MacBreak Weekly 919 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy will be here. He's got to adjourn court and go into his chambers, but we're going to get him in a little bit, along with Jason Snell and Alex Lindsay. What happened Friday night? So many Apple users were kicked out of their accounts. We speculate. Is it really going to be the M4 and the iPad Pro? We're only a week away from the announcement Alex says, says, couldn't possibly be. And we'll talk about Siri. Is it the stupidest of all the assistants and can it get better? It's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

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This is MacBreak Weekly episode 919, recorded Tuesday, April 30th 2024: Thinko's.

It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show. We cover the latest Apple news. Andy is at the Boston Public Library struggling with his setup, so we'll start the show with Jason Snell, back from Memphis, tennessee. I'm here, hello, I'm back. And the beautiful St Jude Hospital out there. Great to see you back. Welcome back, good to be here. Also here, of course, Alex Lindsay from officehours.global and 090.media. Hello, Alex Lindsay, good to be here. So you all mocked me. Mocked me when I said hey, I wonder, would. Maybe they'd put the m4 in the ipad you all said oh, no, no, no.

0:01:33 - Jason Snell
I said no, no, no, no, leo.

0:01:35 - Leo Laporte
No, don't think that was the first thing I thought of sunday morning when I was reading mark german's email and mark could very well be wrong, although usually mark when he goes so big with something he's not very certain.

0:01:48 - Jason Snell
He's like I'm hearing that it might be it's, it's still but still, I mean, what did he? Yeah, what did he? He said it's possible that the new ipads announced next week will have an m4 processor, which is bananas. And I still don't think I believe it. And we'll tout ai features. Um, I don't know. Leo, like I'm sorry, I apologize. Obviously, your supposition that that might be an m4 is more possible than I thought.

0:02:14 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I was just guessing.

0:02:16 - Jason Snell
I knew nothing, so you know I think it comes down to how desperate apple has been recently in terms of pulling up perception of them as getting serious about AI, Like WWDC is going to be in a month, so I don't know if an extra month. It's weird, right, Because this iPad was rumored to happen a couple months ago and then it got shifted. Mark Gurman said at the time it was because of software. I think we all assumed that that software was going to be like for the accessories, but now I do. I mean I don't think it's impossible that they might take a chip that maybe came. Maybe it's on the new fab right, there was a new fab.

0:02:52 - Alex Lindsay
It's the new package, a new process.

0:02:55 - Jason Snell
That's the key. It might literally be the M3 on a new process that they might or might not even call M4. It could be M3X or something like that, and might or might not even call M4. It could be M3X or something like that. And then, software-wise, even though we made all those assumptions like if they had some AI features either in the OS or in some of the apps iPad apps that were plausible, like what if they delayed it a couple of months so that they could pull some of those features forward a little, given that they were only a month away from being released as a developer beta, so that they could prime the pump and use uh, you know, use this, this product launch to talk about ai a little bit sooner. So I don't think it's. It seems really weird and unlikely to me and like a game of telephone has gone on, but I can't say it's impossible so I think on that I apologize.

0:03:41 - Alex Lindsay
I often feel that what people think apple is zigzagging um, oftentimes is them getting more information and saying, well, apple's panicking and doing X, y and Z In a consumer hardware world. Whatever chip was going in there was going in there a year ago, like you know. So like whatever chip they're adding, they're adding into it. There's just no other way. You can't make the turn Like there's so much that has to go on with the fabs and the process and how it's going to integrate. So it wasn't like. Apple decided this is all a big deal in September and started to have meetings and then in January decided they're going to put an M4 instead of an M3. If there's an M4 next week, there was an M4 before WWC last year.

0:04:18 - Leo Laporte
Are you sure? I don't know if I agree with you on that. Alex, I understand what you're saying saying, but here's my scenario. Uh, tsmc was saying we're not going to have the n3e, the the three nanometer e-node, until late 2024.

That was their roadmap until well, maybe recently well, so tsmc comes to you and says, and admittedly, it wouldn't be, wouldn't be yesterday, it would be in, would be in December or whenever they started making these things. And says, you know what Surprise we have the process now Apple. I think you're right too. Jason is very concerned about being behind in AI and wants to make a big splash. We've heard that the iOS 18 will be AI focused. You know, we've heard that the iOS 18 will be AI focused, but it would be very. And we've also heard that an M4 would have more machine learning processors, would be focused more on that. It would be very interesting if they so say maybe September, maybe it was September.

Tsmc says, hey, you know what, I think we're going to have enough M4s for you to use by spring. And Apple says, ah, interesting, know what? I think we're going to have enough M4s for you to use by spring. And Apple says, ah, interesting, and we're pushing really hard. We really want to get an AI. We've got this OLED iPad Pro. I don't think, honestly, moving to OLED is enough for me, as an iPad Pro, m1, ipad Pro owner, to jump. But M4 and really a big focus on iPadOS, on, on AI, that I would actually, I think, have to buy an iPad Now. What's possible is we so we know they have an event, they announced event, it's next Tuesday. But what's possible is they may say on Tuesday and the new iPad Pro with M4 coming out June 8th.

0:06:03 - Alex Lindsay
Right, they may not October you know, like if they're announcing now and they're saying october, then maybe they did something at the last minute. But if they're saying, if they say it's shipping in a week or two weeks or in june, it was, it takes so long, it's not just the fab, it is, it's how that chip integrates, it's testing those chips, it's doing all those things at a consumer level, at apple's level. Now other companies can probably move faster, but half of the stuff goes out. That doesn't work. So you know, and so and so I I just don't think that. I think that this is the boat.

0:06:30 - Leo Laporte
It's just a big ship so are you saying it's unlikely an m4, or that they hit, that it was always an m4?

0:06:36 - Alex Lindsay
I'm saying that, if it, if we get an m4 next week it was going to be an m4 a year ago like there's just, the ship is too big to turn that fast, and it's just it is. You can't, you know, build those in now they may have, they may be exposing more. What they can do is in software, go, hey, this thing that's in the backend, we're going to talk about it and it's going to be in beta and they can release software, you know. So they can say we can, they could show more machine learning, things that Apple has been working on for a decade, you know, like and just, and they're bringing those things to the surface faster than they would have otherwise. Bringing software to the surface fast is easy, or not easy, but it's easier.

Um, bringing hardware shifting gears, again, it's different than professional level software. It's different than people willing to have a certain level of loss. Apple doesn't have that, doesn't? They don't have those luxuries, and so, as a result, these, this ship is a giant ship. Apple doesn't have that. They don't have those luxuries, and so, as a result, this ship is a giant ship.

0:07:33 - Jason Snell
That just doesn't have the trim to say in September, we want to change what's happening in April. So here's the thing about narratives, right Like. One of the challenges here is we've got the cold hard kind of like hardware reality and then we have narratives and there are a few narratives, right. Marketing Apple marketing is a narrative and we've seen them pick up the cause of AI in their marketing. We saw it with the MacBook Air, which is suddenly the world's greatest consumer AI laptop. Like. That is just a shift in marketing. Hardware didn't change. The hardware was planned years in advance, but they changed the marketing. There's also Bloomberg's narrative and we've talked about it here where Bloomberg is trying to put Apple's moves in the context of their other reporting about Apple and about the trends in the tech industry. So they want to talk about AI as a trend and they want to. But what's the hardware reality? My guess is I think Alex is right Hardware has to be planned out way in advance.

It is possible that Apple and TSMC always were talking about the possibility of doing a new chip. Whether and what it's called is marketing. Right, it could be called the M4. It could be called the M3X, it could just not be called anything, the M3 again. But they might have been talking about this new process. They might have said we can get you a low volume in mid-year next year, let's say 2024. We could get you a low volume then.

And apple's like, well, we could maybe put that in the ipad pro, because that's for apple. That's a really low volume product. Right, it doesn't sell at the level of uh of other products. It's a high-end ipad. The ipad sells about the same as the mac units wise, but this is the high end iPad. So maybe they're like oh, actually, why don't we start with that? And we can do that first. And then the narrative builds up around it which is oh, this is Apple rushing to do AI. But, like I agree with Alex, the hardware would have had to be planned and if there is a chip surprise, it's not going to have been a surprise. That happened in three months. It's going to be more like they made a move with TSMC, maybe to be a little more aggressive sometime, maybe last year, maybe.

But the software side is totally right, like they could push and think about it. Developer betas would have shipped mid-June if they had like some apps that were kind of close to being ready for developer beta, apps that were kind of close to being ready for developer beta, and back in February or January they said let's pull that forward and put it in a special build of iPad OS for shipping in May. They could do that. They could do that. That was doable. Or some brief basic AI integration, they could do that faster. So that's why I keep thinking this isn't a no from me. I think that this might't a no for me. I think that this might be have some truth to it, but it's way more complicated and it's easy to get the hardware realities mixed up in the narrative.

0:10:13 - Alex Lindsay
And I think that Bloomberg often benefit benefits in viewership by acting like everything's a panic. You know, like everything, like they're panicking, they're panicking, they're panicking.

0:10:22 - Jason Snell
That's why you got to be on the Bloomberg terminal. You got to know immediately about whatever is hot in that moment.

0:10:27 - Alex Lindsay
Very rarely is apple panicking like you know, like it's very, it's more of a like oh, we should probably take a look at this and let's take a look at that. And even if they panic.

0:10:35 - Jason Snell
How could I mean, like you're making the point about turning the ship even if they panic? What is an apple panic? There's nowhere to go. It's six months and you know.

0:10:42 - Alex Lindsay
TSMC being aggressive about their timelines does not benefit them at all. Number one is Apple won't appreciate it, um uh, broadcasting that it's going to be earlier, because that pushes competitors up and speeds things up. And number two is if you don't make those deadlines, then you look bad and so there's no TM TM. Tsmc almost always is pretty conservative about what they say they can and can't do. Because they, because it doesn't. There's no, they don't, there's no ROI for them to say that they're doing they can do something faster than they can.

0:11:09 - Leo Laporte
Let's uh real quickly just see if we can get Andy uh on here, cause I think he's got it set up now at the library. Andy, can we, can we hear you? He's? He's fiddling with a knob on his Raspberry microphone. Okay, let me read you Mark Gurman's. Just leave his volume up and if he suddenly starts talking I'll know. Let me read you what we're all talking about. This is from Sunday's Power On newsletter.

The new iPad Pro will kick off Apple's shift into AI hardware. I'm hearing there's a strong possibility. So there's the weasel words that you were talking about, jason that the chip in the new iPad Pro will be the M4, not the M3. I wonder why he wouldn't have heard that until now. That's interesting. Better if, given what you guys said, better yet, I believe, the Apple would position the tablet as the first truly AI-powered device and that it will tout each new product from then on as an AI device. This is in response to the AI craze. By introducing the new iPad Pro ahead of its WWDC in June, apple could lay out its AI chip strategy without distraction. Then at WWDC it could and, by the way, this is his speculation, I would guess at this point Then at WWDC it could focus on how the M4 chip and the new iPad Pro will take advantage of the AI software and services coming as part of iPadOS later this year.

0:12:39 - Jason Snell
There's a lot of marketing in here and I would just say I actually the thing about it's going to be all AI from now on. It's like I think he missed it. The MacBook Air was an AI product launch too. They specifically called out that it was the world's greatest consumer AI laptop or whatever. So, like we're already in the world where every product launch is going to talk about AI, it's not going to be new.

