MacBook Air M5 (13" & 15") First Impressions, iPhone 17 Pro MLS Event, KC Public Schools Go Apple

Tom Anderson (00:01.78)
This is Basic AF, episode 88. Show notes for this and all episodes can be found at basicafshow.com. How you doing today? Tom Anderson here. Good to have you with us. And I'm joined by my cohost, Jeff Battersby. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff (00:16.84)
Good morning Tom Anderson, how are you? It's good. It's a rainy Saturday in New York and I slept poorly probably because of allergies which are kicking my little booty these days. But other than that I'm perfectly fine.

Tom Anderson (00:19.006)
Doing well, sir. How about yourself?

Tom Anderson (00:30.153)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (00:34.942)
Good. Yeah. Had rain here for three days, which has been nice. Attempts in the 50s wearing sweatshirts. like

Jeff (00:42.23)
Yeah, I'm gotta switch it on right now. Not covering my bald little head, but...

Tom Anderson (00:45.342)
Now for the Memorial Day folks, with today being Memorial Day, lot of weekend plans have been cancelled because of the rain, some local events I think are rescheduled here, but we really needed it. We were really, really dry. And so we've had close to three inches of rain so far, so that's good. And so that's the Old Man Weather Update for this episode. Thank you guys for bearing with us for that. Yep.

Jeff (00:53.538)
Well, the day that you get this podcast.

Jeff (01:11.266)
Shakin' my fist in the cloud, Tom.

Tom Anderson (01:14.836)
So I can't remember. may have, I think we did talk about this just a minute last episode. You were test driving a MacBook Air, the M5 model.

Jeff (01:22.413)
Hmm.

Jeff (01:27.348)
Had I got the I don't think I was discussing picking one up. Yeah, I did. Because I was dropping off my my MacBook Pro to get a battery change and then they were changing the logic board on that thing too. But yeah, I kept it. Yeah, I kept the MacBook Air that I got and I have the MacBook Pro up on swap if anybody's interested. Yeah, there we go.

Tom Anderson (01:29.544)
You were discussing maybe? Okay. Okay, so.

Tom Anderson (01:39.626)
Cool. So did end up doing that?

Tom Anderson (01:52.842)
We'll put the link in the show notes.

Jeff (01:56.27)
Bye, bye. Yeah, so I did. I got the Midnight Blue MacBook Air, which immediately shows your fingerprints. But I will say, I kind of like the little patina that puts on it. The first fingerprint sucks. The next 54 are pretty good.

Tom Anderson (01:57.78)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (02:04.362)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (02:14.762)
Yeah, you just learn to live with it.

Jeff (02:17.823)
Right, now it actually looks kind of interesting, so I do like it. Yeah, so that's pretty good. I got one gig hard drive. I don't need a lung. Whoa, what did I say? One gig, yeah, one gig. Sorry, one terabyte, one gig. Right, right, one gig hard drive and I can't install the OS, it sucks. 12 megs of RAM, one terabyte hard drive.

Tom Anderson (02:28.842)
Oh, who wouldn't get it. Don't fill it up all at once.

Tom Anderson (02:39.21)
12 megs of RAMs. that what you did? Good.

Jeff (02:45.613)
16 gigs of RAM, which for me, I don't need anything more. And I'm kind of going in a different direction than this one, on this one that I've done in the past. I set it up as brand new and I'm putting apps on as I need them. It's kind of like how I run the bar, which some of the bartenders that I work with, I can tell don't like it. if people aren't ordering, you know,

drinks with lemon in it. keep the lemon in the fridge until somebody orders a drink that has lemon juice in it. And then I take the lemon juice out of the fridge because for the first drink. And I don't untop any of the liquor until somebody's using it because why? You know, why would I, why would I open up the Campari if nobody's gonna have a Campari and soda on a 45 degree day?

So anyway, yeah, same idea. So I installed Highland Pro, not surprised. I installed my scanner software, which I'm now using wirelessly, even though I went and bought an adapter. So pretty nice though, wirelessly. And just adding a couple of things at a time. So added Photometer, Pixelmator Pro, and all that jazz. And one at a time is I'm doing stuff and I...

Kind of love it. It's a really good computer. Super light, man, compared to the... And my battery life has been off the hook. Like, I had it open at the bar, you know, doing some work on it, and I think when I went home, I was at 98%.

Tom Anderson (04:16.932)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (04:32.553)
That's crazy.

Jeff (04:33.773)
Really bonkers, so I'm happy happy about that so really good, but you sir also through the beauty of school got your Thing it got a new one to it so talk to me about yours, and you had a little trouble setting that up

Tom Anderson (04:43.401)
you

Tom Anderson (04:50.447)
I did. Yeah. So I, had been using the MacBook air two, the 13 inch display. And, so it was an two. It, we had some little bit of funding left at the end of this budget year. So we were looking to spend it. So was like, Ooh, so 15 inch model this time around the five. but I tell you, dude, it has been so much nicer, like in meetings and things like that, because

Jeff (05:13.451)
Old man.

