Synth [00:00:06]: It's the TEH podcast episode number 234 with Leo Notenboom of askleo.com and Gary Rosenzweig of macmost.com. This week, Apple's new Macs and Minis, perplexing conundrums with perplexity dot ai and social media misinformation. Leo [00:00:25]: Hey, Gary. So I understand that there's some new Apple stuff. Gary [00:00:31]: Yeah. It's kind of, an interesting week. This is the second time Apple has done this. Actually, I think maybe the 3rd, but this time they've, like, really upped it a notch. Instead of doing a big announcement on like one day having a keynote event, they're instead having a week of new stuff. And they've done this in the past and some of the stuff's been kinda tiny, like little updates and stuff. But this time it's big things. Certainly worthy of a big, like, announcement, but said they're spreading it out. Gary [00:00:57]: So, we are recording this now late on Tuesday. So, we don't yet know what Wednesday morning will bring, except that we absolutely do know what Wednesday morning will bring. Monday morning was a new Imacs. Tuesday morning was a new Mac mini, which is maybe the most interesting thing of the week. And then Wednesday morning will certainly be new, MacBook Pros. In addition, on Monday morning, they also released, macOS 15.1, iOS 18.1, and iPadOS 18.1, and some other operating systems as well. But the the most notable thing about that, it's a good place to start really, is, that's the first versions of those operating systems to have actual Apple Intelligence features. So Apple Intelligence has begun its rollout. Leo [00:01:49]: How intelligent is it? Gary [00:01:51]: It's pretty so it's pretty good, and it's pretty like what you would expect. I mean, obviously, Apple's not hiding anything. They've they've had betas and things, and people have been talking about it. So the first features are are basically, reading and, kind of writing features, but in terms of, like, rewriting and proofreading and things. Yeah. So you can select stuff and say, summarize this for me. There's a bunch of stuff for that. Summarize stuff as lists. Gary [00:02:18]: Summarize you know, make it you know, give me one paragraph that explains this entire article, that kind of thing. The proofreading tool is an AI proofreading tool, which is different than what Apple's had for a long time, which has been a more algorithmic proofreading tool. Right. This is you know, we'll find mistakes in your writing. And then there's the rewriting tool, which you can pick from. It just some basic things like rewrite this as friendly, rewrite this as, you know, professional, that kind of thing. And it rewrites your text for you. And it makes it available basically system wide. Gary [00:02:52]: You know, you can select the text, use the context menu or buttons, and it just changes the text right there in place. Leo [00:02:58]: I'm curious. Mhmm. So we I think we've talked about Grammarly and ProWritingAid in Leo [00:03:04]: Yeah. You have any sense of how this relates to that? Because this sounds like those tools. Gary [00:03:10]: Yeah. I mean, it's basically I don't use Grammarly or, you know, any tools like that, but my sense is that you probably don't need those anymore. It's very much like that. Okay. I do happen to know because, they also release the beta of the next version of things. Right? So the beta testers are one version ahead. And the next version, instead of just the buttons for, like, rewrite, rewrite friendly, rewrite, professional, rewrite concise, there are the 4 options. The next version actually gives you a prompt. Gary [00:03:40]: Like, you could choose those 4 options, but you could also type what you want. So you can type something like professional and concise or, you know, some other thing, like as a sonnet, and it will rewrite your your application for, job as a sonnet. Leo [00:03:56]: Professional as a pirate. Yes. Gary [00:03:58]: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So it'll do stuff like that. That's the next version. But yeah. So it's, it's a very useful tool for people. It will be one of these things where there are people that use other tools now, that will start using this. Gary [00:04:12]: There'll be some people that don't use a tool now that will start using this. And there'll be people that don't use any tool now and write horribly that continue to write horribly and not use this tool. I mean, we know that. You just have to look at Reddit and see all the spelling mistakes and think, spell check has been around since the eighties. Why are there posts every day at Reddit that are, you know, not spell check? But yeah. So we have all that stuff now. We have, like and and it's, you know, it's like in system settings now for all of these. There's Apple Intelligence. Gary [00:04:43]: You can turn it on, that kind of thing. So you've got the basics there. And the next versions of all the operating systems coming out in December will have the first image generation tools. Wow. So that will be interesting. You do have one image editing tool now. If you have Apple Intelligence on your Mac, you, now instead of having the old retouch tool, which much like the old grammar tool was algorithmic, this one's now using AI. So you can go into an image and, you know, erase your ex girlfriend from it, that kind of thing. Gary [00:05:16]: And it does it with AI in a similar way that you might, you know, feed it to, like, a, you know, another AI tool and make ask it to make changes or use Photoshop for instance. Leo [00:05:25]: Any of the several online tools and, yeah, Photoshop with its AI capabilities now too. Gary [00:05:30]: And it's, you know, it's so that's really useful. Just having it there just built in is kinda nice. There, you know, are a few other minor things, because it is a point one release. So it's not like, you know, the major stuff, but there's a few other minor things in there. One of the things I like a lot is a new, tool that, well, you can record phone calls in your iPhone, which is kinda nice. It's just built in to the, you know, the phone app. There's just you're talking to somebody. There's a button there. Gary [00:06:00]: You can hit it. And it's really smart because you hit it and say, yes. I wanna record this call. The other person hears a little, this call is now being recorded thing. Right? So you can't get away with secretly recording somebody. Leo [00:06:13]: Right. Gary [00:06:14]: And it will record it and give you a transcript. Leo [00:06:18]: Right. Gary [00:06:18]: It also takes you into the notes app. So you can basically use this, like, oh, let's say you're on an important phone call, and you say, okay. I wanna record this. I wanna make sure I get this. It takes you into the notes app. It shows it's being recorded. And now you're in the notes app, and you can actually take notes while you're talking to somebody. And then when the phone call's done or you hit stop recording, the recording's complete. Gary [00:06:41]: And then after seconds, or maybe a minute or 2 if it's long, you'll get the transcript there, which is kinda nice. And that's that's a new feature in iOS 18.1. There's, yeah. So it's, you know, things like that. It's kind of, kind of neat. Some neat things they've thrown in here. It's Apple moving away, I think, from the big annual releases because it used to be, maybe as little as like 4 or 5 years ago, that if it wasn't in the big release of the new operating system, it was not going to be added as a feature until next year. All that would happen is there would be minor changes and bug fixes until then. Gary [00:07:22]: Now you've got this thing grapples like, here's the big one, and we're gonna have more stuff in point 1 and more stuff in point 2. And I really feel