MacBreak Weekly 950: Whacking on the Soccer Wall

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MacBreak Weekly 950 Transcript

Dec 4th 2024






Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Alex and Jason are all here and we've got lots of fun things to talk about. We'll take a look at the 45 best apps and games for the App Store Awards Review. A few of them. I'll tell you. The day that I'm going to die thanks to my favorite app, we also have a game that all of us played 30 years ago. That's back now for your iPad. That and a whole lot more coming up. Next, on MacBreak Weekly.
This is MacBreak Weekly episode 950, recorded Tuesday, december 3rd 2024. Whacking on the soccer wall. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show where we get together and talk about Apple Sch-news, with the Apple Sch-news team joining us right now. Andy Ihnatko from the library. Hi, andrew.
0:01:06 - Andy Ihnatko
Hello, I got a question that it's a light week, so maybe later on we can discuss this as a panel. When you're hanging a wreath on the front door, are you a bow at the top, family, or a bow at the bottom?
0:01:17 - Leo Laporte
family? Oh, that's a really interesting question.
0:01:20 - Andy Ihnatko
Because I always put mine at the top and as I was adjusting it, I'm like why? It seems like this is a thing that Google and Facebook ads. They will figure out which one you are and make our ad targeting decisions based on it, because there is something that tells us about you on where, if you have a holiday wreath where you put the bow, we won't discuss side bow people because those people have been reading too many design magazines honestly, I think it's pretty clear that, uh, you should put the bow at the top.
0:01:51 - Leo Laporte
Now Patrick Delahanty says put the bow at the bottom. But we're going to get into that in greater detail. Yes, that's likely going to be like the clip that goes on all the socials and all of that stuff, the bow, because that's what people care about. Uh, Alex Lindsey is also here from office hours, dot global he has deeper issues to think about htr, hlg versus pq.
0:02:15 - Alex Lindsay
This is what we talked about there you go. That's what counts, that's what matters exactly it's a religious issue so we try to go very quickly. Some people are like hlg and I'm like.
0:02:24 - Leo Laporte
Hlg curve just isn't as good as the pq curve, so you know, sometimes I wish I lived in Alex's head just to understand some of the things that he says also with us from sixcolors.com, mr Jason Snell, just happy to be part of the apple news team.
0:02:42 - Jason Snell
Uh, big storm coming in, but then it's going to be clearing up.
0:02:45 - Leo Laporte
I'll be back later with the apple weather and now with the traffic report, captain leo in the skies uh no, we're not going to do that to you today, because you tuned in a podcast so you didn't have to listen to radio. I'm sad to say that the many of the staff at the radio station I used to work for KFI in Los Angeles have been laid off as radio continues its death spiral terrestrial radio has been replaced by extraterrestrial well, and I have to say, uh, unless you're Joe Rogan, or uh, call her daddy podcast ain't doing all that well either.
There is a. There is a uh, a chill in the air with advertisers. I think they're very nervous. I don't. I don't know if it's us. Is it us, Jason Snell? You sell advertising, is it?
0:03:35 - Jason Snell
I don't sell advertising. I have people who do that for me because I don't want to do it, because I've never wanted to do it, but they don't tell you how Jason is it's going to be.
0:03:42 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, it seems like it's slow.
0:03:44 - Jason Snell
It's a tough market. I mean, my big podcast over at Relay is doing okay. But even there you know you can feel it and it's a tougher sledding than it has been, but you know when I say, oh, podcasts are struggling, people go.
0:03:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh no, they're bigger than better than ever.
0:04:05 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's true if you're a celebrity or you have one of the big shows yeah. If you've got smart lists, you're doing it okay, right? Or if you enjoy talking about murder and the misery of other families that are left behind.
0:04:11 - Alex Lindsay
If you're talking about Apple a little tougher.
I think that one of the things that you kind of see when you start to see this kind of stratification of that process is I think this is one of the things that Twitter did early on. That was kind of a I that process is I think this is one of the things that Twitter did early on. That was kind of a I think a lot of people lost interest in Twitter or didn't have the same verve for Twitter when they just started really dumping to. You know, really making sure that the that celebrities that joined Twitter did really really well. And so you know, there was a point where I think, leo, you were number one or two on Twitter when we, when we were getting started in the old days, I was number. I was number 99. At one point I was a 99, you know, like I think I might've taken a screen capture of that Like I'm on the top 100.
And um, and then, you know, then they started, uh, basically really pandering to uh, all the celebrities that came in and everyone else just kind of dropped away and you kind of felt like it was like this cool little club. Then they, they just hung out with the popular kids and dropped us all all into the deep. You know, and, and I think that that is, in some cases, this, this kind of uh and I personally think that spotify did a lot of the work, you know, on this is to really jam up. You know, there's a couple things that spotify did. I think number one is to really press down on the, on the really popular ones, and throw lots of money at it.
But also the specificity of the data you know didn't take into account some of the effect, the effectiveness, that you can't measure in podcasts. You know that they're, and they, you know they want to know every minute that you listen to it and every little bit. And I get that. That that's important data. But what happens is that you can't really have a CPM that properly represents that level of specificity. So one got really accurate and the other one's not, and I think that mismatch has been pretty damaging.
0:05:52 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Well, anyway, we're going to soldier on. Thanks to our club members who help us keep the lights on, and as long as people want to hear about technology news, I hope we can find a. As long as people want to hear about technology news, I hope we can find a little place, a little small place, in your heart, right next to mom and apple pie. Apple has announced, revealed and shown the 45 app and game finalists for the big App Store Awards. Actually, this happened right after the show last week so I missed it, but we will do it now because it's a good time filler. It's going to go right through the first hour of the show. Here are the finalists in the app of the year. They haven't announced the winners yet, have they? Am I that far behind?
0:06:37 - Andy Ihnatko
No, there's the podcast of the year announcement, but not the app of the year.
0:06:41 - Leo Laporte
What was that? Okay, this I don't want to hear. What was the podcast of?
0:06:53 - Jason Snell
the year. Oh, hysterical, hysterical, hysterical. It's a wondery podcast about uh dan taberski.
0:06:56 - Leo Laporte
Uh, that spreads among a group of high school girls yeah, see, that's uh, yeah, and, but the problem is that's, I mean, you can't do that for 20 years, can you? It's a miniseries, it's a miniseries. Uh, that's the problem, you, that's, I mean, you can't do that for 20 years, can you? It's a miniseries.
It's a miniseries. That's the problem, you know Well. Good for Dan, congratulations. It starts episode one Outbreak Spasms. Oh, I don't know if I would read. Why do people want to listen to this, I wonder? Anyway, hysterical congratulations. The podcast of the year is that because it had the most downloads of every other show? No, it's just. Uh, it rose to number one in july.
0:07:34 - Jason Snell
2024, at end of the year, is number nine it's uh, yeah, it's a demonstrating quality and innovation podcast, and so, again, it's apple choosing. I just want to point out all these things that we talk about here. These are all decided by apple they're essentially apple, yeah it's editorial.
well, it's marketing though, because I mean, it's apple, so it is editorial in the sense, but like they have a podcast app and they have an app store, and so really what they're doing is it is, uh, people doing content, but they, you know, are they choosing based on completely, you know, objective criteria? Are they choosing based on relationships with developers and things like that? I mean, I think that there's a lot that goes into this, so just keep your eyes open. It's always nice to see Apple recognize developers for their good work, but it is marketing for the app store.
0:08:25 - Andy Ihnatko
And the good news is it isn't necessarily a popularity contest. So sometimes they do lift up apps that are well-made. Oftentimes, the unifying factor is that this is a good example of Mac or iPhone or Vision OS or iPad OS design. It's the sort of things that Apple wants to put more eyes on, and a lot of it is promotional. A lot of it is what's going to sell very, very well.
I wasn't the first person to notice this, but it's like it is kind of interesting that there are no AI apps on this list, like ever, given that AI apps are some of the most interesting and transformative mobile apps that are on the app store right now. I don't think there's anything weird about it, but it is to note that, whatever metric they're going for, it's not about the number of downloads. It's not about necessarily stylistic impact. There is a lot of arguments, I'm guessing, between a lot of different factions, just like on a lot of Jason's podcasts. There are a lot of arguments, I'm guessing, between a lot of different factions, just like on a lot of Jason's podcasts. There are a lot of arguments about, you know, when we do our own, when we do our own picks of holiday movies involving bears, it's like, oh, I can't believe you chose the Revenant. It's not a Christmas movie, but it is a Christmas movie when you think about it.
0:09:39 - Leo Laporte
As is Die Hard when you don't think about it. App of the year. Finalists are drum roll, please. Keno uh, I think we've talked about that, haven't we? Alex keno's a movie making yeah, it's a great.
0:09:54 - Alex Lindsay
It's um uh from the folks that brought you halide. So so there you go yeah, yeah, so really, really, um, it's kind of it splits the difference between the apple photos app and black magic app, you know where. It's not quite as complicated as black magic, but not quite as simplistic as the apple photos one, or as simplified, I don't even know if it's simplistic it does something every, every, I think, american, proud american, wants to do, which is great log movies with lutz in my. That's super important, I know.
0:10:28 - Leo Laporte
I bet they have an opinion on HLG versus HDR. But I don't Handering to the office hours crowd.
0:10:34 - Alex Lindsay
I mean you know, I mean they would know they would know, PQ is better than HLG, so the HLG is easy but we do better. But for people listening, the LUT means that you can shoot in log but you can watch it in the regular linear color space so that you kind of understand what you're looking at while you're shooting. So that's why the LUT is important to a camera app.
0:11:04 - Leo Laporte
Clear as mud, Lindsey. No, actually I know what you're talking about, but I am speaking for the everyman. Now, there you go, uh, keno, and, and you do recommend it, right, or would you rather use the black magic?
0:11:17 - Alex Lindsay
so I admit that I I recommend it for anyone where the black magic one feels too deep and the and the uh and the apple photos makes you crazy because it all, the all the tools are kind of hidden in weird ways. So if you, if that, if you're kind of in that, so you open up the black magic, go whoa, that's too much. Or you go to the into the photos app and you go, oh, that's not enough. Or I can't find anything. Then kino's perfect for you. Um, it's got a clean interface, it gives you a lot of control. Um, I'm still using.
0:11:43 - Leo Laporte
Why would you use it over over the built-in?
0:11:48 - Alex Lindsay
camera. The built-in one is, you know it, just a lot of the features that are available, that the camera has available to you, are kind of either hidden or not available to you. You know the photo. You know apple tries to make it easy for everyone. They have a lot of great tools that they put in. They put, you know, you look at all this like they shot the weekend music video with it and they shot this with it. When they're doing that, they're not using the apple photos app like they're using the phone. It's a shot with an iphone. It doesn't say shot, oh, but they're using something that is much more capable, like you know, or, and like and like black magic, opens up every bell and whistle that you could possibly have. That the camera is capable of delivering, except maybe spatial, and so it opens up all of those options. But there's a lot of interface to it. Now there's rows and rows and rows of settings and all these things, and it's easy for you to take bad footage. You know you can get the settings wrong.
0:12:37 - Leo Laporte
Kino is kind of, in my opinion, kind of halfway between yeah, so it's really, when you shoot in log, you're shooting to get all of the data, but it doesn't look right initially because it needs to be color graded before it actually looks normal, and so what this does is allows you to shoot in log, gives you an instant grading so you can at least see something that looks sort of like what you want, and then at some point you could either use another tool or use it to apply a.
LUT, which is a lookup table that tells you what colors should really look like.
0:13:08 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and the lookup table just says instead of this color, go to this color. Instead of this color, go to this color. It's just a curve. It's like if you think of Photoshop curves, just do that in 3D and you end up with a lot.
0:13:17 - Leo Laporte
And so the it comes with built-in color grades.
0:13:28 - Alex Lindsay
Are they pretty good? I mean, yeah, they're good they're they are. Mine are very specific, like, like we have discussions about, are you using the nbc hlg lut or the pq lut, are using their specific ones, and a lot of times, as you get going, we don't really use kind of pre-built luts. Like a lot of times we would go out and shoot a test footage and then we take it into resolve, you let it and we and we make it look the way we want it to look, or or or I actually get a colorist that I know to make it look the way he wants it to look, and then I and then he sends me back a LUT.
0:13:55 - Leo Laporte
So you can derive a LUT from an image that you've got it to look exactly as you want. You can then derive the lot from that in resolve you don't derive.
0:14:02 - Alex Lindsay
So you can say here was a the original.
0:14:04 - Leo Laporte
Here's b the the what I want it to look like.
0:14:07 - Alex Lindsay
Please give me a lookup table that maps yeah, exactly exactly so, and typically that a is a, um is a log. You know shot or raw. You know raw and lot more log that's shot, and so the colorist will go in and set up the nodes inside of the color window, inside of resolve, and then you just literally select the image and right click on it and say export a 33 point lock or a 65 point lock and for people who do still photography, this is somewhat analog to shooting in raw.
0:14:34 - Leo Laporte
You have to process it afterwards to get exactly. It looks normal, all right, so we've really gone deep into keno. What is runa? Is anybody here actually exercise?
0:14:43 - Jason Snell
Oh, I actually do run, but I've never used Runa so I can't really speak to that. It has an opportunity.
0:14:49 - Leo Laporte
Strava, excuse me which is a very popular runner's app, has just disabled its API for most third-party tools, which is probably disappointing to people with Apple Watches and so forth. You like to get that stuff into Apple Health, for instance?
0:15:02 - Jason Snell
Yeah, well, there are a couple of running apps on here, because there's also a Couch to 5K app and the best Apple Watch nominees, so they're definitely leaning into that, and I have used apps. I haven't used this app, but I've definitely used Couch to 5K apps and other run tracking apps on the Apple Watch to do that and it's pretty great. But I can't speak to Runa other than that it's got tailored training plans, which is great because that's actually the thing. I ended up doing a lot of manual timing using a, an app called intervals pro, because I couldn't find an app that would set my training plan properly, so I ended up inputting it on my, you know, on my phone manually and syncing it to my watch and having that training plan right up uh, for you is it's better, right to do.
0:15:42 - Leo Laporte
It says 5k, 10k, half marathon and ultra, so yeah if you want to run one of these, you could get a train. It would generate a training plan for you and it's really nice because it knows when you're running.
0:15:52 - Jason Snell
It's not just like telling you okay, now run it, like will tell you what your paces are, but it'll also tell you, like some of them do interval training I know that's how I did it with my 5k training is you know, it tells you to run for a while, then it tells you to take a break and then it tells you to run again and it gives you your stats. And that can be really helpful to have, basically a coach who is speaking to you in your ears as you're running.
0:16:13 - Leo Laporte
It's interesting Apple pick this because it only has five reviews. Of the five reviews there are there, most mostly are five star, and then there's a whole bunch of one stars are. They're most mostly are five star, and then there's a whole bunch of one stars.
0:16:26 - Andy Ihnatko
There really seems to be no agreement. You know. You know how I feel about one star reviews. They're garbage. You throw them all away.
0:16:29 - Leo Laporte
You throw them away, throw them away okay, yeah, if you throw the top of bottom away, you have no reviews. So there you go, uh, run on me the mean is no opinion whatsoever. The median uh, runna is, um uh, a finalist. We should mention these are not winners. And then the last one in the finalist for iphone app of the year is tripsy travel planner I have used this one and it is good.
0:16:58 - Jason Snell
They uh. The idea there is you're taking a trip and you can load it up with uh information. It'll give you, you know, weather per day, which I really like that is a winning feature.
There aren't too many apps that do that. I was when I went to new zealand last year. Um, that was one of the things I really wanted is I wanted to see we were in different cities in different days and I wanted an idea of what the weather was going to be like. Tripsy will do that. It's got a bunch of other things.
This is really nice activity lists, itinerary planners, flight updates, things with your calendar, like it is. If you want to be like, have an app that works with you on, like every day of your trip and what you're going to do, and and all of that, uh, trip see, does that? It's actually a. It's a very impressive app in that category.
0:17:39 - Leo Laporte
I do most of this by hand in a notion. I just kind of create a notion.
0:17:43 - Jason Snell
I do Apple notes for a lot of this stuff too.
