MacBreak Weekly 988 Transcript

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for Mac Break Weekly, our annual struggle to find something new to say as we approach the Apple event next week show. But it's always fun because we find lots of things to talk about, including new uses for AirTags, what we're expecting with new AirPods, and a broadcast Emmy for a friend of the show. All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

Leo Laporte [00:00:36]:
This is Mac Break Weekly. Episode 988, recorded Tuesday, September 2, 2025. Clothes by the pound. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Apple. And as we get closer inch closer and closer in a Zeno's Paradox sort of fashion to the Apple event, we have less and less to say, but more and more time to say it. Thank God we've got Andy and Ako here.

Leo Laporte [00:01:04]:
It's good to see you, Andrew.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:06]:
That's one of my favorite paradoxes ever. And I'm not even kidding. It's like when I was a kid, I learned about Zeno's Paradox. Like, oh, so if you're always getting halfway closer and halfway closer, you never get wow.

Leo Laporte [00:01:17]:
Wow.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:19]:
As a kid, I would often use Zeno's Paradox as a reason why I did not take out the trash. Like, well, I kept getting halfway closer to the trash barrel and halfway closer and halfway closer.

Leo Laporte [00:01:26]:
Dad, I'm getting closer to getting out the trash.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:28]:
You solve this one, you're going to.

Alex Lindsay [00:01:30]:
Yourself a bulletin or Nobel.

Leo Laporte [00:01:32]:
Great to see you, Andrew. Have you figured out what the Chinese antler site is doing on your camping on your name?

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:39]:
Oh, no, I haven't.

Leo Laporte [00:01:40]:
It's.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:41]:
I still, I still have the domain. I don't know what the situation is, but okay.

Leo Laporte [00:01:44]:
They're camping enough to camping out.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:46]:
No, I don't. I didn't.

Leo Laporte [00:01:47]:
Apparently they sell. It's in Chinese, but I've been told that they sell antler velvet, which I don't even want to know anymore at all about that. Mr. Alex Lindsay from office hours.com global. So good to see you.

Alex Lindsay [00:02:03]:
Good to be here. Hello. I'm doing well.

Leo Laporte [00:02:06]:
Two eyes still in his head. He hasn't developed a fourth eye to give himself 3D vision.

Alex Lindsay [00:02:12]:
Yeah, I'm doing the best I can. I mean, I have a little bit of 3D vision, but I'd like to have 4D vision, but I, you know, I've been talking to geneticists. They said it's not. Not in the cards for me. It's too late. It's too late.

Leo Laporte [00:02:23]:
I'm so sorry. Gene editing, though, is. It's in its infancy, but I think, you know, there's still a chance.

Alex Lindsay [00:02:30]:
It could happen.

Leo Laporte [00:02:33]:
Let's see, who else. Oh, Mr. Jason Snell. The last time I'll see you till October.

Jason Snell [00:02:38]:
Six weeks or something like that. Yes. Well, hello. It's good. I'll be out the next couple weeks and then you're gone. It's good to be here. We are approaching the speed of light, but as we can never reach it due to Zeno's Paradox, I'll point out also that that means that time dilation will mean that the show will get longer and longer as we have less to say. So that's great.

Andy Ihnatko [00:02:56]:
We're doing this to just feeling that way.

Leo Laporte [00:02:58]:
It's an excellent, excellent.

Jason Snell [00:03:00]:
We're doing it. Time is just going to flash by on the outside, but here it will be eternity.

Leo Laporte [00:03:05]:
It's an eternity. And it often seems that way.

Jason Snell [00:03:09]:
It can be. But think about it this way, Leo. When next this show appears, we'll know what's real instead of what's rumored. I think that's exciting.

Leo Laporte [00:03:19]:
There are many, many rumors. The latest, so many from Mark Gurman, is that the AirPods Pro 3 will come out, but we'll be lacking the translation feature until later this year.

Alex Lindsay [00:03:34]:
So that. Do we think that they're gonna. So I think that they're gonna. The chip's there, the software's not, like. So I think that's the.

Leo Laporte [00:03:40]:
Yeah, there's hardware. In fact, there's also health hardware in these things. Right? They can. The rumor. This is all rumor. We know nothing. But the rumor is this is actually from March. I'm looking at an old one, but.

Alex Lindsay [00:03:54]:
I have a hard time thinking about, like, other than the batteries dying, I have a hard time think what an AirPod. I have the AirPod Pro 2 or whatever. I don't know what they would add that I would have me go, oh, I have to.

Leo Laporte [00:04:06]:
So the, the powerbeats have heart rate.

Jason Snell [00:04:09]:
Yeah, Powerbeats have heart rate. There's been some talk of, of temperature monitoring as well, which would mean that if you don't wear an Apple watch, you could still get some health features. I think they will probably. My guess is, and this is just based on spitball and stuff, but, like, you could talk about extended range, because sometimes I just did this last week.

Leo Laporte [00:04:26]:
I like to walk down that.

Alex Lindsay [00:04:28]:
It feels like tugged by a cable, like, you'.

Jason Snell [00:04:30]:
I didn't have my phone in my pocket and I walked and I was like, oh, right, I don't have it with me. So extended range is a thing they might be able to do. There's audio quality stuff they could do in terms of lossless audio and latency, which there's some of that with the Vision Pro, but. And then there's processing. You know, in addition to the sensors, there's other things that they could potentially do with on device processing. Like my. Also my guess is that they will. They will announce that they are more.

Jason Snell [00:04:55]:
More noise canceling. Right. Like, just like they did where they said that the AirPods were 4x or whatever. Noise canceling. And I always find it hilarious when they have like a number for noise canceling because it just doesn't seem like a thing that you could measure a number for. But they do. So they must have some measurement for it. But it wouldn't surprise me if that's a thing where they're like, we process it much faster and the noise canceling is much better.

Jason Snell [00:05:16]:
Or maybe there's a new mode or the adaptive mode works better. It's going to be. I mean, Alex, I think the bottom line is I don't think AirPods are so much a product you buy because it's got a. Because they're faster. Right. Because it's a sweet new feature. It's more like the next time you need to buy a pair, they'll be better.

Alex Lindsay [00:05:33]:
Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. And I think, I think that one of the things that's interesting is that I, you know, I got the last upgrade was specifically to get the kind of going to a concert, the sound, you know, ear protection, which did not work at all. Like.

Leo Laporte [00:05:46]:
Like it was just, oh, I use it at concerts all the time.

Alex Lindsay [00:05:49]:
I just felt like it didn't sound very good. Like I just, I was just like.

Leo Laporte [00:05:51]:
Well, it sounds better than earplugs.

Alex Lindsay [00:05:54]:
Yeah, that's true.

Leo Laporte [00:05:55]:
What do you wear?

Alex Lindsay [00:05:57]:
I have some pretty good earplugs. I can't think of what the name.

Leo Laporte [00:06:01]:
Of them is, but I. Animotics makes them. A number of them make them with holes in them and filters that say, well, you could. But they've never sounded full frequency to me.

Alex Lindsay [00:06:10]:
Yeah, I mean, I felt like they were just. The airpods were constantly getting slammed. Like they felt they were bottoming out all the time.

Leo Laporte [00:06:17]:
Yeah, actually, I have experienced that.

Alex Lindsay [00:06:19]:
So the bottoming out was what bothered me. I was like, I'd rather have it all just be quieter than have it be, you know, this kind of grading. Yeah. So that was the. And maybe that's Just that I was too close to, you know, too close to the speakers or whatever. But. But I think that that was the, that was my complaint. And so if they made that better.

Alex Lindsay [00:06:35]:
But that's. It feels like a software thing, but maybe they need more chips.

Leo Laporte [00:06:38]:
So I, late, of late, have been going to concerts wearing only the AirPods instead of stuffing my ears with cotton.

Alex Lindsay [00:06:45]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:06:46]:
And I've been pretty happy. But you're right, I do. On the, on the low end, you'll hear sometimes clipping and. Yeah, if it's. See, maybe I don't go to concert centers loud as the ones you.

Alex Lindsay [00:06:58]:
Well, I go to a lot of. You know, what's funny is, is that it's not, it's not that. What's interesting is the bigger concerts are actually oftentimes, you know, you're not quite as close and it's not as big of a deal. It's like the bottom of the hill. That's the problem, you know, because now that you have a decimal meter in your phone, you're constantly.

Leo Laporte [00:07:14]:
I know I get those alerts.

Alex Lindsay [00:07:16]:
It's all for 90 RV or. I am constantly looking down at my watch because I have the decimal meter watch, you know, as a, as a widget or whatever. And so I'm looked down at my watch and I'm like, oh, we're at 110.

Leo Laporte [00:07:26]:
That's.

Alex Lindsay [00:07:26]:
I'm really glad I have something in my ears, you know, so. But that's the little bars with, with, you know, because they're, they're, they're really trying to give you that experience. But like, when I was at, you know, when I was, I don't know, 30 people back or 50 people back on at Dead and Company, it was probably, you know, like in the high 90s, but it wasn't, you know, crushing.

Leo Laporte [00:07:46]:
You know, I've set mine to my Apple Watch to alert me when it's over. I think over 90. And it happens fairly frequently. Even if I shout. It's not hard to get over 90.

Alex Lindsay [00:07:58]:
It's ongoing. I think 84, 85 decibels is where you don't want it. You can listen to that all day. That's what your theaters are usually maxing out at or near. They'll peak over that. But your theaters are trying to keep the average below 85, typically. And usually people complain. So when you go to a theater, you're not usually hearing that because people will.

Alex Lindsay [00:08:20]:
The number one complaint at a theater is that it's too loud. I know it sounds crazy, but that's the number one complaint. And so the theaters are usually set considerably lower. They're in the high 70s, you know, most of the time then. And for people who are used to, who know what the theater should sound like, you're always like, oh, man.

Jason Snell [00:08:37]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:08:38]:
And I have to say, knowing your heart rate or your temperature. Well, heart rate you get from the watch anyway.

Alex Lindsay [00:08:43]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:08:44]:
Temperature you don't. I have an aura ring, so I'm constantly monitoring.

Jason Snell [00:08:47]:
Apple Watch has a temperature monitor on it too.

Leo Laporte [00:08:49]:
Oh, it does?

Jason Snell [00:08:50]:
Oh, yeah, it does. But I think so. Two thoughts there. One is I wonder if Apple finds that you could get more precision if you're also. If you have a second sensor. And then I think there's also the fact that some people don't have an Apple watch and this will give them Apple health features. If they run with their phone and AirPods, they will get that feature and it may be they'll find it useful. So I think that there's a little bit of that in there too.

Jason Snell [00:09:12]:
I do think, yeah, there are a whole bunch of different little tiny AirPods features that might make it better sound quality, noise canceling, the, that pass through thing. Like maybe there's better concert, concert mode or something like that. Because there are ways, I think you put it in pass through with reduced loud sounds turned on and then it sounds okay. I, I have used them for that and they sound okay. But I do think that there's, you know, look, part of this is just, it's been a few years now and I think that this is one of Apple's best products, the AirPods Pro. And to make it better and to put some more intelligence in it so that it can do better, better with noise canceling than it does already, you know, just better a better version of itself. Maybe it'll look a little different, I don't know. But like, I think that's great.

Jason Snell [00:09:58]:
It's actually the product that I'm most. I mean, the iPhone Air I'm excited about, but I am also really, really excited about AirPods Pro because it's just such a great product that I love it so much.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:07]:
And it's not just about like the technological features. It can be vastly improved if they simply say, hey, look, we've also redesigned the fit of how these things nestle into your ear. So those of you who can't wear them because it happens to touch against a piece of cartilage and makes it excruciating after 20 minutes and please come back to the Apple Store, give us another try.

Alex Lindsay [00:10:25]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's actually the. One of the, probably the Apple product I use the least because it never fits quite correctly. I have the, you know, so I tried the medium and the large and I can't quite get it to feel like it's going to stay in my ear. And so I do wear them because it's the only one that reacts quickly when I'm using, when I'm talking to my phone. So if I'm trying to lay something up, I use the. Because I typically, if I'm not talking to people, I'm using the UE fits. If I'm talking to people, I'm using the open twos from shocks. And so those are the two that I use the most.

Alex Lindsay [00:10:59]:
And then when I think I'm going to interact with mostly with Janet, otherwise known as ChatGPT, then I'm using the Apple ones. So the Apple, the AirPods. But otherwise I don't use them because I always feel like they're on the verge of falling out of my ear.

Andy Ihnatko [00:11:16]:
Yeah. One of the reasons why I'm sticking with wired headphones is because the wired headphones that I have are super, super comfortable. Not only do they stay in as I'm walking or taking or riding my B bike, but I can wear them for two or three hours without really necessarily feeling them over the ear. Headphones are still like the ideal, but every pair of in air buds I've tried at some point there's. What is, what is it? The vagus nerve? Like most of there's there, There have been Apple, Apple AirPods that I've really, really loved, but it does that my. I, I will do like this full body because something touched something and I gotta pull it out and just go. Because, because of the fit of this thing and it's like you're having. We're having such a good time together.

Andy Ihnatko [00:11:58]:
Airbus, before you started to put me.

Alex Lindsay [00:12:01]:
Into convulsions, when, when, when Apple went Bluetooth and everything else, I, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna really, I'm gonna always, I love my Wired and I'm gonna always have my wire, my etymotics and everything else. And now every time, a handful of times, I have a backup in my, in my backpack of wired headset with a little convert USB C to conversion. So if my hair, if my AirPods die, I can put them on. And when I put them on, I get them caught on everything. Like, it's just like this. My brain doesn't manage that. Anymore. And I'm like, yeah, I can't, you.

Jason Snell [00:12:28]:
Know, absolutely the same. And that, I mean, low latency, lossless, which they currently do with the Vision Pro, is a feature like. Because I always said that when I edit podcasts on an iPad using my AirPods, which I can do, I've done it on airplanes and all of that. But the latency, like, you press play and you gotta wait for it to catch up and match the latency. And so if you reduce that latency and still have it full quality, that's a nice feature to have on top of everything else. But, yeah, I mean, I just am. I'm a fan of the products. I will say having.

Jason Snell [00:12:59]:
I feel like I've been. I've done briefings with Apple people for all of the AirPods, which is. I don't know how I got on that list, but I'm glad that I was. They. The first AirPods came out and they were like, all right, we shaped them so we think that people will love them and they'll fit in their ears. And obviously the feedback was a lot of people. It didn't fit in their ears at all. The AirPods Pro first gen, and they came back with the second gen and they said, okay, here's what we did.

Jason Snell [00:13:24]:
We used to have, you know, a database of all these ears that we had that we found. Not, not an ear serial killer or anything. The ears, they scanned around, you know, California or maybe at Apple or maybe in the United States, but they got feedback because it's Apple, right? They sell these everywhere in the world. So with the second gen, they tried to build a new model based on a much broader cross section of human ears to try and hit the sweet spot. You're never going to be able to hit everything. But they wanted to fit in as many ears as possible. And I think what we saw with the. The AirPods 4 is another progression there where it's got a kind of an odd shape because they're trying to hit the sweet spot.

Jason Snell [00:14:09]:
So it is something to watch for sure. To see if they've taken another crack at the fit of it. Because every time, if the, if the AirPods don't fit your ears, wait for the next AirPods and give it a shot, because maybe. And then. And then you're the winner.

Alex Lindsay [00:14:23]:
I. I don't think people understand sometimes when they complain about something not quite working, how much work has gone into getting it to where it is, you know, like the. I. Not for Apple, but I worked. I worked on a project where we we were just sampling what it would take to send commands to a device in a room. Right. Like that was the thing. And we, to do that, we rented three to four houses.

Alex Lindsay [00:14:47]:
Three to four houses a week for months. And different houses, different rooms, different people, different backgrounds, different parts of the country, different humidities, everything where you're constantly changing all these things and you're. And there was like this list of words to say that you needed to say to see how the device was going to hear it through all the echoing and everything else. But I think sometimes when we talk about this, you know, I'm always conscious to like, how much work it takes to get even to where we are now of the kind of testing, because I'm sure that whatever Apple did was more than what I'm talking about. And, and it just takes so much for these to. It's kind of a magical thing that any of this works at all.

Andy Ihnatko [00:15:25]:
Yeah. And it is. That's deep respect for people who have to drill products that have to be put out in front of an audience.

Alex Lindsay [00:15:32]:
Because as consumer audience.

Andy Ihnatko [00:15:35]:
Consumer audience, Exactly. As writers, like, we're all familiar with that kind of hell. But I mean, but the hellacious things about it is that like, it doesn't. To the consumer, it doesn't, it's not, it's not, it doesn't have to be relevant. It's just that, wow, what is the. Why do these keep cutting out? And if you're, if you're gonna go on like Reddit or something, say, oh my God, hey, Apple, how about you? How, Here's a suggestion. How about you test these earbuds before you start something that's, that's not probably.

Alex Lindsay [00:16:02]:
You roll your eyes, people stop listening to you, but you start saying that you're like, okay.

Andy Ihnatko [00:16:05]:
But nonetheless, it's like there are people like me that like, you're. I, I do, I do have Bluetooth earbuds. I like them for like the times that I want to use them, but for my day to day, hey, I'm going to be walking home from the library or hey, I'm going to be running errands. It's like I can't deal with not necessarily knowing if these earbuds are completely charged up or not. I can't really deal with the idea of am I going to be. Have these comfortably in my ear for two or three hours. I can't deal with the idea of when I'm not using them. I love the fact that when I'm at the market, I just simply pull out One earbud and drop it and the other one stays in.

