MacBreak Weekly 915 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.

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell they're all here. There's not a lot of news. Mostly it's what's not going to come out this month, but we will talk about Vision Pro. In fact, we managed to get 53 minutes of Vision Pro content, including why Apple's baseball efforts aren't great and that soccer video, Wow, terrible. We'll also talk about the guy who's getting sued by Apple for leaking to the press. They're throwing the book at him and a new version of vision pros 3d. Man actually looks pretty good. It's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

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This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 915, recorded tuesday, april 2nd 2024. I ain't got that many stockings. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Apple and the new ipads aren't here.

0:01:09 - Jason Snell
Joining us, jason snell from sixcolors.com I am here, but he is here yay also. Andy Ihnatko from GBH in Boston. Hello Andy.

0:01:23 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm more excited about the micro OLED Apple watches that also aren't here and working out. We can talk about how that didn't happen.

0:01:32 - Leo Laporte
There's a lot of stuff that's not here, can't we? And also from officehoursglobal and 090.media. Mr Alex Lindsay. Hello, alex.

0:01:40 - Alex Lindsay
I like to talk about the intercontinental transporter made by Apple that has not arrived yet, not been announced yet.

0:01:48 - Leo Laporte
Jeff Jarvis was a guest with Krasny on Gray Matter. It's great, was it good? It's so good. He's really good.

0:01:55 - Alex Lindsay
He's great, it was really great to have him on Future of media and journalism.

0:01:58 - Leo Laporte
I'm not sure I want to listen. Be honest, it's good it's Jeff Jarvis, is it's good it's Jeff Jarvis? Is the future right? You know I?

0:02:05 - Alex Lindsay
think Jeff's more on the bright future than the dark future, you know, so I think we're doing okay.

0:02:10 - Leo Laporte
So because there are no new products from Apple this week, and I guess the latest is probably not going to be until May, there'll be new iPads, so we're just going to rest.

0:02:21 - Alex Lindsay
It does seem like they'll get them out of the way before they get to any WWDC, yeah, which we now have a date for.

0:02:26 - Leo Laporte
so yep, june 10th, right. So sometime between now and june 10th, in the next month and a half, let's say, there will be new ipads.

0:02:36 - Andy Ihnatko
I wonder if I wonder if we're going to get like all the new ipads at once, or whether they're going to sort of want to like stretch them out a little bit because we are like we are super overdue for like all ipad updates. And what happens when everybody who is has been in the market for any kind of ipad of any kind has updates available to them all at the same time. Like if someone who, like maybe is more of like a mac, an ipad air sort of person, but there's no iPad. Oh, but gosh, this brand new iPad Pro looks kind of nice and it is still a 10-inch body, or like an iPad Air person or an iPad Mini person is waiting for like whatever. Like that's the one I'm most looking forward to the iPad Mini. Yeah, it'd be great to have an entire day of this stuff, but here is everything. Here is let's have the entire beauty pageant of iPad just for one day.

0:03:30 - Leo Laporte
Gosh, we can dream. I still love my iPad Mini 6 and use it. That's the only iPad I use all the time, every day, and I use it mostly in bed reading. Yeah, will there be a new iPad Mini? There ought to be, it's been a while.

0:03:44 - Jason Snell
But it won't be. Oled, think this year, unclear whether it'll be May or not. It won't. Yeah, almost certainly won't be OLED.

0:03:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I want to keep the price down, so there'll be no real reason for me to wait and hold my breath or anything. Let's uh. Let's do the long uh awaited Vision Pro hour, because that's all we got. Are we best? Are we still happy? Are we enjoying our vision pro? Uh? Immensely, jason. When's the last time you wore yours? Uh, yesterday, oh, very good.

0:04:15 - Jason Snell
here's the thing, though. I mean. The truth is, it's what we I I don't know why we're checking it out, but it's it's what we said before, which is it is for developers and people who want to see the future, and it's not for people who want to use it today in most practical ways. With a few limited exceptions, and I think that that is true, I think that I still think maybe they should have called it a developer product, but I think it's not in their bodies to do that, and they wanted to get people excited and find some people who just want to do it to watch immersive video. They wanted to get people excited and find some people who just want to do it to watch immersive video. The problem is they have not released any more immersive video for

it, except soccer did last week, which is a five minute highlight package that came out 100 days after the events that are chronicled within, and I wrote a piece about this Like I don't know. Look, you got to make mistakes and I I'm curious what Alex thinks about this too, so I'll throw it to him in a second. But you got to make mistakes. That's part of the learning process. But it's an immersive video, cut like a like an ESPN highlights package, and it shows simultaneously the individual shots show just how amazing immersive video can be and show just how amazing immersive video can be. And as a unit, it's terrible because it's all quick cuts and they don't allow you any immersion. And you're like looking over there at the soccer player who's the center of attention, and then there's a cut and he shoots a goal. But you're looking over there, you don't know where he is now that it's cut, because it's not a 16 by nine, that's in your field of view. So now you're looking around and like, every time they cut, it takes several seconds to reorient, which is why you shouldn't do quick cuts, and I don't.

It is. It was so obvious. On watching, I was like, oh, this is what not to do that. Said, elements of it were amazing and I think that there is huge potential for sports on vision pro because, like the feeling that you're on the field, the feeling like seeing those fans in the stands, seeing professional athletes doing their thing close up, is amazing. But I'm also a little worried that they haven't released any other of these immersive videos. The one they did is it took them more than three months to do a five minute highlight package and when they released it it was put together by people who didn't get it. So I'm a little concerned that even one of the highlight features of the vision pro is not it like suffers from a lack of content not a failing of the vision pro, but a failing of the people of the content engine behind it

0:06:38 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, yeah. And the hard part is is that most of the errors are stuff that folks like me, who've been doing you know 60 for the last decade, we all know that those rules, all those rules, are really, you know, common Like they're all the things you do the first time you do it Like it's like oh yeah, nobody, nobody makes the first jump, you know, like you know, and so you, so you just go, you're like, okay, well, they got started and they realized about stuff didn't work.

0:07:01 - Jason Snell
Someone at MLS was put in charge of this and they've never done it before. And I mean there's a, there's a reason. I think even Apple has to be aware that it doesn't work Right Like but, but they released it. I don't know why did they release.

0:07:14 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think that it has. You know, it shows you some of those great clips that are there. The concern you always get into when we work with traditional directors who haven't done a bunch of VR work, the number one thing that happens is they want to treat it like a regular show, so they just want to shoot it the way they want to tell the story, you know, and you're like, yeah, it's more of an experiencing the event, not telling a story. Like, and you can experience a story, but you can't, really, you don't tell it the way that you tell it in the traditional way.

We've had this very limited little box that we live inside of called, you know, the, the screen, and now we're not in that and it just it's a completely different, you know, thing to work with and we all do it at the beginning is that you'll cut quickly. You'll want to move around. You can't with with VR, you really can't move the camera very much. So then you want to cut a lot because you move the camera, people get sick because they're everything's moving. So people want to do 24p, which looks horrible in VR, and then they want to cut a lot, which looks horrible in VR. And so what we found is that letting people sit, and giving people some self-initiative as well, really helps a lot. So really, at an MLS game, what I would say is you want to sit over the net, you want to sit at the 50-yard line, you want to sit in some of the corners where they're going to kick out.

0:08:24 - Jason Snell
And you as the viewer. It's called midfield, by the way, not the 50 yard line, but I appreciate it. It's Americans here, we're Americans, I'm American. I don't understand any of that stuff.

0:08:33 - Alex Lindsay
So I understand basketball now because I had a stream 20. Up until then I was like I don't understand what anyone's doing here. So, anyway, you have a couple cameras at midfield or in the corners over the nets. Those are the things that are places that you want to stand and then let the users go find those places, because when you cut for them it's disorienting because they are experiencing something. So you really want to give people this is where the kind of choose your own adventure actually works. And they'll sit, you know they'll. And what happens is now you could, if you're going to choose it for them is you're going to be at the net and then you're going to be in the at midfield, then you're going to be at the other net or in a couple maybe in between, and as you just follow where the ball is and you just you just kind of cut to those and they experience. Now the reality is for a lot of sports, for a lot of sports, you're not going to like it's not going to be a better experience. You know so because you know, like golf is a good example of you're stuck with the reality of where you were sitting on the 18th hole. Well, you only get to see the 18th hole or the tee off of the 18th hole or whatever, wherever you're stuck. So what we found with golf as an example, is that it was better for us, with VR, to let you watch a 16 by nine experience and literally it's just the clean edit of the, so there's no graphics on it the clean edit of the show. I just watched the show in 16 by nine. When we get to the green, to a green that you're watching, you know that we can show you that, like we can suddenly use, let the entire background appear and now you're standing on the green for that moment, and then we go back to 16 by nine and you can watch it because and I think that that people are going to you know they'll hopefully find that that was something we learned eight years ago. You know like so, so the but, but you want to kind of go back and forth between that 16 by 9 experience for a lot of sports and because the reality is being on the field is only good for a moment. That's the hard part with sports. So I think that the VR is great when you're going to like they're about to do a penalty kick, that's when you want to sit on the net, but the rest of the game you might want, or big chunks of the rest of the game you might actually want to watch a 16 by 9 um, and so you know of it being cut, and so those are the kind of things. And but, like with concerts, I felt, even though they did a much better job with alicia keys, they didn't need more than one camera, like sitting next to alicia keys and having her sing to you is all they needed, and they still cut around and I think that that's it's.

It's just a learning process. It's, it's, it's just a learning process. It's, it's. You know, it's just old. You have to get Pat. What happens is is that, at every company hires someone from Hollywood to go, they're going to clean everything up, and they worked on the Oscars or they did whatever, and they're going to, they're going to bring these folks in to make it all great. But the problem is what they're doing is they're bringing old, uh, old wineskins to put new wine in, you know, and so they're, you know, they're, they're, you know, and it's you know, they're, they're not. They're not bringing a new, the new ideas, or or just dancing with the new technology. Apple will get there, because everyone else does, but it takes, but they'll spend.

0:11:33 - Leo Laporte
I mean, everybody else has spent uh 10 to 100 million dollars making this mistake so it explains, though, your conundrum, jason, because they've got to put it out so that people can learn these lessons.

0:11:48 - Alex Lindsay
Right, they already have the lessons, what they really should do is just hire people from the other teams.

0:11:51 - Leo Laporte
They should hire people who've already learned them. Yeah.

0:11:54 - Alex Lindsay
And you feel that NextVR would know these things because they bought them. But I don't think even then they were still kind of an edge case when Apple bought them.

0:12:02 - Andy Ihnatko
But it's still a big problem case when Apple bought them, but it's still. It's still a big problem. Like, uh, even if it's a, even if it's a sport I understand, like baseball, like, I don't want I don't have the expertise that the camera operators have on the field, I don't have the expertise that the director in the, in the, in the trailer or the, or the person who's operating the switcher has. Like, my problem is that I do want to have a more immersive experience, but I want, I wanted to cut to exactly where the action is happening. I want to, I want to cut right to where the balls, where the balls being hit, when they're, when the director anticipates that there's going to be a play at third.

I want that close shot at third, because I'm probably still looking at that. I'm still probably looking at that guy to see, like, is he? Is he angry that he overshot, that he overshot, he overshot, he overshot his, his intended target, uh, and he's pretty frustrated with myself. Meanwhile, I missed up, I missed a stand-up double play, uh, so so it's so, it's so. I'm saying that the part of the creativity, part of the storytelling, is selecting these shots without counting on the viewer, like, looking in the right direction right so this is someplace where I'm.

I'm kind of interested and kind of confused by how much is going to have to be immersive and how much is going to have to be.

0:13:10 - Alex Lindsay
I'm here for a passive reception of a story and what we found so far is that, for the most part, uh, when we've done choose your own adventure with 16 by 9 on phones verizon did this, at&t's done it, a lot of other folks have done it when we you go, you can choose your camera angles. Um, 95 of the folks within three to five minutes, will move back to the passive view, like because they it's just not as good to try to do exactly what you're saying. It's I don't want to jump around and there's too much lag and there's all these other things. Now, what I think is interesting, though, is like a you know where replays for, or being able to just pop into a replay. So you're watching the whole thing 16 by like. The problem is, jumping really quickly in 180 degree is not going to, is going to make some people very sick, so cutting the show the way you've done it in the past isn't really going to work. So a 16 by nine window works better that way, cause it gives you a frame of reference. Then the then the thing is, is a replay, though might like, let's say they steal second. Um, maybe we're going to let you stand on the on the field or be somewhere nearby, or maybe it's a steal on home or or or something like that, where you can feel like you can stand there and either you as a user can just decide I want to stand on. It's like to be standing on, sitting on top of that net, or be in the, in the be in the end zone, and I want to go stand there. And then I just go and stand there and stand there until I'm bored and then when I come back, it's a 16 by nine experience and watching, you know, same show that I had before. Maybe it's in 3d, I don't know, or something kind of like it and then I but then some replays might be something that gets switched over. You know, like there's a touchdown. We happen to have a good shot from the stereo camera in the corner of the end zone, so when we cut to that, you're watching 16 by nine, but you see it kind of fade. And now you're standing there and you get to see the receiver coming right down in front of you with all the stuff happening, and then it goes back to the show again and I think that that, I think we, I think there's too much of a we. It has to be one way or the other, and I don't.

We found that it didn't have to be, that we could seamlessly give you momentary experiences of immersive that were great, you know, for for sports sports, it just felt like with big fields the only sports that we find really work well for immersive that you don't need that as boxing, like boxing, and things like that. Really small spaces are really good because you can put the camera there and now someone can. Now you really just feel like you're there and no one's going too far away and no, you don't need to change your frame of reference and you don't need to do any of those things, you can just enjoy it. You don't need to do any of those things, you can just enjoy it. So I think that that those you know, small sports, small field sports, but large field sports you need, you need to be able to cut around and you can't do that, and so I think that that's going to be the challenge.

And again, I think concerts are changing, like when we design concerts, we're designing them. We're designing concerts right now, and a lot of what we're talking about is one camera, it's the, the. You know you're going to have an artist playing now. That does that solve what acdc wants to do on a big stage? No, does it. Is it a great experience if you want to have tracy chapman or toad the wet sprocket or or noah khan? Absolutely so, you know. And so so there's some artists that will play better to those things than others and it doesn't mean that, or you have a big, big show.

The problem, you know the again the. The problem is where those cameras want to be often conflict with where the audience wants to be. The camera wants to be right at center stage, it wants to be 10 feet from the lead singer. I mean, if you look at the stuff that, if you look at that MLS, I believe that the best shot in the MLS was the champagne at the very end. No-transcript things that all of us that have been doing this for a while have been talking about. And I was, to Jason's point, surprised that Apple did many of the things that are kind of well-known to not do, and I think that it just came down to an external producer putting something together, and I'm sure that they were from LA or New York.

0:17:30 - Jason Snell
Well, the good news is Major League Baseball and Vision Pro is yeah, but so I'll give them credit. They're trying, but it's super buggy and this is. It's actually a story on Vision OS that we're seeing a lot is. Everybody wants to be there, but everything is taking longer than we thought it would. Right Like that. That highlight package was more than three months after the playoffs were over. The vision pro app they did a demo app at launch, but they obviously rushed and all it did is play a world series game.

So the MLB updated the MLB app. They had to. They had to rush a new version out that would play video for the season, and they did. And you know what it does it does play video, so I'll give them that.

0:18:14 - Leo Laporte
But it has some good ideas it's, it's got great ideas.

