MacBreak Weekly 884, Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy KO's here. Jason Snell's here. Alex Lindsay has a day off, but good news from Apple Insider. Steven Robles, the bearded teacher joins us. We will talk about the invites they went out, who got 'em, who didn't, and what are the differences. Plus, where's the AR version? What will Apple announce September 12th. Oh, give away the date and why we think maybe the iPad might be the next computer in your life. All that coming up next [00:00:30] on Mac Break. Weekly
(00:00:34):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is Mac Break. Weekly episode 884. Recorded Tuesday, August 29th. 2023. Cuckoo Cchu. This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by ACI Learning IT. Skills are outdated in about 18 months. Launch [00:01:00] or advance your career today with quality, affordable, entertaining training individuals. Use the code TWIT 30 for 30% off a standard or premium individual IT Pro membership@go.acilearning.com slash twit and by Zocdoc, the free app where you can find and book appointments online with thousands of top rated patient reviewed physicians and specialists. Filter specifically for the ones who take your insurance are located [00:01:30] near you and treat almost any condition. Go to zocdoc.com/mac break and download the Zocdoc app for free and buy Mylio. Mylio Photos is a smart and powerful system that lets you easily organize, edit, and manage years of important documents, photos, and videos in an offline library hosted on any device and it's free.
(00:01:54):
Visit mylio.com/twit. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, [00:02:00] the show. We cover the latest news from Apple and yes, there is news, but we'll get to that in a moment. Jason Snell is here from six colors.com. Hello, Jason. Hey Leo. Good to be here. Zeppelin Flights slash j Snell for his Mastodon. For your Mastodon. He runs his very own Mastodon, the incomparable Mastodon, his very own. I like that Zeppelin flight vanity domains. It's good. It's a good one. I have T social. It's kind of boring now I think. [00:02:30] I wonder if I can get Twit Zeppelin. Oh no, you already own the Zeppelin. Nevermind. Annie and Ko from beautiful New England. WgBH Boston. Hello Andrew. Can
Andy Ihnatko (00:02:41):
You get twit.Helly Gyro or something
Leo Laporte (00:02:44):
If you're need some vintage twit ton or some vintage vehicle to go,
Andy Ihnatko (00:02:51):
Something that a crackpot inventor in a 1960s Disney movie would be traveling around in
Leo Laporte (00:02:57):
Chitty chitty bang bang.com. [00:03:00] Good to see you, Andrew. I'm going to be out your way. I we'll talk about that in just a little bit. There we go. But first I want to welcome from Hurricane Soak Florida, Mr. Steven Robles. Hello, Steven.
Stephen Robles (00:03:10):
Hello. Thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure
Leo Laporte (00:03:11):
To be here. The bearded teacher beard.fm. I'm going to get a little update on podcast movement. I know you were there because you did a whole show with Micah.
Stephen Robles (00:03:23):
I did. We did it live on the show floor and I used all the AI tools to get that noise out of air.
Leo Laporte (00:03:28):
Boy, Lisa was [00:03:30] also there, told me that she did a panel and you couldn't hear anything because all the panels were in the same area, all highly amplified. It sounded awful.
Stephen Robles (00:03:39):
Yeah. What could possibly go wrong? Putting five live stages on the expo floor hall, no problem. Crazy. Not a problem at all. Yeah, crazy. We
Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
Can discuss. Yeah, we'll discuss that, but first I think there's some news from Apple, the word of the hour.
Jason Snell (00:03:56):
No, it's not news. It's news that there will be news. It's not actually [00:04:00] news.
Leo Laporte (00:04:00):
No, this is news. Look, we've been holding on for this for some time. Okay,
Jason Snell (00:04:05):
Let's call it news. Fine, mark.
Leo Laporte (00:04:07):
Mark Kerman, the whip, and we jump right through that hoop, don't we? Yeah, whatever they want. Mark Kerman said it would be September 12th, the iPhone 15, apple Watch series nine event and sure, lo and behold it's announced. You got the invite, Jason.
Jason Snell (00:04:25):
Yeah, I mean showing up in everybody's mailboxes, it's, what do they call [00:04:30] it? It's Wonderlust, not wanderlust. Wonderlust.
Leo Laporte (00:04:36):
First of all, I'm shocked. Shocked. I tell you that Apple used the word lust in a sentence. So wonderlust is what? The desire to travel's Wonderlust. I wonder how managed to screw up U S B C so they could still be as defiant as saying, no, you didn't make us do anything we didn't [00:05:00] want to do. Enjoy your 1200 bad data connections. Stupid, stupid person. I love
Stephen Robles (00:05:08):
It. I'm counting on Thunderbolt Thunderbolts coming.
Leo Laporte (00:05:10):
Thunderbolt. Oh, there's the Wonder, wonder, wonder. So I don't know. I mean, I guess the good news is you can Google Wonderlust and pretty much find Apple right away, so by making up a name, they've come up just,
Jason Snell (00:05:27):
Yeah, just another marketing tag to let us spin [00:05:30] our wheels for another couple of weeks. Although the idea here is that we're going to get that iPhone event and it's going to happen like Mark Kerman said and iPhone and Apple Watch, and who knows if there'll be anything other than that. I guess we'll get spoiled about all that in the next couple of weeks. This is when the rumors really start flying.
Leo Laporte (00:05:44):
Don't confuse it with the 2020 movie Wonderlust. The preachers in love with the Sunshine schizophrenic. The Range Runner has a family of five with one more on the way, and the professor is a alcohol aficionado. As [00:06:00] for Slab City's unofficial sheriff, he shot and killed his stepfather at age six.
Jason Snell (00:06:05):
That's it. You spoiled it. That's what it is.
Leo Laporte (00:06:09):
Here's the movie that Apple will be playing on the stage. Tim Cook's going to come out and say, good morning. We'd like to show you a movie about a preacher in love with a sunshine schizophrenic. That would be funny, but not for very long. So they are going to announce what Jason
Jason Snell (00:06:29):
IPhone, apple [00:06:30] Watch, maybe other things related to those. If you think about it, the Apple Watch is kind of the ultimate iPhone accessory, but they'll have a new set of accessories and maybe it'll be an AirPods thing or not, I don't know, but it would not be a bad time for that. Maybe they could do a reset on some of their services. The thing I always think about the iPhone event is that it is Apple's most watched event of the year. It is the most popular product, and so people pay attention, which not only means that they'll talk about the new [00:07:00] iPhone, but they're going to talk about other stuff that they want to get in front of people's eyes. So whatever that might be, this is your chance to get out in front of the biggest audience you get in a year. And all of us who work in media around Apple know that this is the one that has the biggest audience. People are interested in the iPhone. So new high-end iPhone is the rumor, right? We've been talking about it all summer, titanium instead of stainless steel, which is great because stainless steel is really heavy and so these should be lighter phones [00:07:30] change the colors. A lot of rumors about camera upgrades, U S B C, there's a bunch of stuff that they're throwing in here. I think that this is potentially the most appreciable iPhone change in the next or in the last two or three years,
Andy Ihnatko (00:07:45):
Particularly for camera fans. And also we're still hearing rumors left and right about maybe we're going to see a price increase at least on the pros that some people aren't going to like who knows? But we'll find out in a couple of weeks anyway. But I'm keen, [00:08:00] Apple's probably one of the few companies that can get by with saying, you know what, we have decided to jack up the price of our very, very tipity top most phones by another, let's say a hundred dollars because A, we know that people can absorb it and B, if it puts some distance between the pros and the more affordable ones, it will make the more affordable ones seem like budget phones and that's right up our alley too.
Stephen Robles (00:08:24):
I'm also curious, the whole ecosystem of lightning devices that is still out there, like the MagSafe duo, [00:08:30] Apple's MagSafe Battery Pack, all the AirPods cases, and even AirPods Max, how many of those will actually see switch to U S B C along with the phone? I would think AirPods at least it might be a case update. Even if they don't release new versions of it, they might say, now shipping with U S B C or you can buy a U S B C case, but things like the MagSafe Duo I think is long due for a refresh. I use it still sometimes, but even with the Apple Watch, it's a little janky. You can't really have the little Apple Watch charger all the way up at 90 degrees because the Apple watch is too big. So [00:09:00] curious how they're going to refresh those different devices to match U S B C alongside with the iPhone 15? Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (00:09:06):
Yeah. Wonder if they're going to have a new, they already have a U S B C to lightning cable, but I wonder if they're going to do a dongle like when they replace the coin sluck, the standard iPod connector with Lightning. Do they
Leo Laporte (00:09:22):
Need to though? I mean I think actually in some ways it's good. Apple says, but don't worry, all those lightning cables and accessories [00:09:30] you bought will, it'll still be useful for charging your AirPods. So there's that.
Andy Ihnatko (00:09:36):
Yeah, congratulations. The Apple could come out saying, our customers love the lightning cable and we're happy to announce that you can still carry one with you wherever you go because the lightning, because your AirPods won't be able to charge with you with
Leo Laporte (00:09:53):
Is that the only thing left? They changed the Apple TV remote to type C, right?
Andy Ihnatko (00:09:59):
All the
Jason Snell (00:09:59):
Mac [00:10:00] accessories, trackpad and mouse and keyboard are all lightning
Andy Ihnatko (00:10:04):
And aren't, aren't there some earlier cheaper iPads that are still Lightning maybe haven't been updated yet
Jason Snell (00:10:10):
That haven't been updated? I think there are There iPads? The iPads, yeah, there's like the previous generation iPad. I think that's still kicking out there, but they've been turning over a lot of their products for a while now. But yeah, this is why a lot of us say there're rumors that the IMAX going to finally get an M three this fall seems [00:10:30] like the right time for them to refresh their keyboard and mouse and track pads so that they don't charge on lightning and we can just clear lightning out of the entire product line.
Andy Ihnatko (00:10:37):
But Steven makes a good point that I wonder how many features this U S B C connector are going to have. It would be wonderful if it were Thunderbolt like on the iPad Pros. You might wonder that's
Leo Laporte (00:10:51):
Expensive though. The licensing for Thunderbolt is expensive. I don't see Apple.
Andy Ihnatko (00:10:54):
It's expensive. I mean they could put it on the pros, especially if they say, Hey, look how big [00:11:00] the video files that we're creating with our new wonderful high of high definition stuff. It would be incredible if they use that connector to also do things like guess what? You can also connect video directly to the bottom of the device again, but this would be another reason to say here's why the iPhone, the pro line is a very, very special rarefied sort of device. It does things that are for people who just want the phone that has absolutely everything in it, [00:11:30] even if it doesn't necessarily make sense. I don't think you're going to see a second screen capability on an iPhone ever, but it would be interesting to see if they decide to put lightning on it, what they would allow that port to do
Jason Snell (00:11:43):
Or Thunderbolt. Yeah, that's
Andy Ihnatko (00:11:45):
The, I'm sorry, Thunderbolt.
Jason Snell (00:11:46):
That's the question. I don't know. I mean I think that it's not a high percentage chance, but how do you define pro? I mean they've already got a stage manager on the iPad. Would they ever think? Yeah, it's pro. If you want to plug that Thunderbolt into a display, [00:12:00] you get basically stage manager like it's an iPad and you can work on that if you want to. I doubt they'll do that. I think they want you to buy an iPad or a Mac to do that, but you do think that they've got to be running through all the ideas of how do we define a pro feature? What are the things that we can put in this phone to justify its higher price and potentially its higher price.
Leo Laporte (00:12:22):
So I'm on the Apple website with the little dissolving apple on my iPhone. How do I do the [00:12:30] VR with this? Where can I make the Apple appear dissolving in my, I don't think
Andy Ihnatko (00:12:36):
There's an AR feature this year. Yeah, nine to five. Max says that this is the first time since 2020 when they've had one of these invites that did not have an AR like
Leo Laporte (00:12:45):
Easter. Well, there you go. They're given up on ar. I knew they would. The Vision Pro is history. It's all over.
Andy Ihnatko (00:12:52):
Yeah.
Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
Why didn't they do it?
Andy Ihnatko (00:12:56):
I'm sorry. I like bandwagons
Leo Laporte (00:12:59):
Hop on that bandwagon. [00:13:00] You
Jason Snell (00:13:00):
Got to wait for the Vision Pro now. It's not good enough unless it's,
Leo Laporte (00:13:02):
Oh, okay. Maybe that's it. Like we would do it, but we want you to do it right.
Andy Ihnatko (00:13:09):
That was AR for poor people and Apple is not in the poor people AR business
Leo Laporte (00:13:14):
No more maybe established. Get your checkbook ready. Please join us for a special Apple event broadcasting from Apple Park. That's interesting. Have they used that phrase broadcasting before or they finally decided to let you know it's not going to be anything that you couldn't see at home?
Jason Snell (00:13:29):
Yeah, [00:13:30] I think they've done that before. I think that the idea is that they're streaming. That's for the stream, right? There are two invitations, right? There's the invitation to come to Apple Park and there's the invitation to watch the stream
Leo Laporte (00:13:40):
Apple Park. Oh, ing. So baby Mark Derman, they choose like me.
Jason Snell (00:13:45):
He's invited to watch. Leo, were you invited to watch the stream though? Because if you weren't
Leo Laporte (00:13:50):
I wasn't even invited to watch the, I wasn't even invited to watch. It might
Jason Snell (00:13:53):
Be a little embarrassing for you
Leo Laporte (00:13:54):
To watch it. You weren't invited. I was. You can't even watch the stream Laport. [00:14:00] Well, I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway. September 12th, which is a Tuesday, right? 10:00 AM Pacific time. I will be in Rhode Island at my mom's, so I guess I'll be doing the show from my mom's basement.
Andy Ihnatko (00:14:17):
Something
Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
Many have thought I should be anyway.
Andy Ihnatko (00:14:21):
No, you're right. I think this is a time where you want to be with family. Yeah. You want to be sharing this momentous moment together.
Leo Laporte (00:14:28):
My sister, my mom and I will be holding hands [00:14:30] when they announce the iPhone 15.
Andy Ihnatko (00:14:33):
I have a cousin who's going to freak out when she learns that there's a Periscope camera involved. She'll excited. She has a thing about Periscopes. We don't know how it happened, but
Leo Laporte (00:14:43):
Will there be a crank though? Because if there could only be a crank, then I would be interested.
Jason Snell (00:14:50):
You be the crank Leon. I crank. I'm
Leo Laporte (00:14:53):
Crank. Thank you very much. So yours does not say, it's funny that Germin got one that says [00:15:00] watch the stream@apple.com.
Jason Snell (00:15:04):
He was invited for a little while but then he wasn't. I will say this about that event. A good company, that event is at the Steve Jobs Theater and it's got a pretty decent capacity, but again, the iPhone event is the biggest event and it's also the most international event. They invite media from all over the world to come to that event. There's a lot of broadcast media that comes to that event. It is the toughest of all of the tickets when there's an event at Apple Park [00:15:30] because of the interest in the iPhone and they do make a real effort to get people there from all over the world. And so it's always the one where you see people getting, some people get invited and some people don't and then people sneak in later when other people are dropping out and it is a tough ticket. It's like any tough ticket for a concert or something like that. You can tell they're not as free with the invitations as they are [00:16:00] for something like a Mac event. Certainly or even wwc where they've got a lot
Leo Laporte (00:16:04):
Of, okay, you don't have to make me feel better. That's fine. I didn't
Andy Ihnatko (00:16:06):
Even get No, no, I
Leo Laporte (00:16:07):
Didn't even get the invite. Mark Germond got for just say, watch this online. Here's the one that you got Jason that says, oh, please, you join us in person for a special app. You
Jason Snell (00:16:18):
Get a little Apple wallet pass and everything
Leo Laporte (00:16:20):
With that one. The Steve Jobs theater and Apple Park. September 12th, 10:00 AM Pacific R S V P. So did you R S V P already?
Jason Snell (00:16:29):
Yeah. [00:16:30] Click that little button. Yeah, click the button. I keep
Leo Laporte (00:16:32):
Clicking it. Nothing
Andy Ihnatko (00:16:33):
Happens if you don't know French. They don't want
Leo Laporte (00:16:36):
You.
Andy Ihnatko (00:16:37):
That's that's isn't American Company Company.
Leo Laporte (00:16:39):
Isn't that funny?
Andy Ihnatko (00:16:43):
Ous, but Jason races a good point. It's like there's been a shift in the past five or 10 years where it's like most of the seats in that theater are for specific purposes so to speak, where it's not that, Hey, we're going to get the, if we've got 500 [00:17:00] invites to give to the press, we're going to get the 500 most influential members of the press or the 500 members of the press for the largest audience. There's going to be some seats that we want to fill because they are YouTubers with really huge audiences. They are somewhere going to fill because they work for newspapers and journalists out outposts of record somewhere. This is part of the marketing that we're not really reaching and we want to make sure we reach out to this part of the market or this part of the country [00:17:30] and people who just have a really good relationship with Apple and that's not meant as a sucky upy sort of thing.
