MacBook Air Redesign, Spotify Exclusive Podcasts, and MagSafe Accessories

**Apple's Struggles with App Store Security, Hiring Practices, and More: A Deep Dive**

In recent weeks, Apple has found itself at the center of several high-profile discussions, ranging from its hiring practices to its efforts to secure the App Store. These topics have sparked intense debates among tech enthusiasts, developers, and even普通 users. Here's a closer look at some of the key points that have emerged.

---

### **Epic Games vs Apple Court Case Reveals App Review Process**

As the Epic Games v. Apple court case continues, new details about Apple's App Store review process have come to light. One of the most fascinating revelations was a photo of an "app reviewer" setup, which included an impressive array of devices: an iMac, MacBook Pro with external display, Apple TV, iPad with Touch ID, iPad mini, and multiple iPhones. This setup highlights the immense responsibility of App Store reviewers, who must test apps across all Apple devices to ensure they meet the company's strict guidelines.

The numbers are staggering: in 2020 alone, Apple deactivated 244 million customer accounts for inappropriate activity, rejected 424 million attempted account creations, and terminated 470,000 developer accounts. These figures underscore the massive effort required to keep the App Store safe. However, critics argue that despite these efforts, scam apps still slip through, raising questions about Apple's ability to achieve a near-perfect efficiency rate.

---

### **Apple’s Hiring Misstep: Antonio Garcia Martinez**

Another headline-grabbing story emerged when Apple hired Antonio Garcia Martinez, author of *Chaos Monkeys*, who had previously made disparaging comments about women in his book. After an internal petition circulated among employees protesting his hiring, Apple announced that Garcia Martinez had been terminated just 48 hours later. This incident raises questions about the rigor of Apple's hiring process and its commitment to fostering a inclusive workplace culture.

The situation highlights the challenges companies face when balancing their values with the need to attract top talent. While it’s unclear whether Garcia Martinez's past comments were known during the hiring process, his firing suggests that Apple takes employee concerns seriously.

---

### **MagSafe Accessories: A Game-Changer for Wireless Charging**

On a more positive note, MagSafe-compatible accessories have continued to impress users. The Belkin 3-in-1 MagSafe charger has become a favorite among iPhone users, offering a sleek and efficient way to charge the phone wirelessly. Similarly, third-party products like the Moment Car Vent Mount and Car and Driver's MagSafe adapter have shown how versatile and innovative this technology can be.

One user shared their experience with the Car and Driver MagSafe adapter, praising its strong magnet and adjustable angle, which makes it ideal for car use. While some initial concerns about damage to car vents exist, many users report a seamless experience. As more developers create MagSafe-compatible products, we can expect even more creative solutions in the future.

---

### **Podcasting’s Future: Exclusive Content and Its Implications**

The podcasting world has seen its share of changes too, particularly with major podcasts like *Armchair Expert* moving to Spotify exclusively. While this move might benefit content creators by expanding their audience, it raises concerns about podcasting's open ecosystem. If listeners are forced to use specific apps to access certain shows, the medium risks becoming fragmented and less accessible.

For example, if someone subscribes to Apple Podcasts for one show and Spotify for another, managing subscriptions across platforms becomes cumbersome. This could deter casual listeners and harm smaller podcasts that rely on multiple platforms for exposure. As the industry evolves, it will be crucial to strike a balance between exclusivity and accessibility.

---

### **Aerial Screen Savers: A Visual Treat for Apple TV Users**

In a lighter note, Apple TV users have been treated to a visual feast with the introduction of Aerial screen savers in tvOS 15. These stunning videos of Earth from space or iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower captivate users and offer a beautiful backdrop for their Apple TVs. The feature also allows users to learn where each video was filmed, adding an educational element.

For those upgrading to the new Apple TV 4K, the enhanced resolution will undoubtedly make these screen savers even more impressive. If you haven't enabled Aerial on your current Apple TV, it's a must-try feature—especially if you enjoy visually stunning experiences.

---

### **Conclusion: Balancing Innovation and Responsibility**

Apple continues to push boundaries with its products and services, but challenges like app store security, hiring practices, and podcast exclusivity remind us that no company is without flaws. As Apple navigates these complex issues, it’s important to remember the human element behind its policies—both the employees who work tirelessly to keep the App Store safe and the users who rely on these technologies daily.

