Picks of the Week

It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Jason, Andy, and Christina are all here. I'm back home. We have lots to talk about, including uh uh maybe twenty five dollars that Apple owes you. We'll tell you why. We'll talk about the Supreme Court saying , no, Apple, you got you gotta make some concessions uh to Epic. And Tim Cook goes back to China. That and a whole lot more coming up on Mac Break Weekly next . Podcasts you love. From people you trust . This is Twit . This is Mac Break Weekly, episode 102 4, recorded Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. Good talk . It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Yes, the show we cover all the latest Apple news. I'm back home, but Christina Warren has moved. I have. You're in the beautiful somewhere beautiful. Look at the greenery in the ancient window. Yeah, it's it's so green out. So I'm in Atlanta. Um I I'm in my mom's office. I'm the uh came to visit for Mother's Day. And it was funny actually because a Facebook memory came up of a photo I guess I posted where um five years ago, I guess it was this week, uh my nephew made his podcasting debut because he was in my arms as I was on an episode of uh of this week in tech and I held him the whole uh the whole episode and he was at that point I think he was maybe eight days old. You held a baby for three hours. I did. I did and he was good. And he was good. While his mother napped. That was my mother's g day gift to her. Oh I dimly remember that. Which episode was that? I don't remember now, but I have a five, but it was it was fine. Hold on. It was super cute though because um um uh he even had his own um uh um chiron, like it said like you know, like like a Christian Warren baby like as his as his you know title. That's Andy Yanako not holding a baby, probably holding a tome of some sort, because he's at the library Hello Christina was w was was his first words as a consequence of that like a name of like a mattress or a food prep company? You know no, but you know what he does. Okay, here here's the real thing though. The kids they watch so much YouTube and they're exposed to this stuff, even though my sister claims that she has like a you know low screen home, but come on. Um that that when he plays YouTube , like, which is what the kids do now, he's like like and subscribe. Oh does he have a little YouTube uh like Fisher Price YouTube set they should do that my friend they should do that yeah he just he just you know kind of build his own kind of thing but no somebody should like like Fisher Price or or or somebody should create like a a creator set of a fake cameras and and backdrops and stuff. That honestly, I'm saying this out loud. I'm like, that's this is actually a really good idea. Also here, his ink stained fingers now recovering from many, many colors. Jason Snell of six colors .com. Hello. Good to see you. Good to be seen. We did the same thing. You were in Hawaii preparing for Jeopardy, working. I was in Hawaii, did five, four shows in Hawaii. Um, but I'm back now . All I brought back was a little tan in this shirt. So oh, and somewhere I have a lay. Aloha. Aloha. What a great trip it was. It was so much fun. And while I was gone, a few things uh happened. For instance, the uh we knew this would you, I think Jason, you said this would happen. Supreme Court instantly turned down Apple's appeal in the Epic Games lawsuit. No only reason I say that is because I was I I think Jason would probably have hedged more, which would be the smarter thing, and I was just like, no, they're gonna they're not even gonna hear this. No, no. I mean I I would have said something like these days, who knows what the Supreme Court is going to do, but yeah, the Supreme Court just basically apples like, please sir, we we must we must spare us from the the law. And uh the Supreme Court was like Spare us from the law. Nope. Yes . That's exactly what they were saying. Yeah. Elena Kagan uh on behalf of the court in the uh shadow docket declined to pause a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that considered Apple in contempt. This is Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the epic lawsuit. Contempt is literally the word, I think. Um on App Store fees. That's it. Boom. So it goes right back to Judge uh Gonzalez Rogers. Now they're now the fight is over what commission Apple can charge. Not twenty seven percent. Tim Sweeney, of course, taking the victory lap again. Yep. The Supreme Court has considered Apple's delaying motion and found it unworthy. Yeah. I w I w I wonder if Google's settlement or n uh planned rev revision of how they run the goal the the Play Store, which they did hand in hand with uh with Tim with Sweeney is going to affect how the judge rules on this. It's okay. Well, you know what? Uh, a company that's has a uh as big an app store as yours uh dealt with this company, and they decided that 10% was pretty much okay, uh scaling up to, I think it was like 15 or sixteen percent. Tell me why you should not have your your fees reduced to the same thing. I I don't I I don't know where the where the argument goes like legally, but the fact that that can't be a good thing that there is this other app st ore out there that seems to have had a negotiated settlement and they have accepted and Google has accepted way, way, way under twenty-seven percent. It's ironic because Apple told the Supreme Court in its filing , regulators around the world are watching this case to determine what commission rate Apple may charge on covered purchases in huge markets outside the United States. To which the Elena Kagan said, Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's why going back to the judge to figure it out. That's why we're not gonna screw this up. Yeah. Uh so uh we'll see what happens. Uh the contempt, by the way, the civil contempt ruling also holds. So uh that gives the judge additional uh ammunition to do something. I don't know fine apple or something. Uh so we'll see um what happens. It's going back to the uh the judge in the uh Stall, stall, stall, stall, stall by all of a sudden deciding that hey judge, uh we can't move forward because we have to petition the government of South Korea uh to let us have access to Samsung's uh stuff, and the judge basically slapped them saying, Yeah, it's really suspicious that you had about a year and a half to think about this, and only like a week before we're supposed to move forward do you decide this? Apparently, uh apparently another an another court basically said, Yeah, uh we'll let we'll let you do that. We'll let you go we'll let we'll let you get your discovery documents from uh from Samsung before we move forward. So I don't that it must be nice to it must there must be like this weird leaderboard somewhere in the legal wing of the of the spaceship campus about wins and losses of like, okay, we we our little horsey got two steps forward. Only took only took one step back. This was a good week, everybody. This was a good week. We get to have Kelzones on Friday. Not a good week for uh Apple. Um a two hundred fifty million dollar settlement has been reached now over the Siri delays. And the reason I mention this is you might well, uh all of us might well be getting some money uh from Apple, up to ninety-five dollars per device in this settlement. Yeah. I think the minimum was thirty or forty, I think twenty five dollars. Depending on how many users submit claims. So they divide the total two hundred fifty minus the lawyers fees by the number of people who ask for the money back. Once it's a multiple it's going to be the lower number, right, probably. But still it's going to be worthwhile. Has anyone set up like the website yet where you can you know your claim so that's the next thing is the is the lawyers will have to set that up. Yeah. I think I think you have to have bought a fifteen or a sixteen. Was basically about people who might have s seen the WWDC keynote about, hey, in just a number of months, we're gonna be giving you all these wonderful AI features that we're demonstrating for you right now, and we promise, promise, promise that you're gonna be getting them very, very shortly. So it's on the basis that anybody who might have bought a brand new iPhone like around the time the keynote came out, all the way through the time where they decided that yeah, we about that, no. Uh they might feel as though we we bought this based on a promise of a feature that you or more years. Uh it added that Apple saturated the internet, television, and other airwaves to cultivate a clear and reasonable consumer expectation these transformative features would be available upon the iPhone's release. long, but I I guess it was emphatic though. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was running during football playoffs and stuff and it was it was stating it as if those features already existed. It actually sort of stated that like they were they were basically there or coming shortly and it that you know they never ship them. So I I it's kind of nice to see that there's at least a little bit of recriminations for saying things that aren't true in commercial announcements. It's kind of uh when I was a kid I don't think kids say this anymore, we used to say, oh, it's on an ad. They can't lie on ads. Uh I think we know better now, right? Uh but you can't you ha there's a risk if you lie on an ad. You can't lie on ads. You you can you can market and and you know emphasize and do all there are all sorts of things you can do. Ads can be misleading, but you cannot actually, lie about facts about the product that you're advertising. Okay. It's not protected speech. This is one of those things that comes up sometimes, which is like, Well, what about the first amendment? I can say whatever I want. Commercial speech is not really protected in the same way that that that a person's speech is, because the idea there is that the law is protecting the people being spoken to, and that just lying to them because it's your free speech right to do so is So that's why yeah, you will see issues with the FTC striking things down and then class action lawsuits and all sorts of stuff like that. That that's that's that's why we as we say every time we we talk about uh the quarterlies, it's unusual because it's a ti it's the only time during the during the year in which the senior executives have to answer questions and if they say anything that is even marginally misleading, there Turned out to be not only not true, but Apple should have known it was not true and they got sued by shareholders to tune a half a billion dollars. Yeah, you know, they actually find Elon Musk for lying on Twitter about the value of Twitter. They actually find him like one and three quarters million. I know. He had just he had to search pocket for that. Ah pocket. Yeah, in the coin in a coin pocket he's got a little moth flies out of it. So I guess my point being I wouldn't count on the S E C or the F T C really enforcing these rules, but you know what? Class action works. million dollars from applications. Well they spent more in in lawyers fees, no doubt. Absolutely. Although these lawyers aren't retainers, so they're spent and once again they settled. They did not let this go to trial. This did not go to trial, which could have been a lot more expensive, right? And nobody wants to uh to have discovered As part of the settlement they agree they uh said uh no fault of ours. We admitted no wrongdoing. But we're just as we're nice guys and we're just gonna give them a little money just 'cause we feel bad. We feel bad. Our mistake. No wrongdoing. Either now this will all be made good this in next month, right? W W D C all of those features will suddenly appear. I don't think so. I I mean this is this is our speculation , right? But like it feels like there was a little bit of a pivot because they were originally trying to ship all those features in the spring and then they said we're gonna not do that and ship it this summer. And I think everybody is starting to think that they've shifted gears from can we make good on all our promises from 2024 to let's not think about what we promised in 2024 and think about what we can deliver in 2022. Take $25 and stuff and forget what you saw here. Yeah. But but this is-I mean, this is seriously exciting though, because this is like both Google and Google I.O. next week and Apple W andWC next month are gonna have an amazing keynote. Or th I'm looking forward to both of them the way that I have not uh for either of them in a couple of years now. Because Apple were asked, they had a lot of promises a couple of years ago, and then last year they had eat a lot of crow with their hat in their hand. I'll add a third metaphor, but which I'm not gonna come up with. But now they're like , it's in a hat in the hand. But but but now it's like okay, well, again, well, we decided to have like one of the premier foundation model makers make us our foundation model. So we're on top of that. Number two, we're also deciding that we're gonna make our platform ecumenical to any uh any AI that wants to run on it because we don't we figure we we win so long as you but you buy our iPhone. We don't have to do that. It seems as though they're it they're positioned in a pl and also they they have learned their lesson very, very well. I feel this is not gonna be a Steve Jobs, you're holding it wrong sort of thing. This is okay, what can this is a Tim Cook, what can we learn from this and how can we come out from this even stronger? What did so just out of curiosity, 'cause I it was a while ago, what did they promise? Personal So the idea was uh that they were going to do an on-device uh semantic index of your personal information that then an on-device model was going to be able to um look through and make some intuitions about stuff that you could do. So it was things like uh answering questions about who did I email with last month that did this thing or the the the classic one is the my mom is coming in when do I need to get her at the airport and it knows to get your mom's like uh text message about her flight and look at a flight info thing and find out when her arrival is expected and then look in maps and see what the time is for the airport and like build up these. There's this idea of like mining your personal information and also doing multi-step automation. So uh that you can which is great. Like it's kind of a gentic, we would say now. Um, the problem was that like the app intense frameworks that are probably responsible weren't there, and the uh model was not strong enough and it and we haven't heard a lot of detail. I love the idea of building a personal index on device that is not getting uploaded somewhere and then being able to do some intelligent kind of parsing of that inform ation, but will they be able to pull that off? It's unclear. I mean some of that stuff is absolutely still happening, but whether they whether they're gonna bite off that whole thing or whether they're gonna be a little more restrained about about app intense. Because app intense, the whole idea there is apps making um features that they can do available to the system so that the system