(00:17:36):
It means that they're very, very good at here's what I would like, here's what I need. If this is available, this would be great. And if it turns out that there are seats available, then this person who you may not have heard of and you think, goodness, this person doesn't have much of an audience. That's how they get in because they were very, very good at doing their job, which is to, if there's a seat there, I want to try to get in there. And so that's why they sort of keep [00:18:00] tugging at the ear and that sort of thing. Jason could probably remember there was who was it that was tracking? They're maintaining a chart of who got invited, who didn't get invited, who got early T know this who did not get early hardware and it's like, oh geez. I mean high school was a long time ago and I don't want to do that again.
Jason Snell (00:18:23):
And their ways are mysterious. I mean there are different PR groups and different marketing groups and they all have different reasons. [00:18:30] This has always been the case dating back to the early days of Steve Jobs. Sometimes people get invitations and you're like, why? And other people don't and you're like, huh. And that's, they have different, different allotments for different things and so you'll have print journalists and broadcast journalists and YouTubers and podcasters and everybody's in a different slot and then international pr, which is not domestic pr and then there's the VIPs and the analysts and anybody [00:19:00] who's mentioned in the keynote and all of those things go into it. It is complicated and like I said, this is the toughest tickets
Andy Ihnatko (00:19:08):
And they also include some seats I think still for engineers, people who are working the crunch hours. It's a sort of thank you very much for working so hard to get this through the door. We're getting you a seat at the event so that you can be there when we show off all of your, the Apple people sit in front, Jason and then
Jason Snell (00:19:26):
Generally VIPs and the Apple people sit in front. Although now that they don't show that [00:19:30] they're just showing a video, I think maybe the rules are a little bit different. Do you need to be in the theater to show your product off when nobody's going to see it because nobody's actually watching the theater, they're just watching the video on the screen maybe, but the rule, so it's a little bit different. You're not part of the show when you're there, but it used to be they would stack up Apple employees and VIPs down at the bottom by the stage and there were the ones who you could actually, there was no applause sign that you could tell when they were expected to applaud in order to create [00:20:00] that kind of audience feel a momentary
Andy Ihnatko (00:20:02):
Expectant pause in the flow
Jason Snell (00:20:06):
By the end. No, by the end the applauses happened before the applause line and it was really by the end of their live events, they were really pumping that up. See Point went too far. See, I'm applauding Jim. See? Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (00:20:23):
Okay. That's another thing I often speculate about. Remember that the Steve Jobs theater was purpose built [00:20:30] media events. These just like the Coliseum was meant for breads and bread and circuses. Does anybody think there's a 0% chance that part of the air conditioning system is the ability to put more oxygen into the room when they feel the event should have as much oxygen in the room as possible?
Jason Snell (00:20:50):
I think it's a Letterman esque thing where they heap the light weight locker keep so you can never fall asleep and you're always in there
Leo Laporte (00:20:59):
Wide [00:21:00] awake. We keep it pretty cool in here too because as you know, I'm prone to drifting off.
Andy Ihnatko (00:21:08):
That's bad for the press because we have to wear those bob crochet fingerless mittens because we got to keep our joints limber as we're typing and taking notes.
Leo Laporte (00:21:18):
Okay, this'll be fun. We know everything there is to know at this point about the iPhone 15, although there was an interesting story from Gu G as Renee. Richie likes to call him Ming [00:21:30] Chi quo, that Apple is already shipping in vast quantities. The iPhone 15 Pro Max, it's on the boat on this way here. This is, yeah. There
Jason Snell (00:21:41):
Was a rumor that Sony couldn't supply camera parts fast, fast enough and so that it was going to be one of those things where the main phone was going to be available in two weeks or next week, but the other phone was going to be in October or something like that and it means you Quo is super reliable supply chain guy and he's like, no, they're making lots of them. So that doesn't necessarily [00:22:00] mean that there won't be limited supply and that you might get back ordered, but it does sound like it's not going to be one of those, we don't have them for a month kind of things. It maybe
Leo Laporte (00:22:11):
Quo writes the market and I'm reading a translation from Apple and Cider, your publication Steven. The market is concerned that iPhone 15 shipments will be further cut due to supply chain issues. My estimate of 80 million units versus conservative views of 70 to 80 million units, especially the iPhone 15 promax shipments will be delayed. [00:22:30] However, the fact is the iPhone 15 promax will start mass shipments this week and that is this week. And Apple's also increasing shipments of legacy models simultaneously. So no, there sounds like probably there won't be a shortage on any of the fifteens and even some of the older ones.
Stephen Robles (00:22:50):
It does seem like though this is one of the years where the max is going to be a different camera than the pro model and I think the last time this happened was the iPhone 12. It's been parody [00:23:00] on the 13 and 14, but it seems like maybe that Periscope camera is going to be reserved just for the larger size because physics and engineering and so even if it's available at the same time, I dunno, I'm curious to see. I think it's going to be a different year for the Pro and Promax cameras.
Leo Laporte (00:23:15):
It also, the rumor is it's going to be more expensive, like a couple hundred bucks more, which means we're really pushing, we're getting closer and closer to that $2,000 mark. Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (00:23:24):
But it's okay because this is one I think we're always going to be debating what [00:23:30] does the word mean? What does the word max mean? What does it signify? I think they've spent enough time establishing this as, no, this is not necessarily like the phone for the masses. This is designed to be the most expensive phone that we make and whereas other companies make super expensive phones because they have folding screens, we are putting, I dunno, Cupertino Elfin magic into ours, wiffle dust on top of every pixel and so long as they can back it up, the [00:24:00] Apple market is such that there are people that will not think twice about spending an extra $200 to have the very best version of the iPhone that they can get. I don't think Apple's a company, it's such a style driven company that they're not going to give you exclusive features that are going to be highly desirable, but I think that their focus is always going to be on the real iPhone. Is the iPhone nothing and we're going to give the best experiences to the people who are going to be buying the most quantities of this specific [00:24:30] phone. It's the top level pro models that allow us to really flex and try out things that we're not going to be able to put into mass market phones for another couple of years yet. Yeah.
Stephen Robles (00:24:41):
Is this the year a dynamic island comes to the 15 or do we think it's another year away? Well, the
Leo Laporte (00:24:45):
Rumor was that Dynamic Island would come to the 15 and leave the Pro Max that they were going to go. I don't know what these rumors
Jason Snell (00:24:52):
Mean. I don't believe that. I think they like the dynamic island and that it'ss a I love it future feature and that they'll put it everywhere because it's a nice, it's [00:25:00] not just a way to get around cutouts on your screen, but it's also kind of the modern iPhone equivalent of the status bar. The menu bar on the Mac. It's a good useful place to put information. Every time I use I Travel, I use Flighty, which is a travel tracking app and it uses the dynamic island to put up when your flight's leaving and what gate it's at and it's really great. So I think it's going to be everywhere. I think they like it and it's one of these, the Notch was before, but it's like an [00:25:30] identifying feature of the iPhone that makes you go, that's an iPhone, so I think it'll be everywhere.
Andy Ihnatko (00:25:35):
Most brilliant thing. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead Steve.
Stephen Robles (00:25:37):
I'm finally see more apps actually using it too. I actually recently saw Instagram for better or for worse, if you're going to upload a story, it actually puts the upload progress up there in the dynamic island because Instagram's weird where if you navigate away from the app and you're adding a story, sometimes it doesn't finish. Well now it actually gives you some of that progress as a live activity, which I thought was pretty cool. So it's been a year, but I think we're going to see more apps start [00:26:00] using it to better effect.
Andy Ihnatko (00:26:02):
Yeah, Google, there's a rumor that Google is actually going to have their live activities ready in time for the iPhone 15, which is good. I mean it really is one of the most in the history of Apple, I think it's one of the most brilliant user interface elements they've ever done and it's almost incidental that it solves a big problem, which is, oh gosh, we won't be able to get the bezels we want unless we've mastered this sort of under display camera and sensor technology, [00:26:30] which is not really working great as far as every parts manufacturer that I've heard of that's trying to do under display fingerprint sensors, under display cameras under display, FLIR and that sort of stuff, and they've taken, it just basically made this entire thing just an obsolete question because it's not just a workaround or a hack. It's almost as if that's the way they designed that thing to be from the very, very beginning. [00:27:00] It is exactly the sort of elegance and fascinating user face elements that you kind of want to see from Apple. They're not being stagnant. It proves that they're still thinking and they're still coming up with great ideas.
Leo Laporte (00:27:15):
Is one of the issues Apple faces that people aren't really upgrading as much as they used to is the burden on Apple to put something in every new phone that makes even the previous year's [00:27:30] phone owners say, oh, I really want that.
Jason Snell (00:27:32):
Well, I don't think that's the burden. I think the cycle is really widened, so it's going to be people, most people, maybe not people who watch this show, but most people don't buy a new phone every year or every two years. It's like three years or four years as the smartphone matures that gets wider and wider. So it's incumbent on Apple to keep iterating and keep improving, but they are, I think selling for somebody who's got a three-year-old phone and a four-year-old phone [00:28:00] and there is some degree of one or two year old phones where they're doing a return and then they're reselling that phone on because their goal is to keep expanding the install base. But realistically, when you're buying, most people who buy the brand new phone are going to be people who are buying it not just for this year's features, but also for the last year's features and probably the years before features.
(00:28:23):
And it's always important to keep that in mind. It's really like, so you've got an iPhone 11 and you want a new iPhone, [00:28:30] here's all the things you're going to get and then you have to detail 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 and what are all the features of all those in order to do it? Because very rare that somebody, unless you're on an annual plan, in which case you're locked in, you're buying one regardless of what's in it. It's all about that cumulative effect because the cycle's way longer than it used to be
Andy Ihnatko (00:28:52):
And I don't think it's terribly unlike the way that automakers have to keep tweaking the design of an established car year after year after [00:29:00] year. They have to make sure that they know that there are very few car buyers that are going to be trading in a car every single year. But the thing is, if they get to 50, 60, 70,000 miles, they want to trade in for a new model and they're good enough customers, they want the new version of this, you'd better not be giving them the exact same body style. You'd better not be giving 'em the same interior because these things actually matter when it comes to keeping people excited about your brand. So it's not as though Apple is going to do nothing but hey, look, our chamford edges are a [00:29:30] little bit rounder this year. Isn't that exciting? But the people who are coming in after another two or three years have to absolutely think that this is a fresh brand new phone as opposed to, Hey, I'm just going to go to Best Buy and just get something used and
Leo Laporte (00:29:42):
That comes down really to the camera for the most part. I don't even think the fact that it's got a three nanometer processor in it, which the higher end ones will probably will be the kind of thing that anybody will know in the real world except us, right? It's the camera and the periscope is the biggest [00:30:00] that gives us what a SuperZoo. I mean I have that on my Samsung SS 23 Ultra. That's a 200 X digital, a 10 x optical zoom. That's the periscope.
Andy Ihnatko (00:30:10):
Yeah, that's a game changer. When you can extend the range of the optical zoom, that's when you start using this thing as a real camera as opposed to a feature of your phone. And so it's a long, long time coming. I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple has been behind Samsung and Google in terms of their phone hardware, [00:30:30] but oh, you can really see the difference when if you spend a couple of weeks using the latest iPhone and then spend a couple of weeks using the latest flagship phone from Samsung or Google. Gee, why is it that this new phone's cameras are so much clearer and so much sharper and I don't have to use crappy digital zoom effects. It's actually shooting. It's shooting better videos, it's shooting better everything because [00:31:00] clever computational tricks are wonderful and they're an important part of mobile photography, but you start off with how good of an optical process are you getting and you can't really trump anybody who's got better optics in a better sensor than you've got.
Stephen Robles (00:31:13):
I actually can't wait. There were some rumors about the iPhone 16 because why not talk about the iPhone 16 when the 15 is just now getting launched, but the rumor was that the ultra wide lens would get 48 megapixels and that's going to be exciting for the macro photography, which already is amazing [00:31:30] on the 14 pro, but I think that'll be pretty cool next year when we talk about the iPhone 16.
Andy Ihnatko (00:31:35):
Yeah, those are the cool things. We're seeing astrophotography, which was not possible a generation ago. Really great macro photography, which was not possible like a generation ago. That's the sort of stuff that keeps you loyal to a phone maker if they give you everything, you can use all the same apps, all the same user interface. You've got the dynamic island you liked so much in the last phone, but now, oh my God, this does things for the photography [00:32:00] that I could not possibly even think about doing for the past two and a half years since I've had this older phone. That's what keeps you into that ecosystem.
Leo Laporte (00:32:07):
I've shown this before, so forgive me if you're bored, but one more time. This is the SS 23 Ultra Periscope lens. This is just with the regular lens and slowly zooming in. Note those two people in the middle at the distance. I'm going to zoom in a little bit more on them. At some point it's going to go, I think this is still optical [00:32:30] at some point it's going to go digital. Maybe that might be digital. It's pretty good Digital. I'm, I'm getting closer and that's clearly because the quality's not very good, but boy, that is a huge zoom and you could see how people might get, and by the way, the image quality is very, very good. I mean they also use the Sony sensors I believe.
Andy Ihnatko (00:32:55):
I mean that's plenty good for social media. It's plenty goodness sending a text to somebody. God, it's incredible. [00:33:00] And when you're at half that distance now you're still good enough for an eight by 10 for the sofa table.
Leo Laporte (00:33:05):
We also, this is not going to send people to the stores, but they're going to replace the stainless steel with, what did they say? Titanium,
Jason Snell (00:33:12):
Titanium, titanium.
Leo Laporte (00:33:14):
That's be much lighter. Lighter. That's the biggest deal of that though. I kind of like the stainless, the surgical steel shininess. Titanium won't be It's
Stephen Robles (00:33:23):
Fingerprint though. It's two fingerprint.
Leo Laporte (00:33:24):
Yeah, I guess I keep it in case. So I really
Jason Snell (00:33:26):
Know titanium is anodize, so it'll be an anodized titanium [00:33:30] presumably at whatever their colors are. The rumors for the colors are super boring. It's like gray, darker gray, lighter gray, poor gray and blue, but really a gray blue. So real
Leo Laporte (00:33:41):
Boring. Now this may be a fake, I don't know. This is about the time we'd get real images as me and G quo said they're shipping them, they're putting 'em in pallets and putting 'em on container ships right now or maybe seven 40 sevens. This is a image from a rumor image with showing the type C connector [00:34:00] in a greenish blue. Gray blue maybe. Yeah,
Jason Snell (00:34:03):
That's the iPhone 15 though, right? Those are going to have to be in brighter colors. The pro models, the pro models are going to be the ones where it's sort of like silver, gray, black look. They're pro and dark blue. They're pro, yeah. Yeah, they're pro. We want them to be as boring as possible.
Leo Laporte (00:34:16):
Yeah, so this is the green of the iPhone 15, not of which
Stephen Robles (00:34:21):
I'm still bitter because green is my favorite color and the one pro model that had green was launched and so if you had bought the iPhone, I think it [00:34:30] was the 13 pro on launch day, you couldn't get the green. Unfortunately, green
Leo Laporte (00:34:34):
Is pretty. Green is pretty. I know Micah wants green. It's a good color. Yeah. Is that the kind of more No, this is also the 15 because I could see that from the camera configuration, so I don't know. Is this real or a mockup? We don't know. It's a rumor. Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko (00:34:52):
Someone tweeted a stack of components that were purportedly U S B C connectors coming, iPhone and all the different colorways.
Leo Laporte (00:35:00):
[00:35:00] There's a green with braid. Blue black. Yeah. Somebody was saying, oh, maybe those braided cables really go to a MacBook. Yeah, we do get braided cables with our MacBooks. Those are nice. Those are pretty,
Andy Ihnatko (00:35:12):
But this is two weeks before the announcement. This is when they have to let in a whole bunch of people into the secret that they wouldn't have trusted three days earlier than that. So who knows? And then the thing is we are going to know for sure we're going to find
Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
Out in two weeks, so just relax. Okay, just relax. Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (00:35:30):
[00:35:30] I'm with you Steven. I appreciate the fact that people who want a phone in an alarming color, they can buy a $20 case and get it in the wackiest colors they want. That's not the purpose of the people who are designing the phone color itself. But I would just love to see just one freak color and the colorway just one, not just sort of a yellow, but just how yellow can we make a phone [00:36:00] that much yellow plus two more notches up above
Stephen Robles (00:36:03):
That? Actually, I took my family recently to Washington DC and they have an exhibit in the National Museum of Natural History of phone parts, the raw materials that make up a phone and they had this glass case in the exhibit of old phones including flip phones, blackberries and a few iPhones including the iPhone five C. They have the white on five C and the green and my 14 year old son was like, these iPhones look amazing. What are these? I said, oh, those [00:36:30] are the old ones that were plastic, but they were cool colors. People liked it. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:36:35):
I like the people who take their old phone and take it apart and make an exploded image of it. I would like, here's a four s exploded image. I go to the website.
