MacBreak Weekly Episode 811 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Rene, Alex are all here. Lots to talk about. Well, not, not really, but we'll find something. The EU provisional law that would change everything Apple does. Is it a good idea? Congratulations to Apple for their academy award win. How is Apple playing a different game than Netflix? Your you now use your iPhone as a driver's license in Arizona. I'd be a little careful using it on the highway. It's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

... (00:00:34):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:43):
This is MacBreak Weekly episode, 811 recorded Tuesday, March 29th, 2022. Hands off my Flappy Bird. Macbreak Weekly is brought to you by Wealthfront to start building your wealth and get your first $5,000 managed for free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/macbreak and by it pro TV. Give your team an engaging development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts. Start at five seats. Go to it. Pro.Tv/Mac break, and make sure to mention Mac break 30 to your designated it pro TV account executive to get 30% off or more on a business plan and by eight sleep good sleep is the ultimate game changer and nature's best medicine. Go to eight sleep.com/mac break to check out the pod pro cover and save $150 a checkout eight sleep currently ships within the us, Canada and the UK. It, I Vermette break weekly. The show we cover the latest news from Apple of which there is very little because we're still celebrating the news from Apple from two weeks ago. Rene, Richey's here though. That's how we know there's no news from Apple.

Rene Ritchie (00:01:57):
No, I'm ready to break some back. Leo. This is the week where we usually get WWDC announcements and, and maybe it's not today. Maybe it's tomorrow, but last year it was March 30th. Really? I got my fingers crossed. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:02:06):
So, but it's usually in June, like June 6th or seventh or eighth, right? So yes. They'll announce it though. Yeah. Yeah. But they would announce it now. So you could, what? Buy your plane tickets. You think it'll be, but we can talk for a good 34 minutes. There you go. Like invitations. I mean, that'd be something, that'd be something also here, Andy Ihnatko he's on a, a hot spot today. How goes it?

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:28):
Yeah, I'm just, I'm just having my fights with infrastructure this week. That's

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
All infrastructure battles continue in beautiful downtown Rhode Island. And because Rhode Island's so small, they really anywhere in it. It's downtown and from beautiful Marin county, we have Montreal, we have new England and we have new Marin county Skywalker ranch, office hours.global ma Alex Lindsay. Hello, Alex. Hello? Hello? Hello. How hello? How are you

Alex Lindsay (00:03:01):
Doing well doing well.

Leo Laporte (00:03:03):
So I got my Mac studio that yesterday that was fun. Plugged it in, turned it on done. Did

Rene Ritchie (00:03:12):
It look like your Mac mini got swollen? Is that what it looked like

Leo Laporte (00:03:14):
You? Yeah, I like it. I love it sitting there and I, and I just leave it on because I'm running a air message with it so I can get my my iMessages on my Android phone. Thank you, EU. And so I don't wanna turn it off. So the screen goes off. Hey, but I got a question. So I'm J I'm using the HTM I port to drive this 4k monitor this gaming monitor HDR, but it doesn't look that good. And I don't think it'll go past 60 Hertz even though the monitor will, is that that's that's cuz Apple did not put H D I 2.1 on, on this computer. Am I right? Rene? Do

Rene Ritchie (00:03:53):
I think HDMI 2.0, should. Oh, HTM I 2.1 doesn't support anything anymore. Like it made everything literally off it's

Leo Laporte (00:03:58):
It's all imaginary. Anyway,

Rene Ritchie (00:04:00):
Everything is optional. Yeah. It's the most frustrating thing, but I think you can go up to one 20 on HDM. I T

Leo Laporte (00:04:04):
0.0, it doesn't offer me that. So maybe it doesn't know that the monitor can do it or something. Anyway,

Rene Ritchie (00:04:09):
Max notoriously great at gaming. It'd

Leo Laporte (00:04:11):
Be better. Yeah, no, I know, but, but, well, and this is one thing I've heard from people who have the studio display is I would really love promotion. I'd love to have that higher frame that I have on my iPad and my iPhone. And even my MacBook.

Rene Ritchie (00:04:24):
That's a, that's a pro display though. Leo, that's gonna cost a lot more money and it's gonna have to drive a lot more bandwidth. So

Leo Laporte (00:04:29):
Right.

Rene Ritchie (00:04:30):
Careful

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
What you wish now I can do, it's a 4k I'm I'm driving a non Apple 4k which it theory should be able to. But anyway, I don't know

Rene Ritchie (00:04:38):
The is it's gonna be seven K for seven K the

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
Next, yeah, of course, of course.

Alex Lindsay (00:04:44):
17 a weird number.

Rene Ritchie (00:04:46):
Well, cuz you need to like, you need to be pixel accurate. So it's 24 inches for 4k, sorry, 21.5 for 4k, 24 for four and a half. K 27 for 5k. 20 30, 32 for six K and then 36 for seven K or you, you go off great in Apple people

Leo Laporte (00:05:02):
Who would want

Andy Ihnatko (00:05:02):
Everybody everybody's watching on their phones anyway. Why do these people

Leo Laporte (00:05:06):
Even care who would

Rene Ritchie (00:05:08):
Want, cause the phone people are docile. It's the Mac nerds. That'll cut you.

Leo Laporte (00:05:12):
What is the deal with five? Not four and seven, not eight native

Rene Ritchie (00:05:17):
Resolution

Leo Laporte (00:05:19):
Is, is that it? That they can't get monitors that have the, that.

Rene Ritchie (00:05:22):
Yeah. Like if you go read the blogs of all the human interface, developers, all the app designers, all of our little developer friends and they will tell you exactly why their eyeballs will never look at anything that falls off the pixel grid ever again.

Leo Laporte (00:05:33):
Hmm. All right. So there's a good explanation for it all. It's nice. But I have to say it's no FA it's no slower. I have a, a max, which by the way, if you'd asked me six months ago, I would've said Woohoo, I would've coveted it. Now. I want the ultra, which Lisa has. And I don't, I don't detected I am not doing photogrammetry, Alex. I want you to send me that cinema. I'm

Alex Lindsay (00:05:55):
Gonna get that done this yeah. Last week got away from

Leo Laporte (00:05:57):
Us. No, no. You got other stuff to do. This is a no, but I'm

Rene Ritchie (00:06:01):
We'll it this week.

Leo Laporte (00:06:02):
Yeah. I'm

Rene Ritchie (00:06:03):
I's 30, 90 card with AI. What's it called? Video enhanced AI Topaz video. Enhanced AI. We were beating it by a good 15 seconds, which made me super

Leo Laporte (00:06:11):
Happy. Oh, that's neat. Well, now they've got the 30, 90 TIS for only $4,000. So

Rene Ritchie (00:06:17):
I was re I was turning Steve jobs keynotes, like the original Mac mini keynote in the 4k Gloria's 4k carry cartoony really fast.

Alex Lindsay (00:06:25):
I definitely think it's, it's, it's, it's a lot about what the software is optimized for. I mean, I think that that's really what we're gonna find. I

Leo Laporte (00:06:30):
Think you're absolutely right. And for single Corp software of which we still have a majority it's predominant, there's no difference between a MacBook air and my, and, and Lisa's ultra, right? So that's kind of, you know, I should have put a MacBook.

Rene Ritchie (00:06:47):
Well, you, you, you're gonna, you're gonna throw more around than a MacBook air would, would handle within its thermal envelope. Like you're gonna go over 20 minutes on a sustained load. At some point, you're gonna be happy with this. Leo it'll be a good home theater machine for you.

Leo Laporte (00:07:04):
Well, okay. That's our news. 

Rene Ritchie (00:07:09):
You mentioned the EU though. I have, so I have so many hot take, oh,

Leo Laporte (00:07:11):
We should probably talk about this. Okay. So hot take time. EU the European union, as it's the own, the shin nations have provisionally agreed on a law that would force Apple and anybody big enough anybody with annual sales of seven and a half billion euros, 45 million monthly users and and a value of more than 83 billion. So I think Google and Apple, both qualify there to have,

Rene Ritchie (00:07:40):
They don't count Ireland. If you avoid Ireland,

Leo Laporte (00:07:44):
Don't don't count Ireland. And they will have to have a bunch of stuff. Third party app stores is the big one allowing app developers access to features of his have maybe been kept private like for a long time, Apple kept an FC private, although it's now available now, right? That means Apple would have to write a framework for all of the hardware that they have in the phone. So this is a non-trivial process, ensure that users have the right to unsubscribe from core platform. Service is as easily as they subscribed. I think Apple's pretty good on that one. I don't think we have to worry about that. That's more, that's more apps and stuff. Not require default web browsers messages, all of that stuff on installation of the operating system, make sure. And this is one that something people have said, I'll be very curious, what you guys think implies that Apple would have to open messages to WhatsApp and other messaging PR products.

Leo Laporte (00:08:49):
It's sure the interoperability of their instant messaging services, and this is important, basic functionalities. So that's, I guess, a open interpretation give sellers access to their marketing or advertising performance data on the platform, inform the EU about acquisitions and mergers. You can't rack your products or services higher than those of others. That's more aimed at Google. I think, you know, with Google shopping, they were in trouble for that with EU some years of ago, reuse private data collected during a service is that religious services, I don't know for the purposes of another service. Okay. Unclear, unclear, establish unfair conditions for business users. That's pretty broad. Pre-Install certain software applications and you can't require, this is the big one Apple. Anyway, this is the one they fought tooth and nail require app developers. Can

Rene Ritchie (00:09:38):
Pre-Install phone.app. Like I have so many questions about that.

Leo Laporte (00:09:40):
Oh yeah. That's a good question. Should I be, should I have to allow a third party dialer? You can use third party dialers on Android. I think yep. Require app developers to use certain services, for example, payment systems or identity providers in order to be listed in app stores. In other words, you can't force 'em to use the Apple app store or Apple payment systems. Rather. the fines are substantial. 10% of revenue, 10% of global revenue for repeat offense. 20% of global revenue. That's enough. That's a, that's not a 5 million Euro. We that's a, that's a spanking hefty amount of money. Okay. I'm done talking. What do you think? But Rene, you, you said you wanted to talk about this. I'll I'll start with you.

Rene Ritchie (00:10:27):
Yeah. So, I mean, in general, I think there's a lot of stuff here that absolutely needs regulation. My constant fear with the EU is that they don't always approach this from strategically smart or informed positions. And I would only point you to browser ballots and cookie disclosures and GDPR that stops small companies from even being able to, to handle the legislation. And this again is overly broad. It's unspecific. It's not specific. And it doesn't, I worry that it's gonna do a lot of harm rather than a lot of good or maybe in the, in the course of doing good. For example, just messages, profitability, even at a basic level, there is huge questions about what that means for end-to-end encryption, which cynic among us would say maybe is the whole point of them wanting to push it. But even things like I don't use Facebook.

Rene Ritchie (00:11:08):
And right now I use iMessage or signal because end to end encryption is really important to me. And privacy is important to me, but if, you know, somebody decides they're gonna switch to, to WhatsApp or to Facebook messenger. And I, I, it's just gonna automatically IOP, so interoperable into interoperate and then they'll get my messages and Facebook will have my data. And we already have email that does that. And messages was sort of the opposite of that. And I I'm afraid we're gonna lose a lot of stuff just because they're not well informed or careful about how they legislated.

Leo Laporte (00:11:38):
It is a weird thing for a government to make. What is essentially a big technical decision for these companies, for instance, amendment 1 27. This is from Benedict Evans, tweet proposal for regulation, article six, paragraph one point a parenthesis new you should do all of this without, while guaranteeing a high level of security and personal data protection. And I think it's

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:03):
Like a back door only we in access that comes

Leo Laporte (00:12:05):
Another Apple would argue, this is you know, absolutely gonna impact security. This is the, this is for the interoperability between messaging providers. Go ahead, Andy. I know you wanted to talk,

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:15):
I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I mean that I'm I'm with Rene here. I've there are a lot of, there are a lot of intentions in this, in, in this measure that I absolutely support. I do think that I I've been saying for a long time that the largest tech companies, Apple included have been may sailing along on the pretext that we will never be regulated. We will always be able to do exactly what we wanna do when we wanna do it. We will never be answerable to any outside influence. And they real, they don't realize exactly how much these large companies have benefited from it. The internet has benefited from it. Users have benefited from it, but we're we have long since entered an age where this helps large companies stay large and small companies stay either acquired or become dead.

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:01):
However, this is so broad in all the different, all the different earmarks that is trying to achieve that. It does seem that it's almost impossible for a company, the scale of a Apple or or Google to just basically conduct business. Does, does this mean if I, I was reading, I was trying to read through the entire thing and part of it made me think that, okay, so if a developer decides that they don't want to use Xcode anymore, they wanna use code warrior. Does that mean that Apple has to allow people to develop apps using whatever code system that they, that they wanna develop? Is this open season for any developer or any industry with any sort of a beef against Apple or Google to simply say, we're gonna Sue you because we want to be able to do whatever we want to do on form.

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:47):
And you can't say boo about it because you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to answer to the EEU about it. I think that the only way for a company like, like Apple to continue to be as good as it is under these limitations is to simply say, okay, EU congratulations. We're gonna create a whole version of iOS, a whole version of Mac OS, a whole version of our systems for you. That don't do very much the people in the United States and outside the are gonna get the whole Schmo and it's gonna be awesome. And your guy's gonna hate it. You're gonna hate how hard it's gonna be to, to, to, to keep your, your, your keep spam messages off of your device. You're gonna hate how power it is to keep malware off of your phone. You're gonna, you're gonna talk to any who your cousins in the United States and either, and your cousins in China China, India, anywhere. And you're gonna say, why the hell is the EU doing this to me personally? Instead of, instead of the EU saying, here are some men that we would like to put, we would like to put some limits on on the power of trillion dollar companies. You're they're instead, basically ensuring that they're gonna become an AEDO of sadness.

Leo Laporte (00:14:58):
I should point out that the provisional agreement is not yet law. It has to be approved by the council and the European parliament. And then after it's entry to force it there's another six months before it has to be implemented. So it is just a proposal. So there's still time to to change the provision. Alex, I'm sure wants to say something. I'm gonna Alex, a chance here. All,

Alex Lindsay (00:15:19):
All I say is six months is an insanely short from what they're asking for. It's an insanely short runway. You know, but we have to realize that politicians are, you know, basically they're

Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
Not technical toddlers.

Alex Lindsay (00:15:30):
Yeah. They're technical toddler, you know, like they're, they have no idea what they're doing. And then what they have is a bunch of,

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
Well, I would say differently. I would agree with Andy that they're trying to enforce a societal. Good. But the problem is it's hard for them to understand what they're saying, what the implications be. For instance, a lot of cryptographers say that this is gonna break cryptography in a apps like WhatsApp. This,

Alex Lindsay (00:15:54):
The thing is, is that this is, this is, this is like having a 12 year old, do open heart surgery. You know, like we know that there's a problem, but we're gonna give someone who doesn't know anything about what they're doing. Maybe they read some books and watched dogie Houser, but they don't know how to actually do what they're doing. Well, how do we

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
Solve that though? Well, because surely you're not saying the company's should self-regulate, they're not,

Alex Lindsay (00:16:14):
Well, I, I don't know if the, I, I, I think that I'm as a user, I think that I'm better off with the way it is right now, as a small developer, I'm better off as, as the way it is right now, as a large rich developer, I'm better off with the new rules because I can now do all the things I can do to make more money as an intelligence agency. I'm a way better off way, better off doing, you know, here. So we, we, we understand where the, the pressure's coming from the inte the five eyes, unless be clear you know, the intelligence agencies, the that's, that's the big push on politicians to do this because they have to crack this up because Apple is like three revisions away from cutting them out completely. The, so the, the issue is, is that we have, they're going down this path.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:57):
It's sometimes it's better to do nothing than to, than to stick your hand into it. If you like any doctor, they're gonna be like, well, we're not sure what we're doing. We might not go do it. And this is something that is going to have a huge impact on a lot of people, again, for the large rich developers and the intelligence agencies. This is a, a boom, you know, boom, this, this is great for them for small developers. The problem is you look at Apple TV, the Apple, the TV OS is a disaster because they let all these folks, you can log in this way and you can sign up for this and you can do it. And you know, what I do is I don't even go to the app store anymore there, like the TBOs app store is dead to me because you know, unless there's some new, you know, because the problem is, is that, and, and I really thought about this over the last couple weeks is that, is that I don't use that iOS.

