**Microsoft's Monopoly**

Acting as a monopoly is often viewed as a negative practice, but it can also be a successful business strategy for companies like Microsoft. By maintaining control over their products and services, Microsoft has been able to create an environment where they can dictate terms and conditions to their customers. For example, in the past, Microsoft required that computers shipped with Windows licenses had to have a specific version of Windows installed on them, even if the computer didn't come with Windows pre-installed. This was a way for Microsoft to ensure that they were getting a significant portion of the revenue from every computer sold.

Another example of Microsoft's monopoly power is in their use of patents to control the market. Qualcomm, a company that specializes in CDMA technology, has several key patents on this technology. If you want to serve with carriers that require this technology, then you have to use a Qualcomm chip. This gives Qualcomm a significant amount of control over the market and allows them to charge high royalties for their patented technology.

However, some critics argue that Microsoft's monopoly power is being abused. For example, in the past, Microsoft was required by law to offer users the choice between Bing and Google search engines when they installed Windows. However, instead of giving users this choice, Microsoft would always set it to Bing. This was a way for Microsoft to steer users towards their own search engine without actually giving them a choice.

**iCloud for Windows**

In recent years, Apple has made efforts to integrate their iCloud service with Microsoft's Windows operating system. In 2022, Apple released an updated version of iCloud for Windows that allows users to access their iCloud storage from within Windows 10. This means that users can now have the same sort of cloud storage experience as they do on Macs, where files are synced across devices and available for offline use.

This update is a significant improvement over previous versions of iCloud for Windows, which were limited in their functionality. The new update allows users to access their iCloud Drive folders from within Windows 10, making it easy to share files with friends and family who also use Microsoft products.

The fact that Apple released this update through the Microsoft App Store is also a positive development. This shows that Apple is willing to work with Microsoft to create a more seamless user experience across different platforms.

**Apple Insider Podcast**

After our conversation about Microsoft's monopoly power, I had to wrap up my time as your host and get back to the studio. But before I do, I want to thank you for tuning in and ask if there's anything else I can help with. You can always find me on Twitter @wgallago or check out my writing at Apple Insider.

On a lighter note, I'm also running a GoFundMe campaign to support my friend who is trying to adopt a child through the foster care system. He's facing significant legal fees and is relying on donations from friends and family to help him through this process. Several watch brands have even reached out to offer their support, raffling off watches to people who donate to his cause. So far, they've raised over $10,000 and are working towards a goal of $50,000.

**Victor Marks on Wristwatch Reviews**

That's all the time I have for today. If you're interested in learning more about wristwatches or Apple Insider, be sure to check out my writing at Apple Insider. You can also find me on Twitter @vmarks where I'll be discussing everything from Apple products to social justice issues.

The world of watchmaking is a fascinating one, and I'm always excited to share my knowledge with others. From the latest smartwatches to traditional timepieces, there's something for everyone in this industry.

So, if you're looking for advice on what watch to buy or just want to learn more about wristwatches, be sure to check out my writing at Apple Insider. And who knows? You might even find yourself donating to my friend's GoFundMe campaign and helping him achieve his goal of becoming a father.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast this is the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor marks and joining me is that Wy person that that willful individual that wonderful William Gallagher okay you just I mean you're often dropping the odd thing I responsible like that but that was a whole list of them is that to make up for the fact that last week I sat here on my own talking to myself about WWDC just cuz you had done on live from the venue itself yes yes it is i' have did the same okay right that was a good show I thought by really I am well but I I mean you've been to lots of events I've been to lots of events and things uh you kind of get your fill of them but not WWDC that's one I'd love to go so hearing from Dan right there I thought that was a really interesting episode yeah what's interesting is that we all know that that's not a consumer Hardware event yes right it's an event for developers to get an understanding of what's coming in the future and yet the keynote is used as an opportunity to talk about hardware and to talk about where things are today right yes and and you and I had discussed whether or not there would be something introduced there what was that cuz cuz I think I'd placed bets that we were and you'd said no what happened there uh I I was putting money on Swift UI uh coming out with that name uh doing exactly what it does so uh kaching I think I I I won there or do you mean the Mac Pro which I was certain they wouldn't show and I had asked them to do that right I was I was saying I really wish that they would and here enough sure enough we got something didn't we no no no wait a second I mean let's not split some hairs here but I was sure they wouldn't and you wished they would so the fact that they did you're taking that as a win for you that you were right but you weren't right or wrong you were just wishing I was definitively wrong I own my wrongness there all I'm saying is not whether I or not I was right what I'm suggesting is that when you wish it makes no difference who you are okay that dreams do come true I wonder if that's certain or not I can think of people who could wish for things and then afford to get them anyway that's probably no okay all right well long as we things up so talking about things that are futuristic and cool Apple has been looking at different ways to display pre-rendered 3D video in a stereoscopic method what do you think they'd use stereoscopic views for traditionally what do we use those for uh traditionally for pictures of ancient New York book in those little readers where You' got two photographs side by side and it all looks 3D and it's brilliant yeah the two lenses side by side with the photograph mounted two photographs mounted a couple you know about a foot and a half away right yeah yeah stereoscopic Vision when was that stuff invented I wonder I'm guessing probably roughly alongside photography 18 177 photography really came into its own in the mid 1800s uh stereoscopic view stereoscopic I'm not exactly sure I think I have uh a book of old New York stereoscopic photographs from early 1900s somewhere you know what I'm I'm Mist you're you're right just as early as photography came into Vogue stereoscopes which is what those things are called came into popularity from the 1850s till about the 1930s isn't it funny how 3D comes in with a bang and then whimpers away and comes back with a bang and we're still doing that today we're now post the latest 3D thing let's get ready for the next one yeah no so the the earli stereoscope was 1838 and the the common one that you and I are thinking of was was an Oliver wend Holmes invention and came around in 1861 well and we're still talking about it today and we're still talking about it and we're talking about it because Apple has been looking at ways to do that for what we suspect would be a virtual reality or augmented reality headset okay I am less excited by all this because until it looks like a hollow deck I'm not that interested but I have enjoyed how Apple's done uh augmented reality with the reveal of its new products I put the new um Apple Pro display on my desk uh virtually it'll never be on there really but it was fun to see just how big that thing is and then to examine the new Mac Pro and pull it apart I that was a really clever use of technology so good on Apple I took a cheese grater and an iPad mini and I put them next to each other and I squinted real hard and pretended which of us is sadder ANW was on a tweet to Okay but well no you win cuz you get the cheese at the end okay all right jeez yes yes grommet so so apples chees ifying everything in a way how much do we actually know though cuz you you clearly know more about this than I do um and I imagine Apple isn't saying anything so what do we know well what we know is that Apple has purchased in the past people that make micro displays that is micro LEDs that are are very very small and the of microns and those tend to be based on on gallium nitrate or Gan technology because that's the only way to get them small enough and the benefit is that you get a lot of power savings and they're very bright which is what you need for augmented reality so it's it's pretty sure bet that Apple's working on that this idea of stereoscopy that they're working on only adds fuel to that fire so they filed a patent they've got an application that says stereoscopic rendering of virtual 3D objects well they showed us at WWDC about occlusion so people can be occluded by 3D objects which makes it that much more realistic that you're working in a 3D space and so if you can do that and you can put up 3D rendered objects pre-rendered objects in front of them in the glasses then it's just about making it that much more real that much more engaging the other day Tim Cook was uh to talking about the Statue of Liberty app and and I got that it is utterly fascinating being able to just place it in your living room floor and walk around it and inside it and examine the construction of it these things are genuinely useful and the 3D thisness of it is actually becoming real I'm I don't want to sound cynical about all this stuff but I've been surprised to how good these experiences have been so yes good on Apple let's render stereoscopically everything we can you know that's interesting when you mentioned Statue of Liberty because I I've been up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty but no one has been up to the arm of the Statue of Liberty unless you work for the National Park Service in decades no the arm has been closed and and you know that's been over worries about things like the stability of the arm under stress from not many people walking up and down it or it's been about weight or it's been about the idea that you just can't you know there's there's no real safety because you're up there and you could go over the ledge kind of thing but it's interesting to me because if we have this sort of augmented reality that's truly immersive then those experiences that are off limits to most of us could be ones that we could live through vicariously yes I mean I still would rather go there than see it this way but yes I did exactly that I because same as you I knew I couldn't get into the torch before so I did through this um and I looked down what a long fall it would be and the sound of the birds around me which actually I wasn't expecting nice little touch of detail there for it it felt like you could Fe hear the wind as well so it's very nice nice really nice you know there are all kinds of problems that have to be solved around this and they aren't all things like stereoscopy or people occlusion it's it's as well as thermal regulation right or just the weight of the headset because if you have something that's big and bulky or you have something that doesn't fit well or it gets hot it takes you out of that immersion it makes it uncomfortable to wear there are a lot of problems to be solved here but we are fairly certain that apple is working on it and they've been working on it for years right I just wonder how they're going to solve the wallet stealing uh option I mean I think Apple's very fond of our wallets but there you are with this headset on uh and you can't see what's actually around you so you you get mugged this holiday reality means that you see what's in front of you as well right and I TI him up behind you virtual reality is is your blocked off and viewing only what's projected but but augmented reality or mixed reality is where anything that has a headset though is going to affect your view of the actual world around you William if you put all of your wallet in apple wallet you don't have to worry about this okay nether be an answer right get there now you know we we know that this is the kind of thing that's being worked on not just from the the occlusion that they showed us at wwc but there are many changes in AR kit 3 and iOS 13 green screen style effects you know that that's kind of big without needing a chroma key background uh yeah that I've got to try that X I did green screen stuff at uh at BBC just very basic stuff for one of the websites and and it's remarkably hard actually trying to get cuz the green the actual green screen um there was some sort of pot mark on it so to get rid of it completely was a a right light on the screen or or reflection of the green onto a person's clothing standing in front of it or you know all of these kinds of Details Matter and I have a green screen here at the house and it it can sometimes be a little difficult if you haven't got it lit correctly wait so that postcard you sent me from Mars was fake don't you know we're going to skip the moon and go straight to s of course that was it was real I was there man it was warm unseasonably warm okay right they don't call it the red planet for nothing no I believe you have to pay uh anyway um every time you say a clusion I've got to say this I am thrown back 20 years is it longer to the 80s how long go is the 80s got 40 years to recurse of occlusion in Doctor Who uh castra valva if you uh you're probably so young you didn't even see that one repeat but that's just was it Tom Baker episode uh Peter Davidson his first nope didn't see it no so Christopher bidm wrote it yay to castra valva based on the aser print look at the sort of level of detail I can give you about things that you're not interested it it's a skill that's so true thanks it's funny when I said it less so now but they've also added motion apple apple this is a podcast about Apple they added motion capture capabilities so the movements of a subject can be analyzed interpreted real time in the application so you divide the subject down to a skeleton with joints and Bones determined and monitored for changes and with those movements trigger animations or or they can be recorded for custom movements of characters which is cool it also impacts face tracking which is cool you know face track and currently get used for mimoji and Snapchat kind of thing but it's been expanded to allow it to work with to three faces at the same time oh I didn't know that wow okay another key component is is of course for users to be able to collaborate within the same AR environment so by letting people see the same items in the same environment in a single session you can enable multiplayer games and of course we were looking at that Minecraft game that they displayed because that's super cool um the ability to tr track the user's face and the world using the front and rear cameras at the same time detecting up to 100 images at the same time and estimates of physical image sizes more robust 3D object detection improved plane detection the all of these things are are leading us to a future where reality can be mixed where reality can be shared can be augmented that augmented bit can be