Andy Ihnatko (00:36:47):
In the case of the case, the battery sometimes literally
Stephen Robles (00:36:51):
This is the iPhone four. This is Oh,
Leo Laporte (00:36:53):
You've got one Look at that.
Stephen Robles (00:36:54):
This grid studio. Yeah, this is the iPhone four. It was my first iPhone, so this is why I wanted this. Did you
Leo Laporte (00:37:00):
[00:37:00] Send it to them and they exploded it for you or
Stephen Robles (00:37:02):
No? No, you just buy it and they just send it to you. Oh, okay. They have it all exploded. I also have behind me, I can, hold on one second. I have the chips. They have now all the chips. These are the apple A four to the A 13. Of course you cannot see the camera's. No way it's going to focus on this,
Leo Laporte (00:37:20):
Have all the chips. That's cool. Look at that
Stephen Robles (00:37:21):
And a nice little display. So that's kind cool.
Leo Laporte (00:37:24):
Well, these are awfully expensive. Here's a four s 139 bucks. [00:37:30] Did they have Liam take it apart? I wonder or this is really cool.
Stephen Robles (00:37:36):
Occasionally they have original iPhones and they actually have some iPods, which for whatever reason, I just bought an iPod video on eBay two days ago just because I just wanted it an
Leo Laporte (00:37:47):
Exploded one or a normal one.
Stephen Robles (00:37:49):
Supposedly a working one. So we'll find out two days when it arrives, whether or not it actually works.
Andy Ihnatko (00:37:56):
They're lovely objects. I mean there are things like I had to [00:38:00] buy, one of the dumbest things I bought chronically is as an actual Google Nexus queue, which is that streaming their first
Leo Laporte (00:38:11):
Streaming device. Did that ever ship?
Andy Ihnatko (00:38:14):
No. As a matter of fact, everybody who pre-ordered one, if their pre-order was accepted, at some point Google said, you know what? We're refunding your money and when you receive it you can keep it. We just want to forget this ever happened and I can get these. If you're patient [00:38:30] in the box for about $30 and it's just an interesting object and when you plug it in, there's a ring of LEDs that light up and yeah, this is why I can't get into collecting old Apple twos and Old Macs because at some point it's like, wow, those are really, really big and I've got not a whole lot of room and leaky capacitors and traces that die. And then you have to figure out why they're not working. Whereas [00:39:00] when you buy a really cool iPod shuffle and it's just you put this in a line with all the other little iPods and someone is saying that is is clearly not an iPod. Oh yes. The thing that's the size of a stick of Dentine gum. Oh yes. That was back before Bluetooth streaming was a thing back before the Apple watch was a thing. Apple had to contend with fitness people by giving 'em the tiniest, tiniest iPod that could ever exist. One that could be fitted nasally if so desired
Leo Laporte (00:39:28):
Could I could see
Stephen Robles (00:39:29):
They, I'm trying [00:39:30] to decide what to keep and I still have my original iPod touch box with the John Lennon on the front. This is one of my, and I still have it. It still turns on the iPod touch and everything, but you eventually have to choose what do I keep after years and what do I let take up so much room so
Leo Laporte (00:39:46):
I could see why Andy, they killed this because there's fingerprints all over the, it's kind of not such a good look to be honest.
Andy Ihnatko (00:39:52):
Yeah, I mean I had to kind of wipe mine off for a little bit, use it. I actually use it as it's actually doing service [00:40:00] for me. Actually actually use a headphone stand like an,
Leo Laporte (00:40:02):
I'll give this back to Jason Howell and he can use it for a headphones. Small point. This is his, I didn't know he
Andy Ihnatko (00:40:08):
Had one stand.
Leo Laporte (00:40:09):
Jason, did you buy this or did Google? Google might have sent this to him before they realized they weren't going to sell 'em.
Andy Ihnatko (00:40:17):
It's also for New Englanders. It reminds us of Candlepin bowling. So no matter where we room, yes it does. It
Leo Laporte (00:40:21):
Looks like a candle.
Andy Ihnatko (00:40:22):
Proper, proper bowling where you play the wood where it lays. You get three tries.
Leo Laporte (00:40:29):
Yeah, [00:40:30] candle pin. It's hilarious. I remember
Andy Ihnatko (00:40:31):
That. And the high-low jackpot ends every Saturday morning bowling show. Wow.
Leo Laporte (00:40:36):
Alright, let's take a break. We've got Steven, are you going to the Apple event?
Stephen Robles (00:40:42):
No, no. I'll be tuning in from Florida. Mid hurricane. That's what I'll
Leo Laporte (00:40:45):
Be doing. You and the hurricane we'll be watching. That's it. Andy, you're going to be in New England. I'm going to be in New England. Maybe we can get together, maybe go to a diner and cover the Apple event together. That'd be
Andy Ihnatko (00:40:56):
Fun. If nothing else, I'll come over and bring you some [00:41:00] ice lemonade. Lemonade ice.
Leo Laporte (00:41:01):
Adele's Lemonade would be very
Andy Ihnatko (00:41:02):
Nice. Lemonade you go.
Leo Laporte (00:41:03):
I would like a Dell's Lemonade and if you would some eclipse coffee milk and we'll be very, very happy.
Stephen Robles (00:41:09):
Done. One last question about the event specifically with the rise of threads and Mastodon, this is kind of the first big Apple event where threads is a thing and X is over here. Where are people going to be talking about the event Live as it happens because it feels like threads is still not great for that live interaction as it happens.
Leo Laporte (00:41:28):
So I've been looking for the invitation. [00:41:30] Right. Found plenty of them on Twitter. Went to threads. Not one image of the invitation, not even one mention of it. So Threads I don't think so. Went to Blue Sky. Nope. I think it's going to have to stay at X because for whatever reason. Jason, did you post your invitation anywhere?
Jason Snell (00:41:52):
I haven't, no. And I don't dunno where I would put it at this point. To Steven's Point,
Leo Laporte (00:41:58):
Yeah, where would you put it?
Jason Snell (00:41:59):
It's [00:42:00] everywhere too. Sometimes I think all the breathless like, oh, apple did an invitation for an event thing. It's not, it's
Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
Just pretty thread all
Jason Snell (00:42:09):
Know that's
Leo Laporte (00:42:10):
Happening. I don't see even a mention of an Apple event. It's like these are real people. I
Stephen Robles (00:42:15):
Posted it, I posted, but during the event at WW d c this past June I tried to run. Back then it was Twitter and Mastodon side by side and Mastodon just couldn't handle it. I tried to upload pictures quickly, but it seems like X is still the only one that has made
Leo Laporte (00:42:30):
[00:42:30] Neli Patel reckless. Joanna Stern. Oh, so Neli got the R S V P. Right? Joanna has cut off the bottom so we don't know. She got invited I think. But why would she cut off the bottom? She didn't want anybody to know what invitation she got. So those are the two. And you said you posted too. Oh there's Carolina. Carolina by the way, me not only is going to Steve Jobs theater, she gets invited. I don't know how she's also going to the Surface event two weeks later [00:43:00] in New York City. She got invited to that too. Please note invitations are not transformed. She's on the
Jason Snell (00:43:05):
Analyst list.
Leo Laporte (00:43:06):
Oh, she's an analyst. I guess podcasters don't count. Marquez Brownley join us in person. This is a subtle, little subtle way of saying who you are in the world when you put the bottom part on, join us in person or see it online. So there are a few people, I guess I didn't go deep enough. [00:43:30] They had moved on by the time I checked Threads. This is threads,
Stephen Robles (00:43:34):
Which again, I think it speaks to the algorithm threads is not good at surfacing that stuff as it's happening or even shortly after. I know Neli Patel was talking about during that first Republican debate, he went on threads and really saw nothing related to that event as it was happening. And so again, it seems like for live events, I mean threads got to change that algorithm.
Leo Laporte (00:43:54):
Jason decided at the last minute just now you posted on threads. Apple's doing an event now.
Jason Snell (00:44:00):
[00:44:00] There you go. Leo did that for you.
Leo Laporte (00:44:02):
Thank you. Just for me, Jason posted that,
Andy Ihnatko (00:44:05):
I guess it depends on your, you have to use your experience in this industry to think for yourself of how big your audience is and how many of them are January 6th truthers and how many of them are interested in the
Leo Laporte (00:44:17):
New iPhone. If you're trying to reach the truthers, I think X is the place. I think so X marks the spot as very welcome,
Andy Ihnatko (00:44:22):
Very warm embrace
Leo Laporte (00:44:23):
There. Yeah, it is. We spent a lot of time on other shows talking about this. Not so much on Mac Rick Weekly, [00:44:30] but we kind of bereft. We don't have the Twitter anymore, we don't have that place. Everyone can go. Twitter's kind of still hanging on just a little bit.
Stephen Robles (00:44:43):
I still find the most engagement there. I mean just from my audience and I had a good amount of followers come over to Threads, but again, it's just not really for that. It was exciting for a couple of weeks and then everyone just was like got bored with it. I think the algorithm wasn't surfacing what people wanted to see fast enough [00:45:00] and either they went back to X or just nothing. But I still find engagement there on X.
Leo Laporte (00:45:07):
Interesting. So Steven's in Florida. Andy is in Rhode Island. I'm in Rhode Island, but we know where you'll be. Jason Stone, Cupertino, California, September 12th. Those are the assassination coordinates. If you're following along at home, will you be taking the jet or probably just driving down. You could probably segue over Ride my bike, whatever.
Andy Ihnatko (00:45:30):
[00:45:30] Be Famous. A six Colors Jet in six colors
Leo Laporte (00:45:33):
Livery. Oh that's a pretty jet. Oh that's so pretty. You can't miss it when you see it down there to San Jose Airport when you see that there, man. You know Got to embrace the branding. Yeah, flight at
Andy Ihnatko (00:45:45):
Attendants and their signature jeans and black mock turtlenecks
Leo Laporte (00:45:51):
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(00:48:23):
Well we just shot our news wad. There's nothing more to say. I'm [00:48:30] excited. I'm going to So actually I didn't ask how many of you will, I guess we're the wrong people. We kind of have to buy it.
Stephen Robles (00:48:37):
Yeah, everybody. We're all going to open.
Leo Laporte (00:48:38):
You're going to get the Max Pro Max super duper 1200, $1,400 Dynamic Island Window
Stephen Robles (00:48:46):
Version. I struggle because I've not been promax since the seven plus what I prefer the smaller size phone and I just have angst whenever there's a better camera in the promax. But this year my 14 [00:49:00] pro struggled with battery life and so I'm considering the 15 pro max for that battery if it's a better camera, but I don't prefer it. I like the smaller size, so
Leo Laporte (00:49:08):
We'll see. And the mini's gone, right? They're just,
Jason Snell (00:49:10):
Yeah, it's gone. I'm a mini user and I'm on a two year cycle, so I have to actually choose what I'm going to do for my own purchase phone and it's probably going to be the pro. I don't like the big phone at all. So it would probably be the pro though, depending on what the specs are with that camera and the screen. And if I can get by with the [00:49:30] fewer cameras but still have the dynamic island, maybe I would go to the cheaper model. And it's also my wife's phone buying cycle right now she's been holding on so she's going to get a fresh new iPhone 15 I think too. So yeah, it's going to be an expensive fall again. What else is new? What else is new?
Stephen Robles (00:49:47):
Supercycle?
Leo Laporte (00:49:49):
Supercycle. Yeah, we do an assembly line because the phones get handed down. So Lisa and I, we'll get the new phone and we hand down the, actually it's interesting, nobody
Jason Snell (00:49:58):
Wants my mini though, so [00:50:00] now I have to buy two phones.
Leo Laporte (00:50:01):
See, I knew that a day would come. This day has come,
Jason Snell (00:50:04):
No one wants something. My mini our
Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
20 year old who finally got, finally, I'm sorry, that's a rude thing to say. Who is now working at Safeway? Didn't finally get a job. He was working at Safeway, good Union job and he wanted to buy the iPhone 14 Pro Max, like the day he got the job. And Lisa and I said, no, no, no. There will be an I iPhone 15, so I think he'll be in the market. So maybe the hand me down chain is finally been broken. [00:50:30] But I think I'll get the promax. Of course I will. I will. Yeah. Great.
Andy Ihnatko (00:50:35):
But that shows how well the system works. It does. It's like, okay, okay. You can either have my hand me down two year old or three-year-old iPhone or I can buy you a brand new 2023 Android phone. Like, oh God, no Green Mobile. No, no, no, no. I'd rather have the old one.
Stephen Robles (00:50:55):
Yeah, I subverted this by just doing the iPhone upgrade program. So I just tell my [00:51:00] kids my phone's going away, I send it back to Apple and then I get the other one. So sorry. No upgrade.
Leo Laporte (00:51:07):
Alright, well we just made Apple a few thousand bucks right here just in this panel. It's amazing how they do that. And plus all new type C cables for everyone. I have a drawer full of lightning cables, although that's a smaller drawer than the drawer full. The double sized drawer full of type C cables. There's a lot of those in the house.
Stephen Robles (00:51:28):
The only time I used that u s bbc, the lightning [00:51:30] is for fast charging, which we were at podcast movement last week and I did use fast charging then because it is useful. That's nice. It is very nice. But I welcome our u s BBC overlords and I'm good to let Lightning go.
Leo Laporte (00:51:43):
And Andy, you're going to get the Samsung Galaxy Flip Z Ultra, right? I dunno. iPhone for you?
Andy Ihnatko (00:51:52):
No, well, not yet. My Pixel six pro is still along nice. I might be eligible [00:52:00] for a new phone, meaning my interior accountant might allow me to buy a new phone next year or the year after that. And as always, switching to an iPhone is going to be absolutely in the cards if they do something that's is more exciting and more viable to me than whatever the latest pixel phone is. But for now, I mean the most important feature, the two most important features for me on a phone happen to be storage so I can put whatever media I want [00:52:30] on this and whatever apps I want and not have to care and camera. And now that Adobe Lightroom mobile is so freaking good, it's like I still think that the pixels cameras are at least as good as anything that Apple's doing. But then when you throw in on either platform, well, however good the phone is, the phone's camera is the ability to drop it into Lightroom and then 30 seconds later have it tweaked exactly the way you like [00:53:00] it and so good that you can then say, Hey, I think I'll enter that in that photo competition that I just read about last week.
(00:53:06):
Really for me, it upended a lot of the thought process of buying a phone. Used to be best camera wins. Now it's like, no, so long as all three Samsung, they're all
Leo Laporte (00:53:16):
Pretty close.
Andy Ihnatko (00:53:18):
Although I will say Samsung is always out of the running because every time that I test out a Samsung phone, it's like how many Samsung accounts do I have to sign up for to just [00:53:30] use this damn phone? It's like, oh, well you need a Samsung account or, okay, that's so frustrating. You need Samsung account if you're going to get updates. And then the Samsung account if you're going to use the fitness stuff. Okay. Oh you need Samsung Music and Samsung. Okay, what if I just don't ever deal with you ever again because Google's already got his hooks into me, so I don't think I'm losing anything with the pixel. I trust apples. I'm not losing anything by going with Apple. If I were to get Samsung out of my life, I think I could proceed forward on a very, very even keel. [00:54:00] Yeah,
Leo Laporte (00:54:00):
I agree with
Andy Ihnatko (00:54:01):
You. I wish Apple would make a good folding though. A folding phone though. Love the flip.
Leo Laporte (00:54:06):
I bought the flip five and the newest flip is really great. I really love it. It's tiny. It's pocketable. It's just really cool. It's cute.
Andy Ihnatko (00:54:15):
I mean I can't afford $1,800 for a phone of any kind. Oh, I know. Much less a screen that part of the marketing for that is that it's not just for people who can afford an $1,800 phone, it's for people who can [00:54:30] a year and two months after they buy it, see a really bad scratch on it or see some sort of wrinkle in the hinge part of it, of the screen and not really care about it and because hey, I'll just buy a new one or I'll just get the screen replaced. It's like I am a five-year person when it comes to a phone, ideally that I can sit out for five years if necessary and if I possibly can because I don't have $1,200 a year to spend on an iPhone subscription, so I try to get as much use out of these things as I can.
