MacBreak Weekly Episode 798 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's yes, I'm dressed for the most wonderful time of the year right now, the time for our best OFS. Yep. Coming up next MacBreak Weekly's Best of 2021.

New Speaker (00:00:15):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:26):
This is MacBreak Weekly episode 798 for Tuesday, December 28th, 2021. The year's best MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Cachefly. Give your users the seamless online experience they want. Power your cider app with cash CDN and be 30% faster than the competition. Learn more at twit.Cacheflk.com. Hey everybody happy holidays. It's it's that special time of the year when I send Renee and Andy and Alex home, and I get to take over MacBreak Weekly. Really? It's our, it's our editors in our audience who put this show together. It's our <laugh> it's our best of episode. You know, this was actually a, a fun year. When I, when I listened back to all these segments, we had a, a lot of fun, lot of interesting stories. I think you're gonna enjoy this best of thanks to Mikah Sargent the producer of the show who put this together.

Leo Laporte (00:01:26):
And I think early in the year was also Carsten who put this together. We're gonna start off with a little bit going way back to the beginning of the year. David Pogue joins us New York times columnist. He's famous for CBS Sunday, Monday morning, and his work with scientific American <laugh>. He back in 2007 was one of the three or four top journalists who got iPhones before they were released. And you'll never believe what happened next, January 9th. So three days ago was the 13th anniversary, not of the ship date, but of the announcement that famous Steve Jobs speech. Were you all there at Moscone center when Steve announced the iPhone? Yep. I was in was there? Yeah, I was there. I, you

David Pogue (00:02:18):
Got it back on. It's the 13th anniversary of the shipping, not the announcement. The announcement was in June.

Leo Laporte (00:02:24):
Really? The shipping was in January. Are you sure on the way around? No. No. He announced WWDC in January and it came out six. No, you announced at Mac world in January. Yeah. Or Mac world rather not WWDC. Yeah. Mac, right. Okay. Yeah. And shipped it after dub dub. I, I was sitting next to Scott borne, who was the, he was the guy who wanted an iPhone vest. He was so sure that there, no, we didn't know for sure there was gonna be an iPhone. This is back when apple really could lock this stuff down. So we had no idea. David, did you know you probably had an advanced preview?

David Pogue (00:02:55):
No, no. I did not have an, I will share with you a story I've I've never told anyone that's really embarrassing and makes me look terrible though about that. <Laugh> apple gave four people the phone before two weeks before it was available to the public. So that was wall street journal, Walt Moberg, New York times. Me and Steven Levy at Newsweek had been from

Leo Laporte (00:03:18):
USA day. Got

David Pogue (00:03:19):
Big USA

Leo Laporte (00:03:20):
Today. Yep. So we, I remember this because I'm bitter to this day, 13 years later, I know you're no, it's so bitter,

David Pogue (00:03:27):
So healthy. And so it was so cool and I wasn't allowed to show anybody, but I could play with it. I could learn it. And one of the first things I had since being issued the phone was a, a speaking engagement in late Como Italy. Oh. So I took a red eye with this thing in my pocket. Oh, nice. Landed, got a cab to the venue of the talk slumped down in the cab seat. Fell asleep. Oh no. Oh no. The phone slipped outta my, my pocket in the taxi. One of four existence. Did you,

Leo Laporte (00:03:56):
Did you, were you able to recover it?

David Pogue (00:03:58):
I, I got out I got my tour of the venue. I met the organizers and then realized it and just got, you know, my heart dropped outta my body. And she said an Italian, well, of course he's probably, you've probably got the receipt. Right. And I did receipt phone

Leo Laporte (00:04:15):
On it there receipt. Oh,

David Pogue (00:04:15):
Right. We got it back. I mean, he, he was really mad when he came back to plays. I, I emptied my wallet to him. Like, please take this tip. And but he was really infuriated. He had no idea what it was. Thought it was some pager or something.

Leo Laporte (00:04:31):
A bad accent. No. Any an infuriated Italian. We can all see, we can all imagine that. Especially infuriated Italian can Abby. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:04:44):
Unfortunately Gizmodo didn't exist back then, so they couldn't sell it to anybody.

Leo Laporte (00:04:47):
So yeah. This is prior to the, you know, many years prior to the iPhone for leak to Gizmoto

David Pogue (00:04:52):
That's right. And that could all the PR people who would be furious at me to know this story have now moved on. Yeah. You're safe. Story can.

Leo Laporte (00:05:00):
Now it can now be watching. Oh my gosh. I believe I have the x-ray from your sleep last night. There it is. That's an AirPod <laugh>. This is a guy it's only one. It's interesting because it's very close to where Andy lives in Wooster. He Worcester man swallows AirPod while sleeping and does not realize it.

Heather Kelly (00:05:28):
That headline is just so beautifully straightforward, especially that does not realize

Leo Laporte (00:05:31):
It part that's not real. I, I,

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:33):
I've never, I've never slept that deeply. I'm very envious. Apart from the ingesting, something that's both expensive and health and, and, and like, again, a battery that you probably

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
Should not be swallowing. This is from also found there. The house cat. This is from 22 WW, L P you probably watched that Andrew in wor a wor man, lucky to be breathing today after accidentally swallowing, one of his AirPods Bradford go TA good, good French Canadian woke up Tuesday morning, noticed he had a little trouble swallowing. He attributed it to a dry or sore throat and carried on with his day. The day before he had been shoveling snow for two hours after the nor Easter. You remember that, Andy, that was a nightmare. He didn't wanna know why that was coming out of his mouth. He says he went to sleep that night, all worn out <laugh>. I went back in the morning and shoveled snow for an hour. When I came in, I tried to drink a glass of water again. And couldn't says, go at this point, Goche also noticed one of his AirPods was missing <laugh> <laugh> family began putting clues together. By that point, my wife and son had gotten the idea. I may have swallowed it. They brought it up jokingly at first, but it seemed too coincidental. <Laugh> then I would be missing it. When I knew I went to bed with it while I felt a distinct blockage in the center of my chest <laugh> he went to the emergency and much to the doctor's surprise, an x-ray showed his missing AirPod lodged in his esophagus.

Leo Laporte (00:07:06):
He didn't chew it enough. <Laugh> one shot in one shot. This is a very common problem. People do not chew their food sufficiently. As a result, they gulp, they gulp and things get esophagus. They did an emergency endoscopy to remove it unknown, whether the AirPod continued to work after the endoscopy, is that covered under apple care? I Don know, here it is. Here is the err AirPod <laugh> oh, see, we're getting worried about nothing. Wasn't an AirPod pro was one of the first generation. Oh, no big deal. Relax. I've probably swallowed many of those. I don't know where they ended up. They're not anywhere I, the, the battery was probably gonna dine in, in a week anyway, so yeah. Yeah. he said it never occurred to me that sleeping with headphones could be a safety hazard. I was really quite lucky long Twitter thread from a developer Costa OU who apparently he's had a number of successful apps. He says the app store has a big problem. And it happened to him. You an honest developer, working hard to improve your IA P conversions, your competitor, a $2 million a year scam running rampant. Yep. Over the years, I've worked incredibly hard to create what I think is the best apple watch keyboard app in the world. When I started, I had two gold, well, my God, I believe I, it became the top paid app of 2020. I failed to stay ahead of the competition, but not for reasons I anticipated.

Leo Laporte (00:08:42):
He got copied first. They made an app that appeared to fulfill the promise of a watch keyboard, but was practically unusable. Then they started heavily advertising on Facebook and Instagram and using my own promo video of my own app with my actual name on it. And you have to pay it's a 400 because you, you can't really use the app until you pay for it. The ends up being four $16 a year. Yeah. It's so gross a year. They keep getting five star review because Costa says, they're fake. He says, it's obvious. They're fake. Cuz the app doesn't work once you pay for it. And yet all these people saying, oh, that's great. It really like it doesn't fake ratings, fake reviews, quickly push the scams to the top of the search results, leaving honest and hardworking developers in the dust. And he says, this is, it's not just me. There are hundreds of these. This happens all the time. Why doesn't apple fix this too? How come apple can't fix this?

Rene Ritchie (00:09:45):
David Barnard has been beating the drum for years as well. He did a great job over this week. Surfacing like articles from Guer, from like 2018, talking about the desperate need for a Bunco squad on the app store because there are so many scams and they're even worse now than they used to be because they're taking advantage of something that shouldn't exist, which is like weekly subscriptions. There's very little need for like any apps weekly, seriously terrible. Yeah. A weekly subscription. And they, apple has made tiny bits of progress. Like they made it harder for you to be tricked into tapping the wrong thing to authorize them and the little things like that, but just the, the amount of comput of pure scam apps on the app store, they seem to come in waves and surges and I don't know what apple is doing, but obviously it is not effective. And I don't know why this isn't like a huge, glowing neon priority because Apple's whole thing is faith app store. That's the whole promise of the app store is that it is a safe, trusted place for you to spend money. You know, whether that's in app purchases or direct payments for apps and this totally destroys all of that good faith equity that they've built.

Leo Laporte (00:10:50):
Sorry, is that app? No, it's really terrible. I feel so bad for Costa. Is that app still up?

Rene Ritchie (00:10:56):
But the are so many of them, like anytime there was a popular game or something, it would get cloned and there'd be a scam version of it. And any category, there's all these scam apps that all they do is rope you into what looks like a small, like first of all, I don't know why people pay subscriptions for this stuff. I will never victim blame, but this stuff is not worthy of your subscription money. And then they try to obfuscate the fact that it's a weekly subscription and I don't know who's falling for, for it. But there seems like based on their sales, a massive amount of people falling for these things. And it does become incumbent on the platform to protect us from ourselves at a certain point.

Leo Laporte (00:11:27):
Well, a scam app should never appear on the platform and even,

Rene Ritchie (00:11:31):
Even if they don't have the resources to police, all of them, any of the apps in any of the top lists should be routinely scrutiny like daily scrutinize, cuz there's just not that many in the top list.

Leo Laporte (00:11:42):
So I, I should say that a week ago apple did in fact take it down that all that Twitter activity brought that to their attention, but they didn't take down their developer account and they have another scam called GPS speedometer, which is also $200 a month. And it it's just crazy. Yeah. It's gross. 200, $200,000 a month they're making on it. I'm sorry. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:11):
It, it does. It does feel like they've got enough data to track to basically have a scam app. Like these trigger warnings that get escalated immediately to a human review. That if you have a, some, if you have an app that's a watch app, particularly that's, that's charging an relatively enormous amount of money per week that gets immediately checked out by your real life human being to see exactly what's going on there. Cause yeah, there's there's app. Any, any company that is trying to sell thousands upon thousands upon thousands of items in a store, they have a certain amount of cover here saying that, look, we, we don't ha we have an automated system for submitting. We can't simply human review, every single app or else. We will never be able to get people developers to get their stuff on the app store. But nonetheless, when you have enough metrics to say, this, should this person, this person who's working at McDonald's and making $1 over minimum wage per hour seems to own a lot of boats. For some reason, perhaps we should find out if, if, if they're they've got their, their hands on anything else in the corporate structure, this is the, and this is the similar sort of thing. I think. So

Leo Laporte (00:13:20):
A couple of proposals one obvious one is to Marco arm suggested just eliminate the weekly subscription billing option. Yep. Dave Barnard posted part of this is Apple's fault because they don't of you, the information, you know, in a clear way to understand what you're paying for. He suggests redesigning the buy sheet. So that it's clear that it, you know, 10 bucks a week and you know, it's, it's gonna, it's you get a three day trial it's it's needs to be more clear. They do it with the, the privacy statements. They should do this with the subscription statements too. Are those

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:04):
Say

Leo Laporte (00:14:04):
Again?

Heather Kelly (00:14:05):
So are those better? Cause those are also self-reported so we're relying on these companies to,

Leo Laporte (00:14:10):
To oh yeah. Present. Yeah. In fact, Jeffrey Fowler, your colleague did a really good job. I think of tracking down how many people lie on their privacy label. Like most of 'em apparently I

Heather Kelly (00:14:25):
Was just shocked that there was no it's I guess it's like a spot check system. And that might also be the case here. Just the pure volume of, of stuff in the app store being it's done by spot check or if it's flagged. But Andy, I like the idea of an, anything is making a certain amount of amount of money that, that should raise your little flag.

