ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Gentlemen, I got to tell you, Ubiquity giveth and Ubiquity taketh away.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Oh no, what happened?

00:00:04 ◼   ► So we're doing a very abridged birthday trip for Michaela. She turned eight on Sunday, which is impossible, but here we are. And we're going out of town for a couple of nights over the weekend. And I did the thing that I love to do when we go out of town, which is I go to one of the local libraries and I borrow a hotspot.

00:00:23 ◼   ► And as I've said many times on the show, our actual library offers T-Mobile hotspots that you can borrow. And a neighboring county, which is like a little under half an hour drive from me, offers Verizon hotspots. And these counties have reciprocity with each other for library cards and things like that.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And so if I have the time and the inclination, I'll usually go to the further away county to get the Verizon hotspot. And I did that. And Erin went with me a couple of days ago. We got her library card at the other library. So now I can like stage two different hotspots on hold, like ready and waiting to go. I'm very excited about this.

00:00:56 ◼   ► This is what makes me happy, right? Especially around football season, because I use these hotspots, you know, to get internet to the TV and whatnot when we're tailgating.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Anyways, I get home and I have the opportunity, I guess this was yesterday, and I have the opportunity to try out the hotspot with my shiny new Ubiquity travel router that I'm so excited about, right?

00:01:20 ◼   ► And this travel router has worked no sweat with tethering to my phone. It has worked no sweat tethering to my iPad. All has been good so far.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And I connect it to the Verizon hotspot, and it says, can you please plug in the internet?

00:01:36 ◼   ► I did. I did plug in the internet. Now, admittedly, this was while Verizon was dying. So I thought, oh, perhaps that's the problem.

00:01:46 ◼   ► But it turns out, I tried again today, after Verizon rose from the dead, and it still is asking, please connect the internet.

00:01:53 ◼   ► So I was so excited to have my sweet new Ubiquity travel router to bring with me, and I still will, and it still works, and it can still rebroadcast the hotspot's Wi-Fi.

00:02:04 ◼   ► But I was connecting it via USB-C, which I prefer for a bunch of unimportant reasons, and it didn't freaking work, and I'm having a sad.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Does it have an Ethernet jack on the hotspot or no?

00:02:14 ◼   ► Not on the hotspot, unfortunately. There are hotspots where this exists. In fact, you might have or did have one, if I remember.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Okay, there you go. This is a Verizon Jetpack, I think. I don't remember the model number.

00:02:24 ◼   ► But it's actually not a bad hotspot, and it has USB-C on it, in contrast to most of the T-Mobile ones that I get, which have, what is it, micro-USB?

00:02:32 ◼   ► The god-awful one that won't go away.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And so that's very annoying. But then I plugged the same hotspot into one of my GL iNet travel router things, and it worked no problem.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So I'm sure this is a software problem with Ubiquity travel router. I'm sure it will get resolved at some point, but probably not before my trip this weekend.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So all is really fine in the grand scheme of things, but it's the little things, gentlemen. It's the little things.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I was so excited for my shiny new white plastic toy, and it's not going to work the way I want it to.

00:03:03 ◼   ► It'll still work. Like I said, I can rebroadcast the hotspot's Wi-Fi, but ugh.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I mean, that's not going to be your limiting factor, especially with Verizon being down for a day.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:03:12 ◼   ► No, that's too bad. So I have the Netgear, whatever the second most recent Netgear AT&T 5G router is, and it's fine.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It functions as a piece of consumer electronics. It's garbage.

00:03:32 ◼   ► But the function of a portable 5G hotspot that creates Wi-Fi or over Ethernet broadcast, wherever you are, I have so many uses for this all the time.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And in fact, since the iPhone 17 Pro has broken iPhone tethering for me, which is still not fixed, I've been using it more and more.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Really?

00:03:54 ◼   ► Oh my God, yeah.

00:03:54 ◼   ► It's working fine for me. I'm not trying to say you're wrong by any stretch. I'm just saying it's not everyone, apparently, because it works fine for me.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm very annoyed, but I, you know, so in the meantime, I've just been carrying this hotspot wherever and whenever I like, you know, go anywhere outside of the house and want to use my laptop.

00:04:08 ◼   ► And it's fine. The only thing is like, so the hotspot, it's kind of like an Apple watch where like if you need to reboot it, you just, you know, go do something else for a while.

00:04:18 ◼   ► And the thing is, unfortunately, almost any kind of configuration change requires a reboot.

00:04:24 ◼   ► If you want to like take the battery out and switch it to just a hardwire only connection, reboot.

00:04:30 ◼   ► If you want to go the other direction, like, oh, I'm on an unhardwire this and, you know, put the battery back in, reboot.

00:04:36 ◼   ► If you want to, you know, convert it from like bridge mode where it just passes the IP address through the Ethernet port to Wi-Fi broadcasting mode, reboot.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And each of those reboots, oh, and, you know, just when you're done using it and you turn it off, you know, next time you go to use it, you turn it back on again.

00:04:51 ◼   ► You know, that's the boot.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So it, it takes a while.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And, and like, you know, the battery charging, like it has USB-C.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Great.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Except that it does not support even remotely fast charging.

00:05:04 ◼   ► So no matter what wattage charge you give it, it's going to charge at like three watts.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And so if it's, if it, if the battery's dead, you can plug it in like 10 minutes later, it'll be at 2%.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Like it's, so like as, as a device, it is not good.

00:05:22 ◼   ► But having a hotspot when you have crappy tethering situations is really nice.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So it's, it's frustrating.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And also, and like the, the plan is not good either.

00:05:36 ◼   ► The plan from AT&T for a hotspot is something like $55 a month.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And, and there, there is a data cap.

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's not, it's not too awful.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I think that's for like 20 or 50 gigs.

00:05:47 ◼   ► It's, it's a good amount of data, but for, and then this is kind of why I'm concerned.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Like, I wonder if, you know, we've been waiting all these years for Apple to make a cellular

00:05:56 ◼   ► MacBook of some kind.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I'm, I'm afraid that the plans might end up sucking for them.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Like that, that they might be really expensive plans.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Cause like an iPad plan is what?

00:06:06 ◼   ► 20, 25 bucks a month.

00:06:07 ◼   ► It's anywhere like minus 10 because I get like some sort of bundle, but I think typically,

00:06:12 ◼   ► yeah, they're like 20 to 40 generally speaking.

00:06:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:15 ◼   ► In that range.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:17 ◼   ► But like a hotspot plan is 50 or 60.

00:06:20 ◼   ► I, I wonder where they would put, like, I know, I guess PC laptops exist.

00:06:23 ◼   ► I guess we can look, just look this up.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Um, but I do worry like that, that eventually Apple will give us a cellular MacBook and AT&T

00:06:30 ◼   ► will want 60 bucks a month for it.

00:06:32 ◼   ► But anyway, uh, yeah, mobile hotspots, they're what amazing capability in such crappy electronic

00:06:41 ◼   ► devices.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:43 ◼   ► They usually are straight up trash.

00:06:45 ◼   ► That's why it would be so great to just have this built into the device.

00:06:48 ◼   ► You're trying to get it into in which 99% of the time for me is my computer.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Occasionally like now it, it isn't, you know, when I'm going traveling or whatever, but generally

00:06:57 ◼   ► I would just like to be able to get on my, uh, get on the internet on my computer, easy

00:07:01 ◼   ► Uh, another thing I've been looking at because I don't want a recurring hotspot bill because

00:07:06 ◼   ► I generally only need it kind of regularly in the fall for football.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And then outside of that, I don't really ever need it.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And if I do, I can just borrow one from the library, but I've been looking, I don't know

00:07:16 ◼   ► anything about this, but Solis, S-O-L-I-S, at least here in the state, I don't know, I think

00:07:19 ◼   ► it's worldwide.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Um, it seems to offer hardware that you have to buy for like a couple hundred bucks, but

00:07:25 ◼   ► then you can buy data either as like a day pass or as like in chunks of, you know, 50 gigs

00:07:33 ◼   ► or a hundred gigs or whatever the case may be.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And I haven't spoken with anyone that has actually used this.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So if you have used this and you're listening, please reach out.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Um, I think this, the, their hotspots on the States anyway, we'll kind of go back and

00:07:45 ◼   ► forth between T-Mobile and AT&T and T-Mobile around where I am is generally trash.

00:07:50 ◼   ► But AT&T is really good.

00:07:51 ◼   ► So I'm very curious if, if maybe this would be a good answer if I decide to stop doing

00:07:57 ◼   ► the rotating library borrowing dance, if doing this wouldn't be so bad.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Cause I don't mind paying a couple hundred bucks for the hardware, but I don't want to

00:08:04 ◼   ► pay 50, 60 to your point, $70 or whatever a month, every month forever.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And I looked briefly, God help me at, you know, could I get like a Starlink mini or something?

00:08:13 ◼   ► Cause that would be nice.

00:08:14 ◼   ► But not only is it hilariously expensive when service is turned on, which I mean, to a degree

00:08:19 ◼   ► I get, but they, have you looked recently?

00:08:21 ◼   ► Cause again, they turned off the like, um, pause, the free pause feature, whatever it is.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Well, they did, but also, I mean, I, again, person who runs it is awful, but Starlink dropped

00:08:32 ◼   ► their rates considerably, uh, last year.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Um, so like the, the monthly rates for Starlink are a lot lower than they used to be.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Oh, maybe I'll have to look again, but as a wife, a 5g hotspot is still cheaper though.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Well, and that's the thing.

00:08:43 ◼   ► And I don't need that kind of bandwidth, right?

00:08:45 ◼   ► I don't need whatever Starlink provides.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But anyways, uh, I really am interested in the soulless edge thing or soulless service, because

00:08:52 ◼   ► like I said, I think you can get like a day pass, which would be sufficient.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And, uh, or, you know, I could buy like 50 gigs or whatever the case may be.

00:08:58 ◼   ► So reach out if you ever used it.

00:08:59 ◼   ► The other, the other thing that I will, that I will advocate for, for, for 5g hotspots, which

00:09:04 ◼   ► is way better than tethering, um, is that when you have a hotspot, like in your backpack and

00:09:10 ◼   ► you open up your laptop,

00:09:11 ◼   ► it's ready.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Because the hotspot is broadcasting a wifi network.

00:09:15 ◼   ► So it's like wifi.

00:09:17 ◼   ► So when you open up your laptop, it's online, like just immediately it's on, it's really nice.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like that's, you know, it's, you know, the, the boot up time for the hotspot is not great.

00:09:28 ◼   ► As I was saying, if it, if it isn't on, but if you're like going in and out of stuff all

00:09:32 ◼   ► day and you have one in your bag, that's, that's just sitting there on all day.

00:09:35 ◼   ► It's like all of your devices are on wifi all the time.

00:09:39 ◼   ► So it also helps, for instance, if you have some other device that, you know, that hasn't,

00:09:43 ◼   ► that needs wifi, like if you have a Kindle, uh, if you have a room, a remarkable tablet,

00:09:47 ◼   ► you know, any, any other kind of device, one of the, if you have one of these stupid new

00:09:51 ◼   ► AI gadgets, if you have anything like that, if you have a hotspot on your person somewhere,

00:09:57 ◼   ► those things are just online always.

00:10:00 ◼   ► So it's, it actually is like, it scales well in terms of if you have multiple devices or if

00:10:06 ◼   ► you're again, traveling with fame, like you were saying, traveling with family,

00:10:09 ◼   ► everybody has their own devices.

00:10:10 ◼   ► They don't probably all have cellular plans.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Um, like, you know, like your kids, iPads and everything, you know, that's not going to

00:10:15 ◼   ► have cellular plans.

00:10:15 ◼   ► But like, if you just have a thing where everyone is just always online on, you know, some road

00:10:21 ◼   ► trip you're on, like, that's really nice.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Uh, and so I would say, Casey, you know, given, given your, you know, the, the things that you do

00:10:30 ◼   ► and, and what you value, I think you would really enjoy owning a hotspot with a stupid $55 a month

00:10:40 ◼   ► data plan.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Oh, I'm way too cheap for that.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I don't think you will ever do it.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And I don't think there is any number of ATP members that could sign up to make you do it.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Because it isn't that you can't find $55.

00:10:52 ◼   ► It's the principle of the matter.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And I get that because it is, it is kind of a stupid amount of money for the utility that

00:10:57 ◼   ► most people would get out of it.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But I think if you ever wanted to like really treat yourself one year, be like, you know

00:11:04 ◼   ► what, maybe like when you turn 50, I don't know, like, I'm going to sell, I'm going to

00:11:09 ◼   ► celebrate Casey this year.

00:11:10 ◼   ► It's going to be all me all the time.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Cause I, I'm a great person.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm a great dad.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I'm a successful podcaster.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I'm going to treat myself.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I'm going to get myself a $55 a month tethering.

00:11:21 ◼   ► At that point, it'll be a hundred bucks a month.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It'll be too much.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Uh, no, I, I hear you.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And I mean, the thing of it is, is that generally speaking, I don't really need it.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Like I said, I, I travel maybe at most once a quarter.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And I would say that's even aggressive, you know, generally speaking, I really, truly don't

00:11:39 ◼   ► need it, which is why I balk so much at the monthly fee.

