Comment Corner and Closing Thoughts

Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined today by my colleague David Price. Hello. And as always, our producer, Roman Loyola. Oh, hi there. This is episode number 9 84. Roman, I did the math. Alright. Uh-oh. Sixteen weeks from today, if we don't take any days off, will be s the week of September um seventh. Oh very well could be the iPhone event. We didn't we didn't plan that like thirty years ago when we started doing this, but but it it worked out really nicely. So the thousandth episode we're gonna make sure we somehow make it work will be um the iPhone eighteen eighteen uh yeah well the fold the fold and you know, like a big deal. So we're gonna try to try to coordinate that with Apple, see if they can get their uh the event on the on the eighth. They they they they always take our suggestions. I'm sure John Turnus would mention that during the presentation. Right. Tell everyone to listen to the You can listen to the thousandth episode on your new iPhone uh you know eighteen uh proigns. Watch it in full four K or whatever. That's right. There you go. Um so we're not allowed to take a week off uh Well it depends. If Apple has the event on the fifteenth we are. We gotta see. But we won't know until like the week before. Which we can't take the week off. I don't know what we're gonna do because we can't take the week off before so, it might just have to be a thousand and one, which would be unfortunate. Yeah. But uh we'll we'll see. Well that would be the s a good start to the next thousand. I guess so, yeah. That's good that that's a good point. That's one way to look at it. Uh but today we're gonna actually talk about Google a little bit um and Microsoft and how it all relates to Apple and a bunch of stuff happened last week that we're going to um talk about. David wrote a couple stories, has some thoughts, so we'll hear a lot from him. Uh, and then we'll have this week in Apple History. We'll close as always with our comments from you . The uh uh see, I tried to add limb and I screwed up. We'll close us with our comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook or Thread, search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo. You can send emails to podcast at Macworld.com, send us a personal email. Comment under a video, comment under a post, get us your thoughts, and we will talk about them on a future show. Okay, so Google. Well, we're going to start with Google. Um, if you don't follow Android closely, and I'm assuming you don't, um it's Google I.O. season. In fact, it's it's actually today is like their their like keynote, which is Google I.O. is basically WWDC for Google. It's their developer stuff where they where they set like their their expectations for the for the coming year. So today's Google I.O. last week was they have a thing called the called the Android show. It's like a I don't know if it's monthly or weekly. It's some some like podcast thing they do. But last week was the I.O. version of that. So they kind of talked about like specifically Android 17, a little bit of Gemini, they introduced a new um a new AI kind of laptop. They didn't really like show it, but they talked about like what it's gonna be called the Google Book, which is just a terrible name. But um so naturally, like we're Macworld, so we look at that stuff from the the the vantage point of of Apple. And um it's it's kinda hard not to look at all that stuff as a response to what Ga Apple's been do ing for the last you know six to twelve months. Uh specifically MacBook Neo and um Apple Intelligence. So starting off with Gemini, Google renamed Gemini last week, Gemini Intelligence, which is just hilarious. And but beyond the name change, it kind of also tweaked and changed and and and retooled like how it works on you know it's uh Android phones and watches and and speakers and stuff. Um just before David starts ranting, I want to say so. Google describes Gemini intelligence is a quote. It gets your vibe, it handles the busy work, and it helps you focus on what matters to you. And I I don't know. It just sounds like that's just such marketing nonsense. I mean listen, Apple does it too, and we make fun of Apple when they do their rhetorical flourishes, but the idea of AI getting my vibe is so just disturbingly icky . I don't really like it. But David, you're not happy at all. And um I'll shut up now and let you and let you say some stuff. I don't want to rant. Um Shut up, please. This is this is fun. We're we're we're unafraid of of ranting. Have you didn't didn't you hear the beginning? You don't want to be a rampant. Um yeah, so it's i I I hadn't heard that quote actually about getting my vibe and that makes me hate it even more. Great. Kinda, yeah. The quote I heard was that Android is not going to be an operating system anymore. It's going to be an intelligent system. So the idea is that AI underpins everything, which I I suppose maybe to an extent it already was under the surface, but it's gonna be foregrounded. Whatever you do, if you've got an Android device, there will be Google Gemini in your face constantly offering to do things. There's there was a very good article on PC World um about how Google Books are gonna be uh I think the term they use was an anti-personal computer because it it makes decisions for you. But it's gonna be it's gonna be the same on Andro id. It's gonna be here's what I think you want to do, shall I go ahead and do it for you? Rather than being a tool in which you make the decisions, you do most of the thinking, you do most of the work, and it helps you. It's now gonna it's gonna be the agent itself. And and that sort of thing distresses me to an extent um because I I I think AI should be inten tional and thoughtful. And I mean these are not words that you can really use to describe most AI implementation at the moment. But I I accept that AI exists. I accept that AI has its uses. But I don't like AI being used as the default. I don't like AI being used without consideration of its costs and its limitations. And um I think it's I think it's a trouble in development when AI becomes the operating system. And yeah. So like Apple intelligence. Like obviously Google is kinda taking a page from Apple lambested and and skewered over the last couple of years for really being late to the party on AI. And what that what that really means is that they don't have like a like a chat bot that works well. Like say Gemini, so I I'm using Chrome right now to record this and back in the top right corner it says Ask Gemini. Like it's they want you to use its chat bot to ask all sorts of things. You know, we've seen the commercials where you know someone punches a hole in their wall and they take a picture and they show them how to fix it. Siri cannot do any of that. We know that. However, on the iPhone, AI is all over the place. It's, you know, there's writing tools. There is, you know, automate like like uh uh uh battery stuff where it tells you how long it's gonna be it uh every day I saw I have the iPhone Air and I you know the battery isn't as good as other iPhones and every day at like 11 o'clock a big pops up and it says we're adjusting your battery uh settings because you're using your phone too much and it's gonna run out. That stuff is all over the phone. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it seems to me, and you know, I I we we haven't seen it yet and you know it's all just marketing stuff right now but it seems like Google is kind of taking a page from what Apple's doing with AI. Like a more of a less of a of uh image creation and and and and chat stuff and more of uh like we're gonna you know look at your emails and summarize them like well you know like not in a privacy way, but you know, uh uh here's your notifications. They're all bunched together and these are the most important ones, like really using it to you know, make make things on your phone streamlined. The problem you have, and I agree with you, is that it seems to be somewhat intrusive on the Google in the Google I don't know the Google mission, whereas they're going to really kind of I don't know like put it like in front of like Apple intelligence is always there, but if you want to ignore it, you can. Like I don't use writing tools. I know they're there. It seems as though this Gemini intelligence stuff is going to basically say, hey, could can I help you with that? Whether or not you want it or not. I think it's the same it's the same idea taken the next step really 'cause I I do think I think I think we have to skewer Apple to an extent on this one because I think it has been intrusive. Okay. I've several times accidentally pressed the writing tools button because it's it's right there. It you're right, it is there. And suddenly I'm in this whole mode that I I have no interest in using. Um it it it is it is very present. You know, serious it just happens to be quite limited in its in its scope. It's just not very it's not very good AI, but it is shoved in your face all the time on the iPhone. Um it sounds from what Google has said that it this is gonna be the next step. It is going to be a bit more intrusive and a bit more capable. I mean we we should acknowledge as well that the Gemini is way better than um Apple Intelligence and Siri. I I just I like the idea and and maybe maybe I am exposing myself as the almost boomer that I am, that I think AI should be a it should be an app, it should be an option, it should be a uh a service you you sign up for, you go into rat,her than underpinning everything, it should be to some degree compartmentalized and optional rather than being something that you must have to avoid, which is increasingly the case. Um and you know, give given how how unreliable AI is at the moment, how prone it is to hallucinations, how easy it is to use it accidentally to spread misinformation, the number of people I've I've talked to that will tell me something that they got off ChatGPT without really thinking about it. And that's and that's with the sort of current um paradigm where they've had to they've had to think about a question and think, how can I how can I find out about that? I will go to Chat GPT . And then that's that's one stage of thought, one stage of intentional ity that separates them and introduces that uh that thought process of but what if it hallucinates? What if it damages the environment? What if it's inaccurate? You know, all the rest of that. Whereas if it was just I look at my phone and it says, Do you want me to answer a question? And you go, Yeah, sure, you've not thought about the fact that it's AI, the fact that it's limited, the fact that it's harmful. It w it worries me a little bit. You remember when um Apple introduced the uh summary notifications, notification summaries and they were really inaccurate. And they had to add in a sort of um standardized boilerplate text around them that would sort of remind you we've created these using AI. Yeah, they disabled them for a bit because they weren't they weren't you know, like not part and parcel, but you know, enough of them were getting things wrong where they said we're gonna turn these off for a bit. Yeah. So they had they had to introduce that that that that layer between where they would remind you this is AI, this is unreliable. Um and now we're hearing about um a new development that's gonna remove all friction, all layers and just um and put you straight in touch with the results of the AI. You're not even really in touch with the AI. It gives you the output of AI and you're invited to um accept it. WWDC is in a month or a little less than a month. And we there've been a steady drip of rumors from uh Bloomberg's Mark German over the last I'd say two weeks. And I'm gonna say like a hundred or ninety-eight percent of them are all AI featured. It sounds like AI is going to be like the thing this year that we have to basically come to terms with. You can turn it off , of course. You can turn you you could probably turn off Gemini intelligence too, I assume. But it it th there's so many features and there's so many inter actions like you're going to be doing yourself a disservice by turn I think by turning it off. Abble intelligence now you turn it off, it's fine. Siri still works basically the same. You you you lose the writing and tools and the image creation, but that like that's not a big deal. The the the way it's gonna work going forward, I think is I think you're gonna have to keep it on. So there's gonna be a new Siri chatbot that's like Gemini. It's gonna be its own app, which is which is what you were just saying there. So you have to like you know in like have the intent to go press the app, open the app, talk to Siri. That that's all fine. But there's a lot of like little things that they're gonna be doing. Um most recently there was one yesterday, that writing tools, you were just talking about writing tools, is gonna more now turn into like a like a grammarly type thing where it's where it's always on, it's always checking, it's always scanning if you enable it. And it's you know giving you suggestions. I use Grammarly, I will admit on um with my writing. I don't use the grammar, contextual grammar stuff. I'll just use like the spell check and you know it's good. And spell check is a thing that we've grown accustomed to. But um it sounds like it's gonna be everywhere now. Like everything you type, s Apple intelligence is gonna be looking at, you know, on your phone. It's I'm like I'm not trying to expose privacy stuff. Like Apple is very mindful of that. But it's gonna be giving you suggestions, it's going to be it's always gonna be present. Like you're gonna know Apple intelligence is a thing that's on your phone. Uh I mean this is kind of what you just said, but that does that concern you, David? I mean I mean I don't want you to repeat yourself because you just said it. But um like taking if so Google just took their thing to the next level, it sounds like Apple's gonna kind a do something similar in a couple of weeks. I agree and I I don't love it. What worries me more really is that Apple is gonna spend WWDC talking about AI, talking about AI sort of features and surface level stuff that isn't needed and not address what it needs to address, which is that um Syria is terrible. Um and that and that is within the AI remit. So I'm happy for the company to address AI, but I would like it to focus its attention specifically on Siri becoming more accurate, more capable, more able to trigger more actions. When you when you wanted to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it's just on a really basic level. Like when you've got a home pod and you and you ask the home pod to play