driven by an LLM bas,ically by an agent, can say, I'm gonna use this lookup from maps, and I'm gonna use this thing from mail, and I'm gonna take this thing from a third party app and get an answer and then give you the answer. And that's the dream , right? And we see it's funny. Today it seems more understandable than in twenty twenty four, I would argue. Like today we've seen more agentic stuff that's 1996. It's not a good thing. I'm doing this right now with my own agent, and I can do it with Telegram on my iPhone and my Apple Watch, telling my asking my agent for any of that stuff if my agent can go to the case . I think it is doable on a certain level, but whether they'll try to replicate like every feature uh that they promised in twenty four or whether they'll be like, let's I think they need to recalibrate and say, let's start with what we can do. But this would be this would be crucial because I can do this because I know what I'm doing and I've spent hours, days you know coding all this with my uh with with uh oh claude at first now hermes with chat gpt and uh this would make all of those capabilities available to normal people who aren't willing to or able to do that, that would be pretty cool. I think people would appreciate that. Especially I mean remember Google also promised something similar ages ago with its cards on Android. Uh but of course that means Google knows everything about you and you have to use Gmail and all this. For Apple to be able to do it privately, I think would be very desirable. I think people would look what they're doing with Minis. They're buying Mac Minis to run OpenClaw. If you could do all that in your iPhone, that'd be a hell of a product. Yeah. I think and I think it's doable. I don't I I know you you don't think they'll do all of that, but I think with Gemini local models, they could do a lot they could do a lot of that. I think I I do think that this is uh it's you the past is the past. They can't go backwards in time and undo what they did a couple of years ago. But it and if you look at it this way, it can be a benefit that that the world is different in twenty twenty-six than it was in the 2024 set of plans that they made. Now they can basically react, instead of saying we have to build our own AI and we have to build our we have to be our own island, they basically say so long as we are we are an open port for whatever w the people who are sp sp the Googleending $190 billion this year on infrastructure. We don't have to spend that because we can we can have all the features that Google is making for their own agent work on our stuff. We can spend a penny's on the dollar to get that same kind of functionality on our thing. They get to take all the b all the hits, they get to do all the support, they get to put build the infrastructure. All we got to do is build a a thousand dollar phone that people are going to want to run this stuff on . Well I, think people will want it. And uh I will very you're right. It's gonna be a very interesting couple of weeks. I can't see the new version of the thing. Do you think Google will uh offer something like that? Oh, next next week is going to be uh if if you just look at what they were talking about for uh for for for cloud customers, uh and then you extrapolate that to now they now let's see what they can do for Android. They're having their Android like video event today. So we'll find out what whatever they want to show off for Android today. Next week is when they show off whatever the new user-facing version of Gemini is going to be, as opposed to corporate-facing one. And a lot of the stuff that is that they they've been that's been leaking and remember google is not really good at keeping secrets people just talk and talk and talk uh so there's a there's already a whole bunch of stuff about that's that's leaked about the new gemini that is agentic in the sense and not in the sense of a developer who's building a workflow by clicking things together in uh in some sort of scripting language, but simply creating a prompt that says start with by doing this, then do this, then do this, and seeing how well that works. Uh and again, I don't I I'm not I'm not predicting this is gonna it's gonna be fantastic, wonderful groundbreaking stuff. No no more than we're predicting that Apple's gonna be doing brown groundbreaking stuff in June, but it's going to be very, very interesting. We're not we're at the point in which uh I I guess I I guess rem remember remember we when these have demos of like walking robots in which it's tethered to like a machine like at the top for all for all the power and for all the compute and it's sort of like can do sort of human speech and then now it's at the point where like it's actually doing like dance numbers and actually like folding laundry and and sorting parts. I feel as though we're cr both Apple and Google have again in terms of making a consumer mobile operating system and uh and and desktop operating systems, we've gone past the point in which this isn't this is interesting research through the point where we've built these tools and these features. We're hoping to convince you that you want to change how you live and work so that they will be relevant to you. And now they're in at least the potential, both Apple and Google, where they don't have to make that sales pitch. They can just simply say, name one thing that you have to do every day or every week that is annoying because it's boring and repetit and repetitive. If you can describe it to an assist to a a human assistant, we can basically have our assistant do it for you. And you'll have to talk to it a couple of times to get to iron out some of the creases, but basically you will no longer have to be coordinating three different calendars and three different uh sets of cars to get all of the uh all of your kids to the right uh wrestling practice and soccer practice. We'll be covering that, of course, uh keynote on uh the club TWIT. Yeah. Uh in fact, both keynotes, the WWE C keynote and the Google I.O. keynote will be only uh for Twit Twit members uh because uh alas, we don't want to get uh strikes against us on our YouTube channel. So if you're not a member of Club Twit and you wanna watch our coverage, uh yeah, this is gonna be very exciting. Christine has pointed out that Google has already announced stuff, which kind of is interesting. They announced uh uh a Chromebook successor. Yep Yeah, they announced a Chromebook successor and they announced, I guess, the next version of of Android , um, which makes sense because I know last year at I.O. the emphasis was definitely more on a lot of the um AI stuff. Um and the other thing. So they're clearing the deck so they can they don't have to waste time on it. They did the same thing last year with the all the Android stuff was a week before and then they 're not going to bring back that Android show that they do before. Yeah, exactly. Second year. Christina, you have to cover this because uh working at GitHub you have to be ecumenical. Yeah, of course. Well no, and I'm just interested in all this stuff anyway. No, it is actually it is aluminium. Oh. Okay. Well, we have to say aluminium now? Yeah. Even in the US? In the sense that it's a successor to chrome. That's why they call it aluminium. Chrome? Eum. Aluminium . Yeah. It's not gonna be the final branding. That's just the code name. Is it more Android, do you think, than Chrome OS? Well they're claiming that it's that 's a combo. It's a fusion of the two. So the idea is to bring so bring something to Android similar to what we have in iOS, where you have a developer can write a a phone app that will then basically with either minor changes or maybe no changes be an iPad app. And then if you were to run this on for Apple sense, uh on an iPad that has a trackpad and keyboard, it will also run trackpad and keyboard. The idea is to have that kind of like multitasking, multi-windowing, multi-app thing going for Android. Let's see if that actually works, because they still don't have the apps like they have for iOS and iPad OS, but it's a good I think it's going to be um very interesting because especially for competition for the Neo. Because uh right now, if you get a Lenovo one of the Lenovo Chromebooks with the media Tech Companio chip, which is a terrible name for actually a surprisingly good chip. You're getting basically M2 performance on a six hundred fifty dollar box. Yeah. I think there's there's some competition here for Apple. I'm I've seen a number of people say my favorite laptop is my uh is my uh yeah media tech based Chromebook. I'm I'm sure Google is well aware of what the advantages are of Chromebooks and Chrome OS, but ever anytime they tinker with it like this, I have that moment of like, I hurt I sure hope they know what they're doing. Yeah. Not because of their track record as much as that history is full of examples where a company has big ambitions and they don't understand the thing that makes their product successful and they mess it up. And I I wasn't gonna mention like George Lucas, but like I just did. But this idea that sometimes the people who are in charge Are you saying this will be the Jar Jar Binks of uh Chromebook? Well sometimes I would argue sometimes the people who who made the thing are not necessarily the people who understand it the best. The name alone makes me worry that it's a little bit of an ego trip. But like what is great about Chromebooks in some ways is their simplicity, the fact that they they fit into a school so easily. And like they gotta be really careful here because they could make what is a better computer, but if they risk the thing that makes people love Chromebooks, they could put that whole part of the market at risk. So I I just I'm always a little worried when somebody comes in and says, Oh, we're doing a whole new thing now. It's like did they are they taking care not to destroy the other thing? Actually, the show title. Yeah, the Jarbook. Here's the thing though. A lot of kids like who grew up on the first like on on on the second trilogy, they love Jar Jar. Like that's their childhood. Like that's this weird thing, right? So so aga and I know this because I talked to the child. So it works on two levels. Talk about how like their favorite thing, you know, was like their childhood, which to them it's you know the films that the the trilogy that started in nineteen ninety nine, not nineteen seventy seven. So I I agree with you, Jason. Like I think they need to be careful. At the same time, if from what I've read and I haven't read a lot about this either, they've have a lot of succession planning around this. They have a lot of support things in place. I don't doubt that they have, you know, I mean, I know this personally and I th everybody does. Google has more uh telemetry data and and metrics than probably anybody on the planet uh about things. Now that's not to say that you can design that way. It is just to say though that it's not as if they're going into this, I would hope, blind about how are people using this product. I think the real thing is what the challenge has been with Chromebooks, and this is part of the reason I think what the MacBook Neo is such a special device, is that a Chromebook is a great device for not just schools but for businesses too. Like you can actually do a lot with them and you can get them to be much more powerful um than you would think and and they can have like Windows apps it's and it's it's not just the the web browser experience. The problem is it when you run into those applications that are not available as a web app or that have not been packaged in a certain way for Chrome OS, which is uh you know a not insignificant amount of applications, you're stuck. And so the NEO has this advantage in that you can run regular Mac apps, right? They might not run perfectly and they might not be suited for all tasks, but you can run them, especially, you know, most apps out there are gonna run really well. And you can also run iOS apps, which uh how they run on on Mac OS regardless of of how powerful your laptop is, I think kind of depends on the application, but you can do that. And so I think a big part of this is basically saying you can have access to all of the Android ecosystem apps on this device alongside any of the web apps and it and if people you know create more customized things too. And that I think helps them close a gap that they've had for a really long time, um, which was that you know they had this Linux base, but nobody's building Linux applications and Google certainly doesn't want to be in the business of trying to distribute Linux binaries. So this I th this this is at at the very least, I think this could be some good competition to help, you know, hopefully keep Apple's eye on the ball and and keeping the NEO and the future NEOs moving in the direction that they've had it moving in um you know just since we've seen it in March. We're going to take a little break. There's lots more news, in fact, a big, big announcement, but we'll we'll get to that in just a little bit. You're watching Mac Break Weekly with Christina Warren uh of GitHub, where she's in developer relations, Andy Inatko, and uh Jason Snell of Sixcolors.com. Our show today brought to you by Zoc Doc. Life can feel like a puzzle. You're constantly trying to fit all the pieces together. Your career, your passions, and of course your healthcare. It can be a lot , but finding health care should not be, you know, the last thing, the trickiest piece to fit into the puzzle of your life. But it's pretty important. 