MacBreak Weekly 973 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 Mac Break Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Alex Lindsay they're all in the house we're going to talk about both. Microsoft and Google made big AI announcements this week. What is Apple going to do to respond at WWDC? And a big cover story in Businessweek about why Apple fumbled AI. The real question is is there anything they can do to get it back? We'll also talk about Darth Vader's voice in Fortnite. No, you can't get it on the iPhone yet. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly

This is MacBreak Weekly episode 973. Tuesday, may 20th 2025. Lyle did it. It's time for MacBreak Weekly hello everybody. It's sorry about our tardiness for those of you watching live. We were watching google pretend that it has everything under control at google I o. Now it's time to talk apple uh with uh, mr Jason Snell of six colors dot com. Good to see you, Jason good to be here.

0:01:13 - Jason Snell
Everything's fine. Uh, under under control here, fine, how are you?

0:01:18 - Leo Laporte
oh dear when people say that I worry.

0:01:21 - Alex Lindsay
Star wars reference there I caught the star wars reference. Oh, it caught the star wars reference.

0:01:24 - Leo Laporte
I did too. Oh, it was a star wars reference. Oh, that's right.

0:01:27 - Jason Snell
Oh yes, we're gonna have company, everything's fine, yeah, fine negative uh lockdown, I feel like the whole tech industry is doing that right now right it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's gonna be all right stuff it's good, how are you, how are you doing over there, and whatever you're doing any of I go also here at the library.

0:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Hello, Andrew, hey there. Heather, who there? Yes, good to see you. And, of course, from office hours, dot global. Mr Alex Lindsay, thank you for being very patient. Uh, we're starting a little late because of google. I had to say watching google io and, by the way, the last thing they saved the you know, the big announcement for the end was these Android XR glasses they're developing with Samsung that will be sold by Warby Parker and another company whose name was weird and I've forgotten it.

These are pretty impressive and I think mostly a shot across the bow gentle monster is the name of the company mostly a shot across the bow. Uh to uh, meta, because they're very much like the meta Orion glasses. But I have to think apple's watching too and saying in my mind let me just say this this is the next iPhone, this is the next breakthrough consumer product that will change everything when it comes out, a pair of spectacles with your prescription in it, with a heads-up display, cameras and ai built-in that can describe what you're seeing. It can, you know, put your notifications? You know, one of the things they showed that was awesome was a map on the ground that you could see while you're walking, telling you turn left, your turn right here. All of these things again, maybe not today, but sometime. Google's going to release this and I think this is what everybody is looking for yeah, do you think it?

0:03:19 - Jason Snell
scares apple a little bit some are near, some are far. It's time to talk android xr.

0:03:25 - Andy Ihnatko
No, no, no, no, I should never, have showed you my royalty statement for comfort for the vision.

0:03:33 - Leo Laporte
No, no, now everybody's trying to get their own will not.

0:03:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, no, I I think, I think that a lot of companies are like kind of like slapped themselves in the forehead because, uh, because the, the, the ray bands are such an easy thing to make, they're all trying to figure out, well, we have to, we have to have a five or six or seven or eight year plan because we're waiting for the display technology to catch up. And they were sort of ignoring the idea that, yeah, but maybe you can have something, an interim product. Maybe, instead of making the next iPhone, you could start off by making the next airpods, and those are absolutely, totally doable right now. Uh and uh, remember that and and google's been like developing the software for a product that is still not going to exist for a few years, for a long time now, remember well, they didn't give a date and and it could well, no, as usual, yeah, yeah, and we've seen.

0:04:22 - Leo Laporte
You know, one of the killer apps which they've shown now at google I o for a decade is simultaneous translation and they showed they actually were able to do it in front of the audience, from farsi uh to hindi and back again. It failed halfway through, but at least the first part got done and you know, you could see, you could see the outlines of a really killer product and I don't know, is it five years away? Is it three years away? Is it 10 years away?

0:04:48 - Jason Snell
let's, I mean, since this is an apple show, I'll just point out like all the reports suggest that this is what tim cook wants, right yes and when?

that's why I bring it up yes, and as they were building it and and so you know, in our discord somebody says it seems like apple's just went back the wrong horse here. It's like I don't. It sounds like, based on the reports, this is what they wanted to build and as they looked at the technology, they're like this is not going to be a product for a while. It's just too soon, and that Vision Pro is kind of the backup plan of like. Why don't we start from the top down instead of the bottom up?

0:05:18 - Leo Laporte
Do they get learnings from the Vision Pro?

0:05:20 - Jason Snell
I think you know that Vision OS stack that's got using cameras and is using hand gestures and all of that. I think that there is huge research value in all that stuff that will benefit if we're going to do glasses-based interfaces in the next decade. The problem, I see, is that Apple, when they made that move, they didn't say let's also work from the bottom up on. We'll start with sort of glasses that are AirPods and then just kind of iterate from there. Because if it's true that iteration is the best thing to do and that's why the Vision Pro got released to the public at all is you got to ship it and then learn from that and grow. Well, you could also ship a pair of glasses at bottom up, fairly limited, and then learn from that and grow and progress up the chain at the same time.

So I don't think that this is hopeless because I do think that all of their research into this means that apple has got a role to play in in something you wear on your face. But I I am troubled by the fact that they didn't take that opportunity to build glasses like the meta ray bands that are, you know, know, technology. They basically they have all of it. They just didn't think there was a product there, I guess, or at least not enough to build it. And now you know, but I'm not sure that Apple didn't go through everything Meta and Google has gone through and been like. This is going to be awesome, but also when's it going to be?

0:06:41 - Leo Laporte
And maybe Apple. There's battery life issues, yeah, and maybe apple battery life issues, yeah, the heads-up display might be more tricky. Google did buy a company anthony nielsen was showing us, uh, his glasses uh, that did many of these things using a laser projection on us, on your lenses and stuff. Um, so google does have some technology in-house that can do this, thank you, but, um, I'm I'm wondering how close we are. Uh, google, you know, look at every Google's working with Samsung. So they've got a manufacturing giant. I do believe that if Apple wants to preserve its lead in consumer technology, this is the next iPhone, is it not? Am I wrong? And, by the way, it's going to require at least Google's does a phone to go with it.

0:07:27 - Andy Ihnatko
So it sells phones and yeah well, the the classic problem that we've been discussing for years now is that what do you? That's great for in the people in this conversation. That's great for Alex, that's great for Jason, uh, it's great for anybody who wears glasses every day anyway. What does it do? I mean, I have very weak nearsightedness. I use my glasses when I'm driving, but otherwise it's just an option. Is this going to convince me to wear glasses all day, every day, just because I want to have that feature? And how many people are actually in the bubble where, hey, I don't need glasses at all, I don't even own a pair of non-sunglasses, but am I going to start being someone who wears glasses all the time because of this?

0:08:13 - Alex Lindsay
And I think the hard part is that, like when I had Google Glass and I was using, I would wear that for big chunks of time because I would be playing with it and experimenting with it and the camera on the Google glass. You know, the number one reason I took the Google glass off is because, a I was having a meeting that I didn't want to ever have a chance of it being broadcasted and, B someone would ask me to take it off, like you know. Like you know, and what I was doing, like including people that were connected to the product, so so the. So the you know so the. The you know. So the. That was the. The was the challenge there, and I think it's the same thing.

I think that, for me, the Facebook Ray-Bans. I was just having lunch with someone sitting there talking freely and suddenly realized that what I was looking at is someone with Ray-Bans from Facebook and immediately clammed up and, even though I was supposed to have a light, I was like I'm not comfortable anymore, and so I think that's one of the challenges that, beyond all the other technical challenges, the camera sitting on someone's head all the time is is a, is still something that even I haven't gotten over and I have most of these things.

0:09:18 - Leo Laporte
We get used to a lot of these things, you know, I bet we get used to it.

0:09:20 - Andy Ihnatko
I think. I think you're right in the sense that remember that when Google Glass came out, we were still at the end of the happy, fluffy, bunny period of the internet, where it was possible to do things on the internet without being absolutely 180% scrutinized, cataclyzed and monetized. For better or for worse actually, for worse, probably people have. I think they've grown a tough skin about surveillance and that they're going to be aware about it. They're going to be able to protest when saying hey, yeah, just make sure you're not recording me. Hey, I see that light on on your device. I don't want to be recorded, but I don't think that when you have a device that hints that there's a camera there as opposed to a camera on your face, I think that a lot of people are going to be like okay, I mean, I'd rather they're not, I'd rather they not be wearing those glasses, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to force them to take it off just because I'm concerned that maybe it might be on.

0:10:18 - Leo Laporte
Everybody will be wearing them, so you'll just have to. You know, you just have to live with it.

0:10:23 - Jason Snell
Yeah, this is what we've already done. I mean, we live in an environment where there are cameras everywhere. There are cameras on buildings, there are cameras in everybody's pockets. People can shoot video at the drop of a hat and what I feel very strongly? That the feeling that was there when Google Glass appeared isn't there now. I think that that's the difference. Google Glass, people reacted really viscerally to the idea that you had a camera on your face and with the snap glasses and with the meta ray bands. I mean, I'm not saying people don't care and that Alex doesn't care. I'm saying, culturally, I feel like everybody got over it.

0:10:57 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. And again, I, as someone who wears them, and I thought I would get over them, I realized that I'm not over it and so that I mean, that's what the only thing I observe is that, even as someone who is pretty far on the front end of things, you know, I'm just like well, and maybe it's because I end up in a lot of conversations that are somewhat complicated, so it would be hard. You know, from a business perspective, that I'm probably more conscious to it than than others.

0:11:22 - Leo Laporte
Bloomberg piece by Mark Gurman and Drake Bennett. You brought this one up. Uh, Andy, why Apple still hasn't cracked AI? Insiders say continued failure to get artificial intelligence right threatens everything from the iPhone's dominance to plans for robots and other futuristic products. Does Apple watch this? Google IO? And, by the way, monday, monday, microsoft oops, I don't know what that happened there. Microsoft showed a lot of very interesting AI stuff as well, and is Apple worried? Should Apple be worried?

0:12:00 - Andy Ihnatko
I think they should. This is a life-ending incident. It's not like the future of the company is hinging on the success of their AI. I think they should. This is a life-ending incident. It's not like the future of the company is hinging on the success of their AI. But if we wind up in a world three or four years from now when people expect that it doesn't matter that this is a noisy environment I can actually read the captions of someone who's speaking to me or what's going on in that TV up there all this sort of stuff If Apple has an AI, that can just sort of kind of do it, but it doesn't really work all that well, versus Google's iterating on like its 10th year of its speech to text system, and it's not just getting it in noisy environments, it's not just getting it in any sort of accent that might trip up another AI, but it's also getting pretty much every language that anybody who travels within 10,000 miles of home would ever encounter.

That's the sort of thing that would make Apple look like the inferior product. When we look at Apple design, there are people who are into design say oh well, let's compare this iPhone 15 to the latest Samsung and you see where the grill for the speaker is perfectly centered vertically and horizontally between those two screws, whereas on the Samsung it's just off kilter and you can see like there's sort of a gap in the panels right there. And that's the difference between Apple design and Samsung design or whatever design. This could be the exact same difference, only against Apple's favor where it kind of works, but not really versus no, I have every expectation this is not only going to work, but it's also going to work pretty much flawlessly.

0:13:31 - Leo Laporte
From the Bloomberg piece. Seven years after Jen Andrea arrived, the big coup you know getting the Google AI guy. The optimism he brought with him is gone. Apple's AI has not only fallen further behind, has only fallen further behind. Since OpenAI's chat, gpt software burst into the public consciousness, every major tech company has accelerated its efforts to develop the large language models that power such programs. I think it's beyond LLMs at this point, by the way. Incorporate them into voice assistants and other tools. Hype them to consumers. You know, it's not that Google is in the lead by any means. In fact, google is facing existential threats from companies like Perplexity and OpenAI. This is their response to them. But boy, it doesn't look like Apple's, even in the game.

0:14:14 - Alex Lindsay
We ll, I think there's a lot more at stake for Google as well. I mean Google, their search is existential. Like this is what pays for everything. I mean Google has a lot of other little projects, but the thing that pays for Google is AdWords and their ad networks and so something that, like I know that my use of Google has dropped 80% 90% since I had since I started using ChatGPT that's an existential threat because they're selling something that is directly impacted by AI, where I think Apple not yet you know they're selling something that is directly impacted by AI where I think Apple not yet you know they're selling hardware. So I think that that's a different situation.

I do think that Apple's probably what we'll probably see next month or soon after is a relax. They're going to relax, I think, their pressure valve, which is make it easier for people to use ChatGPT or Gemini or other things on the platform. That kind of takes a lot of pressure off of it. It's not like Apple users are ready to buy another piece of hardware. So they're, you know, like they're.

I mean that's not if you just make it easy for them. I mean for me it's a little bit of a lift. I have to push a button and give a and so forth, but it's not fully integrated into the rest of my experience. And that's what if Apple just lets me tie in chat GPT into my experience? You know, as an Apple user I don't know when they need to fix that. You know it gives them two, three, four, five years of if the AI can seem. If they just figure out how to seamlessly integrate the AI into it, is there a long long term solution that they could provide? That is different than everybody else's, absolutely Inside of a private thing, inside of the hardware. But I think that that can be slowly cooked correctly while they, while most of us, are really happy with what we have in front of us.

0:16:01 - Leo Laporte
One of one of the ways Apple's responding. Jay snell just put the link to today's german piece. Uh, in our discord is to they've announced today that they're going to open their ai models to developers it's not announced, it's a report, right it's going to be a WWDC thing. This is going to be a w.

0:16:17 - Jason Snell
This is a german um scoop, but. But this is the one-two punch right. So one punch one and this is mentioned in that Bloomberg Businessweek feature is that Apple is trying to improve its own models, right, and one of the things that they're going to need to change is their annual cycle, because, according to that feature, apple feels like their foundational model in the last year plus, has gotten way better and they feel that it's in the realm of a chat GPT at this point. Now. Is that true or is that a pipe dream? I don't know, but I'm sure it's better, right, because that company has been acting like they've been on fire for the last year and a half about AI. So I'm sure that their model is better. And when you see how fast new AI models get released and Apple doesn't seem to be doing that like, so maybe in the background they've got a new model that's better. Um, but that they're also, you know, at least in europe and maybe elsewhere they're, they're. You know, we know that gemini is the worst kept secret, right? Everybody's saying like, oh, that'll be nice when gemini is on iPhones, like well, yeah, okay, that's gonna happen, and there may be others. And to Alex's, maybe it will be easier to trigger them, whether they're taking over for Siri or whether you're just sort of like choosing which world knowledge engine Siri uses. Either way that you could get something there.

