MacBreak Weekly 899 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 Cyber Mac Break Weekly. Andy's here. Alex is here. Jason's here. We're all here. And of course there's lots to talk about. Beeper minis back the on and off again. Saga continues. iOS 17.2 is out. Some big changes. We'll take a look at that new journal app. I'm pretty impressed. Also changes to Apple tv. All coming up next on Mac Break. Weekly podcasts you love

Jason Snell (00:00:27):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:29):
This is twit.

(00:00:34):
This is Mac Break. Weekly episode 899. Recorded Tuesday, December 12th, 2023. Which way to the bathrooms. This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by our friends at IT pro TV now called ACI Learning. Keep your IT team skills up with the speed of technology visit Go dot ACI learning.com/twit twit listeners, your discounts could be up to 65% off an IT Pro enterprise solution plan, but it depends on the size of your team. So fill out the form and find out how much you'll save@go.acilearning.com slash twit and buy express vpn. Protect your data and identity every time you go online with a number one rated VPN provider. Get their special holiday offer right now, three extra months of express VPN for free with a one year package. Go to express vpn.com/mac break to learn more. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show. We cover the latest Apple News with our wonderful Apple Friends. Hello Apple friends. Andy Anco from WJ BH in Boston wearing his Pixar cap, his traditional 12th day of December. Pixar Cap. Yes. Did you get an advent calendar of caps?

Andy Ihnatko (00:01:59):
Actually I did get a couple of advent calendars that I'm enjoying very much. It's nice to have this little, we just never get over the idea of just enjoying opening a little compartment and not knowing what's going to be behind there. Even if it's a tiny little piece of chocolate, if it's a little piece of Lego,

Leo Laporte (00:02:14):
It's great. Lego's a good one. I gave my son a hot sauce Advent calendar a couple of years ago. Alex Lindsay, who probably has his own specially branded office hours global Advent calendar. Hello, Alex. My

Jason Snell (00:02:27):
Mother sends one. I We got chocolate, I think chocolate. I don't know which chocolate but C you go chocolate.

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
Chocolate chocolate's. Always safe. Thank you. Welcome. And Jason Snell, who's in Studio B today.

Jason Snell (00:02:40):
Studio B. Yeah, I'm in the back of the house today due to some technical difficulties in my garage. It's okay. Nothing's on fire actually. Did it get flooded? It's possible that my Mac studio, SSD may be on fire. I am reinstalling and we'll see what happens, but I'm back here

Leo Laporte (00:02:57):
Instead. Yikes. Well, I hope everything's okay.

Jason Snell (00:03:00):
It's much warmer in the house quite honestly, so this

Leo Laporte (00:03:03):
Is very fy. The garage is chilly. See,

Andy Ihnatko (00:03:06):
That's why Jason is such a professional top of the grade podcaster. He understands the concept of the ticking clock. It keeps people glued for the entire show. Will there be smoke billowing from the left-hand side of his frame? We

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
Don't know. We never know going to have that's exciting. Have to sit and find out. It's exciting. The reason why I'm got Advent calendars on the mind, by the way, GRE Rebel in our discord says he wants the Prozac Advent calendar. They don't make that because it would be the same thing every day or maybe an increasing dose every day, which is probably not a good idea, but there is a pharmacological Advent calendar which has a variety of SSRIs in easy to consume form. Actually this is the one you want. Somebody sent me unnamed, so whoever you are, thank you. The Whiskey Advent Calendar Explorers edition 25 drs. I'm going to give this to, we'll do this with Richard Campbell tomorrow. I'll ask him to tell us what's in here. Maybe he said it, I don't know. Anyway, happy holidays everyone. This is episode 8 99 as Jason Snell whose math is excellent. Pointed out next week, our last episode of the year on December 19th will be episode 900.

Jason Snell (00:04:20):
Amazing.

Leo Laporte (00:04:22):
I can add

Jason Snell (00:04:23):
One to another and

Leo Laporte (00:04:24):
900 your math's amazing. What's amazing to me is that way back when we started this show and what is it, 2007, we planned it out so well that we would be someday in 2007. The year 2024 sounded like Sci-Fi and yet here we are.

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:47):
They just, whatever government agency sponsored it is now unveiled the logo for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And I remember barely what it was like at the bicentennial in 1976 thinking that, oh my God, how old am I going to be in the 200 flower? That's

Leo Laporte (00:05:09):
Just 2026. It's going to be, that's like two years from now. It was hard to imagine

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:15):
It was playing the party already. Hope someone book the room for

Leo Laporte (00:05:18):
This. Well, apparently the Library of Congress has planned our invitation to use Celebrate America's 250th anniversary. They're getting ready already. They've got the deck right there. We call it the deck.

Jason Snell (00:05:33):
I hope we make it, hope

Leo Laporte (00:05:35):
We make it. You never know what'll happen in the next couple of years. We

Jason Snell (00:05:38):
Call it a floor. I call it deck.

Leo Laporte (00:05:41):
Call it a deck. I call it deck. So I think we're going to rename this show at least for the next couple of weeks, this week in beeper Mini, the Beeper's back beeper

Jason Snell (00:05:52):
Mini weekly, right? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:55):
BMWW. Oh, I like it. I always wanted one of those. This is the return of Beeper Mini and I found out, I guess it was yesterday, maybe the day before because all of a sudden my Mac said, Hey, another phone has joined. Joined. And I went, what? That was the same thing I heard when I first signed up for Beeper Mini. So it just kind of automatically worked. Again, the workaround, it's only a matter of time before Apple puts the kibosh on it. Again, the workaround was apparently not doing the phone number but doing your email login.

Andy Ihnatko (00:06:31):
Go ahead. The beef was that, oh, well Beeper Mini is falsifying a device ID and we can't have that, which is completely within Apple's purview. I don't think Apple has a responsibility to keep beeper mini working or to allow No, of course not other devices on iMessage, but it's, it's going to be fun that the fact that this was shut down so quickly, it meant that that was something that was going to be very easy for Apple to shut down. Like that trick and what's happens in the next two or three or four weeks or a couple of months to see as they grind, if they can shut down this version of it, which doesn't use FALs, okay, not falsified, falsified device IDs, can they make a version of this that works with just the email login and then can Apple shut down non-Apple devices that are using the email login?

(00:07:22):
And I think that where the rubber meets the road is two or three months from now when it becomes both sides. Here's how much work we're going to have to do to win this war and is it worth it? But as I said, I was pretty excited about BER mini last week. I love a good rhubarb, but as I said last week, this becomes a lot less relevant if Apple delivers on its promise to deliver R css. If RCS arrives and iMessage and all Android users get most of what they would want from iMessage anyway, beeper mini kind of becomes irrelevant.

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
We kind of nailed it last week. It had just come out the morning of last episode and I think we kind of nailed it where we said the question is can Apple turn it off? And then the question is how many people will adopt it? Apple clearly took it seriously because it became almost instantly the number one downloaded app in the Android Play store, so at least a hundred thousand people. Okay, that's getting serious. And then the question was, well, will Apple risk the regulatory heat if they block it? They were willing to so they could and they did, and they're getting the regulatory heat. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote them a sternly worded email or at least a tweet. I don't think she has a leg to stand on. And also you, I think Jason speculated that if Apple did turn it off, they would turn it off on the grounds of security.

(00:08:51):
In fact, that's exactly what happened. Here's Apple's statement, Nadine Haja, according to the Verge at Apple, we build our products and services with industry leading privacy and security technologies designed to give users control of their data and keep personal information safe. We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials. The fake credential in question is the phone number of your Android phone. It made it look like an iPhone in order to gain access to iMessage. These techniques pose significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam and phishing attacks. We'll continue to make updates in the future to protect our users. Now, some of that's not going to be the case if you're using a legitimate Apple account email, right? Because spammers phishing attacks, are they going to create an Apple account? And even if they do, that's easy to turn it off quickly, so that's eliminated by this technique. Metadata exposure, I don't know. I guess so. I don't know if that's being exposed then it's exposed to everybody uses messages.

Alex Lindsay (00:10:03):
I think Apple's just going to back into, you're saying you're something you're not. We're not going to let that happen. I think it doesn't really matter what the little linkage is and everything I talking, if you're talking to Apple's building RCS, it's going to be a green bubble. It's going to say you're not in the Mac ecosystem and Apple's not going to, I don't think apples, I mean I think we can try to go through and check off all the little boxes, but the bottom line is that you are misrepresenting your device.

Leo Laporte (00:10:29):
Well, one other thing

Alex Lindsay (00:10:30):
Apple's just going to get into, that's where Apple's going to kind of draw the line. I think

Leo Laporte (00:10:34):
One other thing that probably pissed the hell out of apples, they were charging $2 a month for it. I

Alex Lindsay (00:10:39):
Don't think

Leo Laporte (00:10:40):
Beers now said we're not going to, it's free because we can't really charge you for something that's up and down and up and down

Alex Lindsay (00:10:46):
And it's never going to be up for very long, and I think it's more of Apple just making sure that people are clear this is not going to be place. You can't raise money against representing yourself as something that you're not. Don't. If you're an investor, here's welcome to Apple. That's what they really need is to make sure that investors don't go, oh, this is a good business idea. Let's put a million dollars into that. And so just what happened over this last week kind of ensures that not BPA may continue to flail around with this until RCS comes out, but they're never going to turn it into a business.

Andy Ihnatko (00:11:21):
Yeah. Also, there was a report that eu, one of the things that we were speculating about or me too last week was about how maybe if it turns out that this is going to be a difficult thing for Apple to shut down, apple might factor in that while we're arguing with the EU that iMessage is not a gatekeeper service and should not be subject to the Digital Markets Act. We can point to, oh well there's this third party tool be per mini that hey, we've decided to simply bless as an okay and acceptable thing. But there's a report that the EU hasn't made a decision, but that they've preliminarily decided that iMessage is not a gatekeeper service. So there goes another reason for this thing for Apple to not want to commit acts of stern rectitude against the beeper service.

Leo Laporte (00:12:09):
What about Elizabeth Warren's contention, Senator Warren tweeted Green bubble texts are less secure, which is an interesting thing to say. I'm sure Google wouldn't really appreciate that. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors. I don't really argue with that. Chatting between different platforms should be easy and secure. I completely agree with that and it is.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:40):
There are many apps you can use to do it.

Leo Laporte (00:12:42):
Yeah, fact, beaver Mini is just like using WhatsApp. It's not your default text messaging app. It isn't yet anyway. They might make it that way, but for right now on an Android device, it's just like opening a different messaging app.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:54):
But the question is that the default pre-installed blessed by Apple messaging app is not nearly as secure as it can be. The fact that

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
That you could do this is a problem. Right?

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:07):
Well, no, I'm sorry. I meant that the fact that if you're not going iMessage to iMessage, then Apple really doesn't care about the experience, even the experience you have on the iPhone, which is another reason why again, they're supporting RCS makes a lot of problems go away. And as I've always held, I think it was just petulant of them not to incorporate a way to make messaging more secure on the iMessage platform. Unless you want to make wave a magic wand and turn every single phone on the entire world into an iPhone, that was kind of a necessary step. I think Elizabeth Warren is of course is an antitrust hawk, which is one of the reasons why we love her. But this

Alex Lindsay (00:13:45):
Is in irrational one. In irrational,

Leo Laporte (00:13:47):
Yeah. Mean

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:49):
She makes a good point. Her

Alex Lindsay (00:13:49):
Kneejerk is like, I'm going to attack everything that a corporation does. That's just,

Leo Laporte (00:13:53):
That's

Alex Lindsay (00:13:53):
Necessarily, I will attack it all. I will attack it a lie. I will attack it all. Sometimes it makes sense. I mean sometimes she hits the mark, but about eight times out of 10 she does not.

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:01):
It's like, I would disagree with that. That's your

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
Reality, Alex. That's your political point of

Alex Lindsay (00:14:06):
View. Sure.

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:07):
But if any Senator was going to basically say that shutting down a very hacky but wonderful way of participating in iMessage for Android, it was going to be Senator Warren. I will say that

Leo Laporte (00:14:18):
Definitely. Or Bernie, I don't think Bernie knows how to use an I iPhone should go to

Alex Lindsay (00:14:25):
Corporation,

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:26):
But to everybody, but

Alex Lindsay (00:14:28):
I will agree that I will say that Bernie usually hits the mark a lot, lot more often than Elizabeth Warren. He tends to be a little bit more connected to reality. So yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:14:42):
Daring Fireball, John Gruber weighing in on this one saying good on them, making it free. It was irresponsible to charge a subscription fee for a service. They can't guarantee making it free should only help its popularity. But I think it's an open question. Gruber writes how much demand there is for this? Well, we know now. It in fact is one of the most downloaded apps on Android, so there's demand. What's interesting is, and I think that there's some confusion, I'm not sure Gruber says Beeper Cloud was relying on Mac relay servers prior to October, and I thought that was the case too. But Beeper has now said no, we're actually running on Linux servers in the cloud using this technique that beeper mini well

Jason Snell (00:15:29):
Since October.

Leo Laporte (00:15:30):
Oh, maybe that's the thing is they changed it in October. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:15:33):
They phrased it to make it sound like it was there forever, but it's since their October update.

Leo Laporte (00:15:36):
Okay. Yeah, so that's part, okay, that makes sense. So in fact, if Apple somehow finds a way to discontinue beeper mini, it would also affect the beeper cloud service. I guess I find it hard to recommend giving your Apple credentials to any third party period, but you're not doing that with Beaver Mini, right?