Leo Laporte (00:55:00):
[00:55:00] I don't look forward to retiring and having to actually think before I buy. Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (00:55:06):
See,
Leo Laporte (00:55:06):
That's not going to be fun. Make that
Andy Ihnatko (00:55:10):
Calculus. It's like it's that joke and police squad where Frank Robin, Liz Nielsen gets fired off the police force. Say just think the next time I shoot somebody, I could even be arrested for
Leo Laporte (00:55:23):
This.
Andy Ihnatko (00:55:24):
Just think the next time I want to buy a camera, I might not be able to try every single [00:55:30] one I'm interested in for 60 days. Absolutely. For Free's the world going mad
Leo Laporte (00:55:35):
Sunday we had the great Jason Keebler on. He of course was editor in chief of Motherboard at Vice for a long time, vice has had some financial difficulties. He and three of his other superstar reporters have formed their own little company called 4 0 4 media@fourfourmedia.co. But Jason, we'd actually talked to him some years ago, has always been a right to repair. I dunno if advocate's right [00:56:00] because he's a reporter, but he's always covered that right to repair story from 4 0 4 media.co. We are winning. In quotes, apple formally endorses the right to repair legislation after spending millions fighting it. He got access to a letter to lobbyists. Actually it was a letter to Senator Eggman, if that's his real name. No, her name Susan Chuchu. Susan Eggman, the sponsor of the bill. [00:56:30] Apple writes in support of SB 2 44 and urges members of the California legislator to pass the bill as currently drafted. We support SB 2 44. Apple goes on to say, because it includes requirements that protect individual user safety and security. This was one of Apple's concerns was, well, if you repair yourself, what happens to the locked enclave and so forth, as well as the product manufacturer's intellectual property. We'll continue to support the bill so long as it continues [00:57:00] to provide protections for customers and innovators. I guess Apple finally found is it that Apple finally found a bill they could support or they finally saw the writing on the wall and said, all right,
Jason Snell (00:57:11):
Can it be both? Yeah, I feel like that's what's going on here. I wonder if behind the scenes there was some talk of people were either hesitant to vote on it who are very pro-business and were not going to be not like this and so I don't like it. And then the authors of the bill are like, let's reassure you that apple's okay with [00:57:30] it. Or if somebody was trying to amend it to do something that Apple didn't like and so Apple decided to have this moment to swoop in and say, no, no. This is the law. We like do this. This is the one we, I think they know that this sort of thing is coming. In fact, they built a whole infrastructure with their repair programs to support it. I think the last thing they want is legislation that breaks some part of the process they've already said in place. So something probably prompted this letter to be put in the record like [00:58:00] a threat from somewhere or somebody who needed to be reassured that Apple was okay with it as it was written.
Leo Laporte (00:58:06):
Well, they may have seen the writing on the wall. It passed in the Senate, the California Senate 38 to nothing but the assembly still has to vote with apple's support, it probably will pass and as a number of people have pointed out, as SA California goes, so goes the nation, even though there was a bill in New York that was kind of stripped of most of its [00:58:30] guts last year, this is going to be it. This means ultimately a total victory for right to repair.
Andy Ihnatko (00:58:37):
And also the writing was on the wall internationally in the EU and elsewhere. So if they were going to have to keep iPhone parts in stock and available for people to repair for the EU anyway, it's behooves 'em to say, well, okay, if we're going to have to maintain that new part of our business, that part of our organization keeping track and inventorying and maintaining stockpiles of repair parts for third [00:59:00] parties, we may as well. It kind of changes the calculus and the California law isn't that draconian. It basically just says that Apple for their part for iPhones, they would have to maintain a supply of spare parts for iPhones available to third parties for three years after they stopped making 'em. I think three years and that's not that hard. They've also seen how well these programs have worked for other companies working through I Fixit that they don't even necessarily have to deal with these third [00:59:30] parties directly.
(00:59:31):
I think that, as you say, it was a combination of them having lots and lots of conversations to make sure that they feel as though they've been heard by legislators seeing that this is not something that they can fight so they can at least maintain a presence, a seat at the table and dictate, excuse me, and being consulted about how this works and also realizing that the world is not going to end because we are going to make screens and other kinds of sensors available. And the question is [01:00:00] always going to be though, how are they going to control access to software that if you still have to code each one of these components before they get installed and before they'll be admitted into the secure enclave of the device that remains to be seen. But that seems to be something that they're going to have to do underneath this California law anyway. But yeah, they had to do this at some point. It is the u s BBC of legislation and they were kind of foolish to fight it so hard for so long as they did.
Leo Laporte (01:00:28):
The law says manufacturers will [01:00:30] have to make available on fair and reasonable terms to product owners, service and repair facilities and service dealers. The means as described to affect the diagnostics, maintenance, or repair of the product. They have to make the same diagnostics tools and parts available to the public as they make available to authorize repair professionals. Apple says some of the things that we really wanted. I think Apple did see the writing on the wall, but at the same time they could save a little face by saying, well, [01:01:00] we got the assurances we wanted that the bill would not threaten consumer safety and data security by requiring manufacturers allow repair providers to disabled device security features, many of which have been requested by law enforcement agencies and required by ludd to tht theft that they also will require that repair providers disclose the use of non-genuine or used parts. I think that's good and [01:01:30] I think it's a win all round as finally something good.
Andy Ihnatko (01:01:36):
Yeah, and of course how many times have we joked about Apple always couching their bad behavior in terms of we've listened. They're to you the consumer and you're welcome. Congratulations consumers, we've just won a great victory on your behalf. We fought. We were not going to support this law until your security and privacy were being protected. And thanks to us, your friends, your two [01:02:00] wacky hippies in the garage with 2.3 trillion in evaluation decided make to make this all happen. And also when you read it out, realize that this is also the kind of weasel words that any large company likes to see if they can comply with this law in a way that they think will work for them. And if the consumers and E F F and other organizations say, well actually [01:02:30] no, you're not complying with this law at all, then congratulations now we're off to 2, 3, 4 years of litigation that will lead to a settlement as opposed to no, here is a line that you failed to. No, we felt as though our solution was very, very reasonable and very, very practical and did extend the right to repair to people. You disagree, but we will simply argue this out in court until an agency says, look, we're sick of fighting this. Give us a couple hundred thousand dollars and some free iPads for schools and let's just go home.
Leo Laporte (01:02:57):
A nice victory, by the way for Kyle Weens and [01:03:00] i fixit.com, they've really been advocates. They created the right to repair website also to Cal perg the public interest research group. They've been very strongly in favor of the right to repair and they're in the middle. In the green raincoat is Senator Eggman Cuckoo. Thank you Senator. I just wanted to say cuckoo cchu again, thank you Senator Eggman for sponsoring that. I think this is good for everybody. It's good for everybody.
Andy Ihnatko (01:03:29):
Iix is one of those rare [01:03:30] companies that proves that you can have a profitable for-profit business that nonetheless is working in the public interest. There's no BSS behind that, that they're working for rights that will direct business to their site but also to everybody else and give everybody a fair shake than they're getting right now. So that's one place we're okay, capitalism, we'll give you another five years at least.
Leo Laporte (01:03:53):
Yay, five years. That's it though on the outside Ben
Andy Ihnatko (01:03:57):
Red banner Revolution's going right
Leo Laporte (01:03:59):
Up.
Andy Ihnatko (01:04:00):
[01:04:00] I got in the closet. It's still on the pole. It's still on the pole. I'm telling you
Leo Laporte (01:04:06):
Apple, we've mentioned this before, but I think it's official, is buying tsm C'S entire supply of three nanometer chips for the year. Every one of them says digit times. We knew that they'd booked most of them. Well now Apple's projected to take a hundred percent of their capacity and that's partly because Intel delays in Intel's wafer needs [01:04:30] are part of the problem. I guess Intel's lack of orders, they're really not there yet. So Apple said, well, okay, we'll take that 10%. Intel doesn't want. We'll take 'em all. How many more can you give us?
Andy Ihnatko (01:04:44):
Yeah.
(01:04:46):
Also they've been investing heavily in this technology too. So it not as though it's their technology, but it's not as though they're scooping. It's not as though they're just scooping up every ticket to the concert so that no one can see it unless it's on their terms. So yeah, this is [01:05:00] cool. This is what Apple does so very, very well. It's like sensing what their need is going to be and making sure that they will be able to fulfill that need. That's why Apple's one of the few companies that weren't affected as hard by parts shortages in the past few years as almost every other company was because had already secured procurement for every component they're going to need for the next five years.
Stephen Robles (01:05:22):
Which I do wonder, mark Germond said there's going to be an October event as well this year. If we could see an M three or a three nanometer process [01:05:30] maybe in an iMac, which is still running the M one, that thing's been around for a couple years now, so it's possible we see it a couple months.
Leo Laporte (01:05:37):
Good point. I would love to see that there was, somebody put this article in, thank you from five 12 pixels.net, the case for and against Apple shipping a larger iMac. We've talked about this before. The current 20, what is it, 21 inch or 24? 24 inch. 24 inch, 24 inches. It's so small that it's really for [01:06:00] consumers, not for prosumers. And I missed the larger one and there've been strong rumors that Apple is going to do 30 inch plus probably next year, not this year. You think? What do you think they'll announce, Stephen in October? It's certainly new iPads, but do you think they'll have an M three something?
Stephen Robles (01:06:19):
Well, I wonder if it'll be iPads. They'll probably be the base model iPad the 11th generation, because government also said next year they're going to revamping next pro models, right. So I think maybe base model iPad, [01:06:30] I would love to see an iPad mini with
Leo Laporte (01:06:32):
Promotion. I love my mini
Stephen Robles (01:06:33):
Promotion. That's a wishlist item, but I would just love a mini with promotion. But I do think that the iMac is one of the longest in the tooth and if we do see, maybe, I don't dunno if they'll update the MacBook Pro, we just have the M two PRO and M two Mac over the summer with the MacBook Pros. So maybe it's just an iPad, iMac and possibly some accessories, maybe updated AirPods then. Although it'd be strange to wait for that if Uspc is coming in September. So [01:07:00] I think mostly iMac and then a base model iPad with something else, which I'm not sure for
Leo Laporte (01:07:06):
October, your colleague Dan Morin has an article in Macworld, has Apple's oldest Mac overstate, its welcome Jason, after 25 years in numerous reinventions, apple needs to figure out where the iMac stands in the desktop lineup. I talked about this last week.
Jason Snell (01:07:23):
Yeah, I mean in the thinking of the 25th anniversary, the iMac sort of where does it go now and what [01:07:30] Dan and what Steven Hackett right in their pieces is very much like desktops aren't what they were, but they're still important to have. The question is, are they so important to have that you have two different iMac models or not? Mark Germond has said that they're working, but it's not clearly not a high priority. I wonder if it's going to be like that 15 inch MacBook error where they will sort of do one eventually, but it's not going to be on the same cycle as the revision of the 24 inch model to [01:08:00] the M three, which we probably will see this fall. I wonder when the way it's gone. The base model chip is what we see first. So if you see an M three then that's a thing that they could put in an iPad air, they could put in an iPad Pro, but they're also, it could go in a Mac mini, but they've got the Pro chip now, so maybe not there. What's another product they have that only has the base model chip? It's the MacBook Air. Could it be that the MacBook Air would get their revision this fall as well? Because they probably won't have [01:08:30] an M three PRO right this fall. So the only Mac that they would be releasing this fall would be the ones that only come in the base model. That's the 24 and I love the 24 inch iMac to have a chip option too. But again, if it's coming this fall, I just don't see it.
Stephen Robles (01:08:49):
I always thought I would get an iMac as a family computer. I have three kids and it always in my mind was going to be the ideal machine, but even to this point, I have not had a reason to get it. My kids have iPads [01:09:00] and actually that suffices now that Logic Pro 10 is on the iPad. That was the one thing I would've gotten a Mac for. And even my oldest son who is making music is just using Logic Pro 10 on his iPad. And so as a family computer device, I don't know if that age has maybe passed, but I do think there is a place, especially like doctor's offices or administrative types use cases where I do see IMAX all the time. Typically they're older imax, they just stay around forever. But I do think eventually if it dies or new offices [01:09:30] open up, there's still some use cases like point of sale systems maybe, although that's gone iPad too. But for me as myself, I do not see a personal need for an iMac anymore, which is kind of sad. I love that computer. Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (01:09:41):
I mean it's so personable and we were talking earlier about wanting to have really, really cool colors. The iMac is the most color line that Apple makes. It really is quite joyful, all the range of bright, wonderful colors that they have. But it's hard to see a need specifically that the iMac [01:10:00] fills really, really well because at that doctor's office, they've probably got some sort of record system that is probably based on Windows and plus they probably want to, instead of spending whatever Apple Tax is for this really cool pretty looking iMac, they'd much rather just get whatever Dell screen they've already got in the store room and whatever little mini, mini Windows 11 box can actually run it. Ditto for anybody who's buying lots of multiples of these devices. If you're buying multiples [01:10:30] of them, then you're not buying the person who's going to be using them day in and day out is not making the purchasing decision.
(01:10:36):
It's the person who's doing the budgets and whoever shows up at the office or at their school room and finds this thing on their desk. Congratulations you. You're now a Windows user or you're now a user of whatever that is. But one of the things that I'm still kind of on the fence about is I wonder if Apple's going to try to phase out the M one on desktops. If they're going to at some point say that the [01:11:00] difference between the M one and the M two as such that we want to make sure that now that we've put an M one in every single portable Mac and desktop Mac now's the time to the next big upgrades for all of those are going to be making sure that the least sophisticated Apple silicon is going to be M two across the board. Does anybody think that that's something that Apple would like to do or the M one is still plenty powerful as it is, and they can always increase the speed of that ship and keep the same architecture, but there's something about [01:11:30] saying, oh, by the way, we've upgraded the new MacBook Air, same price and we've upgraded everybody to a new M two chip.
Jason Snell (01:11:37):
It's the Cook Doctrine as they call it, right? Which is do they benefit from having that moment of old product on price list that's cheap and profitable and the M one air does have to go away at some point, right? But it's the old body. It's presumably a lot cheaper to make than the M two air body is. So [01:12:00] yeah, I don't know. I feel like the M one will be around for a little while longer than longer than Old Max who have been replaced have ever been before, if that makes any sense. Just that it has been so long, but it's still so good and it lets them sell that MacBook Air at such a low price that it's worth doing. I wonder if the M two will go away and the M one will stay when they do the M three air. I really [01:12:30] do wonder because they've done stuff like that in the past where they've sort of kept the interim or kept the old model around just to hit a price point and then they keep updating the interim model. But I would be happy if the M ones went away. The question is, can they make the M twos cheap enough that they can hit their price points, right?
Andy Ihnatko (01:12:48):
Yeah. I mean the only big roadblock of the M one, I mean it's fast enough, but it's a bummer that you're always going to be stuck with just two displays. It's like, because [01:13:00] if you're trying to get five or 10 years out of a Mac mini or out of a MacBook, there's going to be at least a period or a project where you're going to say, oh God, I really wish I want two displays, but I don't want one of the displays to be the built-in MacBook display. Exactly. And no, you can't do that because M one is stuck with that and it's also stuck with the high speed lanes for
Jason Snell (01:13:22):
Volt and M two had that limitation. They both had that limitation, which I hope that M three finally addresses. It's surprising [01:13:30] how many people buy a laptop and expect to connect two monitors to it. I think Apple initially just decided, oh, that's an Intel feature. Nobody actually uses it. We don't need to build it into the M one. And over the last couple of years, I think maybe they've realized that there are more people agitating for that than they accounted for.
Andy Ihnatko (01:13:48):
We can give you an additional display for your MacBook. It's called an iPad Pro. Come on in, we'll set you up.
Leo Laporte (01:13:57):
The rumor is that they'll do the, this would make sense [01:14:00] schedule wise that might do an M three 13 inch MacBook Pro. That's not really a pro, but it's called the Pro, right? They've done that every year ahead of the bigger MacBook Pros
Andy Ihnatko (01:14:16):
And the big deal is that the thermals in this silicon are so terrific that on other silicon it would've been, well, no, of course, unless we want to make this thing that's three times as thick as the original Power Book just to keep all the cooling fans going. [01:14:30] It's like we can keep the fans dead for most operations, even with an M three, even in the current chassis design, or at least with very, very little modification. There's a lot of overhead in those systems.
Stephen Robles (01:14:41):
I'd say if they do a MacBook Pro 13 inch with an M three and it still has the touch bar, I don't know.
