Transcripts

MacBreak Weekly Episode 801 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. 


... (00:00:02):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:08):
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 801 recorded Tuesday, January 18th, 2022. Machine Gun Clippy. Macbreak Weekly is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Protect yourself with a VPN I use and trust. Use my link at expressvpn.com slash macbreak today and get an extra three months free with a one year package. And by Zdoc. In this chaotic world of healthcare, let Zdoc be your trusted guide to find a, a quality doctor in a way. That's surprisingly pain free. Go to zdoc.com/macbreak. Download the Zdoc app for free and start your search for a top rated doctor many available within 24 hours. And by hover, whether you are a developer, photographer or small business, hover has something for you to expand your projects and get the visibility you want. Go to hover.com/twit and get 10% off your first purchase of any domain extension for the entire first year. It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Yay. Tuesday has come around once again, as it is wants to do, which means it's time to talk about the latest news from apple with Rene Ritchie of YouTubed fame, youtube.com/reneritchie, Forbes magazine Top 50,000 Money Makers on YouTube or something.

Rene Ritchie (00:01:33):
I don't even know if I'm Top 50,000, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:01:34):
You gotta be,

New Speaker (00:01:35):
I don't know. Those lists are so funny. Anyway, it's the rock picks one YouTube video. Is he the highest paid YouTuber? Cuz he made a like the it's it's it's all just, you know,

Leo Laporte (00:01:43):
I think they're probably right. Mr. Beast probably is number one, right? He's in there. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:01:46):
He's a beast.

Leo Laporte (00:01:48):
He's a beast.

Rene Ritchie (00:01:48):
Yeah, he's alright.

Leo Laporte (00:01:49):
That's Alex Lindsay. He knows a little bit about izing the stream except Office Hours is free, but anyway OfficeHours.global. Oh nine oh media. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:02:00):
Oh we, we, we help people monetize their stream where we produce that are worth monetizing. And oh, and I know we mostly just talk about it <laugh> so yeah, it's free. Yeah. Not I'm sorry. Hours, hours. We just

Leo Laporte (00:02:11):
Talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But nothing but also with us and NACO from w GBH who is soon gonna Mo monetize his PEZ dispenser collection. I oh

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:23):
I, you point out that I'm the person who pivoted from print newspaper, writing to retrial radio, please don't take my, my buy backwards money or anything. <Laugh> I I've, I've done this dumb thing, which is, Ooh, that looks like a, looks like a good way to a good way to spend the day. This looks like this will be challenging and interesting. I should've, but when I, I should've had that convers station with myself at 23 saying, yeah, but maybe you wanna have a real estate license in addition to that because they don't, they don't, they don't give you a lot of money for doing things you love.

Leo Laporte (00:02:53):
I just got an email from my boss at the radio syndicated premier saying congratulations on 15 years in syndication. Wow. I went your iPhone old what? <Laugh> and then, and then, but I wrote back, I said actually last month was my 45th year in broadcasting. So wow. That's a long time. I remember when I first started thinking I'll never get to five years experience. How am I gonna get these jobs? They all say three to five years of experience required. <Laugh> was radio black and white back then

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:25):
Lean. Yeah, it was, it was

Leo Laporte (00:03:27):
Correct. Those are the days. No, actually it was all <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (00:03:32):
It was a lot. I got about two years in. I thought I was gonna do it for the rest of my life. And that was it. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:03:36):
Yeah, you were smart. It took me a while to figure

Alex Lindsay (00:03:39):
I got fired. That's how I got out of it. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:03:41):
We got fired. No, you were smart because in fact we were talking about this in the club TWI discord the other day. What's fun as a hobby turns out to be horrible as a job. <Laugh> and I thought college radio, I love this. I get to play the music I love. Okay. Make great segues. Talk to the people. Then I got a real job and it's like, play this, push a button. No more than 20 words. Read the weather. And it's like that's that's assembly line work. That's not.

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:09):
Yeah, but, but it's, I gotta say I would like to be negotiating on this, on closing the sale on my fourth, like vacation home right now, but there's got there's something to be said for like being, being like deep, deep, deep into middle age and still thinking that, wow, I can't wait to, I can't wait to do I'm I'm so enjoying doing this podcast month, this podcast is on. I can't wait. I'll take, I can't wait to, to go do this next thing that I gotta do. Because if I, if I had become an attorney or an accountant, it would've been, would've been a great 10 years. Those 10 years would been great. I would, would've had, I would've bought so much stuff during those 10 years, but then I would be one of those guys. Who's like, you know what, maybe living in a camper van and having no fixed dress for the rest of my life. I think at 43, that's what I want do I don't cause yeah, I never, I don't like people. I don't like procedures anymore. That's the, I don't like with

Leo Laporte (00:04:58):
The van by the river, nothing wrong with it. You

Alex Lindsay (00:05:01):
Know, being a jock. I don't think I could have done for, for everybody. I was, as a music director was kind of the life like, like a music as a music director for R in,

Leo Laporte (00:05:08):
In those days, in,

Alex Lindsay (00:05:09):
In the old days, a music director for an R and R parallel was like good. A good time. Especially when you're 21 years old. Yeah. It was it was great. Yeah. Yeah. But it every, every night it was really bad for my liver. It liver <laugh> so it was, but yeah, but it was, but I, I did imagine I did project out forward looking at everyone around me going probably gonna have a, you know, a 30 year old van by the river, you know, a you're never make

Leo Laporte (00:05:36):
Any money. That's exactly what, but

Alex Lindsay (00:05:38):
You, you can't, it's hard to give up. You're hanging out with the band. Love it. It's fun. You know, it's a good,

Leo Laporte (00:05:42):
It's a good life. Yeah. No, thank God. I found podcasting and, and <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (00:05:46):
Changed. Yeah. Yeah. I turned it over. Yeah. It turned it

Leo Laporte (00:05:48):
Over. I know so many people in radio still Hawaii, they just laid off pretty much all of the the best known Hawaiian radio. People just all got fired and it's like right. 30 years and you know, nothing. What do you got to show for it? Nothing. So,

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:02):
Yeah, that, that's my part of this component is if you can work for yourself and do the thing that you love, that's better than, oh boy. If I get fired from this job, I'm totally screwed. It's like my, I think all, I think all of us have like parts of the story, which is like my God, oh, oh no, this newspaper folded. Or, oh no, they stopped doing this show. It's like, if I lose six more jobs, I could be in real trouble.

Leo Laporte (00:06:23):
<Laugh> no, in fact, every one of us has a freelance career, I guess. Alex, you, you work for somebody, but you know, I think you're still pretty much a, your own boss.

Alex Lindsay (00:06:34):
Yeah. I'm kind of left to my own device. This is long as I keep generating my avenue. Exactly,

Leo Laporte (00:06:38):
Exactly. So, and you've had, you've started many a business and we're all kind of, you

Alex Lindsay (00:06:42):
Know, we, there was some point where we were in Vegas and a bunch of us were having dinner and, and all of us had started companies and they were all about the same size, all had about 30 employees or so, and, and we were talking about it and we realized that none of us had gone to col and finished college and we'd all started college and finished it. And, and we were wondered what the connection was. And someone brought up that it was like, well, when you don't have a college degree, there's a little voice in the back of your head. That always says the next job after this is McDonald's <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:07:07):
That's funny. That's exactly what that voice, my keeps you moving, keeps you moving. You <laugh>, Hey, it's not really an apple story, but boy, what a big story broke this morning you, you know what I'm about?

Alex Lindsay (00:07:19):
Yeah. We all talk. We were all talking about it this morning. Microsoft

Leo Laporte (00:07:22):
Buying blizzard act vision blizzard for a massive amount of money. Of course, this is the company that's been very troubled by accusations of harassment, misogyny, mistreatment of women, a a, a frat culture. But they also some of the biggest games in the world and 70 Instagrams Leo was that the amount 70 and 70 Instagram, something like that. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:07:46):
And worth every penny. I mean, it was incredible. 68 Instagrams, I think directly, I mean, specifically 68 billion.

Leo Laporte (00:07:53):
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:07:54):
Like who, who decided it was 68 into, instead of 70 that's that's the, like, how did they negotiate that down? Someone said 75, someone said 63. And they were like, how about

Leo Laporte (00:08:02):
70 on MEChA? Or the New York, York times says nearly 70 billion. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. When, when, when 1.7 billion is, is like, eh, that's a small, nearly 70 billion billion here, billion there pretty much the,

Alex Lindsay (00:08:20):
I do think it's an apple story in the sense that Apple's gonna have to get more serious about how they view games. I mean, they already pay a lot of attention to games, but, but you know, Microsoft now has made a big move. I mean, they already have Xbox, they have Minecraft, they have you know, they have a lot of AR halo. Right? Exactly. So there's a lot of things that, that they already have, and it really puts them in a, a really interesting, I think in a better position than the, than the folks that are ahead of them, you know, there's a, you know, they have Sony and other others that are a little ahead of them in the game area, but I think that, but the rest of Microsoft's infrastructure you know, from Azure and everything else really puts them in a really, a poll position to do some, some really interesting things, especially as it pertains to the metaverse. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:59):
Absolutely. And remember that one of, one of the companies that that Steve jobs absolutely admired and really kind of wanted to emulate in the early days was Sony cuz he loved their, how they were. They were telling his story through their products. Their products were really well designed. And of course, one of the pivoting big, biggest pivoting mode when of Sony was when they said, Hey, you know what? We're having problems with people with brow beating record companies and supporting our compact disc format and our debt format and all those other formats, you know what, let's just open the checkbooks. Let's just buy CBS records, have our, have become our own music company. Exactly. And just keep buying these companies. So to, to not, not will be great for our hardware line. It'll be great for just for, just for our bottom line. And so apple, this is, I, I know we've had, I know that Alex you've talked a little bit about GE maybe, maybe apples should try to buy a Disney or something. It makes, I mean, it makes a lot of sense on that basis where we workers control the means of production, but when big corporations also control the means of means of creative output. Yeah. That's, that's a good place to, to be

Alex Lindsay (00:09:56):
As a, as an employee of epic records when that, when that happened. Or, you know, or as a, you know it was the best <laugh> cause you got 60% off all the Sony gear and you could buy it for your friends. And we said, can I buy it? How much can I buy? Can I buy it for my friends? And they were like, oh yeah, you can buy it for your friends. And I was like, why, why, why are we allowed to buy it for our friends? And they said, they said, just don't sell it somewhere, but you can buy it for people and give it to them and, or, you know, and they can pay you for it and everything else. And I was like, why? And they like influence. Cause everybody wants to, everyone wants to be friends with a Sony, a Sony employee because they can get them everything off at 40, 60% off

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:30):
About crane.

Alex Lindsay (00:10:31):
Yeah. But, but I, but that, and it did, it made a huge difference. Yeah. About crane. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:37):
Yeah. I'm 10, I'm sorry. I'm 10 years old. I will

Alex Lindsay (00:10:39):
Shut up. <Laugh> yeah. But, but the but it was you know, the, the Sony, it broke all kinds of things for Sony, you know, to, to, to go into that, into that area to be specific. But I think that, you know, there's a, there are, I mean, we, we talked about in office hours this morning, there are just a myriad of, of potential possibilities of what Microsoft can do with this. It's gonna, it's gonna really give 'em some, it's gonna be really interesting. It's a great, it's really a great

Leo Laporte (00:11:04):
Purchase to both of turn them into the largest gaming company in the world they bought, as you mentioned, they bought Moje mic Minecraft they bought a Zenax, which owns Bethesda. So that's it software they own now the, some of the biggest franchises in gaming call it duty Overwatch, Diablo, world of Warcraft. And let's not forget candy crush <laugh> cuz king is also part of that deal. Yeah. So yeah, it really, it's interesting. I think one of the things that makes this possible is the fact that all the antitrust scrutiny right now is that Google, Amazon, Facebook, apple, nobody I've noticed Microsoft. Yeah. They didn't, they didn't even have to show up. Right. They didn't even go to watch. They wouldn't even. So I think that there, cuz obviously at this point there's such a big dominant aggregator of gaming companies. I think there should be regulatory over, I think it sounds like

Rene Ritchie (00:12:00):
There's like a two year window and it seems like the new legislation that they're drafting is specifically targeted for these kinds of mergers and acquisitions.

Leo Laporte (00:12:08):
Get it done now. Period. Have no,

Rene Ritchie (00:12:10):
No, I, I think they, I, they didn't get it done soon enough. It sounds they're gonna fall right in this sweet spot of this stuff ramping up.

Alex Lindsay (00:12:15):
Yeah. And I think that what'll be interesting is to see what happens to two K games to, to you know, a lot of other, you know, there's a 10 cents other yeah. I mean all of the well Tencent, because it's Chinese probably won't go anywhere. But, but the, I mean, as far as it'll go somewhere, it's a huge company. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:12:30):
That's why there needs to be regulation because it does make it hard for every anybody else. Now, especially since Microsoft, not only has all these, they have the Xbox in fact, if I were Sony, I'd be complaining like crazy, cuz it, you know, Microsoft says, oh we're not gonna make these exclusive. Yeah, sure. So at some point, well today Leo. Yeah, not today. So at some point PlayStation's gonna really be challenged by this.

Alex Lindsay (00:12:52):
Well the question guess is with, as you look forward towards, we spent all of yesterday with an NFT expert and once you start thinking about it, you're like, oh, okay. I get, I'll start like off after office hours yesterday was all, all NFT. And, and when you think about it, there's a point where you start moving potentially from selling the game to giving the game away so that you can, man, you can take a piece off of all the commerce. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
That's kind of happens the already that's freemium. I mean that's, you know, and NFT should make maybe make that more of a even scammier situation. But I don't think it potentially could.

Alex Lindsay (00:13:23):
I'm just saying, but what I'm saying is exclusivity may not be what they're looking for. I, you know, at this point the numbers could be so much bigger if they, if they are 

Leo Laporte (00:13:30):
I'm just, I'm thinking the regulatory problem are gonna,

Rene Ritchie (00:13:34):
It was a really good tweet from Ashley <inaudible>, which she said Microsoft just wants to be the Netflix, the games before Netflix is a Netflix. The games.

