MacBreak Weekly episode 804 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Leo Laporte: (00:00)
It's time for MacBreak weekly. I'm back. Thanks to Mikah Sargent for doing it last week. Now, Alex Lindsay is out, but we do have Renee Richie and Andy Ihnatko. We will talk about the rumors. March 8th is the magic date, uh, Apple, quarterly results. I get to weigh in a little bit on, uh, that one. And of course Apple's response to the Dutch dating apps. It's all coming up. And by the way, before I get into the show, I just wanna ask you to help us out just a little bit by and indulging in our annual survey, we do this, uh, every year as a way to get to know you better. It helps us sell advertising, but it also helps us plan programming. So, uh, we can make your experience even better. It'll just take a few minutes. We do it once a year. Uh, and of course it's completely voluntary, but it would be much appreciated. Go to twit.tv/survey 22 to take it. And thanks in advance. Now, on to the show.

(01:00)
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte: (01:10)
This is MacBreak Weekly episode, 804 recorded Tuesday, February 8th, 2022, Canadian Magic. MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Betterhelp join over 1 million people who've taken charge of their mental health. As a listener, you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting Betterhelp.com/mac break. And by New Relic, the next 9:00 PM call is just waiting to happen. Get New Relic before it does, and you can get access to the whole New Relic platform and a hundred gigabytes of data free forever. No credit card required when you sign up at newrelic.com/macbreak.

(01:52)
It's time for Mac break weekly. The show we cover the latest news from Apple. Alex Lindsay has the day off heading to LA for, uh, something probably has to do with the super bowl, my guest, but we got Renee Richie here from youtube.com/ReneeRichie. Hello, youtube.com/reneeRichie.

Rene Ritchie: (02:10)
Hello, Leo LA part is wonderful. Wonderful

Leo Laporte: (02:12)
To have you back. Good to see you. Oh yes. Thank you, Micah, for filling in for me last week. I really appreciate it. Uh, Lisa, we left Micah, but we miss you Lisa and I took a day off basically a couple of days off and went down to Carmel by this C, which I'm happy to report is in fact by the sea. Uh, Andy and ACOs also here. W G B H Bolson.

Andy Ihnatko: (02:31)
Hello, Andrew. I am also by the C I can confirm that we by the sea. So, so BA so basically that's part of the service that TWIT that we offer. Occasionally we will send a representative out to make sure that the west coast is anchored and the east coast is anchored by water.

Leo Laporte: (02:46)
So we are holding them down on each end with our big fat geek butts. Uh, Andy actually, uh, did, are you did the snowmelt? Did you get a second storm? What's the situation there in, uh, New England? Uh,

Andy Ihnatko: (02:59)
Very, very light. It's like the, uh, last week or so we got, uh, the, the big storm. Yeah. Uh, over here, it settled down to about 16 inches. Not, not far away. We got like 22, something like that. But of course, because this is 2022 and not like 1982. And the climate is what it is. There is nothing we used to melting. Yeah. Again, I, I, I hate to be one of those nostalgic folks, but it's like, it used to be that like, you would, there'd be like a shipment of snow that would last you through like the rest of the winter through March. And now it's like, no, you get, it's a lease program. You get it. You, they brought it in for, for, for a photoshoot for about four or five days. You get to shoot your next Christmas card. You get a few good Instagram posts, but then boom, it's hysterical.

Leo Laporte: (03:47)
My, I ask if my mom is near you and I always want to know, I talked to mom, of course, but, uh, but I always want to know how she's doing and how's the weather and all that stuff.

Andy Ihnatko: (03:54)
No, it, it, it wasn't bad. We didn't even lose, uh, power. It was, uh, I, I, I bought all kinds of baking stuff. Like just, almost for no reason whatsoever. Cause I thought, well, just in case we get snowed in for a couple of days, let's, you know, I'll, I'll have cookies, I'll have cakes. It's yeah, it'll be a festival. And unfortunately, unfortunately day afterwards, all yeah.

Leo Laporte: (04:16)
Also, uh, with us. Uh, no, no, that's it that the two of you, it's the three of us today that makes it easy. That makes it easy, uh, big announcement, couple of big announcements, apple empowers businesses to accept contactless payments through tap, to pay on the iPhone. You now have an iPhone payment device cash register on hand Leo. That's pretty cool.

Andy Ihnatko: (04:42)
That's that's, that's interesting. It, it really is. But before it's not, it's not simple person to person payment. It's not as though you could simply walk up to somebody and then exchange money just by doing a, doing a tap devices. What they're, what they're doing is they're eliminating all of these like Stripe devices. Where is device plugged

Leo Laporte: (04:59)
In? Well, that's the funny thing they're to use Stripe as the back end, by the way Stripe is a sponsor. So yeah,

Andy Ihnatko: (05:04)
Well, uh, the big, well, the actually it's broader than that, basically. They're saying that, uh, approved, approved transact doors, like again, like Stripe can have access to just use the hardware this directly, uh, from one iOS device to another iOS device. So they don't. So if, if you are us to, if you are a, if you already have an account with Stripe and you just bump into somebody in the village who says, oh, wow, that's right. Can you come, can you come by and like, uh, uh, and, and, and redo my deck, uh, got a couple broken steps. Oh, great. Just to hear I'll, I'll go down to home Depot, uh, just gimme like 40, $4,000 or whatever for, for lumber. And you can just do, do the payment, like phone to phone right there. So that's, they're they're and they're encouraging this, uh, as a, sort of a more casual business relationship, again, not a personal person to person transfer stuff. It's not gonna be, uh, like, uh, like how apple pay or like how PayPal is sometimes use. Yeah. They already have apple

Leo Laporte: (05:58)
Pay. So you can, you can do that cash register my, uh, hair cutter, uh, with the apple pay and it's, or like a farmer's

Rene Ritchie: (06:05)
Market, like you're there, you're selling your zucchini's the pictures and you don't have a whole cash registry.

Leo Laporte: (06:09)
Yeah. Here's the picture at the farm, but see, this is what's cool. And I suspect that's, who's gonna use it is people who would be using square or Stripe or some other, you know, if you have square, you have to have an iPad and there's a whole process and they tap their watch. Although now they

Rene Ritchie: (06:23)
Just don't need the square dongle. Like they could still use square. Like it might benefit square from not having to make all that hardware. They can just be the transaction process. Yeah,

Leo Laporte: (06:30)
Yeah. Uh, it does. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't require stripes, stripes the first to say, uh, we're, we're going to be supporting it. In fact that think they're already taking signups, um, for the cuz it's not out yet, but it'll be out

Rene Ritchie: (06:41)
Sometimes. It just means that Apple's gonna magically start adding NFC to the future iPads because right now it's iPhone only. Oh, interesting. A lot of people would love to have iPads.

Leo Laporte: (06:48)
What's interesting. Also to me is apple could have done this at any time. I mean, the hardware was there has been there for several generations, right? Yes. There was nothing stopped them from doing this. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko: (06:59)
The hardware was there, maybe just the infrastructure, uh, wasn't there. I mean, this is this, isn't just like an iPhone iPhone payment system. Like they, that they, this is a, this and this isn't, this is important enough to them that they actually have a news release on newsroom. This isn't just something that they're just sort of, you're just finding out as a part of a developer update. And part of the, uh, part of the package that they're sending out is, Hey, look, here's somebody at the farmer's market. Like I said, uh, with an actual, just like tap to pay MasterCard, not just, it's not just a phone to phone sort of thing. So I can't imagine what had to be done at the back end to make sure that this is actually going to work and the people are gonna actually consider this to be

Leo Laporte: (07:34)
Trustworthy. Is there a, yeah, that's the ES other question, is there a security, uh, to concern,

Rene Ritchie: (07:40)
Well, not a concern, but they've built it. They've baked it right into everything. So the transactions, the same way that apple pay does. So through the secure element and apple doesn't get any access to any of your transactions. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. The other thing that's interesting to me is the way that Apple's willing

Leo Laporte: (07:52)
It's, it's not through apple, it's through whoever the payment processor like Stripe that you're using. If it's also Apple's using the hardware channel, it works with Shopify's point of sale app as well. So apple gets, no, they don't get a cut and they don't get any visibility into it. That's interesting. No, but

Rene Ritchie: (08:08)
I think that's calculated. I think that, you know, in, in several jurisdictions, apple is fighting over whether they have proprietary control over NFC and that's something that some people are looking to regulate because there's no that you can't get like Samsung pay on your if phone. And a lot of developers didn't have access to NFC the way they do on Android, but also apple has got apple cash and they've got apple pay in the us only. And this is us only as well, but having that sort of relationship like apple could do this themselves. But I think they're, they're starting to be a little bit more tactical and strategic about how they see ownership of core technologies on iOS and the finance one seems to be the one that they're, they're doing

Leo Laporte: (08:41)
That with first very interesting, uh, once tap to pay iPhone becomes on iPhone becomes available. It says, so that's 15.2. What is it for? Today's beta it's in today's beta. Yeah. Point two. Yeah. Okay. Good merchants will be able to unlock contactless payment, acceptance through supporting iOS app on an iPhone 10 S or later. So it really has been around the capability. Anyway, the hardware capability has been around for some time, a check out the merchant will simply prompt the customer to hold their iPhone or apple watch to pay with apple pay. Apple pays, had a big, a big boost from COVID hasn't it? I use touchless now all the time. That's suddenly in the us. Nobody wants in the us. Nobody wants money. Yeah. They don't touch me, man. Yep. Just go. And so I think

Rene Ritchie: (09:30)
You've become Europe in Canada though. Do you not have it?

Rene Ritchie: (09:34)
No. We've been like that for, for like 20 years. Oh, I see. With your credit cards for 20 years. And so is Europe. Yeah. With your credit card and with apple pay, like I, I remember they had Singleton once and I, I picked up a bunch of apple people from the airport and brought them there and I tapped to pay for gas on the way. And they're like, what is that Canadian magic? Like, no, this is how the rest of the world Canadian. That's what we tell. It's still weird. Cuz like you go to the us and you take, you put out your credit card and they take it and they leave with it. And you're like, what, what is apple?

Leo Laporte: (09:58)
Oh, I know. I hate that. Yeah. Apple pay, uh, apple says is already accepted at more than 99, 0% of us Realty retailers. That's incredible penetration.

Andy Ihnatko: (10:08)
Yeah. That, and that, that, that that's that's about, uh, contactless payments as a whole that it's

Leo Laporte: (10:15)
You get, you get apple pay and Android pay and yeah, you,

Andy Ihnatko: (10:18)
You, you realize that the, the, the, the historically funny thing is that banks in the United States have always had the, have, have, have always been running the numbers and said that whatever fraud, uh, whatever fraud, uh, retailer suffer as a result of insecure bank swipes, and just handing over the card, it cost us a lot less than actually having to update all the terminals, update all the software. Also do all the retraining we need to do for all of our customers in order to make that work. And they've always been just simply willing to pay the fees. Uh, and also I saw another report that said that they're actually making more money off of the, the, the fees that they are charging, that they were charging re retailers to cover losses actually exceeded the amount of losses that they were suffering, uh, due to fraud.

Andy Ihnatko: (11:03)
So there were a couple of reasons why there were not a whole lot. There wasn't a whole lot of incentive, uh, for banks to switch all of their payment platforms over to contactless payments. But as really, it's one of those things where I, I I'm sure all of you, uh, had the same thing. Like the first time that oftentimes we, we got, uh, contactless payment devices, uh, before the people behind the registers did. And like, you see the little symbol on the new Kio on, on the new terminal that, on the Walgreens, like, what did you just do? Like, oh, I just paid with my phone. That's how

Leo Laporte: (11:34)
Does that work magic? Exactly.

Rene Ritchie: (11:37)
Oh, I wanted my experiences as I walked into, I, I forget what it was. It was at the airport and I went and I just tapped my watch. And they're like, what is that? And the thing went beep and it worked. They said, what is that? I said, I paid with my watch. And then the next time I came through the same woman, I was speaking to held up her watch with like this giant smile

Leo Laporte: (11:52)
On her face. That's cute. Yeah. So I would guess by now everybody knows, and it's no longer magic. Um, Canadian magic will also work with credit cards. However apple says, yeah. Tap to pay on iPhone, which I'm gonna call TT P O I from now on no, I'm not we'll work. No, I'm not. We'll work with contactless credit and debit cards, including Amex discuss of her MasterCard of visa. So is that if I have a chip chipped card, is that contactless or is there something special edit you? Yeah. Well,

Rene Ritchie: (12:19)
I think you need a little symbol, the little wifi symbol

Leo Laporte: (12:21)
On it. Oh, I need a Canadian magic symbol. Yes.

Rene Ritchie: (12:24)
Now I have, but I wonder if it'll work with Android devices that can project payments as though there a credit card. Cause actually it sort of has to, right. I don't think there's any way.

Leo Laporte: (12:30)
Samsung, that's a Samsung thing where it acts like a mag Stripe. Um, right. No,

Rene Ritchie: (12:36)
This wouldn't be a mag reader, but it would be a, it would be like acting like a credit card projector.

Leo Laporte: (12:39)
So Apple's own card does not have any magic symbols on it.

Rene Ritchie: (12:46)
No, it doesn't have any symbols on it. Leo, it's an apple card.