Leo Laporte (01:14:49):
It's the last, they didn't update the design for them. Maybe now they'll update the design. So the advice I saw again and again, I bought the 13 [01:15:00] and then I bought a 14. I'm an idiot, but was not to buy the 13 when it was the M two or
Jason Snell (01:15:06):
M one. It only exists to hit a price point for organizations that don't want to buy something that isn't labeled Pro. So they're like, get us the cheapest MacBook Pro and Apple doesn't feel, they can say, get the 14. That's really, really good starts, but it's grand starts
Leo Laporte (01:15:23):
1200
Jason Snell (01:15:25):
And instead they've got this old computer that is not any more capable really. [01:15:30] It's got active cooling, but it really is not any better than the MacBook Air, but it's called a MacBook Pro, and there are absolutely organizations that will not buy a MacBook Air. They will buy a MacBook Pro. We only buy professional laptops for our users, and Apple can't get that 14 inch model down to 1299. It's not even close. So instead, this kind of joke of a pro laptop just kicks on and yeah, I don't think anybody should buy it, honestly, because if [01:16:00] you're going to buy that, buy the MacBook Air, it's just, it's a better designed computer, more modern in so many different ways. Unless you want the touch bar, unless you really want the touch bar. Yeah, this
Stephen Robles (01:16:10):
13 inch MacBook Pro doesn't even have MagSafe charging. So I would say the MacBook Air, you can have two u s BBC plus it's charging on MagSafe, this MacBook Pro, it's two s BBC ports, that's it. No mag safe charging
Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
Hit a price point for people in policy. Think what they'll do in October that that's the MacBook that they'll announce in October.
Jason Snell (01:16:28):
I wonder if there's a revision coming that [01:16:30] is a specifically, if they decided that they can't keep making this, what they might do is instead of build, instead of just eliminating it and keeping the 14 in the 16 in the line, I wonder if there's a de contented 13 inch MacBook Pro that is not very interesting, but
Leo Laporte (01:16:49):
They have to do something to keep the
Jason Snell (01:16:51):
Cost down at that price point. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. It's sort of like a MacBook Air Pro almost that it's just enough that they can call it a pro. Maybe the [01:17:00] touch bar is out of there. Maybe there are some more ports, but it's really not, I have a hard time imagining it being good, but I think at point, they might need to just do a revision in order to hit a price point, which is again, how exciting is that to be like, we're making this computer to be 1299 or whatever it is because we have to sell something. So it's either that or they just keep running the touch bar model out there again and again, which I mean, maybe they got extra touch bars they're trying to sell.
Stephen Robles (01:17:27):
I say bring back the 12 inch MacBook. [01:17:30] That's what I want, a 12, 12 inch MacBook with an M
Jason Snell (01:17:32):
Three. The corporate users won't buy that one either though. No,
Stephen Robles (01:17:35):
No, no. It's
Andy Ihnatko (01:17:37):
Actually, actually that reminds me, I would love an iPad sized MacBook, even if it was with a magic keyboard case because there's still a use case for me where the iPad is not going to, it's almost something I can use for several days on a trip. I just have to plan not to do the things that it can't do for me. And so [01:18:00] there was a rumor going around that there's going to be a new redesigned match, a keyboard case that is more laptop of some kind. Again, it's just this
Leo Laporte (01:18:09):
Goes with the
Andy Ihnatko (01:18:11):
Rumors are rumors, but this goes
Leo Laporte (01:18:12):
With Mark Mann's assertion. The next year will be a revamped iPad Pro with an M three and a OLED screen and the new magic board. That sounds
Andy Ihnatko (01:18:22):
Like what you want,
Leo Laporte (01:18:24):
Actually.
Andy Ihnatko (01:18:25):
Yeah. And if you were to make that up [01:18:30] with better multi-screen support with that feature that everybody tried for about 10 minutes, but then didn't use it all, so a better version of Stage Manager that seems to have taken in a lot of info from people, I think, is that a Six Colors article about the iPad is [01:19:00] still not a laptop. There's still, I love it. It is my go-to device for short trips, but there's still, when you hit that wall, you hit it so freaking hard. It's like, no, there's absolutely, not only is there no way to do it, but you feel as though you are in a really badly done Dungeons and Dragons game where the Dungeon Master has basically set up this world to make sure you get as angry and frustrated and [01:19:30] feel as powerless as possible, saying You would lose nothing if you just let me do this one thing. No, you can't do that. Why? Because that would impede the user experience. Are you talking about the user experience right now?
Leo Laporte (01:19:42):
Ben, are you talking about Jason's article giving up the iPad only Travel Dream?
Jason Snell (01:19:47):
Yeah. And what Andy's saying there, I mean, yeah, we've always said when you hit the wall, it's brutal with the iPad. No flexibility. That's the thing. I have some very unique things that I need for when I travel because I'm a podcaster. But [01:20:00] the fact is, and I heard from people who were like, well, other people don't do what you do. And it's like, guys read the next paragraph, which is the problem is flexibility. If it does what you need, you're good, right? It's great. It's so flexible for you that you can believe it, but if you don't want to do anything that Apple hasn't foreseen, you hit the wall. And that's the difference between the iPad and the Mac. If Apple hasn't foreseen it on the Mac, guess what? A third [01:20:30] party app utility, something has foreseen it, and you can do it yourself or you can install a utility and you can make it happen.
(01:20:37):
But on the iPad, because of the way it's structured, if Apple hasn't foreseen it, you just can't do it. And so I just decided, I tried very hard to work around all of those issues for a long time. And only when I'm visiting my mom or I'm traveling to other places, like only bring my iPad. And I finally realized, you know what? Apple, Silicon, the MacBook Air, it's so good. It's less than [01:21:00] three pounds in my bag and I can stop fighting. So that's what I decided to do is I just stopped fighting. If I'm going somewhere and need to record a podcast, I just bring the iPad and the MacBook Air, and I use the MacBook Air sometimes. I went to Colorado a few weeks ago and I had to do a podcast when I was there and I pulled the laptop out, recorded one podcast and then put it right back away. Didn't touch it the rest of the trip, but I couldn't have done that with the iPad. It would've been jumping through hoops. And I just decided, if Apple's not going to do it, [01:21:30] I'm not going to push it. I'm done pushing the envelope for now because Apple's pace of iPad innovation is very limited, and I think that they want it to be, it's growing, but it's growing really slowly. And the fact is, as we've talked about here many times, apple Silicon Max are really good. So maybe I should just,
Leo Laporte (01:21:53):
You talk in your article about the specialty stuff you use, like the audio hijackers or stream deck that you carry [01:22:00] with you. But I think if we were to generalize it, it's really that you cannot install arbitrary drivers on the iPad like you can on a computer
Jason Snell (01:22:09):
And background utilities that can capture your keyboard at any point. There's so many useful Mac utilities slightly modify the interface or I would
Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
Call 'em all drivers. And I understand the reason Apple doesn't allow third party drivers on that because that is also a notorious source of bugs, security issues [01:22:30] and problems for users. And so Apple probably in their head, is saying the same thing you just did, Jason, which is, well, if you need that, take a MacBook Air. That's why we make it. And if you want something that's simple, secure installing drivers is the number one hassle on Windows computers. It's its source of all sorts of trouble. And I can see why they wouldn't want to do that. Go ahead.
Stephen Robles (01:22:58):
It's tough for me because when we [01:23:00] went to the podcast movement last week, I sit here and have an existential crisis every time I'm packing because I have an mini iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, which of these devices do I take? And for me, I actually edit multiple podcasts a week on my iPad Mini because it's so light. What I can sit out on the patio, what do you use? And I edit faite
Andy Ihnatko (01:23:21):
People love Fair,
Stephen Robles (01:23:22):
And it is just amazing. I can edit faster with the Apple Pencil on iPad than any other, and I have Logic Pro, I have it all. But when I was at this conference, [01:23:30] I had to record a podcast. I did it with Micah Sergeant, and it was this moment where we were using all this B n H photo equipment and we ended up using this Zoom track recorder that had an SD card. And in that moment, if I didn't have my MacBook Pro 14 inch and I didn't bring any dongles, I would be up a creek. And so even just for that a 14 inch MacBook Pro, I'll probably never run into a situation where I'll be stuck as opposed to the iPad. If I just had my iPad Pro, even with a dongle, I don't know if I could [01:24:00] have recorded, I could record in Faite, but I don't know about Jason's experience. I don't trust multi-track recording into Faite, not because of fair right's limitations, but just it's with the iPad had a problem. I can't monitor enough of what's happening in real time to really just trust you on
Andy Ihnatko (01:24:17):
Recordings. You have the sweet spot though, by the way, this would be my sweet spot too, is a MacBook Pro 14 inch and a iPad Mini. That's a really nice combination. That's not much heavier. The mini is the Hidden Superstar, [01:24:30] the entire Apple lineup. I really honestly think that as someone who already has an iPad Pro that he spent a lot of money on, I didn't get the cheap one. I had money set aside so that I could get as much storage as I wanted. The M one, everything and the pencil still, every time that I get out, my old iPad, the one that is basically made out of animal skins and twigs at this point compared to what's available now, that's going to be my next Apple purchase, maybe [01:25:00] even before my New Mac Mini because it puts such a role in my life.
(01:25:05):
But Steven, we're talking about not being able to install drivers, and that is a big deal, but for me, just the simplicity of I have a file, I want to move the file from here to there. Okay, oh, that's easy. Just use clouds. I'm in the middle of nowhere, but I have everything I need. [01:25:30] I just need to move it from this place to this place. Can't do it. Okay, well, how about if I have a JPEG file that was created by one app and I want it to be able to be used by another app, that's great. Just put up the sharing sheet. But for some reason, this graphic editor that works with JPEGs is not showing up in the sharing sheet. Well then there must be a really good reason why you shouldn't be able to do that. And I compare that to this is I think at this point in 2023, [01:26:00] it's not a case of Android being better than iOS.
(01:26:03):
IOS being better than Android. There are things that will attract some people and not attract the others to compare to putting music files on this device. I just simply drag files onto it or download into whatever folder. I have an open file system, and then I've got three different music players for three different kind of uses. And for each one of them, I just simply say, scan through this folder or scan through the entire device for anything that's a flack file. And within [01:26:30] 10 seconds, every single flack file that I've pointed it to is now part of that music library. It is the way the things should work. And so I understand that there's a dogmatic difference at Apple between the iPad line and the Mac OS line that I think it really is like we are going to make it a pain in the butt for a lot of things, but the payoff is going to be, it's going to be way more reliable than any Mac we've ever made, ever
Leo Laporte (01:26:54):
Was. Again, I come back to,
Andy Ihnatko (01:26:55):
I just wish there were a couple little things that made I come
Leo Laporte (01:26:57):
Back to that third party driver thing. I mean, I think that [01:27:00] there's UI issues as well, but the third party driver is a lot of times when I look at Windows, I say, if you could just get rid of WIN 32, you wouldn't have nearly the security issues. And Microsoft's answer is, but we can't because so many people need it. And I think in a way, this is what Apple has done. They said, well, what if we made a new device that is absolutely simple and robust and reliable, but you're going to have to give up some things like the ability to install these third party, [01:27:30] well third party apps from anywhere. For one thing. You got to go through the app store and especially third party low level drivers. Those are problematic.
Stephen Robles (01:27:39):
It also feels just like a limitation of iPad os. Now clearly Apple sees it as pro. We have Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro 10 on iPad, right? Yeah. That pro device.
Leo Laporte (01:27:49):
Can you install the plugins from those though?
Stephen Robles (01:27:52):
So supposedly coming soon, but
Leo Laporte (01:27:53):
No, you
Stephen Robles (01:27:54):
Won't. The point I'm true,
Leo Laporte (01:27:56):
They're going to make sure that everything that gets installed on an iPad comes [01:28:00] from Apple.
Stephen Robles (01:28:02):
But my point is when I record on my Mac with Audio Hijack, I'm not afraid to click to another window and that recording is still going to happen. It's still going. Whereas if I'm recording on my iPad, even in a Pro app or even in faite, I'm not sure what's going to happen if I swipe up to go home or what happens if I tab over to a different app. Yes, it should still be recording, but I just don't trust it because I don't see iPad OSS as being able to handle that. And I think [01:28:30] a lot of times just, I think from experience, people have experienced this where you're recording or you're doing something, you go to another app and all of a sudden a process stopped in the background and you just can't have that When you're doing something like podcasting, you want to make sure it's recording. And on my Mac with audio hijack running, I can look at my menu bar and see the little peak meter always going, and I just know I trust that it's happening. And until iPad offers that kind of, I guess security, not necessarily privacy
Leo Laporte (01:28:54):
Security, it never will. And that's the whole point. It's not that they can't, they've got the processor, [01:29:00] they've got the ram, they got the storage. It's not that they can't, it's they won't. And I think that this makes sense, at least in my mind, that there's this division in these product lines and we offer something for both people. It's not like we're,
Andy Ihnatko (01:29:14):
I keep coming back to something I read about the creation of Disney World and Disneyland where, and someone who worked with Walt Disney in building these parks said that Walt wanted to make sure that if you came to one of his parks, you would have a fantastic time. And [01:29:30] he was so adamant that you have a fantastic time that he wanted to make it impossible for you to have a bad time even if you were trying to have a bad time.
(01:29:39):
And that's what I think about. I think that philosophy set on two clicks on the knob on Mac oss and it's set to eight out of 10 on iPad oss. This is where I don't think that Apple is BSing like anybody. I think that really is their philosophy. [01:30:00] They're once or twice every couple of months I wind up resetting the audio drivers on my Mac, and on the one hand I can think of, well see because the Mac is a lot more powerful and a lot more open, if suddenly I lose all audio, I can just simply go to the terminal, enter a studio command and simply restart that audio driver and have things back. The flip side of that is, but if you were using an iPad, that audio would never have screwed up in the first place because nothing can screw up at that low level.
Leo Laporte (01:30:30):
[01:30:30] And there's a reason, Steven, you worry about background recording suspending when you change screens because Apple doesn't want initially because of the iPhone and battery, they don't want stuff running in the background, but also they don't want stuff running in the background where your troubles begin. And so I think this makes perfect sense to me, and yet I look at what Mark Erman is describing for the iPad Pro 2024, the code names are J 7, 17, 18, 20, [01:31:00] and 21. They'll be M three. They'll have OLED displays, which is awesome. They'll probably have the best displays out there until we get OLEDs on the MacBooks 11 and 13 inches, which is a little bit bigger than 12.9, I guess revamped magic keyboard. And as you said, Andy, the new accessory according to Garman makes the iPad Pro look even more like a laptop than the current setup and has a larger track pad. And that's actually a fix because the magic [01:31:30] keyboard's track pad is not great. So Apple is moving it more towards something that you could say, well, I could do that's my laptop, except I firmly believe they don't want to, that they really,
Jason Snell (01:31:43):
And then using the chip, the same chip as the Mac, that kind of calls it into question because the truth is my MacBook error and my iPad Pro use the same chip, therefore, but they're very different in terms of what their functionality is. That's [01:32:00] fine. That's a choice that they can make. But it is something that you think of as a user. You're like, well, wait a second, why aren't these things the same? But they aren't. That laptop report is interesting. The idea that I wonder if it's going to be a heavier, because weight is the concern there. The cantilever design is there because they're trying to push the center of gravity forward so it doesn't tip over backward. So either there's a kickstand, which I'm really against because I think kickstands ergonomically are terrible and you can't put 'em in your [01:32:30] lap or they're going to make a heavier keyboard case, which I actually think is probably the right way to do it.
(01:32:37):
There are some other companies that made clip in keyboard cases for the iPad and that the key is just to have more weight in it. And if your apple, apple gets to design the iPad and the accessory together, any other accessory maker just has to make do with whatever Apple provides them. But Apple can design them together. And I wonder if there's a keyboard trackpad case in the future that is heavier, [01:33:00] it's going to make it more like a laptop, but you could do stuff like have a supplemental battery in there that would not only battery flow. Power can flow both directions. So what if there, imagine the marketing, if they say, and then you snap this iPad into this thing and it's got laptops, hours, things and it's 24 hour battery life or something like that. It's 24
Stephen Robles (01:33:19):
Hours to watch movies and it
Leo Laporte (01:33:21):
Can also charge your AirPods, right?
Jason Snell (01:33:23):
Yeah.