0:17:46 - Leo Laporte
But yeah, the reason I use Notion is I could share it with my partner or other people so they kind of know what we're doing, and so forth. Does Tripsy have that kind of capability, can you?
0:17:55 - Jason Snell
I don't know if I, if I uh, I didn't try that out. I tried this a while ago, when they were still developing it, but it's a, it's a it's very cool but it's a it's. It's a nice idea. Yeah, uh, you can share your itinerary with family and friends okay, because that's really key.
0:18:07 - Leo Laporte
Right, you want to do all this planning, but you don't want to have be the only one who knows what's going to happen.
0:18:13 - Jason Snell
That's kind of ugly what happens when you get hit by a truck while on your vacation and nobody will know where to go next by the way, some of these uh run off for sure, and tripsy uh also run on the ip iPad.
0:18:23 - Leo Laporte
At trips he runs on the Mac as well. So there and the Apple watch. So there you go. There's your three you want to keep going.
0:18:29 - Jason Snell
Are we good apps of the year?
0:18:31 - Leo Laporte
yeah, those are the apps of the year. Now we have game finalists. I'm not going to go into as much detail afk Journey for building enchanting Fantasy worlds with striking battles, the wear cleaner for delivering comical gameplay, and zenless zone zero. You know, I'm starting to feel like the iphone games are really pretty crappy. Am I wrong on that?
0:18:56 - Andy Ihnatko
they're just. They're just of a sameness. I think they're of a sameness yeah it's, it's when this is. This is one of the reasons why I I really still my play date my, because so many of the games are just one very, very strange lone game developer who didn't have to bounce any ideas off of anybody, they just thought that it was a weird and I just want to see this game happen. You really have to dig to find like the stuff that really gets gets my attention on any kind of a mobile game.
0:19:26 - Leo Laporte
Those are for iPhones. For iPad, the app of the year, finalists, bluey, let's play. I know a lot of kids like Bluey. Oh, you got to love Bluey for lovable characters and family-friendly fun.
0:19:38 - Alex Lindsay
We were talking the other day about the most viewed things on YouTube.
0:19:45 - Leo Laporte
Half of them are for kids, like you know why, Alex? Because a kid will watch the same video a thousand times, right?
0:19:52 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, and I think maybe not your kids are smart they still sometimes watch it pretty often, but they're usually trying to figure baby shark wouldn't exist if only adults were in the world.
0:20:02 - Leo Laporte
Because you hear it once you go huh, that's cute and that's it. You don't want to hear it again, yeah. But a kid wants to hear it over and over and over, and so I think you when you see all those kids with iphones and ipads in the restaurant. They're playing bluey moises, interesting, incredible, yeah, really incredible app.
0:20:20 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, I just it's like it's magical, like it's a magic for musicians.
0:20:23 - Leo Laporte
So it's it's it listed as ipad, but it's also just it's like it's magical, like it's a magical app.
0:20:26 - Alex Lindsay
This is for musicians, so it's it's it listed as iPad, but it it's also a um, it's iPhone as well, it's iPhone as well, and so, uh, my daughter uses this heavily, um and so so what she does with it, um, is that, you know, she's got electronic drums, and so when she's trying to learn the electronic drums, uh, learn a new drum riff for one of the bands she's in a couple bands um, uh, and uh, she, uh, she can take this, she can take a song and, uh, she usually downloads it from youtube or whatever, throws it into moises and it will separate all of those instruments.
So it just, it just pulls out all the instruments and it gives you a levels control over each instrument does it do a good job. That's incredible. Like it does a job. Like I don't even know how that's possible. Like it's it is it's. I don't understand it, to be honest. Like it is so good at pulling these apart and doing them so cleanly and then and then what it can actually separate the rhythm and the lead guitar. Yeah, it did it gets better, you keep I can't do that.
Yeah, exactly, it's it. It is, and it didn't do that when we bought it, but now it does it, and it keeps on adding more and more tracks that are available, and so the interesting thing is is then, what she does is she takes that and mixes it in with her drums so that she can turn just the drums up and play with the drums until she gets it interesting and then turn the drums down, down the drummer and everything else is playing around her and and it is, it's just transformation, like it's just like.
Sometimes it's one of those apps that I just go, uh, I don't think I might have used it. I might have recommended it a year ago, or when I think you did actually um, but it's just like. This is uh, you know we're living in the future with this app this is remarkable.
0:21:58 - Leo Laporte
I should apologize to to micah and rosemary, because of course, ios today has already done all this and talked about it and, if you like apps, that's the show to listen to. But I thought we should bring this up since we're so light on material.
0:22:13 - Andy Ihnatko
I also thought it was kind of interesting that so many of the picks were like wow, Adobe Lightroom, what's that Like in the Mac apps? Both of them are two productivity apps that we know well omni focus and lightroom. The third one is a pipeline uh feature for like 3d production, so it's a 3d modeling package. Okay, thank you uh a shaper 3d.
0:22:36 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah it's um relatively affordable yeah. So these are big, so the first two are big name products. I mean, I guess omni focus isn't, except anybody's been in apple's space for a while knows very well the omni group. Yeah, um, and I think omni focus has probably been an app of the year finalist for a long from many times before again.
0:22:57 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean that's that that that company, like they are, like they were writing mac apps before. Before there was mac app development because they were writing these Mac apps as next step apps. So you can't get like a more tighter pedigree or understanding of the philosophy of a Mac oriented app. And I was pleased to see Lightroom in there because, my God, the leaps that that has made in the past three years.
This year too, not just the desktop app but the mobile app, where things that were like I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to wait until I get home to edit a photo because there are so many advanced features on the mobile app for doing things like oh, but I only want this to affect the face or this object inside the frame and oh, you will automatically detect objects for me and I can.
Or even with people in the frame, you can say, you can just say, please identify all the people in this, in this, uh, in this image, not by name but by you know which shape, shapes that that represent people, and be able to say, okay, I want this, these edits, to affect only person three and only their clothing, and it's like. That's why I keep saying that, one of the reasons why I've never got into mobile gaming on my phone is that Lightroom Mobile is like my entertainment app when I'm, when I've got spare time 10 minutes waiting for a bus, or like an hour waiting in an airplane or something like that. It's just so much fun to work with. So I'm not I'm surprised to see them name someone so important, by the way, particularly because, like, okay, so if they're buying their own competitor to Photoshop and to take it in-house and maybe release as a free app, you're choosing to give promotion to Adobe, which is great it means that they're being honest, but it's like oh boy, that's going to be fun next year.
0:24:43 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, jumping, we jumped ahead a little bit. I'll make this quick iPad app of the year finalist. I just don't want to leave out Procreate Dreams, because the people at Procreate saying you mentioned Bluey and Moises. What about us? Procreate Dreams is, I guess, from the Procreate team, savage Interactive.
0:25:02 - Alex Lindsay
It lets you build animations with what you're drawing layers and so on and so forth.
0:25:08 - Jason Snell
It's really cool, a lot of these apps up here. You will not be surprised to believe in various Apple keynotes over the course of time, which is again a sign that they're apps that are liked by people, especially, I think, in developer relations within Apple, and I think those are the people who drive and that's probably who decides this right?
think those are the people who drive and I think awards probably, who decides this right? Yeah, I would think I don't. I don't know, but that's my guess and it's all of a kind right and and I mean you talked about iphone apps sometimes feeling kind of samey. Um, that again, I don't want to. I don't want to be too down on these awards, because I really love that they're recognizing third-party apps, but they're recognizing them for reasons that make apple happy, right?
So one of the reasons that a lot of iPhone apps especially get recognized is because Apple likes to show off apps that have heavy graphics use, because they want to use it to show off their GPUs when they release new iPhones, and so they're really into that. When you know is the market into that or is it really that Apple's into that and you see that you know if it's adopting Apple technologies, they really love it because that's what they're trying to promote. It's just something to keep in mind. Also, you know they're going to prefer apps that are working with them as partners and that are in the App Store and all of those other things.
For Mac apps, for example, I did notice that in their press release they linked to the mobile version of Lightroom in the Mac app of the year category, which is oops, but anyway it's a great not Mac app, but it was nominated for Mac app of the year. So I'll give you an example the Mac game of the year. One of the nominees is Stray, which is an amazing game, but what they're really happy about is that that's a fairly high profile game that came to the Mac this year.
0:26:44 - Leo Laporte
It's a double A title. You get to play a cat wandering around.
0:26:48 - Jason Snell
It's a great game, but, yes, it is somewhere between cute indie game and AAA game. Well, so is Thank Goodness You're here, which was published by Panic. I actually loved.
0:26:57 - Leo Laporte
Thank Goodness You're here. That's a hilarious game. It was so much fun.
0:27:00 - Jason Snell
And I'm glad that they gave it a promotion right.
0:27:03 - Leo Laporte
I played it on the Nintendo Switch, so I apologize.
0:27:06 - Jason Snell
But for any developer, for any developer, getting the marketing muscle, even a little the weakest and flabbiest of marketing muscles of Apple, behind your app in any way, it's a big deal, it's really important.
0:27:18 - Alex Lindsay
I was talking to a developer. This is years ago so I don't know if it's the same now, but they were they. Their app was in one of the commercials, you know it. Just it just flew by, it was like a logo, like a logo and they showed they someone actually used it for like a second. It was like a second or two seconds that you saw someone actually using their app. Quarter million dollars a month, sure.
0:27:38 - Leo Laporte
They've done that with songs too right, they were just like.
0:27:40 - Alex Lindsay
it was just like suddenly they didn't have to work anymore, like it was just it was. It just turned the whole switch on. They didn't know how long it was going to last. When I was talking to them, they're like, eventually this is going to fade away, but you know like we're going to enjoy it while it lasts. And you know, but that was it that paid off their house, paid off everything else. It was just the two seconds on an Apple ad. So these, these know it's like. These are strong apps, like, for instance, I do think that in the Apple Vision Pro they have JigSpace listed as the number one. I think it's the most impressive app other than playing movies. The most impressive non-movie app in the Apple Vision Pro is JigSpace.
0:28:18 - Jason Snell
Like you said. I think you're right. I think it comes from a point of view because of course it does it comes from Apple's point of view.
0:28:24 - Alex Lindsay
I think it's telling, like when I saw JigSpace listed I thought, well, of course I literally got a Vision Pro demo from Apple at Apple with JigSpace right, like I know they like that app and when I show it, when I show it to someone, I'm like you got to go into JigSpace and take a look at this Like and I think this is to your point it shows you where the Apple Vision Pro could go. It's actually not a very practical app because the development process is really expensive and painful and all kinds of other things. You don't see that many new things, but it's the best example. I think a lot of these Moises and JigSpace is an example of showing you what the technology could do from a vision perspective.
0:29:04 - Leo Laporte
Well, anyway, it's also useful for us as users to get some discovery in here, so that's nice, but it's much like the editorial function that highlights these things in the app store itself. It's yeah, it's a little self-serving.
0:29:19 - Andy Ihnatko
But it's useful. It's not a garbage app, so it's a good place to start.
I do wish that the app store itself were a little bit more discoverable and a little bit more fun. To just say, I'm kind of dissatisfied with the image viewer apps that I have right now. I want to sort of browse and explore, or even I don't know. I haven't really looked at new apps of any kind because all my tools seem to be kind of okay. I just want to see what's new. I want to see what's interesting. I think there even used to be kind of okay. I just want to see what's new. I want to see what's interesting.
I think there even used to be RSS feeds you could subscribe to Back when the influx of apps was somewhat manageable. The firehose was at least something that you could keep on top of if you were so bizarre as to want to take a look at it. I do still feel like it's hard to know if I just want to see, I just want to really know a lot about the breadth of text editor tools that are available for the Mac, and it just doesn't seem like there's an easy way to do that, unless you're just interested in editorially picked content, featured content or the best sellers.
0:30:16 - Leo Laporte
All right. Geeking Tom has asked a question that I'm afraid I must ask Alex, did you try to deep fry your turkey this year?
0:30:23 - Alex Lindsay
I did not, I, I, I soupy, did I, I subbed it, I so I, I um how did you injure your thumbs, is the question. Oh, funny, funny story don't deep fry your turkey with your windows.
0:30:35 - Leo Laporte
Putting in the storm windows never manually drop your turkey into the fryer.
0:30:39 - Alex Lindsay
I guess would be the lesson when you work in shipping and receiving, when you're 18 years old and there's a two chemical process to do, uh, packing materials. It's a two chemical that turns into foam. Yeah, all over the packages it says to put gloves on, don't let it touch your skin. Oh, at 18 years old you don't pay attention to that. And so that when it gets cold, your skin cracks.
0:30:58 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wow. So this is an injury from your youth.
0:31:00 - Alex Lindsay
It's a 30-year-old, so it's a 30-year-old I just so every once in a while I put these on to it. Just lets them heal back up again, oh nice, it happens all winter.
0:31:08 - Andy Ihnatko
It's hard for life. That's hardcore man.
0:31:09 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, it's just different. You know my days in retail In the winter, you'll see different fingers covered with, and usually I remember to take them off before. I usually remember to take them off before sounds unpleasant. Just follow the instructions.
0:31:32 - Jason Snell
That's the only lesson. It hasn't hurt my life too much. Just follow the instructions.
0:31:34 - Alex Lindsay
Just follow the instructions especially the ones with the big circle that has like the evil sign on it and I used to use it for everything. I used to send people like cassettes and I'd be like I'll put it in a phone package because I can do that custom and you know it's what anyway one more app.
0:31:44 - Leo Laporte
It's going to be Leo's app pick it's actually not my app pick because they end up charging you money in three days and you really shouldn't have to pay money for this. It's called death clock. I showed this on sunday on twit. I just want to let you know that I will be dying march 17th 2041 according to death clock, and, uh, just thought I'd warn you ahead of time. They do actually give you a little graphic that says save the date, but since I didn't want to pay 40 for this information, well to to be fair, they actually they got to make sure they get that money out of your early.
Yeah, that's true they give you a three day, a three day trial, which is enough time to get your actual. It's so funny because you it's a questionnaire, you go through the whole thing and then it says if you want to know when you're going to die, you should give us some money. That's like why I oughta. Fortunately they have a three-day trial which is free. You can find out when you're gonna die and then, uh, I don't know why you'd pay forty dollars a year for this. But I guess the idea is they tell you when you're going to die, based on what your current habits are, and then how much longer you could live if you changed your habits. And since changing my habits things like eating vegetables would only add six years to my life. I'm just going to don't bother shine it on.
0:32:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Now the operative question of course has to be have you read it? It's the privacy policy.
0:33:02 - Leo Laporte
Oh my God, yeah, cause I told it a lot of stuff.
0:33:10 - Andy Ihnatko
That's one reason why, like it's actually reassuring to see oh good, they're charging a lot of money for this.
0:33:13 - Leo Laporte
That's how they they want to monetize this, hopefully, yikes uh, there is actually a website that does pretty much the same thing. Uh, it says I'm gonna live to 90. So I don't know. I trust that one better. I think it's more accurate. Just thought I'd let you know that the last mac break weekly will be march 17th 2041 well, it's that's that's useful, because it's like with leo, march 15th part, part.
0:33:37 - Andy Ihnatko
Part of it is like maybe I'm not going to binge watch seasons three and four of only murders in the building. I need to save something, so I'm gonna have to fill like another 15 years.
0:33:45 - Alex Lindsay
I didn't think I'd have I think I think just leo's gonna have a lot of fun on, uh, saint patty's day.
0:33:51 - Leo Laporte
It's just like yeah, that's right, I obviously drink myself to death right, that's, it's not gonna be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, let's take a break. You're watching mac break weekly Alex Lindsey, Andy Ihnatko and Jason Snell and me, talking about the latest Apple news. There is not not much, but we have some more. I don't know if we're gonna have an occasion to play the vision pro theme, but we'll, let's see oh yes.
Andy, you found a story, actually an interesting one, that I think Alex is gonna love. All right, there you go. See, we work hard to keep you entertained. Our show today, brought to you by Experts Exchange. This is a. You listen to our shows partly for entertainment, but I think also partly because you want information. You want to know more about technology.
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All right, let's see here what else is going on. I thought we were talking about privacy and I think it's really good news. It's not specifically Mac news, but it's very good news. The FTC now is looking into banning or restricting what data brokers can sell of your information, including your social security number, and if they do sell that information, can you believe they're actually allowed to do that? They will be viewed as a credit reporting agency, not as a privacy invading data broker, which means they have even more regulation.
