MacBreak Weekly 1040 Transcript
Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Jason, Christina, they're all here, and so is our new boss. John Ternus takes over at Apple today. We'll talk a little bit about Tim Cook's legacy and what John might be up to. Plus, of course, the big iPhone announcement. The invitations have gone out. That's next on MacBreak Weekly.
Leo Laporte [00:00:26]:
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1040, recorded Tuesday, September 1st, 2026: New CEO, Who Dis? It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Hello everybody, Christina Warren is here. She's getting sick of me now because she spent a couple of hours on intelligent machines on Wednesday.
Christina Warren [00:00:57]:
I did.
Leo Laporte [00:00:57]:
Thank you. You were wonderful.
Christina Warren [00:01:00]:
Thank you for having me. That was actually a really great conversation and a great time. So I'm sorry that, uh, there— well, I'm not. I'm glad that I was able to be there. I'm sorry there was like a miscommunication with Paris, and I'm sorry to have missed her, but it was a great conversation with you and Jeff.
Leo Laporte [00:01:13]:
She had the day off. We forgot. But it was a lucky thing that we had Christina Warren and we talked local AI. It was a lot of fun, a lot of stuff to talk about. Of course, Christina covers this In detail as a senior advanced number one tip-top developer relations person at GitHub. I just promoted you.
Christina Warren [00:01:32]:
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Jason Snell [00:01:34]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:01:34]:
So nice to see you in red too. I like that.
Christina Warren [00:01:37]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:01:37]:
Or is it?
Christina Warren [00:01:38]:
It's not.
Leo Laporte [00:01:38]:
It's—
Christina Warren [00:01:38]:
No, it's red. This is red and like it's fall now. So—
Leo Laporte [00:01:41]:
It's kind of a little magenta-ish though. It's got red verging on magenta.
Christina Warren [00:01:45]:
I guess. No, I mean, if you saw this in person, this is like a very deep, like red.
Leo Laporte [00:01:49]:
It's beautiful. It says 1994 on it.
Christina Warren [00:01:52]:
Yeah, it's, it's a Supreme, um, hoodie that I had, like, so it's just—
Leo Laporte [00:01:56]:
it's established 1994.
Christina Warren [00:01:58]:
Yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [00:01:59]:
Uh, Jeff Atwood said, you know, I bought her the Theranos bottle she never gave me.
Christina Warren [00:02:04]:
Oh, he did? And I forgot about that. I meant— I'm so sorry, Jeff Atwood. Um, no, I, I had the other thing, but yes, he did. He got me a Theranos, um, water bottle, which was amazing, and I'm so grateful. That was so kind of him.
Leo Laporte [00:02:14]:
He heard your call.
Christina Warren [00:02:16]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:02:17]:
Now let's say hello to a guy who's been a little busy this week, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason, from Six Colors.
Jason Snell [00:02:23]:
Good to be here. Yeah, you know, news— sometimes the news happens, sometimes you happen, sometimes the news happens to you. I guess that's the way I should put it. It's sometimes you happen to us this week.
Leo Laporte [00:02:34]:
Sometimes the bar hits you. I'm surprised you don't have a ring around your face from many hours in the Vision Pro on Friday.
Jason Snell [00:02:41]:
Uh, you know, I don't. Because that was Friday and it's not— your face is not so bad. And my face is very resilient to Vision Pro. I am a hardened, calloused Vision Pro user, Leo. I can, I can take it. I don't know about these people who say it's, oh, it's too heavy, it hurt my neck. No, toughen up.
Leo Laporte [00:03:01]:
Toughen up.
Jason Snell [00:03:01]:
Do some neck exercises. Beat it.
Leo Laporte [00:03:02]:
Toughen up.
Jason Snell [00:03:04]:
Boot camp for Vision Pro.
Leo Laporte [00:03:05]:
We'll talk about that in a moment, but we have other things, other fish to fry.
Jason Snell [00:03:09]:
Wait, wait. What? There's other stories other than the Vision Pro?
Leo Laporte [00:03:13]:
I know, shocking. But this still is the premier Vision Pro podcast.
Jason Snell [00:03:16]:
Yeah, it just comes later in the show.
Leo Laporte [00:03:18]:
Andy Ihnatko also here. Last but not least from the library. Hello, Andrew.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:24]:
Steadfast, assured, reliable.
Leo Laporte [00:03:27]:
You can count on Ihnatko.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:28]:
CBS News as of, but up to only like 1988, '89, gets sketchy in the '90s, still hanging on by its fingernails in the early 2000s now. Andy, let's be nostalgic.
Leo Laporte [00:03:39]:
You will always be to me the Tiffany podcaster.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:43]:
Thank you very much. I'm a big fan of her music, and any comparison is very— I will try to live up to it.
Leo Laporte [00:03:48]:
I think we're alone now.
Andy Ihnatko [00:03:50]:
She's no Dolly, but who can be Dolly except for Dolly Parton?
Leo Laporte [00:03:52]:
This is the first day of September, and, uh, something happened this morning. Uh, John Ternus is now the CEO. He made his first post on x.com. It should have been New CEO, who dis? But no, it's just Hello.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:08]:
Hello.
Jason Snell [00:04:09]:
You know, it's that little script Hello that they put on the Mac and stuff. That's what that is.
Leo Laporte [00:04:12]:
Oh, I get it.
Christina Warren [00:04:14]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:04:15]:
No, no, this is—
Jason Snell [00:04:15]:
Oh, see, I didn't get it. And their other socials, their Instagram and stuff is Hello Apple, right? Like they've leaned into the whole Hello thing a lot.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:24]:
But for those of us old timers, it's like it's 2008 once again, and we're visiting Twitter and everybody has just signed up and is testing to see if the website works.
Jason Snell [00:04:34]:
It feels like that.
Leo Laporte [00:04:34]:
Yeah, so just setting up my Twitter.
Jason Snell [00:04:37]:
Hello.
Leo Laporte [00:04:38]:
That's so— that was the very, very first tweet from, uh, was it Jack Dorsey?
Christina Warren [00:04:41]:
Yeah, it was Jack Dorsey.
Leo Laporte [00:04:43]:
Yeah, that was back when Twitter didn't have an E.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:46]:
Yeah, he's also so focused on Apple right out of the gate that he does not have time to hold down the Shift key for that initial H. Yeah, he's just business, business, business.
Leo Laporte [00:04:57]:
But I think the lowercase does— that is, now I get it.
Christina Warren [00:05:00]:
That's a stylistic tick.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:01]:
Yeah, that is Apple style.
Leo Laporte [00:05:02]:
I get it.
Christina Warren [00:05:02]:
Well, it's Apple style, and I, I think it's Apple style, and then it's also become like a stylistic way that more and more people are texting just to show that you're being casual rather than like professional.
Leo Laporte [00:05:13]:
For years my kids mocked me because I used punctuation in my text messages.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:16]:
La-di-da.
Leo Laporte [00:05:17]:
They said, what, are you old? I said, yes. So, um, Mr. Ternus, is this his first post? Is he brand new on X?
Christina Warren [00:05:23]:
Mhm.
Leo Laporte [00:05:24]:
He's following 3 people.
Jason Snell [00:05:26]:
A lot of us were watching because like they do a lot of official pronouncements from Tim Cook's account and Ternus didn't have an account and it's like, well, what is going to happen here? And the answer is The executive PR marketing team created a John Ternus account and uploaded a nice picture and got it there so that there is a new channel for official pronouncements about holidays, product announcements, and the like. Natural disasters.
Leo Laporte [00:05:50]:
And that apple is straight from the invite for Wednesday's event. Is that right? I think it might be. Hey, let me do the ceremonial click. Following. He has a quarter of a million followers, which is half of mine. But I'm not going to say anything. Let's see who he's following. He's following Jaws and Tim Cook.
Jason Snell [00:06:10]:
And Tim Cook.
Leo Laporte [00:06:11]:
Uh, figures.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:13]:
That was interesting, you know, that was interesting seeing his, seeing his bio as exact Apple executive chairman, because as of 3 hours ago, it was still, uh, Apple CEO. So I guess maybe the official turnover was when it's 9 AM in Cupertino, all this stuff was set up to automatically switch over.
Leo Laporte [00:06:29]:
I guess I should be following apple.com. I didn't even know they had an X account.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:32]:
Maybe that's why you're not being invited.
Leo Laporte [00:06:34]:
They think that you're— Oh, I don't care.
Andy Ihnatko [00:06:37]:
That's— He's not interested in us.
Jason Snell [00:06:38]:
I don't care.
Christina Warren [00:06:40]:
Well, and I, and I think Apple's account, correct me if I'm wrong, like, I think that they, what they primarily do is that it is like targeted sorts of things. So you can follow along and they'll let you know when something is out rather than like doing a lot of brand tweets.
Leo Laporte [00:06:52]:
Oh, that's a good idea.
Christina Warren [00:06:53]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:06:53]:
Okay, good. So that's where the news channel will go in effect.
Christina Warren [00:06:57]:
Essentially, I mean, Tim Cook has had— I mean, I think Jason nailed it. Like, Tim Cook has kind of been the de facto newsroom, um, for certain things, I think, from a, a Twitter perspective for a while. But, uh, it'll be interesting to see, you know, how or how not John Ternus engages because, you know—
Leo Laporte [00:07:13]:
By the way, people are probably saying, and as I would have, well, Twitter, X, that's— nobody uses— but you know what? It's back. Believe it or not. Elon, for one thing, has stepped way back. He doesn't post nearly as much, nor does the president. So it's a little less of a political zoo. And it's a great place to follow things like AI, although it's become kind of like YouTube where the influencers are constantly vying for engagement. But there's still some good stuff in there. So I, you know, I'm kind of using X again.
Leo Laporte [00:07:47]:
I was— I had abandoned it when Elon bought it, but— And I guess I'm not alone. Apple is too.
Jason Snell [00:07:52]:
Not interested.
Leo Laporte [00:07:53]:
Not— it's still not interested. You're a Bluesky type of guy.
Jason Snell [00:07:57]:
I mean, I think all social media is bad for you and we should all do less of it across all. I do some Bluesky and some Mastodon, but yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:08:04]:
Yeah, I know. I know what you mean.
Jason Snell [00:08:06]:
And I don't want to debate it, but like the whole X algorithm is devoted to amplifying all sorts of political nonsense no matter what. Still?
Leo Laporte [00:08:14]:
Oh, okay. I didn't realize.
Jason Snell [00:08:16]:
But I will grant you this. there are communities that are still there. And if you really wanna be in touch with the AI community, that's probably it. My sports, uh, Bluesky feeds are growing, but the, the, like, I, I'm a Cal football fan and the famous Calgorithm of, uh, of nonsense posters, they're still on. Yeah, almost all of them are still on X. So I will peek in there. But, um, yeah, I just use—
Leo Laporte [00:08:39]:
I think it's all bad feed, but I agree with you. There's a lot of crap.
Jason Snell [00:08:43]:
So I think it's all bad.
Leo Laporte [00:08:44]:
You have to have filtration. All right, but that's— we're not here to talk about that.
Jason Snell [00:08:46]:
No.
Leo Laporte [00:08:47]:
This is not the social media show.
Jason Snell [00:08:49]:
No, that is— now that's a disaster. Don't watch that show.
Leo Laporte [00:08:53]:
We actually had a show. First it was called Inside the Net. Amber MacArthur and I did it. And then Amber and Sarah Lane took it over and they called it— what did we call it? The Social Network or— we had a clever name.
Jason Snell [00:09:10]:
I can't remember.
Leo Laporte [00:09:11]:
It's so far. So long ago. Anyway, no, let's talk turnus. Actually, before we talk turnus—
Christina Warren [00:09:17]:
Talking Turkey with Turnus.
Leo Laporte [00:09:20]:
Talking Turkey with Turnus. There's his podcast, by the way, if you ever— you can have that. Let's talk, uh, Tim Cook, because here's the man who grew Apple from billions to trillions. 7th CEO, which is amazing. I didn't— you don't really think of them as being that many.
Jason Snell [00:09:36]:
Mike Hurley jokes that, that, um, we should just refer to Tim Cook as Apple's 2nd CEO, because as far as the world is concerned, there was Steve Jobs, Jobs and then Tim Cook. And then there was some weird fever dream that happened before that.
Leo Laporte [00:09:48]:
The, the Sculley—
Christina Warren [00:09:49]:
I was gonna say, I think that's kind of mean. Yeah, I was gonna say Spindler, Amelio, and, and the other one. Yeah, the, the other Michael whose name I can't think of.
Jason Snell [00:10:00]:
Just like The Office.
Leo Laporte [00:10:01]:
He was the first CEO.
Jason Snell [00:10:03]:
Yes, Scotty.
Leo Laporte [00:10:04]:
Yeah, Scotty.
Jason Snell [00:10:05]:
And, uh, Mike Markkula.
Christina Warren [00:10:06]:
Yeah, it's, uh, Markkula was the one I was trying to think of.
Jason Snell [00:10:07]:
There have been many, and they all have their different, like, stories to tell, but the most consequential of them, clearly I would say are Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
Leo Laporte [00:10:15]:
And, you know, Cook even got Apple to cross the $5 trillion CapEx mark, which is pretty amazing. Here he is in a bunch of pictures. He's just a youngster.
Christina Warren [00:10:25]:
So all of them are so young. It's just crazy.
Jason Snell [00:10:28]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a bunch of pictures from that. I think that's the, the event from 2008. I have a bunch of pictures from that event with Tim, uh, and Phil and Steve. And that's the earliest Tim Cook photo I have in my photo library. Is it weird that I had a lot of the faces in my photos library are Apple executives? They are. I assure you. I was like, oh yeah, Steve Jobs.
Jason Snell [00:10:50]:
Let's check in on those photos. Um, but that's my earliest Tim Cook.
Leo Laporte [00:10:53]:
There's Steve Jobs.
Jason Snell [00:10:54]:
And it's weird too, because Steve comes out and he's like, oh, to give you an update on where the Mac is in the market, here's my COO, Tim Cook. And then Tim Cook gives a whole presentation and you're like, oh, remember when Tim Cook did presentations about Boring things, but still things that were there. That was when they did the unibody MacBook Pros. But I think they had Phil Schiller actually introduce the product at that event. Jony Ive actually was up on stage presenting, which he really didn't want to do, but he did. That was a town hall. That was a small room. But, but yeah, he's, he's been there and it's 15 years.
Jason Snell [00:11:25]:
I would also say, don't forget the last, I don't know, 3 or 4 years of Jobs's tenure. Tim Cook was really doing all the heavy lifting because Steve was in and out and focused on what he thought mattered because he knew how sick he was. And so Tim was— that's why Steve Jobs was so convinced that Tim Cook was the right guy to take over, is because he'd already been doing most of the job. And he— and, and, you know, I think Jobs, there were a few people that he spent a lot of time with. And what he told Ron Johnson, for example, when he hired Ron Johnson, was, we're going to talk every day for about a year, and when that year is over, you'll know how I think. And you won't need to come to me most of the time and say, hey Steve, what do you think about this? 'Cause you already know it. And I think he did that with Tim Cook too. So by the time he, you know, he knew that he couldn't continue, he knew that Tim was gonna be his guy.
Leo Laporte [00:12:16]:
2011, just months before Steve's passing, he passed the torch to Tim Cook and he has been CEO for 15 years. And from a financial point of view has done very well.
Andy Ihnatko [00:12:29]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:12:30]:
He was, at best you could say, I think was he was a steady hand.
Andy Ihnatko [00:12:33]:
That's exactly the— and that's not a bad thing. Particularly given Apple's history of— boy, the hand on the tiller was very unsteady for a great number of years until Steve took it back. Even then, Steve arguably was not the person to take Apple from a sub-trillion-dollar company to an oh-my-God trillion-dollar company. The question that I've been pondering for the past couple of weeks, though, is that, could Apple have been— the most important product that Apple ships is its stock.
Jason Snell [00:13:04]:
Right.
Andy Ihnatko [00:13:05]:
From that point of view, flirting with a $5 trillion valuation means that it's very successful at that product. I sometimes ask myself, if impossibly, at some point, Tim had said, you know what? It's OK if we're just a $2 or $3 trillion company. What kind of risks can we take? What kind of explorations can we make? How can we be a better entity? other than a really, really good investment for people.
Leo Laporte [00:13:35]:
Well, you know who else took his company, uh, to the heights of stock? Uh, Steve Ballmer. And in a very similar way, he was not— he was, you know, lots of, lots of ideas but no conviction.
Andy Ihnatko [00:13:48]:
And that's, that's, that was his downfall. So many really great demos at CES, like, oh my God, that's a wonderful idea for the next wave of mobile computing. And then they never ship it. Well, because they have to convince Intel and convince all these OEMs to like start to take up that as a device standard. But still, it was so disappointing It's frustrating to see so many flirtations with interesting, moving the needle forward, but then you just never hear from it after a somewhat sketchy demo that was very much on rails.
Leo Laporte [00:14:16]:
Yes, I don't know if I would agree with you that Apple's most important product is its stock price. But if you look at a company's stock price, you would say people like Ballmer and Cook were great CEOs. but not necessarily innovative CEOs. My sense, maybe you guys have a different opinion, is people are looking to Ternus as a guy who might bring Apple back to its innovative, exciting state.
Andy Ihnatko [00:14:46]:
Yeah. If Tim gets excited by processes and workflows and sources of getting from raw parts to finished stuff in time to store, Ternus' history has been, He's a hardware guy. He builds actual things. So, yeah, that's a really, really good source of optimism that maybe we will see, not necessarily crazy things. We don't need to necessarily see a return of Apple Socks. But this could be a time where Apple takes a look at, gee, you know what? Digital music players are having a resurgence. There's all kinds of really good players that are under $100 that the youth market really latches onto. Is it time for us to figure out how to do a $100 music player again?
Leo Laporte [00:15:26]:
Andy, I can pretty much promise you, that is the one product John Ternus is not going to introduce. I'm just saying. But you know what I mean. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Jason, what do you think? Optimism? Yes, of course. Every time there's something new, people go, oh, this is a chance for a change. Is it justified?