there's they're setting the stage for spreading it out and not having, like, big new operating system releases every year. So Leo [00:07:38]: I wonder how much of that is related to the fact that the AI work is so massive. Yeah. And that rather trying to just bundle it up into one large release, they've decided to do it this way, which obviously, I mean, makes a whole lot of sense. Oh, Gary [00:07:50]: I think so. I think definitely. And it's there's, you know, there's annual releases had its use you know, for a while, and I I don't think it's as necessary anymore. And it's probably would end up it's to the point now where, like, the benefits of just year round coming out with new features, is better than the, you know, having this big, you know, thing where it's like we can make all these announcements and all this stuff. So, yeah, so that's just the software. The hardware stuff, because this this week's really about hardware is we got new Imac, new Imac on Monday. And the main thing is it uses the new M4 Processor. So the latest processor, but the base level of the latest processor. Gary [00:08:35]: This was to be expected. It's a nice upgrade. It, comes with a bunch of neat things. One is, an ample number of ports, and the support for 2 additional screens, which is really nice. Apple's kinda now moved with all the new models beyond the, oh, this the additional screens you can add are limited. Like, all the new models seem to support plenty of screens. Like, if you if you really want 4 or 5 screens, you know, maybe, but that's not the majority of voices. You know? It was the original machines only being able to do 1 or 2 screens that, had people, you know, worried about it. Gary [00:09:14]: But now all the new ones are like that. And 16 gigs of RAM is now Apple's standard base. Leo [00:09:21]: Good. Gary [00:09:21]: So this is, this is a big new change because 8 gigs has been the base model for a long time. But 16 gigs is now the base model on the basic Imac, the 1299 Imac that comes with 16 gigs of RAM. So so that's neat. But besides that, the imac looks the same. However, that's not true for what happened on Tuesday morning, which was the release of the new Mac mini. And just as we've talked about here and was predicted, it's a whole new, size. The Mac mini is now 5 inches by 5 inches and 2 inches high. Leo [00:09:57]: I'm looking at the pictures on apple.com. Yeah. Incredibly small. Gary [00:10:01]: Yeah. It's it's really nice. It's exactly what people were excited about. So Apple produced here, and then Apple produced a ton of ports on it. So you've got, 3 Thunderbolt ports on the back, 2 USB ports on the front, Ethernet, HDMI as well, and a headphone jack. So you have, you know, audio you don't have to use a USB port for audio out. Leo [00:10:23]: What I find fascinating about the port situation Gary [00:10:27]: Mhmm. Leo [00:10:27]: Is that, it looks like there's no, wall wart or transformer involved. You're actually plugging the line voltage directly into the box, which is great. I love it. But, usually, that implies, you know, a fair amount of circuitry to convert that into the internal voltages. Gary [00:10:49]: Yep. And, you know, the Apple TVs for a while now have, been like that. So Apple has definitely mastered that part of it, the power supply part of it, and they incorporated that into this model here. And the Mac minis too, but, you know, I I can't remember. The Mac minis, I think, originally did have, external, power converter. Right. But at some point, it moved internal. So, so they didn't wanna go back to that. Gary [00:11:14]: It's a really nice looking, you know, little computer, but it also packs a lot of power because it's got the same m 4 processors the Imac has, but also the option to go up to the m 4 pro. So you've got more cores, of every kind, CPU, GPU, neural, and all that. So that's really nice. That makes it takes up to more, you know, like, literally more of a pro level. Right. You could get. And the pro, if you get the, m 4 pro, the surprise is that the m 4 pro supports not Thunderbolt 4, but Thunderbolt 5. So it's, like, it's a 120 gigabits, throughput or something. Gary [00:11:55]: It's, pretty impressive. So, yeah, we have Thunderbolt 5 on those, on the pro on only the M4 Pro ones, which is nice. And the base RAM, again, is, 16 gigs of RAM, which is nice. They still on both the Imac and the Mac mini, they still offer a 256 gig storage option. That is their base model, and I have mixed feelings about this because first, I would tell anybody to not get that. At minimum, get the 5 12. You know, but just because just based on 15 years of hearing people run into trouble when they get the base amount of storage thinking I don't need it or I'll get an external drive and finding out all the problems like they actually do need it because they don't need it now, but 5 years from now, they still have that computer and they they need the storage and there's no way to upgrade. Or they find out the external drives, they look cheap. Gary [00:12:52]: They're like, Oh, I won't spend $200 more on storage because I can get like a $75 external drive. Except that $75 external drive is considerably slower, than the internal. So then they're like, well, okay. I'll get, oh, I'll get this $200 external. Well, he could have gotten, you know, an internal one for that. So I think on the one hand, it's like a device. Any normal user don't get the 5 12. Don't get the 256. Gary [00:13:17]: Get 5 12 or 1 terabyte. On the other hand, I'm still glad Apple offers it because there are some uses for it. Like for instance, if you're a school or school district buying a bunch of computers that go on the carts or sit on desks, You know, these aren't personally owned computers. They're not gonna be filled with photos and videos and apps and games and Leo [00:13:42]: All the random stuff. Yes. Gary [00:13:43]: Yeah. TV shows downloaded and all the stuff that fills up drives. Those type of computers don't really need that much because they don't, you know, they're they're meant to be basically bare bones in terms of the software. And so, you know, so Apple should be offering a 256 gig version for those. And it's not like, you know, the that's like a minor thing because school districts should be buying 100 of these. So being forced to buy the 5 buy a 5 12, gig storage when they don't need it, that's a lot of money. Also other uses, anytime it's not your computer, like, think of, like, offices that have, you know, might be buying some Imacs or Mac Minis for various different purposes where it's not the person's personal computer. They're not going to have the photos app filled with stuff. Gary [00:14:32]: They're not gonna be downloading stuff on Apple TV and all that. That, type of device need there is a good use case for it. I almost wish Apple would say, hey. The the base model is 512 gigabytes, but we do have, like, special, like, corporate and educational sales programs where they could buy a lower level of it. You know? Because sometimes I feel like people complain and say, oh, they shouldn't offer 256 gigs as the base. And I'm like, okay. Here's the deal. Pretend they don't. Gary [00:15:05]: Don't buy the $599 one. Pretend that doesn't exist. The 7991 is the base model. You know? So so there's that. But, anyway, the, the Mac Mini is really pretty cool it's a pretty cool looking device. It could support 3 screens Leo [00:15:21]: K. Gary [00:15:22]: And even the base one could support 3 screens. The the, the m four pro can support 3 6 k screens, which is Apple's, you know, biggest display Right. Which is pretty impressive to get a machine. I think it's 12 or 1399 is the m 4 pro, and it comes with, like, 16 or 24 gigs of RAM. 1399. Leo [00:15:44]: I've I've got it on my screen right now. Gary [00:15:46]: And the fact that you could run 3 6 k screens off of that Leo [00:15:51]: But I'm curious about it. Could you could you run 3 6 k screens running 3 6 k videos simultaneously? Gary [00:15:59]: Yeah. You could. I mean, that's what it's you know, that that's the throughput of all of the video is to run those 3 6 k screens at full speed. You know? So, you know, technically, you could do it. I don't know. You know, you you start editing video on a Mac mini. You know, it's probably gonna do fine. Yeah. Gary [00:16:19]: I I'm I'm often amazed, you know, because the whole debate of, like, 8 gigs of RAM is not enough, and I'm following the, you know, the threads on 8 gigs of RAM is not enough on my 8 gigs of RAM MacBook Air. And it it occurs to me. It's like I I have a unique perspective in that I've got a 64 gig Mac Studio on my desk. Right? It's got the M4 Ultra or the M1 Ultra and 64 gigs of RAM on my desk that I use for things all the time. My MacBook Air is an M2 with, the o it's a base m 2 with 8 gigs of RAM. And I don't hold back when I use the MacBook Air. Like, I don't sit and think, oh, I shouldn't launch Final Cut Pro, or, oh, I shouldn't try to do this, this, and this at the same time because I'm not on my desktop computer. I just kind of forget and I just do it. Gary [00:17:17]: And then I'm trying to think, well, okay, but has that led me into any trouble? No. No. It has hasn't. I've you know, I haven't run into any situations where it's like, oh, hey. The computer's slowing down. Oh, that's right. I'm on my little MacBook Air. That's why. Gary [00:17:31]: No. It just seems to handle what I throw at it, which makes me question why I need a 64 gigs of RAM on my Mac studio. And probably I mean, maybe if I was producing Hollywood films, you know, at 8 k, Leo [00:17:44]: the old Gary [00:17:44]: scenario pro. Yeah. Leo [00:17:45]: Makes a lot of sense for you. The it's the scenario that I used to justify putting 64 gig in my PC is, virtual machines. I don't know if you're running any virtual machines at all, but that's a great way to be able to support multiple virtual machines, even while you're doing video editing. Gary [00:18:03]: I I actually so I don't do virtual machines much. I sometimes I've just experimented with them for the sake of experimenting with them. Sure. So I'm not really doing it because, actually, Mac OS, the current version of Mac OS and the Apple silicon processors handle virtual machines really well. There's a whole bunch of stuff in there. Let them do that. Right. So there are, like, apps that are super lightweight apps that just tap into the system's ability of virtualization and just to let you, like, boot up another Mac inside a window, and or, you know, some flavor of Linux. Gary [00:18:38]: And I've experimented with that. I do, however, do something a little bit different. I use an app called Whiskey, which I believe is a wrapper kind of for using wine to wrap Windows apps, usually games. Leo [00:18:52]: Yep. Gary [00:18:53]: And so I'm not really running Windows, but I am running Windows apps using wine through whiskey to give them all the functionality that they need and allow me to play a Windows game. And, oh, my Mac Studio runs great. I I haven't tried on a Mac Book Air. It's not like it's easy to just port that whole thing over, and I I wanna play these games on the big screen. And the funny thing is I'm playing a game that on the one hand, would seem to be like, oh, that's not a good test. But on the other hand, it's actually an excellent task. Dwarf Fortress, right, that game, which is like, you know, a lot of people still think of it as a game that's ASCII characters on the screen. Right. Gary [00:19:36]: 2 d ASCII characters. The current Windows version is not 2 d ASCII characters. They've upgraded from that 19 seventies look to more of a 19 nineties tile based look. It still looks pretty primitive, but the weird thing is, of course, running under the hood, it's intensely power. Like, it's using a ton of processor power. Leo [00:19:57]: Right. Gary [00:19:57]: Because it's doing the thing where every little thing, like, including, like, a little cat running around on the screen, grazing in a field is, like, running a complex set of algorithms to determine what it does. Right. And you have, like, thousands of them happening at the same time. So it's extremely processor intensive. And I'm doing that on my Mac through wine, through whiskey. Yeah. It's a whole thing. Anyway, so, Leo [00:20:22]: so So what's coming up tomorrow? Gary [00:20:24]: Coming up tomorrow is MacBook Pros. I mean, you know, everybody knows that. So it's gonna be the, M 4 MacBook Pros. And the reason Apple probably did it this way is they already had the M 4 Processors out before, but introducing the the, the Imac with the M4 Processor made sense. So new Imac, same processor. Then they come out with the Mac Mini and say, oh, guess what? There's an M4 Pro Processor. Right? So introduction of that. And tomorrow, the MacBook Pros, they'll say, hey. Gary [00:20:51]: You've got the M4 Pro Processor and the M4 Max Processes. Leo [00:20:56]: Yep. I was wondering if that's what it Gary [00:20:58]: Yeah. So that's what they'll do. And then the question is is will they, when will they introduce a Mac Studio with an M4 Ultra? Probably not this week. It'll probably be next, you know, in the spring or something. Right. But, yeah. So tomorrow we'll get What was that? Leo [00:21:15]: For Thursday? Do you have things planned for Thursday Friday? Gary [00:21:18]: I don't think so. Every time they've done this, it's been Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with some extra maybe with something, but I I get the feeling it's just Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but who knows? We we will find out tomorrow morning because Monday Tuesday, they've said they've ended their little thing with, because they've been producing a video every morning. So they are actually doing, like, keynote events, but in 10 minute bits. So Monday Tuesday, they've said more to come. So Wednesday morning, they introduced here's the, MacBook Pro, and at the end, they say more to come than we know. And if they don't, it's like, okay. We're done. So we'll probably get no new design or anything like that. Gary [00:21:57]: We'll just get new processors. Probably the, Thunderbolt 5, ports, and we'll see if there's anything else that's cool, like a, you know, possibly, I don't know. Maybe more ports, maybe who knows? But they might throw in a little bit little some screen stuff they're always throwing in, like, oh, it goes down to less nits or more nits or whatever. There are some other footnotes. One of the interesting things, that they came out with Monday was they said, they came out with new keyboards. So the old keyboards still were, like, they were the last devices almost that Apple still had lightning ports on for charging and for connecting to your Mac if you wanted to not run them wirelessly. And people went speculating that they would upgrade to USB c on those, and they did. But, for me, an interesting thing, and the one thing I actually did order, is Apple makes 2 keyboards. Gary [00:22:59]: The regular keyboard, which just basically goes across from, you know, the caps lock to the return key, you know, a narrow keyboard. And then the and then the extended they used to call it the extended keyboard. Now they call it the keyboard with the numeric keypad. Leo [00:23:14]: Right. Gary [00:23:14]: Which has the numeric keypad on the right and a bunch of keys in the middle and arrow keys and stuff like that. The, I always use that because I've got lots of, like, macros and things that I map to