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And then the journal advanced the story this week and said there is a preliminary agreement, which whatever that means, does that mean they signed something, or does that mean they've agreed that this is the framework, but they haven't put it into like there's a lot of semantics there. And Mark German had a very passive aggressive response on Twitter where he basically was like, You read my story. He didn't even mention the journal. He's like, read my story from last week. But I think it's another one of these cases where Mark Gurman's a little offended that some other news organization advanced the story that he was working on before he could. Uh but so he's like, oh, there's still it's still in process. But like r I d I tend to think the Wall Street Journal probably has a good source here that there is that that there is momentum and that they they are they've basically agreed that this is going to happen. And the idea here is I and I don't want to overspin this because people I I've seen some reports that are like, oh, Apple and Intel, what's happening here? This is actually like phase two of Apple's find places to make chips that isn't that aren't in Taiwan . Phase one was with TSMC, their chip partner, and they are working on a chip fab in Phoenix, Arizona with TSMC. But those aren't the high ends. Well, well, the these Intel chips are not going to be at the cutting edge. Oh you don't think they'll be the theory. Intel can't Intel's cutting edge is not TSMC's cutting edge. Intel is behind TSMC. So these are not going to be on the cutting edge, but they will be first off geographically a different location than Taiwan second off politically and just keeping your you know keeping keeping your bets spread around a an American company and a different company Intel it also means that Apple is giving some money in exchange for products to Intel, which builds the Intel up a little bit as an alternative T T SMC so that Apple isn't completely beholden to TSMC and only TSMC, which they are right now. Um, and so yeah, I mean the question is what are these chips? And I I think it does make you wonder up till now Apple strategy about differentiating Apple Silicon has been they build a few chips with TSMC and then they bin some of them in order to, you know, some of them that don't qualify for the high end. They they you know use those as bin chips in a lower end and that and they make it work. But once you're making chips at someone else's foundry, what are those chips, right? Like you you have to I my understanding is you know you can't just like save as to a different foundry. So like I I start to wonder if Apple strategy in America making chips is going to be like, do they come up with like essentially a second-tier set of processor designs that are not for your iPhone Pro, but maybe for your iPhone, not for your iP ad Pro, or maybe even your iPad Air, but maybe your base iPad. Like maybe for your MacBook Neo. Maybe these are the chips that don't have to be on the latest three nanometer, then two nanometer than whatever comes under 2 nanometer process from TSMC. So it'll be interesting to see how they do this because it's a different strategy to have these other foundries if they're if they're making systems on chips, which it sounds like is kind of the plan. But like it's not, it's to be clear for people who hear Intel and have a flashback. Like this is the foundry part of Intel. This is Intel doing the foundry business that they they lost the you know or they refused to do for a while, uh where they're gonna take Apple's designs and make Apple's chips on their own. Does it? If they can't it does in the sense that first off, Intel you're you're investing in Intel, which means that Intel is going to make every, you know, they're going to try to catch up to TSMC eventually. But it also means that if you don't, if you're making s uh SOCs, systems on chips uh at Intel in the United States and, something catastroph ic happens to TSMC in Taiwan , you can still get SOCs for your products. They might not be as good as the ones from Taiwan, but right now, all of them are from Taiw an. So having some of them be made in America has a few advantages. Yeah, but there's no advantage if you have a laptop that's got everything but the CPU . You're kind of still not shipping top. Yeah, although you know what there are PC manufacturers. There are PC manufacturers who are shipping computers without RAM, saying, you know, get the RAM wherever you can. Uh we can't. So at least you can buy something. Good news, we've made this laptop eight ounces lighter. I don't think Apple's gonna do that. So you think it it the Neo that they could make something like an A eighteen? Well, I I think the question is I my understanding, and I'm not a chip person, but my understanding is that you can't say VAS, right? Like if you're gonna design for Intel's Fab , you can make a variant of a chip you've already designed, maybe, but like it's not the same chip. Three nanometer node. It's not as easy as all of that. So that that's a complicating factor here. But yeah, I do think if they're going to be making SOCs in the United States, and maybe I mean they've got the packaging technology there, so who knows, maybe they're making some parts and then they're gonna package them together with other parts. I I don't know what they're gonna do here, but one option might be to use these to make uh make chips that don't need to rely on being the latest and greatest process and that they're a little bit behind, but but they, you know, because Apple does sell lower end products that back in the day would have been you know cheaper Intel parts. And now what they are is binned TSMC parts or they're from the next step down. They're not an M chip, they're an A chip or whatever. But like they may so they may tweak their chip strategy in order to take advantage of whatever they're building here. Um unless again, unless uh the work can be put in to say like we're gonna make two different kinds of A20, one of them at TSMC and one of them at Intel. But I've I've heard some people say that that's not as likely as them doing a different design on Intel. They opened this morning. Intel opened this morning at 132 bucks. Big leap forward, uh probably because of this, but they've gone back down to 117, so it's been very volatile. It sounds like the market is uh not convinced that this is going to be anything. Remember, this could merely be another uh uh SOP to the Trump administration because they have ten percent of Intel. Uh they you know, hey yeah, we're gonna build an America. Uh and that's all apparently the Trump administration cares about is that statement rather than the point of it yeah. Well but to Jason's point too, I mean I think I think that maybe this is why the market is volatile is that we don't know what types of ships these are going to be, right? Like i if it's if it's taking existing designs and modifying them onto Intel's node process, which again I don't know, but that does seem unlikely, or if it's saying, okay, we will use this for specific types of chips that we can then put in the many types of components we sell that aren't just the most high end phones and and laptops. Um and and that I think uh I don't know if that material matters to to Intel's success or not. Uh I think at this point just the fact that anybody is using Intel, you know, at all is is a good thing for for Intel. And Apple really is struggling keeping uh their Macs uh on on the market . Now according to uh Mac rumors, the uh 32 gigabyte and 64 gigabyte variants of uh the studio are no longer available for purchase. The M3 Ultra with two fifty-six gigs of RAM is off the shelf. So the five twelve is long gone. So now, you know, you're you're gonna have to settle for sixty-four gigs if you can get it. The M3 Ultra I'm sorry, ninety-six is the uh only variation available in Max Studio. Um M3 Max Studio and M4 Max Max Studios are now out nine to ten weeks. They are and I know Apple would love to make these, but boy, uh they're it sounds like they're running out of chips. It's t it's terrible. The the thing that kind of breaks my heart is that so they've they've dropped like the entry level um uh ma uh G4 excuse me, M4 Mac mini off the price list completely. Yep. And so which means that like the cheap it's it was so lovely to have a five hundred and ninety-nine dollar, absolutely perfectly useful, performant, broad use sort of machine on the on on the list. And it breaks my heart a little bit that now the cheapest one is now two hundred dollars more. I hope that I hope we don't see the same thing. Absolutely. No, I think we can blame a lot of people for this. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, let's blame them. I don't know what to do. Uh yeah, but I mean there's a shortage all around data centers as well. Exactly.. Yeah And people are buying these Mac Minis and they and they and they Yeah, it is a shame because there are people who want to buy a Mac mini because they want a Mac Mac mini, not because they want to do local AI. Great price. And let that's that's why I hope that like the for the MacBook Neo, it wouldn't be as bad a hit if they were to drop the two fifty-six gig one and simply start but because that that but instead of being a five hundred and ninety-nine dollar laptop, the cheapest one would be now $6.99. And that cuts so much sla ck to all the Windows laptop makers and Google who's now going to be trying to sell these Google Google Books at the end of the year. Because $599 for a device of that quality was absolutely untouchable. Whereas $699, you have enough wiggle room where you can say, okay, that's not a dirt cheap machine. That's where we actually are going to give you an aluminum body. That's actually where we can say that hey look we've actually give you like a useful number of ports that's that will make me make this a lot more uh uh pleasant to use on a day-to-day basis that hundred dollars but is it remember that for every for all the people who are saying, oh my god, it's great that this thing is so cheap. There are so many people for whom God, I really only have $500 to spend. I that's as high as my budget will go. But you know what? I can stretch it for a little bit to get a MacBook. But that extra hundred dollars says no, there's absolutely no I cannot afford six ninety-nine. I could barely afford five, and I'm grateful for it, but I cannot afford six ninety-nine. So that would break my heart if they had to do that. Well and and it it I was just gonna say to add insult to injury and I don't think they're gonna change the price on that. I don't think they can. I I think that it hurts them. But you know they changed the way that the uh U.S. education store verification happens now. Yes. And and so you have to verify through um unidays. Now look, that's fine that regular people. And I definitely I mean I I primarily was buying it for for other people, but like I'm not gonna lie here on this podcast and pretend that I didn't use that for um other things before too. I'm I'm a student of life after all. Here's where this concerns me. Here's where this concerns me, because I don't care. I can I can afford to pay the regular price. When they made this change , which A, I don't like because you have to give your information over to a third-party data broker, and I'm firmly of the opinion, I don't care how many companies do this, that if you want to collect that data, that the company should do it themselves. But the real problem is is that now they what they've done is that you can only get the student discount if you are about to enter college or if you are a um you can be a a a teacher of any type, including a homeschool teacher. So if you have a homeschool kid and you're you know, have a letter of intent, you can get the the student pricing. But if you have a kid in K to twelve and you're not a teacher, you can't get the education price anymore. And that I think is actually really bad. And I'm really upset by that. I I I think there would have been a better way to do a verification scheme that would have been able to include um K- 12. But but to your point, Andy, I think that if you when you combine those two factors, right, where there are people who were looking at like, oh well, I could get this for five hundred dollars. that Now option is not there unless you're a college student who are not the people who uh who should be getting a MacBook Neo anyway. I don't think a MacBook Neo is enough for college. Um so yeah, it it's it I I I would be shocked if they did anything about the the neo pricing. I think they're just gonna take the hit on it as long as they need to for this generation. But I my real fear is that because of all the external market conditions, this gives Apple cover to raise the price on the subsequent releases of the Neo and the Mini. And that I think would be a real shame. Aaron Powell So apparently according to a scooter X in our club, Apple has been using Unidays in other countries. Yes. Um and then uh YZF donor says Unidays didn't ask for any of my email except my school email address, then it handed me off to my school's SSO and then returned me. So I guess the school does the verification I think it varies from from depending on how you're doing it, 'cause in some cases, like if you're uh if if you're not on their system then you have to give them some documentation. From what I understand the process isn't that bad. But again , it does not work for people who are K to 12 unless your kid is homeschooled. And then the parent can apply as the homeschool thing. And that I think is a much bigger deal, right? College students, fine. You can you can you can do that. Um and and it's not that big of a deal, but you're cutting off the the people who really I I think the new especially this was like a really great thing for for families, frankly, too. And they are gonna accommodate home school uh students as well. Well no, but they're the only ones who are accommodated. That's my point, Leo. If you are K through twelve, you do not get this discount. You do not get it unless you are a teacher, period. End of story. Shille can use the app or website to verify their academic standards. I'm reading uh this from Mac uh rumors. Yes, and if you go to the Apple actual email address from an educational institution, a student or staff photo ID or another valid educational document , but not K through twelve? Not K through twelve. When you go through Apple's actual process, it says that it is qualified students who are have been accepted to college, are K through twelve's teachers, um, or are homeschool teachers. So if you attend college or have been accepted to college, so if you you know are graduating next year and you've already been accepted, or I guess if you're you know one of the the kids who's in like an early college program, then you qualify. Now Apple could make changes to this, but Unidays does not verify because they can't people under sixteen. So um uh th this is you know uh w cut out anybody who's just wanting to be able to get a MacBook Neo or uh an iPad or anything else for their kids. Yeah for this, I would say. Uh apparently uh Mac Romer said Apple used Unidays back in twenty twenty two briefly but, for like two days. Yeah. Complaints about it, uh caused them to drop it. So maybe uh this is just another this will be another abortive attempt that would be. So it's it's it is uh Apple Watch is now also included, which is nice, I guess. Um so this is really just kind of a spiff for college kids is really what it is. And teachers, which is good. Which is good. Yeah. But I do think to to talk about the the neo pricing just quickly, I know there's a lot of talk about well, is Apple gonna really eat margins? Apple loves margins. And I just a realization I had is on a five hundred and ninety-nine dollar product , you know, if you lose some margin, like in the grand scheme of things, this is not driving enormous amounts of Mac revenue uh anyway. And you've got a product that's a hit. So I have a hard time imagining that they will do anything to slow the momentum of a brand new hit product that is putting the hurt on their competitors, even if they lose some margin short term, because is the MacBook Neo really a margin play anyway? It's like a market share play. And I know that's different for them, but like a 5$99 computer is not gonna throw off huge profits anyway, regardless, right? So they'll they'll give back a little bit more, but as long as they're making money on the NEO and they're hurting their competitors by sell with every Neo they sell, I think that the they should they should be happy to just keep it at the existing prices, with the only caveat there being, I'm sure they're looking at the next generation of the Neo and