Alex Lindsay (00:17:39):
I don't use the tvOS at all. Because it's too full of weird signups, you know, and that's, what's coming, you know, CNN plus came out I guess, and Scott, you know, and I opened it up and, and I looked at it and it had a weird sign in, you know, and I was like, here it comes, you know, here are the weird sign-ins that we have to deal with. And the problem is, is the problem for Apple is a money issue. Not so much with the apps, the 15%. I realize that the reason I don't update my computer every two years, I usually wait five years for my main computer to upgrade. It's the apps. It's, it's the installs. Like I look at it go, oh, I don't have two days to like, find all of my serial numbers and find all the stuff, like all the Apples, all the stuff from the app store, just loads in. But, you know, and so the reason that I think one of the reasons people update their phones all the time is because it's easy, you know? And we, when, when we take that away, it's not gonna be as fun.

Rene Ritchie (00:18:28):
So one of the things I like to do is I, I like to make sure that I challenge my opinion all the time, because I have a lot of beliefs and I wanna make sure they're loosely held. So I went around and looked. And one of my favorite people who has like, I believe in gatekeeper, on iOS, I don't think it'll make the huge difference. Some people think it'll make, but I believe in it as a philosophy. And Riley's Riley test that, and I'm gonna pronounce that wrong. I apologize. He's the one who's been doing the alternate app store an iOS for a long time now. And I like a lot of his views on it, but even he was worried about this. And he, he tweeted out that siloing can allow new apps to exist, but it shouldn't affect those who explicitly choose a curated, secure platform and forcing Apple to allow alternative app stores is great for giant companies like Facebook and epic, but it's much worse for consumers and for, or good, or for ill. The example everybody's using is we have app tracking transparency, for example, but what happens when a company like Facebook who has the five most popular apps or five of the 10 most popular apps on iOS decides they don't wanna follow those rules anymore. And they pull 'em off and say, here's the new Facebook app store for you. And it's not, it's not, it's not regulated by anything like what an iPhone user expect. You know, it's by a Nova VPN rules of

Alex Lindsay (00:19:34):
Price. This is exactly, this is exactly what I've been talking about for the last, I don't know how many months and HES who makes an alternative off it, but, but this is, this is exactly the problem is that they'll that these larger companies will force us off the platform, or we'll just have to give up on their, on their platform, you know, and that's, that's gonna put a lot of pressure and it's not gonna be used or friendly.

Leo Laporte (00:20:00):
Does feel like there are reasons what isn't SMS form of interoperability. I know it's not encrypted, but isn't it breaks

Rene Ritchie (00:20:08):
Encryption.

Leo Laporte (00:20:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not encrypted at all, but that is a form of, I mean, a number of people have pointed this out in our TWiT community and so forth is yeah, but you do have SMS interoperability is that

Rene Ritchie (00:20:21):
You can argue that's already that's makes it already makes it interoperable.

Alex Lindsay (00:20:25):
Yeah. Well, that's, that's cuts

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:28):
That cuts to the heart of the problems with the, with the proposal as it's written right now, right now they don't, whether are they talking about feature for feature interoperability or they're simply saying that it's okay. It's okay for it's okay. If the if the messages app can simply send a message to the Android stock messaging app, it doesn't have to have all the features of, of iMessage network. But the, again, my, my problem with this is essentially it, it turns the EU court system into a bludgeon against Apple and all these companies, because because imagine it's not Google, imagine it's the smaller company saying that I insist that you support my, we, we, I, I created, I created this very, very small messaging messaging system. I want you, I want you to Sue, I'm gonna Sue Apple. I want you to force them to allow me to have access to the full light message stack. And even though, even if the courts say, no, the Apple doesn't have to do that. That's a whole bunch of time and effort and money that Apple has to do to basically defend off these BS BS actions against them. So, yeah,

Rene Ritchie (00:21:29):
Or it's Trump or it's bill gates or it's Putin, or it's Elon Musk or pop from Sacramento's new three day, you know, iMessage coding problem, suddenly platform. And also like it's interesting because you can T you can handle these things at a platform level, too, like Palm synergy and Blackberry hub did a wonderful job of, of totally abstracting a way what service you were using. It would just project. It would just like present to you what their preferred service was. And if you didn't want to, you didn't have to engage with it. But if you did, you would just, you would just go to this one place, you'd have every person, and you could send them messages through their preferred way of being messaged. And that seems like a,

Leo Laporte (00:22:03):
By the way,

Rene Ritchie (00:22:04):
Doing

Leo Laporte (00:22:04):
All this maybe this is the answer, but on a, under it, I can use almost any messenger as my SMS platform, in fact, including signal. So if I

Alex Lindsay (00:22:14):
Think it'll just come back to green, green bubbles, like, I think that that's, that's the thing that keeps people out of things is not so much the, and you can make a all, all interoperable. It's the green bubbles,

Leo Laporte (00:22:23):
It's the green bubbles. They don't like, I mean that you do make a strong point, which is that it is, there are, we don't know if it's intelligence agencies, but there are definitely stakeholders that compete with Apple that are pushing the EU in this direction. And you know, that's, I think the EU response to people who are, want to compete with Apple without actually competing in the marketplace. So I think that's,

Alex Lindsay (00:22:46):
Well, I think fundamentally, I think that EU is trying to find some way that European can own trees, European companies can compete with the American companies that they're all that they're trying to. Right. You know, how do we crack that open a little bit? You've companies like Spotify and others that are saying it's not fair.

Leo Laporte (00:23:00):
Do you think it's possible to do any of this without compromising privacy and security? Or do you think that that's just a nonstarter, Alex?

Alex Lindsay (00:23:08):
I think that you need to, I think that for, for messages or interoperability, you just need to be able to, as a user, turn it off. In fact it probably should be off by default of, I'm not gonna be able to do that. And

Leo Laporte (00:23:19):
Then you can turn it on if

Alex Lindsay (00:23:20):
You wanna go in. Yeah. If you want do it and take a chance, you, you can do that. So you just want to kind of, but I think that what Rene mentioned earlier is problematic in the, in the, in that area. So you know, like that you could accidentally, suddenly start be talking to somebody that isn't inside of that system. And I think that for me, I would rather keep on using the different message systems in their own silo for what they're good for. Not rather than trying to, I mean, half my front page of my iPhone is all is all different messengers.

Leo Laporte (00:23:48):
Yeah. That's you one of the bad stop that, I mean, don't, you want to get to one messenger that can get messages.

Rene Ritchie (00:23:54):
Do you remember that then? Huh? Like emails like that. Like

Leo Laporte (00:23:56):
If I remember

Rene Ritchie (00:23:57):
A goes to Gmail,

Leo Laporte (00:23:58):
Remember ADM, I mean, you know, somebody Kevin Brewer in in our disc course, our club tour discourse said in windows, when windows phone came out, windows, the original windows phone, you had a tile that collected all the messengers and Google and Apple and everybody else didn't like it. So they made sure that that wasn't possible. So yeah, I would like to have one messenger program that could handle all the regulated

Alex Lindsay (00:24:24):
Game. Right. I just, the problem is, is that we,

Rene Ritchie (00:24:25):
School messenger is

Alex Lindsay (00:24:27):
The problem is, is that trying to get, get the, get the happen, you get back to the green bubble problem, which is that it'll be always lowest common denominator. Each one of these has their own way of doing things. And they're interesting in their own way, you know, and, and I am modal in how I use different these different pieces and what I expect them to do when I'm doing them well, and I'm fine with, I I'm fine with that because I

Leo Laporte (00:24:45):
That's, you're the one who battles for customer convenience. I mean, that does not sound, I'm not like an ideal, that sounds as bad as having to log into different CNN plus and different. I mean, really? Are you, are you kidding me here? Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:24:58):
But, but the thing is, is that, is that we already there, this is it's, it's one thing to crack something up. That's already been built as a unified structure and another one to take a whole bunch of things that have, have grown. These have all grown up like little weeds all, and you're not gonna try to pull 'em together. It's just that if, yeah, sure. If we did that all at the very beginning, but it's not,

Leo Laporte (00:25:13):
It's not quite the actual history. So it used to, they were interoperable and then companies decided they wanted to silo it. In fact, it's the opposite from email, which has, by the way, figured out a way to interoperate used to be you kind of Well, pretty well to be, if you were on copy serve, you couldn't email genie or MCI mail. Well, they

Rene Ritchie (00:25:31):
Regulated that. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:25:31):
Well, I don't think it was regulation. I think it was standards. I don't know. That's actually, they

Alex Lindsay (00:25:35):
Said, if all,

Rene Ritchie (00:25:36):
If you're gonna merge, you have to make it. Well, there, there was a merger going on and they said, if you're gonna merge these two companies, you have

Leo Laporte (00:25:40):
To make 'em ING.

Rene Ritchie (00:25:41):
My, you have to make 'em. But the other thing that's that super, they, the Apple actually did go to the carriers. They had SMS and they were super upset because they couldn't compete with all the features that were coming out and all these other messages like WhatsApp. And they went to the carriers, Scott forreal talked about this in one of his interviews. And he said, can we do this? Can we add this? And they said, no, no, no. And I, and they, and Steve just said, fine, we're gonna do it ourselves. And he started rolling out these features and we could have had a very different history.

Alex Lindsay (00:26:05):
Yeah. You know, the thing is, is that I, I, I think that, again, the app store, when we talk about breaking up an app store, the app store is a pretty unified thing that, that came up from, from scratch builds a certain way. And so tearing it apart and starting to try to make it work differently, I think is complicated. And probably won't work. I agree with

Leo Laporte (00:26:21):
That on that. I don't know if it won't work, but it is complicated.

Alex Lindsay (00:26:24):
Yeah. It'll be complicated and it'll stink for small developers and for users, you know, that's, that's what we're pretty guaranteed. And then the the, so that's, I mean, that's, that's a different situation than having a whole bunch of things that all of us have been using for the last decade and trying to figure out what's the common thread between all of these. And they all have very different ways of approaching things and, you know, so it is just, it's just, it's as complicated and painful to do it. Well, it would be, you'd have to get them all to agree. We're all gonna have these features and we're all gonna have these things. And all you can really get them to agree on is pushing text back and forth, you know, about how they're gonna handle that. And so I think that so I think that's what we'll do. It says basic. So it'll be it'll you can put your thumb up, you can put your thumb down, you can put a heart, you can put text back and forth. Okay. We're done. Like, that's, that's all that's gonna happen here. I think.

Leo Laporte (00:27:14):
Yeah. Well what, nobody would complain about that, right? I mean that that's already doing,

Alex Lindsay (00:27:18):
It's fine. As long as I can turn it off, have you tied two students? My whole thing, as long as I can turn it off I'm okay. So

Leo Laporte (00:27:22):
Sorry, Rene.

Rene Ritchie (00:27:24):
I said, can I introduce you to TWiTtter?

Leo Laporte (00:27:28):
Well, that's another story entirely, man. I was

Rene Ritchie (00:27:31):
Complain about everything.

Leo Laporte (00:27:31):
I was on TWiTtter during the academy awards. Did that beat up or what? Holy cow. I,

Rene Ritchie (00:27:38):
I didn't pay any attention to it. I was, I was a blissful Sunday evening of editing videos for me.

Leo Laporte (00:27:42):
Yeah. So good argument for not having TWiTtter open. Who

Rene Ritchie (00:27:45):
One? The Oscars

Leo Laporte (00:27:46):
Who, well, actually the Oscars are fun. You missed out on some fireworks. You missed out on some real fun.

Alex Lindsay (00:27:53):
He didn't need to cause we had TWiTtter.

Leo Laporte (00:27:55):
Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Just don't do both back to that. Don't cross the streams. Go ahead.

Rene Ritchie (00:27:59):
It goes back to that Craig Mazen thing, where he said that TWiTtter makes him feel like he has to immediately express a very out obnoxious opinion about something he knows nothing about otherwise he misses out on everything and this it's like this constant source of anxiety. So I just decided I don't need to have opinions on these things. Leo I'll focus on a very small set of things that I actually pay attention to and the rest of the world can go by.

Leo Laporte (00:28:17):
I don't, I think that's actually a very wise health conscious decision. Good, good, good on you for doing that. For fortunately as pun, we have to have opinions on everything.

Alex Lindsay (00:28:28):
You know what they say? They say that I like to quote my, my philosopher daughter and said, you know, fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate and hate leads to TWiTtter.

Rene Ritchie (00:28:37):
I did see Frank. I did see Frank Oz was upset that like when Yoda gets mad at you, like Yoda got mad at the Oscars. That's not

Leo Laporte (00:28:42):
Good. Let's take a break. And then we'll talk about the Oscars. Cuz Apple had a good night, a very good night. Our show today brought to you by wealth, front building. Your wealth is maybe not as much fun as speculating in the casino. That is the stock market stock trading. Hey, it's a wild ride. But the real of risking it all as best enjoyed as they say in moderation like street food and casino gambling. If you're playing the market wealth front somewhere where you can build your wealth because retirement comes sooner than you think college for your kids come sooner to think buying that first house you might think day trading is a secret to investing success. But Wealthfront is a ton of data to show the time in the market time in the market, almost always beats timing. The market Wealthfronts globally diversified portfolios, automatically optimized to hit the goals you set.

Leo Laporte (00:29:43):
That's where you wanna focus, the goals you set and the risk level you're comfortable with. You also get things like automatic tax breaks to boost your returns. Even when the market dips, that's a tax loss harvesting, they actually invented the software to do it. You can look it up and that's kind of cool. You could person portfolio. Of course. I mean, it's not a question of just saying, okay, you do it. You get to choose a wealth of funds handpicked by wealth fronts, financial experts in all kinds of categories, social responsibility funds, maybe you want crypto or clean energy funds. No wonder wealth fronts trusted with over 27 billion in assets invested PDF, just named what wealth front, their best robo advisor for 2022. And, and considering the year isn't even halfway over we're what are we in March? That's that's pretty good. Good job. To start building your wealth. Get your first $5,000 managed free for life. Go to wealthfront.com/mac break, w E a L T H F R O N T dot.com/mac break to start building your wealth, go to wealthfront.com/mac break and get started today. Perhaps you did know Rene Richie that Apple won best picture Oscar for its movie. Coda

Rene Ritchie (00:30:59):
Saw press release.

Leo Laporte (00:31:00):
You saw the press release.

Rene Ritchie (00:31:02):
Actually. You were so happy.

Leo Laporte (00:31:03):
You know, some people were saying, see, Tim cooks a genius. They didn't produce Coda. They didn't order Coda. They bought it at Sundance where it was a big winner in Sundance and they spent some money, not a lot, actually. I think it was $25 million to buy it. I mean not a lot for Apple. Anyway. I apparently there was,

Rene Ritchie (00:31:23):
Spent it on a rock action movie. The way Netflix would have. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:31:26):
Exactly. There was

Rene Ritchie (00:31:26):
A little bit of strategy

Leo Laporte (00:31:27):
Involved. There was some, apparently some bidding according to the wall street journal, but Apples beca this is the story. Koda Oscar's win caps, Apples. I, the, this is I'm hard to parse this title. Koda Oscar's win caps, Apple's quality over quantity approach. In other words, they don't have the catalog. They can't compete with Netflix or Walt Disney for that. But if you can pick, well you can have winners and a best picture, Oscar first one for a streamer. Although again, to get, to get eligibility, they had to put it a brief run in a few theaters. No Leo

Rene Ritchie (00:32:08):
Did you mean caps? Like I would gen X caps like kill something or caps like Centennial talk to the

Leo Laporte (00:32:14):
Oscars. You know, these days it could be either one is win caps, Apples, quality. I think they, this they're trying to write variety. I don't know. This is the wall street journal. Use a use English please. But they're basically saying is that Apple has done everything right. In terms of acquisitions, they have

Rene Ritchie (00:32:34):
How you mean validates,

Leo Laporte (00:32:35):
Validates. Good, better word. You're

Rene Ritchie (00:32:37):
Welcome. Wall street

Leo Laporte (00:32:37):
Journal. Thank you. You're editing the journal. Now. He and I don't come cheap. Helmed helm. See that they're using these variety of words helmed by former Sony TV executives, Apple TV plus has made plenty of deals with big name talent. But in this case, this was this was spotting a winner at Sundance and saying we'll, we'll take it. And having the checkbook frankly, to, to, to buy it.

