9to5Mac Happy Hour 318: Apple’s space ambitions, MacBook Pro ports, MagSafe battery pack


    This week join 9to5Mac’s Zac Hall and Benjamin Mayo to discuss Apple in space, what ports might we see on the upcoming MacBook Pros refresh, where is Apple’s MagSafe battery case, Ben’s love/hate relationship with Apple Music Radio, and more.

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    Zac Hall @apollozac

    Benjamin Mayo @bzamayo

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    Transcription

    Zac Hall: Hey, man, how’s it going? 

    [00:00:01] Benjamin Mayo: It’s going good. How are you? 

    [00:00:03] Zac Hall: Not bad. Did you see the other week Apple lost an employee to a rocket company?

    [00:00:14] Yeah, it really it’s really crossed my, my two interests and Apple in space. And I’m very familiar with the company Astra that poached this employee from Apple who apparently was. Was on the Apple car team. That’s that’s according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg just based on their public information, they were, you know, on basically what’s the R and D side of it.

    [00:00:35] Benjamin Mayo: It’s higher included like special director of special projects group. So 

    [00:00:40] Zac Hall: yeah. So something to drive, if 

    [00:00:42] Benjamin Mayo: you’re in the special projects group, you’re either in AI or you’re in car, 

    [00:00:46] Zac Hall: right? Yeah. So this has Benjamin Lyon. And no, if he’s gone from, from working on the Apple car team, as like you said, a senior director of special projects group, it seems pretty serious to to working for this company, Astra, which is.

    [00:01:06] I think they’re based in California, but they, they launch rockets out of Kodiak, Alaska, and they, they almost reach orbit for the first time in their last launch attempt. So, which was, it was a very big milestone for them. They, they got into. Into into space, but didn’t re didn’t quite reach orbit. But they’re in the early stages of developing this rocket that they call rocket, which is a fairy, Apple only thing to do.

    [00:01:29]I think the version of that almost restart, but it’s called rocket rocket 3.2, because it’s the third iteration of the, of, of this rocket. So 0.2. But, but yeah, you know, it was an interesting way of crossing over the streams and And it’s, it’s also, I mean, it’s, I think it means the less for Apple, of course, because of the car team.

    [00:01:46] We’ll, we’ll go on one person isn’t going to make or break the car team at Apple. You know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a very lively project all on its own. But it, but it does, it does probably mean a lot more for the company Astra and having this person be, I think like their hardware chief going forward chief engineer at Astra.

    [00:02:04] So. It just kind of cool for me that there is someone in, in this, from this space world who’s now, you know, for one will be much more accessible because they’re not at Apple. And then for another, there they’re involved in, you know, going from designing, you know, working on, on iPhones and that type of hardware to the eventual car project to literal rockets and things that got to space.

    [00:02:29] So I really enjoyed this story. 

    [00:02:31] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah, I’ll tell you what I found funny about this thing is that like, they made a big deal out of it. I did a press release. Yeah. Like a press release, like some Apple copy, you know, coordination, which is very rare for like a non-executive. Right? Like it basically someone you never heard of having some sort of like Apple coordination as they’re leaving.

    [00:02:51] It’s very odd. Like tech crunch had like a. You know, multi page interview with the person where he’s talking about his history of, you know, working on like the first iPhone to the iPhone 10 and everything in between. And like, that was, that was just unusual, right? Like, Hey, you don’t know me. See, like, people may leave snap all the time, but most of the time you never hear about anything.

    [00:03:11] It’s only if they’re only, if they’re on leadership page, then they get a new story. If not, then they’re probably going under the radar, but this was like a thing. And like w Apple didn’t even try to hide it. They’re like embracing it and like thanking him for his. You know, for his tenure at the company or whatever.

    [00:03:26] And like, as far as it relates to the applecart project, it’s pretty clear, obviously that the. Goes requirements, direction, focus engineering talent. Like that’s been in so much flux with the car when they’ve been flitting from doing, you know, making the car to just doing autonomous systems, to going back to doing the car.

    [00:03:47] Right. Like, and the, the deadlines are changing around that. And whenever you’re having a project, that’s having so many like shifts in. In a destination, like you’re going to have employee turnover at the same time. Like it’s just inevitable. Like say if you’re, you know, we had it back in 2015, 2016, when they, you know, put, put the brakes on the actually making the car and you saw the hardware engineers, they hardly even go off and do other things.

    [00:04:11] And likewise here. You know, maybe lion’s was like ready to ship a car in two years time, but then the project changed and the directions came just like, Hey, this is going to take another five years to get, you know, to get off the ground. So I’m going to go and do something else. Okay. It’s just, so it’s one of those things that when you have, and you know, we’re not on the inside, we don’t know if this is a product of like early misdirection of the thing, or if they just don’t know what they’re doing or, you know, they’re all over the place, but a certain side effect of.

    [00:04:41] You know, divisions or projects changing objective means that you end up having the people underneath and move around as well. Like just, just look at the leadership of the project that we know, how many times is Mark Gurman at Bloomberg have to report in a new leader of the applecart team. Like that’s happened probably four or five times already now, like, and they brought back the, you know, Doug Farrow from Tesla and stuff, and like, it all just comes together.

    [00:05:02] But It is interesting for show 

    [00:05:04] Zac Hall: and looking at this story it kind of surfaced an older story from December, 2019 that I forgotten about because there’s been no update to it, but it’s a story from Bloomberg that Apple’s researching ways to use satellites, to beam data directly between I-phones and the other devices and in the story you know, it’s, it’s basically, this is a, I think as you put it a five-year.

    [00:05:26] You know, five-year out project that they’re investigating and, and, you know, it’s one of the typical R and D things, but there’s kind of been no development to it. And that, that makes sense for something that’s five years out, you know, or, or within five years. But it has been, you know, Let’s see, it’s been, it’s been a year and a few months though.

    [00:05:44] So yeah, this 

    [00:05:45] Benjamin Mayo: report was like the end of 2019. So if you do five years on from that, you’re basically 20, 25, which is, seems to be the key date now for everything. It’s like the round glasses of 2025, the Apple Carl’s 20, 25, Apple satellites are 20, 25. Anything’s just 20, 25 until we know any more information 

    [00:06:01] Zac Hall: about it.

    [00:06:01] Yeah. The thing that I found interesting and revisiting this story about Apple’s satellite ambitions is that one. Space X is. Kind of betting the company on something called Starlink, which is literally a constellation of satellites that are always moving so that you can always have direct access to these satellites wherever you are, and have internet access anywhere on the planet.

    [00:06:24] That’s the end goal there. Right now, it’s very much in beta and it’s it’s spotty service. And they, they advise that you’ll lose connection from time to time and speeds will slow down, but they, they, you know, they also launch batches of 60 satellites every couple of weeks or so. To build off this constellation of, you know, thousands of satellites.

    [00:06:44] And so it seems on, on that measure, it seems way less far-fetched that Apple would be interested in doing something like that because of, you know, space X is interested in doing it because they are a rocket company and they launched things all the time. And this happens to be an area where they can have a consumer business, you know, if it pans out and 

    [00:07:03] Benjamin Mayo: isn’t like some crazy.

    [00:07:05] You know, just pipe dream. They’re like doing it right. It’s like 

    [00:07:09] Zac Hall: people are actually relying on Sterling for internet and rural areas right now. And in ways that they couldn’t before first responders and native Americans and then, and even just customers and select markets where the service now. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a real thing.

    [00:07:22]And then the Amazon has this, this similar service I think it’s called project Kepler. I might, I might be saying the, the K word wrong or misremembered misremembering it, but they also have a satellite service where even though. You know, Amazon’s outgoing CEO. Jeff Bezos has his own space company called blue origin, which has a couple of rockets in development.

    [00:07:43]They’re, they’re using Amazon as the vehicle for for their satellite internet service. And, and it’s interesting because you know, what, what, what the Bloomberg report on is about, you know, how Apple will send community, you know, beam data between the iPhones and other devices. It’s it’s kind of point to point between iPhone, you know, or other device.

    [00:08:04] Via satellite versus, and not necessarily the same as, you know, your internet services from this satellite provider, you know, and bypassing the carrier. I think, I think in a way it’s more that if you have, if there’s, it says the backup to your Siler service, if you can’t get service, then the satellite service could be the backup for that.

    [00:08:24]But, but if it seems, if it, if it works out that, you know, technology like Starlink and project capital are, are Or feasible then than it, it doesn’t seem farfetched that Apple also a tech company like Amazon would, would have expired. Would, you know, Would want to experience in this field and be a major player in this?

    [00:08:43]I don’t know that it would ever replace carriers by it. I think it’s certainly something that fits that, that the more I’m I’m informed on this stuff, the more it fits in with the vision of what Apple, you know, could be investing in what makes sense for the 

    [00:08:55] Benjamin Mayo: company. Yeah. The 2019 report was kind of positioning it as like.

    [00:09:00] You know, you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you want to talk to people that are like, maybe back at base camp or wherever when you’re on a hike and you know, you don’t have phone service, but you could reach them via some sort of satellite connection. Right. But that was, Oh, a bit strange. The, the stalling results they’re like, you know, happening now pretty impressive.

    [00:09:18] You can get, you know, decent internet speeds essentially anywhere in the world, because it’s just coming out of the. You know, just coming out of the sky, like that kind of thing, where you could short circuit the carriers definitely seems like something that would appeal to Apple in general. I mean, like they’re not going to stop making mobile devices, right?

    [00:09:38] Like they’re making more of them. They’re putting them everywhere. Like if you’re in the ocean and you could use like an Apple watch, could just talk to a satellite where you’re, you know, you’re, you’re out of range of the home phone signal, but you can 

    [00:09:48] Zac Hall: actually, why there’s no sailor and max yet they’re waiting for the satellite service.