But Apple's model is important, and so this story today is saying something that a lot of people were writing about and talking about a few months ago, which is one of Apple's great advantages, is the app store and the app market and the fact that people write apps that are on Apple's platforms. What you want to do is make your platform more open to using AI features, and so this report says Apple is building APIs for app developers to use Apple's on-device models. And this is big, because if you're an app developer, you can ship an on-device model, but it'll get killed because it's using too many resources. Right, that really needs to be an API from the operating system, and, according to Mark Gurman, that's what they're building, and there are a lot of developers who will look at that and say, oh, this is so great because now I can just use the foundational model on the device, assuming it's okay assuming it's, good enough.

We have to assume that but like its place as being an Apple model and having the APIs for it means that that potentially opens up some interesting things for app developers to do. So it's a one-two punch right. It's like you want to be open, if you're Apple, to the third-party AI world, because they are pushing so fast and it is very hard for Apple, I think, to keep up there, especially in the short term. And then the second part of it is can you use your platform advantage to say you know, let's empower a bunch of app developers to do interesting things with AI models? I of app developers to do interesting things with AI models?

I mean, the example I always use is Apple can afford to take its podcast backend and transcribe every podcast and put transcriptions in Apple Podcasts, which they did. But if you're Marco Arment, a single person who writes a podcast app, you can't do that. But what he could potentially do is let all Overcast users run a transcription engine in the background, transcribe their podcasts and upload them to a shared server so that you create a cloud of transcripts. That's a thing theoretically he could do, but he's never going to put his own transcription engine on phones. It doesn't make sense. So to answer, the big question is Apple, does Apple care? Is Apple trying? It seems like Apple behind the scenes is trying literally everything. I think the question is is it enough? Will it work? Are they the right things? Those are the things we don't know.

0:19:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm kind of a fan of the Lindsay plan, which is that Apple actually in some ways you know Microsoft's in a similar situation. They have their own local models like PHY, which they promote, but they're also very quick to say but look, you can use everything else they announced on Monday.

0:20:12 - Jason Snell
You can use.

0:20:13 - Leo Laporte
Rock, if you want on.

Azure, I think Alex is probably right that well, I don't know. This is a big crisis. One of the things we learned from the epic trial and from the google trial is that I believe there's a schism in apple leadership about how to address this. Yeah, like some. One group says no, no, we got to keep keep doing what we've been doing, which is a closed ecosystem. Uh, we control it all. We're going to protect people's privacy. Another group saying this strategy is failing now and we have to start opening up.

0:20:51 - Alex Lindsay
And this is always the challenge when you have a large company that's making a lot of money in one place, it's really hard for them to put that in any way at risk. Because there are companies that have done both things, which is that they jumped to something new and the rock wasn't there, or they missed the rock when they jumped. And then there's other companies like kodak is a good example of something that had a lot of challenges because they saw the digital revolution before everybody else. They just didn't act because they had this huge um investment in film.

0:21:20 - Leo Laporte
Worst you know they did act. They, they put out digital cameras, they bought a photo. They did act, but it wasn't enough.

0:21:28 - Alex Lindsay
It wasn't enough because they, because they were always conflicted, like their model.

0:21:31 - Leo Laporte
Their model was based on the profits of developing and film right.

0:21:35 - Alex Lindsay
it was just very hard for them to see how, how to get to the other side of that and and that's always the the issue that large movers have these, you know, big, you know is that someone else is going to do something. And again, apple. I think what makes it very challenging for AI is that Apple's constantly worried about their brand and constantly worried about the, the it's safe and it's you know, it's going to be easy to use and you know, when you're using AI all day, you're used to it just failing. All the I'm used to AI for me fails about half the time, like you know, like something is not right about what it just said, and we don't mind.

0:22:08 - Andy Ihnatko
We go forward, we understand that's the nature of the tool.

0:22:11 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, we understand the precision. Yeah, the precision of the. It's not magic. You don't expect accuracy beyond the precision of the device, and so you're constantly working on that process. But Apple that is like outside of Apple's little world like to be wrong half the time. But you can't innovate without failure, and it's very hard for them to do that.

0:22:34 - Jason Snell
And knowing that that's part of it's a tool and that part of the tool is failure and that you deal with failure and that's outside of Apple's. This is almost like a perfect storm of things that Apple to modern Apple. It's in its blind spot Right and in a lot of different ways. And I think that Alex's point about you know, you have that stream of income and do you jump, and there are definitely people at Apple who just still believe that you know chat, gpt and its ilk are never going to be good and they're overhyped and that this is all going to blow over. But the problem with that is this is a company that spent billions of dollars on what if the next big thing is a car, or what if the next big thing is goggles? And yet they don't seem to have put any money into, or at least not a lot into. What if LLMs are the next big thing? Until it was too late, and that's a. That's a sin in a way.

I don't know whether it's a mortal sin or not, but it's definitely a sin on their part.

So I don't know what you know, I don't know what they do, but I think the key is it's absurd to look at something like Siri and say what's the right thing for Apple's customers.

Is it to let them choose from the various agents that are out there the various voice-activated or text-based agents that are out there and choose what they want to use, or is the right answer for Apple's customers to be to not let them choose and lock them into whatever Apple does, even if it's way behind everybody else? Like there's an obvious answer here, but today's Apple is all about locking things down and not giving people choices, because they're afraid. And that's the part that bothers me the most is I think Apple has every opportunity to compete for payments and like to compete in all these different areas to compete, and it's got the home field advantage, but it feels like that's not enough. If, if it can just prevent everybody from seeing what it's like on the other side of the fence, that's going to be even better, and then like it just, it's bad. It's bad for Apple's customers. Bottom line.

0:24:38 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, there was a part of the reporting in Bloomberg this week this wasn't just Gurman, this was a team effort about what's going on inside. Part of it was made the story that Craig Federighi himself was part of the problem early on because he was looking at LLMs people were talking about LLMs. He didn't see where that could play a role in Apple and this is. I wonder if this isn't part of Apple's institutional problem with certain kinds of creativity where, if you pitch them, here is a piece of hardware, there are a pair of magic goggles that will allow you to see dancing elephants on the middle of your desk. Wow, great hardware, let's do it.

Here is the idea for a car. It could be designed like a car and the dashboard will be like one big iPhone and will be self-driving. Wow, that's a great piece of hardware, let's build it. When you say here is a piece of software that's going to take billions of dollars and years of effort, it is electrons that are glued together in ways that can do some kind of cool things that can have lots of different improving effects on lots of different things across an operating system and apps and third-party apps. That's a divide, it's not aparty apps. That's a divide. It's not a divide by zero error, but it's not something they're instinctively going to understand. Oh, oh, that's not a product, oh well, and, and I think that part of the problem is

0:25:54 - Alex Lindsay
that what apple has gotten really good at is taking people, taking a market that is, uh, already existing but not very good at what it does, and leveraging it with design and interface. You know. So, if you look at the phone, the phone was pretty big market already. It was, you know, but it was just, you know, no one loved their phone. They just hated the one that they had less than all the other ones that they had. And so, like I had a trio it's not like I was in love with my trio before, that was the last phone I had for before the, before the iPhone, but, um, but Apple fixed it really quickly.

Same thing with the iPod. Same thing with, uh, the watch. The same thing, you know, like they, they build things that are easier to use, they're, they're simpler, they're safer, they're all those other things. The problem is is that chat, you know, ai doesn't, is a, is a, it's a still a very volatile market and they just don't know where to like. It's not like that. Like cars, I think made sense to them, because I don't there's very few people that I know that really love their car. Like you know, there's an interesting business week uh piece.

0:26:58 - Leo Laporte
It says steve jobs wasn't particularly interested in building search engines, intelligence or otherwise. He believed apple's job was to curate and show customers what they should want. Yeah, but. But then he found Siri. Yeah, and uh and dad kitlaus who created it outside of Apple. It was this. It was a standalone company, said. The original concept was for a do engine. The ultimate vision was you could talk to the internet and your assistant would just handle everything for you. Sound familiar? This is exactly what google's proposing today, uh. And so steve said oh, I wait a minute, hold on. He loved this. Soon after he started using siri, he phoned kitlaus, invited him and his co-founders over to his house during a three-hour chat, jobs offered to buy the company. When kitlaus, box jobs called him 24 days in a row, every day for 24 days saying I want you, I want to buy you.

0:28:00 - Andy Ihnatko
How about now? This weekend is a negotiating position yeah, kitlaus says.

0:28:05 - Leo Laporte
I met with him every week until he no longer could for health reasons.

0:28:07 - Jason Snell
He made siri his personal project jobs got it, he got it, he did, he did. And the, the, the do engine, I think, is there. And the, the idea that apple would kind of uh, because his goal was not like, oh, we need to curate and that we need to hide the world from our users. His idea was always computer for the rest of us. Right, I feel like Steve Jobs very much, especially for the mind.

Exactly and his relationship, even going back to, was like where was was the technical guy? Was knew all the technical detail, but Steve was not concerned about that. He was more concerned about how do we, how do we reach people? This technology is amazing, but most people can't use it. And so how do we make it so they can? And that was always the lens, I think, through which he saw the world of technology, for certain. And so you look at this and it's a very similar approach, which is why don't I? Is there anything I can not do or not do easily on a computer or a phone or whatever that I could just tell it what I want and then it figures it out Like that is kind of the goal is, you know, we all have fun here, we're all tech nerds, we have fun playing with technology, but for most people it's a means to an end, right, and the more you can make it so that anything technology can do, any person can do, by just expressing what they need the end result to be, you win.

And Jobs knew that and you know he had the misfortune, in some ways, of being born in an era where the computer tech was so primitive that you know, the original Mac was the best he could do, and then the iMac was the best he could do and the original iPhone was the best he could do, and then the iMac was the best he could do and the original iPhone was the best he could do.

But it's not surprising to me that he saw something like Siri and is like oh right, at least now you could just ask it things and it'll do it, and that's so much better for a lot of not for everything. I wouldn't want to voice navigate, maybe like a spreadsheet that I've got or my planning documents or something. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, but like I really appreciate that idea and I would say it is because it is a Steve Jobs thing. It is fundamentally Apple like of like, how do we make things easier? The sad thing is, of course, that that whole presentation thing that they did, that they never ended up shipping, featuring app intents and personalized Siri using an index, a semantic index on your device that is a really Apple vision of how this stuff could work. It's just that they they couldn't do it.

0:30:33 - Leo Laporte
They wouldn't do it. I don't know if they couldn't or wouldn't.

0:30:36 - Jason Snell
They couldn't. It sounds like they're still working on it, but we'll. That's one of the great mysteries of WWDC, right? It's like what are they going to actually say that they can? They can ship now according to this article.

0:30:46 - Leo Laporte
By the way, really, I'm thank you for bringing it, uh up because it's really interesting. Uh, tim was. According to this article, tim was one of apple's biggest believers in ai. He was constantly frustrated that siri lagged behind Alexa. So it wasn't from the top that that this failed. He brought in jandrea something. Something went wrong. I'm not sure what went wrong. I don't know if maybe it was craig federighi who, uh, the article says was reluctant to make large investments in ai. He didn't see it as a core capability for computers or mobile devices. Wrong everything we've seen, by the way, this week at microsoft and google was about talking to your spreadsheet. He was at that level of you're going to talk to your computer and it's going to do what you want. Whether it's fix the spreadsheet or order donuts, it's going to do it for you.

0:31:38 - Jason Snell
Agentic ai is I mean that that's the dream, right? Like computers don't exist to be used as computers, they exist to help us do things in life, and if there's a better way to get a computer to do a thing, then you should do that, right, I mean 100%.

0:32:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Apple was at the forefront of a couple of the most important transitions in user experience from command line interfaces to pull down menus and windows and icons, and then from clicks and taps with mouses to actual multi-touch. The third wave seems to be no, just ask your computer what you want it to do. It does it and it doesn't seem like they're ready for that transition. One of the more interesting things from Google IO today was Google basically saying we've got our AI features for Google Search and we're going to be making them a little bit more prominent, where it will be an agentic version of Google Search, where you ask it questions and it will basically be doing the search queries for you, and that is a very, very good plan. So Google search was a conventional. Google search was actually up, I think, 12% last year. So it's not as though there's a lot of information. There's a lot of data about it dying, dying, dying, but Google sees the writing on the wall and they're already saying well, they've added an AI mode tab to the Google search results.

0:33:06 - Leo Laporte
They did it today.

0:33:07 - Andy Ihnatko
That's yeah, that's what they're.

0:33:08 - Leo Laporte
It's perplexity, basically.

0:33:11 - Andy Ihnatko
I've had it in Google Labs for a while now. But basically, to change the paradigm of Google search from I have to know what the search terms to use because I have to give it a good target. I have to know the query language use, because I have to give it a good target, I have to know the query language. I also have to know how to skim past all the stuff that's trying to get my attention in the search results and get to the good stuff. To no, we'll do it all for you. Basically, we're changing Google Search from a search engine to a research engine that has a powerful search engine behind it. This is the sort of stuff where you don't have to convince somebody to get a brand new app. You don't have to get them to change the way that they work. Google is already the concierge for most of the world to the internet, and now that concierge will not at least fight them so much on trying to get the information and the results that they want. That's the sort of stuff that Apple has to make sure that they're not missing the boat on that.

If people start expecting hey look, why is it that I have to actually type in a backslash command to use this spreadsheet. That's what kind of killed command lines and multi-plan and Lotus 1, 2, 3 in the 80s. They could be heading into a place where, wow, why do I actually have to give this phone a list of instructions and go through them step by step by step to get something done? I just want to get all of the data about our upcoming weekend trip and make sure that it's sent over to all the people who are going to the trip with me. Why do I have to like actually open an email client and go into these apps and cut copy and paste and, uh, bedlam, bedlam so this article?