Jason Snell (00:15:57):
Right, exactly. That's the difference. That's why it's more relevant is that it's not one of these men in the middle trying to synthesize a thing, maybe using a Mac, maybe using some other techniques instead, it's just, yeah, it's running on your phone. It should, it's just emulating. Essentially what happened is that 16-year-old kid reverse engineered the authentication method in order to get the right tokens in order to register and send messages back and forth. And the question last week is still the question this week, which is beeper in their PR seemed to think they had cracked it, right? They were going to be essentially undetectable because they were using Apple systems that other iPhones use and obviously the phone number thing. Apple was able to figure out a way to shut that down and now we're in this game of cat and mouse, and the only thing that will determine how the game ends is really, and Apple knows the answer already, which is what methods are they using and what methods does Apple have at its disposal to change how it authenticates and does it break old iPhones when it does that? How much does it want to do here? But that's the part we don't know is have they sussed out everything Apple does for authentication, and this is where I'm leaning now, given what happened with the phone number authentication, they found a way they think that's the way, and Apple knows that it's actually just one permutation of a larger scheme that they have and they can move things around in order to break what may be a very brittle implementation on people's part,

Leo Laporte (00:17:35):
Right? We just don't know because we don't really know how it all works because Apple doesn't reveal that. I suspect I'm going to go out on a limb. I could be proven wrong in five minutes, but I suspect it's a little harder to block the email authentication. You're actually now logging in with your Apple account directly instead of registering a new number, a real Apple account. I think that might be harder to stop, but we'll see. It may not be. Yeah,

Jason Snell (00:18:01):
We don't know. I think the challenge is they have to detect a unique, I think every device that registers with iMessage has a unique ID and the PR about this from Beeper suggested that you can basically generate spoof a device id, a U id. It's how all the Macintosh's work, right? And that is one of those things that I thought, well, if you doint

Leo Laporte (00:18:26):
Check, doesn't that prove that what you could do, what beeper mini's doing?

Jason Snell (00:18:30):
Only in the sense that it hasn't written to the level where Apple wanted to do something to authenticate it. I just wonder about that. But there are probably all sorts of little pitfalls that Beeper doesn't know about that Apple does. But then again, maybe not, I mean, you never know. Maybe they have cracked the basics and Apple would have to invalidate a bunch of legitimate older iPhones. Let's say if they did this, I don't know,

Alex Lindsay (00:18:56):
But Apple could send something out to your older iPhone that says, Hey, you have to do this update to continue to get messages or whatever, and it would, it'd be inconvenient, but it doesn't sound like that Apple needed to do that in this case, and I think that Apple is most likely going to, they're going to support RCS, they're going to do it to probably minimum viable product. They'll support it, but they're not going to put everything that they can do in iMessages into RCS. But once they support RCS, I have a feeling that what that also gives them the opportunity to do is be pretty much iron fisted with everything else. It is going to be, Hey, we're going to do RCS and you might be able to do SMS to go backwards or whatever, and we're going to do iMessages and nobody else gets to do anything, and these are going to be green bubbles and these are going to be blue bubbles.

(00:19:39):
I think that, but look at all the, I expect a pretty big explosion of new features in iMessage at the next WWC that will not be in RCS. I think this will drive development of custom solutions in iMessage that, because again, apple is, they've got a hook on the 18 to below market, and I have a feeling they would like to continue to expand that because for either side, whatever you're in, when you're in high school, the chances of you changing are probably less than 10% after you leave high school. You know that you're going to move to another ecosystem. So I think they're going to try to hang on that.

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:17):
And if that's true, that's yet another indication that, gosh, nothing spurs innovation like competition and the threat of regulation. That's when they find that the time of the

Alex Lindsay (00:20:27):
Everybody for a while, they've been doing it for a while. I mean they put a lot into, I mean, yeah, no, I'm surprised. My kids know so much about when they pick up my phone and do stuff with iMessages, I don't even know. I can barely keep track of what they're doing with their fingers. It is, there's so much stuff going on. There's so many little features that Apple's added between all the different bits and pieces that don't really target us at all. It's really targeting an 18 below market. So they've been working on this for five to six

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:53):
Years, but again, they're not adopting RCS because they just suddenly came to Jesus. It's because they saw a lot of reasons why, okay, it is now becoming more difficult to not support it than to support it. So

Leo Laporte (00:21:05):
We're going to screw percent. You also make a really good point, Andy, which is that Apple falls back to a very insecure protocol SMS, and that's really not desirable. And Apple probably, I mean regardless of the EU adopting RCS makes a lot of sense because instead of using SMS to text an on iPhone, an inherently insecure protocol, I mean you don't have to trust me on this, just look it up, it will fall back to RCS, which is a secure protocol and you'll still have interoperability. So Apple should have done this no matter what the EU said, this is something Apple should do. If Apple says we stand for security and privacy, supporting RCS is a no brainer. In fact, this surprised me. They dug their heels in so much on this. And also Gruber says something important, which is that the iMessage protocol and the iMessage authentication, all that is secure.

(00:22:06):
Apple guarantees it. That's what beeper's using. So beeper isn't undermining that. What Beeper is adding to the mix is the fact that it's using an Android device. Grouper says his beeper mini storing, cached meshes content and attachments securely on device don't know is it transmitting privacy sensitive metadata back to beeper with those analytics which are on by default don't know beeper can and does vouch for the privacy and security of their client. In fact, in their latest blog posts, they say, we are going to offer this up to third party security folks and they can look at the source code so that we have that validation. So if they do that, then we'll know the protocol is secure. But Android's, as I've mentioned last week, are kind of inherently insecure and as he says, as I wrote yesterday, the existence of an unauthorized client on a supposedly closed platform creates a genuine perception problem for Apple. If Apple can't control a client's permitted to connect to iMessage, it looks like they've lost control of the platform and to some degree they have lost control over the iMessage platform and that's probably the strongest argument from internally, at least for Apple to fixing this to stopping beeper mini right, it should look like no one can do this. Is that right? Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:23:33):
And he also makes a good point that it's one thing to say, Hey, well iMessage is communicating with this device exactly the same way this communicating with any other iPhone. Therefore this is as secure as communicating with iMessage on an iPhone. Well, no, because it's not an iPhone. Exactly. Again, what happens to the data once it's on the device? Is it in a secure place where a piece of malware can't find it? And if someone is trusting that an iMessage is secure from end to end and that other end is kept secure, that is a super problem.

Leo Laporte (00:24:06):
Beeper says we deeply object. I object. So to the allegation the beman poses significant risks to user security and privacy. This is completely untrue as we explained above. The opposite is true. This I don't buy Beeper mini increases the security and privacy of both Android and iPhone customers. I guess to the extent that they're not using SMS to communicate That's true. And so they are saying, we're willing to share the entire beeper mini code base with a mutually agreed upon third party security research firm. That's not going to happen. Apple is never going to say, Hey, beeper mini, let's mutually agree. They're not going to talk to 'em. They also say, which is interesting, if Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper mini. That would make it easy for messages, apps to filter out messages from be per mini users. That's an interesting concession.

Alex Lindsay (00:25:07):
I guess if Apple Caress, if you're asking Apple to make a concession when they've got nothing to, they're

Leo Laporte (00:25:12):
Not going to even talk to 'em.

Alex Lindsay (00:25:14):
Apple's not even probably Apple's not even responding to their calls or their emails and it was like, Hey, why don't we turn this off? Click okay now. Okay, let's go back to our

Leo Laporte (00:25:22):
Regular. But again, I'd be very curious. I mean it's only been a day, but let's see if Apple can turn it off. I wonder if there maybe it's a little harder to do that with just an email login, the phone number maybe that you can say, is this an iPhone? No, that phone number's not an iPhone. But can you say, I mean it's a legit count now, although

Alex Lindsay (00:25:42):
It could take them a little longer, but any incursion including able, able off should, well, it improves security, so they're going to make an incursion. It's not going to make that much of a difference and Apple will build something over between now and June that will make it impervious and all the things that they did to do this will be all those windows will be covered with concrete by the time we get to the next

Andy Ihnatko (00:26:04):
Os.

Leo Laporte (00:26:05):
It's fun to watch. We will have more next week in the saga, I'm sure of beeper mini, but we have lots of other stuff to talk about. Bloomberg, mark Erman has ideas about what Apple's going to do next year. We have received iOS and 17 two and MAC OSS update and a TV OSS update. We'll talk about that. The new journal app is here, all of that coming up in just a little bit with Jason Snell and anco and Alex Lindsay Mack Break Weekly is on the air as it is every Tuesday. Our show today brought to you by our friends at IT pro tv and you may say, well wait a minute, it says a CI learning on all the signage in the studio, our studio naming sponsor, and on the lower third, well, that's right. IT Pro TV has merged with a CI Learning, which makes it even better.

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Thank 'em so much for supporting us all year long studio sponsors and a great team over there. We've always, we've been best buddies with the great folks over at a CI and it. Alright, it feels like Mark Germond has been doing more speculating and less rumor breaking of late, remember last week where he basically speculated that Goldman would give up its Apple card stuff to capital, was it Capital One or Chase to Chase? But it was pure speculation I think probably a good idea, right? Yeah, it was just, I have a good idea. Well, I'm wondering about this article, apple Ready's new iPads, an M three MacBook Air to combat sales Slump.

Jason Snell (00:30:42):
Oh, come on.

Leo Laporte (00:30:44):
Well, you guess you knew it was going to happen, right? I mean, well,

Jason Snell (00:30:48):
I love Mark Kerman because I like his sources, but since he's been at Bloomberg, there is a, because Bloomberg fancies itself a market mover and an important business journalism site, what gets inserted into Gorman's articles are lots of narratives that are just completely BSS fantasy.

(00:31:06):
And so in this case, it's like the way that the story is written, and again, I don't think it's Mark, I think it's the culture at Bloomberg and the editors at Bloomberg, essentially it's framed as if, oh geez guys, we didn't sell enough iPads. Somebody whip up a new iPad for next month. Somebody whip up a new MacBook Air because Mac sales are flagging a little bit. And the fact is the stuff they're going to come out within March or around March, according to Mark Gerberman, which again, I believe he has good sources that stuff's been in the works for years. So they're trying to set up this bizarre narrative of like, oh, because A then B, when in fact it's like, well, A is a thing and B is a thing that's been going on and they're not really connected except in your fantasy world if you're a Bloomberg article.

Alex Lindsay (00:31:50):
And also if are looking at apple's when they do market their forecasts, apple not only is two or three years out when they're doing those, but they're making calculations of how many they're going to sell based on what they're releasing. A year ago they made the guess and they're looking at it so they're not reacting to anything. They are going, well, we are going to have this. This is how many iPads we'll probably sell and this is how many max. And maybe they'll get surprised a little bit, but it's plus or minus 10 percentages, 10%, not like, oh, suddenly it fell through the roof. I mean that happened around Covid, but outside of that Apple, again, it's a much more slow moving ship, as Jason said, than what a lot of press seems to think or some press

Leo Laporte (00:32:39):
Seem to think it moves

Jason Snell (00:32:40):
That, I mean that sense, he didn't used to do that at nine to five Mac and Bloomberg insists on a level of storytelling and narrative building that Mark is now a part of, but he doesn't change that. He's a great reporter who's got the best sources on Apple, I think, in the world. And I believe him, and he's right almost all the time. And when he's wrong, he's usually wrong because Apple changed his mind after the people who knew and talked to him, talked to him. So in general, yeah, it's great. We're talking about new stuff coming in March plus Vision Pro, which he says they'd like to get done before March or by March, which it's like, well that's interesting. Before March sounds like February to me, but I mean that's just again, so good at math. Lemme tell you.

Leo Laporte (00:33:25):
So good. You're impressive. Yes. I mean there is some stuff, according to people familiar with the plans, the iPad and accessories are expected to launch around the end of March alongside iPad OSS 17 four, and I'm going to assume that he has some information. He's actually talking about model numbers. Oh yeah, the company's iPad. One of the things he said, and again, I don't know if this is Apple, him or him speaking, is that they're going to kind of rationalize the iPad lineup and that is the case. It is a little bit, there's overlap is the air and the Pro, they're so close and so forth.

Jason Snell (00:34:06):
Sure feels like what they're going to do is they're going to make the air be kind of like what the air is now mixed maybe with a little of what the pro is now, and they're going to be the sizes of the current pro models, and the way they're going to differentiate is, and I don't know how they're going to do it on price. I assume that if you have an 11 and a 13 inch, so they'll be slightly larger than the current models iPad Pro and it's ole, I've got to think those are going to be a lot more expensive than the current models.

Leo Laporte (00:34:35):
The OLED is what's going to cost you,

Jason Snell (00:34:36):
And so it's an M three instead of an M two, it's OLED screen, which is going to be gorgeous. And it has not been available. I mean there hasn't been oled, but even the really nice screen is only been on the 12.9, the last two versions. It hasn't been on the smaller one, which is I kind of assume is more popular. I have the 12.9. It's great, but I assume most people probably opt for the slightly smaller model, and then they're going to throw in a brand new magic keyboard, which Germond talked about a few months ago, which is more laptop and it has sort of a metal kind of stuff to make it feel a little bit more like a MacBook and not quite what the current magic keyboard is, which presumably will be what the air uses and maybe even a new Apple pencil on top of all of that.

(00:35:17):
It sounds to me like you're going to be able to do a lot more and you're going to pay a lot more, but at least if you're worried about confusion, this sort of like, do I get an air? Do I get a pro? What do I do? It's going to be a lot clearer. It's going to be like, wow, the air costs this and the pro costs, and then you're going to make the decision about, but if you watch movies in the dark all the time at home while your spouse is asleep, an ole iPad's going to be pretty amazing. It might be worth it to you or whatever else they roll in, or if that keyboard is really great, we'll have to see. But it sounds like they'll be really different. It

Leo Laporte (00:35:52):
Can't cost more than a MacBook Pro though, or could it it be the same price? I mean, they're really positioning it as a full computer, right? Full,

Alex Lindsay (00:36:00):
A full-blown iPad is $2,000 or more than two

Leo Laporte (00:36:04):
Point. And then you add the magic keyboard. Exactly.

