MacBreak Weekly 981 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
Time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy, Alex and Jason are all here. We will talk about the succession plans for Tim Cook, the stock market's howling for his head. I don't know. Should we get rid of Tim Cook? I don't think so, but if we did, who'd replace him? Jeff Williams is on his way out, retiring to spend more time with his money Apple, speaking of money, offering a lot of it to stream F1. But will Liberty Media bite? And the new folding phone now with no creases? All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

This is MacBreak Weekly episode 981, recorded Tuesday, July 15th 2025: It's Thicker Where It Counts. It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Hello everybody, it's time to talk about Apple with the best darn Vision Pro podcast in the world Jason Snell. He owns a Vision Pro. How about that? sixcolors.com.

He's now fully decked out on his new set.

0:01:16 - Jason Snell
I bought it for myself. Yeah, still not done, but working on it, working on it.

0:01:21 - Leo Laporte
The no sign. What is it? No what? No fishing, no smoking.

0:01:24 - Jason Snell
It says sorry, no. And my parents for a few it working on it, the no sign. What is it? No, what? No fishing, no smoking. It's. It says sorry, no. And my parents for a few years ran a bed and breakfast and that was. They would have me run down and place that on the sign that said vacancy. Ah, brilliant. So I would run down there, put the sign out and sorry put the sorry no out, and so I love that.

0:01:42 - Leo Laporte
The sorry and I managed to save the sorry no out.

0:01:44 - Jason Snell
I love that and I managed to save the sorry no.

0:01:47 - Leo Laporte
I might have to get that sign for Lisa. Sorry, no, she used to have on her whiteboard behind her. No is a complete sentence. That's a warning to employees. That's Andy Ihnatko, who is employed by none. But as cool as all, get out dressed in black, I love that I treat myself to a pair of Meadow ray-bans?

0:02:06 - Andy Ihnatko
and do you know that you can buy them without the cameras? Oh, so you don't have any privacy problems. That's cheaper.

0:02:12 - Leo Laporte
You have to send it to a guy that had to pull them out.

0:02:14 - Andy Ihnatko
They put these like little things in them instead, but otherwise they look like real ray-bans.

0:02:18 - Leo Laporte
That's more expensive than with the camera in it. Uh, good to see you. I have no idea how to spell Ihnatko, but we fortunately have many acronyms for that. I have no tomato ketchup onions, I think was the title of last week's show. Clearly you've not seen me at in and out also, uh, on location in beautiful South Carolina, mr Alex Lindsay. Hi, Alex, it's good to be here. Good to be here good to see you.

0:02:48 - Alex Lindsay
Very humid here. I'm not used to so much humidity. Are you on assignment? It's actually very nice where I'm, where I'm at right now in the studio. Yeah, I'm, I'm on vacation. Uh, I'm actually staying, uh, in north carolina on the beach, um. But I came down to Charleston to Sage studios and they, they have, they do.

0:03:08 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I see you're on vacation.

0:03:10 - Alex Lindsay
I'm on vacation, but I was gonna. I saw it as an opportunity to come down. We're gonna have a couple of us from office hours are gonna hang out this evening and and have dinner and and so it seemed like a good, good thing to do.

0:03:21 - Leo Laporte
Is this a normal spot for your vacation South?

0:03:23 - Alex Lindsay
Carolina, charleston I'm visiting. Normally we go to Hatteras. This time we went to Holden Beach, so the picture you see behind me is from the back of the house in Holden Beach. You're kidding, that's out your door. Oh man, that's out the back of it and there's like little kayaks. People are like kayaking down the little channels and everything else back there.

0:03:46 - Leo Laporte
So it's, it's it's a fun place. Our top story today. There's actually a lot, a lot of uh rumors about iPhone 17 and so forth. We'll get to those just a little bit, but I think the the story I paid attention to uh comes from the aspen sun valley conference, the Co conference in Sun Valley, where the CEO of Liberty Media, Jared Chang, took meetings with Tim Cook, eddie Q as well as Bob Iger from Disney to ask how much would you pay? I'm sorry, what's your vision for Formula One in the United States? Espn has the rights right now to rebroadcast Formula One races in United States. Espn has the rights right now to rebroadcast Formula One races in the US. They paid $85 million for it. Apparently, according to Puck, which is Dylan Byers is wired in, he's actually in Sun Valley. Cook and Q, which is, by the way, I like that. I'm going to call them Cook and Q from now on.

0:04:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Favorite comedy duo 1982. Bbc won their show only six, only six series.

0:04:50 - Leo Laporte
But so funny offered Chang 150 million dollars, almost twice what ESPN was paying. Uh, the lower end of the 150 to 200 million range that was rumored 50 to 200 million range that was rumored still puts them in the the front row, as it were, pole position to acquire f1. Uh, now it's possible that, uh, that disney will offer more, but seems unlikely yeah, no, I, they're not gonna offer more.

0:05:20 - Jason Snell
What's it going to come down to is do they want the money or do they want the exposure? Uh, because they'll get way more exposure on ESPN. And, as we all know, if you're not on ESPN, you don't exist in terms of their coverage of sports, which makes it harder visibility wise. If you disappear from their networks, they don't talk about you either, and that's bad. And that means reach on ABC and broadcast as well as on espn's new service that they're launching, and it's this is the same thing as the discussion with mls, which is like it's a good deal and the coverage is good, but a lot of people don't have Apple tv plus and so they're not going to see it. Um, and that's the, that's the the. What they have to weigh is take more money and have less visibility. The complication here, which is super weird, is you can already buy a subscription to watch Formula One over the top, yeah, f1 TV, so why?

would they do another? I don't understand why they would take the Apple deal, unless they are, for whatever reason, desperate for money or think that this is potentially like a way to try out the Apple relationship before the international rights come up in 2030 and see if Apple would be a great long term partner for F1 as a sport. But, like otherwise, why would you not take less money other than the fact? Do you need that extra 70 million instead of the exposure of being a partner of ESPN and ABC? It's an interesting decision they're going to have to make, because I don't think ESPN has any interest in paying more. They consider that an overpay and Apple's happy to overpay to get their good friends at F1 on their service.

0:07:02 - Leo Laporte
Should mention that ESPN is Disney, right yeah, they own ESPN. Espn is Disney, right yeah.

0:07:06 - Jason Snell
They own ESPN, espn, abc Disney all the same thing. Now this is what Byers says.

0:07:11 - Leo Laporte
He says it's the MLS cautionary tale. Apple gave Major League Soccer $250 million a year and then more money for Messi, et cetera, et cetera. But MLS has kind of disappeared, except for if you're on Apple tv, where it's all over the place. So f1, may you know, f1, liberty media is john malone.

0:07:36 - Alex Lindsay
I mean liberty media is not, is savvy they're not, I would say, I would say it's different than mls, because I don't think mls was that front row before. So Apple, you know, brian, they're not exactly.

0:07:48 - Leo Laporte
Premier League or something.

0:07:49 - Alex Lindsay
And so, and so they. So it wasn't like they had a lot of exposure. F1 has a lot more exposure. I do think the movie probably had something to do with like Apple trying to show them like this is right, we can bring to bear, we can get a whole lot of people have been't been thinking about F1. And I think that Apple has a lot more dimensionality that they could potentially add. Will they add it? I don't know.

I don't know if they'll do it, but they have the potential to add a lot more dimensions to how F1 is covered than a simple cable network.

0:08:19 - Leo Laporte
Well, Byers points out, for instance, the experimental trailer that Apple released on the iPhone had haptics Since the experimental trailer that Apple released on the iPhone had haptics, also ESPN.

0:08:36 - Jason Snell
I mean, espn just runs the Sky, which is basically the F1 English feed, whereas the F1 streaming service has their own announcers. I would imagine that Apple would probably want to actually do this up and get their own broadcast you know at least announcers and potentially have a bunch of tech add-ons as well right To make it their equivalent of the, you know, push the red button for Sky, which you can see on ESPN, but there's no red button to push, which apparently F1 fans don't like. So there's a lot that they could do, and that's what I think it's going to come down to.

0:09:03 - Alex Lindsay
That's fine.

0:09:04 - Jason Snell
I don't watch it on ESPN, it's as much having Apple as a partner than it is about anything else, because Apple doesn't really want US rights to anything. They want global rights. Mls is a global rights deal. Apple is thinking globally. So why would you get the US rights? Well, to try it out, because there will be a time when Apple could theoretically buy global F1 rights. And does F1 want to do that? Well, this would be a way for Apple to sort of prove its mettle.

0:09:28 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and I think that also there isn't like, when you're making these deals, looking at the fact that there is an executive at EQ who is super excited about the product he's on Ferrari's board. And so that makes?

I think that makes also a difference in how you look at it, cause you're like it's not just another business deal, it's somebody who really wants to, you know, someone who has the ability to make decisions that are available to really push things forward. And again, Apple has a lot of potential for lots of different kinds of promotions across the products. They've not done as much with MLS as I thought they would, but they, but they, they could do a lot more yeah, it's Eve.

0:10:08 - Leo Laporte
It's interesting because ESPN, even though they're offering significantly less, is still at the table, which shows you that Malone and Chang are thinking do we really want all this money from Apple? What is Apple gonna?

0:10:21 - Alex Lindsay
offer. The problem is when you look at cable I mean now, admittedly, except for sports, but when you look at the rest of the cable network, but when you look at the rest of the cable ecosystem.

I mean most of that is, as a macro level, burning up in the atmosphere. So you're kind of like that's not the cable TV Now. Espn may last longer, the sports brands tend to last a little longer in this environment, but but for the most part everyone's trying to divest from from cable tv so not disney, because they're launching espn as a as a streaming service, as well, and they're finally doing that, yeah it's probably a different kind of scenario.

0:10:58 - Jason Snell
I'm sure f1 would love to be talking to other streamers as well, but they're not interested in this.

0:11:04 - Leo Laporte
Too much money.

0:11:04 - Jason Snell
Natural, netflix has the money and they create a drive to survive which I think single-handedly made f1 popular in the us yeah, and I think netflix, uh, probably doesn't think that the us only rights are worth it for them, which is why I come back to why is Apple talking to them other than their f1 film relationship, and it's got to be sort of like, if they do this deal, I just feel like it's a let's do this for the next five years and see what happens. And are we a long-term partner for them or not, more than anything else?

0:11:35 - Alex Lindsay
because, even even even with uh the bulk of the size of this deal, uh, the us market is still a relatively small market for f1 I mean it's a market, in many cases is the middle of the night.

0:11:44 - Leo Laporte
It's not a relatively small market for F1. I mean it's an out-market. They want to grow. Yeah, because the time of the race is, in many cases, is the middle of the night. It's not a good live sport for the US.

0:11:50 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so it's not. This is, as Jason pointed out. There's less at stake. This would be a perfect proving ground for Apple, as opposed to like giving them the golden goose.

0:12:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apple must be saying to them something more long-term than just.

0:12:08 - Alex Lindsay
Well, they started designing cameras for them. I mean, they designed cameras for the, for the, for the movie. So when they start going, hey, we could design. We have a lot of camera technology. It's not just you figuring out how to put cool cameras into your. Imagine what we could do with you know, designing and building new kinds of ways of covering, uh, the sport, uh that that potentially could come with it, and for Apple that'd be. That'd be good on many levels.

0:12:32 - Leo Laporte
Liberty owns F1 TV and they own the streaming uh service, which I think if you're a hardcore F1 fan, you probably pay. It's not expensive. Pay it, uh I do every year because it gives you not only a choice between crofty promoting sky with a red button and they all and their own announcers, who are far, far better uh, but you also get all the camera angles, you get all the radio, all that, every driver camera. You get a whole lot more, in fact that's we've talked about this before. It would be an amazing vision pro app lot more in fact that's.

0:13:05 - Andy Ihnatko
We've talked about this before. It would be an amazing vision pro app. Yeah, remember. Remember that's uh, some independent people uh just basically built it on their own right and it's mysteriously disappeared, which either means that they got lawyered up, they got lawyered at, or someone said hi, come work for us f1 and make this into a real thing, because we like the cut of your jib I think the fact that Apple can basically offer infinite amount of money in for live sports in the long run must scare ESPN just a little bit and, in addition, they're not.

They don't. It's not that they don't care about ratings, but ratings are down on the list. They will. They will buy Sports. They will buy shows for Prestige and for subscriptions. They don't necessarily you don't have to deliver an audience year after year after year yeah, well, that's the the one story, that's not a rumor.

0:13:54 - Leo Laporte
Now. Now let's go to the Gurman. Uh, tim cook isn't going anywhere soon, says uh mark. And oh, I have to sign in. Every time I have to sign in to darn Bloomberg, it's a lot of money for that darn Bloomberg.

0:14:09 - Jason Snell
I know and they're so annoying and then they sell your email address to spammers, do they? Yeah, yeah, I get lots of really random marketing email. That's to my Bloomberg account email. You don't get enough money for me. There's never enough money.

0:14:27 - Leo Laporte
I think that's the lesson of Bloomberg. It's a lesson of late-stage capitalism Always more monetization of your subscribers. Tim Cook isn't going anywhere soon, mark says, but an Apple shake-up looms. Really, the big story of the week, which I should have probably moved up, is that Apple's going to lose their COO at the end of the year. Everybody thought that perhaps Jeff Williams would be the next CEO. No, he's retiring later this year. There's no signs internally, says Gurman, that Cook is getting ready to leave. But you know, cook's going to turn 65 this year, he's retirement age. So there's a question, mark, obviously enough to write about. So there's. It's a question about, uh, executive succession. He calls it the tim steps off the curb at the wrong moment, moment. Uh, who? Who would run Apple if jeff williams?

0:15:24 - Alex Lindsay
is retiring well, and jeff williams, though, is only three years younger than Tim Cook, so if you're doing succession, it may not make as much sense. I mean, I think you're probably looking for someone in there, is it?

0:15:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Eddie Q. Yeah, I mean, do you want an operations guy as the next CEO? Given that the last CEO was an operations guy, I think maybe you want a product guy I'm sorry, product person in that role, right uh, there are a lot of retirements ahead.

