Episode 969: Apple and the Super Bowl

unscripted unfiltered unafraid welcome to the macworld podcast my name is michael simon and i am joined by jason cross good morning and our producer roman loyola oh hi there this is episode number 969 and if you're a sports fan um even if you're not i guess it's kind of a major thing no matter what uh it's the super bowl on sunday and so we're going to talk about how that like the history of it with apple because it's it's a like like non-sports fans probably think of apple when they think of the super bowl and they haven't had a ton of involvement but what they've done has been somewhat monumental so we're going to talk about all that um we'll talk about the history we'll talk about what's going on this year whether we should expect anything and um we're going to have what we're watching on Apple TV segment and close with our new comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook thread, search for Macworld, look for the Blue Mouse logo, send emails to podcast at macworld.com, send an email to one of us, comment under a video, comment under a post, whatever. And we'll find them and we'll talk about them on a future show. Alright, Roman. So, So where the heck is the M5 Pro and Max Pro? You told me it was coming out last week. Yeah, that's what I told you. Yeah, that's what happens when you make stuff up. So, yeah, I don't know. Well, so we had a report come out over the weekend that Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that they're basically sitting in a warehouse ready to go. Yeah. They're ready to go. someone just has to push a button, pull the trigger, whatever you want to say. Apparently that trigger is the Mac OS 26.3 update. Right. Yeah, German says that once that is released, then the MacBooks, the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro should follow sometime after that. Yeah, and it's not like 26.3 is any big deal. No. It's done. it's in the third beta there's nothing really majorly new in it and we thought all right maybe we'll get a release candidate this week we didn't yet it's tuesday so this is tuesday this could all be moot and there could be a brand new macbook pro on the website tomorrow morning which means you can click the little 30 second button and go past this but um it's so it's been four months since the m5 and you know almost four months i think it was like the middle of october and i don't know that seems like a long time between they've done this before right like they've had it have they like the actual chip and then the smaller chip or the yeah yeah they've done they've done the actual chip and then the the higher end yeah they've they've had a gap between haven't they didn't i know the m4 come out the m4 yeah the m4 the base m4 came out and then the m4 pro and max followed and then there was that thing where like where's the m4 ultra and they didn't come out with an M4 Ultra. So the M4 came out in the Mini and the iMac. Right. And the M4 came out in May, and then it was November until we got the Pro and Max. And that's this long, right? Yeah. Yeah, I guess, but it's just weird that the MacBook Pro came out. The M5 MacBook Pro came out. And now we're just waiting for the other version. like i i remember the m1 obviously they released that 13 inch macbook pro and then it took like another like like it was like a year well yeah there were no pro and max or anything like that for them one right or maybe six months i forget how long but it was it was a little while before we we got the variant processors but this one is i don't know it seems weird well you know i bet And since I've been making stuff up, I'll make up some more stuff. I bet if Apple could, they would rename that base M-series MacBook Pro to something else. Like, you can't call it the MacBook Mid. Right. You know what I mean? Because it sort of sits between the Air and what probably Apple considers the true MacBook Pros, the Pro and Max models. Right. You get the better screen and stuff, but otherwise, yeah, processing power performance-wise, it's basically it. And it's only available in the 14-inch. Right. The 16 only has the Pro and the Max, so the larger one is only the – yeah. So yeah, there is this weird disconnect. But in terms of like – I mean, they're just right on schedule in terms of releasing the basic chip And then six months later, releasing the bigger one, the Pro's and Macs. That's what they did not last year, two years ago with the M4s. It was just May to November instead of October. Am I misremembering? Did the M4 MacBook Pro come out before the M4 Pro Max MacBook Pro? Or was that just the iPad? I can't remember. But I hear what you're saying. Yeah, regardless of what product it was in, the chip was just not – It was a six-month gap between those chips being available. So they're just doing that again. If we get a release candidate of 26.3 this week, which those can drop as late as Friday. I mean, those come at weird times. Then the final release could be next week, and it could be any time this month that they just decide to update the website. And there may or may not be a preorder. I don't know. Sometimes they put them up and you can buy them right away. Sometimes it's three days. Sometimes it's 10 days. Like we don't know. So, yeah. And we don't also know if there's any like like obviously the processor and Jason, you've written like Apple might do something a little different with the way you buy it because it could be like you buy this this amount of GPU cores and this amount of CPU cores and you kind of mix and match. um just last week apple changed the way you buy a mac on on it on apple.com to kind of separate everything into chips and hard drives and ram like they always had that before but you would choose between various configurations and then jump into it now it's just like you you click in and then you start with okay it starts at $15.99 for the m5 but you want the m4 pro it's $19.99 You want the M4 Pro Max, it's 2499, whatever. So that could be like paving the way for this new way of buying or splitting up the chip. Personally, I think, although this does sort of technically give them that capability, that's building a bunch of weird – they're not separate CPU and GPUs. They're packaged together in a single chip. They're just separate dies on an interposer and stuff like that. So they have to build a bunch of different versions of chips for you to mix and match. I don't think Apple's going to do any of that. I think that earlier reports that that's going to be something you can do was based on a game of telephone where that could be possible. Right. Technically, but I think Apple's just doing this to get better yields by breaking up the chips into smaller islands of chips and better heat dissipation by separating them out and having less concentration of the heat and everything. So, yeah, I'd be surprised if you could really mix and match any more than you used to be able to. There would always be a version that was like nine cores. It's like a 10-core CPU, but you could get the nine-core version, and then you had to pay extra to get the 10th core. But that's just a 10-core CPU with one core disabled. I think they're still going to do that, but I don't think that whole, I want the GPU from this, but I don't think they're going to do that. My guess is that's just not very Apple, And it's just like this explosion of different chips they have to get from the fab because these are put on interposers at the fab and then sealed. It's too much. I think they're not going to do that. Yeah, you very well may be right, especially now over the last six months. All these component cost and manufacturing issues have kind of ramped up and are starting to affect everybody. everybody and if apple is like all right well you know what instead of like three chips we need like 50 like that might not work