0:34:53 - Leo Laporte
I guess my conclusion from this article is that apple is culturally not prepared for this new world of ai and that that's fundamentally the problem. This doesn't match if it were true, apple's culture and if it's true, it's really a problem.

0:35:06 - Alex Lindsay
Well, I think that I still think that the the, I mean google is facing a much more existential problem, which is that they have, uh, and I think that they're doing a great job at moving down the path, but their situation they're much closer to their horizon of events than apple. Apple's selling hardware to people who don't really want to use some other hardware, and so so there's going to be a long trail before people start like peeling off for just that. There's just one product. If they make it more of it, make the other AI tools more available for Google. The problem is is that you have people using chat, gpt and other things to figure things out instead of searching, but the other thing is is you, can you solve that problem and you make it great? I mean, the demos this morning on Google IO were stunning, but the problem is now I'm sitting there talking to Google and asking it questions and it's not giving me ads.

So one of the problems if it starts giving me ads, I'll be like what? The what we talked about this?

0:36:00 - Leo Laporte
in the stream. One of the problems all these companies have these are all fungible products. There's no lock-in. If you don't like what Gemini gave you, you just go to Anthropic If you don't like what Anthropic gave you. And so, in fact, one of the reasons I use Perplexity is I can choose the model from all of the above and I can use whichever one works for the moment. Isn't that an advantage for Apple? Ben, maybe it is.

So what Google's trying, clearly trying to do and OpenAI has been doing this too is use, google said, because of all the context. This is exactly Apple's strength, all the context we have about you from the apps you use and so forth. We can feed that into the AI. We know more about you, and that's the sticky part is well, you're building up this body of knowledge, this expertise in Gemini, and so you're going know. Building up this body of knowledge, this expertise in gemini, and so you're going to stay with google, and apple has that same opportunity, but for some reason, they are struggling. I think the telling paragraph from this article I thought was uh, it's an example of how ai is proven to be a technology that doesn't play to apple's strengths. The usual playbook. A long time executive says is we're late. We have over a billion users, we're going to grind it out and we're going to beat everyone, but this strategy isn't going to work this time.

0:37:12 - Jason Snell
Yeah. So this is the real question for me is it's very clear that, culturally, Apple was incapable of essentially seeing this happening. That, John Gianandrea. They saw that machine learning was going to be big. They did, they actually did. They built it into their silicon, they built it into a whole bunch of features, but the LLM thing in particular. They just were like, no, that's not what we do, it's not going to be a thing, and they missed an important thing.

The question is there were all those reports about how, like last, I guess a couple years ago now, they had that panic moment of like, oh no, we missed this. And how do they respond? And how do they build those models? And are the models that they're going to talk about in June going to be appreciably better than the models that they had last summer? Because that's where we are now is? It's not.

Did Apple fail to respond properly to this? We know the answer they did. The question is are there ways for Apple to change their culture, to adapt to how LLM stuff works? And how do you alter your vision of, like, what a product is and what third parties you integrate and all of those things in a way that keeps you know keeps you Apple, but that doesn't make your products feel irrelevant. And I know that some people have said Apple will be able to restructure and do this internally. I think other people have said they're probably going to go need to buy somebody at some point and get a, like an infusion of a different culture on the AI side, but that I think the jury's still out right, Because I think that this is a case where we're still dealing with the ramifications of Apple being so late to the party and I mean, who knows?

Like that Bloomberg Businessweek article says they feel like their models have made a lot of progress, but their models are unreleased because nobody's seen them, because Apple keeps secrets, so we don't know where they are. In that and they may be delusional or it might be real, but like that's that's the great mystery right now is like we know they, they, they know that they blew it, but we don't know quite what they've done. And it's a real challenge for them that there's no doubt about it. Like it just it is. It is perfectly not what they've done and it's a real challenge for them. There's no doubt about it. Like it just it is. It is perfectly not what they're good at well, the tension is building.

0:39:32 - Leo Laporte
June 9th WWDC. We will cover the uh keynote as we have, a little differently from the past, the way we did it today with google io, yesterday with Microsoft's build, is in the club only, and that's because Apple will take us down and we're afraid of losing our Google YouTube account as well as our Twitch account because of takedowns, so we no longer stream in public. If you want to watch our coverage Mike and I will be covering the Apple event June 9th You'll need to join the club for seven bucks a month. You get a lot of other benefits, including app free versions of all the shows, but that's how we're going to do it. I'm sorry, I wish we didn't have to do it. I'd much prefer to do it publicly, but that's how we're going to have to do it and I think there will be a lot of interest in what apple announces on Monday, june 9th, and we will talk all about it for you on mac break weekly. The next day we're going to take a little break. Lots more to talk about. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Thank you for being here.

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Uh well, we do have the WWDC message stickers. So there's that they shipped hey they shipped something

0:42:56 - Jason Snell
uh I like that all, all the invitations went out and they did the official that it's at 10 am on the monday and all those things okay.

0:43:04 - Leo Laporte
By the way, this octopus on a keyboard. They're gonna have a little bit of a problem because google has shipped something called let me see if I have it here. I don't jewels, which is an octopus on a keyboard. It's an ai coding assistant on github. Love it so well. Okay, you know there's only so many octopi in the world hey, at least they're developing their own octopus.

0:43:25 - Andy Ihnatko
They understand that this is going to be important five years from now everybody needs an, an octopus.

0:43:30 - Jason Snell
That's right. You just want to hedge your bets. What if, in the future, the octopus replaces the iPhone? You've got to be there with an Apple octopus. It's very important.

0:43:39 - Andy Ihnatko
I just don't see the octopus as a product, though it's a feature. It's not a product, it's a feature. Jason, you've been really thinking about this whole.

0:43:46 - Leo Laporte
Thing.

0:43:56 - Jason Snell
I mean you, this whole thing. I mean you've got a great piece at six colors. How will apple rethink ai features for WWDC? Yeah, I mean inspired in part by our conversations here, and it's that apollo 13 image that I used, which is the. It's that moment. So you're, you're, you're, apple and um, you're taking over your, your um, mike rockwell, uh, the guy who was in charge of the vision pro, and you got put in charge of siri and you're brought into Craig Federighi's group and John Gianandrea is being sort of moved to just a research role more than anything else, a model development and, like you, survey the damage, right, like what now? And the moment that I kept thinking is that Apollo 13 moment where Ed Harris says what have we got on the spaceship? That's good.

Right, like where it's like let's stop doing damage. And it's really for Siri and AI in general. It's like let's stop doing damage control. Let's look at this, as he says in the movie, from the perspective of status. Let's look at it from the other direction, which is what?

0:44:45 - Leo Laporte
works.

0:44:45 - Jason Snell
What do we got? And then you move into the next level what do we got? And then you move into the next level, which is like what do we got that we can ship? We can announce in June and we know we can ship because we got burned last year, so we got to change our rules about that. What are we going to announce? That Bloomberg Businessweek story we've been talking about one of the most interesting things in there suggests that Apple is going to change how it approaches promising new features and it's not going to announce features that it can't ship in a few months.

0:45:17 - Leo Laporte
There's a lot of blame on JAWS and the marketing department isn't there. They over-promised last time.

0:45:23 - Jason Snell
Well, I mean, somebody made the decision to heavily market those features that weren't shipping and some of them that didn't ship, and if it's JAWS, then it's, it's Jaws' fault, like I mean.

But I'm sure the marketing people would say we were assured that if we were going to announce a feature it was going to ship, right, like I mean that you can point, you can point fingers there but, like I think that's the challenge of Apple's the people who are in charge of AI and Siri right now is I'm sure what they want to do is say, yes, llm Siri is coming, but also last year they've said things were coming and they couldn't ship them. So they're going to probably need to not say that, or they're going to be able to hedge it and say like we're working on it but we don't have anything to announce right now with details. And this is that Apollo 13 kind of thing of like you got a triage, like what can we do? What can we bring in partners? What can we do with that? Can we open it up to third party app developers? Can we bring in that?

And it's like I don't envy them that challenge, because that is a huge challenge of kind of picking up the pieces after a couple different disasters and saying, all right, what do we go out to the world with in June? And that's one of the things I'm looking forward to seeing in whatever it is three weeks is is what they? What? What on the spaceship is good, like what is it? What do you, you guys, know? So what is it? What are you guys capable of announcing with confidence Cause everybody's going to be skeptical after last year. So what? What are they capable of saying? This is what we're doing next.

0:46:53 - Leo Laporte
When you wrote that before you? Well, hold on a second Before you. Before you wrote that article. Did you know that the the day after you wrote that article, the guy who solved that problem passed away?

0:47:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, did you know that the guy who made this it's.

0:47:08 - Leo Laporte
Smiley For this. Yeah, here's the picture of him with duct tape. Yeah, garbage bags.

0:47:14 - Jason Snell
So that's for the CO2 scrubbers. Yeah, that was one of the classic Apollo 13 moments and I'll shout out my wife's grandfather worked for the contractor that built those systems. So they were in a room in California working on that same problem, trying to figure out how to do the CO2 scrubbers. Yep, working on that same problem, trying to figure out how to do the CO2 scrubbers.

0:47:31 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, Ed Smiley, the engineer who figured out how to do it with duct tape, passed away the day after you wrote your article.

0:47:37 - Jason Snell
That's the inspirational part of the Apollo 13 story is that that was a complete disaster that happened in space and everybody came home safely and it was due to a lot of ingenuity and that's why I think it's one of the classic troubleshooting stories of technology is thinking about and in that moment, not to. Apollo 13 is one of my favorite movies and I have to tell young people now it literally all happened.

0:48:02 - Leo Laporte
Like it's not made up.

0:48:03 - Jason Snell
And if you get a chance to watch the Blu-ray or the DVD of it. There's a commentary track you can watch where Jim Lovell and his wife literally talk about what really happened. Compared to the movie, it's one of the most amazing commentary tracks I've ever seen. But the idea that in that moment Gene Kranz through the flight controller played by Ed Harris, in real life too, said had that moment of like. Let's not make it worse by guessing. He says let's look at this from a perspective of status. What do we have? That's good and it's really like.

And then that famous line let's work the problem, people. It's like. Let's take the emotion out of it. Let's look at this coldly. We know that it's bad, but we need to start thinking about it in a methodical way so that we can get to the solution and no lives at risk for Apple. So I don't want to make the parallel too strong, but there is, as a technical exercise. It really there must have been a moment where those people came into a room and were like oh boy, apple, intelligence and Siri, what are we?

0:49:04 - Andy Ihnatko
going to do. You can't try to solve the problem by unstirring the tanks. That's not going to happen. You have to move forward from there, and I think that one of the difficulties was that Apple was in the same situation in 2024 at WWDC, that I think Google was in in 2023 at Google IO, where OpenAI put the world on its ear with ChatGPT. Anybody who cannot do something like that, or cannot demonstrate something like that, runs the risk of being pegged as someone who is clueless and is technically far behind. And they had to basically, if not, ship something then and there explain that no, no, no. We are aware of this and we have the capability, and here's what we're building.

0:49:46 - Leo Laporte
To be fair, even the folks at openai were shocked, yeah, at the capabilities of chat, gpt, threat three yeah, I mean they, and even they did not expect it.

0:49:55 - Andy Ihnatko
It took everybody in silicon valley and and remember that this is based on the research that that google first published in 2014 right, and now they're, they're, and now there's, there's, there's. Stories came up, maybe defensively, that well, we had the capability of doing this, but we were concerned that the model that we had wasn't good enough for what we would be selling it. They were demonstrating a lot of things at IO about well, here's a demo of what this could work like, but we're not ready to actually put this into human hands yet. But it's exactly the problem when Apple felt that Apple is the classic model of Apple, the problem when Apple felt that Apple is the classic model of Apple, and I think one of the problems that we all have is thinking that the classic model of Apple that got solidified in people's minds in 2002, 2003 is still operative. The classic model is that you never hear anything from Apple until the thing is ready, until they demo it and they're shipping it and they got a launch date, and now they were in a position where they had to demo something that they were planning on doing and that they hoped would be ready by a timetable that everybody in the conference room decided to sign off on because, okay, we have to choose a launch date, let's choose this date.

And they felt as though they didn't have the ability to simply say we're working on this. We think this is very in Tim Cook's words. We think this is really interesting and very exciting and we have nothing to announce at this time and they won't be able to get away with exactly that in 2025. But hopefully they have the next time that they're about to again try to un-stir the tanks, they'll think back to we. That did not work for us the last time. Perhaps we should be a little bit more circumspect.

0:51:32 - Alex Lindsay
And hopefully they can just be calm. Like you know, like. The hard part is is that you know folks got wound up, and you see this in many companies and in in you know it takes a handful of people to freak out to get everybody else running around, like they're, you know, like chickens with their head cut off. You know like and and they're and the. The issue is is, I think that they they panicked over something they didn't. Obviously they didn't get very far, so they didn't need to do any of this. Here they are with a failure instead of non-action, and they could have. They had plenty of time that. I have 600 movies in my Apple TV. I use notes on all my machines. I have an Apple you know account. I'm not going anywhere, like you know, like. And so the thing is is Apple has plenty of time to to. They had not forever, but they had plenty of time to do this. They didn't need like.

It was just such an unforced error last year to go down this path and panic when there was no, there was nothing to panic about, because the lock-in that Apple has is so much deeper than what Google has.

Because you know, I very, you know I love Google, I love Google search.

It's what I use for search, and I immediately shifted over to something else because it was producing a better product very, very quickly, and so that, and that's a problem for Google, that's not, but but I was still doing it. All of these things, the Google and the chat GPT on my Mac and on my phone and on my you know, and so I think if Apple simply had pivoted last year to saying we can make it really easy for chat GPT to tie into what you're doing, or Claude, or Gemini probably couldn't be Gemini because of the antitrust stuff, but but all of the if they just said we're going to make this available and we're working on something bigger, that's going to be even better, but this is what we're doing today, they would have been fine and I think that they'd be fine if they did that this year. Um, I think that they have plenty of time and I think the biggest thing that will screw up apple is to panic and rush well, we'll find out.

