MacBreak Weekly 957 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko is here, Alex Lindsey and filling in for Jason Snell, yay, Mikah Sargent. We'll talk about why artists make more on Apple Music per stream, Trump's tariff proposal that could cost Apple a lot of money. Why it's safe to use Apple's fluoroelastomer bands at least Apple says so and why you should never customer bans at least.

Apple says so and why you should never leave your 1040 in a company printer, or maybe you should. Macbreak Weekly is coming up next.

This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 957. Recorded Tuesday, January 28th 2025: Slap and Flop.

It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Apple. Jason Snell is on assignment today. Fortunately, we don't care, because we've got Mikah Sargent in this place, hi Mikah. Hello, Hello, leo, hello did you just get off ios today. You're working hard today.

0:01:14 - Mikah Sargent
Uh, actually we recorded this for two weeks, so this is not a record day which is uh nice. This is my first show of the day, so I'm happy to be here. Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, oh good morning as Tim Cook might.

0:01:25 - Leo Laporte
Good morning Also with us from. Obviously I don't need to introduce Mikah, but I will. He is, of course, the host of iOS Today, as you might have gathered on this network Tech News Weekly. He's doing such a great job and, of course, whenever we can get him on, we get him on Hands on Tech All of those wonderful shows. Thank you for being here, Mikah. Andy Ihnatko is here, GBH in Boston in Bostonia hello Andrew

0:01:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Hello, we're under a gale warning.  You can tell it's bad when, like, I don't wear my usual hat, I'll wear like a baseball cap. And then it's doubly bad when I take two steps out. I have to actually turn the bill backwards to keep from losing it it's better than a karen warning.

0:02:06 - Leo Laporte
That's all I'm saying.

0:02:08 - Andy Ihnatko
Enjoy, enjoy your carol allen I thought it was funny, that was a warning this movie is going to be awesome because Karen Allen Karen ASllen is awesome.

0:02:16
and, uh, mr Alex lindsay from officehours.global.

0:02:20 - Leo Laporte
Hello Alex, hello, hello. It's good to be here, wonderful to see you. Sorry about your steelers, but you know do you kind of get a? Little, do you get a little eagles pride, anyway, I mean, you know we.

0:02:34 - Alex Lindsay
There is a hierarchy of of cheering that has to go on here. But I'm very split in the super bowl because after the steelers are out, I usually then well, what Steelers that we know well are playing other teams. The problem is is that Kenny Pickett is playing for the Eagles and Juju Schuster, smith Schuster, is playing for the chiefs. I'm split, I, I do, I, you know. So I, I think that I'm I'm leaning towards the Eagles, mostly because they're from Pennsylvania, but also because it'd be great. I really liked Penny Kenny Pickett. He grew up as an Eagles fan and for his second season, if they even let him play a couple, you know, to walk out on a Superbowl and play a couple of plays at the end of the you know end or middle. They probably won't, but if they, if he gets to play a little bit, that'd be kind of a dream come true for a kid who wanted to play football. So I'd love to see that. I don't really care who wins Nice, just looking for the human stories.

0:03:30 - Leo Laporte
We're talking about sport ball.

0:03:31 - Andy Ihnatko
for those who are confused by the whole topic, yeah, but at least there is a Super Bowl tie-in for iOS news this week. What Is there? Yes, Paul Kvalcis, who is one of the greatest Mac developers of all time, wrote a blog post in which he basically pointed out how bad Apple intelligence is, even with the new update.

He basically asked it gave it questions about who won the last Super Bowl, who won the previous one. He discovered that it could correctly name 20% of the past 58 Super Bowl winners and the rest of it. He did a really good amusing not an angry takedown of Apple Intelligence, but a sort of dumbfounded oh my God. Well, I got to give it a softball. It's got to get this right. No, it didn't get that right. The pull line from the blog post that I think should be on a T-shirt is that the only good thing that apple intelligence asked me was would you like me to look this up on open it? Would you like to switch to open?

0:04:30 - Leo Laporte
ai for this it used to say well, here's what I found on the web. It doesn't. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of. Uh, yeah, this, uh siri is the headline. John gruber, reporting on this siri is super dumb. Reporting on this siri is super dumb and getting dumber. Uh, so he did his own. He did his own test and and confirm and confirm kafesis's uh results. Uh, other answer engines handle the same questions with the plumb rights gruber. He says I didn't run a comprehensive test from super rolls one through 60, because I'm lazy. Also, it could, it couldn't do it, but everybody else could. And well, I mean it's I don't know, do you?

0:05:11 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's my question is it didn't use to be able to answer this question when it wasn't trying to do all of these smarts, and when it was more reliant on something like Wolfram Alpha, for example, that likely has access to this information directly so yeah, that's a good group composed his own very bizarre, a very obscure question uh, who won the 2004 North Dakota high school boys state basketball championship? Always wondered that. Actually I thought it was from.

0:05:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Pennsylvania? Is he trying to like eke out some North Dakota glory?

0:05:49 - Leo Laporte
well, apparently he was a school boy basketball player, but that's the only connection he says. Uh, a question I completely pulled out of my keister but which, amazingly, kagi answered correctly. For class a, chat GPpt did both class a and b and provided a link to a video of the class a championship on youtube. Wow, uh, duck, duck go, got partial credit. But old siri, which is to say pre-apple intelligence siri, does okay on the same question yeah, he says she declined to answer the question and provided a list of links, search engine style, including a, a two-page PDF listing the complete history of North Dakota Class A Boys and Girls Championships. However, new Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence with ChatGPT integration enabled, gets the answer and this is the real problem completely but plausibly wrong, which is the worst way to get it wrong, he writes. It's also inconsistently wrong. He tried the same question four times, got four different answers, some of them completely made up. At 2004. The dickinson midgets? Oh no. Dakota class a place?

0:06:57 - Andy Ihnatko
oh no, okay okay, that's from the, from the boomer version of ChatGPT.

0:07:05 - Leo Laporte
If that's the mascot, I don't know. The Dickinson midgets did in fact win in 2003. So I guess there's something Anyway he goes on and tries a bunch of stuff.

0:07:19 - Andy Ihnatko
Mike, I had a good point. It's like the thing is like a lot of the personal assistants were a lot more useful before they were wired into AI, because they were specifically wired up to do the things that we are likely to ask them to do. I had the exact same problem when Google switched from the Google Assistant to Gemini for its voice assistant, because now it's things like hi, could you Things I've been able to do for years, like hey, remind me tomorrow to do this? At this time, it would say I'm sorry, I'm just a large language model, I'm not allowed to do it. You could do that a year ago and maybe you're supposed to be smarter now, so we might be seeing.

This is part of the year-long, I think, grace period that we should give Apple intelligence, while noting how terrible it is to rely upon it for like anything. Pretty well, but, but, but still, like it's gonna, it's gonna have to. Apple's gonna have to figure out like okay, I think the problem was they tried to do this on device and it can't do this on device and the uh on server model is not equipped for this yet he does point out that the google ai overview gave the single worst answer picking a South Dakota team to win the North Dakota High School Boys Championship.

0:08:34 - Alex Lindsay
And the average iPhone user asked how does this affect my photos?

0:08:40 - Leo Laporte
Oh, come on, no one cares. It all goes back to photos for you, isn't it?

0:08:44 - Alex Lindsay
I'm just saying that it's like it's like, but people pay it. Like we've talked about this a lot in office hours and and when you talk to people who are not geeks about this and they you, you get into all these details they're just like okay, well, but the camera like that, all people like that. We just wait for those presentations.

0:08:58 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but app okay but wait, because apple's pushing apple intelligence I know they're pushing it.

0:09:03 - Alex Lindsay
I think, think it's a mistake for them to push it as hard as they are 18.3 and 15.3 came out and you are opted in now by default.

You have to turn it off. It increases their sample rate and allows them to figure things out. But I think Apple's biggest mistake is not so much making Apple intelligence. It's promoting it so heavily because it's not what people are buying their phones for. It's not what people are buying their phones for, like it's not what they're buying the hardware for, it's not what they're buying the iPads for. We all have a whole bunch of AI. That's I have on a individual on a day-to-day basis. I have three or four AI windows open MidJourney ChatGPT, sonnet, possibly other ones that are popping up and down, opening up, and I'm doing that all on my Mac. Down, I'm opening up and I'm doing that all on my mac. Like I just don't care whether apple, like I, don't interact with apple intelligence and again, I think that the average person doesn't care I would argue the one thing people were hoping with apple intelligence is that siri would get better.

0:09:55 - Mikah Sargent
Sure you're right, they didn't care about the rest of it, but I don't care like apple would take the time where we would see other because apple was, as it's all been reported, late to the game that there would be more care given. I also think it's too soon to say that people don't care, because Apple is just now making it the default on option. So we have to see. Still, we have to see how this plays out.

0:10:18 - Alex Lindsay
I just don't see people leaving their iPhone because they can't, because they want to go to Google.

0:10:24 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, but I wanting to leave, but.

0:10:25 - Alex Lindsay
I'm just saying, like Apple has plenty of time, like no one. I just don't think that it's so far and the thing all I need Siri to do is play the song that I asked for and not pick the live version, like that's. The only thing I need them to fix is like, hey, how about not play the live version? Because that's not what I asked for.

0:10:42 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, what I needed to do, though, is to get this stuff right, so you needed to play your music correctly. I needed to have the AI respond appropriately.

0:10:50 - Alex Lindsay
if I'm going, to try using it. I have very low expectation of what it can do so? I don't try, that's fair no-transcript.

0:11:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Why can't I do this with my PC?

We still have a couple of years, I think, before AI gets to that level.

But Apple can't let themselves get into a position where, again, someone's contract is up, they're in the store for a new phone they're not someone who's necessarily tied elegantly to any one platform and they see a demo of a Samsung phone or a Pixel phone and they see that group of AI features that makes them say why can't, why doesn't my iPhone do that? And that's why Apple can't simply rest on the idea of well, and it's not a big deal People there have been polls that say they're only 18 or 17% of even iPhone users think that Apple intelligence is important At some point. If they don't start hit this ground running, they're going to be in the position where the iPhone is the phone that has to use your metaphor like this. The phone with the phone that has to use your metaphor like it's the phone with a camera that's decent but can't do night shot, that can't do low-light photography, that can't do this can't do that. You don't want people to be saying why doesn't my iPhone do this cool thing that I've seen my friend's phones do?

0:12:17 - Alex Lindsay
I think Apple needs to continue to work on it. I just think that when articles come out of like it's horrible and it's all falling apart and everything else, and it's like like someone cares, like, like, like, like that person cares and there's like 5% of the users that care, um, and so it just it just, it's a little hyperbolic, like sure, when chat GPT came out at first, it was very rough and it would say all kinds of crazy stuff. Um, that wasn't anywhere close to reality and you know it, you need to get the feedback to make it better, and so I think Apple has to do what it's doing now. But I don't think I get quite as riled up as some of the articles that I see written about it, like it's a travesty that they can't tell what the Super Bowls are. I don't care.

0:12:55 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know if I use the word travesty, but it's bad. If you again you have a very, very heavily hyped by Apple product, it's not. Hey, sign up for this special beta list to get exclusive early access to this thing we're working on. Or even now with 18.3, here's a feature set that, if you turn it on, it will start doing things. This is something where people are sort of being led into using a system that just doesn't work. I would be much more pleased with Apple's way of implementing this if they really almost made this like a huge toggle switch that simply said, all Apple Intelligence features on or all Apple Intelligence features off, with the implication that if you turn this on, you'll have a really cool adventure. You're going to learn how to use this stuff. You'll also be helping us train Apple Intelligence to become better, but do not trust any facts that it gives you and be prepared for some wobbly experiences.

It's bad if, again, I use the same voice assistants I've been using for years and suddenly, instead of saying I don't know which is, even with humans, one of the most powerful and important things that an intelligence could learn how to say I don't know, but I will help you look that up. You don't want someone who says confidently could learn how to say I don't know, but I will help you look that up. You don't want someone who says confidently, gee, I don't know. Well, the thing is, in Walpole, massachusetts, the boys basketball team got 412 points in December of 2041. That's when you start to think that, wow, I paid $1,000 for this phone. Joke's on me Something that people shouldn't do.

0:14:23 - Mikah Sargent
we know they shouldn't, but that they will do if they rely on being able to search for a question. I imagine someone like me who has dogs and who's holding three different items in their hand and the dog's looking up lovingly wishing that they could have a bite of this, and normally you could say, can my dog eat avocado? And it would return a search result.

But for it to confidently say, absolutely, your dog can eat avocado, and it turns out that it's not good for the dog If you relied on it being right before, and that's, I think it's the confidence that's at issue here and that's why I'm happy that Apple, as, andy, you pointed out or suggested for the company when they released this new update and completely disabled the ability to summarize and I know we'll talk a little bit about it probably news and entertainment notifications. They've specifically said if you go in to turn on any summary notifications at all, there will be errors. They're likely to be errors, expect errors, and that's the thing is just. I think it's our job to remind people that if they are going to use this, if they do care about it, if they are curious about it, just be mindful not not necessarily that the sky is falling because Apple's getting it wrong. I just want them to get it right and I just I just think that we should do that with all of the internet.

0:15:45 - Alex Lindsay
Like you know, like the thing is is that, with the Apple intelligence, there's no single point of truth on the internet. I find myself constantly searching, especially in technical areas that I work, and getting just the craziest answers. You know, like you know, and these are not AI answers these are people who said that they were experts who have webpages that people pay advertising for, and I read it and I go. That person has no idea what they're talking about. So the problem with all of AI is it's basically it's content on a whole bunch of people that kind of know what they're talking about, and a lot of people that don't know what they're talking about, and a lot of people that are just lying, and and so the and so the thing is is that is, that the whole internet is inaccurate, and I think that it's important.