shared that's a big deal yes I'm a bit overwhelmed by it actually the amount of things going on I'm not sure um yeah I I just could going to go back to waiting for the Hol de but it sounds like it's soon so okay yes please pleas rush me one Hol de I mean we we haven't really talked about the uses but there have to be uses Beyond just the Ikea catalog or apple putting the Mac Pro stand that you're never going to purchase on your desk right yes I can think of uh hostile environments certain industrial plants nuclear areas where the ability to see uh I don't know what a drone that you put in there is doing to be able to manipulate in that fine detail I can see that being uh huge yeah right and and that's sort of a lame use in that that's what Google Glass has become right Google Glass was going to be this thing that everyone was going to wear and it was going to change everything and it ended up being what the industrial worker wears yes and that's a small disappointing future as opposed to one where we all get these things now obviously wearing glasses can be obnoxious just in terms of fit and and and actual comfort and there are the same things that scared people about them with Google Glass which is are you recording me right yes yeah but if we can overcome those things and the uses outweigh those then it will work so it's just a matter of of first building the technology so that we can even see and even get to those kinds of uses right I know it sounds silly to try and say we have to build it first but if you think back that's kind of how Computing developed less deliberately but yes uh here it is what we're going to do about it that was the way around yes okay you're saying intentionally set it that uh kind of the opposite of fake it till you make it isn't it just make it and then fake it until you've sorted it out okay well and and the Apple watch developed along that way a little bit too right we had all these weird interfaces and things that you could do with your first Apple watch that we later learned it doesn't make sense to do those at all yes that's true yes that seemed such a long time ago now weirdly the the history of computing was okay so it's glorified typewriter and that's awesome and then all of a sudden a spreadsheet comes along and the next thing you know you've eliminated a whole floor of an office building that we doing spreadsheets on paper yes sorry about that but yeah yes yeah and you should you put those people out of work well no I I personally concentrated on the bit about uh typewriters and that which got rid of Pas and secretaries a lot just destroyed the typing pool um that that's my legacy yes unbelievable you you have you are a net job Destroyer William yes on the more positive side uh a friend a producer uh organizer is pointing out to me recently writers went digital first we beat everybody else everybody else is catching up with writers because the moment we could get word presses we threw away everything else and our slaves to the screen ever since join us it's true it's true so the headset development first leaked in a safety report in 2017 where incidents requiring medical treatment Beyond first aid were required for a person testing a prototype device at one of Apple's devices at offices rather why the injury related to Iain suggesting it was testing something Vision related potentially a headset of some form brief okay that's not where I thought you were going with that um I'm just laying out the evidence for how we know Apple's working on a headset uh all going around poking its employees in the LA it's one way or the other yeah yeah yeah no they spoke to a lot of Technology suppliers at CES uh with with Apple employees visiting stanza suppliers of wave guide Hardware they have acquired companies that are closely related to AR and headset production they picked up eye tracking senso motoric instruments and they bought aonia holographics which focused on development of specialized lenses for a headsets they picked up uh gosh what was it lumos or lumify or one of those for um for uh microed displays micro yeah micro LED displays they've picked up a bunch of these different things along the way so it's it's one of these Futures that I feel like is coming together and we're just seeing it in slow motion at this point it'll all seem very obvious in retrospect well of you when it happens they'll say we showed you AR and now we're bringing it to your face right that's this does seem to happen a lot with apple um something comes out and you think oh that rumor actually made total sense 5 years ago uh but it didn't at the time so yes who knows what other the rumors we're missing well and you're absolutely right you know for years and years uh at Apple Insider we were talking about what was essentially we were talking about a tablet Mac or a touchscreen Mac and what we got was an iPad so close and yet so far but we were talking about that in 2006 we were talking about that 2005 we were talking about that pre- iPhone because they've been working on the iPad first and shifted gears for the phone right uh tp5 I don't think we were uh Visionary innovators in our thinking there since Microsoft had tablets uh out from what 99 2000 somewhere around there well this wasn't about being Visionary and predictive it was about going on the rumors and Rumblings that we were hearing at the time all right okay well 20 years later we were right absolutely okay now here's another one where you were right tell me about what's wrong with the new Mac Pro absolutely nothing at all what could you possibly mean price yeah okay yeah small thing uh I might not not buy the two that I was considering you know one for the kitchen one for the den I might not do that third for Angel because you know well you can't get them in blue you know that that was a bit of a blow really we have to talk to colorware we could get one made in blue it's not the same come on take it down to the local powder coating shop and have them just it's like I don't even know you okay all right no first party color right so so here's here's the thing right it's the Mac Pro the power to change everything now you have the Mac Mini yes I do is the Mac Mini very expandable no and is that causing me a problem yes you have an iMac an older one now is the iMac a very expandable machine no and it's quite ill at the moment so let's let's not remind me about this yeah and and there are plenty of people who have MacBooks and MacBook Pros and those aren't very expandable machines either no fortunate their iPhones and their iPads they're fine yeah yeah absolutely so there seems to be a number of people who really wanted a Mac Pro like machine but wanted to have it at a price they could afford yes I mean you're talking about ALC I've written saying that that there's a gap in Apple's market but the reason I did that uh one of the reasons apart from the fact that I believe it uh the reason that made me first think of it and then first look at the prices and then spot this just in the prices there's this giant Gap in so so how much does a Mac Pro cost Mac Pro 5,000 well £6,000 P sorry dollars it probably will be £6,000 won't it but $6,000 and change for the monitor all right and there's the iMac and the iMac Pro right the iMac Pro costs how much yeah the bit less I think the iMac works out at about a, uh start these are all starting prices about $1,000 less than the Mac Pro and the iMac is what 3 and a half 4,000 less than an iMac Pro that's the Gap in the middle everywhere else the distence in price between models is comparatively small H but I should say I should there is this argument going around that Apple was wrong to make the Mac Pro and you listen to people talking about this and it always boils down to uh these people would have rathered apple had bought a machine that they could afford and I don't see that as a valid criticism of the Mac Pro you can wish for something else but to criticize uh Tesla's Roadster for not being a pencil sharpener see seems a little bit of a fallacy to me Mac Pro is a superb machine is it right for everybody yes but not everybody can afford it there might be room for more that's all yeah so the the iMac plain old not not pro iMac but iMac starts from $1,99 and goes up to to essentially 1,500 yes in the 21 in in the 27 in it it reaches 2,300 in price and then the iMac Pro is significantly more right the iMac Pro begins at a infantes small 4,999 so what you're suggesting is that there's a gap between the two the iMac and the iMac Pro part of the range there is a gap in pricing yeah there is a gap I think in utility you can well argue that we're only talking about base prices and you can spec up all of these now actually I think that's a separate issue because truly I do not know how many cores will is an 8 core going to be right for me or a 10 core iMac Pro that level of detail I don't know how to determine uh so Apple has chosen these starting points and they have laid out this line uh of Divisions between it You' need this machine or that machine and then within the the gaps you can do these uh adjustments so I think it's valid to look at the starting points of them all and when you do that there is this enormous well it's a price Gap but I I offer that it's a price performance Gap as well so what I'm hearing is that the product Matrix is too confusing I think that's harsh it's we've gone on a long way since Steve Jobs is good or for um I still think if you are in the market you know whether you're in the market for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro You've Got No Doubt over which one of those you are but in the middle there is uh confusion and I think a gap I I think part of the problem that I'm thinking of is not just the number of SKS but where they fit within the consumer or Pro Line and helping people understand whether or not they're a consumer or a pro in terms of needs right you don't know which number of cores you need is is a confusing problem and and uh RAM as well and RAM as well but the it used to be that in that that Matrix of 4 the iMac was the consumer level machine and the power MAAC was the pro level machine and that was a fairly simple division and they had the same for laptops iBook and and PowerBook and those lines are a little bit muddied now because you have the iMac as a consumer desktop machine the Mac Mini was traditionally a consumer desktop machine but now it's a pro machine because it's got 10 gbit ethernet options not to just throw this in but the whole Pro consumer line we've said this before is a very very blurry one I am unquestionably a pro user for certain things at certain times and the rest of it I'm not so give me a straight definition of who I am that's what I need who am I and what Mac do I need and can you buy it for me please just through that last one in I mean it's a it's a very tough thing to try and figure out who we are as people and where we fit on different spectrums and you know I I spend all of my 20s my formative years trying to figure that out and I still don't know to come to any conclusion I'm intending to spend my 20s that way well I know you look forward to that it's going to be good yes yes yes look nobody's going to check are they I can say things like that okay yes the the concern I think is that that these lines are blurred I I think the Mac Mini is a great machine it's a machine that allows some form of expandability in in terms of using its USB or Thunderbolt kind of attachment ports um just as people tried to do that with the 2013 Mac Pro the iMac Pro the same kind of thing so it's it's interesting how these lines have become a little bit more fuzzy yeah I I know that people wanted a Mac Pro they wanted a traditional Tower with expandability with slots and they wanted at a price they could afford those prices are not low and apple is known for its low low prices yes yes absolutely all of this circles around to is there a Gap in price in desire is there a market for something in the middle well logically yes there is uh but statistically actually we don't know Apple knows who buys things Apple knows uh very in great detail detail we will never see of how many people who get modular upgradable machines ever bother to actually upgrade them um I remember Mike wle on Apple Insider looked into this a long time ago uh when he had lots of data from um various sources around the time of the old mic Pro the the the original cheese greater one and the figures he had were at an absolute Peak 5% of the owners of those machines we're changing anything so modularity it appeals to me and I see that there's a market for it but Apple's probably sitting there thinking actually William not so much well they're not they don't know my name but people people regularly buy things that are greater than their needs yes and one could argue that you should with computers cuz that way they last longer for you but yeah I didn't I bought the entry level Mac Mini I tend to try and buy the middle model just because it feels like I'm getting a little bit better value yes well you are yeah but I had an exact budget and it covered that one so I don't regret that I just wish I could have uh stretched to more storage as that is giving me uh problems uh daily at the moment but we'll figure it out yeah I want to shift gears completely and entirely let's talk about security and vulnerabilities and things like that for a moment okay um uh I was going to make a joke there about how I'm vulnerable but uh that would just open up the what are you talking about let's go with that what's troubling you honorable William Gallagher yeah so Facebook we talked about them in the past haven't we fa Facebook Facebook Facebook uh I know the name can't put your finger on it can you uh don't they do bad things or something data well so they had this they had this application right they had a Facebook research app that was banned in January for violating App Store review guidelines because they were using their Enterprise certificate to collect personal and potentially sensitive information from people yes right remember the snap yes and have they gone and done it again they haven't gone about it again but but uh they they called this their project Atlas initiative publicly known as the research app well they they had to write a letter they had respond to us Senator Richard Blumenthal and that letter of course was seen by TechCrunch and in their letter Facebook revealed that 187,000 users including 34,000 teenagers had their data collected by this application of the of those 31,000 users were in the United States and 4,300 were teenagers so they were doing this worldwide Facebook maintains the operation was driven by analytics but notes that the app in some cases received non-target information they didn't review it to determine whether it can contained health or financial data they they claim they've now deleted all user level Market insights data that was collected which would include any health or financial data that may have existed so they insist that they didn't have any there or that they didn't review it and now they can't review it CU they've deleted it woohoo so that's all good then now Apple commented on this in a separate letter in March and apple said that they didn't know how many devices were running the app which is deployed using the Enterprise developer certificate and and of course that's true because Enterprise shts are develop are distributed outside of the App Store and therefore it's impossible to have a handle on who got it or not yeah unusual for app to not know something like that but they can't so well it's I mean oh does that mean it's apples fault and or apple is doomed no no so oh God somebody's going to say that when when we talk about security the best security is when something is inaccessible or unknown or or unknowable and so Enterprise customers want to be able to distribute applications because they they want them to go to their specific users