transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] It's time for Mac Break Weekly. Jason Snell is here, Andy Ihnatko, Christina Warren, and I can't think of a better group of people to talk about the big news this week. Tim Cook announces his plans to step down. John Ternus is taking over. What will the new CEO do at Apple? What does it mean for Apple AI? What does it mean for Vision Pro? That's all next on Mac Break Weekly.

Speaker 2:
[00:26] Podcasts you love, from people you trust.

Speaker 1:
[00:30] This is TWiT. This is Mac Break Weekly, episode 1021, recorded April 21, 2026. Too long in the monkey house. It's time for Mac Break Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Apple news. Jason Snell is here, stayed up late with the BBC.

Speaker 3:
[00:56] Yeah, there's a lot going on. Is there something happened? What?

Speaker 1:
[00:59] I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what we're going to talk about today. We'll find something. Andy Ihnatko also with us from the library and Christina Warren, senior developer relationship fellow person. Are you senior?

Speaker 3:
[01:12] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[01:13] Senior developer relations at GitHub. I don't want to make you a senior if you're a junior or a sophomore.

Speaker 3:
[01:19] Senior discount in everything.

Speaker 2:
[01:21] She gets to wear the bowler hat instead of the trilby.

Speaker 1:
[01:23] Thursday is grocery day here in the Laporte household because I get the senior discount. I think it's worth it. Once you turn 65, things happen. You just slow down, life changes a little bit. You want to take advantage of some of those perks, the Medicare benefits, the senior discounts at the grocery store, early bird seeding at Denny's, that kind of thing. I guess that's what Tim Cook's looking forward to. Because, yes, there is a little bit of news today. I know you already know this.

Speaker 3:
[01:54] If you don't, sit down. Break it to us gently, Leo.

Speaker 1:
[01:59] Tim Cook's retiring. It's funny because this does vindicate that Wall Street Journal article, which it seemed as if everybody at Apple was saying, oh no, even Tim says.

Speaker 3:
[02:07] Financial Times.

Speaker 1:
[02:08] I'm sorry, FT. Oh no, I'm going to stay here. I'm happy.

Speaker 3:
[02:12] But Mark Gurman, I mean, oh man, so there's so much to cover here, right? We got a whole show to talk about it. But like Mark Gurman's been on the John Ternus is going to be the next CEO path for a long time. And then the FT did this story where they're like, aha, it's going to happen as, and they did that ridiculous thing where they're like, as soon as early next year, which is like, as soon as early is like, that means sometime between January of 2026 and the heat death of the universe, Tim Cook's going to retire. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's going to happen. Gertman then comes and says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's going to be like not in the first half of the year. So they kind of both get half credit for this because they were not either I would say dead on, but we all knew that this was going to happen, right? And that probably it was going to happen soon. In fact, I thought it was probably going to happen this year sometime. I mean, nobody really had Monday, a Monday at one in the afternoon on the bingo card, but there we are.

Speaker 1:
[03:11] Let me just, for those of you who haven't been following as assiduously as we have every moment of Apple News, Apple put out a press release yesterday, Tim on 420, Tim Cook to become Apple's executive chairman, you know, the kind of bearing the lead that he's going to leave the CEO chair at September 1.

Speaker 2:
[03:35] He got promoted. Good for him.

Speaker 1:
[03:36] Yeah, John Ternus to become Apple's CEO. Lovely picture of Tim and John laughingly walking the walk.

Speaker 3:
[03:42] He's like, you're wearing the uniform now.

Speaker 1:
[03:45] Got the black shirt, black jeans. I guess Tim's handing them off. Ternus, who is currently senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become the next CEO on September 1. Board of directors approved this following a thoughtful long-term succession planning process, which we denied constantly.

Speaker 3:
[04:03] Exactly, that has been there. I mean, German has reported about this for a year and a half.

Speaker 1:
[04:07] They don't want to tank the market until prematurely.

Speaker 3:
[04:09] They need to do it in their own time, although I will say that financial time story was totally planted by Apple as a way. Because what you don't want to do is scare the market. You don't want to surprise anybody, right? You don't want to surprise everybody. But those two things happened and simultaneous with that, Apple announced that Johny Srouji, who was the subject of a Mark German story about how he might have been thinking about leaving. Then he said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm very committed, which was the surface version of, oh, Tim's leaving and I'm not going to be the CEO and you're giving my peer the job and he's going to be my boss. Maybe I'll look around. They're like, no, no, no, we value you and they showed their appreciation for Johny Srouji, who has led Apple's chip effort. He's the king of Apple Silicon. They promoted him to Chief Hardware Officer, which is a position that did not exist before, which is in the C-suite and which comprises not only his entire empire of Apple Silicon, but John Ternus' former empire of hardware, and Johny Srouji gets that job. And that's, folks, that is how you retain somebody.

Speaker 1:
[05:12] Yeah. Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple's non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, interesting, will become its lead independent director. Ternus will join the board also effective September 1st.

Speaker 3:
[05:27] But Tim becomes the executive chairman, which is sort of like, I'm on the board, but I'm also, I work here also.

Speaker 1:
[05:32] Sort of the boss. Interestingly, they also said he would continue to handle government relations among his other jobs as executive chairman, which is, was actually, my thinking was that's why Tim's leaving, is he couldn't take one more dinner with-

Speaker 3:
[05:44] No, no.

Speaker 1:
[05:45] I'm sorry.

Speaker 3:
[05:46] It's the opposite. It's the reverse. He's taking the heat off of John Ternus. He's gonna be the one who has to eat all the crap.

Speaker 1:
[05:53] I think that's very selfless of Tim, because I'm sure Tim grits his teeth at night. But I think it's very selfless saying, you know what, this is a perfect job for me to continue to do, to take the heat, to take the burden off of John.

Speaker 3:
[06:05] He's got the personal relationships and you need to look no further than today's post on Truth Social by Donald Trump, praising Tim Cook in his own inimitable way, where he sort of praises himself mostly, but also Tim Cook. And I know a lot of people who looked at that and they're like, this is really gross, Tim. And I looked at it and said, oh, so there is one person on the org chart who still reports to Tim. It's Donald Trump, because he's got that guy wrapped around his finger. He's like, oh, he's so great. He calls me, he talks to me. And I'm like, that is what Tim Cook has been doing, is trying to get benefit for Apple by working the president of the United States. And nobody has to like it. I think it's kind of gross. But that post on Truth Social was like, see?

Speaker 1:
[06:50] Let me read it.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:52] It's really interesting. I wish I could do a Donald Trump impersonation.

Speaker 3:
[06:56] It's mostly self-aggrandizing, as always.

Speaker 1:
[06:58] I have always been, of course, it starts with I, a big fan of Tim Cook and likewise Steve Jobs. But if Steve was not taken from the capital P planet, capital E Earth, so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere nearly as well as it has done under Tim. Okay. For me, it began with a phone call. For me, it began with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my capital F first capital T term. He had a fairly large problem that only I, as president, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant who I probably would not have known, but would have said he knows me well.

Speaker 3:
[07:37] He's given away a lot there, about people who hire people who have access to the president.

Speaker 1:
[07:41] Maybe Rudy Giuliani wasn't the first person you should call Tim. The fees would be paid, but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call, I said, I said, wow, it's Tim Apple, Cook, calling. He's making fun of himself. I like that.

Speaker 3:
[07:58] Yeah, I like that moment. We've never called him Tim Apple ever.

Speaker 2:
[08:02] Can I say that I like the affirmation, the reassurance that, okay, he does know his last name. I know his name. Some sort of a synapse misfiring.

Speaker 1:
[08:09] Calling. How big is that? I wish I could do a Donald Trump. I was very impressed with myself. Have you ever said, I'm impressed with myself? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to quote, kiss my ass, end quote. Sorry, Tim. Anyway, he explained his problem. A tough one it was. I felt he was right and got it taken care of quickly and effectively. That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. Do we know what that problem was by any chance? I don't know. During my five years as president, Tim would call me, five years. Okay, I get it. Four plus one. Tim would call me, but never too much. Okay. And I would help him where I could. Years later, after three or four capital big, capital helps, I started to say to people, anyone who would listen, that this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He keeps calling me. He makes these calls to me. I help him out, but not always because he will on occasion be too aggressive in his ask. And he gets the job done quickly without a dime being given to those very expensive millions of dollars consultants around town who sometimes get it done and sometimes don't. Let's not forget, he gave me a million dollars for my inaugural. And I don't know how much for the ballroom. And let's not forget that bar of gold. Anyway, Tim Cook had an amazing career, almost incomparable. Nice, nice plug by the way, for the incomparable. I think that's nice.

Speaker 3:
[09:33] Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1:
[09:34] And he'll go on and continue to do great work for Apple and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy, President Donald J. Trump. I'm surprised you didn't say thank you for your attention.

Speaker 3:
[09:47] I think-

Speaker 1:
[09:47] He usually does. I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[09:48] Also, reading between the lines there, we'll continue to do great work for Apple. He totally got a call from Tim Cook. He said, let me explain what's happening. I'm not leaving. We will still talk, you and I. Don't call John Ternus. He won't take your calls. We're protecting him from you.

Speaker 2:
[10:05] He's slipping a little bit. There are at least two places he could have put in a dig with Biden, but he didn't. Of course, he didn't have this relationship with Biden because he knew that Biden couldn't get stuff done and wasn't the great deal maker. Oh dear.

Speaker 1:
[10:20] So you think Tim wants the job of having the president or is he being selfless?

Speaker 3:
[10:25] I think Tim cares about Apple and he knows that this is his most important remaining role. That's true. There was a piece five years ago in the New York Times about how Tim Cook was one of America's diplomats to China, basically, because he had so many connections in China. And you've seen his connections and we've all talked about them with the White House as well. Like Apple is huge. Apple is bigger than some countries, right? Like Apple is an enormous global player and Tim knows all the players and it's been the thing that he's cultivated over the last decade. And so like if you are trying to set up John Ternus for success, having him not have to deal with all of that, build those personal relationships sort of slowly over time instead of throwing him in the deep end and not maybe get his hands dirty with some of this stuff and let him kind of focus on the products and the rest of the company. I think that's why Tim Cook did it. I'm sure he doesn't like it, but I think he thinks it's the right thing to do for Apple.

Speaker 1:
[11:21] And he may be of the, you know, he's certainly of the generation, my generation that used to say, you know, you want to get things done, you do it from the inside. You join the establishment to get things done. And he may feel that way also.

Speaker 4:
[11:32] I mean, maybe, I don't know. I still feel like, I mean, look, is this a smart move for him to continue to grease the wheels and kiss up to this person? Yes, of course it is, you know, like being on good terms with world leaders is a good thing.

Speaker 1:
[11:49] And she, you know, he probably considers that his job too.

Speaker 4:
[11:53] Oh, well, no, completely, right? Like it's not just Trump, it's she, it's any of the world leaders he needs to be on good terms with. But I don't know, I can't help but feel like all of this is so unseemly and so just obsequious and gross, frankly. And I'm not saying that it's not the correct business decision. I'm not making a judgment about that. I am going to make a little, I am going to like, be like, oh, well, maybe he doesn't want to do this. I don't care. He's still doing it. He doesn't get any moral points for me.

Speaker 1:
[12:18] Whether he wants to or not.

Speaker 4:
[12:19] Well, I don't actually care because he doesn't get any, but I'm not going to give him any moral grace at all because he's made his decision.

Speaker 3:
[12:24] Yeah, no, his feelings are irrelevant. The point is he's decided that this is the thing that he needs to do for Apple and it's the right thing for him to do.

Speaker 4:
[12:32] Well, and for himself, let's be very clear. I also don't want to pretend like this is some sort of altruistic greater good thing.

Speaker 3:
[12:39] He has a lot of money in Apple stock. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:41] I do think that he's been in the monkey house so long that he no longer can smell the smells that a newcomer would smell. My problem has never been that, seriously, I mean.

Speaker 1:
[12:53] Welcome to the monkey house.

Speaker 2:
[12:55] What gets up my nose about Tim's behavior, Tim's choices has not been the sort of open diplomacy that you have to play with the leaders of all the countries you operate in. That's absolutely true. Not even like some of the things that are maybe not very flattering to his public image. What I don't like is the stuff that he does that seems to be absolutely optional and extracurricular and stepping over the line where he did not have to go to the world premiere of the $40 million movie that Amazon paid for. XYZ, AA, BBCC, all these things are like, I think that's what crosses the line between I'm doing what I have to do to protect my company and crosses the line into I want to be able to, I don't want to be the push E, I want to be the pusher. I want to have this weapon at my back that I can inflict against my foreign enemies, which is the United States State Department. That's the sort of stuff where you cross the line, because there are a lot of companies and industries that don't have that kind of access, can't simply say, hey, awesome idea about the tariffs, how about you leave us out of it? That sounds great. There are smaller industries, like food industries, ranching, manufacturing that don't have that benefit, and they're getting clobbered. That's why I see that as worse than unsanely. I'm on your side, Christina. I'm not going to condemn him for what he did, but I'm also not going to give him a free pass for the questionable things that he's also doing.

Speaker 1:
[14:26] We can move on. I think we all agree. Tim Cook, 15 years, CEO of Apple, nothing but success.

Speaker 4:
[14:36] I think it's been a mixed record, but I made a comment on this on social yesterday, and I had some people trying to disagree with me, and I don't really think that from pure numbers perspective, that there is any way you can disagree, that I don't think that there is a better non-founders CEO of a major public company that has had this sustained of a run as chief executive. Like there have definitely been founders or non-founders, like CEOs who've done very well for stretches of time in a company, and Tim Cook has had some failings, and I think the last couple of years have been kind of rough, but if you look at the stock price, if you look at the market position, if you look at the number of users and people using the products, those numbers are all through the wazoo.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] Has he been a steward of Steve Jobs' legacy? Is that kind of how you put it, that he took a company that had created some very, very good, valuable stuff and has been a good steward of it, shepherding it to lofty success? He's not somebody you would call an innovator. He's not Steve Jobs. The register, Matt Ross, he's an optimizer. Matt Ross often in the register wrote this in line, world's blandest man steps down from CEO job to spend more time in tastefully appointed home. That's a little mean.

Speaker 4:
[15:55] That is a little mean, but even if you were to say that's true, and I don't think that it is, I don't know how much that matters, right? Because the CEO doesn't always have to be the most interesting, charismatic, enigmatic person, right?

Speaker 1:
[16:08] In fact, often that's the wrong person.