0:18:18 - Jason Snell
It's just, it's just buggy, it's obviously it wasn't ready. So, like the main screen is weird, it's like the placement of it and you can resize it in weird ways. Like it's just there's a bug, uh, and also's like the placement of it and you can resize it in weird ways, like it's just there's a bug. And also, if you're playing a video and you close the main screen, it just closes the video too, which is not how Vision O apps are supposed to work, and you can't open more than one video at once, which is like I want to put like Vision Pro, like I want videos everywhere, right, and it can't do it. It can only do one. It's got some really clever, innovative 3D features. They force you to go into an immersive mode, which I don't like. I would like to be able to have those on and have other apps open, because a lot of times I want to do something else and I'll look at it.

0:18:56 - Leo Laporte
Baseball is the classic. Let's do something else while the game's on.

0:18:59 - Jason Snell
Exactly.

0:19:00 - Leo Laporte
That's what it's all about yeah. But, you know so baseball? At least eat a hot dog and drink a beer, if not, yeah, you know this.

0:19:05 - Jason Snell
You know this, leo. The Major League Baseball's got through their sort of stat cast system. They have cameras at every major league stadium that are doing live data of it's not just pitches and the pitch trajectory and where the batted balls go, but it's position data for every single base runner, every single fielder, and it's fractions of a second. So it's like, basically, you could reconstruct and they have. There's a demo, you can actually go on the web and do it.

0:19:36 - Leo Laporte
You can watch a 3D reconstruction of the game as it's going on. Yeah, they've had that for a while actually. I've seen that on other apps.

0:19:38 - Jason Snell
yeah, which is super weird, but it's showing off.

0:19:41 - Leo Laporte
It just shows you all the data right, their data right, so for for vision pro.

0:19:45 - Jason Snell
They built a little stadium that you can. You can either you can do pitch, uh pitch view where you look at the home plate you can see the pitches coming in. I find the stadium view more compelling. It shows you the ball trajectory, it's apex, the exit velocity, lots of cool stuff like that, and it's like a little baseball stadium on my floor. I actually got down on the floor like I was playing with Legos because it was so cool to have it on the floor and the players are little discs and they move around and so you can actually see when the ball and above it is like a jumbotron, like a big scoreboard is the video and a lot of other stats.

0:20:18 - Leo Laporte
That's kind of a nice way to do it.

0:20:19 - Jason Snell
It's a nice idea, but again, um, it lost sync at various points. Uh, some of the players just disappear from the field. The little discs, they just vanish and they never come back. So at some point, like the outfield just was gone and I where are they? I think the base runner ran to first and merged with the first baseman into a single disc and they never came back, even though they were. In the video I could see them not merged into a single blob of both base runner and first baseman, but in the 3d version they sort of became that like again.

0:20:48 - Leo Laporte
It's like Apple pushed them to get it out for opening day. Here's what I think I.

0:20:53 - Jason Snell
I think they were ambitious and I think that they were like. You know, yes, Apple, Apple pushed them to get their demo out. Yeah, so they shipped the demo, and the problem is the demo didn't have the ability to play live games, and so they. It was a ticking clock, like they had to ship a new version for opening day, and they did, but it's full of bugs. So I think, in the end, that has potential to be a really awesome app, but it's busted right now and that's too bad.

0:21:20 - Alex Lindsay
And one of the challenges was really that, uh, the security. Even though the, even though they started distributing those last summer, the security on the headsets was so high that you had to give a list. It couldn't be any outside contractors, it had to be a list of who was there. It has to be in a locked room. Only certain people are allowed to put it on.

You know, there's companies that I know that have. You know, they have their own app and most of the company has not seen a Vision Pro ever, like you know, because of the security requirements and so, so, so I think that the anytime you have a very small number of people testing a product, it's not going to work very well when it comes out to a wider number, and so they've only had it really out, they've only had people able to grab onto it for two months, you know, and be able to play with it, and so and they're being very I will say that they're being very aggressive about the feature set, and that's going to you combine a short landing thing with a complicated plane and you end up with, you know, things not working out all the time.

0:22:18 - Jason Snell
It's a long season and I think it's that one I have high confidence. Do you think it'll?

0:22:22 - Leo Laporte
be before the end of the season, that they'll have something. Yeah, there are a couple of sports where even I, a Vision Pro skeptic, could say wow, you know, baseball's one of them. Formula One's another one where you really want to.

0:22:36 - Jason Snell
I don't think there's going to be. Well, look, I'll predict this. I don't think the MLB app will have something more than fixing the bugs on what they've already showed. But if you're talking about things like 3D and immersive, I will make a prediction that they will do something with Friday Night Baseball involving immersive, and it may be after the fact.

0:22:55 - Leo Laporte
Since Apple owns Friday Night Baseball.

0:22:57 - Jason Snell
Since they have those two games a week on Friday night and in fact we know because I looked it up Will Carroll, the sports writer, prompted me to look it up we know that the demo reel that they used last June is from a Friday night baseball game. The baseball shot that they did was was there. They were there on site with those cameras. So I would predict that by the end of the season there will be something immersive or something that will be out for baseball. But, like the app itself, I think they'll fix it.

I I think it's going to be a a fun experience on vision pro to have the mlb app. But they got to fix it and they and this is just look disney rolled in with like three and a half billion dollars a few years ago and bought major league baseball advanced media and they've had to reconstitute that business and you know, I think a lot of the I don't know for sure, but it sure seems like a lot of the real tech um talent went with advanced media and the mlb software story has been a little shaky. Uh, the app story. Since then. They used to be, I mean, literally the best apps on Apple's platforms.

Make it better, not worse well, Well, no, but they bought it for their own streaming right.

0:24:07 - Andy Ihnatko
So somebody who's never seen a Disney Star Wars movie, a Disney Hitman's movie, a Disney Marvel movie?

0:24:13 - Jason Snell
And it's also front end and back end. Right Like ILM is actually a lot of technical prowess right, but I think that whole group just got sold and I don't know who got left behind. But they've had to reconstitute it to build those apps.

0:24:25 - Alex Lindsay
The whole team that the original team that was part of the MLBAM, is all at Disney and the thing is is now you're going to hire a bunch of new people, you've got a bunch of technology, like they get to start with that, but it turns out that the talent pool number one, that the talent pool at MLBAM was the best in the world Like it's still the best in the world, or whatever the Disney I mean, he's, you and I went to their offices and they're like, they're so good and all their apps were really good and now it's just, you know, it's, it's.

0:24:51 - Jason Snell
I love the ambition here. I think it's great. I'll just want. I want to mention the winners and losers since baseball season opened last week. The iPad app is still good, but if you're logged in it crashes on the mac now, which is super sad. I hope they do an update for that. So that was boo, they the mac just, and I had somebody say, oh, I got it to work. I said, were you logged in? And they said no, let me log in. And then boom, boom, uh. So that's too bad. And I want to give some praise to major league baseball.

Their Apple tv app is amazing. It was already pretty good. They added multi-view so you have the ability to do up to four views at once of different games. And the way they did it, it's got proper labels on everything so that it explains to you like what do I do to add a game? And there are these big cards at the bottom and it tells you, like swipe, to move the audio and click to zoom in. And my only complaint is that there's only one set of layouts. You can't do like a four up. It's sort of like one big one and three along the side, but like it. I feel like this is the best multi-view I've seen on Apple tv. It's better than fubo and it's better than the tv app on Apple's own platform.

0:26:01 - Alex Lindsay
So it points to where most I mean I'm sure they have the data. I'm sure it points to where most I mean I'm sure they have the data I'm sure it points to where they think most of their viewers are. So the team that's working on the Apple TV app is probably much bigger than all the other teams, because that's the way you want to watch. Most of these sports is on your TV.

0:26:16 - Jason Snell
It's on your TV.

0:26:16 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so I think that there's probably a lot less experimentation, a lot more a bigger team, more budget, everything else. I would guess that it could be as much as 80 to 90% of their viewership is on the Apple TV.

0:26:28 - Jason Snell
And or other streaming boxes, but I wanted to say this too, right.

Which is I like? I love the quad box, right? Everybody knows Jason loves the quad box. Put four things up, just one, two, three, four. Let's see it all. I love it. What I've discovered is very few services offer multi-view on their, on other boxes, box Is there all designed to be cheap and they're underpowered. And is the Apple TV expensive? Yes, is it overpowered? Yes, but with these multi-view experiences, you see what you get when you're buying the Apple TV. It is a vastly superior piece of computer hardware and when you put it to the strain of streaming four separate videos through HD video streams simultaneously and compositing them and animating them, and it just does it. And other platforms like Fubo is the same way, where you know, on other platforms are like sorry, we know we're not going to do it. And YouTube is like we have to do it ourselves and stream it to you so you don't get to pick.

0:27:48 - Alex Lindsay
And the built-in ones for the TVs can barely, they barely can handle one stream.

0:27:51 - Jason Snell
They can barely launch, right. And so I'm not defending the fact that Apple makes a very, very expensive TV streamer and it means that they have a fraction of the market. But I am saying this is one little case where you see the value of that. You know, like, why did I buy a box with an iPhone chip in it? This is one of the ways that it benefits you. Looks great.

0:28:13 - Leo Laporte
So is it still? Can I still get MLB for free on T-Mobile Tuesday, patrick, he wants to know that over.

0:28:21 - Jason Snell
I ran out. It ran out yesterday. The T-Mobile free MLB deal was expired yesterday, I believe, which is too bad. I want to say one thing about blackouts, because everybody always talks about blackouts when we talk about baseball streaming. Most blackouts happen because there's a very lucrative cable TV contract that is funding your team's payroll TV contract. That is funding your team's payroll, and several teams have discovered that when your regional sports network, your cable network, goes bankrupt and you have to do it yourself, you make a lot less money. And that's what's happening in Phoenix and San Diego right now, where you actually can, in Phoenix and San Diego, buy a package that gives you all your local team and, if you want, all the other teams too, in the MLB app. But what's going to happen over the next few years is a lot of services are going to offer your cord cutters a my Team package. They may not be in the MLB app, but they will happen. And then over time, everybody knows that cord cutters should be able to buy their home team and not be blacked out, and it will happen.

But the money in those contracts is so great and there will be a shortfall when the contracts expire, because one of the reasons there's so much money in there is it's cable companies trying to keep you from canceling your cable because you'll lose your favorite baseball team. So teams are going to continue taking the money out of that spigot as long as they can, but a lot of the cable providers are. I mean like the channels are declaring bankruptcy Diamond Sports, which owns all the Valley Sports, they declared bankruptcy. Warner Brothers. Discovery sold off or is getting rid of all of their channels. It's unclear what some of the other channels are going to do. So in some markets you can actually stream your local teams now and that will happen everywhere. But be careful what you wish for, because it also potentially means your local baseball team is going to lose 50, 70, 100, 150 million dollars a year in cable money and that will go to. You know, not only the tickets will go up, but the uh, the players will not be paid and will go elsewhere and then they'll all look like pittsburgh yeah, the pittsburghification of major league baseball what happened in pittsburgh they're so cheap

0:30:29 - Alex Lindsay
they're just cheap. They're just cheap into the team. They just they let go, hey we can beat you.

0:30:33 - Leo Laporte
We got the oakland a's for a little bit the cheapest, the cheapest.

0:30:39 - Alex Lindsay
I thought.

0:30:39 - Jason Snell
I thought we were at the bottom, I thought no, the a's are worse, the a's are actually worse.

0:30:44 - Leo Laporte
But yeah, on opening day more fans were in the parking lot than were in the stadium. There was a big boycott and they had a big yeah. They said we're not buying tickets, we're just going to sit in the parking lot. And yeah, they wanted to sell the team andrew mccutcheon is.

0:30:57 - Alex Lindsay
You know, was the the most popular player in three decades and he grew up only wanting to play for the pirates and they traded him away for money and not that much, you know and and after that I stopped watching the pirates like I was just like, okay, I'm done.

0:31:11 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if baseball is kind of really have. I mean, let's face it, it's kind of an old-fashioned.

0:31:18 - Alex Lindsay
So here's the. The funny thing is, as someone who streams baseball is the best if you, if you started interacting with the fans and creating other things to do while you're watching. It's the best one to do interactive video with, because sure, because there's so little going on.

0:31:31 - Leo Laporte
There's so little happening, and so you can talk and you can have.

0:31:33 - Alex Lindsay
What's really hard to stream and have any kind of interaction with the audience is stuff like basketball, because it never stops right and so you're just kind of like, oh like. But we realized, like baseball, when we started streaming some baseball games, that there's tons of time to answer questions from the audience, there's tons of times to, you know, bring up stuff, there's tons of times to talk and you can fill it with all, and then you can do things like fill it with data. You know, like, when I looked at that 3D I haven't opened that in the vision, but I was like, you know, the cool thing about that is being able to potentially show all the data of, like this batter comes up and you could see little 3D curves of all of their the entire season, of what they, what they hit, you know, and there's baseball nerds love that stuff.

0:32:15 - Jason Snell
I mean that's the bottom line, right? It's actually this data.

It's the same metrics changed baseball and Leo I, I saw a report that said that baseball's demographics are actually improving, that there is a younger audience that is getting more into baseball and that it it is sort of for the first time in a while not doing that thing where their audience gets one year older every year, which means that you're not getting any new people in that apparently there is a younger age cohort that's gotten into into baseball. So there may be I mean, mean, I'm reminded of the story I forget whether it was Ken Burns or maybe it was George Will, but somebody who pointed out that baseball's doom has been prophesied since the late 19th century as being like, oh, it's not like it used to be. Nobody cares about it now and it hasn't happened yet. So you know it's not. I mean, the NFL shot right by it, the nba is sort of shot right by it, but baseball just kind of like keeps going and, um, I think it's encouraging that it's not gonna yeah, you're a baseball fan, favorite sport, absolutely, it's your favorite too.

0:33:15 - Leo Laporte
But more than premier league, more than anything, it's my number one absolutely, it's my number one, yeah and you're a giants fan and I am a Giants fan and I am a lifelong Giants fan.

0:33:25 - Jason Snell
At least they've won some things now, because otherwise I used to say that and people were like why is it true that you can't take?

0:33:33 - Alex Lindsay
was that April Fool's yesterday, or can you not take your kids to the games anymore?

0:33:37 - Leo Laporte
did you see that article? Of course you can take your kids to the games you done got fooled, alex.

0:33:43 - Jason Snell
I was like is this true or not?

0:33:45 - Alex Lindsay
on the first, you just go.

0:33:46 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's not possible it was a really good article if it was yeah, they don't allow children at baseball games anymore because too much gambling.

0:33:55 - Jason Snell
I don't know too much gambling.

0:33:59 - Alex Lindsay
I got through it about halfway through I was like this is crazy. And then I was like, oh, it's April 1st, yeah, I'm going to move on. I'm gonna put put my drink. It's the worst.

0:34:08 - Jason Snell
Well, you know what?

0:34:09 - Leo Laporte
this is no joke. You know. We installed here in the uh on our server room and I'm really liking it. We have talked many times in the past about our sponsor, uh, eufy. We've talked about anchor for sure many times. We love Anker. Anker spun off a couple of different brands: eufy and Soundcore. Eufy: there we go. There's Mikah Sargent about to. This is how easy this is.

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Now, the thing about this is very cool. It has a 10,000 milliamp hour rechargeable battery, so that's about four months. Easy to pull it out and charge it. You'll get a low battery notification and one of the things I really like is, if the battery does die, if you there's the battery, if you forget about it or whatever, or you're gone for a long time, there's a key hole and a key, so you're never, ever really locked out. You know it's an upgrade from what you've got your existing tool Fingerprint recognition super fast 0.3 seconds and it unlocks in one second. It's got an embedded AI self-learning chip that becomes more accurate every time you use it. Look at that instant.

I love this. But it also is a doorbell cam. Look at that. See the key. Super cool, so you can get in. It has all the features you'd want with a electronic door lock. You can have a passcode unlocking remote control with 2K clear sight, two-way audio, enhanced night vision. You could share your password, share your unlock, and you can create temporary ones, and all of that.

