MacBreak Weekly 1036 Transcript

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

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Hey, Mikah Sargent here. Coming up on MacBreak Weekly, we've got Jason Snell, we've got Andy Ihnatko, and it's time to talk about Apple's earnings. That's right, the Q3 results are in, and it was Tim Cook's last chance, last opportunity to tell us about Apple earnings. We also talk about preparing for the end of Rosetta, what we feel about Siri AI as we're beta testing it, and what Apple has ahead of it. Plus, we talk about any catches or issues we found with the Apple Upgrade Program and why you may or may not want to check it out yourself. A $32.5 billion class action lawsuit rounds things out. So let's get into it with this episode of MacBreak Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:57]:
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1036, recorded Tuesday, August 4th, 2026. Corn Is Just Corn. Hello and welcome. This is MacBreak Weekly, and this voice is not the one you usually hear. It is another one that maybe you sometimes hear. It's Mikah Sargent. Leo Laporte is not here with us today. Don't you worry, he's still here with us on this earth.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:25]:
We are doing MacBreak Weekly. This is the show where we talk about Apple and Apple-y things. And joining us this week—

Jason Snell [00:01:33]:
Hi, everyone.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:34]:
Our 2 wonderful and steadfast and true hosts of the show. First, it's Andy Ihnatko. Hello, Andy.

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:44]:
Hey there, Heather.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:46]:
How are you?

Andy Ihnatko [00:01:48]:
I'm in the— I'm in the— I'm in the horrible position of a trip that I've been looking forward to for a while is now just a few weeks away. So no, I'm like, my God, my life this week would be so much simpler if I were not going on vacation. So it doesn't everybody do that where it's like, I wouldn't have to be doing this in advance, I wouldn't have to be worrying about that, I could just be chilling out. And I'll— it'll be, it'll be fine when I'm actually out there in a few weeks. But it's like, ah, I get that.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:19]:
I've got a trip next week and I'm very stressed about it. Um, also joining us, Jason Snell. Hello, Jason.

Jason Snell [00:02:26]:
Hello, Mikah. Good to be here talking about apple-y stuff, you know, juice, sauce, all the great apples, jacks.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:34]:
Fritters. Oh, Apple Jacks. That's very good.

Jason Snell [00:02:36]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:02:36]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:02:37]:
Cider.

Mikah Sargent [00:02:38]:
Oh, apple cider. Love that. Well, let's get into things because the earnings have hit. And if there's one guy who I know has the coverage, it's Jason Snell and the wonderful sixcolors.com. Did Apple make a bunch of money, Jason?

Jason Snell [00:02:56]:
Apple did big. It's the typical thing where, you know, Apple made a bunch of money and they set a bunch of quarterly records. It was their 3rd quarter all-timer, $109.4 billion in revenue. enormous profits, like all the things that you would expect. It's interesting. There's a bunch of stories here, right? And obviously Wall Street, I think, reacted very negatively to this. And, you know, I think on this show and in lots of places, we are not a business—

Andy Ihnatko [00:03:21]:
Yeah, thank God.

Jason Snell [00:03:22]:
Podcast, right? We're not. I was the kid who didn't want to read the business section when I— in the newspaper when I was in high school and reading the newspaper would be like, no, boring. And now I cover earnings calls about Apple, but it's about Apple and I do it because I want to understand Apple's business. And where Apple is going in a larger context. So why did the— this happens a lot for people who are not investors. Why did the stock get hammered after record results with enormous success came out? And the answer has a lot to do with just how the stock market works. It's expectations. There were a lot of people, there are a lot of headlines out there, some of which got changed actually as it went on, that said Apple stock falls based on disappointing China results and disappointing Sales, and the fact is the sales were not disappointing, and nor were the China results disappointing, and nor were the profit margins disappointing.

Jason Snell [00:04:12]:
However, some analysts in Wall Street had gotten really excited about what they thought Apple was going to do, and they overshot a little bit. And the market follows that kind of thing. And so it's all about expectations. And and so in the end, two things happened: one is Apple didn't have results that were at the at what some analysts thought they would be, even though they were actually extremely good. And So there's that. It's just sort of like depending on how you want to view it and if you care about the stock price or not. And then the other thing is the future, right? Because again, results are about the past and investors are about the future. And Apple did also talk about their concerns about supply and, and a misforecasting of demand.

Jason Snell [00:04:58]:
For me, I actually think the most interesting thing that came out of this entire results, because again, yeah, they're just throwing off $100 billion in revenue every quarter now. It's bananas. And somebody pointed out that Apple made more money, generated more revenue this quarter than they did in Tim Cook's first year as CEO, which is quite a, quite a feat. And it's not the holiday quarter, it's just a random quarter. But the most— so the most interesting to me was Apple saying, we don't want to— we're having supply problems, especially with iPhone and Mac, and they're going to continue and they're going to extend to iPad. That scares everybody a little bit. It means that they are not going to be able to sell as many as they could sell if they had more to sell. But they did not.

Jason Snell [00:05:38]:
What they did not do is lay that at the feet of their partner, TSMC. They said, this is our problem.

Jason Snell [00:05:44]:
We didn't anticipate demand.

Jason Snell [00:05:47]:
And if you look at the numbers, iPhone sales up more than 20%, Mac sales up 29%, 22% on iPhone, 29% year over year on Mac. And Tim Cook said, we misjudged how much demand there would be. I think a lot of that is the iPhone 17 line has been very, very successful more than Apple thought.

Jason Snell [00:06:12]:
And Apple is not a company that is not a believer in its success, right?

Jason Snell [00:06:17]:
Like Apple, Apple knows they're going to be hit products.

Jason Snell [00:06:19]:
And then the MacBook Pro, and especially I think the MacBook Neo also took them by surprise. And as a result, you know, they order the chips from TSMC well in advance and you want to get that number right. And they undershot by a lot.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:34]:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Snell [00:06:35]:
And then, you know, the challenge is right now TSMC doesn't have like a factory on standby for Apple to make more because they've got other clients that they might not have had a few years ago. And so Apple doesn't even really have a dial it can really crank up to say, give us more, give us more, because TSMC is busy with other stuff too. So it's a good problem to have. And that's what Tim Cook said on one level, but it is creating a cascade of issues for Apple because even though it's great that more people wanna buy your product than you have of the product, that's actually really bad for business. And it means that there's shortages and it means the prices go up. And it means everybody has to wait a lot longer to get the computer or the phone they want. And that is what I think set people off. It's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem.

Andy Ihnatko [00:07:21]:
I think also, I wouldn't call it unprecedented, but Tim was very, very direct. Now, this is, as I'm fond of saying, again, I am also not a finance reporter or a business reporter. And so I tend to look at these public statements, these earnings calls as storytelling, where this is another opportunity for a big corporation corporation to tell its own story about, here's what we're about, here's what our priorities are, here's where we see the future, here's how we interpret the past. But the difference being that there can be a half a billion dollar lawsuit or half a trillion dollar lawsuit by shareholders if you are misleading them in any way, shape, or form, to say nothing of the heat you're going to get from the Securities and Exchange Commission. So they have to be honest. But I don't— I can't remember a previous one in which Tim was this blunt and this direct and also this open about the problems. One of the things I think specifically that he said, I don't— I think this might have been in the Q&A, that one of the reasons basically they weren't necessarily kicking the can down the road, but they were able to absorb a lot of these problems over the past few quarters because they have— they had basically been stockpiling hardware. And Tim was saying that, look, we're kind of out of our stockpile.

Andy Ihnatko [00:08:32]:
So now we're just— we are now scrabbling in the gutter with the other dogs. And this is not going to be— this is not going to be a problem that we are looking forward to solving in the next quarter or even in the next fiscal year. This is simply a problem that we're going to have to live with until the weather on the planet changes, until the climate changes. And that's what I think one of the reasons why, if investors can be predicted at all, they basically said, whoa, we're not used to hearing— we're used to hearing this kind of stuff from a lot of other companies, but we're not used to hearing it from Apple.

Jason Snell [00:09:03]:
I don't usually, because I do a transcript of that analyst call and it's AI or I don't even know if it's an AI, it's a machine model to do the transcript. it outputs into BBEdit, and then as I'm listening, I am correcting it. So because the robots don't know, but I know, so I make it good. What I don't usually do is adjust like style things like italicizing for emphasis and all that. It's all— it's a financial analyst call. It's pretty flat. Tim Cook at one point said they're going to be scrambling on the supply side. Scrambling.

Jason Snell [00:09:36]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:09:37]:
Not a great word to hear. And then he said the impact will Increase significantly in the future. And I was like, am I? Yeah, I'm going to italicize significantly. He, he stopped. He was like, increase significantly. Like he was underlining that word. And that's, that's— yeah, Andy, that's when the little siren goes off at Wall Street. And they're like, uh-oh.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:04]:
I wasn't listening to it live. I was listening. I was actually reading your transcript. And then I'm like, wait a minute. Again, this is a tone of language I haven't heard before. And that's when I switched immediately over to the actual audio to get the meaning. Again, it's not like he was a quavering voice. It wasn't like a stock market analyst in 2008 talking about mortgages.

Andy Ihnatko [00:10:24]:
But nonetheless, it was, I need you to listen right now. I need you to focus. This is not a dream. This is real.

Jason Snell [00:10:33]:
And what he kept saying was they had this idea of carryover inventory. And the idea there is that like, They still had some RAM that was cheaper. They still had some stuff, some processors that they had that they hadn't put in systems yet, and that allowed them to mitigate for a little while. And what they're revealing here too is this is how Apple keeps it level during normal times, is they've got a little extra. They can pull it ahead a little bit if there's a shortage and solve it, and then everything gets worked out. And what he said was Well, we can't— we did that last time and we have a little bit left for this time. But like, basically, that is not a game we can keep playing. And that, that again, he's saying, I know it looks like we've had trouble in the past.

Jason Snell [00:11:19]:
There's more trouble ahead. And that is, again, if you're, if you're a Wall Street person, you're not concerned that Apple is going to go out of business or anything like it. Right. Which is always what we joke about here is I think they're going to be fine. But you do worry that Apple is not going to be able to grow and it might even have to contract. And, and all because of these supply issues. You know, one way you solve that, you sell fewer of them, but you sell them for more money. You raise prices, which Apple has started to do.

Jason Snell [00:11:45]:
And there was a great line. He explained how they raise prices and he's like, it's a whole system and it's— you have to look at it 3-dimensionally. And like, have you ever really looked at your hand and then wondered what the price might be? It was a weird world. It was a weird kind of thing. But like, this is— this is— it was still sort of an insight. Like, they are trying to figure out a way to set their prices so that, you know, Wall Street looks at the revenue number and goes, oh, what a relief, the revenue number is okay. Even though the fact is they're probably really going to get a drag on unit sales because they're not going to be able to sell that many.

Jason Snell [00:12:19]:
So it's a big—

Jason Snell [00:12:20]:
like, it's going to be a big issue from our perspective as people who are kind of on the other side of it here.

Jason Snell [00:12:25]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:12:26]:
I think the big issue is just what are those iPhones going to cost this fall? And how hard is it going to be able to, to get an iPhone or a Mac? I think that the only reason we haven't seen M5 Mac Minis and Mac Studios is because they could make them, but like not very many. And then they just sell out of them and they want to use those chips maybe in MacBook Pros and stuff instead. Right? Like this is, That's where it's going to impact consumers is on the price side and on the availability side.

Andy Ihnatko [00:12:58]:
Yeah, I was, I was, I was doing— I'm at the point where every week or so I try to check in on the Apple Store to see what shipping times are. And it really is, if you have a local— if especially if you're building to, or if you're building a customized, if you want to configure it the way that you want it, if you're, if your local store happens to have one in inventory, yep, you're getting it the next day or the day after. If they have to find it someplace, you are waiting weeks, and for some models it still is months. And that could be— that's an interesting statistic for Apple because they are still a hardware company. Like, they're doing a great job with services, they're doing great jobs with generating revenue in all kinds of different places, but they are still making money off of selling iPhones. And if they are— if that pace were to slow down, As Jason said, it's not as though they can still walk into any burrito shop and order guac on their burrito without even asking what the upcharge is. They can afford it. However, despite the fact that they are being— that they don't have to do the sort of capital expenditure that other companies have to do to deal with AI, they still have to buy servers and they still have to prepare for a fleet of devices that can only do some of the Apple intelligence stuff on device.

Andy Ihnatko [00:14:12]:
They're still going to have to Or buy this stuff, build more data centers, or lease time off of Google and Amazon and their other usual services. A lot of analysts are in the position of thinking, if it's no longer a fire hose, but simply a reliable flow of income and not a fire hose, is that going to impact Apple's ability to follow through on the plans that they've been making for the past 2 or 3 or 4 years? Who knows?

Mikah Sargent [00:14:42]:
That's okay. So who knows? What is the— what is the current sort of— what are your thoughts whenever it comes to— because you talked about how it's bad for business, Jason, to, to not have products available. Right. And I kind of would like to hear more about what that means exactly. Is it a matter of brand affinity if you don't have them available, or is it a matter of just because there's no money to be made if it's not there?

