MacBreak Weekly 1043 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Jason, and Christina are here. You're here. We're glad you are. You're going to be glad you are too, because we talk about all the reviews are in for the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max. We'll talk a little bit about who would buy the duo. Is it a crazy, irrational purchase, or maybe it's exactly what you're looking for? Also, the reviews for the M5 Ultra, the perfect AI machine, perhaps. All of that and a lot more coming up on MacBreak Weekly.
Leo Laporte [00:00:37]:
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1043, recorded Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026: The Irrational Phone. It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Hello everybody, welcome. To our weekly descent into the world of the Apple. That's Andy Ihnatko, who is at the core, the very core of this Apple. Hello, Andrew.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:01]:
I'm flattered to think that all of us are above Apple, that we have to, we have to go into the gutter to talk about like new Apple releases. I do a Google podcast. I'm used to that vibe on a weekly basis.
Leo Laporte [00:01:12]:
If I, if I'm in the gutter, at least I'm looking at the stars. That's my whatever. Christina Warren also here from GitHub Film Girl.
Christina Warren [00:01:21]:
Hello. Hello, hello.
Leo Laporte [00:01:23]:
Hello, and also with us, of course, Jason Snell from sixcolors.com.
Jason Snell [00:01:28]:
We're peeling. I'm about the peel. I'm taking care of the peel of the apple this time.
Leo Laporte [00:01:34]:
Oh yeah, I kind of dropped that metaphor.
Jason Snell [00:01:35]:
Peeling it away. That metaphor did— it got away a little bit. Yeah, that's okay.
Leo Laporte [00:01:40]:
You're the peel. You're the appealing. I'm the stem. You twist me 8 times and it means true love will come to you. Uh, well, all the things started kind of come out. Today's the big day for Mac Studios. Micah Sargent is actually standing at his door like a puppy looking for the UPS guy.
Christina Warren [00:02:01]:
Amazing. I bet that's exciting.
Leo Laporte [00:02:03]:
Of course, Friday was the day for the iPhone 18 Pros, Pro Maxes. Poor Christina and I can't even order our phone until later this next month.
Christina Warren [00:02:16]:
We've got— we've got to wait a few weeks, which— how are you feeling, Leo? This is the first time in probably since 2020 where there was the supply chain where I've actually felt nervous about getting a phone, like, on release day. And I'm, like, trying to figure out, like, okay, do we go through the Apple Store? Do we go through Verizon? Like, what's— who's going to have the most supply? Like, how are we feeling?
Leo Laporte [00:02:37]:
I'm going to quote the late, great James Brown Sr., who said, I feel good. Because I do. I do. I don't mind. In fact, I, you know, I almost— it's a fight every year. where I say, I don't want the new iPhone. I don't want the new iPhone. And then I feel like I have to get it.
Leo Laporte [00:02:54]:
So, but this year I'm gonna let Jason Snell, who has the new iPhone, be the man.
Jason Snell [00:03:01]:
I do. I have, this is the Glacier Pro Max 18.
Leo Laporte [00:03:05]:
Which looks pretty blue, actually. Maybe that's the camera.
Jason Snell [00:03:08]:
Yes, this is, to me, it's not. The question is always, is it a color with Apple, right? 'Cause they're like, oh, sky blue MacBook Air. It's the color of the sky. It's like a foggy sky, maybe. Uh, it's barely blue. It's just barely blue. This is not— Glacier actually is blue. It looks nice.
Jason Snell [00:03:28]:
It's not, I mean, it's not Cosmic Orange, which bums me out a little, but like, it's pretty nice. If I was buying a 7, an 18 Pro, I would, I would seriously consider Glacier along with the black one because I always buy the black phone. But, um, it's nice and it is blue. You can tell it's blue in any light from any angle as opposed to other colors.
Leo Laporte [00:03:50]:
I guess anybody who has, uh, who has seen a Glacier in action knows that they're actually blue. They're not white.
Jason Snell [00:03:55]:
They are. There's that whole— it's fascinating. Yeah, we were— we were— we've seen them in Alaska and we saw them in New Zealand. And like, there is a deep, a deep kind of— I would say that this is bluer than a glacier, but I like the reference.
Leo Laporte [00:04:07]:
It's a nice reference.
Jason Snell [00:04:09]:
Take it to the glacier and if you drop it, your iPhone will be available again in, you know, somewhere between next spring or 1,000 years.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:18]:
Blue as Liz Taylor's eyes.
Leo Laporte [00:04:21]:
No, hers are violet. But anyway, back to the phone. This is an Apple loaner, yes?
Jason Snell [00:04:29]:
Yeah, that's my review unit.
Leo Laporte [00:04:31]:
Oh, Anthony Nielsen got his Mac Studio. Congratulations, Anthony.
Christina Warren [00:04:35]:
Congrats, Anthony.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:36]:
The sooner it delivers that torn open empty box, the sooner you can get the theft claim processed.
Leo Laporte [00:04:43]:
I love my UPS guy and he will only give me a— well, I didn't order it, so he's not gonna give me nothing. He brought me the watch. We'll talk about that. I'm a little— A little disappointed, but we'll see. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Let's talk, um, first about the phone, because I think that's the, that's the big product. Uh, we do have—
Jason Snell [00:05:02]:
It's the big unexciting product.
Leo Laporte [00:05:05]:
Is it unexciting?
Jason Snell [00:05:06]:
Well, just because this is the first time since the iPhone X came out, right, where there is another more exciting iPhone yet to drop in another month.
Leo Laporte [00:05:14]:
Good point.
Jason Snell [00:05:15]:
But let's also keep in mind, way more people will buy an iPhone 18 Pro than will buy an iPhone Duo.
Leo Laporte [00:05:21]:
Like way more people buy an iPhone 18.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:23]:
Way more people can, yeah.
Christina Warren [00:05:25]:
Well, most people buy the Pro and the Pro Max actually.
Leo Laporte [00:05:28]:
Oh, is that the big seller?
Christina Warren [00:05:29]:
Yeah, those are the big sellers. And I think it's largely, Jason would probably know more about this, but I think it's largely because of the way that the carrier promos work is that if you can get a really good trade-in at 3 years in, sometimes even 4 years in, and you can get, you know, most of the phone covered, then people are going to go ahead and say, yeah, I'll spend, the $200, $300 difference and get the Pro Max or the Pro. So that's usually the big one. The Air this year, all reports indicate from both the developers who do analytics and, you know, the various companies that do the sales, that the Air was a massive flop.
Jason Snell [00:06:05]:
Yes, less than 2%. But generally, I think—
Leo Laporte [00:06:08]:
People love it, love it, right?
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:09]:
I hear people saying, once you hold an iPhone Air, you'll never hold another phone.
Jason Snell [00:06:12]:
Yeah, well, it hasn't been promoted and I, you know, it hasn't resonated and so be it. But yeah, I believe based on the stats, The 17 sold better than the Pro or the Pro Max, but they're all— but the Pro and the Pro Max both sold very well. I would say you could almost view the iPhone market as being one-third the 17, one-third the 17 Pro, and one-third the Pro Max. They're pretty close together.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:37]:
And we don't put out the iPhone Air.
Leo Laporte [00:06:39]:
Right. And the iPhone 18, 1% till the spring. So we really won't be able to compare.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:44]:
Right.
Christina Warren [00:06:45]:
And just to correct myself, just real quick, what I meant by they sell better is in aggregate, the Pro and the Pro Max together sell more than the 17. Not that they are the individual bestsellers, but because most years they're essentially the same phone in a different size.
Jason Snell [00:06:59]:
Exactly.
Christina Warren [00:07:00]:
I basically, you know, group them together.
Andy Ihnatko [00:07:04]:
Yeah. Also, also, I think, I think that, I think that in the next, when they talk about quarter— quarterly results, I think the phrase tough compare is going to come up because the iPhone 17 Pro was such a huge super smash hit.
Christina Warren [00:07:15]:
Huge hit.
Andy Ihnatko [00:07:16]:
And just, just a quick comment on the, on the Air. I think that Apple was aware that this is not going to be another tentpole release, the fact that they didn't call it, this is the iPhone Air 17, it was, this is the iPhone Air, which means that we don't have to update it every year. And also, for all of us who are excited about the, the Duo, I'm very, very sure that this was like the test bed for here's how we can make the halves of this screen of this device really, really super thin and yet very, very strong.
Jason Snell [00:07:42]:
If you look at the, if you look at the shots of the Duo, And you consider, especially if you've ever held an iPhone Air in your hand, it looks very much like that edge, uh, on the Air and the edges on the Duo are basically the same style. It's like a slightly curved metallic frame. And like, it's totally the, the Air was the warmup for the Duo and the Air is a fun phone. It really is. I liked it a lot.
Andy Ihnatko [00:08:12]:
I'm glad there's some diversity in the platform. It's boring. We have, we've got the big phone, we've got the little phone, we've got the big, less expensive phone. We've got the little less expensive phone. I'm glad Apple's such a great design company. I'm glad to see them trying something different.
Jason Snell [00:08:25]:
But the truth remains that despite their attempts with the Mini and the Plus and now the Air, as Christina pointed out, like, and you look at David Smith's numbers on this, it really is like 33% the Pro, 33% the Pro Max, and 33% the regular 17. And that 4th phone just kind of hasn't found much of a a grip yet. I think, I think the Duo will do better than that. But I'm not— I don't think it'll do even double digits percentage-wise because it's just not going to be a high-volume product.
Christina Warren [00:09:01]:
Exactly. It's so expensive. But I think that the Duo, what it represents to me and why I'm so excited about it and why I think a lot of us are, is that if we look at the 18 as maybe kind of the final form of the first 2 decades of iPhone, right? Like it's kind of like, okay, you take that slab design and this is maybe as far as you can go, at least in this iteration, because who Who knows what they'll do next year for iPhone 20? But I have a feeling it'll be a different design than what we have now. Like, I think that it's a really great kind of perfected— this is what a slab phone looks like at this point, 20 years into the modern smartphone journey. But the Duo is exciting because even though, no, it's not going to be a big volume phone because of the price and because of the many, many tradeoffs that you have to accept when you do it, I think in some ways it kind of reminds me of the MacBook Air and to a lesser extent, the less successful you know, MacBook, the 12-inch MacBook, which is that if done correctly, this is going to be, I think, representative of what design will look like the next, you know, 5, 6, 7 years going forward. And, and that isn't to say that we won't still have the slab phones that we have, because I think we will. But it's to me what was exciting about it is that, yes, it's really different. It's fun.
Christina Warren [00:10:15]:
It's not, you know, the boring thing, although they still have the very good, very fantastic, you know, if you want to get basically the best phone on the planet. It's gonna be an iPhone 18 Pro or 18 Pro Max. But if you want to be on the cutting edge and feel that, you know, joy that we felt at various times, that Jon Gruber had a great article where he kind of listed like all-time iPhones, this feels like it's the precipice for one of those moments. And that's exciting.
Andy Ihnatko [00:10:41]:
Yeah, it must be also, it must be, you gotta take a chance from time to time. I mean, we can't complain. There are 2 very, very big complaints that come up against Apple from time to time. And one of them Oh, they don't innovate, they don't do anything fresh, they only enter a market after it's been very, very proven. But also, oh my God, the Vision Pro is such a flop! Oh my God, the iPhone Air is such a flop! Again, to have such a world-class design team, it's going to be very, very frustrating to only be asked to design something of which there's already a pretty good example extant. Which is why, again, if they were to get into a fitness band like this, or fitness ring, Boy, that would be like throwing meat to a lion or catnip to a tabby. I bet they're going to be like, oh my God, great, we get to design a ring. Oh great, we get to design something that does not— doesn't have to have a user interface, doesn't have to have a screen.
Andy Ihnatko [00:11:33]:
It can just be pure design. So I'm pleased with what they're doing. And also super pleased— I'm tempted. I'm so tempted by the Duo, I can't even explain. Thank God I'm a pauper and can't even consider spending $2,000 on a phone.
Leo Laporte [00:11:47]:
Was that a John Denver song?
Andy Ihnatko [00:11:48]:
Yeah, I mean, thank God I'm a pupper boy. Yeah, I mean, especially in a year which I've— again, I've upgraded like basically all of my hardware at once. It's like, yeah, it might have been true, it might have— it might be possible next year. This year it's like, how much— how many ways do you think you can cook ramen and cold beans, the cold canned beans, Andy? Because you're gonna find out if you spend $2,000 on a new phone.
Leo Laporte [00:12:13]:
I've decided I don't need a car. Cars—
Andy Ihnatko [00:12:15]:
exactly.
Leo Laporte [00:12:16]:
They're just an expense. I can walk.
Andy Ihnatko [00:12:18]:
You know what costs only $140? A really good pair of New Balance sneakers.
Leo Laporte [00:12:22]:
Exactly. Uh, all right, well, Jason's review of the iPhone is not up yet. Are you putting that up later, or—
Jason Snell [00:12:29]:
Uh, no, I, I was not one of the embargo reviewers, and so I only got the phone Thursday. And so at this point, I'm going to spend time with it because there's no point in trying to rush out. No, I would be competing with a bunch of reviews that were rushed out in order to get them out last week, and there's no point now. So I'm going to spend some time—
Leo Laporte [00:12:46]:
changed, it looks like, a little bit how it offers these review units. For instance, the Mac Studio Ultra was reviewed by a very small number of people. Mark is not really representing the video.
Christina Warren [00:12:58]:
Yeah, they've always done this.
Jason Snell [00:12:59]:
It's not really a change.
Leo Laporte [00:13:00]:
Federico Viticci representing the AI group.
Jason Snell [00:13:02]:
It's not changed.
Leo Laporte [00:13:03]:
It felt like there were like 4 total.
Jason Snell [00:13:05]:
No, I mean, well, those are very expensive systems and they've had an attitude for a while now that like if you're not in the target market for a device and there is a lack of trust. I mean, I'll tell you my story. Remember the iMac Pro when it came out? It's got Xeon processors. It was going to be the replacement for the Mac Pro. They wouldn't— Apple wouldn't send me one to review. They wouldn't send me one. And the impression I got is because they felt like what I specialize in is not what they were targeting for that product, which was very high-end users.
Christina Warren [00:13:36]:
Right.
Jason Snell [00:13:36]:
Ironically, I bought one because I wanted it, because I felt I did actually have a use case.
Leo Laporte [00:13:43]:
Because you were the perfect person.
Jason Snell [00:13:44]:
And I wrote about it. And it's literally the only time Phil Schiller has ever posted a link to a review I wrote. And, and it was for a product that Apple didn't think that I should even review. But so they've been doing this, they've been picking their spots for a long time. I'll give you— and honestly, Federico is exactly the right person. Marques is a great person to talk from a video perspective about it. Federico, with all that he's been doing with local agents, is the perfect person to write about that Mac Studio. If they had sent that high-end Ultra Mac Studio to me, I would not have been able to do anything like what Federico did with it.
Jason Snell [00:14:16]:
I would have been the wrong person to review it. And what they did send me is an M6 Mac Mini, which I was happy to receive because I wanted to talk about the M6 chip. So like they pick, they pick their spots. What's changed, I would say, is that they've also leaned into like having a bunch of influencers sort of like make you know, excited videos about Apple announcements. But on the review side, you know, they, they, they, you know, big organizations like The Verge will get everything right. But like they do a lot of like picking their spots and finding the right reviewer who they think is going to understand. It's not even just about like give them a good review. It's like Federico, they picked it because he— first off, they picked him for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio and he's written a lot about that over the, over the last few years and he keeps writing about it and how he's using it.
Jason Snell [00:15:04]:
And he was the perfect person for that M5 Ultra, which, by the way, Federico's review is really amazing. And one of the things that will blow your mind is he basically says, would you like cutting-edge AI performance from 8 months ago, but on your desktop and not in a, in a, in a cloud somewhere? It'll do it. I mean, it costs a lot of money. Yes, of course it does. But like, that's pretty impressive, you know? And so he's, he wired it up to a bunch of agents and Like, it's a great review. I really like the idea that this is— and this is what Apple is banking on. Apple is banking on the fact that AI is advancing and their hardware is advancing to the point where you're going to be able to get a really good set of AI skills and agents and not have to pay except to buy a computer. And like, if that happens, that's good for Apple.
Jason Snell [00:15:53]:
If it doesn't happen, it's not good for Apple.
Leo Laporte [00:15:55]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:15:56]:
And the right— and the right people wind up getting access. It doesn't— Apple doesn't— can't If you want, if you, if you feel as though this is part of what you're here to do, to write about a certain product, you'll figure out a way to do it. Like Daniel Lemire didn't get— I don't think they got— he got free hardware, but he just great— he just posted something really, really great about like the progress of Apple Silicon. Uh, so there's nothing, there's nothing shifty about that. Apple knows they can't control stuff. And again, the right— just as the right people who have the right point of view will find a way to actually talk about this stuff.
Leo Laporte [00:16:27]:
Yeah. And I think, uh, I would say to our listeners and viewers, and to anybody who really cares, that you should be aware of this. You should be aware of the fact that embargoed dates force quick, shallow reviews. So the stuff you see right away are quick and shallow. They're not really, frankly, very good reviews. Those people have had it for a week, right?
Andy Ihnatko [00:16:52]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:16:53]:
And I would, frankly, if I were you, dear Listener, I know we're all impatient. I know I am. I would wait until somebody who actually spent their own money on the device and spent more than a week with the device gives you their considered thoughts.
Andy Ihnatko [00:17:09]:
They're there to inform people who are considering whether they want to preorder and whether they want to be first in line at the first—
Leo Laporte [00:17:14]:
But it's in Apple's interest that you preorder without all the information.
Jason Snell [00:17:18]:
Yeah, preorders go up before the embargo reviews drop.
Christina Warren [00:17:21]:
Yep. Yeah, they do. And at this point, I mean, I think unless it's a brand new category of device and the Duo, I think, is kind of a self-selected category, like those of us who know that we're getting it are going to be getting it regardless of what the reviews say. So there are going to be some people who will return it and there might be some people who are curious, but this is a pretty niche product. I think something like the Vision Pro was harder because I think that was a product where there were a lot of people who were kind of waiting to hear what others thought before jumping in and doing it. Whereas, like, you know what a phone is, right? Similar to the original iPad. Like, I was there. You know, I think there might have been— I was definitely— this was before I was part of any embargoed review process.
Christina Warren [00:17:59]:
So I was in line at the Apple Store on, you know, release day to buy the first iPad. And then I got the 3G version, which came out a couple of weeks later. But, you know, I think the value of these things for some users is going to be, yeah, what does my favorite reviewer think or whatever? But at this point, I think people kind of largely know if you're going to preorder or not. I'm going to preorder regardless of what I'm hearing from folks. It's really more about, I think, the secondary. Okay. Now that it's my annual kind of cycle, what should I get? What phone should I be shopping for? Because it's that time of year that I always upgrade my phone. And they've done a good job over the years of being able to reach out to different types of audiences and influencers and folks.
Christina Warren [00:18:43]:
And yes, it is important to know that if you are are part of an embargoed thing, and if Apple is getting you product that even though they're not controlling your opinion, it's difficult, I think, for, uh, people to definitely be part of the repeat process if you're gonna, you know, just dump all over, um, the, the review stuff. But, um, I, I also— I don't know how much it matters at this point. Like, I think people who are going to buy something release day are going to buy it regardless, and it's really more about like the longer tail, which is why I'm excited to read your review when you're done like testing it out, Jason, because, because I feel like that's going to be much more helpful to show my family members and friends who have questions about what device should I buy rather than, oh, I have this sense of urgency. I have to have this today. It's like, no, you don't. You can get an 18 Pro, Pro Max anytime you want. Like there's, there's not going to be any run on these. The same might not be true for the Duo, to be honest, but even then, I think that it's one of those things where like the market forces will carry it out.
Christina Warren [00:19:46]:
The one area where that's an exception right now is the Mac Studio and, and because of the RAM crisis and, and the fact that the lead times are so far out. But even there, I feel like it's one of those things where if you know you're going to be spending $10,000+ on a piece of hardware, you are making that commitment regardless of what Marques Brownlee has to say, that this, this is something that you're kind of going in And we'll get to it with what he has to say. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just saying that like if this is a thing where you're saying I'm willing to take this sort of bet because I'm going to spend this amount of money on something, A, you always have the opportunity to return it. They're not going to deny you that. So if you didn't like something, you can always return it. B, you know, this is one of the only times where the lead time is such where it's like, okay, maybe it makes sense to order before the reviews come out. And at this point, you're not going to get it Right.
Leo Laporte [00:20:37]:
Until after the next generation. If you order a Mac Studio, I was just looking, you're not gonna get it till February.
Christina Warren [00:20:40]:
It's 18 weeks. Exactly, exactly. It's 3 months, it's 4 months away.
Leo Laporte [00:20:43]:
So I don't know what it's gonna be like at the end of October when the 512 comes out. But again, we will save all that for later. I don't wanna rush through this. We should enjoy the feast.
Jason Snell [00:20:53]:
Yes, savor it.
Leo Laporte [00:20:54]:
Savor the feast. So let's talk about the 18. You can give us some impressions. Have you played with the camera at all?
Christina Warren [00:21:02]:
Sure.
Jason Snell [00:21:02]:
I mean, number one is the Glacier Blue is an actual blue.
Christina Warren [00:21:05]:
It's a color.
Jason Snell [00:21:05]:
It looks nice.
Leo Laporte [00:21:07]:
Yes.
Jason Snell [00:21:08]:
It's, it's, I think this is important because the sky blue MacBook Air just looks silver. Um, it's very pleasant. Um, I am not a photographer. I think that having an auto aperture that can change is great and you will get some better photos, but there are some really nice reviews out there about it. Austin Mann did his usual kind of thing. I think that the net from the, the pro photographers is that the camera is better, but like, The aperture is not going to, you know, it's not going to blow you away. It's a very specific thing. And in fact, its biggest impact will probably be that because there's an auto mode that is the default, there will be occasionally a moment where your phone will say, I should change the aperture here and you don't have to think about it.