0:53:21 - Leo Laporte
I'm excited now. June 9th is going to be a big, big moment and, of course, there's lots of other things apple could talk about, like the app store nightmare that is unfolding as we speak. Apple has agreed to, or has decided to, appeal that and, as a result, they are telling epic yeah, no, uh, we're gonna wait and see what the judge says before we put fortnight on the App Store. They're blocking fortnight. Epic says okay, on Friday they sent a letter to the judge, yeah, accusing Apple of refusing to consider its fortnight submission, calling it quote Apple's latest attempt these thems fighting words to circumvent this court's injunction and this court's Authority.

0:54:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, rana yeah, uh, hopefully can tap into some of the good, the font of goodwill they've built with that particular judge judge rogers is gonna not be happy.

0:54:17 - Jason Snell
Her response is very much like writing see me after class on a paper and handing it out to a student. It's basically look, you two should be able to work this out, and if you can't, whoever at apple is responsible for not working it out must appear before me on a couple of mondays from now and explain themselves. And it's like well, look, how good are you guys at reading signals okay, that was.

0:54:43 - Andy Ihnatko
that was the chilling part of the response was basically because because remember, in the previous order they said okay, I'm going to be forwarding this, this, this, uh this for possible criminal charges against the specific person who lied under oath. Now she's like I'm going to have you give me a name, dude, you're going to give me a name.

0:55:03 - Leo Laporte
So that if I order you guys to do something, it doesn't happen. So TechCrunch said that the judge is in effect ordering Apple to approve Fortnite. Is that your sense of this?

0:55:14 - Jason Snell
I think they're basically saying the judge is saying you should be able to work this out without me, but if you can't, then let's talk about it.

And I think that if I'm Apple's attorneys, what I would probably say is something like our argument is not your order about purchase rules in the store. Our argument is with Epic, which stems from them violating those terms and conditions back in the day and us not trusting them, and that our ban is still in place. You you haven't said anything about whether we could allow it or not. I think the judge, just as a non-lawyer human being, I think the judge is not going to be super sympathetic to that argument, when what Epic is really trying to do here is, say we uh, we just want to be in the U S store, following the rules that are in place in the U S store store, following the rules that are in place in the US store, and you should let us back in because the thing you banned us for isn't disallowed anymore, and so let us in. I think it's going to be a tough one for Apple to win, even though technically they have an argument, it just seems like it's too far for them to go.

0:56:26 - Leo Laporte
So the judge wrote uh, that apple contends that it can ignore this court's order, having not received a stay from the ninth circuit, even though its request was filed 12 days ago. This was this came out yesterday. Yeah, obviously, apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing.

0:56:46 - Jason Snell
However, uh, if you don't figure it out, we'll give you one and this is the thing.

0:56:52 - Leo Laporte
This is the, this is the key part of this. The apple official, who is personally responsible for ensuring compliance, shall personally appear at the hearing on tuesday, which is basically saying you're somebody in trouble here and I want, I want I want names.

0:57:08 - Andy Ihnatko
Who's that new entire lyle? Congratulations, you just got promoted your chief counsel on this case, going to oakland on monday and judge continues.

0:57:16 - Alex Lindsay
Any opposition brief shall be filed by uh wednesday, by uh tomorrow, and shall identify by name the apple official referenced above yeah, and, and the hard part is, is that the judges also understands what apple's doing from a legal perspective is they want, they want a legal case that they can appeal, and so they, they don't, they don't. The judge doesn't want them to do that. They've been losing these, so they may, they may continue to lose those, but what they're, but what?

0:57:43 - Leo Laporte
somebody's going to get a contempt order on on the 27th? Yeah right.

0:57:48 - Alex Lindsay
Not necessarily. Not necessarily.

0:57:50 - Andy Ihnatko
Apple did ask for a response by x date, so I think they were just waiting out the clock.

0:57:54 - Alex Lindsay
I think sometime next week, I think it is or the end of this week yeah, but the main thing is is they need, they need the court action to happen so that they can take it and appeal it.

So what would happen is is that once you put that into the, into the, into the spin, what it means is that they can say the court, she then requires them to do it, but she made that order, it's now a court action, it can now go to ninth court of appeals and if they and if for somehow, apple wins because, remember, each one of these is its own case. Now she's mad about all of it, but an appeals court might look at it and go well, they need to open up the thing, because that's what was ruled. But in this case, they have the right to tell, you know, to tell someone who acted in bad faith back. Then they have the right to do that, and then a court and another court above her may decide that that's the case and then pull that back, and then they'll immediately pull that app out of the, out of the store.

0:58:46 - Jason Snell
What you risk though, if you're apple is is by pressing this, the judge orders you to put that app in the app store and to un-unreject and unban them, setting a precedent that in the future, could possibly mean that apple no longer really has control over what goes in the app store or not.

0:59:06 - Alex Lindsay
Like that's the danger appeal. Yeah, right on the other side of it.

0:59:09 - Jason Snell
So the question is it's a little like a poker game. It's like, do you want to push it that far or do you want to essentially negotiate with epic? Because what the? I think one of the issues here is that epic doesn't have a non-app store, uh, or a an in-app purchase version of fortnite anymore. Basically they have. You want to buy the stuff, you buy it from epic outside of the app.

And if apple wins its case or gets an injunction, or gets the injunction overturned, I guess technically, then what does what happens to fortnite? And I think that that would be a thing that apple could argue in court. But they could also just argue with Epic and say, look, we'll let you back in, but if this thing gets overturned, you got 24 hours to put in a purchase in your app or it's out of the app store. And and because that's, I think that's every you know Kindle, every other country, but the U S that thing is, there's a switch that's flipped and you can't buy external web links, but in the us you can. There there's a fallback position for everybody else, but there isn't a fallback position, I don't believe, for fortnight.

1:00:16 - Alex Lindsay
It's not engineered to do it anymore well, and I think that that would be the argument. I think I think also apple is very resistant if they feel like they have some chance in court. I think they're very resistant putting fortnight back in because most apple iPhone users that Fortnite existed, like you know, and so they don't really care.

1:00:32 - Leo Laporte
Well, they're being reminded now, right, I mean?

1:00:34 - Alex Lindsay
they're being reminded now, but they haven't started playing it. But they haven't started playing it yet. So the thing is, is that once they play it and then it gets pulled out again, that's leverage for Epic? Yeah, that's for sure. So the legal limits. Even if someone spends a couple of nights in jail to keep Fortnite out of out of it, I'm not. I'm poor Lyle.

1:00:59 - Andy Ihnatko
Lyle.

1:00:59 - Leo Laporte
Lyle.

1:01:00 - Andy Ihnatko
And by the way, your prison time is going to be counting against your personal days.

1:01:04 - Jason Snell
It's okay, he Pat, he's going to pack pajamas and a toothbrush.

1:01:08 - Andy Ihnatko
I think they'll offer him double time we'll offer you double time for those days. Yeah and and uh, remember the part of the Apple strategy when they, when they were, when they filed this emergency stay. Part of their argument was that, hey, by keeping epic out of the out of the app store, that means that there's no reason for you, court, not to give us an emergency stay, because it's not as though epic's being harmed by an extra few months of being kept out of the app store.

1:01:31 - Leo Laporte
They're already generating no income from us, so once the kids see darth vader talking bad words in fortnite in james earl jones voice strategic value is very well, value is in a very well, so you talk to her. Darth vader says hawk tour in the new fortnight. Uh, and the sag after is not happy about him by the way. These, even though, uh, james earl jones is the voice of darth vader's estate, his family authorized the use ai use of his voice and presumably that's. Uh, this is one of those legitimate uses.

1:02:12 - Andy Ihnatko
Sag after says it violates fair labor practices well, basically they're arguing that they, that epic has an agreement with sag after that basically prohibits them from doing this and that they're the complaint because, they strike on right now. Exactly the complaint they filed with the national labor board was basically that that they did not come to us first and they did not attempt to negotiate a way through this.

1:02:35 - Leo Laporte
Well, epic's already got the lawyers in the building. They just go down the hall.

1:02:38 - Andy Ihnatko
on this one, they got the hotel at the Holiday Inn next door. They're going to be staying there for another couple weeks, holy cow. But fun fact, the AI is the chatbot. Part of that is actually gemini, google gemini 2.0.

1:02:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh, interesting that's how you and they're using 11 voice technology. Yeah, all right. Yeah, they were getting to say all sorts of bad words. It sounds pretty good well, I mean it's.

1:03:02 - Andy Ihnatko
It's weird, I don't. I don't know if Jason would agree with agree with me on this, but it's like I've heard a lot of this audio and it sounds like somebody doing and an impression of darth vader that you hear everywhere has nothing to do with his performance. It's like yes, I'm lowering my voice and I'm talking like this. It's as opposed to the pauses and the emphasis he puts on certain words it's okay.

1:03:27 - Jason Snell
it's important to note that this is all dynamic, right, like the way in the what is it? I think of the Obi-Wan series, they used the re speech or technology based on James Earl Jones voice, but there was a performance, somebody was giving a performance of Darth.

Vader and and and then it's being tweaked and there's a lot of like very subtle, careful stuff to get in the end, I would argue, a darth vader that sounds more like classic darth vader than the last few times james earl jones did it, like in rogue one. Darth vader kind of sounds like an old man because james earl jones did it but he was an old man, um, but, but it was a performance. This is not a performance, this is an llm with an 11 labs virtual voice, and so it sounds like darth vader. Sure, but it's not a performed darth vader, it's a. It's a text-to-speech darth vader so you get.

1:04:19 - Andy Ihnatko
You get what you pay for it's kind of how we've, culturally, we've forgotten what elvis presley really sounded like, we've forgotten what frank sinatra really sounded like, because our cultural memory has been supplanted by every single elvis impersonator.

Oh oh, thank you very much. Thank you very much, and I'm perfectly okay with this kind of use of AI if the actor or the actor's estate signed off on it and apparently the family was pleased enough, by whatever check they may or may not have received, that they actually provided a quote for the press release, because I'm sure Epic anticipated this kind of a problem. However, this is a situation where I would much rather it be like when they replaced Jim Henson's voice for Kermit. It's like okay, it's a different voice, but it's a different actor, it's a new actor. That's more acceptable than I'm going to have a synthetic voice that replicates the sounds that Jim Henson made, but I'm going to have another actor give the performance and the cadence and overlay that on top of that. That's where it gets a little bit murky and that's where, as a consumer of entertainment, it gets a little bit.

1:05:24 - Leo Laporte
You really have to wonder what James Earl Jones would have thought about this whole thing.

1:05:29 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh, the family statement is is along the lines of oh well, james earl jones wanted the character to survive and wanted this and was very pleased about this being a new generation, but again, that's fortunately he was.

He had enough resources that he he was able to provide legal cover and legal uh continuity for these choices to be made. So there, there's no doubt in my mind that there are people making these choices on his behalf, that he specifically considered and designated for this sort of stuff. So we might not like it as an audience, but ethically, I don't think there's a big problem with it.

1:06:02 - Leo Laporte
It's nice, it's actually nice to take care of your loved ones after your passing. Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do? Not have Darth Vader anymore because the actor's not gone?

1:06:09 - Andy Ihnatko
I just wish that would be. Let's let's hire a new actor who is definitely going to do a voice that's compatible with james earl jones, but we're not going to pretend that.

1:06:17 - Leo Laporte
Hey well, they did that, didn't they?

1:06:18 - Andy Ihnatko
there are a lot of people in cartoons and elsewhere that have voiced batman batman's keep getting cycling in and out all the time and it's like a little tiny little spin on it yeah uh, take a little break, come back with more.

1:06:31 - Leo Laporte
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New book. I haven't read it yet. I want to read it. Apparently he was on Colbert last night. The author, Patrick McGee. Apple in China the capture of the world's greatest company. Uh, the premise of this. Oh, you got it. You've read it nice.

1:11:49 - Andy Ihnatko
No, it just literally arrived today at the library and oh, it's a library book.

1:11:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I've only read the forward this is the summary from Simon and Schuster. After struggling to build its products on three continents, apple was lured by China's seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Soon it was sending thousands of engineers across the pacific, training millions of workers, spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create the world's most sophisticated supply chain. These capabilities enabled apple to build the 21st century's most iconic products in staggering volume and for enormous profit. But without explicitly intending to, apple built an advanced electronics industry within China, only to discover that its massive investments in technology upgrades had inadvertently given Beijing a power that could be weaponized. The author McGee says China could just stop the iPhone cold anytime it wanted yeah, it's a.

1:12:45 - Andy Ihnatko
I've only again, I've only read the forward, but the forward begins with like. When xi jinping, uh like entered and rose to power and immediately Chinese states state-sponsored television was like, launching attacks against apple about oh, you're not treating China, your Chinese customers, as well as you're treating international customers, and you're just all this that the other and how like apple was like shocked that but but but we spent all this money making this great relationship and our, our policies are pretty much the same, like everywhere, and it was like a moment where they realized that they maybe don't have the relationship with China that they thought they did, and that he, the author, identifies that as like a turning point, where that's the point at which, instead of being going 100% diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy, and putting executives living in China full time to keep an eye on like what the weather was over there, that's when they should have started to think about what if this relationship breaks down. They were putting in one of the figures that's being quoted. A lot in the reviews is about how the CHIPS Act. Like the reviews is about how uh the chips act.

Like the biden's chips chips act was something like 52 billion dollars uh total, whereas apple was putting like 55 billion dollars a year into Chinese manufacturing and it wasn't just like investing in factors, it was like creating workflows, creating infrastructure, infrastructure creating this, that and the other. Basically, as I think that quote that you said put it a transfer of knowledge, a transfer of experience going into China. And if you're concerned about geopolitics in that kind of manufacturing, the argument to be made is that Apple seriously undermined the the united states ability to ever be able to build iPhones profitably inside the united states by putting all that money and all that expertise into building up a Chinese it sounds like this was well researched more than 200 interviews.

1:14:45 - Leo Laporte
Apple, according to nine to five. Max says the claims made in this book are false and there are many inaccuracies throughout. The company asserts the author didn't perform proper fact checking.

1:14:56 - Alex Lindsay
So Apple doesn't like it, and there's a pretty good article not article good interview on the Daily Show as well.

