MacBreak Weekly 863 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Alex is back. Andy Ihnatko Here. Jason Snell as well. We'll talk about the new encrypted group chat that John Gruber's been flogging. Apple Music Classicals finally here, along with iOS 16.4. Ventura has an update as well. And Apple deciding it wants to get into the movie business. It's all coming up next on Mac Break. Weekly podcasts you love
V.O. (00:00:29):
From people you trust.
(00:00:31):
This is TWiT
Leo Laporte (00:00:36):
This is Mac Break Weekly episode 863. Recorded Tuesday, March 28th, 2023. Who will speak for the shrubbery? This episode of Mac Break Weekly, brought to you by Club TWiT. Thank you. Club TWiT members for your contributions. Thanks for listening to this show. As an ad supported network, we are always looking for new partners with products and services that will benefit our qualified audience. Are you ready to grow your business? Reach out to advertise at TWiT tv and launch your campaign. Now it's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest to Apple News. Alex Lindsay's back from his sojourn abroad. Did you go abroad?
Alex Lindsay (00:01:21):
No, I just had productions. We just had, we had a Did you leave the house? I I I did leave the house. Oh, okay. La two weeks ago we had one, a theater event that I do, and then Oh, fun. And then last week we covered the gen, the, the generative AI meetup in San Francisco.
Leo Laporte (00:01:39):
Good time for, for that. That must have been interesting. Wow. It
Alex Lindsay (00:01:42):
Was, it was really, it was really cool. I mean, there's just a, it was like all the think how much
Leo Laporte (00:01:46):
Of office
Alex Lindsay (00:01:47):
Thinking about this right now.
Leo Laporte (00:01:47):
Yeah. How much of Office Hours now is about ai.
Alex Lindsay (00:01:50):
It's a growing amount. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, the questions come up two or three questions a day related to it. And and I, I use it. I I, I had a presentation this morning about green screen. I made most of the images from from Mid Journey. So it kind of just, there you go. Seeing that
Leo Laporte (00:02:05):
It's, it's all in there. M Baby
Alex Lindsay (00:02:07):
<Laugh>. I said, give me a Muppet in front of a, in front of a green screen shot with a Sony, a seven s3. My, you know, shorted up the field and I, we were talking about, yeah. And so I, but I have a hold of these Muppets as examples and they're different. Great. Cause Mid Journey keeps on putting them up differently.
Leo Laporte (00:02:21):
So it's, and Muppets don't have hands, so that's not a problem. Actually, I love Mid Journey. We've been playing with Mid Journey V five and it's really, wow. Anyway, we'll get to that. Office hours.global, if you're winning what Office Hours is, it's Alex's let's see. He's got a day job at nine Zero Media. I guess it's his midday job. It's like my,
Alex Lindsay (00:02:40):
No, no, it's, it's my morning. My morning. We're
Leo Laporte (00:02:41):
Done by that. It's Tuesday job. Okay. <laugh>, welcome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome back. We missed You Also here, Mr. Andy Ihnatko from wg. Bayh in Boston. Hello, Andrew. Hey. Who? You look good.
Andy Ihnatko (00:02:54):
Thank you. I've, I brushed my, I brushed my my
Leo Laporte (00:02:57):
Sideburns today. You're in fine. F thank you for noticing. Yeah. <laugh> or South Fine Fe, I guess <laugh>.
Andy Ihnatko (00:03:04):
The, the extra, the extras, couple hours of daylight are really, really, really,
Leo Laporte (00:03:07):
I agree. Appreciate it. Loving it. I looked out the window at 7:00 PM I went, it's still light. What, what?
Andy Ihnatko (00:03:14):
Or, or, or in or in my case, over the weekend, looking out the window at waking up at four 30 and not knowing whether I'd just fallen asleep for only two hours or whether I'd actually slept for 14 hours. And I lead this sort of lifestyle where it really could have been either one. <Laugh>. It, it's, it's fun.
Leo Laporte (00:03:30):
<Laugh>, did I miss a whole day? A whole week? <Laugh> a whole month? I don't know. Am
Andy Ihnatko (00:03:33):
I, am I, am I really well rested right now? Or should I go back to bed and
Leo Laporte (00:03:40):
From six colors.com, the wonderful Jason Snow.
Jason Snell (00:03:45):
Hello, Leo LePort. It's good to hear from
Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
You. <Laugh>. It's a musical
Jason Snell (00:03:50):
And Micah Sergeant has rubbed off on you now you're starting to sing everything.
Leo Laporte (00:03:54):
Does he sing? Yeah. Maybe that's it. He might be rubbing off. Micah
Jason Snell (00:03:56):
Sings everything. Yeah. Yes, if you let him. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
I, I don't know if that's me rubbing off on him or, or him rubbing off on me at this point. Oh, interesting.
Jason Snell (00:04:04):
We're merging. You're a dangerous combination. We're merging. It's like matter and anti-matter. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:04:08):
Jason will be hosting the show next week. I'm going on vacation for three weeks, then Micah, for a couple of weeks hosting, and I'll be back on the 25th. And I hope you have a wonderful time. Have you fallen into the John Gruber hole? Do you know what I'm talking about? <Laugh>,
Jason Snell (00:04:27):
The John Gruber Hole. I mean, not lately. <Laugh>. It's been a while. I thought they picked that. I thought they, the city of Philadelphia patch Trap
Leo Laporte (00:04:34):
Hole.
Andy Ihnatko (00:04:34):
Is that, is that the tourist trap? That is family runs? It's just out a Barstow Gruber mystery hole.
Leo Laporte (00:04:40):
I think probably 2000 word piece about a new piece of software. It's a group end, end encrypted group messaging app called Wavelength. Long, long piece on it, about right. Two-Thirds of the way. And he said, oh, and by the way I am
Jason Snell (00:04:59):
I'm an advisor and have equity in
Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
It. I have equity. It's like, wait, wait a minute. Hold on. There was a very extensive <laugh> and very praiseful piece. So I signed up. I mean, what the hell? Although I'll tell you one thing. I got one re first of all, I think it's a great idea. I don't disagree with him to have a fully encrypted group chat program that's not owned by Facebook. I think that's a good thing. Whatsapp is so dominant in the world, and yeah, it's end to end encrypted, I guess. But it's owned by Facebook. So I guess that's their competition. The other thing that they're doing, because this is what everybody does now, is slathering a thin layer of AI over it. You can for
Jason Snell (00:05:42):
Fun, for funsies,
Leo Laporte (00:05:43):
Just for funsies. And I don't like that. I just wanna say, because the AI is in the chat with you, <laugh>, and it's, and it's, and it's just like, for me, it's like ads in Twitter. You have to use a certain amount of cognitive effort load to say, is this a person or is this a an ad or is it a chat? What, or AI or, you know. And I don't wanna do that. I don't like to do that. I'm, it's not my thing, Andy.
Andy Ihnatko (00:06:11):
Yeah, it sounds a lot like Google Wave, especially when you put AI inside the chat. But hey, if they can revive it, I thought they, I thought Google killed that way before it was due. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:06:20):
I don't know. There's AI everywhere. Now last week Google's Bard came out, but that's not a Apple story, so we'll save that for this week in Google or some other show. Who cares? I just was wondering, cuz I noticed a lot of a lot of us Gruber fans ended up in wavelength.
Jason Snell (00:06:38):
Oh, I noticed you were on there before I when I signed up, I should do it. I was like, Leo's already there. Yeah. Oh, Leo already read it. And this morning I had a list of friends, all of whom had signed up while I was sleeping. I'm like, okay, all right. Yeah, we all read it.
Leo Laporte (00:06:49):
Yeah, we all read it. It's fine. It's cool. The problem with all of these is not that, whether it's functionality or, I mean, it's beautiful and it's functional and it's end to end encrypted. It's, it's Apple only, which is a, a big problem so far. And of course adoption. If your friends aren't on it, it doesn't matter If they're all on WhatsApp, which they are in everywhere but us then it, then, then it's, it's it mocks next. Anyway, let's move on. I'm sure you will be talking more about that or not as as the weeks fly by
Jason Snell (00:07:22):
<Laugh>. Oh, the confidence of somebody who's about to go on vacation.
Leo Laporte (00:07:25):
I can't wait. I am just, I am. So it's gonna be great.
Jason Snell (00:07:28):
Great topic. Great topic. Good luck with it guys. Good luck
Leo Laporte (00:07:30):
With it. Have fun. I'm so at, knock Yourselves out. 16.4 came out yesterday for iOS and iPad os. And oh my goodness, it's all about the emojis. Lots of new emojis. A handful. 
Jason Snell (00:07:52):
Yeah, this here's emoji crop was a little light, right? 21,
Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
Probably 21. Inclu. We've talked about 'em before. Shaking head pink, heart blue heart, gray heart, donkey, moose, goose, goose. Not a donkey, moose, goose, but three different things. Donkey, moose, and goose. A black bird, a wing, a jellyfish, a highest synth. Actually, the biggest thing for me and Andy is Apple, classical <laugh>. And I figured that that was tied somehow to 16 four. And sure enough, shortly after I updated to 16 four, I got a message saying, oh, hey, classicals, available for download. So they made their, their March 28th deadline. Have you reviewed it? Have you examined it, Andrew?
Andy Ihnatko (00:08:35):
I spent last night taking a look at it. I, I'm not sure if it requires, I have, I haven't looked at the requirements page. All I know is that I did download the app and run it before I installed 16.4 on my device. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:08:48):
It may not require it. How, how.
Andy Ihnatko (00:08:49):
Yeah. However, however, that might be the reason why. There were a couple of bugs with it when I ran it on the, before the update. Now it's running perfectly fine. And yeah, I've been listening to it like part of last night and into this morning. It's really nice. It's, I I don't see it as a revolution necessarily, but it didn't have to be a revolution. I, I like, I like the fact that just simply the fact that it understands that as we've said before with classical music, there are all, all of the tags that you have to put into every single one of these things. All, all the metadata is so incredibly valuable because it, it, it overwhelms Apple Music and Spotify and any other conventional player, because they're just so many different things that make, that make a classical track searchable.
(00:09:37):
So, and I also like the fact that just, again, the other, a simple thing where I'm, I'm used to not being able to know what the hell I'm listening to because the name of the track is like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, open parenthesis 1713. So I'll close parenthesis, abduction from the Ciag <laugh> Opus Bulu directed by blah, blah, blah. And I'm still waiting for what is the name of the aria I'm listening to right now. And it, it's, it's very, very sensibly like we'll just simply say, here is the name of the piece you're listening to right now. And then everything else comes in underneath it. But very good. Also, it seems like it has a, a nice number of curated playlists and curated options. I don't know if I'm surprised or not surprised that some, so many of them are introduction to classical music.
(00:10:27):
Here is your first introduction to this. So if it, if it helps a lot of people discover a a variety of music that maybe they hadn't paid much attention to that's great. It's gonna make classical music lovers less upset than they were before. It's not gonna be possible to make them all really, really happy. But they promised it. They, as, as you and I have been saying, they bought a service that we liked it, that service has disappeared for two years while it's been rebranded. So let's just hope that Apple continues to put effort and updating and new thoughts and, and new content into this. And not just simply, you know, decide two years later that, oh, I guess that was just a, a hobby after all.
Leo Laporte (00:11:07):
I guess inevitably it's gonna, the comp, the comparison's gonna be to Prime phonic, the, the Yeah. App that they bought, the company that they bought a year and a half ago. You can show it now. And and there you go. Thank you. And and took their time getting out, introducing Apple Musical music, classical with Alex French. I don't know why there's two Fs and French is just a little a two minute track. A couple of things I really like. There's a lot. You know, it looks very much like mph phonic even down to, I was very pleased. These you know, I really like the MPH phonic podcast. They'll have, they have these, the story of classical, which is both music and text kind of explaining you know, it's a part companion guide to classical music, which I think is, I'll be listening to that on the plane. I'm, I'm sure they also have a whole spatial audio section. Of course, it's Apple, right? Yeah. And I'm ac that actually put me over the top bringing my AirPod Pro Max on the plane because I wanna, I do wanna listen to these you know, as if you're in the concert hall, would be pretty fun. I presume I didn't, I didn't attempt to figure out if they have everything, but I'm happy. I think this is this is what we wanted, right?
Andy Ihnatko (00:12:25):
I, I, I gave it a few curve balls. The, the, the fact matter is that almost anything that, that I could think of is actually probably already covered by Apple Music. It's only these really, really random moments where you're, you're reading a, a blog post about here are, here are the, here are the, the, the, the 10 best versions of modelers. Sy six symphony. Symphony. And you're like, oh, I'd actually like to listen to some of these. And only like two of them are in Spotify or Apple Music. And in, and in and in the Apple classical, you'll see like four or five. But it's, it's a really, really deep catalog. That's how a lot of people get, especially especially with opera. It's not just the composer, right? It's not just the conductor. It's like, I want to hear Robot Aldi sing this area. Yeah. And I wanna hear Darianna Damerow sing this. Then I want to hear you know, you want to compare. You wanna see, you want to figure out what the, what the best version is, even if it isn't in stereo yet.
Leo Laporte (00:13:15):
Yeah. see all the Maria Callis albums, and you get a quite a few classic performances from the fifties through the seventies. So yeah, I think this is this is,
Alex Lindsay (00:13:29):
It appears satisfying. I haven't tried it on my, haven't tried it on my iPad. There was some grousing online about,
Leo Laporte (00:13:34):
It's not an iPad app, an iPad, iPhone only app, which really is disappointing.
Jason Snell (00:13:38):
You could run it on the iPad with the majesty of the big black bars on the side of it. That's very disappointing. Unless you put it in Stage Manager, it's
Leo Laporte (00:13:44):
Just not there. Yeah. This would be,
Jason Snell (00:13:46):
It doesn't run on the Mac at all, because to run on a Mac, an iOS app has to have an iPad view, which it doesn't. So it's only iPhone and then Yeah. In the big compatibility window on the I iPad.
Leo Laporte (00:13:57):
I have to think that's something they will do. Although you'd think with a year and a half <laugh>, they would've Yeah. And they could have just taken the prime phonic codebase, but obviously they did not want to do that. So they didn't. Yeah. I,
Andy Ihnatko (00:14:10):
I, I kinda wonder whether we'll see, we'll see an iPad version before we see an Android version. Like, is there, are they really, are they really interested in growing Apple Music and Apple Classical beyond this one platform? Or are they seeing it this as an a, a bonus for loyal subscribers to Apple Music? Yeah. Who knows?
Leo Laporte (00:14:27):
I'm, I'm pleased. I think if you're a classical music fan you'll be satisfied. And if you're new to classical, which is I think fairly important, this is a great resource to kind of Yeah. Get you started. I think so. You know, a lot of good categorization going on here and things like
Andy Ihnatko (00:14:44):
That. Yeah. And let's not, and let's not forget, this isn't a, this isn't a separate service. It is part of Apple Music. So you subscribe to Apple Music, you also got Apple Classical. So it's, it's a win-win.
Leo Laporte (00:14:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm very happy. So okay. We'll give a tentative a, not a plus, but a tentative a to Apple and, and pending an Android version and a iPad version, which you'd think, so you can't do Catalyst in this. You have those different screen sizes that make sense, I guess mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, so then we could get it on our Mac if they ever do that as well. Anything else to say about 16.4?
Jason Snell (00:15:20):
I think, I think the most interesting thing about it, if you still make phone calls which I don't know if you do. I don't know who does, but they, they had this tech that they built into like FaceTime and other things, which was noise canceling. Yeah. And they're bringing that to regular phone calls. So it's gonna try to do a much more active job of processing your voice and dropping the background noise out when you're making regular old phone call on your iPhone, which might be good.
Leo Laporte (00:15:46):
They call it voice isolation. And I always turn it on <laugh>, I don't know, on FaceTime. I don't know if it does any good. But I always turn it on. And I, you know what, again, I'll probably be trying this as I call people from airports and you know right the SRA familia and that kind of thing. I'll be making lots of phone calls from all over Europe duplicates in photos the duplicates album and photos, expand support, detect, detect duplicate photos in an iCloud shared photo library. That's actually where you really need it, because I'm sharing my photos of you, Jason, now with you. Many may be duplicates. So I think it's good that they're doing that. You still, I presume, have to do a manual merge, but at least you could find them. Andy, I'm sorry.
Andy Ihnatko (00:16:33):
Oh, no, no. I was I was, I was gonna mention that I was looking at the apple security update at the Apple Support page about the security content of 16.4 and seeing, boy, it's a long, long list of things that they fix, including a lot. The phrase able to execute arbitrary code with Colonel privileges ow, pops up a few times, <laugh>, that may be able to break out of its sandbox gain access to protected far parts of the, of the file system. So yeah, this is <laugh>, this is a lot of hopefully a lot of things that have not been exploited just yet to merit a a tap on the shoulder from from Project Zero. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
Hey, the good news is they're constantly patching things, right? Of course. The bad news is there's, some of these are pretty severe <laugh> pretty severe. Again, zero click in the wild zero days is not good.
Andy Ihnatko (00:17:24):
Arbitrary Colt with Colonel Privileges, that's, that's a, that's a,
Leo Laporte (00:17:30):
That,
Andy Ihnatko (00:17:31):
That, that's,
Leo Laporte (00:17:32):
That's bad. There is voiceover support for maps in the Weather app. Okay. it's a couple accessibility features success.
Alex Lindsay (00:17:40):
Are people using the, we are people using the Weather app. I moved completely to Carrot.
Leo Laporte (00:17:44):
I'm gonna like, once they
Alex Lindsay (00:17:46):
Guy.
Leo Laporte (00:17:47):
Yeah.
Jason Snell (00:17:47):
Regular people are,
Leo Laporte (00:17:48):
I bet you 90% of iPhone users. Yeah. Don't even, you got weather listening. What do you need?
Alex Lindsay (00:17:54):
Carrots a lot better.
Leo Laporte (00:17:55):
Much <laugh>, how much weather do you need?
Alex Lindsay (00:17:58):
Right. But if you're listening, carrots, carrots a lot better. I, I, when dark, when I had dark Sky, I was so embedded in Dark Sky that I didn't really think about it. And so I, I had, I bought Carrot or whatever downloaded Kara a long time ago. And and it's, especially with all the weather, the rain and everything else right now, it's particularly funny if you turn the attitude all the way up.