a song, Siri is s so bad at that. Like it it's infuriating and worse than it used to be. So now it will it will play the wrong song. Like it used to be the case that you would um that you would ask for a song and it would just go, Well, I can't understand you may try again later in some annoying um error message. But it would at least knock at it wrong. It would at least have that Hippocratic thing of first do no harm. But now it will just play anything and then and then you'll say you know to stop and it will ignore that and just carry on playing some and and it intrudes, like you'll be you'll be watching TV and it will it will somebody's calling for me and it will butt in. Sure. And it's actively bad just on the level of voice recognition. This is I mean it I know that is a form of AI, but it that's that's quite base base level. It wouldn't be a fun thing for them to talk about. That's the problem. You can't spend a whole keynote saying it now understands basic English, but that's what that's what we need. That's what I want it to focus on as a company. Rather than adding more AI features, which will probably go wrong. Maybe not, you know, because we're hearing that Google Gemini is gonna get sort of patched into um . Yeah, we'd be remiss if we didn't say like the underpin nings of at least Siri in iOS 27 will be Google and Google Gemini. Not Gemini Intelligence so much, but but the Gemini large language model. It's one of them. I don't know. I got another coming out with a new one as we speak because that's what these things do. They keep updating. I don't know if that one or if it's the last one or if it's it's some custom version of the two, but whatever. Apple finally said after failing to deliver this new Siri for almost two years or basically two years, just said, like, screw it. We don't know what we're doing. We can't possibly catch up in time. So we're just gonna pay someone to partner . Which, you know, they probably should have done from day one , but they didn't and that's fine. And they've been sort of using patches before as well with chat GPT as a sort of optional fill in. But I I read you mentioned Mark German um just now and and one of one of his articles recently was talking about the impact of privacy on um Apple's progression as an AI company and how they have this self imposed rule that they will they will only use user data in certain um specifically defined ways, which which inhibits their ability to learn, it inhi inhibits their ability to teach large language models to become effective AI. But they they want they well, we're gonna respect user data, therefore we can't make AI better. But their solution to that is to buy in AI from elsewhere or necessarily buy in, but get in AI from elsewhere, which has been created in exactly those same way. Um impugning ways that they they disagree with. And it it uh it's a real it's It's like hiring a hitman. It's like I didn't kill him. Someone else did it Yeah, and then keeping the hitman on the premises potentially other people as well. Because Google Yeah, I mean this is kinda where Siri got Siri in trouble in the first place is that way back when when Siri first came out and first started doing its thing, Apple they tried anonymizing data, they wouldn't tech data, you have to opt into the data and they fell way behind. Because let's face it, as much as we want these things to be as private as possible and everything to stay on the phone, these companies need this data to develop, to increase, to enhance, to keep making these things smarter and better. But otherwise they're they're you know, they're only as smart as what they are told. It's not sentient. It doesn't learn unless we give it things that it can learn from. So , you know, I appreciate as an Apple user the the fight for privacy, but I can also understand how they can't fall behind another 10 years because they keep all the data private . So this is, you know, in a sense the the right way to do it, I guess. Or but I understand why it's also like, you know, well, if you're not gonna do it yourself , you can't really keep your hands clean by saying, well, we'll just let Google do it, even though it's the same users, the same people, the same information. Like I use Chrome, I use Google search all the time. You know so it's a it's a tricky area, and I think Apple just has to figure out a way. I don't know how, because they tried the whole Siri Ananimous thing and they got into trouble for that, and then like there's really no way to collect data unless you're collecting dat a. Yeah it's I I wonder I wonder about the bargain people would be willing to make, frankly. Would you take that bargain if if Apple said we're we're gonna largely we're gonna largely abandon the privacy uh philosophy policy, but in return you get a Siri that's as good as Google Gemini. Would you take that? So it depends. Yeah. Well it depends. The the privacy stuff that I care most about are the communications I have with my family, my friends, my kids . Like that stuff is what I value in the sense that I don't want people reading the text I send my son. If I get in trouble with the with the law, I don't want them to be able to go do my phone and see all the stuff that I do personally . Now beyond that, so I'll use an example. Last week um my my my son plays baseball so I'm I'm in charge of like the the whole streaming part of that. So we set up a phone, we have a whole it's a whole thing with with with speed speed radar and stuff. Like we set up a whole thing . And last week we were at his um well he's in middle school, but the the high school he will be attending we were at, and it didn't work. Like we couldn't get the thing to work. The there were too many people there or something happened. So it was frustrating. So I started to look into Starlink. For those who don't know, Starlink is Elon Musk's satellite internet provider. It's basically to, you know, if you're in like a rural area or you can use satellites to get your internet or you can augment your wireless coverage because it uses satellites and not, you know, wireless towers. It's a it's a much more if if you're in an area that that can that is wide open, you can reach the sky, you can get you know pretty fast internet . I searched it for literally five minutes. I wanted to see what the price was and what the equipment was and what it would cost. For like three days, I got bombarded with Starlink ads all over the place, on X, on Facebook, on Twitter. And you know, so and I said to my wife, I said, like, I said, look, I I I literally did like, I'll Google search. Read a couple of things, clicked on the Starlink website, looked at the plans and the price, and then that was it . I'm okay with that. Like I'm not complaining about that. I understand. If I'm gonna be online, if I'm gonna be searching for stuff and using Google and not protecting myself like I could I could have gone to the private uh what duck duck go or something I didn't so I'm okay with that level of it. Like not everything on my phone has to be private. Like so Apple Cloud Compute. Like I'm okay with that . So if Apple wants to draw a line and say like your your messages, your emails, your payments are private, but your searches and your chats with Siri aren't. I think I'd be all right with that. That was a roundabout way to say to say all that you convinced