those keys on the numeric keypad. So the numeric keypad for me is kinda like one of those little stream decks. It's all these extra buttons Right. That I could I could map to cool things for video editing and stuff. So I've stuck with it, but that means I haven't been able to get, well, I haven't been able I could have gotten one with a touch ID, which I really want, but I was kinda waiting for them to upgrade to USB c to get that as well. Plus, it's always bugged me that as Apple has, increased the, importance of the f n or as it's known now, the globe key, which is like a modifier key on Macs. It has a globe on it now. Gary [00:24:07]: It used to have f n on it. And in the middle, it sometimes had both. The fn key has always been on these extended keyboards in the middle section, like with the home and page up and page down. But as Apple uses it more and more, it's a very awkward spot. You've got your modifier keys at the bottom of your keyboard surrounding the space bar, and then you have this f n key in a completely awkward space. So they've moved it to the lower left hand corner, and it's been on the MacBook Pros. It's been there for years. On the smaller keyboard, it's been there for a while. Gary [00:24:42]: But on the ex this extended numeric keypad keyboard, they've kept it in this awkward spot. Well, the new one that just came out, it's got touch ID. It's got the f n key at the lower left and it's USB c sold, ordered immediately. And, I can't wait to get that. And the the main feature I want is touch ID because I switch between user accounts constantly, to do tutorials. Right. And, the you know, people most people don't notice the touch ID thing because they have an Apple Watch, and the Apple Watch will authenticate for you. So to log in to my regular account, my Apple Watch just does it because I'm wearing it and I'm logged in to my Apple Watch. Leo [00:25:24]: Right. Gary [00:25:24]: But to go to my, tutorial account, that's not the Apple ID of my Apple Watch. So I actually have to type my password in every single time. Leo [00:25:34]: Oh, how horrible. Gary [00:25:35]: I know. Well, but it's you know, I've got a fairly good password because, you know, I practice what I preach. It's not it's not dog's name. You know? It's a real password. So having touch ID like I do on my MacBook Air, and, you know, I did it's it's gonna be great. So I I can't wait to get that. That arrives the end of the week. Looking forward to that. Gary [00:25:57]: Looking forward to see if Apple announces anything else, but I doubt it. I think this will hold them, pretty good. They did announce last week, or was it 2 weeks ago? And, you know, the new iPad mini, which I'm wondering why they didn't hold that. I guess they wanted to get that out for holiday sales. I don't know. But the the new iPad mini's out, you know, and that's and I'm actually an iPad mini user. I've got the 6th generation iPad mini. I haven't jumped onto the 7th gen because, you know, 6th gen's fine. Gary [00:26:28]: I really don't use it for, like, Apple intelligence kinds of things. I mostly use it to watch videos, maybe play a few games. It's not like a machine I actually do work on. So I I need an iPad around for iPad y things, but I don't necessarily need the latest and greatest anymore. Leo [00:26:45]: Right. Right. Gary [00:26:47]: Yeah. Leo [00:26:47]: Well, I gotta say I was looking at the Mac mini. And, man, if if I were in the market, that is really, really tempting. Yeah. Just because, but of course, the only the thing I was thinking of as I was, you know, drooling over it is okay. So tomorrow there's gonna be MacBook Pros. I wonder how many people will order a Mac Mini today and then regret it tomorrow. Gary [00:27:12]: I don't know. I mean, they're they're very they're very different price levels. You know, the Mac Mini competes more with the MacBook Air in those kind of prices. The MacBook Pros, you know, a lot of people get sticker shock, when they forget things like the fact that MacBook Pros are expensive. MacBook Airs are not. Right? So you end up with this thing. It's like, oh, I'd like a MacBook Airs nice, but then when you get the MacBook Pro, and then you realize, oh, that's $1,000 more. Leo [00:27:40]: Right. Gary [00:27:41]: You know, but the same thing when Apple used to have 2 Imacs, and you'd have people that would say, oh, this is a cool looking Imac, you know, something like the base level smaller screen one. Oh, but I hear they're gonna introduce, you know, the new higher level Imac and then be like, oh, it's $4,000. Yeah. Because they had, like, Intel Xeon Processors in it and all sorts of stuff. Leo [00:27:58]: All the good stuff. Gary [00:27:59]: Yeah. And it's the same thing with the MacBook Pros. There will be plenty of people who'll be like, cool. They're finally out. I can buy a new MacBook. Oh, look at that price. So the MacBook Air, what's the deal with that again? You know? They'll they'll go back to Apple will probably sell a lot of MacBook Airs tomorrow after people see the MacBook Pro realize that they can't afford it. And they probably should have bought a MacBook Air when they, you know, the last ones came out anyway. Leo [00:28:20]: Right. Interesting. Gary [00:28:22]: Yeah. So I did comment on social media today. You know, this is the first time in a while where every single Mac model that's current production, I I want. Like, I don't need them, but I want them. Leo [00:28:37]: Right. I know the format. Gary [00:28:38]: Previously, there's been ones that are like, oh, wow. Yeah. The Imac looks so cool. I would I wish I had a use for it. I'd buy it. But then the Mac mini is like, well, I've got a Mac studio, so why would I want a Mac mini? Like, I don't want it. But now it's like, oh, the Mac mini is so cool. It's so small. Gary [00:28:54]: Neat. I I actually want it now even though I do have a Mac Studio, but I have no need for it. I won't be buying anything. But it's like, yeah. That's true of everything from the Mac Mini, all the other Macs, the MacBooks, all the way to the Mac Pro. It's like, I want them all. They've reached our check marks in that column. Honestly, that's Leo [00:29:15]: just that's just our lot in life given what we do. We are always going to be encountering wonderful products that we would love to have that we are lusting after, that there's absolutely no way we could justify buying. Gary [00:29:30]: Yeah. I mean, how many how many do I need? It's like Yep. Yeah. So you know? But, Leo [00:29:37]: here we go. So what Good couple of days for you then. That's cool. Gary [00:29:40]: Yeah. Leo [00:29:41]: So, switching topics, but not really since AI is such a common thread these days. I wanted to get your your, your reaction to this because over the last, I'll just say couple of weeks, I have been using perplexity dotai. Essentially, I'm reluctant to even call it a search engine anymore. It's more of, I guess, an answer engine. Mhmm. The bottom line is I'm throwing all sorts of just random stuff at perplexity. And it's figuring it out and actually giving me incredibly useful information the first time out. I've been asking it to, interpret, error messages. Leo [00:30:25]: I've been asking it to, give me steps to do certain things, and it just does. I've been asking it, you know, is this this and this a thing possible? And it says, yes, it is. And here's how you do it, which is great. Wonderful. Except, am I shooting myself in the foot? Because, perplexity, along with others, I mean, this is not necessarily a utopic, but, perplexity is making it very, very lucrative. You know, where do they get their answers from? Well, from sites like yours and mine Yeah. And Reddit and, of course, all sorts of other places. But I'm I'm I I in