But here's the best part. This is the thing that put it over the top for me no subscription fee, no subscription fee and all your videos stay local. In fact, if you get the, this is part of a whole Eufy home security and home automation system. If you get the base station, you can record, you know, months worth of video from the doorbell. This is such a great product. I love it. There's no subscription and it's completely private. Oh, by the way, 18-month warranty and very good, 24-7 professional customer service there for you.

Eufy E-U-F-Y you know the guys from Anker, I mean, they're really. It is a great, great company and I love this new Eufy Video Lock. Search for Eufy Video Lock on Amazon. That's the listing there. Or you can go to eufy.com E-U-F-Y.com and check out the whole range of home security and automation tools. This is great. No subscription fee, I love that. And you host the videos yourself so you don't have to worry about somebody snooping on you. Combine a doorbell video camera and and a lock all in one. Search you fee video lock on amazon. Thank you you fee for your support of MacBreak. Weekly. The vision pro hour continues. There is a vision pro 1.2 beta that came out. Are you doing the beta thing, are you not, are you?

0:37:26 - Jason Snell
I, I go on and off of it. Um, they also did uh in 1.1.1, which is the current version. They just turned on a feature. So apparently they're doing this thing where they like have things in so called spatial personas, which is kind of like, okay, if you do facetime call with somebody with a persona, they're in a box and it's like a 3d box, but they're like in a floating box and you can move them around, right, spatial personas. I haven't had a chance to use it yet because, although they said it was out, it didn't work by at press time still not working, but it's more like you're a ghost, you're not in the box, you're just, you're floating and your arms are floating and you're kind of there, but but it's 3D and it's in space, which is not like the Facebook thing where you're more cartoony, but it's a full body.

I think this is I mean, not only is this nice, this feels like a course correction a little bit where they initially thought we got to put it in the box and then, as they've developed it over the last year, they have said you know, we need to have it be in space. And so they created this spatial persona idea and you can share windows really easily and you can use share play really easily and like this is getting closer to that collaboration goal that I think we all have said they need to get to, where it's like I want to be in a shared space with somebody and feel like they're in the same room with me. And they said you know all the rumors about this said like, oh well, persona. The problem with Persona is you can only really do one at a time and it's going to be a while before they're going to be able to do more. And I think this announcement says you can have up to five, so you really could get a group of people, as long as they have a Vision Pro, in a space together looking at the same documents and stuff, and that unlocks some interesting possibilities for the future.

So that's in 1.1.1. I don't know what's in the 1.1.2 beta. But I go on and off the betas based on like, if I'm tempted, if there's like something somebody says, oh, but this beta's got the big new thing, I'll do it, but otherwise I'm staying away.

0:39:20 - Leo Laporte
So it a way, but it is easy to move on and off.

0:39:23 - Jason Snell
It's not too hard to do that yeah, Apple really rejiggered all of their software update stuff in the last couple of years where literally all you have to do it's in the settings app and you can choose what feed you want to be on developer, public or no beta and it does the right thing. It moves you to the right one and shows you updates or stops updating you or whatever. So they've done a really good job with that, and that vision pro uses that system, so it's super easy to go back and forth this does kind of you know.

0:39:50 - Leo Laporte
I mean, people were complaining about the persona. Show this, if you will, john. Actually we were complaining about this is for marquez brownlee on x, uh, but I think this kind of solves that problem with personas simply just by putting it in a kind of more 3d space. You expect ghosts to look a little ghostly, it's okay, yeah it's not a bad thing yeah, it's a specter, but a friendly specter.

Yeah, tempers your expectations enough that I don't think these are as unpleasing as they were. So I don't know, maybe that this is an Apple video, so I don't know. Yeah, in fact, I would love it if you can get it working by next week.

0:40:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Call us, we'll do a little I'd love to see you. Spatial Ghostly.

0:40:31 - Leo Laporte
Maybe you and Alex can be in the same room spatializing yeah.

0:40:34 - Jason Snell
I'll be on a plane next Tuesday.

0:40:36 - Andy Ihnatko
We'll do some scheduling later but I won't be here next Tuesday Staring at the sun next.

0:40:48 - Leo Laporte
Tuesday is the eclipse. Are you going to be here next Monday? Next Monday the 8th, rather?

0:40:53 - Alex Lindsay
yes, yeah, I'm flying back Tuesday. So, yeah, it's yeah, but I'll, I'll be. I'm not able to go because I NAB is the next week. I can't go.

0:41:01 - Jason Snell
I'm getting my car washed, but I hope you all enjoy it and you're not going, I guess, alec you'll get a great replacement for me and it'll all be good. But yeah, or're all spatial. If I wasn't on the plane, I would. I would spatial persona in. I wish you could spatial from the plane.

0:41:18 - Leo Laporte
Are you gonna wear your vision pro on the aeroplane? No, why not?

0:41:23 - Jason Snell
why not? You know, it's I, I am, I pack light and stuffing. I mean, maybe if it fits in my backpack I'll bring it. But like that's always the challenge, right is, then I'm toting it around. That's a short trip, I'll. I might bring it for that one you know you should do.

0:41:38 - Leo Laporte
You should bring it and then stereo broadcast the eclipse so that those of us stuck getting our car washed could watch it from that distance the sun and the moon look pretty much the same in 2d I have to break it to you okay yeah, I'm flying.

0:41:52 - Alex Lindsay
I'm flying tonight and I uh I'm I'm pretty excited to have my first. Are you gonna do it spatial? Spatial flight 100?

0:41:58 - Leo Laporte
yeah, isn't that spatial I think that, if any, if there is a right now, a compelling use for the vision pro, it seems to be. It's kind of boiled that people have done the dinosaur thing and taken apart race cars and stuff and what they really seem to be going back for is to watch movies or tv or whatever. To watch video, is that?

0:42:15 - Alex Lindsay
right, I definitely watch a lot of movies. I can tell you that it's the better, the best movie watching experience I think I've, you know, not the best, but one of the best I've ever had is watching it with the headset on and in in. Uh, you know I did. The quality of the video is so high it's, it's quite a thing.

0:42:33 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so that's the way to do it me. I'm going backwards.

0:42:37 - Andy Ihnatko
I bought a uhd blu-ray player for panasonic right and some discs, physical media for the wind and some only way to only way to buy buy movies and keep them and have them like in 10 or 20 years. Yeah, yeah and.

0:42:51 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and I'm not. I don't know, some people are, but I'm not a movie rewatcher. I realized that. So it's like I look at the movies I could buy but I think, well, I watch it. No, I've seen it. So I don't know what I did. I don't know why I did it, and he was absolutely right. I got Dune and Oppenheimer and it looks. It looks fantastic.

0:43:15 - Alex Lindsay
That's the big payoff I think of of having, if you bought 600 movies on on Apple TV, being able to go back and watch. Uh, go go back and watch them is really easy. Yeah, no convenience certainly, but but you know you got, you got eyes in your head, you realize it's better on a physical medium, right no? Oh, as far as the well with the Apple, what I will say is you don't get banding, you don't get any artifacts.

I don't see a lot of that on the Apple Vision. I don't know what the compression rates are on the Apple Vision Pro. It's definitely higher than what I'm getting on my you know like. Oh, that's interesting and I will say that Apple and Disney are not perfect, but much closer If you're on a fast wired connection and it can take the top of the manifest. You're getting like anywhere from 25 to 35 megs a second down, unlike Netflix, which is like four. So it definitely looks clearer on the online ones if they have a wired connection and Netflix does better, by the way, on a wired connection as well, but not as good as Apple. Apple TV Plus and Disney are the two that have the highest bandwidth.

0:44:35 - Andy Ihnatko
I will say one thing in favor of buying things through Apple is that I love the fact that they keep giving you free upgrades that you bought might have bought a movie like five or six or seven or eight years ago and you were happy with the SD or standard HD. But now, hey, wow, I've now got 4K. Or hey, wow, now I've got 4K 3D. That's pretty swell. I still. I still like my NAS for pretty much everything and also like DVDs and Blu-rays are absolutely a buyer's market, Like my, my local library. They accept all kinds of media donations. Everybody is just offloading all of their physical media and they've had such a deluge of stuff that their prices went down from a dollar a Blu-ray or DVD to here is. Here is a brown paper bag, Fill it for a dollar, and so now it's like can I come over? Next time you're over? I will be actually three weeks.

0:45:24 - Leo Laporte
I'm going to see mom. I'll come over.

0:45:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Will they still be doing it you? Think, and now it's all going to be to like patrick swayze roadhouse in 4k. I don't, it's not well, that well, that's the weird one.

It'll be like uh, they had, I picked up hugo on blu-ray oh well, that's a good movie, yeah and and and then I was like, well, that's really, I'm really happy to give them a dollar for this, but gee, I can now. Now it's not just well, I'm not really interested in american chopper season one, but for free now. It's not just well, I'm not really interested in American Chopper season one, but for free now. It's like I mean, we'll take it. And all these like movies that are kind of marginal, that like in 30 years, whatever Mystery Science Theater 3000 exists in that form will be riffing this mediocre movie. It's like okay, well, I may as well fill the rest of the bag, make it easy If it doesn't look like yeah, exactly. So, yeah, they're flip size to each one of them. And of course it it.

I acknowledge that it is on you. It is on you to find a way to take this piece of physical media and convert it to a digital file. I'm sure there are legal ways to do that. I'm totally legal. I'm sure Does it downgrade it, cause you are you're recompressing it?

it wouldn't it be better to watch it on the physical disc. It depends on what you want to do. You can actually rip it in such a way that, no, the all the physical, all the data that was on that blu-ray is still do a loss rip as kind of it's, it's like it, it, as a matter of fact, a blu-ray player will play that file as a blu-ray, so we'll contain the menus will Blu-ray?

So we'll contain the menus, we'll contain the bonus content. Like, I don't have like petabytes of storage on my NAS, so usually I there was a while. A while ago I had to come to a realization that, yes, andy, you would love to rip this 30 gigabyte original like Blu-ray movie to like the highest possible quality, with a most bravest, most gusto of X, y and Z, but you're not going to notice it, certainly not on the, on the, on the kinds of TVs that you tend to buy. So I find a happy medium. As a matter of fact, just the, just the other weekend, uh, just this weekend, I had a bunch of stuff that I had, uh, uh, that that I grabbed, that actually downgraded to seven, 20 P because because, well, only because they were kind of, they were like 50s and 60s movies that weren't in terribly great shape anyway.

And I just, and also, they're not like, it's not like La Dolce Vita, where it's like no, I don't care, I will take, I will take the hit of storage, I will take the hit of bandwidth, I don't care like how hard it is to stream it on my home network, I want it the highest possible quality. Other stuff it's like hey, here's a kind of a weird movie from ealing studios in 1972. It's really, really cheesy, but it's interesting. Yeah, I don't need to take up like eight gigabytes of storage space do you watch them again?

0:48:08 - Leo Laporte
I mean you, you're just, are you? I feel like people collect, but do people really, I mean, rewatch all of these?

0:48:14 - Andy Ihnatko
You know there is that I do. I do sometimes reflect on my reflect that, hey, I'd grab this movie off of archiveorg because, hey, wow, it looks kind of interesting and I and I want it. Yeah. On the other hand, yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't want to get into that sort of obsessive collector mentality, but on the other hand, oftentimes I'm doing my, I'm basically buying myself a gift that I'm going to enjoy later on, like I'll grab something that, yeah, it might take me a whole year to watch this Billy Connolly stand-up special, but there comes a night when I'm in the mood for Billy Connolly and I finally get around to watching it. I'm glad that it was there waiting for me as opposed to something that I had, as opposed to going out to Netflix and I just want to watch a movie of some kind. Okay, I guess this will do At some point. Everything on the server, on my home server, passed the test of. Is this something that I think that present me or future me would be interested in? Yeah, and.

0:49:11 - Alex Lindsay
I watch a lot of things over and over again. You do Well, I have to admit that I'm surprised you have any time.

0:49:18 - Leo Laporte
Seems like you're busy.

0:49:20 - Alex Lindsay
If I want to sit down and watch something and usually I don't watch very many movies because I don't usually have two and a half hours in one place to spend, as you point out here but if I do, and so usually what I do is like I like to go back and watch movies I just skip the first act. So you know, movies are basically describe the tree, get them up the tree, get them down the tree. I just get to the point where they're getting up the tree, and so the first act is really important when you watch it the first time, but after that you know where everybody is and so you can just skip to the second act, and so usually that's about, uh, 45 minutes in tip on for most movies, plus or minus five or eight minutes. You're gonna get to the second act and um, and so it's like you know, it's right when he, like in braveheart, it's right when he has his arms behind his, behind his head, and he's going down into the village.

0:50:04 - Leo Laporte
That's the beginning of the second act, or you could argue with me just start there, you mean just go right there, jump right to that part, like I don't need all the build up to the first part, like okay, okay, I got it, I got it, I got it, and so um, uh, and then you watch.

0:50:17 - Alex Lindsay
Then you start watching there and oftentimes I don't get to the third act either. I just like I like the second act of a lot of movies and I watch the second act a lot. Uh, third, halfway through the third act it's like, okay, I know how it's gonna end, uh, and the the first act I just skipped. So that's that's kind of how I. But I watch a lot of, but after I've seen it a couple of times and I I watch a lot of the behind the scenes for a lot of movies, I do like that. So that's the other reason. The reason I buy movies is specifically because I want the the behind the scenes. Yes, I bought some Blu-rays like Kund and Kundun, by the way, such a great movie, amazing.

0:50:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Should I get that? We'll probably never be on Disney.

0:50:54 - Alex Lindsay
Plus, no, china's a little sensitive. It was unavailable for like 20 years. China just had a tissy fit over that movie and it was funny. I talked to one of the pop monks that I was in. I was in Dharmashala and I talked to one of the monks right under the Dalai Lama and I said so what does Dalai Lama think of Kundun? And he's like, oh, he thinks it's, it's, it was very, very accurate, except for the fact he goes, he walks so slow. The Dalai Lama was like I never walked that slow and so, but outside of that, the but it's, it's a great, great.

0:51:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Martin Scorsese movie. Martin Scorsese movie. Martin Scorsese I mean anything by Martin Scorsese is worth watching, and this is really interesting. It's so good.

0:51:33 - Alex Lindsay
And it's so visually interesting If you've got a big TV and you know, if you've got a big TV with HDR and everything else, I mean you're going to enjoy it.

0:51:42 - Leo Laporte
All right, it's available on Amazon for 20 bucks. You should buy it. I've never seen it. See, I would watch it. You've never seen it? No, yeah it's amazing.

0:51:53 - Andy Ihnatko
You're in for a treat. And the great thing about Scorsese is that, like anything that his name is on it, it's going to be worth it. Even I mean not that he's not that every movie he's ever made is going to be great, but it's always, at least visually interesting. It's always an experience. All of his choices are interesting and, yeah, it's just. But definitely, definitely, definitely, see Kundun.

0:52:16 - Leo Laporte
I'm trying to find the special edition UHD Blu-ray of it, but it seems to be sold out everywhere, even on the. I don't know if the special edition is better, but anyway, hey, back to the Vision Pro. We only have a few more minutes in our Vision Pro hour. This is the good news. This is the last story. Vision Pro engineers have been moved, some of them to Apple's folding phone project, according to rumor, which is delayed till 2027.

0:52:51 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that was an interesting one. It comes from Digitimes, which is usually better than a basic rumor, but Digitimes is themselves quoting, like another report, from elsewhere, I think from a supply chain, so take it with a grain of salt. I love the idea that Apple, I love the suggestion that Apple is continuing to develop folding devices because the components are just getting better and better. They're becoming more durable, they're becoming more practical. The prices, hopefully, will start coming down, particularly if Apple can negotiate prices of panels from Samsung.