Jason Snell (00:36:07):
And it's Ed, right? I mean an OLED screen, you

Leo Laporte (00:36:10):
Can't get an OLED MacBook Pro. Yeah. So maybe you think it'll be,

Jason Snell (00:36:14):
Wait a minute,

Leo Laporte (00:36:15):
Are you saying it might be more than a MacBook Pro loaded, loaded,

Jason Snell (00:36:20):
Maybe not the base models. No. Yeah, exactly. Although then add in, what's that magic keyboard going to cost 350, 400? My guess is if you want a 13 inch and he says it's 13, not 12.9, 13 inch iPad Pro M three with keyboard, is it going to cost around what am MacBook Pro costs somewhere in the two grand or a little bit below when you add all of that stuff in? Absolutely. It

Alex Lindsay (00:36:45):
Will. Mine does. Now, if it went up at all, generally I think I spent 2100 or 2200 and it just totally loaded. I didn't buy the, but I didn't buy the last year's one because I was like, I've got a pro one from two years ago that was like, I'm not going to keep on buying those every year. So I think that that's the side of it. You're not updating as often, but these computers are already getting, and I will say that the iPads, I mean the biggest problem is file management and a handful of other things that keeps me away. I'm always, when I open up my laptop when I'm on the road, I always have my laptop and my iPad Pro. I'm always like, why am I opening up my laptop? But it's things like the audio interfaces and video interfaces when I'm jumping on Zoom remotely. Some of the file management, some of the things like that, those are still things that I don't think the iPad does as well as the laptop.

Jason Snell (00:37:39):
Keep in mind, the magic keyboard, the current magic keyboard, which Apple is going to replace with a nicer one on the pro level, it's three 50 for the 12.9 and 300 for the keyboard. This is a $350 accessory on top of a thousand dollars plus accessory. So you're already even at the base, if you consider them as a package deal, you're talking 14, $1,500, and then they're going to do an OLED version. I feel like I'm very comfortable that if you wanted a 13 inch iPad Pro with magic keyboard come March, it's going to be about $2,000.

Alex Lindsay (00:38:15):
I would say 20 loaded, 2,225.

Jason Snell (00:38:18):
Why do people buy an iPad instead of a MacBook Pro? And I hear whenever I read about the iPad, possibly, I hear from these people who are really angry like, wow, you should just get a Mac then. And it's like, okay, Macs are available. There are no laws against buying Mac. The people who are buying the iPad Pro and the people who are buying that magic keyboard see value in using an iPad. It's a different platform with different advantages and disadvantages. And while I am not what I once was, which is desperately trying to get everything I do when I travel on an iPad, because I think Apple just doesn't want to let me do some of the stuff I want to do, and so I'll just travel with a MacBook Air and I'll be happy. But there are a lot of people for whom the iPad experience is the one that they want and they prefer it.

(00:38:59):
And it's not a, I just want us to get out of the whole like, well, why not just buy a laptop then? Because that's the point is it's a different product, it's a different platform. And the best part about the iPad, for me, the best part is you can't rip the screen off a MacBook. Well, you can do it once, but after that you can't put it back on and use it as a laptop. Whereas an iPad, you can use it as a laptop, you can pull it off, and now it's just a pure tablet, and then you can put it back and use it as a laptop again. And no Mac can do that at least so far. And for some people, there's huge value in that flexibility.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:29):
And also that's old fashioned thinking at its intro. The iPad was definitely something not other than a MacBook, it was something less than a MacBook. And now that's absolutely not the case. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Apple

(00:39:45):
Decide to try to see what a super premium iPad will do because it is not something less than it now, simply something other than a creative person wants an iPad. It's the number of artists that I know that they would've been putting two grand into a Digitizer tablet, or excuse me, a wacko tablet are now like, no, I've got an iPad, apple Pencil. And the entire creative community is now standardizing behind, Hey, here's a set of pencils that will work with procreate. Hey, here's a certain set of templates that will work with this other iPad app device. Once it gets the device to the level of it's a's an expense that helps me to make more money, that's when these kind of possibilities are created. And I think that's what we're seeing right now.

Leo Laporte (00:40:34):
Do you think Apple's really doubling down on this notion that the iPad is a computer and is there a group of people, they're not my generation, maybe it's the younguns who want to use an iPad instead of a laptop that seems like Apple's now really doubling down on that fork in the road?

Alex Lindsay (00:40:55):
Well, it really feels like when I look at behaviors just in the airport, if I'm sitting in the airport under 20 and over 65 or 70, it's all iPads. It feels like it's all

Andy Ihnatko (00:41:06):
IPads. All folks like

Leo Laporte (00:41:07):
The iPads too.

Alex Lindsay (00:41:07):
Yeah, it's just less things to worry about, less things to, and you don't have to figure those things out, but there's a lot of us that just have some, I would say, technological debt. Is it

Leo Laporte (00:41:20):
Fair to

Alex Lindsay (00:41:21):
Say that in the sense that we just know how to use it a certain way, or

Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
Is it fair to say that people who have work to do are going to use a computer?

Alex Lindsay (00:41:28):
I do a lot of

Jason Snell (00:41:28):
Work on It depends on what the work is exactly.

Alex Lindsay (00:41:32):
I think that, again, when I get into file management and I get into, there's just a lot of interfaces and things that I have to do that I find it difficult to do on the iPad. I find myself back to my laptop, but on a trip, I will spend 80% of the time on my iPad and then I'll pull out my laptop when I need to do those other things. The iPad is a much better experience overall. It's just I'm playing things and doing things and drawing on things, and I like it a lot more. And then there are those things that I need my laptop for. So I still have the two of them stuffed together in my backpack, but I want to use my iPad all the time. I just can't get to a point where I'm like, oh, there's a ceiling here, and I still have this little 13 or 14 inch whatever that I open up and dislike. I actually don't like using it, but it has things that I can't do on the iPad. Yeah, I would say the iPad, the new oss, I was going to say is the new OSS has me wanting to use the iPad more because now I have access to the cameras and I can now just put breakout boxes on it. I can do all those other things. And so it's moving that direction. It's just not there yet. jc

Jason Snell (00:42:40):
You Edit podcast. You podcast on it. It is my favorite platform for editing audio because the app, I'm using faite Recording Studio, which is an amazing piece of software, and I use it with the Apple Pencil, so I can actually sort of cut audio and move it around just with my hand using the Apple Pencil. You can use it keyboard, you can use it with Track Pad, you can use it with just your fingers. But I use the pencil and it speeds me along and I love it. And that's the thing, it's just the problem that we have all learned now is that with the Mac, it was built open and then a lot of people pile on with other features that you might not, most people don't want, but you want, and you can get them that way. With the iPad, it's born closed, and if you want a feature, apple has to basically turn it on and prioritize it and build it.

(00:43:29):
And if they haven't done it as a podcaster, the audio subsystem in the iPad is just substandard and Apple hasn't updated it. You can't run Audio Hijack. You can't record one app from another. You can't do any of that stuff. And is that esoteric? It is, but it's mission critical for me. And so I do reach a point where I can't use the iPad and I run into one of those brick walls that Alex was talking about, but for some stuff, I would much rather edit a podcast and an iPad than on a Mac. And that's bizarre because I've been using Logic. It's bizarre for 10 years, and yet I'll tell you, it is kind of magic. My edits are better, in fact than the iPad because they're more precise, because I'm actually seeing the waveforms and just using the pencil to dice them out and slide them around. It's pretty great. Can I share you my, I've got a wacky theory about the iPad Pro I want to throw out there. I don't think this is going to happen, but I want to be on the record in case it happens. Then we can play back without this disclaimer. Exactly. Don't play this disclaimer from the future play. The next part that I'm about to say, which is what if the M three iPad Pro with that fancy MacBook like keyboard ran Mac OSS in a virtual machine?

Leo Laporte (00:44:33):
Whoa, dude,

Jason Snell (00:44:36):
Wouldn't that be a reason to buy an iPad Pro? An

Leo Laporte (00:44:39):
IPad Pro only used iPad more, but you wanted occasional Mac support.

Jason Snell (00:44:44):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:44:45):
I don't even know if it would be, I

Jason Snell (00:44:46):
Cut it there, I would

Leo Laporte (00:44:47):
Alex a laptop. It's never going to happen. You're nuts. Never going to happen. No, you're crazy. It ain't going to happen. It could. I do know Photographer are another group where a lot of them, I'm even tempted because of the better screen. It certainly would be with an OLED screen to use the iPad for photo editing. And the tools are out there now to do a pretty good job with that. Not quite the same, but there's things, I mean, I'm never going to be able to run emax on an iPad, even if I could. I don't think I'd want to.

Jason Snell (00:45:19):
Well, there are environments that you can run. They're just not on the,

Leo Laporte (00:45:23):
I can run terminal terminal environments. No, I can run blank, which is an excellent terminal and log into emax on my server.

Jason Snell (00:45:29):
Or you can run an entire Unix instance in an app on the iPad. What you can't do is get access to the iPads command line and run things there. So yeah, I've done Python development in an environment on the iPad, and you could do it, but it's like you're not really in the iPad, right? You're in the emulator or the Environment app that's running in its own little sandbox. So you can do a lot, but if what you really want to do is control the system, you can't. You just

Leo Laporte (00:45:57):
Can't. But so in that respect, it's a terminal. It's like a dumb terminal. I use Blink Shell. It's an excellent shell on the iPad, but I have a server running somewhere that I can run the other stuff through the Shell.

Jason Snell (00:46:12):
That has been the solution to a lot of my iPad brick wall problems is that I can use Prompt, which is from Panic, which is another, oh, I'll have to try that H app. It's very nice. And that'll get me to any of my command line based servers. And I use screens from Adobe, which is a remote control server or remote control app, VNC essentially. And I have a Mac server at home. So if I really, really, really, really, really have to do something on a Mac and I'm somewhere else on an iPad, I can use screens, connect to the Mac mini server that I run out of my house and do it there. It's a little silly to have to remote connect to a Mac to do something, but it works.

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:56):
I'm surprised that Apple hasn't kind of blessed that kind of thing with OSS level support that this seems like as part of the service bundle that I get the ability to say, by the way, your iPad could connect back to your Mac wherever it is. It used to be kind of easy. Now it's really super hard, and I don't know why the iPad doesn't simply have a, Hey, by the way, if you've got a Mac, even if they want to kneecap it a little bit by saying, oh, it will not work, MacBooks, hey, those things go to sleep. And we don't want to disrupt what's happening on your MacBook. However, if you've got a Mac, mini Mac studio, anything that's a desktop, Mac it, wake it up remotely, connect to it, and basically virtualize that inside your iPad. I don't know why it doesn't do that. That that'd cool

Leo Laporte (00:47:47):
Feature actually. Yeah, forget what Jason's talking about. Why put a virtual machine on there just put, and that sells more Macs, right? So I always have my Mac studio running to do a variety of server tools. If I could just put that up on my iPad. Sure.

Jason Snell (00:48:04):
I mean, they just recently updated screen sharing on Mac OS Sonoma, and the reason they did that is probably primarily for Vision Pro, but I did have the thought of why is screen sharing not on iPad oss, right? That would be a logical place to put it. And then you would have your ability to connect to a Mac and they've already got the back to my Mac stuff where you can, with your Apple id, you can find the other Macs that are on the network. The missing piece is that you have to add a third party app to connect to a Mac because screen sharing isn't on iPad as an app. And it should be. It totally should be.

Leo Laporte (00:48:42):
It's the most wonderful time of the year. I'm sorry, I have my gingerbread latte. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I really spent thousands on my M three MacBook Pro and I love it. And I have my iPad Pro just sitting there hardly every, I use it to FaceTime my mom. That's about

Jason Snell (00:49:09):
It. That's fine. I mean, it's totally not for everybody. I know people who are utterly devoted to their iPads, guilty people who are completely indifferent about them. And I have a bunch of my friends who were in on the sort of, I'm going to get an iPad Pro and I'm going to use it as much as I can five years ago, seven years ago. And a bunch of them have gone to the iPad Mini where they basically just said, you know what? I'm just going to use the iPad for what it's great at, which is reading webpage and watching videos and scrolling through the web and doing RSS and reading books and stuff like that. And they've sort of taken a step back. iPad is good at a bunch of different stuff, and not all of it is pro-level stuff. And I think a lot of people feel a little of that guilt. You're feeling Leo, which is like, but I'm not really using this to it's full advantage. And that's why some of my friends have just said, you know what? I'm going to step off and I'm going to go over here to the mini, which is super convenient and easy and fun and not try to use it to do these completely bizarre professional level things. I'm just going to use it for what I want to. And there's nothing wrong with that either. And

Alex Lindsay (00:50:15):
I seamlessly go back and forth when I create a presentation in Keynote, I am typically sitting, I now realize there's an outline thing in Keynote that I use now all the time, but I used to do it in notes. And so I sit there in notes and I type away, these are all the slides I want, and then I go into the iPad and I draw, then I go back to the computer and I build, then I go back to the iPad and I present. So I go back and forth because one happens to be better than the other at pure speed. And so I think that for me, I haven't needed to, again, I find that the iPad is a more usable experience, but I jump back and forth even in the same app. I jump back and forth constantly and that's where iCloud works

Leo Laporte (00:50:55):
Really well

Andy Ihnatko (00:50:56):
On top of everything else. One of the things that got me to buy an iPad Pro when they moved to the M1 was that it is such a really great accessory to my desktop that when it's not being used as an iPad, it is an external display. It is a remote control unit. It is so many really, really cool things. So I do suspect that the reason why Apple doesn't facilitate remote access like we're talking about, is that I think that there's maybe a dogmatic shift in which they just don't want to confuse what an iPad is with what a MacBook is. They would much rather make sure that there's a division between the two and it's an artificial one. That's just my suspicion. I don't have any evidence of this, but they've always had sort of a darling effect on the iPad.

Leo Laporte (00:51:45):
It's really interesting to see how many people have Shell Solutions, terminal solutions for the iPad. Our Discords running wild with them. Here's some more. Here's one this for

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:58):
Remote management.

Leo Laporte (00:51:59):
Aaron Secure Shellfish, which has a great name.

Jason Snell (00:52:03):
Yeah, that's a really good app. It not only lets you connect to those servers remotely, but it will put files in the Files app.

Leo Laporte (00:52:10):
Oh, nice.

Jason Snell (00:52:11):
On your remote server. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:52:13):
I use Tux on the server. So it says it has good Tux support, which I look for. There's quite a few of them. Citrix Workspace app, I haven't tried Prompt. I'm going to try that. So that means there are people wanting to do this, obviously if there are that many apps to do it. Alright, let's see. So I mean, can we just summarize what the Ger Man is saying about in March? What are we going to do? We're going to see new iPad airs,

Jason Snell (00:52:45):
IPad Pro and iPad Air four models

Leo Laporte (00:52:48):
Around March.