Tom Anderson (05:20.265)
I work on a 27 inch display here, right? I've got studio display here. I've got a 27 inch LG at the office. I've got a 27 inch that I'm hooked up to here. And when you go to a meeting and you take the laptop, the 13 just seems so tiny. But, um, and so it's, it's been nice in that regard. Uh, but yeah, I ran into some issues. So I brought it home. It came in on like a Thursday, I think it was. So brought it home, uh, turn it on and got

Jeff (05:22.733)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (05:37.25)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (05:48.906)
logged into our MDM and everything on Monday morning. and it's, or it actually did that on Sunday because I didn't want to deal with it on Monday. And, uh, when I took it and turned it back on the Monday morning, I had a message said, your computer has been restarted because of a problem. I was like, Hmm, that's weird. Um, which ironically my 16 inch MacBook pro that I'm using now had the same thing this morning too. Uh, but anyway, so I was like, well, I

Jeff (06:06.358)
fun.

Jeff (06:14.734)
Mm.

Tom Anderson (06:17.289)
Who knows? It was probably just installing something got weird. So I used it for, I don't know, an hour, maybe. No, not even an hour because that morning I had a zoom call and right in the middle of the zoom call, it locked up. Like the person speaking was going, G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G like that. You know, it was like a hard lock up mouse would move. So I had to power it off, turn it back on, ran for about 15 minutes, did the same thing. I was like, man, this is really weird. So first I'm thinking must be a lemon.

And, so I still had 13 inch with me. So I worked on that for the day. Then I went back to the 15, in the afternoon and tried to get it going again. And it was constant. Like I would log in, it would lock up. I would log in, it would lock up. would log in, it would lock up. And I was like, man, this is not good. so I reset it. So thought, well, maybe something got weird during the setup. and so I reset it, got everything going again. and so I was like,

Hmm. Usually Macs don't do that. And we've talked before, think a little bit here and there, both of us, maybe it was just in messages or something, but our disdain for antivirus software. So that's where my first inclination always goes for these things, just because they're so intrusive on the systems. Right. Uh, so then, well, let me reset it, see what it does. So I reset it, signed back in, uh, you know, got into our MDM, which puts all of our managed software on it, our security settings, all that kind of stuff.

Jeff (07:28.355)
Yeah.

Jeff (07:33.121)
Sure, right.

Tom Anderson (07:46.506)
And started happening again. But I noticed this time it only started happening once I. Because what I wanted to do was to see, to see like, because the installer for the antivirus software was a little bit out of date. And so I started going in and just doing the updates manually. And it's like a step update. You can't go from seven dot 11 straight to eight dot two or whatever it is. It's like five or six steps in between. So I got, yeah, always fun.

Jeff (08:03.552)
Uh-huh.

Jeff (08:10.872)
So much fun.

Tom Anderson (08:13.289)
And it was somewhere about halfway through there that the problem started up again. I was like, Hmm. Okay. So talk to a guy I work with. said, Hey, grab one of these tested and see if you can get this to happen. He couldn't get it to happen. I was like, weird. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Cause we have a bunch of them that came in that we're handing out next week, this week. Uh, so like, Hmm. So I logged into another account that's on the machine. un, well, actually I let it set there.

Jeff (08:27.87)
On an M5 though? Okay, interesting.

Jeff (08:35.01)
Gotcha.

Tom Anderson (08:43.035)
under that account and it worked fine. And I was like, Hmm. So at that point I was like, well, let's uninstall the antivirus software and see what happens. So I did that. Logged back into my account and ran fine for days. Like no issues whatsoever. And I was like, that's really strange. so I was like, Hmm. So he's testing it. So we were getting a little bit nervous because we had to hand these out.

Like in four days and we like, I wonder if these are all going to start to lock up. They couldn't get it to happen on any of the ones that they tested. tested two or three. So, what I did is I just left it off for three or four days, five days. yeah. Well, no, I left it. I ran the computer, but I left the antivirus stuff off. yeah. Computer ran great.

Jeff (09:17.89)
Really?

Jeff (09:28.334)
you

Take a vacation. You just get out of the box.

Gotcha. Okay.

Tom Anderson (09:40.361)
I was like, Ooh, this is good. so then there was, uh, went back through. can't, I can't remember the timing exactly on this because apple released 26.5. Not long after I got it. And so I can't remember if I put the antivirus back on before I did the 26.5 update or after, I think it was after the update. I'm pretty sure it was after the update and it ran fine.