me, yeah. I I think I agree with you. Yeah. Because you know, like like I said, like if I get if I get in trouble somewhere, like I just want to make sure that my son isn't going to get wrapped up in it because I said this to him somewhere or or uh you know like I d I want my personal super super personal stuff private. But if they know that I collect marble stuff, I don't care. Sure. Great . Like that that doesn't that doesn't affect me. So yeah, I think that there's a line . And I think Apple is having a real hard time because people don't necessarily people a lot of people aren't able to to to draw that line because it's become such a such of like their identity ever since the the the the court case with the sandburner uh bur sandburner diner shooter and that has become so ingrained in their philosophy. I remember like the billboards, like privacy is big baked into iPhone. And people kind of associate the the the two things. I use an iPhone and everything I do is private. Like that's not even true. Like if I search Google as I just demonstrated, I was you obviously using my iPhone. Like not everything you do on your iPhone is private, but it's really hard to tell people that on like a on like a uh on like a granular level. So it's it's I understand why Apple is having such a hard time with this because AI you know it's it absolutely needs gobs of data daily to continue to get better. Because even if it's a week and a half old, it's useless. Like it has to be if you're gonna talk to something, like you're talking to a person like they have it has to be up to date on everything that's that's that's happening and i i get why siri has been so hard to develop as a tool that's also private, unless you have like a like a 500 terabyte iPhone . You gotta st ata has to go somewhere. And to get to that somewhere, it it can't all be private . Hm. It's like they need a marketing slogan that doesn't just say we have perfect privacy. It it needs to say we're better than other companies, but still flawed. It's it's like that chocolate bar company whose chocolate bars say ninety-seven percent . Um I want to make sure I get this right. I think it says ninety seven percent slavery free. And it's and it's meant to be a way of saying that the that the cocoa industry is is uh is is is caught up in forced labour. But of course everybody looks at it and goes, Wahaha, there's three percent slavery in your what they're trying to say is we've done everything we can to make this free of forced labour, but actually you can't get that last three percent out because it's so tangled up in Apple needs something like that, but more successful that says ninety seven percent private. I also wonder how many how many iPhone users care ? About that? I think this a lot, yeah. Like what's the percentage? Yeah. It must be a significant thing. You would think. For them to be doing the building. Right. If they keep doing it. They must have made a connection on some level in some research group that that people say they're concerned about Google harvesting their data or or Meta harvesting their data. There must be some thought process there, but it just isn't necessarily as nuanced a thought process on a wide scale as it would need to be for Apple to sort of square this circle and and harvest data for teaching its AI models but not allowing the government to access your health data or your pri your your you know your private messages or whatever. It's a difficult one. Yeah health health's the other one. I think most of them are pretty private when it comes to health, unless you like voluntarily feed I don't know, chat GPT like your P your PET scans or something. Like I think it's pretty private. But yeah. Like that's like that that's another thing. Like the health app has tons of of of health data on just walking around stuff, location data. Like that's the stuff that I care about keeping private. But I also do want our phones to keep getting sm arter. So like they should when you buy an iPhone, there should be like a hundred toggles. Like which one will you be okay with us taking? Like what What can we look at? What what what personal data are you comfortable with us taking ? Like messages no, emails, no. Like like like dozens of them. So the more toggles you tick, the lower the price you pay for the iPhone. Oh there you go. Yeah, I think uh because I'm I'm willing to give up quite a lot of my data to uh to to corporations. But what annoys me is giving it away for for free or for very little, you know, for if for the sake of a small amount of convenience. But you know, if if if it re if it reduced the price of the phone, then yeah, I'd say have at it, you know. You you can use any of it, you know, I don't care as long as I'm paying two hundred pounds for a phone. Sure. Yeah, I mean Google makes uh Uh Google makes a fortune every quarter just on us. Like I don't own any Google, not any, but I don't own much Google stuff. It doesn't matter. They're still making money off me just by using Google sear ch every day. So let's just sh we we'll switch to uh to MacBook Neo. That was a longer segment than I wanted it to be. It's it's that was like twenty minutes. Along with the Gemini Intelligence stuff last week, Google also announced this Google book, which is kind of a spiritual successor to the Pixel book, which I really liked. That was it's like 10 years old. Actually, my son still uses it for school. It was a it was just a Chromebook in a in a nice package. And it it was it was really nice. And then they canceled it because they canceled everything. Google can't stick to anything. But um this Chromebook sounds like it's less about Google Book Google making stuff and more about other manufacturers making things and they're gonna supply the operating system. And I'm sure they'll have one that's that's there. But I think it's gonna be made by like, you know, like Asus and Dell and stuff. And it's like it's it's like a platform, the Google Book platform we'll call it . And we don't know how much it's gonna cost, but we assume it's gonna be relatively affordable. So at least some of them. And it's all AI, of course. You know, like that's the underpinning is gonna be Gemini and it's gonna have this new operating system that's that's like in between Chrome and Android. And it it it's gonna basically it's basically a new Chrome OS. They didn't c come out and say Chrome's dead, but like that was the implication. Like eventually it's gonna be phased out, and this new Google book is gonna be the thing. And it's the timing is a little interesting because Apple just came out with this MacBook Neo about two months ago now, March April. Yeah, about two months ago. And it's really kind of upended as we as we suspected it might when even back when we heard the rumors. It's really upended that budget, the budget PC market, which let's face it, is probably 80% of people who buy PC laptops are buying between the 400 and 800 range. Maybe not 800. That's probably too high. Let's let's say 60%. Between like the 400 and 800 range. You know, you have the really cheap Chromebooks, and then you have the higher end um PCs for gaming and stuff. And you know, most of it's in that middle lane, that middle. And ever since MacBook Neo came out at 600 bucks, like PC makers are like, what do we do? You know, they're trying to be all cool about it and say, like, yeah, it