MacBreak Weekly 876, 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 MacBreak Weekly. Alex, Andy, and Jason Snell are all here. Lots to talk about. Yes, believe it or not, the new versions of all the Apple operating systems are out. Now. The final betas before the next releases, there's also big security update. Everybody should get zero click. Flaw in messages has been patched. We'll talk about the rumors, including a new iMac with a bigger than 30 inch display. The vision os S D K is out. Some of the new features in the Vision Pro headset and Apple loses in this Supreme Court. It's all coming up Next on Mac Break. Weekly podcasts you love

Jason Snell (00:00:43):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:45):
This is,

(00:00:51):
This is Mac Break Weekly episode 876. Recorded Tuesday, June 27th, 2023, mediocre Tuesday. This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by ACI Learning IT Skills are outdated in about 18 months. Stay ahead of the curve and future-proof your business competitiveness with customizable entertaining training. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twit for more information on a free two week training trial for your team and by aeg. One, take ownership of your health with a simpler, effective investment with AG One. Try Ag one and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free Ag one travel packs with your first purchase of a subscription. Go to drink ag one.com/mac break. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest MAC News of which there is precious little <laugh>. Jason snells back. How is graduation? Your kid is now a professional.

Jason Snell (00:01:53):
Something. Something. It, it, it worked. She graduated. Yay. <laugh>. Yeah. Yay. It's great. Nice. It's great. We had a good time. We missed you. They just had happened to counter schedule us with Mac Break Weekly. I think that was the university's plan

Leo Laporte (00:02:04):
All along. It gave us a chance to get James Thompson on. It was great to have him on catch up with him and talk about as a developer, what he sees. Coming down the pipe with Iowa 17 and Mac os Sonoma also with us, Mr. Andy Ihnatko. Wg BH Boston. Hello, Andrew.

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:23):
Hey there, Heather. Who there?

Leo Laporte (00:02:25):
That's all we have to say. <Laugh>. No questions.

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:29):
It's hum. It's question. Its, it's Ahum Tuesday here. New England.

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
It's human. I, I heard that. It's pretty warm out there. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:34):
I'm, I'm wearing a shirt. And I think that shows a a an admirable level of commit to you

Leo Laporte (00:02:39):
Brave professionals. Brave, brave man. Actually, I really like your color coordination. Andy is wearing a gray shirt about, I'd say 30% gray, a black TV and a black logo list hat that matches his Sony headphones.

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:54):
No, I, I was, I was a little embarrassed last week. So I was, I was in town to I was, I was in Boston. We're doing G B H in the studio. And so I had like a nice shirt on and a tie and a little thing thrown over that, but then was hot. So I turned, so I took those off and then I realized that I was wearing like black sneakers, black pants, <laugh>, black t-shirt, <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:03:14):
Oh Lord.

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:15):
And like, oh dear Reverend, Reverend Andy is, is is enjoying the summer in, in Boston. Isn't he

Leo Laporte (00:03:21):
On the radio? No one knows you're a priest. It's

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:23):
Good. I try. I I try not to make that, let that happen.

Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
I try Ninja. I would say Ninja Andy instead. And also it's Alex, Lindsay. We had a good dose, Alice on Sunday on Twit. If you haven't heard it. He was fantastic. Great to have you back. Fun conversation in your regular seat. Yeah, it was a good, it was a good show. Really enjoyed it. It was also almost a record holder. Three hours <laugh>. We had Jason Del, it's a long time Jason Del Rayon who wrote a book, really interesting book called Winner Sells All about Amazon versus Walmart. A lot of really interesting stuff about Walmart among all, among other things. Anyway fun conversation. If you didn't get it here TWIT 9 33. Tune in for more Alex, but Alex is here today to talk Apple as we all are just as we went to press. I say that for you Jason, since you're the old print guy.

Jason Snell (00:04:19):
Breaking news. Bringing news.

Leo Laporte (00:04:20):
Everybody press photo presses, beta versions. Copy. Boy. Stand by. <Laugh>.

Jason Snell (00:04:28):
Now listen here, I got a new headline for page one. Are you ready? Get the copy boy in here. It's

Leo Laporte (00:04:32):
Straight on the front page here. Appleseeds fourth beta of Mac os Ventura. 13 five fourth betas of 16. Six iOS 16 six iPad OS TV os updated. I went, I I have an Apple TV in my office. I don't use very much. So I turned it on and wasn't, it was acting kind of funky. It was still on version 14, so I updated it all the way to 16, which took the rest of the day. You can update again if you are on the beta. And I did turn on the beta beta on tv. Os seems a fairly minor thing. Watch os fourth beta of 9.6. All of this sounds like new versions are coming imminently, right? How many betas do they do of a, a version four seems like the limit.

Jason Snell (00:05:24):
Yeah. And this is, this is a cleanup, right? This is probably the last cleanup of the existing os versions before they you know, put them off on the ice flow. But yeah, it seems like it's close now. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:05:37):
That's kind of pathetic. Just there goes Ventura floating away in the ice flow. Yeah, cuz Sonoma's coming.

Jason Snell (00:05:43):
Yeah, that's right.

Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
We are I think the number one Apple podcast in Sonoma County. So

Jason Snell (00:05:50):
I hope so. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:05:54):
I think we're the only probably.

Jason Snell (00:05:57):
I imagine if like Meco as Ken drops in and is like, ah, I gotcha. Damnit <laugh> where you live. Damnit <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:06:06):
Anything to say about these betas? They're, they're cleanups They don't add features or turn things on or anything like that.

Jason Snell (00:06:12):
Yeah, I I imagine it's, it's either things that they, yeah, they have to flip a switch or make some very slight adjustments or bring things to a, a gentle resting place. Not that they won't update them further, but those updates are going to increasingly be about like emergency bug fixes and security updates. Cuz they're, they're pretty much parked, right? Like everybody at Apple has really been working on the new OS versions for, you know, six months now. And now they're in crunch time. So

Leo Laporte (00:06:36):
The other thing that happened since I left the to go to Disneyland and VidCon, what a combat, you know, VidCon was actually had more characters than more people in costume than Disneyland did, which is saying something. Although they, I should have taken a picture of it. They have a big poster right outside of VidCon, which is the convention for video creators, TikTok YouTubers think that they have a big cosplay rules thing. You can't bring a stick <laugh> you can't, you can't hide your face. There are all these cosplay rules. I don't know if that's normal now at Comic-Con and and stuff. Pretty much. Is it, it's for, it's for safety, right? The, the,

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:13):
The anime. Cause players often have these, like, I'm not joking, like six foot long like swords that they carry over their shoulders. Yeah. And after two hours, they're not really paying attention to what happens when they turn. And so they had to be, there's, there's all kinds of rules on thing on length of, length of weapons, length of pro length of props. Also fake anything that could be mistaken for an actual weapon or used as an actual weapon. You have, you have some people who are like clip who are smart enough to say, Hey, I, I just got, I got this beautiful like antique sword that looks, makes my pirate costume look great. Yeah. You're bringing like a three foot long edged weapon into a public space. Maybe that's not a good thing.

Leo Laporte (00:07:49):
Yeah, I would, I didn't mind. It'll

Andy Ihnatko (00:07:50):
Be, it'll be here with your coat when you come back out.

Leo Laporte (00:07:52):
<Laugh>. I didn't mind. There were still plenty of people in costume. It turns out though I didn't, the the VidCon, which was at the Anaheim Convention Center. We were there cuz Lisa was on a panel, which was great. She did a great job. But it turns out that wasn't the place to be at VidCon. The Hyatt Hotel, which was several blocks away, was where all the creators, they didn't even bother going to the show. All the creators were hanging out at the hotel. Fanta, the CEO of TikTok came, but he didn't come to the convention. He went to the Hyatt and, and, and, and hung out at a hospitality suite there. So

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:27):
I It's all about the collabs baby. The collabs.

Leo Laporte (00:08:30):
Yeah. I'm just, I felt so old and out of <laugh>. I mean, I was an influencer back when influencers were made out of wood and stone <laugh> to see, I mean, it's really interesting. And what's, how, what's interesting how is, how niche it is now, you know, which is good. I mean, we're niche, obviously. And, and well, what's what's

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:52):
Also interesting is that, that some of them

Alex Lindsay (00:08:54):
Might be a, they, they, they're only 28 years old or 30 years old, but they've been doing it almost as long as we have. I know

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:00):
<Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:09:00):
Like

Alex Lindsay (00:09:00):
They, a lot of them, they started when they were eight or 10 or 12, you know, you know, they're, they, they started very early.

Leo Laporte (00:09:06):
Although the big guys, you know, Mr. Bees didn't go, you know, the big Marquez brown leg didn't go because this was a scheduling error. Who would've thought Cannes Lion, which is in France, is the big upfront for streaming video. All of these big shots were including Emma Chamberlain and were in France because it conflicted with VidCon. What a dumb idea to have VidCon the same week as. But I guess I'm betting nobody at VidCon scheduling this. Two years ago, I thought, can Lion, why would anybody

Alex Lindsay (00:09:35):
<Laugh>? I think there was actually another VidCon at the same time as VidCon. Geez. And there was like another, I think a VidCon in Baltimore or something, or near it. It's gotten

Leo Laporte (00:09:41):
Too big. I think

Alex Lindsay (00:09:42):
It, well,

Leo Laporte (00:09:43):
It's gotten too big. Anyway, I I really I quite enjoyed both that and Disneyland, but that's not what we're here to talk about. What, one of the things that happened I was starting to say, and didn't finish the sentence while I was gone, is the vision Pro sdk, the software development kit came out, which means we learned some things, right? Mm-Hmm. The vision os sdk

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:08):
A a lot of people now, now that people have the ability to actually run Vision Os inside the, the simulator, they're learning things like, oh wow, there's actually Spotlight Search in here and wow, here's what the keyboard actually like, works and looks like. And where we're fi finding out a whole bunch of other tidbits, like a couple separate stories about how like, okay, so now that the that the Vision Pro will stop, will, will stop working if you are in motion to a certain degree to prevent people, I, I don't know, from like using it while driving or operating a vehicle. There is a safety, there's a safety zone of something like 10 feet. Like you, when you're, when you're in a fully immersive environment that you're inside a box that's about 10 feet across to, again, to prevent you from, I don't know, wandering <laugh> wandering on on a window or something like that. Lots of little thi little details that we haven't been figuring out before. But

Leo Laporte (00:10:58):
There is a traveling switch that you can flip says I'm on an airplane and I'm watching a movie. Yes. So they clear, you know, we, we learn a lot about what I think some people, Alex correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the sense from some people's social media posts, the people who spent a lot of time working with AR Kit were a little disappointed to see that a lot of the work that they had done would not be able, would not be applicable to Vision Pro. Did I, did I get that right? Well,

Alex Lindsay (00:11:22):
Yes and no. So so what I would say by that, by that is that all the work that you do in these areas, yeah, it may not ar kit may not line up as far as the code goes, but understanding how things work Oh, of course. And understanding things that you have to think about. But that's from a coding perspective, that's in my opinion, a lot more important is the understanding of how to interact with things. Writing the, you know, writing the code is going to be a little bit more work. But, but I think that you also don't want them to be trying to figure out how to be backward compatible with something they thought was gonna work three years ago. Exactly. Exactly. So, so I think, but I think that the, what I've learned over, you know, doing a lot of immersive work over the last, I mean, 25 years, is that doing a lot of it means that you understand what you should do next and the coding stuff, or for us, the, you know, the shooting the footage or building the footage, you can start thinking in that terms and that, that has been far more useful than learning any individual tool or process.

(00:12:17):
Did you

Leo Laporte (00:12:17):
Get to play with Reality Composer Pro, which was also released with the sdk?

Alex Lindsay (00:12:22):
You know, I haven't played with it yet. I have watched a lot of videos on it, and we're gonna be doing some stuff in office hours with it, you know, to yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna have some labs where we really dig into it. It's really powerful. Like, and, and watching the videos has me really excited about it. Probably the best. I think I mentioned it before, probably the best nodal nodal system that I've ever seen. Just No kidding.

Leo Laporte (00:12:44):
Pure.

Alex Lindsay (00:12:45):
Pure, pretty, like, just, it is like a lot of these companies are, that we use are fairly functional, but no one really thinks about, only Apple would like, worry about exactly how the little nodes are connected and, and exactly, you know, how everything gets fit together. So on, on that, I'm sure that's just as dysfunctional as Unreal Engine or, or any of the other ones. It's, it's, it's functional, but it, it's the, it's just looks, it looks nice. As someone who used to have to design those nodes, I, I immediately opened it up and I was like, oh, that's yeah, I wish I thought of that <laugh>. That looks really nice. So

Leo Laporte (00:13:16):
It is, so the idea is you can import your 3d stuff

Alex Lindsay (00:13:21):
Access, yeah. You can set up a lot of functions

Leo Laporte (00:13:22):
X code, right?

Alex Lindsay (00:13:24):
Yeah. You can set up a lot of functions that you're gonna hand back to Xcode. So basically, in reality, composer, you're able to build your scenes that would be really arduous to do with your code. And so you can build out the scenes and things that need to be triggered, but those can all be kind of put together and visualized and, you know, and, and kind of worked out inside of this, this environment. And it's got, you know, adding surfaces and particle systems and lighting and, and working with the models and placing them in place, you know, and, and all of that can be set up inside of this environment. And it's again, it's what's missing in a lot of the other immersive environments was really good tools to kind of put that together that aren't just unreal and Unity.

Leo Laporte (00:14:03):
Right. And it'll import U S D Z and other assets and, and then work you working with Xcode to make it a program with these assets, right?

Alex Lindsay (00:14:14):
So it'll, it, it's got all the hooks in there. So you're basically building something that has hooks available that you're gonna be able to call from Xcode.

Leo Laporte (00:14:20):
Yeah. Okay. So we got our first look at that. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:25):
It's gonna, but the, the weird thing is gonna be that people all these developers are gonna be writing really cool apps that will work for this simulator, but they, it's gonna be at least a year before they figure out, is this going to, did, have they placed objects too close to the viewport, too far away from the viewport? How comfortable is this app gonna be to use for more than, you know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, two hours? And that's still, it's, it's still one of the big unanswered questions of of the Vision Pro is how long can, is anybody gonna be able to use this, given the te given the limits of VR as they've implemented them?

Jason Snell (00:14:59):
I don't know. I mean, some of the developers will get units, right? Like I, everything we're hearing is that next month they're gonna have these developer kitchens basically in six major cities where people can come who are developers and use it. And then they've said, they've been upfront in saying that they're gonna open, you know, the ability to get a developer unit, and you're gonna have to apply and you're gonna have to it, it's obviously gonna be limited. In fact, I think the phrase they use is your team, which implies that like maybe James Thompson need not apply. I don't know <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
But he's a solo developer.

Jason Snell (00:15:32):
Yeah. But by under what I've heard is that the hardware is pretty final, and that the reason that it's not shipping is twofold. One, they can't make enough of them. And two, the software is not all there yet, but if the hardware's pretty final, then the developer kits will probably be pretty real. And so developers may in fact be the first people outside of Apple to have a realization about how long can they go using this thing. Now, that's not the whole wide world and the developer pool, you know, is not as diverse as the whole wide world, even the whole wide world of purchasers of this product. But I feel like we're going start getting a sense if they're nda it'll be through the grapevine, but I think we'll start getting a sense later this year from developers and other people who've used it who are actually able to sit there for 2, 3, 4, 5 hours and say, either it's fine or it's terrible, and we'll have a better idea. I,

Alex Lindsay (00:16:26):
I

Leo Laporte (00:16:26):
Did hear some complaint from the open source community that Apple's tools, swift UI, reality Kit, ar kit, reality composer com Pro are all proprietary and their exist analogs in the open source world. I'm sure, Alex, you have a rebuttal to that.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:44):
I don't think Apple cares <laugh>. You know, this is the, this is, and nor do

Leo Laporte (00:16:47):
I Right?

Alex Lindsay (00:16:48):
Nailed this. You know, like, I don't think

Leo Laporte (00:16:49):
The bottom is free, right?

Alex Lindsay (00:16:51):
I mean, the bottom line is, is that, that, you know, trying to, like in open source, now you have Theo license, that is a huge problem if you start building the apps that you want to sell. And so having, you know, incorporating like everything that I, every large company that I work for, I have to sign a contract that says I will not use any open source software. Like it is literally, like in every contract, you will, you'll do all this other stuff, and you will not use any open source software in any part of the development of doing this because of the, of the way the licensing works. And, and so they don't want to have any, most, most, for, for-profit companies don't wanna have any part of using you know, anything with a, with an open source license. And so, so, sure. But that, you know, and, and Apple, you know, is gonna build something that's going to work on their platform. And they, they don't, they're not worried about other, they're not really worried about interoperability except for Unity. You know, they're, and, and that allows them to innovate and move as fast as they want to move. This is a brand new thing. Why would they tie themselves into the past? Yeah. I don't, I don't see any, any upside for them. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:52):
I just want to give you the chance to say that. Yeah, yeah. On on ly on, on the other hand, at least, at at least, there's there was some report, I think put in the show notes that it's gonna support like 3D web technology. So Lisa WebEx, XR sort that, yeah. Webex xr. What is WebEx? Is that, is that a, a Pixar standard?

Alex Lindsay (00:18:13):
No, they, they, so what's interesting is, and, and what you can always see from a company when they, when they do this, is that they are they company wants to control everything that makes them different and commoditize anything that is just a cost of production. And so, oh, by the way, SR is something by under,

Leo Laporte (00:18:29):
If you have your highlighter with you, underline that sentence that you just said, cuz that is really a fundamental concept in all of this. Say it again, Alex.

Alex Lindsay (00:18:39):
So, so, so any company, all the companies, they want to control the things that make them different. So they want absolute control over those, and they want to commoditize anything that increases their cost of production or, or makes it harder that they're not gonna do. And so you can tell when a company wants things to be open source, when Apple wants to make things open source, that's something they want to commoditize. They wanna

Leo Laporte (00:18:59):
Let somebody else do the work. And cause it's not a differentiator. It doesn't, it doesn't help the platform.

Alex Lindsay (00:19:04):
And it also, yeah, it is not gonna be something that they care about in the future. So, like hls, they may, they made, they created hls, right? And they made it widely available because they need to be able to stream to those things, and they want everybody to use it. And so we'll make it free and make it easy for everybody to use. And when I say open source, I mean, they, they may open source it or they may make it just free, but they're going to, you know, they don't want a lot. What Apple didn't want is a lot of other formats streaming out <laugh> soon, because then they have to support them. And so by having one that is really good. And now even now we have to think about h you know, HLS and Dash and so on and so forth. And so, so anyway, the you know, so you'll see I, you know, the you know, the web ar, web WebEx, xr, I think it's most of the things we, yeah, WebEx XR tools are are part of that also.

(00:19:50):
They're not, like Apple is, they're, they're streaming, they're doing the streaming is the M V H E V C. So that is a, but that's a standard. And that standard's been around since I think 2015, although not a lot of people have used it, because just as that standard came out, 3D kind of fell, the bottom fell out of 3D at the time. 3D just keeps on coming up. Like every couple years we go, oh, like right now there's this huge rush. All of us are trying to find 3D rigs, you know, those camera rigs that we were using for all those 3D films. Suddenly everyone's trying to, like, who's got the rigs? Like there's warehouses of people that have fortunately kept a couple of rigs that were all Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:20:24):
We were talking about that. You have that, what is it, $30,000 OZO. There's, there's a behind you's,

Alex Lindsay (00:20:29):
I have a $60,000 Ozo right there. I don't even know if it'll work though. It's like, like, I don't, like, I haven't turned it on for a long time. But the and it's but there's these big rigs that they use for film that were like $60,000 rigs, and now they're like 10,000. And then there's the cannon, I think they, I, I don't know, they must have known something was gonna happen, but they're, they have the, the R five C with a dual lens on it, and it can't stream. But a bunch of us, like, I was kind of surprised that Canon when they came me out, I was like, why are they releasing that camera? Now? It makes more sense, because that's gonna be a great acquisition tool for you know, for the, for the headset. So the so anyway, so there's a couple, you know, a lot of us are trying to figure those things out.