Jason Snell [00:21:54]:
And it's like putting your old SLR on that green square that meant auto everything and like it's doing the work for you. So I think that's great.
Andy Ihnatko [00:22:04]:
Most of the photographers— I'm just a sidebar before we move off the aperture. Most of the pro photographers that reviews I've said, basically they said that it's nice that now, just like every other like multi-leaf aperture lens on any camera, if there's like a big— if the sun is in the shot, you'll get sort of a starburst sort of effect. That's not digital, it's not fake. That's nice. And but they're basically saying that—
Leo Laporte [00:22:27]:
Yeah, I told everybody that last week when Chris Marquardt, our photo guy, said, yeah, it's because of the size of the sensor, don't expect beautiful bokeh. It's not— you can't do that with that sensor size. So starbursts, that's nice. Then do read Austin, you know, Austin Mann's a good example because here's a guy who really knows photography and has done it. It's a beautiful review, if nothing else. He's got a nice video.
Andy Ihnatko [00:22:53]:
Lots of lovely snapshots.
Leo Laporte [00:22:55]:
Yes. Yeah, but yeah, I think the key is it's still a camera phone. Yeah, it's not a camera.
Andy Ihnatko [00:23:04]:
But, but as I said, like, uh, you know, as, like I said a few weeks ago, I've upgraded my first, like, flagship phone in the last 3 or 4 years. And the difference is simply that, like, things like with the, the upgrades you get, the number of cases in which I would have come away with, uh, a memento of a photo, you know, as opposed to an actual, like, decent photo is not, not, not minor. So yeah, I mean, you get— it's, it's not Not the sort of thing you're going to appreciate if you're upgrading after a year or 2 years, but after 4 or 5 years. I don't have a loaner from Apple. I'm hoping to get one. But given that the latest iPhone that I've actually bought was the iPhone 14 or 15, I'm really looking forward to seeing the 4 or 5-year upgrade after that. Because again, digital is— I'm having to retrain myself with this Pixel 11 Pro that oh no, no, do, do try 10x zoom. Dude, if there's a bird there, do try 20x zoom because it doesn't completely stink.
Andy Ihnatko [00:24:08]:
It's not great, but it doesn't completely stink anymore.
Leo Laporte [00:24:11]:
So here's a starburst from Austin Mann of Sophia and her horse Firefly leading the way to the meadow. That's beautiful.
Jason Snell [00:24:19]:
Very nice.
Leo Laporte [00:24:20]:
But if you search through these for— there's the bokeh.
Christina Warren [00:24:24]:
It's—
Leo Laporte [00:24:25]:
and I think what Chris said, and I suspect is the case, is that's computational bokeh.
Jason Snell [00:24:30]:
Some of it is, depending on how you have it, have it It's that you can get a real, you can get real one. If you get something real close, you can get a real one. But a lot of it is going to be—
Leo Laporte [00:24:37]:
But you could get that last year, couldn't you?
Jason Snell [00:24:39]:
Computational. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's true. You might get it a little bit more, but that's, or you might suppress it by, you know, changing the aperture, but the aperture. So the aperture is the most interesting piece of hardware. I think Photographic Styles 3 is maybe even a more interesting thing for photography because they added the kind of film look.
Leo Laporte [00:24:58]:
Right.
Jason Snell [00:24:58]:
And the sort of skin texture modifications. And for those who don't remember, photographic styles is like a, it affects, it's taking more data off the camera sensor and then applying a style on top of that. So it's not entirely, I mean, like you could do a photographic style that's, and then shoot in black and white and then later take that style off and the color is still there because it's actually applying it to not like a raw level of sensor data, but they're capturing a lot of sensor data and then reprocessing it. So you can set up and you've been able to do this for a while now. set it up with a certain look, but now you can add a film look and you can add film grain and you can dial in some really nice effects there. And I think the best way personally to use photographic styles is to find a look that you like for your photos, and then all your photos will have that as their predisposition. You can also always turn it off.
Andy Ihnatko [00:25:48]:
You know, it's really, really— I'm sorry. No, it's really, really weird though. So, uh, photo, uh, film grain and texture are features that I think Apple originally said, oh, and it's available for the 18, 17, and 16. I think that was actually like on the site in the specs, and now they've collapsed that down to just the 18. And so— oh, I'm sorry. And the— yeah, and I'm sorry, are they claiming it for the Duo, or did they take it off for the Duo?
Christina Warren [00:26:13]:
No, no, no, they kept it for the Duo and the 18 Pro and Pro Max. But yeah, that's kind of—
Andy Ihnatko [00:26:18]:
it's kind of weird. I mean, it does seem like a feature that they, that they can trickle down to other phones like after they think they've got it locked, but it feels weird that they said it and then they had felt those as though they had to retract.
Christina Warren [00:26:30]:
I don't remember them saying it specifically for the other ones or not. I, I would, I would be interested.
Jason Snell [00:26:36]:
In the event, it's possible that they put it on like a slide somewhere. It was an error.
Christina Warren [00:26:41]:
Okay. Yeah. 'Cause I was going to say during the event, I was under the impression that this was going to be an 18 Pro and Duo thing, just because they didn't mention that it was coming to other devices, which makes me think, and I could be wrong on this, that this is a sensor issue. rather than a software issue, which would make sense to a certain extent if, you know, what they're doing with the, oh, we can verify your photo is real and things like that, that maybe it's something that's tied to this year's SoC as opposed to simply being a computational style.
Leo Laporte [00:27:10]:
It's the same processor in all of the phones though, right? I mean, it's not like there's a— or is it?
Jason Snell [00:27:15]:
Well, no. So they've got a different processor and I think they've got a different image sensor. And I'm saying this is—
Leo Laporte [00:27:20]:
It's the image sensor. But are you saying that the The A20.
Jason Snell [00:27:24]:
No, the, the processor, you're right. Well, I mean, the A20 processor is the same— is not the same on anything other than the, the Duo and the— and the Pro Max. So the 17 Pro doesn't— it doesn't have an A20.
Christina Warren [00:27:40]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [00:27:40]:
No, I understand the 17. I'm saying in the 18 Pro, Pro Max, and Duo line, those are all the same CPU. Yeah, there are different capabilities. It's not the same sensor, I understand, and it may be sensor-related.
Christina Warren [00:27:53]:
It could be sensor-related was my thought, but I'm— it could just be CPU-based, right? Maybe it's, it's just how the SoC works together. It's just my thought is that it's something that they've done across this particular chip.
Leo Laporte [00:28:03]:
But the SoC is, is different in those 3 models?
Jason Snell [00:28:06]:
No, no, they're—
Christina Warren [00:28:07]:
No, no, it's the same. It's just, I think, I think they might clock the Duo differently, but I think—
Leo Laporte [00:28:11]:
Well, that's— I'd like to know that. Is that the case?
Christina Warren [00:28:13]:
I mean, I think it's They're not gonna tell you. I'm not sure. Yeah, we will find that out when people have review units. My gut tells me just based on what they did with the Air last year, and I'm, I'm happy to be wrong here. I really hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me that it will be the same as what the Air was versus the Pro last year. Whereas it is basically a binned SoC. So it is—
Leo Laporte [00:28:34]:
They can't run at the same high clock speed.
Christina Warren [00:28:37]:
Well, and, and I think that they do that for thermal reasons. I don't think that it's anything more than that. So, um, 'cause if you, if you really look at it and, and, So many of us said this a year ago. So, you know, we all clearly saw what direction things were going in. When you first saw the Air, the only reason that an Air made sense to me is I said, okay, well, you make this because this is how you get to the folding phone. And I think that that's what, what's been proven to be true.
Leo Laporte [00:29:00]:
The folding phone is 2 Airs glued together.
Christina Warren [00:29:03]:
Kind of, right? But you have to be able to get to that point. You have to be able to get all of the hardware.
Leo Laporte [00:29:09]:
Yeah, we did say that last year.
Christina Warren [00:29:10]:
Everything laid out, right?
Leo Laporte [00:29:11]:
Yeah, this was a test for the folding phone.
Christina Warren [00:29:13]:
Right. And I think that it was just the first step to kind of get there.
Leo Laporte [00:29:16]:
Does that seem like that's still true that you should consider the Duo to be Air level?
Christina Warren [00:29:22]:
I think so. Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:29:23]:
I think that's fair. It's, I mean, it doesn't have that huge vapor chamber and the, and the thermal spreader behind the display and all that.
Leo Laporte [00:29:30]:
No, it's not.
Jason Snell [00:29:30]:
It simply can't. So whether it's binned or not, it's going to self-regulate and, right. And clock itself down in order to not overheat. Right. Like that's the point of it is.
Leo Laporte [00:29:40]:
So it will be more throttled.
Jason Snell [00:29:41]:
It will have to be more throttled.
Leo Laporte [00:29:43]:
It doesn't have the cooling.
Christina Warren [00:29:43]:
Because it doesn't have the cooling.
Jason Snell [00:29:45]:
Unless you're in, you know, a glacier, in which case, right.
Leo Laporte [00:29:48]:
Does it have the Secure Enclave processor?
Jason Snell [00:29:50]:
And of course it does.
Christina Warren [00:29:51]:
It has all that.
Leo Laporte [00:29:53]:
It doesn't have Face ID. Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:29:54]:
Yeah. It doesn't have Face ID and it doesn't have, you know, the actual good camera sensor. Right. I mean, I think the thing people need to know about buying a Duo, frankly, I think this is a good conversation for us to have, is that it is going to be the same trade-offs that you were making if you were to buy an iPhone Air last year, except there are more of them. The camera is going to be worse. Than what the iPhone Air camera was. The FaceTime camera, which was last year a huge upgrade, is not coming to the Duo. They haven't said exactly what it is, but it is not the great FaceTime camera we got last year that is also on the Pro model this year.
Christina Warren [00:30:28]:
And so both your front-facing and your rear-facing cameras are going to be worse. They are going to, in my opinion, just based on what Apple's language has been, they will be worse than probably what the Air cameras were, except that there will, it will be a a telephoto option. There's not going to be the vapor chamber. It is not going to be able to run as long, even though it has the same amount of RAM and is the same chip. As we just said, they're going to make sure that that thing is able to run consistently. So there are a lot of trade-offs that you make with that, but you make that because of what else you get from it, because of the form factor, because of the pizzazz, because of the newness. And so I think that people do need to go into this even if you were to bring up Andy's previous point, because I've had this conversation with friends where they are like, okay, I'm on a 3 or 4-year-old phone. As long as the Duo has a better camera than what I have now, I'll be happy with it.
Jason Snell [00:31:20]:
Right.
Christina Warren [00:31:21]:
And I have to, and I have to be really careful with them and say, you're going to want to be real clear about what you want, because if you were to go back to the iPhone 12, yeah, it, which I think was the first one with the triple sensors. Even then, I think that, yeah, you might have a bigger megapixel count, might be a newer sensor, but I don't know if you're going to get better photographic quality than what you had then. And so you need to just make sure, how do I take photos? What are the things that are important to me? What are the tradeoffs I'm willing to take? And if you are going to look at this and say, okay, you know what, for $2,000, I don't need to be a day one buyer. I will wait until they are able to upgrade these things and bring more parity across the line. Then I think that an iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max is a perfect phone for you, especially if you've got, you know, like an iPhone, you know, 13 or 14 or even into a 15, kind of depending on where you are in your upgrade cycle. So I, but I don't want people to be under the impression that, oh, because it's so many years later, the camera is going to automatically be great. Because we saw this with the Air last year. My mom went through this very same thing.
Christina Warren [00:32:24]:
She got the Air. She'd had a 15 and she kept her 15 and uses that as her camera. She frankly hates the Air. She got it for the size and she wanted the weight thing, but she frankly is like, and I told her at the time, I said, I don't know if you're gonna like this, Mom, but I think you're gonna love the size. But she hates the camera on it. She hates a lot of the other, you know, parts of it. She loves just the weight, but those trade-offs did kind of hit her. And she'd kind of gone in thinking, oh, well, I'm not gonna need to, I'll just trade in my 15.
Christina Warren [00:32:56]:
And then I was like, like, if you care about your camera, you're, you're going to want to keep it around. And so I think that there are going to be some people who look at the Duo and they need to really kind of assess what is most important for me. Am I going to keep a second phone around just in case or not? Even if it's not, you know, 17, even if it was, you know, several years old, just because this is, this is much more similar to that scenario. Um, I think that that will be very different in a couple of years. For right now, yeah, I think that's where we are.
Leo Laporte [00:33:23]:
Yeah, club member Swiss Balti avers that the Duo does have a vapor chamber. They showed it at the keynote. And the cameras are— yeah, see, I wonder, are the same as the 18 Pro just without the aperture?
Jason Snell [00:33:37]:
I don't have that huge vapor chamber on the 18 Pro, which is much larger than on the 17 Pro, nor does it have that, that spreader, the heat spreader behind the screen that the 18 Pro has. The 18 Pro has multiple attempts to mitigate the heat of the A20, the—
Leo Laporte [00:33:53]:
and it is always hot—
Jason Snell [00:33:54]:
it's gonna try, but you know it's gonna throttle. It's like talking about the MacBook Air and saying, you know, the MacBook— the MacBook Pro with an M5 or an M6 or whatever is going to be faster than a MacBook Air with the equivalent processor. Not that the processor is necessarily any different, but one of them has a fan and one of them doesn't. If you don't mitigate the heat, it will throttle because it'll have to.
Leo Laporte [00:34:15]:
And you don't want it to be hot in your hand.
Jason Snell [00:34:17]:
You don't.
Christina Warren [00:34:19]:
No.
Leo Laporte [00:34:20]:
That is not a good feeling.
Andy Ihnatko [00:34:25]:
Especially because Apple really is pushing this as a gaming platform as much as anything else, which is not something that Pixels can in any way remotely lay a stake to. So yeah, this is why all of the 2-month-old iPhone 18 Pro reviews are going to be so valuable because this really is all the same things from last year, only better. sort of roundup, if I've— if my original take is correct. The thermals look like they're gonna be better. The power management looks like it's gonna be better, on and on and on. So it's not— so it's not as though, oh my God, I feel like such a dope for buying an iPhone 17 or for keeping my iPhone 17. It's just that all of these quality of life things are gonna— are in this hopper right now so that when you— when Apple does come up with the iPhone 20, that does seem to be, oh my God, this is— the design is so compelling or the new lenses this arrangement is so good that this is such a leap ahead. You're not just getting that wraparound all-glass construction, you're also getting the benefits of the iPhone 18.
Andy Ihnatko [00:35:30]:
One quick side note, just MacRumors did do a roundup of this sort of thing. They checked everything, and this wasn't like a type— the idea of those 2 features not being available on the 17 and 16, that wasn't a one-off typo. They did put it as a footnote in the news release. They did put it, like, in a whole bunch of other stuff. It just— it does seem like something that they felt prepared to announce everywhere and then decided to backtrack on. So that just— it's just—
Christina Warren [00:35:58]:
it's interesting.
Andy Ihnatko [00:35:59]:
This is not a scandal, but it seems odd. It must— someone must have won an argument that they were losing inside of Apple for a while. And I'm sure it's gonna come down to those, those other models later on. I guess they just need to— they need to observe the T-Rex in its natural habitat before they decide to let kids have rides on the back. Or something like that.
Christina Warren [00:36:19]:
I mean, I don't think it's a guarantee that it'll come, to be honest with you. I, I think that this is absolutely a thing that they could hold off on and, and, and gate, which I don't love if there's no technical reason for it. But I, I'm not— I don't want people to like, oh, we should hold this off.
Leo Laporte [00:36:33]:
Well, again, and this is a reason to wait until the phone comes out. I know that's going to be a month, and then wait another few weeks till people actually, like iFixit, tears it down and people actually they put little thermocouples on it and stuff. And so you really aren't gonna know the full specs till the end of the year. But I think that's not gonna deter people. People are just gonna buy it and say, yeah.
Christina Warren [00:36:56]:
Well, no, again, again, the people who are gonna be buying a Duo day one are getting it regardless. I think, I think the people who are, if you're looking at maybe getting one in January or for Christmas, I think that's a different scenario, right?
Leo Laporte [00:37:06]:
But I think— I guess my point is you can't really make a rational decision.
Andy Ihnatko [00:37:10]:
Well, no, it's not rational.
Leo Laporte [00:37:11]:
Until early next year. Well, we're out of it. But it's a perfectly good era.
Andy Ihnatko [00:37:15]:
That's not our strong suit.
Christina Warren [00:37:17]:
I was going to say, I don't think that there's a rational case to be made for the iPhone Duo. I don't. And I don't think that's a problem.
Leo Laporte [00:37:22]:
I think that it's the irrational phone for you, honestly, irrational user.
Christina Warren [00:37:27]:
Right. I mean, I think that— I think this is not the rational phone as the 18 Pro and Pro Max, which are great devices. That's what everybody's buying.
Leo Laporte [00:37:35]:
This is the phone you buy with your heart, not your mind.
Christina Warren [00:37:37]:
Correct. This is what you buy with your heart, not your mind. And as I keep saying, this is the one that you go in and you know what those limitations are going to be.
Jason Snell [00:37:44]:
Right.
Christina Warren [00:37:44]:
I think this— well, not only that, but I think that this is why Apple made a point to do the iPhone handoff. This is going to become— this is why you have to have the iPhone handoff, because they know that at least for this version, there are simply trade-offs that people are not going to want to make. And switching SIMs between phones is too complicated. So if I can just do it with one touch and pay $5 a month or whatever the carrier is going to charge me, Great. Keep my older phone around for those times.
Leo Laporte [00:38:14]:
I'm trading it in. I need all that money back.
Andy Ihnatko [00:38:16]:
That's what I'm saying. Marketing analysts say that the trend for at least for foldable phones has been that people don't use it as a second device. They trade in whatever, even like a year-old or 2-year-old phone.
Leo Laporte [00:38:28]:
I don't wanna carry 2 phones. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:38:31]:
I don't think you carry them.
Christina Warren [00:38:32]:
I think you just choose.
Leo Laporte [00:38:33]:
You have it, right.
Andy Ihnatko [00:38:35]:
But most people aren't thinking about, are thinking in terms of I'm gonna choose between these 2 ones that I've got like on my dresser drawer every morning. Although, but I would have thought that that would have been the exact way that people use it. If you've got $2,000 to spend, especially on the 2024, 2025 version of a foldable phone, I would have imagined that people are buying it as a second device, for those times where they feel as though, hey, I'm going to be traveling for a week and I want to be without even my iPad or a tablet or a notebook. I'm going to have this this convertible sort of thing with me. But again, for whatever marketing people, marketing analysts are worth, they're saying that no people are using it as their primary device, which is a spicy decision as far as I'm concerned. But okay.
Jason Snell [00:39:24]:
When the MacBook Air, original MacBook Air came out, we had these same arguments, which was because that was a product that had so many trade-offs. The processor was lesser. It had cooling issues. It had weird adapters.
Christina Warren [00:39:40]:
One USB port. No FireWire.
Jason Snell [00:39:41]:
It had limited ports. all those things. And you can make an argument— if you as a user of a computer have a list of checkboxes of things that you think are important and they're not there, it doesn't seem like a rational purchase. But I will just say, if you're somebody for whom having the smallest, thinnest, lightest laptop was the number one feature and you could get by with all of those other trade-offs, it wasn't an irrational decision. It was just a decision with a different set of priorities than your decision. And I will say about the iPhone Duo, Not every buyer is making an irrational decision. They have different priorities because— and I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow some people's minds here, but I'm gonna say it— some people don't care that the camera is a little bit lesser and that there's no telephoto. I don't care.
Jason Snell [00:40:27]:
Some people don't care that the A20 processor might clock itself down a little bit when it gets warm, or that it might want— what they care about is they go boop, and now they've got a thing that they can hold and read, and then they do this boop and put it in their pocket. And if that is it, if that is your priority, And I know it's a lot of money. And I will also point out, here's my footnote, that MacBook Air was kind of a disaster because it got too hot and it didn't work very well. But you know what?
Christina Warren [00:40:51]:
I was going to say it was not a great one, but the second— right. And I would just say back to that original MacBook Air—
Leo Laporte [00:40:56]:
don't harsh my mellow, man. I want the Duo.
Christina Warren [00:40:59]:
Well, no, I mean, I think it'll be a great, like, kind of first step. But I think it's actually great to look at that first MacBook Air, which was kind of a disaster and wasn't a great device. But you know what? When they did the refresh a couple of years later, they got it right. That, that not only did it do it right for Apple, that literally upended the entire computer laptop industry on its head to the point that to this day, 16, 17 years later, we are still doing a variation of that wedge shape. Like that is one of the most iconic designs ever. So no, they didn't get it right in 2008. Well, no, it is. I mean, like, I'm sorry, you don't have to like it, but, but like, but it is what it is.
Andy Ihnatko [00:41:36]:
Like, that's not what I meant.
Jason Snell [00:41:37]:
And that original MacBook Air was expensive, not cheap.
Leo Laporte [00:41:40]:
Can I point out the entire PC industry looked at it and said, we gotta do that, and it created a whole category of laptops that persists to this day.
Christina Warren [00:41:51]:
Correct. I mean, literally the Ultrabook— well, no, I mean, netbooks existed, but what was Intel doing? Intel didn't do Ultrabook until after the MacBook Air.
Leo Laporte [00:42:00]:
They copied it directly.
Andy Ihnatko [00:42:03]:
My only reaction there is that I don't think it's a breakthrough discovery slash idea that let's make devices thinner and lighter and smaller. I think that Apple was first. I think they definitely put such a shot in the butts of Windows that they were rushing out ultrabooks way before they had CPUs that could do the thermals. I mean, Apple did the same thing, but they did it so much worse for the first 2 or 3 iterations. But on the other, I'm just always naturally skeptical. I'm instinctively skeptical of the idea that it didn't occur to the Windows side that, or Microsoft, that, hey, it wouldn't be nice if we made notebooks like thinner and smaller and lighter.