Andy Ihnatko [00:16:41]:
And then to have my conversation with the clerk. And then when I, when I leave, I pick it back up again and put it up there. I have never figured out if, if someone could. If someone can. I would love to see, like a compilation video of everyone showing me. What do you do when you have to have a conversation with somebody for like, just like a minute or two, like a transaction? Do you pull it out and hold this, like, waxy, globby thing, like in your hand? Well, for the duration. Do you leave it in and risk that you're not. That you're not going to be able to hear things quite so well? Do you put it inside the case? Like, it's.

Andy Ihnatko [00:17:12]:
I have never been able to find the solution to that.

Alex Lindsay [00:17:14]:
I have to admit that's one of the reasons that I love the, the open comm so much, is that it's open to ear. I can hear someone talking. It's not. I don't have to do anything to, to be able to hear them. And it, and when you, when you put the little, when you put the arm forward, you're talking to someone. When you put it back, it mutes it. But it also, I think people just are much nicer to me. I think that they think that that's some kind of assistive device, you know, like, as a cotton top that I am.

Alex Lindsay [00:17:39]:
I think that I just get. I get better service.

Andy Ihnatko [00:17:44]:
That reminds me of one other thing that I like, the fact that when I can't hear somebody because I've got my earbuds in, there is this big white flag dangling in front of me that says, oh, by the way, you're going to have to give me a second to unplug as opposed to, you've just told me something really important and you're starting to walk away while I'm desperately scrabbling. I had to pull something out. And again, I know that these features of pass through, they, They've been working better and better, but they're still not quite enough for me.

Alex Lindsay [00:18:11]:
I still think it's weird. I think it's weird to talk to someone with my headphones in.

Jason Snell [00:18:14]:
Like, I, yeah, you guys, you guys are the old. What are you talking about, man? I just, I don't, I don't use conversation mode because I walk my dog and I talk to my dog while we walk and it thinks I'm having a conversation with her. Also, her name is Maisie, which sounds a lot like, hey, lady. And it's really dangerous. But I am perfectly comfortable. First off, if you're out and about with people, you shouldn't be in noise canceling mode. Right? So you should be able to hear. I think the password mode is really good, especially at passing through with conversations.

Jason Snell [00:18:49]:
And I just have no, I just don't care. Like I think that society will get over the fact that some people have earbuds in and they can still hear you fine. If they're talking to you, they probably can still hear you fine. So that's just how I do it.

Leo Laporte [00:19:03]:
Do not watch jeopardy with the AirPods and conversation mode because every time I yell out the answer I lose.

Jason Snell [00:19:09]:
You can't. No, that's, that's the problem with the conversation mode is. And this is. I'm sure they've tried it, tried this. But whatever machine learning based analysis of the sound they're doing that needs to get a lot smarter because what you really want to do is detect that there are multiple voices in a proximity where you're actually having a conversation. Whereas if I say yes or no to my dog, I'm not talking to. There's nobody else there. But that's why I had to turn that off.

Jason Snell [00:19:39]:
But I think the pass through mode and their new, the new smart pass through mode that is sort of trying to damp down broadband sound, like the sound of the freeway, you know, a few blocks away where I live that just goes away. But the detail sounds of cars passing by and the dog barking and stuff like that, I can still hear. It's pretty great like that, that whatever analysis they're doing there that, you know, millisecond by millisecond noise cancellation of like only the kind of really heavy stuff is, is really great. It's not full on noise canceling. But I wouldn't go out in the world and like walk down streets with full on noise canceling on because I don't have a death wish.

Leo Laporte [00:20:22]:
Ask a dumb question.

Jason Snell [00:20:26]:
Do it.

Leo Laporte [00:20:28]:
Is there any way. So like I'm looking at my phone right now, my AirPods are in the other room. Is there any way I can change the setting on them without actually going and pairing, you know?

Jason Snell [00:20:36]:
No, because Apple in all its wisdom has decided that all AirPods settings are in the Bluetooth menu under AirPods when your AirPods are connected.

Leo Laporte [00:20:43]:
So you can only change the settings for stuff you're currently connected to.

Jason Snell [00:20:47]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:20:47]:
Yeah. Oh, that's too bad.

Jason Snell [00:20:49]:
Yeah, it is too bad.

Leo Laporte [00:20:50]:
I was hoping there was a way around that.

Jason Snell [00:20:51]:
I hate it because I think of something and I'm like, oh, yeah, I should change that setting.

Leo Laporte [00:20:54]:
I want to change that.

Jason Snell [00:20:55]:
And then I realize, oh, no, I have to go get my AirPods and put them in. And then I can change the setting, which is dumb. It's dumb.

Alex Lindsay [00:20:59]:
And I don't know how much better it's got. I have to admit, I, being the curmudgeon that I am about these things, my AirPods only talk to my phone. Like, I tell everything else to ignore them because I just can't, which is.

Leo Laporte [00:21:11]:
The right thing to do, because otherwise, you're in the middle of a conversation.

Alex Lindsay [00:21:14]:
It goes, hey. And it's. The hard part is. And I think that this is where the hard part is, that there's these little glitches that you're just kind of, like, jumping from something else. I'm like, hey, I was just on the. I'm on a call. Like, it seems like you would know that I'm gonna stay on this call and not jump to my Mac in the same sense that. It just seems like those are the kind of things, like, you're just like.

Alex Lindsay [00:21:36]:
You should be able to figure that part out.

Leo Laporte [00:21:38]:
Lisa's watching tv. I go down to the gym. I'm gonna put in my AirPods to listen to a book. But of course, my AirPods are also paired to the TV. Oh, boy. So as soon as I open my AirPods, the TV turns off, and she says, hey, I'm listening. And I say, sorry. And then I have to, like, put them back in the case and go to the Apple tv.

Leo Laporte [00:22:00]:
And. And, yeah, it's just a mess.

Jason Snell [00:22:03]:
It's funny.

Leo Laporte [00:22:04]:
So I bought another pair of AirPods for the phone.

Jason Snell [00:22:06]:
There's a new feature of In26 for CarPlay that lets you do that. Kind of, like, pick up where you left off. You get in your car, and it will switch over to CarPlay. And a lot of people complained that they were getting, like, this stuff really loud in their car when they didn't want to. And they actually did add a feature in the Betas that basically says, don't do this. And I feel like that's. I mean, the thing is, you can turn all of that stuff off. And Alex has.

Jason Snell [00:22:32]:
I wish they. I wish it was smarter, and I wish that they were better at asking you, do you want to go? Because it's a great magic trick when suddenly you put in your AirPods and your Apple TV starts playing in your ears, but if you're not nearby, like, the magic trick isn't good enough. This is the same when my wife leaves to go to work in the morning and I'm out here in the garage, so the car is right outside the garage door here, my Mac goes into driving focus mode. I'm like, I am. I am not driving. And then after about half a minute, it's like, oh, okay. Because it saw the Bluetooth in the car right on my phone and thought, you must be in the car right now. And they didn't use a sensor or anything to figure.

Jason Snell [00:23:12]:
It just needs to be smarter. Like I get. Look, I think we all appreciate when Apple has this impulse of, like, what if it just did the right thing? And the answer is yes. Like, if it does the right thing, that is the best. But if you can't do the right.

Leo Laporte [00:23:29]:
Thing, you don't know.

Jason Snell [00:23:31]:
Step off just a little.

Leo Laporte [00:23:34]:
All right, we're. Take a little break. When we come back. I don't want to shame you or anything, Jason, but your event draft.

Jason Snell [00:23:41]:
Shame. It's okay.

Leo Laporte [00:23:43]:
For wwdc, Mike Hurley whipped your keystone.

Jason Snell [00:23:47]:
I'm going to win it. I'm winning it.

Leo Laporte [00:23:48]:
But of course, The Upgrade Podcast September 25th event draft is out. We will look at Jason's predictions.

Jason Snell [00:23:57]:
Unfair. Unfair podcast violence.

Leo Laporte [00:24:00]:
Let's see if you can recoup your miserable performance in June. I think that's a great. I think it's such a great bit. I'm just. I love it that you do this. It's so fun. Is my. What is the, like the eternal standings is.

Jason Snell [00:24:16]:
Is I won most of them at the start and Mike has been catching up with me.

Leo Laporte [00:24:21]:
Yeah. And it all benefits St. Jude, which is great.

Jason Snell [00:24:24]:
We do. We have a St. Jude element to it this year. Yes, we do.

Leo Laporte [00:24:27]:
So we should mention that you're going to Memphis. One of the reasons Jason and I will not see each other is Jason is thinking that he might be busy next week.

Jason Snell [00:24:36]:
Well, yeah. One way or another. One way or another.

Leo Laporte [00:24:39]:
Have you wangled an invite?

Jason Snell [00:24:42]:
We're not. The way it works is I send an email week one, and then I bought my time. I get through Labor Day. In this case, send another email this week and see if they can slide me in there next.

Leo Laporte [00:24:52]:
But we know you will. Yeah, we know you will.

Jason Snell [00:24:55]:
Appreciate your support.

Alex Lindsay [00:24:56]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:24:56]:
And then you're going to Memphis, right.

Jason Snell [00:24:58]:
For the St. Jude, we do a 12 hour long video like on YouTube telethon, basically Jerry Lewis style telethonics up with podcast nerds talking about Apple stuff and about fighting childhood cancer.

Leo Laporte [00:25:10]:
And Micah participates in that because he's also in Relay fm. Andy, you're on Relay fm. Do you. Do you do anything with that?

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:17]:
I have offered year after year that if we really are doing a telethon sort of thing, there should be.

Leo Laporte [00:25:22]:
There should be somebody walk alone.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:26]:
We can take or leave that. But what you really need to have is about one hour into it, the host basically starts berating all of the crew in a really mean and nasty way. And then remember that he's actually on television and pretends like it was just a bit. I really think so.

Jason Snell [00:25:42]:
You want to do that? You want to come in, sweep into St. Jude and then be reading crew?

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:47]:
Are you being paid to light? Are you not being played to pay to light? Because I am not lit here. This is Teresa. We've been working together forever.

Leo Laporte [00:25:56]:
I kind of miss the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. Come to think of it, I realized it's not Labor Day anymore without the telethon. Anyway, you're going to have the relay fm St. Jude's podcast.

Jason Snell [00:26:06]:
A thon.

Leo Laporte [00:26:06]:
Podcast A thon. To celebrate. What is that? The 15th?

Jason Snell [00:26:10]:
That is going to be the 19th.

Leo Laporte [00:26:12]:
19Th. Okay. So. And I will go on vacation the next day. So you won't be here through then. And then you'll be taking over the show.

Jason Snell [00:26:21]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:26:22]:
So Jason will be helming the podcast.

Jason Snell [00:26:24]:
I'll try not to break it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:26]:
Don't. You can break it. It's okay. It's been broken before. It's always bounced back.

Alex Lindsay [00:26:30]:
I mean, we put it in the name. Break it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:32]:
Yeah. We say it's going to break.

Jason Snell [00:26:34]:
I'll break it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:35]:
We know it's going to break.

Jason Snell [00:26:35]:
We'll definitely break it.

Leo Laporte [00:26:36]:
And then I'll be back. October 13th, 14th, 14th. October 14th. We will reunite. We'll have a glorious reunion.

Jason Snell [00:26:46]:
It's going to be amazing.

Andy Ihnatko [00:26:47]:
If Leo comes back and finds out that you've put all this gold bric a brac around everywhere in the studio, he's going to be upset, and he's going to have a reason to be upset. So, Justin, I know you've got the AliExpress order already in.

Jason Snell [00:27:00]:
It's happening.

Leo Laporte [00:27:00]:
Do you ever wonder, like, how are they going to get that off the marble fireplace?

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:06]:
They have artisans. They were artists who are going to be. Who grumbled when they. When they. When they were ordered to Scotch tape it onto there.

Leo Laporte [00:27:13]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:13]:
Did you see there was actually, like, someone, like, found, like, the. The sale page on AliExpress where they got a lot of that stuff.

Leo Laporte [00:27:20]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:20]:
It's like, oh, dear.

Leo Laporte [00:27:21]:
Oh, yeah. And it's now spread to the cabinet room. It's everywhere. It's everywhere.

Jason Snell [00:27:27]:
The stuff from AliExpress doesn't have any hidden bugs in it or anything. It's fine.

Andy Ihnatko [00:27:32]:
No, you know, if, if I know the head of the Chinese Communist Party, I think he's a pretty upright guy. He would know the stakes.

Jason Snell [00:27:39]:
I remember this is like when I bought a, when I got my, my carpool stickers for my electric car. I got. You do the thing where you put the sticker on your bumper, but then it's there forever, even though it expires. So what you do is you put, you put a transparent tape on it and then you put the sticker on the transparent tape and then, so then you peel off. So I'm, what I'm saying is the people at the White House, they know that all the residents are temporary. So everything gets mounted with like a removal strip, like a command strip behind it where they can just pull it off and take it all off again.

Leo Laporte [00:28:09]:
Boom. Back to the boring old 18th century architecture. We will be back with the September draft.

Jason Snell [00:28:19]:
Oh, boy.

Leo Laporte [00:28:19]:
In just a bit. But first, a word. It's good to have all three of you. Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay. You're watching Mac Break Weekly, brought to you this week by ZocDoc. I kind of have a little soft spot in my heart for ZocDoc because it's helped me a lot. You know, working out. I'll give you an example.

Leo Laporte [00:28:37]:
Is a great way to take care of your body. But it takes to get truly healthy takes more than just hitting the gym. It takes consistent annual checkups with your doctor getting things checked out if they feel a little off or not normal. A pain right here. Your big toe is swelling unnaturally. You also need a quality nutrition regimen. You got to take care of your mental health. All of this is important.

Leo Laporte [00:29:01]:
And ZocDoc makes it easy. Frankly, ZocDoc means no more excuses. ZocDoc makes it easy to start your health plan by helping you find and book doctors in your area who are right for you. It's quick, it's easy. It's a free app and website, zocdoc.com/macbreak, where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. With ZocDoc, you can book in network appointments more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty from mental health health to dental health to primary care to urgent care and more dentists to chiropractors. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance that are located nearby are a Good fit for any medical you need. You have, and this is to me the most important part, are highly rated by verified patients.

Leo Laporte [00:29:51]:
These verified patient reviews are the secret of ZocDoc. You can also filter based on specific preferences. Whether that's looking for a male doctor, a doctor who speaks a specific language, has availability that fits with your work schedule, or has an opening in the next day or so. Yeah, you can get same day appointments. Once you find the right doctor, you can see their actual openings and choose a time slot that works for you and then click and you'll instantly book a visit. It's so easy. It's so fast. No more excuses.

Leo Laporte [00:30:23]:
Appointments made through ZocDoc happen typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking. That's fast. In fact, more often than not, you can get same day appointments. I use this and you should too. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to zocdoc.com/macbreak to find and instantly book a top rated doctor today. That's zocdoc.com/macbreak. zocdoc.com/macbreak we thank them so much for their support. Use the website first so they know you saw it. Okay.

Leo Laporte [00:30:57]:
And then you can download the app if you want. Thank you, Zach. Doc. Thank you. All right. I'm stealing some thunder from the upgrade podcast. You should listen to upgrade 579.

Jason Snell [00:31:10]:
Yeah, that's fine. You can, you can, you can do it.

Leo Laporte [00:31:12]:
I like it. You and Mike Hurley get together every, you know, every event and you predict what's going to happen.

Jason Snell [00:31:19]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [00:31:19]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:31:20]:
Do you want to particularly pick any predictions of yours that you're particularly proud of?

Jason Snell [00:31:25]:
I think, I mean, I, we do this every time. Like I think I did 10 for 10. I think I'm perfect. I find it funny that anybody would think otherwise because that's. You gotta be confident in your picks. And I actually am pretty much. This is. I feel like I was sneaky in a sense and picked some things that are very boring and extremely likely to happen.

Jason Snell [00:31:45]:
Yeah, that's under the guise of entertainment, which is probably. I should have made more interesting choices than I did. But so like I picked that we're going to see the C modem chip in another phone because I think that that iPhone air. I mean, all the rumors are it's going to have the C1 modem in it that we already saw in the 16e. There are a lot of rumors out there about a replacement for fine woven called tech woven that Apple is once again going to try to make a non leather premium case material happen, and we'll see how that goes. But if it exists, I get that point. I think the iPhone air, and this is in line with a lot of the reports, is going to be the thinnest iPhone ever. But it's not going to be as thin as the iPad Pro.

Jason Snell [00:32:26]:
I think it's not going to be able to get down to that level of thinness. And, and the other phone rumor that I think is probably reasonable is that they're going to sh. They're going to shift the Apple logo down a little bit so that it's optically centered because they're going to have that big bar on the top. And so rather than having the Apple logo centered in the whole phone stack, they'll have it centered in the space beneath the bar.

Leo Laporte [00:32:48]:
So to make it clear here, Mike doesn't just say, no, it's not. No, it's not. That's not how this works. He has a prediction.