1:15:01 - Leo Laporte
That's what it was the Daily Show 24. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was kind of hilarious.

1:15:06 - Alex Lindsay
John was particularly animated in this. This is probably not one he could have done on his show on Apple TV. No, kidding yeah.

So I mean it definitely outlined. You know how you go down a path and you know something grows. You know I always call it the kitty cat principle, which is that your cat is so nice to you as long as you're much bigger than it is. You know, as soon as it's bigger than you, you're a lunch, you know. And so the yeah, yeah and so so the it would, it would switch to lunch really fast, even your own cat. So I think that the challenge that Apple had is, when they got there, there wasn't a lot there. They, you know, splunked it.

The problem is, I think anybody saying that this could be done in the United States isn't really looking at what people are willing to pay. I mean, we're talking about people not willing to pay for a headset for $3,500. That's probably about what the top of the line Apple phone would cost if we did it in the United States. And that's just labor, like. Just the cost of labor is just entirely different and it was much different back then. It's gotten.

The cost of labor has gone up in China pretty dramatically, partially because of Apple, but the automation has also changed and again, I think that trying to compare that to the overall decline of machining and precision machining in the United States long before any of this stuff happened. I think that he probably jumps to a couple of conclusions I wouldn't follow. But it is the case that Apple trained a lot of people to do a lot of things and it has built a lot. When you look at a company like DJI, who is exploding, there's a lot of technicians that are working on DJI that probably came out of those at some point, were in those Apple factories getting trained to do precision work.

1:16:50 - Leo Laporte
Well, I guess I will read it. I got the Audible book.

1:16:53 - Alex Lindsay
I bought it. I saw the interview with Jon Stewart and ordered the. I mean literally while I was watching it going Good Well next week, yeah, by next week.

1:17:02 - Leo Laporte
Book club yeah, book club. Tell us what you think I mean. On the surface it makes a lot of sense. I don't think anybody could deny that. If somehow in this trade war, China decided it would be more in their interest to slow down production of the iPhone, they could do it. He says, you know, you could cut power to four hours a day.

1:17:22 - Jason Snell
So the counter argument is that we, especially in America, tend to build up China as this big, scary boogeyman. And while China is huge and has a huge economy and has a lot of money, the fact is that it is a two-way relationship. The fact is, China benefits greatly and China's economy benefits greatly from all it would have to be a crisis in our relationship that it would.

It would have to be a severing of ties basically for this to happen, because, because it would be and again I know it's an authoritarian regime and they've got complete control and all of that, but like they're also in economic straits.

The weakness is always going to be the economy, because people put up with a lot, but there is a limit to it, and right and so let's. That's. The thing is like yes, apple would be completely boned if China was like nope, nope, no more, uh, exporting anything to outside of you know, to outside of China. It's over, um, but China's economy would be pretty boned too, right.

1:18:27 - Leo Laporte
And it's. It would be mutual, it's mutually assured destruction. Yeah.

1:18:30 - Jason Snell
Yeah, always yeah. At which point we just talking about a war over Taiwan. Is the scenario here?

1:18:35 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, there are a lot of components to this and part of it is like having watched. If anybody who's been watching for the past three or four years has seen that China has decided that, why are we direct helping our own people to put money into a company like Apple and making that almost the national luxury brand? Why don't we make Xiaomi the national luxury brand? Why don't we make xiaomi the national luxury brand instead and eventually wean ourselves of the influence of of this kind of foreign money? And this is one of the reasons why I think you see sales in China declining, declining, declining.

There was there was another story about how they were unprecedented. Some retailers were offering unprecedented discounts on iPhones uh, above and beyond, just like a regional or a holiday sale, because just sales are just down, down, down and it doesn't seem to be a way to get them back up again. And part of that has to be because the Chinese Communist Party has all kinds of outlets in which to promote Chinese businesses and to at least disadvantage apple businesses. I don't think they're. I don't think they're at a point right now where they will do what they did in 2013, which is to basically like within it really was that this it was. It's a nice opening to the book. Literally within 72 hours of taking power, he was like firing fusillades against apple. I don't think we're back to that, but they don't have to really attack Apple directly so long as they give local companies, Chinese companies, advantages that are denied to Apple.

1:20:05 - Jason Snell
Well, apple says that they're still selling pretty well in urban China. It's not all of China, but in urban China that they sell very well. Their business is not growing like it did a while ago. I think that they and I think that from a China standpoint they keep vacillating between the nationalism of you know, be proud and buy Chinese products, and the other part of it, which is look how awesome we are. You get access to the very best product in the world. It isn't denied to you and they customize it for China and isn't that great. And so there there's a real kind of like back and forth that happens there.

But that's the consumer part of the business and I think nobody would argue that if Apple's sales in China went to zero, apple would be in dire straits. Right, they wouldn't be happy, they'd be very sad about it. But like, that's the consumer sales aspect, whereas there's the manufacturing aspect where they would be completely wrecked if that went. And China benefits from that because those are factories that are employing lots of people in the supply chain and you know, assembling Apple devices and all of that and and that is. You know, if you lost that, that would be bad for China's economy. So it's.

It's complicated, but, like there's no doubt about the thesis of this book, which is that Tim Cook didn't have to put go all in on China. But Tim Cook in 2000, in the 2000s, was a real believer in China as a market and China as a manufacturing center and went all in. He did, he went all in. There's no denying that. And now he is dealing with all the weakness that that causes him and the lack, the weakness that that causes him and the lack of flexibility that it causes him.

1:21:40 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and I think that the hard part is, is that a lot of these things kind of generate their own weather system. You know, like all the hard drives are made in Thailand or whatever. There was a time at least when all the hydrogens and when we had a flood we couldn't buy hard drives because everyone. Because the problem is is that you have these huge, massive supply chains that are, it's like. You know, you have to have all these other pieces that are there to supply it. All the little pieces, all the little things that are made, it's all made by a bunch of little companies. It's not just that there's one big company that's building all these things. There's all these suppliers that are providing all of these things that are all kind of flowing into that system. And so as you build that up, it gets to a point where it's pretty hard to do anywhere else. And so now Apple is doing it, and it's very expensive, and I think that China is sensitive to that.

I think the problem is all the saber rallying that's happening between the United States and China gives Apple a little bit of cover, like, hey, we gotta be able to do something else and we've got tariffs and everything else, so else, and we got to be able to. You know we've got tariffs and everything else, so building up into India makes sense. But I think the the what they're doing in India is exactly the same thing as what they did in China and Vietnam. They're training lots of people, you know, it's not just that India is, and this is why India has such large tariffs, for they want you to build things there because they want skills. You know like they want the skills, um, that are that are part of this puzzle. They want to build those skills up.

Whether in Vietnam wants the same thing everybody. So Apple, going in and hiring tens of thousands of people to do these things, you know is going to build up an industry again in other countries. They need time and the question is is whether they'll have enough time to make the turn. Before, you know, there's a conflict over Taiwan. I think that really the big thing is. We can talk about all the other things that Apple might be caught up in, but the war in Taiwan is the thing that would probably be the thing that will turn the crank the hardest between the two if something happens there.

1:23:32 - Leo Laporte
China's already cut off some of their minerals right Rare earth for magnets and lithium and stuff, some of which are not easily attained elsewhere. Lithium is, I mean. I think that we're already in a trade war with them and admittedly we're very dependent on each other, but it could go south at any point. I mean, that's just one more threat to Apple.

1:23:58 - Andy Ihnatko
There are many right, and it's not just the trade war aspect of it.

Another piece of news this week is Xiaomi shipped their first laptop that runs on our OS, which is 100% internally made, no external code, it's not based on Linux, it's not based on anything, it's completely home ground, and they're putting it on their phones, their watches, their tablets, their laptops, servers, everything.

And it just shows you how comprehensive this idea of we want everything to be made inside China.

It's not just nationalistic. It means that, uh, there are a couple of a, a couple of of congress people this week basically said that we have to make sure that the, that the, that this honor os doesn't't gain a toehold in world technology because it's probably a spying apparatus for the Chinese government. It's like it almost definitely is a spying apparatus, at least for their own people, and that's the level of control that the party wants to have over the technology that transacts inside this country. So there's a lot of reasons why I'm sure that I'm sure that they don't, that China does not want to lose apple's business, certainly not as a manufacturing business. But if they can, if they can apply like a five year or ten year plan, that basically says that we can basically handle all the rest of the world's manufacturing without apple. The benefits, the of the multi-dimensional benefits of producing all of our own stuff for our own consumers and our own people internally, that might very much outweigh that.

1:25:21 - Leo Laporte
So well, also there's some of these phones from Huawei, and the xiaomi are pretty darn amazing you can't buy them in the US this trifold, nate. Uh, people are raving over it. It is like three thousand dollars, yeah, but uh, um, you can't get it in the US.

1:25:37 - Andy Ihnatko
It's not, it's not a stunt people who get, who have their hands on it, saying I don't know how long it's going to work.

1:25:42 - Leo Laporte
But no, the raves, but it's an amazing and amazing device. One tech blog said the best phone. Uh, you should not buy. Yeah, uh, because it's not only so expensive, you can't buy in the us, but and this is the thing I mean I don't think that. Uh well, it's an interesting world we live in. Let's put it that way in.

Much in motion is the future yeah, yeah, yeah, um, all right, let's take another little break. You're watching mac break weekly. Uh, the uh usual, uh assembled. It's great to have Jason Snell from sixcolorscom, Andy inaco and, of course, Alex lindsey from officehoursglobal, and we're so glad that we have you too. Thank you for watching uh f1. I'm a big f1 fan. Monaco is, uh, this coming week. Apple has a big movie coming out next month with brad pitt, so of course they're getting in on the f1 hype. You can now travel the monaco circuit on the apple maps in beautiful cartoon fashion, having I've stayed there, I've stayed on the hairpin and I've walked the monaco circuit and it's it's quite amazing. In fact, I was there a couple of years ago when they were getting ready for the race, and it was really fun to watch it be transformed. I love watching the race.

1:27:02 - Jason Snell
Yeah, they did it with Vegas. They did the same thing with the Vegas race, where they added it.

I've heard from people about like they did this with Super Bowl cities. They use it as an opportunity for that too, and there's temporary landmarks that they mark and then those go away when the grandstands come down, and the permanent landmarks that they mark, and this is that enhanced 3D city view and all of that. I got a briefing about this, which I find hilarious, because I'm like are they saying Monaco is the word they're saying? And then I'm like, oh yeah, it is. But you know, if you zoom in close, there are all these like billboards and everything, and they're all billboards for the F1 movie that's coming.

1:27:36 - Leo Laporte
Oh my God, you're kidding.

1:27:38 - Jason Snell
June. Oh my God, uh, in theaters everywhere, we're starting Brad Pitt Cause. That that's. That's what this is. This is part of the the the month long, more than a month long, rolling thunder promo for for the F1 movie that coming out next are you going to get invited to a special screening? I doubt it. I mean, that would be a first I would love, although I'll say this I would love to go to a movie screen screening at the steve jobs theater because that would be that would be state-of-the-art, that that sound system is so spectacular.

Those projectors are amazing. I would love to do that, but I bet that's going to be an apple employees only kind of thing. You gotta be johnny ive level or better to get in there yeah, you know you got to be this tall to ride the ride, whatever I loved it when I worked.

1:28:24 - Leo Laporte
When I worked in san francisco on radio, I'd get invited to they had. There's a screening room in san francisco small, it's about 10 people, get in there very comfortable and you'd get advanced screenings of movies.

1:28:33 - Andy Ihnatko
I always go to as many of those as I could I was a little surprised to find that after the new apple camp, after the spaceship campus was open, that they there weren't more events, public events, at the steve jobs theater, because it's because it's situated kind of like how the theater at ilm is situated, where it's off the main entrance so that you don't have to let people go through like the actual building in order to get there and then Alex will, Alex will know, but there's they do have like academy screenings and other like special events, because it is the most kick butt theater you've ever. I've ever been in my entire freaking life. That's good, uh, but I'm kind of I I kind of imagine that one of the reasons why the steve jobs theater was placed where it was was so that if they had a production or a movie or an event that they felt was in line with their interests or their goals, that they could make that theater available without again allowing people to run roughshod over the entire spaceship.

1:29:29 - Alex Lindsay
I think it's definitely designed to have a lot of people there and to let people in without you know. The way that you get to it from the front entrance, the way you you know all that stuff is a pretty straight shot without having any kind of you're not connected to anything else, so it stands alone by itself. The I think the challenge is is that I think that they I think it might've been building up towards that they were doing more events there right before COVID. When COVID hit, they got used to not having anybody around.

1:29:55 - Andy Ihnatko
I think I liked it.

1:29:56 - Alex Lindsay
They probably were just kind of like I'm here Because I mean it's amazing when you walk up to it the very expensive Meyer speakers that are in the walkway sound amazing, you know, on the way there, you know, and it's a great space to do that in. But I do, you know, I think that, and there's only I think it's probably one of the best theaters there. I mean, I think the Dolby Theater, the internal Dolby Theater that is at Dolby, is probably the nicest one in the Bay Area as far as sound and picture.

1:30:30 - Leo Laporte
And there's Lucas's right at the Ranch. That's a pretty nice theater. Stag, yeah, I saw.

1:30:34 - Jason Snell
I saw.

1:30:35 - Alex Lindsay
I saw uh, what did I see there? Men in black. I saw men in black at the stag. Um, it was amazing. Good sound. They had to add sound back into the stag because uh, because they were, they were creating when, cause they use it for the move, the mixes, they sit in there and they listen subtle for an average theater. So you had to have a way to add noise back in to like dumb it down so that you understood that this is not what people are going to hear like they're not going to hear any of what you just added, because the system can't.

1:31:03 - Leo Laporte
It is amazing to see something with a really good sound in that theater.

1:31:07 - Alex Lindsay
It's, yeah, quite a thing the closest you can get in public, I think right now is from that, from the fidelity, is probably the dolby theaters. Um, yeah, as you know, as far as the number of speakers and stuff like that in public, and then, and then I would say imax. Those are two.

