Picks of the Week and Closing

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Andy's here. Christina's here. Jason's here. And I'm here in Hawaii, but we're gonna do the show anyway. Uh it was a very big quarter for Apple. We'll talk about their quarterly results and some maybe uh negatives, a lot of talk about what Apple's gonna do with iOS 26 and 27 just around the corner. Plus you'll love the new Porsche for Laguna's sake of all that coming up next on Mac Break Weekly. This This episode is brought to you by OutSystems, a leading AI development platform for the enterprise. Organizations all over the world are creating custom apps and AI agents on the OutSystems platform. And with good reason, build , run, and govern apps and agents on one unified platform. Innovate at the speed of AI without compromising quality or control. Trusted by thousands of enterprises worldwide for mission critical apps, teams of any size and technical depth can use out systems to build, deploy, and manage AI apps and agents quickly and effectively without compromising reliability and security. With OutSystems, you can accelerate ideas from concept to completion. It's the leading AI development platform that's unified, agile, and enterprise-proven, allowing you to build your agentic future with AI solutions, deeply integrated into your architecture outsystems build your agentic future learn more at outsystems dot com slash twit that's outsystems dot com slash twit podcasts you love from people you trust This is Twit this is Mac Break Weekly episode 1023, recorded Tuesdayy, Ma 5th, 2026. Don't be contemptible . It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show we cover the latest Apple News. Hello, everybody. I am, as you might uh be able to tell, in Hawaii right now, but I'm gonna still do the show because I care. That's how much I care. Jason Snell cares. He's in beautiful Marin County. Hello, Jason. Hello. Aloha to you . Leo. I wish I was there. I mean, literally I wish I was there. But I'm not. I'm here. It's fine. It's really beautiful. It's very nice. It's also eight in the morning. But other other than that, it's beautiful. That's Christina Warren wearing her Met Gala out. No. No. No. No, I'm not wearing my Met Gala outfit. I'm wearing like just standard like developer chic, right? If we can even call it that. I don't even know if we can call it that. But yeah. You're at work today, which is great. I am. Yeah. I I am uh uh not only am I at work, I'm at I'm not even at the the GitHub um Seattle offices, which is where I would normally be if I went into the office, but I'm at the the HQ in San Francisco. Oh nice. Yeah. Congrats. I wish I were back in the Bay Area. Well, I know I was gonna say the three of us would be there. Honestly, Leo, I think all of us would rather be in Hawaii where you are. It's pretty nice. It is really a beautiful day and it's just it's lovely. We're on the big island and uh I'm on the dry side so there's no rain. We went over to uh Hilo yesterday and it poured was really cool. You get your choice on the big island, dry or wet. Also here from the library where it's always dry because the books need it. Andy and not co. Dry as is the humor. Right . So uh when we last met, we were preparing Jason's uh typing fingers and uh and color ink charts because Apple's uh revenue was announced. Actually it was a it was a earnings Palooza last week, Wednesday, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta , Thursday, Apple. And uh everybody had a great . I just want to say everybody had a great quarter. Good job, everybody. Congratulations to everyone. Congratulations. My financial analysts. Again, I' Im not' am not a financial reporter, so I basically say if Alphabet or G Apple were a human being and they were ordering a burrito, would they be able to say yes, add guac to that without asking first how much is the ad on? They could simply say, you know what? I feel as though I can swing extra guacamole out and take the whole motion . Good, good, good for you, Tim. Another another another guacamole quarter for Apple. Although uh the market wasn't completely uh unanimously happy about it because , well, Meta to be specific, spent so much money, yeah, lost so much money on AI that even though they were profitable, uh, the market said, that's a lot of money. Yeah, and and Apple was, I think Apple uh end of the day like down by one percent because they mostly like met guidance and where they exceeded it, they didn't exceed it by enough to get people excited. They uh they had a great quarter, but it's always about did you grow as much as we guessed that you were going to grow and if you didn't that's your fault and we're gonna we're gonna tank your stock a little bit t for the day. So because Apple's fiscal year is different than the calendar year, this is their second quarter, their Q2 results, but it's January, February, March. Right. Right. And it was a very good 17% up year over year. Year over year is what matters. Yeah. I mean, that's what people are looking at is they're looking at the growth number versus the year-go quarter, especially since the things are can be seasonal, like last quarter is the holiday quarter. So if you go sequential, then this is what happened every year at Macworld, my boss would come to me and say, traffic numbers are down from the beginning of the year. And I would say that's because Macworld Expo is in January and they announced all the new products then and then we never get that number again. Um and that's why it's seasonal. You don't do that. You say, How'd they do Q2 last year? And everything was up, every category. In fact, in terms of all my little charts and all that , you could argue that it was pretty boring just in the sense that everything went up, like literally every category went up, every region for Apple went up. I think the um the fact that they did 1$11 billion dollars in a non- holiday quarter for the second straight non-holiday quarter is bananas because these are the borrowing quarters, right? These are the quarters where they're not killing it on the holiday season. And the borrowing quarters that used to be, you know, not too many years ago, like in 2021, they were in the 80 billion range, are now over 100 billion. And this is 1 11.2. It's not a little over. It's a lot over. And some of that, I mean, what Tim Cook said is this is the best debut for an iPhone, you know, two-quarter debut for an iPhone series ever. Like the 17 really has killed it, and obviously that's 50% of the revenue. So the iPhone does well. Apple does well. But like to to I I think Apple is a machine now that just generates $100 billion a quarter, whether you ask it to or not, which is just kind of staggering. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah. Uh services up uh now that purple sector of your pie chart is 28% on uh services. Uh that's that's pretty good, even though they're gonna give a billion dollars of that back to Google. Uh that's still looking looking pretty good. Profit well, you know, for three months to make twenty nine point six billion dollars, it's about ten billion dollars a month, two and a half billion dollars a week. That's okay. That's a decent look, I am not kidding when I say when I describe Apple as a the world's greatest cash generation machine. I mean it it is true. They are throwing off enormous amounts of cash on a very, you know, uh on a quarterly basis. Enormous amounts of profit. And this number is really interesting. They're gross margin. How much profit out of their revenue? It's almost half. That's a huge number. I think some of that's gotta be 'cause services is almost all profit, right? Services is almost entirely profit. And in fact, I do a chart, it's the next one on my webpage there. I'm trying to chart the moment. It's gonna happen when Apple's gonna have a quarter where they actually make more profit and services than from products. Um which I will lead to a lot of think pieces where people were like, oh, because the margins on on services, like you know, you make a TV show once and then you can sell it a million times and it doesn't cost anymore. Whereas you make a MacBook, every single one of them has a profit margin built into it because there's a cost to make it that's separate from like the cost to design it. But I will say we can overtalk services too, because services are driven by people who bought Apple hardware. Like it's extra revenue on top of the money you spent on your iPhone or your Mac or your iPad or your Apple Watch or whatever. But like if you didn't own any of those, you would also not be subscribing to Apple services. So it's a little bit uh it's it's more synergy than uh you might think when you look at the size of the services number. But remember, the services number used to be nine percent of Apple's business, and now it's a full quarter of Apple's business. So they have done a a a tremendous job at like literally the iPhone is half of Apple's revenue in this quarter and services was 28%. So more than three quarters of Apple's revenue is in those two lines. It's kind of stagger ing. Yeah. And I think Tim actually called out uh how well Apple Watch did that they had I don't know if it was a record quarter, but in terms of uh uh in in in in terms of selling Apple Wa p people uh people uh I'm sorry, I don't have the transcript in front of me. But ba basically he he marked out uh Apple Watch as a as an indication of the synergy of the entire platform that they're doing a better job of convincing uh reminding people that hey we have a whole portfolio of products and that any one entry into the Apple ecosystem is a gateway towards more sales. That's what that was a a consistent message they were sending to uh uh to uh to shareholders. Here's the chart with a percentage revenue by product line watches in WHA . What is that? Wearables? Home and accessories, yeah. Home and accessories. You know uh, as a as a Mac lover, it's always saddens me to see what a small, thin sliver and yet and yet the Mac is the best it's ever been. And they are talk about a business that is just throwing off like the Mac is selling $8.4 billion a quarter. Like for the for the last two quarters, it's been 8.4. And then it was 8.7. And like the the average here is it is really a good business, a huge business. It's just not uh and this is a challenge for John Turnus, right? Is like you have to manage these different businesses and you can't make every decision about the iPhone because you have these other very large and profitable businesses to manage, but at the same time, half your revenue is the iPhone. So you do need to do that. Does Tim Cook get credit for services? That was really under his watch that they started focusing on RPU average revenue produc ts, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean credit blame, I think that there's like there's there's an argument. I mean you you can make either way on that, right? Which is to be like has the focus on on services been to the detriment maybe of other areas, but certainly from a financial standpoint we can't argue with results and um, you know, um I get you could make the argument as well that part of the reason that they can maybe invest and have the types of hardware products they have and do those things is because they know that they can make up the margin on those services. Right. And and speaking of Tim and uh John Turnus, uh we we were taking bets last week on whether John would show up. He did. He did. He did. He he read a 20 uh like a 250 word prepared statement. Yeah that was what he did. Did Tim say anything nice? Oh, I mean, it was very much like, oh, let me introduce you to John. John is great. He's I a visionary. It's all the things he already said in the statement, but they said it again. And then like it so let's throw it to John. And John is like, I just want everybody to know that Tim is the greatest executive, executive, executive in the on the face of the earth. Yeah, that was it was that kind of a mutual admiration society, which is the point, right? Because this is a direct part of the transition, part of leaking this to the Financial Times, all of this is about reaching Wall Street and saying, It's gonna be fine. We're all very responsible. John Turn'us statement was like, you know, we're gonna follow in Tim's footsteps. Don't worry. I'm not gonna go like start spending money like crazy. And Tim is like, John's the right guy and and it's gonna be good because that's the message that they're trying to send with this whole transition is like, don't worry. Because Wall Street, you know, that's the challenge there is that you want the the shareholders to feel like Apple's in good hands. So they don't want to, they don't want to take a hit to their stock or anything like that. And I think they've been very diligent in that messaging. Yeah. Although although I we might talk about this later, but uh they did announce a really big change to how they basically said that they're gonna be not doing net cash neutral uh uh business anymore. That's where they were t Tim one one of one of Tim's earliest thing is that we don't we're gonna try to get to the goal of making sure that our net cash is equal to our debt so that we're no longer hoarding cash, hoarding cash, hoarding cash as they did under Steve Jobs. And part of that was this is this is one of the reasons why Tim Coke has given back one trillion dollars to shareholders. One of the reasons why uh the valuation has gone up to four trillion. But the what that so there's been a lot of people who have been sort sort of speculating as to why they're ending that right now. And one of them is that maybe it's because they really do want to get into not necessarily a a spending mode, but that if uh perhaps part of their plans equals we want to acquire some companies that we think wit we could that could really strengthen our business a lot. Uh some people have been speculating about oh well obviously it's going to be a big AI buy in and I don't know if that's really what App what Apple's going to do. But it does mean that if there is there's a reason why they're suddenly saying that we're ending this 10-year-old policy and the the net effect of we know we basically announcing that we are going to be spending more money invites lots and lots of interesting speculation as to what they're spending the money on, including as Jason said, like services is is racing forward, forward, forward. What if they just simply said we just want we what if we were to make our platforms a destination platform as opposed to an add on platform that hey, we've already gotcha with your Apple Watch, we've already gotcha with your iPhone, we're gonna tr why not sign up for a cloud service or a streaming service too. Maybe they're gonna beef that up to basically say we will want it we Yeah, the net cash neutral thing is in I mean, yeah, in 2018, they they went beyond just like restoring the uh the dividend to talk about this net cash neutral at a point where that I think they had like a hundred and sixty or a hundred and eighty billion in effective cash, which was ridiculous, right? But this is the thing, is they they they were they make so much money. There's the profit is so great. They're like, what do we do with it? And and it's true. Steve Jobs was much more like, let's hoard it. And then they started to spend it. And then finally they're like, we're gonna just say we're gonna be cash neutral. That was a Luca Maestri thing. He was the CFO at the time. What they've done though is like they tried to say, look, we're gonna still be returning value to shareholders. The board, as a part of this announcement, also granted another hundred billion dollars that they can do stock buybacks on over time, and they still hadn't run through the last grant there. So they're like, we're still, don't worry, like there's still value that's going to be generated for stuff for shareholders. But what they said was they wanted to uncouple those two things, right? Which is, which is ca debt and cash on hand. They wanted to a and not try to head head for net zero. And what the way they put it was they wanted it to be they wanted flexibility there. And I think I I don't know, none of us know, we all really want to know what prompted that, but it feels to me like when you've got lots of AI spending happening, when you've got issues in your supply chain where like you can't get enough chips from TSMC, you can't get enough RAM chips at the right price from your your RAM suppliers. And looking at like a more uncertain future in terms of what investments are going to be required in terms of AI, especially, that saying maybe if we're throwing off 20 billion in profit a quarter, we might want to hold more of that back because you never know what we might want to do with it. They could be targeting something specific or it more be it might more more be like the game has changed a little and we need more ability to keep cash on hand so that if we need to do a major outlay, we can afford it. Right? They are spending more on R and D. I I uh this is actually for them a uh a huge increase, isn't