With the iPad, there may be more and there may be more detail, but even then it's very vague and he's really just saying they will tout AI features. It's like, ok, maybe there will be some AI features that they will put in that iPad OS update and maybe that's even why it got delayed a couple of months is that they wanted to pull those features forward. But the chip it is so weird, right, like his chip stuff is slow. Chip stuff is slow, like Alex said, and so I'm just hearing about it now that it may be a M4 rings to me like it's marketing, like they've got a chip that might be different enough that they could call it something else V2, which wouldn't be such a big change, or 3X.

0:13:39 - Leo Laporte
Gurman also says to be fair, these new products are not engineered and developed entirely around AI. This is partly about marketing, as you say. Hardware with even more impressive capabilities is further out. This is a wild one. I don't remember reading this. He says, as I reported, Apple is working on a tabletop iPad connected to a robotic arm.

0:14:03 - Jason Snell
Yeah, that's the HomePod with a screen and an arm, though, and an arm, yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. Here is your coffee.

0:14:12 - Leo Laporte
Wait, I can't reach it.

0:14:13 - Jason Snell
Well, I think the idea is that it'll just follow you around wherever you are. You set it there and it's like. It's like an amazon echo has done that for years.

0:14:20 - Leo Laporte
That follows you around. Yeah, that's. It's a little creepy, by the way, because it doesn't just follow you when you talk to it, it follows you around. Yeah, it's a little creepy, by the way, because it doesn't just follow you when you talk to it, it follows you as you walk around the house. It's very strange, I mean, it's only turning, but it does. It turns to look at you. Okay, well, you got my hopes up. Now I'm thinking, oh, big deal, it's just some marketing.

0:14:44 - Jason Snell
No, I mean this is exciting, right, like what he's saying is we may be surprised at exactly how Apple rolls out.

0:14:52 - Alex Lindsay
This may not be like oh yeah, oled iPads, whatever, that they may not wait till June to start really aggressively telling the AI story, and that would be an interesting choice if they do that, and we have to remember that they made a huge deal about the pen, like have to remember that the they made a huge deal about the pen like it is, like not like the apple doesn't put that in the graphic if they're just updating the screens, and so there's a lot of rumors around haptic pens, and I got to tell you that there's a lot of artists that would get really excited about being able to simulate surfaces, being able to, you know, be able to potentially model I mean, I the kinds of things that are possible and we don't know what they're going to actually do is the ability for things like ZBrush or other things like that to be able to, for you to be able to feel like you're pushing into a 3D object while painting on it, feeling like you have different surfaces, feeling like the pen is the thing that has me the most interested.

If the pen is not that interesting, there's nothing else in the announcements that I've seen so far that would get me to buy a new iPad Pro. I've got two of them from the last couple of years. I don't need another one. So if the pen is really something that is revolutionary from an artist's perspective, from my perspective. I'm super interested and I'll have to figure out how to come up with the money to buy it. You may be in luck. If it's not, I'm like eh.

0:15:59 - Leo Laporte
Because their social media posts say like this one does we're drafting up something special for you, right? That very much implies that it's about the pen.

0:16:10 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think that I think that this is the pen is going to be a big uh push for it, and I think they're going to do some, some stuff that's really hard, like with the pen, that is hard for other people to do. Well, that's what apple likes to do. If they're not promoting this, if they didn't think, if they're going to do something that anybody else could do everybody else is drawing on glass If Apple makes it feel like you're drawing on paper, you're drawing on a surface, you're drawing on all these other things, you know, again, it's not, it's not a general, it may not be a general purpose thing, but I think a lot of people I know that I have an iPad, I have one iPad with that paper surface on it. I do all my drawing on that iPad because of the way the surface feels. You know, and, and that's a, I think it's an important piece of the puzzle.

0:16:48 - Jason Snell
So I think one of the things that is worth thinking about is that last year Apple released. The only iPad related thing that Apple released last year was that USB-C Apple Pencil. Yeah, but what it means is they now have a modern, fully featured more or less fully featured Apple Pencil that is at the lower price point. They could get rid of the old Apple Pencil, they could get rid of the second generation Apple Pencil and they could introduce an Apple Pencil Pro, essentially with all sorts of fancy features like what Alex is talking about, because they also had that other pencil, which up to now, it's been like there's just one pencil and it makes it hard. You can't load it up with tech if you want lots of people to buy it, but if you have two models, and one's more affordable and one is more fancy, that's very Apple. So that rings true to me.

0:17:41 - Leo Laporte
So maybe the event's going to be about a fancy pencil more than anything else.

0:17:49 - Jason Snell
Well, ipad events are all about accessories, right. Like I mean, in some ways, the defining characteristic of the iPad is that it's just sort of a naked tablet and then it's what you put around it. There are lots of rumors that there's going to be a new magic keyboard design Remember that shipped in 2020. So it's been four years since the magic keyboard came out and that it's going to be more laptop like and that'll be interesting, right? How do you ergonomically attach an iPad to a a separate keyboard and have that work and be more laptop like? And then the pencil will be another accessory that takes the iPad in a different direction. You know, I know that I've had, yeah, oled and chips and who knows what else will be on there, but fundamentally, ipad generations I else will be on there, but fundamentally, ipad generations, I think, are defined by their accessories as much as anything else. So I'm also excited about the keyboard and the pencil.

0:18:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so, uh, our, so is our discord. Uh, john gerard says apple has to have different tips, not just software to simulate. Shea says would love a pen that worked on the iphone. Uh, the little falker says pen works with avp, the vision pro. Uh, flying comic, says a speaker on the pen so it could squeak when you're right on glass. John gerard, now we're getting wild.

0:18:53 - Alex Lindsay
John gerard says maybe an actual brush tip that looks and feels like a paintbrush and these tips have been those types of tips and remember, the tip has been easy to remove and put on, even though none of us ever needed to do that for a long time, and other tips have been rumored forever, you know. So, yeah, so I think that it's definitely possible.

0:19:13 - Jason Snell
And the rumor here is that I think there was at one point that they were going to do a magnetically connected tip system that they were going to have, and they're going to lean into it more than just you can replace the nub when it wears down with you can have different kinds, and that's have you had a nub wear down?

0:19:28 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, have you actually had a nub wear down? No, no, never, never.

0:19:29 - Leo Laporte
I'm still using the original tip on all my Apple Pencils. I'm surprised that you're not Alex, because you're using that sandpaper screen cover that it's not wearing it down.

0:19:39 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I haven't really had any trouble with the nubs for any period of time, but I will say it's not all day, every day. You can buy new ones, and they all come with one extra. So you and I've got a little collection of them. I just never I always have to figure out like that's the first thing I come across I'm going oh, I should make sure I don't lose these.

0:19:59 - Jason Snell
I've never used. I mean, there are some rumors that there's going to be some real, actual like accelerometers in the new pencil as well, and, as wild as that is, it's not impossible that they might have a Vision Pro application. Although the thing that I keep thinking would be the most ridiculous thing is right Vision Pro doesn't come with hand controls like the MetaQuest does. I thought, oh no, I hope Apple's solution to gaming on the Vision Pro is not two pencils.

0:20:24 - Alex Lindsay
Just wave your pencils around everybody.

0:20:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I have to say that is one thing people are. I mean, look, I'm always looking for negative about Vision Pro, you know me. But one thing people do seem to say is that Meta did wasn't, it wasn't such a bad idea to have controllers, and that all of this gets a little way more precise. It's tedious after a while to be doing the thing with your fingers all the time.

0:20:48 - Alex Lindsay
I find that it doesn't. I will say that with the lenses in, I find that the accuracy is not as good. Oh, interesting Maybe it's because my prescription is so bad Is that I find that there's a little bit more of me having to work at it. When I wear my contacts and I take the lenses out, I find that it works better, you know so. So it is a little bit um, and it's not a my, it's, it's a minor thing, right. But also I do think that the pen being able to like look at a surface and then draw with the pen and potentially, you know, while I'm in in the apple vision pro would be definitely compelling. And one of the things with JigSpace is you can actually right now you can just pinch and go around, but you can theoretically do that with a pen in 3D be able to draw. There's a lot of opportunities there.

0:21:32 - Leo Laporte
On a purely logistical basis. This is a 7 am video release. This is not an event in that sense. Did you I mean I should, jason, did you get an invitation to go down to Cupertino to touch something?

0:21:45 - Jason Snell
No, I did not get invited to Cupertino to touch something. They're working on stuff though.

I think there is a. You know there's a broader plan for this, but it feels to me like it's going to be more like like think of that laptop announcement last fall right, where they did some stuff and they had like creators in New York at some sort of event and all that, and in New York at some sort of event and all that, and there were press briefings and there were press you know, there were review embargoes for the next week and all that. It would not surprise me if it's sort of that level. It's the ABC of modern Apple, right, which is there's the physical event, which is just WWDC and iPhone. There's the video event with a lot of assorted kind of ancillary stuff, but not a big public physical event. That's maybe this one and definitely that laptop, and then there's just the press release that they put out. So this is a mid-tier.

0:22:31 - Leo Laporte
Mid-tier. I think that they did say they're going to have a London or some EU. I saw that story, yeah, gathering at the same time. So are you going to do an office hour, what you do usually with office hours?

0:22:44 - Alex Lindsay
I think so. Yeah, I think what we're going to do. Well, in the past we've done it in after hours, but I think we're going to because it coincides perfectly with our show. I think we're going to go ahead and just watch it during the show, and so our show will be covering it, with a lot of people interacting and so on and so forth, because it's the same time.

0:23:02 - Leo Laporte
It's before my traditional hour of rising. However, I was talking on Sunday to Mike and he said I really want to cover it, so I think we may actually I might be in my jammies at home. I think we're going to actually do the same thing. We'll cover it, yeah.

Because, you know what I? I believe and I believe there will be a really interesting ai. I think there's something interesting. I am an ai true believer. I've I've converted, my religion has changed and I'm now believer, having used it very effectively in a number of things in my life, and I would love to see what apple can do with it.

0:23:45 - Alex Lindsay
It wouldn't necessarily be like a chat gpt thing, it would be more like uh, again, I think I think being able to just a private interrogation of the stuff that I have on my computer or on my device would be a pretty big deal, like just like I emailed leo six months ago about this subject, or roughly six months ago about the subject or roughly six months ago, about the subject yeah, let me, let me know what that, what, what was that that is? I mean, that'd be life changing for me.

0:24:11 - Leo Laporte
Google does that a little bit with Gemini. So if you have Gemini advanced you can in the settings in there, you know extensions section, connect it to your workspace connection, connect it to your uh workspace, which means gmail, your drive and your docs.

0:24:29 - Alex Lindsay
So that is an interesting turn thing that you could turn on and I and I admit that I'm a little resistant to doing that in the cloud and having something exterior, like I think that's apple's advantage, right, this is all in sitting on my computer or I? You know, adobe now is allowing you. They just put out a subscription now for 4.99, that you you can, you know, use AI to look at your PDFs. Right for Acrobat, there's an Acrobat AI subscription. I could see Apple doing something like that, where if I open up if I'm in you know, books or whatever I want to open it in, I open up a PDF and it's 192 pages, tell me where, and just start asking questions that are against that, that that document. I think that's that's also very powerful, you know, and I think that that's going to be where a lot of people are interested.