yeah yeah and you have to kind of they have to guess like what volume they're going to need of different configurations and stuff so i just don't that makes a lot of sense certainly um i need to correct ourselves uh the m4 already we just started yeah uh yeah we didn't i guess i didn't have my coffee the m4 lineup the base pro and max was released at the same time november of uh right 2024 it was what what was earlier was the ipad right yeah and the m2 yeah the ipad m4 came out before the macbook yeah that came out in may yeah yeah that's kind of like where we were talking yeah didn't clarify that yeah the m2 was kind of split so the m2 uh base came out uh and then it was followed by the m2 pro the m2 max later was that the macbook air m2 is that where it debuted like that was the redesigned air i believe no the show has gone from super bowl to macbook no no that the redesign was m3 right okay yeah but i didn't want to get too caught up on like which product yeah yeah came out in like it's still m4 came out in may and m4 pro and max came out in november yeah right and yeah and regardless of which which processor they have split it before and really stand we just got the specific ones wrong so but just to be you know we're editors we have to be pedantic about it so um so yeah if you're listening to this and there is a macbook on apple.com that's new it's because we're filming this filming this well we are filming oh we're filming this we're we're recording this on uh tuesday so i'm assuming there's no back book i don't know i don't know uh i don't know if there will be but all the rumors kind of say 26.3 which we haven't seen yet and we'll see i think it's coming in i think it's coming in february but i don't necessarily think it's coming like this week i think it's going to be you know sometime in the next three weeks of the month yeah okay so super bowl super bowl is sunday um 6 30 is that right roman around 6 30 i don't know well the thing is there's like a whole like well 6 30 my time right and there's like a whole hour before so yeah sure they always say it starts at three o'clock but it really the game itself starts at like an hour after or something like that right there's a lot of popping circumstance and the national anthem and the flags unfurled and his flyovers and you know the other somewhere somewhere between uh six and seven east coast time and so there's two two kinds of people who watch the super bowl people who are football fans um this year you got the patriots against the seahawks and then there's people who just want to watch the spectacle and and watch the ads and you know back when i was growing up which was a little bit after the 84 commercial that we'll talk about like this the ads are like a big deal like you didn't know what they were you had to like watch and sit in front of the tv now like i i kind of hate that all these companies like they they put them on youtube like a week before the super bowl right yeah even even just i don't know 10 years ago they They'd all be online, but they all put them online after the Super Bowl. Right. I'm okay with that, of course. That's okay, too. But, yeah, there was something missed about how even if you weren't interested in the thing, you would see these really high production value ads, these really expensive ads. If you're going to spend all that money on the ad spot, on the slot to air it, then you spend a lot of money on the ad. And so you'd see all these really cool ads that you'd never seen before. They'd always be really creative or funny. And they were a surprise. And they were surprised. And now it's just a bunch of like FanDuel and just like sports betting and crypto stuff and all this nonsense. It's so bad. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you need like, I don't know, $5 million for 30 seconds or something like that, whatever it costs. It's an insane amount of money. Yeah, Roman, can you look up what a Super Bowl spot cost this year? Yeah, okay. But back in 1984, like Super Bowl ads weren't – they were – it was a thing, obviously. It was a major advantage. Yeah, they cost a lot because it was the most watched TV thing. Right. And you knew everyone was going to see that ad, right? You'd reach billions and millions. but apple was i don't know if they were the first but they were one of the first to really make like a big deal of it like they so this ad ran it was the first ad after halftime so it was a few minutes yeah i think it was the first ad right so yeah to hear halftime show that's the best spot who was who was yeah it's a very good time to be um who was the halftime performer in 1984 was it Was there still that up with people thing or was it like they start doing the pop music stuff? It was – no, it was a bunch of BS and it was a salute to the superstars of the silver screen. Oh, it wasn't either. It was produced by Disney and Florida State University and all that stuff. And it was – yeah. Up with people. A Super Bowl spot this year cost $8 million according to Bloomberg. $8 million just for the time. That's like a 30-second spot. Yeah. Yeah. and that's not even like jason was saying the production you got to put into it like it's right yeah no if you're gonna spend eight eight million for the spot then you'll definitely spend two million on the ad sure because you'll you'll have a cut down version that goes you use for the next three months and you know whatever yeah right uh like there's like like pringles has sabrina carpenter and there's a jurassic park ad i so i forget who that's for oh right there's a whole that's for xfinity yeah i saw that that's like we're saying is super bowl isn't like there's no surprise anymore it's five it's five days from now we're already talking about the super bowl as we saw right we saw we're from the future it's terrible uh back in in 1984 it was on january 22nd and apple said roman what like they said like after halftime like oh no no that was the next one they didn't they didn't tease this one at all i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm i'm mixing my lines here that was the next year this year like like like it just ran like it was right after it if you look on youtube you can find like the like like the broadcast like someone has put up like the game is being played and they they go out the phase to back and then apple's ad comes on and it was um 60 seconds 60 seconds and the it's it's a it's a it's a 1984 parody everybody's seen it it's like when you look at like lists of the best commercials ever it's always one or two and usually one like it it kind of changed the game for commercials it was like a mini movie and it was that was intrigue that was suspense there was you know a desire to know what they were talking about yeah that was it is widely credited with sort of being the start of these kind of new uh a new era of like super bowl ads being a big deal not just being an ad you would run other times there was that coca-cola ad with mean joe green you know yes where the kid chose it that was that it's like four years before that that was the only kind of example before that of like oh did you see that super bowl like that was like where the super bowl ad made for the super bowl was like a big deal um but yeah the the 1980s from then on like every year after that everybody was like well now we have to do something like that apple ad even if they weren't a tech company they're like we're gonna make a custom ad for the super bowl that's like it's fancy and you know what was interesting about 1984 aside from the production value is that it was a it was in a commercial that was for a product coming out like a week later so it wasn't a ad that they were gonna like like it was for it was a preview for a product that no one had seen and it wasn't something that was gonna run again it was just for this one thing like get