it? Uh eleven point four billion uh in R and D. Is that uh is that all AI or is that something else? Is that it's not cars? We know that. It's it's unclear, but what's interesting is that as much like as they're spending an RD for Apple, right? Like when you look at their CapEx versus their competitors, it's not even at the same time. Google's a hundred and eighty billion dollars. Exactly. Amazon Amazon too, right? Meta is issues. And increasing next year too, yeah. Yeah, you know, meta so everybody else is is spending like many, many times this, which I think uh you know to to Jason's point is like kind of middle to kind of think about okay, what are they going to do with this cash? Are they holding it back for a specific purpose? Is it something that's that's planned for? Um but yeah, they're spending more than they typically have . But uh yeah, uh who who knows what it's going to be. I I think AI has to be some of it, but because they're not in the data center game, everything that they're spending, it's just a different math level. It's just not even in the same stratosphere. I I have I I mean I have a couple theories. One theory is that they want to be ready in case there's a moment of weakness where there's something that they could acquire. Yeah. Um or if not often we talk about acquiring and it's like Apple's gonna buy some company. It's like I don't know. I mean it's also could be in a moment because if you've got all this cash and then there's a financial hiccup and some valuation goes down or some company needs a an infusion of cash. Right. You could step in and be a you know, be a partner and an investor in some company that's like a core AI company or something. And that that they might find value in that and the having more cash as the cash cow of Silicon Valley in some ways, right? Having lots and lots of cash on hand in a moment where everybody else is spending huge amounts of money or going in debt in in promise of future value is an advantage for Apple. So that might be part of it. And I also part of me wonders I I I keep getting stuck on the fact that you know TSMC has all these other contracts from other providers now and the RAM shortage thing. I wonder if they're realizing that like so much cash is being thrown around that if they want to reassure, because Apple's very conservative, they wanna, they want to ensure not being surprised by supply constraints, right? They want to do that. I wonder if that's part of this too, is maybe they realize that if they can come to some of their partners with cash and say, build us a factory, that they'll be able to do that and and like rationalize their component issues for the next five years or something like that. By the way, I just inflated uh CapEx with R and D. So Apple's R and D is eleven uh billion, uh Alphabet seventeen billion, Meta's seventeen point six, Microsoft eight point nine. So actually they're not so far off. But it it's's a a big big job. I do wonder, you know, kind of looking at especially with like the the the supply uh chain constraints which they even had to address, you know, the fact that there are shortages on the the the mini in the studio, um uh if this means maybe to your point Jason, if they are uh potentially going to be trying to throw money at the problem. My initial guess was okay, they're going to do kind of what they're doing with the with the mini already, which is effectively, and I know we're we'll talk more about this um a later, but but they're effectively getting rid of the the entry level model, which is not a good thing. And my initial thought was like they're just gonna raise the prices across the board because that's what Apple will do, and they will blame the industry and everything else. But I do wonder if there's an opportunity with this sort of cash in addition to maybe keeping it for some investment opportunities. They did that with uh D D Xux hing, um uh which was a you know a Chinese um uh conglomerate um uh about a decade ago so but it's not like they haven't done that sort of thing before but I do wonder if that would be the sort of thing where they're like, okay, we're willing to maybe give up some of our margin and buy some of this time to keep our prices, you know, um consistent and potentially win market share once things settle out or not. Every business should be doing this right now, right? There's potentially all sorts of you know, headwinds are coming. Save some money while you can. If you aren't spending it, right? Like I mean all your competitors are spending money like drunken sailors because they they're investing so much in those cloud infrastructures and all of that. And Apple's not playing that game at the moment. And I think this is a recognition that they're not playing that game, but maybe they need to keep their powder dry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because data centers, uh you know, clearly compute is constrained. Actually let's take a break. When we come back, let's talk about the supply chain issues, the Mac Mini issues. Um there w there were some um I I don't think if they're negatives. They might be actually positives if you can't make enough Mac minis. It's a problem, but a good problem to have, but still a problem, right? Storm clouds. You're watching Mac break weekly with Jason Snell, Christina Warren, Andy Yanaka. We'll have more in just a bit. This episode of Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by WebRoot. If your computer feels sluggish, heats up when you open a few tabs or sounds like it's preparing for li ftoff every time it runs, your device may not be the problem . You know it probably is your antivirus. 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I'm stuck here. It's uh, you know, it's a perfect day in uh on the big island. Uh so but enough of that. Let's talk about uh headwinds, not trade winds. Uh actually uh you know, this is a a blessing and a curse. Tim Cook said uh on the call uh analyst call on Thursday, it could take several months for Apple to make enough Mac minis and Mac Studios to meet demand and this is all because of AI, right ? Um Cook uh said on the Mac Mini and Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools. See, it's a good thing. And customer adoption of that is happening f faster than we expected. Uh so great great uh results for um Apple, except that they can't make 'em uh fast enough. That's gotta be supply chain issues too, memory. Yeah they said that it's it they said it's really TSMC um that they're they're having their constraint on systems on a chip coming from TSMC because they underestimated the calls of like how they were gonna sell Well that would explain the Bloomberg uh piece yesterday. Apple Explorer is using Intel and Samsung to build main device chips and not only to build them, but to build them in the United States. Both companies have US fabs, apparently. So that solves two problems. It makes the administration happy, uh, but it also uh maybe uh is a backstop to TSMC. And Apple's already um working with TSMC in the United States as well. It's not like on the cutting edge nodes, but they are gonna do processors there. And yeah, it may it kind of makes sense. Like Apple just it goes back to why they might be saving cash. Like these are strategic challenges where if you only have one supplier and something happens to that supplier, and we've been talking about Taiwan and China, right? But like also what happens to TSMC if somebody buys all of their other capacity and so you're left with what you had reserved, but kind of nothing else, you get a situation where you might be short on SOCs. And that's not great. So uh being geographically diversified is part of it, but like uh having Intel or Samsung, especially keeping in mind it's not gonna be like a Samsung silicon here, right? It's like literally this is this is stab as a service building stuff we designed for you. Yeah. Exactly. It it will just be another supplier, right? It's just gonna be using whatever fabs available. The same thing with Intel, since Intel is they're not uh an arm fab, but they have a partnership with them and they can make some of the chips that would go into those SOCs. Yeah, well in fact with Pat Gelsinger , the former uh Intel CEO, said we're gonna split Foundry and Fab , one of the things he said, and we laughed at it at the time, is maybe even Apple will be a customer. Well, maybe Apple will be. Yeah. It's a it's a oh come sorry, go ahead Christine. So I was just gonna say, no, maybe I. mean, it it's it was not a bad strategy from in Intel. I mean I think the only bad part was that they did it a decade after they should have. But yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. But stocks soared yesterday, 12% . Because on this news, now this is a rumor, we should say neither Apple Intel nor T SMC can be. And it's soft rumor, right? Like it was like this is just they're talking about. I I think the strategy seems to be, and this makes sense, that they still want to do kind of cutting edge nodes with TSMC because TSMC's at the cutting edge, but they got lots of products that don't need the cutting edge. Right. And lot lots of systems, lots of uh uh different chips that need to be made that are on the older nodes, legacy nodes, Tim Cook's favorite phrase, or are they don't need to be the high performance chips. And in fact, as we see Apple diversify its product line, you know, there are a lot of Apple products that are using previously cutting edge, no longer cutting edge chips. They could shift their strategy a little bit so that they're in instead of the lower end chips being hand-me-downs from previous high-end chips, they could create a whole sec ondary class of chips that are run on an old that are designed for a process at Intel or Samsung that are gonna go in your Mac Book Neos and your generic iPads and your Apple Watches and other things that don't necessarily need the chips that are going to be in the iPhone or the MacBook Pro. Yeah. It's a that's an interesting conund rum that they're in though. That's um uh so we're talking about the three nanometer process that is being used not just by Apple's SOCs, but basically NVIDIA uses it too, and that's why all this capacity is being being eaten up. NVIDIA's buying all of TSMC's capacity can. And and the but the but the thing is like the NEO was definitely positioned as look, this is not a high performance MacBook. This is a more than this is not even the and it's it's not just a good enough Mac. It's a more than good enough. But the thing is your expectation is that if you need a MacBook Air, go buy a MacBook Air, this is not a MacBook Air. So Apple uh but Apple is in a position where this would be a great place to do either custom SOC that is like to the limitations of what capacity they can get. But on the other hand, the minute that they release a 2027 model or 2028 model that is not every bit as fast and capable as the one before it, that's can they can the product line survive that? Would they would they even write off on that? So they're still kind of constrained on what kind of moves that they can make uh regarding the Neo, which is the not not just a a a a really great sell ing machine, but they were also basic uh Tim uh I think mentioned twice that we've got an entire school system that has decided nope we're not doing Chromebooks anymore, we're not doing Windows laptops anymore. We are basically now buying MacBook Neos because it now makes sense for us to actually outfit all of our all of our students with them. So it's it's an important thing and now it's becoming v it's an important product, but it's a low margin product and it's hard to know how that how that's going to affect the NEO in the next two years. Did they give any details besides the school about the NEO that how well it's selling or anything like that? Did they they said it it they thought it would be good and it was way better than they thought. Yeah. Um and and that is, you know, right. And so the they're they're dealing with that. And they did, you know, they cherry pick like Kansas City said that they're gonna do it. They they they always cherry pick some site that I think more of an audit made to make it made sense for Kansas City as opposed to widespread things. Of the Chromebooks is starting to recede into the the background. I don't even know how committed Google is to it anymore. They've they're going to turn it to a Android, right? They''veve they' gotve got yep, they the new operating system, Aluminium, that's going to debut later this year. And it's it's a very much an Apple sort of play where they're partnering with Qualcomm to develop custom CPUs for it. But uh let's let's see how it works out. The thing is it's not it's not like I don't feel a strong commitment and I think schools are getting exactly a little tired of the whole Chromebook thing. So I wonder I mean maybe. I I think I think the thing is even if Google's commitment waivers you have such a huge partner ecosystem, which this is kind of their their their low end laptop that they can sell in volume um to to schools to businesses to whatever that I don't know if it's I had the framework CEO on on Wednesday on intelligent machines and they stopped making their Chromebook. Uh he implied it wasn't selling all that well. Yeah. Well, that was a more expensive device. Right. Like the the the uh the unfortunate thing with Chromebooks is just to go on like a brief tangent, and I think this is actually interesting though, because it's different than the Neo in some regards, is that the Chromebook is simply a volume machine. It's all about what this what's the lowest selling price we can get and how many can we get them. It doesn't matter three hundred bucks. They're two hundred bucks. Right exactly. And and if you're buying them in mass, if you're buying, you know, thousands at a time, you're getting even better prices than that. Right. You're getting them by the truck full. Can you replace the keyboards and the screens? Yeah, you can, but a lot of times you're just gonna kind of you know swap certain things out and and and move on. It it's you know but it's fast computing, right? It's instead of fast fashion, it's it's it's fast laptops. Uh except they're kind of slow. Ex Exactly, right? And so, you know, uh a company like like Framework who made a really good product and and Google tried this too with the Pixel um uh books of you know of a a number times and and and drag it over. Yeah HP has made a few as well um that that internally at Google you can even choose if you want to get one of like the high end Chromebooks, you can get one with like I think sixty four gigs of RAM or something. Right. Um uh but who who would choose that? I'm not really sure. And that's sort of the problem, right? It's like if you go out of your way to make it repairable and you go out of your way to like make it easy to to you know work with and all that, you raise the price to the point that it's like that's not the point. At that point I might as well just buy a Mac. And that's why I think why the NEO is interesting because it sort of is that middle ground where you're not having to be lowest common denominator, but it's still not super expensive. But it is easy to repair at least for you know some of the parts, right? Like the if the SOC goes, it goes. But uh that that I think is is potentially compelling. But it's i I still see it as just a completely different game than what what they do on Chromebooks. The iPhone huge success, they uh said uh again, like the most successful phone uh they've ever made the 17, the bestseller, the Pro and Pro Max. Over the over those two quarters sequentially, the like if you define that as an iPhone launch, it's the best iPhone launch ever. And I mean it's funny because it it doesn't always line up like this, but it did like line up this time. That I think the reviewers in general all said this is very impressive , right? The the changes in the 17 Pro are really nice. The color is nice. They they tried to do this weird, you know, interesting product in the air. And then they took all those pro features and put them down in the 17. And that it turns out that the sales also followed. I do if you look at the China sales especially, because China sales really b have bounced back in the 17 era, that like in many ways the 17 is just a successor to the 16, 15, 14 in terms of look, but it is a different look. It does have that whole aluminum back. It does have the color options. And think that we, you know, the story is basically like make some nice visible changes and China will be much more responsive. And whether that's the reason or not, I don't know. But like China bounced back and the iPhone sales went up even and you could see how China was like a little bit below on growth the rest of the world and now they're a little bit above it. So I think there was absolutely enthusiasm in China for the iPhone 17 line and that helped uh drive that iPhone. But like it's it's just a winner of a launch. It's their best iPhone launch basically. And and and it's hard to really pick a w pick a reason why a certain phone will uh