Jason Snell (00:52:49):
The other ones the update to the Mini into the low end will come later in the year. Those will come and the accessories for the new iPad Pro, which will be a different size. So they'll use new accessories

Leo Laporte (00:53:00):
And it sounds like a really nice new pencil, third generation Apple pencil and a really nice new keyboard, which

Jason Snell (00:53:07):
Exactly iPad is, I mean part of being a flexible modular computer is that it's all about the accessories, right? The story is not told on the iPad unless you also have accessories to be part of the story. And then MacBook Air, I think this is going to be really exciting. We're going to get that in through MacBook Air he says so sooner rather than later. I think that's great. He says Mac Studio and Mac Pro may come until the end of the year or maybe even 2025, which makes me a little bit sad, but the MacBook here is the most important Mac because it's the best selling Mac and my question there

Leo Laporte (00:53:39):
Will be, he says a new low end iPad, but that won't be until later in

Jason Snell (00:53:44):
The year. Right? The low-end iPad and they'll kick off the home screen iPad and they'll just have the 10th and 11th presumably versions available, but that's later in the year. MacBook Air, my question though is if there's an M three MacBook Air, do they keep selling the M two air and kill the M1 or do they keep selling the M1 because it's cheap and just kill the M two because it would look identical to the M three and I'm warming to the idea that maybe it's the M two air that disappears when the M three air arrives. I don't know Tim Cook, right? Tim Cook, he's maximizing

Leo Laporte (00:54:22):
Revenue. I think somebody like Steve Jobs has to come in and just slash the product line and really rationalize it. It's just too crazy,

Alex Lindsay (00:54:28):
Too crazy. I mean, I think all the product lines feel like they keep on getting busier and busier

Leo Laporte (00:54:31):
And busier. Nothing gets smaller. It

Alex Lindsay (00:54:33):
Still feels like the nineties. I know that they're maximizing it, but at some point you're creating some,

Jason Snell (00:54:39):
It's not like the nineties in the sense that there aren't a bunch of new products. It's that they keep the old products around to hit those lower price points and I get it, but I think that there is, I don't want to see an M three and M two and an M1 MacBook error on sale. I actually think that the M1 staying in the M two going when the M three arrives is more rational because the M1 and the M two or M three look very different. They have different functionality and then there's a big price spread between them and that's okay. The problem is that Apple wants to make really nice computers and they can't always hit those cheapest price points and so instead you have an old one that you keep around and that's the Tim Cook magic, but that's how also on Amazon on Black Friday you could buy a MacBook Caram one for 7 99. It's not bad.

Alex Lindsay (00:55:29):
Right.

Leo Laporte (00:55:31):
Alright, let's take a break and then I do want to talk about Iost tvo OS 17.2, the journal app and the things they didn't ship in this latest updates all around. There was a New Mac update too. I don't know. Is that to tie into the iOS update or just to fix security bucks? Oh, and we didn't, I meant to. We should probably talk more about Vision Pro scheduling because clearly Apple's going to want to separate the iPad and the Vision Pro. I think it's crazy that Mark thinks February or January, but they did say early 2024.

Jason Snell (00:56:07):
Yeah, yeah. He was saying that they've been targeting January all along but that they were slipping a little bit, but he said sooner than March or as soon as March or as late as March. It's one of these things that it's not quite there.

Leo Laporte (00:56:24):
They haven't decided themselves, no doubt.

Jason Snell (00:56:26):
But they're trying for January and if it's February maybe, but this right around the corner

Alex Lindsay (00:56:32):
Now and again, it may not be 200,000 a week, just they want to get some of these past into the open where people can right now it's like, like you have to give blood and so on and so forth to get in to see them.

Jason Snell (00:56:46):
Number one reason it's not imminent, and this is in that same Mark Erman report, is that Apple is actually bringing in a person from every retail store to Cupertino and they're doing it mid-January for, and so a representative from every store, it's like Model UN and they come in and they get a two day session that is the bootcamp of how you sell Vision Pro in the Apple store and then you send them back to their stores where they disseminate that information and if they're doing that training in mid-January, it's not launching in mid-January. It's launching in either very late January or sometime in February, but I would, if you had February in the pool, I think you're feeling pretty good. I'd put some more money down on

Leo Laporte (00:57:28):
February Right now the real question is who's going to buy it? Are you going to buy it Jason? You have to probably, huh.

Jason Snell (00:57:34):
If I'm not supplied a review unit, I will absolutely buy it, my job to do it, but I think there're going to be a lot of explorers, a lot of developers, a lot of people who are curious and they're going to make so few of 'em that that's going to, that's probably going to satisfy.

Leo Laporte (00:57:46):
Yeah, but that 3,500 could also buy me an Olli iPad the next month. See, that's tough. It's

Jason Snell (00:57:51):
Tough. One and a half of those. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (00:57:53):
Well it's a good example of I'm not buying the new iPad specifically because I'm expecting to buy the vision. Good point. I'm not going to buy anything in the spring because I'm assuming that 3,500, once I put my prescription in, once I do all the other things, I've got $5,000 sitting in a box to say that's what it's going to cost me to 4,500 to 5,000 once the dust settles because I'll get the extra battery pack and the extra thing and all those things will add up.

Leo Laporte (00:58:25):
Good. I'm going to let you buy it. Yeah, I really don't want to buy it. I really don't. I'll

Jason Snell (00:58:29):
Bring it into the studio and you can laugh at me. You can

Leo Laporte (00:58:33):
Laugh me. Awesome. There you go. We've solved it. Jason tell it's Jason Smell and Alex Lindsay will buy that dopey thing and the face sucker, you'll let me put the face sucker on once just to reassure myself that I am not wrong that this is a product category that has zero runway. Okay.

Jason Snell (00:58:50):
Only if you ask really nice, but yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:58:55):
Honestly think you never come out to visit me. My home is welcome to you. I honestly

Jason Snell (00:59:00):
Think Massachusetts, I'll use it on the plane and then I'll see it and I'll come down to Rhode Island and I'll say hi. I'm sure

Leo Laporte (00:59:06):
It happens. Recharge it in the Uber please. I'm sure it happens that a company, because these things, plans have to be made so far out, throws the dart and misses and they say, we're going all in on

Jason Snell (00:59:21):
Vr,

Leo Laporte (00:59:23):
And it turns out AI was the thing not mixed reality.

Alex Lindsay (00:59:29):
I just think that we won't know for another decade. I think Apple's going to do this for a decade.

Leo Laporte (00:59:34):
I think we'll know. I hate to tell you, I think we'll know in January or February.

Jason Snell (00:59:40):
Well, I don't think so because I think it's going to be a remarkable cutting edge product and everybody's reaction is going to be, well, it's amazing and then we're going to spend a year scratching our heads about what that means. I don't think it's going to be a flop. I think that they've spent so much money on it, it's going to be an amazing piece of hardware. Having worn it for 30 minutes, this is what I said I think last week, which is like it's one of the world's richest companies spending all of their effort for seven years on developing the most cutting edge piece of hardware they may have ever released. It's going to be really interesting technically. And then comes the waiting, right? Then comes the like and now what happens? Hundred percent, who knows what that's going to be? I'm

Leo Laporte (01:00:22):
Happy to stipulate that it'll be amazing for 30 minutes. It's the 31st minute that is problematic,

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:29):
But that's fine. It will be a success because Apple gets to fine with the word success means I really think they're smart enough to know that this is not going to become a blockbuster right away. This is going to be something where everybody who uses it, everybody who owns one will say amazingly great things about it, but the normal people probably won't buy it for 3, 4, 5 years, six years like Alex says. I mean they've got plenty of room. They just cleared $3 trillion in market cap. If there's one company that can basically say we are willing to invest into making the first version of this hardware as perfect and state-of-the-art as it possibly can be and then see how it goes from there. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:01:09):
Apple and the problem is because it's so hard, if they actually crack the code and they actually start going down the path and getting market share, it just becomes really hard for other people to compete with them because they're playing a game that's a really expensive game of what they're doing.

Andy Ihnatko (01:01:25):
This could be their iPad. I mean just so you look in the market for tablets right now, and really it really is just the iPad. There is Kindle fire tablets if you want to count that. But in terms of here is a tablet computer that is inherently a tablet computer that's designed for productivity as well as anything else you could do for tablet. It really is Apple and everybody else and they could do they pull something like that off here where if you want to do augmented reality, virtual reality, the one that everybody's getting is this one. People who for whatever reason don't want to have the Vision Pro or the Vision series will get an Oculus, will get something else, will get something that's game oriented as opposed to productivity oriented. So again, I love the unknowns about this that it could be just about anything including Apple saying that we've accomplished everything that we set out to accomplish with the Vision Pro series and as we go into a new decade of the 21st century, we're ready to incorporate these into other product lines.

Leo Laporte (01:02:31):
Ferrari builds cars that are not street legal and there are people who come along and spend a million dollars and garage 'em and that's, that doesn't mean it's a product. I think this is a money pit big time and I guess Apple has the mean look, Elon could waste 44 billion on Twitter. Apple could waste 10 times that. This is

Andy Ihnatko (01:02:50):
Way more productive than that. But how well that's turning out,

Leo Laporte (01:02:54):
I don't think it is. I think it's a money pit. I think Apple's made a tactical error. Bravo for putting all that technology in there. That's cool. You could build a Ferrari that nobody can drive, but it doesn't mean it's a product. But that's just my opinion. We'll find out someday if I'll still be alive, I will buy the ones that look just like spectacles. I will buy those. That's not the same product. That's a whole different thing.

Alex Lindsay (01:03:25):
I think that the issue is that you have to do this product before you do that product. You can't just turn that one on. So I think that that's the figuring out the model is part of the process. It's one of the advantages Meta has because they've already done a bunch of that, definitely figured out what didn't work and in some cases what worked I think that Apple, but Apple has, I think that you have to get on the ground somewhere and I think this is where they're getting on the ground.

Leo Laporte (01:03:56):
Our show today brought to you by Express VPN this holiday season. As you're pounding down the advent calendar of whiskey or maybe some delicious Turkey and gravy, I want you to think about everything you have looked at on your phone this last few days. Maybe you prefer not to every website, every link you've clicked on who's in charge of the wifi you've been using with all that content, especially as you're out and about. And by the way, I should point out that your mobile carrier is also kind of keeping an eye on what you're doing. They have access to everything you've been looking at unless you do what I do and use Express VPN Express. VPN is the only VPNI recommend. Now, A VPN is clearly a great solution for keeping you private, keeping you secure, eliminating geographic restrictions when you want to watch that special holiday movie that's only available in New Delhi, but by the way, Christmas and Bollywood, a mix made in heaven.

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You should too. We have worked with Express V VPN to get you a special holiday offer. You'll be glad to hear about this. Express vpn.com/mac break three extra months of express VPN for free when you get that one year package, X-P-R-E-S SV vpn.com/mac express vpn. The best way to protect your privacy is stay secure and to watch Bollywood classics express vpn.com/mac break to learn more. That was by the way, one of the highlights of my digital detox. We had a little dance off. There was a wonderful woman there who is from I think Toronto, but she was Indian and she taught us all Bollywood dance moves and I think that everyone should be able to do that. That's always been a goal. Maybe the Vision Pro will help me with my Bollywood dance moves. See, there's something about the Vision Pro that I have. The same problem with all VR things is I don't want to put something on my face.

(01:07:52):
Well, that is a problem. Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, that'll do her. I love movies by the way, and I've said this many times. A movie is a virtual reality experience. You go in there, the screen is big, fills your field of view. There's music carefully cultivated to give you an emotional reaction. There's fine acting on the screen when you're in a good movie. Well done. You are there. You're in the movie. That's vr and I don't have to put it on my face and I don't think it would be better honestly if it were on my face. I kind of like,

Alex Lindsay (01:08:20):
No, you have to put up with the teenagers sitting

Leo Laporte (01:08:23):
Next behind you. Well, that's why I built a home theater. Exactly. Yeah. I mean it's not a home, it's not a dedicated room or anything. I don't want people to think I'm nuts, but we have a nice tv. I sit fairly close to it with good surround sound and it's a great experience and that's vr.

Alex Lindsay (01:08:39):
I think the content is really always the challenge. What are you going to do with the content and how are you going to make it viable? Because I think that that's where Meta doesn't, leaving it up to a lot of developers. I mean meta paid Epic to do robo Recall, which is in my opinion, probably one of the best examples of what you can do in VR as far as a game. But there was that, oh, they're

Leo Laporte (01:09:01):
Great games. There wasn't another one. I love Beat Saber Dan and e Lizzo and it's fun. After about half an hour it's like, okay, I'm done and my face is sweaty and it's got red marks. It just does not, I don't understand the aesthetic of it

Alex Lindsay (01:09:18):
And I am going to try to get over it for the Apple for the vision. My biggest reason that I stopped using the headsets was because there wasn't a diopter. It was was that I didn't really want to swap lenses in and out. I need to wear glasses, glasses or my contacts and it was just literally that little. And the problem is that because the Samsung gear came out and it had a diopter, even though it might not be as quite as good as them knowing that a diopter existed and they weren't putting it into the headset, made me so frustrated that I just stopped using it. I was just like, I don't want to play this. And then the other thing was with Oculus before it was standalone and how I got out of the habit was every time Windows updated, it would break the Oculus software and it was just like update now it doesn't work. And now I have to go and dig in to figure out, I have

Leo Laporte (01:10:04):
The Quest Pro sitting in my desk and I get an actual physical aversion to putting it on and that's a problem for a consumer product.

Alex Lindsay (01:10:16):
It is. It just depends on when I take the quest to the shore, when my family, my extended family, all goes to the shore, the only thing that stops kids from playing with it is battery life. They'll sit there and use it all day until but do

Leo Laporte (01:10:32):
Your kids,

Alex Lindsay (01:10:34):
They don't play with it as much because they haven't set it up any further. It's the whole login to the meta thing that

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
I think also

Alex Lindsay (01:10:40):
Because stop using at that moment and then it just stopped.