    [00:09:53] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. Or even like, you know, the glasses stuff eventually, maybe like if Apple could just post its own satellite cloud and just, you know, you basically pay Apple for satellite service and you can get. No, essentially as faster speeds as home broadband, but sent through the sky with a slightly longer latency of like, you know, 30 to 50 minutes seconds or whatever, that’s more gonna service you for all sorts of things.

    [00:10:17] Like I, it, it’s definitely when, when this 2019 report came out, I was like, you know, what are they really going to do this stuff? This feels pretty far fetched, but Starlink is doing. A decent rollout, we’re ready. And you know, they they’re coming to the UK. I think then shit like people can get it. And if you, even, if you have home broadband, I can see some people being like, you know what.

    [00:10:41] I’ll get solid and said, just because it’s faster and it’s more pervasive, like, yeah. And right now the stalling one’s expensive. I think it’s, it’s like 500 pounds to like set up and then it’s like a hundred pounds a month, right. Compared to like, you know, you can get like Saudia pants, like 10 pound a month, but you know, it’s the, it’s the early days.

    [00:10:59] And you can imagine that some point maybe like, I assume what happened longer term is that. Stalling stars, like sublicensing out the spectrum or other people that are satellites and you end up the equivalent where you have, where you have like a bunch of characters, but they’re like a bunch of satellite carers.

    [00:11:13] Right. And they do the same thing. Did you also see this week for the story that Apple has started? Its investment into 6g? Yeah. I’m ready. I’m ready. So that’s a, that’s like a decade away, 

    [00:11:24] Zac Hall: but obviously yeah, satellite based, 

    [00:11:27] Benjamin Mayo: maybe it is, maybe it is maybe eventually at some point. I gave five G didn’t have the problems of you know, not traveling through walls.

    [00:11:36] You eventually just like, when does it, it just all blends into one, right? You just have constant internet service regardless of where you are, whether that’s service by cellular towers or satellite or whatever, like early test on six G is going to make it even more thinner wavelengths. So it’s going to be even more harder to penetrate through walls and stuff, but that’s a 10 years away 

    [00:11:55] Zac Hall: issue.

    [00:11:56] Yeah. And, and one more thing, I mean, with Starling, this is something that I wrote on space Explorer last October, but that, that Microsoft has, is doing a deal with, with space X Starling for servers, they call Azure space. So it’s literally I think to put Azure in data centers and places that there, there is an otherwise, you know, high-speed internet.

    [00:12:15] So you know, there’s, there’s a lot of ways that, that whether it’s. It’s Microsoft or Amazon or Apple that there’s there’s room for participation in this area. 

    [00:12:25] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. And it’s just funny to look at story that’s that I don’t see forgotten about to you reminded me of that back in 2019, we were like this thing stupid way, but you know, even just two years later, it’s like, wow, this feels a lot more tangible now than it did.

    [00:12:39] All right, let’s take our first sponsor break of the episode. And thank you tonight for happy hour is sponsored by unite for the platform that lets you turn websites into apps, apps that run right on your Mac with United for you can take any website and make a standalone app out of it. It uses a lightweight WebKit power browser behind the scenes.

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    [00:14:27] Thanks again to unite for, for sponsoring the 

    [00:14:29] Zac Hall: show. Yeah. Thanks unite. So Ming, she quo has. More specifics on which ports, which IO the MacBook pros with more parts will have. And, and I think, I think, you know, we, we discussed before, you know, will it be SD? Will it be HTMI? Will it be USBA? And I argued in favor of USPA at least one port, because it’s common on other laptops that have USBC Thunderbolt three and.

    [00:15:01] Apple still uses USPA work fits on, let them on another Mac. So the Mac mini and the iMac and, and the Mac pro. So but quota doesn’t say anything positive on USPA. It just sounds like they’re going to cut some holes on the side for eight Jim might SD card. Is that right? 

    [00:15:17] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah, that’s basically the, just like the original core report had, you know, all sorts of details, like the touch bars going away.

    [00:15:24] They’re bringing back MagSafe there’s going to be. The re the restoration of IO ports. So users won’t need dongles, but he didn’t specify what the actual ports would be. You know, this is all coming in the new design Maverick. Pre-release where we’re a couple of weeks later, he follows up with this report, which says based on supplier information.

    [00:15:42]We believe that the machines will feature HTMI and SD counselor. What was interesting is that the the social report said like 75 to 90% of models will feature those ports. So it might be like an option or it might not be on every single configuration. I think like it wasn’t entirely clear, but maybe like only the 14 inch one gets.

    [00:16:04] You know, SD card slot, and then the six, each ones get assessed. These cards for an HD might as well. If you see what I mean. So it might not be identical across the board, but, or maybe it’s even just like you, they don’t even come a standard and you get them as add on options or something like that is not the way it was worded in the source report was like, these are the ports, but don’t expect them on every single configuration.

    [00:16:24] So it’s an interesting, interesting little twist on the story. Like. On the one hand, it feels kind of crazy that Apple went on this like tirade for essentially five years and trying to kill off all this legacy IO. And they’ve like forced everyone to borrow the dongles now for USBC and stuff. But even today, there’s still a huge dependency in the world on these.

    [00:16:45] No quote, Lexi pause. I don’t know if you can call them legacy, even because they’re still very widely used. Like, 

    [00:16:50]Zac Hall: Every, every monitor has airplay built in so that you can wirelessly beam to it. HTMI is pretty, pretty modern. 

    [00:16:57] Benjamin Mayo: Right? And like, even if you look at it, Okay, so display port, right? It’s probably the modern, modern display connector.

    [00:17:07] Yeah. It can support the highest bandwidth and everything like that. And on brand new monitors, they will come with display point pers, which is USBC in, in shape. But there’s so many monitors and televisions and projectors. In the world that it’s going to take so much longer for that stuff to be like phased out to a relevancy.

    [00:17:29] How HMI is just so useful. Like if I want to go into the front room and hook up the, you know, my natural, the TV, it doesn’t have display ports in the thing as an HTMI port and Oh yeah. Just use airplanes for the Apple TV. Well, you know, a You know, one of the, probably what, like 10 million people total have Apple TV and to the stream, the, the, the airplay team mirroring is not the same resolution or quality as just plugging in directly.

    [00:17:53] So it comes in useful if you’re in a school environment or you’re in a business environment, like, you know, back when we were in the office for real, what do these things have in their projectors? Yes. Some of them are, you know, deployed Apple TVs and stuff, but it’s not universal. Like just having a Haitian myPort is so useful to so many people like, and yeah, you can carry around an adapter.

    [00:18:11] But do you really want to do that? Like, for me, the, the, the post situation was, you know, amortized by the fact that, you know, I worked from a home office where I just have a Thunderbolt dock and it has all the old Alexio in it. And, you know, what’s plugged into that thought about Doug, Hey, she might pause, started USB ports.

    [00:18:28] And I even used the SD card slot in it sometimes. So if it was just natively in the laptop, I would definitely. Benefit because maybe I wouldn’t even have to bore the dock in the first place. Like the dock has value in that you can only, you only need one port to plug in. Right. And can you can just Daisy chain everything or that one hub, including power and, and display outputs and the IO.

    [00:18:49]But for a lot of people, they just don’t need it. Right. You can just, a lot of people basically get away with. The power cable and HTMI, and that’s it. That’s all the level you use on the laptop for the entire lifetime for the thing, right? Like an SD card slot. We talked about this when the 2016 apropos was brand new, like.

    [00:19:09] So shit, I had that funny interview. I was like, you can just get an adaptor for the SD card. It’s just as good. Yeah. Yeah. He said 

    [00:19:16] Zac Hall: that the Bolton reader is cumbersome, which is like, it’s just like a classic PR strategy of like taking the problem and, and, and, you know, the problem is, is cumbersome to use an adapter and he describes it.

    [00:19:28] The old way is cumbersome. Like why? 

    [00:19:30] Benjamin Mayo: Right. The adapter is clearly more cumbersome than when the connector was built. When they, when there was just an SD card slot in the side of the laptop, like, and I. Never used an SD card slot, but plenty of people that buy mapper pros have cameras that still use IC card.

    [00:19:46] It’s not universal. It’s not everyone. And a lot, you know, a lot of modern cameras use like compact flash or your camera, you know, you can just plug in USBC directly, but a lot of cameras in the world use to SD card. It was just, it’s like, Hey, she might, it’s just a fact. And if your camera doesn’t use an SD card slot, you can just plug in using your adapter anyway.

    [00:20:07] Like it’s, it’s like, it’s hard to argue against it. Like it does feel, there is no argument that like, they went for this thing in 2016 and you, if you’re going to do it, you just kind of have to embrace it and, you know, hold firm. But clearly they’ve faced enough market pressure to not need that. Like. Just give people hate.

    [00:20:28] She made an SD card slot and people are going to be happy about it, you know? Mm. 

    [00:20:32] Zac Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Th the fact that Apple markets map book pros to professional photographers, like they, they, they, they really want. People who edit photos and take photos to use method pros for that process. And then they’re like, you know, just use a dongle.

    [00:20:49]And I, I get it cause there’s other, other versions of, of, of memory cards. You know, that are, that are, that are larger and thicker and, and not nearly as mainstream, but on a pro model. I think there’s room for, for that. 

    [00:21:01]Benjamin Mayo: Johnny ive extreme position would be. Don’t make any more holes in this laptop than an incredibly necessarily, right?

    [00:21:08] Like, and it wasn’t just Johnny ive pushing the app, or there’s loads of people doing it. But for pro prime machines that you’re spending thousands of hours and you use day in and day out, you have to, you know, push the balance slightly, further away from for mistakes. And it’s just a fact, these computers are not going to look as nice because.

    [00:21:26] They’re going to be uneven. They’re going to have weird IO on both sides of different shapes and sizes. There’s going to be a MaxDiff connector on one side of it. Like there is a nice beauty to the current mapper pros. We just have two USB suits on one side and two issues, PC posts on the other side, and it’s identical and symmetrical.

