MacBreak Weekly Episode 818 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, and Alex are in the house. We'll talk about the new versions of iOS, iPad, OS Mac OS update, all the things. Also some previews, Apple put out for accessibility that are coming soon to an iPhone near you and believe it or not <laugh> Alex is going to dissect the the backgrounds that they use at premieres and tell you why Apples are just so much better than anybody. Else's all that. And some fake potato chips too. Coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

... (00:00:39):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:48):
This is MacBreak Weekly episode, 818 recorded Tuesday May 17th, 2022 unconstrained by time and space, MacBreak weekly is brought to you by new Relic. That next late night call is just waiting to happen and wake you up. Get new Relic before it does, you can get access to the whole new Relic platform and 100 gigabytes of data free per month. Forever. No credit card required. Sign up at new relic.com/mac break and by Melissa, make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs in the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7. Get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/TWiT. And by our crowd, our crowd helps accredited investors invest early in pre IPO companies alongside professional venture capitalists. Join the fastest growing venture capital investment community@ourcrowd.com slash Mac break. It's time for MacBreak weekly. The show we cover the latest news from Apple, Andy Ihnatko's here, WG H in Boston. Hello Andrew. Hello, Leo. Good to see you.

Andy Ihnatko (00:02:10):
Yes, it's good to see. It's it's good to be seeing. It's good to be here. Yes, it's good to have the windows open for the first time. Woohoo. Not, it's interesting to go from 20 degrees and like to have two comers on the bed to 48 hours, like all the windows open all the fans out from

Leo Laporte (00:02:22):
The isn't that a great feeling. Yeah, we're doing something in California's an annual tradition called weed whacking. So we've actually closed all the windows <laugh> cuz we don't wanna start growing weeds inside Rene. Richie's also here. Youtube.Com/Rene Richie. How are things in Montreal?

Rene Ritchie (00:02:38):
Good. Like Andy, we went from minus 40 Celsius, which is also minus 40 Fahrenheit to about 32 Celsius, which I think is like 90 Fahrenheit and space of like two weeks. So everything is fine

Leo Laporte (00:02:49):
When, when you get is I know 40 and 40 below are the same is 40 above and 40. No <laugh>

Rene Ritchie (00:02:55):
No that no. It's like, I think it's like a hundred to you. I think it changes. Yeah. It's so weird. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:02:59):
Yeah. Doesn't work. It's justt

Rene Ritchie (00:03:01):
Work cause it's so humid. It's an island.

Leo Laporte (00:03:02):
It's that commutative. Also welcome back Mr. Alex Lindsay from global office hours do global and do media. <Laugh>

Alex Lindsay (00:03:14):
The you know, we have goats here in Nevada.

Leo Laporte (00:03:16):
Nice for the

Alex Lindsay (00:03:17):
We weed whack. Yeah. They, they come in hundreds. They they're, this is up that the goats are coming. Yeah. And so they, they they, they put little fences around our sections and then the goats just take over and they eat everything. So you

Rene Ritchie (00:03:29):
Use goats for weed and for yoga as

Leo Laporte (00:03:31):
A everything goats. I

Alex Lindsay (00:03:32):
Never, I haven't seen the goats. I haven't seen yoga

Leo Laporte (00:03:35):
Goats. Oh, you haven't seen go yoga. They sit on you and then you do poses. It's

Alex Lindsay (00:03:41):
Real. Is it little goats? Like little, yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:03:43):
Little ish, big goats, pig, me pig, goats, goats. They're

Alex Lindsay (00:03:45):
Gr and they little ones that, that jump around.

Leo Laporte (00:03:48):
We got goats back in the day. I thought like you, that goats would eat the weeds. But then Jennifer gave them alfalfa and they never looked at the weeds

Alex Lindsay (00:03:57):
Again. Yeah. You can't do that. You can't can't give animals them. You can't give animals the good stuff than they just won. Eat the other stuff anymore. I'm

Leo Laporte (00:04:05):
Not eating that, that where's that alfalfa gimme more that please and corral,

Alex Lindsay (00:04:10):
You know, you know, if you don't, if you don't feed 'em long enough, they'll figure it out. But

Rene Ritchie (00:04:14):
It's the Roby show weed.

Leo Laporte (00:04:16):
Yes, exactly. IO S and iPad OS 15.5 and Monterey 12 is a 12.4. Yeah, I think so. Update all the things <laugh> this 15 five is just on the heels cuz you know, we're gonna get 16, at least they'll announce it in June and we'll get it in the fall. So I've seen some say, oh, this isn't really, there's not much here, but I think there's, there's quite a bit let's talk about some of the new features. The home app has been tweaked. It will prompt you for critical alert permissions. Okay. The wallet <laugh> has now all the references to the physical Apple card within the wallet app are now the titanium Apple card they weren't before. This is actually no, really, really go ahead.

Rene Ritchie (00:05:15):
I was gonna say the one I really, really liked is that continuity. I thought, sorry. Universal control came out of beta, which like it was announced September.

Leo Laporte (00:05:22):
It works pretty well though, right?

Rene Ritchie (00:05:24):
Yeah. It works fine. I think they were just like a little bit tentative when it first came out. Yeah. And he had the beta label and everything, which is unusual. Cuz the whole thing before was like Phil Scher said Apple doesn't beta. And but history proved that like, like not a good idea. So now they've begun baiting a lot of things.

Leo Laporte (00:05:38):
That's a great story in the tripm book about maps and you know, the trip Mekel book, which I, by the way I have a Thursday, we're gonna have him on triangulation at 1:30 PM, Pacific four 30 Eastern after Steve, it's kind of a recounting of stuff we already, you know, as, as avid Apple Watchers know, but it's, there's a few things behind the scenes, like what was really going on with maps? That's quite interesting. So I'll ask him all that, all that stuff. So yeah. Maps should and

Rene Ritchie (00:06:07):
Richard William disappeared into Facebook and we never heard from him, like he went to Facebook to make Facebook maps, never heard from him again, find so many Facebook

Leo Laporte (00:06:13):
Projects. Yeah. A lot of, lot of people disappear inside of Facebook and never come out. Yeah. So you have now the ability to send a request money directly from the Apple cash card in the wallet, you don't have to go to messages for Apple pay person to person, peer to peer pay. In messages though, Apple has renamed the Apple pay messages app to the Apple cash messages app. And you can get vaccination records in your wallet, in the EU. Now as well as in the us podcasts has a much long desired feature where you can clear out all the, all the old stuff. Let's see. How many recents, when

Alex Lindsay (00:06:56):
Someone sends you cash, do, do you always feel like it's free? It's like free money. It doesn't really,

Leo Laporte (00:07:00):
I, I do not so much the cash, but whenever I use Apple pay, I feel like I'm getting this for free. I just tap my well when

Alex Lindsay (00:07:06):
Mostly when someone sends me an Apple cash, when they send me like a hundred dollars, it's not like I put it back in the bank or no,

Leo Laporte (00:07:12):
It's kinda like floats there.

Alex Lindsay (00:07:13):
It's like this little extra money I'm gonna go and have a, you know, go buy something nice with that. Yeah, exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:07:18):
The iPhone now supports the new dual sense. Adaptive trigger firmware features. Well, well, well

Alex Lindsay (00:07:25):
Was waiting for that one.

Rene Ritchie (00:07:25):
What you thought one sense was enough? What

Leo Laporte (00:07:27):
Is dual sense? Adaptive trigger. Firmware feature PlayStation. I have no idea. Oh it's PlayStation's

Rene Ritchie (00:07:31):
It's PlayStation control. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:33):
Photos will no longer suggest memories taken in sensitive locations.

Rene Ritchie (00:07:40):
Oh Hmm. Mm-Hmm

Leo Laporte (00:07:42):
<Affirmative>

Rene Ritchie (00:07:42):
Yeah, we had that in the early days of Amour. We had someone right in who said that they got the Apple TV, they set it all up. They had photo stream and then, you know, they, they went on vacation and they shared a bunch of stuff and they, the in-laws came over and they were showing them their wonderful Apple TV. When the BWI photos all

Leo Laporte (00:07:57):
Started. Oh dear. How embarra scrolling,

Rene Ritchie (00:07:59):
Scrolling by the screen. Cause it doesn't know like it was just, it was just a dumb app. All it did was take your photo roll and all the photos.

Leo Laporte (00:08:04):
Yeah. I think in this case, sensitive locations are things like Holocaust related locations. Not so much the BIR I don't know how sensitive your BIR is.

Rene Ritchie (00:08:12):
Well, there was Lauren good's article about Xs too. How like he likes to throw Xes up at you every so often just to make your life, you know, that

Leo Laporte (00:08:17):
What's the X for

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

Leo Laporte (00:08:22):
Oh, the exes. Yeah. Former. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:08:26):
I think, I think we we're really approaching the time where there should be. Like by default, every camera role should have like a private folder, meaning that, that can only be, that's never gonna be synced. It's never going to be seen by any other camera app to, to expose this to Instagram or whatever else you would have to move it into your main camera role. And because I think that a lot of people would like that kind of convenience or that kind of like, oh God, that kind of reassurance. You don't

Rene Ritchie (00:08:53):
Use it though. It's a hidden folder and nobody uses it. Cause you gotta tap TWiTce before the thing goes in

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
It. And nobody, nobody cares.

Rene Ritchie (00:09:00):
Candy. We live in

Alex Lindsay (00:09:01):
Ship chip. I don't have anything like literally nothing in my eye photo that, that I couldn't explain to my wife and my kids

Leo Laporte (00:09:07):
Minus I just, because you're

Alex Lindsay (00:09:09):
Smart.

Leo Laporte (00:09:10):
Well, I don't need to explain my wife she's in it, but I don't take no, she

Alex Lindsay (00:09:14):
Won't let me to my, to my wife, my kids, my parents, anything like there's nothing, nothing in there. And unfortunately I live a pretty boring life, but I just, but I just, I, I just like, and, and it's fun. It's cause I love li like I, when I just turned onto the open thing, you see all this stuff from all over the world and it's really cool. Yeah. But I suggest a folder. I have a folder

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:31):
That

Rene Ritchie (00:09:31):
Mine was 99% Pokemon go screenshots for two years. It was very

Leo Laporte (00:09:34):
Depressed. Android added. And I can't remember if five phones in like a sense, like a sensitive photos. You don't wanna show other

Alex Lindsay (00:09:42):
Apple has something. I think they have some kind of uncertained they have a hidden

Leo Laporte (00:09:44):
Folder

Alex Lindsay (00:09:45):
Hidden, right? Like a hidden folder. Right. I don't know how to turn it on, but it's you gotta

Rene Ritchie (00:09:48):
Do like two or three taps to put it in there. And nobody does.

Andy Ihnatko (00:09:52):
It's not just for naughty stuff. Like I, I often like capture receipts. Like when, when I'm doing house cleaning, there are all kinds of papers that I don't think I need to save, but just in case I'll take a picture of it. So I don't have to like actually save the paper of it, but I certainly wouldn't want that to be, to go anywhere that I I'm that I don't understand passport

Leo Laporte (00:10:09):
<Laugh> Knox Harrington has sent us a, a list of sensitive locations. And it's almost all Holocaust related. Yeah. The Anne Frank House TripLink Auschwitz, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, okay. That makes sense. You know, you don't want memories from there. That's not good. Yeah. Although I, I think once you say sensitive locations, that list is, could get lot a lot longer.

Andy Ihnatko (00:10:33):
Yeah. And, and who, and who's maintaining this, right. That, that's another interesting question, right? That like, I don't know. It's it's I think, I think Rene kind of like hit upon it. That's these features can really help a lot of people and craft an experience that people would actually want, but you have to make sure that it's transparent. You have to make sure that they're accessible and that I wouldn't it's it, it would frustrate me if I was looking for a photo, I was expecting a photo to show up in a certain place. And it wasn't, and I didn't realize that it was because this place that there, this, this place that actually just has this really cool, like 1940s, like huge, wonderful piece of sculpture is actually a monument to a tragedy that is not necessarily universally known. Right. It's like, oh, how come that's not turning? Okay. That's the place where like, that's where the coconut Grove fire happened in 400 people died in one night. There's

Leo Laporte (00:11:21):
A beautiful picture. I took in Budapest. There's a famous Memorial on the, on the Buddhi side of the river of the Dan with just bronze cast shoes. And it, it, it memorializes an event in the, when the Nazis drove Jews into the river to drown and and left their shoes behind. And so it's a, I actually wanted pictures of that because that's a, it's a very touching Memorial. Yeah. But I get, you know, that's the thing is, is I don't, it seems this popping up in your memories. There's very specific. I would though. I, but I anyway, well, that's just me so well,

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:00):
Yeah, yeah. This, I mean that, I was, that was another thing that, that came to mind that I, I, I wonder if there's ever been a discussion of a voluntary Bluetooth or wifi trigger or location trigger that says that, by the way, this is like, you're, you're really not supposed to take pictures of any kind in this space. Like let's say you're at a temple church. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:12:19):
Remember that happened at one of the concentration camps, some influencer was doing selfies there. Yeah. And people were very offended by that. Understandably. Right.

Andy Ihnatko (00:12:29):
Maybe. I mean, I, I would kind of, I would kind of enjoy, I don't know if, if that were, if, if there were like a voluntary tag where I could simply say, oh, in somewhere in settings, I can say by the way, if I'm, if I'm ever trying to take pictures on a location where the, where the people have said, I don't know pictures here, please. Yeah. Give at least give me a warning before you proceed. Because sometimes it really is difficult. Again, I have been in that situation where there's a near, near where I live, there is a place that is like, it just looks like a park. It doesn't look like a Memorial to anything. There are like picnic tables, there's grass, there's ball fields, but it is UN it is, it is a Memorial park to a certain event that I won't mention. And someone got really, really upset when I was taking, which basically I'm in a park and I'm having some fun pictures. And like I was, I was, so that

Leo Laporte (00:13:17):
Actually happened to you. That's interesting

Andy Ihnatko (00:13:19):
That actually, yeah. And I think, I think the person who was offended was more, not terribly all together. I don't think, I, I'm not sure if it was reasonable for them to expect that. But the thing is if I, I, I was a gas that had caused somebody offense with someone you didn't even know mention to this event. Yeah, exactly. And like I said, that wasn't like, it was a, it was a park. It was, it was the only thing that was missing was like barbecue. Like those public little barbecue pits where you can just come in with your own Burquette it did not look like anything. It looked like the sort of thing where, Hey, we thought we'd create this place of happiness, where people could just have fun, bring their kids as a way to celebrate the lives of the people that we lost on that day. And so like, like I said, I, it's an interesting idea. I wonder if it's been, I wonder if it's been discussed

Leo Laporte (00:13:59):
Kind of like the geofencing that a, a drone does to keep you away from airports be. Yeah. And of course it'd be an opt-in feature, but I think that's a nice idea. I like that idea. Yeah. And that would be another way Apple could do this. We should, Chatman's reminding me that this, all this means is those pictures won't show up in your memories. It doesn't keep them out for your Apple and so forth. Apple did announce and I'm can look confused about this upgrades that are going to come becoming soon to the iPhone, Apple watch and Mac. Yeah. Including the universal live captioning tool, which Android's had for some time. It's really fantastic.