Leo Laporte: (12:49)
Oh, I love that sound. Can you contact,

Rene Ritchie: (12:51)
Pay with an apple card? I don't know. They don't have that in CA see, it's really interesting that the USS credit

Leo Laporte: (12:58)
Cards all over the studio,

Rene Ritchie: (13:00)
It's such a competitive banking environment that they can find banks and institutions that will do all of this with them. Where other countries have oligopolies that they want nothing to do with apple. They don't need premium cards. They don't feel like they have to offer us anything. So most of the world, none of these things exist.

Leo Laporte: (13:14)
Look, this, uh, AMX card. Let's not look, you can't see the number. Show the number. You can't see the show. The number. No, go ahead, John. You can't, you can't see the number I'm covering the only number you could see, but it has a little, it looks like a wifi thing. That's that's the, that's the, there it is. That's the touch to pay, huh? I'm covering up the only number that's on the front. Um, except the fact that I have been a customer since 1980, which just basically says

Rene Ritchie: (13:42)
This and you're known as LG might

Leo Laporte: (13:44)
As Wells might as well be 80 years.

Rene Ritchie: (13:47)
Your first, your first purpose was a bay city rollers album.

Leo Laporte: (13:50)
Hey, Hey, do a Rob. Do a Rob.

Rene Ritchie: (13:52)
Hey, Hey, it's LG Laport. Your author name. Uh,

Leo Laporte: (13:56)
I don't know why American express decided to call me ALG. LePort I think that was a, uh,

Rene Ritchie: (14:00)
That's algae. LePort he's visiting from the,

Leo Laporte: (14:02)
From the channels. My, my visa signature card does not have that, but my business card does, so that's good. So, oh, my cards have it. Well, of course, cuz you have Canadian magic on your side magic. That's true. We, uh, we hear in America, uh, America do things the old fashioned way. Mer, we got, uh, those things where you go put the, oh, but you have

Rene Ritchie: (14:21)
These like you have, you have apple card, you have apple cash. You have all these things. The rest of the world does

Leo Laporte: (14:25)
Not, you don't have an apple card.

Rene Ritchie: (14:27)
I'm not bitter.

Leo Laporte: (14:30)
You, you don't have our truckers though. So it's okay. No,

Rene Ritchie: (14:35)
We only have the queue. We only have the Q and the supremacy truckers, you got

Leo Laporte: (14:39)
The KU Kuku truckers. You can't have back. You can't hear them all the way in Montreal. Right?

Rene Ritchie: (14:45)
You can have, they tried, uh, they got confused by the lack of English code signs on their way.

Leo Laporte: (14:49)
Well, this is fraud. I'm LG LePort of the Providence ports. That's right. The Providence of Providence, the new port ports. Uh, anyway, that's, you know, it's interesting that, uh, apple has had this capability since 10, the 10 S uh, took them, what does that mean? It took them three or four years to do this, but they did it. And uh, so that's exciting. Now if you're in the Netherlands, it's not so exciting. And I it's really, it's really interesting before

Rene Ritchie: (15:19)
You go on. Maybe, maybe it's what you said. Maybe it is COVID that has increased the demand for contactless payment and apple sign opportunity. Oh

Leo Laporte: (15:25)
Yeah. The most recent years. Yeah. It's the best thing that could have happened to apple pay. Yeah. In fact, I mean, if, if you really, I globalize, uh, it's the best thing that ever happened to technology. All the tech companies have vastly increased in value. Uh, thanks to, uh, quarantine. It's been a very good thing for the tech sector. Not so much that for our psychology. Good for technology. So for us or restaurants, uh, I can't believe the number of restaurants and small business that are just gone. Just gone, blasted off. We lost the

Rene Ritchie: (15:54)
Franchises where we got a bunch of mom and pops that I'm really happy about because they're all cooking, authentic food. It's not just another burger coming off

Leo Laporte: (15:59)
A shelf. Good. Yeah. A couple of the big franchises are suffering here in the United States. Like, uh, the world famous Applebees where everything's microwaved, whether you want it or not. Uh, we lost taco bell big. Just they

Rene Ritchie: (16:12)
Quit the

Leo Laporte: (16:13)
Last, last month. Yep. Oh no. That's not. Uh, that's not. Okay. Jeff Jarvis is never gonna go to Canada then, but we have, but we have

Rene Ritchie: (16:19)
Real taco bell. We have real Mexican restaurants now, which we didn't have before.

Leo Laporte: (16:22)
Yeah. There's like three of them opened. Yeah. Uh, actually isn't that, that it is so funny. Here we are in California where you would think obvious. No, one's gonna go to taco bell. In fact, the best taco truck in town is right across the street from taco bell. And nevertheless, there's a long line around the block to get Doritos tacos or something. Whatever it is

Rene Ritchie: (16:48)
Probably made with crack.

Leo Laporte: (16:49)
Yeah. Something percent

Andy Ihnatko: (16:52)
Pure. My, my usual Wednesday morning, uh, diner with a couple of friends like closed down, unfortunately. Yeah. It's,

Leo Laporte: (16:59)
It's so sad. I'm you love that diner. Was that the one you, you always talk about? Yeah. I'm sorry.

Andy Ihnatko: (17:06)
The good, the good news is that after some months on the market, it got bought. And fortunately, because this is like a, a really off authentic, like 1960s diner, like the gleaming metal beautiful inside. My fear was that there were, someone's just gonna knock it down and put something boring there. And someone it's, it's no longer a diner diner. It's like a, come in, get a cup of coffee, get a pastry leave sort of place. But, uh, again, Anin nothing gold can stay.

Leo Laporte: (17:34)
Yeah. SI touch dating apps. Okay. Touch dating apps. You brought it up. It's not my fault. Wow. There is some salt in the air over this whole thing. Oh God. So the Dutch, just to, in case you it's the

Rene Ritchie: (17:51)
Mr. Burns of law

Leo Laporte: (17:52)
Departments in case you missed the, uh, uh, previously on Mac break, weekly, apple was instructed by Netherlands regulators to offer alternative payment systems to Dutch dating apps were still a little and only dating app. Only dating apps. Yeah. Uh, and apple, you know, given no, uh, alternative. Although I think they were fined, um, said, okay, 5 million. Yeah. 5 million euros, five, 5 million euros a week for, for, not for violating pocket change, pocket change. So apple did respond you way that not only must have irritated Dutch regulators, although they haven't said anything yet. It seems to have irritated people like Steven Trouten Smith and Marco Armit who flipped the digital bird on Twitter over this, wait a minute. Is ti

Rene Ritchie: (18:43)
Twitter, the digital bird,

Leo Laporte: (18:44)
The digital bird. It was flipped. The dun bin flipped, uh, apple said, okay, okay. Fine. And I think they said it just like that. Fine. Yeah. Fine. Fine. We're gonna, here's what you're gonna, we're gonna do, we're gonna give you a 3% discount because that's, it turns out roughly the amount of money the credit card fees would be. Uh, so you only pay 27%. We'll be billing you for that. Of course. Fees

Rene Ritchie: (19:10)
For apple, not for developers, by the way, apple gets a good deal on those process

Leo Laporte: (19:13)
Fees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. So in fact, this may end up costing developers more because if they wanna put their own story in and have to pay credit card fees to other companies, it could be four or 5% anyway. Yes. Even. So, so it AC and there's so many, it's so onerous, you have to create a separate app just for that. And there's a have to request a store kit, external purchase entitlement, or the store kit, external purchase link entitlement. You have to wear an embarrassing hat. You have to wear funny hat. I really, uh, and, uh, blah, blah, blah. Anyway. So apple, uh, responded, but it's like paying your bill, your utility bill with pennies. It's, it's one of those kind of like up yours. It's it's

Rene Ritchie: (19:54)
Like we saw this with a Korean place too. Like Google offered four, Google offered 4% off in Korea, apples offering 3%. And it feels like there's an utter desperation to make sure that they understand that they, they ascribe zero value to the credit card transaction processing and that everything else that they provide in their environment that is the 27 or 12%. Thank

Leo Laporte: (20:12)
You very much. And if Alex Lindsay were here, I will channel him. He would say, they're right. But, uh, you know, that's all you need to know about that. Uh, Steven Trouten Smith. Absolutely. This is his tweet. Absolutely vile. This says everything about Tim cooks apple and what it thinks of developers. I hope the company exactly what it deserves. Everybody on their executive team should be ashamed. Some of them should not be here when it's all over. We all see you. Wow. Uh, Marco Armit wrote, you can just feel how much they despise having to do any of this. And I, I, I'm not sure I would. I think Steven, maybe a little strong, but Marco is factual. You can feel how much they despise doing this. Um, I don't know what the Dutch regulator's response gonna be. They, uh, another 5 million, another 5 million euros, I guess.

Andy Ihnatko: (21:10)
Yeah. They were, they were already upset after the, after the original judgment of, uh, I think two weeks ago, they said that, well, apple, apple com apple, uh, claimed to the claimed to the government that, oh, we are complying with this order. And they said, no, you just said that. You're thinking, you're figuring out how you're going to do it. That is not equating that that's not the same thing as actually doing it. And that's what precipitated this incredibly mature. Uh, and, and, and even handed, this is, this is the,

Leo Laporte: (21:40)
They're gonna get their 5 million euros in pennies. I could tell you right now. No, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko: (21:44)
No, exactly. It's like, this is gotta be the dumbest. This is, this is like asking like a six year old child. Did you brush your teeth? And they said, yes. And he said, okay, I can smell your breath. They said, oh, well, you didn't see. I BR did I brush my teeth tonight? Like, oh God, do I really have to

Leo Laporte: (22:00)
Do this? Marco says, after you take your roughly 3% payment processor, Apple's 27% commission takes you right back up to 30 glorious, come on. Marco says, this is comedy. Amazing, ridiculous comedy. I'd be surprised if a single app ever took them up on this. And that's exactly by that's the whole point though.

Rene Ritchie: (22:18)
That's the point. Yeah. But the also thing is that the Dutch regular said that apple had to let them have both options. And apples answer was, well, they can choose one or the other. And the goes, we have a very different understanding of the word, both, both,

Leo Laporte: (22:29)
Right? So 5 million euros, another, this is the third week. Now they're gonna be paying, uh, the 5 million euros, which again, given Apple's spectacular revenue and we're gonna get to that. Um, yeah, isn't really it just so

Rene Ritchie: (22:42)
Odd because Apple's usually really good at understanding markets and understanding what, like a minimal delightful product is on a market. And obviously that's not their intent here. Well, they must think you look at South Korea, you look at Japan, you look at, uh, this is a global problem. And it is Dify to me that they have not gotten out ahead of this, that they're not only so far behind it, but they're dragging their feet like a dead corpse along the way. It just doesn't seem like good strategy.

Andy Ihnatko: (23:06)
Yeah. I absolutely agree if, if they think that this is just some, one little freakish government with this weird, uh, dictator, that's just making this off the top of their head demand that no one else is in. That's not a problem, any place else. And they can just simply fight this out. This is something they're gonna have to change how they do business worldwide. They're gonna, and not only that, but they will not, they will not be able to continue to do business worldwide. They're gonna be, have, be, have to do business individually with individual countries, adapting to individual laws. Yeah. And exactly to say nothing of, uh, of, of state regulators, if federal legislation in the United States, doesn't, doesn't come aboard. And like, this is, this is why I get really, really upset slash disappointed with apple is how disingenuous and how casually disingenuous they are.

Andy Ihnatko: (23:52)
That when it comes down to hi, um, apple, I, I noticed that you pull down all, uh, all apps in this country that will Allo give, uh, the users of iPhones in that country. Some defense over inhumane and onerous surveillance by the government that allows the government to control their lives. Uh it's like, oh gosh, what would, what can we do? We, we have to comply with every single law in all the countries, in which our app stores, we can't do anything about it. We're, we're just, we can't do anything, but you ask them to do something that affects their bottom line is fundamentally something they don't wanna do. And they will just basically flip the bird at this government. And they will just simply say, great, make us, we can continue to find us five, five or six Euro a week. See how long, like our war, our war chest for fighting. This lasts against your government's ability to, uh, to keep the, the appeals process going. All right. How

Leo Laporte: (24:45)
Much Alex, Lindsay, briefly, hold on. Apple doesn't care. What Dutch regulators or developers of Dutch dating apps or whatever. Think apple cares what the users want and their position.

Andy Ihnatko: (25:03)
Sorry.