Jeff (09:52.46)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (10:04.578)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (10:08.776)
and actually did all the updates just like I had done before and everything was good. Well, there was a for the OS update, Apple puts out these support articles, you know, what's new in 26.5 for IT and it's got kind of some IT specific things. And there was an issue on M5 computers where if there was a content filter on the machine, it would reboot unexpectedly.

And so the, the antivirus tools, anti-malware stuff that these days, a lot of them are doing that kind of filtering to see like, is this computer sending traffic to another computer on the network trying to do something, right? Those types of things. So I believe that it was just the bug in the operating system that, caused that. Very certain circumstances, which is why most people don't have the issue, of course, because they're not running that stuff at that level.

Jeff (10:51.169)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (10:56.398)
That caused a problem.

Jeff (11:04.354)
Yeah, well, good that you found it,

Tom Anderson (11:07.088)
Yeah, so it's been okay and ever since, but like you said though with the battery life has been so good.

Jeff (11:15.692)
Well, yours, I mean, you've got the 15 inch. I only got the 13, which is funny. It is a little small. You know, that's one thing. Not that I've noticed in any kind of bad way, but it doesn't sit on my keyboard stand. I'm sorry. My laptop stand the same way. It's not quite wide enough, which fine. No big deal. But you've got the 15 inch, which got an even bigger battery than mine does. So you probably, you know,

Tom Anderson (11:18.824)
Hmm.

Jeff (11:46.413)
run forever and it doesn't use anything and as I've said before I'm not really doing anything crazy I'm writing and I'm writing a fair amount but when I'm writing it's using no battery it's really wild

Tom Anderson (12:01.468)
Yes, I don't really tax mine too much either. mean, I'll have.

anywhere from eight to 10 different apps running. but they're not really doing anything. I mean, I'm not doing video editing or audio processing or anything like that. It's usually a couple of browsers and note taking apps, Excel, maybe stuff like that. So nothing too hardcore. did get the model with 24 gigs of Ram, only five, 12 storage because it's a work machine and I don't really need that much storage for work stuff. Cause it's all typically in Google drive anyway, but

But overall though man it is, I love it. I've got the 16 inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip that I've had for a few years now and it's a great laptop. It's a little chunky and I think the 15, like if I need to replace this I'm definitely just going to get the 15 inch air. It's just much easier to, it's much more pleasant for me to work with. Now the port situation you only get the two.

Jeff (12:59.086)
15 inch.

Tom Anderson (13:06.344)
versus the slow ports you get on the pros. But aside from when we're recording, like right now I've got three USB-C connections. But day to day, I have no connections. at least on my laptop.

Jeff (13:10.774)
I didn't.

Jeff (13:16.366)
Yeah, and I've got, right, most days I'm using nothing. And like I said, I'm now using the scanner wirelessly. even, I'm only using one port on the back of the studio display too. Not really using much of anything else. And I have a good adapter that has everything all the way up to ethernet. So if I need that stuff, I've got it, for example.

couple times I recorded while I'm out in California and I need to be able to plug the mic in. That mic has USB-A, it has the original connector type. And so for that, can't use it. Although I do have now a couple little USB-A to USB-C adapters.

I'll throw one of those in my kit and then I'll have access to that too. So all good, I'm really, really happy with it. I didn't know if I was gonna keep it when I first got it, but I really would say within a day or two, it was like, nah, this is what I'm doing. I wrapped up my MacBook Pro, put it in a box, and as I said before, it's on Swappa if you guys wanna buy it.

It's really in good shape. Like I said, brand new battery. I take care of my kit. So it's clean and nice and beautiful and ready for you if you'd like to buy. And if you'd like to buy a slightly.

Tom Anderson (14:54.088)
You got a friends and family discount for listeners of The Basic AF Show,

Jeff (14:57.365)
I could probably work something out.

Tom Anderson (14:59.886)
so there you go feedback at basic AF show.com. Now you were having some problems with your studio display.

Jeff (15:02.255)
The calm let me know if you want it. We'll take care

Jeff (15:10.475)
Yeah, that was some weirdness. And so here's interesting things. Yeah, that's exactly it wasn't going to do anything. Right? Did did really well. And yeah, so and I should have probably looked this up first. So this was even pre. So the MacBook Pro, my M2 MacBook Pro, the one that I got when my M1 got stolen.

Tom Anderson (15:14.504)
Which is really what led you down this path, think, right? It's how you had it. So it's brilliant Apple marketing. Walks through it.