(00:21:12):
But the MV h hvac format is basically give me a hero eye. So this is my, let's say my left eye is my hero eye, and then give me, the second eye is going to be compressed into the hero eye. So that means that it saves space. You're not sending two whole frames to somebody for stereo. It only does the delta for the right eye if, if, if the left eye's hero. But if you only have 2d, if you're washing on your phone, you just see the left eye. You know? And so those are the kind of things that, but that makes it, you know, more efficient, you know, in that process. And so that's the, that's the kind of thing that's an, a standard that's eg you know, like it's not a, it's not something that Apple's making up. And you can tell that Apple doesn't wanna make up things that it wants everybody using so that it's easier for it to do, but it does want to control its code Yeah. On how you build

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:55):
It out. And, and if they, if they're supporting this in the web, that means that, like if in five years from now as Alice keeps saying, Alex keeps saying the ability to like, see what this IKEA bookcase looks like in your house, it becomes a thing that's, it would be very, very much improved if you could do it through the web rather than, oh, by the way, oh yes, we can wanna see what this looks like in your living room, download it and install this app, which will only take X amount of time. I mean, if this, if this does become a world standard, that's, it's a very cheap way for Apple to make this, to take the advantages of a world that uses 3D in, in the web without actually having to commit to like dummy itself down to Meta's idea of, of, of 3d.

Alex Lindsay (00:22:37):
Yeah. And, and the, and the b by the way, like with Amazon, if you have, if you go through Amazon on your phone and you look at furniture, cuz I'm replacing something underneath my TV right now, the, whatever the thing is, it will say, Hey, do you wanna see this in your, in your scene? All you gotta do is click on the little button and move your camera back and forth a little bit and boom, it pops right into your living room. So that stuff is already, yeah. And a lot of people have been built, Amazon had a whole team in, in building that for quite some time. <Laugh>. So, so anyway, so the so that's been in the works for a couple years and it's, it's already available on the phone. Obviously it'll be more useful on the, in the headset, but it also means that if you go to any webpage supporting the web the web VR or ar or xr, those webpages, when you open them on a webpage inside of your a, your Apple, you can just click on it and rotate it around and you'll see it in 3d.

(00:23:25):
So it's it'll be, it's gonna be pretty that makes it, as Andy said, it's, it makes it much easier for a lot of folks that don't believe in what Apple's doing to publish something that just happens to work on the headset.

Leo Laporte (00:23:38):
Already. It's been out six days. There are already apps. I more had a list of <laugh> developers are already working on apps Provision Pro here are five. We love <laugh>. I don't It's a gold rush. It's a gold rush. It's a gold

Alex Lindsay (00:23:52):
Rush. Yeah. Yeah. For, especially for the first ones that are out there you know, we don't know how well they'll work, but the b but you have a bunch of people that spent at some point we'll have spent $3,500 and spending another five on an app Yeah. Or $10 on an app Yeah. To see how it works. Especially when a large number are developers and they're just trying to figure out what it works, how it works, and what it does. They're probably gonna spend, you know, so if you're one of those first apps that's being recommended, if you're one of the first apps that gets a little press, if it looks, if it gets a little push, you know, it's not like you're gonna make 10 bucks, it's gonna be millions. You know, like, you know, it's, and I've talked to other developers that have done this in the past where they launched things right out of the gate and, you know, they have a quarter million dollar week now, let me not see anything after that. But it's like, it's like, no, a bunch of money came in. So, so I think they're gonna see a lot of that, a lot of people trying to be in that first tranche and that, and that first tranche will probably last about a year.

Leo Laporte (00:24:44):
I bought a ton of stuff for people when I got that question, bro. Go ahead.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:48):
No, just, or at minimum to, to basically advertise to the world that, Hey, look, I know how to do, how to program apps for this thing. Perhaps you should hire me for a quarter million dollars and give me dental and mental

Leo Laporte (00:24:57):
Here. Look at, I mean, James Thompson was on a week ago. The next day the SDK comes out, peacock is already available. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:25:04):
Yeah. Well, I mean, he got it up and running as the iPad app and then got it up and running in the simulator as a, as a native app. But, you know, I, I would say a lot of the developers, especially the indie developers who are gonna be showing up in these kinds of stories and are posting their things to social media, they are just really enthusiastic about being able to take their skills as an Apple platform developer to a new platform. Yeah. And figure out where it's applied. So I would say that the primary thing driving most of what I've seen is not like I want to be seen or I want, I mean, it's a gold rush to just be noticed months before the product ships, right? It's not, there's not a lot of value there. But a lot of these people are like, oh, my app does x, can that be a Vision Pro app?

(00:25:49):
And like exploring and they're doing it in public, which I think is a lot of fun. But like Steve Tren Smith who does a streaming audio app called Broadcast, like he showed me a video, it was on Mastodon where he is like, he's taking his little player and, and I keep kept saying like, I want it to like turn into a radio essentially that I can put anywhere. And he's got like a minimized view of it that he's been working on where you can put it on a table in your kitchen and then wherever you are, you can hear it playing in the kitchen, which is really cool. And like, I think there's a lot of enthusiasm right now among people who are already invested in this this, these platforms, the Apple platforms trying to figure out what their software, what their existing software does. I think that there will also be a wave of people writing new software, but like, this is that first little rush. It's like when the iPad came out where it's like, oh, can I get it up and running on the iPad? And, and like they're just enthusiastic about it. Is

Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
It Catalyst? It's early days. I mean, is it a catalyst like environment that they're using? I mean

Jason Snell (00:26:45):
No. I think the iPad app, it's literally iPad app emulation. They're literally just running it just as you would on a Mac. You're running on the native iPad app unchanged. And then they make some changes and they do a build target for Vision Os and that gives you the frosted glass look and all of that, which is not there. You can tell when you're using an iPad app, cuz it looks like an iPad. Whereas vision stuff is all

Leo Laporte (00:27:07):
Glasses. This is broadcasts on the vi on the Vision Pro sdk. Yeah. And you could see that the, that big screen in the background, that's just the iPad app. And then he is popped out into a player into the 3D space. So Yeah. That's cool. It's not what, you know, it's, it's

Jason Snell (00:27:25):
Not, they're working on it. They're working on it. What I want is they're showing I want a 3d, I want a 3D like object. I want a thing that looks literally, I can, I can pull out a thing that looks like a radio and set it somewhere. Yeah, exactly. And that's my broadcast player. Right. I, I'm, I'm intrigued by the idea of like, apps as physical objects since we we're getting like super skew amorphic here. Like, let's do it. I wanna see if, if you, if you're an audio player like Steve Tro Smith's broadcast I would love to see your radio, literally physical radio that could set somewhere. And when you do it, when you work through the channels, sure. I mean the more Omo amorphic the better. I think that's

Leo Laporte (00:28:02):
Interesting. It does. It calls for a phim, doesn't it? As Apple has abandoned it, but

Andy Ihnatko (00:28:08):
Yeah. But I don't know if that's ever, it's, it, I don't know if that, that's never really worked

Leo Laporte (00:28:13):
To me. Is it transitional we've had Andy? Or is it it Well, we, we've, it long, long term

Andy Ihnatko (00:28:17):
I think, I think that everybody's gonna have to have their chainsaw moment with this, you know, where you, you get your first chainsaw, the first thing and everything you want to do in life is cut things with this chainsaw. And so I think that as people start to write their own virtual reality apps with the, with Vision Pro, it's the natural thing is, wow, I've got a podcast player that should actually look like a radio and I should be able to, I should be able to put it on top of any physical surface in the real world around me. But it's, I think it's gonna take a little while for everybody to kind of settle down and realize that that's cool. That's wonderful. That's a really great demo. It's not the most convenient way to access and to be using. I, I don't, I I know you're really, really happy about the, the fact that you've used the, the virtual sound stage so that when you turn to the left or when you back away from the, the virtual radio, the placement of it and the sound field moves and the volume moves.

(00:29:07):
But actually I just wanna be able to listen to it very, very clearly no matter where my focus is. Yeah, we

Jason Snell (00:29:12):
Don't know.

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:12):
Yeah. I mean, we have, I mean, remember that the magic cap, like the, that that, that first like pre Newton message pad control was, it was completely s mph where they used the paradigm of, Hey, here is your house, here, is your in here is your inbox tray on your desk? Hey, look, here is the, let's go into the living room where you've got your radio. And again, it was a really cool demo and it kind of made sense on some sort of Vulcan logic way. But then again, when you give people, or here is a menu with a list of five items and you simply click on the one that you want to use.

Alex Lindsay (00:29:44):
Let's

Leo Laporte (00:29:44):
See how long people

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:45):
Use the phim beyond like the first week or

Alex Lindsay (00:29:48):
Two. But the main thing is, is that what's, what what's important is to throw it up against the wall. Because a lot of times there are so many things that that I've been asked to do by someone who doesn't do what I do a lot. And I go, oh, that's never gonna work. Like that is like, we, we had one with Richard Branson and he wanted to do things in the, in the round. He wants to do these, he wants to do his po he wants to do his, his conversation instead of on stage. And I was like, there was a lot of me going, Hey, that is, we, there's a reason, there's a stage on one side and our cameras on the other, you're gonna see our cameras. This is all not gonna work. It's gonna look totally chaotic. And I did it. We did it cuz you know, he was gonna do what he's gonna do <laugh>. And you know, like, like he just, he, he's, he listened to us in this billionaires

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:25):
Always have the right of

Alex Lindsay (00:30:26):
Way and then we're gonna do it this way. And, and the thing is, is that and we did it and now I won't do it any other way. Like I will, like, it was so magical to have people in around talking to each other that we've slowly figured out how to make it way better than what we had done originally. But, but it was, it was a beginner's mind. You know, it was someone going in and going, I don't know. I know that you've always done it this way, but I wanna do it some other way. And about half 75% of the time, it's horrible. I do <laugh> 25% of the time I'm being kind <laugh>. And but 25% of the time you end up with something magical that you didn't know. And so I think that the unknowing of it, of, and I think that's what people are in right now, is they're just gonna throw things up.

(00:31:06):
Like, what does this look like? And does the radio work and does this thing go? And, and I, and that's why it's so important for developers to get into it now and to have, cuz right now they're still gonna figure out the architecture. Like how do I tie in my reality composer pro into those? So there's a whole bunch of subsystems that you have to figure out on how all those things are gonna work inside the simulator so that when you put the headset on all those things, you know how to do all the other things. And now you're going into, I don't feel right or I feel sick, or this is too high, or this is too low. And Apple, I will say, I'm kind of amazed if you watch the WWC videos, the level of detail that Apple gives you around the design, you know, like you want all your interfaces slightly below.

(00:31:44):
I mean, with all things that we've said in the past, those of us who've done it, but I've never seen anyone put it in training of all, you know, you want your head to look just a little bit down at things rather than up or you'll get tired. And, and there's a lot of these things that Apple has, has figured out for folks at least to give them a guide of where to start. And so it's, it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be an exciting time next year when the, when the headset comes out. That's really cool.

Leo Laporte (00:32:05):
I would say Steve Travis Smith did this development in public and you interacted with him yeah. In it, but he, yeah, he, he was, he was posting on Mastodon as he discovered a feature. What, you know, as he got an image he would post, you know, while I have a little downtime of doing the T TV V os app look to see what I can port over, I, I actually really liked, let me scroll down. Look at all these screenshots he put up. I really liked this one. This is a mini player kind of embedded on the desktop. Yeah. That's So this is close to what you're about. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:32:40):
Yeah. And, and, and to Andy's point, I think he's right. Like, we don't know. We, we just don't know. Is this a novelty that will wear off or, I think it's, you could argue are these two dimensional planes in a 3D space gonna be like, oh, what were we thinking? Two dimensional planes? That's so old thinking, right? Like, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle that there're gonna be some uses for the spatial, you know, and, and they're gonna be somewhere it's, it's irrelevant and we're gonna have to figure it out. But I, I love the idea that you've got some smart software developers who immediately are leaping in and saying like, okay, what, what do I do with this? Right. That is not literally just my iPad app floating in a two dimensional window in space. Right? It's like, cuz that's not gonna, it's

Leo Laporte (00:33:21):
Gonna come down to whether people live in this or not. And I don't think generation one they're gonna live in battery life is long enough for one, but then you can't move around. Yeah. But in time, if they do get an ar spectacle of some kind where you're kind of wearing it all the time, you'll want these 3D images, you, you will want them to show up. You know, oh, let's go in the kitchen. I have the radio there. You, you, I think that that's a natural form of augmented reality. It's just the form factor for the Vision Pro doesn't lend itself to that, you know, forever, but

Jason Snell (00:33:55):
Right. Some of these developers I think are also thinking they're gonna play a long game, just like Absolutely.

Leo Laporte (00:33:59):
Absolutely.

Jason Snell (00:33:59):
First thing to do is just understand the language you're speaking and what the issues are and then, and then take your time and grow and learn from there. Risk.

Leo Laporte (00:34:06):
And, and once we don't know how long it's gonna take to get there. We don't how long,

Alex Lindsay (00:34:10):
We don't know how long it's gonna take, but we have a pretty good idea of how long Apple's gonna work on it. Yeah. And, and that's the dis distinction between Apple and Google. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is that with Google, you're like, if this doesn't turn out in six months or a year, we don't know if it'll make it to the next io. You know, like, or, or maybe it gets to one IO and maybe not the second io. You know, that kind of thing. And that's been a real problem that Google has had, which is this idea of just killing things off means that people have to put development time in. They don't know with Apple, you're pretty sure that they spent the last six or seven years working on this, they're probably gonna spend at least the next five, you know, kind of cranking through it. And I think that that's a distinction. Even things that were, you know, probably didn't turn out well, like final cut, final cut, 10 from a PR perspective, <laugh>, they're still with, you know you know, 10, 10 years later or more than 10 years later. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:34:56):
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, that's what I'm waiting for hoping for. And if the vision, as skeptical as I've been about the Vision Pro, it was of that particular form factor. If the Vision Pro continues to make progress it's a, this, you know, it's a good time. And Steve, John Smith is all in on Apple, right? So he he's not gonna go. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:35:17):
It's his skillset. That's what he does. He's an Apple platform developer. Yeah. So this is, why would you not, and James Thompson is James Thompson is the same way, right? Yeah. Like why would you not, would James, I, I've known James for like 25 years now. And I will tell you like one of the great skills that James has is whatever Apple does, whatever is new and you heard this last week, he takes it off the shelf and immediately playing with it. Yeah. And there's this question of like, can I do something with this? What can I do? And it's not everybody is gonna be like that, but it's really interesting to see somebody who's like, oh, I have new colors that I can paint with now let's experiment. And I love that on Mastodon. We're seeing them do it out in the open, like literally like, what can we do? And they only got the simulator. They don't have any hardware to try, but they're already kind of like, just trying to figure out what's the metaphor that works? What doesn't work? What work do I have to do? It's pretty awesome to see

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
It. That's the joy of being an individual developer like Steve or James or a small team like Rich Siegel where you, it's part of the fun of it is, oh look, we got a whole new toy kit, a whole new sandbox. Let's, let's play with it. And you know, you don't have a, the impetus of a large corporation saying, well, okay, but first finish, you know, the login code for our banking app,

Jason Snell (00:36:27):
Right? It's, it's professional development happening basically, is what we're seeing. Yeah. It's like these guys are professional Apple developers and they are learning new skills and Yeah. If they were working at a big company, the big company would be like go back to your app. <Laugh> Bowls and trolls go back to work. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:36:42):
Sure James, Steve and Rich all look forward to this. I mean, I think it's fun when it's like getting a new car. It's great.

Alex Lindsay (00:36:50):
And there's definitely big companies that are building little teams around this right now. Yeah. Some lucky developers. Let's figure out Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:55):
Embedded in a big company. We'll get to play with it. Just not everybody.

Alex Lindsay (00:36:58):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:59):
Yeah. The other good side of this is it is stimulating the competition. You know, this is what you always want. Meta is not sitting still. They're, they're scrambling as fast as they can to be prepared for the release of Vision Pro. As you remember, they announced a thinner, lighter, less expensive quest. They this week announced a subscription model, kind of like Microsoft's game Pass. Game Pass, yeah. Two games a month. You get to keep 'em as long as you're a subscriber. The initial subscription is $1 a month, but I think it ends up getting to $8 a month or 60 bucks a year. But that's one AAA title a year. That's a reasonable cost, and it means you'll get two new games every month for your Meta Quest or your Quest Pro.

Jason Snell (00:37:47):
Or your question, I'm sure there will be Apple Arcade for the Vision Pro at some point, right? Yeah, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:37:53):
Yeah. I wondering, are they, are they seeding arcade developers saying we would love a game to ship come Oh yeah. Early

Alex Lindsay (00:37:59):
Next year? I mean, I think that I, I think that they didn't want it to become, I, I think that we saw very little games and we probably will continue to see very little games because they wanna make it a computing platform, not a gaming platform. But obviously games will be a big piece of what people want do with it.

Leo Laporte (00:38:13):
Well, it is ironic that that is the number one application for everybody else's.

Alex Lindsay (00:38:18):
Is it?

Leo Laporte (00:38:19):
Yeah. For the Vive for the Quest. Yeah. Oh yeah. Netflix the only one. It's Netflix,

Alex Lindsay (00:38:22):
Not Netflix for, is Netflix. Netflix the number one?

Leo Laporte (00:38:23):
Do you think Netflix and enter

Alex Lindsay (00:38:25):
Entertainment? Yeah. Yeah. Watching, watching, watching movies on on your headset is usually the number one thing that people do with their headset. Do people

Leo Laporte (00:38:32):
Really do that? Because that's,

Alex Lindsay (00:38:35):
It's it measured in time. Yeah. <laugh> looks so it's, oh my

Leo Laporte (00:38:38):
God. I mean, I would, so far,

Alex Lindsay (00:38:39):
My STAs are a little

Leo Laporte (00:38:40):
Old so far. Prefer a nice 77 inch qbi a screen 10 feet away that fills my vision and I can have popcorn plane on a planes. Do you see it on a plane a lot? Oh, you don't travel. What am I as ass? I see it before,

Alex Lindsay (00:38:54):
You know, on I've done it on a plane. I've, I've watched on, I've watched movies on planes.

Leo Laporte (00:38:57):
It's nice. I have never seen anybody wearing a a, a nerd helmet on a plane, but okay.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:02):
You will <laugh>. Yeah, you will. Especially, especially especially with the Apple headset, there's gonna be people who are a that much into it, that they're gonna be wearing it in places where it would be socially disadvantageous to actually wear it. And also, you gotta be, you gotta flash it, man. You gotta flaunt it, baby flaunt. It's

Alex Lindsay (00:39:19):
Be half a first class, it'll be two hours into every flight, half a first class, they'll have their little headset on. You do

Leo Laporte (00:39:23):
See a lot of iPads on flights, tons of them. In fact, a lot of airlines have just abandoned their, in their, their, that's because entertainment,

Alex Lindsay (00:39:31):
The seat is so close in economy that you can't open your laptop. So that's all you can do is open up your iPad. Yeah, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:37):
Well, we're seeing, we're seeing all, all these really interesting demos. What what we're not seeing is, thank God my finally I can, I can create the, the virtual reality version of my outliner app. It's like, it's, this is another thing that, that we're gonna be paying really close attention to that Apple I, I think that Apple has is gonna struggle at least initially to defend the Oh, no, no, no. We're not Virtual reality and X xr. We are, we are, we are spatial, we are the first spatial computing platform, but I think they got a ways to go before they show anybody that yes, you're gonna want to, you're gonna want to to run Excel <laugh> or you, you're gonna, you're gonna want to actually like do three hours of productivity with this thing on when you're not like in economy and absolutely forced to do so. It's, it's, I mean it's, they have to make the case that this is gonna be better than it's better than what we use the iPhone for, for productivity, where we'll use it in a pinch, we'll use it because, you know, it's inconvenient to use a real thing or we don't have the real thing with us. But to make it into something that I would prefer to use the the the Vision Pro to my laptop or anything else that's gonna be a big big leap forward when they make it.