Leo Laporte: (25:05)
Now I know why Alex mad at you. See, I,

Andy Ihnatko: (25:08)
I promised, I promised Alex, I wouldn't do that. I didn't promise you. I wouldn't do

Leo Laporte: (25:12)
That. OK. Well, but, okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna channel rum SL here and say, this is, this is for the benefit of the users and apple, really. And I, you know what, there's, there's some mirror in that apples shouldn't really care that much developers are getting a good deal compared to what Ingram micro charged when you had to shrink wrap software. And, uh, you know, apples wants to make the users happy and users, I would argue it's easier for users just to go through apple. Well,

Rene Ritchie: (25:40)
I would argue that it's ultimately a, not a, a successful, it's not a, a strategy that can win for them. And what's gonna happen is all these laws are gonna pop up. Like, like Andy was saying on a state by state region, by region basis. And it's gonna be a nightmare, not just for apple, but for end users right now, there's a unified store that when you travel, when you go, when you live in different places, it doesn't matter. Everything just works the way it works, except it is already broken because apple doesn't let you make in-app transactions for digital goods via other web. So you still gotta do that stupid dance, which is not in the benefit of users going to websites and things like that. And apple has an opportunity here because things are changing so rapidly in the global stage to be ahead of it, to think of a solution that's not rooted in 2008, when you know, this, this was all brand new and they could make an app console. And that really was for the best. They have a chance here to really modernize how all of this works. And it, it just seems like they're not seizing that opportunity, that they're protecting services, revenue, um, and, and the control of the app store in spite of both themselves and the customer, and not, not even mind, developers, developers are

Leo Laporte: (26:42)
Always third or forth on the list, but just in spite of themselves and the customers. Yeah. So I, but the point is well taken that customers don't, they don't really care about this, right? I mean, the apple users

Andy Ihnatko: (26:55)
Are, well, I

Leo Laporte: (26:56)
Begging for another

Andy Ihnatko: (26:57)
Way to pay. I would just, I would just quickly say that. I think that making the customer high happy is another area in which apple is not always, but often disingenuous in which again, forced ask them to make a choice that helps the helps the customers, but again, affects their bottom line or will affect their strategy going forward as a company and will see exactly how much they actually care about, uh, about the, the customer. I don't, I just don't think that's a good catchall for, or to justify what they do. I mean, there's, I, I, I do there. My, my basic argument has always been that if apple wants to say that, the way that they run the app store without really any challenge whatsoever, uh, is best for the customers best for the developers best for the industry. That's fine. It's but it's absolutely appropriate for a government agency or an independent agency to say, great, prove it, give us the numbers, explain why this is. So don't just simply say we are, we are two or $3 trillion company. We don't have to do anything we don't want to, and therefore we're not going to, yeah, this is why I, I, I encourage this sort of thing. I think this is a positive thing. And we have seen in the past three or four years change the app store that wouldn't have come, uh, if had not been for the, this sort of external pressure.

Leo Laporte: (28:10)
Well, I'm gonna take a, uh, Doritos Loco and, uh, Baja blast break right now. And, uh, we will come back and it was a very good, uh, quarter for apple. We'll talk about those numbers. And you know, we're not here buying stocks or, you know, financial gurus. We're here to take a look at those numbers and say what it means for apple. And Apple's good for apple Google and not Facebook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Poor. I, I never thought I'd say poor Facebook. Now they're saying to European regulators, this maybe apple should do this. You know what? You keep you pushing us. We're gonna get, we're gonna take our ball and go home. Yeah. That's data rep. That's like a whole, that's a whole, uh, see, and then the that's all the ke of words. And then the EU, uh, parliamentarians say red, that would be a good thing. We don't like Facebook either. Can you take rope at bud luck with

Andy Ihnatko: (29:03)
You? Yeah. Yeah. You do. You really want the, the, the whole, the whole statement that they were making during their quarterly report is that we're, we're fighting for people's attention. There's so much competition. Not only with social media. Yeah. We're trying to fight against toxic. Oh, great. So why don't you pull out of all these markets? See, see if you leave behind any sort of a vacuum, that's not gonna be immediate and you were gonna lose this completely. Go ahead. Give us a try. We don't love

Leo Laporte: (29:30)
It. Like Google in

Andy Ihnatko: (29:31)
China. That'll be fun. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (29:33)
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Rene Ritchie: (34:12)
Coma? We do. They're just closing here in Quebec. They were here for, oh, that's what years in they? Yeah. Yeah. They were in the back of Kentucky fried chicken. Every KFC got a taco bell in the back for a while.

Leo Laporte: (34:23)
Wow. That's right. They're owned by, uh, they're both owned by Pepsi.

Rene Ritchie: (34:27)
Yeah. I believe Pepsi and Coco and everything. There's only, only two companies,

Leo Laporte: (34:29)
Really only two companies. And in fact, uh, this may be a disappointment to some of you, but there's really only two big fat pipes and it's all made outta the same stuff. Just comes out the pipe. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie: (34:42)
One just gets branded Coke. When gets blown, can Pepsi you one as more salt, one as more sugar. That's about it. That's about it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (34:47)
Thank you, Jason Stu. You know, we should have had Jason on today. Come to think of it, I guess. Uh, uh, we didn't have time to get Jason, uh, lined up, but he does this every year. I love it every quarter, but he's, this is now the a, the annual report, I guess, because apple has now reported in with its, uh, quarterly results for the past quarter. And that makes it for the year. Uh, here's his 20, 21 apple report card. Now this is not from the financial numbers. This is by querying apple Watchers. I bet Renee. You're one of them. He queries.

Rene Ritchie: (35:21)
I, I was, but I missed the email this year. Oh God. My email became, after I left mobile nations, my email got completely annihilated and I missed, I missed Jason. I apologize to Jason. I can help you. No, he does everything right. It's just me. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (35:35)
I, I was a failure point. No, he never asked me, but that's all right. It's everything wrong, but that'll be nice. You never asked me, uh, apple, uh, report card, average scores, Mac number one. And yeah, I have to think. You'd have to say in the M one era in the apple Silicon era, apple max are amazing hardware, reliability number, iPhone, number three, wearables number four, which is ironic. That's more looking ahead, I guess, cuz all the wearables are right now or I guess watches and IPO iPods count AirPods count, uh, iPad. Well, see, watch has its own category services, software quality, not quite as good as hard wear reliability, environmental and social impact. It's interesting how low that's ranked. Well hardware got the post butterfly boost. Leo. Yes. Post butterfly, post track touch pad thing, apple TV kind of down there. Dev relations, definitely suffering, but the most neglected item on the apple report card home kit. Uh, yeah, whatever happened to that. Yeah. Uh, let's see. Let me, did he do his, uh, quarterly results report card too? I'm gonna have to see if I can find that. Yeah. The colored charts. Cause I love those colored charts. His, his, his

Andy Ihnatko: (36:55)
Amazing set of scripts. He, every time don't we praise him for doing this, it's just a set of scripts. It takes like nine minutes. Like, okay.

Leo Laporte: (37:02)
That's it's it's impressive. Right? Uh, how many of us think, oh gosh, I really, I do this all the time. I really should, uh, you know, automate it and never do. So the fact that he did is awesome. Six colors, charts. Apple did have its quarterly results last week. Am I not wrong? Uh, couple

Andy Ihnatko: (37:22)
Weeks ago was the 20

Leo Laporte: (37:23)
Week. Oh, did you guys already here last week? You already did. We did the apple results, but not the smell results. Well here's the Nell results. Good. Right. Good. So there's something left for me. It was a good quarter, 81 billion, right? Uh, iPhone all my almost half, but not, not quite. Which is interesting. Service is really big. I have to say though, there should be an asterisk gun services because yes. A significant portion of that is a check from Google, which I and the app store. Well app store, I think that counts. Right. But well it's like when apple says they have so many subscribers that includes like stores, subscribers, like the whole app store is a big distortion. Yeah. Everybody who has an app iPhone has the app store, right. Or a Mac, uh, apple revenue. Um, look pretty good in Q3 81 billion. But should it be higher? I uh,

Andy Ihnatko: (38:18)
They will. They're one

Leo Laporte: (38:20)
Of the, isn't this, the big selling quarter. The big new iPhone quarter. We were talking about a holiday quarter.

Andy Ihnatko: (38:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (38:27)
Um, well that's like a profit 21 billion. That's nice too. And they're returning so much of a, oh, I see. You know what? This big thing is the yearly result. Okay. Yes. So I shouldn't that's that big, big chunk there. They should just because these are all quarterly. So it's apples to apples. The black line is what really matters. That's the four quarter average in nav, obviously apple is revenue through the roof going really

Rene Ritchie: (38:52)
And services are throwing margins through the roof too, because soft where and services revenues are so much higher than our world.

Leo Laporte: (38:57)
They're Mar their total margin, right. Revenue up 36% for the quarter. Um, there there's that service, that purple services thing in there. Just for those of you listening, we're just looking at, uh, six colors.com. Jason said very beautiful graph. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. If there's this is the wrong quarter. Gosh. Darn it. All right. Just erase everything you just heard. I forget it. I, I hate myself. I take one day off one lousy day off and I'm one lousy show and I'm shot the hell. I guess he, he not done.

Rene Ritchie: (39:36)
It was a good quarter. They made again, they made more money. Forget everything just over fossil fuel resources.

Leo Laporte: (39:42)
I guess he hasn't done the charts yet. It was two weeks ago. So 123 billion in almost under 24 billion in revenue. Sorry. That's why that explains to me cuz yeah, an iPhone was a huge part of that. I got the whole, yeah. Editors just take that whole chunk out. Hey, here are Jason. Snells literally, I guess my brain just rotted while I was gone. You

Rene Ritchie: (40:07)
Already did all. I didn't know the difference either. Cause it's, that's funny. Like it's

Leo Laporte: (40:10)
Just so much money at this point. It's all blurry. Isn't it? We know it care. There's the big bar. I expected a hundred, 3 billion in revenue, all the money. Highest ever profit. 34 billion in profit. That's nice. There's bigger.

Rene Ritchie: (40:29)
The reason max have so much Ram now is for Tim Cook's pivot tables. The real reason. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (40:34)
Yeah. Anything. But again, we, this is money. We don't care about money. We care about products, uh, and services. Anything to be gleaned, uh, from this, it was a good year for iPhone. It was probably a good year for

Rene Ritchie: (40:46)
Services. It was just that they're still feeling like where apple is feeling the crunches and the legacy nodes, which are the large yeah. Um, process nodes. They're still everything they're making themselves with. TSMC is going fine, but they're starting enough to be pick and choose what parts go to iPhones. What parts go to iPad minis. So there are shortages on the less popular, well, less popular comparatively products, uh, than apple would like, but it, it looks like they're, they're not getting a handle on it, but they're able to move stuff around as needed to fulfill most of the demand, which will probably last for another two

Leo Laporte: (41:14)
Years. So you already talked about all of this that I apologize. I forgot that I was even gone last week. So, uh, honestly, if you, if you take a couple days off and you're right back in the thick of it, when you come back, did you really leave it all? That's a good point. I should be foggy. I should say, what are we talking about? What's going

Rene Ritchie: (41:32)
On? The fog vacation,

Leo Laporte: (41:34)
Micah was smart. He left it out of the rundown. I'm the one who went out and said, oh, we should look at this. Sorry about that. Sorry. But there, but there,

Andy Ihnatko: (41:41)
There are a couple of one, one thing that I don't think we hit upon is that, uh, if we talked about the money of course cause many, many, many, many, many money. Uh, but one of the other nice things, especially compared to the failure of the, of, of, of the class of Facebook, one of Facebook's biggest downers was that, uh, a number of active records, user users actually went down, meaning which implies that, uh, they have found everybody that they're ever going to sign up for Facebook. They have found all the customers they can and you compare and contrast this to apple where, uh, the numbers and the guidance they were offering in this document. Uh, and the Q and a afterward was speaking about how we are continuing to like make gains. And we, we have, we have the countries in which the, which apple products and services are doing exceptionally well.

Andy Ihnatko: (42:27)
We continue to actually gain in markets that we started focusing full attention on five or six or seven years ago, meaning that there is still there. There's still more sources of revenue yet to come. Um, they'd also, but my, for, for me, the most fun part is always the Q and a. When the analysts like get to get to actually ask questions, because this is one of the few times in which a CEO and an executive team is legally required by the S E not to lie. So it's so, uh, he was, uh, Tim cook was asked directly about the metaverse and he pared nicely just by saying, uh, talking about, oh, well we've got 14,000 AR apps in the app store. We, we continue to look at this and we were investing accordingly accordingly. So we're looking forward. Do you think he was,

Leo Laporte: (43:10)
Uh, hiding his real interest? Cuz he's been saying AR AR AR, but that sounds like he's saying, oh, those are the apps we did it. And that's not what anybody's thinking.

Andy Ihnatko: (43:22)
I I'm wondering, I'm wondering if he was trying to not give heat to, to, to meta, to, to Facebook about this. Maybe I think, I think that when he, he, I think he wants to do AR slash VR the way that apple wants to do it and not necessarily be seen as, uh, not, not, not hitch their wagon to a pipe dream that might be delivered in five or 10 years or might just simply be bought out as part of Facebook's assets. When the company's liquidated.

Leo Laporte: (43:47)
Speaking of Facebook,

Rene Ritchie: (43:48)
I think there's two other, I think there's two other quick things about that. One is that, um, you know, to Andy's point, I don't think apple wants to be seen as following Facebook and any way shape perform. They don't wanna give them any, no mind share control over this. They don't even want the word meta. Like they, they don't say, um, cyberspace or information super highway. They don't wanna play any of those games, but also they have a fundamental disagreement with how that future's gonna unfold, where Facebook wants that helmet on our head so they can own our lives. Like they, he loves ready player one doesn't understand that he ad guy and that like Facebook and like, he, he really thinks that he's just an app in a brow, like just a webpage and a browser, just an app on a phone. And he doesn't want that. He wants to be the world that we live in. Yeah. Where apple looks at it. Like, we don't want you to live in this stuff. We think that would be super bad. We just want you to come in, watch a movie, play a game, you know, look at maps, do that kind of stuff. And then go on about your life. We're fine selling you that shiny headset. We don't need to put, like buy our toilet paper above your kid's school. That's just a different game from us.