Christina Warren [00:42:55]:
Well, I mean, Microsoft didn't make hardware then.
Andy Ihnatko [00:42:59]:
I think they would have gotten there. I'm just a little sensitive to Like sometimes when I think that Apple's getting credit for discovering an invention when they simply managed to hit fast forward on it.
Leo Laporte [00:43:11]:
Nobody ever put a laptop in a manila folder until Steve Jobs came along.
Jason Snell [00:43:17]:
How about credit for executing? Because that's the, that's the sad thing. Having tried those netbooks, they were garbage.
Christina Warren [00:43:22]:
They were awful.
Jason Snell [00:43:23]:
And then they built a MacBook Air and they showed everybody else the way.
Andy Ihnatko [00:43:26]:
Netbooks are totally different.
Jason Snell [00:43:28]:
I know, but then they showed everybody else the way. And it's easy to say, well, oh, they would have figured it out, but it's like, but they didn't. And then everybody followed what Apple did.
Leo Laporte [00:43:35]:
And to this day, Ultrabooks are the best-selling laptop category.
Jason Snell [00:43:40]:
Do I think that all laptops would look like a little silver thing that was— I mean, would they have gotten there eventually? I don't know, maybe. Or maybe everything would still look like a ThinkPad.
Andy Ihnatko [00:43:48]:
I can— I was going to say, they definitely built those.
Leo Laporte [00:43:51]:
Even my ThinkPad cartridge.
Andy Ihnatko [00:43:53]:
Just like Apple has built tablets tablet-style Macs before and they just simply haven't shipped them for whatever reason they haven't done that. Okay.
Christina Warren [00:44:00]:
I mean, but one manufacturer making one-off thing, I don't think it's the same thing as a company who sells more units than anybody else of any particular item. I just, I think that you have to give credit to that a little bit, even if you're overstating how much of an impact it had. Fact of the matter is more MacBook Airs sold across generations with that wedge design than any number of single like, like XPS that had the same chassis or anything, any other device that had the same chassis.
Jason Snell [00:44:28]:
Like, if we're going to give things sold, if we're going to give Samsung credit for big phones, which I think we should, we got to give Apple credit for those laptops because they, again, because they executed, they brought it to market, it made a difference. They proved that it was a category. And a couple of years later, they iterated to the point where it was now an affordable product that had mass appeal because the first 2 MacBook Airs with the weird fold-down doors didn't. They were kind of there. And I do think that is probably a trajectory for the, for the folding phone, a lot Apple style, is that I think it's inevitable that they're going to be way more of them because ultimately everybody wants a big screen and they want it to fit in their pocket. And this is the only way you can do that. But I also feel like we will look back on the iPhone Duo and think of it like we did that fold-down door MacBook Air, which was it cost what again? And it did it. And when it got hot, it did what again? And roll our eyes at it.
Jason Snell [00:45:22]:
But I I do think that that's why it's an exciting category. And on the software side, I think they are also delivering in a way that will affect how its competition delivers on the software side.
Andy Ihnatko [00:45:34]:
Actually, that's a really good example. And I hope that— I hope this helps to clarify my thoughts and my intent. There is a cyclical sort of myth-making on all sides that I just don't love. One of them is whatever side Windows Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, Samsung vs. Apple, it's easy to color every step that might be colored as disappointing by the other side as a strength, as a sign of why your side is better. Just as there have been people that are saying, well, yeah, I know Apple wasn't first with the foldable, but look at how terrible the first foldable was. Apple did not get into this market until they could do something really good and really positive and really great. And that's true.
Andy Ihnatko [00:46:24]:
It's also true that with the MacBook Air, they rushed something into market that wasn't ready, that they maybe shouldn't have shipped, and that the first generation of excited buyers was going to be paying an operational penalty for using. Both of those things are true at the same time. It doesn't mean that Apple is a lesser company for it. All I'm saying is that sometimes I see a sense of myth-making that I don't think is compatible with—
Christina Warren [00:46:48]:
Wait a minute.
Leo Laporte [00:46:49]:
This is news to me. The first Airs weren't very good?
Christina Warren [00:46:52]:
No, no, no, they were awful.
Leo Laporte [00:46:56]:
Maybe I just don't remember.
Andy Ihnatko [00:47:01]:
You want to feel pity for somebody? I got my press loaner like a week before I took it on a whole week at the University of Colorado speaking thing, and that was my only computer for the entire week with 64, like, 64 gigs of storage. storage, one USB port, and it was throttling all the time. Like, that, that's, that's why, like, I mean, getting back to like what, what led us down this path to begin with, sometimes, uh, uh, it's, uh, maybe, maybe buying a Duo is not an irrational decision. Maybe it's more helpful to refer to it as an emotional decision, where there are always going to be people who feel as though— I feel as though— I feel— well, let me finish. That This is this is this this duo is going to be very very suitable for my needs. I've got the money for it. I don't think it's going to fail me. I don't think I'll be disappointed in it.
Andy Ihnatko [00:47:52]:
It might not be perfect for the first go, and but at the point there's a point which you're willing to say I just like it. I'm interested in it. It it it doesn't it's not just simply a shiny shiny like reptile brain sort of reaction. It is I feel as though I'm going to have I'm going to enjoy every time I take this out of my pocket and feel that snap when I when I open. it, and that click when I close it, I'm going to enjoy that. Being influenced somewhat by emotion when you make a purchase, it should not be the only reason why you buy something. But it's not a negative reason at all. That's one of the satisfactions, I would say a genuine satisfaction, that Apple delivers.
Andy Ihnatko [00:48:31]:
There is something about the Apple Watch that is just a very satisfying object in the way that the first Android Wear watches They were fine. I preferred the round dials, but they weren't that sort of, boy, this feels like a piece of jewelry. Boy, I'm going to enjoy putting this on my wrist every morning and taking it off at the end of every day. That's not a bad thing. It's not, it's not a negative thing to refer to, to say that in the pie chart of the reasons why I'm buying this $2,000 folding phone, emotion is part of it. But again, we are human beings. We enjoy that sort of stuff, and that's perfectly fine.
Leo Laporte [00:49:05]:
You're watching or listening, depending on your ears or your eyes, MacBreak Weekly with Andy Inaco, who hated the MacBook Air. And this—
Andy Ihnatko [00:49:14]:
No, no, no, I'm just—
Christina Warren [00:49:18]:
Well, the 2008 one was—
Leo Laporte [00:49:20]:
I can't remember if I bought it. I mean, that was a long time.
Jason Snell [00:49:23]:
I used it the whole time.
Christina Warren [00:49:25]:
Yeah, I was in college, so I did not have one. But I, I was in college, so I did not have one. I could not afford one. I had a black MacBook. And I was very happy with that. I had the plastic Intel, you know, black MacBook. But I will say, just to close out this thing, that initial MacBook Air was not great. But that second generation, and that's the one that I actually mean as the redefining, as the category-defining one, is the wedge one, not the initial.
Christina Warren [00:49:53]:
It was the wedge one. And I do think that that one, because it came out with a good processor, it came out with a thin profile, which was, yes, absolutely unique at the time for that wedge shape. It had good thermals and more importantly, had a good price. It also had port selection. They fixed every single thing that people hated about the initial 2 MacBook Airs, except that, you know, they still didn't have a CD-ROM drive. But at that point, people had started to move off of optical anyway. And that was the computer that you could tell everybody to buy. Just if you needed a recommendation of a computer, get a MacBook Air.
Christina Warren [00:50:26]:
And that's what's exciting to me is that I don't know how long it'll be. I do feel like the first Duo, and again, like this is why I say it's irrational. Obviously people can do whatever they wanna do with their money and you can make justifications however you want, but this is not going to be, in my opinion, a device that you should be looking at as being like, oh, this is gonna be cutting edge and be everything I need it to be at the beginning. If you're somebody who is okay with taking the risk and you wanna have fun and you are okay with the trade-offs, as Jason said, it's not important for you to have battery life, it's not important for you, or battery I think will be fine, but like it's not important for you to have the best camera, honestly, like go for it. But if you're somebody who's interested in the category, but you look at these kind of downsides and you're kind of going, I don't know, I think that if we give it, you know, a year or two, it'll be like the iPad 2, which was a huge jump from, from the original iPad.
Jason Snell [00:51:15]:
And there is one big thing to fix this, which was the MacBook Air was an Intel product.
Leo Laporte [00:51:22]:
And frankly, Intel is the one who screwed it Well, that was later. And this time Apple's got their own silicon. And I think it's going to be much, much better. At least if Apple screws it up, it's their own doing.
Christina Warren [00:51:34]:
Well, I think that it's not even screwing it up. It's just about the fact that we aren't yet at that point where you can miniaturize processes and get the sensors and get the things down where you can get all the, the highest quality sensor underneath the glass the same way. I mean, I think that there are like physics things that are, that are holding them back and physics, physics, things that will be better. They're already working on future iterations. Right? So I think it's just one of those things. It's kind of like you— when we saw the first iPad, that was another example. Like, it was a really good first-gen product. I don't think anybody who bought that first iPad would be mad that they did.
Christina Warren [00:52:07]:
That iPad 2, that was a way better product, and it was a year later.
Leo Laporte [00:52:11]:
Well, of course, you know, they're gonna get better. I mean, nobody—
Christina Warren [00:52:13]:
Right. I'm just saying that for— because it's $2,000, this should be a thing I think that people think about. Like, how much am I willing to do it? And it's not to discourage anybody from buying it at all. Just, you know, if you're debating between the two, you know, like, can I wait another year or do I really want to do this now? I mean, I just don't feel like there's— people should feel any sort of like FOMO for not buying something.
Leo Laporte [00:52:41]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:52:42]:
And I feel like those of us who are going to buy it, most of us are trying to do it the right way. And my only point of making these long-winded statements is that because I have people asking me questions, I want to make sure they understand what they're getting into with this phone because this is different. Usually you spend more money on the phone and it's going to be better in every way. And that's not going to be the case here. And I think that that messes with people's, you know, priors a little bit where you expect, oh, well, this is going to obviously supersede my iPhone 16. It might not, depending on what you want to do, but depending on what does matter you, this might be perfect. That's all.
Leo Laporte [00:53:20]:
Yes. Also, by the way— Yes.
Jason Snell [00:53:24]:
Yes. The reason I was shaking my head there is that the problem I have with the argument about— we do need to warn people this is a weird product. It's a first generation. All of these things are true. I still do not agree that the idea that this is an irrational or emotional decision. For some people, it might be. Certainly for many people, it might be. For people with different priorities than those priorities, it might also makes sense for them.
Jason Snell [00:53:45]:
And we don't need to be quite that judgmental.
Leo Laporte [00:53:48]:
I think it's reasonable to say this may break your heart.
Jason Snell [00:53:52]:
I mean, it may. And the price, the reason I reacted to the price is I used to—
Andy Ihnatko [00:53:55]:
Cast your lot in love. That's always the—
Leo Laporte [00:53:58]:
how far better to have loved and lost than have never had an iPhone.
Jason Snell [00:54:03]:
I used to have these arguments when we would, back at Macworld, when we would review products, because there were a lot of people who argued that we should include pricing in the rating of the product. And their argument was always like, well, Well, you know, if 2 products do the same thing, equally good, but one of them costs more than the other, shouldn't the one that costs less get a better rating?
Christina Warren [00:54:26]:
No.
Jason Snell [00:54:27]:
And my, and my response was exactly that, Leo, which is, here's the thing. We don't need to signal this secret thing about a product.
Leo Laporte [00:54:37]:
Because it ain't secret.
Jason Snell [00:54:38]:
It's price. Because the price is right on the label.
Leo Laporte [00:54:41]:
Everybody knows.
Jason Snell [00:54:42]:
Like when you're buying an iPhone Duo, the good news is you're going to know how much it costs and you're going to make a judgment about it and you're going to say, really, $2,000? That's all I'm shaking my head about is like, it's not a mystery. It costs a lot of money and nobody is going to be surprised by how much money it costs. They may be surprised when they think $2,000 is going to get them Face ID.
Christina Warren [00:55:03]:
And that's what I'm saying.
Jason Snell [00:55:04]:
All of those other features and a third camera.
Christina Warren [00:55:06]:
That's my point.
Jason Snell [00:55:07]:
They're not. They're not. I'm not going to get that. And that's going to be weird about it.
Christina Warren [00:55:12]:
And that's my only point. The prices, people know that. But, but again, because— and the reason I do think we do have to mention price a little bit here, yes, people know what it is because they're going to be aggressive promos, whether it's through Klarna or other services where people are going to be faced with the idea of, do I trade in my phone or not? And I agree with you. I think for lots of people, it will be a very rational choice to say, yeah, this makes sense for me. But it just should be a thing that people need to of don't go just on, oh, this is new and fancy and I, I want this now. Like, people like Leo and I can do that, but, but we, we are who we are, right? Like, I'm not going to be telling my mom to get an iPhone Duo, right? Like, this is not going to be a product for her.
Jason Snell [00:55:51]:
So if you love her—
Leo Laporte [00:55:52]:
well, maybe if you love her, you buy her an iPhone Duo.
Christina Warren [00:55:56]:
You see, I bought her a MacBook Air.
Leo Laporte [00:55:58]:
There you go. I hope it wasn't—
Jason Snell [00:56:00]:
And not that first one.
Christina Warren [00:56:01]:
No, no, no. I got her a MacBook Air, an M3 MacBook Air, uh, 2 years ago for Christmas. And then last year for Christmas, I got her, um, an iPad and, um, upgraded from that. And no, I, I, I, I am fine.
Leo Laporte [00:56:15]:
As a, as, as somebody even older than your own mother, I, with—
Christina Warren [00:56:21]:
No, I think she's older than you.
Leo Laporte [00:56:23]:
No, she couldn't possibly be.
Christina Warren [00:56:24]:
Oh yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:56:25]:
No, actually, Leo.
Leo Laporte [00:56:27]:
No one's older than me. No. As a, as a person in his This could be my last phone for all I know. I am willing, I am willing. I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that in gold letters on the wall. Better to have Duo'd and lost than never to have Duo'd at all.
Christina Warren [00:56:45]:
No, totally. I mean, that's how I feel too. I'm like, YOLO, let's go, right?
Leo Laporte [00:56:49]:
I understand there's a risk. I do, and I may be unhappy. And you know what, next year Apple's gonna do a 20th anniversary iPhone, and I may say That's the way to go. So the worst case is a year, maybe it breaks.
Christina Warren [00:57:07]:
You know in 14 days. Yeah, that's true.
Leo Laporte [00:57:10]:
I could return it. I'll know. Okay, good. Thank you for that. I'll know in 14 days.
Christina Warren [00:57:16]:
Well, I think everybody should know that, right? Like, you are not—
Leo Laporte [00:57:18]:
That's a deal breaker, ladies. You'll know immediately. You see the crease, the, the screen peels, which it did with me with one of the Galaxy, uh, oh yeah.
Christina Warren [00:57:27]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:57:29]:
Then, you know, then that's a deal breaker and you send it back.
Christina Warren [00:57:34]:
Well, yeah, that was the only thing I was going to encourage is that especially with Apple stuff, because they're willing to replace it. Yes. Or send it back. Be willing. Don't, don't, don't feel like you have to settle for anything, especially you're not married yet. It's cost now. You, you can—
Leo Laporte [00:57:46]:
you're just engaged.
Jason Snell [00:57:48]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:57:49]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:57:50]:
When there are no ad breaks, we fight. I don't like it.
Leo Laporte [00:57:53]:
I've been trying to get to an ad break literally for 20 minutes.
Andy Ihnatko [00:57:56]:
Go, go, go.
Leo Laporte [00:57:58]:
But this is so important. Uh, Andy Iannacco, Jason Snell, Christina Warren. I look forward to Tuesdays every week. I hope you do too. We're so glad you're here. This is MacBreak Weekly. Uh, okay, I gotta admit, I got my Apple Watch on Friday. I took the old one off, put the new one in, paired it, did all this stuff, put the old one in the box, sent it back to Apple for my $400 or whatever.
Leo Laporte [00:58:24]:
I mean, almost half of the money. is back, but I don't see any. I got the Ultra 4. It— I can't see any. When are we gonna get all of that cool stuff that they said? I got the heart rate monitor. I don't care about that.
Jason Snell [00:58:38]:
Heart rate monitor's there. The live Shazam's there.
Andy Ihnatko [00:58:40]:
I'm looking forward to being a—
Leo Laporte [00:58:41]:
being a— The what? Wait a minute, say it. The live Shazam.
Jason Snell [00:58:42]:
What's that? Live Shazam is there. So if you hear a song, you can actually just scroll to the—
Christina Warren [00:58:46]:
to the—
Leo Laporte [00:58:46]:
the widget area.
Andy Ihnatko [00:58:47]:
How do you do that?
Leo Laporte [00:58:47]:
Tell me how you do a live Shazam. You scroll the knob?
Jason Snell [00:58:51]:
You hear someone hear a song and then you take the Digital Crown and you scroll into the little widget area And you scroll up or you scroll down? Uh, you push up on the front of the wheel. And so the little—
Leo Laporte [00:59:01]:
Oh yeah, look, there's widgets there.
Jason Snell [00:59:03]:
That's— so really this is my phone. That's an important watchOS feature, that little, that little widget area.
Leo Laporte [00:59:08]:
Where is the Shazam? I don't see it. Do I have to enable that?
Jason Snell [00:59:10]:
Is music playing around you now? No. Then you won't see it. If music is playing around you, you will see it and it'll tell you what the song is because it's using the same always-on audio processing that's going on. going on there. They haven't added the features where they're transcribing what people are saying, but they are— that music feature is there. I literally was watching a TV show last night and the credits came on and I thought, oh, I wonder what that song is. And I realized I'm wearing that Series 12 Apple Watch and I scrolled and Shazam was like, this is the name of the song.
Leo Laporte [00:59:40]:
This is the problem with these features. You gotta have the habit to log it. 'Cause I'll forget that. And so you gotta get the habit.
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:45]:
Oh yes. Don't make it better. We've had that on Android. They've had that, or at least on Pixel.
Christina Warren [00:59:50]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:50]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:59:51]:
I had it on my Pixel for a while.
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:52]:
Yeah. And it's great because you I don't have to just simply leap for the phone and figure and capture it. It's like, as I'm driving home, like from a wedding, this has actually happened. It's like, oh man, like it was, that was a good playlist. Like the DJ wasn't just playing all ABBA as usual. And then I could just switch to like a pane in settings. It will show, well, here are all the songs that got played, or at least that I could recognize and identify. I do that in Ubers a lot where it's like, there's a lot of music that like I would never have been exposed to.
Andy Ihnatko [01:00:24]:
I often say, particularly on the Google Podcast, that the classic Google features are at the exact intersection point between, oh my God, that is so cool and so useful, and, oh my God, that's really, really creepy.
Leo Laporte [01:00:37]:
Can I make Andy— the title of this show be Andy Does It in Ubers?
Andy Ihnatko [01:00:43]:
Uh, it's your show. I'm not—
Leo Laporte [01:00:47]:
It might encourage downloads. Always looking for the, uh, I love looking for more signups on my OnlyFans.
Jason Snell [01:00:53]:
It's a really nice feature. And actually my complaint is that you have to log every song. And I would like a feature where I said, log all the songs until I leave this location.
Leo Laporte [01:01:05]:
Well, maybe when we get that new Apple intelligence listening always all the time, it might be part of the notes that it puts in there. And then at 12:34, and then this song played in the background.
Andy Ihnatko [01:01:14]:
More control is always better than less control, but the bonus of this feature is that I never ever like catch a song when I think to catch the song.
Jason Snell [01:01:22]:
Exactly. It's great.
Andy Ihnatko [01:01:24]:
It's great. If I was turning it on and off, I would forget to turn it back on again.
Jason Snell [01:01:28]:
There's a lull where a very recognizable part of the song plays and you're like, oh, this song. By the time you go to capture it, people are talking, the lull is over, it's trailing off and you've missed it.
Leo Laporte [01:01:40]:
But that's the fix.
Jason Snell [01:01:40]:
That is the magic of it. I was able to scroll over the Ted Lasso credits and I was able to scroll up and it just said the name of the song. Right. And that's the magic, right? It's not, let me listen. It's like, no, this is the song that you've been listening to.
Leo Laporte [01:01:55]:
Okay. That's one feature.
Jason Snell [01:01:57]:
But, and so that's using that, all the backend stuff where they're buffering audio.
Leo Laporte [01:02:01]:
So that means it's working.
Jason Snell [01:02:02]:
It's the controversial features are not there yet. So do we have any— so there's heart rate monitoring. monitoring that's going on where they're monitoring heart rate and heart rate variability a lot more, which should be able to allow them to give more information to your doctor and maybe even recognize issues with your heart better. And the, the, the, the EKG is better now. Like all of those things, ECG, they're all, they're all better now because they rebuilt the sensor stack there. But the banner features and Siri AI—
Leo Laporte [01:02:32]:
See, now I have a complication on that has my heart rate. I don't know how useful that is.
Jason Snell [01:02:37]:
Because it actually monitors it now.
Leo Laporte [01:02:38]:
Yeah, that's kind of interesting. So those are 2 things that I paid a lot of money.
Jason Snell [01:02:44]:
I mean, yeah, I got a new band. I don't think you should buy a new Apple Watch every year, but yes.
Christina Warren [01:02:49]:
Okay. Yeah, I'm with Jason.
Leo Laporte [01:02:52]:
The reason I bought it—
Jason Snell [01:02:53]:
new processor, so it's faster.
Leo Laporte [01:02:54]:
The reason I bought it is the always listening Apple intelligence. That's what I really need. Did Apple hint to you? Have you had a briefing yet, Jason?
Jason Snell [01:03:05]:
Yeah. About the Apple Watch? Sure. They don't give, they don't give you review units unless you have a briefing. It's not allowed.
