Friends, it is time, once again, to check in with the folks over at MacBreak Weekly.

You may remember we’ve done this before with Episode 96.

The most current episode is number 104 and it clocks in at 1hr, 25 minutes.

Which is a long, long episode.

MacBreak Weekly has become the “late ’90s Kevin Costner movie” of podcasts.

So here, presented free of charge, is your guide to the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly.

Annotated Listener’s Guide

00:00:00 - Netcasts you love, from people you trust (Seriously Leo, a “netcast”. Get over it already. They’re podcasts.)

00:00:20 - Intro, sponsored by for cachefly, audible, Visa, Drobo

00:01:14 - actual start of show “We are here to talk about all things Mac” * Scott Bourne, amazingly bad Don Lafontaine impersonation * Leo tries to intro Merlin, but Andy talks over it * Intro YLNT * Scott doesn’t get YLNT because he just stepped into a recent episode, but he likes it * Some more YLNT references

00:03:30 - Andy I is introduced * Leo gets the name of Leo’s website wrong for the 4,000th time * Andy talks about moving his website to a new server * Now they’re talking about Star Trek, adding www to the front of his web domain

00:05:00 * Leo does the worst Kennedy impersonation I’ve ever heard. Oh, until Andy I. Merlin throws in “Ich bin ein webmaster”.

00:05:44 * An ad for Visa. Now we’ve had 5 minutes of show, but absolutely no actual content, so we’re going to commercial. Ok then.

00:06:30 * Talking about Don LaFontaine. (Now look, I loved this guy’s voice. I’m thrilled that he was once spotted using a Mac laptop. But does it have any [expletive deleted] thing to do with the average Mac user? No it does not.)

00:07:45 * Scott Bourne “Well, I know how much money he used to charge, but I’m not gonna say, but it was a lot of money.” Wow, thanks, that’s sooooo worth my time. This guy had a good voice and made a lot of money. Awesome, because when I tune into Mac Break Weekly, that’s what I’m looking for.

00:08:00 * Merlin talks about how LaFontaine saved time using ISDN lines instead of driving all over town. Interesting, not nearly the same pomposity as Scott, but Merlin is still a young man, and he has time to develop these skills. (45 seconds)

00:08:45 * We get to listen to Leo try to find an audio clip and Merlin try to guide him.

00:09:30 Leo “It’s not really Mac news”. * No, it isn’t, and we’re at 9 min 30 seconds. * Who is editing this?

00:09:40
* Scott now launches a conversation about other people whose careers might benefit from Don LaFontaine’s death. Classy. And Mac related. Oh wait, neither. * (One of them did some voiceover work for Apple, which is as close as this came to Mac news, but wasn’t.)

00:10:26 Top Mac News. 10 minutes later. * September 9th event “Let’s Rock”. Andy and Leo talk about their travel plans (or lack thereof) than the actual event. Then they describe the email that went out, which is great, because no websites carried it.

00:12:30 * Leo suggests trying to do a special Mac Break Weekly to talk about whatever these announcements are. * (As of 2008-09-10 there is no special Mac Break Weekly scheduled that I am aware of)

00:12:45 * Leo asks for speculation about what the event might bring, although they’ve already talked about it being “clearly and iPod event”. They talk about the leaked document that Kevin Rose received, which sound pretty much like what was announced. AndyI and Leo agree it sounds credible.

00:16:00 * Scott Bourne wonders if Apple is leaking stuff to Kevin intentionally

00:17:10 * Leo and Scott talk about other things that they would like Apple to announce: new Air, new Pro, even though new processors aren’t ready.

00:18:00 * Merlin says “Hey, can I do that speculation thing that you do?” about Alex Lindsay’s obsession w/ a tablet Mac. Basically: if these are new iPods, what does that mean for a tablet?
* Leo thinks they might announce a tablet at this a special event. (In September? Right. Just in time to miss all the people who would buy them for college? * AndyI talks about all the undeniable things that are going to happen before we get a tablet (unless Apple does all the software for the v 1.0). “Not 2008, maybe 2009 / end of 2009 at the earlier” and points out school/Christmas.

00:20:00 - Speculation about possible timelines for new Apple hardware.

00:24:36 - Commercial! * Drobo. Firewire Drobo. * Oh, Scott had one in beta.

00:26:45
* Drobo tip even though you can yank a drive “live” it’s not something you should do all that often! A minute later, Leo talks about his eyeglasses.