This is a very small step. It is just a first step and it isn't even a step yet. It's just a proposal. But I've said for a long time, I'm not going to really credit Congress with doing anything for our privacy by banning TikTok, unless they go a step further and ban data brokers. I mean, who cares about TikTok if china and anybody else can buy the same information completely legally online, in fact, better information, because the data brokers collects it from all the apps. Um, but congress has yet to do anything. Maybe the ftc will. We'll see. Oh, actually it's not the ftc, it's the cfpb, which means, uh, they're trying to do this before january 20th because it will that, that that agency will probably disappear.
0:40:07 - Andy Ihnatko
And it's it's especially important because a lot of law enforcement agencies are using these, these resources, to get around to to get around like being able to get having to get warrants for certain information, because if they can just buy information instead of having to go through a court and convince a judge, that's been happening a lot and we need to put brakes on it. Basically, a lot of it is that it will give you. If this rule goes into effect, it means that they would have to go ask you for explicit permission before they move. They sell on your social security number. Why is that already not illegal?
0:40:38 - Leo Laporte
That was the stunning thing in this story. Yeah, wait a minute. They're allowed to sell your social. That's legal.
0:40:46 - Andy Ihnatko
If if they got it, they can, they're not even banning it, by the way.
0:40:48 - Leo Laporte
They're just saying well, that's going to put you under more regulation, and I guess we should probably give you the bad news, which is january 20th it's all over.
0:40:57 - Andy Ihnatko
Well, maybe I mean the consumer financial protection bureau has been all over the news, even the apple news, for the past few months. They've been doing such great work. There was a story just a couple of weeks ago I don't know if we talked about it or not where they decided A first they were the agency that said that, okay, the Apple card and the banking organization that runs it. You basically screwed up a whole bunch of ways things were supposed to do to customers.
Sorry, goldman Sachs, you haven't been responding to user complaints in a timely fashion, you haven't been responding to user complaints in a timely fashion, you haven't been doing chargebacks fast enough, all this sort of stuff, and so they got hit by fines and stuff like that. And then a couple of weeks ago they went ahead and said okay, guess what? We've decided that there are so many new, like Google has their own financial movement system, apple has their own financial movement system for for consumers. We've now decided that you now have to be regulated. You have to now have to follow the same rules that a credit card company or a bank does in those circumstances, so you can't just simply decide that these don't apply to us. We're just two hippies in a garage. Uh, again, they've been doing such wonderful, wonderful work and it's the, the consumer financial protection bureau.
There are four letters. That a lot, I mean. I wasn't really terribly aware of it until like eight or nine months ago, until the first time there was a news item that referred to. I started hitting its website and then I bookmarked the hell out of that website, because the actions that they take are always meaningful and not vague in their intent or their purpose. They're. They move swiftly and accurately. They're. They're a great organization. I hope they stick around purpose they move swiftly and accurately.
0:42:25 - Leo Laporte
They're they're great organization. I hope they stick around. It's a Elizabeth Warren uh created and uh, I have a feeling it will be one of the first things well, as Elon says, there's a lot of waste and dupe there's a lot of waste, yeah and you know I don't see the the need of yeah, that's he actually wants to delete.
Literally use the word delete the cfpb yeah, he's a smart guy you know we should really just delete it. Yeah, I think all the money we'll save, probably. Uh, all right, I don't want to get into politics. We'll stop. We'll stop. Uh, here's a. Here's a happy-go-lucky story. Uh, gronk made some money on his Apple stock. William Gallagher writing at the uh Apple Insider. So Gronk, who is an NFL player, rob.
0:43:17 - Alex Lindsay
Gronkowski. We'd like to think of him as the NFL thinker yeah he's.
0:43:21 - Leo Laporte
I don't. I bet you he isn't dumb, but he sure plays dumb on TV. Let's put it that way.
0:43:27 - Andy Ihnatko
Can I say that as as a New Englander who's been like when he was playing, like every single week there'd be a story. He was like our Yogi Berra or he was, or he was like the those really great old timey football players from the 60s when they're giving interviews in the 70s and 80s where you know they're just like yeah, he's a dick butt.
0:43:45 - Leo Laporte
Kiss for our times, ladies and gentlemen, he's talented.
0:43:49 - Andy Ihnatko
He knows what he's about Exactly and he's a good storyteller, and for now we haven't heard any bad stories about him, so we can still think of him as a lovable one he's now a NFL play-by-play guy. And he also is of of course very rich from his years at the.
Patriots also Gronkowski. How can we a how a great name. It would be a sin if he didn't turn out to be a football player, because Gronk is too good a nickname to waste so, according to Fortune magazine, gronk, in 2014, was building a house and the guy building it would not stop talking about Apple stock.
0:44:24 - Leo Laporte
Every time I saw him when we were building the house, he kept saying get apple, get apple. So after the 50th time, I got it and let me tell you it's the best investment I ever had in my life. Uh, gronk, you should have bought, he says. By the way, I never been involved in stocks, I really don't know how stocks work. So I called up my financial advisor, put 69 000 in apple, says gronk, nice, yeah. That was when apple was just about to take off, right 2014 it was, it was depressed, kind of artificially, and he chose.
0:44:55 - Andy Ihnatko
He happened to pick a moment when, like everyone was on a sell mode and yeah, he did very well.
0:45:00 - Leo Laporte
He says go ahead to this day, I have over six hundred thousand dollars in apple stock, all because of that investment I made in 2014, having no idea with what I was doing, but just listening to the guy who built my house.
0:45:12 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah it was a terrific story. He says he did he just he like, because he's he's got money. He can say he just called his broker or whatever. So yeah, give me sixty thousand dollars in that apple thing. Forgot all about it until like another meeting. Oh, by the way, your Apple stock has quadrupled in the past two years. That's a funny story.
0:45:30 - Leo Laporte
That's just a funny story, a little amuse bouche to move on from what would otherwise be kind of unpleasant news. Let's do our Vision Pro segment. John Ashley, are you ready to press the button? You know what? What do you know? I was gonna give you time, I was gonna take a break and then let you get, find it and get the button ready. I I'm ready to go right on top of it. John ashley, it's like I do this for a living. Leo, do you do we pay you? You're not a volunteer. Wait hold on. I need to check my camera. We should talk because, well, anyway, um, as you know, podcasting is not doing very well. No, we love John Ashley. Uh, vision OS 2.2, according to 9 to 5 Mac, is bringing some upgrades, three upgrades that make the Vision Pro actually a huge boost, a huge now you we've talked about mac virtual display they overstated a little.
0:46:30 - Jason Snell
Are they overstating? It, I think it's just, I mean it's three and it's not really three. It's basically it, because it's really one, which is the stuff we talked about the mac display modes and the fact that the basic mode is also clearer than it was before. And then what's their third item?
0:46:46 - Leo Laporte
Routing audio to the right place.
0:46:48 - Jason Snell
It fixes a bug involving sound.
0:46:52 - Leo Laporte
Okay, well, wow, you convinced me Wow, let's all buy a Vision Pro kids, they say it truly makes the Vision Pro a next-gen computer, not the strongest.
0:47:03 - Jason Snell
I mean that headline cannot be backed up by the story.
0:47:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I mean it's great that Apple's adding value to the product. I mean, I don't think that when we were hopeful last year before having before the debut, we thought that, like, by this time there would be a big update that everybody loves and appreciates and agrees is a great thing for the system and it's like, yeah, the feature that allows you to use it as a a display for the computer you do actual work on, it's a bigger display and it's better detail well, I mean I don't know I mean that's true, but if you go back to when this product was announced and people were talking about features of the vision pro, I'd say even back then people said that mac display thing might be the killer app, like I think that actually very early on people were like whoa, that might be really interesting to use this, and I think it is.
0:47:54 - Jason Snell
Of course, we're still talking about this extended version of it being in beta. So you know, we're coming up on 18 months since they first announced this product and that killer feature still hasn't shipped. But maybe now is the time, maybe.
0:48:07 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean. What I'm getting at is that, just that, like if Apple had decided that we like virtual reality, we think VR goggles and VR hardware from Meta and whatever are interesting products. We think there's only one use case really great use case for it, and that is as a floating display that goes wherever you go, and they decided that all we're going to do is do a VR headset that acts as an external display for your iPad or your Mac. How much less money would it have cost?
I don't know, I mean when you consider how much how much a really good display like people will spend 500 to a thousand dollars on a decent like gaming display, and so if you use that as a benchmark, is that apple? What could you have done if you just yes? If you yes, we'll put some other stuff in it too. But primarily, you're selling this as an external display and the budget the retail budget, is $1,000 or $1,200.
0:49:00 - Jason Snell
But I think that doesn't make sense. Apple's display, apple's cheapest display, doesn't cost $1,000. So it's a bargain.
0:49:07 - Alex Lindsay
Well, so the problem is that, to deliver to me, there's a few killer apps that are in there. You know, I think that the I think that the movie if I'm not with my family, I watch movies on my provision pro Like I don't like it is the best screen I've ever owned. You know, like, as far as watching a film um, that's there, I mean it's, it just really is a sharper, it sounds better, all those things, um, and I think that the immersive even though I think Apple's making a lot of missteps with the stuff that they're publishing I think that that, eventually, that there's a lot of people that someone sees something and you see a couple minutes of it and there's some motion of that You're like, oh, this is going to be great when people actually have cameras and do it more. Um, the uh. I do think that the screen I poohed because I have so many screens at home, but now that I'm traveling, when I'm in a plane, it's a pretty big deal. It's like it's a pretty, it's a pretty amazing experience to have that big screen in front of me and be able to actually get stuff done in coach, you know. So I think that that is there, my, my newest thing right now has been um, you know, I'm getting to the age where you have to start paying attention to blood pressure, where you have to start paying attention to blood pressure, and um, so I take my blood pressure pretty often now.
And um, uh, and I tested the mud meditation app. I was like you know, I, I, I turned everything into a research project six minutes with the meditation app and my and my systolic and diastolic dropped over 10 points. So, you know, and I and I and I suddenly got into, like I have to admit, I turned it on. I was like that's cute. But and I and I suddenly got into like I have to admit, I turned it on. I was like that's cute, but once you get into five or 10 minutes of it, it's actually a pretty amazing experience. You know to to kind of like it. It it seems like a silly thing from the surface that I actually am starting to really enjoy. So the. So I think that that's you know.
Those types of things I think are are pretty interesting. I think JigSpace is. We talked about it earlier. It's a great app. Apple just needs to make it accessible, like, like they need to either buy the company and do something with it, or Sherlock them and do something and make Keynote able to do those things. But something has to happen where you're able to build that kind of experience less expensively and more easily. If or JigSpace figures it out, I like how to build a business model that actually makes sense. But there is an you know, you see this huge gold mine of how to put things together, how to build things, how to build a key of furniture where you use all the screws. You know, like how to do all those things are things that I think that would be really. That's the thing that I look at.
0:51:34 - Leo Laporte
I need to buy a $3,500 headset so I can figure out how to put together a $200 side table.
0:51:40 - Alex Lindsay
That's a good use of my money. But you can just say with half the swear words, with half the swear words.
0:51:44 - Leo Laporte
You know, you know like Well, those swear words can't add up.
0:51:46 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, yeah, so you know, it's all the stress, you know. So no, but I think that there are many complex things that I'm pretty excited about. I I think that I'm I'm personally wish that apple hadn't cut as many corners as they did. I would have paid six thousand dollars if they had done 120 frames a second. So the so, the um, because you need to have, you need to be able to develop for that far end, and you can't develop for that far end if it doesn't exist. And it's easier to go back and say, okay, now we're going to do a cheaper one that does all the things.
But I think that the problem is delivering those movies to the screen. At that, at the frame rate and the resolution that they're doing. It required probably almost all the processing power that you're looking at there, like. So there's not that much. If you're able to see through it and be able to see the environment around you and then put up a screen, you're probably looking at three or $4, like, it's not that. I don't think it would have saved a lot to say I just want to play, you know, a 4K image. You know there are companies that do 1080 per eye, but they're cheap and weird and it's not the same. You know like you know so.
0:52:51 - Leo Laporte
I have to say, though, all the ads Meta's putting out this holiday season to get the Met Quest are probably good for the Vision Pro. They're good for the category anyway. They show people using it to do all the things that you would expect. Uh, you know a nerd helmet would do, and I I think it's probably good for the quest is great.
0:53:08 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, supernatural is the the best app on the quest in my opinion, but it's um yeah, the boxing games.
0:53:14 - Leo Laporte
I like the, the music games and so forth. But so here's an interesting idea, and I hope it comes true that the, the president of Real Madrid, the big soccer team in Spain, is upgrading their stadium and they apparently are thinking of making it possible to attend a game in the Vision Pro. This is a reported by Marca. He says everybody wants to come to Santiago Bernabeu and that's why we're negotiating with Apple to be able to wear glasses and watch the match as if you were at the stadium. It would be the infinite Santiago. I think that's kind of interesting.
0:53:53 - Alex Lindsay
I actually know a lot about this kind of coverage. Yeah, because in the 9 to 5 Mac story.
0:53:59 - Leo Laporte
Uh, they say they, they don't go into what it would take to do that.
0:54:03 - Andy Ihnatko
What would it take to also also just just just parenthetically, to add a little context. It's not as though that you'd be really suspicious of this if this was a vr company. That is that, oh, we're in negotiations with apple to create technology for this. Oftentimes it's self-promotional. This was just something that in the context of we're building this new stadium yeah, we know we've got addressing an actual complaint. Well, one of the ways we're trying to address this is that we're actually talking to Apple about allowing people to visit the stadium and VR. So interesting, early, but interesting.
0:54:32 - Alex Lindsay
So soccer games are really hard to do in VR. I've done a lot of them.
0:54:36 - Leo Laporte
They use the whole big, wide stadium right.
0:54:39 - Alex Lindsay
The pitch is too big and so what happens is, is that the resolution breaks down or you don't? You're in the wrong place most of the time. So where we've put cameras in the past or midfield, we put cameras at the goal. The goal is obviously really cool and the reason the goal is cool is because you have something in the foreground that tells you you're in 3D, you see a lot of dimension. The problem is no one's there most of the time. Then you put it in the middle of the pitch and then you and then you you know everyone's too far away, it's just 2D and then it's low resolution and then you put it in the crowd and it doesn't make any sense. It's really low resolution and even though these are really high resolution cameras and screens and everything else it is it's really hard to find a place in a sock.
I mean, I kind of gave up on it, like I just have to say that it's like I feel like this is like we thought of this eight years ago and then we did a bunch of it and then we were like things that work exceptionally well in VR are close quarter, so MMA, boxing, that type of thing, like if they had done an immersive record of the boxing matches that Netflix did. That would be something that people would want to watch, because when it's close up, remember that the active area that really makes sense in VR is five to 20 feet. Like that's the world, is five to 20 feet and anything longer than 20 feet away. Okay, you know, and and so, and you'll see that if you look at all the examples that they show, if anyone has a, a headset, you put them on.
The stuff that's five to twenty feet away looks amazing. Everything else is just kind of like okay, it's fine, um and so and it's and, and. What apple proved is if you get really close, it's really uncomfortable. So, so the um, so the uh, so um, I think that so is it foolish to say let's, let's, let's do this.
0:56:16 - Leo Laporte
Uh, make a virtual stadium Knock themselves.
0:56:20 - Alex Lindsay
Maybe they'll figure out something that we didn't figure out eight years ago. You know like, but all of many people, because what it?
0:56:25 - Leo Laporte
sounds like is he's not trying to do the. Oh, that was cool, I'm at the goal line or I'm on the ball, or whatever he wants to make it. So you're there at the stadium.
0:56:34 - Alex Lindsay
I don't know if that's doable, I don't. I don't know if it again it's, it's, it's just you got to maybe. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm always looking forward to being proven wrong on on a production pipeline, Like I would not move the cameras the way Apple moved and submerged in a couple. There's a couple of shots there that I was like I would have never done that and it totally worked, like you know. And then there's a bunch of stuff that they did in the weekend that I would never do and I would still never do. So, the so, the so, the. I'm only more sure of it now. So so, the so. I think that. But soccer, just I can say a lot of people have dulled their swords whacking on the soccer wall, like you know.