saying, Right, how do we get our margins back up? Also also it's a very it's a very very the the finances on the neo are are can be subtle. Uh five when when Apple sells someone a five hundred ninety-nine dollar uh a new user, an uh an Apple uh a Mac MacBook Neo, that basically brings somebody into the tent where they're going to stay for three or four or five years, and then maybe their next phone is going to be an iPhone, and then they'll pick up an Apple Watch, and then the next time when they need to replace the the Neo or hand it down to one of their kids. Now they're buying a MacBook Pro. The same thing doesn't happen when someone buys a $6 99 Acer laptop for the first time. It's just a laptop. They could go anywhere else. But once it's been proven, proven, proven by so many analysts that once you get someone inside that tent for the first time, Apple makes them very, very happy. They they love the way that things work together. There's a certain prestige to uh the logo as well as a fit and function that they don't see outs uh at the on the other machines at best buy or Costco. And yeah, I I agree with you, Jason. Like I d I don't think they I don't think they're they want to lose any money on on any one of these, but if they somew somhewerehere there is a line on a graph in Cupertino that says so long as it doesn't go below this line and we stuck still got a lot of air over this line, it is worthwhile holding the line of five hundred and ninety nine dollars. And how much can they give away in margin, you might ask? Uh, because what they're gonna have to do is they're gonna have to crank that A eighteen pro production line back into operation and make more and they're gonna be more expensive because first off, they were using just the bin chips, which have a lower price, but these are gonna include if you do a new run, it's gonna include fully functional chips that that the GPUs work on and then they're gonna have to disable them in software and all that. So it's gonna cost a lot. But just look at the education price. Apple is comfortable selling this thing for $100 less to a certain market. And I assure you, they're still making a profit at $4.99. So they have room. They have room. They have to, you know, they won't make as much profit per unit. But again, it's a cheap enough system that the the number almost doesn't matter. It matters in aggregate. If they sell 10 million of these, they're still gonna affect their profits. But like uh the price is the point. So you can't absolutely run away from it and you you know, if you lose a little margin in the short term, they don't want to do it in the long term, but they can afford if if if the education price is $100 less, like there's a lot of room in there for them to eat some margin. And again, I'll also say they're selling those at the expense of competitors in the market. And that yes is a thing you want to keep doing. Yeah and they I I'm I'm sorry. I was I I just wanted to quickly say that and Apple doesn't s I think we I think we might be saying contrary things, but compliment complimentary things, not contrary things. But Apple doesn't care if it doesn't care if a school system buys 200 of these and they're running Google Classroom on it. They don't care if a company buys 100 of these and they're using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 on it. So long as they sell the comp the machine itself, people are gonna want to use this lovely device as opposed to this thing where they're aware of when they the I have a friend who uses these things and they they love their Windows laptops, but there is a stacking order in their backpack of I cannot have this laptop, this this Acer laptop at the the last thing on my back because it's going to flex with all the other stuff I've got in this backpack. I need to put something else behind it just to make sure it doesn't flex so much that I d that it doesn't destroy the screen. That's not something you have with any MacBook, even the cheapest one. Let's take a break. When we come back, more Mac Break Weekly with Andy, Christina, and Jason. 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We thank him so much for supporting MacBreak Weekly. Uh, Mr. Cook is probably right about now getting on an airplane. Uh President Trump is flying to China and he's bringing sixteen CEOs with him. Would have been seventeen, but the CEO of Cisco said he had to wash his hair this week. Uh Larry Fink of BlackRock is going. Blackstone, Boeing, Cargill, City, Coherent, G E Arrow, Space Goldman, Sachs, Illumina, MasterCard, Meta. Not uh Zuck. He's he also has to wash his hair, but Dina Powell McCormick, who's their uh uh government inter uh liaison. Micron Qualcomm , interesting Qualcomm's going, Tesla, Elon Musk will be going, and Visa not going, not invited, Jensen Wong of NVIDIA. He's in the doghouse, I guess. But uh Tim and Elon. I wonder if they're on the same plane. No, each of them has their own corporate chair, right? Yeah, probably. I got a you know the the uh I I really wish Tim writes his memoir because I want to know what what what transition in life do you go through that says that you know what, I'm willing to give up all of the super super fun things about being Apple CEO, but I'll still be the person who has to spend sixteen hours on a plane to go to China and then hang out with Elon Musk in a in a ballroom for a couple of days. That's not what you were hoping for at age sixty five. There is there's a very funny uh website uh which is predicting the apocalypse now based on private jets uh and how and how they're flying. So it's called the Apocalypse Early Warning System. I imagine uh it's gonna be uh going off big time uh on uh uh today as uh all those sixteen executives fly to China. Currently our emergency level is only one out of five. This is Kyle McDonald built this. He said, in the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. This site tracks that in real time. I guess if you're flying to Beijing, that doesn't really that doesn't really qualify as as escaping a city center. Wow . So anyway, if you want to keep an eye on this, this is uh this is very useful. You can also track military uh jets if you want to include that uh and see all the activity that's going on. This is this is what AI has wrought, right? This kind of website. So uh Mr. Cook will be going. That's that's uh probably good for Apple, right? I think it's maybe good for everybody 'cause he's got so s many great connections in China. Like they're there's that's the guy they should bring. He's he's he actually I mean, there was that piece during the first Trump administration in the New York Times about how a lot of people felt like Tim Cook was basically an ambassador to China, uh, not for the United States but, for Apple, but still that like it was a connection that he had made and that they have been working on for a very long time. So it's probably in uh the United States' best interest to have Tim Cook kicking around. And I wonder, I mean, I don't I don't know if we maybe we should do a vibe check here. I kind of feel like now that we know that Tim is going to be executive chairman and that this is the kind of j stuff he's gonna have to keep doing is his job. I wonder if I wonder if the like I shrugged when I saw this because it instead of it being like, oh Tim, oh no, you got called to the White House again. Instead, my reaction is kind of like, well, this is your job now. I don't know. Um I wonder if Tim will bring up uh the tariff situation with the president. Uh the president's uh response to the Supreme Court overturning his initial tariffs and ordering refunds, incidentally, was to announce another ten percent global tariff under a different emergency. Uh and apparently the the those are also illegal, according to a judge. Yep. So um maybe more refunds. I don't know. But Tim Tim has already played his hand there, right? Because he on the on the Don't worry, Mr. President. We're we're behind you. It's all we got a tube that just takes the money, it comes in and it goes right back out again. The US uh that is pol politic. He is good at this, isn't he? Yeah, he is. For a for a a guy that when you look at him you you'd say um he just seems like a a a a a gray man doing in a gray suit doing a gray job but actually uh sometimes that's that I think that's what you're what you want. I think he's can we could we we didn't talk about this a couple of weeks ago, but I just want to mention that like it's amazing that he is such a public facing figure, not just as a CEO, not just as person of Apple, but basically someone whom like there's there's an SNL cast member that has to be designated as if we ever do a a Tim Cook sketch, you're gonna be playing Tim Cook. W where people know what that name is. But he's still after 14, 15 years, he's still very, very mellow. He didn't go Hollywood at all. He didn't he didn't a star like which happens to so many like uh tech CEOs when they become go from vice president who just does their job to oh no, I'm the superstar, I'm the head of the I'm the face of the company, I represent all that's good and great about uh about technology and uh and the economy. He's still hi. This is still this is Tim. We've had the greatest quarter ever. And we think we're gonna love the new iPhones. He's very Zim. I wonder what his uh very mellow. We we know we don't know a whole lot about his you know uh world view and philosophy and so forth. But he seems yeah, he seems like a norway entitled to it, but he might meditate every day or something. He must be doing something. Maybe he just smokes a lot of weed. I don't know. Maybe maybe like maybe before like they cleaned out like Steve's drawers in the office. They basically 'cause you know sometimes like sometimes things What are these st posta ge stamps? Oh, look them . I was surprised in Hawaii to see that twenty six five came out. Uh in fact I'm gonna have to go 'cause I wasn't so I'm gonna go all around the house and update my Apple TVs. Update your things. My Vision Pros, all twelve of them. I'm gonna have to classic. All of that Yeah, this is the sweeping the last sawdust into the bin kind of release. The biggest the I think the biggest thing in twenty six five is support for encrypted RCS messages. Yep. So um which requires there's a lot of asterisks there about what carriers and what phones are talking to what other phones, but it does mean that if you're having an RC S conversation, so iPhone to Android, you if it's the right carrier and the right circumstance and all of that, it will be end to end encrypted, which is good. But there they do have a support document that says basically for actually for carrier for carrier for carrier, not just for RCS and encryption, but here are all the features that are going to be enabled on each of these carriers for the United States and Canada. And like I so long as you're not getting your phone service through a card you bought at a truck stop, I recognized like all of the different carriers that are at least offer uh RCS. But you're right, you don't know you're getting RC uh and encryption until you see like But I've uh it's uh it's still in beta technically. Uh so we're asked beef in previous releases, it was in beta for the purpose of carriers testing this and Apple testing this. Now it's basically it's in the hand of the use hands of the users and Apple is figuring that okay, we're all beta testing and and encryption on this, but I don't know what a fail looks like. It you get a knock on your door because you said something you thought was private. I don't know. Apple does have a page uh thanks to uh bite for bite in our um Discord, our club member, uh wireless carrier support and features for iPhone in the United States and Canada. So you can actually go to this page, look at your carrier and see uh whether RCS is supported along with other a bunch of other features. Yeah. This is actually like what type of if they get like voice over LTE or visual voicemail or whatever the case may be. And in the United States anyway, and I know it's different like region to region, it looks like like Andy said, even some of the the gas station um services have the end to end encrypted. It looks like simple mobile who I don't know who they're a reseller for um is is the only one that I see on this list um an Alaska uh G C I think Alaska and Appalachian Wireless. So maybe some of the really like your Boost Mobile, your Mint Wireless, Verizon, ATT, T Mobile, um uh Xfinity. But C Spire is Carolina West Wireless is not getting it. Uh but Celcom Wisconsin is. So y it really is a a buy carrier thing. I suspect that the MVNOs mostly will get it, right? Because they're just reselling. Well no, that's what it's looking like. At least on this look, if you're in i it that it looks cause most of those regional things are probably in VNOs in some capacity too, but it looks like like Men Mobile um um and it it it metro um by T Mobile uh, Cricket, um uh total wireless, all of these are included. Optimum, um Pure Talk, Red Pocket. I'm sorry if you if you subscribe to Panhandle Wireless. That is not uh RCS enabled there, but you do get Volty. So that's you know, there's something. Pure talk is getting it. If there's a carrier that's just for like the Texas panhandle, you probably already know the people. I mean it's it's a compact. You don't really need encryption so much. On Apple's newsroom and on the official Apple Google blog. And they both use the exact same for Google and Apple have led a cross-industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to rich communication services. And the rest of the sentence is different from Google or Apple, but that was one of those sentences that was argued that was agreed upon word for word for word. And I remember over the past like five or six years, the theme of Google I.O. keynotes for Sundarpa Chai have been brow beating Apple into like supporting RCS and whole campaigns with animated versions of the Pixelphone and an iPhone about how the how iPhone is not allowed not not uh not being open enough to talk privately with the with a cartoon pixel phone. So I'm glad that they finally, when they found themselves in the same foxhole, they decided to become friends. Uh but yeah, that's th there was some animosity there for four or five years. Sunday, Mark German, power on newsletter. Uh well he wasn't uh I don't want to call him babyish. Let's not. I will stop right there. Uh while he wasn't talking about the Wall Street Journal, um, or not talking about the Wall Street Journal, talked about uh Mac OS twenty six uh and uh the next version of Mac OS, which will have a slight change to liquid glass, he says. Yeah, yeah. I mean again Mark Erman's got the best sources in the business and he does some really good reporting. Okay , there's a lot in here. I mean, first off, it's very clear that one of Mark German's best sources is um designers at Apple. Right. And that's been the case for a while. I think it's why he had a lot of really sympathetic stories about Alan Dye leaving. I think he hears a lot from designers. It's hard not to read that into this where it's like, first off, he reports that it's not the designer's fault. Liquid glass isn't the