Whether it's a groundbreaking feature like MagSafe or a seemingly minor detail like an app reviewer's setup, every aspect of Apple's ecosystem reflects the company's dual focus on innovation and responsibility. As we move forward, staying informed and engaged with these discussions will help us better understand the tech landscape—and perhaps even influence how companies shape their future policies.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host stepen robas and this episode is brought to you by luk back from rogba expressvpn streak and nebia and if you'd like to get an adree version of the show and support the show you can go to patreon.com appleinsider joining me this week my friend across the pond William gallager how are you William oh well you let me back in I'm trying to make it sound like it was your fault I know I know listen the the listeners cry out when you're not in the episode like a thousand voices crying all at once where is William that's what they say right so just unpicking the Star Wars reference I was genuinely touched by people noticing I wasn't around last time I'm I'm very grateful for that it's very surprised but very pleased yes oh oh they are for sure and so now we get to talk about my old iPad Pro and whether or not you're going to receive it yeah I've been looking for the tracking information and there's nothing yeah listen I'm I'm very sorry William but as I went to pre-order the uh the new iPad Pro with M1 I got a pretty decent trade in value for my old iPad I'm very sorry William I didn't know I didn't know I thought a 2018 iPad Pro would be worthless now to Apple but apparently not yeah wa wait a second didn't I read on Twitter you saying you stumbled and ordered two of things and things for me I did I did it was uh it was more of a finger fumble I mean I was thinking of you as I was doing it but it was a fumble and I did I canceled that second order William I'm sorry I will send Co I will send lots of pictures and videos so you can en enjoy seeing me use the new one oh that that'll be that'll be really good yeah yeah don't hold back on that oh I'm so sorry and listen uh let me just rub it in just one one to further uh it's actually shipped the first M1 iPad Pros have shipped and uh I got the tracking number for it so those who are getting it it's coming well it's been very nice being back uh see you in a few weeks time or something maybe may maybe when the M2 iPad comes out my M1 might make it across the pond I'm not sure I know I feel like that I think the mail has stopped working during the pandemic that's why I couldn't send it to you uh maybe we'll talk about some benchmarks maybe that will help you feel better of the new M1 iPad Pro and iMac yeah cuz cuz I hear it's not that fast at all really it's fine not at all that's exactly well not not exactly because benchmarks have leaked and this typically means if you starting to see benchmarks on geekbench or other places of these new devices that reviewers most likely have them in hand and leakers like John prer and I think other sources have said embargos are probably dropping Wednesday and Thursday May 19th and 20th for the official reviews of these products so look out early next week depending on when you get this podcast if you listen to Apple podcast you might get this episode a week late who really knows but the embargos will be dropping on those days probably and these bench marks came out and they are pretty fast and so it says the M1 iPad Pro it has a metal score of 20,000 such and such lots of big numbers here but basically it's saying in graphics performance the M1 iPad Pro is 71% faster than the A2Z iPad Pros which is the next most recent model and that it is about overall 50% faster than that previous generation and again this is no surprise all know the M1 chip is great the M1 is in an iPad Pro it's going to be just as incredible performance as it has been in the mac and again we've said about this before I mean this iPad Pro with M1 is on par with these most powerful Macs that apple is selling this is why we have to have geekbench though because the human eye couldn't spot a 71% I'm going to do some side-by-side tests before my old iPad goes away especially when it comes to podcasting and exporting photos from Lightroom cuz I want to see you know how much is this faster and what I am most interested in is multitasking on this device could I have farite editing an iPad open in one window and doing other things maybe in safari in a second window and it actually be smooth and not Herky jerky so that's what I'll be testing I'll be doing a video specifically about touching on that as well so I'm I'm looking forward to uh to see it for sure I have wondered about everyone cuz I'm I'm a writer most of the time I write there's only so fast you can type really on anything so when I went to M1 for Mac Mini would I even notice the promised difference and yes even just typing I I can feel uh it's not that I feel faster it's that the old one feels slower somehow uh I feel a bit liberated in the typing so it affects everything but yeah that sort of pressor intensive stuff I'm actually going to be interested to watch those videos yeah it's going to be interesting and you know a lot of the things that were tested when the M1 first came out obviously just simple tasks like opening system preferences or opening an app is noticeably faster and you really feel it when you go back to an intel-based Mac but things like displays where if you adjust the display settings on an M1 Mac it's an immediate switch you know with the Intel era you have to wait for the screen to refresh and it would kind of take a minute but with the M1 it's kind of instant so I'm curious what it's like when the iPad is connected to an external display maybe in WWDC time we'll actually get that separate secondary display support with the iPad but curious to try it for sure isn't the truth that Intel Max were rubbish what was the matter with us how did we put it with that for so long there was no other option I mean it just had to uh had to be but but no longer that that dark that dark time is over we were young we didn't know any better that's right and now we do that's right all right well so there were some leaks released at John prer he's a prominent leaker we've talked about him many times he received some images of what appears to be a redesigned MacBook Air he explains in his front page Tech video where he kind of gets this exploded view of the laptop meaning he sees like all the parts and then he has someone Ian on Twitter he renders these images or makes a render image of those parts so you can kind of see what it looks like and so we put a link to his video and the images in show notes but this is by John proster and renders by IEM and this new Macbook Air it's actually pretty different so the differences are this new Macbook Air seems to come in multiple colors much like the new M1 iMac it comes in those seven different colors it is no longer a tapered design so where the MacBook Air it's thicker on one side down to a thin point on the other this appears to be the same thickness throughout the computer but that it is just very thin maybe even thinner than current MacBook Pros and it looks like the keyboard is white and the screen now has that white or off-white bezel similar to the new iMac as well and possibly one USBC Port so removing one of those USBC ports so we can talk about the design in general I'm curious if this is actually a MacBook Air redesign or if apple is going to bring back the standard MacBook terminology you know this was for a while Apple had MacBook Pro at the high end MacBook Air in that middle ground and then the just plain MacBook it was the 12-in computer the only one with that smaller screen screen sides it only had the one single USBC port and the headphone jack and I wonder if could this might be being that consumer level even cheaper than the MacBook Air product or is this actually a MacBook Air replacement because they just refreshed that this past fall what do you think William you thrown me there cuz I what I was wondering was kind of the other way around when I that there wasn't going to be a wedge anymore I wondered if that would make the difference between the air and the pro less pronounced because I mean with the first generation of it the the key difference with the MacBook Pro was that it had uh sufficient room to have sufficient ventilation so that it could run hotter longer and therefore was more powerful I suddenly thought that removing the wedge would improve the air but now maybe it isn't maybe it hasn't uh upped the thin end of the wedge it's lowered the thick end of it instead um I quite miss the old MacBook for it I'm not going to be in the mark of this because my heart is set on a 14-in MacBook Pro but I'm slightly tempted now you've put it this way and I am drawn to the colors and things the colors is nice you know it has like the greens and the yellows and blues and all that kind of stuff blue obviously blue everyone loves the blue blue yeah very important right it does seem on the inside if you look at these renders the keyboard is now white which if you look at a current MacBook Air MacBook Pro the keys are black so the keys have turned white which is similar to the iMac magic keyboard the new one that has come out and the bezels being white and this has been contentious among many people are white bezels better or are the black better cuz they kind of you know Fade Into the background so unsure how I feel about this yet I think once the M1 IMAX come out and people can see those it'll be easier to form an opinion on it but I don't know what do you think about the white keys and bezels I like it see it makes the whole machine seem lighter it would never have occurred to me changed the color of the keyboards I like the black ones but this yeah I suppose I got a magic keyboard in front of me in front of my Mac so it's white I'm used to it but yeah the combination of the pastel versions The Colors the white Bez a white keyboard it has a very light fresh feel so yeah aesthetically great I think but then I also like the new uh IMAX and I understand that I'm not alone in that but I'm on the way to being alone where do you stand on the IMAX uh I don't know you really have to see them in person and at least waiting for those first video reviews surely MKBHD is going to have a video I Justine The Verge so maybe seeing them in videos like that cuz Apple's product imagery you know it's hard to tell what they look like in real life from their product imagery a lot of times it's the device on a white or black background on their website or it's in the promo video which is again all white and even the product images the promotional images that they showed during the event and made available afterwards again it's hard to tell real life what it's going to be like I'm sure with any computer you use you're not looking at the bezels whether they're white or black you know I don't think white bezels is going to be exponentially more distracting than black and either way you just kind of forget about them after a while so I don't know aesthetically it does have that light Airy feeling does feel like the lower-end consumer side maybe that Apple would put it because for some reason all the pro stuff has to be dark and black so I don't know yeah I'm going to reserve judgment so I can see one of these in person or at least see the uh review videos we'll see I I would be curious if this is a MacBook and not a MacBook Air and apple actually hits a lower price point than the $9.99 maybe because they're pumping out m1's in every device they have from the MacBook Air MacBook Pro Mac Mini now the iMac now the iPad Pro maybe the M1 to produce has become cheaper and if they can make a Macbook that only has one port which is not the best but for some people it might be fine and actually hit maybe like a $8.99 or $8.49 Price Point like being well under that $1,000 price point I really think going into the new school year or for Education like that would be probably an extremely popular device at something like that price point I can't remember the last time Apple had a laptop less than $9.99 obviously education pricing you could get a MacBook Air for like $8.99 but just have the retail price under $1,000 that might be something Apple's trying to get into oh I now you've said it I hope for all of this and it's Apple they're going to disappoint me it's going to be $22,000 no we figuring this will be uh a WWDC or are they just going to slip it out subtly John proster was saying this is probably fall at the earliest maybe even later than that so all right probably not WWDC it's probably going to be a little while uh before this because again the new M1 MacBook Air was launched this past November 2020 and so that's been s months 6 months that it's really been available so it would seem strange I guess to redesign the MacBook Air so quickly that's why I'm wondering if it will be just be a different titled computer like the plain old MacBook but but we'll see we're so far through the 2-year transition period already startlingly far through it yeah so what's left to convert yet is the Mac Pro 27in iMac yep what am I forgetting the 16-in MacBook Pro and the higher higher end 13-in or if it's redesigned possibly 14-in MacBook Pro it really looks like WWDC will see some kind of you know Pro announcement that's usually where Apple shows developers and the world their some of their pro lines so maybe we'll see the iMac Pro quote unquote or whatever that larger screen size is maybe the new laptops but surely by the Fall we'll see some more Apple silicon devices launched so we'll see could be this could be the pro level say it's tantalizing but it just occurs to me that right now yeah I'm looking forward to the new machines if I were in the market to buy now I would be really hesitant of the laptops anyway I mean I'd just run for an iMac if I was in the market for it but it's kind of an interesting time in the middle of all this transition I wasn't expecting a patch where it might not be wise to buy the latest it might be wiser to wait you that be over soon we'll be into the new bits there's always another new machine what am I talking about I do agree if you're in the market for an Apple laptop and you can wait I would not buy right now I would at the very least wait for the WWDC keynote which happens June 7th so we're really just 3 to 4 weeks away from that and if there's going to be a hardware announcement at during the conference it will be that Monday June 7th so again if you're in the market specifically for a laptop I would wait and see what Apple announces then and then make your decision again the M1 machines are incredible the ones even that were launched this past November I'm on the M1 MacBook Pro Williams now on the M1 Mac Mini I mean they're incredible machines you're not buying a bad machine you're not buying a machine that's going to be obsolete soon so they're they're great values but if you can wait I would at least hold off till that June 7th keynote okay so this announcement came out you had the article was that apple is moving documents and data to iCloud drive and so what this means is if you have an iCloud account presumably you do because you're listening to this episode you probably have an iPhone or iMac iCloud as well as having iCloud Drive which is like their folder and file storage structure Dropbox competitor all that kind of stuff they also have documents and data which certain apps many apps probably that you use save some of their information whether that's sync information or just your data you know if you use apps like writing apps like IIA writer or if you use uh pixel maters things like that a lot of these apps will save data to your iCloud account and it will be called just documents and data and it's been separ SE from the iCloud drive storage which could be your desktop your documents folder on your Mac plus other folders that you create but next year beginning in May 2022 Apple's going to merge those two so everything is then in your iCloud Drive specifically do I understand that right from your article that is honestly a very good explanation of it and I'm envious because I got really thrown writing that story being certain what was changing when and where uh it's come about because I think apple is making the last steps away from you remember when the iPhone first came out we weren't supposed to think about where our data was it was just there in the app when we wanted it and then we got the files app and now you could move things around it's slowly abandoning that siloed hidden thing and making things easier to find wherever you are and I know that's got to be a good thing I know there are reasons why it's useful but it's astounding how the more you get into iCloud the more confusing it is I actually got this mixed up between uh document and desktop which is a completely different thing Al together so I'm glad that one of them is going away and it's sorting it out yeah I know my only consternation with this is I am trying to use iCloud drive more as my main cloud storage solution I still have a DropBox account I still have a Google drive but I'm trying to use those less and less so I can stop paying for them and just use iCloud drive but when I go to my iCloud Drive either on my iPhone or my iPad or you can go on your Mac just to the iCloud Drive the root level folder