Rene Ritchie (00:33:01):
Now I'm looking through it to make sure it doesn't say the Oscar on Sunday and podium for

Leo Laporte (00:33:06):
Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (00:33:10):
But the other, the other part of this is that it's it, isn't just writing the check to get the movie. It's also waging an Oscar campaign that lasts two months, months. Good point co Coda was like an Coda was an outsider. It really, according, according to people who have been like Sunday morning, Monday morning quarterbacking it's when in the, in the trades they've been talking about how it was, it came up, it was one of those courses that comes out that starts bad, but then like finishes very, very strongly are reasons that are unfathomable. And, but that doesn't happen unless they, unless the, the distributor pushes pushes, pushes, pushes this nomination and then capitalizes on it, the thing. But the, the thing that I keep wondering about is about the, these kind of things is that yes, Apple got a certain amount of like reflected prestige on the fact that yes, they were the people who wrote the check for it. Excuse me, wrote the check for it to appear on Apple TV. They bought it. They didn't like pay for it. They didn't produce it. They, it wasn't their

Leo Laporte (00:34:10):
Idea. Yeah, exactly.

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:12):
They just it's, it's not like Ted lasso where they, where they basically CRA they, they basically allowed this thing to happen. The, the question is, is it bringing in enough viewers to justify all the expense and is the luster of a reflected Oscar win enough to oh yes. Enough to, to Trump the idea of, well,

Leo Laporte (00:34:31):
That's their advantage

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:32):
Finance Theranos,

Leo Laporte (00:34:33):
Because Netflix has to get, has to get the money back. Right. but Apple, they're more like Amazon in that case, this is a prestige product. So I think that a ju 25 million to get an Oscar or whatever the plus whatever they spend on advertising that's for Apple's point

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:48):
View. But, but, but makes

Leo Laporte (00:34:49):
The services valuable. I think

Andy Ihnatko (00:34:51):
What, what, what I'm, what I'm getting at though, is that like, are enough people actually watching that movie to, to think that Apple TV is a, is, has a valuable position on my on my screen box. Yeah, this is, this is a channel I keep turning to frequently. Whereas, whereas Hulu for instance I've I watched Bob's burgers last night. I got caught up on Archer and last and last weekend I wrote death on, excuse me, I read a death on the Nile specifically because the movie is coming to Hulu today.

Leo Laporte (00:35:19):
Hulu is actually actually a dark horse. That's coming up strong. There's I noticed we're watching a lot of shows, like the drop out the Theno story. You

Andy Ihnatko (00:35:27):
Get the Ernest, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's

Alex Lindsay (00:35:28):
Amazing. But awards

Leo Laporte (00:35:30):
Awards, go ahead. Go ahead. All

Alex Lindsay (00:35:31):
I was gonna say is awards are talent acquisition. Like that's what you're doing, right? So you don't care about how many people are watching Coda. It's the fact that you won an academy award changes the way Apple gets seen by the directors and the actors and the, you know, that type of thing. That's, that's what they're. This is, you know, the academy is an inside game, you know? And so it's who gets hired for the next thing. And, you know, and all of those, all those little bits and pieces, so an academy award winning streaming service, you know, to win the best. Other people have won awards and Apple's winning, but that's why they play so hard is because they have to get, they want to get the Martin Scorsese, the, the Francis for cos the, you know, the you know, the ones that you're trying to kind of break down the you know, the folks that are, that still are saying, what has to go out to theater. You're trying crack that wall. And every, and every week, I, I mean, every award is another brick, you know, cracking that, another slam on that wall between theaters and between streaming, which they they're trying to work out. So it puts you above the other ones. And so the, this stuff follows along, but that's what they're, that's what an award gets you

Leo Laporte (00:36:33):
That's, that's

Rene Ritchie (00:36:34):
Definitely that,

Leo Laporte (00:36:36):
It's a, I'm sorry, latency's killing us. I apologize, Rene, go ahead.

Rene Ritchie (00:36:41):
I was, I was also gonna say that, I think it's also like Apple is willing to take a risk, like sure. Ted lasso is made by Warners and sure. This movie was completely made before and there are other people bidding on it, but Apple has shown that they're willing to take a risk to put their money behind a lot of eclectic products. They're almost like this artisanal craft thing that they're doing with Apple arcade on the side as well. And that's not always been common, especially like Disney plus will give you all the Marvel movies, all the star wars, movies, all the Muppet movies, but you know, you're not gonna get star Trek. You're not gonna get DC movies. You're not gonna get like a lot of non-franchise stuff. And even Netflix is putting a ton of money behind very big, like the rock movies, very like summer blockbustery kind of movies.

Rene Ritchie (00:37:20):
And Amazon is doing similar, a lot of like action, adventure series, those sorts of things. And Apple's palette is completely, almost completely non-franchise and very, very diverse. And I think that they make it a point to, to reflect their beliefs on accessibility and their beliefs on diversity and opportunity. And I think they really will want it to be first. Like they really wanted to be the first streaming service to win an Oscar because being the third one doesn't really mean as much as being first and you're willing to put a lot of budget behind it

Leo Laporte (00:37:48):
And, and to Andy's point and, and, and Alex is a Martin Scorsese or Aran for a couple of us looking at how much money Apple spent on advertising to get the Oscar for your con consideration as another plus right, by the way, it's not just the only time. The first time a streaming movie is won. It's the first time a Sundance premier movie is won. I didn't know that. Nice. So it's also a big win for Indy. Some have said movies are dead, not just some Martin Scorsese Ridley, Scott and Barry Diller, three odd bedfellows have said really the idea of going to movies in the cinema, which was already kind of problem problematic is thanks to COVID and pandemic really over, unless you have a big block. What Ridley Scott doesn't like is that the comic universe is taking over that in order to get people to go to the theaters, you have to have a, a comic book title or an action title.

Alex Lindsay (00:38:47):
I guess a lot of us have been talking about this for 20 years, which is that eventually the, the AV systems at the houses were gonna get good enough that you did didn't that the only reason you'd go to a theater is for something that was bigger than that felt bigger than your house. You know, like that's the, that's the reality. And most of us, I mean, have been talking about this for 20 years. So it's not, this is nothing new. It's not like COVID started,

Leo Laporte (00:39:07):
You saw it coming trajectory

Alex Lindsay (00:39:08):
That was coming, but as it

Leo Laporte (00:39:09):
Happened, is it happening? Oh yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:39:11):
And

Leo Laporte (00:39:11):
COVID sped it up for sure.

Alex Lindsay (00:39:12):
It's sped it up by, by five or 10 years. But, but it was, it was going down this path because our screens are getting bigger and higher resolution. We've got better sound systems. We've got all these other things that are happening around us and the theaters didn't move fast enough forward then mean the only two theaters that are worth watching anything in is an IMAX or Doby, you know? And so those are, or,

Leo Laporte (00:39:31):
Or Alamo,

Alex Lindsay (00:39:32):
If you want, if you want to eat with it, you want to

Leo Laporte (00:39:34):
Eat, get tacos a problem. If you, now you can get tacos too. Thanks to 

Alex Lindsay (00:39:39):
Delivery services. I can have tacos, but I also, I can make the tacos at home and then watch them and I can have, you know, and so better

Leo Laporte (00:39:45):
Popcorn. I thanks to you for sure. I

Alex Lindsay (00:39:48):
Popcorn's good much

Leo Laporte (00:39:49):
Better anyway, popcorn now,

Alex Lindsay (00:39:50):
You know, what the popcorn's really good with is, is is Hank is the Hank salt,

Leo Laporte (00:39:54):
Salt, Hank

Alex Lindsay (00:39:55):
Salt, Hank. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:39:55):
Hanks

Alex Lindsay (00:39:56):
One, all Hank is the truffle

Leo Laporte (00:39:57):
Garlic, truffle. I always

Alex Lindsay (00:39:58):
Get, yeah. The garlic truffle is really good with it. It burns. So you have to be very careful cuz it'll smoke up as soon as you put it in there just in case you're wondering. But anyway,

Leo Laporte (00:40:04):
Oh, I forgot. Yeah, you have that.

Alex Lindsay (00:40:05):
There's all the stuff that's got in it.

Leo Laporte (00:40:06):
That really good method of put, put it in the oil with the oil. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (00:40:09):
I like that. Yeah. So anyway, but, but the to go back to those, the, you know, I think that, that, you know, these big theaters, they have an opportunity to give you something that's this massive, you know, over the top experience. So that the do the, you know, the Doby cinemas and the IMAX theaters and so on and so forth, they can do that. But the average theater they're, they're saving money on how, how bright they push the ball, they're playing it too low. They're, you know, even they finally got to a point where they were letting us, you know, schedule our seats, but it was too late, you know, like we, you know, and so, so I think that they, the theaters didn't invest fast enough into creating that kind of upper scale stuff that we had seen starting to show up in a lot of those theaters. And so they just fell behind that queue. And and so I, so I think it's, I think it is true. I think that those theaters could provide other things. They, right now they're just a little overpriced, you know, when, when you wanna, if you want to do something in theater system, it's, it can be very painful. So I think that the upper shell of this is gonna work well. That means Ave, you know, big action adventure, but also cinematic like big cinema experiences. It doesn't have to be well,

Leo Laporte (00:41:11):
That's why it's the Marvel movies. Right. That's why it's

Alex Lindsay (00:41:14):
Bating. Yeah. Marvel move. That's that's why, that's why Disney did such a great job in, you know, between Lucas film and, and Pixar and, and and Marvel. Yeah. They

Leo Laporte (00:41:22):
Built, they, they saw the future of

Alex Lindsay (00:41:24):
Built the future.

Leo Laporte (00:41:25):
Yeah. And this is what Martin Scorsese is saying. He said cinema, as I knew it, you know, the small 

Alex Lindsay (00:41:31):
But, but the, but the thing, I guess what I would say though,

Leo Laporte (00:41:34):
Aren't gonna be in movie theaters anymore. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:41:36):
But, but he has to get over the movie theater thing. Like the thing is not right. I agree with you them too. I agree with, you know, like it's, you know, and, and more people, you're more likely to take a chance on a movie when it's part of your subscription than, than you are when you are gonna have to pay, you know, for me to take my kids and my, and my wife to the, to the theater is a hundred dollars, you know, with popcorn and drinks and everything else. And it's not as good as your popcorn, popcorn. Yeah, exactly. It's not as good. Not good for you, either. The stuff is horrible. Anyway, so the so to do that though is a hundred bucks for, for us to go to the theater. That means that that movie has to be really good. And I think that's part of the problem is that going to the cinema has become a lot more expensive. And so that movie has to be that much better. And, and for me, again, if I'm gonna buy, if I'm going to pay for it, I want to go to a, a theater that's worth sitting down in number one. And number two is it's gotta be a movie that's gonna take advantage of that theater. And that's the, and so for the artsy films, I'd to be honest, I'd rather watch them at home. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:42:32):
Yeah, yeah. At least the went to see the Batman in the theater. First time in a while she's been in a theater couple of years and it was a horrible experience cuz the kids were talk kids who, yes. It only took two years for kids to be de socialized. The kids were on their phones. We were talking

Rene Ritchie (00:42:49):
Your chair. Yeah. They

Leo Laporte (00:42:50):
It's horrible.

Alex Lindsay (00:42:50):
Was it at an IMAX or was it at a

Leo Laporte (00:42:52):
No just, well, it was a, we have a nice know, you know, the theater downtown, the stadium seat. It's a fairly nice theater on a big screen. It wasn't IMAX. It was very nice. And I, yeah, I don't see, you probably don't see kids at the $35 IMAX theater, but 

Alex Lindsay (00:43:06):
I haven't seen it yet. The word around, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't had time to go to an IMAX theater. 

Leo Laporte (00:43:13):
But see that's the point gonna go? Yeah. Whereas you can see, as soon as it's streaming two weeks, you can sit down and watch it. So we watched king Richard on our hundred inch screen with our surround sound system, eating it, Alex Lindsay popcorn. And it was, it was, it was better than the movies. It was great. And it was like the movies in that sense. And

Rene Ritchie (00:43:32):
There's a 45 thing window for HBO. So it'll on max like within like a month, like great.

Alex Lindsay (00:43:37):
Right. But I think Batman's a good example. I am going to go to see it on IMAX because I've heard that it's, it's at one of the best IMAX films that's been made. Oh really? So cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's supposed to be really good. And so, so I'm, I'm planning to go see it, you know, see it there. So there's things that I'll go, I will go out of my, out there, my cave every once in a while to go see something in. But one of things

Leo Laporte (00:43:55):
You have to drive into San Francisco don't, you know, I mean, there aren't that many IMAX theaters in the country,

Alex Lindsay (00:44:00):
San Francisco or Sacramento, they're kind of when all said and done, they're kind of equal distance for me. So

Leo Laporte (00:44:05):
Yeah. Both of which an hour driver, you know, but that's yeah. Parking and you gotta, yeah. So it's a, there's definitely a, a disincentive, you know, if it's, if that's the case, I think this is very, very good for people who want watch movie on their TV. It's also very good for TVs. I have to say with my ed TV, I feel like that's actually better than a theatrical experience. You have

Rene Ritchie (00:44:26):
Doby vision and Doby surround Doby atmo at home like this. I watched David at home. I didn't see it. The movie theater. It was

Leo Laporte (00:44:31):
Fantastic. And, and you're 10 feet away from a 70 inch screen. The screen is bigger unless you're, unless you're at an IMAX or you're sitting right up front. And so it's really a much more immersive experience. I mean, it's immersive except that it, you know, the doorbell rings, you can answer the door, but

Rene Ritchie (00:44:47):
Nobody's kicking my chair.

Leo Laporte (00:44:48):
Yeah. Nobody's kicking your chair. Well it information Martin Pierce writing and the information made a really interesting point. You you couldn't blame Netflix management. If they grumbled a little privately after Sunday night, they lost the best picture competition to a D an amateur, a company for whom streaming is primarily a brand marketing exercise. While Netflix has to make a dizzying amount of programming to capture every subscriber who draws a breath, Apple just needs programming that enhances its brand. Yeah. The ability to, to be discriminating gives Apple an enormous advantage. It's pitch to filmmakers can be simple. This is this, underline, this one come to us, your shows will stand up, go to Netflix, my art and Scorsese, and they'll get lost in a more as stuff.

Andy Ihnatko (00:45:37):
Yeah. But the, the, the problem there is that Apple is still sticking to a sort of eat your vegetables sort of content strategy. I agree. So what you you'd love to get Scorsese, but what Apples lets you say yes, absolutely. Make, make the Irishman here, make a, make a story about a hit man who kills people, indiscriminately do all the, do all the cussing you want. So there's there there's they don't mind Cusing it's a very complic,

Leo Laporte (00:46:00):
You know, if you watch the morning show

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:03):
True,

Leo Laporte (00:46:03):
They dropped the F

Rene Ritchie (00:46:04):
Jason MAOA thing was one of the most violent TV shows I've ever

Leo Laporte (00:46:06):
Seen. Yeah. But there, but I, but don't you feel like it is a little bit like Sunday school. I kind of agree with you, Andy. There's a certain,

Rene Ritchie (00:46:12):
I think Disney think more.

Leo Laporte (00:46:13):
I think Apples more that way. That quick.

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:15):
Yeah. Yeah. But I keep, I maybe it's because I, again, I finally got caught up on actually, I, I don't know why I was getting caught up on like streaming last weekend, but I, I was, I also finally got caught up on season two of Ted lasso. And a lot of it was really that that character was kind do that in that situation. No, no matter what the stakes are, he's gonna do this really, really nice thing is that it's a little,

Leo Laporte (00:46:39):
Is that

Andy Ihnatko (00:46:40):
Really what's gonna happen?

Leo Laporte (00:46:40):
Little sugary now, severance is not by the way. Severance is interesting cuz it's, it's, it's an anti work basically. It's an anti work show. It's very interesting. Almost sort

Rene Ritchie (00:46:53):
For Apple culture.

Leo Laporte (00:46:54):
Yeah. It's almost about fascism and it's very interesting. It's also a little sterile, but they let, I think they let Ben Stiller be Ben Stiller. And so it, it

Andy Ihnatko (00:47:08):
Is warning. Ben Stiller is being Ben Stiller in this movie. It's,

Leo Laporte (00:47:11):
It's kind of, it's actually, it feels subversive. So maybe Apple under maybe Apple didn't understand that they were getting that brand a little bit and say, let's be a little bit more subversive. They did announce today that they have the first 12 weeks of the Friday night baseball doubleheader schedule. This is gonna start April 8th with opening day. Remember Apple did announce that the last event that they were gonna have two games every Friday night. I'm not gonna read all the games, but you could, if you want Apple put out a press release,

Alex Lindsay (00:47:44):
I'd be interested to see if they distinguish themselves that much from MLB. The, the, what I, I will say is that as in live streaming app, the MLB app is one of the best, you know, like it's just what really, really well structured.