Leo Laporte (00:18:17):
There's a great,
Alex Lindsay (00:18:18):
I'm not safe for work, but
Leo Laporte (00:18:20):
<Laugh>, I know Kara is so
Alex Lindsay (00:18:21):
Snarky. Yeah. Since,
Leo Laporte (00:18:22):
And I just like the notifications cuz you know, every time it drizzles here, which lately has been often it will say horrible profane. I turned it all away. Of course. Horrible, profane things. You can also choose your political party, you know, like, are you left, right. Progressive, communist. There's communist is my choice. And so you can get a little, little political thought in there too, which is a lot of fun. Hmm. here is a very nice piece by Rinni Kama from nothing. No, I'm sorry, Nightingale dvs.com, which I, I don't, I've never heard of. But it's a data visualization site, a eulogy for Dark Sky, a data visualization masterpiece. And in this Rinni compares, you know, weather and Dark sky. Oh, this is sad. The dead Dark Sky interface. It's zero degrees everywhere. But I agree. Dark Sky was kind of brilliant. We've talked before about the difference between Dark Sky and the kinds of forecasts you get from the you know, national Weather
Alex Lindsay (00:19:25):
Bureau, you know, and other little things like easily being able to change the city would, is <laugh> something that dark Sky and karat have in common? Yeah. <laugh>. That I still, every time I open up weather, I'm like, what? How I, it's
Leo Laporte (00:19:36):
Not, it's there. We talked about it. It's there. You can find it, but you're right, it's not a city. It's
Alex Lindsay (00:19:40):
Just, it's surprising. You're used to Dark Apple would've missed that. Yeah. No, but, but then it went over to karat and immediately found it. It's just like where the city name is. It'd be really good if I just tap on it. Changing your name. I know that's sense. Crazy but sense. Yeah. I will say that. I, I I, I've become a little bit of a curmudgeon about Apple's aggressiveness related to interface recently. And like I, Ventura has been just a disaster in my opinion. <Laugh> just really the, yeah, I just hate it. I hate the, if I hadn't setting,
Leo Laporte (00:20:06):
Which drives me nuts still, every time I open it, the
Alex Lindsay (00:20:09):
Settings drive me. Like when I'm talking about screensaver, I would like all the, all the settings for screensaver to be in the same place. Not like my lock screen is now somewhere else. And I can't, this morning I was looking on an update and I'm like, it wasn't straight. You know, it just, all these things, nothing about it is natural and nothing is connected like we are. You're in a certain zone. I don't care if you copy it to another place, but when I'm talking about this thing, I should be able to do all the things with that thing in one place. And I think that, I just hope that, I mean, I, there's rumors that the next operating systems are all gonna be clean up. And I hope Apple just doesn't change anything. <Laugh> like, like I'm just like, just, just add a couple things and call today. I mean, mean they
Jason Snell (00:20:47):
Need to change the Settings app is what they need to do.
Alex Lindsay (00:20:49):
They need to go back. Don't,
Jason Snell (00:20:50):
Don't just leave that the same fix that, oh my gosh. Fix, fix that fast. I wrote so bad. I don't know how many, I wrote thousands of words about how all the ways that Settings app is bad last summer. And, you know, they didn't change anything when it was
Leo Laporte (00:21:01):
In beta, basically. They, they could've, they could've Good luck search for it. Yeah. They were listen, they were listening and then ignoring.
Alex Lindsay (00:21:07):
I waited, you know, like, it was one of those things. I waited, I waited. My, the reason I'm complaining about now, and you're wondering why didn't he complain about it earlier, is because after up the last update, I was like, I'm gonna wait six months. And so I waited six months. And so only a couple weeks ago have I installed a Ventura. And now I wish I hadn't <laugh>. So, so I'm now gonna, my new thing will be, is the next operating system. Unless there's something really good, I'm just gonna wait until the following WWC and let them sort this stuff out and hopefully gets better. But I, they're not, I think they're missing the mark. I think that they're, and it's not like there's some stability issues. I think they're moving too fast for their developers. So they're, they're, there's a lot of stability issues across a lot of different apps. And it's just because Apple's changing so many things so quickly to try to get this to, I think, to sync things up with the iPad. And I think that we're just, there's all these things that are happening all at one time and it's just really, it's, it nothing is quite as, I just think that Apple needs a rest. That's all <laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:21:59):
Just
Andy Ihnatko (00:22:00):
<Laugh>. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (00:22:02):
The seventh day a nap.
Leo Laporte (00:22:03):
Is it A nap would
Alex Lindsay (00:22:04):
Be good. A nap. Take a nap for a year would be great. Just fix the things that need to be fixed. And you know, like in just, you know, just happy, fun,
Leo Laporte (00:22:10):
Fix. You're cranky and tired, you need to go to bed now. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay.
Jason Snell (00:22:16):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Leo Laporte (00:22:16):
<Laugh>.
Andy Ihnatko (00:22:17):
Yeah. I, I, I still find myself having to use Spotlight. I, I will open, I will open up settings, but I'll still have to use Spotlight to find the thing that I'm actually looking for. And I didn't have to do that before. Although, although Apple apple sometimes does change its mind one, one of the, one of the breakthrough features of 16.4 is that in iBook, in, in the, in the Books app, now you get back that super, super turning page animation anymore. Love the turning. It's no longer boring as a Kindle.
Alex Lindsay (00:22:42):
So the kids, so the kids can
Andy Ihnatko (00:22:44):
Remember, people complain about page turning, guess what they give? They said, you know what, we can give you back your page. Turning <laugh>, congratulations. You're welcome.
Alex Lindsay (00:22:52):
It's historical lesson for the kids.
Leo Laporte (00:22:54):
Yeah. Let me, let me just show you let's see, let's see what books I have on my
Andy Ihnatko (00:23:00):
Of the 800 things you complain about. We decided that this is the least amount of trouble. This is
Alex Lindsay (00:23:04):
The one to give. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (00:23:08):
Here's a quarter kid.
Leo Laporte (00:23:09):
There's a, let's so Open Common Lisp recipes, cuz I know you're all can't wait. Oh, you know, you probably want, you probably wanna do doing math with Python. There's a, there's a better book. But lemme just install one of these here real quick. Cuz I guess I don't have any books on my, I don't read books on the iPhone. Oh, wait a minute. Here's one. Oh no, it's in the cloud too. Darnt it. They're all up there in the puffiness. I wanna show you the page turning. So the, so why did, so that raises the question, why did they change it and why, and did they bring it back because we complained? Is that what happened? No, I think
Alex Lindsay (00:23:44):
That kind of feels like an executive said there's an executive somewhere at Apple that was using that really liked the page turn and something happened. Cause it, I just
Jason Snell (00:23:52):
Don't, I just, I think it's the opposite. I think that there really, there's some executive at Apple who was like, oh, that page turn is dumb. Take it out. And everybody was like, no, no. People love it. And they're like, no, no, no, take it out. And then everybody complained about it and they're like, all right. Okay. I guess you were right. What do
Leo Laporte (00:24:04):
You think it was a Johnny? It was one of those though. It was like an anti Johnny. I
Alex Lindsay (00:24:08):
How long, how long has it been out?
Jason Snell (00:24:09):
There's two morphism kick it out there. Yeah, it was only just at the, at in, in October, September when they shipped it that they pulled it out. So it's a recent removal, which is like, why now? Why now would you do that thing? And so then they put it back. I, I like it. I like, actually I, I really like it when Apple tries to do something and they think that like, no one will notice and nobody cares. <Laugh>. And then everybody screams bloody murder. And they're like, okay, fine. It's like when Steve Jobs was like, you're gonna have a bumper case. It's that kind of exasperation, but at least it's back. And the truth is, we think of Apple as monolithic, but I always imagine that what's happening is there's a big argument inside Apple and they lose it. And then, and then the, the media complains about it and users complain about it and the people inside Apple go see and then maybe they get it reversed in the long run. I I, I keep thinking that's what happened
Leo Laporte (00:24:56):
Here. Apparently you have to turn it on cuz I'm getting the
Andy Ihnatko (00:25:00):
Old, the old
Leo Laporte (00:25:01):
Slide. This is, this is the bad page turn. Right.
Jason Snell (00:25:05):
As, as a classic, a classic book would do where you would put your finger on a piece of paper and slide slide it away out of the
Leo Laporte (00:25:11):
Book. So how do I, I saw a little popup and I of course was in too much of a hurry.
Alex Lindsay (00:25:16):
You know, it's funny. Go to the,
Andy Ihnatko (00:25:17):
It's funny about those setting section.
Alex Lindsay (00:25:19):
It's funny how important those transitions are too because one of the problems we have with, with Cap, I do a lot of work with captions and one of the things with captions that, that happens is that a lot of the social networks will just have them just jump, you know, just change. But if you watch it on tv, it rolls, it roll, you know, it kind of rolls from one and it, it's much more pleasurable to watch it roll, watch the captions roll than to watch them jump because it's easier to read them. And it was funny cuz it was, I was talking to somebody who really specializes in this and he's like, he's like, you know, the government spent a lot of money figuring out the way those captions. It would, it, it was, it was a lot easier just to have them up, keep on appearing and not having them roll. Everyone should stop reinventing the wheel. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:25:58):
So you go to, so okay, so I finally figured this out. You click this button in the lower right, you go to themes and settings and and there's a little thing that you can have slide curl or none, man. Maybe none is what the guy with the captions would want. But let's turn, let's turn a little curl on curling on. Wait a minute. Oh,
Alex Lindsay (00:26:18):
Look at that work.
Jason Snell (00:26:20):
None is, I, I I think I'm team none, but I love that the whimsy of the curl is back. Oh,
Andy Ihnatko (00:26:26):
That was one of the things I loved about the, about the books app to begin with. That was like the fact that somebody wanted to show off the, the graphics primitives, the, the, the things that you can get for free.
Leo Laporte (00:26:37):
You think it's so how expensive in terms of code that that's why they got rid of it, or
Andy Ihnatko (00:26:43):
I don't, I don't know that they, if if they got rid of it, it might have been an i I wonder if it was an accessibility thing where, as part of the debate internally it was that this is doesn't, this doesn't give all users the exact same experience and therefore we should delete the one that we can't support with an assistive device. Oh. Or the, or was, might have been something as simple as they finally got around to like up ba basically rewriting that entire system. And when it came time to, oh, we forgot to put in the page curl thing. It's like, I am not going to go home at 11:00 PM tonight because I, because we needed to put in a page curl effect. Yeah. You get a page flip and I get to go home if I eat.
Leo Laporte (00:27:22):
So your recommendation Jason, is none where you just tap it and it kind of, it's says quick dissolve
Jason Snell (00:27:27):
Is what it's, I think it's a personal preference. I just, I I always felt like that those animations were unnecessary. But I know that people love them and they're, they're not because they're necessary, but because they're fun and Yeah. And that's fine. But I'm also, I, I recently reviewed a, which is kind of outside the purview of this show, but I, I re reviewed a an Android based EIN reader. So it's like trying to be a Kindle, but it runs full Android. Yeah. And one of the problems I had is so many of the book reading apps and Android are like, we'll do fun animations. Yeah. And on an EA display, the fun animations end up being like, an earthquake happens every time you try to change the page. They're really ugly and bad. Yeah. So I ha I, yes, I have a little animosity toward fun animations because of that experience.
(00:28:07):
But in general, it's sort of like, I love that they give people the chance to do it. I love that that that page curl is totally unnecessary. And I think that there is a school of thought that is probably, I, I probably support it, that Apple, because it's so successful and it's reaches, it reaches so many people, especially with the iPhone, that they've decided to kind of stamp out any whimsy. Cuz it's like, this is serious. We can't be whimsical. We have to serve our billions and billions of hamburgers instead. And the, the page curl is a great example of that. What does it serve? No, nothing. No reason. There's no, it doesn't help anything at all. It's completely gratuitous. But you know what it is, it's fun and whimsical and so why destroy it? Right? Like why, why kill that feature? So I, I'm glad it's back. I'm glad
Leo Laporte (00:28:53):
It's back. Microsoft. I know nobody here uses Windows, but Microsoft often when it really removes a feature or adds a feature cites telemetry, they say, well, we know that no one uses that. You know, you may like it, you three people and you're very loud, but we know no one uses it. Does Apple have that kind of telemetry on it's stuff? Do they know, for instance, that nobody has that turned on? Or
Jason Snell (00:29:22):
They they do have some of that, although remember we did that we covered that story here where you can turn that off or you have to opt in, but it was still sending data back and Right. We still,
Leo Laporte (00:29:32):
Well, you opt in third party. I know it says you want to send information developers, but that's not Apple.
Jason Snell (00:29:38):
I believe there is also the Apple telemetry that Okay. I don't know how much they record, but you've gotta think that through some method or rather Apple has some detail. I don't know if it goes down to the level of do people use slash like the page curl. I don't think it's a bad thing to have a lot of data. I
Leo Laporte (00:29:54):
Think it's good to know like, everybody has that turned off except for, you know, one 10th the 1% of the users. So my guess would be that, that they had that. Yeah. And that somebody said, well, why are we putting in this 400 lines of code to do something the one 10th of 1% does. And then that one 10th, the 1% was loud and obnoxious and they said,
Jason Snell (00:30:13):
It's a real, it's a real argument stopper. If you're inside Apple and you're saying, but I like this, but I don't it, you know, you could go as have as much an data as you could possibly Yeah. One of the metrics. But if you're like, nobody uses the feature, we have the proof, then it's like, all right. I mean, what do you say to that? Okay. We have the proof. I'll, I'll take it out.
Andy Ihnatko (00:30:30):
On the other hand, no, nobody uses the chess app. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:30:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Why is that's still there. Yeah. Somebody, somebody that's a really interesting point. Somebody supposed
Andy Ihnatko (00:30:41):
To the, the, I think, I think the last time that anybody at Apple said anything about that, it was a vague faint towards it's required for the ch for the security check sum to, to check the integrity of the install. I e if it's not there, then some piece of internal math goes, goes wonky. And they, and it won't certify that this is a legit installation of of Mac os. But that could, I think that was a while ago and I never understood that explanation to begin with.
Leo Laporte (00:31:08):
Yeah. Well there you have it now iOS 17 is next, actually. Will there be a 16 516 60? I guess there'll be a one more update.
Jason Snell (00:31:19):
There is a, there's a beta already out there. They just started the beta cycle of
Leo Laporte (00:31:23):
16
Jason Snell (00:31:23):
Five of 16 five. Okay. And presumably there'll be a mcwe. Yeah. 13 four beta is Okay. This will be the last, this is like the bug fix cleanup that comes up right before wwd C and is just there probably to sweep out the last bugs that they're gonna fix or anything, or a security issue. And
Leo Laporte (00:31:39):
We should say Apple will push out security fixes it and it whenever necessary. Immediately. Right?
Jason Snell (00:31:44):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. In fact, there were some security fixes along with this release for previous releases
Leo Laporte (00:31:48):
Too, so. Right, right. Yeah. So the reason I mentioned that is Mark Germond has tweeted when Apple set out to develop iOS 17, which I, I guess would come out with the new iPhones in the fall, the initial thinking was to call it a tune-up release One focused up more on fixing bugs and improving performance and adding new features, kind of like they did with Snow Leopard. Back in 2009, the hope was to avoid the problems of iOS 16, which was an ambitious update that suffered from missed deadlines and a buggy start. But later in the development process, the strategy changed. I presume this is Germin sources. The iOS 17 release is now expected to boast several nice to have features, and he puts nice to have in quotes even if it lacks a tent pole improvement, like last year's revamped lock screen. The goal of the software code named Dawn is to check off several of users' most requested features. He does not elaborate on which those features are.
Jason Snell (00:32:49):
I'll just point out that Snow Leopard, which everybody always uses as the base, the baseline for this. Like, let's have another Snow leopard release Yeah. Where they just fixed things. Snow Leopard had I think hundreds of new features. Like it's hard to keep the feature, the new features out, but I think that no, no big tent pole is maybe an example of this where they're like doing quality of life improvements and bug fixes, and also probably spending most of their engineers time on the VR headset instead of the, the CHROs.
Leo Laporte (00:33:17):
Ah. But yeah, we've heard rumors that they were pulling, it's fine me pulling people off of the of teams to do the the vr. Yeah.
Jason Snell (00:33:25):
Bug fix updates are great. Let's, let's do it. I'm, I'm sold on that. We don't need the pace as of innovation and pushing out new features and rewriting old apps is, has been great. And they're, and, and messy. So I, I would, I would welcome some small tweaks that make life better and some fixes and just letting, I, I'm, I'm in the midst of running a survey for a bunch of IT professionals and if I hear anything from them, it's like, slow it down. Oh, yeah. Like the annual treadmill for if you're supporting a large number of devices is brutal. Like, I get why Apple does it, especially for the iPhone, but that Mac on an annual release cycle is really tough. So if they back off and just kinda let it cool down for a year, I think that's great.
Andy Ihnatko (00:34:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And mostly I'm hoping that they take another wack at Stage Manager because they didn't, they didn't, they, when they, when they debuted it last year, they didn't make a good enough case for people to leave. It turned on. I think that I, I, I rarely see people actually using it in the wild. I don't think it's bad. I just think that it's, it doesn't present an immediate sense of, oh, this is gonna be inconvenient to learn this new thing, but oh boy, is it gonna be worth it. And I, so I would love to see them. This was the very first cut at the, the, the probably one of the most significant user interface updates and changes to iOS tandem with Mac Os since, gosh, since ever. So it's, they're not gonna get it right the first time. You could expect that it's gonna continue to, to evolve. So I'm interested to see, again, do they decide that let's just let this lay fallow and pretend that this didn't really exist? Or are they really energetically gonna be piling on? Okay. We have seen how people use it. We've seen what the complaints are. We ourselves have been dog fooding it. Here is some adjustments that we've made to how it works to make it seem more essential.
Leo Laporte (00:35:16):
What would you want in an iOS 17? I mean, I agree. I think I agree with the IT folks, and by the way, we hear this on on Windows as well. They say, dog, we don't stop. Just, just make it good. Don't change it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just make it good. Is there anything though that's missing from iOS 16 that we should
Jason Snell (00:35:38):
Yeah, I'd like them to move the iPad features or the iPhone features that aren't on the iPad to the iPad this year, which is like that move the lock screen and the widgets and stuff over there. There's a
Leo Laporte (00:35:47):
Bunch of Oh, I agree with that. Those That's good. Yeah. Things
Jason Snell (00:35:48):
That they just didn't bring that to the iPad. Yeah. So that's, but that's, so that's an existing features moving. And then it's funny, it's actually I talked about this on my upgrade podcast with Mike Curley on Monday, and then like later that day, cable Sass are from Panic. Wrote a blog post about it. So it's in the water now, which is Apple has this amazing new password manager that they've been building for the last few years. And I actually have on my wishlist, make it an app like it's hidden in the Settings app. Yeah. And trying to explain to a friend or family member that Apple has a password manager, but you have to dig down in settings. I would love to see Apple just kind of pull it out and make it an app so that you can point to it and say, look, your passwords go in that app that Apple is giving you, and they sync to all your devices. And it, it, it'll keep track of all your passwords because it is a conceptual leap to explain that. It's, there's a subset in the in the settings app, right? Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:36:41):
Yeah.