I think we have this thing like well, I picked it up and it was wrong. Well, most of the internet's wrong too. Like you know, it's it's like you know, and so you, you know, anytime I'm looking for something, I got to find it in a couple of different places and I got to see it from a couple of different angles before why I like Google's overall approach or their consistent, their consistent approach for the past year or so, which has been.

0:16:49 - Andy Ihnatko
I will give you the answer. I will also tell you why I think that's the answer. It will. It will name its sources.

0:16:54 - Alex Lindsay
I think the summaries work well. Yeah, I think the Google summaries work well. They're wrong a lot.

0:16:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh no, absolutely no. I think that there's still a piece of blanket advice that I it's almost my obligation in 2025 to spread, like Johnny Appleseed, which is that the current state status of artificial intelligence is that it is awesome at anything that does not require an absolute yes or no, right or wrong answer. So when you give us a task like here is a thousand page PDF of records, could you tell me what sections I need to look at if I want to learn about this part of it? Or can you summarize section eight of this or any place that mentions Massachusetts Transit Authority? If you say that this is a thousand pages of filings of contributions to campaigns and you ask it, can you tell me, if so, and so how much money was donated within the state of Massachusetts? Don't trust that information.

Anything that's either yes or no, right or wrong. Don't trust that. But everyone should be starting to figure out how to use these not necessarily right or wrong answers as a way to improve their workflow. It's really had a big, big impact on how I do my job that I don't let it do my homework for me, but now, during those weeks when I literally do have 600 or 700 pages of PDFs to go through. It can at least triage stuff for me and say that I'm going to skim through this later, but AI is. Ai is telling me that there's probably not the information I'm looking for in this document and if there is, it's not telling me the answer, it's saying here's where you look in this pdf for that answer.

0:18:34 - Leo Laporte
So I leave the summaries on because they're comedic just for enjoying the comedy of it all.

0:18:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Like zippy, the pinhead is handling your notifications. All it's all non-sequiturs.

0:18:46 - Leo Laporte
But I have to say probably that's not the best for Apple's reputation. Let's say we say, in the AI space they did make some changes to the AI team. I mean, whether Alex takes it seriously or not, apple does. And they've moved Kim Vorath over. She is their fixer, who has been on many projects. She got the Vision Pro out the door. She's been at Apple for 36 years. She'll serve as top deputy, the Verge says to AI boss John Giandrea. Actually Bloomberg says that. So I mean I guess you move the fixer in when you realize there's a problem.

0:19:26 - Alex Lindsay
And Apple, historically, has had problems when they launch stuff out and then they put what they do, what they can do well, which is throw an incredible amount of money at the problem. And so, you know, when Maps came out, it was a disaster. And now you know, it was one of those things I wouldn't. I installed Google Maps immediately when Maps came out. I just kept stuck with Google Maps for years, and today I'm using Apple maps.

I open up Google maps and I feel like I'm going into the past, like I just, you know, apple maps is considerably better from a you know, I don't know about accuracy, I mean, I get to where I'm trying to get to, but I I will say that, visually and workflow wise, I feel like it's better than Google maps at this point. And so, in wise, I feel like it's better than Google maps at this point. Um and so, uh, in the same way, when Apple TV came out, uh, I thought that all of their content I said it on the show was a disaster. Like I just thought it was all bad, you know, and I was like, wow, you spent a lot of money on this, you know. And now I think that, consistently, percentage wise, the number of swings that they make, they're making the best content of any streamer. But it took them a couple years to get over that, over that mess, you know, and so I have a feeling that apple intelligence probably will follow the same pattern note.

0:20:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Note also that when apple maps came out which is probably an equivalent I I'd only use disaster, but equivalent bad black eye for apple tim actually published a letter that said yeah, we, we released Essentially, we released this too early. It's not the way we want it to be, but we're going to keep working on it. It might be appropriate for a more humanist sort of dialogue between Apple and the users about Apple Intelligence that we are not promoting this as full polished features yet we are building this. It's going to take a while before it's where it's at. For people who can find usefulness in the features that work well, we're offering it there. For the features that don't work well, we're offering it for people who consider themselves explorers who are willing to, in effect, help us develop Apple intelligence by letting it look at all of these notifications and get smarter and smarter as it goes by. I really think that a letter like that, or at least an open dialogue, would be helpful to get people to understand their expectations and Apple's expectations in the future.

0:21:32 - Leo Laporte
Apple did push out updates to macOS, ios, probably tvOS.

This week I updated everything and you might want to, because there is, according to Apple, a zero-day bug that may have been actively exploited. Now it says against users with phones running software older than 17 2, so it sounds like it was patched in later versions. The bug is in core media. As, as is often the case if you listen to security now, software that renders other as is often the case if you listen to Security Now, software that renders other media is often vulnerable, because you can send a malformed file and then cause a buffer overflow, which then allows you to do elevated privileges, and that's exactly what happens here. This is the first iOS bug of the year, so they managed to get it in right before the end of the month, which is great. I'm not sure if you need to do this if you are running a later version of iOS, but there are other, I'm sure, fixes as well, and the big change, of course, is that they're now adding reminders to Apple Calendar, so you should talk about that on iOS.

0:22:45 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, you will, next week probably it's surprising how I I didn't realize that people wanted that so badly, but when it came out I saw so many people like finally, finally.

0:22:55 - Leo Laporte
I pay for fantastic hell. For that reason, almost entirely alone. Uh, they also added a few other cosmetic changes to calendar. I think the big one is that they enabled Apple Intelligence by default on 18.3.

0:23:10 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and turned off notification summaries again for the time being.

0:23:14 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so go in and turn them on for news. Can you turn them on for?

0:23:18 - Mikah Sargent
news no right now. You cannot turn them back on.

0:23:22 - Andy Ihnatko
And also when it uses Apple Intelligence summaries on a lock screen for further notifications. It's an italics, to make sure you know to give you a visual disc. And also when you turn it on, uh, it actually is more explicit saying yeah, we're still working on this, so wackiness might ensue. Fine, that's good, or?

0:23:39 - Leo Laporte
it could be hilarity, hilarity could ensue, would you like? A chuckle. Turn this feature on the very first thing it told me is there are many people at your front door.

0:23:50 - Andy Ihnatko
We're making our users happy. When you found out that your dog hadn't actually been kidnapped into a Russian rodeo, weren't you really really happy to learn that he was actually safe and sleeping at home.

0:24:00 - Mikah Sargent
You're welcome. You don't know what you got until it's gone.

0:24:03 - Leo Laporte
Exactly Speaking of which, which, if your iphone has tick tock installed, hold tight, because tick tock, of course, still not in the apple store or the google play store and now being listed. If you go to ebay and search for iphone and tick tock, there are quite a few iphones now they're not selling for this price. If you limit it down to the ones who've sold, but there are some list. This is an eight thousand dollar iphone 16 pro max original inbox unlocked with tiktok and cap cut installed, both, of course, bite dance apps that have been removed from the app store. Marvel snap is back, but that was a kind of a gray area because they're just a publisher.

It was distributed right, so they switched to a different publisher let me, uh, let me go down show only sold items and just see, yeah, well, here's, uh, yeah, 350 bucks, 275 bucks. Oh, somebody did buy an unlocked iphone 13 with tiktok for 1200 a little over, uh value I would guess, how do you leave the app on without logging like?

0:25:01 - Alex Lindsay
do you log out?

oh, that's a good question like I was, like I guess you could log out of your app store and leave it as the only app left yeah, but then I thought that if you sign in as a new person, I guess you could, but I couldn't figure out how I have a bunch of old iphones and I was like I could make some extra money. But, um, but I was like I couldn't figure out like how I would completely extract myself from the phone, right, because I don't want to give somebody else my phone.

0:25:27 - Mikah Sargent
I didn't even think of that, yeah.

0:25:29 - Alex Lindsay
With anything left on it. Usually you want to dump it completely to the ground before you hand it to somebody. So you're not doing that, which means you're kind of leaving yourself opened, I think.

0:25:37 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, because that's tied to your user ID.

0:25:41 - Alex Lindsay
Your Apple account. I think it's a bad idea. That your account. I think it's a bad idea. Don't don't do it. Yeah, I don't. I don't think that that's. I thought about it I and then I thought it was a bad idea, so but I but I definitely considered the opportunity mac os 15 3 has now finally full gen.

0:25:59 - Mikah Sargent
Moji support the one feature I really adore got my.

0:26:04 - Leo Laporte
Is anybody using? Are you guys anybody? I am Of course you are.

0:26:08 - Mikah Sargent
They're silly, they're fun.

0:26:10 - Leo Laporte
And so give me an example of what you've used.

0:26:12 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, yeah. So I just the other day was having a conversation with my clockwise co-host, dan Morin, and we were talking about something to do with the show and I sent a message and he sent a message right after and we both said the same thing, and so immediately I was thinking of like a shared brain emoji. So I typed in a shared brain and this horrific but hilarious image was generated, where it was two emoji side by side with this ugly pink brain above it. And then I've done things like I'm talking to somebody about my dogs, and so I did like a chihuahua wearing a crown, for example. So it's just little kind of references to conversations that have me creating these Genmoji.

0:26:54 - Leo Laporte
And then sometimes it's easy, so you have to. So just so, you go to the plus sign. You say I want to put a or no. How do you get a Genmoji in there? You go to the emojis.

0:27:05 - Mikah Sargent
You, so you, so you. Yeah, you go into the emoji and then at the top, where it says describe an emoji. That that's that search area. When you type it in, if it's something that exists already, it will serve it to you. If it's not, then it will let you generate, but you can also.

0:27:16 - Leo Laporte
There's a button, I see it says create new emoji. Exactly, okay, and now it's. Uh, it's launched, okay, I don't know where to go, all right, well, oh, there you go, dustin. Thank you, fortunately we have Club Twit to do our genmojis for us, indeed, is that as good as the shared brain you came?

0:27:39 - Mikah Sargent
up with. Let me see if I can share my shared brain. That's a little more horrific than that one. Is this one's cute?

0:27:44 - Leo Laporte
It's a little more horrific than that one is this one's cute. It's a little gray brain with a happy face on it and the lobes are split left and right. There's mine, no, that's creepy. So that is two smiley face emojis with the brains on top looking like scrambled eggs.

0:28:01 - Andy Ihnatko
And then there's a committed murder and they're floating.

0:28:03 - Mikah Sargent
And anyone who's had a cup of coffee will understand this next one I'm sending okay, let's see.

0:28:09 - Alex Lindsay
Oh no, I've had a cup of coffee and I feel great, is that what that means uh yeah gross or I'm using I'm

0:28:18 - Mikah Sargent
staying.

0:28:18 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm using an inferior coffee maker and that could also be soft serve ice cream yeah, what is it?

0:28:26 - Mikah Sargent
affogato, affogato, that's what you just made a soft serve affogato for those listening.

0:28:33 - Leo Laporte
You're just gonna have to use your imagination yeah yeah, um, all right, that's one thing. Now we can do that. Notification summary revisions. We mentioned that. That also not just I, but also is extended to Mac OS 15.3. Calculator app. There was a bug in 15.3.

0:28:56 - Alex Lindsay
Talking about getting the facts wrong.

0:28:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, basically you couldn't repeat a calculation that you had done before. So if you did 72 times 2, you hit enter and then you want it to do, do times two, you before we'll be able to hit enter, enter, enter, enter. That stopped working, so they just put that back in.

0:29:12 - Leo Laporte
It's not that exciting, honestly no, okay, there you have it. That's what's changed. Given that they're, given that there was a zero day that they fixed, I think it's probably worth doing this. There's probably other security patches.

0:29:26 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely.

0:29:27 - Leo Laporte
They're not real forthright on that. 20 plus security updates actually, according to Mac rumors, that's quite a few. One could allow attacker with physical access to oh, we'll call this the Alex Lindsay.

0:29:42 - Alex Lindsay
It's an attacker with physical access to an unlocked device can access the photos app even when an iphone is locked, turns out that the current photos app was a defense against people actually wanting to hack into it.

0:29:53 - Leo Laporte
They were like they opened it up and like oh, wow, there were several issues of airplay that could allow attackers to execute code or crash apps.

0:30:00 - Andy Ihnatko
That's not good five different things.

0:30:02 - Leo Laporte
Two kernel vulnerabilities could let malicious apps gain kernel privileges.

0:30:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Some web applications. Termination or arbitrary code execution those are the three words that you don't want to hear.

0:30:13 - Leo Laporte
A brown trouser moment yes, yeah and apple did admit that the the core media bug had been it found in the wild, it had been exploited. So you want to. You want to apply those. You absolutely do. You're watching mac break weekly, Alex, lindsay, andy and ako and filling in for the snell. It's wonderful to have Mikah sergeant good with us today. Thank you for being here, all of you and all of our club twit members and all of our listeners.

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Speaking of radio, it's been interesting. Spotify's a little um butthurt, shall we say. Uh, by a company called Duetti.

They're very defensive and they're kind of defensive in not a good way. Duetti published a report analyzing the state of artist payouts for music streaming services. This is from Apple World Today. So Spotify this is for 2024 payouts per 1,000 streams is the lowest three bucks per thousand. Then YouTube $4.80. Then Apple Music, more than twice as much as Spotify $6.20. Amazon is the big winner, though $8.80, almost three times as much as Spotify. Now Spotify said well in factify just today released you know the how much they've paid artists. Oh, we're looking at billions we've paid artists.