Jeff (15:39.354)
from the no longer existent In-N-Out Burger on Hagenburger Road in Oakland. I plugged it in and it would bounce back and forth between the display on the MacBook Pro and the display on the, you know, that studio display. So that was originally what I thought it was. I thought it was a problem with the studio display. As it happens, it still may have been a

the studio display. The I then while I was plugged in with you with the MacBook Air, I complained to you last week I said, dude, I can't stream anything. I could stream it on my MacBook Air. But as soon as I plug in the studio display, everything hangs up. So

Little known fact, but your studio display runs a version of iOS It has a full-on operating system on it. So it and it has no power buttons You know, there's like it just works in quotes air quotes So I started looking around and this is kind of funny I did not find it on an Apple site. I found it on an Android site how to reset my

Tom Anderson (16:50.81)
You

Jeff (17:02.575)
how to reset that display. And it was really interesting because it was, you know, unplug it for 10 seconds, start it back up and then plug your, they think it was plug your, I can't even remember, I sent you the thing. Then I can look it up probably while you're talking here in a second. And what it did is it essentially refired the OS.

on the display and since then everything's been working fine. So really kind of an interesting, weird one off, but I can now stream, I can now stream audio and without any kinds of problems, which is kind of amazing. It's nice to be able to, nice to be able to use my display as planned. And what was really weird is it was working just fine.

not that long before that. It was pretty good. like it was let me stream audio previously. So I don't know what the weird, some weird glitchiness that's all fine now that I've reset it. And that's the way I usually work. So when I'm at my desk, for the MacBook Pro, because I was teaching classes, I had two displays up all the time. But now I never have the MacBook Air display up.

when I'm writing or doing any of that. Got the studio display, I sit there and work on that. And then when I want to go someplace or do something, you know, I unplug it and then I use the display on the MacBook Air. And it works out really well, which now maybe makes me think that I need to lean toward instead of a instead of a stand where I can have the display open, I might want to get a little.

little stand that lets me just slide it in there and stands up sideways next to the computer and I use it. So we'll see, play around with that. I totally rearranged my desk. I got rid of my standing desk just because I'm not teaching classes anymore when I was teaching classes, online classes, eight hours a day. You know, I didn't want to be sitting sitting down for eight hours. So I got a standing desk. I gave that to my son-in-law, who is now

Tom Anderson (19:16.049)
Right. Don't want to sit there all day.

Jeff (19:25.283)
doing customer setup and so he doesn't want to sit at his desk all day. So I gave him the standing desk and then I sit and I'll write for a couple of hours and do editing on the iPad and then I might, now that the weather's getting maybe nicer, refinish the front porch so can go sit out and work on the front porch, which is a lovely thing. In which case, the studio's display stays upstairs.

Tom Anderson (19:29.767)
Hmm.

Tom Anderson (19:49.937)
Be nice.

Tom Anderson (19:55.272)
Yeah. Yeah. That reset sequence you sent over reminded me of like the SMC reset on the Intel systems and like the

Jeff (19:55.993)
Good stuff. Good stuff.

Jeff (20:02.959)
Yeah, that's exactly what it's like, but on the studio display, which is really, really interesting.

Tom Anderson (20:12.837)
I still wonder why, like, it seems it's, I don't want to say over engineered, but I'd love to like know the backstory of why they took that route with the studio display. Cause it's got like a A series chip in it and that version of iOS on it. Obviously it's doing stuff, right? But it,

Jeff (20:24.921)
with a whole OS. Yeah.

Jeff (20:35.341)
Yeah, I don't know, it's interesting, I agree.

Tom Anderson (20:36.583)
I don't know. It's like the Neo runs on an A18. 18? 17? I can't remember what it is. And it's like, wonder if anybody could hack the studio display to run something. See, back in the old days, before everything was so locked down and cryptographically signed and all that stuff, somebody would have done that. I guess they could jailbreak it maybe to do that. But anyhow.

Jeff (20:40.206)
Yes.

Jeff (20:49.263)
You probably could.

Jeff (20:55.809)
Right.

Yeah, I'm sure it's possible whether or not they want to, you know, who knows, but yeah, that is possible. So anyway, it works out pretty well. By the way, not to get too wild, but let's jump into one other little thing. You, and we may even have talked about this in the last episode, but your school was subject to a little hack, wasn't it? Not just your school.

Anybody that was using what is the name of the software again?

Tom Anderson (21:33.747)
Uh, canvas. Oh, people always get confused with Canva too. Like I saw a bunch of people on social. I use Canva. Did I get hacked? It's not the same.

Jeff (21:34.955)
can this.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, Canvas, right, which is what a lot of schools are using instead of Blackboard, which you used for a while too, which is God forsaken piece of software. Blackboard was the worst, you know. But anyway, you were were part of that hack. And interestingly, and this is kind of strange and you wonder what kind of problems it's going to cause.

Tom Anderson (21:52.835)
It really is.

year.