    [00:21:41] Right. But you know, you do have to use these things at some point. So you have to, you have to make that balance like on a Mac book air. Fine. Right? Like you can go for more style points, but if you’re going to fight workstation map, repair machines, The ports clearly have value. Like Apple’s back in 2016 did not work there.

    [00:22:01] The dependency on stuff that isn’t USBC is still way too high. Yeah. 

    [00:22:05]Zac Hall: And I think I go through this process myself, where I try and remove, you know, clutter this in the way and try to, you know, have feet or apps on my dock and just have, you know, maybe the five that I’m using right now. And then. Launch the spotlight, the app that I need for the moment and then quit it when I’m done.

    [00:22:27] And I always go back to the position of, well, you know, it is just easier to have the app right there in the, on the dock for whenever I need, I just click on it. And, and I do the same thing with like my favorite spar. Like right now I’m in a mode where my favorite spar I’m on Safari doesn’t show.

    [00:22:39]And, and it’s okay, but, but I’m confident that I’ll go back to a position where I have, you know, my folders visible on the browser. Right. You just navigate and click them from there. And it’s that kind of thing. It’s like, there’s definitely a point where you can retreat too far with simplicity and you lose functionality in the, in the port situation is definitely that, especially in that You, you know, these, these Macs will look different because it’s, it’s, you know, expected to be a redesign, but you could, you could have the same modern looking max as before.

    [00:23:11] But with, with, with these port, isn’t it, that that the ports would, would be, you know, Would it have to have a trap door, like the first MacBook air had, you know, that kind of thing. It might be a little bit thicker, but, but also you, you know, they, they could be the same depth, but just play with, with the, with the illusion of, of how they, they, they temper off, you know, on the sides.

    [00:23:31]So I think these will be popular. The, the, the inclusion of max safe is interesting because it doesn’t seem like it’s universally Welcome to back to have a port that’s just for charging. I th I think the big benefit there is, is that you get your USBC port for data transfer exclusively, or for using, you know, if you have to use an adapter and that you have one port that just for charging, because if you do have, you know, four USB-C ports and you want to use all those than one using one, just for power as a shame.

    [00:23:59]But. You know, Hey, I guess you’ll free. He’ll free up a lot of ports, but not having to have one for power and one for, for video out. And, and I don’t think of display port as like the successor to HTMI, even if it is technologically display port in all of its shapes and sizes has always felt very active.

    [00:24:16] It’s just something that Apple uses. And 

    [00:24:19] Benjamin Mayo: even though it’s not like, right, right. Defacto kind of 

    [00:24:22] Zac Hall: is. Yeah. Yeah. It’s always gone through the shapes of what is the Thunderbolt port, you know? And, and, and, and before that, you know, what is the current mini DisplayPort? Whether it’s it’s many are full-sized and and, and so my experience with many of these plates board has always been it’s from an Apple laptop, but how do I, 

    [00:24:41] Benjamin Mayo: yeah, like the make safe situation, I’m definitely more negative on like, had she, my SD card.

    [00:24:48] I probably use them once or twice in there, the license machine, but I’m not, I can understand why they’d run demand by so many people. Right? Like my laptop right now, it plugs into thunder about Darwish, pleasant, teach mind, pause, but the Mexico situation, I can’t, I have no interest in maxi returning for that poor, like.

    [00:25:06] Power only like, it just, it feels so wait, when you’ve got USB-C ports that can do power and data at the same time, I want to do the hog element of, Oh, now you can free up another one at USBC pause to just, you know, just for dedicated, challenging. I’ve got to say I’ve got an idea. Put more USB C ports on the thing instead, like I would get more value out of them adding a third, a third USBC port on the right-hand side and adding.

    [00:25:28]Connect it back again, right? 

    [00:25:29] Zac Hall: Yeah. That’s a good point. And there are constraints with that, right? Like there’s, there’s often stream with how many, right, right. With how much you can live. I mean, you, you can literally fit ports all around it, but, but inside, can you can you have all the lanes for that?

    [00:25:42] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. And we already see that could those kinds of restrictions on the  many, right? Where you get the limit or the mom AdvoCare, where you have limitations on Thunderbolt controllers, how many displays you can have and stuff like I understand it’s not as simple as just putting, like, 

    [00:25:54] Zac Hall: is that why max keeps coming back is because they can’t have an input just because they can’t have four USB-C or Thunderbolt ports on them, on a Mac right now.

    [00:26:01] Why will they address that? Do 

    [00:26:03] Benjamin Mayo: you think that they’re going to, this is, this is a big open question right now. You get four Thunderbolt ports, right? Well, if they’re going to add SD card and HTMI, is that going to be at the expense of the USB-C pause or is that in addition to. That’s the question. Yeah.

    [00:26:21] Like if you compare it, the old 2015 mapper pros, right. Which for all of the, behind the Mac, as the Apple, do you still see loads of them in use right there clearly. Yeah. Like we say it, like, they started this tirade five years ago in 2015, but still there are, they, you know, they sell millions of millions of laptops, but they don’t th they don’t sell it on the same scale as iPhone.

    [00:26:43] So the turnover of the overall, like. Ecosystem is lower, right? Like there’s still going to be more old. Th th right today there’s more 2015  use. And they’re all post 2015. My laptops. It’s just that the, the, the, the, the cycle people keep blackout so long ago. Right? So the old 2015 Mamet pro had mag safe, two Thunderbolt ports.

    [00:27:05] That was Thunderbolt two at the time, right. A USB port. And a headphone Jack on the left side. And then on the right side at a USB three port HTMI NSD card slot. So that was a total of eight pause. The station each today only has five ports. It has the four USB-C and the headphone Jack. So if you’re going to, if you’re trying to really reignite the passion of the 2015 motor by bringing back SD card and HMI.

    [00:27:32] You can’t really do it by replacing two. You, the USB-C is for those two holes. Right? Cause then you’re only giving people two USB-C ports. Like that feels too limiting. I think it has to be an addition because if you have four USB-C ports, mag safe, and then you add HTMI and SD card, then you get back up to the eight number because you have the headphone Jack as well, which would match what the 2015 did like.

    [00:27:57] If you start stripping them down, or maybe even if you only had USB-C ports. Right. Phil was more like that’s the flip side of the pro workstation argument is that these pores support pro workflows like be able to output to like two displays at the same time, or, you know, super fast rate of raise of, of external stories.

    [00:28:19] Like you can’t, you can add back the, you know, the HTMI port, but you don’t really want to give up a whole USB-C port for it. I certainly don’t like. It’s a hard balance and you know, nobody yet, including quotes actually said, this is actually the IO breakdown. He’s just said, Hey, Charmaine SD cards, solid returning.

    [00:28:36] Zac Hall: Well, what else is required for this cycle? 

    [00:28:40] Benjamin Mayo: There was also a digitize report again for. A mini led. So this is this, these Maverick pros have so many things attached to them, as well as the redesign, as well as Apple Silicon, as well as the pores. They’re also apparently, yeah, it’d be the mini led devices we’ve been hearing about Apple was interesting, many D for awhile.

    [00:29:02]Digitize says the amp was expansion of our 14 inch and 16 inch mini led backlit mapper pro models in the second half of this year. So. As well as everything else, you get a brand new display technology. Current map books have OCD screens. They required backlights many led have no backlight and they’re closest to.

    [00:29:23] Because they basically have like localized backline. So they do have backlights, but it’s like dramatically smaller AED. So the whole panic me thinner, you get higher brightness, you get better contrast. It’s what you get on the pro display. XDR where they have like 527 demons zones. Right. But it’d be more like, A thousand dumb exams, you 14 inches or 16 inches.

    [00:29:43] So it’s even, it’s even pushing, pushing that beyond. So it’s getting closer to what, like an old led screen would offer you, but without the downsides of light burning, because it’s not organic, it’s just standard LEDs. 

    [00:29:54] Zac Hall: Yeah, this, this is exciting because display technology doesn’t change that often. And Mac laptops, you know retina resolution was, was the last big change to come to a Mac laptop.

    [00:30:05]On the desktop side, you know, there is the XTR display and then on the iMac, you can now have that same optional coding where it’s more matte. But, but on the laptop side, I mean, it’s been, it’s been retina. And then before that, I guess it was the move to LA. Maybe backlit backlit LCV I don’t recall before that.

    [00:30:24] I just, you know, so, so it was exciting to get to experience one of these display upgrade, you know path. So and it sounds great. I mean, having higher conscious ratio is a big deal, especially because this is rumored to come to the iPad this year as well. And if you’re using an Ola display, you know, your iPhone, your Apple watch, then the Mac display.

    [00:30:47] In the iPad display, just do not look as modern because the contrast isn’t there, you know, blacks are gray, they’re not black. And you know, brightnesses is more spread out. It can’t be as, as localized. And so I love the sound of this technology that it’s, it’s literally just it’s many more led backlights because they can be smaller.

    [00:31:05] And it can be, you know, much more precise than before. It doesn’t sound perfect, but I think it’s I think it’s an it’s an affordable step that, that scales, so the price of a Mac book and, and, you know, we’ll, we’ll see what the long-term cost of that says, you know, what, what the, what the drawbacks are, but just in terms of improving from the current, you know, LCD a L led backlit LCD screens, that should be.

    [00:31:28] Easy to notice just at a glance. 

    [00:31:30] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. Beyond this is the micro led stuff, which is purpose or lighting, which is exactly like, Oh, led, but not organic. Right? You don’t have the regions of, of Deming, but that the micro led displays are much further away. There’s still like three or four years out of like mass production use cases.

    [00:31:47] So. You’re going to have a wall of like the generations of mainly led screens for Apple’s bigger, you know, like laptops and iPads, where they can’t do early displays, but they want to keep pushing visual quality forward. And the 

    [00:32:01] Zac Hall: good news is you get to use your your your Apple developer credit of $500 from the, the dev transition kit for this in the second half of this year, 

    [00:32:10] Benjamin Mayo: when they funded the trend of the And one devices where stuff didn’t get more expensive, it stayed the same price or a slightly cheaper in the case of the Mr.

