MacBreak Weekly 967 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 and Jason are here, Alex has the day off, but Mikah Sargent's joining us. We will talk about the tariffs. It's bad for Apple stock, but is it bad for iPhone buyers and how much more will Apple gear cost? We'll also talk about a victory in the UK for Apple and imminent trouble incoming in the EU. All that and more coming up on MacBreak Weekly

This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 967, recorded Tuesday, April 8th 2025. Breathy, but not in a ditch. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Apple news, or should I say day five of Apple stock held hostage. Joining us now the only guy who laughed at that joke because he has no Apple stock Andy Ihnatko. Hello Andrew.

0:01:03 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, yeah, suddenly the guy who was wasting all of his money on comic books instead of throwing it away in the stock market and investing in his future, somehow now. Now who's laughing? Yeah, you were smart. Okay, back to me after I'm 72 or 73, but for now, mr smarty, I'm still enjoying those comic books also with us.

0:01:22 - Leo Laporte
Uh, mr Jason Snell from sixcolors.com.

0:01:25 - Jason Snell
Hello, Jason hello leo, I don't want to um turn off our audience, but I too, like andy also, don't own any none of us, actually, zero of us, yeah it might be in my uh, in my retirement?

0:01:38 - Leo Laporte
yeah, uh, index, possibly I don't, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, that's, I'm in like some Vanguard 2025 Target retirement fund, but all I know is this year with everything else we couldn't. There it is oh geez, don't you didn't, could you?

0:01:56 - Andy Ihnatko
oh my God ah, the Utah desert is very, very picturesque. Imagine glaciers carving for, carving through the Butte, the sandstone. Look at that butte, that's a beauty, those rock formations what day was that?

0:02:09 - Leo Laporte
oh, april 2nd, it was liberation day. Got it also with this Mikah Sargent filling in for Alex Lindsay. Hi, Mikah, hello leo, nice to see you, good to see you as well of course, Mikah regular on ios today with rosemary orchard and tech news weekly.

And we are going to do you and I are going to do something different for wwdc, june 9th. We are so skittish now about getting pulled down. Well, first it was just youtube. So we, when we you know what we do, what we've always done, we've done for decades now, uh, is is kind of talk over the event, uh, annotating it, if you will, as they speak, but also showing their, their video on the screen, uh. But Apple took us down, gave us strikes on YouTube for doing that, so we stopped doing it on YouTube and the last time we did it, twitched it. So, while I think we're safe on x, kick facebook, linkedin, who knows? So what we're going to do is we're going to do it, but we're going to do it in private. We're going to do it on the discord channel, which gives us two advantages one, apple's not a club member I don't think apple's lawyer probably isn't but two, we can involve you. You'll get to participate, so that's good. We'll get to get the comments from, something Alex has been doing for years, so that'll be a lot of fun.

June 9th for WWDC Looking forward to it, plus, you and I don't get to work together very often, so it's nice. Is Kik safe for keynotes? Somebody named 60F and kick says yes, I would expect so. Um, I mean, obviously the story uh of the week is going to be these tariffs. Uh, right now it's a 54 tariff. Uh, there's threats of it going to 104. Actually, maybe it is 104, I don't know. I haven't. Don't have the latest on china.

0:04:11 - Andy Ihnatko
There's, yeah, there's a, there's been a threat, threat from china with counter tariffs, and then a threat from trump.

0:04:17 - Leo Laporte
Say well, guess what, bubby, your, your tariffs got doubled today, on april 8th which is which cost in Apple's market cap $640 billion in the first three days. I think Apple and the market in general are recovering a little bit because people are seeing it as a buying opportunity probably.

0:04:38 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I think Bank of America has put the rebound buy at like 250 a share and it's not there yet. I think I also saw another financial report that said that apple was really one of only three tech companies that got hit super, super hard. They really maybe that maybe that doesn't mean an overall lack of confidence.

0:04:57 - Leo Laporte
Maybe it's just that, okay, we're afraid of these three and then, when things get a little less unpredictable, right, we'll buy back in it makes sense, though, apple, um, despite the fact that, well, apple thought wisely, oh well, we'll make our phones in other places, like Vietnam and India and Brazil, all of which got equally massive tariffs.

0:05:16 - Jason Snell
Well, not equally, though, right.

0:05:18 - Leo Laporte
Almost equally.

0:05:19 - Jason Snell
That's one of the stories. Here is like Brazil's is, I think, fairly low, but they make those phones in Brazil for the Brazilian market. So you have this question of like, what's more expensive to ship, pay whatever duty you need to in Brazil and ship the Brazilian phones to the US. Likewise, India is not as bad as China, but Vietnam is bad.

0:05:43 - Leo Laporte
Vietnam's where the laptops are made right now, so there's a lot of consternation going on there.

0:05:48 - Jason Snell
I think that's definitely one. Wall Street Journal already reported that one of Apple's first things that it was doing was redirecting iPhone, because you can think about it like the phones that were meant to be shipped to the US can be shipped elsewhere, and you can replace some of those with phones that were built in India or Brazil.

0:06:06 - Leo Laporte
It's complicated, though, because the parts almost all come from china, right, yeah, so it's complicated, yeah, yeah, and chips are, uh, you know, chips seem to be, right now at least, uh, carved out. So you know, tsmc doesn't have to pay the taiwanese tariffs on the chips it sells. Apple.

0:06:27 - Andy Ihnatko
According to the times of india, apple flew five flights full of iphones from india and china in three days yeah trying to beat the tariffs yeah, this is oddly enough like one of the things that apple has been praised for is their ability to do basically just-in-time manufacturing. They don't keep warehouses full of unsold product. They manufacture what they need to sell in the immediate future. But now that means that, no, we don't have millions, we don't have six months where the product landed. Right now we have maybe I don't know what it is, but it's not a comfortable number. So they're going to have to start to source to give them at least enough room to not risk make a decision about pricing and their reaction a week after the tariffs are put in, but to make that decision a month or two months or three months when things seem to have settled down a little bit. But yeah, the speculation is all over the map as to how prices are going to be affected once apple can no longer sell stock that's already been landed.

0:07:25 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and of course it's not just Apple. Nintendo stopped its sale of the new Switch until it settles out, but Jaguar and Land Rover have stopped shipping cars to the United States. Other manufacturers expect to do something similar. The good news is, we can just build all of those here in the US, and so this is all going to be a net positive yeah, I mean, I think we're all supposed to.

0:07:51 - Andy Ihnatko
We all should pitch in. Just like you know world war ii, when everybody was playing their victory gardens, you'll be getting in the mail some wiring, a few chips and a section of a board. If everybody could just like do a little bit. All they're asking for is do a little bit of soldering maybe maybe 11 uh, vlsi, very large scale integrated uh systems on ships, not a whole lot, just like 10 or 11. You can do it on the knock it off on a couple of weekends.

0:08:16 - Leo Laporte
We just pull together and support everybody does their part, uh good fight this great war yeah apple customers uh, I imagine the customers of a lot of things rushing to the stores. They say it's like Christmas at the Apple store, buying iPhones before there is any.

0:08:32 - Jason Snell
I know some people who work in Apple retail who say that there is a lot of sale going on right now. Like, literally, they have their targets of how many phones they want to sell in a day and they're selling like two or three times as many per day just on iPhones and presumably other products too. So there's definitely remember how we talked about how COVID kicked off a buying cycle for Apple of iPads and Macs, and all of that because people were at home. It feels like we got a tariff buying cycle here which is going to lead to some very interesting comments when they do their quarterly results where they're like oh man, we sold so many iPhones. Okay, that's the good news, here's the bad news, right, like we'll see, but they are.

A lot of people are jumping on it, which I think is funny, because I'm not sure Apple's going to do price increases for existing products. They don't want to. They never want to. It's very rare overseas when there are major currency fluctuations. Even then when they do a repricing of an existing product, it's rare. It's more of an exception than a rule. So I don't think that's what they want to do here.

They've got some margin to play with. They've got some stuff that they put in the channel, that they brought over on all those flights. So they've got some of that going on. And then my guess is that, as as new products come out, they will all be priced higher. That's that's my gut feeling about it is is that they will do, and they might even do, that thing that they did with the iphone 15 pro max, where they didn't raise the price but they dropped the lowest spec off so that in the end you couldn't buy at 1099 pro max anymore, for with 128 you had to buy the 1199 one with 256 or 256 and 512. Whatever you see my point, I think that that is part of what the strategy is. They may give back some margin in the short run um, especially right now, but they don't have enough margin to give back all of it, though, do they?

well, I mean, their hardware margins are like almost 40, almost 40 percent. There there is probably a limb, I mean culturally. They're not going to give up their profit margins long term. That's why they are the most profitable company in the world, right, but in the short run it, when things are uneasy and they don't have new products, they may be able to stave off like repricing everything in their product line now. But at some point, you know if they can hold out, I think what they'd probably prefer is to wait until they release new products at new price points. We'll see if they can afford that also do. I mean waiting game seems to be the best game to play right now to me, because, if you can, would you want to make a permanent, irrevocable strategy decision right now about this policy?

I wouldn't, Because it may be different tomorrow or later today, or in a week or in a month. So I think that part of Apple's conservatism about things like pricing kind of kicks in here and they're like we'll load up the market by bringing in all those airplanes full of devices and we're going to play the shell game where we're like take those phones from India, bring them over here, put those phones from China, send them to India. We'll do this whole thing going on there and then see what happens while planning in the background. For my guess is price increases. So the new MacBook Pro comes out, the new iPhone comes out, the new iPad comes out all this fall, I would look.

If you look at the difference in buying power from 2020 to 2025, you know everything should be more expensive than it is and Apple holds those low prices. Like a MacBook Air shouldn't be $999 because, in terms of what it cost at $999 in 2020, today it would cost like $1,200. And they've held the line there right. So, between inflation and tariffs, yeah, I do expect that they'll raise prices, but I don't think it's going to be. If they can help it, I don't think they're going to do it next week or next month. I think they would rather just say here is the new iPhone and yeah, it costs $1,199.

0:12:29 - Andy Ihnatko
I just hope that they don't, apple as well as every other industry. I hope that they don't normalize the tariffs, that they don't say, oh well, guess what? This phone, six months from now, this new phone costs $1,100. We were planning on having it cost $900, but you don't need to know that it's now cost $1,100. I think that the public, the American public, needs to be aware of you are paying $200, that you don't need to be paying for this, that there is a $200 tax that's being applied to this. That is unnecessary. It's not that the phone has just gone up. It's not that the cost of manufacturing has gone up. It's not that they're adding $200 worth of features or $200 worth of fit and finish or $200 worth of support. You are paying an unnecessary $200 tax and I just don't. I hope that we don't get normalized to this and simply say, oh well, this is just what things cost right now because, it's artificial.

0:13:25 - Leo Laporte
Car manufacturers are going to do, because they have stickers in the window, so they're going to add a line that says import fees. So it'd be very clear, right? You know, if you go up to the gas tag, at least in California, they always break down. And, by the way, the taxes on this are adding, you know, 80 cents to your gallon.

0:13:42 - Mikah Sargent
Same here in Oregon.

0:13:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're on the sticker and like a different color so it stands out. Yeah, they don't want people to think they're charging that much or they're even making that much. Um, apple insiders reporting that they saw a report last night from ubs, a big bank, and, of course, investment bank. Uh, offer saying that apple will probably offer smaller price hikes. Instead of, for instance, a 23, a $2,300, iphone 16 Pro Max with one terabyte, it'll be closer to $2,000. Okay, fine, big deal. They also point out this only accounts for tariffs at 54%. Tomorrow the putative 104% tariffs go into effect.

So it's so unclear what's going to happen.

0:14:28 - Andy Ihnatko
And we should mention that this is I'm going to quote Hunt for Red October. Like this is going to get out of hand. This is going to get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it. The Chinese trade minister said, quote, that China intends to quote fight to the end, unquote, against the counter to Trump's counter threat. Like, bring it there. They're like, bring it on, dude.

We've been chipping. We've had for the past China has had for the past many years, the idea that we would like to get our citizens to buy fewer imported goods. We want Huawei to become the de facto phone supplier, a premium phone supplier for all of China. We want them to be running an operating system that was developed in China. We want them running computers and servers that were built in China. This works towards it's not like they're, it's not that they're going to have a problem with an ins, an inswelling of of people saying but we want an iPhone, we can't get an iPhone, why are iPhones costing so much money? Now they'll say, oh well, gosh. Well, these Huawei phones are pretty nice. Wow, look at the camera array. That's really swell.

0:15:40 - Leo Laporte
The Chinese market's always been a kind of hot and cold for Apple Anyway it's getting worse and worse.

Yeah, ming-chi Kuo said that Apple doesn't raise its prices, its overall gross profit margin would face a significant drop of 8.5% to 9%. I think that's out of date. Now he's doing math. Yeah, he did say there are five ways Apple can reduce the impact of the tariffs. And, by the way, I can't read Chinese, so I'm quoting the article on MacRumors. Thank you, macrumors. Apple can boost iPhone production in India. Yep, if India can secure trade tariff exemptions through new trading agreements, so Apple's going to be eyeing. The problem is they have to build factories. So they've got factories now in where Vietnam, india, brazil and China.

