MacBreak Weekly 1033 Transcript
Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Christina Warren is back. Andy Ihnatko is here. Jason Snell too. And of course the big story, Apple sues OpenAI and the details are mind boggling. We'll talk about it. We'll also talk about the new public betas and whether you should install them, including Apple Watch iOS and Golden Gate. MacBreak Weekly: open up your Golden Gate. It's next.
Leo Laporte [00:00:32]:
This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 1033 recorded Tuesday, July 14, 2026: Liquid Glass Half Full. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple news. Too bad it's such a slow day in Apple land. Christina Warren is here.
Leo Laporte [00:00:58]:
Develop relations at GitHub. What team is that that you're wearing? Are you all excited about the World Cup?
Christina Warren [00:01:05]:
No, because obviously I was flying over the world as the United States.
Leo Laporte [00:01:11]:
Oh, yeah. Welcome back.
Christina Warren [00:01:13]:
Yeah. Thank you. Although, go England. I guess at this point I don't even know who I'm rooting for, but. No, but this is a GitHub jersey, actually, that we.
Andy Ihnatko [00:01:20]:
Oh, look at that.
Christina Warren [00:01:21]:
Isn't that cool?
Leo Laporte [00:01:22]:
Super cool.
Christina Warren [00:01:22]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:01:23]:
And they decided to not really stick to any one color scheme.
Christina Warren [00:01:27]:
You got green checks, it's just everything.
Leo Laporte [00:01:29]:
You got stripe, you got Yankees on one sleeve, you got Liverpool on the other. I don't know what that is. Anyway, nice.
Christina Warren [00:01:37]:
It's an amalgamation. But it, but it was, but it was a fun. It was a fun.
Leo Laporte [00:01:39]:
Oh, it's really cool. Was that part of the getting going to Berlin?
Christina Warren [00:01:42]:
It was actually. I mean, I think that we sell them on the.
Leo Laporte [00:01:46]:
Oh, I'm going to buy one right now.
Christina Warren [00:01:48]:
If we do. I'm not sure. If we don't, I apologize, I'll have to check on that. But yeah, no, we wore them during the booth, which was really fun. So it was nice.
Leo Laporte [00:01:57]:
GitHub has the best merch.
Christina Warren [00:01:59]:
Honestly, our team does a great job. So thank you for saying that.
Leo Laporte [00:02:02]:
Oh, you can't search for GitHub store because you know why? You find a lot of GitHub repos about stores.
Christina Warren [00:02:09]:
It's the GitHub shop.com.
Leo Laporte [00:02:12]:
oh, that's easy. All right. Look at all the repos I came up with. Also here from the Library. It is Mr. Andrew Inotko. Hello, Andy.
Andy Ihnatko [00:02:20]:
Hello. And yeah, I'm distracted because I am now scrolling through the GitHub shop.com and because that would. That would be. See the great thing about these kinds of shirts is that it's like a Shibboleth. Like when you're just like when you're just like in the city or just like at an event. And suddenly from the cross. That person knows what GitHub is and likes it enough to buy a shirt by compadre. I know this person, a member of my tribe.
Leo Laporte [00:02:49]:
We do need a AI shirt. I think that would be very interesting.
Andy Ihnatko [00:02:54]:
Oh, man, that soccer ball is. I don't. I have no need for a soccer
Leo Laporte [00:02:57]:
ball, but I have a GitHub soccer ball. Oh, look at, look at these silly cabana shorts. Yeah, the Mona drink float.
Christina Warren [00:03:05]:
That is so cute. We also have a hoodie can cozy, which is like, looks like the GitHub hoodie, but it's for your beer can or soda can. It's incredibly cute.
Leo Laporte [00:03:15]:
Oh, that's so cute. If I drank more soda or beer, I would do it. Also with us, Jason Snell from sixcolors.com who I imagine spent just a touch
Jason Snell [00:03:25]:
busy, quiet time sleeping, sleeping late, going to bed early, taking a nap.
Leo Laporte [00:03:31]:
Here's the good news. In two weeks, you're going to have Apple quarterly results. So you.
Jason Snell [00:03:34]:
I know. Finally, some news.
Leo Laporte [00:03:36]:
All the calluses you're getting on your fingertips now will pay off.
Jason Snell [00:03:40]:
It's true.
Leo Laporte [00:03:43]:
So there's really. There's two stories, and I don't know which one to start with. I probably should start with the fact that the public beta is out. But we'll get to that because there is. Oh, there's a long show jersey. It is a long show. We've got time. $80.
Leo Laporte [00:03:58]:
But, boy, look at all the different. You'd look like a jockey in that thing. So on Friday, OpenAI sued Apple. I'm sorry, Apple sued OpenAI. Everybody's suing OpenAI.
Jason Snell [00:04:18]:
Yep.
Leo Laporte [00:04:18]:
They're like the Beatles in 1971 suing anybody. Elon lost. He sued OpenAI. New York Times is suing them right now. That's still in court. And now the newest one is Apple saying you stole our engineers a couple of hundred. But the key one is Tang Tan.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:38]:
Not bigger than. Bigger than engineers. Like, the court filing goes into parametric detail. They're trying to.
Jason Snell [00:04:45]:
They.
Andy Ihnatko [00:04:45]:
They. The scope that they're laying out is not simply that, hey, you're hiring away some of our people. Not even that, hey, some of the people you're hiring away brought with them some Apple secrets they outline step by step. Step. You are trying to. Instead of trying to build the experience and the expertise of the entire stack of building hardware, you are stealing Apple's entire stack from the talent the technology, the industry contacts, processes, manufacturing relationships with, with, with international manufacturers. Every single thing that Apple has learned about making an iPhone or making a technology, technological device including like the internal process for making a, for agreeing on how to go forward. They're listing in this court filing saying you are have stolen.
Andy Ihnatko [00:05:34]:
They have stolen absolutely everything. And subtext. We don't, we have no insight into. This is the thing. They say this two or three times. We have no insight into OpenAI despite the fact that they have insight to us. So therefore they are going to in the discovery phrase phase just hold them upside down and shake them, shake them, shake them until everything that they have learned about Apple gets tumbled out in discovery. This is, this is a donnybrook that has, this is a rhubarb that has exploded to a full grown donnybrook.
Leo Laporte [00:06:05]:
So Tang Tan spent 24 years at Apple. I mean he's a company guy. He eventually became a senior executive on the product design team responsible for iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, worked closely with Jony I've and in fact left Apple. Now this is interesting two years ago.
Jason Snell [00:06:29]:
Yes.
Leo Laporte [00:06:29]:
To go with Jony I've to start products. Remember Johnny I've and Sam Altman sitting in a bar talking. What we didn't know at the time was he was. Johnny was dragging some people along with him including Tan Tan.
Jason Snell [00:06:44]:
I think at that point maybe they had already started IO so that he had Tang Tan and Evans Hankey at that point. But the. By the way an interesting story that has come out in the last week is that Tang Tan apparently was vying for the same job that John Ternus got and didn't get it and that Tang Tan and John Ternus were rivals and maybe even didn't particularly like each other. It's hard to like your rival. And you know part of the story is the human story that people who are feel like they're not being valued, they didn't get the promotion they wanted, they didn't get the job they wanted are the most likely people to leave. And that's just human nature. I also want to say Speaking of people OpenAI Hiring people from Apple is not in the lawsuit. It's not illegal in California.
Jason Snell [00:07:27]:
You can't even have a non compete.
Leo Laporte [00:07:30]:
The jobs got in a lot of trouble for that. It's an anti regulation.
Christina Warren [00:07:34]:
I was gonna say part of the reason that it's illegal in California is because of Apple.
Jason Snell [00:07:39]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean non compete's been there for a while but then they broke the law of like colluding to not hire other people. And that's why when we're talking about
Leo Laporte [00:07:47]:
a law, by the way, that's not just a California law, that's antitrust law.
Jason Snell [00:07:50]:
I want to make it clear that I think part of this, that we need to set aside when we're talking about this is the idea that people can are free to leave Apple and go somewhere else and use their knowledge and expertise in their industry to do a different job for a different company. They are free to do that. That is how it works. People shouldn't be trapped at Apple forever unable to leave because and then Apple pays them whatever Apple feels is right. That's not how we do it.
Leo Laporte [00:08:17]:
So that's why it's an antitrust law. Because if you say don't poach our employees, what you're really saying is let's keep salaries, let's agree to keep salaries low because they can't negotiate against and
Jason Snell [00:08:28]:
then non competes do the same thing. Because you're basically saying you can't ply your trade anywhere, which is ridiculous because that's how you, how you do your job. And so California, you can't do that either.
Leo Laporte [00:08:38]:
OpenAI's response to this is we do not steal trade secrets.
Jason Snell [00:08:41]:
This is not something we're not interested
Andy Ihnatko [00:08:43]:
in a single tweet. Yeah.
Jason Snell [00:08:44]:
Or something. Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:08:45]:
So.
Leo Laporte [00:08:45]:
So that'll be a court response. But that's the tweet.
Jason Snell [00:08:48]:
The other part of this is, is the rest of it. Right. So it's not the people. It' taken 400 people from Apple. They're allowed to do that. They paid them. I think you got a lot of people who worked at Apple a long time who are kind of bored with doing another revision of the iPhone. Apple doesn't traditionally pay at the top of the pay scale in Silicon Valley you get sort of like you get paid well, but also you get the glory of Apple.
Jason Snell [00:09:08]:
And so they got hired to do get more money, a better title and do an interesting challenge for a new company. I could see why they'd want to go. The thing about the lawsuit is what Apple is essentially alleging and using these particular people as evidence of it. Especially that the one gentleman who we'll talk about. I'm sure what they're saying is OpenAI seems to have built a strategy to exfiltrate as much secret employee only documentation as possible out of Apple for them to use and, and also misrep potentially allegedly misrepresenting themselves to suppliers, as Andy said, in order to get information from them and also possibly inducing potential future OpenAI employees who are currently Apple employees to bring secret stuff out of Apple to show them. And that's, that's the core of the argument. Trade secrets is a hard thing to argue, but just I want to be clear about that. Like the issue isn't the people's knowledge.
Jason Snell [00:10:10]:
The issue is that OpenAI seems to have according to Apple's lawsuit. And it's a one sided. It's just Apple seem to have felt the people weren't enough. They also wanted as much documentation as they could get. And that's where it starts to feel like, oh, now maybe this is a conspiracy to steal trade secrets and not just a strategy to hire good people from Apple.
Leo Laporte [00:10:35]:
Let me throw some more facts at you. We can continue to discuss, but it's, there's some fascinating, juicy tidbits in here, but you need to understand the reason that OpenAI bought products. Jony, I've Evan Hanke and Tang Tan for $6.2 billion. They even said this in that lovely scene where they're sitting at a bar. They want to make a device. We didn't know what the device was. OpenAI says we want to ship a device this year. They also have a filing for an IPO which I think now will be delayed perhaps because of this, but maybe because of other adverse circumstances including President Trump's, you know, blockage of certain AI models.
Leo Laporte [00:11:19]:
But they are building a device and they did seem to acquire a team of device design people when they bought products. There was even an allegation that when Apple interviewed people, they asked them to bring their company laptop.
Andy Ihnatko [00:11:37]:
OpenAI.
Leo Laporte [00:11:38]:
Yeah, I keep saying Apple and OpenAI
Jason Snell [00:11:41]:
could be obviously OpenAI and that's the pattern they want to point out is that they don't just want the people because again, they're all allowed to want the people, but they want the people to bring the stuff and show them the stuff and copy the stuff or spirited away from Apple before they go forward themselves a bunch of documents and all of that. And that's where it gets kind of extra wild is this idea that they're building a larger structure. And Leo, I think the first point you made there is maybe the most important in this entire story, which is feels to me like OpenAI really, really, really wants to start shipping hardware products. And when I look at the big picture of what why would they look, these are brilliant people who worked at Apple, 400 people supposedly who worked at Apple, who OpenAI hired to come work for them. Are they not capable of building a world class product? Yes, but so why, why try allegedly to steal all this information? I think the answer is they wanted to take a shortcut because they felt like time pressured and they wanted to ship products faster. And so they're like, well, you know, replicating everything from Apple is hard. What if we could just take those documents and, and not just kind of rely on our own noggins?
Leo Laporte [00:12:51]:
Is that credible though? You've got Johnny I've, you've got Evans Hanke, you've got Tang Tan. You also have another engineer, Chang Lu, who's also named Trouble Lou. Now one of the things that's interesting is that remember Tank Tan left Apple two years before this lawsuit. So I don't know how much material Tang Tan would have or whether it's germane. It's two years old. Chang Lu, though, according to Apple's complaint, allegedly quote, exploited a rare previously unknown authentication bug that allowed access to the company network. Now that is an interesting thing which would be provable, right? They have laws.
Andy Ihnatko [00:13:36]:
Yes, apparently so. They also document that, hey, he had an Apple company laptop that he did not return and he, even though he was pestered about it and he was using this laptop because apparently it took a while for his authentication for the network to go away. And then, even then he, as they, as, as you mentioned, he was exploiting, as Apple alleges, a network flaw to continue to access this stuff. Not only.
Leo Laporte [00:14:00]:
First of all, does not Apple have a way to keep employees from walking out the door with their laptop? Does not Apple routinely, when you leave the story, connect?
Christina Warren [00:14:13]:
Well, okay, he worked in the hardware division, right? So let's just be kind of logical about this. If he worked at the hardware division, that means he probably worked in different prototypes. He had to have access to things that maybe were Apple property but weren't going to have the same type of device.
Leo Laporte [00:14:27]:
People bring stuff home for testing.
Christina Warren [00:14:29]:
Sure. Well, not only that, but like sometimes there are just having worked at big companies before, yes, there are policies about hardware, about phones and laptops and desktops and other things. But then there are items that you have that maybe do have access to the network and maybe you could even get a bypass for it. But for reasons that are actually very important to the testing, cannot be on the company network and be given access to all the company security stuff. So that's a possibility. That's maybe how you could get something lost now with that laptop, be able to access authenticated Apple stuff. I don't know. That is a question for Apple's it as much as it is for anything Else.
Christina Warren [00:15:10]:
But it doesn't strike me as being completely like out of pocket for Apple to not know that a guy who was very high up in their, in their hardware division happened to have an extra laptop. I'm sure that when like the first time I left Microsoft, I gave them hardware that they didn't have any record of me ever owning. Right. So these companies, I think we sometimes think that they're better than they are about certain things and that's just not the case.
Leo Laporte [00:15:35]:
I would think Apple be the best in the business.
Christina Warren [00:15:38]:
I would too. But again, if you work in the hardware division, there can be very valuable, valid reasons why you might have a prototype, you might have something else, or you might even have like a device that's a consumer device that you've been issued that like I said, isn't going to be referenced anywhere or in any system. Now if that can access the network and other things. Like I said, that's a broader question for Apple. It but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that someone might have an extra piece of hardware in their collection that they didn't turn back in.
Leo Laporte [00:16:03]:
Let me read a little more from the complaint. Apple said that Louis took dozens quote dozens of Apple's confidential hardware related files. This is from TechCrunch over the course of several weeks while working as an OpenAI employee. Again, this would be very provable. You would have logs. Apple said the file contained detailed files contained detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications and proprietary project data. The company says Lou failed to return the Apple issued work laptop he'd previously used to access Apple's network. Apparently he allegedly claimed to have another computer.
Leo Laporte [00:16:45]:
And while he was at OpenAI, Apple alleges Lou misused the access of an acquaintance, Yu Ting. Peng, who was currently at Apple, later went to work for OpenAI. Lou allegedly used Peng's Apple issued work laptop while she was still employed at Apple and he was not. Again, this is provable. There's, you know, they wouldn't assert this I think.
Jason Snell [00:17:10]:
Right.
Leo Laporte [00:17:11]:
Well, this is completely provable. Apple said that during February of this year when lou was at OpenAI, he tried to access Apple's network Storage, a cloud based file repository containing Apple's confidential engineering files, project documentation and other proprietary information. He allegedly discovered he could still access the network repository. And then, and this really is the smoking gun, sent an email to Peng who was still at Apple saying quote lol, I found out I can access the network storage. So funny.
Andy Ihnatko [00:17:46]:
Yeah, this the funny speaking about funny is that when you read the, when you read the claim, a lot of it implies that he was doing a lot of this malfeasance on an Apple owned laptop and that Apple was. Apple basically had full access to all these conversations.
Leo Laporte [00:18:02]:
They're watching it.