Jason Snell (01:10:44):
So I'll just say I get your skepticism, Leo. I totally do. I have a Quest three and I use it and there comes a time where I can't play pinging pong on the Quest three anymore because of my face. My face arg. But I will say this, you remember the early days of the personal computer. They were slow, they were big, they were ridiculous. What I think is very interesting about

Leo Laporte (01:11:06):
This, they didn't nauseate me, Jason.

Jason Snell (01:11:09):
Yes, yes. But they will better screens. They will get smaller. They will get lighter. Now, will anybody want to use this kind of technology? Will people decide they would rather use a computer by putting a screen on their face? There will be in front of their face. There absolutely will be. That's going to be the mystery about how this goes. People

Andy Ihnatko (01:11:31):
Scuba dive,

Leo Laporte (01:11:32):
They love to put a thing on their face and oxygen tanks on their bank and dive into the water and the people who love it love it. Scuba divers,

Jason Snell (01:11:42):
They love it. All I'm saying is that this is cutting edge tech, but it is also early tech and that if this category continues to be iterated on for five or 10 years, that headset is probably going to be a lot less heavy and unpleasant to wear than it is now and it's going to be less laggy and it's going to be higher resolution. And Alex always talks about the resolution and frame rate required to really sort make your brain completely think it's reality. I can see that in 10 years we may have something that checks all those boxes. If Apple can get from here to there, and that is still an open question,

Andy Ihnatko (01:12:22):
As long as Apple delivers something more than, again, I'm staring right now at a $300 screen that is beautiful and wonderful. If I wanted something nearly as good, it would cost me $200. If all Apple is offering me is that $200, $300 mini display port screen, that works great for all of your productivity stuff. Imagine if a $3,500 thing you wear on your head light or not could actually make that into a fake screen. So long as the virtual screens who run iPad adjusted apps is just a first step before people, developers get in their hands and start developing apps that are emphatically virtual reality, emphatically augmented reality, it's still an infant product. How fast can they spin that up?

Alex Lindsay (01:13:13):
I think one of the important things though is that one of the things that we saw, because I did a lot of r and d in the early Oculus days, so we were testing a lot of things and one of the things that we had a problem with is that people needed to be able to get to those productivity apps while they were at the headset or they'd keep on taking the headset off. So I got to check my email, I got to do these things. So the fact that those productivity things sit inside the platform is really important because it means that I can jump out of this or move this over to one side and check my email and I can do other things and then I can go back to what I

Leo Laporte (01:13:41):
You're not even having fun. You're working in these

Alex Lindsay (01:13:43):
Things. Oh my god, no, no, but what I'm talking about is there were momentary needs to get to something that were causing people to take them off. Whereas if you had, we built an interface where you watch golf, you watch the 16 by nine golf in front of you, you turn to one side, you get all the data, you turn to the other side, you get all your Twitter and other notifications and everything else, and so you would be able to, the idea though was creating longer dwell time and think that that was a real challenge that we had was that people felt like to get back to their email, to get back to other things, that they would take 'em off and then they'd take 'em off. They'd be less likely to put 'em back on again or they'd lose their place or whatever. So being able to have these things all exist inside of the same location is going to be pretty interesting I think.

Leo Laporte (01:14:32):
Sure. And I should point out that worldwide there are 6 million scuba divers, which I mean scuba not only puts something on your face but you can die. I mean it's a scary, dangerous thing, but there's still 6 million people worldwide who do it. I imagine there will be to pretty many, there'll be at least 6 million people who will be willing to use a VisionQuest vision pro. I am sure that there will be some market for it. I mean if people will scuba dive, they'll do that. But I also know a lot of people will say, are you kidding? Put that on my back and dive under water with the thing. And no, I'm never going to do that. And I'm in that group, I'm in that group. I do snorkel, 11 million snorkelers in the us, 20 million worldwide. So I guess snorkeling is not that much different, right? Hey, what is the difference? I ask you between Apple's app store and Google's app store? Well, according to the jury, there's a big difference. Epic, as you know, sued both Google and Apple over the app store. Apple beat them in court, but a San Francisco jury yesterday ruled in favor of Epic and said that in fact the Google app store acted unfairly as a monopoly, big victory. Now, I guess this will be appealed for the next a hundred years, but big victory for Epic in court. Why did they win here and not win?

Alex Lindsay (01:16:04):
Was the Apple one in front of judges or was it in front of the

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:06):
Jury? The Apple judgment was in front of one judge. This was in front of a jury, so that's one factor.

Leo Laporte (01:16:14):
Interesting.

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:15):
Another factor was that in this case the Epic had a lot more receipts than Apple that they had against Apple where they were able to see that the work that Google had done to basically create what the prosecution would've called sweetheart deals with handset manufacturers to make it to lock out other app stores from Android plus the internal documentation, internal messaging inside of Google saying, Hey look, this is a really big threat to us. We do everything we have to do what we can to sort of tamp this down because this is how much this will cost us if we allow third party app stores to get into the business. It was a full sweep. It was pretty much the opposite of the judgment against Apple. The jury basically agreed with every single one of Epic's complaints, and so next week the judge starts to decide what punitive action might be taken.

(01:17:13):
Epic didn't sue for any money, however, what they were suing for is basically an injunction or basically an occupational order that they could force Google to make sure that they've got blessed, excuse me, sorry. They could basically force Android to do Google to do something they don't want to do, which is to officially support third party app stores and do nothing to stop Epic. And also to shut down these exclusivity deals that basically say that if you're going to get the good stuff from Android, if you're going to get the Google Maps, if you want to get the YouTube app, you're going to have to have the play store and you're going to have to lock out competing. You can't ship any of your phones with competing app stores either. So that could be a big problem. The

Leo Laporte (01:17:57):
Jury in under four hours decided that Google had engaged in anti-competitive conduct, harmed Epic and illegally forced its own billing system on developers. Tim Sweeney, CEO at Epic said the dominoes are going to start falling here. The end of 30% is in sight.

Jason Snell (01:18:17):
Yeah, spare me that guy. But I think the challenge here is yes, he's very excited about not keeping that money for himself. That's what a terrible, but here's the thing, it is Google. I mean the problem is the Apple ruling was very much like Apple is a monolith that has a black box and it says you want to be in the black box. Here's what the rules are. And the challenge with Google is Google is like, no, we're open and we have partners and all of that. And I was like, well, the problem is then they were trying to exert essentially for the same reasons as Apple exert control in order to take money out of the ecosystem. But the differences for Google, it was starting from a position where it wasn't exerting that power and then entering into the exertion of that power and then doing things like working with different phone makers as Andy said, to sort of squeeze them on things like, you've got to accept this if you want to have that, if you want apps, you got to take the in-app purchase rules. And then they also did a few things like approaching other developers and saying, why don't we invest in you so that you'll use our system? Which the jury didn't. They weren't told that it had to be like a bribe, but it was an anti-competitive action. They called a bunch of stuff like

Andy Ihnatko (01:19:34):
That. Project hug. It's not a bribe, it's Project Hug.

Jason Snell (01:19:37):
Yeah, exactly right. It's not a bribe at all, but now you're our partner and you're going to do what we want. Isn't that great? Aren't we very happy? And then they also cut a bunch of secret deals like the one with Spotify. One, doesn't Apple do that too?

Leo Laporte (01:19:51):
We think Apple does the same thing with Amazon and Spotify.

Jason Snell (01:19:54):
And so here's why I should also say the other thing that the jury had to decide on is do you believe that Google's argument about why it charges 30% has no alternative explanation that is simpler and they seem to not believe it. Although I think there are actually some explanations that you could have used but they didn't take them. So yeah, I mean Apple has done some of this stuff, but I think that the real difference is in presentation where Apple sort of was upfront of we control it all one in and Google was sort of like, Hey, we're expansive, but be shame if something happened and it led down this path where this was one in front of a jury and two kind of a clearer case all around than the Apple stuff, which is a little bit harder to make. So I'm not convinced that all the dominoes are going to fall Tim Sweeney's way and this may yet be appealed out, but there's some interesting reasons why this way when it did,

Alex Lindsay (01:20:53):
And it's probably this is the beginning of a three to five year travel to the Supreme Court and so it it's still got some time. It's the

Leo Laporte (01:21:03):
Last time a jury will have to weigh in. It's going to be judges all the way down now, right? Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:21:08):
After this passed the jury. And I think the judges oftentimes are a little bit more stringent on what that means, what those requirements mean, because they just see them more often. And so a jury is going to be less technical about a

Leo Laporte (01:21:20):
Jury votes from the heart, the judges vote from the brain.

Jason Snell (01:21:24):
It's true. But one of the key antitrust issues here, which is really interesting is what I mentioned before, the idea that, and Annie mentioned it, that if you want to get the Play store, so as a phone maker, if you want apps on your platform, you have to take the billing system that Google wants you to take and that's called tying. And the idea there is if you have complete control over this, which is the distribution of Android apps functionally, even though we could argue there are lots of other ways to get things on and there are other app stores, but if you view that they're tying this to this other thing in order to make money, it hits the antitrust bell, right? The siren goes off then and the jury looked at this and they said, yeah, the siren goes off. And it is an example where Google, I mean there's no doubt Google's using its clout as the owner of the play store to get everybody to use their in-app purchase system. Now, is that any different from Apple? Only in the sense, again, I feel like that Apple comes with its black box and says, would you like to live inside our universe and Google, because of the way they've structured, Android has a bunch of different partners and a bunch of different things and has retroactively built some of this where they used to let you have more freedom, but now they don't let you have as much and it was a harder argument to make.

Leo Laporte (01:22:45):
Apple said though, they didn't respond to a request for comment. That's what they said Google plans to, they were hiding Google plans to appeal. This is according to Bloomberg, apple has said in the past, it doesn't have any side deals with developers, although we do offer discounted rates to some video streaming partners like Amazon, Google in a way it's sad got in trouble because they open because open source, you just said it. Yeah, it requires a lot more. There's just more work. I admired them for doing that, but yeah, then they had, if you want to have the Google Play store and all of that, you've got it here to our, and people who buy Android phones kind of want the Google stuff on it. So I mean, I kind of honor Google for saying, well, we're going to keep it open source and you could, as a headset maker, you could use AO SP, the open source version of Android without any of the Google products on it. Nobody, and that's no small thing, I think, but it's no small thing. I agree that's a big deal that they

Andy Ihnatko (01:23:50):
Amazon based fire R oss on Android and there are a whole bunch of other projects all across the world that aren't even phone related, that are based on the open source version of Android. So it's no small thing, but let's not kid ourselves that the ideal from 2005 just pre iPhone that oh no, we want to create a platform agnostic operating system that treats everybody and then Google figured out that developing all this software is really expensive and it's also a huge opportunity that we're basically leaving money on the table. We will let you have the car with no air conditioning, the factory radio. Exactly, the cloth seats. If you want the car that everybody wants, you're going to have to sign some deals with us.

Leo Laporte (01:24:33):
And how do you feel about rolling up the windows by hand? Exactly. It's funny, that's all cars had, but now if somebody has that in their car, it's like, what the hell? This is 18th century technology. Don't you have a button you can push? That was a big, I'm old enough to remember when it was a big deal when power windows came into cars that was like, Ooh, I just know that if I get in a rental car and I don't have a rear view camera, I'm like, oh, I know. How do you back up? What do I do here? You mean have to look, how did I get here? Oh, but I can't really turn that way. I don't know how to do that anymore. My neck doesn't go that way anymore.

Andy Ihnatko (01:25:13):
It's also made rude rage a lot harder to execute because back in the, again, I grew up in an age of power windows, but we still understood that if someone had just cut you off and you're next to each other at a red light, you can go basically saying, Hey idiot, hold on your window so I can yell at you now. That's right. What do they do now?

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
Yeah, push. That's a good point. What is the gesture for open your window? Oh, well

(01:25:36):
Tap, tap, tap. iOS 17.2 tv, OSS 17.2 have arrived as usual, there's security updates. But the biggest thing you'll notice almost right away is there's a new app on your phone called Journal, which I like. I love the prompts, it knows my photo memories. Write about a person in your life you're grateful for as a reflection. It knows that I took an outdoor walk, wait, lemme get out of here. I don't want to actually do that right now. It knows that I took a walk that I called my sister on her birthday that I visited my dad. It knows my favorite album. I mean, that's cool. Now the folks at Day One apparently we're consulted on this. I'm very happy to hear day one, which is a long time, very good paid journaling app, which I've used for years and now owned by Automatic the WordPress folks, which are good people to hold onto it. Apparently Apple actually talked to them instead of just sherlocking them and day one says, because it's an API, we're going to have those prompts and so forth. We're going to do all the same thing. So that's good if you want a more powerful tool, but I love journal. I'm very impressed. I did not think I would like it as much as I do.

Jason Snell (01:26:55):
It's meant to be the journaling app for the rest of us. The idea is you start with this, it's an Apple default, so you start with it and then you may discover that you want more and there are lots of other apps that are more complex and better than this and cross-platform and all sorts of other things, but the way they built it is the right way because they built it on a journaling suggestions, API. So instead of saying, well, the only app on the whole platform that knows what you did and where you went and what you listened to and what photos you took is ours, and that's why you have to use ours. They built an API, they built their app and yes, it does compete with other journaling apps and it will, that's true, but what they didn't do is lock all the other journaling apps out from that data.

(01:27:41):
It's all there in the API and contributing to the API, it's not comprehensive. There are certain kinds of APIs you have to use for your apps to contribute information to that. So I don't think it knows what Spotify music you listen to, but it knows what Apple music you listen to. But they may be able to extend that over time. But in general, I feel like this is the model for what new Apple app should be, which is it is not built on proprietary hidden. Only Apple can access data. It's built on an API that is part of the platform that all other apps can also access. That's a good thing.

Leo Laporte (01:28:18):
Now you wrote a good piece on it, by the way, rich. I wrote Dan Morin,

Jason Snell (01:28:21):
Not

Leo Laporte (01:28:22):
Me. Oh, not you, Dan's Dan. He says it offers introspection surface steep. He says he's often tried to start a journal, as have I, and I know probably most of you, and failed many, many times. What is his complaint about it?