Alex Lindsay (00:13:40):
Yeah. Well Netflix is already hiring game pass. Yeah. Yeah. I would be surprised if Netflix doesn't buy one or two game companies in re relatively short order. I mean the next year or so, because they're already hiring staff for it. You know, they're, they're, they're hiring up. I mean, that's the public, I mean, you can see it on LinkedIn or whatever. So they're, they're hiring people to manage games. So Netflix is definitely coming down that path. So

Rene Ritchie (00:14:02):
The thing that exasperates me so much is that apple like, like all this is going on, everyone is looking at this and apple is basically still treating games like discs on a shelf. They're not even letting game pass onto the app store. Yeah. The way that they let Netflix and Disney plus onto the app. And it, it just

Leo Laporte (00:14:16):
Does example go, where does apple go though? They, I mean, honestly, none of, they're not none of these games, these are AAA games are appearing even on the Mac really it's PC and, and console gaming all their money

Rene Ritchie (00:14:29):
Off I casual

Leo Laporte (00:14:30):
Games. Yeah. Apple owns casual gaming. <Affirmative> does this maybe in a way market it's maybe better for apple because let those guys fight out. If they let game

Rene Ritchie (00:14:37):
Pass on, it would be so good for apple. If they just became the, the, the platform where we take whatever, eight to 15% of every transaction, this

Leo Laporte (00:14:45):
Is M it would be bananas them on the platform gaming platform. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And in fact, one of the stories this week is that Fortnite is back on the iPhone, but through the back door in the browser. Thanks to NVIDIA's GForce now. So that's gonna be a problem for apple they're you know, could you imagine if they said like Netflix and Disney plus have to put each individual title in the iTune story, they did actually have a Netflix they wanted, right. Oh you. But yeah, that was every book in hindsight, as this is forward thinking, I kind of want actually as a podcast network to have individual apps for each show, like we should have a max, don't say Leo, they'll do it so fast <laugh> we should have a make you do it so fast. It's pretty easy to do. And I'm actually thinking about doing that one per show, cuz you know, why, what you really want. If you're a, if you're an app developer, you wanna be an icon on the screen, you want real estate, you want real estate.

Alex Lindsay (00:15:38):
The company that's really done that really well is Vimeo. So Vimeo has an entire O T T you know, they'll build the app for you. So, and then you can put the content in, you can manage subscriptions, advertising, white label, all that stuff through it and they'll build it across. You just tell it what platform you want and you can build it across all of them. And it's so much less expensive than building your, I used to

Leo Laporte (00:15:56):
Think I was like, all the players do that. We are JD the JDK player we used as that everybody. So does cash player. That's the idea, right? Is you white label it and put it everywhere. Then apple, occasionally bans those for being not useful apps, cuz they're just web rappers around content. And you,

Alex Lindsay (00:16:10):
This is you go back to the vis a is Vimeo is a native app that is built for you. That is using their infrastructure to do that. It's not a, it's not a web app or, or something like that.

Andy Ihnatko (00:16:19):
Well also that's, that's what, that's where Google is trying to go after their, their, their, their typical, we have a master plan for gaming. We're calling it state AI and it's gonna plan next five years, 10 years, 20 years. And then of course, three, three months later, they change all their plan. And now they're basically sold, gotten rid of all their studios and they're turning themselves into a white labeled white label gaming service for people who, again, if you, if you wanna do a, if domino wants to do a new version of the annoyed game, you know, they'll be able to rap and surf ship as a mobile game. But yeah, it's the it's it's I think that a lot of people who are not young people ignore the games are, are not just, Hey, I'm gonna put this floppy inside my apple too. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna play lemings I'm gonna play Kaotica for a little while. And then that's then after my mom yells at me, I'm gonna stop playing Kaotica and I'm gonna go back to my homework. It really gaming is on exact same level as music, exactly on the same level as TV movies, maybe even a larger level that if you don't have, if, if your devices, if logo is not associated with a good gaming experience, you may as well say, wow, it's a great iPad, but wow. Movies really look crappy on it. So

Alex Lindsay (00:17:21):
Yeah. I mean the thing is step up. Apple's Apple's making a lot of money on the casual games <laugh> so, so no they're doing okay.

Andy Ihnatko (00:17:28):
They certainly they're missing, they're missing a trick. That's all I think.

Alex Lindsay (00:17:31):
Yeah. And I think that, I think that what all of them are missing right now is they don't really understand. I mean, the games right now are very popular, but they are still a small fraction compared to like sports, you know? And, and the reason for that is that they, they still build games for gamers as opposed to games for average spectators and, and those that, that's where there's gonna be a breakout title somewhere. But if you look at all the sports whether it's baseball or soccer or football or hockey or, or cricket there, the entire field is visible almost the entire time. And so someone's going to build much more arena style systems that are much more visceral. And when they do that, and there's a lot of places that, I mean, as someone who's worked in and out of the game industry for 20 years, there's a lot of open space that, that still could be taken that doesn't look like anything that we're doing right now. That's really built for viewers. You know, the reason that American football does so well is because it's really great for TB <laugh>, you know? And so, so that's, you know, and I think that we haven't see seen any games like that yet. I mean, they, we, oh, I know Overwatch is supposed to be e-sports is

Leo Laporte (00:18:33):
I agree. Esports is the next huge,

Alex Lindsay (00:18:36):
I just, it's just too geek. It's still too geeky, you know, like that's the problem with it, but they'll figure it, open it up. They'll figure it out. Yeah. If, if they figure it out, it's gonna replace regular sports because you can do things with the cameras and put them in places and create adrenal and in a way that you can't, you really can't do. And with, in the real world, it's gonna absolutely. Are we

Rene Ritchie (00:18:54):
Worried at all that Microsoft's not doing original IP, like, like super Clippy world or Jeff or like Steve bomber in a smash brothers clone are worried. Bomber, are we worried so fast? Are we first person shooter with Clipy developers clip? Sorry, but Clippy with a machine gun. I just that's I'm not gonna really get that outta my head. Clippy running around. You feel like the cups, but with clips, mark for clip's

Leo Laporte (00:19:19):
Back and he's mad as hell

Rene Ritchie (00:19:21):
<Laugh> yeah. Microsoft office, the first person shooter version. I mean, like there's just so much potential here's I, I, I wouldn't be interested in the games, but I would definitely be like on YouTube looking for a compilation of all the cuts scenes for that game. Yeah, exactly. Hi, can I help you with the, anything you could play? Bill gates help yourself to die. Oh no. <Laugh> band Howard. Oh, no post, no knee. I see. You're

Leo Laporte (00:19:43):
Trying a Massa and a dire warehouse of illegal aliens. Would you like some help? I'm sorry. That was darker than Bob, Bob Hogan heroes, Bob crane watching the expense. Let's take a little break before we go down that road. Shall we? And when we come back, I want desperately, I want you to reassure me about Apple's latest security issue, but first speaking, a security word from express V P N. I know, I know. You've heard me talking about privacy, protecting it security at the coffee shop. I know you've heard me talk about watching Netflix from other countries, cuz you've used up all the Netflix in the us. That's that a VPN can do so much for you, but it's so important. So important. I really wanna emphasize this, that you choose the right VPN. There are a lot of free VPN providers.

Leo Laporte (00:20:39):
There are a lot of crappy VPN providers and if you choose the wrong one, you're, you're really not improving your condition at all. And I'll give you a couple of reasons. Why, first of all yeah, sure. Good for privacy. Your internet service provider or carrier can no longer see what you're doing online. Google doesn't know it's you cause it's a different IP address. But if that VPN provider sketch, they see it all. So you wanna make sure it's a VPN provider that re respects you, your privacy express. VPN does fact they go the extra mile do so with their trusted server technology. It lives in Ram. It cannot right to drive. It cannot log your presence and it disappears when you disconnect. There is no trace left. A lot of cheap VPNs don't buy enough bandwidths. You can't watch HD video. You can barely use 'em.

Leo Laporte (00:21:26):
In fact that it's really given VPNs a bad name, express VPN is fast. It's fast. It keeps up. In fact, they have now something called lightweight. They use it's a new VPN protocol that makes speeds fast enough. Yes. For HD video with zero buffering. Fast enough so that if you put express VPN on your router, which you can do protect your whole house, but no one will even know they'll not complain. They'll just, they'll just say, well, it's, you know, somehow everything's better. It is the other thing, of course it says express VPN apart, besides the fact that they're affordable less than seven bucks a month, secure, private and fast is they're easy to use. You know, when I first started a VPN, I REM I remember these days I was using it to log onto the radio station. It was a nightmare. You had to run a client and oh my gosh, now you just get the express VPN app, push a button.

Leo Laporte (00:22:19):
You connected, it's done. Anybody can do it. Grandpa can do it. And it's not just me saying this business insider the verge, many tech journals, right? Express VPN, the number one VPN in the world. I don't think there's any question about it. Fast. They've got 160 locations in 94 countries, easy to watch video from any of those countries in high Def. They they're because they're in 160 locations, they're close to where you are. That also makes 'em faster. And and they, and they do zero logging. In fact, they have third party audits on a regular basis to prove that their privacy policies, what they say it is that their trusted server does what it says. It does protect yourself with the VPN. The only VPN I use in trust express, vpn.com/mac break, go there right now, you'll get three extra months free with a one year pay.

Leo Laporte (00:23:09):
That's the best deal express, vpn.com/mac break. We thank you so much for supporting Mac break weekly. We thank you supporting Mac break weekly by using that address. So they know you saw on here express vpn.com/mac break. All right. Talk me down off the cliff, cuz it looks like according to fingerprint js.com there is a leak in safari that apple knows about and says they have a patch for, but haven't fixed a leak that could leak things like your, your Google account. Places you've websites you've recently visited lots of information. It's the index DB that leaks out. And that has a lot of information in it. Renee is, is this overblown or is it a genuine issue?

Rene Ritchie (00:24:05):
No, I mean, it's terrible. Like the, the, it should be fixed. It sounds like they have fixed it. They just haven't rolled out the fix yet. It's it's not like a, a hack sort of a, like it's not like malware or anything like that. It's a, it's a data privacy breach, but those are terrible. And I think that a lot of ways, apples measure eight times cut one strategy of only addressing these things when they're actually fixed hurts them because people assume that they're ignoring the problem. Especially when you hear dates being thrown around like November and now it's January. And you're like, well, where is it?

Leo Laporte (00:24:32):
You can go to

Rene Ritchie (00:24:32):
Safari. I'm I'm not talking you down. Leo. I'm just standing at the edge of the clip. You're not helping.

Leo Laporte (00:24:36):
No, <laugh>,

Rene Ritchie (00:24:37):
We're holding

Leo Laporte (00:24:37):
Onto each other at the edge of the clip. If you wanna get scared, go to safari leaks.com. It's been up and down. I, I, I guess maybe there are a lot of people using it right now and probably will be down now that I've mentioned it, but safari leaks.com. Yeah, Apple's blocking it. I guess maybe it's the VPN. I can go on my Linux box, but I can't go on my iPhone. And of course it means nothing. You have to be using a web kit browser as, as

Rene Ritchie (00:25:00):
Browser, it makes people angry, especially on Iowa. Cause like on the desktop, you can just switch to Chrome where you can switch to something else and worry about it until apple recovers. But like on, on iOS, apple only allows WebKit as a rendering engine. So even if you change the Chrome or you change the Firefox, you're still using web kit under the covers. And in some cases that's helpful because it limits the amount of active exploit surface. But when there's an actual active exploit is not helpful,

Leo Laporte (00:25:23):
The reason this is kind of a big deal is cuz it was reported to the web kit bug tracker on November 28th of last year. Yeah. And apple still has not fixed it. And apple has had, unfortunately there have been other cases where apple has been slow to respond to to bugs apple did say this week, yesterday that they have merged potential fit Xes into the web kit source code.

Rene Ritchie (00:25:49):
I dunno if they said, I think people just saw that

Leo Laporte (00:25:51):
They did it. Oh yeah, that's right. You can go look and see it. That's right. So sometimes

Rene Ritchie (00:25:54):
Like there's that's right. There's famous instances where fixing a bug destroys a ton of stuff and it's, and it's really hard to fix the bug. Like there were safari bugs that they had to go back four or five years to fix everything. So they take a while, but they don't communicate during that period. So we don't know if they just didn't do it. They ignored it if they did it, but it broke something else. If they're still trying to feel like we have zero information to feel comforted or terrified by at this point,

Leo Laporte (00:26:13):
Because web kit is open source, you can actually go to web kit on on GitHub and see the patch. So it has been merged in and download the nightlies if you want. Yeah. I guess if you got the nightlies you'd you'd you'd have that. Yeah. So you,

Andy Ihnatko (00:26:28):
You would like a little bit more transparency. I think that according to this fingerprints JS article a couple others I saw I could, I could be wrong, but there wasn't a whole lot of information about whether apple was acknowledging this and moving on it that only until like earlier this week, was there demo, was there outside tangible evidence that yeah, they were, they were working on this, they were seeing, this is something that they're gonna have to fix. And you just you'd like to, you'd like to the person who reported it to at least be able to say, okay, I, I, I see a red receipt on receipt on this and a, and a smile in a frowning face emoji. They, they understand this. They're gonna be, they're gonna be working on the somehow.

Leo Laporte (00:27:03):
So to be clear, it's not a hack, it's just a leak of information from indexed DB. And, but it could be some, you know, for instance, your Google user ID. So it could be stuff that could have problems.

Andy Ihnatko (00:27:17):
I mean, just, just being able to see what other, what, what open windows, what websites are you? Do you have another open windows and tab? That's a big deal. Even if it's just that for

Leo Laporte (00:27:25):
A multitude of reasons and not all websites interact with index TB, but many do a lot of the big ones. Do privacy mode, private mode in safari 15 is not, it does not protect you. It's yeah. So privacy

Rene Ritchie (00:27:44):
Mode, people get confused like with privacy and incognito and they think that it actually hides something, all it does is it doesn't generate records. It's not hiding anything. It's just not generating a record of what you did. Right? So you're still doing all those things. And in real time, people can

Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Still see what you're doing. And when a site inter interacts with indexed DB database, that has nothing to do with a private browsing and the, it still happens. So you're not protected. And yes absolutely this could be a horrific bug to, to, to fix. And apple could have been working on this for three months. We don't, we don't know. Yeah. Night and day, we just don't know that's and I understand why apple doesn't like to talk about security issues, cuz that just raises a, you know, awareness with the bad guys as well with the good guys. So you could, you could ex you could explain why Apple's not saying anything about this, however yeah. Now's the time <laugh> step, step

Andy Ihnatko (00:28:33):
Forward. I mean, you need, you, you need to there's, there's nothing as dis quieting as finding out that, oh, but a, a third party or the open press has mentioned that there is an open bug open exploitable, zero data on this platform that was reported a year ago. And nobody knows if the company responsible for fixing this has any, any clue or any care about fixing it. That's when you're like, okay, <laugh> thank you. That's a, that's a, I I've I've trust. I've placed my trust in the, exactly the right laundry basket. I'm gonna be, I'm very, very happy with this purchase that I made. So there and there to communicate, at least with the security community that okay, it's aware, I'm aware of it. We're working on it. We're not just simply it didn't just wind up behind someone's space heater and it's never gonna be addressed.