Leo Laporte [01:03:10]:
Okay. See, I would know that.
Jason Snell [01:03:11]:
I actually had kind of an unhinged briefing that I can't really talk about except some of the questions were bananas. And I, afterward, it's the first time I've ever emailed a PR person afterward to give them a gold star for answering crazy questions. But anyway.
Leo Laporte [01:03:24]:
So does it record everything? So did they—
Jason Snell [01:03:27]:
if a terrorist used this watch, what are you doing? Don't do that.
Leo Laporte [01:03:32]:
Anyway, terrorists do not wear Apple Watches.
Andy Ihnatko [01:03:33]:
I don't like these group briefings where I have to like, I have to like not only like stifle what I want to say in reaction, but also like I can't visibly react.
Leo Laporte [01:03:42]:
Like, you can roll your eyes.
Christina Warren [01:03:44]:
I do. I visibly react all the time. It was too insane not to. I will pull a face anytime. I won't interrupt someone, but I'll be like, I can't help it.
Leo Laporte [01:03:54]:
I can't help it. It's one of my great curses is that people can read what's going on in my head.
Jason Snell [01:03:59]:
I don't even know. Stop asking those crazy questions, Leo, and then we won't have to react to you.
Leo Laporte [01:04:05]:
Um, did they— again, I'm gonna ask again— intimate in any form or fashion with an ear tug anything the kind of time frame that I'm gonna get the thing I bought the watch for?
Jason Snell [01:04:17]:
No, it's later. It's later this year. If I had to guess they're shooting for, you know, maybe in a month, but because they tend to do that. But I mean, it's not in— we'll put it this way— it's not in the betas that we've gotten, right?
Leo Laporte [01:04:32]:
Okay. And if it's not in this, I did turn on the Apple Watch beta just hoping that that maybe would happen.
Jason Snell [01:04:37]:
This may be more end of year kind of. Yeah, it may be.
Leo Laporte [01:04:41]:
What's the holdup?
Jason Snell [01:04:44]:
Unclear to me, right? Isn't it interesting that this is a banner feature and it didn't make it in? And I don't know how much of that is tech and I don't know how much of that is actually waiting to see what people—
Leo Laporte [01:04:53]:
State legislatures to weigh in, attorneys general to say, hold on there.
Jason Snell [01:04:58]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:04:59]:
Yeah. 'Cause I'd be surprised if they didn't have this pretty well sorted out. Right. I feel like they've kind of learned you can only kind of, you know, I guess lead with some of these AI features for so long and you need to start shipping them. And they, They are you know putting Siri AI at all fronts. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like there might be kind of a social aspect where they're just kind of waiting to see.
Christina Warren [01:05:20]:
Okay, what's the reception? How upset are people really? Do we need to refine anything? Because they they do that sometimes too. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. I could I could be I could I could be persuaded by this argument. I was expecting, and I was wrong on this. I was expecting to see the Apple TV and whatever the home strategy was as part of the the event the other week. That didn't happen. Now the reports are that that's going to be happening later.
Christina Warren [01:05:44]:
I could see this sort of feature being part of the, the, you know, Siri Home or whatever we're going to call it story, um, in some way. I don't know.
Jason Snell [01:05:55]:
I don't know. German said, by the way, that they, they were originally planning to put that in the event and then they pushed it back. So, oh, um, that may be why it was the length that it was. Was is that they decided. I think it's a good move. Everybody's talking about the iPhone Duo. I think that your home strategy does not need to be hooked to that. Next month, nobody will talk about your home strategy.
Christina Warren [01:06:15]:
I was going to say next month maybe we do that or whenever they do it. But honestly, yeah, you're right, Jason. Like at this point, like have everybody talk about the phone that they're excited about. You don't need to remind people about how bad your strategy in home is.
Jason Snell [01:06:30]:
In the last week, Apple has shipped or is ready to ship 2 new Mac models, 2 new Apple Watches, and 2 new iPhones. And we have spent the bulk of this podcast talking about the product that they haven't shipped.
Christina Warren [01:06:44]:
That we haven't touched. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:06:46]:
So don't blame me. I'm just trying to move on.
Jason Snell [01:06:48]:
We're trying. We've been talking about the Watch a little bit. So, so yeah, I think, I think that is a challenge. I do wonder if they're wondering about asking permission or forgiveness. And also, I wonder if maybe like they had to prioritize other features in the Apple Watch. Look, if we've learned nothing about how Apple deals with software, look at the Duo software for a great example.
Christina Warren [01:07:08]:
Oh my God. I was going to say there's, there's 2 priorities at Apple.
Jason Snell [01:07:12]:
The iPhone, large gap, everything else. And this is an Apple Watch feature. So of course, if they had to prioritize something, they probably prioritized the iPhone stuff over the Apple Watch. So eventually it'll show up.
Andy Ihnatko [01:07:28]:
Also, also, it's hard to present, like, from— again, I don't have a sample or anything like that, but of course I've been reading up on it. It seems like another one of those things where it doesn't look materially different, it doesn't really behave materially different, but we've improved the sensors, we've improved the software, we've improved the data that it can take in and the data that it can process. And that's not an easy thing to put across in a peppy, even a pre-made video. So that's got to be tough. I'm more interested— Really, at this point, the most interesting thing that Apple could do beyond helping people to lead healthier, safer lives is creating more platforms. I think we've talked about this a few weeks ago, where it's like, the Apple Watch is great, no fault to it. The 2 different versions of it, also great. But again, people like me, there's a whole bunch of people that want something like a band, or they want something like a ring.
Andy Ihnatko [01:08:20]:
Because a watch just doesn't fit into how they use things, and you can't help people if they're not using the product. So I'm— I think the German just today had not a newsletter article but actually a feature article saying that, yeah, Apple's trying to create something that competes with a Whoop band. Uh, and when you, when you see—
Jason Snell [01:08:39]:
when you—
Leo Laporte [01:08:39]:
You wear a Whoop, right?
Andy Ihnatko [01:08:41]:
Oh no, no, I don't. I, I'm a cheapskate. I've got the $99, uh, Fitbit Air. Fitbit Air, which is perfect. This is the first fitness band that I have worn every single day nonstop. I mean, and I have, I have an Apple Watch, I have a Pixel Watch, I even think I've got a Moto Watch someplace that I've all, all of which I paid for. But the thing is, like, I'll wear them for a while, but I'll stop. This one has never been off my wrist, which just goes to show that again, you're not reaching certain people, not because you haven't done a great job on that one thing that you're making, but because you're simply Simply not making something that is compatible with lifestyle.
Leo Laporte [01:09:14]:
Well, given how many words of Mark Gurman— Apple desarrolló un monitor de actividad física para— why is my— why is Mark Gurman in Spanish all of a sudden? He's very good.
Andy Ihnatko [01:09:25]:
He's very cosmopolitan.
Jason Snell [01:09:29]:
I mean, I'm reading it in English, so—
Leo Laporte [01:09:31]:
Oh, so maybe it's me, but everything else is in English.
Christina Warren [01:09:35]:
That's weird. Maybe your VPN, who knows, Leo? Did you— are you looking at your AI?
Leo Laporte [01:09:39]:
I mean, that's the top article, then everything else is in English. What is going on in the world? I feel like AI— this is an AI has snuck into my network and is—
Christina Warren [01:09:50]:
Yeah, I was gonna say you've been hacked or, or something was weird.
Leo Laporte [01:09:54]:
My P Doom just went to 20%.
Andy Ihnatko [01:09:56]:
You should dip your, dip your, uh, iMac in— your Mac into bleach right now.
Leo Laporte [01:10:01]:
It's like I need to bleach it all.
Andy Ihnatko [01:10:02]:
It is that you haven't bought one right now.
Leo Laporte [01:10:04]:
Oh, here it is in English. Apple developing new fitness tracker aimed at rivaling Whoop. I like saying Whoop. So is this the Apple Watch 12?
Christina Warren [01:10:14]:
I don't know.
Jason Snell [01:10:15]:
No, no, I'm wearing the Apple Watch Series 12. This is a band.
Andy Ihnatko [01:10:21]:
Again, something—
Leo Laporte [01:10:21]:
they're going to do a band. This is a separate product that Apple might be looking at.
Jason Snell [01:10:25]:
They're investigating, and it come— if it would not ship before, he says, at least 2028, because they're in technology investigation. But this is— and I think this is great news, right? This is Apple saying, You know, the Apple Watch is great and all, and we've had it for 12 years now and people like it. But the people who haven't bought the Apple Watch probably haven't bought it because they don't want to buy one. What can we sell to them? And they look at the Whoop band and they think, oh, actually, and it makes so much sense because it's small, embeddable technology. They're good at that. It can sync to your iPhone. They love that. They've got all of the health stuff.
Jason Snell [01:11:02]:
stuff and the Health app on your iPhone. Like, I don't know, other than that, they just never want— they want to push everybody to buy an Apple Watch. I don't see why, honestly, they should have made this product 5 years ago at least.
Christina Warren [01:11:16]:
I agree.
Jason Snell [01:11:17]:
A screenless Apple Watch, essentially, that's just sensors that tie to your iPhone's health data because some people don't want to just, period, do not want to wear an Apple Watch. And it doesn't invalidate the Apple Watch. There can be more than one health wearable in your product line. So, I mean, this is a John Turner's move to say, please do that. Or Eddie Cue even to say, please, can we do this?
Leo Laporte [01:11:41]:
Are there people like Andy who just resist wearing an Apple Watch? Because Apple Watch would do the same thing.
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:46]:
It's not so much resisting. It's just that it's not—
Leo Laporte [01:11:48]:
don't you want to know what time it is?
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:49]:
It doesn't fit. Well, again, I've got my— I guess, again, the emo— again, we're going back to emotional purchases. I love this watch.
Leo Laporte [01:11:57]:
I bought that watch. I don't really—
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:01]:
a $400 watch, the Apple Watch, doesn't make me as happy as this $20 Casio does.
Jason Snell [01:12:06]:
Exactly right.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:07]:
And the thing is, I don't want to give up this real estate for a device that again is not gonna fit in with my lifestyle and doesn't give me joy when I check.
Leo Laporte [01:12:14]:
But you can't spin the knob and see what song was playing.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:17]:
Yeah, but okay, but he doesn't care. You also don't get these completely unnecessary like LCD like tachometer sort of displays that counts off every 10 seconds.
Leo Laporte [01:12:26]:
What is it? That's Out of curiosity, all it is is like— is it your 90-yard dash?
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:32]:
Yeah, it's doing something. It's just a cool thing.
Leo Laporte [01:12:35]:
And the thing is, it's gonna do it for 10 years, which is pretty cool.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:39]:
And then I just simply buy more batteries and I'm good for another 10 years. Yeah, but that's just what I'm talking about. It's not— look, it's not necessarily people rejecting the Apple Watch or thinking, oh, this is terrible. It's like, again, I've tried to use it, it just doesn't fit in with my life.
Leo Laporte [01:12:51]:
What about the description? Is Apple just saying, well, this is just a way to get another $20 a month out of people.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:56]:
Yeah, but that's the problem with Whoop. I like the idea.
Christina Warren [01:12:59]:
I was going to say, that's why I don't like Whoop.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:00]:
It is so expensive that unless I can really justify $30 a month— it's like, if Apple did this as part of— well—
Christina Warren [01:13:10]:
It's part of iCloud.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:11]:
Exactly. One of the great things about the Apple Watch is that a lot of the things that with other Fitbits and other Google fitness products is that they do need an extra $10 a month from you to get some of the advanced tracking and the advanced insights Apple's just saying, no, we got your $300, we're good.
Jason Snell [01:13:27]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:27]:
As long as you— and we're— thank you for— thank you for forcing— letting us force a lock into the iPhone for you. But again, we're good. We'll give you all these benefits.
Christina Warren [01:13:35]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:13:36]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:36]:
And that's— and that's something that I would— I would hate, unless they— unless they could really deliver something that is emphatically convincing that, yeah, I'm actually buying $30 for a personal trainer. I'm buying $30 for something that will fundamentally change and improve my relationship to this fitness data. I hope that they keep that.
Jason Snell [01:13:55]:
In fact, the new developer betas, the 27.2, have the new Health app, which has got a bunch of sort of like machine learning-based like advice and stuff. It's— if you remember this story we talked about a while ago, they were thinking of doing like an AI health coach service, and it seems— it sounds like Eddy Cue was like, hey, I got a better idea. What if we made the Health app better?
Christina Warren [01:14:19]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:14:20]:
And I like that approach of like, maybe our health app should just be better because we're selling people watches and phones. And if they sell this fitness band, it's the same thing. If, if there's a service they can offer that adds value, I'm sure they will find a way to do it. But I think that their approach to something like a band would be very much like what Andy said about the Apple Watch, which is, you know what, we are happy that you are buying another iPhone accessory. and relying on it to monitor everything about your health. Great. Go us. And, you know, if they, if they can come up with a useful, valuable add-on service, I'm sure they will.
Jason Snell [01:14:58]:
But Apple doesn't need to have the baseline be a service because they're happy to just sell you hardware and have it tied to your iPhone.
Christina Warren [01:15:07]:
And exactly because it's part of an ecosystem like Whoop has to because they're ultimately selling, you know, kind of like commodity hardware that is customized to a certain extent. And they have to have that service add-on because otherwise you would just keep your Whoop forever, right? This is the problem that Fitbit ran into and why they were acquired. Like every fitness band company has had this problem, honestly, going all the way back to when Nike was doing this, you know, 15 years ago, is that how do you kind of grow this category unless you continue, you know, having some sort of subscription thing? Apple doesn't have to do that, to your point, because you're part of the ecosystem. You're buying the hardware. Will they potentially do add-ons? I could totally see that. But I don't think that— I would not expect them to gate it. Now, here's the question I do have for you, though, because this would be interesting to know. 2 things.
Christina Warren [01:15:49]:
One, you know, the current way that the— like you can have, I think, like multiple Apple Watches connected to one phone. Is that correct?
Andy Ihnatko [01:16:00]:
Yes.
Christina Warren [01:16:00]:
But you can't connect like 2 phones to the same Apple Watch. So I was curious in your briefings, Jason, since I don't know if this came up or not, but, you know, but again, with like the iPhone handoff feature that they've introduced in iOS 27, which is currently only available on T-Mobile, you can hand off your eSIM between 2 different iPhones. Does that also mean that you could, you could use my Apple Watch across 2 different iPhones too? Do you know?
Jason Snell [01:16:30]:
I don't know. But knowing how it at least currently works, you You would, you would only sync it with a single phone, although the health data can sync now over iCloud. And presumably because this is already how the cellular watch works, if you added it to the mix with a cellular watch, they would all share the same number. But I think the actual data sync is with an iPhone. But again, that, that data will then appear on the other iPhone via iCloud Health Sync.
Leo Laporte [01:16:59]:
Right.
Christina Warren [01:17:00]:
Right. Yeah. Because you have to be signed into the same iCloud account, iMessage account, and a couple of other things to be able to do the handoff. I was just curious if they'd done that because that's been the one kind of annoying thing for me as like a multi-phone person is that like my Apple Watch only works with one phone. But I was also kind of thinking more broadly like, okay, if they do get into these other categories, you know, are they going to think about, you know, maybe separating that somewhat? Like that's— is that going to have to be a thing you can figure out? Like I said, now you can. have, you know, 2 phones connected to your watch. But they would— it would be nice if we're looking at these other categories potentially to be like, okay, you know, this is syncing with my global kind of iCloud account, but it doesn't have to necessarily be tied to this specific, you know, independent watch device. Because that's the only thing that when I look at the Apple Watch right now that kind of makes me a little bit frustrated with it, even the ones with cellular, is that it's It's, you know, basically it is a complete companion of your phone.
Christina Warren [01:17:56]:
And it can't really, unless you do it in a very specific way, it can't really operate independently from that. And for something like a more general fitness tracker, you know, health, sleep, whatever, that would be nice to be able to not necessarily be like, okay, I have to be tied in with this specific sets of accounts that are tied into this specific, you know, kind of phone that's home base. I could just, you know, kind of have it exist. And if it's able to connect to an iCloud account, great. And it'll, it'll synchronize, you know, all the places it needs to rather than being like, okay, I have to be indebted to this particular device.
Leo Laporte [01:18:30]:
In the same article, Mark says, if I have started to convince some of you, and as I see that there I have, that you should not upgrade your Apple Watch, Mark Gurman does say that next year may bring us a fully redesigned Apple Watch, so it might be a good idea. I mean, if you don't see anything you really want in the new Apple Watch, might be a good idea to wait.
Christina Warren [01:18:51]:
Maybe. I mean, I think the thing like I wouldn't even say that you made a bad decision upgrading. Like I think doing it just for the feature you did maybe.
Leo Laporte [01:18:58]:
Well, no, I want that. But I think there are a lot of people that want always listening.
Christina Warren [01:19:01]:
Right, right, right. But what I was going to say more broadly was that honestly, when I looked at the Series, you know, 12 this year, and when you look at like the Ultra 4, like. it's been a pretty mid kind of, you know, tick-tock upgrade cycle for a couple of years. Like, these actually seems like these are more significant updates so that if you are somebody who had a Series 9, a Series 8, like, I feel like this is a good year to upgrade.
Leo Laporte [01:19:23]:
Because of the processor, better battery life alone.
Christina Warren [01:19:26]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:19:26]:
Those, those two make a big difference.
Christina Warren [01:19:30]:
Yeah. I mean, I, I think it's harder when you get to Series 10 and Series 11 to kind of make that justification because I'm with Jason. I don't think any anybody needs to buy an Apple Watch every year. And I'm someone who did, but I did, to be clear, mostly because I had a work reimbursement where they would basically give me $800 a year that I could use on fitness stuff. And I didn't go to the gym, so I just bought an Apple Watch every year.
Leo Laporte [01:19:49]:
Oh, that's nice.
Christina Warren [01:19:49]:
Yeah. And then they expanded that category to include lots and lots of other things. So I was like, oh, I don't have to buy an Apple Watch every year. But that was the only reason that I did that.
Leo Laporte [01:19:58]:
Did you go to a Japanese tea ceremony once a week or something like that?
Christina Warren [01:20:02]:
Actually, I probably could because I think now it includes like hobbies. No, hobbies.
Leo Laporte [01:20:08]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:20:08]:
Yeah. Like photography and things like that. So I think I could probably—
Leo Laporte [01:20:10]:
Now you could buy those Sparks you've been, you've been weekly visiting.
Christina Warren [01:20:13]:
Actually, that's covered now too. It's computing. It's covered.
Leo Laporte [01:20:17]:
They should cover that. Heck yeah.
Christina Warren [01:20:18]:
They should, but they did, but they didn't before. But, um, the, but all I was going to say is I think it just, it's similar to phones. It depends on like how old is your Apple Watch, but I feel like similar to the iPhone 18 Pro, this seems like really nice devices this year, putting the privacy stuff aside. Like, yes, the same form factor, but they've beefed up the internals. There's some nice new features. And, and I think that's a good thing.
Leo Laporte [01:20:43]:
Well, I've been a very good boy this show because the only thing I really care about is the M5 Ultra. So we're going to get to that because that's all I really care about. I'm just pretending to care about everything else. You're watching that. We care about the dual Christina, who knows exactly what I'm talking about. Andy, Jason, and we're glad you're here. All right, you don't have one yet. It was— there were really a very limited number of M5 Ultra 256 machines seeded for review, but Federico Viticci got one and he reviewed it for what I'm most interested in.
Leo Laporte [01:21:23]:
I suspect perhaps Christina is Is its ability to run local artificial intelligence models.
Jason Snell [01:21:31]:
Yes. And he was, he's got a bunch of impressive charts.
Leo Laporte [01:21:35]:
He's testing things like that. We who care more than anybody else should about things like prefill and not tokens per second. Oh no. Prefill says it's actually much improved.
Jason Snell [01:21:49]:
Yeah. Yeah. Very impressive. And, and, and can hold these models that are pretty good and generate pretty decent performance. And it's all happening locally. And remember, theoretically, if you had the budget, you could take 4 of these and tie them all together with Thunderbolt.
Leo Laporte [01:22:02]:
There are people now tying Sparks together with the Mac Studio. Yeah. I mean, to do some sort of weird beast with 2 backs.
Jason Snell [01:22:10]:
And it's so expensive, but at the same time, I mean, Apple's argument, and I think it's not a bad one, is I know it's expensive, but you know how much tokens cost?
Leo Laporte [01:22:21]:
And you can, and I should point out, you know, for instance, the Sparks are no longer available from Nvidia.
Christina Warren [01:22:27]:
Nvidia.
Leo Laporte [01:22:27]:
They're running— I don't know whether that's because they have something to replace it. I don't think it is. I think it's just they've run out.
Christina Warren [01:22:33]:
I mean, 5090s are going for $8,000, $9,000 right now.
Leo Laporte [01:22:36]:
Yeah. Wow. These are those higher-end video— used to be gaming video cards.
Christina Warren [01:22:41]:
Yeah, it was. Well, it was. Yeah. I mean, it was pretty largely introduced for AI when it came out. Like, the gamers Nvidia had stopped caring about. But—
Leo Laporte [01:22:52]:
Lumaress ran 2 5090s, and I was very jealous.
Jason Snell [01:22:55]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:22:55]:
I mean, if you're able get them for $2,000 when they came out, or then it made sense. $500. Like, yeah, I mean, even then it was a lot, but you could, you could now, like, that's one of your more profitable investments you could have made in years. But I—
Leo Laporte [01:23:07]:
You could sell them for $8,000 easily.
Christina Warren [01:23:10]:
Yeah, absolutely. The only thing I would ever caution people for is when you're doing kind of like total cost of ownership, if you're an individual and not a business, when you look at running these local models, you need to actually be like, okay, if I'm an individual, would I actually be spending, you know—
Leo Laporte [01:23:25]:
You wouldn't, trust me.