I am so eager to see what Apple's design team would do with just the concept of what, if we were free from the concept of. It has to be in the pocket. It has to be the same size as what it is when it's actually being deployed and used. That is wonderful. And there's also the there's also the data point of, if true, the idea of Apple pulling people off of Vision Pro to work on something that is an unannounced and possibly on an unreleased product.

We one of the maxims of Apple is that we don't hire more people than we have to, so there's often like a shortage of people available for any project they want to deal with, but it is interesting that for at least the jobs that those engineers were doing. They are considered to be well. It's more valuable to put them on this other project than to keep them on Vision Pro. I mean, it's possible that their skills were used and exhausted to bring Vision Pro to its current state and they're no longer necessary there. But it's interesting to see, like how long the runway is on both of those projects.

0:54:28 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's our Vision Pro segment for this week. I hope you've enjoyed it. We didn't quite make it to an hour 53 minutes of Vision Pro. Goodness You're watching MacBreak.

0:54:41 - Andy Ihnatko
We will soon have enough episodes for syndication. That's all that counts. That's all that counts as long as you get to episode 100. That's right.

0:54:46 - Leo Laporte
That's all we want. Alex Lindsay, andy Anako, jason Snell. This is MacBreak Weekly. I thought this was kind of cool. I remember reading this that Apple has a machine in the stores that will update the phone in the box. You know, it's not unusual to get a new device and you have to update it immediately. Apple's very good with the iPhones, of course. I always buy a day of, so I don't have to do an update. But if you buy an iPhone, you know, months into its life do you have to update it? Well, you won't, because Apple is sending out to the stores a thing that will actually. This Gurman talked about this. It's called Presto, presto, presto. It'll start this month.

0:55:33 - Jason Snell
It is a proprietary iPad like device upon which retail store staff placed a sealed Look at that, a sealed box with new, a new iPhone in it and it will update it. How does that work? They're doing so. It's a combination, right? That work? Uh, they're doing so. It's a combination, right, they've got. They've got nfc, they've got uh, and they've got power that they can generate through the box, uh, using the magsafe stuff and, um, I don't know whether there is a. My guess is that there's a. There's a mode that they have the phones in when they are in ready to, you know, ready to go to a new customer mode that allows them to connect to a specific Wi-Fi network or something like that, or read the NFC reader. But they're getting access and they're able to do it. And apparently it takes about 20 minutes to update a phone to the current version.

And stores have these. They're going to have these in the back where they can do them in batches. So it's like bacon, brownies or something right, you can do 12 at a time, but you have to cycle them through and then somebody has to take those off when they go green and put new ones in. And you know, the goal is that everybody who walks out of the store with a new iPhone is running the current OS and if they set it up in the store for them, when they open the box it's already current in the store for them. When they open the box, it's already current.

They don't have to do a software update, which can really slow things down, especially if you've got an older model.

You know just a model that was built a few months ago and is backstage at the store and it sits there and doesn't get an update and then it's sort of behind and everything, and it makes that experience a little less pleasant. So this thing, you put it on there, you let the brownies bake for 20 minutes or whatever, and then they do them in batches, which means, if you do the math, I don't know how many of these machines will end up existing. But you're talking about only being able to do like 100 or 200 phones in a day, which is not going to handle high volume. But there's a reason. This is shipping now, when it's been months since there have been new iPhones, because it's a good proof of concept. But I think that in the and if they run out of the updated phones, they'll give you one that needs an update. Right, like the old style. They can do that, but like this, is Apple building this particular hardware and connecting it to software on the device in order to have essentially a better out-of-box experience for its customers.

0:57:53 - Leo Laporte
The thing that's interesting is that they can do that and it might. I wonder if this has anything to do with the wireless portless iPhone. I mean that's. It shows you what you can do, I guess Okay, so you have NFC, you have MagSafe charging, but you must have software in the iPhone that then says, okay, I'm getting a ping and I need to update, and then I guess it knows the Wi-Fi in the store and probably you're right. And then it gets because it takes half an hour. It says according to iGeneration.

0:58:19 - Jason Snell
Or in the Presto. I mean the Presto. I don't know if the Presto has like an Ethernet plug or something when it's providing its own. That's right it could have its own. But whatever it is, yeah, that's what happens.

0:58:30 - Leo Laporte
Sorry, Andy yeah.

0:58:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh no, all I was going to say is that, like 100%, it really shows how Apple is driven by a lot of fundamental principles on what makes their products great. One of them is they want to have the best out-of-the-box experience possible. So this is why, when they were responding to charges from the EU, charges from the DOJ about well, why don't you just, when people set up the phone, just allow them to choose what, what search engine they want to use? Why don't you just let them have these options? When they say that we don't want to, we are really, really careful about how many choices we confront the user with during setup because we want to make that as slick as possible.

That's that's. That's one of those arguments where no, Apple is not bsing their way around a problem. That's like no, they really do believe that they want people to take the thing out of the box and start being, start experiencing delight as quickly as possible, and this seems like a great way to get through that and you said when you get an Apple box, you look at it and you just know if anything looks like it's gonna be hard to open.

0:59:27 - Alex Lindsay
You're doing something wrong okay, well, there's like little. You just got to pull the arrows and just pull the thing out and everything just kind of pops out and you know they're paying attention to that entire experience and I think that this definitely makes a difference.

0:59:42 - Andy Ihnatko
The only thing. I almost interrupt you because how many of us have watched somebody like having just bought an Apple phone like usually, like on day one, somebody like have having just bought an Apple phone, like usually, like on day one, and the the, the fit between the top and the bottom of the box is so precise that it creates a vacuum. And you can't.

And they say why won't this open and I I have like oh, I have died, stop, don't, don't shake it, don't shake it. I've seen people like fling their iphone like to the bottom of like a mall, of a mall floor, like that. That's the only thing that they could possibly change like put some ventilation a little hole in the top, that's all yeah

1:00:16 - Jason Snell
I will say there is. I mean, I agree. I think this is about the customer experience. I'm sure that they also realized that there were people, uh, in the stores who were wasting time waiting for a software update to go through. Because if they you know, I'm and, and I think a lot of our, our listeners are those people who are like. They're like do you want help setting this up? And you're like no go away.

1:00:37 - Alex Lindsay
I don't want to be around people.

1:00:39 - Jason Snell
I bet there are too many people in the store. I'm going to take this home and I'm going to do it, but they do offer.

1:00:43 - Leo Laporte
I always feel guilty when I do that.

1:00:45 - Jason Snell
If you say yes and you're restoring from backup and your old phone was on a version that is ahead of the version that's in the store. It says I need to update, actually, and it's gotten. They've gotten better at this but that process, which I think is related where it will actually like in process, it'll just say I'm going to do an update and then I'm going to restore from iCloud. But it has to. You have to sit there and that person is going to sit there with you and it's a waste of time. So I think that part of the sales this is improving the whole process, but I think part of the reason that they did it is also for every single one of those phones that they update, that is x number of minutes saved by somebody in that store that they don't have to sit with somebody while they watch a progress bar, and that's why, when the department of justice complains about Apple, I just have to say no, they're the best company in the world.

1:01:45 - Leo Laporte
You shouldn't.

1:01:46 - Jason Snell
Where's the third party api for presto the brownie dater?

1:01:50 - Andy Ihnatko
oh yeah, two sure hippies in a garage who just want to make the world better want to make the world a better place.

1:01:57 - Leo Laporte
Of course john stewart says he wanted to interview lena khan, the chairman of the ftc, on his show on Apple. The problem with john stewart and Apple said no, what did they really have that kind of editorial control?

1:02:14 - Jason Snell
this story is baffling to me because, one, why would you go into business, if you're Apple, with john stewart and not expect that he's gonna fight the hand that feeds them? Yeah. And two, why would you, if you were john stewart, not go? Why would you go into business with Apple not having editorial, editorial control? Yes, I have. Yeah, I have a theory I know I said it here before.

I have a theory that what happened here is this is the disintegration of the Apple John Stewart relationship. That the first season of the show came out and it didn't do well. Um, I didn't think it was very good. Um never really found its footing. I think the format was kind of misguided and I'm sure it didn't do well in terms of numbers. And so I think what happened is that Apple's like we're paying this guy what to do this and they're like all right if we're going to have this deal with him and it's good for the prestige, but I'm tired, I don't want him poking any bears for a show that we don't even like. And and it led to this deterioration of the relationship. That's the only explanation I can have for it, because I don't understand why these two parties would have gone into business with each other at all If the ground rules weren't there for this stuff not to happen. So it feels to me like this is what happens when the relationship is coming apart.

1:03:26 - Leo Laporte
Yesterday Stuart interviewed con on the daily show he's back in the daily and it's very much like the old days and said he told her I wanted to have you on a podcast and Apple asked us not to do it. Now, ask is different than told us not to do it. They literally said please don't talk to her, having nothing to do with what you do for a living. I didn't think they cared for. You is what happened. He said wow.

1:03:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and of course, she works for the FTC FTC, not the DOJ, so it's not as though they want. They were concerned about the investigation, but the FTC she her. She was hired for that job because of a really, really influential paper that she wrote, basically saying that companies like Apple and Amazon and Google need to be broken up because they're just way too powerful. So, yeah, they were afraid of him pulling the tail of the bear and I agree with Jason. I think that this sort of behavior from Apple it's both completely understandable, because if he's not bringing huge amounts of money and viewership to the channel, if he's not bringing huge amounts of money and viewership to the channel, if he's not bringing enough audience to even deliver a whole lot of prestige, then he's nothing but risk. And I don't there's been no indication that Apple like forbade him to ever talk about anything, but there's clearly like from this comment and other comments that he's made since he left, there was definitely pressure, remember.

1:04:51 - Leo Laporte
On the other hand, on the, this is a, this is a bad look for Apple just to think and remember, in the doj antitrust, one of the things they said is that Apple tv was bad for speech, which we mocked. But there is a paragraph that says Apple's conduct extends just beyond monopoly profits and even affects the flow of speech. For example, Apple's rapidly expanding its role as a tv and movie producer and had exercised that role to control content. Well, stewart's, you know, like every other can I can.

1:05:21 - Andy Ihnatko
I can I say that.

1:05:22 - Leo Laporte
I think that exactly it's.

1:05:24 - Andy Ihnatko
I think it's that's a, that's a, that's a bigger, that's a bigger, that's a bigger problem on. On the other, the claims that doj making meaning, where they're kind of indicating that they had the ability to shut down things that other people were doing, as opposed to well, look, it's your channel, it's, you are the production company. Yeah, the producers and owners of networks do have the ability to control what happens on their network. That was kind of a nothing burger for me.

But still it's a bad look, particularly, as Jason said, if you hired him specifically because, hey, I can't believe that. I can't believe that this guy is available. He's a wonderful. His integrity and his stature and everything was everything that we want Apple to represent and then say, yeah, I wonder if you could get into like fat-free yogurt? Huh, get. Yeah, I wonder if you could get into like fat free yogurt huh, it blew the lid off of like why the labels on those are just not correct.

1:06:17 - Alex Lindsay
Don't do anything that might hurt us. But I also think that that even just from a programming perspective I mean, of course he wants to talk about what everyone's to talk about, but from a programming perspective, doing something, doing a hit piece on Apple inside of a format that the only people watching are Apple users, the chances of that, of that, uh, after that hit piece, the chances of that show existing with or without Apple.

1:06:40 - Leo Laporte
To be fair, john Oliver's always taking pot shots at Max, yeah, but he's not, but he's not.

1:06:45 - Alex Lindsay
he's on Max, yeah, but but the.

1:06:48 - Leo Laporte
I think that, I think that the app, I think Letterman used to always take pot shots at CBS and he's on CBS.

1:06:57 - Alex Lindsay
But the viewers' relationship an Apple viewers' relationship and a CBS viewers' relationship with the brand is very different. You know, like I saw when John Oliver did his hit piece on Apple it was the last show I saw I was like, okay, I'm done, you, like. I was just like. I was like okay, I'm done, you know like. And and I just thought you know what I was. There was a couple other ones that made me cringe and then after that I was like man, I don't need to watch this anymore.

And I just I just felted for me and I couldn't watch it anymore, like you know, so so that was, that was.

1:07:33 - Andy Ihnatko
To be fair, there were never any murmurings that John Stewart was looking for a hit piece on Apple. But talking about China as a topic, talking about AI as a topic, interviewing the China, I think those are valid concerns. Those are, that's, those are, yeah, exactly.

1:07:54 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. But I just, I I do think the china one and the ia one are more squirrely, the you know if you're bringing lena khan on.

1:07:57 - Andy Ihnatko
It's a hit piece on Apple, like you know.

1:07:58 - Alex Lindsay
Like you know because that's what she's out to do. You know, and you know, and so so the uh, so it's going to be, I mean, that's what you're going to do with it. You know that's what he's going to do with it, um, and so, so the so that was, I think that I just think that it would have precipitously dropped the small number of viewers. I never really got into the show. I, I, I love Jon Stewart and I love the show that's out there now and I used to watch them all the time.

The format that Jon Stewart had at Apple was completely uncompelling. Like I just couldn't. I'd watch it for about 10 minutes and then I'd be like it's a little slow and so and it just didn't have the same feel that the daily show had and I, and so I, I mean so it's not like a thing, like I really enjoy watching Jon Stewart, but I it was, and I liked the fact that he hits everybody and I liked that. You know that what's there. But I think that I think it's the fact that the show was a long form on one subject. I think Jon Stewart doesn't maintain that well enough to like. It's really funny when he's changing subjects all the time. It's not funny when he does it for a half an hour straight.

1:08:59 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I disagree with your characterization but I respect it. I think that that's a valid point of view. I just disagree with it. And yeah, I've watched the show and it was. There was a little, there was a little porn, pornographic aspect to it where, like, I want to have that visceral, visceral reaction to seeing hearing him like really, really rake a gun supporter over the, over the coals and I want to have the satisfaction of him confronting them, confronting somebody with hey, why are you trying to trying to attack medical care for transgender kids but you're not going to attack cancer care for transgender kids and you don't care about kids being killed by guns? And that's really, really satisfying that episode though I don't think it really got into the issue so much as wanting to see somebody really being made really wish that they had a better screener for their interview requests.

1:09:56 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and I think I think part of what makes his funny is the rapid fire of using other people's clips against them is what makes the daily show work really well. It's not really the interviews the interviews are fun, but the ones that. What really makes his show funny. The regular daily show is the just kind of rapid fire, not necessarily interviewing people in a bad position, but really just showing them in a bad light. So a different format there.

1:10:20 - Leo Laporte
So, regardless of how they feel about Lena Kahn, they are, of course, in trouble with the DOJ and in the EU as well. The EU has announced that they're going to investigate Apple as well as, I think, google and Microsoft for the DMA, and now Apple has. I don't know we'll see if this takes off. They have changed, with iOS 17.4, the ability to have third-party app stores in the EU only. There is now the Alt Store, an alternative app store that is preparing to take advantage of the DMA to launch an updated version of its app marketplace in the EU. They want to support apps through Patreon. I don't know if that's a way to get around Apple's 27% VIG.

1:11:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I'm glad that, even if we just see this as an experiment to see what would third party app stores on the iPhone look like, I think this is a really good experiment.

I really want to see how this turns out. There is a there is a discussion of I won't I won't spoil what this app is, but someone on on threads, a developer, just showed off an app that he's working on for for the Mac that I just absolutely love the idea of and there's a big question as to whether or not it's a fun app. But there's a real question as to whether app whether Apple would allow, would have allowed this on the App Store if he chose to release it like in the Mac App Store. But that's academic because you can just simply release it outside the App Store and that's perfectly fine. So I'm really keen to see how restrictive this will be the first test of how truly restrictive the app store policies are for the iPhone, to see what kind of apps will we see if they have to pass through a much, much less stringent set of rules for appearance on an app.