Alex Lindsay (00:40:43):
Well, I think that, I mean, you know, I have the luxury of, I've got a lot of screens <laugh> in front of me that, that people don't see. And, and I have the luxury of having a room that I can do that in, but in a lot of places people may not have that. And, and whether that's in the office or not, I think that there's gonna be a fair number of people that, again, I think that the first one might, you know, again, apple has to get something out so that, to get back to what we were talking about earlier, developers have to have something they can wear. And, and that's, you know, the number one reason that you release this, the product that's coming out is that Apple will still ma just be able to sell as many as they can make just to developers who wanna figure out how to use it and for companies and organizations that wanna figure out how to use it. But I think that as it gets a little lighter and, and I think that one version will stay heavy and just get faster and the other version will get lighter and probably a little less expensive.

Leo Laporte (00:41:28):
Yeah. If I see somebody with AirPods in and a Vision Pro on their head on an airplane like that, I'm just gonna steal their peanuts. That's all

Alex Lindsay (00:41:38):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:41:39):
They are actually that. They're all alone. That reminds,

Andy Ihnatko (00:41:42):
That reminds me of something. How, how is this, like, is the using the built-in audio, is that like wearing like open air headphones where people next to you're gonna be able to hear what you're hearing? Yeah. Yes. I

Alex Lindsay (00:41:52):
Think it, I I, yeah. And then you put AirPods into, okay,

Jason Snell (00:41:55):
Privacy. Yeah. Yeah, it's privacy. Okay. In a plane you'll use AirPods. It, it is not quite maybe as loud as open headphones, but you can definitely, if you're, if you're sitting next to a person who's watching a movie, you will hear the movie,

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
You hear tinny

Jason Snell (00:42:09):
Hear, hear. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:10):
You'll definitely be the victim of people taking, of taking obnoxious selfies with you that you're not aware of. Oh God, you have to listen to that movie for three

Alex Lindsay (00:42:19):
Hours. Are you able to they, they show the AirPod pros. Do you know, Jason, when you put it on, if you were talking to them about whether they can put, can you put the maxes o over top or is it

Jason Snell (00:42:28):
You, you, you, you, you can't has

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:30):
A weight as a weight

Leo Laporte (00:42:31):
Distribution

Alex Lindsay (00:42:32):
Thing. So

Andy Ihnatko (00:42:33):
Better sounded so great. You

Jason Snell (00:42:34):
Can't, you can't. Cause it sounds so much better. Air Back AirPods Max don't even support any of the new features that are rolling out to the other AirPods this fall. So I think AirPods Max, there's a real question about where's it going and what's it doing?

Leo Laporte (00:42:44):
Oh no, don't tell me that. I paid $550.

Alex Lindsay (00:42:48):
I love it on plates though. I mean, I, I have a, I put these eye things over my eyes and I have the AirPods and I have a little, my neck, little neck thing and I,

Leo Laporte (00:42:55):
It does seal out the sound pretty well and don't I see

Alex Lindsay (00:42:56):
Out everybody? Yeah. Like, it's just like, I, I will not, I will not interact with anybody.

Leo Laporte (00:43:00):
I quite, I surprised was given its cost. I saw maybe half a dozen as we flow to la last week I saw about half a dozen AirPod Max and they're very distinctive cuz they're that rectangle shape.

Alex Lindsay (00:43:12):
I just think they should build a whole helmet. Like I feel like they're playing small, they're playing small with this. They just, just drop a whole helmet down on top and, and call a day, you know, like,

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:21):
Like a pair of French DJs. They should, they

Alex Lindsay (00:43:24):
Should totally, totally, you know, totally daft punk, you know, and, and just that would be you thought would be great. Important actually purifier, it could have an air purifier that goes across the front.

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:34):
It might, you know,

Alex Lindsay (00:43:36):
That

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:36):
That virtual eyeball, that virtual external eyeball thing might be even more interesting if you could do the whole face, especially like ghost of you could be the ghost of that could be the, the one that ghosts from the one of those Japanese anime. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. You could be, you know, it'd

Leo Laporte (00:43:49):
Be actually like in the haunted house. The faces on the on the buss when they follow your eyes would follow you. It'd be great

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:56):
Hat box ghost you

Leo Laporte (00:43:58):
All. Let's take a look break. Why

Andy Ihnatko (00:43:59):
Not come back? Why not make it fun for the people around you? Yes. You're gonna spend $3,500. Part of it is entertainment for the people around you, people can

Leo Laporte (00:44:05):
Break out a sharpie and put a mustache on your virtual face. <Laugh>. Alex Lindsay's here. Andy and naco. Jason Snell's back. It's Mac Break Weekly. We'll have more in a moment. But first a word from our sponsors, studio sponsor and all ACI learning. You know it pro I mean, they've been our sponsor, trusted sponsor for a decade, providing engaging and entertaining IT training to our listeners as part ACI Learning's family. Now IT pro's capabilities continue to impressively grow with their highly entertaining bingeable short form content. And now over 7,000 hours and counting to choose from. With an astounding 30% of ACI learners being MSPs, ACI Learning is dedicated to supporting your MSP team through any challenge. Msps prefer ACI Learning's Practice Labs where you can test and experiment before deploying new apps or updates without compromising your live system. Try out your skills on virtual machines.

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(00:47:07):
For teams from two to 1000 and volume discount, start as little as five seats. Fill out the form@go.acilearning.com slash twit for more information on a free two week training trial for your team. Thank you. ACI learning. There is a big rumor. I don't like doing rumors, but you know, what else are we gonna do these days? There is a rumor though that I think people are very interested in that. There might be, this is from Mark Urman, a 30 inch iMac that is not, the iMac is not necessarily dead. Just don't get too excited about it cuz it's not coming at least till next year.

Jason Snell (00:47:47):
30 plus inches. He even said, yeah. Plus. Wow. How big can this iMac be? But wait, there's more. It's 60 inches. It's <laugh>. I mean it's a hundred inches. Who knows? Yeah. It's an iMac the size of your house. I'm, I'm excited. Right, because clearly they initially out the door, they're like, you know, 24 is fine. Yeah, well that's fine. 24 is fine.

Leo Laporte (00:48:04):
What just seems like

Jason Snell (00:48:05):
Yeah, buy an external display if you want. And it's interesting. I mean, I'm, I'm interested in the argument here that some people just want all in ones and they don't wanna buy a display and buy a Mac Mini or a Mac studio and they just want an all-in-one. And I think there is buying behaviors that suggests that that's true. I just wonder at the high end of a very large screen, do they think, how big do they think that market is? Because there is the argument that, that up there you might as well just buy a big external display and a computer instead.

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:35):
Yeah. And it's, and it's a shame that that's a lot of e-waste. I mean, when you have a, if you have, if someone is buying an external display, that's something that could be re-tasked a dozen different ways. And if they have no use for it and they put that up by the curb, that could be re-tasked by other people in a dozen different ways. When you have that EPED onto a m a computer for which there is no current operating system and no current security updates available, again, that's a lot of trash that could have been, that could have been pulled outta the trash.

Alex Lindsay (00:49:08):
Alright. I've got IMAX that are solid 10 years old that I'm still using. I just use 'em for something else. Like these end up in some room working on doing something. I, I haven't, that's the one thing about Apple is that a lot of the stuff just keeps working. I may not be able to update it anymore, but I have it running radio or I have it running some kind of check system or, or something else like that. And, and now that is to Andy's point, why I mostly get Mac Minis <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:49:29):
Cause they're, you're an unusual consumer. I mean, most people have one computer, they've, or maybe a phone, tablet and computer. They don't have, I mean, when their Mac gets superannuated, they don't say, oh, let me put it in the corner so I can run broadcasts on it. Maybe they do. I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:48):
It's big thing

Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
For that.

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:49):
I, I can't help but think about a, a Reddit video that I saw just a few weeks ago where it must have been some like central facility that recycles IMAX for an entire school system or something. And they were looking at the old, like the really, really old imax, like the kinds where it was a very, very boxy flat panel display and <laugh>, they, they, they, they decided to do a viral video of setting up like a hundred of them, like as a domino run <laugh>, which is

Leo Laporte (00:50:13):
Bad

Andy Ihnatko (00:50:13):
Enough, which is, which is bad. Which is bad enough. But then he, then the recent, the the first thing to knock down the first iMac was throwing like a 20 inch iMac Oh. Onto like, across the room onto a pile of haphazardly piled up one of these, it slides down and knocks over the first one. So it's like, yeah, I, I I do go, I do like occasionally check out like there are websites that do nothing but like government auctions. And so that's where you can probably find like Abu a, a a a shrink wrap bundle of like a hundred like white white IMAX for like how just come and get it for like 50 bucks. And you hope that peop that the people who buy them find a way to actually recycle the components. But that's not often the case. It depends on how, if they can take a write off mu much more easily than they can actually put this on a, on a municipal listening and arrange for a sale and arrange for the money.

Alex Lindsay (00:51:07):
Yeah. One of the big problems we had in Africa was that the varying voltages in the power supply you know, damages the power supplies eventually. And you, and when you first get a PC that has an external power supply, you're like, why would you ever do that? That is such a pain in the neck. And then when you're building stuff in Africa, you're like, oh, that's a really good idea. Cuz now when the power supply goes bad, I just buy another one. Yeah. And I and so, but it, it's a so, but I think that that was one of the problems we had with the iMac was just that it's all contained and Oh, there's, there's the, there's the video <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:36):
Oh God, that's so

Alex Lindsay (00:51:38):
Sads. So many.

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:39):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (00:51:40):
<Laugh>. Okay. Don't watch this. We should have had a trigger warning before we,

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:45):
When the Arms Angel <laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:51:53):
Oh, the Games Recyclers play. Mark Gerberman and his Power On Newsletter does, says, actually says quite a few interesting things this week, now that Apple has finally gone public with the Vision Pro, it's roping in thousands of addit thousands of additional employees to figure out, you know, how to get all the software working, testing and availability of the hardware along with user studies. User studies. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> have already expanded internally. I think you have to,

Alex Lindsay (00:52:23):
It was all stuff they couldn't do, they couldn't do before they, until they announced it. Announced it, yeah. Yeah. So now they're just flipping the switch on. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:52:28):
It does say Apple is still only allowing the most senior engineers and executives to bring the product home. But I think now that we all know what it looks like, we've all seen it. That's just a matter of time. Next month, the company plans to start allowing select developers to go hands-on with the device. So there'll be some sort of developer edition according to Mark Germin. Apple's Core iOS and iPad OS are still being ported over for the most part. You only saw a handful of apps, Jason, I take it?

Jason Snell (00:52:58):
Yes. Just just those ones that they said are there, like, again, you gotta read between the lines, the ones that are there. It's like when, when I got the demo of the original iPhone right after it was announced, and I tapped on the notes app and it was a screenshot of the notes app. It there, you know, there was a little, like, there are some apps that are built for it and then there are a bunch of apps that just aren't there.

Leo Laporte (00:53:15):
Yeah. while with more people taste testing and tasting the headset tastes like nickel yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Its shortcomings are cuing under greater scrutiny. Many users are finding that the metal frame device feels too heavy after a couple of hours continuous use. Again, I don't, mark doesn't source this, but I guess he's, he's got his ears to the rail rails or something. Some also say they've experienced motion sickness, but on a more minor scale than with competing headsets, did any of the journalists who got the 30 minute test report, any motion sickness? I don't think so.

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:52):
Yeah. No. Jo Joanna Stern did I think. Okay. I'd have to double check that. Okay. But she, she, she, she struck, she stuck me she struck me as having had the most negative physical reaction, although it was really wasn't that negative at all. But

Leo Laporte (00:54:05):
She coined the term nerd helmet. So one would expect <laugh>. She's clearly biased. Apple did develop a second strap according to Germin that goes over the, where his head, it's unclear whether that strap will y you got it when you got the demo, you had it right Jason. Yep. It's unclear whether they'll sell that as an accessory or put it in the box. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:54:24):
He says something about how like, currently they think it's not essential. And I, you know, my immediate reaction to that was to say they certainly felt it was essential for the press because we all had it. So I think I, but the truth is the accessory, if we think of those as accessories, I think the accessory story with this product is in flux. They were, they came right out and said that they did not have very many different sizes and shapes of that light what, what do they call it? The light blocker or I, I forget what it's called, but the, it's basically the cushion that goes between your face right. And the hardware. And they said there will be many more when it comes out and you know how many, many more. Like they are still figuring it out, the light seal and figuring out like how Light seal, that's it. Or, or <laugh>. So the the there are many. They go down to Pier 39 and they find I

Leo Laporte (00:55:13):
Think so Yeah. You'll see 'em sometimes in the ballpark. Yeah.

Jason Snell (00:55:15):
Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's up in the air, right? Like I think they are still figuring out which ones they can make and that are gonna be the best ones. And like, they probably don't want to make 20. They probably don't wanna make three. So they're like trying to figure it out. Yeah. And that strap, I think is part of that story. Like,

Leo Laporte (00:55:31):
You have to test this stuff with a large number of people before you really know what needs to be done.

Jason Snell (00:55:35):
But like, is it necessary? Like they may find that so many people's experience are so much better and I can't imagine that strap costs very much. Right? They'll

Leo Laporte (00:55:44):
Put it in the box, meta sells it separately, strap sold separately for the Quest 16, $1,500. Quest Pro Strap sold separately, but you can't get it. My

Jason Snell (00:55:52):
Quest two, I had to buy the, I had to buy the comfort strap or whatever because the one that shipped with it was terrible. And like, yeah, but this is Apple, right? And it's a $3,500 device. So I think it's one of those things where I wouldn't put it past them to put it in the box if they feel like it really is necessary. And I will just point to the demos and say that they certainly thought it was necessary for us to have it.

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:11):
Well, they don't, don't get a charger with, you don't get a charger with a lot of stuff. So it's true. But, but but on the other hand, it, it also makes you think that, is it, is this gonna be something that they're gonna trust people to simply buy it and it delivered? Or are they gonna basically say, come to the Apple Store for a concierge level experience so we can fit it to you correctly? Just, just to make sure that the people who buy it at least and the people talk about the comfort of, okay, go

Leo Laporte (00:56:34):
Ahead. To market the device. Apple is planning to create new areas within its retail stores for demonstrations. The spaces will also let buyers choose the correctly sized bands and Light Seal. The company's considering initially requiring appointments for purchases. Something it did with the original Apple Watch in 2015. That's not, he's not Right. You didn't have to make an appointment to get an Apple Watch. I got mine mail order.

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:57):
You could, I think for the Gold ones there was both for Gold,

Leo Laporte (00:57:01):
Of course. Well,

Jason Snell (00:57:02):
What they told me, and, and again, they, what they told me is what they believed a few weeks ago, and this may all change in six months, but what they told me is they expect that most people will want to go into a store because they'll actually want to try it out if they've never tried it out before. But that there will be an online ordering option and it will be with the Apple Store app. And they will use that face scanning and ear scanning stuff to like make a guess about what your right sizing is. That's what German rights, they'll be able to do it. That makes sense. But I think they, they've got a little level of reality that most people are gonna want to see it before they buy it. Apple

Alex Lindsay (00:57:31):
Is percent go in. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:57:33):
Apple's developed device iPhone app to scan customers' faces to help determine the correct size for the Light Seal. They will issue that app to its retail stores for the purchase process and could also release it as an app to consumers who are shopping online. Ooh,

Andy Ihnatko (00:57:46):
That's a but that know what that also does that also gives 'em a lot of data for which to develop, like, to figure out what are here, here, let's have thousands and thousands of scans of people's heads Yeah. To help us figure out how we should generate the next generation of Face shields. Oh

Leo Laporte (00:58:00):
Yeah. Let's see. One problem Apple might face according to Gerin, and I think he's probably right, is that if you ship it too soon, you might have to put an M two chip in it at the same time as you're releasing Max with an M three processor, which might bother consumers.

Alex Lindsay (00:58:21):
I think it's gonna go, yeah, I think it's gonna go out with an M two <laugh>. Like I don't think it's gonna Yeah, I think if they, yeah, no matter what.

Leo Laporte (00:58:26):
Yeah. So that would indicate maybe releasing it earlier in the year than May. According to Germin <laugh> Apple is already looking ahead to the next headset models. It has shifted some employees working on the original Vision Pro to new versions, a second generation high-end model, and a lower end headset.

Alex Lindsay (00:58:47):
And I think, I think that the, the higher end model will probably go to 120 frames a second and probably be 6K per eye. And the lower end model will probably be not very different than the one we have now. Just less expensive and lighter.

Leo Laporte (00:59:00):
He

Alex Lindsay (00:59:00):
Says at least less expensive.

Leo Laporte (00:59:02):
These are the features that will not make the cut for the first version, but are still planned for the second generation. The ability to show multiple Mac desktop screens when connected wirelessly to a Vision Pro. Right now you can only see one desktop at a time. I dunno why you'd need multiple Mac desktop screens. <Laugh>, that does not seem like, I guess if you're spending 3,500

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:23):
Bucks for it, that wipe b i

Leo Laporte (00:59:24):
And for you Yeah. Have, yeah, I have a lot of different trade actually traders. Right. I

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:28):
Was

Jason Snell (00:59:28):
Absolutely thinking about the idea. Well, I mean, imagine having spaces and having the spaces actually all be visible, something wouldn't

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:37):
Be

Jason Snell (00:59:37):
Cool. You, its a multiple monitor set up. Cause right now you can only have a lot of people have two monitors. So you're traveling and you wanna use this with your Mac, but it will only display a single

Leo Laporte (00:59:46):
Monitor. So I see it fill your field of view with monitors, right? Like

Jason Snell (00:59:49):
You're like, Liberace, you got like five pianos around you

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:52):
<Laugh>, you know, but that that's a, but that's another problem. There's a, there's a reason why like ergonomically, if you have multiple monitors, the best way to arrange them is like one on top of the other. People who have like the, the <laugh> have have the, the, the war games NORAD set up on their desktop. You are always doing this to like get through your daily work. Even if you, if you designate the, the, the front ones as the most important ones. And when you add the po that problem to the problem of now you've got this big heavy weight on your head that you're shifting around with your neck. There's a add that to the list of things that developers and users are gonna be learning about for the, during the first generation of this thing.

Leo Laporte (01:00:26):
How did you like working in that missile silo, Andy? Was it

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:29):
Enjoyable? You know, people were a little bit twitchy, but you become a family, you know, turn, turn

Jason Snell (01:00:33):
Your key, sir.

Leo Laporte (01:00:36):
<Laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:38):
We, we take, we take, we, I, they, they stop asking me to be the tour guide cuz I would Oh, be the one to do the, oh my God. It's a lockdown. You're all stuck with us for the next 40 years. <Laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:51):
Also a bit of a hot ticket, if you don't mind.

Leo Laporte (01:00:53):
Also missing for the first generation but possibly the second generation. Again, this is according to Gerin and he, you know, he doesn't quote, he doesn't say according to unnamed sources or anything. So

Andy Ihnatko (01:01:04):
I don't, Hebert he's told me Is this,

Leo Laporte (01:01:05):
Is this, yes. Yeah. I don't know if this is speculation or what the ability for multiple Vision Pro users in several person FaceTime conferences to use personas, which no one wants to use, but, okay. The first version will only support one-to-one chats with personas. And actually a big thing that was missing in the demos, which was Fitness Plus, because that seems like a very natural use for this. And he says that will not be in the first generation.

