MacBreak Weekly 999 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy Ihnatko here, Jason Snell. Filling in for Alex Lindsay: the wonderful Shelly Brisbin from the Texas Standard. Maybe Tim Cook actually is stepping down. We're going to have to give some credence to those rumors. Jeff Williams is definitely out of the building. We'll talk about the amazing technology Apple uses to build its Apple watches and what's next for the iPhone.
Leo Laporte [00:00:24]:
All that and more coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 999, recorded Tuesday, November 18, 2025. Rough de powdering. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We talk about the latest Apple news. Andy Ihnatko back from his trip in the woods, that we have MacBreak Leafy t-shirts.
Leo Laporte [00:01:01]:
Steve. Stephen Rubbles wasn't kidding. He has produced them.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:06]:
I've heard from people who bought them and are extremely happy with them. Very limited edition. This is, this is like if, like we were like actual, like Comic Con superstars, sort of people who had our own signing tables and like times in which for $60 you can get a signed, signed thing and for $200 you get a VIP, like, photo thing. Like, there would be people who would be wearing these T shirts ten years from now.
Leo Laporte [00:01:29]:
I got it, Andy.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:30]:
Basically. Basically. You know, I'm not just like a fan. I didn't.
Leo Laporte [00:01:34]:
Not like I just saved a fan.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:36]:
Who'S coming to the Con. Oh, I bet I could. No, it's like I, I got deep cut stuff.
Leo Laporte [00:01:40]:
I'm your number one fan, Andy.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:43]:
The sort of, the sort of thing where like the cast member from Firefly is like, that T shirt is referencing a joke that I don't remember whatsoever. But I don't want this person to feel bad. So I'm going to laugh if you.
Leo Laporte [00:01:53]:
Mention Mac break leafy in 10 years. No one's going to know. No one's going to know. Anyway. Welcome back from the woods, Andy. And Nako J. Snell is also here. Hello, Mr.
Leo Laporte [00:02:01]:
Snell.
Jason Snell [00:02:02]:
I don't understand that joke either because a week ago when we, when you guys were recording, I was on in there. I was like over Greenland or something.
Leo Laporte [00:02:09]:
So where did you go?
Jason Snell [00:02:10]:
I went to London for a week. I had a good time.
Leo Laporte [00:02:12]:
How nice.
Jason Snell [00:02:13]:
This is Mike. Mike Hurley did a live upgrade in his office, did some work, saw a soccer match, held Mike's new baby. That was very nice. Cute little baby and. Yeah, so. But I missed. Welcome back one Mac Break Weekly.
Leo Laporte [00:02:29]:
Well, it's not the first one you've missed this month.
Jason Snell [00:02:33]:
That's this. This month. Not this month. Last month.
Leo Laporte [00:02:36]:
Maybe in the last couple of.
Jason Snell [00:02:38]:
I try not to miss.
Leo Laporte [00:02:40]:
No.
Jason Snell [00:02:40]:
I'll have you know that my flight was a little close to Mac Break Weekly the previous week, and I. I said. When I said goodbye, I ran out the door and I. I did make the flight, though, so that's. Thank you.
Leo Laporte [00:02:53]:
Yeah. We got you out there a little early.
Andy Ihnatko [00:02:54]:
I remember.
Jason Snell [00:02:55]:
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Leo Laporte [00:02:55]:
Here is the Mac Break Leafy T shirt in case anybody wants to go to Steven.
Jason Snell [00:02:59]:
I don't understand it.
Leo Laporte [00:03:01]:
Beard.
Jason Snell [00:03:01]:
I'm gonna ask fm.
Leo Laporte [00:03:03]:
Oh, man, you missed it. Andy couldn't get Internet, so. Because it was a holiday, it was veterans.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:09]:
No, no, no.
Jason Snell [00:03:10]:
I could.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:11]:
Ordinarily, I can get Internet at my house, but 10 minutes before showtime, it decided that, hey, what if Children's Day. What if all of a sudden, like, Andy's Internet didn't work and he had. He had to choose between, let's see if he can get his phone hotspot working or get. Can he, like, what is open today that he can sit for two and a half hours and do a show from. And I'm not saying that going to a picnic table where near a free public WI FI access point was necessarily the right choice, but it was a successful choice.
Leo Laporte [00:03:40]:
Yes, it got a little windy at the end, but that's okay. Now, we do have a missing member this week. We're gonna have to change the jingle because Alex Lindsay is on assignment. But good news, that means there's room for the wonderful Shelley Brisbin. Hello, Shelley, from the Texas Standard.
Shelly Brisbin [00:03:58]:
Hi, Leo. I'd like a shirt that just says generic Mac break. Guest star. Could you sort that out for me?
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:03]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:04:04]:
I'll make, finally, a radio professional.
Leo Laporte [00:04:10]:
You do? Yeah. You do radio, right, Shelley? You do a lot of it.
Shelly Brisbin [00:04:13]:
I do, allegedly, yes.
Leo Laporte [00:04:14]:
Yeah. You have that great, rich radio voice.
Shelly Brisbin [00:04:17]:
Why, thank you, Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:04:19]:
What do you think of you? I was. Before the show, I was playing an old. That was from 35, 36 years ago. Air check. And I was, as Jason noted, a.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:28]:
Little bit of a.
Leo Laporte [00:04:29]:
We call him in the business, a puker.
Jason Snell [00:04:32]:
Radio boy.
Leo Laporte [00:04:33]:
Radio boy.
Jason Snell [00:04:34]:
We don't do that here on podcasting. We're more normal on the pod.
Leo Laporte [00:04:38]:
I remember when I first started radio, they said, you shouldn't do am. You sound like you're. Because you're kind of sound like you're an FM guy, you know? So I think I puked it up because of that.
Jason Snell [00:04:48]:
Yeah, yeah. Now we use our podcasting voices, which are different from our YouTube voices, I guess. I don't know. They probably are how it works.
Leo Laporte [00:04:56]:
Characteristic of a YouTube voice. Hey, kids, smash the button, ring the bell, subscribe.
Jason Snell [00:05:02]:
Yeah, friends like and subscribe.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:04]:
But was that an actual thing where it's like FM has wider dynamic range and they might be actually playing it through something with a two way speaker. So therefore, let's, let's, let's hire a baritone for this time.
Leo Laporte [00:05:14]:
It was two things. One, it was. They did use less compression because they thought maybe audio files will be listening. And so you heard all the compression on the KMBR stuff. It was really boom, boom, boom. But the other thing was they played hipper music, so.
Jason Snell [00:05:27]:
Yeah, right.
Leo Laporte [00:05:28]:
A little bit stoned all the time.
Jason Snell [00:05:31]:
Not all of us.
Shelly Brisbin [00:05:31]:
That sounds like early FM because there's a lot going on, you know, 90s FU radio.
Leo Laporte [00:05:36]:
Now there is. Yeah. Well, change.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:39]:
Very diverse programming, both Fog Hat and Poco.
Leo Laporte [00:05:45]:
Hey, guess what? We've been mocking Mark Gurman for probably about a year for saying Tim Cook was going to retire. Now the Financial Times is jumping in on this and saying, yeah, he's going to retire soon. Apple intensifies succession planning for CEO Tim Cook. The board is preparing for Tim to step down as early as next year.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:08]:
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. And I wonder if, like, Jason had the same sort of like deep memory that I did. This is a, it's, it's financial time. So that's like, I don't want to say a real newspaper, but it is more credible.
Jason Snell [00:06:21]:
It's respectable, like respectful.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:24]:
Right. Also, it is a short piece that has four bylines on it. So it's not like just someone read something on Weibo and said, okay, well, I got a deadline. This is. Put this in. And I suddenly thought, I remember the time when like the New York Post ran an article about how NBC is really, really interested in the succession plan for Johnny Carson and they're this close to signing Jay Leno. And it turned out that it was like a faction that was trying to like, maybe if we put. Get this into the paper, it will nudge Johnny Carson to decide to leave sooner rather than later.
Leo Laporte [00:06:56]:
It's. You think that's what this is, Is this kind of a plan?
Andy Ihnatko [00:07:00]:
I'm saying that that's what it made me think of that. It's very, very strange that, okay, well, this institution has. This newspaper has like this piece in there. I'm sure that Tim Cook does not leave that seat until he is Absolutely ready. But this sounds like there's a reason why somebody or a faction of people have decided to talk Financial Times and hope that they will maybe print this story. I don't know what this feels like.
Shelly Brisbin [00:07:25]:
It's prepping the market for it. I mean, you can't, you can't just have Tim Cook say, bye, bye, I'm leaving. You have to prepare the market, whether it's a trial balloon to see whether shareholders are going to freak out or whether it's just this is going to happen. So get ready, make your plans.
Andy Ihnatko [00:07:38]:
And the story made it very, very clear that, well, if there is any sort of a change in CEO, it's definitely not going to happen until the end of the. Until they report the next quarter results again, telling people that steady on. This is if this happens, it's not going to happen tomorrow. No. If they're making plans, don't try to read into this and think that, oh well, Tim is deathly ill and he's been ill for the past 18 months and the management has been going by a thread. All I'm saying is that it's this. It's the sort of piece where as we were. When Mark Gurman reports on that, it's like, okay, that's kind of interesting.
Andy Ihnatko [00:08:09]:
Don't know where you guys information, but that's kind of interesting when a rumor site is talking about. It's like it's a perennial story that you could write at any times about speculating like what happens after Tim leaves, whenever he wants to leave. When Financial Times Times reports that under these circumstances, it means that we have to pay attention and start wondering, is there an actual now, is there a date circled on a calendar that says if everything goes right and people respond well to this piece, then this is when we're going to announce. And this is when we're going to announce not at a date of leaving, but a start of a long transition. So it was a very, very interesting story. That's what I was getting at.
Jason Snell [00:08:45]:
I think Shelley's right, that this is almost certainly a plant. And I think a plant from the top, like from the board. I think this is. I think what we just saw is the official sort of like startup chime of the Tim Cook transition.
Leo Laporte [00:09:00]:
Gentlemen, start your right.
Jason Snell [00:09:02]:
Like the machinery now begins to turn and begin to turn and spin and. Because, because, yeah, investors hate being surprised. Right. And this is the most gentle way. I mean, in some ways, the Gurman pieces. Gurman's been laying the groundwork for a couple of years. He's the one who got John Ternus, his name out there init. And so he, you know, he is thought of as being potentially the next CEO, which the Financial Times concurs.
Jason Snell [00:09:26]:
Yes, exactly. And then, and then the ft, a respectable like publication comes in with their four bylines and says this and it's like, I mean Apple, I don't know all the instances of Apple leaking things to the press, but I can say that when it's the FT and the Wall Street Journal, those are usually signs that somebody is intentionally letting giving a heads up to someone. So I think yeah, this is step one of a process that means that there will probably be a step two where Tim Cook announces a succession plan publicly. Where there's like here John Turner is going to be the CEO, I'm going to be the executive chairman, there's going to be a six month transition period. I will remain on the board. And I, yeah, I was surprised. I thought Tim Cook would stay longer. But I do wonder if part of the strategy here, because we've a lot of us have been talking about how Tim Cook is like the politician and the diplomat when it comes to Apple these days.
Jason Snell [00:10:21]:
And there's a lot of reasons that you're dealing with governments to have somebody in that spot and you're dealing with the Trump administration especially. I wonder if what's going on here is not. Well, Tim is tired of it and he's getting out. I wonder if it's Tim realizing that he's going to need to do that job. But what if the transition is that he does that job as the chairman of the board and let's John Turner's kind of grow into a role if he's the CEO of CEO while Tim is there to kind of like handle some of the, the top level diplomatic stuff. You know, Donald Trump has Tim Cook's phone number. Right. Like I imagine that will continue to be the case.
Jason Snell [00:10:58]:
But if you're Tim Cook and you're like, how long am I going to do this before I'm truly retired, you might say, you know what, I'll give you five years, ten years as chairman. But if that's the case, we should start this now, right. Instead of waiting around. And another thing, cautionary tale. There are lots of them in Corpor America where you have an heir apparent and you've got a CEO who's clearly going to leave sometime and they wait so long that the heir apparent leaves or there's too much infighting and everything gets kind of ugly. And I wonder if this, it Comes.
Andy Ihnatko [00:11:29]:
Back to Jay Leno.
Jason Snell [00:11:30]:
It does, it does. I was thinking about Disney as well and the Bob Iger, various Bob Iger successors who were ready to step in and then he would just never leave. And then they would leave or they would fight it out amongst themselves and the ones who who lost would leave. And then the guy who won also left and was replaced by. I are returning. Right. Like, I wonder if there's some of that.
Leo Laporte [00:11:49]:
That was kind of an outlier actually.
Jason Snell [00:11:52]:
That one got away from them a little bit. But like, I think the idea that if you know this is going to happen, you've got a time, you've got timing, you've got a person who could step in, you can give him the support so he doesn't have to just be thrown in. Like Tim Cook kind of was because of Steve Jobs various leaves and illnesses and then ultimately his resignation a little bit before he died. Maybe you press the button now. And that's my guess. My guess is this is not Tim saying goodbye. This is Tim saying, look, if I'm, if I'm going to do the executive chairman job for a while, we should do this now because otherwise, like what, I'm going to be CEO for five more years and then I'm going to be. I think he wants to sort of like set the machinery going.
Jason Snell [00:12:31]:
And I think that's what this was. This was. They pushed the button. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:12:34]:
Turner is 50, which is roughly the same age Tim Cook was when he took over Turnus is there and he's.
Jason Snell [00:12:39]:
Been there for 24 years.
Leo Laporte [00:12:40]:
He's been there since 2001. He worked first on the cinema display.
Jason Snell [00:12:46]:
Half his life at Apple.
Leo Laporte [00:12:47]:
Yeah, he, he's not an operations guy, he's a hardware guy. So that's a little bit of a change.
Jason Snell [00:12:54]:
Well, and Tim Cook wasn't Steve Jobs. I actually think that that's potentially a good thing that the CEO. Look, CEO can't do everything. CEO always has to rely on their lieutenants and other very talented people in their organization. But I think it's interesting that you have potentially a hardware guy. You know, you'll play to his strengths and then he'll have to find people around him who can play to, to the other parts of the business. Just as Tim Cook as an ops guy was not a hardware software services design guy. And so he had to lean on those people.
Jason Snell [00:13:27]:
I mean, very. Nobody is. I mean Steve Jobs is probably an all timer at being a kind of a cross trainer for this stuff. But even Steve Jobs needed to rely on people for the very technical stuff. So this seems like.
Leo Laporte [00:13:39]:
And he is the youngest person according to Gurman, on the Apple executive team. So this is why you don't pick a Craig Federighi, for instance.
Jason Snell [00:13:47]:
And I think this is why Jeff Williams retirement is tied in here. I don't know if it's why Jeff Williams retired, but I think Jeff Williams, Jeff Williams wasn't going to stick around. And like I think Jeff Williams maybe was there as the in case of emergency break glass CEO replacement. And then at some point he got to the point where he's like, well now I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to retire. And so now we've moved to the next phase of succession planning.
Shelly Brisbin [00:14:11]:
Well, and it could be because his retirement was announced that allows the Financial Times leak to be timely. So it's not that the leak happened and Jeff said I'm taking my toys and going home. That's a longer Runway. Probably happened in the reverse direction. I mean we're just speculating obviously. But this also gives Cook and Turnus a long time to tag team to go to shareholders and to those various diplomatic constituencies. Introduce him. Tim can whisper under his breath, okay, you have to watch this guy for this reason, you know, in a, in a macro sense.
Shelly Brisbin [00:14:41]:
And so it again gives Turner the incentive to stick around because Tim is still there to sort of hand him the reins and then turn. This is probably going to pick his own team which is going to take a number of months. And so yeah, it seems very Apple and very. It's so conservative. I was thinking actually about how many tech companies have actually really long term CEOs. But Apple is still very, very conservative even among that group in terms of its executive team and the shovels that happen despite what we hear about, you know, folks at the vice president ranks who have, who leave periodically either on their own terms or on somebody else's terms. But Apple is all about stability from a shareholder point of view, from a, from a corporate point of view. And you know, a long time ago Apple was this sort of, you know, the hippie company that Jobs and was established.
Shelly Brisbin [00:15:28]:
But they are, they are as buttoned down and as corporate in terms of their transition and structure at the high levels as any company out there.
Leo Laporte [00:15:38]:
Jeff Williams last day was Friday.
Jason Snell [00:15:40]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:15:40]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:15:41]:
So that's kind of interesting timing. Jeff Williams is only 59. So he probably. You think he left in a huff.
Jason Snell [00:15:49]:
No, I mean only who knows whether he wanted that job or not. I, I do feel like they reached a point where he wasn't going to get that job. Right. I think that happened. Maybe he said, maybe he. I just, it's this pure speculation now, but if I were in that position, I would. And I was thinking like, I got a lot of money, I work at Apple, I got all this and it's very stressful and I can retire and be with my family. Because remember he, you know, I think we all said at the time, he's kind of doing it right.
Jason Snell [00:16:17]:
Like a lot of these people stick around because they don't have anything else. And he's like, no, I'm going to retire. But maybe it is also like, oh, if I'm no longer sticking around because I'm the emergency option for Tim, then I'll just leave. Right? Like I'll just take my money and. And go hang out with my family. Which I think is very healthy, very healthy choice for anybody to make at.
Andy Ihnatko [00:16:39]:
A certain high level. It's not you would think why was you think about what a dream job would. Would be? And it is a dream job, but it's still. You never know what the, what the goals and priorities both professionally and personally a person has. So it's like, why would somebody leave at 53 years old where they there for another 15 years at this company or running this movie studio or doing this or that. Sometimes it really is exactly as Jason said, where you just realize that, okay, I am at a very, very high level. If I'm going to achieve what I want to achieve that is run a company that is worth half a trillion dollars or more, it's not going to happen here. So I'm going to have to basically go someplace else to achieve that.