I think that that local support inside the hardware, without it feeling like you're publishing that to the cloud because I think Apple is probably more sensitive to that to anybody else, apple's probably more sensitive to that to anybody else and for a lot of companies that becomes really interesting is like this isn't a cloud solution, this on-prem solution of on the computer or inside the organization being able to do lots of those types of things I think is a big change from what we're seeing from most other organizations. There's other people that are doing it on-prem, but it takes a little bit of geekiness. And if Apple just puts this into the devices and you don't have to think about it and it'll just do all those things for you, you know what Apple's good at is making things easy to use. That you know. And of course they'll call it something else, so it'll have a different name and it'll be easy.

0:26:00 - Jason Snell
I'm skeptical that the iPad event won't be like a little bit of a priming the pump for WWDC. So the iPad, I mean, my best guess is I still think it's going to be a lot.

0:26:07 - Alex Lindsay
There's a lot of pencil there. They put a pencil in the invite. Like Apple usually is much more. They're not usually on the nose to that level Like it's going to be a lot yeah no, very clearly.

0:26:18 - Jason Snell
I mean, they've done that. There was a previous event they did with an iPad and a pencil where they had like sketches and things, and it was very clear what they're going for there and that's why I think that'll be the primary thing. If Mark Gurman is right and the AI is going to be part of this, I think, again, part of it is just storytelling, it's marketing, it's what they say, like about the. They'll say about the iPad some version of what they said about the MacBook Air. If there are AI software features to be had, I would expect that they will be minimal but interesting and, like I said, it's. It's the kind of thing where, like, what if they have an LLM guidance mode that they put in pages or something right? Or what if they have some?

other playing catch up to and a very weak sauce catch up to Microsoft, but it's the start right, because are they going to unveil their entire AI strategy in an iPad event one month before WWDC, which is their huge event? It seems unlikely. It's not impossible, right? They could choose to do that if they wanted to. It seems unlikely to me. So my guess is that they're going to show some stuff off and say and we've got way more that you're going to see next month.

0:27:27 - Alex Lindsay
But they'll ship a couple of things. They're in a different position than the other companies because their user base is moving at a much slower pace. I still have access to all the Google tools. I have chat GPT. I have access to the Microsoft tools if I want them. I have access to the Google tools if I want them on a Mac.

I'm not sitting there going, oh my gosh, I can't believe when Apple will do this. I mean, I don't. It can take a long time for it to be embedded into the Apple system before I would even notice, you know. And so the thing is, I don't think Apple has to panic because when your software, people might go, oh well, I'm not going to use that software, I'm going to use this software, and there might be a move back and forth. But Apple users are using hardware and the chances.

You know, apple has a much longer runway than almost everybody else as far as how the decision process people are going to make. Because, again, all these tools are still. It's not like I'm sitting on the outside and I can't use them. If I have a Mac, I'm using ChatGPT on my Mac and on my phone and on my iPad all the time, you know, and so I don't you know, and so so I don't you know, and I can use gemini on my mac and I can use you know, you know a co-pilot on my mac. So there's not, I don't you know, there's not. I don't think there's this feeling of loss that people have related to that and as, as a result, I think that apple's got a pretty long runway again, I don't think they're panicking or in under any kind of incredible pressure. They're definitely moving forward, but I think that they've seen this for a while and they've been working on it, I mean to your point.

0:28:47 - Leo Laporte
Apple last week we heard, is not only talking to open AI, but Google about Gemini, but they're also talking to open AI, about their AI. It sounds like at least part of Apple's strategy is hey, we're not going to worry about AI safety and all the bad PR we could get from it, we're just going to let Google and Microsoft and in the same way that Siri goes Plus.

0:29:07 - Alex Lindsay
They'll give us money to do it, and Siri will tell you that I found this on the web for you. Like that's her way of saying, I'm not accountable for what I'm giving you.

0:29:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but it also is the number one joke about Siri, I mean it's also the failure of Siri from our point of view.

0:29:24 - Jason Snell
Well, think about the layered model approach too, where they could use external models for certain kinds of queries and say you know, for this one, maybe it's for generative. They say, ok, well, you know, you can ask a model, you can set your default model.

0:29:37 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I use perplexity for that. That'll be a possibility, right Like.

0:29:39 - Jason Snell
So they may do that, and the other thing is, you know, their on-device model might have some checking of its own right. Their on-device model might be saying asking some other model to do something and getting it back and going. Hmm, I don't know what I think about this one. That's also possible, but I do agree. I think Apple is going to farm a lot of stuff out to other third-party models and maybe even let you choose which ones you want to use, which is fine, and let you choose which ones you want to use, which is fine.

0:30:06 - Leo Laporte
And I should also point out there's this guy named Jason Snell who wrote this article for Macworld in which he says Apple's AI push may sell a lot of hardware.

0:30:14 - Jason Snell
Okay, well, I mean, yeah, right, like this idea.

Okay, so Apple gets a lot of.

There's a lot of talk about Apple being like oh, apple always is trying to come up with a new way to sell us something.

I was like, oh, apple always is trying to come up with a new way to sell us something. I was like, yeah, they make hardware. They make their money on hardware, software and services, but the hardware is a huge driver of it and while they can put in a new camera every year in the iPhone and push things a little bit, nothing pushes hardware sales more than a software environment where there's a big leap that requires a lot of hardware effort, a lot of power in the new hardware in order to get some new effect. So if Apple builds AI features right and they require the more GPU, the better, the more neural engine cores, the better there is. I just had that moment where I realized, oh yeah, if they introduce a whole bunch of on device stuff and it works best or it's gated by like, you've got to have an iphone 15 pro or better, let's say like, if it's truly stuff that people want, they're going to sell a lot of phones you know people.

0:31:14 - Leo Laporte
You know, sooner rather than later, you know strategy. That is that's microsoft strategy, and that's why qualcomm is announcing these ai chips and microsoft's making a big deal about their new AI PCs, which have an AI key on the keyboard, a copilot key on the keyboard. None of that's necessary.

0:31:33 - Jason Snell
It's all about selling more products, and that's something Microsoft needs to do In the end, yeah, and you can do it artificially, but it's better if there's a natural fit where there is a new technology that came out that people want for some reason. And that's the struggle with AI is. Ai is not a product, it is a feature. You need to build AI that people that does something people want, that does something that masses want. But we all feel like that's probably going to happen.

And if you do that and it requires more hardware that's perfect, because then you can go out without a whole lot of effort and just say, oh well, you need to upgrade your Mac or iPad or iPhone to the latest because this new feature that everybody loves it's kind of slow on that M1 MacBook Air of yours, but on the M4, it flies right and they will sell. That is how you kick off a hardware upgrade cycle, which is where Apple makes most of its money, and so AI has a lot of potential. But let's not lose sight of the fact that AI, especially on-device AI it has huge RAM issues and huge GPU or neural core issues, where the more the better for all of that stuff. Guess what that is going to help Apple sell a lot of new systems if they do it right yeah.

0:32:46 - Leo Laporte
With a lot more RAM and you're going to wish you had bought more RAM. All right, we're going to take a little break and see if we can get the library online. We're working on Andy. I'd like to get him in to talk about this as well. But first a word from our sponsor, Wix Studio. I have they've given me 60 seconds. That's all to tell you about Wix Studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises. So here are a few things you could do from start to finish in a minute or less on Studio.

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iwx.com/studio. Step into Wix Studio and see for yourself. Go to Wix W-I-X.com/studio. We also have a link in our show notes. You can find it there. Or and I don't mention this enough, but there's a sponsor page at twit.tv. So go to twit.tv/sponsors and click the link there. That works too. wix.com/studio. Thank you, Wix. All right, thank you Burke, who has massaged Andy Ihnatko, rubbed him with unguents and exotic oils and produced a library-based Andy Ihnatko. Is he there? I am here. Ah, all right, hello Andy.

0:34:44 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm feeling very mellow, although I was pretty angry at a bunch of Apple decisions that were made about this hardware five to eight years ago, but I'm doing much better now. Thank you, yes.

0:34:54 - Leo Laporte
Um, do you? Jason's not ever tried to stream with the iPad. Can you do a show from the iPad?

0:35:01 - Jason Snell
You can do it. Uh, it's you. You can't really record it as the biggest problem that's okay, andy doesn't have to record it.

0:35:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

0:35:09 - Andy Ihnatko
I did. I mean I did. I did test it out and it seemed to work. With a zoom chat I did with a friend two days ago, but for some reason it just wanted nothing to do with my microphone anymore. Yeah, it's weird, nothing to do with the, with the camera anymore. And because zoom doesn't have the ability to say hi, I would like excuse me, because the iPad does not have the ability to say hi, I would like Zoom to use this as my headphone, as my microphone, and this as my iPhone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:35:34 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I like the.

0:35:35 - Leo Laporte
MacBook Air as far as I'm concerned.

0:35:39 - Jason Snell
This is why I travel with an Air again, is that the iPad, like Apple's support for external devices on iPad, is still poor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:35:47 - Andy Ihnatko
I want to try that again. I'll have a MacBook. I yeah, I want to try that again. I'll have a MacBook.

0:35:50 - Leo Laporte
I can pretty much guess that that is not something they're going to announce one week from today. Suddenly, it'll work better with a microphone.

0:35:56 - Andy Ihnatko
That's when they'll get you. I don't think they're going to apologize to me either. I'm holding. I wouldn't hold out for that either.

0:36:02 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I'm excited. Well, I guess Mike and I will stream it, Right, john? John Slinian says he's going to get up at 7 am. Well, you have to get up earlier than that and we will. Yeah, you're good. I appreciate that, john. Thank you, and I will be in my jammies at home streaming, not from an iPad, but you know what, I'm ready. I've loosened the wallet. A moth flew out, but I've loosened the wallet, hoping that there would be like I oled was. All is almost enough. But you know what? I'm looking at my ipad pro 12.9 inch that I use very rarely, uh, in fact, mostly just to zoom my mom and thinking do I need another ipad? This was not obsolete and I think that's part of the thing that apple has to fight, has to face. Uh, one month later there will be WWDC and I think Apple's AI strategy will be laid out by then.

Yes, should be, Should be Hope so.

0:37:04 - Andy Ihnatko
They'll say enough to get by, they don't need to put up, they don't need to have the whole plan right now.

0:37:11 - Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, okay, I guess it's hard. You know, you're absolutely right, obviously, and Apple's never been the leading edge or bleeding edge of anything, but it's also got to be hard to sit there, sit on your hands, while such an accelerated process is happening. With AI, this is the fastest tech adoption ever, I think.

0:37:34 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh, you know, now Apple knows how, like how the Android team at Google felt. Yeah, yeah, you know. Like, okay, it turns out we bet on the wrong horse. As a matter of fact wasn't even a horse, it was a duck with a saddle. Yeah, okay, we'll move forward.

0:37:50 - Leo Laporte
So Bloomberg also talks about the Apple conversations with OpenAI as well as Google. This says, according to Bloomberg, negotiate. Is this mark again? Yeah, negotiation Center on powering AI chat bot in iOS 18 updates. Would anybody mourn the demise of Siri?

0:38:13 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think Siri is going to go away. I think this is just going to be another service that's available to it.

0:38:18 - Leo Laporte
That's risky. Samsung did that with Bix, and so you had a Google Voice search and you had Bix, and it really didn't go very well.

0:38:27 - Alex Lindsay
I think the search and Siri are very different. I mean the number one in. I don't know what other people use the house Siri for, but the number one use of Siri in my household is asking for directions and setting timers.

0:38:39 - Jason Snell
Yeah, you know, and getting music to play.