doesn't, like, we're we'll be fine. But it's kind of like the iPhone, where the iPhone came along and Palm and BlackBerry were like, nah, we're not worried, and secretly they were like you know like what are we supposed to do with this thing because we're nowhere near it and you know that's kind of what's what's happening with the um the PC laptop markets market so this this Google book we We you know it seems to be an answer to Mac Book Neo. And um we we had a story uh written by uh Mahmoud Atani, one of our contributors, that basically said like it's it's like an advertisement for MacBook Neo because i it it doesn't appear on paper to do anything better . And if it was cheaper, if Google was planning on making most of these things or other companies were playing, I have to assume they would say that. Starts at $4.99 or starts at $3.99, whatever. So it's going to at least be the probably the same price as Neo and I don't know. I just don't see it moving the needle. I think Apple has dropped a bomb on the budget PC market with a laptop that looks great, feels great, is gonna last , and only costs, you know, a few hundred dollars. Uh like David, where do you stand? Like, is there anything in the Google Book announcement that you saw that made you think like , you know, maybe they can uh you know take some of that market share that Mac McNeil is almost certain to to grab . Yeah, not not at all. It it felt a bit almost embarrassing as as a product launch at that at that time . You know, they've had just a just a long enough period to just sort of pivot the way they pres ented it to respond to the MacBook Neo and it just c it came out as here's our MacBook Neo, hope you like it nearly as much as the MacBookneo. As you said, we don't know the price, but they've they specifically use the word premium. So they said that the uh the cr the the Chrome book will continue to exist. This will be a premium product that sits above it. Um I'm assuming by premium they don't mean twelve hundred dollars or whatever. I'm assuming it'll be premium compared to the Chromebook. So yeah, probably somewhat close to the MacBook Ning. Like there are some premium Chromebooks. Well, the Pixel Book was one of them. That thing was like twelve hundred bucks when it when it came out. So like they they do exist, but that that's not how people think of Chromebooks. Like they think of them as those cheapo, you know, plasticky things. Yeah. And and as we saw with Google when we were discussing Google Gemini . Google Gemini. Yeah. That's Gemini. Yes, Google Gemini. And Gem Gemini Intelligence or Google Gemini. It's gonna be based it's gonna be AI first. It's it it's gonna be um the operating system will be pushing you to AI rather than giving you the same freedom that traditionally you get with a with a PC, with a with a a non Apple laptop. You know, this is what people would always say was that if you use Apple products you have slightly less user agency because Apple funnels you down a particular user experience. But um this is going to be constantly railroading you into Gemini branded AI interactions that you may not particularly be interested in, and I think that could be quite frustrating. We don't know a lot about the design. Renders. I don't think they were photos. Right, yeah, maybe. But it looks like they just kind of like designed. They somehow looked like the MacBook Neo, even though it was just sort of small cutaway parts, possibly because the screen th maybe they'd arranged that the screen was showing blue light, so it gave it kind of an indigo and obviously slim, weak. Yep. It had it had a very much the same vibe as the MacBook N I don't really also but there's gonna be the usual issue when you when you move away from Apple is it it's gonna be made by a whole bunch of different companies, as you said, Dell A Asus. Yeah. To make the first Google books and uh each Google e ach Google book will be built with premium craftsman craftsmanship and materials coming in variety of shapes and sizes. I don't know what other shapes there could be, but um the premium crafts manship is interesting because you know the MacBook Neo is premium chick craftsmanship as well, but it's not a premium Apple laptop. It's a budget Apple laptop. The MacBook Air is a mid-range. The MacBook Pro is a premium laptop. They're all aluminum, though. They're all using premium materi als. So the only thing that Google has like spotlighted is this glow bar. It says you'll you you'll know it's a go uh a Google book by the unique glow bar, which is like a thing on the outside. Like I guess it's like a little light up. It looks like it's like a light up thing and but who cares? Like like okay . There's nothing about the laptop that is unique or new ? Everything, you know, they they talk about all the stuff inside it and how it's uh it's not an operating system, it's an intelligent system, the same thing that they did with the with the with the uh Android stuff and okay great. But um I don't know, we'll see. We'll see I guess but I just think it's amazing that you know Apple just turned 50 and they finally release a MacBook that's actually like a budget, like a like a like a lower cost uh machine that's designed for people who don't want to spend a thousand dollars on on a laptop that isn't last year's model or two years ol d. And PC makers don't know what to do. Well what are we supposed to do now? The Asus CEO said it it had upturned the entire industry. And then in the set in the next sentence said that actually it wasn't a big deal. But they they can't decide how to react to it. We had Microsoft as well last week, um, with its white paper. Yes. Which we should we should really ask Roman about because I read Roman's demolition of the white paper, which was absolutely savage and very good . Um but just shows how how rattled Microsoft actually is . Um like all the rest of them. You know, all the all the Windows and and Windows PC, all these companies. The internet is coaching our kids. When boys hear that on repeat, it shapes how they see themselves. We can't leave it to those voices. We have to be louder. Together, with . We need to coach them, guide them. Back them. Building our boys up every chance we get. Be yourself. Back your mates. Confidence comes from living. As proud partner of the England teams, EE has support and guidance to help build all our boys up on and off the pitch. Search E.E Yes, boys. Completely rattled. Yeah, so before I ask Roman, um the um so the white paper, which is basically an industry term for like a study that you publish is um like they literally took four budget laptops and they they didn't compare them against MacBook Neo like per se, but they went through like these are the this is the stor age you get and this is the screen you get and they it was it was all very like buttoned up and serious and it was insane because first of all a couple of the laptops are priced way more than Neo . They don't mention the fact that they're plastic pieces of junk. They don't mention the fact that you get all this bloatware with it. They don't mention the fact that, you know, you y you you you're not getting the the the the uh service that you get not the service the um the the years of support that you get from macOS like they live out all the things that people would buy a MacBook Neo for and just say oh well look it's it's