Jason Snell (01:01:30):
I have a hard time believ. Well, here's the thing, people are gonna make fitness apps for this thing. So I think Apple would be making a mistake if they didn't have Fitness Plus there. Mm-Hmm. For this particular model. I I, I understand there might be some issues here, but like Facebook has already shown that with Supernatural, like people wanna and beat Saer really. Like, people want to use, use

Leo Laporte (01:01:51):
This. I love playing those in my in my meta quest. I, I and yeah. And, and you know, you, I'm listening to Lizzo and I'm chopping the notes in half and it's great. You, you work up a sweat. It's fun. And then I throw up, but that's another fun of weight loss, I guess.

Andy Ihnatko (01:02:07):
Yeah. But, but, but when you have all this moisture being generated inside this Ooh, sweaty inside this inclusive environment Ooh, sweaty, how, yeah. How do you clean the inside of that display and how do you, and how confident is Apple that these, this is moisture sealed enough to prevent like ingress. You

Leo Laporte (01:02:20):
Never wanna play Beat Saber in a group. It's just not pleasant. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (01:02:24):
Plus plus is that, is is the light shield, like is it machine washable? Yeah. Is can you at least spray that? It's

Leo Laporte (01:02:29):
Fabric, right Jason? The light seal.

Jason Snell (01:02:32):
Yeah. I mean it's fabric with some sort of plastic or something underneath it, but yeah, it's, it's soft. It's meant to be soft against

Leo Laporte (01:02:38):
Your face. You could sponge it off.

Andy Ihnatko (01:02:41):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:02:42):
Actually everybody in my family should have their own light seal. This is a little, a little health tip for you. Okay. What else did Mark Gurman say? So 30 inch plus imax, those are the Vision Pro rumors. He said in addition to the iPhone 15 lineup this fall, there will be two Apple Watch Series nine models and an updated ultra of course. Nice. I mean I love my ultra, but it's expensive. Other pro other I guess, yeah. I don't have to buy it, do I? But I will. Other products may come later. Not this fall. An M three 13 inch MacBook Pro and 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro M three Pro and M three max. These new imax, the company's also conducting early work on an iMac with a screen over 30 inches. I'm told new MacBook air models revamped iPad Pros with OLED screens.

(01:03:41):
Ooh, I would like that. That would be nice. New iPad aired to replace the current M one model. Third generation AirPods Pro. No mention of the max and new home equipment such as Smart displays as well as an Apple TV set top box. You know, I ha I got the Pixel tablet that docs, I should bring it in here and show you that Docs on the base. I would love to see Apple do that with the iPad. That is a very natural way to store your iPad, keep it charging and it's very easy to take it off and then sit down somewhere with it. I think that's a really, I would love to see Apple do that.

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:22):
Yeah. That that was one of the things that really, really struck me about all the reviews for the Pixel tablet. It and to, to be, and to be honest, it, it is a very, very like mediocre tablet. Yeah. It is essentially an entry level iPad. But, but it seems like every single reviewer was saying how much, how often they were using this tablet simply by virtue of the fact that it was there on the end table and every time they wanted to hit Reddit while watching a movie, they would just pop it off the, the the doc do what they want to do, pop it back on again. And it became a very, very heavily used machine. So yeah. If, if Apple were to create like a car mode only the, the, the opposite of butts in motion mode. The butts on a sofa mode where it, when it's, it's actually doing something when you're act not actually using it. Like acting as a smart display. Like acting as a home controller or something that will show you the, a video camera or, or a different kind of feed or a streaming feed. That would be a very, very interesting product. They could do it and they could do it without, and they got, they got the pogo pins. They could just throw the hardware and put it in a new mode. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:05:21):
We got the pogo pins right here. They

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:23):
Got, they got the magnets <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:05:25):
With

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:25):
Magnets and pogo things. All things are

Leo Laporte (01:05:27):
Possible. It is. So here it is. The here's the base and it's not plugged in, but because it's, it is a tablet, it's Paty. So it continues to operate and then it just separates from the base that's, there's speakers on the tablet and on the base. So the ba I gotta say though, this is 500 bucks for 230 bucks. You can get the Nest Home Max, which is pretty much the same thing. It's not an Android tablet, it's not removable. Right. but in Mo and as you said, it's not the greatest tablet ever made Android tablets or not are so disappointing. It does have a fingerprint reader and so forth. And I can run apps on

Jason Snell (01:06:05):
It. Yeah. A Apple just has all the pieces for this product, right. Like they do, whether it's an iPad that goes into a mode or whether it's a product that is intended to be placed, you know, somewhere. And just be used in that, in that format. They've got center stage, they've got the new widget view that they're bringing to the iPhone when it's when it's docked this fall that's got a whole bunch of widgets in it. They've got a bunch of different, they've got the Apple TV interface, they've got all the widget designs that are out there now. They've got Siri, you know, which they, I mean it's okay. And like they have all the pieces for all this stuff. And it feels like when Mark Herman reports like multiple home products are in the works, maybe not like for the next few months, but like in the works, you could see it's typical Apple, right?

(01:06:51):
You can see them assembling all the functionality they need. The idea of continuity camera with the Apple tv. Like it's all, cuz that'll get Zoom on Apple tv. So if they do a box that's an Apple TV that also has a camera in it, they've, they know they, they've already got all the apps on it. Like they're, they're assembling a home strategy finally <laugh> at out of these pieces. And you can see, and you know, as somebody who had a what did I have? I had a an echo show in my kitchen until it's, it kept trying to sell me stuff every time I talk to it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And now I've got a a, a Nest home which is really slow and desperately needs an update, but at least it's functional and is not constantly trying to sell me stuff. But like I keep thinking, boy, apple could really make a good product in this category that would be kind of half HomePod, half iPod, iPad that I would really want in my kitchen to do timers and play media and Exactly. Look at widgets and all those things. Show me photos. All the things.

Leo Laporte (01:07:48):
That's what I do with this this being either the, the Pixel tablet now or before that the Home Max and I can even watch TV on it. Cause I subscribe to YouTube tv. So it's kind of like a mini tv. It's a very natural kitchen object. And then to be able to pry the iPad off and take it over to the stove so you can look at the recipe. There's a lot of, I I think there's, that makes a lot of sense. And I do, you know, this is, this is where Apple has a, a huge advantage. So you've got Amazon and you've got Google and they're making kind of half-assed, basically half-assed versions of these products. Apple sits back and I think when Apple releases it, it's the same thing with the Apple tv. It's twice as much, maybe three times as much as a Roku, twice as much as a nor everybody else's streamer. But it's the one you want. It's the best one. And I think they could do the same thing with home. They're pore right on the, the bar is low.

Alex Lindsay (01:08:45):
The bar is

Leo Laporte (01:08:46):
So low. And these products, yeah. Everybody's making half-assed good products. That's the problem.

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:52):
Nvidia Shield. But that's, but that is an exception, not the problem. And

Leo Laporte (01:08:55):
Nvidia Shield is 300 bucks or whatever. I mean it's, I have it and it's very expensive. 200 it's, but it's an Apple TV cost. And by the way, because it's Nvidia and it's Android, you can't get a lot of the apps that you get on Apple TV on it. It's, it's limited in America apps you can get. So,

Alex Lindsay (01:09:11):
But like there is, I mean I will, I will say, and probably I'll agree with Andy to some degree here, is that, is that we have, I have a bunch of Android tablets and that's because they're less expensive and I have a single use for them and I don't wanna spend, they're fine. $300 or $800. And so one thing

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
Works. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:09:25):
Like I've got 14 of these controllers for our Zoom rooms. Cause we need to do Zoom rooms to, for our remote events and so on and so forth. I'm not gonna buy 14 iPads. <Laugh>. Yeah. So these are Sam, these are inexpensive Samsungs that cost me $119 each. They're cheap and they all, they all run across and they only have to run one interface. And and I think that I've used a lot of Android devices for that because I think in that environment they work great. Now, will I, do I put that on? Do I carry that with me on the plane? No, but, but putting those, the Android, I will say that I love the Android ecosystem when it comes to, I want a couple things. Like for instance, I have we used to have 'em in our office. We had a wall where we had pictures we wanted to keep on changing behind the scenes of what, what what we do. I did that all with Android <laugh>. Like, I'm not gonna put a bunch of iPads on the wall.

Leo Laporte (01:10:11):
And you're a unique, you're a unique user. I mean, I, most people don't have multiple iPads,

Alex Lindsay (01:10:15):
But I'm still, I'm still making decisions based on price. Like, it's just like, it's like I'm not gonna buy, you know, and, and like for the, for cooking, the real problem is my, my family uses iPads a lot in the, in the thing. But it's getting, you know, flour and stuff on them. You know, it just, you know, they're a little more expensive and you're like do I really need to use this in the kitchen? And where an Android sees all recipes just as easily as

Leo Laporte (01:10:37):
Well. Just as Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:10:38):
It's a, it's, it's only, it's a larger issue when you, when you talk to talk about streaming Donald's where the only, there's only one TV in my house where it's worth spending $200 for something like an Nvidia Shield or an Apple tv. The rest of them, like, I'm not gonna spend a hundred dollars, even a hundred dollars on the, on the TV in my kitchen or the TV in this other room. Even in the bedroom really. I've got a, I've got a $50 dongle that's a $50 Google made dongle. That's actually because it's not even hooked up to a 4K tv. I could get by with a $30 one and it would work just fine. I, it's, it's, it's nice to have that kind of a balance. But you're absolutely right that this is something, especially the, with the point that, that Jason made with the change that's gonna come to all iPads.

(01:11:20):
Once you have these these widgets on the screen that are, and widgets on the lock screen, it's Google did come up with a, a very, very simple, but I thought really, really powerful idea with the, with their Google tablet, which is the simple statement. And this is something that we're, they're talking from the very beginning that what if we have a tablet that does something when you're not actually using it as a tablet? What if, what if it could be useful to you while it was charging? And that's something that, how Apple chooses to articulate that. That's a really good idea. And I hope that Apple tries, tries something along those lines with the iPad.

Leo Laporte (01:11:54):
Yeah. And by the way, I don't mis mean to dismiss the shield cuz it's, I mean it's Of course, of course. It's it's a great product. It's amazing product. And to NVIDIA's credit, they've, they've kept putting the latest version of Android on it long after they could have stopped. But it's priced, you know, a little more than the the Apple TV and the, and and in some ways this encapsulates the whole issue. It's a great product, but it's in its own, it's an outlier. Right. And, and with the Apple tv you feel like you're part of a larger ecosystem. Yeah. If you only had one tv, you'd get an Apple tv, you got two or three. And I understand, believe me, I've been thinking about this a lot. We had to cancel all about Android this week because there just, there wasn't that much interest in Android. I think advertisers feel like probably wrongly, people who buy Android are like Alex and they just want something cheap, which means they're not, it's not a great place for an ad to be that it

Alex Lindsay (01:12:47):
Be, I I'm glad that you connected me with <inaudible>

Leo Laporte (01:12:49):
<Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:12:50):
That's usually not what I'm known for.

Leo Laporte (01:12:52):
Most expensive. True. That's a good point. But when it comes to tablets, he buys the crap. Actually there is worse. There's fi Apple, Amazon fire tablets are actually even worse and cheaper. Oh, they're so

Alex Lindsay (01:13:02):
Bad. Oh yeah. I, I got terrible thinking. Oh, I, I got one thinking, oh, this will be great cuz it's only $69 or whatever. And I was like, oh, this is horrible. Like, I can't, and I

Leo Laporte (01:13:10):
Think Roku's going down that path where I used to really recommend the Roku, like that was, it was inexpensive 69 bucks and it did everything and it was good. And now with the ads and stuff, it's just kind of, they're all kind of getting crap fired. And I think it's a real opportunity for Apple to say, we are not gonna be that way. We're not gonna sell ads, we're not gonna get gratified, we're gonna focus on great products. Yeah. They're gonna cost a little bit more like the Apple tv, but you're getting an ecosystem that, that really works. And I, as I much as I hate Lock-in and gated communities, their story is very effective. And when it comes to home automation, that's a big deal because people have been burned. I'm sure Jason, you've been burned dozens of times by different platforms and Yeah. You know, stuff not talking to other stuff. Course we all have hus hubs that don't, you know, that are

Alex Lindsay (01:14:02):
Yeah. It's, it's I've been auto, I've been failing at home Automation now for a solid 20 years. Yes, yes. So has, you know, and yes,

Leo Laporte (01:14:10):
That's a good way, that's a perfect way to put it. Family

Alex Lindsay (01:14:12):
And I, I so want it, you know, I still want it, you know, and I've got parts of it done. You know, like if I, if I you know, if I click on my watch, hold on now my watch is not, not getting along with me. If I click on my watch and I go, oh, I want all my lights out, then it, then, then, you know, then it theoretically see, doesn't work. I'm on, I'm on tv. There we go. See

Leo Laporte (01:14:29):
That? Oh, finally, how long did that take?

Alex Lindsay (01:14:32):
I know. And then I, but I turn it and I hit my watch again and then hopefully the all turn back on. And this'll be a really dark show. It's going really slow right now. So see this is, this is this, I, I just outlined exactly the problem. Put yourself on like a voice

Leo Laporte (01:14:44):
Scramble just so we get the whole full effect. Finally, five seconds later it goes back

Alex Lindsay (01:14:47):
On. Think about it. You know, so, so anyway, so the and but that's, and that took me, it took me a while to get that to work. So and but that's the simplest thing that you would possibly I know

Leo Laporte (01:15:00):
Do

Alex Lindsay (01:15:00):
I know it's an outlet, you know, and I can't get it to like, you know, an's like, okay. And, and for me, I just feel like I just want Apple to do the lock, the outlet, the, the camera, the lights. Do you think they're

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
Planning to that they just wanna

Alex Lindsay (01:15:13):
Get a complete and a thermostat? Like five things. They

Leo Laporte (01:15:14):
Complete story and they're just waiting to,

Alex Lindsay (01:15:18):
I just feel like they gotta give up on everybody. If they did those five things, that's like 80% of the market, like of that, of, of the world. And then after that, everyone else can build around whatever. But there's matter gives them

Leo Laporte (01:15:27):
Matter. There's matter which gives them a chance

Alex Lindsay (01:15:29):
Because it turned out to be a dumpster fire. Oh. Like, it's just, it's not, yeah, it's not working. It's, it's not working.

Leo Laporte (01:15:34):
I thought we'd have a unified standard.

Alex Lindsay (01:15:36):
Apple does. We did too. When Matter came out we were excited. But I've talking to home automation folks and it's just like, it's not, you know, it's not tying together. I'm gonna

Leo Laporte (01:15:43):
Ask Stacy Ebo, and this is her among others, this is one of her fields tomorrow and this week in Google. But I, TP Link just came out with wifi enabled light switches that support matter. They've had non matter switches mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I was hopeful that now I can, cuz the hu thing's just not, I have some Hue lights and I can say, I could tell my Google or my Echo, you know, turn the lights off or on, but it's, it's pretty janky if I could put everything on a wifi light switch that I could then control just like you do with your Apple Watch or with a iPad or with my voice, cuz Matter works with Echo and and Google Assistant as well, then maybe that holy grail of at least being able to control your lights <laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (01:16:29):
Well, and again, I just think that, I think that Apple, I mean I, Apple's jumped on with material and is saying, Hey, we can support it, but it's just, it hasn't been working. And, and, and the thing is, I just think of Apple just said, well, we're just gonna do it our way. There's a lot of people that would jump on and just start building it that way, you know, and they don't have to keep on trying to figure out how to integrate with

Leo Laporte (01:16:46):
Everybody else. But I would like them to make with

Alex Lindsay (01:16:48):
Everybody else is not to work with their

Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
Stuff. I really

Alex Lindsay (01:16:50):
Would. It's not working with others is not Apple's strong suit. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:16:53):
Yeah. It's just

Alex Lindsay (01:16:54):
Not what they're good at. They're good at a lot of things. It's just working with others on their standards is not one of them. You know, so Well, and they're

Leo Laporte (01:16:59):
Very weird about the home app is terrible. The UI is bad. I mean, they have a lot of work to do. So it's, I wonder how much commitment they have to this, this

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:08):
Area Exactly. That. That's, that's even at Apple, you can always tell the difference between when something is a priority and something is not a priority and it's the Apple's no difference from other anything else. The home kit is they figure that, okay, well we ki we kind of gotta have it in some way, shape, or form. But there is nobody that's jumping up, leaping on someone, a product, another product manager's desk leaping up and down and demanding to know why they're not doing more to support their home kit projects. It's, it's, and I don't think that there are a lot of competitors that have the same sort of No, nobody's doing it. Yeah. Do you think maybe Apple

Leo Laporte (01:17:46):
Does the research and has decided, yeah, nobody really wants this?

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:50):
I think I don't think they have enough attention and or enough people.

Jason Snell (01:17:53):
Yeah. I think that matter is an example where Apples basically said, look, we're gonna let Home Kid become matter more or less. And that means their strategy there. I think their strategy is to find partners that are on the Apple bandwagon and are gonna do good home Kid and Matter support and build a business and compete with other partners maybe. But like you look at something like Eco B, right? Like Eco B in Apple are tight and they work really well with HomeKit and their Nest competitor, which is great I think for Apple too. But like Apple doesn't need to build a thermostat. They don't want to build a thermostat, but they are found a partner who wants to support Apple platforms. And I think that that's their strategy is like, they don't want to build a lot of these home products, but what they want to do is find, and, and it might be under the guise of like, we're selling it in the Apple online store, or we're putting it in Apple retail stores.

(01:18:49):
But there's, they've got some leverage there to say like, look, our customers have a lot of money and they want to buy smart home products and if you work really well with us, we will highlight you. And that gets them the equivalent. And I, I know Alex might bristle at this, like it's not quite the same as if Apple built it, but Apple's not gonna build it. So it, it's like tear down from there, which is like, we're gonna work with somebody to make sure that this is good enough for us to sell in our stores. And that's how you get those home accessories out there that are sort of like, and there are, they're out there, there are good citizens of HomeKit and presumably will be of matter at some point. And like that. I think that's their strategy. And then they're gonna keep the core to stuff that's running their operating systems. And that's gonna be like, yeah, we might see a kitchen device with a screen or we might see an expanded Apple TV that's like a soundbar with a camera but they're not gonna I think make light bulbs, right? They're just not gonna do it. Or, or a doorbell.

Andy Ihnatko (01:19:45):
And the, and the, and the other thing is that we, we might be seeing a preview of what the VR industry becomes like where we've had home automation for a number of years and a lot of basic stuff has worked pretty well. And it's possible that there is no magic solution. That there is no somebody that, no matter how much commitment you put into it, people like ho Home Automation for turning lights on and off for door locks and security cameras and they really like turning lights. And they really like setting kitchen timers, but, and, and finding out what the weather is. But the idea of home automation or voice assistance as an entire platform for computing through smart speakers, maybe humanity has said this is enough. We don't care about anything above this level. We, we, we appreciate, we, we, we love how much energy you're putting into this, but we will, we'll enjoy watching these videos and these demos, but so, so long as we ask what, ask what the weather is and it tells us what the weather is, we're good.

Leo Laporte (01:20:40):
We just put in a we had to replace our furnace. So we put in a Lennox heat pump and you know, for a small additional fee. I don't even wanna know how much they give us a Lennox Smart thermostat, but of course it's in a world of its own, it doesn't support anything. I have to have the Lennox app on my phone. I mean, I, it actually is pretty cool. It does a good job.

Jason Snell (01:21:02):
Yeah, I was gonna say just, I, I wrote a smart thermostat story for the wire cutter back right when I was starting. So it's, it's long been replaced. But one of the things I did is I talked to experts in HVAC and they said, if you've got a first party system that has a smart thermostat, you should use their thermostat. Oh, don't go buy a nest. And the reason is they have access to all the like Yeah. Special quirky codes about their stuff. So even though you, you're getting this Lennox thing, although who knows, maybe there's a bridge, like a HomeBridge plugin or something. It works

Leo Laporte (01:21:32):
With Lenox, with Echo and, and Google Assistant. But, but it's not matters. It's, I don't think it's matters.