Andy Ihnatko [00:17:19]:
Or I simply want to be the head of a very large philanthropic organization. And basically once you. Once a certain goal is either been achieved or has been pulled out from you, it's time to switch to different dreams. And that's often what happens.
Leo Laporte [00:17:35]:
Well, good on them. And what kind of CEO will John Turner speed? We want to speculate on that. Do we know anything?
Jason Snell [00:17:41]:
I mean, I've met him.
Leo Laporte [00:17:44]:
Okay.
Jason Snell [00:17:44]:
Yeah, I bet him he's have a firm manly handshake. He's. He, he does. I mean I'll. He reckon he. He said my name unprompted. So I was like, now you have.
Leo Laporte [00:17:53]:
To think about it.
Jason Snell [00:17:54]:
He's like, oh, hey Jason. I'm like, great. John Turner knows who I am. That's pretty cool. He's the head of hardware. I think what I would say is if everybody's going to paint the narrative they want to paint. I would say I think it's healthy that different people have, have those different backgrounds to, to form their CEO ship as you know, based on kind of like a different perspective. I do think it's healthy.
Jason Snell [00:18:21]:
It's a little like, you know, you want to, you want to promote different angles on your business from different ways of thinking. I think can be very healthy. And so honestly, you saw how Apple benefited from Tim Cook really thinking of everything from a status and operations perspective and optimizing a lot of things and changing how Apple offered products in a way that I think Steve Jobs, I think Steve Jobs would never have stood for offering last year's product after you announced this year's product and Tim Cook made it like a whole system that allowed them to sell products a little bit cheaper and keep those products in the price list. I think that, I think that having Tim Cook's perspective has greatly, obviously given the size of the company, benefited Apple. So I look at John Turris, I'm like, well, wouldn't it be nice to have a CEO who is a little more focused on another area that Apple does well, Hardware. The hardware that they build is, is world class. They've got their chip making operation that is world class. This is a place where they're really.
Jason Snell [00:19:21]:
And you know, so it's a little bit of a different emphasis, but it's still on stuff that's kind of core to Apple and, and what they do really well. So I think it'll just be different. The challenge for any CEO is the people around you to support you. Because if John Ternus is a hardware guy, then he needs to lean on Craig Federighi and whoever else on the software side. And he needs to lean on an OPS person, the current coo, probably to who's who replaced Jeff Williams to do the stuff that Tim Cook maybe did a little more of or cared a little more about. But ultimately a CEO you've got to have, even in the stuff you care about, you've got to have somebody else working on it because you're the CEO now, your job is different. But I think that having, it's not a bad thing to have somebody who cares about hardware in charge of Apple. Honestly, I feel like at that high.
Shelly Brisbin [00:20:09]:
A level it's not a matter of advocating for or being exclusively knowledgeable about one era. Okay. This is the hardware era of Apple as opposed to the OPS era. You just ask better questions. You're going to have people in charge of those elements. Elements, whether it's ops or hardware or software who are responsible for executing. And you're going to have a particular focus based on your own background, but you're really asking questions and supervising the implementation of those things rather than saying, okay, it's all about hardware now. I love hardware and I don't care about software.
Shelly Brisbin [00:20:40]:
It's far too high a level for that to be sort of the perspective.
Andy Ihnatko [00:20:45]:
Yeah, I think the most interesting thing, no matter what direction he decides to take Apple in, Apple has always been a company that is led by its CEO. He's not just a CEO. There are companies where the CEO is just the person who makes sure that people who need staples and paperclips have staples and paperclips, people who, we have the right facilities, our investments are working exactly the way we want to. Apple has always had leaders who shape the future of the company with their intentions and with their philosophy of here is why Apple needs to exist. Here are the things that we need to be doing. Again, not just to get the paperclips in the drawers, but here are the product lines that we need to start working on. There's a reason why Apple spent billions and billions of dollars trying to develop a car. There's a reason why they spent billions and billions of dollars on the Vision Pro.
Andy Ihnatko [00:21:36]:
It's because of. There was a philosophy of this is the sort of thing that Apple should be doing. There's a reason why Apple was not putting as much money into research as other companies were doing. So I'm not not saying this as a guide to here's what I think Jeff will be doing or what he should be doing, but Apple is going to fundamentally change based on the priorities that he communicates either explicitly or implicitly about who we are as a company, what we are supposed to be doing, and what is going to amount to a waste of our time and a waste of our potential as a corporation.
Leo Laporte [00:22:09]:
You can see, I mean, it's interesting because Tim Cook really was in the mold of Steve Jobs, really kind of followed in Steve Jobs footsteps. But you've seen other companies. Jack Welch at GE comes to mind, where a new CEO completely changed the corporate culture, changed the plan of the company, changed how it works. It is possible to do that, to bring in somebody like that. But I have to think that Apple is really more focused on preserving its existing culture. Right.
Jason Snell [00:22:38]:
I don't want to say Apple will never do that, but I would say Apple would need to have. Have fallen completely lost its way, been viewed as a company that desperately needs a turnaround and he wasn't in that.
Leo Laporte [00:22:51]:
Position when Welsh took over. Yeah, but was Roland was just like Apple at the time.
Jason Snell [00:22:55]:
Yeah, but, but Apple Co. Apple will not do that because Apple, Apple has built up the antibodies Apple.
Leo Laporte [00:23:00]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:23:01]:
I think everybody knows that Apple has the secret sauce and it's the, their culture and that comes from Steve Jobs. And that if you brought in an outsider just, I mean we've had in smaller roles multiple outsiders come in, hired by Apple. People who by all accounts were talented in whatever they were doing before and none of them worked out like none of them. I don't think it's been, I think it's been since maybe Ron Johnson.
Leo Laporte [00:23:23]:
Yeah. Retail was just since Ron Johnson that.
Jason Snell [00:23:25]:
They, that they have not been able to do that. And so I think Apple has just accepted that the only way they're going to build leadership is internally.
Leo Laporte [00:23:34]:
And that saying is Apple is the Borg and resistance is futile. Is that what you're saying?
Jason Snell [00:23:38]:
I'm saying that they, they are not. I mean and this has been true since the beginning or certainly since I started paying attention to them. They are not like other companies. And anybody who wants to run Apple or, or think about Apple like you can just use the corporate playbook and it'll work will fail because Apple has never been like that. Back in the, in the PC days people are like they wanted it to be Microsoft, they wanted it to be Intel.
Leo Laporte [00:24:02]:
There is an example of that.
Jason Snell [00:24:03]:
It was never any of those things.
Leo Laporte [00:24:04]:
Look what happened when Steve Jobs left and we had Scully and then, and then Spindler and Emilio. All examples of kind of anti Steve.
Jason Snell [00:24:12]:
Jobs sort of sales guys.
Leo Laporte [00:24:13]:
It was terrible.
Jason Snell [00:24:14]:
And, and I, I fir believe that, that Steve Jobs knew when he came back that one of his. I think he was well aware even before he got his cancer diagnosis. I think he was well aware that one of the, he wanted step one was save Apple obviously. But one of the things he wanted to do was make Apple's culture reflect what he thought Apple stood for. And that, that is not necessarily just be Steve Jobs. Right. It's think in a way that Steve Jobs thinks Apple should behave and that's why he did Apple University, which is like an ongoing education for people who work at Apple to understand the culture and to further the culture. And as a result one of Steve Jobs's products that's still with us is the Apple corporate culture for better and worse.
Jason Snell [00:24:58]:
I think a lot of the ways when they fight regulators, it is part of that corporate culture. I think that is, you know, you take it, you know for better and for worse. But I think that that is true. And I think that after what happened in the 80s and early 90s, I think everybody who's got any involvement with Apple, including the board and the investors, the last thing you want to do is break the spell.
Andy Ihnatko [00:25:21]:
Yeah. And that's also a very, very interesting thing in terms of things I would like to see Apple change about its culture is there have been times in its past, and certainly within Tim's tenure, where it feels like Apple is just fighting battles that they don't need to fight, battles that they have lost time and time again. And they are continuing to fight these, their own detriment simply out of stubbornness and dogma. I would like to see an Apple that decides that, you know, what we fought this for, we thought were very good reasons. There's still very good reasons. But we are not going to be in a position where we keep just being, we're just going to be petulant about this. We're going to look at the entire game board, realize that we are just keep losing and losing and losing on this issue and we are not going to magically cause the world to change and for us to win. We are going to find a way to get the best solution we can out of the situation that we don't like.
Andy Ihnatko [00:26:15]:
Because again, time and time again it just seems like you're just being jerks about this. Okay, you know what, it's like the player that, like, you know what, you got called out a third. You maybe was a disputable call, but the thing is like, you are not going to reverse it by storming the dugout and yelling and raising your hands. And in the post game always saying about, gosh, everything is so unfair to us and we're just going to continue to stick to our guns because that was definitely my base. I was definitely not out. At some point you start to think very, very, you start to think a little bit less of this person to say, you know what, the world exists in a certain way. Maybe you weren't the long suffering person fighting for the future of your company in the world. Perhaps this is just a way where you just need to move on and adapt and do well in the world that you live in.
Leo Laporte [00:27:06]:
Well, he's going to have to deal with some interesting challenges to Apple. We're going to talk about those in just a little bit. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Inako, Jason Snell's back and it's wonderful to have Shelley Brisbin with us talking Apple more In just a moment, the show brought to you this week by Spaceship, my new favorite domain registrar. I love these guys. If you've been listening for a while, you know Spaceship. Spaceship has been part of our world for some world for some time. Actually...
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Leo Laporte [00:30:10]:
Masimo said no no, we had that first. They went to trial and a jury has awarded them $634 million. In some ways I think it would be nice if Apple would just pay the money and move on. They say they're going to appeal. They have a workaround for the current watches, but I don't. It's not as good because you have to go to the iPhone. Apple said the verdict is contrary to the facts, man. And Apple has to appeal.
Andy Ihnatko [00:30:44]:
Yeah, go ahead.
Leo Laporte [00:30:47]:
No, you go ahead.
Andy Ihnatko [00:30:48]:
Apple keeps trying to paint Masimo as kind of like a patent troll company saying well, they don't make any products. They're like that's not true. And there's. And there. And their basis of this is that, well, they didn't even announce like a physical watch that reads oxygen levels until like after the Apple watch came out with that sort of thing. But the thing is like they have a decades long history as medical technology, medical device, sensor, many sensor and reading manufacturing companies. They have a huge portfolio of patents that they've developed in house by themselves. So it's kind of a little bit disingenuous for Apple to, I mean they have to, it's.
Andy Ihnatko [00:31:24]:
They're fighting the suits, they have to do that but that's a little bit disingenuous. They, this is another one of those suits where they just keep losing and losing and losing and they have to keep fighting it. It's not as. It's not. I agree, I agree that. I acknowledge that they can't just simply write a check for three, three quarters of a billion dollars and move on with life because this is they, they need.
Leo Laporte [00:31:41]:
Why not, why can't they just settle it and say okay fine, you win and why didn't they just license it? Is actually the bigger.
Andy Ihnatko [00:31:47]:
Yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's a, that's what I was, that's what I was going to say. It's like they, they need to have a way that they can continue to create an Apple Watch that has the sensors and the technologies that they want to have. And one of the ways they can do that is to find a way to have a victory in this case. If they have a license then they're basically subject to, subject to whatever Massmobile wants to allow them to do and also cutting into whatever future that Apple wants to have for the project, not only for the hardware but also for the amount of money that's going to contribute to their mobiles division. So it's a complicated thing. It's just that again, another case where they just keep losing and losing and losing. You would hope that in a perfect world, and I underscore perfect world, Apple and Masimo, at this point, we get together and say, okay, you know what, there's a reason why we keep losing these cases. Judges and juries keep agreeing that, yes, you impinged on Masmo's patents.
Andy Ihnatko [00:32:41]:
We must find a way that we can continue to make Apple watches to the benefit of our users in a way that maybe we won't be as free as possible, maybe we won't be as profitable as possible, but we need to be able to move forward with this.
Leo Laporte [00:32:53]:
Are they afraid of other companies coming forward? Is that why they want to fight this bitterly to the end?
Andy Ihnatko [00:33:01]:
I don't know that.
Shelly Brisbin [00:33:01]:
I don't think they have to be.
Andy Ihnatko [00:33:03]:
Yeah, exactly.
Shelly Brisbin [00:33:04]:
I think it's enough for them to feel like we need to make an example of what we think is the right of it. But it fails the common sense test. And that's why a jury, not to mention judges, that's why a jury. It's unsurprising that they ruled in Masimo's favor. Because when you explain the facts to the level of a newspaper article, typically. But even if the jury has heard an entire trial, Apple hasn't really presented any evidence that Masimo is completely in the wrong. There are technical reasons that Apple can claim that it's in the right, but a jury is unsurprising. That jury says, hey, wait a minute, that's Masimo stuff.
Shelly Brisbin [00:33:41]:
And Apple took it and put it in their watch. And Apple Watch is a very profitable item and made by a very profitable company. And so from a somewhat emotional perspective, it's not surprising that the jury sided with them. And if Apple ever wins this case, it's going to be on a very arcane set of technicalities. And it does seem like this should be an indication to them that they are losing it. And the thing is, if they go to settlement talks now, they're not going to be paying 634 million. They're going to be billion. They're going to be paying some amount less than that, because that's what settlement talks are all about.
Jason Snell [00:34:14]:
Yeah, it's interesting. I think ultimately, I think Apple really does believe that they don't owe Masimo anything. And Masimo disagrees. And that is what the court system is for. It's funny, this jury verdict is not based on the patent. That's a dispute in the import case. This is a different patent that already expired. But the damage is.
Leo Laporte [00:34:36]:
I didn't realize that.
Jason Snell [00:34:37]:
Yeah, this is from an expired patent, from 20. Expired in 2022, but infringed before that. And so the damages are for the infringement before the expired.
Leo Laporte [00:34:47]:
So that's why licensing doesn't matter, because they don't need a license.
Jason Snell [00:34:50]:
Right. They could have settled, but I, my guess is the settlement would have been about the larger issues which they don't want to do because they believe that they can win on those. Apple believes they can win on those merits. For the record, the patent that holds up, the import issue, that is the reason that Oxygen has a weird thing in the US on Apple Watch that expires in a couple years, actually in three years, in 2028. So again, I don't think Apple's running out the clock necessarily, but I think Apple feels that they're in the right and doesn't want to pay Masimo. And I mean, in the end, yeah, they could settle unless they really don't want to, in which case it grinds through the courts. Apple's gonna, you know, if Apple has to pay, they got the money to pay. I think that this is one of those cases where I don't think this.
Leo Laporte [00:35:43]:
Is literally less than Apple makes in one day.
Jason Snell [00:35:45]:
Yeah, I don't think this is like the EU and the dma because that is, that is potentially changing that one. That's a big one. So that potentially changes Apple's business forever. Right. This like either Apple's gonna, Apple's gonna pay Masimo something, who knows what it is, and then the patents expire and that's the end. And so, you know, I think that they, I think this is really, you know, Masimo thinks they wrote it and Apple thinks they aren't.
Leo Laporte [00:36:10]:
And one of the things that probably convinced the jury is that when Apple was planning the Apple watch back in 2020, 2013, they hired Masimo's chief medical officer. Yeah, I mean that kind of implies that they wanted to do something similar to what Masimo is doing.
Jason Snell [00:36:27]:
The question is, was it just let's rip off Masimo or was it. I don't think that their patents cover what we're doing.
Leo Laporte [00:36:33]:
And again, or this guy has expertise in creating this kind of thing.
Andy Ihnatko [00:36:37]:
And this is why we have courts.
Jason Snell [00:36:38]:
This is why we have courts and lawsuits. And if Masimo can prove it, then they deserve the money. Right. That's just how it works.
Leo Laporte [00:36:44]:
That's the previous jury on this was, hah. They couldn't make a decision. And so this is, this is progress, I guess, for Masimo. Now let's talk about the UK because Apple has been trying to appeal a $2 billion App Store ruling from the United Kingdom. And the UK says, no, you can't appeal that. Pay up. This is with the Competition Appeals Tribunal. They refuse the appeal.
Leo Laporte [00:37:16]:
They say in their judgment, Apple's arguments do not have any reasonable chance of success. So, 2 billion, that's a little more than 640 million. And as you say, it might have greater impact on how Apple does business. It's not just the money. This is the App Store fees thing. The EU has also said Apple is subject to the Digital Services act, which means, really, Apple's going to have to change how it does the App Store in the eu, if not globally. Right?
Jason Snell [00:37:53]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:37:54]:
And this is another one of those I think I consider to be dogmatic sort of responses like we're just kind of like, kind of like how Steve Jobs used to fight Samsung on everything. Because we invented a slabs device that had rounded glass corners and has a button in the middle of it that you. The only place you could have stolen that from is from Apple. Because we innovated and we created that. And like, hey, I've got actually a digital scale on my kitchen countertop that was made three years before the iPhone that looks exactly like that, Steve. I don't know where. And the big point is that, yeah, that is different from massmo because they really do have to rework their entire business in how they run nap stores, not only in this country, but that country, but also pretty much globally to comply with a set of rules that they fundamentally and foundationally don't agree that they should have to comply with. So they're continuing to fight this tooth and nail pretty much everywhere.
Andy Ihnatko [00:38:46]:
And there was a story a couple of weeks ago where Google and Epic Games got together after basically the very last appeals and the very, very last ways to avoid a permanent injunction. Excuse me, to. To get rid of a permanent injunction that the courts had inflicted upon Google to close that case. They decided, okay, well, perhaps we can get together and create a system, basically reinvent how apps and app stores work on Android in such a way that Google gets a lot of what they want. We Epic Games and by hopeful extension developers get what they want and let's do something better than. And having to deal with this really, really brutal, barbed wire style injunction that was imposed and they came up with a system that when you. Excuse me, at least when I read it, looks like, wow. You don't necessarily have to agree that all phones should allow third party outside app stores, outside the Play Store, or in Apple's case, outside The App Store.