Jason Snell (00:36:42):
Siri's talking to us
Leo Laporte (00:36:43):
Somewhere. No, it's Carrot, unfortunately.
Jason Snell (00:36:45):
Carrot. Oh, it's Carrot
Leo Laporte (00:36:46):
Stop.
Jason Snell (00:36:47):
It's swearing. Don't swear. Yeah. Anyway, I, I like, like when I visit my mom, I, I, I, I got her off of her p paper notebook that she's addicted to and onto Apple's Password Manager, a half off. She still goes back to it. She relapses every now and then. But the biggest conceptual leap when I was trying to work it out with her was where you go to see it not in Safari, but like, where, where does it live? And I'm like, it's in the settings app. And she's like, she, it, it, it's very hard for her to take that conceptual leap, whereas getting pointing to her to an app is never, has never been a problem. She, and I think that a lot of people are like that.
Alex Lindsay (00:37:21):
You think that the reason that they, that they don't make it an app is to make, is to keep it a little hidden so that if you don't know what you're doing, you're not like exposing the app, the, the passwords all the time. Like, you know, like, like opening 'em up and I, it feels like they're, they, they do that to kind of like, Hey, if you don't know what you're doing, we're gonna keep it hidden and just kind of do it in the back end. And if you do know what you're doing, then we're gonna let you play with it. But you could, you know, do damage if you're starting to kind. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:37:43):
Why would you ever need to open It doesn't, isn't the auto feel sufficient?
Jason Snell (00:37:48):
Well, I mean, there are some sites where autofill doesn't work. Right. Right. And I find myself using the one password app all the time to dig in there, plus the idea that you could leave yourself potentially like secure notes or just look up a password or whatever it is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I, I agree. There's a, there's a paternalistic kind of side to this, which is like, look, all we're doing is make it calling people on this. Maybe we don't want them to do that. And I think that I, I can see that argument. I just feel like at this point, it, it's so important that everybody use a password manager that getting in their faces with an app. I mean, there's a TIPS app, right? Like getting in their faces with a password app and saying, you need to use this for your passwords. I think they should, I think it's probably better that they do that.
Alex Lindsay (00:38:27):
I think the concern is that someone, people will start doing things like, let me cut and paste that password and text it to you or email it to you or whatever. And it's, you're more likely to do when you know where the passwords are and if you're, you do know where they are, well, you know, like, you know, but if it's doing it in the background and kind of make, making it ha you know and you don't really understand it and just gets you into what you need to get to as a kind of an average user or, you know, starter, it kind of protects you from yourself. And if you are geeky enough to get into the settings, they think, well maybe you're, you've graduated to the point where you're, you can start cutting and password cutting and pasting and sending. So
Leo Laporte (00:39:00):
Just for people who are listening and going, what are they talking about in settings where you go to passwords, where you would think normally what you're doing is setting password settings. There's actually a list of all your passwords and and you can go there, you can create new passwords there. Just, it looks just like a regular password manager. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (00:39:17):
And there's, and there's also the key chain access app that most people don't use because this is a iOS nerd. Ios No, I'm sorry. It's, yeah, that's fine. Agree. Agree. Yeah, I agree. It's necessary in Macko West as well. I, we, this a
Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
University. I mean, I, I do open keychain and that is an app. Right, right. You know,
Andy Ihnatko (00:39:37):
It's, it's definitely necessary on iOS.
Leo Laporte (00:39:38):
Yeah. Yeah. I like, I like your first proposal, which is essentially maybe Apple made a mistake separating iOS and iPad OS essentially. Shouldn't all the features of iOS be common on both platforms or No?
Andy Ihnatko (00:39:53):
They kind of are,
Leo Laporte (00:39:54):
Aren't they? Not widgets. Not well, widgets are, what is it that you said they should have? Jason, you had some, you had a list of things.
Jason Snell (00:40:02):
Oh, well, I mean, on between iPad and, and iPhone, right? Yes. Like
Leo Laporte (00:40:07):
They iPad OS features back. Yeah.
Jason Snell (00:40:10):
That's, that's the biggest thing. The Mac at this point, the Mac and the iPad are kind of in lockstep, which I think is a, I think is a good thing. And I know people, a lot of Mac users who are cranky old Mac users, which Andy and I are too, I think, although maybe not as cranky. Remember like, like, it's like, ah, but it's not a Mac feature. It's this thing I imported from the iPad. But like, do you remember the 2010s when the iPad and the iPhone got all these new features in the Mac? Either didn't get it for a year or two or got it, but only about half the features and the other half of the features just didn't work. And that doesn't happen anymore. So I'm, I'm very happy that the Mac and the iPad kind of move forward in lockstep. Now that's pretty good, but I'm not happy that the iPhone gets these features and they're like, yeah, we could have brought it to the iPad, but nah, we didn't this year. It's literally the same operating system. But yeah, we No, you don't get it. You don't get those customizable lock screens and lock screen widgets, so just Yeah. You know, wait a year maybe. So
Leo Laporte (00:41:02):
Cable Sasser is the panic guy. Yeah. Panic software guy. Apple passwords deserve an app. It's in his blog at cable. C A B E l.com. It's funny that they have all of this. They even have, don't they have two FA in it too?
Jason Snell (00:41:21):
Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:41:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So he's, he's got some tweets. Do you know what Apple should do? Build a two A authenticator in iOS? It's already there. <Laugh>, how about a password manager? It's, sorry, <laugh> already there. So I agree with cable and I agree with you. Maybe they will, maybe they will. The problem is right now it's not cross platform. So if you're an Android user, it's not gonna do you any good windows. You can, right. Because doesn't the iCloud app now give you access to passwords and windows? I think it does.
Jason Snell (00:41:54):
Hmm. Yes. Yeah. In fact, it's, it's more standalone than it is on the Mac or iOS.
Leo Laporte (00:41:59):
Isn't that funny?
Andy Ihnatko (00:42:00):
Yeah. But but that is, that is a reason why I think that users should have access to that sort of stuff. Because sometimes you do have to, you, you, you the number of times where I've got my password for something on one password manager, but I need to use it on another device or on another desktop that doesn't have cross compatibility. Yeah. Then I do actually need to have <laugh>. I do need, need to actually see the, the, the 18 digit random passcode <laugh> that I had my password manager generate for me, because I'm not gonna remember that stuff. Yeah. So I, I give, give, give you know, you know, my consistent belief is that give people the ability to get themselves in trouble, but try to steer them away from it. But don't like say that. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not gonna let you see that. I don't trust you with to enough to let you see what your own passwords are. So you'll you'll thank me later. Like, no, I won't. I'll be angry at you now.
Leo Laporte (00:42:47):
<Laugh>, Mr. Cook is, has gone to China again. He he is in China praising Apple's symbiotic relationship with China. <Laugh>,
Andy Ihnatko (00:43:00):
What a bad choice of words.
Leo Laporte (00:43:01):
Oh, oh, lord of a, but it's, it is kind of true, right? At least until he can move all that manufacturing to Vietnam or India for Brazil,
Alex Lindsay (00:43:11):
Oftentimes when you're getting ready to leave is when you're the nicest <laugh>. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:43:14):
So, so I think we love you guys spy. I think
Alex Lindsay (00:43:17):
Apple apples get lot
Andy Ihnatko (00:43:18):
Moves
Alex Lindsay (00:43:19):
And
Leo Laporte (00:43:20):
Tim's saying, it's not me, it's you. No, it's not you, it's me. That's what he's saying.
Alex Lindsay (00:43:25):
I think it's, it's a face-saving thing for China. While Apple, you know, apple's moving a bunch of stuff out of it. People are panicked. The Chinese government is not something you want cross, especially when all your eggs are in their basket. So I think that him showing up and talking, saying great things, while he's gonna continue to diversify, I think probably makes it business sense.
Leo Laporte (00:43:44):
He's at the China Development Forum in Beijing, which financial time says the country's version of Davos. First time since the pandemic began, we could not be more excited. Cook said Apple and China grew together. And so this has been a symbiotic kind of relationship. Who, who is the fungus and who is the tree? That's the question.
Jason Snell (00:44:09):
<Laugh>. Well, if it's true symbiosis, right? They're both, they're both bigger for this. I, I think that's a lot less weird than you might think because what he's saying is Apple needs China and China needs apple. China has benefited from Apple, and Apple has benefited from China. And that is different than I think what is sometimes portrayed, which is that it's a one way street. That Apple has made it big by being in China, but China could cut 'em off whenever they want. And I, you know, I think that there is a case to be made that China has benefited from having Apple in its factories and also having Apple products available in its stores where people in China can buy Apple products, which are good and well liked products. So it is a symbiotic relationship, but yeah, it's also don't feel bad. Ye yes. We're, I mean we talked about this before, but like it's, we are using the pandemic shutdowns as a good pretext to say, oh, we need to diversify our global reach. But, but, but not because we don't like you. It's because we just need diversification in general. When the truth is, it's, you know, it's also let's not have everything in China.
Alex Lindsay (00:45:17):
Not because we don't like you, but because you're acting crazy. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (00:45:20):
Yeah, <laugh>. We're
Alex Lindsay (00:45:21):
Trying to know that
Leo Laporte (00:45:22):
It's not you, it's me. Yeah. It's just
Andy Ihnatko (00:45:25):
Like we wish China the best of luck in its future endeavors.
Leo Laporte (00:45:28):
Meanwhile, China, what they do next, China in the shape of chairman of National Development and Reform Commission, UNG Shaji said apple needs to strengthen its data of security and personal privacy protection. <Laugh>, you need to do a better job. Yep.
Andy Ihnatko (00:45:48):
Yeah. That, that was, that was the only quote that we got from this meeting between a lot of this, a lot of the stuff that's coming out of this is group meetings between Tim Cook and other like C-suite executives with with, with China's China represent representatives. I think that the Reuters report has this as a one-on-one. I'm looking at I'm looking at the original Rory's report and yeah, this, but this is consistent with what they've been saying to pretty much every Western company that when they talk about you, you we you need to tighten up your security. You need to be better, better, better controlled. A lot of it is truly giving your users better security than you're giving them in the United States. But a lot of them is that we have our own data protection practices that require you to have more of your data transacted by and landed in China if you're being, if you're operating through Chinese citizens. And so basically their idea is that the more data we can see, the more secure, more secure your data is. So there's a little bit of both going on there.
Leo Laporte (00:46:44):
Yeah. The two sides exchange, and, and you're right, Reuters didn't say, but they implied that it was a one-on-one when Ji emit with Apple CEO yesterday, but they didn't exactly say two sides. The statement from China's Ministry of Commerce says, the two sides exchanged views on issues such as Apple's development in China and the stabilization of the industrial and supply chains. Do you think behind closed doors, Tim kind of took 'em by the lapels and said, what <laugh>?
Alex Lindsay (00:47:18):
I do. I do not, no, I don't think that, I don't think Apple's gonna, I don't, I don't.
Leo Laporte (00:47:22):
Apple, he struck their hair and said he's
Jason Snell (00:47:24):
Too good at diplomat for him. He's too
Alex Lindsay (00:47:25):
Good. I, I, I think that he's just, he has no interest. I think in having any interaction with China, that would be tense. Like, it's just like, Hey, we're doing great. How do we move this forward? How do we do these things? Yeah. I know that we're moving into the country. We have to, you know, diversify. And they're, and it's easy to go into places like India that require, you know, Brazil and India require the production to be in there. Right. But, you know, Vietnam is a little, is a little different. And, and I think that, you know, China's gotta, China will become more and more paranoid about this because everybody's trying to figure this out. Right. <laugh>,
Jason Snell (00:47:54):
Tim Koch is a supreme politician, I think, when it comes to China. And I know during the, during the last couple years of the Trump administration, people said that he was basically the US ambassador to China in some ways. Like he was the, he was the one that the Chinese talked to the most. But like, obviously he's got a, a real in diplomatic challenge here. Like Alex said, you wanna, you wanna make it clear that they're not losing face, right? Because they know what's going on. Right? They know that Apple's concerned that if there's a US China rupture, that Apple's entire business is gonna be destroyed. And they, they know that. So they know that Apple needs to show some diversification, even if it's just for the sake of Wall Street feeling more comfortable. But Tim Cook also knows that China doesn't want to feel like Apple is abandoning them. And so you play a game where everybody says the right thing and make sure that everybody feels good about what's going on when we know what's going on, which is Apple's not leaving China, but Apple realizes it can't just be in China. And so, you know, here we are.
Andy Ihnatko (00:48:51):
Yeah. And they're also giving apple's, also giving something valuable to China, which is these very, very public and enthusiastic statements of support. The economy in China is, I mean, it's, it's having problems just like everybody else is having problems. The middle class is getting a lot more antsy than they were just five years ago. Not just with the lockdowns, but with the state of the economy itself. So, just like it was wise for Tim to allow Donald Trump to have a massive like, campaign slash press event at an Apple factory in Texas, it's very much to Tim's and Apple's advantage to make sure that you have these statements in line in which you're not simply waffling. You're not just simply, you're having open Franken, Franken Open communications, that you're being one of the speakers at this conference, and that you are 100% enthusiastic about the partnership that you've forged with this, with this friendly nation that you intend to keep on thriving strong together, hand in hand marching forward until kingdom come. So this is just, I feel
Jason Snell (00:49:47):
Like I should be humming patriotic music behind that as Andy Exactly. As Andy speaks.
Andy Ihnatko (00:49:51):
You're, I mean, you're, you're, but, but yeah. I mean, Jason, you're absolutely right. I don't, I don't know any b It's, it's amazing that you have two CEOs back to back at Apple with so completely opposite set of skills in this regard. You don't, you would not consider the word diplomatic when it comes to Steve Jobs in any way, shape, or form <laugh>. And yet the success that that Tim Cook has had is largely because he is able to simply, let's keep, let's keep my, my poker face. Let's, here is, here is a tactical relationship that is very, very good for both of us. Let's find a way to make sure this is a strong relationship where, where nobody's talking to Trump. Let, let's make sure that Apple is talking to Trump. If nobody's talking to China, let's make sure that at least Apple is talking to China. I wonder how deep that goes because it's, it's, it's a very, it's, it is one of the greatest assets that that Tim Koch can provide his Rolodex and his handshake. It really, really moves a lot of money across the, across the boardroom.
Alex Lindsay (00:50:51):
And I think, I think that, you know, apple wouldn't be here without Steve Jobs and it wouldn't have grown to where it is now without Tim Cook <laugh>. Like, it's, it's a, it's, oh yeah. You know, I think that those, those very two very different things. And I, I agree with Andy that it was just an everyone here, I think, but I think that it's just, I don't think Steve could've gotten the company to the size that it is now without, you know, Tim Cook is what did that, you know? Yeah. And maybe we've had another breakthrough product, I don't know. Yeah. But maybe, but, but the, the skill that he's had, Tim Cook would've told a lot of people to go fly a kite or Steve
Jason Snell (00:51:24):
Cook. Steve Jobs would've. Yeah. Tim, I'm sorry. I'm amazed when the people say, oh, well Tim Cook's legacy is the Apple watcher. Maybe it'll be the VR headsets like Tim Cook's legacy. Have you, I mean, maybe I'm special because I look at those quarterly reports every quarter. But let me tell you, Tim Cook's legacy is very clear. Apple is many, many times the size. It was when Steve Jobs died. Yeah. And Steve Jobs wasn't that engaged in that part of the company for several years before that. It, it, that is Tim Cook's legacy is he has made Apple Scale Yes. Enormously and, and done it using, I mean, yes, the iPhone's been successful, but he's played that success and done a bunch of stuff on the operation side and changed the way Apple markets its products. And like, that's his legacy is that Apple is not even remotely the company. It was when he took over
Andy Ihnatko (00:52:08):
100%. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not even sure that he would've green lit something like a car. I'm not sure that he would've been made as big a push into a lot of the product lines that they're pushing into right now. Cuz these are, it's, I've, I've, it's, it's weird that Apple's doing so many, so much, so many projects that are really speculative in nature whose payoff is by no means assured or even <laugh> or even suggested by the work that they're doing. So yeah, I think that's 100%. I
Alex Lindsay (00:52:35):
Think Apple though, does at, at the scale that it's working at, it can't, you know, like if you look at what happened before Apple showed up with Nokia, you just felt like the, their cell phone business was gonna last forever. And then it was gone in a couple years. Like it was just, it just that fast. And so I think that Apple still has to keep on playing with the next big thing and trying to figure out what something that can replace the size of the iPhone when it comes to revenue. And it may, may not be ar may not be cars, but they have to be thinking about those things because you know, that, that, I think anybody who looks back at what happened when the phone the iPhone was released realizes how quickly something can turn in a market. Because that for Motorola, for Nokia, for everyone that was Armageddon, you know, and they didn't even see, and they didn't, they didn't see it coming.
(00:53:21):
They thought that it was foolish by Apple to do it. They thought there was no chance that, that, I remember these quotes of like, Apple's gonna learn the big, what it's like with the big boys. And same thing we saw with watches <laugh>, you know, like, it was like, Apple's gonna learn this is a lot more complicated than they think it is. And, and then suddenly they, you know, they rolled into it, but that market changed so quickly and just turned over. And so I think Apple has to keep on doing hard things. They have to keep on figuring that out. You know, they I think there's easier wins than, than ar and cars. I think that, again, we've talked about fact, I think that they just built some of the home kit stuff. They probably add another 15 billion a year to just selling thermo ther thermostats and, and locks and cameras. You know, like, it's just like, cuz a lot of people just buy those because still none of them are working
Leo Laporte (00:54:05):
<Laugh>
Alex Lindsay (00:54:06):
Maybe someday.
Leo Laporte (00:54:06):
Do you think there, so that's interesting contention that there's stuff that Tim Cook doesn't wish, you know, wishes Apple weren't doing, but can't stop. He, he doesn't have a hundred percent control over that. He can't say, no, I didn't wanna do that. No, let's not do that.
Alex Lindsay (00:54:22):
I think he would kill it. I think he would kill it. He didn't want, if he didn't wanna do it. I, I think that, I think that they, I I think both of those are pretty, there's going to be a self-driving car, electric car, or just even electric car, but most likely a self-driving car in the next decade that a lot of people are gonna start using. And it doesn't have to be the, they don't have to own the market to, to make a lot of money doing that. And it's
Leo Laporte (00:54:40):
Just prudent to do that work. They have the money to do it. It's prudent to do the work. Right. And it's, it's a good bet.