designer's fault. It's the software people. They didn't do it right. That's literally a thing that's in there, uh, which is wild. And then the other thing he tries to sell us is the idea that the problem with liquid glass on the Mac is that it was really more designed for OLED displays and there aren't any OLED displays on the Mac right now and so it doesn't look as good which is nonsense. And that's not a word I used when I read that story. I shouted a different word out loud that I will not uh repeat here, but it's nonsense. So it it i there was a lot look, uh again, I like Mark Erman as a reporter, but he's he's carrying a lot of water for Apple designers who wanna run away from all the liquid glass backlash and say it's not their fault and that they were trying to have a higher vision for something that has not they literally blame the hardware and the software for the failure of their design. And it's just complete complete nonsense. He says a quote slight redesign for Mac OS twenty seven. Uh with the next update Apple aims to address the shadows and transparency quirks. This is the the quote last year's operating systems didn't necessarily suffer from design problems, I'm told, but rather a not completely baked implementation from Apple's software engineering team. Yeah. It's not our fault. Not our fault. We didn't we so uh a little cleanup. I think everybody likes the idea of a little cleanup. Well, I mean it needs yeah. It needs a lot of cleanup. I would argue. Course course corrections. Like the mid course corrections. Just right. I I didn't I just don't think anybody expected the first version of it to be quite so horrifying. We he confirms rumors we've seen in other uh places of automatic grouping of tabs in iOS twenty seven, iPad OS twenty seven and Mac OS twenty seven's Safari . Uh tab automatic automatic tab grouping. Uh I presume with AI, right? I can't say it's a sidebar. Safari, Safari needs a whole lot of love. I cannot believe it's it's it's looking more and more frumpy with each year as Chrome and Firefox and Arc and other browsers continue to bring new ideas that make this into a wonderful platform for running web apps and getting things done and basically exploring the web that you do the way that you do it in 2026, not the way we used to do it in 2015. Like the uh uh the Safari is just not an app that I use at all because it's just it works fine, but browsers have moved forward so far. I'm I'm I'm I've got my I've got the show doc in in Google Docs right now and I'm taking advantage of the fact that they've now got uh uh they've got uh vertically stacked tabs uh mini icons so now the tabs are no longer taking up the whole top of my uh top top of the window. I've got split views so that I can have like one document in one side of the window, not two separate This is not uh there are so many complaints you should have about Chrome about its assault on individual privacy. But man, is it a handy it is a it's a very, very good place to spend the afternoon when you're trying to get stuff done. Did you uh let Chrome download that four gigabyte local AI model? No, you didn't let it do it. It was something that it's it's weird. So Google had to basically explain like what was going on because there was like a security researcher. Oh did you know that it's downloading secretly this four gigabyte AI model. And Google had to say , well, yeah, because that's actually a privacy thing. We've been doing that like since 2024, but we have a local model so that we don't have to send your information up into the cloud. So A, it's faster, more responsive, and also more private. Also, it's a it's a smart download so that if we ever sense that oh this oh this device is running low on storage, we delete that model and then if there's another opportunity later on, we will re-download it. So yeah, maybe they should have said beforehand and not let it be a surprise, but this is this is I see that as more of a faux pas than a scandal, although people could people can disagree with me on that. Yeah. Uh you you can't just delete the uh four gigabyte file . You actually have to turn it and look for uh setting in your system settings uh for on-device AI and toggle it off. If you don't have that toggle, and some people apparently don't, you can uh go to uh chrome colon slash slash flags and delete a very obscure command there is there are articles uh about doing that um yeah sidebar this this is the this is exactly why you make sure you turn on if you're if you use your phone as a hotspot you turn on that feature that says please use this for low data because I I'm very very I'm very very smart in not like streaming videos when I'm streaming for my phone, but I might not know that oh, I did not know that I've my of my of my forty gigabytes of unlimited of high speed data, I've just choked ten percent of it on an AI package that I did not ask for and was not aware of. Yeah. Hopefully it respects that. I don't know if that it does. Let's see. According to the register, Mac OS 27 threatens to bury time capsule. h they they Yes. Tell me about this. They they want to remove the Apple filing protocol, AFP support. AFP is going away in twenty seven and that means that old we we talked about this. The old time capsules and stuff won't be supported. Well the old ones Well there's no new time capsules. It's discontinued. So there are a lot of people out there who are gonna look for new backup solutions now because they're using that for their time machine backup. This is the hardware . It's the old machine. Exactly. Exactly. So it's just not going to work anymore. Like fourteen years ago, Apple basically replaced it with uh with SMB. Right. And if they they've they've kept it around for compatibility, but this is the year they say, okay, look, we're we're not continuing this anymore after this year. This is not time machine, that's continuing. This is so so if you so if you do have a time capsule in your closet, that might be a good excuse to take it out and make sure that you've already um hopefully within the last ten years you already exfiltrated all the data out of it, but you never know. Maybe like you exfiltrated it at the time onto D V Ds that you then lost or then have now rotted away. So it might be a good idea to take it out of the closet, fire it up, and just put it onto uh iCloud or put it onto something so that you know that the stuff from fourteen years ago is still good. Uh we have did we talk about Tim Copeland's uh piece that Apple is about to uh step up ramp up production of the eighteen A eighteen again for the NEO? Tangentially when we were talking about the Intel stuff. But he he's he is the former Bloomberg reporter who has his own uh newsletter now and he he wrote you know the speculative speculative piece about what was Apple gonna do. And then this time he said they they are officially going back to to TSMC to do a hot lot of A eighteen pros, which is why when we were talking about Neo pricing, that's one of the reasons you gotta wonder about the Neo pricing is that they're they're gonna make ten million Neos instead of whatever five to seven Yeah, he said they're doubling it. So I guess the run was five. They're gonna make ten million now, and that means they have to go back to TSMC and order some more chips of the A18 Pro. And how will that affect the price? I think we made we all kind of made the case for having it not affect the price and Apple just eating some of the margin in the meantime. It will be a much more expensive part than the ones that they were taken out of the bin from last year's iPhones. But it you know, th they've decided they're not going to slow the the momentum of that product. So that's what Tim called. We're when uh when there are when there are machines that are out of stock and are out of stock for the c next couple of months, we're not we're not dry for for for DRAM, we don't have many access to manufacturing lines for uh for for SOCs. That's where our choke point is . So that's gonna be another expense. Yeah. Well we'll we'll see what happens. Um let's see what else. I guess uh since uh Mark now goes on to talk about changes to the Vision Pro, we might want to, after a little pause, begin our Vision Pro segment. You're watching Mac Break Weekly, the nation's prem ier vision pro podcast with Jason Snell of sixcolors.com who of uh actually owns a vision pro and you he's pretending he's wearing it right I do I do buy one yeah sorry you don't for my work yeah yeah right yeah I had to buy one is the new excuse uh uh Andy Anaka who does not have a vision Pro and I can't remember. Uh Christina, did you uh buy a Vision Pro? No. No, no. I I think that I was like made the very good choice for once in my life where I was like, This is gonna sit on a shelf, don't buy this. And that's what it would have done. Yeah. Uh nor did I. Uh nor did I. Although we don't really know what the future holds for the Vision Pro. Um at Hill's Pet Nutrition, we know that pet parent guilt is real. That's why we make science led nutrition to help you give more love than humanly possible. Because you're only human, there's hills. Find the right food at hillspet.com slash science doesmore. Netcredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit applications subject to review and approval. Learn more at NetCredit.com/slash partners. If you're living with wet age-related macular degeneration or diabetic macular edema, you know the importance of eye injections to preserve your vision. But keeping up with frequent injections can feel overwhelm ing. What if there was a different way to maintain your vision, while potentially reducing the burden of your treatment schedule, giving you more time to do what you love? If you're looking for an alternative to your eye injections, visit tiredofshots.com to learn more. Do we ? Well wait till we open the open the shit. Yeah. Let's begin. Oh the Vision Pro segment. What do you see? What do you know? It's time to talk to Vision Pro. This might be a good time to buy a Vision Pro, buy a used Vision Pro. Sure. Right? Prices are plummeting. Yeah. Yeah. So this I feel like Leo, we uh were ahead of this last week on on our uh Thormos Vision Pro podcast because there was that story, that weird nine to five Mac story that had a headline that said Vision Pro is dead. And then the story didn't really back it up and was reporting stuff that Mark German had reported the previous year. So it was like why is this even a story? And uh German kind of went off on it this week saying a lot of the stuff that we said, which is he already, you know, what they what they weren't doing is killing the group. They were moving the OS people into the OS group, they were moving the hardware people into the hardware group. They are primarily focused on uh on maintaining vision os and adding some features in 27 for vision os. And then the hardware people are focused on these glasses products that are coming. And the one bit of uh information that German had that I thought was really good this week was he said, on the other hand, please do not listen to people who point at Apple's job postings for Vision Pro and Vision OS and say, see, they are actively hiring Vision Pro Hardware engineers. That is proof that they're still working on Vision Pro hardware for the near term. Because what he said is, no, though they're using those job postings to get engineers who they're going to put on the unannounced glasses products, right? But they're not gonna say we're hiring people for a completely unannounced Apple related glasses related hardware project that hasn't been announced so nobody say anything. Instead, it just says Vision Pro on it. So he said, don't get carried away with that as proof that they're actively working on a Vision Pro successor. That's not what they're doing right now because they've mobilized all of those sort of Vision OS uh and Vision Hardware related people to get the you know their answer to the meta ray bans going uh instead. So it it it it's what we said last week and then he had even more detail uh above that. And then and then Vision OS twenty seven, you know, they're gonna keep it rolling and they're gonna have it sync up with what's in the other twenty sevens and you know, that's that's where it is. It it actually I would say Vision Pro is where it deserves to be right now, which is a product that floats out there that is interesting, but not really a product anybody should buy, and that is meaningful mostly in what it might mean for the future someday. And that's it. He he says uh a coup quotes a couple of important data points. He says Apple continues to advertise positions related to Vision OS uh on the job site. And of course if Apple does AR glasses, that would still be Vision OS. I think that's They said it would be based on some of the same technology. Yeah. Yeah. Uh he says though that uh while there are Vision Pro Hardware ads, the majority of those are actually for the glasses. Yes. Right. And I can't say so. So they say they should grow. To that end, Apple has deprioritized work on any major new enclosed headsets, and then he italicizes this for the time being. Right. So the focus is on glasses, but it doesn't mean they've killed the nerd helmet. I think it's one of the things that we've been saying, it's been a recurring theme of this segment here on the world's most advanced and important Vision Pro podcast, which is what would they do? Like what would that hardware be that they would be working on now? And I think that they've all come to the conclusion that right now, if they were to work on a new Vision Pro or Vision Air or whatever, they couldn't get the price down to an acceptable price the feature with the features that they want because this is su uh uh the hardware is so aggressive that like it's just not ready for hitting that price point. And so I think John Turnus, the reports go, uh looked at their vision air idea that they were trying to do, which is a light, a lighter weight, lighter priced version, and he killed it. And my guess is he killed it because it wasn't good enough and it was still too expensive. And I think that's really where this hardware is right now. Is until they can make it for an accessible amount of money, why would you even try? I mean, and it's so overpowered. It's got an M five in it that that screen is still state of the art. Like the hardware that they've got will serve as the tinkering place for immersive video and for vision OS and for apps and whatever. They don't need something fresher. And anything that they would make would not be successful in the market because it would still be overpriced and probably too heavy. So they have a bit of a chicken and egg problem though, because if they aren't behind it, developers aren't gonna develop for it. And if developers don't develop for it, then you really don't have a platform. But until it's a until it's gonna ship at volume, developers aren't going to develop for it. And I think that that's what everybody understands now is that until you can get it down a lot from $3,500 , nobody's gonna buy it. Other than like in it, I know like surgeons and stuff. I know, I know there will be those uh industrial uses for it. But as a mainstream