1:12:09 - Leo Laporte
There are apparently no rules, because the way this works anyway is uh, you're basically self-publishing. You host a text file with basic information about your app. The user then enters your source url into the alt store and your app appears automatically in the alt store. Uh, they say there is some. I don't know if this is true. They say alt store is made with security in mind. Uh, the only security they seem to have is you can view a list of an app's permissions from its store page okay, so some clarity here.

1:12:42 - Jason Snell
Alt store exists, but it, the new thing, is going to be an alternative app marketplace under the eu rules how would I use it on the iphone today? There is. You have to sideload it using, I think, you have to use a developer account and then you can.

I don't know if you have to jailbreak or what the method is, but yeah, there is a. There is a completely outside Apple's jurisdiction way to do this worldwide. But what riley tested the guy who did alt store is doing in europe, is using Apple's existing dma compliant alternative marketplace system. And you mentioned the Apple's big of uh of 27. There's no big it's uh, it's the core technology fee. So it's 50 cents per install per year. Oh, okay, so a patreon, all the money is just not touching Apple wait a minute.

1:13:28 - Leo Laporte
If you have an Apple, say we want 27 of all the money you make on your app.

1:13:32 - Jason Snell
They didn't say that not in europe, in with a dma? No, there's the core technology. You pay 50 cent, 50 euro cents per install per year, and so if you have 5 000 users paying you via patreon, uh well, if you have 5 000 users, you won't pay anything because it's the first million, uh that you're exempt from for the ctf. So you could build an app that's got a patreon, that's got, you know, a quarter of a million users and they're supporting you, and I don't think Apple gets anything at that point so, yeah, so I'm looking at.

1:14:04 - Leo Laporte
This is from reuters in january, but Apple says that they wanted. Apple says it will charge a 27% commission on proceeds if around linking out of apps to third-party websites for payments. Okay, so that's different from the having an app in the store. This is if you want to use a third-party payment processor, so in an alternative marketplace that doesn't count.

1:14:31 - Jason Snell
It's just the core technology fee. No, this is if you want to be in Apple's App Store in the EU, but not use Apple's credit card payment system. So if you're using the App Store, then even.

1:14:39 - Leo Laporte
Okay, then you're going to pay 27%. But if developers don't use the App Store, they have to pay the core technology fee 50 cents per user account per year.

1:14:48 - Jason Snell
Per user account. It's basically per install or per active, because it's updates count, but they only count one per year and and it's, uh, over a million. So there, if you're, you know again, if you have half a million users, you won't pay Apple for it. You can't be in the app store. You're in an alternative app marketplace. So it's just a. It's a parallel universe and it's own eu only. Um. But I think that riley, having built this thing where you have to get a developer account and sign it and install it on your phone and all of that stuff, this is him saying well, we're going to try to be legit in the EU and let people put their apps in here. Now the challenge is that if you have an app that can go in the App Store, you have to accept the new terms, which change the conditions of how you work with Apple. But if you've got an app that can't be in the App Store and it can only be in Alt Store, then you can choose this method. And then to the point about no security, remember that apps installed in the EU using this regime have to be notarized through Apple. They have to submit a bunch of metadata that is essentially App Store metadata. And then, when you do that installation from Alt Store, the OS we think of it as Apple, but think of it as the OS brings up a sheet that's like an App Store sheet and says here's the app you're installing, based on what they sent to Apple. Here's what it does. Do you want to install it? So there are a bunch of layers there.

Again, it's not what Apple didn't do with the DMA is say all right, fine, do whatever. We wash our hands of it. Good luck, suckers Right. What they said was no, no, no, no, no. We're going to put in a bunch of walls. And now there's a bunch of arguments about are those walls there to constrain trade and give Apple more power? Are they to protect the user? Why not both? All of those things are going on, but the goal here is to do very much what happens on the Mac today, plus a little bit more. Which is on the Mac today default installation. You don't have to be in the Mac App Store, but by default, the Mac wants you to have sent your file to Apple. It notarizes it, it does some scans, it knows who you are as the developer and then it lets that app get launched and you can turn that off on the Mac and you can't on iOS, but it is a very similar system, so there are some security things in place.

1:17:03 - Andy Ihnatko
With the advantage that, if it does turn out to be a malicious app, Apple can simply pull the authentication for it. And now it just simply won't run.

1:17:10 - Jason Snell
Yeah, even if it's from an alternative marketplace. If it's malware, they can kill it.

1:17:14 - Andy Ihnatko
I think that's a wonderful way to do. It has the EU responded to Apple's.

1:17:19 - Leo Laporte
I will call it malicious compliance, but it depends on your point of view.

1:17:30 - Jason Snell
Have they responded to Apple's proposals?

1:17:32 - Leo Laporte
for how they're going to comply with the DMA. Well, yeah, I mean there's that whole thing. They say it's okay.

1:17:35 - Jason Snell
Last week, yeah, they launched a probe, yeah, yeah, they're probing and they could. They could either get Apple to change their behavior or they could.

1:17:40 - Leo Laporte
So that's the response.

1:17:41 - Jason Snell
So that's just well, we're gonna look into it, yeah okay, I mean, Apple's gonna make a bunch of changes based on that feedback. I mean, clearly this is the beginning. In fact, I think an example core technology fee may change your mentioning of well, you can use, you have the freedom to use a different credit card processor with your app in the app store, but you will pay us 27% of that transaction. That smells to me like something that the EU would say is not in the spirit of what they want in terms of freedom. But we'll see and there's going to be a give and take. My prediction, a very fearless prediction here, is some of it will change and some of the stuff we think will obviously change won't change and that the EU will be like, no, that's fine, we don't care. So we'll have to see, but the back and forth is definitely happening.

1:18:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Absolutely. This isn't when that news story got a lot of traction last week, but it's not as it doesn't mean that he was investigating Microsoft and Google and Apple and Facebook with the idea of we found malfeasance and now we're just going to try to get to the bottom of it. It's no. This is part of what the what the DMA is all about. We just want to make sure that they are actually complying with it. They have been very.

There has been a lot of back and forth. Remember, just a couple of weeks ago, they had like an open, in-person forum, like with Apple and people who are Apple stakeholders about. Here is what's going to take. Here is what we would expect Apple to do. Here's what's going to take for Apple to fully comply with the DMA going forward, and I think that everybody expects that. With a brand new law, set of laws, as wide wind scope as this is going to be, it's going to take a while for everybody to figure out exactly what the EU is considered to be compliant, what is not considered to be compliant, without any intentional trying to set people up for failure at all. It's just we have to. The guardrails are there, but we don't know exactly where they are yet.

1:19:28 - Leo Laporte
So these are the kinds of apps right now on the alt store. They're exactly the kinds of apps you now on the alt store. They're exactly the kinds of apps you wouldn't expect Apple to approve a all in one Nintendo emulator, a fully featured virtual machine host running Windows, linux and more on iOS. A GameCube and Wii emulator, a clipboard manager for iOS that actually runs in the background.

1:19:50 - Jason Snell
Yeah, which may not, may not make it right, because one of the things that Apple checks for in their notarization is private API use, which is something that, again, I wonder if the EC may say uh-uh, no like, you don't get to reject apps that do things you don't like if they're legitimate uses, and there will be an argument about that. But the guy who set up AltStore I mean, he's the guy who wrote an emulator as a teenager oh, that's why there's so many emulators on here. And he was the guy who actually, in that conference with Apple and regulators a couple weeks ago that was live streamed. He's the one who said you know, when I was a kid, I wrote this emulator, essentially, and it got millions of of downloads, so much that we got an enormous bill that we couldn't pay from Amazon, right. And we called them and said and my parents were like, oh my God, you're going to bankrupt us Cause my kid wrote an app.

And the Amazon was like, we'll waive it, we're sorry, it's not the intent for stuff like that to happen. And and he said so, Apple core technology fee would also have bankrupted us because I got five million downloads or whatever and we wouldn't have had the money right, what he and and and the Apple representative, to his credit, said. It is not not our intent for stuff like that to happen. Uh, and and for people who are just kids trying out being a software developer to destroy them not what we're trying to do, right, so anyway.

But so riley tester is is you know, that's why there are emulators in there is because those are, you know, some of them are his emulators and and they're cool because you can play like nintendo games on an iphone so I like the flexible fast and open source minecraft java edition launcher for ios.

1:21:27 - Leo Laporte
you could actually play the java version. Interesting, yeah, interesting, yeah, interesting, yeah, so there's a.

1:21:31 - Jason Snell
Patreon. The idea of a Patreon to get an app is, like, it's an interesting one, right, and you just can't do it. It's an example of funding an app through something that's kind of like a subscription, but Apple subscriptions are locked to Apple, right, like you are very limited in what you can do because you're Apple's customer. And as a podcaster, right, I can tell you this that I have people at Apple who have approached me many times to say, oh, our podcast subscriptions thing is great, it's super easy, it's right inside the podcast app and we'll take 30 percent. And I'll say, well, wait a second, because, like, I use a different provider, they take a tiny fraction of that, and I offer all these other things outside of the podcast itself.

And Apple's response is, essentially, essentially well, we don't do that, it's just the podcast and so it's. It is in our ecosystem, it's all we offer and we take 30 and that's it. It's like this is a, it's frustrating and I don't. I have the option as a podcaster, just say no, it doesn't work for me. But, like, the patreon thing strikes a chord in me, where they're trying to say you know, you become our Patreon supporter, you get a lot of stuff, including our app.

1:22:35 - Leo Laporte
Right.

1:22:35 - Jason Snell
And you can't do that in the way the App Store is built, it's just you can't do that. So it'll be an interesting thing to see some experimentation about.

1:22:42 - Leo Laporte
So I'm looking at the installation of Alt Store and you're right, it's not a jailbreak. You have to put a server on Mac OS. You need a Mac or Windows PC, but you put a server on your computer, connect your phone to the computer, trust it and then you in effect copy over this server, which then allows you to install these apps. So that's kind of actually it's very clever. He's obviously a super smart guy and it doesn't look like I mean yeah. Yeah, there's always going to be security issues when you're installing this kind of side loading stuff on a device, but it seems like they're doing it pretty sensibly. I wouldn't recommend this to a non sophisticated user, but then again, there's enough roadblocks here that somebody who's not sophisticated is probably not going to do it.

1:23:34 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I hope this. I hope that if, if systems like this are successful, it will, it will lead Apple to serve one set of its customers better, through customers of people who contribute apps to the app store. If it turns out that, wow, we're actually losing a trackable number of our business to apps that want to be now on a third party app store because not just because they don't want to pay us 30 percent, but because they want to have an interaction with their users that we're not letting them have, or they want to release their apps in a way that we're not letting them do. If that causes Apple to say, well, how hard would it be for us to support that? Would it really hurt our business? That would be a really wonderful thing, sure.

You saw how well Apple responded to Bieber.

Well, that was different, of course. I mean, that was that was that was them trying to work, work away, work away around a technical limitation in a way that is quite creative and possibly skeevy in nature, by, you know, by faking, by faking, by tricking Apple servers into thinking an Android phone was actually an iPhone, that was never going to fly. But Jason brings up another point. There was another story this week about about Apple, how Apple is running its podcast system where people who, it turns out there's allegations that people who do sign up for that deal with Apple who are paying 30 percent of income to Apple. They are the ones that are more likely to be recommended in podcast listings. They are getting higher rankings and there are some people who have who definitely are upset by that and I think, with good reason.

1:25:09 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I see getting promoted because they're because Apple makes more money, right. More money, right, right. You know like Apple makes more money on a subscription than they do on a free one.

1:25:16 - Leo Laporte
So yeah, we uh. I immediately sent that article to elisa. She said oh yeah, we offer that. Yes. Then she said so how do we get Apple to put us in the uh, in the carousel?

1:25:27 - Jason Snell
and now what but? But just as a as a point of fact, you can offer that and they can get the podcast, but they don't get, like the discord or any other feature because, that's what we do.

1:25:40 - Leo Laporte
That's exactly right, because you're Apple's customer, not our customer.

1:25:43 - Jason Snell
That's right. It's just a different relationship. So for 2.99 you could buy this show?

1:25:47 - Leo Laporte
you can, we. Actually, if you go to the club twit page, you can see that. Uh, but you're right, you're not our customer now, you're Apple's customer and they get a third of it, uh, the third of the three dollars, and uh, and we don't. You know, we can't give you the discord or anything else because we don't have access to you yeah, just behind the show for gray matter, the same thing like we.

1:26:06 - Alex Lindsay
Just we're like we want to be able to have a bunch of other services that are not just downloading a little extra content or buying whatever, and as a result, it just didn't pencil out to have a non-integrated solution, right?

1:26:19 - Jason Snell
And I got to be honest that 30% is a lot. But if you know if I could, if there was an API or something where I could connect it to my membership system, at least optionally, and give them all of the features and price it that way it would be more tempting. But it's the combination right, it's they take 30 percent and it's just the podcast and it's a one to one relationship and that's. You know. Again, if it works, the convenience of it, I would actually argue, since this is a place where they have to compete, like what Apple is competing on, is if you're just an Apple podcast user and you're in there all the time, like we make it easy, relatively speaking, to join our membership programs twit and incomparable and relay and all these others but you still have to go to a website and pay there and then get an rss url link and get it into your thing and Apple it's just like it's press the button and pay and boom, it unlocks the member version and it's that part I mean.

That's why, when Apple competes, it's stuff like that.

1:27:19 - Leo Laporte
Right, they're saying, well, yeah, but we can make it way easier, and it's like, yeah, that actually that is compelling although I gotta say their technology is not ideal, because we have a problem, and I don't know why this is, but the way it works with Apple is we have to upload the ad version and then the ad-free version. And so if you are a member and you immediately download MacBreak Weekly, if you pay for the $2.99 MacBreak Weekly, you may well get the ad version. So you have to wait. I don't know how long do I have to wait, patrick. A minute, ten minutes? I don't know how long do I have to wait, patrick a minute, 10 minutes, I don't know, there's there yeah, that's just a, that's a screw up and how that, how it does it.

You know about this. John ashley, do you have a?

1:28:00 - Jason Snell
frustrating how often we hear reports. Yeah, we get here all the time I'm getting ads.

1:28:05 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I pay you two dollars and 99 cents. Why am I getting ads? And all we can say is it's an Apple system. And wait five to 10 minutes. Wait a minute, patrick. Wait five to 10 minutes. After the initial version of Mac break weekly goes up and you see it, if you download it immediately, you're going to get the ad version. Wait five to 10 minutes and then you'll get the ad free version. That's Apple. We can't do anything about it.

1:28:30 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm I'm just bothered by the idea that people are essentially being advertised an Apple associated or Apple invested podcast without being told that, hey, we didn't recommend this because we think we we know enough about what you're listening habits to think that you enjoy this. We're not recommending this because it's very, very exciting right now and a lot of people are talking about it. We are giving this priority because we will make money off of this and we will not make money off of something else that might've had a better chance of getting that slot.

1:28:57 - Leo Laporte
Let's be fair. This comes from Max Tanny writing at Semaphore, and he says, uh, that he was told. An executive at an independent podcast told Semaphore that in recent months when they asked the company how they could be promoted in that carousel and we ask that question a lot Apple leaders probably the product manager, but anyway suggested that the show participate in the platform's new subscription program. Another podcast exec told Semaphore that while Apple podcast subscriptions wasn't a huge moneymaker for them, it was worth participating for the benefit of the podcast feed placement. So it's kind of anecdotal, right. I don't know if we have any direct experience of it. I doubt we've ever been told this.

1:29:46 - Jason Snell
I'm sure they feature podcasts that are subscription podcasts, more right.