Jason Snell [00:15:09]:
From a pure Wall Street standpoint, I think the idea is just just like they want you to sell products and they want you to grow. And if you don't have products to sell, you're not going to grow and you might even shrink in your businesses. Now, I think Apple, like, it's different if what you're selling is a commodity, right? Like if everything is like corn is just corn and you don't have corn, someone else will sell corn and you don't get it and you blew it. And now maybe nobody will buy your corn. You missed your opportunity, or it's it's a little bit like selling tickets to a sporting event or something like that. There's a moment where you just miss the opportunity, and that one's gone, and you hope you'll catch up next time. And I'm not convinced. I'm sure there are some people are like this, but like when Apple has had inventory issues, I think it's unlikely that like somebody who wants to buy a new iPhone.

Jason Snell [00:16:06]:
is going to— what they really wanna do is they wanna buy a new phone right now in September or October.

Andy Ihnatko [00:16:14]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:16:14]:
And they wanna buy a new phone right now. And if the iPhone is not available today, they will just buy an Android phone. I suppose somebody out there might be like that, but I think the bulk of Apple's customers are very brand loyal. And if they'll, they'll wait. And Apple, unlike like the video game manufacturers especially are like this where they're like, I don't know, nothing's available, good luck. Apple's happy to to take your credit card and take your order and then say, we'll ship this to you in 2 months. And so I think Apple's done a really good job in that sort of system and as well as just in their brand, that it's unlikely that if you can't get that new Mac laptop today, that what— that it amounts to a lost sale for Apple today. It does, but maybe not down the road a little bit.

Jason Snell [00:17:00]:
And that's, I think, the thing that most businesses are most afraid of is if somebody really wants ice cream and we ran out of ice cream, they will not buy a cookie. They will go down the street to the next place that sells ice cream. I'm full of metaphors today. Sorry, it's summer. Corn and ice cream don't go together.

Andy Ihnatko [00:17:20]:
But metaphors before lunch are always kind of—

Jason Snell [00:17:22]:
Yeah, it's great.

Jason Snell [00:17:23]:
So you get what I'm saying, though? It's like there are, there are certain purchases where it's like, if I don't get it from you, I'm just going to go somewhere else. And that's bad for your business. I just don't know if Apple's business is mostly like that. So there's a risk there. But it's more about, I think, deferred sales or a drag on growth that Wall Street really wants to see than it is about— in other circumstances, people would be really freaked out because it's like if a PC maker doesn't have your laptop, you could go to another PC maker. If one Android phone maker doesn't have an Android phone, you could go to another one. But Apple is, you know, that's its game is Apple is kind of itself. And there's not really an alternative if you want to be in that ecosystem.

Jason Snell [00:18:06]:
And so then you just say, all right, well, It'll— that new iPhone will show up when it shows up, or that laptop, I can't get it today, but I can get it in 6 weeks, which, I mean, that's happening right now. I know people who bought laptops right before they raised the prices and Apple said, well, you might get that in late August.

Jason Snell [00:18:22]:
And some of them got them earlier than that.

Jason Snell [00:18:24]:
But like, that's not the end of the world business-wise.

Andy Ihnatko [00:18:27]:
But that, but that does speak to growth because, yeah, in terms of like there was, there was— if I had to wait 3 months for my new MacBook and I had to pay the extra $300, I would've said, ah, dagnabbit, but I would've done it. I was, I'm not gonna switch to Windows because of a price hike or, or lack of avail— immediate availability. However, when you talk about growth, you're not, there are 2 ways to get growth, either to find a way to get more money from your existing customers by selling them an Apple Watch they don't have, by selling them services that they don't subscribe to yet. But the other one is to get that person who is a Windows user to consider buying a MacBook Air. And if they discover that, well, it's no longer as price competitive as it once was, this miracle $599 MacBook Neo is now more expensive and I can't necessarily get it. More to, more to the danger point when it's a school system that is—

Mikah Sargent [00:19:20]:
Yes.

Andy Ihnatko [00:19:21]:
Is finally listening to like its IT department saying, look, I've always made the, we've always made the argument that our, our, our support costs will go down so much if we can switch our platforms from Chromebooks and Windows to MacBook. And now finally they've given us one that actually is at at that price point. If now it comes back where not only is it no longer quite as inexpensive as it once was, but also they're going to have trouble getting them. And by the way, and again, from a bulk buy perspective, this is the only source for this kind of laptop. You can't simply say, well, if we need another 110 for the next school year, if this one source can't provide them to us on the schedule we want, we can't just simply say, guess what, Acer, you're up to bat. That could definitely be a very, very bad situation for Apple.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:07]:
Now let's talk about surprises, standouts, those kinds of things outside of the— you said that emphasis that you— that Tim Cook really, really had. Was there anything in this call that was particularly Apple juicy?

Jason Snell [00:20:24]:
Well, the Apple juicy— thank you. The I think the success part is part of it. I think like the MacBook Neo is clearly a hit and clearly a bigger hit than Apple thought it would be. And in other circumstances, I think they would, it would be, it would be bigger news and it would be better news, but it's muted by the fact that they're just really constrained on everything they're doing. So I think the success of the iPhone, if we look past the scares of the supply constraints, the success of the iPhone 17 line in general and the MacBook Neo as well, I think those are very interesting stories on their own. Like the 17, I know we've talked about this ever since the 17 came out, but like all of those of us in the know are like, you know, the 17, it's very impressive. The base 17 has brought a bunch of Pro features down and that's really good. And the 17 Pro, you know, in many ways is not that different from the 16 and the 15, but it's got the aluminum back and it's got the orange version and all of that.

Jason Snell [00:21:28]:
And people like that and all, but like, I don't know of anybody, everybody who was in the know was like, it's a really good year. It's a really good upgrade year. I don't think anybody expected that the vast phone buying public would necessarily recognize it and go kind of gaga for it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:21:44]:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Snell [00:21:45]:
And they, and they have like, it's, it's the most successful iPhone set that Apple's ever done. It's, it's been a wild hit. It's, it's had incredible growth over, the last couple of generations of iPhone. And I think that's really interesting because it's not because of some killer feature that they added. I think they just made the lower-end one more appealing. They did some nice appealing changes to the high end. Maybe there's something cyclical there too. I don't know.

Jason Snell [00:22:13]:
But that— so, so like product-wise, this is the funny thing is product-wise, as Tim Cook goes out the door, Mr. Supply Chain and Mr. Product Engineer comes in, Apple's at a state where product-wise they are killing it and supply chain-wise they're having trouble. So it's kind of a, kind of a weird thing. So I think those are the ones that were the biggest. There's some other stuff too, but like to me, that success is a part of it. And then, and then the services, we always talk about services.

Andy Ihnatko [00:22:45]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:22:45]:
Services grew, but they didn't grow sequentially and it was a little soft. And they had lots of excuses, let's say, for that. They literally, they tried to say that all the money they made in F1 the movie last year was a year over year. It's like, come on. And then, and they also did, oh, and it's also really mean that the, that the, in the US they make us link out to websites because, which we don't want.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:12]:
But we're, but we're, we're, we're certain that the Supreme Court will put the situation right.

Jason Snell [00:23:17]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Snell [00:23:18]:
But, and then in the same breath say, but also the App Store was an all-time record. record. So it's like, well, okay, so that probably wasn't it then. So I think the big note there was maybe Apple makes a lot of money on in-app purchase from mobile games. And they said that there were issues with the mobile gaming market and that's something to actually pay attention to. But they said most of the recent services was soft, was just foreign exchange, you know, taking money in currencies that are not as strong against the dollar or—

Mikah Sargent [00:23:42]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:23:42]:
And that, that when you, when you play globally, foreign exchange fluctuations can actually change the raw dollar number that you see when they report it. And, and yeah, but, but otherwise, I mean, I think the story is their product side was like a huge success, but they can't make them fast enough.

Andy Ihnatko [00:23:58]:
And also, don't forget that ads is part of services. And I think that, again, I have to— I'd have to go back to other— to previous quarters. It's not as though they really planted a really, really big flag for ads this, this quarter in talking to analysts. I feel as though it was a little bit more prominent that they were trying to— they're trying to start the story that if services is the part of our business that is not going to be affected by hardware constraints, if this is going to be a really, really good thing for you to look at to see our growth as a company, not— we are— we have basically been leaving— They didn't say this outright, but The implication that I kind of read between the lines was that we've been leaving money on the table with ads. We are going to start collecting that money and making you a lot more happy in our growth and services. Uh, because again, it's not as though they gave it its own section in the prepared comments, but it did seem as though they really wanted to remind people that no, we're no longer just simply— we're not just going to be selling ads in the App Store for people who want prominent search results. We are actually going to turn ads into an actual service that is going to have its own invisible bar in the, in the services revenue column.

Jason Snell [00:25:16]:
Yeah, they, they, they specifically said it was a June quarter record for ads and that they saw double-digit growth in ads along with cloud services, video payment services. Right. Like they— it's not just ads, but ads, ads grew double digits and they don't usually break that out. But they were trying to kind of like break down what components were doing really well inside of Inside of services, despite the fact that they had a tough compare because F1 the movie was a big hit last year.

Jason Snell [00:25:44]:
Please.

Andy Ihnatko [00:25:44]:
That's that. That's always a that's always a big big tell with these earnings calls that when Apple breaks out something from a category because they normally years ago they stopped doing that. They just basically say by category by category when they specifically sign out one specific product, then you know that that's here. Look here. Don't look at this other thing.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:03]:
Now you see you spoke about Mr. Supply Chain. Right now, arguably, is a time where supply chain is, is a big factor. I wanted to get your thoughts on how much, as things stand, we still— because, okay, let me, let me try to sort of zoom out. When I have thought about Apple in the past, and also what we've heard Tim Cook often sort of Lauded in regard is supply chain knowledge, and it gave Apple a certain power in my mind when it came to sort of the global supply chain and what they need and them getting what they need first. And this shift because of RAM shortages and AI makes it feel like there's been a bit of a shift. But what I'm curious to hear is if that's sort of a misunderstanding on my part and maybe the stories that have been written thus far in terms of the global landscape, and that it has always been a case of Apple having to play ball just as much as everyone else in terms of getting what it needs, or if we are looking at kind of Apple on unsure footing just as much as some other companies that might come along and need supplies that at one point would have gone to Apple first. Does that make sense?

Jason Snell [00:27:33]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:27:34]:
Yeah. It's an interesting issue because basically, like, if you're, if you're one of the companies that's investing billions of dollars in AI hardware right now, right there, they are, they are spending money. Maybe it's not money that they don't have, but there it is, speculation. They want to grow because they don't want to get left behind because the perception is with AI data centers, having that kind of power that what you really are— you don't want to get caught not with a supply issue, right? You don't want to get caught with demand for AI compute being unable to be fulfilled by your company because you just don't have the servers for it. And so they're spending money at a level that Apple, you know, Apple is a very conservative company. They're spending based on their products and not based on speculation about a huge you know, growth opportunity in AI. And so the pure economics of that work against them. But, you know, but make no mistake, like in the realm of companies that are trying to buy processors for computers and RAM for computers, Apple sells really well and is going to spend a lot of money and they're still going to get their supplies.

Jason Snell [00:28:52]:
Also, I just have this gut feeling that a lot of these companies, even the ones that say, oh, take that, Apple, you, you nickeled and dimed us for so long and we're going to make our money now. I think they all are aware that the AI, the AI thing is going to reach an end. And I'm not even saying a bubble will burst, but like economically, there's going to be a shakeout. And also, I would say if you're building factories, The risk is by the time you build them, right, the need from the AI companies may not be there. And now, because it's speculation to build a factory, right? Like you can get some contracts, but on one level you are putting lots of money into building a factory and then hoping to make that investment back with a big profit. So Apple as a blue chip, essentially Apple as a, a company that, you know, is going to have this customer base and is going to keep buying chips and keep buying making iPhones and keep making Macs, they are a good customer to have. So if I'm any of these companies, like, it's not like TSMC is like, see ya, Apple, we're out of here. I think that, I think that that is, is a case where they, they know that that Apple relationship is long-term and good.

Jason Snell [00:30:09]:
Also, you know, again, I think what Apple is probably doing is investing in the future. They talk about a lot of American manufacturing. And they are doing that. But I think, I think it's even broader than that, which is, you know, one solution is you learn that your capacity was not enough. And so it's going to take a few years.

Jason Snell [00:30:28]:
But you, you, you go to companies and you say, whatever you're doing in AI, here's $2 billion, go build us a factory for RAM. Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:30:36]:
In addition to whatever you're doing for AI, and our factory will be a good deal for you and hedge against whatever is going to happen with AI. So I think in the long run, they got the money, they got the products, they got the customers.

Jason Snell [00:30:49]:
Not too big of a worry, but I do think what Tim Cook's trepidation is all about is like they're in a bottleneck now and they don't know how long that bottleneck is, is gonna run, where they're gonna have to fight for, you know, every last scrap of RAM and space on processor fabs that they can.

