Back to School - B1 - B2 Intermediate English Story for Learning English

It's time for Mac Break Weekly, Jason's here, and he's here. Christine is here. We'll talk about the Mac book, Neo. Turns out, sold a lot better than Apple expected. What's next for the Neo? We'll talk about Apple's AI Glasses. Mark German says they're on their way, and some great picks, including a classic Apple game that's back. Mac Break Weekly is next. (soft music) Podcasts you love. Front people you trust. This is Twit. This is Mac Break Weekly, episode 120, recorded Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. AirPods for your face. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news, Apple news of which there is very little. Hello, Christina Warren. How is it going back to work? It's been good. I mean, look, it's been a day and a half. So. (laughing) Did everybody did you have a cake? Did you give you a cake? They did not give me a cake. They did not give me a cake, but everyone's very, very, sure, that's real to see. Yeah, and I'm excited to be back. So, yay. And it's actually here. Yay, we're glad to have you. Sorry to keep you waiting. I had a little network snaful. We'll get it, I'll explain that in a bit. Because we've got very little news, Jason Snell is also here from sixpose.com. So three hour long show guaranteed now, 'cause he said we don't have much to talk about. We'll fill the mix in the long challenge. It's accepted, yeah. It's good to be here. Networking comes for us all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Drew and not Cole. He doesn't have to worry about the network 'cause he's using civic property. Exactly. It's nice to have one gig up and down. That's more reliable than what I get at my house. Also nice not to have. Now that the weather's really, really nice, it's like I can't. In the middle of the day, I'm wondering, it's Tuesday afternoon. Why are you two-dling about in your muscle cars and your motorcycles? Do you. Should you be at work? At school. I saw that it was gonna be 88. Is this possible? 88 degrees tomorrow in New York City? Is that possible? Is that that one? Anything's possible. It was a whole lot weird. It was very strange. The planet's in a death spiral, okay? Let's just accept that and move on. Let's talk Apple News. So there's some question about what's going on with the Neo. I guess either they didn't make enough or they made enough and everybody bought them and now they don't have anymore. Because they're sold out. Well, they're still out there, but yeah, there are reports that Apple increased their build to like 10 million is one report. And the idea was that they were anticipating whatever sales of five to eight million and it's going even better than Apple anticipated. But the real drama here is, they're using a binned chip from an iPhone that was released in 2024. And one report said they're gonna run out and it's unclear that's one report. We don't know if it's right or not, but since they're using a chip that has, I mean, the advantage of it is basically free. They already bought it as part of the process of building the iPhone 16 Pro. But what happens if they sell so many MacBook Neo's a good problem to have, right? That they run out of the chip that is required to make the MacBook Neo. And I think that's an interesting question of like, you could go back to Taiwan semiconductor, but like that probably blows up your margins on the computer. It's a good question. There's also a story that sort of breathlessly reported this week that, oh, guess what, there's gonna be a new MacBook Neo in the future made with the next generation A series processor, which is like saying that there's gonna be an iPhone 18 after the iPhone 17. It's obvious. The question is, are they gonna have to like scramble to get it out sooner because they're gonna run out of MacBook Neo's? I just, what a good problem to have, but also what a fascinating way, since you're a company with a single source chip provider, you are your own chip provider. If you run out of chips, what do you do? - Yeah, Tim Kulp, who used to be at Bloomberg, now he has his own newsletter, had a really good piece about it. Basically, basically going into a lot of this, the strategy was also talking a little bit about this, but his piece was basically explaining that, the thing is, you can either, it's a three nanometer chip, and capacity is already booked up, absolutely solid. So Apple's going to, if Apple wants to make more of these, they're going to have to contact TSMC and make it rain for them to say, please let us skip the line and make us more three nanometer chips. He's also mentioning the problem of aluminum is going to be a little bit short, and they need aluminum to make it. And basically, the DRAM is going to be a problem. Basically, it's really, really weird, isn't it, that Apple apparently didn't anticipate exactly how popular this thing was going to be? The idea of basing it on a chip that it is, there is a hard limit to how many we can access. We can't just simply keep rolling them, rolling, rolling, we don't have a stockpile, we just have an inventory. And when that goes, that's can present us with a problem. I'd forget whether it was Ben or Tim, who suggested that it's possible that one solution to the problem is going to be that Apple, kind of if that the low margin version of it, the 250, 6.1, or at least becomes four to six weeks so they can use our existing components to fulfill the higher margin 512 gig ones. But it's like you said, Jason, it's a good problem to have, but it's kind of weird to have a conversation about how Apple was not apparently, assuming that all this is true, tell a story about how Apple did not manage its supply chain adequately to be able to sell to everybody who has money in their fists to buy them with the hotest laptop. - I don't believe that one bit that Apple, first of all, if there's any company that believes the upside, it's of themselves, it's Apple. - Yeah. - I cannot believe that Apple would come out with a MacBook Neo and not think that it might be a hit, right? - Yeah. - Like, of course they can't, they've always had a plan for what to do, even if it's higher than the top of their thing, they've always had a plan for what to do. We don't know what it is, and it's interesting, right? Because what is the plan? I keep thinking the plan was probably that one that bin is empty, you just introduce the next processor from the next bin over and just keep it going. And maybe they do something, I saw some speculation that maybe what you do is if you have to bring in the new HIP, you make that the high end model and you take all the last scrapings of the bottom of the previous bin, and that's the low end model, and you kind of extend its availability, but you just kind of keep rolling, and changing chips in a computer doesn't have to be a big story, right? They could literally just say, "Oh, as of this week, the 69 version comes with the newer A-series processor." But I refuse to believe that Apple is not, did not have a game plan for the MacBook Neo being a hit. I just, of course, there's no way. There's no way. - Yeah, I think the only way that they would be caught off guard is if the actual supply demand rather was, say, double what they projected out, it meant to be, right? And I don't think that there's any sign that that's been the case. I mean, yeah, right now, if I look on the Apple Store online, it says three to four weeks, I guess, for delivery, but I can get one delivered between April 29th and May 6th where I can pick it up at a store on May 7th. - Well, that's not so bad. - That's three weeks. So it's not ideal. It's not great that you can't go into a store and buy one, like that's not a good thing. You want people to be able to go into the store and buy a laptop. However, I don't know what the situation is like at their retail channel partners, I don't know if Walmart, if Best Buy, if Amazon, if whoever else has more. And like Jason, I have to think that they had some sort of plan for this, whether it was further cutting down other ships, whether it's changing, however they do their bidding process. If it is a matter of having to change, what variants are available, maybe that's the case. What I do think this indicates though, is that if these reports are accurate beyond just what we see on the supply chain available on the website right now, which could just be a blip for a lot of things. I mean, hey, have you guys heard it's kind of hard to get things out right now? They're kind of some broader geopolitical things happening that might make some of this a little bit more complicated. But I do think that if there's any truth in this being a bigger hit than they anticipated, then I would expect them for, say, next year to do several more runs of ships that they might not have anticipated doing otherwise just so they can either have their bins, whether through software otherwise, ready to go for the NEO in 2027. - So it sounds like they didn't anticipate. Well, did you guys anticipate demand like this? Let's ask that question. Do I need to answer the NEO? - I didn't anticipate it five hundred million dollars. - It's always, I mean, for, look, I think everybody who was thinking about this product, I mean, we've been kind of talking about this product for two years now. Like everybody has said, this could be really big because it's putting Apple in a different place than the thing before. - That's true. We could say that, you're right. - And on the day, I think everybody had an expectation that like when you saw it and you saw the price, you thought this could be big and that this could be a really big hit product for Apple. Nobody really knew. - So it's really when you surprised Apple, certainly would have been. - I don't think so. I mean, Apple knows, Look, if these are all bin iPhone chips, then Apple knows the finite number of these that they can make, right? They knew that going in. - That was always an issue. - And so I'm sure they always had a contingency and we just don't know what it is. And maybe their contingency has been fouled a little bit by what's been, like as Christina said, just during all of this, maybe so. But I don't know, I just keep coming back to the fact that they've got an A19 Pro chip in the bin from the iPhone 17. Like they could switch this. - They could. - And it doesn't have to be. And in fact, I would say, I actually don't believe that you designed the MacBook Neo without thinking about how you want to as easily and cheaply as possible. - Put whatever chip you want. - The next A chip in there and the next A chip in there so that you can do it almost like a slipstream update where you're just like, we'll just pop in the new one in and that'll be the 699 model now. And then when eventually there'll be another config that'll be the 599 when we run out. Like the only question is timing. And if they get caught with their pants down a little bit where they have like no Neo's to sell for four months or whatever, that would be bad, right? - That would be really bad. - So how soon before there's an announcement, hey, good news. The Neo now has what would be the next chip in A19? - A19. - A19. - They might not do a pro though, right? Like that would be the interesting thing. Like that. - You get more RAM, that would be a big job. - Well, that would be a big jump and that would be a thing that I think that would be difficult to kind of make an argument, well, why are you gonna turn off this RAM, especially with this valuable as RAM is right now? Well, what you could do is you could look at like the regular chip that's in the A19 or even in the, so the one that's in the 17 or the 17 E, you could look at that and you could go, okay, this is Nate gig chip. This has a similar kind of core count. We can swap this in, we can make sure that we are going to get the allowances and whatnot. You could do that because you're still producing those chips. And if you need to do more runs of that, you could, right? So I think that there are options there. I think the only thing I imagine that Apple might not have anticipated and this I think would probably be similar for us, is like, I think all of us knew that this was gonna be big. The timing on this was so good because in the rest of the industry, everything else is going up in price. All the other manufacturers are being squeezed by, the RAM stuff. Now to be clear, - How come Apple isn't? - Well, they prepaid, this is what the trades have reported. They're like the chip maker trades basically reported that Apple prepaid a year in advance, whereas most of the other manufacturers, Dell, HP, Lenovo, they buy by the quarter, which probably makes sense when you're doing the volume to those places are you can get better spot pricing, except if there's going to be massive shortages. So Apple by paying in advance was able to lock in prices. Now I don't know what that means for next year. - Yeah, how long does that last? - Precisely, but for right now they're in a really good place, but that I think is the one thing that could have maybe, not to a point where I think it's a problem, but maybe could have made demand to be a little bit different because it's one thing like, a price, 499 with the education discount was I think lower than all of us were expecting. Like that was the best case scenario, and then it came out we're going, oh my gosh, this is not what I ever expected to see from Apple. When you couple that with the fact that the-- - Deconceivable. - Right, but what makes it really conceivable is we're at this weird point where the prices that Apple used to charge for memory and for storage are now almost in line rather than being exorbitantly overpriced because of the rest of the market. So even though everybody else in the industry unless you were a Chromebook was already at the 16 gigs of RAM place, now it's like no, if any other laptop maker is gonna have to make the same constraints that Apple was doing just for margin reasons, they're gonna do it just so they can not be losing hundreds of dollars per device. - I'll give you some input from our chat room. Andre who's watching on YouTube makes a good point. He said, "If you real gut punch for people who bought the Neo, if three months later, they upgrade the chip for the same price." - Here's the thing, I heard somebody say they'll never do it because they don't want to offend people who already bought the MacBook Deals. - Oh please. - Are you kidding? - Yeah. - No, in the end, in the end depending on your bad timing or timing on a product, it happens. You got a great computer for $5.99. - Exactly. - It seems the way of the world is still going to be good. - And the alternative is not being able to sell that computer to other people, it's not an alternative. So yeah, I guess you might be bummed out a little bit, but the computer you bought is still the computer. - That's the thing. - The man doesn't come to your house and