Andy Ihnatko [00:18:03]:
You wonder and you wonder what, you wonder if it was like, we know that we don't want to just stop this one person from getting this one document. We are going to build as big and solid a case against OpenAI as we possibly can and then we're not going to let the hammer fall until we got them that we can possibly shut down app OpenAI from building. I'm sorry, just to, just to tie things up, a lawsuit of this scope could possibly allow Apple to forbid OpenAI from shipping any piece of hardware by alleging that, look, this is used as proprietary Apple information. So there. So therefore you are effectively out of the AI business until you successfully defend against this lawsuit.
Leo Laporte [00:18:44]:
Apple says they attempted for two years to get this stuff back and OpenAI did not cooperate. In fact did not even respond to their cease and desist. So they were forced, forced, I tell you, to file this lawsuit. That's why it took two years.
Andy Ihnatko [00:19:00]:
We cried when we emailed the PDF to the court.
Jason Snell [00:19:03]:
Well, they, they, I think what they've got is they've got the smoking gun. And even if you read the lawsuit, it says they don't know. They're like, we think this is the tip of the iceberg, but we don't know and nobody isn't talking. And I think there's a real disconnect between some of the allegations which are, oh, they brought an eyes only document or whatever which is like, is that even illegal? Is that maybe it's against their terms of employment and those individual employees might be responsible for something. But I think what Apple is saying is based on what we know from this one guy and his friend who worked at Apple who then helped him and then came over to OpenAI and some of the other patterns that they're laying out in the lawsuit about asking employees to bring information with them that Apple's alleging that they think there is a conspiracy here that is much larger to just to take all of this data from Apple in order to advance their hardware design plans. And, and I think Apple doesn't really know or can't prove. And that's why I think a lot of this lawsuit is basically like, well, this looks really bad. The extenuating circumstances are very suspicious.
Jason Snell [00:20:10]:
We'd like to do some discovery, please. Right. That's basically what they're saying. Here is we don't know. And the truth is. But they have, it might just be this, it might just. Well, there's some stuff.
Leo Laporte [00:20:20]:
But like it says, for instance, in the pleading messages left on an Apple issued work laptop revealed Mr. Lu also coached Peng. Yeah, on ways to quote. Sure, but they've got the messages avoid trouble with the security.
Jason Snell [00:20:32]:
But is it just them? Is it just them or Was this happening 50 other ways?
Christina Warren [00:20:38]:
OpenAI.
Jason Snell [00:20:39]:
If OpenAI has a larger conspiracy, they, they seem to not be able to see it. But they say that there are enough edges around this in terms of what people are asking and their patterns of behavior and I suspect not said in the lawsuit. I suspect one of the ways that Apple found out about this, it's sort of alluded to in the lawsuit, is not all the people that OpenAI interviewed and asked to bring confidential materials and all of that, not all of them took jobs at OpenAI. And I suspect some of them went back to their managers and said did you know what OpenAI is doing? And that, that got to the highers up, you're right.
Leo Laporte [00:21:12]:
Trying to prove a pattern here in the pleading. And as Apple continued investigating, a broader pattern emerged. Mr. Liu was not the only one using Apple's proprietary information, OpenAI's Advantage. Other former Apple employees who had gone to work for OpenAI mailed themselves Apple confidential information to personal accounts on their way out the door. Others were improperly using their knowledge of Apple's confidential and trade secret information to assist OpenAI in developing hardware. You're right. This is a larger attempt to establish a pattern on, on OpenAI's part.
Christina Warren [00:21:46]:
That's the only way they can get access to discovery. I mean that, that's, that's the only way that they get access to discovery is that they show this is a bigger thing because otherwise looking at this, granted, like there are a lot of really salacious details and we can talk about how dumb all these people are in the ways that they were violating rules and potentially laws by taking information out the way that they should and how dumb people are for using personal accounts on corporate devices when communicating about these things. But the bigger question is, and this is what a judge will have to decide is do the actions of one or two individuals indicate a pattern that then OpenAI is now forced to adhere to these terms of discovery because the discovery terms are incredibly broad and, and that's obviously, you know, what Apple wants, but it'll be up to a court to decide, okay, how much of this is potentially a real pattern that will necessitate discovery. And how much of this is okay? There were a few employees who acting rogue, were spreading information around and potentially coaching people on how to siphon information out. But that wasn't done at the directive of anyone in upper management at OpenAI and certainly not a common hiring practice.
Leo Laporte [00:23:06]:
Tang remember this former Apple vice president directed job candidates coming to OpenAI job interviews to quote, bring actual parts from Apple to their interviews for quote, show and tell sessions for which in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information. That's actually amazing.
Christina Warren [00:23:26]:
Anybody, anybody who did that, I just have to say like if you ever, I don't care who the company is, I don't care if it's your dream company. If anybody is ever asking you to do anything like that and you agree, you were dumb. You were so dumb like you were, you were so dumb like.
Leo Laporte [00:23:39]:
These directions to bring Apple parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates who commented that quote, he didn't even know we could take those from the office. Apple, Apple. Now this is where Apple is trying to establish the broader conspiracy. Oh, they say they and this is an assertion, not proof. OpenAI has been instructing Apple employees to quote, bring CAD design artifacts and prototypes to their interviews and divulge details about their work such as quote, subsystem and component selection, the tools or methodologies you use for system integration such as CAD software simulation tools and vendor selection and communication collaboration with vendors. I think they don't assert this unless they have some, a substantial proof on their servers and B a strong suspicion that discovery is going to further prove
Christina Warren [00:24:31]:
this and, and see at least somebody who was not named in the lawsuit cooperated with them. Right. Like I have a feeling that it was, it was interesting that they named a couple of people and then some people were mentioned but we're not, the lawsuit was not against them which to me says okay, we, we caught somebody dead to rights. They've basically made a deal with us. And it's possible another lawsuit could be incoming, but it seems like it's at least in some cases.
Leo Laporte [00:24:54]:
Notably Johnny I've is not mentioned at all.
Christina Warren [00:24:58]:
No, no. And it would surprise me if he were because somewhat of his level I don't think he's involved in any day to day hiring.
Leo Laporte [00:25:04]:
Too smart.
Jason Snell [00:25:05]:
Tank Tan. So Tank Tan Evans Hanke who is a designer, head of design and Johnny I've. They all work together on iPhones and stuff at Apple and they are the, they are listed as the three co founders of IO, which is the hardware startup that they built outside of love from and outside of open AI essentially to build hardware for OpenAI. And at the top of the lawsuit Apple basically says you should consider IO essentially a shell company of AI of Open Air. They're like this is, don't even pretend that this is a different company. It's open AI. But Can Tan is, you know, and Evans Hanke are the, are the primaries there. We know that Jony I've is there but he's probably not involved day to day.
Jason Snell [00:25:43]:
And that's how does that break down. There's the hardware side and the design side. So Tank Tan, if we're hiring a bunch of hardware people from Apple, Tank Tan is the head of that. Right. And so that's why they're saying Tank Tan is the one they suspect by naming him is ultimately responsible for whatever strategy this is and whatever they're doing. And again we don't. It's all Apple allegations. They haven't responded to it.
Jason Snell [00:26:05]:
But this is what Apple is saying is that they have this plan.
Leo Laporte [00:26:08]:
The classic disgruntled employee said you passed me over for Turnus, I designed this thing. Screw you, I'm going somewhere else and I'm taking a bunch of people with
Jason Snell [00:26:17]:
me and that's fine. Right.
Leo Laporte [00:26:19]:
But then why can't suborn Apple employees then to violate their own confidentiality agreements? And as to IO, it's actually the pleading is hysterical. All I o is this says in the pleading an alter ego of Open AI. In fact, corporate filings for OpenAI say that the CEO, Secretary and CFO of IO is an employee of OpenAI and has been since 2023.
Jason Snell [00:26:48]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:26:49]:
So it's that now they're assert in a way implying that I owe is a shell company that was set up absolutely purely in fact they call it a corporate shell entity because they don't
Jason Snell [00:27:01]:
want to open AI to say it wasn't us, it wasn't us.
Leo Laporte [00:27:04]:
Trade secret information and other intellectual property in violation of the law. Wow. So now we all know that there is always a risk. We learned this in the Apple Epic case. When you turn people upside down and shake them, discovery can also produce embarrassing details on your side. And Apple knows that better than anything. However, I have to think they feel like they've, they've got them dead to rights.
Jason Snell [00:27:32]:
It feels like Apple feels the preponderance of any discovery would be open AI discovery because this is, it does feel like a one way flow here, right. That the allegations are that OpenAI has done this and OpenAI can come back and countersue or whatever. But again, I'm not quite sure what they're going to get out of Apple. And yeah, you've got to think that they've calculated this all out. And I know, I mean, I've seen some commenters who've said, why are they doing this? It's because they're, they're scared or they're, or they're grumpy or they're behind an AI and all of those things. It's like, well, first off, I mean, they're. What are they supposed to do if they discover that one of the other tech giants in AI is, has decided to put them in their sights, their most valuable product in their sites and has gone on a hiring spree and you're like, you can't do anything about that. But then you discover that they're also kind of like plotting to steal all of your stuff so that they can get even further ahead.
Jason Snell [00:28:26]:
They don't want to just knock off the iPhone 17, they want to knock off the iPhone 19. That's not out for two years or a year and a half, right? Like, that is when you, you, you got to say something at that point regardless. Like, because that's not. Let, let the, let it roll off your back territory then, then it's like, oh, they're just trying to eat us alive.
Andy Ihnatko [00:28:45]:
Well, not just that, but like I said, the first sections of this, of this filing basically makes this linear argument that it wasn't just. We're not just upset that, oh, you stole our battery technology or we have this aluminum process that you stole. It really is all the way down to who at this, who in this country should I email if I'm trying to get a relationship going about this? What is the diplomatic process for arranging a contract like that? It makes the case to the court that, look, we have spent 10 to 20 years developing not just a special battery for the iPhone, but a whole mechanism, a whole country, so to speak, of techniques and information and expertise and experience that allows us to basically do everything that we do as a hardware manufacturer. And it says explicitly and basically they decided that instead of acquiring this information on their own and building up their own business, they simply wanted to start at, at third base, so to speak, by taking everything. So again, it's not about this battery, it is about everything that Apple has ever learned about, about iPhone manufacturer. And for that reason, like, like, like Jason said, you can't just simply try to negotiate a way out of this and a settlement it's like, no, you have to hit hard. Again lastly, specifically, because if it's not just a rogue employee who has wants to dazzle in an interview with a competitor and say, hey shifty, shifty, shifty, I've got this thing that I kind of want to, I can show you and I'll break my NDA in order to give this technology when they are create, when OpenAI, as is alleged, is creating a pipeline and a mechanism for exfiltrating information out of Apple through multiple conduits. This is warfare and you have to strike back.
Leo Laporte [00:30:31]:
Yeah,
Jason Snell [00:30:33]:
yeah,
Leo Laporte [00:30:35]:
it's wow, it's kind of salacious.
Christina Warren [00:30:39]:
It's, it's incredibly salacious. I do wonder if, if, if, if we are. Because I mean, again, like as Jason pointed out, this is one side of the, the lawsuit and I think we have to keep that into mind. Even like his debt to rights isn't as bad as, as things look and they might be this bad. Right? But, but this is, this is one assertion. And so I think sometimes like we look at this and obviously the most salacious details are going to be up top, top the things that they have the strongest proof ever could be up top. When I look at this, I can't help but like as like a, you know, person who's worked at big tech companies who knows about what some of the policies are around leaving things, who worked at Google after Anthony Levandowski did and knows firsthand like how compromised in my opinion all the working environment then became at Google after that moment because of the fact that they have to lockdown machines so much, especially when people leave, even to the point that even while you're working there, you can't have external drives and all kinds of stuff like that. So I know that these sorts of concerns are real.
Christina Warren [00:31:37]:
But when I look at a lawsuit like this, I still can't help but think, okay, how much of this is specific to one person or sets of individuals and how much of this can actually be proven to be systemic for a company to the extent that you are required to share, you know, all of your own discovery with the court because you know, as like, and again, I'm not defending any of the things that are coming out here. It's terrible and dumb I think for anybody to go along with it. But let's say that they did get a lot of this information from Apple. There's part of me that wonders, okay, how much can this even help you catch up? Because two years old, some of it's, some of it is two Years old. But in some cases it's like if you did the work, I can understand. I mean, I think this was one of the arguments that Anthony Levandowski made when he was being sued for. After leaving Google, he went to a company that was acquired by Uber. He did many of the much of the same work that he did while employed by, by Google and Waymo.
Christina Warren [00:32:39]:
And, and I think that, you know, his personal way that he kind of got around it was, well, I already did a. This one time. I shouldn't have to redo the work a second time. You know, this, this was my original intellectual property anyway. And it's like, no, actually belong to your former employer. But in some of these cases I do wonder, I'm like, okay, how useful are these specific parts and how useful are these exercises? And isn't OpenAI going to have to build its own relationship with manufacturers from the ground up anyway? Right. So like, there's a certain part of me that wonders which makes this that much dumber. It's like, okay, so why, why even instruct people to come in with this sort of stuff? There's nothing that you can really glean from it that is going to help you get out in front that much faster where you're not still going to have to do the hard work of building up the supplier relationships, building up your own tooling and doing all those things.
Christina Warren [00:33:26]:
I don't know. It's just, that's the part of it that strikes me as odd, which is why would you go through all this trouble about this types of information?
Jason Snell [00:33:36]:
I have an answer.
Christina Warren [00:33:37]:
Okay.
Jason Snell [00:33:38]:
Which is, Spike, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, I think, I think that there is a suggestion here that some of these people were kind of disgruntled.
Christina Warren [00:33:47]:
Sure.
Jason Snell [00:33:48]:
And feel like they're sticking it to Apple by taking their stuff and working for a competitor. And that's the, I think that's where you end up going from being, you know, playing fair and being a tough competitor to maybe making some dumb mistakes that are. I also wonder about the pressure, you know, if open AI feels this incredible pressure on the hardware side. They spend so much money trying to set up this thing and maybe some of the people there feel like they, they really want to cut some corners, take some shortcuts to get where they were at Apple so they can start shipping faster. And pressure makes people do make bad decisions too. So some combination, my guess is some combination of people who actually kind of left Apple and feel like they are going to stick it to Apple Even though, like you said, it's, it's this feeling like that belongs to me, but it doesn't actually belong to you, only what's in your head belongs to you. And the. And maybe some pressure to ship hardware faster because remember, that's part of this too is, you know, Sam Altman's out there saying, hey, Johnny, I've and I are going to start shipping amazing products soon.
Jason Snell [00:34:46]:
And then the people who are actually having to start that process are like, geez, that's really ambitious. How are we going to do this? And maybe, you know, somewhere along the chain they're like, well, let's just sort of spirit away some of those Apple documents that we are relying on, because that'll help us out. I don't know, and I don't know what Apple's endgame here is other than I think it's, we got to be fair and say, I think one of the reasons Apple is doing this is because Apple is trying to put a chilling effect on people leaving Apple, which again, I don't love, because people should have the right to go where they, where they go and get paid what they can get paid. But I think that's part of it. And then maybe the other part of it is sending a message to Apple's own employees that, you know, what, what's, what's apples is Apples and what's yours is yours, and that you need to know the difference. And, and I think that's part of it. If they can put the hurt on Open AI and embarrass them and slow down their hardware project, I think that that's a bonus to them.
Leo Laporte [00:35:38]:
Yeah, I don't think it's a primary reason. It's not. I was going to say Open AI.
Jason Snell [00:35:43]:
How do they stop it? I mean, how do they ultimately, I don't think a judge is going to say, all right, Open AI, you've got to throw out all those things and forget everything and start at the beginning. And every piece of hardware that you build for the next two years, I'm going to have to review it and make sure that it's okay. Like, I just can't imagine anything like that.
Leo Laporte [00:35:59]:
I do that though, is white intellectual property organization could prevent OpenAI from importing phones made in China.
Jason Snell [00:36:07]:
Because, I mean, they could. But I think it's more likely that what they're going to get at most is an admission that certain employees broke the rules. And maybe those employees have to be disciplined or maybe they have. There are individual cases against those people.
Leo Laporte [00:36:22]:
Flew a little Close to this.
Christina Warren [00:36:23]:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Jason Snell [00:36:24]:
There's real danger for individuals at OpenAI now.
Christina Warren [00:36:26]:
Yeah, yeah. I think these people get Chris Eaglerge right. Like I think that they just get asked to, to go away.
Leo Laporte [00:36:31]:
One of the reasons Apple might be upset is that when Tan said I'm leaving, they respected him so much. They, they gave him a long period of time to make the transition to train his replacements. They didn't see him as, as a future competitor. They saw him As a long 24 year trusted employee that they were going to treat with dignity. Mark Gurman has some additional information. He says Tang, he's got an insider who asked not to be identified. He says Tan was famous for taking risks at Apple and quote, flying very close to the sun. Tang is well known for moving fast, playing fast and loose and breaking things.