Andy Ihnatko [00:31:07]:
Yeah. And I, I will say that it was a bit of a bummer to hear the, the, the denouement to last, last month when Tim was asked about, hey, you're getting this $2 billion tariff refund, what are you gonna do with it? And he said, oh, I'm gonna reinvest it. reinvest it in, in America. And okay, that's fine. Uh, it would have been nice if they say, well, we're going to use it to help like offset a lot of these price increases that we're doing, or we're gonna basically send everybody like a— uh, every— everybody like a— I don't know. So it's, it's, uh, it's, it was a fine answer, but not an answer that I would have loved to have heard. But the thing is, like, they do need to create more manufacturing in the United States. They We need more manufacturing options.

Andy Ihnatko [00:31:49]:
And Jason's absolutely right that companies like Google and Apple, they are always going to be good companies to deal with because you— Apple maybe more than Google, but both of these companies are well positioned to whatever happens in the next 10 years, they will still be around to do it because they're not simply reliant on more and more people spending $20 a month, spending $100 a month for AI services. They have basically businesses that go well beyond it. And in the case of Google, for instance, they have uses for that, all the hardware they buy, whether it gets tasked to AI or not. And they are not— they're willing to host whatever AI anybody wants to run anywhere. So they're going to kind of be fine. And it's good to see that the market for manufacturing is actually becoming more competitive. One of the things that I thought was really, really amusing was there was an article in Chinese state media last week about the, uh, the, the Tata data breach, uh, in India, that, that was basically the whole point of this piece was to throw shade on Indian manufacturing of technology and electronics. Like, ah, this sort of data breach would never have happened to a Chinese company.

Jason Snell [00:32:54]:
Haha.

Andy Ihnatko [00:32:55]:
And so it's— if there were to become like, uh, I, I, it's a bummer that all manufacturing was centered within so few companies that something like this is, is creating a dead drop for the entire industry. However, if this means that it is now going to be very, very profitable for other companies to rise up and become fourth, third tier— from fourth or third tier manufacturers to become second or first tier manufacturing— so that by the time all of this shakes out, there is going to be a lot more competitive bidding for the— for this manufacturing. And there is going to be— they don't— we don't have this one mega manufacturer that has to sort of partner with a company like Apple to create the next manufacturing process, that basically there was just always, always, always this moonshot drive to create better hardware at less per unit prices. Hopefully, if those of us who survive to see 2031 might actually find ourselves in a much, much better environment.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:55]:
Jason, I was just looking at sixcolors.com. When did you get the new beautiful glossy glowing? That's gorgeous. I'm sorry, I haven't seen it. I get your newsletter and so I haven't been on the site.

Jason Snell [00:34:07]:
With the logo?

Mikah Sargent [00:34:07]:
Yeah, it's so pretty.

Jason Snell [00:34:08]:
Yeah, I had our friend Joe Rosensteel, who's a VFX artist. I said last— it was last fall. I said, could you do a liquid glass version of my logo? And in dark mode, you can— it glows. In light mode, you don't see it so much, but in dark mode, it does. It glows a little bit and it's glassy. And I don't— we got it right the first time, so I didn't need to like overhaul it for this year. It's just a little subtle. Subtle thing.

Jason Snell [00:34:32]:
I don't know. I just thought it would be fun. And Joe, Joe made it happen because he's got 3D skills. So he kind of made a 3D glass lit up version of the logo, which was fun.

Mikah Sargent [00:34:42]:
Awesome.

Jason Snell [00:34:42]:
Little things. People, for people who still look, I added a whole like a box with featured stories to the homepage and it's like, I may be the only person who reads my own homepage, but I care even if everybody else is reading it in RSS or, you know, whatever else, or just linking to articles. Um, I care enough. I'm old school enough that I want the homepage to be nice too.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:03]:
Yeah, it's very, very pretty. Uh, good work there. All right, let's talk about, well, I think maybe a little bit of rumors, right? Um, we're gearing up for the rest of the year. That means that, uh, the iPhone event is around the corner, perhaps some other hardware announced, and, uh, perhaps some, some some promises finally completed with AI Siri. Now, I'd like to hear first and foremost, gentlemen, if you have been making— I'm sure this question's been asked of you— how much you've been testing or not testing betas over the course of the summer and how we're feeling about the current state of the AI-aware Siri and the promises therein. And if we're thinking that it's gonna be a hit come fall when these, when these phones are rolled out?

Andy Ihnatko [00:35:58]:
I think it's definitely gonna be a big, big hit. I have to, I have to give you a caveat that I only have it installed on my old M1 MacBook Pro, so I don't have it installed on my iPad or my iPhone yet. But already having used Siri, this sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, but it's actually useful now. It doesn't, it's, it Doesn't whereas Siri used to be just this thing that I would accidentally trigger from time to time and then turn off because why would I ever use Siri? Now I'm sort of treating it like it's Siri 1.0. That's something I've never tried before, which I think is probably the right attitude because it is an entirely new Siri from start to finish, and I'm finding that's very very useful, very very handy. I can't imagine it's not going to be immensely popular simply by virtue of the fact that it comes preinstalled, and I would say that it's kind. It's not quite like comparing Apple Maps to Google Maps because Apple Maps is really, really close to the usage, to the usability of Google Maps. However, it is good enough that it's going to satisfy most of people's immediate needs.

Andy Ihnatko [00:37:03]:
And I think it's going to take a while before people find the ceiling that something that they really want to do with AI that Apple Intelligence and Siri can't do yet. And even there, the things that— the places where it falls short, like a lot of agentic things, a lot of generating code, generating images, generating stuff like that, are not necessarily the stuff that a new user or a common user would actually want to access. It's— to make another analogy, it's like Gemini and ChatGPT and Claude are like Photoshop, but Siri is like the Apple Photos app, where people just want to push a few sliders around, say, oh, that's a little bit too dark, I want this to be brighter. Oh, the colors are a little bit too drab, I want them to be a little brighter. Great, that's fine. Doesn't do everything that the nicer apps and the more established apps do, but still very, very appealing and will turn people into regular users. So I can't— for now, I can't see this as anything other than a big, big win and something Apple to be immensely proud of.

Jason Snell [00:38:11]:
Absolutely.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:11]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:38:12]:
It's, it's, we, we got so focused on the drama of Apple doing a big belly flop 2 years ago, and there's no doubt about it that they did. But the promise all along has been, can you make Siri good? And that has changed over time to be not just like, what does good mean? Like it used to be like, make Siri good meant I'd like it to understand my words, please. And then do the right thing. But it was also like, Like, I asked it a question and it gave me an incredibly stupid answer. The bar has raised so much because of chatbots, because of ChatGPT and others. But ChatGPT really kind of drove popularity of this where you could suddenly ask a question and get an answer. And Siri, meanwhile, was not good before that and now really looks bad. So leaving aside all the drama about AI and whether Apple missed the boat or not and all of that, Like bottom line in all the 27 OSs, will Siri be good? And I've used it enough now to say, yeah, it's good.

Jason Snell [00:39:20]:
Is it, is it gonna write code for you? No, you should probably use a tool for that. But like, and if you are comfortable with ChatGPT, like ChatGPT has their live functionality where it's like making mouth noises while you're talking like a person, which is, I hate it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:39:36]:
Yes.

Jason Snell [00:39:36]:
But it's there for you.

Jason Snell [00:39:37]:
Like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh-huh. like, stop talking computer. I know you're just a computer. And it's a very realistic voice and there's a lot of kind of back and forth. Although even then I think it's kind of, not to go on a rant about the ChatGPT thing, but you can tell that it's thinking because like a person who's thinking, they say a lot of nonsense for the first sentence until they come up with the answer and they're like, oh yeah, that's a really interesting point. Uh, and then it gives you the answer.

Jason Snell [00:40:01]:
So it's—

Andy Ihnatko [00:40:02]:
I'll just, I'll just say, I'll just say parenthetically, I do like when I'm using the phone app that it does these little like haptic Which, as a, as a Generation Xer who's used to like '80s shows and '70s shows with computers that always go, yeah, every character makes a noise on the screen, it appears on the screen. I don't, I don't, I'll say I don't hate it, but I, but I, I'm with you on the rest of it.

Jason Snell [00:40:25]:
I, I don't think they're doing, it's doing what they think it's doing. But, um, but like, so if you're used to that, if you become a loyal ChatGPT user of, or Claude or whatever, then, you know, fine, nobody's going to stop you. But like, I think lots of people will discover that all those basic things you use something like Claude or ChatGPT for, that's just tell me the answer to this question. Like Siri AI does it and it gets the answer right. And like the bottom line, plus since Siri AI is tied in and yes, it's a little bit spotty, they're also working on it. But like being tied into the Spotlight database and over time, like App Intents and stuff. I, I had a, uh, we were going over the weekend, we went to visit family in Denver and we were gonna get there. Our flight came in late and we were gonna be at their house at 1 in the morning.

Jason Snell [00:41:13]:
And they got 2 little kids and they're like, just let yourself in. They've got a smart lock with a code on it. And I didn't remember what the code was. And I asked Siri AI, what's the code at Mike and Kaylee's place? And it spun for a second and it said, well, here's this message from last Thanksgiving when you went there and they gave you the code. code. It's like, it's pretty good. Like it doesn't work all the time when it's doing that stuff, but like that's a real advantage to using it that would make you choose to use it by default over something like ChatGPT. And like, yeah, so there's a lot to play for in the AI world.

Jason Snell [00:41:47]:
How Apple is gonna fit in is an open question. But if the basic question we're asking is, is Siri finally usable and good? Yes is the answer. It really is.

Andy Ihnatko [00:41:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. And that functionality is available on other platforms. Like, the thing that you just mentioned is exactly what one of the biggest things I use Gemini for, which is like, oh, when's my haircut appointment this week? And it will just, doesn't matter where it lands, oh, it's tomorrow at whatever time.

Jason Snell [00:42:17]:
Exactly.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:18]:
But the thing is, whereas this is baked into the operating system, the mere fact that you are using all the defaults, which is probably what you're gonna do 'cause you're an ordinary consumer, You don't have to hook it up to anything. You don't have to give it— you don't have to see if you've got an extension loaded in. You don't have to add extra permissions. It's basically all part of the onboarding process. That's what's gonna give it the biggest leg up. It does not necessarily have to be the most powerful AI. It just has to be the easiest to use. And you don't get much easier to use than it's already set up for you.

Andy Ihnatko [00:42:47]:
Just turn the keys and drive.

Jason Snell [00:42:49]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:42:49]:
And everywhere, like, you know, if you're using— if you're walking using your AirPods, You know, it's the same because it'll route it all. It just all kind of happens. And I think the biggest challenge for Apple is just to train people to use Siri again, because I think a lot of us, even if we use it for some things, like I still use it for timers and stuff and adding reminders, but like training us to not to take down those barriers of like Siri can't do this, so I'm not going to ever ask and give it a try. I think that's going to be a challenge for them. But because they're— they have the home field advantage as the platform owner, I think And, and yeah, again, Apple strategy doesn't have to be to be the best, right? Apple is not building a, uh, uh, Siri is going to write an app for you at this point yet anyway, not yet. But, uh, it doesn't need to. It needs table— the table stakes are, is your system-based assistant going to answer questions and be helpful? And, and, um, it's August, but like it's deep enough in this process that I could say it's already that way. So it's going to ship that way.

Andy Ihnatko [00:43:50]:
As I've been saying for a while, All Apple really has to do is make sure that the most modern iPhone feels to the average user like a modern phone. That if they get into a situation where people are currently looking over the shoulder of a Google Pixel user or a Samsung Galaxy user and wondering, why doesn't my phone do that? That was so easy. Again, when you're at the airport, waiting for pickup and you see people just asking their phones, hey, what's the name of the pickup company and where am I supposed to meet them? And simply getting an answer, whereas having to dig through apps. You don't want iPhone users to say, why can't my phone do that? And mentally noting it says S-A-M, Sammy, Samsung, whatever. Maybe the next time I'm shopping for a phone, I'll look for that one. And I think that they've definitely done that with the first release of the new series. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:46]:
Now, there's of course this talk of a more, perhaps a more advanced version of it or more accessibility, more access, I mean, to it that would require a subscription or would require some sort of paywall. What are we thinking about that? Like, do we think that Siri AI could have some features that are compelling enough that people would pay for them while still having compelling enough features to, as Jason, you, as you pointed out, get people using it again in the first place. Because I think that's the immediate hurdle, right? Is, yeah, I've had lots of, of, of disappointment from this thing. And so I've stopped using it in the past. I have started using it again in its new form to try and train myself to trust it again. But then you want to charge me for more? What would be behind a paywall that you would pay for?