00:11:41 ◼   ► The only time I kind of sort of needed a lot is between, I don't know, the very end of August

00:11:45 ◼   ► and late November when we're going to UVA football games every couple of weekends.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:11:51 ◼   ► But outside of that, it's kind of a waste 99% of the time.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So you're not wrong.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure I would put it to use if it was here, you know, if I was already committed,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I'm sure I would use it more often, but it's certainly, well, I mean, it's never really

00:12:03 ◼   ► a need.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I shouldn't say need it, but you know what I'm saying.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And so, um, it's only a want, you know, a couple of times between January and August and then

00:12:13 ◼   ► semi-frequently between August and November.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Certainly like some kind of like, you know, day or week pass arrangement makes a lot of

00:12:20 ◼   ► sense for a lot of people, probably you included.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Although there is one other thing.

00:12:23 ◼   ► If you have one and you have a ubiquity router, you can make it a backup internet connection.

00:12:28 ◼   ► That is true.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:12:30 ◼   ► That way, which would be very appealing to me.

00:12:32 ◼   ► And now I'm going to totally jinx myself.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Watch as I don't make it through the following recording.

00:12:36 ◼   ► But generally speaking, Fios is freaking bulletproof.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And yes, I understand that's Verizon, but this is Verizon Communications, not Verizon Wireless.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Very different.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Which is very, very different.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So anyways, that went on longer than I intended and I apologize, but it's, it's just, it made

00:12:52 ◼   ► me sad that my shiny new toy didn't do what I wanted to do.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Not yet anyway.

00:12:56 ◼   ► But we got to do some follow-up because even though I'm having a small sad, John, you're having

00:13:03 ◼   ► a very big sad.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Oh, we already talked about this, but as the other shoe dropping, I got the email from Verizon

00:13:09 ◼   ► Fios telling me that my cable card is, I don't know, not long for this world.

00:13:15 ◼   ► It's as we saw last time when people sent us images of their emails, I got this basically

00:13:19 ◼   ► the same email and it's, I mean, it's the end.

00:13:22 ◼   ► They're saying it's the end, but they leave out one very important piece of information.

00:13:25 ◼   ► So here reading from their email, recent technology advancements now allow us to deliver your Fios

00:13:31 ◼   ► TV service using internet protocol, parentheses, IP delivery.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Recent technology advancements.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I'm excited about this.

00:13:38 ◼   ► This sounds so additive.

00:13:39 ◼   ► This is exciting as it allows for a more improved viewing experience and increased flexibility.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Exciting.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Increased flexibility.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:13:48 ◼   ► What does this mean for you?

00:13:50 ◼   ► Your Fios TV digital adapters and or cable cards will no longer work and require an

00:13:54 ◼   ► immediate upgrade to avoid a service interruption.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Once your new equipment is in place, you can choose what to do with your old equipment.

00:14:00 ◼   ► You will not be charged if it's not returned to Verizon.

00:14:02 ◼   ► They don't even want the cable cards back.

00:14:04 ◼   ► They're like, just, you know, recycle it.

00:14:06 ◼   ► They're like, you don't have to bring it back to us.

00:14:08 ◼   ► You don't have to bring it back to a Verizon store.

00:14:10 ◼   ► You don't have to ship it to us.

00:14:11 ◼   ► We don't want it.

00:14:12 ◼   ► We don't care what you do with it.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Just do something responsible with it.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Cable cards are garbage.

00:14:16 ◼   ► They are dead to us.

00:14:17 ◼   ► There is no date or deadline in this email.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Googling led me to just a bunch of other Verizon customers saying, I got this email, but it

00:14:24 ◼   ► doesn't say what the date is.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I mean, I imagine they have to be doing this rollout slowly just because, let's say, some

00:14:31 ◼   ► large percentage of their customers decide to upgrade.

00:14:34 ◼   ► That's a lot of service calls.

00:14:35 ◼   ► So it's not like they're going to turn them off tomorrow because, you know, people, you

00:14:39 ◼   ► know, the customers say, oh, I don't want to lose my TV.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Come to my house and swap my cable cards for your crappy stuff.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Some number of their customers are going to do that.

00:14:47 ◼   ► And they have to wait for those people to make an appointment, get the service call, get it

00:14:51 ◼   ► all working.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And that's why they're spreading these emails out.

00:14:53 ◼   ► It's a slow rollout.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So I don't think this is going to happen immediately, but I don't know when it's going to happen.

00:14:59 ◼   ► So now start your timer.

00:15:01 ◼   ► At some point, I'm going to go pull up my TiVo and it's going to say, I have no signal.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And that's when I know it will be over.

00:15:08 ◼   ► And at that point, I will cancel my Fios TV subscription and not replace it with anything.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Probably at first, if it turns out, I have to replace it with something that, as I said,

00:15:17 ◼   ► last time we discussed this, I'll look at YouTube TV or the stuff like that.

00:15:20 ◼   ► But that's my plan.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Wait until it stops working.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It's some unknown point in the future, which I will mention on the show, I'm sure.

00:15:26 ◼   ► And when that happens, call Verizon and say, please cancel my extremely expensive cable

00:15:31 ◼   ► television package.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And then I think this is a good time to give a salute to my TiVo Romeo Pro.

00:15:38 ◼   ► It's still working.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Cable cards are still working, but it has 12 years of service under my main TV.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I think it's probably the best TiVo they ever made before they really started screwing them

00:15:47 ◼   ► up hardware-wise.

00:15:48 ◼   ► It has more recording capacity than any TiVo device they sold after that, I believe.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And it is 12 years old, and it's still going strong.

00:15:58 ◼   ► So goodbye, TiVo, whenever, at some point in the unknown future.

00:16:03 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, John.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I truly am, because I know that as much as I give you a hard time, and justifiably, for

00:16:11 ◼   ► your obsession with TiVo, I know that it is something that's very important to you, and

00:16:15 ◼   ► I know that this is something that you and I have both been dreading.

00:16:18 ◼   ► I have not yet received this email.

00:16:20 ◼   ► It's coming.

00:16:20 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, sometime soon.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And again, it's some kind of gradual rollout.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Your time will come.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm very sad about this.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And this is a good time for me to replug that I was on Downstream with our friend Jason talking

00:16:31 ◼   ► about what to do after this comes for me.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And there were no strong conclusions reached, but he had some really fascinating insights.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So if you're in a similar boat, you might want to check that out.

00:16:42 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:16:43 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Temporal dithering.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Kyle Foreman writes, well, John's description of how temporal dithering is implemented was

00:16:50 ◼   ► pretty spot on.

00:16:51 ◼   ► How we perceive the colors is actually even more analog and cooler, in my opinion.

00:16:55 ◼   ► The visual cortex does all sorts of cool processing to fill in gaps when you blink, for example,

00:16:59 ◼   ► or during eye saccades, saccades, I'm not sure how to pronounce that.

00:17:02 ◼   ► I should have looked it up.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Anyway, super quick movements that you don't even notice.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But for temporal dithering, a lot of it happens all the way down at the photoreceptor level.

00:17:10 ◼   ► You have three different types of cones that react differently to wavelengths of light.

00:17:13 ◼   ► However, the cones aren't instantaneous detectors, but rather slowly responding gauges that are laggy

00:17:19 ◼   ► because they're opening ion channels to create an electrical potential that gets red downstream

00:17:23 ◼   ► as inputs to the color system.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:17:26 ◼   ► So the cells in your eyes themselves are basically implementing a low-pass filter on the colors

00:17:30 ◼   ► you see long before your brain smushes anything together.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Pretty cool.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:34 ◼   ► I just, for people that don't know what a low-pass filter is, uh, well, you're lucky you didn't

00:17:38 ◼   ► have to take signals and systems in college.

00:17:40 ◼   ► And don't write a podcast app.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It's a, it's a filter that allows, um, doesn't allow low, low frequencies to go by.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Um, I just don't know how high frequencies go, right?

00:17:49 ◼   ► It allows low, low frequencies.

00:17:50 ◼   ► I always get like nearsighted and farsighted.

00:17:53 ◼   ► It always gets confused.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:17:54 ◼   ► So what this is saying is, let's say there's a high frequency signal, like a light that turns

00:17:59 ◼   ► on and off and on and off real, real fast.

00:18:00 ◼   ► That's high frequency.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Because each time the light hit, hitting your cones changes, it takes them a while.

00:18:07 ◼   ► It's like a laggy gauge.

00:18:08 ◼   ► It's like, oh, different level of light.

00:18:10 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:10 ◼   ► I'm opening up an ion channel.

00:18:11 ◼   ► I'm going or whatever.

00:18:12 ◼   ► As it's going through that process up now, the light has changed again.

00:18:16 ◼   ► So high frequency signals, like something that goes on and off real fast, don't actually

00:18:21 ◼   ► even get through to your brain because the cones take too long to respond to changes.

00:18:25 ◼   ► If it's a low frequency thing, like light goes on for three seconds and then off for three

00:18:28 ◼   ► seconds.

00:18:29 ◼   ► That's plenty of time for your cones to react.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Light goes on.

00:18:31 ◼   ► It's on for three seconds.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Your cone's like, oh, lights change.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Let me open my ion channels.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And that happens.

00:18:36 ◼   ► And it's like, hey, light's still on, light's still on, light's still on.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And then it goes off.

00:18:39 ◼   ► That's low frequency and that low frequency signals are allowed to pass.

00:18:42 ◼   ► That's why things like CRTs, plasma televisions, movies, stuff like that.

00:18:47 ◼   ► That's why they work for us because you can flash an image on the screen real fast.

00:18:51 ◼   ► And as long as it's like bright and there for a second, you can have blackness for a while

00:18:56 ◼   ► and it doesn't matter because your eyes are still reacting to the stimulus that they got

00:19:00 ◼   ► as long as by the time they're, you know, you don't, as long as you don't allow them to

00:19:04 ◼   ► linger too long, the next flash of light, they don't care that nothing happened in between.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And same thing like plasma, where plasma TVs would like, some of the old ones would show

00:19:13 ◼   ► just like the red and the green and then some blue.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Like, I don't actually even know what system they were using, but if you took a slow-mo video

00:19:18 ◼   ► of a plasma TV, you'd see that it doesn't even flash the whole image.

00:19:21 ◼   ► It flashes pieces of the image individually, like a dot of these colors and a dot of like

00:19:25 ◼   ► at the same spot.

00:19:26 ◼   ► But that would just be combined.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And it's not combined by our brain.

00:19:29 ◼   ► It's because our eyeballs themselves are slow to react, the cones in our eyeballs, which

00:19:33 ◼   ► is the thing that I didn't know.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So thank you, Kyle, for writing in with that information.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And I forget what this is in the context of, I think it was like,

00:19:39 ◼   ► was it monitor technology?

00:19:42 ◼   ► Oh, no, it was temporal dithering.

00:19:43 ◼   ► That's right.

00:19:43 ◼   ► It was the people complaining about screen flickering or whatever.

00:19:46 ◼   ► That's why most monitors can get away with temporal dithering, because they are flipping

00:19:52 ◼   ► a light on and off fast enough at a high enough frequency that the low-pass filters that are

00:19:57 ◼   ► the cones in our eyes only allow lower frequency changes to go through to our brain.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And that high-frequency one just smushes into a medium before it even gets to our brain.

00:20:08 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Guru.

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00:21:21 ◼   ► Thanks to Guru for sponsoring our show.

00:21:23 ◼   ► John, you were shaking your fist and shouting at clouds with regard to too many screens and

00:21:33 ◼   ► things.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So we have a lot of this from CES.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Do you want to tell me about it?

00:21:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I mean, this is just a coincidence.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I was complaining.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I was mostly complaining about that tiny little anchor charging brick with one USB-C port on

00:21:45 ◼   ► it, and they put a screen on it.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I'm like, no, too far.

00:21:47 ◼   ► It's too much.

00:21:47 ◼   ► This is tangentially related.

00:21:50 ◼   ► At CES, they're putting screens on too many things.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Two examples.

00:21:55 ◼   ► One, this is an MSI computer.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Obviously, gaming PCs, they're all fancy and RGB lights, and they have clear sides and water

00:22:03 ◼   ► cooling or whatever.

00:22:04 ◼   ► They've had screens on them for a while, but now there's a little bit of an arms race.

00:22:08 ◼   ► This MSI MEG Vision X tower computer essentially has a screen on the entire front of the tower

00:22:15 ◼   ► of the computer.

00:22:16 ◼   ► An LCD screen, like full height on the front of the computer.

00:22:19 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me of those, you know, like, I guess a nanoraptor type, you know, fake

00:22:25 ◼   ► drawings of like, take a tower computer and say it's an all-in-one because you put a screen

00:22:28 ◼   ► on the front.

00:22:29 ◼   ► The screen is not for you to run Windows or whatever.

00:22:31 ◼   ► What's on the screen is some gamer-y looking thing that lets you look at settings inside

00:22:37 ◼   ► your PC or whatever.

00:22:38 ◼   ► It is literally a screen for your PC, which I think is dumb, but fine, whatever.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Let's go up one more level.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Also from MSI, there's a lot of MSI content in this episode.

00:22:49 ◼   ► The MSI Lightning RTX 5090 is an extremely expensive, no price announced video card.

00:22:56 ◼   ► It's the Nvidia 5090 with like a 17-pound copper heat sink and liquid cooling going through tubes

00:23:03 ◼   ► to a giant fan assembly.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's going to be really expensive.

00:23:05 ◼   ► It's super-duper overclocked.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:23:07 ◼   ► This video card has a screen on it.

00:23:10 ◼   ► No.

00:23:11 ◼   ► No.

00:23:13 ◼   ► It's inside your computer.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I know the cases are clear, but like, it's literally inside your computer.

00:23:19 ◼   ► What's next?

00:23:20 ◼   ► CPUs with screens on them, but RAM with screens on it, screens are on too many things.