everybody interested in in what was to be the macintosh and then like i don't think anyone in apple thought it would be this iconic thing where 40 years later we're still talking about it yeah it was two days um it was the it was the uh they they went on sale two days later on the 24th yep so yeah it was just this like really well timed anticipation thing and of course remember this is in the days way pre-internet even pre-BBSs and stuff like that, before Prodigy and CompuServe or any of those things. If you wanted to advertise something, you either had to do it in print or a TV ad, you would produce it way ahead of time and then it would go out to affiliate networks and stuff like that You have to find a specific live event in order to do this kind of timed anticipation thing which the Super Bowl was right Yeah. And perfectly timed. I'm assuming Apple coordinated its back-and-to-end launch around that, obviously. But yeah, extremely well-timed. And at the time, Apple wasn't a super well-known company. They were around for less than 10 years. People knew who they were, but they weren't – certainly not like today, but even not like 20 years ago. Yeah, the Apple II, it wasn't like in everyone's home. Right, right. So it was – people wanted to know what this Macintosh was. It's funny that we talk about the production values now, and at the time it was a lot for commercial. But looking back on it now, it's really bad. It looks really low end and low rent. Like everything now, everything is so good now. Like CG has gotten so good that just a regular insurance commercial has perfect CG in it. Like everything is good. And so this is like a small set and like it's filmed in what looks to be a very small room and everything. Yep. It was bad. But it's so iconic. Go ahead. Yep. Ridley Scott, who did Alien. Aliens. uh alien the first one yes you're correct the first one yes yeah uh he he directed that james cameron was aliens james cameron right same thing with terminator he would and then cameron did too um yeah so really ridley scott directed um the 1984 commercial which i don't know what he got paid i don't know if we can find that anywhere what he got paid i don't know i i haven't found how much he got paid, but I found that that commercial cost about a million dollars to produce. And I've seen varying reports of how much a commercial slot cost in those days. I've seen reports that say 400,000, but I've seen other reports that say 525,000. I also kind of did the math and if you were to adjust that for inflation $525,000 adjust that for inflation is $1.7 million in today's dollars so they spent a lot but I mean now it costs $8 million everything's inflation and the audience is bigger now too Yes, just true. Yeah. But it was so iconic that just recently, just a few years ago, when Epic Games started their whole free Fortnite campaign and poked the bear deliberately to try to force a legal issue to get Apple to change its rules, they recreated that. But with Apple, the big face on the screen, the big brother was an Apple with a bite taken out of it. It was all done in like Fortnite graphics and everything because they know exactly what that means to people, right? What that ad means to people. Right. It became a symbol. Like you see that big screen with the big head and the rows of people, you know exactly what they're talking about. And so that was meant to represent IBM and the big – yeah ibm was big brother computer company yeah and you know macintosh changed again that commercial changed it it really put apple on the map like people knew who they were but this was the thing this was the moment and you know whoever came up with that commercial the the the is a genius because it was it was perfect perfect for for the message they wanted to attach to the macintosh i'm trustee jobs had a major hand in it. But it was just perfect, brilliant marketing. So they wanted to do it again. So the next year, almost exactly a year later, this time they teased it. They took out ads in the paper and told people that during the fourth quarter, they were going to run a new ad. So this and the McAdash had been on shelves for, I don't know, about a year or so, about a year. And it was selling well. Apple had some momentum. People were still talking about 1984. And they wanted to, I guess, duplicate that. But they didn't at all. No. Most people listening to this probably have never even heard of. So it was called Lemmings. and it was produced in a similar sort of vibe where it was this dystopian world, maybe marginally in the future. And it was a bunch of people who were mindless and listening to this really kind of freaky version of Hi-Ho from the movie Snow White. And it was to advertise something called Macintosh Office. And the message was that you can either follow the crowd and use, I guess it was IPM Office or whatever was the popular Office suite of software at the time. Or you can use our version of things. And it was just creepy in all the wrong ways. Like it just, it didn't hit like 1984 did. And it wasn't advertising a product that everybody watching the Super Bowl wants to hear about. Right. Like it was Office software. That's a good point. Like it's not. Right. It wasn't for like your home. Like the Macintosh was meant to be the first personal computer, like buy it and bring it home. You're right. It's a weird audience to sell business software to. Also, it's not exciting. It's not sexy. It's not cool. Yeah. And so they got Tony Scott to direct this one, which was Ridley Scott's brother. It's not like he's like a nobody, like he's a director in his own right. But it's an amusing tidbit that they I guess they couldn't get Ridley Scott. Maybe he was working on something else. So they got his his brother to direct it. And to make matters worse, not only was the commercial universally panned Mac, as far as I know, Jason, Macintosh Office never even came out like it, like it, like pieces of it did. I don't know. But it didn't. I don't think it ever. Hold on. Let me look. Roman. I mean, in 1985, I was 11, so it wasn't on my radar. Like, it's – yeah. Yeah, so I just pulled up the Wikipedia. It says, in January 1985, with a poorly received 60-second Super Bowl commercial, Dub Lemmings, in the end, the file server would never ship and the office project would be canceled. However, Apple Talk, which came out, I don't know, five or so years later, and then the LaserWriter printer would be hugely successful down the road. But they were teasing a product that I guess wasn't finished, which is crazy to me. Yeah. Like that's not Apple's game. Not usually. That has bitten them on occasion. A couple of times, but not in major Super Bowl commercials. No, but, you know, like most recently, all that Siri stuff that wasn't ready and didn't get ready. But then there was the air power air power. Yeah. Yeah. Where they actually got on stage and talked about it and showed it and all that stuff. And showed it off. And they could could never get it across the finish line. So but that doesn't happen very often. And like you said, not a Super Bowl ad. No, it's just a weird the whole thing, which is a debacle. Yeah. And, you know, coming a year after 1984, I'm sure people really noticed at the time. Like, so I'm looking up. It was Super Bowl – what's XIX? 19? Yeah. Yeah, 19. So the game was 38-16 in the fourth quarter. So if you were still watching at that point, you wanted to see the Apple commercial. And it went from being like the greatest commercial of all time to being probably one of Apple's biggest flops. Yeah, the biggest snapback. Nobody's heard of it. It was for a product that didn't ship. Everything wrong. Of course, Apple, like we said, was not the size of company it is today in terms of anything, cultural impact size, anything like that. So it wasn't that big a deal. If that kind of thing happened now where they advertised the Super Bowl thing, it would be in the front page of every business section of everything about how did they let this flop and this debacle happen. and didn't even ship the product and all that stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. They probably forgot about it by Tuesday. Right. Yeah. Nobody cared. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. Can you imagine Apple on Sunday does an advertisement for some new iPhone and it never comes out? And that'd be like a three-year story. Yeah. Like a weird, creepy ad. And it's for like the iPhone fold and then the iPhone fold never ships. Like that's – yeah. Yeah, yeah. um so it was so bad apple just abandoned super bowl ads for 15 years oh man uh 15 years later they they did an ad called um how which if you're a yeah a fan of two and when it's based odyssey you'll know that that's the computer the the computer system from that movie um And Stanley Kubrick was allegedly – he gave them their blessing to use the likeness. It wasn't like stolen property. And it was basically a commercial to say like Y2K is coming. And you might have heard all these reports about computers breaking down and they can't handle the change from 99 to 2000. But Macintoshes don't have that problem. Like they're going to keep working. Yeah, that's the idea. They'll be fine. That was the ad. It was clever. I was in college maybe when I saw that, I think. I don't remember. But it was a clever ad. It was a good ad. It played to their strengths for sure. It wasn't advertising a product per se, more of like Apple's superiority over the world. Yeah, it was the brand. Yeah. But of course, at that time, the only product they made were personal computers really. you know right yeah right so it was ipod was still two years away at 99 yep so they really only made macs right but the i mac had come out a year earlier and they were starting to kind of claw back from the brink of bankruptcy basically oh yeah i'm sure they you know this commercial cost a fortune and you know not so much a gamble but it was uh i'm sure you know it was it was a decision they had to make like do we want to spend as much money on superbowl commercial right now um it didn't have as much notoriety as 84 but you know people talked about it i remember my friends you know noticing it and talking about it like um 2001 was at the time i think it was like it had like a like a comeback of sorts amongst culture i don't remember but um it was it was a good it was a good commercial the that was it right like they never had another one they had three another what another super bowl oh gosh i i couldn't tell you the whole list i mean i it would not surprise me if they had ads run in the super bowl that weren't for the super bowl like the ipod silhouette ads were everywhere right so i wouldn't it wouldn't shock me if they ran one of them during the Super Bowl during that time. It wasn't made for the Super Bowl, though, right? It was already existing ad. Like that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. So I have a list here. Oh, of all the Super Bowl? Yeah, those are the three that were created for the store that ran during the Super Bowl. In 2004, there was a Pepsi ad. um so pepsi teamed up with apple to sell or promote rather itunes and there were like codes under the cap when you bought two liters of pepsi and there so there was an ad promoting that which involved max and talked about itunes so that's kind of tangentially related to apple um i remember going to stores back then and if you like looked under the yeah you could tilt the You could use a bottle to see if there was a code or not, and if there was a code, you would buy that one. Of course, iTunes was on Windows, too, at that time. That's true. I think the giveaway was a total of something like 100 million songs or something. You would get a song, is what the code was for, a free song download. And yeah, there are some people out there who spend enough money on Pepsi to get a few dozen songs by the time that promotion was over. It was really popular. The ad featured a Green Day covering I Fought the Law. And it featured kids that were targeted by Napster for sharing songs. They were talking about it. They didn't talk about anything, but it was showing them downloading legal music now. That was a whole thing back then with Metallica and Napster. Oh, yeah. Finding people who were sharing their songs. and now Apple Music is the sponsor of the halftime show yeah and weren't they last year as well 2023 was the first one that was Rihanna the second one was Usher the third one was Kendrick Lamar was last year and this year is Bad Bunny um pepsi had it for a long long time before that i want to say at least a decade so um i'm assuming apple has it for several more years and um i'm sure it's great promotion for apple music because people watch the artist and then they go download or listen to a bunch of songs and they see apple's branding all over the place so um i gotta assume it's it's great for them leading up to it and leading out of it yeah i wonder some promotion for the service goes yeah at this point i wonder how many people watching the super bowl just kind of like unaware of apple music and maybe yeah like is there a spike in subscriptions or something following the super bowl i i wonder i'd love to see that data yeah they they never talk about stuff like that i mean services has gone up every single quarter pretty much steadily 15 or so percent so it doesn't you know you don't see like a bump in the january february quarter or whatever but um i mean it's got to be right a little bit tiny because they they offer three months free like right now if you if you sign up and get you can get um three months they like That's part of the Bad Bunny promotion. They have a whole bunch of tie-ins leading up to it with interviews and playlists and things like that. So my guess is that it pays off. I mean, their branding is all over the place. I got it. So I'd love to know, and Roman, I don't think you can find this, but first of all, what did Apple pay to have the rights? and did they oh like yes the sponsor pay for like the production like does apple pay for bad bunnies like stage setup i don't think that i don't know how any of that as far as i understand it doesn't work that way i mean like it uh you could say it they do because they pay the nfl a ton of money for like a five-year contract to sponsor half the halftime show and they get their marketing all over it and then the nfl spends all that money on the thing but i think the nfl just pays for all that to have time sorry that maybe yep according to uh the sports business journal uh when the rihanna show was the first the first year of a five-year deal worth about 50 million per year to the NFL. So Apple was paid 50 million per year. So about $250 million Apple paid back in 2023. So 50 million a year, that's more than enough to produce the show. That's a lot of dough. I know it's been reported in the past that the performers of the halftime show don't get paid at all. And it's up to them to determine how to produce the show and stuff. The NFL just says, you get the privilege of having this audience. So, you know, if anything, you should be paying us. But, you know, I know the performers don't get paid. So I don't know if Apple helps pay. They must because they're kind of expensive. If you ever watch like the recent ones, they're kind of expensive to put on. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The production is, it's like a mini arena show. Yeah. There's a lot of, I don't want to call them extras, but there's like dancers and stuff like that. There's just a huge number of people. And I have to imagine that they get paid from someone whether it the artist thing or the sponsors of the halftime show or whatever Like you know even if the NFL doesn pay them i don think that they necessarily doing all that for free because they don get any marketing out of that like i was that guy over there carrying those light sticks like that's not you're not right you know um apple films it obviously and then puts it up on um apple music like the next day or maybe even later that day um the production is is excellent but you know, it generally is, but, um, I feel like it's, it's like their cameras and their, um, their production values are, are, are excellent. Um, so if it's five years, next year is the last one that they're contracted to till 28, right? From 23 to 24, 25, 26, 27, cause it's a five year contract that started. So the 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. Yeah. Yeah. Next year will be the last one. Yeah, next year. Unless Apple re-ups. Yeah, I haven't seen any reports of extending a contract or anything like that. You probably won't know until... Yeah. Right. After next year's Super Bowl, they'll start talking about who's going to sponsor it. I mean, I'm sure they have a whole bunch of them lined up who want that gig. because it's probably the most watched 10 minutes of television. Even people who don't watch Super Bowl are going to watch the halftime show. Yeah, people turn into the halftime show specifically. Yeah, I know our neighbors said that. Our neighbors had a Super Bowl party, and the game was on, but nobody really was watching the game. And then when the halftime came on, everybody stopped and watched the halftime show. Right. Right. My brother's like that. He doesn't give a damn about football, but he'll always watch and talk to me about the halftime show. So yeah, it's definitely worth it to Apple. $250 million is a ton of money, but it- Oh, over five years? That's a rounding error for Apple. Yeah. They spend tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks every quarter. Like this is nothing. so yeah um apple of course is kind of famous they've won a lot of awards over the years for ads in general their ads have have won a ton of stuff not all super bowl ads of course right do you have a favorite i do you have what do you what do you what do you remember as my favorite my favorite apple ad there's there's been a bunch that i've liked like you brought the ipod silhouette ads like that was i i remember that like specifically like the m&m one with um oh right like that was fantastic oh that's kind of funny the m&m one yeah but my favorite ad was it was a christmas ad from i want to say four or five years ago so every year they come out with a with a holiday themed ad just to kind of it's like usually usually heart heart warming this one was it was a it was a teenager who was so it showed a bunch of scenes of of a family and within that family that there was a teenager and he was always always on his phone and looked like he was not participating in whatever the family was doing like they were building a snowman or shopping for a christmas tree or you know driving he's always on his phone and then it's christmas morning at the end of the ad and everyone gives out their presents and he's sitting there he's doing his phone stuff and then um like so the tv goes on and he projects from his phone onto the tv and it turned out the whole time he was filming his family and he created this movie and iMovie and right now everybody hugs him and it's you know it was just it was it it used apple products throughout obviously right and just and advertise how easy it is to make your own movie exactly right right but it was a very clever and a very i'm you know as a as a father yeah you know it It was endearing. Constantly telling them to put their phone down. That's the one that sticks out in my head. Right, all the time. Try to be here. Try to be present where we are. Put your phone down. Robin, do you have a favorite? It's probably the Crazy Ones ad. Okay. That one was fantastic. Yeah. I mean, that was like the first ad that came out after Steve Jobs returned, I think. That was the Think Different ad campaign. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It was famously a print run for probably at least five years. And they would show various figures in entertainment and history and science and engineering and whatever else. And they would have a little Apple logo in the corner that said, think different, as if to say, like, these people were able to do what they did because they thought outside the box and used Max. yep but um and i was already working as an editor at that time and it drove all of us nuts because we would scream at it like it's supposed to be think differently like it's different is wrong like we were just like it doesn't have the same ring to it but it's like chromatically anyway but so the the original ad that roman i assume the one you're talking about it was it was like a whole poem here's to yeah right crazy right the long version yeah yeah yeah yeah and it was you know it's you know the show like bob dylan later once had jerry seinfeld like you know popular somewhat avant-garde figures and um you know i'm pretty sure alban eislein didn't use a mac but you know it's it's right it's fun to connect them to it um my favorite my favorites were like the um I won't say it's a single ad. I loved the name of the ad campaign was, I think, Get a Mac. But it was the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads with John Hodgman and Justin Long. And I was working when those all came out at a computer gaming magazine. I was not a Mac guy at all. We were all very affronted by the false messaging of it. like, don't tell me Macs don't get viruses, or that every PC is like the word. But they did, everybody loved John Hodgman. The secret sauce of that was that the villain of the ad was the far more likable one. No shade to Justin Long, but he just kind of stood there with his hands in his pockets like, I can hook up to this camera. But John Hodgman was doing all the work and he was so entertaining. so that was a very big series of ads there were yeah 30 or something ads like that but sure it was very simple against the white screen them usually standing next to each other uh hodgeman was in it was in a you know a full three-piece suit yeah very boring beige suit like brown like suit right and justin long was you know like just kind of a regular cool guy yeah It's just jeans and a long sleeve shirt, just like, Hey, you know, I'm a PC. I mean, like I'm a Mac. And each one focused on like a particular feature area, like how easy it is to create a photo book with a Mac or whatever. So those kinds of things like this guy's great with spreadsheets, but I do all the life stuff. That was the vibe. I found out recently that there was a series of these in the UK with different people that had David Mitchell and Robert Webb as the Mac and PC. They're great. You should look these up on YouTube. They might even be better than the Hodgman and Long thing. Some of them were kind of the same. They don't have the exact same script, but they were about the same features and the same idea. And some of them were a little different. But, yeah, there was a whole – they did at least a dozen of them in the UK with those two. They're endlessly entertaining, and you can find them if you dig around on YouTube. There are also Japanese versions. really yeah different people yeah so um i actually wrote an article i'm almost embarrassed to say nine years ago which actually is longer than that because the last time last time it was updated was nine years ago oh right and yeah it includes the list it was the list of my favorite apple ads and it includes one of the uh get a mac ads that was done in japan I'll have to look those up I probably won't recognize the actors who are the Mac and T-shirt because you want comedians or comedic actors that's the whole point I wouldn't know who any of those people are from Japan