Jeff (22:11.536)
But the folks who do Canvas paid the ransom. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (22:17.062)
Seems so. least they came to an agreement, I think is what they said. And we're still kind of waiting to see like what the, if there's anything else to do with that. mean, there are a lot of schools, there are 9,000 schools supposedly on the list for the people who got the list. But yeah, and the timing was impeccable by the hacking group. yeah, that was.

Jeff (22:21.538)
Yeah.

Jeff (22:31.141)
Yeah.

Jeff (22:39.962)
finals week.

Tom Anderson (22:46.406)
Interesting period there for a little bit, but luckily for us it was late enough. I think it was middle of finals week for us. Um, and a lot of times they do it. They kind of wrap them up early anyway. And, uh, so I don't know.

Jeff (22:49.826)
Yeah.

Jeff (23:02.288)
And you didn't really have a lot of pertinent student information in Canvas either, right? That's on some other backend system. Okay.

Tom Anderson (23:09.99)
I'm not really sure. Like it didn't sound like it, but that someone else covers that. Uh, but I think for the most part, no. Um, but like I say, I, I'm not sure where that is, is heading, so I can't say too much about, um, yeah, but they, uh, had that happen twice, I think. Cause like there was the original announcement on, course you don't know when

Jeff (23:34.2)
Yeah, the second time.

Tom Anderson (23:37.796)
I think it was Shiny Hunters was the name of the group. they announced it right up there, you leading up into the finals and stuff. But who knows how long they'd had the data by at that point.

Jeff (23:48.133)
Well, and they had said that they had previously hacked them and then sent Canvas the information saying you need to fix these holes. it appears that Canvas sat on their hands. Like they didn't do anything to plug the holes they got told about. So these hackers went back again and exposed more data.

Tom Anderson (24:10.392)
Yeah. then they did some stuff and I don't know, it's, it's a mess. but I'd be curious to know how much they paid. Like, I always wonder, like, they always say you shouldn't do that, but.

Jeff (24:23.588)
Sometimes you have to. Yeah, right. It's either that or lose millions of, how many did you say? 9,000 campuses? Schools, yeah. Yeah, all right. And I don't know what.

Tom Anderson (24:24.134)
If you're over the barrel, I mean

Tom Anderson (24:36.55)
schools. Yeah. At least that's what was reported. But it was a lot because like if you looked on Twitter, like at the time and like the different web pages for the schools, like is, it was a lot. It's US, Europe, lot of big schools, smaller schools, middle schools, not middle schools, but middle sized schools. maybe some middle schools. I don't know if they would use that or not, but, yeah. So it's, the beauty of, SAS. Everything's in the cloud.

Jeff (24:53.263)
Yeah.

Jeff (25:03.312)
Cloud computing. Yeah. Right. And that is problematic. And those 9,000 schools represent millions and millions of dollars, I would assume, on an annual basis. So probably way, way cheaper for them to pay the ransom than it was to... So it's crazy. anyway.

Tom Anderson (25:20.678)
Yeah, I would think so.

Jeff (25:31.28)
I'm happy that you survived that. Have you started your summer semester yet?

Tom Anderson (25:37.382)
Yeah, last week.

Jeff (25:38.769)
Okay, so people back in business, getting some new M5 MacBook airs. All the other people gonna be not happy about that because they've got, what do they get it? M4's the last, nobody's gonna notice that big a difference. All right, Tom, sports history today when we're recording.

Tom Anderson (25:46.438)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (25:55.035)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (26:05.622)
on Monday will be pass sports history. Supposedly, Apple, as you all may know, currently has the corner on the MLS market and it's now free to everyone who has an Apple TV subscription. And this weekend, for the first time ever, Tom, they're shooting an entire pro sports game using a

and iPhone 17 Pro. Sports history. They've done other stuff.

Tom Anderson (26:40.42)
History is made. Now they've... What else did they do? They've done other stuff, but not, it sounds like entirely just iPhones, like they used it for certain. That's right, that's what it was.

Jeff (26:49.308)
Major League Baseball, think they were doing a couple of games, but I don't know that that was full broadcast. I think that was a little test run where they had a couple of cameras on the sidelines and they were shooting some of that. Apple also on Friday nights broadcast Major League Baseball. So, you know, they're playing with this. And who knows, maybe we'll be having those phones in F1 cars.

Tom Anderson (27:00.262)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (27:17.432)
Shine's gonna come off that for me, by the way. I'm not watching it like I was the first week or two.

I'm not really cars going in circles just do anything for me. It's fun to watch for about five minutes, but I'm not going to sit there.

Tom Anderson (27:35.8)
That echoes my experience too when I got into that a little bit some years ago.

Jeff (27:42.845)
Yeah, okay. Reminds me too of much. Yeah, it is really. Yeah, it's it's anyway, that's a very much a non sequitur. So they are recording a soccer game between I'll tell you the match today. I think it's five o'clock and it might be fun to watch. Be interesting to see. I think they're

Tom Anderson (27:46.33)
But like you said, like all of the tech around it and everything is fascinating, but it just doesn't hold me for very long.