Jason Snell (01:28:38):
I mean, it's the same thing, which is it is basic and it is. He

Leo Laporte (01:28:43):
Says it's a clever idea and one that's clearly meant to ease people into the habit of journaling by answering the age old question, what do I write about? But I'm not convinced it's enough. I think it's good. Yeah. My first actually,

Jason Snell (01:28:55):
And it's a starting point, right? I mean this is 1.0 what I hope will happen is what has happened with a lot of other good Apple apps like notes and reminders, which is over time based on how people are using it, they will update it. But it is really the idea there is the thought, and this is part of their kind of mental health focus. It's the thought that being a little mindful thinking at the end of the day about what did I do today or what am I grateful for? And it is a gratitude journal kind of thing doing

Leo Laporte (01:29:21):
Here, which is nice. That's really valuable. That

Jason Snell (01:29:21):
Improves your mental health thing.

(01:29:23):
Absolutely. Because instead of just letting it all pass you by, you are dwelling on it for a moment. And that may be all that's required and you may not even need to look at it later. You may just need the act of thinking in order to reinforce those things in your mind, and that's what it's there for. But it is also just a fairly basic thing, but it's a good thing to have I think on an iPhone. I am sad that it's not on the iPad and the Mac, it's only on the iPhone right now, but that'll change

Leo Laporte (01:29:50):
Eventually. You can use it on the iPad, but it's an Apple, it's an iPhone app, not an iPad, it's an iPhone. They should really make it an iPad app or frankly use day one because it's all of the above and it's really great. It even works on Windows if you're crazy. His chief complaint is exactly the reason I love it. He says it's a social network for one. I've found myself struck by the solitude of the journal app. Well, yeah, and honestly I think that's, to me that's its chief value is you can, and actually maybe he'll learn if he does it for a while, that the audience isn't you today. It's you in the future.

Jason Snell (01:30:28):
Yeah, I don't think he's criticizing Apple. I think he's skeptical about whether our current society, which is so focused on taking a picture of your salad and putting it on the internet, is going to be able to adapt to the idea that maybe you should just write about your salad for yourself and not tell everybody else about it,

Leo Laporte (01:30:47):
Which I'm a big fan of. I have to say though, and again, this goes back to that retreat I did, I had never written anything. My hand is like a claw because I don't do handwriting anymore, but I was forced to because there's no technology to hand write and write a lot in that week. And I got used to it. My handwriting got better and I started to enjoy it. And I think there is something to be said for handwriting a journal. There is something in the process, the physical process of writing on a page that makes a journal more valuable. I don't find typing on a phone screen to be quite as self-expressive, maybe as doing it by hand. But on the other hand, you can put in the music you listen to, you could put in the pictures. I went to visit my dad yesterday. I put pictures of my dad in there. So there are some pros and cons. Maybe do both. I don't know. But I think handwriting is really powerful to me. And

Andy Ihnatko (01:31:43):
The great thing about writing on paper is that it will be human readable unless there's a fire

Leo Laporte (01:31:48):
Or a flood. Well, that's the funny thing. I mean if I do it in day one, it's backed up in their servers. It'll probably outlast anything I hand write and I can search. Plus day one pulls up, here's what you did a week ago, a year ago, and so forth.

Alex Lindsay (01:32:05):
I don't know if I could write a whole page anymore, but

Leo Laporte (01:32:08):
That's what I thought too. And you get better at those muscles come back quick.

Alex Lindsay (01:32:12):
I've done that. I had to write something recently. I had to fill out a form of the doctor's office. By the end I was like, man, my hand hurts. I have not used those muscles in a long time to do more than a signature or put something in because I just type everything. My thumbs are much better.

Leo Laporte (01:32:28):
Neil Stevenson, who writes, as you know, very long novels, writes 'em in pen. In fact, if you go to the Museum of Popular Culture in Seattle, there's one of his, I think it's Snow Crash. There's literally a human sized pile of papers and boxes. A of pilot fountain pens. Yeah, it was the short one that he hand wrote. The broke cycle was all handwritten. There's something about handwriting that I get now and I support, but nevertheless, for a lot of people having just this and those gratitude prompts are good, I think it's really good. Lemme see if I have a prompt for today in my journal.

(01:33:14):
Plus, let's see. Select a moment and write journaling suggestions. So it mentions my wife, highlights from photo memories. Here's the reflection. Describe someone in your life who you really appreciate but forget to thank. See, I think that's a nice thing to slow down and do that here. It's got an outdoor walk I took, so I can talk about that. Other photo memories, music I listened to. Here's another prompt who's the most creative person record a voice memo with a compliment for them. Obviously they had mental health professionals working with them on this. I think it's quite good for sure. Yeah, there I went to the barbershop this morning and it actually knows that. And now I could write a little thing about my visit to the barbershop if I wanted to. I think that's great. I like what they've done here. I don't by the way yet see all of that in day one. I don't know how much of the a p they're using, but yeah, it's good.

Jason Snell (01:34:13):
And we should say one of the things about the API that's very clever is privacy related. It's apple, which is when you do it as an API. What that means is you might think, oh no. Day one now knows all this personal data that I don't use a chair, but it works like sharing photos does now with an app, which is the app calls the sharing API for suggestions, the journaling suggestions, API, and then you see a window with a bunch of things that are suggested and you select something. And when you select something and say, put this in day one or the journaling app, that data is then given to the app, but the app doesn't see it before then it's completely private. So any aggregation that Apple's background API is doing to collect information and intuit events in your life that you might want to write about apps, don't get to see that. You have to choose to share that with an app. And that is again, the right way to build that feature. And Apple did it, right?

Leo Laporte (01:35:12):
Yes. So you see the list of stuff on your device, but the app doesn't the app, but then you get to say, I want, oh yeah, I do want to take that barbershop and put that in my journal, and then the app gets to

Jason Snell (01:35:22):
See it, then the app gets

Leo Laporte (01:35:23):
To the Exactly. Brilliant. You know what, apple does a lot of new, remember flow. Apple does a lot of new apps and iTunes. Yeah, clips. Remember that one. Apple does a lot of new apps that don't really get traction. I hope this one does. I think this is a good idea. And you know what? Maybe put that salad in your journal and not on Instagram. Just a thought, just a crazy thought. Now, Andy, you can keep doing it. I like watching your diner pictures. What else is new in 17.2 that we

Jason Snell (01:36:01):
Should be doing? The emoji sticker replies and messages is in there for one. That's a feature that I ranted about a while ago. They did it really badly and it's slightly less bad now. They didn't make a tap backs, so you still have to go to a different interface. They're not using the tap back interface with the six emoji like everybody else who just lets you arbitrarily assign emoji. Instead they you tap and hold and say, give me a sticker, and all the emojis are stickers, so you can pick one. And the big change in the beta was when it first came out, the stickers covered the text of what you were responding to. Oh yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:36:37):
You didn't like that. Did they fix that? They fixed it. They

Jason Snell (01:36:39):
Did fix it. Good. So now the first two reactions don't cover the text of a given message. And then the future ones after that, they do

Leo Laporte (01:36:47):
Should reconsider, if you're putting more than two reactions on your

Jason Snell (01:36:50):
Text emoji should just be built into tap backs. That's what you should do. Apple chose not to do it. I don't know why it's not a very good feature that we were hoping for, but it's not super bad. It was when they first released it. So that's in there.

Leo Laporte (01:37:05):
Spatial video, recording video. Oh yeah, yeah. Have you used that yet, Alex? Have you done any?

Alex Lindsay (01:37:10):
I've played with it.

Jason Snell (01:37:12):
It's

Alex Lindsay (01:37:12):
A little tricky. So it's 10 80. You have to be in landscape mode and you need enough light every time. I picked it up for the first couple of times, it was like, Hey, you don't have enough light. You need to get more light to shoot this. And part of that problem is that it's not really capturing two individual eyes in a raw format. It is using computational photography to create those two eyes. It is capturing as a single image. The goal really is that you can capture a video, take it into final cut, edit it all. It just keeps passing through that system. And you don't have to think about two eyes, but when you push it out, how it's going to have it, it's in your photos. I mean, if you open up the photo app,

Jason Snell (01:37:53):
Yeah, you have to go to seven first and settings, photos and then choose. There's a subsetting that's basically like extended format you turn on where you can choose lots of, and you got to turn on that as a format. But then as Alex said, it's just a button in video. There's no spatial video mode or something. There's just a button with a picture of a vision pro and a circle, and you tap it and it'll go automatically. It goes into landscape automatically into 10 80 P 30. That's the only mode that it'll shoot in because remember, it's cropping the ultra wide down to a wide to go to match the normal camera. And so it's losing resolution, which is why it's only 10 80. And there's a lot of, I'm curious what Alex thought about it. I looked at some videos that I shot. There's a third party app that's in TestFlight that lets you pull 'em apart and turn them into side-by-sides. And I watched them on my quest. The fact is it looks okay. It's not great. You really got to the 3D stuff really needs to be very close to you. You really

Alex Lindsay (01:38:53):
Need,

Leo Laporte (01:38:53):
You go to camera, you go to formats, you scroll down, and then there's spat video for Apple Vision Pro. You have to turn that on

Jason Snell (01:39:02):
And then it's just in your video. Then I turn on

Leo Laporte (01:39:04):
ProRes too. Alex, by the way, I would turn it on. Don't,

Alex Lindsay (01:39:07):
It just makes it an option. Why not? It won't matter for this. This is recording in an

Leo Laporte (01:39:13):
Take. Oh, and then I saw a little Vision Pro thing. Yeah, I guess because I'm so close I can't see it.

Alex Lindsay (01:39:18):
And you got to remember, you got to be a landscape. Oh yeah, do it. Portrait. And then you should see a

Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
Little, there was a little vision

Alex Lindsay (01:39:25):
Pro thing. Are you in video or in stills right now? I'm

Leo Laporte (01:39:27):
In video. Should I be in stills?

Alex Lindsay (01:39:30):
No, no. You should be in video. Video.

Leo Laporte (01:39:31):
There it is. There it is. You saw it. Oh, boom. Now I'm move farther away. Well, yeah,

Jason Snell (01:39:39):
And you need to, yeah, if you're just taking landscapes off in the distance, don't use this feature because there's no real 3D. You're going to see, you want things in the foreground and in mid ground

Leo Laporte (01:39:49):
Five. So if I do this, yeah, I'll do this at the Festivus Bowl. Okay, now I'm going to move. Everything

Alex Lindsay (01:39:55):
Will matter between what's right in front of you. So in the, should I move around as we saw? Should I?

Leo Laporte (01:40:01):
You can move, yeah. Or no? Is it

Alex Lindsay (01:40:03):
Better? Remember that? No, no, it's fine. You can move around. So this isn't 360 video. So when you end up viewing this on a vision pro won't, it's going to be on a square. No, no, but I'm just saying it's going to be, it's going to an be in a

Leo Laporte (01:40:16):
Window. Yeah, you won't be in a three because

Alex Lindsay (01:40:17):
It's not doing a 180. What you So the And

Jason Snell (01:40:22):
They fuzz the edges. There's a border around the edges because when you get to the border, the video doesn't really work that well. So they're going to do a lot of things to calculate it out and make it, but it's going to be like a postcard kind of thing. It's not going to be an immersive thing. Right.

Alex Lindsay (01:40:37):
But it's going to be great for Yeah, but it's going to be in there. I think that you're going to see some pretty interesting, I think eventually you'll be able to stream it from the phone, so you'll be able to, someone could watch a 360 stream in that area and 3D envision if you're in vision, you'd be able to see it. And the idea that someday Apple could do a recal mean do build a phone that would let you view it is not out of the question. But because it's assuming hydrogen did it, I dunno how many years ago, I mean Red did it with the hydrogen, it does degrade a lot of other quality issues around the phone. So I think it could be a little hard sell, but the challenge that it has is that the inter axial distance, which it does not match our natural interocular distance. So it's got about really about one quarter of the parallax that you would normally have. And so it just means that, as Jason said, when you get the lenses, when you get the sensors at interocular, which is the same distance as our eyes, which is what the Fuji cameras did, and a lot of what lot of the

Jason Snell (01:41:47):
Visual pro will do when it captures video

Alex Lindsay (01:41:49):
Exactly when you get that, then it feels very natural to the amount of para or the amount of 3D ish that you would. Now a lot of times if we shoot bigger shows, we move the cameras further apart, then that creates a kind of a hyper, but you can't have anything in the foreground because it'll cause you to cross your eyes anyway. But I think that it's going to give you some fun footage. There are definitely things when you take things close up, it looks really, really cool. This is most of my experience from the hydrogen shooting video and stills with it. When you get pretty close within a couple feet, it looks awesome. When you're shooting things like snow, it looks amazing. I mean, just snow, things that change in distance a lot is really, really impressive. So there'll be things that people really, you'll start shooting stuff and I think that people will, who have the 15 will shoot. I know I'm starting to shoot some of the spatial stuff just going, well, someday I may have this in a headset that I really care about or that I may show on my TV that is in 3D or whatever.

(01:43:00):
So you kind of like you're there, you shoot with your regular cameras and then you switch it to spatial and shoot your little spatial and then you go

Jason Snell (01:43:05):
Back. That's important. That's a really important note, which is there are lots of things you should experiment with this, right? But also do not say, oh, right from now on, I've got to capture everything in this because it's very limited. You really need to have it be things that are sort of in that mid ground, five to 10 feet area. And honestly in, I don't know, 90% of scenarios, I would rather have a 4K video that's 2D than a 10 80 video. That's 3D.

Alex Lindsay (01:43:33):
And one of the things I think someone talked about, I don't remember whether other Apple talked about it or we talked about on the show, was the idea of shooting a birthday cake. And of course that's what I tried to do. My son turned 16 on the 24th of November and I went, I'm going to get the birthday cake. And he was like, you don't have enough light. I was like, okay, nevermind.

Leo Laporte (01:43:54):
I

Alex Lindsay (01:43:55):
Was like, got to do this outside. We're going to do it. It's got to be dirty. People don't

Leo Laporte (01:43:58):
Understand. Low light is just inside. You're not getting good light inside generally.