Speaker 4:
[16:10] Right, exactly. In fact, sometimes you really do just want somebody who's going to be able to get the trains running on time and optimize the heck out of the supply chain, which he's done better than any other person on planet Earth. And yeah, do I, like as an Apple lover, love the way that everything has been squeezed and optimized to get as much service as revenue as possible? No. Do I like that that has been maybe put ahead of the finer details? No. At the same time, I think that he's trusted people that were either put in place before he joined and then made changes after he was CEO to try to keep the product spirit alive. Do you miss out on some of the innovation and other stuff? Absolutely. Does it matter? No. But what I would also say is this. It's incredibly difficult to take a company that was as successful as Apple was in 2011 when Steve Jobs had to finally step down and it was ascendant, right? It was rising in a way that none of us, I don't think ever would have predicted, certainly not a decade earlier, and not only sustain that momentum and that growth, but even go beyond that, right? So even if you don't have another iPhone level product, well, okay, there are probably only a handful of iPhone level products that will ever exist in the next 100, 150 years. So not having iPhone after iPhone to me, I don't look at it as a failure. I think the fact that the businesses continue to sustain and grow and bring in new people is a real accomplishment because that's not a given.

Speaker 1:
[17:44] For the success of the iPhone, he managed that supply chain masterfully. That really was his real accomplishment.

Speaker 3:
[17:51] The iPhone has progressed a lot since the four, which was the last one that Steve Jobs, right? This is part of Tim Cook's story is him. Yes, he is an efficiency guy, an operations guy and has presided over iteration that I think it's short shrift. There are a lot of stories that are like, but what did he really do in terms of innovation? There's the Apple Watch and there's AirPods and there's the Vision Pro and whatever. But it's like most important thing Tim Cook did was preside over the iPhone 5, 6, 7, 8, 10. That is Apple's cash cow and it's never going to totally blow you away, but they do iterate and then you look back over 15 years of iPhone innovation and there's a lot there. So I think that that's a big part of it. And then also, you don't get a lot of credit, I think maybe that is actually due for saying that managing growth, managing how Apple went from the size it was to the size it is, which its growth almost went exponential for a little while there in the 2014, 2015 period, especially when the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus came out. It really kicked off this enormous growth on the iPhone side, and totally transformed how Apple had to think of its business. And having honestly an operations guy in charge to manage the growth was fortunate for Apple because you could have mismanaged that and he didn't. But at the same time, he knew he wasn't a product guy. I think getting a product guy in there after Steve Jobs would have been impossible anyway, like what an act you could not follow. When we talk about Ternus, I'll say it's kind of nice to have a product guy back in the seat. But I think in managing that growth and taking those products, especially the iPhone from where they were to through this giant growth period, we can't take that for granted. It could have been mishandled. I don't think you could say that all of that growth was just there on a platter for somebody to deal with. I think Tim Cook had a good set of skills to manage that.

Speaker 1:
[20:00] He was the quintessential CEO as manager, not visionary. I can't judge on leadership. Only people who worked for him probably could judge that, but it must have been successful because they've done well. He was maybe the right person at the right time. I also want to give him credit. Rousseff does this in the Register article. He was the first major company CEO to go public that he was gay. I think that that was not only courageous, but I think fairly important culturally. He gets, I think he should get credit for that.

Speaker 2:
[20:35] Yeah. He also turned around Steve Jobs' policies against a lot of the Apple philanthropy and a lot of Apple like echo messaging and social justice messaging. I think that we shouldn't, in an environment in which Google and other companies went from, yes, DEI, yes, DEI, yes, we're going to publish diversity statistics. Google went from that to all of a sudden, gee, and all their keynotes, suddenly they're not putting pronouns next to these lower thirds for all their executives. Apple has pretty much stuck to their guns. They released their environmental report this year. They're still sticking to those guns. I think that that's one of Tim's signatures. When he talks about health being Apple's most important product, I really think that he's absolutely sincere about that. That's not marketing speak. I believe that that affects him.

Speaker 1:
[21:32] His letter was quite moving. His letter to the public was quite moving, I saw it. Which he did really assert how great it was to wake up every day and read these emails from customers to know that they were making a change in the world, that they were making people better and making the world better. I think he really cherished that. I can understand why he might want to continue on.

Speaker 2:
[21:56] That's an interesting thing about Apple, isn't it? Because a press release would have done it, okay? But there was a press release plus a personal letter from CEO, from the former CEO to the Apple family of users and community, which is not something that would ring as sincere from any other CEO that's out there. So that's one of the things I was thinking about when I read the news last night, that I hope that we don't force John, collectively, I hope we don't force John Ternus to be the dad of Apple, to be the dad of the Apple community, because that's a big burden to put on anybody, to basically suddenly become a person that is an answer to a trivia question that only people who are listeners to this podcast and related podcasts will be able to answer to a celebrity CEO who is being judged for their, every time they do, every time they show up at a government function anywhere in the world, maybe some people like us are going to judge him for that and sort of try to, and even today as people are trying to unwind his brain and figure out, well, of course, being a product guy, he was very, very much anti the Vision Pro from the start. So I feel as though we're going to see reduced resources. Why are we already guessing what's inside his brain? That must be a very, very stressful thing. I bet that when he signed the contracts, whatever, a few months ago, I bet that if he's smart, he spent four months seeing a shrink twice a week just to get him ready for being under that kind of scrutiny and those kinds of expectations, because that's a lot for someone to go from a very, very responsible technical business relationship with the inside of company to again, being sort of like the pseudo dad or the stepdad of a community of Apple users. That's a heavy, heavy load.

Speaker 1:
[23:46] You can make a score sheet of Tim's successes and failures, and there are both columns. But one of the greatest successes of Apple in the last 15 years is Apple Silicon. And Ternus and Srouji were somewhat the architects of that. So that's what's going to be interesting about the next generation. Well, let's take a break. I think we can honor Tim. There'll be lots of honors between now and September 1st, and I'm sure we'll do that. But I'd like to talk about what's next for Apple when we come back in about John Ternus, and who he is, and what kind of CEO he'll be. You're watching MacBreak Weekly with Andy Ihnatko, Christina Warren, Jason Snell. Our show today brought to you by WebRoot. If your computer feels sluggish, you're probably using Windows. No, no. If it feels sluggish, if it heats up when you open up a few tabs, actually this can happen to anything, any PC, or sounds like it's preparing for liftoff every time it runs, it may not be a hardware problem. Your antivirus might be the problem. Many of those big name antiviruses have become so bulky, so complicated, so full of pop-ups and upsells that they actually make your computer experience worse. Not Webroot. Webroot offers all-in-one digital protection, and I like this, for up to 10 devices, the whole family's covered, with a variety of plans designed to protect you and your loved ones from digital threats. You get, of course, powerful antivirus, and I think this is important, identity protection, but you don't get the slowdowns, the pop-ups, the junk. Webroot keeps you protected on-line while staying out of your way. Webroot Essentials scans six times faster and takes up to 33 times less space than the average competitor, and it ranks number one in performance compared to, dare I say the names, Norton and McAfee. Webroot Essentials, let's compare it to Norton Antivirus. It scans 3.7 times faster, it installs 35 times smaller, uses 5 times less RAM than Norton when idle. Compare Webroot Essentials to McAfee Antivirus, 10 times faster, 16 times smaller, 5 times less RAM when idle. That makes a big difference. It can make your computer, just that simple change, feel newer, faster and easier to use. Webroot has a number of products, including Webroot Total Protection, which includes the antivirus, the identity monitoring, the privacy protection and cloud backup. All in one simple hassle-free subscription designed for everyday life. Webroot Total Protection ranked first overall when compared to the top competitors. It's scanned 7 times faster than the average competitor, 3 times less space than the average competitor on the hard drive. And I have to mention, because AI has really changed the cybersecurity game, we've really seen that. Scams are smarter, malware is faster, phishing emails look shockingly real. We talk all the time in security now about how enterprises can fight phishing emails. But what about at home? The good news is you don't have to be a tech expert to stay ahead of all the new attacks when you use security that can keep up with the AI threats. Unlike free antivirus tools or older security programs, Webroot is built to counter modern AI-driven attacks. It's fast, it's lightweight, and it's designed to spot threats before they ever reach you. Webroot is offering our listeners an exclusive 60% off offer. Visit webroot.com/twit to learn more. That's webroot.com/twit. We thank them so much for sponsoring Mac Break Weekly. We appreciate it. All right, let's talk about John Ternus, who has been with Apple since 2001. It's really pretty much his entire career with Apple. How old is Ternus?

Speaker 3:
[27:50] He's 50 and he's worked at Apple for 25 years, so you do the math. Half his life.

Speaker 2:
[27:55] All but four of his professional working years as working at Apple.

Speaker 1:
[28:00] Yeah. He has a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, worked as a mechanical engineer for a few years in his early career at a company called Virtual Research Systems, I'll probably have to do some research on who that is. But he came to Apple in 2001 as part of the design team, product design team, which is interesting. Almost immediately became vice president of hardware engineering. Well, it took 12 years, but that's immediate corporate terms. 2013. Eight years later, joined the executive team, senior vice president of hardware engineering. Every time, we've seen him on stage a lot for Apple introducing the iPad and other products, and he's always been impressive, I think. But what do we know about John Ternus? What kind of CEO is he going to be? Is he a visionary? Is he a manager? Is he a leader? Do we know anything?

Speaker 3:
[28:54] Well, I think the most important thing we know about John Ternus is that he's deeply connected to Apple's hardware team and has led it. That means he's a product guy who knows details about how Apple develops products. At a level that Tim Cook is never going to know. Is he a visionary? I don't know. Does the CEO need to be visionary? Or does the CEO need to understand the process that leads to the products that Apple makes? We could argue about it. There are reports from sources that say that he's a good decider, which is good that Tim Cook-

Speaker 1:
[29:36] He's more decisive even.

Speaker 3:
[29:38] That Tim Cook did a lot of consensus building and all that. And John Ternus is a little more like, let's do this and you go in and you get an answer. And you might not like the answer, but you get your marching orders and you go out and you do it. I know those people can be right or wrong. I mean, that's the challenge with somebody like that. But I am really encouraged by the fact that John Ternus has spent 15, 20 years, 25 years really marinating in Apple's product process. So he knows how it works, what they're capable of, how Apple products come to be. I think that's important. I think that Tim Cook, for all of his strength, he did have to rely on the wisdom and expertise of others.

Speaker 1:
[30:25] Including John Ternus, let's be honest.

Speaker 3:
[30:26] Including for the last five years on hardware, John Ternus. So I'm encouraged by that. But that he's a product guy and that he's been deeply involved with. Apple hardware, which honestly, we talk about my report card here every year, like Apple hardware is doing pretty good. That is a skill set of that company that is working at a high level right now.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] It's kind of interesting. When Ternus was at UOP, he developed a mechanical feeding arm for individuals with quadriplegia that could use it for head movements. That's how he got his first job, which was designing, interestingly, virtual reality headsets. That's what VR systems did. So that's kind of intriguing. His first job was working on the Apple Cinema display. He oversaw AirPods, Mac and iPad product lines, put in charge of iPhone in 2020, taking over from Dan Riccio. So I think this is kind of interesting. This is the youngest member of Apple's executive team.

Speaker 4:
[31:30] That's a good thing.

Speaker 1:
[31:31] He could have 15 years, right?

Speaker 3:
[31:33] It's a different generation.

Speaker 1:
[31:34] Same age as Tim Cook when he took over.

Speaker 4:
[31:37] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[31:42] It seems as though he understands that his job is to take the football from Tim and continue to make yardage, just like Tim took the football from Steve, meaning that he's not gonna run the same place as the predecessor did, but they're on the same field, doing the same thing, trying to get the same goals together. This is not—if they had gotten somebody from a different part of Apple or with less experience at Apple, this person might have taken the football and tried to shoot a basket with it, which is not going to work. Apple—it's always been said that Steve Jobs' most important product at Apple was Apple itself and the Apple culture and the teachings that you get through Apple University where you hand down the Apple philosophy of what this company is about, what it's here to do, what doesn't interest it as an organism, and the things that it can succeed at. This person is absolutely marinated in that culture. So the fact that he is of a completely new generation means that he can bring fresh eyes to that playbook, which is going to be very, very interesting. There's going to be a lot of tea leaf reading for the next couple of years. We're going to find out a lot about what dogma inside of Apple was simply cultural and cannot be burned off of that campus and what was brought in by and reinforced by Tim. Like are we going to see hardware become a little bit more open? Is Apple going to be a little bit less vitriolic about making sure that we keep this as a closed ecosystem or is we're going to see an Apple that at least says, you know what, notifications on a third party watch, we're going to let that happen or we're going to let the Apple watch pair with a non, we're going to let you activate it with a MacBook or with an iPad. You don't necessarily have to activate it on an iPhone. It's going to be fascinating to see where Apple goes for the next couple of years. It's not going to be a revolution. It's going to be a progression. But the thing is, he's going to be driving the ship in his own direction. I've already used three metaphors, I'm not going to use a fourth. Basically, we're going to see a different style of leadership as opposed to a different company from now on.

Speaker 3:
[33:58] All right.

Speaker 1:
[33:59] We just don't know.

Speaker 3:
[34:01] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[34:02] That's really what it comes down to. We don't know. It's a little bit different than the situation when Tim Cook took over because obviously he had been interim CEO before. He was a chief operating officer, so we knew a little bit more about what to expect from him because he had stepped into that role before. We don't know as much, but what we have heard, I think it's encouraging. I think the fact that he does come to Jason's point, even if he's not necessarily like the big visionary, he is still a product guy. He understands what it takes to get these things made and done and what else is going on on that level, which I think is a good thing. So I think that we all saw the tea leaves, that this looks like this was going to be the guy. And I don't think there's any reason to, I guess, expect anything, but hopefully positive things from this. But I think there will be changes. I agree with Andy. That will be the interesting thing to see. What changes in the company culturally, but also from a product perspective and from anything else that happens. I think that's a really interesting reset because with Tim Cook, it's been 15 years, but looking back on it, it felt like, especially for the first couple of years, there was a real hesitance to do anything different from what had been the status quo with Steve Jobs. There were already these products in the pipeline, there were already these things that were happening. Scott Forstall, before he was ousted, was still the face of things for a bit. Johnny Ive still had a big public-facing role. Tim Cook just helped keep things even and then started to make changes and introduce things that really left his footprint on it. It'll be interesting to see how long that takes for John Ternus to come in and maybe make decisions that are clear that say, okay, this is not what our executive chairman would do, but this is what I'm doing. That's going to be, I think, an interesting thing to look at too, which is, Tim Cook is still executive chairman. Is he going to still have a hands-off approach and just make the decisions as a board member, to approve various things, and then do the government relations part, or is he going to have more of a strategic conferring and consignore kind of relationship? I think that'll be interesting to observe too.