0:35:55 - Alex Lindsay
What they don't say is how much per stream or how much they just say total, we've paid billions and I think that their argument is that, um and I don't usually come to the defense of spot very often, but but I will say that the math I think is important to understand is that Amazon has a membership that a lot of people are kind of automatically paying, yeah, I think, and no one uses it. I mean, I don't, I don't know anybody that uses Amazon. I use it, okay, you use it. So, so there we go.

0:36:23 - Leo Laporte
Well, I also music, right, and you told me the only one I don't use is spot how often you use how often.

I used it yesterday because they have a, a no lossless. They have a lossless version of all their music, which is really nice. Okay, there you go. So some very nice playlists, and I don't trust Spotify's playlists because, as we know, spotify lies or misrepresents what's on those playlists. If you ask for bossa nova din dinner time, more than three quarters of the artists will be phony artists, will be ai generated or commissioned artists, not real artists. So I think spotify is not the best.

0:37:00 - Alex Lindsay
I'm gonna let you defend them no, I'm just defending but I'm not that crazy about them I'm I I greatly dislike Spotify, you know, I think that they've been. It's so like. I just want to make sure it was clear. I'm not a I'm not a Spotify fan at all. Uh, I think that they've destroyed the podcasting market. Yeah, that's another reason to hate them. Um, and I don't think that they're good for artists, um, so, but I think that the what you're looking at when you look at that number is what percentage of subscribers are using an ad-supported system versus a subscription-supported system, and as the subscriptions increase, it means that there's less people downloading, but everyone's always paying, and so I think that that's why Spotify's at the bottom, youtube's a little bit higher.

0:37:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, spotify says nobody calculates payment per stream, which I find hard to believe. I think nobody calculates payment per stream, which I find hard to believe I think everybody calculates payment.

0:37:53 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, everybody thinks that way. They may not think that way, but every artist no.

0:37:57 - Leo Laporte
And like every other. They released a press release.

0:38:00 - Alex Lindsay
It says no, we paid 10 billion dollars to artists last year, but then again, that's only because they're the biggest right and to get back to what you're saying is when they're commissioning artists and when they're commissioning AI-driven audio, it definitely calls into question what the artists are getting you know it's watering that down and I think that Apple is getting good at that kind of value add to media.

I think it's taking them a long time. I think Apple TV again, as I said, what's interesting is with Netflix, increase in cost for the cost of Netflix, for one, you know, one subscription of Netflix, you could have Apple Music, apple Games, apple Plus, you know, apple TV Plus, you know. So Apple is actually, and when you watch those you can just you can see the money literally pouring out of the front of your screen. From a production value perspective, I mean it just looks so good and so so the thing is is that they and Apple music is clearly I don't know. I mean I haven't listened to Amazon music, but it's definitely better than Spotify, like my. My daughter is like, oh she, she listens to spotify for the recommendations, but she, she said I listen to everything else in apple music because it sounds better spotify, and this is their blog post, uh, titled for the record.

0:39:22 - Leo Laporte
They say we, we help artists because we grow the pie. And it is true. They are by far the largest, with half a billion paying listeners. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It says today there are more than half a billion paying listeners across all music streaming systems. Oh, a world with one billion paying listeners is a realistic goal we should collectively set. Well, yeah, I mean, if you were an artist, you might say, well, I kind of wish they'd buy the album. That might be a better goal from an artist's point of view. Uh, they, they. They basically say look, you can't base it on the cost per stream because we've grown the audience base artists make more money from us, even if it might be. You know, if you calculate it by stream, I don't know, I mean, I think artists aren't gonna.

0:40:10 - Alex Lindsay
Most artists are not making more money with spotify than they used to make with cds. Yeah right, you know, like I think, when they compare it, I'm like well, but we are in a different world, right?

0:40:19 - Leo Laporte
nobody's that those, those days are gone. I mean, as much as we might like them spotify, this is interesting and I and I kind of like this and this is kind of what the internet is promised going growing careers beyond the superstars. I've said for a long time, you know, an equitable music system wouldn't have a half dozen people making billions and then hundreds of thousands making nothing. It would be more. I mean, they're wonderful musicians all over. So they say. We estimate in 2014, at least 10,000 artists generated $10,000 a year on Spotify. Today, well over 10,000 artists generate over $100,000, a living wage. In other words, on Spotify and I think that's fair.

0:41:03 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know any artists other than the very top ones that make $100,000. Maybe, maybe. Well, they say 10,000. Most of the artists that are doing well are are leveraging that into patreon or other other tools to to generate revenue.

0:41:15 - Leo Laporte
They're saying on spotify per year from spotify alone. There you go um. So that I mean, that's exactly what you would hope with the internet was a democratization of it and a chance for more artists to make a living as opposed to making a killing.

0:41:30 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, I think that you're seeing that in the video market, in the, in the sense that there are many youtubers that are making a solid living, um, without you know, they're not making millions, they're just making enough to do what they love to do at a regular you know, at a rate that they can afford wherever they live, and I think that that that is a you know, that terrifies Hollywood, that that that you, that people could just do it out of their house, you know, and I think that, um, the cost of production for a lot of this stuff has gone down, but again it's, I think, with Spotify it's really hit and miss. Um, I just don't know a lot of artists that feel like they could live on what they make on Spotify. They usually look at it as a loss leader for their concerts. You know, live is what kind of live and merch are what generally pay the bills for most music artists at this point.

0:42:14 - Leo Laporte
Just you know I. You go down in the subway in new york city and there's some guy playing the fiddle, like a genius or a guitar like a genius and you think it's brutal. There are so many talented musicians, uh, who aren't able to make a living. In the old days it was much worse. You had to get a label and then the label would take the cost of your studio time.

0:42:36 - Alex Lindsay
Your out of your red dinner's that they took you out to, but that label right every the band out to dinner. That's coming out of the band, the bit I'll be fair.

0:42:46 - Leo Laporte
That was my deal with I heart radio also for years. Was the you know they would? I would. Every time they took me out to dinner I said you know I'm paying To be fair. That was my deal with iHeartRadio also for years. Every time they took me out to dinner I said you know I'm paying for this right. But that's fine. They make these deals right and if you're an artist and the only path to success is going through that barrier, you're going to do it. Thank goodness that's not the only path anymore. It's easier now. You're watching MacBreak Weekly we're glad you're here. Alex Lindsay, andy and Ako. Jason Snell taking the week off, Mikah Sargent here. This is. I don't want to raise alarms unnecessarily, but it's kind of the way it's been for the last week. Apparently, the new president is threatening to tariff Taiwanese chip makers 100% Now he hasn't done it yet?

He hasn't done it yet, and that's the thing it would be. Who is it TSMC done it? Yet he hasn't done it, and that's the thing, is it it would be. Who is it? Tsmc? He said they took all our jobs offshore and we're going to charge them 100, but of course, if you doubled the cost of a chip from tsmc via tariffs, um, it's going to cost us a lot more yeah, it's it's way down.

0:44:05 - Andy Ihnatko
if you read the statement it's it's disheartening because it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. He was actually just basically making fun of and disparaging the Biden administration's CHIPS Act, which is say well, how do we get more chip manufacturing back in the United States? And the answer is well, we incentivize with money. We basically say he will help you make factories we need to establish and build up. Trump's statements seem to be he's basically saying oh well, we want to move those jobs back to the United States, as if no, those jobs don't exist. We don't have the ability to make chips in the United States. There's a reason why we went overseas for that, because they can actually build that capacity. Terrorists are not gonna magically put two nanometer process plants in the United States. So it's disheartening to hear that kind of policy statement.

0:44:56 - Alex Lindsay
You were expecting rationality and thought process out of the White House that we have currently. I'm shocked.

0:45:03 - Andy Ihnatko
I've made it a policy on this show to not to stick to the facts and stick to whatever and not make editorial comments I can't imagine this going, because if I start, where do I stop?

0:45:15 - Alex Lindsay
well, it may just be. It may just be a threat, right, it may be garbly.

0:45:19 - Leo Laporte
Like this is like well, it's kind of like indonesia saying hey, give us a billion dollars if you want to sell iphones here. Uh, it's a hold up, it's a stick up there's got to be something.

0:45:27 - Alex Lindsay
Tim apple is going to, you know, go over there and and sing, and you know, pull out his out his harp and sing a song to to trump, trump said they left us and went to taiwan, which is about 90 of the chip business, and we want them to come back.

0:45:42 - Leo Laporte
We don't want to give them billions of dollars, like this ridiculous program biden has. He's talking about the chips, actps, act. They already have billions. They have nothing but money. They need an incentive and it will be. They will not want to pay a tax. They will want to build a factory with their own money that will come in because it's good for them. Now, this article did not say 100% tariff, but that is a number that has been bandied about.

0:46:09 - Alex Lindsay
It would certainly, if any tariff would, of course, Well, the question is whether it's a tariff of direct input or like. How does the tariff apply? Like is it applied? Well, there are lots of questions, right? I mean, if those chips go out in China and then they get assembled in China and then come here, is it the 100, do the TMS? That's a good question yeah.

So like, or is it the hundred? Do do the team? That's a good question. Yeah, so like does it does that? Is it the china tariff or the? Or the tms tsmc sheriff?

0:46:33 - Andy Ihnatko
you know, we don't know what that means in previous administrations tariff proposal it was there's an assessment of percentage of whatever that that represents, uh a a tariffable content. So it's not as though uh iphones would be 100 percent 100 more expensive. There will be a determination, possibly after lots and lots of dinners with Tim in Mar-a-Lago, that hopefully Apple can live with, but it really is topsy-turvy. Another thing that got me super concerned was so he gave a web. He participated in the Davos conference, the World Economic Forum conference, via webcam and he was saying almost explicitly that and you Europeans and you're passing laws that put billions of dollars of fines and penalties on the United States and you can't do that. We're not going to allow you to penalize United States companies. That's unfair and essentially I don't have the statement in front of me, but essentially saying that we're not going to allow you to pass laws to protect your citizens if it in any way impacts American businesses and given America's history with you mean a tariff or something like that internet diplomacy of saying hi.

We really wish that. We love the. We love the fact that you want to pass all of these labor protection laws for your country, but that's going to affect, like our American businesses, so you can either not pass those laws or we can inflict a regime change on you Already. They're talking about regime change in Greenland. For heaven's sake, it's like this is this is.

This is why I get concerned about not only this, not only the larger picture, but also, in terms of Apple, it's like we've had very good discussions about the pros and cons of Tim developing such a close relationship with the Trump administration, and how necessary it is for the CEO of a large company to have as good a relationship and a working relationship with the government that they operate the governments that they operate in. However, at some point, we're going to have to ask ourselves are we okay with Tim saying hi, we're a $3 trillion company? We would like to not. I know we keep saying that we have to pay, we have to observe all the laws that are enabled in the countries that we, per se, have been. It would be great, though, if we could basically have our government, with either diplomatic pressure, economic pressure or military pressure. Tell this country that you're not entitled to pass any law that would affect us in any way. That's a much bigger mud stain on Tim's face than Apple intelligence messing up a notification.

0:49:10 - Leo Laporte
Well, my guess it's all transactional.

0:49:12 - Alex Lindsay
So my guess is I don't think, I think you have to pay a lot of attention to Trump, because I don't think he he doesn't, he's not worried about fairness or rightness or anything else. He's just looking at the next deal and every deal is its own transaction and he has. He's going to take. Take, say, I have leverage in this deal, which is that I'm the united states and I will use that leverage.

0:49:32 - Mikah Sargent
Well, look what he did, you know, wildly columbia.

0:49:35 - Alex Lindsay
I mean that was they would have been in a coup in like two or three weeks if he had just if they escalate, that I don't know.

0:49:40 - Mikah Sargent
I think I think, they kind of back down they well, they back down.

0:49:43 - Leo Laporte
And then they said, oh, we're going to tear up the united states goods by 25 percent and well as off, as is always the case and we're not, it's not the province of this show, but this is always the case there are consequences. Down the road, you're pushing them to china and uh and so, um, you know, does tsmc? What is tsmc's reaction? I mean, they are already building a plant in arizona using chipsack money money, by the way, which is now frozen, illegally frozen and impounded by the president.

0:50:13 - Alex Lindsay
So uh, it's a, very uh, it's a um kind of chaotic time, right? If I think what he's probably looking for is and we don't know, it's hard to tell with him yeah, um, but but I think that there may a I'm going to say this big thing and then TSMC is going to announce a new factory in Detroit.

0:50:33 - Leo Laporte
And then he'll say look what I did.

0:50:35 - Mikah Sargent
I got what I needed. I didn't have to do the thing.

0:50:38 - Alex Lindsay
So I think that he's now looking for by saying this big thing I think he's going to. We should the other foot to drop will be in the next, within the next three months, there'll be an announcement and T, tsmc and Apple I'm sure can say you know what? We'll spend a hundred million dollars in, you know, poughkeepsie.

New York, or or in Denver, Colorado, or whatever, and just like the, you know, just like the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin, it doesn't really matter if that plant ever gets built or is efficient. Like you know, some of these might get built, but as long as you know, as long as people see you know, people are not good at math so as long as they see something happening and they have a short attention span, and then the cycle is short, it's just got to be big enough that, when you walk through it.

It looks big on the camera.

0:51:21 - Leo Laporte
That's the well no, they didn't even bother. In wisconsin, right broke ground, they built a and then they walked away from it. And, by the way, the only people holding the bag, of course, is the state and the local governments that did all this funding for this and got a dome. No jobs, just a dome. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be something like this, and this is where you know you're lucky. You've got uh tim cook, who the last time uh the president uh, well, it was president trump in his last administration threatened this. Tim went to him and said look, all you're going to do is help a Korean company sell phones in the United States. It's going to kill us. And he backed down, he changed it and I imagine there'll be similar negotiations.