Jeff (28:09.572)
Doing what game?

Tom Anderson (28:12.74)
the LA Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo FC, which I guess is football club. So that's what the FC is for.

Jeff (28:16.79)
Yes. OK.

Jeff (28:21.774)
So yes, FC stands for football club Tom, welcome to soccer.

Tom Anderson (28:27.398)
Well, the Washington commanders were the Washington football team there for a while after they dropped the Redskins. So, which was a really weird football team. I think the Giants used that for a while back in the 1900s sometime, early league days.

Jeff (28:32.798)
Yes. team.

Jeff (28:42.562)
Yes. So it'll be I think that's like a five o'clock Eastern time game. Not that anybody that's listening to this, you know, you will that it will be long passed by then. So it'll be interesting to see. might tune in for a couple of minutes to see what it's what it's all about. And the hope was that your vision pro would have very immersive.

you coverage of stuff like this. Vision Pro, I think is turning into Glasses or something like that at some point in time in the future. I don't think the Vision Pro is, didn't they deprecate that like they said no more a couple weeks ago?

Tom Anderson (29:26.212)
They haven't said anything. there were reports from the usual suspects, Mark Gurman, that, perhaps the vision pro itself was going to be kind of put on hold as they shift focus to the glasses, but they just released, I didn't put it in the show prep. let me grab that real quick. yeah. let's see apple.com slash newsroom. Cause it was.

Jeff (29:33.082)
Ha ha ha!

Jeff (29:40.526)
Okay.

Jeff (29:45.954)
Another movie or something, didn't they?

Jeff (29:54.864)
Look at you.

Tom Anderson (29:55.812)
It was interesting stuff.

Jeff (29:58.214)
Okay.

Tom Anderson (30:06.756)
Here we go.

Jeff (30:10.032)
Silence.

Tom Anderson (30:10.117)
So Apple unveils new accessibility features and updates with Apple Intelligence. So there's a bunch of stuff for iPhone for the voiceover magnifier and so on, but they also announced new features for controlling power wheelchairs with Apple Vision Pro. So it doesn't sound like they've totally given up on anything to me.

Jeff (30:26.984)
interesting.

Jeff (30:32.099)
Okay. All right. Fair, fair. Just not.

big. I don't know. We'll see. We shall see. There is, think, another movie that came out too. I think that was one of the things.

Tom Anderson (30:44.25)
Mm-hmm.

Oh, and they did that. Oh, what's the name of the series? Elevate. They've got an immersive series on there that it's been around for a while, but they they're, nine, 10 minutes long, maybe. And there are a lot of aerial shots over different places. And they do different cities or, you know, they did one in the remote village, I think it was Sweden, Norway someplace, but they did one for New York City. Was excellent. Like just.

Jeff (31:14.735)
Yeah. How many of those episodes have you watched?

Tom Anderson (31:17.861)
Uh, think they've got, they're up to maybe seven or eight in that particular series. Yeah. Cause they're all short. mean, they're all eight minutes right in my wheelhouse. So these are great. Uh, but no, it really. Yeah. Yeah. But really, really just well done with the footage. Um, and not all of it is, you know,

Jeff (31:22.417)
and you've watched them all. Okay. Look at you. Right. Right. Your attention span about five minutes longer than your attention span.

Tom Anderson (31:46.726)
aerial top down like they're actually scenes from the streets, you know, in the city and there are some people talking about different things and but just they're all really well done. But that one's probably one of my favorite ones so far.

Jeff (32:01.745)
Cool, cool. Time you have a new addiction, don't you?

Tom Anderson (32:07.077)
Perhaps. I think I've entered the batter's bean era of my life. Uh, so if you recall earlier this year, I subscribed to the field notes, notebooks subscription. the quarter lease, uh, which I think I've gotten two of at this point. So we've got the 1943 series, which I absolutely love that one so far. That's my favorite. Uh, and then we got the copper was the last one about the pennies, right?

Jeff (32:11.857)
Ha ha ha ha!

Jeff (32:35.217)
Yep, right, right, that was the last one that out, which you said you didn't love quite as much.

Tom Anderson (32:37.743)
Yep.

Right. mean, they're, they're fine. I mean, they're at the end of the day, they're notebooks, but, so they've put out a new series that I saw this week and I sent it to you. You've seen it too. explore America two, three packs. this is not part of the subscription, but I bought these, 15 bucks a pack. There's three in the pack. And, so they've got,

Jeff (32:43.045)
They're notebooks. Right.

Jeff (32:58.65)
No.