Speaker 1:
[36:25] Amanda Silberling at TechCrunch did a little oppo research on Mr. Ternus. She found out he does not have an ex-account, which in my book is a good thing. I approve, even though I have one and have always had one. And she also quotes his 2024 commencement speech at Penn, at the engineering school there. He said, always assume you're as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do. With this mindset, you'll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions. I guess that's something you would like in a CEO, right? He talks about his early time at Apple in this commencement address. At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home, probably China, well past midnight. I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw. And I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25. I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, what the hell am I doing? Is this normal? It is for Apple. So, I guess he's got the Apple mindset, the Steve Jobs mindset even talks about Steve Jobs talking about the furniture with the carpenter and the backside was just as beautiful as the front side and all of that, the famous anecdote. He was involved in Apple Silicon, which is I think arguably Apple's greatest success of the last decade, and the Neo, which is probably a good thing. Although, you know, it's so hard in a company like Apple to give any one person credit for any of these things.

Speaker 3:
[38:09] Exactly. Better to say that he was in charge of the hardware machine that was generating all of this hardware for the last five years, and before that he was a senior member of the hardware team. And then, like, some of the credit for a lot of the stuff you mentioned, it's got to go to Johny Srouji and his chip team, and that is, to me, that's the other big announcement here. I said it earlier, but, like, you've got to retain your most important and valuable people, right? And that story was really scary, because I think when that story came out, that he might be leaving, I was like, oh, no, like, a brain drain from Apple Silicon would be exceedingly bad for Apple. And, I mean, but they knew that, and that's why he is now Chief Hardware Officer and gets to pick up. So one of John Ternus' trusted lieutenants is going to be in charge of what John Ternus used to be in charge of, but he's not going to report to John Ternus, he's going to report to Johny Srouji. So Johny Srouji gets that aspect of hardware, as well, and there's a story, Mark Gurman has a story with the memo and how they're going to lay out all those groups. If you're really a Kremlinologist, you can check it out. But the bottom line is, they also kept Srouji in a role where he feels apparently good about not being the CEO but being loved, that he's in the C-suite. That's a big deal to be Chief Hardware Officer.

Speaker 1:
[39:27] Everybody seems to love, for as much as John Ternus is kind of an unknown, everybody seems to love Johny Srouji.

Speaker 3:
[39:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[39:35] I remember the first time he appeared in an Apple Keynote, which wasn't so long ago, the panel was just like, it's Johny. Everybody was very, very happy because he gets so much credit. He led the development of the A4, which is the first Apple SoC. So if anybody gets credit for Apple Silicon, it might be Srouji. In fact, Intel was looking at him a few years ago, according to Wikipedia, to be its next CEO. So he's probably had several opportunities to leave.

Speaker 4:
[40:08] Yeah, I'm sure he has. I think that giving him, it's Jason's point, giving him that title of Chief Hardware Officer is a really nice way of letting down gently, like if you really did think that you were in contention for the CEO role, creating a whole new position and having a bunch of people under you and putting all of the hardware under this figure who's well-respected is a real coup. Sometimes what you see companies do is that they will create CEOs of various divisions like Phil Spencer was CEO of Xbox and they'll elevate those titles. But yeah, the fact that they gave him that title and that he's clearly had other offers, they've made it worth his while. Yeah. Because honestly, he would not have been a bad person to consider in the musical chairs game of Intel CEO. There's an argument to be made that Intel probably would have done better with him than if they had Geithner. I think that there's an argument to be made there. But the fact that he's been exited.

Speaker 1:
[41:07] Because of those rumors, Srouji actually had to write a memo to his team in December saying, I love Apple, I love my team, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon. There was real concern.

Speaker 3:
[41:18] Yeah, I think that's when, I mean, literally, I think the way it went down is, Tim's not going to be here anymore. Your peer as an SVP, John Ternus, is going to be the new CEO, and he's going to be your boss.

Speaker 1:
[41:29] So this all happened in December, really, right? This tells us.

Speaker 3:
[41:32] Yeah, I think this was happening when those reports, people are like, ha ha, German's got egg on his face three days later. That memo came out and it's like, I think German was right. I think that they were negotiating. I think you're Johny Srouji, and you're like, well, how are you going to show me the love Tim's going to leave? Maybe I should leave too. Everybody wants to hire me, and you're making my peer my boss. Nobody's going to really love that, honestly. Even if you like the person, it's like that's a weird feeling. Obviously, they're like, what can we do to keep you? We'll give you his division and we'll give you a C-suite job title and you will be Mr. Hardware at Apple. That's what he is. I think that that was behind his, I'm very happy here at Apple. He knew what his new job was going to be.

Speaker 2:
[42:16] That's very, very significant. It's not like when Johnny Ive was promoted. Whenever you see in any industry, the announcement of promotion says, he will be reporting directly to the CEO. Okay, that's nice, but who's reporting to him? The fact that he has an entire tree underneath him of responsibilities means that, yeah, he is not only is he valued as, he's valued as something way, way more than we don't want Intel or somebody else to hire him away from us. We want to keep him where he is. It's like, no, his experience, his contributions, his knowledge, his part of the whole ecosystem of how Apple develops product is way too valuable for us to lose. It will be a void that's going to take a long time to fill in. So if we have to basically redraw the entire org chart to make sure that he is very, very happy with his leadership position inside the company, we are going to redraw that damn org chart for him.

Speaker 4:
[43:08] Yeah. One thing I'll also say about Johny is as much as he's respected, and I don't know what went into Apple's decision about why they were going to choose one person over another, but he's in his early 60s, and so I think that you have to look at that if you're thinking, succession, do we want to replace one person from one generation with basically someone from the same generation? I think that giving him as much gravitas as he's earned and making him sappy as possible to keep him in place for as long as possible is a good thing because we don't know what he would want for his career aspirations or future either, right? Like how much longer he's planning on wanting to do all of this. I mean, to Jason's point, I'm sure that no one likes having to report to a peer. But at the same time, if you're kind of looking at your career in aggregate, you're going, okay, if I'm going to really have control, have a lot of people under me and be in a good place where I don't feel compelled to stay longer than I have to just because I now have this lofty title of CEO, I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 3:
[44:14] You have to say, what other jobs would Johnny Srouji take? It would be maybe for a major chip manufacturer, or maybe it would be a competitor of Apple's in some way. But I guess, and this is the question, is does he want to be the CEO? Because we've just been talking about all the other parts of the job that go along with being the CEO. He knows how good his team is, and he knows that Apple's kind of a leader in this, and that he doesn't have to worry, he's got a good partner in TSMC, he's got a plan, he is making bespoke chips, he doesn't have weird customer relationships with a bunch of different potential customers, there's just Apple. He gets to collaborate with the hardware designers on what the plan is. It's a unique job, and there's a lot to be said for it. If I was giving, it's like I'm doing it right now, Johnny, please stay, I'm giving you the pitch. He's staying, but these are reasons to not go. If you can be like the idea that not only now are you in charge of the chips that are syncing with that hardware, you're also in charge of the hardware. You're in charge of that whole synergy between those things. You just need to make it sweet enough that unless Johnny Srouji's absolutely positively needs to be a CEO somewhere, that's a better deal. I think a lot of people who've left Apple have found that being a CEO of a lesser company is not all it's cracked up to be. I'm thinking of Ron Johnson going to JCPenney. Yeah, you were the CEO, but was that a better job really than being the head of retail at Apple? Maybe not. It depends on what your goals are.

Speaker 4:
[45:51] It's the inverse, right? Because I think that Angela Ahrens who I liked her, I think that she maybe gets a bad rap. But I don't think that being the head of Apple retail was better than being the CEO of Burberry. It can go the other ways too. But yeah, your point, Jason, I think that's a great point. He might not want those other roles. Certainly, I'm sure as interesting as it would be to take on something like Intel, which I'm sure was floated towards him, that also could end very, very badly.

Speaker 1:
[46:19] Somebody pointed out that the next CEO is almost always the head of the most profitable division of the company, if you promote from within. It's not surprising that both Ternus and Srouji got big promotions. But I think we'd all agree that while Apple excels at hardware, their software, especially lately, hasn't been great. Is this a problem that the hardware people are now being ascendant? What happens to Craig Federighi and the other software guys? Are they going to step up? Because that's where we really need them to step up, don't we?

Speaker 3:
[46:54] The last few years have really felt like the software has let down the hardware at Apple. If you put the hardware guys in charge, well, I'm a software person, I'm sweating a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[47:04] Maybe they spank the software people saying, catch up, catch up.

Speaker 4:
[47:08] I think so. It's interesting, because it's the reverse of where we were a decade ago, where the hardware was, at least on the Mac side, was really hurting their products. That did lead to disruption, whether it was Johnny Ive was more than a lot of those things, but that was part of the tension there. I think this is what the interesting opportunity will be for John Ternus as CEO is what happens with software and what decisions he makes, who decides to keep in place, who decides to maybe move into new positions. Because if I look at Apple right now, that is the area where I think they have the most opportunity. Because the hardware is firing out all cylinders. I don't think anybody has any complaints about that. It's the software which, for those of us who have been around for a long time, are starting to have complaints. And where I think the disruption possibilities really exist.

Speaker 1:
[48:07] That might always have been the case with Apple though. I think back there have been many. We were talking a couple of weeks ago about how god awful the memory management was before OS X. I mean, Apple's had a lot of software letdowns, but their hardware has been consistently impressive.

Speaker 2:
[48:24] Apple's always been a hardware first company. They still make more than half of their money off of one product or one product line. So the thing is, if you basically, it's important for them to diversify a little bit because services is pretty much free money. So when there's a bag of money on the table, you should probably pick up that bag of free money. But the thing is, if Apple ever fails to produce a phone that is more desirable than any of the 100 other phones like it on the market, if Apple fails to do a laptop that feels like a more premium experience, like a more pleasurable experience than the 100 other laptops on the market, that's not a dive that you recover from.

Speaker 1:
[49:04] You're watching MacBreak Weekly. We're analyzing the big Apple news from this week, the planned departure on September 1st of Tim Cook and the rise of John Ternus and Johny Srouji. It's great to have Christina Warren. You know what's really good about this panel is all of you have been covering Apple since well before Tim Cook. You've really got the background, the history, the context of all of this going way back, which is impressive for such a young bunch. Christina Warren's here, Andy Ihnatko. Well, she's the only non-gray hair anyway in the bunch and Jason Snell. We continue on. I guess I need to ask about AI because right now, and WWDC is next month. We're waiting to hear what they do with Siri. The rumors are, of course, strong that this will become the new chatbot, Siri with Gemini built in. What does this change over portend for AI or is it just going to be business as usual?

Speaker 2:
[50:08] Business as usual. Apple has a very, very, very long runway for AI, longer than anybody else. So long as their hardware continues to be a really, good platform for researchers and dabblers, there's nothing but upside. So long as it becomes so much easier to create apps, that suddenly Apple has no problems keeping the App Store fully loaded with new apps, and they're making money off of these apps. Again, Apple is doing great, but they have to make sure that whatever comes in three months time, and whatever comes in three years time, they have the hardware that can support whatever AI is going to be, is going to help them to sell more hardware. So, yeah, it all comes down to hardware, always.

Speaker 1:
[50:59] Okay. Good. How about Vision Pro? It is interesting that Ternus' earliest job experience was building VR headsets. We don't know where any of these people stand in the Vision Pro, Pro and Con. I've heard people say both.

Speaker 3:
[51:14] I don't think Pro and Con covers it remotely, right? It's complicated, is what you're saying. Where they take it and where they go from here is more of it. Who knows? I get the sense that Johnny Ive had a lot to say about the Vision Pro, right? He's long gone, but he was a huge mover in that. My understanding is, and there are reports about this, they were going to do the thing that was much lighter and there was going to be a wireless transmitter on a desk, and then Johnny Ive was like, no, and they had to change the design in order to make it what it is now. The question is, where does he want to go with that? There was a story I saw that said he's been a champion of smart home stuff, they're doing more smart home stuff. Another area, by the way, where they've been let down by the software side and they've had to delay a bunch of hardware because the software and Siri isn't good enough. But yeah, for something like Vision Pro, I think the real question is, is there a path forward for that platform and what is it? Is he going to be patient? Does he think it's a dead end or does he think it's a thing that just needs to be brought along so that it might be something in 10 years? Those are the tough questions, but he certainly was involved, so he knows what all the issues are. Again, that's why I'm encouraged by having a product guy in the mix, because he knows what those trade-offs were that were made to make the Vision Pro what it ended up being and what was right and wrong about it. I don't think he was pro or con. I think it was more complicated than that.

Speaker 2:
[52:39] Yeah. And on that point, Tom's Guide got the, what great timing. They got an interview with Jaws and John Ternus last week. So basically, the last interview with him before the nighting, and he did specifically say that combining the digital and physical world via VR is a quote.

Speaker 1:
[53:00] They said specifically spatial computing was the future, right?

Speaker 2:
[53:03] Yeah, so that doesn't sound like-

Speaker 1:
[53:05] Which I completely disagree with, but okay.

Speaker 2:
[53:07] Well, I feel, we've had a conversation before. I just feel like it's not necessarily a product that they can ignore at this point. They have to, just like the folding phone is not necessarily going to be the biggest solver they've ever done, but it's time for them to play in that playground. Similarly, it's time for them to play with glasses.

Speaker 1:
[53:27] Whenever I hear them say, oh, spatial computing is the future of computing, I just get shook.

Speaker 3:
[53:33] They're not going to throw their shipping existing products into the bus, and they're not going to tell you about what the actual thing is until they ship a new product. So like, I get you saying it.

Speaker 1:
[53:42] Let's not forget when Sachin Adela took over at Microsoft, one of the first things he did was throw out the Surface Mini, right? I mean-

Speaker 3:
[53:50] Okay, but what you're asking for is for them to just throw things out before they make product announcements, and they're never going to do it. So you can complain about like, it's just PR. They're just saying the company line. Well, they're the company, they're going to say the company line. Until they make a change, spatial computing is the future. Just like Steve Jobs saying that nobody wants an iPod with video until he like a week later introduced the iPod video. So like iPod photos.

Speaker 1:
[54:16] And it does seem that Ternus is the kind of guy who will sit back and as you said, Andy, take a couple of years before he makes any big decisions. But I do have to remember when Sajan Adela took over Microsoft, they dumped the Nokia, they dumped the smartphone, they killed the Surface RT, which had already been built and was sitting in warehouses and was about to be announced.