0:57:14 - Andy Ihnatko
You know like with VR, like this is like whacking on the VR wall Show title whacking on the vr wall show title.
0:57:22 - Alex Lindsay
It's a really it's not the right venue for this at the current resolution and technology that we have right now. It's just not the right place for this, and there's so many places that are.
0:57:31 - Leo Laporte
Is there a sport that would be better?
0:57:32 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, we're talking about shot put boxing, boxing there you go boxing mma wrestling, uh, anything that's close, you know, is anything that's going to all happen, mostly 20 feet away, where the most of the actions would be 20 feet from the camera.
It's going to be, it looks great, uh, it's, you know, and so so those things are, are the uh, um, and, and you know it's, and things that go wide. There's this temptation you saw this with um uh concert for one. Is there's this temptation you saw this with a concert for one is there's this temptation to try to fill the whole space but you don't actually want the person to look to the side. You want them to feel the side, you want them to look at what's in front of them, and because every time they see the black, it takes them out of the experience, and so, so, the so, those are the so I think that, but again, I think that there's. There are sports that really lend themselves to it, and concerts and all kinds of other things. It's just that we're often going after people, often go after the ones that are harder.
0:58:28 - Andy Ihnatko
But I think that we talked last week about that really cool looking F1 app, vr app for the Vision Pro that was pulled while they discussed rights to the F1 for the footage of it, was pulled while they discussed rights with F1 for the footage of it and a couple of years ago I might have thought that, oh well, great, I can actually be in the cockpit and I can feel like I'm actually there, when actually that's such a great example of to be able to watch baseball or basketball or even soccer or football or anything, where in front of me is the entire field like a, like a, a game version, a video game version of the field, that I've got a god's eye view on things, whether it's real or whether it's something that's being simulated. Uh, remember that I think was it next week that the simpsons they're doing a special simpsons simulcast of an nfl game where, in real time, they're replacing all of the players with simpsons characters is that what they're're going to do?
0:59:18 - Leo Laporte
I saw the ad for that they're going to. Actually it'll be the game as Simpsons characters playing it.
0:59:23 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and they did that with Toy Story characters last season, I think oh that's wild.
0:59:29 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it's. What happens is they. You can build the characters out, and it depends on how much detail that they want to do it, but you're basically building every player and then you're using a variety of algorithms and people call them AI, of course, because that's cool, but they're just using a bunch of things that are going to track that information it's going to extrapolate. It gets a little complicated when they get into a obviously into a bundle, so but when they're in a pile it's hard, but when they're running, it's able to do a pretty good job of figuring out where they're moving. It's not, actually, and then what it does is you take, you create a what's a skeleton. That is just what we call the um. Rigid bodies, the bridge. Rigid bodies in someone's body are things that normally won't change in relationship to each other unless something horrible happens, and so so usually, like playing football there's parts of it.
So rigid bodies are your forearm, your upper arm, your, you know, your, your chest cavity, your hips, those types of things. You track those and you turn those into a skeleton and you take that skeleton, you apply it to the CG and you can do that these days in real time. You know that's not a and it's a, and so then, and then you can track their position and I mean it's. There's a lot people are trying to get to a point where you could actually stand on the field and have VR versions of the football players and you could watch from where the referee is, or you could watch from where you know, and, and that stuff's close.
1:00:46 - Andy Ihnatko
What I'm getting at is I don't necessarily want to place myself on the field. I want this, this basic setup of in front of me on a table, whether real or virtual. I have the entire field in front of me. So let's get into baseball where, when there's a hit into left field, I want to follow where the ball's going, like where the play is going. I can go there, but I can also select virtual displays around it that are live video feeds, because there are times when, like, right in front of me would be the big screen which would be like the conventional TV coverage of it, where the director is calling all the shots, but, like when I'm at a real ball game, I love looking at the interactions between the catcher and the home plate umpire. I would want, like, a fixed position on that and I want a fixed position on the pitcher and I want a fixed position on this so that after the, after the thing's been hit into the midfield, I want to see how the catcher is setting up the play. I want to see if he's doing that.
Those wonderful, those wonderful Jedi mind tricks that catchers sometimes try to play against the umpire, like making them think that the strike zone is bigger than it is, or intentionally shielding their view of something that they don't want them to see at the plate, so that they'll get a better chance of getting a good call. The ability to interpret this as exactly how I specifically want to be able to see it, given that there's so many video feeds happening at the same time during the airing of the shooting of a live game. The ability to at least give me a menu of viewpoints to choose from, again, not in an immersive 3D way, but basically be able to see oh, I really want to see what's happening at the plate. Is he signaling? He signaling for cutoff, or is he actually preparing for a play at the plate? You know that sort of stuff.
1:02:24 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, I think that creative stuff.
1:02:26 - Andy Ihnatko
Like that is a little bit lateral, but I think it's a really, really interesting. It would make me a lot more interested not in a $3,000 headset, but maybe a $1,000 headset.
1:02:45 - Jason Snell
One of Apple's Vision Pro app nominees was the nba app and that's an example where it's not quite the uh, annotated single game but they've got the multi-view where you can place you know different games in a you know, ozymandias and watchmen kind of view if you want, I can see all the nba at once, but it speaks and the mlb app they've been experimenting with this too, where you're sort of watching the game on the Jumbotron. But there's also some sports might actually be improved by being, you know, by being annotated, a little bit more than being immersive and and that's that's okay. As somebody who has been to a lot of baseball and football games live, you know the live stadium experience can be kind of annotated to by the scoreboards and stuff like that. So I do wonder, like I would, I would be really interested in getting a front row seat for, you know, at a, like a front row seats courtside at an NBA game. I mean that would be really interesting. It would be a very different experience.
1:03:58 - Leo Laporte
And that right, Alex. That's within 20 feet If you're in the court side.
1:04:02 - Alex Lindsay
What we, what we've done, is we've put them right at right, at the right, in the middle of the middle of the mid court, yeah, right, at the scorer's table right, set it right up in front of where the scorer's table is, and but still out of bounds obviously. And then the, and then you look at it and and it is the problem we had when we did it, I don't know, four or five or six years ago, was that our frame rate wasn't high enough. So this gets into where the.
1:04:26 - Leo Laporte
Because they're moving pretty quick.
1:04:27 - Alex Lindsay
Those guys Well, really, and the ball, yeah, so it's at 30 frames a second, which is where we were at when we were doing 4K per eye. Stereo, you know 180. So you could turn all the way to the side. Or stereo, you know 180. So you could turn all the way to the side, or not? 180, 360.
You could go all the way around, but the, the problem we had was I want to see Jack Nicholson in the back there. Yeah, exactly, and so, and so at 60,. Um, we felt at 60 frames a second to be better, but really where we wanted to get to is 120, because that action does make a difference, but it is. You suddenly realize why people pay $2,000 a seat when you when you get to court side.
it's amazing, you know it's, just it's just an amazing experience, and people are coming by and again, there's enough action. That's a good example of where it does work, and there's other things you can do, like we were talking about the we. You know, golf is a one that doesn't work right. You know, in general, golf is not a great experience for this, but what we did is we were able to put 360 cameras at different greens, so that's a place that it does make a difference, and and so, and then, if you put it on the pin, then you could see the ball coming at you.
1:05:30 - Leo Laporte
We just put it to the side. They're still playing the game. I mean it's just like there's scores, Anyway.
1:05:33 - Alex Lindsay
So these are big cameras I mean, these are a camera that's it's like a basketball size camera and so so the um, the pin, easier to find. But what was interesting is is that if you took the content and just put the 16 by nine the content you see on TV, but without all of the data on it so no lower thirds, none of that you just put a big screen and you can make it as big as you want and then you have all the data on one side and your social stuff on the other side. It's great experience. You're sitting in there and you're kind of in it like you're. You're seeing, you're seeing twitter feeds, you're seeing all the data that you want when you want it. You're seeing a big screen and then every once in a while, you just transition to the, to the 360 experience. You know when there's someone, something happening there, and then you go back to it. That is the problem is, can you?
do that live yeah, yeah, okay, you can do that live, because that's the problem if you have to do it in post you.
1:06:16 - Leo Laporte
You know the game's over. Everybody knows the score. Nobody really cares very much.
1:06:19 - Alex Lindsay
No, this is. I mean there's a latency of 20 seconds, but same as you. Yeah, well, that's live enough.
1:06:25 - Leo Laporte
You know it strikes me, the best thing would be chess. The World Chess Championship's going on right now. Nobody watches just the game. You always watch the commentary and it's right there. It's close, you close. You could look left, look right.
1:06:36 - Alex Lindsay
that would be great again how do we not think of that? How do we not think of that? It?
1:06:40 - Leo Laporte
doesn't move very fast, so the frame rate's not important next year.
1:06:43 - Alex Lindsay
We're going to do that, you know.
1:06:44 - Andy Ihnatko
I think that that's that has to be done if you try the new google ai experiment, where it will create, it will play. It's a chess game, but you give it an ai prompt and it will develop pieces. Yeah, and it pieces. Yeah, and it's funny, it's like it's exactly what Google is kind of meant to do, which is like, oh, wow, that's kind of cool, that's kind of fun. And then you think about it one level later and you think, my god, the Earth resources that are being consumed to make two sets of chess pieces that look like Brussels sprouts.
1:07:16 - Leo Laporte
It's just. And, by the way they, whoever designed it, doesn't really understand much about chess, because the way the board is angled when you're playing it makes it actually very unpleasant. And and anyway, who wants to play chess with cheese pieces? Really right, if?
1:07:34 - Andy Ihnatko
they were edible and there are no like, if you could get away, if you have to, if you could get rid of. Like the the the.
1:07:41 - Leo Laporte
That's true. If you could eat the pawn after you take it, I think that's not a bad idea. That increases the stakes, yeah, yeah. So let's see, we're gonna play, uh, cheese versus wine, which I think you know. That that's a natural I, I do.
1:07:52 - Andy Ihnatko
I do like the fact that like you choose a prompt for one and then it will choose for you, like an opposing thing to that concept, so that I think I did uh plumbing, and it shows like architecture or like electron electronics, as as the it seems like there's, I realized there could be a.
1:08:11 - Alex Lindsay
Um, how have we not had candy chest that you, just, if you get, take the person's candy, you eat it?
1:08:18 - Leo Laporte
oh, I like there are chess sets that are little um vodka, like little alcohol bottles. I was gonna say, actually that's a good way to do it because if you have to uh drink the person's piece after you take it I can't play a version of checkers like that on mash once shot glass checkers. Shot glass checkers. Baby um it this. Whoever designed this doesn't play chess, because this is the worst possible angle to to look at a chess game. It just really is. I can't even figure out I think I, I had the my.
1:08:50 - Andy Ihnatko
My problem was that, like they weren't, they should have to do. You do the like if there's a light colored set, there has to be a dark colored set, and whatever happens to be light colored set has to go first. And that's when I when I played it on the on the phone at least I got like the. The typical oh, you're sitting at a table across from another person view, so maybe that's just the desktop view.
1:09:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I can't, this is impossible, and that's why I'm losing to wine.
1:09:19 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm playing cheese right now I want.
1:09:23 - Leo Laporte
Don Knotts characters versus what the hell's going on. You can't even tell. It's so weird. Yeah, all right, let's. That was, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not. You see, this is why I want vision pro chess, the vision pro segment.
1:09:39 - Jason Snell
Now you see, now you know, we're done talking the Vision Pro.
1:09:45 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're watching MacBreak Weekly for a Tuesday. We do the show every Tuesday, 11 am Pacific. 2 pm. Eastern Time, 1900 UTC. And we do now, thanks to the Club Thank you, Club TWiT Members. Eastern time, 1900 utc. And we do now thanks to the club thank you, club members.
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1:12:45 - Jason Snell
Why don't they just tell the robot vacuum to go home?
1:12:49 - Leo Laporte
Go home, robot, you're drunk. I don't even know why this is a story, but I can tell you that's what it's come to.
1:12:58 - Jason Snell
You know, I know we're all grateful when Apple actually talks in detail about their plan for future software releases. This sort of story is why they don't want to do that is because then everybody says, oh, but Apple, you said by the end of the year you'd have some robot support in HomeKit and now it's going to come early next year. So you're a liar and your pants are on fire and I was like I don't know if anybody really cares, it's a little late. A few of the features they said would be the end of the year are going to get pushed to the next OS version sometime early next year. So I have a robot vacuum. I'd love for it to. You know all my little things that are not in HomeKit. I would love to be able to get in HomeKit one way or another. So I'll wait. I've been waiting. I mean, that's the truth. Anybody who's got a robot vacuum already can't use it in HomeKit or has figured out a way to use it in HomeKit.
1:13:45 - Leo Laporte
Either way, they're not waiting around for it. How would you use it in HomeKit?
You wouldn't give it instructions, Well it's a native, I mean, at the very least you would be, and possibly to tell it to run a particular routine or tell it to go home Stuff like that using Siri. Yeah, yeah, you know what I did when I used to have a robot. I had a Roomba and it would wake up in the middle of the night. It plays a little song. When it wakes up, strike one. I have a Roomba, I know it. And then every night it would get stuck under a piece of furniture and go yep. And so you know how I said go home. I got up in the middle of the night, picked it up by its little robot handle and put it back on the station. After the third time of that, I put it back at a special station under Lisa's tire in the garage. Unfortunately she noticed it before running it over. But uh, we, we don't have that rumba anymore. What one do you use, Jason?
1:14:45 - Jason Snell
I, it's a, it's a rumbo, I forget i4, something like that with the collector, you like it? It's the kind that doesn't walk randomly but actually has a camera and knows where all the rooms are and maps itself and all of that. I do like it. The big problem with it? Because I do not like to sweep or or mop or anything like that. What I don't have to, though. Well, yeah, I mean a lot less and I have three pets, so there's a lot of hair. Yeah, uh, and having it run every day is fine. The problem is I do work at home. These products are best for people who aren't at home when they run so you can say go to work when I'm at work every day at 2 pm the thing goes off and it's noisy in the house and I have to hide.
Well, that's I mean it's a vacuum cleaner. I mean it's little and all, but like it's a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner is never going to be silent, but yes, I do find it valuable. It really picks up a lot of stuff just running, you know, and and then when we're out of the house, uh, I have it set to run when we leave the house as well, and that is pretty great too. So, yeah, I mean it's a, it's a supplement, but with three animals in this house plus two people, it is, uh, it definitely does its job, it's I.
1:15:51 - Leo Laporte
I like it. I'm glad I have it. You like the iRobot? There are many competitors now it now it's become a very uh. Did amazon end up buying iroba? They tried and they didn't. I think is what happened because the uh, the, the hue and cry was yeah that might be.
1:16:04 - Jason Snell
So there are some others, other competitors out there.
1:16:06 - Leo Laporte
But yeah, I have a robo and I like it I didn't know this, but apple's headquarters in the uk are in london's battersea power station. I didn't know that either it's beautiful.
1:16:16 - Jason Snell
Um, my friend mike hurley has been there multiple times and he says that it's the most. He says it's beautiful, um, my friend mike hurley has been there multiple times and he says that it's the most. He says it's more impressive than apple park.
1:16:22 - Leo Laporte
To him, what they've definitely has that industrial feel with the two smokestacks yeah, like apple really churning out. We're cold powered now, uh. So apparently, uh, from today until new year's eve, according to Apple, you can watch Wallace and grommet decorate giant Christmas trees in a stop-motion installation shot on iPhone 16 Pro Max and projected on the Battersea power station. Smoke stacks, which are no longer in use, of course.
1:16:52 - Andy Ihnatko
What a great idea that's like that's cool looking it because it is like one of the classic things you kind of want to see when you visit London, particularly taking a boat tour, and to have both of those smokestacks creatively turned into. Wallace is on one side, gromit is on the other. The stack is a really, really thin tree with hijinks and merriment aplenty. What goodwill they're creating for everybody by doing something that cool. And also, by the way, oh, of course they would have, of course you know the Aardman Animation was happy to use the iPhone 16 Pro because they were planning on using them anyway for the stop motion project.