Jason Snell (01:21:37):
Yeah, yeah. So I mean that's why I have HomeBridge is to bridge this sort of thing, which I hate, but I have it because Right. It's necessary to do. But, but there is like, there's a reason. It's not just the upsell there. The the HVAC guy I talked to is like, no, they're, it's always gonna be better if you're using the manufacturer's controller.

Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
Yeah, yeah. I have this, it's got this smart thing where it says, well if it's this, it does it all automatically. I don't have to think about it. I mean, yeah, there's stuff in there that I, if I had an Eco B, I'd have to go, well, okay, fine, I have to do, I mean this is,

Alex Lindsay (01:22:07):
I will say that even, even the very first nest that I installed, it was pretty fast <laugh>. Like I put it in and said, put this wire into here. Put this wire into here. Oh, after that it was running. Know

Leo Laporte (01:22:17):
It was, you had that long third wire that went to the furnace. That's the difference. Common wire. The common wire, right. A lot of, I didn't, a lot of people don't. Right. <laugh>,

Alex Lindsay (01:22:26):
Right. Yeah. There like, like this.

Leo Laporte (01:22:27):
There is, is where your troubles begin. <Laugh>,

Alex Lindsay (01:22:30):
This is a good example. This I believe, I think I got this at the Apple store, but definitely this was, this is sold at the Apple store. Or, or was, and, you know, two days of tech support is what it took to get it to actually turn on. Is that a know And that,

Leo Laporte (01:22:43):
That's a wifi

Alex Lindsay (01:22:44):
Switch. Know this is the Eve Eve switch. Oh, Eve and I, now here's the worst part is I went and bought the eve power. That's what turned these, all these lights got turned on and off with an eve you know, power strip. But so, so I didn't, because there was no other place to go as far as I was concerned. Like Eve is making these outlets and that one works fine. This one still is really, really slow. But it, but it does work now.

Leo Laporte (01:23:06):
So it's all it takes. Unfortunately,

Alex Lindsay (01:23:09):
Unfortunately I don't more

Leo Laporte (01:23:10):
Yeah. Is is a few experiences like that. Some of us like Jason <laugh> and you, Alex, are, are I, I can suffer a lot more pain than others, but it does at some point. People go, yeah, I give up on,

Alex Lindsay (01:23:24):
I wired my, I had my whole house with Hughes for a while. Like I had, I, I don't know how many, I got 'em laying around in boxes. Cause I just have, I had all Hughes and I built the whole thing and everything else, and then eventually it stops working. Right? And then, and then you're like,

Leo Laporte (01:23:35):
It's too much trouble to get it back and Yep.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:38):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:23:39):
So maybe I won't buy those teepee link wifi lights switches. I asked Lisa, I said, can I replace, they're 25 each, so we got, I'd have to spend like 500 bucks. I said, can I replace all the light switches with wifi enabled light switches? She said, well, I, what happens if the wifi goes down? And I said, oh, that's an interesting question. I don't know. So

Jason Snell (01:23:59):
I, I'm, I'm a big fan of the Lutron Casita product line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, those are the best ones because, and I, I feel like we've had this conversation before, but the best smart switches, the best smart lights are ones that behave like regular lights and then are also smart, right? Right. So those are wifi controlled and I can have them on timers and I can use a remote, but the fact is there's a thing in the wall and if you press it, the light goes on. And like that's, that's what Janine's, you gotta have that. You gotta have that.

Andy Ihnatko (01:24:26):
You're making me think of every single time that I have house overnight house guests over, I have to, and I have to like walk them through like the training video of here's how to turn the bedside light on

Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
<Laugh>. Here's, I have, I have a manual, I have like an eight page manual with pictures <laugh>, how to turn on the tv, how to turn on the lights, what to do when the lights come on in the middle of the night. Oh,

Andy Ihnatko (01:24:48):
You see that? That's what, that's what Vision Pro is gonna be all about. I can actually send them a simulation of what my, what the house is like, and they could practice. We, we go through a training video together about a now say <laugh>. Hey, hey Shlomo, take turn on, turn on the kitchen lights. But turn off the living

Leo Laporte (01:25:03):
Room. Maybe I'll get these cassettes instead. These do, do you work with Home kid as well as Alexa or Echo and Assistant? Maybe. Maybe I should get these. Do you like 'em Jason?

Jason Snell (01:25:13):
Oh yeah. The Lutron Casda are the best. They're

Leo Laporte (01:25:16):
Rock solids. That's what Stacy said for you. Rock solid.

Jason Snell (01:25:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not only, I have never had a a a case where I've been like, oh, why aren't they working? And they do have a little dongle that you have to put somewhere on ethernet to be in your house. But other than that they just, they just work. I gotta say it like, it just works. It hasn't let me down. And of course, if it does let you down, or you know, you, you have a person who just have a switch, wants to use a wall switch. Yeah. It will work just fine. Yeah, they're really good.

Leo Laporte (01:25:40):
That's the, that's really the goal is from Lisa's point of view, nothing has changed. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a break. Boy, there's still a lot of stuff to talk about. We'll get to that in in just a second. But first word from our sponsor, I love this stuff. A G one, the daily foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole body health. I look forward to this drink every morning, like countless others. I, I've, you know, I've always wanted to support my health. I've taken a lot of pills. It got to the point where it was a fist full of pills and it was costing me $20 a day or something. I, I decided I didn't wanna sacrifice my taste buds or incorporate more pills. Through a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole foods sourced nutrients. AG one delivers comprehensive support for the brain, the gut, and the immune system.

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A simple drinkable daily habit, just one scoop. You get the nutrients, the gut health support that helps your body thrive and covers all the nutritional bases. And I love these AEG one packets when we are traveling. It's great. You just bring these around. That's the whole day's supplements right there in this little packet. So made in New Zealand. So if you're looking to take ownership of your health with a simpler, effective investment, start with AG one. Try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free of these Ag one travel packets with your first purchase of a subscription. Go to Dr. This is a new address by the way. Please use this drink ag one.com/mac break. It's actually a little easier than it used to be. Drink ag one.com/mac break. It's in the, it's in the name of the url.

(01:28:09):
Drink ag one. You'll love it. We thank 'em for their support and for these great ag one products, my mouth's watering. As soon as I get the packet out, I go, I want some <laugh>. Moving. Moving right along. Well there's still quite a few stories here. Let me, let me kind of rip through a few of them. There were zero days, if you haven't updated your various Apple devices do. So. Apple fixed zero days used to deploy a spyware called Triangulation. It's another iMessage zero click exploit. And you probably see saw the.one updates on your iOS, your iPad os your Mac os do not delay. These were discovered by Kaspersky. Zero click is the big scare because it means you essentially, they could send you a message. You don't even have to open it, read it or do anything.

(01:29:06):
And it will infect your computer. And it's of course used by state hackers. These are very powerful exploits, which means, you know, you probably not a target. They're not gonna use them. You know, hackers aren't gonna use 'em to put ransomware on your machines or stuff. It's really used by cuz they're so pricey to get these exploits, but still update. Oh, another tip, <laugh>. If your car gets stolen and you have an air tag in it, call the police. Do not go to where the car is. Bakersfield woman, 61 shot to death. Jesus, after she confronted suspects who stole her car, she the car was stolen, had the Apple Air tag in it. She didn't tell law enforcement according to Bakersfield police, she just went to the 5,600 block of Ginger Avenue <laugh> and found her car and found four guys who had stolen it and they shattered dead.

Alex Lindsay (01:30:08):
And Bakersfield is not like the, it's not the place that you just go wandering off. And

Leo Laporte (01:30:13):
It's humbly

Alex Lindsay (01:30:13):
Not a good idea. I try to do that. It's, it's, it's very unfortunate, but it's, it's a good, I mean, it, I mean this is the, this is the challenge is that people get, you know, get ahold of these. I had a, I had a situation where someone stole a camera from me when I was in Africa and I was at a big event and I was wearing a Scotty vest and I had thought about putting the, the cable, you know, there's a little cable on the inside of the inside of your pocket and someone, and someone stole it and someone said, why didn't you put that cable on it? And I was like, because I don't want someone to pull that camera out. And then I'm looking at them and they're looking at me. That puts me at danger. <Laugh>. Yeah. Like, I, I'd rather than just

Leo Laporte (01:30:45):
Take the camera, the kinda people who might steal that camera or steal your car.

Alex Lindsay (01:30:48):
I don't wanna be in that situation.

Leo Laporte (01:30:50):
They may be. Yeah. I'm so terrible story. But it's a good wor warning. They did catch the guys by the way. Or at least the suspects. And they're being tried for murder. Bad news for Apple

Alex Lindsay (01:31:04):
By the, but by the way, I just, you know, the, with the technology that our government has at different, at various levels with air tags, it is going to get really hard to steal cars because, you know, you'll have to really think about it because they can attach your phone and the car and the car's tracking device. All it needs to do is you go together for about a 10 feet and it goes, I think it's you, you know, and, and and that's not hard for them to get ahold of. And so you know, so things going, going in the same place together is something that, that's why when you think about the government wanting all this data, it's one of the things that it shortens the list really fast of about what, what's possible. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:31:45):
I ideally, but it still ha you still have to get the cops motivated to actually solve crimes. There's, I'm not saying that they, that's not what they do, but there's, there are a lot of instances in which say, hi, well, I got, I just got hit and run with lots of damage, but don't, I had a dashboard camera. I had the license plate. I got a video of the person. And they hear stories of, oh, well, they didn't really care. They just said, well, follow your insurance company. And that's about it. So,

Leo Laporte (01:32:09):
On the other

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:10):
Hand, there are a lot of moving coman components to

Leo Laporte (01:32:12):
This. There are happy stories. There was a taco restaurant in San Antonio, Texas.

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:18):
Everything, every happy story starts with the word

Leo Laporte (01:32:20):
Tacos. Tacos, right? Tacos. Don Manto opened in January with a giant bull, a plastic bull statue out front, which of course was immediately stolen. However, Don Manito was smart enough to put a air tag in the bull

Andy Ihnatko (01:32:41):
<Laugh> <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:32:42):
And now, now he did not go find the bull himself. He called police who then helped him locate the stolen bull air tag. This is the nine to five max story air tag fulfills destiny, helps locate giant bull statues stolen from Taco Restaurant. Thank you Scooter X for, for giving us the good news on air tags.

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:05):
<Laugh>, that, that is good because I, I don't know why Dirtbag crimes like this bother me more than a lot of other crimes. The idea of we could, what, what if, what if you just decided that, hey, here's a cool thing in front of the store. Why don't we just let it be and let other, let, let it, let the owner enjoy it. Let other people enjoy it. Why do you have to say, Hey, I've got a pickup truck. I bet I could pull that thing off. Ugh. I, I don't know why. I don't know why that bothers me.

Leo Laporte (01:33:28):
An Apple ad <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:31):
Oh, I hope so.

Leo Laporte (01:33:32):
With the giant plastic bowl. That would be nice. That would be nice. Anyway Dawn

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:37):
Bowl is back. It'd be nicer than those, those, those sl those slow pans down. Like a dim, dim lit, dim lit mountain valley where you can picture like the crumpled body of a ski. I was desperate.

Leo Laporte (01:33:47):
I was trapped under the snow. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:49):
Using his own blood to scratch out. Like, I love you, honey, to raise the kids the way that I would like on the leaves,

Leo Laporte (01:33:56):
<Laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:57):
Oh my

Leo Laporte (01:33:57):
God.

Jason Snell (01:33:58):
I just wanna make it clear. I I, if you've missed this point, every Mac break weekly is recorded on Taco Tuesday.

Leo Laporte (01:34:06):
Oh golly.

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:09):
Who are we? Not every single tacos. That's how we not

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
Have

Alex Lindsay (01:34:12):
Tacos. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna

Jason Snell (01:34:13):
Have to have tacos sometime. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:15):
Careful every time.

Leo Laporte (01:34:16):
When you use the phrase Taco Tuesday, somebody owns that.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:19):
Let's get them to be a sponsor. Mr. Taco. Like the original, like it should be Mac Break, brought to you by the original Taco Tuesday,

Leo Laporte (01:34:25):
I think. Man, there was a Taco Tuesday lawsuit

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:28):
Actually. I

Alex Lindsay (01:34:28):
Know, but, but so not, not Taco Bell, because they're not the original, but we have to find the, the original Taco Tuesday and then get them to sponsor us as, as we are the, you know, the mass daddies.

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:38):
So maybe you know of Taco

Leo Laporte (01:34:39):
Tuesday back in fact, wait a minute. Here's, this is actually breaking news. Just came out minutes ago. Taco John responds to Taco Bell's. Taco Tuesday lawsuit. Taco John's in a filing.

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:53):
Taco John, if you're,

Alex Lindsay (01:34:54):
If you're watching, if you're watching us, we'd love to have you.

Leo Laporte (01:34:57):
Yes, we will. We will do Taco Tuesday.

Alex Lindsay (01:35:00):
We'll eat, we'll eat your tacos. We'll call

Leo Laporte (01:35:01):
It something like Taco Mac Tuesday or something. And if filing Friday, responding to Taco Bells petition break to cancel the trademark. Oh, wait a minute. Taco Johns applied for a trademark for Taco Tuesday. To which Taco Bell said no, <laugh>. So this is actually interesting. The Taco Bell filed a petition with the U S P T O to cancel the trademark owned by Taco Johns for 34 years.

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:35):
Good for them.

Leo Laporte (01:35:35):
Because Taco Bell claims the commonly used phrase should be freely available to all who make, sell, eat, and celebrate tacos. <Laugh>,

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:44):
The Defense of Tacos Act sponsored by Taco Bell and Doritos, french

Alex Lindsay (01:35:49):
Fries. It's gotta be a marketing plan here. They got, they gotta take away your taco Tuesdays. I I think I would turn that, whether you get it or not, I, for Taco Bell, I would use the mo use the moment. And Taco John's. Taco Johns. Where is Taco John's? It's

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
Regional is what it says. Regional chain. Mm-Hmm. Texas

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:08):
Probably, but, but also did, but also, did you, did you read, so Apple is now suing, basically taking legal legal action in Switzerland to own all trademarks of all apples everywhere. Yes. And every comp, even even like the, the Apple growers, the Apple Growers association trademark, which is simply an apple with a plus inside it. And they're, they basically want to either be granted exclusive rights to use the, any sort of like an Apple logo anywhere, or to at least get all these people to sign non non-compete and non basically sign, sign agreements essentially bending in the need to Apple saying that, yes, your 50 year old, 60 year old trade group uses it only with our benediction.

Leo Laporte (01:36:48):
It's 111 year old trade group. The Fruit Union Swiss, for most of its history, has had a symbol that's a red apple with a white cross, the Swiss flag. Apple says, no, <laugh>, you, you can't do that. We have a hard time understanding this because it's not like they're trying to protect their bitten apple, which is Right. Apple's got a bite out of it. Right? the the objective according to Fruit Union, Swiss Director, Jimmy or Martos, their objective here is really to own their rights to an actual Apple <laugh>, which for us is something that is really almost as universal as, but Taco Tuesday the case has left Swiss Fruit Growers puzzled according to Wired. Apple did not respond to request for comments. You know, I think Apple hires lawyers and says, go forth, go the fourth and protect our trademarks. Right?

Alex Lindsay (01:37:48):
I think if I, if I read that correctly, I think that it's, they either want to own it or they want to have no one tell them that they can't own, they can't, they want mutual exclusive whatever with, with the brand. And so what they're usually this kind of thing happens because somebody sent them an email, you know, like, this is how lawyers, this is how you stir up a bur a a a a beehive is that somebody with an Apple ish logo sent a cease and desist to Apple or something at some point in time, probably four or five years ago. And then there were, then they crushed them. You know, like that, you know, like, like there's a whole bunch of legal whatever. But they were like, we gotta make sure this never happens again. And then there's like a plan. There's a bunch of meetings and there's, you know, and then there's some, some agreement initiative. Yes. No, they're, they're, they're not, apples aren't trying to take the, take the brand. What they wanna do is make sure that no one can ever claim against it. Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:38:34):
But let me tell you the history of Apple's lawsuits. So you remember the Apple Core lawsuit where they fought back and forth with the Beatles. Beatles said, fine, just don't do any music. Then Apple said, you know, we have this thing called iTunes. We were thinking, so anyway, they finally settled that back in 2007. But, but Apple has also sued a meal prep app that had a pair logo, a singer songwriter named Frankie Pineapple, a German cycling route, and a pair of stationary makers and a school district offer using an apple of some kind in their logo

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:09):
<Laugh>. Yeah. This is, this is so, so it's, I, when I see stuff like that and how regularly they've been doing that, I think that the legal department at Apple, like independently, they know that we got a pretty good scam going. So long as we keep filing these lawsuits, all our kids are going to Ivy League colleges. We can, we can keep tra trading our boats for bigger, better boats.

Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
I, I should also point out, and I've been told this many times because we have a trademark for Twit and the TWIT logo and stuff like that, that you have to defend these, otherwise they, you know, people assume you're not defending 'em anymore. And so it's, it's, it's fair game. So to a certain degree, a company that has trademarks does have to defend them. I think common sense, perhaps

Andy Ihnatko (01:39:50):
This, this is pretty super aggressive though. Yeah. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:39:52):
Nevertheless taco Johns says <laugh> I think Taco Johns says it's okay. Let's see. Taco John's parent company, spicy Seasonings denied that there is anything not cool about obtaining a trademark for the phrase <laugh>, the Wyoming,

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:17):
You might think that we're some stuffy corporation here, but they're not.

Leo Laporte (01:40:19):
Stuff

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:20):
Just as with it, as you

Leo Laporte (01:40:21):
Folks, as the Youngs, the Wyoming based company said, taco Bell's lawsuit is filled with statements of opinion to which no response is required, including that Tuesday is a mediocre day of the week. <Laugh>. Well, I never,

Jason Snell (01:40:36):
As somebody born on a Tuesday, I say, how dare you, how dare you that? How dare you Taco Bell?

Alex Lindsay (01:40:41):
Like all I, all I can say is Taco Bell. Taco Bell's getting a lot of good, they're getting a lot of not, I don't know, good or bad, but they're getting a lot of press for it. A lot of people are talking about Taco Bell and we haven't talked about them for a long time. Leo, I

Jason Snell (01:40:51):
Thought you were gonna say that. Taco John's had declared that. Anybody can use the phrase Taco Tuesday from Wednesday to Monday. <Laugh>,

Alex Lindsay (01:41:00):
It's yours, taco. It's

Leo Laporte (01:41:01):
Taco Bell that's defending our right to call it Taco Tuesday. It's Taco John's that is trying to stop that. So just so we're clear on

Jason Snell (01:41:08):
That. Oh, no, but they're, they're willing to let you have ta Taco Tuesday on Thursday, or you can have Taco

Leo Laporte (01:41:12):
Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:41:14):
And Taco John's we're, we're really excited to have your tacos, but if you don't, this, this, this offer expires by in the next two weeks after that, we're gonna go to Taco Bell. Yeah. And that's right. And, and do a whole ad campaign. It was gonna of Mac Break defending our right to know

Leo Laporte (01:41:29):
Follow Taco Tuesday. I don't care. Come on and sue us. I would like to have tacos delivered to each of your domains on

Alex Lindsay (01:41:37):
Tuesday. I'm a hundred percent behind that. I'm, I'm always as,

Andy Ihnatko (01:41:40):
As, as a freelance freelance journalist in a rapidly collapsing market. I'm very much in favor of people sending me free protein, carbohydrates,

Alex Lindsay (01:41:46):
<Laugh>, there's always room for tacos. Oh, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:49):
In a little bit more serious lawsuit, the Supreme Court has rebuffed apple in the Caltech patent case. You may remember that Caltech says they have wifi patents that Broadcom uses in Apple when it used Broadcom chips in their devices infringed Caltech at 1.1 a 1.1 billion verdict. But a lower course said last year, the amount of damages needs to be recalculated. This lawsuit's been going on since 2016. Apple and Broadcom asked the patent and trademark office, administrative court to reconsider whether the patents were good in the first place. That's a, that's like one of the ways you can try to get around these. I know, because there was a podcast patent that ended up getting overturned thanks to the e f in an inter partes case at the pto. But the patent office tribunal agreed to review the patents and ultimately upheld their validity.