Jason Snell [00:45:46]:
I don't think Siri AI is, is where the paywall is at all. I think it's all, it's all generative stuff. I think it's stuff that's got real appreciable— I don't think Apple is ever going to put like you asking Siri some questions about facts behind a paywall. I think that's nonsense. I think that it's going to be generative. It's going to be make an image, write an article, like the stuff where you're already seeing like iCloud AI stuff is all— or not iCloud, iWork stuff is all in the creative bundle. And that means it's behind a paywall. There will be— where you're going to see it is, yeah, it's all generative stuff.

Jason Snell [00:46:21]:
Like if you— and even there, I think it's going to be a weird soft paywall. Like if you want to generate a bunch of like expanded images and photos and you want to do 50 of them in a day and you're not an iCloud Plus member, you're not somebody who's paying Apple for something else, you will eventually hit a wall where after image, I don't know whether it's 5 or 10 or 15, it says you've, you've really used this feature enough for today, come back tomorrow. And then if you have iCloud Plus, you'll get more of it. But I, I'm not even sure at that point they're going to say become an iCloud Plus member for 99 cents and then you can get more of these. I think it's more just a practical thing of like, we can't have people hammering our image generator, you know, 200, 300 times a day. It will kill us. And, and, but that's— Apple wants this to be invisible. And I just, I just don't see it ever being something more than that.

Jason Snell [00:47:17]:
This is not— does not strike me as a revenue enhancement area. Not that they won't consider it, but like, I think there are areas that makes sense for revenue enhancement, and it has to do with really intense content generation that has to happen up on the server where they can do a line of demarcation like they did with the iWork apps, which I don't love that they're in the Creative Bundle. But it is the idea that like if you want to use an LLM to generate a keynote presentation, well, you got to be in the bundle for that, right? Like that, that is a feature that actually has tangible costs. to Apple every time you make one of those. So that's, I think that's where they're drawing the line is it's not for stuff like this. It's for really processor-intensive generative stuff on a server.

Andy Ihnatko [00:48:03]:
Yeah, I feel like you're, that's right. That I think it'll be something very, very subtle where it's like, there is like a token meter running at all times where it only runs when you are trying to do things that require cloud support. If Apple is not allowing unlimited access on-device models, that's a big problem. That's basically treating your customers like marks, not like, not like customers. If you're basically saying that doesn't cost us anything to run this model on the local device, but nonetheless we are going to give you a limit on stuff that runs locally, that's a big, big problem, and Apple really shouldn't do that. However, it is absolutely correct for them to simply say no. You could, you know, you don't know how much people are going to be using this feature, and people themselves don't know how much they're going to be using this feature until they find themselves like really relying upon it. And if someone is burning through tokens at an amazing rate, that's the point at which you get the, the what is kind of the industry standard of, yeah, you've basically exhausted— again, we, you need, we need to let the GPUs cool down a little bit, try again at 11:22 AM tomorrow.

Andy Ihnatko [00:49:09]:
Uh, and they've, along with an offer saying, or you can basically, uh, subscribe, give us $20, subscribe to this for $20 a month, first month free, which is a lot of people will go for once they demonstrate that they're hitting those limits too often. And also in a more like, you know, capitalism sort of way, you want to hit people with the buying choice when they're in a weak mental state of, no, I just want the duck with a hat on for my child's birthday party. Yes, you can have $20 a month forever. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:38]:
Let's talk about The there there are some upcoming changes when we see the launch of of Mac of the next version of macOS iOS etc. And a lot of people who watch this show are Mac users, and obviously so that means that if they are running any of this beta stuff, they're seeing that lovely little thing pop up in their system information that has all the list of the. Intel apps and talks about the end of Rosetta. And I've, I've seen a little bit of anxiety coming with that as some developers are trying to figure out what's next and some are not. There was, um, on Apple Insider, uh, Oliver Haslam has put together a piece about, uh, CodeWeaver's CrossWeaver now being Apple Silicon native. Um, first I wanted to ask If you have tested, I'm sure Jason, because I remember you kind of giving a preliminary on the next version of macOS, is there anything that is critical to your workflow that you have concerns about getting the Apple Silicon treatment? And then in general, kind of what's the advice here? Is it just a, is it a move on situation or do we think that developers will come to where we are?

Jason Snell [00:51:01]:
The most important thing to know is that all you're getting now is a warning that next year in '28 it won't run. So Rosetta 2 still works fine in GoldenGate. So on that level, just don't worry about it.

Andy Ihnatko [00:51:16]:
Breathe.

Jason Snell [00:51:17]:
Um, on another level, yeah, I mean, I think a lot— I think the danger is if you have an app that is by a developer who's gone. You know, they've, they've put it out to pasture or they disappeared and it may never get updated again. Then you're going to need to think about an alternative. This is very much what we went through with Catalina, with the death of 32-bit apps, uh, or, you know, that the, the older apps just weren't gonna be there anymore. Um, and so you had to— if an app couldn't go to 32-bit, it needed to, it needed to die and people had to find replacements.

Jason Snell [00:51:53]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [00:51:53]:
It's the same story, which is if that app is, is end of life, you've got a year now to kind of like find a replacement. And probably there is a replacement. If there isn't, you know, there will be a way undoubtedly for people to run a VM, a virtual machine of GoldenGate in macOS 28. And that VM of GoldenGate will have Rosetta in it, right? Like you will, there will be a way to do it, but you're not going to want to use it. So I think Apple's doing this now because they want users of those apps to have time to either find a replacement or to bug the developer and say, do you have a plan to be Apple Silicon native with this app? And I think if there's an active developer there, they probably do have a plan and they will hear from their user base. that they need to have a plan and they'll do it. So it's— Apple's really good at these transitions. They're really good at blocking off compatibility to old stuff and moving forward, but they're also good with giving everybody a lot of time to make the adaptation to it.

Jason Snell [00:53:01]:
And, you know, and we still have another year, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. But CodeWeavers is a great example. Crossover had a bunch of Intel code in it and It needs to come out, but they're going to do it and it's not a big deal. So like if your, if your app is actively being developed, I can see why a developer might say, look, our deadline is next fall. And, and that's fine. It's a little less reassuring if they haven't done the work yet, but if you talk to them and they say, yeah, we're on it, you know, it's either that or you find a replacement.

Jason Snell [00:53:32]:
Those are your choices.

Jason Snell [00:53:33]:
But, but for sure, or just don't update to macOS 28 when it comes out next year with whatever amazing features it has.

Jason Snell [00:53:38]:
Exactly.

Jason Snell [00:53:38]:
features it has in it are just a glint in the eye of Apple engineers right now.

Andy Ihnatko [00:53:43]:
Yeah, and a lot, and a lot of this is not just people who just don't want to upgrade from Photoshop 4.0. A lot of it is like, there is a computer on this campus whose job it is to monitor these 11 valves, uh, and to activate servos that will activate certain valves under certain circumstances. It was written as a, as a, as a semester project by some kid in 1993, and because it continues to work on the Macintosh LC it's always been working on, no one's ever touched it. And that's the sort, well, okay, that would be a 68000 processor.

Jason Snell [00:54:15]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [00:54:16]:
Forget I've—

Jason Snell [00:54:16]:
It's true, but there is software of a certain age.

Andy Ihnatko [00:54:19]:
Exactly. Oftentimes it's not people who are actually at a desk doing productivity things. It is the one computer on the network whose job it is to do this one simple thing. And because it is just basically, you know, it is just basically a one-function thing, Nobody's ever messed with it, and no one's ever dared to mess with it. Those are the ones that's going to be kind of a bummer because yes, you just got to make sure that you do. It's it's a it's a Y2K sort of thing. You are going to have to make sure that you find out exactly where on what rack this computer is, and make sure that, as Jason says, it stays on the older version of the OS. What you're going to do about security, I don't know.

Andy Ihnatko [00:54:56]:
That's going to become a larger problem. But maybe once every 15 or 18 years, you should upgrade the hardware that. that monitors the state of a critical valve in a heating, ventilation, and cooling system.

Mikah Sargent [00:55:08]:
We are joined this week by Andy Ihnatko and Jason Snell. And as we come back to the show, of course, Apple announced its Apple Upgrade Program, a way to lease a device from Apple with the option to purchase it at the end of the program. Of course, that also meant the end of some of, some of one of Apple's other sort of purchase programs. And there's been some confusion therein, but I wanted to ask, you know, one of the main things that I saw after this went was a lot of people doing a lot of math and trying to figure out, is it, is it a good choice? Is it a bad choice? Does this make sense? And I wanted to get your take. Now that you've had time to digest, first and foremost, has anything stuck out that seems like, whoa, this is not a good idea, or hey, this is actually a great idea? And advice to people who maybe are on the iPhone upgrade program or are making purchases of Apple products through Apple Card, should they change those behaviors? Does that still make sense? Um, and what's the deal with everybody really hating the idea of a lease?

Andy Ihnatko [00:56:32]:
I, I don't know, but it's— the more, the more I look at it, the more I like it. I mean, I don't want— I would much— I, I don't, I don't think I can actually love it, but the idea that this isn't where you wind up spending like $3,000 for a $2,000 laptop— it is like a 0% interest. You are basically paying down the cost of the phone. If you, if you wind up keeping it with— by the end of the lease, if you wind up paying, just paying enough to own it outright, you will have spent as much as you would have spent to buy it, to buy it new. On that level, it's kind of fine. I just don't kind of like the idea of— I don't like the idea of maybe people thinking that, hey, wow, this is the way that I can always have the latest phone for just like $20 or $30 a month. The thing is, like, you are basically not ever going to own anything. And I don't think that's a great solution for a lot of people, especially people in families, because it is really, really swell to be able to say that, guess what, my kids get an iPhone 15 this year because I'm getting the iPhone 18.

Andy Ihnatko [00:57:35]:
To basically have those things trickle down, to be able to basically, uh, not necessarily have to buy a new machine in the next 2 or 3 years because you have a second machine that's, that's still on your desk, that's still, you know, Works extremely well. So long as people are completely informed, I don't have— after looking at it, I don't have a big problem with it. I just— I'm also aware that I'd like to see what the credit check is like for this program, that if it's people who legitimately, look, I can't get my hands on $1,000 or even $800 or $600 right now to get on the new phone that I need. However, I can definitely swing $10 to $20 to $30 a month. Are those people going to get access to this program, or are they going to say, nope, you, you failed the credit check, so I guess it's a blister phone from Walgreens for you?

Jason Snell [00:58:26]:
Yeah, I think, um, I think that's one reason that they've got Klarna involved, is Klarna is, is, is the back end of this. And I know people, some people have real bad vibes about Klarna, but like, there was a bank that I think that there's a bank that does the Apple iPhone upgrade program. Klarna is doing the backing for this. It's because there's an aspect of financial stuff that Apple just doesn't want to get into and they don't need to. They can have partners that do that. But like, I think, yeah, Mikah, our friend Dan Moran told me that his feeling about this is just that there's sort of like weird vibes about it more than anything else. And it's like, it's a different It's a different approach. And you got to kind of think about how you feel about how you spend your money.

Jason Snell [00:59:10]:
And everybody is going to have a different feeling about that. But what I would say is, you know, if somebody came to you and said, you can, you can buy an iPhone for $1,000, $1,500, $2,000, whatever, a larger number getting larger all the time right now. And then keep it forever. But you know, you're going to want another iPhone in 2 or 3 years and you're gonna have to sell it back and whatever. But you could do that. Or you can pay the same amount of money every month for the period that you've got it for, 2 years or 3 years. And at the end of all of that, when you do the math, it all adds up to basically the same amount of money. Which is like basically the case here.

Jason Snell [00:59:55]:
This is not a thing where if you— where there's like a huge interest rate and if you if you spread that money over 24 months, you're paying way more money than you would if you bought the phone. It's actually essentially an— it's a, it's a 0% interest kind of thing going on here.

Jason Snell [01:00:10]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:00:11]:
Well, everybody's going to have a different answer to that question. And I think that that will lead you down the path of how do you feel? Do you— or even if like, if you would save a little bit of money buying it upfront, but you have to have the money upfront and then that money's not in your pocket the rest of the 2 years. And you are at the end of the process going to have a phone that you could hand down to somebody in your family. But if you don't want to do that and use it to get your next iPhone, you have to go through a process of selling your iPhone or turning it back into Apple, which, by the way, is another thing where like Apple's not going to pay you as much as somebody else might pay for it, but it's super convenient. And, and a lot of people are like, you know, this is easier and they'll do that. And other people will be like, I don't want to, I don't want to be bothered. I'd rather have the same bill every month because it helps my budgeting. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Jason Snell [01:01:04]:
I think that this plan is there. If you look at this plan and you recoil, that's fine.

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:10]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:01:10]:
Like, it's not for you.

Jason Snell [01:01:10]:
Nobody's making you do this. Apple is not stopping to sell iPhones and only lease iPhones in the future.

Jason Snell [01:01:16]:
Like, it's not, a part of it.

Jason Snell [01:01:17]:
But I think Apple realizes that there is also an audience that really would rather put in a consistent amount of money.

Jason Snell [01:01:29]:
And what's interesting about this plan, too, is that it's not just for the iPhone, right? It's for the Mac and the iPad and the Apple Watch and like—

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:34]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:01:35]:
And, and, you know, I personally don't like the idea that all my Apple tech suddenly is rented.