0:15:51 - Leo Laporte
Uh, Gurman says that you know Lisa Jackson's gonna retire. Obviously, luca Mastri, just you know, kind of somewhat stepped down. Yeah, semi-retired, jen Richo left at the end of of last year. There's a lot of turnover. He says half of cook's 20 direct reports are at least 60, including jaws, phil schiller, lisa jackson and johnny cerucci, and besides they have unlimited funds at this point.

0:16:22 - Jason Snell
Do they're all hundreds of millions.

0:16:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, they don't have to work.

0:16:26 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think that I bet that Cook wants to see the transition to the headset through, Like I think he's in the middle of that or not. Jason's like he wants to jump off the ship before I don't know that seems kind of far out.

0:16:44 - Jason Snell
I don't know, I don't think it's 10 years away.

0:16:47 - Alex Lindsay
I think we'll see a lot more of it in the next five or six years, but I think that I would be very surprised if Cook left in the next five years and potentially in the next. I think I would only give it maybe 20% or 30% that he'd leave in the next 10 years. I mean, I don't think that he has. I think he's doing this because he loves to do it. He obviously doesn't need the money.

0:17:05 - Andy Ihnatko
I feel like he leaves Apple feet first and also, he's not necessarily things would have to. Apple's already lost what? $600 billion in valuation recently and the board is still not interested in replacing him. The shareholders by and large are not interested in replacing him. There are some, there's a lot of. There are a lot of reports this week, uh, from various sources about different analysts and different newsletters saying, hey, it's time for a regime change at Apple if he can't turn things around with ai. But that's really not in the cards. This is it's his job for as long as he wants it, because he's really good at everything that's Apple yeah, that's what uh Gurman says is the board.

0:17:43 - Leo Laporte
You know might think they want a product guy in there, but they're so happy with the stock price. The valuation of the company under Cook's tenure that he is solid.

0:17:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, from from start to finish. Again, 600 billion dollar in valuation. Going away is not a great thing, but you think about what's not been a good year for Apple has it. No, but the thing is, think about where Apple was when he took over, and it's not an accident that valuations got they're now a $3 trillion company.

It's also been a pretty crazy year, the fact that he's gotten through so much of it with so little scathing and it's not like unprecedented macroeconomic headwinds, it's it's screw-ups, that, and miscalculations, uh, that, if, uh, if tim had been on less sound footing, uh, in his job, he might have been bounced after the second problem, after, after, after canceling the, the, after the, after canceling the car, after the Vision Pro turned out to be a lot of money thrown away on what is just a very preliminary experimental product. Anybody who was not secure in his job would have been invited to spend more time with your plants and your dogs and your and your basketball games. But the fact that he survived this, he survived the fumble with ai, which is worse than anything else that's happened during his tenure, probably there are shake-ups going on right now.

0:19:14 - Leo Laporte
For instance, Apple's broken up the vision pro team. It's moved the pieces from Gurman, moved the pieces into its software and hardware departments, relocated engineering for siri and the robotics teams. Now they've got to figure out who's going to take over for jeff williams, the coo he says this is, and I presume he's got sources inside the plan. Apple's already said its design team will report directly to cook. Was reporting to williams right, so I think they've got they've got a new coo.

0:19:44 - Jason Snell
What they need to do is find a place for the other jobs that weren't CEO, that Jeff Williams was also doing yeah. And the thought there is design. Design's a can of worms, right, but design the can of worms is reporting to Tim Cook. But the other, the other stuff, like where?

0:19:58 - Leo Laporte
does Apple Watch and?

0:19:59 - Jason Snell
Health Go A few years. They did that before Right. And where does Apple Watch and Health go? Well, Apple Watch is going to do what Vision Pro did, which is they're going to put the hardware on the hardware side and the software on the software side, and it's just going to be like every other Apple product. It's going to be part of the mix, and Health is an interesting one.

0:20:15 - Leo Laporte
So Ternus has Watch and Health. The WatchOS team run by Dave Clark and its health engineering group led by Evan Dahl, will move to software engineering head Craig Federighi's organization. The current unfinalized plan is for the health product team led by Dr Desai, to shift under Craig Federighi's oversight. Interesting so there's quite a bit of reorg going on, right. Yeah, this new COO will get the AppleCare team. According to what Gurman is hearing, Fitness Plus will move to the services group which was under Jay Blahnik.

0:20:52 - Jason Snell
Yeah, Applecare, it's interesting. Applecare is actually a service, but I get it.

It's a different kind of. There's kind of it's technically a service, financially a service, but in the end probably doesn't make as much sense under any cue as it does. And some of this is like there's some stuff that just doesn't fit really well and that's why Jeff Williams was in charge of some stuff that was not COO stuff. It's because they're like who's going to take this? And Jeff Williams either was told or put his hand up and said, all right, I'll do. You know, he probably liked fitness and watch. Yeah, I'm into, into that, I'll talk about that, I'll. I'll handle that part of it but now.

But now he's leaving and and the COO job it doesn't. You know, coo job doesn't come with those, so they got to find new places for those.

0:21:37 - Leo Laporte
It feels like his leaving is a bit of a surprise. Is that not the case?

0:21:41 - Jason Snell
I don't think so. I mean because he's got to have been part of succession planning. Look, there's two good theories here. One is that he was told that he was no longer part of succession planning. I don't, I think that's possible, but I think it's more likely that he looked at what he wants to do next in his life. And if you look at the text of the announcement, it's really interesting, right? Because Phil Schuller became a fellow Luca Maestri, sort of stepped to the side but kept some rules.

Jeff Williams they use the word retire like he's going to retire. He's not going to be endlessly working at Apple, which good for him to spend time with his family, and he doesn't need to work. None of these guys who are in their 60s and have made hundreds of millions of dollars at Apple need to work, but they I mean need to, but they want to, so they stay. I mean need to, but they want to, so they stay. But as a result, we're in an interesting position where you have to figure out how to take those people and use them and find a succession plan without the guy.

My theory to get back to the second point my theory is he looked at the future and what he wants to do in terms of retirement and said this is just a theory, but just a guess, and said I don't want to be part of the succession planning anymore because I think being part of the in case of an emergency with Tim Cook, you're the CEO plan is some acceptance that you're going to be riding the the CEO rollercoaster for a few years. And if you're Jeff Williams and you're like I riding the CEO roller coaster for a few years, and if you're Jeff Williams and you're like I think I want to retire soon, succession planning needs to get out right. Like you're like I'll be the COO for another year or two, but I'm not going to be the emergency CEO for five years. It's not going to happen. And when that happens, I think is when this happens, it's the step off, because you're not going to be, you're not willing to be here until you're 70.

0:23:28 - Alex Lindsay
And I think that if, if I don't think that Apple will promote someone from the outside, you know when it when, whenever there's a succession. So I think, it puts I think it puts Federighi and Ternus in the front row, Like I think?

0:23:39 - Leo Laporte
they're in their fifties, they're in their 50s. They're not the kind of company that goes outside.

0:23:44 - Jason Snell
Yeah, never.

0:23:49 - Alex Lindsay
But if you look at the public face and who's in the keynotes and everything else, I think it's those two become the primary. You know those are probably the two most likely at this point.

0:23:57 - Leo Laporte
The Apple press release is interesting because it says that the transition from Jeff Williams to Saba Khan is a long planned succession. Yeah, yeah.

0:24:06 - Jason Snell
Saba Khan's been there forever, right he's a lifer.

0:24:09 - Alex Lindsay
He's an Apple lifer yeah.

0:24:10 - Jason Snell
He's been there since, I think, 95. So, like this is not in many ways you're just kind of and this is actually one of the issues right now is Apple have a lot of people that have been at Apple since the 90s or early 2000s. They been at Apple since the 90s or early 2000s. They've all got a lot of money in stock options over the years. They're all sort of around 60, a little older, a little younger, and this is a challenge Again. Look, I'm in my mid-50s. I'm not being ageist when I say the problem is, eventually you can't stay forever right.

0:24:40 - Leo Laporte
Like that's just a truth of humanity, the other side of that birthday, that's. That is when you start thinking OK, I'm on the downhill slope, now what do I want the rest of my life to be like? And if you've got hundreds of millions of dollars, you don't have to work.

0:24:59 - Jason Snell
I do think you don't become a senior vice president at Apple or a CEO without being basically a type A personality workaholic person, and so they probably a lot I mean. So, again, credit to Jeff Williams for actually saying I don't want to do this anymore. I don't need to do this anymore, but it's going to become an issue sooner or later and and this is probably it feels I think Kermit is right it feels like this is a moment, not not like where there's a calamity. Apple is doing so well that they haven't had that calamity that causes a lot of stuff to break and then people to leave, and Apple is such a unique company that they just stay forever Right, and so you end up in this position where they now have to start thinking like okay, but what happens in five years, when you know?

Or or eight years, when all those people who are now sort of like 60 are all now headed towards 70. Like you do need another generation to step up to do this stuff and to be the face of the company and to do succession planning. You know, honestly, even if Tim Cook wanted to stay until he was 75 which you know he could he he seems very fit. Um, you still want clear people who are ready to take over, and probably you want to see some sort of a, a gradual transferring.

That's the thing about, like phil, what phil schiller did is phil schiller is still at Apple and he does events and he does, uh, app store. He's just not doing the job that jaws is doing now and that that's like that. That's like Apple retirement, right, which is like now I'm only in charge of two huge things of this giant company instead of five, uh, but you, you do need to see more of that. You need to see john turnus step up. Yeah, you, you need to see more of mike rockwell and you know other people who are like below and are coming up now.

0:26:49 - Alex Lindsay
You got to see those people now but I think I think when you start looking at that short list, you're looking at someone who's been at Apple for more than 20 years.

0:26:56 - Jason Snell
That's less than for sure yeah, that's you know like that's exactly right and they're not that many, because, because people are saying, oh well, maybe there would be a, there could be an acquisition, and all that. It's like, look, I know, and somebody was like, oh well, but the board is the one who will decide who the new ceo is. I was like, yeah, but the board and tim cook agree on everything and I really just can't, can't, imagine tim cook will not be the executive chairman after he's the ceo. I feel like he's going to do the same thing that they did to Steve Jobs. Right before Steve Jobs died, he was maybe the chairman of the board and they're going to pick from within Apple. Unless there is a catastrophe that kills Apple's business, they will pick somebody from within Apple.

There are too many examples and we've talked about them here, too many examples where they brought somebody in from the outside and it has either gone completely terribly or after a few years they just leave, and and so you can go from john broward, who was brought in to do the store and that was a calamity and he was gone within a few months. Or it's angela erentz, who came in from burberry and it was okay, but after a few years she just left and uh, or you can talk honestly about John G and Andrea, who, by all you know, visible evidence hasn't really worked out as the machine learning chief, so it's gotta be somebody from within Apple. And they've got to. You know, they've got to be training those people up Does.

0:28:17 - Leo Laporte
Apple need as many analysts. Apparently, the stock market is not happy with Tim Cook, which just like come on, guys, are that short-term focused oh my God, they really are.

0:28:30 - Alex Lindsay
That's the way they think.

0:28:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you know they don't have an AI story, and that's the story of 2025. So, of course, meta and Microsoft are doing better uh than Apple is in 2025. But gosh, the track record's pretty good. I wouldn't sell my Apple stock.

0:28:47 - Andy Ihnatko
Most of the analysts that I was, after seeing a couple of these really, really alarming reports of leading analysts, says CEO must duck down or Apple is in big trouble. There are some influential analysts. However, the majority of the reaction to that has been no, Apple would be nuts to make a big CEO change. This is still a good stock. It's still working great. They've got problems, but the the chaos of a regime change would hurt the company a lot more than just sticking around and trying to work things out lightshed, which is an analytic firm, said app quote Apple needs a product Focus CEO, not one centered on logistics well, I mean, there are a lot of I'll just tell you financial analysts are Because logistics is not turning into a problem in 2045.

0:29:29 - Jason Snell
Financial analysts are not smarter than the rest of us.

honestly, and like I look at, some of these analysts, and I think they don't understand Apple's business as much as we do here, honestly, and they don't really get it. I will say one of Tim Cook's great advantages is I think there's a general perception I think it's true, but I think there is a general perception that if you mess with Apple's culture a little too much, you will kill the goose that laid the gold bags. I think that that is true, that, like, we've seen too many examples of people coming in from the outside and yeah, somebody in the discord was saying John Scully is like yeah, I mean okay, like there are a lot, but like, even recently, like Apple, Apple is is legitimately unlike any other company in the world and it is used that to become one of the biggest and most valuable companies in the world. And I think it is a legitimate argument to say, if you brought somebody in from the outside to optimize Apple, all you would do is destroy it. So there we are, yeah.

0:30:32 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, it means it's a tough problem that they've, which is not to say that putting someone in the C-suite that's that's a couple of generations younger than the current crew wouldn't be a good move.

There are times where you really do feel as though Apple is making some very, very smart choices, but based on a hard established view of the world that has changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years. I'm not sure that if you had someone in their early 40s taking charge of the App Store, I'm not sure that Apple would still be taking these hardline stances about keeping developers under their thumb and bucking every single attempt to limit or control what they want to do. I think that we would see people. We would see at least some conversations about adding features for developers who are selling through the App Store that they've been asking for for years and years and years that they're used to getting on pretty much every other platform. That's just an example of younger people who grew up with App Stores not understanding why we have this regime. That seems to think that every Apple soft disk sold on a floppy is stealing from from from Apple's revenues.

0:31:49 - Jason Snell
Well, that goes to the fear of the goose that laid the golden eggs. I mean, in some ways, is Steve jobs, and that's part of the fear. I think that causes a lot of these cultural problems that Apple is. Oh, you know, this is the way Steve did it. Let's just kind of keep doing it that way. And I and again not saying it's not the fact that those executives are in their 60s, it's the fact that they're all in their 60s and they've all been there for 25 years and I wonder if, like there there, there are lots of executives down below that that have different, newer perspectives. It's just like at some point it does feel and we've talked about this with some of the legal stuff in the U? S and in the in the EU that it feels a little bit like that the people at the top, even when told don't do this, are just like no, we're going to do this because they have always succeeded, they have all the money, they have all the power, yeah Well.

0:32:43 - Alex Lindsay
And I think. I think it's not just their age, but they were all here in 1997.

0:32:48 - Jason Snell
That's a huge part of it.