0:52:09 - Andy Ihnatko
There's a lot of. It's kind of scary I don't know it's scary or reassuring to know how much, how many bad ideas get modified later on after people who know what they're talking about get the ear of the person who said that thing. And we've had so many stories about Steve Jobs basically deciding that this is no good, we're never going to do this for the iPhone. And then, because he has shrouded himself with smart people who knew that they could talk to Steve, basically, here's why this is actually a good idea, and so he'll reverse himself. The difficulty is when you have the person who is walking through the building saying those sprinkler heads in the ceiling, they're ugly, take them all out. You need to have another layer of people who say here's why those sprinkler heads are super, super important and why we can make them look better, but we can't remove them.

If the things that we've been this is still very, very early weeks, of course, the things that we've been, there's still very, very early weeks, of course, but part of what we've been hearing is removal of everybody who knows why those sprinkler heads are there and why they're important and what laws you'll be breaking and what disasters you'll be calling it into into being by removing them and we're being replaced by people who don't know why the sprinkler has are important.

They just know that their boss said we need to get rid of them and they want to look for the good for the boss. Diplomacy is all about goodwill as a commodity and if at some point you need to have a conversation with that other country in which they feel as though they're being heard, they feel as though they're getting something out of the deal. If they're just, if the united states is just a position of we are, we are trying to shepherd in the new golden age of America and you are interfering with our security and our progress and our prosperity and we can't have that. That's going to work just like any bully can eat very well off the lunches of the other people in the playground for the first few weeks, by week number four, when they realize that, yeah, we don't want to live the rest of our lives this way, they'll realize that a lot of little kids can beat the hell out of one big kid very easily uh, if you're wondering what some of those now impounded uh grants, federal grants fund it.

0:54:08 - Leo Laporte
They funded, among other things, the air force office of scientific research which came up with slap and flop, which is not what I'm doing to my focaccia later today, but in fact speculative attacks on the apple processors. Uh, this has been, this has been intel's problem, and amd and arm as well. Speculative execution, predicting what's going to happen, uh, which speeds up a processor considerably, also opens up some holes for exploit. It's happened to intel, amd and arm and it's happening on the, sadly, on the apple apple chips. Apple cpu, starting with the m2, are equipped with a load address predictor which improves performance by guessing the next memory address the cpu will retrieve data from based on prior memory access patterns. But if it guesses wrong and this is the problem it causes the CPU to perform arbitrary computations on out-of-bounds data which should never have been accessed to begin with under speculative execution.

And so they've found and this is a this is from the US Air Force, which I think is fascinating. They've even come up with a cute little logo. The slap logo has a slapping hand on a chip. The flop logo has flip-flops on a chip. In both cases you know the problem with these and I'm sure Steve will cover them on security now we'll have to listen is that often these are difficult to implement without access to the machine and so forth. But still it's a proof of concept. Predictorsfail is the website.

And the research is from Georgia Tech School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and I hope they spent that money before it got cut off. All right, enough politics for the. For the next five minutes, let's talk about what Alex wants to talk about the new iphone se the new iphone se se4.

Uh, it's been shown off by a leaker. No sign of a dynamic island, uh, and there is a single camera. I don't know if you trust the leaker here. Um, he shared a short video, uh, over the weekend.

0:56:29 - Mikah Sargent
That shows the sorry that is almost certainly a reference to the anime dragon ball z oh, you know, you recognize majin buu, yeah I do, oh, and then in fact now I know for sure, because the low, the avatar is of Majin Buu. Yeah, I do, oh, and in fact now I know for sure because the avatar is of Majin Buu.

0:56:45 - Leo Laporte
Well, it's good we have somebody under 50 here.

0:56:50 - Andy Ihnatko
So, Mikah, you're saying a known celebrity who has a reputation on the line A celebrity, who is a jolly evil character, has done the leak.

0:57:04 - Leo Laporte
Here's the video. I mean mean, look, they're in manufacture by now.

0:57:06 - Mikah Sargent
We could only turn this.

0:57:06 - Leo Laporte
Oh, turn down mushing's music please uh, and this looks like it's China and it's probably is something that was, you know, exfiltrated from one of the factories. Is they're making it right? I mean that's not. Yeah, we are getting too far, rumours are.

0:57:19 - Andy Ihnatko
Rumours have it appearing as early as next month, which probably is not going to happen, but in the next couple of months. So it's. We're definitely in a window where, as we keep saying, as you get closer to a ship date, you start letting in, having to let in more and more people into what this is and what it looks like and what it does, and so leaks become a lot more possible. So so I don't necessarily know if I 100% believe it and I don't have to because it's going to be a couple of months. We'll find out in any event. But yeah, I mean it lines up with a lot of the stories we've been hearing from multiple leakers. I mean the most interesting thing about the new SE would be simply that it runs Apple intelligence. So having a really cheap phone that is still like on board with Apple intelligence, meaning future-proof for the next five or six years, that's a pretty significant statement from Apple about how much they're investing the future of the platform in Apple intelligence.

0:58:12 - Leo Laporte
The iPhone SE3 came out almost exactly three years ago March 2022. So spring 2025 seems like a reasonable time.

0:58:23 - Andy Ihnatko
I think there's a good market for the SEs right 100%, especially worldwide, because remember that Apple needs to keep selling iPhones and they need to find the people who are not buying iPhones right now, convince them not to buy Android phones. And one of the reasons why they're buying Android phones worldwide is because not only they localize, but also because they're a lot less expensive. They're not, they're not all like luxury, aspirational items, so just the ability to put an iPhone SE in someone's hands at half the cost of a traditional iPhone, that will help them a lot in India, for instance.

0:58:59 - Leo Laporte
I am going to wait for the new homepod hub. Yeah, um, there are rumors about new homepod minis coming out soon, but mark german did say over the weekend, a new homepod like smart home hub with a seven inch screen remains on track to launch this year. This is obviously a mock-up, but uh, uh, you know, I, I would like, I would liked. You know, I guess some of this depends on siri getting a little smarter, but I would love to. I like the uh big home pods. They sound great. I have several, four of them I think, in the house.

I have a lot of the minis because I thought, well, I want to be able to command siri from every room. But I think this would be more sensible. A18 chip, according to guoming chi, um six to seven inch display. There would be apple intelligence. Um quo says it would enter mass production in the second half of the year and that smart home capabilities would be a core aspect of the device. Of course, there was a rumor last week, I think from german, that the wi-fi capability in this chip or in the new apple networking chip might mean these also are wi-fi base stations I think the big thing here is that well one.

1:00:17 - Mikah Sargent
It will likely provide all of the necessary background components.

If people are confused about whether their device is a thread border router and whether it can serve as a home hub and this and that and the other, this can be that consistent device that does all of those things and that there's no question about it remaining in the home and kind of always being accessible.

As such, with this purpose-built device that's supposed to run Home OS, I think it's going to be really important. More so, I feel that any device that makes it easier in a, I should say, multi-person home for people who are not incredibly smart, home-minded to be able to access and control different devices without having to do the weird thing of shouting out loud or fiddling around with some app and not knowing exactly what they're doing, is always a good thing, and so I look forward to this as a potential opportunity for more people to get into some of the smart home stuff and not feel sort of put off by okay, I just want the light to turn on. Why do I have to talk out loud to make the light turn on that kind of thing? Um, and ultimately, seeing apple focus directly on what what, in theory, will be called home os. Very exciting as a person who's paid attention to the smart home for a long time.

1:01:38 - Leo Laporte
this is your bailey, this is your bait, this is your Baileywick, home automation and so forth. Yeah, we're pretty excited about it.

1:01:55 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, matter devices recently and seeing how well that is actually working and how there are many, many more devices that can now work with my Apple Home that used to not be able to, has been very impressive. So I really think this does start to open things up a lot more in a good way and make it so that people aren't kind of, you know, a little shy about should I make this purchase Because I don't know if this device is going to work with the smart home that I have? Do you run Homebridge? Do you use Homebridge? I do. I have Homebridge for a couple of devices that don't have matter opportunities, so, for example, my Eve or, excuse me, my Elgato lights that I use here. Those are accessible via Homebridge so that I can control those. And if there's one more device that I am running, oh, the house that I'm in now had. It came with a Nest thermostat and Nest does not by default, work with Home, so Homebridge is what makes it possible for me to control the thermostat Nest thermostats as well, yeah.

1:02:57 - Leo Laporte
I just have a big folder on my phone with 25 apps controlling all of the different devices.

1:03:04 - Mikah Sargent
It's, it's. We know how to do it and we've been doing it. But if you have someone who's not super keen on all of that stuff, it is nice to say you've got one place you need to go. You can make it all work there.

1:03:13 - Leo Laporte
It would be nice someday.

1:03:16 - Mikah Sargent
Andy, I think I interrupted you, though.

1:03:17 - Andy Ihnatko
No, no, I was just going to ask you like did you see the Verge interview with Vivek Siddharth?

1:03:23 - Mikah Sargent
Of course I did.

1:03:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Yes, I thought that was really interesting what he had to say about threads and what it amounts to for the future of iPhones.

1:03:32 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely so a couple of things there. Patterson Toohey, my regular co-host on Tech News Weekly, who is the Verge's supreme smart home writer and is incredible at the stuff she does. So the CSA spoke to Nilay Patel, but also to Jennifer Patterson Toohey, as we call her JPT, directly in an interview and some of the conversations surrounded how and why the iphone has a built-in thread thread radio and there was some early you know kind of what's the point of that? Why do we have another device? And the big thing there is that if your wi-fi network is down in your home for whatever reason, and you've got your smart lock and you're trying to get into your house, having that phone that has that thread router in there, being able to commute radio not router radio, uh, to communicate directly with that device, is really nice. And speaking as someone who uh this device that I have right here, it's from waymo and for uh, when I first bought it it only mo not waymo, waymo's the self-driving yes wemo, wemo, belkin, wemo, um.

It used to only work with Bluetooth and later enabled the Thread router or the Thread radio, and it is wild the difference that makes. Thread is an incredible technology because it's one of the first that says, instead of the case where adding more devices usually means there's much more crowded network and the communication kind of drops, no, the more you have, the better, because the more connection points there are and the more mesh you have, and so this thing is super fast in controlling my different devices, is it?

1:05:11 - Leo Laporte
a remote. What is it?

1:05:12 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's a little remote, so I have it set up to control my lights. I literally just hit the button and all of my lights just went off.

1:05:20 - Alex Lindsay
I hit the button again.

1:05:21 - Mikah Sargent
Already the lights are all on. My house is sprinkled with hubs and remotes.

1:05:26 - Leo Laporte
I mean, everywhere there's a plug, there's something plugged into it that's blinking red or blue depending on whether it can see the curtains and stuff. It's just a mess. It's such a mess so, yeah, we'll for people to JPT's. A piece in Verge Matter will be better in 2025, say the people who make it. And she interviewed three, not just one. She interviewed somebody from the CSA. You mentioned Vivek Sita, who's president of the Thread Group and director of software engineering at Apple, and Kevin Robinson. It's nice that Apple's director is president of the thread group. That's good.

1:06:03 - Mikah Sargent
And.

1:06:03 - Leo Laporte
Kevin Robinson, who's the CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

1:06:06 - Mikah Sargent
CSA is a little bit like the emoji group in that it's a trade group. It's made up of the people who are making the technologies that are affected, which is good.

1:06:18 - Leo Laporte
Nice, yeah, that are, you know, affected, which is good. Nice, yeah, um, tobin richardson, ceo of the connected connectivity standards alliance. But you can see in this very interview the it's a little bit of. I mean, you gotta had three people, three different, you know protocols, it's all. I mean this is the mess we're in. Uh, you can't even figure out what's going on in this space unless you have three people in the room to interview. So I don't have high hopes, I'll be honest, but I have hopes, yeah it's good you have hopes and I understand why you wouldn't.

1:06:52 - Mikah Sargent
I push back a little bit on. I think that what needs for most people. There's no reason to get into the weeds in that way. You don't need to necessarily know what the three people are doing and what each group is bringing to the table, because that's part of it. Matter is using Thread as a means of device connection and communication, but Matter is the language that they all speak, and so it's just getting the perspective of these three. It's not three different protocols that all are, you know, trying to connect devices in different ways. It's instead the uh, I can't think of the, the. What Transformers, the you know the the Transformers joining together to make the Ultra Mega robot, whatever that you know. Yeah, ultron, part of it is matter. That's the arm.

1:07:38 - Leo Laporte
First dragon ball z now I have to know voltron, I swear uh I swear uh and of course jpt appears uh every month on tech news weekly with Mikah uh and as often as we can get her on any of our shows because she's fantastic. She maintains a list of every smart home device that works with Matter, from Apple, amazon, google and Samsung at the verge. So if you want to see if your device works with Matter, you can check it out here. Yeah, so all Apple stuff will work with Matter. Right, that's their commitment.

1:08:16 - Mikah Sargent
Essentially yes, and in fact it's almost the reverse is the more important thing If it's Matter certified. Apple recently said if the device goes through Matter certification, it automatically goes through the works with Apple home certification, and so, yes, that's how it's supposed to work and in fact I can confirm. Recently we purchased a little light that goes in our living room from Govee, and Govee does not have a direct integration with HomeKit, but I was able to set it up via Matter and it works just fine, works in the Home app just like everything else and is instant just like everything else. So it's been very robust so far and that's only continuing to improve. Where before we've seen some kind of lagging behind from different companies, they really are getting their act together this year, but I understand the skepticism that remains and I think it is on these companies to prove that there's not that same fear of everything breaking apart into different protocols there's not, you know, that same fear of everything breaking apart into different protocols I do have.