    [00:32:17] Mac mini cars. Sure. Yeah, that’d be really nice. Like if they, if the odd anyway, but if the 2020, while I pray was like $500 more expensive for like, Oh, okay. They’ve they’ve already set a nice precedent with the M one stuff where it’s like, everything stayed the same price, all got slightly cheaper. So if they can carry on doing that as well as the different, you know, all these other changes, I’m going to be say, throwed.

    [00:32:40] And 

    [00:32:40] Zac Hall: by the way, Bravo for using your 2016 MacBook pro for, for what, what will end up being five solid years? And I 

    [00:32:46] think 

    [00:32:46] Benjamin Mayo: five years, yeah, the original plan was I was going to swap out in 2019, but then the 16 inch was like fine, but it wasn’t as radical as hoping. And that was right around the time when like all miserable rumors were really.

    [00:33:00] Kicking around. So it was like, Oh, I’ll keep it holding out 2020. Right. They’re gonna, they’re gonna release the arm map of pro. Oh, okay. Well they did release laptops, but not quite the one for me. So, but this is this 2021. It’s the time of the new day. 

    [00:33:14] Zac Hall: This is an ad, right. Exercise and restraint. And I hope to one day model 

    [00:33:18] Benjamin Mayo: you, especially for it, Peter who’s keyboard is literally broken in 20 different ways.

    [00:33:24] Zac Hall: Yeah. I’m not going to comment on, on how long I plan to use my Mac, but because I’ve gone through so many every year, but, but boy, do I strive? This is I, I I’ve been well I’m, I’m podcasting right now without a power adapter. I’m just, you know, I’ve got. I’ve worked a full day. I’ve got 58% battery left.

    [00:33:43] It’s crazy. I’ve been on the charger som, but on a day where I, I’m not under the power director at all, I will end the day after eight hours. I’ll end the day with Over 40% battery, which is just nuts. Like it’s so good. That’s crazy. Yep. And then, and then lastly John Prosser has some rumors about what colors the next iMac will come in and iMac has historically came in.

    [00:34:09] Well, I’m Mac used to come in lots of colors. The latest design of iMac has come in silver and then space gray for the pro version. W, what does Prosser say about colors for the next iMac? Is it going to come in like rainbow colors 

    [00:34:22] Benjamin Mayo: or flowers, flower, power pink, or whatever that color was called the nineties.

    [00:34:26] And that process says that it will be basically the same as the iPad airline up. So that’d be space gray, silver. Rose gold, green and sky blue. Obviously the iMac is getting redesigned this year a much needed long, but like iterate design for the, for the product line. And apparently is gonna come in cool colors too.

    [00:34:43] Like this makes sense to me like the iPad air and the iMac kind of feel like. Similar-ish right. Like, and if they’re doing it on the iPads, you’d hope they’d do it on the laptops as well. Like MacBook air, especially in that bouquet, especially. But sadly they don’t have the color options quite yet on the air, but if they did a big redesign IMAX do a believer version, I’m sure that’d be cool.

    [00:35:06] Do a green version, like say like I, if I wasn’t buying the 22 of my mapper pro I’ll be buying the 20, 21 iMac, like. Yeah. Apple has so many massive max coming out this year. They’re just going to be like so good. 

    [00:35:19] Zac Hall: Yup. Yup. And there’s still room for improvement with like face ID and cellular, but just not this year, 

    [00:35:25] Benjamin Mayo: that’s the problem.

    [00:35:26] They bought themselves so much time by making the M one ship. So good. They’re like, we don’t need to worry about face ID. That’s coming down the road. You can buy, you can buy the East generation now and we know you’ll be happy with it. Yep. All right. Happy hour. This week is also sponsored by Amazon pharmacy.

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    [00:37:36] Zac Hall: All right. So we talked about maxi earlier and it’s returned to the Mac, but there’s, there’s also a different kind of Mac life that we use today, which is max from the iPhone 12. And and, and there’s, there’s a story from Bloomberg, from Mark Harmon about a potential Mack safe battery pack. Is that 

    [00:37:52] Benjamin Mayo: right?

    [00:37:53] Yes. So there were some like vague code references that people were finding, talking about like battery pack stuff. And then Mark followed up with a story on Bloomberg. Which is the Apple is supposedly developing a Mac safe battery pack accessory for the iPhone 12 phones. Obviously right now there is no like Apple smart battery case.

    [00:38:14] Which they’ve done in previous years. And I think last year they released them in January. So it’s now the end of February. And we still haven’t seen that from Apple. They, the Mexico physician is they did do is like the leather wallet and the, you know, they’re just standard snapping cases and the you know, they did the sleeve and stuff like that.

    [00:38:29] But in terms of battery cases, Apple does not have any official Badger case currently for the iPhone 12. The idea is, is that instead of. The traditional cases, Apple’s trying to get out this max safe battery pack thing. But of course, Bloomberg says that it might actually turn out the Apple can’t ship this thing, so they might never do it and they might save it for a future year.

    [00:38:49]But the idea is that rather than a Badger case, Apple will make a mag safe. Like a magnetic battery pack that kind of looks like the hump from a smart Badger case, but it’s standalone and it just snaps on the back of the MagSafe connector on the back of it F and 12, just like the leather wallet does.

    [00:39:07] Right. And one of the prototypes that’s being developed supposedly uses like rubber casing that obviously lines up with the materials they use in. Small battery cases. However big says the accessories face development issues. Apparently the actual like hardware works, but the software can erroneously report that the backpack is overheating, even when it actually isn’t and basically goes and says, it’s not clear if Apple will be able to resolve these, these issues in a timely fashion to get out for.

    [00:39:36] You know, the iPhone 12 cycle maybe if it’s not possible, that just means Apple won’t have any sort of battery accessory this year. Cause they were planning on shipping this battery case. Right. But they now they can’t do that. So they might just not have anything in the cannery to go. Or maybe they’re making the smart edge cases just in case and they’ll have them available if the maxi thing isn’t it.

    [00:39:57] Isn’t there like you’ve used smart battery cases at the palace. Right. Zach, would you be interested in. Not the case, but just a magnate battery. 

    [00:40:06] Zac Hall: Yeah. I think the, the appeal is in the battery cases or if you’re a non case user, you know, They’re the bulk of your cases to use, not just because of the battery, but because it’s a full case on the device.

    [00:40:19] So there is some appeal in having, you know, if you use your phone with no case or a case that you’d just prefer more than the battery case. Th th there is, there is some appeal in having a magnetic battery that charges, you know, if it can charge then And in a decent amount of time and not be too much of a drawback from being a wired in battery, then that’s pretty good.

    [00:40:41]It is, it is. Mysterious part in that, you know, w where do you hold the phone? Do you hold it from the phone part or do you hold it from the battery part? And is it annoying to decide that, and are there situations, you know, if you put it in your pocket, does that kind of a no-go, whereas you could put the battery case into your pocket and there’s no chance of it slipping off.

    [00:41:03]And also. It’s not impossible for others to already address this market. And so what is Apple going to do? That’s different than, than other, you know, magnetic batteries? One thing I was thinking is it’s. It’s probably more apples and more than Apple’s interest to make a version of these for each size phones.

    [00:41:24] So you’re not a wallet is the size of the wallet, no matter which phone is kind of designed to fit on the many and then scale this way up to the pro max. 

    [00:41:31] Benjamin Mayo: So though there, the wallet is like the width of the iPhone, 12 mini. And so on that different phone, it literally just like fills the entire back of the device.

    [00:41:38] And then on the pro backs, it just sits in the middle of like a little Island. Right. 

    [00:41:41] Zac Hall: And so, yeah. Probably what would happen is they’d have one version that is the same way it’s defined by the size of the mini and then scale. And then it just fits on the other phones. But I think that’d be too bad, especially with the mini isn’t quite the popular phone, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one fourth of the phones in the lineup.

    [00:41:59]So having, having one that does specially made, because they do that with the smart battery case, right. They’ve got a case made just for the phone size and the battery capacity varies because of the, the phone size 

    [00:42:09] Benjamin Mayo: varies. Yeah. That, that, and that’s why I think they’re more likely to do per model battery battery.

    [00:42:16] Packs. Right. So I’ve heard them say Badger cases because the iPhone 12 mini batteries is a little smaller, so it can have a smaller battery and still give you a full charge. Whereas the pro max, you can’t, it’s unlikely that you can have the same battery pack size as what would fit on the back of the mini, but actually better fully charge the probably max, like there’s a reason it’s not Badger case.

    [00:42:34] You’d have to be fit to the size of the phone in the batteries for proportionately bigger as well. 

    [00:42:39] Zac Hall: Yeah. The, the, one of the appeals here though, would be that if you don’t change phone sizes, like you don’t go from a pro max to a many the next year. And even if you do then in theory, there’s, they’re still compatible.

    [00:42:52] Like you, you could in theory, put a pro max size battery in the back of a mini and just supercharge it, you know, more than you need. It wouldn’t be visually the same, but, but if the charging. Lines at the same way, which I don’t see why it wouldn’t, that’s the same size and then it could be compatible. And, and you, you move on from the problem of this, this battery pack, you know, whenever you upgrade, you need to upgrade your battery pack.

    [00:43:15]And also that, that Apple doesn’t make new battery cases at lines. They’re always months off from the phone matching which is. Interesting, you know, I guess it’s just that the phone is priority. And then you get to the accessories after that and the, in the battery cases and the highest priority. And in this case, at that there’s, you know, pre production constraints or issues with development of the whole thing in general.

    [00:43:37]But if you had just one battery case that you could reliably use or one battery pack that you could reliably use, whether it’s your iPhone, 12 pro max or your iPhone 13, many that would be compelling. 

    [00:43:50] Benjamin Mayo: Okay, firstly I do think there’s a reason why the battery case is only slightly delayed and it’s because half of the pair of upgrades and new phones these days, it’s like you get an hour extra battery life.