Andy Ihnatko (00:14:34):
It's exceptionally, it's, it's such, it's such an enabling tool for people who people who have, who have different differently abled for for hearing, but also for it's, it's one of those accessibility tools that actually helps everybody, just the idea of whatever text is going through the system, going through the audio system, just caption it. And the ability to just be able to hear somebody in a crowded room, better, the ability to someone who is in a chat in a, in, in a zoom meeting that maybe you're having a little bit of trouble understanding, or maybe you you're just responding better. Visually the ability to not simply rely on a, a third party app supporting this external feature. But simply that look, if this is going through the audio system, we have the ability to capture it and to trans excuse me, and to transcribe it. The next step is translation. And that is like almost like, you know, Jedi ninja magic. Once you get that feature going where you're, you're on TWiTter and the president of Francis talking about making an announcement about about the Amicon VA variant. And you're kind of interested to see what he is talking about and boom, suddenly you're, you're, you're reading in English. This is great stuff. It's just one of a whole bunch of different features that that were announced today that I think are just exceptionally on the point. Google

Leo Laporte (00:15:43):
Has that translation feature as does Microsoft in in the, in case of Google's Google meet and Microsoft and Skype. But I would love to see it's system wide. Wouldn't that be great.

Alex Lindsay (00:15:54):
It just,

Leo Laporte (00:15:55):
You, then you could watch anything and, and

Alex Lindsay (00:15:57):
Understand and well both in meet and Skype and Skype, it's the, both of those are working incredibly well. And I think Skype supports like 60 languages. Isn't that amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a thing.

Leo Laporte (00:16:08):
We were talking about that on Sunday that when Microsoft announced that was a big deal and nobody ever talks about that. So you obviously have used it.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:14):
Oh yeah. Yeah. We've used it in events and, and we've also with meat one of the cheapest ways to put like lower, like to put captioning, if you don't have the money is you just put the captions over top of over top of a window, and then you just cut that window out and key it over top of your, of your footage. And it, it totally works. Yeah. Then it's it. It's it's and it's Accu, it's remarkably accurate. Even when you're talking to tech, you know, having technical jargon meet just, I mean, Google's it's

Leo Laporte (00:16:41):
Kind of incredible.

Alex Lindsay (00:16:42):
Its just amazing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:42):
I, well, it'd be interest to see how well Apple does is Google does seem to have the advantage in this.

Rene Ritchie (00:16:47):
It's a cool thing cuz like they started doing it a couple years ago. They got the, they announced the accessibility features in head of WWDC. So this is stuff that's gonna come in. The next version of iOS. They just don't want it to get lost amid all the excitement over like iOS 16 and iPad OS 16. So last year it was like motor control for the phone, for the watch and where you could actually move your wrist and everything would move. And now it's things like it's gonna recognize the door for you and not just recognize the door, but it's gonna tell you what the text is. It's gonna tell you how the door opens and you can configure all this because you may not want too much information. You might want the information that's very pertinent to you. It'll tell you like the hours that the door says it's open or closed.

Rene Ritchie (00:17:21):
So you don't try to open the door if it's outside those hours. And this is building on the distance detection they did last year. So that people would be able to do like the safe, physical spacing, even if they were lower, no vision. And it uses like the LIDAR sensor and the RGB camera for a computer vision. And all of these systems they've built in to provide this real deep it's all in the magnifi app. Like all this stuff is built into the magnifi app, this really deep accessibility experience. That's like, it's so close to superpowers. Like I was thinking of Andy when I was listening to it because it's like, like I've got radar vision and it's got zoom vision and it's got all of these things that are just beyond the scope of humanity that any of us might need any given day. Like I know they talk about it for accessibility, but you are always just like one injury or one doctor's appointment or one something away from needing this stuff desperately. And it's all, it's all baked in there. I think it's just fantastic.

Andy Ihnatko (00:18:10):
Yeah. I, I love, I love how subtle some of these new features are too. They did a there's another feature where you can basically if there's a, if there's a noise that is, that is made inside your house, that you need to have an, an eye on, like you don't, you don't know if a certain burner has been turned on or not. Or if you don't know if that a certain fan has been turned on or not, or a C P a P machine, you don't know if that's working or not. You can, you can basically play it, play the sound into the system five times and now we'll be able to recognize that sound and alert you that, Hey, this is another thing that has been heard. I mean, I can't, I can't wait to, to see what Steven Aquino has to say about this stuff. I mean, I'm, I, I don't, I don't cover accessibility 100%. And there there's always like so much that you just absolutely cannot possibly imagine about how well this stuff, stuff works, how valuable it is. So this is why yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:19:01):
Is the I think this is the video Apple sent out for the live captioning and FaceTime. It actually shows the person's name and it's a BU it's like part of the FaceTime, which is really fantastic. I hope that, yeah. Now, so these are accessibility features that will be available in the next version of iOS

Rene Ritchie (00:19:23):
In the future, but like, they don't talk about like, they don't talk about pre announced stuff just coming last year. It was in the next version of iOS. I'm assuming these will be in the next version of iOS when

Leo Laporte (00:19:31):
It's announced here's some other, other images protection as well. You're gonna be able to put the image of your Apple watch on your iPhone. So if you have trouble seeing it or whatever, you can actually mirror your Apple watch. And,

Rene Ritchie (00:19:43):
And that works with like all the accessibility features that are already on the phone. So if you've got everything built up to do like the trigger for like, like, you know, different breathing patterns or different tapping patterns, that'll all work with motion

Leo Laporte (00:19:53):
Too. Nice. Really nice. Yeah. Here's the door detection that you talked about, Andy, where it says closed door, seven feet away. And it even reads the text on the, there's a video for that Leo. Oh, is there, okay. Let me find that cuz that's yeah, it's really good. I think that's, that's pretty good. Here's the door detection video. So a blind user, she's using a cane. She goes up to the door and it says muffin to write home about bakery <laugh> which is <laugh> I think not a real bakery, but it is a funny name. That's

Andy Ihnatko (00:20:23):
A, that, that, that's a, that's a good Bob. Burger's like <laugh> store name.

Leo Laporte (00:20:27):
Yeah. Muffin to write home about yeah, some really, these are all great. Why did they roll this all up into one press release now, so

Rene Ritchie (00:20:37):
That we talk about it now and not, not talk about it and w WDC has 3 million other things.

Leo Laporte (00:20:41):
Okay, good. Talk about it. Got it. Yep. Got it. So this is they're clearing the space. This is part of the, the free WWDC releases. We saw that we've seen that in years past. Yeah. Buddy controller, you can ask users can ask a care provider or friend to help them play a game. Buddy controller combines any two game controllers into one that might be just fun in general. That's really a cool idea. Siri, I'm

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:04):
Gonna get my God kiss to

Leo Laporte (00:21:05):
Help me finish some of these games last. Yeah. I can't get half exactly. <Laugh> exactly. Don't you laugh at me and not go. You don't know how hard these games are.

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:13):
I, I I'm, I'm just thinking that if I wanna get my, my hand in that like TWiTch game streaming till I will like hire an 11 year old to be just off camera with the second controller so that people people will see, I'm not using a bot to do this because this is definitely human stuff, but I'm definitely playing this game. Not at the skill level that someone who has like has to pay rent and pay

Leo Laporte (00:21:35):
<Laugh> the way its

Andy Ihnatko (00:21:36):
Pay bills can do. Yeah. But yeah, but that's, that's an excellent example. Like when we think about accessibility, we think about things like, oh, well, how do, how do we, how does someone get through the city? How does someone order in order in a restaurant that can't see the menu, accessibility is not about like a it's about saying that every single experience that is available to every user on this device should be available to all users of this device. And that's, and games is just another thing that if it is that, that we need to make sure that we can have an, an equal experience for everybody. If, if, especially when the solution is just not difficult to really, you know, rock, it's it, I'm sure this wasn't a trivial thing to build dual controllers, but nonetheless it is it's, it's a more solvable problem than how to create an autonomous autonomous trail seeking robot that can deliver laundering pizza within five minutes for, for less than $3. These are, this is, this is why people get frustrated with why why are we, why are we why are we praising a technology company for developing a self driving car that we don't actually need? And we probably can't afford when we have so many basic, simple problems that could be solved very, very readily with some assisted assistive technology that everyone can afford.

Alex Lindsay (00:22:48):
Well, and, and also I think that we're, we're getting very close probably within the next two or three years where you put your AirPod AirPods in and they're translating whoever you're talking to because they just take this, this voice to text. And then the text back to voice Google, just

Leo Laporte (00:23:00):
Show that IL, they showed it five years ago at IO, by the way. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:23:04):
They showed

Leo Laporte (00:23:05):
Different version

Andy Ihnatko (00:23:06):
Version of, but I think we're getting, you don't have to. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Interrupted. I'm

Alex Lindsay (00:23:10):
Sorry. We're just getting very close. What I'm saying is it's a hard problem to solve, but, but I think that there's apps that do it right now. There's separate pieces of hardware that do it, but I think we're gonna see it in the OSS pretty soon in the

Leo Laporte (00:23:23):
Pitch basically from, yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:23:24):
And basically you put, you have your headphones on and when you're talking to someone you're hearing them and your language there. I love that if they have the other side of that, they're hearing you back. Yeah. And it could even, it could even sit there and tell you what to say. If you can't, you know, you right. You know, like you could,

Andy Ihnatko (00:23:40):
Can I, can I just say that this is one of the reasons why I was kind of excited about the pixel buds pro coming out from Google, not necessarily that I want to upgrade my cheap $99 pair of pixel buds with with the noise cancellation, but they are so comfortable to wear and they understand they're, they're so fit for purpose, for operating with a voice assistant that you don't have to squeeze something. You don't have to find that one surface, the entire surface that's accessible outside your ear is a tap control. That does nothing but that. And the number I'm I'm now like in a default mode where whenever I need to get somewhere like a New York city, I will always turn on navigation, put on my air Budd, and I will just listen for cues to go that way. I've I, I, I, I won't get into, I won't get into this long spiel again, but I still think that there's another example of why are you work?

Andy Ihnatko (00:24:25):
Why are you working so hard to create augmented reality goggles when you could create something amazing just by having make, having a priority of having an audio interface where this is just your, give me a star Trek, next generation communicator, where I just tap it to say, please listen to this command or give, I want help with this juncture or take this note or or send this message or do whatever it it's something that anybody with a pair of $30 Bluetooth headphones can get the technology to do and operate with their own phone. All we need is just development of this idea, cuz I just absolutely love it. And I use it all the time. It gives me the same sort of Jolie that I got when I was using when I had the courage to use Google glass for the first year and a half.

Leo Laporte (00:25:07):
Siri, pause time. We'll let you adjust how long Siri waits before responding to a request. So this is actually something Google also talked about at Google IO, letting people kind of think in between words. Exactly the

Rene Ritchie (00:25:21):
Real challenge is how does it not translate cling on when it's opportunistic? <Laugh> because that's all the universal translate.

Leo Laporte (00:25:27):
It all sounds like still

Andy Ihnatko (00:25:28):
Make the point. Yeah. Can I just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna renew a, a request that I made that unfortunately fell on deaf years a couple years ago. I think that Google and Apple and everybody who's doing like voice to text should an automatic, automatic transcription. They need to work with the, the Henson company work with Disney, decide what the canonical lyrics of the Swedish chef's theme song is Y V de GU scooter. So whenever like someone is the Swedish chef is like, is singing that song. We get the actual lyrics. This, this technology is available to us. All we need is the will and congressional funding. I support both of those things.

Leo Laporte (00:26:03):
Voice control, spelling mode. I think many of us would want to use. This gives you the option to dis dictate custom spellings using letter by letter input. I think all these features will be an accessibility, but as is often the case, that's a place to go to find some really useful features. Yeah. Accessibility for everybody, for everybody sound recognition can be customized to recognize sounds that are specific like your doorbell your alarm, your appliances love that Apple books is gonna have some new themes new customization to make it easier to read for people with various abilities. So this is good. Oh, I get it. This is global accessibility awareness day is coming up. And so they're celebrating yeah, Thursday, May 19th. And that's why this is in there. They'll be doing this with special sessions at the Apple stores and so forth sign time will launch in Canada on May 19th to collect, connect Apple store and Apple support customers with on demand, American sign, language interpreters already available in the us. And the UK and France.

Alex Lindsay (00:27:07):
What I will say is that I think Apple does some of the best ASL that anyone does for their keynotes. You know, they've already kind of, and Apple generally with accessibility pays a lot of attention. And but if you notice that they give you two options, rather than trying to just fit an ASL in, they're like, Hey, if you wanna watch ASL click on this and we're gonna give it to you exactly the way you want it. Nice. You know, and I think which is, I think a much better solution than, than most. But I think a lot of other people have been kind of following along

Leo Laporte (00:27:29):
That has to be done though, by humans. Right. We don't have yet automatic ASL.

Alex Lindsay (00:27:34):
Well, not only does it done by humans, there's a difference between ASL that's provided by people who can hear an ASL that is provided by people who can't hear. Right. And those are, and sometimes you have one that can hear, speak, going to the one that can't hear. And then that one it's, it's a very, we've done a lot of it. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a complex system and, and those little fine details make a huge difference.