Alex Lindsay (00:54:47):
Worth thinking, hedging the, the market. Because the problem is with, with both ar and with cars the, the, the, the development time to get it right is so long. Yeah. They, if they working on, they, they could, they could not have a company left if they, if one of those, you know, like by the time they figured out how to do it. So you have to kind of play that, play that game along, unless you're just gonna buy into it into the market. And that's not what Apple wants to do. They wanna do it their way and they don't wanna buy something they didn't, I mean, they did it with Beats, but they really just needed iTunes or they just needed music and they needed, and they didn't, I mean the, the headphones didn't mean anything to them.
Leo Laporte (00:55:20):
When when Satya Nadela took over at Microsoft, he wasted no time to kill some things he just didn't want to do, including quite famously a product they were about to reveal. Yeah. And he just said, no, no, put that back in the warehouse. They'd already made them. So, you know, it's not unheard of for a guy to come in, but I guess it'd be different though for Tim, given that Steve had just passed and it was like, you know he's got Johnny Ive to deal with. It might have been politically difficult for him to say to do the same kind of size wielding. Anyway, let's take a break. I wanna take a little break cuz I do wanna talk about the headsets. I know we're kind of endlessly talking about that, but we should. There's a new Apple Long announced finally out Apple product we can talk about in just a bit.
(00:56:07):
And I left out something, I forgot that they updated Ventura too. So if there's anything to say about that it sounds like it's much of the same stuff that they updated with 16.4 on iOS. But we can talk about that. But first a word from us about sponsorship. Hey everybody. Leo LaPorte here. I'm the founder and one of the hosts at the TWiT Podcast Network. I wanna talk to you a little bit about what we do here at TWiT because I think it's unique and I think for anybody who is bringing a product or a service to a tech audience, you need to know about what we do here at TWiT. We've built an amazing audience of engaged, intelligent, affluent listeners who listen to us and trust us when we recommend a product. Our mission statement is TWiT, is to build a highly engaged community of tech enthusiasts.
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(01:01:37):
Apple announced it was gonna do this. When did it announce that? Like in the fall Right? A while ago. It's finally launching. Oh, it's funny because there is a lot of people saying B N P L buy now, pay later is not consumer friendly, is not good. Consumers may like it, but it gets them into financial trouble. The way Apple's doing it maybe is not so dangerous. You can use a service pretty short. It's like six weeks. Yeah, six weeks <laugh>, it's fif loans of 50 to a thousand dollars, I presume to buy a Apple product. But then you have four payments over the course of six weeks. That's not exactly a long term to pay it back with no interest or fees.
Andy Ihnatko (01:02:23):
Yeah. Maybe that's how they're hoping to not be hoodwinking their customers in coming, going underwater. You'd be really, really scared if they said, you got two years to pay. Here's the apr. Yeah. now you're basically getting people to pay $3,000 for <laugh>. Looks like they can't afford laptop. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's, it's a I mean, it's, it's, it would be interest, it would be an interesting thing if it's like I know that you're gonna be buying a phone sometime in the next three months. Why don't I know that you're wi you're in the three months in which you're saving up for it. We don't want to take the risk that you may buy a different phone or you might buy a different laptop. So we will let, we will let you buy it now. And then at the point where you were playing to buy it anyway, you'll be able to pay it off.
(01:03:05):
 As, as usual, I wish I really knew what Apple's end game was for, for banking. It doesn't seem like a, if I, I, the only thing, the only way it makes sense for me is if they see this as a way to sell more Max sell more hardware, sell more services. Because if they really do wanna get into the credit game, that's a scary place for them to be. That's so anti antithetical to a lot of the historical points of view that Apple has had. I don't, I don't, I don't see them being being a money lender. I don't see them being a, a rent collector. I don't see them being rent, like renting a sofa <laugh> and then taking it back eight months later and leaving people on the hook for $5,000 worth the payments. It's, and those are the things you sort of associate with these other credit card issuers. So I hope that they don't get, I hope they, I hope they, they don't wind up in another air tag situation where I'm, I'm sure it gives them nothing but bad press.
Leo Laporte (01:03:56):
I'm sure a Goldman Sachs is underwriting it. Right. But yeah, the Verge found a little fine print. You may be interested to hear, according to Apple users can apply for this loan within the Apple Wallet quote with no impact on their credit end quote. But the company notes in the fine print that the pay later loan and payment history quote may be reported to credit bureaus and impact their credit. So yeah, it will impact your credit.
Alex Lindsay (01:04:21):
I I think that they, I think that the issue there is that they said it originally because I think that's probably what they believed. And then what's happened is, is that that's not,
Leo Laporte (01:04:28):
You can't do it. That's not how it works.
Jason Snell (01:04:30):
Yeah. Or, or the check doesn't, but if you fail to pay it absolutely. Does something like that. I don't know. I mean, Andy, I I, I totally see your point, but I, I feel like what Apple is doing here is actually a different quintessentially Apple thing, which is they're looking at the success of buy now pay later services with certain age groups and saying, well, we could let somebody else administer that program or we could just Well, and I do it ourselves and control it all, which is a very Apple thing to do. But I, I see your point. Like it is, it is a weird choice too. Maybe it was one of the easier things for them to do, but Apple doing, you know, being its own bank and doing all these other things that we've heard rumored, this is a strange sort of thing to roll out.
(01:05:13):
But, you know, then again, I think Apple's found that it disrupting the financial industry and the banking industry is a lot harder than disrupting the cell phone industry was because what Apple Pay just launched in South Korea, I think just this week or this month. And that like Apple Pay <laugh> in South Korea in a major market, and yet it, and it's limited to like one card in South Korea. So there's all sorts of, I don't know, i i o to be a fly on the wall of the Apple Financial team and hear about what they choose to prioritize or what they choose to launch just because it's the thing that they could manage to get, I
Leo Laporte (01:05:50):
Bet there's a full building of lawyers because financial and banking regulations only one <laugh>, maybe a couple of buildings. These are, this is complicated stuff. I know because I watched Billions in Showtime and I remember he really wanted to be a bank in all of these. It's
Jason Snell (01:06:05):
Called Tama. Yeah. It's like, wait a second,
Leo Laporte (01:06:08):
<Laugh>.
Alex Lindsay (01:06:08):
Well, I think that this is a really, I mean, I think if you look at, I still think that if you look at Apple Pay, you know, they let somebody else administer the, that this is Apple Financial Services or it's a sub, they have their own thing at they're market.
Leo Laporte (01:06:20):
I think it's Goldman, right? Goldman's probably.
Alex Lindsay (01:06:22):
No, no, no.
Leo Laporte (01:06:23):
Apple's is handling it by itself. This is,
Jason Snell (01:06:25):
This is their pilot project of their own be
Leo Laporte (01:06:27):
Their own bank. This is by Aary called Apple Financing. L l c,
Alex Lindsay (01:06:32):
Limited liability, <laugh>,
Leo Laporte (01:06:34):
Very careful middle liability. So
Alex Lindsay (01:06:37):
But I think that the, and Apple has the money to back this up. They, you know, it'll be interesting to see there's still, apple is one of the only companies in the world and it would be very, like, I I, is it one of the only companies in the world that could build a closed loop system where they're offering you credit and then, you know, offering people savings all inside of the same pipeline and they, it just feels like they're sneaking up on it. You know, like they're just adding one more little thing. Let's figure this out for a little while. Let's one more little thing figure
Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
Out, this is very, at some point very slow though toe in this is only available iPhones and iPads and to a random selection of users.
Alex Lindsay (01:07:14):
But this is, again, this is, this is a very, it's a very complicated thing. And I think Apple is, I still feel like Apple is, is just kind of figuring this out slowly. Cuz they know how, how dangerous and deep the water is. But there's a lot of people that are not, you know, there's a lot of people that just don't care about their bank <laugh>. Like, you know, and I think that Apple looks at that like, you know, they're, the banks do, don't do what they do very well. Apple thinks they, it can do it better. It builds a very tight relationship. And if you look at larger financial things like cars and other things like that, being able to provide that financing as well as provide savings opportunities to, to make that all work is not something like in, you know, typically banks can't afford to do that kind of, I mean, banks we just saw recently, <laugh> and having large deposits are not necessarily the safest thing in the world. Smaller deposits are not very profitable. But if you're just cutting out one or 2% of interest or taking that one or 2% of interest out of it, out of the system, it could be very profitable for a company like Apple. I mean, it could be billions and billions of dollars that they get kind of by cutting everybody else out slowly. And, and so I, I think that I I it still feels like Apple is just kind of, I know it sounds crazy, but it looks like they're really sneaking up on this horse <laugh>. So,
Leo Laporte (01:08:32):
So despite the fact that Apple has a new subsidiary the company partnered with the B N P L program, MasterCard installments to enable it while quote Goldman Sachs is the issuer of the MasterCard payment credentials. So it's a little bit of Apple, a little bit of other things as well.
Alex Lindsay (01:08:55):
The easiest way to do it, it's the easiest way to, to dip your toe into that. Oh,
Leo Laporte (01:08:58):
Absolutely. I really think there probably is a debate within Apple about, yeah, there's a lot of profit here, but there's also a lot of risk, both reputationally and otherwise. Consumer financial protection Bureau identified several areas of risk of consumer harm in B N P L programs, including inconsistent consumer protections, a prevalence of data harvesting and a risk of debt accumulation. Which of course is always the risk with all of these, by the way. Good job Emma Roth at the Verge on her reporting on this a lot of inside stuff. So this, you know, and this makes me wonder also about the savings account because when 16 before 16, 4 4 came out, when it was still in beta, there was a lot of conversation about stuff in the code referring to kind of accounts there. 16 four had references to routing and account numbers, current balance, interest earned data management funds available for withdrawal and more. I, we didn't, have we seen anything in 16.4 the release that in indicates Apple's savings is happening imminently or it still hasn't happened, right? I can't still, still, I don't think so. Still don't have that high yield savings account. I I know a Alex, you've said for a long time Apple should be a bank.
Alex Lindsay (01:10:19):
I'm saying they should. I'm saying they are. They're
Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
Going to, they're going to look, I
Alex Lindsay (01:10:22):
I'm, I'm saying that they should, I'm saying, I'm saying that it, that it just, I can see these trajectories and it's just Wow. It doesn't look like, why would you do any of the things you're doing if you weren't gonna become a bank? Like that's the thing is that, so if you weren't gonna become a bank, you wouldn't do any of these things. And so it just, I'm not saying that Apple should do it, I'm just saying that they could and they really look like they are five years
Leo Laporte (01:10:43):
Ago. Right now they're just doing what merchants do. They're not doing well. The savings account would be what a bank does. Of
Alex Lindsay (01:10:49):
Course. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
Yeah. And, and Apple paid to a degree that you could pay others. You can't pay bills with it yet. Right. I mean, I pay my hairdresser with it.
Alex Lindsay (01:10:59):
I pay, I pay the same hairdresser with it. Yes, that's
Leo Laporte (01:11:01):
Right. Apple Pay. We have the same hairdresser,
Alex Lindsay (01:11:03):
<Laugh>. So, but, but the but I keep a lot of, I keep a bunch of money in Apple Pay all the time. Cause I just, that's kind of my,
Leo Laporte (01:11:10):
I oh
Alex Lindsay (01:11:11):
My God, all the time. I don't have to, you know, know. And so I
Leo Laporte (01:11:13):
$1,738 in my wallet, <laugh>
Andy Ihnatko (01:11:16):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>,
Leo Laporte (01:11:18):
That acu, that's cuz I accumulate, you know, one, two and 3% when I make purchases.
Jason Snell (01:11:23):
Wow. I transfer some of it back to your bank. I
Leo Laporte (01:11:25):
Might take that back. Is it insured? Is it F D I C insured? Is this like being in Silicon Valley Bank? Hmm. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (01:11:36):
So apparent. So apparently the pay Apple Pay later starts today to, as we said, like offer, they're making offers to select users. Did we mention that that's loans of $50 to a thousand dollars? So we're really talking about can't af can't afford, can't afford, can't afford the, those air, those AirPods We'll help you with that. Yeah. Can't afford not the best iPhone, but a iPhone will help you with that.
Leo Laporte (01:12:01):
It makes sense. In that case. It's a merchant feature. It's just like layaway, right? It's something Yeah. Merchants do as a convenience to help sell stuff, especially since it's not six months, it's six weeks.
Jason Snell (01:12:10):
So the argument is that Gen Z you know, likes this sort of thing. I'm not sure I buy that argument. I think the more, the argument is Gen Z is young and doesn't have a lot of cash right now and wants those AirPods and so we can close the deal by splitting the cost over three payments two weeks apart or whatever. Like, that's the story here. And, and it is, you know, it makes me uncomfortable because it feels actually like, it's probably not what it's being sold as, which is oh, a new way to pay that a new generation likes and probably more the same old story, which is, it's a financial instrument designed to get as much money extracted from 20 somethings who don't have a big bank account as possible.
Alex Lindsay (01:12:49):
And I think a lot of it is that they go for the AirPod Pro instead of the AirPod because it's, you know, they can figure that out. It's, it's less of like, they're, they're taking a big bite, but they're like, oh, I'll buy something that's $50 or more. I can't do that right now, but if I split it up, I can spread it out.
Leo Laporte (01:13:02):
Danger, children danger. I don't, I encourage my kids not to do that, but <laugh> as I'm sure most parents do we just told Michael, you know, he just got his first credit card. We said pay it off every month. Don't run a balance. That's, that's a recipe for disaster. And I know that from personal experience. I mean, I got to a point in my thirties where I hadn't, I don't know, 20 or $30,000 in credit card debt at that point. The interest is so high that you're real almost not paying off the credit card. It just goes and goes and goes. It's not a good thing. Save your pennies. But see, that's what I'm doing now. My Apple wallet, when I get to $3,000, I can buy the new M three MacBook Pro
Andy Ihnatko (01:13:48):
<Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (01:13:50):
I just realized I'm saving.
Alex Lindsay (01:13:52):
I did try to, I will say that I, I don't, I think the cap is, I think the transfer cap, I believe is about two grand on Apple Pay only because I tried to buy, I tried, I I went to buy something from a friend of mine for six grand or five grand and it, and Apple Pay was like, no, no
Leo Laporte (01:14:07):
Kidding, no kidding. Are
Alex Lindsay (01:14:08):
You kidding? Transfer $5,000 over Apple Pay. And they were
Leo Laporte (01:14:11):
Can you transfer that money into your bank account though?
Alex Lindsay (01:14:14):
Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:14:14):
Yeah. They don't
Alex Lindsay (01:14:16):
Transfer your money. You can't your bank account into Apple Pay. You can go send it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I did. Cause I moved it from my bank account to Apple Pay, and then I tried to just send him Apple Pay. You
Leo Laporte (01:14:26):
Can't just do it in one transaction scanner
Alex Lindsay (01:14:27):
That I was getting. And
Leo Laporte (01:14:28):
Yeah, you have to do well Venmos like that. You have to do a thousand bucks at a time.
Alex Lindsay (01:14:32):
Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:14:36):
Oh, at Apple, there's, according to the New York Times rare dis descent over a new product, think of the New York Times is a little late on this, frankly, trip Mickel and Brian X Gen, the company's expected to unveil an augmented reality headset in a few months. Some employees wonder if the device makes sense for Apple. Didn't Germin have this story like three weeks ago?
Alex Lindsay (01:14:58):
Financial Times had it last
Leo Laporte (01:15:00):
Week, I think last week. Okay. So, so Trip and Brian are finally getting around to it.
Andy Ihnatko (01:15:07):
But they had to I think, I think the, the information about the, the demo in front of like how executives, the
Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Hundred people Yes. That was Gurman, right? Yeah, yeah. A hundred Apple. Yes. The top 100 Apple executives came to the Steve Jobs theater last week to see, not for the first time, but to see this new product, which Apple will presumably be offering for $3,000 in June.
Andy Ihnatko (01:15:30):
Yeah. That's it. That, that's the only, the scary thing about it was that the description of the video, it was was they, they showed a video that was along the lines of like a, a promo video. And so the video showed a man in a London taxi donning an augmented reality headset and calling his wife in San Francisco, would you like to come to London? He asked two people who saw the video that soon the couple were sharing the sites of London through the husbands always. Oh Lord. So that is awful <laugh>. I
Alex Lindsay (01:15:58):
I I will say that I don't, I think that something got convoluted there. I know that that's what they reported, but that happened something almost identical like that was reported to have happened in 2018. Yeah. Like where they didn't even have the, the device yet. And, and Johnny I was still like pushing this, you know, and there was a big thing. So I think that
Leo Laporte (01:16:18):
It's Oh yeah. In fact, no, no. The time says this was five years ago. It says that. Yeah. So when Apple had a corporate retreat in Carmel Valley about, about five years ago to discuss the next major product, Johnny Ive right captivated a room with a concept video. That was five years ago.
Alex Lindsay (01:16:33):
So that was, I think that was in a different time when they had a different expectation of what, of what they were gonna be able to get done in five years. They're, they're not gonna get that right now. You know, and I think that they were trying to create some imagination there, <laugh>
Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
That didn't Well, but also I mean, I, as time goes by, I think we're less and less. Does that sound appealing? Is that a feature you can't wait to get? No. So that you can get into taxi? There
Alex Lindsay (01:16:57):
Are a lot of features, you know, and, and I have to admit that I I, I have done a lot of AR and VR work, you know, and yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:17:04):
You're our expert. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (01:17:06):
So I can tell you that there's a lot of things that'll be exciting. One of the problems that Oculus had and you know, we were part of the training team for the Oculus Camera <laugh>. So, so we were, so, I, so I definitely know a lot about the capture and the process and everything else. And the, the, one of the real challenges with Oculus in general was the frame rate wasn't high enough to be compelling. And the development process was really hard and the video acquisition was very hard. And so everything was hard to create content for it. It, it, it still is. I mean, I dunno if it's as, as much anymore. I haven't done it for Oculus for a while, but the the content development process was very difficult. The frame rate was too low, the resolution was too low, and they burned up all the people that were really excited about it.
(01:17:52):
Yeah. With something that just really wasn't there. It was like three 20 by two 40 video. Now, what I can say is that when you, well, a lot of there are headsets that, you know, haven't been released, <laugh> that have much higher frame rate and much higher resolution. And you, you know, you can't gauge what the success of the current one is without seeing the ones. I don't, and I don't know what Apple's gonna do, but without, but with, if the frame rate is over 95 frames a second, let's just say 120 frames per second. And if the, if the video is 6K per eye or more, it's a much different experience than anything, anything people have seen, seen up until now. And so if Apple's able to, to, to do that, it's gonna be a really interesting thing. The other real problem has been development and Apple's been building up all the U S D Z and all the AR tools and all the other stuff, because it was really, it was only a handful of us were doing it very well when it came to like, live interaction with Oculus, because it was really a heavy lift.