Andy Ihnatko [00:39:48]:
But if you are going to have to do this, this sounds like exactly the way you would want to do it. And after reading like this 32 page agreement that was proposed to this judge, it's like, wow, this almost really does seem as though this makes Android better. I would look favorably upon a platform like this that simply makes it okay for a third party App Store to exist in a way that it's been vetted and certified and not simply the wild wild west. I think that Apple is kind of missing out an opportunity to have that kind of same reinvention of the App Store. Remember that the App stores were created 20 years ago under a set of circumstances that were a unproven territory, pretty much in mobile, at least in this fashion. And secondly made sense during the marketplace and the way that apps were created, distributed and sold at that time. It's not necessarily the case that this is so perfectly done in 2006, 2007, 2008 that needs absolutely no changes and modifications. There's no need to Wi fi.
Andy Ihnatko [00:40:48]:
Why would anybody want Wi fi? Why would anybody want to connect to the Internet? I think the way that phones work in 1990, 1998 is perfect. We don't have to change a thing. Well, no, revolutions sometimes have to happen. And I think that Apple is not looking at opportunities to make the platform more relevant for developers that could actually enhance iPhone.
Leo Laporte [00:41:09]:
Apple also just won in the Supreme Court. This was kind of a silly battle over the camera patents. Dr. Timothy Pryor sued Apple in 2021 even though his patents had expired in 2020. He claimed Apple infringed upon my patents before they expired. Your Honor, Apple appealed one in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. They declared the patents invalid. Dr.
Leo Laporte [00:41:37]:
Pryor then appealed to the Supreme Court, which has refused to hear the case. So the Federal Circuit's ruling stands. So Apple's dodged that bullet. It gosh, they must just spend a lot of money on lawyers all the time.
Jason Snell [00:41:51]:
Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:41:56]:
And not for silly things either. It's like they just, it's like they have to keep batting away all kinds of garbage day in and day out. And they're not going to.
Leo Laporte [00:42:04]:
When you're a big company, you know, three and a half trillion dollar company people are going to try to come after you.
Shelly Brisbin [00:42:10]:
It's going to be a target. And I do feel it's fortunate. If we're talking about the background we would like for an Apple CEO, at least it's not a lawyer.
Leo Laporte [00:42:18]:
I mean, yes, that's good point. Yes.
Jason Snell [00:42:21]:
It's funny. I mean the, yes, this is, I believe that a lot of this, we're going to fight it in court goes back to sort of a Steve Jobs kind of culture. But I think it's also true that when you have new leadership, it's an opportunity. Even if everybody still has the opinions they had before, if you have new leadership, it's an opportunity to claim a reset, to say, oh, we, you know, so it's possible, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I'm saying it's possible that Tim Cook departing as CEO and John Ternus or someone else coming in as CEO could be an opportunity to reset their policy and relationship about things like the App Store. I wrote a piece a couple years ago about this. Like Apple has built on the Mac a perfect model that completely fits with what every regulator wants, which is this open model where there's an App Store but also you can just do whatever and they've, they've got their whole idea of you can notarize things and so there's security is in place. And ultimately if you want to flip a switch and run something that has not been approved or scanned by Apple, you can still do it, but you're going to get a lot of warnings like that model works on the Mac. So it could be that you have a reset where a new CEO says, I mean it's, it's, you know, it's like politics.
Jason Snell [00:43:42]:
It's, it's like the new leader comes in even if it's the same political party and says, well we're going to make some changes to our policies. Let's start a, let's reset the relationship with the EU or you know, whoever. I think that might happen. I'm not saying it will happen, but I think that it might be an opportunity for Apple to step back and say would it be better for us to end this multi front war that we've been fighting and come to a solution that's pretty, still pretty beneficial to us as the platform owner.
Leo Laporte [00:44:15]:
Kind of wish they would do this.
Jason Snell [00:44:16]:
Honestly, I think there's a strong argument that it's the right thing for them to do at this point is do you want to keep this going? Now that said, there are some stories about how there's a little bit not at the dma, but there are other parts of the European Commission where they're kind of retrenching and trying to deregulate a little bit and change their policy. And that makes me wonder if Apple Is like, yeah, let's just keep holding out and maybe everybody will give up. It might happen, I don't know. But it would be an opportunity with a new CEO to change if they wanted to.
Leo Laporte [00:44:48]:
Yeah. All right, that's enough of that. Enough talking about courts.
Andy Ihnatko [00:44:56]:
And we've done lawyers and money. How about guns next?
Leo Laporte [00:44:59]:
We have guns somewhere. Joe Rogan. We could. Well, no, that's not. How about we Talk about Apple's 2026 roadmap? I know this is very speculative. Are we going to see anything more in 2025? I don't think so. We're almost at Thanksgiving. There's no reason to announce anything.
Jason Snell [00:45:20]:
It's over.
Leo Laporte [00:45:21]:
The most interesting story, of course, is the, the Mark Gurman story that Apple has lost interest in the Mac Pro and that the Mac Studio. It's too bad. If Alex were here, I think we'd have more of a. We'll talk about it when he comes back. But none of you care.
Jason Snell [00:45:37]:
It's over. It's over.
Shelly Brisbin [00:45:39]:
It has been for a while.
Jason Snell [00:45:40]:
It has been for a while. Absolutely. This is, look, Apple Silicon has some fundamental things about it that make it great, that also make it inappropriate for a classical PC model, which is what the Mac Pro is, where you've got expansion slots that can have on GPUs and stuff like, and RAM and all that. Like, Apple Silicon's not meant to do that. Apple has reaped the benefits. And Apple meanwhile, has literally built the new Mac Pro. It's the Mac Studio using one of those Ultra or Max chips. But the Ultra chip, especially Thunderbolt's really fast.
Jason Snell [00:46:13]:
If you really need outboard stuff, you can break out using Thunderbolts. I just, look, I think the Mac Pro only exists now because they apologized for the, the, you know, they did the trash can Mac Pro and then they had to like apologize for that. And so they did this. And I think it's that litany of kind of failures that make them reluctant to do what they really ought to do, which is just say the Mac Pro doesn't make sense anymore. The Mac Studio is the new high end Mac the end. And I'm hopeful that they will do that at some point because, like, it just, no offense to people who loved their Mac Pros and all those slots and all of that, but like the decisions Apple has made lead them in a different direction and they're not gonna. Why would you invest a dramatic kind of like decoupling of a lot of the things that make Apple Silicon what it is just to sell what A few thousand maybe of your lowest volume product. It doesn't make sense.
Andy Ihnatko [00:47:14]:
Yeah, particularly in the world that, that Apple lives in. Because there were a good amount of reasons to have. I've got a big box on my desktop or underneath my desk, it's got slots and I can configure it exactly the way I want to. If I want a humongous amount of memory far beyond any sense of reality, I can do that. If I want to have four different GPUs, I can do that. If I want to build a RAID inside this box, I can do that. There was a time where I need a graphics workstation or I need a video editing workstation or I need a number crunching workstation you need 10 or 15 years ago there was a need for that sort of thing. And if Apple wanted to compete in that world of there are people who actually need serious computing power, we need to be able to build that sort of stuff.
Andy Ihnatko [00:48:00]:
And now they don't live in a world in which they can possibly compete with Windows machines and with Linux machines. Because the definition of I want a real workhorse, I really want a super, super powerhouse that's configured to my needs. Now it's, it's like okay, great, so are you training AI models? Are you basically fine tuning AI? Are you crunching enormous data sets? All these things are the sort of thing where if you have an open platform, where here is a buy the board you want, buy the main CPU you want, fill it with all the GPUs you want, fill it with all the extra compute that you want. That's not something that would benefit Apple to support. Now that they have Apple Silicon, now that they have a platform where the people that they know are are buying Macs, they don't need to create a special configuration just for super, super, super duper video editors. Because even like a base level like Mac mini can do 70% of what a lot of people would have required a Mac Pro to do 10 years ago.
Leo Laporte [00:48:57]:
Does so five give these high end users and this is why I wish Alex were here. But does it give them enough throughput that they don't have to worry about expandability? I mean you can use it to attach a gpu, I guess.
Jason Snell [00:49:09]:
Well, no, not a GPU because the Apple architecture just isn't built for it. But Thunderbolt 5 has enormous throughput and there's multiple lanes of it on the Mac Studio that's got the Ultra chip in it. So like, you know, I feel like this is more like a requiem for What a PC used to be, what a high end PC used to be. But like Apple. And for people who are like, yeah, but on the PC side you can still do that and you can build that and all that. Apple is reaping the benefits of Apple Silicon on the map.
Leo Laporte [00:49:39]:
There's a lot of Apple Silicon envy on the PC side, I gotta tell you.
Jason Snell [00:49:44]:
Yeah. But the side effect of that is Apple is making essentially mobile computers. Everything's integrated and they've managed in five years that they've had Apple Silicon. It's been five years now they have managed to build surprisingly. Remember we were worried like could they make a Pro system with Apple silicon? The answer is absolutely they can. The downside is if you have either misty watercolor memories of the way PCs were or you're somebody who loves that builds, build it and do all the parts and swap out parts thing. Apple is not. Apple has moved their platform elsewhere.
Jason Snell [00:50:22]:
And that's the bottom line is I get nostalgia from the Mac Pro. I used to have a, maybe not I power Macs for years and years and years. I don't think I ever had a Mac Pro. I think I was off the Mac Pro training.
Leo Laporte [00:50:33]:
I had the trash can Mac, if that counts.
Jason Snell [00:50:35]:
Yeah, I mean it does count. It does count. But I just, I mean, I mean. So your nostalgia is welcome and your, your wishing that Apple would do something like that is understandable. But the truth is Apple has moved on in the Mac Pro is as it's currently constituted is completely irrelevant, which is why they didn't even update it.
Leo Laporte [00:50:50]:
Memory you could put in a studio. You can get 192 gigs of RAM into a Mac Pro.
Jason Snell [00:50:56]:
No, I mean the Mac, the Mac Studio is the highest of, of literally everything that's available. So it's, it's the, the, that M3 Ultra Mac studio. Right?
Leo Laporte [00:51:09]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:51:09]:
So that's.
Leo Laporte [00:51:11]:
So M2 Ultra is the high, is the farthest the Pro went. So it can go up to 512 gigs of unified memory.
Jason Snell [00:51:19]:
Right. So 512. And that's, that's it. So the Mac Studio, 512 gigs of memory.
Leo Laporte [00:51:25]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:51:29]:
SSD internal, up to 16 terabytes.
Leo Laporte [00:51:32]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:51:32]:
And you're talking about a 60 core GPU and a 28 core CPU.
Leo Laporte [00:51:36]:
Yeah. So the Studio does everything you need.
Jason Snell [00:51:39]:
It is, I mean the M3 Ultra.
Leo Laporte [00:51:42]:
Except for expansion.
Jason Snell [00:51:42]:
Except for expansion. But even there I would say what first off in the Mac Pro, what expansion? Because GPUs are not compatible. So it's like, yeah, you could put hard drives in it I guess. But really you're going to have that whole case so that somebody can look at a case instead of an external hard drive. Like I see the argument, but you can. My argument is not that there are aren't reasons. My argument is if you're Apple and you have to build a computer and you have to sell it and it costs a lot to do that, those aren't good enough reasons. Especially since I would be shocked if they sell at this point.
Jason Snell [00:52:15]:
Are they selling any Mac Pros? Dozens of Mac Pros a month if that like to install. I think the only reason it still exists is they've got some clients out there who like, they committed like, yes, we will provide you with Mac Pros for the next five years or whatever. And they're like, all right, I guess, but like, like nobody. The writing has been on the wall really since the M2 because the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro are at parody in the M2 generation and now in the M4 technically generation with the M3 Ultra, it's surpassed it. So it's just. It's over. I mean, it's over. What can you say?
Andy Ihnatko [00:52:49]:
Yeah, on top of that, the people who would have bought a Mac Pro for certain specific and very, very good reasons left the platform a long time ago and they're not coming back. Once again, that's a good way of putting it. Nostalgia, that if you would like to think that, well, if we just build a machine to their needs, they will come right back. No, because they're very, very happy with what they can do and customize like on Linux and on Windows right now. And there's no need for a $4 trillion company. Apple does not need to reach out to those people for what is a small market. There was a certain amount of prestige in the past about saying, hey, we're going to create an art poster that speaks of exactly how powerful this new G5 Mac Pro Cheese grater Mac Pro is because it is the most powerful desktop work you can buy. But that was a nice poster.
Andy Ihnatko [00:53:33]:
It was a nice slogan. They're very, very proud of it. They worked very, very hard on it. But that was a long time ago. It is no longer necessary. So they're very, very wise to simply let go of ego and just let the numbers tell them. Their customers will always tell them what machines they need to design and what they need to build. Their customers in 2025 were telling them that if I'm in the Apple Store, I will take a look at your nice Mac Pro and think, wow, gosh, golly, a $12,000 computer isn't that nice.
Andy Ihnatko [00:53:57]:
But I'm walking out with a Mac Mini or Mac Studio, because you can.
Leo Laporte [00:54:01]:
Get a Mac studio up to $15,000 if you want to get an 8 terabyte hard drive and 512 gigs of RAM.
Shelly Brisbin [00:54:10]:
Because back when the, at the beginning of the first Trump administration, he had. Trump and Tim Apple had one of their famous conversations in Texas about building, assembling more properly Mac Pros in Texas. So if Apple wanted to continue to add to it, see, look what we're doing, doing in terms of United States manufacturing, that would be the best argument from Apple's perspective to build more Mac Pros and to build them in Texas. But even that doesn't make it worth their while.
Leo Laporte [00:54:38]:
Fortunately, they've replaced not paying attention to the future of the Mac Pro.
Jason Snell [00:54:42]:
They've replaced that story with the, the plant in Houston where you just were, Shelley, that is building Apple bespoke Apple Silicon servers for private cloud computer.
Shelly Brisbin [00:54:53]:
Well, and that's what's so funny because those aren't Mac Pro pros. Those aren't Macs. They're using Apple Silicon. They're using it to build AI data center for Apple. But they're not a thousand or a million, not consumers. It's not Mac stadium down there.
Jason Snell [00:55:06]:
Exactly. Although I would argue that there'll probably be more of those in existence than Mac Pros very quickly. Right. It's actually a higher volume product. No, it's not. And that's the. I mean, it's interesting. Like in the.
Jason Snell [00:55:19]:
We've got a lot, I mean twit. There are a lot of really, really big, big, big. And I say this in the nicest possible way, tech nerds in the Twitch community who are saying like, oh, you know, you can get these GPUs that are much more powerful than Apple's GPUs and all that. It's like, so what? Like in the end, Apple has made decisions that have benefited them greatly to integrate the GPUs deeply with their systems. And that's the path they have walked down. And it does motivate them to do have good GPU performance. But like, if the argument is Apple should make a Mac Pro so that some incredibly tiny group of people can put a G card which would require them to deconstruct Apple Silicon entirely.
Shelly Brisbin [00:55:58]:
Like, it just.
Jason Snell [00:55:59]:
The more you talk about it, the less it makes sense. And I find it's funny. One of the arguments that comes up sometimes about what products Apple should make is but this product exists somewhere else and I don't want to be mean about it, but like Apple, there are categories where Apple is not interested and the super high end PC where you stick a bunch of GPU cards in it, they don't care, they've moved on, they're doing something different. And like that could be right or wrong. You can agree or disagree, but after five years of Apple Silicon, they don't even have the wherewithal to build a computer with separate GPUs and separate memory. Because like that's not the game, that's asking a rock musician to play, to pick up a saxophone and play some jazz. Somebody might be able to do it. But like, like it doesn't make sense.
Jason Snell [00:56:48]:
Like they spent their whole life over here. That's what Apple has done with Apple Silicon. They have built this expertise. It is in this particular way a computer is made and if you don't like it, that's fine. But this is the computer they're making now.
Leo Laporte [00:57:00]:
I suspect we'll have this conversation again next week when Alex is here. But it is an interesting change a little bit in Apple's construction when they're looking at this very low cost iPhone based MacBook, a 500 or $600 MacBook and they're abandoning their very high end Mac Pro. Is it a shift a little bit of Apple towards consumer.
Andy Ihnatko [00:57:24]:
They've always been consumers, consumer technology. They also see a unique opportunity I think in 2026 that they did not have in 2020, 21, 22 in that they can be super, super competitive with a $600 response $700 laptop in a way they were not able to be five or ten years ago. Part of that is Apple Silicon. Part of that is just the slow, boring but important process of building retail channels in places like Walmart where the people who are looking for the mid range machines are actually living right now. There are a lot of factors there and lots more outside of control.
Leo Laporte [00:58:05]:
Let's not forget that AI though is driving a lot of the.
Jason Snell [00:58:08]:
Yes, this is the point is that that M3 Ultra Mac Studio has again, what is it, 819 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth and up to 512 gigabytes of memory. So like there are a lot of AI workflows that you could do on device with that thing.
Andy Ihnatko [00:58:28]:
Right.
Jason Snell [00:58:28]:
And, and I would imagine the M5 Ultra, which Mark Gurman says is coming will do even more. It's not that Apple isn't still trying very hard. It's not like Apple's like, you know what, what, it's not worth it. Let's just do the base model chip and walk away. Like, they're not doing that. They, they will not be able to push at the same level as a computer that is loaded with the highest end GPU cards. That's not a game they're interested in. It's a low volume game.
Jason Snell [00:58:54]:
It's not what their company is built on. I, I can't say this, I got to stop saying this because it's, it's, it's the same story over and over again. What I'm saying is they can make high end systems that are high end Apple silicon systems that will have performance characteristics that will be good for certain tasks and that's all they're interested in building at this point.