Jason Snell [00:15:43]:
Every CEO brings their own baggage to the role and their own skills to the role.
Leo Laporte [00:15:47]:
And that's what's weird about Ternus.
Christina Warren [00:15:48]:
He—
Leo Laporte [00:15:49]:
we don't know anything about him.
Jason Snell [00:15:50]:
Well, we know— what we know is that he spent half his life at Apple and he came up from through the ranks and has built hardware. over the years, and that is a very different profile. We think about Tim Apple, right?
Leo Laporte [00:16:02]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:16:03]:
Tim has an MBA, worked at IBM, worked at Compaq, got hired as a VP. I, I, somebody today sent me an email saying, do you think Tim Cook had ever used a Mac when Steve Jobs hired him? And the answer is, I mean, Ron Johnson, whose book is coming out next month, or I think later this month, and now it's September. Ron Johnson had never used, I think, a computer before Steve Jobs hired him and he sent him an iMac and he is like, here, learn this. But But I don't know, John Ternus is like a lifer and I think he's more like us as users of Apple products and people who think they're interesting and good than Tim Cook ever was. Not to say Tim Cook didn't like Apple or anything, he got it, but like he came to it as an external hire who had worked at a bunch of kind of gray suit companies, whereas John Ternus, like he's lived it. So I think that that's a different perspective also. I think it's healthy. I mean, I was talking to— somebody interviewed me yesterday about this and I said, I think maybe you could argue that Tim overstayed a little bit.
Jason Snell [00:17:06]:
I think because he felt like there were some dire straits with the pandemic and all the shortages there and all the politics, and even now the crisis that's going on. I think that maybe Tim Cook in other circumstances could have done this 5 years ago, And I say that not because I think that Apple is falling apart or anything, but I think that it's healthy to have different perspectives. And we had the same executive team for a very long time at Apple. And Cook, as good as he was at optimization, all those things Andy said, right? Optimization of things, having somebody who's going to lean more toward thinking about the products, be the CEO is also probably healthy, and you should probably not have that same kind of set of characteristics for 15 years if you can help it. I will also say that one of the reasons Apple has, I would say, did better under Cook than as a product company than Microsoft did under Ballmer is because Steve Jobs worked real hard to inculcate this sort of Apple culture and Apple University. And Uh, and I'd say Tim Cook, one of his greatest strengths is he's no— he knew he wasn't a product guy. And so he had a team around him and he deferred to them. And that allowed a more diverse set of people to come up with products.
Jason Snell [00:18:26]:
Also timing. The iPhone was—
Christina Warren [00:18:29]:
Right.
Jason Snell [00:18:30]:
And when I see people say, what about innovation? 2 things that bug me. One is, what about innovation? And then the other thing people say is, uh, they need to do another iPhone. There's never gonna be another iPhone. There's never gonna be another smartphone. It's the product of our lives, the tech product. The whole personal computer industry was a prelude to the smartphone. The smartphone iPhone is the big one, I think, in the tech industry for probably a while in terms of a hardware product. But the innovation thing, I'll just point out, innovation is important.
Jason Snell [00:18:57]:
Iteration is important. Tim Cook's entry was at the point where the iPhone was primed to take off but hadn't taken off yet. But we can't assume it would have taken off the way it did if they hadn't executed it right. And the best example I can give you is on the day Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple, the iPhone was the iPhone 4, and now it's the iPhone 17 Pro. And there's been an awful lot of iteration and innovation in that product in the intervening 15 years. So like, I just— there are lots of issues. It's a complex legacy for Tim Cook. But I would say that he didn't— he was handed potentially a world-changing product and he didn't blow it.
Jason Snell [00:19:39]:
And that is not a gimme.
Christina Warren [00:19:41]:
No.
Leo Laporte [00:19:41]:
No. In fact, you could say, not to bring Microsoft back into the conversation.
Christina Warren [00:19:46]:
Do it.
Leo Laporte [00:19:47]:
But what happened with the Microsoft phone, the Windows Phone, compared to what happened with the iPhone, same era. What Tim Cook did was shepherd the iPhone by bringing, you know, doing his thing in China. He's a great operations guy. And I mean, look at the failure of Windows Phone. Arguably not because of technology, but because of operations. Go ahead, Christina.
Christina Warren [00:20:09]:
No, I mean, well, we, we could spend a whole— we don't need to talk about all the failures of Windows on mobile.
Leo Laporte [00:20:15]:
No, but I'm just saying it could have gone that way, honestly.
Christina Warren [00:20:19]:
I mean, it could have. I, I tend to think that by the time Tim Cook was in like chief operating officer, they were in a really good spot. And I think to Jason's point, he absolutely needs to be committed for— it was not a guarantee that it was going to continue to be as successful as it was, right? Like, we have to acknowledge that he was set up in, um, about as well as you could potentially be set up. But that also means that you could have a drop-off too, right? So I think that like the thing when I look back at Tim Cook is, is the consistency and that can be positive and negative. And, uh, I think in some ways, you know, uh, do you get the same level of like product innovation? No, but also to Jason's point, you literally have one of the products of our lifetimes across categories. You're not going to have another one. Um, and, and, and that would be, I think, true even if Steve Steve Jobs had remained able to be CEO. But, um, when you look at, I guess, like what his, uh, consistency did was that it allowed Apple to grow into these markets and be reliable and become the burgeoning company that it was on the cusp of being when he took over as CEO, right? There had already been, you know, because of the iMac, because of the iPod, especially because of the, the, uh, iPhone.
Christina Warren [00:21:35]:
The company was on a turnaround. But I think that if you hadn't had somebody who was able to come in and be a consistent leadership force who was not trying to change everything, was not trying to take over, was just basically trying to keep the ship steady, things could have gone in a very different direction. And so I think he should be commended for that. And I also think that one of the exciting things about having someone new in, someone who's been around for a long time, is that he's going to be able to offer a different perspective. And yes, he's been an executive, but he's been in a different part of the business. He's not been as focused on the the day-to-day stuff, the operations, which has always been Tim Cook's milieu. And as Jason said, he was, I think, very smart to, you know, delegate many of the other tasks to other members of his team. And I think that when the breakdown, whatever happened with Jony Ive's time at Apple, when that changed, there was a palpable loss, I think, across kind of the hardware and the software in the mid-2010s.
Christina Warren [00:22:32]:
But that notwithstanding, I mean, you know, he's a very consistent force, was able to push things through, was able to, I think, keep the culture in place where people still wanted to work at Apple and they were still putting out good products. And so I, I think that being slow and steady and being reliable is not something to be dismissed. I think it's actually quite incredible. Like, when I, when I look at, you know, great, you know, I guess like post-founder CEOs, the 2 names that have always kind of come to my mind have been, uh, Bob Iger, especially his first turn at Disney. I think the second term gets more complicated. And Tim Cook. And It's unquestionable that if you are to compare the two, again, because the first way that Bob Iger left when he wasn't ready to leave and all the complications there, they were similar in the sense that it was able to kind of keep things steady so that the company and more importantly, the employees were able to continue to put out what they wanted to do without necessarily interfering in the way and letting the politics evolve it. And I'm sure so much of that existed, but we didn't see that.
Christina Warren [00:23:30]:
What we saw was— We got to get iterations and we got new iPhones every year and we did get new products. We got, you know, um, AirPods, we got, we got a Vision Pro.
Leo Laporte [00:23:39]:
We got an Apple Watch.
Christina Warren [00:23:40]:
We got an Apple Watch.
Leo Laporte [00:23:41]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:23:41]:
You know, and, and so we, we continue to, to see things. I mean, I think, you know, obviously it's, it's not going to be anywhere near the same level of the, uh, iPhone, but I mean, AirPods are one of those great category kind of shifters. Apple Watch too, for that matter, right? Like you basically, uh, take, you know, something that could have been kind of an also-ran accessory and you completely dominate the market. Even by people who aren't— people will buy an iPhone if they want to have an Apple Watch. People who aren't even iPhone users wear AirPods. So I feel like his legacy, yeah, it can be more complicated, but it's very strong. And it doesn't have to necessarily— everybody doesn't need to be the innovation. He was set up in a really good spot to succeed, but he did succeed.
Christina Warren [00:24:25]:
He nailed it. And that's to be, I think, applauded because— That doesn't always happen. And we've seen many other companies who've struggled with that, especially during that transition period when you lose a founding executive and when you pass the reins on to someone else.
Andy Ihnatko [00:24:39]:
Good point.
Christina Warren [00:24:39]:
I mean, you know, Steve Ballmer had been at Microsoft basically from the beginning. So that was a slightly different situation, I think, than even, uh, you know, kind of Tim Cook coming in. But the fact that he was able to keep that steady is not a guarantee. And we've seen so many companies, so many companies that Apple was smaller than, and then eclipsed, who they succeeded.
Leo Laporte [00:25:00]:
There's no question Tim Cook is leaving behind a solid foundation for John Ternus. And really, this conversation might be very different in a year or 2, depending what happens in the next couple of years. Ternus is taking over at a fascinating time for Apple as the world turns to AI. And Apple, funny story in The Information this weekend saying Apple stumbled into this AI thing. And to some degree, I think it did, although to their credit, they'd been preparing for this with the iPhone for many years. And so they had Apple Silicon, which is a very good chip, as it turns out, for AI. Not exactly an accident. The iPhone had AI all along, machine learning all along.
Leo Laporte [00:25:46]:
The information story showed though that it's going to be very hard to get these new Macs because, oh look, OpenAI is buying as many as they can for training. And I bet you it's not just OpenAI.
Jason Snell [00:25:59]:
Sure. Yeah, well, it is, it is funny. I got asked— so I was on, uh, BBC last night. Not to brag, this— sorry, I literally were watching TV and I turned to my wife and I say, sorry honey, I gotta go talk to the BBC now.
Leo Laporte [00:26:11]:
You just call it the beef now that you're a regular.
Jason Snell [00:26:13]:
You know, as you do. But that was one of the questions is obviously about AI and the challenges turnists will face with AI. And it's really weird, right? I know we've covered it here every week. That's why MacBreak Weekly listeners and viewers are so well informed about this. But like, it's a real mixed bag. Like if the narrative is Apple blew it on AI, it's like yes and no. They blew it on one kind of AI, which is like anticipating LLMs and integrating them better into their operating systems. And they, this fall are going to be in the game finally.
Jason Snell [00:26:45]:
Not caught up, but in the game. They tried to build their own models and realized maybe they didn't need to do that, which I think was actually, as it turns out, they probably didn't need to do that. But they have other areas where they're really strong, not just their chip development, where they've spent a lot of time working on these AI-optimized chips. And we hear that the M7 is coming with even more AI optimizations. They happened on, people found Mac Minis and were like, hey, this is actually pretty good for local AI. And so they're pressing their advantage there. And, um, and so they've got, uh, I mean, their mobile hardware skills, right? I, I still believe that a lot of the future AI devices, like what OpenAI is trying to do, are gonna either be that super smart thing that's in your pocket, your smartphone, they're gonna be tied to that. Apple is a big player there.
Jason Snell [00:27:31]:
Or they're gonna be little things that you wear that will connect to you in various ways and connect to your agents. The opportunity for Apple's good at building that hardware, right? Apple's really good at building AirPods, right? For example, consider Apple Watch fashion hardware. Yeah, exactly. So like, yes, they don't— I mean, and so it's like, did they plan for it? Well, probably not as well as they should have. Are they actually, as it turns out, pretty well positioned anyway? Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:27:55]:
And I'm going to predict as soon as people get iOS 27 and the new iPhones in their pockets, they're going to forget the nightmare of 2 years ago when Apple over announced Siri AI works. It works. As long as it works. Dictation suddenly is good. That's the front-facing thing that people are most experiencing with Siri. I, I, I—
Jason Snell [00:28:13]:
and the world knowledge queries. If you ask it a question, it gives you the right answer now. I mean, it's like, again, it's table stakes, I know, but when you're the platform owner and this is your default assistant, table stakes that you need to get the table stakes right. And, and they, they basically have. I'm sure there are going to be stories about things where it's gone wrong, but I, I've been using it all summer and it's fine. Like that. And again, I know that's a low bar, but like, it's important to— it's important to clear that bar, and they haven't cleared it for a while, and they're gonna finally have cleared it.
Leo Laporte [00:28:43]:
Majority of AI users, probably 95% right now, are simply using chatbots, using ChatGPT or something like that. This will, uh, be equivalent, and from their point of view, built into their iPhone and free. They will be I think all, all will be forgiven. I love this picture on your piece that you did on Six Colors of Tim at WWDC and all the people holding their iPhones up to take a picture of Tim with his hand on his heart, his farewell. And in a way, there's something very appropriate about these iPhones being that this was his greatest, greatest achievement.
Jason Snell [00:29:23]:
That was a great little moment. I was looking through my, again, my Archive of Tim Cook photos.
Leo Laporte [00:29:27]:
I love this picture.
Jason Snell [00:29:27]:
And this is a— this was just one that I happened to snap. And it's a great moment because first off, you don't see Apple executives with crowds anymore because they don't do live events in the same way they used to. But they did do a live intro before they played the video at WWDC. And we knew this was his— this was him saying goodbye. He did make a statement about that, that this was him, you know, this was his last WWDC and all that. We knew that. And then, yeah, to have all of those people with their phones out taking pictures of him, it was a, it was a great little moment.
Leo Laporte [00:29:57]:
What a great picture. You, you, that's the picture.
Andy Ihnatko [00:30:00]:
I was lucky.
Leo Laporte [00:30:00]:
Yeah. That's the picture.
Jason Snell [00:30:01]:
It's iPhone 17 Pro, baby.
Christina Warren [00:30:03]:
Yeah. But it, but also I love it because it encapsulates, and obviously, you know, it started before Tim Cook and it wasn't, you know, he, he, he wasn't CEO yet, but it, it encapsulates, I think, the last 2 decades of Apple in that photo, just by the notion of the fact that everybody has a camera out that happens to be their phone and it happens to be an iPhone. And this is just the default of what we do when we see people that we like and that we— memories that we want to capture. You know, you're at concerts, you see it all the time. There are some musicians who go phone-free because they don't want that experience. And so I love that photo for so many reasons. But it also just sort of encapsulates this perfect moment of where we are now, which is that, yeah, the expectation is that we are going to pull the phone out and we're going to take the photo because we're—
Andy Ihnatko [00:30:45]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:30:46]:
We are primarily, in many ways, seeing the world not through our eyes, but through the lens of our phone screens.
Leo Laporte [00:30:52]:
I tear up a little bit seeing that picture. Nice job, Jason. So the first thing— by the way, Ternus is keeping Tim Cook's executive assistant, but I think we're going to start seeing some shifts in the executive suite pretty quick.
Jason Snell [00:31:08]:
It's already happening. Luca Maestri is no longer in charge of Cafe Mac.
Christina Warren [00:31:11]:
What?
Jason Snell [00:31:12]:
Yeah, that was today. Luca Monastri is reduced to—
Leo Laporte [00:31:16]:
He's the CFO.
Jason Snell [00:31:17]:
He's the CFO still. Kevin Parekh is the CFO now, but he kept, he kept some parts of it.
Leo Laporte [00:31:24]:
I think maybe just for a—
Jason Snell [00:31:26]:
including, I think, the Cafe Max.
Leo Laporte [00:31:28]:
Uh, but now responsible for the menu, German said.
Jason Snell [00:31:31]:
Yeah, I wonder, is he just serving fries back there? Um, German said, uh, Mark German said that he was only coming in maybe one day a week and then actually The report today.
Christina Warren [00:31:40]:
Oh yeah, exactly.
Jason Snell [00:31:41]:
Yeah, I mean, the report today— well, I— Gerben in his story this week referred to it, and I love this, he referred to it as the Hotel California policy, which for those who do not remember '70s album-oriented rock, he's referring to how you— for the Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. And that's true of Apple executives, and they like it that way. Not only are a lot of those people lifers and super committed to Apple and basically have nothing else to do. They love Apple so much and they can't imagine life without paying attention to Apple. But it's a way to keep people around who have institutional memory while also allowing new people to step into those roles. So Maestri apparently is still going to have a, like, a very tenuous, nebulous dotted line that keeps him on the payroll. Phil Schiller, we heard this week according to Mark Gurman, and I think this has been confirmed in a couple other places, Phil Schiller is dropping His responsibilities that he kept even after he was no longer an SVP. He was in charge of the App Store and planning events.
Jason Snell [00:32:39]:
He's not going to be in charge of those anymore, but he's still going to be around as an Apple Fellow. Again, Hotel California, but in, in the best way of like, if anybody has any questions about what do we do here, how did this happen, you can tap the, the institutional knowledge base of these people who are no longer standing in your way of doing your job that you want to do now. I think it's actually, uh, pretty great. And I would say it says something about Apple because most executives at most companies would just say see ya and be out of there. But a lot of these executives kind of can't let go.
Andy Ihnatko [00:33:13]:
Yeah, not only that, but, uh, they, they are let go and the company is kind of relieved that they're going. They don't want them back. Whereas they've— so many— we have so many stories over the past 5 or 10 years as the top-level executives have started aging out of 90-hour work weeks. Say, look, I know you want to leave. Can we create a new role for you so that you can meet your grandchildren and actually contribute to Apple? Yeah, it's a two-way filter.
Leo Laporte [00:33:48]:
I will leave it to our audience, if they want to read all of the speculation in Mark's piece from his Sunday Power On newsletter because a lot of it's speculative things like, yeah, how long will it be before Johnny Shiroguchi leaves?
Jason Snell [00:34:00]:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it is a— I mean, there were— this is a moment of change and everybody knows. And I, I remember when this came out, I, I said, um, actually it was even before, it was when Alan Dye left, um, the designer. And I said, you know, there is clearly going to be a, an executive transition going on, a CEO transition. And just human nature, if you've been working for somebody for 15 years and they leave, and now you have a new boss who used to be one of your peers, it is a natural time to consider changing yourself as well.