Alex Lindsay (01:44:04):
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:44:06):
It says on this, it's spacial because I'm spatial. You can only do this on a 14 Pro, is that right? 15 mean 15 pro. It says spatial, but it doesn't look any different. It won't look any different until I have the show. You

Jason Snell (01:44:22):
Feel the left eye. And unless you separate those out using an app and put it on a quest. Otherwise you'll have to wait until the Vision

Alex Lindsay (01:44:30):
Pro. Okay. But the nice thing about that is that it's going to go into an editing package that knows what it's looking at is generally going to just treat it like you could cut a hole. I went to the fair and here's all this 3D stuff that I showed you. It's true. And you don't have to think about how to deal. I mean for a lot of us, part of it is how do you manage all the stereo? You shoot all the stereo and then you're manage it. You don't have to manage anything. You just put it in there. And I think that we haven't seen it yet, but I expect to see, well, I mean obviously final cut in motion have a lot of tools in there already for 3D, and so you'll see probably more in that area where those things link together with this video really well.

(01:45:09):
So your ability to add graphics, to do the edit, do those things, and again, most likely we'll see this in Resolve and Premier, but the advantage that Apple has by having final cut in motion is that they own their own destiny. They can keep on building tools in to show what they can do with the, they're building a headset. They have to be able to build the content to the same level and trying to get a big problem with for Meta is the development pipeline. How do you get Apple is able to build all those tools and Meta did not. And so we spent an enormous amount of our effort in the early Oculus days. We spent an enormous amount of effort just figuring out how to stitch everything together, just figuring out how to get everything working. And I think Apple's going to probably do this. They've got more runway and they have a lot more software and hardware dedicated to it. So it'll be interesting to see.

Leo Laporte (01:46:01):
Also new, which is exciting. The action button actually now has the translate feature that they demonstrated. Has anybody used that? I haven't, yeah. I guess I'll have to go somewhere soon. But

Jason Snell (01:46:16):
It does it in the dynamic island, so you can actually have it, you press the action button and say something into it and then the dynamic island actually just expands with the translation of what it was, which is pretty cool. Cool idea.

Leo Laporte (01:46:27):
Oh that's neat. Here it is. Translate. So I'll select translate. Okay. And that really over-designed UI for the action button. All right. Now I have that. So I'll press and hold the action button. And now as you said, it's doing it in the, but I have to download some languages first, so Okay, I'll download a few languages. Let's get Korean anyway. I won't do it in real time, but yeah. So before you travel, get your languages here and English, I guess. Do I have to download English just in case I want to translate it back? I guess I do. So I'll get all of those both input and output languages. Yeah, must be downloaded to enable offline translation. That's cool. It's doing that offline. So before you travel, that's a good thing to turn on and then you can have conversations, right? Is that the idea? It's two way.

Jason Snell (01:47:20):
You can show it to somebody. You can do Where

Leo Laporte (01:47:22):
Is the bathroom, don't they? Bathroom they've, they set up s,

(01:47:27):
SS. See it's already working. There are a bunch of Apple Music features. They've added an option to disable inline predictions. I've heard a lot of complaints about how crappy these inline predictions are getting. Sometimes it's even offering non-existent words. I don't know where it's getting that from, but I think that's when they moved it to on device. So you can turn that off. iMessage contact key verification, that's valuable for encryption, so you might want to turn that on and make sure nobody's doing a man in the middle and that the person you're talking to is actually the person you think you're talking to. Messages and iCloud syncing, they've renamed that. It also shows how much it's using, which is actually pretty handy. A bunch of stuff. What's new in Apple tv? They've put that sidebar in now, right? Huge. Yeah,

Jason Snell (01:48:28):
So

Leo Laporte (01:48:28):
Tell me about that.

Jason Snell (01:48:30):
There's a whole big, they move the tabs off the top of the TV app and now it's a sidebar, so you have to kind of press the back button in order to display it and then choose another tab and then click and then it displays full screen. So what the advantage of it is when you're in a tab, you're in it full screen. The disadvantage is this weird modal switcher instead of the old one where you could just sort of scroll up to the top and choose a different one and they've also rolled a bunch of apps into it, so it feels like they're really trying to make it so that you can get to all of your video from that app without ever going back to the home screen. If you remember, the future of TV is apps, which is a thing that they said once. It seems like the future of TV of Apple TV is the TV app now. So if you want to get to Disney plus, you can literally scroll down in the menu when the main part of the TV app to Disney Plus and click it and it'll just launch the app. So it's a weird, I don't know what they're doing there. I don't think I'll like it, but it's an interesting direction for them.

Leo Laporte (01:49:31):
They also remove the ability to buy stuff within the app itself. So now you have to buy stuff in the iTunes separately?

Jason Snell (01:49:39):
No, no, no, no. It's the reverse. They've removed the iTunes apps and now you buy all your stuff in the TV app. The TV app is the store and the other apps are going away.

Leo Laporte (01:49:50):
That's what Google is doing too, by the way. Google has finally got rid of the play store or what it was, TV

Jason Snell (01:49:55):
And movies. iTunes as a concept is sort of fading into the background and now it's like if you want to rent or buy movies or tv, you actually just do it straight. You've been able to do it in the TV app for a little while now, but now they're just getting those apps out and saying no, that's where you do it. The TV app. So you do a search for a movie you want to watch and you rent it or buy it. I just did this today with my pick. That's coming up later and then it comes over and that's it. So you don't need the iTunes. Yeah, iTunes is a concept is sort of vanishing before our eyes.

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:26):
Yeah, I try to buy music from the iTunes store every time I try to buy music. It takes me a while to find how to actually do that.

Alex Lindsay (01:50:34):
The same problem. I'm just like, I just want to buy the song. It is like this little, like you got to find this. It literally feels like a little maze. I got to go over here and then I got to click this thing and I got to lift one foot and then I've got to hop forward and jump over to

Leo Laporte (01:50:48):
Side. There's a lot of new features. There's a book I can go on and on. Lemme just try this translation thing. Which way do the bathrooms? Oh, what do I It's Spanish Spain. Spanish, not Mexican.

Jason Snell (01:51:09):
Spanish cast.

Leo Laporte (01:51:10):
Yeah, listen, but cool. And I'm sure if I were in Mexico they'd understand, they'd think I was kind of putting on airs but they'd understand. That's cool. That's really nice. I love that. I love, it's the dynamic island. That's a great place to put it. And now I know where the bathrooms are. Let's see. Oh gosh, there's so many stories and we don't have any more time. So is there anything that you think is really important? You mentioned market cap over 3 trillion. If you want to use your phone's digital key to drive your car, look for the digital key logo which uses RFID. Not the insecure Bluetooth to unlock your car, but that means you have to tap it on the door. I don't know if NF I'm getting a new car a

Alex Lindsay (01:51:57):
Month. NFC. I think it's

Leo Laporte (01:51:58):
NFC, right? What did I say?

Alex Lindsay (01:51:59):
N-F-T-R-F-I-D. I think it's an

Leo Laporte (01:52:02):
It's FT NC

Alex Lindsay (01:52:04):
Nfc.

Leo Laporte (01:52:05):
Thank you. Car Key, which is more

Alex Lindsay (01:52:06):
Secure than the RFID it that's, that's why it matters.

Leo Laporte (01:52:09):
It's not going through the air. You actually have to have physical proximity and that was a big problem with a lot of these things. Yes, it's right and I think my new car has car key. I'm hoping we'll see. Sweet, sweet man. Finally, I've been using the Ford app to get into my

Jason Snell (01:52:23):
Bluetooth out of here.

Leo Laporte (01:52:24):
Yeah, it's not good. It's not good. Or our FID for that matter. Yeah,

Jason Snell (01:52:29):
All Bluetooth keys to be replaced by NFC keys. Some dime soon please. Woo-hoo.

Leo Laporte (01:52:33):
So much better. Apple is now apparently offering incentive to musicians to will you goddamn use those high-end spatial audio things because you're driving me crazy with your stereo stuff.

Alex Lindsay (01:52:46):
Well the funny thing is the Apple themselves make it harder because they spatialize a lot of the software already. I mean 2D, they take stereo stuff and they've spatialized it. I wonder if they're going to pull back on that and go, Hey, we're not going to, because right now what they do is they kind of reprocess it. You

Leo Laporte (01:53:01):
Automatically get it and maybe musicians aren are crazy about that,

Alex Lindsay (01:53:05):
Right? No, it's mostly because people haven't rerecorded. I mean already the music, a lot of studios have spent a lot of time, if you've got all the stems or all the tracks, there's a lot of people out there remixing stuff for Atmos right now because of what Apple did and Apple sweetening in the pot by saying you might make more money, you might get more streams, just is going to keep on heating that. It's really good for Apple, it's incredibly good for Dolby. Oh

Leo Laporte (01:53:34):
Dolby's loving it for Apple.

Alex Lindsay (01:53:35):
For Apple. This is a rounding error. We'd like to have people we want, but what it does do is it separates the Apple platform from a lot of the other platforms because Android and Windows is kind of a dumpster fire when it comes to Vision and Atmos. And so Apple is like what they're doing here is by pushing things towards Atmos and having more and more content over Atmos, they get to separate their platform from The problem is no matter what they do on Windows and Android, they're so fragmented and Apple has invested I think now eight years into Atmos envision. So almost everything on the Apple platform will handle this and almost nothing on the Android and Windows will handle it. So Apple is really, this is not about money for Apple, it's about market separation, but for Dolby it's a lot about money.

Leo Laporte (01:54:21):
I don't know if Apple has announced this. It might be, it's just a rumor from Bloomberg. They say starting the next year the company plans to give added waiting to streams of songs that are mixed in Dolby Atmos. I hope that doesn't mean when I do a search for a song, it's going to give me songs that are Dolby atmos over ones that aren't.

Alex Lindsay (01:54:37):
I think what it means is that when your songs keep playing, so you play a song and it starts to play other songs after it, those

Leo Laporte (01:54:44):
Will be Atmos.

Alex Lindsay (01:54:45):
It won't be the only weight. It's not like we're only going to play Atmos for you, but if there are two songs that the waiting for that next song is even or close the Atmos one might be the next one you hear.

Leo Laporte (01:54:56):
I'm not happy about that. Listeners will not necessarily have to play the Atmos version for the artists to get the extra money. Just that the extra money comes because the artists have offered it in that format. So it's encouraging it really, you hear it, you love at Atmos. I no longer can tell the difference, so it doesn't No, I can hear it. Yeah, I know you can't, but I don't, I mean I guess if I really pay attention, I can hear it. I don't think it's, at first I thought, oh this is, and they have pitched it as this is like going from mono stereo. I don't think it's that big a jump.

Alex Lindsay (01:55:30):
Obviously to me it's more of a jump than from mono stereo because the problem is that it's just a lot less muddy. So the thing is that when you start putting all the instruments, you start filling in those spaces, your is able to manage that. And the big thing that happens when people are really, and right now we're not designing, we're basically doing stereo and then we kind of make it a little wider. When you work with a really good Atmos mix, what happens is that Atmos Mix builds a kind of a theater in your mind that you're listening to and it feels bigger. And what it'll do is it'll make what's coming right down that center track even more present because your mind has kind of built up this space that it sits inside of that makes it more present than what it, so it's actually the singing that actually sounds the best when done correctly.

(01:56:17):
The problem is that a lot of people will build what we call a phantom center with the right and left channel. Then you don't get some of that benefit. So when it's mixed properly down that center track and you really use that space you end up in, it feels much bigger. And I think that's, I'll take your word for it. You're hearing the problem is that a lot of this always comes down to the content is that a lot of the content and a lot of the mixes are kind of muddy and so you don't hear it when you hear it done really well, it makes a big difference.

Leo Laporte (01:56:51):
IPhone 17, which is two years off, we'll get TSM MCs two nanometer chips. Okay, great. It's the end of E three. The ESA finally admitted it after announcing it and canceling it two years in a row. Now they finally said, yeah, we're just not, we're going to skip the announcing part. It's canceled. The executive, the Apple executive who invented the iPhone screen and touch id, Steve Hoteling is leaving. He was top deputy, retiring. Retiring. Well, he's going to have more time with his money. He's

Jason Snell (01:57:25):
Got to have a lot of money. He's doing okay.

Leo Laporte (01:57:29):
So he was a direct report to Johnny Siri.

Jason Snell (01:57:32):
I feel like that's going to be a story of the next 10 years at Apple two next five years. A lot of the people who were really key in bringing the iPhone to bear, the ones who are still there, they're all going to cash out, they're all going to leave. It's not going to all happen at once. But anybody who was at Apple 15 years ago and had stock options probably doesn't need to work anymore unless they have a gambling problem. I don't know. Or many, many, many different divorced spouses. Anyway, Bernie, apple employee number, but I digress. 17, right? And it's a victim of your own success that some of those people are not driven by money, but also Apple is a hard place to work is the impression I get. And you have to work real hard and at some point you probably want to step off the treadmill.

Leo Laporte (01:58:21):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I know that feeling.

Jason Snell (01:58:25):
Go to the Cabo house, right? Time to go to the beach house. This

Leo Laporte (01:58:30):
Is a happy story. It is a different story when they got hired away by somebody, which is like, oh, Steve's problem. Steve deserves some time at the Los Cabos retreat. Pixel the week gentlemen, prepare them because that's what's next on Mac Break Weekly. Our show today brought to you by Wix. Oh, web agencies, you're going to like this one. Let me correct that. You're going to love this one. Lemme tell you about Wix Studio. The platform that gives agencies total creative freedom to deliver complex client sites and still smash deadlines seems impossible, right? Well first, let's start with the advanced design capabilities. With Wix Studio, you can build unique layouts with a revolutionary grid experience, watches elements, scale proportionally by default. It's kind of magical. No-code animation adds sparks of delight while custom CSS gives you total design control, but it doesn't stop there. You'll be bringing ambitious client projects to life in any industry using a fully integrated suite of business solutions, e-commerce events, bookings, it's all in there, but that's not all.

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You can extend the capabilities even further with hundreds of APIs and integrations. And you know what else? The workflows just make sense. There's the built-in AI tools, the centralized workspace, the on canvas collaboration, the reuse of assets across sites, and the seamless client handover. You're going to love it. Find out more at wix.com/studio. Check it out. The new Wix studio, Wix WI x.com/studio. We thank of so much for supporting Mac Break Weekly. I rarely do this because my wallet is already groaning under the burden, but let's start with Alex Lindsay's pick of the week. It's free.

