MacBreak Weekly 954 Transcript

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

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for MacBreak Weekly, reassembled for 2025. Andy, alex and Jason are all here. We're going to celebrate a very important birthday for Mac users. We'll talk about Apple's $95 million fine, they agreed to nothing, admit nothing and a couple of new Vision Pro ideas. All that coming up and a whole lot more. Next on MacBreak Weekly Vision Pro ideas. All that coming up and a whole lot more. Next on MacBreak Weekly Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is MacBreak Weekly episode 954, recorded Tuesday, january 7th 2025. Lickable interface. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news with Mr Jason Snell of sixcolorscom Hello. Occasionally, you'll see his stories at MacWorld and elsewhere.

01:00 - Jason Snell (Host)
Happy New Year to you Leo to everybody, happy New Year to you and your and your brain and your many visits to this year to a Sky Harbor Airport.

01:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, so many flights. It's great to have you at home today. I hope you had a wonderful holiday. Uh, also you, uh, mr Andy nako. You're celebrating the? Uh, except it's called little christmas. Is this little boxing day?

01:31 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
there should be. I didn't I.

01:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I use, I use the, I use little christmas as an excuse to like have a nice dinner, but actually now I have an excuse to do some shopping excellent thank you very much, andy, and I go from wg bh in boston, who celebrates christmas twice, and from officehoursglobal, mr Alex Lindsay. Happy New Year, alex, hello, hello, good to be here. 2025,. Welcome to the Gulf of America.

01:57 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It does feel like a yawning Gulf, doesn't it?

02:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, we're all in it. The Maw of America, that would be even better. Let's see so. 1821, right, I feel like I got an announcement, is that?

02:14 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
not true, yeah, but when I see point something, point something, I figure, okay, whatever it is that they didn't have time to fix for 18.2,. They finally said, yeah, that's enough of a bug to fix it in 0.2, not enough of a bug to like fix it at the time. So, yeah, I didn't really pay attention to it I didn't pay any attention to it.

02:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There it is. We got it right there.

02:35 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I was distracted there was figgy putting everywhere, everywhere you know that stuff goes bad, like, and you can't freeze it.

02:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's like you know so this update provides important bug fixes and is recommended for all users and is half a gigabyte. When? When are the days? What are the days end where? Where we would like pay attention to the size of files and like the internet.

02:58 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
You think that the size of it has to do with Apple intelligence, that from now on there just aren't going to be any compact updates because they got to show a new on device model to you, like if they have to fix anything.

03:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that makes sense. In fact, we did learn that the Apple intelligence is doubled in size.

03:13 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, 9595. Max said something about how they it's three, it's six, seven gigabytes for 18.2 versus four gigabytes for 18.1. So that's how much Apple intelligence is going to cost you for storage. That's how much more intelligent.

03:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is well we're. I'm doing the update now. I guess it's for iOS and iPad OS. Do we know anything? Presumably there's some security stuff. Apple's never very uh open about what kinds of security patches they're providing. Right, because they don't want to give the bad guys any hints well, no, don't they usually do.

03:49 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
There's a isn't there a page?

03:51 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
that basically says here's what this, here's what the security update entails.

03:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like they don't really say until later, like I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Let me look and see what the security update this update provides important bug fixes and recommended for all users.

04:05 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
That's the entire, that's it.

04:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the one I'm talking about yeah, okay, you might have a problem? Uh, 18.2.1 ios. Uh an ipad? Uh yeah, it doesn't this. There's no cv yet published.

04:20 - Jason Snell (Host)
Cve yeah that's at least yet. Yeah, clearly, when they say you should update it, that means there's something there that's, I guess what I'm getting to is.

04:28 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
This is for security as well, whether they say it or not this is and, just as a rule, there's never a reason not to download a point, something, point something, update, because the the main, the integer updates are always huge, disruptive changes, even if everything works properly. The point something changes can inflict new problems that you won't, you aren't prepared to deal with, but the point something, point something is always okay. We find we caught a, we we fixed something minor that we didn't have time to do like three months ago, and so now here it is what say you to that, alex lindsay?

04:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know you have a rule about point, updates, I update.

05:02 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I'm pretty aggressive about my uh, my mobiles probably too aggressive should be, um, you know, but I'm pretty so my mobile, my ipads, I just I'm on the beta, I just upgrade whatever it says. Upgrade, um, on my, on a handful of my computers, on my mac minis, um, I'm usually upgrading to the newest released schedule. Uh, so not not betas, but but I'm doing those. And then for my main computer, I'm still, I'm usually a year behind, you know so, and that has to do. It has less to do with Apple. I mean, it has something to do with Apple, but it also has to do with I use a lot of software that takes a long time to update.

05:37
So things like Dante, audinate's Dante is a good example of something that is not still, it just just might be just starting to work right now. So so you know cause they're, and especially when you're dealing with loopback or you're doing with anything that's digging deep into the OS, um, there's more for them to update and it and takes them a little longer once they have it there and once people are using it. So I let, uh, you know, I, I stay back on my main, my main production computer for typically a year. Um, you know I stay back on my main production computer for typically a year. You know I might start thinking about it February, march. But the other ones I'm pretty aggressive about because I feel like I need to know what's going on. And there's all this good stuff, there's all this candy that's laying around and I want some of the candy too.

06:15
Not in this case, I think it's but point ones, I'm not too afraid. This one does not have any new features, so that's probably why it is a bug fix, right, yeah, but I think, as a bug fix, the point ones I think are oftentimes the most stable updates, because all they're doing is doing house cleaning, not doing any kind of adding features.

06:35 - Jason Snell (Host)
Not anymore, though. Now they're plowing in new features and Apple intelligence and all sorts of stuff like that Again for my mobile devices.

06:42 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I'm pretty like, yeah, whatever, let's just keep going. I think stuff like that Again, like for my mobile devices, I'm pretty like, yeah, whatever, let's just keep going. And with my again, with my Mac Studio is the one that stays way behind, so that I can always have something to go back to and get stuff done.

06:53 - Jason Snell (Host)
There are some 18.3 betas that are cycling through. There were new ones that dropped earlier today. Those are so far quiet. I don't know whether that's just going to be a quiet cycle or whether there's going to be another beta that gets released that adds features in that aren't in there. But it sounds like maybe 18.3 is being worked on quietly and then there'll be an 18.4 that will be out later. That will be the one that has those kind of last remaining apple intelligence features. It's kind of unclear right now, but they're still working in the background so the general, our general advice is update.

07:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You should update. It's good. Good update. No, no noticeable problems. This, by the way, yesterday was that I didn't note this, but I will note it now. The 20 I didn't like note it yesterday, like have a party or anything, but it's the 25th anniversary of os 10.

07:40 - Jason Snell (Host)
yeah, I mean, or at least um the. It's the 2000 macworld expo where Steve Jobs unveiled the Aqua interface and showed off what we really think of. I mean, I watched the whole video. I wrote a piece about it at Macworld. Actually, technically, I wrote a piece about it at Macworld in the year 2000. And that's, but that's so good.

07:58
You can read that later, and I found the files on my in an archive on my server and I still have the Word files that I wrote. It turns out I wrote that whole story that day, like I went back to the office. I've still got the timestamps on it from that day, january 2000. And anyway, I wrote a new story on Macworld about it on Sunday and it's quite a trip to watch that event because I mean, there are so many anniversaries of OS X because there's like when 10.0 shipped and when the public beta shipped and when they brought Steve on stage in 1997 and when they brought him back in 1998 and he was there talking about the transition.

08:32
But like, for me this is the big one because so much of what he's demoing first off, people are reacting to it like they've never seen anything like it and yet from the perspective of 25 years later, it all seems totally normal. And that's the thing is. At the time it did kind of blow you away as a Mac user because it was a completely new interface. But all that stuff I mean. Keep in mind the Mac was only 16 years old at that point and Steve Jobs even undersold it and said you know, this will be the foundation of what we do for the next decade. And it's like, well, okay, a quarter of a century later, you know this will be the foundation of what we do for the next decade and it's like, well, okay, a quarter of a century later, still so much of what he showed is just what the Mac is now. It really was a remarkable moment. So if you need to celebrate a single kind of birthday for OS X, I think this is it. I think this is the one.

09:18 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, and 100% the significance of OS X. Remember that OS X was, from the very, very get-go, designed to be the foundation of everything Apple does in the future. So when it became time to do a phone interface, there's OS X, and now we've turned that into iPhone OS. When an iPad became a version of OS X, that was an iPad OS. Everything is now built on OS X. That was an iPad OS. Everything is now built on OS X. And also, from the very, very get-go, it was designed to be CPU non-specific, so that if at any point they wanted to make a change to what CPU they were using, they wouldn't have to undo everything in order to do it. And also make sure that we all remember those of us who were there for the 90s.

10:03
Man, uh, mac, mac OS was in a really sad state. People were switching lifelong, like Mac lovers were switching to Windows, because it was simply more stable. It would if, if something it had the ability to like let a piece of code crash without taking the entire platform down with it, and so many even not only that, but the creature comforts of life, prettiness, things like that. It was so stagnant that we felt as though, thank goodness we don't have to leave the Mac. Apple realizes they have a problem here. They're not going to try to just keep polishing the same incandescent light bulb. We're going into the led.

10:42 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
And the problem we were, we were polishing 80 light bulbs. I mean I I remember trying to buy my parents a computer and I, you know, had got an Apple two E when I was 12 and have Apple computers all the way up into it and it's 1996 or 1997. And I'm trying to buy my parents a computer and I couldn't figure out which one to buy because they were all so, there were so many and they were all so close together, like do I need the TV option or do I need the CD? You know, like there was so many versions of it and I just was so frustrated that I ended up not getting them one. I got something else for them or something Like I'm not, like I just it was, like it was a disaster.

11:17
I mean, you know it just and it was. And I think most companies have fallen into this thing where they try to compete with Microsoft head-to-head, like we're going to do everything that Microsoft does and Microsoft's a different beast, like it's got its own ecosystem. And you know, learning, you know trying to do what Microsoft does is usually a recipe for disaster. And Apple went down, was one of the first ones to really go down that path.

11:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It all turned around when they brought Steve Jobs back, and along with steve jobs they brought the next stop.

11:46 - Jason Snell (Host)
well, that's the thing is, jobs came back because they needed an operating system right and they had tried multiple times to do that in those 16 years. They had tried talgent copeland. They had tried copeland something. Oh, what ended up shipping? This os8 was really just a cleanup of system 7 and the classic macOS, and then you had BOS building. Yeah, they wanted to sell BOS to Apple and Apple didn't want to buy it.

12:10
Guess they tried that. And the thing is classic macOS, as much as it was loved, I mean, it was a product of that late 70s, early 80s, early days of personal computers, and it was not a modern operating system in any sense of the word. And so they were desperate to do something. Next step ended up being the answer. And then Steve came along with a ride. Pretty good, throw in, if you ask me. And yeah, Andy's absolutely right.

12:37
By the way, in that era I was working at Mac User Magazine in those mid to late 90s and I remember I have these visceral memories of re, of rebooting force, rebooting my Mac multiple times a day because it would crash to a dead stop, and and that was because there was no protected memory. The multitasking wasn't really real. And that's part of what's in this jobs presentation. It's like there's a moment where he's playing a video and he drops the a menu bar down and the video keeps playing and people lose their minds and you're like, as a modern person, you're like why? But like back then, if you drop that menu bar, the whole Mac stopped to drop a menu item, because it couldn't multitask.

13:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was doing the radio show at the time and I was very critical of Apple because System 7 and OS 9, which is the current operating system at this time had terrible memory management. Yeah, and that's what you're talking about, because because it couldn't.

13:24 - Jason Snell (Host)
It couldn't it didn't have modern memory management do anything a modern computer could do.

13:28
One bad app took down the whole system. In fact, jobs demos it. He has an app called the bomb that he runs in this 2000 demo and he says this does everything, it writes to memory everywhere it can and he's playing a video it's actually the mission impossible 2 trailer, because tom cruise is immortal and uh, he, he runs the bomb app and the video just keeps playing in the background and again people lose their minds. But like as a Mac user, like something like that just takes down the system and you got to reboot and they couldn't do it. And so the other thing about this that's really interesting is he's trying to sell. I mean, jobs, what a salesman, right? He's trying to sell OS X to Mac users here, and the thing about it is it's important that he does this because, to Andy's point, especially Windows in this era, the era of the wind in the sails from Windows 95, like already everybody, especially like the design pros, everybody's like go to Windows NT, go to Windows, drop the Mac Apple. Steve Jobs can't just sell this thing as hey, we built you a brand new operating system for you to switch to, because if they do that, everybody who's got a brain in their head is going to look at it and say, well, if I'm gonna have to adapt to a brand new operating system, that is nothing like what I've used before, I'll just go to windows. Like the only thing holding people on the mac was familiarity with the Mac. So all these Next Step engineers come in and there is huge friction between the Next people and the Apple people. But they've got like the Next has the code base. If they implement Next features they don't have to rewrite the code. But then it doesn't look like the Mac because Next Step is very weird and not very Mac-like. But if they don't make it Mac-like enough to satisfy Mac users, they'll just switch to Windows. So it was really an existential moment for Apple to get OS X right. And keep in mind they bought Next in 97.

15:16
This is 2000 where they announced what they were going to do in terms of the interface and they said they'd ship it that summer. They didn't ship it that summer, they shipped a public beta. They shipped it the next summer. So we're talking like a four plus year period just to get to 10.0 shipping. It took them a long time. But what is brilliant about it is what they shipped. It took a while. 0.0 wasn't very good. 0.1 was a lot better. They had to optimize for speed. 0.0 was really slow, but they did indeed build the foundation for Apple's future, not just for a decade, not just for the Mac, but for all these other interfaces, and for a quarter century and counting. It's really quite remarkable. It's a very hard problem to solve and they did end up getting there.

16:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And not only did they solve it, they sold it, and I think we just have to keep on coming back to how good Steve Jobs was at selling things. Was this his best example of it was an early example, but one of his better examples of Steve Jobs, the pitchman, the seller, I think.

16:18 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
So I mean, I think that his pinnacle was definitely. This is the one where he said one of the design goals, but this is you quote this in macworld's uh, your macworld piece.

16:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One of the design goals steve said was when you saw it you wanted to lick it.

16:30 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yep, very famous right and then how long did we deal with all that aqua? How many buttons did we have to create? I had I had. I have finally created a set of actions in photoshop that would create the aqua button, so you could just select it and hit a button and you hit go and it would just go and turn it into an Aqua button, because it was. That was. That's how you look modern, and there was some point that it all was not modern anymore like you know, like remember, remember for like a hot minute there.