1:17:29 - Leo Laporte
Of course they were.
1:17:30 - Andy Ihnatko
But nonetheless, like it is impressive that, like it is good enough for and sturdy enough for that sort of thing.
1:17:35 - Leo Laporte
Well, yeah, especially because it's getting blown up to a giant size, right?
1:17:38 - Andy Ihnatko
well, I mean they're and projected on like rough. So that's projected on bricks, but nonetheless what impressed me was that, like you sometimes see these behind the scenes. Oh you, you believe this behind the scenes movie. They made a video actually and yeah, and you see the behind the scenes and it's like it's in this robocop, huge like refrigerator size enclosure with a million cables running in and out of it. This is just no. We just sort of put it in an aluminum thing and aimed it at the. We have a remote activation.
1:18:07 - Leo Laporte
That's the 6,000 frames of stop motion. It looks like some of it was done in hand by hand. I don't know.
1:18:15 - Alex Lindsay
I can't possibly like a lot of it was done by hand. I mean, it's all done by hand, the hand.
1:18:18 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, that can't possibly like a lot of it was yeah, it is, it's all done by hand. The motion was, but the camera's not. I mean he was hand holding a camera. Oh, I think that handheld was like figuring out framing.
1:18:24 - Alex Lindsay
I don't think that they did any of that by hand. I know, I don't think you do motion with handheld shots.
1:18:29 - Leo Laporte
It's really hard you know, lock it down.
1:18:32 - Alex Lindsay
yeah, yeah, so they had like the that's the kind of the larger small rig cage that they use there and it looks like the only thing they added to it was power. And then there is a couple shots in the behind the scenes where they show a motion control system that the camera was put on to do pans. Like that's how you kind of do. In some cases you're using motion control to change the camera position over time so that someone's animated. If you want to see a pan, it's complicated because you're moving the clay armature a little bit At the same time as you're moving the camera, the camera too.
So what they do is a lot of those are built around a motion control head that just moves. What you've decided is one frame for that movement while you're doing the other parts that are in front of it. I think this is a great integration. I think they could take it a lot further. They could be doing Aardman could be so. Aardman released has an app, the Aardman animation stop motion app that, of course, they're promoting in some of the behind the scenes as well. I think it's the second behind the scenes video is them actually showing. This is how you could do it yourself. You could build a little clay thing that would hold your bone.
That's a horrible idea, but we're going to show you how to do it then that way, anyway, I was like I was like I was like put your camera in clay. I was just like I was like okay, like not okay. So so I I didn't appreciate. I was like just buy a tripod it's six dollars, you know like, so they're trying to, they actually show you putting your iphone and you can show this, right?
1:19:56 - Leo Laporte
am I gonna get tucked, taken down? Secure it with tape, clay, blocks or board. I guess the real point is for kids, right? I understand you could don't use sugru, though.
1:20:07 - Alex Lindsay
You'll never get your phone out right, yeah, I was like uh you know like I was, like if I came out, my kids had put they had wrapped their phone with clay. I'd not. I would not be happy. So I paid a lot of money for that camera, for that, for that phone so so ardman is the tool they're using.
Yeah, they're using ardman animation. Um, it's uh, uh, it's a, it's a little tool that's just designed to make it really easy to do. There's lots of them. I mean, you know, um, uh, boink software makes one.
1:20:34 - Leo Laporte
There's a bunch of other ones there's a lot of motion probably the most, the most, um, but uh, but I also like at the end of both of these how-to behind the scenes videos, the apple logo. Let me show you that you can show this. They're not going to take me down for showing the apple logo does a little, uh little thing. I don't know what that is. It's got a little weird pin in it or something. Let me go back. Oh well, never mind what's, I don't get that. What is that? Is that some stop motion thing or is that? Yeah?
1:21:06 - Andy Ihnatko
I didn't wallace agramit thing it looks like a mechanical switch or something that's. That's all I came up with yeah, yeah, they.
1:21:14 - Leo Laporte
They're doing the end of both of these videos. I don't know what it means. All right, I thought I'd just ask because you guys are the experts. I, like Wallace Gromit, all I know from that is cheese, cheese.
1:21:30 - Andy Ihnatko
Gromit and there's a new short coming out this month.
1:21:33 - Leo Laporte
I can't wait to see that's part of his promotion and you know it's funny. We were watching the NFL, as one does pretty much constantly on thanksgiving week and saw the apple ad uh, which when it starts out is a little weird, because the guy is watching his family unwrap christmas gifts and it's all really like this. And then his wife says, honey, put in your airpods. And he goes into hearing aid mode and now he can hear everything clearly the long version of the short version I haven't, I just saw the one on tv?
1:22:06 - Alex Lindsay
I haven't. The one on tv is barely makes sense. The the long version, of course. I guess it makes sense.
1:22:13 - Leo Laporte
It's kind of like there's a two minute version which you are not going to see on on the nfl and it is just a work of art. It's hard, it's I mean it is, it is your heartstrings.
1:22:22 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, it's it. I was like I was someone, someone posted it on on something and said you know, just try not to cry and I was like oh yeah, cause, then leave in the long version the little girl playing her little instruments as she grows up.
You just have to watch if you get the whole experience. It's kind of one of those it's and for anybody who says they can't tell a story in two and a half minutes, I mean, you know it's, it's. It's kind of an up level, not maybe not quite the level of up, but it's like that. I'm going to show you a bunch of pictures and by the end of it you're going to be like so yeah, so and I have.
1:23:01 - Leo Laporte
I wear hearing aids normally like professional, highly expensive hearing aids from otakons, but I've worn, worn resounds and starkies too over the last decade. Uh, and there is a big difference between the airpods 2. Airpods pro 2 do do have a hearing aid mode. Uh, my, my wife, maybe I should do the hearing test. And I thought, yeah, that's a good idea, go ahead and do that. That's built into the iOS 18. And then the hearing test gives you a curve which is then applied to the AirPods.
But, as I mentioned before, there is a significant difference between what the AirPods do and what real hearing aids do. I think the AirPods probably are as accurate, if not more accurate, because they've got better speakers, better microphones and so forth, but they seal your ear, which real hearing aids do not. So with real hearing aids, you've got a little speaker in your ear, but you still hear around it. So you hear everything around it and the hearing aid is just amplifying the voice. When you put in the AirPods, it's a little at least it was for me as a hearing aid wearer a little claustrophobic because suddenly I'm sealing out all these sounds and relying entirely on the AirPods, microphone and speakers for everything, and that's a different experience for some people, especially if you've never worn hearing aids. It probably won't seem weird, but it isn't, I think, necessarily a direct replacement for hearing aids. It's certainly a lot less expensive. I bought two so that I could get through the whole day, because of course, the battery life is not as long either.
1:24:28 - Andy Ihnatko
I had only one bad reaction to it and I'll keep it very, very short, so I was watching it. Then I wanted to look for more information on it, so I was doing a Google search on news. The number of news articles and commentators that are like. You know what's great about it? Because it's anti-woke, like hey, I got to compliment. Apple for doing a pro-family ad Like the revolution is here.
1:24:52 - Leo Laporte
Does this have to get into everything Exactly?
1:24:54 - Andy Ihnatko
It's like what is wrong with you?
1:24:56 - Alex Lindsay
What I did notice is how many. It was really a fascinating thing Within days how many family members I talked to that talked about oh, I'm thinking of getting the AirPod Pro. My wife was talking about it.
1:25:08 - Leo Laporte
Well, that's what I meant when I said Lisa said, oh, I should do the hearing test. That's really good.
1:25:12 - Alex Lindsay
I mean, that ad just nailed it Like it was, you know, and Apple does that about once a year. They do something where you're going oh, do I need that? Yeah, so really well done.
1:25:23 - Leo Laporte
No, it was a beautiful ad it did effectively.
1:25:25 - Andy Ihnatko
I thought it was interesting that they were spending so much time and so much money promoting a fairly small feature, but I guess I was going to say the exact same thing, because Apple has done an enormous number of really cool holiday ads and of course they show off Apple technologies. Exact same thing because they Apple has done an enormous number of really cool holiday ads and of course they show off Apple technologies. But the Apple technology is more in the background. The foreground is again the teenage son, who is maybe not quite connected to his family and you think he's just moping off doing his own thing, but actually what he was doing was shooting a holiday video that showed everyone in the family how much he loved them. I mean, the iPhone is incidental it's prominent, but incidental. This one, and I'm not complaining about it but this was unique in that it was a holiday ad that was also specifically a promotion for this specific piece of hardware and this specific feature.
1:26:15 - Alex Lindsay
And I think, with the changes in the laws, I think one of the things is there's a lot of ground to be taken right now, like you know, and so I think that there's a huge market that people are going to get something and it's not going to people who don't have the money or don't have the insurance that can pay for the $5,000 version. They're looking for something under $300 that they can put in that helps them, and a lot of them are people who are borderline, like they, and a lot of them are people who are borderline, like they think they can hear okay, but they're not ready to say they're not ready to buy a quote unquote. I think it's less about whether it competes with the hearing aid, but I have family members I have, you know that I know that should be wearing hearing aids, but they're not going to buy a quote unquote hearing aid.
1:26:51 - Leo Laporte
That's the real selling point, real hearing aids are thousands of dollars.
1:26:57 - Alex Lindsay
Well, but not just the money it's the, it's the their mental stigma to it and being able to just throw an uh, an airpod in and be able to hear everything a little bit clearer, I think, is a you know, as a real uh, you know, I think that that's pretty valuable to people. It's a lot less expensive. People can't afford it, but it's also a lot less stigma in their head. It shouldn't be, but it is um, and so I don't.
1:27:15 - Jason Snell
I want to get all existential here, but this is, and so I don't. I want to get all existential here, but this is the post Thanksgiving episode, so we have the time, so I'm just going to say a lot. We talk about technology here. We love it, it's fun. But there is this question about like, what if technology is a means to an end? What if technology makes people's lives appreciably better?
And that Apple ad really encapsulates, and I think it's good for lots of strategic reasons and branding reasons and all of that, but I think, most importantly, it's Apple saying this is our technology making your life better in a very relatable human common way? Right, so many people have various levels of hearing difficulty and it's not the only way they're doing it. And you know, and there are lots of other things you can get done with technology, whether it's productivity or personal stuff. But like, this one story lets them not only, yeah, look good and market their products and all of those things, but it tries to put down an explanation about, like, how a product can actually make your life better.
1:28:22 - Alex Lindsay
And honestly, that's refreshing in the year 2024, because a lot of the hottest product categories are, uh, you know, solutions in search of a problem, and this is not that and I think that what apple does with these ads, these holiday ads specifically is what they're really good at is showing you something that has you feel the value that their product adds to your life. Right, it's, it's mostly visual. They're not telling you why it makes a difference. They're not telling you all the features. They're going to give you something that has very little, uh, very, very little speech. You know very little text, Um, I mean, look at the script on this one.
It's like like four words, you know, and then I'm going to show you a bunch of things and as you watch it, you're going to feel something and you're going to feel something that that that is directly related to the value of the product ads to someone's life, and I think Apple does that probably better than anyone else that I've seen. I can't. I was trying to think, while Jason was talking, of other ads that I can think of that are that good at it, and I would go back to another app, like I'd go back to another Apple ad. I'm not sure how many other ones make that kind of difference.
1:29:31 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, and also it comes from such a good place. Like ordinarily, particularly as a Gen Xer, I would just like roll my eyes go every time. Like a trillion dollar company says we care about humanity, we care about people, our most important thing is. But when Apple talks about, when Tim Cook talks about, how health is the most important mission that Apple has, they back it up and you absolutely believe it. And that's why I think that this commercial really is an outflow of not just hey, this is a really good, this is going to be really good pr for us. Or hey, look, this could be an interesting way to sell more airpods, but also really the, the promotion that we we want to be able to do things that we are proud of.
The famous phrase that uh, uh, steve jobs used to get john scully to quit pepsi and come to apple. Like, do you to Apple? Do you want to continue selling sugar water to kids or do you want to change the world? And a lot of companies aspire to that, but they don't put in the work. This is an example of Apple absolutely believing in that. This is an example of them really believing and showing you that you're not a fool for thinking that they think that these things are important, that they want to do things, that they can be proud of you, that you're not a fool for thinking that they think that these things are important.
1:30:40 - Leo Laporte
They want to do things that they could be proud of. Yeah, I guess really that's the point is. It's not really just advertising a feature, a small feature of airpods. It's don't you feel good about apple? Aren't they doing good stuff right?
1:30:49 - Andy Ihnatko
it's a good company, I feel good and in in a world in which, like you, two or three years after you buy like a car, suddenly you're ashamed of it because of, like what the company is known for. It's like it's good to know that I just spent two thousand dollars on a Mac. I'm not going to be really, really upset by what the CEO does two years later right, yeah, and they're not very.
1:31:09 - Leo Laporte
I mean, you're not going to see Lenovo doing that, for how Lenovo's making the world better place. You might see Google do it. You might see Microsoft do it. The big tech companies, companies can do it, but that's their realm, that's their thing. You're watching MacBreak Weekly and that's what we talk about. We talk about Apple every Tuesday with Andy Anotko, Alex Lindsay, Jason Snell we're glad you're here. Apple Replay 24 is live in Apple Music. So it's that wonderful, magical time of the year. So if you listen to a lot of apple music, you can listen to the same songs again. Is that the idea? What is the well, it's everybody loves it.
1:31:49 - Jason Snell
It it's the uh, quantified self right. It's telling you what music you listen to this year. And they added a. They've got like a video that is generated for you with a montage of what you want, you know, listen to during the year. It's, you know, it's. I find it interesting. It's skewed for me because, like they're the playlists I listen to while I'm writing and so those are always high on the list, but it's kind of fun to see like this year they were like this is your number one artist for by month, number one song by month, and if you like those kind of stats, I do, spotify does it, so Apple's sort of following them and it can be fun.
1:32:28 - Leo Laporte
Well, let me just go right into my Apple Music and replay and share my year in music. Are we excited? I'm turning the sound down because I can't. Obviously we'll get taken down the minute we play any of this stuff, but uh, let's just see. By the way, I'm using that great iphone mirroring.
1:32:46 - Andy Ihnatko
Oh, stop it, never mind it anticipated you were about to do a content match and the internet
1:32:56 - Leo Laporte
said nope, leo, not today, not tomorrow not ever not, you, leo, no, no, uh, apparently I have to log in to my apple music in order to do this, which I am logged in.
1:33:08 - Jason Snell
Also interesting apple still does this on the web. You actually can't do it inside the music app. It takes you to a web page that they've built, which I still think, so now I've done it now I've done it.
1:33:18 - Leo Laporte
And I had to get pick up my iphone. I couldn't do it in mirroring because it needs the camera and all that. So now I've done it, here's my replay. This is your life, was it's thinking again, my, my.
1:33:32 - Alex Lindsay
While you're doing that, my top artists are are, uh, it's kind of cool.
1:33:36 - Leo Laporte
Okay, how much music do you? I listen to 31,448 minutes of music. Say that I don't know where I said that was the first thing my longest listening streak 18 days in a row between mel torme, baroque music and katie perry. Oh, oh, here's this. I could this could be embarrassing. Out of 602 artists, one stood out, peter gabriel. Yeah, I've listened to him quite a bit, 570 minutes, understandable.
1:33:59 - Jason Snell
That was my top album of the year actually, in terms of minutes listened was io, but I listened to a lot of as an album. Right, because I I listened to that as an album. But yeah, I believe for like the sixth straight year, my number one artist is the 1975. What can I say? I like them.
1:34:13 - Leo Laporte
They're good, uh you've told me about them. Yeah, boy, peter was my top artist two months in a row, so this is kind of fun. You're right, this is fun. I thought it would just be a playlist. You played 1,130 songs, but one was my anthem. Now I want to know what your anthem was. My anthem was Cracks in the Wall by Amaranth Cove.
1:34:33 - Jason Snell
No it's not my anthem. I promise you 27,950 minutes of music listened to. That is a lot. I do listen to a lot. I listened to more than you did, though I had 31,000. Where is that?
1:34:46 - Alex Lindsay
I don't see it.
1:34:47 - Jason Snell
It's in the video, actually the first video that you generate. I had a 27-day listening streak. I didn't know I was doing streaks in Apple Music, but apparently I was. They should put that on the watch you, but apparently I was they should put that on the watch.