0:32:49 - Alex Lindsay
Yes, and it is a. I think it permeates their view of the world. They don't take it, they don't take anything for no-transcript, and that almost was a disaster. I mean, that was almost the end, you know and I think that there's definitely a um, a certain level of paranoia that's driven Apple forward. But I think that they definitely view the world as you know.

They're looking at, like you know, china is very unstable and they may have to survive on their services for some period of time, somewhere in the future, and that's why I think that's why they don't want to give it up is because they it's a big, it could potentially be suddenly, unexpectedly, a huge chunk. I mean, it gets it's. It's one thing for us to talk about tariffs. It's another thing of, like, what does Apple do if China invades Taiwan? You know, like that is a and that's becoming, as we get closer to 27, 2027, 2028, a more real problem. You know, and so and so, and they have to, and China's now making it hard for them to get out of the cut, out of the country. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things where they have to figure it out, and I think that that's why it's so important for Tim Cook to be there is because the next five years is logistics, logistics the market and analysts might say well, there was the Apple car, and then there was a vision Pro, and now there's AI, tim's stumbling.

0:34:25 - Leo Laporte
He's lost a step. Uh. Apple, uh is at risk of becoming irrelevant in the in the next five years.

0:34:34 - Alex Lindsay
I can understand why they might say that yeah if you didn't have if you had no memory of history, if you had no track record you might say this is not, this is not going well, you know, I think that the relevant the being irrelevant, I think they definitely having to figure out what they have to do next. But we talked about like microsoft got, quote, unquote, kind of like hammered and almost broken up or whatever, you know, 20 years ago and now they're one of the largest companies in the world.

0:35:01 - Leo Laporte
So they pivoted, though they got rid of steve ballmer, who actually did a very good job. He was, right, the tim cook of microsoft, right, the stock was stagnant, but but he made him a very successful company. But they got.

0:35:14 - Alex Lindsay
They got rid of him and they brought in this new guy, uh, sachin adela, who's done very, very well and that may happen, but this isn't the time that you would make such a radical change in in they're doing. The other thing is is that I do think that there is a and I don't know how what percentage of Apple users are like all in, but whatever that number is, the chances of them going anywhere is so low they're pretty locked in.

Well, it's just like, like, like I, you know, like, because everything gets easier, Like if you're all, if you're like I I live mostly. I mean I've got PCs that are on the peripheral of things but I don't really like they're not part of my core operating process and so, as a result, you know like, I own 650 movies on Apple TV.

I have you know all this and so everything becomes easy and everything becomes lock-in. And it's not just lock-in, it's just. It's just everything's easy Like it's. It's not just locking, it's just everything's easy Like it's fun and it just works. You know, and you know you're throwing things from one device to another and everything.

And the idea of going outside of that to a less efficient, because I think that especially the ones, the folks that use almost all Apple products, I think are very much it's not that they're that geeky, they actually just don't want to spend time thinking about it. Like you know, they don't, like I know I don't for the, the basic operation of my day-to-day life. I don't want to. I don't want to figure it out Like I just went to work, like you know, like cause I'm doing other things. I have other things that I'm working on and fiddling with my computer to try to figure out why this isn't talking to.

That is not one of the things that I want to spend time on, unless it's something that's cutting edge. But on a day-to-day, like how do I get notes from one place to another? I don't want to think about it, I don't want to calculate it and I think that there's a. I think I don't know whether it's a half or 60% or 70% of Apple users are like that, but there's some pretty big percentage don't have any interest in other platforms, you know, and there's definitely a group that are using a little bit of everything and it doesn't really matter to them.

0:37:13 - Leo Laporte
Does it matter if Apple innovates? Does Apple have to innovate? Do they have to come up with something new? I think they have to innovate?

0:37:18 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think they. I think that they just have to stay on the ball. Or can they coast, like for For most of their users? I think they have to stay in the ballpark of where things are. But I also still think that the book hasn't been completed on AI yet and I think a lot of what Apple's doing long term, I think, makes a ton of sense. I think short term they made a lot of mistakes and the biggest mistake in my opinion is still that they just announced more than they could do. But I think that long-term you know on-app, on-device, when you own the operating system and the hardware and the chips and everything else and then you're building on-device AI and then delivering that back to your developers that over time is a lethal concoction, you know. It's just that it's not cooked yet a lethal concoction, you know.

0:38:07 - Jason Snell
It's just that it's not cooked yet. Yeah, and as I mean, andy and Alex have both talked about this the fact we, we, we wring our hands about ai a lot, but you can do a lot of ai stuff on Apple's platforms, right, it's just the stuff that's baked it from the os and that insulates them to a certain degree, and they could, if they wanted to do more third-party app integration, make it even easier to bake, to have that stuff in even though the Apple didn't bake it, and that gives them an enormous advantage. Leo, to your point about, like, do they need to innovate? Well, they do, but they don't need to innovate in, I think, a lot of ways that the analysts and other people sometimes say right, which is that classic? Like going back to the Apple Watch, where people are like, if it's not the next iPhone, it's a failure. And I think the truth is there is no next iPhone on the horizon and the iPhone is going to be an annuity that pays off for Apple for a very long time.

But what they do have to do is keep their head on a swivel, not get complacent, make sure that the iPhone continues to be good and look for whatever might replace the iPhone, which is why they're spending money on vision products.

It's why they spent money on the car. There are reasons that they throw money at things because their biggest existential threat is that they'll be like Microsoft missing mobile right, that they will miss the moment for a fundamental platform that they can't get back into. And I don't think AI is necessarily that, because you can do good AI stuff on Apple's products and integrate it pretty well. It's a threat, but I'm not sure it's quite as existential as that. I think the stuff you can wear you know wearable stuff on your glasses, in your ears, wherever could be a long-term existential threat. But even there you need something with a battery and a network connection and processing power, and smartphones are pretty good for that and everybody's got one, so I think they've got still got a lot of advantages there so what you're really saying is you don't see the next thing coming at this point there's nothing.

It's going to take a while disenfranchise them right, right, but the danger is you get complacent, I think, when you say do they?

0:40:02 - Leo Laporte
have blackberry. They probably thought they had the market locked.

0:40:05 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah so that's, that's the danger. I don't. You know, honestly, there are places like I don't think Apple has gotten complacent. I really don't.

The ai thing they missed it. They blew it but didn't were they complacent? I mean, they were building neural processor units into their processors and they had it. They missed llms because they thought there were other ai technologies that were going to be better and in fact, I would say they knew enough about AI stuff, about ML stuff, that it gave them a false sense of confidence that LLMs weren't going to be it and they were. And then they got wrong footed in that. But it wasn't that. They were like missing the mark. You wouldn't be missing the mark on the importance of AI and building neural engines into your product for a decade. They just missed LLM. So I think that they I think Apple is kind of obsessive about what the next thing is and about innovating, but you know there's a danger that their perspective is not.

They don't have enough people arguing about what they should do that they're not as flexible. They're a little more calcified because they are a giant, and this is just the story. They're a giant, profitable company. It's very hard when you have there was a great.

On the Connected podcast last week they were talking about the liquid glass design and a point that the host made was Apple's so huge now that if you deeply offend 5% of the install base, that's tens of millions of iPhone users Like. And the danger when you're Apple and you're that big and you're that successful is it's kind of hard to be as bold as Apple used to be because you have I mean, again, you're really successful but you also have this enormous install base. And how do you please all those people or keep them from getting mad at you and like? It's a good problem to have, but this is why companies calcify and get more conservative and they're optimizing for their current profit and not trying to do other stuff. I think Apple tries to fight it. I'm not sure how successful they are at fighting it.

0:41:57 - Alex Lindsay
And also, I think, Apple, the only time they truly innovated was with the Apple One. So they didn't create MP3s, they just made them MP3 players, they just made them better. They didn't invent touchscreen phones, they just made them better. They didn't improve watches, they just made them better. They didn't improve, they didn't, they didn't. I mean, I'm sorry, they didn't invent a set top box, they just made it better.

Like and so what Apple? I don't think. I think a lot of times Apple's MO is to take the. You know, as we said before, take the bread that's been half cooked by other people and just put it back in the oven, you know, just cook it all the way. And so I think that a lot of times they're going to, and I think that, again, I think that A they and the time and the ability to continue to out-design folks, because a lot of people think, well, if it just does the thing, it's going to be enough. And Apple's like well, there is this thing called a user experience that might be useful, all right, we need to take a break.

0:42:57 - Leo Laporte
Hang on, we will talk more about all the news having to do with Apple with Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko and Alex Lindsay. So glad you're here today.

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So Apple has come is committed to spending half a billion dollars expanding the us supply chain, they say, with a commitment to american rare earth magnets, Apple and mp materials will launch an all-new recycling facility for processing recycled rare earth elements better to recycle them than to dig them up. Uh, this is in fort worth, texas. Is this the? Is this exactly what you were saying Apple should do to appeal to the? The?

0:45:46 - Alex Lindsay
government part of it? Yeah, no, I think we even million.

0:45:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I think we said that number. Apple is committed to buying American-made rare earth magnets developed at MP Materials flagship independence facility in Fort Worth, texas. They're also going to create a cutting-edge rare earth recycling line in Mountain Pass California I don't know where that is and develop novel magnet materials and innovative processing technologies to enhance magnet performance. How important are magnets to Apple?

0:46:18 - Alex Lindsay
Well, rare earth is very important to Apple. It's a part of every piece of everything that they're doing, and MP Materials is probably the most well-known and I guess MagSafe is a magnet, is it?

0:46:30 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, yeah, definitely.

0:46:30 - Alex Lindsay
But there's, I mean it's MagSafe is a magnet, is it?

0:46:32 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know, yeah, yeah definitely, but there's, I mean it's, but yeah it.

0:46:34 - Leo Laporte
They also use rare earth and Taptic the Taptic engine. Nearly all magnets across all Apple devices are made with 100% recycled rare earth elements.

0:46:43 - Jason Snell
Yeah, that's the thing is. They've been talking about recycling as being a green initiative, but it is also a materials independence initiative isn't it yeah although, yes, you're spending half a half a billion dollars to save money anyway. Uh, by the way, to maintain access to materials that might not be available otherwise yeah, because they come from china, right yeah, and there's a lot of unknown.

0:47:08 - Alex Lindsay
I mean there's there are definitely folks with claims in the united states that have mp materials is one of them, but there's a lot of unknown. I mean there's there are definitely folks with claims in the United States that have MP materials is one of them, but there's definitely folks that think that there's a lot of rare earths in the United States. We just haven't looked for them as heavily yeah.

0:47:21 - Andy Ihnatko
Are we willing to do to our land what we are willing to pay others to do to their land, though?

0:47:25 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, Well, and and and I think a lot of the people are like, why did we? Uh, when you look at the cost of rare earth and you look at back at petroleum products, why are we suddenly have all this oil? Why is the United States now the largest producer of petroleum products? Well, it's because we knew that they were there. We just weren't going to do it for $12 a barrel, you know like we weren't going to open that up. You know, then we opened it up when it, when there was more money available. And I think that the rare earth it takes a long time to, to turn the rare earth that's the big thing is that it to to go from zero to it actually producing something takes typically five or six years uh, a victory for trump as EU backs down.

0:48:09 - Leo Laporte
This is maybe a Apple saves some money here in the EU. Uh, on a digital taxes Uh, the Politico says it's because of the uh the tariff negotiations, Apple and meta were about to be taxed pretty heavily, uh, by the EU. This was a tax against big tech and digital technologies. The EU has apparently backed down so good. I don't know how much it would cost Apple, but I imagine a significant amount.

0:48:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, apparently they traded away that for taxes on tobacco products and on discarded electronic equipment and basically adjusted the sliding scale. That's fine, yeah good.

0:49:01 - Leo Laporte
I'm okay with that.

0:49:02 - Andy Ihnatko
They still want the half a billion bucks that they fined Apple for, though that's still happening.

0:49:07 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I thought that might give them a little break on that. No, oh well.

0:49:10 - Andy Ihnatko
No, no, happening. Oh, I thought that might give them a little break on that. No, oh well, no, no, actually there's the. They had, uh, the. The eu has like public hearings for all these compliance fines. And so microsoft, google and Apple both had their like live streamed day in front of this, uh, uh, day in front of this panel, uh, and Apple was EU was basically saying, explain to us why you're not playing nice.

And Apple was so petulant. It was amazingly funny, their entire statement. They ate up most of their time because there's supposed to be time for Q&A and interrogation, but conversations with EU people but also questions from the public. And they were. They were again as petulant as a three trillion dollar company can be. Like it's couched the language of well, I mean, we would like to comply, but you keep telling you that we don't think that these are things that can't be complied with and you keep that you're not really so. We're, we're, we're just gonna like let the courts tell us be specific about, about what we need to do to comply with ee regulations, because you're not doing it. You're not helping us any. It was, it was really it's actually condescending.

0:50:17 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, even with the fines, it may actually be cheaper for them to let the courts tell them what to do. Yeah, you know, like that may be a pretty well calculated process of like well, we'll see what we get forced to do. Um, because the the problem with a lot of the lot of that whole regulation is that it isn't very specific. It's kind of like we'll know it when we see it, like whether you're doing it. So I think that they could give up more than they have to if they actually offered it.

0:50:43 - Andy Ihnatko
That's a good observation, but Apple was also doing like they were asked directly, for instance, about so they've been directed to allow third-party browsing engines in the EU, and so they're asking, gee, why? How come, like, we made this order a long time ago and, you quote, complied with it a long time ago, and yet we don't see, like any third-party, any browsers on iOS that use third-party engines, that don't use WebKit, and they said, gosh, gosh, we don't know why. And meanwhile, like, they actually basically answered their own question by saying yeah, here's everything, here's all the roadblocks you've put up against anybody, even google, google and mozilla have testified that they wanted to do it, they tried to do it, but they found it absolutely impossible under the terms that Apple was demanding. So, again, it was a fun live stream. It was about three hours long.

0:51:35 - Leo Laporte
Did you watch it?

0:51:37 - Andy Ihnatko
I've gotten through a half of it so far while I was doing email and stuff, but it's pretty amazing stuff. Like I said, there's something that just triggers Apple. When they talk about certain topics, they can be perfectly reasonable about certain other regulations. But when you talk about steering, when you talk about certain topics, they can be perfectly reasonable about certain other regulations. But when you talk about steering, when you talk about how they run the app store, when they talk about how they allow uh people to uh outsiders to operate on their own platforms, they are just. I know that. I know that my hands and my mouth are covered with blueberry jam, but I swear I'm not the person who got into the blueberry jam and stole it all.