Jason Snell [00:32:54]:
Same category, we have a list of things that are not obvious, that, that are not, like, guaranteed, like an iPhone air will be announced is like, it's going to happen. You know, we're pretty confident. But if it's like, if it's. If, if we think that it's debatable, we'll put it on a list and then we just alternate and pick from it and we do 10 picks and we figure that.

Leo Laporte [00:33:13]:
So, Mike, excited about the Ultra 3, the new Apple Watch?

Jason Snell [00:33:16]:
Yeah, I think so too. We ended up doing a lot of. In our Apple Watch pick category. About that, I think, you know, one of the rumors is it'll do the satellite connection, which, if any Apple Watch should get that. The Ultra should get that. You know, if you're out, out and about and having, you know, no connectivity that your Ultra can let you send a message or a location or call for help is a good idea. It didn't get updated last year except for a color, so it'll probably pick up a new new processor as well.

Leo Laporte [00:33:43]:
I have the Ultra 2. That's going to be my question. Do I want to upgrade this? The bigger screen might do it for me.

Jason Snell [00:33:50]:
Maybe. I don't think it's going to be a lot bigger, but I do think it's going to be bigger again. It's one of those things that I think. I'm not sure if people with an ultra 2 need an ultra 3. Even after 2 years. The cycle of updates for Apple watches is probably longer than that. But we'll see.

Leo Laporte [00:34:05]:
I mean, if you're somebody who I Wear this every day. There's not a scratch on the sapphire crystal. It's really robust. The titanium case is. It looks brand new.

Jason Snell [00:34:15]:
I think that there are some people out there. If they truly add that satellite feature, there are people out there are going to be like, oh, well, sold.

Leo Laporte [00:34:20]:
If you hiked a lot.

Jason Snell [00:34:21]:
I know, and I know that, like the iPhones have been doing that and can still do that. And that's true. But again, one of the ideas with the Ultra, maybe you're somewhere where you don't have your phone with you and you're out, but you're in the outer reaches and you're out of satellite service. Having that extra level, that extra layer there. I think it's a potentially really nice feature.

Leo Laporte [00:34:41]:
I do have to say, in the two years I've had this, it has not once switched over to tell me what depth I'm of water I'm in. So damn. Go deeper or just go in the water. Might be the first step anyway. You know, it all begins with the first step. Yeah. And I'm gonna add a prediction because one of the things they do with the Ultra just. It's a silly thing to get people to buy it is they have you, you know, unique watch faces.

Leo Laporte [00:35:09]:
We've talked before about the fact that they don't let you customize the watch faces. I like the modular watch face. That's unique. I would, I wouldn't be surprised if they add some unique watch faces.

Jason Snell [00:35:20]:
There usually are new. We didn't pick that. It was one of our pickable items and we didn't pick it. But I almost picked it because it's a good. It's a really good one, which is there's usually a watch face that they introduce with the new hardware, even though they could have introduced it on with the WatchOS update and, and it may still work with the older watches. But whatever reason, there are things that they hold back because it helps them make a splash at the, at the iPhone event. So they do it.

Leo Laporte [00:35:49]:
They understand how tied we are to appearances.

Jason Snell [00:35:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, like. And so it goes. It goes both ways with Apple events. There are the things they hold back that are just features, but they want them. They bulk up the weight of the hardware announcement to say it does this thing and it's a new thing. So they do that.

Jason Snell [00:36:09]:
And then there's also restatement of features that aren't new as if they're new. And I suspect one of Mike's predictions was improved AirPods audio quality as a microphone is mentioned now They've got new firmware that's in beta. We were talking about it in the discord, where Apple's gonna make claims that, like, you can Talk on your AirPods on a podcast and it's gonna sound pristine, like you're in a studio, which I really doubt. But they say it's gonna get a lot better and that would be great. Better audio quality as a microphone on AirPods would be a winner. But they talked about that and they've been beta testing it. And yet I think that this is a good choice because I think that perhaps there are going to be some hardware improvements in AirPods Pro 3. But also it's just a good time again to boast about the fact that this fall all microphones in AirPods will get better or whatever.

Jason Snell [00:36:59]:
So that's. Their other trick is, like, it's not new, but they're going to still use it as a way to sell you a new product.

Alex Lindsay [00:37:05]:
You know, the thing that'd be really interesting is if they, you know, the Sennheiser makes these headphones that you put in that are these Ambeo headphones that do binaural recording. It would be a really interesting feature if you're making the headphones better. I don't think Apple's going to do this, but it would be really interesting for them to say, and now we do binaural. Like, if you pick up your phone, it'll do a binaural recording with your head, with your thing, while you're taking a video to get Apple, like, spatial.

Leo Laporte [00:37:28]:
Apple's big into spatial, right? That's why I'm saying suddenly your phone calls are spatial.

Jason Snell [00:37:32]:
Well, they could do that on the phone because I got microphones at both ends, so they could actually do that. They do stereo capture now, which is.

Alex Lindsay [00:37:39]:
Not quite the same. They couldn't. It sounds really good. I mean, what the phone picks up is really good. They could, theoretically, by doing it on either side of the ears, what happens is that it, number one, is it's more spatial than the phone. And secondly, it takes into account the head. So the head is blocking. No, from a spatial perspective.

Alex Lindsay [00:37:58]:
That's why there are some binaural recordings that come with a head.

Jason Snell [00:38:03]:
Very few of our heads are shaped like phones.

Alex Lindsay [00:38:05]:
And not only that, that you're you. The argument is that depending on where you put the mic, your ear shape and everything else impacts the sound and everything else. And so there's a possibility that, I mean, Apple could get super geeky. I think the chances of that are less than 10%. But it could be one of those super geeky things that people would suddenly want to use more often. It will sound different than just the phone.

Leo Laporte [00:38:32]:
Is there anything everybody can pitch in on this that will be unexpected or anything you're hoping for that Apple has is not yet rumored to see?

Jason Snell [00:38:43]:
Feels like everything, literally everything has been rumored.

Leo Laporte [00:38:46]:
There don't seem to be any surprises this year.

Jason Snell [00:38:48]:
I think it would be a. Unexpected. My guess would be an unexpected product. Like well, okay, so there's unexpected product.

Leo Laporte [00:38:54]:
You didn't mention the Apple TV in your.

Jason Snell [00:38:56]:
Like they might, they might, they might roll out the Apple TV new hardware that we think is coming. Maybe AirTag 2. I'm not sure how exciting that is, but it's there. And I would say the other thing is the unexpected accessory that I mentioned, the tech woven cases, which is a thing that's happened recently that would be now it's not too surprising because it's been rumored, but it would be a little bit different. And I saw a piece today about how they're working on like a magnetic body strap that you can attach your phone to. Cross body strap. And that's a, that would be a first for Apple.

Leo Laporte [00:39:27]:
I see a lot of people, a lot of women especially wearing those.

Jason Snell [00:39:30]:
Yeah, that's why Apple wants to sell them one.

Leo Laporte [00:39:32]:
Yeah, I always think that's kind of cool. Like why put it in your pocket, just have it strapped to your body.

Alex Lindsay [00:39:41]:
I think Apple, I'm really interested with Airtag whether Apple will ever license that technology to be more usable.

Leo Laporte [00:39:48]:
I use the Chipolos and they kind of work with Find my.

Alex Lindsay [00:39:51]:
I just want it to be just. I mean I just think that they could, Apple could open that up a little bit. So we kind of want every device that you lose to have it.

Jason Snell [00:39:59]:
Alex. It's pretty open. I bought a third party iPhone wallet that's got Find my on the back. I mean you can, you can build Find My into stuff now they just have to want to do it. But Apple absolutely will let you do it.

Alex Lindsay [00:40:10]:
Every time I lose something, I, I, my, my keys, you know, have the, my keys and everything else that I own has like the problem I've run into is that you can only do 32. So I have 32 trackers on different bags, different things all, you know, and so I'm, I had to take a tracker away or figure out what happened and you know, but I have, I.

Leo Laporte [00:40:30]:
Have, I have one in my bag. I have that plod note, that recording AI recorder that's got Find My on it. And I have a wallet, a third party wallet card that has died. But yeah, I mean I think that's. I find mine a lot of stuff.

Alex Lindsay [00:40:47]:
I've gotten into the habit now. If I FedEx something that I care about, I put an envelope, I have an envelope that is self addressed stamped envelope with the air tag in it and I just throw it into the bag.

Leo Laporte [00:40:57]:
Oh, that's smart.

Alex Lindsay [00:40:58]:
And I just throw it into the bag. And when I get, gets to that, when it gets to the place, it just says please put this back in the mail. So I've got a couple of those too. So that you just. When you're sending something out that, that matters. Because all my, I mean it, all my cases have it. Like every suitcase bag, whatever has, has it. So I always know where all my bags.

Alex Lindsay [00:41:15]:
I had, I had a bag go errant on a flight and I was like, well, I'm in, you know, I, I'm in one place and it's in Charlotte. But I, I imagine I'll get here soon.

Andy Ihnatko [00:41:26]:
Yeah, I love that. I love that airlines have actually like stopped kind of of realizing they can no longer pretend that when they're on, when, when someone's, when they're on the line with customer service. And so, well, you're no worries. Your bag is on its way to, to Memphis. And they said, no, it's not. The air says it's in San Francisco.

Alex Lindsay [00:41:44]:
I had FedEx, I had FedEx tell me that my bags, I had nine bags and they all have, they all have the trackers in them. Nine cases, these pelican cases. And, and they said that they hadn't arrived in la. And I was like, they're in, they're not only in la. They are in the northeast corner of your building. Like, I was like. And I sent them a little picture. I was like talking to guys, everybody.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:06]:
They're all clustered. I can see this little cluster of.

Alex Lindsay [00:42:09]:
Airtags all sitting there.

Leo Laporte [00:42:11]:
Well, you could ask a West Hollywood man. On Friday, he urged air travelers to put airtags in their suitcase. Daniel Scott, after a long flight from Salt Lake City, all he wanted to do was pick up his. This is from Channel 4 Los Angeles. All he wanted to do was pick up his suitcase from luggage claim and return home. But no one was able to locate his bag. He checked his phone, saw the Apple airtag, said it was moving toward the rideshare lot and leaving the airport. He said, I immediately started sprinting to the Uber lot.

Leo Laporte [00:42:44]:
Once I got to the Uber lot, I saw it was continuing to move. It reached across the street. He followed it all the way to an abandoned, boarded up building near sepulveda Boulevard and 98th Street.

Alex Lindsay [00:42:55]:
Oh, my gosh.

Leo Laporte [00:42:57]:
He called the cops. And when the officers arrived, they used their flashlight to shine light inside the abandoned building. And then when the guys came to the window, officers lined them up in the window. I saw the guy wearing my clothes.

Jason Snell [00:43:12]:
This is the best part of this story.

Leo Laporte [00:43:14]:
My shoes.

Jason Snell [00:43:15]:
Yeah, fabulous.

Leo Laporte [00:43:15]:
My shirt, my pants.

Jason Snell [00:43:19]:
These guys just needed clothes.

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:20]:
Now you can keep it.

Leo Laporte [00:43:23]:
The police detained several people once they cleared the building. He went inside to look for his suitcase. He found his luggage, sliced up with his clothes, scattered in multiple rooms. He got 90% of them back. I think you might want to wash them, Scott, before you put those on.

Jason Snell [00:43:40]:
I mean, I gotta admire the moxie of a thief who steals clothes and then immediately puts them on. What?

Alex Lindsay [00:43:47]:
I think he needed the clothes, maybe.

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:51]:
At a job interview. How long is it gonna.

Alex Lindsay [00:43:53]:
I think he didn't think that anyone's gonna react that fast. Usually you're gonna go, you're gonna talk. He probably was gonna be out of there in the next 20 minutes, you know, like, you know, it's never to be seen again.

Leo Laporte [00:44:01]:
There is video if you want. If you want to watch it. Channel 4, NBC, Los Angeles.

Jason Snell [00:44:06]:
I have these moments. I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but like, I'm coming back from a trip usually, and I've got my suitcase with me. And I had that moment of thought, which is like, I wonder what would happen if somebody stole my suitcase. That I'm. And I'm like, it's just my smelly, dirty clothes. They don't want it. It turns out maybe they do. Yeah, maybe they want my smelly.

Jason Snell [00:44:24]:
They're gonna wear my.

Leo Laporte [00:44:27]:
Underwear. I don't know.

Alex Lindsay [00:44:29]:
It's only one wash from being totally useful, you know, like, you know, that's the. But. And a lot of times, especially if you have bags that are. I try to do things with my bags that are original so that, you know, like big, weird pieces of tape so that people don't think that they're. Of course I use stickers. We had one where we had. I don't remember what the case was, but it was a, you know, like a twomey case or whatever. And we suddenly realized that it wasn't until we were landing in Tel Aviv and we, you know, someone was on their way to another.

Alex Lindsay [00:44:53]:
Another Israeli city when we were able to figure out who it was.

Leo Laporte [00:44:57]:
You know, I have never Lost.

Alex Lindsay [00:44:59]:
Someone just bought it by accident.

Leo Laporte [00:45:00]:
My. I've never, ever lost luggage. I don't knock on wood, but I've lost very little.

Alex Lindsay [00:45:06]:
I will say that. It's not that I've never lost luggage. I just haven't lost it that often.

Leo Laporte [00:45:11]:
And you have valuable stuff in your.

Alex Lindsay [00:45:13]:
Well, I try not to. I do the best I can. Like when we send. When we ship kits. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have taken, you know, and then you. You very carefully decide what you're going to check and where you're going. You know, like it's.

Alex Lindsay [00:45:26]:
It's not. So we, you know, send things over and we do little things like it's complete. Those little locks that they sell you are completely useless. Because there was an article in Washington, the Washington Post did an article about. About security years ago, decade ago, and the security guard let them take a picture of the keys. The keys are one dimensional. They're just outlines. And so once they took the picture, it was like, well, none of the blocks matter.

Alex Lindsay [00:45:49]:
So you zip tie everything. But what we do is we zip tie them with fluorescent colors because TSA only has clear. And so if they'll replace it with a clear, they'll replace it, but they'll replace it with a clear one. Then we always know whether TSA's. We know which bag.

Leo Laporte [00:46:05]:
They're supposed to put a little card in there, though.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:07]:
They do.

Alex Lindsay [00:46:08]:
We just want to make sure, like, from the outside, we know which ones to open quickly when they arrive. We know because you want to see.

Leo Laporte [00:46:14]:
If everything's in there.

Alex Lindsay [00:46:15]:
Everything's everything. It's not so much. We're worried about stealing things. Typically, TSA puts things back in a way that.

Leo Laporte [00:46:21]:
Oh, never. Right.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:22]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:46:22]:
It's broken.

Alex Lindsay [00:46:23]:
So. So we had to. In fact, John Ashley was part of some of those conversations of how to pack things.

Jason Snell [00:46:29]:
I remember vividly that we had different.

Alex Lindsay [00:46:33]:
Yep. Yeah. Screens come back broken. Those are the number one thing. But, yeah, we would. But the other great thing about. About pelican cases that you don't have to look up. You can be sitting there on your phone and you just hear this big clunk, clunk, wherever you are, and you're like, oh, my cases are arriving.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:46]:
So I have a pelican case I use just for, like, my carry on. Because. Partly because even if I can't overstuff it and make it so that it.

Alex Lindsay [00:46:56]:
Doesn'T fit in the overhead anymore, it's a hard shell.

Leo Laporte [00:46:58]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:46:59]:
And secondly, it gives me a place to sit when there's no place to sit. And thirdly, because if I do like get trapped. Oh, sorry, all the overheads are full. You're gonna have to check that bag. I'm not going to be quite as of the things inside the bag getting absolutely destroyed as I would if I said, oh, you know what, I can just put this inside my carry on this. I don't have to. Oh no. Oh no.

Andy Ihnatko [00:47:20]:
This is going to get this, this bought, this bottle, this, this, this, this beautiful ceramic duck is going to be absolutely destroyed because I did not plan for this to go through baggage.

Leo Laporte [00:47:29]:
So air tags have been kind of on, on sale over this holiday weekend. Should people get them or should they wait for the Air Tag 2, it's.

Alex Lindsay [00:47:38]:
Only going to be a couple dollars. I'd wait to see if there's an air tag too.

Jason Snell [00:47:41]:
I mean, unless they, unless you gotta have them. You should wait.

Alex Lindsay [00:47:44]:
And I'm hoping to get better range. I mean, one of the problems is AirTag is kind of like, I don't. There's two things that bother me is, number one is that it's like you're keep moving around, I don't see anything. And then. And you have to get within 20ft of it before it really starts to. Or 15ft to get before it starts giving you some direction. It feels like with all the other devices it should be able to have a better idea of where you are.

Jason Snell [00:48:07]:
Same story as AirPods, right? I think like, better range is like a huge additional feature.

Alex Lindsay [00:48:13]:
Yeah. And then I know that Apple doesn't want, I mean, Apple doesn't really give us a lot of tracing, but man, it would be great to have an AirPod tell me where it's been, you know, Like, I know that they're not going to let us do that, but it's just, it's so useful with other trackers that I have that they just give you a whole history of what, you know, where that all went. So I've been thinking about changing my luggage ones that way just because I'm curious. Like I'm just curious to see what happens. But, but I think that. And then the other thing is it knowing that something's above me would be great, you know, like, because it's, it's. I get to a point where it says you're right there, and I realize it's in my bedroom, sits over top of my living room so oftentimes I can find it.