Speaker 3:
[54:36] This is the most important part of this is it's a new person in charge. And even Tim Cook, we saw Tim Cook taking over for the beloved sainted Steve Jobs. One of the first things Tim Cook did was like, okay, this policy about not matching employee donations is ridiculous, we're gonna change that right now. And that's a little corporate thing, like being not the person who used to make the decisions. And now you get to make the decisions, means you can make different decisions a lot easier, because you don't have to own the old decision. You can change your way of thinking. I think that's the biggest deal about literally anybody stepping into this role, is it's an opportunity for Apple and John Ternus to look at what's going on and revisit things that they've taken. We made a decision and we're going with it. It's like, well, new guy's in charge, and even if he was a senior leader before, now he's the CEO and he may say, I don't like how we did that. Let's not do that anymore. That is an opportunity to do, whether it's something very dramatic, like taking products that are sitting in a warehouse and putting them in a landfill, or whether it's a little less dramatic than that, that's the huge opportunity here for John Ternus is he's not Tim Cook. He can make his own decisions and he can change the aspects of what Apple is trying to do.

Speaker 2:
[55:58] That's the value of being able to make decisions uncontaminated by ego. It helps that, well, I didn't ever like this project. This wasn't something that I promoted and I'm looking at it objectively. This product doesn't make a whole lot of sense for us right now.

Speaker 1:
[56:12] It might be a little harder for somebody stepping into that role, though, at a company that is so successful. I don't know. Were you at Microsoft when Nadella took over?

Speaker 4:
[56:24] No, no, I was much later. Yeah, I was much later, although I did go on CNBC, I think like three times that day, similar to what Jason had to do for the John Ternus announcements. I kept getting called into that. But no, but I will say, even though I joined Microsoft a few years after that, you still felt the reverberations. There were still people who were from the Balmer era and then people in the Satya era. The way that things had changed internally from what people told me was that there was a lot of differences. Now, that I think was probably a necessary thing and that's one of the reasons why I think Satya made the decisions that he made and some of the-

Speaker 1:
[57:01] Because Balmer wasn't the success that Tim Cook has been. Correct. Although you could look at the stock price of Microsoft and he was a success.

Speaker 4:
[57:06] Well, he was a success, but there were layoffs, there have been downturns, they'd lost, I think, a market credibility in a certain extent. Mindshare, I guess, would be the better framing. Satya came in and he'd been there for a long time, no one really knew who he was, he was the Cloud guy. And very clearly, I think the interesting thing about Satya was that it was very clear from the minute that he was anointed as CEO was that Microsoft was basically telegraphing the center of our ecosystem is no longer Windows, but it is the Cloud, it is the data center, which I think was very prescient and ultimately a very good move. Apple doesn't have that same, I think, kind of like necessity to have to make immediate changes the same way, because the hardware is already incredibly successful for the companies that we have about the software. It's still very, very good, and the profits and the stock are obviously through the roof. But there are areas where there are opportunities, AI being a big one. And so I think this again becomes like the interesting opportunity when you have a new person in charge who does no longer having to do the status quo who can actually, or not status quo, but is no longer having to follow orders, is actually able to dictate them to be able to come in and look at things and say, okay, this is the change directionally I want to make. And I don't know how long it will be before we start to see those changes. What's also been interesting is that you've seen over the last couple of years, just because this generation of Apple executives have started to age out, that some of the transition might be able to just be kind of more natural. And it's a course, but it'll be interesting, I think, to see who's chosen to go into those roles.

Speaker 1:
[58:48] All right, we've spent an hour on this, and I'm sure you all are talked out from all of your appearances on this.

Speaker 3:
[58:53] It's real important, though.

Speaker 1:
[58:54] But it certainly is important. And I mean, unfortunately, all we can really say is, well, it's a bunch of question marks.

Speaker 2:
[59:00] But can we just offer our gratitude to Apple for making this announcement the day before we have to do a show instead of a week before?

Speaker 1:
[59:09] Lisa's come running in and said, turn on the cameras, start doing something. I said, I don't have anything to say.

Speaker 2:
[59:14] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[59:15] I mean, I guess I could. It is breaking news, but I thought, you know, tomorrow's MacBreak Weekly, these guys will have the most incisive things to say. And also I think there really isn't yet anything much to say, except thank you, Tim Cook, for doing a great job for 15 years. Good choice, I think, on the CEO, right? We'd agree on that. I can't think of anybody better to take the reins. He'll be a steady hand on the tiller. There's no question about that. Glad to see Srouji staying and enhancing his role. I think we have rightly concerns about software. Let's hope that that software division gets kicked in the butt a little bit. Big question marks about AI and Vision Pro, spatial computing. But that's the future. You don't think that Mr. Ternus has in his back pocket plans for an exciting new product that no one's ever thought of before, right? He's not that kind of guy.

Speaker 2:
[60:21] Well, it's a ship. The captain can steer it, but it will take years for it to actually change course. That's not how Apple... Like we said a little while ago, Apple is a group think organism that has a leader that makes decisions. However, it's not someone storming into the room saying, suddenly we will make cookies, custom birthday cookies shipped on demand. It's like, okay, we'll get right on there.

Speaker 1:
[60:45] It has happened. There have been CEOs have done that. Finally, by the way, I'm sorry that Alex Lindsay didn't get the job. And Alex, I know you went there with hopes, but that's what happens. But has anybody talked to anybody inside Apple? What is it? How are the... We haven't heard how the rank and file are taking this. Are they happy?

Speaker 2:
[61:06] I haven't.

Speaker 4:
[61:07] I have.

Speaker 1:
[61:08] I haven't.

Speaker 4:
[61:09] The people that I spoke with, I mean, honestly, like I was sending messages to some of my friends and we were just kind of sending memes back and forth. I don't really know if anybody has any sort of opinion one way or another. It didn't seem, certainly no one seemed upset and no one seemed, at least the people that I talked to, no one seemed overly surprised. So, I mean, I think that it'll all come out as things progress, but the fact is like the one MO of this guy is that he was nice. And which is a really good sign, right? Like, so this wasn't one of those cases where people are either going, huh, or, oh, no. At least the folks that I've talked to, but who knows? I mean, all this will trickle down. But also, like I said, this has been an interesting era just the last year or so. We've just seen kind of this, I think, preparation for this moment of kind of the C-suite kind of getting ready to cycle itself out. And I think that'll be what will be interesting to see how that winds up looking a year from now, 18 months from now.

Speaker 1:
[62:10] One of the things a lot of people would say is, oh, the third CEO of Apple, people who have not been around for a long time. He is actually the eighth Apple CEO. New York Times had a very nice retrospective of Apple CEOs through the years, including the first CEO, Michael Scott, not of the paper company Michael Scott.

Speaker 3:
[62:30] Yeah, I mean, he had some similarities in how he treated his employees to Michael Scott of the paper company, though.

Speaker 1:
[62:35] But yeah, I'm here for four years, actually.

Speaker 3:
[62:38] And then he laid a bunch of people off and he got then and Mike Marcela got rid of him and was the temporary CEO until they hired Scully.

Speaker 1:
[62:46] And then the guy from the Pepsi company who was there for 10 long, long years years and then really put his mark on Apple, but not necessarily in a good way.

Speaker 3:
[62:53] But actually, you know, I think he is underappreciated. I think that John Scully is the reason that the Mac was a success. Not Steve Jobs, because Steve Jobs got it out the door. But it was a business failure and Jobs resisted all the reasons that they were trying to make it successful. And when Jobs left, they put Jean-Louis Gesse in charge and then it was successful. But over time, you know, John Scully's era did kind of erode away and they replaced him with Diesel Mike, Mike Spindler, the sales guy from Germany. It didn't work out. And then it was like Gil Amelio boxing up all the assets and trying to figure out whether they were selling or buying. And, you know, he bought and he bought a box and opened it up and Steve Jobs was inside.

Speaker 1:
[63:36] Oh, good job. Steve is not. That's the first time he was CEO. Yeah, he never came back.

Speaker 3:
[63:44] Yeah, he was. No, I mean, in those, in those early days, I just did a bunch of research about this for a, we did a kind of history episode of Upgrade for the 50th. And like these were smelly kids like Steve Jobs didn't wear shoes. The people who were investing like Mike Markkula, like believed in these kids and their computer and stuff. But like, there was no way they were going to loan money or give a credit line with Steve Jobs. Like Steve Jobs was not going to run that business, which is why they found Mike Scott as just like a guy they knew, a guy that Markkula knew who was a tech executive, who they brought in to like be the business dude. So Steve was not, yeah, he was not prepared at any point in his first run at Apple to be the CEO of Apple, not even a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[64:33] So as bad as Gil Amelio was, if he wasn't there that long, it just felt like a long time. He was only there for a year.

Speaker 3:
[64:42] On the firing line, right?

Speaker 4:
[64:44] Exactly. I was going to say, she's there a year and a half, his book, which is again incredible. I can't recommend it enough.

Speaker 3:
[64:49] It's bananas.

Speaker 4:
[64:50] It's so good. But no, I mean, I think that he was probably like, I don't know, Michael Spindler was probably the worst CEO.

Speaker 1:
[64:56] Yeah, we didn't like him much at all.

Speaker 4:
[64:58] Well, because he was the one who got everything into like, I mean, Apple was running on fumes and was over leveraged out the wazoo and potentially having to take.

Speaker 1:
[65:09] Was he the guy who did the clones?

Speaker 4:
[65:11] Yes. He ultimately started the clones. Emilio continued the arrangement jobs, shut it down instantly. But I think it started under Spindler. He was like, you know, they just lost so much money and they were like over leveraged to all get out based on his, I think, bad, you know, kind of estimates on product success and whatnot.

Speaker 1:
[65:34] Yeah. Then Jobs, who was there for actually quite some time from 97 to 2011, but really the longest tenured CEO is Tim Cook, 15 years in office, saw a lot of changes, a lot of transitions. And now John Ternus, in September 1, can say, I'm CEO, the 8th I am. CEO, the 8th I am. So yeah, it's interesting to watch the progress of Apple. It's really a very different company.

Speaker 3:
[66:08] Oh yeah. It's been through so many, it's different from when Tim took over, right? And then obviously when Jobs took over, it was an entirely different company. And when they corporatized in the early 80s, it totally transformed from being this real kind of like makeshift thing into a corporate. That's what John Scully did even more than Michael Scott is sort of provide the adult supervision and you know, for right and wrong, right? Because they lost a lot of that pirate flag ethos and became much more of a 80s corporation with waste and bureaucracy and stuff. So they Apple, it's not talking to Pogue like we did, right? And his book, which is a biography of the company, 50 years Apple has lived a lot of life. Like I think anybody who lives 50 years, they have lived a lot of lives and they had a lot of different eras. And our today's Apple is like so different than even the Apple of 15 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[67:05] Yeah, well, one thing we can also look forward to is Tim had this gold-plated bulletproof vest on every single time he talked to analysts, every single time he talked to investors. He said, he didn't have to say that he turned Apple to a $4 trillion company. So if he was suggesting something that might have been slightly unpopular, then Tim could simply say, well, we feel as though your money is very good, safe with us in Apple stock. You don't like this policy, you're free to invest in another company. Now we're bringing in somebody who has no track record of generating $3 trillion in valuation. It's not as though Apple is known for its bizarre and whip quick moves that make people go, huh, but I wonder when's it going to be the first meeting where shareholders say, we're not confident in this direction that you're taking the company. And we want to know if you're going to respond to these complaints. We're putting more questions on the ballot, on the proxy ballot this quarter, this year.

Speaker 1:
[68:16] You're watching Mac Break Weekly, Andy Ihnatko, Jason Snell, Christina Warren. We're glad you're here on a very important episode talking about the transition, but there is other news. On Sunday, before the breaking news of Monday, Mark Gurman spent many hundreds of words talking about the glowing 26 in the WWDC invitation. Apparently decided that this was somehow an indication this would be Siri's new look.

Speaker 2:
[68:52] Yeah, he's saying that the point of interface for Siri on the phone is going to be the dynamic island, that what you see, that white glow that you see around the WWDC 26 is the glow that will surround the dynamic island when you're talking to Siri.

Speaker 1:
[69:10] Okay. I'm sure he has inside information. He usually does on this. He also, there's actually quite a bit in the Sunday newsletter. For instance, this really worried some people. Industry-wide memory shortages could push back Apple's next Mac upgrades. The Mac Studios and the touchscreen MacBook Pro could debut later than the company initially planned. Company has been saying over and over again, no delays, no delays on the folding phone. We'll see what they say about this. Shortages pushing back shipments of current memory-heavy models already. He says the new Mac Studio models may be several months delayed, not until October. And I don't know where that puts the laptop. Might even be into 2027. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[70:06] German has always said that it might be early next year and not late this year, that they wanted it to be late this year. But I get the sense that that was one of those sort of like, once you're starting to talk about Q4, it may be Q1 of the following year. That's just what happens sometimes.

Speaker 4:
[70:22] And we've seen that. We've seen that happen before. And I feel like on the Mac Studio, if those reports are accurate and I have no reason to doubt them, that probably is simply a component price thing where they pre-bought maybe up to a certain amount of RAM for certain configurations for the M5s. But if they're going to be doing an Ultra or something else, that might be an issue that they want to think about, okay, how much are we going to have to raise pricing in order to, if we have to, in order to keep our margins or whatnot. And I mean, look, it's disappointing for people who want those machines, but at the same time, it's not like you can't configure out an M5 Max, you know, on a laptop today if you need one.

Speaker 1:
[71:05] It is, it feels a little to me though like missing an opportunity because there is huge demand for Apple chips for AI, for local AI. And Mac minis are sold out. I mean, Apple, I mean, obviously they want to make more.

Speaker 4:
[71:20] Yeah. I mean, to me, the missed opportunity is not so much this because like, what can they do, right? Like you can't get more chips than you can get, right? And I'm sure they bought up all the time that they can. I'm sure that they are going to be very aggressive with that. I also don't feel like Apple is the sort of company that even in the short term would be, I mean, I argued last week that they probably could take it on the chin for the Neo if they needed to pay more to get to keep that up and going and I would stand by that. But with a smaller product that doesn't sell as many units, like the studio, I don't know if that makes the same amount of sense. What I do feel like is the missed opportunity is, and this is becoming more clear than ever before, is the fact that Apple really does control so many facets of the supply chain, they make the chips and whatnot, but they don't make the memory components. And I wonder if that's something that they will start to think about differently going forward if these sorts of constraints are going to continue. Because even though it can take many years to create VABs, to create memory chips and whatnot, that's the real constraining factor here that everyone is facing, so.

Speaker 1:
[72:24] Yeah, they have no choice.