0:52:12 - Leo Laporte
Wow um, Apple let's talk about. Oh, there's so many rumors as we get closer to, uh, iPhone day. First of all, iPhone day, everybody seems to agree will be september 8th. Is that credible, jason? You kind of pay attention to this stuff. It's predictable.

0:52:30 - Jason Snell
It's exactly what we'd think, because it's the first tuesday after first, so the eighth is a monday, so I would say the nine labor day the ninth is the one where I'd put my money down the night, okay first week after labor day week.

0:52:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, right um now here's the.

0:52:47 - Jason Snell
That would mean that phones would probably ship on the 19th.

0:52:51 - Leo Laporte
Okay.

0:52:51 - Jason Snell
That's my guess.

0:52:51 - Leo Laporte
I'm leaving for vacation on the 20th so I might be able to take my new iPhone with me. Are you guys going to look at the Air, the rumored extra slim iPhone Air?

0:53:06 - Alex Lindsay
I want the extra thick one. Yeah, battery life, Like I want battery life and power, like I don't care about how thin it is, because I put it in a you know it's in a big case, like I'm not going to get anywhere near the you know, and if it's thin I just want it to be in a thicker case to make sure it doesn't get bent or turned or anything else. And so I have literally zero not even zero negative interest in some thinner phone. I'm sure that there are people that want them.

0:53:31 - Leo Laporte
I might get it just to be different, just to not like.

0:53:34 - Andy Ihnatko
I think I think a lot of people are going to be like that. It's like Apple is. I'm surprised that Apple doesn't do more. Let's call them style phones, where they're not just the meat and potatoes. Uber phone for everybody We've got. We've got a slab phone for mid-range people. A slab phone for budget people. We've got a slab phone for people who've got $1,200 to spend. They are so good at design and making it worthwhile to pay for Apple Design that I'm surprised that they haven't. This is pretty much the first time they've done a phone. That is, you will be paying a lot for a lot more, a little more for a lot less phone. But, oh my God, when you'll hold this in the Apple store you will make some of you will decide that maybe I don't need an iPhone, an iPhone pro, after all. Uh, I, I'm. I'm with you, Alex, like I, there's. This is the absolute intersection of uh, a product that I think Apple would do a great job of making and a product that I have no interest in owning whatsoever.

0:54:29 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and I do agree with you that making a thin phone would be great. I just wish they'd also go the other direction Make a thin phone and make a really hefty, powerful phone With tons of storage and power and battery.

0:54:42 - Jason Snell
I keep hearing people saying this. But, like, the whole point is that you take the phone and if you need more coverage, storage, battery, whatever, like that, you put a, you put a case on it and you put a battery case on it. And I guess the whole point is that they, if they, if they make because I my you're not the only friend of mine who has said I just wanted to make a big one with a big battery in it and it's like, but that's just the whole point of Apple making little ones is that you can then add to them as you see fit. But if they made one that was only available in that size and shape, it would be another SKU and it probably they know that it would only sell to a small amount. So instead they make the, what my pal John Syracuse calls the naked robotic core. And then everybody because I mean most people put cases on them too.

But Apple doesn't build them. Like, if they, if you like a case so much, why don't they make it with the case? And the answer is because they don't, because they want it to just be this little thing. And then you choose what you want. On top of that, I think the the thin phone goes even more extreme in that direction. I think it could be interesting. Um, you know why not make it? I, for all the reasons you've said.

0:55:50 - Alex Lindsay
But like, if you just I mean at some point, if you want a super rugged battery heavy phone, get a battery case and stick a rugged battery case and stick it on there and you've got it like nobody's stopping you I was introduced to, the first time I've ever seen my phone I was I was capturing, um, some stuff for my daughter, for her music stuff, and the first time I ever saw the phone I was charging it externally as well as capturing from it. And I've never seen an iPhone say I'm too hot, I can't keep recording Like I can't, you know, and I was doing ProRes HQ on it. But that's when I started going well, it would be great if I didn't have it. I think it got my thought process.

0:56:33 - Jason Snell
I don't want to just do it isn't there a rumor that they're doing some new cooling tech on the, on the this next generation too.

0:56:37 - Alex Lindsay
Where they're gonna, there's like the vacuum chamber, whatever it is and and the thing is is that you can do the pro res or the hq. What you can't do is do hq and charge it at the same time for a long period of time, like that's. The thing that gets you is the is it'll heat up, because it's. It heats the battery a lot when you are charging it, and then you add a ton of processing to it and that turned out to be the thing that got. But I'd never seen that message. It was a. It was a new message.

0:57:01 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm just, I'm just glad they're making it thicker where it counts, like that people. I remember the first camera, the the uh uh, nokia 10, 20 or 1030 camera, where they said, screw it, we're going to bump out the camera modules because we want to have really great optics. And designers just savaged it oh look, it's got an Oreo cookie on top of it. But man, did they have the right idea? When you make the camera module thicker, the optics are much better, you get better pictures and people will get over it once they see the great pictures that they make.

0:57:35 - Alex Lindsay
I have to admit that I was a little excited when the early rumors showed the cameras going all the way across the top, thinking that maybe the two cameras on either side would be much closer to inner ocular distance so that when they do the 3D you would actually be able to get a much more aggressive 3D. But it doesn't look like that's where they're going.

0:57:56 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, the bump goes all the way from left to right, which is in itself a feature.

0:58:00 - Alex Lindsay
I saw that I was excited about the bump going left to right. I was just hoping they're going to put a camera on the other corner of that bump so that we would get and maybe rumors right now.

0:58:12 - Andy Ihnatko
As I've shown time and time again, the idea of like a horizontal bump means that you can actually put it on the counter and it doesn't like rock when you're actually using it. So that alone might think we'll get a lot of people saying, okay, you know what?

0:58:20 - Leo Laporte
maybe I don't hate the bump after all so, speaking of bumps, sonny dixon has pictures of the iPhone 17 lens protection cover which he says tells you what colors the new phones will come in. And they're actually some kind of dramatic colors for the 17 black, gray, silver, light blue, light green and light purple to the air black, silver, blue, gray and light gold. For the pro orange black, gray, silver, dark blue and orange yeah, they're orange or it could be.

0:58:59 - Andy Ihnatko
It could be more of a copper ah, it is kind of coppery maybe that's just the names that were like put attached to it that's what he called, yeah the, the.

0:59:08 - Jason Snell
There's a. The mac rumor story about this has this like a concept render of the phone and and they've taken dark blue and copper and made it into bright blue and bright orange. And maybe it's just 10 years of knowing that Apple doesn't want to do colors and pro phones, but I have a hard time believing that those will look like that. I think you know and take your imagination and then desaturate it like 90 percent, yeah, to be like faintly coppery instead of bright orange, and if you look close you could see that it's a darker laptop blue.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean amen, though great I'd love to see. I would love to see phones these colors, I just don't believe it, I wouldn't have to buy a slim.

0:59:49 - Leo Laporte
If they have an orange pro, I'll stand out plenty. Uh, yeah, it's yeah. Well, we'll see, and these are all. Again, these are rumors, although they're more credible now because they are undoubtedly manufacturing these right?

1:00:04 - Andy Ihnatko
yeah, there's a news that uh, India's plants are already are already accepting shipments of of components. Whether they are proponents for a trial run or test run or an actual production run, unknown, but they are definitely getting components ready even though China recalled all the Foxconn engineers yeah, but that's not. That's not a problem.

1:00:24 - Jason Snell
They could still make it, yeah yeah, Apple likes a multi-toned phone design on the back, and so that what the mock-ups are doing is saying, okay, that ring is going to be the color that it is, and I think it's again. I hope it's true, but I think it's more likely that that ring is the pop of color on a much less colorful thing. We'll see.

So like that would be like the bright copper and the body would be like a darker copper, not a contrast yeah, or, or a light, or a lighter, sort of vaguely coppery, shamed white gray, because that seems to be what everything Apple does on the pro phones is sort of like it's black except not quite, or it's white except not quite, or it's tan, right like it's like you know right, remember desert titanium. I mean this could literally be.

1:01:13 - Andy Ihnatko
It's basically beige with a little tiny touch of orange here and there, basically, basically the designer's vision board for iPhone colors is they take stills from like the old bob newhart show, like the living room, the sunken living room, and if it's, if it's in that, if there's a rust, there's sort of a buff color, there's sort of a brown color, there's sort of a brown color. Yeah, they don't go. I am of the belief that every phone line should have one kind of wild color in it.

1:01:38 - Jason Snell
I mean, my favorite iPhone color of the last decade was the coral on the iPhone XR. Which was this just bananas orange? I loved it so much but they so rarely, rarely do that yeah, uh, we are going to take a break.

1:01:54 - Leo Laporte
When we come back we will talk about what you won't be getting this year. Mark Gurman disappointed me a lot, but anyway, we'll talk about that in just a second. You're watching MacBreak Weekly.

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1:04:49 - Jason Snell
now I feel like you're just digging back through the different layers of sediment from the past of the internet.

1:04:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm amazed though. I mean I get a lot of email. I see lots of yahoo, hotmail, yeah aol domain.

1:05:03 - Jason Snell
But once you're on, it's hard to, it's hard to get off right, it's hard to switch right that's right. Forever doesn't have to be spaceshipcom I had a yahoo that I mean I log in for ages and they finally had like one breach too many where they're like, okay, everything is gonna, you're gonna have to come back to yahoo and do this and do that, and I was like, no, not just delete my account, it's fine, I don't care anymore. I don't care anymore. It was a good. We had a good 20 years yahoo.

1:05:27 - Leo Laporte
But for a long time. I just sent all my spam to yahoo. I still use yahoo to log into flickr, though.

1:05:34 - Jason Snell
Come to think I only used it for, like fantasy football, I mean honestly, that was about it. So when I retired from fantasy football bye you don't do that anymore.

1:05:44 - Leo Laporte
Do you fantasy curling?

1:05:45 - Jason Snell
I don't do fantasy sports. I decided it was too. I didn't care enough about it, made me like it was maybe care about things artificially and it just I wasn't getting any joy out of it. It was more like work to go set my lineups and stuff and I thought, well, if you're not enjoying it, don't do it. So I stopped.

1:06:02 - Leo Laporte
It's a huge time sink it is. See, Larry got it His own domain, L-R-A-U dot com. Oh, but that was back in the day, Larry. Ah, all right, All right, what are we not going to get? I'm holding out for the MacBook Pro with the OLED screen and maybe an M6 or an M5 processor.

1:06:28 - Jason Snell
Well late 26, early 27, I guess.

1:06:31 - Leo Laporte
Maybe, yeah, maybe not 26, even because the m5 macbook pro is 26.

1:06:37 - Jason Snell
Well, according to, Gurman I mean Gurman said it's in. He was really vague about it. He said they're probably next year instead of this fall.

1:06:46 - Leo Laporte
But then he's considering pushing them back to 2026 considering right, and he said it was.

1:06:51 - Jason Snell
He also said it was like in flux or something. So it's, it's. Maybe we may not get it. Basically, if you're expecting an annual cycle where it's going to come out this fall like it did last fall, it may not. It may be more like the previous year where you get it in in early next year. That doesn't preclude Apple from releasing that new OLED MacBook Pro that's been rumored at the end of next year, because they did that. Remember, a couple years ago they did two different macbook pro iterations in a single calendar year.

They could do that again. It wouldn't be a problem. There's no law preventing them from doing it. Or they could wait and and and ship it in in 27. That's also possible. Yeah, yeah, one more cycle and then you'll get your OLED MacBook Pro. It sounds like that's interesting. Also, the other quirk of that report is, if it's true that they're not going to do a fall launch for the MacBook Pro. He said they are going to do a fall launch for the iPad Pro, and that would mean the second Apple chip generation in a row to be launched by an iPad instead of by a Mac, which launched by an iPad instead of by a Mac, which is wild, the M5 first appears in the iPad.

1:07:52 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think it feels upside down to me, but I'm starting to think that the lower quality chips that are easier to make first it's just you know, so you put them out first, but it feels so backwards. But I can understand that you slowly work your way up.

I mean Jason said this before Because you don't have to have a Pro or a Max to launch an iPad, but you do launch a MacBook Pro, because a lot of times I think that you know that you have, you know the chips just aren't yielding what they need to yield. Yet you know, because a lot higher percentage of them because an iPad, we're not really measuring them the same way.

1:08:24 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can get that basic. I mean, nothing about chip design is basic, obviously, but an M5 is going to be the most basic of any of the M5 family and it's possible, even via binning, that the M5 that goes in the iPad Pro might not even be the same M5 specs that you might get in a MacBook Pro down the line Maybe, maybe not, who knows. And it's a smaller volume, so you, it lets them kind of ramp up the volume and they don't have to have the pro and max variants there on on day one for that product. And and so, yeah, I, I I'm not surprised I think it's amazing.

1:09:03 - Alex Lindsay
You're like these chips are so complicated and they and they're baked, you know like they're baked. It's kind of like we're computing with bread, you know, like it, like it's. You know they're that, you know, and some of the bread is good and some of the bread is good Like cause. It's cause they, you know they come out as these wafers and some of them are running faster than the other. Some of them will continue to run and do what they need.

1:09:30 - Leo Laporte
They put them in the Apple tvs, throw them in here you know that it'll. It'll be fast enough well, I have uh, handcuffed myself to this notion of a m6 oled, fully redesigned macbook pro, and I will not allow myself to buy anything until then. Good for you sounds like uh, go get them leo, tie me to the mast. It probably won't be foldable though well, let's speaking of all.

1:09:59 - Jason Snell
Laptops are foldable.

1:10:01 - Leo Laporte
Okay, once no, every time all laptops are foldables.

1:10:09 - Andy Ihnatko
We're going to get into is a burrito of a sandwich argument here. What constitutes a fold? A hinge is not a fold. A hinge is something you cut open or closed, sir I don't know I don't know, if I had a white leather glove, I'd be slapping you with it. And, sir, I challenge you I challenge you, sir.