Christina Warren [00:34:34]:
Absolutely.
Jason Snell [00:34:35]:
That's what's happening now.
Leo Laporte [00:34:36]:
One of the biggest things though that we, we do know, I think, is that Eddie Cue is kind of stepping up, that this is, this is good for Eddie Cue.
Jason Snell [00:34:45]:
He's not going anywhere.
Christina Warren [00:34:46]:
Yeah, he's still around.
Leo Laporte [00:34:48]:
Now he's 61, he's not a kid, But he's got, uh, uh, new duties. He's gonna take over from Phil Schiller's, uh, duties.
Jason Snell [00:34:57]:
Yep, he's taking the App Store back. He actually used to be in charge of the App Store, and they took it away from him and gave him to Phil, and Phil made a bunch of changes that were good. And now, uh, I guess, don't break it, Eddie, uh, they're giving it back to him. But he's a— he has boundless energy, and I think he's— yeah, I think at 61, he's like, I got— I mean, I don't know how much, but he may have a good 5 years left in him before he wants to retire. And I interviewed him a couple of years ago when they launched the Apple Sports app. I got— it's the first time I'd ever even met him. And it was a one-on-one interview, basically. And that guy's got— he's got so much energy.
Jason Snell [00:35:30]:
He's like super into it. He just— that's— it's Eddy Cue. So I guess he's— he's going to be a bigger bridge than many. I mean, because we've seen with Maestri and Jeff Williams and Tim Cook, obviously, and Phil Schiller, Um, and, and yeah, Gurman speculated about Greg Joswiak, who is also a lifer. Greg Joswiak used to be the product marketing manager for the, for the PowerBooks back in the '90s. Like, he's been there forever, right? That these, these people are gonna all probably be going. But I think, I feel like Eddy Cue as Mr. Services has got a good, you know, he's not— his departure doesn't feel imminent.
Jason Snell [00:36:05]:
It feels like he's gonna be there as, as, uh, John's trusted lieutenant, basically.
Leo Laporte [00:36:10]:
This is— we're reading the tea leaves now because these executive moves are really what's going to tell you, at least at first, what John Ternus's tenure—
Christina Warren [00:36:19]:
Yeah, well, yeah. And, and, and I think that the thing we say, like, it's good to say at first, right? Because as new executives come in and as new people are— new teams are met, there might be changes. And so it's possible, you know, someone like Eddie Cue, who I've interviewed a number of times when I was a journalist, and like Jason, like, he has so much energy and he's a great guy. I think he was one of like the, the You know, considered one of the creators of the original iTunes Music Store, and so his history with that stuff goes way back. I think he's a natural person to kind of be that bridge character. Now, will he stay in that position or not? I don't know. Right? That'll be that'll be up to you know John Turnus and the other execs to make those decisions. But I can see those things happening too, where if you're coming into a new position, you don't necessarily want to reset everything, and maybe you want to have people around who have the institutional knowledge, who more importantly have the trust.
Christina Warren [00:37:06]:
of the, of the, uh, you know, workforce behind you, and then you're gonna, you know, figure out what changes you wanna make. And, and I think that that's— this is the first time we've really kind of seen, I think, this happen on this big of a scale. Because from my memory, when Tim Cook took over, A, to what Jason had said earlier, you know, he had essentially kind of been the CEO. You know, he was been the interim CEO, and he'd kind of been the CEO for the previous couple of years while, while Steve Jobs was sick. But, but B, it always felt to me at least it took like a few years for it really— more than a few years, frankly, I think— for it to feel like it was Tim Cook's company. It felt like it was still based on what the, the processes and the culture and the things that Steve Jobs had created. And that can be a good thing, but that can also be limiting to you as a leader if you want to put your own mark on things. And so I think this is exciting because we get to see someone who has been around for a long time, who has been a lifer and has spent half his life at the company.
Christina Warren [00:38:03]:
But we're also going to be able to see what changes he wants to make and what changes are made as a result of that. And I don't recall anyway that happening quite to this level other than the ousting of Scott Forstall, at least in the Tim Cook era. That was obviously a really big moment. But other than that, it felt like, at least from what I was exposed to, like it was still, you know, same people in the same roles for quite some time. And so it'll be interesting to see what changes happen now.
Leo Laporte [00:38:37]:
How long, uh, is the Apple pipeline, Jason? Because I remember when Cook took over, for at least a few years people were saying, oh, that was Steve Jobs' product, that would— that was Steve Jobs.
Jason Snell [00:38:48]:
They all always say that. It's— it can be long, right?
Leo Laporte [00:38:50]:
They're all in process, they're all in flight in different You know, that's really the test, is the first product you could say this was under John Ternus's administration.
Jason Snell [00:39:00]:
The challenge here is, unlike Tim Cook, he was— the new hardware they released is going to be from John Ternus as CEO, and previously John Ternus as head of hardware.
Leo Laporte [00:39:10]:
So it was his all along.
Jason Snell [00:39:11]:
So he can— he can— and in fact, there— that whether it's true or not, I mean, that's the narrative, like the idea that the hard— the home hardware initiative that they're doing, that he was working really hard on the folding phone, like these are all Not wrong, right? Like, 'cause he was, he was the hardware guy, so he can't take credit necessarily for like software decisions, but he, he has been the hardware guy. So he is gonna be able to, I think, uh, have more ascribed to him rightfully. And I, I think that's probably fine. But yeah, you know, they probably have a really good idea about what products they're gonna release throughout 2028, uh, already, right? And have some designs for 2029. And the chip architecture is probably out to 2031 or something, right? Like they work way ahead with some of that stuff. So it, it's hard. I mean, there is no— we always want an author. There is no author.
Jason Snell [00:39:58]:
That's why Steve Jobs, right? You know, Steve Jobs was problematic in that he basically decided to be the author of everything.
Leo Laporte [00:40:06]:
I still blame Jony Ive as the author of a lot of mistakes that Apple made in that era.
Jason Snell [00:40:11]:
Well, I mean, that's okay. So I think one of the most— there are, there are a lot of complexities of the Tim Cook era. One of them I would say is he made the decision to stabilize because people were really worried about the future of Apple, legitimately thinking that Apple could not survive without Steve Jobs. And one of the decisions he made was to elevate Jony Ive and give Jony Ive anything he wanted in order to keep him because they needed to show, not really even for product reasons, they wanted to show Wall Street that some of somebody who would, would carry the torch, who had the magic, was going to stay at Apple. And that was Jony Ive. And you could argue that that sowed the seeds of kind of a disastrous 2010s decade where Jony maybe was even already burned out and kind of bored with making phones. And so he wanted to do cars. He wanted to make headsets or glasses.
Jason Snell [00:41:04]:
He wanted to, you know, he, he seemed— and you read interviews with him like he seemed kind of checked out. And then, and then delegating to his lieutenants who might have also been kind of like— also, he seemed to get into like really high fashion, pricey, expensive tastes, made a bunch of decisions that I think maybe Steve Jobs would have said, no, we're not going to do that. But there was no one to tell him no, and they kind of lost their way. But the original sin of that is Tim Cook sending a message to Wall Street that Apple wasn't going to go under because some of the magic remained. And I totally understand why he made that decision. It just, you know, it helped them in the short term and hurt them in the medium term, and they had to deal with that. At least that's my, my read on Jony Ive, is that he was a brilliant guy, but he had outstayed his time, and basically they backed up the money truck in order to keep Apple appearances, basically.
Andy Ihnatko [00:41:57]:
Yeah, it shows what happens when someone who is a brilliant, brilliant creative person gets itchy creative feet and is not allowed to leave the place where he's just bored, that's where you get things like the 2020 MacBook Pro and the Touch Bar— excuse me, the 2016 revision, which was one of the worst products Apple ever did.
Jason Snell [00:42:20]:
Awful.
Andy Ihnatko [00:42:21]:
But definitely had a point of view. It just wasn't the point of view of the user. Sometimes, it really is the best thing to let somebody go because This is just not the— you had them for the time in which their creative direction and your business needs were completely in sync. But again, at some point, the planets are no longer lined up and you're just in different orbits.
Leo Laporte [00:42:45]:
All right, we're gonna take a little break. Enough obsessing about the new CEO. I guess all you really need to know is his first post on X. Hello, hello, hello, John. We'll find out a little bit more actually a week from tomorrow because John, uh, well, this is all going to be pre-recorded, right? It's Apple. Yeah, deviate from that. So we won't really see John Ternus except in a video. If you go to— if you're lucky enough to have an invite, uh, you'll get to see him stride out on stage.
Leo Laporte [00:43:21]:
I think there is going to be some interest in what he says compared to Tim Cook's good morning. Hello! I don't know. He's got to come up with a catchphrase. But, you know, I think you could officially say the Ternus era begins not today, but a week from tomorrow.
Jason Snell [00:43:39]:
Sure.
Leo Laporte [00:43:40]:
And his first presentation. We'll talk a little bit about that and a lot more in just a little bit. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with Christina Warren, Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko. And you, so glad to have you. They're saying in the, in the Club Twit chat, there's nothing to say about John Ternus. Yes, but that's what we do here. We're obsessive. That's why we do the show.
Andy Ihnatko [00:44:04]:
I mean, can I just—
Jason Snell [00:44:06]:
also, I think we've proven there is a lot to say about John Ternus because we've said it.
Leo Laporte [00:44:10]:
We said it. We just said it on a half an hour of everything.
Andy Ihnatko [00:44:13]:
I mean, so the last thing I'd really like to say is that this is one of the many reasons why I, I don't want to be in his shoes. Oh, God, please. Because you've gone from being someone whose job is just to do his job, and now, on top of whatever bandwidth he has to find bandwidth for, if I say this, if I do this, if I try this, if I wear this, people are going to be analyzing it to find out how many billions of dollars is this going to cost the market cap. If he simply says, oh, wow, he's wearing a lot of pens in his pocket, does that mean that they're looking— is one of those housing a camera and they're testing out AI?
Leo Laporte [00:44:49]:
If I were going to give advice to John Ternus, and I'm sure that he has no interest in anything I might say, I would say, please don't pay too much attention to the stock market. Pay attention to the users.
Andy Ihnatko [00:44:59]:
Or analysts or us.
Jason Snell [00:45:01]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:45:01]:
I wouldn't even listen to the freaking analysts.
Jason Snell [00:45:04]:
And not yet.
Leo Laporte [00:45:05]:
I wouldn't listen to the pundits. Listen to the users. Listen to the users.
Andy Ihnatko [00:45:09]:
But that's— I'm sorry, you have to go to commercial. But that, that's why I, I opened up by saying that their most important product is their stock price. Because the fact that they are a $4.5 trillion company means that they don't necessarily have to listen to analysts. They don't necessarily have to listen to whatever the current whims of the marketplace are.
Christina Warren [00:45:27]:
That's true.
Andy Ihnatko [00:45:27]:
They don't even necessarily have to listen to governments if they don't really want to. The stock price is what gives them the power to do exactly what they want, almost— excuse me, nearly exactly what they want, with a level of freedom that is unmatched, pretty much, by anyone other than Nvidia, maybe.
Leo Laporte [00:45:46]:
Uh, so Apple has, uh, renewed their push for expedited discovery in the OpenAI trade secret lawsuit. They want federal court. They're afraid that OpenAI is deleting this stuff as fast as they can. Uh, Apple wants early document production, forensic imaging, and depositions within 30 to 50 days. Their concern is, they say, this is in the Apple filing, every day that passes without an injunction allows OpenAI to embed their knowledge of Apple's stolen information into their hardware development efforts, further damaging Apple and making it more difficult to unwind the harm.
Andy Ihnatko [00:46:31]:
Yeah, they also accused— they have more details about the depths The depths of OpenAI's thievery and the company's knowledge of it, trying to undermine any defense that, no, no, no, this was just one person who was doing things that were naughty. They claimed that they were actually taking schematics from, I think it was the Mac Mini, and actually using their own AI tools to probe them for information and underdogs. And then basically back and forth about, oh my goodness, they were learning We're learning so much just through our own OpenAI tools, basically trying to create the case that this is going up and down the chain pretty far, so that this was not done in a clean room where everyone else was isolated from knowledge.
Leo Laporte [00:47:12]:
Apple did a forensic analysis of Cheng Lu's MacBook and revealed what they say is shocking evidence. That was literally the term Apple used, which defendants, OpenAI, choose to ignore despite its availability, demonstrates why Apple urgently needs expedited discovery. The MacBook represents the very limited information defendants provided so far and shows Apple is not conducting fishing expeditions, but that these trade secrets are being used and evidence is being destroyed. By the way, at the same time as they're doing this, OpenAI turns out to be one of Apple's biggest customers. This really pissed me off. The information says that OpenAI is buying these new Mac Studios and Mac Minis by the thousands. So if you go to purchase one, no wonder it's slipped now until December if you order the new Mac Studio with 256 gigs. And of course, that means if you wanna hold off for the 512 gig version, which a lot, I think a lot of AI people are looking at as the holy grail for local AI.
Leo Laporte [00:48:13]:
I'm not sure that's true, by the way. I'm gonna wait and see what the reviews and people who actually get the 256 gig version say. But if you think that that's the holy grail, you're gonna have your finger on that button whenever in late October Apple might— and you're going to be competing against bots, Astra from OpenAI or something. They've got all the AI in the world trying to buy up all these Mac Studios. Christina, are you— what do you think? I mean, I guess Apple can't say no to OpenAI. This is—
Christina Warren [00:48:44]:
I mean, they could. I mean, look, it's good business. I mean, look, you make decisions, and when you want to sell in bulk to orders like this, you absolutely do have the opportunity to say, no, we're not going to completely sell all of our stock to one OpenAI customer, to, uh, to X, to Cursor.
Leo Laporte [00:49:01]:
You can't have our models because they said you're still— I mean, they already did that.
Christina Warren [00:49:05]:
Yeah, I mean, in Cursor, I, I do feel like this, that would be a different, a more difficult situation. I feel like if Apple were like, OpenAI can't buy our hardware, A, I think that that would probably not work out super well for Apple for a lot of reasons. B, I'm not sure that, that I feel like is, is potentially a different line than saying we're not going to let you continue a new business agreement, right? Right. Which is basically what the Cursor thing is saying. Like the Cursor deal, you can still use OpenAI models inside Cursor if you get a subscription directly through OpenAI, or if you're buying through OpenRouter, or if you're bringing your own API key. Basically, that deal is just saying OpenAI is saying we're not going to have a business relationship anymore where we offer a subsidized price to Cursor. to serve our model to their subscribers.
Leo Laporte [00:49:51]:
But they accused him of thievery.
Christina Warren [00:49:53]:
They did. But, but I'm just saying, the— but this is— but, but this is a— this is a different sort of— this is making a different business arrangement. I feel like it would be unprecedented. I'm sure that it has happened before, but I can't recall for a major consumer technology company to basically say, we are not going to sell our products to this company. And then how do you enforce that? Because on the one hand, I'm even going to contradict myself. On the one hand, yeah, you know, if a big order is coming in, who it's going to, and you can make decisions if you're going to go to retailers or if you're going to go to, um, you know, like enterprise types of things. On the other hand, usually these things don't go directly to Apple. They go through like a third party, like someone like Zones, who's—
Leo Laporte [00:50:31]:
Oh, really? Oh, that's how they do it. They don't buy them. They're not sitting on the Apple website.
Christina Warren [00:50:35]:
No, no, no, no. What happens actually is you buy them through a company like Zones where they are preconfigured with whatever MDM configuration the customer wants. And then when you get them, they come in a retail box. And when you open it up and you turn it on, it has the setup, which is, you know, basically this is my company's kind of set way to do things. So when you're buying like in the scale of like that many thousands or hundreds, I guess that's usually how it's customized. And then you do use a third party like Zones. And then I think there's another company too. So there would be ways where OpenAI could get the hardware if they—
Leo Laporte [00:51:12]:
Without anybody knowing it's them.
Jason Snell [00:51:14]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:51:14]:
Yeah. Right, exactly. Right. And so, you know, I think then it would just become a determination of what is our mix going to be to retail channels versus to, um, business channels, right? That, that's really what that would, to me, would, would come down to. But yeah, I mean, I, I, it is interesting, obviously, that they're in this scenario where obviously, uh, you know, um, Apple has filed the lawsuit. They want discovery. They want to have all of this done now. OpenAI also responded.
Christina Warren [00:51:43]:
They filed a response. I haven't had a chance to read through all of it and a number of different declarations from different parties who were named in this suit. And so, but the business still has to go on. It's not like OpenAI is going to be like, oh yeah, we're just not going to use Max anymore. I'm sure like every frontier lab, the And frankly, every tech company, the bog-standard computer that you give your engineers is a MacBook Pro, and then you have higher-end machines for people who need to do other tasks. But other than Google, where you have a choice between a MacBook Pro and a high-end Chromebook, I can't think of many major companies where— tech companies, FAANGs anyway— where the standard-issue engineer laptop is not a Mac of some sort.
Leo Laporte [00:52:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Wild that they would be buying racks and racks of Mac Studios for training. That's kind of a shock.
Christina Warren [00:52:35]:
Yeah, it is. I mean, and I wonder what that says about if this is for them doing some like, uh, you know, RT stuff. This is, this is for other types of investigations or what, because I can't imagine, obviously they're not going to be serving this sort of, you know, serving anything from this. And so I imagine it's just their R&D stuff.
Leo Laporte [00:52:52]:
That was the sense I got from the information story. It's for, it's for, uh, what they call RT or reinforcement training at the end.
Christina Warren [00:52:58]:
Yeah. And honestly, that might be as much about even less about like how powerful is Apple Silicon, which to be clear, I think it is very powerful and more about we can more easily get these machines in volume than we can get GPUs from NVIDIA or for someone else. Right. Like honestly, it might come down to that, which is we want to be able to do these sorts of things outside of our data centers. The most effective way for us to do that is to be able to go, who is the company that has the biggest deal with TSMC. That's going to be Apple. Let's buy as many of these things as we can. Let's, let's go to every avenue we can to, to buy them out and, and test them and see, and then go from there.