Jason Snell [01:01:42]:
And I'm paying Apple $100 and $200 or whatever dollars a month for the privilege of using my devices.

Andy Ihnatko [01:01:49]:
Right.

Jason Snell [01:01:50]:
But I have the privilege of buying my devices. And if you don't, then that actually could sound like a great deal, especially like here are the caveats from Dad, right? Which is you got to pay your bills, you got to pay your bills, otherwise you're going to get in real trouble. So you got to be— this is not free. phone, right? You gotta, you gotta pay your bills. You gotta stay up on the payments or they're gonna come and take your computer away and nobody wants that. So don't do that, right? Like that's, that's a key part of it here. Don't overbuy if you can't afford it. But like beyond that, um, my only other piece of advice would be for things like iPhones and even sometimes for iPads, if you use a cellular, is, is your phone carrier may also offer deals.

Jason Snell [01:02:32]:
So like shop around. This is a great opportunity, especially if you're in the iPhone upgrade upgrade program, shop around and see what your options are. There's this program. There's— if you have an Apple Card, there's an Apple Card program. Your carrier will have a program. Find one that feels right for you. Like, I've been on the same phone carrier so long that, like, if they're offering me inducements to stay with them, it's basically a no-brainer.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:58]:
If—

Jason Snell [01:02:59]:
because I'm not going to leave them. Right. But if they'll give me a good deal to stay with them and I'm not leaving, great. So I, I don't know, like, like, in the end, I, I would love to give some very clear buying advice or renting advice here or whatever it is, but that's my answer. It's just like cars. Like, I know people who all they do is lease cars and they get a new car every 2 or 3 years. I have never, ever, ever, ever leased a car. I buy cars and then I use them a long time and then I sell them or hand them down.

Jason Snell [01:03:27]:
And, and like, it's all about your worldview, what's in your bank account, what's in your pocketbook, and it's a very personal decision.

Andy Ihnatko [01:03:34]:
Yeah. And I guess the, the only ick factor for me, the one of— if there's only one or two, there's one of those that really does come to mind. It's just the one where I don't, I don't think it's healthy for the default position for anybody to be every couple of years I get a new phone. The default position should be my phone is no longer doing what I need it to do on a day-to-day basis, either because my usage has changed or because I've simply had it long enough that the operating system is just too heavy for a machine that was made 3, 4, 5, 6 years ago, or it's been dropped now that that crack that was once quirky and once defiant is now actually making sure that I can't click the OK button 3 out of 7 times that I need to actually click on someplace. I don't like the idea of some— of anybody thinking that this 2-year-old phone needs to be replaced, or I, I would, I would much rather throw away the money that I've already put into this over the past couple of years and now have a brand new phone that's only 2 years old. If you want to do that, that's fine. I just don't— I just don't like the perception that we should all be having new phones. I think that we should all be using something until— I mean, I'm with you, Jason.

Andy Ihnatko [01:04:46]:
Like, I'm the— I am the king of— I will buy a car at 80,000 miles and then drive it in New England salt weather until it's like $150, $160 until it falls apart like the Bluesmobile. Okay. And I feel as though that's the correct way to use a car. The idea of saying, well, this car is 2 years old, I basically need to have a new one, is like, but why? It's paid. You've just paid off your car. All you're paying for is like insurance and maintenance and it's still running fine. So I just don't want people to think about this as, oh, well, I've— it's much smarter for me to always be paying $180 a month to— for the virtue of using a MacBook Pro and doing that for the rest of my relationship with MacBooks, rather than saying that at some point I've bought this, it's paid off, and it's just, and it's just nothing but making use of the thing that is a perfectly useful tool for my day-to-day, for my day-to-day life and for my future life in the next 2 or 3 years. Just don't spill Diet Pepsi on it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:05:39]:
That's all.

Jason Snell [01:05:40]:
That's what Apple— that's why Apple likes programs like this, right? And the previous program is It's great if everybody buys a new iPhone every year or two, right? Like, it's great for them.

Andy Ihnatko [01:05:52]:
It doesn't feel like you're spending money. It feels like you're just—

Jason Snell [01:05:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. But everybody, you know, but they're not making you do it. And I think, Andy, your point about it does feel wasteful. It's not like— like, I have bought a car that was in a lease program and it came off the lease and then I bought it and I got a great deal because somebody else was done with it after 3 years. And I got it. Great, great. Like, it's not necessarily waste.

Jason Snell [01:06:15]:
A lot of those products do get— find another buyer. But it is also true that if you buy that laptop and 2 years comes by and you're like, it's still great, and you get to year 3 and you're like, it's actually still great, and you get to year 4, that last year or 2 is a freebie. And if you're on the upgrade program treadmill, you don't get those opportunities, right? You don't get the opportunity to decide, I don't need an update because this still serves my needs. Instead, you're on the treadmill. You get to the end, you got to jump off, hand in your laptop, get a new laptop, jump back on, or phone or whatever.

Mikah Sargent [01:06:56]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:06:57]:
And that, I think, again, I think some people out there are going to be realistic with themselves and say, I'm always going to get a new phone every year or two. And like, if you're that person, then, then so be it. Then actually this program makes more sense for you. But, but for a lot of people, it is like, be aware that if you do a 36-month lease, at the end of 36 months, you either need to pay off the lease and walk away with the product or give it back and start a new lease. And that's— that doesn't give you the same opportunity because you already spent the money of just not spending any extra money and holding on to your product for another year or 2. And that money, basically you've just, you've amortized that, that whatever you paid for your laptop, you, instead of dividing them by 24 months or 36 months, you can divide it by 48 months or 60 months or 70 months. And, you know, this is exactly how I think about cars, by the way, is the same thing.

Jason Snell [01:07:58]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:07:58]:
It's like, yeah, I paid I paid full price for that car that you knew or used or whatever, but then I drove it for 8 years. And if you do the math, that's a, that's way better than a lease price if you want to be that person. And that's like, again, it comes back to, I think you as a listener, look into your heart and decide what kind of person you are.

Andy Ihnatko [01:08:16]:
I guess to sum up, I think that if, if Apple's going to do it, I think they've done it as well as it can be done. And I'm not going to judge people for thinking that this is exactly the way they want to go. I just, we, we, we, we got this opportunity every week to speak our piece and then And then whatever you guys want to do, go with God.

Jason Snell [01:08:31]:
And Mikah, I mean, maybe to round this up, I would just say that that's the good news of this is this is not— everybody's looked at it. And as far as we can tell, this is not an evil program. It is not full of gotchas. It is not trying to like exploit people into making terrible financial decisions. It really isn't. It is designed to make it really easy to give Apple money. Because they are a business and they're like, oh, some people might not want to spend $3,000 for a computer. How could we get them to get that computer? And the answer is, how about monthly payments? I mean, so it is that.

Jason Snell [01:09:08]:
And if you want to say, you know, capitalism is evil or whatever, like, okay, we could talk about it. Like, this is not some nefarious scheme.

Jason Snell [01:09:14]:
Right.

Jason Snell [01:09:14]:
And if you agree to it, you've sold your soul to the devil.

Jason Snell [01:09:17]:
It's not like that.

Jason Snell [01:09:18]:
It's perfectly reasonable if this is the way you want to live your life. Go ahead. Dad says it's okay.

Andy Ihnatko [01:09:24]:
Yeah, it's not like buying a sofa at one of those like rental stores. It's like where you find up spending $6,000 for like a $400 IKEA sofa. It's fine. Again, if Apple's gonna do this, I think this is the best way they could have possibly done it.

Mikah Sargent [01:09:40]:
All right, let us move along. I wanna talk about the legal battle Apple is underway with, of course, OpenAI. Over on 9to5Mac, Zack Hoffman Paul put together kind of a quick rundown of where things stand as far as the timeline. On July 10th, Apple sued OpenAI, said that former Apple employees who now work at OpenAI have been systematically stealing Apple trade secrets. On that date as well, OpenAI did respond with a brief statement. We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. On July 14th, OpenAI provided even more info, saying that it has not even seen any evidence supporting the claims. Now, on August 4th, OpenAI has published a blog post and goes into detail about it.

Mikah Sargent [01:10:32]:
The post is, let's see, is it still called that? Yes. Apple is Getting This Wrong. So I remember, I don't remember, I wish I could, I think it might've been on The Verge, but there was someone who had put together sort of examples of how something like this has been, maybe it might've even been during Fireball. Anyway, examples of how this used to be handled with talent being scooped up by different companies and this sort of behind-the-scenes conversations that leaders were having. I didn't realize how many people from Apple had moved into this specific area of OpenAI's company. And so I kind of wanted to get your take first and foremost on where things stand, between Apple and OpenAI, how much of this you think is just, you know, egos going at it and whether either company has a leg to stand on.

Jason Snell [01:11:33]:
Well, the Verge headline on this was Apple or OpenAI drags Apple's lawsuit into the court of public opinion, which I think is exactly right here. This is just essentially, this is PR. It's OpenAI. And I can tell you how this played out. And there's an OpenAI executive or 2 who's really angry, and they demanded that they write a blog post about it. And they may have actually written the headline. They're getting this wrong.

Mikah Sargent [01:11:56]:
Just say that.

Jason Snell [01:11:56]:
Just say Apple's getting this wrong. And they're using a lot of the same information that leaked to various news organizations earlier, which I think is very funny. Like, oh, there's this lawyer who emailed the wrong person. And like, that was a story 2 weeks ago. And that blog post just brings it back up and says, here are the emails, haha. And it's like, well, I guess that story didn't get you enough traction before, so you're trying to revive it. Um, it's Apple.

Andy Ihnatko [01:12:24]:
I'm sorry, side point. Apple is not suing you because you did not respond to an email.

Jason Snell [01:12:28]:
So yeah. Yeah. And, and it's, it's, it's very weird. And then they post, they posted a bunch of like, um, what they say are the threads of these various iMessage things that don't really Do establish anything? I again, my feeling here is: Is it possible that Apple filed a lawsuit that is meritless and that is sort of like all confused and messed up and alleging a bunch of things that Apple actually realizes aren't true? Oopsie. Yeah, I mean theoretically it's possible, but it reads to me more like this is. OpenAI putting chaff out there to spin it a little bit so it doesn't seem as obvious because Apple's lawsuit filing was so damning that I think OpenAI has tried an escalating series of ways of batting it down. They had a one-sentence reply that said, you know, we don't think this is— this is wrong. We don't agree.

Jason Snell [01:13:34]:
And then that didn't work. So then they did a 2-sentence reply several days later that added the line that's in the blog post, which is, we're more interested in building new things than stealing trade secrets. We don't want to do that. And that didn't have enough traction. So now they've made a blog post out of it with a bunch of the stuff that they already leaked to various places in one place. Because, look, I mean, the problem is that Apple's thing is very detailed and looks really bad for OpenAI. And OpenAI's responses seem to be something like, nuh-uh. And also, they emailed the wrong guy.

Jason Snell [01:14:09]:
Haha. And like, is OpenAI right? They could be. They could be. I'm just saying, this feels more like there's an executive somewhere who's really angry and feels like nobody's treating OpenAI fairly about this, and that they're going to keep kind of like throwing this stuff out there. Yeah. To try to get people more on their side, and in terms of legal merit, there is none here. This is just about muddying the waters and making people question whether OpenAI is actually doing bad things to Apple, or maybe Apple's just being mean to OpenAI. And you know, so treat it as you know.

Jason Snell [01:14:50]:
I think you have to treat it as that. This is PR. This is PR. The court of public opinion.

Andy Ihnatko [01:14:56]:
And I think you've— I think you're right. This was the result of somebody in C-suite pounding their fists on the table saying, why are we just rolling over and not defending ourselves here? When their advisor's saying, because we don't have a whole lot to defend. We should be defending ourselves in court. We can't really defend ourselves on that level.

Jason Snell [01:15:11]:
Thank you for mentioning the table, by the way, because that's that classic line, which is, you know, if you have evidence, hammer the evidence.

Andy Ihnatko [01:15:21]:
If you don't have the facts, argue the law. If you don't have the law, argue the facts. If you don't have either, pound the table.

Mikah Sargent [01:15:25]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:15:26]:
I mean, this, this, this blog, this blog post is just so weird because again, it wasn't like, like I said, it's like OpenAI, they're, they're not upset that you didn't respond to an email. Thank you for this, for pasting in all of this, this, these quote receipts, unquote, about how you tried to respond to the— they sent it to the wrong place. And also, like, I'm like, I cannot believe that they were saying, okay, and also they're saying that like our guy, like was abusing access to internal Apple file servers information that he did not have the right to access. The thing is, that's been an open problem at Apple for months and months and months.

Jason Snell [01:16:07]:
Yeah, not an argument, right?

Andy Ihnatko [01:16:08]:
Again, you should be saying that no, this never happened because that would have been incredibly bad and that would be the reason. No, you're basically saying yes, that happened. That is, you should have, you should have, you should have, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't protect your, your, your, you shouldn't put a Home Depot lock on your door. That's your fault.