0:38:41 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so what I'm saying is that Siri is something that is this low level. I just want my hardware to do something that is barely repeatable. Now, what you do outside of that Siri may have there may be a lot of other things but I don't necessarily even want Apple to get rid of that low level functionality, to hand it off to AI, because I don't know what AI is going to do with it. I don't. You know, it may hallucinate, it may do a lot of things, but right now the bear to the metal play me this song what time? When is sunrise? You know, I set another timer. Tell me how to get to here. Those all, all those things with Siri, work pretty well and that's what we use it a lot for, you know, and so I mean like every day, all day. So I think that Siri, at that low level as far as tell me something about something, then we shift to chat GPT, and that's where some of the conversational stuff could get a little bit better.

0:39:36 - Andy Ihnatko
But I don't think it's an either, or I think it's a this and Well, I think that Siri is way too valuable a trademark for them to abandon it, and I think that it's very, very ripe for enhancement with advanced AI.

The difficulty is going to be like what a lot of people like myself on Android have discovered when suddenly the Google Assistant that works really, really great, does all kinds of really great things, and I know how to ask it the things that I want it to do and get it to do the things I want it to do is suddenly Gemini with a system with Gemini, and now, like something simple like turning on or off the lights takes a long pause while the two different voice assistants decide who gets it, or, in the early days, before they fix a lot of stuff, like, oh, I'm really bad at doing this, I'm Gemini, I'm really bad at doing this, but I'll do that instead of the assistant. No, no, no, no, don't take me to a web page that finds like a JavaScript timer Set an actual timer using the actual clock app. But I really think they could give Siri its debutante ball it's coming out as confirmation by doing it that way.

0:40:41 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I agree. I think this is they're not going to throw Siri away. I know people, especially in our sphere, are like, oh, everybody hates Siri. It's like, you know, people use Siri. It's fine, it's a brand that's known and that's the most important thing. So I think it'll be, you know, siri AI or Siri AI features within Siri and if they do it right, right, the stuff that Andy describes. That's what you need to avoid, right? Is it needs to feel like a responsive on device model that can go out, you know, or ask the LLM, or ask a remote LLM or whatever it needs to do, but still be just your voice assistant that you know, that you don't have to. I mean, like it should be that basic. It should literally be I'm talking to this thing and it's smarter than it used to be. That's it.

0:41:24 - Leo Laporte
It'll be very interesting to see how Apple handles this. I'm sure this is a fun challenge for their marketing team and their engineers. Yeah, because you know, do you really want to say, hey, shlomo, ask AI for something? You don't want to do, that you want it, and I don't think you want two different assistants. I really think Bixby was a bad experience for Samsung. I think we know that's not going to fly, so you've got to take Shlomo and make her something better.

0:41:58 - Alex Lindsay
I just don't know if you do, I don't know. I mean, again, I use, you know, my family uses Siri all the time and has no feeling of just knows where the where the border is, of what to ask for and doesn't. I don't think that Siri has to do any more than that. I think you can have a whole nother feature set that you double tap or do whatever or open up. I mean people are already talking to their chat GPT as it is and asking questions and having it talk back to them. So it's I don't know if.

Um, because we and again, I have a family that uses chat GPT, all of them use chat GPT most of the day, you know, like you know, and my, my wife gets, you know, has recipes done. I, you know, she's asking chat GPT stuff all the time. My kids are, you know, of course, exploring ideas and so on and so forth with it. I use it all day. So I, you know, and I don't feel, like I guess I'm actually, as a user of both chat GPT and and Siri, concerned of any attempt to merge those two things together, Like I just think that the confusion and process of who to talk to about what in, you know, I think that for a lot of Apple users and again I'm only using my family, as you know, anecdotally, but from my experiences looking at my wider family as well as my nuclear family is that no one's complaining about siri not being able to do certain things like they're just not thinking of an average apple user not a techie apple user, but an average apple user is uses siri for a lot of, you know, basic requests and things that they need and I don't, and it works fairly well inside of that.

Inside of that area, I think a lot of techie people, um are trying to get it to do a bunch of other things and are frustrated about it and everything else. But I don't know if I think that, again, 90 percent of the Apple users probably are serious, working exactly the way they expect it to. I don't think they're not clamoring for something new.

0:43:43 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you know you're not with me when Lisa and I ask her to do something and swear up a blue streak for about half an hour, Lisa yells at her. She says F you, but not that Siri's worse than Amazon or Google's assistant. We yell at them all kind of equally. Well, no, maybe we yell at Siri a little bit more.

0:44:07 - Alex Lindsay
I think you're unusual, Alex.

0:44:08 - Leo Laporte
I think most people think Siri's an idiot and don't like it.

0:44:13 - Alex Lindsay
I just think. I don't think that I don't know.

0:44:15 - Jason Snell
I mean again. I know a lot of people say hey, siri.

0:44:18 - Alex Lindsay
I don't. Here's the funny thing. I use Siri only in my kitchen, and the reason I do that is because I have so many Apple devices in my office that if I say, hey, shlomo, the, I don't know what device is going to respond. So the only time I use Siri is if I'm going to. I use it in my car and in my kitchen when I'm outside of my office, because the number one problem I have with Siri is not what it responds with, it is which device will respond, you know, and so that's the constant problem I have with Siri is that I don't know which one's going to respond. I've got two iPads here. I've got six Macs, I've got a couple phones. They're all sitting here and they all light up and go okay, I'll watch, you know, like they're all lighting up and saying what do I here's?

0:45:03 - Leo Laporte
what the Discord says. I personally think Siri is the worst tech Apple has released in 15 years. Average iPhone users don't use Siri because it's so terrible. I'm truly embarrassed by Siri. I have better results with almost every other ST speech-to-text technology. Everyone I know doesn't use Siri because it's terrible. Siri is an idiot for most things.

0:45:26 - Alex Lindsay
Well, I don't again, I don't, and I don't think our listenership is necessarily an average user. I think the average user doesn't even think about it.

0:45:32 - Leo Laporte
I think Apple's got a massive problem with Siri, and one of the reasons Apple looks laggard with AI is because Siri is so awful.

0:45:41 - Jason Snell
Honestly Yep, but this is. But the thing is, I will. I'll say the flip side is, everybody knows what Siri is. That's true In fact, it's like it's become common. They don't know Cortana.

0:45:50 - Leo Laporte
That's true.

0:45:50 - Jason Snell
In fact it's become common, for, like a cliche, people say so, like there'll be a baseball highlight of somebody failing to catch a fly ball and the announcer will say something like hey, siri, how do you catch a fly ball? Right, like it's in the vernacular is like that's what you say when you're talking to a robot.

0:46:08 - Leo Laporte
A word also. A word also, the fact is you can't buy that.

0:46:10 - Jason Snell
You can't buy that, and I know that it's bad. It started out as being groundbreaking. It has not progressed. It's very frustrating for everybody who's tried to use it some. You know, I was the other weekend. We were trying some stuff with siri and it gave the right answer and I was legitimately shocked. So I was like, wait a second, maybe it's, but the fact is people know it and if apple uh updates it to use some of this new technology to make it better and more reliable, then it's a it's a winner. But like that's, that's what they have to do.

0:46:38 - Leo Laporte
What was the movie? It's been clear for years. The guy's driving down and he says, hey, shlomo, call somebody. And it says dialing your mother. And it says no, no, no, stop, stop dialing your mother. And it says no, no, no, stop, stop dialing your mother. It it's, it's, it's so well known that it's a joke. You know that's the flip side of being well known. Uh, you know edsel was well known as well. Uh, and anyway, this is something apple has to transcend, and it may be an argument for what you're saying, alex, that don't use that, because we already know that's an idiot.

0:47:12 - Alex Lindsay
uh, we just know what its limits are. You know so well you do, I think you're different.

0:47:17 - Leo Laporte
You're a little different. Your experience is a little different than a lot.

0:47:20 - Alex Lindsay
I think most people like that when, when you talk to someone who doesn't know how to do something, you stop asking them to do those things right, that's right.

0:47:26 - Leo Laporte
That's what I'm saying is that a lot of you know the name kind of like well it's good for timers and asking what time it is and asking you know how long it'll take to get somewhere for timers. I use alexa for timers or those in my house.

0:47:39 - Andy Ihnatko
That's the big difference. We we keep talking about what, what a tactical advantage it is to be the pre-installed thing. Uh, when you're trying to compete with anybody else, sirius slomo is the pre. The pre-installed thing thing is the thing that's in all of apple's advertising, and so people start using it if it starts being good, I think we're gonna take a little break when we come back.

0:47:59 - Leo Laporte
Uh, we will talk about some other things. I had a list but I forgot. Hey, what are we going to talk about next? Our show today is brought to you by Ecamm. Actually, this is a product that works and we love the leading live streaming video production studio built for Mac. I've said it many times had we had Ecamm when we started TWiT 19 years ago, I probably wouldn't have bought all this equipment. I would have just done the show at home with Ecamm. It does everything we do with much more expensive gear. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, Ecamm is here to elevate your video production at a price you know anybody can afford. It really is democratizing streaming.

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Now, did any of you on Friday night get your Apple IDs reset overnight Didn't happen to anybody.

I know, and yet social media was alive with it. People locked out from their accounts. According to 9to5Mac, even a few of its staff members had it happen. One person was in the middle of a FaceTime call when, all of a sudden, boom, you're out.

0:51:00 - Andy Ihnatko
That's not nice.

0:51:01 - Leo Laporte
That could be relationship changing, but it happens during a tense moment in a very important conversation. Did you hang up on me? No, no, siri, did it Apple? One Mastodon user said this is from the Verge that an Apple support team member said told them. Quote sometimes random security improvements are added to your account Mass password changes, app-specific passwords broken, some people not forced with a password reset. Some just suggested we love Michael michael sai. He's a guy who wrote spam civ and is a really great uh developer, but I think his blog is a must read mjtsaicom. Uh, he also had it happen to him. Have we heard what was going on?

0:51:50 - Jason Snell
apple has made no statements about this at all, which is weird.

0:51:54 - Leo Laporte
Cy says unlocking the account would require a one-hour security delay because he had stolen device protection turned on and he wasn't at home.

0:52:03 - Jason Snell
This happened to Mike Hurley, who I do the Upgrade podcast with, and he was traveling for the weekend, so he was outside of his home and therefore also had the apple uh device security production turned on, and he had to wait. But, although it turns out, he could go to his mac, which didn't have it on, and fix it there, and and that's what he ended up doing, but this this does I. What's weird is apple hasn't communicated what's going on, which makes me suspicious that they felt that they had like an incursion or something. Yes, that they were dealing with, and it's a security measure that they don't want to disclose. But even still, you should probably say something to your customers somewhere that says here's what's going on, at least in vague terms, and they've been silent about it.

0:52:44 - Leo Laporte
And there doesn't seem to be any commonality. It wasn't just people with stolen device protection turned on. It wasn't just people in a particular geographic location, right, mike's in London or England, right, right? So I yeah, you know what, though and this is where Apple really gets a pass If they did it, they must've had a good reason. That's always what I think. I think it could be a security issue. I think it's I don't know.

0:53:12 - Alex Lindsay
I really feel like there's a security thing here that they don't want to talk about until they've gotten to the bottom of it, like you know, and I think that there's something you know. They were able to see something and they're not going to give anybody any information until they fix it. I have no idea if that's the case or not. I mean, I'm, you know, guessing, but but it seems really odd that this would happen without them at least acknowledging that there was a problem. For Apple to be so quiet and then just to quietly tell everybody to do this seems like they wanted to sneak up on a problem.