Leo Laporte [00:37:16]:
So now who knows? That's just one guy inside the design division. No doubt that's talking to Mark Gurman. But it could be that Apple is deep down deeply hurt by this person that they trusted, that they respected, they'd worked with for a quarter century doing this to them. Yeah, it could be that simple.
Andy Ihnatko [00:37:37]:
It could be. You're right, it may be, it could be weird if this turns into like, like what? A lot of what drove the Samsung lawsuits was not just simply, hey, you stole our intellectual property, but we are angered by what we feel you did to us and we feel like we have to put the hurt on you as a result. And so it's hard to know exactly how. And it also bears mentioning that this is four days old. All it is is a court filing. It is probably going to take a couple of years before it progresses to an extent where Apple could even get enough muscle in the course to say, you know what, we're going to be moving to, to create a block towards importing any open air hardware into the United States.
Leo Laporte [00:38:15]:
So it goes ahead and makes the device.
Andy Ihnatko [00:38:18]:
And I think they do until they, until they're absolutely ordered.
Leo Laporte [00:38:23]:
Damn the Apple torpedoes full speed ahead.
Christina Warren [00:38:25]:
Yeah, I mean I think it depends on how far along they are. Right. Like, I mean, I think that's also one of the determining factors. How far along are you? This guy's only worked there since January. February. Really? Right.
Leo Laporte [00:38:34]:
Remember the Paul Mead who was in charge of Apple's glasses masses division also defected recently.
Christina Warren [00:38:40]:
Yeah, okay, but who cares? I'm saying the person they named was hired. It stopped working at Apple in January. So we're talking about six months worth of time. So. And like they are not alleging in the lawsuit even though they are talking about how Apple has hired all these people away or not Apple opening.
Leo Laporte [00:38:57]:
Okay, well prevention years.
Christina Warren [00:38:59]:
Okay, well, I mean, sure. But also the hiring time right now everybody is going to big Frontier Labs if they have have mobility to do so.
Leo Laporte [00:39:08]:
I'm sure Meta has done the same.
Christina Warren [00:39:09]:
I was going to say, if you look at the defection numbers at those places, 400 actually strikes me as kind of low. So I mean, honestly, and as Jason said, it's not. Apple is not paying top of band. People are, I'm sure wanted opportunities to work on different things. So. Okay, so this particular lawsuit. Yes, obviously your entire design team got up and left, started their own thing and now works for open AI. Yeah.
Christina Warren [00:39:32]:
Yes, clearly, because many years have passed. They're going to recruit from within. Yes, they have the right to do that. That's all fine. But this particular people who are named, it's like we're talking about six months period of time. And so unless you could in my mind demonstrably prove that everything that's happened up until that six month period of time was also tainted. I don't think that you stop if you really are close to shipping something. But I, I think that depends on how far away or close you are.
Christina Warren [00:40:01]:
And, and we'll just have to see because like Andy said, this could potentially take years. One last thing I want to say because I thought it was pressing that Andy brought this up, you know, when we mentioned that the Samsung lawsuit, I do understand, I think like Apple's perspective on that was like Andy said was a lot of it was just more like the this is just wrong and for spite space. Even if this doesn't actually help us, we're just going to go forward with this and make your life miserable. But if you look at what the actual end game was, because that was a question Jason had too. I mean Samsung continues to dominate in the mobile phone industry. Okay. They had to, they had to change, you know, the shape of some of their icons. But all phones essentially look the same.
Christina Warren [00:40:44]:
Apple has absolutely taken design cues from other manufacturers since that lawsuit too. I always. IOS and Android steal elements from one another all the time. And so you know what, what was really achieved by that? Right? Like I, I'm, I'm all for a good spite lawsuit. Like let's go for it. Like it's fun, it's fun for me as somebody, as long as I'm not a party to it. Like I, I enjoy it. But when we think about like what is the actual end goal of this? I don't know what this really changes except potentially to Jason's point, maybe making people think twice before leaving or at least being smarter about how they leave.
Christina Warren [00:41:25]:
And then I am going to say I think that part of the goal of this, even one of the primary goals, even if it comes from a place of spite, is that they want to deter or at least decelerate any momentum that OpenAI might have on the hardware front.
Leo Laporte [00:41:38]:
Let's not forget that Apple and OpenAI were bosom buddies as recently as a year ago they were that had a deal to use ChatGPT. It's still in the iPhone as the model that's from OpenAI. This is a huge this is a rent a breach and may explain why they went to Anthropic in the end. The other thing that is important to point out Open there's been a drumbeat over the last few months of how untrustworthy Sam Altman is and how untrustworthy OpenAI is. As soon as this lawsuit came out, Elon Musk jumped on it. See, I told you he was a liar and a cheat. There was that New Yorker article which basically, you know, implied that Sam Altman was completely untrustworthy and kind of a slime bag. There's the general feeling in the world that AI companies at large are stealing our intellectual property and putting creatives out of work.
Leo Laporte [00:42:38]:
This is a, this is a blow to, at least reputationally to OpenAI. Do you think? I mean this kind of confirms what the gestalt is the general feeling among the public about OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Andy Ihnatko [00:42:55]:
I think he might have a point about AI in general. Look, just for the 4th of July, Google did a funny little video about hey, what if a founding father is creating the Declaration and improving the Declaration of Independence? Had used Google Workspace and well, and the thing is like when I saw the headlines about it was like, oh, AI will ruin everything. This is so tone deaf. Then I saw the video. It's like there's like maybe a couple of moments in which there's any AI whatsoever. And that indicates to me that anytime you AI is like MSG where anytime you mention it, people are going to recoil whether it is relevant or important or not. And so yeah, that's going to to that's going to beat down AI even more. But it's I, I am really interested to see how that affects Apple's relationship with ChatGPT on various platforms.
Andy Ihnatko [00:43:41]:
I imagine that's going to be well, partitioned off and Apple couldn't get away with denying them access to the public APIs that they offer every other AI platform. But yeah, this is, this, this has put these two companies on a war footing, on a war relationship with each other and it is going to be years before any sort of detente. Can, can, can, can be restored. It certainly is a good. If you, if you're looking for changes in relationships. Yeah. Anthropic and Gemini are probably going to be the background characters whispering in Apple's ears saying, oh, I'm so, so. I can't believe they did that to you.
Andy Ihnatko [00:44:17]:
Will you? Well, that's just horrible. Horrible.
Leo Laporte [00:44:23]:
Yeah. I might ask you, Christina, because you work in the AI business. OpenAI has just released last week a very, very strong model, 5.6 they call. There's three versions of it, Sol, Luna and Terra. I've been using it. It's very impressive. Some say as good as Fable, but a lot of the people who use either models from OpenAI are anthropic and I'm going to include myself in this. Do so kind of holding our nose because both of these companies are a little sketch.
Christina Warren [00:45:03]:
Well, yeah, I mean, but I think this is kind of the place where we're at. Right. Like where I think Andy's point is true about. There is kind of this broader backlash about certain AI things and how it impacts our lives and some people, especially younger people, although it depends of course on what audience you're talking to, almost have like a viscerally like negative reaction anytime AI is mentioned or used in any context, no matter, no matter what. This sort of thing certainly doesn't help. At the same time, I feel like Apple has to be careful with this too, because what's the one big feature that they are pushing with the next version of iOS and iOS and everything else? It is, you know, you know, the new Siri and AI themselves. And I, and I feel like, I don't know if there's necessarily a way where you can argue cogently. Oh, well, all AI is bad and all these companies are unethical except for us.
Christina Warren [00:45:57]:
Because. Because it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. Right. So it's one of those things where I have a feeling that for a lot of kind of the end users, yeah, maybe you feel like you're holding your nose, maybe you're feeling like. I don't know how I feel about some of the business practices of these things, but if the tools help you do what you're trying to do or if you feel compelled to use the tools. I haven't seen People yet step in and say, I'm not going to use the tools.
Leo Laporte [00:46:20]:
Yeah, no, no, we're holding our noses, but we're thrilled to be able to use them. I mean, the other strong model that came out last week is from Xai is Grok.
Jason Snell [00:46:34]:
So you remember, I mean, what I want to apply what they said about Tang Tan in that, that anonymous Apple person to everything in the tech industry. Remember, move fast and break things. I mean, this is a thing that has played back over and over again and we are in the break things era where. And this is, I think maybe one of the things Apple is trying to get out in the lawsuit is these companies. Yes, they have. You wonder about them in lots of ways that we've detailed here and lots of other ways. Even though they're making a useful product as, as long like, but they're losing money on it, but they're all, and they're buying up all the chips and making every other computer incredibly expensive. And they've got weird marketing that sometimes is like, I mean, anthropics marketing is literally, we're the only AI company that cares.
Jason Snell [00:47:18]:
If AI is going to destroy the world and if it's going to do it, maybe it'll be us. Wouldn't that be great? It's so weird, so strange. But you know, this is, this is, the question is, is somebody going to stand up and say, well, wait a second, you're, you're, you're, you can't just break all the rules because it's leading you somewhere interesting. And I mean, I think that getting on Apple's bad side like they did was a tactical error. That's the thing about this whole story that makes me think about this is I think it's just a mindset at OpenAI. And whether that comes from Mark Altman or whether it comes from other or not. Mark Altman, Sam Altman. Mark Altman's the guy who wrote all the Star Trek stories.
Leo Laporte [00:47:58]:
There is a Mark Altman.
Jason Snell [00:47:59]:
That's interesting. Yeah, Mark Altman. So Sam, whether, Sam, the guy with a pop collar who had that was on stage that Apple keynote that one time. He, whether it's him or not. Like, is that the culture there? And did they go, do they not care? I mean, that's really. I think my question is, do they not care? Because, because, like, it's easy for us to look at Apple's allegations and be like, why would you poke the bear? Why do you even need that stuff? You, you're Brit, you're hiring hundreds of the Best and brightest at Apple to make your hardware division. And that's probably a smart thing to do. That sounds pretty good.
Jason Snell [00:48:33]:
Why would you come up with a scheme to steal documents? Like why. Why even bother? And I think the answer that is at least being suggested there is because they don't see right or wrong. And if it. They feel like if they do something that benefits them, it's right, which, which
Christina Warren [00:48:50]:
I think is a valid thing to point out. I would ask this though, if that's true. Some of these people worked at Apple for 24 years. So what does that say?
Andy Ihnatko [00:48:59]:
Yeah, also, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, it's relevant that just a week ago or two weeks ago, a class action suit moved forward about YouTube creators suing Apple for using their videos to help train their AI. And Apple's response to the suit is, well, you posted it publicly. Sucks to be you. So to think that, and to think that Apple is immune from these kinds of tactics that, look, if we can take it, we don't think, we think that the repercussions are not going to be as great as the benefits of taking it. Therefore the smart business choice is to simply take it. I don't think they would ever do something as horrible as what OpenAI is alleged to be doing. But I do think it's less of a thing about this is what the AI industry is doing.
Andy Ihnatko [00:49:37]:
But so much as this is what the tech industry historically has always done and even just broadly, this is what large companies have always done. What is the downside to doing the quote, unethical unquote thing put into the spreadsheet? If the numbers say yes, go ahead and do it. We will go ahead and do it.
Christina Warren [00:49:53]:
It.
Leo Laporte [00:49:54]:
What a story. Well, we'll be, I think, covering this for the next five years, so that's good.
Christina Warren [00:49:59]:
Yeah. Content.
Leo Laporte [00:50:01]:
I do want to talk about Siri AI. The public beta is out, so that means the rest of us can now try it. Golden Gate is also out for Mac OS, in fact, iOS27 public beta, Mac OS27 public beta. It's everywhere but the Vision Pro.
Jason Snell [00:50:18]:
Vision Pro keeps just doing developer betas. There's never been a public beta for that because why would you even need one?
Leo Laporte [00:50:24]:
Right?
Christina Warren [00:50:24]:
Because it's a dev kit. Only people who should have bought it, it's a Dev kit.
Jason Snell [00:50:29]:
Exactly. 100% of people using the Vision Pro should be on the developer beta, by the way, because otherwise. What are you doing?
Leo Laporte [00:50:34]:
What are you doing? What are you thinking? We'll have more in just a Little bit. We will talk about all of this stuff and whether you like Siri AI. I've just started playing with it. By the way, the waiting list is almost instant. You do have to apply, but then go. Okay, so that's good news. I don't know why they even bother with the apply part, but maybe they were worried about too many people signing up. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [00:51:02]:
You're watching MacBreak Weekly. Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Christina Warren, and oh yeah, you. We're glad you're here. So I think you advised us, Jason. I avoided. I abjured the developer beta and waited and I saw yesterday. Oh, good. The public betas are here and probably shouldn't have done this but installed it on all.
Leo Laporte [00:51:27]:
You're gonna go all the way on my iPad mini. On my iPad Pro. On my iPhone 17 Pro Max. On my Macintosh mini. I don't. I don't. Oh, okay. The only thing not the MacBook Air that I'm using for the show.
Leo Laporte [00:51:42]:
I didn't, I didn't want to screw that one up.
Christina Warren [00:51:43]:
Right. See, See, there you go.
Leo Laporte [00:51:45]:
Not all one. One remains, but I haven't had any problems. Did I make a mistake, Jason? Did I make a mistake?
Jason Snell [00:51:54]:
I don't think so. I don't think so. It's. It's. Look, it's a beta. I. I have not run into anything that I would consider a non starter. I think you just need to go in with your eyes open and Leo, you're a veteran, right?
Leo Laporte [00:52:06]:
That might not understand.
Jason Snell [00:52:07]:
There's some bugs. I mean, I haven't had any apps not work. Sometimes apps crash. Sometimes you. Here's a Golden Gate quirk. Sometimes you quit an app and it doesn't leave the dock. Ooh, it's a ghost in the dock. And when you mouse over it, it says, this app is running in the background.
Jason Snell [00:52:23]:
It's like, friend, that app is dead. I don't know why you think it's running in the background. It's just dead. But those are quirks. If you know that you're going to go in there and they're going to be quirks. And you're going to have to like on my iPhone today, I was like, oh, the settings app app is non responsive. I'm going to have to quit the settings app and open it back up. Or occasionally like, oh, things are real weird right now.
Jason Snell [00:52:44]:
Let's reboot. Or hey, that shortcut that used to work doesn't work now. Maybe it'll work later. It's like, these are the Things that happen in the summer when you're on a beta. If you know that, if you're willing to do that, then it's worth it. And if you're one of those people who refused to use Tahoe, you'll also get all the features that were in Tahoe in Goldengate. So that's a nice thing.
Leo Laporte [00:53:06]:
You say in your review that you actually liked Tahoe.
Jason Snell [00:53:09]:
I did. Because of all the productivity boosts in it. I love. I think it's the first. Tahoe was the first major macOS version in a while that felt like Apple realized people use their Mac's productivity and maybe they should add productivity improvements to the Mac. They also. I choose to look at the glass, the liquid glass, half full, which is. They could have done so much more to ruin the Mac interface with liquid glass.
Jason Snell [00:53:31]:
And it's like their disinterest in spending a lot of time on the Mac made it less bad than it would have been. That said, Golden Gate fixes most of the issues with, you know, the windows look better, the sidebars aren't broken, the toolbars. Minor, minor Mac interface features like sidebars, toolbars, and the menu bar. Who's gonna notice? Anyway, those are a lot better.
Leo Laporte [00:53:55]:
And I have to say, it is part of the onboarding process, at least in iOS, that it says, and how do you want your liquor glass? And it gives you the slider.
Jason Snell [00:54:02]:
Yeah, with a slider. So, yeah, when I talked to them, they said, they said, you know, we like to make a decision. We understand that there's, like, design is often about making choices, but they say when they talk to people about it. There was a camp who really liked the liquid glass to be transparent and a camp that hated it and wanted it to be opaque. And they're like, okay, here's a slider.
Leo Laporte [00:54:24]:
I'm in the majority camp, whatever, which just left it. I didn't change the slider. It's right smack dab in the middle.
Jason Snell [00:54:30]:
I left it in the middle. And I think it's. I think it's perfectly fine.
Leo Laporte [00:54:32]:
I didn't even notice.
Jason Snell [00:54:34]:
Yeah, well, everything is so much like, they kind of ate toolbars in. In Tahoe. Like, the Photos app is a great example. There was not a toolbar anymore. There was just kind of like some floating glass buttons and then a. A weird hazy area that would change color based on what was behind it. And I put a screenshot in my story about it. Like in Golden Gate, you know, it's not like.