will will will go w will go and other one won't. It really does come to I I think they they mentioned I think they they talked a little bit about this, about cycles of uh people are holding on to hardware a lot longer. And so that really affects it. So and they they sold really, really well with people who were upgrading their phones, whether or not that was wow gosh, I was gonna hold on to my iPhone's uh iPhone twelve for another two years, but gosh, they're the the combination of style, features, and price has won me over and got me to buy early. Sometimes people it's just time for people to buy a new phone and if it's orange, that's the reason why they bought it. So it's it's I think that's pr that's probably one of the reasons why they are now staggering their releases to let's have a spring release and a fall release to basically when you see when you see some of these charts and it's always just like these point and then swoop and point and swoop and point , uh, and not really knowing uh exactly how much you're gonna be making during that one big uh those two big uh sales quarters. It'd be nice to sort of flatten that out and get money over the course of the year as opposed to just during these one-two upgrade cycles . At the very end, Tim Cook mentioned tariffs. That was interesting. Yeah. So they haven't really talked about this before. They've mentioned uh previously that the tariffs cost ranged from eight hundred million and a quarter to more than one point four billion. Even though they were getting some breaks on tariffs, I know with the iPhone tariffs they were getting breaks. They uh announced uh at the very end of the call that they were going to take any refunds they get because remember the Supreme Court said those tariffs are illegal and yeah uh there will be some refunds that they're gonna reinvest it into US manufacturing, which of course will make the president happy what a great piece of diplomacy. Yeah. Well we'll take them back, but we'll reinvest them in U.S. manufacturing. They really wanted to make this announcement to the point where uh an analyst asked a sort of related question and Kevin Perrock, the CFO, it was like about product margins. And in the midst of his answer, Kevin Perrick is just like, Hey, let me turn it over to Tim for a minute. And Tim Cook appears. Uh it's like that they never do that. And then Tim Cook makes this statement about tariffs and it's very much like we're following the established processes. Uh we're not doing anything. We're not suing anybody, but like we're we're we're following the tariff reimbursement process and if we get that money back we're gonna put it all into American manufacturing which is also not only is makes that kind of unassailable uh to criticism from the president and others. But it's also like money that they would be doing that with anyway, but they get to say they're doing it for the oh no, that's the tariff money. We're doing that. We're adding that in. Uh it makes it yeah. It it it clearly was a thing that and then literally Kevin Perrick then just continued with his answer after Tim said this. So like they really wanted to get it out there. Uh and then it it was the moment was like, No, this is the time.' Ls doet it right now. So that they can say that . Yeah, I I mean, you can almost hear like the tip of a big pen being tapped against a post-it note that doesn't matter . they're like, well maybe this product margin question will do it. Let's just try it. Because they wanted to send that message. Uh and you could see why. I write like you could see why. And it fits with what they're doing. It's not uh obviously they they're going to continue announcing their cunt contributions to American manufacturing in all sorts of different ways. That's the thing they've been doing for the last, you know, eight years. They will continue to do that. And this allows them to frame any, you know, billion dollars they get back in tariff reimbursement as not a big deal because it just becomes another they take it away from the US government and they just invest it in America. Hard to be criticized for that. They may not be uh suing over tariffs, but they are going back to court over the epic and I mean epic battle. Uh remember that uh last week on Mac Break Weekly, uh the Ninth Circuit uh had uh uh said no you you gotta actually I think they they uh found Apple in contempt and said uh no you gotta you gotta do the changes in the app store. Apple has now filed uh with the U S Supreme Court asking it to stay the Ninth Circuit's mandate. So the battle goes on. Yeah, and and for and for interesting reasons, basic basically their basis is that well, yeah, if uh uh so the they they were hit with this order because they were they they as you'll recall you'll recall, they were cute with a good with the judge saying, Okay, well fine, you're ordering us to allow developers to uh be great. Okay, we'll do that. They can do that, but they'll still pay a twenty-seven percent uh f uh f uh uh tariff on our on the expenses and we'll basically make it so they don't want to do that. Essentially with this appeal, they're not they're they're basically saying that number one, because the original order didn't say anything about how much we could charge. Number two, because uh the order affects all of our operations, all developers worldwide, not just Epic. And they're also saying that the current staying this order won't aff won't uh won't affect Epic's ability to do basically what we've told we've been told they ha we have to let them do. So basically give us a little time v and give us a stay while we all while we try to talk the court in hearing this. Let me rephrase this in a way people understand. They said, Your Honors , the the the 2021 injunction didn't say anything about app store fees. They didn't say we couldn't make it twenty seven percent. What are they what are they talking about? And and that contempt thing that hurts us. It hurts. Exactly. I don't have children, but you might have explained that to them at some point. maybe shouldn't have, you know, like been contemptible order. Right. Well well it and look, there's there I I fully understand that as you know very well paid legal counsel, in-house counsel, they have to file the appeals, they have to go through this process. I get it. But there's a part of me that I'm like, just take the L because you know the Supreme Court is not going to hear this. Yeah. Um, you you know that. Like just just take the L. I mean I don't know what we know. Oh Oh I don't think this they've turned down every other attempt that they've done about this. I mean I I I just I I don't think that they were the ones who sent it back to the Ninth Circuit in the first place. Exactly. It's and and there's uh there's also not really an interesting legal question here, which is usually look I'm not a lawyer so I I just you know watch uh legal shows on uh Hulu but um like we're gonna but usually from from my understanding like that would be why the Supreme Court would take on something like this. I don't think there's an interesting question here. It's you know, they basically to your point like no but but but but why it's i it's interest it's interesting though because like so Google got uh g uh got uh the attention from from Epic just as just as bad as as Apple. Eventually they threw in the towel and said, Okay, we're gonna even though like we've lost l at at some point they lost so badly they basically open they they took the judge's the the judge basically said look we I would love for you two to sit together and work this out before I have to actually enforce or enact this thing and they actually worked out a system where Google basically rewrote all the rules for how they run the Play Store. And it was so like comprehensive, and both in their joint filing to the judge say, Why don't you set aside like what you said before? Because we've just come up with this plan. Even the judge was was skeptical, saying, So suddenly you've been fighting tooth and nail for the fast five years, and all of a sudden you've you've you've had all these opportunities to solve this before, and you didn't. Uh but I'm wondering like what's the difference between Apple and Google such that again, Google also lost, lost, lost, lost, lost. But they decided at some point, at some point we need to have a consistent policy for our app store that's going to work internationally because we can't continue to fight these battles and have these uncertainties with our div with our with our developers. I wonder why Apple is continuing to f to to to go tooth and nail with this. Maybe it is because they do control the entire widget end to end-to-end. They control the the hardware platform, not just the operating system and the app store and the APIs. But it's I it's I would love to I I hope that I live long enough for uh to to read like the Apple seventy fifth anniversary book in which they explain exactly why Apple refused to give an inch on this. I'm sure David Pogue will still be writing it. Right. Like differ different companies have different philosophies and Apple uh it you know is gonna be like resolute and their belief no matter how misguided it might be. How long did they fight Google over the uh you know the Steve Jobs and Google thing? That went on for a decade. Yeah, I mean but Steve I mean I understood it from a Steve Jobs is mad and he's gonna not gonna take it anymore. If I were advising John Turnus, I would say talk get with Phil Schiller, who's been who's been running the app store for a long time and who court documents show has been a measured at I mean Phil Schiller's a company man, right? But he was even he was like this may not be wise to go to the talk he was the only one speaking back out of any of them. He was the only one. Yeah. So I would I would get with Phil Phil Schiller and I would say, let's come up with a strategy that will allow us to try and set a new bar worldwide for how we're gonna handle this, because we don't want every market to be different. We wanna have exert some level of control over what's going on and what our fate is gonna be instead of letting it be chipped away court case by court case. Let's see if we can do a reset because the thing is, and I'm not saying like, oh wouldn't let's dream on John Turn as having a you know a a ghost visit him in the middle of the night and have a make a change. No, it's like he's a new CEO. There's a new CFO. There's an opportunity for a reset where you can say, look, let's take a reset. And I don't I don't believe in a million years that Apple's going to say, let's just throw the doors open and we don't care anymore. But they could try, and they should have 10 years ago, but they certainly now could try to say, what if we can set some new terms that make more sense that is sort of tracking what all the regul ators want in a way that works for us but also allows a little more flexibility into the system to make it ultimately to make it harder for people like Tim Sweeney to pick them off in court because now they will have given enough. Because I think what we've seen in a lot of these cases is Apple ends up constructing its own solution to the problem that still serves Apple while allowing people enough flexibility that it makes it harder to argue that they're being held down. And that's kind of the where they want to go. And so fighting a tooth and nail to me it's like self-defeating and that it's a really ripe opportunity for John Turner's to say, can we do a reset here ? Yeah, and interesting footnote to the uh epic uh Google case that you were talking about, Andy. The judge in that that scolded the two of them and said, You guys work it out. I don't want to see you anymore, was Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers , who is currently the judge on the Altman versus Musk case. And she's been kind of scolding them too. She said, I don't want to hear anything about AM Doomerism. That's it. I don't want to hear it. I love her. She loves her pretty strong. That's good. No, I mean I w w when her initial order like for contempt or what a grapple came out, like that was one of the juiciest things I've ever read in my life. It was directly I wanted to do like a reading of it because it was so good. Like it was a so it was just because it's rare that you see like judges who A, you can tell really paid attention and B just completely cut through the BS and was like, no, I'm actually not going to entertain this complete and total ridiculousness. This this is what is happening. You haven't pulled one over on me. You're not actually smarter than me. This is this is it was so good. She rules her courtroom with an iron fist. She's good. All right, we're gonna take a little break. Lots more to talk about. You're watching Mac Break Weekly . This is not a green screen. It's real. I mean why ? Although I I was a little tempted. I did bring my green screen. I thought I could just take a picture of that and then uh and then I sit somewhere more comfortable. But that's all right. I'm out here on the uh Lanai in the beautiful uh big island, enjoying a perfect day in paradise. Andy Yanako in the library. A perfect day in the library. It's always a perfect day when you're surrounded by books. Not a cloud in the ceiling. Uh Christina Warren, who is in a small booth in San Francisco at the GitHub headquarters It's a shame because like if it's to the right of me, like it's it's like this lovely like brick facade, but like it's not the background. Yeah, it is cool. It's actually a pretty decent sized little office, echo a size, but yeah. And neither of us are in danger of g getting hit in the head with coconuts, which happens a lot more than you think. That's true. So you're taking your life in your own hand, my friend. We were uh we were out at a waterfall, rainbow falls, yesterday and there was a guy selling coconuts out of the back of the truck and he he takes the whole coconut, he takes a machete and in his hand. I said, Careful, he's chopping the coconut off in his hand. I said, You ever cut yourself? He said, No, I practice. And uh and uh with somebody else's hand, I guess. Anyway, suppose at some point you've cut off all the fingers that are in the way. Exactly. And so you're now your own. Nothing left. Nothing left to get in the way. I said, Oh, you must you must have grown up here. He said, No, I'm from Texas, but uh he does grow his own uh coconuts. They were that was delicious. And uh Jason Snell also here from uh his garage. So indeed we are all somewhere. Not a cloud in the garage either. It's amazing. It's amazing. Blue skies everywhere. We'll have more on Mac Break Weekly right after this. Hey there. This episode of MacBreak Weekly brought to you by Mill . Most food waste . You're going to be sad to hear this. Happens at home, not at restaurants, not in the supply chain, at home. 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We got it before before we started doing ads, in fact, uh we told the mill people, I love it. I want to do an ad for it. Please let me. Let me tell the people about it. You can try MIL right now, risk free for 90 days, and get $75 off at MIL.com slash MBW, but you got to use the code MBW. $75 off MIL.com slash mbw and use the code mbw. mill mil dot com slash mbw use the offer code mbw did i mention that i have saved 368 pounds of scraps diverted from the landfill. Did I mention that? And it doesn't there's no no fruit flies, no stink, nothing. I love the mill . Mill dot com slash M BW. Gotta check it out. Okay, let's get back to the show. Cinco de Mayo, May 5th today. Uh, in years past, iOS uh releases have usually occurred in the middle of May. We are expecting, I think any day now, maybe this week or next, iOS 26 . 5 to be released to the general public . Uh some big changes. Jason, you usually use the beta, right? The developer beta's or the uh I'm on I mean it's late beta, so I try not to. I actually by mistake am on the Mac beta, but um but we're uh but yeah what we're at release candidate now. So my guess is that they'll be pushed out in the next week. Right. Barring it. Chance Miller writing at the nine to five Mac compared previous release dates of 18-5, 17-5, 16-5, and 15-5. And it was almost always mid-May. Yeah. Second or third week in May. So uh yeah, it should be soon. Um what are the new features? Apple Maps now has suggested places. Ads are coming . Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Um again though, it might it might make the map it might make maps better, genuinely. Like that that's's kind of my thought. Yes. Because if peop because if people like right now, at least my my philosophy is one of the reasons that the maps are as bad as they are is that the businesses don't ever prioritize updating the place dat a uh because it's not going to bring them any traffic relative to Google. So I don't know, maybe maybe maybe ads will improve that. Maybe it'll make it a higher priority, which will then increase the mapping data. Like I don't like it either, but we've been using Apple Maps to navigate everywhere uh on the big island and they work quite well now. I haven't had any trouble with Apple Maps in years since I mean J Cook admitted that this was not this was his biggest failure, in fact, I think he said at one point. Yeah. At this at this point, it's so good that I've uh I think that every iPhone owner should have Google Maps installed alongside Apple Maps, but you it right now it's the platform that you would only use when you need the very best mapping app available because there are only like I don't know, maybe three or four percent of situations in which Apple Maps is going to fall up short. It's an important three or four percent. Like when it's like I need to make sure I know where the door to the emergency room on this hospital is. I don't need to know what block it's on. That's when you say, you know what, why don't we ask Google Maps that you're Apple Maps, you're great. You're great. Why don't you sit back? We're just gonna ask Google Maps about getting that thumb reattached. I have several mapping apps actually on my iPhone, just in case. Although Apple has now added download, I don't know when they did this, but you can download maps. I didn't know that. I knew that Google Maps did. So I downloaded the maps for Hawaii because there's a lot of areas in the big island where you don't have cell reception. Well and it it it it even recognizes um when you enter in a new area, like when I landed in SFO last night, it said, Oh, you know, welcome to San Francisco. Do you want to download this map off line? Which was a really nice feature. And I was like, uh uh okay. I mean I don't anticipate losing connection, but go for it. Well, here you need it. There are a lot of areas. Oh yeah, no, I was gonna say in Hawaii you absolutely do. Uh like that that's actually a perfect like opportunity for that. And to recognize, I know you're at the airport, this is the time now that you're you're there to do it, like that's smart, right? Like that's actually that's really slick. Another very important feature, uh end-to-end encryption in RCS uh messaging. Um so they sh they it started doing it last version uh but with iOS twenty six five beta one RCS encryption has come back to the messages app. So if you're messaging Andy and he's on an Android, uh you and it uses RCS, you'll see end to end encryption. Of course Apple to Apple messages of course has always had uh end to end encryption. Yeah, thank goodness for that. So that that was was in in b a couple of earlier ba earlier beta, I think twenty f uh point four and even point three, but that was for carrier testing. But it's going to be actually widely available in point five. Um although like all things RCS, it is carrier-dependent, so it might not be available to everybody all at once. It might take a while for uh for all the carriers to update. I expect in the United States, most major characters will be carriers will support it, uh, chiefly because uh chiefly because of course they're all using Google Messages as their standard um uh standard uh RCS app or excuse me, standard messaging app. Right, right. And cre and encryption very, very important. Uh one hundred percent. It's it's way delayed. I'm I'm glad I'm glad they're finally falling in line because that was one of those things where you just had to say, why are you base why are if you why are you saying that privacy and security is really important and you're not supporting an open standard for inter f cross-platform uh encryption and I'm sure so the on so the standard didn't require encryption, right? But Google offered it. And I think Apple said, well we don't want to use Google's encryption. We want to have it our own in-house encryption, right? Well no, there was there there's there there they're they had they had a rational argument which was that uh the stand GTPR had not actually formalized a standard for end-to-end encryption. Google had basically as a gift to the standards committee said we've developed the standard and we're willing to basically create uh uh dis make it a make it from a private thing to a public thing so everybody can use it. And I think Apple's official party line was that we're waiting for that to actually be uh actually be form ally integrated into the spec before we will do it. Um it would have been nice if they said, you know what, we're gonna be given that the Google the Android platform is 80% of all mobile out there, and that we can basically cover a big swath of those people by supporting this uh Google standard. Uh, why don't we just be a little bit forward-looking? I mean, they they were even dragging their feet on wouldn't it be great if those beautiful photos that we're taking with our iPhones did not look like downscaled garbage when it's sent to a a non Android phone. Uh but I'm but but let's I I uh let's we can put that aside right now. I'm glad that they're w however they got to here, they they got here eventually. Yeah. Yeah, my daughter said, Oh, she's on Android. Oh, you're using an Android phone now. And I said, No. No. I i I I I I have one friend uh who I talk to a lot who's who's a green bubble and it was so nice when RCS was rolled out because finally we could react to messages and photos didn't look terrible and you could send videos and like interact uh you know like like a normal human but not using WhatsApp or signal. Um uh group messages are still a mess , but you know, it it's it's better than it was. We're getting we're getting there. Uh a couple of weird things you may or may not notice. Uh with iOS 265 beta 3, Apple introduced a new way people can pay for subscriptions on the app store, monthly subscriptions with a twelve month commitment. In the past you'd have to pay for the year to get the year price. So now developers, I don't know how many are doing this, will will have a choice to say , Oh, we'll give you the price, but you only have to the yearly price, but you only have to pay month to month, but you commit to a year. I don't know. I haven't seen that. Uh yeah, I don't that that's what I mean Adobe has been saying. It's just a lot of it's just in other things and I wonder if that's because Adobe has been sued for that in the past. Um now it and now Adobe has to make it very clear when you sign up that you are committed to like a twelve month p thing, right? But but but but and and they have to make it explicit like when you sign up for their you know Black Friday promo, hey if you cancel early you still have to pay for it. Pissed people off to cancel and send that they get a bill for canceling. Exactly. Exactly. And so I I don't love it from a user perspective. It it will be interesting to know if if a developer is adopted or not. Um at this point, but developers don't usually care that much about what users think about uh you know their subscription policy. So we'll see if it takes off or not. I don't know. Also, uh this thanks to the EU Apple's testing live activity support for third-party accessories, uh, not just um uh Apple accessories. Also pairing will be easier to imagine keyboard trackpad or mouse . Oh, there's a whole bunch of little things. Uh uh new inicatuit inicatu keyboard layout. Some new clearing up. I mean this is literally sweeping the last bits. Yep into the when it's so is this the last version of 26 265? Bar barring a I mean there'll be like security updates and other bug fixes that can happen, but obviously the bulk of the work being done at Apple already is on twenty seven. Yeah, because a month away from them telling us what's going to be in it and probably about I mean a month and a week away from not only the conference, but the first beta developer beta release of 27. So that's where the bulk of the work is going. This is like the last little bits that they're getting out the door in the 26th cycle. Here's something that excites me for uh 27 . Uh there will be a button on your iOS 27 wallet that says create a pass, which means you can create a custom digital pass from any QR code. Your gym membership now, you don't have to wait for them or you know, gyms want you to use their app, right? That's why they don't allow you to add it to the wallet. But that's a pain in the butt. I want everything in my wallet. Uh so now Apple finally giving up on uh developers doing this have added a or will be adding a creative pass feature in the iOS twenty seven right in there. I'm glad they're finally doing it. I mean it's interesting because people built I remember a a decade plus ago, like people built websites to basically do this exact same thing. Like it's been a relatively easy thing for anybody to do if you just kind of reverse engineer the um uh I mean it's not even reverse engineering, they document how to do it, but people have had ways to kind of create their own passes on on websites. But I think it's a really smart thing to yeah, just build it in, build in a wallet, make it that much easier. Our local uh movie theater, you they you buy a ticket, they email you a QR code, which you then have to hold under their special machine at the at the theater. So prints out a ticket. It's just the worst system. And then by the way, nobody looks at the ticket. I I guess they didn't pay for ticket takers. So you just then walk in. So it's it's it's it even it is this is a good example of like a feature that serves the user but also serves the platform. Because but when I when when this feature came on uh on Google Wallet a while ago, like it suddenly went from okay, I guess my Starbucks card is in there and I guess when I take a Amtrak my tickets went up there to my library card is in there. Lots of loyalty cards are in there. It's like why would you not use it if all you have to do is simply take a picture of it and it turns into this beautiful like little pass that's always there. It's like I've I'm again I don't I don't care why it took Apple so long to do something that seems very very basic but I'm glad that it's not. Well Apple made I think Apple wanted people to use Pass kit. Apple made a way for developers to do it. They wanted them to do it traditionally and the developers went, No, no, we want everybody to have four . We want our own apps. Which which again is is frankly kind of Apple's fault because they led for so many years. There's an app for that and there's app intents and all these other things and they really have pushed developers to the point of being like, oh, the only way you can be successful is if you have an application. You can't just have a website, even though a website would be the better you know use case for things. So part of it is often it doesn't want to give up any uh customer information, right? So if you want customer information, you've got to do an app . Is that right? Well, I mean a barcode is a good idea. Ultimately, right? Like barcodes. It's I don't I don't know how much of it is that. But I mean, look, I don't like like Andy, I don't care how long it took. I'm glad that's gonna be here. It's a nice feature. Um I use Apple Wallet for everything when I can to the point that over the years I have actually created passes myself, you know, using like little one off websites or or whatever just to try to make things convenient. But it's certainly much easier to just be able to take a photo of your of your card and turn it into a pass. So we'll find out. There'll be a lot more, I'm sure, in iOS twenty seven. We will find out uh at WWDC. When is the keynote? June sixth? Fifth? Uh we're gonna cover it, of course, Micah and I. Eighth. Eighth, yeah. Is that uh is that on Mon Mondaday?y. All right. Which is rare. W W C is always on Monday. Yeah. But yeah, the iPhone things are never on a Monday. Yeah. Never on a Sunday. Never on a Monday. Um yeah, so we'll be covering that if you're in the club. Now uh I should mention that this is a good reason to join the club. We cannot stream those uh to the public. You know, we stream this show um to on YouTube and Twitch and X and Facebook and LinkedIn and Kick and of course in our club to Discord, but we we can't stream the Apple events, the Apple keynotes in public because they take us down and they give us strikes and they're mean. So uh oh don't tell Apple but we will do it in like a Discord . Uh in private. We're gonna have a private screening for uh club members. So if you want to watch that WWDC keynote. Mike and I will cover that um on June 8th. And uh you can watch it in the club twit uh Discord. That's the only place we'll be able to make that available. I think we're gonna do that now with all the keynotes. We're doing it with Google I.O. as well. It's uh it's a club exclusive. Here's a uh scuoplet . Uh I am getting excited more and more about the iPhone Ultimate and uh uh Sonny Dixon has put out or and I think he's pretty reliable on this. Uh we know they're probably already making it, right? The first dummies of the final look of what the fold will look like, as well as the 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max, and then unbox therapy did a little uh video. They took the dummies and they and they made a video out of it so that you can kind of imagine what it'll be like to have one of these little look at this. I can't wait. Now it's not gonna sit flat according to unboxed therapy, but we don't know. Of course this is this is not a uh this is a guess . But uh anyway, if you want to see the whole video uh there on YouTube I I I I gotta say that I'm sure that a lot of us are going through a little bit of nostalgia because we remember when uh like the iPhone was announced, but was a long time before you could actually it was actually shipped the iPad the same way. And so lots of people were I'm gonna make myself one out of foam core. I'm gonna paste a picture on it. So I can at least hold it in my hand and know what it would be like to hold on to this. And now we're seeing that exact same thing again. In fact, I think I might still have the foam core uh dummies that Burke made up for us. Thank you, Burke. Way back in the day. So we could say, oh look. I took that on so many cable news shows. Oh my gosh. You know what I think I think I did too. I think for one for like an iPad or something. It was a similar kind of thing. Yeah. That is a throwback. And what's great is now because like you know uh personal 3D printers are so good that you can actually like print out the mock up . Yeah the inbox therapy one looks like aluminum and it looks really nice. Yeah, exactly. Go to send dot uh send cut send or whatever. They can they'll mill you uh mill you anything you want out of anything you can anything they can make it out of. It's just amazing. It's it's between this and how good people are at producing convincing still renders and video renders is like I'm not gonna believe that anything is anything until I'm actually holding it in my hands now. You can't believe anything rumors be more fun anymore. Yeah. I mean it's now a big you know I in fact there was a uh uh show because I don't I don't I just don't think I can trust it. You just you just don't know anymore. Oh yeah. No, there was a uh we mentioned this a couple of months ago. I g I oh gosh, I can't remember the the book guy's name, but we've had we've we've featured his stuff on the show a number of times where like f he took like he took this concept uh frog design Mac tablet with a cube integrated keyboard, disk drive and everything that was just a prop that they made uh like in 1986, 1987. And he said, I'm gonna manufacture, I'm gonna make that. And he made it and it actually works like with this all the design stuff and all the keyboard stuff. And it's like, and if he decided if if this showed off on an auction site as a prototype, nobody would question it until they realize exactly how good engineers Well, this has been happening in China for a long time. I remember uh we have a listener who goes to China regularly. He brought me back a bunch of iPhones from Shenzhen. Oh, yeah that are indistinguishable from iPhones, except for the fact they're running Android. Right. And and you have to and the thing is you have to dig down deep. But look well when I when I went to China, like the one of the few things that I absolutely wanted as a souvenir was I wanted to go to a counterfeit c counterfeit market and get the best iPhone I could. And even back then it was like it held up until you got like three or four levels deep into an app. Right. And then you saw like just your basic st stock Linux font. Uh and that's and that's why like uh from from uh now on, like anytime I buy something, I'm not buying uh I'm not buying anything from the Apple store unless uh I'm not buying any hardware until I can actually break it open right there and verify that it's a real thing because if you go to if uh I'm sure that at the Apple store it's fine, but if you go to Best Buy, like they're probably just gonna take a return, re-shrink rep that, not not knowing that somebody basically bought one of these really, really good AirPods Pro. Exactly. And again, it pairs fine, g sho itws up everything you need. It's it's it isn't until like you accidentally drop it and it shares apart and you realize that does Apple put a lot of like steel plates inside these things to make them heavier or is or is that like an impedance thing? It's for the antenna. Yeah, of course. You're watching Mac Break Weekly, Andy Anako, Jason Snell, Christina Warren, and of course, you especially uh our club twit members. We're really glad you're here watching the show too. And we're back in the miller's yard. Despite the heat, their True Green Lawn is thriving. They got a lawn like a golf course here in South Carolina without wasting a weekend. And PJ to a golf has started showing up. Like this, pro. Amazed this grass looks this good and this heat. Has to clear the patio furniture and the sandbox. Oh, perfectly struck. True Green, the easiest way to get a golf course quality lawn. Don't wait. Tap the screen now to sign up at TrueGreen.com. Exclusion supply. See TrueGreen.com for details. Conquerors are made of different stuff. When the waves come crashing down, they beg for more. When the drop-off sinks beneath them, they grit their teeth and dive headfirst. And when others quiver, conquerors stare Thrills in the face with steely eyes of determination. Soaky Mountain Water Park. Severeville, Tennessee. Conquer the mountain. Season passes available at Sooky Mountainwaterpark.com . Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe. Or white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Uh let's go to AI news. And actually, the big news is uh tonight there's a party. Uh Sam Altman asked ChatGPT 5.5, if you were gonna plan your own launch party, what would you do? And uh he said it came out a little bit weird, but guess who got an invite? Now, Christina, why are you invited to this party? Because I replied to the tweet and I filled out the form and and and and they shows it. So I won the lottery, right? I mean, um and and I'm very grateful. Thank you very much, OpenAI, for uh anyway, or no. So that's why you're in the city now . Uh yeah, absolutely. No, and and they were they were cut yeah, they were kind enough to uh to cover people's travel if you're in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. So now did you bring a fancy uh gown, a met gala kind of uh outfit, or what are you gonna wear tonight? No, well okay so the weather is colder than I was thinking and so I'm I'm having a little bit of a problem. Yeah, but like I was looking at things earlier and so I had something the the shirt that I'm wearing now I'm I I don't know. I don't know if I have time to go get a jacket or not is the long story short of it. We will see. But uh yeah. What are you expecting? What's gonna happen? I don't know. I have no idea what is actually fun. I will share this. And I I don't think this will uh bother anybody I won't share names, but um about 20 or twenty-one of the the women who were invited, I guess we all found each other on Twitter and we created like a Twitter group chat because there's so few. Like The only ladies the ob basically hundred nerds and you. Kind of, right? And so that's gonna be kind of the the funny thing is that we're we're and we're actually um a number of we're we're meeting up like at a at a wine bar before the party and then like all all all the all the women um are gonna like w pop up to the party together. But yeah, no, um, it was very, very kind of them and and also very kind of GPT 5.5 to uh select. I I had no illusions that that would happen. I just like filled out the form as one does, because why not? And then I was very uh pleasantly surprised when Friday afternoon I got a an email that was like you're invited and I was like , You weren't the only one. Uh Sam Altman uh reached out with an olive branch to Elon Musk and said, Hey, you can come too, buddy. You can come too. We'd love to have you. Uh 5-5 is out already, so it's a launch party for something that's already been released. Although Altman did say we might have a surprise for you. So I wonder if there'll be a new model or something interesting. Well, one thing they did you, which was pretty cool because apparently like eight thousand people you know applied to attend the party um and and they only you know had capacity for less than 10% of that. But anybody who uh filled out the form, got 10 x codex credits until June 5th on their account. That's nice. So and this is not the first time that OpenAI has done things like that. So just kind of a pro tip for anybody out there, when they have you know things like their developer days or or stuff like this even if you don't want to go or even if you don't think you'll be chosen fill out the stuff anyway because I have seen like their their their devx team does a really good job of of you know making um their fans feel good and let's be fair, you are in developer relations at GitHub and GitHub co-pilot is is it not based on chat GPT? Well no and we use a number of different models. No, actually might it might it might it might be five three. Five three is our long term model, but we we use we use clawed models. We um have Gemini models available. Uh uh we have um you know uh Gemini uh we have obviously the open AI models. So you can choose. But yes, the original impetus of Copilot back five years ago when it was first announced was actually it was a joint project between GitHub and OpenAI, where we let them scan our public repos and we developed our own, you know, kind of uh assistive stuff. Well, also the Microsoft GitHub co pilot relations triangle. Well yeah, but the that the it was actually it w it was actually like a separate thing. Like like Microsoft had invested in OpenAI at that point, but it was a the the GitHub um integration thing was was a separate agreement. So maybe they will mention this smartphone that they are building to compete with the Apple iPhone. Um in fact they say they've moved up the date. They were going to try to get it out uh sooner than they had said. They were saying 2028. They say now uh because we think there's demand.' Were gonna try to get it out in 2027. I wonder if Johnny Ive will be there with this new phone. I think that you're gonna have a scoop. No no no no no recording no whatever. But I mean it's it's it's a it's it's a party. I'm um Can you say where it is? Or they have they they they told people it's at their headquarters. Oh okay. Which is where? I don't even know where that is. Is it it's in Mountain View or is it? No, it was in San Francisco proper. San Francisco. Okay. Actually, did the was was it OpenAI who said that? Or I think it was Ming Chiquo who basically doubled down on uh a tweet he said last week last week uh that uh first half twenty seven, open AI appears to be fast tracking his first AI agent for mass production track targeted as early as first half twenty seven. Ming qiguo, right. But he's usually pretty good. He's a supply chain. ly Supp chain guy. Other AI stories. XI AI is bringing Grok's voice to Apple CarPlay. This has uh actually been uh a nice feature of CarPlay. They've started to allow you to add, I think you can put uh chat gpt in there and uh probably Claude and uh you can also put uh grok and grok will talk which is uh maybe not a good thing I don't know sure I want to be talking to grok anymore uh grok's kind of rude. So Grok voice mode will be coming to uh CarPlay. So uh can you do I haven't tried it yet. Can you do voice mode with uh chat GPT? Uh I don't think so. I think Apple restricts uh that I think this somebody else somebody who drives should should chime in on that. Complexity also is uh is there . It says this is from nine to five Mac with Groc when Grok voice motor arrives on CarPlay soon, it will join chat GPT in perplexity to the party . So maybe you can. I haven't, you know, I don't want it to be a lot I I feel like there was something with it which might be maybe maybe once you activate the app you can use voice mode, but it might not be one of those things where you can just talk to it if it's running on the side. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you can't say, hey Grock, you probably have to press a button on the screen and so forth. And you may not be able to do that when you're driving. Come come to think of it. Let's hope not . Um here's from Apple Insider. If you are using Perplexity Computer, which is like their Claude Cowork, it's their it's their app that lets the uh AI do stuff on your computer. Malcolm Owen writing it a Apple Insider says Mac Mini is the best platform for personal computer. Good luck getting one. I guess go ahead. Oh I was just gonna say if you're if you're done with that. I'm done with that. Mark German broke some Apple uh iOS 27 news today, and then it it's very interesting. What he said is, and this is I mean it makes a lot of sense, but to see Apple or any tech company do this is it's another thing, which is g according to German, I was twenty seven will let you swap in whatever AI provider you want, not just for one thing, but for anything, for Apple Intelligence, the whole thing. Like they're gonna create a base using Gemini that will be on every phone without you doing anything. But if you're like, I'd rather use Claude . You can assuming that that they provide, I think it's called extension for this, you would be able to just say, use Claude for all my AI stuff. And iOS will just say, okay, now you use Claude. So basically there,'ll be a default that'll be a white label version of Gemini that everybody just gets. But if you have a preference, if you have a an account uh or or or a specific functional preference, that you will be able to just pick an AI model and it will be apparently everywhere, according to Kerman. So like writing tools, image playgrounds, Siri , like all of the places. The Apple's goal is they will create the default or with Google create the default, but that if you want to swap in someone else's AI model, go ahead. Interesting. That raises so many interesting questions. It is the trend, by the way. Cursor announced that last week. More and more companies realiz ing that the lead model changes from moment to moment are saying, well, why don't we let you use whatever model you want to use at the moment, but then how do you pay for it is the question. You know, Apple's paying Google a billion dollars, we hear you log log in and I think the app has to be on your device. You're not getting it for free. Yeah, yeah. The app is on your device, that's how it gets an extension. And then you're logged in using your account in that app, or you know, whether it's you know however they want to do it to the API, tied to the API, tied to your your um membership, whatever it is, and then you you know, you're you're charged or credited. I'm such a sucker for this because I have subscriptions to I don't even want to say how many different AI models because every moment oh you gotta try Kimmy now. Oh no, GLM file . Oh no, you gotta try uh Quim and then pretty soon you have subscriptions for all of them. Also, I I wonder I wonder if they will allow you to split things, like saying I want nano banana as my image generator. Right. I want uh cloud as my general chatbot. I want Gemini for my research stuff. Uh be and also I wonder if how if they're going to be imposing uh privacy controls that basically have to uh d do do I wonder if it if they're going to require each of these AI companies to say you have to div you you have to provide an API access in such a way that we will allow you in or we will basically forbid you to go in. And also could also can I have a a locally run uh AI like on my network saying I'm uh there's there's some privacy things I just wanna agent there are agentic stuff that I'm only trusting to this one machine I've got on my network. So for agenic stuff, run it through this machine but through nothing else. I've got yes. First off the, way they do chat chat GPT basically is like there is sort of this understanding that if you're using the base level that it follows Apple's rules, but if you say no, give me full on chat GPT and I've logged in, then you're following Chat GPT's rules, and apples's like that between you and them. Yes. Uh, in terms of the the the granularity or using a kind of like bring your own model, that's a great question. My guess is that it won't be there on day one, but that they'll feel that, you know, that people will say , hey, you know, I I my guess is that again, it's gonna be the App Store model where it's like you got to have an app, you gotta be approved by Apple to use the AI extensions, and then it appears as an option. That's my guess. And that's it. We've been saying for a long time, Apple just has to sell iPhones. And so if all they do uh if all they do is basically say we don't care what you bring to the party, so long as you're running it on something that we sold you at a thirty to forty percent hardware markup, we're good. Right. Well we'll make it easy for you. Yeah. The only the only thing on the privacy can uh issue and and I I agree with Jason, I I have no doubt that they will do it exactly the way that they do the chat GPT now, which is that they will say, hey, if you're enabling this third-party service, you're following their rules, we are completely taking our hands off of it. And um and I think that's fine. I think that's a actually a kind of an elegant way to get around the fact that they don't do, you know, um uh mass trainings on things, which is one of the reasons why their local models are frankly not good. But um I I so I think this is kind of an elegant in run around that to still have a good experience. I think the challenge though will be okay, well then how do they I guess um position these tool thing the these two things, the the more privacy efficient, you know, like you know, um localized not localized, but but you know, uh hybrid, you know, Gemini on device and and you know I don't know if this is related. Apple research just released a paper uh with UC SD talking about using multiple models in a diffusion model at the same time to deliver better answers. So maybe they're maybe they use all I don't know. You know a lot of times the uh AI research Apple's doing is is very blue sky. And I think Apple releases these just to remind people, hey, it's not just the other guys. We're working too on the it's always with the narrative of we have s uh we're doing research that says that our strengths as a hardware maker are one hundred percent applicable. Meaning that we're you if you're telling if you're telling the world that you need an amazing amount of compute uh uh uh c network compute power to do this, we've got this new method for doing the for running these models that will actually run just fine on hardware or just on a a smaller uh smaller number of compute uh uh uh compute capability. But it's it it's you know, isn't it isn't ironic. It it really does show you the difference between Apple's position regarding position in the world regarding artificial intelligence, the opportunities presented by AI, and also how fast AI is moving. That this is still a platform where it's like we have it's you can't you if you want to use a different chat app you can't or for for SMS message messing you can't there's only one uh uh webkit is like no, if you you can have multiple browsers, but it's always gonna run in our renderer. All these if all these different things like our AirPods are locked to this. Our Apple Watch, our watch is locked to this platform. The fact that they're saying that no, we will allow you to choose whatever you want as an AI platform. Just please, please, please run it on an IO. Yeah, exactly. Well and I th I think I think you're right. It's A because this is moving quickly, and B because I don't think they would do this if they felt like they were in a position of strength or at least a position of parity on on their own models, whether they were hosted or local. I don't think that they would be this open. But but you know, because obviously like that was the thing with WebKit. When WebKit, especially mobile first came out, not hing else was even close. You know, Chrome was uh you know a a fork of that essentially. And and um you know the same thing with like they built the watch to kind of be part of the ecosystem. This is almost the inverse where they're going, okay, we recognize that we don't have this moat just of being Apple, but we don't want you to leave. So we will do everything we can to make it happy for you. I'm sorry, but it's I just I I can't I couldn't just jump again where they say, well, you know what? If you don't like our app store guidelines, you can switch to another platform. And knowing that no one's gonna do that, like if you don't like our AI, you can switch up. Wait, wait, don't don't switch to another AI. I'm sorry, we said nothing. We're we're open. Oh, we are. Can I make a vote though? There's one thing they've got to do, and Siri dictation has now fallen way behind everybody else. It's the worst dictation. And I'm using you know uh open AI's whisper of, a variety other tools. Jason, you've recommended many tools, but you can't plug them in to the dictation mode that Apple, at least not on the iPhone, that Apple's using. And that would be my number one thing. Just let me use something else to dictate this. Your keyboard sucks. Okay, fine. I understand the limitations