Leo Laporte (00:27:57):
Huge. Yeah. Not to mention of course country differences. And I wonder why it took so long in Canada maybe because Canadian ASL, no, you jokes <laugh> no, you jokes. No, you jokes. Okay. Apple store locations will be offering live sessions throughout the week to help customers discover accessibility features. So if you have some accessibility issues, you might want to go into your Apple store. The accessibility assistant shortcut is coming to the shortcuts app this week on at Mac and Apple watch. It helps recommend accessibility features based on user preferences in Apple fitness plus trainer Bakari Williams will use ASL. Oh, that's so I'm gonna cry to highlight the features available to users that are part of an ongoing effort to make fitness, more accessible, to all including audio hints. Time to walk and time to run are gonna add time to walk or push for wheelchair users, time to run or push. This is really great fitness plus trainers incorporate ASL into every workout and every meditation, not only close captioning against six languages, but also ASL.

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:06):
Yeah. See, this is why even the, even on the, just checking in on TWiTter, a lot of people are saying, well, gee, why, why are they having accessibility features for the Apple watch? If you can't, if you can't see it, you can't use it, but there's so many a it's possible. So let's do it. Well, it

Leo Laporte (00:29:20):
Speaks the time. I know blind users who love the watch, just cause it'll tell 'em what time it is. Right.

Andy Ihnatko (00:29:24):
But, but, but also all these health features that if they, if it, it should help everybody's lives, not just people who have a certain set of set of check marks on their, on their product list. Yeah. So the fall detection is important for everybody. ECG ECG checks, breathing detection is, is important for everybody. 9 1, 1 access is, is available to issues is gonna help everybody. So yeah, this is, this is, this is a really, really good set of announcements.

Leo Laporte (00:29:52):
A, a series on national parks with accessible features guides from gallate university. This is just, I mean, I, this was a big press release and well done Apple. They got a little bit of trouble. I know from some people because series' ability to read email and to direct phone calls was for some reason removed with iOS 15 is I think it was put back those since. So they, I think they're very aware of this. I, I, I think they, they err on the side of extra features.

Andy Ihnatko (00:30:26):
Yeah, this is, this is one area where like there, there, there are some, there are some features and there's some problems that unite every single tech company. Like there, there is no company that is more advanced than anybody else on security. Both Google and Apple are both will want to want to make every, make the internet as in communications, as secure as it possibly can be. And that's why they swap information and they help out each other. I think accessibility is on the same page. I've never met anybody on an accessibility team that wasn't all about, Hey, wow, that's a great feature that these other people are working on. Let's do it ourselves. Yeah. Or, Hey, we, we found even, I, I can't things I can't talk about, but basically collaborating with each other saying, I, you know, shop talk where we can't, we can't figure out how to get permission to get this to work. Say, well here, once you try doing this, this is how we got around it. This is again, there's some things they're, they're competing on so many ways, but there are many ways in which they recognize that they have an opportunity to not be jerks and help. A lot of people

Leo Laporte (00:31:21):
Let's take a little break. We will have more in just a little bit. Andy and ACO, Rene Richie, Alex Lindsay, the whole gangs here. Hey, Hey, hail hail. The whole gang is here. Our show today brought to you by new Relic. Now, if you're a software engineer if you're responsible for systems assisted men, you know that midnight phone call and that no one wants your phone. Maybe gets an alert, I guess. Just do people wear pagers anymore. Beepers in the old days, it'd be a, a pager alert something's broken. Your mind is already racing. What could be wrong? Suddenly your whole team's scrambling from tool to tool going, what's wrong. What's wrong? Do you know what's wrong? Is it the back end? Is it the front end? Is it global? Is it the server? Is it the network? Is the cloud provider. Do we have slow running queries or the one you really don't wanna think about?

Leo Laporte (00:32:13):
Did I introduce a bug in my last deploying <laugh> oh, don't you wish you had new Relic? According to new Relic, only about half of all organizations are implementing observability in their networks and systems. Maintaining network. Observability continues to be an issue for companies around the world, but it won't happen if you get new Relic. If you don't like those middle of the night calls, if you don't like not knowing what's going wrong, you need network observability and you need new Relic, 16 different monitoring programs. You'd normally buy separately, but all on one single software stack in one place, your whole team can see everything going on. 16 apps. I'll give you a, a couple of them. They have application monitoring APM for your apps and microservices very handy. You can actually go to the, if there's an error to the line of code causing the error.

Leo Laporte (00:33:08):
If you use Kubernetes, you'll love pixie instant Kubernetes, observability. They've got distributed tracing. So you can see all your traces without management headaches in one place, network performance monitoring, which goes right across the barriers goes right through the silos. System-Wide correlated views. That's what you need. So you're not looking piecemeal trying to find the problem. You could see the whole system and that's just four of the 16 products. And can I tell you something? It is so popular among the people who use it dev and ops teams at DoorDash and GitHub and epic games, 14,000 companies use new Relic to debug and improve their software. So easy to install, whether you run a cloud native startup or a fortune 500 company, and it'll just take five minutes to put new Relic in your environment. And here's the best news. It's free access to the whole new Relic platform and a hundred gigabytes of data per month free forever.

Leo Laporte (00:34:08):
You don't even have to give them a credit card. Look that middle of the night call is, is out there waiting for you. Get new Relic before you get that call, sign up at new relic.com/mac break, w R E L I C. New relic.com/mac break. We thank 'em so much for their support of MacBreak weekly. And I know there are a lot of devs and, and ops guys out there who thank them too. If you wanna support MacBreak weekly, go get that free plan. Just make sure you could do it at new relic.com/mac break. That's the URL just in a <laugh> Apple is delaying return to office, according to the New York times. <Laugh> remember Apple, you know, which, which said, I think it was this week that everybody was, have to spend at least three days in the office was already getting, you know, pushback on that.

Leo Laporte (00:35:08):
Not because of COVID, but just cuz people wanted to continue to work from home, but we were getting a spike of COVID 19. Yeah. And they're putting masks back in hundred stores too. The stores a hundred stores masks again. So I think it's convenient for Apple to say, oh yeah, nevermind Apple. Apple said is gonna proceed. They sent this note out today with a pilot program to bring some workers back to the office TWiTce a week in the weeks ahead. But it did say anyone in the program who felt uncomfortable coming into the office, would've the option. The O that was a COVID sneak. No, that wasn't would've the option to work remotely. 

Rene Ritchie (00:35:54):
This has been so weirdly, like I'm watching a bunch of the, like people went back to having events. Like they had GC and they had hacks and they've had other events. Yeah. And people keep getting sick, like TWiTter explodes with, oh, I got sick. I got COVID. And then people are like, oh, I had COVID I was positive, but I didn't wanna miss out. So I went anyway and then half of TWiTter wants to cancel. That happens like, oh, well at least you're admitting, you're sorry. That's really, I'm really here and supportive of you. Like the whole thing is just, you can't pretend that it's over to end it. You have to like actually end it. And it's a little bit inconvenient, but it's way better to be a little bit inconvenient for a couple months longer than just like sick for like

Leo Laporte (00:36:26):
A couple weeks. There's so many stories from bad bosses requiring sick employees to work. That's Terri. Look, if you're we tell everybody, if you feel ill, I know I don't care if it's COVID or not. We don't want you in here. So stay

Alex Lindsay (00:36:41):
Home. I, I, I'm just getting over a cold and I didn't even wanna leave the house. No, like it's just a cold cause I don't wanna wander around and be that person it's like, like sniffling and coffee and stuff. I, I, cause I, I felt like I'd have to walk through whole foods going. It's not COVID it's not COVID it's not COVID. And I was just like, I'm just gonna stay at home and order things from Amazon and let my wife go pick things up.

Leo Laporte (00:36:58):
That's the right thing to do though.

Alex Lindsay (00:36:59):
Catch the rest of the world.

Leo Laporte (00:37:00):
Kohls are very contagious. It's the right thing to do. Why? You know, don't get,

Rene Ritchie (00:37:03):
We finally ended our mask mandate LA this weekend at like May 14th or something was the end of our mask mandate. And I went to the grocery store and like half the people were still wearing them half weren't and the ones who weren't wearing them were real angry at the ones who were, it was just, it's such a weird

Leo Laporte (00:37:16):
Situation. You know, nowadays, initially where you, you wore a mask to protect other people. Right. But now with good N 95 masks, you're protecting yourself too. Yeah. So I, for me, I just, I wear 'em, you know, I just wear 'em and if I were, if I had a cold and I had to go out, I would absolutely wear a mask going out. I'd wear a hazmat suit. Yeah. Right. The company did say that employee who come to campus wear masks and common areas and elevators. And as you said, Rene, a hundred stores now are bringing back masks. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:37:44):
I still think we keep on seeing people. We keep on seeing people from Apple quitting over the return to work. Yeah. I think it's really a problem. I think a lot of people all over the place left, well, they, this is what I, a couple people that I know that have left. What happened was is that when it went to where it was, they had a vacation home or they had a second, you know, or they had, or they moved to Tahoe, they moved to other places like that. And then once Apples said you had to come back, they were, they, I think that a lot of 'em just didn't think that was actually ever gonna happen. And then the, the idea of having to go back to the south, the south bay is just a horrible place to live. I'm sorry, but

Leo Laporte (00:38:15):
It's so bad. No, it's expensive. Expensive

Alex Lindsay (00:38:17):
Back to the traffic is the everything expensive. I mean, you look at a house and, and it's like, it's a million and a half dollars. And if you see something listed at a million and half dollars in most of Northern California, but definitely, and you're like, ah, that's not gonna be very good. <Laugh>, it's just like, it's just not gonna be, you know, like, and, and the thing is, is that that's the, I mean, and in, and in million, I don't know if you can buy a house in the south bay for a million and a half dollars. And if it is, it's like a one bedroom, you know, studio apartment, you know, to buy.

Leo Laporte (00:38:41):
So the house where Facebook was born 5.3 million,

Alex Lindsay (00:38:46):
My, my point, exactly. You know, and they didn't move

Andy Ihnatko (00:38:49):
The bodies. They only moved the headstones. Didn't you?

Leo Laporte (00:38:51):
It's in, it's actually in a very nice neighborhood. It's in Los Alto. Which is very nice, but 

Alex Lindsay (00:38:58):
It's

Leo Laporte (00:38:58):
Three

Alex Lindsay (00:38:58):
Millions. I, I think that other thing is, is that the idea of going back and paying all that extra money and sitting in, or, and, or sitting in all that traffic and then, and then your reward is that you get to sit in an open office, which is just so amazing. Yeah. So, so the so,

Leo Laporte (00:39:12):
So it, yeah, you know, I come to work, but I have, and everybody who comes to work has an office and what we did when COVID happened. And we had people coming in is made sure that everybody was one to an office because we had enough people weren't coming in. So that you do have at least that kind of environment where you're closed in. Yeah. And then you put on the mask when you go into the common areas, the kitchen or the bathroom and stuff like that. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:36):
Right. Yeah. If, if there, if there are two things that I hope COVID changes, work culture permanently one is the idea that, look, if you're sick, stay home, work at home. Don't don't come in. We're not

Leo Laporte (00:39:47):
Gonna say that. You're not a Though, you

Andy Ihnatko (00:39:48):
Know? Right. Well, but again, that's, that's what I'm hoping for. But the other thing is that, and this is something that only came to mind where I was, I, I was checking out Steven Aquino's TWiTter feed to see if he had actually commented on the Apple news got, and he retweeted something that was very, very potent about how someone, someone who had posted someplace about how, you know, if you, you' sure if you want, you can li if you working from home is a career limiting up choice because people, if you're not there face to face, if your bosses and your bosses bosses, aren't there, then you know, if you be, be happy being just a worker, drone B for the rest of your life, but you know, that that culture needs to go away too, because not only because there are people who have mobility issues and can't come to come into work like three or four times a week.

Andy Ihnatko (00:40:32):
And so basically that attitude is saying that anybody who cannot physically be present five days a week eight hours a day is gonna be career limited. But also it's just insane that you're not being, you're being judged on FaceTime and not on stuff that you're actually doing. There's so much that we're rewriting. I'm hoping about our relationship to work. And I think that unionizing is just one of them working from home is another. And the idea of making sure that your health and the group health is more important than whatever somebody's bingo card is as a manager is for that week. And that quarter,

Leo Laporte (00:41:05):
Although remember the cook doctrine, which I was reminded of, again with this trip, MI nickel book, one of the one of the points we believe in deep collaboration and cross pollination of our groups which allow us to innovate in a way others cannot, although it is ironic that Apple has such firewalls between groups. Yep. 

Alex Lindsay (00:41:26):
Well, and, and I, I will say, I, you know, I was, I was, I wasn't here last week cuz I was working on a project and in that project it was, it was a hybrid. So we were basically sitting, I was sitting in with some of the, the folks that were we were shooting on a stage. And what was interesting though is our audio is being managed from the Philippines, like the whole house, like the, all the routing, all the, everything is all being managed from the Philippines. And, and this is we're in, you were here in San Rafa and the lighting is being handled from Maryland.

Leo Laporte (00:41:54):
You're very advanced in this realm.

Alex Lindsay (00:41:56):
How, no, no, no. I understand that point. But, but what I'm the point though, is we're all on comms. We're all talking in a way,

Leo Laporte (00:42:00):
This is what office hours has done, isn't it?

Alex Lindsay (00:42:02):
Yeah. No, these are all office hours folks that we now hire to do stuff. And so, I mean, that's

Leo Laporte (00:42:07):
A side effect. I don't know if you intended it, but that's a great side effect of

Alex Lindsay (00:42:10):
This. Absolutely what I intended. Oh, okay. Smart man. Very smart. Yeah. So this is the easiest way to find the right people is to, is to, you know, provide a lot of information. Anyway. So the, but so we have the, this, this virtual, so the power was I get to pick the right people for that job regardless of their locations. And I'm not yeah. Not, I'm not constrained by time or space. Yeah. And so the, so that, that helps, but at the same time,

Leo Laporte (00:42:33):
By the way, that should be your head, your tagline on your business part, not constrained by time and space.

Alex Lindsay (00:42:40):
Yes, exactly. So the so, so anyway, but the other, the other side of it was is we were, I was sitting with our technical director, the person cutting the show, and this is a person who, you know, has cut, you know, she cuts for Paul McCartney and, and wow, that's what she's doing right now. I think this week <laugh> wow. And and Metallica and all these folks. And, but the two of us are sitting there watching people move things around on the stage and just talking about ideas. And so I really got clear, like there was a real power to everyone being able to be in the show from anywhere, but there also really was this kind of informal what they talk about that informal. Like we're just sitting there talking about ideas and coming up with, oh, we need to think about this. And that might not happen if we were just on, you know, just, just overcomes, you know, kind of thing. So it was definitely, I can see both sides of it, but I, I do think that for the most part, it's very limiting to have people like constrained to a geographic location is a really a, a painful constraint.