Leo Laporte: (44:43)
Yeah. Well, they don't need it cause they don't need the revenue. But on the other hand, they do everything they can and make sure that you live Lavita apple. I mean, they, you lock in, I mean, people are going crazy now over this, you know, what is it? I can never remember the name of the handoff continuity where you move the mouse and of course, oh, universal control, universal control because you need an iPad and a, and, and uh, you don't need a mask, uh, face recognition. If you've got an apple watch, I mean, Apple's doing everything they can to keep you living in the, the, uh, ecosystem.

Andy Ihnatko: (45:13)
But there's a difference between they, they, they want you to live in the world, but always have an apple product and your hand while you do so. Right. So, and, and also there there's such,

Leo Laporte: (45:22)
It's, it's a different business model. Their money is made, but selling Mar. Exactly.

Andy Ihnatko: (45:26)
Yeah. And also apple, I don't think apple is ever not since the Newton message pad has apple ever done this sort of thing where we think that this is an interesting idea. We're gonna put us out there and hope that it, it becomes like a, a money magnet that people just simply see it realize that, oh my God, where is this thing existed in my, all my life until this point, uh, they, they wait to make sure that people actually want this thing, that there's a future for this thing. And then they actually release this thing. That's knows what they're doing.

Leo Laporte: (45:53)
Yeah. That's an interesting point. Um,

Rene Ritchie: (45:56)
There's also a fundamental difference in the relationship. Like apple feels like, like we walk into this place, I give you money. You give me a thing. You know, we're kind of settled where Google's like, I walk into this place, I can have this thing. And then they, they might glare at me a little bit, but the, the relationship is more or less under my control. I can, I can give them back, whatever I want. Facebook feels like you walk into this place, they'll give you an unlimited buffet, but you gotta, you get it naked while being examined. And that's like a completely different relationship than the other two. So, but it's it true though? Like they're upset. Well, we, I mean, like we were talk, we were talking about like Facebook's warning about the EU and the, the reason that they're doing that warning is EU is increasingly about data repatriation, similar to what China wants. But you know, we, we have different political dynamics with them. They want Facebook's data to stay in the EU and they don't want Facebook in the us to operate on that data. And Facebook is saying, but operating on that data is our Reon debt to put it like, that's how we make money that you'll understand. Yeah. Yeah. And that is literally like, again, you like Google will give you a lobster dinner and they'll layer at you, but you like, you get to make your own decisions. Facebook really wants you naked and being examined

Leo Laporte: (47:00)
While you, even that lobster what a great analogy. But that,

Andy Ihnatko: (47:03)
That, that also brings up an interesting point that, uh, uh, and, and these guidance reports, they're also supposed to talk about headwinds. Uh, that's why Facebook just tanked so badly cause they, they were detect about nothing but headwinds and, uh, even Google only slightly glanced at how they might find themselves having some difficulties in the future, dealing with, uh, new regulations and also existing regulations. I mean, the GDPR is having such com such huge, huge effects. Uh, even even a time later, uh, just recently, uh, they, uh, the EU, uh, handed down a finding that, uh, Google fonts on websites violates GDPR because when, when a, when a, when a visitor opens a website and this, this, this font free font is downloaded from Google to display the webpage correctly. That is transmitting information about the viewer of that webpage back to Google. And so it's, I, I wonder at what point this is gonna become so onerous that you, they real just as, uh, Tim cook was talking time and time again about chip complain, chip constraints, chip constraints, chip constraints, uh, during, uh, during the entire call, they're gonna have to talk about, we don't know how we can do, we're gonna have to revamp our payment system here.

Andy Ihnatko: (48:14)
We're gonna have to revamp, uh, our, our app store here. We're gonna have to, uh, figure out how we can actually run, uh, our transparency service because we, we we've built it so that we can prove to ourselves and to our users that we're protecting, uh, users, privacy. We did not build it so that we can prove to the, to, uh, the UK or to France or to Australia that we're protecting users' privacy. This is gonna become a bigger, bigger issue. As we go along.

Leo Laporte: (48:40)
Speaking of Facebook, they, uh, blamed apple for their apple or the headwinds. Uh, they said, uh, Apple's, uh, IDFA checkbox, uh, on the iPhone is gonna, they say, anticipate cost them 10 billion for next quarter. I'm gonna

Rene Ritchie: (48:55)
Quick. It's apple. It's not users choosing to deny them that data.

Leo Laporte: (48:59)
Like, honestly, I'm gonna Callow on that because I think Facebook doesn't, we've seen many studies that show that Facebook has plenty of other ways to get that in information, uh, that, that all apples, all that checkbox does is say, you can't have the IDFA that doesn't, there's lots of other things you Facebook could do,

Rene Ritchie: (49:20)
But like a fundamental difference in viewing the universe, like, like Facebook really believes that it's their data, that it's not our data, that we're doing things on the internet and that doesn't belong to us that belongs to them. Right. And they've gone so far. Like they bought WhatsApp based on spying, on iOS and Android users, other activities, they made that they got that. They bought that VPN and deployed it with an enterprise certificate based on the idea that they deserve to know that every everything we were doing on the device, they truly don't believe that we have the right to determine who, what we share our data with and their entire business is built around that that philosophy would, they're being told a hard note to now, increasingly from other companies and regulators. And they, they might have like, absolutely they could get this stuff in other ways. I don't think they thought that they should. I think that they, they have real massive entitlement issues they're dealing with right now.

Andy Ihnatko: (50:06)
Yeah. They, they also met, actually addressed this and they said that, uh, they didn't say that, oh my God, we don't know what to do. They, that we're gonna have, we're rewriting basically how we do tracking. And that's gonna take us a couple years to figure out, uh, the, the Mo actually the more sensational thing they said was that they were complaining that they were being, they felt as though they were being singled out unfairly, because that means that the Facebook app can't get access to because it's a, it's an app that runs on Iowas, can't get access to this stuff. However, they're also mentioning that well, but Google, Google is not facing the same problems because they're, they've got this sweetheart deal, uh, with, uh, with apple. Uh, and I, I, I forget the exact language they use, but they said until this UN until this, uh, favoritism and ends, we're gonna be dealing with this problem. And Google is not. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (50:51)
Um, it's kind of, it's a little bit whiny though. Uh, do you really think it hurt that it hurt them? They made a choice, kinda hurt them that much. I don't. I just, they made a

Rene Ritchie: (51:00)
Choice. Unlike Google, like Google is so smart, like compared to Facebook, they are so ingenious because they never, they, they had this feeling. They grew up when Microsoft owned the internet and part of the whole debacle around IE and Chrome was that, and with Android and iOS was that they didn't wanna leave their hands, the, the control of mobile search to Microsoft, but they didn't just like complain about it. They went out, they made a mobile operating system. They made a browser. And now even if a lot of stuff gets turned off, they still have access to that via the operating system and via the browser. Whereas Zuckerberg hired the same people. He poached the, the second in charge of Android, Eric saying, you did all, but then he kept like, oh, maybe we'll do it. I don't know. We'll partner. We'll make a Chacha with HTC maybe. And they never did anything. So now they're in this point of complete dependency and I think that's why they're so desperate for metaverse because that would give them the ownership that Google already had.

Leo Laporte: (51:48)
See, I don't take it quite as, uh, face value. I, I think that Mark's saying guard, we can pretend we don't know anything about them because of apple. Oh, woo. What was me mean? You know, meanwhile, continue to collect all the data we're collecting. Anyway, snap kind of pulled the curtain aside cuz they had their first profit ever. And they said, yeah, Apple's privacy didn't we figured out way around it. Uh, they say it will take time to fully adapt. I honestly think these companies are using it to be honest with you, um, more than really hurt by it. I think they don't wanna admit how much they already know. Facebook tracks you all the time. Everywhere you go. Thanks to like buttons. And I just feel like they don't deals with data brokers deals with data brokers. They've got plenty, uh, of information. They're so

Rene Ritchie: (52:34)
Good at it. We think that they're listening to us on the microphone, even though like all evidence of the contrary, they are so good. It,

Leo Laporte: (52:39)
Everyone believes that. Yeah. So yeah. You know those Instagram ads, but I was talking about goldfish just the other day and

Andy Ihnatko: (52:45)
All of a sudden I'm getting

Leo Laporte: (52:45)
Goldfish ads. Um, that I, I think this is really a magician's trick. It's saying, oh yeah, they're killing us. They're killing us. Meanwhile, keep giving us that data boys keep giving us that data. I don't, I don't buy it. Yeah. But anyway,

Andy Ihnatko: (53:01)
No you're, you're absolutely right. And they were in profit and, and the thing is this, this is a nice smoke screen for the, for the larger industry. Uh, where, I mean, Amazon, uh, Amazon had their results and oh my God, they're making so many billions of dollars off their ad network. It's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Uh, just, I mean, just it's, it's one thing to be able to say that, well, gosh, this person searched for this item here. After reading this article there that went to this store, there, it's another thing to have a list of here's what people were searching for in a store. Here's what they looked at before. They looked at this other thing and here's the, what they looked at before. They actually made the purchase. They made, I

Leo Laporte: (53:38)
Google even knows if you just use a credit card, they buy them with data back and they know that you use the credit card. They even said this, they offered to advertisers. We could buy the way it ties to a physical address. Yeah. Cuz you placed an order, right? Yeah. So I mean, I think Apple's doing a lot to protect privacy. I'm glad they are, uh, including anonymizing, uh, apple pay payments, but I, I'm not gonna weep a tear, shed a tear for Facebook or Google or anybody else because of it. Think they are finding ways around it perfectly well. And they would like to pretend they're not, oh dear. And by the way, it gives them a little ammunition against apple. I'm sure they're not that fond of apple either. Well remember they were, they were, uh, Zuckerberg was turning, was getting the federal trade commission to investigate apple because they were blocking his by spyware online.

Andy Ihnatko: (54:22)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and if anything else, the, if it, for these people to try to figure out how to deliver something that, that, uh, in a way users want to see users understand that content has to be paid for somehow. And that ads are a really, really friction free way for them to pay for content without having to actually pay for content. Uh, and they want their ads to those ads to be relevant to what they're interested in, what they're looking at, uh, people who purchase ads want those ads to be effective. They want to be able to figure out how effective those ads are. So we have two, we, we basically have two industries or two groups of people that sh there should be a comp a way to compromise between these two. And I think it's a good thing that this wild, wild west that no, no take any data you want track, track anybody anywhere, buy whatever data you want, use it.

Andy Ihnatko: (55:11)
However you want connected to each other, to fill in whatever gaps you think you need. I think it's a good idea that now we're starting to tamp down on this and that at least the easy ways of getting access to that data, a copying like apple saying, no, you don't, you don't have that data. You don't have access to that. You're gonna have to figure it out some other way. Uh, and if it leads, this is the only way that's gonna lead to new technologies that, that come to that kind of a compromise, uh, technology where yes, I it's perfectly fine if you understand that I'm actually in the middle. I I'm, I'm actually trying to buy, uh, trying to replace like a heating system. And I don't know what I'm gonna go, but I'm, I'm doing a lot of research into what I need to get, what I can do myself, uh, what technology's gonna work the best. If there's a way that that kind of information simply drops in my lap in a way that helps me solve a problem. I'm interested in that. I just don't want you to look at, okay. So the last time he bought Twinkies was three months ago. However, he crossed against the light in this situation, but doesn't do it when he's a Bo. And so therefore we're gonna see that that's when you get creepy and that's when you're like find a way to do that without, uh, without violating my trust and my privacy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (56:17)
Yeah. Let's take a little break and then we'll talk about why March 8th is an important day in the future, but first a word from our sponsor. Andy NACO Renee rich. It's great to have you, Alex. Lindsay has a day off our show today brought to you by new Relic. That's a name that should make. If you're a software engineer or assistant man should make your heart go pita, pat. Uh, I know we love it. And I know many, many, many companies love new Relic because of the 9:00 PM phone call. You know that, you know that feeling, you, you know, you're relaxing, maybe, uh, have a little adult beverage, you got your feet up, maybe you're ready to go to bed. And all of a sudden the beeper goes off the phone buzzes something's broken and guess who has to fix it? And your mind's already gone.

Leo Laporte: (57:04)
Oh my God, what's wrong? Is it the back end? Is it the front end? Is it global? Is it the server? Is it the network? Is it the cloud provider? Did I introduce a bug in my last deploy? Oh my God. Now you got not just you, but the whole team's scrambling. It's nine and in the evening, uh, almost it's gonna be midnight and miss everybody's going, what's going on. And unfortunately there's still a lot of companies where that happens. New Relic did a study over only half, uh, of all organizations have implemented, uh, some form of observability for the networks and systems. That means there's half out there who just are in the fog. They'd have no idea. And you just have to kind of try everything. It's really important to maintain network observability. And there is no better way to do it than new Relic.