of that. But if I could just dictate reliably, and Siri's so far behind, there was actually a very good piece on uh tech crunch comparing a number of the AI dictation apps. Some of them you've already recommended, Jason. I think you recommended Whisperflow. Uh there's Willow Monologue, Super Whisper, I guess that 's the one you like, right? Yeah. Voice Typer, Aqua , uh handy. I've used type list most of these workers. Yeah. So look at all of these. They're all better than Siri. Every one of them. Well, first off, Siri Siri is not dictation. They're different. Um who does dictation? Dictationictation is just d . There's a dictation engine that Apple is using. Um but but what these tools do is they are using not just a text to speech engine, but they are often then adding an LLM layer where they are kind of like smoothing everything out. Much better. And and you know, there are some cases where you don't want that, but there are also some cases where you you absolutely do want that. Some of these are local models. In fact, the one I used to do local. And yeah, paired better popular. It's not using any bandwidth. It's not costing me anything. It's running locally. And it's better than whatever the hell Apple's using. I guess the iPhone's kind of more limited than a Macs. All of these are on max. So um do you do you you expect that 26 or 27 will improve uh I would hope that that there are underlying tech changes across all of the stuff that's ML based, given how fast it's all moving. The question is, do they go above and beyond, right? Like it would be it would be really nice like if they if they made their dictation much better. It would be even nicer if , as you said, they let third party dictation engines into the mix. But again, will that be covered in the first round of releases of this? My guess is always to say no, because they tend to go out with like a very basic thing and then they start to add the like the details as as they go. But like this is one of those areas where there's been a lot of advancement, and that like not only are the are are the spe ech to text engines better, but then when you add that proper kind of like transformer model lay a lot model layer on top, you end up with better output and and and it you know different people like I said different people have different like when I'm doing the transcripts of the of the advisor call I do not want a language model rewriting what they said because I want exactly what they said. But if I'm just dictating a thing because I need to send a text message and it cleans up my stupid words that I got wrong to have it and I look at it and go, yeah, that's what I mean and send it, that's that's great. That's productivity. So But there are you I mean there is very good transcription, LLM based transcription that is much better than what Apple's doing. That doesn't matter Oh yeah, no both layers need to be better. I I th I think that for some people that second layer, the which like super whisper is a good example of that, like what what they're doing on a lot of those apps is like they're they're saying well when I'm in email I'm gonna run my raw transcription through an email context and it's gonna read more like email and that's gonna be better and you can do with this double process. But there's also just the straight up the the both the speech to text and text to speech engines are dramatically better than they were a year ago, let alone five years ago. I you know I use Whisper to talk to my uh uh agent, my um Claude agent. uh And on Apple, I'm always having to say period, question mark, new sentence. Yeah. Apple actually has the funny thing is doesn't do that, it just knows. So I always have question mark and period in the I don't think you have to do that anymore, but I don't know. I'll tell you, there is there is an API in tw in at least Tahoe. I don't know if it's an iOS 26 or not, but in Tahoe, there is a new better speech to text API that you can use for transcrip tion and it works really fast and it works on device. Yes. Well um on the Mac, this is the thing. On the Mac um there's a there's like an app you can install called Yap that um and then and then it'll grab from your microphone, it'll grab from your system audio and it works really great. So like they're they're making steps here, but but I think what you're saying is if I'm on an iPhone in core keyboard press the microphone dictation, I want it to be much smarter about that context and know that I'm not doing an old drag and dictate kind of hello, comma. I have a question, question mark kind of stuff. You wanted to just uh be there. And I think they're I would be surprised if that's not improved. Yeah. Uh we're gonna take a break. The Vision Pro segment coming up on the nation's number one Vision Pro Podcast. In just a little bit, you're watching Mac Break weekly with Andy and Hako , Christina Warren, uh, Jason Snell. I'm in Hawaii. I'm going to go get a little tan while we watch this commercial . Oh, I don't have a commercial. Thank you, John Ashley, for not doing anything. I am gonna do a commercial for Club Twit. How about that? Uh a little plug anyway, a little begging for club twit. If you support and believe in independent media like this, the best way you can show your support is by joining the club. I think it's really important. Podcasting is great because we're not spying on you. It's an RSS feed. We are beholden to no one. And I take extra steps to make sure that you know nobody has an inside track on any of our shows . But that means we need your support to keep doing it. We do have ads, yes, but they only cover about 60 to 70 percent of our costs. The club really keeps TWIT afloat. If you're not a member, I want to invite you to join. It's 10 bucks a month. You get ad-free versions of all the shows, including this one. You won't even hear any begging from me. We'll cut that out also. You also get access to the club twit Discord, which is really great. It turns out if you have a social network where people pay to join, the quality of conversation goes up by a hundredfold. Great people, great conversations, not just about the shows that are going on, but about everything the geeks are interested in that's the discord you also get access to special programming we don't put anywhere else like as I mentioned our our keynote coverage for the uh WWDC keynote coming up next month uh also coming up soon actually google io uh we do special programming stacy's book club is coming up this uh this next week uh mica's crafting corner home theater geeks this week in space i go on and on. We do a lot of extra programming for our club members because they support it. We'd like your support. Twit.tv slash club twit. 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Whether your destination is a business conference or a client meeting, your purchases will help you earn more points for future trips. Experience more on your travels with Amex Business Gold. Terms apply. Learn more at AmericanEpressx.comlash/s business dash gold. Amex Business Gold Card. Built for business by American Express . Have you? All right, on we go with the Vision Pro . What do you see? What do you know? It's time to talk the vision grow. There isn't much to say, actually. No , but I have to do it anyway. Otherwise, how are we going to keep our status is the number one Vision Pro podcast? We gotta keep our liquor license. It's uh Vision Pro has been used for hundreds of cataract surgeries. This is Marko uh Zivkovich writing at Apple Insider. That's interesting. Surgeons are using it uh uh to uh I guess augment their vision. Uh yeah, there's there's this is happening. I got an email from somebody who's using it for arthroscopic procedures uh procedures as well. Like that there's yeah, uh this is not surprising, right? Like Microsoft found with holo lens, like there are lots of high-end industry. Applications. Yeah. Epson was doing stuff this was twelve, thirteen years ago, um with you know kind of their um like uh AR type of glasses where you could um it they were because I remember looking at them at CES probably in twenty fourteen, maybe twenty fifteen, where you could look at someone's arm and you could um be able to view the veins um much more easily and and they were you know aimed at at nurses and things like that. So uh healthcare being that was also a big uh place that uh things were adopted for uh Holaland's, um some of the other I think the Samsung uh stuff. So I'm not surprised at all to see that this is an area where there's getting some some use. The first Vision Pro uh ophthalmological sur surgery was done by Eric Rosenberg of Site MD. This was back in October of 2025 . He has uh since made software uh to do this uh co-author ed something uh called Scope XR for extended reality, designed for ophthalmic surgery, uh integration with three D digital surgical microscopes via HDMI, USB and wireless MDI . So they get a stereoscopic feed from a surgical microscope. Diagnostic data is also shown in the Vision Pro . Uh and it can also be fed to uh remote professionals for consults for, mentoring, for students, which is pretty cool. So they they wear the Vision Pro. Uh they are able to do the surgery using an ophthalm ophthalmic microscope, 3D microscope. Wow. Uh that's very, very co ol. So that's one uh good use. It it's almost like this wasn't really a consumer product. Interesting. Yeah. I mean we but when back when was a rumor like we the the table stakes for those kind of headsets are always any any industry that can afford to write their own software for it and basically customize the hell out of it for a specific use case. The'yre gonna be buying it as long as it's good hardware. The the challenge was always going to be as a general interest general use device for people who do not do not bill at eight thousand dollars an hour for architectural services or whatever. That's what's always going to be the child the the challenge. Uh let's talk about the rumor that a Mac rumors wrote about last Julie Clover. The headline Apple has given up on the Vision Pro after M five refres h flop. Mac Homers has learned Let's let's let's start with the headline 'cause the story the story does not back up the headline. What uh you know So maybe we shouldn't Julie Clover because she probably didn't write that. Yeah, I mean the story's a little a little bit uh hypey, but like the headline is definitive in a way the story is not. And then hours after that story broke, Mark German went on Twitter and basically said, uh , no, I reported I mean, I reported about this a year ago. There's nothing new here. And John Gruber and other people and I've heard through the grapevine too, like, it's not true. Um, what what German reported a year ago is they used to have a group that did Vision Pro because it was a new product. And now the people who do the Vision OS software are part of the software group. And the people who do the vision was hardware are now absorbed into the hardware group. They're what they did is say we're not actively developing another big heavy headset because they're worried in the short term about uh more things like the metaglasses and doing a response to those lighter weight things. But that's not the same as saying the whole thing is dead. It's more like the M five is like, do we expect that in a year or two they'll be able to come out with an eight hundred dollar headset? I mean, it's not gonna happen, right? So they're they're working on some other stuff. I think what Dan Morin said on six colors that I thought was good is if we get to the 27 OS release and Vision OS 27 is kind of like tumbleweeds, um that's a bad sign, right? That's a really bad sign. But I I don't get the sense. Like they're investing, we our friend Alex is gone to Apple, right? Like they are investing in content, they're investing in the OS, they're investing in it in a as a platform in a lot of ways, but they also, I think, are aware that they aren't going to sell any of these. And the framing in the of that headline is being M5 refresh flop. Like, did literally anyone think that the M5 version of the Vision Pro was gonna at $3,500 was gonna stoke up more sales? Like they did that for inventory reasons because they were running out of M2s and they needed to switch it to an M5. But like it nobody expected it to be anything. Uh so that that somebody would like say, let's do an M5, and if that doesn't sell like hotcakes, it's out of here. It's like that's just a ridiculous narrative. Like we all are well aware at this point of the limitations of the Vision Pro. And I don't know. It's not the processor. It's not the processor. It's not the processor, even not even on the list, right? And and like I I enjoy the Vision Pro and I think it's impressive in a lot of ways, but like I would never advocate for them to consider it like a product that is important right now. I I think at this point they've shipped it so they should keep it around and think about the future and think about where all that technology might be applicable in an i in a product that would reach a large number of people. But I don't think even its biggest fan would say that product is gonna exist in the next five years. So to that to remember as as John Gruber points out, a daring fireball, it was just, you know, last week, we even mentioned this last week that John Turnus uh and Greg Jos uh talked to Tom's guide and talked about the future of spatial computing. And I don't know what spatial computing means without a some sort of XR device. I don't even think you could do that with spectacles. I think you need a a a helmet, an air helmet. And and and and remember that the the that the Vision Pro uses Sony uh display modules that they were oh that were only going to be able to ship in the terms of like several hundred thousand uh a a year, so it was never going to be mass market . I think that I think it's gonna be what I what I'm cu what I'm keen to see is that if at some point we will see a twelve hundred dollar rethink of it, something that is more along the lines of a MacBook Air version of this where an Apple TV. Remember when they did the the the the refresh in 2010 on the Apple TV and they took it from being, you know, kind of like the the the Mac Mini type of device to actually being a set-top box that had integrated Apple . So if they're all in on spatial computing, what do you need for spatial computing uh to work? Well look that that thing I mean first off spatial computing as a concept implies a level of like y Mac performance and windowing and stuff that I think you could revisit and say maybe that was a bit much. But I I think I mean the way I read it is there was a real internal struggle over designing this thing and they decided to get really kind of high end with it in a but making a bunch of decisions to ship sort of like no no you know no regrets highest end and you know it I I remember when the rumor was that it was going to be three thousand I was I was blown away because I assumed it would be 2,000 at most. And 3,000 was too low. And so I and John Turnus was involved in a lot of this. And I I would imagine that there that there will be a time when they say, okay, we're close enough now that we could probably do a product that also close enough in terms of the content, because the content's very slowly coming. But if you imagine maybe three years out, four years out, if they could get a thousand dollar one of these and suddenly they have the infrastructure to do sports and theater and they've got a bunch of movies and they've got a bunch of other content and some apps have been developed and like they have a better sense, that starts to sound like maybe it's an interesting product. So maybe you know, maybe they will get there eventually. And I think that would be really encouraging. I I I just think unlike every other Apple product, they have to think long term and as this is a like a direction that they're going in and that this is all just for exploration, because like it's it doesn't make sense otherwise, right? Like it doesn't make sense. Yeah. I I mean I could see I again I I realize that we're uh that I'm looking with uh with with in hindsight. It's like if they if Apple found itself in two different uh two different modes as they're designing this, we can either develop a very basic model and then do the super deluxe model, the the the ultimate expression of this, like after building upon the success of this first, like more of uh more MacBook version of it rather than uh MacBook Pro or Mac Mini versus Mac Studio. And then we'll we'll make the we'll make the the Pro version, the Vision Pro, like in a couple of years, that would be predicated upon the idea of this first version being a six big enough success to merit that kind of development versus, you know what, let's go out guns blazing, let's basically make the best version of this we possibly can, because the people who are going to be buying this are going to are we're not gonna we're not gonna get the people who are buying uh meta quest uh sets. We're we're gonna we're getting peop we're gonna get people who want like the finest thing