Speaker 2:
[72:27] There's also a rumor about the iPhone 18, a fixed-focus digital over on IWAIBO, was saying that Apple is looking at quote certain manufacturing downgrades, unquote, which might be a translation that added some color that might not exist in the original one. But basically, the rumor that they're putting forward is that Apple is looking for ways to not cut corners, but to make the iPhone 18 in any way they can, make it less expensive to manufacture. And basically, taking a lot of the stuff that they learned and putting together the iPhone 17E and seeing, can we apply that towards the iPhone 18 while still making it into a premium product. It does mention downgrades to manufacturing processes, chips, memory, etc. To quote, effectively bring it in line with the 18E model, which you can read into whatever you want. But the thing is, we are, if that is even marginally true, it does suggest that Apple is hunkered down for a long, long winter and being able to get the components they need at the prices that they're used to being able to pay. So if they can find a way to mill the aluminum cheaper per unit, if they can find a way to make cheaper memory perform like better memory, they're definitely going to be well motivated to try to find it in the next year.

Speaker 1:
[73:50] All right. Anything else to say about that? I think WWDC is going to be interesting.

Speaker 2:
[73:58] Super interesting.

Speaker 1:
[74:00] We expect what we'll see. This will be Siri's debut, the new Siri's debut you think?

Speaker 2:
[74:09] If iOS 27 is coming later this year, and it is going to have the new Siri, they're going to have to start sharing it with developers at WWDC. I don't think they can delay. I think this is going to be one of the most exciting WWDCs in a long time, as far as I'm concerned, because when you think about all the products that are very, very hard, very, very well substantiated rumors, that will require Apple to basically prepare the entire Apple development community to, here's what happens if I don't know, let's say that your iPhone screen spontaneously becomes horizontal and twice as big. Here is what would happen if I don't know, someone were operating a MacBook with a mouse that was about the size of a fingertip. Hypothetically speaking.

Speaker 4:
[74:53] Hypothetically. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:54] So there's so much stuff on the table, and this has just added stuff to it, given the date that they set for John Ternus' takeover. The launch of the new iPhones is probably going to be his first media event in the keynote seat. So this is probably going to be Tim's last drive in the keynote seat. So I don't know if they're going to make a golden staircase that he descends down while violins play. He definitely deserves a major sendoff because there's a lot of love for the guy, and a lot of people who want to make sure that love is felt.

Speaker 3:
[75:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:30] All of a sudden, that will be a big part of WWDC. You're right. I didn't even think of that.

Speaker 3:
[75:34] Right. But since it's not a live event, I imagine Tim will come out and all the developers will give him a standing ovation and he'll be there with John Ternus, who will also get a standing ovation. Then they'll both speak and then they'll play the video. But I would imagine that in the video, Tim will be on briefly and we'll see more of Ternus. Maybe we'll even just see Ternus. Who knows?

Speaker 1:
[75:54] Wouldn't that be interesting?

Speaker 3:
[75:55] Yeah. But by the iPhone event, it's over. It's all Ternus all the time.

Speaker 1:
[75:59] That's why September 1, isn't it? So that he can helm the iPhone event.

Speaker 2:
[76:03] If he ditches WWDC to go to a cookout at Mar-a-Lago, I'm going to be super disappointed with Tim.

Speaker 1:
[76:08] Oh, man. Well, there is one little tidbit in Amanda Silberling's TechCrunch deep dive. The only political contribution she could find for John Ternus was 2,600 bucks to Chuck Schumer's campaign a few years ago. I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2:
[76:27] Tim's contributions pre-Trump are also pretty much minimal, like the maximum of personal donation could do. They were not eye-raising by any way, shape or form.

Speaker 1:
[76:35] And Mashed Potato has generated a little bit of a preview of WWDC as Tim Cook, a legend and a legacy, sends.

Speaker 3:
[76:46] Onto the roof.

Speaker 1:
[76:47] Onto the roof of the space.

Speaker 3:
[76:49] Go up there with Phil Schiller on the roof.

Speaker 2:
[76:52] Tim was called home to his home planet.

Speaker 4:
[76:56] I was about to make the poochy joke. You beat me to it. I was literally about to make the poochy joke. That's so good.

Speaker 3:
[77:00] Did we get to the fireworks factory finally? All right, guys.

Speaker 1:
[77:05] All right. All right. Let's see what else is going on. It's so easy for those big stories to swamp all the rest of them. We will cover, by the way, June 8th, the WWDC keynote. Michael Sargent and I will do that. Any of you want to join? That's more. You're more than welcome. The more the merrier. We usually stream those live. We were thinking, last year, we did the State of the Union talk afterwards, thinking that that would have a lot of juicy tidbits, and it didn't. So I don't know if we'll do that this year. We'll certainly give you the beginning, the first keynote, which is usually where they announce all the new features, and the focus will absolutely be iOS 27 and the Siri overhaul. Apple has talked a little bit about some of the other features in iOS 27, some design changes, some new features. Nicolas Alvarez has looked at the back-end code of iOS 27, and MacRumor has confirmed some new visual intelligence features, the ability to scan a nutrition label and learn more about the ingredients. Maybe that would be part of a new Apple Health feature. Not clear. Also, the ability to add new people, phone numbers, and addresses to contacts by scanning the people. Wait a minute, what?

Speaker 4:
[78:30] Oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all.

Speaker 1:
[78:34] What? Oh, you could add events by scanning flyers. Yeah. It's just scanning more things. I think maybe not the people themselves, maybe their business cards. I don't know what you would get from the people unless you did face recognition, which I doubt Apple would do.

Speaker 4:
[78:47] No, I doubt they would, but that's where my mind was going. I was like, oh, they'll recognize that this person is in your photos or your address book. Right.

Speaker 1:
[78:54] Christina Warren, she's film girl.

Speaker 4:
[78:55] Yeah, I don't like that.

Speaker 2:
[78:57] You have lots of pictures of her. I'm very proud of Apple because I wouldn't have put it past them five years ago to say, you know what? If you shouldn't be associating with people who don't have an iPhone and you can't exchange contacts with somebody by tapping. We're just protecting you from filthy Android users by not allowing you to simply scan a business card or scan something like that. So they're becoming more open. I don't know why I'm complaining.

Speaker 1:
[79:19] I actually have tapped the top of my phone to the top of other people's phones in a kind of salacious gesture many times.

Speaker 4:
[79:27] I have too. No, I like that feature a lot.

Speaker 1:
[79:29] It buzzes a little bit.

Speaker 4:
[79:30] It buzzes. It's nice. The only annoying thing is I have two phones. I have my personal phone and my work phone. And if I bring them together, sometimes I'm holding them both, then they'll immediately kind of get activated. And I'm like, no, I don't need you to transfer anything. I promise this is fine.

Speaker 1:
[79:45] The report also says, and I like this, that you might be able to scan physical passes, like a gym membership pass, and put it into your Apple Wallet.

Speaker 4:
[79:55] Okay, now that's slick.

Speaker 1:
[79:56] Wouldn't that be cool?

Speaker 4:
[79:57] Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 2:
[79:58] Yeah, that was, I mean, I like the headline. I read the story and I was kind of disappointed because this does seem like simple stuff that you didn't need advanced Apple intelligence to do.

Speaker 4:
[80:07] No.

Speaker 2:
[80:08] This is not an Android is better argument, just saying that my library card, I simply had to take a picture with Google Wallet and suddenly it's my digital library card. And it's not a photo, it's like it found the barcode.

Speaker 4:
[80:19] It found the barcode and created a new thing.

Speaker 2:
[80:21] Yeah, which we created a pass. So it seemed as I was all excited about, oh, visual intelligence, that means it's going to be able to like smart. It can do things like, oh, I'll take a picture of like a bookshelf and it'll recommend the book. No, it's like, okay, I'm glad to see good things moving forward. This is going to be an improvement thing, but that's not that's not going to be the item bullet item number one on the iOS 27 section of the WBDC keynote for sure. No.

Speaker 1:
[80:44] You know what else won't be the new system-wide liquid glass slider. This is not a guaranteed, but I hope they don't actually do this. This is totally not functional. I'm sure you'd agree, Christina, I know you're not a fan of liquid glass. This is.

Speaker 4:
[81:05] No. Here's my feeling on this. If you have to go through all of those gyrations to make it more usable, then you have to accept that it's not usable, right? If you have to give it that many layers, where I have to have a slider so I can say, well, how visible do I want this to be? Then something is more fundamentally wrong, and that's how I feel about liquid glass. But the people I really feel for genuinely is an accessibility issue. If you have people who don't have eyes that are as good as they used to be or have other vision impairments, it can be very difficult sometimes to see what you're supposed to be looking at. I don't know, I just feel like that's just a failure in just basic design and human user interface guidelines, if you have to go to the point where you're like, oh, well, you can control it as much or as little as you want. Okay, well, what was the point of all of this?

Speaker 1:
[81:57] Looking farther ahead to September, manufacturing, according to 9to5Mac, is starting for the iPhone 18 camera. China's Sunny Optical, not a company, a rumor mill, has reportedly, oh no, it is a company, I like the name, has reportedly begun manufacturing a key component need to control the iris in the lenses in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, including, it looks like a really huge optical zoom. So you'll, and the ability to set apertures, which is something good cameras, fancy, real cameras can do.

Speaker 2:
[82:39] And realistically, we're talking about switching between two different apertures, but still that's a, the ability to like, be able to stop down and super bright light, or the ability to choose an aperture for a certain optical effect is still a big deal.

Speaker 1:
[82:56] You can change the depth of field with a wider aperture.

Speaker 2:
[83:02] Next year could be super interesting because there's also rumors Samsung and Apple are both developing a sensor based on a brand new technology that is super, super good and low light, particularly with video. It basically does HDR right on the sensor. So basically takes the compute load off of the CPU. It can do a lot of tricks just with the video stream. So the 19 could be super, super interesting if those rumors turn out to be true. Apple went public with a patent on this technology. Samsung actually announced this sensor for their own usage earlier this year. So this isn't like a wild rumor. But it wouldn't be, if it were to appear, it wouldn't be before 2027.

Speaker 1:
[83:46] And here, this is the one I really like, a Macworld exclusive, dark cherry.

Speaker 4:
[83:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[83:53] Call it burgundy, don't fear the 70s, call it burgundy, I love it.

Speaker 1:
[83:56] I like dark cherry, I like that.

Speaker 4:
[83:59] Wine, wine is what I would call it.

Speaker 1:
[84:00] Oh, it is wine.

Speaker 4:
[84:01] I would call it wine. But no, that's, if that is the color, like that's beautiful. I mean, I like that light blue as well, but no, but that wine color, that kind of purple, you know. Aberdeen, however you would say it. Aubergeen, yes, thank you, eggplant, yeah, like that. Yeah, that would be a beautiful, beautiful color. Like, I'm into it. Well, it's funny, because I keep saying this, like, oh, I want that one. I'm like, no, you're not buying that. You're going to get the fold and keep your orange, you know, 17 Pro Max. Like, that's the plan.

Speaker 1:
[84:39] The Pantone.

Speaker 3:
[84:40] Remember, they got this last year and they were right.

Speaker 1:
[84:42] Light blue, dark cherry, dark gray and silver.

Speaker 4:
[84:45] I was going to say, the colors, they're usually at this point, they're fixed. Yeah, the mockups that they make that we see online might not be accurate, but usually like the reports of what the color will be are.

Speaker 1:
[84:56] Yeah, we don't know how saturated, we know what the color will be, but how saturated will it be? It could be like a Neo where it's barely there.

Speaker 2:
[85:03] Interestingly, when dummy folds started appearing, again, the dummies that are basically sold for case manufacturers to make sure they get the fit and function as best they can from whatever information they have, it might be a coincidence, but the samples were burgundy in color.

Speaker 1:
[85:19] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[85:19] Since it came out, I thought, oh, I would love it if that were the actual color. I love the idea of super, super bright citrusy colors, but until I actually have to use it day to day and I realize that, oh, wow, so you can totally see the reflection of this color like on selfies and on like in different kinds of photos. So I do like the darker colors, but oh, burgundy. When was the last time you saw that color way in a phone?

Speaker 1:
[85:45] Paul in our Club TWiT Discord says it's the same color as the buses in Edinburgh.

Speaker 4:
[85:51] That's awesome.

Speaker 1:
[85:53] It's maroon if you're a fan of the hearts. It's the hearts maroon. Macworld sources also had access to CAD drawings of the new phones. Macworld says those documents support the rumors that the 18 Pro and Pro Max will look pretty much the same, although a smaller dynamic island, which all of this confirms other rumors we've heard earlier. A Weibo leaker said that Apple will adopt a new process to minimize the color difference between the glass and the aluminum frame. Apple's always looking for a glass that goes all the way, or at least appears to go all the way to the edge.

Speaker 2:
[86:32] Yeah. Apparently, they're putting more of the Face ID sensors under the screen, so they can make the dynamic island smaller. I hope they never solve that problem entirely, because I do think the dynamic island is one of the most brilliant things. I love the dynamic island. It's not just a hack to make an excuse for this dot. It's like, no, it actually gives that dot a purpose and a function.

Speaker 1:
[86:52] Well, I do not like the notch on the laptops. I love the dynamic island.

Speaker 4:
[86:56] No, I feel the exact same way. Well, you know why I think it's because the notch on the laptops, A, it's too big, B, it takes away space that we used to have and used to know, well, I've got all the space and now I have a limited amount, which was not ever a problem on the phone. We didn't have a top menu bar running across the top of our phones. It's almost the inverse. On the phone, it's an additive thing because now I have this extra indicator that I can tap on, I can control, I can see notifications on. I can see alerts of how long before my delivery is going to be. But on the laptop, it's the opposite. It takes things away because it's just taking up the middle of my screen that I stare at literally right this second.

Speaker 1:
[87:39] Yeah, and that's the menu bar and I need that real estate.

Speaker 4:
[87:43] That's exactly what I'm saying. I need that real estate, right? Whereas on the phone, it didn't take anything up. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[87:48] Yeah, phone's got plenty of screen. I think I probably, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy the folding phone. I really love the idea that it's kind of like a, I think the screen aspect ratio is going to be awesome. This is what Macworld says the colors will be black and silver and then an Indigo option similar to the 17's deep blue. I guess I'll get the Indigo. I don't know. You know, on folding phones cases are problematic. It really isn't a good way to put a folding phone and protect it. So in this case, color is going to be more important, I think.

Speaker 2:
[88:26] Yeah, I still, I'm not down on the form factor. It's, I will have to actually hold one and use one to figure out if the transformation from phone to something larger than a phone is dramatic enough to justify it. I love the idea of going a little bit for broke and basically making something that is a substantial, like almost an iPad mini size device. This does not seem like it's going to be that. It's going to be bigger. It's going to be certainly proportioned very, very well for watching movies, like in full HD widescreen. But I'll have to use it for a little while to figure out if I can actually get more done with it than I could by just, you know, holding, saving half the money and squinting just a tiny little bit.