Leo Laporte (00:43:34):
Well, one reason why you might not want to come to work at Apple on May 23rd is that's when prehistoric planet debuts.

Alex Lindsay (00:43:41):
I am so excited. I am so excited. Five,

Leo Laporte (00:43:43):
Five days, you gotta watch every night expense. I, I am gonna watch every night. The Apple had a big event at the AMC century city IMAX in Los Angeles. May I guess Monday, may whatever that is 15th executive producers, John fre, Mike Gunton were there show showrunner lead scientific consultant. John fro is so busy

Alex Lindsay (00:44:08):
As someone as someone who who does a lot of shows like this. I, I have two things to say, one is it's the nicest step in repeat I've ever seen? Like it's the free step and repeat it.

Leo Laporte (00:44:17):
What's that all

Alex Lindsay (00:44:18):
I can see when I saw that it's the, it's their logos over and over again. It's the, the logos behind them is it's a 3d. They actually built in 3d a step in repeat,

Leo Laporte (00:44:28):
Oh, that's the, that's that thing that you see at all the premieres that everybody stands in front of. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:44:34):
Normally it's just a print, but I'm pretty

Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Sure that that's, I don't that's print looks 3d, doesn't it? I think they

Alex Lindsay (00:44:39):
Actually built it. Like it built,

Leo Laporte (00:44:41):
Like I've never seen, or was it a green screen that everybody stood in front

Alex Lindsay (00:44:43):
Of? No, no, no, no, no. I think that, well, the cheapest and easiest way to do this, especially in to make it broke up lighting would be to make it. So I think that that was made so, so the a that's so it's cool. That's so, so it's it's so over the top, But B I'm kind of like, we could just let the step and repeat die, cuz it's horribly. Oh, I hate it. Plus that on.

Leo Laporte (00:45:06):
But how else do you get the sponsors names? So

Alex Lindsay (00:45:09):
Again

Leo Laporte (00:45:09):
And again, and again,

Alex Lindsay (00:45:10):
I can tell you, I can tell you, you have to, we've done it. You build, you basically spike the ground and you build compartments for them to walk it. They walk and stop walk and stop, walk and stop. And behind them is a very nice when you do it with Instagramers, you always, this is how you do it. You don't do a step and repeat you do things that give them a frame. That's great. And so what you do is you have a frame and it has your logo. It has your logo once <laugh> and, and you frame it so that they look good. It's obvious where they're from, but it looks super cool and all they gotta do all the instructions you give them is go to the, go to go to your mark. That's the problem. Turn and take

Leo Laporte (00:45:44):
Pictures. They don't want to go to the mark, right?

Alex Lindsay (00:45:46):
Oh, they will. No, no. Actors are really good at that, actually. So

Leo Laporte (00:45:49):
Yeah. Where the camera's here's here's a company in LA step and repeat la.com that has, oh my gosh. The standard step and repeats. But look, they do make some fun ones right in

Alex Lindsay (00:45:57):
The middle. That's the one. Yeah. So that's the kind of stuff that you do is, and you build those, the step and repeats are just like, I am a, I've been doing this for a long time

Leo Laporte (00:46:04):
In business. So at least 20 or

Alex Lindsay (00:46:06):
30 years that I'm so tired, but I will say in a tired environment, Apple did the best tired version of step and repeat I've

Leo Laporte (00:46:13):
Ever seen. I agree. I'm glad you called that out. Cuz I hadn't really paid any attention to it. I also,

Alex Lindsay (00:46:18):
Well, this is my life, Leo, my life. This is my life talking. You me a

Leo Laporte (00:46:22):
Dinosaur

Alex Lindsay (00:46:22):
Like weeks, weeks of we're trying

Leo Laporte (00:46:24):
To figure out is that John frow in the middle, you're going look at that step and repeat <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (00:46:29):
Sounds like that

Leo Laporte (00:46:30):
Took a lot of turning on that. He was looking for green.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:31):
I looked at he, I was like that step and repeat that step and repeat costs 20, 20 to 30 grand. Like that's, that's all I,

Leo Laporte (00:46:37):
It looks like real, real MOS rocks.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:40):
No, I think they had someone. I think they modeled the rocks and they put the things on. It could be a print. We don't know cuz, but it looks, it really looks like it's 3d. I mean, I think that they built it.

Leo Laporte (00:46:49):
I could get video from the event. Then I could tell, let me play though, because I do want everybody to know what we're talking about. David Attenborough narrates.

Alex Lindsay (00:46:58):
What is

Leo Laporte (00:46:58):
Basically like planet earth, but it's from the prehistoric times music by Han simmer. I don't care if they're gonna take us down, I'm gonna play it. I don't go ahead. Take me down cloning. It's coming Monday five day event, Monday through Friday. Next week on now are many

Speaker 5 (00:47:16):
Ways to describe life on this planet.

Leo Laporte (00:47:20):
I love it. They got Atin bur yeah, sir. Leave it at Richard. Is it Richard creature

Speaker 5 (00:47:26):
Could be called Mike Gerson.

Speaker 6 (00:47:29):
You

Andy Ihnatko (00:47:32):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:47:32):
So, so monstrous is the nature real. And then the, just, they've done a CGI of the,

Alex Lindsay (00:47:39):
Maybe some of it's probably a lot of it's all

Leo Laporte (00:47:41):
Location. Cause you can't get those moving and all that right. Lo is

Alex Lindsay (00:47:44):
Earth. Some of it very well could be it. Wouldn't be hard to insert it in. I mean, that's what we do. Well, what do you

Rene Ritchie (00:47:50):
Do this 3d and Alex, this

Alex Lindsay (00:47:51):
Be this is, I I'll put money on, this is all Mayan Houdini.

Leo Laporte (00:47:57):
This is I can't wait to see this.

Andy Ihnatko (00:47:58):
Explore the coastline giant. Apple is really getting there. They they're creating so many these event, things that say, you know what, maybe I'll subscribe for a month and then cancel.

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
This is the time to jump on Netflix. It's stumbling. It's really the opportunity. Yeah. To say to HBO.

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:15):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:48:17):
But you know, we're not gonna have the huge catalog we understand, but we're gonna do special five day events like this. You're gonna really want a subscription.

Alex Lindsay (00:48:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is just

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:27):
Over the top. Yeah. Also I got, I, I got the impression that maybe they're really into getting the packages going cuz I got, I got an email from them or notice from them saying, Hey, we noticed that you're subscribing to X, Y, and Z. And for you could save 10 bucks a month if you just subscribe to Apple TV plus plus plus and get everything for $29. Well

Leo Laporte (00:48:46):
That's and advantage Apple has right. Because unlike right Netflix, they don't have to make money on Apple TV. Plus it's a loss leader. Netflix

Rene Ritchie (00:48:53):
Has no iCloud.

Andy Ihnatko (00:48:54):
Yeah. And, and, and immediately I thought, oh, isn't that nice. They're looking out for me. But then a, they are looking out for me, but also it's to their benefit to say that, Hey, this person gets the entire package. So if they see if they're getting everything, then there's less of a chance that they will cancel Apple TV after they're cut up on Ted lasso or they'll maybe they will not cancel Apple arcade after a few months of not downloading something. So yeah. That's yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (00:49:17):
True. Cause unlike smart, unlike Netflix, where you have to, you know, people will cancel cuz they've seen everything, then there's something else in the Apple, one package you want and then there's something. So you can just rotate your yeah. Just rotate through them. All you need is something new in one of those five things. I think severance slow horses. They've done some really good stuff now. My

Rene Ritchie (00:49:38):
Trailer for for all mankind three just dropped two, which like every year they go another decade, I think every season is another decade

Leo Laporte (00:49:46):
Forward. And I'm not, I have to say I'm still not that crazy about the early stuff they did. But I think the, the newer stuff they're doing is really very, very good again.

Andy Ihnatko (00:49:53):
I, I really, yeah. They found the groove, I think. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:49:56):
And importantly, I did look at some more photos and I'm almost certain that that's a 3d step in repeat. And I, I, I up my, my, my I up he's

Leo Laporte (00:50:05):
Justing the whole thing.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:07):
<Laugh> no, I just can't, I'm pretty, I, if, if someone asks me to do this, I I'm pretty sure it would be somewhere between 50 and 75,000. It's a really big step in repeat. It's like really holy cow. And I was like, oh, that would be really expensive. Cause the, the rocks are modeled. The rocks are modeled and

Leo Laporte (00:50:21):
Oh yeah, this is 3d looking at and then this stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:23):
For sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's all they built that that's a, that's like a, that's a model like it's a miniature, I mean, it's a, it's

Leo Laporte (00:50:30):
Why not

Alex Lindsay (00:50:31):
So amazing

Leo Laporte (00:50:32):
Little paper mache, some spray paint.

Alex Lindsay (00:50:35):
I, I really enjoy, I really enjoy the level of over the top that Apple takes things like are, it's definitely,

Leo Laporte (00:50:42):
You know, one of the stories in the trip medical book is about the Apple watch launch and they were gonna have it at, you know, DeAnza community college, which is kind of dumpy. They hadn't finished the campus yet. And Johnny's kind of like you can't, I can't bring all, I can't bring all these fashion people to a community college. What I,

Rene Ritchie (00:51:01):
That gala is not held community

Leo Laporte (00:51:03):
College. So he said, can we put a tent out front to show for the after event where we show people, the watches

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:11):
Keep out the

Leo Laporte (00:51:11):
Riff rack? And they said, well, there's a lot of trees there. We could remove the trees, build a tent and then replace the trees. Well, how much would that cost? 25 million do it. <Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (00:51:23):
Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (00:51:23):
So, but Tim waited a while too. Like Tim's just sitting there

Leo Laporte (00:51:27):
Letting

Rene Ritchie (00:51:28):
Everyone

Leo Laporte (00:51:28):
Think he's listening. And it's a two story tent. It's not your every day it's there was some concern, apparently that would look like a wedding tent, this white tent. Right. Did not, I wasn't there. I remember

Rene Ritchie (00:51:39):
That it looked so hilarious because there were a bunch of fashion people there and the fashion PR people did not look like the tech. Like they looked like the tech people all looked like me. They were like swirled, like Egyptian goddesses. They had like three dimensional hair arrangements. And they were sitting at the back with these tiny little coffee cups going, oh, this really does feel like a fashion event. It really does have that feel. And they were just talking amongst themselves about how good the vibe was. I

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:01):
Was crazy. And it really, and, and, and the, the structure, it wasn't, it was the, the, the opposite of a wedding tent. It really felt like almost

Leo Laporte (00:52:08):
Structure that this,

Andy Ihnatko (00:52:09):
That they designed from start to finish. And, and I will say that may, maybe it was my own ego, but it really did feel like you, you ink stained res don't get printer, zinc and newsprint, like on our, on the fashion people. This is for the fashion people. This is for the riff, there's other parts for the riff ref.

Alex Lindsay (00:52:25):
You know, that I, this is, there's a whole street in Davos. That that is pretty much stuff like that. So, you know, during, during we, and, and it's a funny thing, cuz they'll build like these three story buildings like Facebook and a bunch of other folks. Yeah. And, and this idea of just building something up and it starts building for a month and then it's, it's there for a week and then it's gone and, and there's a whole street that goes right down the main, the main drag in, in Davos that, that like, there's like four or five of these that are just these massive construction jobs. And they've gotten really good at, you know, they're all made from they're all gonna get recycled and they come from recycled, you know, they're very careful about a lot of that, but it's it's so here's an amazing thing to watch a parking lot. It turned into a building,

Leo Laporte (00:53:03):
Here's the tent. It's not exactly a tent. <Laugh> yeah.

Alex Lindsay (00:53:07):
Like

Leo Laporte (00:53:09):
25 million.

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:10):
That's like the new wing of the gear. Yeah.

Rene Ritchie (00:53:13):
Yeah. Holy cow.

Andy Ihnatko (00:53:17):
$25 million.

Leo Laporte (00:53:17):
Here's what it looked like inside the, the tent. Let me see if I can find a picture of

Rene Ritchie (00:53:22):
It. It reminds me of that story about when Scott forestall was sick and Steve just wouldn't stop coming to the hospital. And he eventually said, you can't keep doing this. And he said, well, I'll just buy the hospital then.

Leo Laporte (00:53:30):
Yeah. He said, I'll build a wing with my name on, well, he wanted again trip Mickle a lot of these little details probably have been revealed before, but it's fun to read it all together. Scott forestall was just couldn't hold any food down or anything. Steve says, I'm gonna bring my acupuncturist in for you. And Scott said, well, you can't, this is a hospital he's he's gotta be, he's gotta be registered with Steve said, I'll just buy him another wing. <Laugh>

Rene Ritchie (00:53:54):
Are you reading the, the Tony Fidel book Tulio? I was reading the book. No,

Leo Laporte (00:53:57):
I gotta read that, but I'm not interviewing Tony Fidel, but I feel like I should be cuz of course Tony's a big part of this book as well. Yeah. How, what do you think of it?

Rene Ritchie (00:54:06):
I did a quick interview with him and, and they had more expletives than I've ever heard from John before. Just because of the, of the titles of the chapters in Tony's books were so it it's good like at, is like Tony's a real character, but he was there. He was like contracted, which is so funny, like Apple contracted out a large part of the iPod, which they would never do today, but he was contracted to run the iPod and, and his like the, the big takeaway, which I thought was really interesting was he's like Apple and Google are so different. Obviously he did much better at Apple than Google, but he is like Apple failed. They failed over and over again. And it really taught them how to be tenacious, how to stick with things, how to focus, how to do one thing at a time. It's like Google's been making a money forever. So they're like 15 different messenger products. Exactly.

Leo Laporte (00:54:46):
No

Rene Ritchie (00:54:46):
Problem. We'll have a

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Thousand flowers

Rene Ritchie (00:54:48):
Doesn't

Leo Laporte (00:54:49):
Matter. Exactly. Like

Rene Ritchie (00:54:50):
It's like, they've never been hurt. So they don't, they don't have the same discipline. Right?

Alex Lindsay (00:54:53):
Here's the

Leo Laporte (00:54:54):
Inside that tent, by the way, the 25 million I'm gonna put 10 in scare quotes, cuz

Alex Lindsay (00:55:01):
Well this is, this is what I was, this is what I was talking about here. This is, that's the, that's one of the

Leo Laporte (00:55:06):
Buildings. Oh my God, that's a Davos. That's the Facebook.