Leo Laporte [00:53:37]:
There might be, uh, a light at the end of the tunnel on this Armageddon story. China's CXMT, which we— you may remember we said Apple was going to try to get the Commerce Department to allow them They're not strictly speaking forbidden, but they, they don't want to go around the White House to allow them to buy these Chinese chips for use in Chinese versions of the iPhone and the Mac. And now CXMT is suing the US Commerce Department saying, you know, you can't block us. We don't have anything to do with the Chinese military. That's a bogus block. And then the information says they have made a breakthrough in advanced memory chips. They actually have some new technology for high-bandwidth memory that I think people may even be looking for. Apple gets its memory from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, as does most of the world.
Leo Laporte [00:54:39]:
But CXMT says, we want some of that business. This is going to be— I don't think Ramageddon is a given. So people who are saying, I'm gonna run out and get those Mac Studios while I can, which I, by the way, was thinking about, I decided to hold off. Actually, my checkbook decided to hold off. It said, ah! Might benefit by not being in such a hurry. I don't know. We shall see.
Andy Ihnatko [00:55:10]:
Yeah, that would probably only affect China. which is good enough for Apple. Trump is meeting with Xi in a visit sometime this month, and that could be something that's on the table. It's a bargaining chip. Most supply analysts are saying that RAM is sold out through 2027. We can definitely expect to feel a pinch at least through then. But even if there's a sign-off on this from the White House, there's still going to be a whole lot of political blowback on it. There's bipartisan resistance to Apple doing this deal.
Andy Ihnatko [00:55:49]:
Yes, the Senate. As you said, there is a forbidden list in which American businesses cannot do business with these foreign companies under any circumstances. This company is not on that list. They're just simply on the Department of Defense's naughty list, so to speak, because their position is that if you're doing business with this chip supplier, you're essentially giving money directly to the Chinese military. That's why they don't like that. But again, That's why they'll have to basically accept that we're going to blow a bunch of political capital if we do this deal, even if it doesn't come directly from the White House. Maybe over the course of the next year, they're going to decide that, OK, that's why we have political capital to begin with. If you don't have it, you can't spend it, and we need that RAM.
Leo Laporte [00:56:34]:
Apple is doing a good thing for people who ordered M5 Pros. They're actually upgrading them for free. They're saying, oh, you bought the M5, and then we I don't know what the time window is within the last few weeks. Well, I guess it has to be somebody who hasn't received it yet.
Christina Warren [00:56:51]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:56:52]:
It hasn't shipped yet.
Christina Warren [00:56:53]:
It hasn't shipped.
Leo Laporte [00:56:53]:
Since it hasn't shipped yet, we're going to give you the M6 instead.
Christina Warren [00:56:57]:
And honestly, if it hasn't shipped, it might even be as much as we have run out and we don't have the allocation and we are going to prioritize allocating you from the new stuff that we do have. That's what would make sense to me in that case. I'm glad they're doing that. I think it's good. I, I, I will absolutely— I will say this, if I was somebody who like got one in July, you know, assuming you could get one, maybe you're a little bit annoyed. But the— but also in fairness, the stock has been— they've been out of stock for a long time. You haven't— you have not even been able to order the Studios from the website for months now. So I, I think that this is, um, a good way to basically say, well, you know, thanks for keeping, um, letting us keep your money warm, I guess.
Andy Ihnatko [00:57:40]:
Thanks for the float. Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:57:41]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:57:43]:
Uh, it was, it was really kind of an interesting, uh, story in the, uh, the information. I mentioned it on Sunday just as Apple stumbled into this AI success, but I missed the paragraph that said that OpenAI is buying these things by the thousands. Uh, good, good on Apple. They're well positioned. All right, we got a big event coming up. We're going to talk about that next. You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Christina, Andy, Jason, great to have you.
Leo Laporte [00:58:12]:
Uh, anybody get an invite? Uh, September 9th, it's now official.
Jason Snell [00:58:16]:
I got invited to watch it on the internet. That's very nice with a little calendar link. You add it to your calendar and you don't forget that there's an Apple event on September 9th.
Leo Laporte [00:58:25]:
Yeah, actually, I don't even know if I got that email.
Jason Snell [00:58:27]:
I've got— no, you're not on that list.
Leo Laporte [00:58:29]:
I don't even get that email. You're not even allowed to watch it, Laporte.
Jason Snell [00:58:34]:
Well, you can watch it, but you have to stumble into it.
Christina Warren [00:58:37]:
Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have to go to apple.com and hope that it loads for you.
Leo Laporte [00:58:41]:
We will. Micah and I will watch it, but we won't watch it in public. We'll only watch it in our club because Apple is very— well, they've threatened to take our YouTube channel down if we dare stream it. So we don't. That's— if you want to watch it, Watch it. If you want to watch it with our commentary along with us, join the club. That's all I, all I have to say about that. And Apple's lawyers, I hope you're not listening.
Leo Laporte [00:59:07]:
Surprise and Shine is the name. Is this a reference to the fact that it's going to be early in the morning?
Jason Snell [00:59:15]:
It's just the usual 10 AM Pacific.
Leo Laporte [00:59:18]:
It's not a— it's not an— it's not an invite that really says a lot, is it?
Jason Snell [00:59:22]:
Well, that's not the goal.
Leo Laporte [00:59:24]:
We know what it is, right?
Andy Ihnatko [00:59:27]:
I think, I think at this point Apple at some point was amused by how much tea reading that people used to do and why they decided. And now they're like as bored as almost anybody. Okay, you know what, we, we, we put that little halo around the Apple because we have a Photoshop plugin, it looked awesome, and we decided to publish it. If you want to think that that's because like we're actually do— we're actually promoting— it looks like the corona around the sun at high altitude, and therefore, we're putting new satellite features into pretty much everything. Go nuts! You have to write about something. You have to post something on Reddit. But, it's hard to invest too much into that kind of speculation.
Leo Laporte [01:00:04]:
Yeah. Everybody will be watching with interest as Apple announces— well, we know what they're going to announce. The new iPhones, obviously. iOS 27. They'll probably talk about macOS Golden Gate. Right.
Jason Snell [01:00:19]:
Sure.
Leo Laporte [01:00:20]:
That comes out at the same time. Will they announce the watch, the new watch? They were expecting a new watch.
Jason Snell [01:00:24]:
Yeah. No, the real question I think is, will there be something beyond Apple Watch and iPhone? Because there's probably time for it. There's gonna be, I mean, obviously they're gonna have to roll out that folding phone. That is gonna be a big extra segment, but they, at the same time, they're not rolling out the base model iPhone 18, uh, 18 Plus, Air 2, any of those. Those are coming in the spring, everybody assumes. So What else might they do? I think the based on Mark Gurman's reporting, like they've got a bunch of home related stuff ready to go. And so I think the question is, is this where where John Ternus rolls out the Apple's getting into the smart home in a bigger way narrative, or is it a little more restrained? I think either honestly, I think either way there's going to be almost certainly new HomePods, maybe new AirPods, new Apple TV hardware, which you know we finally right Christina finally they'll do that finally all. All because they want to talk about Siri AI, because Siri AI is such a huge feature that they're launching this fall.
Jason Snell [01:01:23]:
And not only do the phones have it, but presumably these new pieces of hardware will be better at it. And yeah, it would be really nice as all the other TV boxes raise their prices too, to have a new Apple TV box, right, Kristin?
Christina Warren [01:01:33]:
I was just going to bring that up. I was just going to bring that up. I was going to say, you know, fair is fair. If I'm going to kvick about like the ridiculous like price increase on the Apple TV, and I still stand by this, do not buy an Apple TV until next week and then hopefully we'll see a new one. Fair is fair. Google raised the price of the, the Google TV streamer 50%. It's now $150. What?
Leo Laporte [01:01:55]:
No.
Christina Warren [01:01:56]:
The, the, the Fire TV went up in price. What? Like that? No. You pay $25 for a Fire TV. Like you, you pay $25 for a Fire TV Stick on, on Prime Day. And you know that it's adware-infested garbage. And that's fine. And, and you don't care because you're using it either for, you know, a, a family member who who already has—
Andy Ihnatko [01:02:16]:
Who you don't like very much.
Christina Warren [01:02:18]:
Well, no, it's not a matter of that. It's that their own TV is going to have the same amount of spyware anyway. So you might as well have a user interface that is updatable and that they can access, right? So it's either that or, you know, you're me and you want something to be able to use in your hotel rather than the terrible, you know, hotel, you know, fake Netflix thing or whatever that they've got.
Andy Ihnatko [01:02:39]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:02:39]:
So, you know—
Leo Laporte [01:02:39]:
Do you have that in your go bag? Do you have the little Fire TV in the— Yes. Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:02:42]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:02:42]:
Genuinely, I have a Fire TV Stick, and I actually have a Google TV thing too. I was joking online today. I was like, you know, my— I have a Kindle that I travel with too. All these things have gone up in price. I'm like, you know, my useless travel gadgets have suddenly appreciated in value. It's absolutely ridiculous. But yeah, I mean, look, I think that this is a good moment. And what makes me angry about the Google TV thing the same way it made me mad with the Apple TV initial price raise is it's like, it's not new hardware.
Christina Warren [01:03:07]:
It's 2 years old. Why are you doing this? All you're— to me, all you're doing is basically shouting from the rooftops to people, do not buy this device. Uh, but if we could get as part of the larger home narrative— and I think Jason's right, I don't think it matters how big it is. I think whether it's a big splash or even just like kind of a, you know, smaller entry, it's going to be good because now we finally have a Siri that works. And I personally, as much as I'm going to be annoyed by it, I will be throwing $250 towards a new Apple TV, and I will only be slightly annoyed.
Leo Laporte [01:03:43]:
Uh, how about the folding phone? You're gonna buy that one?
Christina Warren [01:03:46]:
Yeah, well, okay, yeah, I think so. It's gonna come down to the pricing. I think, I think what I've kind of— I think what I'm going to do this year is I'm not going to do the Klarna stuff for a number of reasons. One, apparently if you have really good credit, you are not somebody that Klarna wants to extend loans to. So—
Leo Laporte [01:04:06]:
Oh, that's interesting.
Jason Snell [01:04:06]:
If you're—
Leo Laporte [01:04:07]:
wait a minute, wait a minute. If your credit's good, right?
Christina Warren [01:04:11]:
If it's too good, yeah, they don't like that.
Jason Snell [01:04:13]:
They can't, they can't make predatory loans against you.
Christina Warren [01:04:16]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:04:17]:
Wait, I'm confused. Don't they want you to pay it back?
Christina Warren [01:04:20]:
No, no, no. They want you to be late so that they can make more interest, right? That's, that's the whole point. That's why these things are predatory. God, that's horrible. It is. And, and who, who's the Klarna competitor? Affirm. I remember once at one point, and I have, you know, my credit score is 820, so it's pretty good. And I was at one point, this was like during the pandemic, I was looking at potentially getting my parents a Peloton, and they only used Affirm or something.
Christina Warren [01:04:45]:
And I wanted to see, oh, can I just, you know, pay this over 12 months? And they were like, no, we won't, we won't extend this loan to you. I was like, okay, well, I, A, I don't necessarily know that they want the Peloton anyway. B, I have other credit cards that would let me finance this interest-free if I wanted to, or C, I could just pay for it. It'd be fine. So I think for— I don't want to mess with the, are you going to be allowed to buy this over this period of time thing. So I think what I will more than likely do is just keep my iPhone 17 Pro Max, pay off the loan that I started on that last year because I've just always traded my phone in. And then I'm going to more than likely just like I might not even use the Apple Card. I might— I'm gonna just see basically what card is gonna give me the best either points or interest-free thing or whatever, um, and then just, you know, get, get the Fold and consider it a 1-year experiment.
Christina Warren [01:05:37]:
And if I, if I want to keep it, great. If I want to trade it in, you know, next year, um, hope that I can get a good trade-in value with that.
Leo Laporte [01:05:45]:
So I'm just, as an experiment, gonna see if I can buy— because what a lot of people have said is, well, what if you just You could just bought the Mac Studio with the lease and then it'd be like a couple hundred bucks a month.
Christina Warren [01:06:00]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:06:00]:
And then you would be basically replacing your $200 a month Cloud Mac subscription with a local machine, right? So let me see if I can get, I wonder if I can get, oh, I don't have to sign in and everything. I won't do that. I'm gonna try to get a loan.
Christina Warren [01:06:16]:
Yeah, I was gonna say, you're gonna sign in.
Leo Laporte [01:06:17]:
For an $11,000 machine. That's interest-free though, right?
Christina Warren [01:06:20]:
Well, yeah, it's, well, it's, It's interest-free, and the way that they do it is that it is not spread evenly. So at the end of your term, you will owe more if you want to keep it, which is the whole point, because the whole point is that they would say, oh, we'll just continue to keep your loan open and we'll just give you a new computer, which, you know, depending on your use case, could be great.
Leo Laporte [01:06:40]:
It's like a car lease, right? There's a balloon payment at the end.
Christina Warren [01:06:42]:
Exactly. It is like a car lease. And I think that for most people, I think that if you know what you're getting into with that, I don't have any problem with that at all. You just need to know what you're getting into and be prepared for that balloon payment.
Leo Laporte [01:06:52]:
Make sure you can get it.
Christina Warren [01:06:53]:
You can get it. But yeah, for something like $11,000, I've seen a number of just— this is anecdotal, I haven't tried this myself and I'm not really interested in trying it myself— where if you haven't built up credit history with Klarna, they are not going to give you $10,000, $11,000 because you've never purchased anything with them before.
Andy Ihnatko [01:07:11]:
Oh, wow.
Christina Warren [01:07:11]:
And in my mind, I'm like, well, why would I ever use Klarna? I have American Express, I get Membership Rewards points, I have, you know, Chase, I have, uh, like, you know, Citi. Like, there are any number of people that I could get way better rewards from, um, than, than going through your Klarna thing. If I, if I need to finance something, I can do it. So I am— but obviously I'm not the target customer.
Leo Laporte [01:07:34]:
Now I'm gonna stop because I— continuing to ship, I don't want to actually buy it. I just want to see if they would let me lease it. If I go through with this, am I actually going to say I'm buying it?
Christina Warren [01:07:46]:
No, I think you'd have to actually like go to the, the financing site. Yeah, it would do something probably on Apple's side. I think— I, I don't know how this works. I would imagine that it's like— because I've done this before on—
Leo Laporte [01:07:58]:
Oh yeah, here it is. Continue to application.
Christina Warren [01:08:00]:
Right, you have to apply. So I— because I've done this before. If you buy like a phone through like a carrier subsidy thing through apple.com, you have to basically apply and say, okay, can I, you know, get this at this, um, you know, rate?
Leo Laporte [01:08:13]:
I'm just gonna stop here because I don't want to accidentally buy it.
Christina Warren [01:08:15]:
But don't accidentally buy it. And but, but I, but I, but I did want to point out people who are—
Leo Laporte [01:08:19]:
But that's an interesting point. And in fact, some of our club members are saying, yeah, I couldn't get a loan even though my credit's good, right? Because that's a weird thing. I didn't even know that.
Christina Warren [01:08:28]:
Yeah, because again, they're, they're looking for your history with Klarna, and then they're also— in some ways, it's a, it's a detriment that you pay your, your bill off every month. You are not the customer that they want. And that's how these things work, and that's why they make money, and that's why they're insidious. And that's why I understand why companies like Apple make partnerships here, but I also have to, you know, like, be a little bit disgusted because I, I don't like these types of programs.
Leo Laporte [01:08:53]:
I think if the iPhone Ultra, or whatever they call the folding phone, it's unknown, uh, is over $2,000, there'll be more than a few people using that, uh, Klarna.
Christina Warren [01:09:02]:
Oh yeah, without a doubt. Well, especially since it's replaced what their old upgrade program was. Now you can still finance with an Apple Card, and I don't know, and I haven't checked with this, my Ameri— my, um, my Prime business card just switched from American Express to US Bank or some garbage. I don't know. I'm not happy about that, but it's fine. I know that the Apple Card is supposed to be moving from— to Chase, I believe, right? And I don't know— from Goldman Sachs to Chase. I don't know when that's happening. That would be obviously a good— probably the best way is that if you could space that out over— I think they let you do 12 months and I mean, if Apple wanted to, uh, or Chase wanted to, I guess, as maybe part of the partnership, they could potentially say, oh, we'll let you do 24 months or something.
Christina Warren [01:09:50]:
That would be, in my mind, better. But there are going to be lots of people who don't have an Apple Card.
Leo Laporte [01:09:56]:
Um, and I think it's a year instead of, uh, 2 years.
Christina Warren [01:10:00]:
It is, it's a year. And that's why I said it would be—
Leo Laporte [01:10:02]:
it's $1,000 a month instead of $200 a month. But then you own it at the end.
Christina Warren [01:10:06]:
But then you own it at the end. Exactly. And that, that is the difference. But there are people who might not want to to put that much on their Apple Card or might not have that credit limit, that sort of spend.
Jason Snell [01:10:14]:
Right.
Christina Warren [01:10:14]:
There are all kinds of situations. But yeah, I imagine that even more than the Fold, what I think is that if they're going to be raising the price on the Pro models this year, which we expect that they will, and we don't know what that will be, since the Pro and the Pro Max are their best sellers, that is going to potentially put a segment of people who, if they can't get a deal through their carrier— and that's the other thing to keep in mind too, is that the carriers also do financing, and oftentimes that's That's where people can get the best deals. You get the best trade-ins. They will finance for you over a 3-year period of time. They will tie you obviously to the carrier, but most people don't really switch carriers anyway. And so there will be a number of options, I think, for people to be able to get a phone. I am curious to see what types of financing things and terms they do for the Fold at Verizon, at AT&T, at T-Mobile. I imagine it will be similar to what they do for the Z Fold 8.
Christina Warren [01:11:09]:
But they might make other options because they're going to sell so many more iPhones of whatever variety it is than any single Android device.