Speaker 3:
[89:12] I feel like, I mean, that aspect ratio, when it's open, I think it's going to be close to being an iPad Mini. And that's going to be the question. But I was going to say, I mean, Leo is not going to be able to restrain himself. I know I've had a couple of people say, oh, I'm going to really want that folding phone. And what I keep saying is, wait for the reviews on that. Yeah. Because, because like, I also am really intrigued by that product, but it's all going to be about the execution. And until we see it, and until the reviewers get their hands on it and talk about the experience with it, like, you know, we don't know. And I think it's the biggest question mark in an Apple product in a while, of like, how is it actually, like, because they're going to have to tell us a whole story about what they've done to the software and how it all works and all that. And like, it could be great. But like, also, I wouldn't want to put my money down today on it. No.

Speaker 4:
[90:03] I mean, I think that's the thing, right? Like, this is going to be like the kind of the epitome of like an early doctor product. And I think that one of the lessons with Apple, especially when they enter in a new category, is it's kind of a truism that's kind of existed, you know, since kind of the beginning of time. It's like, there are exceptions always. But for the most part, like, it's good to wait when they enter a new category, a new form factor, to see to Jason's point, like, whether it was what those reviews are, how things are really working, because oftentimes it's the second generation when the bugs really kind of get worked out and when you really start to see the real possibilities of what they can do.

Speaker 3:
[90:41] I'm excited by it, though. Like, I think it could be really interesting, but it is, yeah, it's complicated.

Speaker 2:
[90:48] I mean, Samsung launched this category, and you could tell from the first one, two, three iterations that we are a display panel company that is using this as a proof of concept to basically continue to develop our display panel, folding panel technology that we hope to sell to Apple and to other people in the future, whereas Apple will start with the benefit of having waited for this thing to mature, will start with the user experience and then see what components they can actually execute that with. So like we discussed before, I'm less concerned about any ditch that might be between the two halves of the screen and more interested in saying, again, I take out my phone, I get an e-mail, it's like, oh, I actually want to like, I need to look something up to respond to this. What is the transition from opening it up and continuing that thought and continuing that workflow on the inside screen? I feel as though Apple will have a really good solution to that. If their solution is simply that, it's the mail app, but it's bigger, or hey, you can have an app on one half of the screen, and then another app on the other half of the screen. Don't worry about the second and a half pause during the transition, because just keep saying in your mind the thing that you're trying to do, and you won't forget about it. I think that they'll have a better answer than that.

Speaker 1:
[91:59] Here's a little cause for concern for those of us who've been looking forward to a smarter Siri. Apple, according to the information, is sending Siri staffers to a coding boot camp to learn how to vibe code. I can't believe that anyone who's coding these days hasn't already played with it, but maybe not.

Speaker 3:
[92:22] Well, especially if it's not, right? Like if your job is at Apple and they're like, you only use the allowed tools and all of that.

Speaker 1:
[92:31] There's been a little battle going on at Google. Steve Yegge used to work at Google, a smart guy. We've interviewed him. He wrote some really cool vibe coding tools, has said from his sources at Google that only the, and maybe Christina might want to weigh in or out on this one, only the DeepMind people at Google have access to Claude, which of course is not a Google project. Everybody else at Google is forced to use Gemini, which is deemed substandard. They tried to take Claude away from the DeepMind crew. They said, over our dead bodies. Now, a number of Google executives have taken pains to deny all of this. But Yagi says it's really holding back engineering at Google because they're forced to dog food their own.

Speaker 3:
[93:18] Can I have a theory here? I have also is that one of the places that Apple needs to be better is in making its platforms better for vibe coding. If you're somebody who's an OS engineer, you're not vibe coding apps, right? You're doing your OS stuff. And I think what's going on here is they're like, you need to see what the real world is doing with your tools. Because I heard from a friend of mine who said, he's been vibe coding Mac apps and he's got all these issues.

Speaker 1:
[93:43] Oh, I've done it. SwiftUI is incredible.

Speaker 3:
[93:46] One of the opportunities Apple has is to be better at that. Because you still have to do Xcode and it's still a lot. I think maybe there should be a vibe code mode or even a vibe code app. So you can make simple apps without maybe all of the overhead that comes with Xcode. But if you're an OS developer and you're working to the bone at Apple and you're not going home and building your side hustle app, and even if you are, you're probably not vibe coding it because you think, I learned how to build apps and you don't do that. You need to get them in the mindset of how their customers are using these tools.

Speaker 1:
[94:22] It's almost too late because already you have perplexity computer, you have Claude Cowork, you have a Codex.

Speaker 3:
[94:28] They've been going down this path.

Speaker 1:
[94:30] Google just put out a Gemini for Apple.

Speaker 2:
[94:34] Well, that's part of what's going to make WWDC so interesting because they're really going to have to keep Xcode up to date and developers are going to expect not necessarily vibe coding an entire app, but at least build me an interface for this or build me a prototype for this that we can take into the conference room and show up.

Speaker 1:
[94:51] The information is saying the Siri team has a reputation as a laggard struggling with AI advancements. The company plans to send a significant chunk of people working on Siri, a group that totals in the hundreds to a multi-week boot camp to learn to code using AI.

Speaker 3:
[95:09] Get with the program, everybody. Why do you think Siri is so behind?

Speaker 1:
[95:12] The changes will leave around 60 members of the course Siri development team behind. An additional 60 will work in a group that evaluates how Siri is performing. That's not exactly coding. That's more testing. Did you want to say anything about this, Christina? You can recuse yourself.

Speaker 4:
[95:32] No. The only thing I would say is that obviously I worked to DeepMind. My experiences there are going to be different than what maybe the average Google engineer would have been. Having said that, some of C.B.E.G.'s initial comments did not ring true to my experiences in terms of what he described as the internal hesitance to adopt AI. Now, I'm not going to comment on what models are or not allowed to be used internally. I won't talk about that. But I don't think that it was a fair representation, at least in terms of how engineers were adopting AI tooling regardless of either on their personal projects or on unofficial Google things. I worked at DeepMind, but I often worked with people who worked in other parts of the company and observed their conversations and their feedback on things. I don't think that was, at least it didn't match what my experiences were working there. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[96:27] Good. That's what others have said.

Speaker 2:
[96:30] Apple really is going to have to think about how they integrate. I'm sure they have a plan for how they integrate AI internally, because it's not just the tool set that the people they hire are going to be used to using. It's also like last week, one of the big stories was, of course, Mythos and the fact that this is such a dangerous AI. Excuse me, this AI coincidentally happens to be so adept at finding and exploiting security weaknesses in any OS or software you throw at it that we are giving Apple and other vitally invested parties early access so they can figure out what the hell happens to their software with it. And tools like this are going to discover so many new vulnerabilities that will have to be addressed that they are going to be coming in much faster than old-fashioned coders can actually address them. They are going to have to be corrected by AI if they are going to be keeping up to security standards. So yeah, the scale of this problem inside any shop, Apple and everybody else, it's hard to really fathom how big, how important it is for them to basically make sure that they switch from manual labor to automated assembly line, so to speak, because they got to start cranking out code a lot faster than they were able to get away with 10 years ago.

Speaker 1:
[97:51] Yeah. Well, we'll just see. You know, the good news is no matter whether you're using Apple products or not, you still have access to all these great tools.

Speaker 2:
[98:01] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[98:02] Siri doesn't have to do any of this. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[98:05] That's why Apple is in such a great position. Like we keep saying, all Apple has to do is make sure that whatever tools you're going to use, whatever tools exist today, whatever tools exist a year from now, two years from now, your Apple hardware is going to be a really, really great home for that code, for that platform. They can make a bundle off of AI without actually being an AI forward company.

Speaker 1:
[98:28] Yeah. I guess I can admit this. I'm doing something I never thought I would do. I'm retiring the HomePods, by the way, I had to convince Lisa of this. I'm replacing them with Sonos speakers.

Speaker 4:
[98:39] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[98:41] I'm doing that because I have worked for some weeks now with Claude to create a personal agent, which it took me some time because Sonos' interface is so horrible. But Claude and I finally reverse-engineered it, and we're able to talk to it directly. It can talk to me through Sonos. I can get Sonos to play music, books, podcasts, using Claude. Now, I'm re-coding my ESP32 interface, and I'm going to put those all over the house so that instead of saying, hey, Schlomo, I can say, and we've just trained it to do this, help me, Obi-Wan, because that's its name is Obi-Wan, of course. I can talk to it. It can talk back through the Sonos speakers and do a much better job of responding than Siri, and do all the things that the HomePod did with Siri better. And so I've completely done an end around on Apple. And I think that this is doable for people. And it's a much better solution because this agent knows me and knows a lot about me, knows my habits and so forth. I use it to log exercise and food and do research for the shows and all sorts of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[99:56] It's such a strange world because people have, I'll say in air quotes, relationships unquote, with the AIs that they've been using for the past year or two. And they're like, oh, why would I fire my assistant that knows that's been working for me for the past year and a half, who knows me inside and out, that I know exactly how to communicate with it and it knows exactly how to do what I needed to do. Why would I essentially fire this assistant for this new person called Siri who just came out of AI assistant school that I'm just going to have to develop a brand new relationship with. It's a very pretty speaker and I love the sound for it, you can keep your Apple personal assistant. Let me take Claude with me, let me take OpenAI, ChatGPT with me, let me take Gemini with me.

Speaker 1:
[100:39] Well, then that's the beauty is I can talk to my Apple Watch and to my agent through Apple Watch. I have a little shortcut that we wrote together for that. I can use Telegram, so Telegram works on the Apple Watch, it works on the iPhone. All the interfaces are there. You don't really need Apple. And I can do it on an Android phone just as well. But since I'm kind of all in on the Apple, I'm doing it on the Apples. So honestly, I used to really care about the new Siri. Now I don't. It's fine, whatever. Whatevs.

Speaker 4:
[101:16] Yeah. I think the defaults are always an important thing to look at in having a good default.

Speaker 1:
[101:21] Yeah, I'm in an unusual position. I wouldn't expect most people to do what I do.

Speaker 4:
[101:24] Well, no, totally. But the fact that you were able to do that is impressive enough. I think honestly that would be the thing that if I'm Apple, that I'm looking at them, I'm concerned with, right? Because part of the reason that you want to keep people in your ecosystem is that you don't want basically all this free data to go to your competitors. Who can, Apple might take great pains to talk about how they're not doing post-training or taking your information and using that to make their models better in this and that, and that's fine. But that's not going to be the case for Anthropic or for OpenAI or for Google outside of the confines of however it runs directly within Siri. So if it's easy enough for people to create their own alternative assistance, then A, Apple's not getting that amount of kind of like user lock-in and B, it's like, well, now their competitors are actually getting more data on the users than they are. So having defaults are positive, but I am hopeful they will at least, to Andy's point, make it a better place for you to be able to run these tools, whatever they might be. But I certainly hope that Siri might someday be better than where it has been. I mean, if we're up to me, I would just say, scrap the name, just start over.

Speaker 1:
[102:36] Yeah, start with something new, yeah. OB1 is available, I'm just saying.

Speaker 4:
[102:39] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[102:43] John Prosser, Apple says, has only partially complied with the subpoenas. This is the leak case that just will never end. I'm convinced Prosser feels like he's getting more value out of the negative attention.

Speaker 4:
[102:56] Well, he finally hired a lawyer. So, yay.

Speaker 1:
[102:58] Oh, well, that's huge.

Speaker 4:
[103:00] Yay, he finally filed a response and said, even though there was a summary judgment against me because I'd never bothered to hire a lawyer to respond to these very serious legal claims.

Speaker 1:
[103:13] Now I am.

Speaker 4:
[103:14] Okay, now he has and agreed to work with Apple where Apple is like, okay, we won't go through the course and we will just accept that we will defer this summary judgment so that you can have your deposition and we can, I guess, continue to work through other things.

Speaker 1:
[103:28] We've always said that Apple really doesn't want to put Jon Prosser in jail or get a $100 million settlement out of him.

Speaker 4:
[103:35] They're not going to get any money out of him at all. He's not going to go to jail. He didn't commit any sort of crime that would do that. But like, come on, Jon. Why did you not get a lawyer until now?

Speaker 1:
[103:46] Well, I'm telling you, I think he is making the calculus of how far he can push it because he's going to get all the negative attention. We're talking about him. It's good for the YouTube channel.

Speaker 4:
[103:56] Is it though?

Speaker 2:
[103:57] I don't know. That's, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[104:01] YouTube is set up in such a way that any attention is good attention because you get monetized.

Speaker 2:
[104:06] I hope he's getting monetized a hell of a lot because he's got a $4 trillion company blowing down his snorkel and that's not fun. Nor is it cheap. That could have some very, very serious repercussions. The thing is Apple absolutely has to move forward with this because this wasn't, oh, gosh darn it, someone reached out to him on Signal and gave him some secret information. No, he really. He screwed up. That was nuts. Apple has to basically make it very, very clear that if you are looking to repeat, the behavior that was engaged against Apple in this operation is not something we are willing to tolerate. We have to basically make sure that this is the line you are not going to cross and we will not. You're not acting like a journalist, so we are going to not treat you with the respect of a journalist. So I hope this ends well for all parties.

Speaker 1:
[104:58] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[104:59] Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1:
[105:00] I should have mentioned this when we were talking about chatbots, but you can now use perplexity, ChatGPT and other chatbots in your car on CarPlay. I put ChatGPT on there. It's not as easy as just saying, hey, ChatGPT, you have to tap the screen and stuff, but you can talk to it. I'm going to work on ways to talk to my... Can you run short? You probably can't run shortcuts from CarPlay. That's the next step. If I could run a shortcut from CarPlay, I could talk to my personal assistant in the car too. Now I have to do it on the watch. Anyway, that's a part of iOS 26 for AI chatbot apps. Perplexity and ChatGBT are the first to arrive. You do have to have a pro subscription for Perplexity, apparently, if you're going to use the voice chat. Finally, I don't know about this. Maybe you can explain it. Unless, this is from Apple Insider, unless you reboot every once in a while, your Mac will get kicked offline every 49 days.

Speaker 3:
[106:09] Yeah, if you're running Tahoe, this is a story that came out a few weeks ago. If you're running Tahoe on a Mac that has network activity and stays online after 49 days, there's a- John Gruber investigated it. There's literally a 32-bit sign number that overflows. Somebody put it in the wrong-

Speaker 1:
[106:26] 49 days, 17 hours, two minutes, and 47 seconds later.