1:34:58 - Andy Ihnatko
I see that's the streaking. Okay, can we say that? Like, after spending so much time talking about how nice Apple is to like to care so much about health, I don't like the idea of any social media companies praising you for wow, you just completed your 12 day Reddit streaker. Wow, you've been listening to Apple music every single day for like keep it up Like for whose benefit?
1:35:16 - Jason Snell
Every time I for like keep it up like care, whether every time I open care, whether it yells at me because I haven't opened it in a while yeah, it's like you buy it for a product. That's the product I like it's got one is one stat. That's fascinating is are you one of the hundred, most an artist's hundred top listeners? Uh, you know so like I am in Bob Mould's top 100 listeners which is kind of a surprise.
He's my number two artist I listen when I'm writing. My Bob Mould playlist is my number one playlist, so but that's kind of funny, right, because that's within all of Apple music and my anthem is I think there's something you should know by the 1975. Of course it is right, because it just that's why I listen to that on repeat all the time, forever, and that's just how it is. I guess, I don't know, it's fun. I think it's fun and that's why Apple is doing it is because Spotify did it and they're like oh no, people are having fun with Spotify. We can't let that stand. We have to have fun with Apple Music too, and so they threw it in there and it's fine.
A bunch of apps do this. Overcast actually, a popular podcasting app by Marco Arment just added this feature as well, and I've had a lot of people sending me their Overcast list where podcasts appear uh, third or fourth in their list of favorite podcasts, like thanks, but not too much I'm just happy to know that the top genres I like to listen to are can you show my screen rock, hard rock, arena rock pop and pop rock all right, well, we get you my.
My top, my top two genres are alternative and adult alternatives. Yeah, mine was indie rock.
1:36:54 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah mine's alternative rock, alternative rock, pop, rock, pop, rock and then pop.
1:37:00 - Jason Snell
Yeah story checks out fun.
1:37:01 - Leo Laporte
You know what okay?
1:37:03 - Jason Snell
I take it back. It's fun. I did enjoy that memory lane.
1:37:04 - Leo Laporte
I can definitely see my daughters. You know what? Okay, I take it back. It's fun. I did enjoy that memory Lane.
1:37:09 - Alex Lindsay
I can definitely see my daughters. You know I've been hanging out with my daughter a lot when we trade playlists the two of us trade playlists and I can definitely see the influence on my playlist. You know it's like oh yeah, wilt Noah Khan, the luminaires, ella Jane Haley Hendricks, like some stuff that's got good taste.
1:37:23 - Leo Laporte
You don't knock that, she's got great taste is about excellent taste.
1:37:27 - Jason Snell
Yeah, um, let's see I thought I had some good gift ideas in here.
1:37:36 - Leo Laporte
Uh, oh, yes, how. Thank you, andy. You can now wear the apple running shoe. Emoji designer. Uh, jose wong's shoe won 219 dollars. Does that look like an emoji? I guess it's. That's the emoji on the left. Yeah, I guess it's the same. I thought it was going to look like a clown shoe or something. It's just a regular everyday running it's it's.
1:38:02 - Andy Ihnatko
It's interesting because it's a double rip off. Not only the like ripping off apple's original art for the emoji, but he's also ripping off like the new balance shoe that the emoji was based emojis looks like the new balance shoe.
1:38:13 - Leo Laporte
You're right, oh yeah, okay I was.
1:38:18 - Andy Ihnatko
I was trying to figure out if this was like for real, but it turns out that these, this guy, he is one of those designers that like will do like a limited drop over and over again. So if you do a search for him, you will find that, oh, here's a shirt from him, here's a whatever from him. However, if you go to the site that's linked to from the Verge article that I found it from, the page has gone 404.
1:38:38 - Jason Snell
Maybe they sold out.
1:38:39 - Leo Laporte
He has ceased and desisted.
1:38:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Either they sold out or exactly, or he ceased and des. If I so that's what that caused me to like want to go to that is Instagram stories feed and say, okay, it's not as though that was just like a parody. He has like dozens and dozens and dozens of shoe boxes stacked behind him, but there is like at least like four or five actual pairs of these shoes like in evidence, like in the shot, so it's not as though he had one made up just for this joke, uh, but well, some lucky child in nigeria is going to have a whole bunch of running shoes pretty soon.
1:39:13 - Leo Laporte
Uh, not the only copyright issue. A brazilian company says hey, dudes, we own the iphone trademark. Yeah, a little late, but they are going to trial on this thing.
1:39:25 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why this I mean, this is, this is legitimate, like it's not as though they're pointing out that they had their paper, were filed long before this and just like Cisco also had an iPhone product, just like a lot of other companies had an iPhone product, and Steve just simply said you know what? We're just going to go ahead. We're going to figure out that it's going to cost us more money to believe this.
1:39:52 - Alex Lindsay
That's right, yeah, and we figure as though that we figure that they're going to go away in time, or with encouragement of money, or with threats of how much money we can spend. It seems like there's some. I guess brazil might not have the same statute of limitations that the united states has so uh, so uh.
1:40:00 - Leo Laporte
The gradiente iphone was launched in brazil in seven years. Before the iPhone, they had leaflets that they used to promote the phone in 2000. We sold 30,000 units in a few months. However, due to a dispute between Gradiente and another Brazilian company, the iPhone trademark was only granted to Gradiente in 2008. Oh, this is going to be a little sticky wicked. A year after the iPhone was was introduced. By that time they were no longer selling uh phones.
1:40:30 - Jason Snell
So apple has decided yeah, they may.
1:40:33 - Leo Laporte
This may not actually work, although it is in brazil, so you never know. They've been battling in court since 2013.
1:40:41 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, there's a quote from the company that basically saying that oh just, we just don't want people continuing to say that we've ripped off this idea from Apple. Ah yeah, it's probably not just that, though.
1:40:51 - Leo Laporte
That is, though I know this because of my dispute with Twitter. Right, there is something called reverse confusion, where people assume the twit named itself after Twitter, even though Twitter came later and our trademark predated the existence of Twitter, and so, uh, that's actually the biggest. My lawyer told me this the biggest payouts in lawsuits have come from reverse confusion, where a small company, they people assume, oh you, you ripped off the big company because, uh, you're, you know, you copied there and it wasn't the case, so it could go. That's in the us. I don't know what brazil's laws are, but uh, anyway, interesting. When are we going to get a new iphone se? It's over a thousand days old, says mac rumors. Spring right, yeah, the spring release. Oh, this is. Is that the skinny one?
1:41:44 - Jason Snell
No, no, this is a spring release, but rumored to be Apple's first modem, apple-built modem in an iPhone.
1:41:51 - Leo Laporte
Also on the SEs.
1:41:52 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, also interesting in that part of the rumor that got my attention was that, yeah, it's an SE, which means that you can expect it to be like a sub $500 phone, but it also will run Apple intelligence, which implies that it won't run an older processor, run Apple intelligence, which implies that it won't run an older processor, if nothing else. I mean, yeah, it has been like almost three years, which means that this is the only current iPhone, the SE, that still has that thick like bezel at the top and the bottom. Like it doesn't look. It looks like an old iPhone, it does not look like a modern thing. It's been getting my attention because I've been this year.
I changed a lot of the tools that I use for what I do and a lot of my workflows and so many times I've thought, oh my God, if only I had Ulysses for on my Android phone, like at this moment.
My life would be so much easier.
And so, like the wheels in my brain are thinking that, well, you know you don't actually own an iPhone that does Apple intelligence.
So what if you were to buy the iPhone SE and write a bit about it and then sort of carry it with you just as a host for like iOS apps or the iOS versions of Mac apps that you use. Because the idea of running Apple intelligence on an inexpensive phone would, a be very, very interesting and B but also sort of encourage people to not think of Apple intelligence as just something that you get if you spend $800 to $1,000 for a phone, because remember Gemini and OpenAI they will run on nearly anything with a pulse, because, although Gemini does have a run-on-device aspect to it, it can go run to mama up in the up in the cloud If it doesn't have enough compute power on the device to actually do it. It would be, it would not be good to have a digital divide of that kind where you don't get any AI features unless you spend top whack for a phone. So I'm glad that I hope this rumor pans out, because that would be a really interesting version of the SE.
1:43:43 - Jason Snell
I wonder if this is where they're going to dump that processor. That's also in the ipad mini, the what is it? A 17 pro from last year and it's on the old three nanometer process, but they apparently have a big a big bucket of those processors that have been made that they need to put in products and so they might stuff it in there because that's the base to get it over the hump to being Apple intelligence on the phone.
1:44:06 - Alex Lindsay
A lot of times those processes are almost free because they're the ones that didn't perform. They didn't perform at the level that the ones that needed to go into something else, and so they're just kind of as Jason said, I don't know if they're sitting in a bucket, they fetch them from the bin.
1:44:18 - Jason Snell
Yeah, the question is just if that process is still running, because it was a dead end process for TSMC, and if they want to retest that factory into doing something else and I don't know enough about chips to know what plausible thing that is but it's possible that they literally ran off a bunch of these and Apple has collected them and basically binned them from other products and they're going to use the excess on these smaller selling products like an iPhone SE and an iPad mini. Well, I don't know. You know, I don't know the details there, but that seems to be what's happening.
1:44:47 - Leo Laporte
So it wouldn't surprise me if that's what they do. Does the SE sell that much more poorly than the big brothers? I think so. I would think it would sell better because it's less expensive.
1:44:58 - Jason Snell
Particularly internationally where Apple's competing with Android phones.
1:45:02 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, and thehone's not the de facto phone for kids, for instance I think they, I think they do want something that's available for kit, for parents to buy for their kids, if they don't want to spend a lot of money on something that they're going to break. Um. So I think that that that makes sense. I think a lot of the, a lot of apple users, you, you go in thinking you're going to buy something basic and then you're like, oh well, that's only 100 more and I'm going to use this for a long time and next thing you know, you spent $1,600 on a phone, not to mention donuts, and the Simpsons tapped out.
1:45:31 - Leo Laporte
That can really add up. Speaking of chips, according to Mac Rumors or actually according to the Elec, but that's in Chinese, so they've translated Apple has ordered M5 chips ahead of the late 2025 production. The next chip is already in order and I bet you Apple said give us all the M5s you can make. Yep, Yep. Well, I guess they have to, because no one else uses those yeah.
1:46:00 - Alex Lindsay
Well, they took up a lot of the factories to do it and the thing is, this is a good example of a rumor that happened. I mean, it probably is happening, but when people say Apple pivoted in, fall for a fall, you know, for a November release, just remember this, this thing. When we said takes years, years, I mean the design of that was done a year or two ago, and you know, it's, you know, and that's the. That's the length of this tale.
1:46:22 - Jason Snell
I had. So the new Star Wars show, skeleton Crew, came out yesterday and my friend, todd Vizzieri, who works at ILM, said you know, it's funny when you work on a project in secret for a year and a half and then suddenly everybody can see it, because he worked on Skeleton Crew. And I thought this is exactly what the people at Apple feel like where they are working. You know, depending on where you are in the funnel at Apple, you are working on the news of 2025 or 2026 or even 2027, like, not even in R and D, like if you're a chip designer, what are you on now? The M seven, like it's a years long project. I know we talk about it here and that's why it's so frustrating when you see these articles that are like ah, apple turned on a dime and changed their strategy.
1:47:03 - Alex Lindsay
in two months it's like.
1:47:04 - Jason Snell
That is not. I mean, apple Intelligence happened pretty fast. But to say that the chip that is driving Apple Intelligence was designed for Apple Intelligence is not true, because that chip had to have been in process for a very long time. I do think it's funny as Pat Gelsinger leaves Intel, and I don't think Apple's prints are on the gun or anything like that but when you think of the current state of Intel, it is interesting to think that maybe the best chips in the world are being designed by Apple and fabbed by TSMC. When you consider that 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it was very clearly Intel and Intel. But we've come a long way and these cutting edge fabs that TSMC is building and they're building them for Apple's chips, and that's the state of the art right now.
1:47:53 - Andy Ihnatko
Yeah, I mean that's a good point, because there was an interview a couple of weeks ago with some of Apple's chip engineers on a podcast. I'm afraid I don't have the citation in front of me, but what I remember is how excited they were to talk about how originally they were working, like in 2016, 2017. Of course, they were working on AI, but they were working mostly on machine language for neural engine chips that were mostly there to power computational photography on the iPhone. But they told a story about how. Then, in 2017, google Research published that paper on transformers.
That totally changed everything and they started to like not not like they were designing for a future product known as Apple intelligence. But they thought, oh my God, this is really, really cool. Like when we're designing more new neural engine chips, let's design it to run, so that would be very, very capable of doing something like this or running these kinds of models. And that was like the foundational research that led into Apple intelligence. So, yeah, I mean we're talking about Apple only talked about Apple intelligence chips this year, but even at a grassroots level, they've been thinking about it for the past seven years.
1:48:58 - Leo Laporte
Well, this article from MacRumors will actually presage a late 2025. Presage a late 2025 apple has pivoted from the the three nanometer process or the two nanometer process back to the three, because in fact, that's what this m5 series is it's a three nanometer uh chip, according to macrimor's apple because it's a nano, the two nanometer process for the m5 is due primarily to cost considerations.
But the m5 will have a lot of new features. There's a this is a good article talking about those features, including tsmc's system on integrated chip technology, which they say is a 3d chip stacking approach that enhances thermal management, reduces electrical leakage. So there are some new features in the m5, even if it is not the two nanometer uh process, and watch for those articles. In a year they pivoted away.
1:49:53 - Jason Snell
How dare they? They failed at the. Yeah, you know you can't do a chip process. Shrink every year, I mean it doesn't happen.
1:49:59 - Alex Lindsay
Two is pretty small, I mean I mean the only thing smaller.
1:50:01 - Leo Laporte
Two is one.
1:50:02 - Jason Snell
You can't do zero nanometers I made a joke about going to picometers or whatever. But somebody told me they actually are going to Angstroms.
1:50:09 - Alex Lindsay
They're going to go to Angstroms instead. Isn't that amazing? A single nanometer is tens to low hundreds of molecules thick. Isn't that amazing?
1:50:20 - Andy Ihnatko
I still remember a conversation I was having with a chip designer I think it was even 10 years ago saying that they're starting to run into problems where electrons are too big and too slow for what they want to do with chip design and that they're going to do a lot of like, very creative problem solving, to like package the sort of power and features that they want to have for the kind of tasks that they're being contracted to do.
1:50:43 - Leo Laporte
There are 10 angstroms to every nanometer the kind of tasks that they're being contracted to do. There are 10 angstroms to every nanometer. So we are now going to the 30 angstrom design. Everybody, get ready. We've got plenty of headroom. I don't know what happens when you get to one angstrom, however, You're pretty close to a molecule thick.
1:51:00 - Alex Lindsay
You're a couple molecules thick at that point.
1:51:07 - Leo Laporte
What is the definition of an angstrom? It is, it is uh. An angstrom is one ten billionth of a meter, a hundred millionth of a centimeter, six thousand angstroms as the as the wavelength of red light the width of a hydrogen atom is 1.1 angstroms. Oh my god. So we are basically at 20 hydrogen or 30 hydrogen atoms. Yeah, atomic level stuff, yeah, and you know, I guess moore's law is continuing, but at some point don't you get quantum, get down to the quantum level?
1:51:39 - Jason Snell
you have all sorts of weird quantum well, I mean, but a lot of the moore's law stuff that what we've seen is that it's been things like they went to multi-core designs, right, and they multi-layers the cores, and there's cpu cores and gpu cores and there's specialized cores, there's ai cores, there's like they, they, and now we've got this they're talking about their 3d chip stacking. So you're being you're, you know, be able to be more efficient. So the processes keep shrinking. But remember, moore's law isn't just about process shrinks it, it's about the speed of the chip.
1:52:06 - Leo Laporte
Number of transistors on it.
1:52:08 - Jason Snell
Yeah, the density and all of that. So there's other things to do here, but it is amazing. I mean I was reading a story about sort of where Intel went wrong and one of the things is that they held off on the UV lithography longer than they should. They were skeptical of it, but this is the amazing thing of it. But this is the amazing thing. Chips are made by projecting light because we don't have tools small enough to make chips, so we have to project ultraviolet light and we have to use ultraviolet because we need the little frequencies that'll go right onto the. It's amazing.