punch the screen when they release a new one. - Right, right. I mean, it's as well as since it happens. I mean, look, remember when the iPhone came out and they lowered the price and they got rid of the four gig variant, right? It's like two months after it came out. And after the outrage, they did give people, I think like an iTunes creditor something. - $100 dollars. - You know, like $100 dollars, right? But they cut the price $200 and got rid of the lower storage variant, then like 60 or 70 days of being out. Like these things happen. The iPad 4 came out, I think 10 months after the iPad 3. Maybe seven months, it might have been less than that. It was, but it was a very short period of time. Because I was someone who bought the right in the iPad 3, which was not a good iPad. - No, it was a spare. - And it was a bad one. And then the lightning version comes out a few months later. I'm like, okay, but did I not buy an iPad again? No, of course I did. I was just like, well, this was unfortunate. This happens. - Yeah. I mean, we can all acknowledge the bad feelings of people who are in that state. But like, if you're a business, like you're trying to, you're worried about who's gonna buy your next one, not who bought the last one. - Exactly. - Yeah. And not losing momentum. That's why, like, I don't think that this is likely because I feel like they must have had another trap door. But like, if the story is they got desperate and they did need to pay TSMC to fab some more of these, which I really doubt. But like, that would probably kill their margin on it. That said, if your only choice is temporarily killing your margin, but allowing your hit product to continue to be sold and available, or taking your hit product and stopping all momentum, I'd probably pay the hit on my margin in order to keep the products flowing, right? - Oh, no. - Because this is a hit product. - No, I think you'd have to keep it, I think you'd have to keep it reduction. - As long as you're still making money, right? You know, money's only, right? - Well, I mean, even if you're losing money, and I don't think they would be your apple, you have to look at this on like a pendulum and you go, "Hey, we have enough of this that we can absorb any loss if that were the case." And I don't think that would be. I think their margins are probably well over 40% on this product. But secondarily, this would be a limited time thing because where they save money on this product is not just using the bin chip, although that's part of it. Is that they're using, you know, I think Jason, you pointed out like basically the keyboard feels like it's the older magic keyboard that they used to sell, right? Like with a trackpad element, the screens are screens that they probably had laying around, right? The aluminum is recycled. And so these are, and they're designing these similar to the E-series phones, at least this is my opinion, kind of trying to read T-Leaves, where they will be able to use the same, you know, exact, it will be a drop-in for years and years to come. So they've already amortized, you know, amortized, whatever, they've already played out how much they're gonna be making off of this. And so the idea is that the longer these go on, the more the margins will go up, that the chip is the one kind of piece in flux. So if even you had to say, okay, well, for six months, we have to take a little bit of a hit on margin on this product. Okay. For however many years, you're gonna be making it in hand over foot. - Scooter X and our Discord chat, our Club, Twitch chat says that his local Costco has the Indigo 512 for 10 bucks off lists, 689. That's up in Sacramento area. - Oh yeah. - I saw them at Costco too. I mean, I just, I think the, sorry, go ahead, Andy. - Oh, no, I talked about this, yeah. - Well, I was gonna say this. So yeah, we're talking about a lot of moves here. And remember that the Apple's next quarterly call is the end of this month. And there's already a lot of, so the, if Apple, if this becomes a louder sort of, louder sort of a problem discussion, I think a lot of shareholder questions, a lot of analyst questions are going to be, well, how are you managing supply? Also, how are you managing, what's your profit margin? Can you afford to like, weather this storm? And if not, like, how are you going to basically make up to this? Because shareholders do not like to know that, by the way, we believe that Apple had a plan, but they're gonna want to know how much money you're making off of these $599 laptops. And should we expect you to charge $100 more, just to make sure that there is some extra margin compared to everything else that you do? Is this a pivot towards Apple moving away from the model of we're gonna make premium products that are at a very, very high margin? Are you pivoting away from that to, we want to get market share now. So we can grow the market for it maxed by basically reversing that and taking less money per unit. And risking not sabotaging sales of the MacBook Air, but diverting some people away from a very high margin item to a lower margin item. This is gonna be a lot of really pointed questions, I think, in a couple of weeks about this exact subject. - So what color should I buy again? - I'm just trying to get-- - Indigo. Indigo, really? - I think that's the one. - Not the lemon yellow. By the way, it looks so much eat lemonier than your purchase. - Then it does in person. - I know, I'm looking at the Apple store. - If it looked at that, if it looks like that, I think that would be the one to get, right? - The first news on the wild, I saw from, it was a citrus and I saw it from like 40 feet away. - Yeah. (laughing) - You do, yeah, well, that could be a good thing or a bad thing, it is announcing, hey, over here, here's a Neo. - Well, no, no, we are announcing is that, hey, well, someone has, oh wow, no, it's the $590. - I can get the silver one, which obviously no one wants. - I was gonna say, I was gonna say, the silver one is available now. And it's interesting. on a, I'm at Costco's website and at least in my area, I can get any of them delivered except for the Indigo 256 base model. The Indigo 256 base model is back ordered for two weeks. So Jason, your favorite color is Indigo? I think that's my favorite. The preferred. How about you? I think Christine has the best taste, however. I mean, I like the blush, but I have to say I like the blush. I wish we were a little bit pinker, a little more saturated, but I do feel like that Indigo is actually like a really nice balance between like having, well, I'm going to say classier, but like you can tell that it's a unique color, but it's also not like I would if that citrus were really as yellow as it appears on the website. I would love it. But when I saw it in person, I was like, yeah, this looks like the color of my magic keyboard and my iPad actually looks a lot like the magic keyboard and my iPad. Almost identical to. Well, you know what? You have to really admire Apple for their ability to do some recycling, right? This is smart. The studio display is the same thing. It's basically, hey, we got these chips. What can we do with it? I know they've always wanted to make an inexpensive Mac, and this is a perfect use. Speaking of recycling, I'd like to talk about our sponsor for this segment. You know, Apple has left over a 19 chips. What do you have? You have left over food scraps. You know, I mean, it's like I go in the refrigerator and yeah, that chicken I bought three weeks ago probably shouldn't be eaten that. But do you want to throw it in the trash? It feels terrible. I was really happy when our local garbage collection company said, well, we'll do composting now. And you know, I've done composting when I was a kid because we had a garden. But that's not that's a horrible solution also because what are you doing with it? It starts to really get pungent. I want to show you what we have been doing with our food scraps. And I think it's the fantasticest thing ever. We bought a mill about, well, let's see, you got it in November. Look at this. We have diverted 356 pounds of food scraps. Look, my UPS is coming. 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It's not a question of sticking with it. This is just where the food waste goes. It goes in our mill. It's actually right there just like that picture against the center, you know, that center thing in our kitchen. It's great. The mill app tracks how much food you're keeping. You saw 360 plus pounds for us since November. It's already helped customers put over 15 million pounds of food to good use. It's sleek. It's beautiful. It looks great in any kitchen. There is a 90 day risk-free trial. So if you don't absolutely love it, you can just send it back. You know, we thought let's take a chance. We got the white one by the way, but they have some nice, there's black. They have that nice chrome silver. We were, you know, we were, Lisa and I'm sure you've seen it and we were thinking, well, I don't know, is it? What are we? Should we try it? So we tried it. And we, and I could just tell you, I love it. I think it's really great. 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Okay, you're right. When I said at the beginning of the show, I don't have anything to talk about. Jason, to talk about the NEO, you're going to get good mileage out of that. And we did. Hold you. You were right. Thank you. To button that up, I'll just say, I think the most likely scenario is that they just bring forward their plans to slide in the new chip and they find a way to make a work. And everybody's got these sort of rules that they built up about what Apple does. And it's like, well, Apple's not going to put out another model the same year that they put out. That's like, if they've got to, they will. And again, another model is a very, you know, people who pay attention to computers way of thinking about it, there could absolutely just be a press release or maybe even nothing. And the 699 model gets a different chip or whatever. And it's like a footnote, basically. And I think that's the most likely scenario is that they will make every last one they can out of the bin. And then they'll just flip the switch. So I mean, it's we can write that down. That's my prediction. I think in the next few weeks, you're probably right. They're going to we'll see. And they won't need to do a press release because guess who we'll talk all about it for. Yeah. Yeah. And just to button up, I mean, anything, I think a lot of options are going to be attractive to Apple because this is around the time of year when people are buying laptops for their kids to go back to school. Oh, yeah. High school. And also the great thing about the NEO is that it basically puts the Apple hook into into kids young and makes them into like foundational Mac users so that the next next time they need a new laptop, they're going to ask for the high margin ones. So I could definitely imagine Apple doing things that five years ago, we said, no, no, Apple doesn't do that. Apple doesn't like trade away like profits for they know that they they they protect that 35% 40% margins to the depth. Like I think they could do a lot of things if it means that the NEO becomes not just something that, oh, well, gosh, a couple times a year, they they burn off used unused chip inventory by putting these cheap laptops as no foundationally. This is a $599 laptop that is fast enough and built really, really well and competitive and it will always be part of the line of it's strategic. Another smart thing that they might be doing since they are thinking ahead is I wonder if they're looking at the size of their bin of the chips that they're still manufacturing. Yeah. And saying, let's make some more, right? Like literally let's let's make more. And you're thinking like, well, that's going to increase the expense it does. But I think one of the key things to think about when you're thinking about the MacBook NEO is that they get away with this like Christina was talking about the costs and the increased costs. One of the reasons they get away with the MacBook NEO and a lot of their competitors struggle is they're dealing with iPhone volumes. Like all of the parts that they're using the chips so much of what they're doing is like extra stuff leftover from the iPhone and like yeah, building a bunch of custom computer chips for a run of computers is just it's a different calculation than building millions of chips for iPhones and then just sweeping the excess into a laptop. And that's what their game they're playing is. So that gives them a lot of advantage just on volume that the volume of the iPhone is so huge. And I know it's a joke making up on volume, but they are kind of making it up on volume. But so that's a thing that they could do as part of this process is if they're caught flatfooted now and they're really mad about it, one thing they could do is say let's make some more of the current iPhone ship than we really need because we could put it in the MacBook NEO if we have to. Maybe. All right. Boy, that was the story that just keeps on giving. It's good. I love it because it's got like the drama of like did Apple make a mistake, but it's like a good mistake, but it could be a bad mistake while it's being a it's like oh my god, that's good. That's also good stuff. Also, did you see that a couple of different YouTubers decided, well, if this really is like a phone chip and a phone board, if we sourced a one - One terabyte storage chip from China. And we know how to basically, could we make a one terabyte version of this and I'll be darned it. - You sure can? - It's exactly like upgrading it, I think of a one terabyte of Mac Neo. I love how the consensus is like, wow, Apple did a very sensible, mainstream, practical for everybody laptop. What if we put a shoebox size water cooler in the back of it and try to overclock it? Like, you're ruining it. That's not the idea. This was a simple cheeseburger. This is not your putting crap on it that's not supposed to be there. - Security wise, and I think Scooter X for he's been outscranging for other stories we can cover. Thank you Scooter X, always useful. Mac rumors just reported this, actually saw it, I didn't see it, it came out minutes ago. A fake Mac app, and it was in the Mac store designed to look like a crypto wallet, actually snuck past Apple's review team, and it's now estimated that users have lost $9.5 million in cryptocurrency. Apple has removed that wallet app from the app store, but that's bad news. This is from CoinDesk, a fake Mac OS version of the Ledger Live crypto wallet was on the Apple Mac store, not the iPhone, the Mac store between April 7th and April 13th. Less than a week, 50 people downloaded it in that week. There is an official Ledger app, it's not on the app store. Apple approved the fake app, and as a result, three of the 50 people downloaded it, lost seven figure sums. I know if somebody, if