Speaker 3:
[106:28] A little birdie told John Gruber, here's the line in Apple's open source that they changed for Tahoe, that they messed it up, and it's a relatively simple fix, but it does mean that if you're running a company that does server hosting for Macs, they have Macs in a cluster. They saw this issue, they're the ones who first noted it.

Speaker 1:
[106:49] We use Mac Stadium, that may explain.

Speaker 3:
[106:50] It's really minor. It does seem to only be Tahoe. I want to confirm this, but I've just been waiting. I still have 10 days.

Speaker 1:
[106:58] Are you really? You're trying to do it?

Speaker 3:
[107:00] I have a Mac server, but the problem is, unless you're running a cluster, your Mac server crashes and you're like, all right, and you reboot it, and you don't write down when it happened or note that it happens at the same time every time. Only if you've got hundreds of them do you notice that. But it is true that just set your Mac to reboot every 30 days, and you'll be fine.

Speaker 1:
[107:21] Probably doing that anyway, I would imagine. Yeah, let's talk as long as we're talking about Tempest in a teapot. Marques Brownlee did a collab with Veritasium, both very, very popular YouTube channels, showing how $10,000 could be stolen from a locked iPhone in a controlled setting using Touch to Pay. But they maybe knew but didn't mention or maybe didn't know is that it only happens if you're using a Visa card, and it's hooked up to your auto pay on your Express Transit feature.

Speaker 3:
[107:56] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[107:58] So this is kind of not a big deal, right?

Speaker 3:
[108:02] No, if you've got a non-Visa credit card and you use Express Transit, you should change to the non-Visa credit card until this is addressed.

Speaker 1:
[108:09] Yes, just to be safe.

Speaker 4:
[108:10] Yeah, I was gonna say, I looked at that and I was like, oh, well, mine is American Express on my transit thing, so that's fine. But yeah, I mean, look.

Speaker 1:
[108:18] It's not an Apple issue we should point out.

Speaker 4:
[108:20] That means it's a Visa issue. It's a Visa issue. Visa is trying to downplay what it is.

Speaker 1:
[108:24] They say we'll cover the loss, so.

Speaker 4:
[108:27] Well, good.

Speaker 2:
[108:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[108:30] Let's not find out.

Speaker 2:
[108:32] I think you can also turn off that feature. The reason why it works is because basically, it would suck if you had to like-

Speaker 1:
[108:40] I turned it on. Because I was in New York City. I could walk up to the subway and tap my wristwatch on the subway and not have to buy a token, not have to even buy a card is incredible.

Speaker 4:
[108:52] Yeah, I mean, they don't even sell the cards anymore. The metro cards are gone. So yeah.

Speaker 2:
[108:56] Can I also say that also means that I'm no longer paying like the $1.70 tax on every- Because it's never- gosh, if they never allow you to feed them, they would not allow you to feed the card the exact amount you need for 10 rides, it would always be $20. So, oh, there'll be $1.40 left over. So basically, congratulations, it's $1.40. It's just $1.40, but it's just annoyed the hell out of me. As if I know what you're doing. Rudy, I know what you're trying to get away with here.

Speaker 1:
[109:26] I have a bunch of those cards with a small amount of money.

Speaker 4:
[109:29] And the expires too. Well, that was the real thing, is they expire, right? Because I used to always just buy them monthly and just get them a monthly Metro card. And now it's just like, it will charge you up to the weekly or monthly amount and then won't charge you any more than that once you've hit that.

Speaker 1:
[109:47] Now they have OMNY, Oh My New York cards, which is the replacement for the Metro card. But if you have an Apple Watch or an iPhone, just hook it up to anything but a Visa card, and you just tap it and walk right through. I say, it's a wonderful thing. Wonderful. It is. A couple of TV notes, Pluribus Season 2. We've been trying to figure out how long we're going to have to wait to find out what the heck happens there. According to Carolino, Wydra, Zosia, they are going to start filming this fall. Yay.

Speaker 3:
[110:24] It's going to be a long wait.

Speaker 1:
[110:25] It's been a long wait. But you know what? I'm not going to forget what's going on in this show. I think this is one of those, like we talked last week, I have no idea what happened in Euphoria five years ago, but I will remember what happened in Pluribus no matter when it comes back. Also, if you've been waiting for the Jessica Chastain show, The Savant, it was pulled after Charlie Kirk's assassination, and according to Chastain, it will be released this summer. She said, I was not aligned with Apple's decision to pull it. No. Not aligned.

Speaker 2:
[111:01] Yeah. That was super suspicious. Excuse me, the environment that we're in right now, particularly with Tim, left us not inclined to simply assume that they were waiting for another slot in which they could air this series that was all wrapped and ready to go and promote it correctly. It was like, okay, maybe it is something innocent or maybe it is being buried because politically it's an unpopular show to put on the air at this time.

Speaker 1:
[111:29] Well, and to be fair, Chastain is also a diplomat. Chastain is currently filming two new shows for Apple TV, a limited series with Ben Stiller called The Off Weeks, and a drama called The Dealer with Adam Driver. So she clearly doesn't hate Apple.

Speaker 2:
[111:45] Oh, no, no.

Speaker 1:
[111:45] She's just not fully aligned.

Speaker 2:
[111:47] That's, boy, what a perfect statement though. It's like, okay, people know exactly how I feel, but I have not burned any bridges. Right.

Speaker 1:
[111:55] We agree to disagree. Yeah. There are some complaints about, Chance Miller's complaint is probably the most noisy. Apple, Netflix ruined its Apple TV app by switching to a custom video player. They actually, they switched to the Netflix video player. They hadn't been, they stopped using the native TVOS video player in favor of the one they use everywhere else. I haven't really noticed. It is different.

Speaker 4:
[112:23] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[112:24] I don't know. Are you guys unhappy about it?

Speaker 4:
[112:26] Look, it is what it is. I think that this is difficult to say. This is honestly kind of, I think when like some of Apple's stuff comes home to roost and when they're, I think a failure a little bit in developer relations really comes to bite them because Netflix is not incentivized at all, so once you maintain multiple types of players for all their different types of devices, especially when I'm sure Apple TV is a much smaller percentage of the actual players for their content than Roku boxes or Fire TVs or what's built into the TV itself. It's one of those things where you maybe would see more goodwill if you weren't constantly at loggerheads over like who gets 30% and who doesn't based on...

Speaker 1:
[113:14] Oh, do you think that's what this is about?

Speaker 4:
[113:18] I think it comes down to some of that, yeah. I think the fact that Apple makes it difficult for Netflix to... That Apple seems to think that they are indebted to a certain percentage of every dollar that Netflix makes.

Speaker 1:
[113:32] They are rent-seeking.

Speaker 4:
[113:33] Right. The fact that they think that, I think, is probably a disincentivizes Netflix to want to follow all of Apple's guidelines for their own players.

Speaker 1:
[113:44] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[113:45] That's just my personal take. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[113:47] I bet most people don't even notice.

Speaker 4:
[113:49] No, I don't think they do. I mean, and here's the thing, not that I need to cape for any multi-billion dollar company, but the thing I would say, I guess, on Netflix's defense slightly is even though I agree with Chance's critique that the player is not as good. If you are someone who is using Netflix, you want consistency. I think Netflix probably wants consistency.

Speaker 1:
[114:10] This will look the same on Roku, on Google TV.

Speaker 4:
[114:13] That's the thing. I think that most people are just accessing Netflix. This is the thing I don't think Apple quite understood until they had to basically enter in that agreement with Amazon to finally get Prime Video on Apple TV and not make Apple TV an object embarrassment, is that when people are coming to watch these services and the content, the platform that they're watching it on is secondary. They don't care. I'm watching Netflix. That's who I have the relationship with. I'm not looking at this as, oh, this is my Apple TV experience. I think the same is also true for Apples, whatever experience they have on Roku or on FireStix or built into LG or Samsung TVs. They do better or worse jobs depending on what product they're on with those. But that's when my relationship is with Apple. Apple is the one who controls that app experience. I'm not thinking about who the set-top box maker is. But the inverse is true too. I'm here to watch Netflix. I'm not here to deal with whatever UI paradigms Apple has created for the Apple TV.

Speaker 3:
[115:15] I just want to say, I agree that that is what Netflix thinks, and I completely disagree with it. Because when I'm using an Apple TV, that's my box, that's the box I'm using. I'm not worried about, oh, how does this feel on some other box that I'm not using? I think about consistency on the box. If some apps behave a certain way on that box, and then other apps behave differently, I don't think, well, at least this is how Netflix also behaves on Roku or on a Fire TV. I think, why is it different than the other thing that I was just using? From Netflix's perspective, I really don't actually think it's about consistency. I think it's about they want control, and they're not happy with what Apple is providing to them, and I think that goes to the root of it being a bad relationship with Apple. But it is the same argument that Microsoft made about making Microsoft Office as Windows-like as possible on the Mac, because they wanted consistency with Windows. But I'm a Mac user, I'm not using Windows, I'm using the Mac, and I want it to look like all my other Mac apps. They're like, well, that's not what we're prioritizing. We're prioritizing consistency of our product across interfaces. The fact is, this can be a tempest in a teapot too, but I will say, consistency in behavior, how the remote works when you play video on any of these set-top box platforms, it's nice. It's nice when you don't have to say, oh, now I'm in Prime Video. It behaves totally different when I pause video than from YouTube.

Speaker 1:
[116:39] Yeah, for me, I turn the set-top box off and on a lot, and it's a completely different way to do it on the Netflix app that it is on the Apple app.

Speaker 3:
[116:45] But if you are Apple and you control that platform, I don't think Netflix is in the right here, but I will say it this way. Apple, as the platform owner, needs to do a good job of one, evangelizing why it's important. Two, making it worth motivating them to spend development resources to standardize. Three, come up with player APIs that allow the Netflix's of the world to do what they want with the player, while it is still the standard player. It takes two to tango here. We can belly-ache, and I will, about Netflix ditching the Apple player and going to its own non-standard player, but it does take two to tango. I suspect the real reason it happened is because Netflix wants to do some stuff on its app that Apple's player won't do. The right way to handle that is you have a conversation, and Apple goes, yes, Netflix, you're an important partner. We want to update the API for you. Maybe some of that conversation happens, I doubt it, but maybe. But it's incumbent on Apple too. I think the sad thing is because those two are not tangoing, me as an owner of an Apple TV box, I get a substandard experience where instead of just watching TV, I have to remember the context of what app I'm in to know what will happen when I press a button.

Speaker 4:
[118:03] No, look, I want to be clear, I completely agree with you and my only defense of Netflix is to say, I think they have their own business realities that are completely separate from Apple's, and Apple is doing nothing to incentivize them. As an end user, I'm completely with you. I don't like that I have applications that act differently depending on what app I'm in, and unfortunately Netflix isn't alone in that. YouTube TV is like that too. There are a lot of apps that are on Apple TV are inconsistent, and I do honestly put that-

Speaker 1:
[118:30] Disney Plus does not use the TV OS native player either.

Speaker 4:
[118:33] A lot of them don't, and so at a certain point, I have to look at, okay, well, if we're Apple, to Jason's point-

Speaker 1:
[118:38] Make it worthwhile.

Speaker 4:
[118:40] Make it more extendable or enforce it, right? If it were that important to you to have the consistency then enforce it. Since they don't, I can't blame the companies for wanting to do their own thing because-

Speaker 1:
[118:54] It's a bit of a flex for Netflix too, because Apple can't say, oh, no Netflix for you. That would be not good.

Speaker 4:
[119:00] Well, no, well, that's the thing. Well, that's the thing, right? I think that Apple and Netflix clearly don't have a good relationship, but it is one of those things where they both know that they need the other.

Speaker 1:
[119:10] Yeah, Netflix for years has not been part of the Apple search.

Speaker 4:
[119:13] No, absolutely. And I don't blame them.

Speaker 3:
[119:15] But again, it's one of those things where we can shame Netflix, but it does take two. And Apple doesn't want to give Netflix what Netflix wants, and Netflix doesn't want to give. And there's probably a really nice quid pro quo that could happen there, but they're just not going to do it. And the result is the product suffers. It's just too bad.

Speaker 1:
[119:32] And the user suffers. We suffer.

Speaker 3:
[119:34] And honestly, in TVOS right now, if I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to anybody, whether it's Apple or the app developers, I'm going to give it to the app developers, because TVOS is a product in Apple's lineup.

Speaker 1:
[119:50] But like, there are so many things that they could do to make it better, and it moves at such a glacial pace that I have never... No doubt, I don't actually know this, but I'm just gonna say, undoubtedly a lot of these app developers who have Apple TV apps are like, come on, Apple, here are the things we need for the player. And Apple's like, yeah, okay. And then nothing happens. Like, nothing happens. And so I'm inclined to believe that TV OS needs more attention. John Ternus, hey.

Speaker 2:
[120:20] John, John, software, remember, software's also important.

Speaker 1:
[120:23] TV OS, better, maybe?

Speaker 2:
[120:25] They don't, the problem is they don't need to make a better Apple TV box.

Speaker 1:
[120:29] They don't, other than they're going to run out of chips at some point.

Speaker 4:
[120:31] I was going to say, I was going to say, I mean, like I'm actually a little bit surprised that we didn't see when we got all the other kind of updates that we didn't get an Apple TV box out of that too, which says one of two things. One, they have something ready to go. Maybe we'll see it in a couple of months or two. And this is the sadder thing because I love my Apple TV. I think Jason Snell is the only one who probably likes an Apple TV more than I do in a certain extent, even though I get frustrated with it, is that they're just not selling enough and so they have plenty in the warehouse so they can continue to sell.

Speaker 2:
[120:58] They must know that they don't need to, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, thanks to Rasmus Larson, wrote an excellent piece on this in FlatPanelsHD at flatpanelshd.com and has a list of all the features you lose by not using Apple's native TV OS player, but you may discover those yourself as you use Netflix. Let's see, one final story and then we'll get to our picks of the week, Paul McCartney shared a little three-minute video of a behind the scenes at the Apple Park concert. We talked about that, that he did for the 50th on March 31st. It's a fun little video to watch with an awkward couple of conversations between Sir Paul and Tim Cook. It's kind of really funny to watch this, but I recommend it. I can't play it, of course, because I don't know. I just don't want to get taken down, but you might want to take a look at it. It's on Paul McCartney's YouTube channel and a little bit of Get Pack is there. Also, I don't know if you guys worked with him or knew him, but we should perhaps mention the passing of John Martellaro, a longtime Apple reporter. He wrote about Apple at the Mac Observer and for several other Mac sites as well. We're sorry to lose one of our own RIP, John Martellaro. Our picks of the week are next, you're watching Mac Break Weekly. Christina Warren, Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko. Let's kick things off with Christina Warren, your pick of the week.