it's a little unfortunate that there are so many folders created by different apps that store their stuff in iCloud so when I go to my iCloud Drive root folder I have a one writer folder which I don't use anymore buw which I don't use anymore Castro has a folder in there you got drafts home passes in there again pixel Mator in there scriptable shortcuts like all these random apps have folders in there and you can move them because if you're using those apps and they're syncing between your devices like this is what they use is these folders in the iCloud drive and so you can't delete them or move them the folders will just recreate themselves or you lose access to some of that data so while they make these changes to simplify iCloud Drive I really hope that they I don't know give us more options to clean up that root level and I I try to put everything in the desktop and documents folder so I'm only going there and I have those in the sidebar on my Mac so I don't have to look at all those other folders but I kind of wish could either hide or those other folders could be stored somewhere else that just didn't clutter up that root level does that make sense oh completely uh it's just I'm envious of you only having one documents and desktop folder because you if you ever stop iCloud or if you move machines you can end up with a new one documents and then uh suffix with the name of your new Mac and somewhere along the line I've ended up with three or four of these and I look at them and they appear to have all the same files but am I duplicating them is I've got go through I Cloud Drive and sort it out I just keep putting it off man that's that's unfortunate I have not experienced that even I mean I moved to this M1 MacBook Pro but I did not get a duplicate documents folder that's not great no I can't account for it um everything Apple support says about it is that it shouldn't have happened but it's happened multiple times to me though weirdly I'm actually I'm looking through now to try to find them and I had them on my Mac Mini my Intel uh Mac Mini and I can't see them on this one so maybe they didn't convert over and now suddenly I'm I'm missing them cuz they could have things in from pre oh it's just it's a mess isn't it's either I cat or my organization one of them is a mess well organizing files is no no small feat you know especially when you're busy working and all that in any area any kind of job you know you got to save stuff quickly and you don't have time to make organizational file structures on the Fly usually so yeah keeping keep it organized this it's tough but it's worth it this episode is brought to you by loopback listen if you do anything with audio on your Mac you have got to try loopback from Rogue amoeba so here's what loopback can do loopback is an application you run on your Mac and it allows you to take audio from whatever application you want whatever audio inputs you want and send those to any other app that you would like so for instance you're probably on a lot of Zoom calls maybe you do Skype calls and you would like to send music or audio from YouTube playing in Safari along with your microphone input to whoever's listening on the other side maybe that's through Zoom maybe that's through Skype maybe record a podcast and Zen cter or tricast lupac lets you combine an application Audio Plus microphone inputs and whatever other audio inputs you have into one virtual sound device and send that to whatever app you would like so I actually used this just the other day I was recording a podcast and I wanted to play some music so everyone that was recording on the other end could hear it and in loop back it uses this great visual interface and I can just drag my mic input block over here I dragged the music application from their library on there and say create a virtual sound device and then you can name it whatever you want I called it Mic Plus music and now that virtual sound device I can select that in any app I choose in Zoom I can select my mic input to be that virtual sound device Mic Plus music and then whenever I play music in the music app on my Mac the people on the other end of the call hear it just like I'm hearing it no no extra hardware needed you all do it right there in the loop back app with so many people working remotely via Zoom Skype FaceTime all those tools loopback has proved incredibly popular for adding audio to that call the live stream or whatever it may be and improving the sound of your own mic that's right I could do that too if you need to play a recording into Zoom at sound effects as you record a podcast loop back has you covered if you want to improve the quality of your microphone P loop back and audio hijack to do just that and listen I use audio hijack all the time when I'm podcasting I love that app loop back plus audio hijack the sky the limit with what you can do with audio on your Mac download the free trial at Roga website at maca.com insider2 that's Mac audo Mac audio.com insider2 and because you're a listener of the Apple Insider podcast you can save 21% off loop back when you buy it and you are totally going to want to buy it use the coupon code in insider2 all one word to save 21% Mac audio.com insider2 and use the coupon code Insider 21 when you check out our thanks to loopback for sponsoring this episode and this episode is also brought to you by streak as a founder or business owner you know what it's like to run your entire business from your inbox between sales recruiting fundraising emails things can get very messy quickly but streak is a CRM designed to help you stay on top of each part of your prodct process and your inbox without ever leaving Gmail streak gives you tools for Email tracking mail merges and Snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency in just a few minutes you can set up pipelines right inside your inbox to start tracking your contacts and emails through each process and listen I've used different CRM services and Lead Management Services but you're always going to have to check your email so when you have those tools right in your inbox it can help you do things faster more efficiently and you won't an important lead or email as it comes up right there in your inbox streak also helps you collaborate by sharing emails and pipelines with your team members whether you work in an office out in the field or on a remote team pipelines are completely customizable so you can track processes and details specific to your business access your pipelines on desktop or the mobile app to add and share information in meetings at job sites or however you work on the go so sign up for streak today at streak.com apppp Insider and you can get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan their most popular option that's St a.com slapp Insider for 20% off their Pro Plan streak.com slapple inssider our thanks to streak for sponsoring this episode there were some more iPhone 13 rumors we talked about that model that unbox therapy had showing a larger camera bump and a smaller Notch uh this is looking like it's also going to be slightly thicker according to some schematics seen by Mac rumors that the iPhone 13 will be slightly thicker than the current iPhone 12 and 12 Pro with that larger camera bump and you know with the whole iPad Pro being slightly thicker the 12.9 in model so you can use the old smart keyboard and now you got a slightly thicker possibly iPhone 13 that probably wouldn't fit in Prior cases I'm just waiting for hashtag thicker gate to launch that's what I said on Twitter it's going to be thicker gate I think after decades Apple has finally you realized that going for thin thin thin is a missed Financial opportunity and slightly thicker gives them all of this accessory I when was it I can't remember when Apple stopped saying that something was uh this thick and started saying it was this thin instead and you could see that was a policy decision that is right they would start saying millimeters thin in the slides and in their key yeah it's only a mile thin you know and stuff like this to have finally been driven away from this uh they're thin enough yeah aren't they I think so and again a slightly thicker I was talking to some people on Twitter battery life I'll take a slightly thicker iPhone for better battery life for sure camera improvements those are great I don't think Apple would ever go too thick you know I feel like they're they're not going to be in the danger zone of creating a a too thick phone so go ahead have will go a few millimeters give us a little more battery life maybe that would be great and maybe then more battery life would power a 120 hzz display that promotion display that has been long rumored to come to the iPhone it's on the iPad it's on the iPad pros and hopefully it will come to the iPhone 13 lineup and maybe that extra battery will help power that I can hear your eyes brightening at the thought I hear you know what I mean yeah I'm looking forward to it a lot of people many other smartphone makers lots of Android phones have 120 HZ Apple does it on the iPad Pro I think it's time I think it's time it comes to the iPhone for sure actually in all seriousness about the thickness of as you say this I've realized uh things have changed for me I used to uh I usually wear uh shirts with a shirt pocket and that's where the iPhone always went but since I've had the iPhone 12 Pro I've tended to put it in my back pocket cuz I've noticed when I lean over to get something out of the fridge and things it's heavier slightly thicker it feels more likely to come out of the top pocket and I had not thought that until you said this so no I I'm against all of this apple make it thinner come on sort it out I actually would do that too putting it in a shirt pocket and and I don't anymore cuz it it is heavy I mean it's it's not a light phone for sure but you could have something slightly thicker and and lighter but I don't think Apple's doing that either this is probably going to be thicker and heavier so got to live in that pants pocket on table apples should sell shirts that's what Apple should do Apple shirts are are we it would be really bad if we bought one don't answer that I mean I'll be real I would love to get some apple apparel I think you can only get it at The Visitor Center at the you know Apple Spaceship Campus and I think there's one other Apple Store I think in California or near there that offers merch but you can't get it anywhere else so I'd be down for a shirt want to to mention air tag one more time I thought it was interesting someone tracked a letter mailed across the UK your home country over there they put an air tag in an envelope mailed it to a friend the person sending it was in Stratford upon Avon England oh I I I know that place I've actually been there what what yes I have on my you've been there and you didn't say hello well this was a number of years ago sorry we didn't know each other then next time though I will say hello all right d yeah and he mailed his air tag to a friend near London and was actually able to track the air tag pretty much the entire Journey he set up some scripting on his Mac to screenshot the find my app every two hours or so and it's really cool we'll put a link to the blog in show notes it's at ino.com but the link is down there and you can see all the screenshots he took and he said either the mail person had an iPhone on them or wherever it was going there were multiple people with iPhones but it was able to track the air tag all the way through England uh to the recipient what is strange is once his friend got it in London the air tag was sitting on a table for multiple days and according to Apple some of the anti-stalking features and all that is that the air tag would start beeping to let you know that a foreign air tag is near you or has been near you for some amount of time and his friend actually did not receive that warning thing and the air tag did not start beeping and so this friend had an air tag next to him that was being tracked by his friend somewhere else and he was not receiving a warning so a little bit of a concern there although it is cool I guess that the guy was able to track it so there's that that is disturbing well I'm just I'm not surprised that there were a lot of iPhones in traford on because it's not the poorest part of the UK should we say gorgeous part of the country do visit if you can but yeah and even traveling I mean all the way down to London now I will say you actually had a a tip article talking about how to factory reset an air tag and I did a video on it it's on the Apple Insider YouTube channel and I missed one key piece of information that I I left it in a pinned comment so what viewers can see it there you can unpair an air tag without factory resetting it you can do that in the find my app going to the item that the air tag is tracking and there is an unpair option at the bottom so if you the owner of the air tag and a friend that you want to give it to if you want to unpair it from your account and give it to them you can do that in the find my app but if you're not near the air tag or maybe you've given it to someone else and forgot to unpair it you do have to factory reset it and as I read your article preparing to make the video I thought surely is this the the operation to factory reset an air tag of removing and replacing the battery multiple times but no sure enough that is in fact how you do it if it's unpaired within Bluetooth range fine just the normal stuff like you would with anything else outside it yes you have to go to it do feel a bit now you say it feels a bit like Alchemy isn't it you've got to do things five times or something and say somebody's name and throw salt over your shoulder and right things like that but at least you know a thief can't tiptoe up to your luggage take it out and casually resent it no but you without you noticing as some people in the YouTube channel were pointing out if someone steals a possession of yours let's say you have an air tag in your backpack or in one of those loops on the exterior side of your backpack and someone steals your item it is possible for them to factory reset that air tag and you the previous owner are no longer able to find it you know so the fact that someone can take your stuff and reset it yes I don't know what the option is there I guess there has to be some kind of factory reset ability built into the air tag but it does give thieves the ability to disable whatever air tag might be tracking your stuff yeah I didn't think about that but YouTube commenters they they'll always reveal whatever is wrong with an Apple product so also wanted to mention last thing on air tag and trackers but chipelo the one of the items that Apple actually announced in their Newsroom press release that work with the find my network is available for pre-order they'll be shipping in June the chipelo tracker is has like a black disc and it actually has a key ring hole built in so you don't have to buy another accessory to attach it to a key ring you could just put the chipo on your key ring and you're good to go but keep in mind as I was looking at at it I had planned on getting one cuz I was like oh let me try it it works with the find my network it takes advantage of all the Apple devices in the find my network the chipolo tracker it does not have a U1 chip nor does it have NFC it seems like and so you cannot do the Precision finding feature from an iPhone with a U1 chip to the chipolo tracker so you can't get that arrow on your screen and it points you in the right direction and tells you exactly how far you are away from the device you can't do that with the chipolo and without NFC it doesn't that anyone can scan it feature and get your contact info to let you know about the Lost item so while it is a great option for the F my network and you can get it instead of an air tag it does not have feature parody with air tag and it does not use that Precision tracking one chip stuff that Apple's air tag can it also actually isn't as waterproof it's water resistant it can cope with splashes but it can't stay underwater for whatever it is with the air tags a minute 30 minutes at a meter or something you can't do that but it is apparently that's a thing I mean it's cheaper it is what's what's the price on it it's the entire dollar cheaper when you're buying one it's $28 and at the moment if you buy a four pack it's $90 instead of air tags 99 but there's a thing on the side that makes it look like that's a temporary thing it's going to be $112 at some point in the future but for today it's a pixel cheaper yes gotcha well it's a little cheaper but honestly I want that NFC and the U1 chip I feel like so yeah kind of glad I went with the air teag you know you did the official air tag review on Apple inside you gave him a 4.5 do you still like him just as much as when you wrote that review yes still a new toy feel to them I I actually got to leave my house the other day under lockdown and I deliberately left uh one of my sets of keys at home so that I could track it from when I was wherever I was and it all worked perfectly well directed me right back to my own front porch so yes I had a good time with that I bought a pack of four I gave two to my wife Angela I have one of my keys and one is spare waiting for when I can actually go on holiday put it in luggage very nice and that's when I'm going to be annoying Everybody by blip blipping