16:54 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
They said, hey, we thought that the Apple menu would look good in the middle of this menu bar and set it to the side sorry, sorry, logo.

17:01 - Jason Snell (Host)
And then, yeah, that was one of those public beta things where people were like no, you need an apple menu and they and they retasked the apple.

17:07 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It really wasn't until 10.4, until it was a finished, like usable, operating system. It was like they made lots of progress and I think, but there was a while before. Okay, will it print? Yes, will. I will have file compatibility yes, will all the multitasking work? Yes, all this sort of stuff that we were waiting to, actually, and the thing is, steve jobs and created a picture of an apple that finally had stuff together and that if they said that this is, we have a plan and we have a plan to execute that plan, you might even start to believe them.

17:34
I mean, this was before, before, uh, os 10. This was when they were trying to develop rhapsody, when they're trying to develop, like symphony, copeland, all this sort of stuff. This was still. This was the time where I was still getting emails that were intended for worldwide Apple executives at the VP level, and so I was hearing about lots of backbiting, about lots of stuff, of wasted effort. Oh well, the print, the print system kind of works, but we decided to toss everything and put this under a new manager for organizational reasons, and that as much as anything else. I mean you could write an entire book just about all the things that Apple needed to do, and successfully did to, to convince each other that they had their act together finally, and to actually become the, the seeds of the company that, the that they would once become well, and I think part of it, james.

18:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thompson talks about uh watching this because of course, he's very well known as the author of peacock and drag thing but uh, before there was drag thing he wrote the doc for this and he talks about his experience of watching. This is the original doc, which was hideous with Square it's he talks about watching uh Steve hoping it didn't crash uh from his uh home in ireland. Uh, it's a really good piece. By the way, if you haven't read it for his from his three uh, he's given letter acronym.

18:50 - Jason Snell (Host)
he's given a bunch of presentations about this but he's never put it down in words. And I was writing my story for mackerell and I said I sent him a uh, an I message and I basically said is that like, is there a preferred link where you tell this story? And he's like you know? You know, I don't think there is. I think there's just various presentations I've given over time. So he wrote this up because of you and so he wrote that story so I could have something to link to. And it's great. And it's got that classic moment, because the thing is Steve really wanted everybody in Cupertino.

19:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the classic moment is somebody offhandedly mentions that they'll get their developer who's working on the dock in from Ireland and Steve was like okay, and then goes to another room and finds the manager in charge of James and basically says it has come to my attention that the engineer working on the dock is in effing.

19:34 - Jason Snell (Host)
Ireland, yeah. And so he was given an ultimatum that he had to move to Cupertino or he had to quit. And what? Instead he refused to move to Cupertino. So what they did is they like gave him an office and they had him fly in and they've like hit him for quite a while and then finally he was found out and he was, and he just said I'm, I'm not going to move to California. So, uh, he, that was it. Um, and he went back to doing drag thing. Uh, and they threw out his doc. They they actually rewrote the next person on the project, rewrote that doc again.

20:04
Also, that doc demo is weird. There are things in that demo that are very strange. They're like the one, the single window mode, that you clicked on another button that was on the right side of the title bar. They got rid of that. The Apple menu in the center was very weird. And the doc. At that point there's actually a doc folder in your user folder so you could drag a file file from the desktop and steve does in the demo onto the dock and the file disappears from the desktop and as a modern mac user you're like what wait, what, where'd?

20:27
it go and then he takes the file off the dock and drags it back to the desktop and then and it goes out of the dock onto the desktop. You're like what? Wait, huh how because it means that completely later on that metaphor, because it used to be you could literally just save a file into the dock folder and it would just show up on the doc.

20:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, by the way, that's how microsoft did it, and so that's naturally the way that they would attempt it. Yeah, because it's easy to configure then, but much easier just to drag it to the doc. Pretty incredible yeah, yeah.

20:55 - Jason Snell (Host)
So it's a big it's. I mean it's a long thing, but even if you just watch the part where steven throws it it is it.

21:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is where people go crazy so much.

21:04 - Jason Snell (Host)
Of it is, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the genie effect which was definitely a steve.

21:09
Tom cruise jumps out of the dock, uh, in a which you know, but it doesn't play in the dock and steve actually says we're gonna make it so you can actually see the video playing in the dock, but it doesn't actually do it during the demo and they did get there with that. And there are a bunch of things that clearly are just for steve right, like the finder he talks about. The finder and finder is very different uh, it's more like a browser than it was in the original where there's sort of that was the next step.

21:34 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Uh finder exactly next, I love the browser but they did the, they added.

21:38 - Jason Snell (Host)
So what they added was they added they had icon support and list support, which were the things that mac users were used to. And then they and Steve you can hear it in his voice he's like and then you've got this really cool column view and it's like well, yeah, that's the next view, that's Steve's favorite view.

21:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

21:51 - Jason Snell (Host)
And he's really into that. Just like he introduces mail, apple mail also. 25 years ago that it was introduced and that was because Steve's favorite email program was on Next Step went back to apple and he was using the mac. He was really mad because he didn't like the email programs on the mac and he got them to start moving next step mail over. And so he's. You know it's steve jobs. If you hate apple mail or love it, you know. Either way, blame steve jobs because that was that. That was next mail and that's what he wanted, and so he got it and you can see he demos that too and you can see his delight in it because he loved that app. So there's certain things that steve clearly made happen because he liked him so much yeah, yeah, I mean, he does this genie effect.

22:29
Genie effects, so many, they wire in the slow motion of it so that he could hold down. You could hold down a couple of keyboard commands and do the slow-mo, that's right and he just kept doing it. Oh my god. It is showing off that they're using a much more advanced graphics imaging system that's based on pdf, just like how next was on display post look how happy he is.

22:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But he yeah it is.

22:50 - Jason Snell (Host)
I mean it's literally. It is kind of a master class too, because it's just a dude at a keyboard and a mouse, like there's not a lot to it. He's just a guy using his computer on stage.

23:00 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
He does a pretty good job doing things that other app, other computers couldn't do, you know, and it wasn't like you know, and suddenly it was like, well, it doesn't do that. And and I think that one thing that apple's good at and I think steve was exceptionally good at it's picking out things that don't they're not functional but they give you like a little like oh, that's cool, like that surprise and delight. You know, um, and that surprise and delight, it's pretty important doing something. Well, it. I think it's actually one of the most important things, because what happens is people make that's what sticks with you yeah, what people?

23:31
people make decisions subconsciously about products and that's the most dangerous place for them to make those decisions if they make a decision, because when they do it consciously, you can argue with them and persuade them that to go some other direction, but when they subconsciously decide it's cooler, or that it's a little sleeker or whatever.

23:50
When you talk to big companies, they talk about this.

23:52
All the design teams like they're thinking about things, like about that kind of thing all the time of how you know if something looks just a little bit more refined or just a little bit cooler not crazy, but just a little bit more refined, or just a little bit cooler, not crazy, but just a little bit more people like and that gets into the, the, the, the, uh, the radiuses of the corners, the, the, how it feels in your hand, all this stuff.

24:13
And I think that the companies that have done really well have paid a lot of attention to those things. And I think a lot of times, you know, uh, when people don't pay attention to those things, they pay a price because people make that subconscious decision. There's nowhere to get to it. That's like in the bios, Like you can't get. You can't get to that decision and change it because they don't even see it. They don't see that they've made that decision and I think that this kind of there's so many things that Apple does that are in that little world, that that are subconscious things people make decisions about.

24:43 - Jason Snell (Host)
Things that seem trivial now and may have even seemed trivial then, that are still really important. I mean, you're absolutely right, alex, there's a subconscious level going on here and to again beloved, hallowed, venerated, classic Mac OS. But here's the thing about classic Mac OS it was a black and white operating system designed in the early 80s and although, yeah, system 7 and 8 had color and graphite interface and all these things and white operating system designed in the early 80s and although, yeah, system seven, eight add color and graphite interface and all these things, that the bottom line was it was a black and white interface and that color was sort of like stuck onto it to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got color, but even then, like, yeah, sure, you can have a colorful backdrop, but like, everything was still really monochrome with little tiny highlights. And so one of the messages he's sending with Aqua and a lickable interface and taking the graphics and maximizing them and minimizing them and doing all these things, he's showing you cool special effects that you could call. You could probably just wave your hands at it and say it's just sort of trendy graphic junk and it's meaningless and it's just empty calories, but it serves the larger purpose of, like the Mac being the weak sister of computer operating systems in terms of graphics, ironically, as a graphics powerhouse and Photoshop and all that, but the OS itself being kind of this pale thing from the early eighties, that Steve making it very clear that that that era of of the Mac being a kind of colorless computer is gone because of the, the graphics power that this thing had.

26:08
Now, ironically, all that graphics overhead meant that it was super slow until point one or point two. Yeah, they got there like the hardware advanced and the software got tuned. But uh, he was sending that message right up front that, like, this was not the old mac interface with its kind of black and white things everywhere. This was just, you know everything, even the, even the buttons were animated, rendered blue, glossy, lickable things Right, Like that was that was. It was on one level, yes, sort of silly. On another level, super important to send that message.

26:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to speak for the geeks here and say that none of that mattered at all.

26:48 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
The real reason this is still an operating system 25 years later is based on unix darwin and the darwin kernel, yeah, yeah and it was based on the mock kernel and had a real largest install on unix in the world oh yeah, and, by the way, invented in 1970 is also still in widespread use.

27:06 - Jason Snell (Host)
We got to do all these articles at Macworld. In that era where we started to, I basically hired one of my friends from college who was a Unix guy and said write articles about how to use the command line, because no Mac user knows how to do it. And I found it funny because I learned how to use the command line in college too. And suddenly OS X comes out and I think to myself wait a second, I learned how to use the command line in college too, and suddenly OS X comes out and I think to myself wait a second, I know how to use VI. Right, it's like, why are all these skills I learned in 1990 suddenly relevant again? But it was actually a huge boon to Mac users to get access to that command line for the first time.

27:39
Because before that there was like Mac's bug and stuff, but really there was no proper command line like you could get uh on unix and then we got it.

27:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
To me it's more. It is that, of course and I use the command line more than anything else on the mac and emacs but it's really the idea of you changed from what people thought. Not you know, kind of the people at bell labs looked down on them, but people at at companies like microsoft and apple thought, yeah, this would be a good idea for an operating system, to a real operating system, an operating system that was robust, that had memory management, that was scalable, that would get better and better with age instead of break down with age, and that was really the right choice.

28:18 - Jason Snell (Host)
It was very lucky they did that early days I don't think the software story gets enough credit. There were and Jobs talks about this in the presentation right, there were Cocoa apps, which is basically their next step apps, and there were some of those. The Omni group had those and Stone Design had some and Apple brought some over from Next as well. That was what going forward was the native Mac app Cocoa app experience, and they built Carbon, which was this API. That was basically the Mac compatibility layer that let you spend a little bit he says like three months or whatever to convert your app so it runs natively on OS X using the Carbon APIs from classic Mac OS, and that's what the bulk of the apps were, but it took time for them to come over.

29:00
What I don't think gets enough credit is that there was also an influx of software that was basically never intended to be on the Mac and was never built for the Mac. It was Unix stuff, it was X Windows stuff and they did. Over those first few years you kept seeing all these apps that looked terrible but they were very powerful and the reason was that Unix underpinning meant that they could bring it over and that was in the early days of the Mac. Some of the most mind-blowing apps that came out were actually these ugly things that were brilliant and powerful, and they had never even considered running them on an.

29:41
Apple platform and they would put GUIs on them and there was a whole class of apps. There are still a few around Caliber. The, the ebook app, is a good example of this where it's really not a good interface on top of it, but it is a cross-platform app that would never have existed.

29:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Handbrake is is really ffm peg with a nice ui.

29:58 - Jason Snell (Host)
Yeah, there's actually quite a few of these yeah, but in the early days there, yeah, and the uis were really bad in the early days. But getting that influx of this stuff where, like literally how many people? I knew a lot of people who were basically unix nerds and they all started buying max because they could get a nice ui when they wanted it and then you get a command line when they needed it, yeah, and that was super powerful. So it was incredibly, incredibly good decision to have Unix underneath and then, of course, that meant that that's the layer that was the most easily transportable to the iPhone, the iPad, etc.

30:34 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It actually made it more saleable because, just like they say, you don't market dog food to dogs, you market dog food to you. Package it for an advertiser for the people who buy the dog, the dog food. Suddenly giving all these system administrators and it people here's a command line that you will enjoy actually using it makes it more likely that they're going to recommend this, as why don't we make or approve a buy of 100 of these units?

30:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
because they know that they're going to have a good time using this on their desktops to administer the rest of the network and you know it's interesting because at this point, no, you know, 25 years ago, people couldn't wait to get away from OS 9. But at this point, nobody's saying, oh, how do we replace OS 10? It's so superannuated, we needed something better. Nobody's saying that, as far as I know.

31:15 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Well, I think we've also gotten to a point where operating systems are a little. It's a pretty mature operating system. We don't know what we would add to it. Well, we, we would add, we got there because we had a solid base. Yeah, yeah, 100 yeah.

31:27
But I think I think nowadays, I think I find most advancements in the operating system be something I complain about more than yeah don't mess with it yeah like I'm just kind of like okay, we got it, it's working, let's just make it and stop making it ruin with it yeah, you're watching mac break.

31:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Weekly happy birthday to uh os 10, so they in fact come to think of it every january. We're probably going to have happy birthday, because it was all announced at macworld how long before os 10?

31:52 - Jason Snell (Host)
shipped jason so they shipped. They said they would ship it. That summer they shipped instead what was called the public beta. Um, so they had some developer previews and then they had the public beta, which you had to pay for and was broken, uh, and that, and. And then the next summer, 2001, they shipped 10.0 and it was super slow, uh, and we didn't, nobody was recommended to use it. Uh, then they did 10.1 the next year and I I actually thought the 10.1 that was the first time that I officially moved over and used Mac OS X.

32:27
The whole, like every day, all day, was 10.1. And even then it was really right on the edge but you could do it. So it was, it was a real transition and that you know they made the classic compatibility layer which was essentially you could run old apps in a in in classic Mac OS on top of OS X, and that kept them for a little while. And it wasn't really until Steve did his little funeral for Mac OS X, for Mac OS 9, where they brought out the Mac OS 9 casket and everything, and that was WWDC 2002. So that was the moment, you know, two and a half years later, where Apple really just said guys, it's over, like it's over this is a stop.

33:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Stop. And this is when the big cats began. This was puma, to be followed by jaguar. Yeah, they weren't originally weird they were.

33:18 - Jason Snell (Host)
Yeah, they were originally code names that nobody knew, and then they started just using them in the marketing right, which was kind of right, yeah puma was secret or a secret code name.

33:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, I do have one story. I'll mention back what. Steve was out in the wilderness still working at next in 1995 I think it was. I got to hang out with him a little bit for a weekend and I remember him vividly saying and this was a little bit bitter because he's not at Apple yet, they haven't started the conversations we had a 10-year lead on microsoft with the macintosh and we blew it in 84. They had a 10-year lead by 1995. Windows 95 came out. He said there was nothing, no reason to buy a macintosh, and remember he's not at apple. But I think even then in his mind he's thinking how do we get rid of you know, how do we replay, how do we put next step in the Macintosh? And it was a very smart move on Apple's part. They did the right thing. Great to have you all on this very special birthday. Jason Snell, thank you for writing that article and getting James Thompson to put down his thoughts. I didn't realize that was your idea.

34:29
A whole chain of events that had a very good idea. I was really pleased to read that. Uh, jason's on the course. Six colors dot com.

34:32
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37:51
Uh, speaking of security, apple has agreed to pay a 95 million dollar fine. Actually, the fine is is de minimis from apple's point of view. I mean, that's, that's pocket change. That's in tim cook's couch, but and and, by the way, you may get as much as 20 each for up to five in siri enabled devices. So 100 bucks, that might be not pocket change to you. The point more is that apple is, you know, after five years finally kind of said well, all right, they don't admit any wrongdoing. But the the settlement refers to and this is what you want to know, the actionable thing unintentional siri activations that occurred after here's a siri back in 2014, and later recordings were apparently prompted without users ever saying hey, you know who and oh, I'm sorry, I activated. I apologize, I shouldn't have said that. Hey, you know who. Sometimes shlomo would be inadvertently activated. Yeah, a whistleblower. Uh, the Guardian. When an Apple Watch was raised, actually, I turned that feature off pretty darn quick. And worse, it seems Siri might have sent that out to marketing people. No, no.

39:01 - Jason Snell (Host)
No, that's an allegation that is never supported. Apple denies it and there's no there. There's no way. There's no, there's no way that happened.

39:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That this is the the phantom thing, it's the fake conspiracy theory I've been talking about breadsticks all day, and now I'm getting an olive garden it's people who don't understand how good internet tracking is they don't need to, they don't need to listen and also apple I don't need to listen.

39:24 - Jason Snell (Host)
And also Apple. I mean, like Apple doesn't even know what apps you want in the app store and they're going to perfectly target Like that's not going to happen. Apple doesn't?

39:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apple said unequivocally, told Ars Technica Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles. It's never been sold to anyone for any purpose. And they said, apple settled to avoid additional litigation.

39:43 - Jason Snell (Host)
We just want to get on and this is the story that we all talked about before. I mean, this was actually a few years ago now, right, but it's the idea that they used to have a human crew of people who would listen to activations as part of their quality for Siri. And then there was the story about how those things were being shared among the people in that human group, where there would be like an activation and people would be having sex and you could hear it in the background and they'd like it was like high school.

40:09
They were basically like sharing these audio clips around and apple had to apologize profusely and actually put a feature in that's still in there, if you ever gotten that warning. That is like would you like to improve siri by sharing audio? That was the feature that was added because of this, where you could say no, I do not want to share my audio files with Siri. So I mean, obviously Apple made some mistakes here and they're paying a very small amount of money for it, to be honest. But, like, let's not get like.

40:42
That one statement that's in there is never corroborated. There's no evidence about it. It is and it is going to feed every conspiracy theory and like, seriously, the fact that people want to believe that assistants are listening to them and feeding all that information so that you can be profiled the next time you open a web page, versus the very clear way that people are profiled and tracked in our world today, the fact that people would rather believe that it's Siri listening to them than that everybody knows everything about you without needing to listen to you. I find it kind of baffling, but there we are.

41:18 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I was talking to someone who works on that algorithm for a network and not Apple somewhere else that does a lot of it, where you think that they can hear you, and they said you know, the idea of using the audio is just so inefficient. He said it would be such a mess. He said no one uses that. He goes the person. I can tell whether you're standing next to somebody and whether you're talking to them because your body and their body move in a certain way with the accelerometers. When, because your body and their body move in a certain way with the accelerometers. When you're standing and talking to someone or interacting with them. There's these things that we know. So we know the two of them. As soon as we link the two of you. I know all the information that they searched, that they bought at Safeway 10 minutes before that. They did all that. I have all that data and so I can guess really quickly what they're talking about, because this is all on top of mind for them.

42:07
And you know, oftentimes people are doing the best thing, which is searching while they're talking, like they're talking and they're searching some item or whatever you know and they don't. As you said, it's so invisible People don't even know that they're doing it. Like you're constantly asking Google for something or figuring something out while you're talking to someone like what is that, where did that come from? Whatever, and you forget that you even did that. But the idea that we would use audio, he said that would just grind our servers to the ground. You know he goes. He was like even the NSA doesn't use. Well, all right.

42:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to pause here because I would contend otherwise, but I don't think Apple does it, I don't think Google does it and I don't think apple does it. I don't think google does it and I don't think amazon does it just the metadata your smart tv does do it. Oh yeah, your smart tv which has a microphone and a camera and has a lot of incentive. That's why tvs are so cheap to send this stuff back.

42:58 - Jason Snell (Host)
I don't. I don't think with ai you could do. I don't think it doesn't work. They've admitted it.

43:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're looking for keywords.

43:02 - Jason Snell (Host)
The ai could do that too I don't think they're listening. The smart tvs are listening to what you say in your room as much as they're just watching what you watch and are able to infer everything about you from what you watch well, and you should never connect your tv to the internet no, don't do it.

43:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't do that, don't do that like it.

43:18
You know, we've never had so many reasons and and I think there probably are people out there who are packet sniffing and looking at what's going back, although it's hard to see, because it may be encrypted, it may be, you know, in some way parsed before it goes out on the network. You probably don't want to send the audio of the conversation out. Let's face it continually we cause concern because both manufacturers of cars and TVs in their privacy statements say we could if we wanted to. Secondly, cox and I bet others have. There are companies out there marketing this ability to Target using audio from consumers. Now they may be lying, I mean, god knows my guess is that it's not content.

44:07 - Jason Snell (Host)
My guess is that it's things like they've got an algorithm that will predict the number of people in the household and the gender and the age. We know they're doing that right. Obviously I'm not sure they're transcribing what they're saying marketing material.

44:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They said we hear what people are saying and we know what they're talking about all right they specifically say that now I'm not sure I believe them. I think I don't sure I believe nobody lies more than salespeople, so I have a feeling that that's more them pitching their non-existent services. However, there's no trust zero trust.

44:38 - Jason Snell (Host)
There's no reason to trust them.

44:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, there's no reason to trust, uh, the TV makers or the car makers.

44:45 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
And it's not just that. It's just that the worst part is that the technology that you're getting is so bad for that internet. You know the chips. I mean I have to, you know. So when I build streams we have to dumb down all of our stuff for these stupid TVs, you know, because their chip sets are so bad, and I have have to admit it's a luxury I stream a lot of stuff to Apple TV. The Apple TV is by far. I mean there's not any other chip set that's close to the Apple TV from a power perspective. So you can throw anything at it and it just will do anything over the last five years. It'll just crank through whatever you're sending it the. But when you deal with these TVs, you realize how we, because we look at the chip sets, because we have to figure out what, what can we deliver to those TVs, and we have to dumb everything down so much because they're just such cheap pieces of electronics.

45:34
And the same thing in the cars. You know it's a cheap piece of electronic Like I have a. I just got a new radio for my car and you know I'm a very old car, not a car guy and I put a. I replaced the radio because the headphone jack was broken. That's all I cared about was can my iPhone connect to my headphone jack? And the headphone jack finally gave out. So I paid a hundred and some dollars and bought one with a new screen on it and everything else.

45:56
It doesn't know how to do anything other than play music and but I hook it up and and it does Bluetooth to my, my, my phone, and it looks better than it. It looks better than most, most, uh, you know the. Just the car play makes the whole thing work. You know, and so you know apple's ability to build all this stuff up, or other people I mean go google's making great stuff with some of the android tools as well. Um, the, but I. But what I would say is that the stuff that's built into the cars and the stuff that's built into your TVs is not worth the trouble. Like you should just disconnect as much of that as you can, because you're giving up a bunch of privacy, for you know fast food, at best, you know badly made fast food.

46:39 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, and the damage that can do to you they're selling that information to insurance companies. Damage they can do to you, they're selling that information to insurance companies. So God forbid like you actually have to make a claim. If it's a serious enough claim, they can just basically buy information from your car maker saying, yeah, but you know what? We did an analysis and you tend to break a lot more stiffly than 18% of the soil.

46:58 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Well, and I would say the one that's more apparent is that they charge you differently for your flights. They charge you different. They're they're doing, they're using that profile to decide oh, you're the kind of person that would pay more for your flight than somebody else, and so you're. You're not even seeing the same price. We're getting to the point where you're not seeing the same prices. If they decide that you're that kind of person, and that's you know, and so it's, it's. It's not even something that's you know, and so it's not even something that's theoretical or it might happen at some point when you re-up. It's happening every single day when you're on there and you know it's better.

47:31 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It's known that you get a better price if you're accessing the app or the hotel chain or whatever, from an Android phone than from an iPhone, so yeah, it's very difficult to separate.

47:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, there are people now in our chat saying, uh, you know, I was, this is my favorite. I was talking about pierogi christmas tree ornaments, uh, during the day, and I got ads for pierogi christmas tree ornaments, uh that night, uh, that you hear that all the time, I hear it from every all normals uh, absolutely believe this is happening and that, uh, and I guess what I try to say is it and I think this is what you were saying, jason, they don't really need to listen to what you're saying because they already know so much about you I mean, if they could, they would, but it's like it's like trying to avoid microplastics like okay, but what?

48:19 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
what bubbles? That was what bubble that was uns has been unsealed since, since 1803 are you going to live in now?

48:26 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Well, and they know that it's Christmas time, they know that at some point you bought those pierogi.

48:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They know you love pierogis, right? Yeah, I know, but you probably deserve a little.

48:34 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Christmas, because pierogis are what I had.

48:37 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
On little Christmas yes, or that the pierogi ornaments are somebody that you know, or someone, someone that that you, or maybe you ordered them somewhere in the past and now it's the right time, um, you know for you to to do that. They all explain it. I mean even even just positional data. They know that you're walking around in a way. That would be what you do when you put things on the Christmas tree.

48:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the thing though that does make people, I think, reasonably uh nervous is uh, is uh the? The capacity of computing, uh, of the cloud and with AI, has increased so exponentially over the last 10 years that marketers can do so much more with this data than they can ever do, and that's why it seems like magic, um, but, and I think people should reasonably be afraid of what people are doing with AI and the vast volume of data.

49:28
The NSA didn't build that giant data center in the Midwest because they could crack encryption. They just figured down the road we'll be able to, and so all this is being collected, has always been collected, and now they really have some powerful tools.

49:43 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, that's why it's absolutely imperative that, collectively, society decides that we are going to make this a priority for our lawmakers, that we need to set a laws enforceable that basically protect personal, private user information.

49:58
I've always wanted a framework that basically says that these are some specific categories of information that belong to you and ownership cannot be transferred to any other entity under any reason. It could be leased, but it cannot be transferred, which would create a requirement to say that every year or so, whether they do it in a lame way or in a legitimate way, they have to basically renew that lease with you in a direct and specific way. But unless there are consequences, you fall afoul of what I always refer to as the big bag of money on the table phenomenon, where, if there's a big bag of money on the table and a sign saying it is not illegal to take this bag of money and take it home with you, people are going to take that big bag of money when do we get to despair of this, andy, because I don't think it's ever going to happen anymore.

50:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're going to get money out of politics. Well, we just they're just some fundamental structural problems here that every clear minded person knows are a problem, but because of money and because of the the power that billionaires and marketers and these oligarchs have, we're never going to see any reasonable privacy.

51:02 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, well, the only the only thing. I don't know what we can do. The only thing we can't do is give up.

51:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, that's. Despair is what you're saying.

51:09 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
The modus operandi of the devil, metaphorically speaking, is to lower our standards until we don't care anymore.

51:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I read the screw tape letters. I know.

51:19 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Actually I was more quoting broadcast news, albert Brooks.

51:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But, it started with CS Lewis lewis, if you want to know the devil's ways. The screw tape letters is hysterical anyway, and there's a john cleese version of it on audible that I really enjoy.

51:34 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
but at the end, you know, I think that it is uh typically when these kinds of things happen, when, when people start to have a lot of friction or start to have it upset or start to become conscious to it, it also beyond the government provides market opportunities for a new way of doing things, and I think that's an interesting point.

51:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what Tim Berners-Lee is trying to do with solid yeah.

51:53 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
And that turns into a disruption. You know like, when you see disruption, a lot of times it's people being built up and more and more frustrated with something. Someone comes in with something that solves that itch that's become, you know, intolerable. Suddenly everybody jumps over and that's when you see something happen really quickly suddenly everyone moves over to something else. And so, you know, I don't think that I think the government may be able to do something about. I think it's actually going to be more likely that someone like I think that there's an opening for social media someone's going to build a human only social media that requires you to biometrically log in all the time. That is not going to allow any bots. That's going to, you know, and it'll be a little harder to communicate. It won't be as automated.

52:29
There won't be. There won't be any automated posts. There won't be any way to do. You know, like it, it's going to have to be you, and I think that that kind of thing um is going to crop up because people are so tired of what you know. Like that, half of meta is you know, half of that is bots. Now, you know, like which they said right, half of facebook is going to be bots do you feel like, though, that maybe we're just the tin hat wearing?

52:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, I don't think. I think that we're talking already right.

52:55 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I guess what I would say is we are consciously talking about it, but I think that when you look at depression rates, when you look at upset you know, when you look at upset, you know, when you look at this, it's, it's affecting everyone, um, and they're just not, uh, you know, like they're not conscious to it. You know like it's, but they're, but it's affecting. You know, a lot of people. You know, and, and I think that you know we're we become more as a group, we oftentimes become more sensitive to this Um, we become more sensitive to like, for instance, right now, ultra processed foods, having a moment, you know, like where, suddenly everyone's like, hey, maybe we shouldn't be eating everything out of a box. So, which you know, and and you know, and there's a whole bunch of market opportunities that are occurring underneath all of that, and I think that you know.

53:35
So what happens is is that I think, a lot, of, a lot of folks, you know, we see these, these snaps. Does it fix everything? Probably not, but I think that you will, um, you know, I think, and I also think that that's why I mean, as an Apple user, um, you know, a lot of times, I want Apple to keep on tightening all those bolts. I want them to say you know, I don't want to share the third parties. I want them to be able to. I want to keep having them close that stuff down, um, because you know, I think that that but how do you explain that there's still hundreds of millions of people using x?

54:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, I think, I, I, I think you're an optimist, I guess is what I would say. Uh, alex, you're a wide-eyed optimist.

54:16 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
You could just you know, but I think that I think that it's again I I to. To take elon musk for a moment. Maybe I'm assuming is that everyone was really resigned about about that. There's no way you could build an electric car until Tesla came out, and so it's just he took advantage of a moment that people were paying attention to that and didn't try to have us eat broccoli to do it. He just said we're going to make something that's cooler, that happens to be electric, and and so that you know.

54:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I think that that shows you where there's weak points in a lot of these things, and I think that again, I think that but to bring it back full circle, there is no car made today that spies on you more than your Tesla. I don't have a Tesla, so I don't know I can tell you for a fact I have a 10-year-old Dodge.

54:57 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Caravan that I had to pull by the radio, that the headphone jack broke on.

55:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I don't-. Yeah, you're smart and, by the way, you said I'm not a car guy. Car guys all own old cars. Car guys love old cars I have.

55:10 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I have an enclosed truck. That's what, that's how I look at it, because I put all the seats down. I literally have a four by eight piece of plywood that just sits on it until someone has to get into it. Every once in a while you have to open the windows because it smells bad if it gets wet. So so it's, it's. But outside of that I'm, you know, a country boy with a truck that that I can close the link, I can close the top on, and so so. But I, but when I, but I do look at some of the newer cars and I do think about oh my gosh, there'll be a lot of tracking going on that I don't, you know, deal with. I also don't put a lot of miles on cars.

55:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't drive that much and we will find them and talk about them with mac break weekly, andy inaco, alex lindsay, jason snell. Our show today brought to you by melissa, the trusted data quality expert, and they've been doing this longer than we've been doing this since 1985, since the mac came out with melissa's debut in the stripe app marketplace. Stripe customers now have access to the same data quality services leveraged by large global enterprises every day. Key features of Melissa's Stripe integration include address validation. You know this is where addresses get munged up is when your customer or your customer service rep is entering in an address and flips numbers or gets the phone number wrong or the email wrong. Melissa's app validates global addresses at the customer and the invoice level within stripe. In fact, they do it with auto completion, so you reduce the number of key strokes required and ensure that only valid addresses enter your database. If you use stripe, you want this right.

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Melissa's services understand compliance like no other too. By the way, with Melissa, you'll get secure encryption for all file transfers. It's an information ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They support GDPR policies, soc 2 compliance. Of course. They treat your data like the gold that it is. Treat your data like gold. Get it is. Treat your data like gold. Get started today with 1 000 records cleaned for free. Melissacom slash twit m-e-l-i-s-s-acom slash twit. We thank melissa for supporting us for so many years. They're back again in 2025. Welcome back, melissa. We really appreciate the support mel. Melissacom slash twit. Do we care why Apple won't make a search engine? Eddie Q says it's economically risky to compete with Google. You know what the risk might be, though and Apple actually filed a brief in this is that they may lose their $20 billion or so a year from Google if the court rules that google has to stop those payments. That's the real risk. This was part of that.

58:52 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Uh, that briefing that they filed, yeah, with the department of justice yes, this is part of the uh remedy portion of the antitrust case against google search, where they lost the case and now we spend lots of months with the doj and google arguing about okay, well, how do we remedy this?

59:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
won't go on much longer. I think the judge has to decide soon, right?

59:12 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
yeah, in a couple of months, I think, oh, is it that long? Okay, not, not, but not, but, not, not too long? Uh, and of course, the doj is asking essentially, google, shut down everything, solve chrome. One of the things that the doj is asking for is, uh, sorry, backing up one step. Doj does not have the ability to make an order. They simply file a document with the judge saying here's what we think will remedy the situation and restore balance to the force, so to speak.

59:37
One of the things they want to do is Apple can, they can no longer have any special deals with Apple that benefit Apple in any way. On that basis, apple filed a brief basically saying that hey, we think that this means that we get to be part of this conversation, because now you're directly interfering with Apple's ability to do business, because if you put a 10-year ban on Apple having an agreement with Google, that benefits Apple. That means that not just with search, we can't support Android devices, we can't have links that go out to google docs. Anything that involves google will short us out. And because google and this is, if you read the document, it's, it's, it's actually very, very like, very plain english, very english, very easy to understand. They're saying that because google has more than their hands full worrying about themselves, apple, as they're not going to worry about protecting Apple's interest. So we have a very important interest and being able to have a voice in this conversation.

01:00:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the development of us. This is what Eddie wrote in the filing with the federal court. Uh, last week it says his name. I don't think Eddie really wrote it, eddie. The lawyers who talked to Eddie wrote this. The development of a search engine would cost Apple billions of dollars, to take many years, diverting investment, money and employees away from other growth areas. It would hurt us, your honor. The search business is rapidly evolving, that I'll admit to, due to artificial intelligence. So it would be economically risky for apple to create a search engine. That's probably true.

01:01:04 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I I need to know. I think that sometimes we get into this thing where we get antitrust by the time something's ending and for Google.

01:01:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think Search is ending.

01:01:13 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I spend way more time asking ChatGPT or Claude or Sonnet or whatever questions than I do Google search. Now, I mean the Google search. The summaries are pretty good, but outside of that, I find that I get my answer much faster with ChatGPT.

01:01:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm using Arc now, which uses perplexity, uh and, and it summarizes search results much better. I very rarely now.

01:01:33 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Also also Google has.

01:01:35 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm excited. All I was going to say is that I think that that, uh. Number one is I don't think this. Maybe, maybe all the years away, um, and by the time they get to the supreme court, will search still be a thing in at the level that it is now. Number two is that you know we're about to have a new doj like are they going to continue to fight it, like you know? So if it goes into it, well, at at this point.

01:02:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's up to the court, right? I mean? I mean, if it got the doj. Can he go to the court and say, hey, your honor, uh, no, no, no, because it was. If it gets done, it's a done deal.

01:02:15 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
If it gets a p, it hasn't gone up. Oh, they don't have to defend an appeal. They could just say, if they appealed it, the, the, the doj could decide not to move forward. Like they could just go. You know this is not. Oh, you're right, you know so. So in the next four years?

01:02:24
that explains why tim cook put a million dollars down on the inaugural ball that's why everyone's putting it's pretty transactional this one, you know, I think trump's a lot easier to calculate for when it comes to like will it make a difference?

01:02:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, it's much easier.

01:02:37 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It's much simpler, no guessing involved at all yeah, yeah, but this could affect google search because they're putting together so many products that leverage off of essentially the google search product.

01:02:47
They have a brand new marketing hype that they're putting together for AI in 2025 is now they're going to move the Gemini model into agentive, what they're calling AI, which is stuff that actually uses other tools and apps to do things for you, and one of the first things they introduced to people who are paid subscribers are, essentially, research this topic for me on google search, and here's what I'm interested in, here's your parameters, and it will come back, not just with the google search, not just with the search summary, but here is like a couple of pages on this topic and a whole list of here are web pages to take a look at for more exploration.

01:03:26
And if you, you say, oh, refine this, I really want you to talk about. Limit the talk, don't tell me more about Paris in the 1890s. So if, if, google is barred from using Google search, not only will it bar that, it will also bar them offering Google search as a product to essentially double check other people's eyes, which is another service that they're trying to offer through Google search for developers. So so it is, it's a moving target and it is a very, very complicated thing and yeah, it's million dollars.

01:03:54
Seems like a small amount of money to pay.

01:03:55 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, as a user, I guess the question is like is this gonna make my life any better? I don't know if it will. Like I don't know if the breaking this up is gonna make my search any better. Like I just don't think that. Sometimes I think we go down this path and and it's like google search is so much better than everybody else's search. Like it's not really. I don't feel, like it's close. Like I try other ones, so they're like they're.

01:04:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's why the argument if you're going to still use search is, in fact, the best remedy for this is for google to be forced to, yeah, license it's search index. I use kagi I actually pay money to use kagi and they use, in a very kind of clever, derivative way, the Google results along with other results, and it's um, it's so, it's gets the benefit of all the of the Google index without good, the Google ads, without the Google algorithmic placing of its own properties up at the top. And it's so, it's. I haven't used Google in in ages. I stopped using it a long time ago. The problem is google's still in there, right, and so what? What the judge has to do, I think, is tell google look, you got to give companies like kagi access to your index at either a reasonable fee or no fee. Uh, no fee would be a punishment, right? Yeah?

01:05:04 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
and uh good, and that's, and that's one of the remedies that the doj is proposing. They didn't propose that, and I think that's the one it's a long list of.

01:05:11
Obviously, this is like well, how much you? You, uh, my car got dented. How much you dented my car? How much do you rather, I'm sorry you, your car got dented by my construction company like, how much do you think you should get in compensation? You started a million dollars and you negotiate down because you ask for everything, knowing that you're going to have to settle for what you settled for. But yeah, the problem is that Google is the word that people use for searching something on the internet. That's how popular it is, and this is another one of those things where people in this conversation might understand that there are other tools that, if nothing else, give you a different perspective, a different ranking of search results. Google is simply the concierge to the internet for the entire world.

01:05:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This might be one case where alex's thesis of the market changing things might be might actually hold I'm more like to normal people who are dissatisfied with google's results. I hear that a lot.

01:06:05 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I 100, 100 agree with with alex on this. Alex on this point, because Maeda's ruling was so bizarre when you read it, because almost every paragraph could have been used in a billboard ad for Google search. Okay, because everything that he was saying said that it is the best.

01:06:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is soon the ascendancy.

01:06:25 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It's what everybody wants to use and it's not because they're being unfair, it's because it legitimately is the best. Other companies don't want to compete with them because they would cost. They don't want to start 20 years of research and spending on it, on and on, and on and on and on. Nonetheless, we feel as though they're abusing their market power and so we're going to fix it.

01:06:43
It's not like I thought that. I thought that the big deal, I thought that the search was going to be something, either a win, a minor, minor, minor, minor win at best. I thought there would be something that the DOJ would have to appeal really to get a win on. I thought that I mean, they still got the ad business antitrust suit over their heads and that's where they're going to absolutely get destroyed. I don't think that anybody is benefited by breaking up Google search. I don't think that anybody is benefited by breaking up Google search. I do think there could be a benefit by giving third-party searches and third-party tools access to their search rankings not the algorithm, but at least what is the value of this link as a result for these words and get that information back and use that to build, like a cooking search engine, an academic search engine. That, I think, is more within the ballpark of what's good for the market and what's good for users.

01:07:36 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I guess I think it would still be like noise, like. I mean, the number of people that would do that would be noise Like and it, and I think that it is uh, and I think the era of the government, you know, trying to fix all the remedy, all these things, is probably over and so, um, you know, so the you know like, I think that that was a, that was a moment that the government had to do that, and I think they, they still have to get to the Supreme court. I don't think the Supreme court is the kind of court that's going to think that this is a good idea. So so I think that this is the current, you know it could change and there's lots of things that can change.

01:08:04
So think that the chances of it succeeding at the level that the DOJ is asking for if the DOJ continues to appeal it, which will be in question, because you know it's not going to be Google, because I don't think that Trump cares about Google, but it might be, you know, tim Apple talking to you know whispering like, hey, this is dumb. You know like, let's not do this, and so I think that I don't. I just don't think that there's any and again I don't know if it's relevant. I guess I'd probably think more about it if I thought that search had a future. But I just don't see what the future is when I'm, when I, my whole family just sits there and finds things on chat, gpt all the time, like just, it's just like a constant and TikTok.

01:08:48 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Tiktok is a search engine for the young.

01:08:50 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
When I needed to figure out how to do something pretty complex in DaVinci Resolve through three pieces of hardware to output to a stream, and all I did is ask ChatGPT how to do it and just ask one piece after the other. I can't find it was such a weird connection, I couldn't find that on the internet. Like I, I started in Google and then it's in that moment, six months ago or whatever, just changed everything for me, which is that I I start with chat GPT and if I'm not sure then I go to Google. But I rarely, I mean like now, like night, like, and I'm someone who we used to joke that in our family. It's not what you know, it's how well you Google, you know like it's you know, and that all that information was out there. We don't need to figure it out. And now I'm constantly I'm using Sonnet for other things and and you know, and I I just feel like I don't, I it's so I can go a whole day now, as someone who used to Google five or ten times an hour at least, I now go. It can go a whole day without opening Google, like, and I think that I think we're sitting there building all this legislative stuff around something that I don't know how relevant it is.

01:09:56
I think they are worried that they don't know how relevant it is and I think that now starting to weight it down with a bunch of legislation, when it's they're going to be, I think Google is going to be fighting for its existence because Google search and Google AdWords nothing else at Google really works. It's like nothing else makes money. Nothing else makes money like ad. I've been in a lot of Google events and I can tell you, you can tell when you're at a Google ad event, because it's like the money spent on it, for the big thing, is like looking into the sun, and when you look at what they're doing it, for the big thing is like looking into the sun, like it, and and when you look at what they're doing, um, but the only thing that's really generating lots of money at google is ads.

01:10:35
You know like, or is the google search and display ads and youtube, you know, and, and so the, the, the, uh. I think that this disruption that's happening with AI around search is the end of search, like. I just don't think it's going to happen, that it's going to, and so I, you know I, and I didn't think that until six months ago, when I again, when I started asking complex questions, I'm writing whole apps without having to open, you know, without having to know how to code, like you know, like it's, and when you do all of that, I used to Google all of that to try to figure it all out, and I just don't do that anymore.

01:11:13 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
MARK BLYTH JR. Yeah, I kind of disagree. I still think that most people's first point of access is Google. For myself, I mean, for instance, for reasons not unrelated to Tim Cook's alleged million dollar donation to Trump's inauguration fund, I had to learn a whole lot about the Federal Election Commission and how donations are registered and that sort of stuff. And the number one, the first place I went to, was Google Gemini just to ask for a broad. What do I need to know? The next step was to Google search to find okay, now I know I need to find form FE-13 for each of these election commissions. I also need to know what names these election commissions are registered under, and that's when ChatGPT, all these search bots A are not going to produce the results that I wanted and B, if they did, I would have to run that back through Google Search anyway because I wouldn't trust it. Ai is not a place where you trust any fact that it gives it. At this point, again, it's really good at sending you on the right direction, giving you that overview for things you can verify yourself, but it's not something that I would use that way.