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:41):
Yeah. The other thing that that occurred me is that if you, if you, if you go to the market you're trying to figure out how much something actually costs. There is actually by mandate, not only here's the, here's the, here's the price of the thing, but here is the price per unit. And I think that in addition, in that little table of, of, of price information on app store should basically say here's how much this costs per year of operation. And if it costs $5 and 99 cents and you own it not right, it will say five bucks, 99 forever. If it's, if you're charging by the month, it'll say here's that times 12, if you're charging by the week, here's that times 52. That's just, it seems as though in an easy first step and yet another indication that apple, I don't think that apple doesn't care. I just think that the app store is such a big business for them, that they really haven't planned on how difficult it's gonna be to manage it. And so they aren't managing it very well. Yeah. And

Heather Kelly (00:15:33):
There's a tricky thing about apple manages your subscriptions because it's, it's all lumped together. And if you look at your credit card statement, that's right, there's one charge. You don't see it. It takes an extra step to go see what everything is unless you have the emails turned on. That's a good point. So it's

Leo Laporte (00:15:44):
Kind of a surprise coming up in just a little bit. Apple had a number of events this year is they did last year, the first of apple events from April of this year coming up in a bit. But before we get to that, I want to thank our sponsor cash. Fly cash fly is more than a sponsor. They actually bring you this episode. In every episode of all of our shows, there are content delivery network we've been using 'em for more than a decade. They were a lifesaver when TWI first started in, well, frankly, they they're still lifesavers. Now cash has an amazing solution for low latency video, deliver your video with cash, fly the best throughput and global reach, making your content infinitely. Scalable with, with, with CASHS low latency video, you can get to less than one second of latency. It's kind of remarkable.

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No pressure, no sales, just information. Twi.Cash.Com. Thank you, cash for bringing in us to all of our fabulous listeners. We appreciate everything you've done for us. Cash line cash, like twi.cash line.com. So every April apple has the first event of the year this year, I think there were a couple of surprises. Let's take a look, iPad pro. Now this is where they flexed. This was wow. The rumor was <laugh>. Alex is very excited. This is excited, Alex, the rumor was that this would use mini L E D display. They kind of downplayed it. I think that industry analysts and, and, and we go, you know, enthusiasts, know what a mini E is, but nobody else does. So apple, didn't say now within a mini L E D display, they talked more about what it can do, but it became clear that it was a mini L E D display instead of what we thought, the a 14 X, which would be essentially an M one. They just said, no, we're putting the M one in this iPad pro yeah. Interesting. That gives you some capabil that gives you some things you've never seen on an iPad, for instance, a Thunderbolt three reports, which can do not only fast data transfers and charging, but video. So you can now run an external display, six K external display. Wow. It runs.

Alex Lindsay (00:20:16):
And I wonder whether you, you can do video out, but with, with that kind of connection, you can do video in as well. So, so

Leo Laporte (00:20:23):
You can capture me, okay, Alex. Now you're really now you really excited, sweet mystery of it,

Alex Lindsay (00:20:29):
Iphone. I, it works in my head. Like I, you know, I don't know,

Leo Laporte (00:20:32):
Didn't say anything about, well, well, it could be a recording device cuz you can go up to two terabytes now. So there's a lot of storage and here was the shocker. They didn't even say it. They just showed it in a slide up to 16 gigs of Ram. Yeah. On the one terabyte and two terabyte

Alex Lindsay (00:20:47):
Computer. I mean, it's just, it's a touch. It's a touch screen computer at

Leo Laporte (00:20:50):
This point, essentially your choice now is which op operating system you want. Do you want iPad OS or Mac OS? Cause otherwise it's pretty much the same hardware right? With touch. Now we know why they haven't put touch on Mac OS.

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:06):
Yeah, well, no we it's. I think I still think that's a dogmatic thing, but I I've. I have to say that in the middle, in the middle of this presentation, I was in my banking app. I was, I have a special account just for like mad money. I was moving money into the, onto putting them on the plan. I was like suit up warning up on the bullpen. It's $2,000 of Andy's money. I had a, I had a window open just in case they, they, they created they, they, they started taking pre-orders immediately because this is apple has always tried to make the statement that, oh, well, no, this isn't a, this, this isn't just a computer. It's an iPad. Trying to make the statement that they're, don't think of this as a, as a, as a tablet that is for reading books and for doing light computing, this is a computer in its own.

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:51):
Right. It does really real desktop type things, but only an exciting new form factor. But this is the first time they've brought hardware. That really just absolutely thundered home. That point that's every see as it happens, just like my, my, my usual the, the computer that replaced my iPad pro as my, Hey, I want something ultra slim and ultra light because I'm just going out for a few hours or just, just to my bag has been this Google pixel book and it's a few years old and it chose next week for the all the, but all the keys on the left side of the keyboard to die. So I'm actually, and I was actually already sort of think contemplating, okay, so what do I get as the new ultralight thing? And there's so many points in this presentation, particularly the high speed high speed Thunderbolt.

Andy Ihnatko (00:22:39):
So high speed devices to be connected externally. The addition last year of the, the, the ability to use track pads and, and mouses with it. And just the speed and capacity of this thing. Also also I'll, I'll say the, the upgrades to the camera, the, the LIDAR I really want LIDAR on an apple device. And I was actually thinking about, well, gee, if I, if Li's gonna be this interesting for doing AR in 3d, maybe I should buy a new iPhone just to get it. And they added that to this thing too. It really does see it's it's they're they, the iPad pro was never cheap. But I it's about the same amount of money that I spent on my first generation iPad pro 12.9 inch. And I really think I can justify it more than anything else it's gotten me excited about.

Andy Ihnatko (00:23:24):
Yep. I will. I will still accept some of the downsides of having an iPad other and not a device that simply responds to a USB device by saying, oh great, here's a USB device. Please have access to the file system. And stuff like that. The, the software, the software that they were presenting for this. And also again, that wonderful, just the state mission statement of, oh no, we just put an M M one in there. It will never, it will never run Mac software. Believe it. I'm, I'm sure that 80% of the engineering beside this was let's make sure that nobody can even possibly contemplate this, but I really am excited about the future of iPad pro with this device. I think this was a, it was just a demonstration and this is I'm still kind of fill the chemicals. The Andy want shiny new thing experience. And so I'm glad I got 10 days to sort of cool off and think about it, but this is a really, really shot across the bow of every device that costs about a thousand dollars in windows that tries to be hip and cool. I

Leo Laporte (00:24:19):
Think the Ram is telling because up to now, iPads have historically had scan Ram and, and excuse was, well, I iPad OS doesn't need it. Four gigs was a lot then I think the most recent iPad pro had six gigs, maybe eight, but to go to jump, all of a sudden you can get it with 16 gigs. What does that mean? What does that say?

Alex Lindsay (00:24:41):
This, this is, I mean, it's, it is also the price of a computer loaded up it's $2,400. Like it is a real, like when you, when you put two terabytes of God, 16 gigs of Ram and two terabytes of drive space and a wifi and cellular, you're looking at 2,400

Leo Laporte (00:24:55):
Bucks. You can, you put 5g in it now too, by the way. So, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:58):
And with, with millimeter wave,

Leo Laporte (00:24:59):
Which holy cow finally there was a, just a still of Ted lasso event last week. And, and it said, you know, they talked about shortbread, Ted last secret shortbread. It makes about one box and they cut it off, cuz it's secret. Right. Except you know, it actually, you kind of see it, David Smith's wrote in his blog. Well that looks like a one and a half cups 340 cold insulted butter. And he said, oh wait,

Alex Lindsay (00:25:32):
Did he make it?

Leo Laporte (00:25:33):
You Googled it. And look what you find. You find a New York times recipe that has exactly one and a half cups, three and 40 grams, cold insulted butter, three sticks cut into half inch pieces. Now it's for a bittersweet brownie shortbread. That's not what Ted lassos giving people. So you'd have to take out the, but he's giving them American shortbread in London. Yeah. Actually the, there is a regular shortbread. It's a double, it's like a layer cake. So one layer is just plain old shortbread. All it is butter. I want you to make it Alex butter. A lot of it. Three sticks. You have, you have homework, three cups of flour, three quarters of cup of sugar and one and a half VE Leo Sue, you can't so eat shortbread. What are you nuts know he's going to shortbread. Sovi it shortbread it. Be it bakes in seconds. Just brown. It isn't that cool. So apparently the Ted Las who's shortbread recipe really is a sharper recipes,

Alex Lindsay (00:26:34):
New York times. That's awesome. That's an awesome way to get people engaged is to give them just enough.

Leo Laporte (00:26:40):
They knew people

Alex Lindsay (00:26:41):
Would do that. It's like, it's like when NASA put up the design on the, on the parachute, wasn't

Leo Laporte (00:26:45):
That awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody, they deciphered that within hours. It was amazing. Yeah. Hello, Alex Lindsay from, oh my God. May the fourth be with you? Rum SL. He's a bounty hunter with a gala galactic Republic. Nice. Very nice.

Alex Lindsay (00:27:00):
Yeah. I was, you know, I, I brought it up this, this May 4th because I didn't know until maybe a month ago or two months ago that the action figure had actually come out. I, I was at a, what is Ru

Leo Laporte (00:27:10):
Leg? Is he a bounty

Alex Lindsay (00:27:11):
Hunter? He's a bounty hunter. Evidently I didn't know that when I was doing it, I didn't really know

Leo Laporte (00:27:16):
What to do. Is he from the original star wars universe or is he one he's from

Alex Lindsay (00:27:20):
He's from fan OFin. Oh, okay. So what happened? The, the story behind it was is that they I was, you know, working at, I was working at ILM and occasionally, you know, when you need extras, there's no reason to hire extras at ILM. Someone just walks in and says, you, you and you, and they, especially, you're wearing a

Leo Laporte (00:27:36):
Costume that you can't really

Alex Lindsay (00:27:38):
Well, that's the whole point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't see 'em. And so the so anyway, so I is, I was picked because I think I, because it looked like I would probably fit into the given suit. And so, so they, they put me in a suit. They had a, another, someone else was, do, was supposed to be with me. I'm actually, I look in the movie, like I'm talking to somebody and I was talking to Jonathan Roth. That's you? It was that's you? Yeah. That's yeah. That's me. You are room SL I I'm rums leg. Yes. So star wars, character, Leo that's my, and so was funny. Is, is that, so that's me walking, you know, I was forced, of course I was just walking. Did you have to wear that

Leo Laporte (00:28:11):
Outfit?

Alex Lindsay (00:28:13):
Yeah, I wore the outfit, the whole outfit. It was just me in front of a green screen with Jonathan Rothbart and Jonathan Rothbart got, I think, I think that they ended up roto in out, cuz you could see his face too, too clearly. But I don't know for sure why they did that, but you a mask talking to myself. Yeah. I was wearing that mask. I mean, there was nothing changed and you

Leo Laporte (00:28:32):
Were talking to somebody who wrote, wrote it out

Alex Lindsay (00:28:34):
That's they wrote it. They got rid of him. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I, I stayed in

Leo Laporte (00:28:37):
Now we have to do a new star wars edit with with that guy, wrote it back in. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Lindsay (00:28:44):
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the so anyway, so I was they, when you, when you finished it, when I finished it, I walked off and they said, okay, we need you to do TPOs. And I was like, TPOs TPOs is what you do to, for 3d modeling. And I was like, why do you need a TPOs? And they were like, oh, it's for the action figure. And I was like, I'm gonna have an AV action figure. And, and they were like, they were like, well, they said, we'll see, you know, we'll we'll, you know, you're in

Leo Laporte (00:29:07):
Like the demand. Yeah. They

Alex Lindsay (00:29:09):
Said, we just had to take the picture you're in like the third tier or fourth tier. You know, it's like, if the idea is, is if you sell enough of the first one, you go to the next tier. If you sell enough of that, you go to the next tier. And he said, but star wars, it could work. This was been the first one, you know, we didn't know what was gonna happen anyway. It didn't go very well. And there's

Leo Laporte (00:29:26):
Like, action figure

Alex Lindsay (00:29:27):
Folks. Well, no, no, there wasn't. There wasn't at the time of the movie, but on the 10th anniversary they released a new set of action figures. Oh no,

Leo Laporte (00:29:36):
There it is. That's it? It's that's right. That's Alex Lindsay. So that means you are cannon. Yeah. So

Alex Lindsay (00:29:43):
You're official. So hopefully someone will put that in my book

Leo Laporte (00:29:46):
Plus series Alex. Oh my God. You could have, I've known you 20 years and I never knew this. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:29:52):
Yeah. Well, I didn't, it wasn't, you know, it was something that I didn't think about that much, but, but so I, the guy I got wrote

Leo Laporte (00:29:58):
It out. Did he get an action figure? You getting put in the back of you should call them right now and say, you wanted to, if you get it, I'm decided box star wars action. Figure. That's him. Yeah. So, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:08):
So I've decided that, that I, I think this is gonna be my Halloween. Like if I go out with my kids, it'll be a little scary. Oh yeah. I figured I should do a, I should have a

Leo Laporte (00:30:17):
H did you get to the costume? Probably not.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:19):
Right. Keep that. No, it, it wasn't, I'll be honest. It's a movie. It wasn't really that great. It's not like a costume that would've held up. It was the one that I'll probably end up making for H will be much better 3d, I think. Yeah. 3D. yeah. So yeah. I'm gonna, Alex, would

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:36):
You, would you like to know that the hard, the, the hard plastic prototype for that action for gear is now

Alex Lindsay (00:30:42):
On eBay? I know, I know it is. I can't, I can't, I, I know

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:45):
That because I just, I just bought my own action figures. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:30:50):
Nothing, there's a run on rum. That's awesome.