1:29:49 - Leo Laporte
Well, five out of I think Max says something like five out of six are paid subscription podcasts, so that may be the proof. I don't know.

1:30:00 - Jason Snell
Yeah, but there's no. I mean, that's the thing. Is that featured editorial placement? We talk about this with the App Store too, like if you have a good relationship with Apple, if you do things that they like, if you support their new technologies, you're going to get promotion, because there's a whole app store editorial group and there is a for podcast as well, and those people are marketers. That's the marketing we talk to them as much as we can.

1:30:19 - Leo Laporte
We love them.

1:30:20 - Jason Snell
And it's fine. I just would say, for something like who gets promoted on Apple's platforms, I think there's no implication that there's some sort of fair play going on there. It's not a fair market. It is Apple choosing to market in ways that benefit them, and it's it's editorial of a sort, but in the end it's marketing Cause it's not. It's it's about the money, but like. What it's not is like I'll put it this way the top charts. If Like I'll put it this way the top charts. If things get a bonus on the top charts waiting because they are in a business relationship with Apple, that's BS, right, because there's no evidence that that happens.

1:30:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and there's no evidence of that.

1:31:00 - Jason Snell
But for promotional stuff. I mean, it's promotional stuff, that's what it is. It's ads. Essentially, it's Apple choosing what to advertise.

1:31:09 - Andy Ihnatko
Apple choosing what to advertise. I'm just not sure that the average user the consumer is using this really understands that it does. It does make sense that preferred this display, particularly of that kind. There's going to be a motive for it, but nonetheless, I would much rather there be some sort of indication, some more, even if it's just hey, if you care about this, click on this link. That's somewhere on here's, here's, here's the take out the trash information for the stuff that we, rather not you, know about. But if you were looking for it, we'll let you find it.

1:31:35 - Jason Snell
What would that say, though? What would that say? It would be like well, some things are subscriptions, and sometimes we make those featured, but other times we don't, and it's our up to us. Like I'm not, how do we tell them about how the world works?

1:31:46 - Andy Ihnatko
I think there's a limit to what the way that we can kind of coddle a user about something that's getting promoted.

1:31:53 - Alex Lindsay
And how is this different? Like the fact that you know when, when you, when Apple started to make you or even the GDPR, and Apple started to make people say, do you want to be tracked across the Internet, do you want to share with third parties? And you look at the app and go, really, is that what you're doing? Like you know ones that you didn't like, like PG&E, like can we give you cookies that we can sell to third parties? And you're just like come on, guys. And so the thing is, is that everybody's doing it? I will say that everybody is doing something that isn't straight up all the time. Like you know, like all the companies are doing are doing something where they're recommending something that is in their best interest, or they're manipulating your data. I mean, the average person doesn't have any idea what they're getting.

1:32:38 - Leo Laporte
So I'm looking at the carousels right now on Apple podcast top shows from Apple news. So that makes sense of promoting. That's the very first one Top shows from Apple music. They're promoting their own stuff. Now here's you might like. Now this says based on your listening, so I'm going to presume.

1:32:56 - Jason Snell
Anytime there's a claim like that, I think it needs to be real.

1:33:02 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if I would say that's the case, because my listening is entirely Twitch shows, popular shows that may well be paid Dateline Media Pressure, the Dough with Ex Mayo, I never even heard of these. Oh, there's our good friend. What's his name? The Daily Show, here's edition, see, john, they like you, john, criminal.

1:33:28 - Jason Snell
They don't, but it's popular. There's nothing they can oh this is popular.

1:33:31 - Leo Laporte
This is like charts, then huh, and then then there's stuff oh, we're loving. You think that's the one that's. I mean that implies we love them because they give us money right the.

1:33:41 - Andy Ihnatko
The fact that we're questioning, we don't we're making asking these questions for every category because we don't really know right. That to me is an indication that I would I and I, ideally a company would want to not put a big warning flag, gdpr style banner. But look, if you're interested in this information, here is just a link that says terms, policies, whatever. So if you see what's the, information?

1:34:05 - Jason Snell
what information do you put in if there's? If it's just we have a group of people and we make various decisions based on all sorts of reasons, because it's not like this is a paid placement where only subscriber podcasts can go. It's like one factor in a huge number of factors that they use to make their marketing decisions about the top level group. That is not making any claims about being algorithmic.

1:34:29 - Andy Ihnatko
This isn't like decoding hieroglyphics. You can write a phrase like Apple sometimes will promote certain podcasts that it has a financial stake in. This was, or there are many reasons why we might recommend a podcast. One of them is that some, some there are some podcasts in which we have a financial it is the case, you should probably disclose financial stake.

1:34:50 - Jason Snell
How complicated is that Caution contains capitalism. No but the FTC, for instance. That's really cynical. No, no, I think you're right, Andy.

1:35:00 - Leo Laporte
And I think you make an excellent point. The FTC, if I start talking about a product and they're paying me to talk about it this fine coaster is is a pay. You know that I have to disclose that. I cannot just talk about it and throw it away. People on youtube get in trouble. I would get in trouble. The ftc does insist on that. So I think you're right. It's fair if something, if a company has a financial stake in something it's recommending, they should probably be required to just like.

1:35:26 - Alex Lindsay
That means it's safe way. We need to have a sign over the end cap and say you know, we got a better deal on these chips, so we're putting them on the end cap. You know like. You know like. So you know like it is. You know, because that's what it is right. I mean, there's all these wheeling and dealing of how high it is and where it is and those are.

You know this is one of this is like wearing slightly faster shoes or a suit that makes you swim a little bit faster. You know it's not like because 99% of podcasts out there are not actually listenable. Like you know, people like to put them out but they're not. You know they're not. The quality of the content, the quality of the mics, the quality of everything else makes them really hard to listen to, and so the so, the so you get rid of all of those. It's not like if they added subscriptions, it wouldn't make any difference. You know like they're still not going to get highlighted. And so you're really talking about what is giving you the edge If you have a highly produced podcast, again like Slightly Faster Shoes, like a bodysuit that you can swim in, like you know, like those types of things, what is going to give me that last little edge?

And I think that's what they're really talking about, cause that's, when you see the things that are recommended, those are the podcasts that are at that elite level. They've already, they're already better than 99.9% of the podcasts that are out there, and and it's just a matter of trying to how do how do I get a little bit faster? It's, it's, you know, I don't. I think that that's really the the impact, but that kind of impact is happening in every part of our lives all the time.

Like that is like, again, as Jason said, it's like this is what's happening everywhere, like what gets put on a sign, what gets put on the end cap, what gets mentioned, what, and it's not like I'm getting paid. You know, people aren't getting paid to do that, they just, but they're they're leaning towards that for a variety of reasons, and so I think that that's it's really hard to. I mean, I don't know how you do that, like I just don't know how you do it, and that it would make sense. And again, it's just it's it's literally everything around. If you're in America, it's everything around you.

1:37:15 - Leo Laporte
Here's what the FTC says. Suppose you meet someone who tells you about a great new product. The person says it performs wonderfully and offers fantastic new features. Nobody else has with that recommendation factor into your decision to buy the product. Probably now suppose the person works for the company that sells the product or has been paid by the company to tout the product, wouldn't you want to know? You bet, and the FTC requires it. Now what's odd is they require it of me, they require it of you, they require it of influencers, but apparently they don't require it of grocery stores or Apple.

1:37:49 - Alex Lindsay
Well, I mean, I think that you can tell whether that Apple has a financial gain by just seeing if it has a subscription. If subscriptions are often there, then they have a financial gain and you downloading that one or subscribing. But generally there's a free version of that podcast. You know, the 99% of the people who are actually downloading that podcast aren't even subscribing. You know like they're just downloading that podcast, aren't even subscribing. You know like they're just downloading the podcast for free. You know. So it's not. It's not like a it. I think that's not what the debate's about.

1:38:16 - Leo Laporte
The debate about is about Apple's recommendation for, but it's not. It's because someone getting paid somebody's, they're getting paid when you subscribe to it.

1:38:23 - Alex Lindsay
That's exactly what the ftc is talking about I don't know why they don't enforce it for companies. It's's not a CTR though it's not, you know it's not. It's not paying attention to click throughs, it's not paying attention to it's just some people will subscribe to it and it's not pay to play either.

1:38:38 - Jason Snell
Right, it's not like featured items are a place where you pay to get in or where you even have a relationship with Apple. That is a certain kind of business relationship. It's way messier than that and that might be a factor, although I have yet to actually see the evidence. But even if it is like it's one factor in so many factors, is Apple going with its own self-interest when it promotes in a general feature box, not a top charts, not a? This is popular, but like a general feature box, because the app store is the same way and the answer is it's super complicated because it's acting in its own best interest.

But sometimes it's making you want to love a show. So you keep using the podcast app, keep you on the iPhone, because the podcast app is only on the iPhone. You know, right, writing any hot hand of a podcast people are talking about and maybe, yeah, maybe, oh, this one's performing really well. So, on the subscription side, so we're promoted. But even then, when you click through, you don't go to the buy this podcast. You go to a free podcast that has a subscription offer. So it's like you could disclaim it, you could warn people about it, but it's not the same as saying I endorse this coaster because every, because they pay me it's, it's, it's just way messier than that.

1:39:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Like the world it's, it's the, it's the ongoing process of being pecked to death by ducks. Each one little peck doesn't destroy anything. However, it makes life a little bit harder, a little bit more confusing, a little bit more cynical. It makes you feel a little bit more like a product that's being sold to other people than just someone who is just out using a product or service. All I'm saying is that it would cost Apple nothing. It would not be difficult at all. The language you could come up with within 10 seconds. You could put it somewhere so that people who are interested in it could find it and I don't understand any objection whatsoever to doing that.

I'm not saying they should be legally required to do this. I'm saying that this would make me trust Apple more than I would if they did not do that, and I think that that in itself would make this worth doing. And that's all I'll say about it.

1:40:49 - Leo Laporte
All right, I want to take a break because we have to and get paid because we want to. And oh, there's no ad here. Well, that's why you should join the club. Now let me tell you something. Club Twit is a fantastic deal. We only charge you seven bucks a month. Wait a minute. You say why would I give you seven bucks a month? Well, I can give you a bunch of reasons. You get ad free versions of all the shows and, because you're going through member full, you also get a subscription to the TwitPlus bonus content, including stuff we talked about before and after the shows, special events like the Insight Twit we did last week, stacy's Book Club, plus access to our members only Discord, which is a really great place to hang if you are, you know, a nerd. Can I just say that if you are a nerd, you will love it.

Now, uh, the seven bucks a month does go to a very important thing. In fact, we are so close now to covering our payroll with a club that I really want to make that last inch. That that doesn't mean me, it doesn't mean Lisa. It means hello, hello, club to it. It means it means, uh, people like John Ashley, esteemed producer of this show. John Slanina, our studio manager, and Burke and our continuity department are all the wonderful people who work here. Uh me, that is going to be critical going forward because, frankly, ad sales is is is tough and the amount people are willing to pay for ads is going down and we're just not making the revenue we used to.

We've already canceled as many shows as I'd like to. We've already laid off some people I'd hated to leave off, but we can avoid that if you would join the club. So please, twittv slash club. Twit Nuff said, nuff said, but we would love to have you in the club. Okay, and this coaster. By the way, nobody paid me to show on the show. Nobody, not one. We are talking about Apple with Jason Snell from six colorscom, andy, and not go from GBH in Boston. Got the website going yet, andy.

Very soon, any day now, you'll get an email this week. Oh good, I'm looking forward to it off. That's me Just as a beta tester. Folks don't get tropes Office hours. That global host and a creator, alex Lindsay Apple is global host and uh, creator alex lindsey um, Apple is suing a former employee for leaking do? They is that typical that they would actually leave, sue, or mostly they just fire.

1:43:21 - Jason Snell
They're making an example of this guy. They want to. They want to let everybody else know that do not. I mean also, this is a classic what not to do because he, like, used his Apple's issued phone, managed by Apple, and then so they could like it's a what not to do for leakers. But I think that the reason they're doing this and bringing it into the public is probably just to make it clear to people who work at Apple. Essentially, like you could ruin your career if you, if you give information to the press even though many people will be like but just don't use your Apple issued phone to send secret messages like that's not, that's a terrible idea, but they're looking, they think that they benefit from the secrecy, so they're going to make an example they're looking for 25 000.

1:44:04 - Leo Laporte
The lawsuit alleges that over a five-year period, uh, he used his Apple-issued iPhone to leak information about more than half a dozen Apple products and policies, including its then-unannounced journal app and the Vision Pro headset. Product development policies. Strategies for regular this guy was a blabbermouth. Strategies for regulatory compliance employee headcounts and more.

1:44:27 - Alex Lindsay
The fact that he got away with it for so long is quite a thing. And then you know, according to Apple, they tried to actually sort it out with him. They just wanted to know what he said, like, what have you said to everyone? And he only would admit to the things that he couldn't delete without them knowing. And so the fact that he wouldn't come clean is why he's in this.

And one thing you want to notice is they demanded a trial, and the reason for that? There's two reasons for that. One is they're going to pummel him. You know, on, on, on, on, you know cause it. It means that he has to. Here's what happens is in discovery, if they want a trial, they can subpoena him and they to hand over what he pulled, what you know anything he, because if he lies then it's perjury. So what they want is the trial is important because they want him to get on the stand and make him tell them what he took. That's why they're asking for the trial. Number two it's super expensive for him. So it's $25,000 win, it'll cost him $100,000 to defend himself. You know so. But Apple doesn't have to look like they're pounding out on him because they're like oh, we're only asking for $25,000. It's not our money, but it's going to be his money.

1:45:35 - Leo Laporte
There's another, more reprehensible reason Apple is asking for a trial, in my opinion. They want the names of the journalists. Well, they won't. They already have one. Apple alleges that he leaked a list of finalized features for the journal app to a journalist at the Wall Street Journal on a phone call, and the same month the journal's Aaron Tilley published a report titled Apple Plans iPhone Journaling App. He is said to have sent over 1,400 messages to the same journalist who he referred to as homeboy. He's also accused of sending over 10,000 messages to the same journalist who he referred to as homeboy. He's also accused of sending over 10 000 messages to another journalist at the information guarantee you, Apple is looking for the names of the journalists, and that's the real chilling effect they want journalists to stop.

1:46:21 - Jason Snell
What are they going to do?

1:46:22 - Alex Lindsay
leakers what are they going to do? They can't put them in jail. All they can do is say you're not invited to our little launch event.

1:46:32 - Jason Snell
I don't think that's it Right and they're all bylined in the information anyway. No, I think this is he's. He's being made an example of the low monetary cost here, which is like meaningless to Apple entirely, is to scare, I just that's. I think it's just to scare people. I think it's to strike fear in the hearts of Apple employees who might dare to talk to a journalist.

1:46:52 - Alex Lindsay
I think that's what it is and you know, I think, that again, getting him, you know, sworn in and having to say the truth and then being able to ask him what, you know, what he did, If he says he didn't do it and they catch him, then that's against the law.

1:47:06 - Leo Laporte
You don't think Apple wants to know the names of the journalists that he?

1:47:09 - Alex Lindsay
was leaking to. Sure they're going to get the names of the journal. They probably know all the names of the journal because they can tie the leaks to the journalists. But journalists don't matter, it's the employees.

1:47:21 - Jason Snell
Yeah, journalists protect their sources. The sources don't protect the journalists.

1:47:24 - Alex Lindsay
That's how it works Right, yeah, so it's not. So the sources. What they want to do is make sure the sources know that that's not like you know, that you know. And again, 99.9999 percent of Apple employees not only would never do this, uh, but are probably insulted and upset that he did it like you know, like it's, it's there's like sure for every. You know there's like almost all the other employees. I mean Apple is not known for. I mean you don't get hired if you have a mentality like this.