Leo Laporte (00:29:16):
Now. It's time for the Alex Lindsay, I told you so segment <laugh> apple is going to allow, allow dating apps in the Netherlands to use alternative payment systems. But that has to be in a separate app. So now this data app you'll download one that uses apple pay and you'll download another one, uses whatever the dating app provide

Alex Lindsay (00:29:41):
Have to choose one or the other as the user. Yeah. You'll

Leo Laporte (00:29:43):
Have to choose one or the other. So there'll be two apps competing apps. Apple's gonna allow third party has to allow third party payment systems in Korea. They've accepted

Alex Lindsay (00:29:52):
That. I'm just curious, like, why is it dating apps? Like I haven't figured that out. I've read a bunch of articles. I don't understand like what made dating apps separate, like seriously, everything else is dating Alex. Wow. They are. Those are, have you ever dated

Leo Laporte (00:30:03):
It? Literally the country

Rene Ritchie (00:30:03):
Where you go Dutch? No, but that's where like you go Dutch that the whole,

Leo Laporte (00:30:07):
Oh, they invented going Dutch. That's right. What am I thinking?

Alex Lindsay (00:30:13):
I'm not gonna go there anyway. So the, yeah. It's it's yeah. So anyway, I, I, I just thought I was, I just, I'm just amazed. I was a like what? I, I still can't figure it out. Like what is the dating app thing that makes it okay. Or makes it special?

Leo Laporte (00:30:28):
I guess it has to do with the ruling from the Netherlands. The heart wants what the heart wants. <Laugh> exactly. To deploy an app store app with an external payment system, you have to apply for one of two new special entitlements, the store, external purchase entitlement, or the store kit, external link entitlement. You have to declare what payment processor you're going to use, purchase support URLs, and some other information apple will, as of now only grant those entitlements, as you said, for dating apps in the Netherlands, because that's all that was

Alex Lindsay (00:30:59):
Required. And we don't quite agree. Understand.

Leo Laporte (00:31:02):
Yeah. South Korea, I think it's the same everywhere. Apple says, we're gonna bill you yep. Dating apps will have to pay apple commission on the transactions just cuz you're not using our store. Doesn't let you off the hook, which I think by itself platform, Google's gonna do that too. Yeah. By itself just means, well, the, and I'm not gonna do it if I still have to pay 30%. Well

Alex Lindsay (00:31:26):
They're, they're giving, I think Google's giving 4% off or something like that. For that, for that processing. The, the the thing is, is that this is a really a rich person's game. You know, like this is not, this is not the average developer. This is top 0.001% of developers. So these are rich companies that wanna make more money. And so, so they, they're the only ones that this, this is gonna make sense to do these separate apps and everything else. And, and so it's, this is like you know, baseball players striking for more money or actor striking for money. It's not like the average, you know, person working at the warehouse, you know, striking for a, you know, 10 more dollars an hour. Also being

Rene Ritchie (00:32:00):
Super careful with the 4% because they wanna show that they transaction fee is a minimal part of what they provide. Like they wanna make sure that, that everybody governments regulars understand that it's the APIs, the platform access. The I, all of that is the value and the transaction fees are just really minimal. So we'll give you a few percentage off, go home. You're cute. Ruffle your hair

Alex Lindsay (00:32:18):
Go right. Well, and, and, and it's really not a it's this isn't, you know, this isn't out there to help the average developer cuz the average developer won't be affected by it at all. It's not going to be, it's not there. Definitely, definitely not there to provide a a better experience for the user. Like this is, this is rich companies putting money into politicians pockets so that they can get more money. <Laugh> like, like this is not, you know, cuz the user's definitely gonna have a, a poor ex the experience for the user is going to go down. It is empirical. Like it is going to go down for the user for on, on at least the app app PLA the Mac platform or apple platform. Well and, and app and

Leo Laporte (00:32:52):
Well, let clear make it clear. Apple's doing everything that can to make it a crappy experience for users. Yes. Things like you have to have two apps. I mean, Apple's not gonna facilitate

Alex Lindsay (00:33:02):
This in, even if they don't, even if they don't, they're

Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
Not a bad face. I mean, I know they are. All you have to do is

Alex Lindsay (00:33:07):
Go to the apple store. All you have to do is go to the apple TV and see what happens. When an app asks you to go out of the apple TV. Now you have to go to this webpage and sign up for this thing and then do this thing so that you, you can use your app that you paid for. You know? And so the thing is, is that what, what, what the user wants is to be able to do it through the apple store app store so that they can, I mean, the only users that benefit from opening all the side loading and all the opening is porn <laugh>. So, so the, so the thing is, is after that the user is better off, but just sitting there with their little clicker and saying I would like to be charged for it. And now I, I have a place to manage my subscriptions. I can easily turn it off. I can easily turn it on. I can do all the things that that's the U that's the best user experience. The best experience for rich companies is to have some kind of outer area that they will force the users eventually to use. You know, so, you know, you know, and that's, that's the issue. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:00):
Well, a couple of quick points definitely benefits to the users because if, if epic and other agencies had not been creating such a stink about mandatory percentages and only one transaction, all these independent developers would that are making not a whole lot of money would be not wouldn't apple would not have simply said, you know what? We've just spontaneous suite decided that it's kind of crap that we're charging, trying to stick for 30% on this, on this low selling app. We're gonna, we're gonna cut those fees dramatically so that there was definitely a benefit to the users who are developing apps and providing for the app store. And secondly is of course the big companies are doing things that pursuing things to, to make things better for themselves. But so is apple. I, I mean, this is another, this is another one of those instances in which you can't make the case, that it it's a better user experience for people buying Kindle books to have to leave the, the Kindle app for, to buy comic books.

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:53):
You have to leave the, the Comicology app. And it's not because Amazon as the owners of both those, those, those entities are being mean stinkers who are too trying to make an end run against Apple's completely true, completely fair fee structure it's that there is no, there is very, very little trending towards no rational explanation for why apple thinks that they should have a cut off of book sales inside these in-app purchases because they had really nothing to do with with helping this person to buy to, to, to buy a Kindle Booker com

Alex Lindsay (00:35:23):
Other than making the platform that makes it viable.

Andy Ihnatko (00:35:27):
The platform that makes it viable is the Kindle app and the Kindle book reader. The, the iPhone is negligible has a negligible influence on this. Any phone, any device can, can sell a Kindle app can sell a Kindle app, can sell a book that way. But again, you've got a $50 Kindle fire tablet. Yes, it's heavily subsidized. Let's call it a hundred dollars color tablet and they, and, and that can still run, read comic books very, very well. This was not apple. This is, this is the, that that I think is one of the weak parts of Apple's argument saying, oh, well, we've created this, this, this infrastructure and this API and this blah, blah, blah it's. And it's, that's completely, completely significant as, as luck would have. And I'm wearing my, I have wearing my vintage code warrior shirt. This is the I

Leo Laporte (00:36:12):
Ment warrior.

Andy Ihnatko (00:36:13):
Yeah. Almost

Leo Laporte (00:36:14):
Every think. Right. 

Andy Ihnatko (00:36:17):
Think, think, no think, think was, think, Pascal, think, see, see children, there used to be a lot of different development platforms for the Mac before apple decided that now we're not gonna really think em like that. We're gonna big fix that. We, we, we can't, we can't force, we can't force our developers to do exactly what, what we want them to do unless we falls force 'em to use the same platform. But

Leo Laporte (00:36:35):
Metro work that's who it was. Metro. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:36:39):
But the, but the, but the, but the basic point is that yes, that is true. And that would be true when you're talking about a sophisticated app, like a really, really intense productivity app, a game a a to-do list spreadsheets, things like that. When really I, you can create a Kindle app that is just take the website, put that in a rapper, upload it. Boom. You're done. That is not something that Apple's APIs helped to bring into creation. So this is, this is why that argument just absolutely fails

Leo Laporte (00:37:08):
For I'm gonna truncate this conversation. Cause we have it every freaking week. So I'm just gonna one, all I say is except that they built the market, like I don't wanna buy it to the lab. I wanted it to run on my phone. Okay. We're kind moving on. We're moving on. You gotta, there's gonna be quite a big debate actually on Thursday because this will go now before the judiciary committee, this is a bill introduced last year, the open apps, the open app markets act by Dick Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, which would establish basically competitive rules for app stores. And, and they've announced that that's gonna go in front of the judici Jude judiciary committee. On Thursday it does have bipartisan support, but you know, I don't know how I hope it passes. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see the Blumenthal says the bill aims to stop apple and Google from crushing competitors and undercuting consumers breaking the iron CLA grip of these two behemoths on the multi-billion dollar app market is long overdue. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens is that, I mean, I'll get WEBO west back. Yeah. That would be, of course, I'll get WEBO west back. Speaking of WEBO, as Metro works, came out of Hudson Quebec, did you know that Renee? No. Greg gal? No. I just assumed

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:15):
That we had, we had no

Leo Laporte (00:38:16):
More companies left in 19 eight. Well, you don't cuz in 1985, he, he created it. It was a, I, I used Metro works. It was an incredible code warriors. It was incredible developer tool. Yeah. Came out may 94 at WWDC. Metro works received credit for helping apple succeed in its risky transition to a new processor. <Laugh> let's see which one was that? 94 must have been Intel, right? I can't remember. Yeah, I think. Or was it power PC? I think it was power PC power PC. Wow. From the Motorola a thousand tiger family. Yeah. Yeah, it was a power PC compiler at power PC. And but now here's a sad story, Renee. It was in 1999 acquired by Motorola 2005 spun off as part of free scale. Freescale semiconductor absorbed into NXP <laugh> they currently, okay. Okay. I'm following <laugh> they currently own code warrior, but Andy owns it to t-shirt and that's what really counts see in a t-shirt like an NFT. Does that give Andy rights?

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:20):
He has red. See, I will, I will give you like kids. Another, another history lesson. There was a time when you, when like you got a t-shirt from like, whether it's a comic book or a creator that you liked or a web comic or, or AUL platform, it was high quality stuff that you could wash and for like a decade or more, it wasn't the sort of thing where you open it up, you feel the material of this thing, you paid $30 for and think, okay, I'm gonna have to plot out the two times. I'm gonna watch, I'm gonna be able to wear this before it completely disintegrates from Wiki

Leo Laporte (00:39:49):
Time. Here is the Metro works logo circa 2001. Yeah. On it. It's called <laugh>. You know, I like that image. I'm I'm using that somewhere. I don't know where

Andy Ihnatko (00:40:03):
Oh, they, no, they're they're I don't know who they had, who was a graphic designer on staff, but it's a, I think that, I think, no, it's I think that it's it kind of predates Google's recognizing the value of let's have graphic artists on staff. Who's only job is to draw things for, I have a, I, if I can find it during the, during the next break, I, I will, I actually have a shirt, like not a t-shirt, but an actual button up shirt that is all the different, like wood cut, like development drawings that they ever, that they ever made. And it'd be, you know, people handling gears and, and like women, like, and it's, they always, it, it was a trade dress that kind of made you happy every time you saw like a new ad or a new piece of literature.

Leo Laporte (00:40:39):
Mr. Cook is going to Washington, but not, not to lobby against the open apps act, not to run for president and well, maybe later <laugh> okay. He is gonna go to the judiciary committee to lobby them because he wants to oppose the American innovation and choice online act, Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley. Glass's cooky. I think KKI bill to prevent another business's product or service from interop operating with the dominant platform or another business requiring a business to buy a dominant platform's goods or services for preferred placement on platform. Oh, it must. This must be Bann. I'm sorry, this can't be yeah, yeah, yeah. Bann misusing a business's data to compete against it and biasing search of results in favor of the dominant firm. Who would that be? Dominant firm. So not duck, duck go. I don't think that's against duck. Duck go <laugh> could be, but I might, you, you have a brand of attack for big tech. It's the plan is to attack, attack,

Andy Ihnatko (00:41:43):
Threatening. This is, this

Leo Laporte (00:41:44):
Was one of those four bills introduced last fall and that are still alive. This boat, this is Cook's job. Like his job is like, it's not good for his company. So obviously go and try and get into not do it. Yeah. To provide that certain discriminatory conduct by covered platforms shall be unlawful. And for other purposes, the American innovation and choice online acts.

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:03):
Yeah. It, it, it's always very significant when a CEO decides to make, when a CEO gives a politicians time out of his schedule without being two, because that time is super, super valuable. Not in the, not in the way that our time is valuable. I mean that you could actually meter how much money is being lost by virtue of the fact that someone was stuck in traffic without access to internet at that level. Right. and, and, but you can see why, when you look at this bill, that point after point after point there's like six or seven, like major bullet points and two or three of them are not vague. They are like, they are like, you are not allowed to have an, to have an app store that sells content where, which demands that, that, which demands that the store gets any discount that's offered anywhere to anybody else, apple you're now allowed to.