1:52:41 - Andy Ihnatko
I think there was an episode of Connections years ago that basically talked about how essentially Gutenberg's printing press started the chip revolution, because essentially, making chips is all about how fine detail can you print on a surface Right, it's so extreme and it's like that was one of those ideas, yeah.
1:53:00 - Leo Laporte
So now, in hindsight, apple's move away from Intel looks to be pretty prescient. Intel, in fact, continues its troubles. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO who was brought in to save Intel, has announced he's retiring immediately, not next month, they're like you can take your retirement package or we'll fire you.
1:53:19 - Jason Snell
And he's like I'm retiring right now.
1:53:21 - Leo Laporte
I'm out of here.
1:53:22 - Jason Snell
It's funny because we think about it in terms of Apple leaving Intel for Apple Silicon. But I mean, it's not just it's funny because we think about it in terms of Apple leaving Intel for Apple Silicon. But the real move was the founding of Apple Silicon, because that was a case where ARM processors were going to give mobile devices what they needed and Intel processors weren't, and Intel just missed it. Like they just missed it and it was. And I mean there are a lot. Ben Thompson has written about this, a lot on Stratechery, I think very intelligently, which is typical for Ben stupid Ben Thompson so smart.
1:53:51 - Alex Lindsay
But about how you know, pat Gelsinger should really not be blamed because, like he, wasn't there when they made the fatal error he maybe he was trying to solve the problem.
1:54:02 - Jason Snell
That was too late to be solved is possibly the case, but, like the mistake that happened before, he was the person in charge at intel because they just they just missed so badly. And now the question is are they gonna stay as one business? Uh, how do they deal with the fact that the us government has tried to give them a lot of money so that there's an american company making chips, but they're not really as good at making chips as they used to be? Tsmc has eaten their lunch there. And what's the board going to do? Who are they going to hire? And there were some rumors about like Johnny Sruji from Apple?
But I think he's already turned them down and I don't know why you would take that job. So it's an interesting question about the future of Intel. But yeah, Apple, good not to have any eggs in that basket right now yeah, it turns out this.
1:54:48 - Leo Laporte
This has been a long time coming morris chang, who's the founder of tsmc. He's written his autobiography and, according to the autobiography, tim cook met with chang in 2011 already 13 years ago kind of miffed at Intel and said and Chang said yeah, we should talk about making chips for Apple. According to the book, cook was left unimpressed by Intel's contract manufacturing capabilities.
1:55:17 - Jason Snell
He told Chang that in the meeting and that was the beginning of the Apple moving to TSMC back in 2011 and that's intel's fatal flaw, right, because you know, the problem with intel is that they're fab and they're a chip designer. And so apple came and said we have an arm chip that we designed, right, we want you to make it. And intel was like no, we're not into that, you can use our chip and and, and that's the I mean. Really they should have, and gelsinger fought against this, I think for a while, but like they should have split into two businesses a while ago.
1:55:46 - Leo Laporte
Ben Thompson's been saying this for a while.
1:55:47 - Jason Snell
Yeah, a fab and a chip designer.
1:55:50 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, intel's business model was integrated, where they would design and build, and in fact, that's exactly what Gelsinger said. We're going to split this into two parts a foundry and the designer and the manufacturer, the fab and the foundry, but it just was too little, too late, I guess.
1:56:07 - Jason Snell
Yeah, the real question is the American government right, because the US government, the CHIPS Act and all of that, and so who knows what's going to happen in the Trump administration? But there's this feeling like we don't really want a Taiwanese company, and TSMC is great, but the fear is that China invades Taiwan and our chip making capacity is gone, which is why, to be fair, tsmc is also building factories in the us as a part of that deal.
1:56:30 - Leo Laporte
So, but like intel, it's one of these stories got almost eight billion dollars under the chips act yeah, but they have to.
1:56:36 - Jason Snell
They have to follow the rules is the thing, or they have to give it back. And that's one of the challenges is how are they going to invest in fabs as per the chips act in order to keep that money, if they're? If they're pivoting to design and not to and away from fabs, which is what gelsinger was trying to do the board pivots away from that. Do they give the money back? Do they try to spin it out? I believe there's a string attached where they can't actually divest themselves of their fab business. They have to keep ownership of a high percentage of it like it's a mess. It's a mess.
1:57:09 - Andy Ihnatko
And, on top of everything else, I think the speculation is that it's going to take 2030 until there could be a meaningful chip production capability inside the US. And that is like how many administrations between now and then? And it's going to have to be mature leadership that basically says this is an important thing. It will not be done on any one administration's watch. We have to make investments and make assurances and make alliances to make sure this key strategic capability is within the United States by a certain timeline, whenever it happens.
Remember that China at some point, you know, was not a manufacturing powerhouse. They made it a government priority, saying we're going to make sure that we get manufacturing here. They, when the sanctions basically cut them off from american chip design, they said, okay, this stinks, but we're going to have to learn how to design steel, manufacture our own chips, and now they're finally in the position where they can start making stuff that is completely homegrown and now they don't have dependency on other countries necessarily for that manufacturer. So it's you can't. You can't put people on the moon as an executive order and expect to be on the grain stand uh, greeting people walking on the moon two or three years later. You basically have to design the Cathedral, prove the Cathedral, put in the infrastructure for the Cathedral and be pleased that three years after you did Are you putting a cathedral on the moon?
1:58:28 - Leo Laporte
Is that what you're doing?
1:58:29 - Andy Ihnatko
Musk says he wants it on Mars first to prove the viability of it.
1:58:34 - Jason Snell
It's very small though. It's only about 80 Angstroms, exactly. So pull back.
1:58:40 - Andy Ihnatko
Or 12 different shades of red as it would go, but you know what I mean the people who basically decide okay, a cathedral goes here, knew that they will not live long enough to actually see this thing be built. But they have to realize that that's not my job here. My job here is to make sure that I set up the machine that is inexorable in its forward progress. That will not be ended three years before it's done.
1:59:05 - Leo Laporte
It will be ended when it's actually finished and, of course, the United States has become the shortest term planning country ever. You know, I mean we don't think more than three months. We're kooky.
1:59:15 - Jason Snell
That way it's true, although there are some examples, like the space program stuff started. You know, trump administration started it, biden administration continued it, and that's what I was going to say is this needs to be like, like that. There were little pockets in the government where there has been continuity between these various administrations and if we, if, if we are serious about america's chip making capacity, this needs to be one of those areas where there's consistent behavior and we'll see what, whether it happens or not it's that uncertainty that is uh causing all the answers like career government workers.
1:59:51 - Andy Ihnatko
They're the backbone of keeping every country working. The ones that they.
1:59:55 - Leo Laporte
There's 10 angstroms in each angst, I believe.
1:59:57 - Alex Lindsay
Thank you it's also why sword sword rattling is not like china's making all this noise about the fact that they want that they may take Taiwan, or they're not going to rule that out, or whatever. It's just generating trillions of dollars of movement. You know that that around them it just seems like such an unforced error.
2:00:17 - Leo Laporte
I mean, you know, just, it's a well, it's not unilateral, I mean we're doing the same thing, but it's a good example of them going down this path of saying all this stuff that scares everybody.
2:00:27 - Alex Lindsay
You have companies moving out of their countries and they're you know there's all this, you know there's all this movement that they've created because of you know the threats and you know it's just it's crazy thing to do what a world.
2:00:40 - Leo Laporte
What a world. All right, let's take a little break. Uh, when we come back? Your picks of the week. So, gentlemen, start your engines. You're watching Mac break weekly, andy, and not co from GBH in Boston. When are you gonna be on GBH next?
2:00:52 - Andy Ihnatko
enough this week, but next Thursday at 12 45.
2:00:55 - Leo Laporte
I always ask you that question, thank you. Thank you, andrew. I H N A T K O. I have no idea how to spell it. Uh, Alexlex Lindsey office hoursglobal got something exciting going on this week as well I'm having a chat with matt levine today, right after the show oh, mr uh cashfly, he's got a podcast that he's putting together, that he's I'm gonna be on it.
2:01:17 - Alex Lindsay
You're gonna be on it sooner than me, though I'm, I'm the test case, I'm, I'm, I'm just. He's just making sure it works with me, and then he's ready for you. So.
2:01:25 - Leo Laporte
I think I'm doing it in January, so that's exciting yeah.
2:01:27 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah.
2:01:28 - Leo Laporte
The cashflow podcast, yeah, uh, and office hours, anything to report.
2:01:33 - Alex Lindsay
You're going to continue to see us uh test. Right now we're testing HLG. We were talking about this HLG versus PQ. It's're going to see, but we're still every day we're just answering people's questions and we've got, of course, an evening show on both Monday that's the extra hours and on Thursdays, which is the rundown, but every morning for an hour we have some you know, about 100 years, 150 years of expertise that sits down and answers random questions about media production, of expertise that sits down and answers random questions about media production, which is.
And then one of the things we've gotten really good at is we have this great chat that is all tied into what we're doing and we're using it more because we realize there's all these experts that are in the chat, um, in our chat, that are uh, you know that really know a lot, that are from all these broadcast companies and post companies and so on and so forth. So it's now, even though there's six or eight or 10 people in the panel, there's also another 50 to a hundred that are doing stuff that we're kind of incorporating into that, into that conversation. So it's it's you're you're going to see us keep on evolving that as we move forward. Quite exciting.
It's fun.
2:02:38 - Leo Laporte
And uh, from six colorscom. Jason Snell, you said uh, you took a little time off for Thanksgiving, but the Six Colors never sleeps.
2:02:47 - Jason Snell
Well, I mean we were a little sleepy. I was very happy to see that a couple articles got posted while I was away. It was a quiet week. Is it just you?
2:02:54 - Leo Laporte
and Dan Morin.
2:02:56 - Jason Snell
We have a weekly post from John Maltz. He writes a kind of funny links column on Friday for our members.
2:03:05 - Leo Laporte
Is it a secret? What?
2:03:06 - Jason Snell
john used to be. It's not, it's an open, it's an open secret. He's fine, we talk about it. John mold sometimes is the macalope there, I said it, um, but sometimes he's. He did a the crazy apple rumor site for a long time. He writes under his name and the other name at mac world now and he writes a a nice fun thing. And then, uh, shelly brisbane and joe rosensteel also write um sort of occasional posts for six colors, but it's primarily me and dan, so it's a you know kind of a two-person operation yeah, the latest episode upgrade 540.
2:03:32 - Leo Laporte
Validation for shower Jason.
2:03:34 - Jason Snell
I'm not sure, I want to know it's a good episode. Well, I, I, uh, actually we had a whole thing and you, you all will understand this too. It's that troubleshooting brain that you have if you're a tech nerd, where you somebody has a problem and they come to you and you and you. We've seen so many mistakes, so many problems with tech and you know this from your radio show that is actually a perfect example where you built a perfect troubleshooting machine and there's you know, turn it on and turn it off.
Why don't you restart the computer? I did that over the Thanksgiving break, but it can be like shower Jason is I'm listening to a podcast in the shower. I can only listen to podcasts when I shower and when I walk my dog. Those are my listening times, and my friend, steven hacker, was telling a story on this podcast about how he and his wife's Apple watches both suddenly had battery life problems, which is really weird. Right that they both had it simultaneously is really weird, right that they both had it simultaneously and I knew that he changed his wi-fi network last week to a
different sort of hardware and I, and and I, I literally reached out of the shower to the phone and sent him a text saying have you checked the wi-fi? And he was the guest on upgrade, uh, yesterday. And he's hysterical and he tells this story and then he says I think it is the wi-fi and that was my validation for shower Jason. That I was like because, because there was a little thing that ticked in my brain and we all have this where it's like what changed? What changed? And I just thought.
We all know that mobile devices, if they have trouble connecting to a network, whether it's wi-fi or your cellular network, if you're out in the woods or something, your phone will get hot, like it expending. It'll crank up the power on that radio to try and make a solid signal. And I thought what if his new wifi base stations it's the, the watches are having trouble connecting or they're not seeing one but they're seeing the other, or they have to crank up the power in order to compensate and that's draining the battery essentially invisibly, and it I think maybe that is actually the answer, but this happens.
2:05:31 - Leo Laporte
There's something about the shower. It's my theory that the heat is opening up blood vessels and making your brain work better.
2:05:38 - Jason Snell
There's something it could be, or even the isolation or the focus. If I'm not listening to anything in the shower, that's where I am brainstorming, yeah, and and if I am listening it's because I want to focus on something other than the shower and just right get through it, but um, anyway. So computer nerds know what I'm talking about. That we all get at. Thanksgiving is a perfect example. You all get told time to do some troubleshooting and some of those problems are actually really like.
My father-in-law had a whole problem where his mouse he said sometimes was um was giving a context menu when he clicked instead of a regular click and like what he didn't say context menu, right, he was like a menu appears when I'm saying the pop-up thing and and I observed this and I thought about it for a while and I thought you know, what I think is actually happening is, I think that as he's using his mouse, gradually over time, his, his hand, is just sort of sliding to the right, and then he doesn't realize it, but he's right clicking when he thinks that he's left clicking. I think that's actually, but again, it's just cause I've been doing this for so long now that I have. And then he said Jason, it's not working, the mail is an opening right. And uh, uh, I did command Q on Apple mail and nothing happened and I said, well, let's restart this computer. And then I walked away because I was super confident in that. And then a minute later he shouted from the other room it's working now.
Thank you, I was like why don't we turn it off and turn it back on? This is how you get to be known as the miracle man in your family.
2:07:04 - Leo Laporte
Hey, a little programming note about our old friend, renee ritchie. I watched a long video from him, me too. He has moved to san francisco and an even more exciting note he's got a new girl who moved with him, better known callie lewis, better known as luria petrucci. Renee ritchie and loria are an item. Congratulations, it's so great to hear it and welcome to uh to uh, california. Renee ritchie in san francisco, we're gonna have to figure out a way to get him up, uh, into our attic studio. I'm I'm just really happy. So if you're a renee ritchie fan, he's still working at youtube. In fact, probably that's why he's in San Francisco now. It seems like that's a better place for him to be than Montreal for working at YouTube, and his channel is there at youtubecom. Slash Rene Ritchie and you can read his update or listen to his update, I should say there. So good on you, rene and Callie. I'm very happy to hear Two of my favorite people in the world.
2:08:05 - Alex Lindsay
Yeah, aren't they? It and Callie. I'm very happy to hear Two of my favorite people in the world yeah, aren't they?
2:08:09 - Leo Laporte
It's like, wow, that's so cool. I was really happy to hear that. I have my own little personal YouTube channel, which isn't very active. Every once in a while I'll do some gaming. But it has been active in the month of December because we've been doing the advent of code and I have been live streaming, which is a crazy thing to do. Live streaming the coding.
These start at 9 pm Pacific, midnight Eastern, when the Advent of Code challenge comes out in the first 25 days of September. Get it, it's an Advent calendar and it's been a lot of fun. And three of our stalwart real programmers from the club Cy Faze, paul Holder and Darren Oki have been getting on saying Leo, you might want to check that parenthesis there. It seems misplaced, shall we say, and it's been very helpful and a lot of fun. So we'll do that again. I guess I'll do it again tonight, 9 pm Pacific, for day four of the Advent of Code.
They get progressively more difficult, which means at some point in the next few days I'm going to hit an impossible wall. I'll be like that saber rattling against the soccer wall and I will have to go to bed before I actually solve that. But this is kind of fun. I do it in emacs and common lisp and we get the, we get the chat going with it and uh, we also get, uh, some really fun people popping in a little bit. So, um, just thought I'd mention that youtubecom slash leo Laporte, our Picks of the Week coming up and Doc Rock, who is in the Discord, says don't make it too expensive, guys. You just spent a lot of money on a 3D printer, all right, all right, doc Rock, we're going to get you some inexpensive Picks of the Week. Well, maybe not, maybe not. You're watching Mac break weekly.