0:53:40 - Jason Snell
Also also seems like they they had a red alert go off. Where they're like we're unsure about something, let's just lock all the accounts that might have been affected and make them reset, because something might have been in progress, something might have been, you know, I don't know again how it may not have been them.

0:53:56 - Alex Lindsay
It may have been like they see that this is being hit because these providers have now those, those emails are in the wind or something's in the something's been lost in the wind, you know, by another provider and we're simply going to close that down and they might have seen an uptick of usage of those emails and stuff like that. They're going to have all that data and just decided to close it all down.

0:54:18 - Jason Snell
Yeah, there's a lot of potential signals, right. There's signals of other accounts, there's signals of incursions into specific servers, maybe Certain kinds of accounts, we don't know. Like there's so many different things it could be, but I bet they have a security team and, again, I think this is the most reasonable scenario is, they have a security team, they flagged something and, because I think Apple does legitimately care a great deal about the security of their users, I think they did one of those preemptive let's just lock it because that will stop this from happening, whatever it is and that they're not disclosing, perhaps because they don't understand what went on or it's still ongoing. It is possible that they just had a screw up somewhere, but I feel like if they had had a screw up somewhere, they probably would have just said we apologize, we had a screw up and that's the silence, the longer the silence goes the more.

0:55:10 - Andy Ihnatko
I believe that this was a security thing that may be ongoing, in fact, Exactly, but that's very much like characteristic of Apple, Like the default position of Apple. Is that? Why would we tell you anything? Why would we explain ourselves? Yes, so I don't mean that in any way. I mean that just simply as the characteristic of the sync. So, as a result, like when they don't, when something like this happens and Apple doesn't make a comment, to me it almost doesn't seem particularly suspicious, as it would with another company that has a policy of saying hi, we are aware of the blah blah blah. We have not identified the source of the problem yet. We anticipate be fixed by blah blah blah. We will have here's a webpage that we've set up on a different server so that you could check for updates, Whereas, whereas with Apple it's like, yeah, we might, we might find out, we might never find out, but I don't what I don't anticipate is them apologizing yeah, so we knew this was going on.

0:56:02 - Leo Laporte
We've known it was going on for a few years. At&t, t-mobile, verizon, sprint all sharing your location data with strangers. The fcc has now fined each of them a combined total of 200 million dollars for illegally sharing customers location data, to quote aggregators, who then resold the access information to third party location-based service providers. It all we, it all came to a head, believe it or not, three years ago with joseph cox's article in the defunct now defunct motherboard, in which he said I gave a bounty hunter 300. Then he located our phone. Remember this? We talked about. It. Took the FCC three years to do, actually, more than that. This was January 2019. Five years.

0:57:10 - Andy Ihnatko
Actually it even goes a deputy sheriff, who then became sheriff of Missouri town, was filing false paperwork to get access to a police only location database and basically keeping tabs on his workers, on people in the state police, on friends, whatever, and he wound up spending like six months in jail and he wound up spending like six months in jail. This started off like a long series of investigations about. It's not illegal for AT&T at all to sell this information, but they are supposed to. The only responsible they have is to basically take responsible amount of care and making sure that whoever you sell it to or share it to protects it and keeps it safe. And the fine was based on you did not protect and keep that data safe, which is kind of chilling because you would like the problem to be hey, you're not supposed to sell this data to anybody under any circumstances or any time.

0:58:03 - Leo Laporte
The T-Mobile got the largest fine $80 million. Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile, gets a $12 million fine. At&t $57 million. Verizon $12 million fine AT&T $57 million. Verizon $47 million.

At&t's response is that's unfair, it's not boy, you guys suck. Alex Byers of the AT&T behemoth we call it the Death Star says the FCC's action lacks both the legal and factual merit. It unfairly holds us responsible for another company's violation of our contractual requirements to obtain consent, ignores the immediate steps we took to address the company's failures and, perversely, punishes us for supporting life-saving location services like emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC itself previously encouraged. So AT&T's position is look, we share it with people for emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance. It was their responsibility to tell AT&T customers. Oh, incidentally, we're going to sell that information on. Was it all to these kinds of reasonable people or was it just? I mean, I don't. I don't know if I believe AT&T. This is the same company who lost control of I don't know how many billions of records and has kind of consistently said well, it was somebody else's fault. Um, yeah, they like to blame other people.

0:59:32 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, we should. We should clarify this isn't about like your browsing history or anything like that. It's about the data that the company has to collect. Yeah, the, the company like your, your address, your billing information, your phone number, stuff like that.

0:59:45 - Leo Laporte
Uh oh, you're talking about the at&t breach. Yes, this is separate.

0:59:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, well, I'm talking about the penalties, I think.

0:59:54 - Leo Laporte
And the penalties are for location information.

0:59:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Right, exactly, which is again part of the package of information that these carriers have to keep in order to basically run the business and actually apply stuff. We're not talking about stuff like what a data broker would excuse me, what YouTube. Youtube does what when instagram does like tracking your interest and selling it on? Yeah, um, they call the the internet. I mean it really does show what a dog's dinner like american privacy laws are. I mean it's just non-existent. There's a matter of fact, just, yeah, matter of fact.

Just today on on gbh, on npr, I was talking about the new, uh national privacy law. That's mark two, second second swing that Congress put into draft legislation and they had their first committee meeting about it a couple weeks ago, and it would make these things kind of unambiguously wrong. At&t is saying hey look, we are not the ones who violated the terms of use of this data. It was this company we sold it to under the terms of this law said no, you are responsible. You're basically responsible down the line for what happens to the data that you collect, and it's, it's just astounding. And also you realize that we're only seeing this fine right now, because finally there's no longer a two to two deadlock along party lines in the FCC.

1:01:09 - Leo Laporte
That's what took so long yeah.

1:01:11 - Andy Ihnatko
The FCC decided on this fine, I think in 2000, 2001. 2020.

1:01:16 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly.

1:01:17 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's only like since October, when they finally when the Senate finally deigned to allow Biden's appointee to actually assume the role as commissioner. That's a good point. That way they can actually get things done.

1:01:28 - Leo Laporte
Shouldn't really blame the FCC for the five-year delay. They that was, they were, they were essentially blocked. Uh, from that I wouldn't be surprised if it was telecom lobbyists who said hey, you know, if you could just keep that deadlock going for another couple of years.

1:01:42 - Alex Lindsay
Well, and again, I think that this is what you know apple slowly tying a noose around it's. They don't have it all done yet, but you, you can see them slowly obscuring their user data away from everybody else because it protects.

1:01:53 - Leo Laporte
And again, there's a certain group of people that are buying Apple devices because it is yeah, but if you have an iPhone, you're probably using one of those three carriers and they have that information. Apple does not keep that location information from them.

1:02:07 - Alex Lindsay
They have that. They have what they.

What they have internally to them, I believe, is that your position from the cell site, the actual GPS them, I believe, is that your position from the cell site, the actual GPS data, I believe, is something that Apple has. It may not be obscuring it from them yet, but it could, and so the thing is that what they have is, and it's not that bad, but it's definitely not nearly as precise as the GPS data that the phone has, or the very precise data that your Wi-Fi gives, or the ultra precise data that your ultra wide band you know. So ultra wide band, for instance, which is not being used very heavily in something Apple has, is six to 10 inches, you know so. So it's, it's a very, very precise thing and, again, not used widely yet. But I think that it will be fairly restrictive of how Apple allows that to be used as they go forward. But what the cell companies are doing is triangulating your rough position plus or minus, usually hundreds of feet, maybe tens of feet, based on your signal strength to the towers.

1:03:08 - Leo Laporte
Okay, I'll take your word for it that that's not shared. I would bet it is shared. No, that can be.

1:03:15 - Alex Lindsay
They can't no, they, they, they have that data, the, the, the cell carriers have. There's no way to. That's what they have, what they get, um unrestricted when you call 9-1-1 they have no when you call 9-1-1 locations automatically because it's provided by the software, but it's not.

But AT&T doesn't have the gps data. What AT&T has is your varying uh strength to the cell tower, you know, and then the, the, the, the device that has gps. That gps is sitting there. That may be delivered to 911, it may be delivered to at&T, but what AT&T has, that it absolutely has all the time that it couldn't lose, is where you are in relationship to the cell towers, and now it obviously improves its service to have your GPS location. So it's being delivered back to it and that's why this is being problematic. I'm not saying that it's not being delivered to them right now. I'm saying that it could be cut off. It could be, it could be reduced or it could be basically hidden in a more, you know, like giving you, giving them less data, but right now it's most likely being delivered back to them as a service, as a service from the app Right.

1:04:30 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a little break. More to come with MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, glad we got you at the Boston Public Library.

You were on GBH this morning, that's why you're in Boston, yeah at the GBH studios, nice, and that's one of the things you talked about, which I like Privacy Yep, very timely. We also have Jason Snell, sixcolors.com and, from officehours.global, Alex Lindsay.

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All right I'm going to point my microphone now. I'm not going to show you what I'm doing, but tell me if you recognize this sound I that steve jobs business card, it's. Steve jobs business card no, it's my titanium apple card with no number on it, just my name and Goldman Sachs. You got one too. So apparently they wear out. Mine's not worn. Is yours worn out, john? Anybody's worn out.

Apple is replacing them, though I guess maybe this is just. They do this kind of thing on a regular basis with other credit cards Plastic, cheesy credit cards. I didn't realize this. I got an Apple card right away. I've had this now for six years, for since 2019, so they're starting to send out new cards and, uh, you may have received the email apple says.

The replacement card will be sent to your billing address on file will arrive within two weeks from that email. They they expire, I guess, july 2024. It's hard to know because the card has nothing on it, not a number, not an expiration date, just my name. I could accidentally hand this out as a business card, and that would be a bad thing. It says you can continue to use your titanium card until it expires or you activate the new one. You can still use the Apple card with Apple Pay and your virtual card number. See, I have yet to pull this card out ever. Um, and, by the way, remember they said don't put it in your wallet. It will stain it. It's been in my wallet for six years and it's completely beautiful.

1:08:03 - Alex Lindsay
Hard to believe it's been six years I know I don't.

1:08:05 - Leo Laporte
I find that stunning. Still feels like the new card. Yeah, yeah, signed up in 2019. It's five years, five years, right, I'm doing my math, right, five years, and I guess it had a five-year expiration date. I guess I don't know, but do I have to shred this Because I don't think I have the?

1:08:27 - Jason Snell
equipment. They may actually let you return it to them. They were recycling.

1:08:32 - Leo Laporte
You're right. Apple may also send a prepaid shipping label so you can mail it back for recycling. This is according to MacRumors.

1:08:42 - Andy Ihnatko
You think that maybe there's new technology in the new series cards, like there's something that makes it cheaper to operate for.

1:08:48 - Leo Laporte
Apple? Yeah, because I don't. Maybe the chip has an expiration built in. I mean, I, I guess maybe that's just a license maybe yeah, yeah, I don't know. Let me somebody's saying if I look at my wallet, I can see the expiration date.

1:09:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh my god, I'm not joking at all when I say that I can't wait for ifix or somebody else to do now that it's possible to have, like I don't know what the technology is, but side stand electrochromography or something where like, like how they did, like the virtual teardown of the vision pro, so to compare like what's inside the titanium wafer on the new card versus the old card, and can we figure something out because of that it is mine inspires, uh, july 2024.