(01:18:49):
You're in Unity or, or in Unreal and you're building these things out and it's not, it's not trivial to put those things together. And so I think that that was a real, you you, there was a just not a, they built a huge canal with no water, you know? And so, so I think that, that there are a lot of challenges. And the biggest thing with Oculus was not the biggest thing, but one of the big things is configuration when you put the headset on is really important. When you put it on, it has to do something and you have to understand where you're going. And a lot of people had a problem with that. You put it on and now you're in some state and you're trying to figure out how to explain it to somebody on how to do X, Y, and Z.
(01:19:23):
One of the advantages that Apple has is that they have a phone that can connect to it. They have an Apple TV that can connect to it. They have a lot of things that can say you're in a state at your Apple tv, let's say you're watching mls, would you like to stand next to the goal for this next little bit? Throw your, throw your headset on and boom, you're there. You know? And, and I think that, and they can do that because they're the broadcaster for mls. They can tell them, they can put cameras wherever they want. They don't have to, they don't have to negotiate with anybody. They don't have to. They're gonna say, we're gonna put a camera here and here and here, and we're gonna be able to give you that. But it's not, people are always like, well, how are you gonna do that for hours?
(01:19:56):
You're not gonna, maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's a minute. Maybe it's three minutes of I'm gonna ex have a, a bigger experience in that moment. And I think that there's a lot of there's a lot of places that, you know, when we were doing a lot of the stuff that we've, that I've worked on hasn't made it to the public. But I can tell you there were a lot of things that we were like, oh, this, we would do this all the time. It was just expensive and hard to do, and it wasn't ready for prime time because the technology wasn't fast enough to do it. But I think that there's a lot, I mean, when people say there's, there's no, there's no solution or there's nothing people want to do with ar we've only seen very, very small and rough versions of, of what's there.
(01:20:36):
 I think that, I think there's a lot of really interesting things that people are really gonna be interested in to, to play with as that rolls out. And I think that the biggest mistake Apple will make if they don't do, if they don't execute it, is funding development of content. Like they have to go full out. They blew it with books, you know, books. They went to Pearson and gave them money to do something stupid. Yeah. You know, and it was completely a disaster. And they didn't build the tools that were necessary for books to be successful. Like, they could have designed something that was way beyond books and that that's not what they got. So if they, if they can, if they can if they develop, if they really fund, you know, I think that Unreal has done, I mean, epic has done an amazing job with their, their what do they call it?
(01:21:19):
Mega fund. I mean, it got every, everyone stopped thinking about anything else and started developing for mega funds because they, because they could get 25, 20 $5,000 almost in, and all those are grants. They're not investments. So you can get 25,250,000, 500,000 million dollars and people are developing all the time for it. And so I think that Apple really ha, I I, you know, I I think we should be careful of saying that Apple, there's no market here. I I think there's a pretty big market here. I think that at $3,000, it's gonna be a very small market to start with, but Apple has to get user inter interface. They have to get user feedback before they go any further. They can't keep developing this in a lab with, with like 10 people using it. They have to get it out there. They have to, you know, take some scrapes. They have to like figure it out. And they ha and I think it's just smart to actually charge a lot for it so that you can have the performance that is inspiring and you're not dealing with just average people putting it on and going, I don't understand. You know, it's, it's people who are investing real money in it and getting performance that they, you just can't put into a thousand dollars headset. So I think it's gonna be interesting. I think it's gonna, I'm you,
Leo Laporte (01:22:22):
You're the bull. I'm the bear. I think this is such a waste of time and money for Apple. I, what's interesting is apparently mark Gorman's turning into a little bit of a bear, he says, with a headset, apple will have to explain to consumers why they'd wanna own such a product at all. Moreover, the device will start around three a thousand dollars. Lack of clear killer app require an external battery that will need to be replaced every couple of hours and use a design that some testers have deemed comfortable. It's also likely to launch with limited media content.
Jason Snell (01:22:53):
Yeah. I mean, show me the lie, right? I mean, he's not wrong. Although the killer app thing is weird because very rarely does a, a new hardware product launch with a killer app. You launch it and then the world provides a killer app or doesn't, and you kind of hope you, you know, build a product that will be able to enable a killer app. But other than that, he's not wrong. I, I don't, I always think of Mark Germond as the person who has good sources inside Apple, but is not being sort of like, used by Apple to get, you know, for its purposes. Although I know I said a few weeks ago that some of his reporting was doing exactly what Apple wanted, which is to show that it's being responsible when it, it's cutting back on costs and not, you know, using attrition and not filling open jobs and all of that. But this one, not just Mark's report, but a couple of of these other reports that I've seen in the last couple of weeks, I find, how shall I put this suspiciously useful to set expectations low for the Apple VR headset. It feels like, I don't know whether it apple's really behind it in a concerted way or not, but I'm seeing a lot more reports that are like, oh, but it's gonna be expensive and it's gonna be a slow build like the Apple Watch, just
Leo Laporte (01:24:09):
Not gonna
Jason Snell (01:24:10):
Be there and launch. Yeah. And like that totally serves Apple's purposes if this product is what we think, right? You don't want the hype cycle to be like, oh my God, it's the next iPhone and everybody's gonna buy one when the truth is they don't think they're gonna sell a million and it's gonna cost three grand, and they're really playing a long game. So whether the people inside Apple are just saying that to Mark Gurman and he's reflecting it, or whether there is a more concerted effort on Apple's part to lower expectations, it really has felt for me in the last couple weeks, like the expectations are all being suppressed in a lot of these reports. And that, like I said, I don't know if Apple's doing that on purpose, but it certainly serves them well to have everybody not expect this to be the thing that changes the world. Mm-Hmm. we'll, we'll see. But like, it, it just, I, my spider sense went off with this latest one where I'm like, now wait a second. How, how much ex expectation management is going on here. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder,
Andy Ihnatko (01:25:03):
I I, I, I do think, I do think that the review cycle, and this is going to be so completely predictable, where Apple's gonna announce this, and then for the first week cover of every virtual magazine everywhere saying, apple, apple, apple, oh my God, this did, but did, but Zuckerberg couldn't. The next revolution is here. Cycle two people actually get them and see that it doesn't actually do anything. Cuz now it's more, it's more truthful, but also more marketable if you're writing a story. So, oh, apple's, apple's finally fallen on its face. Look how little this thing does for 3000 damn dollars. And hey, look, I'm, we're doing a side by side comparison between them that and this $800 Oculus, and look how much better the Oculus is at the exact same tasks. And then people are gonna forget about it for about eight or nine months, and then Apple will come out with the actual thing.
Leo Laporte (01:25:48):
Okay, good. All right. We'll make a note, put a pin in that and we'll come back in eight months or 18 months or however long. And
Andy Ihnatko (01:25:55):
We'll say that, that said, it's still very speculative. The, the pro as a product, just like the car I think is speculative, they can afford
Leo Laporte (01:26:01):
It, but except that the difference is they're releasing it. So the car, it's all under the, under under wraps now they're releasing it. And I think there is gonna be a drumbeat saying Apple has fallen on his face and Tim Cook, what are you doing? There's gonna be that You're right. And inevitable. It's inevitable. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (01:26:19):
But, but I, but I think that, I think I do think that'll be, and, and you know, I believe that Apple has been probably spending a lot of time and money on developing proof, you know, that killer, not the killer apps, but apps that are going to ex really push the envelope of what the, the headset can do. I I just can't believe that they would do something for this long without working on that. The I I, I do think that there's some tests that if they show it, like if you, if you walked up, if you went, if you took this headset to, let's say the Gettysburg Battlefield <laugh>, I, I've been there a lot. So I grew up in Pennsylvania, and you go there and you walk up to pickets where pickets charge was, and you put a headset on and you, that would be cool to see what the battle looked like.
(01:26:58):
Yeah. But you get to see what the battle looked like. People are, you hear things, people are going past you, you'll want that for every historical place that you went. And it's not that you leave it on the whole time, you're not walking around the battlefield with it, but you walk over to a point, a poor little point on the ground, and you put it on and you feel like you're there. Or if you're at a sporting event and you feel like you're on the sidelines, or you feel like, and again, it's not, I don't think it needs to be. What we found in most of the work that we did is number one app, by the way, it, I don't know, watching movies is very popular on, on, you know, in, in planes on Oculus. Like, it's, it's, it's a, you know, like that's the, that's the, people just wanna put the headset on and forget everybody's there and go watch a movie.
(01:27:36):
So that's kind of sta table stakes, but a lot of use cases are five minutes or less. You know, you put 'em on, you experience something, you take 'em off. And, and I think that the thing is, is that, you know, developers will have to make a decision, but the developer, the, the, the one thing I will say is thinking, the problem with this is not, it might be some of the development issues, but the really hard part about AR and VR is that you have to learn how it works. You have to, it takes many, many cycles to learn how to build content for it. You, there's all kinds of things everybody does when they first start, and you can't do most of those things over time. And so the developers that get into it early and bet on it, and if it turns out successful, they'll be the ones that sell for hundreds of millions of dollars.
(01:28:21):
Like, like the, you know, the, the other. But it'll be, you know, that. So, so there's going to be, you know, there's gonna be the first run really makes a difference because you don't know which way is up when you start developing this content. Now they'll go grab a lot of people that have done stuff, Oculus and so on and so forth. But I think that I, I I think that, you know, it's, they're, they're, this is really aimed at the developers. This is aimed at the developers. This is aimed at industrial. This is aimed at those things. People who want to get in early and figure this out and figure out how to develop for it and figure out how to create cool things. And I think there's a lot of cool things they can create. And I think that we haven't seen most of them we did, we, we've just done done enough tests that I know there's a lot of things that I did that I would totally use if it was higher frame rate and higher resolution.
Leo Laporte (01:29:01):
All right. As I said, I'm the bear on this one. You're the bull. We'll see who's right sooner or later, mostly likely later. And that's good. It's a good caution that in, in a few months you will be hearing us laughing, mocking, throwing eggs at the Apple VR headset. Don't believe, what I
Alex Lindsay (01:29:23):
Will say is <laugh>, there's gonna be a lot of money floating around in Sandhill for shovel-ready Pro if Apple releases it, shovel-ready projects in
Leo Laporte (01:29:32):
Maybe the Bay Area, if there's anything left after all the AI investments maybe. Yeah. this is, this is the problem is that something came along all of a sudden nobody expected. And, and everybody's jumped on that bandwagon.
Andy Ihnatko (01:29:45):
Yeah. And, and the thing is, Microsoft and OpenAI and Google can all point to something that will solve problems immediately. Like, okay, you have, you've got, you've got a, you've got 5,000 emails in your inbox. 100 of them are related to a project that you've been working on with collaborating with three people on for the past four weeks. You need to summarize what you've agreed on, what the timetable is. Good luck looking through all those 5,000 emails. Or you could just simply ask our, our new Gmail enabled AI to simply say, find, find everything about this project, summarize it, and basically produce a summary for it, for it immediately. That's the, I don't, I, I don't think that that means that that's gonna be like the, the, the death of Apple by any means. But it's a, it's an interesting time for Apple to say, we've got this thing that trust us. It's awesome. It's, you can watch movies on it like an I not, not like an iPhone. Not like an iPhone. Better, better than an iPhone. Everything about this better than than
Alex Lindsay (01:30:42):
Iphone. I mean, the, like that, the example you just gave, like, that's not Apple's market. Like they don't care <laugh> like, about that market. Like, they don't, you know, like they're, they're cared.
Leo Laporte (01:30:50):
Well, the only thing right now that anybody does VR with is games. That's not, that they aren't gonna have games. They might have, you know, like Monument Valley level games, they're not gonna have AAA titles. So they're not gonna have,
Jason Snell (01:31:06):
They'll have games, they're not gonna have AAA titles, but they are gonna have games. Even if they have to pay people to make games for their platform, they will do it. Whether they're there on, you know, month one or whether it takes a while. Anyway, my vote for which, which of you is right by the way, in the great beer and bold discussion is Andy Andy's right? This h the hype cycle will happen. And I don't know if we'll know for years whether Yeah, I agree. Anybody is right or wrong. Cuz this first product is just not gonna be one worth judging cuz it's gonna be a developer kit essentially. So we're really not gonna know what regular people, regular people are not gonna buy a $3,000 thing. So it's, it's, you know, it's like step zero, square zero. We're not at square one yet. That probably won't be for another year or two.
Leo Laporte (01:31:45):
Yeah. And that's one of the things Kerman said is it's gonna be like the Apple Watch, which took a while to gain traction. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (01:31:51):
Well, ba basically not, not just to gain traction. Apple, as I said before, apple guessed wrong as to what people would think about this watch. And basically everyone after a year told us, no, no, no, you built, you gave us a fitness watch. I know you think you gave us an extension of the iPhone. I know you think you gave us the next step in mobile computing. What you gave us was a fitness watch. Thank you for the Fitness watch now improve the features of this wonderful fitness watch. Then Apple said, yes, we are geniuses. We made this wonderful fitness watch cuz stay tuned. We'll be improving the fitness watch. I I'm sure this, it's gonna be the same, same way for for for the VR set.
Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
Well, I just hope I'm still around when the VR takes off. You can all tell me how
Jason Snell (01:32:35):
Wrong. We'll stick one over your head in the home.
Leo Laporte (01:32:37):
<Laugh>
Jason Snell (01:32:37):
Leo hits here. It's, here you
Leo Laporte (01:32:40):
Go again. London <laugh>.
Jason Snell (01:32:42):
Let's do
Leo Laporte (01:32:42):
It
Andy Ihnatko (01:32:43):
Now. Of course it will, it will just be a milk carton with a, with a, with a viewmaster inside it. I'll be impressed. But, but we know it'll make you happy. You know, it's
Leo Laporte (01:32:52):
Apple's threatening to take action against staff who don't come into the office. This is just Scrooge Light. A lot of companies are doing this. You gotta show up and it's always management that wants this and workers go, God, I don't want to, I don't want to come into the office. This is from Zoe Schiffer platformer. They've, they, according to Zoe, again, it's not, you know, according to Zoe apple is tracking employee at tenants via badge records and will give employees escalating warnings if they don't come in three times a week at Apple.
Jason Snell (01:33:28):
Yeah. That's the new, that's the new reporting. Right? We already heard this last week that they were, they were leaning on people and it's like a part of their, you know, we're, we're saving money and we're making sure that you're following our rules, but the, the fact, the detail that they're doing, badge tracking. I also wonder if maybe the badge tracking is really not ratting out the employees, but is ratting out the managers, right? Like their managers are like, wink, wink nudge. We know you don't need to come in. You can, you can take Wednesday at home and I don't mind. And then the badges don't lie. Right? And, and they're like, yeah, I wonder about that. That was my, I immediately, what I thought was why I wonder how many wink, wink, nudge, nudge agreements there are with managers and their employees and that if they're going to the card reader records, that, that strikes me as being Apple trying to root out like the managers who are, are not following the policy, not the employees, but
Leo Laporte (01:34:19):
Who knows. Here's a petition, apple together.org Tell Apple, we demand location flexible work. 1,250 people have signed, although anybody can sign. So <laugh>, I don't know how, how many of those are actually Apple employees. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (01:34:36):
Part, part of this, when as part of this might be that when they built that brand new campus, they basically got some tax tax breaks, some financial advantages that were tied to commitments to having x number of employees coming in to use that facility. And if they don't make those targets, they might have to give some money back or they might lose some advantages. There's a, there's a lot to unpack here with all these different companies insisting that co that that that that employees actually start to work back in the office. And some of it really is based on teams, but a lot of them is based on commitments that the company has made that are really, really complicated that they didn't, they never, never thought they would have to have to default on just because they, they're having trouble getting their employees to simply come back to work.
Alex Lindsay (01:35:21):
Good news. I mean, there's a big Go ahead.
Andy Ihnatko (01:35:23):
Go ahead. No,
Alex Lindsay (01:35:24):
I was gonna say that, you know, the ecosystem, you know, yeah. That there's an ecosystem around all of these headquarters that has lots of restaurants and lots of other things, and they're probably, you know, upset <laugh> that has going. But on the same side, I mean, there's a, there's so many things playing against it. It's not just people wanting to work at home. The, the open office is an unmitigated disaster. Like it's probably the worst architectural idea in or work management idea in the last century. And you know, it, it is. And, and it's just, I don't know how anyone thinks straight, you know, when they're, when they're in that experience. I think that if, if most companies just gave up on said, Hey, we're getting rid of the open office. We're gonna give you little cubes that are, let's say eight, eight feet by eight feet by eight feet that are gonna have a virtual, you know, have a have a, they're gonna have a camera in them.
(01:36:05):
You can jump into the meetings and everything else. Cause the other thing you have to realize is that when you're there, you're not just, it's not just the, the open office. It is the con the, the battle for the conference rooms. You know, all of these companies have these conference rooms. There's not enough conference rooms for everybody. So everybody sits there and they're trying to schedule their 30 minutes. And there's people, like, literally you're one minute over and there's people stacked outside the window, like waiting for you to get out so they can get into their and do theirs. And there's so much stress that goes on with all of these things they're trying to get into the conference room and trying to get out of the conference room, and then trying to think straight when people are talking to you and, and all these other things that if they gave people their own little spaces that they don't have to listen to everybody that they can be, they can be in a, they can jump in the meetings would be easier to do securely, let's say on campus.
(01:36:51):
You could say some of 'em are only on campus. And so that you're only using the infrastructure in internally. It would be easier to do all these conferences and talk to each other more by not having to walk over to this campus or that campus and try to get into that, this conference room or that conference room. It's, it really is a, just a, you know, the, the way that these companies have set up their, their offices is just a mess. You know? And in addition to that, you either spend an enormous, like an enormous amount of money on really bad real estate in, you know, the, in the Cupertino area, you know, it's like a million dollars for a shack. Like, I don't even know if it comes with plumbing for a million dollars. And so people can either pay an in, you know, an incredible sum for a really bad house, or they can move out and not have and be two or three hours away, and now they have a reasonable house.
(01:37:39):
But getting into the office is no, no small thing. And it's just so, the quality of life for the employees, and they suddenly realized how good it could be. And I think Apple's already lost a lot. I, I mean, I know people that are no longer working at Apple only because of the travel policy. Like literally they were just like, no, I'm not coming in. And they said, well, you have to come in. And they said, well, I quit. You know, like, you know, and I have enough stock to, they don't need the work <laugh>, you know, like, you know, they have plenty of time to do whatever they want to do. And that's the, and, and so I think Apple's already had a brain, a bit of a brain drain from some key. I mean, there's some teams that I feel like got eviscerated, you know, by people who just didn't want to come back in.
Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
Good news. Piper has been acquired and Apple is now in possession of middle out compression. Very big story here. No, I'm just kidding. Apple acquired a startup using AI to compress videos. Of course. It's using ai. Everything's using AI these days. Wave one,
Jason Snell (01:38:38):
If you want it to be funded, it's using AI and using
Leo Laporte (01:38:40):
Ai, whatever.