00:23:26 ◼   ► No, they even mentioned in the video I watched about this that like, in case you're wondering

00:23:30 ◼   ► why it's not an OLED screen, it's merely an LCD screen on your horrendously expensive video

00:23:35 ◼   ► card.

00:23:35 ◼   ► It's because the OLED screen gave off too much heat.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Maybe don't put a screen on your video card.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Yeah, imagine that.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So stupid.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Anyway, screens are on too many things.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Gamers have bad taste.

00:23:46 ◼   ► You tell me about it.

00:23:48 ◼   ► All right.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Last episode, we were talking because Abraham Vague wrote to tell us that the channel selection

00:23:55 ◼   ► and channel size are the most important part of setting up a good Wi-Fi network.

00:23:58 ◼   ► And John, you have thoughts.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I meant to talk about this when I was talking about my new Eero setup in both the pro and

00:24:05 ◼   ► the con.

00:24:06 ◼   ► That's exactly why I put Abraham's thing in there about selecting channel size and also location,

00:24:12 ◼   ► all the other stuff.

00:24:13 ◼   ► In theory, one of the benefits of Eero is that if you don't know how to do that, you

00:24:20 ◼   ► don't know how to select the right channel and how big it should be.

00:24:23 ◼   ► You don't know how or when to tweak that or tell whether you've done a good job.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Eero does that for you.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It figures out what channels are free, what channels have the least congestion.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And amongst all the little mesh nodes, it sets everything automatically for you.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Now, if you Google about, all right, well, so how well does that work?

00:24:39 ◼   ► You'll find some people saying, it's great.

00:24:41 ◼   ► I never have to worry about this stuff.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It just does it automatically.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And it's great.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And then you'll find other people saying, I want to manually select the channel on the

00:24:48 ◼   ► size.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And Eero won't let me do it because it's all automatic.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I wish I had, quote unquote, real networking hardware that would let me select this stuff

00:24:53 ◼   ► myself.

00:24:54 ◼   ► I fall down on the side of, I don't ever want to know or care about this stuff.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And I just want Eero to do something smart.

00:24:59 ◼   ► As far as I'm aware, Eero is doing something smart.

00:25:03 ◼   ► My only evidence is that I have solid Wi-Fi connection everywhere.

00:25:06 ◼   ► And that every time I upgrade to fancier Eero gear, my signal and my speeds get better.

00:25:11 ◼   ► But if you are a network expert, this is another trade-off with Eero.

00:25:14 ◼   ► If you want manual control, oval channel size and selection, I don't think Eero gives you

00:25:19 ◼   ► that option in any way.

00:25:20 ◼   ► But if you don't know what channel size or selection are, maybe Eero is the right product

00:25:25 ◼   ► for you.

00:25:26 ◼   ► All right.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And then continuing with Wi-Fi, let's talk about Wi-Fi 7.

00:25:30 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Wi-Fi 8, because apparently it's happening.

00:25:33 ◼   ► So Steve Bonifield at The Verge writes, the first Wi-Fi 8 routers and chips made a surprise

00:25:39 ◼   ► appearance at CES 2026 and could launch this year, only a couple of years ahead, or excuse

00:25:43 ◼   ► me, after Wi-Fi 7 debuted.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Rather than focusing on speed upgrades, Wi-Fi 8 promises improved stability.

00:25:49 ◼   ► It offers the high speeds and bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7, but with improved power efficiency, higher

00:25:53 ◼   ► throughput, and better peer-to-peer communication between devices.

00:25:56 ◼   ► Wi-Fi 8 is also better at maintaining fast, stable connections when the users are moving

00:26:00 ◼   ► devices around or moving them further away from their router.

00:26:03 ◼   ► As a result, Wi-Fi 8 users will experience less dropping out or freezing and better streaming

00:26:08 ◼   ► and gaming performance.

00:26:09 ◼   ► See, our past discussion about how long it actually takes for a Wi-Fi standard to trickle out through

00:26:14 ◼   ► the hardware and get the good version of the standard with all the features.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So it'll be a while, but it is funny that we chose this time to start talking about Wi-Fi

00:26:21 ◼   ► 7 and Wi-Fi 8 is already here, where here is in scare quotes.

00:26:25 ◼   ► All right, so since we're already talking about CES, we are now done with follow-up because

00:26:30 ◼   ► John has some new news he would like to share with us.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And John, it appears that you have virtually strolled the CES floor and have some discoveries

00:26:38 ◼   ► you'd like to share with the class.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Yeah, there'll probably be more from CES in future episodes, but I just wanted to give a

00:26:42 ◼   ► few items that kind of ties into earlier discussions about Apple monitors and stuff.

00:26:48 ◼   ► My usual disclaimers about CES apply at CES, they show things, some of which may never

00:26:53 ◼   ► even ship.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Hopefully like that video card with the screen on it.

00:26:57 ◼   ► One of the things they almost, almost never do at CES is announce prices.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Like they'll show you the products and they'll say, yeah, it'll probably be around this price.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, but nothing official, blah, blah, blah.

00:27:07 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just no price at all.

00:27:09 ◼   ► But I did manage to find some items that look like they're real and are going to ship and

00:27:13 ◼   ► actually have announced prices.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And the reason I want to highlight these is to continue to show just how far behind Apple

00:27:21 ◼   ► is in the monitor race.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Sick burn.

00:27:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you'll see.

00:27:25 ◼   ► So the only place Apple's ahead is in monitor naming.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Oh, true.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I think I've made fun of this before, like in the monitors unboxed guy.

00:27:32 ◼   ► I forget what his name is, but he is an expert at rattling off the alphabet soup that are these

00:27:38 ◼   ► monitor names.

00:27:39 ◼   ► He just, he's really good at it.

00:27:40 ◼   ► He says them over and over.

00:27:41 ◼   ► I don't know if he practices or something, but he commented in his YouTube video on this

00:27:45 ◼   ► particular monitor that some of the letters in the middle of this jumbled product name

00:27:49 ◼   ► actually spelled a word and he just pronounced it as a word.

00:27:51 ◼   ► And he's like, I wonder if they're doing that to try to make the names easier to pronounce.

00:27:54 ◼   ► No, I think it's just random.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Anyway, this is the MSI MPG 271KRAW16.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Cool.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Or the 271KRAW16.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I don't think that's an improvement.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Anyway, it's a 27 inch 5K monitor.

00:28:10 ◼   ► It's the exact same resolution as the Apple studio display.

00:28:12 ◼   ► It's a mini LED IPS LCD, which means that has a backlight with a bunch of little LEDs that

00:28:16 ◼   ► you can turn on and off.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's glossy.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's got an adjustable stand, 165 Hertz or 330 Hertz in 1440 mode, which is a gamer thing

00:28:23 ◼   ► where they double the refresh rate by having the resolution or whatever, or quartering

00:28:26 ◼   ► it, whatever.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Can I pull on that thread just for a moment, please?

00:28:29 ◼   ► You play first person shooters and you play games that I believe are the sorts of games

00:28:36 ◼   ► that a gamer would want, like no latency, you know, instant refreshing on their monitors.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Does that actually freaking matter?

00:28:45 ◼   ► It totally does.

00:28:46 ◼   ► The problem is I'm playing on a PlayStation 5, which mostly maxes out at 60 Hertz.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I can play Destiny at 120, but only on my big TV because my monitor is so old.

00:28:56 ◼   ► It only does 60 Hertz.

00:28:57 ◼   ► But it makes a difference in your ability to like play the game well, the difference

00:29:01 ◼   ► between 60 and 120 Hertz?

00:29:02 ◼   ► It does.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Because like the input lag is lower and the motion is smoother.

00:29:07 ◼   ► And maybe in a future episode, I'll talk about Nvidia's new backlight strobing thing,

00:29:11 ◼   ► which is another big update this year in terms of motion clarity.

00:29:14 ◼   ► But yes, it does make a difference.

00:29:16 ◼   ► No.

00:29:16 ◼   ► I mean, there's diminishing returns, obviously.

00:29:18 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Sure.

00:29:18 ◼   ► So this one, like I said, it's 165 Hertz and it does have a doubling mode where you

00:29:22 ◼   ► can do 330 Hertz at 1440p mode.

00:29:25 ◼   ► The mini LED backlight has 2,304 local dimming zones.

00:29:28 ◼   ► The Pro Display XDR for $7,000 or whatever has 576 dimming zones, which is way less on

00:29:36 ◼   ► a way bigger area.

00:29:36 ◼   ► The 16-inch MacBook Pro has 2,554 dimming zones.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Supposedly, that's the best number I could come up by searching.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Apple doesn't give it announced, doesn't give that number, I believe.

00:29:46 ◼   ► The studio display has one zone and no dimming at all.

00:29:52 ◼   ► This MPG 5K monitor is 1,400 nits on an 8% window.

00:29:57 ◼   ► The XDR and the MacBook Pro are 1,600 nits.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't know what window size.

00:30:00 ◼   ► The studio display is 600 nits.

00:30:03 ◼   ► This monitor is G-Sync compatible, if you care.

00:30:06 ◼   ► It's got HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, two USB-C with 98 watts power delivery, two USB-A at

00:30:12 ◼   ► five gigabits, one USB-B at five gigabits, and one headphone port.

00:30:17 ◼   ► All right?

00:30:17 ◼   ► This monitor is essentially a 5K monitor, like the Apple Studio display, but it is brighter.

00:30:24 ◼   ► It is 165 hertz.

00:30:26 ◼   ► It has 2,300 local dimming zones, and it is $900.

00:30:33 ◼   ► So, like, I'm just reading, just as we're recording this show, there's, like, another rumor leak

00:30:39 ◼   ► of, like, oh, FCC things for, like, the studio display successor and the XDR successor, where,

00:30:44 ◼   ► you know, those things aren't out yet and don't exist yet, but, like, oh, maybe the studio,

00:30:47 ◼   ► maybe the XDR will have, the studio display will have local dimming now or whatever.

00:30:50 ◼   ► This is what they're competing against.

00:30:53 ◼   ► 165 hertz, 27-inch, 5K, you know, 2,000 local dimming zones, $900, adjustable stand included.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Now, next monitor.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Before you move on, though, I have to say, stats-wise, this is incredible, and you, we were just talking

00:31:09 ◼   ► about how I'm cheap, I mean, frugal, I mean, I spend money wisely, and-

00:31:13 ◼   ► No, you don't.

00:31:14 ◼   ► A hundred, no, with, I don't know, for $900-

00:31:17 ◼   ► You have a Vision Pro!

00:31:19 ◼   ► All right, well, fair enough.

00:31:19 ◼   ► Occasionally frugal and occasionally cheap.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Selectively frugal.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Selectively frugal.

00:31:24 ◼   ► For $900, this is an incredible deal.

00:31:26 ◼   ► This is incredible, except-

00:31:27 ◼   ► Because it is better, it is better than the studio display in every possible spec that you

00:31:32 ◼   ► can care about.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Except-

00:31:34 ◼   ► Except, go ahead.

00:31:34 ◼   ► You have to look at it, and it is not pretty.

00:31:37 ◼   ► It's not that bad.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I mean, the stand is, like, if you look at it from the side, it's pretty tasteful.

00:31:41 ◼   ► That little chin on the front, I think, they put motion detectors there sometimes on the

00:31:46 ◼   ► OLEDs to make them turn off when you're not sitting in front of them, which is cool.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Um, it could be worse.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Look, this is a gaming monitor.

00:31:53 ◼   ► It could be worse.

00:31:53 ◼   ► Oh, it could be way worse!

00:31:55 ◼   ► And actually, I think if you Visa mount this, it wouldn't be too bad, to your point.

00:31:58 ◼   ► But, yeah, I mean, you've still got to look at it.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And I would suffer through.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I mean, I'm looking at two LG 5Ks, which are not exactly pretty either.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And so, I would be able to suffer through, but-

00:32:08 ◼   ► This is better than those.

00:32:09 ◼   ► It's like a mini XDR.

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's because the dynamic backlight makes a huge difference.

00:32:14 ◼   ► You can have true blacks on it.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And it has way more zones than the XDR.

00:32:17 ◼   ► So, this is a good display.

00:32:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:32:19 ◼   ► So, what's the next one?

00:32:20 ◼   ► The next one is the MSI MAG271KPD7.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Cool.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Rolls off the tongue.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Are these Sony headphone names?

00:32:27 ◼   ► Right?

00:32:27 ◼   ► This is the other worst.

00:32:28 ◼   ► The monitors are worse than Sony headphone names, believe it or not.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Um, because there's so frigging many of them.

00:32:33 ◼   ► This is another 27-inch 5K display.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like, these are Mac-relevant things.

00:32:36 ◼   ► IPS LCD, matte finish, adjustable stand, 75 hertz, not 60, 75 hertz, or up to 300 hertz

00:32:43 ◼   ► in 1440p mode.

00:32:44 ◼   ► This is the guy's name.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Tim Scheisser?

00:32:47 ◼   ► Scheisser?

00:32:48 ◼   ► What do you think about that?

00:32:49 ◼   ► Scheisser.

00:32:50 ◼   ► All right.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Tim Scheisser from Monitor's Unboxed.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Here's a quote from his video.

00:32:53 ◼   ► He's looking at this monitor, and this is what he said in the video, talking about the

00:32:57 ◼   ► 75 hertz refresh rate.

00:32:58 ◼   ► That's a little unusual.

00:32:59 ◼   ► 75 hertz is quite a low refresh rate for a modern display.

00:33:03 ◼   ► I tend to think of 120 hertz as being the minimum these days, so I thought, why are they

00:33:07 ◼   ► making this monitor?