Alex Lindsay (00:30:54):
It, it was funny. I tweeted it this morning and I went to eBay and there was like 29 people watching Ru rums, just watching rums leg on, on eBay. Obviously I made sure to buy a couple before I before I posted anything. So I have, I have my supply there, there is, there is a prototype up there. I now I'm, unfortunately we've talked about it on the show. It'll probably be gone, but, but I, I wasn't willing to pay. I, I looked at it a month ago and I was like, I'm not gonna pay $545 for a, you know, for a rub

Leo Laporte (00:31:20):
SL.

Andy Ihnatko (00:31:21):
Yeah. I, I have new sympathy for you though. Like this, the, now the, the fact that all the conventions like are canceled for the past two years, that's gotta really cut into your income. <Laugh>

Alex Lindsay (00:31:32):
Do a boots

Leo Laporte (00:31:33):
Sign. There's a guy in the corner. He sitting at a table. He says, he's rum SL well, I, I think,

Alex Lindsay (00:31:38):
I don't know if I wanna do a fan film, but they're building up all these as, as Renee was saying, they built up all these marble things. The adventures of rums leg, I think are, are on their way. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:31:48):
The book of the book of rums, leg, the book. Let me ask you on that, in that, in this Fanene are you on TAing? Is that where you are? Where it looks

Alex Lindsay (00:31:56):
Like TA moley.

Leo Laporte (00:31:58):
Wow. At the Mo Eley space space. That's pretty cool. Did you go into the Cantina while you were there? Have a drink green

Alex Lindsay (00:32:04):
Screen. It's all green screen, baby. I, I, I could imagine going to the contain, we almost built one for something. Cause I think if

Leo Laporte (00:32:10):
Rum was drinking Ru in the Cantina, it would be pretty exciting. Well, I think I, it's funny if he asked for rum, is it

Alex Lindsay (00:32:18):
Ru? What I really want is my own brand of rum Ru

Leo Laporte (00:32:21):
Run

Alex Lindsay (00:32:22):
SL room rum,

Leo Laporte (00:32:23):
SL rum leg room.

Andy Ihnatko (00:32:25):
<Laugh> that, that is totally a move that a star wars actor who's had one of those, like one line appearances at the booth, you'd be able to buy Rome SL brand, like be, cuz he knows a guy in the liquor

Alex Lindsay (00:32:36):
Industry, but it won't, it won't be a problem. SL we'll just call its SL it'll BES, SL rums. Everyone will know, you know, you need to know apparently you were cheering Sebo at the pod race. So that wasn't me. So, so there's two of us actually that, that wasn't I wasn't, that was the other rum SL. That was the other rum SL. Yeah, you were a human was wow. I had the major one, but yeah, I had somebody else. I wasn't, I didn't have time to do that one. I was, I was on, on another officially in the can folks.

Andy Ihnatko (00:33:04):
It was a lovely moment for your lighting double to get that moment. And you know, you could see

Alex Lindsay (00:33:08):
Could I was like kids. Did you attend? Was that you at the Punta classic? I saw at the Punta classic Eve. Was that you? Yeah, no, I I don't, I don't know who got to wear that is a CGI. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know who, I don't know who else wore the, the infamous rum it's like, and I apologize, the guy bidding on the prototype right now. That's who was a little sweaty when I got into it. Who was the guy in that thin suit? That must have been terrible. Oh, the fin suit. That's so hard to wear Finn. You don't wanna be Finn. I will say the rum, like the rum SL suit was pretty hot. It's a scuba suit. It's like one of the, you know, in this shot, actually it looks pretty ratty. I'll be honest with you. <Laugh> it looked better. It looked better and you don't take it too far. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:33:49):
That? That's honestly why I thought that it might have been when I first saw the, that shot that you put up. I thought it might have been from like episode the, the, the, the original star wars. Cuz it did look like a okay. What, what have we got in the prop house that we just sort of put

Alex Lindsay (00:34:03):
Together randomly? When you

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:05):
Put, put a Halloween mask,

Alex Lindsay (00:34:07):
It's not a scuba suit in the Christmas special cuz it's got little wrinkles of stuff. Yeah. The action figures looks way better than the, than the actual, the reality was much. Not, not nearly as good as the action figure. The it was, it, it didn't like, I was like, really? This is how all it, it was a little bit of a, yeah, this is really how all these suits that's called movie magic baby, but 24 frames. That's how we make it. But you know, well, and it was all that way. Like I, we were, we were playing around with what I thought was a toy prop of, of hon solos blaster in the ranch. We were like, I was real. So it like put the, put the blast down. <Laugh> that's that's the original, it's the original drop, you know it's OK. OK. I'll put it down. So yeah. So by way they, up the day off, up, up at the ranch may the fourth the memo went out by an email saying take time for yourself today to do whatever you want. So

... (00:35:00):
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Leo Laporte (00:35:37):
Alex still has that bounty hunter rums sling on his desktop every once in a while. He'll he'll show it to us. The, a lot of excitement, I think rightly so over Apple's beautiful colored IMAX just slim gorgeous and light. And as usual on the team, Rene Ritchie was the first to get one. Here's his review of the new IMAX? I guess the first question is no, I think it's is it, so this is the low end iMac. In fact, we're, we're gonna talk later about rumors that there is another iMac, more powerful coming. But how low end could it be with an M one in it? Does it feel pretty snappy?

Rene Ritchie (00:36:13):
Yeah, so I mean the M one is so interesting to me because cuz I'm used to apple, apple did this whole civil Silicon architecture thing. They didn't wanna become their own Silicon vendor with like every single device as a separate customer because that would lose every advantage of making their own Silicon. So they created this scalable architecture and now they have the M one in the iPad pro going all the way up to the, to the iMac and it performs the same in all of them, but they use it for different things. Like they were very savvy in figuring out that efficiency leads to performance so they can use M one to have world class performance, but huge battery life in the MacBook air or the iPad. And they can use M one to let them whittle down the chassis on an iMac to almost nothing and give you like a modern version of that translucent iMac take. Not because the plastic is see through, but because the thing is almost two dimensional. So it's, it's it's and it doesn't miss a step. Like it is every bit as powerful as any of the other M one max. It's just, it's a really interesting, really smart product decision, I think. Yeah. I mean,

Leo Laporte (00:37:13):
Everybody focuses as we just did on the color. The design, you know, is a refreshed design, but it is kind of feels like as thin as it is. It's like an, a giant iPad on a stand <laugh>. 

Rene Ritchie (00:37:26):
But it's like the MacBook air of iMac for the first time. And it is a small level

Leo Laporte (00:37:30):
Imac it's bigger than the 21 inch, but it is not as big as as a full size iMac or iMac pro. And I think the rumor is that the next one's pro IMAX will be even larger, like 32 inches. Does the screen feel constrained to you? 24 is not bad.

Rene Ritchie (00:37:46):
No it's and because it's so thin, like the, the interesting thing about this is that you can fit it into almost any nook and any cranny and because it's not a giant silver bubble butted backed wedge it's, it's not as obtrusive as, as the old iMac, I put my 27 inch slide by side with it and it just, it, it kind of melts away in an interesting way. And I heard a bunch of other people talking about them, like, yeah, my family would never let me put an old iMac there, but they have no problem with an orange one or a green one right. In the kitchen's right in the, yeah, it's all psychological, but it, it holds together really well.

Leo Laporte (00:38:18):
So is that a market guys? I mean the market of the people who want a computer, but don't want anybody to know they have a computer, I guess it is the hidden computer. Yeah. I want people to know I have a computer

Rene Ritchie (00:38:28):
<Laugh> yeah,

Doc Rock (00:38:29):
Me too. But you know what, and, and to Renee's point, like, for instance, like in our house, when you first walk in, we do have a little like nook that we cut into the wall purposely to be like the communication stand, right? That's where you get the mail, grab your phone off the chargers. If you are, do not disturb her, I tend to have my phone next to me. Pull up the watch off the charger. Everything is in this one little place. It's the perfect place to put a smaller iMac. Doesn't have to be is super powerful. It's close enough to the kitchen. I could pull up a recipe or something real quick, but it's a good, nice little place to have a small hub. And I know a lot of people have similar creds and things like that, or a community computer say someone comes over, you know, I can't for work reasons. I can't let them use my laptop, but someone might need to use a computer. Now I'm not suggesting you go out all balling can go buy a really high end one, but it's a good thing for a lower computer. So I think the fact that it has a little bit of that beauty utility to it as well, lets it lend in for a good design as a home computer.

Leo Laporte (00:39:26):
That's really interesting that, so now you're saying it's good for a second computer or a third or fourth? Absolutely. It's the extra computer. The one that you use for, you know, just checking things in the kitchen hub. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:40):
Yeah. Remember that

Doc Rock (00:39:41):
Old school device. Sorry, sorry. Andy. Remember that old school device. I forgot what it was. It was made by 3m. It was white. It was super kind of ugly at the time, but it was the for Aubrey. It was,

Leo Laporte (00:39:51):
It was the Aubery it was kitchen. They even built it that way.

Doc Rock (00:39:54):
Yes. And it, it didn't fly, but nowadays we're getting to the point where something like this could happen. So yes

Leo Laporte (00:40:01):
<Laugh> Andy, what, what did you wanna

Andy Ihnatko (00:40:02):
Say? All I was going to say is that it's interesting that that apple is even continuing the iMac line because all in ones like on the PC side of life, they aren't really a, a big factor. I think apple themselves have said the at IMAX are not the general people who walk into an apple store to buy a Mac. Don't come in intending to buy an iMac they're for special users in special situations, as opposed to like a Mac mini or, or a Mac book that are more general purpose computers for people. Again, this is, this is the sort of things that people are coming in to buy for some who wants an all in one, they have to have a reason for doing it. And one of them would be, I have a household I'm not, I'm not gonna buy my kids.

Andy Ihnatko (00:40:43):
Each of them a, a thousand dollars laptop or a $1,200 laptop, I'm gonna buy one nice all in one that doesn't take up the entire living room, doesn't take the entire kitchen or whatever. And that's gonna be the family computer where we have basically all of our accounts on. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's an interesting thing where, whereas the iMac used to be the, the Mac, just, just like the original Mac plus Mac 1 28 Mac five 12 Mac se was here is the box that you have that here's the box that you come in to buy the iMac that you B you come in to buy as a Mac. This is now the it's nice. It's the utility outfielder gets its job done fills out the roster, but it's certainly not the sort of stuff that's gonna get. Most of the press at the end of the day, it

Leo Laporte (00:41:23):
Has a mag safe connector on the back, which I thought was interesting. How does that work? Does it fall out easily Renee or is it pretty secure in there? No, no, not all. It,

Rene Ritchie (00:41:32):
It, it fits in really, really well. It's got like a here. I'll see if I can hold it. I it's probably too far away, but it's got sort of a ring on the outside and then a little, nothing in the middle. And the whole thing goes in and sticks in magnetic

Leo Laporte (00:41:45):
In some it's a nice satisfying snap. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (00:41:47):
Well a magnetic sort of a thought you like, we're all addicted to the AirPods case. You snapping it, open my clothes. It was like. It's really

Doc Rock (00:41:57):
1500 trying to say my name with a list.