six hundred bucks and you're getting more storage.'s It like, okay, great, but I don't know. It just it seemed very short-sighted and and like ridiculous that someone at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to commission and then publish a st a study To prove that its laptops aren't awful . Where should I start with this? So this is a funny thing. So Mike asked me to look into this and write it up and It portrays itself as a white paper, which is you know if if pe people who are familiar with the white term white paper, there's like an academic association with it. So it's supposed to have some sort of credence to it, some credential to it . But in this sense, and it happens frequently in this sense, it's it's marketing. So and it's funny that Microsoft paid this external firm essentially to perform a marketing function . But it's being portrayed as this as a study . But it really wasn't anything that like say we would have we could have done or PC World could have done. You know what I mean? In terms of like comparing specs or anything like that. There was no deep research done in this article, except for So I started writing it thinking, all right, I'll just do the usual thing. And then I th and then as I was going through the study I went I thought, oh I wonder if PC World reviewed this laptop. And then I looked it up and I saw what they did. And then I thought, oh wait a minute, this would be brilliant if I could use PC World's words against this study and it it ended up working out that way. So it was just it wasn't even a lot of us defending the Mac . It just is it was a lot of PC World which is very PC centric using their words to kind of um tear down this this this white paper which kind of like goes to speak about how I guess it it talks about i it it it c it's it's like a statement about this this market, so to speak. How it's just it's it's clearly obvious what's going on with this market. This paper kind of like was finding a way to kind of disguise that. Right, exactly right. Uh it was all it was all deception. Like the the upshot is PC world, PC well I'll say PC users. Like they hate these things. Yes, y.es Like nobody is looking for them. Nobody would recommend them. It they're they're sp strictly made for the mass consumer who doesn't have or doesn't want nine or tho ausand dollars, nine hundred or a thousand dollars to spend on a laptop. That's it. They're not good machines. They're flimsy, they're bloated, they're slow . I in in in in a year they're gonna be um you know, yet two hours of battery life and and and take you take you a a day to open Chrome like they're not good . Yet Microsoft presented this thing as is like, Look, we have we we have four MacBook Neo type computers too. And like when I saw it, I like I immediately said, all right, Roman's gonna have some fun with this because man, this is crazy. I can't, I I I did a double take to see like you even uh messaged me, like like are you sure Microsoft commissioned this thing? Right. Like it's crazy to think that someone at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to publish this thing. Like I could see commissioning it. Larry, let's let's pay this company and see what they can come up with. But that when you got the bat when when you got the thing back, like all right, let's keep this at a draw somewhere, because this is not we can't publish this. David, I'm sorry, I've been we've been bogarding this whole conversation. Do you have any like we we're we're at like fifteen minutes? I don't want A pleasure to listen to you. That it can't keep selling Is it even a lost leader? Um we keep hearing that the the the bin ships that it's relying on are have run out. So it's having to actually buy chips instead of being able to use essentially free ones that would just produce defective in the buy as a byproduct of the manufacturing. Um it would be an absolutely brilliant sort of strategy to release this product knowing that it's way better than any rival product, just to mess with them and then , well, we're not making very much money on each of these but but it acts as s sort of a a seed. Uh it gets people in its entryway, as you said. People use these things, they think this is great. And that introduces them to the Apple ecos ystem. Um there's a there's an old um business thing whereas uh uh uh the uh Costco warehouse stores sell these rotisser ie chickens for $4.99. They're like a pound and a half to two pound big giant rotisserie chickens. And people flock to them. And Costco loses money on every single one they sell, but they don't care because they sell memberships and they sell other stuff in the store. I don't think Apple's losing money. Apple does not generally do that, but I also I I wonder if its margins are the same thirty five percent that it gets on other products. Because you know you're right. It once you you get that Ne o in front of you and you start using it, like dang then that's it. You got an Apple customer for life. It's different than an iPhone because the Mac in my mind is more of a lifestyle thing. Like people who buy iPhones, they'll use a PC, they'll use a Chromebook. But that Mac is the Halo product that connects to everything. Yeah, that that actually a good that was a good wrap up to jump into Apple History. Apple history. So So in Apple History on May nineteenth, two thousand one, so twenty five years ago, the first Apple store opened in Tyson's Corner, which is a shopping mall in Tysons, Virginia, which is about I think twenty to thirty minutes from Washington DC in the United States. Um of course yeah, I did say color fights in the United States because David's here. But not that he wouldn't know that, but we do have international listeners. I I what David David was gonna come on the show is like, Oh yeah, we have international listeners. I should make sure I clarify that too. Anyways. Um so before the store so actually they opened two stores that day later on because of the time change uh difference uh later on that day , uh Apple opened a store in Glendale, California . Um and we actually have a first person's account of that Glendale opening on our website. I'll put a link to it. It's w it was written by Serenity Caldwell, who's now at Apple uh doing developer relations. So it's an interesting thing. I don't know much about those list Oh yeah. So it's it's it's like four hundred miles south of the case. I know, yeah. It's like six hours away. Okay. Do you know why it chose those two is it sounds like relatively would it be fair to say obscure locations? I I have a thought. No, go ahead. Um I think that they weren't sure this would be a success. And the rents in in Tyson, Virginia, and Glendale, California are a lot less than San Francisco and New York City. So they wanted a it's kind of like a beta. You know, they had a C back in 200 1 . They were shutting down PC stores, gateway stores were huge, and then they weren't. And everyone said that Steve Jobs was nuts for opening brick and mortar shops right when the online boom was happening. And, you know, he g he doesn't get enough credit for the genius that was an Apple store in 2001, opening the first Apple store in 2001. Because , you know , buying Apple's products before that, you would go to Comp USA or Micro Center or something, and they would have like a little section off to the back. Sometimes they