Leo Laporte: (57:52)
You gotta get new Relic to avoid that. Then when you've got new Relic, you get the 9:00 PM call you, you, you, you look at the monitoring and you go, oh yeah, whoops, let's uh, roll that one back. And you're done. New Relic has 16 different monitoring products that you'd normally go out and get separately. So you can see the entire software stack in one place. There's application monitoring, APM, unified monitoring for your apps and your microservices. There's pixie for Kubernetes. You probably I'm sure if you Kubernetes, you know about pixie, right? There's distributed tracing. You can see all your traces without management headaches. So you can find and fix issues fast there's networks, performance monitoring. So you'll know exactly where performance issues start. You could ditch those data silos for a system wide correlated view. New Relic's amazing. That's just four of the 16. And, and, and, and when you have an issue, by the way, I love this APM because you can pinpoint issues down to the line of code.

Leo Laporte: (58:52)
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Leo Laporte: (59:42)
I know you know the name, but do you know what a life changing, uh, experience is gonna be? Honestly, why are you waiting that next 9:00 PM call is just out there waiting get new Relic before it does new relic.com/mac break. We think of so much for supporting Mac break weekly and supporting all you DevOps CI admins, get it solved new relic.com/mac break. Thank you. New Relic. There's a kind of convergence of the, uh, rumor mongers on March 8th. Do we, um, Renee, I know you're close observer of, uh, of all this. Is that credible? You think that's the date?

Rene Ritchie: (01:00:29)
I think, well, I think right now, in those last, in the decades of 2020s, these things can shift, like, it's, it's a prerecorded virtual presentation and if anything changes apple hasn't announced it. So until we get the ads, like, but yeah, sorry until we get the invitations, like the emails, those sorts of things, then it's locked. Uh, I think it, it it's early, typically apple holds them later in March or June, but it, the March event moves around so much and there's not always a March event that, uh, it it's a wild card to me. So yeah, it absolutely could be March eight. Uh, but it could be any, any week that apple chooses to hold it.

Leo Laporte: (01:01:01)
In other words, it, they could be right. And it could be changed. Yes, yes. Uh,

Rene Ritchie: (01:01:07)
So, uh, logistics are different. They don't have to rent a building, has other, other rental people. Yeah. Like your BWE or this is why they,

Leo Laporte: (01:01:15)
The campus really, and the Steve jobs to, but

Rene Ritchie: (01:01:18)
They built it and then they didn't always use it. Like they built it and then they went to Chicago and then they went to Brooklyn

Leo Laporte: (01:01:22)
And they, that was, yeah. Well now here's the question. Uh, B Bloomberg, sorry, mark Goman and others, uh, I think are all saying, and I think this is probably, you know, pretty obvious, uh, new iPhone se with 5g. Yeah. And the a 15 processor, uh, new iPad air were due. It'll look kinda like the iPad pros, like the iPad mini, um, anything else is what

Rene Ritchie: (01:01:52)
The look identical like the, the iPad air got its big redesign at the end of 2020. Uh, but then the mini got the same redesign last year, but got the better processor. And I think this is just about leveling that playing to yield again. So you'll get the a 15, uh, and you'll get slightly better camera. Uh, so it'll be a, just, uh, like the Apple's version of a spec bump basically. And then the third rumor is for a Mac. Um, it, it sounds like the iMac pro has been delayed a little while, or I hate saying delayed for a product that doesn't exist. It feels like that that's that Vulcan law, like nothing unreal can exist. It feels like that's not ready yet. So it'll my money. My hopes, my dreams are pinned on a Mac mini pro at this point.

Leo Laporte: (01:02:30)
I that's what my hopes are pinned on too. Do you think it's reasonable though, or, I mean, why June seems like a more likely target date? I

Rene Ritchie: (01:02:38)
Think June might be the Mac pro preview, uh, and maybe they don't

Leo Laporte: (01:02:41)
Wanna overlap that maybe. Okay. That's interesting. They

Rene Ritchie: (01:02:44)
Could. I mean, I just, I need a new Mac in my life, Leo. I just,

Leo Laporte: (01:02:47)
Yeah, that's the thing mark had a good, we can't be driven by our desires Renee.

Rene Ritchie: (01:02:52)
Well, mark had a good, uh, newsletter, um, on, on Sunday where he sort of laid out what he thought was reasonable for the Mac road map. But I think he's pretty, he's pretty good at that. And that was like a, a new Mac maybe at this event. And that sounds like that would be the Mac maybe, but not a Mac

Leo Laporte: (01:03:06)
New iMac. Okay. Cause cuz times 60.8% are accurate, according to apple tracker digitize, randomly accurate randomly. In other words, little better than 50 50, uh, says it's gonna be an M two based MacBook pro like a, which would be a low end, which is by the way, you've explained this many times it's confusing. The M one will continue to be the high end as they add more cores, more GPS, the M two more dyes, even more dyes. Right. You could have like four M one processors, but the M two is gonna be low end initially a 15. Yeah, because it's based on the a 15. So it'll just be an a, it'll be a, uh, won't be a spec bump. It'll be a

Rene Ritchie: (01:03:52)
Capability faster, single core. That's more of power efficient because it's just, it's a cooler chip in general, which is great for like, but mark put the MacBook mark put the, the M two to the MacBook, a MacBook pro, um, M two Mac mini and the M two iMac towards the end of the year. And it starts to get fuzzy, whether that would be an a 15, M two or an a 60, like, this is such a deep Rabel hole we could get into. Well, and that

Leo Laporte: (01:04:13)
Should be, this is confusing. Like if you introduce an M two people are gonna think it's better. It's one better. It'll be.

Rene Ritchie: (01:04:20)
Yeah. But like, so it's always been that way. Like again, they put out the a 13 iPhone and then they put out the a 12 Z iPad pro. Yeah. But we don't, and that caused the same confusion,

Leo Laporte: (01:04:30)
But yeah, but we weren't so aware. I most people weren't so aware of the designations, a 13 X and all that, but I think M one and M two are really big brands.

Rene Ritchie: (01:04:38)
And so they should change the branding. They should call it like junior or like air, like I should call it M two air or M too many. Yeah. So that people understand it's like a lower end power architecture.

Leo Laporte: (01:04:47)
And then for people like you, they could say, well, it's an a 15, you know what that means? Yeah. Uh, uh, so mark says, uh, at least one new me on March 8th, but he, he even, he isn't, or which it'll be high end Mac mini, which Renee and I are voting for. Not that we have, which is weird. Right. Cuz

Rene Ritchie: (01:05:08)
It's been decided like they know which one is ready. It's not like that's a mystery. So how come people, like, it's always weird when someone doesn't know something when it's about to happen

Leo Laporte: (01:05:17)
Or, or he says apple has at least four new max power by M two chips, but he thinks those will be later in the year. As you said, MacBook air that low end MacBook pro it's basically a successor to the original M one 13 inch. There'll be an M two. Well, so

Rene Ritchie: (01:05:33)
It's, it's the new enclosure, the new 14, supposedly it's the new 14 enclosure, but with an M two and instead of an M one X or sorry, an M one. So

Leo Laporte: (01:05:39)
Will go M max 14, not 13.

Rene Ritchie: (01:05:41)
Yeah. And they might take a port away from us just to be petant looks. That's what they do with

Leo Laporte: (01:05:45)
No, but for you 24 inch iMac is successor to the colorful IMAX of last year. Oh,

Rene Ritchie: (01:05:50)
I shouldn't say petant, it's got the, if it, it follows two to form, there's three USB and three Thunderball controllers on the pro and match it's the issue

Leo Laporte: (01:05:57)
Is, is only two of each on the Chip's controllers, uh, is really the issue. It's the capability of the, of the dye. Um, alright. I guess all we'll have to do is wait, it's only a couple more it's a month. I made

Rene Ritchie: (01:06:10)
A video on this yesterday with an animated timeline, Leo. It was so confusing to me. I actually, and I don't do animation a lot. I made a little timeline moving across. Oh, I see the dropping other dropping little max onto it as it went because I needed to figure this out. I got it. Wait a

Leo Laporte: (01:06:23)
Minute. All right. I'm gonna pull this now. Uh, is this the event links one or the uh,

Rene Ritchie: (01:06:27)
No, the recent one. The M two

Leo Laporte: (01:06:30)
M two max links. Super, super fake renders. Okay.

Rene Ritchie: (01:06:37)
Yeah. I like in my own super fake render.

Leo Laporte: (01:06:40)
Um,

Rene Ritchie: (01:06:42)
But so yeah, so a little timeline's gonna pop up, but because like, it, it seems like to me, well, it should be up in a second. Oh, okay. Um, that's that's my, that's my version of mark typing. That's what I thought mark typing.

Leo Laporte: (01:06:53)
Is that stock footage or do you shoot that?

Rene Ritchie: (01:06:56)
No, they wouldn't. Let me shoot mark typing on a balloon. See making little timeline. Oh, here's the timeline when the different products are oh at this and I still that in as a video go,

Leo Laporte: (01:07:03)
This is cute. I love it. Smash. The, I had to subscribe button, man. I love you. I had to get some better. I tell you, you, these it's

Rene Ritchie: (01:07:11)
Taking me longer to edit it now, but I'm putting more, a lot more work

Leo Laporte: (01:07:14)
Into it. Yeah. Well, I guess that's the way of the world. Right?

Rene Ritchie: (01:07:19)
But it seems like they might wanna get the M one pro and M one max out of like, not out of the way, but they want, they're gonna wanna release those before they get into M two. Cause I think it will be even more confusing if M two starts coming out and M one pro and M one max haven't finished coming out. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe I'm overthinking that.

Leo Laporte: (01:07:34)
Uh, no, I think this is, this is all we have is overthinking you.

Rene Ritchie: (01:07:40)
And it's not like Intel, like the Intel transition, all those chips existed. Like apple just had to go through and choose and yeah, their apple. So they're like, we want this and that. But all that those chips were done. Apple has to build, not just and scaling a chip is hard, like taking an M one and making an M one max that's a lot of work in like just getting the universal memory in the fabric and the, the memory bandwidth and doing like Quadi is gonna work too. Cause those guys have to talk to each other in a way that preserves everything. That's good about universal memory and massive bandwidth to begin with. So it is a non-trivial amount of work, but then once that's all done, incrementing them, I think is just, it's more of a, of a marathon and less of a sprint.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:08:16)
Andy, any thoughts are you, what are you voting for as if our vote matters? Yeah, I know. Andy's God vote. I, I kind, I, I kind of imagine this as being kind of a low key event. Um, like let's, let's, let's fill in, let's improve. What's already there, particularly in the iPad range. What's what are people gonna need to be buying in bulk like in March and April? And usually you think about people who are buying things in, in readiness for September and October. So you're talking about bulk purchases for education. So that really points very heavily to, uh, to, uh, uh, to a lot of iPad updates. I'm still very mystified as to like where apple is gonna go. Like in the pro line. I mean, I don't mean in the, the pro chips. I mean that the traditional line of here is the pro max here are the ones that are, we're trying to get as much performance as possible out of this thing.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:09:07)
Uh, and do a little bit of a flex if we can, if we can, for people have $10,000, we will make sure that you have a very, very happy and very, very, uh, very, a well deducted fan experience, uh, that how, uh, are they gonna, are they gonna try to find the limits of what they can do with the iPad mini case and have that be sort of like the aspirational mid-level Mac, meaning that you can buy one for as little as 600 bucks, that's very, uh, uh, very, uh, strategically kitted out. But if you wanted to check off all the boxes on the website, you can buy a three to $4,000 build, uh, that is just an absolute screamer or are they gonna wanna, are, are they gonna wanna start to steer those people towards an actual Mac pro? Um, and there was some rumors, uh, very, uh, rumors border on speculation last year about like a Mac pro mini, uh, I don't know whether people were talking about that.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:10:00)
Who, who, who, who fail as though they had access to information. We're talking about a high spec Mac mini, or actually let's to let's take a MacPro huge, huge, like $900 castor wheels MacPro but also make a smaller diversion, smaller cut version of this that is more affordable, uh, more, uh, uh, more portable, more accessible. Uh I'm I don't know where they're gonna go with this. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have, have even bet money on them doing a, a, a, an iMac pro given that the original one was kind of a stop gap when they saw how much of a failure, uh, the, the, the, the cylindrical, uh, uh, the C cylindrical Mac pro was where they had to get something out that would actually, we work that, that developers would actually, uh, be able to use for their work. So I, I always thought that the iMac pro is a stop gap that may or may not even survive the apple Silicon transition. Interesting.

Rene Ritchie: (01:10:49)
I have the iMac pro my understanding is that $5,000,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:10:52)
And it's really aged poorly.

Rene Ritchie: (01:10:54)
It's not some people still love it, but like the, my, my under thing is that the iMac pro isn't like a, um, a successor to the original iMac pro, just that whatever they put the M one pro and M one max chip in is gonna get pro in the name, like MacBook MacBook, pro iMac, iMac, pro Mac mini Mac mini pro. It'll be like a, a unification of branding more than like a, a spiritual success. Cause some people are panicking going, I want a bigger iMac, but I don't wanna pro and like, that'll be fine. You'll be okay. It's not

Leo Laporte: (01:11:21)
That name. So even if it has an M one max and it'll be still be a pro.