it every few yeah that'd be pretty funny all right well I wanted to talk about podcasting I'm not going to Bone Apple podcast again I did that on the last episode and yes Apple podcast still seems broken episodes take sometimes multiple days to hit people's apps but we won't go there just yet I did want to mention that another major podcast has gone exclusive to Spotify this is the armchair expert podcast with Dax Shepard he's the husband of Kristen Bell Dax Shepard was in the Parenthood TV show and you know pretty bigname actor his podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the industry he's got millions of listeners every month and he announced that he is taking his podcast armchair expert to Spotify exclusively and all past episodes of the podcast will not be available anywhere except in the Spotify app and that is effective July 1st so if you want to listen to that daak Shepard podcast then you have to use the Spotify app you don't have another choice and overall I find this practice this you know Joe Rogan did it first he went as a Spotify exclusive and now Dak Shepard and it seems like there's probably going to be more big names taking aside into some podcast Arena or the other some service I still feel like this is a net negative for the podcast industry when a show says you can only listen to this show in this particular app namely Spotify or if Apple does this with apple podcast if you can only listen to Apple podcast I think it's bad for podcast as a whole for instance Apple announced its Subscription Service where you can offer paid exclusive content but it could be like adree and Main podcast can be available anywhere they announced a partnership with wondery plus which is an Amazon content deal and wondery plus they're like adree and additional bonus content service will be available in apple podcast to purchase but you can also get the wondery content wherever you get Podcast if you want to get the free ad supported versions and all that you can get that anywhere same with the Apple Insider podcast you can get it in any podcast app you choose and if you want to get the ad free version you can go to patreon.com inssider and you can take that RSS fee and put it in whatever app you want but the show like armchair expert with Dak Shepard and The Joe Rogan Experience it is still free quote unquote but you have to use the Spotify app and I'm just not crazy about it because if someone switches to Spotify just for this app you know if this is your favorite podcast the armchair expert podcast you're going to go to Spotify and you're going to listen to it there but if you also want to support apple Insider or some other show in apple subscription service or you want to I don't know listen to an RSS feed from a a bonus content like patreon it's you're going to have this rub there of you know what do I do with this I want to listen to this show and that show and I just don't think people are going to use multiple podcast apps because of exclusive shows and it might actually limit The Listener pool that open podcasts have because they don't offer the same things or can offer the same things in an app like Spotify so I don't know William do you have any thoughts on this I mostly agree with you I we see it in television though shows are a bigger drawer than networks Hamilton was a massive drawer for Disney plus more than the name Disney plus was the Mandalorian and Star Wars as well as that getting a really hot show on your channel makes the channel and that's not just in streaming it's been going on since network broadcasts began even and this feels like it's trying to follow the same model if I'm an apple one subscriber I've got Apple music I'm already paying for it as part of my thing am I going to really pay another fee to listen to one show I got to admit I have never even heard of armchair expert now that you've told me about it I mean I still don't know what it's about but Dak Shephard uh you just said it Christen he's Mr Veronica Mars he's married to Veronica Mars so suddenly I'm a bit more interested and I've got until July the 1 to be hooked for it but listen to the way I said I'm never moving over not for one show so and I will say I've listened to a couple of his shows he does a good job interviewing pretty big name people in all kinds of Industries you don't have to pay for Spotify though to hear his podcast so that's spotify's argument is that you don't have to sign up for Spotify subscription service to listen to armchair expert you just have to listen in the Spotify app and the idea is they want to you know make these exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and Dak Shepard so you start using the Spotify app more and more free you're not paying for it you're just listening to those podcasts in there and if you switch all your podcast listening to Spotify then someone might ask the question well why don't I just start paying for Spotify music rather than Apple music so I can do music and podcasts all in the same place and so this is the play from Spotify it just it feels greasy to me and I understand exclusive content has been the deal with TV networks radio you know all that I totally get it HBO having The Sopranos or Game of Thrones like exclusive content it's HBO original content I totally get it but I guess for me as a podcaster who's been doing it for a long time it's a little bit sad to see a medium such as podcasting that has been so open a podcast is just an RSS feed and you can do with it whatever you want you can just download the mp3s from the RSS feed it doesn't matter how you want to listen to it and to see it go from that open great ecosystem into an increasingly closed ecosystem in this Silo of what app do I have to listen to which show in is just a little disappointing to me and and I don't know I just don't think it's on a great trajectory that's all this episode is brought to you by expressvpn listen your internet service provider whether that's Comcast AT&T I actually have Spectrum cable internet they're not making money just off that monthly subscription you pay for Internet service they're also making money from spying on your internet activity and then selling your history and data to Big tech companies listen this is why you see weird ads all over the Internet because that information no matter where you search for something look something up that traffic is sold to other tech companies so they can serve you ads and listen I want my privacy and internet browsing history to be Totally Secure that's why I use expressvpn expressvpn creates a secure tunnel between all your devices and the internet so that everything you do online is encrypted it reroutes your connection through a secure server and this blocks your internet provider from seeing everything that you do online and expressvpn uses trusted server security not only is it independently audited to confirm essential privacy protections but all data is wiped with every reboot servers never write to a hard drive minimizing data risk you can know that your data is totally safe and not saved anywhere with expressvpn and it works on all your devices your tablets Smart TVs even on some wireless routers so you know all the internet traffic in your house is going through expressvpn's secure servers I use it on my iPhone my iPad and my Mac it's so easy you just open the app tap one button and you're connected to expressvpn servers and you know all your internet traffic is safe your data is your business so protected at expressvpn.com slapple inssider Visit expressvpn.com appleinsider to get three extra months of expressvpn protection for free that's expressvpn.com slapple Insider to learn more our thanks to expressvpn and the nebia by Moen shower you've heard me talk about nebia before and I still love using it my entire family still loves using it it's an incredible way to save water and get a superior shower experience nebia started in Mexico City where water shortages were a big problem they came to Silicon Valley to raise money and none other than Apple's own CEO Tim Cook was nebba's first investor then developers from Tesla apple and NASA all came to nebba to create the shower experience that the nebia by Mo and Spa shower delivers and the mission of the company is to save water they have currently saved over 175 million gallons of water now I know the idea of replacing your showerhead might be intimidating especially if you're not super do it yourself and listen I'm not one of those people either but I was able to swap out my old shower head with the neb by moan spy shower in really 15 minutes they give you all the instructions step by step all the parts you need it was actually really simple and once you get it set up you're going to love taking a shower with the nebbi B Spa shower it atomizes the water that's the fancy word for it and it envelops you with water droplets from the shower head that's height adjustable which is super useful and I got the one with the magic wand it's like an extra attachment it attaches on this little magnetic dome in your shower and between the two of those things it really creates a spa-like experience in your shower even my kids love taking showers now because of the nebia by moan Spa shower this is nebba's most advanced and affordable shower yet starting at just $1.99 and it saves 45% of water compared to standard showerheads you can get it in four finishes I got the brush nickel finish so it's fingerprint resistant and it looks great in my bathroom against the tile and you can also get nebba's beautiful accessories to match the shower I have a shower shelf where you put the shampoos on top hang the LOF is from these little hooks it looks great in the shower and I got these little towel hooks as well that can either adhere to the wall or you can screw it in to be really secure and everything just looks great together and right now for listeners of the Apple Insider podcast you can get 10% off nebia products nebia doesn't usually do sales but they've partnered with us for a long time and they offer great deals to you guys so go to neb.com slapple Insider that's neb a.com apppp Insider take a look around and then use the coupon code Apple Insider all one word when checking out that's neb.com appleinsider for 10% off nebia products our thanks to nebia for sponsoring this episode I did want to cover this one story that came out Apple hired this person called Antonio Garcia Martinez he was hired onto the ad platform product engineering team at Apple and once he was hired on there was actually a petition started within Apple that went to Eddie Q saying that a previous book that Garcia Martinez had written the book was called chaos monkeys and he had some disparaging comments about women and some other things and so these Apple employees started this petition saying you know having this person on our our staff on our team just working at Apple is kind of against a lot of what Apple stands for and really just a day or so after petition started circulating it was announced that this person was fired from Apple so Garcia Martinez no longer works there because of that petition I thought that was so interesting and how this person went through whatever hiring process at Apple surely there was background checks done and surely looked into his past work and he was able to get through the hiring process to where he was actually on staff but then the employees actually rose up revealed this content in his previous book and then literally just in 24 to 48 hours the man is fired from Apple it's a pretty wild process and I guess brings up more questions about Apple's hiring process and how much background research they do on a person because they kind of missed this so strange always imagined that I don't know if I knew this or just but expected it that apple had incredibly rigorous hiring policies the things he were saying about women are are parent and I have to sympathy for him obviously I'm I'm interested did he leave a job to join apple and so now he's out of work and can't go back I'm concern I I realized I'm a little concerned for him and I'm a bit surprised given what he said I'm slly embarrassed to be concerned I think whenever anybody loses any job I kind of identify with that because I've had it happen U so I wish for his sake it hadn't gone through all the way I wish for everybody else's sake it hadn't either yeah and I feel like so the book that he wrote was 2016 so you're talking 5 years ago still kind of recent we can leave room if someone writes something 20 years ago and they say I was wrong then I don't sell that book anymore and apple is forthcoming with that information to the staff and to say you know we're bringing this person on staff they wrote these things in the past in case it comes out but we've You Know spoken to him about those and he's riged all that you know that's one thing but you they didn't seem to do that there was no you know forthcoming of that and the book is pretty recent this is not like an old book so I I don't know curious just about their hiring process there and if they didn't think it was going to come up or I don't know strange it speaks to a lack of due diligence because yeah it's okay you can't expect them to read every book anybody's written but to aspose as those attitudes in a book uh they're pretty you know uh well embedded in the guy and it would be hard to imagine that they weren't known by former colleagues whoever they got references from at Apple I think it just boils down to somebody made a big mistake at some point and we all do it that book was a New York Times best seller so I feel like apple would have known about that book but anyway all right I wanted to talk about magsafe just for a second I feel like one recent time we spoke William you had gotten or had purchased the Belin 3in1 mag safe charger and we don't talk about mag safe a whole lot that was kind of one of the big new features of the iPhone 12 it's been 7even eight nine months with mag safe how's been your experience with mag safe do you like that belcon thing or any other accessories unfairly still a little wary of belcon stuff because of previous problems but actually yes I like this uh very much it's amazingly satisfying putting the phone on every night it feels like you putting it on a shelf the magnet grip is so strong for it and yes I like it's the best stand I've had uh of that type I used to have one that also did my iPad and things and that was you know bigger ungainly and no mag safe but it did the iPad and this doesn't so I still have that one knocking around somewhere but for a bedside table it's so small so neat and so easy to just slip everything on uh I found I'm remembering to charge my airpods more often than I was before so in every way yes very happy with mag safe not enough that I want to go buy a MAG safe case with a wallet and whatever else there is but that stand gorgeous yeah it's nice what about you well I I'm really enjoying the Bellon stand still for charging I do have an apple magsafe wallet and it's become my primary one and I do actually enjoy using it it's nice if I'm going to you know put take the stuff out of my pockets for a second I can just put the wallet on the back of my phone and I don't have to worry about things in two different places or whatever and just knowing they're sandwiched together is fun but I've been looking for a car air conditioning vent magnet holder for the iPhone moment who makes a lot of iPhone and camera/ lens accessories for the iPhone they came out with a MAG safe car vent so I had bought that and it finally arrived at my house and also car and driver has new mag safe uh adapters too and so I tried all of them and because I was trying to find one that worked I'll put a picture of the chapter art you can see I have multiple of these car vents to trying them out but the the moment one I really like it it's got a super strong magnet mounts to the vent just fine and it's very Sleek so I like the look of it but because it's super flush like the pegs that hold the air conditioning vent are pretty deep so they go right there and then it's very flush the design of my car which is a key of Soul no I don't drive a Tesla listeners maybe one day but the air conditioning vent style it made it difficult actually to put my iPhone on there securely like it would be kind of cockeyed sometimes or the the flushness how flat it sits to the air conditioning vent limited the placement that I could have of the iPhone but the car and driver ones are kind of nice because there's a like there like a arm where you can adjust the angle which that's the other thing with the moment vent there's no angle adjustment on the the accessory the car and driver ones you could actually adjust the angle there's like a a ball joint so you can pivot and all that kind of stuff on it and because there has a increased depth because of that ball joint and then the clamp that hold the air conditioning vent it actually sticks out farther and actually helped fit mine better they have one where it's just a mount and if you want to charge it you just plug the cable in and they also sell one that is a charging mag safe pad where you can plug like a USBC Cable in the bottom and you can just slap your iPhone on there and it starts charging via mag safe right away and so that's the one I kind of landed on and honestly of all the ones that I've tried so far is pretty slick so I'll put a link in show notes to that but the the