part of me feels guilty because I'm not clicking through to the sites that are actually producing the, the information even though perplexity does a very good job including reference links. Leo [00:31:18]: So if I wanted to see where an answer came from, I could. But given that the answer is right there on the screen, and it's almost always right, why would I? And yet I understand that that is in a way harming the very same ecosystem that allows perplexity to do what it's doing. And I I just I don't know what to make of it. I feel I feel bad, and yet, I keep doing it because it's so darned efficient. I'm curious if you've had any thoughts along those lines in your in your, travels on the, on the search engines and the answer engines and such. Gary [00:31:59]: Yeah. Oh, definitely. It's something I think about a lot. You know, if, if we can get answers from AI, which is taking its information from previous human generated answers, then there'll be no new answers being created. You know? Like so at some point, like, our knowledge stops. Like, is 2024 or 2025 maybe the year that, like, everything kinda stagnates? And for the next however many years, like, our information's the same. Right? Nobody's writing new stuff. Nobody's researching new stuff. Leo [00:32:35]: Through AI. Yes. Gary [00:32:36]: Yeah. And, you know, and I think I think though that's strangely, I think it's something that's come to the surface that was before kind of unseen. Like, if you look at lots of creative endeavors, there are periods of innovation and then periods of stagnation, you know. And then a lot of times during those periods of stagnation, people think it's over. Like, this is settled. Like, I I even thinking of the times when, different sciences, over the years, there were periods of decades sometimes in different sciences where they thought we've learned every we've completed the science. Leo [00:33:12]: We're done. Gary [00:33:13]: Geology thought we're done. Right? You know, at a time before I think before plate tectonics was discovered. They were like, we're done. We know everything there is to know about rocks. And somebody was like, oh, you know, the Earth's surface may be moving. Uh-oh. So we actually only knew 1% of geology. You know, there's physics. Gary [00:33:30]: Like, there was a time, you know, before relativity when it was like, well, I think we've I think we've figured it all out. There's Barely recall Leo [00:33:40]: a patent office official saying that, they'd effectively issued the last patent because there wasn't anything more to be invented. Gary [00:33:48]: Yeah. There's stuff like that, and it's happened in creative pursuits too. I mean, if you look at, like, film, there are, like, periods where, filmmakers go through it. It's like, well, film has reached its apex. Then there's, like, 10 years of movies that aren't really bringing anything new to the table, and then a bunch of new young directors come in and start doing things that people didn't imagine. And then suddenly there's this period of innovation and things change, and then it settles down again and becomes stagnant. And I think probably other types of arts too and writing and everything, it it there are these cycles. And I'm wondering if AI, for things like writing or, you know, creating knowledge or something on the Internet, like, if it's signaling the end of a innovation that started in the late nineties with blogging, Right? And continued through to today, but has has had plenty of signs of dying off before AI, like, of stagnating. Gary [00:34:41]: Like, so many blogs, I mean, there was a period, god, around 2010, 20 to 2014 when, like, there were, like, massive blogging sites and they were coming together and merging and there's tons of money being thrown in it. And, like, journalism seemed like the future of journalism was all just gonna be these websites that were, like, blogs and stuff. And then they all kinda died out really quickly. And, you know, it it just seems like, okay. So we've gotten to a point now where we might be hitting a period of stagnation, and AI is part of that. And we don't really have too much that's innovative in terms of people creating content on the Internet. But history then points to the fact that we're wrong and that maybe maybe, you know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we hit a point where AIs can't really predict, you know, like, AI is still there, but then people figure out, okay, based on that, here's, like, a whole new direction we can go that doesn't involve AI in terms of creativity. Right. Gary [00:35:46]: And so and so I don't know. I I I I I'm not all doom and gloom. Leo [00:35:51]: Right. Well, neither neither am I. Gary [00:35:52]: I Leo [00:35:53]: mean, clearly by bringing this up, I'm more like, guilt. Gary [00:35:57]: Shit. Guilt. Yes. Leo [00:35:58]: And and and like, the the way I rephrased it in my, in my notes is like a it's an existential dilemma because, you know, Ask Leo depends on people not behaving the way that I'm behaving. And, I'm just not sure what that means long term. But you're right. I mean, there there absolutely will be stair steps to the to to things progressing. But we're in the, here and now, and I wanna make sure that I'm I understand what I'm doing with full knowledge and doing the right the, quote, unquote, right thing. It's funny because the kinds of things I'm doing with perplexity Gary [00:36:34]: Mhmm. Leo [00:36:35]: You know, the the the reaction will be, well, don't use perplexity. Use traditional search engines and go to sites and so forth. The problem is where AI is really adding value is it is synthesizing way more information than I would be able to Gary [00:36:51]: you to Leo [00:36:52]: find in a search and coalescing it into a statement or into a solution, you know, just just takes all of the information all of the information, puts it in in appropriate way that I can understand what's going on. That would take me days of searching. And as a result, I'm saving oodles of time by using this instead of, doing it, you know, the old fashioned way, so to speak. But Gary [00:37:16]: Yeah. No. I I use it. I use Perplexity here and there, and I use ChatGPT and Claude as well. I mean, I find myself doing things just the other day or just the other day, just this morning. I just couldn't find the right phrase for something like, oh, there's a better way to say this. So I was Yes. I was writing something. Gary [00:37:33]: I've done that. And it's kind of a thesaurus thing, but it's not a single word. It's like, and I'm like, yeah. Okay. I could start if I'd started a Google search, I could probably, in a few minutes, figure this out, or I could just type a bunch of stuff into chat gpt. Like, just I don't even have to be very precise. Like, here's what I've said. I think there's a better way to say something similar, not sure, return, and it spat back, oh, yeah. Gary [00:37:59]: That was that was it. And I was like, that took me 15 seconds. Leo [00:38:03]: Exactly. Gary [00:38:04]: So, yeah, I think I think it's, you know, we we have to use these tools that are there. I I I don't know. It's it's good that we're thinking about it. Right? Leo [00:38:15]: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Gary [00:38:16]: We're think thinking about it all the time and thinking maybe is is this the best way to do it? What, my dream is, of course, to as I continue to produce content and, like, 4,000 transcripts worth of MacMost videos is I could train a large language model on me, produce a chatbot that is, you know, you know, Gary g p t. Gary g p t. And and then the thing would be to do is have it answer people's questions And first of all, have a little side channel where it's like, hey, answer