I were able to get my wallet into somebody else's wallet, there'd be 7.85 big coins that would be lost to a bad guy, so I've been very careful about my wallet. That's a lot of money. Apple removed it from the app store, it was live for a couple of weeks, it's not known. How it got past review, Apple hasn't commented, this is breaking news just happened literally 15 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago. Word of warning, if you downloaded that. Crypto apps are going to force both Google and Apple to change what their app review process is like, because it's getting bigger and bigger. This is one of the reasons why, sorry, this is the reason why Google says that they have, that they're restricting side loading on Android from now on. To make, because they cite as that look, and especially in Asia, it's just flooded with banking apps and crypto apps that are just there to steal crypto, steal banking information, and we can't have the wild west anymore. Now, people are arguing that no, their reason says a really good excuse to take some control back and make the Google Play Store more important, but I think the things like this, when it's possible to make these big, big, big scores based on fraudulent apps, if Google and Apple aren't revising how they screen their apps, given the repercussions of a mistake, it's not just like people, like losing five bucks for a bad flashlight app anymore. - Yeah, I mean, I think that this is, I think this kind of underscores why, even though at Alibit, I was very critical of Apple at the time when they refused to allow any sort of crypto wallets in the app stores. I was very critical of that decision. I do feel like if you are not going to be able to notarize and approve these things the right way, if you can't guarantee that the ones you're approving are actually going to be legitimate wallets, then maybe there is an argument made, like I might come around and change my opinion a bit to be like, okay, well, if the gatekeeper can't guarantee that what it's letting into these services is legitimate, then maybe these shouldn't be things that exist in the app stores, which is not a position that I feel good about taking. But I do feel like this was one of those, this was all in the Mac app, which I think is why the only, there were like 50 victims or something, I think is what the reporting says, which is, I'm not trying to downplay that at all, but at least it was contained to that over the course of a week, whereas if it had been, I think a mobile app it would have been a lot more. And there's certainly no victim blaming here because you're supposed to be able to trust what's in these stores. Having said that, I think it just kind of just enters, where it's like this is a difficult area and anybody who's getting these things should be ideally only clicking on links that are affiliated with those sites themselves if they exist. I don't know, this is kind of a messy situation, but I feel for anybody who was impacted. - I think that's a really good point that what is the responsible thing for Apple to do? Maybe the responsible thing for them to do is admit that we are not set up to validate an app that can be, if used wrongly, can be used to steal millions and millions of dollars from you personally. Therefore, until and unless we can have, create a separate sideline certification so that we can scrutinize the hell out of it, we are not willing to promise you that any app like that is trustworthy. So, sorry if that makes it super inconvenient, but we're not going to promise something that we can't deliver. That might be the most ethical thing for them to do. - Actually, a collectic light company, we often talk about Howard's excellent blog, Max, and painting, no AI content, talks about why you can't trust Apple's privacy and security settings. And it's kind of a technical article, but it's probably worth reading. And the privacy and security, you've probably run into it. I know I do all the time when you add install and app and it says, "Oh, you've got to go into privacy and security and allow me to do this, have accessibility settings, access to files." That kind of thing. I'm glad that the Mac has that. And you would assume because of it, you're getting good protection, but he points out that it is possible for apps to bypass it. It's the intent mechanism. The app says, "I have an intent, I need an intent, I need to be able to write to a folder or open a folder." And Apple, in theory, will say, "Okay, you've got to ask the user first, the app won't be able to do it until they ask the user, but he's written a little app called "Inscent" that you can use to kind of see how it's possible for apps to kind of bypass that security setting. So this might be worth reading if you're absolutely worried about security. He says, "Inscent is notarized, it's an ordinary notarized app, it doesn't run in a sandbox, it doesn't pull any clever tricks. System integrity protection does block some of its operations, but not all, and it can get around some of the intent security." His conclusion, access restrictions shown in privacy and security settings, specifically those to protected locations and files and folders aren't inaccurate or trustworthy reflection of those that are actually applied. It's possible for an app to have unrestricted access to one or more protected folders while it's listing and files and folders showing it being blocked or for there to be no entry at all. Okay, I don't know if that's how the Bitcoin wallet app got around Apple's protections. Probably people assuming that it was a legitimate wallet said, "Yeah, yeah, you can access my Bitcoin wallet." Sure, I mean, how else would you do it? And that's when your troubles began. Take one more break here. As we go on, we've got the weekly Mark German report. And actually, some interesting things to say about glasses this week so we can talk about those. You watch a Mac break weekly with Andy and Ako. I almost said Alex Lindsay. The dear departed Alex Lindsay. No, he's still alive. He just works at Apple, which means he's invisible. He's got two different things. He's got two different kinds of afterlife. He's got a curved glass curtain. I hope he got to see Paul McCartney. I don't know. I hope he wanted a lottery. Christina Warren, though, able to fill in the Lindsay honorary seat of Apple distinction. Also here, Jason Stelff from sixcolors.com. Our show this hour brought to you by ZockDock. Life can feel a little bit, there's another product I use. I like being able to talk about products, actually, use. Life can feel a little like a puzzle. You're constantly trying to fit all the pieces together. You know, we're busy. We've got our careers, our passions. And often, and sad to say, what takes a back seat? Your healthcare. It's a lot. I know, especially in this day and age, but finding healthcare should not be the trickiest piece to fit into everything else going on. And I think it's especially true of us, guys, you know, rub dirt on it. I'm going to be fine. Yeah, my back's been killing me for six weeks. It's okay. ZockDock, you know, we had Jammer B for years was limping around the studio, limping around the studio. And he really needed hip replacement. 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And I have to tell you, my experience has been appointments made through sock doc happen quickly, typically within just 24 to 72 hours of booking. Sometimes even same day appointments. I've been using this for my in-laws, for my mom. It's fantastic. Stop putting off those doctor appointments, go to sock doc doc comm slash Mac break to find an instantly book a doctor you love today. That's zo c, do c dot com slash Mac break. We thank sock doc for sponsoring this message. (upbeat music) And by the way, Jammer B says, if I would dance, if I could find somebody to dance with. He is that happy. He says he's waiting now for an appointment to get the other hip done. So that's great. I'm happy to hear about that. That's awesome. Thank you, sock doc. Back to the show, Mark Goiman, last few weeks have been kind of think pieces. I don't know if this is, you can tell me Jason, you're good at reading the tea leaves on this. It doesn't sound like he has an inside person telling him what they're doing. But Apple, he says, is working on the display free smart glasses that they weren't always the plan. They did form a vision products group 10 years ago. But at the time they were looking at an iPhone tethered augmented reality headset with a wireless controller kind of like the Vision Pro and high end mixed reality headset. Actually, that's the Vision Pro. And standalone AR glasses, those are ones with displays. I think the success of the meta glasses has changed everything. He says that started in 2022 with the meta ray bands. He says Apple's now developing its own version. He says the internal code name is N50, gold, the target release is the end of next year or maybe early 2027 capturing photos and videos. Yes, that kind of surprises me because the camera is the one thing people complain about with a meta. There's that privacy issue syncing with a smartphone for editing and sharing the meta's do that. And obviously iPhone is perfect for that. Handling phone calls, meta can do that, but the problem is meta doesn't have a phone. Yeah, I feel like the best way I think you've got this product. It's kind of like AirPods that you wear on your face instead of on your ears. And so it's connected to your iPhone and they're gonna, part of what German says is they'll be able to do really nice integration with iOS. And I feel like the EU immediately cranks up its engine of like, why are you building this thing? I mean, and again, I don't think Apple should build smart glasses integration in speculatively for other people's products, but if they're gonna build their own, then it becomes a question of like, how much home field advantage are they gonna withhold and only make available on theirs? But be that as it may. Yeah, you think about this. They are, they're gonna have Siri access. They're gonna be able to play audio. And the difference is the cameras. And I mean, that's like, that's why you have this thing is because it gives you a camera that can see what you're seeing and that there are various AI applications. I think more so than probably not very good photos in video, I think it's probably more about like AI applications that currently require you to take your phone out of your pocket. And that with this device, you won't have to do that. I mean, they've already got features like this. Like I'm navigating, if you've ever tried to navigate, walking directions in a downtown with tall buildings, the GPS signals get really sketchy and they have a feature where if you hold up your phone, it looks at the buildings around you and knows where you are. It's really great. Well, imagine if you could just do that, walking with these glasses. That's one example of visual intelligence is another example. I don't know how practical that all is, but I think that's what they're thinking involving this product. So yeah, I mean, we'll see where it goes, but I think that they decided that more lightweight product, after doing the Vision Pro, I think they decided that more lightweight products are probably a place that they should experiment and iterate. And that's what they're looking at here. And then he says, they're looking for something, something kind of iconic in terms of, I think it's in terms of the camera. He says there's gonna be kind of like an oval camera housing. I think what they want is something that you can see on the glasses that makes you go, oh, those are Apple glasses and they're gonna have four different frame designs, he says probably. - It's probably kind of a big apple on the nose piece. - No, I think it's just a low-wing apple. - Just like the Apple grab of the. - That plateau on the back of the phone, I think it's gonna be like that where everybody's gonna know that that kind of oval-leafing with the lights and all of that means that it's those are Apple glasses. But you're right, they have to have a privacy story because this is a huge issue and it's part of Apple's brand. So what's that story like? Is it privacy for me, but not for me? I don't know what the story is here, but I do think they need to be trying this stuff out instead of just, they got caught flat-footed by. - He apparently has some insight 'cause he says, according to employees working on the project, Apple's strategy is to outdo competitors by integrating the glasses with the iPhone and offering a better build. Instead of going to Asalora, Laxatica, as Meta does, or they're going to do it their own, of course, design and build it in-house and all of that stuff. In fact, he points out even Google and Samsung are using Warby Parker to make the glasses. There are four, according to, again, Mark German at Bloomberg, four different styles the design team has come up with a large rectangular frame like Wayfair's, like the ones I'm wearing right now, which are Ray Ben Wayfair's from Meta. Although they're very geeky, black and thick, a slimmer rectangular design like Tim Cook's glasses, what a surprise. Larger oval or circular frames, and a smaller, more refined oval or circular option. So early though, I don't know if these designs will hold. They're looking at ocean blue, light brown and black. As you said, they want it to be instantly recognizable as an Apple product. Yeah, and that might mitigate a little bit the privacy thing because everyone knows what an Apple watch looks like. Okay, you recognize it immediately. Whereas these are metawent with Ray Ben's, the most iconic frame design ever that gets duplicated everywhere. So you don't know that those are smart glasses until you actually look really, really closely. Carefully, whereas if Apple were to design an iconic frame, at least I would say, okay, those are clearly Apple glasses or they look exactly like Apple glasses. I better ask if you are record. And basically say, please don't make sure the microphones are off, please don't take pictures while you're doing this. I still, the thing is, I would be a little bit more, I wouldn't say skeptical, but I would be a little bit more puzzled by it if not for the fact that Apple continues to sell the air tags, which are by definition, a privacy nightmare. And again, I want to make sure that I'm really, a clear Apple is not doing anything wrong by selling these things, but they are trackers by nature these devices. So they are going to be abused by people who are going to use it to surveil people without their knowledge. And the only thing that puzzles me has always been, how much money are you making from these air tags to make it worth that terrible, terrible hit of all these news stories about, oh, car ring has, has been broken up and they were using air tags to track people and worse stories and that. How much money they're