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
You mean in production in how they do it. Like

Alex Lindsay (00:47:57):
The, the, the actual user experience of, of, of like, but not just the streaming to you. That's that's, that can be done by any, I mean, not anybody, but it can be done at scale. The, the issue is that, that the interface is really nice. Like if you, you can get into different modes where you can see all the stats, you can, you know, do picture and picture between two, two different games. You can do a lot of really cool things inside of the MLB app in the, I both on the app, Apple TV, as well as the iOS. And so, you know, I'll be interested to see how Apple makes it better than watching the game in on the, you, maybe they don't need to maybe just, you know, but

Leo Laporte (00:48:31):
It is an opportunity since they are a technology company. Yeah. Just like Amazon does a little bit they're gonna have Thursday night football to kind of say, Amazon's been pushing this and it's kind of dumb, but, you know, the announcers will say, well, let's go to the AWS stats analysis. And the it's like, he only had 32% chance of catching that, like who the hell cares under replied to how many digits

Alex Lindsay (00:48:58):
Did they count, but a good, but AWS is a good example of the fact that they haven't really innovated that much. No. You know, they, you know, in, in their own app, so they they've been, they they've proven that they, they know how to stream a football game, but we haven't seen them really take that experience anywhere, you know, from, from there. And so I think that that's big challenge. Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (00:49:16):
A big,

Alex Lindsay (00:49:17):
It's a big opportunity. I'd love

Leo Laporte (00:49:18):
To see them say, say, you know, so, so some tech chops and say, Hey, you know, look, what we can do.

Alex Lindsay (00:49:23):
The problem really is, is that there's, there is you're still the Cabo, like the, the MLB is still doing a game it's for B. And we're gonna give you a, we're gonna give you a feed. And if you're lucky, maybe some of the cameras are higher resolution or something like this. But, but the B

Leo Laporte (00:49:38):
Probably would be nice, but I don't know if

Alex Lindsay (00:49:40):
I think the Amazon ones are, are streaming 4k, are they? I think that they, yeah. But

Leo Laporte (00:49:44):
What else would you do? Would you do a second screen experience?

Alex Lindsay (00:49:47):
Yeah, I mean, I think, well, I, so I think that there's a there's a lot, lot of opportunity to, you know, once you start screaming and you're not doing linear, there's all kinds of possibilities of, for instance, having the decide which team, and you're gonna have announcers that are not trying to be unbiased, you know, like they're like we used to watch Steeler football game. We used to watch the Steelers and we used to listen to Myron cope, which was the, the local broadcast that had been there for 30 years or whatever, but we would listen to it on the radio. And even if it was, he was off by like three seconds or four seconds between the, the radio and the football. And so, and you never knew which one it was gonna be, he's either head or behind. And but we listened to it because we didn't wanna listen to the networks, talk about Steelers.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:28):
We wanted listen to iron cope, talk about the Steelers. And so and so I think that you could, that's easy to do, and it's hard to do in linear, really easy to do when you're streaming. I think that you could also have other audio tracks. For instance, you could have the beginner's version where, where you people could put in question, it's like, why are they doing that? Like, why are they? And, and you can just listen to it and it'd be, so you'd be, it'd be an ex couple X pros explaining why the quarterback does what it does. You can do all these other things that become very interactive and have entirely different interfaces. You have the same game, but you can take that audience and break it into 10 or, you know, 10 or 15 different audiences that are interested in, in different parts of the game.

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:07):
Yeah. Wouldn't that be? Wouldn't it be brilliant if you could turn it to sort of like a, a, a, a gaming streaming where if you can, you can, you can watch like the latest version of, of NBA two K 22 or whatever, but it depends on, but you can watch whatever comment want, talk about like the action in this game. Imagine if you imagine if if a baseball did this or any sport did the same thing, where yes, you subscribe to this main channel that gives you the feed. However, there could be user generated content where I will create a live. I will do my own like commentary stream live with it. So you can basically choose between a professional. You can choose between like the, a Johnny most type of person who's been doing this professionally just got fired from his local station because of the network, or just some idiot

Alex Lindsay (00:51:54):
Who, who, well,

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:55):
Like you, it doesn't, doesn't give you insight into the, into the proceedings, but at least like makes it more entertaining to watch.

Alex Lindsay (00:52:01):
Well, I, I, I started, we did a stream where I screamed about 25 basketball games. And the thing to understand is, I don't know anything about basketball. Like, I don't know. I Don understandable. I, I, I was a, I was a wrestler, so I didn't understand anything about basketball. It just like, I don't understand why these people are doing what they're doing and it's moved so fast. And why can't we take a break and huddle and, you know, like that kind of thing. And, and so so we streamed all these things and we had an ex-professional basketball player and we had a social media guy that really likes basketball and well known for it. And the two of them sat there and talked and sometimes had an extra watching the game and we're streaming it with some of the cameras. And the, the, the interesting thing was is that by the end of that, I completely understood basketball.

Alex Lindsay (00:52:36):
And it's much more interesting to watch now, because I understand all the defenses and all the things, because they were, but they were able to talk in a way, you know, they were answering people's questions. People are putting quite questions in the stream, like, why are they doing this? And they said, explain, they'd explain a screenplay. He'd explain the, you know, this, these are the sets of rules that you have to follow and they're, and they just didn't, and they didn't have to, this was, they were one sided, so they didn't have to protect anybody. They'd say, oh, the, you know, this, this team is doing really well, or our team should have done better here. And, and they were just able to say a lot of things you wouldn't see on broadcasting. It was so much more interesting. And I kind of ruined watching most of these games because I was like, oh, we, we were doing this little low budget thing. That was way more pleasurable to watch than, than, than the big budget. Well, that,

Leo Laporte (00:53:17):
But that's why you, the, the, you pay a lot of money for a good play by play and color guy, because if they're good, they can do that. They do do that. They bring those games to life. Yeah. So

Alex Lindsay (00:53:28):
There's, But there's like three there's like, there's like three of them. There's like four

Leo Laporte (00:53:31):
Really bad ones. And there's, yeah. There's, there's only a handful, really good ones

Alex Lindsay (00:53:34):
That drops off pretty fast.

Leo Laporte (00:53:35):
I think also there is, and this is always a challenge. It's a challenge for any kind of specialized programming. There's a group in the audience that knows all that stuff, and they want to hear, you're a different level of commentary. And, but that's why, why you just right for you as a neophyte, because, but, but you probably wouldn't hear that on network broadcasts because they're playing to an audience. That's a hardcore enthusiast audience, right.

Alex Lindsay (00:53:57):
We're not even, they weren't even calling the game ours. They were not, they're not calling the game. They're just talking about the game. It's sitting around with two really smart friends that know a lot about it. And the, the thing is, is that, but that's where I, I think that in a live stream, in a linear, going out the TV with all the limitations of UN, like lowest, common denominator of every person's TV and everything else, it's really hard. I mean, Doby has the, you know, there, there are technologies that let you stack multiple commentaries, but no one knows how to use them in a stream with an interface that you can design. You can easily say there's a beginner stream. There's a, there's the pro stream. There's the, there's all these things. And these are just audio. They're all looking at the same game. They don't even have to be there. I mean, you can give them a low latency connection that they're watching the game through zoom or through the switch or through a variety of different technologies. And they're all just pumping their commentary into it. It's all embedded into, up to 16 channels really easily. And then it's just sent out in the HLS packet of here's here's 16 different channels that you can choose from. And that's

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
A, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Slicing real. What we've done withs of media is the niche slices right. The

Alex Lindsay (00:54:59):
Cost of that Is a fraction like, cuz it's, it's literally paying for commentators and you know, the, the, the pipeline, but right. Compared to a whole game, but

Leo Laporte (00:55:07):
They're cheap. These guys

Alex Lindsay (00:55:08):
Costs nothing.

Leo Laporte (00:55:09):
No,

Alex Lindsay (00:55:09):
No, no, but they're

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Cheap. Not Al Michael's price. Let's put,

Alex Lindsay (00:55:13):
It's not 20 it's, but it's not another 20 cameras and three broadcast and an EVs, you know, this is our 20 SS or whatever it is, our 18 of them. I think a

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
Lot of the problem is the rights issue with the NBA or the MLB or, or NFL where they would have to approve it. And you know,

Alex Lindsay (00:55:30):
Yeah, no, no, that that's the whole, but I, but I think that that's where we start seeing some interesting innovation as opposed to just putting it on online sound like that

Leo Laporte (00:55:38):
League

Alex Lindsay (00:55:39):
Is gonna do. I think at some point we, and, and again, you, you get into it by saying, I'm gonna buy out the Friday ones and then that's much more where you start to get people willing to experiment and everything is doable with enough money. And Apple has a lot of it. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:55:51):
And it shows off their bigger business, which really is the plus of Apple, the point of Apple TV plus anyway it's not, it doesn't need to succeed on its own like Netflix does. So I do think they're getting a little darker. So here is, as an example, I'll read a couple of shows from Apple TV plus today, still water, Carl Addie and Michael have a very special next door neighbor, a wise Panda named Stillwater or pretzel and the puppies meet pretzel. The world's longest Tound or but then, but then some of the new stuff get ready. For instance, there's a show based on a British a spy series called slew house slow horses. It's a Spicers Gary Oldman will star in that I'm excited about that comes out in April, as Americans don't

Rene Ritchie (00:56:42):
Know the word slew. Is that why they

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
Changed it? Is it slew or SL? I don't know how they, they might, they probably say SL house. I think they say Britain say SL, maybe we say slew house, unless you're sloughing it off. And then we pronounce it SL

Rene Ritchie (00:56:56):
Or sounding like a is English

Leo Laporte (00:56:58):
Way is a nightmare language. They probably say SL house. I'm thinking that would, should explain the title, slow horses, right? It's about a a bunch of MI five spies who screw up in their career and are sent to SL house to while away their days doing unimportant work. They're the slow horses and Gary Alman one of

Rene Ritchie (00:57:20):
Gotham. What did he do wrong? Come on

Leo Laporte (00:57:24):
Roar the anthology of darkly comic feminist fables. We'll see four parts magic Johnson. Go ahead, Alex. Sorry.

Alex Lindsay (00:57:34):
The one thing I was gonna say

Leo Laporte (00:57:35):
Is that, that

Alex Lindsay (00:57:36):
We talked about the fact that large established directors are upset that their movies won't be seen in theaters, but I will say as a starting create as a creator, this has never been a never been a better time. I mean, you can agree a, a properly structured pitch has a really good chance of getting ending up on one of these networks. Cause

Leo Laporte (00:57:56):
There's such competition. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:57:57):
There's such a, there's such an enormous amount of competition right now for, for content. So if you have a, a reg a not even original idea idea that they think they can make I think that you, you have a pretty good chance if you, you know, it it's just never been better for creators to, to

Leo Laporte (00:58:09):
Get this out. Apple paid a lot of money to Martin Scorsese for his book starring Leonardo de capo and Robert de Niro killers of the flower moon, the Osage murders in the birth of the FBI. That's a movie from the 20, that sounds that's prestige. Right? And you got Scorsese

Alex Lindsay (00:58:29):
Well, and then, you know, that Apple, like the, the thing is what these directors have hated forever is dealing with Hollywood producers who are constantly telling them how much they can and can't spend a Martin sort of Scorsese doing this film. I'm sure that Apple was pretty much like you, whatever, you, you know, whatever you

Leo Laporte (00:58:43):
Need. Yeah. Like

Alex Lindsay (00:58:44):
He's like, I think we need a, another, another 2 million. I

Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
Don't think

Alex Lindsay (00:58:47):
They I'm sure that someone was like,

Leo Laporte (00:58:49):
I don't know if they paid him to make this, or they bought rights for streaming. I think that this is paramount. Right. And it's gonna be in the theaters. So they prob, but I spent, I'm sure a lot of money. Remember they bought Finch that Tom Hanks vehicle that was very expensive. And I don't think made them a lot of money. I don't think it was a huge hit. They don't have, they do have a deal for a Russian language series that was from Russian TV that was supposed to start this spring. I have to think, oh, that may not happen. Awkward, awkward. Here's a, maybe a more traditional Apple story, an animated film about Sam Greenfield, the UNL luckiest person in the world, suddenly finding herself in the never before scene, land of luck, where she must unite with magical creatures to turn her luck around. Oh, but they've got a documentary about the history of James Bond, the sound of double oh seven. And, and I've been seeing clips of this musical adaptation of Christmas, Carol with will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds spirited.

Alex Lindsay (00:59:56):
I do think that the, that the behind the scenes opportunities for a lot of these movies are really not being taken advantage of by any of the platforms, is if you're really into the movie or even if you're just into movie making, it's not that expensive to have in the grand scheme of things to generate another 30 hours of content about that. Yes. About that thing. And because it's streaming, you're not, it's not like you have to figure out where to program it. You just put it up there with it. And you know, and even like, Disney's done a little bit of this with Mandalorian and some of the other, and it's been pretty, it's boring.

Leo Laporte (01:00:25):
It's why I buy, they could movies from iTunes because otherwise no reason to buy a movie, but I want the extras and you know, I missed DVD extras. This is the closest thing. Sometimes they actually have commentaries. Yeah. Not always. I wish they, I wish you could see what the extras were before you spent.

Alex Lindsay (01:00:42):
I do Apple shows it.

Leo Laporte (01:00:43):
Do you, can I find out if they have a, like a director's commentary, it

Alex Lindsay (01:00:47):
Has a list you can't like watch the

Leo Laporte (01:00:49):
Pre no, no, that would be good. Okay. I just bought Doune. It was only 10 bucks whole show. It was only 10 bucks, but I figured do, they've gotta be some extras there.

Alex Lindsay (01:00:58):
I'm surprised someone hasn't bought up. Like this is where someone just buying CRI criteria and like the criterion extras were the best, you know, like if you look at like the criterion release of like Armageddon or traffic I love this.

Leo Laporte (01:01:11):
I actually subscribed to the criterion channel. Yeah. Just for that. Yeah. One of the things

Rene Ritchie (01:01:16):
That's super fun is Ryan Reynolds and will Ferrell were both supposed to be on late night talk shows at the same time. And they swapped without telling anybody people showed up for each other's slot saying the other one had just blown it off because they weren't interested. And the hosts were like, tried to roll with it, but they insisted on answering. Like they didn't let them change the questions. So they made them go through the questions they all had just brilliant answered it. Brilliant. And that's the kind of stuff I wanna see more of because it increases interest. But also like, yeah, it, it breaks the fourth wall a little bit,

Leo Laporte (01:01:42):
Dark comedy, 10. So series about the Garvy sisters bound together by the premature death of their parents. That could be, that could be dark. And then there's the, the comedy drama about the story behind the beanie babies, which stars Elizabeth Banks and Zach hair

Rene Ritchie (01:01:58):
Bears the dark

Leo Laporte (01:01:59):
And Sarah snuck is in that from succession. So I probably be watching the beanie bubble. This one, it'll be interesting. The greatest beer run ever starring Zach Efron and Russell Crow.

Rene Ritchie (01:02:11):
Is that the old Apple two game? No.

Leo Laporte (01:02:13):
Oh, heard about this. It's Chuck it's Chickie Donahoe who in 1968, left New York to track down and share a few beers with his childhood buddies now in the army fighting in Vietnam. Wow. I read, I read the a was based on, that was a great story. That sounds really interesting as a movie. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead it little tangent. Leo, did you see that Ryan Reynolds did a one password commercial because they're sponsoring his soccer team. Now Mount Reynolds, YouTube channel. He has what is actually hilarious. 32Nd one password. His ads for MI mobile, his company are fantastic. We were asking what they would do with all that VC money. It turns out they gave it to Ryan res the rich just get richer. Yeah. It is really well. I suppose I could play this. Yes. So which one? There's a couple, there's a few of them. The one that says cyber security and skincare. Yes. Okay. Cyber security and skincare football club.

Speaker 7 (01:03:08):
I need to watch out for our

Leo Laporte (01:03:09):
Players. Let's start over here.

Speaker 7 (01:03:10):
As the owner of Rex and football club, I need to watch out for our players. I've been a star for a long time. These guys have no idea what's coming,

Speaker 8 (01:03:25):
But we got a big match coming up.