01:12:16
All I'm saying is that Google has a plan that goes beyond simply Google search. It involves keeping that monetized. And lastly, yeah, you're absolutely right, the ad business is to Google slash Alphabet what the iPhone business is to Apple. It's roughly the same percentage of their revenue and if something were to destroy that market, they'd be in super, super big trouble. And, for the record, google has fewer great, successful, profitable bets than Apple does. Google Cloud is working extremely well, but it's still in the launch phase than Apple does. Google Cloud is working extremely well, but it's still in the launch phase. And the thing is, the appetite for iPhone sales is not going to go down anytime soon and Apple has plenty of time, whereas if, in two or three years, google has to find a way to replace 52% 53% of its annual revenue, I don't think they're in a position to do that right now.

01:13:03 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I guess what I would say is that also that no, no other search. It doesn't make sense to go into the search business now, or to even try to suddenly, if google suddenly, just you know is disrupted or told that it has to do all these things. It's just not a that's just not a good business for other people to get into, not just google's. Google's is the. They're the best at what they're doing, but you're in a deteriorating market. Why would you invest? You know you're. It's not a good.

01:13:26 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I still know if it's a good. I disagree, and that's that's all I have to say.

01:13:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
BBC says Apple has been urged to withdraw out of control AI news alerts urged by the BBC, I believe. But uh, they left that out of the headline. You read it. You wrote a good piece, uh, jason, on how you were taught back in the day how to write headlines back in my day, back in my day that created clicks, but, but did it without hiding information so the problem?

01:13:52 - Jason Snell (Host)
the problem is there's a lot going on here, so the bbc has had its uh apps, push notifications, summarized by apple intelligence, and what gets created is things that are factually untrue. And the problem is and apple has said that they'll address it, but it sounds like they're gonna put a more prominent warning label on it, which is not the same as saying we're going to fix it.

01:14:11 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
People are dumb and don't understand what the feature works like.

01:14:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The warning would be like we made this up, but here's what we think the BBC is saying.

01:14:18 - Jason Snell (Host)
There are a lot of things going on here. Part of the problem here is that what Apple is doing is summarizing a summary. They're summarizing a if not a headline, a push notification text written by somebody that's being sent out through the BBC app and it depends. Some of those are automated. Sometimes the people who write the headlines write the push notification text, sometimes it is the headline. It doesn't matter, it is a summary made by a human. And then what Apple is doing, apparently, is throwing all of these summaries in a bin, you know all together into their LLM and saying summarize this.

01:14:50
And the problem there is that you get weird crossover, you get misparsing of phrases and you know it's an LLM. But the challenge here is that you end up with things that are not factual and the BBC has been making noise about this because it keeps happening where, like, there was a headline that was like the shooting suspect of that health care CEO had made some like gestures and stuff as he was being led into court and Apple summarized, took shooting suspect and the guy's name and turned it into that he was shot because it misread and it's using that big difference. He was shot, yeah, uh, because it misread and it's using that big difference. Yeah, so, yeah, so I mean, my complaints about modern headlines being bad are are there was a. There was a, uh, a company called artifact that went under, that they had an app where you could actually mark a headline as clickbait and have the ai rewriten headlines about it.

01:15:44
Yeah, the ai rewritten headlines were pretty good, but the thing is, and this is a key point, the AI headlines were based on the story text and here Apple is rewriting a summary of a story. It is a summary of a summary and of course, it's going to do a bad job with that. So the question is, in the long run, I mean, first off, I think this is an effect of Apple rushing Apple intelligence forward, because I think there are ways you could do this in terms of classifying the push notification as being a news app or something else, changing the behavior of summarization.

01:16:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe you ask the news app to supply more information and you summarize that, rather than Apple using the on device, they are to do that. This is that's part of the problem is, this is kind of not a super smart model it is, yeah, but I think that if it had better data, it's yeah it's not a stupid model.

01:16:36 - Jason Snell (Host)
The problem is it's summarizing a summary, right and it so there's so little data for it to infer what's going on.

01:16:42
Our human brains can do it, yeah and so so, like apple's, apple has not even responded to stuff like this before. So so this response, which is very brief and very vague, saying well, we'll do some more labeling later, it's like it's a start. But I think what really needs to happen is Apple needs to. You know, and they also said it's a beta, right, which is fine, it is a beta, but it's a beta and a final version of an operating system. So it's already a little beta, but it's a beta and a final version of an operating system. So that's already a little shaky and it's heavily marketed and they don't say in the marketing oh, but it's a beta, be careful.

01:17:15
So I think Apple just needs to be more diligent here, and I think we all need to not be as understanding about the fact that Apple is trying to struggle to catch up here, because the fact is, apple is shipping a feature that takes news and a certain percentage of it turns it into things that didn't happen, and that's bad. Right, that's bad, and we should say it's bad and we should say they need to do better. And if they can't do better, they need to turn that feature off until they can do better. Bottom line, that's what they need to do not only that, but they're not.

01:17:48 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
This isn't apple intelligent, the notification that apple intelligence says blah blah, blah, blah, blah. The bbc says and here's the logo for the bbc next to it they are basically not only coming up with things that are pat, not just a little wrong, but completely wrong yep, uh, it's they're basically also putting other people on the hook for it. The bbc and others are very, very right to be miffed off about this, and I also think that it's super, super weak sauce for apple to simply say oh well, we'll be modifying how these things are notified. They, they need to. This is a broken feature that spreads misinformation and an era where misinformation online is one of the biggest crises that the news industry faces. They need to terminate this. They need to unplug this feature right now and come back with it in 18.3, 18.4. And you're absolutely right. Like, it's not just, they're not just. You can't hide behind. Oh well, we're still working on it. It is a beta.

01:18:38
Not only are they putting it out, as anybody who has the full version, the mainstream edition of the golden version of iOS, can use this, but they're also all their marketing is wow, it's part of Apple intelligence, it's magic and it makes everything better, like no, it doesn't. This feature is bad, bad, bad. You need to take responsibility for what it is doing and just basically turn it off. It's perfectly fine. You aren't the first organization that's had this problem with AI summaries of these kinds. It's certainly not to say nothing of how early you are in your adventure towards implementing AI. No harm, no excuse me, it's not embarrassing or humiliating, but if you decide that, no, it's perfectly fine to keep this feature going, even though we know it can cause harm. That's not the responsible thing to do. They need to terminate this feature and come back to it later.

01:19:29 - Jason Snell (Host)
Fair enough.

01:19:29 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
What's not the responsible thing to do. They need to terminate this feature and come back to it later.

01:19:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Fair enough, what's your prescription in that art? You wrote a great article, by the way, and I appreciate the nod to ben folds, although I doubt very many people got that, jones it's a bedfold steep cut, thanks a wonderful, wonderful song. But, um, what is your prescription? Maybe they could do what artifact did? Well, I think, yeah, I think there are a lot of things they could do and thatifact did.

01:19:49 - Jason Snell (Host)
Well, I think yeah, I think there are a lot of things they could do and that the fact that they didn't is because they rushed the feature out, because they're rushing all of Apple intelligence out, and that's why I think that we need to not cut them as much slack, because I think we need to say this isn't good enough, it isn't up to your standards. That they could classify those apps by what they're doing, and they could even make a judgment and say you know what we're going to turn off? Summarization of news headlines now. Or they could do something like summarize each headline on its own and then put them together, because I think one of the things they may be doing is putting them together in a bushel and summarizing the bushel and you end up getting kind of like leakage between headlines. I don't know that for sure, that's just a guess is that they're feeding different headlines crossing over, which is also bad. They could also build something in where and again, this takes time because you've got to work with developers and you've got to work in the app store and you might need to build a new API. But like I think it's a great idea.

01:20:46
Like I think it's a great idea, the reason I brought up the idea that you could summarize full articles is if the push comes with a URL as well as a payload, maybe you have your LLM. Go look at the URL and summarize that instead, because it is and this was my point in my follow-up article is, llms are actually pretty good at writing headlines. If you give them the whole article, if you give them 8,000 words or 4,000 words or even a thousand words, they can do a pretty good job at writing you a headline. But when they're given 20 words or 10 words, all they're doing is rephrasing based on very little information. So I think that there are, you know, from letting apps opt out which I know that Apple doesn't want to do because it wants apps to take advantage of this feature letting classes of apps like news apps opt out, or changing the rules of the game a little bit so that there's more information that they can glean for their summary.

01:21:38
All of these are options. Some of them are harder to implement than others, but, like I think the problem is just, you can't just throw this out there and say, okay, we got it. I know it's a beta, but like part of being a beta is that it's incumbent on the developer to take the feedback and make changes, and I think we risk apple thinking they got away with this, and I think that's why the bbc shouting like this is really valuable, because it's them saying this is not okay, you have a lot of work to do here. This is, this is not how we want our content to be presented to our customers, and I think that's fair enough.

01:22:14 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Independent press organizations are also calling for the same thing, so it's not a quiet problem.

01:22:18 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
And I know that this is going to sound basic when is this showing up? And the reason I ask is I don't ever see any summaries.

01:22:26 - Jason Snell (Host)
You off the ai summary, if you have ai summaries turned on and you have a news app that feeds you lots of headlines, like the bbc app, if you opt to have them fed to you, then in the lock screen or in the notification center, instead of seeing a stack of headlines, you'll see a single notification bubble that will summarize, with little semicolons in between, a few of those headlines together, which, again as an idea of you, you know 10 push notifications have gone by. We're going to tell you what you really need to know in a really quick blurt like that's okay, that's not a bad idea. The problem is when it says rafael nadal comes out as gay, when that's not the headline. That's not the story. It's not true, but the BBC now is allegedly saying that because it's been filtered through.

01:23:14 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, and you probably realize, I don't have any, any notifications.

01:23:20 - Jason Snell (Host)
It doesn't sound like you does it? It doesn't sound like you. It was like I don't want anyone to ever talk to me ever.

01:23:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is our? There's the, by the way, the New York Times headline I never what is our. There's the. By the way, the New York Times headline Trudeau will be the next Congress. I think that's pretty darn exciting. I just got that one.

01:23:34 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
And it's not just these summaries either. Remember that it's one of the things that Apple Intelligence was supposed to benefit us for. Is that, hey, we're going to make sure that we're not going to give you alerts for every single email or message that you get. We'll make sure that the most important ones, like, get special alerts, but it's too dumb to know that. Yeah, the reason why spammers put extremely lurid and attention getting things like oh my God, call me right now, is because things it's, it's because it's attention getting and so great. So now spammers are getting at the top of my notifications outside of, like, my mom, my friends, my doctors.

01:24:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's, it's not good so how do we feel about it? With notifications I mean um messages notifications. They are also sometimes hysterically wrong, but I think it's not quite the same right.

01:24:22 - Jason Snell (Host)
I wish I wish they were better, but I think they have more context because they get to summarize the entire text of the message. So it so it's sometimes wrong.

01:24:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We've seen some really crazy.

01:24:31 - Jason Snell (Host)
Yeah, absolutely, but I think that there's potential there for it to be useful, but it's not, you know, and the stakes feel a little bit lower to me than with the use of hindsight. I like these.

01:24:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, when I first turned it on, my ring doorbell said there were multiple people at my front door. I got a little nervous until I mean, when I first turned it on, my ring doorbell said there were multiple people at my front door. I got a little nervous until I realized so that's just a roll-up of all the different people that came and went over a five-hour period. It sounded like they were there with pitchforks and torches and I should immediately bar the door. But that wasn't it. So you learn. It's funny.

01:25:05 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I think that one's useful, but the difference is it's not claiming to come from a news organization yeah, I really think that one of the simplest things they could do to please partially address this is simply say guess what? Every notification that you get that's been filtered through Apple intelligence has a special background on it. That is there you go just get. Just give it a different shade of colors that's associated with this.

01:25:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, all right, let's take a little break. More to come. You're watching Mac Break Weekly on the TWiT Podcasting Network. This is our, by the way. When did we, when did you, start Mac Break?

01:25:36 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Alex, this was. It would have been, I think, this week in 2000. I think it's 2006 because it was Mac World Expo. The Mac World Expo, we, we ran around with Emery wells and amber macarthur and you and I, yeah, and we covered it. And then we, that week, we recorded a whole bunch of episodes that took me a long time to put together.

01:25:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this is the 19th anniversary of mac break? I think it is. Yeah and it is. We are in our our 20th anniversary for a twit in april. Uh, we've been doing this a long time almost as long as you, Jason.

01:26:08 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Wow, it's pretty amazing.

01:26:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So happy birthday to us. Our show today brought to you by Cashfly. That's. One of the reasons I ask is because practically since the beginning we've been literally brought to you by Cashfly. You heard me say it over and over. You know bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by Cashfly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Ycom. Actually in is provided by cashfly at c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y dot com. Actually in the early days I think I said all radio bit torrent. I mean we were trying everything. That's when matt levine from cashfly came to me and said uh, can we help?

01:26:39
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01:28:49
Thanks to cashfly, I think I'm doing matt's podcasts in a few days. I have to check my calendar. I remember I'm doing that. It's coming up. Uh, all right.

01:29:00 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Strava integration into fitness plus nothing I don't exercise enough to have a comment on this I don't use strava actually I really like fitness plus as it is in apple's activity.

01:29:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've been using something called gentler streak, which is basically the same stuff apple tells you, but in a nicer way.

01:29:23 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I like that I, I love the, I love all the apple health I mean.

01:29:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I I think that it's so valuable, it's so great.

01:29:30 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I. Finally, my wife was kind of like I don't want to watch, I don't want to watch, I don't want to watch. And then she said do you have any of the old Apple watches right around Christmas? So I very quickly got her 10. I just went and bought her. You're like here, have a new one. I want to make sure you have a great experience. Experience. And she just loves it. Like she's going to go into the Apple store and like, do the little tutorial on how to use it and and all this other stuff. She's, she just really enjoys it.

01:29:52
And but I think that the biggest thing is the health is is the sense that I have all this biometric data, sleep data I have. I don't feel like, if I go to swim, that I don't have my watch or my watch battery. You know if I, if I, if the battery ran low or whatever, I feel like the swim doesn't count, I have to go do something else. You know like so so the um, uh, the tracking of that has been kind of amazing, like and just all of that. I think that that's the biggest.

01:30:16
I think Apple had a lot of assumptions about what I think we talked about before, but what the app would, what the watch would do and what it's really done as timers and health, you know, are the two big. You know that's what they like. That's the lock in. I can't imagine using something else at this point, but I think their, their fitness stuff is great. I haven't found a space that I wanted to do. I've done it a little bit but hadn't found a space that I really found was the right space to do it in. But I think that the what's fun as a production person is to watch what happens when someone builds fitness videos where they used all the money yeah, like the production value on the business was so hard.

01:30:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, they're going to have some strava. Uh, athletes, uh, in the fitness videos. I love the fitness videos.