Jason Snell [01:16:25]:
Like that. That is an amazing item in the blog post is what they, what they say is, look, uh, Dropbox, I think, right? Or no, it's iCloud. Like there's a special iCloud folder for Apple employees, but if you are, um, if you get a file and you put it somewhere else, then when you leave the company, that folder, that file See, huh? And it's like, okay, but like Apple's allegations— yeah, Apple's allegations are very specific about spiriting lots of documents off of work computers and all of that. And like, the answer is, well, he had the computer, or, well, the file was on his hard drive, is not an answer, right?

Andy Ihnatko [01:17:08]:
Right.

Jason Snell [01:17:08]:
Like, but it's more detail. And that's what I say about it being— I don't want to say a smokescreen, but it is that like, That, that chaff in the water just to confuse things a little bit and make it not seem one-sided. Because I think this— because it doesn't have any use other than trying to get people to not feel as negative toward OpenAI, which is why, you know, I think, I think it's abs— I don't know anything about this, but this feels so much like an ego trip from somebody in a position of power who's like, we're not doing enough. We should be out there. This is stupid. And, and then somebody in PR is like, oh, yes, sir. Okay, we'll do it.

Jason Snell [01:17:50]:
So here we are.

Andy Ihnatko [01:17:50]:
I don't have to sign my name to it, right? Okay, file whatever you want.

Jason Snell [01:17:53]:
Yeah, it's not legally binding in any way, is it? Get it out there.

Andy Ihnatko [01:17:55]:
Except to shareholders, yeah.

Mikah Sargent [01:17:57]:
It's interesting because, uh, I would say arguably Apple, that's, that's, well, I was gonna say that hasn't been the game that Apple has played before because, you know, we've lots of, of opportunities to appear in court, but then I thought about how it makes very clear as often as possible that the reason why some of its features aren't available in the EU is because of the EU. So I guess it does also do court of public opinion at times. It's sort of a standard play across big tech now.

Jason Snell [01:18:28]:
Oh, sure. Absolutely. I mean, they did it literally with that analyst call where they're like, oh, well, remember, services is soft and the judge is being mean to us and we're going to the Supreme Court. And it's like, come on. But that is an excuse. And they, somebody at Apple felt the need to get that out there in the court of public opinion.

Mikah Sargent [01:18:46]:
Absolutely. All right, let's see, what do we have next on the list? We've been sort of following along again with this upgrade program and, you know, looking at it from the lease side of things, understandable. One area that I sort of saw conversation around was the idea that while all of these prices are inflated, for people who need to have, or especially for companies who need to have a new setup, a new fleet of Macs could take advantage of something like this and that it would help to sort of spread out the cost of these devices. Something that I'm curious to hear. I know it's kind of it is going a little bit back to earnings, but what are we thinking about the the sort of I don't know three five year forecast when it comes to device prices? Do we see that MacBook Neo going back down in the future and And does that have an impact on sort of the overall value? I mean, Apple is well known for not being a discount company. They don't provide lots of discounts except through, you know, the education store and things like that. Does it devalue the products when they go down in the future, if they do, or is this the new normal regardless of what the supply chain looks like 3 and 5 years into the future?

Andy Ihnatko [01:20:31]:
Well, I do think that Apple knows who their customers are. They know what their behavior is. They're going to be watching very closely to see if we do have a legitimate need to raise prices. We can actually substantiate that. But they're going to be seeing how much of a hurt that put on sales. When supply is no longer an issue, hopefully within the next 3 to 4 years. I don't necessarily think that the prices will stay up there, but if they could have dropped the prices by, let's say, $400 in, uh, in 2031, maybe they'll drop it by $200 or $300. Or maybe they'll think that, look, we've got an extra $100 to play with if we want to add more features, or if we want to add more distance between these 3 levels of product.

Andy Ihnatko [01:21:17]:
Um, obviously a lot of people are going to be paying close attention to it. As long as we don't forget That there is what Apple has declared to be an artificial price increase in 2026. We have to basically put down a Post-it note, put it right next to our monitor, so that once we get once we have demonstration that no no no now the crisis is over, all the companies that should have gone out of business have gone out of business, and now there's there's there's there's they they found an untapped vein of jet clampet shot into the shot into the ground and. up from the ground, showed a bubbling, like, fountain of DRAM. The crisis is over with. We're gonna have to, like, take a look at, okay, so what is the price of a MacBook Neo going to be? I would imagine that what would happen is that they're not simply gonna start dropping prices, like, on— here's the— it's August 8th and now it's time for us to drop prices because the crisis is over with. But I do imagine that, like, generation, uh, then the next generation of hardware will have some more affordable prices after that. Like I said, they're gonna be taking advantage of this to see what— how much money are people willing to spend on our products.

Andy Ihnatko [01:22:20]:
Uh, even, even the, the, uh, the folding iPhone is all— is going to be a huge source of data to figure out like who is buying a $2,200, $2,300, $2,400 iPhone, and does that embolden us to make a $2,500 iPhone or $2,600 iPhone?

Jason Snell [01:22:35]:
Yeah, I think the problem, Mikah, is I think Apple would like that MacBook Neo to be $5.99 in our hearts. But like, the truth is that's not how inflation works. I mean, this is the thing that we're not talking about here is like inflation means everything gets more expensive and deflation doesn't really happen. And so like, I don't know if that's— we're ever going to see that price again because It's possible. But remember, like, Apple's competition is the reason that they set it at $599. They wanted to play in a market segment down there, and everybody in that market segment has to deal with the increase in prices. And all of those products are going up in price.

Jason Snell [01:23:28]:
Hmm.

Jason Snell [01:23:28]:
And so I think what you're looking at is if Apple looks around at $699 and says, well, actually, this is where the segment is now, it's now at $699. Because everybody's prices went up, then it'll stay there, right? And it gives them the opportunity to undercut and go down to $599 over time. If prices come way down and the, you know, the bill of materials cost drops dramatically, they could go back down. But I think it kind of depends on what every other product in that category does. And that's the danger here is that like Yeah. Computers, you know, historically actually are— all these devices are way cheaper than they used to be, right? Like in the olden days, computers were very expensive. And, and although the prices look similar, inflation means they're actually, you know, your buying power to buy a computer is a lot more than it used to be. So I think that this is just a natural part of the cycle where we are all going to have to recalibrate in our brains And hopefully a lot of people will have their salaries grow with the cost of living, which has not happened in the last few years, which is the problem here.

Jason Snell [01:24:41]:
And that will just, you know, you get a time traveler from the 1940s who will say milk costs what, right? Like, and that, that's just how it is now. We don't, you know, a candy bar for a, for a dollar or $2 or $3. I got a frozen lemonade the other day. That was like $4. And I'm like, seems a little pricey, but it's like, that's just what it costs now. Sorry. So some of it is just adapting to what prices mean and that they mean something different. But I think that if all the targets for Apple for the MacBook Neo end up being $500 computers, you know, they'll make a $500 or $600 computer again.

Jason Snell [01:25:18]:
But I'm not sure that's going to happen.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:21]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:25:21]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:25:21]:
It really— inflation is a thing, but competition is, is constant. If historically Apple has— there's— we've— it's less necessary now than before to talk about the Apple tax, but it's always been like, here is how much a mid-range Windows laptop costs, and here's how much a mid-range MacBook costs. And typically, even if you single out Windows machines that have comparable construction quality and comparable features, the MacBook is going to be more expensive. So we have a basis of comparison. If the quote Apple tax tax, unquote, is higher after prices basically stabilize on storage and RAM, then we'll have to start asking questions like, okay, so if you're gonna be charging us now, if the Apple tax has gone up $180, $200, what are we getting for that $200 that you weren't giving us back in, way back in 2026? But the problem is that we do, I do think that we have a responsibility to be on alert. That's why I say, mentally speaking, we should have that on a Post-it note.

Jason Snell [01:26:22]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:26:23]:
just to remember that, okay, they said that, or that they would, they would not have raised prices on the MacBook Pro by $300 if it weren't for this crisis. So that does not mean that the base price for a MacBook Pro should be $300 more, relatively speaking, forever, unless they are basically giving us, guess what, the baseline storage is a level higher than it would have been otherwise, or or RAM's gonna be a level higher than it would otherwise. Or we found a way to put a microphone, to put a headphone jack into a $2,000 iPad Pro. You're welcome.

Mikah Sargent [01:27:00]:
I would like it if we took a little moment to acknowledge a very important device in Apple's lineup. It's one you strap to your face and it takes you to other worlds.

Jason Snell [01:27:14]:
Oh no.

Mikah Sargent [01:27:14]:
It's time to talk about the Vision Pro for a moment. What do you see?

Andy Ihnatko [01:27:17]:
What do you know? It's time to talk Vision Pro.

Mikah Sargent [01:27:21]:
Wow, this is longer than I remember.

Jason Snell [01:27:27]:
Yeah, it goes on forever. It's getting longer every time we play it.

Mikah Sargent [01:27:32]:
And if you put— I imagine putting on the Vision Pro and then having a hallway that goes on forever, and as you're walking through, it's just playing that haunting music. I wanted to ask, um, can you lease an Apple Vision Pro? And if not, why didn't it make the list of leasable devices that Apple makes. Is this evidence of the end of the Apple Vision Pro?

Jason Snell [01:27:56]:
I have no idea if you can lease the Vision Pro. It would make sense if you could, but one way to get people on it, I think not. I think the volume is too low.

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:04]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:28:06]:
And it's a developer kit, right? Like this is the truth of it is it's not a product. It's not a consumer product as much as they sort of pretended and went through the motions. It's a, it's a, it's just a, it serves an entirely different purpose, which is trying to figure out the future future of interfaces like this. And for people who want to explore, I, I'm— I bet you if they made a version that could sell in volume for people to watch live NBA games or whatever, then they'd probably make a— make it available for a lease. But we're just, we're just not there.

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:34]:
For that matter, I, I'm legitimately asking because I can't remember.

Jason Snell [01:28:38]:
Do—

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:38]:
does Vision Pro ever wind up on the refurb list?

Mikah Sargent [01:28:42]:
That's a good question.

Jason Snell [01:28:43]:
I don't know. Maybe.

Andy Ihnatko [01:28:45]:
I mean, one question that would pop to mind is that if it's something that you're strapping to your face for hours on end, I bet that refurbishing them— and if it were a lease product to send it out to a new customer, you would have to sanitize the heck out of it. But I bet they will figure out the solution to that.

Jason Snell [01:28:59]:
Yeah, honestly, most of the stuff that— the stuff that touches your body is all the kind of the stuff that you can— you can pop off the magnetic— it's magnetic, or it's the strap or whatever, and you can just pull those off.

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:09]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:29:10]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:10]:
But yeah, it's, again, I legitimately can't remember if they're, I've ever seen one in the, uh, in the refurb store.

Jason Snell [01:29:15]:
I don't think they're in the refurb store.

Mikah Sargent [01:29:18]:
No.

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:19]:
Hmm. 'Cause people love them so much, they never—

Jason Snell [01:29:21]:
That's right. They never go back.

Mikah Sargent [01:29:24]:
Yeah, exactly. Uh, another—

Andy Ihnatko [01:29:26]:
They forget which drawer they left it in.

Mikah Sargent [01:29:28]:
Another aspect of this, of course, then is visionOS. And arguably that is, uh, going to be used for Apple's future Glasses or whatever it happens to be that we see from the company.

Jason Snell [01:29:46]:
Do we?

Mikah Sargent [01:29:48]:
The current state of Vision OS and Apple sort of talking about new features there, it it feels a little bit like what we saw with the introduction of Golden Gate and the fact that you can. When you use iPhone mirroring, stretch out the iPhone mirroring window to show different sizes. That's kind of given us a hint at future iPhones that maybe or maybe don't fold. Would you say that this is sort of a well-known understanding among developers that, you know, developer, third-party developers are, if they're making apps for the Vision Pro, that it's just kind of a known that you're also making apps and features for the other Vision-style products that Apple makes? Because if that wasn't the case, you would wonder why anyone is taking the time to make anything for the Vision Pro.

Jason Snell [01:30:52]:
I mean, no and yes. The whole Vision— the reason people are making software for the Vision Pro is that they think it's cool and they like to explore. And it's probably because they're a developer who thinks it's fun to play around with what it would be like to have a 3D product like this. And also, I would say for people who are like, there will be something that will come out of this, this experimentation and knowledge, because the Vision Pro, I mean, from the day it shipped, it's like, well, this is obviously not the final form of anything. This is a thing you strap, a big heavy thing you strap to your face. Even Apple, the way they designed it, they designed it to act like Like it's an AR product with all that pass-through because they couldn't do AR. So it's a VR product that pretends to be an AR product because they know they knew from the moment they shipped it that this was not even close to the product they actually wanted to ship in their dreams in five or ten years. So yeah, if you're investing time in Vision Pro, it's because you either think it's cool and you want to play around, and you're somebody who likes the idea of.