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:11]:
Yeah. And just one little footnote. There are some things that Apple just isn't good at. And this is one of those things that Apple just isn't good at. So sometimes Apple makes a very strategic and very, very savvy decision. Sometimes it's that, you know what, we just are not, we are not a company that is in any way has the sort of cultural or engineering background to make a product like that happen. Also, we have a market that is very, very. I'm not saying niche as a way of making it sound silly or insignificant.
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:44]:
I'm saying that we have a set of customers that is not like other sets of customers. Our iPhone customers are not like other phone customers. Our laptops and desktops are not for the conventional laptop and desktop customers. Fortunately, all those other people, they have 82% of the market and a dozen different companies of great magnitude to choose from. We know our customers. We know what our customers are expecting from us. We know what they'll line up to buy. We choose to make those things rather than say, oh, why can't we make a really, really great, legitimately useful and well built $350 laptop? God, if only we could be Motorola and build an awesome $200 phone that can run pretty much every app that anybody would ever want, want to run on a phone and also has a halfway decent camera.
Andy Ihnatko [01:00:32]:
They're like, no, we can't do that. We don't know how. We would fail miserably at that attempt. And then we would also be undermined. Motorola would just figure out a way to make that same phone for $175 and make our work irrelevant. So let's not play that game. We know what people are coming to us to buy. Let us build the things that they want.
Andy Ihnatko [01:00:51]:
They're coming to us for.
Leo Laporte [01:00:53]:
Well, save your apple wheels, your $500 apple wheels, and you can put them on something else.
Jason Snell [01:00:59]:
Going to be a heck of a display piece. I look forward to their prices crashing.
Leo Laporte [01:01:04]:
They're beautiful.
Jason Snell [01:01:04]:
I mean those display. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:01:06]:
Maybe what they, Maybe what someone should do is create like an adapter plate so the people who like are buying, bought those super expensive feet, could put it on the bottom of Johnny Ives $7,000 boat lamp and just basically the ultimate Apple design Flex.
Leo Laporte [01:01:22]:
I think I have at least one or two old Mac Pros, the Intel Mac Pros sitting across from me. They're the old editor boxes back when we still used Macs for editing. And I also have a bunch of Dell power stations, which we don't use anymore either. Times have changed. I think you made an excellent point, Jason, that this computing has changed. But if you are doing local AIs, maybe you want Cuda, but maybe you don't need Cuda because Apple's got a lot of unified memory at a lot lower cost.
Jason Snell [01:01:56]:
And if you do, this is the thing. It would be different if Apple was the only company that made computers, but they're not. And sometimes I think people are offended. Like I said that Apple doesn't want to play in certain spaces because those.
Leo Laporte [01:02:09]:
Spaces are nearly there. My machine is a Strix Halo box from amd. This is the Framework desktop. It's lovely.
Jason Snell [01:02:14]:
It's.
Leo Laporte [01:02:14]:
Yeah, it's super fast.
Jason Snell [01:02:17]:
What I'm not saying is everything Apple does is right. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is Apple made some decisions that have benefited them greatly and that, that has led them down a path of Apple Silicon. The Apple Silicon Mac era is the best era in the Mac ever. And Macs, you can buy Macs with incredible performance characteristics. That said, there are certain things that they are not going to do. And if those things matter to you, I guess it's a bummer that Apple has said we're not going to go down that path. But like it's a bargain that Apple made to get to go down this path.
Jason Snell [01:02:49]:
And I would say for 99.99% of people, it's the right one, right decision to make and they've benefited from it.
Leo Laporte [01:02:55]:
I'm really happy with the M4 Mini that I got here that replaced my old studio. Yeah, it's a nice computer and I put it in that fake Mac Pro case. So it's like a little tiny Mac Pro.
Jason Snell [01:03:08]:
Yeah, well, that's. I mean, yeah, that's, and that's the truth of it is that there is a Mac Pro. It's the Mac Studio. It's just what a Mac Pro so is has changed. Yeah.
Shelly Brisbin [01:03:14]:
See, I've been hesitating as to whether to say this or not, but I do think that Apple, to some extent and just other, to another extent, customers themselves have trained themselves to want the best thing. And if the best thing is called the Mac Pro, that's what they want. Obviously there are people who have more sophisticated reasons for buying a Mac Pro than that, whether they be expansion GPUs, which we've, we've talked about. But there is this sort of desire, this thought, wait, the Mac Studio that isn't enough for me because it's not the best thing Apple offers. And maybe at some point when the Mac Studio is the best thing that Apple offers, they can be satisfied with the $15,000 Mac Studio, which doesn't need wheels. And maybe that's sad for them. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:03:53]:
This is actually a really interesting point, which is in the PC space, you have thousands of manufacturers trying every possible configuration. There's only one company in the whole wide world that makes Apple computers. And so this. And it's their business. And they've looked at how many Mac Pros they've sold and they've decided it's not a good business. And, you know, you don't have a second company that could say, oh, we'll take up the slack there.
Andy Ihnatko [01:04:22]:
Well, not a good business for them.
Leo Laporte [01:04:24]:
For them. Again, that's their right to make that decision. And I suppose there'll be some people who will be upset.
Shelly Brisbin [01:04:30]:
Right?
Andy Ihnatko [01:04:32]:
Also, again, philosophically, Apple, and I actually mean this in a neutral way, there are companies that can make almost everybody happy. There's companies that are like, I can make only a certain specific subset of people happy, but they'll be so happy that they'll come to me exclusively because we're creating something that's completely unique. Apple is not the sort of company that can say, if you need 1,000 computers for your corporation, we can give you those thousand company computers that will be configured for every task in every single department. And this is a large enough order that we will custom configure and custom build this to your specifications. Apple is not going to be really, really super great at that. They can't target that effectively and hear.
Leo Laporte [01:05:16]:
From our corporate trillion dollars. Doing things good is a very good use for those old Mac Pros. They make an excellent desktop top holder. If you cut the Wood just right. It fits.
Andy Ihnatko [01:05:28]:
Cut, cut to my living room.
Leo Laporte [01:05:30]:
Is that a bench? Right. It's too low for a desk, isn't it?
Andy Ihnatko [01:05:32]:
They also make a. They also make a really good, like, side table for your chair. I've got a couple of G3s and G4s that are just, like, next to, like, a lot of different chairs. That's a perfect, perfect place for, like, your drink on a coaster, of course, because, you know, you got that beautiful mirror finish and also the remote or, like, if you have like a muffin that you're having for breakfast. Breakfast. So actually, I literally do have like two or three of these, like, in my living room.
Shelly Brisbin [01:05:55]:
I just have tablespoon of wood. I got rid of my cheese grater. G5 at some point. I did not think about their aftermarket.
Andy Ihnatko [01:06:02]:
I don't believe I have gotten all the value out of the money that I spent for that. For that pro yet.
Leo Laporte [01:06:08]:
And we should also say this is not Apple's announcement. This is Mark Gurman's speculation. It's possible there will be a Mac Pro next year.
Jason Snell [01:06:17]:
I mean, it's his reporting. It's his reporting. He says that they put it on the back burner, which is not necessarily that they'll discontinue it. Look, there remains a chance, but I feel like the longer we go, Apple.
Leo Laporte [01:06:27]:
If it looks like it's abandoned, doesn't it?
Jason Snell [01:06:29]:
Because they talked about doing like. And Gurman reported they were looking at, like, an extreme chip that would be like multiple ultras in one thing. And then you might need the cooling of the. But even then, it just sort of doesn't make sense, like, to have a case that big. It doesn't. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Leo Laporte [01:06:46]:
Now, how about this? Apple in their newsroom has put out a press release about how they. They're 3D printing the new Apple Watch cases out of titanium. They said nobody thought titanium would be a good material. Recycled material would be a good material. But we figured out how we can use it in 3D printing.
Shelly Brisbin [01:07:06]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:07:07]:
Wow.
Jason Snell [01:07:07]:
They use powder. They use titanium, pure titanium powder. And they say that it actually reduces the waste as well. Because by 3D printing it, you don't have shavings that are coming off the larger titanium block that you shaved off down to the size. Instead you3D print it with powder. And it's not just. It's Apple Watch. And it's also the USB port on the iPhone.
Jason Snell [01:07:28]:
Air is done by a 3D. A 3D printing process, titanium 3D printing to get to get it to fit.
Leo Laporte [01:07:36]:
A 3D printer like we think of in our house. Right.
Jason Snell [01:07:40]:
I mean kind of prints with metal.
Shelly Brisbin [01:07:41]:
I mean.
Andy Ihnatko [01:07:42]:
Yeah, creality.
Jason Snell [01:07:43]:
Get yourself a screen metal and not plastic.
Leo Laporte [01:07:46]:
Yeah. And they say using the additive process of 3D printing, layer after layer gets printed until an object is as close to the final shape needed as possible. Which is really, it does make a lot of sense and it allows them to recycle titanium, which has historically not been.
Shelly Brisbin [01:08:07]:
And this is the kind of environmental story from Apple that I really enjoy because it's highly stuck specific. It's not just saying we're doing a good thing, trust us. It's saying this is the process. That it's a tech nerds environmental story. And I love it.
Leo Laporte [01:08:20]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:08:21]:
And also it really does come down to like Apple's tenure. Apple's definition as a design company. I mean this is. I don't know what, what planets aligned so that this year Apple decided that we're stopped. We're no longer, we're no longer content simply implying that we're a design company and that that's part of our heritage. We really want to put that front and center by messaging that right in the introduction, the pre roll introduction video when we launch a new iPhone. We want Avenva that says that we are, we are all about design. Design is about intent.
Andy Ihnatko [01:08:54]:
Design is about A, B, C and D. And this is. You can almost hear Jony, I've titanium, the purest titanium deposited.
Shelly Brisbin [01:09:02]:
Now you're recognizing it until Johnny I Titanium.
Leo Laporte [01:09:10]:
Even before the printers can start, the raw titanium needs to be atomized into a powder. A process that involves fine tuning its oxygen contents to decrease the qualities of titanium. This is what happens when exposed to heat.
Jason Snell [01:09:25]:
This is what happens when you have one of these enormous companies that produces enormous numbers of products in great precision and has built up an incredible. I mean I've said for a long time, I bet you that one of the, if not the greatest repository of knowledge about how aluminum is used outside of the aerospace industry, I guess is Apple, like Apple is so good at metallurgy in so many different ways. And it leads to things like this where they. Because they've got the resources, because they're going to ship these products at volume, they can do this kind of research. And it doesn't. I mean, I mean I give credit to Apple PR here because honestly, this is one of those things that they could also just not talk about. But they want to boast about it a little bit, which is kind of cool because Somebody's got patents on this, right?
Leo Laporte [01:10:09]:
Somebody's like I think is super cool. And it takes them 20 hours to build the Apple Watch Ultra 3 Titanium, which is. This is. And the Series 11. Each machine features a galvanometer that houses six layer lasers all working simultaneously to build layer after layer over 900 times for a single case. The powder is 50 microns in diameter, which is like very fine sand. When you hit it with a laser, it behaves differently if it has oxygen versus not. So we had to figure out how to keep the oxygen content low, otherwise it bursts into flame.
Andy Ihnatko [01:10:49]:
Ooh, where's that in the video? I want to see that.
Leo Laporte [01:10:51]:
Yeah, right. This is wild. Now I imagine all these machines are in Shenzhen, right? I mean they're in China probably, or maybe they're in Vietnam.
Jason Snell [01:11:00]:
I mean, who knows? Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:11:01]:
Are these off the shelf machines? The, the chat room seems to know what kind of machines these are. So maybe, maybe these are. Maybe these are kind of stock Beneshaw lasers does that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:16]:
But does Apple take anything off the shelf when it comes to manufacturing? Don't they like to optimize for exactly the product they're doing?
Jason Snell [01:11:22]:
I would imagine it's a known. It's a known process that has then got custom hardware to generate components.
Shelly Brisbin [01:11:29]:
And you build your own machine. Yeah, does what you need.
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:32]:
Or, or they. Or they just simply. Just like with Gemini, they just basically. Can you. We would like to contract you to build. Build us a titanium deposit machine that we don't know how to build ourselves.
Leo Laporte [01:11:41]:
Apparently one of our. One of our regulars in the club eat the oligarchs. I love his name says he's used machines like this. I've used. He says you load the powder from above. I've used titanium, aluminium. Titanium.
Jason Snell [01:11:57]:
Selective laser melting.
Leo Laporte [01:12:02]:
Well from Wikipedia, so that's pretty darn cool.
Jason Snell [01:12:06]:
I like my lasers to be selective.
Leo Laporte [01:12:08]:
I want one. How much would one of these set me back? Would it be more or less than a Mac Pro?
Shelly Brisbin [01:12:15]:
Oh, Leo's building things out of titanium.
Jason Snell [01:12:18]:
Nobody give Leo a laser.
Leo Laporte [01:12:20]:
Crappy 3D extrusion Printed plastic things. They're so crappy. If I could build my stuff out of titanium. Now I'm interested.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:28]:
An essential part of our process is that we examine each fragment of titanium to select only the best ones that are proper and suitable for this application.
Leo Laporte [01:12:38]:
I want to see an ad of the rejected titanium wandering off.
Jason Snell [01:12:42]:
It becomes 16 years.
Shelly Brisbin [01:12:46]:
Old.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:46]:
They show up at Ocean State job a lot with like Swiss movements inside them. I would love that to happen. Building 19 would be Billy 19 would have a big, big bin if they were still in business. We can't say which watch casings they are, but you can use them to store pills in. You can use them for stamps.
Leo Laporte [01:13:03]:
Once the printers are done working, the excess powder is vacuumed off the build plate in a process called rough depowdering. I think I had a nanny that did rough de powdering when I was a baby. But I might be wrong, I don't know. This is. The video on the Apple website is actually pretty darn cool.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:24]:
They're very proud of processes.
Leo Laporte [01:13:26]:
Yeah, they should be.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:27]:
Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:13:28]:
They've tagged this with environment though. They're pushing this as an environmental solution.
Shelly Brisbin [01:13:32]:
Because it is, I think that's. It seems legit and like I said, I feel like they can make the case as to why it's very cool, but also what the environmental not impact. We don't know what the actual impact is, but we know what they're doing to diminish the amount, reduce the amount of waste and to do the process in house in such a way that it is efficient, presumably as efficient as possible. I think it feels legit to me.
Leo Laporte [01:13:58]:
I'm very happy that my Apple Watch Ultra 3 is made of 100% recycled aerospace grade titanium powder.
Jason Snell [01:14:06]:
Well, yeah, I mean the, their point, their argument here because it's again, it's a volume of these products that they're producing in this. It's not like, oh, we could do this.
Leo Laporte [01:14:15]:
It's like, no, no, that's what they say.
Jason Snell [01:14:16]:
Could you make millions of them? And, and so in the, they say in terms of raw titanium, we are talking about more than 400 metric tons saved and they're using half the raw material that they were using in previous process.
Leo Laporte [01:14:29]:
They're not cutting it because they're not.
Jason Snell [01:14:30]:
Cutting it and they're having those shavings.
Leo Laporte [01:14:32]:
I love this.
Jason Snell [01:14:33]:
And that's cool. I mean because that is, that is one of the goals. I mean it serves Apple's pr. But also like in the end that means you're, you've got more of a closed loop of supply chain which is good, right? To not have to, you know, go back to the titanium mines for more titanium.
Andy Ihnatko [01:14:50]:
I like Casio's approach. Like their philosophy is if the plastic is on my wrist, it's not being choked on by baby sea turtles. It's not in the water, it's not in the air, but resonant.
Leo Laporte [01:15:01]:
Is there any rough powdering involved with those cats Casio watches? I think not.
Jason Snell [01:15:05]:
That's okay, Andy. The sea life will be choking on that plastic in 200 years when it's floating in the ocean.
Leo Laporte [01:15:10]:
That's right. No Casio watch ever made has, has disappeared. It's, it's still there somewhere.
Shelly Brisbin [01:15:16]:
Meanwhile, my Series 9 feels big and bulky and non titanium compatible.
Leo Laporte [01:15:22]:
When I'm sad, I love this man. Makes me want to just go and roughly de powder somebody. All right, let's take a break. More to come. The Apple podcast charts are out and man, I went down thousands and thousands and I still didn't find us. But anyway, we'll tell you the best podcasts according to Apple of 2025 are in just a moment. You're watching Mac Break Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell.
Leo Laporte [01:15:52]:
Alex has the week off, but it's great to have Shelley Brisbin from the Texas Standard with us. So I'm confused. I think of it as a newspaper paper. It's a radio show.
Shelly Brisbin [01:16:03]:
It is a public radio show, statewide public radio show. We're syndicated on about 30 public radio stations across Texas.
Leo Laporte [01:16:09]:
And what, what are the topics of conversation?
Shelly Brisbin [01:16:12]:
So we are a daily news show. So we do, you know, news of the day. So today we had a story about how Texas universities may or may not capitulate to what the Trump administration wants in terms of regulating their content. And we also had had a story about a book. And we did. What else did we do? God, I can't remember. It's been like hours and hours. But basically it's news, arts, culture, music, books, sports, little sports.
Shelly Brisbin [01:16:39]:
We actually have an executive producer who loves the sports. So we're getting more sports on all the time.
Leo Laporte [01:16:44]:
Have you been hurt by the loss of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defunding?
Shelly Brisbin [01:16:49]:
Indirectly, because our station KUT in Austin is our home station and we actually had the some reserves. And so I think what's scary for us is that the real hard times will probably come in a year or two because we did so well with the fundraising that we did after CPB was dissolved that we're, we're kind of floating along a little bit. And I'm, I'm a little bit, I'm looking over my shoulder to see what happens in a couple years.
Leo Laporte [01:17:13]:
But right now those members continue to support.