1:47:51 - Jason Snell
Very often, even the people who leak information are upset right, because he did it so amateurishly, you know, and by being on a. But this is look. The other argument here that I just want to make is Apple talks about, and I had an exchange with somebody who used to work in Apple marketing used to work for Phil Schiller on Twitter about this last week where he basically said you know, this hurts Apple and it's and should this even be ethical to report, to take the confidential information as a journalist and because it's not exactly the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, my response is exactly it's not the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, it's freaking product introductions a few months before they happen. It's not important on either side. And while Apple has doubled down on secrecy because Apple feels like they get a material benefit from surprising people, the fact is, almost every major Apple product launch of the last decade and a half has been, if not entirely, largely reported in advance and Apple's doing just fine. And while I have gotten feedback from people who say, oh, it is dispiriting if you're working on a product at Apple and then it gets reported in by mark german at bloomberg and you feel sad because you wanted it to be a surprise, I get the feels, part of it.

But I think I don't particularly buy the argument that any leak materially hurts Apple in a way that is, you know, like materially, materially Sure, you might move a sale from an iPad sale right from now to May, because we all hear that Mark Gurman says iPads are coming in May. All right, there's a little bit of that. It's not lost sales necessarily. It's more like sales movement. It's only from people who are tuned in to the rumors. But there are some, and that has always been the case, back to when Mac Week used to do Mac the Knife and reveal all sorts of secrets in advance and make Apple very angry too. But, like again, it isn't Watergate, it's just a product launch. And while I get why Apple doesn't want to be leakier I totally get it I question the idea that Apple has been grievously wounded by leaks.

1:49:55 - Alex Lindsay
Well, but I think that also it is. I mean, with most of these companies you sign a pretty heavy confidentiality, Like you made a contract with them and said you're not going to talk about this. You're breaking the rules. You definitely broke that contract. You should pay.

1:50:07 - Jason Snell
No, denying that, no denying that, no denying that, I'm just saying that from the perspective of the reporting on these things, it's like if somebody comes to me I mean somebody comes to Mark Gurman let's say, and I should say, legally, inducing somebody to break their agreement with their employer is unethical and, I think, illegal if you're a journalist. But if they come to you, it's not your business about what agreements they've signed. And I think I roll my eyes when Apple says, oh, it hurt us so much that this guy talked to the information. It's like, come on, that's not it. But what you do want is for your employees to sign those agreements and know they will be held to it so that they will not leak to journalists. And that's what's going on here yeah, do you think so?

1:50:45 - Leo Laporte
it's interesting that you have the point of view that, uh, the job that journalists are doing to reveal that is not important.

1:50:54 - Jason Snell
Oh, I'm not saying it's not important, I'm saying it doesn't harm Apple. I don't think. I don't think Apple's sales like Apple.

1:51:00 - Leo Laporte
Like I said, it's a value to the consumers, is it not?

1:51:04 - Jason Snell
I think there is some value, although I'll also say this I'm just going to be full of heresy today. I would say that a lot of it is entertainment and it's awesome and it's people who just want to know. But, that said, there is a tangible value in the people who were thinking about buying an iPad last month and are not going to do it because they know a new iPad is coming in day. Like for the buyer, they do have an interest. If you're a corporate buyer who's buying thousands of them and Apple will never tell you that there's a new iPad coming and this was always the argument back in the Mac weekdays is those powerful buyers like they want the Intel, the intelligence, the secret that don't buy Mac X because Mac Y will be here in two months and you will have bought thousands of Mac X and you'll be stuck for the next three years. Wait, two months, like there is some value to that.

But I think we also need to admit a lot of it is just entertainment and gossip. I just would argue that, in the grand scheme of things, Apple is one of the most reported on companies, especially their product plans, in the world, and they're also one of the most valuable companies in the world and I don't think it has appreciably harmed them to be so leaked on that. Like they still sell their products, they still make a lot of money. I just I get that it might hurt people's feelings, but I question how much they get done.

1:52:20 - Alex Lindsay
I think the only thing is is that there is, you know, and you know there's always people. Again, you want to have people trying to be confidential about what they're working on. It's one thing to leak out stuff that's going to happen two months in advance. Another thing to leak out many of these things you know the Vision Pro was working on and Apple did not talk about it for years. You know, and so and there were many things about it that were very confidential thing is is that is that the and that is an information you know acquired by competitors is allows them to, to, to basically trim what they're doing and affect what you know, how they're building things against that years in advance, so that it is creating, you know, more competition for Apple.

1:53:03 - Leo Laporte
you know, down that, down that road, and again, I think the revelation that Apple was doing a journaling program a couple of months before they did release it. It had any material damage to Apple.

1:53:15 - Alex Lindsay
The bottom line is it's like a holding call, like you agreed to not say things and then you said them and you're paying the price for it. I think that's all this guy was playing the press too.

1:53:24 - Jason Snell
That's the other funny thing about the story. One of the details is like he released information about the journaling app because he thought it was dumb, apparently, or he didn't like the way it went, and this is true, honestly, a lot of these leaks, you have to also consider the source and why, why they're motivated to leak it, and I think a lot of times what happens is somebody loses an argument inside Apple and a product goes in a direction they don't like, and so they go and they leak that direction, hoping that people oh, how dare they.

And then they'll. They'll get people to change direction inside, or just as revenge for losing an argument. That stuff happens all the time.

1:53:56 - Andy Ihnatko
There was a period in which I had access to internal Apple emails without any involvement by myself. Great story, it was a total. It was a total accident and Apple refused to correct the situation. And Apple refused to correct the situation and so for a period of time, I could see a the flurry of emails between senior Apple managers and Apple's about to cancel it, and I can say, ah, the one that you, as a product manager, were trying to steal resources away from. Okay, well, yeah, there's always that. And yeah, jason is right in that it doesn't harm Apple at all, excuse me, generally doesn't harm, and if it does, I'm sorry, but that's hello.

Free press you can't control the press. It's one thing that I think that Apple is. When you're trying to cover Apple is particularly difficult and annoying. I have been contacted by I will not give any specifics, but in fairly recent times, to like for two less recent times, I have done investigations and wound up talking to somebody and then, boom, you get a call from someone in an official capacity that not only we're trying to make sure that you know what the official Apple line was, but who also is trying to say well, you should have. I think you should have known that. You know it was going to get around to me eventually as though I was doing something naughty by, you know, actually doing my job.

So there are a lot of levels to this and the punitive action of this is absolutely correct. Remember when there was a bunch of stories about labor practices and experiences inside Apple charges truthful or non-truthful, they have to be determined about pay inequity, opportunity inequity they're being filed with federal labor boards. And then it came out that, oh well, tim had I think it was Tim who had a company-wide email about this, about all the stuff in the news, and the tone of his email was I know this distresses you that somebody broke the code of secrecy. Don't worry everybody, we will ferret this person out like a dog and shoot him down, like okay. So now the message is if you have a complaint, don't complain. The message is if you have a complaint, don't complain, because the problem is that somebody talked, not the problem that somebody wanted feels as though they have been compensated unfairly. So yeah, it's a cultural thing, it's terrible For sure.

1:56:39 - Alex Lindsay
And again, and you also have to deal with verticals, like I worked for one company it wasn't Apple that had my company worked for nine different verticals within that company, like we did streaming for nine different companies, and one of the things we were very careful of is not to cross-pollinate. So no one ever knew about the other launch events and it was very complicated. There were code names and there was constantly and we were all not, because other people will not protect your project as much as you will. So the journaling app team, I'm sure, was really upset that he's like leaking out. So there's a moral morality thing not morality morale issue when things are going out that does affect, you know, does affect productivity and so on and so forth. And so you know, I think and again, I don't think it's a big deal, I don't think he did anything. That's going to end, you know that's going to end. It's going to suddenly could have ended world peace or anything else, but the bottom line is he broke the rules and then Apple tried to just find out what he said.

I don't think that they really they can figure out who he was talking to pretty quickly. What they want to know is what's what is out there, you know, like what is he? What has he given away? And he won't do it. And so, as him not doing it, they're saying, okay, well, we'll sue you then. But it's very rare, and a lot of Apple employees have told people things and if they get caught, they kind of come clean and it's very rare for them to get sued. It's very common for them to be fired. It's very rare for them. I think there's a joke in a lot of companies Apple might be one of them is you can say anything you want on your last day, so anyway. So so I think that a lot of people can get away, you can do that and they get fired, um, but but I think that, uh, getting sued, you really have to work at it to do that yeah, he seemed a little vindictive.

1:58:19 - Leo Laporte
I'm looking at one of the messages that Apple published. By the way, can't wait for chaos to break out before Apple corporate people even wake up that's I mean we should say.

1:58:30 - Jason Snell
Part of this is you want to, you're grumpy, you're disgruntled, you lost an argument. Part of it is an ego trip and I, you know a lot. Why do people leak things is a real question. They're insiders.

1:58:42 - Leo Laporte
I know.

1:58:43 - Jason Snell
And a lot of it is they know something you don't know and they and, but they can't do anything with that. So what do they do? And the answer is you know, they feel powerful in getting that stuff out there and revealing it to a reporter and therefore the world. They feel like I did that and it's what. It's a little like stealing a painting and putting it in your house. You can't show it to anybody, but you know that you stole the painting and you have it in your house and it's so. So some of those messages are very much like he's on an ego trip. He's on a power trip because he's got information and he can get, see it get out and he can make people at Apple uh squirm because how did that get out? And he knows that it was him and that's that's.

1:59:23 - Andy Ihnatko
There's a whole psychology behind leaking information that's confidential the worst, worst spy in US history, fbi agent Robert Hanson, like of course he's now. After he got caught, he's been interrogated up down and sideways and it turns out that, no, he wasn't in financial straits. No, he wasn't disgruntled, he just liked the idea of being a spy and having power and being able to put things over on his employers. And so, yeah, it's a weird psychology, isn't it?

1:59:52 - Jason Snell
Yeah, yeah, it is very strange.

1:59:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Add to it the social clout of being on a message board. Oh well, I Hi. This is Dr Dr Infinite Loop with another.

2:00:01 - Alex Lindsay
Yes, patented, inside scoop.

2:00:04 - Andy Ihnatko
Because my sister who works at Apple, let me play with her phone for two hours and then the sister gets fired and it's very bad and the whole thing.

2:00:11 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I think there is a. It's a, it's an ego trip. It's dangerous. I get why people do it, but it also, I don't know it is. It's the not. Watergate thing keeps coming back to me too, which is like a lot of leakers are leaking information because they think that something terrible is happening and the public must be informed. And that's not what's going on here. Right, not even like the public must know a journaling app is being released because they'll stop it. Like no, it's just not. It's just not the case in all these cases. So even if we can say, like I don't know of any leaker who's like the public must be told not to buy an iPad this month, right, like?

I don't think that's why they're doing it, and so there may be some public interest in the reveal of those things, but I don't see the interest in being the revealer.

2:01:01 - Andy Ihnatko
I regret that I have but one career to give up for my country.

2:01:06 - Jason Snell
For spring iPad buyers.

2:01:10 - Leo Laporte
For the 80 people who follow me on threads all right, my friends, get your picks of the week ready. That's next. As you uh are listening to MacBreak Weekly, jason snell, andy and ako and alex lindsey we're glad you are here. Let's uh kick things off with alex lindsey for your pick of the week, a Alex.

2:01:28 - Alex Lindsay
So we're getting ready for NAB. We have a booth there and I decided to build a rig and I think I might have mentioned last time. It's got a little out of control, so this is my little iPhone rig.

2:01:40 - Leo Laporte
Oh my God, where's the iPhone? It doesn't have an iPhone in it right now. The iPhone.

2:01:44 - Alex Lindsay
it fits in here. So you go, it goes in here like this that's where the phone goes in and it's got.

2:01:50 - Jason Snell
How much does that weigh? And he says it's shot on iPhone, but look exactly no, they said it's on an iPhone.

2:02:02 - Alex Lindsay
This is how. So we've got electrosonic receivers on it. I've got a mix pre on the bottom to get those electrosonic receivers. We've got ambisonic mic from Zoom return monitor. If I want to do Zoom returns, yeah, so that. And some power and a battery big battery. You can shoot Major League Baseball with that. Yeah, exactly so, anyway. So I'm building this and I'm building my other rig that I'm starting to build. This one's just at the beginning, so next week it'll be more done. This one's just at the beginning, so next week it'll be more done. This is so that people can actually interact with zoom directly from the floor into like panelists on zoom, can talk to them directly. Let's hear them up here and they can see them. And we'll put a, we'll put a Sony FX six over here, and so we're pretty excited about that.

2:02:42 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, it's kind of an Errol Morris kind of a contraption that you got going on there right now yeah no, of a contraption that you got going on there right now?

2:02:50 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, no exactly it's your view. It's almost like an interotron. Yeah, yeah and so, um, anyway, this is how it begins. But all of this stuff is put together with, uh, this stuff called from a company called small rig, which, by the way, uh, I have bought all. In case you're wondering, we talked about sponsorship before I bought all the pieces. I don't know anyone at small rig I if, if you're SmallRig, please call me.

2:03:09 - Leo Laporte
They're going to be at the NAB show. As a matter of fact, you can go see all the stuff they've got, yeah.

2:03:15 - Alex Lindsay
So I'll tell you when they sponsor you, because that'd be great because I spent so much money in the last couple of weeks on their hardware. But it's not like you buy. The hardware is relatively inexpensive and so it's not like you buy $800 of something you buy like $10 here, $10 there, $12 here, $12 there. I started with it because they make great cages for your iPhone, just little cages that'll go right around your iPhone and it's got quarter 20s on the outside so you can put lights and things like that. And, of course, what happens is you get into a system and then you start building and now I just have like half of the stuff that they make and it's just great. It's. It's cost effective. It's not the most expensive version that you can get. It's relatively cost, expensive again it's. It's like you suddenly realize you spend hundreds of dollars instead of buying it all at one time, but it's, it's like a, it's like an erector set for a camera, for a camera kit, so you have cages. So the first thing that I do like the, the fx30 that I have here, all all the cameras I have when I buy a camera, the first thing I do is I go to Amazon and I buy a small rig cage for it. It protects the camera, but it also means I can start attaching things to it, which I tend to do really quickly, and so so you, so I just use it all the time, and I've just I spent a lot of quality time with it over the last two weeks building these rigs, um for nab and I, and I just realized that's a really good little rig system. You know, and I'm having fun with it. I know more about the construction of quarter 20 screws, um, than I ever thought I would. Um, but they have it, they have almost everything. You think, oh, it'd be really good if I had like a long piece or a cheese plate that was like this, and you go up to to the website, there it is, and so you buy another $12 down the road, down the drain.

So great little rigging system. Again, as you get your head into it, you understand how it works. You can sit there and build all kinds of. You know, I'm kind of recreating the iPhone rig that I built 15 years ago with just hacked together pieces that were sitting in the office, and now I have one actually might work, so, so anyway. So we'll be testing more of that, um at NAB next. Uh, you know about a week and a half, but um, but small rig is a great little uh, it's a great company. I don't know if they're definitely not a little company, but it's a great uh rigging setup. If you're trying to build cages for your iPhone or regular, regular cameras and all that stuff, I love this they have a Fujifilm X100 stuff that matches, because people who have an X100 care about the retro feel of it.

2:05:37 - Leo Laporte
So they have retro kind of brass, you know burnished brass stuff. That's hysterical, they do.

2:05:45 - Alex Lindsay
When I first got the first rig for the FX30, I thought there was something wrong with it and I sent it back because it was all. It looked all beat up. And I got the first rig for the FX30, I thought there was something wrong with it and I sent it back because it looked all beat up. And I got the next one and it looked all beat up and I realized it wasn't that. They accidentally sent me a used one. That's just how they have them look for that build, Like they've made a decision about what that looks like.