1:31:20 - Leo Laporte
There's a certain irony in the fact that all of those fancy speakers, like the revel speakers in the sound booths there at lucas sound uh now are owned by samsung, which has purchased every damn speaker brand, including bowers and wilkins uh that there is. They're all under the samsung label now. So apple should have done a little bit of that. They could have swiped it. I don't know if myers is myers might be too small, but the revel is bowers and wilkins is um, because they bought denon morantz. Right, this just happened.

Uh, let's see what else is going on in the apple world today. I need to fill some time so we don't have all the commercials happening at the. Oh, you know, I wonder if tim cook's ears were burning when the president was in saudi arabia. Uh, you know, making money, accepting planes, all of that. Jensen huang made the trip. He joined him from nvidia. Uh, and and uh. The president said I see, my friend is here, jensen, tim cook isn't here, but you are, tim cook isn't here. Uh, is this like a mob boss saying I mean, if you, if you would be?

1:32:38 - Alex Lindsay
why, you want another million bucks if you're, yeah, if you're asking like, why did all those people pay a million dollars and willing to sit behind him during the thing? Is because of the constant threats you know like, and so you know the constant like I'll. You know I all of this can go away tomorrow at at a whim tim.

1:32:55 - Leo Laporte
So trump says I had a little problem with tim cook yesterday. I don't want you building in india. He says little problem with tim. God, this must be, this must be so humiliating. Yep, I said to him my friend, I treated you very good, you're coming. This is such a mob boss. I said, my friend, I treated you very good, you're coming here. This is such a mob boss. I said to him my friend, I treated you very good, not once in a while me over for a cup of coffee.

1:33:23 - Alex Lindsay
And Tim didn't look at him and go.

1:33:25 - Leo Laporte
I think it's very well, very good, you're coming here with $500 billion. Now I hear you're building all over India. I don't want you building in India. This is the president of the freaking united states threatening basically yeah, unbelievable. I don't want you building in india. I said to tim. I said this is more quotes, I'm not making this up. Tim, look, we treated you really good. This is from cnbc, which is, by the way, not the most left-leaning of organizations. I said to Tim. I said, tim, look, we treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years. Put up with, we put up with that. Now you got to build us. We're not interested in you building in India. India can take care of themselves. We want you to build here.

1:34:21 - Andy Ihnatko
I said to tim. I said tim, tim's name is never far from his lips.

1:34:24 - Jason Snell
It's weird something's not far from his lips.

1:34:29 - Alex Lindsay
I think that uh christ, I'll say that anyway. So so the uh, um, the, um, the. You know, I think, that, uh, the challenges, I think Tim's played it about as best as as well as you can, but you're it's riding a buck in. Bronco.

You can't win. You know, eventually you're going to come off and and I think that that's the, that's the challenge. And again, I think that oftentimes, in all of these monopoly conversations and everything else, you just realize how quickly all of this can go one way or the other, especially in the current environment where, whatever you thought someone had a controlling interest, things can evaporate very quickly, and I think that he's obviously threatening that. I'm sure that Tim Apple will promise some factory, more factories, or there'll be a new announcement, WWC, about another factory in Austin or something that they're going to bring to the United States, and then Trump will forget about it for another six months and then complain about it again.

1:35:23 - Leo Laporte
Uh, I don't know if you were watching the Google event, but uh, weirdly, they had you to a you to song behind one of their promotional videos. God, I hope Tim doesn't find out. Uh Bono, uh bono says apple is, quote dying to make vision pro affordable.

1:35:42 - Jason Snell
Nope, we got wait a minute. It's time for the vision pro segment. What do you see? What do you know?

1:35:45 - Leo Laporte
it's time to talk to vision pro so friday bono stories of surrender arrives on Apple TV and on your Vision Pro. Are you all excited to watch that? Yeah, I'll be interested to see it, I am yeah, it's not about you two, it's kind of a Bono thing. It's going to be the first full-length immersive video, by the way, so bring snacks.

1:36:19 - Andy Ihnatko
That's the one hard thing. That is where your cervical collar, so you can bear the weight of the thing for the entire runtime.

1:36:25 - Alex Lindsay
It's only a pound eating the snacks looks a lot like pinching, and so every time you do something with the snacks, I found that it's like well, nevermind, I can't. That's the. You know. If you want to have popcorn, you got to go back to a regular screen.

1:36:38 - Leo Laporte
So this is what Bono says. Apple have this new sonic innovation commitment to fidelity of sound. Sounds are becoming really important in movies and people's home cinemas. The Vision Pro it's a commitment. You're getting into a world and there are extraordinary things I've seen. I've seen extraordinary things in the Vision Pro. We had this idea of well, the camera can be on stage and walking around you. We couldn't light it as easily as we thought, but we successfully got the viewer on stage. I took out my drawings from the stage show for the filming and they're not in the 2D Apple TV Plus version of Stories of Surrender, but they are in Vision Pro. These childlike drawings one would be able, would like to be able to draw as badly as me, but it's like a signature, a fingerprint. Anyway, that's Bono talking to Deadline.

1:37:29 - Jason Snell
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe that's what it sounds like a little.

1:37:34 - Leo Laporte
Blade Runner going on there. What time to die? When asked on, the price is right sorry, I'm remembering this video is there? I can't, probably can't, show the video. Actually. Uh, when they had a vision pro on the prices, right? Uh, and as you know, with that game show you're supposed to guess the price and whoever's closest wins, right it was a showcase that was.

1:38:04 - Andy Ihnatko
It was a part of the show where, like they're, they're, they're at their little kiosks and they have to. Whoever comes closest to guessing the price of the thing gets to come up on stage and you know actually so it's just it's, you're starting without, without going over, and so the first first guy says 750.

1:38:18 - Jason Snell
yeah, well, you know, maybe can I show?

1:38:20 - Leo Laporte
I'll just show it. What the hell? What are they going to take us down? It's on threads for crying out loud.

1:38:25 - Alex Lindsay
Well, everybody, look at it because the first prize is coming on down.

1:38:28 - Andy Ihnatko
It's a mixed reality headset like coming down, like an angel 256 gig.

1:38:34 - Alex Lindsay
Apple Vision Pro headset offers an immersive 3D camera system that can display photos and videos, take calls and can be used to play games or watch TV.

1:38:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Watch TV and it's rotating.

1:38:46 - Leo Laporte
And then whoop back to the ceiling. Goes to whoever is closest to the actual retail price without going over. Good luck, everybody, Go ahead. He kind of knows 1,000. 1,000 is the first bid. 1,000. 7.50., 7. Go ahead.

1:38:58 - Mikah Sargent
He kind of knows, a thousand is the first one, a thousand seven fifty okay big mistake.

1:39:02 - Alex Lindsay
Big mistake a thousand dollars say one thousand and one, yeah, always be one thousand two hundred and seventy one thousand two hundred and not even she should have just been a listen to the audience. I know that's the whole thing.

1:39:19 - Andy Ihnatko
The audience can't believe come on down. Someone's grandson or granddaughter is going to get one hell of a nice Christmas this year.

1:39:31 - Jason Snell
Yeah, so that's I mean without going over. So after that, the first two bids. The third guy is like well, it's more expensive than that, so that's a thousand and one. Two bids. The third guy is like well, it's more expensive than that, so that's a thousand and one. And then the last lady is like the right, if you are convinced that it's more than that you just thousand two exactly, obviously the last all prices above it an infinite number of prices above we, obviously all of us are.

1:39:50 - Alex Lindsay
You know we, we spent our time when we're sick. Yeah, we know, we know we're talking.

1:39:56 - Andy Ihnatko
We're talking about dan on on jeopardy last week and I I'm not confident that I do great on jeopardy, but everybody's like, oh my god, I would have gotten my, I would have got the hundred dollar bonus if for that one, if you get a hundred dollar bonus anyway hundred dollar bonus you would have gotten on that one.

1:40:13 - Leo Laporte
Everybody knows it's 3 500 the hundred.

1:40:16 - Alex Lindsay
The audience gas uh, you would have lost leo.

1:40:19 - Andy Ihnatko
You would have three thirty four, nine, you would have went over. I gotta go into it claiming yourself out of a free uh vision pro there I don't think she got the vision pro.

1:40:27 - Leo Laporte
I think it went back out of the ceiling. For next time it's gonna stay up, there. So yeah, yeah uh, has anybody tried the new sound therapy on? Uh on apple music it, the collection from umg, leverages cognitive science and their roster of global superstars. Subtle auditory beats to well-known curated tracks. Oh, that's interesting. So it's not special tracks, it's regular tracks with beats behind them yeah, it's, it's like a meditation DJ mix of like actual.

Yeah, but I'm not going to meditate to Katy Perry, Kacey Musgraves, I mean, come on, man. Anyway, there's focus, there's relax and there's sleep. I'll have to try it. We play sleep sounds when we're sleeping because we have a noisy street near us.

1:41:20 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean, I love, I love the idea of it. I love that Apple is like continuing to add features and have new ideas for it, as opposed to just simply coming up with new ways to, like, insert a playlist into the front screen that I need to move past and to get to the stuff I actually wanted to listen to.

1:41:33 - Leo Laporte
Uh, take radars. Hamish hector says. I tried apple's new sound therapy playlists and they've solved my sleep troubles, so I'll take that for whatever it's good link bait. I'm no sound psychologist, but I am an apple music subscriber you know it's a, it's a good thing, I think.

1:41:55 - Andy Ihnatko
I think a lot of us are in the like I listen to, like when I'm preparing, like to do this show, I've discovered that my show prepped is exactly one Turandot long. So if I put on like a recording of Turandot.

1:42:07 - Leo Laporte
It's like a two and a half hours, and how long?

1:42:09 - Andy Ihnatko
is Turandot, Like two and a half hours. Oh jeez, Louise, Something like that. And I know that if we get to Nessun Dorma and I'm not just sort of saying, well, what have I missed I'm probably behind, and by the time that Leo makes her sacrifice, I really need to be uploading the spreadsheet.

1:42:27 - Leo Laporte
My preparation's about hang on Sloopy long?

1:42:30 - Jason Snell
Yeah, you're spending a lot of time, I just take a Greatest Hits of Alvin and the Chipmunks and put it on repeat, and so by the time I got here, all I could do is see blood and want to kill everyone, and that puts me in the right frame of mind. So I'll take the throne.

1:42:53 - Andy Ihnatko
All I was getting is pretty music and the lyrics don't like because I don't understand the language. I don't like. It doesn't really distract me. So I like the idea of here's something that if you have a work session that's going to be two or three or four hours long, it will be enough to basically cover up whatever the background noise of your life is that's going to distract you while not being so pretty and so engaging that it's going to distract you from the thing you needed two and a half hours to three hours worth of peace for. So it's interesting. I gave it the shortest of listens just to see like what it was about. But again, I like the idea that Apple is putting in interesting features for Apple music to distinguish itself from Apple spot, from Spotify beyond.

1:43:27 - Leo Laporte
You know, high resolution music which we're still supposed to be getting on Spotify any year now Are you saying that Puccini's story of the Chinese Princess Turandot and ancient China is not sufficient to put you out?

1:43:39 - Andy Ihnatko
the Chinese princess turandot and ancient China is not sufficient to put you out. Um, I will say that as if I'm focusing on it once again. I'm thinking oh my god, khalaf is such a stupid, stupid tenor to fall in love with this woman who clearly khalaf. The first thing you saw was one of her suitors being beheaded and the head being put on a pike to join all the other people who have dared to ask her to marry them. What the hell do you see?

and but he's been listening to alvin and the chipmunks, I guess if you listen to it at normal speed, I think makes you want to murder you're going to have something new to miss.

1:44:15 - Leo Laporte
Listen to come july 18th, snoopy presents a summer musical, a new original Peanuts special featuring music by uh, one of my favorite pianists, ben folds, and Jeff Morrow. I mean, look you. I mean Vince gruraldi's long gone, but at least you can have Ben folds in your, in your thing.

1:44:35 - Andy Ihnatko
That's pretty cool for first musical in how many years? I think they were saying.

1:44:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's cool.

1:44:40 - Andy Ihnatko
They've been doing some cool stuff First penis musical in 35 years, according to Apple TV.

1:44:44 - Jason Snell
Wow, Excuse me, I have very important news, breaking news, that I need to share here. Leo, we need to close the parentheses. What? Do you know we're done talking the Vision Pro and it was the shortest pro segment ever. I added some that was the, just the second shortest.

1:45:05 - Andy Ihnatko
Leo second shortest. That's why the show wouldn't compile unmatched parentheses.

1:45:10 - Leo Laporte
Good catch you'd think, being a lisper, I would have known. Uh, it is the 75th anniversary of snoopy charlie brown and the peanuts gang and apple of course, owns it. Yeah and uh. So there's. Uh. There have been other specials, but this one's fully musical. Uh, directed by eric vice. It's written by craig schultz. Brian schultz those are interesting names, I think may be related somehow and cornelius uliano, the world needs more peanuts and muppets.

1:45:38 - Jason Snell
I think I agree pre-dizzy muppets, but okay frog and toad is coming.

1:45:43 - Leo Laporte
A wonderful story I used to read my kids. Yo gaba gaba land, uh okay, and a whole lot more of kids entertainment. But there's nothing like peanuts for all the family of all ages.

1:45:58 - Andy Ihnatko
One morning the penis gang learns that their beloved camp is shutting down because fewer campers are joining each summer. The news especially saddens charlie brown, who feels hopeless about losing a place that's meant so much to him and his friends okay so let's put on a bikini cart wash right, that's what happens next.

1:46:13 - Jason Snell
Right, this is movie.

1:46:15 - Andy Ihnatko
This is definitely cinematic universe canon because in comic strip canon Charlie Brown hates going to camp every single year he feels like he's being drafted. You're right. Except for the one time he went with a sack over his head and became elected camp president.

1:46:30 - Jason Snell
We know, based on the hello mother, hello father corollary, that by the end of your time at camp you actually love it and want to stay. Yes, that probably happens like that for Charlie Brown. Every year he gets drafted, he doesn't want to be there and then by the end he doesn't want to go.

1:46:49 - Alex Lindsay
Any of you own an. Aston Martin. No, oh, not right now, not now.

1:46:57 - Leo Laporte
Soon it's car play ultra. They found one manufacturer who was willing to let apple take over the entire front of the car, and there it is. You have to have an aston martin, yeah, although they did.