Alex Lindsay (00:55:08):
And that's, that's temporary like that we'll go down and it feels when you walk in, it just feels like it's been there forever. It's a, but it's just a parking lot.

Leo Laporte (00:55:16):
That's

Rene Ritchie (00:55:16):
Amazing. Do you drop it at an inflates around you? Is that how that works? <Laugh> no,

Leo Laporte (00:55:19):
It

Alex Lindsay (00:55:19):
Does not. It's it's but, but yeah, the you're you're right though. The, that, you know, all the things that Google starts and stops are not the things that generate revenue. Right. You know, those are the, the things that they that's,

Leo Laporte (00:55:29):
Why they could be cavalier.

Alex Lindsay (00:55:30):
And they were, they, they started making money almost from this from day, you know, almost from day one, they've been successful. It's

Rene Ritchie (00:55:35):
Interesting things like Apple, just this year, it started building out teams that they had like one person on for two decades, cuz they were almost bankrupt like two or three decades ago. So they've never poured money into these departments and now they're hiring teams for them finally, which is

Alex Lindsay (00:55:47):
Just, well, I think that there's definitely some like serious PTSD at Apple about, about what happened. Yeah. You know, the near death experience, I think affects, especially the older executives a lot, like the people who were on the ship when it almost San it's like that thirties mentality of folks that, you know, my, my grandmother saved everything well and imagine, you know, all the pin, all the tin foil. Yeah. And she, you know, she had from the

Leo Laporte (00:56:07):
Depression. Yeah. But imagine cuz so Steve comes, saves it and then dies and that right. It was a second. It was a second kind of trauma. Yeah. To them. Like I don't, we, we only survived cuz Steve came back now what do we do?

Alex Lindsay (00:56:20):
Is this guy. Yeah. And I, I think that, I think nobody had Apple. I mean, no one in, in management takes it for granted like takes, takes the success for granted ever. Yeah. Like they're just, they know they're beautiful. It's this constant fight.

Andy Ihnatko (00:56:30):
Yeah. Yeah. This is, I think this is also the reason why they don't they kinda shake it off when people complain about, oh Apple's left, lost its soul. It's putting all this, all this effort into things like services. It's like yeah. Things that will continue to make the money almost for free without having to develop, without having to rely on the facilitates of a market market response to hardware. It's like no, anything that helps Apple to continue to be profitable, to continue to be able to do whatever they want to do. And survive is a really, really good thing.

Leo Laporte (00:57:02):
One thing that always works is ads and at the new fronts, which is the digital ad fronts that they had a couple of weeks ago Amazon and peacock both showed off and you're gonna like this Alex, cuz you've been telling people to do this all along ways to do product placement and already shot TV shows. Yep. So this, this is a there's Tim gun. So some sort of fashion show and there's an M and Ms. Ad kind of put into a poster near it as a way of, of, of ad placement. And they're all gonna do this in Amazon prime.

Alex Lindsay (00:57:39):
They're not all going to while they've been doing this for a while. They've

Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
Been doing for a while. Oh you think so? Oh,

Alex Lindsay (00:57:43):
I've worked on the, I've worked on the tech 15 years ago. Oh like it's yeah. This is not the interesting thing about streaming that makes this available is because we're sending you new segments all the time. We can recast those segments. I don't think that what they're actually doing is compositing in the app. Then they're not compositing that, that system

Leo Laporte (00:58:00):
It's after something shot, it's when it's gonna be streamed out. So it's like, it's like digital ad insertion, as it is, comes out, they call it, they say it's in beta. The virtual product placement tool from Amazon, let's say advertisers place their branded products directly into streaming content. After they've already been filmed peacocks new ins scene ads will identify key moments within a show. I kind of hate this idea. It's gonna be it's digitally insert of brands, customized messaging or product post production.

Alex Lindsay (00:58:30):
Yeah. I think there's gonna be a lot of filmmakers that, that bristle at the, at the artist intent is gonna be a little bit

Andy Ihnatko (00:58:36):
Difficult to deal

Leo Laporte (00:58:37):
Movie. And now there's an add,

Rene Ritchie (00:58:38):
But there is a lot of remember at the end of iron man when he ate a, a he went to like Wendy, sorry. He went to burger king. Yeah. But now they can bid that out. So the next time that goes on Disney, go

Leo Laporte (00:58:47):
To Wendy's. They can just yeah, yeah,

Rene Ritchie (00:58:49):
Yeah. And then they'll use the script fake his voice. So he'll be saying Wendy's instead of saying burger king, this goes so deeply I'm so what

Alex Lindsay (00:58:57):
So, and, and the way that you the way that you make this, there's a couple different ways to make it work. One is obviously that you just re redo the, the piece, but that's that's cost, cost prohibitive to like re redo the effects, but, but what you can do and you'll notice that where they put it, they can't put it everywhere. You know, there's certain things that work well and work don't work well in, in, but you can build a layer that basically says, this is a layer and this is the movement of that layer in 3d. And these, these are the elements that sit over top of that layer. And all you have to do is put a new image in for that layer. And it will immediately like the next time it renders out the next time it sends it out, it can send that out and, and that can be done at the server. So basically you have, let's say an AWS server that's sitting there and it can do that composite because it's actually a really simple composite sure. For the server, because it's got all the alpha channels and everything else it needs, but

Leo Laporte (00:59:45):
That's also why it's not a Coke can on the table. So much as a Coke ad on a flat surface,

Alex Lindsay (00:59:51):
It can be a Coke can. So what you have to do with the Coke can itself is you build you actually, when you shoot it, you shoot it with trackers. So, so that you are going to, so that in you can match moves, you have to do it means that in post you have to, you know, replace the can, but it also means that you can, you have all the morph information and everything else and you can replace it any time you want. So you move

Leo Laporte (01:00:13):
Match the camera movement 

Alex Lindsay (01:00:16):
Yeah. It's

Leo Laporte (01:00:17):
It's you kind of want a static shot though, right? It be a lot. Well,

Alex Lindsay (01:00:19):
Everything is fake and then you move. No, it doesn't even be static at all

Leo Laporte (01:00:22):
Is fake. Oh wow. Because

Alex Lindsay (01:00:23):
What, what you do is you build, you just have to build all the layers. Cuz what you'll do is like if someone's walking in front of it, you have to rotoscope them out. And so then, so then you rotoscope that, that, that foreground element through it, you know, and then you, and a lot of this is shot in green screen. So it's even easier than that cuz you already have the alpha channel, but you're still gonna end up. Rotoscoping is like used in like 80% of the effects shots done anyway. So you cut these layers out that are gonna be in front of it. You can set its motion blur, you can set all the things that it would have if it was moving because that track only has to happen once, once you have the tracking data for that segment, that you're gonna insert that ad, it could be just added you.

Alex Lindsay (01:00:58):
You're just changing the layer that's being affected. So, and then, and then hitting render. And so that's, and it just puts in all the stuff that it needs to, and it has all the lighting information and has all the things that are there. So it's definitely something that that can be done. Now we did it when, when we were working on this 15 years ago you know, some of the light, you know, it was, it was a, it was, it was more difficult and we ended up kind of doing it by hand, but you could do it very quickly. You just throw it in and make it go. But at this point you could definitely do it in a server. And the, the main thing is, is that as you do those composites, they're seamless cuz they were basically built that way for the show.

Alex Lindsay (01:01:33):
And you're just taking all those, that information back out and then putting it all back in you know, to the thing. So it can be actually very, it can be 3d objects or ornate or organic objects, pretty hard, not impossible, but pretty hard, but cans and signs and, and, and like Ellie, like the place that you really do, this is you, you throw it on the signs in a, in the background, on a street. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that stuff's easy, but it doesn't have to be static. It can definitely be moving. It can do all those other things and you'll be able to blend it right in it'll work for

Leo Laporte (01:02:03):
You. You, you may have already seen it. Costume replacement, according to prime Amazon prime, Tom Clancy's, Jack Ryan Bosch legacy Reacher and leverage redemption all have had virtual product placement in them. Yeah, it is. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:02:17):
Like is Ted, Laslow gonna have

Rene Ritchie (01:02:18):
The, the sponsors on the, on the shirts changed every season now like windowing, that kind stuff is

Alex Lindsay (01:02:23):
Hard. I

Rene Ritchie (01:02:24):
No logo on it.

Alex Lindsay (01:02:25):
That stuff is hard. It's not impossible, but hard it's much harder. What's easier is the plainer or anything. That's it's around a simple shape, like a, a cylinder, a plane, a right. You know, those kinds of things are much easier. Shirts moving, not impossible. Cuz what you're doing is basically building the, the morphine maps or the, or the maps I was watching like the

Rene Ritchie (01:02:42):
Avengers endgame. They said that they hadn't finished the costume designs yet for the time travel suits. So none of those are real, every like 90% of the costumes were all done in, in CGI. And so they could probably just change the map, Reinder

Alex Lindsay (01:02:54):
It, they, they can it again. Yeah. You, you can do that to some degree, but it depends on whether you did that in the first place, because what makes this work is all the post process that someone did by hand to get it set up, but it, but once it's set up you're right, that you can just swap the a lot of times you'll just be able to swap those layers. And what's interesting about that is that you can do it for each person. So everybody's seeing different ads and different and I, by the way, I'm telling you that this is possible. I think it's a horrible idea. Like I don't want to ever

Leo Laporte (01:03:20):
Watch fire them. You know, I'm

Alex Lindsay (01:03:22):
Say from a

Leo Laporte (01:03:22):
Perspective, see ads for Jurassic mark in, in you know, Irish,

Rene Ritchie (01:03:27):
It's like 19 Roger stadiums already. It's

Alex Lindsay (01:03:29):
Less that in more of like swapping a Pepsi sign for a Coke sign or swapping a, you know, putting in a a Toshiba instead of subway or something like that. It's it's, it's less of a something that's part of the story and more of just something most,

Leo Laporte (01:03:41):
Just a background. Yeah. But,

Alex Lindsay (01:03:42):
But I still think it's, I, I think it's CRAs and I would never want to do it, but I, but technically it's, it's very doable. The, the interesting thing is when you know that you're inserting it, the, in the thing that, that I got into and then I got out of, cause I didn't like the idea once I dug deep, deep into it <laugh> is imagine having a second screen experience where you are being, you are watching that ad. Now we know what ad you're watching when you're watching it. And we give you the ability to buy it on your phone. Why you're watching the movie, you know, like that's the, that's the golden,

Leo Laporte (01:04:12):
Oh, that's already happening. I can't remember it Visio there's TVs where you're watching a show, listen, and they pop up a thing. Would you like to buy that on the screen, but on your TV's doing it, which is really,

Alex Lindsay (01:04:25):
But imagine it going, it goes to you. You're the only one getting

Leo Laporte (01:04:29):
That's. Cause it's coming from your smart TV, which knows what you're watching and then pops up a lower third. Right. But this

Alex Lindsay (01:04:36):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:04:37):
And so you can click it. It knows it's you, you can click it and you're buying it because it's you, it's your credit

Rene Ritchie (01:04:43):
Like actor replacement, the contract negotiation breaks down there, replace the actor in the first film with the actor in the second film. Just nothing's gonna be,

Leo Laporte (01:04:48):
I think we know all of this. Stuff's gonna be here. Netflix is already saying, we're gonna put ads in by the end of the year. I mean they, these companies, well, they're trying to figure out way to monetize this.

Alex Lindsay (01:04:58):
Well, it's, it's the issue that they have. It's not just

Leo Laporte (01:05:00):
Subscription costs.

Alex Lindsay (01:05:01):
Well, the, the other issue is, is that that for brands, they are getting cut out of advertising right. At end record rate. Right. So they are desperate. It's it's not only can we do it technologically and do we need to, can we make extra revenue? But the brands are just desperate to get in front of people because we're basically many people like me live in an almost ad free environment. Like I don't, I pay extra and I'm almost untouched by ads at any given time. Right?

Leo Laporte (01:05:25):
Yeah. That's increasingly the case, isn't it? Yeah. So it's driven partly by advertisers. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:05:30):
Oh, oh, go. Yeah. They'll pay a lot of money for

Leo Laporte (01:05:31):
That only seven bucks a month. And you don't have to have ads in any of our shows. <Laugh> yeah, no, exactly. Just joined clump to it. I

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:38):
I'm. And we come back

Rene Ritchie (01:05:39):
And we over place with a burger king burger

Leo Laporte (01:05:41):
<Laugh> even, you know,

Andy Ihnatko (01:05:43):
Even on even on Patreon, there are, there are channels that I support a, because I wanna support the channel. But also because I don't wanna hear about that wallet again, you know, it's, it's worth $3 a month to me to get the ad free version of it. And this is, hopefully this is good for the services and this is good for Paton. And this is good for Netflix and Hulu that I can pay extra for for ad free experiences. But yeah, people are gonna get more and more desperate to get ads in front of us. And people are, oftentimes people are surprised to find out that well here's here is why like this TV that has pretty much the same display panel from LG as this other TV that costs $400 more that's because they're selling, they're collecting and selling so much information about you while you're watching this exact same experience with the exact same panel. And that's, that's gonna be like the really creepy thing when you don't have the ability to say, guess what guess what TV you, I, I, I connected you to wifi so you could download the latest firmware, but now you I've changed my firmware, my wifi password. You don't get to talk to anybody for any reason, except for I ask you to do something. And then I took later on

Rene Ritchie (01:06:45):
Player cuz it played out well. That's like literally player played out the Blueray player. It was like, you buy a Samsung Amazon player or a JVC and it would play ads on top of your DVDs

Alex Lindsay (01:06:53):
Or blue racer. And it's why, it's why for me, other than my DVD player, my Apple TV is the only thing allowed to talk to TV, talk to the internet. So all my other electronics I'm like, Nope, you don't get to do that. I have one thing that does that. And thank you very much.