0:16:28 - Jason Snell
Malaysia, malaysia, that's right Thailand.

They have been since, especially COVID, they have been diversifying their manufacturing. The problem is, like you said, it takes years. It takes years to stand up a factory and what is their capacity like? That's the in the background. Apple's been doing this, but they've got a. They got a. You know there's a limit to what they can do playing that shell game and you also don't know what the tariff is going to be, because some of those countries that they move to, like everybody in american manufacturing, was like ah, let's go to vietnam. Uh, that gives us a bulwark. You know again.

49 china and they got a 49 tariff. So it's like, okay, uh, never mind, forget it so this is of course the thing.

0:17:10 - Leo Laporte
Business hates is uncertainty. Market hates us it's hard to plan. Yeah, uh, you know if, if we knew it's going to be this, apple would plan and they could. You know they could do stuff, but it's just completely unknown. Yeah, quo says they can raise prices. Of course, yeah, and and the reason I think this hit apple hardest is because iphones are half of apple's revenue.

0:17:32 - Jason Snell
Right of course, but but all of apple's revenue is assembled outside the us.

0:17:36 - Leo Laporte
That's good in countries with high tariffs but the iphone is what everybody's focused on. Services are done right here in the us, yeah there are no tariffs on services don they're about to lose 20 billion dollars of that.

0:17:46 - Jason Snell
Oh well yeah, and the margins on tariffs are great, but you still have your hardware margins and I think that's the that's. I mean he's. He's right, they can eat margin for a little, while. There is a limit to to their appetite for eating margin. Um, like I said, it's a cultural thing. Cutting margin is repelled in apple's culture like a virus like it. It is they seriously. They didn't get where they are by not having huge margins. They make huge margins. That's Apple's business. They don't play in areas where they can't make huge profits selling products. That's what they do.

0:18:15 - Leo Laporte
I think the upshot of this is going to be. The perfectly predictable upshot of this is going to be we as users are not going to upgrade as often, we're not going to buy as much stuff right? Apple's in a tough position because unfortunately they're. All of their hardware is so good and so overpowered.

0:18:33 - Jason Snell
There isn't much incentive to upgrade you could, you could afford to wait, and uh, also, their, their low-end stuff is great too. So another side effect of this is going to be, I think, in the long run assuming prices go, that they're going to sell more MacBook Airs and some fewer MacBook Pros. They're going to sell more iPhone 16s or 16Es and a few fewer Pro Maxes and Pros, and you'll see some. If they raise prices, you will get some downward pressure and the buying cycle will extend. I think both of those things will happen and the fact is like like that 16E came out and we're like you know, it's nice. I was just with family buying new iPhones at an Apple store. We were taking a family trip and you know it's one of those things where it's like well, Jason's here, let's all go to the Apple store.

0:19:19 - Panelist
And I'm thinking oh God, no, no, don't, Don't put me.

0:19:21 - Jason Snell
I was literally ping-ponging between two different tables.

0:19:23 - Leo Laporte
I would do that. Over here, Jason, over here, come over here. I'm going to the iPhone store. Can you meet me?

0:19:30 - Jason Snell
And I did tell my mother-in-law, since she holds on her last phone was an iPhone SE, first generation, right. So I was like spring for the 16. Don't just get the 16E, Spring for the 16. You're going to keep this phone. You're 80. You may keep this phone the rest of your life. Just get the good phone. Okay, Get the better phone than the E. But the fact is that 16E it's pretty nice. It is pretty nice, and if everything's going to raise, I think that it becomes more attractive to US buyers for sure.

0:19:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and the other thing, part of this, what I was thinking about yesterday is that every company, but Apple particularly, prides itself on thinking way, way in advance. Right now they've got design imperatives for the iPhone 20 and the iPhone 19, the iPhone 21. As we said before, one of the biggest difficulties of this for corporations is uncertainty. You can make a plan for. Here is where we want to be in five years. Here is the set of AR wearable glasses that we want to be selling in five or six years time. Here are the features that we want to deliver on the new iPhone, like in five years time. But if you don't know what it's going to cost you to bring these devices into the United States, does that mean that now there have to be discussions inside Apple that we have to delete this feature, this feature and this feature from the iPhone 19 or the iPhone 20? Or we would want to think harder. We were already kind of on the bubble about whether we wanted to ship AR glasses. Now that we don't know if we can meet a price point that we thought was absolutely imperative, should we just table that for another couple of years and come back to it? It's hard to know what the total sum effect of this tariff war is going to be. And of course, we're talking about Apple, because this is an Apple podcast, but this is happening to every small business.

One of my favorite YouTubers is Bumgartner Restoration. He restores paintings. He got like contact from all of his suppliers saying that the, the belgian linen that he buys to like do interfacing things like that that's going up 50. The paints that he has to that he uses are going to go up 30, not like in the future, but today, right now. So a lot of his expenses have gone up 30 to 50 and now he has to decide am I going to to have to? You know what am I going to respond to that? So we're talking. Just thank you for giving me a moment to make sure that we point out that this is going to hurt little people, individuals, small companies in a way that could affect their actual survival, and it's correct for us to, in this context, also talk about yes, apple how they're going to, what are they going to be doing in five years time? They will be around, they will weather this, but I wanted to do a mass sell-off with big discounts to get those out and clear because of tariffs.

0:22:49 - Jason Snell
Right, because he could not afford to take a loss on those books sitting in a warehouse in Canada because that's where he happened to have them printed. And that's the thing. I think, yes, there's a huge human toll. You're going to see it in small businesses first, then you will see it move up the chain. It's going to affect a lot of people. The fact is and I know there are people out there who will say, and this is the argument, right, it's like, well serves them.

Right for not sourcing things from the United States. The problem with that is a lot of stuff we don't make it anymore, we don't do it anymore, or what it costs is so much that it would change the product price, and then you wouldn't sell any product because somebody would buy it cheaper on Amazon coming from China anyway. And so the challenge here is that I think you will see people try to say are there things I could do in the United States? But the balance is still the same, which is a lot of this stuff, even if you can find an American supplier for it, it's going to cost a lot more than what you did, because everybody's business assumptions are based on decades of relatively free international trade and if it's over, it's going to take years for everybody to recalibrate and it's going to be ugly.

0:24:00 - Leo Laporte
We have. You know this mirrors our experience with the Internet. Everybody thought everything was free on the internet. We've had a kind of rude Awakening that it isn't. None of it was free and it was monetized by selling our information to advertisers. Um, we've been living in a free, relatively free trade uh system for yeah, a century there. Uh, Elon posted you Elon is totally pro-free trade, like zero tariffs, which is bringing him into a little conflict with the White House. He posted a Milton Friedman video here. I'll just play the end of it.

0:24:35 - Panelist
Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. People who don't speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are, in effect, trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending out orders from some central office. It was a magic of the price system, the impersonal operation of prices.

0:25:14 - Leo Laporte
And free trade and I'm not a Milton Friedman fan by any stretch of the imagination, but he's absolutely right. The costs of goods were kept way down by the fact that we have free trade, and we are now going to be paying the real price, I guess, in effect, plus a little bit of fact sheesh for the government and it's going to cause a great change, just as it has caused great disruption on the internet and it's not gonna.

0:25:43 - Andy Ihnatko
it's gonna take a while to shake out um yeah, and also quickly keep in mind that even stuff that you think, oh well, a company like google, a company like facebook, a company like apple and creating its services, well they're, that's not going to be affected that much because they're, they're, they're just server, they're just. You know services, well, they run on servers. Yeah, and servers are hardware that are also not manufactured all it's turtles all the way down, yeah.

0:26:07 - Mikah Sargent
Because they also have employees who need to be able to survive, and they also need to attract talent, and so then they're going to need to offer more money to them, and so then the money needs to go there. It's just, it's, it's, it's going to hurt everybody, Our, our network.

0:26:20 - Leo Laporte
We're just waiting for advertisers to start canceling. Yeah and I said. I said to lisa well, don't worry, because they're all software companies. Uh, they're not selling physical goods.

0:26:30 - Jason Snell
She said yeah, but the people they're selling their services to are are selling the physical, because that's why people, a lot of people, were scratching their heads about meta having problems and it's like meta's business is advertising and a lot of it is advertising goods that are from, you know, from other countries and imported and sold to Americans, and like that business is going to get blown up. I wonder about, like, the impact of Amazon is a great example where so I mean Amazon viewed one way, amazon is a giant pipe from China to the United States and then a truck takes it out of the pipe and puts it in your front, at your front door, right Like that.

0:27:06 - Leo Laporte
So there was a. There was a de minimis exemption for goods under I think it was eight hundred dollars, which basically facilitated that trade with Timu and Alibaba and she in and all the Chinese manufacturers via Amazon, among others. That de minimis exemption was lifted. They, they pay a tariff on the first dollar. Yeah, so this is, that's a dramatic change. All that, uh, cheap fast fashion people were buying, right not gonna be cheap tech too.

0:27:39 - Jason Snell
A lot, a lot of cheap tech where there's little gadgets that you could get, like I. I don't know the the provenance of Andy's pick of the week from last week, but that little brilliant USB gadget that shows you has a screen and it shows you how much power is passing through, and all of that Like that's awesome. That is almost certainly from a standard Chinese chipset put together by a no-name company in China. I don't know that for sure, but I'm just going to guess Stuff like that that you can get on Amazon. And you look, I looked when andy was talking about his pick and it's like it costs almost nothing. It's like 10 bucks or something and uh, you know those, the all that stuff's going to get blown up. Now maybe, yeah, maybe, that will just cost 20 bucks going forward. But like, this is the whole idea that that may not seem like a lot but it's a. It is a doubling in price, and if every price doubles, that's bad that real bad.

I already talk to people all the time, already before any of this, who I keep hearing from people who say you go to the grocery store and your bill is enormous and you didn't buy anything and like, that is kind of where we already are, and some might argue that that is a situation that facilitated the election of Donald Trump and, folks, the tariffs are not going to make that better it's a regressive tax as well, which is problematic because, uh, you know, donald trump and his ilk can afford to pay twice as much.

0:28:55 - Mikah Sargent
They've got surplus funds, but there are a lot of people who are using uh things like clarna to be able to pay for their groceries.

0:29:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, buy now, pay later for that burrito right just to buy their groceries. Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's been devastating another.

0:29:11 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, one of the other interesting things that came out of, I think, was the financial times that got confirmation from the white house that apple did not get any carve-outs whatsoever I'm so surprised what happened to tim cook's diplomacy and his million dollars that he gave to the inauguration. Well, trump's birthday parade military parade is coming up in June, so maybe he's looking for another million bucks for that.

0:29:32 - Jason Snell
See what I was going to say is imagine how much worse it would be if they didn't give him a million dollars for his inauguration. Ooh, whoa.

0:29:39 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean in the past, Tim Cook has managed to avoid all of this through diplomacy.

0:29:47 - Jason Snell
I think that is. I mean, I did a piece that will be on Macworld tomorrow, but I was trying to come up with a list, like Ming-Chi Kuo, of like ways Apple can deal with this. And number one on their priority list is working the refs. It really is. It is connections in the White House talking to Trump. It's finding ways, because what Apple has in its favor is it is a great American company that dominates the world, that is powerful, that is good for the USA and, if you and it's a weird situation to have the president of the United States beating up its own companies in the name of making America great again. So they have that on their side and then they have to have the relationships. And they did this the last time. It's going to be harder this time because this is a very different Trump administration. I think we're all seeing that. But, like I do think that fundamentally, apple does have the optics of of favoring Samsung over Apple, for example, or or laying waste to one of these great American companies, so that it is faltering and it's a perception in the economy. So I think that they have to work the reps, and they have to.

I don't know what form that takes. I don't know if that is carve outs for different parts of what they're doing or if it's facilitating conversations between the US and other countries to get deals involved, because I know they keep fascinating between deals and no deals for this. But like, in the end, what politicians want all politicians is a win. They want to look good and you could say, and you could use logic, which is a dangerous thing to do right now. With anything that's going on, you lose logic and say, well, wait a second. Why is it a win if they negotiate a resolution to the problem they themselves created, and all I would say is that's politics. So I think Apple has to work the refs and they have been successful in the past and that is one reason why you see Tim Cook show up at White House. Stuff is because they are trying very hard to have a good relationship with the people, who might be able to lessen their pain.

0:31:47 - Andy Ihnatko
But it is a very, very dangerous game, because let's step back for one moment and take a look at what the Trump administration is doing to education. They are basically saying yeah, I know that we're supposed to give you half a billion dollars for your public school system, but we're going to withhold that unless you agree to make ideological changes that we wish to inflict upon the school system. You're either in or you're out. If you are going to support us in our ideological campaign, you can have the money that you're supposed to get. Otherwise, we're going to tie this up for years and years and years. Who's to say that that's not the game that the administration is playing with companies? That well, you thought that just because you gave me a million dollars and you had a chicken club sandwich at my resort a couple of times with me that I'm going to cut you some slack. No, we are upset. We need to see from you that you support us not only politically, not only economically, but also ideologically, that if you don't want these tariffs to be double what they are right now.

Here is a list of some apps that we would like to not have on the app store anymore. Here's you know how you do that DEI special band every June. We want you to stop doing that or stop or at least stop promoting it so much and come back for another lunch and we'll talk about it after we see that you are supporting us, because we want friends, we don't want enemies here. Why would we help our enemies?