Leo Laporte [00:48:52]:
Oh, yeah, that's hard. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:48:53]:
And also when they're on sale, that's an opportunity to like, even if you don't need one to buy. Like, if you got one on your bike, put like a second one on your bike. Because thieves might just say, oh, great, I found the airtag. It was in the most. It was underneath the seat, just where people usually put them. Unbeknownst to you that you actually had one in the downpipe as well. I've always thought that Apple would never do this, but I would love for them to sell instead of five for $100 or four for a hundred dollars, like four for 25 or five or $25. Like decoy air tags, where they're just like the shell part of it so you can put it someplace that's hidden not very well so that this is in the place in the bag where people are going to be looking for it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:49:35]:
They don't know that. That you actually tore up part of the. Part of the liner, sewed this inside, then sewed it back up. Because I'm. I'm all for people being feeling as though, wow, not only am I a crook, I'm a dumb crook.

Leo Laporte [00:49:48]:
All right, let's take a little break. When we come back, more dumb crook stories. By the way, the guy whose luggage was stolen claimed there was $15,000 worth of clothes at there.

Jason Snell [00:50:02]:
Huh?

Leo Laporte [00:50:02]:
Sure.

Andy Ihnatko [00:50:03]:
And a Degas sketches. Get a Degas sketch.

Alex Lindsay [00:50:06]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:50:07]:
Who's gonna pay for that? Was he insured?

Leo Laporte [00:50:12]:
Well, I'm thinking he was hoping the airline would. Would take care of it. Could. I mean, maybe there could be. If you had what. What could you have that would be in there? A Birkin bag? And.

Andy Ihnatko [00:50:24]:
Well, also, is it. If he's Transporting more than $10,000 dollars, isn't he required to report it somewhere?

Leo Laporte [00:50:31]:
Only if it's cash.

Alex Lindsay [00:50:32]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:50:33]:
Not in value. I. I don't think I've had $15,000 worth of clothes in my life put together.

Alex Lindsay [00:50:40]:
Yeah, I don't think so either. I think if you took everything in my closet, it'd be like there's. There's like a couple suits that would knock it up to a couple thousand.

Jason Snell [00:50:47]:
Couple men's warehouse suits, nice dress shirts.

Alex Lindsay [00:50:50]:
It's like I paid 800, but it was $300. I mean, maybe, you know, like, if.

Jason Snell [00:50:55]:
It's like all the shoes I've ever worn were added in.

Alex Lindsay [00:51:00]:
Shoe person.

Jason Snell [00:51:01]:
I. I'm not a shoe person either, but. But the shoes, like, I mean, shoes are expensive and they wear out, so you have to keep buying. I'm just saying this guy is a real snappy dresser. Sounds like to me. Which means. Which makes the humor of the fact that the guys are wearing his clothes better.

Alex Lindsay [00:51:18]:
Yeah, exactly. These guys were like Armani, you know.

Andy Ihnatko [00:51:21]:
Like, first of all, also, this happened, this happened today, September 2nd, and he was wearing seersucker. That's how you know he was a low life scum.

Jason Snell [00:51:30]:
That's right.

Andy Ihnatko [00:51:31]:
After Labor Day, first thing he does.

Jason Snell [00:51:33]:
I guarantee it, I'm gonna get my clothes back. I guarantee it. With an airtag, you know, I guarantee it. This is George Zimmer, president of the Men's Air.

Alex Lindsay [00:51:46]:
Yeah, I have to say, I, I was, I bought, I bought and men's warehouse suits until about two years after he left. And then after that I was like, I need to find somewhere else.

Leo Laporte [00:51:57]:
He didn't leave. He was, is pushed.

Jason Snell [00:51:59]:
It was kicked out.

Alex Lindsay [00:51:59]:
Yeah, but I'm just saying after that, the whole thing kind of fell apart, you know, like, it was, it was, it was definitely. You didn't think that it would make that much of a difference for a company that big to not have someone paying attention, but it does.

Leo Laporte [00:52:09]:
Oh, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:10]:
Before ebay, most of my nice clothes came from an insurance salvage store in Boston called Building 19. Like, literally like a warehouse flooded. And, and you buy, you buy the, you buy the stuff. It's sopping wet. But they, they, they on the, on the store floor. Floor. It was inside a wading pool so it wouldn't get moldy. You just like get right home and then put it right in the.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:28]:
I'm not, I'm not even joking that. That was one of the sales they did where the sprinklers went off. So they shipped everything like in water, like tuna. And they said, we're going to sell this by the pound. Just wring it out. Put in this plastic bag. We'll give you. As soon as you get home, put it into the dryer, you'll be fine.

Alex Lindsay [00:52:45]:
80% of what I wear is the bargain rack in Eddie Bauer or Banana Republic. Like there's this one, there's always one in the very back. There's like 70% off. And I'm like, yeah, that's where I, I'm going to pick up.

Andy Ihnatko [00:52:55]:
Show me a label.

Alex Lindsay [00:52:56]:
Like 20% is like, my wife wants to go out somewhere nice.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:01]:
Show me a nice label in my wardrobe and I'll show you. So I bought this on ebay, right. And like most of my nice stuff came up on it. I will take that. You'll take the 80% depreciation and I'll buy a 90 shirt for 15.

Alex Lindsay [00:53:11]:
I wonder if the reason that they grabbed the bag I Wonder if he had like a Toomey bag or something like that. That had to have been like. Or a. Yeah, you know, it was high end clothing. But if you're going to put high end clothing, you would assume if you're $15,000 of clothes, you're going to put it in.

Leo Laporte [00:53:24]:
Oh, yeah.

Alex Lindsay [00:53:25]:
Pie.

Leo Laporte [00:53:26]:
Louis luggage was ended up, which is.

Alex Lindsay [00:53:28]:
Another thing that I try to do is make my bag look as beat up and unusable.

Leo Laporte [00:53:32]:
That's right.

Alex Lindsay [00:53:33]:
Possible, actually.

Leo Laporte [00:53:34]:
That's smart. That's actually. That's exactly where he went wrong.

Alex Lindsay [00:53:37]:
Well, and you don't. There's a bunch of things about when you travel a lot in places that you are worried about this happening is number one is you don't get cloth bags for anything that matters. Number two is you don't want anything to be a zipper because you can put a knife in a zipper and just go right around and open the whole thing up. So you want to clamp over again. And so those are the two big things that you'll see. Anybody who travels a lot in like the emerging world will have. There's a one, there's one bag that Samsonite makes. It's like an empty shell that has clips on it.

Alex Lindsay [00:54:04]:
And that's what everybody.

Leo Laporte [00:54:05]:
Huh.

Alex Lindsay [00:54:05]:
Everybody has the same one.

Leo Laporte [00:54:06]:
Learning so much.

Alex Lindsay [00:54:09]:
And then you put trackers in them and everything else. You want them to be as light as possible because you're trying to stay underweight. So there's a whole bunch of those. It was fun in Zimbabwe for a long time. They had these lips on the front of the weight things and you put your thing on and you can put your to up and just lean it up and take at least 3 pounds, 3 to 4 pounds off the. Off the bag.

Andy Ihnatko [00:54:30]:
Jason, can I salute you once again for something you said weeks ago? So this morning I was putting together like stories for like our shared show Doc. I said, oh, God. Well, it's the week before the Big Apple event. There's like nothing to talk about that I remembered you saying, when we have nothing to talk about, that's when the show goes an hour long because we start talking about where we buy our clothes from. And clothes luggage is the best.

Jason Snell [00:54:50]:
That's true. It's as we sit here on the edge of the event horizon of the black hole and time dilates and runs to almost a stop. We're going to give you a whole.

Alex Lindsay [00:54:58]:
Bunch of weird tips that you didn't need.

Jason Snell [00:55:00]:
Yeah. I mean, seriously, people would be like, honey, what are you listening to? And the Answer is going to be, well, it's a bunch of nerds talking about packing their suitcases and clothes they bought. I know. We can chart it, Alex. We can chart it.

Alex Lindsay [00:55:17]:
There was an airtight. There was clothes that were stolen, and then there's just talk about clothes.

Jason Snell [00:55:20]:
And this is what separates us from the amateurs when it comes to podcasting is the amateurs are like, where was I? And the answer is they don't know. We know where we were. We know how far we've come away from the actual topic. We don't care. But we know. But we know airtags anyway. Air tags.

Alex Lindsay [00:55:42]:
Wait for the airtag, too.

Leo Laporte [00:55:44]:
Wait for the air tag.

Alex Lindsay [00:55:45]:
That's our advice.

Leo Laporte [00:55:45]:
Yes, that's the advice. And it may be this week, Alex.

Andy Ihnatko [00:55:48]:
Lindsay grabs controls and brings her in for a safe landing, even though despite crosswinds, despite a couple of failure and warning lights on the dash.

Alex Lindsay [00:55:59]:
Answer AirTag 2.

Leo Laporte [00:56:00]:
We will be covering the Apple event, but we do it in the club Twit Disco.

Alex Lindsay [00:56:07]:
You should have a disco.

Leo Laporte [00:56:08]:
That would be discord.

Alex Lindsay [00:56:11]:
Every new hive, every new. Every new release, you have, like, Leo, you need that.

Leo Laporte [00:56:17]:
All right, we're getting the. It's too bad we left the disco ball.

Jason Snell [00:56:24]:
T. Fun to chat at the twit.

Leo Laporte [00:56:30]:
Anyway, if you want to watch the event, watch it with Micah and me. That will be next Tuesday in the Disco Pacific.

Alex Lindsay [00:56:39]:
In the disco.

Leo Laporte [00:56:39]:
In the disco. And then immediately after Mac break weekly. Michael, stick around. Jason's probably not going to be here. We think he's going to be at the other place under the rainbow.

Jason Snell [00:56:48]:
Not at the disco. Not invited to the disco.

Leo Laporte [00:56:51]:
Disco. Well, you're always invited, but you never. Never.

Jason Snell [00:56:53]:
I just never count.

Alex Lindsay [00:56:54]:
Are you allowed to stream from the. From the. That space?

Leo Laporte [00:56:58]:
Let me make a suggestion that you.

Alex Lindsay [00:57:02]:
Not ask or ask.

Leo Laporte [00:57:03]:
No, I didn't know, having done that once.

Jason Snell [00:57:07]:
People do, like, after the show is over, people do, like FaceTime and stuff like that. I think I did that one time, but it's just really kind of unpleasant because you can't hear anything and they can't hear anything.

Alex Lindsay [00:57:15]:
And it's not.

Leo Laporte [00:57:16]:
There's a famous incident where Becky Worley was representing us at an Apple event. She was streaming the new iPhone and Steve Jobs walked in and she started. She started to interview him in the live stream. I'm sitting here watching this and then asks him, when are you going to open FaceTime? And like, they slapped the phone out of her hand. It was over. But so, yeah, you can do it. I just don't recommend it. I Guess would be my.

Andy Ihnatko [00:57:48]:
It might be the. It might be your last.

Leo Laporte [00:57:50]:
But again, still in Apple jail for how many years has it been? 14 years.

Jason Snell [00:57:54]:
It's a very different scenario. There's so many influencers and stuff that, that there's lots of, lots of video recording and even some live streaming happening. I would say if you'd live streamed when Tim Cook was down in the Panzan area, you would get beaten up. But if you're outside afterward. I've done a podcast. I've done a podcast from sitting outside the Steve Jobs Theater. It's no.

Alex Lindsay [00:58:15]:
I remember the moment, though. I was watching that. I was in that show where Leo was broadcasting from his laptop. He had turned it around and Skype was on and everything else. And I, I knew the moment. Leo would never be back. I mean, literally, Steve looked at me, Steve looked at him, and there was like this stink eye that Steve had. Like, just for a moment.

Alex Lindsay [00:58:35]:
It was like this weird little. You saw this little flicker in Steve's face and I was like, oh, Leo screwed.

Leo Laporte [00:58:39]:
It's actually captured on, it's captured on the video.

Andy Ihnatko [00:58:42]:
It was like, it was like. But I was sitting here like a moron. Alex had like the still store of the Chiron ready to go like a half a second later. Arrow.

Leo Laporte [00:58:53]:
That was someone who's received an iPad announcement.

Alex Lindsay [00:58:55]:
Someone who's received that stink guy and spent a lot of time in the, in the, in the. I'm still in jail in the penalty box. I was like, I've seen that before. I know what, I know what that means.

Leo Laporte [00:59:06]:
I really don't mind.

Jason Snell [00:59:07]:
I think what I've heard is that this year especially, Apple is trying to get more influencers, obviously, and iPhone events, especially for influencers. And it does kind of make sense, right? Because influencers are going to say, hey, everybody, here's the new iPhone.

Leo Laporte [00:59:25]:
Wow.

Jason Snell [00:59:26]:
And they're going to really say, to be there. And thousands. Yeah. And even people with not particularly huge audiences. But I mean, what they do give is a largely uncritical reflection of whatever gets announced. And, and let's make no mistake, Apple is marketing. This is a marketing event. It's a PR event.

Jason Snell [00:59:45]:
The journalists being there is, is not. I mean, like, there's a percent of efficiency that they get out of that coverage, whereas with an influencer, you might get a much higher amount of control over it because they're going to repeat your, your points instead of questioning your points as a journalist might. And like, again, they're not entitled or they're not, they're not I'm not entitled to be there and they're, they're not entitled to invite me. They should do what they think is the best mix for, for their marketing. And I would argue that having some degree of people there who are going to not just sort of pass through the marketing reaches an audience that is not interested in pass through marketing. But if I were them, would I want some influencers there who are very popular and are going to just say exciting things about the cool new iPhone? Yes, I would. And that, Leo, that is why you didn't get invited.

Leo Laporte [01:00:41]:
Oh, it's, this is always, I mean.

Andy Ihnatko [01:00:43]:
I was, I was thinking about this the other day, that this is we, we who fancy ourselves members of a legitimate press, you know, put halos above our heads as legitimate journalists. I will definitely do that. I put that, I put that halo above my head myself, I admit that. But like we are those of us who've been covering Apple long enough to have preceded social media and influencers. They were doing the exact same thing with us in the sense that the only way to get a message to the consumers, the people who are going to buy things, is to go get through people who have, have like TV exposure, who have newspaper columns, who have magazine columns. And the way that they would present would be tailored to that. Because if you are working for a newspaper, if you're working for a magazine, if you're working for, you have editors who will scope you out and say, okay, no, you can't take this free trip to San Francisco. No, you have to make sure that you have that.

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:35]:
Why are you talking about. This is basically marketing copy. So as a result, when Apple talked to these people, that is us, they have to like have an engineer on board to answer the technical questions that were definitely going to come up. Now the conduit towards the consumer is the influencers. And now they're, the way that they present these things has changed to take advantage of the fact that no, you're not going through an editorial board, no, you're not going through, not that these people are unethical, but you don't understand what an obstacle, so to speak, it is to have an oversight, ethical oversight and legal oversight over how you report on stuff. And so I think that they're doing the same thing they used to do 20 years ago ago. It's just that we, if we find that as a surprise, it might be that we just simply haven't thought about it in an abstract fashion before.

Jason Snell [01:02:22]:
We've moved from being the ones that they bring in. You Know, like I was with covering for Macworld, right? I was, I was for the technical focused hardcore audience in a way that inviting the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal wasn't. And so in some ways as we especially were website and blog and things like that, we were the outsiders. And, and now we are not so much that. And that's fine. Also the other factor is scale. The iPhone is so huge that what they really, they're reaching a broad, the broadest of broad audiences and there's much less, not that there isn't, but there's much less appetite, especially as a percentage of the interested audience in a very technical, you know, question about the tetraprism, question about the new processor versus Whoa, look at the cool colors. Like.

Jason Snell [01:03:10]:
And again, so it comes back. Like I, I've said this before. A senior PR person at Apple once told me my job is sales. And like I appreciate that she was that forthcoming about it. Like that is that my job is sales. And, and, and I mean we had been, we had been dealing with each other for so long at that point that it was like she was cool with it and I was cool with it. But like we understood each other. But the point is that's what they're doing.

Jason Snell [01:03:32]:
And so, so you just kind of have to understand every move they make. There are product launches, branches where the presence of the technical press is more important than the iPhone event, right? Like they, they will be, they will be your best friend. When they're talking about Pro Mac like a, like a MacBook Pro, where they, they, they want to boast about the prowess of Apple Silicon, it helps to have technical people there to say yes, look how impressed like the, the influencers can't be as impressed by Apple Silicon as the tech people can. And that's good for Apple's pr. So it's just how you view, view it, you know, from, from event to event, I'll point out like I have great access to the iPhone 16e. When that came out, they were like Jason, we really. Or when they did that yellow phone in the spring that one year and they're like Jason, we want to sell you a yellow phone. Which I did the live stream where I compared it to other yellow objects.

Jason Snell [01:04:23]:
One of my favorite videos I've ever made because that's like a low attention time. And they're like, please somebody write about this product. The iPhone is the absolute, the new main iPhone event is the opposite of that. It is, is the broadest possible. And so, so yeah, it's not I mean, that, that's, that's why they're trying to reach different. And it's worldwide in a way that the interest is so worldwide that that's why you have these people from all over the world coming to do TV and videos and stuff from. And you see them in Cupertino in September. It's just, that's what it is.