Christina Warren [01:23:26]:
Amortized this much money over years, or would a $400 split payment—
Leo Laporte [01:23:32]:
It's for somebody who—
Christina Warren [01:23:33]:
And OpenAI makes a profit once.
Jason Snell [01:23:34]:
It's a limited audience.
Leo Laporte [01:23:36]:
Because it's not for somebody who wants to play with AI. It's for somebody who wants to play with AI in their house or a business or individual that really wants privacy.
Jason Snell [01:23:45]:
Yeah, I hear from law firms.
Leo Laporte [01:23:47]:
But I gotta tell you, you, as somebody who is kind of buried in all of this, local AI is nowhere near as competent as the cloud models, and it's expensive. So if you really— if all you're doing is you want to try AI, this is not an economical decision.
Jason Snell [01:24:05]:
Federico says it feels to him like they're— like this is about what the cutting edge was 8 months ago, which is funny, but AI moves real fast. That's about right. Real fast.
Leo Laporte [01:24:14]:
I feel like I have with— I'm running Quen 3.8 Flash next on my dual Sparks. And I would say that's Opus 4.6 between—
Jason Snell [01:24:23]:
Yeah. So that's, it's not bad.
Leo Laporte [01:24:24]:
So it's pretty good. It's something I would've a year ago said, wow.
Christina Warren [01:24:28]:
And right, a year ago, you're crazy.
Jason Snell [01:24:29]:
And then he points out, you use, you use this to orchestrate and, um, you, you have it run models that it can run well.
Leo Laporte [01:24:36]:
I still run cloud models.
Jason Snell [01:24:37]:
And, and, and kick it to the cloud for the things that it needs to.
Leo Laporte [01:24:40]:
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, going through my email, going through my finances, going through my taxes, I do that all locally. It's perfectly competent to do that. But I— but doing the big coding projects I'm doing, it's probably— I probably still want to go to Fable 5.1. Opus 5.5 just came out.
Christina Warren [01:24:59]:
Yeah, it's good actually. It is very good.
Leo Laporte [01:25:02]:
I sort of brought 4.7, which is a little less good.
Christina Warren [01:25:05]:
I was going to say, I'm not as big of— and then OpenAI released 2 models too. um, 6, uh, Solana, um, and Luna.
Leo Laporte [01:25:12]:
Is, is Bell out yet? We're waiting for Bell. That's the one that attacked Hugging Face, we think.
Christina Warren [01:25:17]:
No, no, that one's not out yet. But, uh, but 2 of the lesser, uh, um, 6 model series, uh, opening AI came out.
Leo Laporte [01:25:24]:
So the cloud continues to move forward, but so does open weight local stuff. I would say it's more— like I said, it's more for a business that really thinks it has to be on or somebody, a hobbyist who really wants to play with this stuff, which—
Christina Warren [01:25:39]:
And has the budget.
Leo Laporte [01:25:40]:
And can afford it.
Christina Warren [01:25:41]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:25:42]:
But I, so one of the decisions that I had to make was, should I buy a Spark or should I, well, when I bought my Sparks, which are the NVIDIA products, I didn't even know about the Mac Studios. They weren't announced yet. 2 weeks later they announced them and I went, I could have had a V8. But in hindsight, I'm maybe not so sure. It's still, the jury's still out. Frederico seems very happy. Uh, the M5 Ultra seems to be, you know, uh, pre-fill, which is a very important part of agentic. I don't know if I should even get into this, but just for those who care, very part— important part of agentic work because it's, it's the, it's the kind of the, the cached tokens you keep reloading every single turn.
Leo Laporte [01:26:22]:
Being able to do that fast makes a big difference, much more so than the thing people focus on, which is tokens per second. And historically people said, well, the Macs are gonna be great at tokens per second because of that high-speed bandwidth memory, the 1.2 terabytes a second, but they're not gonna be so good at prefill, which is GPU-bound. And historically Nvidia's CUDA GPUs are much, much faster, and they still are faster. Yes. But according to Federico, Apple has really stepped up with the GPUs in this new M5 Ultra.
Jason Snell [01:26:54]:
Yeah, they're— because they're— they added the whole accelerator thing on the GPUs because previously they had really invested in the Neural Engine. And with the M5 generation, they started putting neural accelerators in the— in the accelerators in the GPUs because they're like, oh, people also use GPUs for AI. Uh-huh. So they're doing that now.
Leo Laporte [01:27:13]:
They got all excited. And even Marques Brownlee said, you know, I'm a creator, I create high-quality 8K videos, I don't need Yeah, this is nice. It's the fastest machine I've ever had, but this is not for creators anymore.
Jason Snell [01:27:28]:
No, the ultra high end, it's— it is there. They're playing in this space and they're headed somewhere else. Remember, the stories are that they dumped the M6 high-end chips to go to M7 because the AI features on M7 are so good. And like, they're chasing this high-end local AI thing because they think Apple Silicon gives them an advantage there, and they think they can, if not close the gap with frontier models, play themselves to a place where it's okay if you're a year behind the frontier models because the pace— maybe the pace has slowed down, maybe the prices have gone up, whatever it might be that it makes more sense. And also, don't forget that there is a trickle-down effect here. Like the M5 Ultra obviously has this incredible incredible performance. But if like a base M7 had pretty good performance, it makes all of their— and the A21, like it makes all of their devices a little bit better at doing local stuff. And if local stuff becomes more relevant, then that's good for Apple.
Jason Snell [01:28:34]:
So.
Leo Laporte [01:28:34]:
The other thing we should point out is that it's a lot of it is software that the MLX that Apple is using, the Metal GPU acceleration, is different from CUDA. And CUDA, which is NVIDIA's proprietary technology software, isn't available on the Apple. But with these new machines, there's a lot more people working on MLX-accelerated models. And I have a feeling these models will get faster and better, that we're just seeing the beginning of what will be a revolution. So that's something else to consider.
Christina Warren [01:29:08]:
For sure. And it's interesting too, like MLX, I have to imagine they did not expect it to take off the way that it did. And I think what happened was that when the, you know, the M-series machines came out and they were so good and people realized, oh, we can use unified memory in these other ways, people started getting creative with things. And, you know, up until Apple Silicon, you could not do AI, no matter what Apple tried to tell you, in any sort of real machine learning sense. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. on a Mac, in macOS, you just couldn't.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:40]:
No.
Christina Warren [01:29:40]:
The tooling was not there because CUDA has been the standard for what, 16, 17 years? And, you know, AMD hasn't been able to break through that or anything else. I think because people like their Macs so much, and this is really a testament to Apple's community that is, you know, kind of built around them even more than the company itself. We saw this in the PowerPC days before the Intel transition. We saw it after the Intel transition. We saw it again again, now with that silicon transition, developers will go out of their way to make something work with the hardware they want to use. And in this case, once MLX came out, you started to see model providers and groups like Hugging Face and other things really kind of working to say, okay, how can we make sure that this will be optimized in a way that they never have for AMD stuff? And, you know, ROCm is still really far behind. It's gotten a lot better, but no matter how much AMD has invested there is still not the priority for anyone, whereas now CUDA is obviously still going to be number one. But I think especially when you're looking at like the, you know, local model space, MLX is usually, you know, number 2.
Christina Warren [01:30:48]:
And for depending on what the model is, might even be higher priority depending on who's putting the release out and what sorts of tests they're doing, just because so many people love to use their Apple hardware, which is great for all of us in the ecosystem because we all get to benefit from these downstream effects. And so that's really great to see. I don't imagine that that was necessarily intended when Apple released MLX, but I'm sure glad that they did because I think we've all really benefited from it as an industry.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:15]:
Yeah. You're absolutely right that all of these improvements that they're making for AI benefit everybody either immediately or in the near future because that's just how it's all— they're selling the same box to everybody. But how do we feel about the community being— it just seems like it's bifurcated a little bit right now, in which there's the AI users and then there's everybody else, whereas there used to be sort of the creators and everybody else. But the thing is, creators and everybody else felt like their needs for hardware were kind of aligned better than the AI people and everyone else. I mean, the creators weren't buying them like in lots of like 5,000. Like, do we, do we, is there, is there a, is there a worry that Mac Minis and Mac Studios are going to become like the AI computers as opposed to something that if, if a regular consumer or even a business user needs to get a desktop, they're, they're gonna, it's gonna be on their radar or something that they might consider purchasing for their home use or for their desk?
Jason Snell [01:32:19]:
Man, I think that first off, you know, 3 quarters of Macs sold are laptops anyway. But, and then the iMac sells pretty well. And then there are a lot of people who get that. I don't know. I mean, the, the Mac mini is like M6 and it's more expensive than it was, right? But it's still, it's got, you know, M6 has got a, a pretty powerful processor and yet it's not unreasonable. You could buy, you could have bought a Studio Display several years ago and then one upgrade to your old system and you plug this in and you keep on motoring with that Studio Display. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:32:53]:
I think Let's talk about the M6. Do you have the M6?
Jason Snell [01:32:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just to finish answering Andy, the Studio Display or not the Studio Display, the Mac Studio, like high-end systems have always been a little bit weird. Right. And like sometimes they're aspirational and sometimes it's all about the people who are doing high-end video and want like super fast throughput. But what's happened is all our computers have gotten so good now that a lot of pro use cases, everybody can do the pro use cases now. And they, and you do. do, right? Like, I mean, that's why every computer company, not just Apple, is like rubbing their hands together about AI.
Jason Snell [01:33:27]:
It's like finally a use for all the compute that we can do, but that nobody needs anymore. So they're doing that. So, I mean, I'd, I'd say maybe it will be less relevant, Andy, but like, I would also say, I think it's kind of great that somebody could be like doing video editing and buy a MacBook Air and be okay.
Christina Warren [01:33:47]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:33:47]:
I think that's also great. And that's sort of where we are is Like even a MacBook Air is probably okay depending on the level of video that you're doing. And, and, and you could go up from there to a Pro if you wanted to, and you could get a big display and all without ever going to a high-end Mac Studio. So, you know, I, I do, I think Mac Studio may become like, I always feel, I already feel this way, right? Like I bought an M1 Mac Studio and like it even feels too much now, you know? So, So it is kind of floating away into the stratosphere, but as long as there's an audience for it up there, it's like, that's okay. I don't need to— if my needs are being met down here on the ground, I can watch that shiny balloon up there and just be like, good luck.
Christina Warren [01:34:32]:
And frankly, if we didn't have those, you know, up in the air things, we wouldn't have— I mean, now I would love to hear your thoughts on the M6, you know, with the mini and, you know, kind of where it fits in all of this, Because, you know, as we mentioned, like this does all kind of trickle down, right? Like the advances they make there do all come down to those lower levels. And I think it's perfectly okay to say, okay, well maybe the pro Apple, the highest end users no longer create professionals and it's AI people. But that doesn't mean that regular home users or even like video professionals don't have Apple products they can use. Of course they do. It's just maybe they're not gonna, you know, be the ones who are spending $10,000 or $15,000 on, on a system, which, hey, that's, that's great. I mean, I think if anything, like what we've seen even before the Open Claw of it all, you know, with the 2024, um, the Mac Mini, the M4 Mac Mini, like that was such a great product. I honestly, that felt to me like the first real kind of stab in, I can't even remember how long, where Apple was like, okay, here's, here's a desktop for the rest of us.
Leo Laporte [01:35:32]:
Yeah, I'm running an M4 Pro with 64 gigs and I can actually runs them. I'm running Quen, uh, 3.8 in it.
Andy Ihnatko [01:35:39]:
Yeah, so I, I just, I, I only hope that Apple can continue to like churn them out as fast so that everybody who wants one can get one. Uh, that's the, that's the only— it's, it's a bummer that there's no such thing as a $599 desktop Mac anymore, just like it's a bummer that there's no such thing as a $599, uh, laptop MacBook anymore. That, but that's okay, that's the way of the world. I just hope that it's not like if someone, someone might get Not— someone might decide to get like an AMD like mini desktop, not the Mac, not the Mac that they want, because gee, I can get the AMD device like in about 3 weeks or overnight.
Christina Warren [01:36:15]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:36:15]:
Whereas I'm gonna have to wait until February to get, to get the Mac Mini. Because I— it's, it's too bad when people don't get the thing that they want for— because dang it, they need one this semester. They don't— they can't wait 2, 3, 2, 3, 4 months.
Leo Laporte [01:36:29]:
Yeah, I agree with you on that. I've seen people, uh, I won't name names because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but I saw somebody who's pretty smart say, well, I don't understand why Apple can't make as many of these as they want. Don't they— don't they— isn't the RAM on the chip? Uh, the RAM is the same RAM. It's the same shortage. It's hitting them just as bad as anyone else. I guess they could probably make as many processors. There was a rumor, I think probably not true, that Apple had all these processors sitting around but they couldn't package them because they didn't have the RAM to put Yeah, sidebar, I think someone, someone wrote—
Andy Ihnatko [01:37:04]:
I think I just saw this today, so I might be remembering this wrong— but they did the— they did like a teardown of the, of the M5 Pro and the Mini M6, finding that, okay, the storage is no longer on a daughterboard that could be hacked and replaced. It's now actually— unless you have microsurgery skills, you can't really build in— you can't sneak in, uh, that's the storage. That's the homebrew upgrade. Yeah. Yeah, which is not to say that most people were even aware that there are these pirates out there. And saying pirates in the best sense of the word, like saying, ah, well, we'll reverse engineer this, we'll figure out a way to make our own memory daughterboards and our own upgrades. That's too bad.
Jason Snell [01:37:39]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:37:41]:
So tell me about the M6. I think it's— I feel sort of bad for it because, oh, it's not getting all that much attention. It's, you know, people— I think people who went rushed out out to buy Mac Minis in the OpenClaw era at the beginning of the year, realized, oh, I didn't really need that. I'm not running anything local on it.
Jason Snell [01:38:02]:
Right. Um, well, it's nice to have. I mean, also, once it was priced as an impulse buy, it was a lot easier. Just, you need another computer that's walled off that you can set the permissions on and all that. Now it's 50% more than it was.
Andy Ihnatko [01:38:13]:
I wish I had acted on that impulse.
Jason Snell [01:38:15]:
Right. Right. So the end—
Christina Warren [01:38:17]:
I wish I'd bought another one.
Jason Snell [01:38:18]:
M6. I mean, I think the most interesting thing about this product, the M6 Mac Mini, is the chip because it is the M6. It is a new processor generation. It will be in an iPad Pro. It will be in a MacBook Air. It will be in a MacBook Pro at some point, right? Like the M6 will happen. And I did, I did all the tests and I looked at all the results and I've been, I've got a bunch of charts on Six Colors that are about like tracking M-series performance from 1 through 6. And how, like, different things change at different times.
Jason Snell [01:38:47]:
Some years are good for GPUs and the GPU cores get better, and some years are good for CPU cores and the CPU cores get better. The M6, again, I, I am not—
Leo Laporte [01:38:57]:
I love it, by the way, that you, you show a picture of the Mac Mini next to a scuffed up baseball.
Jason Snell [01:39:02]:
For scale, that's a Major League Baseball.
Leo Laporte [01:39:04]:
For scale, MLB, it's tiny.
Jason Snell [01:39:06]:
I didn't show the signature. It's a, it's a Bud Selig baseball though. Oh, anyway, Anyway, the commish. Yes. So it, it is not damning it with faint praise to say the M6 is exactly dead on what you would expect a new generation M-series processor to be.
Leo Laporte [01:39:24]:
Because probably, let's face it, most people will want this, right?
Jason Snell [01:39:28]:
I mean, it's a, it's a good update. You're not going to come from the M5, but like every year Apple over the course of the now 6 generations, Apple has generated a, you know, 15 to 20% GPU increase, 15, 10 to 15% CPU power increase every year. And they doubled the neural engine so that the neural processing, if you're doing something that uses the neural engine, that's twice as fast. That's great too. But generally this is right on the level. And if you try to pick apart the way that the processor works, what you'll also find is that per GPU core, the number is only like 3% faster, but that's what they do. If there's a year where they don't, like they didn't do a massive upgrade to the GPUs in this generation. And so what did they do? They added cores.
Jason Snell [01:40:16]:
They added 2 GPU cores to the—
Leo Laporte [01:40:17]:
That's why this line, the red line, which is single core is going up a little bit, but the blue line, which is multi-core is really steep.
Jason Snell [01:40:25]:
It's steep because they, because they can add cores when they need to, or if they improve cores, cores, all the multi-cores get way better. And if they didn't improve CPU cores that much, they add a couple of cores and the number goes up. And it's a great way, and it's not fake. They can't, they can't make the CPU and the GPU core a new generation every single chip generation. They, they're upgrading different parts of the chip at different times, but they can get more performance out of that particular part by tossing in a couple more cores. And, and so this is right on average, And I, you know, I think they did a good job. It's the first chip that Apple's ever done with 3 different CPU core types because they've got the super cores, which are about single-threaded performance, the, the, the, uh, the performance cores, which are about multi-threaded performance. And they've got those efficiency cores, which are about bubbling around background tasks that just need to get done.
Jason Snell [01:41:15]:
And they don't, they don't need to get done right now.
Leo Laporte [01:41:16]:
They don't call them efficiency anymore though, right?
Jason Snell [01:41:18]:
Well, they do. They're efficiency cores. They do. There's efficiency, performance, and super.
Leo Laporte [01:41:22]:
Okay.
Jason Snell [01:41:22]:
And the difference between— I asked, the difference is Super is about single-threaded performance. 'Cause, you know, we don't live in an ideal world where everything is multi-threaded and chopped up into little bits. You know, computer scientists would like that, but it's just not possible. And so they've got the ones that are like foot to the floor, single thread, give me all you got. They got 2 of those. And then they've got, I think it's 4 of the multi-threaded performance, or maybe it's 6 of the multi-threaded performance. And then they've got the efficiency which is like when you're just sitting there staring at your blinking cursor, like your computer's doing stuff, but it doesn't need to use a lot of power to do that. It just kind of does that in the background.
Jason Snell [01:41:55]:
Okay, so this is all cool, but in the end, the story is it is the perfectly nice processor update that you would expect for the base-level processor on a new Apple Silicon processor generation. However, given that Mark Gurman has told us that Apple has apparently looked at what they've got with the M7 generation, and decided not to even, according to Gurman, even bother putting the M6 Pro and Max chips into production. They're just not gonna bother. Well, let alone the Ultra. They're gonna cut, and they may not. They've been sort of doing every other for Ultra anyway, because their M7 generation apparently is so much better, especially when it comes to AI performance, that they're like, let's just cut it and jump to M7. And I was looking at this chart Chip, and I was thinking about like if you know that for your high-end users who are going to care more about that stuff, you've got this great leap in the wings. And if you put the the M6 Pro and Max into production, you know it's going to be a whole cycle.
Jason Snell [01:43:00]:
You're going to have to put that in a MacBook Pro. You're going to put that in a Mac Studio. You know, and a year from now. You'll put the M7 out there and people will be impressed. And I totally— looking at these M6 scores, I understand why they said, no, let's just jump, let's jump to M7. Not that the M6 is bad, but that the M6 is not a leap in performance. It's just the next standard improvement, which is good. Who should consider this? Who should buy it is somebody who's got an older Apple Silicon computer.
Jason Snell [01:43:33]:
I mean, this is Yeah, I mean, this is a— for the Mini, like, it'll be in— there'll be an M6 Air presumably next spring.
Andy Ihnatko [01:43:38]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:43:39]:
And if you've got an M2 Air, you might want to get an M6 Air, right? Like, it's the usual iteration every— because like I said, every year, every chip generation is 10 to 15% faster on CPU and 20% faster on GPU. And if you've been waiting 3 or 4 generations, that is a huge increase in performance. It, it will be, you know, the M6 will be a perfectly good upgrade for those people. But I also understand if you're looking at the high-end chips, why you might say, well, if we've got a great leap coming, let's just get to it. Let's just, let's just go there and not worry about the rest of the M6 generation. But, but, you know, again, I don't want to come across as sounding like I'm, I'm damning this product because I think it is also emblematic of how good the Apple Silicon era has been for Apple. That remember back in the 2010s, there were years that would go by, like multiple years, and the new MacBook Pro would come out with a new Intel processor and it would be like grinding to be like 7% faster or 10% faster. And Apple almost essentially every year, every chip generation, so roughly every year is throwing off 10 to 15% in CPU and 20% in GPU every single year.
Jason Snell [01:44:51]:
It's very impressive, the march of the M1 through the M6. It's very impressive. But if I'm looking at my high end and I'm looking at AI performance like we were talking about earlier, and I just— I know I've got a blockbuster coming in the M7, I could see why they would take the M6 and say, that's enough, let's just move on.
Leo Laporte [01:45:09]:
All right.
Christina Warren [01:45:09]:
Do you think— do you think at $900 for the— for the Mac Mini, does that still make sense right now? And I understand that this is not Apple's fault.
Jason Snell [01:45:16]:
This is just—
Christina Warren [01:45:17]:
the industry at writ. But, but do you think this makes sense?
Jason Snell [01:45:21]:
You know, it depends. It obviously it depends on what you need it for. The way I end it. So my review is very much like I get— I go through the whole thing about the M6 and I get to the end. I'm like, look, great things about the Mac Mini since they did the last one, the M4 version, because they skipped over M5. It's, it's tiny. It's adorable.
Christina Warren [01:45:39]:
It—
Jason Snell [01:45:40]:
there was a time in the 2010s where we thought they might not actually ever update the Mac Mini again and they might kill it. I literally wrote a blog post called Mac Mini I Want to Believe, right? Like, I, like, I, I had become the Fox Mulder of the Mac Mini of like, I think there'll be one. And everybody else is like, sure, sure, sure there will be. So I love that it exists and that they made a smaller one and that it's so powerful and all of that. And that's great. But Christina, to your point, the 50% price increase over the M4 model that they, that they sold when, when that was introduced.
Christina Warren [01:46:12]:
So great. Right.