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:50):
And so it's, it's weird. It's it's, I, I keep coming back and forth on what I, what I believe about this now, the, the, the meeting, the, the action this week means that they move forward. So now they're gonna discuss it. There's gonna be markup so that there's, there could be a lot of changes to it. I don't know whether I feel like, wow, this could be so disruptive and not in a positive way. Cuz a lot of the stuff that makes things work really well is because are, are also things that allows technical companies to like become a $3 trillion company for the good for the users. Good for the shareholders. That's fine. But also part of me really fundamentally, and I'm talking about fundamental beliefs. Like we are the reason why they're these companies are worth one, two, $3 trillion is because they have been able to act largely unre. And is it time for, for, for countries across the world to say that, yes, I know that this law is absolutely gonna suck for you, but oh well <laugh>, you're gonna have to deal with it because we decided that we don't, we decided that not enough, we decided that you have way too much power and not enough responsibilities rather than limiting your power per se. We want to increase, see responsibilities. That's that's the sort of thing that I like increase their responsibilities. Not necessarily limit their power. Bloomberg

Leo Laporte (00:44:01):
Got a copy of the letter sent to the senators the judiciary committee by Tim Powderly apple, senior director of government affairs. He says after to ult year that witnessed multiple controversies regarding so media whistleblower allegations of long ignored risks to children and ransomware attacks at hobbled critical infrastructure. It would be ironic if Congress responds by making it much harder to protect the privacy and security of Americans' personal devices. Unfortunately that's what these bills would do. <Laugh> Tim still filibuster is he allowed to filibuster I've lost, I've lost track of American politic meds to Washington. Legis, I guess the idea is I'm not sure why I would threaten security by the way says it would do the same thing. Apple believes control

Rene Ritchie (00:44:53):
Equals security. So any loss of control music, they can't regulate and otherwise protect us from the vicious, vicious

Leo Laporte (00:44:59):
Internet out there. Maybe that's it. And the bill and, and, and the bill also calls out you can't be the exclusive app store. You have to allow side loading. That is gonna be a problem. Right? Apple said the bills erect very steep obstacles. <Affirmative> for the company to instate new privacy controls, the company also said the legislation would put the app tracking transparency feature in jeopardy meta doesn't like it obviously. So they're gonna, they're gonna cons you know, it's in committee. I don't have to remember my schoolhouse rock, but I think that that's still a long way, still a long a law. Yeah. It's still a long way. A law still just a bill

Alex Lindsay (00:45:40):
Capitol hill. Some of these bills also will run up against their, one of the things they're trying to do is sidestep the leg, the, the judiciary. So they have different ways that you can't take it to court and that's unconstitutional. So, so they're gonna have, have a problem with the fact that it, they may put that may be just an unforced error. Like the rest of it would go through, but saying you can't use the courts to manage that is actually you suring the judiciaries <laugh> and the judiciary has, has the choice to say, you can't take our power away. Right. So, so the, what you're, you know, that part of it is very problem. And the reason that they're doing that is because they can't win in a court of law so that they they're gonna make this and it's gonna get, you know, it's, it's not gonna, it's not gonna turn over without them taking the judiciary out of it because it's unconstitutional.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:24):
Yeah. You know, they're not, you're taking, you know, and so the thing you can't take the judiciary out out of the system and not expect to be taken straight to the Supreme court, you know, and, and Supreme court at this point is probably not gonna not gonna take that well, so, so it's gonna be one of those things that they don't. So the thing is, is that they're not, they're gonna have a hard time cutting the judici judiciary legisla, the legislative branch cannot cut the judicial branch out of the system very often. And so that's gonna be very, very problematic for them if we just saw what, what just, and last week, the judiciary is clipping the wings of the, of the legislature

Leo Laporte (00:46:58):
Branch also problems on the Eastern front for apple. Some European carriers are blocking Apple's private relay feature on the iPhone. Course they don't like, that's not surprising. Yeah. Didn't talk about that last week. Oh, did we all right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> oh yeah. That was the T-Mobile thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. You're right. I'm sorry. We did it. We did. But some of those, those states

Rene Ritchie (00:47:19):
Also wanna root kit, you know, their entire country on their, on their dime. So it's conflicting interest, Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:47:25):
All right. Let's take a little break. I have to say I am so impressed. I've been watching a little bit of football over the last couple of days. Can you clarify, please? <Laugh> American game play in America has an egg shaped. I was just curious <laugh> it involves giant players who are padded to look even more gigantic beating each other up on the, what we call a grid. Iron. Oh, not Ted lasso with, with lots

Alex Lindsay (00:47:51):
Of replays

Leo Laporte (00:47:53):
Graphics, lots of down football, like

Alex Lindsay (00:47:55):
Replay and Tony and Tony Romo. You got Tony Romo's game.

Leo Laporte (00:47:59):
Oh man. We enjoyed Tony. Romo's I know he did not. However <laugh> he wanted that game, but he did not. Yes, we will be watching now the Steelers. I'm sorry to, to, I apologize for, I was, were lucky for big Ben. We were, we were, we

Alex Lindsay (00:48:15):
Were, the only thing I wanted was 10 more seconds so that he could get one last touch line. The last he was watching touchdown missed all this. It was the Steelers got, you know, they were gonna lose. I mean, yeah. And, and I just wish he had one more play is all he needed. I watched the

Leo Laporte (00:48:28):
Game, touchdown his game at three rivers or whatever they call it these days. That was good. Yeah. It was beautiful. It was moving. And I really I've always liked Ben Rothberg. He's a quarterback. That's the guy who throws the egg shaped ball at other players. Hoping one of them will catch it. In any event I saw quite a few apple commercials during these games. These are of commercials. Are you talking about the apple watch commercials? Yeah. Hold on. We're gonna talk about it in a bit. The apple watch and the cinema mode, both of which I thought were brilliant. Apple's clearly got new ages. Amazing as well. Yeah. Hold on. We'll talk about it in a second. Good. And, and apple, you might wanna start saving the pennies because the super bowl commercials are gonna be, I think, six and a half million for 30 seconds. No, according to Andy, they can just sponsor Mr. Beast with the same viewership. <Laugh> tricky. Yeah. Maybe more. If you just put an ad on baby shark, you would've had 10 billion views. Do you know how mad baby beluga must be Leo? Like how salty that they lost taken up shark. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:29):
You know, baby beluga. That was brave, but go going to how salty they were. That was heroically. Bla brave. I like people who, who just, I I've got this idea for a joke and it. I'm just

Leo Laporte (00:49:40):
Gonna run with it. Go with it, man. Dig a deep deep, oh, I'm sorry. It's Heines field now. He field deep bluesy named after the, it was

Alex Lindsay (00:49:49):
Seven. I still think of Heines field as the new, the new, the new field stadium new, but it's, it's been there for like, I know, I think 30 years now,

Leo Laporte (00:49:56):
Did the, did the Steelers play in, in three rivers or just the pirates? I think maybe it

Alex Lindsay (00:50:00):
Was just the, they both played. They both. No. So it was so they both played there until, I don't know. The nine somewhere in the nineties, they, they, they built up Hines field and then PNC park, both of, I mean, PNC, PNC park. The best is the best baseball field in the country. But it was the same architect that did a bunch of 'em. They just got better

Leo Laporte (00:50:16):
High field's kind of cool. Lisa and I and Michael are, were seriously after the game, considering buying tickets to green bay for Saturday night's game <laugh> it's Tampa bay, right? No, it's us 49ers green bay Packers.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:30):
Oh, you gotta go to green bay to go and tell you I've worked. I worked on a green bay game and I can tell you three

Leo Laporte (00:50:36):
Green bay, like it's really cool. 11 on a January night is gotta be it's. And oh, snow is in the forecast. Your head might freeze. You literal

Alex Lindsay (00:50:49):
Looped through a whole game. I've sat through a whole game in a and the, the window was open where we were working.

Leo Laporte (00:50:56):
They have inside, you know, booths, but but we had to have it open.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:59):
I want, I want

Leo Laporte (00:51:00):
NFL films told Michael cuz he's a Ru roots for green bay said if you're gonna roof for green bay, you gotta paint yourself green and old and sit there shirtless for at least half an hour. So cold. But Youni, you're like literally kill it. I know wouldn't be good. It's so it's

Alex Lindsay (00:51:15):
Got a bunch of, I grew up in Pittsburgh. I grew up in Pittsburgh. I'm used to cold, but green bay is a different kind of cold it's it's a cold. That hurts.

Leo Laporte (00:51:21):
That's all I'm saying. It's yeah, we decided, okay, we'll stay home and watch it and come find Freecom fines. I've always 50 bucks. I wanted to go to Lambo field and you know, for Christmas you can buy, I didn't know this, but you can buy into the green bay Packers. They're owned by the community as his Lambo field. I bought Michael a share and he's got like a, yeah, he's got a vote and share. And then green bay Packers. Now, if you're much got cost,

Alex Lindsay (00:51:45):
How much does it cost to have a share of the 300 bucks Packers? Oh wow. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:51:49):
There you go. And you get a nice certificate. Is, is it a DOA Dao? Sorry. No, it's an NFT. No, it's neither. It's something we, in the old days we used to call them stock certificates. It's you also get the tallest and grandest cheese head in all the land. Oh, he already has that man. <Laugh> I don't know how he's a child. Lisa is, is like a season ticket holder. The 49ers. I don't know how this happened, except that I think kids is basically Canada, right? Yeah. Basically. It's like you're in our, it's like the it's north of Montreal. I think. I mean it's really. Yeah. Anyway, on we go with the show. Let me take a break and then we'll talk about ads, but I wanna talk about doc right now. Z doc Z or Z for you Renee OC D O C. I love this idea.

Leo Laporte (00:52:40):
There are some amazing doctors out there, but really the only ones that matter, the ones that take your insurance, obviously, right? You wanna pay outta pocket for this was Z doc. You could focus on doctors who are in network, putting you on the path to see doctors who are right for you. No more time, wasted hunting down an Shirley's cash, only chiropractor or the dentist. Your coworker recommended only to find out he's outta network. That'll be $3,000, please. No one knows what you're looking for in a doctor better than you. <Affirmative> right. And no one's given you better tools to find the perfect doctor than Zoc the people who created Zoc were, you know, and this is what I love about Silicon valley. They were really looking at the pain points, the biggest pain points in healthcare, all the things that weren't working. And they said, Hey enough, we could do a better job.

Leo Laporte (00:53:30):
So they've made booking a great doctor. Surprisingly PainFREE primary care dentist, OB GYN, dermatologists, psychiatrists, eye doctors, chiropractors, Zo doc is a free hat that shows you doctors who are patient reviewed insurance and are available when you need 'em. You can read up on local doctors. You'll get, there's actually verified patient reviews right there. I think that's super important. We, I wish people were, you know, talking about these kinds of things. Like you shouldn't go to this one. You should go to this one, see what we, I can go on and on about trials and tribulations we've had. But now you can see what other humans have to say about their visits. So when you walk into that doctor's office, you you're set up to see someone in your network who gets you Z O C do c.com. Choose a time slot. Whether you wanna see the doctor in person or do a video visit.

Leo Laporte (00:54:22):
Yes, you have a choice. And just like that, you're booked find the doctor that's right for you. Book an appointment that works for your schedule. Millions of people use Z doc every month. It's got a very broad network, very broad reach. It could be your go-to. Whenever you need to find someone to book a doctor. And nowadays, when you need a doctor, you kind of need a doctor fast don't you in the chaotic world of healthcare led Z doc. Be your trusted guide to find a call doctor in a way that's surprisingly PainFREE cuz that's how it ought to Bezo doc. You get your docs in a row. Ha ha go to Zach doc.com/mac break. Get your docs in a row. <Laugh> download the Zo doc app for free. Then search for your top rated doctor. Today. Many are available right away within 24 hours.

Leo Laporte (00:55:09):
Zoc D c.com/mac break, doc.com/mac break. I like that. Get your docs in a row. Thank you, Zach doc for supporting Mac break, wake lay. All right. We just did an ad. I wanna see apples ads. So I've been watching on the football games, the apple watch ads. I'll tell you how effective they were. We were sitting there. Lisa's ex who's also nine years. Fan comes over to watch the games and he's he's watching the ad. The one where the guy fell down a cliff or something. He's wait a minute. Let me see if I can find these. Cause you, if you haven't seen them, they're really effective slash apple. There's a bunch of them there. Yeah. Here you go. Right. This is this is and listen to the audio. I'm gonna have to turn it up cuz that's really what, what works? Nine

Speaker 5 (00:55:59):
One. What's your emergency? Quiet. Been in the car accident. My car slipped. There's water getting in the car and I can't get out. Nine one. What is your emergency? I came out paddle board and a hard wind and pushing me out to see. Okay. Do not hang up. 9 1 1. What's your emergency? I'm here as a farm. I broke my leg straight down 21 feet. I sure. I sure need help quick. Are you by yourself? Yes. Have you tried to get out? You tried to bust the window or something. I'm pretty far on in the ocean. I can't get to my cell phone. I'm talking about apple. Watch. Try to keep talking to me. Okay. I can't fight the wind anymore. It's getting deeper. Get to my neck, please. Hurry. I'm hurting real bad. You gonna see help. Okay. Hold on. Are you in air pocket? I'm just in the driver seat. Okay, but you're headed above water. Yes sir.

Leo Laporte (00:56:54):
All three of those. These are real 9 1, 1 calls. All three of them were saved. Thanks to their apple. Watch. Mike bought a watch within 60 seconds of seeing that a and I have to think he's not alone. I, I get teary just watching that. Have you seen that before Renee? Is that new to you? I don't know if they're showing it in camera. Yeah, no, I

Rene Ritchie (00:57:12):
Saw it and there was like a bunch of outrage on the internet too, because people couldn't decide if it was good to promote that apples saves lives or if apple was trying to frighten people into buying apple watch

Leo Laporte (00:57:21):
That's it became, that is I think the closest thing to a perfect ad I've ever seen. Yeah. It's terrifying. And I know, you know, somebody, the chairman said, I get, I get, I get very, it's very stressful to, to hear that. But boy, it, they all are okay. They all got hope and they all, yeah. Yeah. She says, or he says, I'm on my apple watch. I can't reach my phone. It makes you want you're out in, in the middle of the ocean

Rene Ritchie (00:57:45):
And you're like, I'm going, like, what else would you do? Did see?

Andy Ihnatko (00:57:49):
Did you see the other one where I think was a, a, a, a bicyclist biker. Yeah, exactly. Who basically who, who, who

Leo Laporte (00:57:55):
The watch called for? I guess I should play this too. Yeah. Yeah, because that was even more impressive. Yeah. The watch called for him because was noted unconscious. 

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:07):
It, it, it senses to crash and then it tried to, as the, as the UI is supposed to do, it said, Hey if you're, if you're okay, tap this button to let me know. You're okay. And then when it didn't, it automatically dialed 9 1, 1 and sent and a voice basically walked. Yeah. Let

Leo Laporte (00:58:20):
Me, let me play the let me play the the audio. I don't why I can't find that one.

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:28):
I'll say any advance. I'm surprised that the voice was that bad. <Laugh> it

Leo Laporte (00:58:33):
Was okay. It's coming from a freaking watch. Yeah, no, I

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:37):
Know. I know, but

Leo Laporte (00:58:41):
Okay. Let see apple watch ad 9 1, 1 cyclist. Maybe, maybe that's search will do. It's not on their YouTube page. For some reason. Oh yeah, here it is. It's called 9 1 1, Bob, here you go.