Jason Snell [01:04:55]:
It's a huge deal and it's Apple's biggest event of the year in that way. And so that's why they do it.

Alex Lindsay [01:05:01]:
The way they do. Arguably one of tech's biggest events of the year. I mean, the. If it.

Jason Snell [01:05:05]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [01:05:05]:
If it was on any given night, on the weekday, it would rank number one. Like, you know, if it was. If it was like on broadcast, the. The ratings would be number one, like by a lot, by a long shot.

Leo Laporte [01:05:15]:
Really? You think so? Yeah, the numbers are broad, general. Like millions of people would want to see it.

Jason Snell [01:05:21]:
They should put that on something. Lots of people, they do abc, right? Because they're, they're buddies with abc.

Alex Lindsay [01:05:29]:
But. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:05:29]:
Oh, yes.

Alex Lindsay [01:05:29]:
Yeah. Good, good. A good night. You know, on an average thing that isn't special, I think is like the 8 to 12 million.

Leo Laporte [01:05:35]:
And they didn't Disney spin ABC. Aren't they spinning all this stuff off?

Jason Snell [01:05:39]:
No, Disney hasn't done that yet. Not yet, maybe, but someday soon they find value. They find value in it. You know, I think that's a totally other conversation, but I think they find some value in it, especially with the sports from ESPN on broadcast. But.

Alex Lindsay [01:05:52]:
Yeah, but I think the reach of the YouTubers and a lot of the creators now is so much larger than broadcast for the target audience, for that audience. For the audience that's going to buy these. I think it makes way more of a difference.

Leo Laporte [01:06:05]:
Marquez, Brownlee, I am sure, carries more weight than Oprah Winfrey.

Jason Snell [01:06:10]:
Yeah, yeah. Marquez is a. Yeah. But I think what's interesting is they are also placing some bets on some smaller influencers that are.

Leo Laporte [01:06:18]:
That's smart.

Jason Snell [01:06:18]:
They'll be grateful.

Leo Laporte [01:06:19]:
They'll be more grateful because they'll get.

Jason Snell [01:06:21]:
A lot of benefit out of that in some interesting ways. And I think that that's fine.

Leo Laporte [01:06:26]:
And, you know, I don't think I'm still on any list. I think Apple just forgot I exist. I'm not sure which is worse.

Alex Lindsay [01:06:34]:
Well, and I think the big advantage of influencers is the fact that they're all going to be interested in something different. So the big press just kind of pays attention to it. It's kind of a clumsy blunt object that is kind of covering the new big thing. And instead you have all these little influencers and some are really interested in the camera, some are interested in the chip, some of them are interested in the screen and so you get lots of different coverage that all kind of goes out there.

Leo Laporte [01:06:58]:
More to come as we stall. Kind of like Walter Cronkite at a Gemini launch. Just just waiting for something to happen. It'll be a week. We will cover it live and that'll push MacBreak Weekly back a little bit, but it'll just be one continuous thing basically. Starting at 10am Pacific next Tuesday, this episode of MacBreak Weekly brought to you by our good friends at Melissa, the Trusted Data Quality Expert. They've been doing it since 1985, longer than we have Melissa's latest milestone they don't sit on their rest on their laurels. This is what I like about them.

Leo Laporte [01:07:34]:
Their Latest milestone features a 4 full SSIS product stack that's now officially supported on Azure Data Factory, both web Service and on Prem. SSIS components can be executed in the cloud, empowering you to modernize your ETL workflows without disrupting your existing development processes. With this release, you can continue designing SSIS packages in Visual Studio exactly as before and then deploy and run them within ADF's SSIS integration run time. The IR this hybrid approach delivers minimal to zero changes to your existing SSIS packages or development workflow. Azure Hosted Execution for enhanced scalability you get centralized management and reduced infrastructure overhead, seamless support and simplified infrastructure. No need to maintain on prem SSIS servers. That's nice. Melissa's Data Enrichment Services support every industry by using Melissa as part of their data management strategy organization well they just build a more comprehensive, accurate view of their business processes.

Leo Laporte [01:08:41]:
I'll give you an example. The University of Washington was facing a major loss of critical data, costly postage waste, you know, email stuff to non existent addresses. That's just money down the tubes and missed fundraising opportunities. That's when the Associate Director IM of Strategic Technology Initiatives for the University of Washington took a look at Melissa. Melissa they said quote we had so much data to contend with and knew it was important to bring in an expert. We were an early adopter and used nearly all the components in Melissa's Data quality suite. We appreciate the developer support and the integration with our own tools and workflow. We see Melissa as a trusted vendor that provides good value and superior quality.

Leo Laporte [01:09:24]:
And of course it's always good to know your data is safe, compliant and secure. With Melissa, Melissa Solutions and services our GDPR and CCPA compliant. They're ISO 27001 certified. They meet SOC2 and HIPAA High trust standards. You shouldn't use anything that doesn't support these standards for information security and management. That's why you'll be glad to know Melissa does get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twit. That's melissa.com/twit. Thank you Melissa for supporting MacBreak Weekly. News from TSMC. Apple has booked fully half of their 2 nanometer chip capacity when the production hits full speed.

Leo Laporte [01:10:14]:
This is according to a DigiTimes. It looks like they will hit that target fourth quarter of this year. That's soon. Just a month or so mass producing 2 nanometer process chips in their Taiwan factories and expect that availability will be fully used up by the end of next year. Half of it going to Apple, the other half being split between AMD, Broadcom, Intel MediaTek and Qualcomm. Wow. You know, when you're this big, you know, it's pretty amazing. Qualcomm is the second biggest client, but Apple's got half of it.

Leo Laporte [01:10:54]:
I don't know what chips we're going to see in that 2 nanometer process. Ming Chi Kuo says he thinks 2026 is iPhone. Not next year's but the year after the 10th. Ann or sorry, 20th anniversary. No, no, that won't be the 20th anniversary, will it? That's the following year. So the iPhone from. Not the folding phone of next year. The iPhone for 2026 will probably have a 2 nanometer process.

Jason Snell [01:11:20]:
Process.

Leo Laporte [01:11:22]:
What does it mean? First of all, it's not really 2 nanometer. That's just kind of marketing terms. It hasn't been. Those terms haven't meant anything for some time in chip production. But it does mean generally a cooler, faster chip, more transistors on the same size die. Nothing to say guys about that.

Jason Snell [01:11:44]:
I mean I'll point out for those who are worried that we're going to run out of nanometers that the next step is angstroms. They actually just go down to angst.

Alex Lindsay [01:11:52]:
Angstroms, 900 angstroms. We're now resetting.

Jason Snell [01:11:56]:
Yeah, so that'll happen at some point. But you're right, it is kind of marketing. Like they, they did the, like Apple's on the third, the second three nanometer process which is like two and a half nanometer. I mean there is that to a degree, but they want to get the impression like they're continuing to die, shrink and there are benefits to that. Which there are like, it keeps moving forward.

Leo Laporte [01:12:16]:
It's kind of said 2 nanometer equivalent, which is 20 angstroms, by the way. But it used to be related to the gate length or the gate pitch of the transistor. It doesn't have anything to do with any physical element. It hasn't for a few years now. But it gives you an idea roughly of what we're talking.

Alex Lindsay [01:12:42]:
I mean, you do get to a point. We're on our way, way towards the point where we're talking about molecules. So there's only. Oh, yeah, I think it's like 10 or 20 molecules per nanometer or whatever. So we're getting down to a point.

Leo Laporte [01:12:54]:
They'd call it teensy weensy, but I think they feel like that would be unified.

Alex Lindsay [01:12:58]:
Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte [01:13:02]:
Hey, it's about time. France has forced Apple to patch the iPhone 12 because of the amount of RF it emerges. Do you have an iPhone 12? Anybody? I guess there are probably people.

Alex Lindsay [01:13:16]:
My kids have iPhone 12s. Yeah, my kids have 12.

Andy Ihnatko [01:13:18]:
Well, but it makes sense. I mean, this rule did guideline and finding did come a few years ago, but it took them that long to lose every last route of appeal of their argument that this is going to stifle innovation, that this is going to make the phone unsafe for its users, and was basically unfair.

Leo Laporte [01:13:36]:
So it's Apple's contention, and I think people generally agree, agree that the testing methodology the EEC used was flawed. It's not standard anymore. In September 2023, France's radiation watchdog, the Agence national des Fragrance, revealed the results of RF's tests for the iPhone 12. They said at the time the model exceeded the country's SAR for RF exposure, their specific absorption rate. I remember going to the FCC, oh, maybe it was 20 years ago, and looking at how the FCC tested SAR and they had a. Was lying down, but it was essentially a mannequin that was hollow, filled with a gel that was to simulate the density and RF transmission capability of the human body. And then they had a machine that would move the phone around all around the perimeter of that shell. And I guess there was something inside it radiating out.

Leo Laporte [01:14:34]:
And they were testing, or I don't know, maybe there's something on the other side. And they were testing how much RF got through this. It actually isn't the same process that France uses, the Watchdog uses. So the World Health Organization has said, and we should. Bears repeating. There is no convincing scientific evidence, evidence that the RF coming from these devices can cause adverse health effects. It's Non ionizing radiation. However, Apple's got to do something about it.

Leo Laporte [01:15:12]:
What the patch will be, I don't know. Maybe they'll turn the radio down, I guess turn down the power.

Andy Ihnatko [01:15:18]:
Someone's got to figure out who's got access to the Dropbox they were using back then for the code for the iPhone.

Leo Laporte [01:15:26]:
Apple said it doesn't agree with the approach to the test, but it wants to respect the decision of the European Commission. Apple Insider points out that your house wiring, in fact the knob and tube wiring, old fashioned wiring commonly found in homes in France, exposes users to more RF on a continuous basis than that that France discovered momentarily from the iPhone 12. So does a toaster when it's in use.

Alex Lindsay [01:15:49]:
Well the other thing is what kind of reception was it getting? Because the RF is completely different if it's in a contested environment. So if the phone can't see very much, you'll notice because your phone suddenly your battery isn't working very well. It's because your radio just turned way up. And where you really see that is on a airplane. I was talking to a Boeing engineer who happened to be sitting next to me on one of my flights and I said, does it really matter if we turn off our phones? Does that really affect the controls? He goes, no. He goes, but if you ever worried about. He's the number reason, number one reason to turn your phone off when you fly is because it burns your battery right out. Like a five hour flight will knock your battery out because the radio is on.

Leo Laporte [01:16:29]:
Yeah. And it's keeping. The towers are going by so fast.

Andy Ihnatko [01:16:33]:
Trying to find, scanning.

Alex Lindsay [01:16:35]:
Right, exactly. And it can't find anything. So. So it's at full blast. He goes, if you have any concerns about radiation related to phones, then the plane, everyone, you want everyone to turn the phones off because all the phones are running at their radios are all running at 100%. Anything that's on, anything that's not in flight mode, it goes. So you're, so you're just. If you're worried about microwaves, the plane with people that haven't gone into airplane mode is probably the most radiation you could possibly get.

Alex Lindsay [01:17:01]:
You know.

Leo Laporte [01:17:01]:
Well but you're also getting hit by cosmic particles actually pretty just being bombarded.

Alex Lindsay [01:17:05]:
The question is whether we should fly at all. I mean mostly, should we just go underground and walk?

Leo Laporte [01:17:09]:
You are.

Jason Snell [01:17:10]:
Did you know that trillions of neutrinos are passing through your body every second?

Leo Laporte [01:17:16]:
Every once in a while I mention this and say that this is one of the primary causes of of losing bits in RAM on your hard drive. And people mock me, but, you know, you can mock me all you want.

Jason Snell [01:17:26]:
Cosmic rays.

Leo Laporte [01:17:28]:
Cosmic rays.

Jason Snell [01:17:30]:
There's lots of bananas. That happens. That's right. Bananas are emitting radiation because of the potassium in them. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [01:17:36]:
Oh, it's true.

Jason Snell [01:17:37]:
That's true. Not to be. I mean, look, there are issues, but I think that we also live in a world where there are people getting really upset about things that are not right. Issues.

Leo Laporte [01:17:46]:
Right. Okay, let's see what else. Oh, I'm so excited about this. Apparently Apple Insider has the same issues we have. Round about this time of the year, Apple may be readying, maybe readying the largest case redesign yet for the iPhone 7 cases. Oh, boy.

Jason Snell [01:18:08]:
It's the earliest thing we ever hear about an iPhone design and the last thing we hear about iPhone design on cases.

Leo Laporte [01:18:15]:
It's got a big camera bump in the, in the renders. Right?

Jason Snell [01:18:19]:
The rumored render, the little camera bar at the top so that it'll. It'll be. It's not quite a wedge shape, but it'll be like all the way across. So it won't necessarily jiggle so much when you lay down.

Leo Laporte [01:18:29]:
Do we know anything about this so called tech woven case that they're replacing? The fine woven ones?

Jason Snell [01:18:33]:
I read a story about it. Like it's another synthetic material that is woven that they want to create kind of like a, a fabric like feel, but have it be more rugged than. Because the fine woven, like it got battered and it would get shiny with use and it ended up just not wearing well and not being a very nice material that they were trying to use to replace leather. Also, I think it really just wasn't as good as leather and was being directly compared to leather. But it's an important upsell at the Apple store. Let's just be honest here. Apple does cases because they will. They can sell you a case when they sell you an iPhone and make more profit that way.

Jason Snell [01:19:11]:
And it's really not nice to have something above the silicone case that provides a little premium feel beyond silicone. And so tech woven is supposedly a new formulation that according to the reports that Apple has found to be better in their testing at things like wear and that it will therefore create. You know, it gives them another opportunity to sell these products, you know, wallets and cases and things like that in something other than silicone.

Leo Laporte [01:19:38]:
This is always a dangerous period for me when I get a new iPhone. I don't think I will this year. Because I like you, Alex. I use the peak Design cases because they have this little magnetic lock and they have all sorts of access. And what's nice is that if you get the new case, all the old accessories continue to work.

Alex Lindsay [01:19:57]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:19:57]:
So I'll be able to use the tripods and the bicycle mount and the car mount and all that stuff. But it does. But Peak design won't have a case for a while.

Alex Lindsay [01:20:06]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:20:07]:
You have to go around naked.

Alex Lindsay [01:20:08]:
For me, it's, it's, it's Peak or Otterbox. Those are the two designer Otterbox or the two. My family, I have different members of the family. We learned some people have to have an Otterbox.

Leo Laporte [01:20:17]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [01:20:18]:
My wife was using my, my older phone with the Peak design and the problem was we kept on picking up the wrong phone because they looked identical.

Leo Laporte [01:20:23]:
Oh yeah, that's important.

Alex Lindsay [01:20:24]:
So the, so the, so she has an Otterbox there and my, my, my daughter drops her phone a lot. So. So she hasn't. She has an Otterbox as well. But, but that with a, with a screen protector is kind of like, you know, bulletproof it. You. What's great is you get to where you're going to trade it in or you're going to give it to somebody else and it's still in mint condition. You know, it's, it's nice to not have it all beat up.

Leo Laporte [01:20:47]:
Here's Majin Boo's picture of the cross strap case. I'm a strap. Crossbody strap. This is disappointing. I thought it was going to be like a shoulder holster.

Alex Lindsay [01:21:01]:
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:02]:
I was trying to. I was trying to.

Leo Laporte [01:21:03]:
It's a speak. This looks like a hand strap kind of.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:06]:
Yeah, I was trying to. So you sling it over your. Over a shoulder or over something.

Alex Lindsay [01:21:11]:
It.

Leo Laporte [01:21:12]:
I want it to be like a messenger bag kind of thing.

Jason Snell [01:21:16]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:17]:
Also I, it just looks like something that could easily be stolen.

Leo Laporte [01:21:24]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:25]:
If it's magnetic, particularly it's like, okay.

Leo Laporte [01:21:28]:
Just take it, Take it, baby.

Alex Lindsay [01:21:30]:
Anyway, with the stuff that's built into the phone, I, you know, it depends on how you, how you manage it. But it.

Leo Laporte [01:21:36]:
Well, only stupid people steal iPhones. But there are stupid people in the world, I'm sad to say, and many of them have just taken to a life of crime, finding it difficult to make a living otherwise.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:49]:
Well, again, realize that Apple made it a lot, made it really, really hard for people to steal a phone and then sell it on Facebook, Marketplace or ebay as a working thing. But the people who steal these things know that they, they eventually that will be bundled together with 50 stolen phones and sent to China and be parted out. So there's money in it.

Leo Laporte [01:22:09]:
Right. Although even now you can't use the parts because they're locked, which is. I mean, Apple's really gone the extra mile to make these things not locked.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:16]:
Some of these factories have ways.

Leo Laporte [01:22:18]:
They have ways. One of them is to text you a message saying, I have your phone and all the information on it. And if you don't remove it from Find my. I'm going to release it to the public. Do not fall for that. I love this. I should make it a pick of the week. But I.

Leo Laporte [01:22:36]:
I'm desperate for stories, so I'm going to do it here. The Ada.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:41]:
Before. Before. There. There is a Vision Pro News that from Ming Chi.

Leo Laporte [01:22:44]:
Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:46]:
It's just this just in.