(01:42:49):
That's the risk if you challenge it at the patent office. And they disa and they say, no, no, that's a good patent. Now you got a double trouble. So Caltech won a Los Angeles jury in 2020, cited with Caltech. The company's appealed US Court of Appeals for the federal Circuit in February of last year. Upheld the jury's findings. Apple said, well, and Broadcom, let's take it to the Supreme Court. In January, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in. The Biden administration said, don't take the case <laugh>. The law is properly applied. And the Supreme Court in fact did not take the case. So I'm not sure where the, the award stands, but as of now, apple and Broadcom now we're gonna have to face a trial to find out how much they owe cuz they owe you owe. It's just a matter of how much you owe. Let's see. Anything else in in the listing here? Studio Pro headsets from Beatts are now are gonna in the FCC database. That sounds like they're gonna do a kind of promax version of Beatts. Yeah. have we,

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:02):
Have, we decided what the differences is between Apple branded headphones and Beatts branded headphones. They're EQ in terms of like,

Leo Laporte (01:44:08):
You're Curve is different, I think. Yes. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:10):
Like if you're trying to recommend headphones to people and someone someone is, is automatically going for Apple Brand. Like when would, when would we steer with them towards beats? Like for, for sports?

Leo Laporte (01:44:20):
No music. Hmm. Modern music, right. I don't know. What do you think? How they look? Yes. How they look. Yeah. And if you like more base base. Cause I think they're, I think they're base heavy. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:32):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:44:33):
I don't know. I did like anybody know, I don't know.

Jason Snell (01:44:36):
They, there are some functional differences. Like I think they make, you know, they make more of an effort to do the Bluetooth, you know, proper Bluetooth pairing cuz they're meant to be more cross-platform than AirPods are. Even though airport Good point. Pods are that there is a sport version right there. There's a little more variety there. I think there are some features that they lack that the AirPods have. But they're pretty, I mean, they're pretty close. It is, yeah. It's, it, it's an exercise in branding and, and, and Apple focusing on AirPods on, you know, a very particular market. But like, they're, they're good is, my understanding is they're very good and they have a lot of that Apple secret sauce in them, even though they're, you know, not Apple branded. I

Leo Laporte (01:45:13):
Keep buying third party Air Budds not beets so much, but others, just to compare them. And Apple's AirPods Pro are really the kind of the standard. I just got the new Denon Pearl Pro. They, they have a special technology that they place sounds in your ears and, and condition the sound based on that. It's kind of like a hearing test without you doing anything. Yeah. And they sound very, very good, but they're missing that ecosystem. This is what made me start thinking about ecosystem, you know, the transparency and the mix of the new features that are coming soon. All of that Apple can do cuz they have the phone. They ha you know, and, and it just gives them more capabilities. Even if you could make an equivalently good sounding. Yeah. Headphone, by the way, the, the denim Pearl Pros are twice as much as AirPods. Right?

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:00):
Well, that's, you know, that, that's actually one of the big one of the bigger qualities that has gone to my own decision making. Because the thing is, like all of these, all of the truly wireless headphones that I've had, they've got an end of life that's measured in a couple of years. Either because the battery is gonna go comfort or because simply I'm going to lose them because things happen and I'm me. And so there's like a, I've I love Google's Pixel Buds a because I think that 99 bucks for me is exactly the right money to the right amount of money to spend. I'm, I'm willing to spend like $40 a year for use of truly wireless headphones. The sound is not as, certainly not as good as Apple's Pros or, or the best Sonys, or probably the Denis. But they're really, really good. But, and the other thing is that I love the design where they have that little, little tail that sort of nestles into one of the folds of your ear. They're by far the most comfortable earbuds I've ever used. And so that's why, like, even though I do have a nice pair of sonis, usually when I'm going out for, for, for my walk or for any real reason I'm using the Pixel buds, it's, it's a complicated piece of math.

Leo Laporte (01:47:05):
Yeah. But Pixel Buds with Android makes sense.

Andy Ihnatko (01:47:10):
And, and, and, but also with my, with my iPad, with my oh, okay. With my Apple stuff, I mean I, I I I agree that the I, I agree that the secret sauce of having Apple, apple, apple created earbuds, working with an Apple created product, all take it tied together with Apple created software is awfully nice. I really wish I had that kind of like the ability to check my, my the, the, the charge on everything I had. But again, when it, when it comes to, it's hard for me specifically to, particularly to spend 200 some odd dollars on something that even if I don't misplace them, I know that in a few years they're just gonna be garbage. And, and, and, and even if that weren't the case, they're not as comfortable as these cheaper ones. And I'm sure that there are $60 earbuds that have certain elements that are designed that suit my ears better than than the app

Leo Laporte (01:47:56):
Ones. Well, and, and there's another issue in some ways because these for instance, these pro, pro support Apex, which is a high-end Bluetooth Kodak, that Apple doesn't support <laugh>. So, so, you know, well

Alex Lindsay (01:48:07):
The, the, my biggest complaint is that if you have any other Bluetooth app other than Apple, and I don't know whether this is the, the the one w one chip or whatever, but when someone calls me and I'm on a different headset, which I'm off and on, I'm on. I, so I, when I'm talking on the phone and I'm working or doing something, I'm on an open calm. Yeah. I bought those because shots open com, they're

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
Great after shots. Cause you

Alex Lindsay (01:48:29):
Can, no one hears anything if you have that little boom that comes down and everything else. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's great. When I'm purely listening and I might answer a call, I'm on the ultimate ears fits because they fit, you know, like they're, they're great and they're, they're really in my ears. And when I'm on kind of general purpose, I'm on my AirPods, you know, and but what's interesting is, is when someone calls me, no matter how often I, I've been using this open calm, it's the only one connected to my phone. And when it answers, it doesn't answer to the open, calm, <laugh>. I have to, I have to go. Isn't that frustrating? Every single time and I'm just like, I, and I can't decide whether it's conspiracy or just missing that chip or something. Cuz it's just cause it's so, it's, it's just like if I'm driving, I don't want to use it because I don't wanna, I, I use the AirPods because I, you know, I want to just answer to the headset. So it's just, it's, it's annoying.

Leo Laporte (01:49:14):
I gotta find something that does apex lossless so I can try these pearls with it. Anyway

Andy Ihnatko (01:49:23):
I did think there was an interesting story. Like last week, the week before there was an interview with Kevin Lynch of Apple and Dear to Colbeck about finally answering at least a sub, the first ubstance of answer to the question, why doesn't Apple allow third party watch faces? And they ascribed it to just reliability. That they were basically saying that they don't know. Like if they, if if they allowed third parties to developer to develop watch faces, then maybe the next time they off they upgrade iOS, then the watch face would break. And I, I thought that was an interesting point of view because they have no problems when they allow developers to write other kinds of apps for the watch. And they don't worry about breakage.

Leo Laporte (01:49:59):
Yeah. It's weird. Somebody in our chat room said there's a, he's got a bet on whether you'll have custom eyeballs for the spooky eyes before you have custom watch faces for the Apple

Alex Lindsay (01:50:09):
Watch. It's gotten to the point with wwc, the number one thing I want to see is custom watch faces. Like, I would literally tweet it out, like, oh my gosh. Yeah. There's, there's production things that I wanna do with my fo with my watch, you know, with, I want a very specific thing with secondhand and certain things, and I want my, my complications to be in a very specific way. And, you know, it's, if Apple did that, then I probably wouldn't care anymore. But if a but given that they haven't done it and I desperately, there's only one on watch phase with secondhand. If you're in, if you're in production, you really wanna know how many seconds are left. You know, there's, there's an exercise one and then there's a dorky one, you know, and, and so the, the thing, and so the, the fact that Apple doesn't do that, just like, oh, like let us experiment and if it doesn't work, let us know. You can give us three warnings that we might break the break the watch, or it might run out of battery or whatever. That's fine. But this is definitely a place where usually Andy's talking about it, where Apple's being over controlling and they should just let us free our watch faces

Leo Laporte (01:51:10):
Free the watch face. Yeah. Yeah. Although having had custom watch faces on Samsung watch and others, they're usually pretty crappy <laugh>.

Andy Ihnatko (01:51:20):
So that's that. Well, that, that's true. But the, the thing is, like, I don't want, I don't want there to be 500 different watch faces available. I want there to be one, one different one that I absolutely love and I will be having on that watch face on that watch until the thing go goes into the trash.

Jason Snell (01:51:35):
This is one of those areas where Apple's reliance on a curated app store, you know, kind of proves the point, which is, you know, you could say, oh, no, no, no, we can't allow that. Like, you never know, there might be trademark issues. We might be lawsuits or they might not work. Right? And it's like, yeah, you've got an app store <laugh>, so only let in the ones where you've checked and they're okay. And then wouldn't that be nice? So I, I still feel like it's gonna happen eventually, but I I would've lost the bet if you had asked me back when the back absolutely back almost, you know, like nine years ago when they announced the first Apple Watch, how long it would take to do custom third party watch faces or,

Andy Ihnatko (01:52:11):
Or, or even if they allowed, if they, they basically allowed a handful of studios to create the, the right to the, the author authorization to do that sort of stuff. Because I could, I could absolutely see where they don't want the, the design of the Apple watches was just as important as like the engineering or the software. They just, they wanted to make what looked like a beautiful, elegant, timeless, classic watch. And that that, that they wouldn't have to keep updating every two years as the fashions changed. They could just update the software. So I absolutely see where they would want to have some control over to make sure that let's have <laugh> when the calv, when the Calvin is pissing on the four, that means that it's a four o'clock, you know, but, but if they simply said, here are some, here are some studios that we really, really like. We have given them like license to produce the following eight watch faces that are optional downloads or optional purchases. And to see how well those, those things work out and then keep keep expanding the program as they see how people are reacting to the sort of stuff. Although, although I'll say having a Snoopy and Woodstock watch face as, as with the new watch, I was <laugh> that delayed that, that delayed my, my tension a little bit because I wanna Snoopy watch. That's all you really

Leo Laporte (01:53:20):
Needed, huh? <Laugh>?

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:22):
I'm, I'm, I'm a simple man. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:53:25):
A simple man with Symphony.

Andy Ihnatko (01:53:26):
We sing, we dance, we bring in the harvest. Jason, let me pray to an indifferent, God

Leo Laporte (01:53:31):
Interesting article in Mac World. I thought we should talk about this while Jason's here. Sorry, apple, most people will never use any of the new features. <Laugh> coming in iOS 17 credit. Did you write that?

Jason Snell (01:53:43):
Credit? Credit to my editor. Okay. Okay. Well, no, you can always, here's the secret is you can always go to six colors when I link to it and see my headline that I wrote, which was something like pro tip the iPhone has a discoverability problem. Yeah. But it's the, I I SEO

Leo Laporte (01:53:57):
Is not as good on that. I don't think

Jason Snell (01:53:58):
This one, this one made me laugh. I I like some of those, their headlines are a little too much. But this is the point is like Apple can ship new features, but how do users ever discover them? And there's a new thing. My news angle is that there's a thing called Tip Kit and I 17 that is gonna try to standardize so that app developers have a standard way and Apple is using it too. A standard way of rolling out little tip bubbles that will pop up and it's, and it, they don't want 'em all at once. Like you can set it to be like, when a user does this behavior or does this behavior for the third time, you can pop up a little tip that said, here's a thing you could do. And they, they, you know, don't do five at once, only do one every few days or weeks or whatever.

(01:54:38):
Because they're trying to improve discoverability. The reason that this came up is that while I was in Oregon for my daughter's graduation my wife and I go out to lunch and she comments that I don't have pictures of our kids on my lock screen. And she says, how will she works in an office with other human beings? She's like, how will people know it's your phone? Cuz people know it's her phone cuz it's got her pictures of her kids on it. And I said, oh, well you could have a lock screen that shuffles through all the pictures of our kids, cuz that's an iOS 16 feature. And I opened it up and I, so she didn't know about that feature. I found a bug, which is that the faces that it offered were totally random and not our children. It's like, why are these pictures there?

(01:55:14):
They're like people we took two pictures of and they're like, would you like to shuffle between those two pictures of randos? It's like, well no Apple <laugh>. And so I filed the feedback about that, that's fine. But like then I'm looking at her app screen and she's got nine pages of apps just going off into oblivion. And I realized she, apple like three, four years ago, apple completely simplified and, and adjusted how we handle apps on iPhones so that you don't have to have them on the screen anymore. They're still in the app library. You can still search for them, but you can sort of simplify your life and delete all those extra screens and only sort of have, instead of having a junk drawer, which is what she has, you can just have a coup like your favorites on a page or two. And then the rest are just in the app library.

(01:55:55):
And I explained this to her, but I, and, and it was, she was like, oh, well that's, that's cool, right? But like, she never thought about it. And I, I thought, well what did Apple do to try and prod her to completely change the way that she handles apps? And it struck me that like what happens with most people is they learn once how to do something. So they learn how to manage apps on an iPhone and then five years pass and Apple says, Hey, it's getting kind of messy on that iPhone. We're gonna do a cool new feature that lets you organize it better. And the, all those people who learned that, they just don't notice and they keep doing what they learned. And it just struck me that like, it's a hard problem. Like how do you not get super annoying?

(01:56:37):
Like when they update their phone, if you bombard them right, then they're not gonna do it. And I realize that it's not our, our viewers and listeners, right? It's the, it's like everybody else. We're, we are the discovery system for the people who listen to our podcast, right? But but the general public, and my, my wife was a good example because believe it or not, I do not replicate Mac Break weekly at the dinner table. My wife, my wife was like, she learned in 2014 or whatever, 20 12, 20 10 how to manage apps and it never knew that Apple made it easier. So it's a real, I just got me thinking like we're about to enter this beta cycle again and new apps or new os features are coming in the fall. But the core problem is like, how do regular people ever know that something like that lock screen thing that got outta last four last fall, it it, which is so oblique, right? It's not even an app. You have to be in the lock screen and then press and hold. Like how do people even know that that exists? And what if you're Apple, how do you strategize to try and get it to be discoverable in some way? You know, I don't have an answer. I just, I I'm fascinated by how hard the problem is.

Andy Ihnatko (01:57:47):
Yeah. I'm sorry that they don't that the Apple doesn't continue to publish, like update manuals on on Apple Books that they used to be like, here is an entire like 192 page manual on how to use your iPad and or specifically here is how here's how to use the iPad, you know, I io iPad os what, whatever, what point, whatever with a full prefix says, here's the stuff that's brand new with this. Because there is this, I mean, ideally things would be simply discoverable and ideally simply having when you finish the update, walking you through a simple slideshow of advertisements of things that are, that are different also would be sufficient. But if people just got into the habit of, Hey, look, there's a whole document that explains not only what these features are, but how actually to use them. I, I, I don't know why Apple doesn't do that anymore. I wish they did. I

Alex Lindsay (01:58:33):
Think they leave it up to people to do it. And I think that not as many people do it anymore that they used to. There used to be those, those great little manuals that people would put out. Yeah. I know that for me on a daily basis on some app, I'm, I'll do something like, I wonder how to do this. And then when you see what Apple did, you're like, whoa, that's really cool. <Laugh>. You know, like, and, and, and I was, I did, I, I was doing this thing where I was showing countdown clocks inside of Keynote. Like, you can do a countdown clock for your show. And when I was prepping for it this morning for office hours, I, I I went, did Magic move from one to the other. So thinking that, oh, it'll reset and move my countdown clock.

(01:59:09):
It kept the countdown clock running. Like it just, I started on, on by the third slide. It was just, it just kept on running in seconds and just moving it along and changing the images behind it. And, and that was like, you know, like, I've never seen that published anywhere. Like I'm sure that they, they did somewhere. It's in some note that, oh, by the way, magic Moves will keep your video running. I mean, it, it is probably connected to the backgrounds that run and everything else. But, but the you know, apple does a lot of things and they do one thing Apple does that, if you're listening, you're an educator, they do education seminars mm-hmm. <Affirmative> WebEx or something like that. And I've sat at some of those. And that's another one of those ones where I sit in, I sit in the keynote ones cause I use Keynote a lot, <laugh>.

(01:59:46):
And there's stuff on the iPad that I, you know, like you can just take your pencil, grab onto an object with your pencil and just swirl it around. And you've now built an animation path. Like, you know, like you've just, you know, and, and and the first time they did that, I, you know, I feel like I know Keynote pretty well. I've been using it since version one. And as soon as they do it, I think I had an audible like, whoa, <laugh>, like, like holy smokes. And I think to your point, it's unfortunate that Apple leaves out, you know, doesn't educate us. Cuz I mean, half of the problem is, I I, and, and I, I'll say this is not an Apple problem. This is everybody's problem, is that there is so much value locked in devices that we don't know about.

(02:00:23):
They spend millions of dollars developing things. I've, I've said this oftentimes about my microwave that I know how to turn it on and I know what the power is. It's got all kinds of fuzzy logic in there that can cook my te my my chicken and everything else. But it's hard to figure out how to do it. And so I don't do it. I just turn it on and give it some time and move on. Yeah. And that's the, the Delta there is Wetware development, which is teaching me and make, creating an app. And nowadays I get these apps all the time. I'm almost expect it, I get, I'll get some app and I, I I I'm looking for the QR code, like where's the QR code? Cuz there's somewhere like if you buy a, the screen for this, this little protective screen that I have on the front had a QR code, I put, I, I hit it, it opened up a movie on YouTube that showed me exactly how to do, how to put that, that Project Protect, you know, and there's no amount of explanation, there's no, there's no manual that can tell me how to put that screen on as well as a video.

(02:01:14):
And so they just, they have a manual. They, I mean, they have a step-by-step that's there that you can follow. But there was a little QR code and I hit it and boom, I knew understood it. And I think that not just Apple, but everybody has to get better at that because, you know, especially with software,

Jason Snell (02:01:26):
Yeah. It's a, it's a super hard problem in the Discord, the Wheelwright said, well, don't they, you know, when when you update to your new os, isn't there a big thing that says, here are all the new features? The answer is yes, but the problem is I think a lot of times people just wanna use their phones, right? They're like, oh, I had to wait for it to restart and now I want to use your phone. I, I, this happens to me when I use, I'm on a lot of beta, so I'm on a lot of test flight things and like test flight, you open the app and it's got a thing. It's like, here are all the new beta features and check this out, and all of that. And every time I launch an app that's got one of those, I'm like, God, not now Tesla.

(02:01:58):
I want to use this app, right? <Laugh>, because in the end, I didn't launch it to read about beta features. I launched it to use the app. And so when you're, you can do that and maybe you'll get them in the right moment, but I think that the challenge is that a lot of times they're not ready to learn and they're not ready to sit down and have a whole session about the 20 features that you added you think they should know about. So like, how do you get them later? And like an example that I found that, that every time I recount this, there are people, and there'll be people who are listening now who are gonna be like, no way. I can't believe you could do that. One of my wife's complaints was when she's got an app that gets added to page nine and she wants it on page one, she has to tap and hold until it wiggles. And then she drags it over to the left side to the edge, and then it moves one page and then she waits or wiggles it and then moves another page. And I said, well, did you know that if you put another finger down, you can swipe with that finger while,

Alex Lindsay (02:02:45):
Oh, I didn't know that. The app, I didn't

Jason Snell (02:02:47):
Even know that. And go all the way to page one really fast long. They added, they added that like two years ago. Yeah, but does anybody know? So, so then I would say, wouldn't it be interesting if Apple could do something like see somebody slow dragging an app and say, Hey, did you know that there's a faster way to do this? But that's the challenge is like, how do you do that? How do you cue that? How do you observe behavior? And then, and then, you know, you don't wanna be clippy. Exactly. You do wanna like intercede at some point and say, there's a faster way to do this or, or how do you put something up on the lock screen that says, Hey, would you like a cooler lock screen? You know, tap me to find out. Right? Like, and the

Alex Lindsay (02:03:28):
Problem is judging you we're saying

Jason Snell (02:03:30):
It's a, it's a challenge. It's just really hard.

