MacBreak Weekly 911 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. We've got a lot to talk about. The EU says Apple, we'd like $2 billion. Right now, apple says hold on, just a minute. Apple had new hardware to announce this week. In fact, just yesterday they announced the new MacBook Airs. We'll give you a preview of what's new and what's not so new. We'll also talk a little bit about the Vision Pro. Yeah, of course I tried not to, but I couldn't help it. In fact, we've got some great Vision Pro tips. It's all coming up. Next, on MacBreak Weekly. This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 911, recorded Tuesday March 5th 2024: The Deep CPU.

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It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show we get together on Super Tuesday to celebrate the right to vote in this great land of ours and talk about the Apple Computer Company Actually, not just computers anymore. Jason Snells here. Sixcolorscom Hello.

0:02:23 - Jason Snell
Jason, don't blame me. I voted for the M3 MacBook Air.

0:02:28 - Leo Laporte
Well, I think you might win. We'll see. Also here Andy Ihnatko from GBH in Boston. Hello.

0:02:35 - Andy Ihnatko
Andrew, you know it's. You know they have us vote between, or vote air quotes between, the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. It's really the same puppet CPU holding up both of them.

0:02:48 - Leo Laporte
So unless you want to keep contributing to this fascist system, I'm glad that finally you've called out the deep CPU, because that's really the problem here, isn't it?

0:02:59 - Andy Ihnatko
You know it's all big money going into these things. What's running these, these machines?

0:03:04 - Jason Snell
Yeah, have you ever smelled the deep sea PU?

0:03:11 - Leo Laporte
PU. And this punfest continues with Alex Lindsey from officehours.global.

0:03:16 - Alex Lindsay
Hello Alex. Yeah, I, my problem is that I really used to feel like we could choose a GPU or a CPU, and now they're all just they're all the same, they're all connected to each other. You know it's, but you get the NPU for free.

0:03:33 - Jason Snell
People over those industrial complex, those poor windows users on the right.

0:03:38 - Leo Laporte
They they have. They've been waiting for NPUs all this time. They're just now getting them. They've been held back in their machine learning.

0:03:46 - Andy Ihnatko
Well the puppet masters, they're only listening to the extremes of the consumer market. That's right. I mean moderates like me who just bought an affordable laptop that is suitable for the next three or four years and well built. I feel as though we're being ignored, and that's what's driving this buying decision.

0:04:02 - Leo Laporte
So Mark Gurman was right, he said last Sunday. He said you know, don't expect an event, Apple's going to come out with this stuff, with memos basically. And the first memo came out. There is the new MacBook Airs are here the M3 MacBook Airs. How exciting Memo memo.

0:04:22 - Jason Snell
Take a memo, Dottie, Take a memo. Take a memo New MacBook Airs and Wim 3.

0:04:29 - Alex Lindsay
They're looking exactly like the old ones.

0:04:31 - Jason Snell
They, they, yeah, no, it's good, they, they. Finally, the M3, remember debuted with the iMac and the low end MacBook Pro a few months ago, in late 2023. And, of course, the MacBook Air is the most popular Mac, so probably needed to come there sooner rather than later, and so it is now. I guess uh order is now shipping Friday. I think, uh, and you know it is the same exterior, but there are some changes on the inside that are nice, including, you know, the M3 processor having more capability in terms of we can talk about. Apple has a whole AI section, because AI is now a checkbox in product announcements yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we do it All.

0:05:13 - Leo Laporte
Apple Silicon has had a co-melt copress Neural engine.

0:05:16 - Jason Snell
Yeah, but now it's in the press release, I think for a lot of, I think, our audience and similar kind of power users, one of the big stories here is that Apple has enabled, for the first time in Apple Silicon era, the ability for a MacBook Air to turn its internal display off and instead drive two external displays, which you used to not be able to do, and I know that seems super esoteric, but I cannot tell you how many people I've heard from who always had a setup with two monitors and a MacBook Air, who haven't been able to do it. And now you'll be able to do it, and in fact it's a firmware update for that M3 MacBook Pro as well. It will be able to do this too. I don't know why it couldn't do it at launch. That's weird, but uh, that's a big like. That's taking one of the big criticisms with the MacBook Air and the Apple Silicon era and knocking it out.

0:06:04 - Andy Ihnatko
Also, it's not as though. Oh well, we'll let you put up like a 1080p monitor and via HD. No, it's like dual, like five. Is it 5k or 6k?

0:06:13 - Jason Snell
One of them can be 6k and the other one can be 5k. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's immense, it's okay. Yeah, you two studio displays, it'll drive two studio displays.

0:06:21 - Leo Laporte
But you have to be in clamshell mode. I mean, I think you said that, but I just want to underline it. You have to be in clamshell mode.

0:06:26 - Alex Lindsay
You've used up all of your you've used. Also use the only two you um Thunderbolts that you have.

0:06:32 - Leo Laporte
It's to run those monitors. Well, you could do it in a chain, right, can't you? Uh, can you Sure yeah, and what happens if you put on that on that Thunderbolt port, and if you're using a Thunderbolt adapter.

0:06:43 - Andy Ihnatko
You can still drive like displays or connected to the Thunderbolt Thunderbolt adapter.

0:06:48 - Jason Snell
Or on the back of a, on the back of a display or wherever you've got it. But this is I mean, it's big, it's not everything right Because you can't run it with the lid open. You know there's, but but still this is one of those things. And for the Macbook pro, too, people are like well, how is it a pro laptop if it doesn't drive the second external display?

0:07:03 - Leo Laporte
Here you go when does that firmware update come out?

0:07:07 - Jason Snell
I am I'm not sure. It's unclear to me on whether that's something that's enabled by the next version of Mac OS or if it will be a specific firmware update for the for the Macbook pro or not? It?

0:07:16 - Andy Ihnatko
was. It wasn't in any of the official releases. I think nine to five and a couple others asked them directly and got responses saying yes, in the future we'll be able to have a firmware update.

0:07:24 - Leo Laporte
Isn't that interesting. So it had the capability, it was just a software switch. They had.

0:07:29 - Jason Snell
why? Why it was not on, like why would you ship that base Macbook pro with that limitation and then turn it on later? That's so weird, but I don't know. Maybe somebody inside Apple was like oh, I think we can do it Right, I think I know how to do this Give me some chewing gum and a pair of tweezers.

0:07:52 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm getting in there to fix it yeah, I mean there have.

There have been times in the past, like usually not quite the symphatic where, like somebody inside Apple like did a hack just to make their lives better and then, like propagated to other people who, like, saw them working that way and it became integrated basically. Basically it got into the, into the pipeline as a, as a mainstream feature. I'm not sure that something as big as this happened that way, but I bet that the most, the most influential beta testers and voices for Apple products are inside Apple themselves. When people are complaining about, hey, why does my M1 Mac and my cubicle do this, this is something that gets a lot of attention pretty quickly.

0:08:31 - Leo Laporte
Also Wi-Fi 6E. That's new right yeah. So a little bit faster Wi-Fi Now. Wi-fi 7 just got ratified, but don't pay no attention to that. We've got 6E Is. Are there any?

0:08:45 - Alex Lindsay
We'll say that I think that we're starting to get to a point where the, the capability of the laptop is starting to run past the, the capability, the air is starting to run past the utility of it. I can, I can just say that a lot of us, I mean with only two, the, the kind of the, the, the limiting factor here is really those two USBs, and I know that people say, oh, we can put them on a bridge. But you know, for a lot of us, you know, putting video on a bridge and audio, or and or audio, all those things are the things that we try to avoid like the plague, and so, as a result, you know, daisy Channing doesn't always work, and so when you start to have this really high performance computer, you're having that, you know, you have that M3, it's really powerful and it's still limited by these two jacks. And I know that that's the primary. Probably to me that's the primary difference between a MacBook pro and a Mac and two Thunderbolts the RAM limitation right, it's only 24 gigs still.

That's it. I think you can do again. I think you can do a lot with 24 gigs, but, but the but and again, I think this is for someone who wants to have their you know like. I think that if you're casual, casual using it. But I think we get questions in office hours a lot of hey, should I get this as my video production thing in our flatly, we're like no this is for.

If you want to do a light video or light audio and you want to do, you know, if you want to do those kinds of things, if you, if you mostly just want to have a great, pleasurable experience to do your general computing, it I think it's a great laptop. But as soon as you want to, if you want to do something that is remotely professional, the extra, the the max chips, the extra headroom on the RAM, the extra USB, they make a huge difference. So there is, these are not. I think people keep on saying that these are kind of blending between and. To me the Mac Air is a very different product than the pro.

0:10:32 - Jason Snell
Yeah, except for the one that's identical to it, but I mean but it doesn't have those ports.

0:10:39 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, right.

0:10:39 - Andy Ihnatko
But that is. That is a good point. I mean right now, in terms of the amount of power that you need. For 80% of everybody who's out there, a MacBook Air is absolutely going to cover you. And the addition, the ability to again plug it into a dock. Even if you have, even if you decide to put in a dock and have like a work station like, like setup that you simply plug in and take out. That is what was one of the final factors.

So I think that Apple's going to have to take another look at the MacBook Pro line to do things that are going to really differentiate, like it's. I know that the unified memory concept is. It's a subtle discussion about what, what, what application RAM means inside Apple Silicon, but still, this is where you start to now look once again at like the base level MacBook Pro and think eight gigabytes is still kind of chintzy as like entry level machine on a pro machine, when why it's Apple's going to have. Apple seems to have some trouble now, like trying to convince me to spend $1,600 for a base base level MacBook Pro versus like an $1,100 M3 MacBook Air.

0:11:47 - Leo Laporte
You can get now the M2 MacBook Air for $9.99., but again, that's with eight gigs of RAM and I and I really, you know, is it 128 gigs of storage, or is it? Have they at least beefed that up? Let me look, I'm on the. Apple store page the basic, the base model $9.99, which is I mean, you know that's a special price point under a thousand bucks. Exactly 256 gigs of storage and eight gigs of RAM. What do we not recommend? Eight gigs of RAM, or do we?

0:12:21 - Andy Ihnatko
My recommendation is always max out the RAM to the extent that you can afford. Like if you've got, if you know what your budget is and you're balancing out, how much extra money do I put in above the base level? I would much rather spend more money on extra RAM, because that's one of the things that makes this thing future, proof, like it's a difference between six or seven years from now, this MacBook Air being usable and being perfectly usable, because you can't expand the, you can't expand the storage or the RAM on these things, but at least I can plug in a Thunderbolt external external device and at least I can get like a get a terabyte of two terabytes off of that, whereas if you're, if you have a problem, that's with lack of RAM, you're just stuck.

0:13:02 - Leo Laporte
Apple took a fair bit of mockery for saying eight gigs of RAM on a MacBook as equivalent of 16 on a PC, Is that? Is that? Is that true, Jason?

0:13:14 - Jason Snell
I wouldn't say that and I think they do deserve some degree of mockery for that. But it's marketing, you know, marketing is going to be what it's going to be. I think the truth is that a lot of computer nerds will turn their nose up at eight gigs of RAM, and for good reason. But at the same time, I think that a person who's buying the base model is probably price constrained in a way that it's just, it's not going to be a bad experience, it's not going to be the best experience, but it's not going to be a terrible experience. I think that they need to get off of eight at some point as the base here.

But right now I mean for the MacBook Pro, I actually agree. In fact, you would be better off, unless you're, you know, like Alex was saying, somebody who really wants the ports and the card reader and things like that. I think you'd be better off spending the money that you would spend on the base MacBook Pro M3, on a MacBook Air M3 upgraded with 16 gigs of RAM and, you know, 512 storage. You can actually get that for a hundred less than the base MacBook Pro, but, but I think you can get by again. Could our audience get by with eight. Maybe they would push it, but I think a lot of people you know the low price is the thing and they can. They can survive. Apple Silicon Macs run okay, unless you're running like 15 different apps or whatever, like. It's just not. I just there's a little level of snobbery and it's based in reality, but I also think that it overstates it.

0:14:36 - Alex Lindsay
And I'm running, I've got about. I got a stack of Mac minis here. They're all eight gigs, one of them 16, and most of them are eight gig, eight gig RAM, and I've never feel it Like you know. I have to admit that they're some but single mission, but they're running, they're running apps, they're running keynote, they're running in, occasionally, photoshop, they're running, you know, other things like that, and I really don't. I don't feel it at all. So now I wouldn't do the heavy work that I do on my studio on those computers.

So I think that it is, you know. So I've kind of separated that out, but I think for the kind of things that you should be doing on the air, in my opinion, eight gigs is probably gonna you're probably not gonna feel it for quite some time, you know, and it's. And when you start saying, oh, I need 16 gigs of RAM, I would start saying that you should really be thinking about a MacBook Pro. You know, like, like it is. You should just step up and and and.

But if you're, I think that for most of what the eight, the air is good for, I think for a variety of reasons. I think I would, I would probably, and I think that the, the Mac and the M2 right now is still the most as much as most people who buy an air need. So so you know, so the. So I think that it's a pretty good deal right now too. And remember, you can start with eight gigs and that's the 999. But of course you can upgrade those past that. So I believe you can get at least a 16, I think so yeah, I mean that it's the also one of the questions.

0:15:54 - Andy Ihnatko
That was much. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you're still there.

0:15:57 - Alex Lindsay
No, just 20,. No, I was 20. One of the things.

0:16:01 - Andy Ihnatko
That was really on my mind when I was making my choice. Macbook Air MacBook Pro was slightly larger battery in the MacBook Pro. Also, macbook Air does not have a fan, so it can get thermally throttle theoretically faster than than a MacBook Pro can. However, again for the sort of things I'm using this machine for the only time that I'm ever that I even hear the fans on my MacBook Pro are when I'm doing like nothing but like transcoding, where I'm not probably going to be really involved in doing anything really important anyway, and the battery life is going to be, I think, more affected by improvements in the OS, improvements in the battery tuning. So the next step, I think, for Apple, is going to be the the only this isn't a complaint, but an observation that the difference in Airness between the Macbook Air and the Macbook Pro used to be phenomenal.

The Macbook Air used to feel like nothing in your hand compared to carrying around a Macbook Pro. Now they're roughly the same. They roughly take up the same space inside your bag. Yes, it's thinner at one edge, but it's basically the same thickness at the other edge. Weight is it's lighter, but not that much lighter. I think that the next big transformation is going to be, make me something that looks like it has the styling of an iPad that is shockingly thin in light, that is at least at the $1,000 price point. Give me something that, if I really do want, something that is super transportable, that feels like I'm not even necessarily aware that I've got a laptop in my bag, that's going to be an option for me. I don't know if Apple, if inside Apple, they feel as though they don't want to crowd the decision for an iPad Pro, because if you do want super light, if you do want super thin, if you do want super compact, maybe what you want is an iPad with a keyboard cover.

0:17:52 - Leo Laporte
I think that, given that the MacBook Air design physically has not really changed since the beginning not that much anyway I think if this is so overdue for a style makeover, Should point out that, alex, that you probably are right, because in the picture in the Apple memo they're running both monitors with two cables, although it's a little bit of a mystery, because there doesn't appear to be a cable going into the left monitor. I'm going to presume that monitor goes somewhere. The cable goes somewhere, probably down under the table and back up to the hiding the monitor.