kind of like consumer product, if there is a place for uh for VR uh headset, and I I think there probably is, right? I I think that that there are are certain applications that could be really cool. Yeah, but until it's nine hundred dollars or twelve hundred dollars or something like that, like don't even bother. And I think that's where they are is I think Turnus looked at it and said, I don't see what this gets us. And by the way, we're now behind Meta on exploring this. So here's a guy selling a uh brand new unopened vision pro for ten thousand dollars. I don't I don't think that's uh that's a market price. I am seeing some pre owned ones for is there cocaine in it? Well, speculation. Like what kind of money laundering is this, right? Yeah. I'm seeing it. It seems like for a used vision pro the kind of It's still a lot m money though, right? It's still a lot of money. Yeah. It's still a lot of money and it's a lot of money. I don't know this would be the interesting thing to see if with the new um, you know, uh Apple care subscription thing if you could add a Vision Pro into your existing subscription plan, right? Because I I I don't know. Because I always would freak out about this, be like buying one that's you know twenty five hundred dollars. I'm like, okay, but if this breaks, it's gonna cost me more than that to fix it. So German does say that if there is a new Vision Pro, uh it's gonna be uh two more years at least, given the focus Apple has on the glasses. He says to be clear, the end result is certainly on the table and wouldn't surprise me, I even hope it happens. Yeah. Well, okay. So I mean it's not a priority product for Apple. Yeah. At this point. He did have something he did have something that was kind of uh I think we can s put this in the Vision Pro segment. The the thing that the one of his uh scoops this week that I was super interesting was he's saying that those AirPods that have integrated cameras are now at the next level of production, meaning that they have working test units that people inside Apple are able to wear to test the engineering. The next step after that being a sample that tests the production, test tests the manufacturing. But basically there are working versions of this, which means that it's which uh and he's saying that yeah, if if they were intending to to ship it later this year, then yes, that would be on track for for doing that. I mean, I'm still I want this ex to exist only to find out exactly where the cameras are, how cameras to basically add a stream of data to Siri, not for taking specifically not for taking pictures, not for taking videos. But even so, I mean, uh when I'm walk when I'm taking my walk and I meet a friend in the street, I really do have to like take my earbuds out because with my sideburns they are not going to be able to see that I'm actually wearing one of these things. I uh uh it's basically series like okay you seem to be stuck in tall tall dry grasses and weeds uh let me do do you want do you need a helicopter to extract you from this meadow? Like, no, I and I actually this is a problem. They are so good at sealing out background noise that really when you've got ' onem a P you can't hear people talking to you. And it is a social I think it's kind of a social problem. Well I mean but that's don't leave it in transparency mode. But I'm but I'm thinking I'm say I'm I'm sorry, just qu just quickly, what what I was getting at is that like people who have facial hair, like beards and stuff like that, how are they positioning the camera so that A, you don't look like a dang fool with this hovering like little dealy bobber thing sticking it to uh uh uh to the sides of your uh of your ears? Or do you simply say that okay, you know what? If you got a beard, this is not the product for you. I'm sorry. Well at some point maybe you'll decide to th that the the functionality of Siri with cameras is worth shaving, but we can't help you right now. The case of the Apple Watch doesn't work that well if you're sleeved, if you have tattoos where this for some people can't make it for everybody. Oh yeah, I think that that I think far more people are gonna you know potentially be impacted with that. Yeah. So I I don't know how they'll have the sensors working. It is interesting though, I'm assuming. So it'll be interesting to see what what the what the um I guess value add is for having that data, right? If it's gonna be something that would help you with your mapping or if it's something that you know Siri could tell you, you know, what's in front of you or whatever. I I don't know. I hope they're testing it with people with long hair. That's all I can do. And mutton shops. That's all I can say. I'm I'm really skeptical. I will say though about the transparency thing. The the smart transparency mode is great. And fantastic. It is it is filtering out the broadband hum noises that you don't want to hear while letting like I do that I use I don't use noise cancelling, but I do use the transparency mode, the smart transparency mode when I'm walking my dog. And what it means is I can't hear the freeway, but I can hear car coming around the corner. And that's what I want, is I want it to be a little quieter, but I want to hear anything that's important and like I can hear people talking to me just fine in that mode, but I'm not hearing the annoying kind of background noises. It's pretty great. So Apple has done a good job there. But as for AirPods with cameras , I mean, come on. I I I I just I I would love to be impressed by what they will do for me. And I I just like there are so many issues. The hair issue, the fact that it's looking, even if it's got like a really broad view uh which would be degraded because they would be like it would be like fish eye and they would be lower resolution everywhere like they're looking out this way they're not looking forward what are they seeing what value do I have there I just I I I know that there are lots of arguments about like, oh well use AI to it'll understand where you are and stuff, but I'm like, but what is my benefit from having, you know, things that are gonna hurt the battery life and increase the weight and maybe look weird and like wh I keep I keep coming back to give me uh give me like a magnetic pin or something that's just a simply simple thing that just simply has a lens and a camera on it and let my uh my smart assistant, whether it's Siri , whether it's uh Claude, whether it's g uh whether it's uh Gemini, access to that camera and I can whenever when I'm in a position where I don't want that kind of help or it'd be rude to have a camera on my on my person, I simply take it off and now I don't no longer have a cam I don't I like I said, I'm not saying that's a stupid idea. I'm saying that I can I cannot imagine how this could be designed in such a way that you don't look like you're like Grogu cosplaying uh uh uh or the cameras actually just don't have any actually function. What about what about always listening instead of looking? What about always listening? I I for a number number of months wore a variety of devices that were always listening with the idea of feeding it into AI. Uh, you know, and I think they could do the same thing with that that they would do with the camera, which is say, Well, no, we're not taking pictures, uh, we're just listening for keywords and stuff that we're gonna then add to Leo's diary or or something. How about that? Yeah, that could so long so long as the people around you are not uh are okay with you basically even. gonna be freaked out by the well even if they're not recording audio like they're still just generating a transcript and that in and of itself is like I don't want everything I say to be transcribed without context without anything like that at least with a camera, I can basically see that little LED light on someone's frames. Uh, these earbuds with the camera. The uh German's report says, Yeah, there's actually also a light there too. Oh, okay. It's like there has to be. But but if I but if I'm wearing if I'm wearing my usual like walking around earbuds, I'm not trust I'm thinking that okay, this is so they I bet they have transparency mode. They're not being rude and continue to listen to their podcast while they talk to me. I'm okay with that. I would I don't want to worry that if I'm if someone asks me, hey, what it what do you think about the problem in Palestine? Like say, okay, that's a uh I don't want to I don't want to be trapped into saying something that because I'm having a l a casual conversation and I'm speaking imprecisely because I really just want to play with your dog that you're taking for the walk. I'm distracted, I'm not thinking about world situations. And then it comes back to me two years later that can you believe that he said something so glib about such a serious thing? And then he just said, Ooh, who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? I you know, I I used to respect that man. Like I I don't I I I and to and I mean th there's a there's an argument that a lot of people that I respect have said, which is that look, we're just live we're living in the Panopticon whether we want to or not, and that's just a fact of life. That is true, and you basically you have to live in the world that you find yourself living in. But that doesn't mean that at this early stage we should not be pushing against it and saying that we're not okay with that. There is going to be a price that if you're using this technology, we're going to expect you to be circumspect or we're going to expect you to be a little bit embarrassed that you're in this particular space and that there is a transcript of everything that's being said around you. You will, as a Vision Pro owner, uh get uh Vision OS 27. Mark Gurman says don't expect a lot. Uh there will be it'll be light on features compared with vision os twenty six. Instead, focus on performance bug fixes and parity with the other twenty seven operating systems. That means adding uh the new Siri. Yeah, I mean don't expect a lot, but if they can if they can actually do usable voice control and AI and stuff like remember the guy in charge of Siri now is the is Mike Rockwell who shipped the Vision Pro and famously they were gonna make the Vision Pro very, very Siri forward, which makes sense, right? I I use Siri more on the Vision Pro than any other device I use because instead of like going around and finding a thing, I can just say launch this app and it does it. Uh and and Rockwell was frustrated by how bad Siri was. And he apparently like got in, I don't know about fights, but like was really vocal about how bad it was and they had to re uh architect how the UI worked to make it less Siri forward because they were let down. And now he's in charge of Siri. So I would not be surprised if Vision OS 27 actually is a lot better just because it will theoretically have a good Siri, which is what Rockwell wanted all along. Are we Are we taking any bets on how much Vision Pro we'll see on stage? I think it'll be a slide. Mentioned? Vision Pro mentioned. Vision OS twenty seven mentioned. And our customers continue to love the Vision Pro. So it will make an appearance in a video probably. It's the new Apple TV. It's gonna be the new Apple TV, I think. And then also pressure. But it will but no one will wear it on stage, right? I don't think we'll no. It remains a platform in our lineup of platforms for twenty seven. Okay. Okay. This is coming. It's the kind of thing where it's like and it's coming to iOS, Mac OS, iPad OS, Watch OS, and Vision OS. When you and Vision V OS, and Vision. Yeah. And it'll just be in there. When you do your uh draft on upgrade with Mike Hurley, I I want you to really take a wild card and say someone will appear on stage in a Vision Pro. You could get a lot of points. I don't want to lose . I don't think they want to call attention to it, Leo, to be completely candid. Like maybe I'm like being overly negative here, but I think this is one of those products that they like have, they're continuing to update and support. But especially if you're trying to reset things with with with AI, WWDC, you have a really big event, do you really want to remind people of you know your your your past shame They're not gonna talk about the car either, I think. True. Well actually one one one last thing. I ra i racing the the iRacing simulator is now available for uh Vision pro that was announced just yesterday or they just released it yesterday. It's not an app that runs on Vision Pro. It's just streaming from it's just streaming from Nvidia's cloud thing. But still it's some another th another reason to see another reason to remember which drawer you left it in and then maybe see if the battery still holds a charge after not having been charged for five or six months. Oh Lord. I'm sorry being mean. Right, you are mean. And that is your Vision Pro segment. Now you see, now you know, we're done talking the Vision Pro . Yeah . Uh the US Mint has uh now announced the coin with Steve Jobs sitting cross legged uh on the back of it. Uh we mentioned that they were going to do this. You can get it for mere I don't understand sixty-one dollars or a hundred fifty-four dollars. I guess it depends Oh it's a sack. Either buy twenty-five or a hundred. I get it. And of course the obvious joke is that it's very very appropriate that an Apple Apple person's uh thing has an insane markup that they can't possibly justify. So it is it is so this these are one dollar coins. Actual legal tender will know it's the mint, right? So that's the Denver mint or the Yeah, me me neither. Um but it's but it's nice. It was so e each state is has a state quarter for innovation uh and California's they decided to ch they decided to have Steve Jobs in a meditative quarter. This is a buck. I'm sorry, I'm I'm sorry, you're right, a dollar. Uh you make and with a legend, make something wonderful. So for twenty-five, you get twenty-five dollars worth for $61 or $100 worth for $154 . There you go. That's it. Let's see the let's see the video. That's it. The video is just moving. And then it flips over and there's uh the statute of liberty on that. And by the way, it does say now not available, so I guess it's still not not available. Currently unavailable. Oh it's out of stock. That's why. Yeah. They sold out. Okay What are some of our our uh How can you be out of stock on money? Isn't that an indicator Aren't you the mint ? Make more . Maybe TSMC's making those in time. I don't know. How many nanometers in are are in his cow look on that engraving? So the three nanometer uh dollar uh it's great. They they they I I think they even have the new balance uh uh on them. They got the it's uh Oh new balance sneakers. He's got the mock turtleneck, but he's got like the uh return the the ICEO haircut Well you're really you're really zooming in. It's little it's a little immaculation of all of the various looks of Steve. Does it look like Steve Jobs? I don't. No, I think it's more like Christina Warren than it looks like Steve Bass, to be frank. Um Okay . Okay . Um I like how he's got his fingers steepled. That's his famous steepled . He's he's but imagine his like he's just steely gaze