Shelly Brisbin [01:17:15]:
Absolutely. Keep supporting your local public radio stations and it will come to us.
Leo Laporte [01:17:19]:
I, I donate to KQED and San Francisco because I'm a believer and actually I watch it more than I watch other things. So they deserve my, they're a lot cheaper than YouTube TV. I could tell you right now. Oh, man, we actually bought yet. What did you do? How did you survive the. The Disney, espn, ABC blackout? Jason Snell, did you do what I did? Did you actually end up subscribing to ESPN?
Jason Snell [01:17:45]:
I have. I switched to FuboTV a couple months ago and it includes ESPN. I went back.
Leo Laporte [01:17:51]:
Because it's owned by ABC.
Jason Snell [01:17:52]:
Because it's owned by ABC now. Yep, that's exactly it. By Disney.
Leo Laporte [01:17:56]:
So how do you like Fubo?
Jason Snell [01:17:57]:
I think Fubo is better if you're a sports fan because they've. That was where it came from. Their goal is to have really good sports content and their multi view is the best. So on a college football Saturday, if you're putting up like three or four games in a box and moving around between them and all that, it's really good at that. And they have access to. I think they have access to all the 4K streams. And that's one of the things I found on YouTube is that some of the 4K streams on YouTube were just like the NBC 4K soccer feed just wasn't there. It said it was there, but it wasn't there.
Jason Snell [01:18:24]:
And I decided I was gonna for roughly the same price, I could just go to Fubo. So I'm trying that now again.
Leo Laporte [01:18:30]:
What are you gonna do when F1 goes to Apple TV though? You're gonna have to.
Jason Snell [01:18:34]:
Oh no, do you mean I will have to get an Apple TV subscription that I've already had since day one?
Leo Laporte [01:18:39]:
Oh, okay, nevermind. You have both. Okay, okay. You like we'll save the Pluribus conversation.
Jason Snell [01:18:47]:
I have. What do you mean? Like you either subscribe to Fubo or you subscribe to Apple TV and there's no in between that I would think.
Leo Laporte [01:18:53]:
One would choose, but maybe. No, no, there's no overlap there, you foolish man. It's on Peabo. Anyway, we, we were able to watch Monday Night Football last night. So that was.
Andy Ihnatko [01:19:05]:
Congratulations on YouTube TV all Pivo Bryson all day.
Leo Laporte [01:19:10]:
It's on Peabo.
Andy Ihnatko [01:19:13]:
Theme. We got it. If he's done other music, I bet we have that too.
Leo Laporte [01:19:21]:
All right, we'll be back in a moment. Our show today brought to you by Zapier. I actually have been a Zapier fan since they started. I don't know when they started, but I signed up long ago and have been using Zapier as part of my. As everything as my automation system. You know, I have Zapier turn the lights down or up at sunset and you probably, probably use them for my Christmas lights. And of course the most important thing Zapier does for me is my workflow for these shows. When I bookmark a story in Raindrop, it's automatically posted to my Mastodon instance.
Leo Laporte [01:19:55]:
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Leo Laporte [01:22:35]:
I'm loving it. Now I have to say this before a little disclaimer before we cover this Top charts of 2025 in Apple Podcasts. This is only podcast subscriptions in Apple.
Jason Snell [01:22:53]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:22:54]:
Admittedly, Apple Podcasts is probably the dominant podcast client.
Jason Snell [01:22:58]:
Spotify is probably even.
Leo Laporte [01:22:59]:
Oh, Spotify. Even bigger. Okay, okay. Actually I should ask Patrick what percentage of Mac break we listeners use Apple podcasts. I would think it's higher than, you know, some of our other shows. Number one show, which is ironically a Spotify video podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. It says Spotify right on there. That took over number one from last year's number one.
Leo Laporte [01:23:27]:
The daily from the New York Times. Then Mel Robbins, Crime Junkie, Dateline, Smart Less Call Her Daddy, this American Life, Huberman Lab and the Ezra Klein Show. It's the usual. It's the usual subjects.
Andy Ihnatko [01:23:42]:
Yeah. As old timers like Hoobin like. Like using podcasts since the time where we realized why it was called podcast because it was for the ipod. It was fun in the early days to see people who are just doing this for fun and they're at the top of the charts as opposed to who's at the top of the charts now? Well, people who are essentially celebrity podcasters, even if they came by it by becoming podcasters 10 years ago and rising up. But it's like, okay, it's hard. Where is the next? Really? Where is the next? Answer me this coming from. And I'm not sure that this is an environment in which Helen and Ollie can basically get noticed by people outside of. By word and mouth.
Leo Laporte [01:24:27]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:24:28]:
Answer me. This podcast is back, by the way. It was on Harris for a long time and I was very, very delighted to see Helen Ollie once again on my podcaming podcast inbox.
Leo Laporte [01:24:37]:
By the way, we are in the top 10 of technology shows at least this week in tech is which kind of surprises me. The audio version of that. I thank you. I guess given that we've been around most of these shows are within the last five years. We've been around 20 years. I don't really expect to be.
Jason Snell [01:24:56]:
So the Apple metrics are weird, right? Because they. They actually have another list that's the most. Most followed I guess they call it and not subscribed to. And it's a slightly different list because Amy Poehler is high on that list. I. I think it's. You know, there's an algorithm happening here too, where it's like they're probably measuring engagement, they're measuring new subscriptions. Right.
Jason Snell [01:25:18]:
Where if you've got a bunch of people who've been there for a long time, but you don't have a bunch of new people coming in, you might not be high on the chart. Even if you got a lot of listeners. I'm not sure I believe that this is like exactly a pure kind of thing. I think it's a manufactured by Apple kind of gauge of. Of hotness more than anything else.
Leo Laporte [01:25:37]:
It's just like the Billboard charts. It's my understanding that there's a ballistic effect that new subscribers count a lot more. Mac Break Weekly is 75th on the chart, right between TFTC, a Bitcoin podcast, and me, myself and I from MIT's Sloan Management School. So at least we're on the top 100.
Jason Snell [01:25:58]:
Yeah, but number. So twit is number nine in tech. That's pretty good, right?
Leo Laporte [01:26:03]:
That's pretty good security now.
Shelly Brisbin [01:26:05]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:26:05]:
Yeah. So I'm happy enough. We're old, we've been around a long time. We don't have as many new subscribers every week.
Jason Snell [01:26:14]:
Oh, look at, look at that. Upgrade on relay is number 52. I like it. I like it.
Leo Laporte [01:26:18]:
You're beating Mac Break Weekly. Good job.
Jason Snell [01:26:21]:
It goes the other way. Those flip. I've seen this before and it's like one over the other. It's like, where will my little podcast be on this list? And there they are.
Andy Ihnatko [01:26:28]:
You gotta make sure. Go ahead.
Shelly Brisbin [01:26:30]:
Sorry, I was gonna say, you're right. There are several lists. There's the follow list, the subscribe list. They have a best of list, which in the article I. You actually had to click through to see what the Apple editors thought were the best podcasts, which is somewhat different than this list, but a little closer to the. Than this, to this list than I would like. They also call out specific episodes if I guess that's a good way to get into a podcast. That's top.
Shelly Brisbin [01:26:52]:
But yeah, like Andy, I miss the sort of days of indie podcasts where you might actually, if you're a podcast geek like all of us, you might actually see somebody in no way high up on the list. And now it's celebrities and, and people who.
Leo Laporte [01:27:04]:
Oh yeah, we were off. You know, we announced a new show to be number one for a while because.
Andy Ihnatko [01:27:10]:
And not to denigrate those podcasts, I mean, Conan o' Brien has an amazing podcast, but it's like, okay, it's, it's like you just like to see. I have no idea who this person is, but that seems like an interesting idea for a podcast. I'm looking forward to finding out who this person is.
Shelly Brisbin [01:27:25]:
Yeah, I read an article last week that really depressed me about the degree to which, which podcasts are male and white person dominated.
Jason Snell [01:27:34]:
Yeah.
Shelly Brisbin [01:27:34]:
So the Annberg school did a study and something like 75% of podcasters are men. And in particular topics, women do true crime podcasts and art and culture podcasts. But overall it's a very male dominated field. I believe it. But I will say that I am glad to see some women, whether they're podcasts I personally listen to or not appear in the. The top 10, you know. Oh, well, there went a piece of hardware. But we.
Leo Laporte [01:28:00]:
Wow. Musical tone as it went down.
Jason Snell [01:28:04]:
Big podcast has gotten you Shelley already. That's Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan came over and did something.
Shelly Brisbin [01:28:12]:
In any case, I'm glad to see that there's a little diversity in the top. Although still, like when I'm looking for a podcast to listen to, there, there are. And no, you know, no offense to you gentlemen who I. I love to podcast.
Leo Laporte [01:28:24]:
Yeah, I can't help it that I'm a man, Shelly. I try not to not to be, but.
Shelly Brisbin [01:28:27]:
I know, Leah, but there, there are too many dudes in podcasting in general. So anytime a. A woman led podcast gets a little love, that makes me happy.
Leo Laporte [01:28:36]:
Oh, I agree with you. But you know, I'll be honest. When I started, there weren't many people at all in podcasting, so it was just. By the way, hey, we got a. We got a. A club member Cruising classic who has the Mac Break Leaf leafy shirt.
Andy Ihnatko [01:28:52]:
And welcome to this week's Mac Rake Leafy.
Leo Laporte [01:28:56]:
And it looks like he's in the same woods you are, Andy.
Andy Ihnatko [01:28:59]:
I was thinking the same thing.
Leo Laporte [01:29:01]:
I think he must have run over to wherever the hell you are.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:05]:
I think I need to contribute to the ongoing success of that product by occasionally doing it. Even when my Internet at home is fine. Library is fine.
Leo Laporte [01:29:14]:
We were worried and it turned out to work quite nicely. Except there's probably a little risk right now.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:22]:
If I do it again, I will dress a little bit more. I dressed out of anger in the moment as opposed to taking five minutes to say, okay, what are the warmest things I have and how many of them can I have on underneath my best coat?
Leo Laporte [01:29:35]:
Apple on Thursday, introduced a new set of app Review guidelines which now specifically say apps must disclose and obtain permission before sharing your personal data with what they call third party AI. In other words, not Siri. Right? Not Apple AI.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:57]:
Yeah, because apps are special. Yeah, actually they are.
Leo Laporte [01:30:00]:
But it's the same as app tracking, transparency, isn't it? I mean, it's the same idea. Don't share my data with AIs. I like it.
Andy Ihnatko [01:30:11]:
Yeah. There was a lot of things that they changed here. They also clamped down on predatory loan apps by saying you can still have a loan app, but you can't like have APRs that are higher than a certain extent. They. What else do they do? There's a note here. Yeah. There's new stuff for that. Your app has to control, has to support users who want to know what kind of content your app delivers that might be age restricted.
Andy Ihnatko [01:30:37]:
And that's certainly looking forward to like all the laws. All the laws. They're about being a trend.
Leo Laporte [01:30:42]:
Yeah. Roblox just announced. Announced that you're gonna have to, Even if you're 8 years old, submit a video of yourself before you can use chat. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:30:51]:
And there's another one that was like, why. I can't imagine why there wasn't a rule against this to begin with. They're basically having. There's a new rule that basically clarifies that. Yeah. If you are trying to. If you create a video streaming app where the local looks like Hulu and it says that makes people think that it's Hulu and you're trying to trick people who are looking for the Hulu app, we would rather you not do that. To the extent that We've introduced Rule 4.1, 4.1 C and a couple other things like that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:20]:
So interesting.
Leo Laporte [01:31:21]:
That's a problem for poob, which does use, in fact Hulu Green.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:26]:
So that is trademarked. I was amazed at the power of a signature color. I know that this is a new thing, but like when I was like designing an interface for, hey, I want to link to music stores, I'm like, how do I. Should I, should I have like the logos in there? Should I mention? It's like. No. If you, if you have like apples white on black, they understand that. If you have youtubes like white on red, they understand that. Spotify green, they understand that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:52]:
Amazon orange, they understand that. It's amazing how. And I'm glad to see that there are these like new rules that says that. Yeah, we know that you're trying to say, oh, no, no, no, it's a, it's a four Letter streaming service. And yes, it's green, but I mean, green is just a color. Nobody owns a color. An Apple can say, yeah, we've pulled your app internationally. Have a good day.
Shelly Brisbin [01:32:13]:
If only there were rules mandating better color contrast. But that's just.
Leo Laporte [01:32:18]:
I'm sorry, can you turn that on in accessibility? Because is there a way?
Shelly Brisbin [01:32:22]:
Well, you, you can and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I mean, to be like we have accessibility nutrition labels now which are entirely optional. And for a long time time, those of us in the accessibility world have been advocating for some sort of at least required disclosure if not requiring that an app be accessible if it can be made. So. But yeah, color contrast is a big one, especially in the liquid glass world. We don't have to go too far down that rabbit hole except to say sometimes it's bad.
Leo Laporte [01:32:48]:
Yes, we have managed to put off the Mark Gurman synopsis till way deep in the show. I think we deserve a gold star for that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:32:58]:
That's why we're a top hundred podcast baby.
Jason Snell [01:32:59]:
Legitimacy.
Leo Laporte [01:33:01]:
The Mark Gurman rehash will now commence. Apple's iPhone overhaul will reduce its reliance on the annual fall spectacle. We kind of heard this before. This is not new. They're going to do two releases a year. Is that what Mark is saying?
Jason Snell [01:33:19]:
Yeah, this is the big. It's fall pro phones and spring non pro phones which Google's been doing for a while. Yeah. And Samsung. Samsung do releases a year. And if the iPhone line is going to be six phones, then maybe they should do it. So the idea is next fall we're not going to get an iPhone 18, we're going to get an iPhone 18 Pro, an iPhone 18 Pro Max and an iPhone fold, but that's it. And then in the spring of the next year of 27, if you can believe that, then you'll get a regular 18 and maybe you'll get an Air and an 18E.
Jason Snell [01:34:01]:
But the idea there is that they're going to split and I think it's smart because if you've got that many phones and everybody wants to know what the new iPhone is, doing it twice a year. And since it once a year, it lets you tell your story more, it lets you advertise, sort of spread your advertising out. Apple is still kind of going by the playbook of when they had one or two phones and they don't now they have a whole product line. So following the Samsung model. Model makes sense to me.
Leo Laporte [01:34:25]:
Yeah, it makes sense in manufacturing, makes sense in marketing.
Jason Snell [01:34:30]:
Oh yeah, that's One of the things is that, is that part of this. If we don't think about this, I mean, as actually those of us who cover Apple do think about this in the sense that it's so much work. In September, I'm like, guys, can you spread it out? I said, back when I was the editor of Macworld, we were really like one product release every month to put on our cover, please. And they would not listen to us.
Andy Ihnatko [01:34:50]:
Right?
Jason Snell [01:34:50]:
So to do this, to spread it out, it also is like getting the OS and the new OS that comes out in the fall and testing it on every new model. Like, okay, let's reduce the number of new models. Getting all of those phone models into production at the same time in the factories. It's. It's a lot. So if they can do like half of them for that and then half of them. The other part, you get this really nice kind of like, like, you know, every six months is a better, a better pattern than every year, I think to spread out the load for the people who work on this stuff and manufacture it and all those aspects, people who design it, like they're hitting all those milestones simultaneously for like four different phones. It's a lot like, maybe, maybe stagger it.
Jason Snell [01:35:34]:
It makes sense.
Shelly Brisbin [01:35:36]:
I actually think it'll be interesting for marketing in Apple stores, carrier stores, anywhere you buy an iPhone. Because up to now, to the extent that this was a conversation, people would say, well, September or October is when the new iPhones are going to be available, so wait till then. But now it's every six months and you go, well, if you wait three months, there might be a new Pro Phone, but right now there's a brand new non pro phone and it just, it gives a better or more of a story to tell that isn't so much about a linear product line. But hey, here's something new that's coming from Apple. Maybe you want to hold on to it for it or maybe you don't. It'll be interesting to see how it affects the Laggard products, which I'm a big fan of. Apple having. We talked about that earlier.
Shelly Brisbin [01:36:16]:
Apple having left Laggard products on the price list to make the product line even broader. It'll be interesting to see how that's managed and to what extent that continues after this shift.
Jason Snell [01:36:27]:
Yeah, it's also, I think you talk about who buys these products and I think the truth is in the fall, especially the people who are buying who are like, oh boy, new iPhone. I can't wait, wait, those are People who are buying like the pro phones, because those are the nerdier people. And I'm going to do a plug here. Shelley did a great story on six colors and we had lots of charts that was about, like comparing her co workers at the radio show to the people who subscribe to six colors in their iPhone buying patterns. And they are different and people hold onto them longer. Regular people, like the regular people Shelly works with. So I think, I wonder if, if it's easy to split this into two, because the people who know and care are going to know that in the fall there are pro phones and they're going to buy them. And the people who don't care so much and just kind of go into the Apple Store when they need a phone aren't going to really care if it's a 17 or an 18.
Jason Snell [01:37:26]:
And then at some point in the spring, it'll be an 18 instead of a 17. But like, really the point is, is this the current iPhone? I would like to buy it, please. And they don't care so much about, is it, oh, I can't believe this phone's been out six months. I, I should not buy. I think that there's a lot less concern about that for casual buyers.
Andy Ihnatko [01:37:42]:
100%.
Leo Laporte [01:37:44]:
Gurman also took an opportunity to take a shot at the information, which of late has competed with him a little bit. Getting the scoops. The information, he Sundays, reported a second generation iPhone Air had been postponed from next fall to 2027. Well, from what I've heard, it hadn't actually been earmarked for next year. That's why they named it the iPhone air.