This is the home assistant green server with the home assistant connect zbt dongle. Is that what?

1:09:32 - Leo Laporte
zigbee, bluetooth, what is, yeah, so it connects to this is, in theory, a matter compliant thing that's plugged into my network and then you run the home assistant software and it's supposed to discover everything. And yeah, yeah, and I pay for nabucasa, I subscribe to nabucasa, which bless you, yeah, which uh, uh rich. So it's funny because richard campbell is a big, yes, uh, like automation, automation guy and and he's recommended the HA, green and using HA and so forth.

1:10:02 - Mikah Sargent
That's for the big nerds, which is great. Well, you know it's you're looking at. Involved. Yeah, exactly, and and I, uh I love home assistant because it is just so incredibly granularly um, amazing you can. You could say manually. Um, amazing you can. You could say, if I turn the volume up by one on my sonos speaker, then unlock the front door and make my home pods scream this sound, you know?

1:10:31 - Leo Laporte
I mean like it's so wild, what if sonos only worked with that, that would be wonderful, right, right, oh yeah, don't get me started. Don't get me started. Uh, all right, you're watching mac break weekly andy inako. Uh, Mikah, so good to have you. We don't. You know, we don't normally get into these things, so I'm so glad you could be here. Uh, for that good and uh and mr Alex lindsey I think all, all of us have a certain degree of home automation in our lives.

1:11:02 - Alex Lindsay
I have a dream of it. I have to admit that I've. I have a dream, after 15 years, of buying random stuff and putting it in. Much like you, I'm just waiting for the next Apple device to come out. That isn't a HomeKit package. I'm not really buying anybody else's products anymore.

1:11:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah that's what I'm hoping.

1:11:22 - Alex Lindsay
I'm waiting for the camera.

1:11:23 - Leo Laporte
I'm waiting for the thing. I'm waiting. I'm gonna wait for the lock, I'm gonna wait for the like. I'm just like I'm done, like you know, and I just car lock in theory will work. Uh, it will be updated soon to work, or maybe I have to get the new one with. See, for instance, the iphone car key thing which works with my car is great, and if my lock would work the same way. So the door opened up when I came close and all of that stuff. So I feel like we're, we're just it's tantalizingly close.

1:11:45 - Andy Ihnatko
I just feel like I'm just life's too short, like I have so many other things to work on and I'm just gonna wait until I can just pick it up and it'll just do the thing, yeah well, it's just, you know, there's just so many problems I'm probably in, I'm close to the second, the second time in the history of home automation in my house that I'm close to. Okay, I'm going to have to get rid of everything and start all over again because I have such a mishmash of things that sometimes you know the problem is when you get used to just getting into the door and you bark that command and then the first time it doesn't work and you're like either something, is it either?

1:12:21 - Alex Lindsay
either something, either my wi-fi is down or I'm gonna and I'm in for four days, I heard trying to figure out where the break in the system is and the hard part is like, yeah, to your point, like I got, I got an eve, you know, just a outlet, like three, three plugs, and it worked for four months or whatever, and I walked in I could just turn it on and then one day it didn't work anymore, and then I, you know, like an update. Then, yeah, I don't even know what I updated, like just it just stopped, stopped reacting. And then I said and then and I looked at the instructions, it's like if you want it to work again, you got to do this thing, you got to reset it, you got to, and then it'll come back on again, it'll be just fine, and you're just like oh it happens all the time with all of these, like I do, 95 different smart devices in the house.

1:13:06 - Leo Laporte
There's only so much you can wink with your left eye before you just go.

1:13:11 - Andy Ihnatko
And before we leave the topic, let's mention just how terrible most of these smart locks actually are. Like, I have a lock pick kit, like a $15 lock pick kit that I just use to test, like when I get a lock in, or one that I just paid like 200 and something dollars for A simple wave pick that doesn't require any. You could learn how to use it in less than 10 seconds. I'm not even lying about that. Okay and okay. So well, this again, this is. It's tell me about how secure it is that. No, you can't trick it with another phone. No, you can't trick it with a magnet. No, you can't just pull the batteries like okay, but will this ten dollar piece of metal simply simply pushed in and out, and in and out for five seconds? Will that unlock it? Hey, yes, it does.

Okay, so this is now garbage. Or, in the case of the lock that I bought because I get it, since I couldn't get a refund, I had it, I took. I had to take it to an actual locksmith and pay him like 200, 120, 130 dollars to say I, I would like this to be resistance against any idiot who watched a YouTube video. It's like I know that. I know that it's a fool, it's a fool's iron to try to like make any door like impossible to get through because one one place well placed it's just a serving suggestion and you know it's just like don't come in here.

I don't want you to come in here I just I just I mean historically, I don't worry about the professional thieves because I know they're going to win anyway. I worry about, like the, the, the knuckleheads who are like, hey, wow, look, I just read this thing on the. I'm just going to go start to see what kind of doors I can open. Hey, look, I can open this no one's home. That's those people that will like again, turn on all the faucets and then leave and then like okay, thank you, aren't you adorable?

1:14:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, poop on the carpet and get the hell out. Anyway, you are watching Mac mac break weekly. We're very glad you're here, but I want to ask our our listeners, for a little help. There's just a few days left for our annual survey. I mean literally just two days left, I think, for our annual survey.

We would really love to know more about you, not individually, but as as a group. The survey is the one thing we don't know about you. We can't, you know. We, uh, we're a podcast. All we got is rss feeds.

But, uh, once a year we do put out this survey, hoping to get at least a representative sample of you so we get to better idea of who's listening, what kinds of shows you like, what you wouldn't want to hear. And also, I'll be honest, we use it with the advertisers. They are, they're very, you know, anxious to know all about you. We don't tell them anything about you, but it's nice if we can say, yeah, you know 53 anxious to know all about you. We don't tell them anything about you, but it's nice if we can say, yeah, you know, 53% of our audience is IT decision makers or whatever. So that's what we use it for. Your privacy is guaranteed. We don't want to spy on you. We don't need to spy on you. We certainly don't sell this information on.

If you would like to help us out, though, it is a way where you can really us uh on the air. Uh, just go to twittertv slash survey. Shouldn't take more about 10 minutes. It's pretty quick. It's just a you know online survey, check, check, check, check, check, and I do appreciate uh for all of you who've already done it and for those of you about to do it. Thank you, twittertv slash survey. Uh, apple earnings are coming. Maybe that's what Jason Snell's doing he's buying ink for his six color graphs. Uh, it will. The earnings will be Thursday after Market close. Uh, analysts are downgrading the Apple stock, interestingly, although apple has the one company that kind of survived the ai apocalypse after the chinese.

1:16:44 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, ai deep seek r1 scared the crap out of silicon valley seriously apple actually went up a little bit, turns out, being behind has its benefits yeah, well, actually specifically like the.

1:16:59 - Andy Ihnatko
So I guess, I guess the investors didn't completely lose their minds because they're like OK, well, if this means that, if this, this is going to, this idea is going to clobber companies like, like Google, and open Microsoft, everyone else, they're. They're betting their futures on being able to charge a fortune for artificial intelligence. But Apple, who is a company that's going to be buying artificial intelligence services from other services? The idea of a system that can run on cheaper hardware that doesn't cost that much money to grade, that's going to benefit Apple. But yeah God, $600 billion in one day, that's amazing.

Someone decided you know what I've been working way too, I'm going to take 90 minutes off and, just you know, get a good, get an aromatherapy, get a massage, get a deep pore cleanse, and then, when they come, when they get, when they get back to their car, they find out that there are 100 notifications and they're all. Yeah, our, our valuation has been pretty much wiped out just remember, andy, when times like these.

1:17:59 - Leo Laporte
Just remember the 1860s english economist, william stanley, jevons. Okay, just keep jevons paradox in mind, because it turns out the more you use ai, the more efficient it becomes. The more you use it and the more need there is for it. He observed it with a coal. He said that the increased efficiency in coal use led to increased consumption of coal, and our own power company in California has been invoking Jevons Paradox, saying you guys are conserving, so we have to charge you more, which is incredibly annoying as our utility bills skyrocket. Um the uh, a number of people said you know, don't, don't panic. This is good news, because the the cheaper it is to make ai, it's the people who are going to use it are the people who, for the last year and a half, who created a bubble?

1:18:53 - Mikah Sargent
yes, if you just said, if you said ai, and then they said a million dollars, like yeah, here have this money, we're gonna, we're gonna make.

1:18:59 - Alex Lindsay
We're gonna make pancakes with ai and they say here's a million dollars, like, yeah, here have this money. We're going to make pancakes with AI and they're like, here's a million dollars. And so the thing is they put all this money into the assumption that everything was going to be hard, and then it got easy. So all the money that's already like they're talking about, like, if this turns out, no one knows, this is so brand new.

No one knows. If it's, it definitely calls home. So until someone goes through the open source and removes all the we're going to store everything on Chinese servers. It's storing everything on Chinese servers and so there's a bunch of things about it that are problematic. But if it turns out that it opens up a new level of this, there's a lot of people that already committed money and some of this is potentially an existential event, extinction event for many vc firms, because they put everything into ai, thinking that, well, one of these is going to work, and what if none of them work? Like, what if all of them are suddenly, you know, competing with a thousand things? So it's a really interesting funny because the market's already rebounding.

1:19:56 - Leo Laporte
Apple is up four percent today, microsoft three percent, okay, seven percent. Nvidia seven and a half. Yeah, but it's still down. Oh no, it's down seven and a half down seven and a half that's on top of the 16 from last yesterday.

1:20:08 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So nvidia, the problem is is that they may just go well, we may have enough nvidia cards now, like you know, like if it's 95 percent more, act more. Or if it's you know it's if it's five percent, takes five percent of the thing. There's a lot of NVIDIA cards out there. It just means that this painful demand for NVIDIA cards may slow down a lot, which is the challenge.

1:20:28 - Leo Laporte
We'll definitely be covering DeepSeek and all of this tomorrow on what is currently the show formerly named this Week in Google, soon to be renamed Intelligent Machines, our AI show. So yes, next Tuesday, I guess jason will be here, right, and we'll do the uh, the colorful charts. Do not leave your resume. I'm sorry. You're 10 40 on the office printer a tax form. This. Thank you, andy for this. This is from sfist. A tax form left. Thank you, andy for this. This is a her male colleague's tax form on a printer is 1040, showing her in 10 000 more than she did for an equivalent role. Judge of san francisco superior court gave the case a go ahead to proceed. They're still trying to get class action status.

1:21:42 - Mikah Sargent
Steve Trang. On the contrary, do leave your 10. Oh yes do.

1:21:45 - Leo Laporte
I guess it's a good thing, steve Trang, but we can make sure everybody's getting paid the same.

1:21:48 - Mikah Sargent
Well, this is why it is right.

1:21:51 - Leo Laporte
Employers are always telling their employees don't tell anybody what you make and it's it is illegal to do that.

1:21:57 - Andy Ihnatko
You cannot retaliate People doing that, at least in the state of california, and apple's actually still in trouble for basically asking people well, how much, how much were your money, how much were you making it your previous role? The things that basically the questions during the job review and the offer process that are illegal in california yeah that's all right, everything's gonna.

1:22:17 - Leo Laporte
It's all going to be legal soon. Apple has bought a street in Boston, on Boylston. You know Boylston is the best Boston street, I think. $88 million. What are they going to put there, Andy?

1:22:30 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, actually no, they basically bought the property that the Boston like the. Boston landmark Apple store has been in, which is interesting because I didn't realize like they had been I, I, I didn't realize that they've been renting it for quite that for that long like that since 2008 yeah wow, uh, that's the, that's the.

1:22:53 - Leo Laporte
It's a very pretty store it's very pretty.

1:22:55 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like the guy's got it's it's, I guess.

I guess what you'd call the a glass staircase apple store. They're glass staircase apple stores and then there are not glass apple, glass staircase apple stores. It's three floors. One of them, it's all huge glass front there's also. It's also in a really good spot. It's like two blocks away from the boston public library, from copley square. Coincidentally, it's also only two blocks away from the brand new Google company store that opened on Newbury Street just like a year ago. The Google store is not nearly as nice. Also, the Wi-Fi is not quite as fast. I have tried both of them. It's easier to find a seat at the Google store, yeah yeah, should we do a.

1:23:38 - Mikah Sargent
Vision Pro segment. Do we have enough material to do a vision?

1:23:54 - Leo Laporte
no, there's one story apple's next immersion, immersive vision, pro film and vibes bull riding and is coming soon I'm not excited man versus beast arrives next week to take you on a bull riding adventure that's guaranteed to make you barf yeah, I was gonna say that's just well I my guess is in control center will say hey, try this out.

1:24:23 - Mikah Sargent
If you've just swallowed something you shouldn't friday.

1:24:26 - Leo Laporte
Well, if january 31st will come out's description, hang on tight, as professional bull riders take you inside the rodeo and show you what it takes to compete in the dangerous sport.

1:24:37 - Alex Lindsay
I think that they I doubt they're going to put them on the bull, but I think that what you're going to get is the advantage of a bull riding situation is that there's a lot of close quarter stuff that's got a lot of vanishing points from a 3D perspective, so you'll probably feel very you know there's a lot going on that will feel very dimensional when you look at it. Um, I think that, uh, I don't again. I, when we talk about apple intelligence, like so far, the content that apple's put out as immersive has, uh, I get less interested every, every time, like I'm not more interested in doing it, like I was like immersive. You know, we were excited about the first movie. The movie was pretty good and then the next thing was not quite as good and the next thing was not quite as good, and so I, well, how about this? The?