1:09:28 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, it's expiring. I I had to look on my phone to find out. I wonder, though, if that's built in. I don't know. It feels like this is such a nice thing. John Ashley is saying come on, flick it. You can do that. Anyway, look for your email from Apple and then look for your card in the snail mail, probably not tied to the expiring Apple IDs. I doubt it. The EU has now said yes, ipad OS is also affected by the digital, by the what, what do they call it? The Digital Markets Act, the DMA, the what? Dm, what do they call it? The uh digital markets act, dma, uh, so you have to open ipad os to side loading within six months as well. So that'll be interesting kids only in the eu, obviously. Apple has six months to ensure full compliance of iPadOS with the DMA obligations.

1:10:31 - Jason Snell
Honestly.

I mean, I know iPadOS got separated from iOS, but they're basically the same operating system.

This is interesting in that what they're saying is look in terms of the business limits, they think it's already covered well over and that they expect that iOS or iPadOS will grow and reach the limit shortly. So they're just going to give Apple their six-month heads up. I imagine this will not be a lot of effort on Apple's part, because they are essentially the same operating system and they've done this work and in fact, I think it might actually improve the lives of iPad users and people in Apple's ecosystem, because right now in the EU they've got a phone that they can use all sorts of things on theoretically, and then they go to their iPad and none of that stuff is there. It's actually kind of like broken away from from the. The iPad has been broken away from the iPhone, so this will unify those platforms, I think, a little bit more, and that's probably actually a benefit for end users that that app that you got, if you did at an alternative marketplace, will also be on the iPad.

1:11:39 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, it's a good move for developers, too, who might consider putting their apps in third-party marketplaces too, because it would stink if you had an app that was multi-platform by design. But you can sell it as an iPhone app. You can't sell it as an iPad app. That doesn't make any sense.

1:11:57 - Leo Laporte
Epic Games has convinced the US District Court that Apple is not complying with the App Store victory the single, sole victory that Epic had in its lawsuit against Apple, which seemed to resolve last year but apparently no continues on. So now we get to talk about it for the next two to three years.

1:12:18 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, that's good we always need more material.

1:12:21 - Leo Laporte
This is about anti-steering compliance. So there, that is not a feature of the new Tesla full self-driving 4.0. It is actually uh, apple, has they say, has been uh not doing what they were supposed to do to. Uh, what is the anti-steering mandate? Allow epic games to say go to the epic website to buy fortnight goodies or something um, right, right it's.

1:12:51 - Jason Snell
It's saying there are other places where you can buy this. You don't have to buy it with an in-app purchase. And apple wanted to hide that behind uh scare quote. You know scare, scare dialogues.

1:13:01 - Leo Laporte
Or they wanted you to have a uh single link that could go in certain cases and epic is saying no, no, no, no, that's not what we agreed to there will be a hearing uh on wednesday, a week from tomorrow, uh in the us district court and uh, epic is asking for the court to hold apple in contempt, to force them to update their policies and to remove all of the new anti-steering provisions. So it's, you know, that's the court agreeing to hear it, not agreeing with epic yeah, and we're going to keep seeing this every few weeks.

1:13:35 - Andy Ihnatko
There was also, I think developers were also uh, developers of alternative browsers were also complaining about how, uh, yes, uh, apple's opened up to third party browsers. However, we want placement right in the setup to basically set this. We don't want. We don't want a situation where there's safari by default and then you have the setup to basically set the. We don't want. We don't want a situation where there's Safari by default and then you have the ability to switch to something else later on If you want. We want, like first party, equal people, parties, uh, sort of powers, uh, during the setup process. So everyone's going to have to, everyone's going to be complaining, saying we don't think that Apple or or YouTube, or anybody who falls under this act, we don't think they're complying in a way that they should be complying. We have complaints and please listen to us.

1:14:16 - Leo Laporte
If you're wondering what to do with that old iPad, you could send it to Ukraine for their war effort. Apparently, on these older fighter jets, the Ukraine Air Force is using iPads to control them. This is according to US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. Thank you, sir Dr William LaPlante. He says tablets like the iPad are being added to older jets to modernize weapons systems. You can still fly the plane. It's the weapons systems that are too modern.

1:14:47 - Alex Lindsay
The level of innovation that's going on in Ukraine right now is quite frightening no-transcript.

1:15:10 - Leo Laporte
You know why we like these little wars? Because it lets us test out all the new stuff.

1:15:14 - Alex Lindsay
Well, yes, but they're testing it out and they're not. You know they're again. You don't think we're helping them out. Survival mode, not in those things. Us Undersecretary the.

1:15:25 - Leo Laporte
US Undersecretary of Defense. For whatever and whatever might disagree. Here's the video of the Ukrainian Air Force SU-27 Flanker Wild Weasel conducting multiple low-level standoff strikes against Russian radars with US-supplied AGM-88 Harms. Problem is those AGM-88s are kind of modern, more modern than the, so he's got a light pad to control it.

1:15:46 - Alex Lindsay
Oh yeah, no, that's the case. I'm saying with the other stuff. What we prefer to do is give them technology, not have them develop technology that can propagate, so that's, you know, like hey, that's part of their negotiation is like, if you don't give us what we need, we'll just keep making it, and you know, of course, it'll be part of the world after that.

1:16:08 - Leo Laporte
I love it that OSINT has an Instagram Reels channel. What a world we live in, isn't it? It's kind of amazing, really amazing. This is the 831 Tactical Aviation Brigade. You can follow them If you speak Russian. You can follow them on Instagram. Wow, andy, did you want to say something? Or should I move on?

1:16:32 - Andy Ihnatko
I was just going to quickly say that I think the US military does not want Ukraine or any other company pursuing really cool, clever, inexpensive DIY solutions to problems. I think they want them basically get stuff from the United States so that we can basically pay all of our defense contractors to make really expensive things and new toys to send over there.

1:16:56 - Alex Lindsay
And I think it's less about us selling new things and more about if Ukraine comes up with a lot of great things, or a lot of good ideas that are, then there's going to be almost no control over how those go out, and so the thing is is that you end up with lots of small states having lots of things that are really complicated, and that innovation is something that Ukraine has proven, because they were already a technology hub when this all started to happen. Their ability to innovate has been. I don't think anybody's ever seen Any country with so little resources produce so much innovation in one you know, one war, you know, and I think that that's a you know but that innovation will go everywhere, like because what they're doing is very low, inexpensive. This is the thing.

1:17:42 - Leo Laporte
These are DJI drones and things.

1:17:43 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, when you think, about asymmetrical threads when you have these, when they're building up all these DIY things. These aren't $100,000 missiles that require you know a month to build. These are $6,000 drones that are delivering payload, and it's an entirely different. And that's a again. It may solve this problem, you know, but it's also going to be a huge problem. What's happening in Ukraine is, I mean, I know we're getting off past iPads, but it is very dangerous for the rest of the world of the innovation that's happening there, because we're not giving them enough support. They're figuring it out and as they figure it out, it's going to put everyone at risk.

1:18:23 - Leo Laporte
Basically, you're saying give them the expensive weapons so they don't come up with cheap superior cheap weapons.

1:18:33 - Alex Lindsay
Exactly Give them the expensive weapons so they don't come up with. Exactly give them expensive weapons.

1:18:34 - Jason Snell
Give them what they give them the weapons and the things that they're asking for, because their solution really puts all of us at danger later.

1:18:36 - Alex Lindsay
Like you know, like, yeah, you know, they, they, they'll figure, they are figuring it out and they will continue to figure it out. And what would you know? In our own best self-interest, we should be giving them pretty much everything that they need so that they don't have to do that.

1:18:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah uh, mercedes ben says uh, no, apple, you can't take over all the screens in a decoder interview, mercedes ceo hola calanios, explains why apple is not going to get that immersive version of carplay they showed off in mercedes. I'm gonna to bet that Mercedes is not alone in this, that most car makers are reluctant to let Apple take over the whole cockpit. But maybe I'm wrong.

1:19:17 - Jason Snell
No, this was always the knock from the beginning, I think, is that car makers want to have some control over the experience in their cars and that Apple saying well, what we would like to do is have your car become basically an extension of everybody's smartphones. People do love their smartphones. I think that the CarPlay has a place, but even when they announced this, I think a lot of people who know the car industry and I talked to some of them said this is an overreach, because a lot of these companies, just like Apple's overplaying its hand with CarPlay. People like CarPlay, but to like, I get it. You're Mercedes, you're selling your brand and your experience and then saying, well, once you get into the car with your phone, all the Mercedes stuff goes away and is replaced with Apple stuff. I can see why a car company would not want to go that far. Right, yeah.

1:20:06 - Alex Lindsay
And definitely one like Mercedes. I think that there's other ones, like Hyundai or other brands, that are trying to gather. You know another brand that is trying to bring people to it. You know, I think that there are Apple users that would pick that car over another car because they have the environment that they. You know the Apple user has the environment that they want, so I think there's a sell to there. But I don't know. Mercedes is the right brand that needs to, needs to have that sell, and I can definitely. I definitely agree with you that they're going to be more touchy about having that experience controlled by somebody else and there's also a point of pride.

1:20:37 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean designers. Apple would never sell. Hey, either buy a macbook air as is or we'll just sell you the screen and the cpu and the keyboard and you build your own case around it. We'll be happy with whatever design language you come up with. Like, no, the designers of cars. They don't just design like the bumpers and the headlights and the turn signals and the seats, they do also design the indicators and the dashboard and the user interface to be part of the same effort that goes into the rest of the car. So, yeah, why would they want to basically say that, Apple, you get to design the most savory part of the sensory experience when driving a car, the stuff that you touch, the stuff that you look at every single time?

1:21:22 - Alex Lindsay
And the real challenge is that the problem is Apple is generally better at it than they are. So you know, like, like most most, most interfaces for most cars are not is not nothing to write home about. I mean, I know, I know I apologize A lot of them put a lot of money into it, but you look at them and they're they always feel like they're a couple of generations behind what Apple and you know, even Google are doing. So. So I think that that's the challenge that they have is that you know to stay up to speed, and some of the best interface designers are at Apple and a lot of that stuff. You know, having the look and feel Again it's. Are you looking to have a differentiating factor over other cars with that interface? And if you're not, then it doesn't make sense. If you are, then it does. Collenius told.

1:22:02 - Leo Laporte
Neil A Patel they're not fundamentalists to say for some reason, we're not going to allow a customer to use apple carplay if that's what they choose to do. I don't know why. He sounds like verner herzog a fast verner. So we have apple carplay, we have android auto. If for some of the functions you feel more comfortable with that and we'll switch back and forth, be my guests, you can get that too.

But to give up the whole cockpit head unit in our case, a passenger screen and everything to someone else, the answer is no. You know, I uh I recently uh got a new uh all-electric. Uh bmw and I at first. One of the reasons I I I wasn't interested in tesla is because tesla doesn't do carplay or android auto. They have their own thing and I as good, and tesla's isn't bad, but I just wanted carplay. I love carplay. Uh, bmw supports carplay, but it's interesting because you don't they don't really want you to, and Tesla's isn't bad, but I just wanted CarPlay.