Jason Snell [01:38:07]:
Yeah, yeah, he actually reported. This is funny. He reported that it was going to go in the spring before the information reported that it had been delayed out of next. Like, Gurman had already reported that it wasn't going to ship next fall because he said it's going to ship in the following spring. And then the information comes up and says, oh, no, it's not. Like, if I were Mark Gurman, I'd be a little offended too, that, like, they, they didn't, like they were reporting this as if they were breaking news. And they seemingly had not even read his report about it. I don't know.
Jason Snell [01:38:38]:
So he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what it is.
Leo Laporte [01:38:40]:
I knew that. I knew it all along.
Jason Snell [01:38:43]:
It was. He said it's been at least for a while. It may have, they may have discussed releasing it in the fall, but he said for a while it's been on the spring 27 agenda for Apple. That was not. That was not really.
Leo Laporte [01:38:55]:
It's still not clear how well the air is as selling. Right. I mean, there's kind of dispute over this.
Jason Snell [01:39:01]:
Yeah. Gurman says that the Target is like 7 or 8% or that's what the fourth phone did in the past. I've heard through the grapevine from some sources that, you know, when. When you look at the statistics of what phones are using apps and stuff like that, that, that the numbers are small for the air. It's whatever 4 or 5%, something like that. But that's not surprising. I mean, it's not a mainstream phone. The pro and the pro max and the 17 are the mainstream phones.
Jason Snell [01:39:27]:
Phones. This is the outlier. And you know, when you, when you sell six phones, they're not all going to be mainstream phones. So I think the question is, is, is Apple a little disappointed? I think they probably are because there was a report that they reduced the number that they're making, which means that it probably undershot their projections. But we'll see how it does over time too, because I do think that that phone is more likely to pick up buyers over time who are more casual who see it and go, oh, that's really cool. I want that in a way that maybe the hardcore. Give me another pro Max. People are not going to look twice at some phone like that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:40:03]:
I totally agree. Remember when Apple the iPhone 6 was only marginally thicker than the iPhone Air. And at that time Apple decided that, nope, this is not the special super thin version of it. This is just the version that we want to make. And we are establishing this as the mainstream phone with our expectations that's going to sell as well or better than any previous mainstream iPhone we've ever made. This is clearly a. This is something that it was a good time for us to build this at least partly because we need to have technologies and experience in manufacturing super, super thin panels backed by batteries just in case we actually do want to do a folding iPhone next year. So this seems like a good way to capitalize on a lot of the investments we've been making in flat battery technology and assembly technology.
Andy Ihnatko [01:40:47]:
So, yeah, if they had decided that this was going to be a phone that everybody would want to have, they would have declared it to be. This is the new iPhone 7. Yes. It's thin. You notice that.
Shelly Brisbin [01:40:57]:
Hey, I hope they stick with it though, because I like the design and I am not like, I know Jason is somebody who is an advocate for a Whole ton of colors just for the sake of having them. But it seems like the iPhone air would be a good opportunity to do some things like add additional colors because it's the cool factor that's going to sell those phones in the store more so than the features themselves. And I think if it's going to have longevity, the idea that you could get it in a whole bunch of colors or there would be some other sort of wow factor feature that's more about aesthetics than about actual tech, seems like it would be a big help for that product.
Andy Ihnatko [01:41:32]:
Yeah, I agree with you. That makes so much sense because I think that Apple is again, they're a design company company, they're really good at it. They're good at making a highly desirable object that you just want to own. So I'm glad that they're seeing an opportunity or potential and saying what if we made a phone that is not going to have the best specs of the entire product line. It is not going to be our flagship in any way, shape or form. But we've got some ideas on how we can exploit some brand new technologies that have been happening for manufacturing. We have some ideas that for the opportunities that Apple Silicon has in terms of we don't actually need a super thick battery anymore. We don't have to necessarily worry about heat dissipation for certain levels of performance anymore.
Andy Ihnatko [01:42:15]:
Can we do something that takes advantage of all of that and creates. I don't want to call it a statement phone, but something for people who they would be perfectly fine with a $500 commodity smartphone, but they would much rather spend a lot more money on something with a emphatic amount of style and coolness about it. You deal with this device how many times a day? Way too many times a day. And it's the cigarette case of cigarette cases used to be in the 1920s and 1930s. Actually I want to go to Tiffany's and find a cigarette case that I'm going to enjoy interacting with several times a day only the difference here is that this is killing your brain instead of your lungs. But still the principle holds true.
Leo Laporte [01:43:02]:
One good point of information. According to an analyst Counterpoint research firm, the iPhone is doing very well in China. 1 out of 4 smartphones so did China last month were iPhones sales jumped 37% year over year. The iPhone's doing very well. IPhone 17, we don't know if it's the. I guess it's not the air, but it's doing very well and China. So that's Good. Tim will be happy to report that next quarter.
Andy Ihnatko [01:43:31]:
Yeah, especially because that used to be like one of the big things that they wanted to mention in every single analyst call about how they're doing in China. Analysts used to ask questions about. Yeah, we noticed that year, year over year, the growth is, is, is pretty much flat. The growth of this, the entire market in China was X and your growth was actually much large, less than X. And so that's clearly a focus again, not only, just not only an opportunity that they needed to pursue, but also what was acknowledged as a problem, that there must be reasons why we're not selling in that country. I'm not knowledgeable enough about that market to understand. Oh, well, obviously it's because they did this and they took advantage of these subsidies and they just. All this sort of.
Andy Ihnatko [01:44:08]:
No, but it could be as simple as they created a phone that just everybody wants. Sometimes that's how you become successful with a specific product or others. The right phone at the right time and the bright market had the right amount of money to spend on.
Shelly Brisbin [01:44:20]:
On it.
Andy Ihnatko [01:44:20]:
But I'm glad to see that this is good news.
Leo Laporte [01:44:22]:
New data from Ookla, the owners of Speedtest. The Wi Fi speeds are much faster on the iPhone 17. And they credit, or at least nine to five Mac credits, the new N1 chip. That's interesting. This is an Apple custom chip that I presume replaced a Qualcomm chip. They've got the new modem as well. So overall, average download and upload speeds on iPhones with the N1 were about 40% higher than the iPhone 16. That's a big jump.
Andy Ihnatko [01:44:56]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:44:59]:
417 Mbps on average on one.
Andy Ihnatko [01:45:04]:
Think how badly they. What a great. They couldn't gamble on this. Like, imagine the one thing that everybody would. That would make the next iPhone into a flop is as if they decided, hey, we know more than everyone else, we're going to make our own WI fi chip, we're going to make our own cellular modem. And if people notice that, wow, my wi fi performance suddenly stinks, or wow, my connectivity to Verizon in my area now is suddenly absolutely terrible. I regret having bought this. I'm returning it.
Andy Ihnatko [01:45:29]:
I'm going to consider other options. The fact that they stuck the landing on the N1 is maybe just as significant as any other piece of Apple Silicon news that's come out in the past five years.
Shelly Brisbin [01:45:39]:
I wonder if they'll be able to market that at some point. Feels like it's too early. You've got One study. But is it the kind of thing where they can say, you're going to get better WI Fi speeds if you buy a new iPhone.
Andy Ihnatko [01:45:51]:
I wonder if it's. At this point, it's still a thing of this is their ability to say, wow, we've made this twice as powerful as last year's one, but you still get the same battery life. Wow. It's actually a little bit lighter than last year's phone. But you see, still get the same battery life and the same performance. Sometimes they don't have to actually call out that we have. We've got this new technology. It's like, hey, we have never downgraded or degraded your performance in any way, shape or form.
Andy Ihnatko [01:46:17]:
At minimum, we have given you the same performance and the same expectations each and every year, and that will continue to exceed them in certain ways. Where and how we can.
Leo Laporte [01:46:26]:
What is interesting is that they did not put the new C1X in the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro Pro. I think it's still using the Qualcomm modems.
Jason Snell [01:46:35]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [01:46:35]:
But they did put it in the air. So what I'd love to see is some comparisons to cellular speeds on the air versus the 17. I haven't seen anything like that.
Jason Snell [01:46:45]:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it sounds like it's going pretty well, but they. They were hedging their bets there.
Leo Laporte [01:46:50]:
Nobody complained about the speeds on the 17.
Jason Snell [01:46:52]:
Oh, certainly not. No. I. So I did a. I did a real quick test on the iPad, the M5 iPad. Between. Between this.
Leo Laporte [01:46:59]:
You went in your backyard? Right?
Jason Snell [01:47:01]:
In my backyard. And the answer was that it was. I think it was. I think I got faster, slightly slower down, but way faster up. And it made a connection on Verizon that it. That nobody makes a connection on Verizon in my backyard. And it made a connection even though it was one bar. So, like, it was different is the answer.
Jason Snell [01:47:19]:
But, like, that's the challenge with any of these tests. The nice thing about OOKLA is that they were probably testing under lots and lots and lots of conditions just because of the volume of people using speed test. But, you know, a modem's characteristics, like, you may get a. An incredibly fast modem that's brittle. Right. Like, incredibly fast modem, it maxes out in a great environment, and in a bad environment, it falls off the ledge and is a disaster. And you might get another one that's slower but more resilient. And I.
Jason Snell [01:47:47]:
I don't know whether it sounds like the C1 and C1X are pretty good, but which was the fear. I think Apple's goal for generation one was don't mess it up, have it work, have it be functional. Don't have people returning products because the cellular doesn't work. Now step two is put it in the iPhone pro and see what happens. So I think this was. I think. I don't. I haven't seen anybody who would suggest that Apple isn't on the path to doing a C2 essentially and, and replace a Qualcomm and all their phones and that it'll be fine.
Jason Snell [01:48:22]:
But what it may still be is different. Right? Like just because these phones are doing different things in different environments and that's. They're not. It's not, it's not a straight up speed test like a CPU test, because it depends on where you are and what frequencies you're in and all of that stuff. And if you're in my backyard and it's a disaster.
Leo Laporte [01:48:44]:
You may remember, remember during the Apple product launch a couple of months ago when Apple introduced the iPhone Air, the engineer, the designer that introduced it, Abadur Chowdhury, featured prominently on the launch video. Not at Apple anymore. He's taken a job at an unnamed AI company. I don't know if that makes any difference or not, but he is an industrial designer who left iPhone, according to Mark. Mark loves doing these stories about AI people leaving the company. This is kind of a funny one because he's a Designer, not an AI guy, but he did go to an AI company. I wonder if it's OpenAI because remember Jony Ives working there, working on some sort of product. Does it matter? We don't know.
Andy Ihnatko [01:49:35]:
It's interesting. Also, he did point out, Mark Ehrman did point out that it's not as though this person was left because of fallout because of underperforming iPhone 17, iPhone Air or whatever like that.
Leo Laporte [01:49:48]:
The air is gorgeous. I don't think anybody would disagree that the industrial design on the Air is impressive.
Shelly Brisbin [01:49:54]:
Well, and for all we know, he might have left because a project was successfully completed and he felt like he could move on to something else.
Leo Laporte [01:50:01]:
Thank you, Shelley. See, a cooler head prevails only occasionally. You are the saucer that cools, rules the cup.
Jason Snell [01:50:12]:
Let's take. That's right. Shelley, thank you for your pleasant take. You know, see, hot takes. It is good to get a pleasant, reasonable take for once.
Shelly Brisbin [01:50:22]:
I mean, I'm saving up for when I have a really hot take that I'll take coming.
Jason Snell [01:50:26]:
Yeah, no, no, save. Yeah, save. Save it for. For the real hot take.
Shelly Brisbin [01:50:30]:
My Mac Pro was the hot take for today, I think.
Leo Laporte [01:50:35]:
Let us take a break and come back with more hot takes and cold takes and cool takes. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Shelley Brisbin from the Texas Standard. Great. Always great to have you on, Shelly. I'm thrilled we could get you here. She's filling in for Alex Lindsay, who may or may not be back last week. He's been working hard. He's been getting a lot of jobs.
Leo Laporte [01:50:55]:
Andy Ihnatko is also here. I'm sorry, Andy, but your website was brought down by Cloudflare this morning.
Jason Snell [01:51:02]:
Morning.
Andy Ihnatko [01:51:03]:
Yeah, I noticed that because I was trying to post a whole bunch of stuff in anticipation of something.
Leo Laporte [01:51:08]:
I got up and, like, this has become a new tradition, you know, first it was aws, then it was Microsoft Azure, now it's Cloudflare. Bunch of sites not working in the morning because Cloudflare was down for a couple hours. Actually, it's pretty serious.
Andy Ihnatko [01:51:25]:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Because sometimes now it's like when fates befall us in a negative way. Maybe it's not God that hates us, maybe it's Cloudflare that hates us, it's the cloud.
Shelly Brisbin [01:51:35]:
Yes, when AWS went down, it really wreaked havoc with us at the radio show because you don't realize how many things that use AWS you're actually relying on. But none of us noticed Cloudflare. The first thing we read about being down was X. And all of us were like, oh, we don't do that. So we, you know.
Leo Laporte [01:51:51]:
Well, besides Anakin during Fireball, maybe you've heard of them. That's. That also went down.
Shelly Brisbin [01:51:57]:
I've heard of them. Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:51:58]:
A few other. A few other Mac stories was down. I know because I do my beat check and I was up early and I got a warning from Tapestry and we couldn't connect with all these sites. I thought, what? That's something.
Andy Ihnatko [01:52:10]:
Ironically, I set up Cloudflare because, hey, I don't want this thing coming down.
Leo Laporte [01:52:14]:
You don't want the DDoS.
Andy Ihnatko [01:52:16]:
I want.
Shelly Brisbin [01:52:18]:
Well, what's the. I can't remember the name of the site that checks whether things are up or down. That was down.
Leo Laporte [01:52:26]:
You know what? Down Detector was also down.
Shelly Brisbin [01:52:28]:
Detector, yes, Down Detector was down.
Leo Laporte [01:52:31]:
It was behind Cloudflare too.
Andy Ihnatko [01:52:35]:
Maybe. Maybe that should be a feature of Safari and Chrome. Like when it realizes what's happening, you just put. Instead of the usual, oh, Internet connected connectivity or whatever could not resolve, just says, guess what, everybody? You get a snow day. You get an Internet free snow day. Day, put on your snowsuit, go outside.
Shelly Brisbin [01:52:51]:
I mean, when AWS was down, we, we use a tool called Rundown Creator to run the show. We can't do the. We can, we can do the show without Rundown Creator, but it's really like having your hands tied behind your back. And there was about 45 minutes that day where we were just like, I, I don't know what we're doing. Nobody does. Just keep cutting tape.
Leo Laporte [01:53:09]:
Wow.
Shelly Brisbin [01:53:09]:
But we, but we don't know how long anything is.
Leo Laporte [01:53:12]:
Yeah. Also here, Jason Snell from 6colors.com and the upgrade podcast this week from London. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Jason Snell [01:53:24]:
Love it.
Leo Laporte [01:53:25]:
The 52nd most popular podcast in the.
Jason Snell [01:53:28]:
Technology sector, I guess. Today.
Leo Laporte [01:53:32]:
Our show today, brought to you by Framer. Now let's talk about websites. If you're still jumping between tools to update your website, you need to know about Framer Framer. Framer unifies design, CMS and publishing on a single canvas. So no more handoff from one tool to another. It's all there. No hassle. Everything you need to design and publish all in one place.
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Shelly Brisbin [01:54:35]:
Free.
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It's a free. Yes, free, full feature design tool. Think unlimited projects. Free. Unlimited pages, free. Unlimited collaborators. Free. Everything you need.
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Leo Laporte [01:55:50]:
Framer Supporting Mac Break Weekly Three episodes in Pluribus. What do we think?
Jason Snell [01:55:59]:
I love it.
Leo Laporte [01:56:00]:
Love it. It's really good, isn't it?
Jason Snell [01:56:03]:
I love it.
Leo Laporte [01:56:03]:
It's another Severance.
Jason Snell [01:56:05]:
Maybe. We'll see if it takes public consciousness. It is. It is, I think, a harder watch than Severance because it's more stylized and a little weirder. Yeah, a little weirder than Severance.
Leo Laporte [01:56:16]:
Gilligan, if you love Breaking Bad.
Jason Snell [01:56:19]:
Seahort man.
Leo Laporte [01:56:21]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:22]:
Again, they. They real. It's. It gets really, really intense. Not. Not. Oh, my God, there are zombies and they got axes and flamethrowers and they don't have a defense against the. Against the zombies.
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:33]:
It's more like these subtle things where even, like, if you were. You could. You could imagine a situation that is absolutely mundane in which. Oh, my God, if I were in that situation, I would be. I would be despairing and I. I would. The panic of not knowing what to do and having to figure out something.
Leo Laporte [01:56:51]:
See, I think it's telling how would react. Ray S. Horn is clearly upset. I think there are others in that world who are taking advantage of it. I think I would be more like the other guys saying, hey.
Andy Ihnatko [01:57:06]:
Well, I'll say is that. I'm sorry, just very quickly. The only thing they're very, very cagey about what the subject material of this was about. The logline was, was everybody a virus or something?
Leo Laporte [01:57:18]:
We're not going to spoil it. Right.
Jason Snell [01:57:20]:
The log line was a world's unhappiest person tries to make the rest of the world who's happy, unhappy and that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:57:28]:
And that. And that was something like that. Basically like this. Yeah. And the. And the. And that would make me. I.
Andy Ihnatko [01:57:34]:
I have lots of faith in the creators, but, like, what could have been like, okay, so it's a. It's kind of. It's kind of like curve your enthusiasm, only like sort of as a drama where it's like, oh, well, gosh, why is this one person always so, like, morose and everybody's so down when everybody's so upbeat and it's like, no, that was. By the end of the first half hour of the first episode, it's like, no, it's not that at all.
Jason Snell [01:57:58]:
No. And I think the reason that it may not be as broadly popular as something like Severance is that. Is that I'm not. First off, Severance had kind of of this mystery, and I'm sure there are facts to be revealed by Pluribus. We're being very good at dancing around what it's actually about. But I will say this. I think, yeah, you're right, Leo. I think a lot of us would say, well, in this situation, why would I not just live like the guy who on, you know, on Air Force One.