car and driver mag safe adapter is pretty sweet I've actually avoided uh that kind of vent thing because many years ago I can't remember what phone it was I managed to break one of the parts of the vent just from not very roughly uh fitting it on but apparently roughly enough but so this is secure and yet doesn't seem to damage right and think that sounds great yeah absolutely well we need to touch on Epic vers Apple the court case is still still going on they have one more week of this court case even as we record it was a 3-we court case you know there's no jury in this courtroom it's totally decided by the judge so it's a little bit different of a kind of Court situation if you're familiar with it but a couple interesting things that came out this was actually towards the end of last week I believe but there was actually a picture of a human review station for the App Store apps so this is someone who works for apple and their job is to review apps that are going into the App Store store whether they are updates or new apps and it's a picture of their setup I'll put it as the chapter art right now so you can see it really wild like the amount of devices which this totally makes sense I guess you have to test it on multiple devices and so this setup it's got an iMac a MacBook Pro with an external display an Apple TV an older iPad with Touch ID an iPad mini and then two iPhones plus another device like intense setup and just to imagine man this has got to be a tough job like I don't know anyone personally who has to be a part of the App Store review process but man like having to test across all those devices and now knowing the amount of apps that go through the document that was revealed in the court case of Epic Games vers Apple it revealed that 4.8 to 5 million apps are submitted every year and so to think about all those apps that have to be seen by every app review App Store reviewer and not only that but if this app has a compatible iPhone Apple watch iPad and Apple tv app where some apps do the app reviewer has to check it across all those devices and so again thinking about that amount of work just sheer amount of work to be done and trying to limit the amount of scams and all that for the App Store it really seems like a daunting task so I just I thought that picture was wild I'm hoping to have some automated routines to get some of the brunt work out of the way but what I noticed in that picture was there's an app p in it with a bite taken out so I think slightly posed photograph there but yes it's an array of gear everything Apple produces apart from the Apple watch I think which presumably the tester is wearing that's F I did not notice that at first that was a good catch and so there there's other things being talked about as far as again Ina purchases being able to purchase v-bucks for epic games and whether someone going through a web browser makes it more difficult to do but there was also this interesting thing where Apple released this Newsroom press release on Tuesday of this past week kind of bragging about all the things the app store has eliminated or caught to prevent scammers and how many customer accounts were rejected Because of You strange activity during the app review process basically bragging for lack of a better word about how the app store has protected iOS users and grber had an article about it I I'll put the link in show notes but some of the numbers from from Apple's Newsroom article was saying that 244 million customer accounts were deactivated for inappropriate App Store activity 424 million attempted account Creations were rejected in the calendar year 2020 and 470,000 developer accounts were terminated and these were basically scams or nefarious activity from these accounts that Apple has eliminated through its review process and its security teams and just looking at those numbers it's staggering the amount of accounts and apps and work that has to be done and again to hold such tight rain over the App Store trying to review this much stuff it just seems like almost an impossible battle I don't know yeah give up Apple just let let it all through let it we'll sort it out not saying that it'll be fine no no no no and works for Google so one of gruber's points was Apple was is basically saying in this Newsroom press release that they are 99% effective at removing scams and if the Epic V Apple court case wasn't happening right now Apple probably wouldn't have released this Newsroom press release talking about the App Store stuff and there was also developers on Twitter and on the websites kind of like surfacing scam apps to basically show look at all the stuff that Apple didn't catch and so again Apple's trying to answer that public opinion's voice but John Gruber held Apple to the idea of if you're going to say that you can protect users and that you are doing a good job of it why isn't the efficiency rate like 99.99999% you know there is still a lot of scam apps that come through for all the millions of accounts you deactivated and the hundreds of thousands of developer accounts you didn't allow to put an app in the app store Apple is still the most profitable company in the world it's still a trillion doll company what does it take then to create the kind of security and privacy that apple is touting at a rate so low that you don't see this kind of number of scam apps that developers have been surfacing in the recent future is it a money problem is it too expensive is it a Manpower problem or is just you know and these are the inner workings that is coming out in the epic games versus Apple court case so I don't know maybe in this last week as apple is trying to defend the App Store well more stuff will come out and we're obviously covering it on appleinsider.com but yeah it's just interesting anything interesting that you saw come out of the the court case these past weeks um I'm not going to say I'm avoiding the court case but I would like to say I I think actually uh what we all forget is that scammers are people too they need an income just like the rest of us and we are denying them oh the opportunity to make a decent living I think that's called a devil's advocate William no I'm not taking that okay it was a shot and the issue is with scams is because Apple takes the 30% apple is kind of complicit I mean I like for better word because they're taking the money from some of these scam apps so and sure they shut them down but if these scam apps are active for a month or two and they do Weekly subscription renewals for the users they can really milk a lot of money out of unsuspecting people so I'm not sure what needs to be done obviously it's it's a difficult problem to solve but it is still a problem I think that's the point anyway last little bit you had an article about aerial screen savers on Apple TV and it's fun I just want to say if you have an Apple TV and you don't have the aerial screen saver set up I'm not sure what doing because it is really fun doing that and you can actually find out where an aerial screen saver was captured and you have the article on telling them how to do that yeah we did it because I kept finding the captions by accident how am I doing this when I want to I can't so I studied it I looked into it also I have bought the new Apple TV 4K and uh one of the things I'm deeply looking forward to is seeing the 4K version of these screen TP cuz I've been using an Apple TV HD for 5 years now I can't remember something like that so it's quite I was excited about the new screen savers and then this was coming on as well isn't it silly screen savers that it's worth talking about but they are so well done so gorgeous just mesmerizing yeah they really are beautiful so if you have an Apple TV 4K or I think the Apple TV HD does it too as long as you have TV OS with a Seri remote you can do the aerial screen savers and they're beautiful we'll put the article in show notes from William you can find out how to do it and find out where the screen saver was taken they're pretty cool well that's the show this week thanks again to our sponsors expressvpn loopback from Rogue amiba streak and the nibia by Moen Spa shower don't forget you can get an AdFree version of the show and bonus content at patreon.com slapple Insider don't forget if you haven't yet give us a fstar rating and review in apple podcast that will greatly help out the show if you take a moment to do that you can tweet at William and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes we'd love to get your questions and thoughts we stuff we could talk about here on the podcast we'd love to hear from you and don't forget to check out The homekit Insider podcast that comes out every Monday we talk about smart home and homekit devices and the Apple Insider daily podcast you can get the Top Apple news headlines every day in just a few minutes there's links to all that in the show notes thanks so much for joining us this week we'll catch you next timewelcome to the Apple Insider podcast this is your host stepen robas and this episode is brought to you by luk back from rogba expressvpn streak and nebia and if you'd like to get an adree version of the show and support the show you can go to patreon.com appleinsider joining me this week my friend across the pond William gallager how are you William oh well you let me back in I'm trying to make it sound like it was your fault I know I know listen the the listeners cry out when you're not in the episode like a thousand voices crying all at once where is William that's what they say right so just unpicking the Star Wars reference I was genuinely touched by people noticing I wasn't around last time I'm I'm very grateful for that it's very surprised but very pleased yes oh oh they are for sure and so now we get to talk about my old iPad Pro and whether or not you're going to receive it yeah I've been looking for the tracking information and there's nothing yeah listen I'm I'm very sorry William but as I went to pre-order the uh the new iPad Pro with M1 I got a pretty decent trade in value for my old iPad I'm very sorry William I didn't know I didn't know I thought a 2018 iPad Pro would be worthless now to Apple but apparently not yeah wa wait a second didn't I read on Twitter you saying you stumbled and ordered two of things and things for me I did I did it was uh it was more of a finger fumble I mean I was thinking of you as I was doing it but it was a fumble and I did I canceled that second order William I'm sorry I will send Co I will send lots of pictures and videos so you can en enjoy seeing me use the new one oh that that'll be that'll be really good yeah yeah don't hold back on that oh I'm so sorry and listen uh let me just rub it in just one one to further uh it's actually shipped the first M1 iPad Pros have shipped and uh I got the tracking number for it so those who are getting it it's coming well it's been very nice being back uh see you in a few weeks time or something maybe may maybe when the M2 iPad comes out my M1 might make it across the pond I'm not sure I know I feel like that I think the mail has stopped working during the pandemic that's why I couldn't send it to you uh maybe we'll talk about some benchmarks maybe that will help you feel better of the new M1 iPad Pro and iMac yeah cuz cuz I hear it's not that fast at all really it's fine not at all that's exactly well not not exactly because benchmarks have leaked and this typically means if you starting to see benchmarks on geekbench or other places of these new devices that reviewers most likely have them in hand and leakers like John prer and I think other sources have said embargos are probably dropping Wednesday and Thursday May 19th and 20th for the official reviews of these products so look out early next week depending on when you get this podcast if you listen to Apple podcast you might get this episode a week late who really knows but the embargos will be dropping on those days probably and these bench marks came out and they are pretty fast and so it says the M1 iPad Pro it has a metal score of 20,000 such and such lots of big numbers here but basically it's saying in graphics performance the M1 iPad Pro is 71% faster than the A2Z iPad Pros which is the next most recent model and that it is about overall 50% faster than that previous generation and again this is no surprise all know the M1 chip is great the M1 is in an iPad Pro it's going to be just as incredible performance as it has been in the mac and again we've said about this before I mean this iPad Pro with M1 is on par with these most powerful Macs that apple is selling this is why we have to have geekbench though because the human eye couldn't spot a 71% I'm going to do some side-by-side tests before my old iPad goes away especially when it comes to podcasting and exporting photos from Lightroom cuz I want to see you know how much is this faster and what I am most interested in is multitasking on this device could I have farite editing an iPad open in one window and doing other things maybe in safari in a second window and it actually be smooth and not Herky jerky so that's what I'll be testing I'll be doing a video specifically about touching on that as well so I'm I'm looking forward to uh to see it for sure I have wondered about everyone cuz I'm I'm a writer most of the time I write there's only so fast you can type really on anything so when I went to M1 for Mac Mini would I even notice the promised difference and yes even just typing I I can feel uh it's not that I feel faster it's that the old one feels slower somehow uh I feel a bit liberated in the typing so it affects everything but yeah that sort of pressor intensive stuff I'm actually going to be interested to watch those videos yeah it's going to be interesting and you know a lot of the things that were tested when the M1 first came out obviously just simple tasks like opening system preferences or opening an app is noticeably faster and you really feel it when you go back to an intel-based Mac but things like displays where if you adjust the display settings on an M1 Mac it's an immediate switch you know with the Intel era you have to wait for the screen to refresh and it would kind of take a minute but with the M1 it's kind of instant so I'm curious what it's like when the iPad is connected to an external display maybe in WWDC time we'll actually get that separate secondary display support with the iPad but curious to try it for sure isn't the truth that Intel Max were rubbish what was the matter with us how did we put it with that for so long there was no other option I mean it just had to uh had to be but but no longer that that dark that dark time is over we were young we didn't know any better that's right and now we do that's right all right well so there were some leaks released at John prer he's a prominent leaker we've talked about him many times he received some images of what appears to be a redesigned MacBook Air he explains in his front page Tech video where he kind of gets this exploded view of the laptop meaning he sees like all the parts and then he has someone Ian on Twitter he renders these images or makes a render image of those parts so you can kind of see what it looks like and so we put a link to his video and the images in show notes but this is by John proster and renders by IEM and this new Macbook Air it's actually pretty different so the differences are this new Macbook Air seems to come in multiple colors much like the new M1 iMac it comes in those seven different colors it is no longer a tapered design so where the MacBook Air it's thicker on one side down to a thin point on the other this appears to be the same thickness throughout the computer but that it is just very thin maybe even thinner than current MacBook Pros and it looks like the keyboard is white and the screen now has that white or off-white bezel similar to the new iMac as well and possibly one USBC Port so removing one of those USBC ports so we can talk about the design in general I'm curious if this is actually a MacBook Air redesign or if apple is going to bring back the standard MacBook terminology you know this was for a while Apple had MacBook Pro at the high end MacBook Air in that middle ground and then the just plain MacBook it was the 12-in computer the only one with that smaller screen screen sides it only had the one single USBC port and the headphone jack and I wonder if could this might be being that consumer level even cheaper than the MacBook Air product or is this actually a MacBook Air replacement because they just refreshed that this past fall what do you think William you thrown me there cuz I what I was wondering was kind of the other way around when I that there wasn't going to be a wedge anymore I wondered if that would make the difference between the air and the pro less pronounced because I mean with the first generation of it the the key difference with the MacBook Pro was that it had uh sufficient room to have sufficient ventilation so that it could run hotter longer and therefore was more powerful I suddenly thought that removing the wedge would improve the air but now maybe it isn't maybe it hasn't uh upped the thin end of the wedge it's lowered the thick end of it instead um I quite miss the old MacBook for it I'm not going to be in the mark of this because my heart is set on a 14-in MacBook Pro but I'm slightly tempted now you've put it this way and I am drawn to the colors and things the colors is