Stephen Robles (01:33:24):
All that amazing technology though. And again, I love iPads because again, I had a podcast all the time on it. But again, [01:33:30] use case, even editing a website, I manage a lot of Squarespace websites and on the Mac in Safari, everything works great. And even though Apple has said Safari on the iPad, it's supposedly desktop class and is like parody with the Mac. It's just not. If I try to manage a Squarespace website on my iPad Safari, it looks like it should do everything the same, but just click wise functionality, like mouse activity, it's just not the same. And so on that beautiful screen, I watch stuff on my [01:34:00] iPad Pro and it looks amazing. I love watching stuff on it, but I want to be able to do more on it.
Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
Yeah. Let's take a little break and then when we come back, I do want to talk about podcast movement and some final thoughts. But first a word from Zak. You know that feeling when you finally get the thing you've been searching for your whole life, after spending hours researching and reading thousands of reviews, you finally get the perfect, what is it? Sparkly disco pants? [01:34:30] Sure, that's it. Or designer dog hoodies or whatever. It's the thing, it's the right thing. Five stars arrives tomorrow. That's just a nice feeling. How come we can do that with sparkly disco pants? We can't do that with our physician. If you want to see a good doctor, maybe you've got a recommendation from a friend. You call that we're not taking new patients or yeah, we can make an appointment in June of 2024. And really, is it enough just [01:35:00] that your friend said, this is a good doctor?
(01:35:01):
Wouldn't you like to know a little bit more? That's why we love Zocdoc. There is a way to book and find great doctors who are available many with appointments in 24 hours and with verified patient reviews. So you could see exactly what that doctor is like. It's more than just, this is a great doctor or this isn't a great doctor. It's how that doctor communicates. Some people want a lot of information. I want all the options. [01:35:30] Doc. Tell me everything I could do. Some people, I'm one of 'em. Just tell me what to do, doc. I don't need the options. Just you tell me you're the expert, Zocdoc, but you get the choice, right? You can see the reviews, verified reviews from actual patients. Zocdoc is a free app where you can find amazing doctors and book appointments online. We're talking about booking appointments with thousands of top rated patient reviewed doctors.
(01:35:54):
And it's not just doctors, it's specialists, it's dentists, chiropractors. You can filter specifically [01:36:00] for the ones who take your insurance are located near you and treat almost any condition you're searching for. They all have verified reviews from actual patients, no bots, they're very cared. Doctors are really good job. Good job curating all that to make sure these are real patients. The average wait time, I just got this sta, this is so cool. To see a doctor booked on Zocdoc is 24 to 48 hours. That's it. You can even get same day appointments. Now this isn't for acute care, obviously this is [01:36:30] for a physician you want to see for a particular thing or maybe on a long-term basis. Once you find the doc you want though, you can book 'em immediately and it's just a few app taps right in the app. No more waiting awkwardly on hold To talk to a receptionist, go to zocdoc.com/mac break, download the Zocdoc app for free, then find and book a top rated doctor today, Z O C D c.com/mac break.
(01:36:55):
I've used this many times. It really works. It's fantastic. In fact, I just realized I need to find a new dentist. [01:37:00] I'm going to go to zocdoc.com/mac break now. I know you're smart enough, you could just go to the app store and download Zocdoc. Please would you do me a favor? Go to the website so they know you saw it here and then it'll say, here's the link and you can download it. I know it's one extra step, but it helps us a lot. zocdoc.com/mac break. Thank you, Zocdoc for support and Mac Break weekly. I saw this tweet with Micah sergeant and [01:37:30] Steven Robles at the podcast movement. I just got the new Zoom F two recorder. It's only a two mic set up, but it's a 32 bit recorder. I'm really excited about using it in the field. It's cool that you were able to get all the latest equipment to try out. That's really neat. It was great. Were you on the show floor at Podcast Movement out there in Denver
Stephen Robles (01:37:55):
For a podcast conference? There's not a lot of places to record a podcast, ironically. [01:38:00] You
Leo Laporte (01:38:01):
Mean look, they don't have a podcast studio for people to do their shows.
Stephen Robles (01:38:08):
There was one brand that had a couple pods, but it was booked solid podcast movies, thousands of people. So I was scrambling. Me and Micah, I think we were just going to find a closet to record in, but then the b n h photo people, they had a whole table set up and I was like, I have enough tools to try and take out the background noise. Let's try it. And it works. So we just sat there [01:38:30] on the expo show floor, the people walking around
Leo Laporte (01:38:32):
Around it was very loud. I know Lisa did a panel there with member full who does our club twit. And by the way, they're great. And she was excited about doing it. We really wanted to give member full a big plug and tell all the podcasters is a great way to do a club. And nobody could hear anything they were saying. It was so loud. And Lisa came back to was Hoss. It was so loud.
Stephen Robles (01:38:57):
It was difficult. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:38:59):
So what's the latest [01:39:00] podcast news? Is there a future for this nascent business nascent? It's 20 years old. It can drink now.
Stephen Robles (01:39:09):
It is an interesting environment because I listen to all the techie podcasts like you all the Twit network, the Relay FM network, the incomparable and all that. And when you go to one of these trade shows, it's all these shows I don't typically listen to, but it's these big names. Is there, Disney is there, Spotify is there, and they're all talking about these very large shows. Will
Leo Laporte (01:39:29):
Ferrell and [01:39:30] Meghan Markle and Yeah, superstars. Yeah, huge names.
Stephen Robles (01:39:34):
And you see these sessions that talk about monetization or they talk about dynamic ad insertion. And I feel like the gap between the independent podcaster who can still get sponsors on their own and things like that versus these massive names, celebrities really doing podcasts on these networks like Wondery and Spotify. I feel like that gap is widening a little [01:40:00] bit and the rise of video is such a huge push, which obviously you personally have been doing it for forever, but for many podcasts,
Leo Laporte (01:40:09):
I always crack up when I go to these things because it's like, oh yeah, we did that in 2007. Oh yeah, oh yeah,
Stephen Robles (01:40:17):
I was downloading Mac Prick weekly video on my iPod video. That's why I got it. So, so I could relive that experience. So that's interesting. But I do have some, I don't know if it's concern, but I do wonder over the next few years [01:40:30] where it comes to ad agencies and where sponsors go to actually book spots on podcasts. Is it going to flow where you basically have to be doing dynamic ad insertion and tracking and all of that? Yes, and I remember the first time I actually experienced it, I won't name the podcast, but I pressed play on a podcast I've listened to for many years and the first ad that played was DA in the Tampa Bay area. And it was such a shock to me because it was the first time I experienced a targeted ad [01:41:00] in a podcast every other time before it was something, it was baked in. I knew the sponsors. Every time you hear a sponsor on a podcast, it feels familiar. And this was like, oh, this is the future because someone can actually target my local area. And actually they
Leo Laporte (01:41:17):
Do that, by the way, via IP address, so they don't necessarily have spies in your closet.
Stephen Robles (01:41:23):
But what was interesting was I downloaded the episode before I flew to podcast movement and I was listening to it on the plane and it was there [01:41:30] where I heard the Tampa Bay area, right? That's where you downloaded
Leo Laporte (01:41:33):
It? Yeah,
Stephen Robles (01:41:34):
That's where I downloaded it. So it was a very visceral like, oh, right, I was tracked for this ad. And so I do wonder if that's how you're just going to have to do it, especially if you're growing a new show and you want to get those sponsors. Are you going to have to play that game? And so that's kind of the feeling I walked away with. And again, I don't know if it's concern or if it's just kind of nostalgia where the podcasting landscape is not going to be like it was five, 10 years from now. I'm not sure. [01:42:00] So I don't know how Lisa felt her over. It's
Leo Laporte (01:42:02):
Funny, she exactly echoed those exact same sentiment. She said, we're in deep trouble. It says all ad tech all the time. It's all tracking. And we're big fans of R S s, which really can't track you. It knows your IP address. So direct ad insertion does work. We use Advertised Cast, which is a libson company. In fact, some people not in this show, but some of our shows, you will hear ads in the language of your country if you're [01:42:30] listening outside the US or for your local car dealership or whatever. And just to reassure you, tracking is not exactly right. They're using IP address, IP geolocation to figure out where you are, which is not, I mean not the end of the world. There is though a push towards much more draconian tracking with pixels and so forth, and we push against that. It's very hard to because advertisers are getting that kind of service from Google and Spotify and others. And [01:43:00] when I see Apple announced as they did at podcast movement, more tracking information for podcasters, you'll know more. I know that that's really not for podcasters, that they're collecting that information for advertisers in the long run.
Stephen Robles (01:43:14):
And what's tough is the value proposition for a podcast ad in the past was twit, the Mac Break audience is a known audience. And so if it's a tech company, it's
Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
Contextual advertising based on the context the ad is running in. [01:43:30] And we still prefer to do it that way. We also prefer to do host red ads, not inserts. That's how we would prefer to do it. And I think frankly for the advertisers that who've been with us for more than a decade, they know it works. But I think more and more agencies who are not the advertisers, that's why we like doing direct business because the agencies, it's too much trouble for them. They're going to buy 20 different podcast networks. They don't want to bother having a personal relationship with them. So it's a
Stephen Robles (01:43:59):
Very interesting thing [01:44:00] and that's difficult. And again, for an advertiser, I don't like it, but an advertiser could say, I want to reach 1 million of this age demographic in this location. Of course they want that of this gender, then they'll just buy the ad space rather than buying the podcast. And that is the shift. That kind of stinks. Honestly. I agree. I think it was valuable for a sponsor to say if it was Squarespace that they're going to buy an ad on the twit network and they know it's going to go to a tech tech-centric audience who is probably building websites [01:44:30] themselves or helping others. And it just makes sense. And that can be a relationship hopefully long-term, where now it'll just be like, well, every other ad just give me this demographic, this location, this interest, and that's what I'm just going to buy ads across this ad agency that has so many shows and those dynamically will just be inserted. And it's unfortunate. I mean for a long time, podcaster like you all, I'm sure. I think that's where it's going. And I don't know, I don't feel great about it.
Leo Laporte (01:44:56):
How about you, Jason? You didn't go to podcast movement? I don't think. [01:45:00] I'll go again. I stopped going a while ago and I wonder if Lisa will go again, but do you worry about this kind of stuff?
Jason Snell (01:45:08):
I do. Podcasting is a much larger part of my job than I anticipated when I started doing this on
Leo Laporte (01:45:15):
My own the nine years ago. The same thing has happened by the way to blogs. And there is some hope. I mean, blogs initially were very much personal, like podcasts and if you had ads, it was personal kind of ad sales, then the big ones came along. But what's good news is here [01:45:30] you are Jason doing six colors and it's still viable.
Jason Snell (01:45:35):
Yeah, it's just not what I thought it would be ad driven. I thought I'd make the bulk of my living from blog ads and in fact, I make the bulk of my living from podcast ads and from memberships, which takes us back to something memorable. And it's funny because in Covid time and right before a lot of us were like, we got to get on the membership train here because who knows what the ad market will do? And the ad market did fine for a while, but it has changed. And [01:46:00] I will say being a niche publisher, I have advertisers who want to reach my audience still Exactly. Because I'm not trying to build this enormous reach. And that's the challenge is you're either in a volume game or you're in a niche game. And while some of this tech ad tech stuff is going to push down and try to force niche publishers to use that ad tech, there are also still [01:46:30] advertisers who value a very specific audience and will pay for it.
(01:46:36):
And that's why I'm skeptical that it's going to go all the way to everything is self-serve ad network on the fly kind of stuff. I think that there's still a place if you're playing the niche content game for other stuff. But if you're playing the broad content game where you're just some more impressions, volume, that's a different game. That's volume [01:47:00] and that's going to be a lot harder. But with Relay, I mean Relay has seen a slowdown for sure, but they have built a lot of direct relationships that have allowed them to extend and do better than some other kind of
Leo Laporte (01:47:16):
Podcasts. Credit to Mike Hurley who has really maintained those relationships with advertisers and so forth. And that's what we do here too and yeah, exactly. I think at some point we're going to have a hybrid model where we're going to be, the club is very important to [01:47:30] us. It's about 7,000 members strong now, which is still only 1% of the total audience, but it's something that keeps us going and that plus advertising, I think we can survive at the level we're at. We may not, at some point we may have to shrink. Ironically, Steven might have to stop doing video. That's the most expensive thing we do and most people don't watch the video anyway, so you mentioned Squarespace. I was really pleased Squarespace celebrated their 20th anniversary a [01:48:00] couple of months ago. timeline@squarespace.com and we're in the timeline. March, 2009, Squarespace Land's first podcast advertisement. Anthony Castellana makes a big gamble paying nearly $20,000 for a Squarespace ad to appear on the podcast this week in Tech was more than 20,000 because he bought a seven months contract, but that's okay.
(01:48:22):
A post-purchase survey, and this is the part I proves the risk to be worth it revealing that a third of the company's new subscribers [01:48:30] heard of it through the plug, so that's good. That's good. This was very, we didn't expect this. They didn't mention it and we were very pleased to see it. They stopped buying ads on our shows several years ago when they remember this. They bought a Super Bowl ad and we said, how much did that cost for 30 seconds? And you could have bought five years of us for that. So it happens to always happens.
Stephen Robles (01:48:58):
Well, I do think direct membership is [01:49:00] going to be a huge part for independent and podcast networks. I think we have to do it, but I also wonder how much subscription fatigue is also going to play a part for those people. Because I support multiple podcasts directly and some networks, but I also feel like I don't know how sustainable that is as more podcasts are going to be asking for direct support and networks like Relay, like Twit can offer here, pay this monthly and you get the benefit of ad-free and bonus content across all these shows, [01:49:30] but if you're truly an independent show, you have one podcast and you're not a part of a network, I think it's going to be a tough sell to ask people to pay you $5 a month for a membership for ad free or bonus content as opposed to paying a network $5 and get multiple shows. And so that I think is tug of war, not a tug of war, but something that's going to have to be figured out maybe if it's like creator networks that individuals can join to kind of be a part of and so their listeners might get more value [01:50:00] for a certain amount of subscription per month or I don't know. I don't know if it's going to subscription fatigue is going hurt that
Leo Laporte (01:50:08):
Let's not talk about that. Okay. People say that podcast, but on the other hand, when you go to the grocery store, you continue to buy cottage cheese every week. I mean I think at some point people are going to say, well, yeah, because I know what you mean though. I subscribe to for the shows, I have to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and Bloomberg and all sorts of stuff [01:50:30] and it's thousands of dollars a year. It does add up, but I think it's the way it is with streaming too. You want to consume content on the TV content. Increasingly it's going to be because pay a subscription for it, right?
Stephen Robles (01:50:45):
Well, people are stopping paying for all those streaming services too, which I think as Disney is struggling with right now, what networks do we drop because they're not profitable enough. And so I do think subscription fatigue is real and that's why I don't know if there'll be another shift to [01:51:00] something else, but yeah, I don't know what the future is. I guess that's why it's unsure and I love podcasting. That's what's a struggle because the industry was small enough or niche enough where you could have your audiences and have us
Leo Laporte (01:51:11):
Show, I love the community,
Stephen Robles (01:51:13):
The audience and the community is great and most people are still there, and so just hopefully the future of monetization can still handle or support that kind of relationship between the smaller shows and the audiences.
Leo Laporte (01:51:26):
I honestly think that's the [01:51:30] thing advertisers and agencies are missing is you're buying not a show, you're buying a community, you're buying access to a community, and that's something we're really, podcasters are really good at, is building at least the successful ones at building community and that has value I think to an advertiser. When we told people about Squarespace that carried weight because we were talking about something, I don't know if you're not [01:52:00] a member of the club, you can see why we keep plugging it. Visit TWI tv slash club twi. We keep the price low, we give you a lot of value. We understand about this subscription fee. Seven bucks a month or a lot of people said, well, can we buy a year? I was reluctant at first because I didn't know how long we'd be doing the club, but now, okay, yeah, you could buy a year.
(01:52:20):
You can also get family plans and corporate plans. You get all the shows ad free, ad tech free as well. You also get the access to the Discord, which is really [01:52:30] a great place to hang. I honestly that was an unexpected benefit of the Club is the community in the Discord is fantastic. Plus shows we don't put out in public because there's no ad support for 'em, but we know the club supports 'em and so that makes a big difference for us with hands on Macintosh. Micah does that and Hands On Windows with Paul ot. We're not doing these to say, oh see, you should join the club if you want to get our content. We don't really want to put anything behind a paywall, but it's also fair [01:53:00] because club members in effect are paying for it. These are shows that don't have advertisers yet, and when a show gets big enough that we can sell ads like this week in space, we do move them out of the club into the public.