Alex Lindsay (02:00:19):
It's free. It's free for this one. I love you. So I am recommending Gray Matter show and because this week Jason Snell, it was our guest, it just released this morning and what a great conversation. It was just a really, I mean I know Jason's here, so don't let Jason just close your ears. Don't tell me. Yeah, one of our best episodes just a really, really good, I mean it was just a really, I dunno how it felt on your end, Jason, but it felt like a really,

Jason Snell (02:00:47):
I think this Michael Krasney kid really has a future.

Leo Laporte (02:00:49):
He's got a future people and I think it's hard to tell, but Jason's really smart.

Alex Lindsay (02:00:57):
Think someone good at interviewing and matches up someone knows something. The

Jason Snell (02:01:00):
Dog's on a keyboard on the internet and I don't know what I'm doing.

Leo Laporte (02:01:02):
Jason's been around and he's, he's really sharp and has great insights, so I'm not surprised. I can't wait to

Jason Snell (02:01:09):
Hear it. And Michael Kressley is an outside our domain kind of interviewer, so yeah, he's curious. He has questions that are like, yeah, yeah. They're like, what about this AI stuff? And I'm like, oh, okay, let's talk about it. It's not really my top area, but yeah, let's do it. Yeah, that was wild. Kind of out of body experience to talk to somebody who is a legend in radio in the Bay area and he was just talking to me before we got started. He was like, we were talking about Star Trek. It was weird. It was actually a really good kind of icebreaker where he was like, I interviewed Gene Roddenberry and I

Leo Laporte (02:01:38):
Bet he's really good at that kind of thing. Yeah, just kind of, yeah, I think so. Warm me up before the show. I think he's good at it. I think he is also, thank you Alex. Advice for new and aspiring journalists from an editor in chief for many years, a longtime journalist. So that sounds like a good episode. It's a gray matter show episode. Bear with an E 62, Jason Snell

Alex Lindsay (02:02:01):
And all of them. I think that what's really interesting is all three of you have been on and all of them are some of our top shows. It's been really, I think that there's some kind of matchup between what we're talking about and his interviewing style have been really, really good.

Leo Laporte (02:02:15):
Did we beat Geraldo? Did we get more downloads in Geraldo?

Alex Lindsay (02:02:19):
I will say that, no. Yeah, you did actually. Oh good. The funny thing is, is that the Geraldo one is still, it's the best interview of him I've ever heard and it's a much more is a complex person in that interview than I've ever assumed he was watching

Leo Laporte (02:02:38):
Krasney iss. Good Krasney is already knows what he's doing. Amber Mack is an earlier interview, but the list of people he's interviewed are Ken Burns. I mean it's just mind boggling. Some of the

Alex Lindsay (02:02:50):
Best people when Burns is excited to be on the show. Yeah, they were. That's so cool. Interviewed 'em quite a few times. You're getting, yeah, that's so

Leo Laporte (02:02:58):
Cool. Gray Matter show. See it didn't cost you a thing. Look, there's Andy, Andrew Naco pick O the week muted. You are muted, unmuted.

Andy Ihnatko (02:03:13):
Mine is always a good pick around this time of year at Charlie Brown Christmas and good news is that Apple has decided to do something very nice they didn't have to do, which is to make it absolutely free, no subscription required this weekend. So if you just download the Apple TV plus app on December 16th and 17th, which is Saturday and Sunday, I believe this weekend, you can watch it without any subscription whatsoever, which again, I think it was, they don't have to do it. It's just a really nice thing to do given how this is iconic and parents want to share this with their kids, just their, like their parents wanted to share it with them.

(02:03:53):
I repeat they didn't have to do this, but it's made a little bit more difficult because they also, when they got exclusivity on all the Charlie Brown specials, they also removed them digitally from every other app store, every other media store. So the only place to get it is on DVD and a lot of houses don't even have DVD players anymore. So the gold standard would've been to air it on PBS, which is what they did the first time. But I'm sure there were going to be problems getting clearances for that even as even if they decided to make that big of gesture. But yeah, this is great. It's in high definition, it's almost off-putting, watching it on a 4K TV if you are of a certain age because there needs to be interlace and a little bit of snow. Wow. The ability to see old animation in 4K where you can actually see the shadows between the cell drawings and the background. It's a trip man. Wow. But yeah, this thing completely holds up and it's quite wonderful. And again, thank you Apple for making this move.

Leo Laporte (02:04:55):
Yeah, that's really great. I mean, I wish Apple would send each and every one of us in the entire nation our own U-H-D-D-V-D copy, but failing that, I think at least they're putting it, it is number one, by the way, on their holiday charts, Charlie Brown Christmas,

Andy Ihnatko (02:05:16):
It's kicking the butt of the, it's Arbor Day Charlie Brown

Leo Laporte (02:05:21):
As it should

Jason Snell (02:05:22):
Quite right as it

Leo Laporte (02:05:22):
Should. Jason, Jason, this not on your,

Andy Ihnatko (02:05:27):
Everybody acknowledges it.

Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
This is not at the bottom of your list of Charlie Brown shows.

Jason Snell (02:05:31):
No Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving one's bad. This one's a good one. This one's at

Leo Laporte (02:05:34):
The top. Tipity top

Jason Snell (02:05:35):
Opposite of the chart from that one.

Leo Laporte (02:05:39):
I can't play the music stupid dance, but I think if I hum it,

Jason Snell (02:05:41):
We all know

Leo Laporte (02:05:43):
Nobody will take it down. I play Vince Aldi all year long. Vince Aldi.

Jason Snell (02:05:51):
Awesome. That's my favorite Christmas album is just that music. It's

Leo Laporte (02:05:54):
The best. Just listen to it on repeat.

Jason Snell (02:05:56):
That's two free picks of the week. By the way,

Leo Laporte (02:05:59):
Vince Aldi, I'm

Jason Snell (02:05:59):
Going to make you pay. Yeah,

(02:06:01):
I'm going to make you pay. Well no, it was like Apple showing it free. Alex has got a free podcast. I'm going to make you pay because you know James Cameron, maker of some of the most profitable movies of all time. But for my money, his best movie has not been available in 4K HDR until yesterday I think. I mean basically right now, which is the abyss from 1989. I love this movie. It's available. I think you get the special edition, which is my preferred edition. He had to cut a lot of stuff out to get it to a shorter runtime. And I'll just say that I remember this movie, the Special edition being incredibly long by Modern Standards is not a long movie at all. No,

Leo Laporte (02:06:45):
Go ahead. And it's hilarious. Killers The Flower Moon three and a half hours later.

Jason Snell (02:06:50):
Exactly. So this special edition, it's wonderful. Restores a lot of good character bits. The ending makes more sense if you are a purist and want it on Disc, it is coming out on a UHD release in the spring. But I'll tell you, I have wanted to talk about this movie on my podcast, the incomparable for 700 episodes now, and it's been my white whale in a way because it was not really available. And the special edition especially, not really available in anything but DVD for the longest time, not even hd, just DVD and that's not good enough. And they did a 4K restoration. My understanding is they did it several years ago, but Jim had to sign off on it and finally after making a million avatars or whatever he did, he did sign off on it. It is coming out on disc, but you can just also just buy the 4K on apples, not on iTunes because it's gone, but in the TV app or on Amazon or wherever else videos are sold on the internet, 4K version HDR Can't wait to watch it 20 bucks or wait for the disc. I'll buy

Leo Laporte (02:07:58):
It. This is important in CGI history too, as I remember Alex. Yep. It's the first CG composite. Yeah,

Jason Snell (02:08:07):
The water weenie that comes out of the water is a got the experimental CGI thingy. Well

Leo Laporte (02:08:15):
Yeah, go

Andy Ihnatko (02:08:15):
Ahead. Just say it's so experimental that I didn't notice until I read about this in Synex or something that he designed the shot so that he could remove it, that if it completely failed, he could get rid of it. In the interview he just gave last week, the variety, he said that there was another effect shot with the finale shot, which is what Jason was referring to. It was actually tested and they just could not get the effects to work. And also when they tested it with an audience, it just didn't work. So we got rid of it. So this is a 1992 restoration, which they put it all back together and I agree with Jason, it is the best movie that James Cameron has made in a catalog of really great movies. And furthermore, there is one scene that I don't want to spoil, but Jason knows very well what I'm talking about that I think is one of the greatest scenes

Jason Snell (02:09:09):
History. I just got chills. Yeah, I agree. I think that there is one particular scene in this movie that is one of the best scenes ever made on film. Really. It is shocking.

Leo Laporte (02:09:18):
I'll be watching it this week and then I'll see

Andy Ihnatko (02:09:20):
If I myself saying chilling. I wish I could come up with this. It's amazing.

Leo Laporte (02:09:25):
Okay, so I'll be looking for that. Wow, great pick. Thank you. It's a movie and thank you all for being here. Jason Snell is@sixcolors.com. That's where you can read. Yes, I am. Him and the Dan Morin and all the other stuff and how to Stop Mail Logs, froms in there every week, your disc space and all sorts.

Jason Snell (02:09:44):
All sorts of fun stuff in there. John Moltz, he's funny. He writes a funny column for us at the end of the week. Love I love mos. We got lots of stuff going on. There's hysterical. So check it out and then more if you become a member. But we all have our memberships, don't we? But anyway, but a lot of it's free so you can check it

Leo Laporte (02:09:59):
Out. There is also, of course, a special page dedicated to Jason's 1400 different

Jason Snell (02:10:06):
Podcasts, many different podcasts, six

Leo Laporte (02:10:08):
Colors.com/jason and look at 'em. All you busy, busy guy.

Jason Snell (02:10:14):
There's a lot going on. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:15):
Thank you Jason. I appreciate you filling in for me when I was off getting my brain fixed, by the way. Of course. Thank you.

Jason Snell (02:10:22):
I appreciate it. Happy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (02:10:24):
Mr. Andy and Ko, GBH in your future. Yes.

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:29):
Thursday, 1230. Go to WGBH news.org to listen to it live or later or listen to the last one I did a couple of weeks

Leo Laporte (02:10:35):
Ago. Very nice. Anything to tell us about inco.com?

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:42):
I'm aiming for an early, I'm aiming to get it out before the Vision Pro. Let's put it that way.

Leo Laporte (02:10:49):
I love it sometime early next year.

Andy Ihnatko (02:10:53):
Now I'm disappointed that you hear about, oh, good training of Apple Store employees. Oh damn. I guess I'm going to be working on Christmas. I

Leo Laporte (02:11:02):
Thank you Andrew and Alex Lindsay, of course Gray Matter show that produce show he produces with Michael Krasney, but day in, day out at Office Hours Global where you can really find out what's going on in the world of production and if you want to hire this CAT 0 9 0 media.

Alex Lindsay (02:11:20):
Yeah, we had a rate dated it this morning. We had Alex Goldner, who he builds a lot of the lower thirds and stuff like that for some of the web assets for the BBC. Oh wow. And he was breaking down how he builds these in motion and how you build the integration between Motion and Final Cut so that you can build all the tools that you want and everything from, I mean, lots of stuff that I didn't even know existed in. I've been using motions since version one and he was showing stuff and I was like, I was today's years old when I knew that, and so he was kind of building that integration there. It's pretty slick. Lots of cool stuff. So I would definitely check it out.

Leo Laporte (02:11:57):
Black Magic Camera app show. There's a show map.

Alex Lindsay (02:12:00):
We spent a whole show last week talking about the Black Magic camera app and it's, it really is pretty groundbreaking. I mean the level of sophistication, especially in a free app is kind of amazing. So we spent a fair bit time talking about it. I'll have

Leo Laporte (02:12:16):
To watch that so I can use it properly. Office Hours Global, that's the website. Find out more. We do Mac Break weekly, Tuesdays 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern, 1900 utc. We do stream all our shows as we produce them on YouTube, which is of course youtube.com/twit and if you subscribe that way you'll get a little notification when we are going to go live. We go live during the show so you can watch it. If you're watching live, join us in the club. The club Twit Discord is a great place to hang. I spent a lot of time in there. In fact, many of us are doing the advent of code and there's a nice advent of code section in there. We talk about all kinds of geeky stuff. So if you are into geek stuff, if you're into our shows, the Discords great. There's only one catch.

(02:13:09):
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Only about 1% of you are members. We'd love to get that to, well, at least 2%, maybe 5%. That would really put us on a good financial footing. It's going to be up to you twit TV slash club twit if you're not already a member. And thanks in advance after the fact, even non-Club members can listen to the show. You just go to twit tv slash m bw. That's the website. You can also, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to Mac Break Weekly with even more ads if you like the ads. And then because YouTube ads their own, and then there's of course the best way to listen, which is to get a podcast client. We like PocketCasts, but Apple Podcasts or whatever you prefer. I think Google just killed their podcast app and I think Apple's podcast is not long for this world, but podcasts is great and we recommend it if you, oh no, apple podcast isn't going anywhere.

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They keep updating it. No, it's okay. Why didn't I think that they were making changes in the No, they keep adding new features to it. So they've got actual real developers on Yeah, they're all in on podcasting. Well, that's good. I like that. So you can use that if you want, but whatever you like, do subscribe, because that way you'll get the show the minute it's available on a Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to John Ashley, our technical director who edits the show these days, Mr. John Ashley, our technical director and editor edits the show and who produces the show? John Ashley, editor and director John Ashley, the producer, editor, and technical director of the show. And thanks also to John Sena, the other John, who's our studio manager and Burke McQuinn, keep the things working of course to our entire team. It's been a little rough this holiday season for twi.

(02:15:45):
We are really doing our best to get everything together and keep it going in 2024 and onward. And your help will help a lot. Thank you everybody. We'll see you next time. But I am sad to say time to get back to work because break time is over. See you next time, episode 900. Bye-Bye. Listeners of this program, get an ad free version if they're members of Club twit. $7 a month gives you ad free versions of all of our shows. Plus membership in the club. twit Discord, a great clubhouse for twit listeners. And finally, the TWIT plus feed with shows like Stacey's Book Club, the Untitled Linux show and more. Go to twit tv slash

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