01:30:58 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
There was a yeah, there was an apple newsroom mark, so it's this big enough. They decided to put a newsroom piece in it, in addition to a whole bunch of like little new features for fitness plus, such as pickleball, you can now yeah it should, for crying out loud.

01:31:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They got everything else?

01:31:14 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
yes, for, for Strava do you get?

01:31:17
Do you get credit for, like, the fist fights you get into with tennis players as you're trying to use the same court? That should also count too, because that's very, very aerobic as a as and manages your blood pressure and stress levels, uh, but yeah, so the strava stuff is that, uh, essentially, there's integration between fitness, the fitness app and the strava app, and also, uh, this is the strava strava app can get access to data off of your phone that's fitness related and that content related, and also that they're having a whole bunch of trava instructors available in, like apple's fitness offerings. So, yeah, I mean they, they're going where the money is. So their services, services, services, services. They gotta keep making as much money as they can from services, thereby making Fitness Plus more attractive by hooking it up to the, the, the kind of the, the name, the, the only other name that you kind of think of when it comes to fitness services, it is Strava, so it's a, it's a high tide that can float both of those boats I have uh my um.

01:32:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There you go, there's, there's straw. It's usually mostly used by uh runners, I think, for training and so forth. I have my uh go gentler. I think I presume it's taking this from apple fitness. It can record dancing. So when I go out to dance I turn on my Apple watch. People think I'm a complete dork. Uh, tai chi. I turn on my Apple watch when I'm doing my tai chi. It records a lot of those things. It's pretty cool, I uh. Adding more is always a good thing. Incidentally, there was a breakthrough. I know, alex, you have said that the, the, the company that comes through the way of doing non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, is going to be very, very rich. University of waterloo announced that they have now created a non-invasive continuous glucose monitor that you could would fit in a watch uses radar. Um, now I I'm sure apple came a calling almost immediately. Yeah, I was like. I was like also seen as a bunch of apple executives having to enter technology from benefiting anybody who doesn't buy apple products.

01:33:13 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Apple decided to come in and write the check uh, so we'll see.

01:33:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, actually, this paper came out last year, so radar near field sensing using meta surface for biomedical applications. You might have missed that in your uh and I don't inbox.

01:33:28 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
But I don't know if it would have the same impact with almost any other manufacturer, because the watch is so ubiquitous now.

01:33:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, massimo came calling too. They don't have the billions that Apple does.

01:33:40 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, I think that if I was looking for the right deal, I would definitely do it with Apple. It's going to be whatever Massimo can afford definitely do it with apple.

01:33:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to be whatever the word plus the piece uh says. The team is currently working with industry partners to introduce the technology to be installed in the next generation of wearables. We have a minimum viable product that's already being used in clinical trials. That's the key, though, isn't it to?

01:34:01 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
get the fda approval. I make sure it doesn't like turn your skin into leather. You know like.

01:34:07 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
You know like by the way it's like being licked by a cat.

01:34:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a smell of of roasting meat.

01:34:11 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, as you wear your watch, yeah the uh, but I, but I think that it if, if apple releases that watch again, if for anybody like like dunkin donuts, I would definitely sell my stock like it's gonna be it's just gonna for for desserts and and ultra processed foods.

01:34:32
It's. It's gonna be a apocalyptic, like it is, when people can see the data, when they, when it's easy, it's on their watch and they can see their data. It changes the way you, it changes the way you operate, like it changed the way, like my watch definitely changes my behavior, you know, and and I you know about a lot of things, um and so. So I think that it's. I think that when people start to see their glucose levels and start connecting it with what they ate, it's fantastic there is.

01:34:56 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
There is an ethical component to this. Like it's nice to have enough money you can afford. Like an expensive phone nice to have enough money, you can afford expensive smart watch. What about people who necessarily don't have?

01:35:06
that ability I think there's an ethical component. If Apple were to decide that this is great technology, it's the only one that seems to work. We're going to make sure that this is absolutely exclusive to us, and Samsung can't get at it. Any other smartwatch manufacturer can't get at it. We want to make sure that if you want the revolutionary improvement in health that glucose monitoring constantly can can provide, you have to buy an iphone and you have to buy an apple watch. But that's where I start to have an ethical issue.

01:35:33 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, I think that. The thing, though, is that what it's going to do is it's going to affect the entire uh discussion about food, so sure it won't be just the people who have the watches. It'll be that, you know, like only the watches will benefit, though.

01:35:47
No, no, I think everyone will benefit from the long run, because everyone word will, because everyone's going to realize because everyone's going to realize that eating ultra processed food is poison. Processed is poison. And they're going to get that really clear when, when, suddenly, a whole bunch of press people and all all these people are wearing the watches are are posting on their social media about look at what's happening to my thing it's, it's. It's going to change how food is sold.

01:36:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to change how I mean, like atkins did it well, wait till we have a uh, where do we have a lot of those. It didn't matter whether they were ever chemical detector in your watch. That's when you're going to really see some changes just just quickly.

01:36:20 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Well, actually two things on that. All all I will say is that imagine it's 1950 and apple decided that it's going to buy the polio vaccine, and we're going to have lots of press about how wonderful it is that when we beat polio and here's, people are aware of how communicable polio is.

01:36:36
I'm not directly equating the two, but I think it's in the same broad category. Hey, we've got these. We're going to start the next uh wwdc keynote with a video about everyone's first-hand accounts about how their lives were saved and how they almost got they. They're now on top of their health and adding to that. Well, by the way, we're going to need at least a thousand bucks out of you before anybody.

01:37:00 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
But here's the thing is that that's not good, that's not. I think that what's going to happen is people are going to become really conscious to it. I've talked talked to a couple of people who have glucose monitors because I'm looking at getting a glucose monitor and they were like you know, the bottom line is is that you take the glucose monitor and what it does is it underlines for you that there's a whole bunch of foods that you already knew were bad for you, that you shouldn't be eating it and you shouldn't be eating it. And you now, you just now, see the results. He said you know you can the wine and and, uh, you know, you know, so then you do, oh yeah, um, but the, the um, but I think that there's something about it when it's in, it's on a certain a lot of things affect overall societal change when only a certain percentage have it. I, I don't think that. I don't. Number one is, I don't know, alex.

01:37:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I understand that, but I think annie has a good point too, which is I just don't want to be bad for a lock up technology like that maybe and it's really going to be up to the university of waterloo to make sure that they don't? Do you know that they do something that's that's you know, appropriate to society or funds the whole university or maybe the government puts these out.

01:38:15
I know it's, you know who you know. The problem is it's going to be expensive to make a device. Yeah, that does, it's good, I don't know it's.

01:38:21 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It'll put apple in a real awkward position when, inevitably, of course, someone has they have exclusive access to this technology. But but the research is out there and people and other individuals and researchers and companies try to create another technology that uses that same system. And then Apple starts suing people, saying, no, we're not going to allow you to create life-saving equipment for other people.

01:38:42
Again, not a good look for Apple, especially during those times of the year where they dust off that aluminum halo and put it on on themselves and adjust that that and say, gosh, thank god, you're doing business with us and not apple, or not facebook? Huh, because the debate the angels.

01:38:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The battle between massimo and apple over the blood oximeter is is really not not in the same category, because knowing your blood glucose is a life or death thing compared to. I mean, I guess if you've got covert you, you want a good, but you can buy a cheap blood oximeter. I think you're right, andy.

01:39:11 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I think it's something Apple should be, aware of, and I would hope Apple would be smart enough to to do the right thing although on that other thing you said, though, did you see that there was a much over inflated research paper that came up where researchers were investigating uh fluoroelastomers ability to get into the bloodstream? Basically get into the body through and they said oh gosh expensive watch band?

01:39:36
yeah, and they so, and a lot of this turned into headlines. Oh, is that is your apple watch actually killing you by introducing microplastics? And that's, of course, kind of nonsense. All they were saying is that they decided that the researchers said that we we don't think that anybody's really done this kind of research before, but yes, we did test like a dozen different straps, I think they including. I don't know if they mentioned Apple specifically, because I can read the summary.

01:40:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They said the more expensive fluoroelastomer.

01:40:02 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Yeah, exactly, they hinted at it and they also mentioned that. Well, and also because you're sweating into this, that's going to increase like the transfer. All they and they. They didn't do any human studies. They basically just demonstrated that.

01:40:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you can't like my phthalates like the normal way through through my food. So, exactly, I'm not too worried about my watch band. Um, hey, uh, john ashley is on vacation. He's in japan. I hope he's having a great time. That means anthony nielsen is producing the show today. Anthony, I say this to wake you up, because it would be a good time right now to play the vision pro yep theme. Oh, that's the jingle. My bad pull-up. There's a theme and there's a jingle.

01:40:45 - Jason Snell (Host)
What do you know it's time to talk to Vision Pro.

01:40:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We don't really have any Vision Pro news today, except for mass production of micro LED displays will begin next year, says Foxconn, and I guess that's not going to be for, for that'd be probably too expensive for a laptop or a tablet or even a phone, but it might make a lot of sense in uh, a vr headset of various kinds there were a couple little pieces, um, but we got remember that back in October or something, there was a story okay.

01:41:30 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Well, these companies that were manufacturing displays for the Vision Pro are no longer manufacturing in that kind of volume. There are a couple of kind of interesting things from CES, NVIDIA, both of them through NVIDIA's keynote.

01:42:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I thought this was a good news.

01:42:03 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
yes, yeah, so basically Vision Pro is going to support NVIDIA's GeForForce now, which is their cloud gaming service they're going to get. I've used it.

01:42:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's quite good yeah, that's really nice, so that's, that's good. It won't be a VR game or right because it'll, it'll just be a screen, you know, as usual in your, you know, 100 inch screen in your vision, but uh still so, and it will be through Safari, not through an app.

01:42:24 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
But that's the. That's something you weren't able to do before. They also mentioned that last year, one of their big announcements was that they're creating this new AI platform for training humanoid robots. It's called Groot GR00T, as it should be, yes, and part of the system is that you can basically train this robot AI by example, by showing it video, by showing it things you captured. So one of the things other things in the keynote, I think was that now you can use the vision pro as a source of movement capture for training those robots. So researchers and professionals love them. It's a great hardware uh, it was impressive.

01:43:02 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
A lot of the announcements impressive. Did you watch the whole keynote?

01:43:06 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I haven't yet. It's literally on my laptop right now.

01:43:08 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I downloaded this morning no, I was curious because I found myself, I was like you know, because I think jensen's one of the best at it and but I still found myself skipping through the 12 minute version, like I just. I was like I just still feel like the keynote era is over, like I just like when you have yeah out there and the 12.

01:43:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't understand why the CES era isn't over. The whole thing seems like an exercise. Oh, I don't know Past century.

01:43:31 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I think that the presentations at CES are kind of worthless. The expo is actually really useful. I don't get to go this year, I'm too busy, but NAB, ces, nam, a couple other ones, you know. The big thing is is that I think the real value is the expos, not so much that I think that the, the actual sessions, are old, old ideas you know not old ideas that they're talking about an old way of presenting them.

01:43:55
You know we, we created these conferences when we didn't have video, like in the, and you had to come and watch something to actually get the knowledge. And we're way past that now. So I think that the actual sessions are kind of a waste of time. But the networking, the dinners and, most importantly, the expo, when you go to the Chinese section of CES and you're two years, you just walk two years into the future of things that are being created in the Japanese area and the Chinese area. But also you get to see all these little things. I mean, we see big announcements, but there's so much at CES that you get to kind of explore and see new technologies that aren't going to probably come out for sometimes four or five years and they're sitting on some little 20 by 10 booth with some dude no-transcript.

01:45:18 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
They have, or they have, a manufacturing technique for a certain component and they're trying to sell it not to, obviously not to consumers. They're trying to figure out that, hey, if you've got, if you, if you're building phones, here is a new way to build that illuminator, here is a way to do a do a lens array. And that's the stuff where, like the stuff that you see, like in every YouTube video about CES and every like good, good morning at Tumwa, iowa show, like, is your rice cooker old tech? I guess it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't do Bitcoin, does it? Well, that changes with a hot new product at CES. That stuff is garbage. But the stuff that is really interesting are these small companies that don't necessarily need PR. They're just there for the dealmaking.

01:45:57 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Now I will say that if the companies who go to CES spend as much on a company like Video Studio to stream about their products as they do on the booth, it would probably die, because these are, you know, these are like $2 million for, you know, $2 million and $7 million and if you're cheap, 250,000, um, you know, for most of these booths. You know, um, you know that, uh, I mean, like a 10 by 20 booth is is 30, 40, $50,000, you know, and you know, with all the costs that are related to without electricity, yeah, yeah, so, so the um, so the thing is is that if they took that and they, the big reason that we need to go to ces to cover things is because no one will invest in their own, uh, video production, uh systems at their own office. You know, like, where they could, they could do streams and talk about it, because otherwise we just have them call in and talk to them, but we have to go there because they don't have any things at the office.

01:46:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just don't think I've seen anything interesting at CES in years. But OK, I haven't been there for years.

01:47:00 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
And NVIDIA is now the king of CES. They're the ones who like OK, but now you've got a $3,000 affordable mac mini tile computer that can run multi-billion, multi-billion number models like on, privately like okay, since we're still in the vision pro segment.

01:47:17 - Jason Snell (Host)
They did say that the geforce now is going to come to vision. You mentioned that you weren't you must have been asleep. I was just. I'm sorry I got swept away in all of the other weird conversations. Did we talk about the humanoid robots? I don't even want to talk about that.

01:47:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, let's not. Apple yes, you can now the question is GeForce now?

01:47:34 - Jason Snell (Host)
But no, you can't now. This is the thing. How they said they're going to do it Safari, you can't do it. Well, yeah, but GeForce now you've got to save the as a web app bundle to the launch screen. I don't think it's going to work and you can't do that on Vision OS now. So the theory is that hidden in the Vision OS 8, what is it? 2.3 or whatever beta is either a way to do that or some kind of thing that they've worked with NVIDIA on to make it usable. So it's interesting. It is, of course, the least interesting kind of gaming on the vision pro. It's just like from apple's presentation about it, which is like, hey, gaming on the vision pro, hold a controller and play an ipad game. It's a little like that, but still it's interesting that nvidia has apparently nvidia has been working with apple, apple's been working with nvidia.

01:48:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
somebody seems to be motivated to have insider says gaming says players will be able to stream games to their headsets. Yeah, when the newest app update starts rolling out later in january. Yeah, so this?

01:48:37 - Jason Snell (Host)
is the challenge is what? What? There's things that are not in vision os right now that are going to be required for that to work but what? Are. So what's going on there?