Speaker 4:
[122:49] Yeah, so this is an app called Pica, P-I-C-A, and it is by Josh Puckett. So it's at pica.joshpuckettwith2ts.me. And this is basically just like a font manager app. It's free, it's-

Speaker 2:
[123:07] Because Pica is the size of the font, right?

Speaker 4:
[123:09] Yeah, yeah, or Pica, I guess that's how you say it. I thought it was Pica, but yeah, Pica. And he's someone who he used to work at Wealthfront and Dropbox and Groupon and Design, and he's built a new font manager app. And so basically this is just kind of like an alternative to the standard font app. And I saw this, a font book, I guess, I saw this on social media the other day, and I really like it. I like you can kind of create-

Speaker 2:
[123:39] It's about time. We needed a better font book has been the same for years.

Speaker 4:
[123:45] Yeah, this is free. It's really lovely. You can create watch lists, you can create custom collections, makes it easy for one-click activation. I remember many years ago, I used to pay for, I think it was called suitcase or something, like an expensive kind of like font manager. And these days, you don't really need to manage fonts the same way you used to because it's usually fine. But in terms of like, if you have a lot of fonts, you want to look and see which one do I want, which size do I want, how do all my different styles look, what are the different, open type supporting features. You usually have to use a different tool for that. And now I found this one and it's free and I like it. So that's my pick.

Speaker 2:
[124:25] Very nice, Pica. I've just installed it because I'm ready for something different. Now I wish you'd write it for Linux. There is really not a very good selection of font apps for Linux at all.

Speaker 4:
[124:38] No.

Speaker 2:
[124:39] No. I bet he could do that. I bet he vibe coded. I have a feeling we're just going to see a lot more apps.

Speaker 4:
[124:45] Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, a lot of them that I've seen lately, like you can tell and like, but again, like if the quality works and if they does what they need them to do, I thought that's great. It's something like this. I'm like, yeah, this is, I just literally wanted a better interface than what I already have from font books.

Speaker 2:
[125:00] Pica.joshpucket.me, J-O-S-H-P-U-C-K-E-T-T, and Pica's P-I-C-A. Andy Ihnatko, Pick of the Week.

Speaker 3:
[125:08] Just a quick sort of like non-technical one. Joyce DiDonato is one of my favorite opera singers, favorite mezzo, and every year or two, she gives two or three days worth of master classes at Carnegie Hall. These are two-hour sessions in which student, quote-unquote, singers who have already had like eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years of opera training. Basically, she and she and the student go through an aria together and really take it apart, the meaning behind it, like how to basically get all of the emotion, all the character, all the importance of this aria within the larger story. Basically, how to dig down and basically be a creative singer as opposed to just a pretty singer. It works for us as a two hour each bit of background ASMR while people talk and sing beautiful, beautiful music. That's cool. But also as a creative person, it is super, super inspirational because it reminds me and everybody that creativity is never a solved problem. One issue, one thing she keeps coming back to with most of these students over the years is that, look, I mean, okay, great, you got through this aria, you did a great job today, that doesn't mean that the next time you sing this aria, you solved it and you're going to sing it the right way. No, that means that these are the tools you need to always, every moment, try to find something new and find something creative to do. And it's like, dang it, that's right. It's never a solved problem. Even if I'm just writing like a silly, like 800 word thing, it's like, no, I still have the responsibility to find a new way of doing this because I'm not using the benefit of AI. It means that I'm always needing to find new ways to write the next thing. So it's very, very inspirational. And even if you don't need to be inspired, it's just a pretty two hours worth of noise and it's like two or three days worth. So actually, I think the last one of the series is actually live streaming right now. I think they started the stream at 4 p.m. But definitely there are a bunch of these like past master classes that are in like downloaded to my iPad because there are times where it's like I just can't get my head like into the game and all this. There are a couple of specific ones that are like, ah, damn it, that was, that was, that was, when she was like guiding this, this singer through a Pongero de whatever, Cleopatra, it's like, oh, damn it, that is really what it's all about. And you get excited about making the next thing.

Speaker 2:
[127:35] I'm going to have to listen to these. That's really cool. It's in the, it's on the Carnegie Hall, that YouTube channel, and you're right, she's doing one right now as we speak. So a few people, a few opera singers not listening to MacBreak Weekly right now, instead listening to this. Joyce DiDonato.

Speaker 3:
[127:50] If you are, put down your phone. You're supposed to be learning. This is a great experience.

Speaker 2:
[127:56] Cool, yeah, I think you described it well, ASMR. I, you know, I'll be listening to it. I won't know a thing about it, but I'll be listening to it and it'll be wonderful.

Speaker 3:
[128:05] It's actually very accessible. It's not like she's not doing technical stuff, well, your vocal mask is a paragial, but it's like, no, she really is. It's really about creativity. It really is about the feelings and about the creativity.

Speaker 2:
[128:16] Nice.

Speaker 3:
[128:17] It was very accessible.

Speaker 2:
[128:18] Last week, Jason Snell waved a really big pen at us.

Speaker 1:
[128:22] It's back. I use it now.

Speaker 2:
[128:26] So tell us about this.

Speaker 1:
[128:27] My pick is the Logitech Muse. It is a pencil stylus for the Vision Pro.

Speaker 2:
[128:37] Thank you, by the way, for preserving our status as the number one Vision Pro podcast.

Speaker 1:
[128:41] We didn't get to that segment, and so instead it's going to be a pick of the week. So I've used it a little bit. The challenge, as with anything the Vision Pro is like, what's the software that's best for it? But yes, you can write on a surface and that'll work with some apps. There are all these 3D painting apps where the primary interface is like you pinch and then move your hand and you can create things, paintings in 3D space. But even better than that is the ones that work with this. You literally, I was like painting, and then like painting through the hole of the other thing that I had painted, and then like tapped on a little palette and then painted something else. Just really interesting. So it's got the sensors in it for full 3D positional. So that's what makes it more than just an Apple Pencil, is that it is moving through space, and knows how it's moving through space, which is just kind of amazing. So like what's the practical application of this? I don't know. I think if you're using like 3D apps in Vision Pro, this is a way for you to do it more tactically, or tactically it's like Apple Pencil is for 2D, this is for 3D. It's incredible. I have no use for it, right? Which is like Vision Pro in a nutshell. But if you're somebody who is messing around with stuff in the Vision Pro, also it works with a phishing app, I just want to say, which is hilarious. Because you could literally just use the phishing app and do it that way. And that's, I mean, it's a lot, it's $130 for a virtual phishing poll. But you could do it. But it's an amazing piece of tech. Like so much with the Vision Pro, it's like, wow, this is really interesting and enables a lot of just crazy stuff. For what it's worth, that's what it's worth. It's weird and interesting. But, and I'm glad, I mean, this also tells you something, right? That like, how long has the Vision Pro been out? And there are still things coming out for it that are like, like it has game controller support now through the Sony controllers and now it's got this stylus. And it's like slowly they're accumulating things that probably should have been there on day one, or maybe day one should be now and not, you know, two years ago or whatever. But that said, it is very cool. So, you know, for what it's worth.

Speaker 2:
[130:53] What do you see? What do you know? Jason's talking the Vision Pro. That's it. It's a mini Vision Pro.

Speaker 1:
[130:59] Thank you. But anyway, that's the Logitech.

Speaker 2:
[131:01] The Logitech Muse, which you'll find on the Logitech website, Muse for Apple Vision Pro. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have wrapped this episode up. We did it. And we didn't say one word about Tim Cook. It's amazing. Jason Snell, there is an upgrade to upgrade. It's funny. He did the upgrade and then they had to upgrade it.

Speaker 1:
[131:26] Yeah, we did. We had to do a 2.0 update to upgrade in the middle of production, but we did it. And that's how people can listen to that. And then we also did a very silly draft of 50 Apple products from 50 years, where we just picked 50 Apple products for fun.

Speaker 2:
[131:41] Oh, that's fun.

Speaker 1:
[131:41] So that's on that episode of upgrade. And I have a, I'm not going to spoil today, but I will say Jeopardy! Update is that the guy who beat me is still playing and he's now in the all time top five. So my performance gets better and better and I'm not even playing. I'm just saying.

Speaker 2:
[131:58] We had Ron Fleischman on Twitter on Sunday and he pointed out three incomparables have now appeared on Jeopardy! But you're the only one who faced a super champ.

Speaker 1:
[132:08] I ended up facing a super champ when we didn't know it, but he's still playing. I'm going to be sad when he loses because anybody brings up Jeopardy! to me, I'm like, my response is that guy's still playing.

Speaker 2:
[132:17] I got beat already.

Speaker 1:
[132:18] We watched you last month. I was like, yeah, that guy's still playing.

Speaker 3:
[132:21] The road to the record had to go through Mr. Jason Snell. You want to prove yourself to be the best, you had to.

Speaker 1:
[132:26] He tore right through me like tearing through paper.

Speaker 3:
[132:29] Well, I wasn't going to put it that way, but.

Speaker 1:
[132:32] No, actually, the more people he destroys, the better my performance looks. Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[132:37] You're in a very elite crowd.

Speaker 1:
[132:39] You could go in.

Speaker 2:
[132:41] sixcolors.com/jason, if you want to see all the podcasts Jason does. Of course, J6colors is fabulous. Glenn's there.

Speaker 1:
[132:47] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[132:47] Dan Morin.

Speaker 1:
[132:49] John Maltz.

Speaker 2:
[132:50] John Maltz. You really put together, you basically brought the team together, the old team back together and I think it's great. Christina Warren is a Senior Developer Relations Specialist at github.com. She's back at work.

Speaker 4:
[133:05] I'm back at work.

Speaker 2:
[133:06] At Film Girl. Don't forget tomorrow, Christina, 10.30, big Framework announcement.

Speaker 4:
[133:12] I know. I'm excited.

Speaker 2:
[133:13] I'm going to turn on the cameras early before Windows Weekly because I'm very interested. I think we are going to talk to the founder of Framework in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 4:
[133:21] Yeah, he's a great guy. He's a great guy.

Speaker 2:
[133:24] I'm a fan.

Speaker 4:
[133:25] Disclosure, I am a very small investor, but yeah. Really?

Speaker 2:
[133:28] You can invest in Framework?

Speaker 4:
[133:30] Well, they did a community round.

Speaker 2:
[133:33] I've invested in the sense that I've bought many of their products. I spent a lot of money with them. That's awesome. Yeah, I have the Framework desktop. That's my...

Speaker 4:
[133:43] Yeah, same. At the desktop, I obviously have the laptop. They just came out with a... We announced a new keyboard, I think.

Speaker 2:
[133:50] Yeah, and third parties are now making compatible motherboards in our motherboard, which is very exciting.

Speaker 4:
[133:56] Which is very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[133:57] What do you think they're going to announce tomorrow?

Speaker 4:
[133:59] I don't know. I have no idea genuinely. It's a hard... I feel for them because I think this is a difficult time for them to be in this business because of the component pricing and everything is so ridiculous. It's got to be hurting them. But what they are doing is so important, which is why I bought the framework. Literally when it came out, I heard about it and I immediately pre-ordered one. Immediately, I think it was the very first batch that shipped. I evangelized the product because I was like, look, I'm a Mac user, but if I were going to use Linux or Windows Laptop, I really like this. I think the way they built this and made this upgradable and delivered it as a one-auto product was fantastic.

Speaker 2:
[134:35] Was the announcement today? I thought it was tomorrow. Yeah, it might have been today. They made an announcement. It was today. They announced the Laptop 13 Pro, the MacBook Pro for Linux users. Well, it's for you. There you go. It's a premium framework.

Speaker 4:
[134:51] Nice.

Speaker 2:
[134:51] Interesting. Nice.

Speaker 4:
[134:53] The only thing I saw was I guess they have a keyboard that basically is for HTPCs that has the built-in trackpad and stuff on it. It's a standalone keyboard. That's pretty cool. That might be a thing that I get.

Speaker 2:
[135:06] This is at Machined out of Aluminum. Haptic trackpad. They really are making a MacBook Pro.

Speaker 4:
[135:12] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[135:12] But it's loaded with Ubuntu.

Speaker 4:
[135:16] That's awesome.

Speaker 2:
[135:17] Which is interesting. Yeah. Now, I may have to take a look at this. They even say it beats the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro for battery life.

Speaker 3:
[135:29] We'll find out. But I just love the fact that they're putting pressure on every manufacturer that said, look, we could make it really, really, our laptops really, really easy to repair and upgrade. But trust me, you would not want to use what would result. Because all the things that make your laptop great are things that make it also hard to repair, unfortunately. It's like, okay, framework laptop, like, okay, yeah, but they're special.

Speaker 2:
[135:56] Oh, I feel bad. I thought it was tomorrow or I would have covered it today. Oh, well, there you go. Thank you, Christina. Thanks for the work you do. We appreciate you taking the Alex Lindsay Memorial Chair and turning it into something all your own. You're kind of the John Ternus of this show.

Speaker 4:
[136:17] That's completely inaccurate. I'm trying to keep Alex's chair warm, hope that he's doing well.

Speaker 2:
[136:25] Yeah, I haven't heard a word and I really wonder what he's thinking right about now. But I guess we'll never know. Andy Ihnatko at the library, IH-NATKO at Blue Sky and soon on the web. Thank you, Andrew. Thanks. Appreciate seeing you. We do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday, 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us live. Club members get special access. Of course, the Club TWiT is a very important part of how we stay alive. If you're not a member, go to twit.tv/clubtwit, get ad-free versions of all the shows, access to the fabulous Club TWiT Discord, and a very, very nice crew of cool people that you can hang out with, as I do all the time, and special programming just for club members, including our AI user group, Stacey's Book Clubs, coming up. We had to postpone the photo show with Chris Marquardt. We will be doing that next month. So there's more chances to take your playful submission. twit.tv/clubtwit, please join the club. We need you. We really do, and we appreciate your support. Of course, everybody can watch. You don't have to have access to the club to watch us live. We're on YouTube, Twitch, x.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and who did I leave out? But after the fact, you can download copies of the show, audio or video or both from our website, twit.tv/mbw. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to MacBreak Weekly, a great way to share videos, clips. In fact, if you see something you think others might be interested in, it's a great way to tell other people about this show. Or subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That way you'll get it automatically as soon as we're done. Any way you listen, we're very glad you're here and we look forward to seeing you next week. It is, I now have to tell you, my sad and solemn duty to have to say, get back to work. Break time is over. See you next time.