Speaker 6 (00:58:56):
The owner of this apple watch has taken a hard fall and is not responding to their watch. The emergency location is latitude 47 point longitude minus 117.5 with an estimated search radius of 41 meters. This message will repeat in five seconds.

Leo Laporte (00:59:15):
Bob fell off his bicycle. He was knocked unconscious. Yeah. His watch automatically called 9 1 1. And he was rescued. I presume, although apple doesn't say that on this one. <Laugh> I hope it ended well for Bob. Hope they found Bob. It does. You know, what, if you're gonna knock it. That is the music is very like, oh my God music. I think these days though, to break above, especially with the, when you're watching NFL football, where all the ads are very expensive to break above the crowd, you've gotta do something. And then boy, those ads yeah. Really

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:48):
Work. And, and the, and the other bonus is that there, we assume that everybody who owns a device knows about all the features on that device. And I can imagine that there's not a few apple watch up. No, that's right. Don't understand that there is, it will, it will come all emergency services for you. And there's a way you can have it. Well, I'm sure they would've paid the extra for the for the GSM connection, if they hadn't if they do, you

Leo Laporte (01:00:09):
Have to have LTE for all of that stuff that we just saw to work, I guess you do have to have the watch with LT. Yeah. Yeah. So they, but you don't have to have

Rene Ritchie (01:00:16):
A plan. Like as long as you Don have the watch that has that capabilities anywhere in the world, it'll do emergency calling for you. Even if you don't have the plan.

Leo Laporte (01:00:22):
Oh, that's good to the emergency alert. Yeah. Cause actually Mike said, should I get the LTE? And I said, no, cuz I figure he's always gonna have his phone with him. But maybe yes. If he didn't have to spend the 10 bucks a month extra to this office, if you plan on going

Rene Ritchie (01:00:36):
Out without your what, without your phone, right. Like if your phone is down or like, it's like an insurance policy, if you always have your phone with you, maybe a is fine. But if your phone is damaged or like people who go paddle boarding and don't have their phone with them, right. Then

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:47):
The LTE is really handy. Or, or maybe you, you're not gonna be able to when the, when the car is turned over three times, maybe you're not going to be able to find the phone in the car in the car, but your wrist is prob hopefully still accessible. Right. Then it is. It is great. I, I think it's, I think it's reasonable to ask how scary he is this for re for reasonable people. But the thing is, it is talking about scary situations and what, what sells fire extinguishers isn't Hey, now we've got them in rainbow colors. It's that? Hey, here's, here's a per I'll I'll I'll I'll I'm dead honest truth. There's there's that famous? A famous, like viral video of a Japanese man who's streaming and showing off his new lighter. And it's almost, if not for the fact that if turning into a whole disaster that turned, that tore down the entire building, his attempts to put out the fire, he did everything wrong.

Andy Ihnatko (01:01:33):
And that's what that's. And part of it was because he did not have a fire extinguisher handy, right? Like he kept to trying to do all these different, weird things to try to put out the flames and just made a higher error. And, and that was one of the things that made me at at the time. I didn't have a fire ex I didn't have a current fire extinguisher. And that's when I just went, <laugh> went out to Amazon, like right. Clicked on a new window and ordered three right there and made sure that there's always a fire. So yeah, it's not, it's not the happy Teletubbies message that gets people to buy the thing, the emergency equipment that they need to have on hand before the emergency happens.

Leo Laporte (01:02:05):
Your spot on also that I, and I'm sure this is Apple's intent. These ads not only sell the product, but they teach people who have the product about capabilities. This is cinematic mode and Alex, I think you probably, I don't have you seen this one at the detectives? I don't.

Alex Lindsay (01:02:20):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
It's really good. This is, this is really good. Two, two detectives, it looks like, you know, a traditional gritty cop show. They're sitting in a beat up Ford tourists in a beat up location.

Speaker 7 (01:02:33):
Can I ask you a question? Am I at of focus?

Leo Laporte (01:02:38):
That's fine. That's the cop in the background. Yeah, but I mean,

Speaker 7 (01:02:42):
Look at me, I'm all, I'm all blurry.

Speaker 8 (01:02:45):
Well, you're supporting cast what the camera focused on the most important character rich is me.

Speaker 7 (01:03:01):
Well, what if my character had a big reveal?

Speaker 8 (01:03:05):
Like what,

Speaker 7 (01:03:08):
Like maybe I'm the killer

Speaker 8 (01:03:12):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:03:12):
Are you, and now he's in focus. All of a sudden rap's focus. <Laugh> <laugh> back to the background. <Laugh> couple of things, days from couple of things I note on this ad, first of all, the, the, the lead cop, greatest actor ever very good, subtle like gestures. And I mean, just beautifully act. Both of them actually did a great job, but also just a really perfect example of cinema, cinema mode, you know, cinematic mode of racked focus. It's perfect. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:03:51):
Yeah. It's the phone has come along. I mean, you really, I mean, I'm not saying you shoot a feature phone with it. I mean, I know that's no,

Leo Laporte (01:03:57):
In fact, I think a lot of people will never use cinematic mode, but it's just cool.

Alex Lindsay (01:04:01):
But if you want to do, you know, for, I mean, if you want to, there's a lot of places you could use that and especially fun places to use it that I think are great. And the fact that you can do with your phone. Yeah. It's just, it's really cool. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:14):
Has, has that feature really been really been working out? The one thing that I was curious about, I, I, I still don't have the new iPhone still don't have it, but the one thing that I was curious about seeing the demos and seeing the release was that how, if you've got three kids who are all acting like a bunch of, a bunch of, you know, squirrels jumping in and out, how is it possible to make sure that like, it doesn't just keep like switch switching, focus and giving you, giving you a, giving you a headache, trying to watch the thing. Is it capable direction?

Rene Ritchie (01:04:38):
You can control it. Like it'll go to the first person and it'll lock on their eye line. And then if that eye line moves, it'll go to the next closest person. You can manually override it. I think the issues a lot of people had though, is that apple deliberately chose to put it on all iPhones. So they didn't include any of the LIDAR in it. And that would've improved low light performance, but they wanted to make it ubiquitous for everybody. So the first version doesn't include any LIDAR. So if you go to low light, you have the same problem that you had with a traditional portrait mode. And that is, there's just not enough for it to actually understand the scene. So it works really well right now in daylight. And it's gonna get better every year, obviously that is the, the limitation. And the cool thing is that it goes beyond the main sensor. Like it uses the ultra wide angle to sort of preload what, what GS are coming into the frame, so that if it sees someone else coming in closer, it's already on them by the time they enter into the frame. And that makes it very, very smooth.

Alex Lindsay (01:05:26):
And the, if, if you look at like what DGI is doing with their, some of their new cameras that's probably a preview of where apple could go, which is the idea that using the LIDAR, the way DGI is using it, they're using LIDAR to literally show you as a focus puller. You can be looking on a, on an iPad and, or on, on the touch screen there and making, you know, controlling it. But you see the, the outline of the person inside of the focus of what you're doing. And I think that film it pro you know, once they get, you know, they could probably build that into it to make sure that you, the remote control actually had a lot of control over what it's doing. And I think that that's probably not too far away, I'm guessing, you know, within the next year we'll start seeing it. And that starts to be where yeah, you could get a expensive camera, but if you're not gonna get an expensive camera, you could do an enormous amount of, of damage. Yeah, yeah. That,

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:16):
That, that, that's always my, my, one of my hottest buttons on technology is when I find myself like something screwing up and I find myself saying, wow, this would be a great piece of software or a great feature or a great piece of hardware. If it didn't keep trying to make, trying to work better on its own regard without asking me, Hey, like, do you, do you really, do you want the background own to be completely washed out? Cuz I could do do that. And I, I imagine the cinematic mode saying you are never keep, I, I know that, I know that there's a dude walking behind like my friend who's who's, who's, who's singing this song, but the fact that he looked into the camera and her eyes were closed doesn't mean please change the focus to the dude walking behind her in the camera. I just, I,

Rene Ritchie (01:06:59):
Which is my favorite thing. Right? Like that's, that's gonna be truly revolutionary is that you can just go in afterwards, not only change the focal point, but also change the amount of depth effect. Like you can change it from like F two point something to F 4.5

Alex Lindsay (01:07:12):
Something and focus, focus was doing that. Yeah. Focus was doing that with you know, with the fo, with the photos for a long time. And yeah, I just wanted to work whatever it does automatically. I just need to do better than my AirPod pro yeah. Deciding which, which apple device I would like to attach to. That's the, that's the low bar that we'd like

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:31):
To avoid. Oh God. That's. Yeah, that that's been coming up in my life too. Now, now that I'm doing a little bit more things in public, I don't, I don't have AirPods, but it's like, I was last time I was on Amtrak. I was like, I really wish that my iPad wouldn't keep informing me that somebody on this train has just opened up an IPO, a pair of AirPods because that's not relevant to me. It really isn't. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:54):
Speaking of rumors where we, I didn't, I don't think we are, but I, I will now say let's speak of rumors. Analyst Ross, young on Twitter and others now are saying that the next iPhone 14 will have a whole plus pill punch out an exclamation mark whole and pill. The smaller hole will not be visible, will not be invisible. The two hole concept will be unique to apple, like the notch, not similar to all the pill models from Huawei is Russ reliable.

Rene Ritchie (01:08:28):
Yes. He's very reliable because he just sits there and looks at the supply chain

Leo Laporte (01:08:32):
<Laugh> and it really looks like, honestly it looks like you know, it's got a little stamp on it, little Chinese on the stamp. It definitely looks like something might have leaked out of and that's

Rene Ritchie (01:08:40):
Backwards. So you flip that around and that's what it's gonna look like on the phone.

Leo Laporte (01:08:44):
Ah, okay. Okay.

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:46):
I, I'm just glad that Apple's finally addressing this because as we all know, there were so many people, I, I think it's actually double digit percentage of iPhone users that jet, as they said on social media, when the first renders of the, of, of the I eyebrow were first were first the nots appeared. They were, they, they can't look at it without vomiting. So every time they're using their phone, they're just vomiting right onto the screen. And now I can't imagine what, after two or three years that's done to reper GI system. So this is a very, very humanist sort of approach from apple actually,

Leo Laporte (01:09:14):
You know, then not, I thought I really hate the notch on the MacBook and I've gotten used to that even. Although it does occasionally I think fantastical, cuz I have so much stuff in my menu. I don't, I think fantastical is actually, I can't see it. I think it must be under the notch. So I'm sure flexy bits will figure that out and move it. But other than that,

Andy Ihnatko (01:09:35):
Yeah, there there's a lot of stuff like that where it's not that it's not that you ever think it's a good idea. It's not that you necessarily don't wish that you could have the old way back, but okay. You'll get over it. It'll it won't ruin the experience experience. You really have to break it hard compound fracture in order to say, okay, guess what? I'm gonna look at windows or Linux right now because I just can't deal with this anymore. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:09:59):
No it's eyes are bleeding. It's really the other direction people. That's what Microsoft has pretty much done with windows <laugh> and everybody's flowing in the opposite direction. Actually PC sales were up big time last year and apple, the biggest growth. They're all still only 8.5% of overall PC sales, according to analysts. But the facts you've

Rene Ritchie (01:10:19):
Been firing on all cylinders over the last

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Years, buying this max, it's all good. Yeah. And I have to say, I, you know, I mean we are starting to hear rumors about, well, one, one rumor I just read and I think it's kind of what you've already said. Renee, not so much as a rumor is just, you know, likely is that the Mac pro will actually be just a beefed up M one and that the LBM twos coming out this year for probably for MacBooks and air.

Rene Ritchie (01:10:43):
Well, that'll be the low end one. Like the apple had previously had that this is the MacBook pro for people who like the MacBook air, but want the pro brand. And that was the one that didn't have the touch bar first. And now ironically, it's the only one with a touch bar and that's gonna be replaced by an M two version. So you'll have the M two MacBook air and then the M two MacBook pro the difference being the air is gonna have no fan. So it's gonna have like a limit of 15, 20 minutes of like full out heavy workload. And then if you, if you do want to sustain longer than that, you can get the MacBook pro M two and that'll just have a, a what, what apple calls an active cooling system, but it's a fan yeah. In it. So you can do harder

Leo Laporte (01:11:19):
Workloads. Should I I'm <laugh> it's silly to ask, buy it. Well, no, I was thinking, should I get a beefed up Mac mini, which I could likely get in the next six months or wait till the fall for a little mini Mac pro, which sounds so cute on my

Rene Ritchie (01:11:37):
Desk's way to do the fall anyway, <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:11:39):
You'll use 'em all. I mean, they're the great thing about the Mac minis is you have, I mean, the, I have so

Leo Laporte (01:11:45):
Places to use them inch, Alex

Rene Ritchie (01:11:47):
Is sitting on four of them right

Leo Laporte (01:11:48):
Now. I have a 55 inch Ole gaming monitor from alien wear. Right now it's running Lenox at, you know, in Val Heim. But I would really like to attach a Mac to it. I don't know if a Mac 55 inch Mac experience would be very good or not, but I'd like to try. And so the mini be fine for that, right? Yeah. I, I have,

Alex Lindsay (01:12:07):
I have three, I have three Mac minis in my space right now. Yeah. Like, like literally in my system is three, you know? And, and the thing is, is at that price point, it is, it, you know, you don't feel bad about putting it and using something else. And it's so powerful. The M one is, I think it's perfect.

Leo Laporte (01:12:20):
Yeah. I'm

Alex Lindsay (01:12:21):
It's the most, it's the coolest, the, the M one mini Mac mini is the coolest Mac. Yeah. I bought

Leo Laporte (01:12:27):
I'm super happy. The M1 pro laptop. Yeah, it's amazing. It's in incredible I'm life changing, running a very, very, very slow root force search on mine right now. And it's using 11 cores, 97% of 11 cores. And it has the fans not on, it's not hot. It's, it's a hundred percent.

Rene Ritchie (01:12:48):
The CPUs cannot, cannot saturate that machine. If you're just running CPUs, you will never saturate. You will never deeps something like that happen. Wow. Yeah. It, the envelope is big enough. You have to hit the GPU's if you wanna start hurting that machine.

Leo Laporte (01:13:01):
Yeah. And this is all CPU. Wow. That's really interesting. Cause remember those I seven machines, even the I nine MacBook pro you had to put in the freezer, it would, it would throtle it got to a hundred, a hundred degrees Celsius. And it would throtle and it would do that in seconds.