Leo Laporte [01:11:23]:
You going to buy one, Andy?
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:26]:
Probably not. As a matter of fact, I've got— He's got a phone. I just got a phone.
Leo Laporte [01:11:32]:
You got your new Pixel.
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:33]:
Yes. I got my new Pixel 11.
Christina Warren [01:11:35]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:11:36]:
I like it quite a lot. I'll be writing a lot more about it over the course of the week. The thing is, I've got a piece that's ready to go. I'm just waiting for the actual retail price of the iFold. If I was making, let's say, 3 times more money, as much money as I am right now, I might take a gamble on it. But then, Unfortunately, it'll probably be so expensive that I have to filter it against the idea of every single time that I'm about to make what I might consider an enthusiastic purchase, where I'm just excited about owning this thing, I always think about, okay, well, let's assume that this is too— let's say it costs $2,200. Let's say that that's a $2,200 budget to enhance my mobile computing. What would I spend it on? And so I have a piece, I've got a spreadsheet all ready to go, just waiting to see what I have to delete to get it under the price range.
Andy Ihnatko [01:12:34]:
And that's, I think, what I— unless you have the sort of income where you can be enthusiastic like that, or this is exactly going to fill a hole that you've sensed in your daily life, your productivity for a number of years, it's always a good idea to step back. And even if you're considering a $600 original price MacBook Neo, What can you spend for $600? What are you trying to achieve with this purchase, and how can you most effectively spend that money? The Apple folding phone is going to be really exciting because Apple customers, historically, have money for enthusiastic purchases. I'm not saying it's wasteful. I'm saying, gee, I just like this idea. I want it. I want to see how well works, and thank God I can afford it. This is a really good opportunity to test out the idea of a folding phone with a bunch of consumers that have never really had access to it before. It doesn't have to be budget, it doesn't have to be niche, it doesn't have to be an emerging thing.
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:36]:
This is going to be a folding phone made by a company that knows how to make these damn things and make them extremely well.
Leo Laporte [01:13:41]:
3 things we know we won't see a week from Wednesday: an iPhone 18 Nothing, an iPhone 18 Yeah. E, or whatever they call it, or SE, or whatever they call it, and the iPhone Air 2. Those, we expect anyway, will be in the spring, right?
Andy Ihnatko [01:13:57]:
Yeah, they're splitting up their launches, basically. Instead of having that huge, huge spike of sales in September, instead of having to source all of that stuff and all the manufacturing hit in September, they're hoping for a double spike motif.
Leo Laporte [01:14:12]:
I have to say, if they do, as some rumors say, a double Dark Cherry iPhone 18 Pro Max. That's pretty tempting. I bought the orange last year.
Andy Ihnatko [01:14:22]:
Don't fear the '70s. Call it burgundy. It's burgundy like a Cadillac from the 1970s.
Leo Laporte [01:14:27]:
Burgundy is not as good as Dark Cherry.
Andy Ihnatko [01:14:29]:
No, no, no.
Leo Laporte [01:14:30]:
But you're right, it's the same color.
Christina Warren [01:14:31]:
It is the same color. No, or wine, right? Like, I honestly would love— I would love— I would love that color. Um, but I, I, I, I am— I have kind of told myself this, like, I'm not buying 2 phones. No, I, I will get the Fold, but I will— I'm going to keep my, my Pro.
Jason Snell [01:14:45]:
This is your conscience. You will not buy a second phone.
Christina Warren [01:14:50]:
Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. I know I need to be held accountable on this because I can't buy 2 iPhones. I just—
Andy Ihnatko [01:14:55]:
Can I say parenthetically that marketing, consumer marketing has basically demonstrated that based on Samsung's, Samsung's foldable phones, most people actually trade in whatever phone they have to buy the Fold. It's not as though they've got so much money to spend that they can have a second special phone. They really want to get that $800 or $900 or $1,000 off. So it's actually, in a sense, affordable because now they're kind of spent buying a high-end regular phone as opposed to a super luxury, oh my god, I can't believe I'm spending $2,300 for a phone sort of product.
Leo Laporte [01:15:26]:
No, Christine, why are you keeping your, your iPhone?
Christina Warren [01:15:29]:
Because the rumors are is that the camera is not going to be great. There's not gonna be telephoto. And, and I'm, I'm, this is just the reports that, that, that Gurman and others have said. And, and I also just physics, I don't think they're going to be able to get the, at least in this generation, the, the cameras, the optics, the same way that you would have in the Pro. If I'm wrong on this, then I'm wrong on this. But if that's the case, then I'm still going to want to have a good phone that I can take out with me, you know, to do my day-to-day things. And, uh, you know, if I'm at concerts, if I'm, you know, uh, you know, sightseeing on vacation, whatever the case may be, I'm going to want to have that really good camera. And I'm sure that the 18 will be— they will tell me how much better it is than the 17.
Christina Warren [01:16:09]:
I thank you for being my conscience, Jason. I do not need to buy 2 phones. I do not. I don't need it. Right. And so if I'm going to buy a new phone, it's going to be the Fold and it'll then be secondary. And the reason I think that Apple has thought about this a little bit is that, to be clear, Andy is right. Most people are not going to do that.
Christina Warren [01:16:27]:
That is a dumb thing to do. You do not need 2 phones. But they have a new feature in the latest version of iOS where you can— it looks like you can share your number between 2 devices. And in that instance, then it's like, OK, so I could have my good camera phone out when I go to a concert and I maybe want to take good photos and also, let's be honest, not risk breaking my device. And if it's just day-to-day stuff at work, around the neighborhood, whatever, I can have my foldable, which will be, you know, like my little mini iPad or whatever. And we'll see what the use cases are. I think most people won't do that, but there will be a not, especially for Apple, you know, there will be some sort of audience where you'll be like, no, I'm going to keep my older Pro. Maybe it's not a 17, maybe it's a 16 or a 15.
Christina Warren [01:17:16]:
And I want to keep that around, but I'm going to go ahead and try out this new thing too, to see if it works for me.
Leo Laporte [01:17:23]:
I'm doing the same thing because I'm going to be going on a big trip in October. I want to have a good camera in my pocket, and I just don't trust that the folding phone will have a good enough—
Andy Ihnatko [01:17:33]:
It's going to be interesting to see how Apple positions it. Remember when they did the iPhone Air and other models to say, oh no, no, it's like a— it's a, it's a virtual second lens, it's a virtual second sensor. And they— the quality was, uh, it didn't— it was a ridiculous claim, but the quality was such that, you know what, a lot of people who would have dismissed a single-lens, single-sensor camera, when they see the pictures that are coming out of it, think that if this was the only reason why I didn't want to buy this phone, maybe I should at least consider it. Hey, I can return it in 2 weeks if I— if it really doesn't turn out well. And there's— I'm sure that there are— I'm sure that there's a huge proportion of people that are just like you, Christina, that's like, if I can't get— if I'm— I need to have the best camera that I can possibly get on a device. That is like— even on me, that's one of the reasons why— this is one of the reasons why I bought the Pixel phone I did. It's like, I have to have the best camera I can possibly have. My phone is—
Christina Warren [01:18:28]:
Right.
Andy Ihnatko [01:18:29]:
The best pocket camera I can have, plus running maybe 8 or 9 apps and sometimes getting text messages. But— and iPhone users are notorious for image quality. But they might be able to at least sell them on the idea of, hey, at least give it a try. You might be surprised that— you might be thinking— you might actually be in locked into 2022 thinking and not what a single camera can do in 2026.
Christina Warren [01:18:55]:
Yeah, no, it's true.
Jason Snell [01:18:56]:
It's a reason to have that 48-megapixel where they do the binning to take it down to a really nice 24. And, you know, people— yeah, I— it's a, it's, it's a tough sell because you've got people with premium tastes who are going to get a phone that does not have a premium camera. And, you know, I was, I was thinking about this too because Leo just started taking a trip and I'm like, I'd kind of love to take a trip with an iPhone that also folds out to be my iPad so I don't need to take both. But I also am gonna want to take pictures on the trip. And so I'm gonna make sure that my wife's got a good phone with a good camera or something like that.
Christina Warren [01:19:29]:
Somebody's gonna need a good phone.
Jason Snell [01:19:30]:
Yeah. It's—
Leo Laporte [01:19:31]:
I look, I guess I could take an actual camera.
Jason Snell [01:19:34]:
You could.
Leo Laporte [01:19:34]:
Crazy as that sounds.
Christina Warren [01:19:35]:
You could.
Jason Snell [01:19:35]:
Taking— look, a lot of this Apple stuff, first generation is like, let's see what develops. And a lot of people will sit on the sideline as they probably should. I mean, look, if I'm giving buying advice, not knowing anything about it, which is, I mean, why would you do that? But I'm gonna do it here. I would say wait for the reviews.
Christina Warren [01:19:53]:
For sure.
Jason Snell [01:19:53]:
And maybe even sit out the first 3 months.
Christina Warren [01:19:56]:
Mm-hmm.
Jason Snell [01:19:57]:
And see, are there issues? You're gonna get stories of how people live with it. That's gonna either affirm or deny your possibilities of like, could this work for me? But, you know, I think Apple will learn a lot from that too. And if this category has got legs to it, then, you know, obviously in a year there will be another one that will be better and address a lot of its shortcomings. And like, I think that's— I think that's how Apple does it a lot of the way is just they kind of like start to validate the category and everybody's got to kind of warm up to it. And then in a year or two, you'll see them potentially sell a lot of them. But like upfront, it's going to be for the early adopters. And they're going to have fun being— I mean, it's my job, but like, it's so fun to be an early adopter. But like, if you're not one of those people—
Leo Laporte [01:20:48]:
expensive. Yeah, don't—
Jason Snell [01:20:50]:
just don't do it. Just don't do it. Listen to the— listen to the early adopters and hear what they have to say.
Andy Ihnatko [01:20:54]:
Pricey fun. I mean, more data points. The analysts are now saying that they think that they'll sell— Apple will sell about 10 million of them, which also happens to be what they think is going to be Apple's capability manufacturing capability for them. 10 million does not sound like a small number, so I don't feel as though you're going to be in a Mac Studio sort of situation where, if I want it in January, I'd better order it in November. You will be able to get them.
Leo Laporte [01:21:22]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:21:23]:
Like Jason said, it's worthwhile to hold off to see if they made any big mistakes. That said, if there's any company that I would trust buying a first-generation product from, it would not be Samsung foldable. It would not be Google foldable. It will not even necessarily be a Huawei foldable, but it might be an Apple foldable, particularly since they've got so many years of experience from other manufacturers to steal from.
Leo Laporte [01:21:45]:
You're making me— hmm.
Andy Ihnatko [01:21:47]:
I'm really good at encouraging other people to spend $2,000.
Christina Warren [01:21:50]:
Yeah, Leo, we both, we both know that we are who we are and that we're going to get the phone even though we don't want to, right? We don't want— we don't spend the money, but we are going to. And like, in my mind, like, I've I've, I've done the girl math. I've made the justification. I can make it a business expense. Thank you to the MacBreak Weekly podcast for that. I appreciate it.
Leo Laporte [01:22:07]:
Um, yes, by the way, uh, Christina, you have to buy it. Yeah, I told you, you have to buy it.
Christina Warren [01:22:13]:
You're right, right.
Jason Snell [01:22:14]:
But, but also, you know, this is your conscience. You can listen to Leo, but don't buy 2 phones.
Leo Laporte [01:22:20]:
Correct. Must buy 2 phones.
Christina Warren [01:22:22]:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, I, I have too many phones as it is. I already have—
Leo Laporte [01:22:26]:
Wait a minute, don't you want a dark cherry, sky blue, or lovely black? This is from Weibo, the—
Christina Warren [01:22:32]:
I mean, I mean, they look great.
Leo Laporte [01:22:33]:
Digital. By the way, that silver one is, he says, unlikely. So it's the 3— you— the other 3 you see.
Christina Warren [01:22:39]:
I mean, they look— they, they look awesome. Um, if it— look, if it was pink, it was rose gold, we'd have a different conversation. I really love that orange. Yeah, I'm, I'm not gonna lie. Like, even though it's an Aperol spritzer It's perfect. It is. It kind of is. And here's the thing, even though usually I'm the type of person who this is just, this is a broken part of my brain and this is, I'm not encouraging this, but would to myself, not to others, but to myself would be like, oh man, you're really just like letting everybody know you've got the year-old phone.
Christina Warren [01:23:08]:
I'm like, yeah, I've got the year-old phone, but it's the orange phone. It's a great color. It's like one of the great colorways because that's the thing with the Apple stuff. usually get the fun color that they put out. And I just, just had it. And some years there are hits and some years there are misses. And I don't know what it'll be this year. But I will say last year, the orange, I was immediately so excited.
Christina Warren [01:23:32]:
And it's great. And I love, I love being out with it. I love to color coordinate with it. Like, it's just, it's great.
Leo Laporte [01:23:39]:
I went out and bought 12 orange hoodies just so I would match.
Andy Ihnatko [01:23:43]:
I mean, I It's such a good, it's such a good orange that when I got a dbrand skin for my new MacBook, I went right for that orange without even necessarily thinking, oh wow, yeah, they're echoing the, the iPhone 17. It's like, no, I just think that's a really good color. That's the kind of strong, fun, joy-delivering color that I want every time I slip my, uh, my notebook into a bag.
Jason Snell [01:24:04]:
Yeah. Mark my words, Cosmic Orange. If it goes away, it's coming back. It's coming back. 'Cause I, I also think it is a cult hit. Maybe even a legitimate hit.
Andy Ihnatko [01:24:13]:
Isn't that funny?
Leo Laporte [01:24:14]:
Because, you, you know, at first if you had said, oh, the, the orange one is going to be the one—
Christina Warren [01:24:18]:
Oh, I knew. I knew.
Jason Snell [01:24:20]:
I see them everywhere.
Christina Warren [01:24:22]:
Yeah, I do too. And I, I knew it would be like— the blue is great too, and the silver is— my husband has the silver. I— he loves orange. Orange is his favorite color. I assumed he was going to get an orange one, and he was like, no, I want the silver. I was like, okay, do whatever you want.
Leo Laporte [01:24:34]:
It's kind of a status thing too if you have I'm sure this is in the psychology of what Apple's up to. A unique color for the latest version.
Christina Warren [01:24:43]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [01:24:43]:
When you— and especially if it's a bright one, then it's a way of saying— it's a humblebrag. Yeah, it is.
Andy Ihnatko [01:24:50]:
Oh, it's a new one.
Leo Laporte [01:24:51]:
See, I have the newest iPhone.
Christina Warren [01:24:53]:
1000%. It's the same reason, like, I'm wearing— I mean, it's old, but like, I'm wearing a Supreme hoodie. It's the exact same type of thing. That's why I said my brain is broken, and I'm not encouraging this for other people, but there will be, there will be a part of me that will be like, oh, I'm not going to be signaling that I have the latest phone. But 2 things. One, don't need 2 phones. Thank you, Jason, being my conscience. 2, I'll also have the foldable phone.
Christina Warren [01:25:13]:
So there will be that, right? So I will have that. And then like, 3, okay, get over yourself. Orange is great. It's a great color and it's a great phone.
Jason Snell [01:25:21]:
When you unfold that iPhone, everyone will know that you've got the new iPhone.
Leo Laporte [01:25:25]:
So that's true.
Christina Warren [01:25:26]:
Everyone's gonna know you have the new one because you're unfolding it. And that, that will be the thing. It'll be like, oh, well, it's your other one. Oh, well, this is just, you know.
Leo Laporte [01:25:32]:
I think, Jason, you said something though that, that spoke to me, which is I'm going on a trip, having that foldable to be able to open it up, it's an iPad mini size. I can talk to my AIs back home. Yeah, I can do all the stuff that I want to do. I can read.
Jason Snell [01:25:46]:
We'll see how it feels. But as somebody who— I use my iPad all the time, and I will not— I write these articles about like traveling with my iPad, and people are like, why don't you just travel with your laptop? And I said, well, I don't want to Some trips I don't want to bring my laptop and my iPad. They're like, why would you bring your iPad? And the answer is, I'm never traveling without my iPad, people. I'm sorry, that's never, ever, ever, ever, ever happening. So if I could do that because my phone is also kind of my iPad, I don't know, that, that's really interesting. We'll see if it's practical, right? But maybe—
Andy Ihnatko [01:26:14]:
Can I say that I'm, I'm traveling to a family wedding, uh, the next couple of weeks. That's going to be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and is the perfect use case for a foldable.
Christina Warren [01:26:24]:
Yes.
Andy Ihnatko [01:26:24]:
Where I— there's no way that I'm not going to find a few hours a day to get some work done, either for business or pleasure. But there's no— but also there, I should be free to not even take my iPad Pro on a situation like that because I'm not going to be doing a 6-hour work session. So the idea of having something that's in between like that is chef's kiss.
Jason Snell [01:26:43]:
I've been thinking about you because— I mean, I'm thinking about you all the time, but in this particular case, I'm thinking about you because you are You are the master of the, I got a little art stand. I got a little easel for my mobile device so that I can plop it down on a table and then have a little keyboard. And I thought, we're gonna have to do that for this thing, right? We're gonna have to do that.
Christina Warren [01:27:04]:
Jason, no, we are. Well, I was thinking—
Jason Snell [01:27:06]:
Because you gotta travel with a compact keyboard and a little stand that you can put the unfolded iPhone on. Can I just— And then write an article or something.
Andy Ihnatko [01:27:14]:
Yeah, you should hit my website on Thursday or Friday. It's already—
Jason Snell [01:27:20]:
You're on the easel beat.
Andy Ihnatko [01:27:20]:
It's already in the queue. Yes.
Christina Warren [01:27:22]:
I love this.
Leo Laporte [01:27:23]:
Yeah, because it's accessories for your new folding phone.
Jason Snell [01:27:26]:
Well, no, if you're going to travel with something that doesn't naturally have a case or something that allows it to be vertical on a table—
Leo Laporte [01:27:33]:
That's true.