2:06:02 - Leo Laporte
Well, from now on, I think we're going to do the show like this there you go, anthony Neal, there you go, anthony neil. Is this all small rig stuff? He's got a focus. Is that a wood focus knob? That's nice. Yeah, look at that. Wow, yeah, I, I. This is so heavy I can't even lift it off my shoulder, take it away, that's. We're all building these rigs. That's for an iphone. That's amazing. He's crazy. He's a crazy man. That's a ronin. There's a a Ronin gimbal on there and all sorts of stuff. You know, I think it's addictive, is what it is. You just kind of start getting into it and pretty soon you've got to buy more. Yep, absolutely Small rig.

2:06:43 - Andy Ihnatko
I think you must be a big fan of what was the name of that weapon in the fifth element, the Zorn mega disruptor. Oh yeah, that was good man. That's what you want, that's good.

2:06:53 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, someone who grew up building stuff from scratch and doing lots of the like in the shop or whatever it's so nice to be able to just buy a bunch of stuff on Amazon have it and it's a steady stream. I can't imagine what the Amazon drivers think. Because like the steady stream because thing. Because like the steady stream because you build a bunch of things and you go, oh, I'm missing these screws and this thing and I need one more of these, and then you order another.

2:07:12 - Leo Laporte
Every day there's like another four pieces show up as you, as you slowly put it together it's, I feel like I should buy an x100, just so I can buy the rig to put yeah, that's a nice rig, exactly jason snell.

2:07:25 - Jason Snell
Pick of the week well, I was talking about baseball earlier and this is a site that people don't know about. That is amazing. It's called Baseball Savant. It's run by Major League Baseball. The spigot of all that data gets just washed out all over Baseball Savant. It's BaseballSavantMLBcom, and when you click into a live game which they're up at the top, you can see it's live data and it's got quick links to the game day functions. But it'll like show you every pitch, every hit. What was the velocity? Where did it go? You can click through and see, pitch by pitch, at bat by bat, batter by batter, what happened in every game. You can go back to the past games. It has it is.

This is where all the data goes and and sports writers and and baseball insiders in the know all rely on baseball savant and I find that fans have never heard of it. So baseball savantmlbcom it's free, they just put it there and it's got all this data so you can like bring it up while you're watching a baseball game and you can be like, hey, a couple of pitches ago, how fast was that fastball? And you look and it's like, oh, that was a 99 mile an hour fastball, baby. And you know your life is complete. I love it. It's just super nerdy. But like you can't, if you record the data, you got to do something with it. Right, and baseball is one of the things they deal with.

2:08:48 - Leo Laporte
It's pretty hysterical. I used to obey back in the day. I would get the was it the blue book and the whole sabermetrics thing. This time let's not eat the bones and you probably did all that too, but it was.

2:09:00 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I mean, I was. I was in the early days. I was in a rotisserie baseball league. My first fantasy league of any kind was a rotisserie baseball league and I did the stats. I had to go on and I grew up in a small town, sonora, up in the foothills in California, and on Wednesdays I would leave school and go to a newsstand where I could get USA Today, because USA Today on Wednesdays published the baseball statistics for every team. And then you take that home and I would Apple 2, I would use Apple works, which had a spreadsheet built into it, to calculate out the points for our rotisserie baseball leagues week by week. And, uh, so, yeah, what I'm saying is, yeah, leo, I was into that yeah, you were.

2:09:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so was I back in the day. Yeah, there used to be a book that had everybody who ever showed up on a major league even for one pitch.

2:09:52 - Jason Snell
The Baseball Encyclopedia is what you're talking about, that's what I'm talking about.

2:09:55 - Leo Laporte
That was great, but I guess you have to get one every year. You get a new one, right?

2:10:00 - Jason Snell
Well, now it's all on the internet. It's all at Baseball Reference. But yes, all my friends on the Zoom knew I was saying is this your book?

2:10:07 - Leo Laporte
They took the fun out of it by putting it online. Yeah, that was great. That's a library edition.

2:10:13 - Jason Snell
You have the library edition that I bought used because I just wanted to have the Macmillan baseball encyclopedia near me at all times.

2:10:21 - Leo Laporte
I used to buy it every year, but now you can find it at Baseball Reference for free. So yeah, if you get into it, you can really get. It's kind of like small rig.

2:10:31 - Jason Snell
If you get into it, there's a bottomless pit of things you can man, let me tell you about johnny grabowski, who played for the white socks, the yankees and then the tigers for seven years my favorite good stuff, the guys who came up for, as they say, a cup of coffee, that's right, they were up for a couple of pitches so fun.

2:10:54 - Leo Laporte
Uh, you brought back some memories. I'm, you know, I'm trying to get back into it. Maybe I will this year.

2:10:58 - Alex Lindsay
At least there's something about all the stats. It's you know I, it's for my, it's amazing for my. My father, he was a lawyer. He had another friend was a lawyer. They could tell you the starting lineups of every team. Yeah, in the uh, uh, in the major, in major league baseball between like 1955 and 1975 or 78, you could just say the new york yankees and they would list you the batting order. Wow, and I was just, I don't understand what a memory, even not, but but it was. But back then they had a lot of time to think about those things like in the practice and to cue each other and they watched lots of games and they paid attention to who everybody was and they both had nearly a photographic memory. Those things combined it was fascinating.

2:11:42 - Leo Laporte
I think about it and then I think but I don't do, I want to devote that many brain cells to that, and I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, andy, and I go. It's your turn for a pick of the week.

2:11:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, earlier in the show we were talking about like being in our grabbing old movies and putting me on the server in case you want to watch them later. I hit a treasure trove, like last year on archiveorg I discovered the the Torchy Blaine movies, which was a series of movies in the 1930s. I know this is OK. So the 1930s Warner Brothers had the series of movies, b movies. They were like less than an hour long starring Torchy Blaine, like the hot, the female lady reporter from from a major metropolitan newspaper. She was actually so popular she was the inspiration for lois lane in wow the like superman's creators like acknowledge that even the reason why they named her lois lane was after lola lane, who was the actress who played torchy mcblaine. And these are simple, little like periods pieces, but they're so fun. They're the sort of. They're the sort of movies where like torchy will say things like torchy, why, why were you poking around that office after midnight? Say, hey, I can't just stay at home washing my stockings and waiting for you punch-drag flat-footed to solve the case. I ain't got that many stockings. And you're amazed because like she's not like oh, my God, who's going to rescue me? Oh, I just can't figure out this case. Oh, what are you gonna? It's like no, she's the driving force. It's the cops who are idiots. We're not taking the initiative. She's the one who puts everything together. She has a. She has a boyfriend, slash fiance, who's on the police force, and it always starts with uh, you know, starts with like her putting him off. In the end, like they solve the case, say, well, are you finally gonna marry me? Like hey, until I, the day I run out of scoops is the day I become, I stop being, I stop being a reporter and start being your wife. Hotcha, it's just.

And half of the movies are on archiveorg and oh my God, they're the fun, they're the most. They're not even like I'm not even being sarcastic or ironic here they are just like one hour of pure fun. Start to finish. These are day. These are like contract players who, like, this is the gig they've got for the next like three weeks. They're having fun, they're knowing, they know exactly what they're doing and like, oh, it's just so charming and so wonderful, so you can. Uh, I don't know. I don't know if these are officially out of copyright or or not. The it's, it's more like they are, like there's, nobody has heard of these movies, nobody cares about these movies and nobody's really monetizing these movies. So I think that that's why so many of them are on archiveorg. But they're so good that I kind of had to sort of like when I knew that there were three more I hadn't seen. I had to go try to find them because they were unlimited DVD release a while ago.

And so Torchy Blaine if any, just do any search for Torchy Blaine. There there is. There are six of them. They're smart blonde, flyaway baby, the adventurous blonde blondes at work. Torchy Blaine in Panama. Torchy gets her man. Torchy Blaine in Chinatown. Torchy runs for mayor and the wrap up, torchy Blaine playing with dynamite. Wow.

2:14:47 - Leo Laporte
And this all comes from a time when you would pay a nickel to go see a movie. There'd be a cartoon, there'd be a short, maybe a newsreel, there might be this one hour movie and then the feature. So the whole thing it was. It would go. I remember this kind of dimly in my youth. It'd be all you know, go on and on. There'd that would happen, uh, leading up to the feature film with the big names and, and you know, clark, gable and so forth. Wow, what fun that's it. You know, it's nice to know. There was a time like 1938, between the wars. Everybody was kind of okay, the depression was pretty much in the rear view mirror. It was just kind of, you know, life went on yeah on.

2:15:29 - Andy Ihnatko
It was a moment, and it also makes it a little sad, Cause it's you know that at some point, like society or the film industry said wait a minute. That woman is independent, she has her own point of view, she can. She can exist and thrive financially and personally and professionally without a man by her side. She doesn't even care about marrying this guy. We have to stamp down this trend. We have to stop this one.

2:15:51 - Leo Laporte
This is what the motion picture code was created for yeah, wow that's great, torchy blaine. Look for it. B-l-a-n-e on the archive internet archive. And I have to say, if you do watch it, donate to the internet archive archiveorg. I'm a monthly donor because, uh, it is a great thing that they're doing preserving our cultural history, yeah, things people don't care about anymore and and, by the way, our digital history as well.

2:16:18 - Andy Ihnatko
Like, if you do search for for Apple stuff, you will find. Here is the training documents for like the original mac. Here is. Here is the, the white paper, such as it was for the Apple lisa, explaining, like what the operating system did and how it worked. Anytime somebody finds a document of some kind, like in their files, a lot of them will just scan it and put it on Internet Archive because that way everybody gets it. So it's, it's a treasure trove.

2:16:41 - Leo Laporte
It's like the Wikipedia. It's one of the things that the Internet does, so very well. Thank you, andy. When are you going to be on GBH next?

2:16:49 - Andy Ihnatko
I was on just last Thursday. Go to wgbhnewsorg to listen to that. I'm not going to be on for another couple of weeks, I think week after Thursday 1230.

2:16:59 - Leo Laporte
Nice, and soon coming soon to a browser near you. Yes, absolutely, we'll talk about it later.

2:17:07 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm trying to get my federal blogging license. Absolutely, we'll talk about it later. I'm trying to get my federal blogging license.

2:17:09 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it's you know. Yes, it's hard. You got to go to Washington. There's a practical and a written exam.

2:17:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, Also the background check. Fingers crossed on the background check. Thank you, Andy, Because you know they won't let you on the Internet unless you have a good reputation for getting your facts right and not saying things just because you're upset.

2:17:28 - Leo Laporte
That must have been how it was in 1938. Hot child 23 skidoo. Sixcolorscom slash Jason. That's where you'll find out all about that guy. Jason Snell, the baseball fan, Author of Take Control of Photos, weekly columnist at the Macworld, founder of the Incomparable.

2:17:47 - Jason Snell
Yeah, lots of places I'm going to plug. Here's my plug this time. Uh, upgrade podcast has a youtube channel and, um, if you like watching MacBreak Weekly as a video, might I suggest watching upgrade as a video, because we actually have been doing for the last few months or I didn't know quietly, a full video version of the podcast. Uh, we don't actually see the video while we're recording, um, so it's it. It sounds like a pure audio podcast experience, but we are capturing it and then we put it together after the fact and it's pretty good. So, if you like your podcast with video, check out our youtube channel. Um, because we have the whole upgrade. Just upgrade.

2:18:23 - Leo Laporte
What is the youtube channel?

2:18:24 - Jason Snell
upgrade podcast I believe.

2:18:26 - Leo Laporte
Uh, very no, I did not. I had no idea you were doing video.

2:18:30 - Jason Snell
Just experimenting with it. What are you using?

2:18:33 - Leo Laporte
to record.

2:18:36 - Jason Snell
I think we're both using Camo and just recording on iPhones. And then we are using this amazing piece of technology called Autopod for Premiere, which is a machine learning enhanced system to do the cuts back and forth between us based on who's talking, and it does a great job, because we couldn't do this if we had to make all the cuts manually. So our editor, chip, puts it together and does a pass.

2:19:00 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute.

2:19:01 - Jason Snell
Do you have Ooni as a sponsor? We do, we do. Oh man, it's pretty good. I love my.

2:19:08 - Leo Laporte
Ooni.

2:19:09 - Jason Snell
It's pretty good, but this is not that anyway. So we, we, we do that and we don't even know what each other is wearing like. I see the videos later and I'm like, oh, we wore the same t-shirt that day. Uh, it's fun. So, if people like, if people like watching this show as a video, uh, might I recommend my other tech podcast that?

2:19:23 - Leo Laporte
has a video very good jason snell, sixcol colorscom and of course, last but not least, alex Lindsay. I already plugged the gray matter with Jeff Jarvis. That's really must a must listen. Gray mattershow episode 77.

2:19:42 - Alex Lindsay
So many good, good guests.

2:19:45 - Leo Laporte
Oh amazing.

2:19:47 - Alex Lindsay
Good guests and they have great, and the reason he gets good guests is, I mean, I, I gotta say probably a quarter of the folks that have come out of it. That's one of the best interviews I've had, because he just really researches, you know. So it's a good one. We'll be talking a lot about NAB over the next two weeks and office hours. We're going to talk about what we think is going to happen on Thursday. We're going to talk about how we're covering it, which is probably the most aggressive coverage of any conference I've ever done. So I'm a little I'm both excited and terrified of what we're doing. So we're just a lot of live from live from the floor. So we've built two different systems to do live from the floor.

2:20:35 - Leo Laporte
And so we'll be doing about three hours a day, so, but if you want to see what that's going to look like on Friday, we'll tell you the insanity that we're planning and hopefully we'll survive it. Happy birthday office hours. It's fourth in its fourth, now fifth year, um, and you don't have ads, right? You don't have sponsors. You just do this, you just do it. It must be some cost yeah uh, you know, if you can explain to me how to do a podcast without making any money.

2:20:53 - Alex Lindsay
I will be very interested. That's how you do it. You spend money, you just don't care. I have to explain to my wife. It's my boat.

2:20:59 - Jason Snell
It's my boat, three profit.

2:21:01 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, he's spending a lot of money, but he's making up for it in volume. Yeah, exactly, we, we, no, he's making up for it in volume.

2:21:10 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, exactly. No, we did get a sponsor for NAB. Zoom is helping us with the bandwidth. They bought the bandwidth because that was I was like I can't do a booth if I don't have bandwidth, like I just you know. So the whole reason the booth exists and everything else is Zoom paid for the bandwidth. But that's the, that's our, that's our first sponsor ever. That's exciting.

2:21:27 - Leo Laporte
That's a big breakthrough. Yeah, that's our first sponsor ever. That's exciting. That's a big breakthrough. Good, yeah, yeah, thank you, alex, andy, jason, thanks to all of you for joining us, especially thanks to our club members. Really, this show exists thanks to members like you. If you're not a member, twit.tv/clubtwit after the fact, by the way, you can't watch us do it live. Now we decided, you know what, we should put the live stream on YouTube. So if you go to youtube.com/twit when our shows are on, when we're actually doing them, we stream it to the YouTube.

This show starts 11 am Pacific on Tuesdays and ends around about 1.30 Pacific that would be 1800 UTC, that would be 2 pm Eastern. You can watch the live stream on YouTube. After the fact, though, you can get edited versions of audio or video at twit.tv/mbw. That's the website. There's also a YouTube channel with just the video, kind of like Upgrade. There's also, you know, the option to subscribe in your favorite podcast player. Just look for MacBreak Weekly and get the audio or video, and you'll have it the minute we're done cleaning it up later today. Thanks to everybody who joined us today and I hope you'll come back next week, but now I have the sad and heavy duty to tell you it's time to get back to work because break time is over. Bye-bye.