Alex Lindsay (02:03:32):
And the hardest thing is, is that like Adobe will try to do that when you open up, every time you open up Photoshop, it wants to tell you something new and you're like, oh my gosh, where do I turn this off? You know, like Lisa. So it's, it's, it's, it's, that's the, the balance is always like, it tries to help you and then you're half the time you're like, I don't want your help. Yeah.

Jason Snell (02:03:48):
Yeah. And then they have the tips app as the will rights pointing out in the discordance. It's absolutely true. But again, you have this user problem of like, a lot of users are like, oh boy, I will read some tips now. Right? Like, or they, or they come out as push notifications and they end up getting in your way. And like that's part of the challenge is, is is like Andy said well, Andy and Alex have both covered this. Like, the microwave problem is great, right? Which is just like, I just push the button and it cooks the food. I don't wanna read a manual about it. And that's like, there are manual readers out there and bless 'em, but like you do, you do, it's software. Like you need to hold people's hands a little bit more and be like, don't wanna bother you, sorry to bother you, but did you just noticed, did you notice this thing? Because people are, most people are not gonna curl up with the manual. They're just not.

Alex Lindsay (02:04:32):
Well, and and the thing is, is like a June, I have a June at home in my, in my house and, and they do really well in the sense that it just kind of works, but oh, you can attach your phone and oh, you know, like, and they have, they have stuff that you can learn how to, you know, make, like, you know, and you, you learn how to make something and we make something. I think we learn how to do something with the June, like the first week, and we, we make it at least once a week, you know, like, you know, and we Yeah, we did too. We don't do it the same way. Roasted brussel

Leo Laporte (02:04:57):
Scraps.

Alex Lindsay (02:04:58):
Yep. Yeah, for us it's like, it's like potatoes with carrots or something like that. And, and the thing is, is that, but what they did really well, and I think Heston does this really well, where they have these tutorials on how to make new dishes with their product, you know, and they spent a lot of money on those. Like, like, it's not like they said, oh, we're gonna give you a little like how to, there's little videos of how to do each piece and how to put all that together. And it makes a big difference. And you, and it adds a lot of value to the product without actually engineering anything new. It's just video, you know? And and I think that yeah, it's, it's, it's missing and it feels like it's huge problem. It should be everywhere. Yeah. It's a huge

Jason Snell (02:05:32):
Problem with all software. Understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (02:05:34):
And hardware.

Leo Laporte (02:05:35):
Hardware and all technology. It's just technology. Yeah. It's they can do a lot of things and nobody, ain't nobody got time for that.

Jason Snell (02:05:42):
Mm. It's, or, or if they are totally in c they'll learn it one time. But like to tell them we have improved it to do a new way and it's like, yeah, I'm just gonna use my way that I use. And,

Alex Lindsay (02:05:51):
And the hard part is, is that I, I've been thinking about putting together keynote tips because, because my whole thing is I do all these keynote things, but if you do a search online, it's always like, there's like the first minute and a half on YouTube of now subscribe to my channel. Oh God. And now I, this is a real thing. And yes, and, and, and the problem that you may have, I'm like, I know what the problem is and it's in the title of the video. I just need, I want you to start with this is how to do the thing. That's not

Leo Laporte (02:06:15):
How you build an audience on YouTube.

Jason Snell (02:06:17):
Those are bad YouTube videos. Those are bad.

Leo Laporte (02:06:18):
Well, I, you know, I think it's just playing the game. I mean, this is the, this is the whole thing about all of these platforms is you play the, you, you tune yourself to the algorithm, which isn't necessarily what users want. But that's how you get discovery.

Jason Snell (02:06:31):
Have you seen a recipe page on the web? Oh my god.

Leo Laporte (02:06:34):
Oh, the recipe's at the bottom of the bottom, bottom, oh, 3000

Jason Snell (02:06:36):
Word essays about how they made this recipe for their mom. And then the recipes at the very bottom with

Alex Lindsay (02:06:41):
Every two inches, there's like four more ads. There's like four more ads in the average two inches, four more ads. And it's the, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:06:46):
Whenever I make Shaken Bake, I'm always taken back to this. I skip here in <inaudible> <laugh> when I met and I helped <laugh>. Alright, we we're gonna take a little break, come back with your picks of the week. So guys, get those ready. You're watching Mac Break Weekly and those of you who are on Club Twit, the picks are gonna happen right away cuz you don't get any ads. Now ad free is just one of many benefits. Club TWIT members get really important to us. I mean, the biggest benefit you get is that Twit sticks around that we will continue to do this show on our other shows cuz times are tight for podcasters everywhere. They're cutting back, they're laying off shows are disappearing. We realized at Lisa realized two years ago that the real future of Twit in its audience, you are community.

(02:07:37):
That's the strength of Twit. And so as a result, we started Club twit seven. I'm gonna lead with the most important part. Seven bucks a month. It's a couple of lattes a month, actually. Not if you go to Starbucks, it's like a half a latte, but nevertheless, seven bucks a month, you get completely ad-free versions of all of the shows including this. You get access to our Discord, which is a really fantastic, even Mr. Beast says you should subscribe to our Discord fantastic community of itself. You also get shows that we don't put out in the public, including the new AI show with Jeff and Jeff Jarvis and Jason Hall are putting together for us. We're very excited. That's gonna launch in the club. That'll be a club special. Home Theater Geeks with Scott Wilkinson's Club, only Mac Hands on Mac with Micah Sargent HandsOn Windows with Paul Thot Theat, the UNT title Linux show.

(02:08:33):
The we don't look, I would like to put every show out for everybody, but the club members are paying for these shows. They're making it possible. So we wanna make sure they get access. And and you know what, if a show does well and builds an audience, w like this week in space, did we start it in the club? We put it out in public after it builds an audience. So the Club is really an important incubator for us. It's a way to keep the lights on, keep the staff employed. I, I don't want to beg, but I'm on my knees. <Laugh>, please join Club Twit. Seven bucks a month, $84 a year. There is a family plan, there's a corporate plan. Both of those will save you money. TWIT TV slash club twit, twit on Oh, and yeah, we're bringing back hands on text, some of our views.

(02:09:21):
In fact, that's where my review of the Pixel tablet will appear first. It's also where my review of those Deon Pearl Pro Earbuds, really the whole point of them is AP this new Apex Lossless Kodak. And I have to first find something that will play Apex Lossless, but that review will be part of Hands-On Tech. The re returned review show that's club only TWIT TV slash club twit, sorry to interrupt, sorry to do this. But if, if only a few percent right now it's about 1% of the audience. If 5% of the audience subscribed, we'd be golden. That's all I need. That's all I need. Maybe you're one of the 5% time for our picks of the week. Jason Snell kicker off, if you will.

Jason Snell (02:10:08):
Sure. I have had a Mac server in my house forever. Like aren't

Leo Laporte (02:10:12):
You fancy

Jason Snell (02:10:13):
Since the, since the beige G three days. And really, I, you know, I I used to do very different things that I do now on the Mac server, but I love having a Mac Mini. It's been a Mac Mini for a long time now in my house. However, if, if you don't know, like back in the day, Mac o s 10 server was a thing, and Apple build all these tools that would go on top of the Unix stuff that's in macOS and macOS 10 to do server stuff. And over the years, apple has gradually sloughed off every single one of those features. They, in the latest couple of versions, they don't even do you know, Python's not in there and you like it, it all of the scripting stuff is dropped and a lot of the server stuff has dropped. There's very little left of that.

(02:10:56):
And I still run a web server on my for a bunch of stuff on my on my home server. Anyway, I, I just upgraded to an M two Mac mini and that meant updating to Beyond Mojave, which is what I was on, on my old server classic and all. And it stripped away the last vestiges of anything that Apple built in of scripting languages and, and Unix servers and stuff like that. And I decided finally to just not, not keep migrating the same server I've been migrating for 20 years, but instead embrace the new world. And so instead of, you know, getting out, I mean, I installed Home Brew, but like instead of installing a million different things on the command line, I decided to, I I had actually already bought a license for it to do some WordPress testing, a thing called mamp and mamp Pro. It basically mamp it, it sounds like a horror movie monster, but what it is is, is Mac amp in the sense of, what is that? Apache MySQL php basically it's an app with an installer and there's a pro version that has more features. So there it

Leo Laporte (02:12:04):
Does, there's a lamp stack has been around forever. Linux, Apache, my, my SQL

Jason Snell (02:12:09):
And php. Yeah. This is, this is, this

Leo Laporte (02:12:12):
Is a map stack. Okay.

Jason Snell (02:12:14):
Yeah. But the, the idea here is that instead of doing all that, especially since Apple used to provide graphical interface controls for all of these features and has abandoned it entirely, this is a Mac installer that runs a web server and will run WordPress. It will install php so you don't have to do it through Home Brew or something

Leo Laporte (02:12:33):
Like that. Or by the way, cuz a lot of people don't want php, Python, Pearl and Ruby or Exactly. If you don't want a patchy Engine X. So it's, it's really up to date mm-hmm. <Affirmative> updated, which is great.

Jason Snell (02:12:42):
Yeah, it is. In some ways this, this app reminds me so much of what Apple was trying to do with Meco Aer 10 server back in the day. Yeah. Which is create a Mac app that has all that Unix server stuff behind it. It was very easy. I was able to use Let's Encrypt to, to get my own SSL certificate and it in, appoint it at the certificate, and then it just worked. You know, it was not, it was a lot easier, let me tell you than trying to install all of that software and edit all those text files to get it to be exactly what I wanted. So if you were thinking, and I I will say I, the number one reason I started using mamp was because I was doing WordPress development for six colors when we moved to WordPress. And I needed a local server to do that. And rather than I, I tried to install all the things that were required to get WordPress up and running on my Mac, and it was a nightmare. And with mamp, you literally turn it on Man Pro, you turn it on and you say, yes, WordPress please. And it's done. So can I

Leo Laporte (02:13:42):
Still use my Mac if it's running?

Jason Snell (02:13:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It runs in the background. It's, it's invisible in fact, other than when you're administering it, it's just running, it's just, you know, if it's your Mac, then if you restart it or sleep it or whatever, then your server goes away. But but yeah, you can do it. In fact, that's what I did. I spent an entire summer doing WordPress development where what I was doing was on my, on my Mac here, on my desk. I just had that as a, a local host server running WordPress so I could fix my templates and debug them and do all of those things. And it was a lot easier than trying, I know if you're super unique savvy, it's gonna be second nature for you to install this stuff, but if you're a Mac user who knows just enough to be dangerous, you know, you could be a little desk less dangerous and use your Mac user skills by using this app instead.

Leo Laporte (02:14:27):
Plus it has a nice control panel, centralized control panel, which makes it much easier, I think. Yeah. So there's

Jason Snell (02:14:32):
A free version, the pro version does. Yeah. Pro pro versions is $90 and has a lot of detail in multi-site and all of that, but there is a free version if you want to get started. But it was totally worth it for me, and I'm glad that I've been able to repurpose it now for my surfer.

Leo Laporte (02:14:45):
Yeah. m a MP info for mamp, not a great name, but

Jason Snell (02:14:51):
Not a great name, A great

Leo Laporte (02:14:52):
Product.

Jason Snell (02:14:53):
A little elephant icon. It's cute. Aw,

Leo Laporte (02:14:55):
Yeah,

Jason Snell (02:14:55):
Yeah. Think, think about the elephants.

Leo Laporte (02:14:57):
Think about the elephants. Andy anco Pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko (02:15:01):
Slightly controversial pick. Now that I, I've, I'm not gonna recommend Ulysses again but it is it over the, one of the signatures of 2023 is that I now have gone from, oh, I should definitely like give an Ulysses another deep dive because, but there's a lot of new features to, this is now like the center <laugh> of all of my creative work. Almost completely descr displacing scriveners. I use Scriveners scr for some novels that I'm working on, but that's about it. And you know, I can, I always know when a certain like note taking app or writing app or whatever has reached that level of, you know, you know, like on in Toy Story when, you know, Andy writes his name on the bottom of on one of the toys feet, you know, okay, hey, I'm, I'm officially accepted.

(02:15:42):
It's when I finally start to fine tune the editing environment to make it look exactly the way I want. And so I've been playing with different monospace fonts. I'm a just like just like Jason, I used to do most of my writing in BB edit and sort of, that's, that's the environment that kind of put my, puts my brain into, hey, I'm writing, writing, writing for duration, not just for fun. And so I came across a fork of a fork of comic sands called Comic Mono. And what they did, what I like, okay, first of all, it's mono space, but it's fine tuned to not look like comic sands so much as it looks a little bit like a friendlier version of Monaco, a ver a friendlier version of like these monospace terminal fonts that I normally wind up going with. And yeah, when you put it up at like, at 18 points, no, it doesn't look very good, but at text editing size it looks pretty nice and it's, and it's free.

Alex Lindsay (02:16:37):
Do you do the titles in Papyrus

Andy Ihnatko (02:16:38):
<Laugh>? You know what,

Leo Laporte (02:16:42):
Yeah. You, you can, you're not serious people, are they? No

Andy Ihnatko (02:16:47):
No, no, no. It's, I mean, at least I'm not using Helvetica man. Well actually they're, I shouldn't, I shouldn't throw shade at Helvetica either. Dare. It's very nice sturdy, nice sturdy. It's all, it's all about, it's all about the, the character spacing. It sort

Alex Lindsay (02:17:01):
Tica new,

Andy Ihnatko (02:17:02):
I mean, you know, but, but, but, but, but, you know, but you know what I'm talking about where, what I, what I like about the editing environment that, like I, that BB edit threw me into is that it really when you're just using markdown for all your formatting, because yeah, I do need to throw some metallics in there. Sometimes I do need to throw headers in into there. It's nice to be able to say, I'm, I don't care what I, I, my mind gets distracted by, Ooh, you know what, there's, there's some space between the header and the, and the following paragraph. But I'd like there to be a little bit more space between, whereas if I'm just using a mono of space font and just tagging as I go, I don't care. I just get to the words. But that, that, that isn't to say that you can't get something a little bit better than like a basic typewriter font for your terminal.

(02:17:44):
And I don't know if I'm gonna keep it, but I like it. And I will certainly, I will certainly never print this out or share this in a pdf with anybody who has to read it. But as someone who sometimes has to read like four or five, 6,000 words worth of stuff that I just read before, like turning it to something that is going to be a PDF for the people to read, it's a little bit more pleasant than like, Menlo was my previous default, and it's kind of a tossup between the two. I might, I actually like

Leo Laporte (02:18:09):
This. Yeah. Comic

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:11):
Mono has, has a little something about it. Yeah, yeah. Again, a little, just a little, little bit of difference,

Leo Laporte (02:18:15):
Honestly. Like the IBM electric font.

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:19):
Yeah. A little bit of like an orator.

Leo Laporte (02:18:21):
Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't look like, what it doesn't look like is comic sands. It just looks like a jovial terminal font. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:29):
A little, little, little less, little less of a

Alex Lindsay (02:18:30):
Terminal. Tight

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:31):
Monaco, but not quite a tight as. Yeah. Yeah. Like a, like the Monaco, if it dropped acid and spent some time in an Ashray

Leo Laporte (02:18:37):
<Laugh>, I have installed it. And I'm going to make it be my default font for a while. Just, just for fun. I like it. Comic

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:46):
Just don't, just, just don't tell people what, what's derived from, or people like Alex will just, like, make you feel like you're supposed to be ashamed of it.

Leo Laporte (02:18:52):
<Laugh>. Sorry, man. Alex, you're so mean.

Andy Ihnatko (02:18:57):
You got, you gotta, you gotta poke holes in my rowboat, don't you, Alex? Every single time. I'm afraid the screen doored my submarine. When you're talking about

Alex Lindsay (02:19:03):
The, the, the impact of, of, of videos. Anytime someone says papyrus or comic sands, all I can think of is a Saturday live ski. I can't, there's like, it's just completely embedded into my, into my bios at this point.

Leo Laporte (02:19:14):
Yeah. Comic Sands is pretty reprehensible, but Comic mono, no, not so much. I think it's kind of cute.

Alex Lindsay (02:19:21):
We actually had a, you know, we had a discussion on office hours about it with someone who works in topography and she actually was talking about how readable comic sands is. Oh, there, I mean, that's what makes it, you go. Yeah. It's actually a very readable font that, that very specifically. So while a lot of who make fun of it, it actually has a ooh a certain power to, and it

Leo Laporte (02:19:39):
Is a nerd font. It does support. I'm using it right now and I like it. It supports the nerd font ligatures and things so that this is a, this is a good choice. I like it. I'll make it bigger so you can see it. Look, see, that's pretty, that's pretty, I think that looks nice. I'm gonna use that from, from now on. Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Good choice.

Alex Lindsay (02:20:02):
I made fun of it, but I'm, I've already stalled it to

Leo Laporte (02:20:05):
<Laugh>. It's not comic sand. It's pretty It is. Looks, it's, it looks like order. You're right. I like it. It's a, it's

Andy Ihnatko (02:20:11):
A, it's like comic sands. Once it's grown out of an a, it's awkward teens, it's, it's grown. It's no longer wearing the black trench coat. It's no longer shopping at hot topic. It's integrated <laugh>. Exactly. It's childhood into a very sturdy

Alex Lindsay (02:20:21):
Adulthood. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (02:20:23):
Mr. Alex Lindsay, pick of the week.

Alex Lindsay (02:20:26):
So I was talking earlier about the, the, the little thing that I was doing in, in keynote. Let see if I can get this to see. So this was, this is what I was talking about before was this. And, and the thing you wanna know is these images I all made in,

Leo Laporte (02:20:38):
Ooh.

Alex Lindsay (02:20:39):
So this is this is all in fine in mid journey, but, but this is the cool thing with keto is you go like this, this keeps on ticking, and then it goes like this. And then it just keeps,

Leo Laporte (02:20:48):
These are all mid journey 5.2 generated.

Alex Lindsay (02:20:51):
Yeah. These are all, so my chip, my pick is mid journey <laugh>. And this is, this is gorgeous. Everything is fine, or it's all that is, this is fine. Yeah, with a min with a minion, you know, you know, a

Leo Laporte (02:21:00):
Despicable, this is fine.

Alex Lindsay (02:21:02):
Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so anyway 5.2 is out. It's, it's pretty slick, you know. If we let me see if I can pop over to this is the interface here. If you look at it here, one of the things you'll see now is this zoom out. So you can zoom out 1.5, you can do a custom zoom. You also can vary it a lot or a little. So if something's close, but eh, not quite right, you can do, do a subtle variance, whereas you can do, or you can do strong, which is kind of the normal one that they have out there. And you can build really fun things. So this is the, I think we were talking about a light seal earlier. So I put the light seal in and you'll see me, all I did was type it in, and then I started zooming out and picking ones during the commercial breaks, <laugh>.

(02:21:47):
And and so I started doing that. And what I ended up with is, just to give you a sense of, and this was just during the, during our commercial breaks everybody has a hobby. And so this is mine. And so here you have this kind of infinite zoom of, oh, I gotta grab onto this. So just keep zooming in, <laugh> to our seal, you know. So basically I started here and now you'll see a little edge. I'd have to paint that out, but it's pretty close. It would take very little to fix it. This is what a lot of people are doing right now, is doing these zoom outs. But so as you start to zoom out,

Leo Laporte (02:22:22):
That's so wild.