Jason Snell [01:31:57]:
you know, messing around with new concepts in computing that might lead you to interesting places in other ways. Or it's because you're thinking there's going to be a computer that uses some of these concepts down the road, and I want to have explored some of that before we get to that point.

Mikah Sargent [01:32:15]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:32:15]:
But under no circumstances is there anybody out there thinking, I'm going to spend a lot of money getting my app ready to go here because I just know that Apple's going to have AR glasses glasses in 2, 4, 7, 9, 12 years, right? Like it's just, that is not a reasonable thing because whatever they do ship, even if they end up shipping something that's more augmented reality-like, there's no guarantee that it will remotely resemble the Vision experience. In fact, it might be more like, you know, we talk about that, that screen that's coming, that's like the HomePod. Some people are calling it, that's like the, the HomePod with a screen or a screen you can mount on the wall to and it's gonna have widgets.

Jason Snell [01:32:53]:
It may—

Jason Snell [01:32:54]:
the glasses may be more like that when they come, the ones that have a display in them, at least to start. It may be more just sort of like floating widgets, not full-on AR experiences or VR experiences like what's in the Vision Pro. So like nobody knows. So to answer your question, Mikah, I think the people who are messing around with Vision Pro are doing it knowing that nobody knows where it's going, but maybe it's fun to experiment or—

Jason Snell [01:33:17]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:33:18]:
Maybe you're making—I'd say the only people who might be good at making a fixed investment in this right now are thinking that there's going to be an application for it, like live sports or live theater or something like that. That there's a second iteration of this because it's not like Vision Pro is not close to being AR glasses, but it might be within a few years away from being a. you know, half the price, good enough to watch a live event in an immersive setting. And I think that's where all the content makers are also thinking is they're like, they don't know if Vision Pro is ever going to be anything or lead to anything, but they figure there'll probably be immersive experiences for computing devices in the future. And they want to, they want to get on that train now and start making content for whenever they get there. But it's all speculative. Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:08]:
Yeah. That's, that's the thing that disappointed me the most about Vision Pro. Uh, it's, it's a wonderful piece of hardware. I like the experience, but the fact that they comp— I don't know, I don't know if compromise is the right word, but the fact that the use case that they made for it was that, hey, look, you can run iPad apps, you basically have virtual screens that you can actually take a look at. That's great. It makes it, it gives it a use and a purpose that goes beyond the requirement for someone to have a breakthrough app that has to happen on, uh, on Vision Pro. But nonetheless, it's, uh, It reminds me of the reasons why the first Macintosh did not have any function keys, did not have any arrow keys. That was a very specific choice because this is the first computer that— popular computer that has a mouse and has menus and has windows, a whole new paradigm.

Andy Ihnatko [01:34:54]:
And the Mac team understood that, look, if we put function keys and arrow keys, then the users and the developers are going to write apps that require the use of function keys and arrow keys, just like every other machine. And we want them to learn that that's not what makes the Mac special. It's the Mac and the, it's the mouse and this wonderful interface. And again, the, I'm not saying it was a bad idea to put this, to have this like windowing experience on it, but it basically said, oh, so essentially it's a way to have virtual displays and basically run apps that I'm very, very familiar with, 2-dimensional apps in a 3-dimensional virtual space or hovering in front of my workspace.

Jason Snell [01:35:31]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:32]:
And it's like, okay, but we've seen those apps before and that can run on $800 hardware. It can run on $500 hardware. Why are— what— how is this going to take advantage of stuff? So I was very disappointed that, um, the mutants, the wonderful, wonderful mutants amongst the Apple development community didn't find the thing that is a unique experience for Vision Pro that wouldn't have made it into a monster hit.

Jason Snell [01:35:58]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:35:58]:
hit, but at least would have sold the idea of this is why this— a device like this should exist. Remember, Apple didn't say that this is an experiment. They said this is a whole new paradigm in computing.

Jason Snell [01:36:09]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:36:09]:
And it just wasn't. If they— if they had come out and said, look, this is an experimental thing, we've been— this is an idea that we're really, really fascinated with, we think our developers are going to be fascinated with it, and we think some of our early adopter style users are going to be fascinated with it too. So as a result, we're doing this platform, that might have taken the curse off of it a little bit, at least for me.

Jason Snell [01:36:29]:
But they, they, you know, I don't think they had it in them. I think that they think they just assume every Apple product is going to be a massive hit for the, for the whole wide world. And spatial computing, that was, that was a mistake, uh, a marketing mistake, I would say, more than anything else, because it was very clear what that product actually was. I will say one of the funny things about Vision Pro is that there's a lot of fun stuff around the edges that those mutants have done, right? Like a lot. The problem is, and that Apple has done some of that, like being able to put a widget on the wall and stuff. It's kind of amazing.

Jason Snell [01:37:04]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:37:04]:
And doing a FaceTime with that, with the spatial personas got so much better over time. They're really, really good. And that was a feature that was the grossest at the beginning and they've really improved them. The problem is not the ancillary stuff that you'd want to have. The problem is the core. What nobody found was why I put it on. When I put it on, I'm dazzled, but I have— I continue to look for reasons to stay. And there was no productivity, as much as people tried and Apple tried.

Jason Snell [01:37:37]:
I never really got a solid productivity story where I felt more productive using an app in spatial. And again, there are edge cases. Uh, the Mac Virtual Display to give you a big display, even if you've just got a little laptop, is cool. Uh, immersive video is cool, but like, and, and for me personally, as a, as a writer, sometimes I would be like, I just can't get the story out. Mm-hmm. I would go into an immersive, um, setting with a text editor window up and a Bluetooth keyboard, and I could actually sometimes write there because I just was tuning out the entire world. But like, I never feel like, oh, I've got to do some work in a spreadsheet. I'm going to do it in Vision Pro.

Jason Snell [01:38:20]:
It's like it's not a superior experience. So as fun as it is to have this little 3D gadget over here and this widget on the wall and all this other stuff that I— it's like personalizing my Mac. There's no core that's there that they've found yet. And that's— and that's the spatial computing part is if you're going to make your claim on being this new paradigm of spatial computing and the interface I actually think the interface work they did is beautiful. It's brilliant.

Jason Snell [01:38:44]:
Really?

Jason Snell [01:38:45]:
It is incredible that you can interact with all of these floating windows and move them around in 3D space and all of that. But to what end? And very few people have found that end of like, ah, I have to do it in Vision Pro because it's superior because of X and Y. And that is the— if this is gonna be like a general purpose computer, it would need to do that. And I, I am never thinking, oh, I don't need to bring my Mac on a trip. I'll just bring my Vision Pro because it lets me be that productive. It just doesn't. It's just not the right device for it.

Andy Ihnatko [01:39:17]:
Yeah. I don't think anyone has ever said, gee, I love Google Sheets, but I wish there were a way that my neck could be really, really sore after using it.

Jason Snell [01:39:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. Right. I, I wish I could struggle with putting my hands in places instead of having it be precisely on a pointing device.

Mikah Sargent [01:39:29]:
Yeah. Um, all right. We've got one more story I wanna talk about and then we'll head into the picks of the week. Uh, 13.5— no, 32. There you go.

Jason Snell [01:39:44]:
Now you see, now you know, we're done talking. Oh my, Vision Pro.

Mikah Sargent [01:39:49]:
Yeah, we have to close the loop.

Jason Snell [01:39:52]:
Yeah, otherwise bad things happen in the world. There's tornadoes and hurricanes and stuff.

Andy Ihnatko [01:39:56]:
We've got a compiler error.

Jason Snell [01:39:58]:
Butterflies.

Andy Ihnatko [01:39:58]:
Unbalanced parenthesis. Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:40:01]:
Syntax error in 20.

Mikah Sargent [01:40:02]:
Yeah, I'm glad we did it. All right, now I can say it. $32.5 billion. That is the current estimate for the class action lawsuit against Apple, uh, due to facial recognition, which may make you go, wait, I thought we settled this already. We know that Face ID saves it in the secure enclave. There's nothing— no, this isn't about that. This is instead about the photo app. And in Illinois, where there are laws that make it so you have— there are a lot of protections when it comes— or some protections when it comes to biometric data.

Mikah Sargent [01:40:41]:
Illinois argues that this is a violation of that law. The fact that photographs and associated data are synchronized across devices using iCloud, says Malcolm Owen on Apple Insider. Now, the interesting thing is that Apple sort of disagrees about whether this is a correct assertion in the first place.

Jason Snell [01:41:11]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [01:41:12]:
And I wanted to hear, how are we feeling? Because I think maybe people are— I would argue people are aware, I thought, of the people faces albums that exist. And their use, uh, potentially with HomeKit and how that information gets, uh, sort of synced around. But oof, this can be very expensive.

Jason Snell [01:41:36]:
Yeah. I, I have not read the case. I've only read the summary. My understanding, and I have written and continue to update a book about Apple Photos for the last many years now, is that the assertion in this lawsuit is incorrect. That the lawsuit, according to Apple Insider at least, it says the lawsuit adds that photographs and associated data are synchronized across devices using iCloud. This data is assumed to be biometric data and a violation of Illinois law. I can tell you my understanding of how the the people feature works. People and pets now in photos, which is.

Jason Snell [01:42:18]:
Every time you get a new device, your photos sync, and then they're all scanned for faces. And the face scans do not sync. If you, if you click on a photo and say, this is who this person is, as a human being asserting a fact about a photo, I believe that metadata does sync, which enables a little bit of an assist in terms of facial recognition. Because if you've got— the way it works is like, if you've ever gone through here, it actually asks you to train a little bit. It says like, I found 8 pictures that I think might be of Jason. And you're like, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes. And that's useful because the way it's working is it's clustering clusters of faces it's found that they think are the same. And then you as a human being can say, well, yeah, this cluster You know, this one that's in that cluster is Jason.

Jason Snell [01:43:12]:
So all of these are going to be Jason. And this one that's in this cluster is Jason. So those are all going to be Jason. And this one that's in this cluster are not Jason. So none of those are Jason. But it's all, you know, it's not finding one face. It's finding a bunch of different face profiles and then using some intelligence and some human interaction to group them together and say, these are all pictures of you or your friends. What my understanding is, Again, I haven't seen the code.

Jason Snell [01:43:37]:
My understanding is that none of the facial recognition processing ever gets synced anywhere. In fact, this is why getting a new device is so annoying.

Mikah Sargent [01:43:49]:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Snell [01:43:50]:
Because everything needs to be reindexed. And in fact, if you look at your photos libraries on different devices and you search for something that might come out of a machine language or a machine learning search, not just faces, but like if you search for dog, or horses or zebras or whatever, you may get different responses on different devices because they're all doing their own somewhat non-deterministic scan of your Photos library. So having not seen the lawsuit, not knowing about the law, I don't know nothing about that. But my understanding about how Photos works, it's actually that Apple is, say, is potentially saving themselves from some liability here. by not doing that, not syncing the results of their scans. It's annoying when you get a new iPhone and your iPhone is hot for like a week afterward because it's going to download and scan every single photo in your Photos library. And it does. And, you know, but anyway, so my understanding is that this is entirely incorrect and Apple is not doing any machine learning face scanning data transferred across devices at all.

Jason Snell [01:44:55]:
In fact, this makes— maybe answers the question of why they aren't Yeah, I think so.

Mikah Sargent [01:45:00]:
I think you're right. I think that does answer the question of why they aren't. I was just helping a friend a couple of days ago set up a new phone, and we're going through the process, and then she picked up the phone and she goes, oh my goodness, this is really hot. And so I started— and she was wondering why, so I started explaining the different things and mentioned about going through the Photos library. And yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious, of course, we saw that the judge allowed the class action lawsuit to go forward more. It'll be interesting to see if this gets dropped before or if Apple's going to have to actually go in and argue and prove, you know, that this is— that the fear or the concern or that the violation does not in fact exist. I am shocked at how many people— I shouldn't say, this is extrapolating.

Mikah Sargent [01:45:51]:
Anecdotally speaking, I was shocked how many of the people I know still think that Face ID is something that is cloud synced or that is going to some server somewhere and it's not just stored in the secure enclave. And so I think there's more education that frankly Apple could do here to make this more comfortable and understandable for people because I have people who who, despite my assurances and, you know, explanations that I promise were asked for, they still don't turn on Face ID. Just don't trust it. And look, that's understandable from, you know, if you don't know for sure and you feel uncomfy about it, fine, don't use it. It makes sense, but—

Jason Snell [01:46:43]:
I don't use it at Whole Foods. You know, Amazon wants me to scan my palm.

Mikah Sargent [01:46:47]:
Oh, right, yes.

Jason Snell [01:46:48]:
And like, and pay for stuff at Whole Foods. And I'm like, no, no, no, you're not. No, you're just not going to do it. That's where I draw the line. And is that logical? Do they know who I am? Yes. Do I even scan my little QR code? Yes. Do I want to give them my palm? No. I mean, I'll give them the stop.

Jason Snell [01:47:06]:
Like, yeah, exactly.