Leo Laporte (00:42:01):
Rock, rock. But the interesting,

Rene Ritchie (00:42:03):
The interesting thing is they're transiting. They're transiting ethernet over this cable as well. If you get the higher end, did you get safe adapter? Yeah. And you can plug it in. And I'm guessing cuz the Thunderbolt the on package, Thunderbolt ports are being taken up that it's using USB and I kinda like more USB ports on the, on the power adapter. Cuz why not? It's off your desk. You already plug make it a

Leo Laporte (00:42:26):
Hub. Let plug like

Rene Ritchie (00:42:27):
A printer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:42:28):
Yes, absolutely. I dunno how well that

Doc Rock (00:42:31):
Would drive. Drive. Give inside the brick

Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
Inside the break. I like it. Yeah. Go ahead and go get it. Come on Renee. We wanna see it. Go, go bring it to us. We don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. He's gonna run and get it. Now we can talk about how jealous we are and how much we hate him. That he got prerelease. Oh, look at the front. Oh doc rock. Is it beautiful? Do you love it? I'm in love now the course, some com the only complaint I've heard about this at all is the white bezels. And you can see 'em there. I know. I think you're right, doc rock. This is not the computer. You, you put it your workstation for editing photos. This is, this is more, really a family computer kind of thing. Right? So the white bezzles wouldn't be. Yeah. See

Doc Rock (00:43:12):
You notice the sad part about M one. I should just say the sad part, but the part about one that's gonna be impressed with people is it is so powerful that you are gonna want to do those things. But when they put it out there, they weren't thinking, Hey, we wanna put out this workstation that comes in fruit loop colors, right? It was intended to be a fun, you know, apple, they love to add fun and excitement and things into the product that part of their character identity. And as said, they, they have been recently following this, this design language that is very on point. Like they have been very, very specific with their design language. So I, I think my, like for me personally, it's a dope computer. And although you can edit your photos and things on it, because people are be coming from a hiring end, iPhone hiring iPads, and that I'm not gonna replace my studio computer with it, but it is a fantastic get some work done when I'm at the house, you know, let my niece use it when she comes over, don't have to worry about her harming anything.

Doc Rock (00:44:10):
You know? So yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:11):
I don't know if this is related to pandemic or if it's, you know, design goes through cycles. Apple clearly colors in Google today at its Google IO announced their new design language for Android 12 material U and it's all about color, customizable colors, picking up the color of your wallpaper. I tell you why I hate this

Rene Ritchie (00:44:32):
Though. Why

Leo Laporte (00:44:33):
Leo? Why?

Rene Ritchie (00:44:37):
So? I, I, no, like I, like, I like it in general and I like the white bezel. I thought I would hate them because I'm all in on the black bezels, but in a room, like when you put it in a house, they fade away. Like most people have lighter colored walls or colors than black. It just, oh, interesting. It sticks out. So

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Only Alex Lindsay has 30% gray walls. Translucent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense. Did it feel stable? Is the

Rene Ritchie (00:44:58):
Stand very stable? The mockups? Yeah. No, it's totally stable, but I mean like on the subject of the nostalgia marketing, like to me, I always think of the Watchman, not the movie, but the original comic book where Adrian white was having like this futuristic millennium marketing. And then the minute the doomsday clock started counting down, he switched to nostalgia and explained that whatever people are stressed or anxious, whenever they're worried about the future, you remind them of their past because that's comforting and warm and nurturing to them. It gives them those feelings of better days and better times, but it's in the past, it, it becomes hard to move forward. So like, I really wanna push back against like nostalgia marketing. Cause I think that's really cynical and hope, hope that they're to that like a next step forward reintegrate, the good things about them. But don't try to make us feel like don't pander to our anxiety, make us hopeful for the future again.

Leo Laporte (00:45:46):
Yeah. I also note related or not that apple is confirming that they are discontinuing space, gray magic keyboards, track pads, and mice, the keyboards that came with the the space gray iMac pro I'm gonna keep mine there gonna be a collection machine. Yeah. Color is in this year. <Laugh> it's back mean it's totally sick. Like, I mean, it happens in fashion every decade or so

Rene Ritchie (00:46:12):
More human like colors are so yeah. I like

Leo Laporte (00:46:14):
Colors. Yeah. Sometimes we wanna be more sedate and sometimes not, I guess you

Doc Rock (00:46:18):
Don't the

Leo Laporte (00:46:20):
Braves. Go ahead.

Doc Rock (00:46:21):
Rock Andy and I are having fun today. Dancing <laugh> I was gonna say the brave segment of this is when the, when we had it back in the past, one of the things that was always weird was you go of the stockroom at that time, I was at comp USA and there'd be all of one particular color lift or all of another particular color lift. Everything else is sold out. But I think now like the planning of, you know, making sure you have the right amount of colors in the right space, it's very hard to do. So I wonder like what type of thought they put into, like we know for a fact, red, blue automatically gone, no matter what, what shoe management. Yeah. I'm just wondering how you manage that. That part to me is brave, very brave right now for something this 

Leo Laporte (00:47:06):
Price rate famously, it's the thing Steve jobs did when he came back to apple, as he cut the SKUs, cuz he can't, he can't do that many different, but

Rene Ritchie (00:47:13):
He introduced the color. Like he gave us of the bond day, blue baby IMAX and the iBooks, and then he canceled all of it and gave us a decade of, of be blasted aluminum.

Leo Laporte (00:47:23):
<Laugh> I really honestly think it's you have to keep your, you know, ear to the rail on, on fashion and it changes I've been watching. Netflix has a great series with you and McGregor on Halston, the designer who brought color to women's fashions in the seventies. And it's, it's very much that same thing. It's like, oh, it's been, you know, black and white Chanel suits and all of a sudden there's color and there's form. And this's just what happens in design. And it's all cyclical. The at the Google IO, the designer the Google IO designer came on what was his Mattias came on to talk about it Mette Mattius thte, he's the guy who does material design and he is doing the new material. You the, and let me see if I can find his quote, emotion is essential and the beauty is everything. And that's how he announced the new color palettes for the material design. So

Rene Ritchie (00:48:20):
I forever love him from web OS. He can do no wrong in my eyes because he made web OS he's a

Leo Laporte (00:48:24):
Good designer. And he comes on, he wears floral print shirts and stuff. He's famous for that. And yeah. Yeah. So good. I'm glad color is back. Anything else to say before we let you go about the new iMac, any other thoughts?

Rene Ritchie (00:48:37):
The camera is actually good. I mean it, oh my seven 20 P in potato cameras on the Mac books for a while, the 10 P cameras on the IMAX were good, but they had the T2 image signal processor, which is an 10 repurposed, a 10 chip. And this got, this has basically the a 14, the M one is, is analogous to the a 14 in terms of Silicon IP. So it's got the same, every single processor as an iPhone. And I like if you had a YouTube drama or like liket channel or like a, a reaction channel, you could totally film it with this camera and these microphones. Wow. And the speakers are ridiculous. Like I know there was a whole bunch of VEing. I'm sure you guys can talk about it later. There was a whole bunch of VEing about apple not putting lossless audio into a lot of their Bluetooth devices, but they spent so much of the last three years, audio building it into the spatial audio thing. They're doing it from everything now. And you've got speakers in this iMac that have no right to sound anywhere, nearly as good as they do because this thing is like a, a stretched out, I don't know, it's like a, a griddle or something. It is so thin. And it it's got, got the same sort of the forest canceling technology that the MacBook pro has. So it's got really good base without it shaking your table. The whole thing is really well done.

Leo Laporte (00:49:51):
So you're making me want one. Even though. I know I shouldn't wait, buy one, wait for the big one who should not buy this

Rene Ritchie (00:49:59):
Besides me, anybody like, well, if you, if you wanna be able to throw something in your bag, you're gonna want an I or a MacBook, you know, it's just like, if you need your computer, clearly

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
Don't throw an I back around.

Rene Ritchie (00:50:10):
Yeah. But yeah. Well, I mean, marque take, so, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be judgy about it, right? Like if you wanna take it to the coffee shop as the ultimate after, after lockdown flex, like you can, it's 10 pounds, but like for just moving around your house, it's fine. But I think it's really, or for people who really wanna do like workstation level work, there's gonna be an M series iMac pro you know, within the next year that will give you way more cores and way more ports and just way more of everything, things that are really appealing to pro users. But I think if you're looking for a computer for your home, it's really hard to get good displays. These days, people discount the value of a good display and apple is one of the best display teams in the world.

Rene Ritchie (00:50:50):
Like it's hard to get a display, this good, that costs as much as the iMac and you get a free Mac thrown in with this, right? So if that appeals to you and you want to be able to put it anywhere in your house and have it like, look like a piece of decor and not a piece of technology, like you want it for the kids. You want it just as like a home computer. You want it in your spa, in like front of house at a gym, places like that, places that I think wanna have a real humanistic feel and a really big high quality display. I think that's the, the sweet spot for this

Leo Laporte (00:51:21):
Price as configured. That particular one you have,

Rene Ritchie (00:51:25):
This is the six <affirmative> I believe it's 69 is the oh, gigabyte one te it's not too. Say it again. Your

Leo Laporte (00:51:34):
Break, you broke up say, say the whole thing again. Cause you broke up. Oh,

Rene Ritchie (00:51:38):
Sorry. It's two terabytes. Sorry. It's one terabyte. 16 gigabytes. There's not a lot of options anymore. With the M series processors. You don't get to configure like the number wars

Leo Laporte (00:51:48):
Or frequencies, right? Two ports in the back, right. Thunderbolt ports,

Rene Ritchie (00:51:53):
Two Thunderbolt plus two USB,

Leo Laporte (00:51:55):
Two USB. Okay.

Rene Ritchie (00:51:57):
So they all look the same. So they have a little Thunderbolt icon on it, so you can tell the difference.

Leo Laporte (00:52:00):
It's really it's tempting. And, and, and what did you say the price was for that model? Do you know? I

Rene Ritchie (00:52:06):
Believe this one is 1699. Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:52:09):
So it's not, I mean, nothing apple does is cheap. It's, it's still expensive in that, you know, compared to other people's computers, they start at 1299, but as configured, that's about 1699. That's still tempting, you know, if you needed one for the, you know, where you put this on the phone desk, just have nobody has a phone desk anymore, but <laugh>, if you had a phone desk <laugh>, that's where you would put this. I, I really like this idea and it's really not just a Monterey features, an iOS 15 feature of being able to put my iPhone, iPad, Macintosh, and my iMac all together, my laptop and my, and then moving the mouse from one or the other and using the same mouse and keyboard and all of them. That's, you know, you could do that with synergy and other third party tools in the past, but now I'm really excited. I can also drag files. This means the iPad pro is suddenly I was the right thing to get. That's gonna be where my photo workflow starts, but now I can easily after I'm done doing whatever I wanna do on the iPad, drag it to my iMac for the finishing touches. That was one

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:15):
Of the nicest demos. I think apple has ever put into a keynote. Yeah. Because it's like, there's not like load in this app and make sure you register this device with this device, make sure you use monitors to use so that you tell, like the, the there's gonna be a host Mac. You gotta make sure that the host Mac knows exactly where the iMac is or the iPad is in relationship to its own desktop. It's like, no, you see, I put the iPad next to the thing. All I, all I have to do is keep moving my mouse cursor to the right. And at some point it leaves the, the, the max screen and enters the iPad screen. And if that pointer is on the iPad screen, suddenly my track suddenly the track pad belongs to the iPad and the keyboard belongs to the iPad.

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:53):
And as you said, if I got, if I, if I've got like a, if, if I got procreate and I've got a project that I was drawing and that, that app, I can simply use the mouse, drag it from procreate. Oh my on the iPad. Wasn't that cool into the timeline. Yeah. And, and if, if it really is as simple as the, as that, where no, you don't, you have to make sure I'm sure that at some point you have to flip a switch and say, yes, yes. Please use this feature. But man, there's just the simple, that's exactly how it would work in a movie. And then nuns gospel would say, oh, forgot sakes. It would never work like that. There would have, have to be some sort of permissions thing and you have to click some buttons. So, yeah. That's and I, and I'm absolutely with you.

Andy Ihnatko (00:54:31):
This is the sort of faith leap of faith that I made when I bought the, the new iPad. You don't need the new iPad to do it. I think it goes all the way back to, I think, I think the specs actually say any iPad pro and most machines made in 20. The, I think the earliest Mac is the 2015 MacBook. Proso you? It will work on existing hardware, but yeah, this is, this is if you bought an iPad of any Stripe with the idea that you, at some point, Apple's gonna make this so well integrated into your desktop experience, that it is going to be not a case of, oh, I'll have to upload something into cloud, then download it from iCloud. But this will actually be an extension of my, of, of my digital experience. This was the payoff. That's a really, really wonderful feature. And I can't wait to get my hands on. I can't. You mean

Leo Laporte (00:55:17):
Just having the 12.9, you know, they've had this with duet, the ability to share the screen. Yeah. But this, this is, you just put it down. It looks like they say no configuration. The, I was set up. It just,

Andy Ihnatko (00:55:28):
It just works. Yeah. They said, I, I was reading someone on online who says that they they, they got some more information about it. That it's actually a very, very simple hack where this switches the feature. Well, no, the feature assumes that if you're moving this, that you know, where the iPad is. So if you're moving your, the mouse pointer off of the, off of the right hand side screen, that must be where the iPad is, or that must be where the next device is. And that's where it's gonna go to look for it and go find it. I don't know. I don't know how it works that way, but I think that the, the biggest win of this would be if it really is as simple as that, where if it locates each other via, via Bluetooth or something, it knows it knows where each device is. And based on that, you don't because you've enabled this in, in pre you're good, here's the fine

Leo Laporte (00:56:13):
Print available on the MacBook pro 2016 later MacBook 2016 later MacBook air 2018 later iMac 2017 and later 5k iMac 20 late 2015 iMac pro Mac mini 2018 letter Mac pro 2019 and iPad pro iPad air third generation and later iPad, sixth generation and later iPad mini fifth generation letter later, both devices. This is actually a hint to, as to how it's working must be signing to iCloud with the same apple ID using two-factor authentication. I thought that was kind of interesting. I think that's for security, but maybe also a nudge to get people to using two-factor to use wirelessly. Both devices must have Bluetooth, wifi and handoff turned on and must be within 10 meter of each other. That's the range of Bluetooth, iMac and iPad, and Mac must not be sharing a cellular and internet connection. You can't be hotspoting you can use it over USB by the way, but you must trust your Mac on the iPad.