Leo Laporte (01:03:26):
This is very much Ted lasso. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:03:29):
Cybersecurity. How many of you have heard of one password? Really? Okay. Well, how many of you have downloaded one password?

Leo Laporte (01:03:42):
They're all raising their hands.

Speaker 8 (01:03:43):
No idea. Whales was so cutting edge.

Leo Laporte (01:03:45):
So

Speaker 8 (01:03:46):
I guess you know that one password completely secures your digital life. Well, I will shove red card so far up your ass. People will think it's your tongue. Now let's talk nighttime skincare routines.

Leo Laporte (01:04:06):
That's that's totally Ted lasso takeoff. Isn't it? That's pretty funny, except he's not nice, except he's not nice. Well, and he's Canadian. Why was he so angry at that guy? With the red card thing? I don't understand that part, but

Alex Lindsay (01:04:19):
I think he had planned to say that he know where to

Leo Laporte (01:04:22):
Yeah, that's right. He had the line. He had to use it. Yeah, he that's probably it. They're they're gonna do a drama series inspired by Fritz Lang's Metro 1927 film metropolis. That sounds, these are all these are all new Apple TV coming out.

Alex Lindsay (01:04:38):
I'm still thinking about the fact that I think that Ronald rein just needs his own channel. I

Leo Laporte (01:04:41):
Just, he does. He's called

Alex Lindsay (01:04:44):
Ryan Reynolds. Yeah. Its just funny.

Leo Laporte (01:04:45):
He's too good. Yeah. A, a limited series Apple describes as an epic thriller set against the world war II. Nancy occupation of Paris could be dark. Julia Benino will be in that as co you're getting good cast. They're get they're well at see. Yeah. Yep. It's exactly what you were saying. Alex having the, having the prestige awards really brings you start getting those

Alex Lindsay (01:05:14):
Awards and it's no longer, you know, just retail content. It becomes like it's, it's a thing. And because the actors wanna feel like they're gonna get a chance to win an Oscar or they're gonna get a chance to win an Emmy or, or something. They, they gotta feel like they're gonna, that this is cause that moves the, you know, they get the charge a lot more like, like an Oscar's worth millions. Yeah. You know, and every time you, you know, every time you do a, a film, so it's, it's a so it's, it's a big deal to win those, those awards for the actors. And, and as a result for the, for the platform. I

Leo Laporte (01:05:43):
Actually think what we're also seeing is that these Sony guys are pros in, you know, it's not any cue. And these Sony guys say, well, we gotta do this. So for instance, there's a food show, a food documentary from Kerry, Joe G Fuga telling the story of humanity through eight defining ingredients. That's kind of classic. I don't know discovery or, or I don't know who does the food, food channel 10 part documentary about the new England Patriots. You know that these are, these are classics that you see on other streaming, big budget.

Rene Ritchie (01:06:15):
BBC, PBS collaboration

Leo Laporte (01:06:18):
Presumed in innocent is an eight episode limited series from the Scott Toro novel of the same name, David E. Kelly, JJ Abrams, executive producers. Pretty good. I, we haven't seen the cast list for that, but Kirsten wig and Laura D are gonna be in a show called Mrs. American pie. Apple studios is pretty this one 10 episode comedy set in the early seventies.

Rene Ritchie (01:06:42):
And if you agree to the casting, Eddie key will turn your iPhone service back on it's Karen PO.

Leo Laporte (01:06:47):
So I'm, this is a long I can go through. Go on and on. This is a long list, a limited series, true crime story about the hunt for John Wilkes booth in the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination may an hunt. This is good. I'm, you know, Apples you know what? It just takes time. Doesn't it, it takes a while to spin up the wheels. There's a George Clooney, Brad Pitt John Watts, film untitled project, a thriller in which two, lone Wolf, fixers, pit, and Clooney get assigned to the same job at outbid. Other major studios and distributors for the film rights, Amber Brown, an unfiltered look at a girl, finding her own voice through art and music and the weight of her parent. Wait, wake of her parents voice that's more classic bunny hunt wrote and directed that. Yo GABA Gabo that we, I remember that one.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:40):
Oh no. Oh no. We escaped that. I

Leo Laporte (01:07:43):
Thought that would it's back baby.

Rene Ritchie (01:07:44):
Talking about the care bears,

Leo Laporte (01:07:45):
A live action. Yo GABA GABA. Oh ghosted, Anna Demus and Chris Evans. All right. Romantic action, adventure fill.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:56):
But this is, this gets back into when people say this, this is the, I mean, when you have to all these actors and all these directors, it's, it's, it's kind of inevitable that, you know, you're not, not gonna keep on, you know, you're gonna only have the biggest films on big theater screens that you're not gonna really go. This

Leo Laporte (01:08:11):
Is, these are, this is a great list. These are movies I would go see in the theater bad monkey and Carl, which is one of my, I love Carl HEAs and one of my favorite novelists that's a Vince Vaughn vehicle and featuring a monkey. There is a monkey Heis and likes having animals in his in his novels, a series on the United Negro league baseball of this is, yeah, I'm excited. This, I think Apple is, is kind of hitting their stride now. Some big name performers, directors, actors, writers. Yeah. And some and awards and awards. Yeah. So congratulations on the Oscar for Koda, which I still haven't seen.

Alex Lindsay (01:08:52):
I, I will say that, I think that Apple should, with all of this con they're creating, I still think that they should tell these, you know, like have the creators do whatever they want to do, but say pick one scene. And we just want that in final cut. You know, we just pick one scene and think, just, just, just grab one, we just wanna do it because, you know, basically releasing, you know, basically taking all this content that they're creating, whether it's to documentaries or other things like that, and, you know, cutting it together, even if they literally did it in avid and then, then recut it in final cut and then release it as a yeah. You know, just release it, you know, for users, it's a, it would, you know, it's a master's course. I mean, when you open up anybody's project files, they've done that with garage band.

Alex Lindsay (01:09:36):
They've done it with they took a Billy Eilish song. I mean, I gotta tell you the Billy Eish song that comes with logic now that is incredible. Like, it's just, it's the breakdown of it is, is amazing to just look what they actually put together there. So, so I think that, oh, I love that. Yeah. Like the whole thing is, is that they're making all this content. They're not saying you have to do all of the scenes that way, or you have to do the whole movie, but used to one so that people can learn a little bit about it. And what it would generate almost immediately is more content about how to do

Leo Laporte (01:10:05):
This thing. Like master has ever

Alex Lindsay (01:10:06):
Been created by the

Leo Laporte (01:10:07):
Way. Well done Samuel Love Jackson sneaking in his mention of masterclass during the Oscar Oscars, it's a tribute to pulp fiction. So IR Thurman Jackson John Travolta come out, they're talking about it. And Samuel Jacksons talking about acting and Travolta says, you should do a, you should teach a class on that. He says, I did on masterclass. It's like, oh yeah, masterclass is going. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:10:33):
Yeah, Everyone everyone's gonna go see it. And of course he makes money on the number of,

Leo Laporte (01:10:40):
But that's an example what you're talking about. I mean, that's a behind the scenes, how they make it, I'd love to see more of that stuff. And Apple could actually do that. It'd be amazing.

Alex Lindsay (01:10:49):
And, and they have the films. I mean, the big thing is the expensive thing is to build. I mean, like, I don't think people understand like how expensive masterclass they shoot masterclass in the stage near me. And it's gorgeous, very near me. And, and they they it's, you know, it's 60, the crew is like 60 people.

Leo Laporte (01:11:06):
It's not like,

Alex Lindsay (01:11:07):
And they're building, they're building the sets from scratch, you know, in a raw stage. I mean, these are not wait a minute. They're not messing around. Wait

Leo Laporte (01:11:12):
A minute. Those aren't shot on location. These are actually all on a sound stage.

Alex Lindsay (01:11:16):
It's all. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:11:17):
Oh man. I

Alex Lindsay (01:11:18):
Don't know if they're, I don't know if they're all that way, but, but definitely there's

Leo Laporte (01:11:22):
Some, I wouldn't be surprised cuz the quality, the lighting and the everything's so perfect. That yeah. Makes sense. You're not gonna it's yeah. You're not gonna take over Steve Martin's apartment and set it all up.

Rene Ritchie (01:11:33):
Especially not how many murders happen in that building. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:11:35):
You know, I don't know. I don't know it for sure. I don't know for sure if that's why they all are, but, but definitely some of them

Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
That makes a lot of sense to be honest. They're too perfect. Yeah. there is one other thing that we didn't mention, which is product placement. Every one of these shows is rife with iPhones and iPads and MacBooks,

Alex Lindsay (01:11:53):
But only the good people.

Leo Laporte (01:11:55):
Yeah, no bad guys. Do they give them windows machines? I didn't see Koto. Is there a bunch they're no. See, they shot that before the Apple involvement. It's only the stuff like Ted lasso that Apple actually produces that has all that stuff. Lassos got a lot of iPhones in it.

Rene Ritchie (01:12:08):
Disney's got a ton of Android.

Leo Laporte (01:12:09):
Do they? It really annoys me billions, which is a show about you know, billionaire hedge fund managers and their shenanigans is all windows it's surface. They even have a surface studio, which I Microsoft has, has sold in years. It's all surfaces everywhere. One of my

Rene Ritchie (01:12:26):
Favorite moments on TV is when Microsoft think this huge deal was CBS. And before that, all these shows were using iPads just cause they were easy to get. And like they did get out the car and type on their iPad. But as soon as the deal was, INED literally in like all these cop shows, they would pull the car over, get out, take out the surface, put it down. Unflip the stand, pull it in Mount it like show off the animations and the, the Villa would be running halfway down the street by then. It was amazing. Oh

Andy Ihnatko (01:12:50):
Yeah. My, my, one of my favorite things about the old show parks and recreation was that they had to do with Microsoft. And that was the only place anywhere in probably in reality, not just, not just media, that you'd find people using actually windows phones because all of them were using windows phones and, and surface tablets. And it's like, okay, maybe that's maybe that's how weird this, this town actually is that they're the, they're the one mutant that actually sees the appeal of a windows phone.

Leo Laporte (01:13:18):
Now I don't think the computers featured in severance are actual Apple products.

Rene Ritchie (01:13:25):
Maybe there's tar one

Leo Laporte (01:13:26):
Could be future Apple products. Yeah. Their green screen actually they're real working computers. Ben Stiller told E news that the prop master old computers and had them rebuilt so that they'd work and they're running actual software so that the actors don't have to kind of pretend. Yeah. The the

Rene Ritchie (01:13:46):
Best thing about that CBS deal though, is that they would always, it was for Ford and for wind for Microsoft. And they would always pause and teach you how the car or the windows phone worked in the middle of he speed chases or criminal investigators. They would give you a lecture about how tiles or how cruise control work. It was amazing integration.

Leo Laporte (01:14:01):
I think that's important

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:02):
Quick go to Bing maps and let us know if there's a restaurant he's probably hanging up there.

Leo Laporte (01:14:07):
Yeah, exactly. But literally

Rene Ritchie (01:14:08):
That.

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. all right. Let's take a little break. More to come. Rene Richie, youtube.com/Rene Richie. What are you working on these days?

Rene Ritchie (01:14:19):
Oh, I just finished all my Mac studio and studio display coverage. And now I'm starting to warm up for WDC in

Leo Laporte (01:14:26):
Case that get announced. Holy imminently. It could be any moment. Keep your eye peeled on your, your inbox. Yes. And

Rene Ritchie (01:14:33):
Apple.com.

Leo Laporte (01:14:34):
Yeah. Andy ACO. Hot spotting today. Not from the library. It's going fine though. It's working well. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:40):
It's fine. Thank you. Thank you. At and T 5g network service. It is long as my battery hand got here. Are

Leo Laporte (01:14:47):
You getting there ultra wide band or just a regular 5g? What are you getting?

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:51):
I'm afraid to touch my phone right now.

Leo Laporte (01:14:53):
Don't don't no,

Andy Ihnatko (01:14:54):
I did. I did do, I did do speed. I did do a speed test and I'm getting like an impressive, like 40 up it, 40 down and like eight or nine or 10 up. Nice. And I haven't paid for any special service. So that's, that's, that's, that's an improvement upon, I won't tell, know what the problem with my my home internet it is now, but I did a speed test when I noticed it going walking and it was somewhere around 1.2 down 0.8 up. That was, yeah. I'm sorry. I will, I will look into this. I will make alternative. Oh, no. About it

Leo Laporte (01:15:28):
Arrangement. It is interesting though, that in many cases now, if, if you are lucky enough to be near a 5g tower, more and more of us are especially the mid mid band, the ultra wide band or ultra capacity is T-Mobile calls and yeah, it's better than home internet for most people. It's hundreds of megabits down and 30 or 40 odd. It's incredible. It's incredible.

Andy Ihnatko (01:15:46):
Yeah. It's I mean, this is why I keep, I keep advising people, writing people that once every year you have to go to your broadband provider and find out like what bro, what great plants are now available, cuz it's possible. You're paying $40 a month. Yeah. For essentially what is now cell phone hotspot speed. And by paying the exact same amount of money, they will switch you to a higher service. It gives you three or four or five times. Yeah, it is that the, the idea of having an the idea of being able to connect a Dropbox faster than you can to like a home server is, oh my goodness, what a wonderful world we live in

Leo Laporte (01:16:23):
W GBH Boston every week. And it's great to have you. And of course, Alex Lindsay, who is the head honcho@officehours.global, going strong 24 7 just amazing. What are you working on? So, so,

Alex Lindsay (01:16:39):
Oh, we have today we talked about iPhone production. So literally how to, how we're using iPhone should iPhone in production and, and all the rigs we're using and how do we get sound into it and how do we, you know, there's a lot of people using those things there. And then tomorrow we break green screen, like how to do it fun you know, like the, the real technology around it. So it's it's a lot of fun. And then we're a lot of us are we, we have a stage that we built. And so a bunch of hooks are jumping in and getting to kind of see behind the scenes of us starting to test some concerts there. So, so it's it's a lot of fun

Leo Laporte (01:17:11):
Right now. Oh, nine oh media is day job. If you wanna stream with the best, our show today brought to you by it pro TV, we talk a lot about the consumer product from it, pro TV. And a lot of you have become it professionals getting those SEARCHs. You need to get first job using it pro TV, but you know, it pro TV has a business product too. That's incredible. Your it team of course, is important to your business. They need the skills and knowledge to make sure your business is safe, secure, successful. And it pro TV has the kinds of courses that your employees, your it department will love 80 more, more than 80% of users who start a video at it, pro TV, finish it because it's engaging. It's fun, it's informative, but it's not a drag. You don't wanna sign them training that you know is they have to go kicking and screaming to it.

Leo Laporte (01:18:03):
Pro TV. They actually look forward to it. All of the courses on it, pro TV are divided up into half hour or less chunks. So you can easily watch it during a lunch break or, you know, send 'em off to take a break and watch a, a, a, a particular chapter. In fact, that's one of the nice things, 5,800 hours of, of programming, more coming all the time. They've got the latest content and you can, they have transcripts. So you can search the transcripts and you can find a particular part with it. Pro TVs business plan. You can actually assign, you know, one chapter say, you need to study up on this, or you can assign a whole course, assign a whole course. They provide training for Microsoft, Cisco Linux, Apple security cloud, also business skills, soft skills, not just not just it stuff.

Leo Laporte (01:18:48):
The tech industry is changing rapidly and your team can't just sit still. They need to add to their skills. Whenever a new software release comes out, a system upgrade whenever there's a new cyber threat facing your business. It pro TVs there with a training you need to take care of business. You can track your T you'll love the dashboard. By the way, you can track your team's results. Manage your seats, assign an unassigned team members, access monthly usage reports. So you'll know they're using those subscriptions. You can see metrics like logins, viewing time tracks completed, and a whole lot more manage teams. There's a subset of you can make at any group of subsets. So it doesn't have to just be this department or that department. You can actually say, you guys have to study this. You have to study that customized assignments.

Leo Laporte (01:19:40):
You get reporting and immediate insights into your team's viewing patterns and progress over any period of time with visual reports that look great, but also inform it's just like it pro TV. It looks great. It's entertaining, but most importantly gives you the information you need to get the search to get re-certified to get the skills that's hands on learning is fantastic. I just, I love it. Pro TV for individuals. And now for business, give your team the it development platform. They need to level up their skills while enjoying the journey for teams of two to 1000 volume discounts. Start at five seats, go to it. Pro TV slash Mac break, and anybody can get a discount right now. If you say Mac break 30, when you sign up, just tell your account executive whisper Mac break 30, and they'll go, Hey, now get 30% off or more on your business plan, as well as your consumer plan Mac break 30 at it pro.tv/mac break.