0:18:28 - Andy Ihnatko
Also, I should point out that that user is using a magic mouse, so how realistic is this up any way?

0:18:33 - Leo Laporte
A good point. I think the Apple is clearly well, they don't want to promote docks and dongles.

0:18:42 - Alex Lindsay
I think that that's the problem is that you also don't want to. If you're trying to do it like for us a lot of us are doing higher on the road, higher in Zoom connections and higher in those types of things, you really want that. Whatever your camera and your audio device are going to be, you want them to go directly into the computer. And then you want another one for the ethernet, and then you're down to one. It might be your keyboard. It eats up everything that they're in. The keyboard can absolutely go through a dock and technically the ethernet can go through the dock as well. So that's fine, but your AV should not. That's where we get into real pinches when it comes to needing to do a professional use case.

0:19:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, my instinct when I was at my mom's house was to make sure that the audio and the video were directly plugged into the Mac. But then I had a Mac Pro, so I had extra ports. Exactly.

0:19:30 - Andy Ihnatko
But also again for the MacBook Air user. This is perfectly fine, but also the convenience of having one Thunderbolt cable that I plug into this laptop and all of a sudden I have every convenience of a desktop.

0:19:43 - Alex Lindsay
Exactly.

0:19:44 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm not going to travel with a dock, unless it's like a little pocket dock just to have USB ports and stuff like that. But I think that if you can host both of those external displays through a dock, I think that would be super, super wonderful, because you don't want to have to eat both of them up with two monitors.

0:20:00 - Leo Laporte
And of course, other world computing is having a 14 port Thunderbolt dock sale right now.

0:20:05 - Alex Lindsay
What a surprise.

0:20:09 - Jason Snell
I can't believe I'm in this position to somewhat defend the honor of the MacBook Air, but it's Apple's top selling computer and I think they did redesign it with EM2. I know it's not an enormous redesign, but I think if you asked Apple they'd say that design is going to go for a while. I agree with Andy and we may talk about this more later that Apple needs to do some experimentation. The form of the laptop Apple seems to have thought they defined it in 2011 or something, and since then it's all pretty much been that. I would love them to try to do something thinner or lighter or convertible, but for this one, this is the most popular laptop Apple sells for a reason. Price is part of it and also what people want out of their computer.

I will say I use a MacBook Air, I didn't buy a MacBook Pro, and I am more than comfortable with the power in it, and so I just want to put that out there, that I think I would not push somebody to a MacBook Pro unless they had some very specific needs in terms of ports or in terms of that beautiful display.

And we didn't even mention the 15-inch MacBook Air, which I should also mention. The 15-inch MacBook Air got revised as well and, in a very funny thing, because they came so late to the 15-inch M2, which came out last summer. It's gone because they're only selling the M2 in the 13-inch variety, so that 15-inch M2 MacBook Air had an extremely like almost record setting small short life. But the 15-inch is there for people who want it. The big screens, the beautiful screens on the Pro are a reason to get the Pro, and the ports are there too. But at the same time, like the MacBook, I would be more than happy to recommend an M2 or an M3 MacBook Air to almost everyone, knowing that the people not included and almost include a lot of our viewers, a lot of our listeners and everybody Alex knows. But I think that even for me, the only thing that I get sad about when I'm on the MacBook Air is if I'm trying to do a whisper AI transcript and it only runs at 4X instead of 8X. That's about it.

0:22:17 - Alex Lindsay
I think my sensitivity to it specifically is that my wife bought an MacBook Air the M2, the last one because she wanted to keep it light, she wanted to spend a lot of money and she wanted it to work. And then, of course, she decided that this is much better than the other computer she has for Zoom and attached it, and I'm still figuring out all the tech to fit it into those two ports, stably just going.

0:22:37 - Leo Laporte
You know, if this was a MacBook Pro, I mean this is I would get that other At least $99 for that other world computing 14. It's Thunderbolt 3, 14.

0:22:46 - Alex Lindsay
That probably perfect for her. Yeah, and then she. It's plugged into the wall.

0:22:50 - Leo Laporte
It's got a real power jack.

0:22:52 - Alex Lindsay
So you sit down you plug in that one cable.

0:22:54 - Leo Laporte
and he was talking about it and you light up and that's where we're going.

0:22:58 - Alex Lindsay
It's just been one of those things that it's like oh, and now I'm buying another piece of hardware. You don't like to donk a life.

0:23:02 - Leo Laporte
I understand You're the snob that we were talking about earlier, as am I.

0:23:08 - Alex Lindsay
I bought a Pro.

0:23:09 - Leo Laporte
I had the M2 MacBook Air and I went. In fact I had both. I bought the 13 that I thought I wanted the 15. Then I realized I liked the 13. Then the 14-inch Pro came out.

0:23:20 - Jason Snell
I said that's perfect and so.

0:23:24 - Alex Lindsay
Well, it hurts a lot faster than the 2020 Intel 14.

0:23:27 - Leo Laporte
Oh, God yes.

0:23:29 - Alex Lindsay
Apple keeps.

0:23:30 - Leo Laporte
You know, apple will tell you the differences in speeds. And at least they're honest. They say well, it's a 13% faster M3 MacBook Air than a M2 MacBook Air, but it is twice as fast as the i7 MacBook Air. I mean it's a big difference.

0:23:46 - Alex Lindsay
It's huge and I'm just not out enough to make it worth it. So I sit here and just buy more Mac Minis. I'm like, oh, I'll buy them.

0:23:52 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so that raises and Demos is asking in the chat Now. Mark Gurman said there's many products coming out this month but there will not be an event. They will all be set out with a memo Memo. One is out, but I suspect we're going to see more, right? Will we see this is the real question M3, mac or other? Yeah, mac Mini. Will we see a mini?

0:24:12 - Jason Snell
This month. That's not in Mark Gurman's rumor list and I think that they might have announced it now. I think that we're going to see an M3 iPad Pro, but I don't know about that.

0:24:21 - Leo Laporte
So next memo will be iPads, right? I think so, and that's it.

0:24:26 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think. So I think that the Mac Mini and the Mac Mini has in the past been announced with the iPad, so it's not that it's impossible that that would happen.

0:24:35 - Jason Snell
Because it's happened in the past, but I think that it has a couple of years ago.

0:24:39 - Alex Lindsay
No, maybe when I say a couple of years, it might have been four or five years ago, that I remember it Anyway.

0:24:43 - Leo Laporte
So and we do have June will be WWDC. That might be another time.

0:24:46 - Alex Lindsay
That's what I'm saying I think that the desktops are getting grouped together. Yes, so the desktops will all come out at the same time. So you have the Mac Mini, you'll have the Studio, you'll have the Pro Will all come out at that time. That makes sense. So I think that those are going to get grouped together and I think that that's kind of where things are kind of settling in to that process.

0:25:04 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of funny, which is nice, that we'll actually have an event To think of the Mini as a desktop.

0:25:08 - Alex Lindsay
But of course it is a desktop, but it's yeah no absolutely Like just like a little Many of them can fit on one desktop, as I approve.

0:25:16 - Jason Snell
My Mac Studio is under my desktop. You've got Mini Hinge. I love the.

0:25:20 - Leo Laporte
Studio.

0:25:21 - Jason Snell
I forgot about the Studio.

0:25:23 - Leo Laporte
That's right. They got to update that as well as the Pro. So maybe in June, you think, or we're not going to wait until the end of the year For fall.

0:25:29 - Jason Snell
It could be the fall.

0:25:31 - Andy Ihnatko
I think yeah, remember they had a couple of big refreshes of the Mini line in the fall events. But also the priority is to make sure that. I don't know if the cutoffs for bulk purchases for institutions have changed for fall usage, but traditionally bulk purchases for school systems, for universities, for people who need to basically be an institutional purchase for fall, tends to end it around May, which is why you tend to find more student-friendly hardware being updated May or earlier, so that if an institution is buying 500 of them or stocking 1,000 for a certain operation, they can place that order and be ready for that time. And that's why the Pro stuff tends to wait for the people who are going to be on tender hooks for it. People can appreciate the developers, people like Alex it almost sounds as though a derogatory term for a subculture, people like Alex, but of course we're talking about people who are at the top of the performance curve and who have like. The fact that something has two ports instead of four is an immense pressure point for a lot of people.

0:26:40 - Leo Laporte
You're talking about the 1%, andy. That's what we call ourselves. The 1%ers have MacBook Pros.

0:26:49 - Alex Lindsay
Actually the 1% is probably have MacBook Pros Very long time. Yeah, I love my Mac you know what I spent.

0:26:57 - Leo Laporte
It was $5,000 or something because it had 4 terabytes. It was an M3. I maxed out RAM. It was very expensive. But my thinking was this is it for a long time? I love the screen. It's an. It is a better screen than the mini. I mean the air. It's really a nice system and I figured, like this is my, this is my pal for the next five years. So it was. I think it was worth it.

0:27:18 - Alex Lindsay
If you add times to that, and I you know for me, I try to make a decision about what I actually need. So I buy, you know, a lot of my Mac minis. When I say, oh, I got a bunch of Mac minis, these are all like almost all, but one of them is the cheapest Mac minis you can buy.

0:27:32 - Jason Snell
That you know. So it's like $599, $599.

0:27:35 - Alex Lindsay
So like I can have three of those instead of instead of my, instead of on air. My Mac studio is a Mac, not an Ultra, because I thought I'd buy the Mac, the Mac Pro, and then wasn't. You know, then it took a lot longer to come out than I expected. I'm probably my next computer is probably a Mac Pro, because I need all the IO, like I need all of that, I need to put cards in it, I need to be able to put like I'm now like there's things that I'm doing that need those things, so the that's. So now I'm saving up for that and again, not buying. Not buying a laptop because I'm buying more desktop stuff, just because I spend most of my time. You know I'm working from home, so I spend most of my time at home. I don't really need I take my when I go out, I take my iPad, I take my laptop as the thing to do the things that I can't do on my iPad.

0:28:18 - Jason Snell
So I I feel like I'm almost going the other way. I set up a second workspace in my house and I got a studio display, a keyboard, a track pad and a and a Thunderbolt dock and it's a single cable plugin for my MacBook Air and I am essentially duplicating what I have here with my Mac studio, but with the air driving it.

0:28:37 - Leo Laporte
And it's fine and it, and you don't notice the difference to you.

0:28:40 - Jason Snell
I love it and in fact I love my Mac studio so much that I I imagine I'll replace it with another Mac studio, but I have given it the thought that I might not need to.

0:28:49 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, Me too. I'm one Mac's next to you and I don't feel like it's slow. In fact, you know, I the one thing I have, the only benchmark I use is my little programming things that I do Just try to run topaz.

0:29:04 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I don't do that Right.

0:29:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I do run the XOMar and capture one and I and the Nick plugins and stuff and it runs just fine. And then when Max, I'm very happy with that, yeah, I do my photo, I'm starting.

0:29:16 - Jason Snell
I have a surfer in my house too and I'm starting to wonder if my end game is going to be to, rather than having be like a low end Mac mini server, have it be like a studio that's beefy and use it for all the you know AI grinding that I need to do every day and not worry about it so much for my my day to day. But I don't know. I mean, I do edit video and audio on this system a lot and it is nicer to have the studio for that. But, like I'm just saying, for most use cases, just docking, especially since you can charge and drive everything off of one Thunderbolt cable, that's a pretty good setup.

0:29:52 - Andy Ihnatko
And I, I mean I've got to. I'm. I tend to leapfrog I'll like every two or three years, up by a new Mac, one a year. It's going to be the mobile one, one year is going to be the desktop one. I've been overdue for a Mac mini upgrade for a while, but I still got my i5 iMac on the desktop on another desk, the one that I basically only do like writing and researching on.

So that's not as though it's a. It's a it's a big heavy deal. But I mean, jason, like you've got a good point there. Where now, if you there's so much that's in motion in the next five years, including AI tools that are not like a separate topaz, ai that you're going to like fire up, because, hey, I just want to upscale this one thing and then I'm going to walk away and come back.

But, given how important that so many companies are, how much value they're putting into adding AI models that run locally, like, what if, like, just as part of outputting video of any kind, there is an AI component to it where extra memory is going to be really, really important? Or what if there's an important tool like, like, you're counting on transcription? Just not, not, as, again, you and I both use it as a, as a component of the recording process, so that we have a transcript of something if we need it. But what if there's a workflow in which basically everything that you record or everything that you do should have an AI transcript with it that always runs in the background? That's another, another application where you're going to need you're probably going to need a whole lot of application RAM and you're going to need a lot of processes. So it's going to be the. I really do think that it's going to be the death by a thousand cuts in the next five.

I see, not within the next five years, but let's say five years from now, where, if you're expecting a Mac to give you five, six, seven, eight years worth of use, it's a good long-term investment, unless you really are planning on getting heavy iron in in in 2028, 2029, 2030. As it is like last year, if I had bought, if I had upgraded my my, my Mac mini, I would certainly have settled for a very, very good uh, upspect, uh, regular Mac mini. Now, however, I'm sort of holding off to see what happens, what gets released in 2024. Is there going to be like a pro processor that is going to be within range of my budget, and would I rather now not have to figure out what's going to be most practical for me now, but what's going to be practical for me in five or six years and that's basically what I'm saying is that I might.

I'm the person who was going to say, oh well, I don't, I don't need a Mac studio. I appreciate it, but, gee, I could put my money elsewhere. Now I'm thinking maybe I'd better like if I can find another $500 to get the next level processor. Maybe I would rather have to do that rather than deal with oh man, I'm, I'm trying to do spell check on this, on this on this dock, and it's taking it's. I'm getting, I'm getting beach ball curses from left to right, up and down, because it's trying to do a data center operation, that on something that BB edit used to do as a grip.

0:32:41 - Jason Snell
Well, if I was trying to split the difference, I think what I would probably do is actually just buy a higher end MacBook pro. See, alex, I've come around to your side now through the MacBook pro and then cause it docs just as easily. And I will tell you, having used this sort of two computer lifestyle and having the laptop in the back most of the time and the back studio up in the front, is the advantage the laptop has is it's the same computer everywhere. And when you're in, cloud services help you sync a lot of stuff. But, like I, I go to the laptop and I'm like oh, I have to reapply all those software updates that I did before and like, so there is something to be said for investing in a really good laptop that can which is going to be a little more expensive but take it everywhere and dock it when you need to.

0:33:23 - Alex Lindsay
I've not lived that life in a long time, but I I see the appeal of it, even though right now I'm still, I think, pretty happy with that the value of the of the Mac studio and replacing it every three or four years, and I think that one of the things that I purposefully do with what I do, how I manage this, is that there's one room in my house that has a lot of technology and almost no technology in the rest of the house, and that is definitely purposeful, in the sense that I walk out and maybe I take an iPad out, but mostly it's just my phone, and then there's an Apple TV running into the TV, but the rest of my house is pretty analog and I do that so that when I walk out of the room I'm not doing this like and I, when I have a laptop that's current, I'm constantly like setting on the desk and setting on my lap and setting on the things and working on things.

And I've just found that I I wanted to be able to walk out of my house, walk out of my space and have it be in, you know, just go to the rest of my life, and so that's, and I think that's just a. Different people have different ways of approaching. I just have a hard time thinking to find.

Allow myself to have that electronics around me all the time. It's hard for me to think about new things.