So this is part of that larger conversation about how there is almost complete uncertainty and fear, and uncertainty always plays into the hands of tyrants. I'm not saying that anybody's a tyrant here, but, historically speaking, you don't hold on to power outside of the law by following rules and allowing people to make free choices. You have to put the pressure on them, put the handcuffs on them, put the hurt on them, and this administration has shown that it's very, very happy putting the hurt on anybody, including hospitals, including people who just want their social security benefits, people who are in this country legally. We'll put the hurt on them if, ideologically, this is a sound move for us to make. That's what scares the hell out of me about all of this well, there you have it.

0:34:11 - Leo Laporte
I don't know if there's anything more to say about it. Well said, uh, andy, uh, we are entering in unknown, into unknown territory. Um, and I think they burned the ships. I'm thinking there's no return, but we shall see.

0:34:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Second hunt, Red October. I almost made a third. We are pilgrims in an unholy land.

0:34:33 - Jason Snell
You fool, you've murdered us. That one would work.

0:34:39 - Leo Laporte
Actually, Jason Calacanis, who is to some degrees, has connections. Let's say, I don't know if he's a friend of the administration, but certainly has connections uh, on sunday was on twit and said don't worry, uh, trump is sensitive to public opinion and will lift the tariffs. There has been no evidence of that, although I think the market really believes it, which is why it keeps struggling to they are applying logic.

0:35:00 - Andy Ihnatko
That is their underling, because that's how they undermine themselves uh I you know what.

0:35:05 - Leo Laporte
What it really feels like at this point between China and the us is uh two, uh bullies, uh lined up nose to nose, and uh, we're gonna be in a fight chicken right it's chicken. I don't know if anybody's gonna but no one's trying to.

Yeah, get out of the way and on that cheery note, let us take a break. There is there are other things to talk about and we shall get to those just a bit, including, by the way, I'm very happy to say, the for return, after a two-week absence, of the vision pro segment. Just around the corner, Andy IHnatko, Jason Snell, Mikah Sargent, filling in for Alex Lindsay great to have all three of you.

Our show today brought to you by 1Password, a name, I know. You know I've got a rhetorical question about your security situation at work right now. This is for the for the it the department, the security folks, the cyber security folks.

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The TikTok: oh my God, it's just like the TikTok saga continues Another 75 days. The president extended it. Apple has now been given official permission by the attorney general, pam Bondi, to keep the app in the app store. Another letter to Google and Apple, this one from Friday, requesting the company follow oh, now it's a request the new executive order and keep the apps in the in the store.

0:38:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that was super important because it's all they had going was the word of the administration saying yeah, this law is absolutely in effect, it stands. The penalties, which are enormous, absolutely stand. We have just agreed on a whim that we are not going to enforce it. We absolutely pinky swear we are not going to enforce it.

And I'm surprised that Google and Apple put TikTok back on the stores on that basis, put TikTok back on the stores on that basis, but now, hopefully, this letter basically says that yeah, look, the Attorney General has said you have permission to do this. It's unlikely. Now they're safe and it's amazing that people were allowed to download the app even before that. But isn't it crazy the number of people that are supposedly trying to make a move on it Amazon is not surprising, but you have YouTubers who are supposed, that are supposedly like, trying to make a move on it like amazon is not surprising, but you have, like youtubers who are trying to, who are calling it's a good way to get publicity right yeah, but it's it's very weird, it's very, it's very silly.

0:39:57 - Leo Laporte
Um, again, Jason calacanis thought that amazon was had the inside track. I think oracle has the inside track, but yeah, um, we shall see I heard the opposite about Amazon.

0:40:07 - Mikah Sargent
The administration was not interested in Amazon.

0:40:10 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, who knows? It's all a great mystery.

0:40:13 - Andy Ihnatko
And now the administration is also saying that they basically had a deal for a US sale pretty much locked up until the tariff war came in, and that scotched the entire thing.

0:40:24 - Leo Laporte
I hate even bringing this up. But war came in and that scotch, the entire thing. He's like, yeah, well, china wants yeah and that, and I hate even bringing this up. But trump says we can make a deal with china if they let us have tiktok, which makes that's such a de minimis. There's such a tiny part anyway. I don't.

0:40:39 - Mikah Sargent
Also, what isn't the the whole yeah, the whole agreement here that it's just leasing the algorithm too, does that not factor into? So we talked about this on Tech News Weekly, with Amazon being at the forefront of it and the idea that it would be mostly owned by the US but that the algorithm would just be leased. That doesn't really solve for the bigger initial concern with the algorithm.

0:41:10 - Leo Laporte
It's all very, very odd. It's a very yeah, thank you. I don't know what to say about it anymore. Hey, but there is a victory for Apple. Congratulations in England. Remember, this is actually a fascinating story.

For a long time, apple couldn't say anything about a request by the English government the British government to remove end-to-end encryption, not just in the UK but everywhere. Apple said well, no, in fact, not only well, apple didn't say anything, anything. But they did withdraw advanced data protection from the uk, which everybody saw as a confirmation. And then we heard and we talked about it, I think last week that there was going to be a court hearing again a secret court hearing. Uh, apparently, um, the secret court has now ruled against yvette Cooper, who is the English regulator on Apple encryption. This is from the Telegraph. The Telegraph and nine other organizations successfully challenged an attempt to keep the secret the details of Yvette Cooper's legal battle with Apple. I guess in England the name Yvette Cooper is well-known. It's not here in the US, so I apologize to our American. I don't know who she is.

Apple is challenging a technical capability notice Now we know it's official, issued by the Home Secretary. Is she the Home Secretary? Maybe that's it. Yes, she's the Home Secretary. Okay, there we go, demanding that the tech giant break the advanced data protection feature that encrypts iphone backups. Lawyers uh, for the home secretary had applied for a gag order which would have prevented the bare details of the case from being made public. The augured revealing details would be damaging both to public interest I'm not sure how that is and national security. Well, I guess if it damages national security, it damages us all anyway. On monday, the lord justice president of the investigatory powers tribunal dismissed the secretary's home secretary's application, saying no you, you don't get total secrecy.

So now you know, we know a lot more than we did before. We know, for instance it's true, uh that they did demand that, yeah, so yeah, the the.

0:43:32 - Andy Ihnatko
The judgment is something like I've got in front of you right now. It's like nine pages long and basically the the judge patiently says that we acknowledge that it is possible for the claimant to acknowledge that it is possible for the claimant to correctly insist upon secrecy. But open justice is a very, very important principle and you have not demonstrated the harm that will happen if this happened openly. It's also a murderer's row list of people who have objected to this action of decrypting iCloud content News providers, politicians on both sides of the ocean, essentially citing that there is enormous amount of interest in people who are affected parties, who want observation and participation in this process, and that there will be denied participation in the process if this is not done openly. So that's also a timeline of all the actions that were taken. So it's good stuff. They lost, lost, lost. At this point.

0:44:28 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but Apple does have to take a little heat, because it turns out it was Apple's fault that the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, jeffrey Goldberg, was added to that, not war plans signal messaging group. It was all the iPhone's fault.

0:44:46 - Jason Snell
I mean maybe. I think probably it has the ring of just being so dumb. It does feel kind of dumb, dumb enough to be true.

0:44:54 - Andy Ihnatko
I think everybody in this conversation and listening have the same reaction, which is like oh, come on, you're blaming the iPhones. Oh, they're saying that data detectors incorrectly flagged a phone number as an updated phone number or something and changed it. Like, yeah, that's happened to me like 11 times, Exactly Every time it does do that it does. I can read the article before I'm out of reach.

0:45:14 - Jason Snell
The idea here is during the campaign, there was somebody who has forwarded a request from Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic for a comment and a press officer in the communications group sent it to the guy who became national security advisor for him to comment. And therefore that person the press, the communications person sent text containing Jeffrey Goldberg's phone number to Waltz and Waltz's iPhone apparently was like hey, communication person has a new phone number. Do you want me to add that to the contact? Fast forward many months and he's in Signal trying to add people to his. We're going to bomb the Houthis chat and he puts in that guy's name because he's in the communications group at the White House. But it's Jeffrey Goldberg's phone number and that's how Signal works.

And I know there are people out there who are like, oh, this is all just a scam. What's really happening here is that he secretly was passing information to Jeffrey Goldberg and he's just trying to hide it and I guess that could be true. But this feels right, this feels like it's the answer, which is it was bad metadata, bad data in your contacts, and we've all seen that. Like hey, I'm going to be helpful. Would you like to update this information? And it could go wrong that easily. Of course, the answer is to not use your phone and use the secure systems that the government provides for you, but we already kind of blew past that one.

0:46:42 - Andy Ihnatko
This is like saying it's not my fault. I had the Canadian invasion plans like in the backseat of my car. I went into Walmart for 10 minutes and someone broke in and stole them. It's the fault of the person who broke into the car. It's like okay, donkers, why did you have a copy of the battle plans in the backseat of your?

0:47:00 - Leo Laporte
car. It's the car's fault. It's the car's fault.

0:47:03 - Andy Ihnatko
You're, you're, you're, you're gone from like being this much an idiot to this much an idiot, which is good progress, but you're still this much an idiot.

0:47:13 - Leo Laporte
Maybe Apple will change how that works, although it is a convenience when it works properly.

0:47:19 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, but this is it's. It's isn't that like one of the most the the things that technology and computers and software does that makes that can really get me super, super angry is when it makes a decision that it thinks is in my best interests without being really transparent about what it's doing for me and B? Allow me to quickly verify and undo it. It was true when my auto-reverse cassette player would continue to reverse and reverse and reverse, and it's true every time. I say wait a minute. Why did you change all of the markdown formatting of this document into rich text? Oh, because we want it to look pretty. I didn't ask you to do that because now I't export this into the into the next app.

0:48:04 - Leo Laporte
It's just trying to be helpful. Andy, you've got to accept help from trust me, you'll, you'll. This is going to be better. You'll just just trust us. We know what's best for you. Uh, you will issue, speaking of the eu apple's digital markets act antitrust ruling within weeks. This could go very badly. They could charge them as much as 10 very bad, this could be bad. Uh, they, they could charge as much as I understand as 10 of their global revenue yeah.

0:48:38 - Andy Ihnatko
I think one of the eu ministers, though, did say that the point of these laws isn't to. It's not. We're not like a. We're not like a corrupt sheriff uh, running a speed trap trying to generate revenue with speeding tickets. We want them to do the right thing, so it's more about enforcement than collecting penalties. If we, we will collect huge penalties if we think that's the only way that we can get them to comply. But they've already indicated, both in this response and also earlier, in kind of response of like once the US started making ideas, that well, this is like putting huge penalties against US companies is an attack on US economy and we won't stand for it. They've already indicated that we might not be terribly interested in levying like $900 million penalties, as we might have been a couple of years ago.

0:49:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, but if you ask for 10 million, apple goes yeah, fine, whatever. Yeah, that's right. So you got to ask for enough to make it hurt.

0:49:35 - Andy Ihnatko
The problem is that I admit that I was pretty ignorant about these kind of regulators and government agencies, both US and international, how they work.

I was pretty ignorant until like six or seven years ago, and one of the first things that I learned that was a solid gold fact is that they just want to have a win, and so they're not like we have the power to bring you to your knees and hear the lamentation of your spouses and your children Like like no, we want to make sure that you respect that.

We have these laws. We want to end this in a way that we feel as though we came out with a win and you felt a little bit of pain. That's why, although it's really dramatic what the department of justice is proposing to do against google for its first of two to three major antitrust violations, it's more likely to end with a negotiated settlement, just like the Microsoft case did 25 years ago that they want a win. They don't want a total win after 15 years of litigation. They would much rather negotiate something that can wrap this up in the next 19 months that can say yes, see, we have our enforcement has some teeth. We strictly, we seriously inconvenience this company. It's not necessary for them to destroy a company with huge fines or by breaking them up, and that's probably what's going to happen here.

0:50:58 - Leo Laporte
Let's hope, let's hope not. I don't know, I don't, I don't really. I mean, I hope that I don't know what a lot of these laws are laws I really enforce, I really support.

So because they're doing it we where we, our government doesn't really care. Yeah, so visa is uh offering apple a hundred million dollars. Maybe this will offset the fine uh apple, as you know, has kind of been like unhappy with uh, uh goldman sachs over the apple card. Maybe looking, maybe shopping it. Um, visa says we'll take over the credit card from mastercard it's a mastercard right now and we'll give you some money. Now I don't know if Visa would manage the whole thing. I think the Apple card is up for grabs.

0:51:43 - Jason Snell
Yeah, they'd find a partner.

0:51:44 - Leo Laporte
They'd find a partner.

0:51:45 - Jason Snell
I think Goldman Sachs is getting out of consumer.

0:51:48 - Leo Laporte
Consumer. They've lost so much money.

0:51:50 - Jason Snell
It's not really about Apple dumping them. It's about them saying we're not going to be in this business anymore. You need to find a new partner.

0:52:01 - Andy Ihnatko
American.