Leo Laporte (01:20:40):
We've known these guys since they started the business and just very proud of their success. We're glad to have been partnered with 'em all this time. Thank you. It pro TV. Let's see here, there's a class action lawsuit. They may be sending you a check. Apple has agreed to pay $14.8 million to paid tier subscribers to iCloud for breach of, of contract regarding regarding the iCloud service. Apparently I don't does. I wasn't upset, but apparently Apple breached the iCloud terms and conditions by storing iCloud user data using third party servers, rather than their own, maybe. Well, they

Rene Ritchie (01:21:22):
Don't have first party

Leo Laporte (01:21:23):
Servers. Yeah, that's all. Yeah,

Rene Ritchie (01:21:26):
It was all Amazon. It was all Asia and Amazon and

Leo Laporte (01:21:28):
Google. Right, right. Fine. What did you think? What did you care? Anyway? September 16th through 2015 through January 31st, 2016, if you had a subscription to iCloud you're in the class, you don't need to do anything make sure that the email you signed up for iCloud during that time is still active. You will get notification and a check probably for buck 50. I don't. I get so many of those.

Rene Ritchie (01:21:53):
I

Alex Lindsay (01:21:53):
Think it's, I think it's actually because

Rene Ritchie (01:21:55):
Becca's so litigious, I get like 18 cent from the, all the time.

Alex Lindsay (01:21:58):
I it's such a racket by their lawyer. The lawyers like this whole thing is in racket. We all get each and they get, they get 40%. Right. You know, so, so that's how this all works. So, so it's, it's, it's just a racket.

Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
Keep an eye on your email. If you were using iCloud, that's pretty early.

Alex Lindsay (01:22:14):
I got it. I'm gonna get $2 and 83 cents. I mean, I can almost buy a cappuccino with that.

Leo Laporte (01:22:21):
You will get more, the more you subscribe to Apple should have mentioned that

Alex Lindsay (01:22:26):
Can buy a cappuccino in ads, buy cappuccino.

Leo Laporte (01:22:28):
Yeah. In the ads they should. I said, Hey, get the higher tier. Cuz when we do settle a lawsuit in 20 years, you're gonna get more money. Yex Yex the Russian Google is apparently harvesting data from millions of IO apps, iOS apps and sending 'em to Russia, whether or not you use the company's apps, your data. This is from nine to five Mac financial times article a security researcher discovered the code, which sends data to Russia. And Ft says it's independently verified. The claims Russia's biggest internet company has embedded code in the apps found on mobile devices. Zach Edwards first made the discovery as part of an app auditing campaign for the me to be Alliance and nonprofit Ft had four independent experts. They ran tests. Same thing. I wish there were a list here among the apps. So this was a service called app Metrica so that, you know, that's an easy sell to some app developers. Hey, you wanna know how your users are using it. You've seen the checkbox send information back to the developer among the apps of the app metric Metrica installed or games, messaging, apps, location, sharing tools, hundreds of virtual private networks, seven VPNs are made specifically for a Ukrainian audience. That may be really why they want this right. Hundreds of millions of installs of the APPA SDK, according to app figures. So I don't, I don't know what to say about that.

Andy Ihnatko (01:24:06):
Yeah. It's it's just hard to know. It's it's, it's a lot, it's a lot like when you hear reports, but Ooh, this is sending you information back to China. This is right. Sending information back to you. Yeah. But there, there are private corporations in China just like their private corporations in the United States that like to monetize all, all kinds of data. Obviously the fact that of what's going on in Russia and the fact there are laws that say that, Hey, if you've got da, if you collected data we, the government have a right to get to get at that data as well. Makes things a little bit scary. But this in and of itself, isn't a big problem. If anything, it just highlights the fact that so there's so much embedded in all the apps and all the services that we do. We use that it's impossible to know where our data is going on, who it's being exploited by.

Leo Laporte (01:24:48):
Well, we finally reached 50 million euros Apples paid its last payment to the Netherlands regulators for as Tim

Alex Lindsay (01:24:59):
Cook, Tim cook flicks the dollars off of the outside of the roll here, here, kid

Andy Ihnatko (01:25:05):
Here. No more of this. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
Yeah, that's the whole dog, dog beer

Andy Ihnatko (01:25:10):
Steak, steak, classy Apple

Leo Laporte (01:25:13):
The authority for consumers and markets. The Dutch regulator has a new proposal from Apple, which they say should result in definitive conditions for dating Apple providers. Something that we all care about. Love it. 

Speaker 9 (01:25:27):
This is dating apps and every time, every time it comes up, I'm just like,

Leo Laporte (01:25:30):
Really? But this is, this is what we ACM says. Apple could face further penalties if they the revised offer is ultimately deemed unacceptable. The ACM says, and I don't know how to do a Dutch accent. So don't worry. You're safe. ACM welcomes. Apple's current step. The adjusted proposal should result in definitive conditions for dating app providers that wish to use the app store. I thank you for not just doing gold member. We all appreciate it. So Apple has paid the maximum penalty of 10 payments of 5 million euros. Each. I hope they got a toaster or something. Are

Rene Ritchie (01:26:06):
They gonna just hope they sent them price of iPhones in, in the Netherlands to compensate

Alex Lindsay (01:26:11):
For this? I think they should have sent, sent it in Penn's

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
Now I didn't retracted

Alex Lindsay (01:26:15):
Trailer. Here's 5 million in

Leo Laporte (01:26:16):
Pennies. I didn't bring this rumor up as a lead story. Although some might say, oh, you missed the lead mark Herman's power on newsletter said Apple is working on a hardware subscription service for iPhones. And the only reason I don't know what this story means is they already kind of offer yeah. A payment plan that you get the new iPhone every year. That's a

Rene Ritchie (01:26:37):
Leasing pen. This is a rental plan. Like right now you can lease your iPhone. Now that you'll be able to rent it as well.

Leo Laporte (01:26:41):
What does that, what? Huh? How's that different? I pay 'em a monthly fee and I get a phone, but you don't

Rene Ritchie (01:26:47):
Get to own it at the end.

Leo Laporte (01:26:49):
Oh, well in either case, right?

Alex Lindsay (01:26:52):
Which means you pay a subscription and then what, what

Leo Laporte (01:26:55):
Is this rent to own? No, it's just rent to rent. No. Okay.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:58):
Right. I just swap it out every month. Every year you get a new one, but that's the same. It comes. It is if you, but you can lease it. And then at the end, pay it off. Oh. You know, and, but this one is, you're never gonna have that.

Leo Laporte (01:27:09):
There's no, there's no payoff at the end. That's the only difference.

Andy Ihnatko (01:27:13):
Yeah. But it's a big, it's a, it's a big difference for I'm sorry about this again. Latency's killing us. But it's a big difference from in terms of how Apple explains itself to to shareholders that the problem with buying a phone is that a lot of people will think that even if you're paying 'em in installments that, Hey, I've got my phone. Hey, it works great. Hey, I have no need to upgrade. Thank you, Apple. I'm not sending you any more money month after a month. If you turn into a service, essentially, you're essentially you, the relationship is that this is a subscription where every month on the, on, on the first of the month, every single month, I'm going to be sending you $48 and that's gonna be going on forever without any end insight. And that's a much more much more reliable way of generating revenue. Plus at some point they swap out the phone, you get the phone back, you can turn that back into you can turn the hardware into a different channel. So again, but, but mostly it's about making sure there's a steady metronome of every single user is always giving me a certain amount of money every single month ad nausea for 10 years necessary.

Leo Laporte (01:28:13):
We should say that Apple has not announced this. This is what the rumor rumor right plan would be.

Alex Lindsay (01:28:19):
Well, it's also much simpler to do things like roll in a general rental that is you know, roll a general rental. That is includes all of your Apple services. Along with the hardware. There can just be one big, as Andy said, $48 or $46 or $52 or whatever that you're paying a month and you're getting your Apple TV plus you're getting your new, you know, all, everything is all coming in that one rollout. In fact. Yeah, that be

Leo Laporte (01:28:44):
Interesting. So one flat fee for the whole

Alex Lindsay (01:28:47):
Shang. Yeah. You just, you just get one, one check for, for all of that stuff plus whatever other, and then I think that, I think that with all the European EU stuff, and depending on how the laws are written, you could see Apple putting in, you don't have to install it, but you can sign up and get basically a lot more core apps, you know, where they just start basically doing Apple arcade for apps, you know, and then, and then all of that. And then all of that's rolled into one big.

Leo Laporte (01:29:11):
So essentially right now, it's it's really an Amor amortized lease. They do it through citizen one. They, they divide a price of the phone by 12 or 24 months. And that's what you pay per month. Garman says it would be a, yet to be determined monthly fee for this rental program. That depends on which device the user chooses. The company has discussed, allowing users of the program to swap out the devices for new models when fresh hardware comes out, that's something you do get with the Apple upgrade plan, right? So I'm very, I think this is confusing. And would it be lower monthly cost or higher?

Alex Lindsay (01:29:50):
I think it could, if you did lower, it would be lower than the lease because it's all bundled with a whole bunch of things. So youre getting a whole, the value would be much higher for what happens. If

Leo Laporte (01:29:58):
You destroy the phone,

Rene Ritchie (01:30:00):
You get a nice bill,

Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
You pay for the phone out right. Fully.

Rene Ritchie (01:30:04):
Yeah. It's like if you break any rental thing, but it's a very like, well, one thing is that a lot of these are us only. So like you have to constrain yourself to that market. But then the media, as soon as Apple announced Apple, one, a lot of media outlets were like, well, why, why can't you get an iPhone with this that makes total sense. This bundle in the iPhone, then it's really an Apple one program. And then Google either announced, or it was leaked. The they're announcing I'm fuzzy on the details, a similar rental program. And so this is something the market has really wanted Apple to do because they want money, basically more of our money, all of it.

Alex Lindsay (01:30:33):
Well, it's just much more stable. Who

Leo Laporte (01:30:35):
Would somebody wants a lower monthly payment is that who

Alex Lindsay (01:30:38):
Would want, and it's simplicity, you'll get all the services from or less money. But the, but the company has gets way more stable of much more stable income than trying to, to make that work. Cause you just know how many phones you need to make you, you know, how many things you need to do. You have your, your ability, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's the subscriptions always better for the company, but you can also, if you, if you, these are all digital products and so you can start lowering prices a fair bit you know, it's, it's all a little bit made up. And so, so you can not all, I mean, there is some costs, but not nearly what, what, what we're getting charged most of the time. And so, so Apple can, you know, bundle all, you can keep bundling into this thing where you're, and it's a, it's a really nice business model because the chances of someone leaving in it's you become lower and lower.

Rene Ritchie (01:31:25):
Yeah. Yeah. It's good for stickiness.

Alex Lindsay (01:31:27):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:31:28):
All right. I, I I'm, I don't understand, but I'm sure we all be electrics.

Rene Ritchie (01:31:35):
Don't buy, they don't buy houses. They don't buy cars. They wanna rent everything. If you could do an Apple share program where you would tap it. No, you can't tap. Cause you don't have an iPhone, but you would, you'd hit something in the iPhone show up for the long period of time you needed it. Then it would go to somebody else. They do

Leo Laporte (01:31:47):
That too. Apple makes

Rene Ritchie (01:31:48):
More

Leo Laporte (01:31:48):
Money if you pay less per month. How?

Alex Lindsay (01:31:53):
Because it's yeah. You're well, the other thing is, is that it's just it's stable income. It, it means that you're, it's

Leo Laporte (01:31:59):
An accounting thing. They prefer it's accounting. They prefer it that way. They

Alex Lindsay (01:32:03):
Well not. They will make the thing is, is that more and more people will, as more and more people buy into it, the lock in is intense. Like it's, you know, like you're now don't

Leo Laporte (01:32:14):
Because you just is, it are you month to month, maybe you're not month. Well, all your

Rene Ritchie (01:32:17):
Services are tied it in. And then they resell, you get the new one, they resell the other one in the third Mar in the emerging markets, which is gangbuster business for them as well.

Alex Lindsay (01:32:26):
And, and you know, and then also it, it, when you get, when you make this transitory, this is where all of these things in the app store become re that's. The friction is that now you have to re reregister for all those things and Resig in and everything else. And that'll, that'll have a downward, both. It'll be both, you know, and especially if you have a rental where you're just changing them out the, the apps that you, you only, you'll only stick with the apps that, that are outside the app store one year. Cause as soon as you have to do it, you have to do the update. You'll be like, do I really need CNN? Plus, you know,

Leo Laporte (01:32:57):
I fix it finally has to down the Mac studio, we saw Mac Mac text, a max text tear down on YouTube. But this is the more kind of formal thing. And one of the things that max text tear down raised this issue of these additional slots in the Mac studio logic board that looked like they were for additional storage cards. I fix it, did a quote, a lot of testing. We popped this stick into another base model Mac studio's empty slot, but you kept getting DFU, restore errors. No matter the configuration, we haven't got two base model drives to boots simultaneously in a single machine. There was one thing they could do when we swapped the spare studios drive for the one in the tear down unit and used configurator to do a DFU restore at work. That's what you were saying. Or somebody was saying maybe it was doc rock that, that signs the storage and says now, oh yeah. It's it's mine. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (01:34:01):
Apples go convenience.

Leo Laporte (01:34:02):
Yeah, we were saying that last week. Yeah. you

Andy Ihnatko (01:34:05):
Can't have someone be able to take a, take a storage drive out of one machine, put it another and get access to all your data. So that's why that's all loved.

Leo Laporte (01:34:11):
Right? Well, that, that would be nice if a machine dies and you could take the cart out and, and save it as you can with a PC, but then

Rene Ritchie (01:34:17):
The five I's love that Toolio.

Leo Laporte (01:34:20):
Well, just take this drive. Thank you. You can keep, keep it to computer. Yeah. Storage swaps are possible between two drives of the same size. The jury's still had an upgrade, says I fix it. Perhaps a software update will make the spare slot worthwhile, but right now it's

Rene Ritchie (01:34:33):
Not. And one thing to point out is that the, the reason that they're often solid sold welded, whatever onto the boards in mobile devices is because one of the most common tech support issues Apple faced was people just unseating them over normal course of business, like dropping them or banging them around in their bags would become unseated. And that would be a tech support incident. So just welding them in was fine. And because those products are so much more popular than max keeping all those skews around is not a problem. This is a very small batch product for Apple is designed for enthusiasts. So this lets them assemble SKUs on the fly. Like if you want four terabytes or eight terabytes, they can just pop that in, send the model out and not have to make a separate version of the board for every SKU. So it's it's for their efficiency, not for our configurability.

Leo Laporte (01:35:11):
They did do a very clean, nice picture of the logic board and the chip. They didn't get an ultra. They only got a max. So I, what, so this, this is different. They took the plastic, I guess, off the dye. Right? Is that what happened there? Yeah. And so now these are the, these are the Rams, these black squares or other, or the AALU or whatever they call. And then this is the chip in here. The, the, in this case, the max big old fan, by the way. Yeah. They call it a fan or quad cop. It's max, he carrier hell carrier dual fan assembly. I have to say, I am so impressed with my max studios. At least a, as I said, Lisa has the ultra, I have the max fans on all the time, but it's very, it's so quiet. You don't hear it. And never gets hot. Never gets warm. Never no thermal problems. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (01:36:06):
They're messing with your mind. They have like a bunch of different fans that are going at different frequencies that are hard for humans to hear and when, and it doesn't let them combine up to make a louder frequency, either

Leo Laporte (01:36:14):
It,

Rene Ritchie (01:36:15):
A lot of shaping on that kind of stuff. Yeah. That whole audio lab. Fantastic. Ever since they got that audio lab set up, they do things like they, they, they try to figure out using machine learning where your ear is when you hold the, the thing up. And they do all sorts of different kind of advanced sound design.

Leo Laporte (01:36:29):
Yeah. Six to 10 on the repairability scale, mostly because it's a system on a chip, so you can't upgrade the Ram. And and the fans they said are buried and the storage being non upgradable. So but that six to 10 is actually pretty good. I, I mean, I, I didn't expect more than that.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:48):
I just, I just wish that the fans were easier to clean the fact that they've got. So the fact that half of that, of that volume is just fans. And the fact that these fans are on almost all the time shows you how important. And it is that these things work and work just spec. True. And the thing is, if you don't that that is regular routine period maintenance, every three to four months, open up the case, run a vacuum in there, get rid of all the dusts accumulated in there. So if that becomes a problem, I shouldn't have to go back to the Apple store every time, every, just to show people that get

Rene Ritchie (01:37:18):
Call Kyle over.