and then later on based on the success of the Vision Pro, we will make a more affordable version of it. I could see Apple making that second decision. But either way, you can you can feel all of the arguments that went on like out on the development team about how the the the fundamental question of again, who are we selling this to and what are our expectations of it? It was you could you could see the claw marks on the side of it for all the fights that probably went behind the scenes. And you can see it at launch, right? Like I mean I I was I got like hammered online like on all the ne on all the social networks. It wasn't just Twitter, like the Mastodon people came at me too, which was funny because I was like, I'm not gonna buy this. This is a dev kit being masqueraded as a mass consumer product and it'ss not a mas consumer product. This is a dev kit that they are, you know, not positioning the right way. And and that's exactly what it was, right? And I and and and I I I will like gloat now because I was like, I was exactly right as soon as I saw it announced, as soon as I learned more that's what it is and you you can see to your point like it there were lots of tensions inside how do we position this who is this for how do we do the exploration and look the the content strategy, I think you, know mak,es sense to continue to go after that. Uh what I do think we should be prepared for though is that no matter what you know platitudes they say about the importance of spatial computing, I think that we have to like you know, think about the fact that Apple, I'm sure, is looking at different modalities and different form factors for where this content could be displayed and how it might work that are completely different from what the Vision Pro is now. And and and you know, maybe they are able to reuse some of the work and content, maybe they're not. I'm sure they've taken a lot of learnings. But if they're gonna continue to invest in this, the one thing I will say that does probably ring true about like the MacRumers report, which was kind of an amalgamation of other things, is that in this current iteration of where the product is now, this is not what anybody is working on and it shouldn't be. It should not be. A hundred percent. Because because it's not a good product and it's not a seller, right? Like when you have, you know, you're constrained by resources, you should not be doubling down on this of all things. Yeah, I I think it it's like I think it's not a product. This is the thing. I mean I I'm with you, Christina, about the dev kit thing. I think when I wrote my review of it, I basically said it reminds me of the early days of a computer where you'd spend six thousand dollars on an Apple two and then say what does it do? And the answer is um You tell us. Write a basic program and and play blackjack or something. And the problem is, and I I really do believe this, I wrote a piece about this at some point, that Apple doesn't know how to market products that are not mass consumer products anymore. And that Vision Pro is the example where they used they used like an iPad playbook for the Vision Pro. It's like, no, no, no, no. That is not what that product is. It is a it is an entirely like theoretical conceptual developer kit. Let's, you know, we're out on the edge. Let's try this out. And I think it hurts the I think it hurts the product that it was ever sold as anything other than that. I will say this though. Ben Thompson at Stratekary said something last week that has stuck with me that I think was really good. He tried the new meta display stuff and he said he felt like he liked the new meta uh display that's a very light, like little c tiny thing in your eye with some basic overlay information. And he also got the demo back when of uh of that that tech demo of the Gemini like AR specs. And he said his realiz ation was lightweight overlay is a thing and V R is a thing. And they and he his take was they don't really go together. That like there's like a lightweight overlay, which is what the MetaSpecs are trying to do. And there's like what the Vision Pro is trying to do. And I thought that was a really interesting idea because I think it says to me that, you know, maybe these aren't two maybe this isn't one thing. Maybe it is two different things. Maybe maybe it really there was a place for something. And remember there's a rumor um that they were trying and then they put it on hold or they killed it, making a version of this Vision Pro that was instead a tethered to a Mac. Yep. And it did two and so think about it. You could do extended display, which is a good feature of the Vision Pro. And if you're tethered to an Apple device, it probably would give you access to , for example, all of those great videos that you want to watch on a Vision Pro. And and that makes me think what Andy was saying, like there's probably a product, not now, but in the next few years that,'s not a Vision Pro. It is a severely cut down thing that is maybe a Mac accessory, yes, but that lets you do some level and and a sp and and what it's not doing is it's not a spatial computer. It's not its own iPad with its own apps on it and a bunch of windowing. It's a simpler concept. There are fewer, you know, there's no display on the front, there's a lot less Chrome, there are maybe some fewer sensors, and it's lighter and you know, maybe it's tethered or maybe it's it's not, but like whatever it is, it's a product that you could look at and a price tag that you could look at it and say, actually , that's worth buying. But it's not what the product is today. No, I agree with you. I think that maybe like if I you know if I were to do a post bortem or whatever, I think that they made the decision to not make it a tethered product, to make it an independent product. They made that for the reasons that they made that. I think in in hindsight, uh that was probably at this point maybe not the correct move. I think that you know, um may maybe Yeah. That was Johnny If by the way. Yeah. Oh I'm sure, right? But but but I think like treating it more like car play, treating it more like like an accessory, and again, you could have it wireless, you could do whatever and saying, look, we already have these great Macs and and even phones that can power this sort of thing. Why are we going to double down and build this into the device itself because that adds to battery that that that that you know decreases battery that adds weight that adds uh heat that does all kinds of things not to mention the the cost. It's like instead you could have a very good uh situation because if they sold for fifteen hundred dollars just a dumb display that connected to your Mac or um you know a a high enough end phone, I feel like more people would buy that. Of course. Than than than being like, oh no, I have to be $4,000 and it's still not even going to be as good as my Mac or you know uh or or whatever and I'm not gonna have access to all my things and the storage on it is weird and and all of that. It's a very Jurassic Park product in the sense that they asked they asked if they could without anybody asking if they should. And I mean it really is because so many of the decisions, they just decided, well, we can make it a standalone computer. We can put a screen on the front in order to facilitate human connection and all these decisions and like and you know Johnny Ive this has been reported a lot like they were gonna do a version where there was like a a a box that sat on the table that did all the processing and that made it a lot lighter. And Johnny Ive was like no,, we must do it all on the device. And it's like, well, so much for that box. Uh, and and like, yes, I wonder with John Turnus and maybe even with Mike Rockwell, if he sticks around at Apple, if they will take another run at a product, because look, say what you will about the Vision Pro, but even on day one, it was apparent, we're gonna learn a lot. Apple's gonna learn a lot. Users are gonna learn, like, we're gonna learn a lot about what this thing does and doesn't do from it existing. And boy have we. Yeah. It is such a perfect sister product to the Apple car because I I really feel as though the same generation, the same institutional thinking makes it part of we just we we we are a company that can is we're great at design, great at integration, we're great at software, we're great at hardware. What we we we c if we build this, they will come. The only mistake they made, unlike the Apple car, they released it. Did you did you rem I mean here's the thing, Andy, do you remember there was a report that came out about Project Titan that said, and again, I I not to beat on the guy, because he did some amazing work, but like late, late Apple Johnny Ive, I think was just a big bag of mistakes. Because he was bored. He was so bored. They they were trying to make a self, they were trying to make a at some point in Project Titan, they were trying to make a Rivian, basically, or a Tesla. They were trying to make a really good, computer-assisted, luxurious car. And then there was the report that they had pivoted and that they were only designing a car with no steering wheel where, everybody likes and no driver's area because it was totally going to be full self-driving. And that was the moment that I was like, oh no, they're so high on their own supply now. And it's like, what are you even doing and and i i agree both of those products seem to go in a path which was what is the most we could do what is the maximalist like because apple is a giant astride the world we can make anything happen and with vision they Pro did, get to a a thing that they could ship. With Titan, they literally couldn't ship it because you can't ship a car that doesn't have a steering wheel, right? You just it doesn't even level level five is three at least four wor se than level one, which is where they were at the point of of of the uh engineering standards for a self-drive or a system technology. I love the optimism and the and the and the like the forthrightness like let's not have any limits . Let's imagine what this product could be. But at some point, part of the product discipline is putting the limits there. And I do think that in his last years at Apple, John ny was surrounded by luxury goods, uh f,elt that he did that they could do anything, and made a bunch of product decisions that you look back on and you're like, why would anybody pay for that? But you know, that was uh so I wish OpenAI all the best, is what I'm saying. I I I I I like I gotta s I gotta say that I I like uh Christina's comment that you can just tell how bored he was. Like which is which is not uh not the same as having not wanting to put an effort. It's like I'm bored with the stuff that is sensible for this company. I want to design things that Apple really should not be making. On the edge, I want to be on the edge. And I'm so important to this not evil whether he was aware or not. Like I'm so important to this company that if I suggest let's at least put to put together an expl oratory group on a satellite. Like uh who's gonna say no? Who's gonna tell John Sir Johnny Ive no, right? Well that's the problem, right? I mean and ultimately I think this is why he was pushed out and whatnot. It took it to get to that point. But this is why he and Steve Jobs did work so well together because Steve Jobs was able to be an editor, right? But when you're bored, when you don't have an editor, when you don't have anybody really directing you and you can do whatever you want, it can lead to really ridiculous , ultimately not great products, even if they're beautiful designs, even if they're interesting experiments. And I'm not taking anything away from like the the brilliance of Johnny Ive, who's probably the greatest living industrial designer we have, but yeah, you could just tell the guy really wanted to design futuristic things and was tired of of making you know like actually like the MacBooks that actually made sense. Yeah he he's the kind of person who looks at the the steering wheel and the dashboard and is like, it's been done. Can we do something different? And it's like, okay, but look at all the clutter on this dashboard. One red big sign that says brace for impact. The Ferrari has a lot of switches that he did. But Steve was his great editor. They that's why they were just like um Waz and Jobs were a great combination. Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive were a great combination because they were they pushed each other and they could say no to each other. And and then when Steve died, they needed to keep Johnny around to keep some credibility. They felt they really needed to keep him around . But yeah, I think he was burned out. And I think he wanted new challenges and was interested in new stuff that was not necessarily practical. And, you know, I do think the Vision Pro is a product from that era. And uh that's why I, you know, I hope after technology advances and after they've spent some time uh updating Vision OS and creating new uh you know spatial video and and coming up with lots of other ideas and learning what works and what doesn't work on this platform. I hope they do eventually get another crack at it because I think there's probably a pretty great product that's an actual product that people would buy there. But it's not there now. And I I I actually don't blame them for taking some time off to let that cook while they do something like make some sunglasses that are airpods. Like okay, I'm okay with it. And that's your Vision Pro segment for the week. This is why we were so good at this. We can solve anything. That's right. But it's good baloney. Put us in because Stephen King said I make baloney, but it's good baloney. Uh just a word of warning. You might have seen Notepad Plus Plus uh for the Mac. This is a very popular PC program by a guy named Don Ho, no relation. Uh the notepad plus plus for the Mac is not by Don Ho , or anybody even Don Ho knows, but uh by uh a Russian fella, Andrei Letov , who is kind of uh stealing the name, shall we say. Uh it is not, and and Donho is very clear about this in any form or fashion related to the original. And uh you can ignore the um the uh app and I'm glad we never recommended it as a pick of the week. Notepad plus plus is awesome on Windows, it's a much needed app on Windows. It's a great app on Windows. But no, well it was it it was interesting when I saw it kind of get linked around, like I even like made a point to try to point out was like, hey, it's cool that someone did this, but this is not officially related in any way. You should know that. And frankly, if you're a Mac user, you should just use BB Edit and that is going to be my standard advice right because Notepad is a fantastic open source project it's under the GPL the developer is is really responsive and and it's fantastic but just because it was ported over, like it's still out all the same menu things that 's purely purely vibe coded. It wasn't vibe ported. It was a little bit more announced he w is gonna change the name to NextPad Plus Plus. So Again, just use BB Edit. The free version is great. The paid version is great. Yeah, there's a new version of BB Edit coming out in the next couple of weeks. And like and for those who don't know, they used to do Text Wrangler. They don't do that anymore because the base version of BB Edit, like ninety percent of the features are are available for free. So you should just get it. It should BB Edit should be on every Mac. Yeah. It should. Like it's literally it is one of the first applications I download every single time. Which case you don't need it. But well okay, but like if if if if if you're a sane person, BB ed it has Emacs key bindings, you can use an exactly does. And and and even if you and if and it doesn't even assume that you need you want Emacs. If you want Vi, that's fine. If you want VI, it'll help it. It it's there. Yeah. I think that's the next version that adds the VI and keep mixed, but yeah. Porsche's uh vehicle in the next Laguna Seca will be uh stealing from your six colors. Last weekend. It was last weekend they ran that. And they did they did a retro six colors to reference their race livery that they had back in the eighties. And it is gorgeous. It is the six color apple rainbow and the proper sequence and it's got the rainbow apple logo on top, and it's got Apple Computer in modern tectura, the old Apple II font. So good. Good job, Portia. Yeah. Also, by the way, um John Turnus has a Porsche and is a and and is a fan of of uh of Laguna Seca Raceway. So like something he's totally driving that car sometime. Yeah. If he doesn't if he hasn't if he didn't drive it last weekend, he'll drive it next weekend. Went to the Porsche website, went to the press site and got like downloaded the entire image package, but the poster is not there. There's like a poster that they put in the uh the Instagram post and the social media post and like two garage projects on one track in the vintage uh uh uh gar mon condensed font on a background of like original Macintosh beige. So they must