Jason Snell [01:58:22]:
I'll just put it that way. And the answer is, you know, it's kind of a show about grief. And I think that the grief is a thing that, that motivates the main character. And I think it's really, I think Vince Gilligan is exploring some really interesting kind of heavy concepts about, not only about grief, but about identity, about what's important, the individual or the collective. And like, I don't know, maybe it'll be a smash hit like Severance. Maybe it will be one of those shows that most people don't get into. But then the TV critics at the end of the year say, yeah, but that's the best show. And I'm leaning toward the latter.
Jason Snell [01:59:07]:
I'm not sure this is as much of a crowd pleaser, but I'll tell you, I've been thinking about it every day since I watched it.
Leo Laporte [01:59:12]:
Yeah, me too. It really is. It's philosophically very interesting. And by the way, I am very taking great pains to pronounce it Raya Seehorn, because I pronounced it Ria last time. And I got an email from Dennis Bootsacares, who was her. Worked with her. He was one of the lawyers, Dennis Boutsakaris. Oh my God, you know who he is.
Jason Snell [01:59:37]:
He sent my website 20 years ago mean emails because we made fun of him. What a jerk.
Leo Laporte [01:59:43]:
Did not make fun of him.
Jason Snell [01:59:44]:
But, but Raya. Okay, good, lesson learned.
Leo Laporte [01:59:48]:
He said, don't ask me how I know. And he knows because he was worse with her in Better Call Saul. He's a character, well known character actor who I think I might have seen on Broadway back when he was in Amadeus many, many years ago. Anyway, thank you, Dennis, for correcting us. We're going to say Rhea because she deserves a lot of respect. She was, she is great in this show.
Andy Ihnatko [02:00:11]:
Imagine working on a production as bold and as big as Better Call Saul. And even amongst that ensemble cast making such an impression upon the creator that he decides, you know what? Next one I do, you're going to be at the very center of it.
Leo Laporte [02:00:24]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [02:00:25]:
Because you can absolutely everything she's and.
Leo Laporte [02:00:29]:
By the way, is perfect for Carol Sturka is a perfect person to play that role. And we're not going to say why, but she just really is very, very good. Anyway, Shelly, you haven't said a word. You haven't seen it.
Shelly Brisbin [02:00:42]:
I have not, no. I have scrolled by a number of very positive reviews, though, so I know know that the Zeitgeist, or at least the Zeitgeist in my RSS feed, seems to love it.
Leo Laporte [02:00:51]:
So, yeah, we're not ruining it for you. But the reason we mentioned, of course it's an Apple TV plus show. And Apple TV seems to be firing on all cylinders lately. They have been making better and better stuff. I was not a fan of the morning show, the early attempts. Schmigadoon was interesting.
Shelly Brisbin [02:01:10]:
I like Schmigadoon. I'll say good things about Shmugoon.
Leo Laporte [02:01:13]:
I love musical theaters. So I liked it, but it was a little cloying. But I think they're with Slow Horses, Last Frontier Down Cemetery Road and now Pluribus. They are firing on all cylinders. I think they're really doing a good job. Apparently, Apple's also looking at a sequel for F1, the movie. Joseph Kaczynski, the director, says Apple's interested. Brad Pitt would come back.
Leo Laporte [02:01:40]:
It would be F2. I don't know what you call it.
Shelly Brisbin [02:01:45]:
Is that the sort of movie that when they made it, if it was successful at all, there was clearly going to be a sequel.
Leo Laporte [02:01:51]:
I didn't see it, so I don't. I'm waiting till December 12th and I can watch it for free.
Shelly Brisbin [02:01:55]:
It's. It's a big budget movie that did really well and it's 2025. Of course there's a sequel.
Leo Laporte [02:02:01]:
Yes, they have to. I mean, they're running out of stuff to make movies. Apparently. There's no ideas, no new ideas. Tim Cook said it's. When he was asked at the Emmys, he told Variety, it's definitely something that's being talked about. We're so proud of it. And the director said, I'd love to see what other adventures Sonny Hayes has in his future.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:25]:
So we had a long conversation about it in Cupertino. We decided that we like making lots of money, like attracting prestige operations.
Leo Laporte [02:02:33]:
Plus we bought the rights to F1. One real F1 broadcast, coincidentally. Coincidentally. And it might help us boost ratings a little bit as well.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:42]:
I mean, we kicked the ball back and forth is what we did, you know.
Jason Snell [02:02:44]:
Yes.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:45]:
We're an open campus. We were open, open.
Shelly Brisbin [02:02:46]:
We ran it down the track to see what would happen.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:49]:
We decided, hey, what if we picked up. What if this big bag of money that's on the table that we're free to take? What if we actually take that big bag of money.
Leo Laporte [02:02:56]:
Yeah, yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:57]:
Just spitballing here.
Leo Laporte [02:02:58]:
Just, you know, it's a thought, it's an idea. And sad. I'm sad to report, I don't know if you. You played any of the Mac ports of Baldur's Gate or Fallout, but the game designer, the programmer, brilliant programmer who worked on those for Interplay, she did the famous three do port of Doom in just a few weeks. She did the Macintosh versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Icewind Dale. Rebecca Heinemann passed away at a very young age of 62 two of cancer. So a legendary game designer programmer, she got her start as one of the first arcade champions, Space invaders in the 80s. That's a pedigree.
Leo Laporte [02:03:49]:
Yeah, yeah. Her wife had just passed last year, so it's kind of a double tragedy. But you can thank her because she really made it possible for us to play some of these big titles on a Mac back when that was unheard of. And it was because she was so brilliant. One of the founders of interplay, Bard's Tale 1 and 3 Wasteland. Dead at the age of, I think, 62, sorry to say. All right, I'd like to take a little bit of a break and if you would, my friends, prepare your picks of the week week. We can do those when we come back.
Leo Laporte [02:04:34]:
Shelley, I don't know. Do you want to do a pick of the week this week?
Shelly Brisbin [02:04:37]:
Sure. I got a pick.
Leo Laporte [02:04:38]:
All right. And I don't like to make our guests work, but.
Shelly Brisbin [02:04:42]:
Well, it's, it's funny because I had one pick and then my iPad fell off of it and so I have another pick.
Leo Laporte [02:04:48]:
Is that what we. Is that what, Is that what happened?
Shelly Brisbin [02:04:51]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [02:04:51]:
Was that the sound? The gong? Oh, my God.
Shelly Brisbin [02:04:55]:
I'll share it with you.
Andy Ihnatko [02:04:57]:
Oh, my God.
Leo Laporte [02:04:58]:
Oh, that's not good.
Andy Ihnatko [02:04:59]:
Oh, my God.
Leo Laporte [02:05:00]:
Maybe not such a pick.
Jason Snell [02:05:01]:
Maybe not.
Leo Laporte [02:05:05]:
That's gotta be the first live pick failure on this show.
Jason Snell [02:05:08]:
I know.
Shelly Brisbin [02:05:09]:
And I hope you don't get letters from who make this thing.
Jason Snell [02:05:12]:
That's hysterical.
Leo Laporte [02:05:14]:
All right, more with Shelley Brisbin, Andy Ihnatko and Jason Snell in just a moment.
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Leo Laporte [02:09:10]:
Pick of the week time. Andy Ihnatko, why don't you kick things off?
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:17]:
One of my favorite picks of the year. Apple tv, of course, has all the rights to all the classic peanut specials. Yeah, exactly. So this is the weekend you can watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for free. Free. Free. Free. Free.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:28]:
Without having access to Apple tv go through the app. I think it will.
Leo Laporte [02:09:34]:
I think it's there. Yeah. In fact, it's on the front page. There it is.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:38]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:09:38]:
Yep.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:39]:
And so, yeah, it's. I'm. I would have been very, very upset with Apple if they decided that this is the only. You got to pay up in order to see again part of our cultural heritage. So I'm still upset that it's not available just simply on free tv. I'm still a little bit upset that you can't just simply go to, like, the Google Play store and buy it if you want to own it. It's like, more know, it's. It's its own lock, stock and barrel.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:04]:
But yeah, it's. It's still something that has to happen, like, each. Each and every year.
Leo Laporte [02:10:10]:
And no spoilers. I won't tell you whether Lucy pulls the football from Charlie Brown again this year. I watched it last night. I just love it. It's just. It's nostalgia.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:23]:
At some point, you have to start blaming Charlie Brown.
Leo Laporte [02:10:25]:
I think it's.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:26]:
I mean, it's never a good thing, but it's.
Leo Laporte [02:10:28]:
He talks himself into it each time. It's like, well, she wouldn't do this. It's a holiday tradition. Yeah, exactly. Charlie. Charlie.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:36]:
She said a lot of things, a lot of things about a lot of subjects that you shouldn't have fallen for before. And this is one of the ones she does not. Just once a year.
Leo Laporte [02:10:43]:
So they do this. Do they do a Great Pumpkin every Halloween? Make it available, too.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:48]:
Yeah, every. The holy trinity of. Of Peanut specials. Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas, they do do a free weekend and they announce it well in advance. I think this week it's happening. This year it's happening like a week earlier. I think they normally do it like close. As close to Thanksgiving as possible.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:05]:
But I think you kind of want to see it before Thanksgiving and not after Thanksgiving.
Leo Laporte [02:11:09]:
I remember that right around Thanksgiving you could also see the wizard of Oz with Danny Kay introducing it.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:15]:
Yeah, that's. I mean, I can't be like a Gen X, like old timer and say, oh, life was different back then. But there were, you know, there were times where it's like, it's New Year's Eve. Guess what's happening. We are turning on channel 38 and we're watching the Stoo a Thon. Yeah, we're not.
Leo Laporte [02:11:32]:
And, and so when you had to in order, you know, this is how TV worked.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:37]:
But also you wanted to. Because, come on, it's the Stooge a Thon. It's New Year's Eve. What else are you gonna do? Even if you're. Even if you're at a party, like, guess what? It's a part. It's a watch party of the Stooja. Th on, there's going to be. There's going to be champagne at midnight somehow.
Leo Laporte [02:11:50]:
And I don't know how this happened. You gave me the Czechoslovakian or the Czech Republic link to Apple tv.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:57]:
Sorry about that.
Leo Laporte [02:11:57]:
But thanks to that, I know that it's 199,000 Czech kroners or whatever it is they use in Checklist for Apple TV Plus 199. No, wait a minute. The comma's in a weird place. It's 100. Maybe it's 19,900 case.
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:16]:
I. I apologize. I was. Oh, with the, with the, with the.
Leo Laporte [02:12:19]:
What are you doing in Czechoslovakia?
Jason Snell [02:12:21]:
It's just the. It's just Czechia now. The Slovaks. Somewhere else.
Leo Laporte [02:12:26]:
Is it Czech Republic or Czechia? What?
Jason Snell [02:12:28]:
It's Czechia.
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:29]:
I was dealing with a cloud flare conference downage. I was. I had my hands full of lots of stuff this morning. I apologize. I. I copied and pasted without really checking out to see. What is it?
Leo Laporte [02:12:40]:
Czech Karuna. Oh, you know this?
Jason Snell [02:12:44]:
Yeah, I looked it up before you, that's all.
Leo Laporte [02:12:46]:
Okay. The Czech Karuna. I, when I was a kid, went to see. Went to Czechoslovakia in 1967 when it was still Czechoslovakia, and I have a very fond memory of it. The Czech Republic now. Well, now we know you can see Charlie Brown in the Czech Republic for only 199. Whatever.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:08]:
And before I close, we move on to somebody else. I will notice that the Hostess did buy the intellectual property of Dolly Madison. So if you want to have the snack cake, these zingers which when it was back on ABC TV during Gen X, Gen X time period, you can actually do that. It's no longer.
Leo Laporte [02:13:26]:
You were the traditional sponsor of.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:28]:
Exactly. In New England ways to say, wow, I wonder what a Dolly Madison zinger would taste like.
Leo Laporte [02:13:33]:
Like, ah.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:34]:
Some people buy them in New England. No, we did not have. This was New England is and was a Hostess stronghold.
Leo Laporte [02:13:43]:
You're right. I never had Dolly Madison when I was a kid. Come to think of it. You're absolutely right. I had. I had Hostess.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:50]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [02:13:50]:
Yeah, there was a Hostess plant in Providence.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:53]:
Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [02:13:55]:
I remember the Wonder Bread factory as well. Always smelled wonderful.
Andy Ihnatko [02:13:58]:
They also used to have snack cake called the Google.
Leo Laporte [02:14:01]:
Well, there you go.
Andy Ihnatko [02:14:03]:
Honestly, they're absolutely true.
Leo Laporte [02:14:05]:
There you go, the Google. Ms. Shelley Brisbin. How about your pick of the week?
Shelly Brisbin [02:14:11]:
All right, so this is probably accident and I should have put it in the document. I'm just realizing now, but accidentally, probably the least expensive pick you've ever had on Mac Break Weekly. Visual aids. It is a. An ipod. It's a lanyard for AirPods Pro. What's special about a lanyard for AirPods pro, you may ask. It is from Cobcob.
Shelly Brisbin [02:14:32]:
C O B C O B B. And it is a lanyard that you stick each AirPod in and then it's magnetized so that you can put it around the back of your neck. It's perfect for being on a plane because the worst thing I can think of is to drop an AirPod on the plane. And so you put this thing around your neck and you magnetize them together. You put your little airpods in the hole.
Leo Laporte [02:14:54]:
Oh, I gotta get this.
Shelly Brisbin [02:14:55]:
It's so big. Good.
Leo Laporte [02:14:57]:
I have a lanyard for the case. I thought you were talking about the case. This goes right on the AirPods themselves.
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:02]:
Exactly. You just stick them in little holes and it comes in colors.
Leo Laporte [02:15:06]:
And can you still put them in your ear with this thing on?
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:08]:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you can.
Leo Laporte [02:15:10]:
Doesn't interfere with that.
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:12]:
No.
Leo Laporte [02:15:12]:
Do you have pink?
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:14]:
I don't personally.
Jason Snell [02:15:15]:
I have blue, but they come in many colors.
Leo Laporte [02:15:19]:
I might get pink because you know what? I get everything pink that way nobody's going to steal.
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:23]:
There you go.
Leo Laporte [02:15:24]:
There you go.
Andy Ihnatko [02:15:25]:
I love that. That's it. Because I'm going. My walks is like, sometimes you do need to like remove just one earbud. So you can talk to a clerk that you're purchasing and then lose it.
Leo Laporte [02:15:35]:
Yes.
Andy Ihnatko [02:15:35]:
And then you put maybe and something. And the ability simply this. This is one of the reasons why I kind of like wired earbuds because when I'm not using them, I can just sort of just wear them. Like an attractive, very, very thin and non. Very insulating scarf.
Shelly Brisbin [02:15:46]:
Yeah, I used to carry a pair of wired earbuds just for that reason. And I have this thing. Can I. Can I tell a Charlie Brown Christmas TV story though, real quick, please? So when I was a kid, I was probably 9 or 10, something like that. I was in a school string ensemble. Wasn't quite an orchestra. There were probably about 10 of us and we had a gig on local television and it was for a kids show that was taped, pre taped, but it was going to be played on Saturday morning. So one night before Christmas, we went down to the television station to record our big.
Shelly Brisbin [02:16:19]:
It was the night that Charlie Brown Christmas was on. And because we were in a TV studio, the monitors were showing what was live on television, but they wouldn't turn the sound up. And we were playing. And I was so mad because I kept looking over this way, trying to grok Charlie Brown Christmas while I was supposed to be playing my violin on television.
Andy Ihnatko [02:16:39]:
That's another thing. That's nothing. Younger generations don't understand that if you missed your shot at watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving or Charlie Brown thanks you, that was it for the year.
Shelly Brisbin [02:16:48]:
You're waiting a year. You missed a lot VCR back in that day.
Leo Laporte [02:16:54]:
I don't understand how hard it was back in the 90s or whatever, 80s.
Shelly Brisbin [02:16:58]:
A little earlier than that.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:00]:
I believe that when DJ Jazzy Jeff and this Fresh Prince wrote parents just don't Understand, I think they were tapping into that memory of I don't care if it is my aunt's birthday tonight, we have to stay. I have to stay home and watch a trip Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
Leo Laporte [02:17:14]:
It really has.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:14]:
I just don't understand.
Leo Laporte [02:17:15]:
This on demand world has changed so much and it's changed rapidly because first you had VCRs and then. And then you had DVRs and now you could just watch anything you want, streaming whenever you want. And it really has completely shifted our consciousness. I don't know if it's for the better.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:32]:
Well, I will say that there was a. I missed. I missed the Star Wars Christmas Special special. And I was upset about it for a long, long time.
Leo Laporte [02:17:42]:
Until you saw it.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:43]:
Until I learned about the true horrors. I realized that I was not ready at age 7 or whatever to see something that horrible with characters I liked so much.
Leo Laporte [02:17:51]:
It would have really. It would have ruined you, my friend. Ruined you. Cob cob. I'm gonna get some cop magnetic cob cobs for my Airpod pods. I think that's brilliant. But then. Wait a minute.
Leo Laporte [02:18:04]:
You can't put them in the charger anymore.
Shelly Brisbin [02:18:08]:
You can't have everything. Leo, come on.
Leo Laporte [02:18:12]:
I have to choose.
Shelly Brisbin [02:18:12]:
You hang them around your neck, but you can't charge them.
Leo Laporte [02:18:15]:
No, that's not good. So you want to tell us what it was? Do you want to tell us what it was that fell off your desk?
Shelly Brisbin [02:18:24]:
I bought this. I really like to use an iPad as a teleprompter or as a note keeper. And the way it's easiest for me to do is to mount it on. On some sort of stand. And right now the easiest thing for me to do is I have a tall microphone stand. It's like a five foot tall microphone stand. And I bought this clip that is very durable, sturdy plastic, or so I thought, that hangs off of the microphone stand. And what happened was the iPad just fell out of the clip.