0:52:01 - Leo Laporte
Express also. Express also wants it, I think. Look, obviously it works in visa. If amex gets it, yeah, everyone's good for it. Uh, apparently visa offered a similar payment to costco, which is why you can't use a mastercard at costco. Um, so it'll be interesting. Uh, you know, there there's a bit more.

0:52:14 - Andy Ihnatko
That's a good thing, right, it's very, very you want card holders that can afford apple products and ways, that's that's going to be worth, whatever check you have to write for it, it's very. You want card holders that can afford apple products and, yeah, boys, that's that's going to be worth, whatever check you have to write for it, it's so weird that goldman lost billions on this, I don't.

0:52:30 - Leo Laporte
It still baffles me that you could lose money owning a credit card. I mean having a credit card. But you know, not as a, not as a buyer, as a supplier. Those of us who have credit cards know perfectly well you can lose money with a credit card, yeah.

0:52:44 - Mikah Sargent
Where does the loss come from? Is it all about just people not paying? Where else do you lose this?

0:52:48 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know. A lot of it is that the credit card companies have been in business for 30, 40, 50 years. They have made the first 10 years worth of mistakes. They understand how to run this business and run it profitably and sustainably. Apple was. I don't know if this is entirely the reason for it, but Apple was famously saying oh, we're going to make a better credit card because we're going to dispense with these really stupid, antiquated rules.

Everyone gets their bill on the same day. It's not like it's going to be every single day and we're going to process buybacks and things like in this fashion because it's simpler and it's more straightforward and it's better for the consumer. And someone who has been in this business for 30, 40 years saying yeah, if you're processing all the bills for all your customers on the same day, that means that all of the customer service problems you're going to have are also going to come to you on the same day and you're not going to be able to handle them correctly. And that means that's going to be inefficient and that's going to cost you lots of money. On, and on, and on and on.

Sometimes you can't reinvent a business because the status quo is how that business can be run, unless you've figured out something that these companies have not figured out in the last 40 years, which is definitely possible, because dogma is a thing and it's the dream killer. But sometimes the reason why I always come back to what an aeronautical engineer told me about airplane design, saying the reason why all airplanes look the same is that anytime somebody builds an airplane that does not look exactly like that, it crashes. So it's okay, if we're not going to be innovative, we need this airplane not to crash.

0:54:27 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, there's a thing called expertise, and when you start to abandon expertise, that's when you get sometimes into trouble.

0:54:36 - Mikah Sargent
Then why did an expert company decide to hop on board with Apple?

0:54:40 - Leo Laporte
Was it just the they wanted to get in the consumer business. That's true.

0:54:44 - Mikah Sargent
So I guess it was their first time.

0:54:47 - Leo Laporte
Remember, Apple was able to convince Singular to sell the iPhone when others said no way, are you kidding, we can't allow you to run a real web browser.

0:54:56 - Andy Ihnatko
No, we can't allow you to design the hardware. Verizon was saying no, you have to build the hardware that we specify for you and we're not going to make adaptations to our network so that voicemail works better. No, we're not going to do that. But Singular soon to become AT&T again said that we are lagging way behind Verizon and we think that having the hottest phone that's been happening in the past five years will help us a little. We feel so we can get another two percent of subscribers and it worked out very well for them.

0:55:26 - Leo Laporte
It was a very good trade well, sort of the CEO, now retired, randall Stevenson, did say at one point the worst thing we ever did was give Apple iPhone users unlimited data. That was a very expensive yeah deal for them, so it kind of it kind of worked out. Kind of worked out. Uh, let's take a break. We do have our vision pro segment. So, john ashley, prepare the singers, let them know they take them off the cigarette break. They gotta come in, not now, not now. Oh, they were. So it's not sure. Maybe they're practicing. Oh, that was just the rehearsal.

Okay, we're gonna take a break and when we come back, the vision probe that's Andy and not go throw in in german words there for you, Mr. Andy Ihnatko from Ihnatko.com, of course, Jason Snell, sixcolors.com and our very own beloved Mikah Sargent from ios today, what do you? You and rosemary are so great. I just love you two together and it's such a great show. And it makes me very jealous of rosemary. She's a lucky, lucky person uh in tech news weekly every thursday, which is actually a really good time for it, because it's kind of in between uh, you know, uh our shows when news is still breaking and you get a lot of good scoops yeah, talk to the journalists who are writing the stories at the time, which is great.

You and I were on a call with the folks at spaceship this week, our sponsor for this segment of uh of MacBreak Weekly: Spaceship. Well, it starts as a domain registrar, but it's so so much more. Here's a big question for you. Why do we assume simple and affordable should mean basic and only for beginners? Tech professionals want to save time and money too. Right, that's the idea behind Spaceship. This is a really very slick, pioneering domain and web platform. So it also does that. It takes the pain out of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products Things like shared hosting, virtual machines, business email, alongside below market prices for domain registration and renewal.

Spaceship has some pretty fresh ways to deliver simplicity. They call it Unbox for connecting your spaceship products to your domain and configuring it all in just a few steps. And if, at any point, it gets a little confusing, you got your very own AI assistant there, Alf, ready to help you from domain transfers to updating DNS records. You don't have to do it by hand anymore. Alf loves this stuff. You probably don't. You just tell ALF what to do and ALF will do it. It's very cool and you'll see. You're seeing it right now if you're watching the video roadmap I love it when companies do this which shows you what they're planning on and gives you a chance to suggest and vote on new features and products, because spaceship's kind of new.

So it's a chance for you, as a customer, to get what you really need. I want to just show you real quickly I'm going to register a domain name, you, as a customer, to get what you really need. I want to just show you real quickly I'm going to register a domain name. You just start typing, by the way, which is really awesome. I'm in beast mode, beast mode, beast mode.

I'm thinking, um, I want a domain name. Don't tariff me, bro, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if I can get the-com of that. Let me just, uh, let me just do a quick search. Oh, look at that eight dollars and 88 cents. donttariffmebro.com or dot org. So it's very easy to do that. But then the dns is so simple, the connection is so simple. Look at the launchpad and all the different products, all the different ways they can make your life easier. I am very impressed. This is the next generation of domain registration and website hosting. They got VPSs too. That's brand new. Visit space.com/macbreak to discover exclusive deals on domains and more spaceship.com/macbreak.

0:59:26 - Mikah Sargent
Mikah and I are big uh domain registration kind of and during the call, I was able to set up an entire website with wordpress. While we were chatting these.

0:59:38 - Leo Laporte
It was that easy to do in just minutes like 10 minutes it took you, I was so I was like what you did? That? What already?

0:59:47 - Panelist
already, it's very nice and I love the WordPress turbo did you use the turbo?

0:59:51 - Leo Laporte
that's $3.88 a month. Very easy to set up a WordPress site. 88 cents a month for their space mail, their email it's really good. Spaceship dot com slash twit. We thank them so much for supporting mac break weekly, and now bring the singers on in. Come on in gang. It's time for the. What do you know?

1:00:12 - Andy Ihnatko
vision process we also have dancers apparently.

1:00:19 - Leo Laporte
We also have dancers, apparently.

1:00:22 - Mikah Sargent
There's a new app.

1:00:24 - Leo Laporte
There's a new app. There's a Mac and Vision Pro app for managing your vast immersive content. Do you have a lot of immersive content? Then you need the Apple Immersive Video Utility. Wow, what a name.

1:00:39 - Jason Snell
This is for. If alex were here, he would say this is for people who are shooting and producing immersive video so that they can check it out on the vision pro as part of that process. So it's a it's a professional production tool hence the really boring name yep ah, that's disappointing.

1:00:56 - Andy Ihnatko
I I really. One of the things I would have bet money on before the vision pros release is that, out of the box, it will have some sort of a tool for finding, acquiring, managing and watching immersive videos, because it's the one thing that is a lot simpler to make than a real Vision Pro app, and it's one of the most fun things about having.

1:01:15 - Mikah Sargent
For Vision Pro immersion. They don't even have a YouTube app right. Well, wouldn't it be cool? I know, I know We've had bad experiences with Apple making social media networks, but if there was a public library, you could call it Ping.

1:01:31 - Jason Snell
Here's the thing, though there hasn't been a way for people to make immersive video until the Blackmagic camera and DaVinci Resolve.

I mean, yeah, there's Spatial Gallery and there's 3D stuff that can be in various places, but the immersive stuff has not been available outside of, basically, apple the true immersive at that level of quality. And so now they built a tool for this and it's very cool because this is NAB stuff, right. So it's Blackmagic and they're doing DaVinci Resolve that'll be able to support immersive video as well. That's out there. Now that they made that announcement, apple is doing this. This is the thing Alex has been prepping us on this show for for the last few months, which is the opportunity for people outside of Apple to really start experimenting with what immersive video could bring on the Vision Pro.

1:02:17 - Mikah Sargent
That's why he's not here, because this launched and he wanted to play with no he's not.

1:02:21 - Leo Laporte
He's immersed in something he's been at nab all week?

1:02:24 - Andy Ihnatko
yeah, it's nab.

1:02:25 - Jason Snell
I mean, these announcements are coming from nab, that's. That's.

1:02:28 - Leo Laporte
That's why these I guess you're right totally forgot.

1:02:30 - Jason Snell
So that's. That's what's going on here, good point.

1:02:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, all right, I'm gonna take you back in time to 2017, when apple decided it wanted to open its global flagship store in the heart of melbourne, australia, marking its first store in the southern hemisphere. It was a beautiful glass flagship, but the project quickly met resistance from the victoria government, heritage groups, architects and local residents, because they deemed it unacceptable and an irreversible detriment to the square, and it was actually denied in 2019. They scrapped the proposal. Apple gave up. They opened other stores in Australia, but nothing in Federation Square. Well, now you can see the federation square store in your vision. Pro back to life. Designer flip chudzinski has created a 3d walkthrough reconstructing the proposal. The revised proposal uh, you can see it in 3d. It's hosted at store teller de an immersive look at the store's imagined layout, with wallpapers, renderings. Oh, isn't that, isn't that wonderful, isn't that great? You see it lives on.

1:03:49 - Andy Ihnatko
Ladies and gentlemen, it would have been pretty kind of like the fifth avenue store, but they, uh, they said that really wasn't a historic looking place I love this sort of thing because there's so many places where you can't really appreciate what would have been or what something that is no longer there, unless you have the ability to really like walk through it and look where you want to look Like there's there's a project to rebuild the Titanic digitally to the smallest, tiniest correct detail, and man, I'd love to get on the Titanic and walk around.

1:04:22 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that would be so cool.

1:04:25 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's so detailed that there was a blog post a couple years ago. It's a long, long project, because they're not just trying to make a game model that hey, for these four rooms that the game takes place in. No, they want the engine room correct. They want, if you decide to go into the waiter's quarters in one of the restaurants, they want to make sure that the coat hooks, that the hooks are correct, are exactly what they would have been, or as close as they can determine where they would have been. So you can just basically free explore and, as a matter of fact, some museums are actually.

It's complete enough that museums often like contract them to produce an animation or produce photos of what this place would have looked like for other projects. But yeah, that's the sort of thing that's going to sell a lot of headsets the ability to again what was the Library of Alexandria like, what was it like to like watch this sporting event. Just a free roam and free walk through an area and just go wherever you want to go, places that never existed or places that no longer exist. That's part of the potential of of ar and vr technology this really is.

1:05:36 - Leo Laporte
Uh, I mean it's a vision pro segment, but I don't think it's anything to get excited about, though it is probably not the case. There will be a Vision Pro 2 released within the year, despite a rumor site, it Home I'm looking at a very poor translation of it Says Apple overweight XR. I don't know what that means. That's an interesting translation. I don't know what that means. That's an interesting translation. I don't know what it meant. So Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has said no, there's not gonna be anything.

1:06:10 - Andy Ihnatko
But a lot, of, a lot of new sites and commentators have been discussing this rumor that, okay, this this site is not known for like lots of really great insights and predictions, and the ones who are willing to support it at all are willing to say, okay, well, 2026, that kind of hooks up with what German and other people have been saying about, not like a reinvention, or Vision Pro 2, more of a now Vision Pro with updated M5, m whatever processor, meaning we're building the 2026 model with components we didn't have in 2024, but are functionally identical to the same thing.

1:06:46 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, this most of the rumors sites say seems.

1:06:52 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm really excited about not buying this one, almost as excited as I was about not buying the current one.

1:06:56 - Leo Laporte
I can promise you I'm not buying this one. Let's see what else. Uh, vision pro. Uh, we'll get a vision os 2.4 update this month. Have you been playing with that Jason?

1:07:09 - Jason Snell
yeah, it's been out there for a while. That's the thing that enables, uh, the apple watch or apple watch like oh, that's vision pro app on the iphone and the spatial gallery is now out there. Um, you know, it's been a bit. It's a funny thing too, because I hear I I often hear podcasters complaining about like I can't believe they have haven't updated the spatial gallery in a few weeks. It's like it's a beta, like technically it's not, even the curtain hasn't even come up yet. I think the truth is that so many vision pro users are on the betas, because why else would you even have a Vision Pro if you weren't on the betas?