00:33:08 ◼   ► He's questioning the existence of this monitor because it's only 75 hertz.

00:33:11 ◼   ► All of Apple's monitors are 60.

00:33:13 ◼   ► It's sad.

00:33:15 ◼   ► G-Sync compatible.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Display HDR 400, which is only 400 nits, and the studio to display is 600 nits, which isn't

00:33:21 ◼   ► great, but whatever.

00:33:21 ◼   ► HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a, USB-C with 15 watts delivery, two USB-A with 5 gigabits, one

00:33:28 ◼   ► USB-B with 5 gigabits, headphone out.

00:33:30 ◼   ► $500.

00:33:31 ◼   ► This is a studio display equivalent with the only thing that gives up over the studio display

00:33:37 ◼   ► is 200 nits versus, yeah, it's 400 versus 600 nits.

00:33:40 ◼   ► $500.

00:33:41 ◼   ► The studio display nanotexture upgrade is $300.

00:33:45 ◼   ► The studio display adjustable sand upgrade is $400.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Just upgrading from the, taking away a non-adjustable stand and replacing it with an adjustable

00:33:53 ◼   ► one is $400.

00:33:54 ◼   ► This entire monitor with an adjustable stand is $500.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Say you wanted to have two 5K displays, $500 each.

00:34:03 ◼   ► You could have this thing.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Wow.

00:34:04 ◼   ► And it's 75 hertz, which is still better than studio display.

00:34:06 ◼   ► So, and the other thing is, I think it might have been MSI or maybe another one, had a monitor

00:34:12 ◼   ► aimed at Mac users, but they obviously have no idea what Mac users want because I believe

00:34:16 ◼   ► it was 4K, 27 inch.

00:34:18 ◼   ► It's like, oh no.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Nope.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Nope.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Nope.

00:34:21 ◼   ► You missed.

00:34:22 ◼   ► The whole point, it looked like Mac, white and kind of Mac-y and it had a special mode where

00:34:27 ◼   ► it's like exactly calibrated to how the Apple studio display is.

00:34:30 ◼   ► So it'll match like the laptop monitors or whatever.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Anyway, all I'm saying is if you want a cheaper 5K display, the gaming world, where apparently

00:34:38 ◼   ► all the action is in external monitors, has finally come around to 5K, 27 inch displays.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And now you have your choice.

00:34:45 ◼   ► What do you want?

00:34:46 ◼   ► What kind of features do you want?

00:34:47 ◼   ► And they're all so much cheaper than the studio display.

00:34:49 ◼   ► So it is a great time to be looking at 5K displays.

00:34:52 ◼   ► And it's just about time if these FCC rumors that maybe we'll talk about next week are real

00:34:56 ◼   ► for Apple to finally update its monitors.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Will it update them to still be worse than the monitors I described here?

00:35:01 ◼   ► Probably.

00:35:02 ◼   ► They will certainly be more expensive.

00:35:05 ◼   ► You can be guaranteed that.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Yep.

00:35:07 ◼   ► And then one more quick one.

00:35:09 ◼   ► LG, so it's not as gamery, 27 inch 4K RGB stripe tandem OLED panel.

00:35:15 ◼   ► This is a lot of words.

00:35:18 ◼   ► RGB stripe means the subpixels are red, green, and blue stripes.

00:35:22 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes to an image I finally found that shows the subpixels.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Not like a drawing of it, but literally a photo of the subpixels.

00:35:29 ◼   ► Do you see this in the document when you scroll down?

00:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, so like normally OLEDs for like ever since they've been out have had what I believe

00:35:34 ◼   ► used to be called the pen tile arrangement of pixels, right?

00:35:37 ◼   ► No, the pen tile arrangement is on phones where neighboring pixels share like the green subpixel.

00:35:42 ◼   ► But on big displays, they haven't used that.

00:35:45 ◼   ► But if you look at the picture, you can see like this shows a couple of generations of cutie OLEDs and then LCD.

00:35:51 ◼   ► But look at all the cutie OLEDs.

00:35:53 ◼   ► It's like there's a red and a green and a blue for every pixel, but they're kind of in like a triangle or a diamond, right?

00:36:00 ◼   ► Which is fine.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And it's perfect for a TV, I think, because you want it to be kind of dithered and fuzzy on a TV.

00:36:05 ◼   ► But especially if you're using windows with subpixel anti-aliasing, this totally screws it up.

00:36:10 ◼   ► But now they have RGB stripe displays of various kinds, including OLEDs.

00:36:17 ◼   ► So LG has a 27-inch 4K RGB stripe tandem OLED.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Tandem OLED is a thing that Apple puts in its iPads where it's like got another light emitting layer, which makes the screen brighter with lower power, blah, blah, blah.

00:36:30 ◼   ► This is the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG27 UCWM, not to be confused with the PG27 UCDM, which is, believe it or not, an alphabet soup that I've memorized because it's a very popular monitor.

00:36:43 ◼   ► No white subpixel.

00:36:44 ◼   ► So this is the first time, this generation is the first time that there has been a non-QD OLED without a white subpixel.

00:36:51 ◼   ► So that is exciting.

00:36:53 ◼   ► I don't know if the iPad has a white subpixel or not.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I've never looked into that.

00:36:57 ◼   ► But anyway, this is a monitor.

00:36:58 ◼   ► And I'm looking at this as a gaming monitor.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Why do I care about 27-inch 4K?

00:37:01 ◼   ► Not for my Mac, but my gaming monitor.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I currently use on my PlayStation a 4K 27-inch monitor.

00:37:06 ◼   ► That's the size and resolution I want for PlayStation games.

00:37:09 ◼   ► This is a tandem OLED.

00:37:11 ◼   ► It's basically like, take my iPad that I love and make it 27-inch and make these subpixels be vertical stripe.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Glossy finish, 240 hertz, 1,000 nits max brightness, which isn't that much, but it's way higher than my current one, which probably is like 300 nits.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Adjustable stand, of course.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Display port 2.1a, HDMI 2.1.

00:37:31 ◼   ► USB-C with 90 watts power delivery.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Headphone out.

00:37:33 ◼   ► No price announced.

00:37:35 ◼   ► That's good specs, though.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and the stand is disgusting and I hate it.

00:37:40 ◼   ► But to Casey's point, like, you can do something about the stand.

00:37:45 ◼   ► Anyway, all I'm saying is that the time for me getting a new gaming monitor, it's getting closer.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's looking closer.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I love these specs.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I'm sure the price will be great.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And this would be a huge upgrade over my current monitor.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, we'll see what happens and whether any of this ships, but it's definitely looking promising.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I'm really pleased that the PC industry has finally embraced 5K monitors because, you know, basically up until now, there was Apple's and then there have been other options, but they're few and far between.

00:38:15 ◼   ► There's the LG Ultra Fine.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Dell, for like 10 seconds, had one years and years ago.

00:38:19 ◼   ► No, I think they still do.

00:38:20 ◼   ► There's a couple.

00:38:21 ◼   ► We've talked about a whole bunch of them, but like they're they're kind of aimed at like creative professional type things.

00:38:26 ◼   ► So they're priced a little bit higher and they have different they have different things that they're shooting for.

00:38:32 ◼   ► But this year at CES, not only I just listed some 5K and 4K things, there are 6K gaming monitors.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And I think part of the reason is the DLSS and other sort of frame generation stuff that we've talked about on past shows is really, really sort of coming into its own.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And people, gamers are really accepting it, essentially, like run the game at a, you know, it would normally run at an unacceptably low frame rate.

00:38:53 ◼   ► But don't worry, the video card will add frames in between the real frames.

00:38:56 ◼   ► And so now you can potentially game at 5K.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Maybe you can't game at 6K.

00:39:00 ◼   ► But like it's it is these monitors are suddenly somewhat relevant to gaming, not super relevant.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Everyone's like, can you run any real games at a good frame rate at 5K?

00:39:11 ◼   ► And people like, oh, I need 500 frames per second.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Nothing can run.

00:39:14 ◼   ► And, you know, even that liquid cooled video card with the screen on it can't run 5K at 500 frames per second.

00:39:20 ◼   ► But it's it's happening.

00:39:23 ◼   ► The gaming world is discovering retina resolution and monitors are being made.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And that benefits Mac users as long as you can stand the cases.

00:39:32 ◼   ► We are sponsored this episode by Gusto.

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00:41:14 ◼   ► All right.

00:41:18 ◼   ► So let's talk some directly Apple stuff.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And within the last 24 or 48 hours as we record this, Apple has announced Creator Studio.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And so what is this?

00:41:28 ◼   ► Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and Mainstage, plus new AI features and premium content in Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, come together in a single subscription.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Apple Creator Studio will be available on the App Store beginning Wednesday, January 28th for $12.99 a month or $130 per year with a one-month free trial,

00:41:46 ◼   ► which includes access to Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro on Mac and iPad.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Motion Compressor and Mainstage on Mac.

00:41:53 ◼   ► And AI features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and later free form for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

00:42:00 ◼   ► If you're a college student or an educator, you can do it for $3 a month or $30 a year.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Up to six family members can share all the apps and content included in the Apple Creator Studio with family sharing, unless you got it through the student discount, which case, tough nuts.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that was my plan.

00:42:15 ◼   ► I was like, this is great.

00:42:16 ◼   ► I have two college student children.

00:42:17 ◼   ► They'll just get it for $30 a year, and they'll share it with their six family members, you know, and it'll be great.

00:42:24 ◼   ► No, not allowed to do that, which sucks.

00:42:25 ◼   ► Blomp, blomp.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Alternatively, users can also choose to purchase the Mac versions of Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Motion Compressor, Mainstage individually as a one-time purchase in the Mac App Store.

00:42:36 ◼   ► John has been kind enough to put notes in the show notes for me to read to you.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Final Cut Pro, $300, Logic Pro, $200, Pixelmator Pro, $50, Motion, $50, Compressor, $50, Mainstage, $30.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Mainstage turns the Mac into an instrument, voice processor, or guitar rig.

00:42:52 ◼   ► I'd never even heard of that app, had you?

00:42:54 ◼   ► No, nor had I heard of Motion or Compressor, to be honest with you.

00:42:57 ◼   ► No, I've heard of Motion or Compressor.

00:42:58 ◼   ► It's been around for a while.

00:42:59 ◼   ► I have Compressor.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Mainstage is just, maybe it's a new app, or maybe it's just a blind spot because I'm not a musician using my Mac.

00:43:07 ◼   ► So, two things before we continue with the story.

00:43:09 ◼   ► One, I'm kind of surprised that they continue to have the one-time purchase things.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And two, it kind of reminds me of those infomercials from our youth where it's like, you know, you're getting all this.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Look at the value.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Because when you add up the individual price of like, okay, well, it's, you know, $130 a year.

00:43:28 ◼   ► But if I actually wanted to buy all those apps individually and I add $300 plus $200 plus $50 plus $50 plus $50 plus $30, it adds up so fast.

00:43:35 ◼   ► What a deal it is to get it for $130 a year.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll talk about pricing a little bit more.

00:43:41 ◼   ► But like, it does surprise me they did that, but they did do it.

00:43:44 ◼   ► So, if you hate subscriptions, you can still, for now, buy these apps standalone.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Yeah, which, and these, I believe those were all the prices they already were.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think they changed it.

00:43:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:43:56 ◼   ► So, with that in mind, Apple says you can use either version of the apps.

00:44:00 ◼   ► You can have both versions of these apps installed on your Mac.

00:44:03 ◼   ► To make it easier to distinguish versions, the apps in Apple Creator Studio have unique icons.

00:44:08 ◼   ► Yeah, we can talk about the icons now.

00:44:09 ◼   ► So, what they're saying is, if you buy or have purchased in the past, say, the standalone version of Final Cut Pro, but then you get Creator Studio, no problem.

00:44:18 ◼   ► You can have them both installed.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Every one of these apps that's available as part of the Creator Studio and available standalone, you can have both.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And they distinguish them because the old apps have the icons that they have now.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And the new apps all have a set of icons that kind of make a family.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Kind of like how all the Adobe apps are.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Well, I figure what they're looking at.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Like, now it's like a, they're just round racks with letters in them or something.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Or the Office, Microsoft Office apps always have like a family resemblance where they pick a theme and they make Word and Excel and PowerPoint or whatever look, you know, fit in the theme.

00:44:50 ◼   ► So, these icons are Tahoe-style icons.

00:44:53 ◼   ► They have black backgrounds and they're little round racks on the Mac.

00:44:56 ◼   ► And then they have kind of liquid, glassy, frosty, glassy elements.

00:45:01 ◼   ► I don't even know if the, I don't think they actually are the, you know, like the Icon Composer frosty things.

00:45:07 ◼   ► I think they're like bitmaps or something.

00:45:09 ◼   ► Because I don't think you can do those effects with Icon Composer.

00:45:13 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:45:13 ◼   ► Maybe they're using a new version of Icon Composer that we don't have.

00:45:15 ◼   ► But anyway, they're kind of modern Microsoft Office style, abstract blobs on a black background.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Lots of people are giving these icons crap.

00:45:26 ◼   ► And I have to say, I think as a family, they don't look terrible.

00:45:30 ◼   ► They're Tahoe icons.

00:45:32 ◼   ► They're boring.

00:45:32 ◼   ► They all kind of look the same.

00:45:33 ◼   ► They're very abstract or whatever.

00:45:35 ◼   ► But I think this family is actually reasonably well executed.

00:45:39 ◼   ► If every other icon on the Mac didn't look like butt and we just saw these, we'd be like, oh, what a refreshing change.