Shelly Brisbin [02:18:50]:
And I am going to assume that it is not a human error of my own because it's been sitting there for an hour and a half, but all of a sudden, it just decided to clunk. But it's a great way for me to use a teleprompter or notes or whatever without having to, you know, stare at a screen over here.
Leo Laporte [02:19:05]:
I'm glad you didn't make it your pick, because I have purchased every iPad stand that's been mentioned on this show, and I have a whole junkyard of iPad stands littered over there.
Shelly Brisbin [02:19:17]:
I bought crummy ones, too. I really like this one because it is. It's. It's sturdily built. I mean, it's a. It's not rubberized plastic, so it's not going to get tacky. It's not. Not weird metal.
Shelly Brisbin [02:19:27]:
It feels like a very rugged piece of kit. And I'm going to keep it. I'm just going to be more careful about how I put the iPad in it.
Leo Laporte [02:19:34]:
Do you want to mention the manufacturer?
Shelly Brisbin [02:19:37]:
It's called. It's an I clip.
Leo Laporte [02:19:38]:
I clip. Oh, yeah. I have I clips. Yeah. All right, Jason Snell. I don't know why I kept you for less because you've got four picks.
Jason Snell [02:19:45]:
Well, it's a conceptual pick. So bartender has for many years been the standard at organizing your menu bar so that you have like 80 icons up there, and that's too many. And you want to hide most of them most of the time because they're distracting. And the problem is Bartender got sold. The early reviews of Bartender 6, the first major version under the new owners, are that it's kind of hinky. I haven't tried it myself, but I didn't love how they handled the sale transfer. And now people are saying, especially on Tahoe, it doesn't really work very well. This is my public service to you, is if you're a bartender, you who doesn't want to update is concerned about the new owner, maybe doesn't use a menu bar manager at all, but has thought about it.
Jason Snell [02:20:27]:
There are many options, so I'm going to.
Leo Laporte [02:20:29]:
If you have a MacBook Pro or anything with a notch, you need it because the icons will disappear behind the notch.
Jason Snell [02:20:36]:
They will vanish behind the notch or they'll get kicked out by the menu bar menus on your app that you're using.
Leo Laporte [02:20:43]:
Yeah, so I hear some showing it right now. I don't know if you can see it because it's kind of tiny on my show my screen. Because it's up at the top. It's a little tiny.
Jason Snell [02:20:53]:
Oh, I see. Up at the top. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:20:54]:
See there. I'm using Hidden Bar to do that.
Jason Snell [02:20:56]:
Hidden bar. Okay, so these are your options. Hidden Bar is free. It's open source. It hasn't been updated in four years, but it is open source and you can download it from the GitHub project if you want to. And it works. There might be a memory leak in Tahoe. It's unclear.
Jason Snell [02:21:11]:
But like, it works.
Leo Laporte [02:21:12]:
And it's also in the Mac App Store, which.
Jason Snell [02:21:14]:
Yes, exactly. There's one called Ice. It is also free and open source. There is a GitHub link that the developer will give you. They're currently in beta with a new version that works better and doesn't have a memory leak in Tahoe. But Ice is nice and it rhymes. There's Vanilla from Matthew Palmer, ironically, Vanilla Ice.
Leo Laporte [02:21:37]:
Okay, okay.
Jason Snell [02:21:38]:
This is what's happening here. I don't know why. Vanilla is for Matthew Palmer, who's the guy who wrote Rocket, which is a great emoji utility for the Mac. Vanilla is. You can try for free. But the Pro version that's the Most functional is $10. And in the Mac App Store, a thing I discovered only when researching this pic, is an app called Barbie B A R B E E. Barbie is a $12 app that also is a.
Jason Snell [02:22:03]:
It's a free within App purchase of a $12 lifetime buy, or you can do a subscription that's also a menu bar manager. So the beauty of this is all four of these you can try for free and see if there's a menu bar manager that speaks to you and use it to organize your menu bar.
Leo Laporte [02:22:22]:
May I ask which one you use?
Jason Snell [02:22:24]:
I have been using Hidden Bar, but I think it's getting a little weird in Tahoe, and I may go through this shopping process myself because I'm kind of. That's one of the reasons I wanted to bring it to the table, is that I'm actually not sure which one of these I like the most, but I really like the idea of this because. And you might be saying, well, I just drag it off the menu bar if I don't want to see it. But it's like there are ones that I want to see occasionally, but not in my face all the time.
Leo Laporte [02:22:51]:
Right.
Jason Snell [02:22:51]:
And so these. What these utilities do is they give you a little space where you can drag them, and then they're kind of. They vanish until you. You mouse over or click on an expansion. The UI is varied between these apps, so you can get to it when you want it, but you don't have to see it all the time. Or if you're on something like a MacBook Pro with a notch, you have a second tier of them. Then you mouse up and the second tier appears, but normally it's not there because they're not as important. It's nice.
Jason Snell [02:23:19]:
It's nice.
Leo Laporte [02:23:22]:
I feel like I should be unhappy with Hidden Bar. I might have to look at these other ones.
Jason Snell [02:23:26]:
If Hidden Bar works for you, it's great. That's one I've been using. I just. I noticed some weirdnesses in Tahoe. But, you know, they've been up. That was in. That was in the beta process, so they may be fine now.
Leo Laporte [02:23:36]:
Right?
Shelly Brisbin [02:23:36]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:23:37]:
The one review that's complaining says when you install something new, it gets sent to the hidden section, which is actually.
Jason Snell [02:23:43]:
Exactly the behavior that may be what you want. Yeah, yeah, but I.
Shelly Brisbin [02:23:47]:
What I like until you decide whether you like, want it on your regular bar or not.
Jason Snell [02:23:51]:
Think of it. Got to earn its place in the visible section of my menu bar. But anyway, do not be subject to the whims of many items in your menu bar. You can manage them with one of these many utilities, all of which you can try for free and some of.
Leo Laporte [02:24:05]:
Which you can't ever get rid of. The notch on MacBooks.
Jason Snell [02:24:09]:
Yeah, I think Gurman suggested that it May be going away with those. The M6 MacBook Pro, the OLED either going away or reduced. Right. It could be just like a little tiny cutout instead.
Leo Laporte [02:24:22]:
Yeah, you can. You can. They're. They're starting to work on through the screen cameras for the selfie cams. And that would be nice if they gave us the full screen back.
Jason Snell [02:24:32]:
Sure would be.
Leo Laporte [02:24:33]:
I would like that. Mr. Jason Snell. He lives@sixcullors.com that's his publication.
Jason Snell [02:24:39]:
Thank you.
Leo Laporte [02:24:40]:
You're hiring better, better people.
Shelly Brisbin [02:24:42]:
More.
Leo Laporte [02:24:43]:
No, I'm just getting my wrong. You're hiring wonderful people like Glenn Fleischer. I see a young Shelley Brisbin there from time to time. Of course, you and Dan Moran. You do a great job.
Jason Snell [02:24:55]:
Thank you. I don't know if we said it on this show, but just to throw it out there, when I started in this business at Mac User as a summer intern in the summer of 1993, one of the editors there was Shelly Brisbin and one of the columnists was Andy Anatka. So you are viewing the Mac User staff from the 90s right now.
Andy Ihnatko [02:25:22]:
When I try to explain to people how long Jason and I have been friends, the usual thing I go to is Jason taught me how to boldface things in HTML. That's how long we are as friends.
Jason Snell [02:25:32]:
Yeah, Shelley, for a period of time.
Shelly Brisbin [02:25:34]:
Let's talk about the Internet map.
Jason Snell [02:25:36]:
For a period of time, Shelley and I were literally the only people on the magazine staff who did the Internet.
Shelly Brisbin [02:25:42]:
Did Internet. Right.
Jason Snell [02:25:43]:
And we did this thing called Mosaic.
Shelly Brisbin [02:25:45]:
Check it out.
Jason Snell [02:25:45]:
Yeah. We did create a thing called the Internet Roadmap with. With my collaborator Jeff Duncan as well, who wrote a hypercard stack for that. And. And Shelly and I had the delight of discovering that some. It was in like an art gallery in Boston where they were selling it as an object of the 90s for like several hundred dollars. And I'm like, I think I've got five or six of those in a bin in my garage. Anyway, so.
Jason Snell [02:26:07]:
So. So Shelley is OG and she just works in legitimate radio now.
Shelly Brisbin [02:26:13]:
Yeah, I don't know if that'll step up a step down a step sideways. I don't know.
Andy Ihnatko [02:26:18]:
I make podcasts too, so it's very, very smart. Again, some of us are like chasing TikTok and chasing all these micro apps. We're just about ready to pivot to terrestrial radio.
Leo Laporte [02:26:33]:
It's the next big thing. I can assure you. I can assure you that's Andy and not Ko and not cool. Oh, blue skydive.
Andy Ihnatko [02:26:41]:
Happy Thanksgiving.
Leo Laporte [02:26:45]:
Somewhere in the cloud flare. Thank you, Andrew. Mr. Mac Break, Leafy. And of course, Shelly Brisbin. Thank you so much. texasstandard.bluesky.social or go to texasstandard.org or shelley.brisbane.net or all. All.
Shelly Brisbin [02:27:05]:
So many ways, so many things.
Leo Laporte [02:27:07]:
Is it only Texas or do you. Or do you get hurt in other locals?
Shelly Brisbin [02:27:11]:
Well, I mean, we're available as a podcast, so we're syndicated on 30 Texas Public Radio stations. And then you can grab us anytime at your favorite podcast establishment.
Leo Laporte [02:27:20]:
There are a lot of Texans going. I know that voice.
Shelly Brisbin [02:27:24]:
I hope so. There's some. Some expats who listen to us too.
Jason Snell [02:27:27]:
So, you know, that's nice.
Andy Ihnatko [02:27:29]:
Jason, can I point out that I just hit. I just hit. On ebay, there's a copy of the Mac user Internet roadmap listed as a rare collectible. $3,000 or best with free delivery.
Shelly Brisbin [02:27:42]:
You get a free Mac Pro with that.
Jason Snell [02:27:44]:
Somebody. Yeah, email me if you want one for. For 2,500.
Shelly Brisbin [02:27:51]:
Jason, could you put that on a shirt maybe. Well, we'll sell. Is it a comparable bet?
Jason Snell [02:27:56]:
It was literally just a giveaway in. I think it was a magazine. Yeah, it was either bagged or it was a subscriber premium or something. But. Yeah, but they needed somebody to do it.
Leo Laporte [02:28:05]:
It's in the Dave Rumsey Historical Map Collection if you want to. Want to zoom in and take a look. Look at that.
Andy Ihnatko [02:28:14]:
Jason, I'm going to email you.
Leo Laporte [02:28:17]:
Sponsored by Farallon.
Jason Snell [02:28:18]:
Yeah. And Lisa Orsini, I think maybe and Diane Dempsey were the art directors on that. And so they. They designed.
Leo Laporte [02:28:24]:
You can actually have the entire Internet on one pace page.
Shelly Brisbin [02:28:28]:
Not only that, I mean, entire Internet is generous.
Jason Snell [02:28:31]:
But all those, all those. All the connections on the map were legitimate links, which is what we use. Yahoo. Which was the big directory at that time. And Jeff Duncan wrote a crawler. It was probably one of the first web crawlers ever in HyperCard. And he was the one who generated the data that led to the map. It was a pretty awesome story.
Shelly Brisbin [02:28:51]:
I always forget he did that in HyperCard. I knew he did the crawler, but.
Jason Snell [02:28:54]:
I didn't HyperCard at the time. We thought that was a ridiculous thing to do. And now only more so.
Leo Laporte [02:29:04]:
Wonderful, wonderful. You can actually buy a print of this. I'm sure less than $3,000 from the Dave Rumsey map collection. Dave Rumsey Cartography Associates.
Jason Snell [02:29:16]:
Yeah, I wonder who has the copyright on that. It's probably. It's probably. It's probably IDG because they bought the assets of Mac user for and integrated into Mac World. So it's probably like, okay, like, so I'll talk to Roman Loyola over at Mac World and see if we can.
Leo Laporte [02:29:31]:
I can get it on a 24 by 362 by 3 foot canvas for only 370 bucks, I don't think.
Jason Snell [02:29:39]:
I mean, who's gonna.
Leo Laporte [02:29:40]:
How about a wall peel?
Shelly Brisbin [02:29:41]:
I mean, even on cheaper that I was gonna say.
Jason Snell [02:29:44]:
Yeah, my wall decorations are a little more modern. The Internet in 1993 or 1995 or whenever it was.
Leo Laporte [02:29:50]:
Well, that's historic now, right?
Jason Snell [02:29:52]:
It is. It's.
Leo Laporte [02:29:54]:
This is amazing.
Shelly Brisbin [02:29:55]:
And I think we did manage to get in a few sites that we each sort of liked. I mean, it was web crawled, but they were like, oh, this is something I like. We need to put it on.
Jason Snell [02:30:03]:
And that was that. I mean, yeah, because we were guiding the crawling of it. That, that is, that is the case for sure. And also I think all the Yahoo links are. Are Aonobono, Stanford Edu before they went out on their own. So yeah, old times.
Leo Laporte [02:30:19]:
They were Gopher. Gopher and Archie. And Archie.
Shelly Brisbin [02:30:23]:
Archie and Veronica and all the Veronica.
Jason Snell [02:30:28]:
Just amazing.
Leo Laporte [02:30:29]:
Wow. And there's the top level Gopher at the University of Minnesota.
Jason Snell [02:30:33]:
I was trying to point out how deep we are into the subject matter and now I just feel like I pointed out how old we are.
Leo Laporte [02:30:40]:
Old man.
Shelly Brisbin [02:30:41]:
Pretty much. Much.
Jason Snell [02:30:42]:
Yikes.
Andy Ihnatko [02:30:42]:
Again, legitimacy. Legitimacy.
Leo Laporte [02:30:46]:
Thank you to all our club members who make this show possible. We really appreciate your support. 25% of our operating income comes from the club and that's both a great success and a wonderful heartwarming stat and kind of an indication that we need it if you want us to keep doing the stuff we do. We. Yesterday we finished our D&D adventure with Mikah Sargent as our dungeon master in Paris. Martineau and Paul Thurrott and Jonathan Bennett. It was so much fun. Jacob Ward and I.
Leo Laporte [02:31:19]:
And anyway, those are the kinds of things we do on the club. Twit. Discord. You get access to the Discord. You get all that extra programming. You get ad free versions of all of our shows. And right now, if you go to Twit TV club Twit, there's a coupon for 10% off the annual membership. Great for gift giving.
Leo Laporte [02:31:35]:
Giving as well. Twit tv Club Twit. Thank you in advance. We really appreciate our club members. We stream this show every Tuesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. On in the Club to a Discord, of course, but also YouTube, Twitch, X.com, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. You can watch There. Chat with us there after the fact.
Leo Laporte [02:31:57]:
On demand versions of the show, audio and video are available at our website, twit.tv/mbw. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to MacBreak Weekly. A great way to share clips with friends and family. And of course, you can always subscribe in your favorite podcast client. Move us up to the top of the Apple charts if you want to use Apple's podcast. But we don't care. Anyone you want to use, if you subscribe, that's great. Also, audio or video? Or both.
Leo Laporte [02:32:22]:
Thanks everybody for joining us. We will see you next time. And now, as I have said for the last almost 20 years. By the way, next episode is episode one. 1000.
Jason Snell [02:32:32]:
Yeah.
Shelly Brisbin [02:32:32]:
Wow.
Leo Laporte [02:32:33]:
That will give you some idea of.
Andy Ihnatko [02:32:34]:
How long if we make it.
Leo Laporte [02:32:36]:
If we make it, we may not make it. So again, Club Twit, nothing is given. Nothing is given in this world. So, yeah, come back for episode 1000. We're not going to do anything special, so don't get your hopes up.
Andy Ihnatko [02:32:50]:
I'm going to buy a cake.
Leo Laporte [02:32:52]:
Okay. We could all.
Andy Ihnatko [02:32:53]:
When do I have an excuse to, like, buy an entire cake and just enjoy it myself?
Leo Laporte [02:32:57]:
I was planning, but I think it's only now to send each of you a frozen 12 pack of Runzas. But maybe I won't do that after all, because it's. I think it's too late. There's a. There's a lead time. They only make them twice a month. Do you know what Runzes are?
Shelly Brisbin [02:33:13]:
No, I don't.
Leo Laporte [02:33:15]:
Well, then you're missing out. That's all I can say. You can look it up. It's a Midwest tradition.
Andy Ihnatko [02:33:21]:
I've never admitted publicly that I don't know what a Runza.
Jason Snell [02:33:24]:
You know what?
Leo Laporte [02:33:24]:
I thought of the Runza because I figured you probably grew up eating pierogies.
Jason Snell [02:33:29]:
Oh, yeah. These are those Midwestern Hot Pockets, aren't they?
Leo Laporte [02:33:33]:
Yeah, they're basically, yeah, Hot Pockets. Sizzling steak, grilled onions and gooey cheese. They're actually delicious.
Shelly Brisbin [02:33:39]:
I'll stick to kolaches, which is our local. But, you know, I don't. I wouldn't mind a free one, but.
Jason Snell [02:33:45]:
No, we gotta do something. We'll dress up. We'll wear hats.
Leo Laporte [02:33:47]:
We'll do something.
Jason Snell [02:33:48]:
We'll do something.
Leo Laporte [02:33:48]:
We'll wear hats.
Andy Ihnatko [02:33:49]:
Something.
Leo Laporte [02:33:50]:
1000Th episode. But until then, it's time to get back to work because break time is over. It's over.
Jason Snell [02:33:59]:
See you next time.
Leo Laporte [02:34:00]:
Bye bye!