Rene Ritchie: (01:11:28)
Yeah. Can you imagine iMac max? Like if they, to extent the can't

Leo Laporte: (01:11:32)
I can't do the max. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie: (01:11:33)
How much max, can you max outta max of a max? Max? Max could be max it's just

Leo Laporte: (01:11:37)
So a pro or a max is a max mad max is in pro. Yeah. Yeah. But that,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:11:41)
But that would be, that would be new if they decided that I, I like the logic of that kind of nomenclature, but that would be a new, uh, extension of the, of the, of the brand. So you've never had a, a Mac mini has always been a Mac mini. Maybe you can, for the, to, to fill it up with lots of money, maybe you could just simply get the case with as little functional stuff as you can, you know, am radio, no factory air roll up windows. The, uh, the idea of having a Mac mini pro that's tantalizing, like would they have to create a new tooling for a case? Would they have to simply say, we're gonna make a, we're gonna make a few design. We're gonna make a Mac mini, nothing that is even smaller, even more compact, even easier to hide on a desk or Mount on the back of a back of a screen. But when we make the Mac mini pro, we're gonna make that twice as thick so that you can, you can pop off the top and add, uh, add new SSD storage. You can do make modifications to it as you need,

Rene Ritchie: (01:12:32)
As long as we respect. Oh, you know, it'll be colors, Andy. Yeah. It'll be colorfuls for the regulars and then black and white.

Leo Laporte: (01:12:38)
Uh, I also think that because apple now makes a display again, the XDR and, uh, maybe we be making more, maybe they'll see the iMac as more for the style conscious consumer and, and not, I agree with you maybe Andy, that the pro was a, a stop gap and not a planned future. And, and that ex assume a pro's gonna wanna Mac, Mac pro or a Mac mini pro. The problem is if they do the shrunken

Rene Ritchie: (01:13:06)
Guy, Mac pro, though,

Leo Laporte: (01:13:06)
If they do the shrunken Mac pro is some of rumored, which is awfully cute, it'll ver into mini territory, won't it?

Rene Ritchie: (01:13:14)
So it's less sh and it's mostly just taking out those giant Zion and giant, uh, R sports mRNA, R MNA cards. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, those that reduces the size immensely. So I think like the, when people talk about it being smaller, it's just smaller because it doesn't have those two shield. He carriers, it

Leo Laporte: (01:13:30)
Could be a lot smaller. Those things are, those things are, they're

Rene Ritchie: (01:13:32)
Massive. Massive. When you look at the opens, like one third, the song.

Leo Laporte: (01:13:35)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so you

Rene Ritchie: (01:13:37)
Might stay the same because you could put four, like in a 300 closure, you could, well, well, that's my other question. Like you could put four, um, M one maxes in there and still not fill up that thermal envelope. But the interesting thing is like an iMac pro with an M one, max would have 64 gigabytes of storage, but the I, the previous iMac pro had 256 gigabytes, the Mac pro was 1.5 terabytes right. Of storage max. So like, how does apple scale any of that? And like, to your point, how do they address P C I E expansion slots? Like that's never, that's never been a thing with apple.

Leo Laporte: (01:14:08)
Well, now that you don't have to do graphics cards, you're not gonna have Ram slots cuz they're all on dye. I think they're not think, but what, what are you gonna put in there that, uh, is some of the

Rene Ritchie: (01:14:20)
Specialized had off package Ram? Like I think the iPad, some of the iPad, the ex chips, the ex the extended chips did have off package Rams. So does apple have like an ugly or a brilliant interf face that lets you put in off package Ram, if you, if you need it for like a giant project and then do you have like a raid card that you can put in there that interfaces with? Okay. That

Leo Laporte: (01:14:39)
Makes sense. Apple Silicon, there are, I mean, I'm thinking of what kinds of pro applications and there certainly are, uh, machine learning applications required giants, uh, amounts of Ram. And you, you might wanna be willing off board Ram and that's such a specialized thing you wouldn't necessarily want, well, some studio,

Rene Ritchie: (01:14:56)
Like some of the higher end 3d stuff. That's a lot of high end stuff. Yeah. Alex photogrammetry.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:15:01)
Yeah. So, and, and analysts who are doing science and analysts are doing like massive, massive data sets. Yeah. It's it it's, I I've, I've always my, my hope for transition and for the product line has always been, I think that there's like there I've, my ideal would be that there would be a, a Mac, a desktop Mac pro where the difference between the two is that one has P C slots. One does not, but it has like M two for SSDs. And you, you can have a couple of SSDs in there. Uh, the world has changed a lot

Leo Laporte: (01:15:31)
Upgrade since the Mac pro, but you don't have to put in asada drives you don't. I mean, so you really could still be fairly compact and fairly expandable. And I wonder if pros are willing to hang stuff off a Thunderbolt for like that's pretty fast. Well,

Rene Ritchie: (01:15:45)
I mean, there, there also could be a Zon and, and a nav three, uh, Mac pro that tied us over for another year while that it's ultra high end. Really there's been rumors of that too. There's been rumors at the very, they're gonna keep an Intel one around for another two year. Remember like the people on production pipelines work slowly like Pixar and ILM, right? Like work at a different

Leo Laporte: (01:16:03)
Schedule. Yeah. They don't care and they don't, they don't, they probably don't want, uh, to have to re recompile for arm. But,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:16:08)
But how, how would that affect their didn't? They do a hard promise that we're gonna have the op pulse can transition complete by the end of 2022.

Rene Ritchie: (01:16:15)
So you get, you get the M one max Mac pro, but then there'd still also be an updated, like legacy, basically just a, a press release that says now the, the other, the old Mac pro comes with, uh, the latest Zion and, and nav three

Leo Laporte: (01:16:28)
Chest, I think you're right. I think they will do that because that certainly is a market for that. I mean, pro tools running,

Rene Ritchie: (01:16:34)
We'll give them some breathing room to get like the really, really high power apple. So like the really crazy high powers they're looking at. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (01:16:39)
I think that may very well. Yeah. Be

Andy Ihnatko: (01:16:42)
I, I still, my head still spins when I think about, imagine apple Silicon that requires massive cooling, like imagine they said, screw, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna have like water cool systems. We're gonna we're we're gonna have Skynet like

Rene Ritchie: (01:16:55)
Power. Well, they were rumors about a vapor chamber for a 16, because like the, a 15 with the fifth GPU core inside an iPhone pro does, does, uh, ramp down really fast if you put it under load, not many things put it under your load, but if you do like your tion impact branch benchmarks, it, it will throtle

Leo Laporte: (01:17:10)
Down. Sure. But that's a package, the size of a Hershey bar. Yes. Yes. Uh, wow. You know, it's really interest. We get really engaged when we talk about max and I know at Mac is a fraction of apples, business and revenue. Uh, but we do call the show, Mac break week, us old timers. We love our max and it's not a, you know, I mean, I guess we could say, uh, oh, let's see, iPad. Rumor ed LG seems to be ramping up production for OED screens for the iPad.

Rene Ritchie: (01:17:42)
Yeah. It's hard because like a lot of the publications that put us out, those rumors are industry rags in Korea that really do, um, manipul not manipulate, that's the wrong word for it, but they're like advocacy for Samsung and LG. And they do a lot of the backroom dealings in public. Like posturing, is that the right word for it? They do a lot of posturing on behalf of the, of the local OED industry. I, and I think they, they might transition, but many led apple likes to make things fight like most like gladiator combat. And they're gonna let many, many L E D has problems. Ed has problems right now, many led D doesn't have as many problems on a larger display because the ed processes are so different. Like from TV set to phone to tablet, phones are handled like there's so many mitigations. You need to make ed non terrible. But when you do them, ed is fantastic. It's just, when you go to tablet size, it's harder yield. It's more expensive. And it gets blotchy because the highlights Don a consistent, but if they could solve for that, they'll be better than mini L E D again. And I think Apple's more that like, they don't care. They just want the best display. So they're happy to let them fight it out.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:18:39)
Yeah. That's why these rumors make more, are, are more impressive when they come from, uh, a display supply chain analyst, as opposed to an industry group, cuz as, as Renee says, it's very, very positive to make. Not, not even just to know that, uh, to put out the rumor that, oh, this factory is coming is manufacturing is gonna get a big contract from apple. But even though this country is going to get this big, this contract for apple. So there's, there's a lot of wink, wink, nudge, nudge there a little

Leo Laporte: (01:19:04)
Bit of, uh, concern, uh, over an apple patent published, uh, last week showing the, then Apple's working on touch controls for the AirPods. Max patently, apple has the patent, but a lot of folks love that little and I do too. And I'm one of the few who actually spent $550 on this headphones. Uh, but

Rene Ritchie: (01:19:24)
I do that was a workaround to begin with. Like that was because they couldn't get other stuff working. So

Leo Laporte: (01:19:27)
They went to that, the winding stem, this isn't new. Yeah. They borrowed for in the apple watch. I love it. You tap it, you turn it smooth. It feels good. Um, but I guess touch makes more sense. It's probably easier to manufacture. Well,

Rene Ritchie: (01:19:40)
They're don't wanna patent it regardless. Like they're gonna, I think touch was the original idea for it. And then they had like, it wasn't gonna work the way they wanted it to. So they went to this, but ah, the people working on it, still working on it, they're gonna patent everything that they can sure. For reasons to explain. Well, last time it's just like, that's

Leo Laporte: (01:19:53)
The war chest, but sometimes a workaround is the right thing. I mean, I like the, the dial I yeah.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:19:58)
You know, especially on headphones because one of the problems I've always had with like true wireless earbuds is that, uh, they're so small that even when you just, you, you I'm just walking. I just feel it getting a little bit loose. So I just want toe a little bit. And then unfortunately I just activated the assistant. Right. So, and I realize that there's on a, on a tiny IBA. There are very, there are very little choices you have to, to design. But when it come to the larger ones, I like the ability to be able to do this without having to paw as something, without having to change the volume. And, and there's something. And when, when it's something that you can't actually see there is when we're not actually looking at it, there is something to that tactile thing where I feel, I feel around till I feel this bump. I know that I feel the neural grip. And I know that if I twist it this way, this is gonna happen. If I twist it that way, it's gonna happen. If I push it until I feel a click that's going to happen. It's a, it's, it's a, it's a non-obvious solution. I do. I have

Leo Laporte: (01:20:51)
To admit though, because I wear, I mostly wear those headphones during, uh, conference calls. It's I dunno why, but I just like the noise canceling. They and people laugh cuz I have pink ones. So it, it lightens the room up. But uh, I have

Andy Ihnatko: (01:21:05)
To, I think they're throwing the right.

Leo Laporte: (01:21:07)
You have to say tapping that digital crown will hang up the phone call in many cases. And I often inadvertently do that kind of famous at the company now for just disappearing from phone calls. And that's why,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:21:20)
So, um, and you forgot to say, oh, I'm going into a tunnel. We might be discu. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (01:21:25)
But you have the hello kitty ears on the top. Leah, I, I should put the hello kitty in. We, we got those when they were the, all the rage we got 'em from Michael. Uh, he was too embarra to wear them even in private, uh, good news for apple. The academy award nominations came out, uh, this morning and actually it's good news for streaming in general, huge number of streaming nominations. Uh, I think this is for the first time ever, but apple has for the first time ever received a best picture nomination for Coda, which is the Marley Maland, um, uh, movie about a, uh, predominantly deaf family with one hearing kid. I haven't seen it yet, but um, best supporting actor nomination for, uh, Troy Kotzer first time a Def male actor has got an Oscar nomination. Uh, Marley ma obviously has hers and, and has one best, uh, screenwriter, Joel Cohen, tragedy of Beth three nominations, best cinema photography, best production design.

Leo Laporte: (01:22:29)
And Anzel Washington got a best actor nomination. Uh, it, you know, I, I wonder if the, all the streaming nominations have more to do with COVID and the fact that movie theaters are kind of closed and it'll all revert back to something else. Uh, or if this is a trend, maybe it's just a meritocracy I'd I don't think that's true, but I'd love for that to be the case. So cool. Yeah, because is just the quality of that counts. These are, these are all really, uh, great. Um, I saw power of the dog and I told Lisa, I said, Lisa, this is gonna get a ton of nominations. Both of us were kind of scratching our heads at the end. Um, but because it's Jane Campion yes. 12 nomination, 12 categories. Yeah. But let's talk about streaming Netflix, 27 nominations, uh, combining with apple TV plus and Amazon for a total of 40 streamer nominations. Um, don't look up gonna, which is the Netflix, uh, movie nominated for best picture. So a, a really change of, uh, pace dune got nominated king Richard, both from, uh, HBO were on HBO max, but did go to movie theaters as well.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:23:42)
Yeah. Streaming the streaming channels are at, are at a, a competitive advantage. Believe it or not simply because the sort of the sort of movies that, uh, get awards are tend to not to be the 300, 400 million blockbusters. They are the quiet movies that cost less than a hundred million to make that attract, attract screenwriters track directors, attract actors. And before for COVID before streaming really got that, that next leap forward, it became the, the, the news on lots of different like industry sites was that it's just almost imp, it's easy to make a movie for like less than 20 million. It's easy to make a movie for more than 200 million. It's these dramatic movies in the middle that have a problem. And these are exactly the sort of things that apple and Netflix and the rest, uh, like to like to fund. Although I I'd love, I'd love to see if the next quarterly, if, if, uh, some sort of future, uh, quarterly statement, apple actually talks about how much money they spend on Oscar and awards campaigns, because this is not, you don't just simply release the movie and then hope you hope you hope that you, you, you get recognized, uh, in, in February, this is like an expensive campaign, oftentimes in the contracts with these creators and these actors, it is contractually it's part of their contract that you will support.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:24:55)
Uh, you will bankroll an Oscar campaign to try to get this nominated. And if it's nominated, you will also support the campaign to get, to get a win. So it's, it's interesting to, it's interesting to figure out that these, the same building, that houses, people that are trying to figure out how to make the next generation of 5g and tan work in this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny device. There's also an office with, this's trying to figure out how to convince somebody that, okay. Yeah, this he's, I, I know that he was on Saturday life three seasons ago and he got fired for drugs, but I'm telling you his supporting actor performance in this is you'll never believe it.