Leo Laporte [01:22:50]:
It's time for the Vision Pro segment.

Jason Snell [01:22:53]:
It's time to talk about Vision Pro news.

Leo Laporte [01:22:56]:
Breaking news. Andy Natko in the Breaking news bureau.

Andy Ihnatko [01:23:02]:
Yes. Noted analyst Ming Shi Kuo reported in his newsletter today as part of it, not as a breaking story, but as a bunch of roundups, updates to his ideas and thoughts about the Vision Pro Air. He's saying the Vision Air is going to be half the weight of the current model, about half the price price, and will be coming out in 2027.

Leo Laporte [01:23:25]:
Well, that's not exactly breaking, is it?

Alex Lindsay [01:23:28]:
Well, I mean, it's new that we know it's not breaking.

Andy Ihnatko [01:23:34]:
It's like when we have that language, language duolingo app, we can't keep. We can't break our streak of being able to report on Vision Pro News. And also, what else are we going to be talking about today?

Jason Snell [01:23:45]:
Luggage. Good. Yeah, I know. Clothing. This is good. Like, I remember when Mark Gurman reported about this and it was at once good news and also sort of like the most obvious thing you could probably. He was like, Apple is working on one that will be cheaper and lighter. It's like.

Jason Snell [01:24:02]:
Yeah, I mean, like. Yeah, because I think Vision Pro has, you know, the problems with the Vision Pro are there's not quite enough stuff to do on it, which is partially because nobody has bought it, which is, you know, it is what it is. But like one of the reasons nobody has bought it is it costs too much money. Money. And it's also too heavy when you put it on. And so 40% lighter. And I would argue, more importantly, less than half the price.

Leo Laporte [01:24:31]:
That's.

Jason Snell [01:24:33]:
Yeah. I mean, again, less than half the price is still a lot of money. But that's the, the. If this thing is Ever going to lead to a product that is interesting, you got to cut the price and.

Alex Lindsay [01:24:44]:
You got to get a lighter.

Andy Ihnatko [01:24:45]:
I mean, it's two years. It's two years in advance. He's actually, he says more than 50% cheaper than the blog post open in front of me. Also he's saying Vision Air shipments are anticipated to reach 1 million units in 2027.

Leo Laporte [01:24:56]:
Okay, well, we know they sold half a million, right? Of the first 400,000.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:02]:
Below 400,000, they're saying okay. Or he says versus existing models with shipments below 400,000 units. But like that was limited by their.

Leo Laporte [01:25:10]:
How many they can make the screens.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:11]:
Well, yeah, exactly. Sony displays, they couldn't. They can't get as many of them. And they said that from the outset that there's going to be a limit to low hundred thousands of how much we can physically make. But that'll be kind of a test in a couple of years that. Okay, what if we make it competitive with headsets from Samsung and headsets from Meta? At least the high end of those things. Are you still completely put off by this? I mean, 2027, either the category I think is going to be completely dead in favor of something that's more wearable and lighter and just simply smart lenses, or it's going to be okay. Yes, you removed the roadblock.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:45]:
And, and also Apple, can you take two years to figure out how to make this justify its expense a little bit more as a productivity device, as a utility device, as a capture device, who knows? Two years, a long time.

Jason Snell [01:25:57]:
Yeah, yeah, but it's, I mean, this is a direction they have to go if they have hope of this.

Andy Ihnatko [01:26:01]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:26:01]:
Like, I still firmly believe, like they know the dream is AR glasses that do all this stuff and that they'll have an operating system capable of running on it. And it sounds like they are going to approach it from both directions, which I think is also the right thing to do. Do. Whether this is its own category, I mean, Alex and I have talked a lot about how great it is to like watch movies on it and stuff like that. I think that there's probably something here, but it's not a certainty. It's still really just a research product. But, you know, if it's going to be anything, one of the things you need is to make it have it in more hands because that will also spur developers and content creators to make more content for it. And I mean, it's a good sign.

Jason Snell [01:26:40]:
I used my, My Quest three for the first time in a little while this weekend. And, you know, it's fun. But I was reminded of all the ways that the Vision Pro is so much better than the Quest 3. The Quest 3 is also cheap. I mean, this is the thing is it's a tough category. Maybe in a couple of years it will be the case where we will have that better experience for 1500 bucks instead of three grand. That would be a good start. A good start, right? Not great, but a good.

Alex Lindsay [01:27:09]:
Yeah. And I guess I still feel like when I put on my Meta Quest, it's still much more of a specific thing I'm going to do. And when I put on my Vision Pro, it tends to be kind of like I'm hanging out, like doing a bunch of things and checking some stuff out. And there's interesting, there's actually, I find a lot of the apps that are available on the Vision Pro to be more interesting. As far as some of the stuff that they, you know, whether it's wireframing things or interacting with things, I find that it's a little bit more. More addressable. I do think the things like the camera, which I hopefully will have back in about a week to do more testing, the immersive camera, I think really makes a huge difference in people being able to generate that content. And I think that we're at the very beginning of that.

Alex Lindsay [01:27:51]:
But I do, you know, if they're able to maintain the video quality and the visual quality on something that's lighter and cheaper, I think that's going to make a huge difference. I don't think that they can go back with backwards, you know, in that area, but I think that they can find ways to do again with a slightly faster chip being able to process it. I do think that the next version of the big, the bigger version of the Vision Pro that we have right now will probably move the frame rate up a little bit and move the resolution up a little bit is my guess, you know, and that's going to, again, set this pretty high level. And you can see the difference. I now have the opportunity to see video in a miniquest that I actually shot and watching the difference between what it looks like on the Meta Quest and on the Apple Vision Pro, there's not the same. So you're definitely. It definitely costs a lot less, but it's also, it is a lot less than what the Vision Pro provides. And so I think that that's the challenge is how do you maintain that differentiating.

Alex Lindsay [01:28:50]:
Now, I've heard people put on the Meta Quests, you know, Meta's new headset that's $10,000 a unit or whatever. And it's so heavy you have to hold it up to your eyes. So weight is not a. So I haven't gotten to see it myself, but I've heard it's pretty heavy device to put on and it sounds like it's spectacular, like it is a spectacular piece of hardware. So it'll be interesting to see where Meta gets to. From a. From a price and weight perspective. Right now, it's way too expensive and way too heavy.

Leo Laporte [01:29:21]:
They're going to announce this at Meta Connect next Wednesday, right? This is at least the rumor.

Alex Lindsay [01:29:25]:
Yeah. I don't know what they're going to announce, but yeah, I've heard that it's. I think they're definitely going to stream.

Leo Laporte [01:29:28]:
That right after Intelligent Machines. So that's another thing you can watch at the Club Twit Disco.

Alex Lindsay [01:29:34]:
Yeah. And so it'll be interesting and it's also, it'll be interesting to see, you know, where we go with immersive versus where we go with spatial. I think there's going to be a, you know, there'll be a lot of spatial stuff that Meta's doing as well as immersive, more immersive video. So it'll be interesting to see what Kinect has and where they're going as well.

Leo Laporte [01:29:54]:
I don't want to give short shrift to the Vision Pro segment, so is there anything else to talk about? New beautiful visual backgrounds, new wonderful content from the Ursa cameras?

Jason Snell [01:30:10]:
I would say that there's new betas out today and I haven't had a chance to check it out on Edition Pro. I think one of the interesting things is that that Jupyter environment is still not shipped in a beta. I wonder what's going on with that. But yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Leo Laporte [01:30:26]:
Those are developer betas, right?

Jason Snell [01:30:29]:
Yeah. There's no public beta for Vision OS.

Andy Ihnatko [01:30:31]:
One week away at all. That's a little surprising that it's just one week before general release. So I wonder what's in that update. It's fresh, so we don't know yet.

Leo Laporte [01:30:41]:
Everything got updated, right?

Jason Snell [01:30:44]:
Yeah, I think so. Makes me think that maybe Jupyter is going to be a 0.1 release for Vision Pro. And that's fine, whatever. It's okay. I would say again, if you've got a Vision Pro and you're not on the developer beta, what are you doing? Because it is a developer platform of it is that you're on the cutting edge, so you should just get on it. Get on that edge right now.

Leo Laporte [01:31:05]:
And that's. I tried your Vision Pro segment.

Alex Lindsay [01:31:08]:
Now you see, now you know, we're.

Leo Laporte [01:31:11]:
Done talking the Vision Pro. We need to disappear. Disco version of this song for the club to a disco.

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:18]:
See, if nothing else, we get to keep our liquor license. So long as we keep doing the Vision Pro segment. If you want to stop doing those smokers every Thursday night, hey, let's stop doing this, but fast.

Leo Laporte [01:31:31]:
VLM web gpu, which Apple released their model for, multimodal model optimized for in browser inference, released a few months ago, is now up on Hugging Spaces Foundation. In fact, I'm going to turn it on right now. Oh, web GPU not available in this browser. Oh, I have to use Safari. Of course, that's silly of me, but you can run this in the browser and what it'll do. Anybody know? Caption your videos.

Andy Ihnatko [01:31:58]:
Yeah, caption your videos. Like what's the emotions? Basically the usual stuff from like two years ago where create live captions, identify people, what are their expressions, that sort of. Sort of stuff.

Leo Laporte [01:32:09]:
Yeah, but have you played with it?

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:11]:
No, no, I don't. It's, it's all. It's on hugging face. I haven't tried it yet.

Jason Snell [01:32:14]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:14]:
And I'm also barely a hugging face user, so I'm probably not qualified to check it out.

Leo Laporte [01:32:19]:
I guess if I open Safari, I could probably get it going here. Let's see. Lightning fast captioning model right from your browser. All right. Allow Hugging Face to use my camera. Oh, it says it's not available in this browser either. Well, okay, whose browser is it? Probably Chrome, right? No, it's Apple. It should be Safari.

Jason Snell [01:32:48]:
You need to try.

Andy Ihnatko [01:32:52]:
Start at the bottom and then work your way up. You'll hit it eventually.

Leo Laporte [01:32:55]:
One of these days. One of these days, I swear. Apple has released a new AI chatbot to help retail employees sell iph. This seems like a bad idea. This is from a 9 to 5 Mac.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:12]:
Yeah, it's a new feature in there in the existing employee app that basically not for now, the employees to ask hey, like if customer comes in like next week or the week after saying hey, I'm using T Mobile, can I want to buy the new air? Can I use this on an easy sim or will I have to like get a new account and the chatbot will tell it. Yeah, exactly. It's basically live training, so to speak, through the AI.

Leo Laporte [01:33:39]:
Yeah, I can't see.

Andy Ihnatko [01:33:40]:
I mean this is not the first. They've also. They also have a chatbot with I think it was. They also have a chatbot that does some like online stuff with that's customer facing but it's not the same same sort of thing. I wonder if they're not given that this is a. I wonder if this isn't an opportunity for them to dog food some of their own techno, their own AI technology by making it only available to their own employees to get feedback on how it's used to get training data on interactions with its own employees. And I don't think there's been any reports on exactly what model it's using. For all we know, it's not even using the Apple AI model.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:17]:
But I'm keen to see exactly what Apple's doing to get as much experience into these Apple intelligence models as they possibly can before they try to ship anything with it.

Leo Laporte [01:34:27]:
Yeah, you're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Ihnatko is with us. Jason Snell from Six Colors.com and many podcasts. Of course. He's also a regular at Mac World magazine. Is it, can I say magazine or is it just Mac World?

Jason Snell [01:34:42]:
There is still a digital edition in Apple News plus and to subscribers. So I guess magazine, I guess it's a brand.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:50]:
Some of them we call new collections of music from, from an artist, an album. Even though the idea of. Of it being shipped on a section of 78 inside sleeves like a photo album stopped like in 1942.

Alex Lindsay [01:35:02]:
We're okay.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:03]:
Well, it's urban.

Leo Laporte [01:35:03]:
We can stop dialing the phone. Am I correct on that? I think we can stop saying that.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:08]:
Can we stop filming things on phones too or taping things on phones?

Jason Snell [01:35:11]:
Taping is the best one.

Alex Lindsay [01:35:12]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:35:14]:
Also Alex Lindsey is here. We're so glad you are as well. If you're not a member of Club TWiT, I want to encourage you to consider joining. It makes a big difference to us. Keeps our bottom line good. With 25% of our operating costs now are supported by Club TWiT members. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Leo Laporte [01:35:29]:
That makes a huge difference. It gives us the opportunity to do more things like stream these special events into the Club Twit disco. You get access to the disco, which is a great hang. It's actually Discord, but we'll call it a disco. You also get special shows we don't put out anywhere else and ad free versions of all the others. So twit.tv/clubtwit if you're interested. We would love to have you and thank you in advance.

Alex Lindsay [01:35:52]:
I think someone should build a Discord competitor and just call it disco, disco, disco.

Leo Laporte [01:35:59]:
Go cat, go disco.

Alex Lindsay [01:36:01]:
Just go to disco.

Leo Laporte [01:36:02]:
Just go to the disco.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:04]:
What if the musician Cisco were to like buy into this so they could basically create his own competitor and call it D I S Q U O.

Leo Laporte [01:36:13]:
And there you go.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:14]:
It's a natural fit.

Leo Laporte [01:36:15]:
It's perfect.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:16]:
Get some foreign money in it and I think they could do something in that space.

Leo Laporte [01:36:20]:
I know you're excited about that. I certainly am. Apple Music radio stations can now be heard on tunein.

Jason Snell [01:36:29]:
Woohoo.

Leo Laporte [01:36:30]:
It's about time.

Jason Snell [01:36:31]:
Smart.

Alex Lindsay [01:36:32]:
Is it?

Leo Laporte [01:36:34]:
Does anybody listen to Apple's music stations?

Alex Lindsay [01:36:36]:
It's the largest radio station in the world.

Leo Laporte [01:36:39]:
What? No.

Alex Lindsay [01:36:40]:
Most listeners in the world, no.

Leo Laporte [01:36:42]:
Really? 75. Oh no, that's TuneIn. 75 million active users. We're on tune.

Alex Lindsay [01:36:47]:
Tune in just adds to that. I mean it adds that, that leverage. I still think, I mean, I think that Apple could. The problem that Apple has, I mean they have like whatever, it's six, six channels or six things or something like that that they're playing like this. But. Yeah, the. But Apple one, I think is the one that is like the, it has.

Leo Laporte [01:37:04]:
Three more last years to make a total of six.

Alex Lindsay [01:37:07]:
Yeah. And so, but, you know, so this will add a lot, potentially a lot more listeners. They already have a fair, fair number. I do think that there's such an opportunity for someone, whether it's Spotify or Apple Music, to empower people to build their own stations that are using the songs and playing them out and giving the artists the royalties, but allowing people to kind of.

Leo Laporte [01:37:28]:
Isn't that Pandora? Isn't that what Pandora? Yeah, but I think.

Alex Lindsay [01:37:33]:
There'S a contextual piece that I think people would enjoy of someone actually DJing or talking about things or doing interviews, doing things that are outside of music. I think that someone, one of these services is, you know, now I'm saying this as someone who knows a lot of people who own radio stations, knowing that if, if, if either Spotify or Apple did this, we'd be like, you could set the time on how long other radio stations will survive. But, but the idea of being able to have all the other stuff that you have in a radio station and. But then also have the songs themselves be. But the idea is that they're all played out or all ID'd one way or the other so that the artists get the money for.

Leo Laporte [01:38:09]:
Why do people listen to Apple Radio?

Alex Lindsay [01:38:13]:
I think it's because, you know, it's, it's a. I, I don't. I'm saying this, I know a Lot of people. I mean, I know that the numbers are really big. I don't know why someone does that. There's interviews, there's. There's more conversation. Again, these contextual things.

Leo Laporte [01:38:26]:
They do a lot of promotion. They've got artists, takeovers, and.

Alex Lindsay [01:38:29]:
Yeah, so they've got. They've got the traditional radio. I have to admit that for me, I mean, mostly I just. I play. My number one way of using Apple music is I play one song that I play like, and then I let the audit play.

Leo Laporte [01:38:39]:
Pick the rest.

Alex Lindsay [01:38:40]:
You just tell me. I just want more songs like this song. And then I favorite the ones. Or I have a list, a playlist in my Apple music called New to Me. And it's just like, I just save things to it all the time. Like, oh, I like that. I'm going to put that in there for a little while and see if I continue to like it over time, you know, and so. Or I favorite it or whatever.

Alex Lindsay [01:39:00]:
But that's, you know, so I don't really listen to that radio area, but mostly because I don't. The hard part for radio is that you can't just have anybody dj, a radio station. Someone has to have a lot of experience. By the time most of us got to be on a radio station that had any size, we had done hundreds and hundreds of shows. And I think that the hard part is most people get on and want to do something.

Leo Laporte [01:39:21]:
Right. It's not good.

Alex Lindsay [01:39:23]:
It takes longer than you think it'll take it.

Leo Laporte [01:39:25]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [01:39:25]:
To do it. I mean, everybody thinks they can do a backflip until they try.

Leo Laporte [01:39:31]:
All right, well, maybe I'll have to. So there's no. The number one music radio. There's hits. There's country, there's musica uno, which I presume is Spanish language. There's club, and there's chill. But it's all artists I never heard of because I'm not hip. And with it, I guess that's why you would listen.

Leo Laporte [01:39:49]:
Right. Is to discover new stuff. It's for the kids.