Jason Snell [01:46:12]:
And I know we live in this time. I also looked up when the original $499 Mac Mini, what that would cost in today's money. And the answer is still less than this Mac Mini goes for. So it has not— I mean, the Mac Mini is more expensive than it used to be. There's just no way around saying that. And to me, it's like the Mac Mini being this wonderful computer that fits into an ecological niche. It's the kind of thing you pick up because you want a second computer to have the agents run on or to stick in a closet or to stick in a lighting rig at a theater or like, it's just like, that's what the Mini's always been good at is it's a utility player. You stick it where you need it.
Jason Snell [01:46:52]:
And when it was cheap, it was a beautiful moment because then you didn't— I mean, I'm not going to say it was an impulse buy, but I would say it's as close to an impulse buy as a computer could ever be. Absolutely. And now it's not. That's the bottom line. It's not. Now, when I say here's the M6 Mac mini, what I have to say is you need to think about if you need this. And I think the best case is somebody who has an older computer attached to an external display, because the beauty of the external display is it's still good. Like if you got a Studio Display when that came out, it's still fine.
Leo Laporte [01:47:31]:
Fine.
Jason Snell [01:47:31]:
I got a Studio Display when they came out. I'm looking at it right now. It's still fine, right? This will give you a big compute benefit without having to buy a new screen. Like, that's good. But like, that's the difference is now you got to do the, you got to do the calculations. Whereas at the old price, and I know again, it's not just Apple, it's everybody, but at the old price, the beauty of the Mac mini was that it was a no-brainer. Just like if you're thinking about the Mac mini, At that point, it should just appear. You should just buy it, get your credit card out and buy it.
Jason Snell [01:48:01]:
And now you can't do that. Now you've really got to ponder, like, what's my use case?
Christina Warren [01:48:05]:
Well, that's why I asked you, because I think for 2 years in a row in your, you know, Apple report card survey, I think that I said that like the Mac Mini was the best valued computer that Apple had maybe ever offered. And I stand by that. When it was, you know, $599, you could frequently find it at, you know, $499. that the M4 Mac mini, even when it came out, and that was pre-RAMpocalypse, it felt too good to be true. I was like, Apple has never been this generous and, and this good on anything. And this is, was just, I think, the best deal in computing, period. But that was kind of why I asked, because yeah, at $900, I, you're right, it no longer goes into that almost impulse secondary computer thing.
Jason Snell [01:48:45]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:48:45]:
And, and I, I would wonder too, for folks who, even if they do want a desktop, I think you make a great point. If you've got an older machine, maybe not an M1, but maybe, you know, you had an Intel machine, but you have, like you said, an external display that you really like and things like that, maybe it's worth looking at. But I wonder your thought on this. You know, the chip performance looks great. I wonder, depending on what your use cases are, if you need a desktop, obviously, and you and I are both similar in this way in that we actually like desktops, but there are a lot of people out there who would be better suited by a laptop. And I do wonder if this is one of those years, just because of the way things are, that if, if you are looking at an M6, maybe the MacBook Air might be a better fit for folks.
Jason Snell [01:49:29]:
Oh sure. I mean, I, I, um, I don't think I told this story here before, but the short version of it is my father-in-law had an iPad that was very, very, very old, and he had an iMac that was very, very, very old. And he said, I want to replace my iPad with a laptop. So I want to buy a new iMac and a new laptop. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going to stop you right there. You don't want 2 totally separate computers that are, you're going to have to like, where is that file? Or where is that app? I said, you want to buy a MacBook Air and a display. And he, I just, but just buy a Studio Display. It'll be fine.
Jason Snell [01:50:03]:
Like just don't even worry about it. He's, he's got the budget for it. It's fine. And that's— I think that's true, Christina. I think we live in a point now, as somebody who used to use a laptop as my primary back in the like 2010s and late 2000s when it was really bad, like connecting to an external display and every window would move somewhere else. And sometimes I'd put my— because I was a bus commuter, I would put my laptop in my backpack every night and go home. And occasionally, which is why I got the MacBook Air, because I 'Cause I wanted it as light as possible. Occasionally I'd take the thing out of my backpack when I got to my destination and it was hot 'cause it like didn't go to sleep.
Jason Snell [01:50:39]:
Apple Silicon Macs are so good at being desktops.
Christina Warren [01:50:43]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:50:44]:
And connecting to external displays and running lid closed if you want, or lid open if you want, that if you're somebody who wants to use a display most of the time, but sometimes might wanna unhook go around, you should totally get, like, you should totally get a MacBook Air at the very least, maybe a Pro if you really want it. But like a MacBook Air is so powerful. It fits most use cases and it, and it will work great as a desktop. My primary computer is an M4 MacBook Pro and I use it lid closed attached to a Studio Display 95, 98% of the time. But when— and I actually have— there's another thing. I also have another workspace that I'm sometimes in, and that's the beauty of it, is I can unplug it and then go to the other workspace and plug it in there. Guess what? It's the same computer, which is so much more convenient than having a second computer somewhere. So yeah, I mean, this is why most people buy laptops, is they're just much more— they're just much more flexible.
Jason Snell [01:51:46]:
And that's why the— That actually goes back to the shame of it being that the Mac mini is so expensive now is, you know, it's not a general purpose computer in the same way that maybe it was 15 years ago. It is a niche player and being more expensive makes it tougher to be a niche player.
Leo Laporte [01:52:04]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:52:05]:
It's just, it's just too bad that you're absolutely, you're absolutely right. At $900, it's not overpriced by any means, given the power and the performance that you're getting for it. There is, but there, but it means that you have to, it has to be a very intentional act to buy this. And so I'm thinking about use cases Well, again, like education, where, OK, well, instead of being able to afford 14 of these, now we can only afford to buy 9 of these, so some kids are going to have to double up. Or, in a household situation where, well, we have the kids' room where we would love to have a computer setup that they could use. OK, and we can't afford to buy each of them a MacBook Air or even an iPad, but we've got $600 and we've got a display that's kicking around and we've got a keyboard That'll work fine for us. I'm shedding no tears for myself, but just giving a third example. I've been budgeting for my MacBook upgrade for a while.
Andy Ihnatko [01:52:59]:
My thought was always going to be that, OK, well, I'll also buy a Mac mini as the desktop that will just— the thing that's always there, it's always plugged in.
Christina Warren [01:53:10]:
Always on.
Andy Ihnatko [01:53:10]:
It's always connected to the internet. There are all kinds of services that I it can run, but also the idea that I don't have to worry about, oh, where did I leave the MacBook? Oh right, it's in the bedroom. Pick it up, go back in the office, plug it back in. I can do without it. I would have bought the base level, like $600 one. It's, it's not a pain point. But again, as you— as, as we've been saying, it's a very deliberate choice. And that now to buy a Mac Mini, and that's unfortunately keeping it out of places where a Mac Mini could have been very, very useful to a lot of people.
Andy Ihnatko [01:53:39]:
people. Okay, it's the way of the world. It's not Apple's fault, uh, because they're— and bravo to them for not figuring out, well, let's make a— I, I'm always— I've always been a proponent of, oh, take the— take the Apple— the Apple TV case and put like an A20 processor on it and give us like a Mac— a Mac Nano, because I think that would be a great product. But kudos to them for basically— for basically deciding that, well, a Mac Mini still has to have a basic level of performance that we're not willing to compromise. on, even though it would be nice to be able to sell these for less, for, for less money. So I mean, I was, I'm, um, when the day comes that I do decide to buy a Mac Mini, it is going to be a barn burner. And I'm very, very looking forward to that too.
Leo Laporte [01:54:21]:
Maybe, uh, next year the M7 is the one to hold out for.
Andy Ihnatko [01:54:26]:
One more, whatever is, whatever's the one more.
Leo Laporte [01:54:27]:
At some point, Ramageddon's gonna end sooner than later. Only I know everybody say 2028, and like that. But there's so much pressure for these companies. They know how much money they could make to get, get on the shtick and build those fabs as fast as they possibly can.
Andy Ihnatko [01:54:43]:
Yeah, I don't know. Too bad they can't just— too bad they can't buy them from the ACME company. Just put like a pill in the middle of the street, add water for it.
Leo Laporte [01:54:52]:
Yeah, yeah, ACME Fab Company. I don't— yeah, I just— I, you know, a couple years from now we'll all be sitting pretty with M7s and a terabyte and a half of RAM, and we'll be running the latest, uh, I don't know what, uh, models, and we'll go, wow, how did we live in 2026?
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:18]:
What—
Leo Laporte [01:55:18]:
how did we survive going out to the cloud?
Jason Snell [01:55:21]:
Boy, wouldn't my— wouldn't my RAM cost so much?
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:26]:
You know, we might You know, the thing is, we might, we might be like, like, like Mr. Scott of the Enterprise saying, oh, a keyboard, how quaint.
Leo Laporte [01:55:38]:
How quaint.
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:40]:
A discrete computer in your home, how quaint.
Leo Laporte [01:55:43]:
How quaint. I still believe it's maybe a few years off that there will be a market. People announced it at IFA. Anker announced one for a home AI server that sits in your closet and becomes your little buddy.
Christina Warren [01:55:56]:
Oh yeah, I think, I think, I think, I don't know how long it'll take, but I think that, I mean, we, we almost had that if, if we hadn't, you know, kind of reached the RAM crisis. If the, if the memory makers had invested based on what their projections told them to invest in and, and they hadn't waited until we got into this crunch, we might actually be closer to, to that being a reality. But yeah, I, I do think that the home server type of thing, ironically aided in part by AI, I have so many friends who are doing home labs for the first time, right? Because Claude will just help configure it all for you. And yeah, you don't have to know anything, right? Which is honestly fantastic because that's always been the hardest thing of maintaining this stuff. And so I definitely think that, that there's going to be a market for that. Will everybody know? But I mean, not everybody. Most people don't have desktop computers anymore either. You know, we just talked about laptops make a lot more sense.
Christina Warren [01:56:45]:
But I think that provided that it doesn't become this thing you have to pay an inflated price for. Yeah, I can totally see people having, you know, almost little, you know, like you could have it as your Apple TV, so to speak, right? It could like do dual, you know, purpose stuff. I could see that definitely being a thing.
Leo Laporte [01:57:02]:
Absolutely. Or, I mean, already Meta's Muse is the number one app, I think, on the App Store.
Christina Warren [01:57:08]:
Oh yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:57:09]:
Because it's basically that, only it runs on your phone and it runs on a server in Meta. Meta's cloud. It's pretty capable. It's planning my 50th anniversary in broadcasting documentary right now. If you get emails from it, it's me.
Jason Snell [01:57:24]:
It's not me.
Christina Warren [01:57:25]:
Amazing. Well, congrats.
Leo Laporte [01:57:26]:
It's my little agent saying, hey, don't tell Leo, but we're planning a surprise documentary. It's a 98-minute documentary.
Christina Warren [01:57:35]:
Amazing. Amazing. But no, I mean, no, these—
Leo Laporte [01:57:38]:
I think these— I honestly think these bots are very interesting. I think Muse is gonna end up being— I saw an ad for it on Monday Night Football last night. I mean, I—
Christina Warren [01:57:48]:
Oh, they're putting real money into this. I mean, you know, Nat Friedman, who was my boss at GitHub for a time, was the one who kind of spearheaded this for Meta. And he's very, very smart.
Leo Laporte [01:57:59]:
And I think he's gonna take charge.
Christina Warren [01:58:01]:
I have my own conflicting thoughts about Meta as a company and how they deal with data and everything else.
Leo Laporte [01:58:07]:
I agree.
Christina Warren [01:58:08]:
I agree. That from it, which I think you kind of have to do to a certain extent with these things, and just looking at the category of maybe not this specific implementation between GrokBot and this, and there will obviously be other things too, there's a real thing for this. And I mean, honestly, this is an area where I don't think that Apple is up to snuff. I don't think their AI is good enough. I don't think their software is good enough in this capabilities right now. I don't think they're good enough, but I would really like to see them push further and further so that we could have an Apple solution like this in a couple of years. I would trust them more.
Leo Laporte [01:58:41]:
At the last minute to have a Siri app on the phone when they had originally said we're not going to do it. I think that's what the secret plan is.
Christina Warren [01:58:48]:
I don't know if it's, if it's that, but I mean, I think that that's part of it. And, and I, I definitely think that the idea of being able to have a macOS and, and containerized and secured and sandboxed way of managing all The things that you want. I would, I would really, really trust that much more. I, like I said, I don't think that right now Apple's capabilities are what the frontier are.
Leo Laporte [01:59:11]:
Well, and Apple's cautiousness might hurt them, just as Google's cautiousness has hurt them. They're big companies with a lot to lose. Meta doesn't really seem to care.
Christina Warren [01:59:21]:
Well, no, because everybody hates them anyway.
Leo Laporte [01:59:24]:
But others might. They put— there's a credit card in this. There's phones in this. It's making phone calls. The beauty is using it to make reservations, dinner reservations.
Jason Snell [01:59:33]:
The beauty of where Apple and Google are, though, and Gurman talked about this actually in his newsletter this week, is they— oh no, it was his interview with, with Nilay Patel at The Verge, which is, which is good. He's on the podcast. So Apple and Google, like, first off, companies like whether it's OpenAI or Meta or whoever can take the arrows about like they can throw stuff at the wall and they can take the arrows about stuff where people are like really upset about. about it, but because they've got the smartphone platforms and the ability to do, you know, the classic, what Samsung, I think we refer to a lot, the fast follow, like they don't have to be first. They just have to, they just have to be capable of getting somewhere if something is detected that is gonna work. And, and, and there is, you know, I'm sure they would prefer not to, but I think there is something to that, that Like if Meta or OpenAI or Anthropic proves like, oh, this is the thing that people love now, Google and Apple are gonna go there, right? They're obviously gonna go there and they, and they will bring it in a maybe slightly nerfed, but like they will bring it to their user base. And like Siri AI is a great example. Siri AI is so late and yet it kind of does the job, right?
Leo Laporte [02:00:49]:
It doesn't matter if it's late because This is all new stuff.
Jason Snell [02:00:53]:
This is exactly—
Leo Laporte [02:00:54]:
the world's just getting around to seeing this.
Jason Snell [02:00:56]:
Right. The cutting edge is awesome and we love following the cutting edge, but in the end, the cutting edge isn't what matters. It's the bringing it to a lot of people in a way that people want to use it and find that there's a reason to use it.
Leo Laporte [02:01:09]:
Historically, that's what Apple's done.
Jason Snell [02:01:10]:
Historically, that's Apple's game.
Andy Ihnatko [02:01:12]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [02:01:12]:
Yep. Yep.
Christina Warren [02:01:13]:
Yep. I think so. The only, only, only area I would push back a little bit, I think for both those companies, is that you don't want to be in a place where you're always being reactive. What Apple has also historically been good at is understanding to, you know, as Steve Jobs used to say, you know, skate to where the puck is going.
Andy Ihnatko [02:01:28]:
Of course.
Christina Warren [02:01:28]:
And I do, and I do worry in some senses that, you know, okay, yeah, you can take the fast follow approach and you don't have to be as cutting edge. But in some areas I look at this and I go, okay, are our consumer habits potentially going to become upended? Are habits, you know, are things going to change in a way? And that's And that's, that's where I think that that's the risk that I think Google and Apple face.
Jason Snell [02:01:50]:
Fast follow is not— to be clear, I think for Google and Apple, fast follow can't be their primary strategy. But I do think it's their fallback that like if they get it wrong or if they're in an area that they— that is not an area that they're trying to push forward on, they have a little bit of latitude. Yeah, it does also mean, yeah, are they a little fat and happy because they've got the whole smartphone market sewn up? Yeah, it does kind of mean that. But it does work that way. Like, it gives them insulation.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:16]:
They are—
Jason Snell [02:02:16]:
they, they have some room to adapt. But I also would agree, like, you— that can't be your strategy, right? To just wait, lay in the weeds and see what happens like that, because you will lose eventually if you do that.
Leo Laporte [02:02:30]:
What do they call that in video games? Sniping. Uh, yeah, you gotta— you got— sometimes you gotta jump out from behind the bush.
Christina Warren [02:02:38]:
You do, you do.
Leo Laporte [02:02:39]:
You present yourself.
Christina Warren [02:02:40]:
You gotta present yourself and make a run for it. See if you can. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:02:44]:
All right. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko is— how's the website going? ihnatko.com.
Andy Ihnatko [02:02:52]:
It's going great. Uh, thank you for people who are helping to support the site. Also, I'm having some fun with some, uh, with what I'm writing for it. Got a whole bunch of reviews that are kind of been stacked up, but they'll be coming out soon. I finally, like, like, like we've been saying, it's no fun to like have to crank out like a phone review in 3 or 4 days to meet like an embargo date. But when you have a couple months and you finally have something to say about it, that's when you really enjoy what you're, what you're doing.
Leo Laporte [02:03:15]:
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Nice to be able to do that. I'm glad you're doing it. That's great. ihnako.com. Jason Snell's also here. Christina Warren from GitHub.
Leo Laporte [02:03:27]:
Uh, you're watching MacBreak Weekly. Oh, look, there's a Vision Pro story.
Christina Warren [02:03:33]:
It's time for Vision Pro.
Leo Laporte [02:03:38]:
It's not much of a story, as usual, but it's a story. John Ternus giving an interview. Who's this interview with? He did a Canal+ interview. I don't know.
Jason Snell [02:03:53]:
Yes, I think it could be Canal+.
Leo Laporte [02:03:56]:
Plus, as you say, because you're correct and I I try to do it Frenchie style.
Jason Snell [02:04:01]:
Canal+.
Leo Laporte [02:04:02]:
It was Clique, the Canal+ show, Clique show. And, uh, he said, uh, the Vision Pro is like the earliest days of, uh, personal computing, or as you call it, uh, is he from up in the Alps where he's right on the Italian border there?
Jason Snell [02:04:19]:
You're verging on Italian there.
Leo Laporte [02:04:20]:
Okay, yeah, it's a nice thing.
Jason Snell [02:04:26]:
I'm a Switzer, lady.
Leo Laporte [02:04:30]:
Vision Pro to me is an amazing device, says Mr. T. It's an absolutely amazing device. Can you say it again, John? But I think of it as, well, like the early days of computers. It's the early days of a long, expensive, bitterly fought, perhaps futile— no, I'm adding—
Jason Snell [02:04:50]:
somebody's journey. Somebody sent this to me because that's literally how my Vision Pro review starts, is this reminds me of the Apple II where you, it's expensive and there's nothing you can do with it, but it seems cool and maybe the future is this. So I like, I like to believe that John Ternus reads my stuff and thank you, John, for using it. You can take it. You can use it.
Christina Warren [02:05:11]:
You can use it.
Leo Laporte [02:05:11]:
Whether he does or not, I think it shows that you were insightful. You nailed it.
Jason Snell [02:05:15]:
I appreciate that. He doesn't, he does know my name. because he has recognized me on sight. So I got that going for me. Tim Cook had no idea who I was, but now John Turner is making jokes.
Leo Laporte [02:05:30]:
I think when he took the job as CEO, he was like the new substitute teacher who comes in. They gave him a grid of all the journalists with pictures and he memorized your name.
Jason Snell [02:05:40]:
He walked up to me and said, hi Jason, like at WWDC last year.
Leo Laporte [02:05:43]:
He didn't have somebody next to him going—
Jason Snell [02:05:45]:
He did not. Jaws was not next to him then. The next time I saw him, Jaws was next to him, but not that day.
Leo Laporte [02:05:50]:
No, that's impressive, Jason.
Jason Snell [02:05:52]:
We have fun here on the world's foremost Vision Pro podcast. We do. We have fun with the Vision Pro. But like, seriously, when we talk about it and sometimes we disagree and yet do we disagree? Because like, I think everybody kind of agrees that the Vision Pro is not a product. It doesn't make sense for anyone to buy it. It's a technology demonstration about what Apple— and maybe Apple is building a platform that might be something And where we disagree is probably, is it ever going to be anything? I don't think we know. I think it's possible there are some products out there in the future, but I think it's a long time because the tech's not there. So with Ternus taking over, there was a lot of conversation that was like, well, what does he think? And they're like, uh-oh, bad news for the Vision Pro.
Jason Snell [02:06:32]:
He doesn't think it's a very good product. And I thought, who thinks it's a good product at that price with that weight? Like, who thinks it's a good product? It's a bad product. Maybe it's leading somewhere, but it's a bad product right now. And so to hear him say this stuff to Canal+, um, I, I think it's good because I think the only way to view the Vision Pro is that it's early days, early tech. The hardware isn't going to be there for years and that Apple can choose to either kill it or let it kind of bubble away until there comes a time when the pieces of the hardware start to make sense. As a product, and like so I think this is the right thing for him to say. I think the real debate that you could have is: Is this a Newton where you might be better off killing it, letting it lie fallow for eight years, and then doing an iPhone? Or is it better to just keep it around? Unlike the Newton, all of Apple's operating systems are based on the same code base now. It actually I don't think is a huge cost to let the Vision Pro just kind of bubble and just continue to exist.
Jason Snell [02:07:37]:
and see where it goes. So I, I thought this was a pretty responsible thing for him to say, which is like, it's realistic. It's not a real product. He's not trying to pretend it's a real product. And like, also like, but let's keep our eyes on it because maybe it's the future. And if it is, we'll, we'll do it. Like, that's the right attitude.
Andy Ihnatko [02:07:53]:
To keep the Apple II analogy, like, I don't think anybody thought that this was going to be a transformative product, just like the, uh, just, just like the, uh, the iPhone was when the project was started inside Apple. It looked as though by the time they released it, it this type of computing might be a big thing. And I think that's why they were making that wager. But I'm with you. I think that this was such a really good response because, again, to continue the Apple II analogy, after we kind of accepted that, okay, spatial computing is not going to be particularly a thing in the foreseeable future, we also thought, hey, maybe at some point somebody will create the VisiCalc for this that makes it, wow, a certain segment of people are going to really, really want to uptake this.