people's questions for me. But if you have trouble, if you sense that you're not communicating well with the person, let me know what the question was. And then also have the person at the end say, hey. Was this a good answer? Give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. And then compile that information. And over time, let me know, like, what questions were you able to handle well. Gary [00:39:14]: And, like, what was your top thing that you had trouble with recently? And then I produce a completely new piece of content based on that. Right. It's the same as having an assistant. Like, if you, you know, you have that assistant go and do stuff and say, any any questions you have trouble with, let me know, and those would be good topics for videos. I I need you need, the AI to do that, also. But maybe that's circular, like, to your thing. Like, I would just be completing the AI until it got so good. It didn't need me for anything. Leo [00:39:49]: Anymore. Yep. Gary [00:39:50]: But yeah. But and and you know what? Then I'd be challenged to be like, well, what can I do that the AI AI can't do? Leo [00:39:56]: Well, the good news about our industry, of course, is that it's always growing. It's always changing. Right? Gary [00:40:01]: Mhmm. Leo [00:40:02]: The AI, for example, doesn't have a ton of content to consume about, say, of latest version of macOS or the latest, you know, piece of of Mac hardware, you're generating that content will end up feeding the AI. But for that little window, right, you are, you know, you're the expert, not the AI. Gary [00:40:23]: Yeah. Yeah. And it Leo [00:40:25]: It's I don't know. It's it's tough. And, absolutely, I use AI for a lot of different things. I the only thing I don't use it for, honestly, is, to generate text. I use it to generate images, and I use it to, help me write better text. But, you know, those are things that are transforming content that I am personally working on, as opposed to returning the information based on content. And Right. It's it's it's a challenge. Leo [00:41:00]: Anyway so perplexity. It is perplexing. Gary [00:41:06]: Yeah. Leo [00:41:07]: Now, I ran across an article actually just this morning, I think. The, the article's title is the newest let's see. This is different. They changed it. The newest AI slop on Facebook exploits suburban fear. Basically, there is are a series of images of people claiming that, quote, my neighbor threw eggs at my car because it blocked the view of his Halloween decorations. And these are pictures of a car just covered in, like, 3 or 4, 5, 6 dozen eggs Gary [00:41:45]: that have Leo [00:41:46]: been plastered on it. Here's the thing. None of it is real. The images are AI generated. And in fact, if you look at multiple images, you'll see it's often a very similar looking car, even though it's in different situation, different settings. And it is, being used by, you know, a bunch of essentially bot accounts, I guess. It's very bizarre. It's very difficult to understand. Leo [00:42:14]: But the one thing it is doing is it's acting as rage bait. And people are responding to this like nobody's business. They're either saying, how could they do this? Or couldn't the eggs have gone to a better use? Or, you know, there are people hungry, all that kind of stuff. I just found this fascinating, not for what it is, because this will happen and there will be variations on it and so forth. But what it really boils down to, and it's something that, gosh, I've been preaching to people for a long time, and I think you have too. We have to be even more skeptical in an AI based world because it is becoming more and more I don't wanna say difficult because it is absolutely possible to relatively quickly figure out that this isn't what it seems to be. But you gotta make the effort. You gotta assume of the worst, especially for things that are rage bait, things that are, that really generate an emotional response in you. Leo [00:43:23]: That's kinda like the huge flag on social media that says, you know what? If I'm feeling this strongly about something, let's make sure it's a thing first. Right? And yet in the moment, people aren't doing that. And I think that that's what, if there's one thing that people really need to become accustomed to and learn how to do better is, just be more skeptical before you throw that ranty comment on a post. Make sure that whatever you're commenting on actually happened. So I don't know. It's tough. I'm sure you've seen exactly the same kind of stuff in your travels. Gary [00:44:03]: Oh, sure. Yeah. I'm not on the 2 biggest social media networks anymore. But I am on a lot of the smaller ones. They have various degrees of like this kind of thing happening. And yeah, it's, I, I think one of the main things is I wish people would hold back with the reposting or liking of posts more. Like, we need to I mean, if you see something and it give gives you an emotional response, you don't have to hit the like button or hit the the share button. Right. Gary [00:44:41]: Like like, it's okay. Like, people are like, oh, you're telling me I have to if I see something, I need to research it and figure out if it's true. No. You don't. You could just ignore it. Like, you don't have to do any of this. Right? If you see something and you're like, I'm not sure this is true, which you should be saying a a lot of the time, you could just go and say, you know what? I don't have the time to research this. I'm not going to share it. Gary [00:45:04]: I'm not going to like it. I'm not gonna comment on it. I'm not going to perpetuate the spread of this thing. Maybe save that for the things that are, like, closest to you that maybe you know something about. Leo [00:45:18]: Right. Gary [00:45:18]: You know, that your particular expertise or, your particular hobby or whatever it is and say, I'm going to you know, my thing is this. I am I I'm passionate about, public transportation. So if somebody posts out the public transportation, then I will take the time to figure out if this is true or not and comment on or what. Leo [00:45:39]: Social issues like that. I mean Gary [00:45:40]: Yeah. Leo [00:45:41]: Honestly, if your car Gary [00:45:43]: yeah, Leo [00:45:43]: if you woke up one morning and found a couple dozen eggs on your car, absolutely post it, talk about it, do whatever. There's a, you know, if something is happening local to you, for example, this last weekend, I think it was just Sunday, there was a mudslide in Bellingham, north of here. And, you know, there's lots of interesting pictures and all sorts of commentary on it that's local, that's news, that's real. You can see it. In fact, I had a niece who literally walked over to it and took some pictures because she was nearby. Those are the kinds of things that well, yeah, of course. Talk about those all you want. Like, share, whatever it makes sense. Leo [00:46:22]: It's this stuff that, I don't know. Gary [00:46:25]: It's too easy. It's too easy to you know, maybe it should be the kind of thing where, social media networks could be more responsible by limiting the amount of interactions. Like, wouldn't it be neat if you got, you know, 5 likes a week? Leo [00:46:41]: I thought I'd go for a day, but sure. Gary [00:46:43]: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Only comment, like, once a day and, you know, that kind of thing and only share 1, you know, one thing a day or what whatever. You had a limited number and it displayed them at the top. So you really had to think. Yep. You could just be liking everything, and then it, you know, it's then sent to you all your friends. And what would Leo [00:47:01]: be so cool is that a like Gary [00:47:03]: would be Leo [00:47:03]: so much more