Alex Lindsay [01:39:52]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:39:53]:
I'm surprised kids are listening to radio. Be honest with you.

Alex Lindsay [01:39:57]:
I think, again, it's something that you can. You can just turn on and leave on. You don't have to think about it. It's just going to keep playing and someone's curating it for you. And I know that the guys in my warehouse in Pixel Core, our warehouse, the guys listen to all the time. They did. Yeah. But I never got it.

Alex Lindsay [01:40:16]:
I never understood.

Leo Laporte [01:40:17]:
Yeah. And we both worked in radio for years. Just shows You.

Alex Lindsay [01:40:25]:
I think the one by the way, that I listen to the most if I'm listening to radio is Radio Garden. I don't know if people.

Leo Laporte [01:40:30]:
Yeah, I love Radio Garden because you can hear all over the world.

Alex Lindsay [01:40:33]:
Yeah, I like to listen to it there, where I can listen to a station in Zimbabwe or Rwanda or Tanzania or whatever, click a world map, it's like I'm there. You're like listening to it and the commercials and the DJs and everything else is all something I want as part of it. I don't want just Zimbabwean music. I want to listen to a Zimbabwean radio station.

Leo Laporte [01:40:54]:
Yeah, Radio Garden is very cool, but that's because there are still radio stations in the world. Quite a few. Which also surprises me. I don't.

Alex Lindsay [01:41:07]:
If I could get a license, I would definitely do one here, but I would do it all local. The main thing is that local artists, the big thing with radio stations is that you want to be hyper local with the radio station. But the problem with it is almost nobody. A lot of people don't have receivers anymore. So you want to be able to stream it. And the issue is that if you want to stream music in the United States, it is so expensive to be a streaming music platform. The royalties are just out of the. Not usable.

Leo Laporte [01:41:33]:
Do you think it. Do you think that the rest of the world is cheaper?

Alex Lindsay [01:41:36]:
Well, no. If you have a radio station license, even in the United States, you don't pay for that. You don't pay the streaming penalty. So you have to have a license. So it's there so that radio stations can just put their. They're not paying extra past the BMI and ASCAP that they're already paying.

Leo Laporte [01:41:54]:
Yeah, there's a rights clearance system and pay a fee. And we used to have to take logs periodically of what we were playing so they would try to charge the radio station.

Alex Lindsay [01:42:04]:
And Alex, you owe us $340 for this quarter.

Leo Laporte [01:42:08]:
But it's intentionally cheap because there used to be this concept that, well, you got to get radio airplay if you want to sell it records. But that seems pretty old fashioned.

Alex Lindsay [01:42:17]:
Oh yeah, yeah. Most. Most record companies I think mostly want to know how many YouTube followers you have.

Leo Laporte [01:42:23]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [01:42:23]:
Or TikTok followers or Instagram followers. Although it's really interesting, the bands make choices now you look at small bands and they'll have 4,000 or 2,000 people on YouTube, but they'll have 200,000 followers on Instagram. Instagram is kind of the big, the big one now.

Leo Laporte [01:42:38]:
I just wish K Fat were still streaming because I would listen to kfat. That was a radio station. It was only eight years in existence. It was Steve Wozniak's favorite. In fact, Wozniak said that's why he did the US Festival, because he loved listening to Kayfat and he wanted to do something like that. They went off the air in 1983. It was pretty funky. Oh, there's K Pig still around.

Leo Laporte [01:43:05]:
K Pig, which is a streaming station in the kitchen. All right, all right, that's good news. Fat has gone to the pig. Let's see what else? Oh, I was going to talk about this Adafruit. I love Adafruit. We all love Adafruit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to talk about this new Adafruit product that basically, it's the smallest, cheapest Raspberry PI, but it's more than adequate to run the old Mac Os.

Leo Laporte [01:43:32]:
They call it Ada Fruit Jam, nicely named. It said RP2350, which is really. It's a very small Raspberry PI with an ESP32 chip in it. And you can boot up. I mean, I guess you'd have to get the ROMs from somewhere.

Andy Ihnatko [01:43:51]:
Yeah, I subscribed to their YouTube channel and so they do like regular, like, vlogs on stuff that they're kind of developing. And we're not talking, and we're not talking about, oh, well, we bought. Bought this stuff from China and now we're writing derivers for it. No, they're talking about, like, actually doing chip design and actually doing component design. And from the very, very beginning, Lady Ida was like, Lada Ada was talking about her progress, was showing off her progress on getting, I think, the umac, like, open source Mac emulator running on this. And it's like, hey, wait, we got. Here's a. Here's a game.

Andy Ihnatko [01:44:22]:
Like, oh, wow, now we've got sound. So here's Dark Castle running on it. And this is like months ago. And the fact that, like, this is why we love Adafruit and we love, like, Lady Ada. It's like the fact that I want. Let's. Let's not just like, get a Mac game later running on this just as a sort of, hey, what a. What a fun rainy day concept.

Andy Ihnatko [01:44:40]:
But I want to see how quickly we can get this done and how well we can get this done.

Leo Laporte [01:44:43]:
It's very cool. And the fact that you can. On a Raspberry PI Pico, which is a very inexpensive processor.

Alex Lindsay [01:44:49]:
What is it?

Leo Laporte [01:44:51]:
I don't even. It's not very expensive. Run what was essentially a $2,500 computer back in 1994.

Alex Lindsay [01:44:59]:
Like $6,000. That's the Apple IIe, I think was $6,000 in today's dollars.

Leo Laporte [01:45:07]:
It's amazing. Unfortunately, the Mini Jam is sold out, but 40 bucks for the whole thing. And then they have instructions on how to get the emulator.

Andy Ihnatko [01:45:18]:
That's one of the things about you can buy things cheaply off of Amazon, where they get them from China, where they are just like little, like mini controllers. But the thing is, when you buy it from Adafruit, like they will get. They will give you all the resources you need to actually make this work, as well as packages of stuff that will make it work. And so I've never had any problems, but oftentimes my eyes are bigger than my intellectual capacity for engineering. I will order something because, oh, wow, here's this little controller, it's little component. And I will not get it to work or I'll just sit there because I don't know what to do with it. But when I buy something from Adafruit, it's like, I know what the first three weeks of this is going to be and, and if things work well, I will know what I will do with it for the next year after what I've learned for the first three weeks thanks to the Kickstart that, that Adafruit gave me.

Leo Laporte [01:46:06]:
Very cool, very cool. Let's see anything else? I. I feel like, oh, congratulations to Andy Carlos Luccio. That's what we have to tell everybody.

Alex Lindsay [01:46:18]:
Emmy. He's got an Emmy.

Leo Laporte [01:46:19]:
He's got an Emmy, kids. Zoom won an Engineering Science and Technology Emmy for innovation in broadcast contribution. What was the broadcast contribution they innovated in?

Alex Lindsay [01:46:30]:
It's, you know, it's kind of a general. I mean, the Zoom is so far ahead of everything else when it comes to broadcast at this point. So I think it was just.

Leo Laporte [01:46:39]:
It's Zoom for broadcast. But is that the same as Zoom ISO or is it.

Alex Lindsay [01:46:42]:
Yeah, it's a mixture of Zoom ISO direct integrations that they've made with all the hardware. It is.

Leo Laporte [01:46:49]:
We use it with ECAMM Live.

Alex Lindsay [01:46:52]:
Yeah, the fact that you can scale it up, you can have two people talking back and forth, but like us, we are a handful of people or many people, and all of those things are possible. And also the, of course, the cloud infrastructure that makes all that possible, which is, you know, like, it's one thing to say you got WebRTC, but it's another thing to be able to Actually transfer. Transfer transverse complex networks, which Zoom does exceptionally well. And there's just nobody else. I mean, I'm glad that Zoom's getting the props for this because there's just nobody else that feels like they're even trying, like, you know, like that to make Broadcast actually usable. So being able to have a 1080p stream with more than two people, which is something teams doesn't do, teams will say we're 1080p, but they're 1080p for two people. As soon as you put three people in at 720, being able to have all these and the ISO tools is something we use every single day, you know, so we're using, I think, think here, but we use the raw ISO. But of course, it's been integrated with all these other pieces of hardware and software and just having a focus in that.

Alex Lindsay [01:47:52]:
And then also all the Zoom OSC and now the new Broadcast toolkit. These are all things that you actually have a team that's paying attention to it. So I'm glad they're getting the props that they deserve because they put. It's an incredible team that's put an incredible amount of work into the. Into the process.

Leo Laporte [01:48:10]:
Andy Carluccio, who of course wrote Zoom ISO originally was independent acquired by Zoom. He's now the head of client innovation and his. His Emmy is on his way. That's good.

Alex Lindsay [01:48:22]:
There's a picture somewhere of, like the, you know, now, you know, office hours is got, you know, $100,000 of hardware that runs everything and it's got all this stuff going back and forth and all that engine was a pile of little Blackmagic hardware in an office in 090's office, with Andy and Jonathan figuring out how this would actually work using Isadora and all these other bits and pieces. And that was when they were liminal. And so I guess we've kind of grown up with a lot of those tools.

Leo Laporte [01:48:53]:
Oh, shoot. I just realized this is your pick of the week. I apologize. I didn't mean to steal.

Alex Lindsay [01:48:58]:
I'll find another pick.

Leo Laporte [01:48:59]:
Find another pick. I apologize.

Alex Lindsay [01:49:01]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, not at all. I put it in going. Well, if we don't talk about it, I'm going to talk about it there. Yeah, so. Yeah, so. But it's. It's a.

Alex Lindsay [01:49:09]:
It's.

Leo Laporte [01:49:09]:
Well, now I've used both of them because you also had Radio Garden, so it's. It's all over now. I don't know what to do.

Alex Lindsay [01:49:14]:
I got.

Leo Laporte [01:49:14]:
I got.

Alex Lindsay [01:49:15]:
I got a long ticker oh good. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:49:17]:
Okay. He's got a queue of things to pick. We're going to take a break and do our picks of the week in just a moment. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with its original progenitor, the man who started it all, Alex Lindsay at 090 Media. But he is also of course the man in charge at officehours Global. He can't. I can't stop creating things. I can't.

Alex Lindsay [01:49:38]:
There's new shows.

Jason Snell [01:49:39]:
Wonderful.

Leo Laporte [01:49:39]:
So glad to have you. Andy Inotko. He's in the library, somebody says. Does he live in the library? No, he goes to visit the library every Tuesday. That's all.

Andy Ihnatko [01:49:47]:
Exactly.

Leo Laporte [01:49:48]:
Yes. Great to have you, Andrew. And from sixcolors.com Jason Snell will be taking over the helm of Mac Break Weekly in a couple of weeks when I go on vacation. Thank you for doing that. You'll be out of the pocket next week but Micah Sargent will be filling in for because we're going to be covering the Apple event and then doing macpre weekly immediately after. Michael will be with us for both. And then you're going to be going to Memphis. That's exciting.

Jason Snell [01:50:14]:
That's right. For the Relay St. Jude podcast a thon so people can tune in to YouTube to the Relay Podcast Network channel for our 12 hour long video stream where a lot of PCs will be destroyed and other shenanigans will have happen. And that's September 19th.

Leo Laporte [01:50:31]:
How fun. And then I'll be going out. I'm actually, I'm very excited. I've got my pith helmet on the ready because I'm going to be sailing up the Mississippi seeking the source of the ancient river. And if I get to the top I'll let you know. But it's kind of an open ended trip. I'm going to go all the way until I find the source of the Mississippi in my pith helmet. We will, we will be back with our picks of the week in moments.

Leo Laporte [01:51:03]:
All right, on we go with the show. Jason. I'll give Alex some time although you have immediately pasted in a pic so.

Alex Lindsay [01:51:14]:
I have a note stock of like all the things that need to be picked. So it's just a matter of going down to the next one.

Leo Laporte [01:51:19]:
I'll start with this one which is via John Quinn Gruber who mentioned that somebody named Nick R donated a vintage Mac programming library to someone who has scanned it all in@vintageapple.com and if you want to go back and understand Apple Basic from 1983 or Macintosh Basic which Was never released. But by the way, in 1984, if you want to learn about the earliest days of the Macintosh, what a great resource this is. They're all PDFs you can download. I love going through old computer stuff like this. In fact, I have the Macintosh, the original Macintosh Bible, which Apple published. Actually, I had it when it came out and I, I foolishly got rid of it. So I had to go to ebay and buy another copy for myself a few years ago. But I'm happy to have that.

Leo Laporte [01:52:21]:
Man, it was so much fun. The MPW Macintosh Programmers Workshop manual is in here, which was the best way to write assembly language. In fact, I kind of think if I still could use mpw, I might still be programming for the Macintosh, because that was just a pleasure to use. Use Pascal.

Andy Ihnatko [01:52:43]:
I thought it was funny to see all of this, all the entries for Mac basic, which was like one of the famous.

Leo Laporte [01:52:49]:
Which never was released.

Andy Ihnatko [01:52:51]:
It was part of the big buildup. It was part of the. Oh, we've got. Microsoft is doing a version of basic and apparently they gave advanced code to people who write these books. And then was it Apple or. Microsoft said, yeah, now we don't want to ship that.

Leo Laporte [01:53:05]:
Microsoft said to Apple, you best not. We have a BASIC and we don't want us have to sue you. It was a beautiful. Now all the PDFs that I just downloaded are opening. It was a beautiful version of basic. And I know that because I ran a Macintosh bulletin board system round about 1985 and somebody slipped a copy of the Macintosh BASIC over the transom to me and I offered it for download on the bulletin board. That was probably the best thing on the. The macq bulletin board is you could download that and use it.

Leo Laporte [01:53:40]:
And it was a beautiful, beautiful basic. It was very modern, gorgeous ui, really simple to do. Let me scroll down, see if there's some. This is Scott Kamen's book about it, if they have some screenshots. But this was really advanced for this period of time.

Andy Ihnatko [01:54:03]:
Mac PASCAL was a lot of fun too.

Leo Laporte [01:54:06]:
Was that an Apple product? Mac Pascal? I don't.

Andy Ihnatko [01:54:09]:
Yeah, I want to say yes, but.

Leo Laporte [01:54:11]:
That was a long time they had Pascal. In fact, that was one of the things that was so important that Bill Atkinson did for Apple was he ported a UCSD Pascal to the Macintosh so that that became the default language for the Macintosh. But a lot of people knew BASIC back in the 80s. That was the language everybody wanted.

Jason Snell [01:54:29]:
So many people who went to UCSD worked on the original Macintosh. So of course they brought ucsd Pascal. I say that as a UCSD alum. I'm very proud of. I thought you went to Cal Cal for graduate school.

Leo Laporte [01:54:42]:
Oh, UCSD as an undergraduate advanced degree.

Jason Snell [01:54:46]:
I do, I do also I grew up as a. As a Cal fan and so. And UCSD has no football team, so it's really easy.

Leo Laporte [01:54:52]:
What's your. You have a master's.

Jason Snell [01:54:53]:
I have a. I am a Master of Journalism. You've been talking to all this time. Watch out.

Leo Laporte [01:54:58]:
Holy cow. I'm now. Okay, I'm a little. I apologize.

Jason Snell [01:55:02]:
I got my eye on you laporte. I've been watching. I've been watching. What's going on with you?

Leo Laporte [01:55:07]:
I have no idea. I apologize for not respecting you in the.

Andy Ihnatko [01:55:12]:
Take your college boy fancy book. Learn and I. I shall be referred.

Jason Snell [01:55:15]:
To as Master Jason from now on.

Leo Laporte [01:55:17]:
Master Snell is here.

Jason Snell [01:55:20]:
Mac basic. Just thinking about the Pascal and BASIC and all that. Like when I came over from the Apple II to the Mac, that was one of my great disappointments is that there was no readily available understandable programming language. And fortunately after a couple of years system 7 came out and applescript sort of allowed me to tinker a little bit. But it would have been such a different thing if there had been what there was on the Apple ii, which is literally with no effort you could be at a command line writing software. And the original Mac, it was a much heavier lift, which is too bad.

Andy Ihnatko [01:55:53]:
You were pretty much expected to learn machine like assembly language in order to. For the first year or two of of Macintosh. And it was. I had the phone book. I had the original like phone book and I'm like this. And this is when I was arrogant. I was like a teenager. I was arrogant as hell.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:12]:
Like, oh, I can learn all this stuff. I'm a wrote an operating system for the Apple IIE of all this stuff stuff. And I dug right into it and I'm like, I have no. I mean.

Leo Laporte [01:56:22]:
He says phone book, kids. He's not talking Paducah, Kentucky. This is like the New York City phone book. This thing is huge. All of these ROM interfaces were available in Pascal so there was a high level interface. But almost. So I wrote some stuff in Pascal, but almost everything I did was 68000 assembler and it was a great language to work in and MPW was an amazing environment. I mean they.

Leo Laporte [01:56:47]:
But yeah, I hadn't, you know, I been a long time since I wanted to use basic.

Alex Lindsay [01:56:52]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:56:52]:
To be honest with you.

Alex Lindsay [01:56:54]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:56:54]:
I had learned peeking and poking into a Macintosh you were hammering at something with a rock that maybe you should update your skills.

Alex Lindsay [01:57:02]:
Yeah, yeah. I started in BASIC and then moved to Pascal and then to assembly. But when I never moved made it to the Mac, I just. When the Mac came out, it was enough different that I was like, oh.