I love CarPlay. Bmw supports CarPlay, but it's interesting because they don't really want you to live in CarPlay. Carplay is almost a second screen. You can switch to CarPlay and you could keep that screen up all the time, but most of the time the way it's designed and they have their own nav, their own apps, they have an app screen and you're absolutely right, alex, even with all the money BMW has, it's not anywhere near it's four generations behind, even though it's a brand new vehicle. But so they kind of it feels almost grudgingly say well, we know you want CarPlay, we're not going to go full GM on you, we're going to let you use CarPlay. We're not going to go full GM on you, we're going to let you use CarPlay, but we're going to make it kind of be not the first thing you use all the time. They own the screen and I think most car manufacturers who can will do that.

1:23:40 - Alex Lindsay
And I think the hard part is that as soon as someone has CarPlay, as soon as an Apple user has CarPlay, they stop interacting with the car.

1:23:52 - Leo Laporte
I didn't actually. I stay in the bmw and what they have is a hybrid screen. So if I'm listening to an audio book, I can see that I can go to carplay. When a text comes in, carplay loads up and then it goes back. They have a hybrid screen and I actually I thought at first I would live in carplay and no, in fact I don't I go. I go back to the hybrid screen most of the time because there's some functionality, uh, in the, in the, in the BMW screen that isn't in the car. It knows more about the car, that's. The other thing is that Mercedes and BMW and these other companies don't want Apple to have all that information. They want to keep that.

1:24:20 - Alex Lindsay
I think and I wonder whether some of Apple's closing down their car program had to do with the fact that they weren't going to get any traction with the car companies while they're making their own car. And if they stop making their own car, then maybe Then they're not competition.

1:24:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, maybe my car, the BMW, runs. I believe it's. Android is the operating system, it's not some other real-time OS. It's like what does BlackBerry own? I forget. Qnx it's not QNX, it's yeah. Qnx it's not qnx, it's yeah uh, blackberry owns qnx. Um, and a lot of car manufacturers do that. Ford has its own, but a lot of people now are using android, which is interesting. So it's got an android back end with carplay running on top of it, with the bmw stuff on top of that uh, most of my experiences.

1:25:06 - Alex Lindsay
I have a, my, my wife's has, you know, car play and as soon as you go in it has, which I find to be actually more difficult for me to use with my phone than my high tech version in my Dodge Caravan, which is a eighth inch jack, yeah.

1:25:21 - Leo Laporte
Just plug it in and I can hear it.

1:25:23 - Alex Lindsay
I have a little adapter attached to my thing and I just have my phone there and I snap it on and I then I have an eighth inch jack and that's that's all I. That's how I interact with my own car, um, but when I get into other cars I get to play with, carplay with all you know general cars you get to play with. Like what does it do?

1:25:38 - Leo Laporte
and how does it? Work yeah uh, it's yeah, I have to say. When I rent a car, I always say, please give me one with carplay, because otherwise you're you're suffering. It is not a good experience.

1:25:49 - Alex Lindsay
I have to admit, because I'm so used to it, I take my little attachment and I just attach it to every like. I just have it on the outside of every car and I just go. I know that there's Nathan's Jack in here somewhere and all I want to do is listen to music, because I don't use it for phone calls, because I don't like the way people sound in their car and so I don't want to sound like that. So I use the headset so that it sounds so I sound cleaner. Yeah, so it's so. I'm always on a, on a the bone induction headset when I'm driving, so that I don't have to sound like I'm in a car.

1:26:17 - Leo Laporte
Did I miss anything you guys wanted to talk about before we go to the picks of the week? I'm being? I'm cognizant of your time limitation, Andy. Only put in enough quarters to use that room for another 20 minutes, right?

1:26:33 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm out at four, although I've been told that no one has booked the space yet. That was a couple hours ago. Okay, can I ask you some of that time to say that I was trying to figure out what it is. That's kind of distracting me. I have finally figured out. I look like a judge you do your Honor.

I am not a cat you do With the law books behind you. Yeah, your honor. I feel like I when I speak a little more authoritatively now when I say about can you make me a cat, and then it'll be perfect.

1:27:00 - Leo Laporte
It'd be a perfect simulation, uh uh. Well, your honor. Thank you, your honor, uh judge anako for honor. Thank you, your honor, uh judge Janako, for uh joining. Are you a judge or a justice, is it? I'm not sure.

1:27:15 - Andy Ihnatko
I'll allow it, but you're on tonight's counselor. You better be holding you better be holding hitting somewhere with this kind of questioning.

1:27:21 - Leo Laporte
You know, a thousand dollar fine for me actually would be a significant. It really would start to add up, you know? Uh, all right, let's take a little. Uh, jason, anything you want to mention? Uh, somebody put in joanna stern's hysterical article in the wall street journal, uh, in which she drops uh phones a samsung phone and an iphone from a drone a dji drone I note 300 feet in the air to test their durability.

Incidentally, now that they've done such a good job banning TikTok, congress is considering banning DJI. They're going to have the FCC, or they're proposing to tell the FCC don't let DJI to connect to the phone telecommunications networks in the United States, which would put them out of business in the US anyway because it's a Chinese company, in case you didn't know. So she says how did the iPhone survive falling out of the seven 37 max when it's fuselage ripped open? Well, I'd say I think anybody looking at this phone will will know it's the screen protector, right? That that really made the difference in the fall? I think it has. I'm going to guess it has something to do with terminal velocity. Am I wrong?

It can only go so fast right.

1:28:39 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, she did two or three different drop tests onto asphalt and onto grass of different heights, after determining, through consultations with experts, that 300 feet with terminal velocity was just as good as whatever the height of that airplane was, and I think it was a bit of fun. I think the only conclusion was that, yeah, it depends on whether it's in a case or not and it depends if it has the bad luck of landing on an edge. But the Samsung did break with one of the drops and I don't think any of the iPhones broke.

1:29:09 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, the Samsung did break with one of the drops and I don't think any of the iPhones broke. Yeah, I just want to point out that 10 years ago, lisa and I climbed to the roof of the old Brick House studio and dropped phones off of it. So look, we didn't have drones at the time. But this is I mean, we did that already, we've done it and I can't remember. We probably have video somewhere. If I could find it in our, maybe, patrick, can you find that in our archives. We, I think we were testing not the phone protection but the um, the otterbox case protection to see if it would survive the drop and as I remember it, I can't remember, I think I think they broke. It was cement. We were dropping them on cement from about I don't know, 30 feet up, wasn't that high? Wasn't 300? Uh, we'll take a break when we come back pics. Thank you, gentlemen.

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Pick of the week time. We'll start with alex lindsey this week. Alex, I have a new case.

1:32:21 - Alex Lindsay
You always have to have a new case. I got a new case a new case.

1:32:24 - Leo Laporte
What kind of case?

1:32:25 - Alex Lindsay
over at colleen henry's and she this was, like her, her favorite case. Now it's my favorite case.

So anyway so, um, so this is Alpaca Alpaca and this is a uh Elements Tech Brief Pro, and what I was looking for was something that was a briefcase, but briefcases that I had like. So, if I'm going to meetings and so on and so forth, and I want to have something that I can use as a backpack, I want to use it backpack, I want to use it. I want to have all the little pockets that I need, everything else, and I had some, but they were and they looked really nice and they were leather and everything else, but they didn't solve this problem, and so what I really wanted was something I could swap back and forth and so, um, and you know, colleen, kind of, uh, well, this is what I'm using, and so, anyway, uh, so, basically, you know, what's cool about it is you have these handles, but the handles will tuck in so you can have them disappear and turn it into either a shoulder cross capture or, on the back of it, you can open it up here and you can actually pull out shoulder pads or shoulder sleeves on both shoulders, which, if you have a lot of weight, you don't want to really put that weight over one side or another. So you can kind of decide I want to hold this like a briefcase, I want to put it over one shoulder other. So you can kind of decide I want to hold this like a briefcase, I want to put it over one shoulder, I want to put it over both shoulders. In addition to that, you've got a lot of, you know, options as far as there's lots of great big pockets. Those pockets will hold iPads as well as your 16 inch MacBook Pro or other things like that.

So if you're going down for something here, you can see kind of a lot, of a lot of pockets here. That that make it work and it's very well padded and sturdy. You've got a water resistant uh, uh, you can see kind of a water resistant um, uh, zipper, zipper technology as well. As on the back here it has the um you can slot the slide through for your carry-on so you can open it up there. And you know, I think a lot of things have each piece of these things, um, but having kind of a very durable one, that that looks nice, uh, at least now, until I use it a thousand times, um, and uh, you know, I, I was pretty, pretty excited about it. So, so, anyway, uh, and so it's a nice one.

As far as, again, this is my gonna be my new kind of this is, when I'm going somewhere, you know this is what I'm going to be taking with me on a on a day trip kind of thing, you know. So I needed something that wasn't quite so rugged as my backpack. You know that that I have a rush 24 that I've been using for, you know, 15 years, so, and it's still. It's still, but it looks a little. Looks a little like I'm camping when I go to a nice meeting.

1:34:50 - Leo Laporte
So so being able to have all this stuff yeah, this is a little dressier.

1:34:53 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah yeah, a little little dressier, but still has the things that I needed. The thing is, I had other dressier ones. They just didn't have all these features built into them. Yeah, so it's. You know, having things that will look nice when I show up at a meeting is useful. Since I'm doing a little bit more of that, I still try to avoid it as much as possible, but I still do it. So having something there is a big upgrade for me.

1:35:19 - Leo Laporte
From Alpaca with a K A-L-P-A-K-A gearcom, the Elements Tech Brief Pro $139. You reminded me. I've been meaning to tell people about my. This isn't going to replace your Elements Tech Brief Pro, but it's a really handy thing.

When we went down to Mexico I wanted to have something I could bring my stuff down to the beach and then keep it safe, lock it up. And Lisa, a few years ago I think it's maybe like almost 10 years ago for Christmas one year, gave me this the Loctote L-O-C-T-O-T-E anti-theft bag, and it is really fantastic. They make these bags out of basically metal lined. This is the one I have which is kind of can be a backpack. It's a beach bag really. Oh, I think we brought the site to its knees never. Never mind, I won't click around, oops, but I love it because, uh, you can. You can tie this on to something permanent, one hopes, although I was often doing it on a lounge chair. But I figure, if people are going to steal my stuff, I guess I'll have to steal the lounge chair with it. You can catch up to them if they're trying to yeah, it's a little easier to catch and it has a.

It has a padlock with a combination, so you don't have to bring a key with you or anything. This thing is incredible. The straps are steel reinforced the, the material is knife proof. Um, I have the kind of the, the the bag. I guess they call it uh, but I'm not. This isn't you're not going to bring this to your board meeting, but when you want to go to the beach or actually I use it.

I used to use it at CES to leave stuff in the media room I put all my stuff in it, cinch the bag up, wrap it around a table leg and lock it in, and it was very, it was really good. Well, I guess a table leg wouldn't be the best thing to lock it into the lock and leave system, and it's from Locktote and I've been meaning to tell you about this as I got back from Mexico, because I use this every single day. We went down to the beach every single day and I just really love it. L-o-c-t-o-t-e. They have a variety of different ones. I think I have the anti-theft sack is what I have and again, we've just well, maybe you know what it could be my ad blocking stuff too, which often blocks this kind of stuff. Maybe it's down, I don't know. L-o-c-t-o-t-e. Andy pick of the week.

1:37:45 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm going to go with the Christine Business Library Innovation Center here at the Boston Public Library. I've been coming to the BPL for years and years and years. I had no idea this place existed. It's like an entire floor of the library that's just set up for, as I say, media creators, innovators, job seekers, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, coders and makers, and so when I was supposed to be on the show last Thursday, trump as usual I always seem to get bumped whenever Trump is in some sort of illegal trouble, so I got bumped because of the Supreme Court stuff.