Leo Laporte (01:37:19):
Here's what the studio display looks like when you open it up. Oh, it also has, these are two big fans. And you know that because the, I just like the studio computer, the display is always a fan is always on and blown. The led

Rene Ritchie (01:37:33):
Back panel is hot.

Leo Laporte (01:37:34):
Is it? Yeah. they also took a look at wow, this is, this is really cool. I mean, this a, this is a computer. It's not just a display.

Rene Ritchie (01:37:43):
I'm kind of sad. There's no wifi. One of my, one of my dreams with this product is like the Apple did, Apple's done something like really unusual AirPods have gotten feature upgrades year after year, they got spatial audio. They got conversation boost. They're getting new features at every WWDC, like their computers because they are, and this has an, a 13 in it. So I was hoping like, maybe they'll get stereo pairing for people who have two of them. But if they had, if they had wifi in this like Apple CRA's wifi into everything they could announce, Hey, we're adding built-in airplay and sidecar to the Apple studio display. So that if you, and it's set up on your Mac studio, but you just wanna use it for a few seconds with your MacBook, you don't have to move any cables. You can just take it over. I think that would be great. So I'm hoping that maybe they'll they'll address that in the future.

Alex Lindsay (01:38:25):
Well, even, even a picture and picture that belongs inside of the, the display that is playing something that you wanna watch. But you can keep on working and you're not worried about the two of them come kind of interacting with each other. You know? I think that that's interesting.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:39):
Yeah. I, I think it would be just as interesting if the power cord were removable. Oh my God. I, I didn't, you know, I never, it never,

Leo Laporte (01:38:46):
It is removable, but you need a special tool. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:49):
You

Rene Ritchie (01:38:49):
Need to pull like your line.

Andy Ihnatko (01:38:51):
Yeah. It's it's like, I, I, I don't think anybody would ever imagine that this thing anyway. I, I, I don't, I dunno how to explain it. I wish I hope that they have a really good explanation of why they weren't unable to put in something that makes it a obvious, as thing is removable on its own. And B to make sure that if I, if I get a problem with a plug end of it, that I don't, again, I don't have to make a service call in order to get this fixed. It's such a

Rene Ritchie (01:39:16):
Weird, so I have that, but you may not like it. Like I have the explanation, but you may not like it. So it's, it's a couple things. It's all design is compromised and everything is a trade off, and this is what they were coming up against. They wanted to make it thin. They wanted to make it with Apples aesthetic, but you can't do mag safe. Like you do on the iMac, unless you have a power brick and they didn't wanna put a power brick on it. So they put a power brick on it. They could do mag safe, and then nobody have a problem with it. Even though mag safe is also proprietary. So it's weird. People yell about the cable, but still want mag safe, not Andy, but like there were people on the internet yelling that they would rather have mag safe, even though that's still proprietary, but then it's so shallow. Like they can't put a normal plug in there. So they designed this very shallow plug in there, but it's incredibly fragile. And they figured if it was too easy to remove, ah, there's no intent buy on. People would just pop it off and on and they would inevitably break it and then require a service

Leo Laporte (01:40:01):
Incident. I get, that's fine. I get

Rene Ritchie (01:40:03):
Space for those plugs.

Leo Laporte (01:40:04):
It. Wasn't just, you know, there's a reason for it. That's fine. Is that,

Rene Ritchie (01:40:10):
You know what I taking the power brick.

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:11):
Well, I, I agree. I would take the power to, but do they communicate that, look, don't keep put on this. You're going to break it. No, they

Leo Laporte (01:40:19):
Don't.

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:21):
Should you have to minus

Rene Ritchie (01:40:22):
Almost breaks it. Yeah,

Andy Ihnatko (01:40:23):
Exactly. I, I saw it and I'm like, okay. I, I, I love the way that that LTT does videos cuz they, they really do play the role of the, of the user and all of this. They don't just, they don't just get a brief and say, oh, well I, we, we were told this, no, they actually do. They, you, you do, you look at this and do you think to yourself, this looks like it's supposed to be removable. Maybe I'm just not pulling hard enough. Or does it communicate either by language or by fitting that no, don't keep pulling on this. You will break it really. It wasn't until I saw someone put on thing, averse their own version of that removal tool that I've figured out that I feel as though I understood exactly how this is supposed to work. Cause a power cord is a very, very easy thing to break. And what a, what a slap in the face it would be if it became a very difficult thing to to, to replace. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:41:09):
Here is a, here he is pulling at, there is a web page watch don't don't hilarious, disconnected, but he, he pulls it out. It is look how, look how shallow it is. Look how short it is.

Rene Ritchie (01:41:25):
And I like his too. He gets bonus points by the Canadian too.

Leo Laporte (01:41:28):
Nice to dude. Nice to all right. Yeah. He's brave. He's a brave man, but obviously makes enough money on LTT to to pay for breaking. Well, it was,

Rene Ritchie (01:41:38):
It was hilarious because he was ranting about how it wasn't removable and then they saw Neely's tweet cuz Neely just pulled it like someone asked and Neely's like, yeah, ha LA and showed the picture of it and they couldn't figure it out. So we went and made them go find the, the studio on his play and bring it down. Oh God. And then he couldn't get it out. And then they looked, they thought Neil like maybe had a, an engineering sample and not a real one. So he pulled harder and then it finally came out.

Alex Lindsay (01:41:59):
I mean,

Rene Ritchie (01:42:00):
Anything exist.

Alex Lindsay (01:42:01):
I mean anything's removable with enough force.

Leo Laporte (01:42:03):
Yes. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:42:04):
It's the

Rene Ritchie (01:42:05):
It's replaceable. That's the problem. Exactly.

Alex Lindsay (01:42:08):
Whether you put it or

Andy Ihnatko (01:42:10):
Anything. Exactly. Anything's removable once. Just like just like every all could be folded once.

Rene Ritchie (01:42:15):
Yes. It's whether it's foldable or not. That matters

Leo Laporte (01:42:18):
Here is x-ray from creative electron via I fix it of the Mac studio. I always like these. They make nice wallpaper. Yeah. And oops. I zoomed in a little too far. And then here is the the fan assembly, the side view of the fan assembly. Yeah. It'd be nice. It's drone,

Rene Ritchie (01:42:35):
Doesn't it?

Leo Laporte (01:42:36):
Yeah. It's pretty cool looking it. What, what really blows me away is that it's just this middle thin layer. That's the whole computer, you know, 90% of the volume is dedicated to power supply fans

Rene Ritchie (01:42:49):
Putting an M one into an Apple keyboard is so interesting because basically you have the Apple two all over again, but in a tiny little keyboard.

Leo Laporte (01:42:55):
Yeah. And Apple ID or your driver's license as an Apple wallet has finally launched in the first state Arizona. There are other states who have said, we're gonna do it, Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and, and the port territory, Puerto Rico. You can use this at a TSA checkpoint in some airports, not all yet. It tells you, I like this. What information is passed off when you do the touch to pay or touch to ID, I guess it would be called. So you know what, what they're getting and it I've heard that ultimately you'll be able to choose what they get. TSA wants it all probably. So you can use it at Phoenix's sky Harbor airport. I presume law enforcement in Arizona has been notified.

Rene Ritchie (01:43:47):
Oh yeah. Nothing bad's gonna happen in Arizona. No, no, no,

Leo Laporte (01:43:51):
No. Sheriff they said I could use my phone,

Rene Ritchie (01:43:56):
Got the car. I said, get outta the car.

Leo Laporte (01:43:58):
Yeah. Arizonans can add their driver's license or state ID to the wallet and then tap their iPhone or Apple watch to present your ID at a select TSA security checkpoints.

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:10):
Yeah. No, that's a, that, that's a part of the good thing about that is that you don't have to, you don't have to seed control of the object in order to give this person what they, what they're demanding. So this would be a terrible thing if they, if you had to hand over your phone for the person to, to, to put into a reader because that essentially you've, you've consented to a lot of things by consenting you to hand over a phone by, by keeping this in your hand and just allowing them to read it with a device, it will, you can control that. They only get to see the things that you're permitting them to see love that. So in the case, in the case of a traffic stop, that's, that's one thing, but it also means that when you try to get into a, a club that serves alcohol, you can essentially give them that you're over 21 without giving them a card that says, here's my, here's my address. Here's my data. Excuse me, here's my address. Here's my full name. Here's a whole bunch of other things. It's, it's the idea of only giving the agent exactly the amount, the, the amount of information that they require to do their job and not allowing them to exploit it by having access to I that's this great. I'll just take your phone back to my squad car. I'll be back in eight minutes, depending on how long the cable, depending on what cable I find in the here's,

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
Here's what it looks like using your watch at a TSA checkpoint you tap it to the NFC, then you double click and then it's done now out. The Apple press release does not mention anybody, but the TSA. So I'm thinking if you're in Arizona, you might want to carry your driver's license with when you drive. I don't, I

Rene Ritchie (01:45:43):
Would also make sure that flappy bird was still on there. So if they did take my phone, there was something them for them to do without like, why you take us so long? No reason.

Leo Laporte (01:45:51):
I can't imagine that they were gonna every trooper with a handheld card reader device, but maybe that's the plan. I don't know. That seems unlikely. I think that's probably why it's

Rene Ritchie (01:46:02):
Illegal Canadians and they'll leap on it.

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:05):
Yeah, well

Leo Laporte (01:46:06):
They could have the phone. You're right. John, maybe that's why they've added that, that when they added that pay to pay on a phone, they added that as well. That's interesting.

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:14):
It, it, this is gonna be a difficulty that we're gonna might that as a country, we might have to kind of address the problem is that for, for, for traditional reasons, the federal government can't demand that here's what your state, what your state ID has to do. They can, they, they have guidelines. Excuse me, for, for digital, for digital, I, they have issued guidelines as to here's what here here's, here's what we would re we would believe to be a secure and proper amount of technology to put into a digital ID system. However, it's not as though there can be a federal, a federal ID that everybody complies to. So essentially every single state is coming up with their own solutions, which is why a company like Apple can add a lot of value here by saying, well, we have a solution that falls federal guidelines. That is also very future looking. That is also very privacy oriented that you don't really have to spend a eight years on a fact fighting Mr. To figure this out. So it's it's but it's gonna be difficult when you have like a, an Android standard. When you have an Apple standard, when you have a Garmin watch standard, we might exactly, we, we, we might have to figure out a whole bunch of stuff in order to make this really work the way that have to pay works.

Leo Laporte (01:47:28):
All right, gentlemen, get your picks ready? Cuz picks of the week coming up next. I

Rene Ritchie (01:47:32):
Just had one last little thing to feel. Yes. Cause like one thing that you find immediately with all of this is that when you see people discussing this online, and this is a surprise to nobody here, but it's amazing how many people don't understand that bills of rights and laws and things like that. Very country to country, but also don't mean what TWiTtter hot takes really say. They mean like, like whether there was freedom was speech or licenses or all of these things, it's like, you actually have to go and look at them. So like, like do what Andy suggested and go like look at the different states and look at the different countries even because you'd be surprised, you know, how functional democracies exist in many weird and wonderful ways.

Leo Laporte (01:48:05):
I've heard there's a country called Canada, a, a fable land north of the 49th parallel. That is Canada. Freedom states. Belgium

Rene Ritchie (01:48:12):
Has freedom,

Leo Laporte (01:48:15):
But Belgium doesn't have Putin. So no,

Alex Lindsay (01:48:18):
I hear someday. They're gonna, I always, every time when I think about that, I was like, I always hear that some someday Canada's going, going to invade us and then we'll all be sorry,

Leo Laporte (01:48:27):
But the bureau,

Rene Ritchie (01:48:28):
We have waters other way around. Yeah. Water. You can definitely invade us. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:48:32):
Exactly.

Rene Ritchie (01:48:33):
I shouldn't have said that.

Leo Laporte (01:48:35):
Get your picks ready picks of the week coming up first. I wanna tell you how well I slept last night, I put this eight sleep thing. Kevin Rose told me about this. Amy Webb and Kevin Rose on a, a TWiTtch show together. Amy bought it. She said, Leo, you gotta get this. It's the best sleep we've ever had. Eight sleep is a breakthrough. I think it's amazing. And one of the biggest problems people have with sleep is temperature, right? Sleeping too hot, too cold eight sleep solves this. We have an eight sleep pod pro cover. You can also get a pod pro mattress. The cover went right for our mattress. And then it is a very advanced solution that pairs not only heating. So your bed is nice and cozy. For instance, when you get in bed, but dynamic cooling and it does it with biometric tracking.

Leo Laporte (01:49:26):
So it can go as cool as 55 degrees. This is Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees and you get to choose, but it also will monitor your sleep and adjust it accordingly. The temperature of the cover adjusts two sides, by the way, Lisa likes to sleep hotter than I do. And it does it based on your sleep stages on biometrics, the bedroom temperature, it reacts intelligently to create the optimal sleeping environment. And somebody explained it to me this way. You know, our bodies are built for an earlier time when we were sleeping in a perhaps less civilized environment where maybe it was warmer when you went to a bed and the fire had, we just put out, but it got colder as the night went by your body expects that. And then, you know, you wake up and you wanna warm it up again.

Leo Laporte (01:50:16):
And that's how I have my eight sleep set by the way. And probably most of you will. So it starts nice and cozy. I get in and it's very comfortable. Lisa always loves that feeling. She gets in beding oh, it's warm. It's nice. Oh it, oh good. Now she likes to keep it pretty warm. I let it cool off as the night goes by and I notice I do sleep much more deeply and then it's set to wake me by warming up. Now this is the thing I like the best, cuz I don't know about you with the worst thing in the winter. The worst thing my whole life is getting outta bed. You're nice and cozy in bed and it's freezing out or worse. The covers have fallen off overnight and you're freezing in bed. I love this. It puts you to sleep in record time.

Leo Laporte (01:50:56):
It keeps you asleep and then you wake up naturally. At the time you said it's the pod pro cover. It's eight sleep. I want say the name again. I haven't said it enough. Eight is spelled out E I G H T. It is the most advanced solution on the market for Thermo regulation. And it really, really works. Reduce sleep interruptions by 40% and overall get more restful sleep. You will wake up feeling incredible, ready for, you know, any, anything that might come along during the day it's vital for physical recovery, hormone regulation, mental clarity show up as the best partner, parent or, or version of yourself powered by eight sleep. I am totally a believer. Amy Webb and Kevin Rose convinced me once we got him. We've had it now for some months. I it's amazing. It's so nice. Oh, see Leo LePort approved. It's all done.

Leo Laporte (01:51:55):
Kind of automatically, which is really nice. You know, I, I know when I get in bed, it's gonna be warm and it's gonna cool off and it's gonna get warm again in the morning. That's how I have it said eight sleep.com/mac break. You'll save 150 a checkout when you get the pod pro cover eight sleep currently ships within the us, Canada and the UK, us Canada and UK eight sleep.com/mac break. You know, good night's sleep is the holy grail. I will do O almost anything to sleep better. And as you get older, you sleep gets lighter. Your sleep is not as good. This has made a big difference for both me and, and Lisa. And she's not as old as I am, but she loves it. She's got a, she's got a, a sore muscle. 

Rene Ritchie (01:52:45):
She exercises too much, I think on her, on her, on her side. And, but this it's like having a little heating pad on. It's just really nice. It's really wonderful aid, sleep.com/mac break. Thank them so much for their support of MacBreak Weekly, the dark tipper approves. That's right. Mike, you have one too. I didn't know that Micah says he's a believer too. Nice. Very nice. All right. Pick of the week, 10, let's start with Rene. So just because the world is so silly right now, I wanted to pick something that was just so much fun, a lot of fun. And I realize people are probably really familiar with this already, but in case you aren't, it is so worth a few minutes of your time. I'm talking about Montreal YouTuber, Ryan, George, who you might know from doing all the screen rant pitch, meeting videos, where he shows that you don't need a lot of fancy equipment or anything. Just, yeah, just, I'm gonna stop talking for a second. Can you start that one over? Should I, should I turn on the audio? This is Superman does. Good. Oh, it's short. Hey

Speaker 10 (01:53:42):
Clark. Kent. Good morning. How you doing? Oh, I'm I'm doing good. Actually. Superman does good. You're doing well.