00:28:36 * After talking about Drobo jingle ideas (yes, really) they finally stop talking about Drobo. * 4 solid minutes of Drobo talk. Now that tip was pretty handy if you have a Drobo, but it’s in the book.

00:28:45 - IMEI numbers * calculate how many 3Gs Apple made, thinking that Apple may make 10million goal, which was a “bold goal” for a non-cell phone company 2 years ago.
* 3rd largest share of smartphone business, and 2 years ago they weren’t in the smartphone business. * Will sell in China.

00:31:20 - Chrome * “Andy, have you played with [Google] Chrome yet?” * Andy hasn’t used it yet. * Leo hasn’t used it yet. * Merlin hasn’t used it yet. * Scott hasn’t used it yet. * It’s not even available for download when they start talking about it. * When they do start talking about it, they quickly mention that it’s Windows only. * Andy I thinks this has the potential to be the best thing ever. * Merlin thinks it has the potential to be the worst thing ever (another proprietary browser). * Somehow Andy becomes convinced that his opinion is the only logical one and Merlin is being a PITA about it. Merlin keeps asking why he thinks it’s going to be great when it’s not released and no one knows how it’s going to actually play out. Merlin is strident, Andy was (IMO) rude and seemed completely taken aback that Merlin wouldn’t just accept his word for it, based on a comic book, that this is going to change everything for the better.

This conversation went on for 7 hours. Ok, 20 minutes, but it felt like forever.

About a program that no one had used, and that (while based on the same technology that Apple uses) is not available for the Mac. Gee, could you maybe talk about this the week that the Mac version comes out, since it’s a weekly show about Macs? Crazy idea, I know, we should speculate now!

00:52:05 - Merlin: “I’m very much not in the business of guessing about stuff based on a spec and a comic.” * To me that’s a fairly profound critique of why the whole conversation had been a waste of time, and Leo responded by saying * “But that’s what we do on Mac Break Weekly.” Merlin replied “In that case, I like it.” [laughter]

00:52:30 - Why use more than one browser? (Merlin answers, why he uses Safari but loves Firefox)

00:54:00 - Leo brings it back to Chrome, trying to explain how this will be totally awesome.

00:54:49 - Scott Bourne explains that he had no idea that there are such a thing as “web standards” by saying “It’s a standard if everybody likes it.” (Seriously?)

00:55:30 - Leo wants to get Merlin on his project to “open up” Twitter. How is this Mac related? If you answered “It’s not Mac related at all!” you’d be correct.

00:59:20 - The start talking about picks of the week. They spent nearly 30 minutes talking about Chrome, which doesn’t run on Macs and wasn’t even released and no one had used, and bitching about Twitter, which Leo again claims has disabled “Track” to monetize it. OTOH you can use Summize (Twitter Search) and make a feed for whatever you want to track. Sounds like a lot of bluster to me, and absolutely NOT.MAC.RELATED.

00:59:20 - Audible picks: Michael Palin book (Leo jumped in with a “he’ll make a great VP!” joke which probably would have been funny a week ago)

01:01:30 - Leo explaining Audible in the exact same gushy terms you’ve heard every other week.

01:02:00 - Picks of the week: Ubiquity (incl. some Mac history)

01:04:30 - Slife

01:10:00 - Andy I: BBedit 9

01:15:52 - “Photomatics” from Scott Bourne

01:21:00 - Wrapping up

01:25:31 - EOF

Now, if you want, you could do the math to figure out how much time they spent actually talking about actual Mac related topics.

But I won’t, because the answer for me is simple:

Our of nearly 90 minutes of MBW, I felt like I got maybe 20 minutes of interesting stuff. Yeah, they talked about the iPod event, but really there wasn’t much there.

It’s a waste of time, and I’m officially done.

Instead, if I need something to listen to, I’ll listen to You Look Nice Today because, to be honest, I was really only listening to hear Merlin talk about Mac stuff.

I hope Merlin will occasionally post some Mac “picks” to 43Folders because I find his stiff incredibly useful, almost as much as the Mac Gems on Macworld and even more than MacOSXHints, two sites I love and visit regularly.

Leo, et al: sorry, but I’m done. You don’t have to care, really. If someone has the gall to show you this URL, please feel free to say “Who the [blank] is this [blank]? Doesn’t get ‘get it’ that the free and open spirit of MBW is what makes it special, and if you edit it down to, say, 30 minutes, you’ll lose the soul of the show?”

I know you think that. I just disagree. Doesn’t make me right or wrong, just makes it the wrong podcast for my iTunes subscription list.

Which is an error I have corrected.