would be working, sometimes they weren't, sometimes they were nicely man icured, sometimes they were just a mess. Controlling that experience and the the the product and the and the light that they presented their products in was just a total stroke of genius. Yeah, prior to that, like Apple had sections in big box stores like remember I don't know if anyone remembers Comp USA. Yeah, sure. I think uh Before the Tyson's Cornerstar opened, uh they did a vi Apple did a video . Actually, I don't know if Apple did the video or if it was done for a I think it was a news program. I know I know which one you're talking about. With Steve Jobs doing the tour. And the one thing that was remarkable about that is that the Apple store is kind of not changed very much over the years in terms of its basic structure. The furnishings have changed. The tables and stuff, yep. Yeah, that's changed. But the and you know, they used to actually have this was kind of surprising to see. They used to actually use uh used to have like a bookshelf. You can buy computer books. Yeah. But that's totally gone now. Uh the big thing they had was they had a uh uh a movie theater in the back of the store. Yeah. With like plush sheets and stuff where they showed like um well I think they actually showed maybe keynotes here and there, but they would show like demonstration videos and product videos and stuff. Yeah. Um but the basic structure like you know uh like a table of some sort, and the style has changed over the years, but the Apple products are there and you can, you know, pick them up and look at them. So like the whole basic philosophy of the store, the whole basic structure of it hasn't changed very much since. It's true. I think they've gone back and forth with the genius bar, like that's come and gone. Like they took it away they they took it away for a while. Aaron Powell Yeah. So remember when uh the Apple stores were first starting to sprout up. If I was in vicinity of Apple store because of what I did for a living, I felt obligated to go visit it. Even though there was you know what I mean? On opening day, they used to give out t-shirts. I don't think they do that anymore. They did that for a while . Where they gave out uh my first the first apple star I went to, first one that was near me was in um Tice's corner . Oh, yeah. Strip mall in in Woodcliffe Lake, New Jersey. Uh it opened on November third, two thousand and one. And what's interesting about that is it was a week before the iPod hit shel ves. I think it hit shelves on the tenth or the or the ninth or something. And while I was waiting online , some like an Apple guy came out and showed us all, like let us use the iPod. It wasn't available for sale for another couple of days, but he let us all kind of touch it and put the earbuds in and stuff. It was the coolest thing a ever happened to me at the time. But um like it was like, oh my god, I got to use an iPod before, you know, my friends. Um I going to I agree, Rome, going to an Apple store, like it's not so much anymore, but twenty years ago. Like it was a big friggin' deal when an Apple store opened within shouting distance. David, what was the first one that you I'm assuming it's a bunch in London or or or or near you now? But do you remember when they opened the first one? I think that's about five now. Yeah. Um I d I can't remember when they opened the f because it was there's there was two. For a long while there was the two. Regent Street in Covent Garden. And I went to the one um on Regent Street for the launch of the first iPhone in two thousand and seven. Not the not the actual launch, uh people on Macworld UK were covering that. I was on PC Advisor at the time. So I went there for the briefing. Uh and I wrote about it on the site afterwards, about the experience of it. And it it's a little bit like um that that architectural awe that medieval stonemasons were going for with cathedrals. I went there and it I was fighting so hard to be objective because it it was so intimidating and so glorious almost going into this so you had the Regent Street store and then they had the headquarters behind, which has since moved to Battersea . Uh I don't know if you've seen you familiar with But Battersea Power Station. Yeah, those big chimneys flung up to the sky. It's even more intimidating and amazing now. It's just this amazing experience and this amazing as you said um conceptual leap to think um everybody's closing their stores, they're not making money. What if we had stores and be able to buy them up quite easily because everybody else is closing down theirs. Sure. And then use them as this as this community hub, as this um way of um materializing what the company means and sort of and then showing you know m showing it as a sort of idealised Apple users home almost or like a like a gentleman's club or or I we we really should mention Ron Johnson who was brought in from Target. He's the guy that basically invented the idea. Steve Jobs said we should do this, and then Ron Johnson was brought in and dealt with all the details. And he wanted to make them like public buildings, like libraries, um, like theaters. He he that was what his his influence was. It wasn't other shops, it wasn't a commercial experience. That's what and he said the employees should not be selling, they should be helping. Right. Just there as a as a as a comfortable experience. It is amazing and yeah, it a a very smart move to think so far, you know, so much against the tide of popular thinking at the time Aaron Powell It's just like you're walking into someone's living room and they just happen to have a bunch of Macs on the table. So just to wrap up the Apple Store stuff, uh I actually did an interview with a guy named Gary Allen who used to run a website called IFOaplestore.com , IFO stood for in front of. And this was back in the day when Apple stores were opening up and people would, you know, gather at the Apple store. There'd be like tho a couple, you know, a thousand people sometimes at these openings and he would go and actually cover them. Yeah. He passed away a few years ago. Um but uh so the funny thing is when I was prepping prepping for this Apple history thing, I thought, oh yeah, I did that interview with Gary. That must have been like what five years ago? It was actually during the 10th anniversary. So it was 15 years ago when I interviewed him. So I'll I'll put a link to that in the uh show notes in the description if you want to check that out. Uh check go to your uh Apple store and wish them an an happy anniversary . Yeah, today. No. Not when you're listening to it, but when we're recording it. Uh let's go on to comment corner. We've got a few comments on uh one is from Christopher via Spotify. He said I find it hilarious how people are comparing the MacBook Neo to Chromebooks. In retrospect I can see why they are comparing both of those machines even though they are not the same thing . I agree. They're not, but it's inevitable to compare the two because it's this it's a similar audience that Apple is targeting. Yeah . Dark Fairy 1234 on T ikTok said that uh nobody wants AI on their phone. I don't know how true that is, but yeah. I mean we just talked about 45 minutes about that stuff. And yeah. I don't think it's true that nobody wants AI in their phones. I think a lot of people want AI in their phones. work