and not to the public App Store those applications may have access to sensitive corporate data they may have uh they may contain sensitive corporate data they may be proprietary there's all kinds of good reasons why those things should be distributed without making the end users go through the app store besides just means of distribution because you know having your all of your employees have to hit up the App Store to download something is hard as opposed to having the Enterprise certificate and just being able to load it on them and so it makes good sense for Apple to not be able to know this no I understand that I'm fine with it let's just make it uh it's easier Facebook who's heard of that let's all just blame Apple for everything and you know situation normal really yeah and and of course we shouldn't leave Google out Google is also running a a product like that that uh has been exposed now I don't have the numbers in front of me on what their screenwise meter product saw in terms of users but um 187,000 people which sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to all Facebook users but you know Facebook can extrapolate from those insights and that is not in significant number in terms of a study yeah okay that is big now in good news the head of Google's account signin teams is positive about Apple's introduction to the authentication space so Apple revealed this product called signin with apple and they are going to require people who use signin with Google or sign in with Facebook in their applications to add sign in with apple alongside it and someone got a hold of Google and asked them and so Google product management director Mark risher revealed on an interview with the Verge that it's preferable for users to employ some form of single sign on button to get into Apps rather than creating users and passwords because people are terrible about users and passwords right you you reuse the same username because it's typically an email or because you have an identity formed around using that username right oh good point you know I hadn't thought about the side of using an email address of course I use an email address in several places that's I had thought of that good point there use the same one do you uh yes uh Victor dot uh there you go that's the stuff yeah so so sorry I told over you there I just I genuinely I've I never used the same username I never use the same password I I use one password to create this stuff and I love it it never entered my head that of course the username is very often the same uh for cause but interesting okay so I'm I'm a little bit vulnerable there I see the point sign in it's certainly more convenient and considered it's also more secure uh Google has a point apple has a point yeah and it's way better for users to not have to type in a bespoke username and password or recycled password and definitely recycled username as we said and the other thing about Apple's doing it is that they have created a a means of not sharing your actual email address they they proxy it so that you don't have to share the real email address with that provider which is good I already do something like that I have I I own a particular website domain so um whenever I sign up to somewhere new I give it an email address at that domain uh so I can write egit at whatever it is um and then later when I get loads of spam address to egit at this place I know where it came from yeah and I've been using a a Google trick for that kind of purpose too where I can use my Gmail address and add a plus sign and then any other descriptor after that and it looks as a unique address hate that but I love this because I get emails uh that are my gmail address or very nearly my email address you know and it's always spam it's never somebody who actually mistyped my address and it's just fed up the problem is that the plus symbol isn't respected as a symbol legitimate an email by everywhere even it totally fits the uh the RFC but it but it allows me to filter the same way you are by seeing which one of those things gave away my my email address for example if I put Victor plus BBC at gmail then I can go ahead and see and that's not my email address by the way so don't give don't don't try writing to that one if I if I do that then I can see if the BBC gave my email address out yes not that they would let's be very clear about this you defending the BBC again there we go okay I have some problems with the corporation but they employed me for a long time and you wouldn't know this but in Britain they're currently getting a lot of uh shtick uh no no they're getting a whole lot of thing about licensing fees which is totally not their fault at this point exactly thank you I want points uh just to throw this in for scale uh the loss of money the BBC was going to face over this would have been the same as the entire radio budget uh or all of it national local BBC sounds World Service everything that's how much they're being forced to cut and as a radio man myself this upsets MEC me sorry we're off the point there a little bit um so uh apple has a point Google has a point this is rare isn't it they're agreeing with each other well so Google has for years wanted to get rid of usernames and passwords and Google has for years wanted to get rid of things like the URL and so anything that people do to help them in that goal even if it's not using their service helps them Reach that aim right they would much prefer people sign in with apple than signing in with users and passwords yeah I they they would much rather people sign in with Google more than sign in with apple but that's that's a distinction you know if if you're going to do it and you're already you pick one of the the the good options is basically what they're saying two minutes ago I was happy and now you mentioned the whole URL thing uh yeah each to send somebody a link and it's not to where you thought it was cuz it's Google's I just m m tell me something nicer happy again nicer you want to be happy again Apple yes please just for a bit is in negotiations to purchase Intel smartphone modem business oh do you know I've been up at nights wondering about Intel smart modern business well you know as we said before you are a net job Destroyer over there and Intel did close up shop and say y you know what we're putting our smartphone business under they took it out back they they they they ended it that's that and pink slipped I think is the the more polite term but yes okay they did that but no Here Comes Apple yes apple is said to be looking very very carefully at Intel's German operations which serve as the basis for the modem business all right I didn't know that okay um the Intel staff there comprised of Engineers from infineon's Wireless technology arm uh Which Intel purchased for 1.4 billion in 2011 they provided the baseband chips for iPhone from 2007 to 2010 negotiations have been ongoing since last year they could fall apart of course but if Apple's successful they will have hundreds of Veteran modem Engineers so sorry did you say this has been going on since last year so before this decision Apple was nudging away that's interesting cuz my mind goes straight to the staff who've just uh I presumed lost their jobs but uh are they in a bance now thinking do I get a job somewhere else do I hang off for apple or or or is Intel redeployed people I I'm not positive I know whether or not the those folks were redeployed or not but um it's interesting because if you look at it there are a number of of former Intel exacts who were brought into Intel as a part of the infinion acquisition who now work at apple somewhere were from years ago like stepen wolf who was a former manager of Intel's German modem outfit came to cuni within the past few months uh February Apple hired umashankar th gajan and I apologize if I've mangled that name who was an engineer who is said to have played a key role in the development of the chipmakers 5G modem now inel as you say exited the smartphone business in in April smartphone modem industry in April but they could pick up this whole office they could pick up this whole segment have hundreds of Engineers and what does Qualcomm think about this well so Qualcomm and apple settled their agreements in the past right they they've settled that Qualcomm is currently facing antitrust prosecution in the US oh yes i' forgotten about that yes okay they do like their lawsuits qualcom yeah well it's so it's a difficult thing right it's it's not illegal to be a monopoly but it is illegal to abuse that Monopoly to act as a monopoly yes okay well to to act in ways that maintain that Monopoly through Force that's naughty okay it is well so I mean a classic example um years and years and years ago Microsoft required that they be paid uh a Microsoft Windows license for every computer shipped even if the computer didn't ship with Windows on yes which is an amazing deal that they pulled off yes for them or or years and years ago when BOS was an operating system BOS got a deal to be loaded on a partition on tashiba and Microsoft had as a part of their license agreement a lockdown on the bootloader so that those machines could not dual boot customers bought machines that had windows and BOS on them and the Machine could not boot BOS out of the box so consumers thought that they were just not getting as much of their hard drive because it was partitioned right okay right those are abuses of the Monopoly that Microsoft had on Windows licenses at that time I remember assuming that Microsoft had been legally required uh when you installed some version of Windows company which one it was now to offer you the choice of Bing or Google for your search but very specifically required to offer for the choice to then not actually do it because when I would pick Google it would still set itself to Bing um that seemed uh Microsoft this is a behavior that they do in Europe they don't necessarily have to show that in the US right okay I do remember seeing the choice of browsers come up but the search thing was a European part all right well my own fault for living here then so so Qualcomm right Qualcomm has several key patents on technology especially related to CDMA and related to things like that they if you want to serve with the carriers that require that technology then you end up using a Qualcomm chip which is why qualcomm's modems were introduced in in the first iPhones that worked with Verizon in the US the problem is are Qualcomm abusing that Monopoly and and that's partly what was going into these patent royalties questions right so than there you go perhaps they just like being in court maybe it's warm there who knows but I asked you to tell me nice things and you did so thank you very much well so here's a nice thing and let's we'll end on this one this is a nice one iCloud for Windows yay yay Apple has updated iCloud for Windows it's available in Microsoft's app store and it makes iCloud function a little more like the the Microsoft One Drive cloud storage service in Windows 10 so it's more convenient for use you can use that that iCloud storage within Windows you can have the iCloud Drive experience that gives the same sort of Technology as as one drives files on demand feature which means that instead of having to manually retrieve things from iCloud you can have your iCloud Drive folders have files synced within the cloud and your drive so that they're they're available for offline use that's actually uh that's Microsoft and Apple presumably helping each other out we've just had Google saying nice things about Apple the world is getting nicer your excellent point thank you very much for that see in a bright spot in Dark Times next time I'll ask you for money we'll see what happens okay this is this is not the first time that Apple's released products to the Microsoft store iTunes for Windows 10 is a part of the Microsoft App Store and uh this is this is good yes but uh the iCloud for Windows app Behavior where it has that sort of download for offline sync is very much like the behavior that you get in Mac where we have our desktops and documents stored in iCloud so I am happy with that well William that is all the time I have I am fresh out of time my most valuable commodity next time I will ask you for more on the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you uh W gallago Twitter and William appleinsider.com all the live long day what about you that is The Honorable William Gallagher everybody I'm Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter I am always found at Apple Insider and I want you to check out my writings at uh at wristwatch review I just published an article there about an interesting thing where I've got a friend who is trying to adopt a little girl into his family and facing staggering legal fees he has a GoFundMe and all of these different wristwatch micr brand companies have gone together pulled a number of wrist watches that they are raffling off to people who donate to him and so there are something like 13 different watches available to people who donate to his cause they've raised over like $10,000 at this point it's fantastic and it's all about helping a person and his family become a family legally and I like it excellent so go there check that out and and uh if you're so inclined maybe even donate all right thank you so much everybody we'll be back next week with moreyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast this is the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor marks and joining me is that Wy person that that willful individual that wonderful William Gallagher okay you just I mean you're often dropping the odd thing I responsible like that but that was a whole list of them is that to make up for the fact that last week I sat here on my own talking to myself about WWDC just cuz you had done on live from the venue itself yes yes it is i' have did the same okay right that was a good show I thought by really I am well but I I mean you've been to lots of events I've been to lots of events and things uh you kind of get your fill of them but not WWDC that's one I'd love to go so hearing from Dan right there I thought that was a really interesting episode yeah what's interesting is that we all know that that's not a consumer Hardware event yes right it's an event for developers to get an understanding of what's coming in the future and yet the keynote is used as an opportunity to talk about hardware and to talk about where things are today right yes and and you and I had discussed whether or not there would be something introduced there what was that cuz cuz I think I'd placed bets that we were and you'd said no what happened there uh I I was putting money on Swift UI uh coming out with that name uh doing exactly what it does so uh kaching I think I I I won there or do you mean the Mac Pro which I was certain they wouldn't show and I had asked them to do that right I was I was saying I really wish that they would and here enough sure enough we got something didn't we no no no wait a second I mean let's not split some hairs here but I was sure they wouldn't and you wished they would so the fact that they did you're taking that as a win for you that you were right but you weren't right or wrong you were just wishing I was definitively wrong I own my wrongness there all I'm saying is not whether I or not I was right what I'm suggesting is that when you wish it makes no difference who you are okay that dreams do come true I wonder if that's certain or not I can think of people who could wish for things and then afford to get them anyway that's probably no okay all right well long as we things up so talking about things that are futuristic and cool Apple has been looking at different ways to display pre-rendered 3D video in a stereoscopic method what do you think they'd use stereoscopic views for traditionally what do we use those for uh traditionally for pictures of ancient New York