00:45:44 ◼   ► But as it stands, they're kind of part of a larger movement that I hate.

00:45:48 ◼   ► But individually, I don't hate this, you know, collectively, I don't hate this family.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Individually, some of the icons are a significant downgrade from the icons that came before them.

00:45:58 ◼   ► And some of them are kind of nonsensical.

00:45:59 ◼   ► Like the main stage one is supposed to look like a slider or something, but it is a little bit off.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Final Cut Pro is always a really cool icon and now it's boring.

00:46:08 ◼   ► But, you know, the Pages one, I kind of like the little gradient pencil.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Pixelmator, I don't know what it's going for, but it's kind of cool.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I don't like Pixelmator Pros at all.

00:46:17 ◼   ► It's like a round rect that's just an outline over a round rect that's filled in.

00:46:22 ◼   ► I guess it's supposed to show layers with like three dots beneath it connected with lines.

00:46:27 ◼   ► So that's the little grab handles on like a Bezier curve, you know.

00:46:29 ◼   ► I guess.

00:46:30 ◼   ► I don't like that one at all.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Yeah, some of them are better than others.

00:46:33 ◼   ► I like Final Cut Pro.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I like Logic Pro.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Do you like the McDonald's icon?

00:46:36 ◼   ► Motion is basically two-thirds of a McDonald's icon.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Motion is either McDonald's or follow the bouncing ball.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Freeform was already like this.

00:46:44 ◼   ► So Freeform is like, yeah, that looks like the Freeform.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And Numbers was already the middle finger like bar chart.

00:46:48 ◼   ► So remember when Keynote was like a cool like wooden pillar stand and then, you know, like now it's just kind of, you know, this is basically like imagine abstract shapes drawn with a strip of frosted glass.

00:47:01 ◼   ► Like even the Keynote one, it's supposed to look like one continuous strip.

00:47:04 ◼   ► So it goes down and then to the left and then wraps to the back.

00:47:06 ◼   ► Do you see it at the bottom?

00:47:07 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:09 ◼   ► I don't mind them that much, but lots of people are giving them hate.

00:47:12 ◼   ► But anyway, I think when I see them, I say, yeah, this is an application suite.

00:47:16 ◼   ► This is a family and that's what they're going for.

00:47:18 ◼   ► You know, the one thing that I will say that really made me laugh is that somebody put together, and I don't think I'll be able to find it for the show notes, but somebody put together.

00:47:25 ◼   ► You know where I'm going with this, a tweet or whatever, where they showed the evolution of icon design, but from current to original.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And the comment, the caption, whatever, was something along the lines of looking at these icons in reverse is like watching an icon designer get incredibly good at their job or something like that, which was very funny.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Basically, and it was and it was showing the pages icon because pages is this super abstract like pencil and like as you go backwards in time, it gets more and more detailed and beautiful looking all the way down to one of everyone's favorite icon was like the pages icon.

00:47:59 ◼   ► It was like a really cool semi photo real illustration of an inkwell with like a fountain pen next to it.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a very funny tweet.

00:48:07 ◼   ► These icons, like some of them are not that different from what we had.

00:48:12 ◼   ► So, you know, like numbers, free form, like those are not that different.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Even the pages were like not that different.

00:48:17 ◼   ► I think the I mean, some of them are bad.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I think Pixelmator is a terrible representation of anything.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Logic is really a real downgrade from the cool platinum record.

00:48:26 ◼   ► Logic Pro, I think, looks like a robot breast from an Elon Musk movie.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And as a user of logic, I'm not looking forward to when this is pushed on me.

00:48:33 ◼   ► But I think the entire idea of distilling the icon style down to an essence and having it be simpler, more abstract shapes and then layering on top of that, we want these to all look like a family.

00:48:50 ◼   ► So we're going to have them all look somewhat similarly styled and have they're all going to have the same like, you know, simple flat backgrounds, basically single color, you know, neon glass looking shape on top.

00:49:04 ◼   ► What that does by that uniformity and having them look like a part of a family that serves the corporation and their branding guidelines.

00:49:14 ◼   ► But that doesn't really serve users because what that does when you have them all follow a very simple kind of template style, it makes them less distinguishable from one another at a quick glance.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And the entire purpose, like when you're using an app icon, either in some kind of launcher capacity, like, you know, like a phone home screen or on the Mac in the case of like looking at things in the dock, what you want, what you need is for those icons to be very different from each other so that you can quickly and easily visually locate the app you're looking for and distinguish it from other similar apps.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Now, when when companies do this thing where all of our things look similar, you know, all the big tech companies do this.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Google does this with all their rainbow icons that all look exactly the same.

00:49:58 ◼   ► You know, Adobe has all their weird like, you know, letter icons for the creative suite apps, which is obviously trying to rip off like the big companies all do this.

00:50:06 ◼   ► They make all their apps look the same and they are serving their own goal of uniformity.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And that, again, I don't think users are asking for that, first of all, or really benefit much from that.

00:50:17 ◼   ► It's in the same way that like, you know, Apple has always in the in the Alan Dye modern era.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Apple has talked to and Johnny, I've talked about like unifying the platform so that you have a consistent user interface across the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And like that often does not serve those platforms or their users.

00:50:37 ◼   ► It's just it's one of those things that to a designer or to a company's like, you know, marketing and branding teams, those sound really good.

00:50:45 ◼   ► It sounds good to have a unified, consistent style.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But in most cases, the results of that suck in some unnecessary ways.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And I wish that I wish they would eventually maybe realize that.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And like there and there's a time and a place for consistent branding.

00:51:02 ◼   ► But I think all of your icons and all of your UIs are not necessarily that place because what it actually does is make the icons work worse at one of their most important jobs.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Well, see, I'm with you on the Google one because they basically use the rainbow kind of gradient and a couple of different shapes.

00:51:21 ◼   ► But I think Apple has made some smart choices here and Adobe kind of, too, because.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So, first of all, Apple, due to its own stupidity, has forced every icon on the Mac to be the same shape with the round rack, which immediately cuts off one one for one form of identification, which is different icon shapes.

00:51:38 ◼   ► OK, to get around that kind of this creator studio suite of icons all use a black background, which and they even put it on on a black background on the web page.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Like the round rack is black.

00:51:51 ◼   ► And yeah, it's got the stupid highlights on the edges, whatever.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And then they put it on a black web page.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And all that is to say, let's try to make the background of our icons fade away instead of making the backgrounds white or a lighter color.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Let's make them black.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I guess it only works if you have a darker desktop pattern.

00:52:05 ◼   ► No, wait, is this but aren't is this liquid glass icons where like if you have a light mode home screen, they will have light background.

00:52:11 ◼   ► I don't know because I haven't like it's not out yet.

00:52:13 ◼   ► So I haven't run them.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I don't actually know how opaque they are.

00:52:15 ◼   ► But in there in the media literature that they've provided, I think Steve Trout and Smith dug up some screenshots from some videos where like somebody had a light mode doc and they were showing like they do have.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So I think for now, let's assume that they're that they actually might color shift with different themes.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Yeah, but but either way, like they're it's trying to be uniform and then there's bold colors on top of it.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And the bold colors are trying to provide a shape.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Logic Pro is round pages is pointy into the right.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Keynote is the little podium.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Final cut is, you know, a rectangle with an antenna coming out of it, whatever.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And then finally, they didn't make unlike Google, they didn't make every single one the same color.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So Pixelmator Pro is the red icon.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Final cut Pro is the purple one.

00:52:53 ◼   ► Keynote is blue.

00:52:54 ◼   ► They kind of run out of colors because freeform Keynote and Logic.

00:52:56 ◼   ► They're all kind of shades of blue.

00:52:57 ◼   ► But pages is clearly orange.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Numbers is green.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Motion is pink.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Compressor is yellow.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I think they're trying to avoid what you just said, which is like, oh, no, they made all the icons look the same.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Now, granted, they're working within a system that demands they use the same art style for all of them, which isn't that bad.

00:53:13 ◼   ► We used to use the same art style when they were all photorealistic, too.

00:53:15 ◼   ► But anyway, there's a little bit more sameness in an abstract design system than there is in a photoreal one because photoreal objects look different in real life.

00:53:23 ◼   ► So they can be distinguished in that way.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Whereas no matter what you draw with this liquid glass frost, it looks like liquid glass frost.

00:53:28 ◼   ► But I think they did as good a job as they could do while still using the abstract liquid glass thing by distinguishing them in silhouette shape and major primary color.

00:53:41 ◼   ► I still like the old icon style better, but I do give them some credit.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And Adobe, the same thing.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Like their stupid icons are like letters like PS for Photoshop and LR for Lightroom and blah, blah, blah.

00:53:51 ◼   ► You can't you're not going to read the letters or whatever, but they do make their stupid round rack icons all different colors.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Now, are the colors different enough when you have a certain number of apps in your icon suite and you run out of primary and secondary colors?

00:54:03 ◼   ► Then you're into like tertiary colors and it's like, yeah, but they're trying they're trying to distinguish the icons.

00:54:09 ◼   ► It's going to be a change for some people, but I have a feeling if you're a video editor, you'll be reaching for that purple rectangle pretty quickly and it won't be as terrible as you made it out to be.

00:54:18 ◼   ► So, again, this is this is a challenge of Apple's own making.

00:54:21 ◼   ► And I think whoever would design these icons tried their best to surpass it and was only somewhat successful.

00:54:27 ◼   ► All right.

00:54:28 ◼   ► Where did we leave off?

00:54:29 ◼   ► Let's see the the AI features like we're not going to list every single one here.

00:54:35 ◼   ► But like you mentioned before, like that if you get the subscription, you get a bunch of intelligent features or whatever in keynote pages and numbers or whatever.

00:54:43 ◼   ► It's like, well, what are they what are they adding?

00:54:44 ◼   ► And I just pulled out two examples of like features that didn't exist before in these apps that are AI powered or whatever.

00:54:52 ◼   ► So with transcript search on Mac and iPad, users can now easily find the perfect soundbite in hours of footage simply by typing phrases into the search bar to to see exact or related results.

00:55:03 ◼   ► That is legitimately super cool.

00:55:05 ◼   ► I really like an AI transcription with full text search.

00:55:08 ◼   ► That's a good feature to add to your apps.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Looking for a specific video clip also gets an intelligent assist with a visual search.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Now users can quickly pinpoint exact moments across all footage by searching for an object or action.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And I forget what the marketing image had for this, but it was something like they searched for going upstairs or something along those lines.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And you see a bunch of clips of a person walking in front of steps.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a pop up menu that says, are you looking for a thing or something that happens?

00:55:31 ◼   ► If you're looking for action, you say, you know, person falls down, car races by or whatever.

00:55:35 ◼   ► You're looking for an object, you say tree or house or rug or whatever.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Again, a way to find stuff using, you know, image recognition in your video clips.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Advanced image creation and editing tools let users create high quality images from text or transform existing images using generative models from OpenAI.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Hey, OpenAI, still working with Apple.

00:55:55 ◼   ► The Content Hub is a new space where users can find curated high quality photos, graphics and illustrations.

00:56:01 ◼   ► A subscription also unlocks new premium templates and themes in keynote pages and numbers.

00:56:06 ◼   ► This is kind of an Adobe type move of like, well, we have some stock art for you and we have some, you know, new templates and new themes and, you know, premium stuff that you get if you sign up for our subscription that is essentially content for our apps.

00:56:19 ◼   ► The Content Hub is interesting.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I wonder how much they'll expand that or is it just going to be the same set of 100 pictures three years from now?

00:56:25 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:56:25 ◼   ► It's a very familiar strategy from the Adobe side of things.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Pixelmator Pro for iPad is compatible with iPad models with the A16, A17 Pro or M1 chip or later running iPadOS 26 or later.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Apple Creator Studio version of Pixelmator Pro requires Mac OS 26.

00:56:41 ◼   ► The one-time purchase version of Pixelmator Pro requires Mac OS 12 or later.

00:56:45 ◼   ► That's a big difference there.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Like, so Pixelmator Pro, again, there's the subscription one and there's the one-time purchase one and the OS difference is Mac OS 12 versus Mac OS 26.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And I know that that's not, you know, they skipped numbers there, but Mac OS 12 is pretty darn old.

00:56:58 ◼   ► So, like, that's essentially like the Pixelmator that Apple bought.

00:57:01 ◼   ► It works all the way back to Mac OS 12.

00:57:02 ◼   ► The Creator Studio subscription one, nope, 26 or nothing.

00:57:07 ◼   ► So, that's another thing, potentially keeping people on the standalone versions is if you don't want to upgrade to 26.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Or if you do really want the new version of this app, you have to upgrade to 26.

00:57:16 ◼   ► And then Keynote Pages numbers in free form will remain free for all users to create, edit, and collaborate with others, including Apple Creator Studio subscribers.

00:57:23 ◼   ► These apps will continue receiving updates with the latest versions adopting the beautiful new visual design language with liquid glass on all platforms and supporting the new windowing and menu bar improvements on iPadOS 26.

00:57:34 ◼   ► However, Pixelmator Classic for iOS, released in 2014 as a companion app to the now discontinued Pixelmator Classic for Mac, provides basic image editing features such as cropping, color adjustments, and effects.

00:57:45 ◼   ► It remains a functional app, but is no longer being updated.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Another one bites the dust.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And then Chris Welch pointed out,

00:57:51 ◼   ► Photomator is not included in Creator Studio, but will remain available for $8 a month or $30 a year.

00:57:57 ◼   ► It's anyone's guess how much development attention the app will receive as a standalone item outside the new bundle.