Jason Snell (01:38:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got it. We got ai. I got, I built a, I built a whole chat app.
Leo Laporte (01:38:47):
Sure.
Jason Snell (01:38:47):
You're sure it's got AI got
Leo Laporte (01:38:49):
Wave links can bring ai. Right, right, right. Yeah. wave One's website was shut down around January because <laugh>, apparently Apple, which never says bought them, but didn't tell anybody nor did Wave well at one. Oh, wait a minute. Here's a LinkedIn post published a month ago by the former head of Sales and Business Development. And that's why he's former that the company has now, it was founded in 2016. They set out to take the decades old paradigm of video codex and make them AI powered back then. Back then deprioritize, shrubbery focus on faces and texts. It's that simple. That's how,
Jason Snell (01:39:29):
Well, I mean, I, I love, I love the idea here, right? Which is that our traditional codex are all based on each pixel analysis.
Leo Laporte (01:39:37):
Pixel counts,
Jason Snell (01:39:39):
Pixel X. Exactly. Yeah. And so what if you had an algorithm, cuz you can't, a person would, would not be able to do this, right? It would be frame by frame, but like an AI that can prioritize every single an algorithm anyway that can prioritize the parts that, that you look at and not the parts that you don't, and then farm out the different parts at different levels of compression. I mean, I that sounds pretty clever. It doesn't just sound like a buzzword. You know, it, it is also a buzzword that probably helps. But I, I like that. I mean, right. This is, this is the part these chatbots we overtalk about chatbots and the chatbots. Chatbots that hallucinate now, they just, I was reading Ben Thompson's story about how they, they wired it up the chatbots up to like Wikipedia and Wolf from Alpha, and suddenly they can look at the internet to find answers.
(01:40:24):
Guess what? The chatbots don't hallucinate so much now it's amazing. But in this case, you know, before and after, before is, well, we just write an algorithm that very cleverly compresses video after, is we can actually have a system, identify the contents of every frame, prioritize what we, you know, do heavy compression on and what we do lighter compression on and then, and, and use that. And like, that's better, presumably in the long run. But it's not something a human could ever do because that would be a terrible job to look at every frame and, and prioritize it. Although, I don't know, Alex May have people who do that
Leo Laporte (01:40:58):
Content aware compression. That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Alex Lindsay (01:41:01):
It's, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, no, it, it does make sense. Cause right now it's really brightness in contrast and stuff like that. It's like, oh, it's not looking for a phase, it's looking for something that's brighter and it's, and the background into dark areas get beat up a little bit and light area. But if, but absolutely if you can say, I'm gonna follow all the people and make sure that they're all sharp and I'm gonna let everything else, and you can get smart about how you do it, so it's blurred out rather than just chunky. And so there's a lot of things that it, it, it could do that, that are pretty interesting and it really makes a difference for vr. So cause we're sending so much data, so it's one thing to get your 10 piece stream on YouTube to your phone. It's another thing to send you two 6K or eight k 120 frame per second streams to your, to your headset is enormously bandwidth intensive. It'll, you know, so that's the other, the other piece of that is getting smart about that is a big deal.
Andy Ihnatko (01:41:54):
Yeah. A a lot of what's, what's kind of interesting about it is, and I'm I'm sure you have more direct experience with this than I do Alex, but the idea of, okay, well what if the bot, what if we, it's not quite so much of a bottleneck because we can just as effectively upscale something that is within the bandwidth limits to using AI to have convincing degree on the device. Maybe we can up the frame rates in certain situations so that we don't necessarily have to send 120 frame per second video at eight K, we can actually send 4K 60 or even the
Alex Lindsay (01:42:26):
H hp Yeah. When
Andy Ihnatko (01:42:26):
You look at 60,
Alex Lindsay (01:42:28):
When you look at the machine learning stuff that they're putting on the chips, a hundred percent. Like you can definitely be rebuilding some of those things based on, depending on what they put in the, in the headset or what they put on the computers or however they do it. You know, that you're right that there's a lot of processing that can be built into the hardware to solve some of those issues.
Jason Snell (01:42:46):
I wonder
Andy Ihnatko (01:42:47):
About the video Evan Nvidia streaming box that does exactly that. And it's so it's so hard to tell on my 4K dis 4K tv. I have to lift up the remote to find out whether I'm looking at actual 4K content or whether it's streaming HD content and simply upscaling it with without my knowing it.
Jason Snell (01:43:03):
I'm thinking about the Apple silicon story here too, and I know that seems a little bit weird, but, you know, what's the one place, I mean, there's, there's compressing video after the fact, but there's also capturing video on an iPhone. And, you know, the iPhone D S P iPhone is already doing analysis of those images and frames as they come in and using them for all sorts of things. This is a face, right? This is, this is shrubbery. We, nobody can, nobody who will speak for the shrubbery <laugh>. Maybe a topiary is what you're really into <laugh>. But, but like I, right, like, so you could also, I could see them, if this is an algorithm that prioritizes when it's encoding the video, you also have that possibility that when you're capturing high resolution video on an iPhone, it's able to take that analysis that's being done and then apply it to the video that's written to disk so that it's much, you know? Right. So it's throwing away more advanced way of throwing away the shrubbery before it gets onto the disc.
Alex Lindsay (01:43:57):
But it can also be all that stuff that the iPhone's doing is making it really good at making that I Id, and then the headset just takes all the smarts that they figured out with the iPhone and just applies it to every video coming in. You know, just like as it comes in, I'm, I, you know, has so much experience doing that now and they've built it up. It, it could just process the video as it comes through. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
I don't know if you've been noticing, every time I go to Apple tv, it seems like they're gonna launch another new show. The story is they plan to spend a billion, 1 billion to on movies,
Jason Snell (01:44:30):
On movies,
Leo Laporte (01:44:30):
On movies
Alex Lindsay (01:44:31):
On these tv I think, I think this is just movies, right?
Leo Laporte (01:44:33):
Movies, yeah. This is just acquiring I guess acquiring movies from Sundance and other you know, movies and,
Jason Snell (01:44:39):
And doing them on theatrical, right? Yeah. Which is the big thing is that they, they're going part of the strategy. It's funny how things have changed since a couple of years ago. Now everybody sort of thinks, Hey, you can make money at theatrical in movie theaters and still make money on your streaming service. Maybe you should do both. Do both. Yeah. What an idea. Yep. And so that seems to be, although I love this, there are some one-offs that they're doing. Like, they, they seal the deal with Martin Scorsese by saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Marty, we'll get you in a theater. We promise. We promise. But like in the long run, they need to find a partner who's a distributor, who will find places for their movies in movie theaters. You, they don't wanna do that themselves. You really need to find a partner, one of these big distributors who's a big studio.
(01:45:18):
And the reports this week are hilarious because they're very much like Apple does not speak the same language as movie distributors too. <Laugh>. And so all the distributors are like perplexed. They want to cut a deal with Apple. Apple seems to want to cut a deal with them. And yet it's a little like what we were talking about, the NFL negotiating with Apple, where it's like they just don't speak the same language. Yeah. And I love, I I can't wait to see what happens, but I love the idea that somebody new encounters Apple as a company in their corporate culture and goes, whoa, these guys are really different. It's like, yeah, yeah. They are, they are
Leo Laporte (01:45:49):
<Laugh> billion is about what Amazon Prime spending, although if you think about it, it doesn't, that's not that many movies. They spent 200 million for the new Scorsese film with Leonardo DiCaprio Killers of the Flower Moon that's gonna, so maybe they get five movies, but that's all four
Jason Snell (01:46:04):
Scorsese.
Leo Laporte (01:46:05):
Yeah. the film will Premiere, can in May, will cinema release for a few months, then Apple tv plus other possible candidates according to nine to five Mac include the spy thriller, Argyle and Ridley Scott's Napoleon. So if you wanna go to Waterloo with your vrs one Yeah.
Jason Snell (01:46:24):
Like Rid Scott is also one of those deals where they're like, yeah, Ridley will get you a theatrical, but it sounds like they're long-term strategy is that they're gonna keep doing this. Right? They wanna
Leo Laporte (01:46:32):
Be a film studio,
Jason Snell (01:46:33):
Basically, unlike Netflix seems to be the only streamer that is committed to never showing a movie in a theater unless they have to qualify for an Oscar that, that they just wanna put it on Netflix. Everybody else is having that moment where they realize, and, and part of it is the marketing, marketing a movie that's going into theaters is very economical. It's expensive, but what it does is it really increases perception and, and awareness of your movie. So you do a big marketing blitz, you put it in theaters, you make some money, it's profitable in theaters, probably. Do people
Leo Laporte (01:47:05):
Still go to movies in the theaters? I haven't been to a movie in a theater in three years.
Jason Snell (01:47:09):
They do four years. They do. And, and the, and the numbers are coming back, but on, on top of it, all those ads you've run for it in the theater, create that awareness. So when it drops on your streaming service, people have heard it. You gotta market, like, the example I wanna always wanna give is that Apple had somebody nominated for an Oscar for a movie on Apple TV plus, and I write about Apple for a living, and I had literally never heard of that movie, and it was on Apple TV plus four months and got an Oscar nomination, and I'd never heard of it. Yeah. And that's the, the solution, at least in part, is you put 'em in theaters, you market them when they're in theaters, and then when they come on streaming, everybody goes, oh yeah, that movie. And then they might actually watch it, which is this better,
Leo Laporte (01:47:50):
This story originally came from Bloomberg, but not from Mark Gurman Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw. It's an ambitious effort, they say to raise Apple's profile in Hollywood and lure subscribers to the streaming service. And yeah, it's, it's all about theatrical. Do you think it's the people like Scorsese out of Vanity or tradition want to be in theaters and that makes that ideal easier? Well,
Alex Lindsay (01:48:15):
And there's rumors that Amazon's looking at am AMC <laugh>, so, so
Leo Laporte (01:48:19):
Like Amazon. Yeah. I'm sure AMC is offered a quite a discount these days. I
Alex Lindsay (01:48:22):
Would. Well, but so, but you know, I think that there is this, this idea of being part of the zeitgeist of people going to theaters. I don't know if the theaters are necessarily by themselves. There's a, in their current structure, it's, it's, it's un unclear. Amazon's got some great theaters in La <laugh>, so they put up, they have ones with L E u
Leo Laporte (01:48:40):
Oh, that's interesting.
Alex Lindsay (01:48:41):
That are, that
Leo Laporte (01:48:42):
Would be an opportunity for Apple to create a technologically advanced movie theater.
Alex Lindsay (01:48:46):
Yeah. I mean, and that's what I mean. Amazon's pushing the envelope. The promise
Leo Laporte (01:48:49):
You need need thousands and Apple's talking thousands of theaters.
Alex Lindsay (01:48:52):
You don't need thousands. You, you Apple could, I mean, they're talking about, I mean, they're talking about theaters. I don't know if Apples Well,
Leo Laporte (01:48:58):
When high frame rate movies, when when 12 on Lee released Billy Lee's long halftime Walk, there were two theaters in the US that could show it at high frame rate two, but they were in, you know, New York and la So
Alex Lindsay (01:49:14):
I guess Well, and there's,
Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
That's
Alex Lindsay (01:49:15):
Okay. There's, I mean, the, yeah, the, the the, the other one that was the, what was the the one with Bruce Willis and not Bruce Willis. So it was the
Leo Laporte (01:49:25):
It was a high frame rate, or
Alex Lindsay (01:49:27):
It was high frame rate, 120 frame per second. Yeah. And the problem they get into is that there's a pro, there's some problems with high frame rate and, and action films. You
Leo Laporte (01:49:33):
Can't watch it in theater, you can't watch it at home. It's, you have to have a special place to see it.
Alex Lindsay (01:49:38):
Well, headset. Yeah, I mean, headset.
Leo Laporte (01:49:40):
Oh yeah. My vr my VR
Alex Lindsay (01:49:42):
Would
Leo Laporte (01:49:43):
Would
Alex Lindsay (01:49:43):
Do it. I mean, thousand movie ticket. Anybody who went to, to IMAX or whatever, or, or Dolby to see the 48 frame version, you know, where you see 48 frames underwater, and then you see 24 above, suddenly they were like, what happened? Why was the film all broken when it was, they were above, they're above water. I was like, because it's always been that way,
Leo Laporte (01:50:02):
<Laugh>, that's,
Alex Lindsay (01:50:03):
It's always, you know, like that's, it's just that you never got to see both of them next to each other before. And so suddenly 48 looked amazing. And so, but 48 works well going much over that. You know, when you get up into the, over the 90, about 95 frames a second, it gets to be, you, you start getting people, a higher number of people start getting seasick because their brain is not able to process it as a, as a video. So the, so the but I think that Apple, to go back to what Apple's doing here, you don't need that many theaters. You're doing it to get, you know, going back out the theaters. You don't have to do a major release. This is kind
Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
Of, well, they're saying 1000 theaters,
Andy Ihnatko (01:50:39):
You know? Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (01:50:40):
I, but you don't
Andy Ihnatko (01:50:41):
Need to, I, I think part of it is that remember that you're talking about Brad Pit, you're talking about Martin Scorsese and Le Leonardo DiCaprio. These people are used to getting financial deal deals where they get dollar dollar for dollar or BA based on box office receipts. Yeah, that's good point. It's kinda hard. And, and their account, and also equally, their accountants understand how move movie studio accountants are going to try to screw their clients over in a theatrical release. They don't yet understand how they're, they get screwed over via direct video release. So I think that even if it's just, even if it's just thousand in the US Yeah. Plus, plus plus the international release, that's enough to get Leonardo DiCaprio that four $40 million, 50 million payday by the time the, the all the day
Leo Laporte (01:51:29):
Is done. Yeah. Remember that was a big diversity about getting paid. That's right. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (01:51:33):
Well, to your point though, I think that they would rather buy an entire theater chain and give people the, you know, their percentage of the box office than give them the, the, the stats on their sale, on their playout,
Leo Laporte (01:51:44):
Right. On the screens. Like those, they tell nobody. I remember Ben Stiller said that, I never knew how many people watched Severance. We, we, we couldn't get that information out of them.
Andy Ihnatko (01:51:53):
Remember Scarlet Hansen, Sue Disney, because they all, her, her pay her her payout was based on the idea of having a huge tent pole release Marvel movie. And they'd said you know what? We'll just toss it on Disney Plus and thank you for this scribe Scarlet. Like, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Get out the check. Boom.
Leo Laporte (01:52:08):
She won. I think Lucas and Buckley I'm sorry, Lucas Shaw and Thomas Buckley writing in Bloomberg say that while Apple still hasn't figured out how it will distribute these movies in theaters, the company doesn't have the expertise internally to release movies in thousands of cinemas worldwide at once, which is why it's approached third party distributors. The Scorsese movies owned by Paramount. So they, paramount will release it in theaters, and they'll get a 10% distribution fee. But it's not clear what Apple plans with future titles. Coda, which Apple won a Bo Oscar is best picture for 2021. They paid 25 million for it at Sundance. They earned two, less than 2 million at the box office. Of course, that was in the height of Covid. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is co it's complicated. And movies are, you know, kind of up in the air right now anyway, because of Covid. And, and so it's, it's in, it'll be interesting to see. It's nevertheless, I have to say, Apple's releasing so many new, I don't know if you've noticed this on Apple tv, but there's a lot of Apple originals, and this is still the, the bulk of their investment in TV coming.
Jason Snell (01:53:22):
I'm actually pretty excited,
Leo Laporte (01:53:23):
Pretty amazing. Tetris looks great. That comes out Friday with Tar Egger Eggerton as it's a story of, and I interviewed him when the original author who pov Alex pov, who wrote it in the Soviet Union. I interviewed him because eventually came to the US and I said, how much did you get paid for for releasing Tetris to the world? He said, they gave me no PC <laugh> <laugh>. That's all he got is a high-end personal computer, which at that time was probably a 2 86 80 column card, upper and lower case. Unbelievable. He was so good. C Geographics, I doubt Alexi POV made the billions of dollars he deserves for one of the most successful games of all time. But yeah, I can't wait to watch that movie. There's a new Jennifer Gardner movie. There's ghosted, there's the big Door prize silo. Schmid Doon is coming back, prehistoric Planet is coming back. There's Hijacked, there's
Jason Snell (01:54:23):
Silo Is is based on Wool by Hugh Howie, which was a real cult hit. It was originally self-published on Amazon, became a hit. Interesting. Eventually he got a publishing deal, and now he's got a TV show. So
Leo Laporte (01:54:35):
Pretty sweet doing another season of the show. Nobody watched Foundation. You watched
Jason Snell (01:54:40):
That dirty little secret about Apple. I I thought it was okay. Not great, but okay. But the dirty little secret about a lot of these Apple projects and a lot of streaming projects is there's a wink wink, nudge nudge order that is not one year, they announce a year. Cause that allows them to then announce a renewal. Right. But I get the strong impression that Foundation was, was probably gonna Yeah. That they had a two year contract for that. If, if they didn't announce it they might've even announced it initially. But there are a lot of those that happen, like Yeah. That, that happens a lot now where there's the secret, like, oh, they're, they're already doing it. A lot of times these renewal announcements are they're just pr like the contract's already signed, kills. It's just pr that
Leo Laporte (01:55:19):
Dune, which was only half the novel, didn't have a green light for part two
Jason Snell (01:55:25):
Yeah. Until it became a huge hit. And then they rushed it into production, I guess. And we're gonna finally see it later this year.
Leo Laporte (01:55:31):
I think it's killed me, but just kill me. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway apple, I, you know, I had, I mocked Apple TV plus for a long time, but now it's really especially if you buy Apple One, which probably a lot of people do, it's, it's a no-brainer. But you got the Apple Music, you got the Apple tv, plus you get all the stuff. Yeah,
Jason Snell (01:55:47):
Yeah. Shrinking is one of my favorite things I've seen here. You know,
Leo Laporte (01:55:50):
I've heard great things, and I, with Jason glad we kind of waited till the season is now all out. We finally forced ourselves to watch the rest of Servant, which is a good but weird show, and I can't wait to see Severance coming back. That'll be, oh yeah. That'll be huge. And of course, Ted Lasso is it, has the third season been good? Is it
Jason Snell (01:56:10):
Yeah, it's, it is good. It's just getting started though, right? Like they, they have their themes and they're gonna make you watch all 12 episodes to get the themes. I didn't, we, we haven't mentioned baseball, but it is baseball week. And so baseball is starting and it's starting on Apple TV plus two. And the, the big news Woohoo this time is one, one you, they're not gonna give it away for free anymore. You gotta be a TV plus subscriber. Oh, okay. Last year they gave it away for free. Okay. Yeah. But two Vegas complaint, and we talked about it here, biggest complaint everybody had. Yes. Their fans of their local radio announcers, their local TV announcers, they don't want to hear the national announcer that Apple is supplying. So they announced earlier this, or late last week, they announced, yes, you can turn it to your local broadcasters audio while you're watching.