but yeah I don't know if it was before or after but there was a switch campaign that was filmed in a similar style or a similar vein where it was a white background and there was like a Oh, right. A little song that played over it. And if you remember that, there was one with Ellen Feist and everyone thought she was stoned and she became like an internet celebrity for a little while. I can't remember if it was before. I think it was after the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads. But that was another one that was clever. They don't really do that anymore. I think get a Mac ads, the I'm a Mac guy with PC ads were so popular that more recent ads have run with like Justin Long using a PC, like banking on the fact that like he's the Mac guy. Yeah. And now he uses PCs like that's his whole, you know, they assume you've seen one of those ads or many of them. Yeah. Apple's gotten so big and popular now. like they don't need to do like their ads are like they're very boring for like iphone features like more they they had the one the one for siri was the last act they did that even that never came out that was with um i always forget the actress from last of us i don't remember i always forget her name oh i can't remember my brain keeps saying ellie but that's the character right she's she's in a lot of stuff she's very great she's great yeah they did that ad they've done airpods ad with like you know directed by spike jones where like people go down the street and they're depressed yeah they feel happy yeah yeah those but like you said it doesn't stick every year yeah it's not it doesn't just different now they're more sanitized they're not they're not risky yep just uh just kind of the way it goes uh roman what's that actress's name please be Bella Ramsey. That's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, that one sticks in the mind specifically because it was advertising features that never came out. Like if that didn't happen, I would have forgotten about those. That's true. Like they had The Rock doing all the Siri stuff too. I don't really remember that ad, but he goes through his day. I don't remember that either. Did they? Yeah, he goes through his day and he has Siri do all this stuff for him while he's doing like – he's a he's a top chef and and then he's doing this fitness thing and then he's shooting this scene and then he's scuba diving you know whatever he's doing all these different things and he's just having siri do all this stuff for him like you always talk to it there was the when siri first came out there was the one with uh there were several yeah memorable ads my my wife and i still quote the one with zoe deschanel where she's like it's that rain like it's so Obviously raining and she has Siri if it's raining. That was like the best thing that I did. I mean, in some ways it still is. And then Martin Scorsese's in a cab and he's talking to Siri in one and stuff like that. I kind of remember those commercials. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this year, it's almost confirmed that there won't be a commercial. Like Apple's not going to do a commercial. They're doing a halftime show, man. That's the commercial. The Bad Bunny halftime show is probably more controversial than Apple wants it to be due to – he's from Puerto Rico and he sings in Spanish. And he's not – there's a whole – he's very anti-Trump and administration stuff and ICE. And like it's a whole flashpoint that I'm sure Apple would rather not be a part of. He just had the Grammys and he just came out there and his acceptance speech made it a little bit political. It was a little bit political, yeah. And then he won Record of the Year or Album of the Year. So listen, there's no such thing as bad publicity. But I'm sure Alba would like it to be just a nice, friendly halftime show. And I'm sure it's not going to be. I have to assume there will be some political stuff. and people will write articles about it. It's going to be a thing. Yeah, there's already this whole there's going to be a Republican response to the halftime show. We're doing this now? We're really politicizing this much every time, so it's already a foregone conclusion that it's going to be a mess in that way. Yeah, so maybe Apple will end its partnership in the five years. Yeah, maybe they're regretting the five years five years they signed up for. Yeah, so that'll be Apple's participation in the Super Bowl. We don't expect an ad for anything. Maybe the new MacBooks will be out by then. That's all, no, wait, probably not. It's Sunday. They'd have to come out tomorrow. Yeah, they'd have to come out tomorrow. And they start shipping new everythings on Friday, so it would be out, right? Like it would be. Yeah, yeah. um yeah so anyway uh commercials super bowl it all happens this sunday and um if you're a new england patriots or a seattle seahawks fan there's also a game being played wait so you're in that area are you a patriots fan are they your team i'm not so i worked at the boston herald for a long time and i was never a fan of of the patriots but i rooted for them because it was good for the paper it sold papers whatever they want so i was happy when they won right um this was like i don't know 10 years ago back when brady was was you know at the top of his powers right i'm not gay i don't really have a have like a football team that i that i regularly root for i i watch it but um but that would be your home team there's no you're not you're not near anybody else who's got i'm not so i'm as close to the giants as i am to the patriots i'm I'm in this weird corner of Connecticut where I'm almost two hours away from everywhere. We don't have a team. We don't have a professional sports team in Connecticut other than the Sun. Is that what they call it? It's a WNBA scene. Connecticut Sun. Connecticut Sun, yeah. But we don't have a sports team. So when I go with my son to watch baseball, we've got to go up to the Red Sox. It's just the way it is. I don't expect Connecticut to ever have a sports team. Once the whalers were gone, that was it. We're not getting anything else. Okay, Roman. This week in Apple history is basically the Super Bowl. We just did it. We don't have a dedicated this week in Apple history because we just spent an hour talking about Apple history. Back in 1984. 32 years ago. 42 years ago. All right. So what we're watching on Apple TV. Let me bring up the article. So Apple – so they won a couple of Golden Globes. And a few weeks later, they came out with the – Academy Awards. Academy Award nominations, thank you. Nominations, yeah. And they picked up quite a few. So let's go through that real quick. There's three films. Six total, yeah. There's three films that were nominated. There's F1, Come See Me in the Good Light, and The Lost Bus. Lost Bus was good. Yeah, I haven't seen that one. I did – F1, the surprise – it's not surprising that these big sort of action, special effects things get nominated for those technical categories. That happens fairly frequently, like best editing or visual effects or sound or something like that. It is surprising that F1 got nominated for Best Picture. It's not the kind of movie that normally gets a Best Picture nomination. Have you seen it, Jason? I actually just watched it this past week. Yep. It's definitely a film that I think we'd be far more exciting on the big screen. Sure. All those race scenes, they're incredibly well. The way they're shot, they're very exciting. the pacing and stuff like that. But you lose a lot just looking at it, even on a large TV, like the big screen experience for that was probably like a ride. Yeah. It was the most financially successful sports movie of all time. Largely for that reason. Yeah. Yeah. But I agree with you. Visually, it was really good. I can't imagine how it's a best picture nominee. It, it's a formulaic