1:10:31 - Leo Laporte
So the iPad pro, which is slated to get the m5 chip as early as october? Uh, wow, that would be in this october. Wow, that'd be interesting. The airs will be upgraded from the m3 to the m4, but otherwise limited changes all right, I just, I just want to see.

1:10:49 - Andy Ihnatko
it won't be me, of course, but I just want to see the person. All right, thunderbolt connectors and everything. I want to see exactly how much of a warship desktop I can turn this iPad into, because it seems like the ambition is definitely there uh, and, as mark says, the timing remains fluid, so don't take this as uh, as gospel.

1:11:30 - Leo Laporte
Uh, the company had been planning to release new 14 and 16 inch MacBook pros later this year them five. But now internally, Gurman says targeting a launch early next year. Um, but it's fluid, it's fluid. I think this might, given the changes in iOS or, I'm sorry, iPadOS, this might be the year of the iPad in 2026. Maybe these iPad are where people will go, because they're now maybe a little bit more like real computers ios 26 is probably a bigger upgrade than the.

M5. Yeah, uh, MacBook Air is also coming in the first half of next year, according to German, and a new external monitor, the first since the Apple Studio display, the highly overpriced but still desirable Apple Studio display three years ago, early 2026 for Studio 2, or whatever they call it, the smart home hub, originally planned for a few months ago uh, delayed indefinitely due to its reliance on the new Siri voice assistant features.

1:12:37 - Andy Ihnatko
That device, says Mr Gurman, may now arrive in the first half of 2026 as well yeah, it was interesting because he was interesting because he blamed not specifically Siri but App Intents for Siri. That put the kibosh on it. And I think one of his previous reports I remember, because I liked the suggestion that Apple was basically saying we're going to Apple watch, this release, where we're going to get the hardware on point and perfect, we're going to release it in time for holiday buyers and then we will give them a hell of an upgrade in the spring once Apple intelligence is ready for this device. But we're not necessarily going to hold off on shipping what could be a very, very interesting and exciting product, particularly as a holiday sort of holiday sort of release, just because we don't know exactly when Apple intelligence is going to be ready.

1:13:27 - Leo Laporte
So mark says this is not a technical, there are no technical reasons for this. He says it's about smoothing out revenue growth. He said. After a pandemic fueled sales surge in the early part of the decade, Apple has suffered from spottier demand the past two years. A slower rollout of new models, including including iPads, contributed to the slump. So they're trying to kind of what stretch it back so that they can get a more even revenue flow. So your graphs look better.

1:13:53 - Jason Snell
This feels like Bloomberg narrative building, where you're thinking, when you think about the market. You can have a little narrative like that, I guess, at most charitable.

What I would say is if you really got, if, if you really crank up your product release engine so you've got a new version every year, everything should be smoother and that the covid good point everything was bumpier and that maybe they're just trying to get it so that they're back on track to just release everything every year and smooth everything out again yeah, I also think it's very hard for Apple to get growth in the iPad.

1:14:24 - Alex Lindsay
As someone who owns a lot of iPads, they just it takes a long time before you feel like the iPad's running slow. Just you know. You buy a new one and it's like five years into it and it's still. And it's again because with the, with the max you know, new software comes out, they get slow. Like resolve is suddenly a lot slower, you know, or a lot faster on the new m4s or whatever, than it was before with the ipads. It's like what app is actually making it and it's just, it's just really hard to find, honestly Alex, the reason that you upgrade an ipad is not because it's slow like a mac.

You do it because you well, yeah, or?

1:14:58 - Jason Snell
or there's a new hardware feature, right like there's a new Apple pencil thing, or there's a new new OLED screen, or there's a new I don't know if the OLED screen really pulls.

1:15:08 - Leo Laporte
I don't know. I think it's like the US screen on the.

1:15:11 - Jason Snell
We can debate them, but what we can't debate is that it's faster, is the hardest of cells. So it is going to be more about the shape or some hardware feature they've added in the meantime. Not because, oh, my M1 ipad feels so slow right now, because it doesn't. I've got one, it doesn't yeah, and and and the.

1:15:27 - Alex Lindsay
You know the usbc made a big difference when when they switched over to that. I don't think cameras matter as much on the ipad, because when are you two taking pictures with your cameras? Don't yeah, like I guess, and so so I think that's over 60, it's not allowed well, and so so I, you know, I think that that's it.

I think it's always sluggish, it's. It's such an amazing piece of hardware, but I mean I've said this before my kids have ones that are 10 years old, that they're still using, you know, and that's the and, and just kind of plotting along with.

1:15:54 - Leo Laporte
I have to say, once you use the m4 pro with that screen, you don't. That's the best screen.

1:15:59 - Alex Lindsay
Apple makes you don't want to do that. I haven't done it yet don't you'll never come back. I bought the vision I bought the vision pro and it kind of sucked up a huge amount of like what I spent money on for a while.

1:16:09 - Leo Laporte
So I just got the new, uh, lenovo chromebook. Uh, the chromebook plus is with the oled screen and it is the same thing oled. Just I'm not I'm. That's it for me now. From now on, it's oled's oled, all the way down. This is not for me. I'm going to show Jeff Jarvis to make him unhappy and then I'm going to give it to my daughter. She likes Chromebooks so cute. If you like folding displays, not the laptop version, the Anady Ihnatko style, you'll be glad to know that apparently, according to Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's decided to go with a crease free display solution from samsung and it's going to be made by uh, this fine mtech company, the leading winner for samsung's display crease flee solution for the foldable and two and second half 26. So that's that. That was interesting. We had.

1:17:05 - Andy Ihnatko
there were rumors floating around that Apple was so, so demanding of the the of a folding display that doesn't have the crease they act. They actually developed their own technology or their own system for it, and so this was this is a new twist that no, samsung's going to make it for them, and they didn't. It's not Apple's design, it's something that Samsung created, and so that should show something about Samsung's ability to get on the ball when a client as big as Apple is placing an order as big as that. It's going to create so much credibility for folding phones. The foldables that came out at Samsung Unpacked last week are amazing. They were so thin.

1:17:44 - Jason Snell
It's funny when we get in this game of like oh, Apple and Samsung, they're arch rivals. But the truth is, samsung Display is a giant company and you know they've been like giving samples to Apple for like a decade now and Apple's like not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And they keep talking about it. You know they are desperate to get Apple on board and sell them a product and that they finally gotten to the point where there's something where Apple's like yeah, that's good enough, let's do it. And like it's going to be, yeah, it's a huge win for Samsung display, it's a huge win for foldable phones. But you know, that's pretty cool, right? Like the idea that they've been iterating and iterating and Apple's like no, no, no, no.

1:18:22 - Alex Lindsay
And they're like all right, that's it, let's do it Next, let's do it.

1:18:26 - Jason Snell
And it makes sense because they are one of the you know, really one of the leaders, if not the leader, in that kind of display technology. And this is one of those great advantages, because Samsung just puts it out there and says, let's see about this one, whereas Apple has been happy to sit on the sidelines until now.

1:18:49 - Leo Laporte
Nice until now, nice, yeah, yeah, next year, next year, we're going to talk about health in just a moment, when we come back. You're watching MacBreak Weekly, andy and ako, jason snell and Alexander lindsay, who is on vacation in cape, not cape hatteras uh, holden beach, holden beach, he's holding the beach are you but but coming to you from Charleston, it's complicated, just to be a picture from Olden Beach. Oh hey, I appreciate that you went the extra mile literally to get a good picture and good sound. I appreciate it Absolutely.

1:19:17 - Alex Lindsay
It's good, a good excuse to come to Charleston, meet them, see some friends, and it all worked out.

1:19:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, thank, thank. We want to thank somebody for giving you access uh, powered by sage is the.

1:19:26 - Alex Lindsay
I'm in their sage studios and they have. They have these inc. This is a huge led wall. Like it it is oh, it's massive, like it's that's a wall.

1:19:34 - Leo Laporte
That's not a screen, it's a real, it's a that's a it's.

1:19:38 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, I think it's um. I want to say it's like eight feet by 16 feet. I want to say it's like eight feet by 16 feet. Oh, nine by 20, nine by 20. Yeah, so it's a, and I'm, it's an FR seven that's sitting in front of me, you know, here, and I've got four huge monitors that are that are so that I see here, this is. This is definitely the way to do this in style.

1:19:59 - Leo Laporte
So it's not only a matter of time before Alex sits us all up at home, I imagine.

1:20:06 - Alex Lindsay
But until then, then, powered by Sage, powered by Sage, I've been taking notes. Uh, I'm uh, uh, taking notes like, oh, this is really, this is really nice, somebody should tell the information about this.

1:20:14 - Leo Laporte
They decided they wanted to do a daily video tech news show, streamed live at 10 am every day. Their first they're they. Weirdly, they name it t-i-t-v.

1:20:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay okay, that wasn't okay, that wasn't very well vetted, yeah.

1:20:33 - Leo Laporte
I mean twit's bad enough, but anyway. Um, and so their first stream was yesterday and at a, of course, a flagship interview. They got Mark Zuckerberg, jessica lesson, their CEO, interviewing Mark Zuckerberg. They throw to Jessica and Mark, they're talking flagship interview. They got mark zuckerberg jessica less than their ceo interviewing mark zuckerberg. They throw to jessica and mark, they're talking. There's no sound.

1:20:50 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, they're talking, it turns out live is hard, and you know, and, and this they have to they literally have to cut away.

I'm saying sorry, uh, we don't have any sound, so uh, see you tomorrow when, when I, when I, when I first met blue, who was one of the owners of powered by sage the, I was excited because they were doing. They were doing zooms for 800 people at the beginning of COVID or whatever. Oh, that's what we're seeing here on their screen. Look at that. Now they do them for 30,000, like 30,000 people in a you know? So if you're doing a giant meeting and you need and and being able to grab any single, any person from that whole wall and that's that's, that's a studio that you're seeing there. It's like a huge wall that they put it's, it's, it is the, the most advanced you know event studio I've ever been in. So it's, jessica, you can afford it.

1:21:42 - Leo Laporte
Go to sage. There you go, don't try to do it on your own, absolutely. I think they have an intern running, it's not?

1:21:49 - Alex Lindsay
it's not good, it's hard, you know, like we, we you watch that all the time. If you haven't, if you don't do it all the time, it is really hard to just stand up and and make it work.

1:21:59 - Leo Laporte
It's complicated, so well, and how you know, you get mark zuckerberg, which is a great get, and then there's no sound.

1:22:06 - Jason Snell
How embarrassing is that I mean that's?

1:22:08 - Leo Laporte
I almost had that happen yeah, well, that's why you go to the pros like Alex Lindsay or powered by Sage. Um, it's not. It looks easy. Yeah well, that's the goal.

1:22:20 - Alex Lindsay
It's not when you're, when you're doing it for someone, you try to make it look easy because they won't do it again if they knew how hard it was like someone working for them.

1:22:26 - Leo Laporte
Everything's like it's always, never let them sweat yeah.

1:22:29 - Alex Lindsay
And then they think, oh, I can do it myself. And then they go try and, and then they roll the seven 37 down the road.

1:22:34 - Leo Laporte
And then they're much nicer after that. You know it's Our show, Alex, and thank you, Sage, for giving Alex that very nice place to hang.

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Yeah, Grok has two new agents they call it that you could talk to the ai with. One is a waifu kind of anime girly. That's kind of sexy and talk sexy. The other one is a wise ass fox. I can't even say on the air the I. I him on. And the first private. I said like hello. He says I can't even say it on the air. He says he's gonna, I'm gonna go teabag the mayor. He says oh my, I said I said what who's mayor? He said whatever mayor you want and he got more filthy after that how is this help?

1:26:43 - Andy Ihnatko
how is this helping you to help me to book a flight to vienna?

1:26:47 - Leo Laporte
I think elon has decided that, because grok is kind of the also ran compared to anthropic and open ai, that they need to get attention and there's no such publicity as bad publicity. This was actually I think amy webb or harper reid floated this on twitter on sunday that the whole mecca hitler thing. Harper reed floated this on twit on sunday that the whole mecca hitler thing was intentional to get coverage because other other than that nobody ever heard of it. Right, if you're not an ex-user. So now that now it's even and he's getting coverage, I'm giving him coverage.

1:27:17 - Andy Ihnatko
It's just appalling still got 200 million dollars from the department of defense.

1:27:20 - Leo Laporte
He just he just took two billion dollars from spacex and put it in xai. I don't even know if that's legal. I guess it is. It's all really elon enterprises. I don't know. Anyway, I'm just old man yelling at clouds. What? Let's talk about health? Uh, this is an interesting study and if it is if it is, uh, could be amazing. Apple's newest AI model flags health conditions with up to 92% accuracy.

1:27:51 - Alex Lindsay
And we talked about this when it first came out is that Apple, with a lot of the anonymized data and everything else, over time is going to see trends that you could never see any other way, because people have these on their wrists all the time. So it's absolutely going to. This is just the natural reaction and it will get better.

1:28:09 - Leo Laporte
It's 92 right now it's using the information every day from us.

1:28:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, well, actually, it was from the data, from the heart and motion studies that they've been doing.

1:28:17 - Leo Laporte
They'll be doing. I volunteer for 30 000 people or so, so yeah, yeah, just not everybody, but it yeah uh evaluated on 57 health related tasks. The Apple model shows strong performance across diverse real world applications I mean this is 162 000 individuals.

1:28:35 - Alex Lindsay
I mean most of these studies are like 2 000, or maybe we'll get up to 10 000, and you know and they're doing 162 000 and that's just a small sliver of of the users, and so that's the the huge advantage that this is going to have, and as they add more sensors, it's just going to get more accurate.

1:28:50 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, actually, what's very interesting about the study is that it's not necessarily hey, we've got these incredibly advanced, fine-tuned sensors that give us this finely grained information about something very, very technical. A lot of it is the fact that they're looking at not just the heart rate monitor. They're not just looking at that stuff, they're also looking at your behavior. How much are you moving around? Combine that with your sleep data, combine that with all these other data that is tracking. So the paper mentions just parts are as simple as if this person is ABC and they suddenly are moving around a lot more slowly, gradually, over the past two months. It might be. It's probably indicative of X and I'm not totally surprised that they say that. They could excuse me. The study claims that this model is predicting like pregnancy with like a 92% accuracy.