book in those little readers where You' got two photographs side by side and it all looks 3D and it's brilliant yeah the two lenses side by side with the photograph mounted two photographs mounted a couple you know about a foot and a half away right yeah yeah stereoscopic Vision when was that stuff invented I wonder I'm guessing probably roughly alongside photography 18 177 photography really came into its own in the mid 1800s uh stereoscopic view stereoscopic I'm not exactly sure I think I have uh a book of old New York stereoscopic photographs from early 1900s somewhere you know what I'm I'm Mist you're you're right just as early as photography came into Vogue stereoscopes which is what those things are called came into popularity from the 1850s till about the 1930s isn't it funny how 3D comes in with a bang and then whimpers away and comes back with a bang and we're still doing that today we're now post the latest 3D thing let's get ready for the next one yeah no so the the earli stereoscope was 1838 and the the common one that you and I are thinking of was was an Oliver wend Holmes invention and came around in 1861 well and we're still talking about it today and we're still talking about it and we're talking about it because Apple has been looking at ways to do that for what we suspect would be a virtual reality or augmented reality headset okay I am less excited by all this because until it looks like a hollow deck I'm not that interested but I have enjoyed how Apple's done uh augmented reality with the reveal of its new products I put the new um Apple Pro display on my desk uh virtually it'll never be on there really but it was fun to see just how big that thing is and then to examine the new Mac Pro and pull it apart I that was a really clever use of technology so good on Apple I took a cheese grater and an iPad mini and I put them next to each other and I squinted real hard and pretended which of us is sadder ANW was on a tweet to Okay but well no you win cuz you get the cheese at the end okay all right jeez yes yes grommet so so apples chees ifying everything in a way how much do we actually know though cuz you you clearly know more about this than I do um and I imagine Apple isn't saying anything so what do we know well what we know is that Apple has purchased in the past people that make micro displays that is micro LEDs that are are very very small and the of microns and those tend to be based on on gallium nitrate or Gan technology because that's the only way to get them small enough and the benefit is that you get a lot of power savings and they're very bright which is what you need for augmented reality so it's it's pretty sure bet that Apple's working on that this idea of stereoscopy that they're working on only adds fuel to that fire so they filed a patent they've got an application that says stereoscopic rendering of virtual 3D objects well they showed us at WWDC about occlusion so people can be occluded by 3D objects which makes it that much more realistic that you're working in a 3D space and so if you can do that and you can put up 3D rendered objects pre-rendered objects in front of them in the glasses then it's just about making it that much more real that much more engaging the other day Tim Cook was uh to talking about the Statue of Liberty app and and I got that it is utterly fascinating being able to just place it in your living room floor and walk around it and inside it and examine the construction of it these things are genuinely useful and the 3D thisness of it is actually becoming real I'm I don't want to sound cynical about all this stuff but I've been surprised to how good these experiences have been so yes good on Apple let's render stereoscopically everything we can you know that's interesting when you mentioned Statue of Liberty because I I've been up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty but no one has been up to the arm of the Statue of Liberty unless you work for the National Park Service in decades no the arm has been closed and and you know that's been over worries about things like the stability of the arm under stress from not many people walking up and down it or it's been about weight or it's been about the idea that you just can't you know there's there's no real safety because you're up there and you could go over the ledge kind of thing but it's interesting to me because if we have this sort of augmented reality that's truly immersive then those experiences that are off limits to most of us could be ones that we could live through vicariously yes I mean I still would rather go there than see it this way but yes I did exactly that I because same as you I knew I couldn't get into the torch before so I did through this um and I looked down what a long fall it would be and the sound of the birds around me which actually I wasn't expecting nice little touch of detail there for it it felt like you could Fe hear the wind as well so it's very nice nice really nice you know there are all kinds of problems that have to be solved around this and they aren't all things like stereoscopy or people occlusion it's it's as well as thermal regulation right or just the weight of the headset because if you have something that's big and bulky or you have something that doesn't fit well or it gets hot it takes you out of that immersion it makes it uncomfortable to wear there are a lot of problems to be solved here but we are fairly certain that apple is working on it and they've been working on it for years right I just wonder how they're going to solve the wallet stealing uh option I mean I think Apple's very fond of our wallets but there you are with this headset on uh and you can't see what's actually around you so you you get mugged this holiday reality means that you see what's in front of you as well right and I TI him up behind you virtual reality is is your blocked off and viewing only what's projected but but augmented reality or mixed reality is where anything that has a headset though is going to affect your view of the actual world around you William if you put all of your wallet in apple wallet you don't have to worry about this okay nether be an answer right get there now you know we we know that this is the kind of thing that's being worked on not just from the the occlusion that they showed us at wwc but there are many changes in AR kit 3 and iOS 13 green screen style effects you know that that's kind of big without needing a chroma key background uh yeah that I've got to try that X I did green screen stuff at uh at BBC just very basic stuff for one of the websites and and it's remarkably hard actually trying to get cuz the green the actual green screen um there was some sort of pot mark on it so to get rid of it completely was a a right light on the screen or or reflection of the green onto a person's clothing standing in front of it or you know all of these kinds of Details Matter and I have a green screen here at the house and it it can sometimes be a little difficult if you haven't got it lit correctly wait so that postcard you sent me from Mars was fake don't you know we're going to skip the moon and go straight to s of course that was it was real I was there man it was warm unseasonably warm okay right they don't call it the red planet for nothing no I believe you have to pay uh anyway um every time you say a clusion I've got to say this I am thrown back 20 years is it longer to the 80s how long go is the 80s got 40 years to recurse of occlusion in Doctor Who uh castra valva if you uh you're probably so young you didn't even see that one repeat but that's just was it Tom Baker episode uh Peter Davidson his first nope didn't see it no so Christopher bidm wrote it yay to castra valva based on the aser print look at the sort of level of detail I can give you about things that you're not interested it it's a skill that's so true thanks it's funny when I said it less so now but they've also added motion apple apple this is a podcast about Apple they added motion capture capabilities so the movements of a subject can be analyzed interpreted real time in the application so you divide the subject down to a skeleton with joints and Bones determined and monitored for changes and with those movements trigger animations or or they can be recorded for custom movements of characters which is cool it also impacts face tracking which is cool you know face track and currently get used for mimoji and Snapchat kind of thing but it's been expanded to allow it to work with to three faces at the same time oh I didn't know that wow okay another key component is is of course for users to be able to collaborate within the same AR environment so by letting people see the same items in the same environment in a single session you can enable multiplayer games and of course we were looking at that Minecraft game that they displayed because that's super cool um the ability to tr track the user's face and the world using the front and rear cameras at the same time detecting up to 100 images at the same time and estimates of physical image sizes more robust 3D object detection improved plane detection the all of these things are are leading us to a future where reality can be mixed where reality can be shared can be augmented that augmented bit can be shared that's a big deal yes I'm a bit overwhelmed by it actually the amount of things going on I'm not sure um yeah I I just could going to go back to waiting for the Hol de but it sounds like it's soon so okay yes please pleas rush me one Hol de I mean we we haven't really talked about the uses but there have to be uses Beyond just the Ikea catalog or apple putting the Mac Pro stand that you're never going to purchase on your desk right yes I can think of uh hostile environments certain industrial plants nuclear areas where the ability to see uh I don't know what a drone that you put in there is doing to be able to manipulate in that fine detail I can see that being uh huge yeah right and and that's sort of a lame use in that that's what Google Glass has become right Google Glass was going to be this thing that everyone was going to wear and it was going to change everything and it ended up being what the industrial worker wears yes and that's a small disappointing future as opposed to one where we all get these things now obviously wearing glasses can be obnoxious just in terms of fit and and and actual comfort and there are the same things that scared people about them with Google Glass which is are you recording me right yes yeah but if we can overcome those things and the uses outweigh those then it will work so it's just a matter of of first building the technology so that we can even see and even get to those kinds of uses right I know it sounds silly to try and say we have to build it first but if you think back that's kind of how Computing developed less deliberately but yes uh here it is what we're going to do about it that was the way around yes okay you're saying intentionally set it that uh kind of the opposite of fake it till you make it isn't it just make it and then fake it until you've sorted it out okay well and and the Apple watch developed along that way a little bit too right we had all these weird interfaces and things that you could do with your first Apple watch that we later learned it doesn't make sense to do those at all yes that's true yes that seemed such a long time ago now weirdly the the history of computing was okay so it's glorified typewriter and that's awesome and then all of a sudden a spreadsheet comes along and the next thing you know you've eliminated a whole floor of an office building that we doing spreadsheets on paper yes sorry about that but yeah yes yeah and you should you put those people out of work well no I I personally concentrated on the bit about uh typewriters and that which got rid of Pas and secretaries a lot just destroyed the typing pool um that that's my legacy yes unbelievable you you have you are a net job Destroyer William yes on the more positive side uh a friend a producer uh organizer is pointing out to me recently writers went digital first we beat everybody else everybody else is catching up with writers because the moment we could get word presses we threw away everything else and our slaves to the screen ever since join us it's true it's true so the headset development first leaked in a safety report in 2017 where incidents requiring medical treatment Beyond first aid were required for a person testing a prototype device at one of Apple's devices at offices rather why the injury related to Iain suggesting it was testing something Vision related potentially a headset of some form brief okay that's not where I thought you were going with that um I'm just laying out the evidence for how we know Apple's working on a headset uh all going around poking its employees in the LA it's one way or the other yeah yeah yeah no they spoke to a lot of Technology suppliers at CES uh with with Apple employees visiting stanza suppliers of wave guide Hardware they have acquired companies that are closely related to AR and headset production they picked up eye tracking senso motoric instruments and they bought aonia holographics which focused on development of specialized lenses for a headsets they picked up uh gosh what was it lumos or lumify or one of those for um for uh microed displays micro yeah micro LED displays they've picked up a bunch of these different things along the way so it's it's one of these Futures that I feel like is coming together and we're just seeing it in slow motion at this point it'll all seem very obvious in retrospect well of you when it happens they'll say we showed you AR and now we're bringing it to your face right that's this does seem to happen a lot with apple um something comes out and you think oh that rumor actually made total sense 5 years ago uh but it didn't at the time so yes who knows what other the rumors we're missing well and you're absolutely right you know for years and years uh at Apple Insider we were talking about what was essentially we were talking about a tablet Mac or a touchscreen Mac and what we got was an iPad so close and yet so far but we were talking about that in 2006 we were talking about that 2005 we were talking about that pre- iPhone because they've been working on the iPad first and shifted gears for the phone right uh tp5 I don't think we were uh Visionary innovators in our thinking there since Microsoft had tablets uh out from what 99 2000 somewhere around there well this wasn't about being Visionary and predictive it was about going on the rumors and Rumblings that we were hearing at the time all right okay well 20 years later we were right absolutely okay now here's another one where you were right tell me about what's wrong with the new Mac Pro absolutely nothing at all what could you possibly mean price yeah okay yeah small thing uh I might not not buy the two that I was considering you know one for the kitchen one for the den I might not do that third for Angel because you know well you can't get them in blue you know that that was a bit of a blow really we have to talk to colorware we could get one made in blue it's not the same come on take it down to the local powder coating shop and have them just it's like I don't even know you okay all right no first party color right so so here's here's the thing right it's the Mac Pro the power to change everything now you have the Mac Mini yes I do is the Mac Mini very expandable no and is that causing me a problem yes you have an iMac an older one now is the iMac a very expandable machine no and it's quite ill at the moment so let's let's not remind me about this yeah and and there are plenty of people who have MacBooks and MacBook Pros and those aren't very expandable machines either no fortunate their iPhones and their iPads they're fine yeah yeah absolutely so there seems to be a number of people who really wanted a Mac Pro like machine but wanted to