0:34:24 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I agree, and I would also say that, look, apple has not made it as easy as it could to live the desktop laptop lifestyle. Oftentimes I find myself having to pull laptop out and open it up in order to authenticate something or to boot it in the proper way that it shows the external display. That kind of stuff keeps happening. It is not a system that you can just keep the lid closed all the time, and you know there are moments of maintenance where you have to pull it out and open it up and all that. I don't love it. I'm like I mean, that's one of those things that makes me not want to do it, but it's still. You know it depends on your budget too, like if you only have the budget to buy one computer, having a setup that you can take with you and also leave at your desk is the right solution, I think, right now. But you know some of us computer nerds have two computers and that's nice too.

0:35:13 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and you know, I was on a laptop solely for 25 years. So it was really COVID that had me, that broke that habit of mine, and then I didn't want to go back. But I was for 25, maybe, arguably 30 years. My main driver was always a laptop Like and I had other computers laying around. But I, you know everything because, for the same reason that you said, everything's on one computer and all the stuff's the same and all my stuff there and everything's all there, and so so I definitely lived in that, in that world, for a long time, and once I got out of it I've just been resistant.

0:35:43 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, one of the things that just quickly, one of the things that Apple and other companies could do very well, is not just data syncing and app syncing, but also workspace syncing, because what I love is that my, my, my MacBook is on my nightstand.

On a day like yesterday where, okay, wake up quickly, say what happened, to see what happened to the world, like, hey, in the fight, in the eight hours that I was asleep, realize that oh, there is a brand new AI models. Their apples get hit with a $2 billion fine, and they're a brand new Macs. I I can start working bed like and get on top of something and then literally just carry it from to another room and all my tabs there are, all my windows, there are, all my apps are there. It takes a while to get that reset on a desktop and I really wish that Mac OS and other OS could simply say please keep these two desktops sync. You have the same apps available, you have the same connections available, services available. Just try to make as well, as good as possible. Mirror the setups on every single thing I have.

0:36:34 - Leo Laporte
Are you going to get a briefing, jason? Have they contacted you?

0:36:38 - Jason Snell
Uh, have they contacted me about the MacBook Air? Yeah, I mean I'm not supposed to say but sure, yes, I will get one.

0:36:45 - Alex Lindsay
I have not.

0:36:46 - Jason Snell
I have not received any briefings yet, but I anticipate that I will, so.

0:36:49 - Leo Laporte
I hope your briefings come from the people who signed the memo, because I don't know if they're real names. They're very fanciful Star Lane Metz and Lizette Viviana DuPont.

0:37:00 - Jason Snell
I'll just say that I, I, uh, I know star very well and talk to her all the time, and uh, love her name, we call her star. We call her star. She's very helpful.

0:37:08 - Leo Laporte
And I and I hope to get to meet Lizette Viviana DuPont at some point. They do sound like maybe something from a West.

0:37:16 - Jason Snell
Anderson movie. You meet them in the one percenters, the one percenters meetings, right. Well, the one percenters.

0:37:19 - Leo Laporte
We'll meet.

We'll meet. Yes, let's take a little break. Alex Lindsay, jason Snell, andy and I, co we're talking max, and there's lots more to talk about. There is a lot of Apple news, uh, this week, but I do want to mention this. I'm more than mention.

I get email every every week now from people who say thank you for telling me about Fastmail, my email provider. I've been singing its praises for a decade. I'm glad we could finally do some ads for them. They're the leader. They say an email privacy. They've been doing this for more than 20 years. They're really a leader in email. They use an open source server that they constantly contribute to, and so the things that Fastmail does trickle down to other email servers. But why not use the best? Why not use the leader, Fastmail? They move email forward with new internet standards and open source innovations that power many other email services.

Fastmail lets you do it the way you want to do it. By the way, you can use your desktop client. It works with Apple mail. You can use your your Apple mail on your iPhone if you want, but they also have great, one of the best web mail interfaces I've ever used. Frankly, it's all you need, probably, and they have iOS and Android apps that have, for me, completely replaced the built-in apps. Fastmail has so many nice features, like their quick settings, which lets you choose new themes, switch between light and dark mode, change text size, generate masked email addresses, auto save contacts, set default reminders and more, all without leaving your mail interface.

Fastmail lets you add or buy a domain. All my domains now go through Fastmail so that they handle the email. They set up all the records for me, so I get SPF and DKIM and DMARC. I get all the authentication, which means my email goes through to everybody. Fastmail does it right. Not everybody does, I hate to say it, and I got to point out that you pay for free email.

First of all, if you care about email, why are you going with free? Fastmail is as little as $3 a month, and if email is important to you, you really ought to get Fastmail because there's real support from real people. You can add your own domain to Fastmail. You pay for free email with your privacy Right At Fastmail. All your data stays yours. Nobody's scanning your data. You get better productivity features Again as little as $3 a month. If you want to move, it's easy to take that old mailbox, move it over, import it into your new Fastmail mailbox. You can keep your old mailbox open and have the mail forwarded to you. Fastmail will go out and fetch it if you want.

I also use Fastmail's calendars and contacts. I've completely replaced Google. I've completely replaced Google. They're my centralized cloud-based contacts and calendars because they're private and Fastmail has extremely good spam filters that you control. If you want, you can even use the CIV programming language to actually write spam programming filtering of all kinds, not just spam. The Volkines and I do that. It works great with your bit warden or your one password to create to generate unique email addresses that they understand and Fastmail understands. But the bad guys don't know.

I love Fastmail. It's the better email service. Have I given you enough reasons to try it out? I'm just scratching the surface. If you care about your email, if email's important to you, pay for it. Quality really is worth paying for as little as $3 a month with Fastmail. Actually it's free for the first 30 days.

Go to fastmail.com/twit. No tracking, no ads, no information sharing. fastmail.com/twit. We thank Fastmail. I thank personally thank Fastmail for making my mail better. I've given up on mail for a long time. It was so useless. Fastmail filtering just makes it so easy. fastmail.com/twit. Actually I have an unread mailbox now that I can check every day that doesn't have spam. It only has you know things addressed to me and so forth. But I can very quickly go through the mail I haven't read Instead of looking, going through the piles of garbage that people you must, everybody must get this Just endless amounts of nothing in your email. I don't know, you know, it's crazy, okay, okay. So now German said something interesting on Twitter and one of our Discordians, one of our club twit members, pulled it up. He said that the iOS 17.4, which was intended for the new iPads, wouldn't be ready until the end of month. So it's his contention that you won't see an iPad Pro announcement until the end of the month.

He also says because of the in-person briefings which were on Monday, it seems unlikely that they would do that.

0:42:09 - Jason Snell
Now I well, I disagree with that. They do all I don't know. I'll just say that they do lots of briefings these days, post pandemic, apple does lots of briefings via remote and then they FedXU the computers overnight and you don't need to go anywhere and I live like I live a mile what is not a mile, an hour, hour and a half from Cupertino, from Apple Park, and like they don't always have me come there for a briefing because they've converted to this online briefing system. So I'm not sure I agree with Mark's supposition there, his intel about the OS release. It's possible that could mean they will release it later this month. It could also mean that they'll do an announcement and you know, announce it on the 12th of the 19th and then take orders later that week and ship it the following week. There are lots of options there. So you know Mark has the sources, but the fact that he's trying to backfill from an OS release time and suggest he doesn't actually know when the release is actually happening, so it could be next Monday.

0:43:08 - Leo Laporte
I was kind of hoping for a magic manic, Monday March, where every Monday in March we got a new, a new something.

0:43:15 - Jason Snell
I mean never say never. There could be something that's not on his radar. There could be, like an AirPods update, or they could make, like the USB, the USB-C version of the keyboard, like I mean there's all sorts of weird Apple.

0:43:25 - Leo Laporte
TV. You know we're doing Apple TV, apple pencil we know there's going to be a new pencil right or we thought we knew that we heard that'll go with the iPad, though.

0:43:33 - Jason Snell
Right, Because that'll require the new iPad. I think yeah.

0:43:37 - Leo Laporte
And and the OLED screen very expensive, 10 inches and 12 inches right.

0:43:42 - Jason Snell
So there are reports now that it's not going to be as very expensive as we thought, which is good. Like I think all of us were assuming that if you add OLED to an iPad Pro it would be a lot more expensive. It may be that they that really nice mini LED backlight. That's on that. The large iPad Pro was itself kind of expensive, and the rumors now are that it'll be more expensive, but only in the maybe couple hundred dollar range, not in the $500 range, and that because OLED requires less physical hardware than something like backlighting, that these might actually be really thin and small in a way that like way thinner than the current iPads. So that's kind of cool if that's true.

Yeah, all right, we'll see. And if you're about the iPad, you want to be down. Are you down on the iPad, leo, or are you?

0:44:31 - Leo Laporte
I can't decide if I'm down, I'm very from.

0:44:33 - Jason Snell
Mac to Vision Pro. Where does the iPad land?

0:44:35 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's a good spectrum of hate. You're going to pile on now, aren't you?

0:44:45 - Jason Snell
I'm just saying you didn't seem enthusiastic about the iPad, so I'm wondering, I'm curious.

0:44:49 - Leo Laporte
I have the iPad Pro 12.9, based on the M one. I use it once in a while. It's not, you know, it's not a go-to device. So I but I, you know OLED screen. I'm tempted, but I don't. I think I would just to be another thing, like the Vision Pro. I just gathered dust in my office.

0:45:06 - Jason Snell
So toward the Vision Pro side of this, I mean I use my iPad Pro all the time because it's my reading device. So, like when I get, I mean I have, I have an e-reader, but like for in the morning, I'll get my tea and my breakfast and I am. I am reading RSS and I'm you know all of that stuff happens Checking my email, checking Slack, all of it on my iPad I have a mini, though in bed, when I'm in bed reading.

0:45:26 - Leo Laporte
I have. I do have a number of Kindles, but I like the mini for you know, it's really good.

0:45:31 - Jason Snell
Absolutely so. I'm a mini fan.

0:45:32 - Leo Laporte
Would they release a new mini? No, just the pros.

0:45:35 - Jason Snell
It needs to be updated. It's way behind, so I think that they'll probably will. Yeah, yeah.

0:45:40 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean to be fair. I love my. I'm with Jason. I use my 12.9 inch iPad Pro pretty much the same way. It's for everything that where for which a, a keyboard, connected to a screen via a hinge with a non touch screen, for every job that that's not appropriate. For that I use the, the iPad. For.

If the iPad pro didn't exist in as in the form, as good as it would be, I would be very, very tempted, I would have been very, very tempted to spend $1,000 on a Windows convertible, because the idea of hardware that is adaptable to the task at hand, whether it is I am reading a comic book or I'm a reading a newspaper, I'm just lying back on the sofa, A keyboard is in my way and it's superfluous. Or I want to draw something, I want to do some art. That's where the keyboard is, Absolutely not what I want to do, and I don't want to tether, tether another, another device to it in order to do those sort of things. On and on, and on and on. If, if, if Apple made a device that was a convertible, there would be no need for the 12.9 inch. Because, again, I mean it's generous to say that Apple fields felt as though they solved the problem of mobile computing in 2010. I think they solved it as soon as they said you know what? That trackball in the power book annoys me. What if we? What, oh why don't we do that with a track pad instead? They're perfect. We were never going to do anything else with mobile computing anywhere.

Hinge keyboard screen that you don't touch at all. Boy, we, we can't improve, let's not, let's not gild the lily here, Whereas other I mean now other other companies are, at least are even trying to say you know what? Let's go completely nuts, let's have, let's have a laptop that's nothing but screen that folds in half, and I think that's practical, but at least they're, they're trying. It's, it's from these early, impractical ideas that things like here is a tablet computer that is awesome, that will run desktop class apps, that will again adapt to whatever it is you're doing at this moment, wherever and however you're doing it, instead of making you make room to balance something on your knees or something in the way. That's, that's where Apple could really, really show they're hiding there late under a bushel when it comes to design. When it comes to that.

0:47:48 - Jason Snell
I think that this is a key point when we talk about the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, when we talk about the iPad, one of the things I wrote a few weeks ago I wrote a macro column about how I want Apple to just do weird stuff, like the Vision Pro is weird and that's great.

Like I want Apple to try stuff I think the most burning like necessity for the Apple is to experiment more with mobile device styles, because we have the iPad and we have the MacBook Air, but like the the PC market has had and I know that Apple doesn't rush into every market where there's like a PC market product they they wait and buy their time but like they have been experimenting with convertibles on the PC side in you know, with weird convertibles for more than a decade now and some of those are interesting. I wonder, leo, I wonder if this might be a segue to also mention our friend Federico Vetticci's story, mac's stories last week or Monday, where he literally ripped the screen off of a MacBook Air and put an iPad there and, using software, created his own Apple convertible. And, like you know, I don't like he's doing it, not as a stunt and he's not doing it, it is but like he is following his own bliss.

If you know, federico, this is like, this is very Federico to do this. But what we all benefit is we didn't have to tear the screen off our laptops and he gets to explore a little bit what a convertible from Apple might be like and what advantages it might have.

0:49:12 - Leo Laporte
So what did he do? He really like he ripped the key bar off of an old it looks like MacBook Air.

0:49:18 - Jason Snell
He took an M2 MacBook Air, not old.

He took the screen off of it. He took the screen off, so it's a. It's basically like a laptop deck that you have to supply a monitor for, and then he put a bunch of magnets on it and snapped his iPad Pro to it as the display, using screen sharing, so, and universal control, so he can actually run a hybrid iPad Mac. It's bananas. But again, you know, apple owns all these operating systems, apple builds all this hardware and I don't know what the right product is. But what Andy was talking about, the iPad, he really is getting at something about this.

You know what are the weird spaces in between Apple's products right now? And is there a place for something that is ergonomically different? Again, not for everybody. I think almost everybody's just going to choose a Mac laptop and probably a MacBook Air. But, like, for some users, the great thing about the iPad has always been that it is actually a convertible. It can be a bare tablet when you want it to be. It can be in a keyboard case with a trackpad when you want it to be. You can pull it out and would use a pencil and write on it when you want to, and the Mac doesn't do that. So, like, what Federico is trying to do is like all right, but what if the Mac was part of that mix too? And how would that work? And the answer is it's real weird, but it's a place to start and yeah, it's a way to start, that is, get the discussion going.

0:50:41 - Andy Ihnatko
And we should mention in all this discussion that Apple is at a disadvantage when it comes to the Windows market because there is such a huge demand for Windows hardware that you can take an oddball thing and say you know what, we don't know if this is going to sell. But here's a good idea we have some indications that people will buy it. Well, this is at least worth doing an initial production run on. Apple can't take excuse me, the Vision Pro not withstanding, apple can't afford to simply say we're going to try to make a couple million, just at maximum, a few hundred thousand of something, in case people kind of like this off to the side product and if it demonstrates that there's an actual need for it. So they can't take that many risks. However, this is the time where I've really wished they did something like the goofy stuff you see at CES and the goofy stuff you see at Mobile World Congress, where, no, we built. Here's one of the things that we built because we wanted to see how well this would work.

0:51:36 - Leo Laporte
And this is, by the way I should point out, the video that we're looking at is Luke Miani, not Frederico Vetticci. Frederico was inspired by this. Luke wanted to take his M2 MacBook Air keyboard and use it with a Vision Pro, and Frederico added his his own interesting concept by and these are magnets. What are these? In the back it has to attach via magnets.