Andy Ihnatko (01:07:05):
My, my Invidia shield is on, in many ways the cheapest 150 bucks ever spent. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:10):
Yeah. Actually a lot of creators that don't want brand names in their shows. This Anthony Nielsen just sent me this link to a old Buzzfeed article about a prop shop ISS prop house that sells let's potato chips, the $40, a big bag, $20 for small bag. And now this is old, but the, it shows up in a lot of shows. It arrested development. Orange is the new black new girl because they don't want real potato chips, I guess the middle. Well,

Alex Lindsay (01:07:38):
No it's broke

Leo Laporte (01:07:38):
Girl. It's girls.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:39):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not just that

Leo Laporte (01:07:42):
Ugly

Alex Lindsay (01:07:42):
Baby, but it's also, you don't have the license. If you have a commercial property, can't

Leo Laporte (01:07:47):
Into it. Potato chips in there. Cause you don't own it.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:49):
Yeah. So, so we, a lot of times we also, what we call Greek it out where, where you take a right. We don't take a Sharpie and fill in things so that it doesn look like

Leo Laporte (01:07:57):
It, but it's not. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:07:59):
Yeah. And then, and like we had a, my server room is in a, what was the old print graphics room. And so you print things out, you know, and put 'em on things that, that are gonna look like it. And sometimes a lot of design goes into it. Sometimes you just buy it from lets

Leo Laporte (01:08:11):
<Laugh>

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:13):
No it's, it's, it's great. There are their entire com companies that do nothing, but like secure the secure, the the IP, the trade dress, everything for fictional brands, just so that they can license a clean soda can a clean airline. Oh, there's reason why oceanic is is the airline of choice. Whenever a disaster happens in a movie, because again, they develop the logos, the trade dress, everything they have the trademarks, they know that's not conflicted with any other sort of airline. And so it's a one stop shopping. It's it's one of those fun things. Like the ninth time you've watched a movie that you're really, really like you realize that, Hey, wait a minute. I saw someone reading that exact same magazine six years ago.

Leo Laporte (01:08:52):
I just know I'm never flying oceanic, no matter what, I don't

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:55):
Care. That's a, that's a be yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:08:56):
<Laugh> well,

Andy Ihnatko (01:08:58):
Or at least, or at least, you know, for the you'll have fun. Like the first three seasons after that, it's gonna go way downhill. The, the experience,

Leo Laporte (01:09:05):
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Leo Laporte (01:12:42):
Apple is now gonna let this is I think, more like a word of warning developers automatically increase your subscription prices within LIS like

Alex Lindsay (01:12:53):
Is a horrible idea. Yeah. I just wanna say, like I just looked at, I read this and I, I don't, I can't unpack like how this is. Okay. Like, you know, I, I don't, I don't, I get, I get that developers wanna increase it, but it's a lot of 50% or $50 is a big jump. And I, I think that developers would be crazy to do this without it says it's gonna notify people, but you know, there's,

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
Apple will always notify users of the increase in advance via email push notification and a message, but a developer who said, okay, it's $50 a year for my thing, you're paying it. You've got automatic renewal and all of a sudden it's $75 or a hundred dollars or a hundred dollars. There's already so many subscription scams already on the store. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:13:39):
Yeah. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:13:41):
You know I,

Andy Ihnatko (01:13:42):
I wonder who I wonder who not necessarily demanded but said here's how much money we're generating for the store. We would very, very much like it. If we had this ability to

Leo Laporte (01:13:51):
Do this, it used to be opt in it's now it's now opt out. So you should be aware of Disney plus increased its price to 7 99 a month. Last month, there was an, a notification that was an alert rather than an opt in choice. That was, I think the first time anybody had seen this,

Alex Lindsay (01:14:08):
I think it's is probably Disney and Netflix. And I think that a lot of them are. Yeah. Yeah. They're they want to be able to do

Leo Laporte (01:14:14):
That. Well, and I don't think it's gonna be 50 bucks or 50%, but I do think

Alex Lindsay (01:14:18):
They just wanna be able to increment it by a dollar

Leo Laporte (01:14:20):
Every once in a while. Yeah. This

Rene Ritchie (01:14:21):
Scam will be though.

Leo Laporte (01:14:22):
Oh, that's right. That's a good point. Yeah. So be a little bit more aware, I guess, of what you're paying you

Rene Ritchie (01:14:32):
Just erodes faith. Like previously you could just set it and forget it. Like I got like, that was the nice part about using the app store. All your subscriptions are in one place, you could set them up. You, they wouldn't be like auto renewing, all these other stuff you have to put up with with web based renewals. You wouldn't have to call a phone number and now it just, it's one, it's one de like degrade of, I dunno if degradation that's the right word. It just, it erodes the trust experience that the app stores is supposed to provide. Yeah,

Alex Lindsay (01:14:56):
I agree. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
There, according to Ming G quo, Apple's working on a USB C port. Won't be till next year, but iPhone 15 could be USBC. Do you think this is credible?

Rene Ritchie (01:15:19):
Yeah. I think it's two years too late. It's absolutely credible. Especially if the wireless stuff isn't working the way they want and the EU is breathing down their neck and they announced ProRes last year, which has six gigabytes per, per minute of footage. And this year it's gonna go to eight K, which is gonna be even bigger. And it's still USB 2.0 speeds on lightning. And something has to give cuz it's like, and not everyone is Alex. Not everyone can have like four iPhones and just throw them behind their backs at a PA who will go and take all the stuff off for them as they start filming with the next one as, oh, their cartridge is, most people have like one iPhone. If they want to use it for any of this professional stuff, like you're sitting there. It's like that joke Steve jobs made about, we need fire wire on the iPod because the other person has five hours to load up a CD and we can do it in one minute. And this is the opposite of that. So it's just, it wasn't tenable anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:16:00):
Well, they'll have to get rid of lightning everywhere though. Right? I mean, if I'm not gonna carry a lightning cable, they're

Rene Ritchie (01:16:05):
Going to, yeah. They're gonna get rid of it on the magic mouse. Yeah. What

Leo Laporte (01:16:07):
Happened to the rumor? They were gonna get rid of ports entirely.

Alex Lindsay (01:16:10):
Well, I here's, the thing is I, I think that you could see them going two different directions. The pro the pro versions have USBC and the more basic models end up with no ports at all. And I think that that might be because there is, if you're a pro and you're putting tons of content on it, there's a real reason that you need USBC. And if it's a smaller one, they may decide that you don't need the speed. That, that speed on a real time basis.

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:32):
Think

Rene Ritchie (01:16:32):
That's, if you have socks, if

Andy Ihnatko (01:16:33):
You have the, if you have the, the lesser models, ones that are cheap, those the people who are buying the $449 iPhone, cuz they can't afford the $800 iPhone. Those are the people who need to be able to use the $9 charger instead of the $30 cheat charger or the special thing that has the Pogo pins on it.

Alex Lindsay (01:16:51):
I dunno. I just think that to me, that seems like for the place that they would do it, I don't know whether they should or not.

Rene Ritchie (01:16:56):
The SEO will be lightning for the next 10 years though. Like, that'll be like the last one to change. Like the, like the, the, was it the 3 49? Ipad is still lightning, even though all the other ones are

Leo Laporte (01:17:04):
USBC. So you're gonna have a period of confusion and upset

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:08):
Probably like when these changed from 30, like when they went from fire wire,

Leo Laporte (01:17:10):
I think 10 and 30 pin to lightning, right?

Andy Ihnatko (01:17:13):
They, they might even dog food it on the, the most exclusive and expensive model. Like if they have the, the mall that's 1200 that starts at $1,200 and has a million wonderful things on it. And then they get to the part with say, and we've, it's the most dust resistant water resistant maintenance free one we've had because we've finally gotten rid of the, we've done the brave thing and gotten rid of all of all power plugs. And when people say that well, but I, but I need to get what way to get my AK video off their front. Well, that's way we've got this really great Pogo pin sled that will actually give you full like Intel, Intel Thunderbolt speeds. Instead of dealing with USB three or USSB 3.2. So I it's, it would be a way to test the waters while exploiting people who would kind of maybe fancy the idea of, oh well, oh, oh Jenkins. Why you still have a, an iPhone that has a, a charging port on it. Oh, how qua I remember what that was like. Ooh.

Alex Lindsay (01:18:07):
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:18:07):
So we need the cable. Like we're the ones who need it.

Alex Lindsay (01:18:10):
Yeah. Yeah. I was say, I, I think that because the people who buy it are really the ones who are gonna use the higher bandwidth. I think it probably wouldn't match up.

Leo Laporte (01:18:20):
Okay. We'll see. You know, with, as with all of these rumors, you know, you just have to kinda wait and see it

Andy Ihnatko (01:18:28):
Could, well, what well, and I mean this seriously, Alex, what, what if like they really did that. They went all the way. They said, we understand that the people who were buying this for this, this, again, they're already giving you a list of all the things that make this great for shooting for AK video. But if they said that instead of like harping on the fact that it doesn't have a data or charge port, so that we basically gave this a Thunderbolt dock that gives you all the things you need in the field to instantly transmogrify, whatever it is on that phone, to something in the destination you needed to go to. Yeah. If they, if they offered a dock like that, would that sort of ameliorate the problem?

Alex Lindsay (01:19:02):
No, cuz of this. Okay. Is that when we're shooting with these things and they're, they have to be all self-contained and we need the wires for power and okay. What

Leo Laporte (01:19:09):
Are you holding up, Alex? Is that an iPhone?

Alex Lindsay (01:19:11):
Oh, this is a, this is a small rig basically skeleton around an iPhone and it's got a handle on it. And this, we build, we're building these huge rigs to cover some events coming up. And so the but this is why you,

Leo Laporte (01:19:27):
You need to power the

Alex Lindsay (01:19:28):
Iphone. And the problem is, is the people who buy those are the, also the people that are in, you know, that are in media and so on and so forth. And the ING of teeth would be so brutal <laugh> that Apple would never get over. Like it would just, people would be so rough about it. And, and they, and they're the people who can be rough that I think that Apple would probably probably take the USBC would be the last, the USBC everybody wants at this point, because we need more speed and we need more power and we need more, you know, we're used to it on our iPads and we're like, okay, this lightning thing is for the birds, you know? And so the, so I think that on the high end, we're all ready for USBC. And, and also that we don't care about like buying a bunch of new cables. Cause we, I have, I have racks and racks and racks of USBC cable.

Leo Laporte (01:20:06):
Do you think people are disappointed with wireless? I think, feel like Apple was all in, on wireless and now

Alex Lindsay (01:20:12):
I, I, I, I don't even like it on my watch. Like, like I like, I, I really cause it always gets slipped. It slips off and then I don't, then I suddenly don't have a charge.

Leo Laporte (01:20:19):
It's slow.

Alex Lindsay (01:20:20):
I don't, I don't don't

Leo Laporte (01:20:21):
Like it at all. It's a waste of power. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's hard to do it. Right, right. It's you gotta position

Alex Lindsay (01:20:28):
Perfectly, but

Rene Ritchie (01:20:29):
You get bashed. If you don't offer it at the same time,

Leo Laporte (01:20:31):
Like you have to offer it,

Rene Ritchie (01:20:32):
Doesn't put wireless on it. People get lose

Leo Laporte (01:20:35):
Their watch. I do feel like Apple's reluctant to go wireless only

Rene Ritchie (01:20:38):
There dog fooding it on the Apple watch. Like the Apple watch has no service port anymore. Apple has these special high, high speed wireless connectors for servicing them now. And that's probably what they're thinking of, including into mag say for the next generation of iPhones, but it's just like, again, like they made a chip that can render ProRes. They made a storage controller fast enough to record it. They made no IO controller fast enough to get it off and wireless. And those like, they have to decide they're a creative pros company or they're like the wireless future of mainstream marketing companies. And those things are, are attention. Those things are opposite ends of the spectrum. They are not to Alex's point. They're not what pros want. Pros want hard wires. We want the matrix. We want Battlestar galactic and they could make a wonderful consumer iPhone. Like it's wireless charging for like, even for nerds is incredibly popular because you're willing to trade convenience for speed. And for the optimization for the efficiency of the charge, people love the wireless charging systems. So let the mainstream love them. And then people who are trying to do work on 'em just let us plug in.

Leo Laporte (01:21:36):
Yeah. By the way, Apple it turns out thanks to somebody in our discord chat Raku. Thank you. Roku is famous for its step in repeats that are not oh, that's great. Isn't that great. This the servant

Alex Lindsay (01:21:53):
That's the first one I've seen. And so yeah, that that's that's

Leo Laporte (01:21:55):
Killer and it's, it's got an open door as you go in, you know, as you're in inny here's this is Pachinko that's okay. But it's got at least got some grass me. This one it's got astronaut suits on the wall. Nothing

Alex Lindsay (01:22:09):
Like the, the prehistoric one was at a whole different

Leo Laporte (01:22:11):
Level. This one, just a seamless, no big deal, but no, no

Alex Lindsay (01:22:15):
Look, look, look, look, look, no, this is what I'm talking about though. This is the ones we've done in the past. So now they don't have a mark to stand on, but you can see that they didn't do step and repeat there. They gave one big logo. You yeah. Now they, they are using, I think that they are using those boxes to subtly kind of set. Well, I, I see they're, they're designing around the soccer field or whatever, but right. But the, but again, there's a step and repeat further down, but this is, we've done ones that are all like that right behind the actress there where they're just big logos behind it and that's fine. Right? Like brand it, I don't wanna say don't brand it. I'm just saying the step and repeat is just so eighties, you know, and not in a good way.

Leo Laporte (01:22:48):
These are all from the Apple TV plus subreddit, somebody put these all together. Here's the shrink, they've got a window, you know, into the office, a disco ball for, we crashed <laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:23:00):
And again, like not look, not step and repeat though, like it's, it's

Leo Laporte (01:23:03):
No, it something much more interesting. And then here's Amazon and Netflix

Andy Ihnatko (01:23:11):
See that that shot is exactly right. Like you have to show off the clothes. There are people who are like, right, this is,

Leo Laporte (01:23:16):
This is

Andy Ihnatko (01:23:16):
Part of their business as a, as a celebrity that they get clothes from top designer. So if they say, why did I, I under, I understand that having like a giant toilet seat really summed up the movie, but this doesn't really show off my Pilan whatever gown, two

Leo Laporte (01:23:31):
Degrees. These are, these are all though. I have to. I agree with you, Alex. I mean, come on, come on on man.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:38):
But then white and black are the worst cause people bring, so you never use white and black because white makes it hard to expose everybody correctly and black half people show up in black and then they just fade in, they fade

Leo Laporte (01:23:47):
Background

Alex Lindsay (01:23:48):
This, you always wanna do something.