Jason Snell [00:54:57]:
There's no question There's a toolbar up there. There's like a bar with a horizontal line, and above it, things are very opaque. And below it, it's the content. And, like, I don't know why they had to make this meandering path to end up getting back where they started. But again, Golden Gate. So for all the Tahoe holdouts out there. Yeah. You could just jump to the public beta of Golden Gate, and I think you'd feel a lot better.
Leo Laporte [00:55:23]:
I'm looking at your article at sixcolors. Com. I don't know what the toolbar is. I have it on my Mac Mini toolbar.
Jason Snell [00:55:30]:
It's at the top of the screen where there are buttons. Top of a window where you can click on buttons. That toolbar got, like, real diffuse or even invisible in Tahoe.
Leo Laporte [00:55:39]:
Oh, okay.
Jason Snell [00:55:40]:
And in Golden Gate, they said yes, actually, at the top of a window where there are buttons, there should be a clear bar there that the buttons sit on and not floating in space in front of a weird fog bank that rolls in and out, which is what it was like in Tahoe. So.
Leo Laporte [00:55:55]:
So this middle one is Tahoe and the top one is Tahoe. The top two are Tahoe.
Jason Snell [00:56:00]:
In. In. In that reference. It's. It's because it would change based on what content was behind it. It would get dark and invert, or it would get light. And now there's just a toolbar. Again, tried and true.
Jason Snell [00:56:11]:
At the top of your window where there are buttons, there's a little bar that they live in and not floating in space. Because why would you do that?
Leo Laporte [00:56:18]:
Good. Why, Christina, did you take the plunge?
Christina Warren [00:56:22]:
I've got it installing on my iPad. I did not get my flight coming back from Germany was delayed and never fly British Airways. That's my advice to all of you ever cosign.
Jason Snell [00:56:33]:
Never do it.
Christina Warren [00:56:33]:
Genuinely, genuinely never. Worst travel experience of my entire life. But because of that, I did. I got home 24 hours late, and my bags then arrived 24 hours after I arrived. So, yeah, so I've got it installing on my iPad, but I haven't had a chance to play with it.
Leo Laporte [00:56:48]:
That's terrible. What happened? They just delayed your flight.
Christina Warren [00:56:52]:
So the flight from Berlin to London, which is a short flight, there was some sort of problem with the plane, and they needed a British engineer to fix it because of Brexit. And then British Airways would not let me, so I was going to miss my connecting flight. They would not let me book my onboarding flight the next day until the original flight took off eight hours later, they made me get my bags off the plane, that I had to recheck my exact same bags onto the plane. They did make it to London, but then for some reason didn't make it into. Into Seattle because of the. The day before. Because originally the flight was supposed to be different. So I don't know.
Christina Warren [00:57:32]:
It was just. It was the whole thing.
Leo Laporte [00:57:33]:
But, yeah, why would you be rooting for England in that case?
Christina Warren [00:57:36]:
Honestly, I don't know. I. That's a really. That's a really good call. That really just comes down to my friends. But that's honestly a great point. Screw England, honestly.
Leo Laporte [00:57:46]:
Argentina, baby, let's go.
Christina Warren [00:57:48]:
Argentina, let's go. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:57:54]:
We won't mention the fact that we're doing the show at the same time as the World cup semis are going on today and tomorrow. I'm sure we'll lose a few live viewers, but, you know, this is a podcast.
Jason Snell [00:58:05]:
That's why it's a podcast.
Christina Warren [00:58:06]:
That's why it's a podcast. You can listen later.
Leo Laporte [00:58:09]:
It's really the hosts I feel bad for. I hope, Jason, you have a screen somewhere that you can observe.
Jason Snell [00:58:15]:
Oh, yeah, it's right over there. It's right to my left.
Leo Laporte [00:58:17]:
Me, too. I just turned it on. I had forgotten until Christina started talking about England. I thought, oh, wait a minute.
Jason Snell [00:58:22]:
World Cup.
Leo Laporte [00:58:23]:
Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, let's. Back to the. Back to the future. Have you played with. What else are we talking about? Have you played with the photo? Well, I know, Jason, you've played. Nothing's new for you.
Leo Laporte [00:58:39]:
This is all stuff you've played.
Jason Snell [00:58:41]:
I've been spending the last couple of months, or last month, I guess.
Leo Laporte [00:58:46]:
The only thing really of interest, I'm
Jason Snell [00:58:47]:
still writing 27 on all my checks because I don't even know what year it is. As far as I'm concerned, it's 27 now. Okay.
Leo Laporte [00:58:55]:
Yeah. Everything's 27.
Jason Snell [00:58:57]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [00:58:57]:
I immediately, of course, tried the new Siri and was stymied immediately by the fact that it wasn't turned on. Yeah, you have to go into the settings and they're marked as a beta.
Jason Snell [00:59:08]:
And they are. You're right. They are worried about gating access to the models that are in the cloud, and that's why they're asking you to sign up for it. And you got your Siri settings, but they have to.
Leo Laporte [00:59:19]:
And then press the button and you'll immediately. At least I did immediately get it.
Jason Snell [00:59:23]:
Yeah, maybe.
Leo Laporte [00:59:24]:
Unless there's a big one, which is that Siri is still thinking. Apparently, Siri has to optimize and it's been optimizing since late, since last yesterday.
Jason Snell [00:59:35]:
Yeah, it'll go for a while. What it's doing is it's downloading. So. Okay, here's the thing about how Apple does this is not everything is on your device, right? Not everything is cached on your device. Not every email message in your email account, not every message in your mail messages, they're on the, they're in the cloud and they can be reached on demand. Apple needs to pull that content down to build an Internet index. And so what's happening in the background is they're very slowly doing things like downloading older emails and then still older emails, downloading older messages and indexing them and then throwing them away, you know, or they're cached, they'll get tossed away. But they have to do that because you might ask a question that requires an email message from two years ago.
Jason Snell [01:00:16]:
And so they're going to build that index but it takes time because they have to. And they built in a system where it doesn't like download all of your email right away. They kind of like titrate out how much of that they do at any given time. So it very slowly is going to build up a whole personal history for you. It takes a while.
Leo Laporte [01:00:34]:
Yeah. I did though ask it yesterday because I couldn't, I couldn't get a straight answer. I said what time is the World cup final on Sunday? And it knew, it told me, which was nice.
Jason Snell [01:00:46]:
The world knowledge stuff is way better. Like if we're talking leaving the AI sort of agent stuff aside, I think if they had released this last year without any of that and just said, oh, we fixed our Siri like world knowledge problem which they needed the last year because they said they tore it down to nothing and rebuilt it in the last year. But like that stuff just works now. It's kind of amazing. I've been talking to friends who say a lot of the stuff they used to use just straight up chat GPT for. They, they can use Siri AI for it. And it's fine because it's like you're just asking basic questions. You're not asking it to write code for you.
Jason Snell [01:01:17]:
You're asking a lot of basic questions and follow up questions and it just kind of gets it. I actually kind of Wonder talking about OpenAI if one of the motivations open I had to change their app to be this new app that sort of like puts Codex at the front and kind of degrades the chat experience is because they see the writing on the wall, which is like basic, super basic chat conversation stuff. Like Google and Apple are just going to do it. I'm sorry, Google and Apple are just going to do that. So. So because it's true, like basic questions you'd ask an AI. You can ask the Siri AI and get basic answers about what facts are and it's pretty good. So like I don't know that they solved that part.
Jason Snell [01:02:00]:
The part that's open is the question of like it's scouring through all your personal information and stuff.
Andy Ihnatko [01:02:04]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:02:04]:
And I did try to ask it about a text message and it didn't know yet. But later today I'm sure we'll. I do have to point out goal.
Jason Snell [01:02:10]:
I just watched on YouTube TV, so it's delayed.
Leo Laporte [01:02:14]:
I do have to point out.
Jason Snell [01:02:15]:
I don't want to feel left out
Andy Ihnatko [01:02:16]:
even though I'm not watching it.
Leo Laporte [01:02:17]:
I do have to point out that almost all. No. All of the pictures in your photos library that you're using this demonstration for
Jason Snell [01:02:24]:
are from the World Cup. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:02:25]:
Seem to be on a soccer pitch of some.
Jason Snell [01:02:27]:
Yeah, that's from the World cup game I went to. So, you know, I don't want to put all my family in there. So those are pictures that I took in Santa Clara.
Leo Laporte [01:02:34]:
You were actually there. That's cool.
Jason Snell [01:02:35]:
Yeah. For the mighty matchup between Turkey and Paraguay.
Leo Laporte [01:02:40]:
The big one or as we say. And everybody now says Turkey, yay.
Jason Snell [01:02:44]:
Turkey and Paraguay was yay versus GWE and the GWE one.
Leo Laporte [01:02:49]:
So yeah, it's like after last time we all said Cotter.
Jason Snell [01:02:54]:
Yeah. Cover. Well, that's how you say it. And they, they want to say Turkey, but yeah. So Paraguay. Paraguay advanced. Turkey. It was boudier and yay to gwe.
Jason Snell [01:03:04]:
That was that game that I wanted.
Leo Laporte [01:03:06]:
Sounds like Igpe Atenley.
Andy Ihnatko [01:03:10]:
Jason, can I ask you, have you installed the Apple Watch beta? Because I've been really, really interested in the. I don't have a compatible hardware to test out now, but it really does seem to me like when the star ways interact with a chatbot are just simply through a watch. And I've seen Wired wrote an article about it. A couple others were saying, my God, this is exactly why this series finally useful to me because I've got it on the. On the Apple Watch beta.
Jason Snell [01:03:37]:
When it works, it's very impressive because it does work by connecting essentially back to your phone to process those. When it works, it's very impressive. I would say it's the rickettiest of all the betas in that I. And again it's beta. I'm not going to judge it yet because I think they will fix this by the time they launch. But like I do a lot of set of 5 minute timers and it's not doing that so good right now. Sometimes it's like I don't know what to do with this and it's like guy, it's five minutes just do that thing. But when it works, yeah, you're able to just talk to your watch and ask a Siri AI question and get an answer and that's really nice.
Jason Snell [01:04:17]:
Or if you're out with like AirPods or something on your phone, obviously it works that way too. So I'm glad they did that right. Because it's like technically that hardware doesn't really support Apple Intelligence. But like if you've got a phone that can do Siri AI, it should be able to do Siri AI. And so yeah, that's the, that's the ideal. But I would say it's really, really spotty right now. I think that they're still struggling to get that connection solid.
Leo Laporte [01:04:40]:
I did put it immediately on the watch as well so but I haven't, I haven't had a chance to play with it much. Does it is you turn to talk to Siri, does that still work or.
Jason Snell [01:04:49]:
I think I have all that turned off because I don't to want. Want. I, I don't, I don't do any voice activation with Siri.
Leo Laporte [01:04:56]:
I'm always gonna press a button to Schlomo on this.
Jason Snell [01:04:58]:
You just say hey, you press, you, you can press and hold the Digital Crown.
Leo Laporte [01:05:03]:
Okay.
Jason Snell [01:05:03]:
Just like the phone set a five minute timer.
Leo Laporte [01:05:06]:
What's the score in the current World cup game? I, I wish I'd had this for making bagels the other day. I, it would have been nice to have the 30 second timer.
Jason Snell [01:05:16]:
I got my timer. It just took, it took longer results because what it has to do is it has to run a little.
Leo Laporte [01:05:22]:
It has the correct score, it's up to a second.
Jason Snell [01:05:24]:
It has to run a little model and I feel like there's optimization they have to do there. Because you want on the watch you want your simple request to happen fast.
Christina Warren [01:05:32]:
Yes.
Jason Snell [01:05:32]:
Right. And I think they're not there yet
Christina Warren [01:05:34]:
and they should be able to optimize that. That should be a thing that they should be able to build fairly easily. Where for tasks like that like, like setting alarms and maybe timers, things like that should not have to go through an LLM4. They should be able to siphon out what those requests are and then send it directly. Because at that point it's really just a function. It doesn't need to be done on demand.
Jason Snell [01:05:59]:
That's how it's supposed to be working on all the devices is that they've got a very simple thing that basically is determining, is this even a thing that I need to hand off or do I know how to do this? Which is like, if you remember way back in the day with voice control, it's the same idea, which is this doesn't require intelligence because this is very clearly just asking to set a timer. So I'm just going to do that. And then another query would be like, oh, I don't know what this is. You. You figure it out and that's how you want it to work.
Leo Laporte [01:06:25]:
So one thing you point out in, oh, by the way, hey, Schlomo does work nice. Set a timer for five minutes. One of the things you point out in your Goldengate review is that Sidecar is in macOS, which would only make sense if you had a touch.
Jason Snell [01:06:44]:
Yeah. So Sidecar. Sidecar's not new. Sidecar's been around a while. Sidecar. And in fact, it's kind of became less. When they did Universal control, it became less relevant. So Sidecar lets you use an iPad as an external Mac display.
Jason Snell [01:06:58]:
So it's like an extra display for your Mac. And then they did Universal Control, which I think is way better because it lets your iPad be controlled by your, like, keyboard and mouse on your Mac, but still be an iPad running iPad apps, which is, I think, better than. Because I would like drag a slack window, window over there and then I'd be looking at the max. Like, we know. I'm like, why don't I just run slack on my iPad and do that instead? So Universal Control was better. But what they've done with Sidecar in this version, and it's their transparent thing, because we know what's going to happen. They're going to do touchscreen Max, but they can't say that now. So they're like, oh, look what we added to Sidecar.
Jason Snell [01:07:32]:
It supports touch with your fingers. Now, it did Apple pencil input before. And so, and so it's basically if you, if you sit there in front of it, you're using a touchscreen Mac as officially supported by Apple. And, and I am happy to report it's a super boring feature because it just kind of works. It's fine. Like, there's nothing. I don't have anything really to say about it, because it's exactly what you think it would be. You touch a window and drag it around, scroll a webpage, it just all work.
Jason Snell [01:07:59]:
Tap a menu item in the menu bar and it comes down and you can tap like there's nothing to it. It's very smooth, it's solid. And you know, anybody who's used a device that can do both will tell you, you know, you're not using the touchscreen on a touchscreen laptop all the time. You know, but sometimes you do. Like sometimes your hands are up here and not down on the keyboard and there's a web page open and you want to scroll it and you just reach out with your finger and it's nice to be able to do that. And then you go back to using a Mac laptop and you go, oh, oh no, it doesn't do anything. I just put a streak on my display. So it's.
Jason Snell [01:08:34]:
Yeah, so it's boring. But we know what it means, which is that Apple has basically built touch into macOS and it's just a matter of shipping a laptop that has a touchscreen.
Leo Laporte [01:08:44]:
Go ahead.
Andy Ihnatko [01:08:45]:
This is the kind of feature that the first time I used Sidecar like that, like years ago was like, why can I not just simply touch touch? Because back in the 1990s, third party rebuilders used to reassemble Power Books. I don't know if it was PowerBooks or MacBooks back then. You could basically send your MacBook out to this company that would send it back with a USB style touchscreen overlaid on top of it and it simply worked. And so it was kind of surprising to me they would just simply make that happen for the first version of this. So. But yeah, I agree, I agree with you, Jason. That definitely means that, well, if we wired this up for, for our unnamed touchscreen MacBook to be named later, why not? Let's just hide the code.
Jason Snell [01:09:30]:
Even in that there's some APIs for developers to take advantage of touch in specific ways in their apps. And there's no way to communic that at WWDC other than to ship it somewhere. And so they've shipped it as essentially a test in Sidecar. And then obviously the implication, everybody knows what they mean by that, but it means that you could do it now as a developer and test your app InsideCar and know that it's going to work great when they do a touchscreen laptop.
Leo Laporte [01:09:55]:
This is something that frustrated me. If I have a external USB screen that has touch, do you know if that will now work? Because it didn't. Doesn't.
Jason Snell [01:10:05]:
I don't know. I would doubt it. I think maybe this is just implemented as a sidecar feature right now.
Leo Laporte [01:10:11]:
IPad. Yeah. Be really cool if it did. I mean that's was kind of my expectation that it would.
Jason Snell [01:10:17]:
Yeah, I don't. That. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:10:19]:
I'll try it. I can't try it right now, I'm busy. The other thing that is now here is talking to your shortcuts.
Jason Snell [01:10:29]:
Yeah, you write a shortcut by telling it what you want the shortcut to be. It's the first vibe coding basically for shortcuts. And it's simple. It doesn't do. You know, it's mostly it's just Apple's things. It's not third party apps or anything like that. But it does it and it works pretty well. Sometimes it goes astray.