00:58:02 ◼   ► If you're unfamiliar, Pixelmator Pro was the company's answer to Photoshop, and Photomator was more Lightroom-ish.

00:58:07 ◼   ► So that one's still around, and it's still a subscription, so I feel like it'll be getting some kind of work on it,

00:58:13 ◼   ► because otherwise they would have, like, made it free or said it was going to be discontinued,

00:58:16 ◼   ► because now is the time to discontinue everything.

00:58:17 ◼   ► But anyway, looking at this whole suite of apps,

00:58:20 ◼   ► my first impression upon looking at this and seeing, like, availability pricing and what's included is,

00:58:26 ◼   ► this is a really, really good deal.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Subsidized by the whole rest of Apple's business, but still, it's a really good deal,

00:58:32 ◼   ► especially if you just need to use, like, Final Cut for one project that takes you, like, a month.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Previously, you didn't have an option like this.

00:58:41 ◼   ► You could either buy Final Cut or, you know, whatever.

00:58:45 ◼   ► And buying it for $300, like, oh, do I really want to buy it,

00:58:47 ◼   ► or should I just try to use iMovie or do I use another app?

00:58:50 ◼   ► This is now, like, a no-brainer.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Like, $13 for a one-month-long Final Cut Pro product.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And by the way, you don't just get Final Cut Pro for $13.

00:58:57 ◼   ► You get Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform, Motion, Compressor, and Mainstage,

00:59:03 ◼   ► all for that $13.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And it's all through Apple's subscription system, and it's very flexible.

00:59:08 ◼   ► $130 a year is also really reasonable.

00:59:09 ◼   ► They're super-duper undercutting Adobe.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Again, because Apple doesn't just sell a suite of applications.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Now, Apple could have made all these free,

00:59:17 ◼   ► because, again, they have a large other business that makes tons and tons of money.

00:59:21 ◼   ► But I think they did a pretty good job of finding the right way to position this in the market.

00:59:29 ◼   ► Because if it was free, it would be like, great,

00:59:31 ◼   ► Apple is destroying all possible third-party applications.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Who wants to compete with a free version of Final Cut,

00:59:36 ◼   ► a free version of Logic, a free version of Pixelmator Pro?

00:59:38 ◼   ► Like, who wants to compete with that?

00:59:40 ◼   ► Free is no good.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Plus, free also makes us think they're never going to update it.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Like Photos for the Mac, for example.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Or Music for the Mac.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Or any other apps that are free on the Mac.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Apparently, Apple has lost interest in updating its free applications,

00:59:51 ◼   ► unless it is to make them work, like Contacts on Tahoe.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Or make them worse, rather, like Contacts on Tahoe.

00:59:56 ◼   ► So, I think what they've done is,

00:59:58 ◼   ► we're going to charge you money,

01:00:00 ◼   ► and we're going to charge enough money

01:00:02 ◼   ► that third-party apps, in theory, could potentially still exist.

01:00:08 ◼   ► It's going to be hard for them.

01:00:09 ◼   ► It's going to be hard for them to exist.

01:00:11 ◼   ► But they could, maybe.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Because, again, Apple is still selling standalone ones.

01:00:15 ◼   ► So, if you want to sell a $50 image editing application,

01:00:18 ◼   ► you probably still could,

01:00:20 ◼   ► because you're competing with an app that's $13 a month or $130 a year.

01:00:24 ◼   ► Now, granted, it's not just that app.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Again, you get a whole suite.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But if someone just wants an image editor,

01:00:28 ◼   ► maybe your $50 image editor looks attractive

01:00:31 ◼   ► compared to $13 a month or $130 a year.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Charging some amount of money also makes me think

01:00:38 ◼   ► maybe they'll possibly be able to fund teams

01:00:40 ◼   ► to provide updates to these applications and make them better.

01:00:44 ◼   ► On the other hand,

01:00:45 ◼   ► $13 a month or $130 a year is not enough money

01:00:48 ◼   ► to actually fully fund the teams that work on these applications.

01:00:50 ◼   ► It's not even enough to fund the team that works on Pixelmator,

01:00:52 ◼   ► let alone Final Cut and all those other apps.

01:00:54 ◼   ► So, they're not pricing it to cover their costs.

01:00:57 ◼   ► But, you know, as a customer,

01:01:00 ◼   ► I suddenly have access to better apps for less money than I did before.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And as someone who cares about the Mac ecosystem,

01:01:07 ◼   ► Apple is not 100% decimating the third-party market for applications.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I mean, this doesn't do that much for me,

01:01:17 ◼   ► in part because the one thing in this bundle,

01:01:20 ◼   ► or the two things, I guess, in this bundle

01:01:22 ◼   ► that I think I'd be interested in

01:01:23 ◼   ► are Pixelmator Pro for doing, like, touch-up on photos and stuff,

01:01:27 ◼   ► which actually you can do in the Photos app now.

01:01:29 ◼   ► But Pixelmator Pro has always been really good at that.

01:01:31 ◼   ► in Final Cut Pro, because occasionally

01:01:34 ◼   ► I will do some manipulation to videos,

01:01:36 ◼   ► and I'm sure I could use a different app for it.

01:01:38 ◼   ► But thanks to my brief stint as a very unsuccessful YouTuber,

01:01:42 ◼   ► I've gotten fairly familiar with Final Cut Pro.

01:01:44 ◼   ► We've all been there.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, right?

01:01:46 ◼   ► It's a rite of passage, I tell you.

01:01:48 ◼   ► So, anyways, I really dig that

01:01:52 ◼   ► the point that you made earlier, John,

01:01:54 ◼   ► about you could do this, like, dip in for a month and then cancel.

01:01:57 ◼   ► Because I remember when I wanted to do this YouTube thing,

01:02:00 ◼   ► just being really, really concerned

01:02:03 ◼   ► that spending the $300, whatever it was,

01:02:06 ◼   ► for Final Cut Pro,

01:02:07 ◼   ► is this worth it?

01:02:08 ◼   ► Is this a good way to spend my money?

01:02:10 ◼   ► Is this going to be something that I use

01:02:12 ◼   ► for more than 10 minutes?

01:02:13 ◼   ► And as it turns out, I'm glad I did buy it,

01:02:15 ◼   ► because even today, like I was saying,

01:02:17 ◼   ► I'll occasionally do some video manipulations

01:02:18 ◼   ► and use Final Cut Pro.

01:02:19 ◼   ► On that topic, by the way, Stephen Robles was saying,

01:02:21 ◼   ► I think that when he wanted to get Final Cut to be a YouTuber

01:02:25 ◼   ► and wasn't sure it was worth it or whatever,

01:02:27 ◼   ► it was $1,300 and he couldn't afford it.

01:02:29 ◼   ► So, he got Final Cut Express.

01:02:31 ◼   ► Remember that?

01:02:31 ◼   ► Remember Final Cut Express?

01:02:32 ◼   ► I do not, actually.

01:02:33 ◼   ► It was like the cheaper version of Final Cut Pro.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Obviously, a really good investment for Stephen,

01:02:37 ◼   ► but just, yeah, it's worked out well there.

01:02:39 ◼   ► That's the thing that a lot of people feel.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And I do think that it's kind of weird,

01:02:42 ◼   ► speaking of Final Cut,

01:02:43 ◼   ► it is kind of weird that like Final Cut,

01:02:45 ◼   ► due to various reasons,

01:02:46 ◼   ► like the big Final Cut Pro 10 kerfuffle

01:02:48 ◼   ► about them dropping features and doing stuff

01:02:50 ◼   ► and other industry forces

01:02:51 ◼   ► that have essentially made Final Cut

01:02:53 ◼   ► less popular in the world

01:02:55 ◼   ► of professional audio production

01:02:57 ◼   ► for television and movies.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Video, video production.

01:02:59 ◼   ► Yeah, right, video production.

01:03:01 ◼   ► But for whatever reason, again,

01:03:04 ◼   ► maybe because of the influence of the iPhone

01:03:06 ◼   ► and Apple's brand,

01:03:07 ◼   ► my impression is that Final Cut Pro

01:03:09 ◼   ► is much more popular with YouTubers

01:03:11 ◼   ► than it is with people

01:03:12 ◼   ► who make television and movies.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I have no earthly idea.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I can't speak to that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

01:03:17 ◼   ► That may not be true.

01:03:17 ◼   ► It may just be the YouTubers that I watch,

01:03:20 ◼   ► but because they're like Mac and Apple people

01:03:22 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:03:23 ◼   ► But I feel like if you want it,

01:03:25 ◼   ► like it's a shame that Apple seems

01:03:26 ◼   ► to have lost so much ground

01:03:28 ◼   ► in the old school TV movie video editing market

01:03:32 ◼   ► to Avid and Premiere and stuff like that.

01:03:34 ◼   ► But if you're looking for a market

01:03:37 ◼   ► that is like the future of video editing,

01:03:39 ◼   ► you know, YouTube is not bad.

01:03:42 ◼   ► I guess maybe like TikToks are even better

01:03:44 ◼   ► and there's dedicated apps for them

01:03:45 ◼   ► that Apple does not make,

01:03:46 ◼   ► you know, setting aside clips or whatever

01:03:47 ◼   ► that I think was canceled.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I forget.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I believe that's right.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Like I,

01:03:51 ◼   ► I think Final Cut Pro

01:03:54 ◼   ► is not necessarily doomed.

01:03:56 ◼   ► No, certainly not.

01:03:58 ◼   ► It's a ringing endorsement.

01:03:59 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean,

01:04:00 ◼   ► this is interesting.

01:04:01 ◼   ► I'm glad that you can still buy stuff outright,

01:04:04 ◼   ► at least for now,

01:04:05 ◼   ► because again,

01:04:06 ◼   ► I don't think I would ever buy Logic Pro

01:04:08 ◼   ► unless suddenly Marco decided

01:04:09 ◼   ► he didn't want to edit the show,

01:04:11 ◼   ► in which case I guess I would.

01:04:12 ◼   ► that's only going to happen

01:04:14 ◼   ► when the show ends

01:04:15 ◼   ► or Marco dies.

01:04:16 ◼   ► So, you know,

01:04:17 ◼   ► and Logic Pro is not a,

01:04:18 ◼   ► as you can see

01:04:20 ◼   ► from every new version of Logic Pro

01:04:21 ◼   ► they put out,

01:04:22 ◼   ► it's not a podcast.

01:04:23 ◼   ► It's for music.

01:04:24 ◼   ► It's so for music.

01:04:26 ◼   ► They're like,

01:04:26 ◼   ► look at all these great features

01:04:27 ◼   ► we have for beat matching

01:04:28 ◼   ► and chord identification.

01:04:29 ◼   ► it's like,

01:04:30 ◼   ► not,

01:04:30 ◼   ► doesn't help at all.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Probably hurts

01:04:33 ◼   ► because everything in that UI

01:04:34 ◼   ► is like,

01:04:34 ◼   ► you're making a song.

01:04:35 ◼   ► It's really not made for this

01:04:39 ◼   ► and it never lets us forget it.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And as each new version comes out,

01:04:43 ◼   ► it just keeps going farther

01:04:44 ◼   ► from being made for podcasts.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:47 ◼   ► But all in all,

01:04:48 ◼   ► I mean,

01:04:48 ◼   ► I think this is a pretty good idea.

01:04:50 ◼   ► I like that they're charging money for it.

01:04:52 ◼   ► I like that they're doing a subscription.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I like that they updated their apps.

01:04:54 ◼   ► That's great.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:55 ◼   ► They don't do that

01:04:56 ◼   ► with most of their apps.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:57 ◼   ► True.

01:04:58 ◼   ► So all in all,

01:04:59 ◼   ► I think this is good.

01:04:59 ◼   ► I don't know,

01:05:00 ◼   ► Marco,

01:05:00 ◼   ► I feel like you've been a little quieter.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Any thoughts on this?

01:05:02 ◼   ► I think it's,

01:05:03 ◼   ► I mean,

01:05:04 ◼   ► it mostly doesn't affect me

01:05:05 ◼   ► because it's,

01:05:06 ◼   ► I mean,

01:05:06 ◼   ► it's a bunch of apps

01:05:07 ◼   ► that I mostly don't use.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But I think anything

01:05:09 ◼   ► that makes these apps

01:05:11 ◼   ► more accessible to people

01:05:13 ◼   ► with small budgets

01:05:15 ◼   ► is better.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And this does that.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Like,

01:05:17 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:18 ◼   ► before,

01:05:19 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:20 ◼   ► you had situations like,

01:05:22 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:22 ◼   ► oh,

01:05:22 ◼   ► you'd have to buy Final Cut Express.

01:05:23 ◼   ► You have to buy the small version

01:05:25 ◼   ► or use some free tools

01:05:26 ◼   ► or use some tools

01:05:28 ◼   ► that are not like

01:05:28 ◼   ► what the pros are using

01:05:29 ◼   ► or,

01:05:29 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:30 ◼   ► back in our day,

01:05:31 ◼   ► just pirate all the big tools.

01:05:32 ◼   ► But I think it's harder now.

01:05:34 ◼   ► And so,

01:05:35 ◼   ► I don't,

01:05:36 ◼   ► but,

01:05:36 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:37 ◼   ► at the end of the day,

01:05:38 ◼   ► like,

01:05:38 ◼   ► these tools,

01:05:39 ◼   ► if you're going to buy these

01:05:40 ◼   ► in the previous arrangements,

01:05:42 ◼   ► they were way more money,

01:05:44 ◼   ► at least,

01:05:45 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:46 ◼   ► up front.