making to mitigate those terrible, terrible stories that keep coming up the time and time again. And with that already in play, I believe that yeah, Apple is going to put cameras in these glasses even though God wouldn't be, I really wish that they would, if two years ago they would have done basically air pods glasses, which are simply, there are no cameras in there. We feel as though there's no solution to this problem right now. Also, we feel as though people don't necessarily want to have cameras on their glasses. There's no features within the iPhone and the near term they're going to be able to really take advantage of that. But however, this is the best way to talk to Siri. This is the best way to get notifications from your phone in a Serb Ticious way. And we think it's a valuable addition to the air pods lineup. And then two or three or four years in the future, when the, when societies may be a little bit more accustomed or has figured out how to adapt the cultural language, to accommodate smart glasses, that's when Apple comes in and that's when Apple's ads cameras are the thing. So as a thing, as it is, that's gonna have to be a third of their messaging. But here is why we are not going to be associated with people doing creepy things with our glasses because we have done things specifically and explicitly to make that extremely difficult and extremely embarrassing for the person who tries to do that. - Yeah, I mean, I think you make a good point that if an Apple design is iconic enough, similar to AirPods or anything else or an Apple watch, like you'll instantly know that it is an Apple device and so then people can have their expectations of privacy to be whatever it might be. What I don't know is because the backlash about the metaglasses has been relatively recent if we're being honest. When they first came out, I think people were skeptical and then the second version, when they got really good and then they continue to improve them with software, like I even saw it with my own circle of friends and I went through this myself where the first version, I don't think they were called the metaglasses, but they had the partnership with Rayban. I can't remember what it was called then, but this was probably four years ago. I was skeptical and I was like, this is creepy and I'm not gonna have these spy glasses on my person. Then they came out the next version and I was like, okay, but these are now actually compelling as a product, right? The fact is that they've got like headphones and they have some interesting kind of AR of your type of stuff and the way that it's recording video, there is a light on it and it seems like it integrates well. Also, many, many people out there have their phones out recording all the time and we don't know about it. So it felt like there was a moment for a period of time where I'm not gonna say this is the case for everyone and probably not for a lot of listeners of this show, but at least in my life and people that I hang out with, it seemed like a lot of people kind of let their guards down and were like, okay, these are fine, these are useful in other ways. And so the privacy implications that really were strong and like to say the Google Glass era just aren't here anymore. Now I think ironically because of the AI stuff, the things have come back again and people are bothered by them even though the way that these glasses exist, there's not a whole lot you can really capture or do. I mean, there are circumstances where certainly they'd be bad, but in terms of surreptitiously, you can't record for very long. - Yeah, better. - The battery's a problem. If someone wants to capture you surreptitiously, go pros and other types of cameras are much easier to get a hold of and can do a much better job of that. Anyway, so I felt like people let it go, but now with the AI stuff, I feel like there's a backlash again, so I agree with you. I feel like that'll have to be important part of the messaging, but I also kind of wonder, I mean, I feel like with a broad of air tags, I feel like the reason air tags get a pass, even though they are trackers, A, Apple did make some software adjustments so that you are at least supposed to be alerted if something is following you for a certain period of time, although whether people see those alerts or not is to be determined. But I think the secondary thing is that a lot of us kind of decided, even though this is creepy and even though this is surveillance tech, it is really nice to know exactly what my suitcase is or my passport or something else and the utility outweighs the creepy factor. And I think that's gonna be ultimately the thing that will determine any of these products, whether it's from Apple or anyone else, if it's successful as does the creepyness factors it outweighed by actual utility. And I don't know if there's actual enough utility. I think the price works really well for the meta-brape and gosses right now. I think the higher end ones, it doesn't, but I think the lower end ones, you're like, okay, I can see the utility in a gadget for this. That's I think the thing that Apple would have to overcome. - And you point out like one of the constant problems with technology where the benefits are enjoyed by the people who adopt them, of gonna for them and use them, however the downsides affect pretty much everybody, even the person, so basically anybody who's walking around, there was a piece in New York Times I think a few weeks ago pointing out the problem of a counter-worker at a takeout place who did not know that a YouTuber was actually recording their interaction and asking them questions about politics, asking questions about this and that, which you might have, okay, in a 30 second interaction while you're begging up someone's sandwich, you might say a couple of simple things, but if it's recorded and now it's taken out of context, it's like I would not have, if you would put, if you had held up a GoPro, if you were wearing a GoPro, if you were holding up a phone, I might not, I might have still answered your question, but I would have answered it differently. And the idea of everybody in the world suddenly having to be on guard about what I say and how I say it, how I present myself and how I'm presenting myself to certain people, that's a shift in society. And again, people who do not necessarily have $500 to spend on a pair of apple glasses are going to have to bear that burden without getting the benefits of turn-by-turn directions or be able to get notifications in the society or so. That's definitely something that we're gonna have to keep and eye on. And I don't, I feel as though it's just as you say, as these technologies become actually useful, they are not simply gadget guys, gadget people who buy them and rich gadget people who buy them, they become, you go into the eyeglass store and say, well, we have two versions of these glasses for $150 more, you can have smart glasses, you will like the smart glasses, just like if you buy the tinting, you buy the coatings, stuff like that. When they start to become everywhere and useful and they are actually are helping people on a day-to-day basis, that's when it becomes kind of unstoppable. And finally, there are people for whom this is not just a gadget, the idea of having this device that can help them navigate through the world, despite the fact that they have low vision to fight the fact that they might have hearing issues, despite the fact they might have cognitive problems. There is a dimension here where we really have to allow these things to happen because the benefits to these people far, far out way, any creepiness that I, and I'm speaking, I know I'm speaking as a guy here, so my, my, my quote, vulnerabilities are very, very different from women, but that might overweight my, skeving out, skeving, my worry that I'm being recorded and having to basically every time I introduce to someone to look at the bridge of their nose or look to the left side of their other lens to see if there's a little hole there. It's going to be a complicated thing and it's going to be, this is one of these things that makes technology, technology makes us revisit a whole bunch of longstanding questions we have as a society and we're not going to find, we're going to have to get used to it and figure out where our comfort level is. - Yeah, I just wanted to say that the, I mean, I think that Andy bringing up the air, air tags is a good point and Christine is right, the utility determines whether they work or not, but I think I have heard people make the argument of like, well, Apple's never going to release product X because it's controversial and it's like, that's not enough because the air tag is a great example of that. I do, I don't want to be this guy, but I'm going to be this guy and say, the thing is Apple's participation or not in this is not going to change the fact that society will adapt and that theoretical or actual person at the counter who got recorded in five years will expect that they might be recorded. And that's just how it's going to be because you could also already talk a phone in your pocket with it peeking out. There are so many ways to do it that are not even noticeable that that technology exists, that what it's going to mean. And I'll say this because this has already happened. My neighbor, this sounds like a tangent, it's not. My neighbor has a lemon tree and they're a new neighbor. The old neighbor is, we had a lemon shearing accord, right? New neighbors, we haven't had a chance to say, hey, do you mind, you've got like 90 lemons on your tree, can I take a lemon, I need some lemon juice? But I'll tell you what, I have an expectation that that neighbor has a camera and that the last thing I really want is to be a bad neighbor who takes a lemon and they're like, that guy is stealing our lemons, right? And that is how the world has changed. So, I mean, I think these are conversations we should have. I don't necessarily think that anybody can stand in the way of it. I do, here's why I'm encouraged about Apple doing this, is Apple is also going to have these conversations because they've made privacy and security such a part of their brand. They're the ones who are blitting a green dot into the MacBook Neo screen that you can't, that's part of a secure X-Clave so that you can't rig the camera to go on without you seeing a dot, right? I would imagine that these glasses will have something similar where they're going to make it really hard or impossible for somebody to sort of like disable the thing that says that you're recording an image. And they may have some very specific rules about where those images go. And maybe they aren't going on your camera roll. I mean, we don't know. I'm encouraged by that because at least if you've got some major vendors that are making these products and they're thinking about these issues and they're being criticized when they don't like with the air tags, when they don't live up to it. And Apple and Google were both criticized about tracking technology. That at least puts some constraint on what happens. But I do, I just am a believer that we already live in a world where everybody has to expect that somebody could be recording them on audio or video or taking their picture. And 20 years ago, that wasn't the case, but I think it is the case now and I think it's going to be the case from now on. And that's why I didn't want to steal a lemon from my nervous drink. - That's right. I agree with you. I agree with all the points you made. I just want to add that one of the things that I'm going to do that I keep coming back to when I think about the air tags is that what if Apple just simply said, you know what, that's a great product. I'm glad they exist. I'm glad that tile is making them. I'm glad that it's becoming a competitive market. We feel as though we don't have to get into that market. They could have made that choice. And I'm not making a decision here about what they could or what they should or should not have done. I think the part of the problem when we have conversations like this is that we, if we rush through it, we can make the mistake of ignoring the fact that not making these glasses is an option for Apple. They can do that. If they make the air tag, it's because they were very aware of the problems that this is going to create. And they decided that we feel as though we can mitigate it. And we also feel as though this is too big of business opportunity for us to overlook, even though it does conflict with our privacy, privacy, privacy mantra, we feel as though the opportunity is too great for us to overlook it. And again, you can approve of that. You can disapprove of that. But let's not ignore the fact that they had the option of saying, you know what, this isn't for us. We're glad that we're glad that tile exists. We're going to leave this as an opportunity for Motorola and Samsung and other people. But we're happy to leave this money on the table. And with the glasses that they do have the option of saying that what if we were to hold back for three or four years until we figure out where the guardrails are within society for there, and then rather than inflicting this product upon society and saying, what are you going to do about this? You're going to have to deal with it simply saying that we decided to hang back and figure out how people are going to use this, how it affects people in the public and how we can make the most polite, the most courteous, the most thoughtful version of this technology. That is also an option that's available to them. Let's honestly let that all say if I were them because the meta glasses are out there. They're selling fairly well. I don't know. I think 10 million units last time. I'm just saying. And people love them. And I think Apple could today make a better device already. And then of course the next question, I mean easily, and just the fact that it would be an Apple product instead of a meta product by itself. If you were a lack of a meta logo is a feature in itself. Yeah. That's that's number one. Number two, it's going to also come down to right now the meta AI is okay, not great. If app, a lot of this is going to come down to how well Apple delivers on Siri and AI. That's a big one. Now the other point in German's piece on Sunday was that John G. Andrea is nearing the end of his rest and vest period on April 15th. A chunk of stuff vests. And German says you're going to hear that G. Andrea is now left the building. He's rested. He's vested. He's done. He's got his money. He says he doesn't think G. Andrea is going to go on to another company, but just going to take some time to enjoy his money. And I think that's fine. G. Andrea, you may remember came from Google very hailed and moved about eight years ago to save Apple AI not only didn't save it buried it. Now the question is if moving to Gemini will save it. And there's a very good