Jason Snell [01:10:49]:
Look, it's by coding sometimes things happen that are weird, but it works pretty well. And then they're also summarizing the steps so that if you click on any shortcut it'll open this little box that tells you sort of what that shortcut does, which is.
Leo Laporte [01:11:03]:
That's kind of cool. Does it must use the local model. That's part of the reason it probably isn't very good. I mean if it used Fable.
Jason Snell [01:11:11]:
Well, I mean the problem is that they have built a custom system that involves. It's very complicated. Involves like there's a Python intermediary that they use and all of this stuff in order to get it. But, but it's a good start. I mean this is the, this is the dream of user automation is you shouldn't need to know anything about programming to get your device to do something for you. And you actually, you have to know to go into shortcuts and ask it. I think the next step is going to be to just ask Siri to make a shortcut for you or make a thing that does a thing for you and not even know that it's a shortcut and schedule it to run every day. Yeah, they'll get there.
Jason Snell [01:11:45]:
They'll get there because it's all, all the pieces are there now. It, it will literally you could say when I connect to my shower speaker, put me in do not disturb. And I've done, I've written that shortcut both ways. And if you just tell it when I connect to my shower speaker, put it in do not disturb, it pops up a little thing that says which one of these Bluetooth devices is your shower speaker? And you pick one and it goes done and it's. And it. And it. And it did it. It's pretty amazing.
Jason Snell [01:12:09]:
The trigger, AI, the actions, the whole thing. Yeah, it's not a surprise to anybody who's done Vibe coding of anything, but, like, Apple built this and they're going to deploy to, like, literally everybody just on their iPhone. And I think that that's cool. I think that's a good step.
Leo Laporte [01:12:25]:
Oh, it's huge. I mean, people like Christina who are doing all sorts of stuff with AI agents, me with my Hermes, of course it's much smarter because it's got all this stuff going on. It's got frontier models, but we're in the minority. I mean, this is going to bring that to. To everybody.
Christina Warren [01:12:42]:
And I would. I would go even further and say, a, this brings it to a lot more people, but also even for us who have our own agents and systems like that, like, I've always really wanted to get more into shortcuts. What has stopped me, to be completely candid with you, has been the fact that, like, it's been such a frustrating experience to write a shortcut that if you are, like, it's such a terrible, terrible experience that, you know, the fact that, like, people. People have created intermediary languages before Apple did, you know, so that they could try to, like, write them in a more programmatic way, it's made me not do things that could be really valuable on my phone. And so I've had to rely on people like Matthew Castellanelli and Federico and other folks, put together really great shortcuts and then maybe make some modifications to them. But it's really prevented me from using this great feature on iOS because the. The method of creating the shortcuts themselves was so ridiculously terrible. So Vibe coding or not, I don't care.
Christina Warren [01:13:40]:
The natural language, I think, is the ideal way to do this. I wish selfishly that there were like a, you know, more programmatic way where I could write something in a text editor and have an easier way of manipulating things. But if that's not going to happen, I would much rather have this than have to go through the, you know, strong drum of setting up a shortcut previously, because now not only is this going to open up automation to millions of people who might not have otherwise done anything, this is, I think, even for some of us power users, is going to actually let us be able to enjoy our devices and our phones more. So I'm very excited about this, and I think that this is the thing that Apple has been probably trying to get to since they acquired workflow, however, many years ago. Ago.
Andy Ihnatko [01:14:25]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:14:26]:
His workflow in the background, or.
Christina Warren [01:14:29]:
Well, it was originally. I mean, they, they, they acquired Shortcut.
Leo Laporte [01:14:33]:
Never had this capability.
Christina Warren [01:14:34]:
No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying, though, is that, like, I, I think that, that they've always wanted. I think, I think the goal was never to have this terrible intermediary, you know, app language thing, which is such, you know, a slog to have to get through and to create anything with. I think the goal was always to be able to just tell Siri what you want it to do and then it can build it in the backend and none of us care what it looks like or how complicated it is or what the pipes are. And we shouldn't. Right. Like this is finally giving us that.
Leo Laporte [01:15:02]:
Christina, I do have a question for you. You're in developer relations. You talk to developers all the time. It feels increasingly to me when I type code that I'm really an animal, that I shouldn't have to ever type another colon and a brace in my life. And I do feel like the world is moving to that point where it is very. It's like hand stitching and almost everybody's going to be using a sewing machine. And so is that, Is that, Is that just me or is it.
Christina Warren [01:15:30]:
No, no, I think that that's definitely more of a trend. And I think that what's interesting is just to see how much that's changed. And obviously it's been since, you know, the models that were released in November, December time period and started to get really good was Opus. I would say Opus and five, four. Right. I would say both of those moments were really. Were really good. And then things have progressed since then, I would say, too.
Christina Warren [01:15:52]:
And I've talked about this with a number of my colleagues and friends. I think that what changes for people who are more experienced is that you spend less time maybe writing code, like you said. Maybe I'm not worrying about my braces or my spacing or whatever, but you spend a lot more time reviewing code.
Leo Laporte [01:16:11]:
I don't even know though, in the long run if we're going to review code.
Christina Warren [01:16:14]:
I agree.
Leo Laporte [01:16:15]:
You're moving up the stack to more and more. You're going to be doing DevOps kind of things.
Christina Warren [01:16:21]:
Absolutely. And I was just going architecture stuff 1000%. And that can change. But I think that we are still in that kind of phase right now where a lot of it moves to. Okay, I'm not necessarily. Because somebody asked me this question at the We Are Developers conference in Berlin last week they said, well, how much code do you write nowadays? And I go, you know what? Not that much. I'll make modifications. But a lot of it is reviewing what an agent is writing for me and then making modifications based on that.
Christina Warren [01:16:47]:
But we'll see how that goes. And I think that in some ways that actually for things like shortcuts and its forefathers like automator and whatnot, it really is great that we are kind of at this moment where that type of idea that came up 40 years ago or whatever is now finally in a place where actually this is not just how any regular Joe Schmo could build software. This is increasingly how professionals are building software too, which is kind of cool.
Leo Laporte [01:17:18]:
That was kind of my point. It's not just the unwashed masses.
Christina Warren [01:17:21]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:17:22]:
In fact, it's coders who are at the forefront of this. They're the most tired of typing braces. All right, a couple more places you're going to see AI emerging. Have you played with the Safari tab grouping feature?
Jason Snell [01:17:39]:
Is that worth anything? I mean, it's interesting, but it'll even do it with your. With. In the Start page, which is what I use, there are a bunch of things like recently viewed items that they usually show you. And now those are auto grouped. So they'll be like. I was opening a bunch of tabs about the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City and it's got a. Here are three tabs that you used to have open about that subject all grouped together.
Leo Laporte [01:18:06]:
Oh, I like that.
Jason Snell [01:18:07]:
And then you can do that if you're a person who has lots of tabs. I'm not a. I'm not a tab addict, but if you're somebody with lots and lots of tabs, you can have it organized in little subgroups. So like all of your vacation planning can be a tab and you can move it off into a tab group. But it'll also like try to cluster them together by topic. So I haven't spent a lot of time with it other than seeing it in my Start page. But, you know, they're just very. It's a very simple AI feature.
Jason Snell [01:18:32]:
Right. Of take these things and group them together intelligently and give them all labels. And they're just trying to make the experience nicer.
Leo Laporte [01:18:39]:
It will auto name files.
Jason Snell [01:18:42]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:18:42]:
Based on the contents.
Jason Snell [01:18:44]:
Yeah. If it can look at the context, which I think is basically whatever the model can see. So like text files and, and images and stuff like that, it will pick them out and suggest them. I mentioned in my review that they need to do this with screenshots when you take them because all the screenshots are just labeled. I love an option to say why don't you name my screenshot what it is a picture of? Because they could totally do that. But they will suggest, they'll look at that screenshot later and suggest what might go in there based on its content. And the same with text files. It also works in the same.
Jason Snell [01:19:17]:
The little pop up where you can save. It'll suggest in there too. So there are a few places where they're just sprinkling this in there, which it kind of makes sense. Right. Like if, if your computer can make some suggestions and that might be helpful to some people in some instances. Why wouldn't you do it?
Leo Laporte [01:19:33]:
Yeah. And the password app now has some agentic AI to make you safer.
Jason Snell [01:19:43]:
Well, so password app knows about data breaches and knows about passwords that are in the wild and that easily guessable passwords and they flag them. The new version of passwords has this agentic password changer thing that they've tried to build where it will actually go in the background to the website that has the bad password on it and it will go through the process of changing it and theoretically if they send you like a six digit two factor code, it will sweep that up and enter it in and all that that. And I tried it on several dozen and it got right on three of them. So nobody can steal my IKEA password now. Haha. But it only worked on three pages.
Leo Laporte [01:20:23]:
Have been trying to do that automatic password updating too for some time. That's a hard thing to do I guess because every site is different.
Jason Snell [01:20:29]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean and I'm not sure how sophisticated this particular approach is. I like the idea though. Right. The idea that you could fairly easily just tell you like do I need. That's why, that's why people don't change bad passwords is they don't want to go to all those sites. So if the robot will do it for them, why wouldn't you do it? It's just not very efficient at that right now.
Leo Laporte [01:20:48]:
Yeah, that's really on the websites to make that automated.
Jason Snell [01:20:51]:
Oh yeah, exactly.
Leo Laporte [01:20:52]:
Ask me.
Jason Snell [01:20:53]:
Yeah, get on ikea.
Andy Ihnatko [01:20:57]:
You're reminding me this for the second time in the past 10 minutes about a paper that Apple's machine language group published about basically doing image recognition of user interfaces to be able to figure out what does this app do, what does this button do, what does this menu do within context? And that's the second time I could see an application like that application of this technology where it's like, okay, we can figure out how to change a password through either a mechanism that's being supplied by the industry, or we can just sort of look at the password generation system of this website and figure it out for ourselves. And that is the second time it came up to me, because when we were talking about using AI to generate automation, this is another thing that Apple obviously wants every single app to be wired up to support Apple intelligence and app intents to be built in. But it also means that there's a lot of stuff, even just for accessibility, where a website will never be wired for that kind of automation. But if they have the ability to take a look at the interface that a user is looking at right now to figure out the steps of operations to make something happen through this webpage, that could mean that in two or three or four years time, we are no longer trying to figure out how to do things. We're just trying to cross our fingers and hope that our iPhones can figure it out for us.
Leo Laporte [01:22:15]:
There is a new firmware build that will take advantage of iOS27 and Mac OS27 for your AirPods. So you can't really force it. Right. You just plug in your AirPods and you gotta.
Jason Snell [01:22:28]:
Yeah. Be nearby and hope that it happens.
Andy Ihnatko [01:22:31]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:22:32]:
Customizable EQ redesign of the AirPods settings menu. Easy to read labels, groupings. So will you not get that in iOS 27 if you don't have updated firmware on the AirPods? Is that what this requires? I don't know.
Jason Snell [01:22:47]:
Well know.
Leo Laporte [01:22:48]:
We don't know. Someday people will know. You could ask Siri, but it'll just check the web, so. Forget it. Forget it. All right, it's time for our hydration break. You're watching MacBreak.
Jason Snell [01:23:04]:
Posa de hydration.
Leo Laporte [01:23:07]:
Pos a de hydration. And we will have more in just a bit with Jason Snell. Who are you rooting for? Is Argentina England, Spain or France? Those are your choices.
Jason Snell [01:23:19]:
Ah, wow. England and probably France.
Leo Laporte [01:23:24]:
I admit I was rooting for Norway against England, I really was, because Holland is so curling.
Jason Snell [01:23:29]:
Holland is great.
Leo Laporte [01:23:30]:
So cool.
Jason Snell [01:23:31]:
Except I hate him because he plays for Man City, but otherwise he's great.
Andy Ihnatko [01:23:33]:
Oh, does he?
Leo Laporte [01:23:34]:
Oh, good. Well, now I know who to root for in the Premier League.
Jason Snell [01:23:36]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:23:37]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:23:37]:
It's like rooting for the Yankees. Rooting for Man City.
Andy Ihnatko [01:23:39]:
Great.
Leo Laporte [01:23:39]:
Go for do they wear pinstripes? There is a guy on the Spanish team named Laporte, so I should probably root For Spain? I don't know. How about you, Christina? You're going to go for England even though Airways. Did you digitize dirt?
Christina Warren [01:23:54]:
Look, look, Virgin Airways has never let me down. So in Brit and British Airways.
Leo Laporte [01:23:58]:
Virgin's British.
Christina Warren [01:23:59]:
You're right. Well, I was gonna say British Airways apparently isn't even known by the Brits anymore, so whatever, that explains it. It really does. So honestly, probably still England, but I mean, go, go sports, go teams. I don't know.
Leo Laporte [01:24:13]:
I would go sports. It's hard to root against Messi, but on the other hand, you know, he's had his share. It's time to spread a little of the love around. Andy, should I even ask you this question?
Andy Ihnatko [01:24:26]:
I'm rooting for the team with that guy who did that thing. Yeah, everyone was talking about. I like his spunk and his go get it attitude like everybody else. I don't have to say it. I mean, I don't have to say the specific, you know what you're talking about.
Leo Laporte [01:24:38]:
No need. We know. We all know what you mean.
Andy Ihnatko [01:24:40]:
You're all sick of hearing about that guy. Aren't we?
Leo Laporte [01:24:44]:
Let's talk about the future. Well, there's a lot of things to talk about. We mentioned last week that the M6 is going to be just a blip. Apple's moving as quickly as it can to the M7. Malcolm Owen, writing the Apple Insider says the M6 era will last just six months as Apple pushes for the AI focused M7. Actually, he's really regurgitating Mark Gurman's Power on newsletter, which was the first, I think to say that the M6 Pro and M6 Max chips just aren't going to happen. It'll be M6 nothing and then on to the M7. But the intended schedule to bring the M7 online six months after the M6, which makes it, if my calculations are correct, the first half of next year.
Leo Laporte [01:25:37]:
So I think the real question for me is going to be will there be enough RAM available to make this a useful machine?
Jason Snell [01:25:45]:
That's the thing with all of this. Like there's going to be an M5 Ultra Mac studio coming at some point too. But like what's that going to cost and how many of them are they going to be able to make? And like that puts it really casts a pall over a lot of these future projects products is we just don't know what the availability is going to be and what they're going to cost. The idea that there's going to be an M7 Ultra in 2028. I guess that would be like 1.5 terabytes of RAM, but no one will be able to afford it, so does it matter? Yeah. Really interesting to see. Exciting to know. When we talked about this the last time, I just think that it's cool that Apple looked at their M7 stuff and thought this is so good in terms of AI performance.
Jason Snell [01:26:28]:
Performance, we should just get there faster and not even bother with all the M6 hullabaloo. We'll just move on. And like, I, I like that. I like the idea that they're, they're saying priorities like this is because it takes them so much time and they, they have obviously prioritized AI development now because they've seen how people have gravitated toward using MAX to do local agentic stuff. And you know, that's good. But yeah, hanging over all of this is that black cloud, which is like, well, that's really nice that you want to buy a Mac with lots of ram, but you can't.
Leo Laporte [01:26:59]:
Well, I think there's an interesting point to be made here. We keep thinking of this as for individuals, but businesses are really sinking money into either their own local hardware with as much power as possible, or private cloud. And I think Apple might actually be looking for the first time since they killed xservices at the server market for this stuff.
Jason Snell [01:27:21]:
Yeah, I mean they're going to build their own servers, but I think what they found, and who knows where it will go. But I think Apple's already identified and I've talked to people who agree with this. The idea that, you know, their company is uncomfortable having their data leave their, their offices and it's as expensive as these things might be. You know that thing I saw, wwdc, where they had the four Mac studios attached via Thunderbolts with a terabyte of addressable memory shared between them, running fairly sophisticated models entirely locally. I think Apple sees an opportunity to follow that thread and with the M5 and then the M7 Ultra with lots and lots of RAM and again, we're talking, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to buy that, but it's going
Leo Laporte [01:28:03]:
to pay that kind of money for privacy and security.
Jason Snell [01:28:06]:
Exactly. And the idea that model is running locally in your offices, it's not even at your data data center, it might be in your office with your data and only you and your employees can see it. Like, I, I think there may be something appealing there. Right. Like, and that's a place where Apple
Leo Laporte [01:28:20]:
can play Puck is going. I think that that's a very you know, so that's my contention because no individual or very few individuals are going to want to spend that kind of money. But there is a market and that is enterprise and, and server companies. And I think that's a very interesting place for Apple to aim for.