Jeff (33:02.362)
Yeah

Tom Anderson (33:10.703)
What do they call that there? The Explore

Jeff (33:12.293)
that two series, it's the Explore America series, right that comes in two, two different three packs. One is the Northern California three pack, which is the Big Sur Coast, Muir Woods National Monument and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I definitely will be getting my paws on those. And then there is the Triple Crown of Hiking, the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail, which my uncle

would leap over every time he crossed it because he didn't want to be that was like a superhighway in So my uncle if he ever if it ever came he didn't want to put a single foot on that on that trail so he would jump over it. Pretty funny. My uncle was a hoot. I still miss him. Been over a year but god he was a he was a some guy.

Tom Anderson (33:48.773)
You

Jeff (34:07.661)
Anyway, yeah, so those are the current ones and the plan is to do many, many more as time goes on. So that's a really, a really good one. And I'll just pitch this one as well. As it happens, I will be directing a readers theater production of play called birds of North America. And there's also a birds and trees of North America set. And I will be for my cast.

Tom Anderson (34:32.74)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff (34:37.915)
they will get a Birds of North America set for keeping notes on the show and doing that kind of stuff. Truly, truly gorgeous. I'll get Northeastern Birds for them. It really is. These guys do, Field Notes do such, such wonderful work. Like, well thought out, a lot of fun. And I'm so pleased that you, are addicted now, too.

Tom Anderson (35:06.053)
I already have more than I'll ever use because I haven't even used one whole I haven't used one single complete notebook of the 1943 series. And what really kind of got me started, obviously, we've talked about it, but I've got my son that Birds of North America series you were speaking of, I got him a couple of those for Christmas this past year. And I was like, those are kind of cool. And so that's when I jumped in not long after that. And like I said, with just the subscription, I already have

Jeff (35:08.165)
so I won't be the only one. Right, same.

Jeff (35:24.762)
huh.

Tom Anderson (35:35.685)
too many notebooks, but when I saw these, they just look so nice, the covers. And, so I was like, wow, these are really, really sweet. So I picked those up. my wife has started using the, using them too. She took a couple of the copper series that I got through the subscription and I showed her these and she'll probably take at least half of these. So yeah. So thanks, Jeff. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Jeff (35:37.361)
Mm.

Jeff (35:41.305)
Yeah, they're gorgeous.

Jeff (35:53.551)
Mmm, okay.

Jeff (36:02.619)
Yeah, you're welcome. My my pleasure. Right. It is it is absolutely free. And yes.

Tom Anderson (36:05.038)
First hit's free. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (36:12.932)
So speaking of addictions, Apple is taking a new tact to get people hooked on using the Apple Card,

Jeff (36:22.959)
Yes, heard that Tom.

Tom Anderson (36:25.188)
Mark Gurman, there's that name again, from Bloomberg. Sounds like Apple may be releasing a new promo, cash back, that would essentially offer AirPods Pro 3 to new Apple Card customers.

Jeff (36:28.326)
Who?

Jeff (36:40.209)
But what do you have to do to get those AirPods Pro 3s?

Tom Anderson (36:43.778)
Well, talking about the first hit being free, you got to do a little bit. So you're going to. According to this, cash back comes in the form of $25 a month over 10 months. So you have to stay with the apple cart at least that long, to get the cash back. so, but the, here's the hook. You have to use the apple cart at least.

Jeff (36:49.233)
Peace.

Tom Anderson (37:12.708)
10 times in a given month to qualify for that month's repay.

Jeff (37:14.993)
you

Tom Anderson (37:19.864)
I don't think I use, I'm trying to think, like, I don't think I buy, I definitely don't buy things 10 times a week, 10 times a month, maybe, but I wouldn't use the Apple card to do that. I'd use my bank card to do that.

Jeff (37:20.274)
did I say that?

Jeff (37:34.352)
Correct. Correct. Yeah.

Tom Anderson (37:36.504)
So I would say just buy the AirPods if you want some AirPods and don't, and don't fool around with this because you spend that and then all of sudden you miss a payment and then you're, you know, who knows what APR to pay that stuff off. just buy the stupid AirPods.

Jeff (37:40.465)
Right.

Jeff (37:52.027)
Right, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so Apple Card is valuable, will say, particularly when you're buying Apple products, because, yeah, same, I use mine for that, so.

Tom Anderson (38:03.018)
Mm-hmm. It's all used for basically.

Tom Anderson (38:07.94)
That's sweet zero percent.

Jeff (38:10.48)
That sweet, sweet 0%. Yeah, I do too. And you buy that stuff and it puts a fair amount of money in there. It's really kind of nice. And other piece of news, and I think with this we can close, I don't think there's, actually there's two other pieces. We kind of foresaw this, not that everybody else on the planet didn't, but.

Tom Anderson (38:11.692)
And cash back, I do use the savings account as well. I've got some, money in there, but.