Mikah Sargent [01:47:07]:
That's the palm.

Jason Snell [01:47:07]:
I'll show them the hand then, but that's it. And, and, and I mean, Mikah, people still, people still think that your phone listens to you and sends you ads. And that's not true either. But they think that because there are other nefarious things that do all of those things, but they aren't this. And this is— I don't know. Again, I don't know enough about this case. I just heard about it. But it looks to me reading that story that like there are some, there are some law firms that have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars out of various big tech companies in Illinois, and they've moved down the list to the next one.

Jason Snell [01:47:40]:
And I, I mean, unless Apple just decides it's cheaper to pay them off than to fight it. But based on what I know, this is gonna be a tough, a much tougher one for them because Apple seems to want to not, unless the law has like, unless the law specifies things that Apple is syncing. But my understanding is the actual, like, we looked at your face and classified you, like that stuff doesn't leave your device is my understanding. And the stuff that does is informed by a human.

Jason Snell [01:48:11]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:48:12]:
At which point it's not biometric data anymore. It's other than the ones that are in our noggin, and saying that's my friend is not a violation of that. So, you know, I think they just went down to the next one on the list and said, how much money can we get out of these guys?

Andy Ihnatko [01:48:26]:
Wow. I think you're— I think you're probably right. If there's— if there's a good thing that can come out of a lawsuit like this, actually 2 good things. Number one, uh, Mikah, you're right in that Oftentimes a problem, a perception like this is a failure in the company to explain itself adequately or to simply assume they work so closely with their own data that they can't imagine why people wouldn't just simply trust it. And this is an opportunity for Apple to explain in court filings, here's how the base broadly, here's how the feature works. And here's why we just, we have, not only do we not collect information, but it's not even technically possible for us to connect, to collect your face scans. We've protected even even attack from ourselves on this data. And the second thing is that sometimes laws like this can't— excuse me, sometimes suits like this can point out problems in an otherwise well-intentioned data privacy law.

Andy Ihnatko [01:49:21]:
That if this is— it might point out that a certain law in a certain state is broad enough to say that no, even though this thing never leaves the device and is actually actively just— the sensor data is destroyed almost immediately. Right. If the fact that this is violating some sort of a privacy law, that means that we need to amend that law so that a very beneficial feature can continue to go without having to defend itself from lawsuits all the time. But I'm always in— I'm always— I'm not in favor of companies being harassed. Even $5 trillion companies should not be harassed. But if one of the things I like about— if we have to find something to like about this is that, again, I'm not opposed to companies basically saying, okay, well, look, here are the facts.

Jason Snell [01:50:01]:
We're not—

Andy Ihnatko [01:50:01]:
you don't have to just trust us. Here is like, we're laying out exactly the reasons why you don't have to think that you don't have to worry about the fact that you're using your face or your fingerprint to unlock a device. And in fact, it's so much more secure than any other method that you're probably using. And instead that we hope that you'll be convinced to switch to this new version of it.

Mikah Sargent [01:50:20]:
All right. Well put there. Let us move along to the final segment of the show, the back of the book, as it were. It's time for our picks. Andy, let's hear about your pick.

Andy Ihnatko [01:50:32]:
I'm like, I'm preparing for, for a vacation. And normally I get a little bit smug about, oh, well, I've got my Plex server so I can access my hundreds and hundreds of movies and tens of thousands of music tracks from wherever I am. Sometimes though, that's overkill and that's a pain in the butt to make sure that everything's set up correctly so that I can access remotely. Also, I might be traveling to a place where the internet kind of stinks. And I guess I can't stream that stuff from my home server. So I started looking last week for something akin to a Plex-like movie app experience or a streaming app experience as a local app that runs and accesses stuff that's local on my MacBook or on my, on my Mac. And I've been using a media player called Infuse, I-N-F-U-S-E. You can, it's made by Firecore, so you can go to firecore.com to check it out.

Andy Ihnatko [01:51:26]:
And it looks like it's exactly— I've been using it for about a week now, and it looks like it's exactly what I was looking for. If you just use it for local stuff, it works almost— this is not a Plex server. However, it gives me the same kind of vibe where you simply point it to, okay, I want you to keep an eye on my— this, this folder, this folder, and this folder where I tend to keep TV shows, music, TV shows, movies, and stuff. And then it will not just simply give me like what VLC will do is like, here is a scrolling list of things that's on your, that's on your device. It gives you a Plex-like experience where if it can't— if, if you format the titles the way that most entertainment is formatted, it will pull down movie posters for it. It'll organize it by category, by stuff you've watched, stuff you haven't watched. If you have this on multiple devices, it will sync between devices. So if you start a 3-hour movie on one device and try to continue it on another, it'll pick up exactly where you left off.

Andy Ihnatko [01:52:23]:
Not only that, but it's— the basic core functions are free. However, if you spend, I think it's $2 a month or $18 a year or something like $80 forever, you can get access to Infuse Pro, by virtue of which now you can actually hook it up to a Dropbox folder or a NAS folder or Google Drive or any of these other things. So I could put— if there's like if, if I'm planning on a week's vacation and here's a bunch of entertainment that I'd like to be able to access, I could just simply throw this into Dropbox, throw into Google Drive, and essentially have the, uh, have the functionality that I crave from my Plex server without having to worry about like, is my Plex server still open? If there's a— if has it reset itself? Has it done anything like that? So long as Google Drive is up, this will still work. And the thing is, if I've got this stuff on my, on my local storage, that's good too. Also, it works with AirPlay. It'll work with Google's own version of AirPlay. So again, when you're at the cabin and you want to be the person who lets everybody see the new Knives Out movie, which you bought and paid for and you converted to an MP4 file, you can do that as well. It works really, really well.

Andy Ihnatko [01:53:34]:
It's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. There's— I keep saying that because I'm I'm not— I haven't found a $3,000 television set that can justify that amount of money for me. The problem is that now, like, my iPad Pro and my MacBook Pro, they're beyond a doubt the highest quality screens in my house for watching a movie on. And it's so— it's nice to have essentially a local storage version of Netflix, uh, to watch and navigate all that stuff on. So Infuse, uh, it's really working out well for me. I did, I did pay for Pro after a couple of days because just using the local storage stuff worked so well for me.

Mikah Sargent [01:54:11]:
And Jason Snell, tell us about your pick.

Jason Snell [01:54:13]:
Yeah, I'm gonna pick an oldie but a goodie. It's Overcast, which is my favorite podcast app of choice. And what's new with Overcast is Marco Arment has fully embraced, he's the developer, fully embraced his $100 a month AI plan and has fixed a load of bugs that have been there for years that were based on tiny, tiny errors errors that he as the developer couldn't find. And he pointed AI at his codebase and said, can you fix these bugs? And he has fixed huge numbers of longstanding bugs. And now he's moved on. So if you had a bug that was really bothering you about Overcast, maybe give it a try again because I bet it's fixed. And now he's adding features that he wasn't able to add before because of all the blockers. So he— there's a Reddit called Overcast, you know, reddit/r/overcast that you can go in and get access to the beta builds.

Jason Snell [01:55:13]:
And his TestFlight builds lately are now loading up on new features. If you're a premium member of Overcast, you get new audio effects. There's a, there's an EQ, there's a customizable normalization of volume. So if you don't like his voice boost algorithm, you can actually just modify It's got a— he's added a background noise reduction filter, which is wild. You can select what chapters you want to play, which was a feature of especially— well, let's see what— Castro, I think, was the first app that did that. So if there's like, you'd never want to hear the theme song chapter, or you never want to hear the, the, the rumor roundup chapter on the Upgrade podcast, you can just uncheck it and you won't hear it for that episode.

Jason Snell [01:55:58]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:55:58]:
or future episodes, which is kind of fun. Actually great for you to triage a podcast before you get in a car so that you can say, I just don't want to— I only want to listen to these parts. And then it just handles it. Very cool. It's— he's been auto-transcribing. He's got a bunch of Mac Minis that auto-transcribe everything. So there's transcripts for every episode.

Mikah Sargent [01:56:16]:
Wow.

Jason Snell [01:56:16]:
Even if they're members-only podcasts, they're searchable now. Like he is just loading up on bug fixes and new features. And it's a great example of having a very skilled, expert veteran developer who knows his codebase backward and forward and is using AI assist to help him find bugs and unlock some functionality that he wasn't able to do on his own. I think it's actually in a world where we have lots of negative stories about people misusing AI, I actually think it's a great example of somebody using AI for the right reasons, in the right way, with the right outcomes. And it's also just great to see Overcast, uh, accelerating again after a while, because one person with a growing codebase, it's really hard to keep that thing alive and well and maintained.

Jason Snell [01:57:11]:
Yeah.

Jason Snell [01:57:11]:
And, uh, now he's got— and Marco has famously said, um, he's not somebody who's ever gonna like hire a staff or something.

Jason Snell [01:57:17]:
He's kind of a lone wolf.

Jason Snell [01:57:19]:
So he's finally found a staff. Its name is Claude, apparently, but it is his staff and it works for him. Not cheap, but also not too expensive. So that's good.

Mikah Sargent [01:57:28]:
Awesome. All right, I'll round things out. If you are out there— if you are out there— if you are— if you out there are planning on hitting the water anytime soon, whether that be on a boat or a paddleboard or something in between, I just picked up up from Pelican, a waterproof phone pouch. I don't have it with me because it's with my gear, but it is— it was for $19.99. I thought, okay, this isn't going to be very good, but I knew the brand and liked the brand and thought maybe. Got it and it's fantastic. So the way that this one works, because you can get really cheap ones a lot of times with other gear, a lot of paddleboards that you buy online will come with one of these. But they're all just sort of a clear vinyl plastic pouch.

Mikah Sargent [01:58:15]:
No, excuse me, a clear vinyl pouch of some sort. This doesn't just have the vinyl, it also has a sort of, um, foam runner around it that helps the phone float if you were to drop it in the water. It comes with a lanyard as well, and it has these cool little sort of rolly clips at the top. So you roll the clips open, you put your phone in there. The front of it has a clear vinyl opening for tapping on your phone, and the back has a smaller vinyl opening that's perfect for most of the phone camera arrays that we have these days. And it is really quite nice. I put it to the test in a bathtub and it worked quite well. Left it there for a while just to see about ingress.

Mikah Sargent [01:59:00]:
Did not have any concerns there. And so, yeah, if you're thinking about heading out on the water Yes, your phone is water resistant, but what it is not is floaty. And so this helps with that part of it. And for $20, I thought, oh my goodness, this is great.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:19]:
Yeah. Can I say that YouTube was recommending like, oh, there are a lot of, there are a lot of YouTube channels where it's like people who dive at like public beaches and dive at like public swimming holes and like look for treasure, look for a lot, drop rings, drop things like that. And what an education on what kind of protective cases work and what kind of protective cases don't. Because when he brings up like a phone in a certain— oh, okay, that's a Temu version, like $8 one. Like, okay, that's the one. It's like every time he brings up something that's like inside an OtterBox or Pelican case, like, and it's still working. Hey, wow, great.

Jason Snell [01:59:52]:
Yeah.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:52]:
So yeah, that's a, that's a good buyer's guide. And I think that that looks like a good case. I might have to get one myself.

Mikah Sargent [01:59:58]:
Absolutely.

Andy Ihnatko [01:59:59]:
I get, I get, and I don't just swim with it. It's more like I'm bringing it to the beach and I don't want accidents to like happen to it. And for $20, I would not spend $100 for like a dive case, but I would spend $20 or something like this.

Mikah Sargent [02:00:10]:
Yeah. 'Cause then you don't have to worry about it sinking in the first place. And Rosemary Orchard pointed out that even if you're not getting out in the water, it can also help protect your device from sand. Yes. So very good in either case, folks, if you can believe it, it. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of MacBreak Weekly. Before I talk about Club Twit though, I'd like to give the 2 gentlemen a moment to tell us where people should go to keep up with your work. Andy Ihnatko, where are people going these days?

Andy Ihnatko [02:00:43]:
A hot little trendy little club called— well, I was about to do a Stefan impression, but I don't have it in me. So I'm just gonna Cut to the Case at ihnatko.com. I-H-N as in Nancy, A-T, as in Tom, K-O. Update at least once a week, aiming for more than that, but at minimum you'll get a rundown of the week's news.

Mikah Sargent [02:01:02]:
Beautiful. And Jason Snell?

Jason Snell [02:01:03]:
Read all my stuff at sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com for my pop culture podcast, and at relay.fm you can check out Upgrade and the forthcoming Designed in California podcast. Superb.

Mikah Sargent [02:01:17]:
Last but not least, you can find me chihuahua.coffee, C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. You can also just look for @micahsargent. That is my username on many social media platforms. Check out my other shows on the network, including iOS Today, Hands-On Tech, Hands-On Apple, and Clockwise over on Relay, plus a host of other places. So, yes, just do, do the searches. Leo will be back next week. And until then, I suppose it is time for me to say, get back to work, 'cause break time is over. Bye-bye.