Leo Laporte (00:57:18):
So I think this is gonna be, this is really the next step from sidecar. But, but I think it's a really interesting step. And the more importantly, the dragon drop the, because really the iPad has felt like this kind of sealed box that it's hard to get files into and out of you don't even really know where the files live. The idea that you could be in procreate and just say, well, put that in keynote on the Mac is really interesting. The very first iPhone that came out you could get was in June. I waited in line, so I, I debated whether going to San Francisco to the San Francisco apple store, and I thought that's gonna be crazy. There's pictures of Robert Scoble and Scott borne and others coming outta the store doing this, this what everybody did. That's the New York store holding up the the bag going. I got it.

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:10):
I got it. That's Vincent from slash gear. That's a famous

Leo Laporte (00:58:13):
Story getting oh, really by Steve jobs. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. People waiting in line was absolutely how you got an iPhone for the first few years I waited in line at this is from nine to five max wonderful kind of look back retrospective. I went in, in line, as it turned out in the local. I thought, you know what? I'm gonna have a better shot at getting one, cuz you couldn't pre-order online. You had to get in line at a store and stories had a limited number. And this was for the first few years I've got, I thought I'm gonna wait in line at my at and T store. It was fun waiting in line for the first few years was really fun. You'd meet interesting people. I see you bomber with you. Yeah, no I was right. It was a petal bomber was not there. I was behind the two guys who worked on Google reader at the time Google's RSS. Oh wow. Program. And they said they'd been up all night making a work on the iPhone, which is pretty cool. Wow. And,

Andy Ihnatko (00:59:09):
And I bet that they were love. Yeah. I bet that they were there like almost like professionally saying. So we need to send some people down to buy an iPhone and then write as soon as the charge bar gets to 22%. See if the app actually the system actually works and then let us know.

Leo Laporte (00:59:22):
Here's the Seattle Eric, no, Eric won't share his here's the Seattle store pulling back the curtains iPhone world premier tonight at 6:00 PM. I, I, I didn't, I've forgotten that cuz later years we waited overnight, but I was actually smarter than to do it in the evening. What did you do, Renee? Were you, you weren't able to get it in Canada? No, I had to wait until it was jailbroken and then have one smuggled by jaws over the border. Yeah, I did that forever. Mac MacArthur. I Jill broke one and brought it cuz you could do it at the time and then put it on your network's Rogers. And then it was a TIFF exploit. You had to do this load, a TIFF picture and just a, your phone was gel broken. It was amazing. You're yeah, here's a Steve. Bosniac going in the Alto apple store pretty pretty

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:05):
God blessing all the, all the different and, and it's legendary that like of course someone at the inside the apple store would see like Steve wane, AAL people just like waiting in line, like in a, in a deck in a folding chair say, oh no. Okay. Come in, come in, come in. And wa was like, no, wanna be outside with everybody. I wanna wait in line. Like everybody else. Here's a

Leo Laporte (01:00:25):
Wonderful photo. I have not seen before from the Palo Alto story. That's Steve jobs on the left, obviously in the baseball cap, talking to bill Atkinson next to bill, the smiling Andy Hertzfeld the two of course guys who are most responsible for the Mac the first Mac. So that's pretty, pretty cool. Really neat to see them. Yeah. In there it's it's

Andy Ihnatko (01:00:46):
It's too bad that we're it's it's I, I honestly didn't remember that this was the anniversary until of course I'm on Twitter and suddenly everybody's like give, giving their, their, their stories. Oh, here's where I was. And here's here's like I met personal memory. I have about the, the launch of the iPhone and it makes I'm I'm I'm companies have to grow, companies have to move forward and as they become $2 trillion companies, they kind of lose that. They have to lose that kind of personal touch. It's just what happens. But it's, it's kind of sad that we're kind of no, no, one's gonna, no, one's gonna have stories 10 years from now. Where were you when you got your first M one? M one iPad or even probably the apple watch, but it does show you at the time when apple was still very much on a rebuilding sort of arc redemptive arc as the <laugh> as the, as the, the, the folklorists would say that it really did feel like we are, we are the freaks.

Andy Ihnatko (01:01:39):
We are the geeks. We are the, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We have a sense of community and we bond together through shared experiences such as it, it wasn't so much that we wanted to like be the, be the first to have like a, a trendy tech gadget. It was that, well, I bet that it was the same reason why a lot of us are first in line to buy tickets for like a, a star wars movies. Like I want to spend the night camping out in a parking lot with people who like me are crazy enough to want to camp out overnight the crazy to see the first showing first day. So

Leo Laporte (01:02:15):
It's pretty cool. Think different. Here's a picture. I didn't, this is actually kind of surprising. I didn't realize that the apple store was selling the iPhone too online. Frost P got this. Put it up on flicker. This is we'll be back soon. It says on an iPhone, we're busy updating the store for you and we'll be back. Yeah. Web objects. We'll be back by 6:00 PM. Pacific. You could see, it says web objects in the URL. W a <laugh> you can also see that the vintage of this because Franco has dig news in his bookmark bar as well as delicious two things that have since come and gone and come again. Here's the original iPhone. Here's the current phone from? Yeah, it's kind of funny from like a baby phone. It's so small. This I didn't, this has eight gigs of storage, which is, oh, I meant this one has 30. Make a camera. So wait a minute. I, I confused is this, this is the 3g. Yeah. That's the original one. This is the

Andy Ihnatko (01:03:17):
Left hand. No, that you exactly the, you were lifting up is the cuz remember it had the, to make, to accommodate the oh yeah. The antennas, it had plastic on the bottom also was a two G phone, not 3g. So

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
This is the 3g. I got the wrong one out, right? This is the apple original apple iPhone. And this one only has eight gigs of storage, but you didn't need it. Cause there was no app store. Yeah, exactly. <Laugh> what did you need it for you?

Andy Ihnatko (01:03:39):
It was an internet.

Leo Laporte (01:03:41):
I'm gonna find a 30 pin cable on an iPad and then charge this up. Cause I'm sure it'll still work. Look how the other thing to look at, I have a case on my iPhone. Let me take it. This is actually as thick as the iPhone with a case on it. Leo, the original iPhone could hollow out your max and use it as a tun to keep warm in the winter. <Laugh> volume rocker. No oh actually 30 pin SIM slot at the top. Here's the on off button. And it had a he phone Jack. Well technically

Andy Ihnatko (01:04:12):
Retro headphones, Jack. Exactly. It had, it had sort of because that, that curved BELE was aesthetically more important usability. They, they, they recessed it so deep that like a standard he phone check would, it was, it was a standard headphone check's, but your, he, your standard headphones would not actually reach deep down to actually make contact. So you had to get this again. It was the start of the dongle wars. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:04:37):
It was that's right. Cause could hit you put a regular, he Jack in here, it was so deep. The apple ones fit fine, but anything wider than an apple, one you the dongle tablet. Yeah. It's so tiny, but yet, and yet we were all thrilled to get this. It was the biggest they could make at the time. That was the biggest screen that they could fit into the device at the time. Wow. No, I have a bigger this than this on my printer now <laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:00):
Oh, compared, compared to an apple watch. Yeah. It's it's

Leo Laporte (01:05:04):
It's from actually, it's kind of close to the size of the apple watch. If the original Samsung watch

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:08):
Was pretty much pixels.

Leo Laporte (01:05:10):
Yeah. The apple store employees got special merch. These are the launch shirts given to them Friday, June 29th. The wait is almost over and say hello to iPhone. Yeah. Wow. This is just I'm so glad that nine five Mac put this together. There's the bag you got? Yep. Yep. I remember that bag. If, if you didn't order online, I guess it was a really nice ice bag and, and, and of course the packaging designed by Allen dye, quite famous Dai told students at Syracuse university, every single black iPhone box had to have its corners painted so that there wouldn't be any color inconsistency. They wanted a black, a box that was completely black. So some poor Chinese person had to paint every corner on every box to make

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:03):
It black. Oh, that's what that's. That's what you got. Like that's what you got apple interns for. Yeah. Yeah. Really come, come change. Come change the world with us. But first here's a Sharpie. Here are a couple of master cases. You got a lot

Leo Laporte (01:06:15):
More accessories in those days. Of course there was more room in the box cuz the phone was so small. Yeah. Yeah. You got a white plastic Bo a dock that was designed for the iPhone, large power brick earbuds, the 30 pin connector cable, a black microfiber cloth with iPhone. Oh I wish I had that in Boston on it. And a crystal clear tray that held the iPhone. This is a picture of all the, all the things you could buy that yeah. You could buy that Bluetooth headset that they made. Oh yeah. That was like a yeah. Wow.

Andy Ihnatko (01:06:43):
And you, and you can just imagine that the microfiber cloth was, was a, a specific demand from Steve jobs, given all, given all the, the, all the stories that came out about how upset he was, about how bad the iPhone looked when he took out of his pocket, like with the original plastic screen and the, and the, the, the casing that he, nothing, nothing must blemish. My precious

Leo Laporte (01:07:04):
Here's the iPhone stereo headset. This was controversial. The white color on the headsets. People didn't make white headsets in those days. Turned out to be brilliant marketing move because anytime, I guess it was for the iPod, that first came out. Anytime you saw somebody with white headsets, you knew, oh yeah, they're using an iPhone. Even the ads,

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:20):
They had some of those iconic ads with silhouettes

Leo Laporte (01:07:22):
And just the white headphones. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:24):
Here's definitely the

Leo Laporte (01:07:25):
Ipad, iPad ads, Walt Moberg's first review his he wrote, we've been testing the iPhone for two weeks in multiple usage scenarios and cities across the country. Our verdict. This is in the wall street journal. Our verdict is despite some flaws and feature admissions like no cut and paste. The iPhone is on balance of beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer its software, especially sets a new bar for the smartphone industry and its clever finger touch interface, which dispenses with the stylist. And most buttons works well. Although it sometimes adds steps to common functions, a breakthrough hand held computer. He called it. Yeah. PO says quite famously in his review, the iPhone matches most of its hype. Ed beg, who also got a review early review unit reviewed it in USA today. Steven Levy for Newsweek said in a sense, the iPhone is already made it's mark Jason Snell ready for Mac world in 2007, the iPhone is a real deal. It's a product that has already changed the way people look at the devices. They carry in their pockets and purses. After only a few days with mine, the prospect of carrying a cell phone with me, wherever I go, no longer fills me with begrudging acceptance, but actual excitement. Nice job, Jason. Well done. He is

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:36):
So different. Like just the man of the,

Rene Ritchie (01:08:38):
The first time you would scroll and it would the inertial, the rubber banding. It was just such an object and like the classic apple sense of object design. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:47):
Yeah. I got I I, I got to I got a briefing right after it was introduced at the keynote, like three or four months. It was actually introduced. And I had, I think like 45 minutes and Jas was there a couple other executives there. Oh, nice. And, and like, and usually like that's an opportunity to, I, I gotta make, I gotta maximize every minute that I'm there and any, all the questions that I came up with, I can get, I can get a direct answer to. But even there, even there, I, I, I specifically remember saying, okay go, go over to the banquet over there and get a cookie in a soda. Cuz I just wanna spend 15 or 20 minutes just like playing with this. And I just Reem it was just intoxicating after having things that, that scroll like, like pixel animation, almost it, it was just so fluid moving between apps was just perfect. I must have go out one of the ones that actually had wifi working because I was loading webpages and it was working. It was it's, it's hard to communicate the first time getting able, getting you getting hands on with a device like this,

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Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
We're gonna have more in just a little bit. Thank you so much for joining us. We'd like to give most of the team time off around the holidays and make the editors work extra hard, putting together and our producers putting together a special best of for the year to 2021. This is our Mac break weekly special. We continue on. We spent a lot of time throughout the year, talking about apples, spatial music. Some of us love it. Some of us are less than impressed. Here are just a summary of some of the things we said over the past 12 months about apples, spatial music watch how do we feel about spatial audio now it's been out for a while. I've pros and cons from people. And you know, part of it is that we're producers are starting to learn how to do it better. Yeah. do we like it still or are we still excited? I, you were pretty excited about it, Alex. You, you still are.