0:52:00 - Jason Snell
Yeah, magnets. How do they work?

0:52:04 - Alex Lindsay
Magic.

0:52:05 - Leo Laporte
Okay.

0:52:06 - Alex Lindsay
I think that fundamentally, it's literally Apple has. They, their design team is focused on other things and the laptop is kind of. I think that for them, the laptops are just water under the bridge. Like you know, here's your laptop. Like you know, we're focused on these other things, whether it's Apple Vision Pro or it's other. We can decide whether we agree with that or not, but I think Apple's design team doesn't really. I think they I feel like they really look at the laptops and to some degree, I mean they keep on updating the power, but, like the, I'd be surprised if we see a new form factor for the studio, the Mac Pro or the Mac mini, in the next five years. Yeah, Like, they're kind of like. Yeah, we're not spending time on that.

0:52:48 - Leo Laporte
They're close to perfect, there's no reason to spend time on it, right?

0:52:52 - Alex Lindsay
Well, just like they work as a lot like in the box that they put them in the shelf called laptop and they're like here and we'll make incremental changes to that, but we're not going to. The design team at Apple is actually not that big and I think that they don't have any interest in re, you know, kind of reopening that, other than making minor changes, because they've got other fish to fry and they'd much rather work on those other things because they I think they look at what are the other things. So a lot of these is legacy. They work on a lot of things I don't know anything about. I'm making this I mean, this is my impression from the outside but but they, but there's a lot of things that they're working on all the time and you know they'll make some fine adjustments to it.

But like when you say, oh, we'd really like to do something crazy, that's retooling it, that's, you know, that's like retasking a satellite, it's like retooling a factory. It's, it's going. There's a huge amount of things that go into, like it's not just the design team, it is how are we going to make those parts and what's going to machine those parts and what kind of factories is going to be in? Where is that factory going to be? And it's going to be in Vietnam or China or United States, or, and so there's this huge that you open up this huge can of worms that I think that takes up a lot of resources, takes up a lot of energy, and I think Apple looks at the these machines as like this is the. You know, this is where we're at right now, like they're. I still think Apple is pretty focused on the vision.

0:54:03 - Jason Snell
I agree with you. I think Apple views the laptop as a solved problem. That said, we also know from various reports that they've been working on how best to use folding screen technology in their products for quite a while now, and they haven't shipped anything yet, which I am not surprised by, because the folding screen stuff is still a little bit weird, but like it sounds like they're getting closer according to Mark German anyway that to doing something. And when it comes out it may not be like I don't think they need to reinvent the MacBook Air, but trying to do something, maybe not what Federico is doing, but something that's like well, what is there an iPad that's convertible either from a smaller iPad to a larger iPad? Is there a phone that's convertible Like that? Those are all weird things that they're trying because there's a new technology that maybe enables different designs that aren't a solved problem. That would give them another thing Because, like, the iPad itself is something that came into the market and everybody was like, well, why do we need this?

And it has found a niche. It's not necessarily revolutionized computing, but it has found a bunch of people who really like that design, and that I mean form factor is the word that people always throw out right Like it's different, and I think Apple is aware that there are other new, different shapes that they can make computers in, as especially folding displays happen, but clearly they're not at the point where they could. I mean, we've talked about this here before. Part of the problem with Apple is that anything they ship the Vision Pro is actually even sort of an exception to the rule. They got to ship it in volume and that means that like you can't just say oh well we'll ship a thousand folding displays.

0:55:33 - Alex Lindsay
It doesn't work that way. It's not just at volume, it's that from Apple's perspective, it has to be shipped at volume at a very high level of quality.

0:55:40 - Jason Snell
You know, and so the thing is that that.

0:55:42 - Alex Lindsay
So the design, how it fits together, there's not a whole lot of move fast. So it's that any new product at Apple takes up so much re, so many resources and so much attention to detail, and this is why they don't produce. I mean, there's lots of products I'd love to see Apple make. I'd love to make, have a refrigerator that was made by Apple, anyway. So and so the thing is, but it takes so much energy for them to get it to the level that they feel is, you know, equal to the brand, that it is so hard to get them. You know, I think that any product that you change is a big deal. And I think, the folding screens, I think I think we're all glad that they haven't gone down that path, mostly because I don't know anybody that's bought a folding screen twice, you know, for, like you know, like they bought one, I do, then they bought an iPhone or they bought something, and so they're like, oh, it was a fun trip, but eventually it dies.

0:56:31 - Leo Laporte
You know it's not ready yet for prime time. I could see those value and something you could make more compact If you could get it better.

0:56:40 - Alex Lindsay
It might, but like Apple and I think that Apple's research in that area is, it might get ready for prime time, and Apple needs to be ready to respond to that at some point in the future. So you keep on. This will take a decade to get good at it. You can't just start flat footed, you know, and so so I think Apple's got a bunch of stuff that they kind of work on in the back end that is just kind of like, well, let's see how this goes, and so they know enough about it that they could, they could pivot. They get an Apple for Apple. Pivoting is we could produce something in three years, you know, or four years, from the time we have an idea, for the time it's in the, in the, in the pipeline is probably at least three to four years, I'd say it sounds like you're describing a moribund company, but go ahead.

0:57:15 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I agree. I mean, the thing is like the creativity is not a solved problem, it's. It's it's seeing what you did before and thinking what did I not think about the last time? What do I know now that I didn't know before? I think that the one of the biggest risks that Apple has is that they do control the entire market. This is not an anti-trust, this is not an anti-trust degree, don't worry about it, but they do control the entire hardware market for their device.

So they never they've never really known what it's like to have to compete with another laptop on equal footing, and so they don't really have to innovate, they don't really have to push the butt. They really they don't have to make. Figure out something that will really heartily improve this thing and make you think my God, why do I? Why have I not had a laptop with this feature before? Because they don't have to. What are you going to do? You're going to switch to Windows. Their user base is probably not going to do that, whereas in the Windows space, one of the reasons why you do see so much diversity is because there is so much competition for resources and there's so many predators out there. That's when you see high speed evolution.

So I don't know if and as it is true that a company that exists on a marketing level as big as Apple, with a market as worldwide as Apple, every decision that they make has an immense amount of practical implications, but that's true of literally anything they do.

When they switch to a USB 3 port on the Apple pencil, they have to make all those same same kind of decisions, so that that is a factor, but it's not the overriding one. I just think that if Apple and Apple can really put their foot down if they want to Again, they did make a $12,000 solid gold gadget watch and they've made this Vision Pro, which is fantastic in its way, but in most agreement is that it's great for super, super, just like a folding phone. It's a great thing for an early adopter, people who see this and people who have the money that they can make these early investments and something that might spend a lot of time inside a drawer but not necessarily ready for bulk things. It's just disappointing to me that they're not they appear they, they are not putting their priorities into the single product which is the single most popular Mac that they make. They don't necessarily want to put that kind of innovation into the most influential product in their product line. That's just my thought.

0:59:41 - Leo Laporte
In other news, unless you want to do a Vision Pro segment, jason, it's okay.

0:59:47 - Jason Snell
I mean, when are the Vision Pro picks happening? Sorry, fine, I don't want to put it on, you know, because that's a lot for a podcast.

0:59:56 - Leo Laporte
We could do the Vision Pro pick of the week. You want to do that every week.

0:59:59 - Jason Snell
No, it's a lot of work.

1:00:02 - Leo Laporte
Extra work I'll do some.

1:00:03 - Jason Snell
Vision Pro picks. I'll do some Vision.

1:00:05 - Leo Laporte
Pro picks. It's teasing, it'll happen. You got a good RSS reader for your Vision Pro.

1:00:11 - Jason Snell
I'm still using it in iPad compatibility mode right now.

1:00:16 - Leo Laporte
I should just shut up, because it really irritates Apple fanboys when I am not sufficiently worshipful of any Apple product, so I will just keep my mouth shut. The EU isn't exactly worshiping Apple at this point either. They just find them 1.8 billion euros. This is the case we talked about last week. Spotify brought it up saying you know, apple has their own app which they don't have to pay 30% on purchases in and which is previously you know it's automatically installed on all new iPhones. That's kind of unfair.

Brussels agreed and they are finding them a big, big time for abusing their dominant position for music streaming on the app store. Apple, of course, will appeal, which means this won't happen for ages and ages. The commission said it had gone beyond this is from the Financial Times gone beyond its standard finding procedure to provide a deterrent not just for Apple but for other quote companies of a similar size with similar resources Google, google, google. The funny thing is Apple's response was oh man, you know Spotify is using our stuff for free. They don't pay us anything. Man, it's not nice.

1:01:36 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, that was that was. That was embarrassing. I thought because this is like okay, kid, we're grounding you because you took the car without asking and you wrapped it around a tree and you're saying it's just not fair that my parents don't want me to ever leave the house and have my own life. No, no, leave the house.

1:01:56 - Leo Laporte
Ask the car Please, I beg of you.

1:01:58 - Andy Ihnatko
Because the yeah, the youth. In the press release that they put out and in like the actual filing, they were really really specific about the reasons why they were slapping Apple with this. It wasn't that Apple was trying to make the case. Oh well gosh, they're the lap dogs of Spotify. I'm not quoting here, but essentially saying Spotify is, like, has got them on a leash and they're under Spotify's influence. Though the single most popular platform or a music platform, they're trying to get the little guys like us to like to not make any money whatsoever, even though Spotify is making so much money off of Apple and our innovation and our platform. No, you was saying that, okay, the idea that you're not allowing, you're not allowing companies to, as we've been discussing so many times before. You can't say, oh, by the way, we, in case you don't want to spend a 30% tariff that we have to pass on to you, go to our website. We will give you a better deal over there. Not be able to link out to the other site, not being able to have these discussions with customers that was the specificity of what they were talking about. And this Apple's also saying oh, they were unable to prove a monetary disadvantage to consumers, like, okay, they kind of did a little bit, but once again in the filings, this is not the Digital Markets Act, this is an older act that goes dates back to like 2006. And they were, they were. The whole point of this law was not necessarily to say the definition being that you're hurting consumers by charging them more money, it's, you are exerting an unnecessary level of control over market.

The actual I think I have the actual section section 102A, I think they said it was and it's basically specific things that Apple was objecting to but also specifically just doing manipulating your marketplace in a way that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Here it is Directly yeah, directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions Article 102, section A and that is it's hard to. It's easy to argue about whether or not the EU should insist that Apple allow users to sideload apps. That's a very, very good conversation to have, but when you, if you're talking about unfair trading conditions and then you cite things like you can't tell your customers that there's a way to avoid having having excess fees passed out of them by getting a better deals software elsewhere by going to our own site. That's what they dinged on, and so that's why I thought that this, I thought that this, this memo, was kind of embarrassing.

1:04:36 - Leo Laporte
Let me. Let me read Apple's response without the whiny voice, to be fair. Yeah, today the European Commission announced a decision claiming the app store has been a barrier to competition in the digital music market. The decision was reached despite the commission's failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive and growing fast. The primary advocate for this decision and the biggest beneficiary? Well, the money doesn't go to, by the way, does not go to Spotify, so I don't know if they're the biggest beneficiary, anyway, is Spotify a company that's based in Stockholm, sweden? Okay, thanks for the input. Spotify is the largest music streaming app in the world, has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation.

Today, spotify has a 56% share of Europe's music streaming market, more than double their closest competitors, and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world. A large part of their success is due to the app store, along with all the tools and technology that Spotify uses to build, update and share their app with Apple users around the world. We're proud to play a key role supporting Spotify's success, as we have for developers of all sizes from the app store as early as days. It's not as clear. It's not completely clear cut because Apple has a point. Spotify's app is built with Apple tools, which they use for 99 bucks a year. I presume they don't pay more than that. Apple does have them on the app store and does let people download it using Apple's bandwidth. And are we saying Apple?

1:06:15 - Alex Lindsay
shouldn't. They're not using their bandwidth, but the entire mechanism, like you know, the entire mechanism that protects it, and and are we saying that Apple shouldn't bundle its app.

1:06:22 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I think these problems arise. I have the same problem with Google and YouTube. These problems arise when a platform company then starts to have its own stuff. Microsoft got in trouble in the 80s and 90s when they were bundling a browser with the operating system. And this is the problem is those lines get blurred, because Apple's business is also music, it's not just being the platform.

1:06:48 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean I'll just say I already spoken a lot so I'll be quick. But like the argument that, oh well, they're exploiting our resources and our app store and the developer tools they have to you, force them to you don't allow them to develop this Spotify app with anything else. So, you don't get to make that argument.

1:07:09 - Jason Snell
That's a good point, yeah it also says something about how weak their business model is. I was struck while watching that press release, while reading that memo. I guess we're calling them today is that they're like, oh, they took all this from us, they did this for free and this for free and this for free and they built a huge business on it and it was for free. And I read that as like, wow, you guys kind of screwed that up then, didn't you, Right, Like you should have maybe found another business model that didn't allow them? I mean, but that's the way they view it is like, oh, our largest allowed them to create their business and, as Andy's point, there are very great limits to that.

I agree, Leo, though this is for me when we argue about this stuff a lot on this show. But for me, this is the peak of the problem with Apple's business model is when they launch services that compete on their platform but don't have to follow the rules that the competitors have to follow 100%, and that is music primarily, but also books, right, and there are probably some other examples, but those are two very good ones where but you would use the books Like like, do you?

I know well. I mean, I'll tell you, though, alex, as a Kindle user, I could never buy books on the Kindle app, right? I have to go to the web to do that. And Kobo it's the same way, and so it's making, it's degrading the experience on this platform for anybody who's not in the Books app, because the Books app you can just buy books and it's really easy, and you can just subscribe to Apple Music just in the app, and it's more complex because there is no 30%. You know there's no magic 30% middleman that Apple pays. Who takes that money away? It's just Apple is paying it from one pocket to another, and they've created a business that is competing with a different business that has to follow all those rules, and that is where, to me, they are using their power as a platform owner to force themselves into an advantage, competing with other things on their platform.

1:08:59 - Alex Lindsay
And that's where it gets faster. I guess the question I would have is that what percentage of book sales belongs to Apple, which you know? So they have whatever that is. But the point is is that they haven't been. It hasn't been particularly useful because I don't even consider Like I don't. I have to admit, I'm so used to buying Kindle books on the Amazon thing when you, until you, said it, I forgot that that's how I buy books Sure, but like Imagine.

1:09:17 - Jason Snell
But I would never buy a book from Apple books because I'm kind of like that's a whole yeah, like my counterargument would be how much better would the experience be and how many more people might buy Kindle books if it was easy to buy Kindle books instead of saying, oh, forget it, I'm not going to even bother. Right, which I think does happen to a certain degree. And Comixology was like that, right In the early days, where there's, all of a sudden, you're like I can't buy comics on the iPad in any reasonable way. So how many people just get lost? Or how many sales do they lose Because iPad is not as good of a place to be for that?

I think that that's part of it too, regardless of how bad Apple's implementation is, because, yeah, books feels very much like kind of a failed implementation, but it also put up a block against Amazon. And then, you know, in Spotify I'm sympathetic to the idea that Spotify is the leader here, not Apple, but it doesn't change the fact that. What would that competition be like if it was more fair and if Apple hadn't erected?