You're the kind of person. Yeah, so it went final and it's got some nice stuff. I mean, again, one of my things that I've been impressed by over the year, plus that the Vision Pro has been out there is they keep releasing new features and updating the software and there's going to be a Vision OS 3 that's going to, according to Gurman, that's going to have some interesting stuff in it. Like they keep rolling with the software, which is what they should be doing, because this is a long game kind of product. So you just want to keep on adding stuff and building it because, unlike so many products that Apple produces, this is a product they're building slowly in public instead of doing it behind the scenes and then launching it. So, yeah, they just keep rolling.

I wanted to mention there was a new piece of immersive video last week which was immersive VIP Yankee stadium. Wow, fun, fun video does exactly what what you would say, I think we've said about all these immersive videos, which is you see it and you want more, because it's only like 13 minutes long, gets you out on the field, gets you up in the crowd. It's got scenes from the neighborhood which are really awesome. It's great to stand on the platform of the train where you can look over and Yankee Stadium is right next to the platform. There's a guy who has a shop right next to the stadium and you see him roll up the corrugated metal door that's got Babe Ruth painted on it and he starts his day and goes through the game. It was a regular season, it was a Friday night baseball. So Apple TV game between the Dodgers and the Yankees last year.

But at the same time, the moments of gameplay. Remember when they announced the Vision Pro almost two years ago, they had that one clip. It was one clip and it was a ground ball thrown wide at first from the camera, well, at Fenway Park, and it was one of those tantalizing clips of like, oh my God, can you imagine sports with this thing? Well, this video has a bunch of those clips of things happening, but they're all real short and so while I was super impressed and I really enjoyed it and it was as a baseball fan especially it was really awesome to see everything from the you know, groundskeepers and all of that before the game to actual game action I also just came away thinking again why are they not trying more game experiences?

Why am I watching brief highlights from a game that happened almost a year ago, rather than something a little more timely. And it's one of the great mysteries of the vision pro is, I feel, like Apple being maybe a little too precious. I'd rather them release something like we were talking about with the Metallica thing, like I'd rather they release something that they're not sure is good enough and let us see it, than what they're doing, which is like no, no, no, no, no, no. Just a taste, just a taste. It's been like two years of just a taste. I would like the meal, please. I'd like to try the meal and if the meal isn't good, at least we would know is it, do you think, a statement on how hard it is to make this stuff?

It's got to be. I don't think that explains it all. I'm willing to buy somebody from Apple saying look, I know you want an immersive baseball game. But even a fixed camera immersive baseball game, the bit rate, the amount of data we're providing, we would have to compress it, we would have to stream it. It can't be done. It's like okay, give me a substantial highlight package of that game a few days later or a week later, just as a tech demo. And that hasn't happened.

1:11:09 - Leo Laporte
When the IHRSA comes out, you think we'll start seeing that stuff. Now that there's a production chain.

1:11:15 - Jason Snell
The issue is who's going to do it? It would be awesome if the NBA, let's say, decided to work with its partners to do a demo of a playoff game or something with it. Even if it was after the fact, that would be awesome. But the thing is, apple's got the clout, at least with MLS and MLB, to do this, and they haven't done it yet. So I don't know, I don't know. I feel like this is the story of the vision pro is. I watch these videos. I'm blown away by how amazing they are. They make me want more. There's never more.

It's been two years of teasers well, there might be more for the vip, because it does say season one, episode one yeah, they have all these tv shows that are are 10 minute long episodes in various buckets and they keep adding more buckets, which is also kind of weird.

1:12:03 - Leo Laporte
More buckets without more shows.

1:12:05 - Jason Snell
But I mean and they're cool as it is it's just they bring up more questions than they answer. I guess is what I'm saying here. But I will tell you it was fun to watch, it was very impressive, even the part where you're just out with the groundskeeper sweeping up the dirt on the infield during the day. Like you get the chance. Like I did a video once for IDG where I got to go and stand on home plate at Oracle Park and it's unbelievable, like unreal experience to just be standing at home plate at the ballpark that you go to all the time. Most people don't get that opportunity and and this immersive video like you got that. You were in a. You were in the upper deck behind a bunch of fans who are cheering for something. You're down on ground level when a fly ball is headed toward the warning track, like it's all really good.

1:12:58 - Leo Laporte
But it seems like a great promotional value for mlb which is, I would imagine, struggling.

1:13:05 - Jason Snell
I I don't know, I don't think. Basically baseball isn't isn't really struggling, they're not. Their attendance is actually pretty high. Is it good they're doing fine they're doing okay.

1:13:14 - Leo Laporte
I'm surprised, to be honest with you.

1:13:16 - Jason Snell
I know you're a baseball fan.

1:13:18 - Leo Laporte
I'm a longtime baseball fan. It just feels very slow compared to.

1:13:22 - Jason Snell
Baseball has been dying and not appealing to young people since the late 19th century.

1:13:28 - Leo Laporte
Right, right, when you get old, you're going to want to sit in the sun, drink beer and eat a hot dog.

1:13:36 - Jason Snell
There's literally writing from 1895. That is like these new players are not of interest and uh young ones are more interested in other games like flippity flu and skippy dough, and no one will watch the bases ball anymore when the catchers started insisting on wearing a glove.

1:13:55 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, ruin the game jeez louise, I mean what is what?

1:13:58 - Jason Snell
am I watching ball before a walk? Why?

1:14:00 - Leo Laporte
that's outrageous have you been? Uh, I know the season started. The giants had their opening day yeah, I went on sunday. Yeah, you went oh how fun, yes absolutely it's going to be a good, good year for the giants. I hope so. Yeah, we're going uh, a few weeks to see the. My son has decided he's only going to follow Wisconsin teams. Okay, so he's a Green Bay fan and we're going to go see the Brewers-Giants game. Sure, why not? Why not, why not?

1:14:30 - Jason Snell
I just got ferry tickets. When you don't live in Wisconsin and you decide to do that, it does help your budget of tickets a lot. It certainly does.

1:14:37 - Leo Laporte
It certainly does let's tickets, it certainly does. It certainly does. Let's take a little break. When we come back, let's talk tv.

1:14:44 - Mikah Sargent
Why not entertainment, the entertainment segment, but first yeah I am not gonna let you in it without playing the outro hey we managed to get a good 20 minutes out of that.

1:14:56 - Jason Snell
That's great you don't want to spend all week with like a open parentheses hanging hanging there, hanging, oh, just hanging. Vision pro you can't people?

1:15:05 - Leo Laporte
you know you joke, but we have for some reason some ocd fans would very much yell at me if we forgot to do that yeah, we had.

1:15:15 - Jason Snell
By the end of the show we would have to play it or we would start next week and say welcome to mac break. Let's close the vision pro theme from last week. It's been a week long, just gotta do it Jason Snell, sixcolors.com.

1:15:27 - Leo Laporte
Wonderful to have you, as always, andy and ako. How's the uh, how's the website going? Have you, are you getting close? Uh, I'm getting close. I mean, I don't want to pressure you.

1:15:36 - Andy Ihnatko
No pressure, dude no, no, no, again it has I want to pressure you no pressure dude. No, no, no, I get it. I want to pressure him. No, and I actually appreciate the pressure. As a matter of fact, I've been on a daily posting jag for the past week or so.

Oh good, just to get the chops going get the juices flowing Well, just to make sure that you program your brain to say no, you are not getting out of this bed until you've at least outlined what you're going to write today for the blog. You're not going to get breakfast and then mess around and then plan to get to it. No, no, no. This is the new rule. You have to have stuff ready to go before you get lunch. If you want lunch, you have to post, or at least have the post outlined.

1:16:12 - Leo Laporte
Well, can people log into it yet, or is it still Not yet?

1:16:17 - Andy Ihnatko
It's not going to be open wide until there's stuff that you can at least a few weeks worth of stuff you can actually see. I don't want people to check it out today and say, wow, he really loves writing about tariffs. I don't want to read about financial news every single day.

1:16:35 - Leo Laporte
No, no, no, I swear it's going to be something silly and going to be something the other stuff there will be your time absolutely coming around the bend yeah, that's why we're lucky to have, you know, 966 previous shows, so nobody will judge us based on 967. Uh, and Mikah Sargent filling in for uh, alex, uh, it's great to have you. Oh, always a pleasure having you on. We appreciate it. You're watching Mac Break. Weekly. Severance is over. I am now dodging all the posts Because I don't want to no spoilers. I'm only on, I think, episode five or six. It's hard. Everybody wants to talk about the ending. Right, I'm not going to say anything. Sure, there'll be no spoilers here. Severance is a success. Yes, yeah, a big success.

1:17:27 - Jason Snell
Yeah, huge Apple's probably, I mean, I think so Arguably even bigger of a breakthrough than ted lasso wow, yeah yeah they are, uh, they are uh definitely trying to capitalize on it.

1:17:41 - Leo Laporte
For instance, they're doing an art bow, which, if you haven't seen episode four yet uh, this isn't really a spoiler just know, there will be an outdoor retreat, team building occurrence, uh, and apparently you can join the art bow. Um, here's the whole cast. Look at them. So great. Who's the tallest one there? It's Gwendolyn. Yes, indeed, she's great, um, and I hope to go the goats go well. I hope the goat raising goes well for her.

1:18:13 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean that was huge, so that's. Even Colbert hosted like a Q a panel like that, so and that's that they had. So they hosted like a huge fan event at the place where that at the actual building in New Jersey that serves as like the corporate, like oh, there is a luma, there's an actual luman headquarters it's a there's a building that actually a a real building that serves as the entranceway to the outside.

Yeah, and I mean the fact that they keep on, keep on, keep on promoting this, coming up with live things are probably familiar with the idea of if we could get like fans to like start cosplaying as these characters and becoming an absolute menace to all of their friends and family about how awesome this is. Oh.

1:19:03 - Leo Laporte
I want a selfie with Ms Wong. I mean, that is definitely.

1:19:06 - Andy Ihnatko
Look at this, holy cow, yeah you know what, if, if, if, they, if, if Lucasfilm had like an open house at the rebel alliance base that I could get a picture taken in front of there I would have flown out to see that too there's spendlin christie with cheers.

1:19:23 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wouldn't that be cool.

1:19:24 - Jason Snell
This is like a live stage event yeah, it's a technically a four-year consideration event, so it's like for people who vote for uh oh, so you have to be a voter, an Emmy voter.

1:19:35 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, they did.

1:19:36 - Jason Snell
It's Bell Labs in New Jersey where they shoot all this. So Bell Works is the old Bell Labs.

1:19:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Is it still occupied or is it just a vacant building?

1:19:47 - Jason Snell
That I don't know. Obviously they use it for filming, but then you can never tell whether they're Right. Yeah, um, obviously they used it for filming with, but then you can never tell whether they're right, yeah I don't, I don't know that part, but it looks spectacular from the outside.

1:19:57 - Leo Laporte
And then, yeah, they got steven colbert 60s brutalist architecture and of course it makes sense it would have been bell labs exactly in new jersey wow, generally, I think a lot of those things get labeled as for your consideration.

1:20:10 - Jason Snell
And then they, you know, they invite public, uh right, and they invite people, they know, and all of that and it creates a whole little event. That photo is kind of amazing that they put this panel together and it's just a huge audience.

1:20:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, and the huge audience. Um, yeah, ben stiller's there. Uh, the the creator of the show, uh, all the stars of the show and even some of the minor, uh characters in the show. That's pretty amazing, pretty incredible.

1:20:37 - Jason Snell
Yeah, so they've had, they've had huge success with that, that is, and they're keeping their foot on the gas right.

1:20:42 - Mikah Sargent
Also they say that season three yeah.

1:20:44 - Jason Snell
Season three will happen faster than season two did because the strikes really slowed it down and they did a bunch of rewrites, but the season three production was already going on.

1:20:59 - Leo Laporte
They, they, they. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. They said, oh, we renewed it. I mean they, they knew more than a year ago they were working on season three. It's not a it was not a surprise. So gwendolyn christie was in game of thrones? She, uh, obviously was. Was olaf or dari olofsson also in game of thrones?

1:21:09 - Jason Snell
I don't know that one. He looks like he he's the big guy who has?

1:21:12 - Leo Laporte
a great voice right yeah oh, that guy?

1:21:14 - Panelist
yeah, there they are, she's on his arm. I feel like they might know each other from.

1:21:19 - Leo Laporte
Can you imagine John Turturro, who is a legendary serious actor, getting the script saying, yeah, I'll do that, and now he's like part of this cultural thing.

1:21:31 - Jason Snell
Well, he brought in his friend Christopher Walken too on top of that yeah, walken and he were great together.

1:21:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's amazing, all right. Well, anyway, it's a success, uh, although Cult of Max says even the success is not enough to give Apple TV plus. It's, uh, it's boost in subscribers that they were kind of hoping for. It's really just a tiny fraction of the overall streaming market. 8%.

1:21:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah.

1:21:59 - Mikah Sargent
I think it still exists in its own little space that people, when I think of everyday people thinking about the subscriptions they get, obviously Netflix is at the top right, and then maybe you have Disney Plus and Hulu vying for second and third. I don't even know if Hulu even is up there anymore. So Apple TV Plus feels so far down the line on, oh, I'm going to get this so that I can watch this show. So I really do think it's about this so that I can watch this show. So I really do think it's about yeah, they've got to really push, as as Jason was saying, a foot on the gas to get these shows that people really want to see so that they end up subscribing to Apple TV plus.