Alex Lindsay (01:11:19):
Yeah. <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:11:20):
Yeah. You know, I, I could tell the difference. I hear the difference. I don't know if I need it. I still think stereo sounds pretty good, but I guess if I had the choice, I'd choose spatial audio. I, I think that

Alex Lindsay (01:11:31):
I, I think that what I'm hearing and the hard part right now is that, is that the the issue is Apple's making everything sound better. So they're doing some kind of processing to all the songs that make them all sound a little bit better than what they did in old stereo. And they're doing something that dimensionalizes them. I don't know what it is, but I can hear it even in songs that aren't necessarily automated way. So, but the ones that are designed, what you're hearing is hit and miss. So right now we're kind of in that there's some, and, and a lot of this comes down. I think we talked about this before, the difference between I think that music, so the folks who have done tons and tons of surround movies, really understand how to do this and the folks doing music.

Alex Lindsay (01:12:14):
Some of them do, but a lot of them don't seem, seem to. So, so the, the issue is, is that, and this is the primary issue that I'm hearing constantly is that they're choosing to one set of engineers is mixing the vocals down the center channel. And one set is mixing down right. And left, right. And left is a mute engineer doing what they would do going down the center as a movie engineer, doing what they do, who and most of the movie engineers have done this for a lot longer. Right. The, the effect on me is that I hear a this kind of echoy reverb thing between the two ears that isn't perfect or it feels phased or something. Yes. And I've heard the,

Leo Laporte (01:12:54):
That as well. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:12:55):
So that that's because someone mixed the, the vocal down the two right. And left instead of down the center track. Oh. You know, and, and so the center track is where you wanna put the vocals, in my opinion. I mean, everybody has a different, like if you listen, a perfect example is, and I talked about this before. Rush is Tom Sawyer is fills the, the field though, the music field, more than almost any other song that I've heard in in apple music, except for Getty, Lee's, you know, his voice is coming down right. And left and has this weird kind of crazy sound to me. Yeah. Ph thing to me. And so, so that's the, I mean, that's my both and you hear it more in a stereo, like I have seven, 7.2 at my or, or yeah, anyway, so seven one in my house and the, the problem you get into is, is that I hear it a lot more in my stereo than I do in the headphones.

Alex Lindsay (01:13:47):
So, so anyway, so I think that it's, I, I, I, I still feel like it's the future. I think that, but I, I hear us wandering, like there's song. I think we're learning how to period, still learning a lot of engineers are, are doing it. And a lot of what we need to do is have a big conference between surround engineers. <Laugh> to talk to each other trade notes, figure out what's better break things down. We're gonna, I'm gonna get a one of the surround engineers that I know to probably do something in office hours. And we're gonna, you know, where we just literally break down some songs, let's talk about the songs,

Leo Laporte (01:14:16):
A listener, send, send me a great podcast and darn it. I can't remember what it was. I'll have to look at my, but where they did get a guy who was doing a lot of spatial who actually built a studio so that he could do it. He's a remix engineer and talk a lot about the issues involved. It was a very good podcast. If I could find it, I will, I will tell you

Alex Lindsay (01:14:35):
It's complicated. I, I, I, and I, I wanna say that while I'm complaining about some of the mixes learning how to do it as a thing, you know, I'm figuring out how to do it right now myself as a, as an exercise. And I'm taking something very simple. I'm literally taking the the sound that your iPhone makes when it rings. I found the, I found the mid for that. Well, I didn't find the mid, I found the XML for that. So I have it in logic and I'm like playing with all the stuff. And I'm kind of moving around, said, I'm just gonna use that one piece of music <laugh> to, to do it, the Ambi, you know, that, that MB thing to, to kind of think through it. And it, and as soon as I got into it, I'm like, this is really hard.

Alex Lindsay (01:15:10):
Like, this is hard to think to think about. And so so anyway, so I, I have a lot of respect for the, the engineers that are doing it. I think that that's the, you know, a lot of them, the, the, some of the best ones are really subtle and I love listening to it. The problem I'm having right now is that I'm so distracted when I listen to them, I can't do, I can't play music and listen to it. Cause when I hear it, I go, oh, I really like what they just do. Like, you know, like, oh, this, this is so nice font. Not really the sign it's yeah. It's not just music anymore. It's like, it's like, oh, they put that there. I, I don't know if I agree with that, you know, like, and, and, and you're, you're thinking about the music in a different way, because it's so much richer. I mean, you can hear what I will say about spatial is that the spatial songs more than it being more than stereo, you can, the, the detail on every instrument is way more, you know, you can hear more in the instruments their, their actual nature than you could hear when they were all mushed together in stereo. You know, and I think that, that's the thing that, that I'm noticing is that there's more, more detail in

Leo Laporte (01:16:06):
The music. Great interview in the rolling stone with Giles Martin, who is, of course the son of the Beatles, very famous producer. I wanna say Don Martin, but he was in that magazine. What's his name anyway. But in this case, Giles who has, who already was working with spatial sound because he remixed, remember the Beatles love was a remix for the CIR. So show in a spatial theater, he talks, he actually said, I'm unhappy with the Sergeant pepper mix. I did he says, I'm gonna change it. It doesn't sound quite right to me. It's out in apple music right now, but I'm gonna replace it. It's good, but it's not right. Sergeant pepper was the first album ever mixed in Doby atmo. And we did it as a theatrical presentation. And he said, because it was mixed for the theatrical mix.

Leo Laporte (01:16:58):
It isn't quite right. He's gonna make it into what he's, what's called nearfield Doby, atmo, as opposed to the cinema Doby atmo. He said, you lose some base. And so forth, Abby road, he says, is, is better. He says a better functioning, ATT most mix, because it's much closer to the stereo mix sonically. And one of the things he did, I think is fascinating. He said, we can do this because we are, you know, Abby road, we're the be he talks about John Len's vocal on day in the life. He says with the Beatles mixes, because we have, I suppose, the money to do it. And the luxury of time, what I and engineer Sam OEL tend to do, as opposed to using digital effects, we place the speakers back in studio two, which is where the Beatles recorded at Abby road. And we will rerecord John's voice in studio two. So what you're hearing is the reflections of the room he's singing in. So it's more accurate, you know, mic must be nice. Yeah. That's

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:57):
Awesome.

Alex Lindsay (01:17:59):
When they thought of doing that, like they're out drinking, you know, like probably some, you know, and maybe drinking anyway. So but they're like, why don't we just put a speaker in there? Yeah, yeah. Just three or four months of them trying to figure out how to record that speaker perfectly, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:18:13):
And it's actually a really good article if you're interested in spatial audio and the challenges. I mean, nobody knows better probably than Gil Martin. Nobody's had more experience with it. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:18:21):
That that's, that's such an interesting

Leo Laporte (01:18:22):
George by the way, was his father. Thank you. Right,

Andy Ihnatko (01:18:25):
Exactly. But that's such an interesting philosophical question because this is, is maybe an ideal situation for the remix because you Paul McCartney is still alive. There is at least the DNA of what the original producer intended or thinks is right or wrong because the original remixes were done with George had had input as they were, as they were doing it. But what, when it's like 20 or 30 years from now and someone else that they're not, they're not even trying to make a, a, they're not even trying to change it into something that it isn't, but they just said, you know, with this new technology, we can really bring that baseline up and now make it more noticeable. Like maybe they decided not to make the base very noticeable. There's a, there's also part of this conversation would be that there a really nice documentary series on Hulu, I think is Paul McCartney, 3 21 where he and a producer, I can't remember his name, but he is legendary are at the mixing board with like the mixing tapes for so much of his hits from the Beatles on forward.

Andy Ihnatko (01:19:26):
And so much of it is talking about the construction of these songs, like them bringing up the baseline and noticing that the Paul on this one song was almost doing like an entirely different melody, which is not something that you notice at all in this Beatles song, but maybe you're not SU maybe if you notice that he was playing like a, a complimentary melody, instead of just an accompaniment, it would be a totally different song. So as these technologies come forward, as we have the ability to add like 3d to Tod television and do it through artificial intelligence and machine learning, as opposed to reprocesing it with thoughtful human intervention by the director, are we creating things that never existed? And that the original creators never intended all in the interest of creating topsy, turvy, tinsel, and gloss that this thing never actually needed the first place, just to make it more

Leo Laporte (01:20:15):
Commercial. That's the thing about Beatles stuff. You, you, you do that at your own peril because Beatles fans are free, very clear and very outspoken. He says we don't fix errors. He says, sometimes when you do the remixes, you can hear cuz you're listening to the vocal track alone. You can hear the vocalist be pitchy or something he said, but that's what made the me the record good in the first place. He says, we, this is real. I highly recommend this article. He says, we start off with the stereo. I feel immersive. Audio should be an expansion of the stereo field in a way. I like the idea of a vinyl record melt ting, and you're falling into it. That's the analogy I like to use. The other thing he says is he says, be careful about using the surround. He says, we are by nature forward facing individuals who don't like too many things creeping up behind us. And sometimes I will with, with Doby mixes and movies. I remember the first time I had AER round sound system, watched a ball game and the beer guy was coming from behind me. <Laugh> he freaked me out. Yep. He says, if you have a lot of sound coming from behind you, you want to turn your head. <Laugh> I get criticized sometimes for not being expansive enough with these mixes, but it's what I believe. I like the idea of falling into the record as opposed to being circled around.

Alex Lindsay (01:21:27):
I, I we're we're in that, that place though. I mean when, when logic and, and when people get better at using resolve and fair, fair light in, in resolve and as well as logic really becomes when it supports it natively, which is supposed to be this fall when those things happen, I think you're gonna see the same thing that happen with spacial as you saw with Photoshop is that there's a lot of things that people thought were useful in advertising and layout and everything else. And, and then, you know, it was all very stodgy and this is the way it was. Cause you had all these Cytec operators that went to school and learned all these things. And you had design people who went to school and they went to Cal arts and they, there was a way to do it and everything else. And then all these Photoshop users were me <laugh> that was me. We got it in 19 91, 19 92. And we went crazy and we made tons and tons of mistakes, right? Like I, I didn't, I, I once printed an ad in, in new, in New Mexico that was fully black. Cause I didn't understand.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:24):
It was like, it was just a black square and they sent, they send you proof, you know, when they do a print ad, they sent me proof back. I, I just hit it because I was like, I don't think anyone wants to see this. We just spent $2,000 on a black square. And so, so, so they, so a lot of us got to play and you know, you had Ray gun, which was completely unreadable and you had all these things that were, that, that exploded out of it. And then what we settled in into over time was something that is much more interesting and much more aggressive. You look at what, what, what our print looked like in the late eighties and then looked at what it looked like in the late nineties. It had just moved a century, you know? And, and so I think that what we're gonna see with spatial audio is we're gonna see this explosion as the tools get easier. This, every artist is gonna design for it because it's gonna be, you know, you have a better chance of being featured on apple music. And so you're gonna, they're gonna design for it and they're gonna think about it. And some of it's gonna be horrible and some of it's gonna be amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
It's not necessarily the images are better, but I have more control over the image. I can modify the aperture. I can, it's just more control the, on any smartphone. Even if you're shooting in the, in the manual mode, you just don't have as much control as you do with a,

Andy Ihnatko (01:23:30):
A real camera. But, but again, but what I adore about the way that all engineers who design smartphone, smartphone, cameras, approach this, this is all about push one button and get the best image possible. This is this is, this was even occurring to me when they were demonstrating the cinematic mode where a, a lot of, I did have to tweet something snarky about this could become like the star wipe of amateur, like iPhone videos. Oh God, they're doing more, more, more, more focus pulls like every time, every time something happens. But in terms of, I, I just wanna shoot a picture. I just wanna shoot great video of my, of my kids' birthday party or my kids' whatever. And the fact that it knows that, Hey, there's, there's something of it, suspects. There's something of interest in the foreground. So I'll keep the foreground sharp and blur the background.