1:10:08 - Leo Laporte
these barriers and you just pointed out, by the way, some real consumer harm. So when Apple says there's no evidence of consumer harm, well, the consumer harm is inconvenience. And if Spotify, as they used to, lets you buy it on the Apple Store, they charge you 30% more for the Apple thing, so it costs more. There's definite consumer harm here.

1:10:26 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think the EU is wrong. I agree with you I agree with you.

1:10:30 - Andy Ihnatko
Just to be fair, I'm going to quote the press release. That wasn't just about money. It was, they're saying. Moreover, apple's anti-steering provisions led to non-monetary harm in the form of a degraded user experience. Ios users either had to engage in a cumbersome search before they found the way to relevant offers outside the app, or they never subscribed to any service because they did not find the right one on their own. So it's not just money.

1:10:54 - Alex Lindsay
I think that I think that the chances of any savings trickling down to the user is almost zero. If we go five years from now, after this, and we're looking, is Spotify going to charge us less? No, they're not, and so we're not going to save any money. I do agree that the inconvenience is a user harm, but the savings is not going to get sent to us. It's going to get sent to Spotify, because Spotify has a bad business model that they're struggling to make work and they keep on blaming Apple for it, because the bottom line is Spotify's business model isn't working. It's not going to work, and the problem is that Apple is slowly building and, as someone who had Spotify for since the day it came out until a couple years ago and had an overlap with Apple Music, I think the Apple Music app is clearly better than Spotify. It's from a pure sound perspective. It's like night and day, and once you get used to the, when you go back and forth, going back to Spotify is kind of like going back to a NASCAR car rather than the BMW that you're driving now, and so the thing is is that? Is that so the issue that they have is that Apple is not taking the market right now from them. But it's going to.

And I think that because and it's not going to be because of the price and it's not going to be because of the convenience is because Apple has more money and is spending more money, is not worried about making money right now with music and their product and the content in those.

If you look at the only for Apple TV content that's getting put into the, you know, into the into music Spotify is looking down the barrel of something they can't compete with. And it won't matter whether they they can't compete, they can. They just simply can't buy that content Like the stuff that Apple can't do albums, because that would get them head to head with the record companies, but they can do live shows and they're doing more and more and more of that and if you just see it slowly stacking up and if you're not using Apple Music all the time, you won't see it. And it's a really, by the way, look at what Apple is focusing on when you look at the live music, because you can see where they're trying to expand their market. So it is all 18 under.

1:13:00 - Leo Laporte
Apple is using their monopoly power to dominate and and conquer and do you want to live in a world where one company produces everything, or in a world where there's a number of companies competing to produce the same thing, and I prefer the latter, and I think that's what the EU is trying to Encourage well, you just made the argument for the EU I think, but it's not, but they're not you, but again, I think that I don't think that this is gonna be the thing that helps.

1:13:27 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, apple, this, this, this 1.8 billion will probably get dropped to 500 million. Apple can afford to pay that every year for a very long time, you know, and so the thing is is that it is you know, so the EU can try to figure that out. It's gonna, you know, get hung up in the courts and there'll be the new digital market out and they'll have to figure out that.

1:13:43 - Jason Snell
I agree, this is probably not gonna change anything, so it's probably not gonna change a lot.

1:13:48 - Alex Lindsay
But, but Spotify, I mean, and I have to admit my edge on Spotify is they destroyed the podcasting market like spot, like a lot.

1:13:55 - Leo Laporte
I'm not a fan of, believe me, I'm not a fan of spot.

1:13:58 - Alex Lindsay
Let's see, they, they Thumped it, like you know, and I talked to a lot of people about it and the number one thing that they bring up so, but when we talk about a big company came in, you know, and destroyed the market, so they, they have just they single-handedly destroyed the In the way it is. But I'm saying that that's, that's who we're trying to back up.

1:14:17 - Leo Laporte
No, you know that's a mistake. That's Apple would like you to think it, it's about Spotify. I'm not about that, it's about keeping Apple from using its monopoly power to dominate a market period.

1:14:29 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean we keep coming across the fact that, yes, spotify is losing money, apple is probably also losing money. We can't make the. I don't like the argument that, oh well, apple, apple's a two-truth, two or three trillion dollar company. They can afford to run this into a huge, huge loss year after year after year, until no one else can afford to be in this market. Then they'll have it all for themselves. I don't, I fundamentally don't like that. Also, the fact that Spotify is out there is making Apple music a much better product. We are. We're seeing so many features, just this, with just this year, coming out, just, and that probably would not be happening if not for the fact that they have to compete with the number one in the market. Differences between Spotify and Apple music it's a matter of taste. I do prefer the Spotify app. It's much, much easier for me to get to the thing that I was by like I like two days ago.

1:15:18 - Alex Lindsay
I would say much more austere.

1:15:20 - Leo Laporte
What does it matter? The?

1:15:21 - Alex Lindsay
majority of users.

1:15:23 - Andy Ihnatko
We know that, I believe you can see, but it and then the thing is like it, it, it's not gonna dig Spotify out of a hole, but if it means that, if this company again, I'm not, I'm not begging for the, the soul of the little match girl who's freezing to death, I was trying to sell music subscription services on the street corner from in the EU. I'm just saying that, like if there's reason why Spotify is not making as much money as they can, and if one of those, one of the implications of that is that five years from now, spotify might not be able to exist, that isn't itself is a good reason. And, once again, the e, this, this EU law, is not about necessarily balancing. It's not specifically. Oh well, there was a the this entity, spotify, has been hurt to the tune of this amount of money, so we are taking a couple billion euro and giving it to Spotify. No, it's.

The intention of this law is to be a punishment, is to make it hurt, not because the many specific amount of money was stolen not even necessarily, doesn't it? Not even necessarily because it costs consumers any amount of money but because, according to this law, they feel as though this is an unfair, fundamentally trade practice, just like you can't just dump your garbage in the middle of the street. You don't have to prove that no one was hurt by the fact you dumped your garbage in the street. It is the rule that they have made that you can't do that. And if you do that and you get caught, you're gonna get punished. So I I have no pride again. I'm not. I'm not one absolutist when it comes to regulations. I do. I do tend to think that Regulation is at least worth discussing because, again, I wish there were not to do.

Yeah, I wish I was doing anything until they, until they get pressured to do so, whether it's from competition or from regulation. We've seen so many improvements in the app store because they're feeling that pressure from regulation, so I'm all for this.

1:17:06 - Leo Laporte
I will agree with you, alex. I wish some regulator to come along and say save podcasting, because Spotify is killing it. They've purchased, unfortunately, the the US government, which should have done something, hasn't. They've purchased a number of companies. For instance, there was an ad company that we used, called Charitable, that they purchased and then Cut off. They said, oh yeah, you can't use it anymore, and that is yeah and I'm designed to undermine the podcasting business.

One of the reasons we have to talk about the club all the time is Spotify, but no regulator is gonna come again after Spotify. I wish they would.

1:17:40 - Alex Lindsay
I wish they and that's someone who's worked on a lot of podcasts for a long time, like you, I would I would say that if Apple was, I think we did better when Apple was the largest podcast provider by sticking their nose into it.

1:17:59 - Jason Snell
I agree, I'm not. I'm no fan of Spotify. I don't like Daniel. I think he is a self-serving guy who talks Out of both sides of his mouth. I he's. He's on my list, along with team Tim Sweeney, as somebody who acts like he's a hero of the people when he always trying to do Make more money for his own company. But that all said, I just want to say generally the perception is not what Alex is sharing about Spotify. Spotify's music features are ahead of apples. They've been ahead of apples for a long time. They're, you know, ai enabled mixes, all of their different mixes that they do. They're unwrapped. At the end of the year, like generally music fans Perceived that Spotify is doing better on that front than Apple, and I'd actually argue it's one of those cases where there's legitimate competition between these two surfaces and I'm a little bit baffled about why Apple is so bad at it. But here we are.

1:18:46 - Leo Laporte
Although I think you can also make the case. I don't know, I think it was Andy said that Apple music has gotten much better because of the competition. Is Spotify they're?

1:18:54 - Jason Snell
doing a lot more. It's just not good enough.

1:18:56 - Leo Laporte
It's still maybe not there, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I think.

1:18:58 - Jason Snell
Apple's is bad too. I mean, I think Apple believes in Apple music in a way that they don't believe in books, as Alex said. I think the books is actually a good example only because I think books was launched Basically to take advantage of this and to make Amazon's life more difficult, and it failed at that right, partially because of a Ruling against it legally, but also because I think Apple didn't really care about it that much and didn't put a lot of effort into it and still doesn't and they do, I think I but I do think that that is somewhat of a proof of like Amazon has not been slowed down by this.

1:19:31 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, you know, like it is. I mean, I between audible and and with. You know, I just don't think they've been slowed down very much and Apple has not made any sizeable impact in that area, regardless of the of the advantages that they might have, because Amazon has a superior model and Apple was unable to move the market into something that is Innovative. You know they, they, they, you know they could have innovated where it comes to books, and they have the tools, and the tools get better and better and better, but they're simply not. You know they're not doing that and and and so. So I think that and I think that music, I think that for me, I guess I just feel like the music sounds so much better on the music app. Sure, that is that.

Then Spotify, I mean, I just feel like I'm just listening to something that's going through a bed sheet. You know let's when I listen to about Spotify at this point, and so it's, and I can't even it's not. You know just this when you get used to it, when you get used to it, you're listening on good headphones you just get. You get little, I mean, I get a little tired. So slight, slight side issue.

1:20:26 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm curious, yeah, you do you know if you're responding to spatial audio or just the higher definition music? Because that's what that's one thing that I don't know why Spotify they keep threatening. They keep always rumors that they're going to be starting releasing higher definition music. I can tell you why?

1:20:42 - Alex Lindsay
I can tell you why they're not doing spatials because it's really hard to do spatial. Android, like Android, is a disaster when it comes to spatial and so it's really really hard to deliver spatial content.

This is one of the reasons I think Apple did spatial and really pushes it is because it's really really hard to do well Somewhere else, because the object data I mean, as I speak from a lot of experience the object data going into Android and Windows, is it because the market is so fragmented, it is so difficult to deliver content, and Apple started working on that five years ago, and so all the devices know what to do with that data and you don't know what to do with that data. I mean, like it's ever. I mean it's just a design, it's just a it's a sure horrible Environment to develop in, and so that's why it doesn't, that's why it works for Apple and doesn't work for anybody else. You know is because of that.

1:21:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I love that. I love that circle that often happens when we have these discussions, that there are ways in which the fact that the Windows market is so Fragmented means that they get to innovate and you get so many options when it comes to laptops. The fact that Android market is so and Windows is so fragmented means that you can't do something where unification is a really, really Important value at. I'm not necessarily on board with spatial audio myself, yet I know that there's a distinction between spatial audio and simple, lossless high definition music, but I guess it's to me it's such a, it's a thin enough line that again, just this morning, there's a classical piece that I found like three or four days ago, that, boom, right there at the top. Again there's, if I want, if I want to mess around with stuff that I want to discover, that I've never experienced before, it's right there for me. I do feel as though Apple keeps walking me away from stuff that, no, I want. Here's an album, I liked it, I want to have it again. That I'm sure. I'm sure these recommendations are wonderful, but you're making it harder for me to find that thing that I liked three days ago that I really want to revisit. That's that again.

This is the, as we've been saying. This is why competition is such a really, really big, important thing. I'm so glad that apples apples made so many strides forward in Apple music. I don't think it's bad at all. I think it's just different and I'm glad that we get Apple, ios versus Android, mac OS versus Windows, spotify versus Apple music, if it creates options for people and it doesn't become a duality. This is that's. The second worst thing is for things to be just a simple two-party system where a third-party candidate can't possibly get any traction. But I do think that this is, in the end, good for Apple.

1:23:03 - Alex Lindsay
I, I use the big third party. That we don't, that we don't crack, is YouTube.

1:23:09 - Andy Ihnatko
You know, like that's, like that's just had a big, big price drop, I think, possibly to keep.

1:23:13 - Alex Lindsay
I don't really competitive, but but the yeah, you know it's, but but YouTube is a Is a giant Area like just massive, and when it comes to in and no one cracks it because they don't have an app, in the same way they don't treat their app. They have a YouTube music, but they but but just the views on YouTube of music and yeah.

1:23:32 - Leo Laporte
Because if you buy YouTube music, you get YouTube premium, you don't get any ads and and you can even say, on YouTube music, I want to see videos. So there's a real overlap, I mean.

1:23:42 - Alex Lindsay
I agree, most of your kids are watching?

1:23:44 - Leo Laporte
aren't YouTube music subscribers? They're watching YouTube, but this is how I mean that.

1:23:49 - Andy Ihnatko
That's. That's why Google music went away and I thought that was a bad move. I think it's a lot less convenient to use it. I stop, I stop using like YouTube, google, google music when it became YouTube music. But Google had that realization five years ago that we have we we don't have Facebook, we don't have Instagram, we don't have Twitter, but we do have like, the most important, influential and lucrative social media network on the planet and that is like people who are on YouTube and subscribe to channels that they like and they we can make so much more money per user if we move music from a separate experience, a separate app, into this experience that they're already putting so much of their time into. So that's good on good on, good on Google. But there's a reason why I don't instinctively think of YouTube music when I think of like major music apps, because it just disappeared From my head as soon as they went into the YouTube app, because I don't like it at all.

1:24:41 - Leo Laporte
I just have to say, honestly, this is really the battle between giants and aristocratic it's an aristocratic battle. Well, the thing is when dinosaurs fight you don't want to be at their feet and we are all walking around looking up, trying not to get stepped on and it's a fight between the makers of mustache wax and the makers of brass yacht real polish.

1:25:10 - Andy Ihnatko
We should, we need to back aside in this, I think.

1:25:14 - Leo Laporte
All right, let's take a break. When we come back, We'll find something else to talk about. Maybe it's time for a big vision pro segment. I think.

1:25:24 - Andy Ihnatko
Sound effect, a drawer being opened, paper is being shuffled aside, something being pulled out our show today.

1:25:32 - Alex Lindsay
You know, you know, jason, I, you know, jason, I are gonna do all vision pro next week while you're gone, the next I hope you do.

1:25:38 - Leo Laporte
It'll be a fascinating show. You can do it now. I'm not stopping you.

1:25:42 - Andy Ihnatko
I take my glasses off and I'll spend those two hours like spending $3,500 on things that actually improve my life. Did I?

1:25:50 - Leo Laporte
show. Did I tell you about the what, the lens, the things I bought my, my brilliant glasses? Did I tell you this this is these will come mid april. They're gonna make your vision pro look like they came from the 50s. These are regular spectacles with a heads up display and they have a correction. So I got my, my prescription. So I'm go yeah, I'm gonna look like pointexter wearing them, but, but I'll be able to see the world around me. Look at that. Nutrition labels Uh, web searches, I don't know, we'll see. They were only a couple hundred bucks, so I Very herald void.

1:26:30 - Alex Lindsay
They look like I don't.

1:26:31 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't know if I could. They really are. They're not just pointexter glasses, they are like jerry lewis doing a nerve character with like the teeth.

1:26:40 - Leo Laporte
I know those are glasses that he would, but I got the clear ones so that they at least look high tech. While I'm being nerdy, right, we'll see. Yeah, sure, whatever that looks so bad in these, I should. But when you guys put on your vps, uh, I'll have something anyway. Andy, you do what you do, you, okay? Uh, our show Should what I'm best at.