1:29:46 - Leo Laporte
I say surprises things. They say combining wearable sensors with physical measurements, as such as step counts can make for a pregnancy detector yeah, well, and it's not just, and I don't know if it's just step, because the gate.

1:29:58 - Alex Lindsay
It's because of the gate, and and you know that that's the uh um, and I think that there's again.

1:30:05 - Jason Snell
I don't think it's a single sensor that's going to make a difference.

1:30:07 - Alex Lindsay
But as you add more sensors, it adds more to that cluster and it adds a more complex or more detailed picture of what's going on in someone's body. And I think Tim Cook talked about this a very long time ago. He said I think our biggest impact is going to be health, and I think that this is just the beginning of where that's going really cool, really cool.

1:30:30 - Leo Laporte
The Apple watch ultra 2 comes out this fall. I'll probably upgrade. I love my Apple watch I love my ultra ultra 3. Now ultra 3. This is a 2. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact. Look, it shows my blood sugar because I'm wearing a cgm and so it goes to the Apple watch and I know my blood sugar is right now 118. That's super useful. Yeah, that is good for me.

1:30:53 - Alex Lindsay
I'm a type 2 diabetic, so that's healthy yeah, the I think that, um, when the watch actually I'm kind of waiting when the watch actually had, uh, measures sugar. I know it could take a while, but I I feel like I I don't know what the watch actually measures sugar. I know it could take a while, but I feel like I don't know what the watch would do that I want it to. What more my Ultra would do, like I just don't know what feature. The only feature I could think of was glucose monitor, like that I would get I would buy the next Apple watch. Or blood pressure Blood pressure, maybe I mean, I have I have. Well, you're old, why things I don't, I take it, I take my blood. I actually, for you know, I take my blood pressure almost every day you are hypertensive.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I take it almost every day.

1:31:30 - Leo Laporte
So you'd want that, You'd want that.

1:31:38 - Alex Lindsay
I want that, but I don't know how accurate I would lean into it doing. You know and so you see these, you see these peaks and the Delta that you care about, yeah, you care about. Oh, wow, Like I, you know, like I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then immediately wanted to look at my watch. Like you know, like I just go, I, you know, I just waited, I waited, I waited 45 minutes and then opened up my my phone and looked at it and like, oh, it's got me walking.

1:31:59 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like you're posting to social media and your audience is your glucose well, the funny.

1:32:02 - Alex Lindsay
Thing is the whole family likes it, I get for that sandwich. No, the whole family is into it, because my daughter will be like she saw me, she saw me eating it.

1:32:09 - Leo Laporte
She's like oh, let's look at your glucose that's so cool that she's aware that is great, is really good, but it's got me walking after every meal now, or every day the same thing.

1:32:18 - Alex Lindsay
I yeah, I have this thing now like I eat and I go. Okay, now I gotta go, I gotta take a walk off that glucose.

1:32:23 - Leo Laporte
Yep, yeah, yeah, uh, pretty cool, pretty cool. Apple silicon machine learning code. Uh, this is actually. I wish it went the other direction, but we were talking about ai machines and you know the, the mac mini or the mac studio, or I guess the mac pro with its npus, with its unified memory, is actually a brilliant ai machine, maybe maybe one of the best ai machines, except it lacks cuda, because it doesn't. It's not nvidia. Uh, I would love to see some sort of translator back and forth between uh Apples I don't know if it'd be metal or whatever it is to CUDA. They are now. Apple Silicon machine learning code may become more easily portable to NVIDIA hardware now, because there's a project designed to develop on an Apple Silicon Mac and then exporting it to CUDA cross-compiling, in effect, exporting it to CUDA cross cross compiling, in effect. This is Apple's mlx, is the company's open source machine learning afraid work and the people are working now to add support to the back end for CUDA. It'd be nice if it went both ways but even this is pretty significant.

1:33:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Nvidia is the number one producer of AI chips out there, so the idea that you're doing your development work on on Apple AI and that the tease that maybe this can be ported to again the most popular chip platform for AI in the world basically validates the amount of work you're doing on Apple AI.

1:34:01 - Alex Lindsay
I will say when we talked about pivots before man and video has done a pretty good job.

1:34:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, well, and they've recently gone from work to AI. I will say when we talked about pivots before me, and NVIDIA has done a pretty good job. So having CUDA to M Apple would be perhaps a problem because I imagine NVIDIA would very actively, you know, defend it. Um, nevertheless it, you know it is a moat. So this is the hacker news uh story Apple's mlx adding cuda support. I don't know if that's quite fair.

1:34:35 - Andy Ihnatko
It's really cross compiling on Apple to cuda and going the other way might be a problem and it is very early going, but it just goes to show that the more, the more portable you can make things, the more credible Apple becomes. It's not, they don't have to own everything, they just have to make sure that, whatever's out there, the work that you do on Apple, uh, in artificial intelligence, is going to be embracing whatever technology, software, hardware, models that are outside the Apple ecosystem uh yeah, I went out and ordered a AMD this new AI plus Ryzen, hoping to have a home AI server.

1:35:16 - Leo Laporte
But I realized one of the things it does is unified memory. I realized, really, I've got the Mac mini here with a lot of memory. I probably should just be running my home ai on the on that yeah um, this is perhaps not the best image. You know what I'm going. Hannah waddingham, the star of ted lasso, says season four is like a quote beloved dog that was buried and now we've exhumed it yeah, to be to be fair.

1:35:50 - Andy Ihnatko
Uh, she was shooting from the hip. She was on a red carpet and just asked, answered a spontaneous question. I'm not sure the publicist signed off on this, but whoa, I like it. But ted lasso, aren't we? So?

1:36:01 - Alex Lindsay
like a zombie and she says, she's here for a dog like. It's like half skeleton and half, you know like sometimes this was at the smurfs premiere in los angeles.

1:36:10 - Leo Laporte
If you appear in a movie, a live action film about smurfs, I guess you know when you go to the red carpet you might be a little stoned. I don't know. She says I was hankering and hankering and hankering and hankering to see where my rebecca had gone, where she was going to. She's my girl, she's in my bloodstream.

1:36:27 - Alex Lindsay
Some thrilled it's been exhumed evidently someone told her that the season three was the last season, like I think that? No, I think everybody thought it was yeah, yeah and they were like, hey, this did so well, let's. This is the typical hollywood thing. It's like, well, this did really well. We might want to do one season, didn't they?

1:36:45 - Leo Laporte
I don't, I didn't watch it, but did they kind of in season three kind of wrapped it up right? He it's oh, at least at least for ted, yeah but, he's coming back for season four, so I don't know what he's going to be doing.

1:36:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Maybe there's I. I think I read the story, the the. This basic storyline. Is that hot, is that? Uh, hannah waddingham's character is like buying a women's soccer team, oh, expanding her sports portfolio, and maybe bring ted back for that, all right yeah, ted will come back for that.

1:37:14 - Leo Laporte
By the way, I have been informed, it is not a live action smurf movie, so now my heart is broken. It's just a new animated smurfs movie but wait, wait two and a half years, I'll do the live action remake.

1:37:25 - Andy Ihnatko
I want a live action smurf.

1:37:27 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know. I don't know if we do want that.

1:37:28 - Leo Laporte
I don't think I think hannah waddingham is as mama. Smurf would be just something else I like hannah waddingham.

1:37:36 - Andy Ihnatko
We want to see her in more things, in more things uh, let's see.

1:37:42 - Leo Laporte
Do you want to buy steve uh jobs commune? This is his counterculture commune in oregon. Uh, it's for sale. Apparently he this is the orchard he worked in to pick Apples right, and that's where he got the name Apple. It's very early years of steve jobs. There's the Apple orchard. Let's see how much would it be. It might be a good.

1:38:05 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh, only five million dollars in McMinnville, oregon and not not only that, but the previous buyer of the property, as though he was auctioning this shack on Sotheby's like, verified the red shack where Steve Jobs actually slept look, there's an Apple logo in the window and preserved it.

1:38:24 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it looks like the half of this was cut off there. I don't know what's going on with that Shack.

1:38:31 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know. It looks like he shared it with chickens or something.

1:38:33 - Leo Laporte
It's not a cider house rules here. Look, there's the. Well, the interior of the cabin looks much as it did when he lived there. Yeah, okay, except I don't think there was an Atari computer on the desk. Why is there an Atari on the desk?

1:38:49 - Andy Ihnatko
because that he lived there apparently at the same time when he and was developing breakout.

1:38:55 - Leo Laporte
Oh okay, which is why?

1:38:56 - Andy Ihnatko
of course is an Atari 400.

1:38:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, personal computer on the desk yeah, was was a frequent visitor to the farm. I, that's maybe a little bit of history, you know the property has been a commune until the mid 80s and then fell into disrepair. Uh, it could be used as a corporate retreat, says the seller, a hunting lodge, a vineyard, a winery or any other commercial venture. It does look pretty. It does look pretty. I am, I would. How much more is it worth? Because Steve Jobs walked around barefoot there?

you know, you could make a little museum. It's home to the McMinnville's home to the evergreen Aviation's and Space Museum and the wings and waves wateraves Water Park. In case you thought you were moving to the backwoods, oh my no home with the splash. Meister general this is an interesting website. A history of Mac settings 1984 to 2004. You put this in right.

1:40:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's a real designer like basically basically decided that the control panel is the only thing that is like that's been a constant from 1984 through today, even though they updated it and changed the, changed the name of it. And so he did this beautiful, like interactive, like website that basically shows the design changes that Apple has gone through, but as expressed through how they designed the control panel and how it changed over the years, and it's not just like static text with some screenshots.

It's a nice site it really is a beautiful experience, like navigating this thing. Yeah, this is really cool a beautiful experience like navigating this thing. Yeah, this is really cool and it is. It is an interesting look at like here's every, here's every setting and user control you needed for the very first mac, and then compare and contrast to what you have to be confronted with today in order to manage uh, manage a system, even in a minimal way yeah, boy, it's memory lane, isn't it?

1:41:04 - Leo Laporte
I bet? I bet you, you all have had almost all of these I have. Yeah, wow, we thought we were so cool when we got the first color Mac laptop. Wow, look at that, so pretty, so pretty. There's the iMac nice orange color I'm sorry, copper, I don't know what color the little extensions, and then look at the 3d kind of design, starting to get a little 3d on that and the control panel. Yeah, there's this power book. Oh, a next cube, the even as the next cube in here.

Yes, I did see an article about setting the magnesium next cube on fire.

1:41:47 - Andy Ihnatko
Don't do that ah, that seems instinctively like a not a good thing to do, not a good thing not a good thing, although magnesium is uh, flammable, inflammable actually but you know it was the country, it was the simpsons that taught me that flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. I honestly thought that one meant, no, you can't. No, it doesn't go on fire it's like innervated.

1:42:12 - Leo Laporte
You think, oh, that must be energized. No it's, I was told. My dad told me this he says you see the back of that gas truck? See it says flammable. He said they used to say inflammable but people thought it meant it wouldn't blow up, so they had to change they to make up a new way of saying it can be inflamed and they just call it flammable. My dad was a professor, in case you didn't know it's not a rash, it's a bomb on wheels.

1:42:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Be be really clear about this it's not inflamed.

1:42:47 - Leo Laporte
Uh, so long airport extreme and airport express. They are now officially obsolete. I don't think Apple will ever make routers ever again, you think?

1:43:00 - Andy Ihnatko
no yeah, I, I don't think they will. Although it is such a perfect thing for them to make, because it's still A routers are still kind of a mess between the need to keep them ultimately secure and also to support the very, very latest versions of Wi-Fi to get the best speeds out of your latest Macs and iPhones and stuff like that, and also configurating things when you need to do port forwarding or make a connection from your inside network to the outside network. It's still either it works without any trouble whatsoever with one mouse click or you're on a two-week sleigh ride through every technical hell that you ever deal with. This is a problem that Apple could solve.

1:43:45 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I agree with you. I think that Apple could do something. I don't think they will, but I do think that this building a network where, anywhere, any device that you have is all kind of tied together but it's also secure and you have it all just works, would be a huge opportunity for Apple and I. But I don't think they're going to go down that path. They just have a hard time concentrating on lots of things.

1:44:04 - Andy Ihnatko
Indeed Also obsolete. The trash can mech. Oh yes, it's so bad.

1:44:11 - Alex Lindsay
It's got to be hard that you spend a bunch of time on designing something and they call it the trash can. But I mean.

1:44:16 - Leo Laporte
Well, you knew it was. It was so pretty, but it was so broken in so many ways.

1:44:21 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, in so many ways. Yeah, yeah, god, and it was. It was announced with such fanfare, I think didn't phil say like hey, I can't innovate, my butt yeah and like yeah, I mean it looks really nice but it can't keep your chips cool and it's impossible to upgrade and yeah nice try nice concept art, but yeah, it worked for a while, but I got we had like three of them, I think, and my first one failed right, there was that uh.

1:44:52 - Leo Laporte
So I sent it back, got a new one and that worked. Okay, yeah, but it was never that. Never felt that fast, did it? Yeah, still intel. That's the problem boy. Did you see the uh lip bouton? The new uh ceo of intel says yeah, we're, it's kind of over, yeah laid off another 3 000 people uh, he says we're not no longer in the top 10 chip manufacturers. Yeah, intel boy, Apple's looking pretty good at their decision to abandon Intel. Yeah.

1:45:24 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and it's looking less than wow, what a visionary, daring, forward thinking. No, they basically said we can either go down the toilet with you or we can decide to live, and I think that we're going to be living. Thank you very much.

1:45:45 - Leo Laporte
It's sad, it's so sad. Uh, I can't wait till Thursday because I am going to immediately download cyberpunk 2077 coming to Apple Silicon Max on Thursday. This was the game a couple of years ago, even though its launch was very much marred by bugs and problems and so forth, but I think those are probably all ironed out.

1:46:07 - Jason Snell
Oh, came out for 25, 20, 25 years ago yeah, you had to wait five years, but the bugs are probably out now, so you're glad you waited and the mean 11 year olds have probably moved on to another platform. Yeah, probably safe and they're all 16 now, so right 16 gigs of ram required for anything.

1:46:27 - Leo Laporte
There are. There are actually m1 and m2 mac configurations with eight gigs of ram. Can you believe that?