article I thought I think a very thoughtful piece. It's actually a blog piece. Add L. Rocha or Adel Rocha. I don't know how you say it beyond the code ADL RO CHA. How the AI loser may end up winning. Apple's accidental mode. And I actually completely agree with this because what we're seeing right now I will I will come to you as a messenger from the front of the AI wars because we cover this off course on our show and television machines and I've been watching it carefully. Andthropic and open AI are now spending billions of dollars a minute competing with one another trying to produce you know the winner before it's all over before they run out of money. It's become very clear and this actually affects the issue of ram availability of hard drive view all of this all of the supply shortages we've seen. It's become very clear in my opinion and I don't think I'm alone in this that it it scaling does matter that in fact more compute makes a big difference one of the data points in this is last week's announcement from anthropic we've got this incredible new model mythos they said it's too dangerous to release publicly we're going to give it to 50 companies let them fix their security flaws before we release it. But I think there's also a strong evidence that they can't release it because they don't have enough compute for it that it would actually they they don't have enough data centers and so this means that it's I think for both open AI and athropic they are now hitting the limit of what they can do with the data centers they have they need more Nvidia GPUs they're making their own GPUs they're going to Google for their TPUs there there there is a desperation in the air by these companies looking for this hardware this battle is getting vicious I think somebody's going to die I think probably likely open AI. I seriously think that these companies are going to be a shakeout Apple meanwhile watches this cartoon kind of says it all Apple watches this cap expert actually there's an even better chart in this post here's the cap expert Amazon up 42% year over year what do they say 180 billion this year spent capital expenditure almost entirely on AI and data centers Microsoft and alphabet close meta close look at Apple down 19% in their capital export really capital expenditure so Apple's just sitting back they're enjoying the the show they're watching the world burn they've got to deal with Google let Google spend the money fine they've got this privacy mode we've talked about the other thing it's coming out that's very interesting for a long time Nvidia had a huge advantage because of kuda which is a proprietary language that they used to access their GPUs and everybody wants Nvidia GPUs and kuda but Apple's always had these machine language processing components they call it mlx and more and more I'm seeing models designed to support mlx most recently Google's Gemma model which you can use with Olamma natively on a Macintosh so Apple's unified memory gives him a lot of RAM that's a great strategy they have the hardware in the Apple silicon and now the software is coming along I always said if you had some way to break kuda's strangle hold on AI Apple would have a real advantage what people are working hard on that so this is the point of this blog post and I think it's accurate that Apple has a moat and by standing back watching these companies burn money watching these companies fight between each other and just standing back they may in fact be the winner maybe discuss because do you I've worked in this area yeah I mean I mean so I mean I think that there is some truth to this which is to say that by failing they might wind up succeeding and let's just call it what it is right they they they whifted it two years ago badly and and they were slow when they came out with their announcements in 2024 and and I think that they have managed to still say part of the conversation because of the strength the hardware which I don't think was necessarily intentional when it was designed that it would be used the way that it is I think that was a happy accident and that's obviously very good and the tooling winds up following you know hardware the people can get and can like so I think all that is true the only thing I would kind of maybe point out I think is that like the amounts of money they're being spent in the data center problems and whatnot like what Apple is essentially doing right now is they are offloading that problem to someone else right and and and that works but the same constraint problems that the rest of the industry is going to face it's not as if Apple will be immune to that right it's great that they haven't split the capital expenditures to build their own data centers that's that's all well and good but if if if Google becomes you know like a you know constrained on capacity I have no idea how the arguments you know the arrangements and whatnot work but but I can't see that this would be one of the situations where you know Google would say for instance shut off its its own access to things so that that Apple could have more right I feel like it would be one of those situations where everyone is just going to have to accept that we don't have enough capacity for these things for one of their best capabilities so instead things will be kind become kind of nerfed as they were or there will have to be more investments which is what obviously the big frontier labs are are trying to raise money to do 122 billion dollar raise by open AI last month the largest raise ever history yes it's ridiculous right and then the money is going out just as fast as it's coming in and I I to be clear I don't think that's sustainable and I and I don't think that it's a bad decision to just kind of sit back and watch with the chips fall and then try to partner up with the biggest winners the only thing I would say that I think is is always gives me a little bit of pause is that if it were that easy I think that you have a lot of players who would just sit back and do that and what you risk when you sit back is that you will lose mind share and you will lose potential future modes that already exist and in which you already use things so it's so it's who it is sort of a tricky thing right and that yeah Apple you know people know that they make really great hardware and that they will be fully to build tooling for it whether Apple will or won't to help work in that space but let's also not like mixed metaphors here like the type of you know graphical performance and you know AI type of stuff that you can do on even a max studio is not a equivalent of what you can do on the $20,000, $30,000 cars from Nvidia and AMD. Like, it's not even in the same wheelhouse. And so yes, it's fine for some types of post-training stuff and some sort of inference work. But it's not as if the power is there unless you're doing-- you're literally just producing millions and millions and millions of chips to shove into data centers. It's not like this is a real competitor against what these needs are. But no, I think it's a good article. And it's certainly thought provoking. And I think for me, the fear is always, OK, you're in this really good spot. And you can kind of watch where the chips are going to lie. But what if one of these companies breaks through and makes an operating system or makes a phone or makes something else and then takes the mind share away? Because that's the problem with sitting still. Yeah. Apple's biggest problem is if AI really does become a thing. And it becomes like social media where everybody simply expects that this is something that you do with this device. And just like Instagram, just like Facebook, just like TikTok, just like YouTube, the iPhone becomes irrelevant to that function is just simply the platform that you run, the third party app that you actually like on. So that's a point where Apple basically needs to make sure there doesn't hang back quite as long as they might. Every time I say that, every time I see an article like this, we've seen a lot of them. It's like, yeah, that's good. That's good. That's an advantage, again, because Apple has never been in the position where they can make money by having huge, huge servers and huge huge amounts of compute. Whereas that is why Amazon AWS exists. That's why Google exists. They can make serious bank here because anything that involves having a big, big bank of computers, they can charge a lot. They can find a lot of customers for it. That's fine. But when I see these articles that sometimes are headlight, that, hey, well, Apple just-- Apple's in the cat dirt seat. Apple's pursuing the right plans. I feel like it's like that the famous people who didn't get the wake up call and they failed to board the Titanic that morning. It's like, that wasn't your plan. I mean, it worked out great. I mean, thank God that things are working out OK. But just let's not make sure we give Apple credit for being extremely wildly by putting $10 billion in to an electric car instead of investing in AI. This is why I think Christina is disclaimer at the beginning is the most important thing that we've said so far, which is, let's clear, they tried and failed, right? Although I would argue that maybe the roots of their failures is that they were trying to be something they weren't. Like, Apple is not a cloud infrastructure company and that's kind of what was required here in a way. But I will say, yeah, they may get away with it. And that's how we should look at this. This is like playing poker and you have a chance to win but you're disadvantaged. That's where they are. It's like if your opponent ends up drawing the right cards, you can't win. And that's true. I think I like the scenario though, as Leo said, I mean, Leo dramatically said, someone's going to die. Someone. But like, I think the idea that there's so much money being spent right now and it can't all be a good investment, right? Like, yeah, somebody's going to be disadvantaged or over-invest. And I just, some numbers that I looked up while we were talking, which is last quarter, Apple ended the quarter with $145 billion in cash and marketable securities. Now, they have a capital return program. They do a stock buyback. By the end of the quarter, their net cash was $54 billion. But I am reminded that one of the things that Apple has as an advantage sitting here on the sideline watching this happen is an enormous cash machine. The cash flow of Apple is enormous. And if there is a moment of weakness anywhere where something teeters or starts to crash, Apple can basically swoop in and say, for like, we talked about that open AI spend of $100 billion or whatever, it's like, Apple could do that with cash if it wanted to. And it hasn't done anything like that before. But that puts it in a position where, unless everybody else succeeds and they all take their balls and go home. And Apple is left sitting thinking, oh no, the music stopped and we don't have a chair to sit down on. We're here all by ourselves. Unless that happens, it seems almost impossible. Apple has this get out of jail free card a little bit, which is their iPhone business is still so enormous. And it's a hedge against the success of AI in a lot of ways because it's a device that's in everybody's pockets and they can run AI on it. So yeah, I mean, in the end, the story is they tried it. They failed. Maybe they were a bad fit for it. They may still get away with it. And one of the reasons they'll get away with it maybe that they could buy their way into succeeding because it has so much cash. Apple doesn't have to go to the money changers for cash. They've got so much cash flow. But when you think about the cash flow, they stopped doing a stop by that for a minute. Right, there are a few companies like that that can sit back and watch. Covers a lot of weakness when you can just write a check for $100 billion and fix it. I do have to point out though, and maybe Christina will disagree with me. But anthropic is at this point kind of racing ahead. I mean, they're lead may not last, but they are in an unusual position. They really have a strong product. - Well, I think their model is my opinion. I think their models are probably the best right now in terms of capabilities, at least for the stuff that I do. And I mean, opening eyes models are good too, but I, but you know, - Yeah, a lot of people like Codex and are happy with it. - Absolutely. But I think like anthropic does a lot of things right. And like this is an area, especially with coding and things like that. I think it's closer on some other things, but especially for coding tasks. - Oh yeah, nobody's better than nano banana for image. - For example, Google I think has the image and video generation down. I think that research Google is a little bit better there too. I think writing is probably mixed. But yeah, in terms of coding stuff, no, I think inthropics definitely in the lead there. I think the big challenge for anthropic, frankly, is probably just the same as anything else, which is, okay, how do we get more data centers? How do we get more capacity? - How do we support the demand that we're seeing? - People complain over the last three weeks. There've been a lot of complaints over Claude. The coder's saying it's nerfed. It's not as good and they have a lot of evidence since the case is not the anthropic. I think it's doing it on purpose. It's that they've run out of compute. - Well, that's the problem, right? Is that when you run out, there are finite resources and even though they're, you know, I think really seeming ahead, it's like, you know, open AI, even if their models aren't as good, they're much better capitalized. And so they, and they, you know, are able to make some of these types easier. So it's definitely an interesting position. I mean, I think it makes both Google and Amazon look very smart to see their investments in anthropic. - And I should not ignore the Chinese companies because I do, when I, I code an anthropic's opus 4.6 all the time in Claude code, that's pretty much what I use hours a day. But I have a fallback because every once in a while, anthropic goes belly up. I'm not kidding, you get a 401, it's like, I don't know. And I fall back to GLM, which is a very good model from Zi, Zi, G-Poo, which is a Chinese company. DeepSeek kind of started this all a year ago, a little more than a year ago, with by challenging everybody with a model that everybody went, what, how could this be that good? They don't even, they can't even buy the Nvidia chips they need. There are many other very good Chinese models. There's some evidence that they're good because they steal. They distill anthropics Claude. And maybe it is, GLM is pretty much identical to the Claude. I can swap in the brain in Claude code and there's very little difference. So there is competitors, there are competitors in China. They will at some point, I think local models will be very good, good