Jason Snell [01:27:33]:
And you're using a keyboard, like a Bluetooth keyboard, you need something to get it in the position where you can sit there and write in a hotel room or whatever.
Christina Warren [01:27:41]:
Absolutely.
Jason Snell [01:27:42]:
And Andy always is the person I know who's like, oh, yeah, I got this thing for $5 that does— Is perfect and you don't have to buy— it's not made for tech because if it's made for tech, it'll cost 10 times.
Christina Warren [01:27:54]:
It'll cost 10, right? But, but if it's not, you can fold it, you can have it in your bag. And you make a great, great point too, Jason. I was just thinking, so I bought that Clicks keyboard, um, that, that MrMobile and, uh, oh right, Kevin came up with, and it's fine. But like, I— it, it's a little Bluetooth keyboard. I'm never going to use it with my phone. It makes things too top-heavy. It just doesn't work. But what I will— what I do enjoy using it for is A, It's nice on Apple TV.
Christina Warren [01:28:18]:
I will say that. But I got to be thinking, I was like, you know, and I've used it a little bit with my iPad, but my iPad is big enough. I just have the 11-inch, but it's still big enough that I would rather have a full-size keyboard for that. What would be great would be something like a foldable, right? That's a case where even if it's not that specific keyboard, in my case, I will use that because I already have it. I'm not going to buy another one.
Leo Laporte [01:28:38]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:28:39]:
But having just a little small Bluetooth keyboard, I think you make a great point. make, you know, traveling with something like this, make it a little productivity device for a wedding too. You're thinking, you know, assuming you're not the one who's having to take all the photos and if, you know, the camera is good enough, having the fold-out thing is also great because you're going to be talking with a lot of people. You're going to be wanting to show them things, you know, and having that ability to have more screen real estate potentially, you know, could be really cool. So yeah, I look forward to seeing how Andy will trick out something like this because like you, Jason, I won't travel without an iPad. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:29:13]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:29:13]:
And for a long time, I honestly, I traveled, and this was dumb of me, but I would travel with my phone, I would travel with my big iPad, and I would travel with my iPad Mini. And the iPad Mini, it wasn't even that I would use it. It's just that it took up no space in my bag. So I might as well just have it there. But I really enjoyed using it at night, kind of more like a Kindle or that sort of thing. And so that's what I'm hoping they do with the size. We won't know until next week, is that it'll be this nice type of, kind of middle ground device where it can be my phone when I need it to be my phone, but if I want to, you know, enjoy content in a way, and to your point, don't necessarily want to take all the accoutrements, um, that go along with the iPad with me, you know, it could be, um, something that could be really nice.
Leo Laporte [01:29:58]:
Yeah, I just like this.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:59]:
This is, this is where, like, I love the fall because I can wear a jacket with pockets in it.
Christina Warren [01:30:05]:
Yes.
Andy Ihnatko [01:30:06]:
And so when I, when I evaluate tech that how can I get a full, like, writing productivity setup that just— a keyboard in this pocket, the screen in this pocket, and then, okay, a charger, like, in one of the big pouch pockets. It's like, I don't know, I'm just unnaturally attracted to the idea of, oh, you think I'm not carrying anything? Yeah, shuck, I'm secret spy journalist. I'm documenting and publishing, baby.
Christina Warren [01:30:30]:
I love that.
Andy Ihnatko [01:30:31]:
On the road.
Christina Warren [01:30:33]:
I had one of those jackets from Scotty Vest years ago. I think I still have it, I need to find it. And it was like one of the trench coats and it was $200 or something. I think they've gone up in price now. But I remember going to Mobile World Congress one year and I took like a full size, it was like a 12.9-inch like Google tablet, like a, you know, a Nexus 12 or something or Nexus 13. And I had multiple phones and I had other stuff and I had like basically my entire carry-on was in this jacket. And if you just looked at me walking down the street, you would have had no idea that I had like a mini Best Buy in my pocket. Um, TSA was obviously enthused, right? They, they, they loved that.
Christina Warren [01:31:12]:
They, they, they really did. But, um, no, I, I— you're right, like, we're finally at the fall thing where you're like, okay, I can stuff my pockets with all my tech and no one will know that I'm actually able to, to work and do all these other things too. So it's fun.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:25]:
Nobody knows that I'm stuck at this wedding with all kinds of distant relatives I barely know. I can sneak off for 30 minutes and just be real and just write something and just do stuff, close my office, and then go back to the table and say, really? You voted for—
Leo Laporte [01:31:40]:
okay.
Andy Ihnatko [01:31:41]:
Aren't you special? I'm glad that's working out for you and you're great with that.
Leo Laporte [01:31:46]:
Well, I'm sure next week, which will be the day before the event, we'll have lots to talk about and lots to speculate about. And then the final, you know, in 2 weeks, that show will have a lot to talk about as well. the Apple announcement Wednesday, September 9th. It'll push, I think, Windows Weekly back a little bit, but that's okay. We can manage that. Those, those events are pretty tight because they're all pre-recorded.
Christina Warren [01:32:10]:
Yeah, I was gonna say, that's the nice— that's the good and the bad thing. It's, it's good in that, like, you can kind of plan your day, like, you know how long it's going to be. It's bad because you lose the magic. And I will say, Apple, um, compared to the other major tech companies, even when they did live events, tended to be much more succinct and like timed to the second. Whereas like, you know, a Microsoft keynote, for instance, you do not know how long it will go. And, and, and I can say that from firsthand experience. Um, the length that it is in rehearsal for the keynote, because I've been in those keynote rehearsals, and how long it actually is, is often different. And yeah.
Jason Snell [01:32:47]:
I can even tell you, because we had to do this for Upgrade for our draft, um, I can tell you the runtimes. Like last year was, it was 71 minutes. It was 98 minutes the year before. It was, uh, '82, '94, '78, and '64, but that was during the pandemic where they split the— they split the event in 2 and did the second part the next month.
Leo Laporte [01:33:08]:
This will be a longer one. I think they have a lot to talk about, right?
Jason Snell [01:33:11]:
If you do the home stuff especially, I think it will be on the, on the longer side. But you could see they, they always invite you for a 2-hour slot, but it hasn't been close. Like, the most they've done was 1:38 in, in, uh, 2024. So I would expect this to be more like a, a 90 to 100 minute event, not 120.
Andy Ihnatko [01:33:36]:
So now I don't want to give people ideas here, but maybe that's how we can afford an iPhone Fold through the prediction markets.
Christina Warren [01:33:43]:
I was going to say, you know, it will be—
Jason Snell [01:33:45]:
I see, I've done my research. So you're gonna— everybody place your bets.
Christina Warren [01:33:48]:
Someone, someone place your bets. And, and then And then share with, share with the class, right? Like, like, please make the bets. And then when you win the windfall using Jason's data, he gets 50%. That's—
Jason Snell [01:33:58]:
I love it. I'll take, I'll take 30%. Um, Mike, for the record, Mike Hurley set the over and under at 1:35, and I chose the under because I feel like Apple really is trying for 90 with this, with these events now, not, not 2 hours.
Christina Warren [01:34:12]:
No, that's a good point.
Jason Snell [01:34:13]:
If it's— I mean, again, it might be 1:40, but I don't think it's going to be 2, you know, an hour and 50 minutes. I just don't think they're going to do it. It's gotta be—
Andy Ihnatko [01:34:20]:
it's gonna be hard though, because they really do, um, they really do have to walk people through what the foldable actually is and how it works. If they're going to show off a new HomePod, they're gonna have to— they'll probably mix it in with the big hunk on Siri. And they really do have to have a big hunk on Siri to basically establish credibility and get people excited about it.
Christina Warren [01:34:41]:
Mm-hmm.
Andy Ihnatko [01:34:41]:
And then God forbid they actually introduce these new AirPods that we're that we're thinking about that might even have cameras on them. I don't think— I think speculation is 2027, not 2026. But that's another thing that could be. We can't just simply say, oh, we've got this new class of chip. Oh, wow, you're going to see that the speech recognition is going to be even better, works even better in noisy environments. They're going to have to do a lot of storytelling with so many of these products. So, who knows?
Christina Warren [01:35:09]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:35:11]:
We'll take a little break. We have other things to talk about, of course. You're watching MacBreak Weekly, including a pretty exciting baseball game, I hear. Uh, MacBreak Weekly with Christina Warren, uh, Jason Raccoon Snell, and Andy Anacco. I just got a text from my son who is right now at the US Open, which is apparently the biggest food event in, in New York history, even though there— I think there's a tennis game too or something.
Andy Ihnatko [01:35:40]:
Whatever.
Leo Laporte [01:35:42]:
He said he's sold— he's selling 2,000 sandwiches a day now, and the line is to the entrance. And of course, the New York Times has given him a lot of coverage. The US Open is now a food festival with a side of tennis, and they mentioned Salt Hanks and have a nice picture of the sandwich there. And so—
Andy Ihnatko [01:36:01]:
He's having a really good summer. Congratulations.
Leo Laporte [01:36:03]:
He's having a great— he's having a great summer. Uh, he said he was a little upset about the US Open because they basically had to close the restaurant and move everything there to make 2,000 sandwiches a day. Yeah, uh, but, uh, it's worth it. Yeah, he's competing, you know, his, uh, $32 sandwich doesn't seem so expensive when you see $100 chicken nuggets.
Christina Warren [01:36:23]:
No, I was gonna say that's like the one place you can kind of be. Um, I, I, I used to know the guy who does, uh, Luke's Lobster, Luke, and—
Leo Laporte [01:36:31]:
Oh yeah.
Christina Warren [01:36:31]:
You know, it was— yeah, and, you know, it was a similar thing, like he started a as a food truck and then it obviously expanded. But it was one of those things where he would sometimes have to take gigs like that. You would take it because all these people are going to try this sandwich.
Leo Laporte [01:36:44]:
It's great advertising.
Christina Warren [01:36:45]:
And they're going to go back, right? Because most of the people, I mean, you have a lot of out-of-towners who go to the US Open, but I used to go to the US Open. When I lived in New York, I would go to the US Open if somebody got me tickets. And if I discovered a great sandwich someplace, I'd be like, okay, I'm going to Go back. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:37:01]:
Hank said the line is a little shorter at the US Open than it is outside his restaurant. So it's a good chance to try the sandwiches. I'm very proud of the boy. He's doing all right. He could probably afford 2 iPhones now if he really wanted. MacBreak Weekly continues with, all right, we got to do it. The Vision Pro segment, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, baby.
Christina Warren [01:37:27]:
Jason.
Andy Ihnatko [01:37:31]:
Oh, Vision Pro, Vision Pro, please don't go.
Leo Laporte [01:37:45]:
Oh, you guys really get into that, don't you?
Jason Snell [01:37:46]:
Yeah, well, that was the jazz. We were in the jazz era of the Vision Pro segment.
Andy Ihnatko [01:37:50]:
I love it.
Christina Warren [01:37:52]:
Jason Takeaway remix.
Leo Laporte [01:37:54]:
So, uh, Friday Night Baseball was in Apple Immersive. Yeah, uh, the Red Sox and the Yankees, which is a classic.
Jason Snell [01:38:02]:
Classic Yankee Stadium. Yep, indeed.
Leo Laporte [01:38:06]:
And everybody seems to have liked it a lot. You seem to like it. Tell them, tell us about it.
Jason Snell [01:38:10]:
Yeah, I, I think the key thing is that Apple has produced all of their sports in Immersive as if they were on ESPN. And I don't know if it's their production partners or what, and somebody said, hey, Let's for baseball, let's try to take advantage of the immersive format that's supposed to be the groundbreaking thing here. And so they had a bunch first off, and if Alex were here, he would point out this is all enabled by the fact that there there are Blackmagic Live cameras now, so you can actually do live. They did the the NBA games live, and now they are doing this live streaming it live is a it's a huge deal just to do that. They had multiple cameras there, and then a lot of the criticism about the NBA. broadcast was that they had 2 cameras under the basket on either end and they would flip between them. And so, you know, every time you make a cut in immersive, it's disconcerting because you have to like get your bearings back. It's very weird.
Jason Snell [01:39:02]:
And they seem to have learned some lessons from that because I think a lot of people have argued, most notably Ben Thompson from Stratechery, that what you really want to do is feel like you're there, not part of a produced show. And I don't think they got it perfect, but I think they got it close. So what they did was they had cameras at the dugout railings right by the on-deck circle in both dugouts.
Leo Laporte [01:39:26]:
Which is a nice place to sit, by the way.
Andy Ihnatko [01:39:28]:
Great.
Leo Laporte [01:39:29]:
Not in Yankee Stadium, but if you're going to a Red Sox game.
Jason Snell [01:39:32]:
Yeah, it's really— this one you're literally up at the railing, not even behind the dugout. You're on the dugout rail because that's where the camera is. So it's a great view. Great view. They also had them behind first base and they had them in a couple of spots in the outfield. Including in the bullpen. So before the game, you're seeing the starting pitcher for the Yankees warm up in the bullpen, which was itself fascinating. Let me tell you, the stuff before the game and then between the innings was fascinating because you did feel like you had access to stuff you don't normally see.
Jason Snell [01:40:02]:
For example, Cam Schlittler, who was the starter for the Yankees, he would throw a pitch in the bullpen during his warmups, and then he'd look up at this big TV. and there'd be somebody tapping at a computer off to the left. He's looking at the real-time tracking data of the spin rate and the location of his pitch and stuff. So the science of baseball as the pitchers are looking at their own analytics was amazing. So during the game, whatever team was batting, you were in their dugout basically looking out at the on-deck circle, at the batter, at the pitcher. And so it only switched between innings, which they would show you highlights that could come from all the cameras, and they would show you There was also a top view from the club level looking down at home plate. So they'd show that and they'd show replays and they'd show things from the outfield. But during the inning, you basically just sat in the one position and watched the game.
Jason Snell [01:40:59]:
And there were some issues, like there was a ball hit to the wall, off the wall for a double, and from the view, you could barely see it. So that was a challenge from that view.
Leo Laporte [01:41:12]:
But I like the giant scoreboard floating over the stadium.
Jason Snell [01:41:16]:
Okay. So one of the smart things they did is there's this virtual Jumbotron. So they've got, they've got data up there and they've got the standard 2D Apple TV broadcast on there.
Leo Laporte [01:41:27]:
So you can always look up for a replay or something. You can look around as the game is going on. So you can see what's going on.
Jason Snell [01:41:33]:
This is, so this is, if you, if you aren't a baseball fan or you don't go to a lot of games in person, one of the things that's great about going to a game in in person is that there's a lot of complexity that you just don't see on TV. So among it is like, where are the fielders going? And between every— for every pitch, like, they're positioning themselves in different places on the infield.
Leo Laporte [01:41:49]:
Yeah, that's actually a lot of the game. There's so much more going on than you see.
Jason Snell [01:41:53]:
Exactly. And they doubled off a guy at first base, and that play was really kind of amazing 'cause you can watch him and be like, you know, what are you doing, guy? Get back, get back, get back. Oh no, no, no, they're gonna get him. And they got him out.
Leo Laporte [01:42:07]:
Did they switch to the first base cam for that play?
Jason Snell [01:42:10]:
No, they played a replay from the first day.
Leo Laporte [01:42:12]:
Perfect.
Jason Snell [01:42:13]:
But while in the moment, you're just sitting in your spot watching, which I think is a key insight is—
Leo Laporte [01:42:18]:
I agree.
Jason Snell [01:42:18]:
I want to feel like I'm there. And that virtual Jumbotron, it might not be positioned quite right. Maybe it should be a little bit higher. It did get in the way of a couple of fly balls. But I'll tell you, that's really great. This is— Ben Thompson always argued that you don't need graphics in an NBA game live because you should just be able to look up the scoreboard. Truth is, the scoreboard is not, you know, doesn't come across great. in, uh, in immersive.
Jason Snell [01:42:43]:
But this was a virtual scoreboard. So if you ever wanted to see, like, if a ball was really hit deep to the outfield, one thing you could do— and I've done this when I've been in bad seats at a stadium before— is in that moment, you look up at the Jumbotron because you can't really see all the way out there at that angle, and you see what happens, and then you look back down.
Christina Warren [01:43:00]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:43:00]:
So it was right there. Plus they had, like, lineups and stats and stuff rolling around. It was really smart. It's not perfect, but I felt like They were trying to do what you should do with something like immersive sports, which is make it feel like you're at the stadium, not that you're watching a 3D baseball game on ESPN. And they did that. My criticisms, they had special announcers and they tried to be Vision Pro focused in terms of if you look to your left, you could see that this guy is doing this thing or whatever, but they still talk too much.
Christina Warren [01:43:32]:
Mm-hmm.
Jason Snell [01:43:34]:
And my gut feeling is you should have 2, like 2 audio choices for these, one of which is local radio. Yeah. Like you, like you brought a radio to the stadium.
Leo Laporte [01:43:45]:
Yep.
Jason Snell [01:43:46]:
And the other is stadium audio where you don't hear anything.
Leo Laporte [01:43:48]:
Oh, I love that.
Jason Snell [01:43:49]:
Except the sound of the game.
Leo Laporte [01:43:51]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:43:51]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:43:52]:
Because what you're really trying to do is emulate, not, again, it's not a TV broadcast, it's an immersive game that you're attending.
Leo Laporte [01:43:59]:
It's an experience.
Jason Snell [01:44:01]:
Yeah, exactly. So, but I'll tell you, it was really good. They did a good job. Obviously we're in the science fiction era here where nobody's going to buy something like this. Uh, if, if this— if there's a mass—
Leo Laporte [01:44:12]:
They should have done this on day one. If they had done this on day one, they would have sold a lot more Vision Pros.
Jason Snell [01:44:17]:
It shows you how— it shows you how, how the Vision Pro was way too far ahead. They did none of this. The, the Blackmagic cameras for recordings didn't even exist, let alone the follow-on, which was the live version. So like the Vision Pro, it was years before it probably should have been released, but they decided to release it. And only now, however many years later, have they finally gotten to the point where they can do in 2026 where they've done some live broadcasts. And you're right. I mean, we're still waiting for the live concert or even like a fully immersive concert that's full length. And live theater.