(01:53:10):
We don't want to put stuff behind a paywall that's never been in our intention, but we also make sure that people who give us their seven bucks a month get something of value, lots of events. We put our community manager, aunt Pruitt does such a great job. He just finished that photo walk in Petaluma last weekend. [01:53:30] Stacey's book club is coming up. We are working on an untitled so far, AI show with Jason Holland, Jeff Jarvis, that's every Thursday afternoon. You can participate in that some good. If you're sci-fi fans, the club is heaven, Daniel Suarez, Hugh Howie, join us with a fireside chat in about a week and then John Scalzi in next month or October. That's going to be incredible. These are all things we do for the club. Renee Ritchie will come back and do and [01:54:00] ask me anything November 16th. He is of course now the creator liaison at YouTube, but longtime host on this show. So lots of stuff, lots of benefits. We try to make it worth your seven bucks a month I think it is. If you're not yet in the club, please go to twit tv slash club twit and join us. We would love to have you. And as this discussion shows, that's more and more how podcast networks like ours will survive. Both Steven and Jason have memberships [01:54:30] and I think that's really important. I don't know what you do to support yourself, Andy, but I wish you the best.
Andy Ihnatko (01:54:38):
Well, I get mostly paid by P B s and by various clients and various podcasts including this lovely podcast. Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:54:46):
Actually some of your clubs with money goes to this man right here
Andy Ihnatko (01:54:50):
And I was planning when I relaunched anka.com to also have memberships, but now I'm starting to think I'm not really depressed at this conversation saying I can't for five bucks a month [01:55:00] for the things I write, who am I to say that I'm worth half of Netflix with it? Yeah,
Leo Laporte (01:55:05):
It's hard to go lower than seven bucks a month because me will takes its cut and it ends up being more like five bucks a month and I don't know how you can go much lower than that and still offer value and so forth. So seven seems to me as low as you can go and it's pretty good, I think. But anyway,
Andy Ihnatko (01:55:22):
The fun thing is I'm writing five to 10,000 words a week anyway. Well,
Leo Laporte (01:55:26):
There you go. I would pay for a
Andy Ihnatko (01:55:30):
[01:55:30] Stay up an extra 45 minutes and gives things for other people to publish. Can
Leo Laporte (01:55:33):
You send us some sideburns once in a while and something like that, just little extras like that. Here's a whisker,
Andy Ihnatko (01:55:41):
You beautiful genius. You've just given me idea for the $15 tier. You get Mutton shop updates exclusive to the double diamond subscribers, supporters
Leo Laporte (01:55:56):
Apple in testimony before the Australian Competition [01:56:00] Authority. They're investigating the way Apple Preloads iPhones with their own apps and of course the app store as everybody else is Apple giving evidence before the A C C C said they loaded iPhones with their own apps and not those of competitors because quote, when you take it out of the box, we want it to work. But furthermore, just to prove Apple's goodwill, they actually [01:56:30] artificially suppress their own absence search rankings just to avoid criticisms of self preferencing.
Andy Ihnatko (01:56:39):
Yeah, this was pretty interesting. They haven't been charged with anything. They haven't been found a follow of anything. They were just hauled before this tribunal basically on a finding that they might be violating antitrust with their app store and this, it was very, very interesting the way that this vice president was couching at a, I didn't know that they were [01:57:00] sandbagging their own search results for their own apps. So this was something in this guy's testimony that was interesting and he was also saying, I dunno where the quote is, but he was saying that actually our stuff ain't that great. I mean people prefer like Google Maps to ours and people prefer Spotify to Apple Music. We wish we were abusing our market privilege with Apple Music. My God. I mean, geez, we're just treading water here, dude.
Leo Laporte (01:57:28):
Apple hired [01:57:30] a former US Justice Department and F T C trial lawyer, Kyle and Deer as VP of products and regulatory law knowing that maybe his experience will be helpful here. He said, when we actually look at the evidence in the marketplace, when we look at the relative popularity and downloads of different apps, we see in almost every category, consumers are picking an alternative. Even when the Apple versions pre-installed. His example was Spotify. Spotify has three to one [01:58:00] users over Apple Music in Australia.
Andy Ihnatko (01:58:03):
So
Leo Laporte (01:58:03):
There you go.
Andy Ihnatko (01:58:05):
If there was something wrong with the way Apple's treating its own apps, quote, you wouldn't expect in category after category that the Apple service was number three or number fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh most popular service. Yeah.
Leo Laporte (01:58:16):
Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that's taking a lemon and making lemonade I guess.
Andy Ihnatko (01:58:22):
Yeah, by basically saying we stink. Oh my god,
Leo Laporte (01:58:25):
Stuff we put it on there, but it's so bad, pu,
Andy Ihnatko (01:58:30):
[01:58:30] I hope no one back home is listening to this because I'm under oath. I got to tell you.
Leo Laporte (01:58:36):
Alright, we're going to take a burger cheese, we're going to take a little break and then a gentlemen, if you'd prepare your picks of the week, we will do that. Next. I do want to give you my pick of the week, our sponsor, my Leo. This thing is so great. When Google bought Picasa, I was like, oh man, and then they really kind of killed it. So [01:59:00] many people I've talked to used Picasa to organize their photos. They had all these folders and collections and stuff, and then it disappeared when I decided I don't want to pay for Adobe's Creative Cloud, but what am I going to use for my digital asset management? I've been using Lightroom. What am I got to keep track of all my photos with? And I couldn't find anything appropriate. Looked at a lot of different solutions. I found the solution and here's the good news. It's not just for photos, it's for documents too. It's called [01:59:30] Myo, M Y L I O, myo Photos. It's a smart and powerful system that helps you keep all of your digital assets organized and secure and private.
(01:59:44):
There's no cloud component to this, like Adobe really wants you to use the Adobe cloud or Apple use iCloud if you want. You can be completely offline. What I do actually is I have my Leo back up my photos to all my devices and you can choose [02:00:00] thumbnails, optimized or originals. So smaller devices like my iPhone, I use thumbnails, but then if you want the full photo, you just click on it and you can edit the full photo, download it and edit it. And then I have it all backing up to a Sonology nas, my own cloud. So I've got all of my photos and I don't have to worry about privacy plus and here's a huge advantage. You may say, well, yeah, but I like how Google photos or Apple photos [02:00:30] picks faces and places. No, my LEO photos has AI built in and does it on device and does a really good job.
(02:00:38):
I now have over 200,000 photos in my library on my LEO photos. I've heard of people literally with millions, no problem at all. Automatically I have to tell it. Okay, that's Lisa, that's Michael, that's Andy. And after I tell it a few, it then goes through all my photos. It does a brilliant job of finding everybody's faces so they're all tagged. It also does smart [02:01:00] tagging with all kinds of variables, monuments and oceans and seashores and it's incredible smart tags make all your photos searchable. You don't have to spend time tagging, organizing the folders. Everything is organized automatically for specific objects, activities, animals, plants. You can say Blue, I want to see all my photos with a lot of blue, smart tags is brilliant. And because [02:01:30] it works with your existing filing system, Mac, iOS, Android, windows, you don't have to spend time importing. I told her to keep a track of my get all the flicker photos here was a huge one. I knew I had stuff on my Google photos that I didn't have locally. I did a Google takeout. It automatically imported and I've done this manually before and it's a pain. This did, it automatically imported all of my Google photos and then it has an incredible d duplicator, so I was able to remove those duplicates and just [02:02:00] find the stuff that was only on Google Photos. It's incredible. This is an app you want and you know what? I just buried the lead because it's free.
(02:02:10):
Yeah, don't wait. Preserve your digital legacy today. Go right now, m y l i.com/twit. Try myo photos free on your computer and mobile device. I actually added my documents folder too, and it ports PDFs, it does O C r, so it's even tagging the documents. It can read Microsoft Word documents. It can read a whole host of [02:02:30] document formats and on the images it does O C R on the PDFs, it does ocr, optical character recognition. So I have the contents and I can organize it via contents with smart tagging. Now you may say, well cow, can it be free? They do have a plus plan of course, but everything I just described you can do in the free version, myo.com/twit, M Y L io.com/twit. At least try it for free. My photos, m y l io.com/twit. [02:03:00] If you have been saying, I need a way to keep all this stuff organized, I found it and it's incredible and it's completely, this is maybe more important to me than others, but it's completely cross-platform.
(02:03:11):
So Android, yep. iOS. Yep. Windows Mac, yep. It's really incredible. M Y L io.com/twitter. We thank them for their support. There's an example of a company that wants to reach our community. They know that you especially are going to have some interest in this, and so they didn't have to [02:03:30] do all that. Well, I want 24 year old men in Fresno. They don't care about that. They want Mac Break Weekly listeners, my leo.com/twitter. Thank you my Leo, we appreciate your support for what we do here at Mac Break Weekly. Alright, let us talk about our picks of the week, and Jason, you've got one I want to lead off with because it's really important,
Jason Snell (02:03:56):
Right? Yeah. We already mentioned the guys at Relay FM in other [02:04:00] ways, Steven Hackett and Mike Hurley in this episode, so I thought we might as well just jump right into it. September is child Cancer Awareness month and every year the guys at Relay fm, they campaign to get donations to raise money for St. Jude Research Hospital, which treats children with cancer for free and also funds a lot of research into childhood cancer, trying to find cures for [02:04:30] diseases. Steven's oldest son is a cancer survivor and was treated at St. Jude and they have raised a couple of million bucks in the last few years for St. Jude. They've got a goal here that they're going to blow through, and then they'll set a new goal, but they have raised a lot of money for St. Jude. It's a great cause and if you would like to join, you can get some stickers.
(02:04:53):
You can get a screensaver written by James Thompson. There's all sorts of things that are in the package there, but it's going to be happening [02:05:00] for the next month. They'll do a telethon at one point for 12 hours. That's happening. I'm going to actually fly to Memphis, Tennessee and be on that telephone. Lots of stuff going on. Relay fm slash st. Jude, or if you prefer st jude.org/relay, either one will get you there, but please consider donating to St. Jude and doing it under the banner of Relay FM is a great time to do it too.
Leo Laporte (02:05:25):
That's really awesome. That was the inspiration for our New Year's [02:05:30] Eve benefit where we raise money for unicef, but boy, I realize how hard it is to raise money. I think we raised 75,000, something like that over a 24 hour period. It's hard work, and to raise 2.2 million over the years is very impressive for a very good cause. So good. I'm glad we could give them a plug. Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, it reminds me we should probably be doing something like that ourselves. [02:06:00] Relay FM for St. Jude. Just go to what's the easiest? U r
Jason Snell (02:06:06):
Relay FM slash st.
Leo Laporte (02:06:08):
Jude S T J U D E. Yep. Mr. Andy and KO your pick of the week.
Andy Ihnatko (02:06:17):
I read comics. I have of course the comicology app. I even suck
Leo Laporte (02:06:21):
A comicology, such a shame animation, but okay.
Andy Ihnatko (02:06:23):
All right. No, no.
Leo Laporte (02:06:24):
Hello, my name is Andy and I'm a comic book reader. I know
Andy Ihnatko (02:06:29):
It depends [02:06:30] on whether you have a positive reaction to the Crack Cohen of Corpse revival protocols. If you're hip with it and you like it, then we don't have anything to talk about. If you think it's a travesty, sit down. Let's have a kish. We'll talk about it. But not everything that I read is on Comicology. Like the stuff you buy every week on Marvel in DC and the major publishers, A lot of times I back a Kickstarter and they give you the reward in the form of a digital comic, or you go to all kinds of places [02:07:00] like archive.org where published domain comics like the original Plastic Man comics, police comics, originals the spirit, or in many cases, independent comics from the eighties that I used to enjoy that just simply disappeared, but someone has scanned them in and collected them and turned them into standard CBR C BZ or P D F files. So my pick this week is an app called Panels, which is a beautiful comic book reader for iOS for both the iPhone and for the iPad.
(02:07:30):
[02:07:30] Actually, the three things that needs to do well, it does extremely well. The reading is really, really good. It's because you can't, even if it's a P D F, you can't have open something in iBooks and have the same sort of experience. You'll have a comic book is read in a special way that is not going to be read, not be read like any other kind of book. So you need to be able to go from panel to panel. Sometimes the artwork is really detailed and nice and you want to kind of zoom [02:08:00] in and stuff like that. So the reading experience is exceptional. The organization experience is also exceptional. It's very, very easy to group all of these individual comic book files into, Hey, here's a series of action action girls, Sarah Dyer's, really amazing independent comic from the 1980s, and keep track of the things that you've read, things that you were in the middle of.
(02:08:21):
You have widgets on the lock screen to get right back into the thing that you're reading. But the third part of it is really, and we were just talking about this earlier, [02:08:30] the difficulty or non difficulty of getting these files on the device to begin with, and if there's any way that humanity or God has and has created that you can put a comic book file on the iPad panels will support it. So for instance, the bulk of my digital comics, I just simply plug it into my desktop via U S B and then simply drag the files into there. It just simply, they populate. You can watch 'em populating on the screen as [02:09:00] you go, and then you can simply organize 'em there. It'll work with the Files app. So any app that's compatible with files like Dropbox, Google Drive, an attached storage device that will work just fine, or a method that was very, very popular at the very, very beginning of life with iPad, which is okay, apple has made things so hard.
(02:09:21):
We're going to include code that just basically turns this app your iPad into a web server. So you can just hear, it'll just give you a web address on the local [02:09:30] network that if you open this up in a web browser on your desktop, then you can use that to transfer files from one place to another. That's cool. Yeah, I've never been in a position where I was not able to copy something over, and it's also, it's not a stickler for format. There have been times where it's not even a comic book, it's just that there is a web comic that I like so much that I just sort of right click and save to a folder, and if I just simply zip that folder and copy it into panels, it will basically [02:10:00] let me read those strips day by day. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, really, really well done.
(02:10:05):
And there are two different ways to buy it. You can buy it on subscription by, which means you get the latest version as they come out. Right now they're on version number two. Version three is imminent, or you can buy it outright for 20 bucks. But the thing is, I bought version two like a couple of years ago. Now I'm going to have to buy version three for 20 bucks. Your choice. But yeah, it really is exceptional and there isn't enough [02:10:30] time to get into the second part of this, which would be, there are places on archive.org where again, there are places where you can get either public domain or abandoned comics, so to speak. And some of these are the most entertaining things that have ever been done. And when it's a comic like Action Girl, where I'm sure that this wasn't done with, it wasn't put on archive.org necessarily with the permission of Sarah Dyer, however, it's not in print.
(02:10:56):
It hasn't been in print in 20 or 30 years. If she [02:11:00] were to produce her own digital version of it, I would immediately buy it and then also give her an extra 50 bucks in her tip jar for how good this comic was. But this is a way for those abandoned comics out of print comics to still have a life, to still have an audience, to still have somebody on a podcast saying, Hey, there's this comic called Action Girl, women doing all the art, women doing all the writing, women as the editor-in-chief and the publisher and the colorist, and they're just interesting points of view and interesting stories with interesting characters. There's a lot of panels,
Leo Laporte (02:11:30):
[02:11:30] A lot of C B R C B Z files on internet.org. I was just wondering if they had Calvin and Hobbs. I bought the hardcover complete Calvin and Hobbs, but I don't have a CBR version, but I could get it from internet org. Don't do it unless you bought it then that's not
Andy Ihnatko (02:11:47):
Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, that's not the long conversation that we can't have. We don't have time for. But yeah, there, there's some times where there's something that's never been made digital. However, I have bought it, I [02:12:00] purchased it, that's has individual issues, and then I purchased it a second time as a hardcover collection, and I don't feel so bad if I happen to cross that. Oh, by the way, someone also scanned in that hardcover so that I can have it on my, I don't necessarily feel as though I have to spend $40 to buy a digital version on Comicology and stuff. I already bought it twice, for God's sakes. Did you
Leo Laporte (02:12:19):
Read the profile of Bill Waterston in the American Conservative? Fascinating. What was this? Recently? He's got a book coming out, which is not a Calvin [02:12:30] and Hobbes book, but he talks about why he retired and it sounds like he was literally killing himself making this comic strip. He said at one point I lost my lead time and I was the night before it was due writing these comic strips, and he said my entire life was consumed by it and he had to stop. It's really worth reading. It's a weird place to find a profile of Bill Waterston, but it's a fascinating [02:13:00] story, and I imagine we're going to see more of him because he is promoting this new book. So maybe that's why it happened, why Bill Waterston vanished.
Andy Ihnatko (02:13:13):
He left behind something magnificent. He did.
Leo Laporte (02:13:16):
He did. It almost killed him making it. It almost kills me that I had to read it in a publication that has R F K Jr on its front cover, but that's another story for another day. It is worth reading the article, and [02:13:30] I am still a huge Calvin Hobbes fan, so if you're curious what happened to Bill Waterston, very interesting piece on him, and I think that would be a good reason for me to get this panels just so I can have the complete Calvin Hobbes on my iPad mini. Now I'm happy Mr. Steven Robles. We don't normally make our visitors do all the hard heavy lifting of a pick. It [02:14:00] looks like you got one.