    [00:43:59] Right. So it’s kind of weird. It happened was like promoting the extra battery life on the phones and then immediately at the same time, bringing up battery cases, like it feels a little off it’s like Apple bringing out. The iPhone 12 and then also bringing out like a waterproof band for it just as, even though they say that it’s like water resistant.

    [00:44:16] I don’t know. It’s like a weird clash. So that’s always been my thought on why the battery case. It was like two months later, three months later maybe they just don’t prioritize it as much and they just get mad when they can, but it’s been a much of a pattern now for like four years where it feels like they intentionally just hold it back a couple of months.

    [00:44:32] And my solution for a battery pack that is universal, that can work on the iPhone 12 and 13. Is all the external battery packs that exist in the world already. Like, this is why I think the max safe battery pack is kind of less like appealing to me in my head because you can get a portable battery pack that can.

    [00:44:52] That has charging if you want to charge by wireless. And it has loads of ports in it. If you want to shut out all this stuff, like you can get one portable battery. That’s about the same size as the iPhone, and it can charge your iPhone. It could charge your iPad. It can even charge your laptop or your charged Nintendo switch.

    [00:45:05] Like it’s so much more versatile than, you know, a little hump that you have to magnetically snap to the back of your phone. And you can only charge your phone, like with a smart battery case. You’re getting Julia too, right. You’re getting the protectiveness of the case and you’re getting a battery carried around you.

    [00:45:20] But if you’re just going to have. My neck attaching a battery. It’s like, well, you still kind of need a case, really, if you’re worried about that stuff, like the appeal to me seems more limited. Like how big is this MagSafe battery going to be like, it’s gotta be somewhat chunky, right? For them to actually give you a decent amount of charge.

    [00:45:38] So it just seems like a better solution to just have a portable battery with you in your bag that you can plug into literally anything and use it year after year after year, regardless of. You know how the actual phone changes. 

    [00:45:51] Zac Hall: Yeah. I agree with that. 

    [00:45:53] Benjamin Mayo: All that being said, and despite Apple supposedly having issues, getting this out of the door, anchor is literally going to release one next month.

    [00:46:02] They, they they’re up on Amazon. Now. You can already, pre-order a anchor battery magnetic pack for the iPhone 12, which is kind of insane, but we’ve seen a few of these from different people, but they’ve always been on like Kickstarter or, you know, like those kinds of like small websites or from brands you literally don’t know, but anchors like respectable or huge name in March.

    [00:46:23] You can pre-order it now is coming out in March. It’s called the anchor Powercor magnetic 5k wireless power bank. It’s a 5,000 million power battery. That’s magnetic. So it snaps on. The back of the FM 12, they say it can charge a iPhone 12 mini to zero to 112 to zero to 95. And I turned pro pro from zero to 97 iPhone to a pro max from zero to 75%.

    [00:46:46] So the fact that you can’t like fully charge a pro max kind of shows to me, like another reason why the battery cases A better option just because you can fit more capacity in them. You don’t have to worry about the space and all that 

    [00:46:57] Zac Hall: stuff as well. A bigger battery, but anchor, isn’t making one for the pro they’re making one for all the 

    [00:47:02] Benjamin Mayo: phones.

    [00:47:02] Yeah. And you have a bigger battery. It makes it even heavier. Like part of the problem with the battery cases, you get so much weight with them. Right? And like, if you’re going to have that much weight, you might as well get the protectiveness of an actual case at the same time. That’s kind of where I come down on.

    [00:47:18] Zac Hall: I think that I think the battery cases, a lot of commitment because you, you always have it on. Even when the cases, dad, it’s still a big, a big case that you have on it, unless you take it off and then you change the case and there’s appeal in having it just be a battery pack and having it wired in. You know, you can do that.

    [00:47:38] That’s, that’s the practical way to go, but there is something kind of neat about being magnetic and taking advantage of Mac safe so soon. So w w with that being said, like, I would definitely consider that the anchor solution If, if I had, you know, battery can train the shoes, I think I’m all right, right now that I’m just not out and about enough to, to, to need my battery to charge more than it is.

    [00:47:58] But but it’s a cool product and it doesn’t seem to be exorbitantly priced, you know, and, and, and all that. Just wait for the Apple one. Yeah. I’m glad that it exists though, 

    [00:48:07] Benjamin Mayo: but you can, then you can compare it open price.  just while we’re talking about like random accessories you know, how Apple gets like Belkin and Logitech to do its day at work and make all the stuff that has no interest in doing okay.

    [00:48:21] Belkin is releasing what they call the sound foam connect, which is basically like an airport express. But for our play too, obviously Apple discontinued the airport express what the Belkin sound foam will offer is a 3.5 millimeter mini Jack, a headphone port audio in as well as optical digital audio.

    [00:48:39] And you connect a speakers to it. And it is an airplane to receiver. So you’re basically getting the airplay part of the airport express in a little device from Belkin, which is cool because like the airport express. That was one of that’s, one of the last things added to it, right? Like randomly offered, they discontinued it, they made it airplay compatible, but they actually make it anymore.

    [00:49:00] So it was like, damn well, you still can. But now it seems like Apple is officially alliancing Belkin to make, you know, the modern equivalent for it as well. 

    [00:49:10] Zac Hall: Yep. Yeah. Airplay two is a very big addition to the airport, express it and, and, and it’s just kind of an add on feature to a base station, right?

    [00:49:19] It wasn’t that wasn’t the main thing it was, it was meant for, it was just. You know, what if we made speakers networkable and, and they did that and it, and it turned out that was pretty cool. And, and, and it’s, and it’s, it makes sense that they’re, they’re relying on Belkin for this, because I do have home pod and home pod, many, especially in home five minutes, that’s pretty Sprig a deal.

    [00:49:39] So them doing this accessory through Belkin do another pricing for it. 

    [00:49:43]Benjamin Mayo: It would be sold for around a hundred euros, so that’s about it. Okay. 

    [00:49:47] Zac Hall: So that that’s pretty. Okay. So that is pretty pricey considering it’s an adapter that doesn’t happen networking side to it to make your, make your well, I mean, in terms of it being a Bay station But, you know, I guess that’s the, that’s the times we live in being able to add airplay to, to your existing home theater system or something without having to upgrade the whole system is, is, is, is pretty good.

    [00:50:08] Yeah. 

    [00:50:08] Benjamin Mayo: What would it do? So the airport express out, it was like 79 or something. Nine $99. I believe it was 99. Okay. Yeah. Sam was actually a wifi, if you want to use it for that. 

    [00:50:18] Zac Hall: Right. That was the main purpose was that you could extend your network with it. You know, you could be your only base station. If you have a small, you know, home or apartment, or you could expand your network if you had a larger home or apartment and, and, and.

    [00:50:32] With this, there’s no networking side to it. It’s just the airplane part. And you, and you can buy airplay two receivers that you can plug in, you know, any speakers into that, that have standard speaker connections. But in this case, if, if you are happy with your existing system, there’s a need to spend three or $400 or more on a new receiver.

    [00:50:51]This is, this is pretty cool because then you get the ability to turn your system into, you know, part of your. Siri, play music everywhere, set up or play it in this room. You get to assign it to a room in the home app. And you know, that that’s, that’s really useful. So you don’t have the built-in voice input like you did with the home pod, but, you know, you’re, you’re, you know, beaming music from your iPhone.

    [00:51:09] You can say, play this there and it will work. So about time, this thing came to market or is coming to market. 

    [00:51:16] Benjamin Mayo: Yep. High power is also sponsored by audible star. Your auto subscription today. audible.com/nine to five Mac to get one book a month with your audible credit. And the first 30 days are free finding the time to sit down and read a book.

    [00:51:32] You know, it’s just hard or you put it off as much as we all want to read more. It just never really happens, but listen to audio books is so much more convenient. You can do it whilst you’re working exercising, or maybe just cooking dinner. Enjoy great stories with audible. Zach, I know you’re a big user of a bow.

    [00:51:48]What have you been listening to recently? Yeah, 

    [00:51:51] Zac Hall: I love water bowl because I look and I’ve got, you know, just today I lost that. I had three credits built up over the past few months and it’s like, Oh, I need to go and turn those into books. And it feels really good to, to do that. You can find things like creative selection by kin Sienna, you know, which we discussed a while ago when that was brand new.

    [00:52:07] And that gives me some insight into Apple. But if you want to mix things up, then I’m listening to a book called why we sleep by Matthew Walker, which is like over 13 hours long. But it’s, it’s interesting, you know, as you think about the Apple. Watch and sleep tracking. You might wonder why, why should I do this?

    [00:52:21] And, and this book is kind of helping me get answers to that. Also if you’re a fan of the movie, the Martian, you know, where I think it was Matt Damon who turns, well, you know, the movie, the Martian that’s that was first a book by Andy ware and he has a follow-up book called RMS that I just turned to credit into the book today.

    [00:52:39] And it’s eight hours and 57 minutes of books. I’m looking forward to listening to that. 

    [00:52:45] Benjamin Mayo: Nice as well as all of your audible book credits or the bows recently launched its newest plan, which is called audible plus or plus includes full access to the audible plus catalog. That means for one monthly fee, you can listen to thousands and thousands of hours of selected audio books and podcasts, as well as audible originals that you can’t find anywhere else.

    [00:53:06] So to get started, visit audible.com. Slash nine to five Mac or text nine to five Mac to 500, 500 to start your 30 day free trial or audible.com/nine to five Mac. 

    [00:53:20] Zac Hall: All right. So you had something you wanted to say this week about alpha music radio. 

    [00:53:24] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah, we we’ve touched on this on the show. I think you mentioned it as part of like a bigger Apple music summit, right.

    [00:53:29] But. The last like week or so, I was just chilling out. I was like, let’s go on Apple music. Let’s listen to something. I didn’t wanna listen to the player there. So I was like, I want to hear something that’s like, you know, hosted by someone. And then I found this like radio show at the host. I was listening to particular like Rebecca judge.