1:47:03 - Jason Snell
They said that hyundai, kia and genesis are now on board as partners as well, to add to the list. I think this is. I don't know if you saw the top gear video, which was excellent and people should watch it, but it's very clearly like a marketing push for other car makers from Apple where they're talking. They asked Martin designers like it was so great working with Apple and all that, and you can see it's like, yes, it is great to work with Apple, you too could work with Apple. But that, that all said, it seems reasonable.

It seems like we got an answer to a lot of the questions that we had three years ago of like how do you implement this if you're not running at a low level? And the answer is something that I definitely, you know, talked about with some car industry people three years ago, which is there's themes. So Apple's working with the car makers to build a bunch of theme files and then when you connect the phone the first time, it downloads the theme files so that there can be parts of the interface that are generated from the car and parts from the iPhone. But they all share the same theme and they all, you know, look of a kind and they can project or cut out one into the other and uh and all that's going on. So you know, I would. I would say Aston Martin obviously is a, you know, very niche case, but there are probably going to be some bigger car manufacturers who will be happy to let Apple give them a little bit of a glow up in terms of availability yeah, I mean they take over the instrument.

1:48:30 - Leo Laporte
Here's the instrument cluster.

1:48:31 - Jason Snell
But it's a co-brand, like when they plug it in, it's not, it's a collab, it's like Aston Martin X Apple right, oh, okay, we work on this together.

Okay, and I'm sure that's because Apple went to all the car makers and they're like Nuh-uh, and so instead it's this kind of like we will collaborate with you and you get to work with Apple's designers and we'll work with your designers and we'll make this beautiful thing. And it's a very interesting way to get something. And I suspect that there are some car makers who like putting screens in their cars because it makes them cool, but doesn't like maintaining software stack and writing user interface, and I think that those companies are going to love the idea that they get to work with Apple and have it be awesome.

And then there are other companies who feel like no, no, no. As a car company, we take pride in our user experience, software engineering, which I would argue is delusional. But there are companies like GM who think that and they'll say no, thank you, we're not even interested in CarPlay at all.

1:49:42 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, if you want to update, I think it's better to update the phone than update the car.

1:49:43 - Jason Snell
I've had numbers of cars with that, do updates where the dealer says you got to bring it in because we're not going to let you do the update yourself. Ironically, if you've got an aston martin, if you've got an aston martin, you need to bring it in to get the software update to do this.

Oh yeah, of course, but they don't want to break anything but the fact I think those, I think the three korean brands that got announced. I think that that's a great example where they have really some of those um the hyundai ionics and all that, the screens, the screens look awesome, but if you've ever been in one, the ui, it's not very good, right, it's just not very good.

So letting iPhone users just kind of like get a super upgrade of their, their car because they're an iPhone user, that's good for everybody. So I think that you know some automakers will jump at the chance to work with apple on this press release does say a design unique to each auto.

Yeah, yeah, that's that's the key, right is. That is that a lot of people assume three years ago that apple just was going to walk in and like, steal everybody's interfaces away. And I think apple discovered there's no way they're going to be allowed to do that. So instead, like the aston martin, it's got like a little aston martin logo on it and all of that, and then a bunch of themes, some of which are very traditional and some of which are very digital forward, and that's interesting and and like. But aston martin feels good about it and I think that's the message to all these other car makers is this is apple. You get to work with apple on a thing that makes your product better, not that Apple wants to come in and steal your product from you.

1:50:58 - Leo Laporte
And US and Canada right now. It'll expand globally in the next year. You have to have an iPhone 12 or later running iOS 18.5 or later, which is kind of surprising to me Like it needs an iPhone still to do this. Well that's where all the computing goes.

1:51:15 - Alex Lindsay
I think that Apple really wanted someone like Aston Martin to kind of show the high-end version of like hey, we're doing this too, not just with some of the Korean work.

1:51:23 - Jason Snell
Even Aston Martin will. Let us do it.

1:51:27 - Leo Laporte
James Bond's car.

1:51:28 - Alex Lindsay
You know I think a lot of people, there's a lot of iPhone users out there that when it's not available anywhere or only available in one car, that's not going to make a big deal. You know they've got a bunch of other choices, but if it starts getting available in, let's say, 10 percent or 15 or 20 percent of the cars you could, there's a certain group of iPhone users that would definitely look at that first, Like I would prefer, because I mean because most of the interfaces for these, these cars is junk, as Jason said. I mean they're just horrible.

I rent a lot of cars, so I see a lot of interfaces. None of them look as good as the Apple interface, and usually all I want to do is just get rid of it and replace it with my iPhone anyway. And so, um, and when I can't do that, I usually just suction cup something to the front of their little screen and put my iPad up and call it a day. And so the thing is is that I think that there's enough iPhone users out there that for these companies, you always have to remember these companies are fighting over one or 2% of the market, if it moves.

I think I've told this story before, but Dodge, when they made their big redesign, there was a solid 40 to 50% of the people who said they would never touch that design with the ones with the big open lights or whatever. And someone came back to the CEO and said well, I guess we're not going to make it because only 15% said they had to have it. And he said our market is 7%. We'll absolutely do it. And so the thing is is that when these car companies are trying to do something new, if they decide their competitive advantage is not going to be their interface. Their competitive advantage is cost. Their competitive advantage is some other part of the design. Why bother Like, why bother having that? You know, let Apple do that. They're really good at it.

1:53:02 - Jason Snell
And there's a comfort factor too where, like you know, hyundai is very comfortable in making a big dashboard full of a big, wide, beautiful screen.

Right, because that's a hardware installation and they're very comfortable with it and they know they need to do a base level of software in order to drive those screens and in order to do basic functionality. But, like, do they have an enormous pride in investing anything beyond that? Probably not. But for a company like that, getting apple as a partner is actually even bigger because they, since they made the investment in all those screens, all those screens now all get an upgrade by using the car play interface on top of their interface. So, like it makes it makes sense to me, like it's not going to make sense for every car maker. But you're absolutely right, Alex, I think over the long haul you're going to end up with three sets, three choices. You're going to get a car that can't do car play, a car that will do standard car play and a car that will do car play ultra, and then then you'll decide and iPhone users will be inclined to choose one of the other two.

1:54:00 - Alex Lindsay
Right, and a CarPlay Ultra car will be more appealing to an iPhone user because of it and if that moves the needle, 1% that's a huge, that's billions and billions of dollars that are there.

And to have Apple do the marketing for you because Apple's going to, especially for these first ones, Apple's going to promote the heck out of them. They're going to be in ads, they're going to be in all kinds of other things the amount of what they're going to receive for being part of that, I think, is going to be pretty big. I know that for me, in a couple of years I'll probably be in the market for a car. I'm going to stretch my car out. I'm at 130,000 miles. I can go a little while longer, and when I, when I do that right now, the slate is the thing I'm probably most like, most likely to buy. But if I don't buy that, it's going to be some kind of electric car that has the Apple you know interface to it, cause I'm not going to you know why bother when all things, other things, are equal, cause I don't really care about anything else in the car other than it moves and that the interface works.

1:55:00 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, and definitely it's one of those things where I bless them car makers some of them really do take pride in their. You know that they're doing building beautiful software with beautiful interfaces. But boy, I've driven a lot of recent model cars as rental cars in the last couple of years and I mean, it's just, it's rough, it's rough and and car play is not perfect. But you know, if I'm, if I'm them, and I build these beautiful screens that have my mediocre software on it, I'm like, yeah, I'll work with Apple, sure.

1:55:32 - Alex Lindsay
Where do I sign up? I mean, I'm back to renting a car every two or three weeks and and I get, and I I'm often left with oh like, like it's just, it's just like. This is like I gotta figure something out. And these, these guys rental cars though, are not exactly.

1:55:44 - Leo Laporte
They're not. They're the worst of the worst. They're not.

1:55:46 - Jason Snell
They're not aston martins, but I mean I, I got a, I got a hyundai with 50 miles on it and it's a brand new 2023, 2024 hyundai and it's got their whole like screen interface up and it's a beautiful screens and the interface is, you know functional it's functional they should talk to former enterprise design lab leader, product lead at apple, richard dos.

1:56:09 - Leo Laporte
richard has a just the wildest uh story, uh on story on his blog about vibe coding a chat GPT app for the Apple Watch. Thank you, Andy, for bringing this along. Oops, he says I accidentally vibe coded a chat GPT client for my Apple Watch. It was this easy. He just he put before going to bed I just typed this into Claude so I could revisit it in the morning.

How feasible is it to make an Apple Watch app that allows the user to ask a question in chat GPT using the OpenAI API? I want to start with just a single conversation so that every time the watch is used it's just depending on the same thread, but optionally, maybe down the line, incorporate a way for the user to save a list of conversations and choose between them. For now, a single thread would be sufficient. He didn. Claude didn't just answer my question, responded with what looked suspiciously like working code. I would be a fool if I didn't at least try to compile it. So he generated a new Xcode project, opened the OpenAI dashboard, generated an API key, plugged it in, then hit build and run and to my surprise, I was staring at a working chat GPT client running on my Apple Watch.

1:57:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, wow, a working chat gpt client running on my apple watch. Yeah, wow, it's a. It's a. It's a good story, because we've seen a lot of stories from like people who are not necessarily like experienced coders. They're like oh, wow, I vibe coded this. There's incredible, like stopwatch apps. He's he actually is x apple. He used to work. Uh, he used to be, I think, a project he's an ai guy.

Yeah, yeah, guy rather yes yeah, enterprise, apple's enterprise design lab, which is where, like the, he used to coach companies on how to build internal apps. So he's very, very familiar with, like, the entire process. He did say he it's it's a worth a read because it does explain well. It's not as though you magically get this completely working app. He just but it was, he understands the entire stack of what you need to do when you're writing an app, not just oh look, I got something that compiles and functions. But I need to have a philosophy, I need to have a flow to it, I need to have a structure to it, and it's a good field guide to what the AI was able to help him with and what he still had to have full control of. But yeah, it never gets old, the idea of well I, I didn't intend to have a working apple watch app, but I just wanted to go to bed.

But exactly, I just I knew. I knew if I clicked seven buttons I could find out if this thing actually worked on my watch or not.

1:58:40 - Leo Laporte
So I did it's pretty amazing, pretty amazing story. Uh, I guess I have to end. I don't want to end with this, but I have to end with the, the sad news that uh just broke during the show that george went as a past norm, of course from cheers. Um, very sad to say um dead at the age of 76. And, of course, as I read these obituaries, as I get older and closer to that age, I I start to think yeah, oh, boy.

1:59:10 - Andy Ihnatko
It's a dog-eat-dog world and I'm wearing milk bone underwear.

1:59:15 - Leo Laporte
A classic, a classic. All right, one more break. And then, if you would prepare your picks of the week. You're watching MacBreak Weekly and if you're a member of the club, you don't have to listen to this. Join the club because you're already mac break weekly and if you're a member of the club, you don't have to listen to this. Join the club because you're already a member and you're probably getting an ad free version of the show. So we just cut that all out. But if you're not a member, can I please beg of you? It's looking more and more like we are going to raise the price. It's been four years. It's getting more expensive to run the operation, etc. Etc. Add revenues going down. So I think a slight price increases in the cards. But I want to promise you this if you are a member, you'll be grandfathered in forever at the old price. So now is a good time to join. Don't say I didn't warn you.

twit.tv/clubtwit seven bucks a month, 84 a year, ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the club twit discord, which just by itself is a great place to hang out with people, like-minded people, like, like you. But we do a lot of stuff in the club. For instance, all of the keynotes now, including the WWDC keynote, will be club only. There's a twit plus feed where you can listen to those after the fact or you can watch live in the club to a discord. Uh, there are special events. We had a great Stacey's book club and now we're voting on the next book in the book club. I'm going to be hanging out with Dick DeBartolo later this week, may 23rd just a few days away. We're going to celebrate the GizWwiz's 2000th episode and I'm going to drag out the old jingles. That'll be a lot of fun again.

Club members only. The ai user group is the last. The first, first day, Friday of every month, that's June 6th. That was really fun. Last week Anthony showed us how he makes some really cool little interstitial videos for the shows. Our keynote WWDC keynote is June 9th. There's a of photo time with Chris Marquardt, june 13th. I hung out with Micah in his crafting corner last week and it was so much fun. I'm looking forward to the next one next month. Just a lot of reasons to join the club, but the big reason is it's keeping us on the air. 25% of our income now comes from club members.

We really appreciate it and we would like you all to be members. twit.tv/clubtwit. Someday. My dream to have a network that's just completely supported by listeners. Would that be cool? Uh oh, grandfathered in is becoming an unfavored term. Doing it to have a racist origin, oh dear. Okay, well, give me another term and I'll use that instead. I didn't realize legacy, legacy users or legacy? I don't keep the price.

2:01:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, exactly. Anyway, you get what I'm saying and I apologize if it's offensive. twit.tv/clubtwit. You see, I learn stuff from the club all the time. They're very smart. Time for our picks of the week. Jason Snell, why don't you kick things off?

2:02:11 - Jason Snell
sure I can't believe I haven't done this one before. But you know I consult mbwpicks.com before every show and make sure that it has been a little while since I promote anything that's not my pick, mbwpicks.com is free, everybody can go there and find all our picks thanks to the guy who does it.

2:02:27 - Leo Laporte
I've never met him, it's just amazing.

2:02:30 - Jason Snell
It's awesome, so I don't think I picked this, but I'm going to pick it now. It's called Pushover. There are apps for various platforms the Mac and the iPhone but I only use it on the iPhone and what Pushover does is it uses the push notification system that's on all apple devices to push to your phone in my case. Whatever you want, it works with web hooks there's an email gateway.

It's super easy to use. All you do is pay. It's five dollars per platform, so I paid for this service. I paid five dollars for the iPhone app and I can send. It's not unlimited, but it's like a thousand pushes a month. I think to this thing and um what do you push?

2:03:16 - Leo Laporte
what do you okay, I mean, what doesn't have a notification that you, you well, here's, here's a great example.