sports movie. it was fine it's i mean it was even good but not oh my god this is i mean i i like major league was a better sports movie than it was it was put together by the same sort of team of producers and stuff that did um top gun maverick and it really is top gun maverick with f1 cars similar story you know like uh yeah similar story the the pacing the the sort of character arc and stuff like that is very similar and all um like i get that best editing it yeah the editing's great in that like the way they keep the pace up special effects if you want all that stuff visual effects best sound like again i didn't see it in the theater just on my home setup it was sure impressive like i i bet it was incredible in the theater but yeah i don't i don't see the best picture knob for that i don't get it yeah i don't especially like so they like lately they've been picking like a blockbuster to fill like the last slot like no everyone knows it right they have twice as many slots for best picture right they have is it 10 I still think there other ones to choose from other than that Like Wicked maybe I don know I didn see Wicked but I don know Listen, great. Good for Apple. They can say that they're a Best Picture nominee. That's great. And they already won one. I can't see. Yeah, that was for Best. Several years ago. It was Best Picture. yeah they won for coda okay yeah they won for like shocking award it was yeah in the covid year for years the other movies uh come see me in the good nights nominated for documentary feature film they have a separate documentary short category um and lost bus is also nominated for visual effects so they're up against themselves in that in that sense but that's it those ones are i mean like Last year they didn't get nominated for anything. So it's a step up. Yeah, well, their movies are generally pretty terrible. Did you see Come See Me in the Good Light? Either of you? Nope. I did see Coda. Yeah, Coda was very good. F1, like it's good. It's fine. It's fine. It's not a bad movie. I encourage people listening to this to watch it. I am not in 10 years going to be talking about F1. Right. Like I'm not – like there's no – the award is going to go to either like Marty Supreme or Sinners, right? But maybe Frankenstein. For Best Picture? Yeah, for Best Picture. Maybe One Battle. Oh, One Battle, yeah. Probably One Battle. That's actually on my list. But that's the kind of movie that I can see myself talking about. Like I think F1 – It was really good. If I saw that in the theaters, I'd be talking about it on my way out of the theater, and that's about it. it's it's it's a good popcorn movie it's fine did you you saw sinners sinners was good i didn't i don't know if it's if it's if it's worth 17 nominations but it's it's a it's a it's a good movie i liked it um i saw one battle after another that was that was really good too but now we're straying from uh apple um have you seen shrinking yet shrinking's back oh yeah so that's the other thing shrinking's back i'm super excited i love that show um i did the first episode it's great a new episode but it but it's it's a great show it's great they're just right back dropped right back into form okay that did not miss a beat um good so uh i don't want to spoil air i mean we know um my brain my the caffeine has not kicked in i keep thinking marty mcfly Michael J. Fox Michael J. Fox is in this season and there's a neat twist to the way and I don't want to spoiler it because it's a neat thing but it makes the first episode even better. Not like it's the opening scene but he's in there. He is in the first episode and I assume further episodes as well, but he's a delight. The first scene he's in, my wife and I just turn to each other right after that scene and just went, I love Michael J. Fox. He's still so charming. He's a good dude. Even in his current state, and he's playing somebody who has advanced Parkinson's. It works fine for him. it seems to me like it's the only show that harrison ford like seems to enjoy making i think he's having a good time yeah yeah like he's he's always kind of grumpy but in this one like he could really lean into his grumpiness it's like the perfect role for him at this age yep um what else is uh that do you do you watch that that hijack show no i think you had you told me before that the first one the first season was excellent i haven't watched the second one either the first one was filmed i don't think it was meant to be a continuing show i think it was meant to be like a mini series and then they're like oh let's make another it certainly didn't end on a note that suggested there would be more of them right yeah no there was no cliffhanger there was no continuing and they just said hey let's do another one and this time it'll be on a train like that's how will be different and so yeah but i hear it's good and i like your drusel but i just need to put it on my list the first one's gonna i'll have to check out the second one what i want a second season of is um what is it called dark matter i don't know if they're i think i believe they're making it i just don't know if it's coming out um this year that was an excellent um sci-fi show that involved some like like multiverse stuff but it's it's it's really good i watched the first couple episodes of that i could not get it hooked at all like i i just felt like so there's a lot of things going on like we actually my wife and i watched it twice because there's like is a lot to to to grasp i felt like it manages to somehow be both slow and confusing in the way that they try to make every multiverse show convert using. So I couldn't get into it. I am looking forward to the next season of Silo. I think that's going to come this year. I haven't seen that. And the final season of For All Mankind, which is excellent. I haven't seen that either. I'm a terrible Apple TV watcher. For All Mankind is just tremendous. I know. I'm sure I'd love it. And it's very hard science. It's science fiction because it's a world where something different happened and it changes the course of history. But it's all very hard science. It's all absolutely everything here could totally happen. Whoever's their technical advisors and stuff like that are very good about all this space stuff. It's really good. Roman, are you watching anything? uh i i like i do watch shrinking but i like to let the make the show i like to have the show stack up a few episodes before i watch them my parents are like that yeah they would talk to me the other night like there's nothing on tv to watch i'm like did you watch shrinking like well we can't watch it for like like another two months yeah the other one i want to let them all finish and then... I've been watching Fallout and The Pit. Those are excellent. The Pit, I've got to watch at some point. I've heard that's fantastic. You haven't seen the first season of The Pit? There's a fair number of them, too. There's something like 16. It's not a 10-episode thing. It's 16 or 18 episodes. Just don't eat while you watch it. There's some disturbingly realistic medical stuff going on. It takes me forever to watch anything. We're just finishing Mad Men, which ended 10 years ago. We're like midway through season 7. It's fantastic. We're just finishing that. It's so rare that we watch a show when it's like Pluribus we watched. I was all disappointed in it. My wife has been watching Chief of War on Apple TV. it's the show with Jason Momoa and most of the show is in Hawaiian it is because it's based on I want to say King Kamehameha so it's based on Hawaiian history so a lot of dialogue is in Hawaiian and my wife has connections we've spoken about this before my wife has connections, roots in Hawaii So she likes watching it. She's like, hey, I understood what they said a little bit. Yeah, but she's enjoying it. So it is violent, which isn't her cup