valuable. Gary [00:47:05]: Yeah. It would be. And it and it it would create the scarcity. It would get you thinking about it. Right? Right. You know, because you have to really think, do I really wanna hit the like button because this is, like, worth something now? That kind of thing. Leo [00:47:19]: It's it's a great idea. You know what that means. Gary [00:47:21]: Yeah. It won't happen. Happen. Yeah. Well, Well, I don't know. Some of these other social media networks, you know, Blue Sky, Mastodon, you know, it sounds like the kind of thing that somebody might wanna try. Right. They but they would probably try to monetize it, though. Gary [00:47:35]: Like, that would be my fear. So I'd say, that's great, and you could buy more likes. Leo [00:47:38]: Buy more likes. Exactly. Gary [00:47:40]: And then it's like, no. Because then people are gonna be, like, throwing other money at this just to be able to get more influence. Leo [00:47:46]: Only the rich can like. Yes. Gary [00:47:47]: Only the rich can. Yeah. And it sounds like an episode of Black Mirror right there. Leo [00:47:52]: Be skeptical. Gary [00:47:53]: Yeah. Oh, and I just wanted to one last thing. I think did we talk about this last week about how, you know, archive.org, podcast, and all that? So I I so I pulled the trigger. I think last week, I left off, like, I wasn't sure what I was gonna do. Right. I pulled the trigger on it. I my video podcast is no more. K. Gary [00:48:15]: K. So, you know, just a quick recap. Since, 2007, MacMost had a video podcast feed. Matter of fact, that was its main distribution channel originally. That's become less and less important in the you know, with YouTube becoming bigger. Right. My site, my email newsletter, and all of that, only a few hundred people were getting my video podcast feed. Most of those were probably people not watching it. Gary [00:48:39]: It was just getting automatically download because that's what podcast apps do. Mhmm. I it didn't cost me much of anything because I just hosted all the videos at archive.org. I was uploading them anyway for posterity, so I just linked the podcast feed to the video at archive.org. Archive.org went down, of course, and it still is down in some ways for this. Yeah. I tried to log in. Leo [00:49:05]: I couldn't log in. Gary [00:49:06]: Yeah. You can't log in, so I can't upload new ones. I could link to old ones. They they work if, you know, they but I couldn't upload the new videos, so there was no way to actually include those. I tried giving them to Amazon, and AWS thinking, well, that's gotta be one of the cheapest ways. An an Amazon s three bucket has to be one of the cheapest ways, and it still was gonna cost 100 of dollars. Leo [00:49:28]: Yeah. Amazon's not that cheap. Anything that has a, an Internet facing, URL accessible solution is not Gary [00:49:36]: gonna be Yeah. So when I I I I think I could maybe cut that considerably by going somewhere else, but then it gets hard to find something that doesn't in a way that works for podcasts. So it was proving to be difficult. I'm like, how many people actually, use the podcast feed and how many need to use it? Because nobody needs to use it anymore. You know, the videos are if you want to watch the videos ad free, they're at my site ad free. If you wanna watch them in YouTube, you can watch them in YouTube. YouTube 6 ads on them. So I was like, this is becoming a lot of trouble, and we're talking, like, 300 subscribers, and a fraction of those are actually real subscribers. Leo [00:50:16]: Hang attention. Gary [00:50:17]: When I'm looking at YouTube is 400,000 subscribers, and my newsletter is 35,000 subscribers. So spending all this time trying to figure this out for 300, probably more like 30, is like, this is ridiculous. So I replaced first, I tried to set the feed up with no video, and the podcast apps were like, oh, with the, no video, no post. Right? It was like empty feed. So then I made a video that's 2 seconds long that just says, please watch the video at macmost.com and just made that video for every every single post. Right. But, strangely, I got several, I did hear from 4 people at this point. 3 out of the 4 were saying that they only got the first two seconds of the video. Gary [00:51:05]: And I was like, no. That's not the first two seconds. The the the 2 seconds, it says at the bottom in big white letters, Go to the site. This isn't a video. And in the description too, I say, Go to the website. So probably pretty soon I mean, I've got the feed up there, but I think people are having trouble with it. I think some of the podcast apps are like, hey. This video is the same video for everyone, so it's not showing people the new episodes. Gary [00:51:32]: Right. Like, it might be using the episode, like, the the URL for the media as the identifier. Leo [00:51:39]: Oh, right. Yeah. Gary [00:51:40]: It's the same. It's, like, confused. Anyway, so I'm probably just gonna totally kill it. It's a shame, but it's also not a shame. I mean, it wasn't doing anything for me, for a long time, and it also had the problem, or it had the benefit for a long time of being a discoverability thing. Somebody would go to Apple's Itunes app and look at podcasts and say, what podcasts are there? And, that they find MacMost, and that's how they would discover MacMost. But when Apple moved from Itunes to a podcast app, they ignored video podcasts. And suddenly there wasn't a separate section for them. Leo [00:52:23]: Right. Gary [00:52:24]: They were with the audio podcasts. But being video podcasts and so much larger and difficult you can't watch them like if you're doing headphones on a bus or whatever. They they just basically fell out of the top 100 or 200 for any category. So there's no discoverability. The only way to know that MacMost was a podcast was to search for MacMost, which is kinda defeats the point. Yep. Anyway, it's interesting. I've had a few people say they're just what I said. Gary [00:52:50]: I've heard from 4 people at this point. Leo [00:52:52]: That's a year. That's that's, you know, pretty significant. Gary [00:52:57]: Yeah. I know. It's, and it's a shame. It's a shame. I did actually test out did I mention last week I tested out using, Claude to take the transcript of the MacMost videos? So I had the transcript. I took the transcript. I gave it to Claude. I gave it a long prompt explaining that I want this to be an audio podcast, meaning that things could not be seen on the screen. Gary [00:53:23]: So you may need to expand on what I'm saying to describe what's on the screen because you can't see it and make it into an audio podcast as a single person audio podcast. No. You know, not 2 people. And Claude produced an example that was good. I then took it to 11 Labs, took the voice I made, so the pro level voice that's Gary and had Gary read it into an audio file. And I was like, this could be the podcast. It's like an audio version of my video podcast. Right. Gary [00:53:57]: It worked. It it was great. I was all ready to go, and then I realized, to do this for real, I probably should read the transcript first before the Lemo Lab speaks it. Leo [00:54:08]: Yep. Gary [00:54:09]: And then I should probably listen to it afterwards to make sure it doesn't mispronounce some technical term Yep. And then make it make me sound stupid. And then I realized I'm already spending way more time per episode than I was doing before. Leo [00:54:23]: You're just telling work. Yes. Gary [00:54:25]: No. No. Thanks. So, anyway, there we go. Leo [00:54:28]: So ain't it cool? Rivals. Have you heard of or seen rivals? Gary [00:54:35]: No. I have not. Leo [00:54:37]: But rivals is a series. I think, yes, it they've had once, one season so far. It's all I think on