Leo Laporte: (01:25:27)
Yeah. And I'm sure Micah wants me to mention that queen B got her first Oscar on nation Beyonce. Uh it'll no, I didn't realize this, but you got E got E got ego. I didn't know this, but apparently no streaming only movie has ever won a best picture, but there are a great many, uh, in, uh, this, uh, list of nominees. It'd be interesting if this year is the first year a streaming, the academy just out of bias says, no, we shall not. We shall not vote for those filth. These streams. Well, remember Steven Spielberg said no streaming movie should ever be nominated for an Oscar movies, mean theaters, but that that's really changed in the last two years. Well, part of

Andy Ihnatko: (01:26:07)
His justification was also that a streaming movie has an advantage in that it's every single academy voter has access to it from day one. Yeah. And can see it on demand from the, from day one. Whereas they they're gonna have to wait for a two week period in which they're actually made available or to send out a DVD, send out a blue race, send out a streaming code and hope that they watch it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (01:26:27)
Power. Maybe they watch it and hate it. Power. The dog was Netflix only. So, uh, and probably the front runner. So it'd be very interesting, uh, 12 categories, including best picture, but good go, uh, apple getting its first best picture nomination with Coda. Now I have to watch it. Yeah. And has either of, you seen it known?

Andy Ihnatko: (01:26:47)
I haven't seen Coda, but yeah, it was on my list. Oh, I've seen Coda.

Leo Laporte: (01:26:49)
Yes. Oh you have, was it good? Yeah. Coda's excellent. I guess it amazing. Right? It's remarkable. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad D won some nominations too. I thought dune was quite good. Yes. Me too. Although Ville and did not get a, uh, nod for best, which is anti Canadian. Some thought yes. Some thought was inappropriate. I think they need a new category for best fake Italian accent because then Jared Lito and lady Gaga could in fact get their nomination for a house of Gucci. They were not nominated. Uh, surprisingly good fake Gucci production is not a category. Oh my God. They, they sounded like at these to the whole of time, it was, it was me. It's Italian. It was hysterical. It's like, I've never seen anything quite like it. Plus lets wearing a 40 pound fat suit. So he deserves definitely he and he goes from that to Mobius. Band's torturing himself, by the way, they did that best, best makeup. So that's, that's kind of appropriate. Uh right. I think that's uh, there's your Hollywood news ladies. Gentlemen. I used to be a, such a big fan of the academy of awards. Me too. And it's kind of lost its luster, hasn't it? I think. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:28:02)
I, I mean I, when I, when I was like in my twenties and thirties, I would like write 10,000 words. We'd parties. What? I thought, what I, well, not me to me was just like what I thought about each movie, what I thought about their chances, what I thought about like, and have, I know it's not 80% because oh, well that was a silly thing to have done. It's just simply a movie, but there was, but it used

Leo Laporte: (01:28:22)
A more of a no it's a great art form. What are you talking about? In fact, no, I'm gonna say this again. It's the original virtual reality cuz you really get, even though you're in a darkened theater with music and other people and there's a screen. Yes. You're not wearing a helmet. You are transported by these things. They cared more about concession revenue than they cared about experience. Well, that's true.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:28:41)
I'm I'm I'm sorry. I'm I'm talking more about like the that's serious. Not about the movies, but out the Oscars. Yeah, no, I was

Leo Laporte: (01:28:48)
Always

Andy Ihnatko: (01:28:49)
The always super serious about the movies and so

Leo Laporte: (01:28:51)
They never nominated chance. I had a disconnect. I it's funny. It just, it used to be one of the big events of the year. We'd have a party. We'd have people over, we'd have food, we'd have Oscar ballots. It was your super bowl. It was, it was a super bowl kind of, uh, and it's just lost its luster and then the golden Globes, which was also great fun. Cause everybody was smashed. Didn't even bother this year.

Rene Ritchie: (01:29:14)
Yeah. Turned out, turned out that that turned well problematic. Real fast. You could have

Leo Laporte: (01:29:19)
Guessed. Yeah. I I, I, I still haven't gotten over Julia Binoche beating Lauren BAU. Okay. I'm sorry. Oh wow. I mean that opportunity. Okay. I, you win.

Rene Ritchie: (01:29:29)
You should have used the computer chess program to help her win.

Leo Laporte: (01:29:33)
All right. Little break. Then we are gonna get your, uh, picks of the week. So, uh, so I don't know what it is it that you have to do for a pick of the week, warm them up. Gentlemen, start your engines, pick your weeks, get those, get those tires, heated up. Get, get the, get the down force. Sorry. Good. No, I love it. I watch the F one and they get to go and doing the zigzag and the, and the warmup lab. I love that. It's hysterical just to get the tires hot.

Leo Laporte: (01:30:31)
Let's kick off our, uh, picks of the week this week with Richie.

Rene Ritchie: (01:30:37)
So I, I, it brings me great joy to, to, to make this pick because you know, there was a lot of stress and anxiety over apps increasingly going subscription. Yes. And some people felt like it was just subscription fatigue or endless. And I just chose very carefully, which apps I wanna support and which ones I thought would provide ongoing value. And so the new fantastic update, which I believe landed today is exactly the kind of thing that I thought is the best result of going in subscription because now you have really talented, really creative, really adept, smart, considerate people who have like the, the ability to sustain their apps, but also to keep working on their apps. And they just announced a new feature for fantastic health where it's, it's not new. Like people have been able to, to, uh, do appointment matching for a while.

Rene Ritchie: (01:31:21)
So basically you could say Leo, Andy, we need to have a talk. These are the times that I'm available, which one suits you best. And everybody can figure out a time that works for them. I mean, it was just a result of a huge, sarcastic threat on Twitter a couple weeks ago about, you know, whether you're important enough to have a colon or something, but this is really so well thought out it's localized. It's not cloud data lives on your device. It lives in your fantastic, a install, but it shared through fantastic health service so that you, it knows what you're, if you want to, it's optional, you can choose to share your availability. And then people who wanna have meetings with you can go in and choose that availability and populate sort of those meetings. And you can come very quickly to a time that suits suits everybody.

Rene Ritchie: (01:32:01)
Uh, and it's done with typical sort of stylistic artistic flare, like fantastic L does. And they've got a bunch of other little quality of life improvements there. Like you can look at quarterly views, uh, you know, just, and if there's, if you're trying to look at a specific date and there's nothing there, it'll tell you there's nothing there, but then automatic, you collapse that down. So you're not scrolling through endlessly, no event days. So it's just, it's a really thoughtful, really good update. And just another one in a long series of updates that I think personally fantastic. How is providing ongoing value to me? So I'm really, I'm really happy

Leo Laporte: (01:32:32)
About that. Yay. Well, I, it did just come out today cuz I, as soon as you started talking about it, I checked and I, I just got it. I just downloaded it. You don't have to have, so I could send a meeting invitation to somebody. They don't have to have fantastic how no. Yeah. All they have to do is say here's my, uh, available times and, and that fantastic. How will mediate that just like Calendly does and others,

Rene Ritchie: (01:32:54)
And then they'll get an invite and what, whatever software they're using will handle that

Leo Laporte: (01:32:57)
Invite. Nice. So a lot of exfil may marks in the, uh, in the change log that's Michael Simmons

Leo Laporte: (01:33:04)
Openings is what we were talking about is the openings feature. Yeah. Uh, you, you have to enable it. So I'm gonna do that. And then you go to hub dot flexy bits.com. So if you, do you have to have a subscription account for this? I guess. So this is one of the, for this feature. Yeah. New features. Yeah. There's also proposal, which lets you what propose to your loved one, suggest time to be your wife. Oh no. Suggest time. Other things. Okay. Suggest times. Okay. Although you could suggest that we get married on Thursday. Yeah. That would, it'd be

Rene Ritchie: (01:33:32)
A very romantic way of doing it.

Leo Laporte: (01:33:35)
Do you have an

Rene Ritchie: (01:33:35)
Opening it's Mac iPad, iPhone as well, which is a nice thing too, is that they're rolling all these features across the, all the devices at

Leo Laporte: (01:33:41)
Once. And then now they've added something which is kind of interesting, which is a quarter view. So they had day, week, month. You should see my quarter view. It's

Rene Ritchie: (01:33:51)
A little busy, it's

Leo Laporte: (01:33:51)
Quite a quarter. It's quite a quarter. I got planned here. Uh, but that's kind of cool. Um,

Rene Ritchie: (01:33:56)
That's my nickel and dime view. Yeah.

Leo Laporte: (01:33:59)
You could see three months at a time, so, uh, and then there's some enhancements to list you. Good, good, good job. Fantastic. How I, I like you have chosen to support flexy Bitz. I love their work and uh, yes, I'm very happy to subscribe to this, which I, you know, I've always had a paid version, but I'm very happy to subscribe to it. Uh, fantastic. How 3.6 available now? Uh, Mac as well, iPad as well. And uh, and, and iPhone as well and iPhone as well. Yeah. Mr. Andy and a co of the weeks. Uh,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:34:31)
I don't know if you were being paying attention to social media, but apparently people are upset with Spotify over one of their creators. One of those bad apples was really, but if you're switching from Spotify to apple music or really any music service to any other music service, or even if like me, like you can't really pick one service and you kind of maintain a couple, it's a pain in the butt to take all of your favorite albums, all of your playlists, all of your likes and everything and transfer them from one, uh, service to another. Uh, so I was using song shift, uh, which is, uh, it's an app that you install, uh, on your iPhone or, or iPad, uh, costs five bucks a month, uh, or 20 bucks a year. Excuse me. That can't be right. Uh, there's a, there there's a pro plan and there's a free plan. Uh, and it's good for, yeah, actually. Yeah, there you go. Uh, 20 bucks a month, uh, or five bucks for one month, which is what you would use if you're just saying I'm, I'm leaving Spotify behind forever. I'm moving to apple music. I'm committing completely

Leo Laporte: (01:35:27)
Because you probably wouldn't use this over and over again. Or would you,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:35:30)
Well, if you, you would, if again, I, I kind of want to have a couple of different services. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. For silly reasons. Yeah. And, and it does have, it does have neat features where, uh, it, it's not just one shoot to transfer everything from one place to another. You can also just simply say, take this one playlist and keep it synchronized from one service to another. And that's nice and it will routinely check and go. One of the things I do like about it, uh, on as opposed to some of these, some of these other services is that it doesn't necessarily trust that it's making the right selections. So when it does a song match, you can actually review what it thinks it's, it's matched from Spotify, apple music, or to Amazon music or to YouTube or to diesel or to whatever.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:36:09)
Uh, and it'll make sure it'll, it'll get your verification before you go ahead. Uh, and so it's, it's one of the, this is one of the biggest pain points of, uh, streaming music services. I think a lot of people will stick with Spotify just because it's, this is like far 5, 6, 7, 10 years worth of acquired experience and knowledge, uh, that you've basically embedded inside this one service and the idea of starting all over again and trying to rebuild your music library someplace else is you'd have to, you'd have to be a lot more offensive than Joe Rogan get a lot of people to like make that switch. But an app like this makes it really, really easy. So you really are free to decide that why am I, why am I sticking with Spotify when I don't get high resolution music, I don't get, uh, 3d music.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:36:51)
I don't, I don't get, uh, uh, parts of this library that apple just acquired. Uh, it, it, it makes it frictionless. You understand why we're talking about regulations internationally, uh, across the world. Why data portability is a big part of the digital bill of rights that a lot of countries are trying to promote that the idea that you can't, you, you can't kind of trick people into, into keeping, uh, paying for your service just because you're making it so difficult for them to move to a competitors. And this is it's, it sucks that you have to spend five bucks to get this thing that you should probably be able to have built in for free, but nonetheless, it is a solution and it'll work great. So if you just wanna transfer, sign up for five bucks a month and cancel after you've done the thing you wanna do. But for 20 bucks a month, you might wanna, if you 20 bucks a year, I'm sorry, 20 for 20 bucks a year, you might wanna keep it going just to see just a sample other services and see which one you settle into.

Leo Laporte: (01:37:40)
Yeah. In fact, I'm adding all my services right now because I immediately signed up and I'm gonna pay for it 40 bucks for the one time only, cuz I, I have so many, I foolishly run many, many services. It's nice. This actually works with Pandora too, where I have a lot of, uh, a lot of things.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:37:57)
They, they added, they added a new service, uh, new feature kind of recently where, uh, if you wanna share a playlist with somebody else, you don't necessarily have to anticipate that they've used the exact same service you do. Even if you don't subscribe to Spotify, but you want a Spotify friend, uh, to use this playlist in apple music, you can just basically it's called Soha, meaning it will, it will figure out what the Spotify place would be and then send a link to that to your friend.