Jason Snell [01:44:54]:
I think those are other things that they could try because the immersion is one of the killer features of it. But I thought they did a good job. It's a it shows that there's probably a future in this kind of technology, but obviously with something that costs, I mean, all the usual caveats apply. The Vision Pro costs a lot of money. It's kind of it's impractical. The the tech needs to advance. It needs to get lighter. And and I would wager that by the time there's a product.
Jason Snell [01:45:20]:
If there ever is a product that's a more consumer-applicable version of the Vision Pro, it might be as much as like 10 years after the Vision Pro came out. But the good thing about the Vision Pro is if I think if it hadn't shipped, we wouldn't be at this point now where Blackmagic made those cameras and they've figured out how to do an infrastructure. But we're watching this stuff be invented in live essentially on these on these broadcasts. So it's really you can play it back if you've got a Vision Pro. And they're gonna do 3 more games this season live on Friday nights. And then they are making those all available for anybody who's got Apple TV to play it back on Vision Pro, which is great 'cause again, the NBA had a bunch of like gating for location based on, you know, the Lakers territory and stuff like that.
Christina Warren [01:46:06]:
Right.
Jason Snell [01:46:06]:
NBA.com. And this is just, it's just Apple. Apple owns it. And it made me think like, it's too bad, I mean, first off, they should try it with MLS. I, I don't know how they would do that, but they should try it.
Christina Warren [01:46:16]:
It'd be hard, but they should. Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:46:17]:
And they should really find a partner and try to do this with college or pro football because it would be really interesting to see it.
Christina Warren [01:46:22]:
I was gonna say, if anything could convince people to potentially— like, if any group of fans, like, where you were gonna look at doing the completely unrealistic and, like, inadvisable thing of investing in, like, a hardware sort of thing to enjoy sports, football would be the sort of thing that would would convince people to do it if you could do that. Now, football, I think, is also— I think it was very smart of them to start with baseball. I mean, I guess technically basketball, but I think make baseball be their first real kind of experience because, like you said, I don't know how they would do it for soccer. I don't know. Football would be difficult too because there are so many different angles. Drones are so important in that, that, you know, being able to like, what type of perspective do you want to show? And I think the way you described it is really a great call, which is that you want it to be immersive as if you're in the stadium, not as if you are virtually watching a game. And I think that those are different experiences.
Jason Snell [01:47:18]:
As somebody who has had— I mean, I've been going to college football games and have had season tickets and all of that. I would say, I mean, you can do it. But the truth is, from my vantage point, like, if you're on the 50, you can't see the end zones very well. And if you're in the end zone, you can't see the other end zone at all. So you're looking at the scoreboard. You could have that experience. My— and I would really love— I mean, Apple should just like talk to NBC about partnering on an experimental basis and letting Peacock viewers watch an immersive, immersive Sunday Night Football, right? Like, that would be a great like thing to experiment with. That it's how many viewers are you going to lose? And you can boast about being experimental and, and maybe the NFL would be into that too, something like that.
Jason Snell [01:47:59]:
But like my theory about how you do it is they've got the a cart. If you've ever been to a football game, college or pro, they've got that like— it's a, it's like a golf cart with a boom and, and then a platform that's up like 8 feet with a camera on it.
Christina Warren [01:48:13]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:48:13]:
And, and since American football is episodic, it's like they run a play and then the play is over and then there's time and then they run a play. Those carts, what they do is they're always on the line of scrimmage and then in between plays they just sort of slowly move. And I You maybe could do that. Like you could do some replays of the existing play while that cart moves, and then go back to it and have the immersive camera sit on that cart. So you're always basically you're always on the line of scrimmage looking around at the football game. Might work. I don't know. But I'd love to see them.
Jason Snell [01:48:46]:
I mean, it's a testimony to how much I I liked what they tried here that it's like yeah, do more right again. I I know I always say that when we talk about Vision Pro, but like that's what I keep saying. It's like. Like, try more stuff, do more stuff. It's really interesting. Nobody else has tried anything like this before. I'd like to see more. And yeah, that would— American football, for people that are not in the United States, it is, uh, number 1 and number 2 and number 3 sport in— like, forget it.
Jason Snell [01:49:15]:
It is— it would be huge if they could figure out—
Leo Laporte [01:49:18]:
Lisa would buy a Vision Pro if she could watch the NFL, right? As if she was there. She had season tickets to the 49ers for years.
Jason Snell [01:49:24]:
And certainly Would, would they, if they lay the groundwork now, if, if they could, if suddenly there's some buzz over the next couple years, which is like, actually this immersive sports thing is really cool. What really that means is that if Apple can come up with a lighter, cheaper Vision Pro in 3 or 4 years.
Leo Laporte [01:49:42]:
'Cause you don't have to have the spooky eyes. You don't have to have so much of that other stuff.
Jason Snell [01:49:46]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:49:46]:
Including the cameras where the hands and stuff.
Christina Warren [01:49:49]:
Yeah. If you just lean into it being a viewing device. device versus trying to be the spatial stuff, which to me has always been the biggest, like, benefit of the Vision Pro has been as a viewing device.
Leo Laporte [01:49:58]:
Like, if I were to buy one, I think we know now that's the sweet spot. We didn't know at the time.
Christina Warren [01:50:03]:
Right. I mean, I think they were hoping it would be more than that. And I don't think that's proven out. But yeah, I think you're right, Jason. Like, people, if they could get that down and invest in this, you have a product where for twofold, and this would be smart for, I know there have been rumors that Apple has been wanting to potentially get into football. I think it could be potentially 2 things, 2 levers you could push. One, you could potentially encourage people to buy whatever a V2 of these, you know, lighter glasses-like things are, right? Uh, the other thing is that if you're the NFL, this is an audience who would pay a premium to access that experience. Oh, absolutely.
Christina Warren [01:50:35]:
Where I would—
Jason Snell [01:50:36]:
It's experimental now, so you could get away with it.
Christina Warren [01:50:37]:
It is experimental, right? Precisely. But, you know, but you could— so you could start it out even as being like, this is experimental, but also this is going to be a special thing, right?
Jason Snell [01:50:45]:
Oh, man.
Christina Warren [01:50:46]:
where you have people who would be very happy to pay—
Jason Snell [01:50:48]:
Pay for the immersive season ticket.
Christina Warren [01:50:49]:
100%. Immersive season ticket, which is like, you know, 3 times the price of whatever NFL Sunday Ticket is, and people would pay it. And, and, and—
Leo Laporte [01:50:57]:
It'd still be less than a single ticket to a single NFL game in person.
Jason Snell [01:51:00]:
Well, that's the thing.
Christina Warren [01:51:01]:
Well, that's the thing too, is, and what the NFL knows, I think, very well, is that even though you have all the lockout stuff, which obviously impacts the NBA and doesn't the MLB because Apple has all that stuff, is that it doesn't diminish ticket sales.
Jason Snell [01:51:15]:
Right.
Christina Warren [01:51:16]:
The people who are really into this and are willing to spend that money, they are not doing that in lieu of going to games.
Leo Laporte [01:51:20]:
That's right.
Christina Warren [01:51:20]:
They will still go to games if they can.
Jason Snell [01:51:23]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:51:23]:
This is really a thing for people who want to watch teams that, like, they don't live in that city or they have, like, some other things, but it's not taking away. I mean, that was always the argument against broadcasting games in certain markets is that, oh, we want people to go to the games. And so we're not going to let, you know, people watch the broadcast out of that. It's like, no, with this, the people who would pay the extra money for NFL Sunday Ticket, who would pay for Vision Pro, who would get the immersive experience, these are also going to be people who would be hoping to get season tickets or would be super excited to go to a game and spend time at the stadium. I don't think it would take anything away from it.
Leo Laporte [01:52:00]:
Yeah, it would have been nice if they could have done this when they released the Vision Pro, but it was really a chicken and egg thing. They had to release the Vision Pro To get to this point.
Jason Snell [01:52:10]:
Right, right. And even then, even then they spent a couple years of shooting immersive video with hand-built materials. It's only, only now that Blackmagic made that camera, which, you know, when I went down there and, and they did that whole thing for creators, I, I found out, you know, first off, Blackmagic thought they'd sell a dozen of them, and it turns out there's way more demand. People are very interested in this as a format, and like But it is telling that like they launched this and like we were all blown away by those demos of those videos. And it turns out they were— it's like the early Mac days a little bit, or the early iPhone when they demoed it at Macworld Expo where it was like, yeah, it looks like it works, but if you actually try to use it, it does not work because we're still building it in the background. And that, yeah, it was— I mean, literally they were not even remotely capable of producing this kind of video 3 years ago.
Christina Warren [01:53:02]:
Right. Which to me, I mean, still goes back to the original sin, which I think you could have gotten away with all of this if you'd positioned it as a dev device and, uh, and, and a dev kit. I think if you did that, you still would have had the investment from Blackmagic. They absolutely still would have said, we're going to make this camera and make this bigger. But then you would have set the precedent and the expectation for the audience of buyers who, again, I think I, exactly. And I think they would have sold the exact same number. I don't think that there would have been a decrease, but it would It would've changed the perception of the entire product. And to me, that's always been the original sin of the product is that they didn't set expectations correctly.
Christina Warren [01:53:37]:
And we all knew what it was except for them.
Jason Snell [01:53:39]:
Apple is unable to, or at least was proven in that case to be unable to do anything but a massive worldwide consumer product rollout. And so they just pushed that button for the Vision Pro and it was completely a mistake, just entirely wrong.
Andy Ihnatko [01:53:54]:
I just wish I could get the least bit excited about immersive sports and immersive video. Especially, especially for— I mean, even if, even if Apple or somebody were able to produce like a $500 headset that certainly had absolutely acceptable quality, you're still talking about an experience that is solitary. You can't just simply get people on the sofa and look at the big screen and have this moment that's shared together unless everybody has this $500 headset.
Christina Warren [01:54:21]:
Right.
Andy Ihnatko [01:54:21]:
I'm not sure what immersion will do. I mean, if, if you were to ask me, if I were in a one-person focus group and you said, hey, we were— we are a multi- Trillion-dollar tech company, and also we're really, really interested in bringing people on board our streaming sports channel, and we are willing to innovate to do anything. What could we do to make baseball, for instance, an even better viewing experience? I wouldn't say, I want 3D and I want immersion. I would say, there are so many cameras covering this game. Basically, use— buzzword, buzzword— use AI, use whatever you want to basically learn how I like to— what I'm interested in seeing and basically give me like a custom feed.
Jason Snell [01:55:02]:
Oh, sure.
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:03]:
There are times when, again, I don't care about 3D, but my goodness, if I could have like a little subscreen that just is always showing me what's going on in the bullpen.
Leo Laporte [01:55:11]:
Okay.
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:12]:
Not even when like, okay, well, we see the people, someone's warming up. It's like, no, I want to be able to look at that. I want to be able to— I want to focus on what that second baseman is doing at a very, very tense situation while the pitch is in motion.
Jason Snell [01:55:24]:
Okay.
Andy Ihnatko [01:55:25]:
There are moments where I don't necessarily want to be overloaded with stats, but I wouldn't mind having a separate sub-window that simply gives me, like, when I want to remind my— refresh myself on what this current situation is. All this sort of stuff where just use all of these feeds to give me what I want. Just like in the olden days when the— there is a rite of passage where your cool uncle who's into sports as a youngster will tell you, okay, so here's what you do. Like, you want to You want to have the TV on channel 38 so you can watch the hockey game, but you also— but you want to turn the sound all the way down and tune in to WEEI for the play-by-play on the radio because the radio play-by-play is going to be much better than whoever's on TV 38. And that sort of customization of the experience is what I would say, my goodness, I'm so glad that I'm spending now an extra $2 a month for Apple TV+ to get access to an experience that makes it more meaningful to me.
Jason Snell [01:56:17]:
Stuff like that is is also happening. It's just a different track. I, I, I think we talked about it here, but—
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:23]:
And I, and I, and I hear it's experimental. Like, as you say, it's not something, it's something, it's not something that's cooked yet. It's something they have to, they have to build it and use it and develop it in order to get to the thing that people are gonna want to use.
Jason Snell [01:56:32]:
Well, yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:32]:
And, and like I said, I'm just—
Jason Snell [01:56:33]:
And the multi-stream, multi-stream of the 2D cameras is, is something that I, I agree. I think that's really build your own feed is a, is a great, um, a great concept that requires buy-in from the rights holders. But yes, for sure. It's not quite the same, but I'll give you an example. So Mosaic, which is this really amazing baseball app that's in TestFlight, so it's basically a closed beta. And I don't know if we talked about it here much, but it's a guy who just built it himself as a baseball fan, an iOS developer. And most of the spring and into the summer, the link kept getting passed around. And it's amazing because it does let you build You know, multi-up up to on an iPad.
Jason Snell [01:57:16]:
Like you could watch like eight games at once, ten games at once. It'll automatically build based on who your fantasy players are or what teams you like. It has all these dynamic modes. It's really it's using Dynamic Island. It's using all the Apple technologies, and you know it it's that moment where you're like oh see this is what I thought TV would be when I was a kid in the future, and and that's. That's all using the main broadcast, but it's only one step further to have access to the stadium cameras, just like MLB Network has access to stadium cameras.
Christina Warren [01:57:49]:
Right.
Jason Snell [01:57:50]:
And the twist of the story, for people who don't know, is that guy, Jason Weingart, Jason Weingart, I think is his name, he got hired by Major League Baseball and is now working for Major League Baseball doing Mosaic in beta as an advanced project basically to test these technologies and how baseball fans want to interact with advanced technologies. And that excites me because that's a league saying there are probably other ways to appreciate our sport beyond a linear broadcast. And, you know, it's not the same track as the ImmersaTrack, which is much more like pretend you're at the stadium, which I think has merit.
Leo Laporte [01:58:27]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:58:28]:
But the other thing, which is I want to build the feed that I want, whether it's multiple games or it's different perspectives, I love that too. And I like that some people are out there trying to do it. And if anybody's going to get access to the innards of Major League Baseball, it's somebody on the inside, which Jason W. is now. So I think there's hope, but it's fitful because so many of these organizations are so monolithic, and then they've got a monolithic media partner, and there are specific terms to their media rights agreements.
Christina Warren [01:59:02]:
Mm-hmm.
Jason Snell [01:59:02]:
That make it harder to do anything innovative. And so occasionally what you end up getting is something like ESPN doing their multicast, where they put a different version on a bunch of different ESPN channels or maybe on their streaming service.
Christina Warren [01:59:15]:
Right.
Jason Snell [01:59:15]:
That's a good start, but like—
Christina Warren [01:59:16]:
It is a good start, but more exactly, or like, like YouTube TV, you know, has the ability to— now you can select any number of different, you know, feeds if you're wanting to watch multiple games at once. But yeah, to your point, if you could customize within the same game, you know, getting multiple angles and controlling that stuff, or even within the league, I'm going to be able to just have all of these games at once. Yeah, I think that's the sort of customization that's much broader. And it's different than immersive, but I think that they're tangentially related. I think that these— they can be complementary.
Leo Laporte [01:59:42]:
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens because there are, according to Mark Gurman, the layoffs at the Vision Pro division were actually a little bit heavier than he had originally reported. He also said in his piece about John Ternus taking over that prospects look dicey for the Vision Pro. Ternus, who did work at a virtual reality startup at the very beginning of his career out of college, never truly supported the headset because he felt it was too heavy and expensive to become a mainstream product.
Jason Snell [02:00:14]:
He was right.
Leo Laporte [02:00:15]:
Yeah. And so it's hard to know what his plans are. This maybe opened his eyes a little bit as to the possibility of a, just a viewing device.
Jason Snell [02:00:27]:
Everything I hear is that Apple is committed to visionOS and, and this concept. And it's important to pick apart the difference between being supportive of the product and being supportive of a direction that this platform could go. Because who among us is supportive of this product in the sense that, does it make sense? Is the price or the way— I mean, like, Like, those criticisms are 100% right. This product's too expensive and it's too heavy.
Leo Laporte [02:00:56]:
According to, uh, so yeah, today in a previously unreported move, Apple also laid off Vision Pro employees across the company, including people working on device security, audio engineering, Siri integration, yeah, testing, and the product's operating system.
Jason Snell [02:01:12]:
Yeah, what John Gruber— John Gruber talked about this, and he said that what he's heard from his little birdies inside Apple is It's much more that they've gotten rid of a bunch of projects that didn't make sense and that they're throwing— Vision Pro is now like no longer, it's just part of the mass. It's not like a little special group anymore. They're kind of like doing it as part of all their OS updates and all of that. But we'll have to see. I think there's, I think, I mean, you shouldn't be investing in it as a product that is active. You should be investing in it in anything as like—
Christina Warren [02:01:42]:
A concept.
Jason Snell [02:01:43]:
A concept in a future direction.
Andy Ihnatko [02:01:44]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [02:01:45]:
And the foundation for potential future products, because that's, that's where we are. And I, I, maybe some of that, Christina, you were saying about the how it was mismarketed, it was probably misorganized too, right? Because they probably organize all these products the same way.
Christina Warren [02:01:59]:
Yeah, that's true.
Jason Snell [02:02:00]:
It's not that kind of product.
Christina Warren [02:02:02]:
It's not one of those things. No, you're right. And, and it's a shame because I think what had happened is that, at least what I can kind of guess, you know, just reading tea leaves, I have obviously no insider knowledge, is that they saw the, the relative success that Meta had had with the Quest and with those products and thought, okay, there's a market here and there's going to be something bigger here. When instead, if they'd looked at something like, um, you know, uh, uh, the HoloLens, you saw how much more narrow the audience for this was. And obviously the technology in Vision Pro is far superior to what you had on HoloLens or on the Quest. But like, I, I remember seeing like the investment in HoloLens and seeing it go from being this idea internally at Microsoft where was going to be this potential consumer movement, although in fairness to them, they never really fully like went full consumer on it, into very quickly realizing, okay, no, the actual use case for this is going to be very specific enterprise scenarios and business-to-business scenarios, which is a very different thing. And I wish that, you know, however they'd organized it or whatever they'd done at Vision Pro, they would have taken more time to go, okay, is this really Ready, as you said so succinctly, like ready to do the full product consumer push? Or is this something that we need to invest more in and experiment with more and then find out, is there an audience here?