Andy Ihnatko [01:28:41]:
I also wonder if the jump to M7 is partially because of not only is RAM limited, but also simply manufacturing capacity is limited. If they're basically saying if we book, if we start booking the lines, lines for production of M7, we're basically set for the next couple of years. Whereas if we have to retool after an M6 rollout, I'm sure that wouldn't be the only reason why they did. I think that it would be because they thought of a bunch of factors and decided that yeah, that's also a factor as well.
Jason Snell [01:29:09]:
Yeah, I wonder if I was thinking about this too, Andy. It's like, well what does it get them? And I think the answer may be as simple as if they Never put the M6 Pro and Max and Ultra. If they never put those on the fabs, then that fab capacity is then available for them to do other things with it. Right. And that's why you can get ahead that, that if they put those M6s on, there's a cost to get all those extra M6 is on and then they have to run for a while and then they come off and maybe you just say no, we're going to take those slots and use them for some, for some other chips instead and it lets them pull that whole thing forward and give them more capacity now instead of for this interim step that they decide they don't really want.
Andy Ihnatko [01:29:50]:
Yeah, they live, they're suddenly living in a world in which they can't simply get capacity whenever they want however they want it now they basically have to be another schmuck in line with their handout. Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:29:59]:
And, and you know, it can also be, I think maybe acknowledging, okay, so we've had to alter our pricing once. We might have to do it more but hopefully, you know, they've made the changes they need to make. If we keep some of our, you know, more lower end consumer devices maybe in market longer or if we don't go upmarket, you know, if we just have like the base M6 and we're not going to go any further until those things are available available. That can also help us kind of weather the storm of this pricing instability period. Just continue to crank out the stuff that we've already fabbed and to, you know, both of your points move move forward on the next step when hopefully both capacities will be better and component prices won't be as terrible as they are.
Leo Laporte [01:30:42]:
Of course the proximate big question mark is how much is the new iPhone going to cost? Counterpoint research is suggesting like a $300 increase in the bill of materials for an iPhone 18 Pro Max compared to the 17 Pro Max. That's the bill of materials getting close to $1,000 which means the phone would probably get close to $2,000 which is gonna be hard.
Christina Warren [01:31:07]:
Yeah, which would be really difficult I think honestly, because I do think that there is a price limit that people will have whether people wanna agree with me about that or not. I think vision Pro showed that there is a very clear price limit where people have and I think that you know, for the foldable, that's a slightly different product, people are going to be willing to spend more than that. I don't know. Like the pro is their best selling phone. Being $1,000 is already a lot. I think if you bump that into 1500 or higher than that, I don't know man, that that's going to be a really difficult conversation for a lot of people. Especially coming off of a year where and again this is just unfortunate, the timing where you literally had the best basic no pro iPhone that they've put out in at least half a decade. Probably you know, eight, eight or nine years.
Christina Warren [01:32:01]:
And you know, so no matter how good the the 18 non pro is, it is not going to be a good value comparatively. And, and I think that the same thing with this year's pro model, like this was a really good Pro phone, the 17. It's going to be I think difficult especially if the price is higher to convince people, yeah, I really need to replace my iPhone 15 with something that is $1500 or more.
Andy Ihnatko [01:32:28]:
Yeah. There are a lot of variables to coordinate. They could do price increases. They could also make it so that hey, wow, you want 512 gigs of storage.
Leo Laporte [01:32:35]:
Correct.
Andy Ihnatko [01:32:35]:
Great. But we're not going to make that available in the lower end models. You're going to have to go for a pro to get it or they could do both. It's, I mean the price. Apple, excuse me, Google is having their Pixel launch event in a couple of weeks, I think mid, mid August. And, and the price list has already kind of leaked out in the, in the EU and that's. They're being, they're doing a couple of both. All prices are going up by a hundred dollars across the board.
Andy Ihnatko [01:33:00]:
Plus if you are interested in getting, I think even in the top end, if I'm going from memory here, if you want this, it comes in a smaller size screen and a larger size screen, but you can't get the amount of storage you want unless you get the absolute top whack model with a larger screen.
Leo Laporte [01:33:17]:
And let's not forget Google sells those in a fraction of the number of phones that Apple sells.
Andy Ihnatko [01:33:23]:
But it points out that it's a much more complicated list of variables for people to navigate. If you're looking to replace a phone, and I'm looking again, I'm using a phone that right now is several generations beyond out of date. It's got maybe one more year of official Android updates available to it. And even I'm trying to think like, oh man, how am I going to make these choices? And amongst these choices, even the idea of what if I were to get, instead of waiting for the Pixel 11, I just simply get the Pixel 10 which is being very, very highly discounted, has the storage options that I want and I maybe have to forget about having the, the current generation hardware if I want to make my current budget for this phone go as far as I want it to go. Maybe iPhone people have the same problem.
Christina Warren [01:34:07]:
I think a lot of people are going to be having that conversation, Andy, and I think that's it's not just going to be for phones, it's going to be for laptops, it's going to be for a lot of things. And this is why when the price changes happened a couple of weeks ago, I think I said on Twitter to people, I was like, look, if you need a laptop, the best time to buy one was yesterday. Otherwise buy it, literally buy it today. But if you don't need it, like if you are on something that is fine, if you can wait, you know, another 18 months, which I know for some people it's gonna be really difficult then do. And I think the same is going to be true for phones and for other items. You know, I think that this is going to be an interesting cycle to watch because we really did have such a strong iPhone cycle last year. My advice to any of my family members or anybody who doesn't need a brand new device, it's going to be like either consider going to the current gen phones before the prices go up or see how long do you need to hold? Because until we know what the pricing is, that's going to be a really difficult thing to ascertain. And there's not a universe where I feel good about recommending somebody spend $1,500 on an iPhone.
Andy Ihnatko [01:35:15]:
100% agree.
Leo Laporte [01:35:19]:
Well, the Ultra, the folding phone, according to the Kailan news agency, will be available in September. The only question is, will there be only five of them? So the supply chain says a number of Chinese suppliers are working on the phone to deliver in September. But Kylan says the production capacity limitations would see shipments of only half a million to a million units at that time. So, I mean, that's a fraction of the 10 million that Apple said it wants to make.
Andy Ihnatko [01:35:57]:
Yeah, that lines up with what Ming Chi Krov said last week.
Leo Laporte [01:36:00]:
Yeah, yeah. So what does that mean? It means we're going to get up very early and start. Start mashing the buy button on the App Store.
Andy Ihnatko [01:36:11]:
That's a harsh one because you, boy, you, you just. On a matter of principle, it's probably not the greatest idea to get the first version of a brand new platform because they're not going to work out all the manufacturing problems. They're not going to work out all the logic board problems or the firmware problems. I mean, it's not going to be a disaster, but it's probably going to be the thing where you are part of the group of people that two and a half years from now, suddenly the hinge is not as actionable as you might. Whereas if you had bought one in the second or third production run after they had gotten the first generation of hardware back through the genius bar about things and look at how things fail. It's, boy, what a price for being first in line. Because you are going to camp out to get these.
Leo Laporte [01:36:53]:
You won't even have time to look at the price. You're just going to have to get right in there and get it.
Christina Warren [01:36:57]:
Yeah, get it and buy AppleCare. Is that.
Leo Laporte [01:37:00]:
This is one good point. That's one to buy Apple Apple Care.
Christina Warren [01:37:04]:
On, boy, genuinely, two years worth. Yeah, I was going to say pay the monthly fee. Whatever. They're going to make you do it. Buy the Apple Care. It's probably going to be $20 a month. Who cares? The, the price to repair the thing is going to be so outrageous. It's like a Vision Pro.
Christina Warren [01:37:18]:
You're already in for that much. Just go ahead and suck it up and do the, do the whole thing.
Leo Laporte [01:37:23]:
Yeah, yeah. There are some rumors about dates and so forth. You're pretty good, Jason, at predicting the day of the Apple event. They're saying September 9th. Yeah, I mean, September, September 8th or 9th.
Jason Snell [01:37:43]:
Well, the 7th. Here's the thing. 7th is Labor Day.
Christina Warren [01:37:46]:
Oh, so that won't be.
Jason Snell [01:37:48]:
So the eighth might be. They have done the day after Labor Day.
Leo Laporte [01:37:52]:
Traditionally they didn't like to do it because they didn't like to make employees work. But now that all of this stuff is pre recorded.
Jason Snell [01:37:57]:
Exactly. So they did this a few. A few years ago. 22. I want to say they did it the day after Labor Day. I think they could do it again. So I think it's the 8th or the 9th. I.
Jason Snell [01:38:07]:
I just remember. The only reason I remember that is that my wife and I took a trip to the Eastern Sierra and we were literally in kayaks on Mona Lake out in the middle of nowhere. And I'm thinking to myself, am I really going to be in Cupertino tomorrow? And I was. It was weird. It was just a weird thing. Thing. But they did it. So, you know, day after Labor Day could be.
Jason Snell [01:38:25]:
So eighth or ninth. I think that's your best guess. It could be the following week, but it very rarely is. And I don't think it'll be the first or the second because that's, that's too early there. People are wearing white slacks. Nobody wants that.
Leo Laporte [01:38:36]:
One reason to push it up is if there is a long period of time between announcement and the ordering day. It may not be the following Friday. In other words, for the ultra. Because.
Jason Snell [01:38:46]:
Oh sure, yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:38:47]:
Right.
Christina Warren [01:38:48]:
Yeah, they've done that before. And they've also done that before. Like what year was it. Was it the year of the 12 where you couldn't order it until like November or something? Like they've done that sort of thing before too.
Andy Ihnatko [01:38:58]:
Yeah, the iPhone X had that thing going on. They have a long, long history of a lot of. With a brand new platform announcing and then not necessarily announcing an ordering date just to get it out there and just to get the. Make that hammerful. And yeah, I'd be, I right now, I'd be surprised if the announcement happened at the same time as the announcement of an actual ordering date.
Leo Laporte [01:39:22]:
I was wondering how long before I'd start to see ads from Major League Soccer, from Apple TV on the World Cup. And I just saw one the smart right people are watching the World cup, especially once it gets to the semifinals and final.
Jason Snell [01:39:35]:
MLS wants to. Yeah, I mean there's. I saw, I read a piece that said they probably should have been doing that in the US Games.
Leo Laporte [01:39:41]:
Yeah. Maybe before. The tagline, by the way, is thanks world, will take it from here.
Jason Snell [01:39:47]:
Yeah.
Christina Warren [01:39:47]:
Okay.
Andy Ihnatko [01:39:48]:
Humble is.
Leo Laporte [01:39:49]:
And they had. And they have, you know, most of the people who are playing in the United States. In the ad I saw obviously Messi Beckham, who seems to be in requirement for every word, every ad. He must be making big bucks. I thought I saw Erlang. I don't know if that was Holland. I thought maybe that was a mistake in my eye. I am trying to do a show.
Leo Laporte [01:40:18]:
But yes, they're clearly saying, hey, if you like this, we have a whole
Jason Snell [01:40:22]:
product of domestic soccer that usually. I'm sure it'll, I'm sure it'll give them a little bit of a bump, I think, exposing people to soccer. I am of the opinion that the biggest bump will come this fall when the, when the European soccer league start and more people are interested. For example, you mentioned Erling Holland and how you like him and like NBC is going to be very happy because they've got the Premier League and he plays in the Premier League and that's a league. I personally like mls. There's nothing wrong with it, but I think a lot of Americans are trained from, from their very youngest days to appreciate the very best athletes in the world playing their, the sports that we watch. Because it's the best baseball players in the world, the best. It's only American football players, but the best basketball players in the world play in the NBA.
Jason Snell [01:41:05]:
Right? That's how it works. The best soccer players in the, the world don't play in mls. And so for those people, I think soccer in America has always been kind of a, a more shaky kind of proposition. But the influx of soccer fandom in the last decade, I think in large part is because you can watch all the European leagues on cable or streaming now. And so you can watch the best players and best teams in the world. As an American, and you have to get up a little early for it, but you could do it. So I think those ratings are all going to go up too. I don't think.
Jason Snell [01:41:34]:
It's just. I think MLS will see a big bump. I think they will. But I think also, you know, CBS and NBC and espn, everybody who's airing European soccer, they're going to be happy.
Leo Laporte [01:41:44]:
I clicked the Premier League button on my YouTube TV to make sure. Get those games recorded.
Jason Snell [01:41:49]:
Yeah, for sure. But I think, I think MLS and Apple will, will have, we'll see some benefit from this too.
Leo Laporte [01:41:54]:
Well, certainly when Messi came to play for Florida, they, that was a big deal.
Jason Snell [01:41:58]:
And Messi being a big star in this tournament is like, it's double because they, they made more impressions about Messi and they have Messi, which is, you know, and it also, I'D say gives them a little bit of a credential. Like, you know, people always say that, that this is where aging soccer stars come to cash in in their retirement. Right. But like, Messi playing as well as he's played kind of arguably puts the light of that a little bit where it's like, no, Messi still got it and he plays in Miami. That, I think that is good for mls.
Leo Laporte [01:42:28]:
As long as we're talking sportball. I hate to, to try everybody's patience, but I did kind of want to know what you thought of the. We read your, we read your missive last week, Christina. But Tavis, or is it Tavis or what trailer?
Christina Warren [01:42:43]:
We're not calling it that. We're not calling it that. TNT is, I think, what they are calling them. Whatever.
Leo Laporte [01:42:51]:
Adam Sandler tied.
Christina Warren [01:42:53]:
Weird. Weird.
Leo Laporte [01:42:54]:
As long as you're going to double down on tacky, you might as well bring in Adam Sand.
Christina Warren [01:42:59]:
Well, I mean, it was interesting that they were like close family friend. I was like, okay. Since then.
Leo Laporte [01:43:02]:
Oh, okay.
Christina Warren [01:43:04]:
Which is great.
Leo Laporte [01:43:06]:
Of whose family?
Christina Warren [01:43:07]:
Well, okay. So I did a little bit of research on this because this was curious to me, too.
Leo Laporte [01:43:12]:
So I guess this won't go on long, folks. Don't worry.
Christina Warren [01:43:14]:
No, don't worry. So apparently his kids are huge fans of hers. Like, massive.
Leo Laporte [01:43:20]:
Okay. And so pretty much everybody's kids are massive. Taylor.
Christina Warren [01:43:24]:
Yes. And she, she is very known for being very good to people's kids. And so she's apparently been very, very kind to the kids over the years. And like, his daughters really, really love her. And I think that it was because of that connection that Kelsey had like a cameo in Happy Gilmore 2 last year on Netflix or something.
Leo Laporte [01:43:42]:
This is the payback.
Christina Warren [01:43:43]:
So I guess so really, when I looked at it, I was like, oh, wow, you love him so much that you were letting Billy Madison, you know, officiate your wedding. Okay, whatever. Do it.
Leo Laporte [01:43:57]:
Okay. So they are, it's official. They're hitched. I saw there was some guy collected the trash off the oh so Gross Matters Square Garden selling it.
Christina Warren [01:44:07]:
People were selling the trash. I was like, okay, come on, guys. This is, this is really getting ridiculous also, like, and then they went apparently to Bozeman or something after afterwards, which is a great place to, to go to go to Yellowstone.
Leo Laporte [01:44:20]:
Paris Martineau was just there.
Andy Ihnatko [01:44:22]:
She just say that John has the most exquisite look of existential.
Christina Warren [01:44:25]:
He's so angry. He's so, he's so pissed off. I love it.
Leo Laporte [01:44:29]:
You don't, you don't Pissed.
Andy Ihnatko [01:44:32]:
Suffering. I just Want to know?
Jason Snell [01:44:33]:
I don't.
Leo Laporte [01:44:37]:
All right, let us pause. We're done for the fabulous. John, get your thumb ready. The fabulous Vision Pro segment. We'll get back to the sports gossip. Should we have a Taylor and Travis channel?
Christina Warren [01:44:55]:
We should.
Jason Snell [01:44:57]:
I recommend we just put it all in the Vision Pro segment from now on.
Christina Warren [01:45:01]:
Actually, you know what? That's a great idea.
Leo Laporte [01:45:03]:
I'm sure there's more people interested in Taylor and Travis. So the Lamborghini app. App is now out for Vision Pro. I'm sure you immediately downloaded that, Jason Snell.
Jason Snell [01:45:17]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:45:18]:
Okay. I have B roll provided by the folks, the kind folks at Lamborghini to show you what you can now do. It's great with your.
Jason Snell [01:45:29]:
I'll put it on the same folder as my Ferrari app.
Christina Warren [01:45:32]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:45:34]:
And my Gucci app.
Andy Ihnatko [01:45:36]:
Virtual Rolex.
Leo Laporte [01:45:38]:
Is it the fact that these high priced brands assume that anybody who spent 3500 bucks on a nerd helmet probably would interest be interested in their product?