on and they're pushing it onto the customer. I I don't know. But is maybe it's just because they're the most vocal people. Do you know what I mean? They're the ones everyone you you you only hear the complaints, you never heard a compliments kind of thing. Sure. So I have met a lot of people who insist on telling me all about their AI experiences. Yeah. Um despite the fact that I make it very clear very early on that I don't like it. Um I I think there is a lot of people out there that want AI on their phone. I don't. And I I think there's quite a few people like me who don't. Um but the companies at the moment are trying to walk a tightrope, I suppose, between those two potentially quite vociferous camps and as you said, Roman, their own sort of agenda of of needing to be seen to Right. Yeah. I wouldn't agree with nobody. Trevor Burrus Warwick Howell via Facebook said that what Apple has done is kinda genius. They've let other companies spend billions on developing AI infrastructure, come along a couple of years later and just license that tech. No risk in owning, developing, and maintaining the infrastructure, just a license fee. I don't think Apple planned it that way. I don't either either, but I think that they also didn't I don't know. It's we we could talk for a whole nother show about this. I said it at the time when they announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC in two thousand and twenty four, I felt like they were forced to do it earlier than they wanted to because it just didn't and then that was you know, we obviously realized quickly that it wasn't even done. But I do think they were developing it, but they always were developing it. I think they were forced to brand it as something that that Wall Street and shareholders could like like like like a tangible thing that they could grasp onto. I think all of these things were in development regardless of the AI boom. Because Apple didn't they like they always did l little AI things. Like it's always been there. Or more or they call the machine learning at the time. But it but it's been part of the iPhone and part of the Mac and part of the devices for for for years. I think that what they were forced to do was was branded into a a suite of products that are kind of cobbled together. And they got lucky in the sense that there's so many competing AI companies that are moving so fast , the public face is ChatGPT and X and or XAI and OpenAI. And they're the ones that are taking all the hits. While Apple kind of sits in the background and says, o,kay well, we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do that. And it could it it could have been a big black eye for them. I don't think they planned it that way. But um they i it it's it's definitely worked out. The um the the Macalobe writes about this far too often . But he uh he I say he? Is it a is is is it a gender specific thing, Roman? I don't know. I think I think I think the Macalope is a he. I I edit the Macalope. I should know if Macalope is a here or sh shape. I believe the McAlope is a he they usually refer themselves in the third person. Right. They always refer themselves as the Macalope, not the same or like the like the the the horned one or something. But um anyway, um they they they write about this often in the sense that you know mm you know Apple missed the boat but that's totally fine 'cause the boat didn't go very far and the ones that did are sprung a bunch of leaks. So it's it's cool. I think it was a bit of a black eye . Maybe it is a bit of a black eye, yeah. I think there was a quite a long period where people were regularly taking uh pot shots at Apple for not having initially for not having any AI contender and then for having a a half baked poor AI contender. Um I think it's it's kind of worked out now, but um I think that 's gonna go for a while. They're they're worth four and a half trillion dollars and sold more iPhones than ever last quarter It appears to have worked out. But yeah, I I hear what you're saying. Danny said Yes. I know I say it every week, but I never actually thought people used it. Uh Daddy said, all I want is iOS and Mac OS to get fixed. Uh the 26 OS has killed all my devices. My M1 Air and 13 Pro worked fine before that after upgrading their hot garbage. You know, we always encourage people to update as soon as you can because the security fixes. Uh the other side of that is we I often do hear some somebody always comes up to me here in the office, you know, it's like I updated and now my so-and-so won't work. And so it it it does happen. So and I don't know if it that if it is the uh OS update that's causing that , uh it's it's hard to say. But Yeah, particularly when you're dealing with five or six old year old devices. Like it's tough because you want the security and you want the new features and but with this particular one with Tahoe and iOS twenty six, there were so many like graphical updates, upgrades, rather. It it did it did wreak a little bit of havoc on some some older phones. Um we're hoping that iOS twenty seven, mac OS twenty seven fixes that. That's the word around the street. But um, you know, so hang in there with your uh hot garbage phones. Uh that does it for comment corner . All right, that does it for this episode of the Mac world Podcast, episode number nine hundred and eighty four, sixteen away. Thank you, Jason. Oh my God. Jason. Thank you, David. Look at me. I changed everything about this except the stupid name. Thank you, David. I appreciate it. Despite the fact that I called you, Jason, I do appreciate it when you come on. This was a lot of fun. Um we we always seem to have you on for like these like serious discussions. Like we should have you on for something that's more fun than Gemini. I think it the last time was something AI or something really do you rem oh you probably remember David. What what did we talk about last time? Do you remember the fifty fifty most important people, wasn't it for that one? Right. So that was also like very like we need to have something where we just talk about something that just like a new iPhone or something. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you. And uh thank you to the audience to Oh my god Roman You don't have to thank me I get paid to do this so you don't have to thank me all right good thank you, listenersers and view, for tuning in. You can subscribe to the macro podcast on the podcast app on Spotify, which now has video and comments, apparently. So watch and comment. Um on YouTube at the podcast channel or through any other podcast app. If you have any comments or questions, contact us to contact us through Blue Sky Facebook Threads, Search from Macro, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send an email to podcast at macro.com, send an comment And we will talk about them on a future show. And you can join us . Uh so next week we're gonna talk about we're gonna start our WWDC preview, I think, Roman, is that correct? Yes. Yeah. So we have a couple weeks of that before the um before the keynote. So you can join us in the next episode of the macro Pascal, as you talk about everything, as you talk about everything, as you talk about WWDC stuff. See you next time. Okay , uh my mouse has been malfunctioning, so hopefully I can stop this. Let's see. It's interesting . Is it because you updated Mac OS?