Rene Ritchie (01:53:57):
I bet you Superman's tempted to do that. So everything is like, these are like, almost like tos they're short. Well, he did this a long time ago before tick TikTok and most of videos are long. Now they're four minutes to six minutes. Okay. And he does them. There's a new screen rant channel that just debuted where they moved. His pitch meetings off to and pitch meeting is famous. It's like he goes into pitch, a movie that we've all seen and he tears the movie apart in the funniest way imaginable by being the writer, who's pitching it to the studio guy. And the writer is every worst cliche about writers, the studio guy, every worst cliche about studio guys. And he plays both parts on two different green screens. So you really don't have to have a lot of equipment to do this. And he is famous.

Rene Ritchie (01:54:35):
He's like pitching game of throne, season eight. And he's like, she goes away on a horse and then comes back on foot. What, what about the horse? We forgot about the horse. It was a very forgettable horse. And he goes through bit by bit, all these things. Is he a comic? He's he a comic first? Yes. Okay. Yeah. He's a comic and he does sketches and like, he'll always, they get millions of views on screen ramp, but he has his own channel and he's famous for doing like the first guy ever to commit a crime or the first guy ever to be arrested. And the cop will come in and say, we decided to put you in this room for several years. We decided, and they just try to figure out what's what's going on. But it's he works with Julie Milky, sometimes another famous sketch artist, but they're just, they make you laugh.

Rene Ritchie (01:55:13):
They they're they're we need this very, yeah, we need this. And he he's gotten to a million subscribers. I mean, his channel is really well known, but in case you just need a little bit of sunshine in your day, Ryan, George, Ryan, George, I, if you could just show like a few seconds of the other one, I think people will get which one crew driver? Like two, which one? No, in the, in the Google doc. Oh, okay. I put one of the screen ran one videos in there as well. Yeah. Yeah. Let me show it. Here we go. This is a game of throne, season eight pitch meeting.

Speaker 10 (01:55:40):
So you have game of throne, season eight for me. Yes, sir. I do. And I really want this to be over. So can we speed this pitch meeting up please? Oh, I mean, we literally just started, well, I'm in a rush, so, you know, let's get cracking. I mean, okay. So anyway, the first two episodes are gonna be people kind of meeting and reuniting and winter fell. You know, Aria's gonna sleep with GRE. Oh. Having seen her grow up on the show that makes me extremely uncomfortable. Is she 18? But certainly what people are gonna Google, but yes, she is Jakes. Okay. And then episode three is gonna be when the night king in his army are gonna arrive in Winterfell. Oh my God. The moment we've been building towards for eight seasons. Yeah. So Brian reveals that the night king wants him, cuz he's kinda like the memory of west rose. Oh, why? Because that's his motivation. Well, okay then. So then the Draki charge the dead army. You pretty much get

Rene Ritchie (01:56:24):
One. I'm

Leo Laporte (01:56:24):
Getting a little bit of PTSD reliving season eight. So I'm gonna stop right now.

Rene Ritchie (01:56:28):
Well, that's the whole point. Yeah. That's all. Yeah, but he he's and the movies that you hate, he justifies why you hate those movies, but the movies that you love, he tear like he'll, he'll tear apart like the original star wars and you have to agree with them and you're laughing along with them, even though you don't care, you love it anyway. But you like, he gets you to acknowledge that a lot of this stuff is subjective and you can love bad movies. You can hate good movies. It's all good. It's

Leo Laporte (01:56:48):
Fine. That's from the screen range ran channel, which has eight and a half million subscribers. So yeah. But there are other people on screen rant or

Rene Ritchie (01:56:56):
Yeah. So they just move that over to a new channel called pitch meeting. So all the new pitch meetings you can pitch

Leo Laporte (01:57:00):
Channel. Oh nice. Yeah. Good pitch. Thank you, Rene, Andy and ACO. Just make us laugh. Pick. Yeah. We need to laugh pick of the week.

Andy Ihnatko (01:57:09):
Big update to one of the, one of IOS's best apps Marco arm podcast catcher. Which sorry. I almost, I almost almost lost the thing there. Sorry. yeah. Over Catt, which, which, which essentially Marco, what I love about Marco Armen as a developer is that he has a unique and a specific point of view. He makes something because he feels as though this thing needs to be made.

Leo Laporte (01:57:35):
I do like points of view. I agree. Exactly. I

Andy Ihnatko (01:57:38):
Agree. And, and, and that was absolutely demonstrative when the first version of overcast came out. I don't think, I don't think there was any other podcast catcher that really put so much emphasis on the act of listening to a podcast. It was so many podcast, catchers were just very, very technical. And this is, he just released what he Def he said is the biggest visual at least update to the thing. In, in eight years, he totally rethought what the visual interface should be like. And it is much, much pretier. It is much less minimalist. I think when it first came out, it was very much an Iowa seven aesthetic, which is anything that you catches your eye, remove it because it's catching your eye. And but the, the two big things I really love about it is that although I've always loved the playback features of overcast, the only thing I did about it is that sometimes it wasn't as great at managing these you've, you've got subscriptions to 40 50 podcasts of which maybe there are three today.

Andy Ihnatko (01:58:35):
You wanna take a look at, and sometimes it didn't make it as easy as it could to identify those podcasts that, Hey, this is I I'm gonna be going for an hour long walk. Here's the show that I wanna, I wanna listen to right now. So it makes it much, much easier to discover the ones that here are new podcast. Here's the new ones that came out today. Here are the ones that you were recently listening to that maybe you abandoned in the middle. And if you have a playlist of specific podcasts that you use for the morning drive, you, you can put those playlists just front and center. First, first order of retrievability on the user interface. And also he added something that was very, very basic, I thought, which is simply to say, just mark something as red or mark, something as listening, listened to, and basically remove it from my, my consciousness completely because I thank you.

Andy Ihnatko (01:59:16):
I don't, I don't want, I, I don't want, don't want to hear this actor who as a movie, every three months, and he spends every interview talking about how much weed he smokes. Thank you very much. I don't need to hear that again. So I'm just gonna mark that as listen to, so as if anything else, it's a great opportunity to once again, sing the praises of overcast. If this is, if, if, if Marco weren't Marco, I think that Apple would this app a long time ago, because it is so much better than the built-in podcast app. It is so much more user focused. It's so much cleaner and I'm just glad it exists. And this is a major, major update. I'm very, very I really want to applaud although the work that's gone into this, cuz it is, it is a, it is a, a resource that that the that iOS absolutely needed

Leo Laporte (02:00:06):
Overcast.Fm. Of course you're gonna put it on your iPhone. So you just probably go to the iPhone store to get it. How much is it? Is it free?

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:15):
No, it's 

Leo Laporte (02:00:17):
Forgot. There's

Rene Ritchie (02:00:17):
Not. And I tipped, like I tipped as much as I possibly could for, for the next hundred years.

Leo Laporte (02:00:22):
Yeah, yeah.

Rene Ritchie (02:00:22):
That, you know, just upfront all

Leo Laporte (02:00:24):
The money, the only negative

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:26):
Our is

Leo Laporte (02:00:26):
Free, it's free. Yeah. There's just

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:28):
Free supported by, by small visual ads promote podcast, but you can hide them for $10 a year.

Leo Laporte (02:00:34):
There you go. If you don't wanna see the ads 10 bucks a year

Andy Ihnatko (02:00:36):
And TWiTce

Leo Laporte (02:00:37):
The price. And the, my only, the only knock at all on it is that it doesn't do video. And some, all of our shows a video, but if you're just an audio listener, which most people are overcast is a great choice and it has the speed up function, which everybody wants for our shows, you know, listen at TWiTce the speed and get TWiTce as much done trained

Rene Ritchie (02:00:54):
On old debug episodes. That's not anecdotal either.

Leo Laporte (02:00:57):
Is that true? Oh, that's interesting.

Rene Ritchie (02:00:58):
Yeah. Guy, when I guy English, when I used to host that podcast, I speak very fast and guy has pregnant pauses that an episode or two, The best shows that he could tune

Leo Laporte (02:01:10):
Alex Lindsay pick of the week.

Alex Lindsay (02:01:12):
So we were talking about production this morning on phones. And I thought I would show something that, that we, we talked about a little bit, this, this is actually the, in the inspiration for a lot of this is Tom Ferguson. Who's one of our folks in office hours. You know, we were talking about it he's oh, this is the best rig. And, and I looked at his rig and I was like, oh, I have to buy one of those. And so I bought one and then I bought two more. So I have like three of these rigs. And so this is the small, this is the small rig sort small. Yeah, small rig rig, small rig really started with like SLR phones. And so the fact that they're making them, they're making such an amazing collection of these for iPhones.

Alex Lindsay (02:01:47):
So you have quarter twenties, these are all quarter 20 mounts on pretty much every angle. This handle is just one of the accessories that just kind of screws in. It's got more quarter twenties on the top ands. So for a lot of us building complex rigs with this, it is it's, it's just a beast. And they make a couple different ones. What's funny is there's another iPhone that is attached to my to my mic stand. That is the phone that's shooting the phone right now. So it's, you know, some, you know, using it kind of in that, in that process. But you can also put moment lense. These are just the mounts, so you can take moment lenses and oh, that's screw them on there. So so it kind of builds that all in and it's it's, it's really nice.

Alex Lindsay (02:02:26):
And especially as a lot of us have gotten to start to use, use these for more and more production. I mean, oops, sorry. I hit the wrong button. The I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not buying the whole, like we could build a with this, but, but what I will say is we can build a lot of training. We can build a lot of communications, news gathering, all kinds of stuff with these phones at this point, but what's missing is usually being able to Mount them, you know? And and so I still have another one from peak design that I like on a day to day basis, but for the phones that are doing production these are just in incredible erector sets of, I wanna put a bunch of, you know, stuff onto my phone and make it, and really, you know, have all the features that I need to, to do a more professional job.

Alex Lindsay (02:03:10):
And you really can produce some pretty great content. I, I build most of my, like how to training for some of our kits and so and so forth. It's just too much trouble to use a real camera. Like I just use, I just take my phone and I, and I grab one of these rigs and I start to just shoot the things that I need to shoot. And it's just, it's great. The cooking stuff that we do in office hours or after hours, we, I, I have three iPhones that shoot all of that, you know? And, and so it's, it's, it's quite a thing. So I should get this they've come a long way for Hank.

Leo Laporte (02:03:36):
He would,

Alex Lindsay (02:03:36):
I think Hank would probably like it a lot. It's, it's, it's super, it just, it it's surprising how much it takes. It's I thought that I didn't really need it. I was like, oh, I have one of those little clamps that'll just work. But the reality is, once you start throwing it into this rig, you start just thinking about other things you can do and, and start attaching them. And it gives you a yeah, it's easy and fun. So it's small rig it's it's I, I didn't even know that they were making them until like a week ago until it came up in, in office hours.

Leo Laporte (02:04:01):
So they make rigs for everything, but the, but they have iPhone rigs,

Alex Lindsay (02:04:04):
Which is, well, it's funny is I use the small rigs on all my black magic cameras too. So they're interest, bigger cages, you know, for my black magic cameras, but I didn't know that they made 'em for phones until last week. So, and, and as soon as I got 'em, I was like, oh, this I, I went out and, you know, bought one, then bought two more. And I've been using 'em for rig all the rigs that I'm

Leo Laporte (02:04:20):
Not just phones. You can use your pad, they do some Samsung and Huawei phones as well. That's that's really pretty cool. I love that. Yeah. They also have a universal Mount, but yeah, you'd want to get the one that, that fits your phone. Exactly. That's pretty cool. Good pick. Thank you, Alex. Alex is at oh nine. Oh.Media. If you wanna hire him office hours.global is on the air all the time. But the, but the big hour is what? Eight to 9:00 AM Pacific, right?

Alex Lindsay (02:04:47):
It's it's AC well, it's, it's seven to nine and seven do office hours. And that's when we're doing kind of high. Just, just answer people's questions and talking about different subjects. And then, and then in, after hours runs the rest of the day, and it's funny, it's, it's just the most geeky water cooler in the world. You know, like you just, you go up there and you gotta question for media folks. This is for me, like, literally, I'm trying to figure something out. I'll just jump up in after hours and I'll be like, Hey, Mickey,

Andy Ihnatko (02:05:12):
Are you

Alex Lindsay (02:05:13):
There? And they'll see a whole bunch of cameras that are all off and someone turns the camera and I'm go. Yeah. And then you start talking about something and then you, and then you go back to what you were doing and, and it's way faster than Google. So, and way better. Like you actually have people that, you know, know what they're talking about. And 

Leo Laporte (02:05:28):
So of course today's episode was all about rigs for your iPhone,

Alex Lindsay (02:05:32):
About the rigs and tomorrow we'll, we'll dig into green screen in a fair bit of detail

Leo Laporte (02:05:37):
Office hours.global. You fill out a form there. If you wanna get an invitation to the zoom, or you can just watch Mr. Andy NACO, when will you be on GBH next?

Andy Ihnatko (02:05:47):
My usual time, 1230 in the afternoon on Friday, go to w GBH news.org to stream it live or later. And it looks like I will be at the Boston public library studio. So if you grab a cup of coffee in the cafe adjoining, watch me fumble through notes while trying to maintain my announcer. Very, very competent knowledgeable techn nerd voice one like, oh, wait a minute. I thought, I, I know I got the number here somewhere. Pearl scroll, scroll. You

Leo Laporte (02:06:14):
Could do it. Why didn't I highlight a very credible Walter Cronkite actually, you'd be good at that. I think you could.

Andy Ihnatko (02:06:20):
That's the way it was

Leo Laporte (02:06:22):
The ERs. Thank you. Under your not co Rene Richie is at youtube.com/Rene Richie, anything. So you said you've done all your studio stuff. Yes.

Rene Ritchie (02:06:34):
Now what I did a, I did full reviews on the studio, on the studio display. Then I did a follow up benchmarking because increasingly benchmarking has become easier due to prepackaged apps, but harder because of APUS and SOCs and a lot of what you, a lot of what you see, I think thrown around is what I call benchmark LARP. Yes. Where it's like, you press a button, but you don't know what it actually means. Yeah. We talked about this on a show. So I did a whole video just explaining why it's really hard and like, do, is it hitting a, like a, an Ecor or a P cor, is it hitting a neural engine or a, a media engine, like just explaining what really goes into like an Antec style review. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to do not just complain, but provide some better information.

Leo Laporte (02:07:12):
Youtube.Com/Rene Richey. Thank you, Rene. Thanks to our club members who made this show and all of the shows we do PO with their $7 a month donations. If you go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT, you can sign up there. There's individual and corporate memberships. You get, of course, a free versions of all the shows you're already paying. We don't need to show you ads, but you also get access to the club, TWiT discord, which is a great time, not just during the shows, but all the time and the TWiT plus feed, which includes material that does not get put out to the public. Like the untitled Lenox show, the GIZ fizz Stacy's book club, Paul, Thras coming up at the end of the month with a after hours, stuff like that. It's all at TWiT.tv/club TWiT. And thank you so much for your support.

Leo Laporte (02:08:01):
Now, I should say that. Of course, we offer a lot of free stuff, including this show. We tape it every tape it there show in my age, we digitize it every Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern time, 1800 UTC. You can watch@livedotTWiT.tv or listen, there's live audio and video streams there. If you're watching or listening, live chat, live@ircdotTWiT.tv, our community run IRC chat. There's also the score chat. A lot of people in there as well. After the fact, you can get the show at TWiTt.tv/mb w it's our website, TWiTt TV slash M BW for MacBreak Weekly. There's a link to the YouTube channel there too. Every one of the shows has their own dedicated YouTube channel. And of course, if you're using overcast or any other podcast player, you can subscribe. If those podcast players allow us to allow you to review, please leave us a five star review, cuz would help us a lot. I think we've run through this reel of film. So before we have to change the cartridge, I think it's time to say, get back to work. Cause break time is over. Thank you everybody. Bye bye.

Mikah Sargent (02:09:09):
Is that an iPhone in your hand? Wait a second. Is that an Apple watch on your wrist? And do I, do I see an iPad sitting there on the table? Oh my goodness. You are the perfect person to be watching iOS today. The show where Rosemary orchard and I Mikah Sargent talk, all things iOS TV OS watch OS home pot OS. It's all the OSS that Apple has on offer, and we show you how to make the most of those gadgets. Just head two TWiTtch TV slash iOS to check it out.