Jason Snell [01:45:46]:
I think it's the other way around. Right. They just figure that their audience has got a lot of money and so maybe they. They can.
Leo Laporte [01:45:51]:
Maybe they'd be interested. All right. Other news component development for cheaper Apple Vision Pros according to the elec have been.
Jason Snell [01:46:00]:
This is not news. Not news. It's what Gurman already reported that they're not going to. They delayed what they're going to do. The Elect is just rewriting other people's work, I guess.
Leo Laporte [01:46:11]:
Okay, so forget it. And I'm rewriting. I'm doing worse. I'm rehashing. Rewriting of the original story.
Jason Snell [01:46:19]:
The story was in my upgrade show notes yesterday too and I lined it out and I was like there's nothing new here other than. Other than somebody. Look, somebody confirmed with Samsung that they're not producing the display that they were going to display. But it's all just from that original Mark Gurman report that Apple is not ready to do another Vision a Vision Pro at this point. Because they're not. Of course they're not.
Leo Laporte [01:46:41]:
That's why this is the nation's premier Vision Pro podcast. Grade is not.
Jason Snell [01:46:46]:
We provide. We provide skepticism. That is useful.
Leo Laporte [01:46:50]:
You just don't see the Story Pro.
Jason Snell [01:46:52]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:46:53]:
And that's Vision Pro segment. Yeah, it's the latest one yet. We're done in the Vision Prol from Lamborghini. And the story. A non story.
Jason Snell [01:47:06]:
Non story.
Leo Laporte [01:47:06]:
But at least we covered it. All right, let's talk about media a bunch. 87. Count them nominations. Emmy nominations for Apple TV. I'm sorry. 89 I undercounted it. There's two more.
Leo Laporte [01:47:20]:
89. This is for the 78th annual primetime Emmy Awards. The Diplomat. I agree.
Christina Warren [01:47:29]:
Excellent, Diplomat. Excellent.
Leo Laporte [01:47:31]:
Was that an Apple tv? No, that was Netflix. It was Amazon.
Jason Snell [01:47:34]:
No, that's Netflix.
Christina Warren [01:47:35]:
Netflix. The show that got the most was the Pit. And even though. And even though it's my favorite show, I think that it got too many nominations.
Leo Laporte [01:47:44]:
Oh, I see. This is all the drama series. The Gilded Age.
Jason Snell [01:47:47]:
I agree.
Leo Laporte [01:47:48]:
Night of the Seven Kingdoms. I agree. Paradise. I haven't seen the Pit.
Jason Snell [01:47:51]:
Fun.
Leo Laporte [01:47:52]:
Pluribus. Yes. Apple tv. Slow Horses. Yes. Apple tv tv. Your Friends and Neighbors. Apple tv.
Leo Laporte [01:47:58]:
I think the second season of that just destroyed it. It's too good.
Christina Warren [01:48:01]:
I agree.
Leo Laporte [01:48:02]:
The first season was good. Lead actress Rhea. I gotta say it right, because I'll get an email from her co star Rhea Seehorn for Pluribus. Good for her. She should win. I would imagine it's gonna be.
Christina Warren [01:48:17]:
She probably will. Well, Zendaya has one twice before. Most people. Most people didn't like the season of Euphoria. But. But, but the Emmys also likes to reward repeat winners, so it's a weird category.
Leo Laporte [01:48:29]:
Taylor Darden, who you remember from the fight club, is also nominated for the Pit. I don't know how that happened.
Christina Warren [01:48:34]:
Me either. Because she shouldn't have been. She was in like two scenes and didn't have any.
Leo Laporte [01:48:38]:
But this is supporting actress Carolina Weedra for Pluribus. Yeah, we love her.
Jason Snell [01:48:45]:
Fun fact about Taylor, she actually submitted herself and that's why she got nominated. Oh, dear. Yeah, because HBO apparently said we're not going to submit a bunch of people and they submitted themselves and got nominated so.
Leo Laporte [01:48:57]:
Well.
Christina Warren [01:48:57]:
No, that was for best. That was for best guest act.
Jason Snell [01:48:59]:
Oh, that was for the guests. You're right. That was supporting. You're right.
Christina Warren [01:49:02]:
I was. I was going to say for supporting. I'm pretty sure that they probably put Taylor forward. I think it's just nepotism. Honestly. The. The Academy is just like, oh, well, Taylor Dearden and Fiona Doref, both of their father have been on TV before. We'll go ahead and give them a bone.
Christina Warren [01:49:16]:
Even though Isa Barones is right there and actually did the work that was worthy to be nominated for. But anyway, I digress.
Leo Laporte [01:49:23]:
Wow. Who's Taylor Turton's Bryan Cranston's daughter? No.
Christina Warren [01:49:27]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:49:28]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:49:29]:
Well, I think she should win then. I mean, she's. She's Reflected Glory alone.
Jason Snell [01:49:34]:
They just give her a lot to do.
Christina Warren [01:49:36]:
I was going to say. I was going to say she's great. She's very good. It's just, I looked at the. I'm like, okay, you didn't have a plot line like that was worthy of being nominated for an Emmy. I'm so sorry.
Leo Laporte [01:49:46]:
Yeah, she was in two episodes, but.
Christina Warren [01:49:49]:
No, no, she was in the whole thing.
Leo Laporte [01:49:51]:
Oh, she was.
Christina Warren [01:49:51]:
She just didn't have a lot of scene, like, her storyline just, in my opinion, wasn't very good this season.
Leo Laporte [01:49:57]:
But she. You know what? That's a good show. Everybody loves that show.
Jason Snell [01:49:59]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:50:00]:
I thought Alison, Jenny, as the vice president was quite good in the Diplomat, but okay, I love her. Lead actor, Gary Oldman, Slow Horses. You can practically smell him when you watch that show. And I think that that is good acting.
Jason Snell [01:50:15]:
It doesn't smell good.
Leo Laporte [01:50:17]:
It does not smell good. I think that's excellent.
Andy Ihnatko [01:50:20]:
Excellent. Smells like Emmy to me.
Leo Laporte [01:50:22]:
Noah Wylie will win, obviously, for the pit Pilly Crudup in the Morning show.
Christina Warren [01:50:29]:
It's nice that they just keep nominating him and that show, even though it's ceased to actually be like. And I still watch it because it's a soap opera and it's about, like, the morning world. I. I enjoy it, but, like, it's not really a good show anymore, but it's. But if you've earned the nominations enough times, like the. I think it's automatic, basically.
Jason Snell [01:50:47]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [01:50:49]:
Jack Loudon, Slow Horses, which is an Apple TV show. And for Pluribus, Carlos Manuel Vesca, he plays that wonderful guy from the Uruguay, Paraguay. I don't know where he's from.
Jason Snell [01:51:02]:
One of the guays.
Leo Laporte [01:51:03]:
He's from Colombia. Really?
Jason Snell [01:51:05]:
Yes, he is.
Leo Laporte [01:51:06]:
Anyway, he deserves. I love Manos. He's so good in that show. That's such a good show.
Christina Warren [01:51:12]:
Great.
Leo Laporte [01:51:12]:
And of course, there's a casting. This is why you get 89 nominations. There's a casting award for which Pluribus and Slow Horses are nominated. Comedy shrinking. I agree. Widow's Bay, sort of kind of a dark comedy.
Jason Snell [01:51:28]:
Well, yeah, yeah, if you're. If you run 30 minutes, you are a comedy according to the Emmys.
Leo Laporte [01:51:34]:
Margo's got money troubles also.
Jason Snell [01:51:35]:
That's good. Apple tv. That's a good show.
Christina Warren [01:51:37]:
Yeah, it is.
Leo Laporte [01:51:39]:
Elle Fanning got nominated as lead actress.
Christina Warren [01:51:42]:
She was great in it. She's going to lose to Jean Smart, but she.
Leo Laporte [01:51:45]:
But Jean Smart's an automatic. Although I love IO Edebiri and I think she should win every time, but.
Jason Snell [01:51:50]:
Okay.
Christina Warren [01:51:52]:
Bear hasn't been good in four years, though.
Leo Laporte [01:51:54]:
No, that's true. It's too bad. It was such a.
Christina Warren [01:51:57]:
It Was so good, but Iowa is great. I agree.
Leo Laporte [01:51:59]:
Yeah. Dale Dickey for Widow's Bay. I don't even know who that is, which one that is, but good on you, Dale. The outstanding supporting actress, Kato Flynn, who. I do know who she is in Widow's Bay. Michelle Pfeiffer from Margot's Got Money Troubles and Jessica Williams for shrinking. There's 89 of them. Do you want me to go through all of them?
Jason Snell [01:52:21]:
No.
Leo Laporte [01:52:21]:
Reese, Jason, Sega.
Jason Snell [01:52:23]:
Yeah. Dale Dickey was the. She's the cranky person who works with the mayor who ends up doing the overhead projection explaining who is lesbian related. You got it. You got it.
Christina Warren [01:52:34]:
Yep, yep, yep.
Leo Laporte [01:52:35]:
Probably the best line of the year. And if there were a Emmy award for best line of the year, that that would be it. Lesbian.
Jason Snell [01:52:43]:
Lesbian.
Leo Laporte [01:52:44]:
Dead baby twice. She says it.
Jason Snell [01:52:47]:
I want to shout out Nick Offer in Margot's Got Money Trouble.
Leo Laporte [01:52:52]:
He was really good in that.
Jason Snell [01:52:53]:
I mean, you're up against Harrison Ford. It's going to be tough for you. And Steven Rood in Widows Bay as
Leo Laporte [01:52:57]:
well is so good.
Jason Snell [01:53:00]:
Steven Roots, the best.
Christina Warren [01:53:01]:
He's.
Jason Snell [01:53:02]:
Christina and I have got Jimmy James in the back of our mind at all times. We always do donkey business. Donkey wrestler Jimmy James. But Nick Offerman's performance in Margo's Got Money Troubles is spectacularly good.
Leo Laporte [01:53:14]:
Yeah, he. Yeah, this is. This is a tough cat. This might be the toughest category of all. All, frankly. This is a really good.
Christina Warren [01:53:21]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:53:21]:
Paul Downs from Hacks Coleman Domingo in the Four Seasons is good.
Christina Warren [01:53:25]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:53:25]:
Like, it's a good list. It's a really good list.
Leo Laporte [01:53:27]:
Yeah.
Jason Snell [01:53:28]:
Good luck to all of you against Harrison Ford.
Leo Laporte [01:53:31]:
Well, that's the thing. Harrison is such a sentimental fate.
Jason Snell [01:53:34]:
And it was. And it was a good year for his character in that show.
Christina Warren [01:53:37]:
Also, Neil. Nick Offerman is nominated twice, as is Colman Domingo there, as is Matthew Reese. There are a few that are. That are nominated for multiple awards this year, which is interesting.
Leo Laporte [01:53:54]:
It's good for Apple.
Jason Snell [01:53:55]:
It's real good for Apple.
Leo Laporte [01:53:56]:
I was watching oh, Brother. Where Art, though, because I hadn't seen it a long time. It was on the Criterion channel. And there is Steven Root, looking not a year younger, even though it's three years ago.
Christina Warren [01:54:07]:
Oh, I know. He's such a good character actor. Well, it's. He's so good. Like, every time I see him pop up on anything, I'm always so happy because I'm like, all right, there's Jimmy James, but also, you know, he plays
Leo Laporte [01:54:18]:
the guy who owns the radio station who records the singers. Well, anyway, I can go on and I probably shouldn't, but lots of nominations and good luck to all of the 89 nominated. Apple TV I think deserves some credit for kind of building up a pretty good repertoire of shows now.
Christina Warren [01:54:44]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, look, let's just call this what it is like when we look at at least the Outstanding Drama Series category. And in fairness, this has not been like a super stellar year for television, I think we can kind of admit. But. But still, when. When you have three of the. What is it, eight nominations, like, that's, that's really substantial. I mean, like, net.
Christina Warren [01:55:03]:
Netflix is obviously. There have been periods of time where Netflix has had more successful runs than that, where almost every single nominee has been a Netflix show. But having 40% of the nominations just for outstanding Drama Series, I think is a really good sign. The fact that they're in every major category. It might not be last year. I think it was pretty easy because the studio was so clearly such a standout and, and you know, severance as well. But in a year that I think has been pretty mid television wise, Apple TV has managed to put out some really good stuff. And that's great.
Christina Warren [01:55:41]:
Bravo.
Leo Laporte [01:55:42]:
Well done, Apple. They are gonna be at Comic Con with a lot of shows. This is another way you get the fans to get excited. Silo, Widow's Bay and Dark Matter, which didn't get a lot of attention.
Jason Snell [01:55:56]:
Oh, I love that show so much. Really great show. I'm so glad that they're. That there's a second season of it and that they're hyping it up because that's a really good show.
Leo Laporte [01:56:05]:
They have a sneak preview of the show's second season at Comic Con if you're there. And Joel Edgerton perhaps will show up, which will draw some people.
Christina Warren [01:56:16]:
It is interesting that this is the first time they've ever done Comic Con. That makes sense because Apple would be hubristic enough to like, they would have that level of hubris.
Leo Laporte [01:56:26]:
We don't need that.
Christina Warren [01:56:27]:
We don't need that.
Leo Laporte [01:56:27]:
We don't need that.
Christina Warren [01:56:28]:
But like, but you absolutely need that. Come on. Like, everyone does. So I'm glad they're at least showing up.
Leo Laporte [01:56:33]:
Yeah.
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:34]:
Including a panel that's just Apple tv. They've panels for individual shows, but just one for Apple TV's lineup as it is as an organization. So that should be interesting.
Leo Laporte [01:56:42]:
And if you've been wondering, as I have, where are the great pickleball dramas, Apple TV is going to have some.
Andy Ihnatko [01:56:50]:
Oh, God, why Leo, If You've ever been, like, at a public park where the tennis courts also double as pickleball courts. I guarantee you you have seen pickleball. You will see pickleball dramas as two competing sports try to claim the exact same turf at the same time. Yes, drama.
Leo Laporte [01:57:07]:
We always play
Christina Warren [01:57:10]:
the third season of Beef Andy right there.
Leo Laporte [01:57:13]:
That would be a good season, actually. The fight over the. Over the course, we, Lisa and I play our pickleball games on a tennis court that has clearly labeled only for tennis. But I'm feeling like that's only for racket sports. They just don't want people roller skating in there. That's what I'm thinking. We did buy a box of 36 pickleballs because Lisa said, but they were on sale. And so anyway, the new pickleball show on Apple TV is called the Dink, which is the sound that a pickleball makes when you hit it with that.
Leo Laporte [01:57:51]:
That solid plastic racket. It's more like a doink than a dink, but anyway. A former tennis prodigy, Dusty Boyd, has been reduced to coaching unruly children at his father's suburban country club. Desperate for his father's approval, he blindly supports Chuck's vendetta against the new craze taking over the club, Pickleball. But after getting injured, he not only tries pickleball, but falls in love with Mary Steenbergen and finds himself actually enjoying it as one would playing with Mary Steenburgeon.
Andy Ihnatko [01:58:27]:
It's Caddyshack meets the Mighty Ducks. I smell money.
Leo Laporte [01:58:31]:
That was the tagline that they pitched it with. And you're exactly right. Andy Roddick is in it. Weird, if you're a Texan fan. Anyway, that comes in just a couple of weeks. July 24, 10 days from now, you'll be able to watch the Dink. And as long as we're talking tv, it almost was in our In Memoriam section. The wonderful TV Time went out of business.
Leo Laporte [01:59:01]:
But guess what? It's coming back at the end of the month as Bingers.
Jason Snell [01:59:06]:
Okay?
Leo Laporte [01:59:07]:
Now, you might look at that and say it's Bingers, but I'm pretty sure it's Bingers.
Andy Ihnatko [01:59:13]:
I wish Hostess would bring that back. That was my favorite cake.
Leo Laporte [01:59:16]:
Weren't those great? I think it was Dolly Mattress Strawberry and the chocolate Dolly Madison's Bingers were the best. The new app will do, as TV Time did, let you track TV shows and movies, set reminders for new releases. Apparently, the TV Time was sold by the founder, Anthony Pinto to Whip Whip. I gotta say that, right? Whip Media in 2016, 20 million registered users by 2021, then sold. And this was the big mistake to a private equity company known as Blue Torch Capital. If you build something, Blue Torch will burn it down.
Andy Ihnatko [02:00:00]:
Blue flames have a very, very specific connotation that works so well in this financial context.
Leo Laporte [02:00:06]:
They had plans for a more AI heavy approach. They shut down. Actually, they're shutting down tomorrow.