01:48:46 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
and as a vision pro user owner, I just have like zero interest, like like I just don't understand like like a kind of a half baked interface into something you can't play it on your mac right now?

01:48:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
games that you presumably play it on your mac and then watch your mac on your vision pro I know people who do stuff like you know, late, late at night.

01:49:06 - Jason Snell (Host)
They're playing games using the vision pro because there's, you know, no light leakage and they can just sit there in bed and do that while their partner sleeps. And I think that there is a why not right, why not?

01:49:18 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
It's a really small market that I think that there are places that that small market could be capitalized on. I just don't think that this one's going to be. You know, I anyway yeah it seems it's.

01:49:29 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
don't think that this one's going to be, you know, I, I anyway, yeah, it seems it's it's it's not difficult for nvidia to do.

01:49:32 - Jason Snell (Host)
It's not difficult.

01:49:32 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
For as long as it's not difficult, I mean you may as well have this thing that you can't have before me again. They if it's true, apple has stopped manufacturing them because they figure, yeah, we've made about as much as we will ever sell ever, so let's at least for the next year. So we don't anything, we will take anything. Take anything we get on the more successful version of this product.

01:49:49 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I think there's a very viable market and there are things that are very viable in the Apple vision pro. I'm just not sure that, like repackaging cloud games is one of them. That's all I mean I like. I think that there are things that that I'm working on that I think you know. I think when the new camera comes out, we're going to see a lot of things. I think that there's a lot of educational opportunities. I think there's a lot of gaming opportunities. I still think that some of the immersive stuff that we see on the MetaQuest is very engaging, whether it's Supernatural or a lot of the Robo Recall, and there's things that, in VR, are amazing. It's just that we don't. I just feel like we're not seeing any of that on the Vision Pro.

01:50:27 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I think that this is where apple the money is not on that vision pro right now.

01:50:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, well, I think, if you loved, uh, if you loved, john chu's amazing movie wicked, then you can thank the vision pro.

01:50:36 - Jason Snell (Host)
John chu loves the vision pro, he loves this raving about it since it the moment that it came out. He loves it so much he says.

01:50:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He says he was, uh, using it at in post-production. He would, uh, he would watch the video on a giant virtual screen. While he talked to other people working on the same project For Wicked, he said we have a lot of visual effects around the world. I could be at my house and I could have a screen that was bigger than the one in the screening room and I could be talking to all the people in all the different continents and I would watch the playback.

01:51:08 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
It's still a crappy movie, but hey, the vision pro what I will say is that that the, the uh, the screen inside the vision pro is still the sharpest experience I have of any movie.

01:51:20
That's probably the thing is, if you wanted if you wanted to look at visual effects, like a lot of times until like when I, when I worked on star wars, you know they would come in and look at everything and they'd I, when I worked on Star Wars, you know they would come in and look at everything and they'd look at it on my little, like you know, and approve the shot to go to film out based on a little screen that we're looking at, and then that would go, that would get filmed out and put onto a big screen to look at it. Well, you couldn't approve it until you have the big screen. I think that at this point the I have seen that screen, obviously that we approve stuff for Star Wars and I've seen Star Wars on my Vision Pro and it would be easier to approve the shot on the Vision Pro than it would be on the screen.

01:51:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you think that John Chu doing this promotional video for Apple TV about how he used the Vision Pro is the equivalent of paying a million dollars for Trump's inauguration? Like it's just John Chu doing something nice for Apple hoping that they'll do something nice for him.

01:52:14 - Jason Snell (Host)
No, he loves the Vision Pro. He's a nerd, he's super into it.

01:52:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's wearing an Apple Watch too in the video.

01:52:21 - Jason Snell (Host)
So he is a super-.

01:52:21 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Like every other filmmaker, yeah.

01:52:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that's true? Well, I guess it's like, I think, that here he is in his house watching the playback. It's, it's, uh, it's a moving moment. I don't know. I think maybe the movie would have been better if he didn't have a vision pro.

01:52:37 - Jason Snell (Host)
I was just we're all truth detecting you in the chat room leo 88 rotten tomatoes score have you seen it. I've seen the. I've seen the, the musical. I haven't seen the movie oh, the musical was fine.

01:52:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not great, but fine. Um, I just started watching the movie because you can watch it now on apple tv and I'm shocked the people who love the movie started watching one song from it.

01:53:02 - Jason Snell (Host)
Well, you had to find gravity. It's a banger. What are you talking about? Um, so what? You just started watching the movie. So is this your review of the first?

01:53:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
three and a half freaking hours of the movie I saw enough. I saw enough. I watched, uh, 45 minutes of it all, right, while I was rowing there's leo's review of 45 minutes of wicked.

01:53:22 - Jason Snell (Host)
This is terrible I'll.

01:53:23 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I'll. I'll say is that like it happened. I spent a lot of my last days of mid-break vacation building the ultimate Broadway playlist on Spotify for myself, and a lot of it reminded me of oh God. That was a good movie, but they had to cut four of the best songs out of it for this, even though the soundtrack album has one of the best versions of one of the killer songs. So, on the one hand, I'm glad that when they made 1776 into a movie, they decided screw it, three and a half hours will include the entire thing. On the other hand, yeah, I'm not sure if you can maintain the delight of a musical over three and a half hours, then go home for a year and then another three and a half hours.

01:54:03
But I do want to see it because it looks like.

01:54:05 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Go see it.

01:54:06 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I know someone who knows one of the stars and they've been telling me a lot about it during the production and got. Oh, so this person, like 110, cares about this and okay, this is going to be fun I mean it's fine.

01:54:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you liked it, that's fine. Uh, wasn't for me, that's fine, and I like the original wizard of oz.

01:54:24 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I thought that was good. I pre-sorted myself. I was like that's not my, that's not my film, not my jam like because I was like, I didn't, I was, I was.

01:54:32 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I will say that when I, when it first became a musical and I heard about like the of clumsy version of a condensed condensation, the storyline, I thought, oh, that's exactly what I don't want people to do with something in the public domain. But then, like I actually saw it, say, okay, the thing that I hate when they people do to certain movies and they didn't do it, they did something completely different. It's like, okay, great it was. I thought I liked it a lot.

01:54:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like and I like musicals.

01:54:55 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I'm not saying I don't like this one, no again, and I'm holding space and I like and I will say I love what's about like if I yeah, I loved it if I ever have like a lot of time on my hands. My my, not because I think it's a good idea because I, I want to go back and replace all the mat, all the uh matte paintings with like really high quality matte paintings oh god you're gonna remember.

01:55:14 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I hope you're gonna release it.

01:55:16 - Jason Snell (Host)
Oh god satan satan is inside your mouth no, there isn't enough resolution in this matte painting. No, it's perfect the way it is. I don't know there isn't enough resolution in this matte painting.

01:55:26 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
No, it's perfect the way it is.

01:55:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, it'd be great Ouch, just don't put Jar Jar Binks in it, okay, I'm just saying Marlon Ross, and that's our vision. I'm second hand. No, no, no, that's our vision. Pro segment for the day.

01:55:44 - Jason Snell (Host)
Now you see, now you know, boys, that's it. I haven't been grumpy today.

01:55:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't like CES, I don't like Wicked.

01:55:50 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I said how great CES is, but I realized I haven't been there since COVID and I have to admit that I talked to a lot of folks and, with the H5N1 as close to the surface as possible, I was like this is going to be the year I went.

01:56:13 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
And I was like, I think I'm gonna take one more year off and just see. But don't worry, because we are really prepared for a pandemic this time around absolutely we got people, we're on top of it.

01:56:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Robert kennedy is gonna be boy. I'm so happy. Forget the vaccines, forget the masks the man's a kennedy.

01:56:22 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
How could you want anyone better than this? Good this year I don't. I don't know much more about him than that, but oh, oh, my God Cut this all out.

01:56:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
On the terms of being definitely the son of Missouri Brad Poole.

01:56:35 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
You're watching.

01:56:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
MacBreak Weekly, I will stop talking. I wish we could get Merlin Mann back just for one visit. Maybe do a Merlin Mann, scott Bourne, you were there, alex. It'd be great. I'm in. You were there, alex. It'd be great. I'm in, you were there and you were there. Macbreak Weekly continues with our Picks of the Week.

01:57:04
Now, since I am the guy who said the best part about Mac OS X is the Unix underlying underpinnings, I'm gonna recommend what is oddly become a cause Celebra a new terminal for Mac OS. A lot of people use iTerm. Of course it comes with a completely competent terminal. There's no reason you need to use a different terminal program. But this new one's really fun. It's free, it's open source, it's ghosttty at ghost ttyorg.

01:57:32
It does use metal, which is nice. It's available for linux as well as macintosh, but on macintosh it uses metal and it has a lot of nice configuration features. It's got a very nice api. I think it's quite pretty. It's got the built-in nerd fonts, which is probably a dumb idea, since it's so easy to download the nerd fonts. But you want but it, you know if you don't want to download them. Built-in themes, uh. And it works with a variety of shells, not just z shell, which is the now the Mac OS default. But bash my choice. Uh shell, uh fish and a shell called elvish. Uh, I really like it. Ghost tty dot o-r-g. If you aren't using the terminal, you ain't mackin.

01:58:19 - Jason Snell (Host)
Jason snell, your pick of the week ah, just added to the document in time. In the nick of time, I finally bought some of those smart led christmas tree lights, the govi christmas lights too. And I know christmas. It's only 350 days till christmas now start to get ready.

01:58:38
Man gotta get ready that these hundred dollar lights are currently on sale for 63 dollars at amazon. As we're recording this, um, 66 feet, it will fit around a reasonably sized christmas tree and in fact, uh, it's got wifi and Bluetooth and what it will do is you can actually hold up their app, uh, to the lights on your tree and it sees the lights and then it maps them and then it can have effects like the lights go around or the lights go from the bottom to the top and other things that are just, you know, they're not super smart, but they're not super smart, but they're smart enough. They've got a bunch of different patterns. I used them this year, first time I've ever had them. They were really nice.

01:59:13
Literally, I could be like oh, I'm in the mood for red and green blinking, I'm in the mood for something like for New Year's. It got all like purpley and stuff. There are all sorts of different patterns you can load in there and, yes, you can load in a thing where it moves along to the audio of whatever you're like music you're playing in the room or movie that you're watching, um, and you can have that be coming out of your phone via the app or it's got a little block on it with apparently a little microphone in it that you can have it use. That will also kind of like vibrate the lights to whatever sound is playing in your room. Lots of try it.

01:59:45 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Lots of variation're pretty.

01:59:47 - Jason Snell (Host)
They're pretty and they're blinky. I like the blinking lights on the Christmas tree and these are really well done. I was very impressed. I mean the app isn't great, but it's good enough and it does some really amazing things on your Christmas tree. And you know what? You don't have a Christmas tree the rest of the year. It's fine. Put them somewhere, Put them around a window or something, and have fun. Whatever Like you can use them anytime. There's no law against it. There's no law on the rule book against, First off, that a dog can play basketball. Yes, a dog can play basketball and two Christmas lights are for all the time. Just light up your lights.

02:00:23 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
And what about Scarecrow's brain? And what about Scarecrow's brain? Yeah, and when you take, I have a set of those Twinklies I got like three or four years ago and, yeah, like when they're off the tree, like sometimes, for certain occasions, I will hang them in just like vertical strips. And because this most miraculous thing, ok, just aim the phone camera at the lights. However you've hung them, it will map them and essentially turn them into a really low resolution video display and just now we can basically put anything on there and it will just plain work.

02:00:53 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
It's, it's super fun to have just as a thing to mess around with yeah, and I think our tree we had the same ones last year or something that by govi I don't know if they're the exact same ones it worked, worked great for the tree and now they're part of my daughter's room. Yeah, like they were mounted ah.

02:01:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So yes, it's not just for christmas yeah, because they're so.

02:01:11 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
They're so controllable and, and, um, uh, if you haven't played with programmable string lights and there's lots of different flavors of them, they're so much fun, like in, and, and the apps are all a little quirky, uh, and, but they all do enough and they're really, really great.

02:01:25 - Jason Snell (Host)
Yeah yeah, and I've tried these out so I can I can recommend them. They're they're, they're really well made and, uh, the software is usable and you get a pretty fun result uh, mr uh and alex lindsey, your pick of the week.

02:01:41 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I like it because it's zero alex's it's zero, alex's, it already comes with your phone if you have an iPhone. I have to admit that when I just this is me eating a little crow Uh, when the cinematic mode came out of the iPhone, I was like, oh, this is dumb. Like you know, like, as someone who does this, I was like I'm never going to use that. Like I, you know, bear, you know, I'm like I'm serious about something. I'm going to use the black magic camera and I'm going to do whatever. I'm going to use, uh, keno or or something like that, and and, uh, uh. And so I was at a concert and, um, I was. There's a, there's a band in in marin actually playing in mill valley. Um, uh, on friday, a z dz which is a cover band for acdc.

02:02:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, they also they're the best band ever.

02:02:24 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Oh my god yeah, and um, and the guitarist is amazing and um, the the half of the band, half of the band, josh z, is that his name? Yeah, he, yeah, he is a beast he is uh, second only uh to the guy in the school boy outfit, angus yeah, yeah, he's just, he's just amazing, and and um and half the band is also in the illegals, which is the eagles yeah joey and and uh for new year's.

02:02:49
For new year's eve I went to see petty theft, whose lead singer is the keyboardist in the illegals yeah right and the drummers in the in the drummer for petty theft is in uh is in the is the drummer and the bass player for petty theft, or the rhythm guitar are in azz.

02:03:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's very complicated, so the um, there's all these cover bands, the guitarists, six bands count them, so good. Anyway, when I saw petty theft, he came in late because he was driving up from an from another band he's playing in nicasio and he had to drive up to the mystic totally probably coming from rancho nicasio up to there, and and um, the uh, but we get into this, I forgot.

02:03:29 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
So I was so, um, the legals, uh, did a bunch of test stuff with me. Um, when we were testing some some shooting at uh for theaters and and so Joey, uh, joey pointed out that they're going to play and I was like, hey, can I come down and shoot some high frame rate stuff and everything else? And so I was down there shooting it and so once I shot, I shot it during the sound check and so, um, so then I was just there and my kids came to see it. Then my kids love going to live shows and um, so we're watching it and I thought I would just pick up. I was like I wonder what cinematic mode is. Like I was playing with it a little bit when I was doing my.

02:04:07
I had a then, so I figured I'd shoot a song, you know like sometime during the show, and you know, and, and so it was good. I was like I can touch the screen and and focus on who I wanted. And I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. I was talking about it on office hours and I had forgotten all the features that it has. And so someone pointed out I was like, yeah, it did pretty well, it missed a couple here and there. And someone said, you know, you can refocus that in final cut. And I was like, and so, um, you know, so if you look at it here, this is the I'm playing here. If you look at this, um, you know, this is in post, you know. I just want to kind of point out like this that that's Josh right there playing away. Um, there's Dave and and uh, and there's so good so david david's thinking over here.

