Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Gentlemen, I got to tell you, ubiquity giveth and ubiquity taketh away. Oh, no. So we're doing a very abridged birthday trip for Michaela. She turned eight on Sunday, which is impossible. But here we are. And we're going out of town for a couple of nights over the weekend.
And I did the thing that I love to do when we go out of town, which is I go to one of the local libraries and I borrow a hotspot. And as I've said many times on the show, our actual library offers T-Mobile hotspots that you can borrow. And a neighboring county, which is like a little under a half an hour drive from me, offers Verizon hotspots.
And these counties have reciprocity with each other for library cards and things like that. And so if I have the time and the inclination, I'll usually go to the library.
further away county to get the verizon hotspot and i did that and aaron went with me a couple of days ago we got her library card at the other library so now i can like stage two different hotspots on hold like ready and waiting to go i'm very excited about this this is this is what makes me happy right especially around football season and because i use these hotspots you know to get internet to the tv and whatnot when we're tailgating anyways i get home
And I have the opportunity, I guess this was yesterday, and I have the opportunity to try out the Hotspot with my shiny new Ubiquiti travel router that I'm so excited about, right? And this travel router has worked no sweat with tethering to my phone. It has worked no sweat tethering to my iPad. All has been good so far.
And I connect it to the Verizon Hotspot and it says, can you please plug in the internet?
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Chapter 2: How does borrowing hotspots enhance travel experiences?
I did. I did plug in the internet. Now, admittedly, this was while Verizon was dying. So I thought, oh, perhaps that's the problem. But it turns out, I tried again today after Verizon rose from the dead, and it still is asking, please connect the internet.
I was so excited to have my sweet new Ubiquiti travel router to bring with me, and I still will, and it still works, and it can still rebroadcast the hotspot's Wi-Fi, but I was connecting it via USB-C, which I prefer for a bunch of unimportant reasons, and it didn't freaking work, and I'm having a sad.
Does it have an Ethernet jack on the hotspot or no?
Not on the hotspot, unfortunately. There are hotspots where this exists. In fact, you might have or did have one. I have one. Okay, there you go. This is a Verizon Jetpack, I think. I don't remember the model number. But it's actually not a bad hotspot, and it has USB-C on it, in contrast to most of the T-Mobile ones that I get, which have, what is it, micro-USB?
The god-awful one that won't go away. And so that's very annoying. But then I plugged the same hotspot into one of my GLiNet travel router things, and it worked no problem.
oh no so i'm sure this is a software problem with the ubiquity travel router i'm sure it will get resolved at some point but probably not before my trip this weekend so all is really fine in the grand scheme of things but it's the little things gentlemen it's the little things i was so excited for my shiny new white plastic toy and it's not going to work the way i want it to it'll still work like i said i can rebroadcast the hotspots wi-fi but it's
I mean, that's not going to be your limiting factor, especially with Verizon being down for a day. Yeah, exactly. No, that's too bad. So I have the Netgear, whatever the second most recent Netgear AT&T 5G router is. And it's... fine. It functions as a piece of consumer electronics. It's garbage.
But the function of a portable 5G hotspot that creates Wi-Fi or over Ethernet broadcast wherever you are I have so many uses for this all the time. And in fact, since the iPhone 17 Pro has broken iPhone tethering for me, which is still not fixed, I've been using it more and more. Oh, my God.
Because it's working fine for me. I'm not trying to say you're wrong by any stretch. I'm just saying it's not everyone, apparently, because it works fine for me.
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Chapter 3: What issues arise with the Ubiquiti travel router?
I think that's for like 20 or 50 gigs. It's a good amount of data. And this is kind of why I'm concerned. I wonder if, you know, we've been waiting all these years for Apple to make a cellular MacBook of some kind. I'm afraid that the plans might end up sucking for them, like that they might be really expensive plans because like an iPad plan is what, 20, 25 bucks a month.
Uh, it's anywhere like a minus 10 because I get like some sort of bundle, but I think typically, yeah, they're like 20 to 40 generally speaking.
Yeah. In that range. Right. Um, but like, uh, a hotspot plan is 50 or 60. I, I wonder where they would put, like, I know, I guess PC laptops exist. I guess we can look, just look this up. Um, but I do worry like that, that eventually Apple will give us a cellular Mac book and AT&T will want 60 bucks a month for it. But anyway, uh,
Yeah, mobile hotspots, what amazing capability in such crappy electronic devices.
Yeah, they usually are straight up trash. That's why it would be so great to just have this built into the device you're trying to get it into, which 99% of the time for me is my computer. Occasionally, like now, it isn't when I'm going traveling or whatever. But generally, I would just like to be able to get on the internet on my computer, easy peasy.
Another thing I've been looking at, because I don't want a recurring hotspot bill, because I generally only need it kind of regularly in the fall for football. And then outside of that, I don't really ever need it. And if I do, I can just borrow one from the library.