Hulu. And there are, there's no decision on a season 2, but there's a lot of of, commentary that they better do one. Basically, it is I don't know, just for rich folk in the UK in the 19 eighties. The reason we started watching it is because David Tennant is in it, David Tennant, of course, being one of the doctor Who's. And, it's turning out to be a guilty pleasure. It is not necessarily, what I would call, Emmy, BAFTA, Oscar worthy, stuff, but it is very well done to be sure. Leo [00:55:26]: It's just, you know, the kind of of rich person scandal stuff that you would expect in the UK in the 19 eighties. Anyway, we're just having fun with it. Didn't necessarily expect to. It was one of those cases where we, you know, okay. This has got David Tennant in it. Let's watch an episode and see if we like it, and now we're, like, 3 up 3 or 4 episodes in. Gary [00:55:46]: Interesting. Rivals. Yeah. My ain't it cool for the week is, you know, if we had been doing this podcast for 25 years, 25 years ago, we probably would have been talking about the tipping point Leo [00:55:58]: Yes. Gary [00:55:58]: Which, of course, is a famous book by Malcolm Gladwell. And, you know, he has written other books and done a lot of podcasts since. It's basically about sociology. He modernized, sociologies for nonsociologists, studies and interesting things about how people think and work in large groups. So he basically, came out with a sequel to the tipping point 25 years later called revenge of the tipping point. And, you know, most of his books have actually pretty much been sequels to the Tipping Point. I think he said he I heard somewhere that he started out, trying to update Tipping Point for a 25th anniversary, and then came across all this new stuff and decided to write a whole new book. So we called it revenge of the tipping point. Gary [00:56:40]: It deals with some of the same stuff, interesting studies going back to the idea that, you know, a certain certain phenomenon happen when you get enough people, agreeing or disagreeing in some way, and it's fascinating to hear, these different studies and different things that have happened over time, and, his research into connecting things that seem to have very little to do with each other, at first. Like, I think a big theme running through is the whole opioid epidemic in the United States. Mhmm. And then connecting that to things like, you know, white flight, teen suicide, and, cheetahs, the survival of cheetahs, and things like that, that seem kinda disconnected, but actually, have some things in common that could be brought together to develop these kinds of rules. And I think a lot of the stuff from his original tipping point book, like some of the actual facts in it have been disputed since then. Yes. And I've always hated the talk like that because I think the whole general gist of the tipping point is something that was very important. And to nitpick at, like, oh, well, technically, this thing, there was another study and blah blah blah. Gary [00:57:59]: It's like, yeah. But it got us to start thinking about things differently. Leo [00:58:04]: Right. Gary [00:58:04]: And this kinda continues that. It adds actually new things to it, like something called the overstory, which was, interesting because it's like he looks into things like, there was an epidemic of bank robberies, and there's an epidemic of, Medicare fraud. But the bank robberies mostly happened in Los Angeles, and the Medicare fraud mostly happened in Miami. Why? Because there's no difference in banks throughout the United States and there's no difference in Medicare throughout the United States. Why were these two places, like, basically places places where epidemics sprung up with huge numbers? And he kind of investigates that and ties that into some of these old things. Anyway, good read. I love these kinds of books. I love hearing about these studies and interesting facts and stuff like that. Leo [00:58:53]: Cool. Yep. Self promotion. So this week, I'm gonna do something a little bit different. There's an article that I posted called Ask Leo and Facebook. It actually didn't go out in my newsletter, although I did talk about it in the newsletter and it didn't go out in its normal, new article notifications. Basically, Facebook annoyed me one too many times. I mean, I've kind of been here before. Leo [00:59:21]: The big issue is that, I started having multiple cases of perfectly legitimate posts being, taken down for some sort of policy violation where it was very clear there was no policy violation. It's basically Facebook's AI run amok. And I'm just getting tired of it. That coupled with the fact that, you know, I've got, I don't know, 10,000 people who have liked the page, and any individual post is gonna be seen by about 1% of them. It just doesn't make any sense. Gary [00:59:54]: Yes. Leo [00:59:55]: So, I'm pulling back from Facebook's again. I've done like I said, I've been here before, but hopefully I assume this time it's gonna stick a little bit longer. What's gonna happen is, you know, I'm still gonna maintain a Facebook page, and I'm still going to be posting things there automatically. So if I've got like, when I publish a new post on Ask Leo, it gets automatically picked up and posted to Facebook. That's gonna continue. When I post something new, it's also now going to go out to a few other social medias that I'm going to try. For example, some things will go out to TikTok. Some things will go to threads. Leo [01:00:37]: Some things will go to Mastodon. Some things will go to Instagram. There's probably 1 or 2 that I'm missing. Bottom line is that for a while, at least, I'm going to be spreading some of my content a little bit wider to see if any of it actually engages on these platforms. The other thing you may have noticed, and this is kind of a sneak peek for podcast listeners, because I haven't mentioned it to the regular audience yet, is that, I have set up a second YouTube channel. YouTube Ask Leo Shorts. And, I've been playing with a tool that lets me make actually very nice YouTube Shorts out of my existing videos. Okay. Leo [01:01:22]: It automatically uses of course, it uses AI. But it's, it does a really nice job of, you know, isolating me on the screen and what I'm talking about and so forth. Anyway, I've been posting those not only to YouTube shorts, but that's where a lot of the TikTok content is coming from. Anyway, that's going out everywhere. So that's something that people may be interested in. But be aware, if you're trying to reach me on Facebook, I'm probably not gonna see it. If you wanna reach me, the best way is askleo.com, and the best way to stay in contact with all of it is to subscribe to my newsletter. But, but, yeah, I'm playing with it. Leo [01:02:00]: Anyway, so there's a link to the, article where I talk about all this, and that article includes all the links to all the socials that I'm experimenting with. Cool. Gary [01:02:11]: Great. And I will just plug my video on, macOS Sequoia 15.1, what's new there. I've got a video on that. Leo [01:02:21]: Excellent. Excellent. Alright. Well, I think once again, we've done it again. We're we're done for another week. As always, thank you everybody for listening, and we will see you here again real soon. Take care, everyone. Bye bye. Gary [01:02:37]: Bye. Synth [01:02:37]: The show notes for this week are at tehpodcastdot com/teh234. If you have a comment or question for us, be sure to leave it on the show notes page. The TEH podcast is hosted by Leo Notenboom of askleo.com and Gary Rosenzweig of macmost.com and edited by Connie Delaney. I'm your synthetic announcer, Adam, from 11 labs.com. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you here real soon.