Rene Ritchie (01:13:18):
Intel changed the definition of turbo to accommodate what, because they could no longer keep a heat envelope. They would say that it was opportunistic and it would just go like this, every millisecond trying to get like as much frequency as it could before the down clock

Leo Laporte (01:13:31):
Again, crazy. And the fans are going and the whole thing, this thing's just, you know, it's, it, it doesn't keep

Rene Ritchie (01:13:36):
Me warm though. And like the Mac doesn't keep my coffee hog anymore. That's like the biggest downgrade of these machines. I lose my free space heater.

Leo Laporte (01:13:44):
The European as we always the, the the European FCC database, what do they call it? It's the gift that keeps on giving cons. So Mac the new iPhone model numbers, Sian economic commission has has been a good source in the past. And apparently has some new model numbers looks like iPhones and iPads, according to nine to five Mac likely representing the upcoming iPhone se plus, and the iPad air, the new iPhone models, a twenty five ninety five, twenty seven, eighty three, twenty seven, eighty four, quite a few on the iPad. One, two threes, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 iPad models. Do they, do they give a different model number for a different color? Sometimes. Sometimes. Okay. Yeah. So, but a lot of skews that's 11 new. It could just be also

Rene Ritchie (01:14:45):
Radios, but they, their radios are so simple these days. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
If now I, I don't know it's the timelines are, but it sound that what I think that bodes well for a spring release. Yes.

Rene Ritchie (01:14:56):
It doesn't, it doesn't because like, this is the iPhone se, which is basically the old iPhone se with a 5g radio and a faster processor, which is fine. And also the iPad air is basically the same iPad air, but with a 5g radio, you know, and, and a to processor in it. So it's a, it's a very se upgrade, but I think people who had their hopes set on M two max are gonna be sad.

Leo Laporte (01:15:19):
Yeah. well, there will be other things but you think the M two max will be June WWDC. I hope. And for sure,

Rene Ritchie (01:15:28):
Like, I think the, the unveiling, like, you know, the, they often show the Maxwell per Mac pro right. June and then ship it December 31st to 11:59 PM.

Leo Laporte (01:15:37):
Well, June is CLU quicker than we think. I hope. Yeah. Is it, do you think

Rene Ritchie (01:15:44):
2022 is gonna be fast, like 20, 21 or slow like 20, 20 I'm I'm not sure yet feels like

Leo Laporte (01:15:50):
20, 21 hardly happened. It was, it feels like

Rene Ritchie (01:15:53):
It's been 20, 22 for a year already. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:56):
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe iPad air five, also rumored. Yeah. With 5g center stage camera also spring, according to 95 Mac and Mako TACA that's sighting, reliable sources China. Does that seem credible? Ipad air five.

Rene Ritchie (01:16:19):
Yeah. I mean, it'll be like the 2016 event where we got the iPhone se and the small iPad pro basically what the air

Leo Laporte (01:16:25):
Has become. And this would be the debut. No, not the, yeah, I guess the debut of the, a 15 on the iPad. Right. I don't think they put that on there. Mini

Rene Ritchie (01:16:32):
The mini has a 15, the, the

Leo Laporte (01:16:33):
Five core version. I love that mini mano. I love that mini. Yeah. It's so fast. It's so great. Okay. Okay. And then the se plus this year will be replaced next year, according to some rumors by a bigger se

Rene Ritchie (01:16:52):
Next year or the year after with my phone, 10 R iPhone 11 chassis. So it'll go to the modern people who are been stick, like people who just want their home button will be really sad at that point. That's a lot of people wanted a

Leo Laporte (01:17:01):
Modern, they still have a home button. That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah. When are we gonna see type C on an iPhone?

Rene Ritchie (01:17:09):
Does it have to be USB?

Alex Lindsay (01:17:10):
I think it has to come. I think it has to be sometime soon. I mean, I don't know about type C, but I think Thunderbolt, I mean, we need faster. I mean, now that you're doing ProRes, you really need a faster connector. So maybe

Rene Ritchie (01:17:20):
I don't think they're gonna do it. I think they're gonna look at it and say that six year old technology, and we're gonna be apple and we're gonna make, like, I was joking in my video today. I did a 20 minute video today on what apple could you post lightning? And you could see like a lightning type C, which just hap cause type C just a plug. You use type C for a lot of things. There's old bunch of different protocols behind type C or they could just go MagSafe and then you slap mag safe on the back and it charges and does data exchange. Yeah. That seems like more than a six year old plug.

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:45):
I, I, I agree with you. I think act actually, I, I think having USB three or four over type C is very, very viable. I think it's, I think it's maybe the most convenient solution for people who are using actual humans are using phones, but I don't, I think that if Apple's gonna make that kind of a big change where they're gonna suddenly get rid of us lightning on, on the most popular platform, I do think that the apple that I know and love is gonna say, why don't we just have no PLA no whatsoever. And that's, whereas that might have been said in just a couple of years ago now it's like, yeah, you know what? They've got Meg safe. They could even put a PGA plug on the surface on the surface of it. Yeah. For, to do stuff that they wouldn't, they couldn't do wirelessly.

Andy Ihnatko (01:18:22):
I don't, I let me be really clear. I don't, that wouldn't be my favorite way to to do access data on, on a phone because some like, like Alex said, sometimes I, sometimes I just don't, I just can't use iCloud as a way of moving data from one place to another. Sometimes airdrop is not going to work for, for, for this huge file. But I, that, that is, that feels like the sort of thing that apple would do rather than simply say, I saw this rather simply use this standard that they're gonna probably wanna at driven three years anyway.

Rene Ritchie (01:18:52):
Yeah. I saw this great, great conversation between John Ruber and Steve Aquino, who does all the great accessibility stuff. And they were just talking about how they can barely see the lightning port now, like for them, it's, it's not an advantage. Like they can barely get it in and it's really tough and you gotta fiddle with it a lot. And if it just had something like mag safe and Mac safe could be like, it is on the Mac, it could just be, you know, and I just wanna point out the irony, the irony that I saw, where everybody who's been lobbying for USBC on the iPhone to get rid of lightning go standardized USBC. A lot of them were also lobbying to get rid of USBC on the MacBook and go to mag safe because it's just so convenient. And it turns out that like convenience versus compatibility is like a big internal battle inside nerd, heart it's. But to have something that would be like as easy and accessible, just a magnetic version of USBC, you bring it close enough, it goes slack and you're connected. That's a huge win for anybody in the accessibility community.

Alex Lindsay (01:19:43):
I think you could put, you could build a MagSafe that had a USBC in the center of it. So that like, if you're in Europe, you could push little USBC and the MagSafe is the cool one, whatever one will use. Yeah. We got the other one just in case you want to use it.

Rene Ritchie (01:19:54):
Well, the European union doesn't care about like, they only care about the plug. So if, if they can show it's mag safe, then they're exempt from all that regulation.

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:02):
Yeah. Which is also interesting. Well, the, the, the other solution is to support right. To repair and and user upgradeability a hundred percent. There's a, I, I flagged this, a story that came across a couple, a couple of days ago, where someone, because, you know, the framework laptop, which is all modular, you can fix everything yourself. And also the ports are like modules. You can slide in and out. Not only that, but the schematics are, the schematics are open source. The, the, the CAD files or open source. So someone said, want mag safe on my framework, laptop. So they made a MagSafe compatible or mag safe, like power connector for the framework. I now I'm like, it's like handspring

Rene Ritchie (01:20:35):
It's it's

Andy Ihnatko (01:20:36):
Like, I don't, I, I don't wanna switch to windows, but I kind of really want that laptop now. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:20:44):
I, uhm, gonna give credit to mic as Sergeant. Cause I think he put in the rundown, of course, our producer and the host of iOS today. And I just set this up and it's the coolest thing ever comes from a guy who was a developer a summer developer, former apple, worldwide developer conference, student scholarship winner recent UC Santa Barbara grad named Matt MOS. And he, it was a side project, which he built for his girlfriend. And it's now one of the hottest apps on the iPhone. I'm talking about, lock it. Have you seen this? You, you can have up to five friends, be be your locket contacts. And then it becomes a widget. It could be a pretty big widget too on your home screen. And they can automatically send photos to your home screen into the widget. So perfect for like the one person you care a lot about to have a lock it. I love the name. I've just asked Lisa to all those accidental photos coming. No, no, you don't send those. You send nice. No, no like

Rene Ritchie (01:21:48):
<Affirmative> like the guys in the shower and just like a whole bunch of photos are just being jammed to your home. Speeding. You're like, please stop. Please stop. Yes. I, I drop my phone.

Andy Ihnatko (01:21:56):
I'm I'm I'm thinking more like you found out that your partner cheated on you, but you're, you're playing dumb because you know that in two weeks time they're gonna be giving like a keynote in front of 500 people and they're you doing it from their iPad and well, yeah, I'll just say, Hey honey, I just found this really great. I just wanted, yeah, exactly. That's

Rene Ritchie (01:22:13):
But back, back in the, in the IOR days, we actually got a, a, like a really angry letter about when apple started doing the photo stream, cuz someone was, was someone sent her husband a bunch of photos while she was away traveling and they had just set up to show their parents how the apple TV worked and they had photos stream as this screen saver. So the inlaws are just like apple needs to stop this technology immediately.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:35):
I, you know, I, I, I excited about

Andy Ihnatko (01:22:37):
The lost did by three to be fair <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:22:41):
Yeah. I, I I was excited about it except for that. I I'm really gotten against this whole like give me your contacts. I know it says it doesn't save them, but it was like it's said, okay, now I want, you know, please give access. I, I won't work with an app now that asks for my contact list. Like it's just, just, you know, like it's like, I'm not gonna do

Leo Laporte (01:22:58):
That's it's one that does, but

Alex Lindsay (01:22:59):
You can, you cannot, you can't do it. You can't use it. You can't use it without don't

Leo Laporte (01:23:03):
Mm-Hmm it says it stays on your phone. It says they're not sending, I know

Alex Lindsay (01:23:06):
Sell. I know it does. I just don't want, I don't, I don't have any reason for that. I wanna be able to invite people. I just wanna be able to invite people to, to do it and connect through them and not, I, I get the stickiness of doing that. That's why I don't appreciate that. You know? Like, and so, well, how else would you super excited about it? How else someone you could just invite someone and create a connection. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:24):
But it makes you you have to get,

Alex Lindsay (01:23:27):
You can't use it without it. That's good.

Leo Laporte (01:23:28):
Matthew, knock

Alex Lindsay (01:23:29):
It off. And, and it's a great idea. And I, but I, I have to admit I've started to take kind of a, I think no you're right. Clubhouse got me super like sensitive to it. Yeah. And, and I just felt like it was gooey. And so it's been, it's been something I've been kind of pushing back on.

Leo Laporte (01:23:45):
I am with you. In fact, I've been starting to say this it's docking your friends because you are sending everything, you know, about your entire contact list to a third party. That's that's that is, I mean, one thing to send your information to third party, you're sending all your friends information to the third party. That's wrong. I agree with you. And it's too bad that they were require that that's

Alex Lindsay (01:24:07):
But it's a great it's. I mean, it's a, it's an incredible idea. <Laugh> I was, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, I gotta download it. I'll put, you know, put my family on it. We'll have fun with it. It would be great. See how it makes tons of fun. Yeah. And I was just like, and all I had to do was invite them, invite their dot, even if it was just their dot Mac. And I invite each one of them and they have to accept it. And then I heard, cause I don't want the app to touch my contacts unless the contact on the other end has a unit said it was okay. A hundred percent, but like I have a lot of contacts and I'm not. And a lot of them would not appreciate being connected to an app. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (01:24:37):
Yeah. Okay. Matthew, just take a little word of advice. Sorry for pouring all the cold water on your no, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I'm glad I necessary my pick of the week or anything. I'm just reporting a story. It's Micah sergeant's fault. <Laugh> he's a be forgive for anything. No, I, I, I think this is something people don't even think about and they're doing it all the time and it really is problematic. It really is problematic. Apple has updated the firmware for AirPods three, four C one 70 came out today. That's that is all brand name. <Laugh>. That is all don't know. I there's no, by the way, I easy way to do this. By the way you connect your, I iPad air AirPods pro to the iOS device, you open the settings app, you type the general tab type, the Abba tab type AirPods. Look at the number next to the firmware version. And then what, I don't know,

Rene Ritchie (01:25:38):
You wait until they're charging a update and then half the people will say they sound better. Half people will sound worse and I'll wanna hide it for

Leo Laporte (01:25:44):
A week. That's <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:25:46):
I, I will say that the one thing that, that did get apple, apple fix sometime recently, I didn't know exactly when but someone suggested it is that there was a problem with ICO and exchange. That would mean that every time you went to a new page in ICO, it would take like 20 seconds. You just, and it was hit there and apple fixed it in the last Mac. Oh, good update. So now it's all I it's, it was kind of like having me go, I need to go back to something else. I mean, it was like really a problem

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
Exchange. I mean, get rid of exchange. Good.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:17):
I can't, it's not my company. So, so the yeah, it's not something I picked on. Here's

Leo Laporte (01:26:21):
Good news for anybody who uses Microsoft products. Excel is now fully M one native Microsoft is released to office for Mac update, just Excel, although excels the one that does all the calculations. So I guess is probably that's one. Tim cook does pivot tables in, got the most pressure for <laugh>. If you previously use a Rosetta Emmy later to run Excel, you may disable it and run Excel natively on your device. I don't know if you need to disable it. I think it would automatically work, but users can get the new version using the auto updater that comes with office. Another incredibly annoying background task that's running on people's max,

Alex Lindsay (01:27:03):
If you, you, all I can say is if you have a Mac and you're not doing heavy calculations, like real spreadsheets, if you're using the spreadsheet to organize things, numbers, numbers is a hundred times better numbers, like a hundred times better. And it looks so nice. You can take a numbers file. And I submit those as bids and they're pretty, and I've got pictures in them and I've got all this other stuff and I open up Excel and I'm like, oh, this would be horrible. And if you're doing one page, like simple, like bids and everything else, there's, there's just a, there's another life out there. I'm just letting you know, like definitely numbers. Slugs slows down. When you start doing heavy tables, like I've done heavy tables and it takes a long time to, and I wouldn't, I would use Excel for that. But, but it that's the, that's not only like 1% of the users of, of a number of, of Excel are doing that. Everyone else is organizing. I

Leo Laporte (01:27:51):
Actually don't think that's the case. Cause a lot of people use it in finance. I leases got massive. A

Alex Lindsay (01:27:55):
Lot of people that have Excel Excel, but there's a lot of people that have excels, definitely a lot of people in finance, but there's a lot like I get these Excel files from clients all the time that are just like a list of the things it's. Yeah. I still think that's that's the vast majority. I mean, there's definitely lots of finance people that are doing it, but of all the people that have 365 that open up an Excel doc, not very many of 'em are doing things that wouldn't be better

Leo Laporte (01:28:16):
In numbers. People who care about that, we'll be very happy. Lisa will be very happy to learn this. She bought a 49 inch monitor because she runs so many spreadsheet and she wants to be able to see them. I mean talk about big tables. She wants to be able to see 'em spread out. She lives in Excel, so she'll be, she'll be glad to hear actually I think we use Google sheets a lot, but we use it just, as you said, Alex is kind of a list.