    [00:53:45] She just does like, she’s like a UK host. And she does like chart music and pop stars, like, and she was doing interviews and people were like, you know, this is nice. I wanted to do this. And then the next day I want to do the same thing and it. Just hit me. How fearing is the Apple music radio? Doesn’t let you follow shows.

    [00:54:06] It’s like so close to being such a good thing. And they added, you know, a hundred shows whenever they did the Apple music radio revamp, you know, last year, but you can’t follow the shows. You go on the radio tab, you have to scroll down and you go to , you find it. And then you play the episode. And then when you come back next time you have to go all the way down to wherever again, like they let you add playlist.

    [00:54:31] They let you add albums. Just let me add a show. Just like if it was in an, if it was in a podcast format, you could just subscribe to the podcast or in Apple’s current terminology, follow the podcast, but Apple music radio, it just doesn’t let you do. And it’s so archaic, like. I don’t want much. I just want the ability to say, add this show by this host.

    [00:54:52] And so then when they do new episodes, They can just pay it in my library feed or they can appear in the listen now section just right at the top, there’s a new episode, click on it and listen, you know, if you want to get all fancy, maybe when you follow the show and it actually goes live, it could give you a notification to remind you to tune in live.

    [00:55:09] But you know, I’m not fussed about that. I just want what I would get if these shows were offered yeah. In Apple podcasts, which is the ability to add them to my actual library. So I’d have to go and dig through the list of like a hundred hosts to find the show that I was trying to Institute every single time.

    [00:55:25] And what makes it even more infuriating? Is that either an iOS 14.4. Or I was 14.5. They’ve changed the UI slightly. So before on the radio tab, it would have like the list of, you know, the stations. It would say schedule in text and they’ve changed it to a calendar icon, but that’s all they’ve done.

    [00:55:41] There’s no function difference. You just click on the calendar. I can, it takes you to the exact same place. It takes you the exact same schedule that you can’t follow. The shows on is so annoying. And like, I know you have this with, what’s the show called that you like, because so much on after, after school radio with back office, the Mark opera show, right?

    [00:55:59] I’m having it now. It’s so mad and it it’s like they’ve got hours, hours of hosted audio content in this app, but you just can’t expose it on the main tab. Like please Apple, please fix it. 

    [00:56:13] Zac Hall: Yeah. What do you think the reason for that is? I mean, surely engagement would be higher if they made it easier to tune in and follow shows.

    [00:56:20] So 

    [00:56:20] Benjamin Mayo: why like technical debt and that the Apple music app has never had the concept of like. Following or subscribing to something it’s always just adding it to a library, you know, like, and they’ve, it’s probably just limited by technology or limited by their current frameworks. And they haven’t got around to like actually implementing the feature because I would also love to follow artists.

    [00:56:41] And then when the artists new music come in, have it appear again in like the top of the list now section, and you can sort of, sort of do that, but it’s not consistent. It’s not reliable. Right. Like I would just want, I want to follow an artist. And then when they have new music seminar notification saying there’s new music available from this artist, I want to follow the show on Apple music.

    [00:57:00] And then when it’s live, you can send me a notification or if it’s just recorded. And I miss it live, just put the episode in, like, that’s the thing, like the listen now tab is like recommendations, but it’s not like a feed. So they don’t have concepts of like, you know, what have you listened to? What, what have you listened to recently on red state?

    [00:57:17] It’s like those kinds of features that you’d find in like any podcast app, including Apple podcasts, they just don’t have that implemented on the Apple music side and they need to get around. And, and yeah, 

    [00:57:27] Zac Hall: so it’s, it’s, it’s a good point. I have a single show on one of the three stations that I listened to every week and in love.

    [00:57:35]And I. Properly turn off South Apple music radio, and it’s done, you know, like, cause, cause the follow up shows and for me, and I’m not sure, I mean maybe there are more shows. I only found this one because I’m familiar with the artist and I just happen to really enjoy it. But. Th there’s, there is no, you know, you listen to this, so you might like this.

    [00:57:53] They, they even do the show. The episode, if you listen to it on demand as the recently played. So, you know, they resurfaced, like you’re listening to an album, you know, it’s in your library that they want you to, to be able to get back to it easily. If you’ve played it because you probably want to continue playing it or play it again.

    [00:58:11] This isn’t necessarily the same for a radio show, kind. I do one plate there and then set, you know, you add some music from it and then you’ll listen to the music itself. So having it be there is not ideal. And it just reminds me of Apple music connect, you know, one, because what if they would have invested all the energy in that feature and put it into making.

    [00:58:30] You know, radio, which was announced at the same, basically at the same time, you know, more integrated with alpha music as a way to add things to your library and, and, and, and follow. But also helped me to connect in that, you know, it just went away and, and, and, you know, we, we understand why it was.

    [00:58:47] Another social network bucket for artists to use. And it was all launch activity and very few artists use it later because there were, they weren’t things that were different from using Twitter or Facebook. No, you couldn’t, you can post photos and videos, but you can’t do like ticket sales are merged through helping me to connect.

    [00:59:05] And those things I think are pretty critical and making it useful. But, but that same, the same idea though, of just following an artist. I mean, that was the idea there. And then at least they could say, Hey, wait, we have new music, you know, they have to actively do it. And I do get the alerts where it says this artist has new music waiting for you.

    [00:59:22]A lot of times, but sometimes I rely on the new music playlist to learn that an art is that I listened to all the time has a new track out. We’re just, you know, following the news to know that there’s something new from an artist that I listened to it it’s not consistent. 

    [00:59:35] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. And like it was less a problem for Apple music radio when they only had, you know, five hosts, seven hosts away, whether, cause you could just go on the radio tab and all of them would just be on the main screen.

    [00:59:45] But whenever they did the overhaul where they added so many more shows from, you know, their own, their own host expansion across Apple music country, Apple music hits and also just getting loads more celebrity shows on board. The list just becomes so long. Like you have to click on the radio tab, scroll down like two screens, just to find the thing where it says click on to see all shows by our house and then say, if you want the Charlie slough show, which I don’t care for, but it’s like, he was like on BBC radio before Apple hired him.

    [01:00:13] You have to go on the hosted by artist screen and scroll all the way to the bottom. And they must be like, 50 rows before you actually get to what you want to click on. Like, just let me, even if you could just favor it and it just put it at the top of the radio tab, that’d be better than what we have now.

    [01:00:27] Like anything that means you don’t have to go and dig through five screens just to get what you want to see on a weekly basis. Yeah. 

    [01:00:35] Zac Hall: I remember before, like at launch, I think it was the tumbler site for Apple music. That was kind of their go-to solution for, for seeing the schedule, the upcoming schedule.

    [01:00:44] And then they have a schedule button for like the station and they recently changed it to be a calendar icon, but it’s not to integrate with your calendar or anything. It’s just, that’s how you viewed the upcoming schedule. And you can’t do anything with that. It’s just you read it and that’s it. 

    [01:00:59] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah.

    [01:00:59] It’s of it’s antiquated. It reminds me of a lot of the TV app, not having like a dedicated tab for the TV plus stuff, you know, like they’ll get to eventually, but you have to, people asked after Mona for them to actually like prioritize. 

    [01:01:13] Zac Hall: Yeah, I did write one piece the other week about after music, after afterschool radio on Napa music radio.

    [01:01:19]And, and I, and I wanted a place to put the idea that we talked about on the podcast of man. It would be cool if I could, you know, subscribe to this show, listen to it in a, you know, in an on demand form. That’s not go and hunt down, hunt it down have a delivered and even even better, you know, I would be interested in doing using this format.

    [01:01:37] Myself. If I could use Apple music and other Apple music subscribers could, could listen to what I create, you know, commentary and music. And but, but it was just kind of an afterthought in his story. It was more about. Realizing. Wow. I’m looking at my recently added music. And so much of it has come from this one show on Apple music radio that has become kind of the way to discover music.

    [01:01:57] I didn’t know about or rediscover music. I used to love more so than any of the playlist. And that kind of goes back to the original idea of beats music and alpha music, which is human curated, you know, not just an algorithm, but, but something with a personal touch to it. And. And as much as you can do that in a playlist, you can really do it with the radio show where there’s commentary before each track and then between songs.

    [01:02:17] So you know, so I was surprised by that, but man, there’s opportunity for, for, for improvement. 

    [01:02:22] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. And switching gears slightly, do you want to talk about this eight cool thing they’re doing with Siri? 

    [01:02:28] Zac Hall: Yeah. I saw our friend, Steve Aquino tweet this out, a link to a study and a wall street journal story.

    [01:02:34] And I wrote it up for nine to five Mac, but basically the Apple is training Siri to improve on a problem that it has, which is that. Right now, if you have a stutter and you speak slowly kind of non sequentially, Siri will interpret the gaps and, and speaking as you’re finished speaking, and it responds to what you’ve said so far, and you can imagine how difficult Siri can be when you speak as it’s designed to be spoken to, but then, you know, imagine the trouble it has.

    [01:03:06] If it doesn’t address the fact that you have a Sutter, and if you have a stutter that’s pretty predictable and determining, you know, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve made You know, a partial command, but nothing complete yet. And that there’s a pattern to it. And so far, Siri, hasn’t been able to, to do that, to detect and adapt to something like that.

    [01:03:24] And so it turns out Apple has. Published a study where they’ve collected just a ton of audio samples from podcast 20,000 audio clips from podcasts that feature stuttering to help kind of train their model. And they’ve also. You acknowledged that they can enhance this you know, training of series to detect a stutter and adapt to it by integrating voice models in the future and other methods.

    [01:03:52] And that there’s also an opportunity to address other Situations aside from, from, from a stutter there, there are other situations that’ll have a different characteristic to a Sutter where it wouldn’t, wouldn’t be beneficial to use kind of the fixed that they’re working on. And I don’t think that they’ve got this in the wild yet, or that, you know, Siri will reliably react to a stutter and be as compatible as if you don’t have a Sutter, but it’s at least something that they’re researching and working on.