as we are today, but they'll always be these frontier models. I don't know, we're gonna, this is such an unpredictable time. I think it's very exciting personally. I think it's also very dangerous because I, you know, every company has ideals and ethics so long as there's money in the bank. What happens when open AI starts to feel this incredible pressure where, again, it just seems, again, I'm not a financial reporter, but it just doesn't look like they have any path to profitability. What happens when they start getting desperate? What happen, will they simply say that we need to get, we need to attract more investors. Let's release this thing that's a little bit sketchy or let's do this stuff with this user data that we said five years ago we would never, ever, ever do. But now we really need to keep this rules going for at least another three years before, so that we can get out of it before it could completely collapse is, that's my biggest worry right now. - Yeah, I have to say, I've been, you know, Amazon came out with this new A-word plus on its echo devices and at first it was really annoying. It's gotten better and better. It's interesting, Amazon is not, as though we don't talk about them a lot. They are still kind of working on it. And I do think that a smart voice assistant for the general public on a voice enabled device like a home pod will be probably how most people will use AI. It isn't the best way to use AI. I mean, coding is the best, but. - I've been saying this for a while, I think that the best, the best opportunity for wearable computing is simply a Bluetooth earbud or again, a pair of glasses that have like, you don't have to put anything in your ear, it has a microphone, it has a thing. And you can simply ask questions and get magic voices, magic voice to giving you responses in the background. That's I think the sweet spot, you can do it for 20 bucks, you can do it for $400. And by making these models better, these assistants better, better, better, better, more egenic, more useful. That's when people are going to start to simply buy defaults, like putting this thing in your ear, walking around, because it's a geolocation app. It says, "Oh, by the way, you're almost at the building we've got your meeting. Look for the subaro. There should be an orange roof next to the building. That's the building you want to go to." I don't necessarily have to see a little screen wave guy that says, "Oh, by the way, here's a picture from Google Street, if you have what it looks like, just describe it to me and I'll get there." Andy, in this theme here, which is Apple may succeed despite their failure, this is one of those moments, right? Because people have iPhones and people have AirPods or other devices, but the AirPods are very popular. If that's the primary scenario, Apple's already got it, other than the good assistant part. But this is why I think it's more likely they're not that Apple escapes its failure on AI. It's because of stuff like this. Because there are a lot of scenarios that we end up in, where you need good hardware to interface with the AI, and Apple's got the good hardware. It gets away with it. They are, again, they're getting away with it. They tried and failed, but it turns out, maybe it's like sitting down a friend and saying, "You've got your strengths and your weaknesses." This is a weakness. Maybe don't focus on that. I feel like that's a little bit of what this is. Apple, the AI model thing, it's not your best move. Your best move is like you make amazing hardware and you do some nice feature integration. Focus on that and let the AI people in the back room worry about that part. You just don't worry about that, and they may get away with it. Because in the end, you do need to stick something in your ear. You do need to have a connection to a network. These are things Apple is good at. And maybe their mode is reduced or maybe it's not. Maybe you still need a smart phone in your pocket and you still need a nice pair of earbuds, in which case they get away with it. I've been playing with it because my goal, I think the real goal for AI is ambient computing. I don't know if it's on your face, it's in your ears or it's in your house or somewhere. But you should be able to just talk and have it do stuff. I've been playing with using cloud. This is an open cloud running on that old R-Rabbit R1. Yeah. Which turns out to be really good for this. I can talk to my cloud. It's running on the framework, but I talk to it through the R-Rabbit or I can talk to it through Telegram. I can actually talk to it through my Apple Watch and get it to do stuff. This is an ESP32. These are cheap. This is about 60 bucks. This is the only one of those that is voice activated. So I can say high ESP and then talk to my cloud instance and get it to do stuff. This is the goal to me. I would, these are cheap enough. I could put one in every room and then be able to talk to my AI assistant. By the way, not just any AI assistant. This is the problem with echoes and even homepods is they are kind of more generic. They can sort of understand a little bit about you, but they're basically generic. Your own assistant, mine knows everything about me. Because over a long period of time, I've stored more and more information and it keeps track of that. Is a personal assistant that knows you. It's general. It's that old John Scully made it, knowledge navigator video. Do you remember that? - Yep, it was made out of wood, but it was a good thing. (laughing) - With the little AI in a bow tie, he says, you have a 3 a.m. appointment and oh boy, so I remember mom is calling. - Apple source. - Really close to that. Who better to make that than Apple? - Yeah, and it just, I mean, just 15 minutes ago, I said that one of the possible dangers for Apple is that AI becomes really, really ubiquitous and now the iPhone is just simply the carrier for the AI. That could be a problem if it means that basically, hey, why don't you buy a pixel phone? Why don't you buy a Samsung phone? Why don't you buy a $250 motorola phone? But it could work the other way around, which Apple is simply saying, you know what? Knock yourself out, spend hundreds of billions of dollars developing this AI. We will make a platform that will simply works best, works great with whatever AI you want to use it with. We will include the APIs so that the developers at Google, developers that are in thethropic, whatever, can do the agent stuff within our rules and safely on our platform. But we are not necessarily going to say that when you finally come to Apple Intelligence, you have to leave behind this assistant that knows, that you've been talking to for four or five years and knows all your rhythms, knows all of your pronouns, knows all of your nouns, knows everything about you, and you have to start once again, all over again with a brand new assistant, brand new interns, fresh from college who doesn't even know how to make coffee yet. But if Apple simply says, guess what? Take your take your cloth and take your cloth, take your open cloth, take your whatever it is, we will, how about you use it through a beautiful pair of glasses or a beautiful phone? We will let you do that. We don't care. We just want your hardware money. - Through your Vision Pro. We're going to do the Vision Pro Second just a little bit. - No. - No. Jason, the only one who has one in the family, I'd say no. - No, what must we? - Hey Jason, at least you're getting some use out of it every week. - No. - No. You're watching Mac break weekly, Jason Snell, the Mays Air. That's your new title, the Mays Air. - Oh no. - Oh no. - Oh no, Mr. Bell. Andy Anaco and Christine Warren were so glad you're here. And now it's time for the Vision Pro Second. ♪ What do you see, what do you know? ♪ ♪ It's time to talk to Vision Pro ♪ - By the way, I'm still wearing my meta-rape pants for no apparent reason. (upbeat music) Vision Pro, there's not a lot, but there's something. Blackmagic's camera for Vision Pro content is now available widely. - Now we really need Alex here, right? - Only $30,000 guys. - Only $30K. Such a deal. - I'm going to make a-- - Yeah. - No, I mean, this is, it's an amazing piece of technology. And I think Alex would tell you that $30K is entirely in line with what this piece of technology is. - Oh, it's a piece of technology. - It's a piece of technology. - To be clear, this is actually very inexpensive for something like this. - I bought a camera from Alex that he had purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars from Lucas. The problem is the appreciate very quickly. I don't think I spent more than a thousand on it. - When I was at Apple Park with Alex for the same immersive video day that they did, and then they hired him. So that was the end of him, but they didn't take me. I just take a couple of-- - Did you notice there was a moment where some guys in the black jackets came over to him and said, "Hey, talk to me." - I mean, it was very much like I was there and I turned around and Alex was there and I was like, "Oh, Alex is here." And I thought, "Of course he is." But anyway, while I was there, I got to talk to some people from Black Magic. And I know I've said this on the show before, but just to reiterate, they thought that they would sell like a handful of these. This is one of those, we talked about the MacBook Neo where they did not anticipate the demand. And it turns out that there are a lot of people out there who really want to shoot a immersive video. And they want to vision pro is the place where you can do that right now. But I think they are all feeling like in the long term, having 3D immersive video is going to be a format that people are gonna experience. Maybe you'll experience it in something like Cosm, which is kind of like mini version of the sphere. Maybe it will be on a headset in five or 10 years, but these are filmmakers who think like this is gonna be a format that's gonna be really interesting. I want to get up to speed on it now. And so Black Magic was kind of taken aback. Like they really, they were happy to build it because Apple was like, we're hand building all this stuff, you gotta help us here. But they didn't anticipate the demand. So now this means that it's gone beyond the kind of like, yeah, I can get you one, right, kind of thing. To the yes, it is a product you can buy. But I think that was an interesting data point that Black Magic was itself surprised that there was a market for this $30,000 immersive camera. But there is. And so, you know, and-- - That's great news for the vision pro, right? - Yeah, and then they've got, I mean, they're also making the live version of this that they're using for the Lakers games that will probably go to other sporting events as well. And it is good for the vision pro, 'cause I mean, the vision pro's price makes it, you know, pretty much impossible for this sort of thing. But if there's a thing vision pro does really well, it's this, it's immersive video. It's the most impressive thing the vision pro does. So perhaps getting more content is at least a way forward for the platform eventually. - Also in the vision pro segment, this is just another app that's on the app store, the space between-- I just thought it was really a cool use of the vision pro. It's a father and son photography exhibit, coffee and sons. So the father who says, "I fell in love with photography the day my son was born five years ago, from the moment he could hold a camera, I've been sharing that passion with him." So what they're doing is a gallery and you zoom into the photograph and now you get this kind of vision pro environment that is, you can walk through that's the photograph. They call it this, I think this is just a, to see, to me this is the kind of innovative stuff that makes this platform make sense. Not just, let's do 3D versions of what we already have, but a unique way to do it. It's a spatial photography exhibit. It's free in the app store for vision pro. I just thought I'd mention it just 'cause I think this is, to me, this is kind of neat. - That's inspiring. - I have a vision pro item to put on the table that is not a non-list. It's more like a promise for next week, but I do now have with me in my hand right now, the Logitech Muse, which is the spatial pencil for vision pro that Logitech made. So it is a full spatial aware, - Stylus. - Purple crown. - And yeah, you can paint the world, man. I haven't used it yet. This is my promise is that I will use this thing, I'm making a promise now, so this will force me to do it. I will use this thing in report that next week, but like, what is it for? How does it work? I don't know. We'll find out together. But anyway, I do have the Logitech Muse now. - And that, ladies and gentlemen, is your vision prosense. ♪ Now you see ♪ ♪ Now you know ♪ ♪ We're done talking, no vision broke ♪ - Listen to this giant. - Sure. (laughing) - One last story, Andy brought to the table, just broke today. We'd heard rumors about it. You remember that Apple did satellite phone with a company called Global Star. They actually put a bunch of money, billions into Global Star's satellite network. - Yeah, they owns 20% of them, I think. - Yeah, they use it for the, you know, a set phone stuff. Well, Amazon has just announced it's going to buy Global Star. The Amazon has its own kind of starlink. They call it Leo, low-Earth orbit satellites. They're rolling out Delta. And now they're gonna use Amazon Leo's in there, some of their planes, but they don't have enough satellites. And unlike Elon, unlike SpaceX, they don't have the capability to just launch, you know, every week. So they decided, well, we'll buy Global Star, so we get access to their low-Earth orbit satellite network. - You know, $12 billion, the official Amazon press release has quotes from Apple to assure basically, absolutely. - Apple and Amazon have an agreement to continue these services. - Not just, yes. - And I think that the wording, of course, is really, really precise, not just continuing, but also we're collaborating on future stuff. So it's not as though, congratulations Apple, as soon as this contract is over with, you thought that this is gonna be forever thing, but no, in 18 months you're gonna have to find a new dance partner. So that was the biggest, the financial times broke this story last week. And they were saying that was one of the hangups of this deal that they didn't know. Basically, they had to basically make Apple really, really happy and really, really confident this is gonna work out for them. They're not gonna have a problem with, they're not gonna have any problems with the FCC, 'cause the FCC is basically, I know we're very, very gung-ho on this deal, so that's gonna go through very nicely. But it's kind of like what Jason said earlier, that this was a $12 billion deal, which is an enormous amount of money, but Apple could have written that check and not have to