have it at a price they could afford yes I mean you're talking about ALC I've written saying that that there's a gap in Apple's market but the reason I did that uh one of the reasons apart from the fact that I believe it uh the reason that made me first think of it and then first look at the prices and then spot this just in the prices there's this giant Gap in so so how much does a Mac Pro cost Mac Pro 5,000 well £6,000 P sorry dollars it probably will be £6,000 won't it but $6,000 and change for the monitor all right and there's the iMac and the iMac Pro right the iMac Pro costs how much yeah the bit less I think the iMac works out at about a, uh start these are all starting prices about $1,000 less than the Mac Pro and the iMac is what 3 and a half 4,000 less than an iMac Pro that's the Gap in the middle everywhere else the distence in price between models is comparatively small H but I should say I should there is this argument going around that Apple was wrong to make the Mac Pro and you listen to people talking about this and it always boils down to uh these people would have rathered apple had bought a machine that they could afford and I don't see that as a valid criticism of the Mac Pro you can wish for something else but to criticize uh Tesla's Roadster for not being a pencil sharpener see seems a little bit of a fallacy to me Mac Pro is a superb machine is it right for everybody yes but not everybody can afford it there might be room for more that's all yeah so the the iMac plain old not not pro iMac but iMac starts from $1,99 and goes up to to essentially 1,500 yes in the 21 in in the 27 in it it reaches 2,300 in price and then the iMac Pro is significantly more right the iMac Pro begins at a infantes small 4,999 so what you're suggesting is that there's a gap between the two the iMac and the iMac Pro part of the range there is a gap in pricing yeah there is a gap I think in utility you can well argue that we're only talking about base prices and you can spec up all of these now actually I think that's a separate issue because truly I do not know how many cores will is an 8 core going to be right for me or a 10 core iMac Pro that level of detail I don't know how to determine uh so Apple has chosen these starting points and they have laid out this line uh of Divisions between it You' need this machine or that machine and then within the the gaps you can do these uh adjustments so I think it's valid to look at the starting points of them all and when you do that there is this enormous well it's a price Gap but I I offer that it's a price performance Gap as well so what I'm hearing is that the product Matrix is too confusing I think that's harsh it's we've gone on a long way since Steve Jobs is good or for um I still think if you are in the market you know whether you're in the market for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro You've Got No Doubt over which one of those you are but in the middle there is uh confusion and I think a gap I I think part of the problem that I'm thinking of is not just the number of SKS but where they fit within the consumer or Pro Line and helping people understand whether or not they're a consumer or a pro in terms of needs right you don't know which number of cores you need is is a confusing problem and and uh RAM as well and RAM as well but the it used to be that in that that Matrix of 4 the iMac was the consumer level machine and the power MAAC was the pro level machine and that was a fairly simple division and they had the same for laptops iBook and and PowerBook and those lines are a little bit muddied now because you have the iMac as a consumer desktop machine the Mac Mini was traditionally a consumer desktop machine but now it's a pro machine because it's got 10 gbit ethernet options not to just throw this in but the whole Pro consumer line we've said this before is a very very blurry one I am unquestionably a pro user for certain things at certain times and the rest of it I'm not so give me a straight definition of who I am that's what I need who am I and what Mac do I need and can you buy it for me please just through that last one in I mean it's a it's a very tough thing to try and figure out who we are as people and where we fit on different spectrums and you know I I spend all of my 20s my formative years trying to figure that out and I still don't know to come to any conclusion I'm intending to spend my 20s that way well I know you look forward to that it's going to be good yes yes yes look nobody's going to check are they I can say things like that okay yes the the concern I think is that that these lines are blurred I I think the Mac Mini is a great machine it's a machine that allows some form of expandability in in terms of using its USB or Thunderbolt kind of attachment ports um just as people tried to do that with the 2013 Mac Pro the iMac Pro the same kind of thing so it's it's interesting how these lines have become a little bit more fuzzy yeah I I know that people wanted a Mac Pro they wanted a traditional Tower with expandability with slots and they wanted at a price they could afford those prices are not low and apple is known for its low low prices yes yes absolutely all of this circles around to is there a Gap in price in desire is there a market for something in the middle well logically yes there is uh but statistically actually we don't know Apple knows who buys things Apple knows uh very in great detail detail we will never see of how many people who get modular upgradable machines ever bother to actually upgrade them um I remember Mike wle on Apple Insider looked into this a long time ago uh when he had lots of data from um various sources around the time of the old mic Pro the the the original cheese greater one and the figures he had were at an absolute Peak 5% of the owners of those machines we're changing anything so modularity it appeals to me and I see that there's a market for it but Apple's probably sitting there thinking actually William not so much well they're not they don't know my name but people people regularly buy things that are greater than their needs yes and one could argue that you should with computers cuz that way they last longer for you but yeah I didn't I bought the entry level Mac Mini I tend to try and buy the middle model just because it feels like I'm getting a little bit better value yes well you are yeah but I had an exact budget and it covered that one so I don't regret that I just wish I could have uh stretched to more storage as that is giving me uh problems uh daily at the moment but we'll figure it out yeah I want to shift gears completely and entirely let's talk about security and vulnerabilities and things like that for a moment okay um uh I was going to make a joke there about how I'm vulnerable but uh that would just open up the what are you talking about let's go with that what's troubling you honorable William Gallagher yeah so Facebook we talked about them in the past haven't we fa Facebook Facebook Facebook uh I know the name can't put your finger on it can you uh don't they do bad things or something data well so they had this they had this application right they had a Facebook research app that was banned in January for violating App Store review guidelines because they were using their Enterprise certificate to collect personal and potentially sensitive information from people yes right remember the snap yes and have they gone and done it again they haven't gone about it again but but uh they they called this their project Atlas initiative publicly known as the research app well they they had to write a letter they had respond to us Senator Richard Blumenthal and that letter of course was seen by TechCrunch and in their letter Facebook revealed that 187,000 users including 34,000 teenagers had their data collected by this application of the of those 31,000 users were in the United States and 4,300 were teenagers so they were doing this worldwide Facebook maintains the operation was driven by analytics but notes that the app in some cases received non-target information they didn't review it to determine whether it can contained health or financial data they they claim they've now deleted all user level Market insights data that was collected which would include any health or financial data that may have existed so they insist that they didn't have any there or that they didn't review it and now they can't review it CU they've deleted it woohoo so that's all good then now Apple commented on this in a separate letter in March and apple said that they didn't know how many devices were running the app which is deployed using the Enterprise developer certificate and and of course that's true because Enterprise shts are develop are distributed outside of the App Store and therefore it's impossible to have a handle on who got it or not yeah unusual for app to not know something like that but they can't so well it's I mean oh does that mean it's apples fault and or apple is doomed no no so oh God somebody's going to say that when when we talk about security the best security is when something is inaccessible or unknown or or unknowable and so Enterprise customers want to be able to distribute applications because they they want them to go to their specific users and not to the public App Store those applications may have access to sensitive corporate data they may have uh they may contain sensitive corporate data they may be proprietary there's all kinds of good reasons why those things should be distributed without making the end users go through the app store besides just means of distribution because you know having your all of your employees have to hit up the App Store to download something is hard as opposed to having the Enterprise certificate and just being able to load it on them and so it makes good sense for Apple to not be able to know this no I understand that I'm fine with it let's just make it uh it's easier Facebook who's heard of that let's all just blame Apple for everything and you know situation normal really yeah and and of course we shouldn't leave Google out Google is also running a a product like that that uh has been exposed now I don't have the numbers in front of me on what their screenwise meter product saw in terms of users but um 187,000 people which sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to all Facebook users but you know Facebook can extrapolate from those insights and that is not in significant number in terms of a study yeah okay that is big now in good news the head of Google's account signin teams is positive about Apple's introduction to the authentication space so Apple revealed this product called signin with apple and they are going to require people who use signin with Google or sign in with Facebook in their applications to add sign in with apple alongside it and someone got a hold of Google and asked them and so Google product management director Mark risher revealed on an interview with the Verge that it's preferable for users to employ some form of single sign on button to get into Apps rather than creating users and passwords because people are terrible about users and passwords right you you reuse the same username because it's typically an email or because you have an identity formed around using that username right oh good point you know I hadn't thought about the side of using an email address of course I use an email address in several places that's I had thought of that good point there use the same one do you uh yes uh Victor dot uh there you go that's the stuff yeah so so sorry I told over you there I just I genuinely I've I never used the same username I never use the same password I I use one password to create this stuff and I love it it never entered my head that of course the username is very often the same uh for cause but interesting okay so I'm I'm a little bit vulnerable there I see the point sign in it's certainly more convenient and considered it's also more secure uh Google has a point apple has a point yeah and it's way better for users to not have to type in a bespoke username and password or recycled password and definitely recycled username as we said and the other thing about Apple's doing it is that they have created a a means of not sharing your actual email address they they proxy it so that you don't have to share the real email address with that provider which is good I already do something like that I have I I own a particular website domain so um whenever I sign up to somewhere new I give it an email address at that domain uh so I can write egit at whatever it is um and then later when I get loads of spam address to egit at this place I know where it came from yeah and I've been using a a Google trick for that kind of purpose too where I can use my Gmail address and add a plus sign and then any other descriptor after that and it looks as a unique address hate that but I love this because I get emails uh that are my gmail address or very nearly my email address you know and it's always spam it's never somebody who actually mistyped my address and it's just fed up the problem is that the plus symbol isn't respected as a symbol legitimate an email by everywhere even it totally fits the uh the RFC but it but it allows me to filter the same way you are by seeing which one of those things gave away my my email address for example if I put Victor plus BBC at gmail then I can go ahead and see and that's not my email address by the way so don't give don't don't try writing to that one if I if I do that then I can see if the BBC gave my email address out yes not that they would let's be very clear about this you defending the BBC again there we go okay I have some problems with the corporation but they employed me for a long time and you wouldn't know this but in Britain they're currently getting a lot of uh shtick uh no no they're getting a whole lot of thing about licensing fees which is totally not their fault at this point exactly thank you I want points uh just to throw this in for scale uh the loss of money the BBC was going to face over this would have been the same as the entire radio budget uh or all of it national local BBC sounds World Service everything that's how much they're being forced to cut and as a radio man myself this upsets MEC me sorry we're off the point there a little bit um so uh apple has a point Google has a point this is rare isn't it they're agreeing with each other well so Google has for years wanted to get rid of usernames and passwords and Google has for years wanted to get rid of things like the URL and so anything that people do to help them in that goal even if it's not using their service helps them Reach that aim right they would much prefer people sign in with apple than signing in with users and passwords yeah I they they would much rather people sign in with Google more than sign in with apple but that's that's a distinction you know if if you're going to do it and you're already you pick one of the the the good options is basically what they're saying two minutes ago I was happy and now you mentioned the whole URL thing uh yeah each to send somebody a link and it's not to where you thought it was cuz it's Google's I just m m tell me something nicer happy again nicer you want to be happy again Apple yes please just for a bit is in negotiations to purchase Intel smartphone modem business oh do you know I've been up at nights wondering about Intel smart modern business well you know as we said before you are a net job Destroyer over there and Intel did close up shop and say y you know what we're putting our smartphone business under they took it out back they they they they ended it that's that and pink slipped I think is the the more polite term but yes okay they did that but no Here Comes Apple yes apple is said to be looking very very carefully at Intel's German operations which serve as the basis for the modem business all right I didn't know that okay