But I've been looking, I don't know anything about this, but Solis, S-O-L-I-S, at least here in the state, no, I think it's worldwide, seems to offer hardware that you have to buy for like a couple hundred bucks. But then you can buy data either as like a day pass or or as like in chunks of, you know, 50 gigs or a hundred gigs or whatever the case may be.
And I haven't spoken with anyone that has actually used this. So if you have used this and you're listening, please reach out. Um, I think this, the, their hotspots on the States anyway, we'll kind of go back and forth between T-Mobile and AT&T and, T-Mobile around where I am is generally trash, but AT&T is really good.
So I'm very curious if maybe this would be a good answer if I decide to stop doing the rotating library borrowing dance, if doing this wouldn't be so bad. Because I don't mind paying a couple hundred bucks for the hardware, but I don't want to pay 50, 60, 70 dollars or whatever a month.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of using mobile hotspots versus tethering?
To Casey's point, like you can do something about the stand. Anyway, I'm excited. All I'm saying is that the time for me getting a new gaming monitor, it's getting closer. It's looking closer. I love these specs. I'm sure the price will be great. And this would be a huge upgrade over my current monitor.
Yeah, well, I mean, we'll see what happens and whether any of this ships, but it's definitely looking promising. I'm really pleased that the PC industry has finally embraced 5K monitors because, you know, basically up until now, there was Apples, and then there have been other options, but they're few and far between. There's the LG UltraFine.
Dell, for like 10 seconds, had one years and years ago.
I think they still do. There's a couple. We've talked about a whole bunch of them, but like they're... They're kind of aimed at like creative professional type things. So they're priced a little bit higher and they have different things that they're shooting for. But this year at CES, not only I just listed some 5K and 4K things, there are 6K gaming monitors.
And I think part of the reason is the DLSS and other sort of frame generation stuff that we talked about on past shows is really...
really sort of coming into its own and people gamers are really accepting it essentially like run the game at a you know it would normally run at an unacceptably low frame rate but don't worry the video card will add frames in between the real frames and so now you can potentially game at 5k maybe you can't game at 6k but like These monitors are suddenly somewhat relevant to gaming.
Not super relevant. Everyone's like, can you run any real games at a good frame rate at 5K? And people are like, oh, I need 500 frames per second. Nothing can run, you know, even that liquid cooled video card with the screen on it can't run 5K at 500 frames per second, but... It's happening.
The gaming world is discovering retina resolution and monitors are being made and that benefits Mac users as long as you can stand the cases.
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Chapter 5: How does pricing impact the appeal of image editing applications?
It's going to be hard for them to exist, but they could, maybe. Because again, Apple is still selling standalone ones. So if you want to sell a $50 image editing application... you probably still could because you're competing with an app that's $13 a month or $130 a year. Now, granted, it's not just that app.
Again, you get a whole suite, but if someone just wants an image editor, maybe your $50 image editor looks attractive compared to $13 a month or $130 a year. Um, Charging some amount of money also makes me think maybe they'll possibly be able to fund teams to provide updates to these applications and make them better.
On the other hand, $13 a month or $130 a year is not enough money to actually fully fund the teams that work on these applications. It's not even enough to fund the team that works on Pixelmator, let alone Final Cut and all those other apps. So they're not pricing it to cover their costs, but... As a customer, I suddenly have access to better apps for less money than I did before.
And as someone who cares about the Mac ecosystem, Apple is not 100% decimating the third-party market for applications.
Yeah, I mean, this doesn't do that much for me, in part because the one thing in this bundle or the two things, I guess, in this bundle that I think I'd be interested in are Pixelmator Pro for doing like touch up on photos and stuff, which actually you can do in the photos app now. But Pixelmator Pro has always been really good at that.
uh in final cut pro uh because occasionally i will do some manipulation to videos and i'm sure i could use a different app for it but thanks to my brief stint as a very unsuccessful youtuber i've gotten fairly familiar with final cut pro we've all been there um yeah right it's a it's a rite of passage i tell you um
So anyways, I really dig that the point that you made earlier, John, about you could do this like dip in for a month and then cancel.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of Apple's subscription model for software?
Because I remember when I wanted to do this YouTube thing, just being really, really concerned that spending the 300 bucks, whatever it was for Final Cut Pro, is this worth it? Is this a good way to spend my money? Is this going to be something that I use for more than 10 minutes?
And as it turns out, I'm glad I did buy it because even today, like I was saying, I'll occasionally do some video manipulations and use Final Cut Pro.
On that topic, by the way, Stephen Robles was saying, I think that when he wanted to get Final Cut to be a YouTuber and wasn't sure it was worth it or whatever, it was $1,300. and he couldn't afford it, so he got Final Cut Express. Remember that? Remember Final Cut Express? I do not, actually. It was like the cheaper version of Final Cut Pro.
Obviously, a really good investment for Steven, but just... Yeah, for real. Worked out well there. That's the thing that a lot of people feel. And I do think that it's kind of weird, speaking of Final Cut, it is kind of weird that like...