1:22:44 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I will say. A lot of these analysts uh are using. There's some dispute about how accurate it is.

Cause Apple doesn't reveal there's some dispute about how accurate it is, because Apple doesn't reveal Exactly. And are they just the numbers of the people who are regular subscribers? Are the Apple One Bundle people included in this, and how does that work? And they're taking their best guess. But Apple's goal? I can't believe it. It's almost like a market share argument. Apple's goal is not to have 15%, 20, 30% of the streaming market. That's not the point.

Their goal is to be the HBO of streaming, to have lots of really high quality content that people want to see and will come to the service for and we'll keep it around and maybe not churn as much and just sort of keep it around and creators will want to come too.

That's where HBO really succeeded is that they got a reputation as a great place for people to create right, they don't need to be netflix, they don't need to be prime video, they don't need to be paramount plus, quite frankly, but they do need to have shows that will draw people to their platform, which is why when you get anything with traction, you you gotta push it. And severance has had the most traction of anything, I think even more than Ted Lasso, because Ted Lasso was different. It was like sort of comfort viewing in the pandemic and it was a new service without as much catalog stuff. I wrote a piece last week on Six Colors about based on the churn. I was like, okay, let's say you're churning through Apple TV+. I've seen a lot of TV plus stuff. What do I recommend?

And I tried to come up with a. I decided to do a top 10 list of TV shows and I came up with 13 shows that I would recommend to people that I have seen personally. And I had to cut you know I have three cuts at the end of the list Like they've built a catalog. So now you've got Severance and you've got a much bigger catalog than you did when ted lasso hit, and it's another opportunity to make all those connections and get those people on podcasts and and on youtube and on talk shows and just try to get more perception of severance to get you to tv plus, to get you to whatever else is there silo or shrinking?

1:24:48 - Mikah Sargent
are any of you watching the studio? I, I found it so good, it's pretty funny.

1:24:53 - Leo Laporte
I liked the. They've had now two very famous directors last week was Martin Scorsese, who Seth Rogen brought to tears, and this week it was Ron Howard who Seth Rogen brought to fisticuffs. The only thing I don't like about it's there's a couple of things that bug me. At first I thought, oh, are they gonna? Because it looks like that drum whiplash right, because it's all one take and there's a drum beat behind it. I thought maybe they're gonna kind of do an homage to different movie styles but no, the whole thing is whiplash so that bugs me a little bit.

And the other thing is and this is just a Seth Rogen issue I have a lot of his comedy is whiplash, so that bugs me a little bit. And the other thing is and this is just a seth rogan issue I have a lot of his comedy involves shouting. Uh, and I've always been taught in improv that shouting is this. But you know what it works? It seems to work because, uh, larry david does it too, and curb your enthusiasm. Shouting is like the lowest form of improv. You know you shouldn't get to that point, but apparently it works.

1:25:54 - Andy Ihnatko
My problem is I don't like dislike him, but I've I'm on like I'm really really tense. Until how soon? Until he, until he mentioned, until he mentions that he smokes a lot of weed because, yeah, he likes it. He oh my god, did I slip that out that I smoke a lot of weed. I think we know that, but we know we know you smoke.

1:26:12 - Leo Laporte
I think it's pretty obvious. It's kind of a stoner. Anyway, it's a great. Uh, it's a great parody of hollywood, probably not as good as the player um, but but you know it's in, it's in that which I enjoy seth rogan has really had some success as a producer.

1:26:26 - Jason Snell
You know, you don't always see him, he he appears in things and I think he's fun, but uh, keep in mind, he actually started as a writer. He's a writer first and a performer second, and now he's probably a producer first and a writer second and a performer third, but that show is really great. And he's one of the exec producers on Invincible on Prime Video, which is a spectacularly great adult animated superhero store show based on a great comic by robert kirkman who did the walking dead. And now that it's him and his and evan goldberg, his co-producer like they are the people who made that show happen too. So that's good. He's building an empire there jk?

1:27:08 - Leo Laporte
uh, what's his name? Is the? Uh, lee simmons j, the lead in Invincible? I'm what my Michael's watching. At least Michael and Leach watch it together. It's cute mother son moment. And I said is that JK Simmons?

1:27:23 - Jason Snell
well, the voice, and this is just like the studio just like the studio, that that you know that Seth Rogen knows everybody Invincible is the same way. You get these people and you're like how is it that all of these famous people there was a story about how apple, when he went to apple with what he was going to do with a studio they're like you, can you really get all these people? And he's like, yeah, I, I got him.

1:27:43 - Panelist
I got him, guys, I got him and that I mean the.

1:27:46 - Jason Snell
The main family unit in invincible is sandra, oh, jk simmons and steven yun. So it's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty good.

1:27:55 - Leo Laporte
I love Seth Rogen in Freaks and Geeks. It was one of my favorite shows when it was out.

1:27:58 - Jason Snell
It was only a season or two, hired as a writer, and then they put him in the show. He was so good in the show, yeah, anyway.

1:28:07 - Leo Laporte
So there is good stuff. I think there's much better stuff to watch on apple tv than there was at the beginning. I mean, you've got slow horses. Yeah, they're doing a lot of. Really I think you're right.

1:28:16 - Jason Snell
Quality you know prestige programming yeah, and and that's the, I think the goal is you get, you make a bunch of that. You hope some of it catches fire and then you also hope that, uh, when people get there, you've got stuff for them to watch in the ted lasso era maybe less so. But now you've got severance and you can bring them in and give them slow horses and like four seasons of for all mankind two seasons of silo four seasons of mythic quest, two seasons of shrinking, like there's a lot of stuff there.

So so yeah, I I think their goal is not domination, I think they're doing okay. It's been like five years. I can't believe how much good stuff that they've done. I would never have predicted this much actual good programming coming out of them, especially on the TV side.

1:29:04 - Leo Laporte
I'm reading your article. They've also done some good movies. Oh sure, and, as you point out, greyhound was really great.

1:29:11 - Jason Snell
And Docs as well. They've got a a nice spread of stuff.

1:29:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Steve Martin documentary is actually fantastic.

1:29:20 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I love that.

1:29:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Uh, I haven't.

1:29:23 - Jason Snell
Uh, at least I watched the dynasty, I thought that was yeah, I mean actually a really great sports doc and it had both Brady and Belichick in it, which is a dynamic that is special. And I would just say ESPN's Tom Brady produced story of the life of Tom Brady did not have the same level of participation so that made it kind of interesting as a different thing. And the long way up round down series with Ewan McGregor riding his motorcycle around is a great travelogue, great series and they bought the old ones and fun and they're making a fourth one apparently of that too.

1:29:57 - Leo Laporte
You know, after what Warner Discovery did to HBO, I really think we need something, and Apple has the money to do it. That is just, you know. Quality Maybe it doesn't appeal to the mass audience, but it does enough to justify itself. No-transcript, but it does enough to justify itself.

1:30:12 - Jason Snell
Honestly, hbo's doing okay, like HBO and Max. Casey Bloys I was talking with Julie Alexander, my downstream co-host, about this Casey Bloys, who runs HBO and now is also sort of like, gets to do some Max Originals as well. He's programming that. I mean, HBO's still got a lot of great content. They're very successful with it. And then if you look at the Max originals, like the Pit with Noah Wiley, that's doing very well, that is a fantastic show and it's basically like what if we did a network procedural but did it for streaming and it's excellent.

Hacks is coming back this week, which is a spectacularly good show and that's a Max original, but there's room. That's the thing it's like in this era where, like Netflix really does want to be more kind of like network TV most of the time, Like there is room for Apple to set it up and be like a little higher level and get some of these shows in and they're playing a long game right. They're not going to rise or fall based on how much money they charge for Apple TV+.

1:31:10 - Leo Laporte
I wonder also if there'll be a golden age now for streaming with these tariffs. The tariffs are a little bit like COVID, in the sense that people might be belt tightening and might spend more time at home watching TV.

1:31:23 - Jason Snell
And no tariffs on services. Apple likes that Right.

1:31:26 - Leo Laporte
So I'm wondering. It might be an opportunity for streaming to recover. It's been a rough go, weirdly. Weirdly. I thought it would do very well. Uh, all right, another break. Uh, well, no, should I do another break? I'm just checking here we got, uh, let me, let me do a couple more stories, then we'll do a break and then we'll do picks. Is that right? Are we right on that, john ashley? Do we need another break? I've done uh, three, I need to do one. Let's let's do it. A couple more stories, a couple couple more stories z wave.

I bet you talked to John Ashley. Do we need another break? I've done three. I need to do one more. Right, let's do a couple more stories, A couple more stories. Z-wave. I bet you talked to Jennifer Patterson Toohey about this, Mikah Sargent, because it's her story from the Verge. Yeah, I love JPT. Z-wave is now becoming an open source protocol. This is one way to find your way in the home automation market, right?

This is the equivalent of a dog rolling over onto its back, so its stomach is exposed and saying, please, I give up, I give up, just take me, that's.

1:32:25 - Mikah Sargent
I mean, that's kind of what we're having here. Z-wave has competed with Zigbee for a long time. Z-wave did a good job of convincing people who build houses that it was the necessary technology to have to do wireless connectivity. But when things started to shift to the consumer space instead of the builder space, z-wave kind of lagged behind. And the big thing with it too is that you tended you tended to have if you had a hub in your home. It just kind of threw the z-wave in there, but it didn't have that name recognition that zigbee did.

it wasn't in matter either, exactly, and that's, that's the part where the stomach exposing happens is that z-wave says look, we can't do it on our own. We know that the, the zigbee alliance and all of y'all came together to make the csa, so we'll look, we can't do it on our own. We know that the Zigbee Alliance and all of y'all came together to make the CSA. So we'll just say if you can't beat them, join them. Please accept us into your holy space and let us be part of it. And yeah, I'm not surprised to see that this is happening, but I done forgot about Z-Wave a long time ago because everything else does a fine job.

1:33:35 - Leo Laporte
All I know about this technology?

1:33:37 - Andy Ihnatko
is there's some reason why my lights aren't responding to voice commands? Exactly.

1:33:42 - Leo Laporte
Z-Wave Long Range is a new version of the protocol that addresses one thing that people didn't like Z-Wave about it was too short range, and it now will integrate with Matter. But the problem is a lot of companies. You don't have a lot of Z-Wave devices, or do you?

1:34:02 - Mikah Sargent
Say that again Are people making Z-Wave stuff. So it's few and far between. There are a lot of not a lot, but there are some inexpensive gadgets that are Z-Wave.

1:34:13 - Leo Laporte
Mostly it's home security. It looks like right.

1:34:15 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, exactly. So that was the thing the builder space. You go and you get the security system for the home. That's where Z-Wave comes in, sometimes the blinds in the home, if you've got that. So there is still Z-Wave stuff, but I think that the writing has been on the wall for Z-Wave. I think that the writing has been on the wall for Z-Wave such that they're saying, okay, you know, we want to keep being an option, so let us join what you're doing so that we can continue to be an option. But yeah, I have not come across a popular consumer product in the past. I don't know three, four years. That is Z wave behind the scenes. The only times where I have seen it is a hub. That's going okay, but we also do Z wave. Ethiolog arcs is saying Amazon ring is Z wave, but I, I don't know under the hood maybe perhaps yeah, I have so my home assistant.

1:35:10 - Leo Laporte
I bought a Zigbee dongle that I plug into it. I guess I could get a Z-Wave dongle and then make HA be fully, I don't know, or if they're in matter. That's the problem. Nobody wants multiple apps. Oh the. Ring Alarm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so is SimpliSafe, a longtime sponsor. They use Z-Wave. I guess adt used z wave, honeywell's use z wave, yeah, so again.

1:35:40 - Mikah Sargent
You, you go and you're gonna, you're going to build a bunch of homes, or a couple of homes, and you are adding that alarm system as part of the package. Behind the scenes, z wave is what's working there, but a lot of these have transferred over to different technologies because it there are better offerings that have gotten more frequent updates and play well in the space. So in that way, I guess I'm happy that z-wave is hopefully going to be joining the fun by saying look, we'll go open source, we'll do whatever we need to do, just let us be part of the party open source will do whatever we need to do.

1:36:15 - Leo Laporte
Just let us be part of the party so you can bridge z-wave into matter or into your home kit, uh, for instance. Um, but you otherwise, you need a z-wave hub and that's the. That's the thing people don't want is a bunch of different hubs and different software.

Well, good luck to you, z wave. Yeah, god bless. Good luck, I hope you hope you do well. Um. And finally there are new uh cal digit. I have. I love my cal digit. Um. Thunderbolts dock. They have new thunderbolt 5 docks. The ts5 has 15 ports wow. And the ts5 plus 20 ports 20 ports, but you pay for the. You pay for these. They're 500 bucks for the ts5 plus um. But if you have a one of the new mac minis or a new mac studio with thunderbolt 5, this might be the thing to look at. I don't know if anybody made it. I should have checked the. Uh. They're coming out next month. The ts5 will be a little less expensive 370 that I think. 15 ports is enough for anybody yeah, I mean on principle.