um the Intel staff there comprised of Engineers from infineon's Wireless technology arm uh Which Intel purchased for 1.4 billion in 2011 they provided the baseband chips for iPhone from 2007 to 2010 negotiations have been ongoing since last year they could fall apart of course but if Apple's successful they will have hundreds of Veteran modem Engineers so sorry did you say this has been going on since last year so before this decision Apple was nudging away that's interesting cuz my mind goes straight to the staff who've just uh I presumed lost their jobs but uh are they in a bance now thinking do I get a job somewhere else do I hang off for apple or or or is Intel redeployed people I I'm not positive I know whether or not the those folks were redeployed or not but um it's interesting because if you look at it there are a number of of former Intel exacts who were brought into Intel as a part of the infinion acquisition who now work at apple somewhere were from years ago like stepen wolf who was a former manager of Intel's German modem outfit came to cuni within the past few months uh February Apple hired umashankar th gajan and I apologize if I've mangled that name who was an engineer who is said to have played a key role in the development of the chipmakers 5G modem now inel as you say exited the smartphone business in in April smartphone modem industry in April but they could pick up this whole office they could pick up this whole segment have hundreds of Engineers and what does Qualcomm think about this well so Qualcomm and apple settled their agreements in the past right they they've settled that Qualcomm is currently facing antitrust prosecution in the US oh yes i' forgotten about that yes okay they do like their lawsuits qualcom yeah well it's so it's a difficult thing right it's it's not illegal to be a monopoly but it is illegal to abuse that Monopoly to act as a monopoly yes okay well to to act in ways that maintain that Monopoly through Force that's naughty okay it is well so I mean a classic example um years and years and years ago Microsoft required that they be paid uh a Microsoft Windows license for every computer shipped even if the computer didn't ship with Windows on yes which is an amazing deal that they pulled off yes for them or or years and years ago when BOS was an operating system BOS got a deal to be loaded on a partition on tashiba and Microsoft had as a part of their license agreement a lockdown on the bootloader so that those machines could not dual boot customers bought machines that had windows and BOS on them and the Machine could not boot BOS out of the box so consumers thought that they were just not getting as much of their hard drive because it was partitioned right okay right those are abuses of the Monopoly that Microsoft had on Windows licenses at that time I remember assuming that Microsoft had been legally required uh when you installed some version of Windows company which one it was now to offer you the choice of Bing or Google for your search but very specifically required to offer for the choice to then not actually do it because when I would pick Google it would still set itself to Bing um that seemed uh Microsoft this is a behavior that they do in Europe they don't necessarily have to show that in the US right okay I do remember seeing the choice of browsers come up but the search thing was a European part all right well my own fault for living here then so so Qualcomm right Qualcomm has several key patents on technology especially related to CDMA and related to things like that they if you want to serve with the carriers that require that technology then you end up using a Qualcomm chip which is why qualcomm's modems were introduced in in the first iPhones that worked with Verizon in the US the problem is are Qualcomm abusing that Monopoly and and that's partly what was going into these patent royalties questions right so than there you go perhaps they just like being in court maybe it's warm there who knows but I asked you to tell me nice things and you did so thank you very much well so here's a nice thing and let's we'll end on this one this is a nice one iCloud for Windows yay yay Apple has updated iCloud for Windows it's available in Microsoft's app store and it makes iCloud function a little more like the the Microsoft One Drive cloud storage service in Windows 10 so it's more convenient for use you can use that that iCloud storage within Windows you can have the iCloud Drive experience that gives the same sort of Technology as as one drives files on demand feature which means that instead of having to manually retrieve things from iCloud you can have your iCloud Drive folders have files synced within the cloud and your drive so that they're they're available for offline use that's actually uh that's Microsoft and Apple presumably helping each other out we've just had Google saying nice things about Apple the world is getting nicer your excellent point thank you very much for that see in a bright spot in Dark Times next time I'll ask you for money we'll see what happens okay this is this is not the first time that Apple's released products to the Microsoft store iTunes for Windows 10 is a part of the Microsoft App Store and uh this is this is good yes but uh the iCloud for Windows app Behavior where it has that sort of download for offline sync is very much like the behavior that you get in Mac where we have our desktops and documents stored in iCloud so I am happy with that well William that is all the time I have I am fresh out of time my most valuable commodity next time I will ask you for more on the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you uh W gallago Twitter and William appleinsider.com all the live long day what about you that is The Honorable William Gallagher everybody I'm Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter I am always found at Apple Insider and I want you to check out my writings at uh at wristwatch review I just published an article there about an interesting thing where I've got a friend who is trying to adopt a little girl into his family and facing staggering legal fees he has a GoFundMe and all of these different wristwatch micr brand companies have gone together pulled a number of wrist watches that they are raffling off to people who donate to him and so there are something like 13 different watches available to people who donate to his cause they've raised over like $10,000 at this point it's fantastic and it's all about helping a person and his family become a family legally and I like it excellent so go there check that out and and uh if you're so inclined maybe even donate all right thank you so much everybody we'll be back next week with moreyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast this is the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor marks and joining me is that Wy person that that willful individual that wonderful William Gallagher okay you just I mean you're often dropping the odd thing I responsible like that but that was a whole list of them is that to make up for the fact that last week I sat here on my own talking to myself about WWDC just cuz you had done on live from the venue itself yes yes it is i' have did the same okay right that was a good show I thought by really I am well but I I mean you've been to lots of events I've been to lots of events and things uh you kind of get your fill of them but not WWDC that's one I'd love to go so hearing from Dan right there I thought that was a really interesting episode yeah what's interesting is that we all know that that's not a consumer Hardware event yes right it's an event for developers to get an understanding of what's coming in the future and yet the keynote is used as an opportunity to talk about hardware and to talk about where things are today right yes and and you and I had discussed whether or not there would be something introduced there what was that cuz cuz I think I'd placed bets that we were and you'd said no what happened there uh I I was putting money on Swift UI uh coming out with that name uh doing exactly what it does so uh kaching I think I I I won there or do you mean the Mac Pro which I was certain they wouldn't show and I had asked them to do that right I was I was saying I really wish that they would and here enough sure enough we got something didn't we no no no wait a second I mean let's not split some hairs here but I was sure they wouldn't and you wished they would so the fact that they did you're taking that as a win for you that you were right but you weren't right or wrong you were just wishing I was definitively wrong I own my wrongness there all I'm saying is not whether I or not I was right what I'm suggesting is that when you wish it makes no difference who you are okay that dreams do come true I wonder if that's certain or not I can think of people who could wish for things and then afford to get them anyway that's probably no okay all right well long as we things up so talking about things that are futuristic and cool Apple has been looking at different ways to display pre-rendered 3D video in a stereoscopic method what do you think they'd use stereoscopic views for traditionally what do we use those for uh traditionally for pictures of ancient New York book in those little readers where You' got two photographs side by side and it all looks 3D and it's brilliant yeah the two lenses side by side with the photograph mounted two photographs mounted a couple you know about a foot and a half away right yeah yeah stereoscopic Vision when was that stuff invented I wonder I'm guessing probably roughly alongside photography 18 177 photography really came into its own in the mid 1800s uh stereoscopic view stereoscopic I'm not exactly sure I think I have uh a book of old New York stereoscopic photographs from early 1900s somewhere you know what I'm I'm Mist you're you're right just as early as photography came into Vogue stereoscopes which is what those things are called came into popularity from the 1850s till about the 1930s isn't it funny how 3D comes in with a bang and then whimpers away and comes back with a bang and we're still doing that today we're now post the latest 3D thing let's get ready for the next one yeah no so the the earli stereoscope was 1838 and the the common one that you and I are thinking of was was an Oliver wend Holmes invention and came around in 1861 well and we're still talking about it today and we're still talking about it and we're talking about it because Apple has been looking at ways to do that for what we suspect would be a virtual reality or augmented reality headset okay I am less excited by all this because until it looks like a hollow deck I'm not that interested but I have enjoyed how Apple's done uh augmented reality with the reveal of its new products I put the new um Apple Pro display on my desk uh virtually it'll never be on there really but it was fun to see just how big that thing is and then to examine the new Mac Pro and pull it apart I that was a really clever use of technology so good on Apple I took a cheese grater and an iPad mini and I put them next to each other and I squinted real hard and pretended which of us is sadder ANW was on a tweet to Okay but well no you win cuz you get the cheese at the end okay all right jeez yes yes grommet so so apples chees ifying everything in a way how much do we actually know though cuz you you clearly know more about this than I do um and I imagine Apple isn't saying anything so what do we know well what we know is that Apple has purchased in the past people that make micro displays that is micro LEDs that are are very very small and the of microns and those tend to be based on on gallium nitrate or Gan technology because that's the only way to get them small enough and the benefit is that you get a lot of power savings and they're very bright which is what you need for augmented reality so it's it's pretty sure bet that Apple's working on that this idea of stereoscopy that they're working on only adds fuel to that fire so they filed a patent they've got an application that says stereoscopic rendering of virtual 3D objects well they showed us at WWDC about occlusion so people can be occluded by 3D objects which makes it that much more realistic that you're working in a 3D space and so if you can do that and you can put up 3D rendered objects pre-rendered objects in front of them in the glasses then it's just about making it that much more real that much more engaging the other day Tim Cook was uh to talking about the Statue of Liberty app and and I got that it is utterly fascinating being able to just place it in your living room floor and walk around it and inside it and examine the construction of it these things are genuinely useful and the 3D thisness of it is actually becoming real I'm I don't want to sound cynical about all this stuff but I've been surprised to how good these experiences have been so yes good on Apple let's render stereoscopically everything we can you know that's interesting when you mentioned Statue of Liberty because I I've been up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty but no one has been up to the arm of the Statue of Liberty unless you work for the National Park Service in decades no the arm has been closed and and you know that's been over worries about things like the stability of the arm under stress from not many people walking up and down it or it's been about weight or it's been about the idea that you just can't you know there's there's no real safety because you're up there and you could go over the ledge kind of thing but it's interesting to me because if we have this sort of augmented reality that's truly immersive then those experiences that are off limits to most of us could be ones that we could live through vicariously yes I mean I still would rather go there than see it this way but yes I did exactly that I because same as you I knew I couldn't get into the torch before so I did through this um and I looked down what a long fall it would be and the sound of the birds around me which actually I wasn't expecting nice little touch of detail there for it it felt like you could Fe hear the wind as well so it's very nice nice really nice you know there are all kinds of problems that have to be solved around this and they aren't all things like stereoscopy or people occlusion it's it's as well as thermal regulation right or just the weight of the headset because if you have something that's big and bulky or you have something that doesn't fit well or it gets hot it takes you out of that immersion it makes it uncomfortable to wear there are a lot of problems to be solved here but we are fairly certain that apple is working on it and they've been working on it for years right I just wonder how they're going to solve the wallet stealing uh option I mean I think Apple's very fond of our wallets but there you are with this headset on uh and you can't see what's actually around you so you you get mugged this holiday reality means that you see what's in front of you as well right and I TI him up behind you virtual reality is is your blocked off and viewing only what's projected but but augmented reality or mixed reality is where anything that has a headset though is going to affect your view of the actual world around you William if you put all of your wallet in apple wallet you don't have to worry about this okay nether be an answer right get there now you know we we know that this is the kind of thing that's being worked on not just from the the occlusion that they showed us at wwc but there are many changes in AR kit 3 and iOS 13 green screen style effects you know that that's kind of big without needing a chroma key background uh yeah that I've got to try that X I did green screen stuff at uh at BBC just very basic stuff for one of the websites and and it's remarkably hard actually trying to get cuz the green the actual green screen um