    [01:04:17] And You know, it’s one of those things where it definitely fits Apple’s vision of their products being accessible. And then just in the age of Siri and thinking about how mature Siri is, you know, regardless of how many features it has or how it compares to other voice assistance it’s kind of surprising that, that this is only something that they’ve just now got to, or getting to, but, but certainly, you know, Bravo for tackling it.

    [01:04:38] And in the piece they also talk about, you know, sort of what Amazon’s doing, what Google is doing in the same area. And what Apple’s response was is that the whole to talk feature where, you know, you hold down, this was added a long time ago, but you hold down the button for Siri and you keep holding it down until you’re done speaking, and then you let it go.

    [01:04:57] And then it acknowledges what you said that that’s the solution today because. It, it doesn’t react until you let go of the button. And so any amount of time could be spent with your, with your query. And that, that’s fine. I think for like an iPhone and iPad a Mac, you know, the places that you use, Siri, you know, the Apple TV, because you can, you have the device in your hand probably, but for like a home pod, you can do that, but it’s just not as convenient to, you know, walk over to the device and.

    [01:05:25] And did the command versus, you know, speaking, held your finger 

    [01:05:28] Benjamin Mayo: on the top of the home pod. Like who’s doing that. Nobody. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

    [01:05:31] Zac Hall: And so to speak into the air is kind of how it’s really intended to be used and the iPhone and iPad and Mac and Apple watch I’ll have, you know, voice activated Siri as well.

    [01:05:40] So it’s a big feature that, you know, a segment of the market is missing out on that, that. Surely could be addressed. And thankfully now Apple’s doing the research and working on it. So a feature version of stearic and can implement this feature. Sure. Yeah. And it’s 

    [01:05:56] Benjamin Mayo: not just about like working out when the person stopped talking.

    [01:05:58] It’s also about recognizing. The actual words and doing it better transcription of people that, you know, have pauses or, or have stuffed us in the middle of the words and stuff, right? Like it’s not just the end of speech working like that is. And, you know, I have like firsthand experience with this as well.

    [01:06:12] I guess you call it second experience. Like my sister has all manner of like learn difficulties and issues. And one of the problems is. Speech pronunciation. And so she dropped veg regularly, like has to pause and have a sentence and Siri cuts her off right. When she’s talking to it, because it, it, it thinks he’s finished or she’ll say like, and I do this instead of, can I do this?

    [01:06:31] Right. So she kind of dropped some of the constants pronunciations and voice assistance are not very good at that. Or it doesn’t matter to him about Siri or Amazon or anything. Like there needs to be so much more development in this area. So like as voice. UI features come into literally every product, you know, from the TV to the home pod, to the iPhone, to the watch, to, you know, Apple glasses in the future, to the car, like all of the stuff they do for accessibility, you know, in, in visual, you, right.

    [01:06:59] It has to come to, you know, speech understanding as well, because it’s the same, it’s the same thing, just abstracted to, you know, another domains and they getting more or less important. I understand it’s a hard problem, but they need to work on it. So, and I agree when you said it’s like, In a series been out since 2011 and it’s taken in what, like a decade to start doing this kind of stuff, like who knows, but it feels, at least they’re working on it.

    [01:07:19] You know, like it’s a good step in the right direction. Okay. Off final sponsor of this episode is tax expander. Thanks to our friends at smile software for sponsoring the show. Take your time back. With the power of text expander, repetitive typing, little mistakes, searching for answers. They’re all taking precious time away from you and your team.

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    [01:09:10] Zac Hall: Podcast. Thanks. Thanks Chris bender. Let’s talk about Apple TV this week before we head off. There was a news story this week about the that, that, that Jon Stewart is working on for Apple TV. And this follows, you know, his career on, on the daily show which ended many, many years ago. And then he was going to HBO to do a thing with HBO that never materialized.

    [01:09:33] And now Plepler from HBO is exclusively with Apple. And John Sierra is going to make this show. That will probably be a lot like what the other show is going to be. But for Apple TV and the news this week is that he picked a showrunner. For the series and kind of the creative team. So a couple of writers and the show runner has experience at CBS evening news and, and has won some awards and previously ABC news.

    [01:09:57] So rather than have someone with a comedy background to be the executive producer and showrunner at somebody with a news background, which can probably inform what to expect from, you know, the serious tone of, of what the show could be. But there are also writers who have experienced with. Comedy specials and that kind of thing who are on his team.

    [01:10:16]So that that’s, but it also, it, I don’t think fully realize that the show he does for Apple TV won’t be anything like the daily show. And that was like at least a four day a week show that it’s going to be. Not even weekly, but it’s going to be maybe like, you know, it’s going to be an hour long series of single topic episodes, 

    [01:10:41] Benjamin Mayo: series of specialists, basically.

    [01:10:43] Zac Hall: Correct. Yeah. And that’s kind of a bummer if you’re a John Stewart fan and you’ve wanted Apple TV to have, you know, something in the comedy around that’s, that’s not just a one off or, you know a series of one-offs. So I was just kind of bonded with that so that my question is why isn’t the show going to be daily or even weekly?

    [01:11:03] Why not have it be like every Friday there’s a new John Stewart special, and maybe that will be the release pattern, you know, for like, Five episodes, but it just seems odd. I mean, there’s this big commitment between Paul PLO, Leffler and Apple, and then John Stewart and Apple through this. And, but, but, but how, how much of an impact can it really make if it’s just a few specials here and there, and it’s not something, I mean, it’s way less sticky.

    [01:11:28] I think for the service to be that kind of the, the, the reporting I was looking at, it was like apples, you know, It’s going to be a PR win for Apple because they’re going to be able to win awards for, for, for this, for the specials content. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s cool. That’s good. It’s something different from Apple TV, but currently but man it’s, is there just not room for that, an apples to apples budget or do they think that, I 

    [01:11:53] Benjamin Mayo: think it’s probably appetite of Stuart, right?

    [01:11:55] Like he did the daily show for a long time and then he gave it up for a reason. Right. He, you know, People people get burned out. They have fun. They want to go and do other stuff. Like they don’t necessarily want to go back doing, you know, weekly episodes, daily episodes, like I’m sure. Apple and Stewart.

    [01:12:12] I’m sure Apple would love to do like a weekly show with Jon Stewart if he was down for it. But they probably just couldn’t come to agreement on, you know, availability and stuff. Like Apple is essentially getting stew out of retirement to be able to do this. Right. Like, so. They probably had to come to some sort of deal on what the situation was going to be.

    [01:12:30] And like, we want you to do, you know, basically, like they probably went to him and said like, what would you be interested in doing for us? Right. Like, and they can’t force his hand. He gets what they get. And even if it is just, you know, a special every month or so I still think that’s like significant and people will come in to watch it.

    [01:12:47] Like, it’s very similar to like the, the things they do with the Oprah stuff. Right? Like Oprah doesn’t have a weekly show. On affidavit. Plus she has like specials and documentaries and sometimes the detail sets at once and stuff. And that brings in the crowd and people watch it. Like, I think it’s the same thing here.

    [01:13:03] They’ll probably try and do like 10 or 12 episodes a year, something like that. And there was a doing a podcast as well. So that’s additional content to go along with it. Like at the end of the day, if you’ve already made millions of million dollars hosting, you know, prime time talk show, For the U S do you really want to do that for the rest of your life?

    [01:13:23] Like, even if Apple offered him so much money, it was unreal. He’s probably still going to turn it down. And they were like, look, this is what we can arrange. Let’s do this. And I’m sure that we’ll give it, you know, the budget and the resources to support it. And it will do well when it comes out in, in a bits and drabs.

    [01:13:38] Zac Hall: Yeah. I, I guess, you know, in an hour long show is the equivalent of like three 20 minute episodes. So it’s, it’s, it’s just something very different than, than, than what’s already out there, I 

    [01:13:47] Benjamin Mayo: guess, in terms of like, what would appeal? Cause obviously this is, you know, the daily show is obviously us predominantly, but if you go wider out, there is more, I think more like marketability for like, An hour long show that’s maybe released weekly for three months or something rather than like a daily show of like 20 minutes each, because people don’t have the, like a lot of people don’t have the time or the bandwidth to watch every single episode.

    [01:14:13] They want it to be more like. And, and hopefully the, like when you do a daily show, you have to make sacrifice in terms of, you know, what’s in it, the show, right? Because there’s just such a time constraint. If you’re going to do things that are like more hour long, special type stuff, it gives you more scope to do, you know, bits to go out and about do more investigative journalism, kind of like, it’s still going to be a comedy show.

    [01:14:38] Right. But they probably want to try and do something that’s more like meaningful or substantative rather than like the daily transactional, you know, his jokes for 20 minutes, you know what I mean? Sure. Like it’s going to be a different type of show than what he’s he, you know, he did on the day of the show, of course, but he’s going to attract back John Stewart fans and it will be a new thing.

    [01:14:58] Right. Like if they just, if they just did the day show again, I’m sure they get so much criticism for it. Just being like a corporate show or not as good as the old days. Like you can’t just repeat the same thing, right. 

    [01:15:09] Zac Hall: And, and maybe doing something that’s more evergreen. So having a set of episodes an hour long each, then you’ve got, you know, five hours or so of something that new people can come to.

    [01:15:20] And. The experience at once, and that was an appeal of the service. I just, it, and maybe that’s because Apple TV doesn’t mature enough yet to, to also, you know, kind of have the, the bandwidth for something that is more regular than this. Someone who came from the daily show comedian, Larry Wilmore he’s he had a comedy central show of his own.

    [01:15:43] Called keeping it 100 that I really enjoyed and it was canceled. And then he did, he did a brief stint for peacock, you know, NBC’s thing. But I’m pretty sure that was just a limited run and not. And it was, I believe also it was nightly, but only for a limited run, it wasn’t, you know, a, an ongoing thing for like a full season even.