1:27:07 - Andy Ihnatko
It's. It's the role I was born for you were born to do you.

1:27:11 - Leo Laporte
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1:29:26 - Jason Snell
I voted.

1:29:29 - Leo Laporte
Hey, how long before we do vote in vision pro? That'd be kind of interesting.

1:29:34 - Jason Snell
I mean sure you get with 3d candidates.

1:29:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, why not? They could talk to you on all sides. What are you looking at right now?

1:29:42 - Jason Snell
My monitor where it was mac break weekly. I.

1:29:46 - Leo Laporte
You could.

1:29:48 - Jason Snell
You know, I can do, I can do stuff that whole keyboard.

1:29:51 - Leo Laporte
The frederico bill really was as much for a mac Pro vision pro as it was for an iPad, right.

1:29:57 - Jason Snell
Yeah, I think a lot of us have have realized that, like text input Especially just can't be done properly on the vision pro, you need a keyboard.

1:30:04 - Leo Laporte
I've been using just a bluetooth any blue tooth to work with it.

1:30:07 - Jason Snell
Um, yeah, you don't any, any one will work. The apple one is nice because it auto reconnects a little bit better, but, um, and it's looked in a light and great. But yeah, I've used. I got the full William Gibson Neuromancer effect with a mechanical keyboard, because that's when I really feel like I've jacked into cyberspace, um, but uh, yeah, so some people really like using the trackpad. I don't think it's super necessary, but Uh, it's nice and so having a little thing in your lap with a trackpad and a keyboard it's nice for vision pro. Um, like I said, I'm not entirely necessary. I feel like the keyboard is what's necessary, but the trackpad is nice.

1:30:41 - Leo Laporte
Do you spend time in it every single day?

1:30:43 - Jason Snell
You know, I wrote in a whole, a whole article on Friday. I was I was struggling, trying to get my focus to write an article about why am I doing eye contact with my camera? You can't see my eyes Anyway, um, because you're a pro Jason, that's why I'm just that's right, I am.

So I I was struggling because I was like trying to get it in a different mindset so I could write an article, and I ended up putting on the vision pro, getting that keyboard out, opening runestone the excellent text editor app for vision pro and uh, dialing in a little environment and, uh, you know, a thousand words came up. So interesting one of my most positive experiences is that, because you were isolated from um a little bit yeah.

1:31:20 - Leo Laporte
I think so, and you weren't tempted to go visit a dinosaur while you were writing. It was like I'm I was not. I'm writing.

1:31:28 - Jason Snell
Exactly right, exactly right More, more environments, apple, that's my.

1:31:32 - Andy Ihnatko
That's the same reason why I go to a coffee shop, sometimes the library, just because not there's any resources there, because, okay, I'm in a different place, there there's not the stink of bitter failure and loser them. Here I can let that air out of my office and get some work done.

1:31:45 - Leo Laporte
Runestone is an open source project, so but that is on vision pro, huh.

1:31:49 - Jason Snell
It is well the simon who wrote it open sourced it because he wants other people to use it as the text editor in their ios apps. He did a vision pro build. He makes. He makes scriptable, which is one of my favorite ios apps because it lets me write widgets in javascript and put them out on my home screen, which is awesome.

1:32:05 - Leo Laporte
Yes, you've talked about that before.

1:32:07 - Jason Snell
So this is a coding, this can be a code editor too, huh. Yeah, and it does mark down which is what I write in. So but yeah, you can use it in in various different coding languages. Nice full color to you know, color support for various languages. And and you can do it in vision pro if you really want to. But I just wrote an article in it.

1:32:24 - Leo Laporte
Nice Supports tree sitter, which is nice. Does it do lsp? I guess it. Probably it has to right, um, I don't know. Yeah, tree sitter will give you, will give you a lot of this syntax coloring stuff nice well done. So you don't mind getting into that vision pro every day and facing the world. You like that.

1:32:45 - Jason Snell
I don't. I mean, I've got the sizing right and I sort of figured out that's pretty critical, right, yeah?

Yeah, I think that's the number one thing is, if people are having problems with vision pro, the number one thing is that, um, you might not have the right light shield, you might not have the right adjustment on the band, like Because I think you can. I think, once I figured it out and it took a few days Um, it's been perfectly comfortable and everything works ever since and, like I said, I can write in it and like If it was a distraction, I wouldn't be able to write in it. You know, and I've written thousands of words now over the last few weeks in vision pro, it's actually, I think, a pretty fun writing environment. Actually, one of my favorite things about it is that it gives me a big display with my writing on it and it's anywhere I want to sit, in my house, for example, so like I'm sitting in like a different uh Direction on the couch and stretched out, and I've never written in that location.

That's interesting and and it just for whatever reason it it, it works. So it's uh, it's a work in progress. I'm still learning. I mean, I know we joke about this vision pro stuff here, but, like, one of the things I think is exciting is it's a new platform. Everybody's figuring it out. It is kind of a dev kit, right Like it's not for regular people, but what's fun is like discovering, oh, this is really an interesting application of this technology, or oh, that did not work at all, right, like. Either way, it's really interesting to learn that stuff.

1:34:06 - Leo Laporte
You wrote an article for mac world about uh, in fact about fit and how apple could do a better job In the stores selling the vision pro.

1:34:14 - Jason Snell
They they have miss Uh trained their employees. Uh, they really focused on that demo and I get it like you have to see it to believe it and and so they train them all to do that 30 or 20 minute, I guess, demo of vision pro in store. But the problem is that when I had a fit problem with my light seal and I went in there, it looked like they'd never even heard of it before and they're like uh, do you know? All they did was go to the app. I feel like they figured they wrote that app that measures your face and that was going to be the solution to the problem. But like I got different measurements when I ran it different times. So what's the right fit and the right thing to do?

And more of what they did, I think, with the apple watch, but they didn't do it so much with vision pro is like what happens if a customer is having fit problems and probably what you should do is bring out a bunch of different light seals and walk through them and ask them certain questions and sort of like, find the right fit for them. And I didn't get any of that when I went to my store. The people were very friendly. They're very nice, but they didn't seem trained in Making it, making me get the right light seal and the light seal they measured before they didn't have in stock. So they're like uh, I guess order it online, and that was a mess too.

So that's. I think that's where they look, live and learn right. It's a new product. It's got ergonomics that I think are complicated in ways that apple wasn't expecting and that apple's not used to dealing with. So, okay, but now that they've learned from it, they need to train their staff better, because I think that they just they put too much into a whizzy app that measures your face and not enough into a personal experience in the store where they can actually Let you try out different light seals and and walk you through it and get the best fit, because when you get a good fit it, you can use it for hours and it's not a problem. But if the fit is bad, you'll be miserable immediately.

1:36:02 - Leo Laporte
Good to know how about you, alex, you, you, you, you, wearing your vision pro a lot.

1:36:06 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, usually in the evenings. I, I have to admit I wear my glasses a lot and I've been having a little trouble getting my order through for apple and it's All my fault, just user error. I keep on putting on getting your size. I want to get my size lenses. Yeah, yeah, well, I had to get, I had to get a new prescription. So that took weeks for me to get my appointment or whatever. And then, and then I Uploaded the wrong thing and then didn't, couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting them. And then, of course, they send it back, like they didn't even send me the wrong ones. I sent the wrong prescription.

The optometrist hand me a bunch of different prescriptions for a bunch of different devices and I sent the wrong one to apple and, of course, they sent me back. I noticed it just got filed into the wrong folder. I know they sent it back within like an hour. Hey, this is the wrong prescription. I didn't see it for a week, you know. So, so the uh, so, uh.

So, as a result, I put my contacts in, usually sometime in late afternoon, and I start to do whatever I'm going to do in stat and the meta office oftentimes, and the big thing that I I will say is that the amount of time I keep on saying this but the amount of time I spend in the headset, in the vision pro, is so much longer than I expect and I I think it's just that I get surprised at how long I was in them.

Yeah, the meta, the meta, the quest I I'm in and out for the things that I'm there to play or things that I'm there to do, but with the, with the pro, I'm kind of, and I think it's just the ecosystem and and I think again, like it is a test unit and I think it's very addictive for people who are totally in the app, the Apple ecosystem. So when you're using Apple music and you're using Notes and you're using messages and you're using all the tools keynote and all the other tools that are there, you just kind of blend into it and before you know it, you're just kind of doing stuff in there and you're, oh, I'm gonna watch a movie. I'm put a movie over here. Well, that, because I want to watch it and I'm gonna work on something over here and it's a. You know, and I think that's the thing that you get caught up in and suddenly you realize, holy smokes, hours and past four hours.

1:37:54 - Jason Snell
Yeah, you know like and I just hadn't noticed my friend, mike Hurley, who I do the upgrade podcast with, called it the perfect noodling around device, which there's something to that, because, because and also part of it is you know how they don't have clocks in casinos. They also don't have clocks in the vision pro. They're actually yes, I'm gonna do some picks, maybe in the next couple weeks while Leo is out. There's some actually really great clock apps that let you put the time somewhere in your because if you don't do that, you're like it. When is it two, is it five? I don't know anymore. Right, like you really lose track of time. It's remarkable, but it is great for that noodling around it is.

1:38:29 - Alex Lindsay
You're sitting there just kind of working on it. Oh, I got a new app. Let's, let's play with this app for a little while, or I'll grab this over here. Just the same way I knew it with a computer, but I'm noodling with the headset and I'm, you know, opening it up and I might and and I'll watch a party. I'll feel like watching part of a movie and the problem is then I oh I watched half the movie like I didn't think about. You know, I got lost into that thing. And the thing that I have noticed and a couple of us have talked about is that I'm I don't know yet if I can I can't identify the film stock Yet on the Apple vision pro, but I'm pretty sure that if I knew what the film stock is for every movie I see Within 20 or 30 movies, I could probably get pretty close to being able to guess every film stock. That's how much that.

1:39:09 - Leo Laporte
Uhd disc on a Nice and old let's screen, you think.

1:39:14 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I mean I I just noticed that all I know is that I never. I have a pretty good TV, uh, you HD. I never really thought about film grain until I like and what what different film grains are, until I Started watching on the Apple vision pro and now I'm like, oh, that's kind of a cheaper film, like I like. I went back to look at the like. I was watching Um. Uh, I was watching avatar, I think it was. No, it was an avatar, it was tenet. And then I went back to Um. For some reason I went back to born identity and the born identity film grain is significantly higher. And you don't, and you know, and something that I didn't, I wouldn't have thought about shifting gears on my home tv, but I definitely thought about on my Apple vision pro.

1:39:59 - Jason Snell
I I can't wait for Andy to try it, because I know Andy is such a movie lover and like if we could get a movie that Andy loves on a service that's going to do high bit rate and it's got a native app and. And that big screen because it is one of the things that the vision pro does best is and I know people are like, oh, but it's the resolution isn't really there and it's all an illusion. But it's like I'm telling you, when you are in front of a big screen In your house Watching a movie, you know well, with a, you know it's either a loaded on your device or it's a high bit rate stream. It's incredible. I mean, like that is one of those moments where you're like, oh, my god, I'm like even it doesn't have to even be like a modern movie, but like a really high quality Restoration, restoration of something at a high bit rate, and then you put it in that big screen and it is.

1:40:50 - Alex Lindsay
I won't use apple screens because I've become a fiend for the size of that screen. So what I do is I use the, the os's, you know, um josh watory, or whatever, yeah, but I use the os's background and then I just set the screen on top of it so I can keep scaling it up, because if you'd use the apple, the apple.

1:41:11 - Jason Snell
You want to be at the drive-in, in the front I want to be.

1:41:14 - Alex Lindsay
I want to have to look back and forth on the and here you need it, apple, come on you gotta do it I, by the way, I want to be very clear.

1:41:23 - Leo Laporte
I have no yet, but I. I want to be.

1:41:26 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for, like the third the third wave of returns, I think.

1:41:29 - Alex Lindsay
but the reality, the reality has set in let me have one for a month or two. But, andy, the reality has set in that even in the nothing on the apple, on the apple, vision pro will still make Napoleon worth two hours and 36 minutes. God, what a terrible.

1:41:42 - Leo Laporte
Never get that time. Is that not a terrible movie? Yeah, you know, it would be great. I want to say, I want to say I thought.

1:41:49 - Alex Lindsay
I thought the acting was great. I thought the effects were stellar. No, I thought the cinematography was was really good. That's no Phoenix, I just wish it had a story, his acting was Underwater the whole time.

1:42:00 - Leo Laporte
I know he was doing Napoleon. Sorry, it sucked, that was not acting. It was like um, I'm kind of depressed.

1:42:07 - Jason Snell
Wow, and I thought my take on on de Caprio and killers the flower moon was kind of. I wasn't a fan of that, but do you see?

1:42:13 - Leo Laporte
do see poor things. I think if seeing that in vision pro might be very, very interesting. That is an amazing.

1:42:20 - Andy Ihnatko
No, we forget we. The Oscars actually, as it happens, is on Sunday, so it's a good time to talk about it. But like what? We what? The one of the things we lose when we don't get to a don't get don't get to see a movie in a real theater and b Don't get to see a movie in like a really good big movie theater Is that the cinematography is the reason why it's it's a whole separate category, is that it's all about the photography of the, the imagery of the thing, and I do find that, like if I there are movies that I've seen, like At the cool corner theater or in like a really big presentation that I Appreciated, that I didn't really, I still I still didn't like the story, I still that maybe didn't like the acting, but oh my goodness, to be in the world of the loss of the last emperor For two hours straight just looking at this an immense field of view.

And yeah, I mean that is when I do get a review unit, that's going to be Basically what I run down most of the battery on with most of most charge. I have a. I've I've gotten the demo, so I've had some experience with it, but I'm intentionally like not saying anything about the experience or trying to get more experience with it. Until I can have Like that fully immersive thing, I think it's going to be unfair for me to like Put it off for 30 minutes, especially in an in-store demo, or even just to borrow borrow our friends for like a couple of days with a misfitting Like like band and and not the right lens.

1:43:39 - Leo Laporte
Honestly, I've said for years that movies are the original VR and bests you know seeing it, maybe I'm not as right, as I want to say one thing. I do want to say one thing, please. Uh, jason and Alex, don't think you can't do vision pro content on here. You have to wait. I'm not here. I don't want to be the roadblock, I do not want to be.

1:44:00 - Jason Snell
We barreled in this time, didn't we? No, I invited it and I don't.

1:44:04 - Leo Laporte
I certainly my opinion on the vision pro has nothing to do with our coverage of it. I don't want to be the roadblock, nor do I want to inhibit somebody saying something negative about it. Either. If positive or negative, we should cover it.

1:44:16 - Jason Snell
So please don't hesitate. I felt like you. You laid down a challenge for us to talk about vision pro. I wanted you to. I was like, okay, let's do it. All right, let's do it. I wanted you to find something and you could do it.

1:44:25 - Leo Laporte
You know it's funny is, on saturday we had scott wilkinson, our home theater guy, come on and he, he literally convinced me to go out and buy a uhd dvd player and some discs. They look good because I want to compare them to streaming, but all you're gonna get is streaming right on your, or is that not true?