nice you know it has like the greens and the yellows and blues and all that kind of stuff blue obviously blue everyone loves the blue blue yeah very important right it does seem on the inside if you look at these renders the keyboard is now white which if you look at a current MacBook Air MacBook Pro the keys are black so the keys have turned white which is similar to the iMac magic keyboard the new one that has come out and the bezels being white and this has been contentious among many people are white bezels better or are the black better cuz they kind of you know Fade Into the background so unsure how I feel about this yet I think once the M1 IMAX come out and people can see those it'll be easier to form an opinion on it but I don't know what do you think about the white keys and bezels I like it see it makes the whole machine seem lighter it would never have occurred to me changed the color of the keyboards I like the black ones but this yeah I suppose I got a magic keyboard in front of me in front of my Mac so it's white I'm used to it but yeah the combination of the pastel versions The Colors the white Bez a white keyboard it has a very light fresh feel so yeah aesthetically great I think but then I also like the new uh IMAX and I understand that I'm not alone in that but I'm on the way to being alone where do you stand on the IMAX uh I don't know you really have to see them in person and at least waiting for those first video reviews surely MKBHD is going to have a video I Justine The Verge so maybe seeing them in videos like that cuz Apple's product imagery you know it's hard to tell what they look like in real life from their product imagery a lot of times it's the device on a white or black background on their website or it's in the promo video which is again all white and even the product images the promotional images that they showed during the event and made available afterwards again it's hard to tell real life what it's going to be like I'm sure with any computer you use you're not looking at the bezels whether they're white or black you know I don't think white bezels is going to be exponentially more distracting than black and either way you just kind of forget about them after a while so I don't know aesthetically it does have that light Airy feeling does feel like the lower-end consumer side maybe that Apple would put it because for some reason all the pro stuff has to be dark and black so I don't know yeah I'm going to reserve judgment so I can see one of these in person or at least see the uh review videos we'll see I I would be curious if this is a MacBook and not a MacBook Air and apple actually hits a lower price point than the $9.99 maybe because they're pumping out m1's in every device they have from the MacBook Air MacBook Pro Mac Mini now the iMac now the iPad Pro maybe the M1 to produce has become cheaper and if they can make a Macbook that only has one port which is not the best but for some people it might be fine and actually hit maybe like a $8.99 or $8.49 Price Point like being well under that $1,000 price point I really think going into the new school year or for Education like that would be probably an extremely popular device at something like that price point I can't remember the last time Apple had a laptop less than $9.99 obviously education pricing you could get a MacBook Air for like $8.99 but just have the retail price under $1,000 that might be something Apple's trying to get into oh I now you've said it I hope for all of this and it's Apple they're going to disappoint me it's going to be $22,000 no we figuring this will be uh a WWDC or are they just going to slip it out subtly John proster was saying this is probably fall at the earliest maybe even later than that so all right probably not WWDC it's probably going to be a little while uh before this because again the new M1 MacBook Air was launched this past November 2020 and so that's been s months 6 months that it's really been available so it would seem strange I guess to redesign the MacBook Air so quickly that's why I'm wondering if it will be just be a different titled computer like the plain old MacBook but but we'll see we're so far through the 2-year transition period already startlingly far through it yeah so what's left to convert yet is the Mac Pro 27in iMac yep what am I forgetting the 16-in MacBook Pro and the higher higher end 13-in or if it's redesigned possibly 14-in MacBook Pro it really looks like WWDC will see some kind of you know Pro announcement that's usually where Apple shows developers and the world their some of their pro lines so maybe we'll see the iMac Pro quote unquote or whatever that larger screen size is maybe the new laptops but surely by the Fall we'll see some more Apple silicon devices launched so we'll see could be this could be the pro level say it's tantalizing but it just occurs to me that right now yeah I'm looking forward to the new machines if I were in the market to buy now I would be really hesitant of the laptops anyway I mean I'd just run for an iMac if I was in the market for it but it's kind of an interesting time in the middle of all this transition I wasn't expecting a patch where it might not be wise to buy the latest it might be wiser to wait you that be over soon we'll be into the new bits there's always another new machine what am I talking about I do agree if you're in the market for an Apple laptop and you can wait I would not buy right now I would at the very least wait for the WWDC keynote which happens June 7th so we're really just 3 to 4 weeks away from that and if there's going to be a hardware announcement at during the conference it will be that Monday June 7th so again if you're in the market specifically for a laptop I would wait and see what Apple announces then and then make your decision again the M1 machines are incredible the ones even that were launched this past November I'm on the M1 MacBook Pro Williams now on the M1 Mac Mini I mean they're incredible machines you're not buying a bad machine you're not buying a machine that's going to be obsolete soon so they're they're great values but if you can wait I would at least hold off till that June 7th keynote okay so this announcement came out you had the article was that apple is moving documents and data to iCloud drive and so what this means is if you have an iCloud account presumably you do because you're listening to this episode you probably have an iPhone or iMac iCloud as well as having iCloud Drive which is like their folder and file storage structure Dropbox competitor all that kind of stuff they also have documents and data which certain apps many apps probably that you use save some of their information whether that's sync information or just your data you know if you use apps like writing apps like IIA writer or if you use uh pixel maters things like that a lot of these apps will save data to your iCloud account and it will be called just documents and data and it's been separ SE from the iCloud drive storage which could be your desktop your documents folder on your Mac plus other folders that you create but next year beginning in May 2022 Apple's going to merge those two so everything is then in your iCloud Drive specifically do I understand that right from your article that is honestly a very good explanation of it and I'm envious because I got really thrown writing that story being certain what was changing when and where uh it's come about because I think apple is making the last steps away from you remember when the iPhone first came out we weren't supposed to think about where our data was it was just there in the app when we wanted it and then we got the files app and now you could move things around it's slowly abandoning that siloed hidden thing and making things easier to find wherever you are and I know that's got to be a good thing I know there are reasons why it's useful but it's astounding how the more you get into iCloud the more confusing it is I actually got this mixed up between uh document and desktop which is a completely different thing Al together so I'm glad that one of them is going away and it's sorting it out yeah I know my only consternation with this is I am trying to use iCloud drive more as my main cloud storage solution I still have a DropBox account I still have a Google drive but I'm trying to use those less and less so I can stop paying for them and just use iCloud drive but when I go to my iCloud Drive either on my iPhone or my iPad or you can go on your Mac just to the iCloud Drive the root level folder it's a little unfortunate that there are so many folders created by different apps that store their stuff in iCloud so when I go to my iCloud Drive root folder I have a one writer folder which I don't use anymore buw which I don't use anymore Castro has a folder in there you got drafts home passes in there again pixel Mator in there scriptable shortcuts like all these random apps have folders in there and you can move them because if you're using those apps and they're syncing between your devices like this is what they use is these folders in the iCloud drive and so you can't delete them or move them the folders will just recreate themselves or you lose access to some of that data so while they make these changes to simplify iCloud Drive I really hope that they I don't know give us more options to clean up that root level and I I try to put everything in the desktop and documents folder so I'm only going there and I have those in the sidebar on my Mac so I don't have to look at all those other folders but I kind of wish could either hide or those other folders could be stored somewhere else that just didn't clutter up that root level does that make sense oh completely uh it's just I'm envious of you only having one documents and desktop folder because you if you ever stop iCloud or if you move machines you can end up with a new one documents and then uh suffix with the name of your new Mac and somewhere along the line I've ended up with three or four of these and I look at them and they appear to have all the same files but am I duplicating them is I've got go through I Cloud Drive and sort it out I just keep putting it off man that's that's unfortunate I have not experienced that even I mean I moved to this M1 MacBook Pro but I did not get a duplicate documents folder that's not great no I can't account for it um everything Apple support says about it is that it shouldn't have happened but it's happened multiple times to me though weirdly I'm actually I'm looking through now to try to find them and I had them on my Mac Mini my Intel uh Mac Mini and I can't see them on this one so maybe they didn't convert over and now suddenly I'm I'm missing them cuz they could have things in from pre oh it's just it's a mess isn't it's either I cat or my organization one of them is a mess well organizing files is no no small feat you know especially when you're busy working and all that in any area any kind of job you know you got to save stuff quickly and you don't have time to make organizational file structures on the Fly usually so yeah keeping keep it organized this it's tough but it's worth it this episode is brought to you by loopback listen if you do anything with audio on your Mac you have got to try loopback from Rogue amoeba so here's what loopback can do loopback is an application you run on your Mac and it allows you to take audio from whatever application you want whatever audio inputs you want and send those to any other app that you would like so for instance you're probably on a lot of Zoom calls maybe you do Skype calls and you would like to send music or audio from YouTube playing in Safari along with your microphone input to whoever's listening on the other side maybe that's through Zoom maybe that's through Skype maybe record a podcast and Zen cter or tricast lupac lets you combine an application Audio Plus microphone inputs and whatever other audio inputs you have into one virtual sound device and send that to whatever app you would like so I actually used this just the other day I was recording a podcast and I wanted to play some music so everyone that was recording on the other end could hear it and in loop back it uses this great visual interface and I can just drag my mic input block over here I dragged the music application from their library on there and say create a virtual sound device and then you can name it whatever you want I called it Mic Plus music and now that virtual sound device I can select that in any app I choose in Zoom I can select my mic input to be that virtual sound device Mic Plus music and then whenever I play music in the music app on my Mac the people on the other end of the call hear it just like I'm hearing it no no extra hardware needed you all do it right there in the loop back app with so many people working remotely via Zoom Skype FaceTime all those tools loopback has proved incredibly popular for adding audio to that call the live stream or whatever it may be and improving the sound of your own mic that's right I could do that too if you need to play a recording into Zoom at sound effects as you record a podcast loop back has you covered if you want to improve the quality of your microphone P loop back and audio hijack to do just that and listen I use audio hijack all the time when I'm podcasting I love that app loop back plus audio hijack the sky the limit with what you can do with audio on your Mac download the free trial at Roga website at maca.com insider2 that's Mac audo Mac audio.com insider2 and because you're a listener of the Apple Insider podcast you can save 21% off loop back when you buy it and you are totally going to want to buy it use the coupon code in insider2 all one word to save 21% Mac audio.com insider2 and use the coupon code Insider 21 when you check out our thanks to loopback for sponsoring this episode and this episode is also brought to you by streak as a founder or business owner you know what it's like to run your entire business from your inbox between sales recruiting fundraising emails things can get very messy quickly but streak is a CRM designed to help you stay on top of each part of your prodct process and your inbox without ever leaving Gmail streak gives you tools for Email tracking mail merges and Snippets to save time and scale up your email efficiency in just a few minutes you can set up pipelines right inside your inbox to start tracking your contacts and emails through each process and listen I've used different CRM services and Lead Management Services but you're always going to have to check your email so when you have those tools right in your inbox it can help you do things faster more efficiently and you won't an important lead or email as it comes up right there in your inbox streak also helps you collaborate by sharing emails and pipelines with your team members whether you work in an office out in the field or on a remote team pipelines are completely customizable so you can track processes and details specific to your business access your pipelines on desktop or the mobile app to add and share information in meetings at job sites or however you work on the go so sign up for streak today at streak.com apppp Insider and you can get 20% off your first year of their Pro Plan their most popular option that's St a.com slapp Insider for 20% off their Pro Plan streak.com slapple inssider our thanks to streak for sponsoring this episode there were some more iPhone 13 rumors we talked about that model that unbox therapy had showing a larger camera bump and a smaller Notch uh this is looking like it's also going to be slightly thicker according to some schematics seen by Mac rumors that the iPhone 13 will be slightly thicker than the current iPhone 12 and 12 Pro with that larger camera bump and you know with the whole iPad Pro being slightly thicker the 12.9 in model so you can use the old smart keyboard and now you got a slightly thicker possibly iPhone 13 that probably wouldn't fit in Prior cases I'm just waiting for hashtag thicker gate to launch that's what I said on Twitter it's going to be thicker gate I think after decades Apple has finally you realized that going for thin thin thin is a missed Financial opportunity and slightly thicker gives them all of this accessory I when was it I can't remember when Apple stopped saying that something was uh this thick and started saying it was this thin instead and you could see that was a policy decision that is right they would start saying millimeters thin in the slides and in their key yeah it's only a mile thin you know and stuff like this to have finally been driven away from this uh they're thin enough yeah aren't they I think so and again a slightly thicker I was talking to some people on Twitter battery life I'll take a slightly thicker iPhone for better battery life for sure camera improvements those are great I don't think Apple would ever go too thick you know I feel like they're they're not going to be in the danger zone of creating a a too thick phone so go ahead have will go a few millimeters give us a little more battery life maybe that would be great and maybe then more battery life would power a 120 hzz display that promotion display that has been long rumored to come to the iPhone it's on the iPad it's on the iPad pros and hopefully it will come to the iPhone 13 lineup and maybe that extra battery will help power that I can hear your eyes brightening at the thought I hear