focused on you because you said good morning and that's the stup he thinks that's the stupidest thing anyone could ever do to start a meeting with the same. I was gonna say the same thing, Leo. I s we we have to presume he's at an apple orchard. Okay. Very nice. Too bad you can't get 'em. They're sold out. Well collectors will sell them to you for twice more for the next few weeks than I'm sure I'm sure you guys in like a year you can probably get these at near face value. Yeah. Maybe you'll get them in a Walmart and change. You never know. Maybe go to the go to the casino. Uh Google. It'd be a great gift, honestly. Like if if if I if I worked at Apple as a manager, I would be trying to put an order for Apparently they sold out almost instantly, which is silly. They should make they should totally make more, do another pressing or whatever. But um yeah, I would. I I mean I because I'd I would give 'em to friends, right? Like I'd I'd be like when I would see somebody at WWDC or at our the relay telethon that we do in Memphis, I I would be like, Okay, you get a Steve Jobs coin and you get a Steve I would be awesome. That's hilarious. I love it. So uh we mentioned that uh Google besides doing their IO keynote uh next week will be uh doing their IO actually uh today. They're doing they just did it, right? Their Android show was today. I missed it. Oh well. Did you watch it, Andy? No, well it was uh uh I think it started at one PM Eastern time. Oh , yeah. So I was I was focused I was focused on my duties here. Uh good good man. Thank you, man. Uh there were uh this is the announcement from Samir Samat uh of Android on uh on uh X.com and there were some comments that the Android uh logo sort kind of got a little liquid glassy. Yeah, there there was a so they g they put up a teaser for the show like a couple of weeks ago. It's just it's just like the the Android droid like uh uh mascot just like found like hey th th th with the words Hey uh the the Android show, tune in for w what's what what's great and new and he's doing a little dance and looking up at the thing. And people noticed two things. Uh one, if you're following Google, the gap between the mouth and the body seems to have a ring of lights, which was paying which was playing off the idea that uh there's going to be support for like notification lights on the uh on the Google book and maybe even on the pixel phones. But also that that he looks like he's made out of frosted glass. He looks like maybe a liquid glass version of him. And I think and you can tell that's some people were just having having a bit of sport, having a bit of fun, a bit of japery, but others were like, is that the new direction for Android? And so that the Google's head of Android basis, oh you people are idiots. Of course we,'re not going in that dire ction. And retweeting, retweeting uh what he said. Speaking of things that are sold out, uh Woot was offering the famous $600 , sorry, $700 Apple Wheels kit for your Mac Pro for a mere one twenty nine ninety nine. That's a great deal. If you have still one of those and you need wheels for it, you know. But wow. I want to put it on my five hundred and ninety nine dollar Mac mini Just have a statement. And by the way, a five star ratings on Amazon uh customer reviews, because Amazon owns Woot now. Uh so no no negative ratings. Nothing but five star ratings. Nothing but fives. Actually, there are no reviews. This is interesting that they say it's a five it's five star reviews, and there are in fact no reviews. So uh is that the default you get five stars unless somebody says otherwise? I guess so. I th I think if you have the Mac Pro that this fits, you have staff that these reviews for you. So that's that's that's and there's an agentic AI now that they've been fired and replaced by that's not working correctly. That's my guess. Five stars, five stars, five stars. All right. Let's uh pause and uh we will come back with our picks of the week. You're watching Mac break weekly with uh Andy Anako. Still you said maybe you'd have something to announce this week. I have to write some stuff. I'm sorry. I thought I thought I thought I would get st th the thing is like and we will we'll talk about this next week, but I have uh I have some obligations to some people that I wanted to take care of And he's waiting until the Iranian peace talks come to a r resolve and Strait of Hormuz opens, and then he'll have an announcement to make. Basically I wanna make sure that like I can rewrite every single thing that I might have written so that I look like I was an absolute prophetic genius. Yeah. 'Cause it'll be dated like April, but I just wanna point out hastily revised. I have been very uh I think I think I've been very uh good not saying anything like I told you so about Division Pro at all. I haven't mentioned it. I'm sad I think Division Pro should be a success. Although I had absolutely there could be a class action lawsuit. Don't lie. Don't do it. I am a liar. I admit it. I should also say because I was a little bit chirlish, if I could have a f if I could afford to spend thirty five hundred dollars on a piece of fun that seems exciting and it doesn't have to make back for me any amount of utility, I just have some mad money and I have 3500. I would have bought one. No, not me. I just feel what I could have spent for something if it's not I don't understand. I am with Neil Stevenson who says nobody wants to put a put a computer on their face. Christina Warren is also here, developer advocate at uh GitHub, back to work. Although I noticed you immediately took a vacation for Mother's Day. So that's okay. That's well, no, I'm I'm I'm working from from working remotely, yes. So I'm I am back at work. I just happen to be, you know, three thousand. How's mom? You said she doesn't like her uh iPhone Anna too much? She does I was so disappointed. Um so I I I I I thought that flops. Yeah. She waited until we could spend time together because over Christmas we bought her uh an iPhone Air. And I did go through the pros and cons with her and I was like, look, the pros are gonna be this is gonna be lighter than your current um Pro Max. I think she had a 15 Pro Max. And so um you're you're complaining about um you know how heavy your purse is, this is gonna be really good for that. The cons are gonna be the battery life is not gonna be great. We're gonna have to buy you a booster , and the the camera is not gonna be as good as what you're used to, but I think with the stuff you do, you'll be fine. I had talked to her and I'd assumed, because she didn't want to tell me that everything was great. S dohees not like the phone and she regrets getting it. So she still has her old fifteen Pro Max, but she did not trade in. And so she's still kind of using Zickly as like a glorified, you know, like iPod iPhone. So in the house, like she'll use that for listening to to podcasts when she's on Wi Fi and whatnot. She doesn't have cellular service on it. And use it for some photo stuff. But um yeah, so I took too bad she's a good thing. It is too bad. So I think unfortunately this will be one of those things where we will trade it in in December and then get her whatever the you know, either the the pro or the the pro max variant of the of the seventeen. Yeah. It is flip flop season. Yeah, no, she she just didn't tell me because she was she she felt bad. And so uh when I talked to her yesterday she was like I don't like I don't like my phone like it. I don't know . Did she did she say why? I'm just curious. It it's it's the battery life and it's the camera quality. Okay. I'm worried uh you know, I it's funny I took uh my very good camera, I took two very good cameras to Hawaii with me and ended up uh kind of leaving them behind often because the iPhone is the Pro Pro Max is so good. So good. And the zoom is so good that I just I I and I'm a little worried because I really do want to get the folding phone, but I think it'll have the same problem as the air. It's so thin that the cam eras may not be as good as the Pro Max first. Right, and there's gonna be a step up on the Pro next time too, right? With the variable aperture. Yeah. So now am I gonna have to buy two phones? What am I gonna do? Yep. At least two. Maybe more. Maybe more Leo, yeah. I'll have to get that vest that Scott Bourne wanted of the iPhone made out of iPhone. Oh, I had one of his uh I had one of the the the Scotty vest trench coats once. I took it to C E S or something. And it it was amazing. I literally had like my carry-on on my purse and I had like ten pounds worth of electronics on me. It was pretty great. I uh I wear my Scotty Vestrich, I wore it to Hawaii, I wear it on the plane because it's the best way to carry a lot of stuff. Yes. Take it off, put it on the conveyor belt as you go. No, no, no joke exactly right. No joke. So this is my favorite watch. It is like a vintage now, like twelve, thirteen-year-old like Casio G Shock, one of the first ones with Bluetooth. And my favorite thing and, I lost it. I couldn't find it, couldn't find it, couldn't find it. And it wasn't until I had my Scotty Vest like uh like multi-pocket shoplifting coat, like and I was wearing it for I was taken out of storage, I was wore it for like the th forird week that in one of the eight hundred pockets I found it at the very very bottom. Amazing. I bec because I I know exactly what happened. I d l uh it was for me it's if it's not so much uh to get a carry on, it's like I'm going to take everything off while I'm in line and put them in these pockets and then put the coat on and because it was the watch like I just for whatever whatever reason never retrieved it. But yeah I I again they're they are um their most amazing it's not just um I'm sorry I'll wind this up but it's not just you you will think it's silly that oh my god 50 pockets that's just crazy stupid it's not just that but it's also that even if you only use four of them the thing is because they're pockets everywhere, it's like I what I really want is I want a pocket like on the on my forearm where I can put like my uh my my transit card so that it's always there when I need to bit m to to beep through a thing. Okay, well there's a pocket, zipper pocket on the for um. And I want I want to keep my phone like in this exact spot on I again, there's a there happens to be a pocket right at the spot where you want to put that phone. You don't have to guess, you don't have to compromise. It's great. And they're nice codes too. They are. Like I honestly, I this is unpaid, but we're fans, all of like we're fans. And Jason Snell of Six Colors dot com and many, many podcasts. Many. Uh do you have a little bit of a respite before WWDC or are you still writing, writing, writing? Yeah, I mean, yeah. I I I have have been enjoying the fact that I have a little break between the Apple 50 stuff and June. Because June's gonna be crazy. Crazy. Yeah, so a little a little bit of a respite is nice this time right now. I I want it I like it a little quiet this time of year 'cause I know what comes next and it's gonna be a lot. So yeah, I'm enjoying it. Cut . Uh we will have more Mac Break Weekly uh right now, actually. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie. Uh well no, you know what? Before we uh get back to your picks of the week, which is coming up next, I might mention that it is so nice to have so many great people in our club twit Discord. And uh as Flyer Scott said, I liked all this talk and as Jason Snell said, good talk, everybody. Yeah, good episode. I mean like really we we a Andy and I had little back channel where we're like, this is a good episode. Before the first commercial, like, Oh my god, I gotta I gotta shut up because I'm having two. It only took us a thousand days by the way, it's ten twenty four. It's a momentous, momentous episode. It's our one K episode, ladies and gentlemen. And we killed it for one K, I'm saying. And if you want us to go to two K, there is a way you can help by joining Club Twit. Uh increasingly I'm of the opinion that the the independent podcasting uh that is not owned by a corporation, is not owned by OpenAI or uh Andreasen Horowitz or or any of the companies it covers, Cisco just announced they're doing podcasts . Uh if you like the idea of an independent podcast covering uh technology without fear or favor, but really representing you, the best way to do that is to support the podcasts you listen to. And I would hope that this is be one of the ones you'd like to support. Here's how it works. Go to twit.tv/slash club twit, uh, ten dollars a month. Get ad-free versions of everything we do, of course. You can also get access to stuff that we don't put out in public, like for instance, the Google I.O. keynote coming up and the WWSDC keynote coming up. We c we wo I d I don't believe in paywalls. Normally we and for years we did put that out. Uh but because Apple takes us down and gives us strikes on uh YouTube whenever we do that, we had to stop. We'd do that in the club only. It's a private broadcast. So uh if you want to watch our coverage of those keynotes and other keynotes. Best way to do it, join the club. You also get things like the AI user group. Stacy's book club is coming up uh on Friday. I just finished uh the book, A Psalm for the Wild uh Built, and it's really I really enjoyed it. So I'm looking forward to that. That's two P M uh this Friday for Stacy's uh book club. Also Google I.O. is May nineteenth at ten A. M. right before Mac Break Weekly. Might push it back a little bit. They tend to go a couple of hours, so we might be beginning Mac Break Weekly next week. Uh I should have mentioned this earlier, uh maybe an hour later. But tune in early to watch the Google IO keynote if you're a club member. Micah's crafting corner. Uh all so many other great shows are jet Set with Johnny Jet. We talk about tech and travel. Um lots of great things go on in the club, but most importantly, you're supporting uh independent podcasting that we do it with integrity. We uh we represent you, not the companies we cover, and I think that's really important. And we do it because you support us. Twit.tv slash club twit. We'd love to have you in the club. Where is Darede vil . Alright . Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I've been liber ated . We're gonna take this city back over Medicaid in an all-new season, now streaming, only on Disney Plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. No one . This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil, born again, now stream ing only on Disney Plus. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks rappercino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Now at McDonald's, a McDoubble is $2.50, so you can get your gym gains on. Or just get lunch. For only $2.50. Get low value on the under $3 menu. Limit time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. Bada ba . Now it's time for picks of the week. Um I'm gonna continue my run of picks of the week. I have a couple. Amazing. Amazing. I know. I stopped for a while and I thought, what the heck? Uh let me see. How about how about this silly one? I've been doing a lot of menu bar apps lately. This one is probably one you don't need. But imagine if you plug in a USB-C cable and a small macOS menu bar app tells you what that cable can do and why your Mac is charging so slowly. It's free at least. You can try it. Uh it is it is it is pretty cool. It's on a GitHub, of course. It's called What Cable by Daryl Morley. And actually, you can see screenshots if you go to whatcable.uk and uh and and see it or install it from GitHub. Imagine having a um a menu bar app that tells you what that cable can do. You can also install it via homebrew, which is nice. Just homebrew install what cable . Uh I think this, you know what, if you've got if you've got room on your menu bar, if you're running one of those great menu bar utilities we tal k about all the time, so you can expand your menu bar uh like this. Put it in there. Why not have a little more in your menu bar? What cable dot uk? Christina Warren , pick of the week. Yeah, so I'm I I I'm sure that you guys have talked about Obsidian um before, the the the note taking app, which is voted obsidian fan. Yeah, which is fantastic. I'm I'm a I'm a big fan too. And you know, it' its it''ss a kind of a plain text, you know, uh writing app, but there are a lot of plugins, there's um a big ecosystem around it, and what actually uh happened this week, uh today actually is that uh the um obsidian team launched their obsidian community, which is a new directory, and then there's like a developer dashboard for obsidian plugins and themes. We need this because there there are thousands of plugins now. There are and and the process they've been had a bottleneck.'re The onlyy seven members of their team and so they've had a bottleneck trying to get, you know, as many um things available and so um it's community dot obsidian dot M D and then they have things organized by category, you know, when things have been updated. Look at this. And then they're they're doing what they can to, you know, try to uh take uh security and things like that seriously. Obviously they're uh there's gonna be some stuff where I think you know that the they have some automated scans and they're doing some score cards um and some disclosures about what permissions things might ask. Um but uh I I think this is great. I I it this has been a kind of a problem. There have been a lot of people who've tried to kind of step in, I think to make this space, but having this officially part of um obsidian uh they've done a really good job with it and I'm I'm such a big fan of what they've built with with obsidian, so I wanted to share that. Uh I ha yeah, and this is you know, I I have mixed feelings about obsidian plugins because on the one hand, it's plain markdown. And if you don't install a plugin, it's plain text and you can see it and read it everywhere forever. But I do have twenty eight plugins installed. So because uh you know, it ends up beinging uh mak it even more functional and can do so many interesting useful things. Well that's the thing, right? You you can get so many integrations, you can connect it to other services and then pull those things into your obsidian vault and yeah, then that is is is plain text too. So there's there's a lot of really cool uh stuff that's and it's great with AI. This is the other the side the other uh wonderful thing about obsidian is uh it uh it because it is plain text your AI can easily ingest it and write to it. And so I, in fact, have a whole AI folder of stuff that my AI creates all the time. In fact, I even planned my entire uh travel uh using AI and obsidian for my itinerary and it was just it was just fantastic. So and now I have a a diary that uh it turned into a webpage and I can just go on and on and on. There's so many wonderful things you can do with obsidian, especially if you're using uh AI. So I'm glad that they finally did this. What what is the address of the uh obsidian It's community.obsidian dot md. Okay. Community.obsidian dot md. Obsidian.md is the base directory. It the's base site. Yeah. So this is just their community site. And they've got everything organized into you know different um categories. It's great. Look at this 280 AI plugins . Wow. Wow. Alone. Andy and I'll pick of the week. Let me introduce you to the problem the great source of stress that all of us have when we have an app that we absolutely love but it has not been updated in ages and ages and ages.cause Be part of you is thinking, oh, well, that means that like when they get around to it, they're gonna make a huge, wonderful update that's going to double my joy in this app. And part of you is wondering, no, they've forgotten it's existed. And at some point there's going to be an OS update that breaks it and they're not going to fix it. I'm going to have to lose my gridest . Fortunately, it was the first thing with Snapseed. This is Google's image editor and it is there's uh i'll i'll say it again there's a reason why i don't have games on my phone it's because i have so much too much fun in adobe lightroom and in snap seed just basically i was waiting for a train and i took a random picture of something and now I'm on the train and I will spend 40 minutes editing it in Snapseed, not because I'm a persnickety artiste, but because Snapseed makes it so much fun to explore what I what can I do with this photo. It's not about k it's not about Canva. It's not about I'm gonna put a puppy dogs, I'm gonna put a decorative thing on this, I'm gonna use AI to put a tap dancing, tap dancing penguin in the back. No, it is photographic editing things for both the simplest damn uh interface you can possibly have where there is a stacked list of scrolling through of brightness, contrast, saturation, white point, dark point, bottom, and you can stop there. Or you can say, you know what I want to go with with details and I want to go with uh uh specular highlights and I want to go with gradual toning and you know what I want to go and adjust the curves but I want to adjust the blue curve because it's a snow scene and the snow is very, very blue. I'd only want to take the blue out of the you keep exploring and having more and more fun until you're left with I I took I I I I had pancakes for Fri on Friday and it was a fine picture and I was as I was waiting for like the train to take me home. I just kept editing this picture of pancakes because those blueberries could have been more blue. And there could have been like more sharpness. And Snapseed is the app that lets you kind of do that. The built-in editor you get with uh with uh with uh Apple Photos doesn't do that even Google Photos its editor they kind of screwed up because they make it way too complicated uh this is very very focused on here is a picture that was taken with by your phone camera or something you imported through whatever. You're going to play with it for with a whole bunch of tools, some of them very, very dramatic, some of them very, very subtle, until this is exactly the piece of art that you want it to be. One of the big things they added uh they so they made one big uh uh upgrade uh like a few months ago. They made a second big upgrade in February or March by which they added a camera mode to it, which it never had before. So it's uh I've been playing with that and I've been learn I've been getting more used to wanting to use it because it has uh vintage film stocks or film looks where you basically on the camera mode you scroll through and you choose, I want Fuji X100 uh for for this because I I even now I know even now I remember because I was shooting you know film as a kid. Oh, lots of greens, lots of reds. Okay, I want, oh, but this is a fall scene, so I want Kodak uh Kodak Chrome. You don't have to mess with that if you don't want to, but I'm amazed that this is the first time that I've actually been kind of messing around with a non-stock camera app on a regular basis. I'm still experimenting with it, but it's fun to play with. And I don't again, I don't have to play with it. All the edits are non-destructive, of course. You can uh you you can uh rewind to whatever you whatever you want. You can uh do things in layers, so you can just basically be experimenting. Like I said, it is the most fun and direct photo editor I ever want I ever saw. And I wouldn't go so far as to call it a uh uh a a uh a Photoshop killer or a Lightroom killer or an Adobe Creative Studio subscription killer, but if you want to do something with photography that goes beyond what the stock photo app will let you do, whether it's an Android phone or an iPhone or an iPad or whatever, definitely get yourself some snapsy. It's free. Also, it's being supported by $4 trillion dollar company, so it probably is not going away. The fact that they finally updated it after I don't know how many years, that means that, okay, so that means it's gonna be compatible with iOS 26 and 27. It's gonna be compatible with Android 17, 18, 1 Version four just came out and uh I have it too, and I it is really amazing. Yeah. Really is great. Uh that I guess that leaves Jason Snell, your pick of the week. Right, I've got a I've got a pick update. I picked Indigo a little while ago when it was in beta. It is out now in the app store. Indigo is a client for Blue Sky and Mastodon in one place. It does. I've been using it for the last like two mont hs. It has replaced all my other clients. It's iOS, uh, but also Mac . And it uh it does what it says on the tin. Those are the two social media platforms I use the most. And now I can use them in one app. It does some deduping, which is very smart. If it's a cross post, you can cross post easily , but you can also read and it supports threading and it supports all the things. So if you're somebody who's using both Blue Sky and Mastodon, I find it very pleasant to be able to read my timeline in one spot. It's just two and one. Instead of having to do the work of saying, well, now I've finished this timeline, let's go over to this timeline. It's just all in one place. You control what post to where, um, what where where you put everything that you do and then you can also see it all and it's got nice little flags so you know that was from a blue sky user and that's from a mast on user although if you're like me depending on the tone of the post you can tell. You'll know. Which it is. I got a I got a very weird piece of feedback yesterday from a podcast I did where the person was uh both did not understand what I said and took it the wrong way and was very upset and I was like, oh mastodon, mastodon is the where this came from. Um but m but I have a real pick too. So that's indigo. It's out now. And also I a Mac utility, it costs seven bucks. It's from my friend Lex Friedman. Lex it is called GNOME. Here's what GNOME does: it's a menu bar app, and you press a keyboard shortcut, and you get a search box, and you find an animation in a file format that's spelled G I F now Lex, being a very funny fellow, has said his he's called it gnome because gnome is how you pronounce G , which is not to pronounce it at all. But yeah, so I'm gonna say it. It it it's a it's a GIF. I said it. I'm from the eighties. I remember when they were pronounced GIF. Uh a GIF or GIF if you prefer uh quick search, menu bar app, keyboard shortcut, type your search. Uh, and then it's optional, but there's a great option that when you choose it, it just auto-pastes it wherever you are. And uh so you can get that GIF in there really quick or GIF or GNOME. And a feature of it that I really love, if you've got a little folder somewhere that's full of the ones that you use , you can point GNOME to that and it will use that and the search engine that it's using so that I have access to all of my uh Spider-Man GIFs from the animated Spider-Man. Uh and all of my uh this is Spinal Tap GIFs, but also the the rest of world. So it's uh it's really nice. And uh Lex is just charging uh seven bucks single purchase. Um, but I I love it. So if you're conversing with me and I send you a bunch of GIFs, that's why. That's great. Lex has a great brain. Every time I see every time he creates something, it's like I think Lex has a great brain. At some point we have to uh do count all the menu bar apps that we've recommended on this show. And and maybe somebody should have Yeah, and you get to kind of customize it as you wish. You can just pull it out and it's a flexible pleat strip of OLED so I can have all of my menu bar items uh uh uh visible at the same time . Oh nice. Broken it eight times since it cost eight hundred dollars to fix every time, but still it's a good idea if you like many bar items like I do. Great idea. And I did want to thank you uh Jason for your uh ped ometer plus plus pick a couple of weeks ago because I put it on my watch and it was a really great tool to see as I walked around the islands. It's a great watch app. There there are not there are not a lot of truly great w Apple Watch apps, but Pedometer Plus Plus is really like David Smith sweat the sweats the details on. Well, and I'm really into complications because I have the info uh you know watch face. And so the having it as a complication really uh is fantastic . I really like that. I should mention uh I picked it many years ago. We brought the Shaka guides along with us. I really like GPS driving tours. And when you go to the islands, when you go to Hawaii, um having these Shaka guides are great. We we got the Big Island audio tour. And as we were driving, you do a lot of driving on the Big Island, uh, it was, you know, telling stories, playing Hawaiian music, describing sites, saying, turn left here if you want to see the uh Akaka waterfalls and things like that. And it was really, really great. So if you're going to uh Hawaii, any of the islands, look at the Shaka Guide, self-guided GPS driving tours. And they have them for the national parks now as well. They've expanded out a little bit. Uh but I really uh I f I I'd f I used it when we were like many years ago, I think, when we were in Maui. And uh I thought, oh I should get this for the big line. And yeah, it was fantastic. The guy's a little bit like a DJ voice and a lot of false laughter, but you know, you I I can put up with that. That's okay. Um but a really useful and uh I now know a lot more about where we were . Uh okay . I think we have done it. Good talk, everybody. Good talk. Good game. Good talk. Good talk. Uh we do Mac break weekly on uh Tuesdays, eleven AM Pacific, two PM Eastern Time. As I learned last week, eight AM Hawaiian time. That's eighteen hundred UTC. If you want to watch or listen to the show you live, you can. Uh, of course, if you're in the club, you can watch in the club twit discord behind the velvet rope special access. Uh, but everybody gets to watch on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Kick, and you can even chat with us while you're in any of those platforms. And I see all the chat comments flying by. After the fact, on-demand versions of the show available in audio or video at our website, twit.tv slash MBW there is a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. That's actually a great way to share clips. You can if your mom is about to buy an iPhone Air, you can share that little clip of Christina's mom's dissatisfaction and save her a lot of money because it is flip flop week. I'm just