1:25:23 - Leo Laporte
second episode of elevated, which takes viewers to a crisp and serene one of the worst things they did, because there's no it's.

1:25:31 - Alex Lindsay
the problem is is that the resolution, the resolution doesn't support and and there's no, there's no spatiality to it. There's no, there's no 3d to it, because you're too far away from everything. So there's no parallax Like what. What makes immersive look great is five to 20 feet, and everything more than five to 20 feet just looks like well, maybe you'll be excited about free solo climbing in mallorca, that's awesome, uh that's right.

1:25:56 - Leo Laporte
I mean, if it's anything like that parkour.

1:25:57 - Alex Lindsay
Like the parkour was a disaster, like it was just like watching the grass grow. You know like it was, you know like it was, like you know.

1:26:04 - Leo Laporte
So so I, you know, like the I mean parkour is one of them something that actually like karel to be, uh, to do that, parkour, parkour, parkour is one of them something I actually like to watch corral to be uh, to do that parkour, parkour, parkour.

1:26:14 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, so so he would actually probably do white shrewd maybe.

1:26:17 - Alex Lindsay
Maybe she's not white shrewd operating the camera for that I mean, you know, you know, justine ezerick did a, did an original, she did she did. One of her early videos on youtube was parkour. They should have justine do a parkour. Ah, you know what? I think a lot of people would watch that. That would be very popular. She does like jujitsu, right.

Her first early parkour was probably 2007 or 2006, and it was her and her sister, I think, and they were just like no, they're kind of just kind of hopping, that was the joke.

They were just jumping around, but it was a good, classic, early YouTube video. I think that what I'm really excited about is, I think, that the camera is probably getting closer to the. You know, we expect to see the new camera before NAB and, I think, getting once the immersive camera gets into the hands of you know many people who have already done this a couple times of camera gets into the hands of you know many people who've already done this a couple of times, and you know, I think, that the kind of content that we're going to see available on the headset is going to change dramatically. I think that it's, you know, even 10 or 15 or 20 of these cameras out there. You're going to start seeing content. So I think that April is where a lot of us are looking to see, like, what do my friends do with it? I don't know if I'll get one, but but what do my friends do with it?

1:27:32 - Andy Ihnatko
But that, but that's something I wanted. I've always wanted to ask you, Alex, like, um, I thought that one of the most interesting things about in the about Apple's hype then hypothetical, like VR headset with cameras would be not, not these, like Dr Tongue, 3d house of you know, would you like another diet Coke, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. But but the idea of like a YouTube sort of thing where people are creating immersive videos based on what, where they are, what they're doing, what they think is interesting, like, and we haven't seen that like where, where, where could people post videos that other other Apple Vision Pro users could then benefit from, even with they do have to rent that $30,000 camera?

1:28:14 - Leo Laporte
She was so young. I'm watching the video. This is hysterical. Oh my God.

1:28:20 - Andy Ihnatko
She's not even completely pink, it's only the top. That's how long ago it was.

1:28:25 - Leo Laporte
Parkour, parkour. Wow, they were so young. Wow, that's so funny. It was so so funny. This is back when I was a mommy pack my lunch, yeah, yeah I would watch an immersive video of this exactly.

1:28:43 - Alex Lindsay
I would watch it, I think if I get the core, if I get the, if I get the uh um camera, we'll get justine to do one in la or something like that. So the um, but the uh uh, the um. That was 18 years ago where to put this content.

Yeah, we're getting so, but but the um, uh. So I think that it's not, that it's not the, the big, whatever, but you do have to feel it. And and there's two different things there's spatial and immersive. So spatial is what you're shooting with stereo, 16 by nine. So it's two left and right, 16 by nine, and that's what you can shoot with your phone. There's other cameras that'll do that. Immersive is the 180 degree 3D that you feel like you're there. It doesn't mean that you, you know you're, you're, you're in that environment, but doesn't really feel that special if you don't see any kind of a 3d element to it.

I think that that Apple took it too far in some places with a variety of things. You see glimpses of genius in the Rhino section, where the Rhino walks up to you and I don't know, I even felt myself pull back a little bit as it, as it runs up to you Um, there's, there's, um, there's moments of that, of like, oh, that's that really works, um, but a large portion of it, you know. Number one is you don't want to cut that much. So Apple keeps on showing stuff where they're cutting all the time and that's not really it. It's it's not as good of not as good. I don't think it's as good of experience when you start cutting quickly between a lot of things. Apple has a tendency to want to drive you towards. A lot of their content is driving you towards the edges, so they're having you want to look back and forth. The problem is is that you really want to use that outer area as ambient content and not remind the person that they're only seeing 180 degrees all the time, so you don't actually want to drive there. You want them to feel like they're looking at something and it's, but it's still kind of happening comfortably, like you were in an audience and you were looking at something that's there. That's usually where it's been the most effective in our experience and so and I've done a lot of 360 and 180 and 16 by nine so it's just that you, you look at them in very different worlds about what you want to do with those and and I think that it'll be interesting to I just feel like Apple keeps on hand and this is the.

This is the pitfall that every company has made. So it's not like Apple is new meta. Meta has done the same thing and Google did that as well, but to some degree, which is you get a bunch of cinematographers that, or directors that you respect, who have only done films, and then you ask that you give them a new camera and they just do goofy things with it, you know, like, and they because they they've never done any any immersive they, they, they don't they, so they don't know what that looks like. They just have a bunch of opinions about how this is all going to work. And, and there's a bunch of people that have never we've all had these cameras that are like. You know, I have this. This is the best you can do right now, which is this is the Canon R5C, and so this is, but it's not as high resolution, it's not as high frame rate, and so it is. This is the first camera at high frame rate and 8k per eye and, most importantly, there is a, there's an actual post pipeline that can generate the content that is going to, that's going to be available for the, for the headset, and that hasn't right, you know, cause what's happening is black magic's not only building the camera, but they're also building the software that's going to manage the camera, that's going to output it to it, and they're working with Apple to do it Like it's not, like they're trying to figure this out and look at the tea leaves, and so that generation of those now to the point was asked before is who's going to be able to watch it? Those that pipeline and SDKs are available, and I know that. You know, with StreamVoodoo, I know that we're already able to do it with the phone, and the reason that I'm shooting with this camera is so that the folks at StreamVoodoo and others can take that immersive footage and figure out how to get it into being able to make it available, and there'll be.

I think Vimeo is another partner for Apple that's already started doing spatial. I would expect Vimeo to make it available to be able to let you watch immersive as well as stream. Voodoo is probably another one. I think that sandwich is probably going to I'm going to guess, is going to build something, because sandwich is already in building theater experiences for spatial. So so those are, and and apple has done a fairly good job.

There's still a lot of stuff left out of the sdk, I think in the and the apis, but especially the SDK. It's there, but you have to kind of hunt for it. So I think that. But Apple, I think, is going to spend a lot of effort on not trying to do this all themselves, but empowering people, and this is the first time we've ever been empowered with a camera that is relatively affordable, like the cameras that do this.

When I bought the Ozo camera, that was $60,000 and it did not do the same quality that this one does. So so it is um, these are um. I think it's going to be interesting, I think, but I'm less interested in what Apple's releasing now and more interested in in, I think, that Apple had to do what it did so that it would know what it wanted from a camera and how to build the stuff this tie into the camera and they're doing what they're doing with that headset, by the way, is revolutionary. You know, like what they're, how they're managing the matching up of interaxial from the camera and interocular on the headset, and how they're doing all the bits and pieces is is unlike what anybody else is doing. Um, and so it's exciting. It's just that we need more people to be able to go out and shoot it, and we're're about to have that 100%.

1:34:11 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean that's. That's why, like I'm not so, my level of interest and excitement is not so much an oh wow, we finally have like a really good, like almost professional grade, $30,000 camera that can be leased out. I'm more interested in I don't. I don't care if it's being produced, but if they're being recorded by people who are just wearing a Vision Pro or even that feature that I can't remember the name of, where Apple's getting spatial photos and spatial videos just out of the taking video through multiple lenses, multiple sensors on an iPhone at the same time. I don't care if it's not terribly good and it's not professional.

I like the fact that here is an experience through somebody's eyes that all they decided was this was going to be worth taking spatial video of and then being able to share that. And I'm here and thinking back to when Google had their Google Cardboard, which their basic idea well, what if we just have your phone held like two inches from your face and have two different stereo visions the idea of I could be standing in the middle of the Boston Public Library suddenly think that, gee, I think this would be a really good space for people to be able to stand here and just look around at will, at all this artwork, and I could just simply take a photosphere using this one lens and upload it anywhere, and now somebody who has one of those phone holders can actually view it. That's what I'm really excited about.

1:35:26 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I mean I think from a 16 by 9 perspective. You know, right now, with something like stream voodoo, I can open up the phone, send you a link from that phone, just like. Hey, there's a link. This is what we did with twit. We, we took a, we took um, I started the video, I sent a link. It was sent out to a couple thousand people that had downloaded the app and 650 people were watching twit in their headsets, you know, in their, in their um, in their apple vision pros, and it was that easy to do that.

So the technology is there, um, and you know, and you can do that as a live stream right now, you know. So the technology is there to do that as well. Um, the immersive is going to be at 90 frames a second, at 8k per eye. You're talking about um, more than 100 megs a second, potentially. So it's a lot lot of being able to do that live. And how that looks live is going to take a little bit more time to kind of figure out, but we'll see as it comes out, what we can do live. But as far as experiencing things, I think it's going to be it's the camera that I've been the most excited about, probably in a decade, because we've been on those rocks for a long time. And finally it's like you know, we've been, you know, cutting our legs on the ice for a long time and like, hey, we've got an icebreaker. We're like, oh, it looks really pretty so anyway. So hopefully we'll get to play with it soon.

1:36:46 - Leo Laporte
And that's the Vision Pro segment. Now you see, now you know we're done talking the Vision Pro More Vision Pro content per hour than the next leading Vision Pro podcast. I just want you to know Apple has introduced the 2025 Black Unity collection. Very pretty, I like the colors.

1:37:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, apple watch, black unity sport loop watch face, iphone, ipad papers, of course, because just a few days away from black history month, the shortest month of the year um, yeah, these are nice, yeah I wonder, I wonder if any of us during the uh, either this, during the shareholders meeting next month and the financial results this week, if any, is going to be foolish enough to challenge tim cook on dei initiatives? Oh wow, because I don't. I think that. I think that's where you'll see.

1:37:41 - Leo Laporte
Like I see tim, I see come out, come up apple says its watch bands are safe to wear, despite the fact that the floral elastomer contains forever chemicals, a high level of pur and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. This is a class action. Lawsuit was filed by somebody saying well, there was a study right that said there was PFAS in these things. And the University of Notre Dame did research. Well, there was a study right, that said there was pfas in these things and uh university of notre dame did research.

Uh 22 fitness tracker and smartwatch bands 15 had pfas. Apple said it issued a statement saying the bands are safe. In addition to our own testing, we work with independent laboratories to conduct rigorous testing and analysis of the materials used in our products, including apple watch bands. Yeah, yeah, and I think they also deny the that the chemicals were there.

1:38:35 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and that study didn't didn't say there was a link between those chemicals and anything bad happening, just simply establishing that yeah, they exist and yeah, they could be transmitted through the skin. And because these are fitness watches, where you're probably gonna be sweating into them, that's probably more of a thing to think about than on any other sort of thing.

1:38:52 - Leo Laporte
I think that they also bands don't have them. That's the funny thing, it's the more expensive bands.

1:38:57 - Andy Ihnatko
But didn't. Didn't Apple say, like a couple of years ago, that they were, as part of one of their environmental impact things that they're trying to get rid of those things from? Yeah, I'm pretty sure, because the, the.

1:39:06 - Mikah Sargent
The fact that they take so long to break down is the biggest issue, right, and that is something that they were looking at. I'm pretty sure I remember that as well.

1:39:17 - Leo Laporte
No Oscar nominations for Apple this year. Apple, of course, won a Best Picture award a couple of years ago with Coda. Zero nominations this year. But I think that reflects what we've been saying all along, which is that Apple is very squirrely about its its movie, uh, ambitions. It does have a big movie coming out this year, f1, a brad pitt vehicle, and uh, based on the, of course, f1 formula one motor racing.

1:39:42 - Alex Lindsay
Uh, if it doesn't do well, I think that might be the end the rumor is that within two years, most of the streamers are not going to be doing too much features. They just don don't. They don't. We've been talking about this for three or four years.

A feature film does not pan out for a streamer Like it's a, it's not a good, it's not a good investment and and since streamers are doing all the production, you know it's it's pretty. So I the. So it looks like almost everybody's moving towards series. It'll be really interesting to see this. So it looks like almost everybody's moving towards series. It'll be really interesting to see. This is a make or break year for Hollywood because a bunch of the movies got delayed so they're all coming out this year. If this year goes well, they buy another couple of years. If this year goes bad, there's going to be a lot of you know, a lot of work to write the ship for the next couple of years, because people expect it to do really well. They expect this to be a blockbuster year and if it's not, it's going to be difficult, I have to say.

1:40:36 - Leo Laporte
They've got some great shows and Severance is back and Tim Cook, apparently, is sending his Audi in. This is Ben Stiller's tweet, tim entering, I felt like there was a little on the nose.