have had Apple's approval for this. I mean you can't use Apple's logos. Yes Apple must have said that Oh yeah, yeah. This was a this was like celebrating it's like two it's Porsche anniversary and an Apple 50th anniversary and they this is a joint thing that they're doing. Yeah. But Apple Apple Music is, I believe, is actually a sponsor of their of their cars now too. So there's like existing deals there. So yeah. Yes, I'm sorry, Laguna Seka was Sunday. I apologize for getting that. I'm just shocked there's that the poster isn't available for sale. I I can't tell you how many different websites I hit to just there there must be some I'll I'll be rewarded if I keep clicking through clicking through I'll find some sort of like Porsche dot store dot home dot whatever that will have like a link that nobody knows about because I saw this uh post I thought I'd just pass it along david gelfman uh worked for uh apple for 12 years was on the team that uh d delivered the iPad the very first iPad in fact had the original iPad uh before it was released, had a friend who was terminally ill in the hospital and thought I would really like to show this person the iPad and show them some photos on the iPad, but I know I'm not supposed to show it to anybody. So on March 23rd, 2010, uh a month before the iPads, actually not even a month, a week or two before the iPad's official debut, he wrote an email to Steve Jobs explaining the story uh that he wanted to show his friend the iPod, he said, I know, you know, I have carry permission, but I can't show it to anybody. I take Apple security very seriously. I was hoping to get permission from you, sir Jobs, to show her photos on the iPad, even though it's not to be released until April 3rd. To which he got a two-letter reply from Steve Jobs. Okay . And uh he I glad he shared this with us because that's a little insight into uh nice Steve. And uh his friend was dying of liver cancer, which of course uh Steve, I think maybe even by then had had a liver transplant, certainly was aware the uh of the um consequences of uh all that . Um all right I think without further ado we can skip right to the the picks of week. You're watching Mac Break Weekly, Andy, Christ ina, and Jason. And okay, I got a kind of cookie pick of the week. I'm just gonna throw this out there. If you've ever uh been annoyed by a cat dancing on your keys? You'll be interested in this app. It's called Furwall. It blocks catastrophes. Believe it or not , the app, which is available on the Mac, you can also view the source on GitHub, watches the camera locally for a kitty . And when they see the cat on the keyboard, it will it will kill those keystrok es. So that the cat and who hasn't had a cat? For some reason, when you're paying attention to something, cats get jealous. And who hasn't had a cat walk on their keyboard typing and inserting junkie? I've literally had it happen during Mac Break Weekly. So yeah. There, I can I clear wall. Can I can I sh can I share my experience? I was visiting a friend of mine in Queens. I do not live there. He does not have an iPad. He does not even have a notebook. And I was like, uh I was I got up before everybody else and I said, Oh, I'm gonna get some work done. I put my iPad and my Bluetooth keyboard on the kitchen table, turned away from the kitchen table to get a drink, turned back at a cat the one of the cats was sitting on the keyboard looking at the scre en like what you've never seen this before this it's an instinct. You didn't want to type here, did you? It is it must be instinctive. What is it? That's so weird. Yeah. So this is one this app has actually been around for a while. Um but I um need to coordinate with people in different different time zones uh from time to time and and it can be frustrating to do that and I've even built tools before and then I remember that this app exists and I was like, why why did I do this? I should just have used Clocker. It is a free menu bar world clock where you basically, if you want to use it to display your calendar, you can. I don't use it for that because I use Fantastical and that just works better for me. But you can basically just set like whatever uh time zones you need to see. And in your menu bar, you can just you know uh either invoke a shortcut or pull it down, see what time it is um around the world. But what I really like about it is that you can basically scrub forward to see okay if I need to see what time is 7 a.m in you know Paris uh for for me in uh uh you know on the West Coast and I'll be like oh okay it's it's midnight or or or you know it might be you know um uh 11 p.m depending on on on the uh tradeoff. It would be eleven p.m. I guess um so anyway you can you can do that it's just a really simple app uh it's updated regularly. It's completely free. Big fan. I can tell you how old this is because in his calendar announcements in the screenshot it says pre-order the new iPhone S E . So you get some sense this might have been around for a while. What a good idea though. Very simple, just in the menu. I like menu bar utilities. The problem is there's limited space in the menu there is. But what I like about this is you can you can designate it to just like look like a clock or or one or two time zones. But then you can you know click on it and then see all the different time zones that you need. So it's just another clock, and then it doesn't take up any extra space. Uh Andy, your pick of the week. Uh my pick of the week is an Android app, believe it or not, but it is absolutely Apple related. Uh a lot of people have they they they might have AirPods and they might also have an Android phone and they were happy, sad to realize that yes, they will work as Bluetooth headphones, earbuds, but a lot of the features just are Apple specific and will not work. Librepods L-I-B-R-E-P-O-D-S has been around for a while and adds restores a bunch of that uh that uh those functions to uh using them on Android devices. However , I could use this on my Linux machines. Yes. Yes, exactly. So so it's it's a couple of different things recently happened to make this app even even better. Uh there are two problems of of getting compatible with a bunch of features. One of them was that uh Android itself had a bug in its Bluetooth uh Bluetooth stack. And also like all headphones, Apple did something kind of weird with how they implemented Bluetooth. That and basically because uh Android uh Google uh put out an update a couple months ago to fix that bug finally, the developers were able to finally address those problems. And now number one, you don't need to have a rooted uh Android device in order to run it. You can basically run it on most regular phones. And secondly, you get features like accurate battery status. I'm reading off the list here. Immediate ear detection. So like when you take the buds off or off or off, conversational awareness is enabled , uh listening mode. You can ba you don't have to actually control it from the buds. You can actually do it from the app or from a widget or from the uh uh or from the quick settings panel. Uh and like you said, it's compatible with Android, compatible with Linux, and I believe it is actually free. Uh so it's uh it really it it really is nice to see uh developers step into the breach and figure out how to fix things when uh when Apple or any other company will take it acros uh take it to uh take the product to compatibility to a place but not all the way to the finish line. I think there's still a a few features that don't quite work, but for somebody who like again, uh uh I haven't I want to buy AirPods because in terms of earbuds they are just so exceptional. But I've always had okay I better get the Sonys or they get something else because I just can't I I'll I'll use I will spend most of my time with these uh uh between the the uh my uh my Apple stuff and my Android stuff. I can't have just forty percent of features on my Android stuff. Uh but now it basically means that yeah, maybe the next time I buy earbuds I will buy the AirPods Pro because uh I've always just sort of like really, really, really good uh envied the noise cancellation and the and the sound quality and all the other little features. It is GPL licensed, it's open source and as with all good open source projects. It is hosted on GitHub. GitHub . Thank you, GitHub. Uh Jason Snell, your pick of the week. Yeah, I'm gonna pick Pedometer Plus Plus version eight. It's an it's an iPhone app, but even more importantly, it's an Apple Watch app. Um David Smith, uh disclosure, a couple of of friends of mine do this company, run this company. Uh David Smith is the primary developer, it is uh labor lovely. He's the one doing the maps on iOS too, isn't he? So this is watch. So this is what David has done. Is yeah, yeah. He is a he is a hiker, he's like a a an extreme hiker. He goes like up into Scotland and just hikes all over the mountains in Scotland all the time. Um, and so he built this new version. It's got a bunch of new features. The one that impresses me though is he wanted a map that looked good on his wrist on his Apple Watch, even in a dark mode. And so he worked with a cartographer to generate good maps so that if you're going on a hike, you can set the hike and you can see where you are on the trail map and you can see it in either mode and it's like it is it is a person who cares because he uses this and this is not his biggest app. Widget smith is undoubtedly his biggest app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's but pedometer plus plus he uses it and and they they also because he does these super ultra long hikes, they introduced a new mode in pedometer plus plus eight where it gets vastly better battery life on the Apple Watch by reducing the amount of time that it measures your heart rate and stuff like that. It goes into like a super low power mode for all of that. So like it is, if you're a hiker or uh somebody who does a lot of walking, uh it it is more than just a pedometer, that's what the pluses are for. Uh there so like great maps. I want this. This is great. Carefully, like not just taking stock maps, but like work ing with a cartographer to do good maps, good design, and even the simple stuff like the you know, your your step count on the Apple Watch, especially is gorgeous. So it's just a it's a huge update. It is, I think, clearly the best speedometer app out there on the uh on the iPhone and the Apple Watch. Made with care by a very small team. It's David and a couple of people he's brought on board since then. I think he has a new designer on this app, so it looks really good. It's one of those indie apps where when it starts out the programmer is the designer. It's like, well, those that's okay. But eventually you get to the point where you get some other people involved. And so him working with a designer and a cartographer and doing all this stuff. And if you go to David's blog, he actually has a whole post about, you know, how he is a hiker. And that is why he was working on this. Is he's been he spent what he said six years trying to get better maps on his Apple Watch for these hikes. And he feels like he's done it. So just uh it's worth checking out. And I I also just love, since I know David a little bit, he recommended some hikes when I went to Scotland last summer. Like he cares about this, like deeply he uses his own product, and as a result, this product is so much better than it would otherwise be because it's made by people who use it and care about it and want it to be better. So pedometer plus plus. Yeah, there's a free version, but there's also a paid version, the pro version. And I would get the pro version for the expedition mode alone. Yeah. Uh this looks fantastic. It's it's definitely made with great care. If you're if you're and I think MacBreak Weekly users are like this. You know, you're you're not just an Apple platforms user. You're somebody who like likes and appreciates when the when somebody sweats the details. You know, this is the app that sweats the details. She said . I wonder how many steps we took. And it's not the easiest thing on an iPhone to figure out how many steps you took. This is I need this totally. I'm gonna download it and use it today. That's it's really good. Yeah. Pedometer plus plus thirteen years in the making. Version version eight. Like this is he David Smith stands behind his apps. Nice. Like very nice. He tried he sometimes he launches apps and they don't go and then they disappear, but like the ones that click and this one is like obviously near and dear to heart. Well, I pay I subscribe to Widgetsmith too, so uh add that to my uh to my list. Thank you, Jason Snell. You'll find Jason at sixcolors.com, all his podcasts at six at sixcolors.com slash Jason. And of course, uh, you talked a lot about the Apple results uh on upgrade and uh and any other podcasts that you want to do. I updated that six colors.com slash jason page just for you, Leo, because I know you say it every week. So it's got a new picture of me and I reorder the podcast. I put Mac break break weekly or higher up because I want you to feel good when you go to that page. I didn't I didn't I'm not that kind of guy. You weren't asking but I had that moment. Well when I when I last revised this page it was just when I started on the site or on the on this podcast. And so I I put it I snuck it in there, but it's now it's rising in the in the it's rising in the charts. It's it's floating upward. Are you playing a a game uh on this? Uh you've got a button in front of you. What is this uh picture from oh this is uh I was hosting a game show on uh on stage in London uh love it that that's the relay ten uh so that's me as a game show host basically instead of what everybody knows me as which, is a game show contestant. There I am. Look, I can also be a game show host if I need to be both. I have no idea how to spell Nako, except I do because of that. Mnemonic. You're in the club. Anything you want to say about your life? Uh next week. I might have something to say about my life. His life begins next week, ladies and gentlemen. So very exciting for you, Andy. And Christina Warren, who has to quickly go and get her gown on. Gown. Yes, for the big ChatGPT 5.5 launch Party. So nice to see you. Developer Relations at uh the great GitHub Film Girl, Film underscore Girl on many, many platforms. She tried to change it, but she couldn't because no, you know what? I did, and then I was just like, I just gave up. And uh you know what? Um at the Metgala last night, Sabrina Carpenter I thought had one of the best outfits. She wore it was it was custom uh Dior and it was made out of film reels from the movie Sabrina . Oh my god. It was incredible. It was so good. And um a a friend of mine texted me. She was like, She's literally film girl, and I was like, you know what? She's stealing my bit, and I don't even care. I'm not even mad. I'm just so happy. Like because I was uh the outfit was so good. Everything was so good about it. I was like I don't even care that this is usurping the username that I've had for you know two thirds of my life. Hey, give me some advice. Are you all excited about uh the new Christopher Nolan film Odyssey which launches in July on IMAX 70 millimeter film versions filmed mostly at sea in a Viking longboat But they you know our local movie theater in Petaluma has a sign out front that says IMAX now. I don't know. I guess they're gonna put an IMAX. A lot of things mean IMAX now. Right. That's this is the problem. So that's not the obviously the seventy millimeter film. I have to go into the city for that. But it's still the incredible. I think the laser IMAX is good, isn't it? It is good. Yeah. So it's not even the big uh square screen. It's a no I love I love that someone referred to it as the latest movie in the bring Matt Damon home saga yes it's so true he's made a lot of those movies he gets home though this time he does get home it's it's it's an epic right well and look, like Oppenheimer was such a big moment. I it'll be interesting to see like a lot of summer movie, right? Oh yeah. Let me give you the so my friend Todd Viziri, who works at Industrial Light and Magic, he did a post on his blog about um, and this is literally like last month about what IMAX means. So I'm just gonna run through it here. IMAX means large format film cameras, but it can also mean large format film, but it can also mean a big digital camera, but it also means a very big theater screen, but it also can mean a regular size theater screen, but it can also mean a movie on a home screaming platform that has the exact same pixel dimensions, data rate, file format, and enclosing specs. But it also means film projection, but it can also mean digital projection. But it also means a tall aspect ratio, but it can also mean a different tall aspect ratio. But it also can mean a mixture of aspect ratios, but it also means a movie that was shot with non-IMAX cameras that alternates between aspect ratios that can play be played in big or regular theaters, but it can also mean a movie that was partially shot with IMAX cameras and two K