1:46:32 - Alex Lindsay
I have them.

1:46:33 - Leo Laporte
I have a whole stack of them well, you can run zoom on it, right yeah, yeah, yeah, we run um.

1:46:39 - Alex Lindsay
We can do up to eight output, right like eight 1080p outputs from an eight gig.

1:46:47 - Leo Laporte
Uh, mac mac mini and if you already own cyberpunk 2077 on steam, good news, you do not have to buy it again, which is actually I think I do own it.

1:46:57 - Andy Ihnatko
I'll have to check, yeah I mean it's good, it's not. It's not great that we that we have to wait five years for uh, for a triple, a very popular AAA game like this to come out. But it's not as though Mac is a really, really lucrative target and there are times where AAA games would just not arrive on the Mac at all and everyone's game is their first game. I don't own a game console, but I've been really curious about cyberpunk. I've been watching the, the game videos. The lighting is incredible the world the world is pretty nice.

1:47:33 - Leo Laporte
It's, yeah, almost up there with red dead redemption yeah, it's kind of that's that style first person shooter. Apple has 81 Emmy nominations 81, which does not put it on the top. Netflix and HBO have more, but Severance and the Penguin leading the pack. This was earlier today. Severance is the early favorite in Best Drama. Golly if it doesn't. Although HBO, the Pit, white, white Lotus and or all uh nominated as, as was the diplomat Last of Us, slow Horses of Paradise boy, those are some good movies, good tv shows. I should say Slow Horses is also Apple Slow Horses. Yeah, loves, loves. Slow Horses. Um Diego Luna snubbed for Andor. That's kind of a surprise. I thought it was quite good in that, noah Wiley, who is in the Pit. The Pit is really good If people haven't watched the Pit.

1:48:32 - Jason Snell
Great show. It's a great show. It's not very.

1:48:35 - Alex Lindsay
Pittsburgh-y as someone who came from Pittsburgh. They sell it as Pittsburgh, but no one has a Pittsburgh accent, which everybody there, at least the folks that work, not everybody there. If they're like at least the folks that work, like not the doctors but the, the, the nursing staff and everything else, they'd have some pretty thick accents. That aren't there, um, and you know they don't show any of pittsburgh.

Well, you're from that area, that's right you know, you would know, yeah, so it's kind of like what's going on here you know, like we you know, and um so uh, but it. What's really interesting about the pit number one is they quote unquote, save money by. Only they really have one set right or one large set, but they don't go anywhere.

1:49:10 - Leo Laporte
It's a hospital set. Yeah, it's like.

1:49:11 - Jason Snell
VR.

1:49:12 - Alex Lindsay
I think they're doing like $6 million an episode, which is right now, you know, inexpensive for these kind of things. Yeah, but the other thing that's really interesting when you watch the Pit is there's no music. Like there's no music. Like there's no, there's no music it's. And then my wife was like I don't like it. There's no music. I'm like, no, I think it's it, you just feel like you're there. We're not adding anything to it, we're just having you feel like you're. You know part of it and I, I think it's just one, each, each is. And the next hour and it's super intense and, uh, definitely one of my favorite shows of the last year no, while's been uh, been doing this for 26 years.

1:49:55 - Leo Laporte
Never got an emmy nomination. It's first. But here's a little piece of trivia he played steve jobs in pirates of silicon valley.

1:50:02 - Jason Snell
Yes, in Pirates of Silicon Valley. Yes, he did Way back when Up against Anthony Michael Hall with Bill Gates. Wow, and John, what's his name? Bender from Futurama is Balmer in that. Also John DiMaggio, yeah.

1:50:17 - Leo Laporte
Wow, yeah, 1999 for that.

1:50:20 - Jason Snell
So good on you.

1:50:21 - Leo Laporte
Noah, you finally 26 years later, you get your first nomination.

1:50:25 - Alex Lindsay
I think, when you look at these Emmys though I mean whether it's, you know, across the board I think that you're seeing this inflation of what it takes to compete, in the sense that you know it's really really high-end stuff is the only stuff that people are really, you know, nominating but also watching, because you're competing against. Again, I'm going to fill time. If I'm going to fill time, I'm going to go to youtube. If I want to watch something specific, I'm going to go and watch one of the, and so you have to spend a lot of money, but all the. I think this is the one of the challenges that hollywood has right now. All the stuff in between isn't really moving the needle like it's not, and so they you know these you're seeing more and more money spent on less and less shows.

1:51:06 - Leo Laporte
Um, because that's the only way you really get eyeballs uh also, uh, best actor, uh nomination, not only for no a while, but for gary oldman in slow horses, yeah, so good really good, did you see?

1:51:19 - Alex Lindsay
did you see the interview with him, with the cobert, oh?

1:51:23 - Leo Laporte
my gosh the interview with him with the cobert oh my gosh, the camaraderie on location. It's so good. He's trying to do a graham norton. It was kind of interesting. It was a total ripoff of the graham norton uh format, but in it I thought the funniest thing was he talks about going into makeup and, uh, his co-star in it um, oh, I can't remember her name it says you, you wear makeup for this show. She said you could. You could do it right now. You don't. You don't need to wear makeup. He looks a little seedy. I guess they have cd makeup. Yeah gosh, I recommend that show, though.

1:51:58 - Jason Snell
So so good yeah studio.

1:52:00 - Leo Laporte
The studio which is also an Apple tv production, the seth rogan uh comedy.

1:52:04 - Jason Snell
23 nominations tied the record for the most uh nominations by a comedy and it was the record is the bear, which isn't a comedy, so technically I guess yeah I never understood why the bear was because it's short because it's a half hour and that they decided. When they say comedy they really mean kind of half hour ish, but but yeah, so huge for the, the studio as well.

1:52:24 - Alex Lindsay
I mean it really.

1:52:25 - Jason Snell
Apple had the most nominated drama and comedy at the Emmys. They were third in total noms. But I mean, it's a, it's a real big deal for them.

1:52:34 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah Well, and I think the part of the studios getting so many nominations is the people in Hollywood who are voting for this, for nominations. Get it, they've all seen it, they've all, they've all been there. They're like it've all seen it. They've all, they've all been there. They're like it's all. It's all inside jokes that they get all the jokes you know. So I think that's part of why they got so many nominations well, good on Apple it's.

1:52:52 - Leo Laporte
I think this is fairly important to the success of Apple tv, not because these nominations drive traffic although I guess they do but really what they drive is creatives. Creatives are looking for a place they can be and get and win awards. Is that right? Am I right? The best?

1:53:08 - Alex Lindsay
in the world at what they do. It's just hard. It's hard if you're not at that certain level, but so a lot of these shows just have an incredible amount of talent both in front of the camera and behind the camera, to do it.

1:53:31 - Jason Snell
Yeah, oh. By the way, little known actor Harrison Ford got his first Emmy nomination for Shrinking, for Best Supporting in a Comedy Shrinking. He's good in Shrinking. It's a good show and he's great in it. I mean that's the thing is. Yeah, shrinking and Slow Horse has got a bunch of major nominations.

1:53:45 - Leo Laporte
He's a curmudgeon in it, which is nice to see him as being kind of a cranky old man.

1:53:50 - Jason Snell
Yeah, brett Goldstein says that it's based on his dad. Oh really, yeah. And his dad was like was your dad offended by that? And he said no. I told my dad that Harrison Ford was playing him.

1:53:59 - Leo Laporte
He it's a nice dry kind of humor and I that's kind of my. I like it. Uh, it's a great show. It really is, yeah.

1:54:09 - Jason Snell
Uh, good, cast on that show, severance. I mean let's. I mean yeah, what a what a success story that is in its second season. It really I think this is the consequence of it. What two years between seasons. I feel like lots of people saw Severance and so when it came back it was in the Nielsen ratings. It was one of the most streamed shows of the year. I think it was the fifth, I think it was a stat that's like the first half of this year was the fifth most streamed TV show on Apple TV Plus, which doesn't have a lot of viewers, and now it's got the most Emmy nominees at 27. So what an interesting kind of like build for it. But if we didn't know, now we know for sure that it is. Yeah, it's on top.

1:54:57 - Leo Laporte
It's one of the top shows and there's a guy on our YouTube, Brian, who says they don't talk about how utterly silly the Emmy Awards are. I just want to say thank you about how utterly silly the Emmy Awards are. I just want to say thank you to the Academy for the Emmy Awards. They're not silly. They're not.

1:55:13 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and I do think that Apple when we talk about what Apple had to do, I mean for Apple TV, I mean they took on this. We're going to do the high end, we're only going to focus on high end, we're not going to try to do quantity, and we're really going to try to put everything into everything that we're making. And I think that if they got to this point six or seven years in and they were not getting these kinds of Emmys, I think that they'd have to really rethink what they were doing. But it seemed to be going in the right direction in that area.

1:55:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they are kind of in last place as a streaming network I mean, they're not yeah, but it's already troubled if you're a streaming network there only really is, is is one which is netflix.

1:55:56 - Alex Lindsay
Netflix and youtube dominate tv viewing these days, so yeah, I don't know again it's, it's part of a larger ecosystem. They don't know if they need it to be as big as everybody else. They're not trying to and they've done real well with computers where they weren't the dominant.

1:56:12 - Leo Laporte
Brian, it may be a mini Emmy, but it's an Emmy Okay.

1:56:17 - Andy Ihnatko
It's just as pointy as the big one.

1:56:19 - Leo Laporte
It is actually. It's deadly and mine broke. That's why it's so small, because it fell off the shelf and but I kept it, even though it's a little. It's a little messed up. Um, we don't have any vision pro stories. I'm sorry.

1:56:35 - Alex Lindsay
I'm sorry no, not this time, no next time I I just all I'll say about the vision pro is that I flew across the country and from the time they finished the announcements to the time that we stopped at the gate, I pretty much had the vision pro on the whole time and if you're traveling a lot, man, what a great experience. I loaded a whole bunch of movies. I'm just sitting there watching movies and doing stuff.

1:57:02 - Leo Laporte
It is just the way to travel like flight attendants, offer you drinks, snacks, anything I don't know I've learned now that I don't want to.

1:57:10 - Alex Lindsay
I get up, I get a window seat and I have. I have my water and my stuff. Like I don't want to deal with. Like the only stress about the vision pro is trying to wait for drinks or whatever. So I bring whatever I'm going to eat. Then I sit down and I and I, uh, and I did the meditation thing and I was like, oh, I got some time, I'll do 20 minutes of meditation.

1:57:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Then I, you know, I was like oh so it was.

1:57:29 - Alex Lindsay
You know, it just just put me to put me on, and I'd never sleep on a flight, and so for me to fall asleep, uh, it was was useful and so anyway, but, um, uh, but, man, as a frequent flyer, it's, it's pretty nice, all right let's take our final break and then, uh, pics of the week coming up.

1:57:49 - Leo Laporte
Next you're watching MacBreak Weekly.

We're glad you're here today. A special thanks to our club twit members who make this show possible. 25 of our revenue now comes from the club. Uh, that's actually amazing because and we started the club for that reason, because we we saw advertising slipping during covid and we thought you know, wouldn't it be nice if the audience supported the show? That was always the dream. Uh, I think we've made something pretty compelling 10 bucks a month gets you ad free versions of all the shows, because I'm never the guy who's gonna charge you and then show you ads too. So, ad free versions of all the shows.

You get the access to the club twit discord, which is a wonderful place to hang out, plus all the special programming we do in the discord. Uh, we've got a bunch of stuff. We did that last Friday. We did Chris Marquardt's photo time and our ai user group, uh, coming up this Friday. I feel like we have something this Friday. Um, we Stacey's book club is coming up.

Micah's crafting corner, I think, is this week on Wednesday. So these are special events that are in the club to discord for club members only. Uh, if you can't be there live, you can watch. After the fact that twit plus feed is just for club twit members and has all that extra content on there, I think we've made it something pretty compelling. But more than anything else, the reason to join is it's a way of voting, of saying yeah, yeah, I kind of like what you're doing and I want you to keep doing it. So if you like the content here on Twit, that's the best way to support.

Micah's Crafting Corner is tomorrow 6 pm. Pacific. That's the best way to support Mikah's crafting quarters tomorrow, 6 pm. Pacific. It's third Wednesday. He does Lego, but you can bring in any kind of cozy crafting project. Um, oh yeah, we're gonna have a uh on Thursday. We're gonna be interviewing somebody who can't be there for the live version of intelligent machines. Uh, google models senior director. She is in charge of ai at google, so that will be good. And then Richard Campbell, on Friday, is going to build his brand new pc. So I'll be, I'll be kibitzing, I'll be, I'll be doing the color while Richard builds the pc. So that's going to be fun. Ai's user group, hands-on tech, Stacey's book club we got a lot of stuff. I hope you will and we're still doing. This is how you lose the time war, Jason, and you're still invited if you want to be there for that twit.tv/clubtwit. If you're not already a member, please consider supporting us. We really appreciate it. Thank you, club members.

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I did an interview, a podcast, with CacheFly a founder, uh, Matt Levine, uh, and I think it's going live. Let me just check. I think they sent me an email saying it's going live soon. Yeah, the anycast episode july 10th. The trailer went out. July 17th, Thursday, the full episode. Uh, I will, I will uh put a link uh everywhere on my all my socials uh for it, because, uh, this is, this is, it was a great conversation. Um, so matt levine and I cash fly, where is the link on that? They sent me all the information. They didn't send me a link. Okay, well, I think if you go to cachefly.com you might find it. CacheFly, I say it every show, bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly brought to you by CacheFly at c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y.com/twit and watch for me, I'll, I'll post it on all the socials. Uh, my interview with Matt Levine. He interviewed me coming up on Thursday.

All right, pick of the week time. Andy Ihnatko, kick us off.

2:03:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Mine is going to be familiar to a lot of people because I was. It was been recommended by doc rock, been recommended by all Allison Sheridan, but I just discovered it recently. It's blip.net. It is a direct device to device file transfer system utility, whatever you want to call it, and it makes it just trivially easy to move any file from where it is to where you want it to be, like AirDrop, yeah, except instead of being limited to the Apple ecosystem. It works with my Android phone. It works with Windows. It works with Linux.