Alex Lindsay (01:28:40):
Like if you need to interact with other people, Google sheets is the way to do it. For sure like that. That's we? Yeah. What, what I do is actually build the 'em in numbers, cuz it's so much faster. Then I save it out as an Excel file. Then I open it in numbers. I'm sorry. Open it in Google sheets. And then I share it with everybody. Cause because the sharing in numbers is horrible.

Leo Laporte (01:28:57):
One of the reasons that I traded in my Tesla for a Mustang Mae is that Tesla uses its own multimedia software. And I wanted CarPlay dam. In fact, I was very happy. The Mae just got an update that lets CarPlay use almost the entire screen. That's nice. That's a big CarPlay. Yeah. I love is that a new feature of CarPlay or did it for, or just enable it? I don't think CarPlay has ever has always been up to the manufacturer to enable this, how they, how they display it or the controls. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz suddenly the sidebar move to the bottom, which is of course a good place for it. Cuz it's got a lot of real estate top to bottom. The icons are big, but I see more of them. The maps are, I mean it's really nice. The unfortunately Tesla refuses to adopt a CarPlay or Android auto.

Leo Laporte (01:29:46):
Yes. But there is a workaround that is a strange thing to see in a model three. Apparently a Polish developer, Maha, GA Penske has figured out how to do it. App Tesla doesn't even support apple music. I didn't realize that that's ridiculous. You play everything through tune in, give me a break. The video shows him running CarPlay on his model three screen. He says the steering wheel scroll button is working, which is good, but he here's, here's the downside. You have to run a separate raspberry pie with a custom build of Android.

Leo Laporte (01:30:32):
And then basically it's a server which you load into the Tesla and car browser. And the mouse has to be connected to your raspberry pod in that CarPlay. Okay. So it's a lot of work. Its all I sayings not, it's not. Yeah. It's it's a bar. You win the bar, you win the $20, but then you probably won't. Won't do it again. It's probably easier to get doom running on, on it to get CarPlay. It's an incar in-app purchase. Yeah. I have to say that car we're going less than 30 miles an hour before the, the driver play. I oh yeah, no that's one of the problems with Tesla. You could play video games at any speed. <Laugh> they're getting a little heat for that by the way. I do have to admit, I love CarPlay. I'm very happy with it. I've got wireless CarPlay in my car.

Leo Laporte (01:31:18):
It works very well. Nice. They did a good job on that. Do you use your, the aerial screensaver and your apple TV? I love it. In fact, Lisa and I will have a game to identify what it is we're seeing, you know, what city or whatever. There is an app for Mac, which I've used for a long time. It is now updated with the latest TV OS 15 screensavers. So if you've been using anti they're 95% Dubai now, anyway, there's a lot of Dubai. There's a lot of Dubai. <Laugh> it's pretty from the air. <Laugh> yeah, it's it is. It's very pretty. We do have some more nature stuff in the new aerial screensavers. Yeah. There's I don't know, canyons and mountains and lakes and so forth. So that's Patagonia Yosemite in the grand canyon in the early ones with helicopters and drones and stuff look great.

Leo Laporte (01:32:11):
I really, I run the aerial screensaver. I love it. I just think it's beautiful. Everywhere. I can. I just love it. That's super slow Mo so this is it's a free app. I think it's on GitHub as I remember by John Coates. I think it's OME Lule who has updated it to version 2.0, he is a self proclaimed C with that probably helps. I where, where can we here it is co dash five is his website co-five.com aerial 3.0 couple of picks for you. I think this is also probably a Mica Sergeant. Let us take a little teeny we E break. And then if you will, gentlemen prepare your picks of the week for me. Meanwhile, I'd like to talk about the place I go whenever I get a good idea to get that domain name. If you're a, a blogger, if you're an artist, if you're a photographer, if you're a business if, if you don't have your own custom site, you gotta get one, you know, having an email@aol.com just doesn't reflect a professional demeanor.

Leo Laporte (01:33:27):
Wouldn't you like to have a custom domain to link to your LinkedIn resume or your GitHub page or your online store. I think hover is the best way to do this. It's the best domain register I've ever used. Email at your domain name, man, that is absolutely a must. Customers trust it. If your brand is in your email address, you have a very affordable, easy to set up choice with hover. They have domain based emails for all your needs, small or large. You could set it up when you register the domain name@hover.com. When your domain renews, your mailbox is renew, you can add as many mailboxes as you want. Very affordable price. You get web mail if you want it, but you can also use your apple mail or whatever client you want to download the email hovers, not just a great place to do email.

Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
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Alex Lindsay (01:36:35):
So I'm coming back to something that we talked about earlier. We, we spent a a keynote <laugh> and I just wanna show something in keynote. We spent last Saturday talking about video and keynote and I kind of, you know, I kind of put together this little demo and when you see it, you're just kind of like, oh, I think that I, I think that I need that <laugh> so, you know, I just wanna show this. This is, this is keynote. This is, you can see that. Look you

Leo Laporte (01:36:59):
I'm, he's a little embedded little circle in I'm a little video

Alex Lindsay (01:37:02):
And you're in keynote. I'm in keynote. This is live. These are all you're presenting live in

Leo Laporte (01:37:06):
Keynote,

Alex Lindsay (01:37:07):
Live a live rock, live, live live. These are four live sources in keynote. And if I go, but you still have all the things that you, that all these things you have in keynote, which is, oh, I'd like to transition. This is still in keynote. Oh, teachers

Leo Laporte (01:37:20):
Should be using this professors.

Alex Lindsay (01:37:23):
Well, we did it in our education hour. So we said, and, and so these are, these are live views, oh, I want this to pop out and pop up here. And then I can even, it can still interact with all the things that you know, that I you know, that I have. So all the other things you have in keynote, as far as a presentation goes, are still there. You know? And I just, you know, I didn't think it was that big of a deal when we were, you know, like, oh, it it's a really cool feature, but it, but as I, as we started to play with it, it <laugh>, it was like, it's a game changer. It's a game changer. Like it that's

Leo Laporte (01:37:54):
Kinda mind boggling. Wow.

Alex Lindsay (01:37:55):
It is it's. And so far the, the Nu the, in our group, the highest number someone said that they've gotten is eight cameras working. <Laugh> inside a few. So

Leo Laporte (01:38:04):
You're going through an ATEM to get into it.

Alex Lindsay (01:38:07):
No, those are, those are here to cut back to this. This is so I'm going through the, at, here in the bottom, I'm actually splitting my I video to to the ATM. And then the other three are web cameras. Those are three different web cameras just hooked up to my Mac mini hooks up to USB. Okay. Yeah. So there, there, there are three little they're just on USB into the, into the, into the thing. And it's, and so there, there's nothing exciting about those. And I could be on a webcam as well. So you could have three webcams or four webcams all plugged into a Mac mini and now you're, and literally if you start using, you know, if I start you know, using the different keystrokes, I can start jumping to different, you know, I can jump to different cameras. You can literally do a, to

Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
Actually switch. Can you go full screen on anything? So you can, I was thinking it'd be great for, for screen tape. Yeah. Sures or

Alex Lindsay (01:38:56):
Screen shares. Yeah, you can, you can totally do it. So if I, if I hit let me, lemme go over

Leo Laporte (01:38:59):
To the, like, if I were gonna, like, this is OBS studio, but better in

Alex Lindsay (01:39:03):
A way. Well, I don't know if it's better than OBS studio. It's just different, but it, it gives you a lot of tools. The main thing is, is that you have all the tools that you have with keynotes. So you're in here and you're just, you know, you're just moving your, your video around, but that's a video frame, you know, and it's, and it's just super powerful. Is it pretty quick? The latency is almost zero. Wow. I, you can see me in the corner. Yeah. I'm up here. Yeah. So if I go, no, it's, it's really good. You know? And so the latency's very low it's and it, and and so you have, you know, you can definitely go full screen. I mean, this is, so if I just built another, like if I, I you know, copy this, just to

Leo Laporte (01:39:39):
Copy this, how do you get the cam? Is there just an embed camera?

Alex Lindsay (01:39:43):
You basically, if you want to add a new one, you just go to media, you go down to live video. Oh my

Leo Laporte (01:39:49):
God's as easy as

Alex Lindsay (01:39:50):
Could be. Yeah. And then you say, and if you want so that, yeah. That's, if I wanna choose, oh, teachers should be turn the camera off. Teachers should

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Totally be using this. Yeah. But even like, I'm thinking of, you know screencasts online and stuff like that, you could make, you could record it and make a screencast very nicely. I think that's

Alex Lindsay (01:40:08):
The, that's what a one of the folks, if you look at our Saturday office hours that, that we did with educators, that's exactly what was done is they, he put together an entire video. O and, and that's the, that's the secret to this? Is that, is it really keynote is the, is the easiest, like, I want to build a video for my class, for my company, for whatever. I don't know how to use motion or final cut or IMO or any of these other apps. I just wanna throw together videos. Just so cool. And you can, you can totally just, can

Leo Laporte (01:40:38):
You do screen capture too? Could I have a live screen?

Alex Lindsay (01:40:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can oh, yes. Yeah. You can, you'd have to to do a live screen. You would need it to go to that's. The you'd have to go out the, the, so this is the one thing that isn't working right now is that there's no way to take virtual cameras and put them in, but you could you can share your apple TV as a source. You can also you know, so you can share an apple TV.

Leo Laporte (01:41:05):
Oh, I see. And, and then you'd live, live, you play

Alex Lindsay (01:41:09):
Airplay

Leo Laporte (01:41:10):
It, apple TV,

Alex Lindsay (01:41:11):
And then, and then you have, it you'd

Leo Laporte (01:41:12):
Need two computers though. Cuz the keynote would be, oh, I guess you got a keynote in a second screen.

Alex Lindsay (01:41:18):
Yeah. I mean, what I'm using is to, I mean, like to do screens, I'm doing, that's why you

Leo Laporte (01:41:21):
Have three Mac minis in the studio.

Alex Lindsay (01:41:23):
Well this one, so this one's the presentation Mac mini. The other one is the this is the one that does the tele illustrator is my other Mac mini. Oh that's and then I just have a work one. What software

Leo Laporte (01:41:32):
Do you use for the tele?

Alex Lindsay (01:41:33):
I made it Aw. So anyway, so anyway. Yeah. So this is, this is my, my tele illustrator software. So that's pretty, that's really good. Anyway, what'd you make that? X code <laugh> so anyways it it's really fast. I didn't, I didn't write it. I designed it. I, I, I a friend of mine it was really smart. It's really cool. Mark. Mark. Grainer put it together for me. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:41:56):
Yeah. Are you ever gonna let any, anybody have that?

Alex Lindsay (01:42:00):
I am trying to, I, I, you know, here's the problem is that the person who wrote it for me, you know, wrote it over like a weekend and then, and then got a job and then that's, it's, it's complicated if he finishes it. So I'm trying to find if, if you're out there, you can contact me. I'm trying to find a good program or that wants to like swift. It's not in swift. I wanna, I wanna update it and make sure my, my big thing is I don't wanna put out an app that people, you know, like it works for me, but it crashes needs to swift while too it does well, but, but it, it crashes every once in a while and it does a bunch of weird things. And, and so I, it works for me, all the, you know, for me, but I, I would want to sit down and develop a, the app before where I put it. I don't want a bunch of one stars of like, it crashed. Right. You know, like I was like, you know, you know, it's, it's, you know, so anyway, so I I do plan, I have a whole line of apps that I'm working on right now. I'm so

Leo Laporte (01:42:47):
I D D I think I, oh, I should really learn swift. I should really learn. I mean, it's just, it's hopeless. <Laugh> I need more Leos.

Alex Lindsay (01:42:54):
Yeah. It, I need

Leo Laporte (01:42:54):
More of the, is

Alex Lindsay (01:42:55):
What I need. I keep on thinking that I'm gonna take like a couple months off and do, you know, coding with Chris and, and do, you know, kind of walk through the videos and I get through a couple of them and I, I start to get my head around it and and then I just get busy again. Yeah. You know, doing, doing work that yeah. I get paid to do

Leo Laporte (01:43:10):
So. Yeah. That's me too. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Very cool. I'm gonna have to start playing with that. That's pretty impress.

Alex Lindsay (01:43:16):
Super. Like if you're, if you're a, if you're presenting it's it, is it, I mean, all of keynote is really good, but the live video now means that you can do, you can finally do those presentations that, you know, you don't want to be having someone watch the slide the whole time. It can be your webcam, or if you're a teacher, you can have your webcam and you can have an overhead webcam, you know, that's looking down at something or that you're talking about, you know, that type of thing. So, and then you can keep on cutting to, you know, videos and everything else. So you have all the access to all the different media that you have. And, and I think that it's just a really, you know, O overlooked. I mean, I I've had this discussion before, but if someone asks, like, what app has made you the most money in the last 20 years? I was like, keynote keynote has made you the most money by far like millions, you know, like not me, millions, but companies that I work for you know, it's made the millions because it's, you know, it's the, it's how you pitch. And it's how you talk about things and how you even just illustrate how we're gonna do this project. You know? So it's, it's really powerful. And the live video just really takes it to a whole nother level, nice

Leo Laporte (01:44:12):
Renee Richie pick of the week.