(01:56:54):
Huge. So you, you can tune out their national ma MLB network announcers and just put on your local radio. Unless you're a fan of the Texas Rangers. This is only in the US where if you're a fan of the Texas Rangers and they're on the road, you can't hear your radio guys. I don't know why it's a mystery <laugh>, but otherwise and then in Canada, they're doing something a little bit different where the Blue Jay's radio will be on that, only the Blue Jay's radio in Canada will be an option. But still it's, they totally heard people's complaints about their beloved home team announcers. And they, they did what they should do, because it's a pure digital product, is add some audio overlays. So there'll be multiple audio overlays for those paintings.
Alex Lindsay (01:57:34):
That's not super hard.
Jason Snell (01:57:36):
It's,
Leo Laporte (01:57:36):
Well, it's only contractually the hard, it's contractually hard. That's what's contractually
Alex Lindsay (01:57:40):
Hard. That's we saw, but technical, yeah, it's like, send us a fee. We put in another, another stream in the hos and add it to the manifest. And
Jason Snell (01:57:47):
I'd say the only thing that's technically hard about it is that you've gotta make sure that in your pipeline, you're getting the audio in the video to be roughly the same time. You need to probably have it happen at the ballpark because you, you know, if they're, if they're like eight seconds outta sync, it's a disaster.
Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
We'll see how they do. The crack of the bat has to be audible at the same time as it actually hits the ball. Or it's really disconcerting, you know, you don't want to see the guy go. And then here it's no
Jason Snell (01:58:12):
Good. You know, you know, there's some, Alex probably knows about this, but some, some TV broadcast of Sports Cheat, they actually put the announcer audio slightly ahead of the video. There's a delay in that and that allows them to seem like they're calling it as it happens, even though, and, and the giveaway is baseball, which is sometimes you can hear the crack of the bat on the announcer mic before you hear it or see it
Alex Lindsay (01:58:35):
<Laugh>. Yeah. And usually, usually when the, it's, when they're wearing the headsets are using the really you know, directional mics, you won't hear any, any of that. And it, it's usually they're, they're usually pretty careful about it. Yeah. Because usually your FX mics are, are, are on the field. They're getting the best sound. I mean, on just a simple basketball game, it's like 27 mics.
Leo Laporte (01:58:55):
It's different for baseball cuz it's old fashioned. The, the radio guys drop 'em. I know this cuz I used to work at K B R. They drop a microphone out the booth and it just sit there swinging. And of course the fans immediately discover it and start yelling, you're a jerk.
Jason Snell (01:59:11):
Yep. <laugh> Classic.
Leo Laporte (01:59:14):
I don't like you. Hey Greenwald,
Jason Snell (01:59:16):
There were, there was a game when I was in high school that I was listening to. It was Ron Farley was the announcer for the Giant
Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
Oh, I Ron
Jason Snell (01:59:22):
Fairley. And he made, he was terrible. He made three mistakes in the course of one at that he was awful. And then, and it was Candlestick Park, so there was nobody there. And then there was silence. And then you heard from below,
Leo Laporte (01:59:33):
You're making fool of yourself fairly <laugh>. I used to listen. Amazing for that. Amazing. Oh, those are the things. And
Alex Lindsay (01:59:43):
I think that, you know, people would complain less about it if, if if the, if the national announcer was good. I think the Well that's
Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
Right. The baseball announcers were terrible at It's
Alex Lindsay (01:59:51):
Terrible. It's, but it's, it was terrible. And, and even, but I will say, to be fair, announcing sports is really hard. Hardly skilled. Like it is. It is such a skill. And there's, you know, even in football, like you watch national football and there's all these games and they, they have to cover, you know, at whatever, 13, 14 games at a time and, and everything else. And those guys spend the entire week absorbing all of the information that they, that they have to be available for. And then a lot of it's just based on their experience. And even then there's like four that are good <laugh> like, you know, out of all of those, those announcers maybe six and, and, and then it falls off and they're doing the best they can to try to fill that in. You know, and, and so I think that yeah, it is what Apple, I mean I, we complain about, I complained about it a lot, but it, I will say that for announcing is so, it's so much stuff in real time that's coming into you that you have and baseball's a little easier cuz it's not quite as fast.
(02:00:41):
But there's still so much in real time that's coming in that you have to you just have to know it all. And it's really, really hard to find those people. And I think Apple missed, missed it, but it's not like they missed a, a b a slow ball. They missed a fast ball that is just hard to hit.
Leo Laporte (02:00:57):
Had
Jason Snell (02:00:57):
Metaphor since we're, I would say yeah. I, I think you're harder on the announcers than I am. There are very few national announcers who I would consider good. Like even the espn Yeah. Even the ESPN Sunday night broadcast is not very good. They're, they're, most of the good announcers are announcing for local teams, which is as it should be. But yeah, they're, they're super, even if you, I give it to you, I mean, like, they're super generic and if you're watching a team you don't care about, then I think you don't care. But if it's a team you care about, you want to hear your people who understand your team and are, and depending on where you live, they're either rooting for your team or at least they understand that you're rooting for your team. Yeah. And I'm glad Apple, I, again, I think the miracle here is that Apple and MLB worked on this and made the contractual whatever they needed to do to get those radio broadcasts available on the Friday night broadcast. Cuz they, they had to, obviously they had to do something different in terms of rights. That's why it's only in the US and the one team in Canada and not the rest of the places that Apple TV is, is showing these games. So. Right. I'm glad they did it like they made the effort and that's to make their product better. A hundred percent. That's a good sign. Yep.
Andy Ihnatko (02:02:02):
I, I, I really wish Apple would, could do something like Twitch for sports where yes, yes. Have those professional announcers that are basically tied to, tied to the broadcast, but also create a mechanism so that if I deem myself an expert on the Red Sox and I want to take it upon myself to do a simulcast oh man. So that I can basically put my, my mug or my, my living room with four other PE friends, like in a, in a sub window and do my own call of the game. Be it a serious call, be it mocking everything that's going on, or be it, no, I want to basically be the local sports local sports announcer for Boston that has that entire Boston perspective with the history the past present in the future. And basically some somehow find a way to monetize that.
(02:02:51):
That is something that I would be ve that would make me into a more avid follower of sports. Because oftentimes it really isn't. Like I, I would love to, I would love to watch the NFL some more. I would love to watch the NBA some more, but a lot of the announcers, they really are way more intense than I can really follow. And if I found someone who was sort of like so sort of like the, the simpleton, the the knowledgeable simple, the knowledgeable expert who speaks down to simpletons like me, I would be watching more N B A games and if I could give this person five bucks a month so I could follow this game, I might even spend that five
Jason Snell (02:03:26):
Bucks a month. Amazon has experimented with that. Amazon has been doing this thing on their Thursday night football broadcast where they've got a couple different play-by-play groups, and then they've got like the alt play-by-play audio where like, they have like an improv troop do it one time. And like, I, I love those experiments. And, and it's like e s ESPN has the manning cast where Peyton and Eli Manning make fun of each other and Well, and more of that please. It's great.
Alex Lindsay (02:03:49):
The, the, the thing is, yeah, to go the exact opposite way, the Manning, the Manning broadcast is the potential of something explosive, which is that you have two, you know, grade, you know, level a quarterbacks that know each other really well. And when they drop into geek mode and they start just talking, like watching the game and talking as if they were, if as, as if they were just on a, when they bring in somebody else and they're telling jokes, it's super boring. Like, I just leave it. And I think ESPN is, you know, their producers are trying to make it a show, you know. But what really makes it great is two, these two top quarterbacks sitting there just talking. You see what he's doing there. He's doing, he's he's gonna do a curl there and he's gonna do this and he's gonna, and this is what he did there.
(02:04:28):
And this is how he, and look at, look at how he's going through his progressions. He's going boom, boom, boom, he missed this one. And they start to just, the two of them will riff for like 10 or 15 minutes. And it's gold because now you're really in it. Like you're in, you're in that, you're in the room where it happens kind of thing. Where suddenly all those things are there. And I think that, that, that's what you know, and, and again, some people want that. Some people want, Hey, they're about to do a run play or they just did a run play. A run play is this and da da da. And you want that basic version of it. Like, I don't understand what this is. You know, for me, I didn't understand, I don't understand. I had to do, we had to stream like 27 basketball games and we had all these different commentaries and by the end I understood how basketball worked, <laugh>.
(02:05:05):
So until before that I was like, it's just random people are running back and forth. But we had a ex-player from one of the teams and a social media guy talking about the, the, the you know, going back and forth and answering people's questions live that they were posting while watching the game. And it was super fascinating. Yeah. And it was, and it was way better than any coverage of those games. Cause we, we could see the other coverage and I was like, I'd much rather watch this and, and these, and, and they were, he's like, oh, look at what they're doing there. That's, they shouldn't have gone down that path. And, and they're just kind of like, they're not trying to impress anybody. They're just talking the way that they would talk if they were watching the game. And I think to, I think that would be great, as many as to Andy's point, as many options as possible. <Laugh>, you know, like that, that we could have to, to, to look at those.
Leo Laporte (02:05:48):
Apple, get your gentleman, get your picks ready. We are gonna take a little break, come back with picks of the week. But first, a little plea first before I get in the plea. I thank you to our club members who are paying for this episode of Mac Break Weekly. You might have noticed a dearth of advertisers. If you are not yet a Club TWiT member and you wanna keep this show and all the shows we do on the air, you wanna keep the lights on the staff well employed. You wanna develop new shows. May I make a a, a gentle request? Join Club TWiT. It's only seven bucks a month, $84 a year. There's a corporate membership plan as well. What do you get ad free versions of all of our shows. You get access to the Great Club TWiT Discord, where fun and Murth and me are always happening.
(02:06:39):
Also, great discussions, not just about the shows, but about every geeky topic possible. We also do a lot of stuff in the club in the Discord. Stacy's book club is coming up April 6th. We do Home Theater Geeks now which was something we relaunched we had to shut down a couple of years ago with Scott Wilkinson because of lack of ad support and lack of audience support. But thanks to the Club, we're able to bring it back. It's a club only right now, but if, if it grows in time as this week in Space did, it might be emerging into the public. We have interviews with staff like the Inside TWiT Chat later this month, or later in April with Victor Bona, Alex Wilhelm, it's Sean Powers from Floss Weekly. Our community manager, aunt Pruit is fantastic, has put together a wonderful se you know, series of events.
(02:07:32):
<Laugh> it is a great place to hang the TWI plus feed, not just new shows, shows you don't hear anywhere else, like Hands on Macintosh with like a sergeant, but also you know bits that appear before and after the shows, stuff from the cutting room floor. I think it's a, I we've really tried to give you a lot of value for your seven bucks. So if you would, if you would like to support what we do please go to twit.tv/clubtwit and sign up today. We appreciate it. Seven bucks a month and thank you members of Club TWiT for making this all possible. Now time for our picks of the week. Jason Snell, let's kick it off with you.
Jason Snell (02:08:11):
Back in January, I talked about a great tool from Open ai, not the one you're thinking of. It's called Whisper. And it is an amazing thing that takes audio and turns it into a text transcript at a quality that is better than anything I've ever seen. And at the time it was very much like, well, you can download this thing and compile it and then figure that out, and maybe eventually you'll get to a way where you can run it. Well, guess what? A very good Mac developer named Jordy Bruin created this app called Whisper transcription. It's in the Mac app store. It's free if what you want to use the high quality models, there's a single in-app purchase that you can make. And what he's done is it's a capable Mac developer taking the inscrutable command line command chicanery of whisper and building an entire gooey wrapper around it.
(02:09:04):
And not only did he do the basics, like I wrote a shortcut that did that, right? Like, you could do that part of it. But what what this app has done is he's now trying to figure out other Mac like app things. He can layer on top of it. You can watch as the transcript's going. You can choose after the fact what formats you wanna save it as. You can choose from any of the models. I have a long-term question about like, where is Whisper going and is it going to continue to be updated? And is Jordy Bruin going to, you know, use a different, if there's a different project that I think he's using the c the C model that, that I'm also using that's like the fastest right now. But if there's one for neural engine, does that get dropped in instead?
(02:09:45):
Like, there's a lot of questions about it, but the beauty of this is now if you don't want to go into the command line or anything like that, but you are curious about having the ability to drag audio, like one of the most popular podcast formats around is church podcast, right? It's like, so if you're the guy, AV guy who does your church podcast and you wanna do a text, a text of a thing that somebody came up and said that was extemporaneous and there's no script, you drag and drop, watch it go by, select the text and you've got it. And you might not be the kind of person who's gonna go compile that c plus plus code. So I think this is a great example that back in the early days of Mac OS 10, we saw this a lot where people were writing gooey wrappers around command line stuff to make it feel like a Mac app. And I haven't seen a lot of those lately, but this is a good example of that. So I think this is a nice right, like for regular people on the Mac to use Whisper, which is an ama it's like a magic trick. I mean, you, it's worth trying out the free version just to drag some audio on it and be amazed at how good it is at its job.
Alex Lindsay (02:10:46):
It, it really points towards an amazing future about mm-hmm <affirmative>, how we share content and how we understand what's going on around us. Where, you know, we were talking about the fact that you're gonna get to a point where you, in office hours, we were talking about that you're gonna get to a point where there's a, a council meeting that's gonna translate it into 60 languages. It's gonna summarize it in the languages that's gonna put them all into audio with different voices and it's gonna put them all out and it's all gonna happen in like a half an hour after the thing happened. And everyone can have it. And, and being able to have that content just, just rolling out of there automatically. And this is one, one connection to that, but there's just so many places where you wanna do this. And it's always been, I've done so much transcription and so much captioning and so on and so forth. I just, I totally agree with you. It's just an amazing, amazing app. It's, it is a must download. It's free must download if you want to get a, I just, it's, it's a, it's really cool.
Leo Laporte (02:11:40):
And I presume if you were listening to a podcast like this one that doesn't have a transcript, you could do it yourself, right? How fast is it? Is it real time? It,
Jason Snell (02:11:48):
It, it depends on how fast your computer is. On my Mac studio, I, it is fa it is like two or three times real time, but on, on a, like a MacBook Air, it might be real time-ish. And the big thing that it doesn't do, I know I mentioned this in January, is the whisper, a mo eye model right now doesn't do speaker detection. And that is a a a next for a podcast. You really want to be able to say this, who this speaker is, even if it's just speaker one, speaker two. And right now it doesn't do that because it's an AI model. Sometimes it'll put like a little line at the beginning that indicates it's a new speaker. Sometimes it doesn't. I've also had to hallucinate speaker names. I did one thing where I did, I did a transcript between me and John Syracuse and it called us like John and Dave, I don't know who
Leo Laporte (02:12:31):
Dave is.
Jason Snell (02:12:32):
It decided I was there. But that
Leo Laporte (02:12:33):
Be uneasy actually. That's good if it assigns some name because you could then go you know, do a master replace, right, David,
Jason Snell (02:12:40):
Jason? Well, and it, right. And if it inferred from the text our names, that would be really cool too. And that's all coming right? Like Alex said, like, I, I wanna say next year, but I feel like with AI it's probably next month. Yeah, it'll all be day now be better. And, and they'll do all of that too.
Leo Laporte (02:12:55):
So this is free small fee. If you want to use more advanced features, whisper transcription from Good Snooze, Alex. No, no. Your pick of the week, Alex.
Alex Lindsay (02:13:05):
I got a new camera.
Leo Laporte (02:13:07):
Of course
Alex Lindsay (02:13:07):
You did.
Leo Laporte (02:13:08):
People
Alex Lindsay (02:13:08):
Already pee me
Leo Laporte (02:13:09):
About it. <Laugh>, of course you
Alex Lindsay (02:13:10):
Picking about it while I'm on this show. So I was like, well, I'll make that a pick. So I, I, I, Sony sent me the FFR seven and it was too expensive. I can't afford that. So, but, but what I got hooked on was the fact that I could have an auto, the auto focus would work really, really well and I could rock in now and I could do all those things. So I couldn't afford the FFR seven. I, they sent me the FFR seven, I practiced, I had it for a couple weeks and it just ruined me. Like, it just, it was the, the color rendition and the, and the sharpness and everything else. So people have been already pinging me on it while I've been on the show. And it, it's, I'm using an FX 30, this is the less expensive version <laugh>. So, so it's still still a little pricey, but this is an FX 30 with a, I did get all a 1.4 eff fe lens. So 35 millimeters. So that's what, can
Leo Laporte (02:13:52):
You use it? Like I have a bunch of Sony GM lenses. Yep. Could I use those? Yeah. Yep.
Alex Lindsay (02:13:56):
Yeah, it's just, it's just a Sony, Sony Mount GM amount. I, you know, I will say that it, what happened was is I, I, the Sony one was there, and, and John Wallace was in office hours, bought a couple of these for his web, you know, for his, his stuff. Same thing I'm doing here. And I'm, you know, I, I do this almost professionally. I mean, I do it do it here professionally, but I, I'm on, I'm on air, you know, two or three hours a day. So it's worth the investment to Are
Leo Laporte (02:14:21):
You using it right now? Is that what we're looking at right
Alex Lindsay (02:14:22):
Now? Yeah, this is what I'm using right now.
Leo Laporte (02:14:23):
It look, I noticed immediately it looked really good. Yeah. Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (02:14:27):
It's picking up
Leo Laporte (02:14:28):
All the gray eyebrows. It's fantastic. Exactly.
Alex Lindsay (02:14:31):
<Laugh>, the big thing is, is that, is that you can, you can do this where it, it pulls into focus.
Leo Laporte (02:14:36):
Oh my God. That was fast.