Tom Anderson (38:19.481)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Anderson (38:26.316)
Okay.

Jeff (38:39.282)
Kansas City Public Schools replaced 30,000 Windows PCs and Chromebooks with... What are they doing, Tom?

Jeff (38:51.185)
Neos. and truth of the matter is, Chromebook's just running Chrome OS, is basically just Google junk. So anybody can do that on a Mac. Did I say junk? I'm sorry. I might have.

Tom Anderson (38:52.782)
about that.

Tom Anderson (39:08.548)
Maybe that's okay. call it AirPods stupid, which really wasn't like the AirPods are stupid. was insane. You know, don't be stupid just by the AirPods. Don't write.

Jeff (39:17.912)
No, the purchase plan was right. So anyway, those, know, if you're you're going to get a way better MacBook. You're sorry, you're to get a way better Chromebook out of your Mac Mac Neo than you would if you just bought one of those crappy little Chromebooks, which my wife, who's she's retiring this year, but she's a teacher. She said the kids beat the living daylights out of those things like they.

So the Mac, I mean, I'm not saying that some kid won't be able to do it, but the Mac Neo, much harder to beat up. That solid aluminum case is something else. And then finally, the Apple Sports app, as of I think the latest version now has all your World Cup games.

Tom Anderson (40:15.492)
How about that, just in time? When's that start?

Jeff (40:17.766)
Yeah, I love it. June, middle of June. 16th, 18th, 12th, something like that. think it actually might be the 12th. But yeah, so every single game you can watch and follow the whole thing, which I didn't apply for this job, but it would have been kind of fun. They were gonna pay somebody to sit and watch every single game.

which would have been kind of fun. I would have done that. I think they were gonna put them in a cube and times square though, so no thank you. That part I could have done without. Watch me scratching my butt crack as I'm watching the game.

Tom Anderson (40:54.786)
No, I can't do without that.

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (41:05.444)
And then you're like, crap, I'm not on the couch or my couch. But yeah.

Jeff (41:08.432)
Yeah, right? Yeah, I'm on the very public couch where everybody can see me. But the fact that all those, I love that. Yeah, it has.

Tom Anderson (41:13.548)
Sports apps turned out to be really great. Like, I think it's really, really nice. When it came out, it was a little bare bones at first, but they've kept adding sports and just enough features, I think, to make it worthwhile. It's nice clean interface, certainly better than the ESPN app. And live activities are nice for tracking scores during when you're busy. And yeah, it's really nice. And they show up on CarPlay now too. So that's nice when you're driving around.

Jeff (41:33.01)
I love the live activities. They've done a good job. It is, it's great, good stuff. All right, Tom, we've burned under 45 minutes. I think it is, I don't, unless you got something else you wanna do.

Tom Anderson (41:43.596)
Yep, good work.

Is it time to wrap it? Let's do it. No, like we were saying earlier, it's a little slower, kind of what about two weeks before the keynote at WWDC. So we'll have a lot more coming up, but.

Jeff (41:58.452)
Yeah, we're in that little inner interstitial phase. There ain't jack going on and nobody sneaking information out that we already haven't seen. So, but it'll be interesting to see what does come up at WWDC and we probably will have something to talk about next show.

Tom Anderson (42:02.2)
Yes.

Tom Anderson (42:17.122)
Yep. All right, wrap this up, buddy.

Jeff (42:18.174)
I so I will I will do just that. So feedback is Thomas already said feedback and basic AF show that come, you know, like us, share us, tell your friends about us. That's the best that you can do for us. We really appreciate those of you who listen and we're excited to have more people listen as time goes on. Show music, psychokinetics and Celsius seven Celsius seven.

killer in allowing us to use that. And we still think it's a good bump to our show and Randall Martin Design for all your design needs. He's the one who does our basic AF show logo. Anything else, Tom?

Tom Anderson (43:03.64)
Yes, fantastic work. Let's see, other than that, if you want to go to tomfanderson.com, you can sign up for my newsletter there. Send that out every other Thursday with more Apple stuff in it. So check that out if you would like. Other than that, thank you, sir. Appreciate that.

Jeff (43:16.466)
Cool. It's a great newsletter, by the way. And I don't say that just because Tom's looking at me. I do read it. Right, right. I'm very rich now. I've got a dollar. I've got a whole dollar.

Tom Anderson (43:23.736)
No, I pay him to say it. Not just because he's looking at me. Right.

Tom Anderson (43:32.226)
He's got that bag. So, but no, if you want to check that out, I would appreciate that too. So I think that will do it, Jeff. All right. So as he said, we do thank you so much for hanging out with us and hope you join us again in a couple of weeks and we'll see you then.

Jeff (43:39.27)
Alright, time.

Jeff (43:47.591)
See ya.