1:37:19 - Andy Ihnatko
I would like to want to still complain about buying computers that don't have, like expansion port, expansion card slots. But that's because I'm an old person, generation X, and we see that, wow, if I just plug this box into this one port, one of the three or four ports on this laptop or this desktop that support it, I will name a single thing, andy, that you would want to use with this that you cannot connect through that port and through that box. I'm thinking let me get back to you on that. It's. It's just amazing, like what a laptop can do with with one of these boxes just sitting on your desk.

It's one of the reasons why I've been delaying, like replacing my intel mac mini for so long a I'm a cheapskate, b I'm a I'm a freelance journalist in a rapidly collapsing market. But also because, well, if I have a, have a $200, $300 Cal Digit box, I can't think of anything yet that I can't do with my M1 MacBook, even my three or four-year-old MacBook, that all the accessories are high speed, all the networking is high speed and I plug in one cable and I've got it all on my desktop. It really has got me thinking plug in one cable and I've got it all on my desktop. It really has got me thinking. Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't even forget about the mac mini and just get a really juicily specced mac pro and just use that as both, if I Jason which which macbook pros have thunderbolt 5.

1:38:45 - Jason Snell
uh, all of the modern m4 macbook pros have m4 or later.

1:38:50 - Leo Laporte
We'll have them. We'll have thunderbolt 5.

1:38:52 - Jason Snell
that's right. I don't know if you need.

Thunderbolt 5, but I guess for the record, that's my computer now is. I have a Mac M4, macbook Pro, uh, and I use it at two different desks and just carry it around, and I very rarely use it open. I'm almost always just carrying it between desks, but it does mean that when you switch locations you don't have that moment of like whoa wait, I'm on the laptop now or I'm on this different computer and I don't have my stuff set up. Like all of a sudden. Everything I do everywhere I go is on the same computer. It's pretty great.

1:39:23 - Leo Laporte
You need multiple Cal digits though.

1:39:26 - Jason Snell
Everywhere you go. I have a Cal digit doc at one of them. The other one I don't, for various reasons. I don't, I don't need the same setup back there, right, um, but uh, it's great yeah, this looks really really sweet.

1:39:38 - Leo Laporte
Um, you get 140 watt charging on the uh upstream to your laptop and then uh plenty of other ports the dream here?

1:39:48 - Jason Snell
the dream and what this enables is single cable connection. So you plug one cable into your MacBook Pro, it's charged and powered and the hub is powering, you know, and sending that Thunderbolt up so that you get it to your display and all of your peripherals. And so it's all rolled together and all you do is roll in with your laptop, make one plug and you're done.

1:40:15 - Andy Ihnatko
You've got three displays. You've got 10 gig internet. You've got high speed. God, it's just amazing. You've got your 10 terabyte high speed hard drive storage. It's like wow, yep, and it's been my experience that this dream is a reality.

1:40:30 - Mikah Sargent
when it comes to the CalDigit dock, I've had some docks in the past where I ended up having to oh no, I've got to plug this directly in or this isn't working.

1:40:38 - Leo Laporte
And CalDigit is bad, especially things like video and microphones and stuff. Yeah, yeah, so that's been good.

1:40:44 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know if you saw their April Fool's prank was an update that made it possible for you to change the color of the LED light on the front of the CalDigit, and I thought you know what you should actually do that.

1:40:59 - Leo Laporte
That'd be great. All right, good, and is T5 a worthy upgrade for people who are on T4 devices?

1:41:09 - Jason Snell
No, or T4 Docks.

1:41:11 - Leo Laporte
I should say I just bought a Thunderbolt 4 hub for mine because it felt like it was plenty fast exactly my, uh, my cal digit is strapped to the desk here because it's so my laptop's connected to, so, um, I guess I, if I want another one, I better get it. Uh, all, right now I'm going to take a break because guess what? Uh, your picks of the week are coming up. Next you are watching Mac Break Weekly Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell filling in for Alex Lindsey, with the wonderful Mikah Sargent. Great to have all of you. Great also to have our club members.

You guys are what make all this possible, and I know you know, with that tough economic times ahead, it's probably everybody's got to think about their dollars, but that's why we keep the price low. Seven dollars a month gives you access to all of our shows without ads, which is fantastic. Uh, you also get um special content on our discord channel. We have a very, I think, a lovely Discord channel full of, uh, you know, wonderful people. All of our not all, but most, or many of our club members hang out in the Discord. It's become my social network of choice, not just during the shows, of course. During the shows is great, because you're chatting with us as we're doing the shows, but also, uh, all all day long and we do events in there. We've got a home theater geeks recording coming up on Monday. Ios, today will be next tuesday. You're going to do a crafting corner. Mikah, are you still doing the little mini succulent, lego succulents?

1:42:46 - Mikah Sargent
that'll be april 16th, it's a jade jade plant and, uh, we'll continue building these.

1:42:54 - Leo Laporte
Oh, aren't those cute, all right, but the thing is you don't have to be doing what mike is doing?

1:42:58 - Mikah Sargent
you believe those little, uh, newspaper boy hats? No, yeah, you're right. The idea is that everybody brings their own little craft that they're working on and it's, it's, um, which could be coding. I always forget his name it's tiny trees, uh, little trees um big poofy hair. What is his name?

1:43:15 - Leo Laporte
bob ross always forget his name bob ross event, we all.

1:43:21 - Mikah Sargent
It's very chill. Uh, you know, we're quiet, we're all just listening to music in the background and we just build our things, we talk. It's a great time.

1:43:29 - Leo Laporte
I've really enjoyed it, uh, with and if you want to get a little more energy, come to our coffee time Two days later, april 18th, coffee time with Mark Prince, our coffee geek, and Liz Happy Beans. I know that should be interesting. We'll be talking about beans. The AI user group is the fourth Friday of every month. We do a lot of fun things and of course we mentioned Mike and I will be doing the WWDC keynote club only. Uh, so if you're not a member of the club, I would invite you. I would love for you to become a member. Seven bucks a month, lots of other benefits as well.

twit.tv/clubtwit to find out more. Uh, I have a testimonial from in our club twit right now. Uh, from a club twit member. Uh, let me see it's. He says the club is worth this is uh ed coy. Hi, ed, the club is worth every penny. Thank you for all the years keeping me informed, entertained. Mac fixer dk agrees the club worth every penny. Indeed, here is uh Mikah as bob ross painting in some happy trees nightscape. I've been watching, listening from the very beginning. I owe you back pay at the point, this point no back pay necessary. But we definitely would love to love to have you in the club, join us. Why don't you twit.tv/clubtwit.

Uh pick of the week time I want to. I'm gonna kick things off because I've been uh playing with a toy, so I store all. I've decided some time ago to stop using lightroom and other technologies to um, keep my photos, uh I, because I've got apple photos and they and apple photos.

Understands the live uh, fomo, live, fomo live photo formats, uh, that my cameras use the raw and so forth, and it's its own formats and I just, I just really like it. So I've been using a uh, using it. All my photos are in there, tens of thousands. But then I I also worry. You know, when you just have one class, you know it's in the cloud, it's on my phone and my computer, but I worry. So I found a free, open source, a tool called icloud pd. You can download it. You can also run it on your synology. I'm running it here on my little arch server and it will store, uh, it will download. Look, it's downloading all my photos. It actually is going through them all to see if any have already been downloaded. What's great if this runs in the background as it does every time I take a picture on my iPhone, it not only goes to iCloud, but it then also goes to an independent server. An independent hard drive Could be your Synology NAS. I think it's a really nice little piece of software. Let me give you the link iCloud photos downloader that githubcom free because it's open source. It has quite a bit of command command stuff that you can use.

I'm just very impressed by its open source project that I have now been using to keep track, keep a backup. It does D dupe. It supports live photos. It keeps all the metadata as well. In fact, it will even update the metadata. If the metadata the photo is not updated iCloud, but the metadata is, it will automatically update it. So I was looking for something like this for a long time. Icloud PD. It's on GitHub. Jason Snell, your pick of the week.

1:46:56 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's kind of weird. I'm going to do two picks in one. I need a tripod that is short enough to put on a desk but tall enough to put on the floor, and it needs to be able to either hold a standard sort of like screw mount for a camera or a microphone or hold an iphone. And the answer is I couldn't find one that satisfied me, but I could find two and put them together, and that's what I did and I like it so much that I'm going to recommend them both, and you might not need both, but you might.

So one of them is uh Insta360, the two-in-one invisible selfie stick plus tripod, which is this thing.

1:47:37 - Leo Laporte
I use that because if you have an Insta, you need to use that Exactly.

1:47:41 - Jason Snell
But it's also great as a regular tripod. It will start out short. It's got little collapsible legs. It's got this telescoping bit that is the selfie stick. But you know, at the top is a standard tripod mount and so you can put this on the floor and extend it way up and it's a perfectly usable mount. I use this with my webcam for upgrade every week and it's very useful. But I also use it to do continuity camera when I do Zoom chats with my wife's family every other week and for that I added to the top of it the newer mini desk tripod, which is a little cheap, crappy tripod but the top of it is a tilt head tripod mount that is perfectly normal.

Pan and tilt head that you can screw on top of the selfie stick or anything else. That's got that standard head. It has its own standard head on it, but the best part is the handle that comes head. It has its own standard head on it, but the best part is the handle that comes with it flips up and becomes a spring-loaded phone mount. So this is like andy and not co-central. By the way, I'm watching andy lean forward here. Uh, so what doesn't it do? It'll cut a tomato. No, um it so.

So this is great because it means I can use this one setup floor or desktop, and I can use it with phones or with any camera that will screw into a camera mount. All four at least get them. While they last about 55 in total. These are one of them's 30, one of them's 25. You may not need both If you've got a part of this that satisfies you, but I bought them separately, did not intend to use them together, and a part of this that satisfies you, but I bought them separately, did not intend to use them together, and now it's like my go-to tripod for everything I do around the house because it's lightweight, it's super flexible, and I love the fact that I can put a regular camera or an iPhone on this with just a quick flip up. It's super easy.

1:49:28 - Leo Laporte
That's super cool. Yeah, I have a lot. I have like a drawer full of different tripod parts and I have done very much the same kind of Frankensteining.

1:49:37 - Jason Snell
Yeah, the secret really is that moment where I realized, oh, this will mount a phone for continuity camera and a standard USB webcam or a camera. I'm like, oh okay, now we're cooking. And I had that moment where I said, wait a second. But this tripod is crappy the one it comes with. But I've got that great insta 360 thing, which I know they say it's a selfie stick, but it's also just a great tripod. It's a really great tripod nice that's.

1:50:02 - Andy Ihnatko
That's a great thing about having like that, a having been like podcasting and live streaming for enough years and not throwing things away like when they when I decided you know what, let's make it a regular thing that we stream from the library conference room. Gosh, I wish somebody sold a tabletop stand that could hold two lights side by side and a webcam adjusted to the height exactly above the height of my iPad that I use as a second monitor.

Or I could take out this box I've got on a shelf. I say put that on that, put that on that, screw that there, done Brilliant. It's brilliant. Never throw anything away. You'll never have a problem you can't solve.

1:50:44 - Leo Laporte
What about your pick, Mr Andy Anako?

1:50:54 - Andy Ihnatko
Mine's kind of an esoteric one, but a really nice one, for reasons that some people who are into comics will understand. A few months ago I was doing a lot of Googling for Kindle comic book converter, as one does as one does, and I came across this really nice app that was not applicable to the solution I was actually looking for, but was a good tool. It's called the Chirmachia. The app is called Chirmachia and they chose that Italian name after they realized that calling it Kindle Comic Converter was descriptive but doesn't actually describe what people are probably expecting it to do. What it is is for people who have e-book readers like a Kindle, like a Kobo, like usually monochrome e-ink readers, and they have, uh, comic book files that are not encumbered by drm. But the thing is like if you take this public domain copy of a golden age comic book, that's like the pages are huge in size and it's in color and you try to put them on like a monochrome e-ink reader, they're huge, huge, they're going to take up too much space, the color is going to make it unreadable, all these other problems. What this app will do is it will take a lot of different comic book file formats and ebook formats and reform, and these formats are all just like folders, compressed folders full of image files. What it will, and what this app will do, is it'll simply convert all of them to. It'll make the images like physically smaller so that they'll fit on the screen better without wasting space. You can adjust the gamma so that you won't just see like big blobs of black pixels as it's trying to reinterpret all these colors. All these other little things you can adjust as you go. It even has like presets for like a lot of very, very popular e-book readers, including modern color ones.

Now, the bad news is that it is open source. So, as a result, if you have any experience with open source, you're picturing a single window that is just basically stickered with buttons and checkboxes, as opposed to a very, very comprehensively thought out interface. But it works. It works great and it's regularly updated. The last update was just like a couple of months ago and, once again, if you have like a whole bunch of Golden Age Captain America comics that you want to read on your Kindle and you don't want it to take up like half of your storage space and you want it to be, very, very drag it into this app. Click a button, select your device and it will spit out a cbz file, an epub, a kindle book app, a kindle book file, exactly what you need.

1:53:25 - Leo Laporte
Really good, really handy, really simple, great stuff on github, kcc, uh, or what did you say? What's the Italian?

1:53:33 - Andy Ihnatko
Siromaccia, oh Siromaccia is the guy. He's the guy who wrote it.