01:05:47 ◼   ► and if you were going to,

01:05:47 ◼   ► if you were,

01:05:48 ◼   ► you know,

01:05:48 ◼   ► just thinking like,

01:05:49 ◼   ► oh,

01:05:49 ◼   ► let me try to learn,

01:05:50 ◼   ► say,

01:05:51 ◼   ► Final Cut or Logic or whatever,

01:05:52 ◼   ► there really wasn't a good path

01:05:54 ◼   ► for you to go from,

01:05:55 ◼   ► I think I want to try learning this,

01:05:58 ◼   ► to go between that

01:05:59 ◼   ► and I'm going to spend

01:06:00 ◼   ► hundreds of dollars on this.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Now there's a path for that.

01:06:04 ◼   ► That's great.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I think that is wonderful.

01:06:06 ◼   ► There are a lot of details about this

01:06:09 ◼   ► that I think

01:06:09 ◼   ► don't make a lot of sense.

01:06:11 ◼   ► I don't think keynote pages

01:06:12 ◼   ► and numbers

01:06:13 ◼   ► and free forms

01:06:13 ◼   ► should be included.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Those are what I think

01:06:16 ◼   ► used to be free iWork apps

01:06:18 ◼   ► and now it's like,

01:06:18 ◼   ► are they free?

01:06:19 ◼   ► I mean,

01:06:19 ◼   ► they're still free.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Like,

01:06:20 ◼   ► that's one of the things

01:06:21 ◼   ► that people are complaining about.

01:06:22 ◼   ► I didn't link to it,

01:06:22 ◼   ► but Jason just posted a thing

01:06:23 ◼   ► to Six Colors saying,

01:06:24 ◼   ► all right,

01:06:25 ◼   ► so keynote pages and numbers

01:06:26 ◼   ► are still free,

01:06:27 ◼   ► but they're freemium

01:06:29 ◼   ► because if you pay

01:06:31 ◼   ► for like the subscription version of them,

01:06:32 ◼   ► it's the same app,

01:06:34 ◼   ► but also now you get

01:06:35 ◼   ► certain special AI features

01:06:37 ◼   ► or access to like the content,

01:06:40 ◼   ► whatever,

01:06:40 ◼   ► that content hub thing,

01:06:41 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And so it's kind of,

01:06:42 ◼   ► people are worried

01:06:43 ◼   ► it's a slippery slope

01:06:44 ◼   ► that like,

01:06:44 ◼   ► oh,

01:06:44 ◼   ► you just have the free version

01:06:46 ◼   ► of keynote,

01:06:46 ◼   ► but you don't have the cool thing

01:06:48 ◼   ► where you can,

01:06:48 ◼   ► you know,

01:06:49 ◼   ► find a slide by describing it

01:06:50 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And I agree that that's not great,

01:06:53 ◼   ► but I also,

01:06:53 ◼   ► I also kind of think that like,

01:06:54 ◼   ► you know,

01:06:56 ◼   ► Apple providing like a mail client,

01:06:57 ◼   ► a notes app,

01:06:58 ◼   ► all right,

01:06:58 ◼   ► like there's some amount

01:07:00 ◼   ► of platform like basics

01:07:01 ◼   ► that Apple has to provide

01:07:03 ◼   ► and they should provide them

01:07:04 ◼   ► in a high quality way

01:07:05 ◼   ► about while also leaving room

01:07:06 ◼   ► for third parties.

01:07:07 ◼   ► But when they get into office suites,

01:07:09 ◼   ► like what used to be called iWork,

01:07:10 ◼   ► where it's like,

01:07:11 ◼   ► this is kind of like

01:07:11 ◼   ► Microsoft Office type stuff.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Should Apple provide

01:07:13 ◼   ► all those for free too?

01:07:14 ◼   ► Does it want to foreclose

01:07:15 ◼   ► the entire market

01:07:16 ◼   ► for office style applications?

01:07:17 ◼   ► And at one point

01:07:19 ◼   ► it would have said yes

01:07:20 ◼   ► because Apple will do them better.

01:07:21 ◼   ► But now we've learned

01:07:21 ◼   ► that A,

01:07:22 ◼   ► Apple won't do them better

01:07:23 ◼   ► and B,

01:07:23 ◼   ► Apple will never freaking update them.

01:07:24 ◼   ► and C,

01:07:25 ◼   ► their competition is free.

01:07:26 ◼   ► It's Google apps.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Like that's the,

01:07:28 ◼   ► like,

01:07:28 ◼   ► yeah,

01:07:28 ◼   ► I mean,

01:07:29 ◼   ► there was some point of that

01:07:30 ◼   ► in the chat room too.

01:07:30 ◼   ► That DaVinci Resolve

01:07:32 ◼   ► is the free competition

01:07:33 ◼   ► for Final Cut Pro

01:07:35 ◼   ► and Avid

01:07:35 ◼   ► and Adobe Premiere

01:07:36 ◼   ► and all that stuff.

01:07:37 ◼   ► So it's a changing landscape

01:07:39 ◼   ► and I think it is a little bit confused

01:07:40 ◼   ► that those apps

01:07:41 ◼   ► are in this bundle,

01:07:42 ◼   ► but they're also still outside it

01:07:45 ◼   ► for free.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So it seems Apple is trying

01:07:46 ◼   ► to like hedge all of its bets here.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But so I think,

01:07:50 ◼   ► you know,

01:07:50 ◼   ► there's a lot of ways

01:07:51 ◼   ► this can go in the future

01:07:53 ◼   ► that I think could be

01:07:56 ◼   ► relatively negative

01:07:58 ◼   ► or mediocre.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Once,

01:08:01 ◼   ► you know,

01:08:01 ◼   ► no one's happy to see

01:08:02 ◼   ► Apple push more

01:08:03 ◼   ► into services revenue.

01:08:04 ◼   ► That's not healthy for them.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I don't know if I would call

01:08:08 ◼   ► this services revenue.

01:08:08 ◼   ► This is just a subscription model

01:08:10 ◼   ► for an app

01:08:11 ◼   ► which is different than services.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It is.

01:08:13 ◼   ► But,

01:08:14 ◼   ► you know,

01:08:14 ◼   ► there is,

01:08:14 ◼   ► you can ask like,

01:08:15 ◼   ► well,

01:08:15 ◼   ► why are they doing this?

01:08:16 ◼   ► And,

01:08:17 ◼   ► you know,

01:08:17 ◼   ► there's some good reasons

01:08:18 ◼   ► and there's some cynical reasons.

01:08:20 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes over time.

01:08:22 ◼   ► So far,

01:08:23 ◼   ► Apple's track record

01:08:25 ◼   ► for keeping these apps updated

01:08:28 ◼   ► and keeping them competitive

01:08:29 ◼   ► has been kind of spotty.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Some of them do well.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Some of them are laughing stocks.

01:08:35 ◼   ► Some of them are ignored.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Some of them get frequent updates.

01:08:37 ◼   ► They're kind of all over the place.

01:08:40 ◼   ► If this is something

01:08:42 ◼   ► that they're kind of trying

01:08:43 ◼   ► to plant a flag on the ground

01:08:45 ◼   ► and say like,

01:08:45 ◼   ► we're going to start doing this better

01:08:47 ◼   ► or being more consistent about it

01:08:49 ◼   ► or these apps are going to,

01:08:50 ◼   ► you know,

01:08:50 ◼   ► be updated more frequently

01:08:51 ◼   ► and they're going to compete better

01:08:53 ◼   ► with their competition,

01:08:54 ◼   ► that's a good thing.

01:08:56 ◼   ► I don't think we have that here.

01:08:58 ◼   ► I think this is a rebranding

01:08:59 ◼   ► with a new subscription model

01:09:00 ◼   ► and that's fine.

01:09:01 ◼   ► You know,

01:09:01 ◼   ► there's again,

01:09:02 ◼   ► pluses and minuses to that.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And most importantly,

01:09:05 ◼   ► I'm happy that

01:09:07 ◼   ► I don't need to subscribe

01:09:08 ◼   ► to the apps in this bundle

01:09:09 ◼   ► that I've already bought.

01:09:10 ◼   ► That they,

01:09:11 ◼   ► I can continue using them

01:09:13 ◼   ► as a customer.

01:09:14 ◼   ► and that being said also,

01:09:16 ◼   ► once Apple switched

01:09:19 ◼   ► to the Mac app store

01:09:20 ◼   ► and put all these apps in it,

01:09:23 ◼   ► they have,

01:09:24 ◼   ► I think,

01:09:25 ◼   ► never charged an upgrade fee.

01:09:28 ◼   ► So I bought Logic

01:09:30 ◼   ► for I think $200.

01:09:31 ◼   ► How many,

01:09:33 ◼   ► like 10 years ago

01:09:34 ◼   ► and I've never paid

01:09:36 ◼   ► for another copy of Logic.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I bought Final Cut.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Final Cut Pro.

01:09:39 ◼   ► Yeah,

01:09:39 ◼   ► Final Cut I think was $300.

01:09:41 ◼   ► I bought that years ago.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Never paid for an upgrade.

01:09:44 ◼   ► I mean,

01:09:45 ◼   ► fortunately,

01:09:45 ◼   ► I never use it

01:09:46 ◼   ► because I also

01:09:46 ◼   ► failed at YouTube pretty hard.

01:09:48 ◼   ► But like,

01:09:50 ◼   ► they've never charged

01:09:52 ◼   ► an upgrade fee

01:09:52 ◼   ► in large part

01:09:54 ◼   ► because the Mac app store can't.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I do kind of,

01:09:58 ◼   ► on one hand,

01:09:59 ◼   ► I'm like,

01:09:59 ◼   ► wow,

01:09:59 ◼   ► I've gotten some good value

01:10:00 ◼   ► out of this

01:10:01 ◼   ► and I'm,

01:10:01 ◼   ► and you know,

01:10:02 ◼   ► I'm glad to have bought

01:10:04 ◼   ► these tools a thousand years ago.

01:10:05 ◼   ► On the other hand,

01:10:06 ◼   ► as both somebody

01:10:07 ◼   ► who sells software

01:10:08 ◼   ► through a subscription

01:10:09 ◼   ► and also,

01:10:11 ◼   ► you know,

01:10:12 ◼   ► somebody who recognizes

01:10:13 ◼   ► business realities here,

01:10:14 ◼   ► like,

01:10:14 ◼   ► I think the days

01:10:16 ◼   ► of my perpetual

01:10:18 ◼   ► one-time purchase license

01:10:20 ◼   ► being,

01:10:21 ◼   ► you know,

01:10:21 ◼   ► even working

01:10:22 ◼   ► and getting the new version,

01:10:23 ◼   ► let alone being available

01:10:24 ◼   ► to new purchasers,

01:10:25 ◼   ► those days might be numbered.

01:10:26 ◼   ► But we'll see,

01:10:28 ◼   ► you know,

01:10:29 ◼   ► as it is right now,

01:10:30 ◼   ► today,

01:10:31 ◼   ► this looks purely additive

01:10:33 ◼   ► in terms of

01:10:35 ◼   ► we get more options,

01:10:37 ◼   ► there's some new updates

01:10:39 ◼   ► and the icons all got weird

01:10:40 ◼   ► and a little bit worse.

01:10:41 ◼   ► But,

01:10:43 ◼   ► you know,

01:10:43 ◼   ► net,

01:10:44 ◼   ► it's pretty good.

01:10:45 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:10:46 ◼   ► We are sponsored

01:10:49 ◼   ► on this episode

01:10:49 ◼   ► by 1Password.

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01:12:46 ◼   ► All right.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Apple and Google

01:12:49 ◼   ► are sitting in a tree,

01:12:51 ◼   ► K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

01:12:52 ◼   ► They have decided

01:12:53 ◼   ► that they are going to,

01:12:55 ◼   ► or that Google Gemini

01:12:55 ◼   ► will be the backing technology

01:12:58 ◼   ► behind Siri in the future.

01:13:00 ◼   ► So let me read

01:13:00 ◼   ► Google's entire press release.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Buckle up.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Apple and Google

01:13:05 ◼   ► have entered into

01:13:05 ◼   ► a multi-year collaboration

01:13:06 ◼   ► under which the next generation

01:13:08 ◼   ► of Apple Foundation models

01:13:09 ◼   ► will be based on

01:13:09 ◼   ► Google Gemini models

01:13:10 ◼   ► and cloud technology.

01:13:12 ◼   ► These models will help

01:13:13 ◼   ► power future

01:13:14 ◼   ► Apple intelligence features

01:13:15 ◼   ► including a more

01:13:15 ◼   ► personalized Siri

01:13:16 ◼   ► coming this year.

01:13:17 ◼   ► After careful evaluation,

01:13:18 ◼   ► Apple determined

01:13:19 ◼   ► that Google's AI technology

01:13:20 ◼   ► provides the most capable

01:13:21 ◼   ► foundation for Apple

01:13:22 ◼   ► Foundation models

01:13:22 ◼   ► and is excited

01:13:23 ◼   ► about the innovative

01:13:24 ◼   ► new experiences

01:13:25 ◼   ► it will unlock

01:13:26 ◼   ► for Apple users.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Apple intelligence

01:13:28 ◼   ► will continue to run

01:13:29 ◼   ► on Apple devices

01:13:29 ◼   ► and private cloud compute

01:13:30 ◼   ► while maintaining

01:13:31 ◼   ► Apple's industry-leading

01:13:32 ◼   ► privacy standards.

01:13:33 ◼   ► That is it.

01:13:34 ◼   ► That is the entire thing

01:13:35 ◼   ► that Google submitted.