Rene Ritchie (01:44:15):
So this is an oldie, but a goodie it's Neily, Bart's above Avalon. Oh, Neily, Bart. I'm familiar with him. He was a former cell side analyst. I think he used to post as Sammy, the wall Russ back in the day. <Laugh> but since going independent, he's full in, on being Neily, Bart and above Avalon. It's very different than like Eckery from Ben Thompson, where he just focuses on apple, but he really digs deep. He's one of the most accurate apple analysts out there in terms of the, like, if you're interested in the stock or where he thinks it's moving or how the businesses are doing very accurate in terms of predictions, he often poo the outrageous outlandish numbers you hear for sales and gives you much, much more down to earth, much more accurate numbers. But he also I love that he per, he prosecutes a lot of the sensational articles that we see, like something will come out and he'll dig into it.

Rene Ritchie (01:45:09):
And he'll say, wait, there's actually no source for this. They're quoting, this person is quoting them. You know, it's, it's like circle quoting at a certain point. And he, and he does this daily newsletter. He subscribe to it. He also does it in podcast form and he just, he really gives very deep analysis around everything that involves apple as a, like, you know, a for-profit company. It's not gonna be for everyone. But if that kind of stuff is really interesting to you, especially if you're, if you look at apple from like a financial point of view, it's just the best thing out there. I read it every day and it's, it's tremendously valuable to

Leo Laporte (01:45:43):
Me. Add it to your RSS feeds, put it in your Google reader. <Laugh> yeah, I completely agree with you Neil sidebar above@avalon.com. Thank you, Renee, Andy and ICO pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko (01:45:59):
One quick one and that's really important and one, wow. Why am I so blurry? Well, probably should switch.

Leo Laporte (01:46:07):
It's actually good. Your skin has never looked finer.

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:10):
It's the stride and effect the original one for the internet. Yeah. so the United States government opened up its free COVID test kits for everybody program a day early. So if you go to COVID tests.gov, they will give 'em your name and address, and they will mail you a four pack of of rapid tests. You don't even have to pay for postage. And I've, you would expect that the news would be, wow. It went online like three or four hours ago. And now of course instead, no, I right. I went online just before the show and it worked just fine. And then I just even just tested it like five minutes ago and the site is still responsive. So for some reason we, the government

Leo Laporte (01:46:47):
Website's actually working

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:49):
Indeed. So again, every, every H I don't know if four test kits is gonna be as useful as possible for a household with like two, they don't like my hover

Leo Laporte (01:47:00):
Email, unfortunately, cuz it's a.email address. But other than that, thank you, us government. Get the us digital services on that one. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:09):
But the point ordered. Thank you. Wow, excellent. Yep. Yep. Have a it's it's like a fire extinguisher. You want the COVID test kit like there when you need it, like again, when you don't want to go when you store to get one <laugh> yeah. I mean, it's like, I, I mentioned this before, like a few months ago where I lost one of my elderly aunts and it was a real struggle to decide that is, is it yeah. I mean, she was, she was wonderful and I really did. I really did want to attend the wake, but it was like, all of her friends are also going to be in their like seventies, eighties and nineties. Should I, should I go even with a mask on and will I introduce if I am I aromatic, had I had, this was before like these at home test kits were available.

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:50):
I might have taken the risk with some other mitigations if I'd been able to take a, a rapid test, like three or four hours before considering leaving. And if that turned out negative and I wouldn't have, I would've also done other mitigations, but this is these, these are reasons why it's good to have this just standing by for that moment. When, before you go to a party before you go to an event where you think it's okay, but eh, maybe just test anyway. But again, as, as you said, it's, it's people, most of the message traffic about this online. It's like, oh my God, the site is actually working. It gave me confirmation. It was very easy. I didn't have to, it didn't ask me to authenticate or validate anything. It was great.

Leo Laporte (01:48:23):
It was instant. Very nice.

Andy Ihnatko (01:48:26):
Yeah. Well my, so that that's one free thing. The other one is also free. Although I, I, I, I did a buy, a, buy a coffee thing for the developer. It's a plugin for every popular browser except for safari that adds multi-select functions to the YouTube interface. So my, my problem was that I've, I've been a YouTube user since like, you know, shortly after it launched and you know how to happens, where you have the, the watch later button where you're scrolling you're you're on Reddit or whatever you see. Oh, that I think I'd like to see that later, but not right now. So E okay. Easy peasy. Just click on the watch later button. And after like 10, 15 years of this, you know, you, you, you always add stuff faster than you watch it and you watch stuff faster than you delete stuff from watch later.

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:08):
So I quickly hit my 5,000 video limit and was like, for like the past, like eight, nine months, I couldn't add more stuff until I go on my phone or something. And just like manually delete like a hundred a funded videos from watch later, cuz it doesn't the, the interface doesn't have a select all or multi-select this one just install the plugin and suddenly just anytime you access YouTube now there's checkbox and another little, like three.menu, like next to each item and just click on this say yes, please select all the select. All will affect all of the videos that are inside the window at this time. So if you have a scrolling list, like the, the user interface will have like preloaded like a hundred videos. So it would only select a hundred, but that meant that I could get from 5,000 5,000 videos copied into a backup playlist in like five or 10 minutes and suddenly after a year or so this big problem had been solved. I, I don't know why YouTube does not support multiple selection or even a select all. Oh, well but this is it's, it's regularly updated. It has a lot of, lot of reviews. So it's not just stealing your data, but not just stealing your data. Well maybe if it's stealing your data, it's also doing something valuable. But I, I quickly, as soon as I solved this problem, like, oh my God, I, I, yes, sir. I will buy you a coffee. I will buy you multiple coffees. Thank you for solving this problem for me.

Leo Laporte (01:50:23):
I just went to, thanks to scooter X, to analytics USA go at gov that shows the traffic to us government websites. There are 1.6 million people on government websites. Now 1.3 million of them are on the free COVID home tests. <Laugh> so

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:40):
Wow done. Whoever built that, whoever built that well done to the

Leo Laporte (01:50:44):
Entire, well, I know Matt, Matt cuts isn't at the SDS anymore, but, but boy, that's a hell of a hell of a job. You compare that to the Obamacare site when it launched a few years ago. That's why, by the way, that's why us digital services exists U SDS exists because they wanted to help with the ACA website. And now they've done such a great job. And I have to think they might have had a little bit to do with this postal services, like the top four <laugh> websites out of this. And it's like six outta the top 10 it's. It's really big.

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:15):
Yeah. I, I, I actually kinda liked how integrated it was. It was you, you, you place your order, then it gives you a United States postal service confirmation, like wasn't as though like you have to, oh, well here's something that if you wanna plug this into a site, it's like it as though the postal service and this website were being operated by the same bureaucracy. It's incredible.

Leo Laporte (01:51:33):
Good. This is actually a great page too. Thank you for this, for this page. Almost half of the browsers are what is that Chrome, but 35% safari. It's it's analytics.usa.gov. And it's real time it gets updated. It's amazing. Firefox is, is small than Samsung internet, but safari is 35% of the visitors more than half on mobile. Ios 34% of all visits are iOS 31% windows. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:52:06):
Also, also, you know what? This is giving us another insight that, well, what is the, what, what kind of computers and operating systems and devices are used by people who actually believe that COVID is a thing. And that self testing would be a useful thing for their lives and other people's lives. It's possible. This is not just a look at how many, the, the disparity between different operating systems. It's like if we ha how, how, how whats signage of the internet that, that accesses like espn.com does, does this reflect the same thing or else, or is this data gonna give us insights into what kind of devices are owned by people who deny COVID?

Leo Laporte (01:52:41):
Yeah, I it's pretty, it's pretty impressive. That's very cool. That's a, a lot of business

Alex Lindsay (01:52:47):
It's really well, really well designed. Isn't this a good

Leo Laporte (01:52:49):
Site? Yeah, I it's pretty bet you U S D S on this one as well. Wow. no, it's a, it's the GSA analytics, usa.gov is a product of the GSA digital analytics program. It's hosted on cloud.gov. Wow.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:06):
Yeah, this, this, this was a big, this is a, a expression of a big initiative during I think the

Leo Laporte (01:53:11):
Digital Dov initiative. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:13):
Meaning to specifically, we want to make government data and government resources more available and it wasn't just, oh, well, we'll have a, we'll have a, a place where we can download tax forms more easily. It was no, it's also is full to create an analytics page like this. So people can have access to the same data that government

Leo Laporte (01:53:30):
Is seeing. Well, and this is, this is a really good example of why you need something like this, this COVID home tests. I mean, talk, I mean, right away. Really good. Very nice. Thank you for that tip of the week. I have ordered four. <Laugh> hoping I never have to use them. I don't. John wants to know what the expiration date is. I don't know. We'll find out when we get 'em. I guess I

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:49):
Got, well, I actually, I did a, I'm having electrician come over tomorrow, so I actually took a rapid test today. I, I probably should have done it like three hours beforehand, but whatever. And they're good for about, about til the end of the year. I think, I think, but the, the fresh, the, the freshness date on the kit that I opened was like at the very end of 20, 22.

Leo Laporte (01:54:07):
Okay. By then we won't need 'em anymore. Of course, Of course. Thank you, Annie. NACO. When are you gonna be on GBH next?

Andy Ihnatko (01:54:17):
The usual time, 1230 in the afternoon on Friday. Just go to w GB H news.org to listen to it stream at live or later. Thank

Leo Laporte (01:54:24):
You. Always a pleasure. Rum SL master Alex, Lindsay. We got a bike. We saw that you have a rum SL cam. That's pretty impressive. I do. Yeah, I do.

Alex Lindsay (01:54:34):
Yeah. <laugh> office,

Leo Laporte (01:54:35):
Office hours, doc global. What is the mic you're using?

Alex Lindsay (01:54:39):
This is an Noman TLM 1 0 2. It's do you like it?

Leo Laporte (01:54:43):
Does it work? It's really? Yeah, it sounds great. Does it sound okay? Yeah, but it's really, really, really expensive.

Alex Lindsay (01:54:49):
It's not, I mean, it's expensive. It's not really, really, I mean, in the mic world, it's not really, really expensive. There's a, the 1 0 3 is really that anything over a thousand dollars ago, that's really expensive. This is about $600. I think so. Well that's, it's not awful. Six 50. Yeah. It's not awful. It's it's 

Leo Laporte (01:55:06):
It's not a USB mic. I mean, I, obviously you have a mixer and all,

Alex Lindsay (01:55:08):
No, no, this is going through, yeah. This is going through his sound devices and then it's got noise assist because otherwise the, you would hear all the fans and everything. Yeah. Cause it's the problem really with it is, is that I've had to rebuild everything around me to use it because it it's off, you know, the off is rejection on the PR 40 is great. You know, this is sounds better. I feel like I got more high, high end, but yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:55:29):
It's a condenser. So it's got, you know, but it

Alex Lindsay (01:55:31):
Picks up. Yeah. It picks up many things. That's the problem. So, so it, yeah. So you so I'm constantly, I had to get a mute and then I have a lot of times I move away from the mouse and use my, a track pad. And then I just have to be conscious of what I'm, you know, what's making noise. Right. It's not so it's, it's, I, you know, it's one of those things, it's for a

Leo Laporte (01:55:49):
Sound Stu soundproof

Alex Lindsay (01:55:50):
Studio it's for a real studio. It is. And I, and so I'm I'm, but I've been using it for the last couple weeks and I'm pretty happy with the, with the we've been using in office hours and I got so many positive rig things. I decided to keep it. So, yeah. But yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:56:05):
Might I, I should play with one of these, but I have a

Alex Lindsay (01:56:07):
Feeling they're really nice. You'd have a hard time using it in that studio because you have a lot of moving parts, but at home it's this is my I've had this for years, so I didn't buy it. I, I mean, I bought it, but I didn't buy it recently. I I've had it for maybe almost a decade. As my voiceover mine, some people ask me to do a voiceover for that's perfect voiceover. I use, I use this mic. And then I, and, and so, but but it's very unforgiving when it comes to oh yeah. Everything around you. So its that's why someone, my cat jumped up on, on me during the show and you could hear it. People were like, I can hear it. Puring <laugh> you know, so

Leo Laporte (01:56:38):
It's so it gives you that NPR sound though. That's what's that's

Alex Lindsay (01:56:41):
Just good about yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Beautiful NPR

Leo Laporte (01:56:45):
Sound. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:56:48):
Oh naturall oh naturall

Leo Laporte (01:56:50):
Thank you, Alex. Renee Richie, youtube.com/renee Richie. What are you working on?

Rene Ritchie (01:56:55):
Oh, I just did like that incredibly long video going through the history of lightning and USBC and a, the aging out of various connectors and where we could go from here. So if you wanna see why I didn't sleep much in the last two days, you must go

Leo Laporte (01:57:09):
Over the YouTube channel. Check youtube.com/renee Richie. You'll find us@livedottwi.tv every Tuesday around 11:00 AM. Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern 1900 UTC. That's when we record Mac break weekly, you don't have to watch live. Of course it's a podcast and you can get on demand copies of this episode and every episode we've done, this is episode 8 0 1. Did you get a cake for 8 0 1? Oh no. I, I didn't think of that. A 8 0 3 only, only for the even numbers. I have some selfish restraint. We're all gonna have to get a drum machine for the 8 0 8. We'll get there in seven episodes. That should be all drums for that one. <Laugh> you can go to twit.tv/mbw to get a copy of this show in all 800 previous shows. You can also find the YouTube channel. It has all the video and you can go to your favorite podcast application and subscribe.

Leo Laporte (01:58:08):
You get it automatically. That way. If you're watching live chat live at irc.twit.tv or in our Discord, Club TWIT's been very busy. The Club TWIT Discord we had Andy, you had your ask me anything fun. Yep. Really fun, super fun. And that's available on the TWI plus feed. Now we also are, did Stacy's book club this week. We've got more coming up later in the, the week I think, and in the future including by the way, the untitled Linux show and the GIZ fizz and many other great shows. So join the club. You just to go to twi.tv/club TWI seven bucks a month gets you ad free versions of the shows, access to the discord. And of course the TWI plus feed, we do have other places you can interact offline with us. There's the TWI community at TWI do community. That's a discourse forum. There's the Mastodon instance of twit.social. So please just interact with us whatever way makes you happy. We love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us everybody. Now I'm sad to say it's time to get back to work cuz break time is over. Bye bye.

Jason Howell (01:59:21):
Have you ever read a tech news story and thought to yourself, man, I would love to talk to the person who wrote this to find out more information. Well, that's exactly what Mikah Sargent and I, Jason Howell do each and every week on Tech News Weekly, we read the stories that matter to us. We reach out to the people, making and breaking the tech news and we invite them on to tell their story and you can find it at twit.tv. Look for Tech News Weekly, every Thursday.

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