there was some sort of pot mark on it so to get rid of it completely was a a right light on the screen or or reflection of the green onto a person's clothing standing in front of it or you know all of these kinds of Details Matter and I have a green screen here at the house and it it can sometimes be a little difficult if you haven't got it lit correctly wait so that postcard you sent me from Mars was fake don't you know we're going to skip the moon and go straight to s of course that was it was real I was there man it was warm unseasonably warm okay right they don't call it the red planet for nothing no I believe you have to pay uh anyway um every time you say a clusion I've got to say this I am thrown back 20 years is it longer to the 80s how long go is the 80s got 40 years to recurse of occlusion in Doctor Who uh castra valva if you uh you're probably so young you didn't even see that one repeat but that's just was it Tom Baker episode uh Peter Davidson his first nope didn't see it no so Christopher bidm wrote it yay to castra valva based on the aser print look at the sort of level of detail I can give you about things that you're not interested it it's a skill that's so true thanks it's funny when I said it less so now but they've also added motion apple apple this is a podcast about Apple they added motion capture capabilities so the movements of a subject can be analyzed interpreted real time in the application so you divide the subject down to a skeleton with joints and Bones determined and monitored for changes and with those movements trigger animations or or they can be recorded for custom movements of characters which is cool it also impacts face tracking which is cool you know face track and currently get used for mimoji and Snapchat kind of thing but it's been expanded to allow it to work with to three faces at the same time oh I didn't know that wow okay another key component is is of course for users to be able to collaborate within the same AR environment so by letting people see the same items in the same environment in a single session you can enable multiplayer games and of course we were looking at that Minecraft game that they displayed because that's super cool um the ability to tr track the user's face and the world using the front and rear cameras at the same time detecting up to 100 images at the same time and estimates of physical image sizes more robust 3D object detection improved plane detection the all of these things are are leading us to a future where reality can be mixed where reality can be shared can be augmented that augmented bit can be shared that's a big deal yes I'm a bit overwhelmed by it actually the amount of things going on I'm not sure um yeah I I just could going to go back to waiting for the Hol de but it sounds like it's soon so okay yes please pleas rush me one Hol de I mean we we haven't really talked about the uses but there have to be uses Beyond just the Ikea catalog or apple putting the Mac Pro stand that you're never going to purchase on your desk right yes I can think of uh hostile environments certain industrial plants nuclear areas where the ability to see uh I don't know what a drone that you put in there is doing to be able to manipulate in that fine detail I can see that being uh huge yeah right and and that's sort of a lame use in that that's what Google Glass has become right Google Glass was going to be this thing that everyone was going to wear and it was going to change everything and it ended up being what the industrial worker wears yes and that's a small disappointing future as opposed to one where we all get these things now obviously wearing glasses can be obnoxious just in terms of fit and and and actual comfort and there are the same things that scared people about them with Google Glass which is are you recording me right yes yeah but if we can overcome those things and the uses outweigh those then it will work so it's just a matter of of first building the technology so that we can even see and even get to those kinds of uses right I know it sounds silly to try and say we have to build it first but if you think back that's kind of how Computing developed less deliberately but yes uh here it is what we're going to do about it that was the way around yes okay you're saying intentionally set it that uh kind of the opposite of fake it till you make it isn't it just make it and then fake it until you've sorted it out okay well and and the Apple watch developed along that way a little bit too right we had all these weird interfaces and things that you could do with your first Apple watch that we later learned it doesn't make sense to do those at all yes that's true yes that seemed such a long time ago now weirdly the the history of computing was okay so it's glorified typewriter and that's awesome and then all of a sudden a spreadsheet comes along and the next thing you know you've eliminated a whole floor of an office building that we doing spreadsheets on paper yes sorry about that but yeah yes yeah and you should you put those people out of work well no I I personally concentrated on the bit about uh typewriters and that which got rid of Pas and secretaries a lot just destroyed the typing pool um that that's my legacy yes unbelievable you you have you are a net job Destroyer William yes on the more positive side uh a friend a producer uh organizer is pointing out to me recently writers went digital first we beat everybody else everybody else is catching up with writers because the moment we could get word presses we threw away everything else and our slaves to the screen ever since join us it's true it's true so the headset development first leaked in a safety report in 2017 where incidents requiring medical treatment Beyond first aid were required for a person testing a prototype device at one of Apple's devices at offices rather why the injury related to Iain suggesting it was testing something Vision related potentially a headset of some form brief okay that's not where I thought you were going with that um I'm just laying out the evidence for how we know Apple's working on a headset uh all going around poking its employees in the LA it's one way or the other yeah yeah yeah no they spoke to a lot of Technology suppliers at CES uh with with Apple employees visiting stanza suppliers of wave guide Hardware they have acquired companies that are closely related to AR and headset production they picked up eye tracking senso motoric instruments and they bought aonia holographics which focused on development of specialized lenses for a headsets they picked up uh gosh what was it lumos or lumify or one of those for um for uh microed displays micro yeah micro LED displays they've picked up a bunch of these different things along the way so it's it's one of these Futures that I feel like is coming together and we're just seeing it in slow motion at this point it'll all seem very obvious in retrospect well of you when it happens they'll say we showed you AR and now we're bringing it to your face right that's this does seem to happen a lot with apple um something comes out and you think oh that rumor actually made total sense 5 years ago uh but it didn't at the time so yes who knows what other the rumors we're missing well and you're absolutely right you know for years and years uh at Apple Insider we were talking about what was essentially we were talking about a tablet Mac or a touchscreen Mac and what we got was an iPad so close and yet so far but we were talking about that in 2006 we were talking about that 2005 we were talking about that pre- iPhone because they've been working on the iPad first and shifted gears for the phone right uh tp5 I don't think we were uh Visionary innovators in our thinking there since Microsoft had tablets uh out from what 99 2000 somewhere around there well this wasn't about being Visionary and predictive it was about going on the rumors and Rumblings that we were hearing at the time all right okay well 20 years later we were right absolutely okay now here's another one where you were right tell me about what's wrong with the new Mac Pro absolutely nothing at all what could you possibly mean price yeah okay yeah small thing uh I might not not buy the two that I was considering you know one for the kitchen one for the den I might not do that third for Angel because you know well you can't get them in blue you know that that was a bit of a blow really we have to talk to colorware we could get one made in blue it's not the same come on take it down to the local powder coating shop and have them just it's like I don't even know you okay all right no first party color right so so here's here's the thing right it's the Mac Pro the power to change everything now you have the Mac Mini yes I do is the Mac Mini very expandable no and is that causing me a problem yes you have an iMac an older one now is the iMac a very expandable machine no and it's quite ill at the moment so let's let's not remind me about this yeah and and there are plenty of people who have MacBooks and MacBook Pros and those aren't very expandable machines either no fortunate their iPhones and their iPads they're fine yeah yeah absolutely so there seems to be a number of people who really wanted a Mac Pro like machine but wanted to have it at a price they could afford yes I mean you're talking about ALC I've written saying that that there's a gap in Apple's market but the reason I did that uh one of the reasons apart from the fact that I believe it uh the reason that made me first think of it and then first look at the prices and then spot this just in the prices there's this giant Gap in so so how much does a Mac Pro cost Mac Pro 5,000 well £6,000 P sorry dollars it probably will be £6,000 won't it but $6,000 and change for the monitor all right and there's the iMac and the iMac Pro right the iMac Pro costs how much yeah the bit less I think the iMac works out at about a, uh start these are all starting prices about $1,000 less than the Mac Pro and the iMac is what 3 and a half 4,000 less than an iMac Pro that's the Gap in the middle everywhere else the distence in price between models is comparatively small H but I should say I should there is this argument going around that Apple was wrong to make the Mac Pro and you listen to people talking about this and it always boils down to uh these people would have rathered apple had bought a machine that they could afford and I don't see that as a valid criticism of the Mac Pro you can wish for something else but to criticize uh Tesla's Roadster for not being a pencil sharpener see seems a little bit of a fallacy to me Mac Pro is a superb machine is it right for everybody yes but not everybody can afford it there might be room for more that's all yeah so the the iMac plain old not not pro iMac but iMac starts from $1,99 and goes up to to essentially 1,500 yes in the 21 in in the 27 in it it reaches 2,300 in price and then the iMac Pro is significantly more right the iMac Pro begins at a infantes small 4,999 so what you're suggesting is that there's a gap between the two the iMac and the iMac Pro part of the range there is a gap in pricing yeah there is a gap I think in utility you can well argue that we're only talking about base prices and you can spec up all of these now actually I think that's a separate issue because truly I do not know how many cores will is an 8 core going to be right for me or a 10 core iMac Pro that level of detail I don't know how to determine uh so Apple has chosen these starting points and they have laid out this line uh of Divisions between it You' need this machine or that machine and then within the the gaps you can do these uh adjustments so I think it's valid to look at the starting points of them all and when you do that there is this enormous well it's a price Gap but I I offer that it's a price performance Gap as well so what I'm hearing is that the product Matrix is too confusing I think that's harsh it's we've gone on a long way since Steve Jobs is good or for um I still think if you are in the market you know whether you're in the market for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro You've Got No Doubt over which one of those you are but in the middle there is uh confusion and I think a gap I I think part of the problem that I'm thinking of is not just the number of SKS but where they fit within the consumer or Pro Line and helping people understand whether or not they're a consumer or a pro in terms of needs right you don't know which number of cores you need is is a confusing problem and and uh RAM as well and RAM as well but the it used to be that in that that Matrix of 4 the iMac was the consumer level machine and the power MAAC was the pro level machine and that was a fairly simple division and they had the same for laptops iBook and and PowerBook and those lines are a little bit muddied now because you have the iMac as a consumer desktop machine the Mac Mini was traditionally a consumer desktop machine but now it's a pro machine because it's got 10 gbit ethernet options not to just throw this in but the whole Pro consumer line we've said this before is a very very blurry one I am unquestionably a pro user for certain things at certain times and the rest of it I'm not so give me a straight definition of who I am that's what I need who am I and what Mac do I need and can you buy it for me please just through that last one in I mean it's a it's a very tough thing to try and figure out who we are as people and where we fit on different spectrums and you know I I spend all of my 20s my formative years trying to figure that out and I still don't know to come to any conclusion I'm intending to spend my 20s that way well I know you look forward to that it's going to be good yes yes yes look nobody's going to check are they I can say things like that okay yes the the concern I think is that that these lines are blurred I I think the Mac Mini is a great machine it's a machine that allows some form of expandability in in terms of using its USB or Thunderbolt kind of attachment ports um just as people tried to do that with the 2013 Mac Pro the iMac Pro the same kind of thing so it's it's interesting how these lines have become a little bit more fuzzy yeah I I know that people wanted a Mac Pro they wanted a traditional Tower with expandability with slots and they wanted at a price they could afford those prices are not low and apple is known for its low low prices yes yes absolutely all of this circles around to is there a Gap in price in desire is there a market for something in the middle well logically yes there is uh but statistically actually we don't know Apple knows who buys things Apple knows uh very in great detail detail we will never see of how many people who get modular upgradable machines ever bother to actually upgrade them um I remember Mike wle on Apple Insider looked into this a long time ago uh when he had lots of data from um various sources around the time of the old mic Pro the the the original cheese greater one and the figures he had were at an absolute Peak 5% of the owners of those machines we're changing anything so modularity it appeals to me and I see that there's a market for it but Apple's probably sitting there thinking actually William not so much well they're not they don't know my name but people people regularly buy things that are greater than their needs yes and one could argue that you should with computers cuz that way they last longer for you but yeah I didn't I bought the entry level Mac Mini I tend to try and buy the middle model just because it feels like I'm getting a little bit better value yes well you are yeah but I had an exact budget and it covered that one so I don't regret that I just wish I could have uh stretched to more storage as that is giving me uh problems uh daily at the moment but we'll figure it out yeah I want to shift gears completely and entirely let's talk about security and vulnerabilities