    [01:16:03]But, but having someone like that who obviously, you know, isn’t John Stewart status, but has a voice, has an audience has a perspective. And then also has the appetite to do something, you know, nightly that would. Be really, I mean, I think I would turn up on every time at errors versus, you know, when there’s a new series, I like the beat, you know, and I watch either weekly or Ben.

    [01:16:27] So, and as a, as a monthly subscription, you know, even though it’s in the bundle now and I think less about how much I’m paying for it it’s, that’s, that’s more compelling I think is kind of the arcade. Problem that Apple has where the gaming service is filled with games that you can finish and be done with.

    [01:16:46] And maybe you replay them, but, you know, they want to shift to this reportedly shift to this model where it’s more, you know, content added regularly and you don’t ever complete the game. It’s just, it’s you just have more levels, you know, that’s that, but for TV, you know, I mean, the other, the other thing that they do is they have just second seasons and more seasons and new shows and new movies, but You know, what you’re interested in can be, can be pretty narrow versus what they offer.

    [01:17:10]And so having something that’s just mass appeal and, and all the time would be pretty compelling. And I know it, it hasn’t really worked for Netflix. Like they had a weekly live series with the comedian and I guess it just didn’t have the numbers that, that Netflix wanted. But you can imagine that that, that Apple would just see it less as a numbers game and more as this is just one element of the service and.

    [01:17:31] And it’s worth keeping going. 

    [01:17:34] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. Like if John Stewart wasn’t down for a weekly show or a daily show, maybe they should pursue some other talent as well. Like there’s no reason you couldn’t have more than one. You know, like if he’s, if he’s off doing, you know, 10 specials a year, you can still have a personality doing an episode a week or something.

    [01:17:52] Yeah, like topical what current affairs stuff, because right now you’ve got Oprah exclusively and there’s nothing wrong with Oprah. If you’re into that, it’s fine. But you know, to, to address what it is, demographics, you need to expand out. And one way to do it is to get John Stewart and then other ways to do it is to do different formats.

    [01:18:07] Like actually weekly news episodes or daily news episodes. 

    [01:18:12] Zac Hall: Yep. Anything that can be a podcast can be an Apple. I mean, this is, I think this is an idea that we’re going to see. 

    [01:18:17] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. Like they’re doing, they’re doing it in both directions. They’re making podcasts that can be TV shows and they can TV shows.

    [01:18:22] They’re going to be podcasts. 

    [01:18:23] Zac Hall: Yeah, exactly. Anything that can be a podcast can be a, can be a TV show. And there’s seems to be based on Mark’s reporting that they’re going to really pursue that, that You know, when original podcasts and becomes more of a thing with Apple. We also speak of Apple TV and podcasts.

    [01:18:36] I listened to the first episode of the, for all mankind official podcast. And I was skeptical skeptical because you know, I’ve, I’ve seen the whole second season. I wrote my piece on it and You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve all seen the trailers and many people have seen the first episode. And as this episode comes out, know, the second episode would be available.

    [01:18:56] But. I was kind of turned off by like the artwork, cause it’s, it’s the moon Marines with guns in the moon. And that isn’t really how I described the second season as being about like, it’s, it’s there as like the cold war escalation, you know, but it’s not the bulk of the season in my mind. And so I was thinking, nah, this really kind of cheapens the, the idea there.

    [01:19:19]But, but you know, don’t judge a book by its cover. I listened to the episode. And it had astronaut Garrett Reesman on who we’ve had on this podcast before. And I think it was, it was produced very, you know, it’s a very well produced podcast is not too long. It it’s pretty good in that it discusses, you know, this is who we’re gonna talk to this week.

    [01:19:38] This is what we’re gonna talk about. And it’s it’s, it’s at least the first episode is a lot less about the current episode of the week, but they’ll get more into that in the future. They kind of did a thing at the beginning where they said this is going to be spoiler free. And then they later mentioned there’s going to be a statement.

    [01:19:54] With spoilers, but don’t worry. We’ll tell you first, you know, it’s like, okay. But I, but I found it it’d be, you know, a good listen and something. I’ll, I’ll keep coming back to having seen the season already. You know, I haven’t listened to all that visitor to the podcast yet. Just as they’re released.

    [01:20:08]But but I, I keep it on my rotation, but I also, I think just as much as I enjoy listening to people like Jason Snell, talk about the show. And, and he’s doing an, a feat on the incomparable where it’s him talking about each week of the show and, and that’s probably more like for super fans. But I think, I think what Apple’s doing with the podcast is, is, is.

    [01:20:27] Plenty fine. That it’s, it’s compelling on its own and it can augment the show in that you, you get insights that you didn’t have before. And each episode will have a different gas, so that’ll be neat. But I don’t know if you heard it, but I, I thought it was pretty good though for, for their 

    [01:20:40] Benjamin Mayo: first to a little bit of it, but.

    [01:20:42] I didn’t finish it. No, like I, I like TV show podcasts. I like about the actual show. And they do the behind the scenes podcast. Right. Where it’s like, here’s how the scenes were shot. We had a tribal filming there. So we had to do this differently, which is more like what the breaking bad podcasts are and stuff like that.

    [01:21:00] This is like, you know, it’s like a space lesson, which is fine. Right. I’m not dissing it, but it, it, wasn’t what I was like. Going in for, if you see what I mean. So the actual T plus episode, for sure, but this one, not really for me. Yeah. All right. 

    [01:21:17]Zac Hall: And speaking of the first episode, you know, I can’t quite make out it scene.

    [01:21:23] So now after bending the first season or the second season but I did take notes on that first episodes and I kinda remember my take being okay, they’re introducing a, you know, a new new class of, of characters and, and maybe those stories will be important in this season and future seasons. And there’s kind of a conflict between the old guard and the new class.

    [01:21:42]But what what’d you think of the, that the first episode? The second? 

    [01:21:46] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah, it was good. Like they you know, they started with the, the the sunrise on the moon. That was cool. And then they did like the character development. You see where they are doing. I am terrible with names, but the, the woman who’s now like in charge of the NASA unit, right.

    [01:22:00] That we saw that she was in charge of the room before, but now she’s not in charge of the whole thing. And it’s like, cool, because she’s got this responsibility now, but it also, it’s kind of sad cause she’s having to like sleep in the office and like have a breakfast, you know, while she’s getting dressed, like it’s the classic, like, you know, drama situations, which is cool.

    [01:22:18] And then obviously it ends with the Th th th the, like the, the trauma or the tension of having to save the person who is stuck in the thing when the, the sun radiation is coming. And then Mary Cobb is that her name is something like that. My name, my naming ability is terrible, but the space astronauts who’s like the, you know, the, the woman who was like leading the charge before modern Molly cob, that’s the name.

    [01:22:40] She has to go and say, the person who’s like crashed in the middle of the field. And then it’s like Oh, I dunno. Are we going to get out of the radio like that tent? Like I just love it. Like it was such a cool website. 

    [01:22:49] Zac Hall: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I exactly, I liked it that they dumped bread into the space in the meeting and the episode.

    [01:22:54] And then it’s, like I said before it, the second season is very much, if you like the first season it’s, it’s, you know, continuation of that, where there’s plenty. There’s probably more space in the second season than the first, because they’re, they’re further along and their progress. Yeah. So they can be more advanced in space, but, but also there’s plenty of on the ground conflict and relationships and drama and everything.

    [01:23:17] And that that’s, I was I’m, I’m happy that you know, that the trailer is, is obviously, you know, dramatic and that it’s meant to be You know, kind of a thriller trailer and grab retention, but the season itself is, and as you can see in the first episode, I think is, is, is takes his time to tell a story.

    [01:23:33] Benjamin Mayo: Yeah. Based on you not telling me what happens that the trailer through it aspects, I like finale stuff. That’s the mind to reputation of what you’ve told me anyway. Nice. The only thing I thought was stupid is when they kept talking about de Mayo, instead of email, it’s like. I get it like Yamaha, alternate reality.

    [01:23:53] It’s D mail, digital digital show. And as we did the alphabet lesson two weeks ago, D comes before E but like, it just felt kind of stupid. Like why, why did you call it D mouse? Just like they did the electric car thing early, which was cool. But. Just call it email. Cause they just say it like once it was like, Oh, you just got a new email.

    [01:24:15] It’s just really having to emphasize the law, which I thought was a bit corny. But there you go. Yeah. 

    [01:24:21] Zac Hall: Me, the thing in the first episode that stood out that I didn’t, that, that I, I thought I was just kind of criticizing is that the, the character of Joel Kinnaman at Baldwin, he just looks. I mean, maybe, maybe that’s pretty practical, but they don’t really age people very much.

    [01:24:36] You know, they, they changed their appearance a little bit for the decade jump, but he just looks like comically older, like his hair, it doesn’t look like the care, like the actor anymore. To me, he looks more like, you know, fake spray tan and, and, you know, artificial and gray hair. Yeah. And it just stands out 

    [01:24:53] Benjamin Mayo: like, yeah.

    [01:24:55] I I, cause I obviously, when we spoke about it before watching the episode or whatever on the show, you mentioned the aging thing of Kenema and I watched the episode, I was like, yeah, obviously it’s like, not real. Right? Cause he’s, you know, he has an age 10 years between a year ago, but it felt fine to me.

    [01:25:11] It didn’t, it didn’t stick out to me at least. That’s that’s. 

    [01:25:13] Zac Hall: That’s good. So maybe it’s just a me thing. So anyway, we’ll say to tomorrow that is the happy hour podcast for this week. If you have any feedback, you can email us together@happyhouratninetofivemac.com. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Apollo’s Zack.

    [01:25:27] That’s a P O L L O Z a C and Benjamin you’re on tour BS at MAA, and we’ll be back next week. Bye everybody. 

    [01:25:35] Benjamin Mayo: Bye-bye.

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