1:40:50 - Alex Lindsay
I was like you know, everybody says that Severance is about Apple and then Tim does the thing.

1:40:54 - Leo Laporte
I was like, oh no, watch him change from his Audi to his Innie, a little acting from Mr C. Look at that. Wow, he's happy.

1:41:08 - Andy Ihnatko
Now he's happy now he doesn't have to think about Apple intelligence.

1:41:13 - Leo Laporte
No, just diddle numbers, diddle with numbers. This is actually great.

1:41:19 - Andy Ihnatko
They have been doing the best promos for this show my favorite, of course, live people the grand central station, where they put the actors in grand central station, that was that gives you an indication of how successful this show is not just just for prestige, but monetarily that they got time on Tim's schedule to shoot this.

1:41:37 - Leo Laporte
Oh, there's Mr Milchick, he's going to welcome Tim.

1:41:42 - Andy Ihnatko
Tim C, core of the apple. Please have a seat.

1:41:49 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I love it. And of course, then they show some, some promos for a severance, which is a great show. I'm, I'm excited about that.

1:42:00 - Andy Ihnatko
That 20 inch tube TV on a rolling cart is made me nostalgic for for middle school.

1:42:04 - Leo Laporte
The retro. There's been a lot of talk about the retro tech because they make a real effort to put real retro tech in the limon offices and it's so it's really, uh, it is.

1:42:14 - Alex Lindsay
It's very cool to see that stuff um by the way, if you're, if you, if you're in the silo after you watch silo, don't do it before you watch silo. Uh, tested, you know, with adam savage has a series of behind the scenes. Oh we that are, wow, really good, like really good. I was actually, as a visual effects person, I was actually surprised at how much visual effects they're doing like, how much is not physical uh, that's interesting and and it's, it's uh yeah, really good coverage.

I would highly recommend, highly recommend it, but watch Silo first before you watch the behind the scenes.

1:42:51 - Leo Laporte
It was 15 years ago today that I burned my invitations to all Apple events forever With Skype.

1:42:57 - Alex Lindsay
Skype. He had a laptop with Skype turned around.

1:43:00 - Leo Laporte
I saw it.

1:43:01 - Mikah Sargent
It was yesterday.

1:43:03 - Alex Lindsay
I saw the stink eye.

1:43:04 - Mikah Sargent
I remember watching it Watching Steve look down at you and give you the stink eye.

1:43:08 - Alex Lindsay
It's on tape.

1:43:10 - Leo Laporte
There's a video of it. You and give you the stink eye and I was like, yeah, it's on tape, there's a video of it. Anyway, steve jobs announced the original ipad. Uh, 15 january 27, 2010, 15 years ago. Yesterday, one and a half decades. Yeah, it was at herba buenos center. So last apple event I went to, I never, never, got invited back again. Uh they sold 300,000 units on launch day in April 2010.

1:43:35 - Andy Ihnatko
That was really big. I mean, there was usually like we're all this was not like the big celebration all these civilians and this really was like more of a press oriented event, and so we're all like taking our notes. We're all trying to make sure that our MiFis are still connected to the internet so we can live, blog and live, and when he announced the price, nobody was expecting it to be that there was there was actually a gasp because people just like, suddenly, what?

I didn't just hear that Did I just hear that, yeah, $500. Yeah, it just totally exceeded expectations and it was. It was also big because, like, it was also big because it was a reminder of how Steve was winding down physically at that point and how important this must have been for him to be there and he was still. So I spent a lot of my time just watching him, even when they were playing the videos. I was like if I leaned a little bit, I could sort of see him off the side of the stage like watching, but still like with his hands behind his back watching the video, and it was it. It was a very big day for a lot of reasons. I think that it's a it bookends the Steve Jobs era very, very nicely. This was another thing that he couldn't summon the sort of energy that he had for the iPhone rollout, but you could still see. You could see sort of like I can't wait to show people this. Finally, we've been sitting on this for a while.

1:44:56 - Alex Lindsay
Well, I think the iPad was really designed first, right. The iPhone was the test for the iPad, and I think that Steve thought that the iPad would be more popular than it is. I mean, it's very popular, a lot of people use it, but I think he really thought that the iPad would be more popular than it is.

1:45:13 - Leo Laporte
I mean it's very popular, a lot of people use it.

1:45:14 - Alex Lindsay
But I think he really thought it was the complete replacement for the next generation, and I just well, the funny thing is is that I think one of the biggest problems that iPads have is that they last for so long so effectively. I have an iPad here. I realized I installed something and someone said, oh, you're using that on an older iPad and I was like how old is this? And I realized it's like five years old, but it's, you know, working great. You know, and I think that's the challenge that Apple has is that the problem really is is that a lot of the software doesn't push the iPads hard as much as they can actually go, and so you end up being able to use them forever, which isn't as good if you're trying to sell them.

1:45:47 - Leo Laporte
But apparently, if you want, you can buy four of carl lagerfeld's ipod nano fifth generation just what I always wanted for a mere 600 euros but they're super blinged out, they're in.

1:46:04 - Andy Ihnatko
He was. He was like I've, I've an ipod fan and collector. You had like hundreds of them. So you see, like when did they make a yellow color way and the ipad? No, they never did.

1:46:14 - Leo Laporte
He just basically had one made for himself wow, did he so after third mark, third party did it, or after market, or he didn't get apple to do it, did he?

1:46:24 - Andy Ihnatko
um, I don't know, but it looks perfect. They have professional, they have professional photos in the in the south of east catalog and it looks like a professional job. It doesn't look like they just got like a vinyl wrap around it. Wow, I mean, he's carl lagerfeld.

1:46:35 - Leo Laporte
He has, he has manufacturing contacts who could basically say prototype me one of these it's estimated that lagerfeld, of course, was the lead designer for chanel had over 500 ipods when he passed away. Lagerfeld this is from Warren Ellis's website famously had an iPod nanny to digitize his collection for the iPods and add new music to the devices.

1:47:00 - Mikah Sargent
He treated them like cassette tapes basically yeah, so each one had its own little yeah. Wow, just talk about having so much money.

1:47:09 - Andy Ihnatko
I didn't have like a like cd case but it's filled with like ipods different pouches with ipods on them.

1:47:14 - Leo Laporte
There it goes easy listening and then here's the ipod classic and a microphone, all blinged out only 500 euros, the current bid. What's the microphone for? I don't know. What do we care right? It's an sm58 with an on off switch. So I don't know. Uh, you know, maybe maybe he had that when it yeah, it's shiny, maybe it's just an interesting pairing.

1:47:42 - Mikah Sargent
I'm like who decided those two went together? I?

1:47:44 - Leo Laporte
am singing to my ipod ipod and I blinked out the microphone. Yeah, yeah, you're watching mac break weekly, gentlemen. Uh, prepare your picks of the week. We are about to wrap things up. Before we do, though, I want to make a emotional plea. You, what are you laughing at, Mikah? I'm on my knees here begging you to join Club Twit. Actually, Mikah and I both do special content for Club Twit. You do that amazing crafting corner, which is wonderful. If we get 100 new members today, I will stream my flop and fold on my focaccia later today.

1:48:30 - Mikah Sargent
Nice.

1:48:31 - Leo Laporte
How about that? We did. We did stream Lisa making her famous bolognese. The club is a great hang. It's a great place to hang out. Uh. We have a club twit discord. We put special programming in there, uh.

But you also get ad-free versions of everything that we do, even video for some of the shows that we don't put out in video, like Mikah's Hands on Mac, Hands on Tech, um. But mostly you're getting the warm and fuzzy feeling that you're helping us keep this show on the air, helping pay for it's expensive, uh, to do this and uh, while we do have advertisers, they don't cover the entire cost. We need you to make up the difference. Now. We I think we make it pretty affordable seven dollars a month. Uh, you get all of those benefits.

Uh, Lisa is is working on me. She's wearing me down saying bring back the annual. So maybe, maybe we're going to end up doing that, but don't wait till that happens. Join for a month and then, if, if we bring back the annual, you can convert it to an annual subscription. twit.tv/clubtwit, I think for seven bucks you get an awful lot of good stuff. And if you appreciate what we do here and the hard work we put in and you want all these guys to get paid. Join the club. That's the best way to support us. We appreciate it. twit.tv/clubtwit, and thank you in advance.

Uh, now it Mikah since you're our special guest, I'll let you kick things off with the picks of the week.

1:49:59 - Mikah Sargent
All right, I got a really awesome present for christmas this year, uh, and I've been using it for a while now and it is the bee's knees. This is pretty. Uh, this is a bottle from lark l-a-r-q, and here's the cool thing when I got this, I thought that the extent of it was one of the features that it had, or two of the features that it has, and it ended up being three features. So, um, I wanted a water bottle that would sanitize itself, so that I could use it for a lot longer until I needed to wash it again, because I only use it for water, right? I'm only putting water in here, and I don't want to have to be washing it every single day if I don't have to. This has UVC light in it, and so every 15 minutes, it shines UV light and keeps the bottle sanitized. That was the extent of what I really wanted from this water bottle, but it came with a couple of other features as well.

It is also a Bluetooth-connected device that will let you track your water intake, and it integrates with Apple Health. So if you want to track your water, then you can do that, and then it has this LED light strip sort of thingy across the top and you can set it to kind of flash and give you a reminder. Hey, buddy, you said you wanted to take 90 ounces in today, so do that. And then, last but not least, this is the thing that I didn't even know that it had they now have a straw that has a little filter at the bottom and so you can use like tap water. Put tap water in there and it filters that tap water as you're drinking it. I don't, I don't use tap water, I use a reverse osmosis water. But if I was in a situation where, you know, I knew that only tap water was going to be available to me, I can go ahead and stick that straw in and it'll help to filter that as I'm using it. The other cool thing is, if you ever need to say you, you know you're going to a place and you aren't a hundred percent sure, you can activate the UV light for an extended period of time and it will help to clean the water, not just the bottle itself.

So, yeah, this is the Lark bottle bottle, pureviz 2. It's got all of that in there, because Lark also makes a pitcher. So this is the bottle. And then this is the second version of the bottle. It is pricey. That's why it was my big Christmas gift at $120. But A it comes in green, which already sells me, and B it looks great and it has all those cool features in it. So this has been basically with me nonstop since Christmas and will continue to be with me because I think it's amazing.

1:52:40 - Leo Laporte
Very nice, wow. And how big is it? It's 25 ounces.

1:52:46 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, this one's 24, 25 ounces. There's a larger one that's a little more pricey. Yeah, this one's 24, 25 ounces. There's a larger one that's a little more pricey. So if you take in a lot more water, you don't like refilling it a lot, then you can get that one instead.

1:52:57 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that straw, that's a hefty little filter on there. Yeah, see that it must be carbon.

1:53:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it does. It has actually a few things in it, so that it filters not just what you'd expect, but also chlorine and a few other chemicals out of the water.

1:53:12 - Alex Lindsay
Can you choose to use it with or without that filter?

1:53:14 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I use it without most of the time because I have reverse osmosis. So in fact, if I unscrew the lid, you'll see I don't have the straw attached at all. It just has a spout at the top and then you just connect the straw and then the spout becomes what you can suck out of. It's closed most of the time. You flip it up to actually access the spout. It's really nice. Oh, and USB-C charging, which obviously is a big thing. I want to make sure that it does USB-C.

1:53:39 - Leo Laporte
And eucalyptus green, which was, of course, very important to you.

1:53:43 - Mikah Sargent
I know Exactly 100%. It's funny. I told a friend there that she said what did you get christmas? And I said I got this water bottle. For her first question back to me was is it green?

1:53:54 - Leo Laporte
yes, I said yes, somebody knows pretty well. Nice, I think I'm gonna get one of these.

1:53:59 - Mikah Sargent
That looks great, but I'm gonna get black, because, yeah, that is pretty sleek, dark person and I want to get the giant one. I know I want more ounces yeah, I will say that's the one they. They were out of stock when my significant other purchased them, of the larger one, and so the smaller one. I do find myself refilling it a couple of times during the day, which isn't a huge deal, but if you are a pretty big water drinker, you might want to get the larger one.

1:54:25 - Alex Lindsay
I just thought. When I travel, I thought I wanted the larger one, but then I turned out with the smaller one because I can't fit it in my bag.

1:54:31 - Leo Laporte
Oh, travel's different.

1:54:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the other thing, too, is that the water bottle I was using before didn't fit in my cup holder very well. This one, easy, which I like, so yeah, that can be. Sometimes the difference is, how are they designing it so that I know if it's going to fit where I want it to?

1:54:47 - Leo Laporte
Do you recommend the?

1:54:48 - Mikah Sargent
silicone boot. I didn't know there was a dust boot. You didn't know. I don't know why, what it's it for, what does it? I?

1:54:58 - Alex Lindsay
can tell you why. I can tell you I don't know, I don't know why they put it in, but but I work on, I've worked on some. You know. Uh, clank at events people.

1:55:05 - Mikah Sargent
There's the move to metal is like you hear, clanking in seminars, all time, oh yeah, and if you're in like a theater that has a uh incline, it's just clink, clink.

1:55:17 - Alex Lindsay
Well, no, it's. It's not every time. Every time someone sets one down, you hear it go dank, and so I'm sure that someone said, hey, if we put silicon on it, it won't make any noise when you set it down.

1:55:27 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so that's what it is I don't recommend it because I'm not in a place where that happens a lot. But if you plan on going to a lot of seminars, leo, maybe seminar with like hardwood floors.