Alex Lindsay (02:22:23):
These are just stacking these images top of each other, and then it comes up with another seal. You're like it hallucinates. Okay. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:22:28):
Like, like think another

Alex Lindsay (02:22:30):
Seal you pull out a little further. Oh, there's another seal <laugh>. So it's good on adding seals to it. But, but anyway, the point is, is that it's, it's a really slick you know, for a lot of us who got a closeup but really wanted something a little further back or, or, you know, you didn't get the full, you know, gave you a waist up when you want into the full body shot. All those things are now kind of doable and it's quality is way higher. Again. one thing that people are showing that I haven't gotten to work yet is the ability to do paint in and then have it actually just build something. This is new in Photoshop, or at least they showed it in Photoshop, where you can basically take a big marker and just say, this is green and this is blue.

(02:23:06):
And then say, give me a valley and it'll just follow off. It'll just build that for you. And that's, they're showing that in Photoshop. And some people were saying, oh, that works in mid journey too. I haven't got that to work yet, but, but the but 5.2 is, you know, it's a huge, probably the biggest jump since three to four, I mean, or three, three point whatever to a four. So it's a, it's a big jump forward. So it's worth, worth, worth checking out. A you, it's beautiful images. I mean, it's just, it's yeah, it's crazy.

Andy Ihnatko (02:23:31):
I'll just try it again

Leo Laporte (02:23:32):
Slash

Andy Ihnatko (02:23:33):
I haven't really gotten deep, haven't really gotten deep dive on it and for like, about a year, so, yeah. Oh, I

Alex Lindsay (02:23:37):
Think I'm, yeah, yeah. It's come a long way. Oh,

Leo Laporte (02:23:40):
It's photo realistic now it's like a

Alex Lindsay (02:23:41):
Decade. It's like, yeah, you're,

Andy Ihnatko (02:23:43):
I've been playing a lot with the Photoshop infill feature, but though that's like, oh my goodness. This is, this is the best kind of like, exciting technology, the kind of technology that might get a lot of people scared. Cause it's so easy. Well, so easy to do cool things with it.

Alex Lindsay (02:23:55):
The cool thing is that you start, you can use the Photoshop infill with Five Point with, with Mid Journey. So what you do is you build the image and mid journey, but you want to change a couple things and you just select it in Photoshop and say, put a screen here or put this here. And Photoshop will infill the, it'll take the mid journey image, but infill the new thing that you asked for, but blend it into, you know, the mid journey thing that you started with. And so there's a, the two of them together is

Leo Laporte (02:24:18):
Pretty, give me a mid journey tip. So I'm in our we have a mid journey channel in our club to Discord. I'm and I slash settings to launch the Mid journey bot. Look at my settings here. I don't know how well you can see those,

Alex Lindsay (02:24:30):
But hold on, let me

Leo Laporte (02:24:31):
Let, I've got mid journey 5.2 raw mode, right? Stylize medium, low, high, very high. What do you like?

Alex Lindsay (02:24:40):
I leave it on medium and then I fast, I, it'll only change it if I, if I have to. Yeah. And then I leave the raw mode. I don't leave on all the time, cuz it, it, it's, it's a little bit more re I mean, it's a little bit more verbatim. So the reason when I use Raw, I'm usually generating the turn. I'm generating the prompt from chat G P T, right? So what, what we have, we have a I'll put in a thing that tells it what I want. Like in general, this is how to do it. And I got this from Ken Jordan who's in office hours. And so Ken sent me this thing that is like this long description of how to do chat G p t or how to do mid journey for chat G P T. So you set that up in the chat G P T setting, and then, then you say what you want. Oh, and then it'll build out a and then it builds prompt. So its your, so when I do that for

Leo Laporte (02:25:24):
You Oh yeah.

Alex Lindsay (02:25:25):
It builds the prompt. Is that how you

Leo Laporte (02:25:26):
Always do it? You do chat gpt for the prompt? No, no.

Alex Lindsay (02:25:29):
Sometimes. Okay. I just, if I'm having trouble getting it done with my own prompts is when I use chat gpt to see like, well chat gp t do with this. And so so anyway, but the, I mean the, the big thing is, is picking cameras and sensors tends to be really powerful. So, ah do, that's the use. I got a couple of them. It depends on, depends on what I'm shooting. We've been

Leo Laporte (02:25:54):
Using a lot of Alex's thumbnails. If you see the Windows Weekly thumbnail, it's Paul Thoran and a dinosaur from last week. It was quite good. I liked it quite a bit. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (02:26:04):
Yeah, the, it's, it's great for thumbnails. I will say that, that this is, it is a, it is just a killer. Let's see. I use, I have a lot of a seven s three s, you know, that I use, I use that and do short depth of field. I have one that I, it's underwater that I use an EOS Rebel. You know, it's like, and I steal these from other people. Like, you see someone else, you see it, their prompt yous like, you go, oh, what are they doing? And then I copy their prompts and I have a notes, I, in my, in my Apple notes, I have my cheat sheet, which is just all the things that I, that created something that I liked and I keep it there so that I can grab the, the pieces out of it. R eight but, but like a panoramic view captured by a Cannon R eight 400 millimeter F five cinematic photography style.

(02:26:48):
And then, and then I so I put something in front of that and then I put that in there and I get an image and I play with different ones, but like an eight D eight 50 DSLR 1 0 5, you know, with a 2.8 lens. I mean, you it. Now, the interesting thing, and then, and I haven't had time to do this in 5.2, there's a shortened command inside of Mid Journey now where you can put your prompt in and say, shorten this and it'll shorten it, but it'll also analyze it. It'll say, Hey, this is, this is what I actually paid attention to. So, so I'm learning cuz we've always had this thing, like, I don't know if those terms actually mean anything, but within Mid Journey you see them a lot. So I put 'em, you put 'em in and you end up with these really long prompts to try to define something. And now Mid Journey will tell you, yeah, I'm not paying attention to any of that. These are the only, these are the only things I was paying. This is, this is what I took. You gave me this big prompt and I took these things out. I want all that

Leo Laporte (02:27:35):
Stuff. You just so

Alex Lindsay (02:27:36):
The, so the, I think that there's a lot of things that we're, you know, that we're, we're learning. It's a, it's it's moving at a fairly frightening speed, you know, it's no kidding. It's really, it's, it's an amazing and it's, it's a lot of fun. And I, you know, I use both you know, chat, PT and Mid Journey, you know, every day. And I do a lot of presentations. And so all of my, to make my presentations much more fun. I use Mid Journey all the time over over a plain white background. <Laugh>, I just make objects.

Leo Laporte (02:28:04):
You like those plain white backgrounds. I know. Yeah. Well, it's just that

Alex Lindsay (02:28:08):
Because I put it over it, it makes it easy to put it over a keynote document. Right. And then you, but you can have things appear and disappear and it just looks like they belong there. And so I, I, that's why I do it, is it's just the easiest thing to key if you do it over a plain black background, by the way, it just becomes a really dark image. So it's not very, you know, it's just very dark, you know. And so that's why I don't do that. So I

Leo Laporte (02:28:27):
Tried the A seven S3 with the prompt, a typical Comic Sands user. Unfortunately it saw the word comic and decided forget the A seven S three. I'm making this like a comic book.

Alex Lindsay (02:28:39):
Well, so, so yeah, add something like realistic to it and you like,

Leo Laporte (02:28:43):
You know,

Alex Lindsay (02:28:43):
Photoreal realistic. Yeah. and, and say shot with a seven S three, you don't want to just say a seven S three, you'll just say shot with, shot

Leo Laporte (02:28:51):
With. Oh, good. See, learn and learn and learn. And this is fun. It is fun to play with. You can, if you are a member of Club Twit, go into our little mid journey channel and and start playing with that among many great channels in the club Twit Discord.

Alex Lindsay (02:29:07):
And the, and the most interesting thing is, is that, I mean, now the, I think mid journey now is like 17 million users on Discord or something like that. That that's amazing. And it, it goes so fast. There's no conversation. But, or at least I haven't seen a lot, but just looking at images and going, oh, I really like what they did there and taking Yeah. And then I grab 'em and put 'em into somewhere. I'm, I've, I've gotten to the point where my mid journey cheat sheet and notes has to become like a database, like search for this, because I don't, it's not, I have so many in there now. It's, it's not as useful. Yeah. So, yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:29:35):
Yeah. It's nice to see what other people are doing that was actually smart of them to make it a discord channel instead of just a general server that anybody could use. I thought that was very clever.

Alex Lindsay (02:29:44):
Yeah. Yeah. And they, they set it up so that the cost structure is different. Like, people like me pay for private, so I don't, like, my stuff is all on my own, but everybody else is like feeding into that system all the time. Or if you're paying just a little bit, you're always feeding into that system. So it, it, it's a great way to learn.

Leo Laporte (02:29:57):
Okay. I made it more realistic. It's still the same guy. <Laugh>.

Alex Lindsay (02:30:01):
I know, but it's realistic. Hold on. He's hipster. He's still rendering, he's still rendering here. Still rendering.

Leo Laporte (02:30:06):
It's more realistic. But it's

Andy Ihnatko (02:30:08):
2009 hipster doofus. <Laugh>,

Leo Laporte (02:30:11):
My gosh. Typical comic stands using

Alex Lindsay (02:30:13):
Like a wide shot. You're like, and, and for, it's interesting that it, it did. And realistic, you want to do photoreal, ah,

Leo Laporte (02:30:20):
You know, not photo, not realistic, but photoreal

Alex Lindsay (02:30:23):
And, and you wanna say Sony, you probably wanna say a Sony a sevens with three eyes. Ah, you

Leo Laporte (02:30:28):
Know, like, it's, it's

Alex Lindsay (02:30:29):
Pretty, pretty,

Leo Laporte (02:30:30):
Like he's actually holding an a, a seven s. No, it's a cannon. Nevermind. <laugh>. That's

Alex Lindsay (02:30:35):
Pretty funny. But, but but you want to, you, you, you, you kind of have to like you do learn when you prompt whether you're prompting for chat G P T or prompting for mid journey, like every word like that you put in there matters. Like, it, it, you know, cuz it's gonna drive the whole Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:30:52):
So, well this I think is a pretty good realistic image of a guy who might use comic sands. Yep. some point or another in his life. <Laugh> this is, but

Andy Ihnatko (02:31:00):
The, and this, what I, what I'm loving about this generative ai chatbots and everything, is that it really is ex almost exactly what artificial intelligence sort of like what, what science fiction told us artificial intelligence would be like programming computers and using computers where it's not so much writing code, it's, it's knowing how to speak in natural anguish to the computer, right. So that what you're doing is clear. Like remember, remember they seen in the, the sequel to 2001 where Bob Ban's character is like, try, is explaining to the backup computer of the backup version of how that I'm gonna run some tests. But do, do you under, do you remember what happened to how, like we, we'd like to figure out what happened to it. Like, do you, what, what do you, how do you think we should do that <laugh>? Yeah. And trying to, so if I really, hi, I'm gonna unplug you just to see what happens and hope that when I plug you back in, but if you, but if you ask the right way, the computer will completely be on board and help you do that.

Alex Lindsay (02:31:55):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it, it's a lot of fun. It's great, you know, and, and, and it, and I think that it, you know, a lot of this we know is going to get a lot easier. Like, everyone will be able to do it and you, it'll be much more real language. But there's a, there's a kind of an adventure right now of creating stuff. And I will say, you know, I don't use, other than my keynote stuff, I don't use the images generally verbatim for anything that I work on. But what I I do use it a lot for concept. And as we start getting these paint in things where I can define where I want people and what I want them to look like being able to just say like, I just think that we're gonna see a lot of pitch decks for a movie or a concept where I can just throw those, you know, you know, a lot of times you, you build something, a mid journey and you're like, I could build a whole movie around that. You know, like, you know, it's, it's one of those, you know, like the let's see if I can find it here. Hold on.

Leo Laporte (02:32:46):
You can make your kinematics this way.

Alex Lindsay (02:32:48):
Like this one, this one was like, there's a movie there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:32:51):
There's something going on. Like, you know,

Alex Lindsay (02:32:52):
Yeah. There's something going on. You know, like there's, you know, there's a movie, a movie somewhere. Story. Yeah, yeah. There's a story there that it, that it, you know, and, and so that's the kind of thing that, that you can come up with those concepts. Yeah. It's really cool.

Leo Laporte (02:33:04):
Well, there's definitely a story in this photo. This this mid journey of a homeless podcaster shot with a Sony A seven s click me. That's not fair. That's judgmental.

Andy Ihnatko (02:33:20):
I feel seen spelled out. I

Alex Lindsay (02:33:22):
Like the, I like number four.

Leo Laporte (02:33:23):
Four. Yeah. That's the one I'm upscaling. Yeah. Here you go. Number four. This is this is your your

Alex Lindsay (02:33:28):
Average. Now do, now do street. Now do zoom outer. How good

Leo Laporte (02:33:31):
Actually is Now how do you zoom out? How do I do zoom out? Go.

Alex Lindsay (02:33:33):
Okay, scroll down. Yeah, scroll

Leo Laporte (02:33:35):
Down. Oh,

Alex Lindsay (02:33:35):
Zoom out and just zoom out. Two out. Two x, two x zoom out. Two x.

Leo Laporte (02:33:38):
Oh yeah. Look at that. There's just a button to do it.

Alex Lindsay (02:33:41):
That's kind. So now what it's gonna do is it's gonna infill, it's gonna give you we can

Leo Laporte (02:33:45):
See the scene. Yeah. And you just

Alex Lindsay (02:33:47):
Keep on going if you want. And, and

Leo Laporte (02:33:49):
So that's the original. And it's working. It, it's waiting. Oh, it's waiting. It's got, got busy now. All right. Well, I'll wait. That's pretty good though. I kinda like this image. Yeah. this is me in a couple of years, I think doing the show, I mean, he's got

Alex Lindsay (02:34:03):
A lot of electronics. Yeah. Which I, I think being homeless with that much electronic, it's a pretty geeky dude, to be

Leo Laporte (02:34:09):
Honest. This is actually really cool because in the past they would've had kind of something that looked a little bit like headphones, but really clearly weren't, this has gotten better in terms of the imagery that it's using. It's really, oh, it's really interesting. And

Alex Lindsay (02:34:22):
Yeah, generally the right number of fingers now <laugh>, so it's, it's,

Leo Laporte (02:34:26):
Oh yeah. They, they trained it on fingers, didn't they? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever

Alex Lindsay (02:34:29):
They did, they were like, I don't know what else we're gonna do, but it's fingers are gonna work <laugh>, so

Leo Laporte (02:34:34):
It's pretty amazing. Here's the let me do the upscale on the zoom out here so you can see it full size. It did. I always have it do four images. Probably got that idea from you.

Alex Lindsay (02:34:44):
It always does it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:34:45):
Yeah, yeah. By the way, Lisa said I promised Lisa this show be 90 minutes long. I said, oh yeah, we don't have anything to talk about. And I'm only off by an hour. So <laugh>, I think it might be time to wrap this up. Yeah, it zoomed out. Great. Look at that. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it really looks like a painting. It's kind of amazing.

Alex Lindsay (02:35:06):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:35:07):
Alex, Lindsay, if you wanna know more about things like this and other things, office hours.global is the place to go. Man, every day there's something going on there. Very exciting. And I literally mean every day it goes on with or without Alex Broadcast graphics with presentation tools This week, today.

Alex Lindsay (02:35:28):
Oh, that's what we did. Yeah. And we, comms, we're talking about comms tomorrow, like just how comms work and everything else. Thursday we have the technical director from Thursday Night Football. Let's gonna talk about, oh, perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:35:37):
Cutting. We were talking about that on Sunday. That's fantastic.

Alex Lindsay (02:35:40):
Yeah. So

Leo Laporte (02:35:41):
Remotes sports, it's gonna be really cool. Very cool. Office hours.global. You can participate if you want. There's a join us button. But you can also just watch it. It's on YouTube. But best thing to do, just go to Office hours.global. If you wanna hire Alex 0 9 0 Media, Andy anco will do his ninja impression on WGBH Boston when

Alex Lindsay (02:36:03):
I, I'm off

Leo Laporte (02:36:04):
This week. I'm on next week, next Thursday at 1230. Go to h news.org to listen live or later. And announcements coming soon,

Alex Lindsay (02:36:13):
I

Leo Laporte (02:36:14):
Hope. Yes. For something <laugh>. Thank you Andrew. Great to see you. Thank you. Jason Snell is@sixcolors.com. He also does about a a thousand podcasts. If you go to six dollars.com, six colors.com/podcasts, I'm sorry. Slash Jason, you'll see everything he does. It's like the Jason Universe.

Jason Snell (02:36:36):
Yes. Connected.

Leo Laporte (02:36:37):
We call it the J C U. The

Jason Snell (02:36:39):
The J C U. Jason

Leo Laporte (02:36:41):
Cinema Cinematic

Alex Lindsay (02:36:42):
Federated Jason. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:36:43):
<Laugh>.

Jason Snell (02:36:43):
Exactly. Lots of podcasts.

Leo Laporte (02:36:45):
Anything you wanna plug?

Jason Snell (02:36:47):
I don't know. There's a fun podcast called The Incomparable Game Show that I'm on sometimes. Neat. The incomparable.com/game show. We play games. It's a game show every two weeks. It's fun,

Leo Laporte (02:36:57):
Neat. Like board games

Jason Snell (02:37:00):
You know, it's trivia or, or mind, mind games or, yeah, it's, it's not board games so much cuz it's audio only and board games kind of require the visuals, but it's, yeah, lots of different party games kind of stuff. It's fun.

Leo Laporte (02:37:13):
Very nice. The all of that at six colors.com/podcast. Thank you Jason Snell, thanks to all of you who joined us. We really appreciate your listening in. We do the show live if you wanna watch us do it live at live twit TV every Tuesday, 11:00 AM at Taco Tuesday at my, as you might call it, every Ele <laugh> Taco Tuesday, 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Pacific. That is two to 5:00 PM Eastern. That is 1800 UTC Live twit TV watching live chat live with us Irc TWIT tv after the fact, of course you can get on-demand versions of the show at at our website, twit tv slash mw. You can also what else? You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player to search for Mac Break Weekly. A little plug, we've got a big Thursday in the club coming up.

(02:38:08):
The Terra Formers is the book of the Month with Stacey Higginbotham's Book Club from Anna Lee noit. Her new book, which I hear is very good. That'll be Thursday at, at 9:00 AM Good book. Good book. Yeah. Well even better book if you know Hugh Howie's Wool series and you might, if you watch the Silo series on Apple TV plus Hugh Howie joins Aunt Pruitt for a fireside chat this Thursday at 1:00 PM Fans of Silo will absolutely wanna watch this, but make sure you well, I don't know what they're gonna do about spoilers. Probably should finish the show before you before you join us in the club on Thursday at 1:00 PM Civic. 4:00 PM Eastern last episode's Friday. Well, that'll be a good time to do this the day before the final episode of this season, cuz I'm pretty sure they got renewed for this one. There's a lot of wool books. Thank you everybody for joining us. Now I am sorry to say you must get back to work because great time is over.

Mikah Sargent (02:39:06):
Oh, hey, that's a really nice iPhone you have there. You totally picked the right color. Hey, since you do use an iPhone and maybe use an iPad or an Apple Watch or an Apple tv, well you should check out iOS today. It's a show that I, Micah Sargent and my cohost Rosemary Orchard host every Tuesday right here on the Twit Network. It covers all things iOS, tv v os, HomePod, os Watch, os, iPad os. It's all the OSS that Apple has on offer. And we love to give you tips and tricks about making the most of those devices, checking out great apps and services and answering your tech questions. I hope check it out.