Leo Laporte (01:23:48):
This looks good. And I think you could still see the fashion you know, yeah. Jared let's and half way. Yeah, yeah. For we crashed.

Alex Lindsay (01:23:56):
I, you know why they were, you know, why you're there? I mean, and this is again, I think that like that Ted last one looks the prehistoric one, other than it being a step and repeat, like, if it's just been one, one or one big motif or whatever. Right. But, but otherwise

Leo Laporte (01:24:08):
I like servants. This one's good. Just built a dinosaur. This one's really good. Looks good. Isn't that? Great. They've got like a hallway and doors opening. They white light behind the door. That's nice.

Alex Lindsay (01:24:19):
I wanna interview that

Andy Ihnatko (01:24:20):
For your own iPod head.

Leo Laporte (01:24:21):
<Laugh> yeah. That's the Johnny, that's the Johnny. I have room inside there. I don't know if I should bring this up, but apparently Doby now has Doby at most for podcasts. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> of course you knew that Alex we've done surround sound. We did Doby atmo 15 years ago on this show. You did

Alex Lindsay (01:24:42):
It. Maybe not atmo, maybe surround <laugh>. It

Leo Laporte (01:24:44):
Was surround. So, you know, it was, it was Doby. Atmo phone is what it was Doby headphone back in the day. That was a, something that didn't last,

Alex Lindsay (01:24:52):
Where this really works are the the, the ones that are adding effects to their podcast. So if you do, you know, if you do a podcast, you can kind of get away with it, like, oh, I'm gonna put people in different places. And it does. The one thing about it is, is that when you put people in different places in your, in your broadcast, it's actually easier people to understand. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:11):
At first, if you were over on the right and I were kind of over in the middle and, and yeah, I mean, as you are on the video set,

Alex Lindsay (01:25:19):
Right. It's nice. It's, it's a nice little thing, but, but the, where it really stands out is if you take a, this American life and you grab all the location records. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:29):
They do. That would be

Alex Lindsay (01:25:29):
Amazing. Now you know, we've done some testing in this area and it's amazing cuz now it puts you in a whole different world, right? Like you're like, it's hear all the environment. And so then you start, you basically take those ambient like, so when you go out to do a location, instead of taking a just a regular microphone, you might take that microphone to interview the person, but you also have an ambient mic that is grabbing everything. And then you're able to kind of pull it back in or you're grabbing specific samples. And in this case you can sample things out and then put them in places, given them inside of at most,

Leo Laporte (01:26:00):
Most people won't be listening on equipment that supports it. It'll still sound fine in mono or stereo. Right?

Alex Lindsay (01:26:07):
Well, it'll fall down. Atmos will fall down into my neural. If you have, if you have an Apple player now I don't, now I will admit, I know how to generate that content. I don't know how to distribute it. I haven't tried to do that. So there's a couple extra files that it wants you to. I was reading through that article. I don't know how that gets packaged up properly for, you know, the podcast app or whatever.

Leo Laporte (01:26:26):
Oh, because you need so there's you need an MXF file in, in addition or something.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:33):
It's not an it's, it's a couple other files that are there to describe that instead

Leo Laporte (01:26:36):
Of just an MP three. It's not an MP three in other words. Well, wait a minute though. Apple does it. I think it has to be Apple does it with music. It's just ANAC file.

Alex Lindsay (01:26:44):
Yeah. So I, I think you generate those things and then they, they generate something that's encapsulated. I don't know enough about that yet. Okay. But the, the main thing is it should be able to be, it will eventually be a file that you have to deal with, but I don't know. I haven't actually tried to distribute it. I just right. Have worked on it, you know, in developing the content. The, the big thing, the cool thing is is that it really does. It is immersive and it will, you will be able to hear it in your headphones. If you have an, an Apple device, this is the best part about Apple, an Apple device made in the last three to four years. I mean, it's like the, these, they all have the ability to do this. And so, I mean, it might be up to five years now anyway. So the, the point is is that they, they can, they can take that at most and then they can put it where it needs to go. And and again, it, if you, if you're adding effects, if you're adding those kinds of things it's very atmospheric, you know, it definitely yeah. Makes you feel like you're there. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:27:37):
It's really cool. Cause certainly, certainly some, some kind of more theatrical shows and so forth, but I still, I would like to do it when we did it. It was very cool. Yeah. But no one could really hear it because you had to have Adobe headphones, decoding headphones and all that right stuff. 

Alex Lindsay (01:27:51):
We're, we're, we're about to add some five, one to what we're doing with office hours. We oh,

Leo Laporte (01:27:54):
Wow. But we, we were talking about

Alex Lindsay (01:27:56):
Having a whisper mic where cuz I I'll just be like, like and put it like in the left surround or, or right. Surround behind you ASMR. And then I'll just be like,

Leo Laporte (01:28:04):
I don't believe that Andy knows what he's talking about. <Laugh> you know, like you said, this like

Alex Lindsay (01:28:08):
Whisper in the back and Andy and

Leo Laporte (01:28:12):
Andy's like, I'm Andy, Andy Cohen of Bravo when he does those shows. You're right. Thank you for calling that Andy Cohen out. And

Alex Lindsay (01:28:19):
Then Andy's like,

Leo Laporte (01:28:20):
Andy's like, can I have a voice of God mikes? Yeah. But Alex is crazy. Don't listen to him. You know, we just have these little like at things in the back of your funny. Oh, but we do truck back. Well, alright. I, you know, you can use Apple's logic, Ableton live black magic DaVinci resolve innuendo from Steinberg there's so a number of Daws that will work yeah. To do this. Okay. Okay. It's Mac OS only right now, which is interesting. PC support is coming

Alex Lindsay (01:28:55):
PC support by the way, P PC support for Atmos is

Leo Laporte (01:28:58):
Hard. Is it <laugh> isn't that interesting. PC and

Alex Lindsay (01:29:02):
PC and Android? Well it's because Microsoft was too cheap to,

Leo Laporte (01:29:07):
Oh, you know, they didn't want buy. So,

Alex Lindsay (01:29:08):
So the, so that they just, you don't, you don't get the license. Apple has all the licenses in there, so right. So it's, so Microsoft didn't wanna pay for it and they, they, it would be a bigger bill for them too. So, but, but a lot

Leo Laporte (01:29:17):
Bigger. Yeah.

Alex Lindsay (01:29:18):
Yeah. So it's because it's not supported. It's not, it's not Doby it's because it's not supported, you know, in the OS. And so it's a, it's a real pain. And so Android is just, I mean, both of those are just hard, hard, hard to do to do that in right now because they're also very fragmented.

Andy Ihnatko (01:29:35):
I, I really wish that that immersive audio were easier to understand. Like even when I, when I'm talking about it, like on NPR or whatever I have to, it is so much freaking work to make sure that I know what I'm talking about. That don't know, you're not imagining this because you have this hardware you're running this app and this streaming service. And I mean, you're right now Apple's biggest leap was to put that in the OS. So that lot of the decoding is just simply part of the OS services. Well, Androids, Androids getting it later in the year, but it's like, it's so confusing when there, there are times, oh my God. I, I can, I can, I'm really hearing and experiencing the sound and oh wait, I'm not actually, I don't have actually AB Atmos turned on. Okay. Sorry. <Laugh> it's just, it's just, I cleaned my ears before I listened.

Alex Lindsay (01:30:19):
Well, and it's also, Apple does a lot of stuff that, you know, makes it sound like it's doing something. You know, they, they do a lot of pro processing to bump stereo to something that feels more surround as well. And so it's, it is a it is, it can be hard to distinguish between those even for, for those folks who do it all the time. But you know, the main thing is, is that it's, you know, Apple has the advantage that they standardized on this a long time ago, as opposed to, you know, they, they rolled it out publicly, you know, last year, but they standardized it a long time ago. So a lot of the devices, the vast majority of devices were already supporting it. And it's easy for Apple, you know, and it's not, the other platforms are gonna be hard and they're gonna say be hard because they're really fragmented and people don't upgrade and you know, there's so there's just a lot of, you know, when you look into those markets, it's just, you know, how much impact can you actually get? But on the Mac platform, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty cool. Or on the Apple ecosystem.

Leo Laporte (01:31:10):
Hey, Hey, some exciting news. I see Alex, you're gonna do a club TWiT AMA next month. That's exciting. Yes. July 14th coming up in a couple of weeks, the book club termination shock. I give you some warning because this one's a long book. Stacy's book club will be termination shock by Neil Stevenson. I'm told it's a great book. Are you finished with it, John? Halfway second, read halfway through his second read. You're an overachiever. And coming up this Thursday, did you know that we have a VP of operations? I didn't, I can't wait to hear the interview with some, some guy named Jerry Wagley. I I know Jerry <laugh>, so that'll be that's. We do these events in the, the club, which is great. As I mentioned earlier, you can get ad free versions of all our shows that also means tracker free.

Leo Laporte (01:31:54):
You can get access to the discord, the special events in the TWiT plus feed seven bucks a month, TWiT.tv/club TWiT club, TWiT members have made it possible for us to launch new shows like this week in space. There's another one I'm very excited about. We're working on we have the untitled Linux show. Right now that's still in the club because I don't think we get advertiser support for it, but the club members support it. And that's, that's what really matters. Twit.Tv/club TWiT our show today brought to you by our crowd. I think there are a lot of people out there who are looking for, especially with the stock market doing what it's doing and Bitcoin doing what it's doing or looking for other ways to invest. Maybe you've watched as I have venture capitalists and friends of mine, like Kevin Rose make it big by getting in early on startups.

Leo Laporte (01:32:47):
Well, our crowd is a venture capital company, a venture capital fund as well. That is giving you access to private market investments, pre IPO pre exit investments. Normally you wouldn't have access to this unless you were a venture capitalist. Well, they are. They analyze companies across the global private market. They select those with the greatest growth potential, and then they let you in on it. Now you have to be an accredited investor. So you must go to our crowd.com/mac break, enter the country. You're in to find out what the rules are for that. Usually it's something like net worth or, or yearly income, but it varies from country to country. So many interesting pre-unit startups and our crowd has access to 'em all they have, what they call deal flow from personal medicine to cybersecurity, to robotics at quantum computing and more in state of the art labs, startup garages, anywhere in between our crowd is identifying innovators.

Leo Laporte (01:33:52):
So you can invest when the growth potential is the greatest early. Our crowds accredited investors have already invested over a billion dollars in growing tech companies. Many of their members have benefited from the 46 IPOs or sale exits of investments. Now you could truly diversify your portfolio by investing in innovative private market companies at our crowd, a credit. Now, I want to give you the rules of the road. You have to be an accredited investor. You could participate in single company deals for as little as $10,000 or one of our crowds funds for as little as $50,000, a minimum of $10,000 is required to invest. And as I said, the investment terms will vary depending on where you invest. You'll find out more information when you go to the site and input the country you're investing from. I think this is a really interesting way to add to your portfolio. Join the fastest growing venture capital investment community, our crowd O U R C R O w D. Our crowd.com/mac break, our crowd.com/mac break. Thank you so much for supporting MacBreak weekly hour crowd. And if you use, if you go there, by the way, it's free to sign up and you, you can go there and you can find out all about it. But two use that address hour crowd.com/mac break. I think his time for your picks of the week. Let me start with Andy and ICO.

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:24):
My pick is a book a biography that autobiography that I bought a while ago, but didn't get around to listening until to a couple of weeks ago. It is Mel Brook's latest memoir all about me, my remarkable life in show

Leo Laporte (01:35:36):
Business. Oh, I'd love. Did this just come out?

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:38):
No, it actually came out late last year.

Leo Laporte (01:35:40):
Oh, but still new. Oh, I'd love, love still, still newish. Right love. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:35:44):
It's it's, it's it really is amazing and hugely entertaining. You've probably you've, you've seen him on on interviews and he tells a lot of the same stories over and over again. And yeah, in this book, he does tell a lot of those stories you've probably heard before you will, you will find out exactly how the 2000 year old man sketch was invented. You will find out about, you'll hear a lot of these things over and over again. But the thing is, I don't think he's done a book before where it really did the entire scope of his career. And he just has so many cool stories to tell I'm I didn't buy the, I, I intentionally bought the Audi, the audible book because it is narrated by him over 14 hours. And what do you want more than like the most jolly joke teller in the world?

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:24):
<Laugh>, who's devoted his entire life to just mischief and humor and being funny to tell you stories of his 95 years in, in, in existence over 14 hours, the only, the only complaint I have is that it would be great if he it's, he's not, I don't think he's an introspective sort of guy. So he is not gonna talk about like he glosses over when he talks about the producers he glosses over and like a sentence that, oh, well I was desperate had this new wife, I was trying to support my career was like pretty much over, so I really desperately needed this. And you're thinking, oh, well, tell us about that. Tell us like what

Leo Laporte (01:36:55):
You'd. Yeah. I'd like to hear more about that. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko (01:36:56):
Yeah. But that's, but that's just like context setting. He does. He's not talking about like things, things like culture in 2022 and how difficult it would've been to do a movie like young Frankenstein or or blazing saddles today that would've been kind of fun, but okay. Maybe that's too much to ask for. That's something for a future biographer to go for, but it's, it's just 14 hours of the most entertaining stuff. It's also, it's also a good book in that you don't really have to consume at all, like in one, two or three day period. It, you can really dip in and out of it because it's just a sequence of really, really funny stories.

Leo Laporte (01:37:30):
I love sh bios. And I have to say, when you listen on audible and the guy who wrote it is reading it, let me, let me just hear what Melbrook sounds like at 95

Speaker 7 (01:37:38):
Or train or hitchhiked is somewhere so he can get a boat to go to America. Believe me, nobody is going to pick him up. So let's say he's lucky enough find

Leo Laporte (01:37:50):
This. This is like, you're in a deli. He's sitting there telling you stories about his life. I gotta, I gotta get that

Andy Ihnatko (01:37:58):
Also. You're I really think you're missing something when he's talking about his time in the Catskills and he's not, and you don't hear him doing, hear him by this day, his voice of elderly, elderly, Jewish people, that Catskills you're really missing out.

Leo Laporte (01:38:10):
I love it all about me, my remarkable life in show business, Mel Brooks it's of course hardcover, Kindle, but Amazon, I mean the audible lets you listen to to the great Mel Brooks Rene Richie pick of the week.