1:55:36 - Alex Lindsay
And I'm just telling you, with 200 people, yeah, that's a good point. It's a constant din, like it's constant, like it's just a ding, ding, ding. And if you're, and if you're the person doing av and it's getting your mics, you're especially conscious to the fact that people are ruining your, your mic, your record, cause you're just like so anyway. I'm sure that that's why the boots there.

1:55:54 - Mikah Sargent
That's probably why, yeah, Cause it is, it's a nice, um well. I don't know if you can hear that.

1:56:00 - Leo Laporte
It's metal, metal, metal. Uh yes, scooter X says you need a Silicon boot. Uh, Alex Lindsay pick of the week.

1:56:13 - Alex Lindsay
So, uh, I don't use teleprompters all the time, but when I do, I like to try to have a lot of control over them. We have we have clients who oftentimes want to have a teleprompter, and a lot of creators that we work with want to have teleprompters, and so I'm always on the scout for a new one. That, uh, is even better than the last ones, and so we got into. We started discussing this one called power prompter, and I really like it. This is by Suborbitalio and I just can't find any tool that it doesn't have that I would want. So if you look at this here, so now you can see it kind of. It looks a little odd right now because it's feeding back into itself, but that's a semi-transparent overview. Um, uh, shot there of what it's doing.

1:56:51 - Leo Laporte
So you can see yourself underneath it

1:56:54 - Alex Lindsay
you would right now this looks like kind of an arty arty feature here. Yeah, um, now you have the controller here and what's interesting about it is you have a lot. You can decide overlays. I can set up different background images. Um, I can decide you know how much high. You know how many lines are highlighted. Um, you know, in that, in that process there I'll turn this video preview off so that you can just see it there, and then you have the arrow. Of course, you can decide what you want to have there. You can decide what the position is like. Where is your target, depending on your teleprompter. Oftentimes that's important. Of course you have the flip controls. I'm now in video. You can record video here, which is kind of interesting. So you know what that's really good for is. If you're a creator and you want to be able to talk and see yourself, but you're also looking at your teleprompter, you know how do you read and see what your reaction is at the same time, and you can do it right inside the app. So you can do the recording here, which is new for me to be able to do that Also with displays.

A lot of times what happens is we have we want to display this teleprompter and have different settings for different. Like the person who's doing it wants to see it one way, I want to send it to a confidence monitor another way, and I can actually use I have three other monitors that are connected, so I could just grab one of these monitors, I just click it on and it'll take over that monitor as a teleprompter and it has its own settings. In that teleprompter I can also just spawn a new window so I can say I just want another window and I can drag this. Now this one still has a variety of setups here, but I can basically turn a lot of setups here. But I can. I can basically, you know, turn these, turn a lot of the displays on and off, and so this is a, but I can just, and then you can do it to n number of of devices. And so if you're looking for a teleprompter software, I think this is my new favorite.

You know this, this one here, as far as you know, and again, we oftentimes get into productions where someone really needs a teleprompter, really wants a teleprompter, and we always want to have and little things like being able to edit easily. You know, we get kind of touchy about being able to just kind of grab onto you know stuff you know and just type it in and not have it be. You know something that is you know, it instantly results here, but you don't see my work if you're the end user. Um, and so, uh, so anyway.

So this is a, it's a, it's pretty useful for us, uh, so, uh and and that's again our, it's become my new favorite and it's, you know, written. One of the things that makes teleprompt software better on a Mac is when it's written for the Mac, like it's not, this isn't a cross platform, like it kind of works on both. It really is just built to use the subsystems on the Mac, and so I, um, definitely, uh again, this is the new, new, new software that we're using now and we're pretty happy with.

1:59:45 - Leo Laporte
What, uh, how, what's? Tell me a little bit about the physical setup, because it's just software.

1:59:50 - Alex Lindsay
Well, this is just the software. You still need to put it on a screen. You still have to have a teleprompter, but you can also run this on a confidence monitor that's right under the screen, or right over the top.

Again, it does the overlay over top of video, so you could throw it. That video could be anything, so I could be throwing. One of the things that we do a lot of is we might have someone who wants to do prepared, a prepared talk, and that video isn't them, it's the remote room that they're speaking to, so it's everybody they can see, kind of see everyone behind them whether they're nodding or not, and they're still able to do that. Now we've had to do that with overlays. This does it right in the software, so it's a. It's pretty convenient. As far as how that works, you still need a physical teleprompter, but it does have, like for each screen whether you want to. You can decide whether you want to flip the, you know, flip the text back and forth. That's usually a pretty important thing with teleprompter software.

2:00:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, because if you're using a mirror, you need to be able to do that yeah, so you have that you know.

2:00:51 - Alex Lindsay
You have both the vertical flip here. So, um, you can see it. I don't know if I open up a new one here. I think you can. Nice, you'll be able to see it. But you can do the vertical flip and the and the horizontal flip, you know. Um, that's there so very nice.

2:00:58 - Leo Laporte
So, uh, it is. Uh, there's a 30-day free trial, even from suborbital and I think that they they do a 90-day.

2:01:06 - Alex Lindsay
I was reading on their website I didn't know that until today when I was getting the link for this. Uh, I guess they do 90 day, no questions, you know, uh, return if you don't like it, so you can, and it's uh, it's not a subscription, it's 50 bucks once, um, and, and then you're, you're off to the races, um, but I, they say that they'll return your money if you're not happy with it. And if you're doing teleprompt work, I, again on the mac, I haven't seen a better one.

2:01:29 - Leo Laporte
Nice. Thank you, Alex Lindsay, and finally Mr Andy Notko's pick of the week.

2:01:37 - Andy Ihnatko
We mentioned earlier a blog post that Paul Kavakis made about how badly Apple Intelligence can tell you who won the Super Bowl. He mentioned a graphics tool in the blog post that I had not heard of, but I've instantly become a huge fan of it's called RetroBatch, and the point of this app is to produce. It's hard to limit what it can do. Whatever you want to do with any file or collection of files or source of files, it can do it for you automatically and it does it by. Basically. Here is a toolbox of things that it can do it for you automatically and it does it by basically. Here is a toolbox of things that it can do with image files and then you simply click them together into a workflow like Lego. So, for instance, I've got, when I dump my SD card and clear it out, I normally archive it, but just basically it's just a folder full of raw files. So I can just simply create a workflow that says take everything from this SD card, convert each one of these raw files into JPEGs of 800 by 600, also create an image grid and then write it and all of those files to this other removable device that I have, so I can archive it correctly. Or you can do things like here is a PDF, please spit out all of the pictures from this PDF, but I also want you to classify them using artificial intelligence and anything that has a picture of a baby in it, I want you to divert it into this folder and I want you to scale it down. This folder and I want you to scale it down. Apply an unsharp mask, crop it down to these dimensions, add this watermark and then send it over here and you can script it. You can set it up so that any time a picture hits a certain folder, it will automatically be processed with the workflow that you've defined. It even works on clipboard. So if you're in a repetitive task where you're just looking for stuff and then copying it from one place and then pasting it into a new document, you can have it so that it basically waits for when an image file enters your clipboard, automatically apply the workflow you've applied to it and then, essentially, the next time you paste, it will take this 1,600 by 2,400. Next time you paste, it will have it will take this 1600 by 2400 image file, image, art or image that you created and on your clipboard will be a downsized, sharpened, compressed JPEG version of it with a drop shadow and with a watermark and all this other stuff with it. It's really, really cool. It's.

If you don't download it and try it right now, just remember that it exists and the next time you have anything that involves a repetitive action, download it and try it. There's a free seven day free trial. There's like a basic version and a pro version. Like the pro version allows you to do scripting. It allows you to do the AI stuff. The basic version is 20 bucks and you own it. The pro version is $20 and you own it. The pro version is $40 and you own it.

And I wish I could go back in time and hand this back to me when I was writing books, and the number of times that I would hear from my publisher one week before the drop deadline said oh, by the way, we've just decided that we need all of your image files in a different format, even though, yeah, you talked to us about this at the start of the project and agreed that I that anything, anything that needed to be done, you would do on your end. But we decided that we don't have to do that anymore. I could have just created this with retro batch, basically pointed it at my project folder and it would have automatically transmogrified in any way, shape or form that I needed to. Really, really great app and I could. It's so beautifully done, uh, that I just. I just want to keep playing with it to see what it can do.

It's the chainsaw effect. I sometimes talk about A great tool or great piece of software. First time you have an electric reciprocating saw or chainsaw, you cut up the fallen branches the reason why you bought it and then does such a good job with that, you start looking for other things you can cut with it because you just want to see what it can do, and that's how good this app is. It's called retro batch 2. Uh, it's from sorry, I just put tabbed away from her, it's from flying meat software flyingmeatcom.

2:05:41 - Leo Laporte
Uh, and they do acorn. I mean, they know they also make the acorn fantastic, yeah, so yeah, it's it's, it's just great stuff really great. I I was not aware of this program. Good to know, I thought I was not aware of this program good to know.

2:05:51 - Alex Lindsay
I thought I was not aware, but I have to admit I went to look for it. I was like, oh I, I own the original, I own it.

2:05:58 - Andy Ihnatko
I haven't used it as much as I think I used it a lot when I got it and then I just haven't had one of those things when you need it, though if you can say if there were a kid in my neighborhood that would take $20 to process these 800 photos, I would would feel like I was taking advantage of it, but I would pay it. Yeah, that's why, even if you don't, even if you just don't, just download it to have it there so that you remember that it exists and you'll say I would much rather have the next two hours of my life available to me than $20. I can make another $20. I cannot make another two hours of my life. Yes, I cannot make another two hours of my life.

2:06:29 - Leo Laporte
Yes, retro Batch 2 from flyingmeatcom. That's Andy and Akko. When are you going to be on GBH?

2:06:36 - Andy Ihnatko
next, next week, from Wednesday, I believe, at 12.30 pm, go to wgbhnewscom to listen to it live or, later, love it.

2:06:48 - Leo Laporte
Mike is Crafting Corner coming up on the 19th. Mike will be back uh thursday for tech news weekly. What are you covering? I know you tried to get the pebble guys on and they're too busy they are.

2:06:59 - Mikah Sargent
But well, I'm I'm going to pre-record the interview, so we still will be good, excellent mikakovsky about, uh, the return of pebble, so I'm really excited about that. And, uh, this is the fourth thursday of the month, so we will also be joined by Emily Forlini of PCMag for our stories of the week I love Emily.

2:07:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, oh, that'll be fun. Yeah, the Pebble is now open source. It's back. Google allowed them to, they freed it.

2:07:24 - Andy Ihnatko
Free at last. They're trying to make new ones, yeah.

2:07:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, very exciting, so cool.

2:07:32 - Leo Laporte
Oh, I can't wait to watch that. That's this Thursday and, of course, Mikah does Hands-On Tech and iOS Today and they're recording next Tuesday and we'll see you soon, I hope.

2:07:42 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, Mikah. Yeah, it's been great.

2:07:44 - Leo Laporte
Always fun to have you. Jason will be back next week, but it's always nice when we get Mikah on week. But it's always nice when we get mike on and, of course, Alex lindsey.

2:07:53 - Alex Lindsay
He's at office hours. Dot global. What's the latest? We're answering questions. It turns out every day we just get.

2:07:57 - Leo Laporte
That's all people want. They just want questions yeah, I mean what?

2:08:00 - Alex Lindsay
uh, tomorrow is our our audio day. We have a lot of audio experts from all over the world, and so we get tend to get heavy questions in that area. Uh, thursday is video day we've got a lot of video experts and Friday, or IT, so cloud production in the cloud or AWS questions, and then on the weekends we just kind of we don't stream it publicly and we all just have internal conversations. So those are some of my favorites. Sunday is a day that we people ask about office hours itself and we just kind of have more of an internal chat.

2:08:31 - Mikah Sargent
So those are all things that we're doing on a weekly basis very good almost.

2:08:35 - Alex Lindsay
We're approaching, quickly approaching our uh, our five-year anniversary of not missing a day. Isn't that amazing, wow, cool crazy, man crazy and we're now.

You know we're, we're starting, we're about to start streaming to LinkedIn. If you watch it and the color looks at all odd. We are working on we're streaming HDR to YouTube. So it's HDR 4K 60 to YouTube. We're about to add 5.1 to it just because we can. But it also is pushing the outer envelope of what YouTube streams. So if you're watching it in an HDR set, it's going to look great. If you're watching it in an hdr set, it's going to look great. If you watch it in sdr, uh, sometimes it's. You know, we're still working with youtube engineering to perfect that that look. So, um, we're constantly kind of trying to push the outer edge there very nice.

2:09:24 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Alex, thank you Andy, thank you Mikah. Thanks to all of you, a special thanks to our club twit members, who make this show possible. If you're not yet a member, twit.tv/clubtwit, it's thanks to you. We can stream in all those different platforms Discord for the club members YouTube Twitch yes, we're on LinkedIn. Yes, we're on TikTok. I don't know how that happened, but we are also on Kick and Facebook, and I'm also on kick uh and Facebook and I'm sure something else that I've left out eight different platforms. So watch us live, oh, x.com, watch us live, and that way you get to see the show.

Uh, the first draft of it, but of course it's a podcast. So, uh, after john ashley takes it in hand, we'll have a polished final version available for you at the website twit.tv/mbw. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. Great way to share clips if you want to tell your friends about something you saw here today. And, of course, the easiest way to get it subscribe in your favorite podcast player and that way you'll get it automatically audio or video the minute it's done. Thank you everybody for being here. We will be back next Tuesday, as usual, 11 am Pacific 2 pm. Eastern Time, 1900 UTC. Unfortunately, the time has come for me to say get back to work because break time is over. Bye-bye.