Leo Laporte [01:57:12]:
The beauty of the 68000. Unlike the 8086 and family of processors, it was a flat memory model, was really a beautiful processor to code for. In fact, I liked it so much when I got an 8086, when I got an IBM PC, I said, I'm not coding for this piece of crap. I was very dismissive of it. I learned C in order to do that. But yeah, I think this is a fun little memory trip down memory lane. Vintageapple.org and thank you, Jon Gruber, for passing that along. Jason Snell, your pick of the week.

Jason Snell [01:57:51]:
I'm going to go with a twofer because the first one is backordered right now, so it's not available. But we were talking about MagSafe earlier and I told Alex that I had this, this. So my first pick is from Nomad Goods. It is the Nomad Leather Mag Wallet. So it is a replacement for what I used to have, which is the MagSafe wallet. Apple doesn't make it in leather anymore, but it comes in leather now for MagSafe devices. But the big story about it, the way Apple's current MagSafe they supports find My is that it remembers where it dropped off your phone. Like when it loses contact with your phone it's like, ah, this is where that happened.

Jason Snell [01:58:28]:
This thing is real. Find my so so you can not only does it have realfine My, which I think is impressive, and it's a very nice MagSafe wallet. It's got a little notch on the bottom so it's easier to push the cards out on apples. You have to kind of go from the back and try to get your thumb to have enough friction to push them up. This is a much easier thing to do. But the most clever thing about it all is it's official Find My, which means that it's got a battery inside of it. And how do you charge that battery? And the answer is you lay this down on your MagSafe charger and it charges it back up every few months. You do that and then it keeps on going.

Jason Snell [01:59:03]:
So Nomad Backordered on this right now. Comes in a couple different colors, but it's MagSafe, which means it'll probably continue to work with future iPhones. I Hope that's the case. Also though, I will give you a two for another Nomad product that I'm really happy about. And if you're somebody who likes your Apple Watch and is sort of like, you know, the current Apple bands are the Apple cycles through bands. Sometimes the bands are boring and sometimes they're. They're interesting. And maybe you missed a chance at a band or a color you liked or whatever.

Jason Snell [01:59:33]:
I have been wearing for the last few months, the Nomad Sport band for Apple Watch, which looks a lot like the regular Apple sport band, but comes in a bunch of fun colors, including orange, which is what I'm. I've got here. Baseball season, got my San Francisco Giants orange and black going on. Really nice band, great material. Material has a little bit of a different look. So if you're a fan of Apple Watch bands and you want to try something a little bit different. I've been really happy with the Nomad band. So there's a couple Nomad.

Jason Snell [02:00:04]:
I'm not being compensated by Nomad for their. For these two product recommendations, but I like them both.

Leo Laporte [02:00:09]:
They're really nice. Oh, I've had a ton of Nomad cases and bands. In fact, I think I have the titanium band which I really like on the Ultra.

Jason Snell [02:00:17]:
It's really. They're not cheap. These aren't like the cheap bands you buy on Amazon. They're pretty pricey, but they're very good. And it provides a really nice alternative to. Because sometimes the Apple stuff, I mean the Apple stuff is good, but sometimes you want something a little different or like I said for me it was also like I really liked this orange. I thought that would be fun. And it's been a while since there's been a good orange band from Apple.

Jason Snell [02:00:37]:
So yeah, like one with Nomad.

Leo Laporte [02:00:39]:
Looks like a lot of them are back ordered. I wonder if it's because they're expecting new products.

Jason Snell [02:00:44]:
I do wonder if that's the case. But I really like that the wallet is been a real find.

Leo Laporte [02:00:50]:
So I have Peak Design's MagSafe wallet, but I think that does not have find my in the wallet. The iPhone knows when the wallet's been detached and remembers the last place it was attached. But that's it.

Jason Snell [02:01:03]:
It's not not the same.

Alex Lindsay [02:01:05]:
It's the one place I use tile because I have a tile in the wallet physically.

Leo Laporte [02:01:10]:
Look how fat that thing is.

Alex Lindsay [02:01:12]:
I know this is nice.

Jason Snell [02:01:14]:
It's. It's basically more or less the thickness of apples, maybe a little bit thicker.

Alex Lindsay [02:01:19]:
But what I have in this One.

Jason Snell [02:01:21]:
Yeah. This one fits three cards basically. But. But it will give you your, your find my. So if you, if it drops anywhere you will be able to find it.

Leo Laporte [02:01:30]:
Yeah. Instead of just knowing the last place you saw it, which is not much use. Yeah. Andy. Not coat pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko [02:01:37]:
Those of us who are a fan of the world of the, of the, of the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick. Love love, love the, the final scene in which the computer is figuring out what global thermal nuclear war is going to look like. Played out on the, on the world perspective and you see basically this huge NORAD digital map in which missiles are landing and you see these circles expanding all over the world as cities are targeted and obliterated and thought I wish that I could have that on my desktop without having to live through such a, such a thing. Well, there is a free site that will give you exactly what you've been wanting for. It's called blitzertung.org and it is a live world map of where lightning is happening.

Leo Laporte [02:02:20]:
Oh it's not war. It's just lightning.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:22]:
It's not war. No. But, but, but you will see if you, if you open it up it'll give you like a world, a Google Earth view of the world in which you see like dots representing where lightning is happening and like expanding circles of where you can supposed to be able to hear the thunder or like the magnitude, stuff like that.

Leo Laporte [02:02:41]:
Very cool.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:42]:
It is exceptionally cool. Like if you are, if you are in Kentucky you are being. And you're listening live. I can say I can. Looks like you're being hammered by lightning right now.

Leo Laporte [02:02:53]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [02:02:54]:
Because like on the eastern west, east of the Mississippi that's where like weather is being hammered right now.

Leo Laporte [02:03:00]:
Time of year.

Andy Ihnatko [02:03:01]:
It is. I would love to have this as a screensaver because it's kind of like mesmerizing to watch. I also had it open like when there was like some bad weather like here in New England England and was able to like actually see, see and hear things happening. So this is apparently this.

Leo Laporte [02:03:16]:
Is there audio on this too?

Andy Ihnatko [02:03:17]:
I don't think there's audio.

Leo Laporte [02:03:18]:
No, no, just music in the background.

Andy Ihnatko [02:03:20]:
It's, it's. It's based on. For the past 10 years there's been sort of a crowdsourced sort of thing to make a worldwide information network of, of of lightning detectors with like very low frequency receivers tied to gps. And so according to the about site, basically the documentation or the information on bleatsertongue do think they're, they're aggregating and calculating on this data in a way that hasn't been done from other, like, weather services. Oftentimes it's used like, for like, marine, marine use and stuff like that. But they are, they, they are saying that these detectors are between 60km and 100 and 250km apart worldwide. It's been going on for like, more than 10 years. And so they think that they can place them through their triangulation and calculation within a couple of kilometers with a delay of, of under 10 seconds.

Andy Ihnatko [02:04:12]:
Actually, they'll give you a live delay. Right now. It's. The map is every three seconds to six seconds. It's really pretty. Again, it's just a beautiful thing to take a look at. Also, if I were trying to figure out, oh, gosh, it's raining, should I get up the thunder shirt for the dog just in case, or. No, you should definitely get the thunder shirt because you can see these dots appearing southeast of Boston and getting closer and closer or so you're going to need that thunder shirt in about eight minutes.

Leo Laporte [02:04:40]:
This is so fun. I really, I really like it. And we do have listeners who say, yes, it is pouring in Kentucky right now. So it's right, it's not wrong, and.

Alex Lindsay [02:04:51]:
For those in Latvia, it's coming, it's.

Leo Laporte [02:04:54]:
Coming, it's on its way.

Andy Ihnatko [02:04:55]:
Don't worry, the lightning will get you.

Leo Laporte [02:04:58]:
To our Latvian listeners, here comes. Very cool. And now Alex Lindsey, who has pulled it out of his shirt pocket.

Alex Lindsay [02:05:10]:
One of the things that I've been, that I've been. That I was testing in conjunction with using the blackmagic immersive camera. One of the problems you end up with is the Blackmagic immersive camera goes through roughly a terabyte every 15 minutes. And you're moving big files around and trying to make all of those work. And so I was able to borrow the OWC Thunderblade X12, which, which is 12 NVMe drives or memory cards built into it. And I can confirm that the peak speed, it's 6600. I tested just a little under that 6550 or something like that. But it is a screaming fast drive.

Alex Lindsay [02:05:50]:
Now this is Thunderbolt 5. So that's part of what makes this work, is that you didn't really have anything@thunderbolt4. You weren't going to get over. Over five gigs per second was the maximum. And there was going to be some headroom. And we never saw anything above 25 to 3 gig, 2.5 to 3 gigabytes per second. So this is not gigabits, this is six and a half gigabytes a second. And it becomes something as you start to work with these larger files, it becomes something that's super important to have there.

Alex Lindsay [02:06:23]:
If you have multiple tracks going on, if you have anything else going on, you really need to have a lot more headroom. So it adds up quickly. And so this is one of the first drives out there that's Thunderbolt 5. And running at these kind of speeds, it's not the most cost effective way to store files. But if you're dealing with a lot of large files in both the immersive camera as well as some of the 12K stuff that I've shot with Blackmagic, we run into the ceiling where the drive isn't fast enough to play all the tracks no matter what we do. It's a drive speed problem. And so we're. This is, this is what solves that.

Leo Laporte [02:07:00]:
So anyway, are you using the soft RAID that comes with it or are you using Apple's RAID for it?

Alex Lindsay [02:07:06]:
Apple. It just opened. The funny thing is, is that the software is there but I just plugged it in and it.

Leo Laporte [02:07:12]:
I don't like installing a third party plug in a raid and Apple does support raid. It's just not as. It's only. It's not. I don't think it does RAID five. I mean it's limited to be fair.

Jason Snell [02:07:23]:
To softraid because I use software aid. The software kernel. It is a third party kernel plug plugin. It's in the os. It's like Apple puts it in there. Oh, it comes with it, it rides along. Yeah, that was part of the security issue is in order to enable this sort of stuff. So yeah, if you update software aid to a new version and you wonder why the driver is still the old version, the answer is update your OS and then it will be the new version.

Jason Snell [02:07:47]:
Because it rides along with the os.

Alex Lindsay [02:07:49]:
Yeah. So there's nothing. So when you put this drive, when you plug this drive in, even though it's got softraid installed that you might need to use it for some computers with the Mac. I mean if you want to do anything that you want to configure it. But I'm not using a 5, I'm not. This isn't deep storage.

Leo Laporte [02:08:04]:
You want speed, you want speed and.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:07]:
I need all the space.

Jason Snell [02:08:09]:
Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:10]:
So it's just. So I didn't have to do anything. When you plug it in, it was like Here you go, 24.

Jason Snell [02:08:14]:
It's just formatted as 24 terabytes.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:16]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [02:08:17]:
Apple as a single volume.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:18]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:08:18]:
Apple supports that.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:21]:
So it's just. So there's nothing, there's nothing you have to do to get it running other than plug it. It in with a Thunderbolt 5. And it is the fastest drive I've ever used.

Leo Laporte [02:08:28]:
Nice.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:29]:
So it's been. And it feels, you know, with everything you're transferring, you suddenly realize what everything else is because everything else that you're connecting to the computer is slower than the.

Leo Laporte [02:08:38]:
You can't buy it unpopulated. You have to buy it with the NVME cards in there, 12 of them. It starts at 12 terabytes for 2,800 bucks. But you can. That's obviously 12 one terabyte drives. But you could put four terabyte drives in there. That raises the cost just a little bit.

Alex Lindsay [02:08:55]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [02:08:56]:
You can get up to 90. I'm sorry, 48. No, 96 terabytes if you want to.

Alex Lindsay [02:09:01]:
96. But the one I'm.

Leo Laporte [02:09:02]:
See how you would do that.

Alex Lindsay [02:09:03]:
Yeah, I don't think you. Yeah, but the. I think you could put. Theoretically you could put eight terabyte in there. I don't know why they don't have those.

Leo Laporte [02:09:11]:
Because nobody would buy it.

Alex Lindsay [02:09:13]:
So much money. But, but the. But because a lot of times, I guess the thing is you have to think about what project you're doing. And for a drive like this, you're not doing heavy storage. This isn't. Even though it's really big. This is for a project. And so for, you know.

Alex Lindsay [02:09:28]:
And so what I'm finding is, is that the projects that I'm using with the immersive camera are getting me into that kind of 12 to 15 terabytes pretty quickly. It doesn't take very long, very much shooting to get to build that up pretty fast. And so, so that. So the 12 would be a little less. I mean, what I've had in the. The past is before that I was using these, these were also OWC. These are Express 4M2s. These little.

Alex Lindsay [02:09:55]:
These little guys here. And these are four MVMEs. And. But these are all.

Andy Ihnatko [02:10:01]:
That's what I have.

Leo Laporte [02:10:01]:
I have that one. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay [02:10:02]:
And this is. This is. These are usually in the smaller projects, like 8 terabytes. And I find that a lot of my drive stuff fits inside of that. But as soon as I'm done with the project, I get. You get it off and put it on a bigger, bigger, slower drive that isn't this.

Leo Laporte [02:10:18]:
Yeah, I like OWC stuff. And the one you have is. I don't know if it's Thunderbolt 3, probably, but it's fast enough for me.

Alex Lindsay [02:10:25]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great.

Leo Laporte [02:10:27]:
It's very nice. Very nice. OWC Thunder Blade X12 is Thunderbolt 5. And it's fast. So fast and so fast that we ended the show early. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Andy, and you.

Alex Lindsay [02:10:41]:
Thank.

Leo Laporte [02:10:42]:
So great to see you. Join us again next week. We'll have something to talk about for a change.

Andy Ihnatko [02:10:47]:
I believe we will.

Leo Laporte [02:10:48]:
Very exciting. You'll be here, Alex. Lindsay, you'll be here next week? Yes, yes.

Alex Lindsay [02:10:53]:
I'll jump right out of the. After the Office Hours. After Hours.

Leo Laporte [02:10:58]:
Yes. You have two choices if you want to watch the keynote with me and Micah. You can do that in our Club Twit Disco. Otherwise you watch it on your own, but you can comment and talk with the Office Hours.

Alex Lindsay [02:11:10]:
Ours is really Mystery Science Theater with a whole bunch of people. It annoys some people a lot.

Leo Laporte [02:11:15]:
A lot of gabbling. Gabbling.

Alex Lindsay [02:11:16]:
We're not talking just about the show. We're talking about the cameras and the.

Leo Laporte [02:11:19]:
And you can't. You're not streaming the. The show. You just stream yourselves and let.

Alex Lindsay [02:11:24]:
We just jump into zoom. We just jump into zoom. If you're, if you're, you know, we have a thing called after hours. It's open 24 7. And so we just jump in there and.

Leo Laporte [02:11:32]:
Nice.

Alex Lindsay [02:11:32]:
Talk about it.

Leo Laporte [02:11:33]:
Nice. Office Hours Global for more information. And Jason says Snell, my friend. Find out about Jason's podcasts, including upgrade@6colors.com. Jason.

Alex Lindsay [02:11:46]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [02:11:46]:
Listen to the draft. I will miss you, my friend. Have a great time wherever you're going next week. And yes, better time in Memphis.

Jason Snell [02:11:53]:
We shall see. And you have a good time on your. On your river cruise. And yes, I will. I'll try hard not to ruin the podcast while you're gone.

Leo Laporte [02:12:00]:
No, you won't. You'll make it better. And I know that's the fact, my friend. Friends. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Alex. And of course, thanks to all of you, especially our Club Twit members, for making this show possible.

Leo Laporte [02:12:11]:
We do Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. We stream it live on eight different platforms, not just the disco. And by the way, it's not the front room in the disco, it's in the back. So when you come to the club Disco, go, go. There's no champagne.

Andy Ihnatko [02:12:29]:
Andy Warhol.

Leo Laporte [02:12:30]:
And it's in the champagne room, but there's no champagne in the champagne room. Unless you bring it. If you bring it, that's fine. After the no, wait, I forgot. There's other places you can watch even if you're not in the club. There's YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, X.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kick. We stream live on all seven of those platforms and again, 11am Pacific on a Tuesday. So watch it live if you want, but if you don't want to, of course it's easy to download audio or video from our website, twit.tv/mbw.

Leo Laporte [02:13:01]:
There's a YouTube channel channel dedicated to the video. Great way to share clips with other friends and family. And if you really care about the show, you really ought to subscribe to it. That way you get it automatically every Tuesday. Find your favorite podcast client and subscribe and leave us a five star review while you're at it. That sure would help. Thank you everybody. We'll see you next week.

Leo Laporte [02:13:21]:
And as I have said now for almost 20 years, we're going to have our 20th anniversary soon. Got to get back to work now because break time is over. See you next week. No matter how much spare time you have, twit.tv has the perfect tech news format for your schedule. Stay up to date with everything happening in tech and get tech news your way with twit.tv. Start your week with this Week in Tech for an in depth, comprehensive dive into the top stories every week. And for a midweek boost, Tech News Weekly brings you concise, quick updates with the journalists breaking the news. Whether you need just the nuts and bolts or want the full analysis, stay informed with twit.tv's perfect pairing of tech news programs.