Rene Ritchie (01:38:26):
So mine is a quick one, but swift playgrounds was another one of the things that Apple updated and the big announcement to swift playgrounds was earlier in the year, coming to iPad where you could for the first time build iPad apps in swift playgrounds for the iPad, and then submit them to the iPad app store so that all, you know, joke about what's a computer. Well, you know, some people believe a computer is something that you can use to actually make apps for the computer that you are using. And app will finally check that button with swift playgrounds for iPad. And now a lot of those features have also come to swift playgrounds for the Mac and you on the Mac, you have Xcode, which is fine. Some people are wondering like why I have swift playgrounds, but it's all about making this sort of pathway for people to get more immersed and better in build skills at coding.

Rene Ritchie (01:39:07):
And to me it feels like you have iMovie on iPad, which is really accessible, direct manipulation. You slice with your finger, all of those things. And then you can move to iMovie on the Mac. Or if you only have a Mac, you can use iMovie on the Mac and then you can go to final cut pro and the same thing with garage band on iOS garage band on the Mac and then logic pro on the Mac. It makes this really nice path to get to build and get better at these skills. And now we have the same thing for code. So you can use swift playgrounds, swift UI, all of those things on the iPad. You can use them now in full parody on the Mac, and then you can very easily move that over to full on Xcode. When you get more confident, more skills or you just start building apps that require full on Xcode to do it.

Rene Ritchie (01:39:49):
And I love that Apple is still, you know, pouring a lot of effort and into, into this space because it's, it was sort of not a glaring a mission, but it, it wasn't as easy a path as it should have been. And coding is such an important language for people to learn at least to have some understanding of, especially as the discussion swirls around with the, you know, in silly topics like algorithmic transparency and things like that. Not that that's silly, but the way the conversation has been on TWiTter recently has been super silly, but just so people understand and know and, and have some sort of agency over code. So if you have an iPad or you have a Mac, you have full on swift playgrounds where you can build an app, literally from just telling bite to move forward or sideways to putting something up on the app store. And that's, that's super exciting to me.

Leo Laporte (01:40:31):
Very cool. I, yeah, I think it's in a remarkable thing that Apple's doing to get people involved in programming swift playgrounds 4.1 for iPad and Mac is out now Mr. Alex Lindsay pick of the week. Yeah. So we're,

Alex Lindsay (01:40:47):
We're building some new kits. I'm building kits for folks that wanna be on. We're gonna do a new podcast. We're actually working on a podcast with micro Krasney. Oh, and nice. We get, maybe get some of you guys on to, to talk to him, but the and we're kind of building some building some kits that are kind of light kits that are just gonna give me good audio, reasonably good video, a little bit, little bit of lighting, but not go crazy. Some of our kits are really big, <laugh> complicated. And one thing that we, we really went through is looking at a lot of different microphones, you know, and the rule, the GA, what we were looking for is not just the highest quality, but also it's a high quality sound, but it also is easy to you know, set, put a put together easy to control, easy to connect to the computer.

Alex Lindsay (01:41:27):
And so we've kind of started to really circle around the MV seven. It's not a brand new, new one, but this is like much like the SMB SMB seven as well, but the MV seven sures kind of large, it's a capsule, same as, I think it's same capsule as the SM 58, but it has you know, a different you know, wind screen and so on and so forth. And it's a, it, it does both XLR and USB, so it can be just a USB mic, but it also, if you decide you wanna put it into something with a little bit more control, you wanna record locally. Cuz what we wanna be able to do is have this mic and then be able to go, oh, we're gonna put it into a mix pre three and you know, record it. But we have the option of just sending it out by itself and having just a microphone. We wanted both

Leo Laporte (01:42:12):
Of those. This is these, this is a legendary microphone. Yeah. For them to have a USB version of it is huge.

Alex Lindsay (01:42:17):
Yeah. And it's got some controls on the outside. It's relatively easy. It's robust, you know, with a little stand. And so it's got the zero latency, you know, microphone connect, you know, headset connection. So there's a lot of things about it that, that that, that are, that are pretty slick.

Leo Laporte (01:42:32):
So yeah. And it comes with purple

Alex Lindsay (01:42:34):
We're on purple. I'm not, I'm not buying the purple ones

Leo Laporte (01:42:37):
<Laugh>

Alex Lindsay (01:42:38):
But but I, but I will. But, but I think that we're gonna start buying a bunch of those because we just think that that's a, a good one. Again, it's easy to send out. We're not worried about a bean in frame, you know? Right. It's kind of audio primary like we do here. Right. And and so it's just a nice, easy one to get really high quality audio. And then again, one of the keys was it had to have an XLR 

Leo Laporte (01:43:00):
Well, both ways. Yeah, exactly. It looks like it's a meter on the front too, which is kind of cool.

Alex Lindsay (01:43:05):
Yeah. It has a meter and you can, you can have some controls over the volume there. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:43:09):
Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. MV seven. Sure's been doing a lot of great stuff under the motive, very aggressive and I really like a lot of their microphones, so yeah. We'll have to try this out too. That's cool. And you get, you can get it with a tripod for only 20 bucks more so that's pretty good. Yeah. And there's a boom too. I don't know if I'm gonna recommend this <laugh> or not. When Snapchat came out with their air selfie, their, their, their little selfie drone, I bought it. It won't be here for a couple of months. And then somebody on the, in the chat room said, well, wait a minute, get one of these they're they're available now. And it came 150 bucks, 159 bucks. This is from air selfie, camera.com. And I thought we'd just try this out. <Laugh> oh, this is gonna be interesting. So you get the app, you need the app to do this and it, it pairs via wifi to the air selfie. I think I still don't know exactly how to use it, but I'm gonna try here. I triple tap this button and it turns on the fans and then I just toss it lightly

Speaker 8 (01:44:15):
In the air

Leo Laporte (01:44:16):
And it's gonna do a selfie.

Speaker 8 (01:44:19):
Hi, I'm over here. It still hasn't seen me. <Laugh> I'm over here. Hello? Hello. Hi. How are you? Oh, now it sees me. Oh, Hey. Hey. And then I can, I can, I can press put my hand out and it's supposed to come land on my hand. Let's see if it does it land out. Oh, look at that.

Leo Laporte (01:44:39):
<Laugh> so now let's see what happens. I don't know if, if I got, see if you actually got something, see if I got anything, it

Andy Ihnatko (01:44:46):
Realized it was on camera and there was publicity involved and that's

Leo Laporte (01:44:48):
When it decided. Yeah, because before the show, it didn't, it didn't wanna work at all. It's being remote controlled. It didn't, it didn't wanna work at all. So let's see, we're watching the stream right now. Downloading two elements. So they're downloading whatever it was that I just shot. Oh, that's kind of cool. Ah, look at that. Hey, you can kind of see it. So you like a studio display? Yeah, I guess I didn't do a video. Maybe that maybe that's yeah. Oh yeah. Let's do a video. Should we try a video? So that was the stills. Let me, let me try the video now. Let's just see if, if that works.

Speaker 8 (01:45:26):
I'm over here. Here's selfie camera here. Here, here. Hi. Hi. Hello. You're supposed to do, I think you're supposed to twerk or something. <Laugh> yeah. Yeah. It's not talk with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's working and now,

Leo Laporte (01:45:40):
And now I just hold out my hand.

Speaker 8 (01:45:43):
Come here, come back to me. Come on, come on little selfie. It's like a little, it's like a <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:45:51):
Or cat, a kind wanna pick it's like that desk star. I want you to pick me up. I kind of wanna pick you up, but I, but I don't really, I might want to. Okay. Now it's downloading those. Let's see if the if these videos, if these came out as videos yeah. Looks like it did. Well, maybe not. Anyway. Not the best image I've ever seen

Andy Ihnatko (01:46:14):
Better composition. The last time I was worried that the, it was putting your head in the

Leo Laporte (01:46:16):
Middle of the frame. Yeah. It's interesting. It's still not doing video though. Anyway. I'm not sure I recommend it. But <laugh> I definitely, if I'm I'm thinking the Snapchat one is this right? I don't know. Pretty good. They say 15 minutes of flight time on a single charge. It charged up quickly. It has several modes. Manual auto fly. Should I try the orbit mode now? We're now we're now we're taking some chances. Now it's supposed to orbit around me.

Speaker 9 (01:46:55):
I'm here.

Leo Laporte (01:46:56):
I'm here. <Laugh> I don't know where it is. There it is. Oh, it can't. It's it can't get around the TV. Oh yeah. Okay. Anyway, you know, this is kind of fun as, as $150 flying toy. I don't think that's unreasonable. No, I wish I we had a cat here to play with. Yeah. Oh, God cat would eat it.

Speaker 9 (01:47:28):
<Laugh> <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:47:29):
No, not Andy. Not Andy. No. Okay. <Laugh> currently it's attracted to charisma. <Laugh> it's walking on to me. Of course. They walked onto you. I thought that was interesting. Air selfie. This is the air selfie, Neo. They say they won a innovation award, fourth generation. And I like the idea, you know, and I think for the price, you know, 150 bucks, you're getting a, I don't know if you're getting stunning aerial HD videos, but you're getting something. Yeah, something again, some fun. It's gonna be a fun to, especially like indoors when you have high ceilings. I'm not, I don't know how well there's only a very slight breeze going on outside. I'm not sure how well those four. Yeah, it says do it inside at first. Here's the video. Yeah, it's going behind the chair. It's going, but <laugh>, it's, it's an interesting view. It's getting <laugh>. Can I, can I make it bigger? I don't, I don't know. Often tell you what I'll put it on. I'll put it on our social media feed or TWiTter or something. You, you can see it. I'm still work on it. Not ex exactly. I got not. I gotta see hearted pick, but have having seen like most of the Avengers movies, I have seen worst composed action shots in fight scenes in the Avengers movie than in that shot. So that's right. Let's try the 360 minutes too.

Leo Laporte (01:48:56):
I like it. That you just throw it in the air. Yeah. <laugh> I don't know if it's see, it's supposed to have a red there. Now it sees me, but now it's going off to see you again. Oh, oh. Oh, I see it is. It's spinning around. It's giving you the whole tour of the studio. I get it. I get it.

Leo Laporte (01:49:21):
All right. Good. Now you can come back. You can come back to Papa. Nope. <Laugh> oh, right by my ear. Oh my goodness. Thank you for Macco head budget. Thank you everybody for joining us this week on MacBreak weekly, you'll find Rene Richie doing exciting things at YouTube. Much more exciting than that at youtube.com/Rene Richie. What are you working on today? I'm working on a really big video about the iPod, the life and death of the iPod I'm hoping to about in the morning. Yeah. John went out, ran out and bought an iPod touch. I understand they're at us. They're sold out now. Yeah. but he went and said, you know, I should for 256 gigs for 400 bucks, maybe I should get that and replace that with my iPod classic. So but, but John, if you don't open it, it's collector's item. You might wanna hundred years from now. You could sell it for something. Good. Rene Richie is at youtube.com/Rene Richie, Annie Naka. When are you gonna be on WGBH? Next?

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:24):
I've been told that the mayor needs my time on Friday. So I'm off this week. We can go to WGBH news.org to stream all the stuff that I've been doing for the past

Leo Laporte (01:50:32):
Three years. Not bad being replaced by the mayor.

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:35):
Let her try.

Leo Laporte (01:50:37):
Oh, it's a, I'll a woman.

Andy Ihnatko (01:50:38):
I'll I'll get, I'll get that parking situation straightened out. Let me tell you, I don't

Leo Laporte (01:50:42):
Know when I think Boston mayors, I think mayor Quimby from the Simpsons for some reason way on Kevin White. Exactly. Aaron in the shitty of <laugh> and Alex Lindsay office hours.global. You can. I think, just from listening to show, get an idea of how interesting it is day and night, go to office hours.global, to find out what your what's coming up. Bird dog was your focus on the line? Yeah, we had

Alex Lindsay (01:51:09):
The CEO on this morning and he was fantastic and, and bird dog does a lot of NDI variety of NDI tools and cameras and transports. And they've really gone from a little company to really doing a lot of big things. And so we had the CEO on today, tomorrow, we're talking about 3d apparel. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:51:24):
3D apparel. What's that?

Alex Lindsay (01:51:25):
Yeah. It's like, you know how to actually look at apparel in 3d and how to model it nice and, and check it. And in XR and XR, retail, and then then we're getting ready. You know, we're gonna be covering Nam. The NA you know, the audio national audio merchandiser,

Leo Laporte (01:51:42):
N a M music, mu

Alex Lindsay (01:51:43):
Music, merchandisers name. Yeah. Yeah. And Sy gear. Those are coming up in a co and WWC. So we're in

Leo Laporte (01:51:49):
Implant. You did B in your NA B stuff is on the website as well. Yep. This is good. This could be the the way to see these conferences from now on, by the way. They're not in black and white. Just the thumbnails. No, we just put 'em there. Yeah, exactly.

Alex Lindsay (01:52:01):
<Laugh> and and then we're, you know, we're talking about a lot of on Saturdays in our education area, we're talking a lot about presentations. So whether it's PowerPoint or keynote we're spending an hour almost every week on, on that to talk about how to structure them. We just realized a lot of, especially educators, but people in general have trouble structuring their, their, you know, their keynote files or their PowerPoint files. And that's why they call it death by PowerPoint is mostly bad. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:52:26):
Design.

Alex Lindsay (01:52:27):
Yes. So we're, so we're working on, like, we've got some folks that are really smart talking about like how to structure it and how to take full advantage of whether it's PowerPoint or keynote, how to take full advantage of the, of the software and really make something that's interesting to watch. So that's come

Leo Laporte (01:52:41):
On Saturdays. Yeah. And of course, if you wanna hire Alex for your next event, he's got some, he's got some special skills. No one else has, oh, nine media. I specialize in moonshot bracket. I fairly particular skills. If, if you have something that sounds impossible, we can probably find a way to help you. Sounds great. We do MacBreak weekly every Tuesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Eastern time, 1800 UTC. You can actually watch us do it live if you want. We stream live audio and video from live.Twit.Tv. If you're watching live, you can chat live@ircdotTWiT.tv. Of course, club TWiT members have their own chat room, the kind of the clubhouse and discord after the fact on demand versions of the show are available at the website, TWiT.tv/m BW. You can also watch on YouTube. There's a MacBreak weekly channel on YouTube. Best thing to do would be subscribe in your favorite podcast player. And that way you can, you can watch or listen at your leisure any old time you want. Thanks for joining us, everybody. But now I have to say time to get back to work because break time's over.