Alex Lindsay (02:14:38):
And then you just, and then you just come right back out and it just, oh,
Leo Laporte (02:14:40):
It just does the thing. Oh,
Alex Lindsay (02:14:41):
That's my, that's the thing that it's, and it's the best auto, the Sony has the best auto, Sony's
Leo Laporte (02:14:45):
Always had the best auto focus. Yeah. But it, it's a, it's a, it's a APSC sensor. Is that a bad thing? Super
Alex Lindsay (02:14:52):
35? Yeah. Yeah. The no, I, you know, the full frame, the FX three is another $2,000. Yeah. And I chose not to go down that path. So, so I so it was,
Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
I, if you're shooting 4K video, you wouldn't be using the full frame anyway, right? You can't, you don't need all the texts. Well, I,
Alex Lindsay (02:15:07):
I could, the full frame would be nice, but this, if, if, if my background got any blurry than it is already, it would be not <laugh>. I like it Bo you
Leo Laporte (02:15:13):
Know, like it wouldn't, okay. It's beautiful,
Alex Lindsay (02:15:15):
Right? It's a good, it's a good Boca, but, but you wanna see some of the stuff back there. You don't want to be like a wash of color. Yeah, maybe some people do, but I, you know, so, so I thought it was fine. I'm gonna take this to N NA B and use it as part of my coverage. We've got like a ton of N na B coverage, and so I'm gonna test it, you know, probably gonna get another lens that's a Zoom lens that's a little a little less and, and take it there and, and put it in a cage and shoot, you know, shoot a bunch of stuff with it. Does,
Leo Laporte (02:15:37):
Does this compare with their alpha S's, because the like the A seven s is a, well,
Alex Lindsay (02:15:43):
Those are full frame and
Leo Laporte (02:15:44):
They're full frame and their video intended video.
Alex Lindsay (02:15:48):
Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they I don't know if they, I don't think that they have full frame htm. This has a full frame HT M I l. Ah, okay. It's nice. It's powered by u s BBC <laugh>, which is really nice. Yeah. As, as
Leo Laporte (02:15:59):
Someone s So it's really specifically for cinema. It, it's a cinema, but they, they say that with the s as well. I mean, this is,
Alex Lindsay (02:16:06):
If I was doing, if I was doing quote unquote cinema, I'd still be going towards the FX three. FX six. Yeah. Z FFR seven. The, the, this one is a, it's, it's a good, it's a small, a good small, it's a cinema line. It is. And again, I haven't taken it anywhere handheld or taken it out. Cannon's
Leo Laporte (02:16:24):
Done this too. They've really bifurcated their lines for cinema. And
Alex Lindsay (02:16:30):
Yeah. And it's, it's nice and small. It's light. It is, again, it's got a full, full sized H D M I. It's got u s bbc, I gotta tell you, like Black Magic has a very specific plug for power. And there's a little PTs d that goes on with losing, you know, not being able to find the power cables. Yeah, yeah. So being able to just grab anything that does usbc plug it into the side of the camera, it's really nice. And the it is so it's, it's a great little camera. And again, I, if I was doing multi-camera like live, I'd still use Black Magic cause I can shade all the cameras separately and I can sync them all together. So it's not, I don't think it's a replacement for what I've been doing with Black Magic cameras, but as a, as this as what I'm using it for here, potentially some coverage that I'm doing, I'm gonna probably keep on using that. And, and I think we are gonna mix and match some Sony cameras at N A B with live views that we're using there. So, so it should be, should be good. But yeah, the full frame, when you go up a little bit more expensive, you're gonna go full frame. And Sony's probably gonna do a lot more full frame which is gonna be nice. But yeah, Sony's really, I think hitting on all cylinders really
Leo Laporte (02:17:32):
To the Yeah.
Alex Lindsay (02:17:33):
To the cameras. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:17:34):
This sounds like the kind of thing my son should be using for his reels and his tos and his
Alex Lindsay (02:17:39):
Youtubes. You know, it's funny, I, I was talking to a YouTuber and and I asked her like, why are you using a black magic camera? And she was just immediately like, auto focus
Leo Laporte (02:17:50):
<Laugh>. Auto focus,
Alex Lindsay (02:17:51):
<Laugh>, like, like she was, like, it was, it was, it was a instant, it was just like auto focus, you know, like I, and, and, and it's, it's good enough that it really that's why I, and I sat there in the store kind of moving it around, focusing on this and focusing on that and seeing how it worked. And it just, it's really snappy. Yeah. And that makes a big difference when you're trying to build that,
Leo Laporte (02:18:06):
That's, that, that's, I mean, is a still camera too. The alpha line the A nine is amazing how fast it can focus and follow things and lock in on birds and stuff. The cinema line, FX 30, super 35, it's May $1,800, which actually you might say, well that sounds like a lot of money is why it's hardly anything. It's not even three Alex's
Alex Lindsay (02:18:28):
Cheaper. I mean, a lot of cameras that you buy in those, in that realm is about that price. It's all
Leo Laporte (02:18:33):
About the
Alex Lindsay (02:18:33):
Glass. I wasn't willing, the
Leo Laporte (02:18:34):
Glass is expensive.
Alex Lindsay (02:18:35):
I spent almost as much on the glass as I spent on the camera. And since
Leo Laporte (02:18:38):
I have all that great glass, I'm always looking for a body like
Alex Lindsay (02:18:41):
That. Well, this is a great one. If you want to have something on the road to, to shoot with that is like your, I don't know, your video camera, so mm-hmm.
Leo Laporte (02:18:49):
<Affirmative>, it's good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Alex Lindsay (02:18:50):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it's a full frame glass, so if I move up, I, or do something else mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I can do it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I think it's, it's good.
Leo Laporte (02:18:56):
Very nice. Andy Ihnatko, you got a pick for us?
Andy Ihnatko (02:19:00):
Yeah. Something really, really simple, but, but which the solves the problem for me. I was looking for a really cheap, really useful flashlight as an everyday carry and not, I'm not the, not in my pockets, but basically I wanna have a flashlight that's in my in, in my laptop bag, in my in my small little bag and in my backpack and everything like that. So that, you know, you never know. And so when I'm taking my walks, like late at night I'm not gonna trip and stumble and wind up in the mud. And I was looking for something really, really cheap and I found something really cheap and cheerful, and I really liked the design of it. Now this is, this is if you do a, an Amazon or eBay search for what's called a c. It's, it's usually under what's called c o b, keychain light, c o b.
(02:19:42):
And you'll find them, it's hysterically funny. If you go on Amazon, you'll find you some sellers will sell you one of these for $18. Some of them will sell you like three for 10. If you go directly to Ali Express, you can buy them literally for a dollar. Wow. But but it's a, it's actually an, it's not a piece of junk. It's, it has three different lighting modes two different intensities of light. It also has a flasher mode, which is another reason why I need something like this. Like, but it's late at night and the, I can tell that the Uber is kind of in the neighborhood, but doesn't know where to pick me up. As soon as I put on the flashers says, okay, maybe that's where I should go. But three different modes. It charges via via u s bbc, so I can use like my regular charging packs for it.
(02:20:28):
 The, the design's actually very nice. It has a carabiner clip, so I can clip it onto my backpack harness. It also has a magnet on the back, so I can just, when the lights go out, inevitably on the M B T A, on the, on the commuter rail, I can just <laugh>, I can just stick this up in the, stick this up on the baggage compartment and will illuminate. It also has a little fold out stand with two different an annoyances on it. And the full charge lasts about two or three hours on, on the low setting. The bright setting is kind of too, almost too bright for me. But again, it's, it's cheap enough that I didn't, I didn't buy 'em on Alley Alley Express. I bought one as cheap as I could get it on Amazon just to see if it would, you know, start a fire after I leave it charging overnight.
(02:21:15):
And then after this one worked out for a couple weeks, I bought like another four four again, bought three bucks each. And like, say, this is not, it's not the most sophisticated flashlight you can get. It's not ch someone's not a Kickstarter where someone is promising to change the world and disrupt the mode of, of, of artificial l e d illumination. It's just a super cheap Chinese flashlight that it's simple and small enough that you can have one exactly everywhere that you're gonna need it without having to remember, gee, did I remember, do I remember to bring this with me or not? Did I take this out of a certain other thing or not? And yeah, it's it's certainly very well this, it also, and of course, waste, not want not on the, they decided that one's one of the sides of it.
(02:21:55):
They decided to put a can opener to bottle opener too. Yay. So, you know what? You, you get a lot for your dollar to $3 here, <laugh>. So again, again, you'll, you'll find, don't make sure if you buy it on Amazon again, make sure you do math in your head of how much they're charging because you will find people who are charging you truly $19 for one of these. And then you scroll like half a click and you'll find oh four for $10. Yeah. That was a better, yeah, and it's the exact same thing John,
Leo Laporte (02:22:25):
That the c o b is because the LEDs are arranged like a corn cob, but in fact he's, that he's hallucinating like an a, like an ai. That's not what c o b stands
Andy Ihnatko (02:22:36):
For. Steve is probably looking into the light and
Leo Laporte (02:22:37):
It's like
Andy Ihnatko (02:22:38):
<Laugh>, my God, it's so dazzling.
Leo Laporte (02:22:40):
<Laugh>. So golly, there are a lot of them. I'm tempted to buy the one from a company whose name looks a lot like abandoned
Andy Ihnatko (02:22:47):
Ship. Abandoned ship. I know, I got that too. <Laugh>.
Leo Laporte (02:22:51):
Just cuz I like the name, the pseudo English name that the Chinese company came up with. Yeah. is that, is that the one you bought the abandoned ships?
Andy Ihnatko (02:23:01):
No, no. I think it, whatever the one I bought, I like, it's almost immaterial which one I, I know which company I bought it from. Yeah. The, the fir the first one I bought from like first price $4. And then there's another one that gives you like 10 for 32 or something. <Laugh>. I might, if I might have waited for Ali Express for literally $1 <laugh> to, to, and wait a couple weeks to get from China. Yeah. but yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's, and also at this price you can have extras and just give them to people who need them when you encounter
Leo Laporte (02:23:28):
'Em. Here's one that says Score eight has three for 8 99. That sounds like the that sounds like the low price leader. Yeah. Yeah. And they all do the same thing. <Laugh>, they're
Andy Ihnatko (02:23:39):
The same thing. The
Leo Laporte (02:23:40):
Same company, right?
Andy Ihnatko (02:23:41):
Almost certainly. And some, and some of them are claiming, oh no, we are, this is, this is a thousand a thousand lumens. No, no, no. This one is 800 lumens. Oh. This is only 500 lumens. There might be a couple of different varieties. I think when I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, I found one or two that were still charging with micro sb. Oh,
Leo Laporte (02:23:59):
That's not good. We don't want that. But
Andy Ihnatko (02:24:01):
Yeah. But again, just as far as I can tell, these are all like the exact same units. They're, they're just maybe on different, different days of different on the assembly line. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (02:24:12):
<Laugh>. Yeah. all right. I, you know, I I think I might order these cuz I, I was thinking I should have a a flashlight or two in the backpack, but I don't want to carry a big old, you know, traditional flashlight.
Andy Ihnatko (02:24:27):
Again, this is, this is tiny. This is like Marshall size. And also, once again, I can, it's two hours off, two or three hours off its own battery, but it can also power directly off of my like 20,000 million a power battery forever USB US bbc and I, of course, I'm gonna have U USS BBC to us BBC cable somewhere.
Leo Laporte (02:24:43):
I'll do my pick real quick. Just came out infinite mac.org. It is actually the guy who does this is a legend and has been doing all sorts of interesting things going back to Grease Monkey days. But he has created a, a web-based simulator for every version of Mac Os from system one to system 9.0 0.4. And you could just run it. It'll, boop it'll beep, it'll start up. You gotta, and then look how fast it is. You, I don't think that's, this is it. Yeah. Is that coming from this <laugh>? I wonder if I have something else open. No, that's it, huh? All right. This is an infinite Mac.
Andy Ihnatko (02:25:34):
Yeah. And you see, and you see the entire startup process. You see the system, the Happy Mac, you see all these system extensions load in, there's QuickTime, there's,
Leo Laporte (02:25:42):
Yeah. Let's run Disc first aid do the drive open. It's hysterical. Anyway, if you have some nostalgia for this or you youngins, if you don't remember what it was like to have a desk accessory called Scrapbook, here's your chance <laugh> to to relive the history of the Mac, infinite Max all for you.
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:09):
And this, and this is only Did you check the, did you check the, the hard drive? Because here's, here's Photoshop. Here's graphic inverter. Oh, here's, here's Kit Icks, Popeyes Power Tips.
Leo Laporte (02:26:18):
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So thanks to Mihai, Photoshop
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:21):
3.05
Leo Laporte (02:26:23):
Partita MI Miha has done tail scale Quip, Chrome Maps, Google Reader, a Iconographer over plot, Gmail, grease Monkey scripts, and a whole bunch more. He's been around for some time. And he said, I, you know, I wanted to get this out in March. So <laugh>, it's out now. The Infinite mac@infinitemac.org. Just fun to play with. You can do, there's similar things@archive.org, but these are really well done. They're really fast
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:50):
There. There's nothing, th there is no difference. I'm running 9.02 right now, and there's absolutely, there's no, there's no stutter, there's no lag opening. It's, it is like, I'm sure it's 10 times faster than any actual 9.02 max. That's the irony that I might ever owned.
Leo Laporte (02:27:07):
Yeah. Yeah. This is running in the browser and it's lots faster. Yeah. Look at this. You're system seven. So you say, look in the productivity, oh, there's Claris Works. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Wow. <laugh>. And there's the music. I don't know what the deal is with the music. Look at that. Claris works. I'm
Andy Ihnatko (02:27:26):
Not getting the music, so
Leo Laporte (02:27:28):
Well, I don't get where the music, maybe it's coming from somewhere else. I
Andy Ihnatko (02:27:34):
Think it's coming from somewhere else. I'm not getting it.
Leo Laporte (02:27:36):
<Laugh> let's not register. Claris works right now. Let's do some Word Pro. Look at that. Yeah. That's amazing. Some memories. Memories from the good old days. Let's, isn't it? Yeah. Look at that. This is the color one. System seven. All right. Thank you everybody. That concludes this thrilling gripping edition of Mack Break Weekly. We managed to eek out a pretty nice long show. Thank you, Jason Snell, you're gonna take over for me next week with Dan Mor and the regulars Alex and Andy. I thank you for doing that, Jason. Yes. Looking forward to it. Six colors.com/jason to find all of the things that he does. All the things. All the many things. Yeah. he is a legend in the industry. And I'll be following you on my encrypted wavelength app as I travel around for many
Jason Snell (02:28:29):
Years now, they've been telling the legend about the guy who writes about computers.
Leo Laporte (02:28:33):
It's the legend.
Jason Snell (02:28:34):
Some say he doesn't exist. Others say he's just a guy who works in his garage.
Leo Laporte (02:28:38):
Just don't ask him about his big Blue Ox. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate you filling in. Thanks Leo. Have a good vacation. I will. I promise. Also, Andy Ihnatko, when are you gonna be on GBH Next?
Andy Ihnatko (02:28:51):
Actually I don't have my schedule for April yet. I'm off this week. But go to wgbh news.org to listen to previous shows. You can also go to the WGBH News channel on YouTube to see the ones that I was, I, the tech news stuff that I did when on either Tuesdays or Fridays when we were at the Boston Public Library. We did. I was at, I was actually in the Boston Public Library on last Friday. Had a, had a really great chat about chat G p t and Bard and stuff like that. The sort of thing where I, I had a doc, I had a docket of four different topics and some of them were very, very technical and we never got past the fourth one cuz it was such a good, the first one cuz it was such a good conversation. We
Leo Laporte (02:29:27):
Have, we have learned the music you were hearing is the on hold music from the Discord stage <laugh>. I thought I had muted my Discord stage, but apparently I have not. So upon
Andy Ihnatko (02:29:40):
It sounds like, you know what, when Noah threw me, it sounds like the perfect, like technical difficulties. Please stand. Oh it is by music. It's totally,
Leo Laporte (02:29:46):
It's even got a little, you know, Hammond organ in there. It was quite I was impressed but I apologize. That is not part of Infinite Mac as much as you wish it. Office hours.global is where you will find Mr. Alex Lindsay, pretty much anytime the fundamentals of Green screen today featuring AI generated Muppets <laugh>. I did. I was
Alex Lindsay (02:30:08):
Great. You know, the, the problem that I have is that I, I don't I don't shoot very much bad green screen. Like I just, cause I'm so particular cause I, it's gonna cost money. And I, so when I was looking for samples, I was like, I can't find, I can't find clean or beat up green screen. I was like, I bet you I can get it Mid journey to generate this for me <laugh>. And so I just threw it in a mid journey and I was like Muppets will be funny. And it turned out really well. Got wrinkles. I have folds, I have gradients, I have all the things you shouldn't do with your green screen. So it was it was a, it was a lot of fun.
Leo Laporte (02:30:39):
It's free, it's open to all. And you can even join the Zoom if you have questions, details at, of fsr. Do Global and if you wanna hire Alex as many do to run your next live streaming event or just to consult. He is at oh nine Oh Media. Oh nine oh.media. Oh, the thousand dollars studio on Friday.
Alex Lindsay (02:31:01):
Yeah. We're we're gonna kind of go up, up, so we're gonna start at a thousand. Then there's a $10,000 studio <laugh>, 25,000. Like, you know, like what would you do if you had more money? Like, what would you add to it? So we're starting at a thousand and we'll go up over the next couple months you know, one month at a time. Cool. Just to talk about what, what, what, what equipment is, what, what would you add when that's possible. That's cool. Cause a lot of people building studios right now, so we're talking about it cuz a lot of companies are looking at building their own.
Leo Laporte (02:31:26):
Awesome. Thank you Alex. Thank you Andy. Thank you Jason. Be back next week. Jason with Dan Moore and Alex Lindsey. Andy Ihnatko mic. Micah Sargent gonna host the show. The week's following, I will be back about a month from believe it or not, about a month from now, <laugh>. My next show will be on April 25th. And I will be long delayed vacation. Yeah. Yeah. This is actually a vacation we booked in 9 20 19 that was canceled twice, I believe during Covid. And finally, we're gonna get to go to a different place, but that's okay everybody appreciate your being here. We do Mac Break Weekly on Tuesday's 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1800 utc, the livestream audio war video@live.twi.tv, watching live chat live with us, irc.twi.tv. If you're club member, of course, the Discord is also a great place to hang after the fact on-demand versions of the show are available, ad supported, or in this case, not at <laugh>, geez TWiT tv slash mw.
(02:32:31):
You can also get a YouTube. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to it. Actually, easiest thing to do is go to youtube.com/twi. All of the shows that have dedicated YouTube channels are listed there so you can subscribe to the ones you wanna follow. Probably the easiest subscription though is to do it in a podcast player. That way you'll get it, it'll download, you can get audio or video your choice. It'll download and you'll have it for your listening or viewing pleasure anytime as Fitz Fitzer needs. Thanks for being here. But now I have to say, I'm sorry I get back to work cuz break time is over. And one third of you should be getting back to the office.
Jason Howell (02:33:10):
If you wanna hear about the latest news happening in the tech world from the people who write the article sometimes from the people who are actually making the news. Well, we got a show for you here@twi.tv. It's called Tech News Weekly. Me, Jason Howell, and my co-host Micah Sergeant. We talk with some amazing people each and every Thursday on Tech News Weekly, and we share a little bit of our own insights in each of us bringing a story of the week. That's at twit.tv/tnw. Subscribe right now.