Final Cut due to various reasons like the big Final Cut Pro 10 kerfuffle about them dropping features and doing stuff and other industry forces that have essentially made Final Cut less popular in the world of professional audio production for television and movies.
Video production.
Yeah, right. Video production. But for whatever reason, again, maybe because of the influence of the iPhone and Apple's brand, my impression is that Final Cut Pro is much more popular with YouTubers than it is with people who make television and movies.
I have no earthly idea.
I can't, I mean, I don't know. That may not be true. It may just be, it may just be the YouTubers that I watch, but because they're like Mac and Apple people or whatever, but I feel like if you want it, like it's a shame that Apple seems to have lost so much ground in, in the, you know, old school TV, movie, video editing market to Avid and premiere and stuff like that.
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Chapter 7: How does Apple plan to enhance Siri with Google technology?
I believe that's right. Like I, I, one of the things I think, I think Final Cut Pro is not necessarily doomed. No, certainly not. It's bringing endorsement.
But yeah, I mean, this is interesting. I'm glad that you can still buy stuff outright, at least for now, because again, I don't think I would ever buy Logic Pro unless suddenly Marco decided he didn't want to edit the show, in which case I guess I would. But that's only going to happen when the show ends or Marco dies.
And Logic Pro is not, as you can see from every new version of Logic Pro they put out, it's not a podcast editor. It's for music. It's so for music. They're like, look at all these great features we have for beat matching and chord identification. It's like, no, it doesn't help at all. Probably hurts because everything about a UI is like you're making a song.
it's really not made for this and it never lets us forget it yeah and and as each new version comes out it just keeps going farther from being made for podcasts yeah but all in all i mean i think this is a pretty good idea i like that they're charging money for it i like that they're doing a subscription i like that they updated their apps that's great yeah they don't do that with most of their apps right true so all in all i think this is good i don't know marco i feel like you've been a little quieter any thoughts on this
I think it's, I mean, it mostly doesn't affect me because it's, I mean, it's a bunch of apps that I mostly don't use. But I think anything that makes these apps more accessible to people with small budgets is better. And this does that. Like, you know, before, you know, you had situations like, you know, oh, you'd have to buy Final Cut Express.
You'd have to buy the small version or use some free tools or use some tools that are not like what the pros are using. Or, you know, back in our day, just pirate all the big tools. But I think it's harder now. And so I don't... But at the end of the day, these tools, if you're going to buy these in the previous arrangements, they were way more money, at least up front.
And if you were just thinking like, oh, let me try to learn, say, Final Cut or Logic or whatever, there really wasn't a good path for you to go from, I think I want to try learning this, to go between that and I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars on this. Now there's a path for that. That's great. I think that is wonderful.
There are a lot of details about this that I think don't make a lot of sense. I don't think keynote pages and numbers and free forms should be included. Those are what I think used to be free iWork apps, and now it's like, are they? Are they free?
I mean, they're still free. That's one of the things that people are complaining about. I didn't link to it, but Jason just posted a thing to Six Colors saying, all right, so keynote pages and numbers are still free.
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Chapter 8: What are the challenges and benefits of using Vision Pro for sports viewing?
That's not healthy for them.
I don't know if I would call this services revenue. This is just a subscription model for an app, which is different than services.
It is. But you can ask, well, why are they doing this? And there's some good reasons and there's some cynical reasons. We'll see how it goes over time. So far, Apple's track record for keeping these apps updated and keeping them competitive has been kind of spotty. Some of them do well. Some of them are laughingstocks. Some of them are ignored. Some of them get frequent updates.
They're kind of all over the place. If this is something that they're kind of trying to plant a flag on the ground and say, like, we're going to start doing this better or being more consistent about it, or these apps are going to be updated more frequently and they're going to compete better with their competition... That's a good thing. I don't think we have that here.
I think this is a rebranding with a new subscription model, and that's fine. There's, again, pluses and minuses to that. And most importantly, I'm happy that I don't need to subscribe to the apps in this bundle that I've already bought, that I can continue using them as a customer. And that being said, also...
Once Apple switched to the Mac App Store and put all these apps in it, they have, I think, never charged an upgrade fee. So I bought Logic for, I think, $200. How many? Like 10 years ago. And I've never paid for another copy of Logic. I bought Final Cut.
Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut, I think, was $300. I bought that years ago. Never paid for an upgrade. Fortunately, I never used it because I also failed at YouTube pretty hard. They've never charged an upgrade fee in large part because the Mac App Store can't. On one hand, I'm like, wow, I've gotten some good value out of this and I'm glad to have bought these tools a thousand years ago.
On the other hand, as both somebody who sells software through a subscription and also somebody who recognizes business realities here, I think the days of my perpetual one-time purchase license even working and getting the new version, let alone being available to new purchasers, those days might be numbered. But we'll see.
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