Andy Ihnatko (01:24:13):
But as soon as soon as somebody leaves the frame or turns around, Hey, I'm gonna make sure that the background or whatever they're looking at is now in sharp focus. That's something that they, they, they obviously highlighted how, how impressed profess cinematographers are for this, but it could be the sort of thing where again, just the person who I just wanna tap one button to start one button to stop and get a beautiful, get the best video possible. I'm not even gonna edit it. I'm just gonna be putting this straight into my social media or straight into, straight into an iMessage or FaceTime to somebody. And I'm

Alex Lindsay (01:24:42):
Curious as to whether that's, that's a live feed that can go out out out of the camera, you know? So something like film and pro, like, that's your new webcam. You

Leo Laporte (01:24:50):
Just stick it

Alex Lindsay (01:24:51):
On there. You think of that. And and watch it. So I, I think that its, it's a really interesting, so Alex,

Leo Laporte (01:24:55):
Let's talk about this cinematic mode, this pull focus mode here's Apple's demonstration of it on the, on their webpage. One pro problem of course is, is that the, the, the camera is deciding what to focus on. Now, there is a manual touch mode you can use. In fact, there's a tracking mode, which is kind of cool. You can touch somebody say track this face. Right. But I, I have to say, I don't know. I wait demands weights to be seen how well, and I thinks,

Alex Lindsay (01:25:27):
I mean, I think that for someone who an average person throwing together a movie for film school or for high school,

Leo Laporte (01:25:34):
It's gonna pull or whatever, and you don't even know it,

Alex Lindsay (01:25:36):
It could work really well. And you just be like, wow, this looks great. I think that there's also probably going to be APIs that we can use that, you know, people can have more control. Like what what's happening here is we're giving the developers a whole bunch, some new tools that they're gonna be able to go in there and say, okay, well, and, and again, but that comes back to like film filmic pro we'll do we'll take that and run with it.

Leo Laporte (01:25:55):
That comes back to my point with control. Like I go to a pro camera cuz then I choose yes. But an amateur may have be racking focus and not even knowing it. Right. It just what's. Wow. How'd you get a rack focus in there. What's that right. And so that's kind of cool. They said something else. And I wanna ask Alex about this one, the only smartphone that lets you edit the depth effect after you shoot.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:18):
Yeah. So I, I, when I saw it, I was like, I wonder if they're gonna give us that information that, and then I saw it. I was like, oh, I have to buy this phone. <Laugh> you know, so, so it was like it was done. So what they're doing is they're saving all that depth information in the, in video format as well, so that you have all that data so that you can go back later. And I've never, I haven't seen any, I mean, we, I have seen other technologies that do that, but never in a phone, you know, is

Leo Laporte (01:26:42):
The phone recording multiple depth kind of like the old Ray tracing or what those it's.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:49):
So it can calculate out that, that the depth of everything in front

Leo Laporte (01:26:52):
Of, but is it blurring? So it's software blur then not, yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:26:56):
It's a software blur, but it's, it's pretty good. You know, and the place that you're seeing have trouble, even if you look at the demos that they have, there are the blonde hair, the white hair the areas where there's not as much contrast, you'll see little blurry Whis that are still going on. So that's still happening just a little bit. That's hard to do. We've seen that and that's really, really hard. I mean, that is the, and so that's why, you know, in many cases you would not use this in a professional environment because it's not giving you that at true depth, the field that said in the right environments shot well, you know, without, you know, for the right things, it could work really well. You know? And, and it could be really, really fun to, to shoot a lot of things. And again, it makes, it's so much more fun just to go out and take pictures, you know, little movies with your kids and again, tos and YouTubes and all kinds of other stuff that be a lot of fun.

Leo Laporte (01:27:45):
We, Andy and I were talking about it. I decided, I think you agree, Andy, it's a content consumption device. It's too small, really to do much typing on.

Andy Ihnatko (01:27:54):
I think that it's it's, it really is hate to be so benne, but it really is the definition of larger than a phone, smaller than an iPad or smaller than a tablet. And that's for tasks too, where again, like, like you were saying, sometimes you spend so much time on Reddit. You spend so much time. I spend so much time like keeping up with news reading. It's perfect for that.

Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
The papers, reading books, news, any websites perfect for that. I was last night I was reading a website, Lisa leaned over said, what is that? Is it your Kindle? I said, no, no, it's the mini said, that's perfect. I said, yes.

Andy Ihnatko (01:28:24):
And, and it is, and it is nice to have something where they're, when I, when I'm outta the office for like three or four hours, oftentimes I will just stick something with a large screen in my pocket because sometimes some see more, more so when I was writing for the paper than for than now, but it's like something happened right now and I'll be, it'll be four hours before I can be back my office. I definitely need to write 800 words right here, right now on this park bench. Guess I could and

Leo Laporte (01:28:47):
I want to, but I could, right. It fits, it fits right in my European carryall. Very nicely. Exactly. It fits in my jacket back pocket pocket in my non hipster, non skinny jeans and notice, by the way, I keep the pencil on it. And, and actually I was inspired by O Mallek who wrote a little piece about how much he likes his mini. And he pointed out that while you wouldn't wanna do a lot of data entry on it, cuz the keyboard's so small, the scribble, the new scribble feature in iPad OS is just right. And the pencil is just right for a lot of the GE kind of that you want to do. I think it's an instant notes and stuff like that. Cuz scribble is very accurate. You can write in accurate enough. I can write in Google searches into my browser and things like that. So I kind of feel like the pen it's it fits very naturally with it. Put one

Alex Lindsay (01:29:36):
Of these in your bag, Leo,

Leo Laporte (01:29:37):
Just like the purple version. See I have that. I Andy, remember Andy, rended that folding thing you put the keyboard in. Yeah, I have that. I don't wanna color match it. That's too that's as that's bigger than the iPad, the whole point of this is compact

Alex Lindsay (01:29:50):
<Laugh> I think the pen is the really an important piece of it because for instance, you know, I build a lot of I, I probably build one or two slide decks a week and I have a very specific pattern of how I do it is I, I lay it out. I, I, I put it out. I outline

Leo Laporte (01:30:04):
It sound like Liam Meen. I have a very specific pattern of, of Specific set of skills

Alex Lindsay (01:30:11):
<Laugh> yeah. That that I've acquired over many years. So, so, but my pattern is that I, I go into notes and I, and I write out, I outline what I want to do, what, what the slides are gonna say. And I just find it easier to think about it in single words or, or lines. Then I go to my iPad and I draw everything. I draw every, I draw every slide, I just look at notes and I just draw every slide and that a little, a little, it doesn't, I don't care how big the screen is. These are like chicken scratches of I'm gonna have this here. And then I'm gonna have a little thing that goes over here. Then the reason I do that is because if you start building your slide deck, it's easy for you to get caught up in like what picture? And should these have rounded corners and what text am I gonna use? And you don't wanna think about that when you're trying to think about the whole story flow of your, of your deck. I have a phrase for that and

Leo Laporte (01:30:53):
The computer editing lends itself to dicking around <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:30:59):
I didn't wanna say that. Yeah. That's, that's a,

Leo Laporte (01:31:02):
You know, and that's the digging around is the enemy of productivity.

Alex Lindsay (01:31:05):
Yeah. So, so what you do is you get the whole first, you get the outline done, then you get the, the visual story done and then you, and then you fill it all in with graphics and then you tweak it all and then you're done. And now the filling in with graphics and the tweaking, I do all in, in on the desktop because the it's too hard to do that in fine detail and on the iPad. But then I oftentimes present from my iPad, you know? So I, I either present it via airplay or I hook it up to an HD, my output and I mean like 99% of the time I'm, I'm displaying. And so the mini, I, I hadn't bought it yet, but I decided last night, <laugh> when I was, I was using my larger iPad and I was like, I really want a smaller one. I decided last night I have an order one. So yeah, the,

Leo Laporte (01:31:44):
The one I don't have is the 11, which might be perfect. I don't know. The 12.9 is so big. It's a computer,

Alex Lindsay (01:31:49):
It's a laptop. That's the one I have, you know what happened? And that's all I bought for a while. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:53):
Yeah. On Saturday, a certain person named Georgia do stole my 11 inch iPad for the exact same reason.

Rene Ritchie (01:31:59):
She'd been using a MacBook air. She hated the 12.9 inch. She goes, what's this? It was just on the table. It was mining its own business. As was the 11 inch. She goes, what am I? She picked it up. And then she left for now.

Leo Laporte (01:32:08):
<Laugh> yes, I, the mini is the touch targets on it are really, really small. In fact, I don't know, you probably can't even see this, but my duck, which by the way, seems to be able expand infinitely. I don't know, at some point I'll guess I'll run at <laugh>. But my doc, when it's in portrait mode, it's not, it's not terrible when it's in landscape mode, but when it's in portrait mode, those touch targets are so small. What's the story. It's

Rene Ritchie (01:32:31):
A, there's, there's a really funny story with that. So Steve jobs did not want an iPad mini. He thought it was dumb. He rallied against small tablets on he's the,

Leo Laporte (01:32:38):
He said have to show sharp fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rene Ritchie (01:32:41):
And then Eddie cue got the galaxy tab and he's like, this is great. We've gotta make this. And Tim's like, no forget, sorry. And Steve's like, no, forget. He's like, no, we really gotta make this they're. He's like, all right, fine. Like, like the same as, as iTunes on windows, it's your fault if it fails. So they made it. And then the, the team was like, look, we just did an iPhone. We just did an app store. We just did an iPad. We do not have time make another complete interface for something. And someone said, well, why don't we just shrink it down? What? Well, if we shrink it down, it'll be the exact same size as the iPhone. We'll take the iPad interface. It'll shrink down to the iPhone, tap, target size and we'll just ship it. So they didn't bother to make a whole new interface. They just used the iPad interface that iPhone density

Leo Laporte (01:33:19):
Oh, that's interest. The,

Andy Ihnatko (01:33:20):
That was in itself. Brilliant. Because that meant that you don't have to spin up developers on here is we, we need you to create new new interfaces. It's just also, that was, that was a selling point for me when I bought mine I, I think I bought the first generation. It was like, no, this will run all the apps that you would enjoy on the iPad at the original scale, at the original size with no adaptations. And so that was like, great.

Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
Take it. And yet iPhone apps, aren't horrible on this. I mean, they're, there's clearly still iPhone apps mean like Instagram,

Rene Ritchie (01:33:47):
Cause there's no iPad

Leo Laporte (01:33:48):
App. It just drives me.

Alex Lindsay (01:33:49):
Can you, can you make actual cell phone calls with it if you have the cellular service or is it

Leo Laporte (01:33:53):
Always just, no, the cellular service is a data only service, but so by the way, here's the Instagram app, which you can, it fills this green nicely, but you can tell it's an iPhone app, right. It just doesn't quite have.

Rene Ritchie (01:34:05):
And it, it, it breaks with every new iPhone because they hardcode it to every specific iPhone. And now I think they're just terrified of trying to make of recoding it to make an iPad app.

Leo Laporte (01:34:14):
And yet this is consumable. I mean, it, it almost feels a screen it's it's it's it almost feels like it it's an iPad app on the main apple

Rene Ritchie (01:34:21):
Had something called size classes they could use to make it automatically fit any device to be. So

Leo Laporte (01:34:26):
I forgot what you, Facebook head resources. What were you saying? Alex, I forgot. I

Alex Lindsay (01:34:30):
Was, I was just asking if you can make cell phone calls. Cause I, oh, that'ss

Leo Laporte (01:34:33):
Right. This is a, there's always question for me cuz I wanted to make this my phone. Right.