you know what I mean yeah I'm looking forward to it a lot of people many other smartphone makers lots of Android phones have 120 HZ Apple does it on the iPad Pro I think it's time I think it's time it comes to the iPhone for sure actually in all seriousness about the thickness of as you say this I've realized uh things have changed for me I used to uh I usually wear uh shirts with a shirt pocket and that's where the iPhone always went but since I've had the iPhone 12 Pro I've tended to put it in my back pocket cuz I've noticed when I lean over to get something out of the fridge and things it's heavier slightly thicker it feels more likely to come out of the top pocket and I had not thought that until you said this so no I I'm against all of this apple make it thinner come on sort it out I actually would do that too putting it in a shirt pocket and and I don't anymore cuz it it is heavy I mean it's it's not a light phone for sure but you could have something slightly thicker and and lighter but I don't think Apple's doing that either this is probably going to be thicker and heavier so got to live in that pants pocket on table apples should sell shirts that's what Apple should do Apple shirts are are we it would be really bad if we bought one don't answer that I mean I'll be real I would love to get some apple apparel I think you can only get it at The Visitor Center at the you know Apple Spaceship Campus and I think there's one other Apple Store I think in California or near there that offers merch but you can't get it anywhere else so I'd be down for a shirt want to to mention air tag one more time I thought it was interesting someone tracked a letter mailed across the UK your home country over there they put an air tag in an envelope mailed it to a friend the person sending it was in Stratford upon Avon England oh I I I know that place I've actually been there what what yes I have on my you've been there and you didn't say hello well this was a number of years ago sorry we didn't know each other then next time though I will say hello all right d yeah and he mailed his air tag to a friend near London and was actually able to track the air tag pretty much the entire Journey he set up some scripting on his Mac to screenshot the find my app every two hours or so and it's really cool we'll put a link to the blog in show notes it's at ino.com but the link is down there and you can see all the screenshots he took and he said either the mail person had an iPhone on them or wherever it was going there were multiple people with iPhones but it was able to track the air tag all the way through England uh to the recipient what is strange is once his friend got it in London the air tag was sitting on a table for multiple days and according to Apple some of the anti-stalking features and all that is that the air tag would start beeping to let you know that a foreign air tag is near you or has been near you for some amount of time and his friend actually did not receive that warning thing and the air tag did not start beeping and so this friend had an air tag next to him that was being tracked by his friend somewhere else and he was not receiving a warning so a little bit of a concern there although it is cool I guess that the guy was able to track it so there's that that is disturbing well I'm just I'm not surprised that there were a lot of iPhones in traford on because it's not the poorest part of the UK should we say gorgeous part of the country do visit if you can but yeah and even traveling I mean all the way down to London now I will say you actually had a a tip article talking about how to factory reset an air tag and I did a video on it it's on the Apple Insider YouTube channel and I missed one key piece of information that I I left it in a pinned comment so what viewers can see it there you can unpair an air tag without factory resetting it you can do that in the find my app going to the item that the air tag is tracking and there is an unpair option at the bottom so if you the owner of the air tag and a friend that you want to give it to if you want to unpair it from your account and give it to them you can do that in the find my app but if you're not near the air tag or maybe you've given it to someone else and forgot to unpair it you do have to factory reset it and as I read your article preparing to make the video I thought surely is this the the operation to factory reset an air tag of removing and replacing the battery multiple times but no sure enough that is in fact how you do it if it's unpaired within Bluetooth range fine just the normal stuff like you would with anything else outside it yes you have to go to it do feel a bit now you say it feels a bit like Alchemy isn't it you've got to do things five times or something and say somebody's name and throw salt over your shoulder and right things like that but at least you know a thief can't tiptoe up to your luggage take it out and casually resent it no but you without you noticing as some people in the YouTube channel were pointing out if someone steals a possession of yours let's say you have an air tag in your backpack or in one of those loops on the exterior side of your backpack and someone steals your item it is possible for them to factory reset that air tag and you the previous owner are no longer able to find it you know so the fact that someone can take your stuff and reset it yes I don't know what the option is there I guess there has to be some kind of factory reset ability built into the air tag but it does give thieves the ability to disable whatever air tag might be tracking your stuff yeah I didn't think about that but YouTube commenters they they'll always reveal whatever is wrong with an Apple product so also wanted to mention last thing on air tag and trackers but chipelo the one of the items that Apple actually announced in their Newsroom press release that work with the find my network is available for pre-order they'll be shipping in June the chipelo tracker is has like a black disc and it actually has a key ring hole built in so you don't have to buy another accessory to attach it to a key ring you could just put the chipo on your key ring and you're good to go but keep in mind as I was looking at at it I had planned on getting one cuz I was like oh let me try it it works with the find my network it takes advantage of all the Apple devices in the find my network the chipolo tracker it does not have a U1 chip nor does it have NFC it seems like and so you cannot do the Precision finding feature from an iPhone with a U1 chip to the chipolo tracker so you can't get that arrow on your screen and it points you in the right direction and tells you exactly how far you are away from the device you can't do that with the chipolo and without NFC it doesn't that anyone can scan it feature and get your contact info to let you know about the Lost item so while it is a great option for the F my network and you can get it instead of an air tag it does not have feature parody with air tag and it does not use that Precision tracking one chip stuff that Apple's air tag can it also actually isn't as waterproof it's water resistant it can cope with splashes but it can't stay underwater for whatever it is with the air tags a minute 30 minutes at a meter or something you can't do that but it is apparently that's a thing I mean it's cheaper it is what's what's the price on it it's the entire dollar cheaper when you're buying one it's $28 and at the moment if you buy a four pack it's $90 instead of air tags 99 but there's a thing on the side that makes it look like that's a temporary thing it's going to be $112 at some point in the future but for today it's a pixel cheaper yes gotcha well it's a little cheaper but honestly I want that NFC and the U1 chip I feel like so yeah kind of glad I went with the air teag you know you did the official air tag review on Apple inside you gave him a 4.5 do you still like him just as much as when you wrote that review yes still a new toy feel to them I I actually got to leave my house the other day under lockdown and I deliberately left uh one of my sets of keys at home so that I could track it from when I was wherever I was and it all worked perfectly well directed me right back to my own front porch so yes I had a good time with that I bought a pack of four I gave two to my wife Angela I have one of my keys and one is spare waiting for when I can actually go on holiday put it in luggage very nice and that's when I'm going to be annoying Everybody by blip blipping it every few yeah that'd be pretty funny all right well I wanted to talk about podcasting I'm not going to Bone Apple podcast again I did that on the last episode and yes Apple podcast still seems broken episodes take sometimes multiple days to hit people's apps but we won't go there just yet I did want to mention that another major podcast has gone exclusive to Spotify this is the armchair expert podcast with Dax Shepard he's the husband of Kristen Bell Dax Shepard was in the Parenthood TV show and you know pretty bigname actor his podcast is one of the most popular podcasts in the industry he's got millions of listeners every month and he announced that he is taking his podcast armchair expert to Spotify exclusively and all past episodes of the podcast will not be available anywhere except in the Spotify app and that is effective July 1st so if you want to listen to that daak Shepard podcast then you have to use the Spotify app you don't have another choice and overall I find this practice this you know Joe Rogan did it first he went as a Spotify exclusive and now Dak Shepard and it seems like there's probably going to be more big names taking aside into some podcast Arena or the other some service I still feel like this is a net negative for the podcast industry when a show says you can only listen to this show in this particular app namely Spotify or if Apple does this with apple podcast if you can only listen to Apple podcast I think it's bad for podcast as a whole for instance Apple announced its Subscription Service where you can offer paid exclusive content but it could be like adree and Main podcast can be available anywhere they announced a partnership with wondery plus which is an Amazon content deal and wondery plus they're like adree and additional bonus content service will be available in apple podcast to purchase but you can also get the wondery content wherever you get Podcast if you want to get the free ad supported versions and all that you can get that anywhere same with the Apple Insider podcast you can get it in any podcast app you choose and if you want to get the ad free version you can go to patreon.com inssider and you can take that RSS fee and put it in whatever app you want but the show like armchair expert with Dak Shepard and The Joe Rogan Experience it is still free quote unquote but you have to use the Spotify app and I'm just not crazy about it because if someone switches to Spotify just for this app you know if this is your favorite podcast the armchair expert podcast you're going to go to Spotify and you're going to listen to it there but if you also want to support apple Insider or some other show in apple subscription service or you want to I don't know listen to an RSS feed from a a bonus content like patreon it's you're going to have this rub there of you know what do I do with this I want to listen to this show and that show and I just don't think people are going to use multiple podcast apps because of exclusive shows and it might actually limit The Listener pool that open podcasts have because they don't offer the same things or can offer the same things in an app like Spotify so I don't know William do you have any thoughts on this I mostly agree with you I we see it in television though shows are a bigger drawer than networks Hamilton was a massive drawer for Disney plus more than the name Disney plus was the Mandalorian and Star Wars as well as that getting a really hot show on your channel makes the channel and that's not just in streaming it's been going on since network broadcasts began even and this feels like it's trying to follow the same model if I'm an apple one subscriber I've got Apple music I'm already paying for it as part of my thing am I going to really pay another fee to listen to one show I got to admit I have never even heard of armchair expert now that you've told me about it I mean I still don't know what it's about but Dak Shephard uh you just said it Christen he's Mr Veronica Mars he's married to Veronica Mars so suddenly I'm a bit more interested and I've got until July the 1 to be hooked for it but listen to the way I said I'm never moving over not for one show so and I will say I've listened to a couple of his shows he does a good job interviewing pretty big name people in all kinds of Industries you don't have to pay for Spotify though to hear his podcast so that's spotify's argument is that you don't have to sign up for Spotify subscription service to listen to armchair expert you just have to listen in the Spotify app and the idea is they want to you know make these exclusive deals with Joe Rogan and Dak Shepard so you start using the Spotify app more and more free you're not paying for it you're just listening to those podcasts in there and if you switch all your podcast listening to Spotify then someone might ask the question well why don't I just start paying for Spotify music rather than Apple music so I can do music and podcasts all in the same place and so this is the play from Spotify it just it feels greasy to me and I understand exclusive content has been the deal with TV networks radio you know all that I totally get it HBO having The Sopranos or Game of Thrones like exclusive content it's HBO original content I totally get it but I guess for me as a podcaster who's been doing it for a long time it's a little bit sad to see a medium such as podcasting that has been so open a podcast is just an RSS feed and you can do with it whatever you want you can just download the mp3s from the RSS feed it doesn't matter how you want to listen to it and to see it go from that open great ecosystem into an increasingly closed ecosystem in this Silo of what app do I have to listen to which show in is just a little disappointing to me and and I don't know I just don't think it's on a great trajectory that's all this episode is brought to you by expressvpn listen your internet service provider whether that's Comcast AT&T I actually have Spectrum cable internet they're not making money just off that monthly subscription you pay for Internet service they're also making money from spying on your internet activity and then selling your history and data to Big tech companies listen this is why you see weird ads all over the Internet because that information no matter where you search for something look something up that traffic is sold to other tech companies so they can serve you ads and listen I want my privacy and internet browsing history to be Totally Secure that's why I use expressvpn expressvpn creates a secure tunnel between all your devices and the internet so that everything you do online is encrypted it reroutes your connection through a secure server and this blocks your internet provider from seeing everything that you do online and expressvpn uses trusted server security not only is it independently audited to confirm essential privacy protections but all data is wiped with every reboot servers never write to a hard drive minimizing data risk you can know that your data is totally safe and not saved anywhere with expressvpn and it works on all your devices your tablets Smart TVs even on some wireless routers so you know all the internet traffic in your house is going through expressvpn's secure servers I use it on my iPhone my iPad and my Mac it's so easy you just open the app tap one button and you're connected to expressvpn servers and you know all your internet traffic is safe your data is your business so protected at expressvpn.com slapple inssider Visit expressvpn.com appleinsider to get three extra months of expressvpn protection for free that's expressvpn.com slapple Insider to learn more our thanks to expressvpn and the nebia by Moen shower you've heard me talk about nebia before and I still love using it my entire family still loves using it it's an incredible way to save water and get a superior shower experience nebia started in Mexico City where water shortages were a big problem they came to Silicon Valley to raise money and none other than Apple's own CEO Tim Cook was nebba's first investor then developers from Tesla apple and NASA all came to nebba to create the shower experience that the nebia by Mo and Spa shower delivers and the mission of the company is to save water they have currently saved over 175 million gallons of water now I know the idea of replacing your showerhead might be intimidating especially if you're not super do it yourself and listen I'm not one of those people either but I was able to swap out my old shower head with the neb by moan spy shower in really 15 minutes they give you all the instructions step by step all the parts you need it was actually really simple and once you get it set up you're going to love taking a shower with the nebbi B Spa shower it atomizes the water that's the fancy word for it and it envelops you with water droplets from the shower head that's height adjustable which is super useful and I got the