Christina Warren [02:00:13]:
Yep. So if you haven't gotten your GDPR data out, get it out asap because
Leo Laporte [02:00:18]:
the torch is about to come in. So Bingers is. Is being brought back by Pinto, which is the original creator, which is awesome.
Christina Warren [02:00:31]:
I mean, that's cool. There's also serialized. There are already a number of different apps out there that do this sort of thing. Although I think that everybody should be. I've been following this sort of app sort of thing for a long time. I'm sure Jason has too. There have been the graveyard of apps is littered with things like this. And unfortunately, which is why there's a part of me that's almost like maybe I should just build my own and like for my own purposes not to really share more broadly with people and then have a way to mirror them with apps if I'm actually using other people's things.
Christina Warren [02:01:03]:
Because I, I think this is like the third or fourth time that my, my tracking app has, has died. And letterboxd has been promising that it would bring tv, you know, tracking for years. It's just movies. And then the thing with letterboxd is that there are reports that Sony, Paramount, Alexis Ohanian, Netflix and others are all and talks to acquire a letterbox, which will ruin it. Right? Because it'll be fine at first if Netflix buys letterboxd it'll be fine until the executive that buys it leaves. And then it will be. It will be dead. So.
Christina Warren [02:01:37]:
But you know, but Tiny is not making any money off of it.
Leo Laporte [02:01:40]:
So if you're a TV time user and you're worried that tomorrow is the last day, go to Bingers website, which is easy to remember. Bingers app and you can apparently import your data. If you create your account, you can import your data from TV time and then when Bingers comes out.
Christina Warren [02:02:04]:
Exactly. I was gonna say. I was gonna say just go. There's like a GDPR page on TV time. Download that data. Serialized already supports the. The import. But just save it and it looks like Bingers will do it too, so.
Christina Warren [02:02:18]:
Yay.
Leo Laporte [02:02:19]:
What do you all just out of curiosity, use and recommend for this.
Jason Snell [02:02:22]:
Stay tuned for my pick of the week. Leo.
Leo Laporte [02:02:24]:
Ah, yes. I was hoping all right, picks a week are coming up in just a moment. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with Jason, Andy, and Christina, and we want to welcome our newest viewers, Taylor and Travis. It's good to see both of you in the audience today. And now it's time for your picks of the week. And I think we should probably kick things off with Mr. Jason Snell, since we don't want to keep people waiting.
Jason Snell [02:02:55]:
Okay. TV Time may be gone, but Television Time, a different app exists, and it is the one. I've tried so many different apps to log my TV and. And be able to know. It's not even about the logging so much. It's about the what's up next? What am I considering? Somebody recommends something I added to my list. What episode?
Leo Laporte [02:03:15]:
Keep track.
Jason Snell [02:03:15]:
When is the next episode dropping? Where am I? You know, I like to pause between seasons a lot of the time. So it's like, I like, you know, finish that season and then know that the next season is coming, and I can watch it whenever I want because it's sitting right down there. I have fallen off of so many of these apps, but not Television Time. Television Time has stuck for me, so I recommend it. There's a free trial. You know, it's a subscription app. Eventually, when you install it, puzzlingly, the short name that appears on your iPad or iPhone screen is TV time. But I assure you, it is not TV time.
Jason Snell [02:03:48]:
It is Television Time, an entirely different app, and it's very good. So I use it. That is what I use now. And I've stuck with it for, I think it's been like a year now that I've been using it to track. When we sit down to watch something, I just open up my iPad and I look at what. What. What's available, and. And then we'll pick something, and it's great.
Jason Snell [02:04:07]:
And then I can also have the little, little cue of everything that. That is coming up that I can watch at a later time. It's great. I. I highly recommend apps like this if you haven't tried one, and if you are a bereft TV Time user and wish you could have another app that says TV Time at the bottom on your device, guess what? You can. You can. It's Television Time. That's the one.
Leo Laporte [02:04:32]:
And I like it that it's Mac as well as iPhone and iPad. So. And does it sync among all three? I presume it does.
Jason Snell [02:04:38]:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:04:40]:
So that way, you know, you could have. Wherever you are.
Jason Snell [02:04:43]:
Wherever you are.
Leo Laporte [02:04:44]:
Yeah. Television Time is there Signing up right now.
Jason Snell [02:04:48]:
Television time.
Leo Laporte [02:04:49]:
Television time.
Jason Snell [02:04:50]:
Totally different.
Leo Laporte [02:04:52]:
Yeah, it's not TV time, despite television time. And Blue Torch will never acquire it.
Jason Snell [02:04:58]:
I mean, I'm a little worried now that maybe they will, but they haven't yet.
Leo Laporte [02:05:01]:
What a great name for private equity company. Andy and Ako Pick of the week.
Andy Ihnatko [02:05:07]:
This is a really fun one because if you, if you've been a geek for any amount of time, you're. You're familiar with Conway's game of Life. It's the cellular automaton, where basically it's about. It's about. Well, I'm just going to show you, like, how people who aren't familiar with it, like, basically how it works. That basically it's just like it simulates life with pixels because each pixel, like in the grid, will either live or die, depending on how many adjacent pixels are lit up. And so as it goes through life cycles, it just changes in a very organic way. And you can click on things and basically put new living pixels in that sort of thing.
Andy Ihnatko [02:05:44]:
And this is what we're used to, basically seeing it with very low resolution, like a, like, pixel art that moves. And it's satisfying as it is. And there are implementations of it everywhere. Again, this is a version of it for the play date, which I love. However, recently I found out that there is someone made a version of it that is designed to take advantage of modern processors that don't have to go at like 2 frames per second and modern screens that have millions and millions and millions of pixels on them. And so I found, found it's called Colorful Life. It's hosted on GitHub Jax3 GitHub IO Colorful Life. And it looks amazing.
Andy Ihnatko [02:06:23]:
It looks like you're. What looks like you're space aliens watching from a light year away. Civilizations warring with each other and basically trying like hell to drive each other into extinction. Because it's not like, again, step, step, step, step. Big block, big block, big block, block. It is these clouds of colorful pixels that keep flourishing, flourishing, flourishing until a point which it's unsustainable to sustain itself and starts collapsing and collapsing meanwhile. And this is like something that's been part of the game of life for a long, long time. Some of these structures, because of these rules, have quirky things where they will actually, like, walk in a line from one place to another.
Andy Ihnatko [02:07:04]:
Some of them will actually fire off pixels into certain dimensions. So basically, you see, I wish there was a way that I could put it more than like, missiles being fired into other communities. But the thing is, like, it's just such a beautiful, beautiful representation of data. And of course, you can use your mouse or pointing device to actually just draw new pixels in instead of like, click, click, click, just draw a swarth so you can kind of play God. Because if you see that, oh, there's part of this screen where civilization dots have died out and nothing is happening. I know I will create life in this section by drawing through it. And it's got all the Apple colors, rainbow colors. It's just such.
Andy Ihnatko [02:07:46]:
It's like a lava lamp you could interact with. It's just such a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Leo Laporte [02:07:50]:
Is it using the Game of Life rules or is it.
Andy Ihnatko [02:07:53]:
Yes, it's. As a matter of fact, there's detailed controls so that you can actually choose what kind of version of Game of Life you can. You want to play the classic one. There are rules that have been set since the 1970s, but there are Game of Life rules for what if you want it to be just a horizontal line? What if you wanted to. You can change some of the visualizations. You can change like, how it renders. And of course you can zoom in if you want to look. Feel like it's old school.
Andy Ihnatko [02:08:17]:
So you basically do see individual pixels and you do see like the familiar shapes of, of groups of pixels that are just very, very stable. They are not going to change until they get hidden by another pixel. Like I said, it's like Tetris without the pressure. It just puts you into sort of like a beautiful meditative state of just watching this go. And I wish this were available as a screensaver. And maybe someone has done a version of this as a screensaver. But it's just a beautiful thing.
Leo Laporte [02:08:50]:
It is really cool. And it is on GitHub, which means I can take it and I can apply it to my, let's say, file system and have each dot represent a. A megabyte of data.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:02]:
Congratulations. I've managed to free up 128 gigabytes of your SSD through means that you probably are not going to approve of.
Leo Laporte [02:09:10]:
I'm going to rename it to Blue Flame. And this is really cool. I really like that. I don't know how you found it, but I, I really like this. It's. It's a.
Andy Ihnatko [02:09:22]:
Believe it or not, it was from a video of Usagi electric, who restores 1950s, 1960s computers. And so he wanted to create a version of the Game of Life for basically a computer that only runs off of Teletype. And basically he showed this off as a. Basically as to explain people what the Game of Life was. And I've been sort of obsessed with this thing like for the past week.
Leo Laporte [02:09:43]:
And when you zoom in, you can see the actual. You immediately could say, oh yeah, I get it, it is the game of Life. Because I could see the. The generations. Very, very interesting what's going on here. I like it. Okay, Christina Warren, I think that leaves you and your pick of the week.
Christina Warren [02:10:01]:
Yes. And so this is one. I kind of mentioned this app, I guess kind of obliquely, but I haven't talked about it directly on the show before enough to make it a pick. But because it became available to all plans last week and even if you don't have have a GitHub copilot plan, you can use the app by bringing your own API keys or using local models. I did want to point out that the GitHub Copilot desktop app is now available and it's actually pretty good. If you've used. It's similar to Codex or other coding first apps, but it integrates well with your GitHub account. So you can see issues that are assigned to you, you can see comments that people have left for you.
Christina Warren [02:10:43]:
Or you can just use it as a way to create or open up an existing repository, whether it's hosted on GitHub on your local device or somewhere else. And then you can choose what models you want to use with it. So you're not beholden to just the anthropic models or OpenAI models. You can use models from OpenAI anthropic Google. We got support for Kimik 277 code recently. But also if you don't have a GitHub subscription, a copilot subscription, you could bring your own key or it can work with Ollama or Foundry Local to work with local models too. So.
Leo Laporte [02:11:17]:
So is this an agent? It's a harness or Hermes. It's a harness like code or Claude code.
Christina Warren [02:11:25]:
Exactly, except it's a gui. So we've had a CLI for a while now that's actually pretty good that the Get Up Copilot cli. This is basically that, but with kind of a GUI on top so that if you are so if you're managing multiple sessions, it can be really, really good. And I spent a lot of time last week actually in Berlin showing it off to people because most people haven't heard of the app or haven't seen it yet. I had never heard of this. I was going to say most people haven't and I was waiting until we made it Available to everybody to talk about it and that happened last week, so give it a shot. Also, we would love your feedback. Good, bad, whatever, because the team is actively making changes to these things all the time and the app, I think it's getting pretty good.
Christina Warren [02:12:04]:
So we'd love your feedback on it.
Leo Laporte [02:12:06]:
What we've learned and we talk about all the time on intelligent machines or AI show on Wednesdays in our AI user group is that the harness is at least as important as the model. Yeah, a good harness can change everything with memory and sub agents and so forth. That really can make your model even. I'm going to try it with my local awareness and see.
Christina Warren [02:12:27]:
Yeah, we'd love your feedback on anything. But. Yeah, I mean, just wanted to throw that out there. I think it's, I think it's a good app. It's also nice because you can integrate it in with like your own custom MCP servers or skills or anything like that. And it's, it's really nice.
Leo Laporte [02:12:41]:
Yeah, I have a lot of those that I've developed over time with other harnesses and there is it the Open. It's the OpenAI API. What gets.
Christina Warren [02:12:49]:
Yes, exactly, exactly. So as long as like your model is hosted, everything but claw, basically. Well, except, except that you can, I mean, well, the skills is an anthropic thing and so it supports those. I mean, and if you, and if you have an anthropic API key, you can bring that with it. You just can't, you can't just. You just can't use tokens, you can't use subscriptions. Anthropic won't let you use their subscription with any other harness. Now we don't care if you want to use your copilot subscription with open code, go for it.
Leo Laporte [02:13:17]:
I've been, I know there's the risk that they're gonna kick me off, but they don't seem to be enforcing that. So I have been using the subscription from my clodmax subscription with other harnesses, but I know I'm playing with fire.
Christina Warren [02:13:32]:
Right? I mean, and there's been some, I think back and forth about their own stance about how much they'll enforce it or not. All I know is that, that they've made.
Leo Laporte [02:13:39]:
You don't recommend it because you shouldn't get on well.
Christina Warren [02:13:42]:
Not only that, but like they've made it very difficult for us as builders to integrate with anything else. And so there might be a way to work around it, but if you do that, just know that, you know, your subscription might be at Risk. But you can, you can bring your own anthropic API key or API keys from any OpenAI compatible LLM if it's on OpenRouter or something. You can, you know, use your local models with Olama. And if you have a GitHub copilot subscription, which gives you access to a bunch of different models, bottles, obviously it works with that too.
Leo Laporte [02:14:13]:
So I, I can't wait to try it. I'm gonna try it right away.
Christina Warren [02:14:18]:
Yeah, yeah, please, please give us your. Give us your thoughts.
Leo Laporte [02:14:21]:
And it's, as you said, free to individuals like me.
Christina Warren [02:14:24]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Andy Ihnatko [02:14:26]:
Yeah.
Leo Laporte [02:14:26]:
And then there's a. There are higher level.
Christina Warren [02:14:28]:
Well, right, well. And the plans are just. Basically, I was gonna say that that's including the usage. Yeah. The app itself, like I said, if you want to bring your own key or bring Harness, whatever, that's fine. Yeah, Harness is free. Yep.
Leo Laporte [02:14:37]:
Nice. Thank you, Christina. Christina Warren works at GitHub. Amazing. You call that work? That sounds like pleasure. We're glad to have you back. She's in developer relations there. You'll find her everywhere @filmgirl and you'll find her here every Tuesday.
Leo Laporte [02:14:52]:
Thank you, Christina. I'm gonna also get that GitHub jersey.
Jason Snell [02:14:56]:
I love that.
Leo Laporte [02:14:57]:
That's so cool. Andy already has one, I'm sure.
Andy Ihnatko [02:14:59]:
Andy, I've got it open. It's above my impulse buy level, but it's now it's like, who am I? Who am I kidding? I will probably break down and buy it next week.
Leo Laporte [02:15:08]:
It's less than a month of Claude Max plus, so, you know, think of it that way. Andy is at ihnatko.com his brand new website. He is welcoming, of course, browsers, free people. But if you want to join and support Andy's work, that seems like that would be a very good use of your money. I H N A T K O loitering at text intersections. Thank you, Andy. And of course, Jason Snell, sixcolors.com always pleasure to see you. Jason has many, many podcasts.
Leo Laporte [02:15:43]:
He mentioned Upgrade. All of them are listed@sixcolors.com Jason. Yes, it is not the premier Vision Pro podcast in the world, but it is not. Otherwise it's really quite excellent. Excellent.
Jason Snell [02:15:56]:
Yes. And if you would like to get on the bandwagon, we're still taking late pledges for Design in California. My new history podcast at Designed fm. Or you can search for it on Kickstarter and eventually that will move over and be a membership podcast at Relay. But right now it's at Designed fm and you can become a member there and you get a year of lots of special bonuses including ad free episodes and bonus episodes and all the other episodes for a series drop at once instead of making you wait week by week, which I think is a really nice feature. And I just wrote our next our first full series and I think it's gonna be great. So people should check it out.
Leo Laporte [02:16:38]:
Yay, design.fm. This is not some AM radio thing. This is stereo high fidelity.
Jason Snell [02:16:45]:
That's right.
Andy Ihnatko [02:16:46]:
No static at all.
Jason Snell [02:16:47]:
That's right. It's Federated Micronesia.
Leo Laporte [02:16:50]:
Thank you, Micronesia. We do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday 11 Pacific 2pm Eastern Time, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live in your club. Of course in the club Twit Discord, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. Chat with us. If you're watching live after the fact, of course you can always watch at your convenience. You'll find the show at our website, twit.tv/mbw. There's audio and video there. Video on the YouTube site dedicated to MacBreak Weekly.
Leo Laporte [02:17:20]:
YouTube.com MacBreak Weekly and of course it is a podcast so if you search for it in your favorite podcatcher you will find it. You could subscribe. There's audio, there's video and that way you'll hear it automatically as soon as we're done. Thanks to our producer, John Ashley. Appreciate your good work and putting up with the Taylor-Travis. He really doesn't like that, but he really doesn't. Yeah, but we managed to get through it. Thank you John Ashley.
Leo Laporte [02:17:47]:
He didn't pass out or anything. We will see you all next time. But unfortunately it is mine now. Sat on solemn duty to tell you. You my friend, especially those of you working at OpenAI with Apple laptops, need to get back to work because break time is over. Bye bye.