and things like that for a moment okay um uh I was going to make a joke there about how I'm vulnerable but uh that would just open up the what are you talking about let's go with that what's troubling you honorable William Gallagher yeah so Facebook we talked about them in the past haven't we fa Facebook Facebook Facebook uh I know the name can't put your finger on it can you uh don't they do bad things or something data well so they had this they had this application right they had a Facebook research app that was banned in January for violating App Store review guidelines because they were using their Enterprise certificate to collect personal and potentially sensitive information from people yes right remember the snap yes and have they gone and done it again they haven't gone about it again but but uh they they called this their project Atlas initiative publicly known as the research app well they they had to write a letter they had respond to us Senator Richard Blumenthal and that letter of course was seen by TechCrunch and in their letter Facebook revealed that 187,000 users including 34,000 teenagers had their data collected by this application of the of those 31,000 users were in the United States and 4,300 were teenagers so they were doing this worldwide Facebook maintains the operation was driven by analytics but notes that the app in some cases received non-target information they didn't review it to determine whether it can contained health or financial data they they claim they've now deleted all user level Market insights data that was collected which would include any health or financial data that may have existed so they insist that they didn't have any there or that they didn't review it and now they can't review it CU they've deleted it woohoo so that's all good then now Apple commented on this in a separate letter in March and apple said that they didn't know how many devices were running the app which is deployed using the Enterprise developer certificate and and of course that's true because Enterprise shts are develop are distributed outside of the App Store and therefore it's impossible to have a handle on who got it or not yeah unusual for app to not know something like that but they can't so well it's I mean oh does that mean it's apples fault and or apple is doomed no no so oh God somebody's going to say that when when we talk about security the best security is when something is inaccessible or unknown or or unknowable and so Enterprise customers want to be able to distribute applications because they they want them to go to their specific users and not to the public App Store those applications may have access to sensitive corporate data they may have uh they may contain sensitive corporate data they may be proprietary there's all kinds of good reasons why those things should be distributed without making the end users go through the app store besides just means of distribution because you know having your all of your employees have to hit up the App Store to download something is hard as opposed to having the Enterprise certificate and just being able to load it on them and so it makes good sense for Apple to not be able to know this no I understand that I'm fine with it let's just make it uh it's easier Facebook who's heard of that let's all just blame Apple for everything and you know situation normal really yeah and and of course we shouldn't leave Google out Google is also running a a product like that that uh has been exposed now I don't have the numbers in front of me on what their screenwise meter product saw in terms of users but um 187,000 people which sounds like a drop in the bucket compared to all Facebook users but you know Facebook can extrapolate from those insights and that is not in significant number in terms of a study yeah okay that is big now in good news the head of Google's account signin teams is positive about Apple's introduction to the authentication space so Apple revealed this product called signin with apple and they are going to require people who use signin with Google or sign in with Facebook in their applications to add sign in with apple alongside it and someone got a hold of Google and asked them and so Google product management director Mark risher revealed on an interview with the Verge that it's preferable for users to employ some form of single sign on button to get into Apps rather than creating users and passwords because people are terrible about users and passwords right you you reuse the same username because it's typically an email or because you have an identity formed around using that username right oh good point you know I hadn't thought about the side of using an email address of course I use an email address in several places that's I had thought of that good point there use the same one do you uh yes uh Victor dot uh there you go that's the stuff yeah so so sorry I told over you there I just I genuinely I've I never used the same username I never use the same password I I use one password to create this stuff and I love it it never entered my head that of course the username is very often the same uh for cause but interesting okay so I'm I'm a little bit vulnerable there I see the point sign in it's certainly more convenient and considered it's also more secure uh Google has a point apple has a point yeah and it's way better for users to not have to type in a bespoke username and password or recycled password and definitely recycled username as we said and the other thing about Apple's doing it is that they have created a a means of not sharing your actual email address they they proxy it so that you don't have to share the real email address with that provider which is good I already do something like that I have I I own a particular website domain so um whenever I sign up to somewhere new I give it an email address at that domain uh so I can write egit at whatever it is um and then later when I get loads of spam address to egit at this place I know where it came from yeah and I've been using a a Google trick for that kind of purpose too where I can use my Gmail address and add a plus sign and then any other descriptor after that and it looks as a unique address hate that but I love this because I get emails uh that are my gmail address or very nearly my email address you know and it's always spam it's never somebody who actually mistyped my address and it's just fed up the problem is that the plus symbol isn't respected as a symbol legitimate an email by everywhere even it totally fits the uh the RFC but it but it allows me to filter the same way you are by seeing which one of those things gave away my my email address for example if I put Victor plus BBC at gmail then I can go ahead and see and that's not my email address by the way so don't give don't don't try writing to that one if I if I do that then I can see if the BBC gave my email address out yes not that they would let's be very clear about this you defending the BBC again there we go okay I have some problems with the corporation but they employed me for a long time and you wouldn't know this but in Britain they're currently getting a lot of uh shtick uh no no they're getting a whole lot of thing about licensing fees which is totally not their fault at this point exactly thank you I want points uh just to throw this in for scale uh the loss of money the BBC was going to face over this would have been the same as the entire radio budget uh or all of it national local BBC sounds World Service everything that's how much they're being forced to cut and as a radio man myself this upsets MEC me sorry we're off the point there a little bit um so uh apple has a point Google has a point this is rare isn't it they're agreeing with each other well so Google has for years wanted to get rid of usernames and passwords and Google has for years wanted to get rid of things like the URL and so anything that people do to help them in that goal even if it's not using their service helps them Reach that aim right they would much prefer people sign in with apple than signing in with users and passwords yeah I they they would much rather people sign in with Google more than sign in with apple but that's that's a distinction you know if if you're going to do it and you're already you pick one of the the the good options is basically what they're saying two minutes ago I was happy and now you mentioned the whole URL thing uh yeah each to send somebody a link and it's not to where you thought it was cuz it's Google's I just m m tell me something nicer happy again nicer you want to be happy again Apple yes please just for a bit is in negotiations to purchase Intel smartphone modem business oh do you know I've been up at nights wondering about Intel smart modern business well you know as we said before you are a net job Destroyer over there and Intel did close up shop and say y you know what we're putting our smartphone business under they took it out back they they they they ended it that's that and pink slipped I think is the the more polite term but yes okay they did that but no Here Comes Apple yes apple is said to be looking very very carefully at Intel's German operations which serve as the basis for the modem business all right I didn't know that okay um the Intel staff there comprised of Engineers from infineon's Wireless technology arm uh Which Intel purchased for 1.4 billion in 2011 they provided the baseband chips for iPhone from 2007 to 2010 negotiations have been ongoing since last year they could fall apart of course but if Apple's successful they will have hundreds of Veteran modem Engineers so sorry did you say this has been going on since last year so before this decision Apple was nudging away that's interesting cuz my mind goes straight to the staff who've just uh I presumed lost their jobs but uh are they in a bance now thinking do I get a job somewhere else do I hang off for apple or or or is Intel redeployed people I I'm not positive I know whether or not the those folks were redeployed or not but um it's interesting because if you look at it there are a number of of former Intel exacts who were brought into Intel as a part of the infinion acquisition who now work at apple somewhere were from years ago like stepen wolf who was a former manager of Intel's German modem outfit came to cuni within the past few months uh February Apple hired umashankar th gajan and I apologize if I've mangled that name who was an engineer who is said to have played a key role in the development of the chipmakers 5G modem now inel as you say exited the smartphone business in in April smartphone modem industry in April but they could pick up this whole office they could pick up this whole segment have hundreds of Engineers and what does Qualcomm think about this well so Qualcomm and apple settled their agreements in the past right they they've settled that Qualcomm is currently facing antitrust prosecution in the US oh yes i' forgotten about that yes okay they do like their lawsuits qualcom yeah well it's so it's a difficult thing right it's it's not illegal to be a monopoly but it is illegal to abuse that Monopoly to act as a monopoly yes okay well to to act in ways that maintain that Monopoly through Force that's naughty okay it is well so I mean a classic example um years and years and years ago Microsoft required that they be paid uh a Microsoft Windows license for every computer shipped even if the computer didn't ship with Windows on yes which is an amazing deal that they pulled off yes for them or or years and years ago when BOS was an operating system BOS got a deal to be loaded on a partition on tashiba and Microsoft had as a part of their license agreement a lockdown on the bootloader so that those machines could not dual boot customers bought machines that had windows and BOS on them and the Machine could not boot BOS out of the box so consumers thought that they were just not getting as much of their hard drive because it was partitioned right okay right those are abuses of the Monopoly that Microsoft had on Windows licenses at that time I remember assuming that Microsoft had been legally required uh when you installed some version of Windows company which one it was now to offer you the choice of Bing or Google for your search but very specifically required to offer for the choice to then not actually do it because when I would pick Google it would still set itself to Bing um that seemed uh Microsoft this is a behavior that they do in Europe they don't necessarily have to show that in the US right okay I do remember seeing the choice of browsers come up but the search thing was a European part all right well my own fault for living here then so so Qualcomm right Qualcomm has several key patents on technology especially related to CDMA and related to things like that they if you want to serve with the carriers that require that technology then you end up using a Qualcomm chip which is why qualcomm's modems were introduced in in the first iPhones that worked with Verizon in the US the problem is are Qualcomm abusing that Monopoly and and that's partly what was going into these patent royalties questions right so than there you go perhaps they just like being in court maybe it's warm there who knows but I asked you to tell me nice things and you did so thank you very much well so here's a nice thing and let's we'll end on this one this is a nice one iCloud for Windows yay yay Apple has updated iCloud for Windows it's available in Microsoft's app store and it makes iCloud function a little more like the the Microsoft One Drive cloud storage service in Windows 10 so it's more convenient for use you can use that that iCloud storage within Windows you can have the iCloud Drive experience that gives the same sort of Technology as as one drives files on demand feature which means that instead of having to manually retrieve things from iCloud you can have your iCloud Drive folders have files synced within the cloud and your drive so that they're they're available for offline use that's actually uh that's Microsoft and Apple presumably helping each other out we've just had Google saying nice things about Apple the world is getting nicer your excellent point thank you very much for that see in a bright spot in Dark Times next time I'll ask you for money we'll see what happens okay this is this is not the first time that Apple's released products to the Microsoft store iTunes for Windows 10 is a part of the Microsoft App Store and uh this is this is good yes but uh the iCloud for Windows app Behavior where it has that sort of download for offline sync is very much like the behavior that you get in Mac where we have our desktops and documents stored in iCloud so I am happy with that well William that is all the time I have I am fresh out of time my most valuable commodity next time I will ask you for more on the Apple Insider podcast where can people find you uh W gallago Twitter and William appleinsider.com all the live long day what about you that is The Honorable William Gallagher everybody I'm Victor marks I'm V marks on Twitter I am always found at Apple Insider and I want you to check out my writings at uh at wristwatch review I just published an article there about an interesting thing where I've got a friend who is trying to adopt a little girl into his family and facing staggering legal fees he has a GoFundMe and all of these different wristwatch micr brand companies have gone together pulled a number of wrist watches that they are raffling off to people who donate to him and so there are something like 13 different watches available to people who donate to his cause they've raised over like $10,000 at this point it's fantastic and it's all about helping a person and his family become a family legally and I like it excellent so go there check that out and and uh if you're so inclined maybe even donate all right thank you so much everybody we'll be back next week with more\n"