2:10:08 - Jason Snell
Jason snell, you, you're, you're, you, yours isn't going to be expensive no, I mean, you gotta have a vision pro, though, so I assume you've already spent that money and that's why that's so small?
yeah, I just wanted to mention this. So, simply, piano has been out for a while like it's a great ipad app to teach people how to play the piano, and they just announced a vision pro version and I got to try it. In fact, just this morning I tried it out and it's pretty amazing because it will, uh, like if you have a keyboard or a piano. I sat down on my piano and it has you like, uh, calibrate its piano to your piano. At which point, um, as it's teaching you how to play the piano to your piano. At which point, as it's teaching you how to play the piano, it's lighting up the keys and actually it shows you the finger notation floating on your hand of like.
which finger is which finger for? For the like? One, two, three, four, five, play the piano already. Or I want to make a joke of Simpsons joke here and I'm not going to do it. Yes, I, I took piano lessons as a kid and so I still sort of know how to play the piano.
2:11:14 - Leo Laporte
I feel like this is the next thing for me as an aging brain. They say it's very good to learn an instrument.
2:11:19 - Jason Snell
Well, simply piano. I mean, even on the iPad, it's very clever because it uses the microphone, so it'll have you, you play along and it knows when you're playing the right note. But with on the vision pro, it will you know it's marking up your hands, uh, and it's marking up the keyboard with with the lighting it up, and if you don't have a keyboard, you can actually take a flat surface and play it like a keyboard. It'll lay down a virtual keyboard for you using the vision pro, and then you can play those virtual keys and that will work too Very clever as an education app using a virtual overlay. It's a really interesting idea for an app that's already, I think, a very successful iPad app, but I love that they're trying it on Vision Pro. In my 20 minutes with it this morning, I was really impressed. It looks like a great way for people to learn how to play the piano.
2:12:06 - Leo Laporte
Very interesting. I do feel like that would be good for my brain to learn to play, and I think if I were going to learn an instrument it would be the piano, because then you could play every other instrument right With a synth.
2:12:16 - Jason Snell
It's true. Get a USB keyboard and attach it to Logic or GarageBand, and then you've got every instrument.
2:12:27 - Leo Laporte
Every instrument. Yeah, maybe that's my uh, my project after the advent of code.
2:12:28 - Andy Ihnatko
I'm a little busy right now, andy and I go pick of the week, uh, with holiday shopping in mind, uh, my one of my favorite little like decorative items like apple, apple, mac related, like ornaments, uh, there's a company called classic botot that makes these beautiful little figures of classic apples. They've got the Happy ClassicBot, which is like a Macintosh classic, which comes with the ADB keyboard. It comes with a little font, da mover suitcase. It comes with a little mouse, the iBoy, which is amazing because it looks like a classic, uh ipod.
but it also has that magnetic attachment so that you have, like we can put up legs on it, you have arms, you can like position your potato head for an ipod, yeah, yeah, and I just I just noticed that they just are taking pre-orders on an apple 2e and I'm like, oh, I kind of gotta have that one. I have, I have the classic bot and I have the ipod, the, the ipod one, uh, and I can say that they're not dirt cheap. They're like 50 bucks each. But they're a small company.
2:13:33 - Leo Laporte
They do what are they made out?
2:13:34 - Andy Ihnatko
of uh, very, very hard like plastic slash resin. It's very, very solid. The details that are carved in there are sharp and precise. When you get it like, you know that this is a very, very well-made, well-designed products, not just oh well, we just made a 3d print of something and then we just throw these things out. No, no, these are professionally manufactured. They're nicely boxed, like it's from a real design studio, real company.
Uh, and I recently found out that it really is pretty much a one-person operation. I think I was reminded of it because you posted on a Reddit forum with a discount code for Christmas. If you use the code XMAS2024, you will get a discount on your order. The problem is, the only hitch is that he is based in the UK. So A I'm recommending it now because if you want to get it as a gift for somebody else and it is a really nice gift for an Apple friend it will take a couple of weeks to arrive. Also, maybe you're going to be hit with some shipping costs, but don't be afraid of it. Again, I ordered both of these when they came out. Every time, I dust that shelf and I put the Mac in a different position or I have the iPod interacting with Alex's action figure from Star Wars. You know it's. It gives me pleasure every single time. This has been a very good investment in joy, very nice.
2:14:57 - Leo Laporte
Happy classic bot from classic bot dot com designer toys, figures and geek culture. I guess it's more than just Apple stuff designer toys, figures and geek culture.
2:15:07 - Andy Ihnatko
I guess it's more than just, uh, apple stuff they do. They got other things. You can also get like a little display that has like 3D versions of like classic Mac, like map icons again it's worth checking out. Again you can see the love and you can see like the determination to create a really great product and all this entire product line I'm very happy to support awesome, awesome.
2:15:23 - Leo Laporte
Thank you, andy. Alex, Lindsey me your pick of the week.
2:15:26 - Alex Lindsay
So I didn't need this. But I kept on looking at it, going for a lot of the a lot of the years, like, oh, I really like to have something, a desktop charger. I have a lot of devices that I'm charging and I just wanted something on the desktop that had a nice display and it told me what was still charging and how much is it actually pulling Um. And so this is. And so this is from oops, this is from Anchor. You can see I bought it on the 21st, so they didn't send it to me and it went on sale. That's what turned the corner for me. So instead $169, I was like no, that's too much for this. At 109, I was like you know, I'm short. Some chargers I got to move some chargers around. It's really nice. So, some chargers I got to move some chargers around. It's really nice.
So it's a. It is one. It's a GAN charger, so it's it's going to do things pretty quickly. Uh, maxes out at 140 Watts, um, so it really is able to charge just about anything you need. It's not something you put in your bag. Um, this is something that I kind of wanted, but it's also not a charger that you would go traveling with Um. I I kind of wanted, I very specifically wanted something that I wouldn't cannibalize.
it's just yeah it's on the desk, it does. It does the thing it needs to do. It's very.
2:16:32 - Jason Snell
I don't know what it is. The knob?
2:16:33 - Alex Lindsay
too, the knob. Um lets you there's there's some selections that you can make, so, um, it'll change, slow down. It lets you go through each one and see how much it's using and you know. So there's some data there to figure it out. Um, it's anchor does over the top, um, but anchor anchors really just cornered the market of great chargers and and uh, um and and great batteries.
2:16:57 - Leo Laporte
I use a lot of their stuff we did uh years ago on, when we were still doing the new screensavers, we had somebody come on and talk about gallium arsenide technology and how it was going to be a revolution. Uh, and so far it's only been in chargers and and walwarts and things like that, but uh, still it's an interesting technology.
2:17:16 - Alex Lindsay
I won't buy a charger that isn't yeah again again like it's just, it's just it's like why no, there's no reason to live that way.
2:17:23 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, so it's just like a savage. Yeah, exactly uh, thank you, Alex, I have a pick. Uh, thanks to scooter x. Thank you, scooter x, who posted in the discord. You can now put marathon on your iphone. The classic marathon games are available on the app store. They have all three classic marathon. Now, there's a history of this, because we played marathon like crazy, oh man, back in the middle 90s on the set of the site, which was the NMSNBC show.
2:17:59 - Jason Snell
We played it at Mac User back in the day.
2:18:02 - Leo Laporte
Sure Multiplayer Because you could do a LAN party with it.
2:18:05 - Jason Snell
And so one of the best things about this according to bungie and this is all due to the, the, the people who've been keeping the code alive and porting it and all of these things um, it is apparently cross-play compatible. So if you've got ipads max, anybody who can run it's on steam as well, who can run these things. Apparently it is cross-play compatible so you could do these amazing.
2:18:30 - Leo Laporte
Some of the best network play maps ever made, especially marathon infinity, just was mostly about the multiplayer this is the multiplayer game we played like just so good, so good I was told karsten bondi are my producer for many years, told me, yeah, we, uh, we all got together behind the scenes and decided to gang up on leo and marathon and all fire our rocket launchers at him at the same time. Which?
2:18:56 - Alex Lindsay
blew me straight up in the air we used to um when I worked at a game company. You know you had to in the early days of marathon. You had to turn, you had to restart your computer and hold down the shift key to get rid of all the extensions because, otherwise you wouldn't get full frame rate. Yeah and so we get about six o'clock in the evening and we all be working and suddenly hear someone go dong, and then they're like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait that's exactly what I'm compiling, I'm compiling.
You gotta wait for me.
2:19:24 - Leo Laporte
I think they had to ban it actually eventually.
2:19:26 - Jason Snell
Yeah, we because we had that, we would um, we would use the conference uh call and speaker phone mode in the office so that all of us who were playing were on speaker with each other, because it didn't do audio or something. And it was always great when you'd shoot somebody with a rocket launcher, and not only on the speakerphone but you could actually hear them screaming.
That was me out in the cubicles somewhere it was me the roman loyola who is now my editor in mac world. Actually we, oh man, because we were mac user was in foster city. We were right by the san mateo bridge and several of us lived in the east bay and for non-bay area, people trust me commute, uh, uh, evening East bound on the San Mateo bridge. It just backed up and backed up, and backed up.
2:20:11 - Leo Laporte
You didn't want to go.
2:20:12 - Jason Snell
And so I had, uh, for a while there, I had a, I had a window. We also had like a webcam. We would go check the traffic. I, Roman, would go to one end and look at the, at the, at the backup, and then we would just keep playing. Those are good times. And the marathon map, legitimately. I mean, not only was this what led to Bungie getting bought by Microsoft and doing Halo and doing Destiny, but they were groundbreaking. They were Mac only, which was amazing, but the multiplayer with the maps and there was a map editor that you could get. They put so much effort into those multiplayer maps being good and they were. So you could play Capture the Flag or King of the Hill, which was hilarious, or my favorite, Kill the Guy with the Ball, where you got a little skull and then you ran around and they tried to kill you and you won by time. Literally, it was like first person to hold the ball for five minutes wins Amazing, just good, just really good maps and good gaming, great play for hours.
2:21:09 - Alex Lindsay
And the problem was we were all married at the time and we were one of our wives would call, and the goal was no one making noise and and and so you'd be talking to your wife and be like, yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm gonna be on my way in a second, and then someone would, someone would fire or they'd fire or they'd fire a missile and and uh, oops, and then then it was like that in uncle block, like why do you stay so late every night?
2:21:35 - Leo Laporte
are they really?
2:21:35 - Jason Snell
working you it's uh.
2:21:36 - Leo Laporte
Master chief mode is 99 cents. Hd mode is two bucks. Enhanced reticules a buck, there are. It's free. Within that purchases. Uh, you can get some tips and so forth, but I think basically they're playable for free they did a demo that they are coming bungee.
2:21:51 - Alex Lindsay
This is. I think this is all an open source project, because the coolest thing that bungee did was they open sourced these before they were bought by microsoft, right, um and so, uh. So I think this is all an open source project. But the uh yeah by dustin wentz butungie is they have a. If you look for it, they did a trailer for the new marathon. I don't know when it's going to come out, but that came out like a year ago or a year and a half ago.
2:22:15 - Jason Snell
Yeah, it's unclear. Yeah, I mean, it's a console game, although I think it's going to be on PC as well, but they're reviving that marathon IP. But it's also great that they're embracing the classic stuff, which is awesome.
2:22:29 - Leo Laporte
And thanks to Wizardling there is. He's passing along this information. There is a marathon server, so if you don't, have friends who can play.
2:22:39 - Alex Lindsay
We hammered that server. One time there was a Mac break where this is early on Mac break where I said, hey, we're all going to go to the server and play and these poor folks that play all the time. Suddenly there was like 300 people that showed up out of nowhere and started playing and they were like you're ruining our server, so um so don't do that.
No, it's good, but it's a good, but it's a good server. And don't do it all at the same time and don't tell everyone at Mac break you're doing it at two o'clock in the afternoon.
2:23:04 - Leo Laporte
Like. Those are the things that cause L-H-O-W-O-Norg.
2:23:10 - Jason Snell
Yeah, using Marathon Infinity is if you want to do multiplayer, that's the that was. It's got a small one player campaign, but it was made for the multiplayer maps. It's the best experience for that, I think based on that. They were boasting like the frame rates are apparently really good that they did some great work, the whole team that it's the LF1 team that kind of kept the flame going with the support of the people at Bungie. So it's awesome, awesome.
It's really really nice it really is like proto Halo, like right down to the fact that there are many, many, many many things in Halo where, if you play Marathon, you'll be like, oh, like that, oh, I see. That's where that came from, yeah search.
2:23:47 - Alex Lindsay
Search for uh also some of the artwork. I can't think of his name right now. He's a matte painter, um, that did all these incredible uh uh concept art. So if you do marathon game concept art, you'll see these incredible paintings that he did. That that kind of uh also expanded, I mean really into Marathon.
2:24:06 - Leo Laporte
I think I won the pick of the week this week. Thank, you. Scooterx.
2:24:10 - Jason Snell
We just need to do an episode where we play Marathon. Yeah.
2:24:16 - Alex Lindsay
We should do that in the Twit Club.
2:24:18 - Jason Snell
A club. Oh, we should. I'm in for that.
2:24:24 - Leo Laporte
You can't all name the rocket launchers at me, though, okay thunderdome.
2:24:27 - Alex Lindsay
That's what we need no, we can.
2:24:29 - Leo Laporte
We're gonna do that, leo.
2:24:30 - Andy Ihnatko
It's gonna happen, john make it so awesome yeah do you need a water boy for those kind of multi-perfect games?
2:24:36 - Leo Laporte
because that's probably what I'm not playing, andy, do you not? Uh?
2:24:39 - Andy Ihnatko
not really kill the guy with a ball. You can have the ball I can be the av person who's running and running the display and he can be the cheerleader from the side if you have the ball, you don't shoot right, you just run you know better than I, would you just run? Actually, when you have the ball.
2:24:58 - Jason Snell
You don't get to run, you have to walk. I'll tell you this like I've been.
2:25:03 - Andy Ihnatko
I've been writing like a thousand words every, at least a thousand words every day, like since I was like 18 or 19. I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome. I don't have any like injuries or anything like that. I still type as well, yeah, and so the thing is every time I try to play like a really fast action game. Like my hands, my hand kills for like four minutes.
2:25:31 - Leo Laporte
I realize that, okay, if I keep doing, doing that, maybe I won't be able to type without no.
2:25:33 - Andy Ihnatko
No, you have to build up those muscles. So it's all. It's just. It's weight lifting for your thumb. You just want somebody in the game.
2:25:35 - Leo Laporte
Who's easy to kill? That's fine, not me this time. Not me, buddy boy, a lot of fun. All right, we will do that. If you're a club member, watch for an announcement because we will do a marathon. Uh, marathon, how about that? Jason snell, sixcolors.com. Thank you, my friend, always great to see you. We'll see you back here next week. Good to be here. Yeah, great, Alex Lindsey. Office hours dot global and, of course, if you want to hire office hours, the office hours legend 090.media is his day job, although I don't know when exactly he shows up for that. But no, you actually do. You're gonna do a lot more travel with 090.
2:26:14 - Alex Lindsay
Right, I am, I'm doing, we're doing some stuff. We can talk about more uh somewhere in the future.
2:26:18 - Leo Laporte
So, yeah, awesome yeah, uh, and thank you, Andy Ihnatko: WGBH Boston. It's great to see all three of you. We do mac break weekly every Tuesday, 11 am, pacific 2 pm eastern time, 1900 utc. We stream it on those live on those platforms. But watching live, you know, requires you be there when we do it and honestly it's a podcast so that you don't have to do that. You can listen and watch whenever you want. Audio and video available at our website, twit.tv/mbw. If you go there you'll see a link to the Youtube channel. Great way to share little clips. If you've got a friend that maybe you played a little marathon with back in the day a roman loyola, perhaps just clip that, send it to him and say game on man yeah it's also a great way to share mac break weekly with friends.
After the fact, you can also subscribe and your favorite podcast player, and that's probably the best thing to do. Once we've edited it all up, once John Ashley's clean it all up, he'll put it out on the feeds and you'll get an automatic download, whether it's pocket cast, overcast, apple podcasts. Whatever you use, make sure you subscribe audio or video. That way you'll get the latest Mac break weekly the minute it's available. Thank you, everybody for joining us. We'll be back next Tuesday, but now it is my sorry duty to say get back to work. Break time is over or you could play some Marathon.





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