1:44:44 - Jason Snell
on your vision pro Is there you can download the file, but again, it's gonna be a streaming file, so it's not going to be the bit. It's on the vhd discs are are insanely high like those are like 45 Wow, wow.

1:44:58 - Alex Lindsay
No, it wasn't 45 gigs, I think, or is it?

1:45:01 - Jason Snell
it's the key. I love. I love movies.

1:45:04 - Leo Laporte
They look amazing and, honestly, if vision pro is the best way to watch a movie, that would be for me, a killer App, that would be. That's the best way to watch it at home. I mean, the problem is is it?

1:45:15 - Alex Lindsay
Is the problem that I have is like napoleon's good example, like I resisted, uh, going to the theater to see it because I was like it's 100 and you know, for a family of four it's 125 bucks to go. You know, to go to see that With parking and popcorn and ticket prices and everything else, you're about 125 dollars in and, and then it was 25 bucks for to want to buy it and I was kind of like I'm just gonna wait. And and when I watched it, all I could think of is that I was. I mean, I was upset that I wasted two and a half hours watching it and I kept on thinking it would get better. There was a couple good scenes and I was like, oh, maybe this is gonna, it's gonna actually speed up at some point in time and not just be about a relationship, instead Actually be about tactics and, you know, battles and things like that.

But it turned out that was not part of the movie. Um, and so the um, so you know, but if I had gone to the theater I would have been livid, like there would have been like tweets about how much I hated that movie and so, and so I think that that's the hard part is with these movies now is that I as a and I think it comes down to when I was single I took a lot more chances. Generally, going out to a movie is something we do as a family and I'm super resistant to what risking time and money on on movies now. Like that's the hard part.

1:46:25 - Andy Ihnatko
For me it's still the COVID exposure. It's not that I won't go to a theater because of being in a crowd of people that may or may not be covering their mouths or whatever, but it's like, as you say, it's bad enough when say, oh my God, I wasted an afternoon and even even going alone, this was like 20, 25 bucks that could have spent on something, on a lot of secondhand books and movies that could have fun with for hours and hours and hours. But I was thinking I got COVID exposure for two and a half hours to two seats away from someone who was just a coughing mess the entire time. Even if I don't get COVID, even if I just get a cough, that was not worth that experience.

1:46:59 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so anyway, those are the challenges. This was no Barbie, but I will say that the you know, I will say that Apple definitely. Just, I mean, they're definitely focused on the experience of watching movies and TV and everything else on this, on the Apple.

1:47:12 - Jason Snell
More about vision pro and, more generally, just anybody who's got TV plus. I don't know if we mentioned this last week, but Apple just dropped like 50 movies on TV plus that are just catalog movies of like really good movies that they're like.

1:47:25 - Alex Lindsay
you know, it's hard to build all of our own content. Why don't I add somebody else? Yeah?

1:47:30 - Jason Snell
So they added and I think they're they're building it around the Oscars and saying, well, here's some great movies that you can enjoy from March and April, but it's like there are movies in there you haven't seen. If you're a TV plus subscriber, you'll get them. A bunch of them are in 3D. So vision pro people that you've gotten opportunity there to watch some more 3D content. And but yeah, I. So I went to the movie theater this weekend. I don't normally do that.

We were visiting our kids in Oregon and we went and saw Dune 2 at a really nice movie theater with like with, like, like you know, theater seating, big cup holders and you could get I got a beer, and then it is so good and the movie is great and the experience was very, very good. It was a good screen it was. You know, nobody was in a 1570 screen.

1:48:12 - Alex Lindsay
Was it like, was it IMAX, or was it it was?

1:48:14 - Jason Snell
not IMAX. The IMAX is sold out, but it was a really nice theater. But I did have that moment as I was watching and thinking I think this would be other than the communal aspect of it, which is a thing where there's a moment where there was a joke and I laughed at it before anybody else did and I thought like I was the laugh track. I was like that's a joke, you could laugh at that. That character is actually. I know he's a, I know that the, the leader of the Fremen, is this very serious guy, but it's Javier Bardem and he's hilarious and you just got to, you got to go. It's like it's Dune, but there are jokes, it's okay. But I did have that moment where I thought what would this be like in the Vision Pro? And I thought I think it would look better. I honestly think it would look better.

1:48:54 - Alex Lindsay
I have. I've had that experience a couple of times since I had the Vision Pro, where I have gone to a movie and realized that I'm not sure if this is a better visual experience, because we have to remember that a lot of theaters, a lot of the movies that we watch, are being running out of 1080p and, at most, 4k projectors. You know so these are. It's very rare for you to see more than 4K and very common for you to see 1080p on a screen, and so it is. So the, the that's not necessarily any sharper, and the problem for me is it's less about you know, like again, less about COVID and more about all the people around me. And you know, I'm kind of like when I'm watching a movie at home, either with my family or with or by myself on it with a, with an Apple Vision Pro, I don't have people behind me talking and doing that and that's that's.

1:49:38 - Andy Ihnatko
I don't enjoy that at all, and that's I absolutely agree, especially when you have people who don't understand that. Again, this is not your living room, don't don't be texting, don't be talking to people on the phone, but it's, it's. It's interesting how it's. The Vision Pro can give you such an enhanced experience in some ways, but it can't give you the idea that even in your living room, the best movies are a shared experience. It's a communal thing, as, as I was going to, I really have to throw one of Roger Ebert's most important thoughts here quotes here that it's that movies are an engine for empathy. Where it's the only way where I can, it's not just telling me the story, but it's also showing me how you feel when you're telling me the story and everybody can feel the same thing. I still the greatest experience I've ever had inside a movie theater watching the big night in a like a 500 seat movie theater in Harvard Square.

1:50:27 - Alex Lindsay
That would be fun have you seen the movie?

1:50:28 - Andy Ihnatko
It's all. It's all. It's all about, like the preparation, this immense Italian meal centered around this immense entree called the timpano. This like huge, like almost like a wedding cake, packed full of like sausage and vegetables and pasta wrapped with. And so there's the scene, was they? They do the big reveal at the table where they cut a slice and you see the cross section of all this food and 500 people simultaneously go. Oh, and then they and then we all start laughing because we realize that we were all the same thing together.

And so it's. It's a bummer. That will always be like a solo experience with a device like this until they get cheap enough that you can do literally.

1:51:07 - Leo Laporte
And then no, you're isolated and whatever you do do not wear it to a wedding. It's a little creepy. Tech workers wife said she didn't want Apple vision pro in the wedding pictures.

1:51:20 - Alex Lindsay
There is a I want to see. I want to experience the wedding in stereo later.

1:51:25 - Leo Laporte
Cambry and Jacob Wright stand together. This is from the San Francisco Chronicle after taking their wedding photos on Saturday, february 10th. Jacob did not wear the vision pro during this ceremony, but did throw it on during the reception. A typical introvert nerd, right, he didn't want to be at the reception. You, you know he was he was probably watching a movie.

1:51:46 - Jason Snell
He was okay being at the reception, but he wanted to have like a browser window up too, just when he was born Just just off.

1:51:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Honey honey. Just off to the side, Not in my direct field of vision, just off to the I'm capturing 3D memories.

1:51:58 - Jason Snell
That's why I'm doing it really. Is that's, that's what you say?

1:52:01 - Alex Lindsay
is like no, no, I'm talking about when we get in a wedding for video videographer, that they're specialty is vision pro capture. So they, what they've gotten really good at, is holding their head really still and going, you know, just like like looking over here and slow pans for the other side and you know like capturing all that. I think that's the next, the next thing.

1:52:22 - Leo Laporte
I have to wonder if this marriage is going to last, but Cambry says, when her husband of two weeks dons the headset she avoids interacting with.

I try not to look because it's a little creepy. It's it's a little uncanny when he's in the Apple vision pro. I let him do his thing. She didn't explain that she tried to keep the wrap around head set away from the wedding photographer. He's like hey, baby, can we get pictures with the Apple vision pro? Cambry said he probably asked me two or three times. I was like no, no, no, we have to wait, we have to wait. And then I turn around one minute and he has it on.

1:52:57 - Jason Snell
It's just you know. Leave them out of your sight for one minute.

1:53:03 - Alex Lindsay
He didn't get the memo of the happy wife is a happy life. He hasn't gotten that memo yet and someone should learn and to learn.

1:53:14 - Andy Ihnatko
This is another reason why, like there are things that you will delegate, they think you'll share lots of the organization and the things you have to do to get this wedding set up. It's important that you be the one who booked the photographer, so they realize I know I'm the one who signed this contract, I'm the one who's we're gonna be writing this check for you. If I say no, no, then you're gonna Suddenly your flash unit is gonna need a recharge and you will not be able to take that.

1:53:42 - Alex Lindsay
I was a DJ for 400 weddings and when I in my wedding I was like this is her day and you just tell me where to go, like you just tell me, like I'm just gonna stand until you tell me to move somewhere else and I'm gonna move there and just and just hope that it's not my, not my day.

1:53:57 - Leo Laporte
Let's take a little break when we come back. Picks of the week coming up next, a MacBreak Weekly. And please, by all means, pick a fun vision pro app. I think the world wants to hear your vision pro picks. You could do a regular one too, if you want. Jason, he's got to, he's got to.

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1:56:45 - Andy Ihnatko
Okay, pick of the week. I remember a few weeks ago I recommended Nimona, the Netflix film that they decided to put on Netflix, on YouTube for free the whole movie because, like Oscar voting was Happening and I predicted that when Oscar voting closes they will take it down from YouTube. Yes, that's exactly what they did. It's not available on YouTube for free anymore. So, in the same light, I am going to call your attention to the fact that somebody has their Larry David did essentially an episode of it's Kirby.

1:57:16 - Leo Laporte
Enthusiasm for Apple.

1:57:25 - Andy Ihnatko
He works at Apple do an app approval process and so, yes, he's showing up at the Apple campus. This was shot for the 2014 WWDC. When they saw that he did, in fact, do an episode of Kirby enthusiasm with all of his Larry isms and all of the point of view of what it's like to work at Apple and what it's like to work in the job of doing app approvals, the Apple decided that maybe we're not gonna put this into the, into the show anyway, and yeah so they didn't ever show this at WWDC.

I don't believe that they did. I don't remember, but it's been pulled. It's not available officially.

1:58:00 - Leo Laporte
Wow somebody.

1:58:02 - Andy Ihnatko
Digital copy has been surfacing around. Occasionally it lands on YouTube and then disappears after a week or two. When somebody finds out about it and I'm I want who's that?

1:58:11 - Leo Laporte
he's arguing with right. Is that Federighi? Who is that?

1:58:15 - Andy Ihnatko
No, no, that's just an actor.

1:58:16 - Leo Laporte
That's just an actor. He looks like he works at Apple. He's saying you can't, you can't come in yet. No, with that would use your card. Buddy, don't follow me in. Yeah, it's Very.

1:58:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Larry. But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a full, it's a full thing. It's not like a little, it's not like a short thing either. It's like a full, like almost full half episode. So I would say, definitely Watch it at the very minimum. I also have a second pick of the week. There's an app called Downey. Ah, that is good for.

1:58:45 - Leo Laporte
Ah Whoever Sam Henry Gold is, he only has 195 subscribers and it's only a matter of time Before this disappears. Is that what you're saying?

1:59:01 - Andy Ihnatko
That's what? Again, that's a totally unrelated Big fan of this app. I use it a lot cuz, hey, sometimes I just don't have time to watch something immediately and so, yeah, I mean also, you know, you Google, they're gonna be hit with a lot of suits from the EU, a lot of fines. I think they appreciate that. I'm offering them some unpaid off-site backup Of strictly public domain and public interest videos, not anything that might be copyrighted, of course.

1:59:29 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is, this is wild. Yeah, I mean he's. He looks like he works at Apple. To be honest, he totally exactly belongs.

1:59:38 - Andy Ihnatko
It's not a set. He is actually at infinite loop, yeah.

1:59:42 - Leo Laporte
Wow, that's so great. Alright, get you Downey fired up and thank you for the pick, and it'll be gone by the time you hear this, I'm sure, but maybe make friends with Downey ready for the next time. Yeah, you should have it ready the minute you hear it. Jason Snell pick of the week.

1:59:58 - Jason Snell
Oh, I have to now because I made my bonus vision pro in a minute. But first I want to recommend whiskey, which is free. It's get whiskey dot app. It is the combination of wine, which is the Windows API emulator that allows you to run Windows stuff not in Windows, and Apple's own new ish gaming toolkit.

2:00:21 - Leo Laporte
Oh, this is the thing that they showed, but it was hard to get working. Is it easier now?

2:00:27 - Jason Snell
The gaming toolkit is for developers but anybody can download it, right. And then wine is the, a Windows API Emulator for a bunch of this stuff. That is sort of like shimming it into like Apple's tech. Whiskey rolls them together and you basically run your installer and it doesn't work all the time but it works a lot of the time to get Windows games running on Apple Silicon and I used it to. There's a baseball game called Diamond mind which is doesn't have any graphics to speak of but is like a great like Baseball emulator simulator where you can be the manager and stuff.

I've been playing that in a virtual machine Running, I think, windows XP for most of that time. Right, it's like it's really old, it doesn't really require, require anything but it's always required the entire overhead of a Windows VM for me to play on a Mac. It just runs and whiskey just runs. Just runs on my Mac. Oh, I don't have to. I don't have to do any of that Windows stuff anymore. So if you've got favorite old Windows games or even recent ish Windows games, maybe get whiskey and try and see if they will run on your Apple Silicon Mac, because they might.

2:01:36 - Leo Laporte
It's free, very, very cool.

2:01:39 - Jason Snell
It's, it is so I recommend trying that out. It's free, there's no, there's no point not to why not? And then I want to recommend a $10 app for the vision pro. Yay, it is from sandwich video makers of fine commercials, everywhere it's called television. You can get it at sandwich dot vision. Well, that's, that's their.

2:01:56 - Andy Ihnatko
URL.

2:01:59 - Jason Snell
It is. It is lonely sandwich. Oh nice sandwich video. They have created an app for vision pro called television. They said what if? You could put on a 3d object in 3d space and watch TV on it. We call it television. You know it says ridiculous, as it is, it's brilliant.

2:02:22 - Leo Laporte
So they have 3d models, adam, listen or 20 different 3d models of television, of physical televisions.

2:02:30 - Jason Snell
Over time, there's even a Macintosh TV in it.

And then you can play you can play local videos and they just did an update this week where you can play YouTube videos as well. On it you can set the aspect ratio. They say that several of the streaming services, as well as share play, are coming. But I've talked to a couple of the people involved in making this and what they say is is actually kind of pleasant when you're working In vision pro if you can play something that's sort of ambient. You just like having it on in the background and you put it in like you know a TV and you set it somewhere because it's a physical object. It's not a window, it's a, it's a 3d model with this, the video playing on the screen, and you can just set it in the corner and the audio comes from there like it's playing, like it's a real TV. So, of course, the first thing I did is take an old Star Trek episode and put it on. That's one of the things they need to add is some video filters to give it like to map it on the curve of the display and maybe like Give a little bit of NTSC fuzz to it if you want to, but it's so fun and the fact that they've meticulously built these 3d models of all these old TV sets. I love it. It's just adorable.