1:53:38 - Leo Laporte
Siromaccia Gonano. Okay, he's a nice guy, but it's called KCC. Okay, yes, he's from Rovigio, rovigio. Yes, kcc, sorry, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I understand your confusion, because github does make it look like that. Uh, very good, it's on github. Just search for kcc. And you're right. He probably was a little nervous. Amazon might not like him using that name the full kindle comic converter is very obvious.

1:54:08 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:54:09 - Leo Laporte
Mikah Sargent so.

1:54:12 - Mikah Sargent
I have a pick that is a little game sort of. If you need something that's just like a, I will listen to audio books while I play this little game. It is called Puffies and it is on the app store, but you'll need an Apple arcade subscription to play it, and Leo is showing right now how this works as well. So essentially what you do is you make little, you're putting the stickers back onto the sticker pack. You have a whole bunch. If you want to show my screen, I've got my phone so you'll be presented with a bunch of different sticker packs and I can go like medium, normal, and it kind of guides you along the process as you're playing.

There's a black line that appears to help you kind of place the stickers, but there are more difficult and less difficult options. There are bigger and smaller sticker packs, but it's very much just kind of a zen sort of quiet experience that I have found is delightful for giving my hands something to do while my brain is elsewhere. Again, you do need an Apple Arcade subscription to be able to get this game, but it's made by I think it's called Likey Studios game. But it's made by I think it's called Likey Studios and they've made some other great games that are in this exact kind of feel and scope of just. You know, they're little zone-out games and I have found this quite delightful. If you choose to listen to it with sound, the soundtrack is nice. But again, I just kind of zone out while I am placing my stickers back on the sticker pack and then afterward you can share the sticker pack.

This is.

1:56:00 - Leo Laporte
This is perfect because it's basically the kind of thing you would do during Mikah's creative corner yes, exactly, exactly, it's very much in that same vibe it has that kind of it's a game that isn't going to make you anxious in any way.

1:56:17 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly, it's very chill. It's going to relax you. It's very low stakes. I like a low stakes situation. Yes, very nice Low stakes so you can check it out.

1:56:26 - Leo Laporte
Puffies. It's kind of like Tetris for people who don't care. There you go Like Tetris for people who don't care.

1:56:31 - Mikah Sargent
There you go Like.

1:56:32 - Leo Laporte
Tetris for people who don't care. Yeah Little puffy aminals just kind of fitting all together. I like the variety, though you can have Me too Different.

1:56:42 - Mikah Sargent
I don't know. I want to believe. I have not looked into. I want to believe that there's. I want to believe. I want to believe that these are created by artists.

1:56:50 - Leo Laporte
It feels like they might be.

1:56:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, by artists. It feels like they might be. Yeah, yeah, and that's very much within the vein of what. But I'm also thinking how do they, how do they make so many? It would be very easy to do this with AI versus humans, but don't do it with AI puffies.

1:57:04 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, do it with real people. By the way, puffies is spelled with a period, for some reason.

1:57:08 - Mikah Sargent
There is a period at the end of it.

1:57:10 - Leo Laporte
Yes, it's interesting A typography is a lowercase p. I'm gonna play puffy's right now, just for you. Here it comes. Game mode is on likey studios. I like eat puffy's. This looks like fun. Oh, you could play it with a uh controller too you can.

1:57:28 - Mikah Sargent
I have not played it with the controller because I thought that felt overwrought.

1:57:33 - Leo Laporte
So it's kind of like doing puzzles, but it's low pressure, right? Low pressure puzzle.

1:57:39 - Mikah Sargent
With very calming music and you hear like the music is very calm but I don't listen to. I don't have the music on because, again, I'm usually listening to an audio book.

1:57:48 - Leo Laporte
Or doing a show, or doing a show. I understand how that could be, Because, my eyes have to be up. Yeah, doing a show or doing a show. I understand how that my eyes have to be up, yeah, but uh, yeah, very fun. It's nice. There you go. Mr Beaver goes right in his spot there and you don't have to hit it exactly.

1:58:00 - Mikah Sargent
I like that yeah, I like, because I don't want a frustration. I don't want no frustration and that's what this is all about no frustration too bad, I don't get the actual stickers uh, yeah, they should add that they should sell the. Because there are the daily challenges are actually much more difficult. Let me show you the Tuesday challenge, just so you can see. This is very relaxing.

There's a little bit of frustration with these. Oh, not good, look at how those stickers are shaped. Not good, very difficult, and sometimes they'll do clever things where you'd think it's a side piece, but it's not. Um, and so, yeah, I like it. I like it. It's just enough of a challenge for these. But if you have a apple arcade subscription.

1:58:45 - Leo Laporte
You might as well. You might as well pick it up, because it's free to you.

1:58:47 - Mikah Sargent
Well, it doesn't cost you any more to get it.

1:58:50 - Leo Laporte
So play it on the iphone, the apple tv, your mac your ipad everywhere, everywhere. Yeah, you're everywhere. Mr michael Sargent, thank you for being here. So good to be here. We'll be back on thursday with tech news weekly. Next, as I mentioned, next tuesday with rosemary orchard for their regular ios today taping.

1:59:08 - Mikah Sargent
You do two in one a day we do, yeah, so we do it every other week on tuesday, nice and uh, it's so good to see you.

1:59:16 - Leo Laporte
I will see you, uh, june 9th, if not sooner. Yes, mike and I used to work in the same building.

1:59:22 - Mikah Sargent
We don't work in the same state anymore yes, now we're in different states. Huh, I was just thinking the other day about how, um, there was one day where you, I was worried you were in a ditch and I sat down.

1:59:35 - Leo Laporte
I was late. Okay, let's be honest, I was late, as I often am.

1:59:39 - Mikah Sargent
For the tech guy and it's a radio show, so it has a very specific time. And I remember Jammer B looking at me and going Mikah, you need to go sit in the chair, you need to go sit in the chair, he's not going to get here on time. You need to go sit in the chair, get ready to do the show. And I'm going. No, no little face. I started walking toward the chair like oh boy, here we go.

2:00:00 - Leo Laporte
and then suddenly we see your car zipping around and you were not in a ditch, I was not.

2:00:02 - Mikah Sargent
You were alive and you got there just in time. You were a little breathy because you kind of you know but that was the worst.

2:00:09 - Leo Laporte
I think that was the worst, that was the one time. It did prompt me to make a a shortcut on my phone that I texted at a Mikah whenever I left the house, saying I'm not in a ditch so that's in the ditch.

2:00:20 - Mikah Sargent
I'm on my way, I'm on my way.

2:00:23 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, Mikah, great to have you. Andy and ako I h n. I have no idea how to spell it, but it starts with I h n an-a-t-k-o. Actually, once you get the i-h-n, the rest is easy.

2:00:36 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like music, it's say it's soft and it's almost like spraying comes together yes, thank you, andy.

2:00:43 - Leo Laporte
Always a pleasure, we'll see you soon. And mr Jason Snell, he's at six colors dot com. Yes, sir, he has a list of shows you can watch on your apple tv plus.

2:00:55 - Jason Snell
Yes, and yes, yeah, check out that list, if you were. If you are wondering what to watch, if you, uh, maybe are going to pick up apple tv plus to watch severance or something his recommendations. There's a lot of good stuff on there a lot of good shows, some good movies, some good uh documentaries and I recommend any of these fine podcasts.

2:01:14 - Leo Laporte
Thank you very much. This seems like the list is getting shorter. Have you been kind of phasing some out?

2:01:18 - Jason Snell
Well, no, there's a lot of like on and off season of various like little TV things that I do that are not that common, but the bulk of it is this show Upgrade with Mike Hurley, the Incomparable, these are the big ones and Downstream. Those are kind of the main ones that are happening, and then the Six Colors podcast that I do with Dan, that's for our members. Julia came back to downstream, she was working for.

Disney for like nine months and we had her on and hopefully she'll be on again and she's got a big brain about streaming media, so it was really great to kind of let her just let the brain kind of out on the podcast waves. It is her expertise and she's back in the media full-time. She was working as an analyst at a research uh company before she went to disney and moonlighting at puck, which is a great uh news site I read her on puck.

I love her on puck and now she's now, so people might be thinking like she's, oh, she's back doing what she was before. It's not true. She is entirely employed by puck now. So instead of doing research and moonlighting in the media, she's got a full-on media job and they're going to use her a lot over there and hopefully I can get her on downstream uh, on a regular basis on top of that, because it's really great to hear you should, and puck should agree to that.

Yeah, I hope so. I mean, matt bellany of puck does a show on the ringer um network, so hopefully I can like do the same, like, come on I subscribe to puck because of people like julia yeah, it, really it's super smart, smartest people.

2:02:43 - Leo Laporte
Uh, talking about stuff I really care about, not just media or politics, but silicon valley fashion. It's a.

2:02:51 - Jason Snell
There's a lot better and better they hired john oran from sports business journal, who was the definitive sort of sports business writer, I would. But Silicon Valley fashion, it's gotten better and better. They hired John Oren from Sports Business Journal, who was the definitive sort of sports business writer, I would argue. And now his column is on Puck too, so Puck News. I don't have a financial interest in that, but they just did hire Julia, so that's good.

2:03:07 - Leo Laporte
No, my only financial interest is I give them money.

2:03:10 - Jason Snell
I give them money too, yeah. I give them money so that I can read their stuff.

2:03:16 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I didn't know she had a full-time job there. Now, that's fantastic.

2:03:19 - Jason Snell
Yeah, she's on full-time, having spent nine months on the inside at Disney. And I asked her what can we talk about, about her job at Disney, and she said you can say I'm no longer employed at Disney but that's, it. She was doing secret strategy stuff that.

2:03:31 - Leo Laporte
Uh, you know it's well, dylan Byers has always been a great media commentator there, so she will really add.

2:03:36 - Jason Snell
Yeah, she, she is, uh, yeah, she's super smart and the way they're saying it is that you used to pay, you know, thousands of dollars to get parrot research as a uh right.

2:03:53 - Leo Laporte
A parrot, analytics is yeah, and of course, you're doing fantastic, which also makes me happy. This is the decade of the indie journalist. It's working so far.

2:04:02 - Jason Snell
I, you know, I had somebody I used to work with in corporate media catch up with me the other day and he was like hey, how you doing? It looks like you're still doing fine. I like, yeah, I'm still doing great. It's great good, it's great to be able to do what everybody from future call you and say, hey, um, I've been getting calls.

2:04:18 - Leo Laporte
I've started this 20 years ago in fact, your 20th anniversary twit is this sunday and uh, almost immediately started getting calls from former radio people saying how tell me about this podcast ah, yes, well, I wanted to start 20 years ago, or maybe 10 years ago, yeah. Yeah, that would be the way to do it, yep. Thank you, Jason. Thank you.

Andrew. Thank you, Mikah, thank you to all of our club members and all of you who watch and listen. We really appreciate it. We do Mac Break Weekly on Tuesdays, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern. That would be 1800 UTC. And the only reason I mentioned that is you can actually watch us live. Most people don't, but if you, you know you had an anchor into, or if you're in the club and you want to chat along with us, we are, of course, in the Club Twit Discord live, but we're live in public as well, because you can watch on YouTube chat there.

We watch the YouTube chat, uh, Twitch, x.com, facebook, linkedin and Kik Eight different platforms all streaming live, all at the same time. How do they do it? After the fact? On-demand versions of the show available at our website twit.tv/mbw. There's a link there to the YouTube channel. That is all of the video. If you go there, it's a great way to share clips. So if you saw something interesting that you wanted to share with other people, like my Apple account password, which I inadvertently shared moments ago, you can just that's all right, I've changed it. You know what Apple security is so good? So, yeah, when I was showing that iCloud PD thing. I inadvertently, I didn't realize, but the text had my clear text, so my password.

2:05:54 - Jason Snell
So password four or five, six now yeah, it's the new password. It's the new password.

2:06:03 - Leo Laporte
So no, but what Apple's so good? Because I said, oh, I immediately went to iCloud, started changing this. No, you can't. You have to change it on one of your devices so that we can do face recognition, because I have the theft protection turned on and then, of course, it does the two factor which everybody should have turned on. So even though somebody in erie, pennsylvania I'm looking at you tried to change my password, they immediately that quick. Well, I got, I got another confirmation from erie pa and I said, yeah, that was not me, but it didn't matter. Good, good on you, apple. Um, I didn't need in. In fact, I didn't, probably didn't need to change my password, but why not? So I have. Now it's a new and improved password.

2:06:43 - Jason Snell
It's monkey456, just in case you stole my password uh thank you all.

2:06:51 - Leo Laporte
And I didn't mention you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That's a good way to watch, uh, because then you get it automatically audio or video and, uh, you don't have to think about it, it's just there for you, for your delectation. At the moment, you need a mac break weekly hit, um, if you would. By the way, if you use a podcast client, give us a review, give us a. Okay, can I beg a five-star review on that site, whether it's iTunes or Pocket Casts or Overcast, wherever you get your shows, if they allow reviews. Five stars helps us a lot, turns out. That is a big factor in both new listeners but also new advertisers. Advertisers look at the reviews for some reason. So just if you would help us out and then join the club and then you don't have to help us anymore. After that, you've done all you ever need to do. Thanks for being here. I must say it, I don't want to, but get back to work Because break time is over. Bye-bye.

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