2:03:20 - Jason Snell
So, um, for example, the guy who edits upgrade my podcast with Mike Hurley, guy named Jim Metzendorf. He puts hi, jim, he puts uh, our files in a Dropbox folder and then says here they are, they're ready to be posted. And then I post them because Mike Hurley's in London, he's going home to his wife and his baby, like I. It's my job to post them. Well, I have uh, a, an automation on my Mac that's actually using Hazel, that basically sees that those files appear in our shared folder and fires off a webhook URL to pushover. So, wherever I am, if I'm walking the dog, wherever I am, my phone buzzes and says the upgrade files are ready. Go post the show.

2:04:06 - Leo Laporte
I bet our producers can use that.

2:04:10 - Jason Snell
When I have people email me or people upload their files to Dropbox for podcasts that I host and Dropbox generates a receipt that basically says, oh, this person used this Dropbox link to send you a file. I have Gmail auto-forward those to the pushover email address so I get a note saying, oh, that person uploaded that file. I have Gmail auto forward those to the pushover email address so I get a note saying, oh, that person uploaded that file. So I know when their files are all there and then I can move them along in the process. And more recently I wrote a little script that runs on my server that when my solar stuff on my roof is, the battery is full and now it's just exporting power to the grid, it sends me a little push notification on my phone that said we're exporting power to the grid now, which for me is a really great notification, so I can do some laundry, run the dryer plug in a car, like anything that uses power, because in the middle of the day in the summer, exporting it to the grid earns me nothing. So I'd be better off using that power for literally everything else pre-chill the house, you know, with the air conditioning, run the dishwasher, literally anything so. But what I love about it is those are three totally random examples.

It's just one of those where if you're not an app developer, you don't have the ability to like send yourself a push notification. Pushover fills that hole it. It does it well. It's cheap, it's easy. You know you can do it with just email. A webhook is literally just you need software to hit a URL and then that's it, and then it automatically sends you the push notification. So it couldn't be easier. It's really not very technical and there are probably cases where, if you know that it exists now, you'll have that moment where you'll think to yourself boy, I wish this was a push notification. Oh, I can make it a push notification.

Even if it's just forwarding an email that meets a few criteria. That's all you need. It's pretty great, so pushover.

2:06:01 - Leo Laporte
I love it. Thank you, Jason Snell. My little pick of the week actually came from earlier. Today, Google announced that Notebook LM, which is a very cool tool we've talked about before. It takes information and turns it into a podcast that you can listen to, is now available for iOS as well as Android. So you can install the app, you can give it content, add sources from anywhere, and then it will start talking to you. And then it will start talking to you. Let's see. I gave it at one point all of the SecurityNow podcast transcripts. I wonder if it could generate a SecurityNow show. It's doing it right now without me or Steve. Anyway, Notebook LM, it's a very cool tool. We're going to interview the people behind it on Intelligent Machines soon. We've interviewed them in the past, but if you want to try it on iOS now, you can. If you don't have enough podcasts, make some of your own. Andy and Iko. Pick of the week.

2:07:05 - Andy Ihnatko
My pick of the week is one of my favorite AI tools Notebook LM oh shoot.

2:07:10 - Leo Laporte
I've been using it for a long time. Okay, you talk about it now. That's good. No, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that.

2:07:15 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm sorry, I'm just going to endorse your pick, and because there really is not much I need to add to it that it's already really, really wonderful. It's the sort of thing where, once you start using it and once you start, I'm so sorry, no no, no, it's fine.

It's fine Once you start using it and say, okay, well, every time that I get a new piece of information about this thing I'm studying, or this thing I'm working on, or this thing I want to understand more, I'm going to add it to this notebook. And you have multiple notebooks. The idea of having it on your phone makes this idea even more powerful, because I'm always reading Reddit, I'm always reading Google News, I'm always reading FeedBurner and it's like, oh, wow, that's a great article or great piece of news on this topic that I'm tracking. Like here is a piece of legislature that's going through, about controlling social media, that's going through, that's moving through through congress. Now I can actually just simply, whatever I'm reading, just forward it to that particular notebook and it adds to the corpus of knowledge that I can access through notebook lm, so that if, like, a month and a half later, I can ask questions like oh, um, uh, didn't wasn't there some sort of a change that was made to that law that has that? That's not going to go anywhere, because that's no co-sponsors, like what's which law is more like most likely to be moving forward at this time?

And because I've been feeding it nothing but news and updates and pdfs of of draft legislation for months and months and months. It can now ask, answer questions based on the the greatest knowledge and because, also because it's it's it's it's mobile, you can basically say just talk to me for 20 minutes about this subject and you can interrupt and ask questions about it. You can even do things like like, uh, I'm trying to, I'm like, if you're trying to actually learn something, so can you give me like a quiz on this part of history, like the victorian area era, but like art and how sexism affected, like the advancement art? Just give me like a 10 question quiz about that sort of stuff.

And it'll give you a quiz while you're on your bus like be going over the stuff that you did. Anyway, amazing tool, with or without the mobile app. The fact that you have the mobile app means that whatever you happen to be reading while you're waiting at the gate for your plane to board is now things you can be adding to your notebooks and interacting with. So really, really, really great stuff, love it.

2:09:33 - Leo Laporte
If you, I, you can use it for free, but I think you can, uh, also if you have a. I have a google ai subscription. So, yeah, 20 bucks a month. I suspect that gives you just more chances to use it. Let me just play my security Now podcast that I generated. I don't know we'll see what it sounds like with the Notebook LM team of podcasters. Why are you spinning? You said you were ready. Oh, it said this may take 10 to 20 seconds. Anyway, available. It's a free download. You can use it a certain amount without logging in. I think so it's really amazing. It's a free download. You can use it a certain amount without logging in. I think so, uh, it's, it's really amazing. I mean, the one on the desktop is mind-boggling, it's so much.

2:10:11 - Alex Lindsay
I've thrown books in there and I'm amazed at books that I've read. Yeah, the podcast sometimes a little corny, but it's pretty corny. Yeah, but it's still, if you want it, it pulls. What's interesting is always that it pulls things out of and quantify. I mean it like crystallizes something that I just didn't think of in that book. Right, you know, it just says something. That's funny. I was like, oh, I never thought of it that way. And the other thing is I use it a lot to interrogate, like manuals. I throw manuals into it and just go how do I do this, how do I do that, how do I do this? And it just immediately, you know. But it is funny. It does a podcast for the manuals, a podcast for the sound devices. Scorpio is a pretty hilarious. This is some really crazy stuff.

2:10:56 - Leo Laporte
That's the only thing about audio. Here's our Security Now. Podcast Welcome to the deep dive. We're here to unpack the latest in security and tech, pulling out the key insights for you, the learner, yep. Lots to cover today. We've got sources touching on everything from browser security pitfalls to how your car might be spying on you and encryption battles hardware security. We don't really need security now anymore.

2:11:20 - Alex Lindsay
The man's voice sounds so much like someone from NPR and I just can't quit. It does yeah.

2:11:25 - Andy Ihnatko
And the fact that there'll be like a catch in their breath and stuff like that, that just really like sells the idea that you're in business through a podcast. I mean, like I said, I just signed this out to Apple in China today and I can't I'm sorry for the fact that I'm looking at this saying you know what 400 pages that's only like 200 double page spreads. How long would it take for me to simply photograph each double page spread and put it in Notebook LM and so that after I finished reading it, I can ask questions like, oh, wasn't there a section in which, like, there was a car chase with organized crime in Toledo? Like, oh, there wasn't anything like that. There was a time when Tim lost his luggage on a trip. Oh, yeah, what page was that on?

oh, that was on page 303 okay my biggest.

2:12:11 - Alex Lindsay
My biggest temptation to wanting to crack open ebooks is specifically just to put it. I mean, I don't know, I'm happy to pay for them, I just want to put them into lm.

2:12:18 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah exactly you know, like you're just kind of like I get a corpus of knowledge you can then interrogate with questions where it's not, it's not it's not, it questions.

The problem with chatbots is that you can ask it a question and it might be getting its information from God knows where, it might be God knows how old, but if you have a chatbot that says here is the only sources of information, you should ever consider when I ask you questions about this particular subject and this particular app. And even so, one of the things I like about Google's overall approach to AI is that it's not trust me, bro, it's not. We will do your homework for you. It's that we. We will help you find the information in this book that you gave us, and we will cite our sources when you ask us questions, because this is this is a, this is a an aid to you doing this manually, not us doing your homework for you exactly, I think.

2:13:08 - Leo Laporte
That's why I'm likening it to khan academy. More than anything else, it's a tool, it's a way to learn, and I think we have some amazing new ways to learn now, thanks to the they've been consistent about that since day one, since they started talking about ai at google. I like that about them yep, all right, your turn, mr Alex Lindsay. Pick of the week.

2:13:28 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, I was excited about it and then I was afraid that I'd be disappointed. And then I wasn't. Uh, murder bought it. It's here oh so exciting. Are you enjoying it, Jason?

2:13:40 - Jason Snell
love it, it's, it's. It's really good. It is in the spirit of the of the original written work, um which doesn't matter.

2:13:47 - Leo Laporte
That was the question I don't like because the original uh work was so beloved, right? Yeah no, but it's it also in that spirit scars guard is maybe not the, from my point of view, the best casting for that character he's good at quirky, I mean, it's everybody's head cast that character which is very it's non-gendered.

2:14:06 - Jason Snell
It's an it, its pronouns are it it's he's a robot, a service robot and they hired a, a man, to play the part.

But it is uh. But he does really the quirky aspect of that character very well and uh, thank you for mentioning it, Alex the. Um. The other thing I would say about it is, if you're looking at that title and are like, oh, I don't know, it's like it's a comedy, it's a comedy. There's science fiction action, it's set in a science fiction world, but it's also funny. It's really funny. That's kind of the point. So yeah, Sarcastic If you're an introvert it's like I could I just dissolve in acid. Instead I'm gonna choose acid.

2:14:56 - Leo Laporte
Bad eye contact I haven't seen it yet. I can't wait to see it. Um, it won't say anything else. I don't want to ruin it.

2:15:04 - Alex Lindsay
It looks remarkably, by the way. Uh, snackable, it's much shorter. Apple's experimenting, I guess, on shorter content. Um, it's not an hour, no, it's half hour. It is like 20, 25 minutes.

2:15:15 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's, it's, it's more like I'd say that the closest analog might be something like star trek, lower decks, which is animated, and this is live action. But it's like that, in that there is sci-fi, there's sci-fi stuff in, but it's also meant to be funny and they're all in that kind of half-hour format not the hour long, and if they gave me the whole season, I probably would have sat down on Saturday and watched it all.

2:15:35 - Alex Lindsay
It was so fast. It felt like it was short, but it just felt like it just evaporated. It was really really good.

2:15:48 - Leo Laporte
In the high-tech future, a rogue security robot gains free will. Yeah, Murder Bot new on Apple TV+. All right, that's it for security now. No, that's coming up next. That's it for MacBreak Weekly. We thank you all for being here. Sorry about the lateness of the hour, but we're so glad you could watch. If you're watching on demand, of course, it's exactly when you want it to be. That's the reason to subscribe in your favorite podcast client to mac break weekly. Andy and otko has nothing to plug yet but I have.

2:16:17 - Andy Ihnatko
I have daily deadlines, so he's working. The stress lines on my face says that hey, wow, Andy's publishing every day yeah, I can't wait. I think you're gonna be amazed at the response I hope, I hope you're enjoying what I've been posting so far. It's yeah, as as I keep wrestling with like, oh, if I want to, if I want to accept payments, what? What's wrong with my id? That I'm providing with is okay, fine, I'll give you another. It's like okay, I guess that's another week of content. All the people. It's amazing, isn't it?

2:16:45 - Leo Laporte
yeah, what a world we live in not as easy as it should be. Well, good luck. I-h-n-a-t-k-o. Keep that, you know, in in the back. Maybe use uh, maybe just a little notification in the background that could just pop up when the site comes out, something like that. That would be kind of cool. Maybe we could get Andy to to write something for pushover vibe code. It vibe coded. Andy, put it on my watch that's Jason.

I'll add it to my free time six colors dot com, all six of them. Fantastic, fantastic site lots of great shows, including upgrade, where you go on a California CarPlay road trip yeah, we talk a lot about that CarPlay, ultra stuff, it's yeah interesting, interesting and the new home of Glenn Fleischman's help and how to.

Yeah, I think that's great too. Congratulations on uh scoring Glenn. We're really, really pleased about that. Uh, you make a dead mac cry. He's very funny, he is, he is that. That's a character. He's a character sixcolorscom. Thank you, Jason, thank you Alex lindsey. Office hours, dot global q and a every morning of the week every morning.

2:18:01 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, so we're q and a? Um, there's, there's no, no change to the q and a. We every morning at 7 am, we get up on Pacific Standard Time and we answer questions. They're always good. We've now answered like almost 60,000 questions and you're always like this is going to be the day, and sometimes we get up there and it'll be like 7 am and there'll be like four questions in there and we're like, oh, this is going to be a really short show. We send some back at the end, and so so we, uh, we, we have, uh, some great conversations there. Also, on on gray matter, we had a Paul liberator, um, who is a rock and roll journalist here from Marin, uh, who kind of really grew up in the whole rock and roll world, and so, uh, it's a. It was a fun, fun conversation. So, uh, that, but that's a gray matter Show. Gray matter Dot show, paul liberatore.

2:18:51 - Leo Laporte
I look like a rock and roller.

2:18:53 - Andy Ihnatko
I am a rock and roller Awesome.

2:18:57 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Alex. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do Mac break weekly every Tuesday, 11 am Pacific 2 pm, eastern 1800 UTC, except for today. But that, but we'll be back on schedule next week. Don't forget June 9th WWDC. If you're a club member, you can watch that in our club twit discord. We'll talk about it the following day, june 10th, and I guess all I can say now is well, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

2:19:24 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, focus up. That is what I said to hands Bye-free, of course. Listen to the audio version ad-free. If you're not a member, the show will still be available to you in both ways. You can watch the video on YouTube with ads or you can watch the audio as you always have. I mean, listen to the audio as you always have in our feeds. In any case, you got to tune in to Hands On Tech because I guarantee there's going to be a question you're going to want to have the answer to, and from time to time I also review a gadget, a gizmo or something of the sort. You gotta check out Hands On Tech and I can't wait to get your question.