And the fact that now it plays YouTube, you could really put on your favorite YouTube Ambient stream or something like that and just have it running off to the side while you're working and it's and I like. Here's the thing I like about it the most. It's silly but it's fun. But I also like that it feels like actual vision pro software, not an iPad app that's been turned into a vision pro app, but it's still just sort of a 2d box in front of you. This is software running in Space in a 3d model in space and you place it somewhere and that's where the software is and I think that's really exciting. And I want there to be more stuff like this on vision pro in the future, because this feels like what real vision pro software should be.

2:04:18 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's aware of, like Tables and shelves in your actual rooms. You're actually putting it on a shelf and on a desk.

2:04:24 - Jason Snell
Oh it'll cast a shadow on your table when you're hovering it over the table and then, yeah, if you get up and walk around, you can get up, walk around, see the back of it, see the side of it, and it's still playing and the audio pans. It's just. I mean again, is this necessary in life? Of course not, but I love that they did the and the models are. So there's also a wall of TVs. If you want to have like that's, like it's like a three by three wall of TVs, you can do.

2:04:48 - Leo Laporte
You can do your Ozimandius and watchman thing if you want to so smart, so television Adam Lissig or was a with a host with Marlon man for a long time, if you look nice today, their podcast, yes, and I've come to become a fan of his as just a funny guy, but I guess he's a.

2:05:06 - Jason Snell
He makes great, he's a great commercial guy.

Yeah, he makes great commercials and he has a whole studio and Dan Sturm is doing his VFX. Now who's a guy who does a podcast on the incomparable and is just a really fun guy. And then they built this thing and it's, it's. It's just a lot of fun and I love there. They're. They're saying there will be more 3d models of TVs in the future, as well as more streaming services. So and this is one of those things it's on our vision OS wishlist. Right is In the future. Right now, vision OS, if you rebooted it loses track of where everything is. But in the future, what you really want is if I put the TV on the table in this one room, every time I come into that room the TV should be on that table. We're not quite there yet, but that that's the dream. That would be hilarious, can I?

2:05:48 - Andy Ihnatko
say this is one of my favorite things in the world something absurd that is Executed at the highest possible level exactly like they love it.

2:05:57 - Jason Snell
They did. This is not a half-assed joke app. It is ridiculous and and perfect at the same time. A great deal of art. You know our art direction and design and care that went into this product. That is on another level, as they know. In the ad, like, they say what if you could put a box on a table and play video on it? We call it television, I mean, they know, but also it's really good. So it's both those things at once television by sandwich.

2:06:26 - Leo Laporte
You can get it at sandwich division. It's in the app store.

2:06:29 - Jason Snell
Yep thanks.

2:06:31 - Leo Laporte
Fantastic, six bucks, six bucks.

2:06:32 - Jason Snell
Oh, is it six bucks? That's only six a bargain I just. I just lowered the price for you. Thank you, see, I want more vision pro content.

2:06:42 - Leo Laporte
Keep up the good work. All right, you're inching me towards the purchase.

2:06:46 - Jason Snell
I mean, I still have a 18 miles away, but it's by. It will get there Bit by bit. Everybody now get ready next week. What's this?

2:06:56 - Leo Laporte
It's all vision pro. Actually, I was a little worried about that in the first few weeks. It was a very much a vision pro podcast.

2:07:04 - Jason Snell
Truthfully, next, next week, the new MacBook Air's will be out, so we'll actually have like oh, bring it up here.

2:07:10 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that would be sure. Yeah, mr Alex Lindsay pick of the week.

2:07:16 - Alex Lindsay
So I have a lot of monitors. I know you never think that I have a lot of monitors in front of me, but I'm constantly Feel like they are. What a shock. They hang out together and then there's more of them, and so here's I'll give you a sense of what it looks like in my, like my, what I'm doing here. So this is my god. So this is a couple these. These are asleep right now, but this is like, for instance, this is my, my. You know, this is my drawing things. You can see me draw on things like that and In this little this is all still connected to that controls, that, and then, and then then you have, you know, the monitors that go around. I have the, the iPads down here, a touchable screen, and and then I have those PC and who?

2:07:57 - Leo Laporte
needs a vision pro. You've got me this is you don't need a vision problem like that's so cute.

2:08:03 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, so this is. This is what my mind, this is kind of my cockpit for what I'm when I'm live streaming and doing stuff and I you get used to having. This is one Of the reasons that I have a hard time with Going to a laptop is that I'm just used to lots of machines and lots of monitors, all all that I'm looking at all the time I was just one curious question if you put your coffee at a certain spot in three space, does it get warmer just because it's the right intersection?

2:08:29 - Leo Laporte
Nobody will never have children again.

2:08:35 - Alex Lindsay
So, yeah, so the the so anyway, but one of my challenges is I don't really like to monitor to sit on tables because I'm adding them and moving them around. I want to move them over here and, like when Michael Krasny comes to my house for the podcast, I have to move a bunch of these. I have to swing these monitors to another position so that I can run the show and he can Do his thing, and so so the. So there's all this stuff that that has to move around, and so I use these arms and I have to admit that I, for a long time, I use these Amazon arms and they're really nice. But I was like, okay, I'm buying a lot of these arms, I need to save a little money, and so I got these. They're who who want.

This is one version of these. I've got a couple different versions of them. This is the one that I bought most recently, like last week, and because I was like I need three monitors over here instead of two monitors, and so I had to figure that out and so and what I will say is that the monitors it's a little bit tweaky, you know. It's got a little bit of extra, more screws than your normal, normally that you put in there. But what I will say is they are. They are super durable and they're super durable and they are, you know, very flexible and you can really, you know, change all the friction that you need in different places and and so it. You know, I, and they're they're really hefty arms. They'll hold a lot of weight and the thing they got, the but the, the reason I've used been using these for the last four or five years, but the reason I'm recommending it is I lost a piece a lot, you know, and for an $89, what I view as a, you know, coming from mainland China kind of. I don't even know if they're coming from China, but I think, well, if you lost the piece, it's gone.

You know, like, like, and it was like like you're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna be able to get, and, and so I was like, right, yeah, I'll just buy a whole another one to get that piece. And that's actually what I did is, I bought another one, but I was like you know what, when I bought the new one, just to get that one little piece, I spent I don't know. I mean, I needed it. I used it again. But the point is is that I so I bought another one just so I get that little piece, so I can get that working. It's a little C clamp that hooks onto it Anyway. So I.

But when in that new box it said, hey, if you need support, just email here. And I was like I wonder if they'll actually give me support. So I typed into this thing and I got back on an email like an hour going hey, how can we help you? And I said I lost the seat. This, this little C thing, and can you take a picture of it? And I took a picture of it and they said I'll be $15, just put it in here, we'll hand it, we'll ship it out to you. Have it in a week.

I was, I was that to put me over like it wasn't. It no longer became like my cheap arms that I, you know that I use. It became like, oh, I can actually get a hold of somebody or something's not working or if I need to do something, and that's not something I expected, and so, and they're really good arms. I mean I, you know I like them a lot and but but the fact that I actually got customer service was, you know, put it over the top of like I you know these are really good. It's good company to.

2:11:18 - Leo Laporte
Know if they're Chinese, but the full name of the business is shan-chan shi men jing Wang. Yuan-chan Fajian you shan Gongxi, yeah, so I think it might be.

2:11:29 - Alex Lindsay
But. But whatever they're doing, the, the inner, the interface is somewhere in the United States and it's very, it was very, is or or. They're just highly responsive and speak, you know solid English and wish and hope that I had a great day.

2:11:42 - Jason Snell
Like they sent like.

2:11:43 - Alex Lindsay
The funny thing is it's like you know that, like when they said it's $15, that there wasn't shipping handling, there was no, like they made something up on the website so that I could pay $15. Like it was like literally like they made it up and they just said here we got one laying around, we'll just send it to you, but you just just 15 just some money, just some money.

2:12:00 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's like H? U a and you oh, triple monitor amount. It's on Amazon for $89.

2:12:07 - Alex Lindsay
They make all kinds of different ones. The less expensive ones hold a little less weight, then the, then the more expensive ones, and they make three arm and two arm and you know lots of different ones.

2:12:17 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I gotta say, don't overspend on a monitor arm like. The first one I got was a beautiful and $250 and it's like a Porsche where you can touch it with. It's like an Apple product. You can touch it with two fingers and the motor will move exactly where you want it to go and stay exactly where you leave it. But for these, these like 50, 60, 70 dollar monitors, they don't move as easily as that. But if you're setting a desk setup where you're gonna put it there and almost never move it, it really is just as sturdy. There's no wobble. It's it supports it well, I'm not afraid of it, and I immediately knew that I'm not spending more than than $40 per display on a monitor arm ever again.

2:12:55 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I, there are. As I mean, as you said, there's creature comforts. There's one of them $250 as a start, but but there are ones that I've had that are like a thousand dollars for two monitors or whatever, and those ones, as you said, you move with an end of your finger with no effort and things just kind of. It just feels like the monitors, floating monitors, and motion company that made those and they just feel like they're floating in space, you know, and they're great. I just can't afford to buy six of them, right, you know, and so so so I and, and for a hundred dollars I'm able to put a little more Albert elbow grease into it.

2:13:26 - Leo Laporte
I gotta pick From our club, our club twit. Now you know I'm an emacs guy, so and I don't really need vision pro. But Vision mad, who I suspect is a vision pro Fan in our club twit said he's been coating in Zigg in his vision pro and I said oh, oh, really, what editor are using? He says I use Zed on my desktop and then, of course, use the, the Mac to, and this is. I've been aware of this. This is from the folks who did Adam. It's there. You know Adam was originally on GitHub. It was. It was ended, its end of life.

They went on to write, rewrite this in rust. It's the same folks who give you a tree sitter. It's a high-performance multiplayer Code editor, open source and available for Mac OS natively, and he's using it for a zig. But because it supports tree sitter probably supports a great many languages except mine, and because it's written in rust, it's probably rock solid. It certainly looks like, it's very fast and it has a lot of very nice features Zed, and it's free Zed, edev, and we think vision mad in our club for the recommendation.

That's one of the great things about the club is there's really smart, interesting, unusual people in there, people you want to hang out with. That's not the reason to join the club. The reason to join the club is to keep us going. Seven bucks a month is all we need. If every listener sent us seven bucks a month, we wouldn't need advertising. We could grow, we could expand, we could do more shows, hire people back, hire new people, but it all comes down to you and we do want to give you some benefits. So you do it access to the club to a discord, which is a wonderful hang, with people like vision mad and all of our all of our family in there talking about all the things Geeks love to talk about.

We also get a content that is not Broadcast anywhere else. Like you saw that escape room if you're watching the video or escape box I guess it was. We did that was a lot of fun. We also have video versions of all the shows that may only have audio versions in public, like hands-on Macintosh and iOS today. So you get some benefit. Oh, I forgot the biggest benefit. Add free track or free versions of everything we do. Seven bucks a month seems like a pretty good deal for that twit TV slash club twit, but the main benefit is the warm and fuzzy feeling, knowing that you're supporting the work we do here. I I just think I might have to take a break because I'm starting off, but we do. Thank you guys for our all our club to members for your support and all of our hosts for the good job they do. Jason Snell will be hosting the show next week. In the week after Lisa and I are going on vacation, we're going down to come for a couple of weeks.

2:16:21 - Jason Snell
Yeah.

2:16:21 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

2:16:24 - Jason Snell
I mean, I'd rather be in Cabo, honestly, but I will host the show and not mess it up. I'll try not to crash, oh we love having you on.

2:16:30 - Leo Laporte
You're the best guy to do this, obviously.

2:16:32 - Jason Snell
Oh man, I thought you're gonna say we love having you in Cabo, but no, it's fine. Oh no, no, I'm sorry to do the show now.

2:16:39 - Leo Laporte
I don't have to do the show. It'll be good. We're gonna have some good guests, good guest and more next week. That'll be fun. Yeah, six colors. Comm also somebody from Mac stories, right?

2:16:48 - Jason Snell
Yeah, john Voorhees in two weeks, who is a really great. If you don't know who he is, you will learn and you will love John Voorhees, who works with Federico Vetticchi on Mac stories.

2:16:57 - Leo Laporte
So that's one of the reasons we like having you do the show, because you bring an interesting People. Of course, andy will be here, anya not go. What are you gonna be on GBH next?

2:17:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I was just on last week. Go to to be GBH news or to watch that. So I'm gonna be off for the next week or two. But go to Anato on pretty much any social network and you'll find my snapback, miss firings, right there, and maybe we'll see you in Cabo then, exactly, yeah Well, I thought it was gonna be more of a from over surprise when I pop up.

2:17:31 - Leo Laporte
And, of course, alex Lindsay and I want to thank Alex, his pick last week, these jam bars to support music and Marin. I think we like them. I think we like them. In fact, I want to put some aside for Jason for next week because I think I warned you they're they're addictive, they're gonna be gone. Yeah, they're very good. Alex does office hours every morning at officehours.global. What's up to over there?

2:17:53 - Alex Lindsay
Oh, you know we're talking about Tomorrow. We're gonna talk about just audio in the physical world, you know, and and then we're. But we're also talking about Multicast, you know, sending out to me a streaming to multiple locations. So a lot of, a lot of fun stuff. Also, we had Renee Ritchie on gray matter. He was great, of course. So, renee, that just popped out today. So if you go to gray matter dot show with an E, you can, you can see Renee's, or you can just go to Apple podcasts or Spotify. So, but the but he he had a great interview with Michael Krasti. Oh, that's wonderful.

2:18:32 - Leo Laporte
That's great, yeah still.

2:18:37 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, he still, he still is. His ability to Encapsulate an enormous amount of information into a short period of time is is always, always amazes me. When you ask my question. He just packages this whole thing up and even when Michael Krasley walked away, he goes. His ability to just package up like a thing of ideas yeah, set him down and is quite a thing.

2:18:56 - Leo Laporte
He's really well spoken, I agree, and we miss him on the show, but I'm glad we can see him on gray matter, gray matter with an E dot show. Thank you, and I mentioned, did I mention Jason's at six colors, comm slash Jason for all of his multi-fairey efforts. We do a MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time, 1900 UTC. Actually it will. We're gonna this Sunday, right the time change. We spring forward, so the math will change, not for, not for people in the US, but our UTC, because you see, we shift but UTC doesn't. So when let me think this out we're gonna set our clocks forward, which means UTC will be minus eight, no minus seven, by the 1800 UTC.

Okay, you got that. I hope you did. You could I say that only because you can't watch us. Do it live on YouTube. Youtube, comm slash Twitter. But of course you can watch or listen anytime you want, by downloading a show, whether it's from twittv, mbw, our website that's where the show notes live or watching the YouTube channel. There's a MacBreak Weekly YouTube channel, believe it or not. Subscribe there and you'll get it automatically. You can, of course, subscribe in your favorite podcast player, download an audio or video or both and Listen every week to MacBreak Weekly. Thank you so much for being here, thanks to our club members, thanks to our hosts, john Selene, our studio manager, burke McQuinn, the guy who keeps things working into our producer Whatever his name is John Ashley. Boy producer. John Ashley, I'm sorry, I'm just teasing you, but that's because you ate all my jam bars. Damn it.

2:20:40 - Leo Laporte
Oh, he's walking out.

2:20:41 - Leo Laporte
You can't leave Now. It's time for you You's particularly John Ashley to get back to work, because break time is over. We'll see you next week. Actually, I'll see you in three weeks, you.