Leo Laporte [02:08:35]:
And that's gonna—
Andy Ihnatko [02:08:35]:
what launches this into, into the next level of it. Okay, maybe that's not going to happen either.
Jason Snell [02:08:41]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [02:08:42]:
But it was still worth working. One of the benefits of being a $4.5 trillion company is that you can build stuff, even if all the— even if one of the big benefits at the end of the day was that you got a lot of experience in designing and building something like this, so that when the world— when this— when the— when you land in a world in which this makes sense, you were very Very, very well prepared to do this. And he was also agile enough to point out that actually, in medicine, this is one of the go-to devices for this type of technology, because it is an off-the-shelf item that is very, very well made, very, very well produced, very, very well aligned with what you need if you are in a lots and lots of screens in front of you, managing lots and lots of information at the same time sort of situation. So it's not so much a statement about the Vision Pro as much as a statement with how adept that he is already as the public face of Apple. He didn't just simply dismiss it. He didn't say, let me tell you, the previous administration left me with a whole bunch of problems. The Vision Pro was one of them.
Jason Snell [02:09:46]:
Oh man, what were we thinking?
Leo Laporte [02:09:48]:
He didn't blame Biden on any of this. He did say at the end, we're going to continue to grow. and find more and more compelling use cases. And I think there's a very bright future. So it ended with a very positive note.
Jason Snell [02:09:59]:
Yeah. I mean, whether there's a nerd helmet in the future or not, I think that like, I have a hard time imagining that there are not going to be devices that are things we wear, things that are looking at the world around us, things that are trying to project something into our vision to give us a heads-up display. And and that maybe an entertainment device that is a little more like a Vision Pro might be a maybe different product category. And like, it's not here now, and I think it's ten years out. But like, if you're Apple and you have all the money, and you especially since you already built it, and it's not an enormous amount to keep it going, why not noodle with it? Because if anything, literally anything emerges. You are there, and like I think there I think something will emerge. I think it's the most likely scenario is that there'll be a product in like seven years where we'll be like, oh, they took a bunch of pieces out of the Vision Pro and used it to make this thing that actually makes sense. And I don't know what that product will be, and neither do they.
Jason Snell [02:11:04]:
But like I think there will be something where they won't they won't think that they wasted all their time on a platform that that didn't lead to a product. I think they'll probably be. Something, sometime. But today is not that day, and next year is not that year.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:18]:
Even the Apple Car, for being so unnecessary for their product lineup that they didn't actually release it, Apple's AI would not be where it is today. Apple's ability to manipulate sensors, Apple's ability to do a whole bunch of things would not be where it is today if not for the fact that they put so much money, expertise, and effort into developing technologies that turns out they didn't need for, for the product they're working on, but were going to be very, very handy for stuff that's good they're going to be making in 2025 and 2026. So no shame here.
Leo Laporte [02:11:50]:
And that is your extended Vision Pro segment. Ron Cynic File on YouTube says, I don't think anyone would call the Apple Newton a waste of effort.
Jason Snell [02:12:05]:
effort.
Leo Laporte [02:12:05]:
Oh, really? Uh, I mean, you can thank the Newton for ARM. They had— they invested in Acorn's processor, and yep, that's what they had, a billion dollars.
Christina Warren [02:12:18]:
I mean, that was big. And, and look, to be clear, the, the sad kind of thing with the Newton— and General Magic was a company that I think was even more harmed than Apple was— but, you know, the idea which led to the Palm Pilot, which obviously was commercially successful and other things. Good point. Did wind up leading to the smartphone. Like, that's, that's how—
Jason Snell [02:12:38]:
Oh, absolutely.
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:39]:
They just didn't have the right thing. And, and the Palm proved that. Let's, let's do—
Jason Snell [02:12:44]:
Jobs came back to Apple.
Christina Warren [02:12:45]:
How about smaller?
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:45]:
How about a built-in development kit that didn't cost you anything? And how about expanding?
Jason Snell [02:12:49]:
Yeah. And the issue isn't with the Newton. The issue, the issue is that Apple was going to go out of business and they had to— and Jobs had to cut expenses. And so we killed it. If Apple had several billion dollars of cash in the bank and was making profit every year, they wouldn't have killed the Newton.
Christina Warren [02:13:02]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jason Snell [02:13:02]:
They would have refactored it and they would have recast it and it would have probably become more like a Palm Pilot. And ultimately, I mean, if you watch For All Mankind, in the For All Mankind timeline, it literally becomes the iPhone. The Newton becomes the iPhone. And they have these iPhones that are, that are called Newtons, but they're iPhones, right?
Christina Warren [02:13:22]:
That's hysterical.
Jason Snell [02:13:23]:
But Jobs had to kill it.
Leo Laporte [02:13:24]:
That's very funny.
Jason Snell [02:13:25]:
They did not have the money to do it, so they had to kill it.
Christina Warren [02:13:27]:
And, and, and he was smart that even though it was a different product, a different type of device, you know, when they had more money because of the iMac and because of, you know, rebounded success and other things, he was willing to invest in the iPod. And, and there, you know, and the iPod in many ways, like it didn't have the PDA elements. Like there was, I think, a way towards the end where you could do some sort of calendar stuff, but it was not a PDA. But you saw those lines blurring like the minute the iPod came out because I had— I was in high school and I had a PalmPilot and I had an iPod and I used them like almost interchangeably. And you could see how those 2 things were going to fuse. And obviously, you know, they did in 2007.
Jason Snell [02:14:07]:
Christina, you should save that story because next month is the 25th anniversary of the iPod.
Leo Laporte [02:14:12]:
History, baby.
Jason Snell [02:14:13]:
Next month.
Christina Warren [02:14:15]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:14:16]:
Where can people find that fabulous history podcast there, Mr. Jason Snudd?
Jason Snell [02:14:19]:
Yes. Will we be doing a 5-part series on Designed in California about the origins of the iPod? Friends, yeah, we will. It's going to start in October and run through November, and it's going to be right over the anniversary of it being announced and it shipping because it was announced in October and shipped in November. And so we're, we're going to, we're going to cover it.
Christina Warren [02:14:37]:
Yes.
Jason Snell [02:14:37]:
I, the reason I say this is because did I write 12,000 words about the origins of the iPod?
Andy Ihnatko [02:14:44]:
Wow.
Jason Snell [02:14:44]:
Yeah. I did, I did, I did. So it's 2025 though. Good. It's a good anniversary for a product that really only lived about 5 years, which is kind of funny, but it set Apple on the course for everything it's done since.
Christina Warren [02:14:56]:
Absolutely. It's— I would argue it's one of the most important products that they ever released, period.
Leo Laporte [02:15:01]:
I would also point out that you have not done a 5-part series on the Newton.
Jason Snell [02:15:06]:
There will undoubtedly be a series about the Newton, but Not yet. Not yet.
Leo Laporte [02:15:14]:
Not yet.
Jason Snell [02:15:14]:
I got other, I got other fish to fry. It's not on my year one schedule. We'll put it that way. I've got, I got stuff I haven't done. I haven't done it about the Mac either. I haven't done a series about the Mac yet. We have only covered, I mean, we're only in like our third series now, but we're, we'll get there. We'll get there.
Andy Ihnatko [02:15:30]:
You've got the phase 2 plan.
Leo Laporte [02:15:31]:
You've got the phase 3 plan.
Jason Snell [02:15:34]:
Anniversaries are also really good and it's really good to get people talking and like if you're launching a new podcast saying, oh, by the way, it's the 25th anniversary of the iPod and we covered it is really nice. I'll just point out that January will be the 20th anniversary of the iPhone launch. And will we cover it? Yeah, of course we will. Of course. Because people will be talking about 20th anniversary of the iPhone. How could you, how could you turn that one down? It's too good.
Leo Laporte [02:15:59]:
You still didn't say where we could find this fine podcast.
Jason Snell [02:16:02]:
Designed.fm will get you there. See, I had to check it out. Design— or just search for Designed in California where you get your podcasts. And we're in the, uh, we're finishing up our, uh, our series about how Apple fell apart and lost its operating system strategy and then almost bought Be and then ultimately bought NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back to Apple.
Leo Laporte [02:16:27]:
Is Haiku still around?
Christina Warren [02:16:28]:
It is, yes.
Leo Laporte [02:16:29]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [02:16:30]:
Yeah. And it is still getting updates.
Leo Laporte [02:16:31]:
Open source version of BeOS.
Christina Warren [02:16:33]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Snell [02:16:35]:
Remake of the BeOS.
Christina Warren [02:16:36]:
Re-remake of what BeOS was, which of course was—
Leo Laporte [02:16:40]:
A great operating system for its time.
Christina Warren [02:16:42]:
I mean, it was really cool. I remember like being, gosh, I don't know, I was probably 12 or 13, putting it on a really old computer that I had, like downloading it, I guess, in like '98 or something and put it on something just to kind of boot up kind of like you would Linux and just being like, oh, this is, this is really neat. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:16:59]:
The Bee machine was beautiful too. It was a really nice machine. I really liked it. Um, oops. Looks like we're overlapping with security now. I better change the album art as we continue to talk about it. So is Apple going to do a server? That's the other rumor that's, uh, going around.
Christina Warren [02:17:17]:
I doubt that they will sell them to others. I would be shocked if they didn't have them themselves.
Leo Laporte [02:17:21]:
This is for their own, right? Their own use in there.
Christina Warren [02:17:24]:
Yeah, I don't think that there's any way.
Leo Laporte [02:17:26]:
Look, they killed the Xserve.
Christina Warren [02:17:28]:
They did. Now that was a different climate and different things, but I, I also don't at this point— why would you want to sell?
Leo Laporte [02:17:35]:
I'll give you the argument. Some other people, uh, for those of us small tiny minority who would like to run a Mac Studio headless with our AI, I don't really need that big-ass operating system running in the background. No, I don't need a GUI. anything. In fact, my Sparks run Linux without any, you know, issues.
Christina Warren [02:17:55]:
But why would Apple care about that small segment of the market? That's my argument, right? That's why they got out of Xserve to begin with.
Leo Laporte [02:18:01]:
They had a version of macOS that was a server version. I would buy that.
Christina Warren [02:18:07]:
Server, but they did it for a number of years. Well, right, they killed that too. So again, like, this is what I'm saying. It's not— I'm not arguing that Apple won't do this themselves. And obviously I'm sure they have their own version of the, the, you know, Mac kernel that they are running, you know, um, as a server that is removing all the GUI stuff and is, is very lean. Like, I, I'm sure that they, their versions of Darwin that we've never seen.
Leo Laporte [02:18:28]:
And it'd just be the Mach kernel and a few services.
Christina Warren [02:18:30]:
Absolutely. But, but, but I guess my, my, my, my point is like, what is in it for Apple to sell that to anyone else? Because I, I don't see what the advantage would be. Um, Um, I don't see what the lock-in would be. Uh, and if anything, I would, I would kind of question, do they look at their own integration and the way they can work, especially with their own services and stuff, as kind of a proprietary and special thing that only they can do, right? And, and, and I say this as somebody who works for a company who has thousands of Mac Minis in, um, our own data centers that—
Leo Laporte [02:19:04]:
Oh, really?
Christina Warren [02:19:05]:
I didn't realize. Yeah, yeah. Anytime you're running a GitHub Action, that is, you know, building something on macOS or iOS.
Andy Ihnatko [02:19:11]:
That's on a mini?
Christina Warren [02:19:11]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:19:12]:
Yeah, that's neat.
Christina Warren [02:19:13]:
That's happening on a mini in a data center. And, you know, there are rules from Apple about how many containers you can run or VMs or whatever you can run per device. I think it's only 2 or something. And we—
Leo Laporte [02:19:26]:
I'm using that Docker replacement that you told me about on my Mac mini.
Christina Warren [02:19:30]:
Oh yeah, or OrbStack, which is awesome.
Leo Laporte [02:19:32]:
OrbStack, and I really like it. Yeah, it's really good.
Christina Warren [02:19:34]:
fantastic. But what I was just going to say is like, I, you know, I work at a company who we have a lot of Mac Minis and we do a lot of stuff in the cloud. And obviously there would be reasons that it would be great for that to be more manageable. People— Apple has known that for years. Like, they're— well, and Amazon has done this too. I just, I don't, I don't necessarily see them getting—
Leo Laporte [02:19:51]:
Didn't we learn that OpenAI is a massive customer for these Mac Studios, that they buy thousands of them? So I think there's a market.
Andy Ihnatko [02:20:00]:
I mean, Christina, you know way more than this about it than I do. So this is actually a question, not like a veiled attack as a question. But like, that's it. That's the— I have the same questions that you did. Like, why would Apple want to do this? And but I'm thinking about, again, these orders for these devices in the thousands for companies that I don't want a fancy case. I don't want— as a matter of fact, I want screaming hot, screaming, screaming fast fans that don't have a to worry about disturbing everybody else in the office. I want power supplies that I can remove and swap out— Right. Without having to shut down the entire server.
Andy Ihnatko [02:20:37]:
All these things that are relevant for people who are buying compute, not a computer. And so, given that the information, that's the news outlet that broke the story, was saying that they're thinking about it, they haven't really, it's one of those things they're assessing, it did seem to make some sense to me. And I was looking forward to talking to you about it this week because you could tell me why it doesn't make sense.
Christina Warren [02:21:03]:
I mean, I mean, maybe it does. I just, I think that if you look at the margins that you're gonna get from consumer hardware, and if you look at the, the money you can make there versus, okay, now it's one thing to have your own internal version of your headless operating system that is stripped down that you're running as a server that only you run and that is unique to It's another thing to now say, okay, now we have to support this and we have to have enterprise support and we have to have small business support and we have to do data center support and all the other things. And I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but I am saying even with a company of Apple's size, you have to make decisions. And is this an area that you want to invest? Do you want to be Dell? Do you want to be—
Leo Laporte [02:21:41]:
I'm watching for people to—
Christina Warren [02:21:42]:
You know, back in the day, or do you say, no, actually, we have a really good thing going with our consumer strategy and we will make servers that we will be very happy. Now, that doesn't mean that Apple couldn't have their own cloud one day and try to do any of that stuff. But, but I wonder if the impetus would more be like, okay, like, do we really want to put the muscle behind it? It's the same argument I always had, frankly, about the car, which is, yeah, Apple could make a car, but then you have to have dealerships and you have to have support and you have to do all these things. Does that make sense? And that's just what I don't know. And they would need to to figure that out. But I feel like that's a different company than it is. But yeah, but they have a different CEO now. So who knows?
Jason Snell [02:22:24]:
And they're capable of doing anything they want if they think it's worth doing. I looked at this story and thought, this is the parable of the blind man and the elephant where like there's something here, but they don't know the whole story yet. And so it's like a server maybe. And I thought, you know, is this— yes. Is it for their own thing or are they toying with the idea of like, if we're going to have these super powerful Mac Studio clusters and things like that for, you know, people want to buy our hardware to do a bunch of AI stuff on, would we be better off with a different product than the Mac Studio for that?
Christina Warren [02:23:01]:
Right.
Jason Snell [02:23:01]:
And is that a server? It's like, well, in a sense it is, because in the same way the Mac Studio might be a server if you're connecting to it via LM Studio from another computer you're using, and it's just the powerhouse behind the scenes. I could see them investigating that as a possible product direction, but that was, that was how I read it is it's probably not a server in any way you think of a server. And it's more like, is there a better product to serve those people if we really can grab a bunch of people who want to do high-end AI on our silicon? on, could we make them something better than a Mac Studio? And what would that look like? Because the Mac Studio, as expensive as it is, they then tell the story about attaching 4 of them together. Right.
Christina Warren [02:23:47]:
So like, I think it's not really right.
Jason Snell [02:23:49]:
Yeah. As impossible as the price of a fully loaded Mac Studio, whenever you can finally buy one, is going to be, I think there are people at Apple are like, yeah, but if we made a higher, higher end thing, we could still sell it at an enormous price. So maybe that's what they're investigating.
Christina Warren [02:24:03]:
Maybe it is. I'm sure that's what it is. And again, I don't have any doubt that the supply, the demand is there, right, at all. I just wonder if it's like, is it worth it? And is it worth it? And because it's just, it's a different thing from anything they've done before. It's a thing that all their competitors have done, to be clear. But Apple never has. And the last time they tried it, which again, never say never, was with the Xserve. And that didn't work for a number of reasons.
Christina Warren [02:24:26]:
I do think that if they were to go in this direction, they would have to make massive changes to the way that you interface with the— to your point, I think it would have to be a different operating system, almost conceptually, just because macOS, even when they did have a server version, in my opinion, was not a great server OS unless you were doing very specific Mac things, just because of the overhead.
Jason Snell [02:24:50]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [02:24:50]:
And, you know, you're much better off using Linux. And that is still the case now. The reason that we have cloud-hosted existed, uh, you know, Mac Minis running our runners is because you need to do testing and, and builds on macOS or iOS. That's the whole point of, of, you know, continuous integration and continuous deployment. You need to be able to do that. So, but if that's removed, then why wouldn't you just use, you know, Unix of some sort or, or Linux? You, of course you would.
Leo Laporte [02:25:19]:
Because I want to use Apple hardware.
Christina Warren [02:25:21]:
Well, right, but what I'm saying is Apple would have to then augment the operating system. And I don't know that— that I think would have— that they'd have to make that decision.
Leo Laporte [02:25:29]:
Right.
Christina Warren [02:25:29]:
And I think that's the only way that people would be willing to do it. Even now in the cluster scenario, I know people are looking at that. But I think most of this is more for, you know, testing things out and doing maybe, you know, finding ways to get compute together. It's much less about, oh, you know, we want to be part of the Apple ecosystem. It's more about, okay, what type of research are we able to do on these things more than it is like, oh, well, it's really important that we use Apple hardware.
Leo Laporte [02:25:57]:
I don't know. Well, I mean, this is purely selfish. I think somebody will at some point release a program that will decrapify the macOS, remove all the GUI, all the extra stuff. I mean, I don't know if Federico addressed it, but there is a significant amount of overhead on that Mac Studio that you just want to run the biggest model you can Right, dedicated to stuff you're never— well, maybe you are going to use. I mean, it's not my main computer. I'm going to use the framework, and I mean, just like a Mac Mini, it's headless. I just log into it. I don't want to see a GUI.
Leo Laporte [02:26:31]:
I don't need a GUI. Can't turn it off, right? But it's Raspberry Pi and RAM, and, you know.
Christina Warren [02:26:37]:
And honestly, that was the problem when they had the server operating system the last time too.
Leo Laporte [02:26:40]:
Um, it was still a GUI.
Christina Warren [02:26:42]:
It was still a GUI. In fact, I actually— there was, there was a company called Media Temple who was like a web host. And I remember this because I was in college and I was blogging for the Unofficial Apple Web Blog, and they actually had a temporary product that I tested. They wound up never rolling it out, which was basically, um, there used to be like a, like, like a VPS, like types of programs. Like I think one was called like Plesk, and there were a couple of others.
Leo Laporte [02:27:07]:
Yeah, yeah.
Christina Warren [02:27:08]:
And they basically, they were going to offer, they were investigating. This was back when the Xserve was still around. Okay, what if you got a VPS that was your own little slice of macOS? And you would basically have your own little Xserve and it would have the GUI and you could manage using, you know, the interface, all of your DNS and your routing and your apps and all that type of thing. And it was a really interesting idea. But the reason I'm sure they didn't go along with it, in addition to price, was that to your point, they kind of realized, okay, we've got all this overhead that we can't get rid of, and that Apple is absolutely never going to let us get rid of it because they're looking at this primarily as a file server and for very specific use cases, and they don't want this to be Linux. Whereas what I think most people, what they really want, if we're really honest, this is what you really want, Leo, is you want Apple hardware and you want Linux on top of it.
Leo Laporte [02:27:57]:
I totally do. And you can't do that. There's Asahi and actually Omaqui, uh, you know, Mac version.
Christina Warren [02:28:05]:
But that's not the same thing. It's still—
Leo Laporte [02:28:08]:
I don't even know if MLX runs on those. I don't know how well.
Christina Warren [02:28:11]:
It doesn't. It does not. And the support is weird on that stuff. But what they've done is amazing. It's fantastic work. But it's not the same thing. Right. But it's not— it's a toy.
Christina Warren [02:28:23]:
So what I think people really want when they say this is we want the Apple hardware, but we don't want their OS. And that's why I'm saying if they were to do this, they would have to, in my opinion, fundamentally relook at how they're dealing with their operating system. And I don't know if that's the decision they would want to do either.
Leo Laporte [02:28:39]:
Right. Uh, let's see, before we get to our picks of the week, a couple more stories. Uh, Jessica Chastain's long-delayed TV show is apparently about to come out, The Savant, for 2027.
Andy Ihnatko [02:28:56]:
I guess it's safe now, politically.
Leo Laporte [02:28:58]:
Politically safe, or Apple doesn't care. anymore now that Tim Cook has taken his gold bars and retired. And Apple has opened— I like this— in London. You know, Apple used to use in London for their concerts. In fact, I went to an Apple concert in London, a really nice venue, but it's a public venue. They're now building their own Apple Music Hall, a state-of-the-art live music venue where they can record shows in spatial audio and maybe video.
Andy Ihnatko [02:29:29]:
Yeah, that's really exciting. Even, even if it's just the idea that we're building a really, really good public music space that's gonna have our name on it. Like, as long as it's not like, you know, corporate naming rights. Like, no, we decided we wanted to have this here. It's— we've already put a lot of investment into Battersea.
Leo Laporte [02:29:47]:
And they have a store there, right?
Andy Ihnatko [02:29:49]:
Exactly. They have actually part of their headquarters there, I think.
Leo Laporte [02:29:51]:
Oh, headquarters.