Leo Laporte [02:03:17]:
Enough. We've done enough Vision Pro for the— to last us.
Jason Snell [02:03:20]:
Fair enough.
Christina Warren [02:03:21]:
Hey, we had news for once.
Leo Laporte [02:03:23]:
We had something to say. That was your Vision Pro segment. Do you have a close or do we not have a close for this? Okay.
Christina Warren [02:03:31]:
Let's choose the other one.
Jason Snell [02:03:33]:
You're mixing it up. Budget, uh, did not—
Leo Laporte [02:03:38]:
uh, we don't— we didn't— we only have an open for the Vision Pro.
Andy Ihnatko [02:03:41]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:03:42]:
Um, we can record a close now, I think.
Jason Snell [02:03:45]:
Anyway, do it for the next one.
Leo Laporte [02:03:47]:
For the next one. Uh, there'll be another one.
Jason Snell [02:03:49]:
So the next Vision Pro, I mean, in 5 years. Yeah.
Christina Warren [02:03:52]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:03:53]:
Now time for the picks of the week. Let's start with Christina Warren.
Christina Warren [02:03:58]:
Okay. All right. So this one comes from a developer, SwiftDev on X and at swiftdev.dev. And this, sorry to bring in some AI stuff, but this was pretty fun. So a lot of people have been having fun with GrokBot.
Leo Laporte [02:04:15]:
GrokBot's amazing, by the way.
Christina Warren [02:04:16]:
GrokBot is amazing. And I know people have their opinions about, you know, touching anything with Elon Musk, and I respect that. But if you have a cursor plan or a GrokBot, Groq plan. GroqBot is a really good way. I actually kind of look at it as being a kind of a cool way to maybe onboard yourself into the power of maybe getting a machine to do local stuff yourself, because I, I think it is a way to kind of onboard that.
Leo Laporte [02:04:38]:
And so GroqBot is basically AI and an AI agent, but hosted on Groq's cloud instead of xAI's cloud, instead of on your Mac. But now this is interesting. So I thought you could use— in fact, I know you can use GroqBot.
Christina Warren [02:04:51]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can use on your Mac.
Leo Laporte [02:04:53]:
In a web browser.
Christina Warren [02:04:54]:
In a web browser. But what this lets you do is that it's a native app, which basically lets you grant permissions over what access it can have. So if you only wanted to have read or write access to your calendar, maybe you only want to have read access to your reminders and contacts and that sort of thing, your messages, you can control that. It also makes sure that the version of the Grotbot app that's running has been notarized and accessed. This is good.
Leo Laporte [02:05:17]:
This is a good idea.
Christina Warren [02:05:18]:
Yeah, it is a good idea. And then he has another project, Groq Studio, which is basically kind of like a Codex type of tool for being able to manage your Groq sessions. So I just wanted to give both of those a shout out. And I think that stuff like this is great. And I hope that we see more things like this because it's not just going to be— it's GroqBot today, but we're going to be seeing these things from other companies. in the future. And, you know, maybe even at some point Apple will get in on this sort of thing too. But, um, I, I like the idea of being able to control and kind of have some way of kind of managing, okay, I want to use these cloud agents on my own computer, but I still want to have some control over what they can do.
Christina Warren [02:06:01]:
So those are my picks.
Leo Laporte [02:06:03]:
Groq Connect and Groq Bot from swiftdev.dev. Uh, DEV. They make native software for Apple platforms. They have some other ones too, which I'm gonna have to check out. Thank you, Christina. Andy and Anko, your pick of the week.
Andy Ihnatko [02:06:23]:
Muted.
Leo Laporte [02:06:23]:
Oh, Andy, tap the top of that.
Andy Ihnatko [02:06:25]:
Sorry about that. Uh, yeah, minus, minus something that I had to, I had to disassemble part of my live streaming setup to show you because this is, I've been using this, uh, for the entire, for the entire show. Uh, I have always been sort of enamored of the idea of these cheap, like, 1080p, uh, like USB, uh, lovely portable USB screens.
Leo Laporte [02:06:45]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Andy Ihnatko [02:06:47]:
And the things I didn't know, like, how well they worked. Uh, and now, as Christina pointed out, I have a phone that can actually use an external display in desktop mode.
Christina Warren [02:06:55]:
Amazing.
Andy Ihnatko [02:06:55]:
So I decided to shop around, and I'm really loving this. This is actually not a new one. If you go onto Amazon, you can can find dozens of these for like less than $100. But this is actually made by Lenovo. It is like the ThinkPad ThinkVision M14 that must have gotten— I think somebody must have done a closeout on these within the last several months because these are all over eBay for like $70, and they are premium builds. They used to— this was originally sold for like— That's what I'm Yeah, I mean, this, this originally sold for like, uh, $250, but it's made out of aluminum. It has like a built-in like fold-out stand. Uh, it's got power delivery as a daisy chain thing.
Andy Ihnatko [02:07:42]:
So right now I've just got this plugged into my iPad, so this is just an external display on my iPad with a proper like USB 3.1 like DisplayPort over USB cable. But it also has on the other side a power delivery power ports. So basically, you can basically put your charger into this and it will both— it'll charge the iPad or charge your phone or charge your MacBook at the same time as it's actually powering the display.
Leo Laporte [02:08:06]:
Interesting.
Andy Ihnatko [02:08:06]:
The energy draw is not that bad, but you will notice, like, if you've— right now it's just running directly off of the iPad, and that's really gonna kind of kill the battery pretty quickly. So you kind of would want to have like an external battery plugged into it if you're using it like in mobile mode. But it is really, really nice. Comes with a cable, comes with like a padded case. And I've been noticing that it's just a really handy thing to have around because having a second display is just such a big deal on any mobile, on any setup. Even if you're just, even if this is on your desktop and this is just your third display, well, it's 1080p, which is plenty of room to like get stuff done in multiple windows. But it's also great to have Just one over the course of this this podcast, I've been able to have like this has been like my Zoom window. I've just I disconnected it from my MacBook so I can show it to you.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:01]:
But basically, now I have oftentimes when this is like at home, I've got it set up on the side, and this is like what I've got Discord open on, or this is what I've got like a live stream on when I can just full screen it. Even though I've already got a couple of extra screens put onto it, it's small enough that this is definitely. focused on one thing. And if— the other reason why I got it was, A, to test out how well desktop mode on Android actually works. This is not a Google podcast, but it actually works pretty damn well.
Christina Warren [02:09:27]:
That's awesome.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:28]:
But I also want to see— one of the major questions that I've got about the iPad— the iPhone Fold is that how much is it going to act like a phone and how much is it going to act like an iPad? And if it acts a little bit like an iPad, does that mean you plug in an external display Yeah, exactly. And have like, again, windowed mode on it. Uh, and the third— and the third thing is like, uh, to sort of wrap things up, is that this is not expensive. Like, even if you buy— if you buy like one of the no-name ones that I think Christina has, it's, it's well under $100.
Christina Warren [02:10:00]:
It was like $70 or something.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:02]:
Exactly.
Leo Laporte [02:10:02]:
What's interesting is, so I have something that really looks very similar. It comes with a padded case, has that same stand. This one's from Dell. So I think that, um, there probably is a Chinese manufacturer that made a lot of these.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:18]:
Well, yeah, you can get— I mean, every— you get a ViewSonic, you get the ones made by ViewSonic that are way—
Jason Snell [02:10:23]:
Yeah, mine is from—
Christina Warren [02:10:23]:
yeah, yeah, mine doesn't have touchscreen, but it, it's, it's like 1920 and it might have been $60.
Leo Laporte [02:10:29]:
The problem with the touchscreen is the touchscreen doesn't work. This is a touchscreen as well. It doesn't work with the iPad yet, right? Apple doesn't support the touch, right? For an external monitor. Boy, if they do that with the phone, yeah, now you got something.
Andy Ihnatko [02:10:45]:
Yeah, I mean, it really is something. But when you've— when you realize that you're making— you've already spent like probably $1,000 on an iPad Pro, and to make— and to basically— because you told yourself you're gonna be using as a productivity machine, and you probably have proven to yourself that actually, you have over the past 2 or 3 years, yes, I can actually use it for productivity. Wait until you add like a second display to it. It's always nice to have a little extra Yeah, and because these things don't have a battery in it, it's like super thin and it weighs next to nothing.
Christina Warren [02:11:10]:
It travels so well.
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:11]:
It's big that— it's big, so you're not going to be putting it in your pocket or anything like that. As the joke goes, you can fold this but only once. Uh, uh, but yeah, I, I, this is— as far as bang for your buck goes, as far as being able to have a lot of extra utility for a lot of extra— a lot of devices I've got in my lineup both at home and on the road, this is one of the best $70 I've ever spent, I really think.
Jason Snell [02:11:32]:
Nice!
Leo Laporte [02:11:32]:
Look around and shop around, because a lot of different companies are—
Andy Ihnatko [02:11:36]:
Right now, if you go on eBay, the ThinkVision M14, they're all over the place. There's actually one without the case, without a cable, that's for $45. I've been trying to tell myself, do not buy a second one of these! You do not need a second one of these! But that's typically what you can expect to pay. Like I said, that is a premium-built product. About 8 or 9 years ago, it was like a $300 accessory.
Leo Laporte [02:11:58]:
Jason Snell.
Christina Warren [02:11:59]:
Darren in the chat has 5 of these types of things.
Leo Laporte [02:12:01]:
5?
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:02]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [02:12:02]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:12:03]:
You know, they're great for AI because you can have your little, your agent sitting there and have it available to you at all times. And there's lots of little uses.
Andy Ihnatko [02:12:10]:
It's great. It's great for your brain that this is, this is a screen for just this one thing. Whenever I need to know this thing, I look at this screen, not look for a window on this screen. It's really good.
Leo Laporte [02:12:20]:
Uh, Mr. Snell, I think, has a Vision Pro product.
Jason Snell [02:12:24]:
I have a Vision Pro pick. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. This is by, also really great to say, this is by Nightscape in our Twit member Discord. Indeed, indeed.
Leo Laporte [02:12:38]:
This is Nightscape's?
Jason Snell [02:12:39]:
This is Nightscape's app. It's called Better Desktop. It is a VNC client essentially, and an Apple Remote Desktop client for Vision Pro. So now you've got that really cool mode where you're right by a computer where you can like take it over and it's got the super high refresh and all of that. That's a great mode. That's a good mode. But like sometimes you're not right in front of your computer.
Leo Laporte [02:12:59]:
Which is apparently how Nightscape watches.
Jason Snell [02:13:01]:
And you want to remote control a different computer. And so you need to use like a remote desktop app. And there are a bunch of screens and, you know, there are a bunch. What I like about this one, he is, first off, he's scratching his own itch here. He wanted something where he could not be right in front of the computer. And in his use case, you have a Bluetooth keyboard attached to his Vision Pro, but not have a pointing device. And pointing a mouse around the screen with the Vision Pro gestures is a little bit tricky. And I think he's done a really good job where like I was clicking around on my Mac server, the Mac Mini that's in, you know, my closet.
Jason Snell [02:13:35]:
And like I'd look up at a menu bar item and I'd tap with my fingers and it would draw a little circle there and go boop. And it was a click. And then I'd go over here and I'd be like, I wanna click on this item and then double-click it or whatever. Really, really well implemented in terms of sort of like look to click. And then if you've got a keyboard and you can click around with a virtual mouse, basically, um, you can do, you can do work on a computer and it doesn't have to be right in front of you. You can do some Mac work and, and set that up. So really clever. He, he sent me, we were talking about this a couple weeks ago and he, and he like sent me a DM on Discord and said, here's the test flight and it's out in the App Store now.
Jason Snell [02:14:14]:
Uh, and he's still working on it, but like, it's from one of our own and I really liked it. I thought it was, I thought it was good. So if you're, if you do have a Vision Pro and you're thinking about computer use, but one of the problems is you don't want to be right in front of a computer with your Vision Pro, you want to access a computer that's over the internet or just in a closet somewhere. This is a really, uh, smart way to do that. So check it out.
Leo Laporte [02:14:36]:
He says, uh, in this, in this shot, that's his, uh, Mac Studio up at the top. Of course, he's watching the show and Look at— I mean, who needs little USB screens? You got them all over.
Christina Warren [02:14:45]:
No, I was going to say, honestly, like, if you're able to be this productive, like, I, I, I wish that I could work with the Vision Pro on my face. I can't. But like, this, this is a, a very desirable experience. That's awesome. Well done.
Leo Laporte [02:14:57]:
He's keeping it up to date. He says, uh, he's, he's got version 1.2 waiting for approval from, uh, the App Store. So yeah, uh, he will, uh, he will be continuing to update this. Well done.
Jason Snell [02:15:06]:
Look at that. Vision Pro app has emerged somehow.
Leo Laporte [02:15:09]:
Love it.
Jason Snell [02:15:10]:
Yeah, it's good.
Leo Laporte [02:15:11]:
You see, that's how we become the premier Vision Pro podcast.
Jason Snell [02:15:15]:
It is. We got— we're so premier now that we've got Vision Pro app developers talking to us in our Discord.
Andy Ihnatko [02:15:21]:
Now I've got a use case for the Vision Pro. I want to set up like the NORAD display from the end of WarGames and just all these tactical displays and just watch the— watch Joshua try to annihilate the planet. I will spend $3,500. $200 for that experience.
Jason Snell [02:15:35]:
Thank you very much. I mean, it is the, uh, the other use case for the Vision Pro other than immersive really is that, that, that display mode that lets you have like an enormous display even though you don't actually have an enormous Mac display with you. And, uh, but like, again, you don't always— like, if I'm working on the couch in the Vision Pro, I could go get a laptop and have it in my lap, but you could also just, you know, If you do, I need to do Quick Connect to my server and do one thing and then come back over. It's just, uh, it's a good utility. I'm frustrated that Apple doesn't have more remote desktop support on its other platforms. Like, because the Vision Pro Mac display extension is not remote desktop. It's a proximity feature. You've got to be— it's continuity, right? So you have to be close to it.
Jason Snell [02:16:27]:
You have to be able to be right next to it. And like, it frustrates me about the iPad too. Like, there are apps that'll do this, but like, I'm a little frustrated that Apple doesn't think that looking at a Mac screen from another Apple device isn't a use case that everybody might want to have access to, because it's super convenient to be able to do that. But you know, in this case, Nightscape's, uh, taking care of us.
Leo Laporte [02:16:47]:
Better Desktop, you'll find it in the Vision Pro Store, an ARDVNC client specifically for the Vision Pro. And Nightscape says he was able to do it thanks to the AI user group in our Club Twit. He was, of course, he's a regular participant.
Jason Snell [02:17:03]:
$10 is the price.
Leo Laporte [02:17:03]:
$10.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:04]:
$10.
Leo Laporte [02:17:05]:
Worth it. Thank you all for your avid participation and great contributions to the show.
Jason Snell [02:17:13]:
Good show.
Christina Warren [02:17:13]:
Good show today.
Jason Snell [02:17:14]:
I love it when there's news.
Leo Laporte [02:17:16]:
There's news, Jason Sells.
Andy Ihnatko [02:17:18]:
It's $6 over for this one.
Christina Warren [02:17:19]:
I'll say it.
Leo Laporte [02:17:21]:
I hope Jason's here next week, but I It would be possible. It would be—
Jason Snell [02:17:24]:
I will be here next Tuesday, which will be the day before the event, so it'll be all about anticipation, right?
Leo Laporte [02:17:29]:
Unless they invite you to the 6K run around Apple Park.
Jason Snell [02:17:33]:
Well, but that's the beauty of it, is I, I, I can just drive. I might— I'm not gonna run around Apple Park. If they call, if they call me on the Batphone, I will, I'll attend. But I think, I think next Tuesday I'll, I'll be present.
Leo Laporte [02:17:43]:
Good. And if you get a call in the middle of the show, you can run out the door. I'll just take off. Thank you, Mr. Snell. sixcolors.com. Great place. You should join up there.
Leo Laporte [02:17:51]:
And of course, check out his podcast at sixcolors.com/jason.
Jason Snell [02:17:56]:
Thank you.
Leo Laporte [02:17:56]:
Andy Ihnako's website is ihnako.com. Become a premium member because you'll be supporting this poor ink-stained wretch through his travails in the library.
Andy Ihnatko [02:18:09]:
I'll be selling matches on High Street if this fails. Thank you very much.
Leo Laporte [02:18:13]:
No, it's a great place to get get all the Apple news. You don't have to wait till Tuesdays. And of course, uh, the wonderful Christina Warren, uh, she is developer relations at GitHub. It's always great to see Film Girl. Thanks to all of you for joining us, especially to our Club Toot members who make this show possible. Uh, if you want to watch us do it live, you can. Club Toot members can watch in the Discord, but even they often choose to watch on the better quality streams on YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Kick. That's every Tuesday, 11 to 2 Pacific time, 2 to 5, whatever it is.
Leo Laporte [02:18:49]:
11 to 2 would be— I don't know, it's too complicated for me. Around 2 PM to 5 PM Eastern time, 1800 UTC. You can download it after the fact from our website, twit.tv/mbw. There's audio and video there. Video on our dedicated YouTube channel. All the channels are available If you go straight to the TWiT channel, youtube.com/twit, you can find links there to all the other shows. And of course you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player, and that's how we like it. Download it, watch it, who cares if advertisers don't count you?
Christina Warren [02:19:23]:
Click it. Click it.
Leo Laporte [02:19:25]:
Yeah, we will see you all back here next Tuesday. But now I am sad to say it is my sad and solemn duty to tell you have to get back to work because break time is over. See you next time.