It works with their clients for pretty much absolutely everything, and it's not like Dropbox or a cloud service where, oh, you're uploading it to a server, then it gets downloaded by that server. No, it will establish a connection. I've got the app installed on my Android phone, on my iPad, on my iPhone and on my MacBook, and so, just directly through the sharing sheet and pretty much any of these devices, if I want to send a PDF file from my Android phone to the MacBook, I just share it just through the sharing sheet, select my MacBook Pro and then, because it knows that these are all my personal devices, automatically, just like AirDrop, a little box pops up, say oh, by the way, I'm receiving a file from your phone, and that just puts it in the downloads folder. And it's all done directly, either through your Wi-Fi, if you're connected to the same Wi-Fi access port, or even if you're just both existing on the internet miles and miles away. You can share files between your devices and other people's devices if you know what email address they're using to you. Sign up for for blip, for it's super, super fast. It's very, very slick the way they've written all this software to make it as intuitive and as easy as possible. It never stutters. I've tested it with normally. I'm using it just for oh, I just want this file on my phone, uh. But if you have like a 400 gigabyte backup file, it'll take a while to do it, but it will churn it, it'll chug it right along and just send it right from point A to point B in a very efficient manner. It's like I said, I was surprised that it worked as well as it did. I've seen a lot of tools that are kind of like this, but none that are done with this level of execution.

The good news and the suspicious thing is that for an individual user, it's also free. They, uh, they make their money by charging 25 bucks a month for businesses to use it, or even more money if enterprise systems want to want to use it, and they also, uh, accept donations, uh, from individuals, uh, the uh. The only downside of being an individual user instead of like a subscription user is that obviously you'll get community support, but you won't get direct support from Blip. You get not necessarily not slower speeds, but they are. I think they're managing the speeds of all of its free users in one big pile so that your speeds may vary if there's a lot of demand on the network.

But, once again, blip does not host or provide web links to your files. Again, all it does is provide a conduit from the Blip app on the device that's sending and the Blip app on the device that's receiving. And again, I can't think of a bad thing about it. This is why I did a lot of searching for it, because I'm like there must be some sort of a catch. And that's when I discovered that Doc Rock had recommended it. Alison Sheridan had actually recommended it. She had introduced it to Adam Angst, who himself wrote a nice tribute to blipnet. So yeah, I've put it on absolutely everything and it's just solved a very simple, frustrating pain point.

Previously, if I needed to send something from my phone to my Mac or vice versa, I would wind up just basically creating a note in Google Keep or uploading it to Google Drive and then having to switch over, find it in Google Drive and download it.

This is exactly the solution that I would have wanted.

It's the sort of thing that I just wish that it were a common protocol that just all machines just happen to support.

The only drawback that I find with it is that I wish it supported Wi-Fi direct, like AirDrop does. So you do need to have some sort of, you need to be on the same network. Excuse me, the two devices you're doing the transfer between both have to be able to access each other through the same network, whether it is you're connected to the same Wi-Fi base station or you're both just happen to be connected to the, to actual broadband. So that's kind of a bummer when, like oh god, airdrop, I wouldn't. I could be sending this like from one point to another, just like on the train, the commuter train to boston. But it it will work, but I will have to like. I will have to like use this as a hot spot and basically use that as a, basically as a Wi-Fi network. Other than that, that's the only thing I can think of that I wish that they would improve. Like I said, simple, cheap as hell and solves a major, major problem in a very, very nice way.

2:09:19 - Leo Laporte
Nice Blipnet to learn more.

2:09:23 - Alex Lindsay
Alex Lindsay pick of the week net to learn more. Alex lindsey pick of the week. So because I'm traveling, I I people often wonder what do you do with your old Apple tv? I have an Apple tv that sits in my bag, like where it sits in, like every time I leave, and I just have to say if you're not using it for this, you're crazy. If you're using Apple tv, I have all of my Apple tv settings, everything all ready to go.

Um, you know that Apple TV, I kind of plug it in and make sure that it works. It's some old, I don't know, it's two generations old or something like that. And you know, and I've, you know, and as you update it, having a travel Apple TV is just so great. When you go to a rental house or any, you know, like rental, you're renting a house. You just walk in, unplug whatever they have plugged into that TV, you plug in your HTMI and you connect it to the wifi and you're back to what you're. You're back to your life. Your life looks exactly the same as it did when you left the house and and I just think that you know, I think a lot of people underestimate the value of that, of just having that especially if you're going to be gone for a couple days or and I I have to admit, I, you know, use them in a lot of places and so, um, but you can't.

You probably can't use it in a hotel, though, right, you can't. You can, I have used it in a hotel, but not very often, um, but usually at any kind of rental house or anytime I'm traveling, you need to know how to get on the wi-fi basically yeah, right I, I, I. I feel like I've done it with a with with a Wi-Fi.

2:10:45 - Leo Laporte
Maybe I had a travel, but what I usually what happens?

2:10:48 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think about it because, I will admit, when I'm traveling by myself, I'm typically have my, have my, I have a vision pro, so that's what I'm watching it on. But when I want to watch with other people, I want to somewhat when my family's around or other things like that. And usually, I have to admit, when I travel with my family, it's often like either Airbnb or some kind of house rental or something. So usually you short circuit all of the things that are trying to figure out how to use whatever they plugged in or whatever they thought was going to be useful. You just have the same thing that we have at home, you know, and all the last time there and last time we did that I I edited all my accounts into that guy's system yeah, yeah, you don't have to remember before leaving to delete them.

I don't have to think about any of that I just plug it, I just unplug whatever's there, plug it in and call it a day, you know. And so, um, it's just such a great solution for travel, you know, especially with family or something like that. And again, part of it works. We talked about this before. Part of it works because the only thing that we ever use at home is an Apple TV.

2:11:51 - Leo Laporte
Right.

2:11:53 - Alex Lindsay
So everything's there. What we last watched, all that stuff is all just active. Nice yeah. So if you're wondering what to do with your old Apple TV, I mean that's pretty good use for it.

2:12:07 - Leo Laporte
Very cool, Mr Jason Snell. That leaves you, my friend, your pick of the week. So it has come to me.

2:12:15 - Jason Snell
This is a pick we've done before, but I've got a little timely reference.

2:12:20 - Leo Laporte
I'm sad because I gave mine away.

2:12:23 - Jason Snell
Well, you could get a new one, I guess Playdate from Panic, which is this little teeny, teeny, teeny tiny game handheld thingy.

2:12:34 - Leo Laporte
It's got buttons, teenage engineering design it's got a little crank on the side.

2:12:38 - Jason Snell
Yes, and it's in stock. It was not in stock for a very long time. It's in stock at $229. It's in stock. It was not in stock for a very long time. It's in stock at $229.

The timely thing is they just finished season two of Playdate, which was they rolled out. I think it's 10 games over five weeks for $39. And there are some great games in there. I'll just point out they also have their own app store called Catalog. That's got hundreds of games in it that are in every genre you can think of that are really good. There was Season 1, which was really great, and you can also sideload games from independent developers and there are a bunch of those too. It's a black-and-white handheld with no backlight, so you've got to play it outside Summer, perfect time to play it outside or in a well-lit room. But the uh, the season two games are great.

And also, I just want to keep mentioning playdate because a lot of people kind of uh poo-pooed it at the beginning because of its specs, which aren't the point, and because it was a new platform that doesn't have any history and therefore you know why would you spend uh boutique kind of levels, of levels of money for hardware that might have a questionable number of games. And the answer now, a few years in, is it's available, you can get it now and there are hundreds of games you can buy for it. They're all cheap. We're also talking these are like $5 games, $10 games, they're not $50 games and it's open so that you can sideload. You don't have to go through panic store. Just, I can't say enough about it. If you love kind of retro consoles, this is not retro, it is new, it is its own platform, but like it's a viable platform with lots and lots and lots of games. It's simple, it's fun, it's cute and two really just a bang up selection of games for.

2:14:27 - Leo Laporte
CNT. What's your favorite one?

2:14:30 - Jason Snell
Fulcrum Defender, which is this kind of use the crank to aim and you're like in the center of a base and the crank turns your little aim around and you have to fire because the various the monsters, the various spaceships are coming at you from all sides and you get upgrades as you go and it's a roguelike. So you know you, you get a different path with different upgrades every time. There are dig dig dino, which is like a super chill game where you dig down into the dirt and find dinosaur bones and garbage.

Uh, like, there's so many different kinds of game for this, so like I definitely um if you haven't thought of it in a while.

2:15:06 - Leo Laporte
Check it out I mean they're black and white but they're really aesthetically kind of intriguing.

2:15:10 - Andy Ihnatko
That's I have. I have to piggyback on on jason's recommendation. This is the only game console I've ever bought and I bought it basically because of panic's reputation and also I had a suspicion that it would attract really talented and weird game designers and it did, yeah, exactly.

They're beautiful because part of the fun is just that it's not like okay, here's another Space Invaders, okay, here's another Pokemon sort of game, even though there are some games like that. It's like just someone will have this most bizarre idea for a game and it's the most creative thing you've ever thought of and it will give you. It's designed to run for like 90 minutes to run to, to play this game from start to finish, but you feel as though you've been interacting with a piece of art for that amount of time. Uh, and I've. And, like, like Jason said, it's easy, for for a gamer like me who doesn't want to spend hours and hours and hours playing an in-depth game, I just want something that will entertain me for 10 to 30 minutes at a time, ideally while I'm waiting for my commuter train or something like that. It's tiny, it's pocketable, the display is not blacklit, but it is super, super, super high contrast and if there is any light in the room, it's going to be playable. Although, like you said, you want any light in the room, it's going to be playable, although, like he said, you want some light in the room.

Again, it you might balk at the price. I bought it when it was only 189. Uh, then the price has gone up a couple times since then. It's 229, but it's for for people who are thrown off by the idea of, like, xbox gaming uh, they, but they don't want to be retro gaming stuff that like hasn't moved forward in since 1980s or the 1990s. This will give you pretty much. It'll scratch the itch that you're looking for.

2:16:55 - Jason Snell
And this is Planet Zone platform, so they're still adding features to it. They just added network support for gaming, so they've, up to now, it's all been very self-contained, but now there will be a new wave of games that will allow you to play if you have a friend with a play date, uh, play with the network, so there'll be. There'll be more, but it is definitely. Yeah, it's a throwback, but it's also just a very different sort of thing, and I guess what I would say is if, if you or somebody you know looked at the play date and said but why would you spend money on that?

It doesn't have color, it doesn't have backlight, it doesn't have mario, it doesn't have old emulation. What's the point of it? I would say the specs are total. You've missed the point of it. The point is this is a beautiful object full of weird indie games and it's uh, I am glad it exists in the world and it is very entertaining and you can just stick it in your pocket because it's super tiny and I'm glad it exists. If you care about specs and stuff, this is not the product for you. Get something else.

2:17:53 - Andy Ihnatko
I'd say it's like an independent movie theater where it's like, oh, it doesn't have THX, oh well, it doesn't have like 4K digital projection. Like we don't go to this theater for, like, the 81 channels surrounding the butt thumper uh, butt thumper reactions we get it because of the pro, the programming that they put into this theater, that you really can't get as a universe anywhere else well, that's a great recommendation and those are great picks, and that's the is still live still, almost, almost.

I, I have to, I'm right, I'm. All I have to right now are, like the three things that you see, like at the very, very top, that explain close why, why I'm doing this and why you should probably click some links and read some stuff. But yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're um, terrifyingly imminent. I shall say like, oh, so now I get to see what, how people react to this stuff. Nice, that's going to be really great.

2:18:52 - Leo Laporte
I'm happy about that Alex Lindsay, is it officehours.global on Youtube? It's youtube.com/@officehoursglobal. Anything you want to plug?

2:19:02 - Alex Lindsay
uh, you know it turns out, if you come in in the morning 7 am we answer questions, so that's uh fascinating it's crazy, it's crazy what a concept yeah, but uh, yeah, we should be, I always send people there if they have questions, especially about production, audio that kind of thing. That's a pretty great resource it's a pretty good collection of people they seem to know a couple things. So it's good, I'm glad to be around you.

2:19:23 - Leo Laporte
Alex, I hope you enjoy your vacation. When do you come home?

2:19:26 - Alex Lindsay
uh get home over the weekend, so olden beach is waiting for you.

2:19:29 - Leo Laporte
Get out there absolutely. Thank you, mr Jason Snell, it's at uh, Jason is at sixcolors.com right end of the end of July. You're gonna have to get back into the graphing Apple has.

2:19:40 - Jason Snell
Yes, that's its quarterly results at the end of the month I gotta get get some chart action going and working on beta coverage for whenever there's a public beta, whenever that happens, Ooh yeah, any minute now I hope.

2:19:51 - Leo Laporte
I thought we'd have it by today, but I guess not. You can also see a list of all his shows. He does so many good podcasts at sixcolors.com/jason. Thank you, Jason.

2:20:02 - Jason Snell
Thank you.

2:20:02 - Leo Laporte
Leo, one of the best, if not the best, in the Jason Snell business, yeah.

2:20:09 - Jason Snell
Top Jason.

2:20:12 - Leo Laporte
Number one, Jason, the best Jason Snell. We do Mac Break Weekly every Tuesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. I say that because we do actually stream it live. You can watch live. Our audio even works. It's amazing If you're in the club, of course, watching the Discord, but everybody else you can watch on YouTube, Twitch, Tiktok, x.com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick.

After the fact, on-demand versions of the show audio and video available at our website, twit.tv/mbw. You'll also find a link there to our YouTube channel a great way to share clips with friends and help us promote the show. Of course, probably the best thing to do is to subscribe either to the audio or the video feed, or both, if you want, in your favorite podcast app, whether it's Apples or Overcast or Pocket Cast, whatever. If you do, do us a favor, though. Leave us a good five-star review. Let the world know about the number one Vision Pro show in the world Very quickly, even though we had no Vision Pro this week, but we did talk about it, though. That's good. That's thanks to you, Alex. We talked about it.

2:21:16 - Alex Lindsay
You know you got to keep the stake in the ground, that's all.

2:21:18 - Leo Laporte
You're going to say a couple things. We plan to lose our title. Yeah, we want to continue to wave. Thank you, everybody for joining us. We'll see you next time. And now it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you get back to work, because break time is over. Bye-bye.

2:21:37 - Leo Laporte
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