01:13:36 ◼   ► And it is supposedly

01:13:37 ◼   ► a joint statement,

01:13:38 ◼   ► but I believe it is only

01:13:39 ◼   ► on Google's website.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Yeah, and they gave it

01:13:41 ◼   ► to Jim Cramer.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:42 ◼   ► So a couple

01:13:44 ◼   ► interesting things here.

01:13:46 ◼   ► first bit

01:13:47 ◼   ► that I highlighted

01:13:48 ◼   ► in the notes.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Apple Foundation models

01:13:50 ◼   ► will be based on

01:13:50 ◼   ► Google's Gemini models

01:13:52 ◼   ► and cloud technology.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I don't know

01:13:55 ◼   ► what the and cloud

01:13:55 ◼   ► technology means.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Their foundation models

01:13:58 ◼   ► will be based on Gemini.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the rumor.

01:14:00 ◼   ► You know,

01:14:00 ◼   ► this is the headline

01:14:01 ◼   ► and this is Apple

01:14:02 ◼   ► and Google make it official.

01:14:03 ◼   ► The rumor has been

01:14:03 ◼   ► that Apple is,

01:14:04 ◼   ► you know,

01:14:05 ◼   ► that Gemini is providing

01:14:06 ◼   ► models to Apple,

01:14:07 ◼   ► that Apple likes them,

01:14:08 ◼   ► that they're the front-runner

01:14:09 ◼   ► official announcement.

01:14:10 ◼   ► They got it.

01:14:10 ◼   ► They won.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Gemini won the bake-off.

01:14:12 ◼   ► They are going to be

01:14:13 ◼   ► the helper

01:14:13 ◼   ► because Apple

01:14:14 ◼   ► can't do its own models.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Although,

01:14:16 ◼   ► that being said,

01:14:16 ◼   ► I don't believe

01:14:17 ◼   ► the rumors

01:14:17 ◼   ► were indicating

01:14:19 ◼   ► that it would also

01:14:19 ◼   ► include on-device models.

01:14:21 ◼   ► I think that's new here.

01:14:22 ◼   ► No, that's not new.

01:14:23 ◼   ► They had that as well.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Like,

01:14:24 ◼   ► part of it was

01:14:25 ◼   ► getting Gemini

01:14:26 ◼   ► down to that size.

01:14:27 ◼   ► There was a rumor

01:14:27 ◼   ► about, like,

01:14:28 ◼   ► making smaller ones

01:14:29 ◼   ► that could fit on-device.

01:14:30 ◼   ► There was two bits

01:14:31 ◼   ► of that.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Well,

01:14:32 ◼   ► isn't Google

01:14:32 ◼   ► already doing that

01:14:33 ◼   ► for Android phones?

01:14:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's not unreasonable.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Apple,

01:14:36 ◼   ► Google makes a whole bunch

01:14:37 ◼   ► of Gemini models

01:14:38 ◼   ► of various shapes and sizes,

01:14:39 ◼   ► so it wasn't unreasonable.

01:14:40 ◼   ► In fact,

01:14:41 ◼   ► most of these stories

01:14:41 ◼   ► are talking about

01:14:42 ◼   ► the extra work

01:14:43 ◼   ► that Google had to do

01:14:44 ◼   ► to get their stuff

01:14:44 ◼   ► to run on private cloud compute,

01:14:45 ◼   ► not to get it

01:14:46 ◼   ► to run on the phone.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But, you know,

01:14:47 ◼   ► I'm sure they're tweaking it

01:14:48 ◼   ► for both of them.

01:14:49 ◼   ► But anyway,

01:14:49 ◼   ► they're going to be

01:14:51 ◼   ► the, you know,

01:14:53 ◼   ► the, what is it,

01:14:54 ◼   ► the Apple Foundation models

01:14:55 ◼   ► will be based on

01:14:55 ◼   ► Google Gemini models

01:14:56 ◼   ► and cloud technology?

01:14:58 ◼   ► What is the cloud technology?

01:15:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Now, there's a couple

01:15:02 ◼   ► of ways this could happen.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I mean, they emphasize,

01:15:04 ◼   ► you know,

01:15:05 ◼   ► Apple stuff,

01:15:06 ◼   ► it's going to run

01:15:06 ◼   ► either on your device

01:15:07 ◼   ► or on private cloud compute,

01:15:08 ◼   ► which is a special,

01:15:09 ◼   ► secure, privacy-preserving way,

01:15:11 ◼   ► you know,

01:15:11 ◼   ► we've talked about

01:15:11 ◼   ► in the past, right?

01:15:12 ◼   ► That's where it's going to run.

01:15:13 ◼   ► But private cloud compute

01:15:15 ◼   ► is a,

01:15:16 ◼   ► it's a combination

01:15:16 ◼   ► of Apple hardware

01:15:17 ◼   ► and supposedly

01:15:18 ◼   ► their M5-based server chips

01:15:20 ◼   ► are coming sometime soon,

01:15:20 ◼   ► but they've got the M2 Ultras

01:15:21 ◼   ► that they've been using.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Anyway,

01:15:22 ◼   ► it's a special hardware

01:15:24 ◼   ► and software thing

01:15:25 ◼   ► and that live

01:15:27 ◼   ► in a data center somewhere.

01:15:28 ◼   ► I assume Apple

01:15:30 ◼   ► has its own data centers

01:15:31 ◼   ► where it houses this stuff.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I guess they could host

01:15:34 ◼   ► this hardware

01:15:35 ◼   ► in a Google data center

01:15:36 ◼   ► and then they'd be using cloud.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Like, what is the cloud technology?

01:15:39 ◼   ► I might be missing it.

01:15:40 ◼   ► This is something

01:15:40 ◼   ► Matt and Reese brought up

01:15:41 ◼   ► in a Slack that ran

01:15:42 ◼   ► and I was like,

01:15:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:43 ◼   ► I don't know what the answer,

01:15:44 ◼   ► maybe it's just a badly

01:15:44 ◼   ► written press release

01:15:45 ◼   ► and I don't know

01:15:46 ◼   ► what the cloud technology is,

01:15:47 ◼   ► but yeah.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Anyway, there's that.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And then the second bit,

01:15:51 ◼   ► after careful evaluation,

01:15:53 ◼   ► Apple determined

01:15:54 ◼   ► that Google's AI technology

01:15:55 ◼   ► provides the most

01:15:56 ◼   ► capable foundation.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Well, you know,

01:15:58 ◼   ► in these competitions,

01:15:59 ◼   ► capability is not

01:16:01 ◼   ► the only factor

01:16:02 ◼   ► in who wins the competition.

01:16:04 ◼   ► The rumored price

01:16:07 ◼   ► for this from Gurman

01:16:08 ◼   ► was that it's

01:16:09 ◼   ► a billion dollars a year,

01:16:10 ◼   ► which is not,

01:16:11 ◼   ► which is peanuts for Apple

01:16:13 ◼   ► and is a good deal.

01:16:14 ◼   ► That's a steal.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Like, for what Apple

01:16:17 ◼   ► is getting

01:16:18 ◼   ► and for how badly

01:16:19 ◼   ► Apple needed it,

01:16:20 ◼   ► that's a steal.

01:16:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:16:23 ◼   ► And supposedly

01:16:24 ◼   ► the rumor is

01:16:24 ◼   ► that Anthropik

01:16:25 ◼   ► wanted more.

01:16:26 ◼   ► So price

01:16:27 ◼   ► apparently was a factor.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Another thing

01:16:29 ◼   ► that might be a factor,

01:16:30 ◼   ► a rumor that was out today,

01:16:31 ◼   ► also late breaking,

01:16:32 ◼   ► I don't have a link,

01:16:32 ◼   ► sorry,

01:16:33 ◼   ► but it was that

01:16:33 ◼   ► some source

01:16:35 ◼   ► familiar with blah,

01:16:36 ◼   ► blah, blah,

01:16:36 ◼   ► and OpenAI

01:16:37 ◼   ► says,

01:16:37 ◼   ► OpenAI essentially

01:16:39 ◼   ► opted out

01:16:39 ◼   ► and said,

01:16:40 ◼   ► yeah,

01:16:40 ◼   ► we're not interested

01:16:41 ◼   ► in being Apple's

01:16:43 ◼   ► model provider

01:16:44 ◼   ► in this way.

01:16:45 ◼   ► So,

01:16:46 ◼   ► was Google

01:16:48 ◼   ► the most capable

01:16:49 ◼   ► or was it

01:16:49 ◼   ► just the best choice

01:16:51 ◼   ► because the price

01:16:52 ◼   ► was right,

01:16:53 ◼   ► the technology

01:16:54 ◼   ► was good enough?

01:16:55 ◼   ► Maybe OpenAI

01:16:56 ◼   ► had better tech,

01:16:57 ◼   ► maybe even

01:16:57 ◼   ► Anthropik

01:16:58 ◼   ► had better tech,

01:16:58 ◼   ► but OpenAI

01:16:59 ◼   ► didn't want to do it

01:17:00 ◼   ► and Anthropik

01:17:00 ◼   ► wanted too much money

01:17:01 ◼   ► and Google,

01:17:02 ◼   ► as we've talked

01:17:02 ◼   ► about in the past,

01:17:03 ◼   ► is a reliable,

01:17:04 ◼   ► boring partner

01:17:05 ◼   ► that Apple

01:17:05 ◼   ► has worked with before.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So they win,

01:17:08 ◼   ► but the price release

01:17:08 ◼   ► doesn't say that.

01:17:09 ◼   ► The price release

01:17:09 ◼   ► says the most capable

01:17:10 ◼   ► foundation.

01:17:11 ◼   ► All right,

01:17:12 ◼   ► it's a price release.

01:17:13 ◼   ► It's a joint statement,

01:17:14 ◼   ► sorry.

01:17:15 ◼   ► So,

01:17:15 ◼   ► you know,

01:17:16 ◼   ► that's fine.

01:17:17 ◼   ► All right,

01:17:18 ◼   ► so the information

01:17:19 ◼   ► had a post about this

01:17:20 ◼   ► and there's some

01:17:21 ◼   ► interesting tidbits in there.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I'm going to read

01:17:23 ◼   ► some very short passages.

01:17:24 ◼   ► In November,

01:17:26 ◼   ► Bloomberg reported

01:17:27 ◼   ► that Apple would pay

01:17:28 ◼   ► about $1 billion

01:17:29 ◼   ► annually to Google

01:17:30 ◼   ► for the AI

01:17:31 ◼   ► to power Siri.

01:17:32 ◼   ► Again,

01:17:32 ◼   ► incredible deal.

01:17:33 ◼   ► These servers,

01:17:35 ◼   ► according to a person

01:17:37 ◼   ► who has been involved

01:17:38 ◼   ► in the project,

01:17:39 ◼   ► the Gemini-based AI

01:17:40 ◼   ► will run directly

01:17:41 ◼   ► on Apple devices

01:17:42 ◼   ► or its private cloud system,

01:17:43 ◼   ► which is powered

01:17:44 ◼   ► by Apple's own server chips

01:17:45 ◼   ► rather than running

01:17:45 ◼   ► on Google servers.

01:17:46 ◼   ► That's what we were

01:17:47 ◼   ► talking about earlier.

01:17:47 ◼   ► This one,

01:17:49 ◼   ► I just really made me

01:17:50 ◼   ► raise an eyebrow.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Another common set

01:17:52 ◼   ► of questions that Siri

01:17:53 ◼   ► has historically struggled

01:17:54 ◼   ► with involved

01:17:55 ◼   ► emotional support,

01:17:56 ◼   ► such as when a customer

01:17:57 ◼   ► tells a voice assistant

01:17:58 ◼   ► it's feeling lonely

01:17:59 ◼   ► or disheartened.

01:18:00 ◼   ► In the Gemini-based version,

01:18:01 ◼   ► Siri will give more

01:18:02 ◼   ► thorough conversational responses

01:18:03 ◼   ► the way ChatGPT

01:18:04 ◼   ► and Gemini do,

01:18:04 ◼   ► this person said.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Danger,

01:18:06 ◼   ► danger,

01:18:06 ◼   ► warning.

01:18:07 ◼   ► As terrible as Siri is

01:18:10 ◼   ► at trying to do

01:18:12 ◼   ► its crappy humor

01:18:12 ◼   ► at the worst possible time,

01:18:14 ◼   ► we all know

01:18:15 ◼   ► the failure mode

01:18:17 ◼   ► of LLM-based agents

01:18:19 ◼   ► when discussing

01:18:21 ◼   ► things like this.

01:18:22 ◼   ► There's lots of stories

01:18:26 ◼   ► about how Apple

01:18:27 ◼   ► will be able

01:18:27 ◼   ► to tweak this

01:18:28 ◼   ► and guardrails this

01:18:28 ◼   ► and safety that

01:18:29 ◼   ► or whatever,

01:18:30 ◼   ► but this is the tricky bit.

01:18:31 ◼   ► We always talked about

01:18:32 ◼   ► how is Apple...

01:18:32 ◼   ► Back when we had some faith

01:18:34 ◼   ► that Apple would

01:18:35 ◼   ► actually integrate

01:18:36 ◼   ► LLMs into Siri,

01:18:37 ◼   ► we were like,

01:18:37 ◼   ► how are they going to do it

01:18:38 ◼   ► in an Apple way

01:18:38 ◼   ► that doesn't cause harm?

01:18:39 ◼   ► And it turns out

01:18:40 ◼   ► they're just not going

01:18:41 ◼   ► to do it at all for years

01:18:41 ◼   ► so we didn't have to worry

01:18:42 ◼   ► about it.

01:18:42 ◼   ► But everyone else