Leo Laporte: (01:38:24)
I just bought that too. A buck 99. That seems fair. That's really cool. Yeah. So are the, I guess these services must have an API unless they, or figured out how to scrape it. That's interesting.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:38:39)
Yeah. It's, it's hard to, it's hard to know when, when you tr when you start looking into these things, you see a lot of things that are like, okay, first of all, open, open Spotify on the web, open the developer pain, pace, the following Java of script code into the, and, and, and there's a lot of stuff that you can fixed by doing that, but a lot of this super sketchy, and as you say, if they change the API or if they change anything, it's gonna stop working or worse, do things you don't anticipate it to do. So I don't know exactly how it does it. It does what it does. Uh, but it does. I I've been using it for a while now. And it's, it's, it's a very good consumer level. It just push a button. You tell it what to do, it'll it exactly as you expected it to do,

Leo Laporte: (01:39:18)
I am signing into all of the dozens of, well, but as a professional hazard, right. Cuz I have to kind of check out all these different services. Um, lime wire nap. Yeah, yeah. A lot of stuff's on you. Uh, not interestingly, well I guess it, everything I want is on here. Some, there are some oddball services that might not be. Yeah, but there's also some oddball services that are like co buzz and hype machine and disc cogs. The,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:39:48)
The only thing I wish it, that it doesn't have that I wish it had where support for Plex, because I, I would love it if I could just simply create if, if I could have a playlist of music that I actually own as files and it could simply replicate that on apple music. Yeah. Uh, without my having to do this, all this stuff manually, I I've, I have yet to find a really, really good solution, uh, for, uh, for, for doing, uh, uh, track matching. If you have a, a physical, uh, physical media, physical files that are on a server that you control, but you also wanna have the ability to simply stream it elsewhere without having to keep a copy of your entire music database in the cloud somewhere

Leo Laporte: (01:40:24)
I'm signing into it's taken me forever, but I'm signing into all these services.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:40:28)
Lot of, lot of fingerprint

Leo Laporte: (01:40:29)
Touches. Holy cow. Yeah. There's a lot of face ID going on here. Hey, I wanted to mention, this is such a, it's just a sweet story. Uh, but if you were a fan of Joe Dan danger, which was one of the early yeah. Runner games, uh, on iOS, Joe danger, uh, has been relaunched and the story is great. And this is from nine to five Mack. So Sean Murray, who did no man's sky, which is an amazing game, uh, is relaunching, uh, something he did earlier called Joe danger. He made the announcement on Twitter, Joe danger's relaunching on iOS today. A secret shame of ours is that the success of no man sky left our first game, Joe danger, unloved, sadly since iOS called older games, no longer worked on the latest apple devices. And then he refers to a ma a male. He received that broke our hearts and made, make us wanna set things, right?

Leo Laporte: (01:41:21)
Hello. The email goes, my name is redacted. I'm a redacted from redacted. And I'm writing this letter on behalf of my son, Jack Jack's eight years old is about the sweetest kid on the planet and has been diagnosed with autism. As you probably know, children with autism deal with a great many struggles, chief among them are a great difficulty with social interactions. However, one of the things that has enabled Jack and us to bond is our shared love of video games. Specifically Joe danger, Jack loves Joe. He loves everything about him. He has a collection of toy motorcycles. He is Joe dangers. Every motorcycle we see on the street is Joe danger. One of the first things I hear every day when I walk in the door after a long day at work is, come on, daddy, let's go play Joe danger. Just being able to say that sentence is a massive deal for a child with autism.

Leo Laporte: (01:42:08)
Joe danger has allowed Jack to interact and have funds with friends and family alike. Now is the part where we act for help. Not only has Joe danger helped Jack with friends, it's become an important coping mechanism, but the iPhone version of Joe danger since iOS was updated, hasn't worked with the newer versions and, uh, one isn't even able to find in the app store anymore. So it's a longer letter, which I highly recommend. Uh, John grouper, uh, discovered I'm not crying, you're crying. I know it's beautiful, but what's even more beautiful is that, uh, Joe danger's back. And, uh, and I hope, uh, both the kid long may he ride? Yeah. Long may he write? It's actually I downloaded. There's a, there's a, two-pack where you can get both Joe danger games. And I downloaded, 'em both Joe danger and Joe infinity. Uh, and they're really a lot of fun. It's a great little game. Yeah. So, uh, I think it might be a good thing for everybody to go out and support the work of this company. Uh, bringing it back, you know, and you'll enjoy it. I think that

Andy Ihnatko: (01:43:08)
That's part of the shame of the way that games are distributed right now. If you can imagine, imagine a movie that's a classic movie that has just been great groundbreaking for, for its artistry and its innovation, but it was made in a special format that can only be played in a special projector that was made between 1944 and 1948. And now it just simply doesn't exist anymore, except for in our imagination because it, the, it just simply doesn't exist anymore. And that's what we're dealing with. We're having, uh, generations of kids are having experie experiences with online games that they can have long conversations about that are, they would love to tell their kids about it sometime in the future, but because it was a server based game and because they pulled the plug in that server, it just doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. So, yeah, it's actually closest. We have our

Rene Ritchie: (01:43:50)
TV shows with rights issues that just can't, can't be published on DVD or streaming. And I remember

Andy Ihnatko: (01:43:55)
Them and I wanna see them again and that's yeah. And that's why I actually kind of, I don't support piracy, but I, I think that you have to acknowledge that there is a role that private, that, that piracy, uh, actually provides. Uh, you think, you think about how it, it sounds silly to think about a of years in the future, but Americans in a hundred years are entitled to have free copies of the Mandalorian. They're entitled to be able to see all of the stuff, share it, create their own versions of the Mandalorian remix it because that's when copyright expires. And the, the, the deal that the, the government makes is that you don't, you get protection from the government for a period of time, but then you give it away and what's gonna happen if Disney says, oh, well, gee, to do that, we would have to actually remove it from our protected servers and actually release it. That sounds like something that we don't want to do. And so we're just not gonna wanna do it. And that's when, but they, they can't, they can't stiff us that way because they're people who they're brave Patriots who are piloting Mandalorian and making sure that's on it's, it's on it's on, uh, Usenet and other cycles so that when the time comes there will be copies of this available, just, Hey, just,

Leo Laporte: (01:45:02)
Well, if you wanna support it, because I really think that this is very important. Internet archive@archive.org, uh, is, is taking that stand saying, look, we reserving, uh, stuff, even if it's still in copyright, but stuff that is no longer playable. You can boot an old Mac on here and play and do HyperCard and all sorts of things. And I think a lot of people know about the way back machine, but archive the internet archive is much more than that. And they

Andy Ihnatko: (01:45:26)
Do such games, console games. They're all, they're all being protected. They're, I'm gonna say very, very quickly that the only way that you can see the original version, uh, the, the original release version of star wars episode four or new hope before all the changes and upgrades were made to it and see it in 4k and H 4k and a really good print is to get a pirated version of it because maybe a whole bunch of people decided that chief, we get a whole bunch of these like illegal release prints, like that're were, that were toward the country a million times and all scratched up. If we get like nine or 10 of these together, we could composite each frame together to make a perfect 4k frame. That's a lot of do all the color correction, do all the fixing and it's gorgeous. It is like the most beautiful thing ever.

Andy Ihnatko: (01:46:07)
It is 10 times better than whatever you might have seen in the late seventies. And until like Disney slash Lucas, moon figures out what they want to do. There's such a long, long story about whether or not that's even legally possible for them to do. At least this thing still exists and that's a hundred hundred. And in 2077, I will, I will be able to like leave. I will be able to go leave a video too. Like my great, great, great, great nieces. Say, no, I want you to watch this movie. It was really awesome me. Then I wanted to wear Ahan solo vest because it was so cool. Yeah. Han Han shot first don't believe the lies child.

Leo Laporte: (01:46:44)
I can prove it. I've got the film, uh, archive.org. Absolutely a great place to go to, to find all of this stuff. And, uh, I think that there's, they're surviving any legal challenges, but they certainly accept donations because it's not an expensive project. Uh, so

Andy Ihnatko: (01:47:01)
It's a no seriously. Some of the, some of the most fun you will have is going through those archives, cuz you will never believe the stuff that you find there. Uh, again, if there's a preponderance of doubt as to whether or not maybe this, maybe this right rights have not been claimed, so we're gonna assume it's okay. They actually, I think they actually have a carve out saying that they're not gonna get sued into oblivion for assuming that something is archivable and making it available. I, I I'd have to look up, have to follow up on that, but yeah, it's weird. Like wait a it, but that's an actual movie that really really was released in 1982. How can they put that up there? I say, well, because nobody claimed it and nobody wants it and it's not on DVD. And someone had a VHS and decided, guess what? You get to see the tonight show for, for, for, for these three months. Okay. I'll take it and credit

Leo Laporte: (01:47:46)
To, uh, Bruce de kale too, uh, who sold, who sold company to AOL made a lot of money and could have gone on and become, you know, a mark Cuban, but instead, uh, decided to plow that money into the internet archive. Yeah. And to do, uh, everything he could to save the internet. And he's now got 99 petabytes of data, 625 billion webpages, 38 million books into X, 14 million audio recordings. It has become, uh, yeah, like Wikipedia. It's one of the great jewels of the internet. And uh, yeah, it reminds me that I've gotta up my monthly contribution to them cuz they're really great. Uh, we are at of time, but it was a lot of fun boys and girls. There's no girls here. That was a lot of fun. Boy, Andy and ACO. When are you gonna be on GBH next?

Andy Ihnatko: (01:48:34)
Uh, I'm off this week, but I'm on next week. At the usual time, Friday at 12:30 PM. Eastern time, you can stream it live or later@wgbhnews.org. Or if you miss me this week, you can just check out past, uh, high tech, Heidi hose that I've done. Hi, uh, news round ups, Heidi,

Leo Laporte: (01:48:48)
Heidi, ho you don't actually say it'd be good trademark for you, Heidi ho kids. I,

Andy Ihnatko: (01:48:55)
I keep, I, I keep working on GBH. There, there, I I've, I've encountered some resistance, but I, I

Leo Laporte: (01:49:01)
Persevere. You need a tra everybody needs a trademark. Heidi, Heidi ho I

Andy Ihnatko: (01:49:05)
Like, I, I just want the jingle time for Eddie. You not goes hi, Heidi,

Leo Laporte: (01:49:10)
Ding deal. Uh, Renee Richey, Renee, Richey's on YouTube at youtube.com/renee Richey. Now with animation animated timelines, what are you working on next?

Rene Ritchie: (01:49:22)
Uh, I'm working on, I've been doing a series of things about the future of technology as the things like apple could do to go beyond Bluetooth or to go beyond lightning. And I'm working on one about going beyond active, biometric authentication into a more passive, uh, UBI. Um, ambient ambient is the right term form of authentication. Nice. I work on that for tomorrow. I

Leo Laporte: (01:49:40)
Hope. Very nice. Well, thank you gentlemen. We do Mac break weekly of a Tuesday 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern that's 1900 UTC. I say the time. So you can watch it live. If you want to at livedotwit.tv. If you're watching live chat with us live, you can either use the free IRC chatroom, irc.twit.tv. That by the way, works with web browsers as well as IRC clients. Uh, or if you a member Club TWiT, there's a Discord as well. And the Discords always a lot of fun. In fact, I want to encourage you to join Club TWiT, that has become an important revenue source for us during COVID. And I think going forward, it's also allowed us to do news shows, uh, in audio that we would maybe not have done as a, as a podcast like the, uh, ultimate or I'm sorry, untitled. Although it is the ultimate Linux show it's untitled.

Leo Laporte: (01:50:27)
Uh, we have a new show that is debuting on the, uh, club feed, uh, this week in space with rod pile. Uh, we also of course have Stacy's book club and there's ask me anything. I think Mike ELGAN and Amer GaN are gonna join me at ask me anything next week. Really a lot of fun, uh, $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all shows because you're supporting us. We don't need to put the ads in, which is very nice. You also get access to the discord and the TWIT plus feed with all the bonus content, twit.tv/club TWIT. If you'd like to know more after the fact, all of our shows are available for free. You don't have to be a member at supported at the website, twit.tv for this show. It's twit.tv/m B w. You can also, uh, subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it automatically. The minute it's available of a Tuesday afternoon. And if your podcast device allows reviews, please leave us a five star review. Let the world know about the longest running Mac podcast. I think we, I don't, I mean, that was one. Maybe there is something that's been going longer than 17 years, but I don't know, seems like an awful long time. Uh, thank you everybody for joining us. And for 17 years, I've been saying now get back to work because yes, I'm sorry. Break time is over. Bye Bye

Mikah Sargent: (01:51:44)
Is that an iPhone in your hand? Wait a second. Is an Apple watch on your wrist and do I, do I see an iPad sitting there on the table? Oh my goodness. You are the perfect person to be watching iOS today. The show where Rosemary and I, Mikah Sargent talk all things. iOS TV OS watch OS Home Pod OS. It's all the OSs that Apple has offer, and we show you how to make the most of those gadgets. Just head to twit TV slash iOS, to check it out.