of tea. But she enjoys the cultural part so much that it kind of she can sit through the violent parts. So I'm still waiting for her to make me some of those little donuts. Wait, there's little donuts on offer? The malasadas. Malasadas. They're Hawaiian donuts. Okay. They're one of the greatest donuts I've ever had, if not the best. They were close. All right. Comment corner, Roman. So in comment corner this week, we've got one email from Ian I from Canada. Had some thoughts about the whole Ram situation and the price of Ram. Jason wrote an article a little while ago about how how Apple could or could not be affected by the whole RAM price increase. Tim Cook even addressed it during the earnings call last week. Ian said maybe a side effect is that we'll see less RAM requirement inflation on Macs. It feels like cheap RAM has allowed lazy developers to build bulky, inefficient apps for too long because they can get away with it as RAM specs keep improving. Will there finally be an incentive to rein in RAM use if people simply don't want to spend the extra money? He also said – That's a lovely thought. Yeah, that's a lovely thought. There is not a chance. There's two things working against them there. One is that obviously they're cramming AI into everything and you have to have a stupid model loaded. Or it's at least a thing that is going to connect to the internet. The other is that everything is like an electron app now, which is basically a way to encapsulate a web app. We made our apps a web page, but we encapsulated it into an app. And those are really inefficient because they load tons of libraries and stuff that you'll never use, your app may never use. So you end up with a very simple app like Slack that has, like, why is my RAM requirement so huge for what is basically like a private IRC server? Like, it's not even get me started. yeah so developers may not clean up their code but there's also the ai dependency that yeah right if it's not one thing it's another uh e and i also said uh you'll get that outro right one day mike so he's offering some encouragement i sure hope not i like it's become a bit now i hear that all of canada is is rooting for me yes we got another message from Canada. It's from POV with RC. He said on YouTube, and this is in regards to ads on the podcast. Ads are a part of life, and I accept them. You guys do a good job. You've actually stolen me from MacBreak and Upgrade because you were completely apolitical and just talking about the subject called Apple. I don't know. Don't listen to any back. Don't read the Macleap this week. Maybe, yeah. So, yeah, sorry, POV. And then, but Danny on Spotify had differing thoughts in regards to ad. Danny said, please, no ads. One of the very few podcasts I can still listen to while going to sleep would no longer be an option. Are ads not soothing? Well, Danny says you can't relax to, but first, ask your doctor about xylophone. So the phone does sound like a drug name, doesn't it? Well, it does sound like you want to stay awake and listen to find out more about it. So, yeah, I mean, maybe so. Just let people know the ads. When we were talking about ads last episode, we weren't show when they were going to be active or activated. Well, now they're activated. They're active. And from what we can tell, not everyone gets an ad insert because we were checking it out. And when we were checking it out, like I was able to hear the ads and some people who were checking weren't able to hear the ad. So I really don't have any idea of how that works. It sounds to me like it's purely random on who gets an ad and who doesn't. Is there one or two ad inserts? I can't remember. We have – we're currently going with just one ad insert. And to let everyone know, to be completely transparent, we're placing the ad right after the main discussion. Yeah. So just to give people a heads up. So when we start going into the segments, that's – you'll hear the first – you'll hear an ad. We haven't figured out if we're going to do more ads or not. But for now, that's how the ads are going to work. I got one for Hilton Hotels, and it was fine. It didn't really disrupt much. I think it was 30 seconds or 30 minutes. Yeah. But it wasn't super related to what we talked about, but it wasn't way off. I would like to do ad readings on this show. I think that would be fun. Yeah. I mean, nothing's stopping you. We won't get paid. We can do them anyways. We just won't get paid, yeah. It's your show, Mike. You can do what you want. The Polypop Soda. So, yeah. So that kind of wraps up Comet Corner for this week. Thank you, Canadian listeners. I never think of the show being global, but that's cool. Well, North America, you know, at least. Sure. I've gotten a few in the past I've gotten a few emails from Germany about the podcast and the funny thing is they were written in German so I had to figure out a way to translate it did Siri help? Siri did not help or not Siri the live I think this was a long time ago before Apple translation was a thing so i had to use the web some uh electron app that took up a lot of ram bring it all around yeah i mean seriously the ram thing we won't go off on a tangent before the show ends but like that that's a real issue yeah like like i have i don't know hold on while i'm talking about it i have 36 gigs of ram on this laptop and i swear like 32 of them are constantly in use. And I don't do, you know, I have a word processing programs, a web browser, and this thing. Well, memory in use is a tricky measurement. Because you want your RAM to be in use. It doesn't do you any good at being empty. So you want unused RAM to be filled up with cache and stuff like that so that you can quickly access things, you know, to preload things that you run all the time. what Macs have switched to is talking about like when you open the activity monitor so if you'll see memory pressure and that's a better sort of metric of like do you need more RAM? Like is your RAM constantly being swapped out for stuff because the active applications don't have enough so yeah, pressure is good like I had a 8 or 16 gig MacBook 13 inch MacBook Pro before this and it was constantly getting like the memory pressure was in the red. As far as that goes, it's good except for when I had all those spotlight issues. Oh yeah. That's a whole other. All right. That does it for this episode of the Macworld Podcast. Yes. Yes. Already. I already screwed it up. I haven't even gotten to the part I screwed up with. You'll get that outro right one day, Mike. That does it for this episode of the macro podcast episode number 969 thank you jason thank you thank you roman thank you sir and thanks to you the audience all over the world or at least north america for tuning in you can subscribe to the macro podcast in the podcast app on youtube on spotify uh in the macro podcast channel or through any other no this but youtube come on you can subscribe to a macro podcast in the podcast app on spotify or through youtube on the macworld podcast channel or through any other podcast app if you have comments or questions you can email us at um macworldpodcast.com you can contact us through blue sky facebook threads comment on a photo comment on a post comment on an article comment on a video send us an email separately um and uh We will talk about it on a future episode of the podcast. That's podcast at Macworld.com. What did I say? You said Macworld at podcast.com. This is the worst outro I've ever done. You put a lot of pressure on me. We got in your head. Yeah, we got in your head earlier about it. Join us in the next episode of the Macworld. Join us in the next episode of the Macworld. I'm going to get this line right because I'm going to read it word for word. Join us in the next episode of the Macworld podcast as we talk about the latest in the world of Apple. See you next time. See you.