one with the magic wand it's like an extra attachment it attaches on this little magnetic dome in your shower and between the two of those things it really creates a spa-like experience in your shower even my kids love taking showers now because of the nebia by moan Spa shower this is nebba's most advanced and affordable shower yet starting at just $1.99 and it saves 45% of water compared to standard showerheads you can get it in four finishes I got the brush nickel finish so it's fingerprint resistant and it looks great in my bathroom against the tile and you can also get nebba's beautiful accessories to match the shower I have a shower shelf where you put the shampoos on top hang the LOF is from these little hooks it looks great in the shower and I got these little towel hooks as well that can either adhere to the wall or you can screw it in to be really secure and everything just looks great together and right now for listeners of the Apple Insider podcast you can get 10% off nebia products nebia doesn't usually do sales but they've partnered with us for a long time and they offer great deals to you guys so go to neb.com slapple Insider that's neb a.com apppp Insider take a look around and then use the coupon code Apple Insider all one word when checking out that's neb.com appleinsider for 10% off nebia products our thanks to nebia for sponsoring this episode I did want to cover this one story that came out Apple hired this person called Antonio Garcia Martinez he was hired onto the ad platform product engineering team at Apple and once he was hired on there was actually a petition started within Apple that went to Eddie Q saying that a previous book that Garcia Martinez had written the book was called chaos monkeys and he had some disparaging comments about women and some other things and so these Apple employees started this petition saying you know having this person on our our staff on our team just working at Apple is kind of against a lot of what Apple stands for and really just a day or so after petition started circulating it was announced that this person was fired from Apple so Garcia Martinez no longer works there because of that petition I thought that was so interesting and how this person went through whatever hiring process at Apple surely there was background checks done and surely looked into his past work and he was able to get through the hiring process to where he was actually on staff but then the employees actually rose up revealed this content in his previous book and then literally just in 24 to 48 hours the man is fired from Apple it's a pretty wild process and I guess brings up more questions about Apple's hiring process and how much background research they do on a person because they kind of missed this so strange always imagined that I don't know if I knew this or just but expected it that apple had incredibly rigorous hiring policies the things he were saying about women are are parent and I have to sympathy for him obviously I'm I'm interested did he leave a job to join apple and so now he's out of work and can't go back I'm concern I I realized I'm a little concerned for him and I'm a bit surprised given what he said I'm slly embarrassed to be concerned I think whenever anybody loses any job I kind of identify with that because I've had it happen U so I wish for his sake it hadn't gone through all the way I wish for everybody else's sake it hadn't either yeah and I feel like so the book that he wrote was 2016 so you're talking 5 years ago still kind of recent we can leave room if someone writes something 20 years ago and they say I was wrong then I don't sell that book anymore and apple is forthcoming with that information to the staff and to say you know we're bringing this person on staff they wrote these things in the past in case it comes out but we've You Know spoken to him about those and he's riged all that you know that's one thing but you they didn't seem to do that there was no you know forthcoming of that and the book is pretty recent this is not like an old book so I I don't know curious just about their hiring process there and if they didn't think it was going to come up or I don't know strange it speaks to a lack of due diligence because yeah it's okay you can't expect them to read every book anybody's written but to aspose as those attitudes in a book uh they're pretty you know uh well embedded in the guy and it would be hard to imagine that they weren't known by former colleagues whoever they got references from at Apple I think it just boils down to somebody made a big mistake at some point and we all do it that book was a New York Times best seller so I feel like apple would have known about that book but anyway all right I wanted to talk about magsafe just for a second I feel like one recent time we spoke William you had gotten or had purchased the Belin 3in1 mag safe charger and we don't talk about mag safe a whole lot that was kind of one of the big new features of the iPhone 12 it's been 7even eight nine months with mag safe how's been your experience with mag safe do you like that belcon thing or any other accessories unfairly still a little wary of belcon stuff because of previous problems but actually yes I like this uh very much it's amazingly satisfying putting the phone on every night it feels like you putting it on a shelf the magnet grip is so strong for it and yes I like it's the best stand I've had uh of that type I used to have one that also did my iPad and things and that was you know bigger ungainly and no mag safe but it did the iPad and this doesn't so I still have that one knocking around somewhere but for a bedside table it's so small so neat and so easy to just slip everything on uh I found I'm remembering to charge my airpods more often than I was before so in every way yes very happy with mag safe not enough that I want to go buy a MAG safe case with a wallet and whatever else there is but that stand gorgeous yeah it's nice what about you well I I'm really enjoying the Bellon stand still for charging I do have an apple magsafe wallet and it's become my primary one and I do actually enjoy using it it's nice if I'm going to you know put take the stuff out of my pockets for a second I can just put the wallet on the back of my phone and I don't have to worry about things in two different places or whatever and just knowing they're sandwiched together is fun but I've been looking for a car air conditioning vent magnet holder for the iPhone moment who makes a lot of iPhone and camera/ lens accessories for the iPhone they came out with a MAG safe car vent so I had bought that and it finally arrived at my house and also car and driver has new mag safe uh adapters too and so I tried all of them and because I was trying to find one that worked I'll put a picture of the chapter art you can see I have multiple of these car vents to trying them out but the the moment one I really like it it's got a super strong magnet mounts to the vent just fine and it's very Sleek so I like the look of it but because it's super flush like the pegs that hold the air conditioning vent are pretty deep so they go right there and then it's very flush the design of my car which is a key of Soul no I don't drive a Tesla listeners maybe one day but the air conditioning vent style it made it difficult actually to put my iPhone on there securely like it would be kind of cockeyed sometimes or the the flushness how flat it sits to the air conditioning vent limited the placement that I could have of the iPhone but the car and driver ones are kind of nice because there's a like there like a arm where you can adjust the angle which that's the other thing with the moment vent there's no angle adjustment on the the accessory the car and driver ones you could actually adjust the angle there's like a a ball joint so you can pivot and all that kind of stuff on it and because there has a increased depth because of that ball joint and then the clamp that hold the air conditioning vent it actually sticks out farther and actually helped fit mine better they have one where it's just a mount and if you want to charge it you just plug the cable in and they also sell one that is a charging mag safe pad where you can plug like a USBC Cable in the bottom and you can just slap your iPhone on there and it starts charging via mag safe right away and so that's the one I kind of landed on and honestly of all the ones that I've tried so far is pretty slick so I'll put a link in show notes to that but the the car and driver mag safe adapter is pretty sweet I've actually avoided uh that kind of vent thing because many years ago I can't remember what phone it was I managed to break one of the parts of the vent just from not very roughly uh fitting it on but apparently roughly enough but so this is secure and yet doesn't seem to damage right and think that sounds great yeah absolutely well we need to touch on Epic vers Apple the court case is still still going on they have one more week of this court case even as we record it was a 3-we court case you know there's no jury in this courtroom it's totally decided by the judge so it's a little bit different of a kind of Court situation if you're familiar with it but a couple interesting things that came out this was actually towards the end of last week I believe but there was actually a picture of a human review station for the App Store apps so this is someone who works for apple and their job is to review apps that are going into the App Store store whether they are updates or new apps and it's a picture of their setup I'll put it as the chapter art right now so you can see it really wild like the amount of devices which this totally makes sense I guess you have to test it on multiple devices and so this setup it's got an iMac a MacBook Pro with an external display an Apple TV an older iPad with Touch ID an iPad mini and then two iPhones plus another device like intense setup and just to imagine man this has got to be a tough job like I don't know anyone personally who has to be a part of the App Store review process but man like having to test across all those devices and now knowing the amount of apps that go through the document that was revealed in the court case of Epic Games vers Apple it revealed that 4.8 to 5 million apps are submitted every year and so to think about all those apps that have to be seen by every app review App Store reviewer and not only that but if this app has a compatible iPhone Apple watch iPad and Apple tv app where some apps do the app reviewer has to check it across all those devices and so again thinking about that amount of work just sheer amount of work to be done and trying to limit the amount of scams and all that for the App Store it really seems like a daunting task so I just I thought that picture was wild I'm hoping to have some automated routines to get some of the brunt work out of the way but what I noticed in that picture was there's an app p in it with a bite taken out so I think slightly posed photograph there but yes it's an array of gear everything Apple produces apart from the Apple watch I think which presumably the tester is wearing that's F I did not notice that at first that was a good catch and so there there's other things being talked about as far as again Ina purchases being able to purchase v-bucks for epic games and whether someone going through a web browser makes it more difficult to do but there was also this interesting thing where Apple released this Newsroom press release on Tuesday of this past week kind of bragging about all the things the app store has eliminated or caught to prevent scammers and how many customer accounts were rejected Because of You strange activity during the app review process basically bragging for lack of a better word about how the app store has protected iOS users and grber had an article about it I I'll put the link in show notes but some of the numbers from from Apple's Newsroom article was saying that 244 million customer accounts were deactivated for inappropriate App Store activity 424 million attempted account Creations were rejected in the calendar year 2020 and 470,000 developer accounts were terminated and these were basically scams or nefarious activity from these accounts that Apple has eliminated through its review process and its security teams and just looking at those numbers it's staggering the amount of accounts and apps and work that has to be done and again to hold such tight rain over the App Store trying to review this much stuff it just seems like almost an impossible battle I don't know yeah give up Apple just let let it all through let it we'll sort it out not saying that it'll be fine no no no no and works for Google so one of gruber's points was Apple was is basically saying in this Newsroom press release that they are 99% effective at removing scams and if the Epic V Apple court case wasn't happening right now Apple probably wouldn't have released this Newsroom press release talking about the App Store stuff and there was also developers on Twitter and on the websites kind of like surfacing scam apps to basically show look at all the stuff that Apple didn't catch and so again Apple's trying to answer that public opinion's voice but John Gruber held Apple to the idea of if you're going to say that you can protect users and that you are doing a good job of it why isn't the efficiency rate like 99.99999% you know there is still a lot of scam apps that come through for all the millions of accounts you deactivated and the hundreds of thousands of developer accounts you didn't allow to put an app in the app store Apple is still the most profitable company in the world it's still a trillion doll company what does it take then to create the kind of security and privacy that apple is touting at a rate so low that you don't see this kind of number of scam apps that developers have been surfacing in the recent future is it a money problem is it too expensive is it a Manpower problem or is just you know and these are the inner workings that is coming out in the epic games versus Apple court case so I don't know maybe in this last week as apple is trying to defend the App Store well more stuff will come out and we're obviously covering it on appleinsider.com but yeah it's just interesting anything interesting that you saw come out of the the court case these past weeks um I'm not going to say I'm avoiding the court case but I would like to say I I think actually uh what we all forget is that scammers are people too they need an income just like the rest of us and we are denying them oh the opportunity to make a decent living I think that's called a devil's advocate William no I'm not taking that okay it was a shot and the issue is with scams is because Apple takes the 30% apple is kind of complicit I mean I like for better word because they're taking the money from some of these scam apps so and sure they shut them down but if these scam apps are active for a month or two and they do Weekly subscription renewals for the users they can really milk a lot of money out of unsuspecting people so I'm not sure what needs to be done obviously it's it's a difficult problem to solve but it is still a problem I think that's the point anyway last little bit you had an article about aerial screen savers on Apple TV and it's fun I just want to say if you have an Apple TV and you don't have the aerial screen saver set up I'm not sure what doing because it is really fun doing that and you can actually find out where an aerial screen saver was captured and you have the article on telling them how to do that yeah we did it because I kept finding the captions by accident how am I doing this when I want to I can't so I studied it I looked into it also I have bought the new Apple TV 4K and uh one of the things I'm deeply looking forward to is seeing the 4K version of these screen TP cuz I've been using an Apple TV HD for 5 years now I can't remember something like that so it's quite I was excited about the new screen savers and then this was coming on as well isn't it silly screen savers that it's worth talking about but they are so well done so gorgeous just mesmerizing yeah they really are beautiful so if you have an Apple TV 4K or I think the Apple TV HD does it too as long as you have TV OS with a Seri remote you can do the aerial screen savers and they're beautiful we'll put the article in show notes from William you can find out how to do it and find out where the screen saver was taken they're pretty cool well that's the show this week thanks again to our sponsors expressvpn loopback from Rogue amiba streak and the nibia by Moen Spa shower don't forget you can get an AdFree version of the show and bonus content at patreon.com slapple Insider don't forget if you haven't yet give us a fstar rating and review in apple podcast that will greatly help out the show if you take a moment to do that you can tweet at William and myself our Twitter handles are in the show notes we'd love to get your questions and thoughts we stuff we could talk about here on the podcast we'd love to hear from you and don't forget to check out The homekit Insider podcast that comes out every Monday we talk about smart home and homekit devices and the Apple Insider daily podcast you can get the Top Apple news headlines every day in just a few minutes there's links to all that in the show notes thanks so much for joining us this week we'll catch you next time\n"