worry about buying groceries that week. They could have bought that. - But they are doing an Amazon's doing. - No, I know I understand, but I'd say internet. But I'd say, that's the sort of operational power that Apple actually has. And it's interesting buying to the future, 'cause of course, the blue origin hasn't been doing as well as SpaceX, but they do have launch platforms. They are going from like the new shepard to the new Glen, so they are basically trying to get into the low earth delivering things to low earth orbit business. They have had to fight Elon Musk, Elon Musk, at least a year and a half ago, was filing petitions after petitions with the FCC, saying, "Oh no, you shouldn't bother." It's getting really crowded up in space. I don't think there'll be warp room for our 20,000 satellites and bowings and Amazon, so you basically better just give us exclusive access to lower-dored orbit. - Well, that surprised me that the government said they'd approve it because I really thought he wanted to make a phone call and say, "This is something that he's been on even in the previous administration." Basically, he does not like the, we're asked the, he doesn't like competition. - Well, no, no, I'm sorry, I'm at the FCC commissioner running car. Like he was basically even wearing a car. For two administrations, it was like, well, if we were going to increase access to broadband in the United States, basically we want to invest in infrastructure, we want to basically have all these companies lay fiber optic cables and basically do terrestrial stuff, where asked Brendan Carr's position has been, we can make this happen really, really fast if we basically make satellite communications like really popular and really, really accessible and remove road box to more of these networks being put in. Basically, that solves the problem of, if you have a rural district that doesn't have access to broadband, you ship them a box and they set it up as opposed to they wait two or three years for permitting and rideaways for all these trenches to be dug. I think that short-sighted, there's not the first thing that I disagree with our FCC commissioner about, but it is, I respect the point of view, I just disagree with it, but that's the reason why I think deals like this are, we're very, very easy to make because it basically promotes his long-term agenda of let's increase access to broadband through satellites, not through fiber. - All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're glad you're watching Mac Break Weekly. Glad you're here, especially glad to have our club members in the audience today. Thank you very much for your generous contributions. 10 bucks a month, join the club. You get ad free versions of all the shows. You get shows, you get access to the club between Discord, which is a really fun place to hang out with super smart people who have access to animated gifts, galore. And if that doesn't float your boat, you should also know that by joining the club, you are supporting in fact, all the programming we do here at Twit, the club is a very important part of our ongoing operations. More than a third of our operating expenses now paid for by club members, thank you club members. And I think that that's gonna increase. We don't wanna cut back on shows. We really don't, we'd like to keep doing what we're doing. We've tightened the belt as much as we reasonably can. I know no more belt tightening, but it's gonna take you. If you like the programming and you wanna hear it and you want it to continue, Twitter.tv/clubtwitofsand. Now, pick of the week time, ladies and gentlemen. I'll kick things off real quickly with a, this is an example I think of vibe coding and how vibe coding is gonna start replacing the commercial apps we buy, we use. People are writing their own versions, they're posting them on that little thing, Kristian might know about it called GitHub. - Yeah. - This is, and you almost always can tell if it's a vibe coded because it'll be MIT licensed. Often the vibe coding will say made by Leo Laporte and Claude code, my stuff all says that, just 'cause I don't wanna hide it, but you can turn that off. But when you see the MIT license, which means basically, do what you want. Anything you want. So there is one, this is from a moment basil. I think that might be a Swiss poison. It is a replacement, a free replacement for Clean My Mac. It's a free open source Mac cleaner, written in native Swift UI, which is nice. Yes, AI is pretty good at doing this. You can install it with HomeBrew. It's called Pure Mac, and you can see what it does. I don't use Clean My Mac. I don't know if I need this, but I did look at some of the things it deletes. And I probably is something I should be doing, system caches, logs, not all of the logs are automatically rotated as they should be. Temporary app data, empties the trash bins, downloaded, may email attachments could be, they don't have to be deleted. Big files, older than a year can be deleted. Again, you get the choice. Lots of good stuff, the HomeBrew cache, which can get quite big. So this is nice, free open source. No telemetry, nothing. It doesn't have an app on installer, and it doesn't have a malware scanner, both of which I think are fine. So if you're interested, you'll find it on GitHub. You could search for Pure Mac, P-U-R-E-M-A-C, on the Moment Basel repo. I, by the way, one of the issues, I think, with a lot of these vibe coded projects is people immediately fork 'em. And so I always try to get it from the original poster, 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen when it gets forked. There are 84 forks of this already. One and a half thousand GitHub stars. That's always a good way to, that's a good signal. If you have a lot of stars, that means people are using it and like it, from M-O-M-E-N-B-A-S-E-L on GitHub. Christine Warren, you're picking the week. - Yes, okay, so I had two, but I think I'm gonna actually talk about one of them more, but I will just as a quick shout out. - You can have two, we allowed that. - Okay, all right, so the first one is, DaVinci Resolve is really coming after Adobe, and they released a photo app that is-- - This was interesting to me. - Yeah, I think this is really interesting. You've already been able to basically do this, where you've been able to edit photos in DaVinci Resolve, if you did it as stills, and now they've just made it a separate app. - 'Cause it's a video editor. - It's a video editor, yeah. But if you use those features like you know, you could take a still frame, and you could do a lot of the same things with color grading and other stuff that you would otherwise do in Photoshop. And now they've just actually just made it their own app. And because we just talked about Blackmagic, you know, they make their money on cameras, they can sell their software for very reasonable prices. The free version lets you do a ton, and if you spend, I think it's $295 to get the sweet, one time, no subscribe, yeah. - No subscribe, last forever, you know, brings you into the ecosystem, which of course then encourages more people to spend money for their cameras and make plugins and do all kinds of other things for them. - I think it's interesting, it imports directly from the Lightroom as well as Apple Photos. And it also imports the tags, the ratings, the favorites and the keywords. This is a shot across the bow to Adobe. - It really is. I mean, to be clear, you can still do a whole lot more with Photoshop. Then you could with something like this, but the fact that if you have your video editor and you have other things, I mean, all they really need is kind of a vector kind of, you know, tool and they, really have a strong package. It's a lot of stuff that pro photographers have. I was going to say, for pro photographers, I think this is great. And so that's the first one. I think I haven't really had a chance to look at it much. It came out yesterday. I did download it, but I haven't done more than just open it. But I think that's impressive. But the one that I wanted to mention, a John Gruber put this on Deering Fireball this morning, and I thought this was great. Similar to what you were talking about about people kind of using AI to either create new apps or alternatives. In this case, it was a developer who created the glider, which was a classic marketing game from the '80s. And then he released a glider classic, kind of a rebamped version of that in the early 2010s. But he hasn't updated it in 14 years, something with the written screen broke, and he had to remove it from the app store. Well, he used Claude to basically just say, OK, fix this for me. It did. And now it's back in the app store. And I think that is actually fantastic. This is amazing. So is it the original developer that did-- It's the original developer. Yeah. So he used Claude to fix it. He used Claude to fix his rewrite that he did 15 years ago. And now it's-- It's true to the game. --back in the app store. So I think that's amazing. This is the original flappy bird. Yeah, it is. It's been 11 years between-- So basically, he just asked Claude, like, why-- How can I fix this to make it up to modern standards and it was able-- which is, I feel like that's some of the undersold things about AI coding assistance is-- I heard this from a friend of mine who's a professional app developer who said they don't use Claude to do code, but they have a lot of old code in their app. And they're literally paced in the code and say, well, what was I doing here? It's not commented or anything. And Claude is like, oh, that's what this does. And he's like, yeah, that's great. It's really good. Or this, where it's just-- Yeah. --you know, he's not developing the glider all the time and thinking about it and up to date on all the latest. But he can point Claude at the glider code and say, OK, what is broken here on modern OS's that I need to fix? And have it come in and go, oh, yeah, you've got to do this. And you've got to do that. And then boom, it's back in the story. Isn't that great? That's great. Thomas Bell. I'm especially pleased that it was the author who actually did this as opposed to someone who's only two. Hey, I just remembered Glider. I spent the afternoon via coding a version of it. Well, if you have a source code, Claude's really good at reading source code. Absolutely. In fact, it's one of my projects. We have a sales system that was written years ago by a guy who left and has not maintained it. And it's never been great. And Lisa's got a lot of features she'd like to add. And I've got the source code. I'm going to have Claude rewrite it. And I said, Lisa, all you have to do is sit down with me. I'll show you an MVP. You add features you want. And I'll type, and we'll make it work. That's very exciting. There's a lot of cobalt code that Claude can very easily rewrite. We live in interesting times. Yeah, thank you for that, Glider. Thank you, John. Doesn't say by John Calhoun and Claude, though. I just have to point out Claude's not getting credit on this one. Andy and I co pick of the week. Apparently, Google thought that G, too many people are using whisper flow and other really cool AI dictation apps. We should do one of those ourselves are figuring it out. So they have one. And you can enjoy it until, of course, they cancel the whole thing and you can't use it anymore. It's called an experiment. It's Google AI Edge eloquent. And if you-- at the name of the app is actually eloquent, Google AI Edge is simply the framework or the technology they're using to build it. Google AI Edge is there like models and their frameworks for doing on device AI. But it's a really good little app. It works basically the way that a dictation-- It's more than dictation, though. That's what's cool about it. Exactly. So basically, it's easiest mode. Basically, you can just hit the tap, hit the microphone button, and just keep talking, keep talking. Anything would be better than Siri. It's dictation is so awful. And I tested it out on a 40-minute interview with Stephen Sondheim. And it did a really good-- and if you want a word for word transcription, it does a really good word for word transcription without any hallucinations. But the big deal is that it basically uses the AI to basically figure out-- it can remove pauses and ums. But also, things as complicated as, well, what we really need to talk about right now is the failure of the construction-- oh, wait, no, we talked about that yesterday. And so basically, all of that will not appear in the transcript because the person basically said, yeah, forget about that. I didn't want to say that. And they're not giving instructions to the transcription either, just simply as it's taking notes, it's basically scratching out something that's no longer relevant. I like it because there are four different-- I think four different settings for it, where, like, as it's going on, as soon as you hit pause, it basically fixes everything up. You can actually go for word-for-word literal translation, keep in all the ums, keep in all the pauses if you want. You can basically ask it to polish, which means it again, get rid of the ums and stuff like that. You can make it-- give me not word-for-word, but a long version, give me a short version, or just give me bullet points, which is why people are using Whisperflow because it's just simply-- you wouldn't-- I don't think I would want anybody to understand a 45-minute lecture or a 45-minute meeting based on a 8-point-- 8 bullet point summary. However, that said, if you're trying to figure out, do I need to pay more attention to this-- to the transcript that's meeting, what was basically what said, OK, great, I need to actually-- I have a summary of what worked there. The other good thing about it is that it works completely on device if you want. If you flip a switch, it will connect to the cloud, and it will use the Gemini models. If you are using it offline, it will use the on-device Gemma models, which are not quite as good. One of the things that I kind of experimented with was I had to do the literal word-for-word transcription, got that text, and then compared the bullet point summary that the app generated with what Gemini Pro would generate, if I pasted it into the web app. And of course, the full Gemini Pro, there's a lot more nuance to it. It wasn't that much longer, but you understood the context and the color of what Sondheim was saying in response to questions. So take that with a grain of salt. Like I said, it's not a Google Labs thing, but it is called an experiment. So maybe it's something where they're trying to get data on how people would use such an app. And based on that, either move forward by adding a new app to the Google suite or simply saying, great, thanks. With the data, we understand how to compete with this product now. One of the things I like about this is you don't have to have your Google account to use it. But if you do log into your Google account, it'll look at your Gmail and add to your dictionary from your sent emails. So if you say things that aren't in the dictionary, well, it's be smart enough to add those. That's a nice feature. I don't use Gmail. Otherwise, I would-- it was very agile. Because of course, in the Sonheim interview, he's using the names of people. He's using the names of theaters. And mostly, it was getting them perfectly right. So it's not just simply going phonetically like some other models do or seem to do. It really is doing an intelligent appreciation of here is what was said and here's what was probably meant. And again, mostly, I was concerned about, is there going to be stuff in here that was absolutely never said or is it going to get something completely wrong? And since then, I've tried it on a couple of different things. And I haven't been able to spot anything that was actually a mistranscription. I wish they'd put this up for the Mac. Maybe I wish they'd put it up for Android for home. Yeah, I was going to say that's the interesting thing is that it came out last week. And we wouldn't have a chance to talk about it. But I thought that was interesting. Even within the labs team or whoever put this out at Google that they put this out on an iPhone. Only thing I can guess is that if they put it on Android, they would probably have to limit it to very specific devices. Whereas on an iPhone, they can probably say, OK, we can download enough space. And we know that there will be enough guaranteed processing power to run the local model. That's the only thing I can think. That's a very good-- It's interesting that they did mention an Android version like in the original App Store posting. And until the got follow-ups from a report saying, oh, so when's that Android version came up? And then they simply deleted that mention from the App Store listing. That's interesting. It's probably using Gemma, which is their latest-- They are using Gemma. Yeah. Very smart, very small on my model. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. You can actually download that as well as part of their Edge product. Very interesting. I'm just downloaded. Anything-- if I wish I could just have it use that all the time, though. Anything's better than Siri. And Siri's better than typing on the stupid keyboards. I use the voice recorder all the time app on my Pixel phone because it does such a good job in transcription. And it's much better. And it's just the number of times where it saves your bake and is just immense. The biggest problem I have with Siri is I have to give it punctuation, period, comma, new paragraph. And whisper and all the other stuff I use everywhere else does that automatically. So now, if I get in the habit of saying period, at the end of sentences, it shows up now. And my whisper dictation when I'm talking to other things. So-- I will say that. That's as quickly. I do like that because the thing is like the transcription that it produces is just one big blob of text. Even though it's an interview with two distinctive voices, and I'm like, couldn't you just at least break it up into different voices? So when I do voice dictation for Siri, I like being able to say a new paragraph, delete that, delete that, delete the next sentence. And I should be smart enough to do that. But I guess that leaves one more person on the panel. You're picked up. Done, done, done. One of them will die. I-- mine's really easy. which is it's a straw poll. Oh yeah. I cannot believe I have not mentioned it before. A lot of people are fans of doodle back in the day. Straw poll is like a competitor doodle. I think it's better. It's certainly better for my purposes. I actually pay for it, but there's a free tier as well. If you're trying to get everybody together for a meeting or a podcast, which is what I use it for, or anything else, and you look back in the day, I used to do this. It was like an email thread or a Slack message, which is like, all right, well, I could do a Tuesday or Thursday or Friday, and then somebody replies, well, I could do it Thursday and maybe Friday. And somebody else says, well, I could just do Tuesday and Friday. It's like, gah. Can I just say for people who are listening and not watching, visually Jason has the expression of a man who knows pain. Reliving something. He's trying to, what doesn't want to relive? This is the proverbial hurting cats, right? Especially if you're trying to get people who are, like I work in my garage, I work with people in lots of other places. So it's really disparate. How do you get people on the same page? Doodle will let you do it. They've got a poll option, but they've also got this schedule and meeting option. You can pick dates, you can put in times. It's all set to the local time zone of the user. So everybody, you're like, oh, I'm free at nine. Oh, not nine, your time, only nine my time. It's, they will see it in their time zone. And, and then there's like a quick grid at the end of it where you can see everybody's availability, and you're like, oh, everybody's available then. Let's do it then. And then you're done. It's just, it's really nice. You can start using it for free. I pay for some extra features, but like, I just, especially if you're still using doodle, which is, you know, it's okay, but straw poll is better. Little developer, it just, it does the job. I, if you, if you are listening to me describe this, you have probably, if you felt this pain, try straw poll. It is a much better way, 'cause you're literally giving the people you're trying to organize boxes to check about when, they're available. And then you get to see, oh, that's when everybody's available, problem solved. And it's like, it's a huge benefit. I use it all the time. And I can't believe I haven't picked it before. So I'm picking it. - We had a listener many years ago who wrote straw poll that me, we used it a lot. This is good though. I've written my own straw poll right now, which one will die and Thropic open AI Amazon Google Apple or Chuck Norris. (laughing) And you can go and you can vote on it. So you get a link, which you can customize. - Right, so that's the poll, which is sort of their primary focus, but then they've got the schedule and meeting feature, which is what I like that a lot. - I like that a lot. Yeah, that's really good. - I like to do, - I like to do, - Fantastic how we'll do that. - Yeah, the newer features. - The issue is that then you're building it in an app and then everybody else gets a box. Like what I like about straw poll is it's just a web page. Nobody needs to do anything weird. - Very simple. - You can just go there and - There's no one boarding. - And it's yeah, and yeah, and there's an if need be option. So you can, people are like, "Well, I'll do it if I have to, but I don't want to," which can be really useful, 'cause like if there's all green, it's solid. If there's all green, except one person is kind of yellow. Like if need be, you can go to them and say, "Is this gonna be a problem?" And they usually, from, in my experience, they're like, "No, if that's the only time people can make it, I'll make it work." And yeah, it's really smart, very good. - Very nice. - And you can use it for signups for things where there's a limited number. You can say like, "Only let somebody sign up for a couple of these," or whatever, and that'll work too. So there's some flexibility in it. Really love it. - That's a simple. - Love it. - Thank you, Mr. Snail. - Yes. - Thanks all of you. We really appreciate it. It's always great to get together on a Tuesday, even if my network fails and everything's going wrong and I appreciate your patience. - For nothing much happening this week, it was a banger of a show. - It was a banger, it really was. - Thanks to you guys, half of those stories were stuff you found. So I appreciate it, Andy and I co-host as a bunch of great stories. Do you still do the post show recording? - No, I did that for a few weeks. I did not find an efficient way to keep on doing it. Plus I've got another project that needed slash needs my time. I hope to revive that in some way for shape or form because I keep hoping I can figure out video at some point. 'Cause it looks like a lot of fun. I don't know how to do it efficiently. - Yeah, no, I know. I don't know how to do it efficiently either, but it's my day jobs. (laughing) Thank you, Andy, Andy and I co-IHNATK. I just remember how to spell it. You someday. It will come in handy. - Yes. - Christina Warren, she is a developer advocate at Beautiful GitHub, which we love. Keep up the good work there. I'll tell you, I am now up to 13 repos on GitHub about three quarters of them, Claude's. - Heck yeah. - It's great. I love it. It's fantastic. Thank you for the work you do there. Thank you for being here in the Alex Lindsay Memorial Chair of Distinction. - I have a film underscore girl on Blue Sky and elsewhere. Anything else to say to relay? Your opportunity here is Teddy Rucksman working yet? - I have not played with Teddy Rucksman. He was not working a long time ago, so he is just for decoration. But you know. - He looks like he's dying to say something. See, man, you're gonna tie it into your clawed and then it could be. - Well, I was gonna say, this is the real thing, right? Like, remember the company, you know, a few months back that the Chinese company that sold the AI teddy bears that said terrible things. - Yes. - And they gave kids advice on how to set things on fire, which is amazing. See, like, I now I think I could just do like a DIY one of those things myself. I don't know if I could get the mouth moving. I think that would be the hard part, but like otherwise I think that would probably be. - Yeah. - Not that hard. - It should be, yeah. - It should be coming out of Teddy's base. Absolutely. Thank you, Christina. Jason Snow, he's at sixcolors.com. He does so many podcasts. I don't know how he keeps them all straight. You'll find him at sixcolors.com/jason. - Yep, it's great to be here talking about "Fraulman Kind" again, right? Is that this podcast? Oh no, that's a different podcast. I should worry. Whatever podcast this is, it's been great to be here. - What's your favorite show right now? Is it "Fraulman Kind"? - Oh, right now. Well, I mean, the pit is just about ready to wrap. And I think the pit is kind of tops and shrinking just wrapped and it's really great too. "Fraulman Kind" like, it's weird 'cause I am reviewing it every week. So I'm seeing it out of sync with everybody. And taking notes while I watch it, which is not a normal thing I do with television shows, but I do love it. It's my exact, it hits all the good spots of space stuff and all of that. And that's been a fun ride. It does a wild, "Fraulman Kind" makes wild moves and it's not afraid to just have wild, terrible things happen in space, which I really enjoy. And if people are digging it, we have a podcast on the incomparable, that Dan Moore and I do called "NAS" a vending machine. And momentarily after the episode is released, you'll get our comment on it because we saw it in advance, which is also pretty sweet. It's a fun thing to do. So yeah, people should check that out. It's a fun show. And there's spin-off is coming in May, the "Cultstar City," which is taking it back to the late '60s, but from the Soviet point of view, which is gonna be a lot of fun to review as well. - Well, there you go, ladies and gentlemen. Christina, did you have a favorite show? I can't ask Jason, not ask you. - Well, no, I mean, actually, similar to Jason, I think the pit is, it's been my favorite show and that ends this week. Hacks just started back up and Hacks has been a favorite of mine. And I really like that. Euphoria also started. It was the first episode, it was not good, but I'm holding out hope that it will get insane. - I have to watch all the old episodes 'cause it's been so damn long. - Well, this is the problem. I went back and tried to remember what had happened and I was like, maybe the moment for this show is ended, but I'm looking forward to the pit ending and I'm really looking forward to Hacks, the final season of Hacks. - I just wanted to warn people about the Apple movie comeback featuring Kiana Reeves, which is God awful. Just wanna warn you, you might wanna watch it because it's so awful, especially featuring Jonah Hill in a weird beard doing a weird character that just doesn't work. Just doesn't work. And poor Kiana Reeves stuck in that. Andy, I don't know, do you have a show or do you even watch TV? I feel like you don't even watch TV. - Last week, Taskmaster series TV. - Yeah. - Woo. - So that's a great show. - So basically that's the focus of my. - And if you're in the signpost of my week is when the new episode drops on YouTube. - And if you're in the US, yeah, you just go to YouTube and watch it. That's it. It's on Channel 4 in the YouTube. - A day later. - A day later. - Yeah, it's a good, so go also, I'm gonna pile on there, Andy. On that channel, they also have Taskmaster New Zealand. It is not quite as good as the UK version, but it's almost as good as the UK version. Highly recommend Taskmaster New Zealand. When you run out of 20 seasons of Taskmaster, go to the New Zealand version, it's also great. - Yeah. Wow, you know, I just used that as a way to get us to two hours. That's it. - Thank you. - Not too much to talk about this week. (laughing) - Thank you so much all of you. Thanks to our club members for joining us as always and thanks to everybody for listening and watching. Club members can do that. Every Tuesday, 11 a.m. Pacific 2 p.m. Eastern in our Club Twitter Discord. Actually, everybody can watch live if they want because we stream it on YouTube, twitch x.com, Facebook LinkedIn, and kick hello to all of you watching on all those channels. You don't have to watch live because we do make it a podcast. It's this new thing everybody's talking about. All the kids love. You can download a copy of the show, audio or video or both at twitch.tv/mbw. There is a YouTube channel. That's the latest podcast stuff. Right there, Formac break weekly and that's a great way to share clips with friends and family and let them know, if there's something you heard here that they should know about, it's also a great way of sharing the show. show with new people. We appreciate it when you do that. Best way to listen or watch, subscribe in your favorite podcast client. It's free and you'll get it automatically in a minute. It's available. Thanks to our producer, John, what's his name? And by the way, John Ashley, by the way, do you edit the show or does somebody else edit it? Oh, I edit it. Okay. So producer, technical director and editor. Jack of all trades. Jack of all, he wears many, many hats. John Ashley, it's always great to see you. Thank you all for being here and now it is my sad and solemn duty to say. You got to get back to work because break time is over. Bye bye.