Andy Ihnatko [02:29:52]:
In there. Yeah. So we definitely want— this is our home. and we want to have a nice theater in our home. And just the idea of every single time when there's like a really, really great concert and it says, oh, at Apple Theater, like, okay, we keep hearing that name a lot and it's being associated with classy, classy, wonderful acts as opposed to, uh, you know, it could have been a Vision Pro. Tiny desk.
Leo Laporte [02:30:13]:
Yeah, I would imagine that part of this is, uh, having Vision Pro capabilities, uh, so you can do, uh, spatial not just spatial audio, but spatial video.
Andy Ihnatko [02:30:23]:
And it's a— that's a, that's a really big public space to use for something they just want to do capture in. Like, not that that would be the only reason they do it.
Leo Laporte [02:30:30]:
It looks like the balconies are little Mac Minis hanging off the wall. I don't know.
Andy Ihnatko [02:30:33]:
Probably. No, I'm certain, I'm certain that they've done all of that stuff. But again, the significance of we're just creating a performance space with our name on it to our specifications that we're associating with ourselves and also further putting our stamp on this iconic piece of architecture inside London. London. That is a really, really strong move.
Leo Laporte [02:30:52]:
Oh, it's pretty. It's probably not super huge venue. I don't know, what does it say in the, uh, the Newsroom story? Doesn't look like it's huge. It's gonna have a 38-foot-wide stage. Every seat feels close to the performer, yet the infrastructure offers what an artist requires for an arena tour. So I mean, Christina, wouldn't you love to see Backstreet Boys there, you know?
Christina Warren [02:31:16]:
There's so many artists I would love to see.
Leo Laporte [02:31:18]:
Yeah, 38-foot-wide stage. It could be reconfigured for traditional front-facing sets or a more in-the-round experience. 48-speaker spatial sound system, so you don't have to get the roadies to unpack the speakers positioned all around the audience. So it's actually, it's kind of like the Sphere, isn't it?
Christina Warren [02:31:35]:
That's what I was gonna say. It is similar to the Sphere, that which is really interesting, especially, you know, since this is, this is neat. And in London, this is—
Leo Laporte [02:31:43]:
I, uh, The Beatles: Love, which was a Cirque du Soleil production in Las Vegas, had that. They had speakers everywhere. It was really a wonderful experience, which I saw twice because I love it.
Christina Warren [02:31:54]:
Yeah, I saw it twice too. I took my mom to see it when we went to see Adele in Vegas a few years ago before, you know, they shut down the Mirage or whatever. Great show. And actually, that album, when it came out, it was one of the few DVD audio releases that I owned. And at the time that was a special album because this before obviously we had things like spatial audio and whatnot where you really could have like 5.1 audio sound and that was remixed by George Martin's son too, which was— yes, that's correct. But, but I remember like listening to that like on my very, you know, purchased because I worked at Best Buy, you know, home theater system and like, like turn it up loud when everybody's gone. Right. But, but it sounded—
Leo Laporte [02:32:38]:
Did you rock out after hours in the Best Buy?
Christina Warren [02:32:41]:
Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and, and, and before too, because that was one of the things you could do is you could just, um, you know, take things out if you needed to borrow a CD, as long as you re-shrink-wrapped it, like that would be okay. Um, but, but also sometimes, you know, they would just send things or you would, you know, bring them from home. But yeah, absolutely. We'd watch stuff on the TVs or listen to them in the audio. But yeah, I remember like listening to the Love DVD audio specifically for that reason, because it was so cool. And the reason they did that was because, like you said, the Cirque show was designed, you know, so that you felt like the orchestral sort of thing. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:33:16]:
The radio, Apple Radio, will also come from there. This is the nicest radio studio I've ever seen. Wow. I would, I would love to be doing a show from there. Look, there's a A little makeup table. This is— this looks like an Apple Store. A lot of blonde wood.
Christina Warren [02:33:31]:
Is Zane going back to the UK, or is he gonna stay in—
Leo Laporte [02:33:34]:
Oh, that's interesting. It says Apple Music Radio's London-based hosts will now broadcast live.
Christina Warren [02:33:39]:
Oh, okay. Got it. Got it.
Leo Laporte [02:33:40]:
So Zane will have to stay with his cruddy old New York City spot. But all the rest of them— applemusichall.com if you want to see more. Doesn't that look great?
Christina Warren [02:33:52]:
It is looking hot.
Leo Laporte [02:33:53]:
Oh, you can sign up for show and on sale. I would go to London to see, you know, I don't know, it'd have to be somebody that I like.
Christina Warren [02:34:02]:
Yeah. Well, they probably would do— hey, they could do U2. I'm kidding.
Leo Laporte [02:34:08]:
You know what? I paid a lot of money to see U2 in Toronto.
Christina Warren [02:34:11]:
Well, no, their Sphere tour was supposed to be very good. I, so I mean, I, I'm joking because of the U2 of it all.
Leo Laporte [02:34:21]:
Yeah, I know. They, but that, that would be the sort of artist, you know, when Glenn Miller plays there, I'm gonna be the first in line. I'm very excited. Maybe Benny Goodman. Yeah, Count Basie Orchestra. They'd be so good there. So do they have the whole Battersea Power Station? Is this all Apple? I don't know.
Andy Ihnatko [02:34:38]:
I don't know. I know they have a huge presence. They have a corporate presence. They project things onto the smokestacks every Christmas. They've done that for the past 2 or 3 years. Again, they are really claiming that as part of Apple's identity.
Leo Laporte [02:34:51]:
It's great to be a $4.5 trillion company, isn't it?
Andy Ihnatko [02:34:53]:
It is.
Leo Laporte [02:34:54]:
It's cool. You can do almost anything you want. In their video, they show Billie Eilish. It's the only artist I recognized. So I don't know. Who knows who'll be performing there? I can't remember who I saw when we went to— in London, but we went to see one of those Apple concerts. This is, I guess, my last connection to Apple in any respect. I actually asked somebody in the podcast division if we could get tickets, and Lisa and I went to see it.
Leo Laporte [02:35:22]:
But now they'll have the power station and I'll never be invited. Ladies and gentlemen, let's pause to remind everybody to join the club, and then we'll get your picks of the week in just a moment. Now time for picks of the week. Mr. Schnell, let's begin with you this week.
Jason Snell [02:35:41]:
Right, mine's real quick. It is September, which means It is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And as always, me and my pals over at the Relay Podcast Network are raising money for St. Jude. Stephen Hackett, who is the co-founder of Relay, he lives in Memphis where St. Jude is and also had a child who— his oldest child was diagnosed as a baby with brain cancer and is still with us. And they got treated completely for free by St. Jude because that's what That's what happens.
Jason Snell [02:36:12]:
They treat these kids for free. They put the families up and you can go to stjude.org/relay and become a part of our campaign for this month.
Leo Laporte [02:36:22]:
Look how much you guys have raised. $5.2 million.
Jason Snell [02:36:27]:
$5.2 million over 7 years. Yeah. There's a— Relay is actually like on a plaque at St. Jude. It's wild. And for fun, because I know that everyone listening to this is people— it's people who like computer things and fun. A week from Friday, October 2nd, we will be once again doing a 12-hour-long telethon on YouTube from the St. Jude campus in Memphis.
Jason Snell [02:36:52]:
I will be one of the participants along with Mike and Stephen and Kathy Campbell and Brad Dowdy and Casey Liss. And we will all be there wearing our Western-themed apparel. Apparently they've made me do that. I do. I'm not a fan.
Leo Laporte [02:37:06]:
And if you give enough money, Jason's going to get a cowboy name.
Jason Snell [02:37:09]:
Yeah. I mean, no, I do. It's my— I'm already— I got my cowboy name.
Leo Laporte [02:37:15]:
Don't tell anybody. You have to watch.
Jason Snell [02:37:16]:
But yeah, so we have fun. There's fun stuff. And it's, it's, yeah, we're live streaming for 12 hours. It's a, it's a thing we do. So you can check that a week from Friday and stjude.org/relay to give to St. Jude where they are taking care of kids with cancer and also doing lots of research that has already over the last, you you know, 50 years that St. Jude has been there, 50-plus years, dramatically increased the survival rates of childhood cancer. And they continue to do kind of amazing research that then spreads all over the world.
Jason Snell [02:37:47]:
So it's a great, it's an absolutely great organization that also has a direct connection to the Mac podcasting community through Steven. So—
Leo Laporte [02:37:54]:
And this is why you will not be here next Tuesday because you will be flying to Memphis.
Jason Snell [02:37:58]:
I will be flying to Memphis next Tuesday. Yep.
Leo Laporte [02:38:00]:
Actually, I want to see if we can get Federico Viticci on.
Christina Warren [02:38:03]:
on.
Leo Laporte [02:38:03]:
Is his Italian accent too strong to understand?
Jason Snell [02:38:06]:
Oh, no, no. His English is great.
Leo Laporte [02:38:07]:
Okay. If you could send me his contact info, because I don't know if I have a way, but I thought his review was really interesting of the Ultra, and I'd love to get him on to talk about that. So we'll see if we can do that. And have a wonderful trip and raise a lot of money for a very important cause.
Jason Snell [02:38:22]:
We will.
Leo Laporte [02:38:23]:
Thanks for doing that, Jason. Really, really appreciate that. The Relay for St. Jude at relay.experience.stjude.org.
Jason Snell [02:38:33]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:38:33]:
Andrew, pick of the week.
Andy Ihnatko [02:38:36]:
Uh, my pick of the week, I've been wearing them for the past couple of shows.
Leo Laporte [02:38:39]:
Uh, what?
Andy Ihnatko [02:38:40]:
I bought a brand new pair of headphones.
Leo Laporte [02:38:42]:
I thought those looked pretty stylin'.
Andy Ihnatko [02:38:44]:
Yeah, these are like old— these are the Moondrop Old Fashioned on-ear headphones. The thing is, I've, uh, I usually— I usually have been wearing like headphones like what Christina wears, like the Sony basically standard cans that have been around forever. They're great, um, but of course they're big and they're bulky It's not something that I would be wearing like while I'm just like walking around, like taking my daily walk. But this is like— it's called the—
Leo Laporte [02:39:06]:
It makes you look like a Time Life operator.
Andy Ihnatko [02:39:08]:
Reminiscent of, you know, the kind of headphones you'd get like with old Walkmans if you are a Gen Xer or millennial or whatever. Because— but the great thing is like, again, they're only $25, so I wasn't expecting much. I thought, okay, at worst they'll be like just an extra pair. They actually sound great. Uh, they're— I mean, I wasn't— they, they, they, they have like— they don't have a whole lot of bass, but I would say that like only— that's only a problem if you like just militant punitive levels of bass. Uh, but I can listen to music with them all day long. I can listen to podcasts for them all day long. They're super lightweight.
Andy Ihnatko [02:39:45]:
Yeah. And the thing is like, unlike other headphones, like they are just super light and super comfortable to wear. like all afternoon. So if I'm at my desk, like, I'll often have these on just because, like, I want to have them on. I want to be listening to music and I don't want to bother the neighbors, but I also don't want to have to, like, take them off my ears and just, like, rub my ears, like, every, every hour or so to—
Leo Laporte [02:40:06]:
So you can wear them long-term? They don't—
Andy Ihnatko [02:40:08]:
they don't wear them long-term? Long-term. The only, the only negative about them is that, of course, it is an open-ear design, so that if you are, like, in the quiet room of a library, people will be hearing a little bit about what you're, what you're hearing. That's not a good thing. Uh, but as long as I have them off— the other nice thing is that even though they're $25 headphones, no, even though they sound great, they also have like these remove— these like industry standard like connectors for, uh, the wires that connect to the actual drivers. Oh, that's great. So if you want to like make them into Bluetooth headphones, you can just buy a Bluetooth set of leads. If you want like a longer set of leads, if you want to convince yourself that a $50 headphone cable will make it sound even better. It probably won't, but hey, if you want to do that, again, it's a standard connector so that you can just swap them out.
Andy Ihnatko [02:40:52]:
It also means that if you break them, you can probably just buy another pair of connectors and they'll just work just fine. So $25, I'm very, very happy with them. Like I said, they, uh, it's, it's almost like I should buy another pair where I can just keep a pair next to all the, all different stations where I tend to compute, uh, in the house.
Leo Laporte [02:41:10]:
Very nice. And you look like the, um, Telegram Operator on the Titanic. You just look like you're ready.
Andy Ihnatko [02:41:17]:
I'm staying at my station.
Leo Laporte [02:41:18]:
SOS. And now, just to troll John Ashley, our producer.
Christina Warren [02:41:25]:
Yes, yes.
Leo Laporte [02:41:27]:
Christina Warren's pick of the week.
Christina Warren [02:41:30]:
Yeah, I know that this literally was announced while we were recording.
Leo Laporte [02:41:34]:
We need you, John. We need you.
Christina Warren [02:41:36]:
This was announced while we were recording. I, I don't know, um, the song is probably not going to be great. I'm going to be honest with you, and I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan, but she announced a new song called Patient Zero.
Leo Laporte [02:41:45]:
I'm not sure I like that name. That kind of is—
Christina Warren [02:41:48]:
Yeah, I mean, it could mean a lot of things. I don't know. Um, it—
Leo Laporte [02:41:52]:
it—
Christina Warren [02:41:52]:
now that she's a married lady, maybe. I didn't like her last album, but we will see about this anyway. Um, she's selling CD versions of it because of course she is, and it's a single. Yeah, and, and there's an acoustic version and a piano version I bought both of them because I'm dumb. They're only $4. Why not? Yeah. And then shipping is also $9. Love that for me.
Christina Warren [02:42:13]:
That's my pick of the week. But no, my actual thing—
Leo Laporte [02:42:17]:
It could be worse. You could be buying a duo. Oh, wait a minute, you are.
Christina Warren [02:42:19]:
Never mind. Don't even get me started on who I've spent more money on, Apple or Taylor Swift. It depends on the year, is the real answer. I've been having fun. I showed off, I think, the Flappy Bird, Flappy Copilot.
Leo Laporte [02:42:34]:
Yeah, that was really cool.
Christina Warren [02:42:35]:
A while back. Well, this one I did with Opus55 and—
Leo Laporte [02:42:39]:
Did you write this?
Christina Warren [02:42:40]:
Yeah, well, Opus did. Yeah, this is called Mona Breaker.
Leo Laporte [02:42:43]:
No, no, you can say you wrote it.
Christina Warren [02:42:45]:
I wrote it. Yeah, yeah. And it's very good. It works on mobile. I am gonna make some updates so that it will—
Jason Snell [02:42:51]:
Oh, it's a breakout.
Christina Warren [02:42:52]:
Yeah, it's breakout, but there are little bugs and bonuses that are involved.
Jason Snell [02:42:57]:
Oh, this is nice.
Christina Warren [02:42:58]:
So it is actually— it's— I've had a number of coworkers tell me that they were very annoyed because they're like, I've just wasted, you know, a lot of time on this, and how many levels are there, and what's going on? And I'm like, yeah, this is great.
Leo Laporte [02:43:12]:
Is that a commit dropping down there that I need to catch? Okay.
Christina Warren [02:43:16]:
Yes. And, and then if you do that, you can get little bonuses. There are also—
Leo Laporte [02:43:19]:
Oh my God, look at all the balls!
Christina Warren [02:43:21]:
Yeah. And, and you can get, um, a additional kind of shields and stuff. And then it's— I really am proud of this. It's really fun.
Leo Laporte [02:43:31]:
It's beautiful. Smooth, buttery smooth.
Christina Warren [02:43:34]:
Yeah, I was actually really impressed by that, especially even on mobile. The way that the motion works is really good. But anyway, these are things I'm going to continue to be—
Leo Laporte [02:43:43]:
And the little GitHub girl is carrying the paddle, which is cute.
Christina Warren [02:43:46]:
Exactly, exactly. It's Mona, who's our mascot. So yeah, I just wanted to show this off. often. I've been having fun. I have to do these launch videos when new models come out. And I've decided, even if I'm the only one who's paying attention to the narrative, I'm going to have a narrative where I do like a retro game and it's all part of an arcade that I—
Leo Laporte [02:44:05]:
Oh, here comes a bug. Let's get that bug. Catch that bug.
Christina Warren [02:44:08]:
Oh, you don't want to catch the bug. You want to avoid the bug.
Leo Laporte [02:44:09]:
Oh.
Christina Warren [02:44:11]:
And so I should make that more clear in the instructions. But no, but it's been really fun just basically recreating creating retro games with a certain theme.
Leo Laporte [02:44:20]:
I like, this is really pretty. I've seen a lot of breakout, one-shot breakout games. So this was very nice.
Christina Warren [02:44:26]:
Yeah, Opus did a really good job with it. So anyway.
Leo Laporte [02:44:28]:
So you like 5.5?
Christina Warren [02:44:30]:
I do, I do. I didn't love 5, but 5.5—
Leo Laporte [02:44:32]:
I didn't either.
Christina Warren [02:44:33]:
I've actually, I found it to be very efficient in comparison and smarter too. So I'm a fan.
Leo Laporte [02:44:39]:
I've switched my planning from Fable 5.1 1 to Opus 55. By the way, should mention Anthropic is a sponsor of the Twit Podcast Network. Very grateful for that. I wish they were paying for my Claude Max subscription, but that's another story for another day. Hey, I got 2 merges. I'm going, I'm going crazy here. Mona Breaker, where can we find that?
Christina Warren [02:45:03]:
You could find it at thongirl.com.
Jason Snell [02:45:05]:
She's playing.
Leo Laporte [02:45:05]:
You're playing the game, aren't you?
Christina Warren [02:45:06]:
No, no, no, no, I wasn't. I was I was actually trying to donate to St. Jude. Oh, good for you. filmgirl.github.io/mona-breaker.
Leo Laporte [02:45:15]:
Or just go to filmgirl.github.io and you can see all the games.
Christina Warren [02:45:19]:
Or if you go to filmgirl.github.io/arcade, that will actually take you to all of them. But yeah. Yes.
Leo Laporte [02:45:26]:
Did you see that the White House actually put an arcade on those? A vibe-coded, clearly vibe-coded, poorly, by the way, vibe-coded arcade. Arcade on the front page of the whitehouse.gov website. You know, it's good they're concentrating on the important things.
Christina Warren [02:45:41]:
No, I'm glad they're doing that. Actually, one cool thing I do want to say real quick about Opus, which I was impressed by. So I created this front-end site that has all the games. The whitehouse.arcade. And you can either play them in an iframe or you can play them individually. But I basically created a way— I said, okay, I want to be able to update this over time. And so it puts something in my agents.md file to basically say, okay, when you create a new game, this is what you need to do to be able to add it to the, the arcade selector. Well, Claude now reads agents files.
Christina Warren [02:46:10]:
And so—
Leo Laporte [02:46:10]:
That's right.
Christina Warren [02:46:11]:
High Five was able to basically look in and said, oh, okay, I read in your agents file that this is what the process is. So this is how we should set up and structure your, your game. And I was like, and I was very impressed.
Leo Laporte [02:46:21]:
Thank you.
Christina Warren [02:46:21]:
I was like, okay.
Leo Laporte [02:46:22]:
Thank you, Claude.
Christina Warren [02:46:23]:
This was exactly what I wanted you to do. I didn't have to tell it or anything. It just was able to, it was smart enough because now it supports agents files to do that. So.
Leo Laporte [02:46:30]:
I like the color palette. Is Phi-Phi good at design?
Christina Warren [02:46:35]:
I think I actually used an OpenAI model for the design on this, but I used a different model.
Leo Laporte [02:46:41]:
Which OpenAI model do you like for design?
Christina Warren [02:46:44]:
I've been using Astra.
Leo Laporte [02:46:45]:
I think it looks really pretty. This does not look vibe-coded, which is—
Christina Warren [02:46:50]:
No, I had to make some adjustments. to really kind of get that to where I wanted it to be. But yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:46:55]:
Nice. There's a maze game.
Christina Warren [02:46:58]:
There's— Yes, that's basically Pac-Man. And then there's the floppy copilot. And then I don't know, do you think I should do Super Mona Brothers? Because I think that's going to be my next one.
Leo Laporte [02:47:08]:
I've been thinking Lisa's favorite arcade game is Ms. Pac-Man. And I've been thinking of just making a Ms. Pac-Man for her.
Christina Warren [02:47:14]:
You should.
Leo Laporte [02:47:15]:
That would just surprise her. Because she's using Hermes as her agent. It'd be fun. It'd be fun if like every once in a while Ms. Pac-Man popped up.
Christina Warren [02:47:24]:
That would be amazing. Yeah, you should.
Leo Laporte [02:47:25]:
Hysterical. Very nice stuff. Thank you, Christina. Christina Warren, of course, Film Girl, is a senior dev advocate at github.com, which means she gets to play with all the toys.
Andy Ihnatko [02:47:38]:
That's nice.
Leo Laporte [02:47:40]:
Andy Anako, anako.com is his website. Great to see you, Andrew. And of course, Jason Snell. Jason Snell is at sixcolors.com. His podcast's sixcolors.com/jason. And next week he shall be very busy, very, very busy raising money. Doing God's work.
Andy Ihnatko [02:47:57]:
Or whatever's work.
Leo Laporte [02:47:58]:
Yeah. Thank you everybody for being here. We do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live in the Club Twit Discord, of course, but also YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kick. We stream live on all those channels. And yes, I watch the also in all those channels. After the fact, of course, it's a podcast, so you can always download a copy, audio or video or both, from twit.tv, our website, twit.tv/mbw. YouTube's got video.
Leo Laporte [02:48:27]:
We have a dedicated MacBreak Weekly page at youtube.com. And of course, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client, which we like because then you get it automatically. You don't have to think about it, and it preserves independent podcasting, which I think is pretty darn important. important. But if you want to get on Spotify, okay, that's fine too. You get anywhere you are. I hope you will listen. That's the most important thing.
Leo Laporte [02:48:50]:
Thank you for being here, everybody. We'll see you next time. And now, as is often the case, it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you, get back to work because break time is over. Bye-bye.