02:04:49
But if I want to change the focus, I just I just tap on it, you just tap on me and and you can, but you're actually re. You're re, like, if I want to, if I want to go over here, I want to come back up here and I can animate how I'm doing all of that in final cut with the, with how is it doing that?

02:05:06
it's recording multiple images, so there's nothing in everything's in focus, right, because it's just a phone, um, and so it's doing computational it's all soft, it's all software focused, so you can sit here and you can um.

02:05:17
You also have the depth of field here, so I can. I can make it even shorter depth of field or longer depth of field. You know, so I can move, move around. You know with what I'm doing here and play with what it's. You know, so I can move, move around. You know with what I'm doing here and play with what it's. You know what it's focusing on, um, in that, in that range, and and the thing is is that I again I'm not probably gonna do production with it, but I was like this is the first year of film school, like you could totally do, you know, short films for school or or I think that there's a lot of social media stuff, but I, I have to admit I just I'm a little late to the game, I know, but I think I didn't. I think it's worth saying like, hey, this is actually a pretty impressive feature that I kind of totally skipped over when Apple released it and thought it was kind of a kid's toy.

02:06:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just parenthetically. So you're that guy who's at the concert, not dancing, recording the whole thing.

02:06:06 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
One, one song. Okay, one song. I didn't. I know I'm not, so I'm definitely not the person.

02:06:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I barely there are always people at every one of these that don't do anything but stand there and record the whole thing and then they dance with it.

02:06:19 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
I'm like I always look at it going you're never going to use that like like you're never going to look at it again. Anyway, you're dancing and you're going like this, like this is my you, you know, and so usually what happens is I. When I shoot, I usually find a place where there's no one behind me, because I'm really sensitive to it.

02:06:34
So I'm usually always see me over at some angle, or I'm standing right in front of a post. You know that's usually where I you know, like where I'm kind of covered, and or I'll shoot. If I'm shooting close up, I might shoot like for 30 seconds or one minute. You know of something to gather when you see me.

02:06:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm the guy with his ipad and the flap on the cover hanging down, shooting the whole show yeah, so I.

02:06:57 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
So I, no, I, I did it as a test. I I did not um shoot the whole about that guy, definitely um, and so uh, uh, but uh, we have to hang out.

02:07:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're friends with joey and fernanda, we could get together and uh, yeah, have a little party, we should, we should. Yeah, I didn't know, you knew joey, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:07:15 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
So, um, a lot of the stuff that I think is on there on the illegals site is stuff that you might have shot. I didn't know that, or some of it is anyway.

02:07:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So so, yeah, so I think arguably that's the best. Uh cover band name is illegals.

02:07:30 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Yeah, and the eagles you know, the eagles are going after them for the, you know, eagles are just like it's. Don henley is just like maniacal about the eagles songs, you know, and so but uh, uh, but they're, they are. They don't spell it the same as the eagles, no, it's just music. But they do sing the same songs.

02:07:49
So the um so the uh, it's a tribute, it's a tribute band and and they're probably one of the one of the better ones and and I, you know it was really interesting going to. It was at sweetwater and and going to sweetwater and having it packed, and you know you really only live on your. I mean how good you are as a cover band to be able to pack one Cause it's not like you have released any new song, new albums, you know, and um, and, and they're just they're, they're fantastic and so anyway, so it was fun. But to get back to the cinematic mode, um, I would highly recommend, if you have a new, a new iPhone that does it, go out and play with it. It's kind of amazing. It's kind of and it's not just. I thought it was amazing when it was just doing cinematic mode. I didn't realize, I forgot, I had just forgotten. It's been so long I'd forgotten that I could all refocus this in post in final cut Um, pretty, pretty cool.

02:08:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Would you recommend always using cinematic instead of video?

02:08:39 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
No, not necessarily. I think that I think that I would. I there's definitely things I shoot with video. I shoot with video more often, um, you know if, but a lot of times what I'm shooting I'm shooting like. I want to remember this. I'm not trying to make anything special, I just want to remember this moment for a second.

02:08:54
Um, you're going to get lower resolution, lower frame rate. I'm mostly shooting in 4k, 60 um, uh, so you know, I can't do that in cinematic mode. I think it's 1080p and 24 or 30 um and so. So I don't think that. Um, I don't think that cinematic is the thing. It's for a specific use. But if I like, one thing I was thinking about doing is, uh, you know, it'd be good if you had like a. If you have a business and you're not a filmmaker, but you want to shoot something about your business for two or three minutes to put on your website or put on Facebook or something like that, I bet you could shoot a pretty impressive little two and a half minute video with it. That looked pretty awesome, that most people would think was was great, you know. So that's the kind of thing I think it'd be good for. And social media.

02:09:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank you. One more pick of the week, Andy and Otko, you're up.

02:09:39 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
One cool thing from CES that I obviously have not I don't own because it just got announced yesterday. I'm recommending it because it's actually available now and it's on sale for 10 bucks 10 bucks under anchor, which is like my official, my official provider of of chargers because they're awesome, they last forever, they're really good value and they solve lots of problems.

02:10:00
So they came up with, they introduced a brand new one, which is a 140 watt four port charger. That looks to be be about the size of an old MacBook charger. It's a little bit bigger than this, but not terribly bigger than this. And 140 watts means it can. If you go to the site and you take a look at how that's distributed, that means that if you have an iPhone, an iPad Pro and a MacBook Pro plugged into this at the same time through USB-C ports, I believe that means that all three of them can fast charge. So it's not just so if you've got like a half hour in the airport and you can find maybe one outlet, if you're lucky, you can actually get you actually actually get your entire menagerie pretty much charged really, really, really quickly. And it's not just that. It's 140 watt, like four ports. The three ports are USB-C, the other one is USB-A legacies, and how much power it delivers depends on whether you're using just one or whether you're using all four. So you can really get all 140 watts towards your MacBook Pro if you want to. But the other thing that makes it really really cool is that it has an OLED display on it. So again, I have two or three of these, which is a 100-watt charger that does pretty much the same thing, only it's got only about two or three ports here. But the thing is, I have to remind myself how much the MacBook is drawing, how much the phone is drawing. This has a color display that, while you've got things plugged into it, will tell you OK, your MacBook, whatever's plugged into, this port is drawing 70 watts, this thing is drawing 30 watts, this other thing is drawing 12 watts, so you know that you're fast charging all these devices.

02:11:36
And as someone who likes to bop around and get out of the office and sometimes gets out of the office with a half charged device the ability to handle everything I've got in my backpack with this one little hostess hostess cupcake size thing, uh, and the right and four cables, that's. That's really attractive and really solves problems for me. It's 90 bucks. Uh, if you go to anchorcom, you can get 10 bucks off for the next week. So, uh, until next Monday, uh, like the 13th or whatever. Uh, but yeah, I. But yeah, I've already ordered it because it's like the ability to like not have to travel with, like this bag full of stuff and just simply, if I've got this one thing, I'm good Actually it's not.

02:12:19
If I've got this one thing plus one of these little like 10 for $20, little like eight inch extension cords, because oftentimes like oh great, so the only thing I can plug into is comp is going to be completely blocked by other things. This, will you know, maybe it's a double pick of the week, but that means that if you don't have enough room for like this entire block, you can just plug it into this and now it'll just plug into basically any one little thing. Again, it sounds stupid, it's the most low-tech thing in the world, but like the number of times that this has like saved my life, uh, has been like kind of incredible. Oh, and the last thing about it I love like these simple things that a manufacturer, like anchor, only learns like after accidentally screwing things up or making a choice that wasn't really great.

02:13:04
So one of the problems of having like a three or four port adapter like this is that, like, if you you design it the way that you might imagine that you want to do, because, hey, you plug this into the wall and now you want to be able to see what you're plugging into. The problem is that now you've got these cables that are hanging off of this and are going to be trying to pull it out of the wall, so they moved all those four ports to the bottom, so now it's actually pulling downward, which hopefully, will make it not fall out of the outlet quite so well.

02:13:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you're showing the old one, that's the new one, that's that's the old one again it just got announced and released, like yesterday started, pre started orders, actually direct orders, like today.

02:13:39 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
It's not. I don't think it's a pre-order.

02:13:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've already purchased it.

02:13:42 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I just bought it thanks to you again for the anchor charger 140 watt that's how 140 watt, four point power delivery 3.1. Yeah, if you go to the anchor site it will say new because it is new. Yeah, it was just 24 years, 24 hours old, yeah this is.

02:13:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know this is. We're now seeing the payoff on this gallium nitride technology. I want to see more of it.

02:14:02 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
Uh, you get so much power 140 watts in that little thing and if you think, oh gosh, I got enough chargers as it is and I got usbc chargers, the thing is, if you bought it, like five or six years ago maybe, it maxes out at 40 watts and that's the reason why you can't. You're wondering why you can't get out of the uh, away from this. Uh, you can't charge up your devices that quickly. Uh, so I last year I think was a black friday sort of thing where I said, screw it, I'm gonna, I'm inventorying all my chargers and I'm going to relegate the ones that I'm going to replace, all the ones that I really need to need to use. I'm also going to replace the cables so that I know that they're capable of charging and handling at these kind of wattages.

02:14:40
Uh, and it was, it was a very positive life move, actually two years ago. But this is why, which is how I I explained myself no, this is why I mean, which is how I, I, I explained to myself no, this is a special new charger. I know that the old chargers work great, but this will be special, it will help me, and we've got $90.

02:14:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're gonna make eight, we're gonna make $80 again real quickly. Let's just buy it. It's just a drawer labeled chargers. Yeah Well, I, I, I actually have.

02:15:05 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
I actually have like a white paint mark that had a mark on every one of the old ones. This is old what are the charging capabilities of each one of these, because otherwise you just pulling yeah otherwise you're just pulling it out of a, out of a box and then you screw yourself up like I always have to like take off my glasses and look at the little print and see how many watts, how many watts, oh god, like if I don't even put the ones I put in my car.

02:15:26 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
100 watts, yeah, I know, just get rid of them all. Now you get rid of anything that's less than that, yeah there goes, andy, that's right, he's going in his bag.

02:15:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Watch out, everybody's going in his bag, anything could happen.

02:15:38 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
This is, this is like one of the power adapters for one of my lights here and at one point, at one point I decided to smart basically label every one of them on their voltage, because again.

02:15:47
Nobody can see nobody can read the bottom of this as much as I like Anchor. It's dark gray printing that's minuscule on a slightly darker gray background. You have to use your camera and then same with that. Yeah, at some point this white paint marker I got and going through the entire box making sure that I've got everything readable has changed my life in a positive way and that I'm no longer exploding as many things by putting in the wrong adapters thank you, andy, for your pick of the week.

02:16:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thanks to everybody for a great show. Uh, andy and Akko, when are you going to be on GBH next?

02:16:22 - Andy Ihnatko (Host)
next time I'm on a week from what, thursday at, I believe, 12 30 go to wgphnewsorg to listen to it live or later, or listen to any of the previous stuff I've done there, nice uh, mr jason snell is at sixcolorscom.

02:16:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can find his writing there. Also a link to all his podcasts at sixcolorscom. Jason, anything particular you'd like to mention?

02:16:43 - Jason Snell (Host)
uh, I mean, check out the piece that I wrote about os 10 and uh, you link to from there James Thompson's piece which is worth a read and there's a lot of fun, and you can find that story that I wrote I also link to. That is from the year 2000 that I wrote the day of that announcement that went in the magazine, and I know that only because I found my old word file which is dated that day at 6.50 pm. So obviously I walked back to the office, spent the afternoon writing and then that story went into the magazine. So you know it's fun Anyway. So check that out. And you can get to all of the stuff that I write everywhere, even at Macworld, by going to sixcolorscom.

02:17:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If I had the video of you then coming on call for help to talk about it, I would play that man, there's a VHS somewhere. Yeah, somewhere. Thank you, jason, thankfully uh, mr. Uh. Alex Lindsay office hoursglobal. Anything to report?

02:17:41 - Alex Lindsay (Host)
Uh you know, every morning, uh, we're getting up answering questions. One of the things we're starting to do which we we're not warning anybody about, we just do it is we have special guests that come on just for a couple minutes, like just hey, we've got something new coming on. Um, though, I will tell you that I think that laura laura davidson, from uh sure, will be on tomorrow morning. Uh, so she's going to talk about that new mv7i, but just for a couple minutes, like, rather than a whole hour of it. We're just like, hey, here's something new that we thought was cool, or somebody else that can come on and answer a couple questions, and so you'll see more of that coming out. But otherwise it's um seven days a week we get up and at seven o'clock in the morning, pacific standard time, and answer an hour of questions and then go back to what we were doing I love the uh suggestion from our youtube chat.

02:18:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Kevin shirts says andy, when you got the white macker out, you should write property of andy on all of those as well. A little call out to toy story, I think exactly on the bottom of its boot.

02:18:33
Yeah, that's a good idea on the bottom of its boot hey, before we go, one more little thing I'd like to ask you to do take our survey. We only do this once a year. It helps us, uh, with advertisers. It helps us understand what you're interested in, what you, what you want to hear more or less of. The TWIT 2025 survey is open at twittv. Slash survey Should only take you a few minutes and thanks in advance. Thank you all for being here.

02:18:59
We do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday. We're back the brand new year and, I hope, another 52 exciting episodes of MacBreak Weekly everyuesday, 11 am pacific, 2 pm eastern. That would be uh, 1800, no 1900 utc. You can watch us live on eight different platforms. Now, of course, our club members get behind the velvet rope in our club twitter discord, but there's also youtubecom, twitch live, twitchtv, twitch linkedin, facebook, xcom, tick tock and kick. All of them. Of course, uh, who knows what will happen in two weeks with the tick tock one? But you know we'll find out. We'll find out.

02:19:45
If you don't want to watch live, you don't have to watch live. You don't have to watch live. If you're live, then you can chat with us as many of those platforms. But if you don't want to watch live, just download a copy at the website twittv slash mbw there. When you're there, you'll see a link to the YouTube channel dedicated to the MacBreak Weekly video, or subscribe in your favorite podcast, client audio or video your pick. They're free. Just go to Pocket Casts, overcast, whatever you use Apple Podcasts and subscribe. That way you'll get it every day the minute we're done. Thanks for being here, everybody. We'll see you next Tuesday. Stay tuned if you're watching live Security Now coming up next. But unfortunately it's my sad duty to tell you all to get back to work because break time is over. Bye.