Alex Lindsay (01:34:38):
Cause I never pick up my phone. I never do this. I mean, I never put my phone up against my head. So,

Leo Laporte (01:34:43):
So, so your SIM has a phone number. That's how all the carriers work, but it doesn't work as a phone through the SIM. However, there are plenty of services that will do data based phone calls. Well, I,

Alex Lindsay (01:34:54):
I, I, I do. I use apple. You said FaceTime all the time, FaceTime audio all the time. Like, like literally that is my primary way of calling anybody with a blue, with a blue thing and everybody else I schedule time to meet on zoom <laugh> for, so

Leo Laporte (01:35:06):
With ways I schedule it, cause what you really, the one thing missing is a way to call a phone number, a landline from your mini and Google voice will do that. Skype will do that. Yeah. There, there plenty many programs that'll do that. So I'm

Alex Lindsay (01:35:19):
Really, I still, I guess my whole thing is, is that, is that I can do something where 90, I can make 90% of the calls, 95% of the calls that I would normally make. And then I still have a phone for the things that need to, if

Leo Laporte (01:35:29):
You pay a little bit of money, you get a regular phone number with Skype, which I have. Right. And then that this becomes the phone number, my mini. So yes, I think the answer is, and increasingly so because LTE is, you know, voice over LTE now and, and everything's moving to data. I think increasing, well, I found this could be

Alex Lindsay (01:35:47):
A phone. I found that that with I don't know what's happened with cell towers, whether it's the 5g or I don't know what it is, but it's gotten a lot worse recently. And I actually find it Verizon I'm both Verizon and at and T and both are, are worse. Know,

Leo Laporte (01:36:02):
Lisa's complaining about that too. She threw out, I, I use T-Mobile. She said, no, I'm not gonna use it. Verizon's so much better. And now she's because it's not

Alex Lindsay (01:36:09):
So good anymore. So I've at my house, which used to work just fine. Yeah. My cell phone numbers are my cell phone calls are falling apart all the time. And so I just to, that's why that's what moved me to, to the apple FaceTime audio was, was that I suddenly had nice, clear calls. And then I got so used to the quality of the FaceTime audio that I don't wanna go back to the cell phone anytime. And so now I'm just driving and I just call with FaceTime audio, unless I have to go to a cell number, you know? And so which I don't have to do very often. So I don't talk to people on the phone that much. <Laugh> I guess

Leo Laporte (01:36:38):
The big question. And I haven't tried, this is if, if I use Skype and my Skype phone number, will this ring and let won't I have to have Skype open.

Alex Lindsay (01:36:49):
No, I don't think so. I think if you have the, it has to be background.

Leo Laporte (01:36:53):
You can't kill it. If you force quid it, you have to restart it. But I think it'll go more. Well, let's say if I didn't force quid it, so you, so it would work then. Huh?

Alex Lindsay (01:36:59):
I should try. It'll I have things. I have things calling all the time. Really? <laugh> signal it's bugging you signal and signal does

Leo Laporte (01:37:06):
It, right? Yeah. What does WhatsApp allows? Phone calls, FaceTime messenger. The question is from a landline, cuz we know if you can use FaceTime to anybody with an iPhone. And I know you don't have any friends who don't have iPhones, but 

Alex Lindsay (01:37:17):
<Laugh>. If you have friends that I, that don't have iPhones, I just don't talk to 'em on the phone often.

Leo Laporte (01:37:23):
Yeah. I'm not gonna call you.

Alex Lindsay (01:37:25):
It just doesn't happen that often. I don't do it on

Leo Laporte (01:37:27):
Purpose. I just Don. All right, let me, let me, let me try. I don't know if no, and I guess, you know, the, the do not disturb rules and everything are gonna still apply. Let me just try calling this. So I guess we're back at 10 digits here. I'm not gonna give out this number, cuz I, this is not when I, so what if I close this and see if it'll ring, I'm calling it now for my phone. It's I don't think it's ringing. Maybe it takes a while to signal through it. Hmm that's the, I completely

Rene Ritchie (01:38:05):
Apple should just put a phone app on it. That's what they should do. Like just yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:38:08):
No, they don't why they don't, they don't want you to buy this instead of an iPhone. It's half. Yeah. It's half the price. Remember those, all those photos

Rene Ritchie (01:38:16):
With giant Android tablets with phone apps and they put it next to their head as a joke, but they're like, that's

Leo Laporte (01:38:19):
Fantastic. This doesn't look very different than the, than the surface duo. <Laugh> next to like, no, but by the way, unfold, no one talks in the phone like this anymore. Have you noticed that? They're we were talking about this on twig. Everybody talks like this. Well, I have

Alex Lindsay (01:38:33):
Airpods. You, you have a, or I have headphones or something. I don't, you need wires.

Rene Ritchie (01:38:38):
They're all in public and they're on speaker and they're very loud and

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:40):
It's very weird. Yes. Yes. I was about to say they, they wait till they get to the quiet car, the am track train before they decide, Hey, hello here. Get just argument with my boyfriend. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:38:50):
Mama, mama, mama. Me. 

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:55):
Yeah, no, it's you you're right. It's it's the, I, I think that the pass through of of phone calls to the device is under the need for it is understated because we're, I think all of us will say that getting a, an actual phone call is the least pleasant thing that we could ever do on our, on our, yeah. Nobody wants that. We, we live our lives to make, but nonetheless, sometimes it really is the best solution to a problem. So such as I don't, I don't have to tell people what app do you have or what's your account name on this? It's like, no, here is a, here's a 10 digit number that seems to work I'm as a matter of fact, every time because it turned out to get a connection, a really good connection between my studio and WG DBA studios in Boston they, the simplest and easiest solution was to simply have me set up a Skype phone number and they will call me from their switchboard. And, but it will still be like all wifi. So it's not gonna be as good as directly internet connection, but at least it's better. And that was, it was, it was reliable. It worked every single week. And there comes a point where it's like, which would you rather have a reliable connection that will always work. And when you call me two minutes before I'm supposed to be taking up 20 to 25 some screw time, or would you have something that's better, better quality, but maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't.

Alex Lindsay (01:40:02):
Well, and I think that the other thing though, is that because we get so much junk, you know, junk calls, you know, all these oh yeah. That, that, I think that a lot of people like me, if, if I don't know what the number is, I never pick it up. Oh no. Like, you know, I just never can point that up,

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:14):
You know, can I say that that's, that's one thing where I, I really wish apple would put more work into because that's one area in which like a pixel phone really shines because I'll, I don't answer the phone. I just, because my phone I'll, I'll, I'll hear it ring. It will it will click to voicemail and instantly I'm seeing a live transcript of what, whoever this is, is saying. And if it's all gibberish, I know that it's somebody speaking in Mandarin trying to sell me a phone card. But if it's like, hi, Andy this is your cousin, Phil, and burst pipe. Okay. Hi, Phil. What's going on? Hi. Right. And there there's, there's so many things you can do with the, with the phone connection that would solve these problems. And I think apple is now, well, well set up to make, make this as good a phone as it is at doing anything else. Instead of it being stuck into wherever they left it at, like in like 2011,

Rene Ritchie (01:40:59):
There is continuity call relay. That'll let you answer regular phone calls on your iPad, that route through your iPhone, but I'm trying it now. And it, the device you seem reliable the other way.

Andy Ihnatko (01:41:09):
Yeah. Again. Yeah. Again, if it, you have to something where hospital is going to call me, they're not going to text me. They're not going to IM me on on this message. They're going to try to call me to let me know about what's going on in, in a situation with a family member. And that's where you absolutely want a phone call to go through. If you not to mistake it for a spam call and for everything to work, the way that a phone's you're you're you were raised to believe that a phone system should work, not the billing problems. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:41:34):
We have to solve that by fixing the hospitals, not the, not the phones. Right? Well, they really could text message us since you've got one in hand, Renee, talk about the the weight, the, the size, the appearance grouper said it feels kind of retro, like a, like a titanium. It is so retro. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (01:41:55):
It's like a power book. It's like a love letter to power books. It's got that whole vibe about it. And it's even got like this little artistic statement on the back.

Leo Laporte (01:42:03):
I dunno, if you can see they E it in, instead of, they also took the labeling off on the screen, which is great. So it's just etched into the bottom. Now that says MacBook pro,

Rene Ritchie (01:42:11):
They took away the yeah. And they give you a notch, which like, you, you, you, it's kind of like in your face, but you stop noticing it after a few minutes too. But the screen is, if you've seen the iPad pro screen, the screen is ridiculously good too. It it's like full HDR, really bright, really vibrant.

Leo Laporte (01:42:25):
I'm I'm I, I keep forgetting to be irate about the notch. I'm sorry. <Laugh> I guess, I think what happens is just forget about the notch after a while, and, and live with the menu bar, take

Rene Ritchie (01:42:35):
The menu bar leaves your screen and goes into the notch. And you have like a normal sized MacBook screen without having the menu bar, honestly, which is

Leo Laporte (01:42:41):
Really nice. Yeah. The stuff I work with full screen, like EAX probably I'll see the notch cuz it's kind of there, I'm using it full screen, but I would gladly trade the notch for full size function, keys and an escape key that I

Rene Ritchie (01:42:52):
Can actually. Well also when you go full screen, you don't see the not because it blacks out the top, the top is out of the 16 by nine. Yeah. But window for full screen.

Leo Laporte (01:42:59):
Some programs put stuff kind of in the middle there like that. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's all right. Yeah. I, I I'll survive. <Laugh> we'll get over it. I'll get over

Rene Ritchie (01:43:07):
It. I just wish you could pin notes under the notch. Like just let us pin our little notes under the notch, then it'd be like a, like a, a bulletin board. It'd be great.

Leo Laporte (01:43:13):
Do you notice that it's a little heavier, but what is it? Half pound heavy. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (01:43:17):
Yeah. It's like going back from baby Yoda to full size Yoda. Like we used to have in 20, 20, 50 and in previously. But like at the 60 inch also it's like four and a half, four point something pounds which is not insignificant. But I think like that's where you should differentiate apples. One of the biggest issues with the previous pros is that apple tried to make them like, like MacBook pro heirs which a lot of new generation, you know, I'm flying everywhere. I'm a founder, I'm a coder. I'm gonna, I wanna use this thing on a Boeing 7 47. They love that they bought though in droves, but the people who were traditional pros are like, no, no, no, that's a MacBook air. I need an actual MacBook pro. And that's, that's what Apple's doing back here. You know, they're not making the Mac pro have to be Mac pro have to be an air anymore. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:56):
How's the sound, how's the music.

Rene Ritchie (01:43:59):
It's be like the, the inch Mac pro Intel model from 2019 was ridiculously good for a laptop. Like I think industry leading still to this day, and this is just a little bit better. Like they've just made every component a little bit better in it. So it's like a little bit wider, a little bit more vibrant, a little bit better base, a little brighter. I was just, I was watching just like as a demo when Georgia came in that that a laptop, she thought I was watching it on the TV surrounds, cause it really is loud. And it really sounds watching the Eternals trailer because I'm into that sort of thing. And it's, it sounds like you'll be, you'd be fooled. If you were didn't know that I was a lap top

Leo Laporte (01:44:31):
Dwindle has, as we've been talking, received his 16 inch and has opened it and booting it and I'm watching it in, in our chat rooms slowly go through the steps. He says, oh, I can't wait to try the speakers. He's waiting for Mac OS update to finish. You have an OS update immediately. Huh? You already have, it comes with Monterey. But,

Rene Ritchie (01:44:51):
And I think final cut, updated some of the, some of the components as well, maybe X code

Leo Laporte (01:44:56):
To when it started. Yeah. what else I'll ask? There

Rene Ritchie (01:45:02):
Was some controversy with the H DMMI and the SD cards, because the H DMMI is H D I 2.0, not 2.1. And the SD card is U HS two, not three. You look the S

Leo Laporte (01:45:13):
Two is pretty fast, right?

Rene Ritchie (01:45:16):
Yeah. Except some people are like, this is a Mac, it's gotta have the best of everything. But when you look at the schematic, it's got three Thunderbolt buses. Now, three USB buses up from two previously, and there's just no bandwidth left. Like they'd have to add another bus to get bandwidth, to make. And there's the benefits are, are uncertain because HTM I, 2.1 is great, but it's like eight K 120 Hertz you know, a variable rate HDR. Great. And you're not outputting that like apple, like the Mac can't output that right now. So it's a bit of a, a bit of a balancing act.

Leo Laporte (01:45:46):
I think Renee is still pretty happy with his M one. Max, I'll speak for myself. I know I am my M one pro still my go to who laptop, just, just an amazing device. And as, as fun as this year was with apple, I am very excited about the year to come. I think next year's best of is gonna be the best ever. Meanwhile, keep tuning in Mac break weekly. Every Tuesday we stream our production live at 11:00 AM, Pacific 2:00 PM Eastern 1800 or actually 1900 UTC. If you wanna watch live@livedottwi.tv. And of course all the Mac breaks from this year and all the years past are available for downloaded our website, twi.tv/m B w of course, if you subscribe, you're gonna get it automatically a special, thanks. This was the year we launched club TWI and I think almost 4,000 members, very, very special, thanks to all of our club, TWI members.

Leo Laporte (01:46:40):
You, you know, you really make it possible to get through this tough time during COVID times have not become much easier. <Laugh> so your, your membership is much appreciated and we really we thank you club to members for being with us. We will be back with Mac break weekly. When's our, our next episode. Mike, I think it's January fifth, we'll be our next Mac break weekly, I believe. Or the second fourth. The third? No, the fifth. No, the it's January 4th, as my calendar says we will all be back live in studio. I hope you have are having a wonderful holiday season. We wish you all the best. We thank you so much for being with us through these tough couple of years. And we look forward to a, I hope much better, 20, 22 happy new year. Everybody will see you next time. Now get back to celebrating because break time is over.