Stephen Robles (02:14:02):
I do. I am cheating a little bit. I'm doing kind of a trifecta of picks, but it's one workflow and every day someone's born who hasn't seen the Flintstones, and so I want to share about a couple apps what that maybe people
Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
Havent heard of. No,
Stephen Robles (02:14:15):
That's true. So the first app is Downy, which is an incredible app by Charlie Monroe. Software
Leo Laporte (02:14:22):
Have,
Stephen Robles (02:14:22):
Yeah, must have. You can download any internet video app. I don't want to say specific websites. Sometimes you get in trouble, but anyway, that's
Leo Laporte (02:14:30):
[02:14:30] How I get all the audio of those YouTube videos. I'm just saying, right.
Stephen Robles (02:14:34):
Well, I didn't want to say it, but you said it so you could download, but also if there's a news website that you need to pull a video from for whatever you're using that video for Downie, it even has an in-app web browser where you could actually log into a website and actually download videos behind a login. So it's pretty amazing. So Downey's amazing, but I use that in conjunction with an app called Transload, and this is an app that you run on your iPhone or iPad, and then there's [02:15:00] a utility that runs on your Mac, and what you can do is from your iPhone share a link. It's right in the share sheet, and I can send a link to Transload, which transports it to translator on my Mac and Transload on my Mac can then send that link to Downy. So as you can see, the workflow might be you're looking at a video on your phone, maybe you're even in an app that plays video. I hit the share button on my iPhone. I hit Trans Loader and it sends that link to my Mac, which automatically sends it to Downey, [02:15:30] and Downey automatically downloads it and saves that file wherever I choose. And so if you choose, say your desktop, which syncs with iCloud Drive, I could literally have an internet video available to me on my iPhone in my files app and iCloud Drive in just a few seconds.
Leo Laporte (02:15:46):
How'd you hook it up to Downey? Is that built into Transload or do you have to write a script? It's built in.
Stephen Robles (02:15:50):
It's built in. No, it's built in. There's no scripting involved. It's very easy to connect the two, and so I do all of that. And then one final [02:16:00] piece of the trifecta, if you want to go this far, I actually use an app called Hazel I love, which is Utility on the Mac, which Hazel's amazing and can automatically move files based on rules and folders. So what I have it do is any MP four video that hits my desktop or downloads folder gets moved to a folder on my Plex server. Oh
Leo Laporte (02:16:22):
My God. God.
Stephen Robles (02:16:23):
As you can see, the workflow might be I'm watching a video on my phone. I tap Transload, sends it to Translator my Mac, which sends [02:16:30] it to Downey, Downey downloads that video file, saves it to my Mac. Then Hazel takes that video file and moves it over to a folder in my Plex server, and now I can stream it on my Plex account in just a few seconds. And that's the workflow from front to back.
Leo Laporte (02:16:43):
That's so cool. So you're looking at something on your iPhone, press a button and now it's on your Plex server and you can watch it on the big screen sometime at your leisure.
Stephen Robles (02:16:51):
Exactly. And I do that again, I have kids and they have varying levels of abilities and restrictions on their devices, and so maybe there's a YouTube video I want them to see, [02:17:00] but they don't have access to just browse YouTube at wim. And so I will use Transload and Downy and now they can stream it in Plex on their iPad just a few seconds after I saw it on my phone. And it's not like they need any more access, they're just watching it from our Plex server running into my closet. So that's the workflow.
Leo Laporte (02:17:19):
Very nice, very nice. You know, this is how our pic should be from now on, not just a simple app, but a share a workflow. I think that's really good. Yeah,
Stephen Robles (02:17:30):
[02:17:30] Thank you. Thank you.
Andy Ihnatko (02:17:31):
No, that's fun. That's amazing, particularly because you're actioning this from a phone that has limited and expensive bandwidth. You're basically commanding, Hey, let's you the computer at home that's doing nothing that's connected to gigabit internet. You do the downloading of this, then you do the transcoding of this, and then Yeah, that is really, I kind want to do this just to do it.
Leo Laporte (02:17:55):
Don't think I'd be using it a lot, but that's the thing. It's cool. You can do it. Yeah,
Stephen Robles (02:18:00):
[02:18:00] It's cool. And I have her just running on a Mac mini sitting in a closet and downing are just always open and sometimes one of my sons plays Rocket League, which is like a video game or whatever, and there's very long tournaments that are like three hours long and I don't want to tie up my Mac studio doing it. I don't want to sit around waiting for anything. So I'll just send the link to this three hour Rocket League video with Transload to Downey, and then it's going to download and move it as it does, and then a couple minutes later, this three hour video in Plex and I didn't really have to do much.
Leo Laporte (02:18:30):
[02:18:30] And the reason by the way, you have to do that besides the bandwidth is the iPhone and the iPad don't allow you to install stuff like Downey. So this is perfect example of a workaround. The share sheet is really maybe the single most powerful workaround on iOS is the share sheet.
Stephen Robles (02:18:48):
I'll head off a bunch of comments you might get too because there supposedly are shortcuts that allow you to do things like download a YouTube video, but I find that they break soon after they are useful. Oh, I wonder
Leo Laporte (02:18:59):
Why.
Stephen Robles (02:19:00):
[02:19:00] Obviously YouTube does not want you doing this, and so a lot of those shortcuts I find that just don't work for very long and they break, and so Downey has been just a rock solid tool for me on that
Andy Ihnatko (02:19:10):
Absolutely double underscore support for that. It's Downey is bulletproof and anytime you've got any content that you want to keep for whatever reason, it's worth pasting the U R L into the box. Even when people post art on Instagram that I just want to save a copy of, just simply pop that out there. The [02:19:30] list of URLs, domains that it can basically find media from and remove it from are amazing, and if it can't find it automatically, it has a guided extraction mode where you say, okay, well here's a Firefox compatible like web browser window. Just do what you got to do. And in the sidebars here is a list of all of the MP four files that are being accessed and streamed. I think that's it. Then click it and then, oh, great. It's 1.8 gigabytes. I think that's the movie that I wanted to get. Yes,
Stephen Robles (02:20:00):
[02:20:00] And you can force MP four format in Downey, so it's going to download a compatible video format, and Downey works with shortcuts, and so I actually have, if I ever need to download a podcast episode from some r s s from shows that I manage, then I actually have a shortcut where little menu comes up, I click the show I'm talking about, and that shortcut sends the latest episode, MP three link to Downey and Downey downloads that audio file as well. It's just really
Andy Ihnatko (02:20:23):
Powerful. The number of times where there's been two and a half hours of Senate testimony or whatever, or [02:20:30] a presentation that lasts an hour and a half, it's like, I just need a transcript of this. The easiest thing is just why don't just have Downey grab this audio, then send the audio to an app that will simply do a speech to text, and then 10 minutes later I've got the audio instead of having to listen to. I'm reminded of a funny story about protein folding. It seems as though an amino acid walked, oh God,
Leo Laporte (02:20:55):
Actually this is a good reason that everyone should have a Max Studio on their desk [02:21:00] running all the time.
Stephen Robles (02:21:02):
That's right, max. You can do a Mac Mini. You could be a Mac mini. That's totally fine. Yeah, M two Pro.
Leo Laporte (02:21:06):
Also, my Mac Studio studio is a server in a lot of different respects and it's always running. I don't shut it off, and so it's always nice to have that, and if it's running on an M two or an M one, it's not using a lot of horsepower power and it's a great thing. I use Aires, I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. Aires is a server I can run on my Mac that hooks itself into Apple's messages [02:21:30] and then serves it up to my Android devices and other devices, so in fact, it is Aires now supports on Android can be the s m s app on Android, so my Android devices actually have Apple messages and S M s is my full messaging.
Andy Ihnatko (02:21:46):
Again, again, the difference between Android and iOS, it's like, no, we don't support this ourselves, but hey, if you want to come together, if you want to create some sort of Rube Goldberg system to make it work, third party developers, we're not going to stand in [02:22:00] your way. It
Leo Laporte (02:22:00):
Seems a little Rube Goldberg, but it works for, well, it works
Stephen Robles (02:22:03):
Pretty well. That's not encrypted, right? I don't imagine air messages you get encryption.
Leo Laporte (02:22:09):
No. Yeah, I mean, well actually you would if you send, so yeah, I guess you would because Apple's encrypting it on their end, so yeah, all it is is sitting on the Mac studio where it's unlocked on the Mac reading it, and it sucks that into the in transit. Is it encrypted? [02:22:30] Probably not. No, no, through the air message it's probably not, but I don't know. That's a good question. I have a password and it uses your Google account as the login, so you don't have to do it. Does that translation, have you used it, Annie? Do you use it?
Andy Ihnatko (02:22:45):
I tried it. I don't have a real use for it, but I set it up and tried it. I know you're
Leo Laporte (02:22:50):
An Android user, I thought. Yeah,
Andy Ihnatko (02:22:51):
Exactly, and it's easier to have one less layer, one less thing to go wrong. It did work for the week, week or two [02:23:00] that I tried it and was working okay. I was just worried about what happens when the transport changes a little bit and suddenly I don't know why I'm sending things but not getting replies back and it's because, oh, because I decided to do something clever. No,
Leo Laporte (02:23:15):
It is an open source project. It's free air message.org, so I know it's not doing anything itself nefarious and my messages aren't going through its server. They're going directly from my Mac to the [02:23:30] Android device, so I think it's okay.
Andy Ihnatko (02:23:33):
Yeah, I mean it's a simple bridge really. When you get down to it and it works, there's
Leo Laporte (02:23:37):
Really well, much better than beeper because beeper, they actually are running a Mac in their an iPhone in their server room, and you have to let beeper get your messages this way. It just goes through the internet to my phone, little
Andy Ihnatko (02:23:54):
Robot arm with a car. It
Leo Laporte (02:23:55):
Solves the problem though. If you want to use an Android device and you're in an Apple ecosystem, [02:24:00] really,
Andy Ihnatko (02:24:02):
Because I mean really it's really too much to ask for Apple to support an international standard that's run on the majority of all the phones out there, that if Offerer secure transportation messaging one way to another, it makes more sense that we put ourselves through this, that you're absolutely
Leo Laporte (02:24:16):
Right. Apple actually
Andy Ihnatko (02:24:18):
And your ground
Leo Laporte (02:24:18):
Fuer, who is the creator of Error Message, actually has an open letter to Apple saying, please free iMessage check please. It deserves to be open, but meanwhile we got this kind of [02:24:30] weird hacky workaround, but again, now I don't mind installing. I've got this Mac just running in the background all the time, and now I can use Transload as an additional thing on that, so thank you, Steven. Thank you for being here. Now, I didn't mention the reason Steven's here is Alex took the day off. He's busy working. He will be, as I understand it, he'll be back next week, but Steven, thank you so much for filling in. You have a hurricane coming your way with some crazy name Ira [02:25:00] or something?
Stephen Robles (02:25:01):
Oh, I don't even know now.
Leo Laporte (02:25:04):
I Ilia. They got weird names now.
Stephen Robles (02:25:08):
Ilia. Yeah, so any other might be coming tonight until tomorrow, but it should be,
Leo Laporte (02:25:11):
Looks like it's going to go north of you a little bit, so
Stephen Robles (02:25:14):
It's north of me and in Florida we just have hurricane party.
Leo Laporte (02:25:17):
You just used to this worry about it. No big. Yes, no big
Stephen Robles (02:25:20):
Deal. It was a pleasure being here. Thanks for me on again.
Leo Laporte (02:25:23):
Good. We love having you on. We'll have you back soon. Steven Robles. It works for a variety of different places, [02:25:30] apple and Cider, of course, but the best thing to do is go to Beard fm. That's it, because you can find out more about his beard. No, because he's the bearded teacher and he teaches you everything you need to know from his evil layer in Tampa, Florida. He does podcasts and evil. I dunno if it's evil. It's a side of a mountain. It could be evil. I don't know. No, I'm kidding.
Stephen Robles (02:25:56):
No mountains. No mountains in Florida.
Leo Laporte (02:25:57):
Florida. No mountains in Florida.
Stephen Robles (02:25:58):
I can't have, no, if you try [02:26:00] to have a cave, it's just underwater. That's That's why there's no villains in Florida. No villains. You can't have a secret
Leo Laporte (02:26:05):
Cave. There are no villains in Florida. See, I didn't even know that. That's true. Beard fm. Thank you, Steven. You're the best. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank Andy and aco, when are you going to be on G B H next?
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:16):
I'm going to be on next Friday at the Boston Public Library at 1230 in the afternoon. Come on down and watch me. What I imagine a respectable geek who's going to be on YouTube will dress like That's it. I assure [02:26:30] you. It's going to be very, very funny. It's also going to be on the Grey Matter podcasts live on.
Leo Laporte (02:26:36):
That's Alex's podcast with the wonderful Michael. Oh, that's exciting.
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:42):
It's going to be fun. You can listen. I think it does a stream live. This is the first time I've been doing it.
Leo Laporte (02:26:49):
I don't think, well, he didn't when I did it, but I think that that was the plan eventually,
Andy Ihnatko (02:26:55):
But I believe it's going to be one episode 49, episode 50, so we're recording on Friday. It'll probably [02:27:00] be the week after
Leo Laporte (02:27:00):
That and you'll really enjoy it. It's a great podcast to listen to. Anyway, he has some of the best people on because for years he was the host of a forum on K Q E D, our public radio station in San Francisco, so he has a really good Rolodex. I'm glad that they got to the eyes so that we can get Andy and Gray Matter on any podcast client that you like. Good. Well, I'll listen to that. I can't wait. Yeah, I don't think they do it live but today, but you could certainly hear it after the fact. [02:27:30] Thank you, Andrew. Mr. Jason Snell has a few podcasts himself. You'll find out about everything. He's up to at six colors.com/jason. When is the Memphis telethon?
Jason Snell (02:27:43):
Memphis telethon is later in September. I think it's the 22nd I want to say. Yeah, and all
Leo Laporte (02:27:51):
The F
Jason Snell (02:27:53):
Midnight Eastern.
Leo Laporte (02:27:53):
Will all the Relay FM people show up for that? That'll be a sign.
Jason Snell (02:27:56):
I think there are only four of us who are going to be there in person. I've never actually been on [02:28:00] the telethon in person before, but we get a lot of people come in over Zoom or there are prerecorded things, so you'll end up seeing and hearing from most of the hosts during the event. They got 12 hours to fill. I mean, anybody you want to turn up, anybody who turns up will probably be able to be honest at some point during the 12 hours that they're podcast podcasting.
Leo Laporte (02:28:20):
Isn't Mike in the uk?
Jason Snell (02:28:22):
Stevens in Memphis and St. Jude is in Memphis, and St. Jude actually has own the fundraising arm of St. Jude has its own studio for [02:28:30] stuff like this.
Leo Laporte (02:28:31):
Perfect. Perfect. That's great. Again, six colors.com/jason. Thank you. Always great to see you. Thank you, Jason. At least one of us got an invite to the Apple event. We do a Mac Break weekly every Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 utc. You can watch us do it live at live twit tv. There's actually audio and video so you can watch or listen live if you're watching or listening chat at IRC twit tv. [02:29:00] The IRC only makes sense if you're doing it live. That's why we do it live, so you can join us. IRC twit tv. You don't need an IRC client. You can use your browser to do that, and of course, club twit members can use our Club twit Discord to chat about the show as it goes on after the fact. We have edited versions of the show, not lightly, very lightly edited versions of the show at our website, twit tv slash mw.
(02:29:24):
There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Mac Break Weekly, and of course the best way to get it, subscribe. [02:29:30] You can subscribe to the audio or the video feed in your favorite podcast player. You'll get it automatically that way. We will be back next week, and again, we will be doing a live stream of the event on Tuesday, which I guess means we'll have a slightly delayed Mac Break weekly. We'll do one right after September 12th, two weeks from today, the Apple iPhone 15 event. That should be fun. Thanks for joining us, but now it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you it's time to get back to work [02:30:00] because break time is over. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.
Scott Wilkinson (02:30:06):
Hey there. Scott Wilkinson here In Case you hadn't heard, home Theater Geeks is Back. Each week, I bring you the latest audio, video news, tips and tricks to get the most out of your AV system product reviews and more you can enjoy Home Theater Geeks only if you're a member of Club twi, which costs seven bucks a month, or you can subscribe to Home Theater [02:30:30] Geeks by itself for only 2 99 a month. I hope you'll join me for a weekly dose of home theater Geek.