This is the first day where I could be rescheduled and it's like, oh God, I can't miss Mac break, I don't want to miss Mac break. Like, is there like a room I would love to like to do to be in the studio? Like, oh well, actually, you know, we'll get you, we'll get your space like in the business center and like business center, and it's a wonderful, wonderful space. So if you I did check and ask in anticipation of this pick of the week you do not have to have, like a Boston Public Library card in order to reserve one of these rooms here or use its resources. I think you do have to have one to use the website to make a booking. But and if you don't have access to the Boston public library, check your, check your local library or your closest city library just Christmas tree, the entire website just to see exactly what's available.

It's sometimes you're shocked to find out that, wow, you mean that that time that I could, I put myself through hell because I did not have a sawzall. I could have just gone to my local library two miles away, borrowed a sawzall and brought it back 48 hours later for nothing. Yeah, it's kind of amazing the stuff that's available at your library if you actually find out what's there.

1:39:23 - Leo Laporte
It's really true. We we should plug the library a lot more often. Libraries these days have become a great resource center. It's not just books anymore. Boston Public Library, bplorg Book your creator's room. You see, you don't need a WeWork, do you, Andy? And there's a lot of libraries. It comes with the room, which is great.

1:39:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Exactly. And again you get the dignity of Justice.

1:39:49 - Jason Snell
Andy, exactly, and again you get the dignity of justice.

1:39:53 - Andy Ihnatko
You can replay every CSI every like. Every evening proceeds procedural. I'm tired of the circus that you've been putting this court through for the past four weeks. We're going to close testimony in four days one, two, three, four days. I don't care what objections you have. Are you on with me on this? Okay, let's go back to the core.

1:40:14 - Leo Laporte
Your honor, I'm not a cat, Uh. So thank you Boston public library and thank you, Andy, for going the extra mile, uh, to both do a GBH and to be here for a back break quickly.

1:40:25 - Andy Ihnatko
I really appreciate it. Thanks for your patience. I'm sure that wasn't easy. I'm glad things worked out in the end.

1:40:30 - Leo Laporte
We're going to put you back on the train and have a safe trip home, jason Snell.

1:40:36 - Andy Ihnatko
I got closed up in case the entrepreneurs are waiting to use this room at work.

1:40:42 - Leo Laporte
It's time for the entrepreneurs to move in. Jason Snell SixColorscom, your pick of the week, my friend.

1:40:50 - Jason Snell
One more outburst and I'll clear this courtroom A real quick one. So Grammarly I am somebody who doesn't always have an editor and I'm posting things to the internet and it's really useful to have another set of eyes. So I, at the suggestion of my friend Glenn Fleshman, I signed up for Grammarly about a year ago.

1:41:07 - Leo Laporte
Longtime sponsor. By the way of the show we should mention Okay fair enough, I didn't get any of that money Anyway it's good, no, you did not.

1:41:16 - Jason Snell
I only look at it has a lot of like style suggestions that I'm not interested in. But I have it's got a little button called correctness or correction, where it's just things that are wrong, and the fact is, spellcheck doesn't find words that are other words but in context don't make sense. There's like commas, and occasionally it'll just take a sentence and say I need to fix this. And a couple of weeks ago I did a story, like I do a couple of times a year. I did one of these report cards on six colors, and this was for the IT and enterprise people. So it's like Mac support people. These people are incredibly smart and technical and not necessarily really great at writing, and they wrote 25,000 words in summation about how they feel about Apple and the enterprise and where they are and where they're going. And guess what? Grammarly saved my butt because Grammarly was able to very quickly go through there and get all the capitals and the commas and all of that working. So that's the service. It's really nice.

People might not know, though, you can do this in a web browser. They've got an iPad app, but on the Mac they've got a desktop app and it works with pretty much any app you want it to Like. I use BBEdit, which is not really a common writing app, but I use it. It works in there. It literally it underlines all the words. It uses accessibility settings on the Mac and I can click and I can say fix this, and it rewrites it all and it happens in BBEdit or your email client or your web browser or pretty much wherever you want to have text on the Mac. And that is a thing I did not know until about six months ago and I don't actually have it on most of the time. But when I get to that end point or I'm looking down the barrel of 25,000 words, that really needs a pass and I don't want to do it piece by piece. I can open Grammarly for Mac and my BBEdit window, or whatever window, ends up immediately getting processed and all that detail is in there. It's super convenient. So if you're, I mean you may, and my BBEdit window, or whatever window, ends up immediately getting processed and all that detail is in there. It's super convenient. So if you're, I mean you may have another selection.

There are lots of choices out there for things like grammar checkers. You could even use a chat bot, but I found that this is a really nice backstop because you know what happens. It looks perfect and then you post it to the internet. And the moment you post it to the internet you start to see the errors that are in it and you have to fix them. I'd prefer to minimize that process, so I run it through, uh grammarly first, and it's uh helpful. You'll find those those weird. It's the words. It's the words that are other words. That's not the word you mean. Oh, they're not typos, they're finkos. You gotta get them out of there.

1:43:47 - Leo Laporte
Grammarly we should also mention, besides being a sponsor, is proudly based in Ukraine. So you're supporting a Ukraine tech company which you know, of course, hard times right now, and they do use AI. I should also say that maybe you want to get your copy editors at Macworld to use it, because I don't think it's generative AI.

1:44:09 - Jason Snell
I just might run that through grammarly it's sure you know where all their typos are. All their typos are in captions and headlines that they had later because they don't run it through grammarly. Yeah, no, they don't. No, because it's in the cms at that point yeah, you could only insert that in the cms too late and that's where they all are, is the subheads.

I get these emails. They're like oh there's, the subhead is wrong. It's like okay, one, I didn't write it, my editor did. And two, they type that in a box in the that's. They do need it. They need it in their web browser yes, they do.

1:44:38 - Leo Laporte
You can't get grammarly uh in your browser, as a matter of fact you can.

1:44:42 - Jason Snell
There's a plugin.

1:44:42 - Leo Laporte
Yep, yep, not to give them a plug in the, but the plugin is a good plug yeah, I was already plugging.

1:44:48 - Jason Snell
Yeah, you were plugging Add to the plug.

1:44:50 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, jason Sixcolorscom. You see his writing everywhere in Macworld as well and of course, sixcolorscom slash Jason will show you all of the very many wonderful shows that he participates in and creates. We had Shelly on for you last week from the incomparable and she's. She's great uh and does some wonderful shows on your network as well. Any uh podcast you want to plug for this week?

1:45:20 - Jason Snell
I uh I'll point people with upgrade again. We always have a good time talking about tech topics. If you are not already full of apple related uh podcast material, uh, check it out. It's uh me and my curly, so it's. He's got a British accent and he talks about his, his uh account being locked and while he was hiking in the lake district amazing pretty fun.

1:45:39 - Leo Laporte
Gotta tell him to abandon basic.

1:45:41 - Jason Snell
However that was me, that was you go to 10. That was that was me and I said it wrong. I I was talking about line numbers and I I said 10 print, jason is cool. 20 print, go to 10.

1:45:53 - Leo Laporte
I thought, well, no, that's wrong, that'll just go to 10 well, print anything, it'll lock up and you'll never see it again. You'll never use your computer again. I love it, jason, always a pleasure. Thank you for being here. Thank you, alex lindsey. Office hours dot global. What's going on these days?

1:46:12 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so we were talking about Epic. The funny thing here we talk about how Epic shouldn't be. You know, whatever I talk about that On Office Hours, we all talk about Unreal all the time and how much we love it.

The amazing engine the game engine that Epic does, and so we talked a little bit about the Epic updates. They've got a new motion designer. That is amazing, and so we're gonna be covering more and more of that. We had a little introduction today. Tomorrow we actually have the senior marketing development manager from sure, laura Davidson, coming on to talk about Mike selection. So, like, how do you make those decisions?

Andy should be watching that one, I think, and and I'll be watching that one, I think and then we're talking about telling stories with editing and the process that we use in that on Thursday, and then also just talking about general cloud tech on Friday, which is, basically, what are we seeing on the horizon? What have we seen? We had Cultivate on yesterday. It's an ad agency, and so we've. You know, as usual, there's lots of different things to look at.

Also, I would highly recommend going back and looking at some of what we did at NAB. We think it was pretty groundbreaking in the way we covered it. There's a shelf on our YouTube channel, so if you go to youtubecom slash Office Hours Global, you'll see it there, and it was pretty exciting. We think that we're going to see a lot more of that, this kind of direct interview on site from a handheld is something new. That was extremely successful for us and you might want to see a little bit of it. Nice, first time we've ever seen it done when you talk to shore, get them to send andy.

1:47:36 - Leo Laporte
One of their motive mics, which works wonderfully on an ipad that's all I use on ios is the motiv mics.

1:47:41 - Alex Lindsay
They're designed for ios, and we've used the mb7 with the ipad successfully as well. It just jumps right on it, so right on it, so there's a lot of good ones.

1:47:50 - Leo Laporte
We use a lot of shirts. I'll send Andy a mic that'll work on his iPad.

1:47:56 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, we've used the MV7 often with iPads.

1:48:01 - Leo Laporte
They call it a podcast microphone. It's got USB on it. Do you use the 7 or the 7 Plus?

1:48:07 - Alex Lindsay
7 Plus is brand new, so we haven't used it yet. We are definitely taking a look at it, but that's a brand new product that I believe they just released at NAB and I think it's got a little more game to it and a couple other things and so. But we right now I've got a bunch of MV7s. We send those out to most of our guests when we have them on, just because they're relatively simple, they're USB or XLR and they're easy to. They're relatively easy to set up for somebody and the off-axis rejection, of course, is great.

1:48:35 - Leo Laporte
Because they're large coil dynamic mics like we use with the ILPR40. Alex Lindsay, andy Anaco, jason Snell you guys, it's great to have you. You know what's even better to have All of our fabulous Club TWiT members who make this show possible, who are keeping the network on the air. If you're not yet a member of Club TWiT, I just want to extend a personal invitation. It's not for you know, it's not, don't? Sometimes people say, oh, I don't want to pay $7 for podcasts. You're not. You're paying $7 to join the most amazing community in the world, the Club TWiT community. They're fantastic in the world. The Club TWiT community. They're fantastic. We've got the Discord, we've got the shows. Of course, we've got additional programming we don't put out anywhere else. They are awesome. So if you're not yet a member, seven bucks a month's not much to ask. It really does help us on our bottom line. Plus, you get ad-free versions of all the stuff we do and video for everything. twit.tv/clubtwit. We thank you for your support.

We do Mac break weekly every Tuesday, 11 am to 2 pm Pacific, or actually it's supposed to be 11 to 1. It was today 11 to 1 Pacific. That would be, let's see, two to four East Coast time, it'd be 1800 UTC. I mention that because we do stream it live on YouTube, youtube.com/twit, but for most people the easiest way to consume our shows is to download them, whether you go to the website twit.tv/mbw, that's where the show notes are as well. On YouTube there's a dedicated video channel for MacBreak Weekly. You know, the New York Times says video podcasting is the next big thing. That's really good to know we're. You know, we'll have to start to think about that. You can also get audio or video by subscribing and that way you get it automatically. Use your favorite podcast client and point it to MacBreak Weekly. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time. But now I have to say it's my sad duty to tell you get back to work because break time is over. We'll see you next time, bye-bye.