Google’s AI Failure, Apple Car Is Over, AI Powered Siri
Download MP3I always say the way a man treats his car is how he treats himself. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, the Apple Car got cancelled. AI news including Gemini's image fail. Sonos is gonna be releasing some high end headphones this summer.
Stephen Robles:And would Apple make a fitness ring? This episode is brought to you by one of my favorite Mac apps, Audio Hijack. We're gonna talk about that in a moment. I'm one of your host, Steven Robles. And joining me, man whose name can never be transcribed properly, by any service, my good friend, Jason Aitin.
Stephen Robles:How's it going, Jason?
The Other Guy:It's good. I don't understand why the transcript doesn't just say the other guy. I mean, that's what everyone else calls me, so come on.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna start putting the speaker labels, which Apple Podcasts, there's gonna be transcripts in there next week as you listen to this episode, and I might just put the other guy instead of Jason Aten. But whenever I say your name, every transcription service thinks it's like the number 10.
The Other Guy:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So they just they separate it. A 10. Sometimes they think it's a 10.
The Other Guy:Which is how I've been telling people to say my name for the last 44 years.
Stephen Robles:Right.
The Other Guy:A and the number 10. So there you go. See, the transcription service just knows. It's it's way ahead of everyone else.
Stephen Robles:It knows how to phonetically do it. So we have a ton of news, a grab bag of news this week, some AI news, Apple news, like the Apple Car, Apple AI generative features. So we're gonna get to all of that, but we must thank all of our listeners and viewers. You guys showed out. We blew past 105 star reviews in Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:So we're gonna give a bunch of shout outs. I'm gonna try and do a rapid fire, but thank you for that. If you haven't yet, we have a lot of reviews that just say the word nerds now in Apple Podcasts. We've accomplished it. It's it's there.
Stephen Robles:It'll it'll be there forever. So this week, if you have not left us a 5 star rating and review, go to Apple Podcasts. Even if you listen to an Overcast podcast cast, scroll all the way down on the Primary Technology Show page, click right over your view, and then give us 5 stars, and tell us are you an Apple Maps or Google Maps person? Because that's gonna be our personal tech topic, next week.
The Other Guy:I can't wait.
Stephen Robles:Have you been perusing the reviews, Jason? Because there's a lot of reviews there.
The Other Guy:I read all of them because sometimes I'm I've made people mad. And then the
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That was only one time.
The Other Guy:Instead of emailing us about it, they just leave it in a review. So I'm trying to preemptively avoid any of that. Okay.
Stephen Robles:If you're mad, email the other guy at primary tech dot f m. That email actually works. It is
The Other Guy:a real email address. Yes.
Stephen Robles:It is a real email address. But a lot of the reviews, I think humorously say, the other guy. They like the other guy. The other guy is good, and we all know who that is. It's the inside joke.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Alright. 5 star reviews, rapid fire, your mom is listening, which was not my mom. I double checked. But anyway, Gavin, 5866, rDustin b, who actually gave a glitter beard shout out.
Stephen Robles:This is an old poll if you were a HomeKit insider listener. I put glitter in my beard, at one point, which maybe I'll do when we reach a 1000 YouTube channel subscribers. John Holzer. Zach White, said the other guy is fantastic. Ward Maguire had very kind words for us.
Stephen Robles:It takes c. Jade Denning, he's a battery percentage on. This is what we asked last week. Let us know if your battery percentage on or off. I have to admit, Jason, everybody was battery percentage on in the reviews.
The Other Guy:I really wanted to make sure that you mentioned that because, clearly, I won the review poll.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Jason won the review poll, so we're gonna have to yeah. We'll have to do a poll there. Elan 2020, pointed out that magma balls was something I said on the last episode, which maybe I'll regret. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Thrash 1952, Andrew w 88, donkey with a bunch of numbers after his name, tydell, pbernie 86. He said we're big time nerds. I take that as a compliment. Rousey 1973, redpixel09. He actually had a Halloween candy comment.
Stephen Robles:He doesn't like Heath bars. I was surprised. I did not know anyone who didn't like Heath. Do you like Heath bars?
The Other Guy:They get stuck in your teeth a little bit, though.
Stephen Robles:That is true. Yeah. If you don't like the teeth feel
The Other Guy:Right.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. You might not like teeth, so I get it. Nick Fitzpatrick, he won't abide our Twizzler hate, which it's okay if you like Twizzlers.
The Other Guy:Fine. They're just not a Halloween candy. That's all. That's my only thing.
Stephen Robles:There were a couple questions in the reviews of, like, what makes a Halloween candy versus not a Halloween candy? Maybe that needs to be a bonus.
The Other Guy:You know it when you see it. Isn't that the standard? Right? Like, you just know when you see it. I because I have very fond memories of Twizzlers, like, when we would go on road trips as a kid.
The Other Guy:Seriously. Like, I do, but they're just not Halloween candy. That's all.
Stephen Robles:Controversial, I guess. Now scody 134 said candy corn is not good. Thank you. I agree. Mike Stanley said every episode is fun.
Stephen Robles:Grandma who loves to listen. Now this might be my mom. I'm not sure, so I'll have to check back with her.
The Other Guy:Okay.
Stephen Robles:Thurston County, attacker backer matter 1, He gave us a review and asked about matter 1.2, which is a smart home spec. And we've not talked a lot about smart home, but we it will be coming on this show. And I might, get or ask Jennifer Tuohy from the Verge if she could join us. She had yesterday on a couple of my podcasts before, and she's kind of a smart home expert. She writes for The Verge.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah. Hopefully, we can get her on. Jorge s, battery percentage on, and p Kingman, battery percentage on. You you won the poll, Jason. All on.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I
The Other Guy:think we all win when we keep our battery percentage on. So I
Stephen Robles:still I still haven't turned mine. Alright. Apple Car is officially unalived. I don't know if you're supposed to say that. Unalived.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, it's unalived. So this was a report from Mark Gurman in Bloomberg and then even the New York Times had a very lengthy piece about how Apple's car project is now shuttered. And the team many of the team members who were on the Apple Car project, some moving to the AI generative team inside of Apple. But this was Project Titan. That was the code name.
Stephen Robles:It's been going on for 10 plus years. I remember I was actually at Apple Insider when Apple Insider broke one of the first Titan project stories with some pictures and and behind the scenes. This has been rumored for a long time. Obviously, Apple has never said anything publicly about this project, but there are lots of leaks and rumors about Apple making a car. This New York Times piece also revealed that Apple had spoke with Elon Musk about acquiring Tesla rather than making their own car, that that would be a better use of their money.
Stephen Robles:But, obviously, that did not happen, And even as Apple has tried to make its own car, it has seemingly now canceled the project, which in the future, obviously, Apple's always gonna be looking for new product categories to enter, hence Apple Vision Pro, and what else in the future? But I think with the advances of CarPlay, especially like the entire Dash CarPlay thing that they showed off at WWDC, plus the car industry being a rather low margin market, and, I mean, so wildly different than anything Apple makes right now. I mean, I get it. I'm glad that maybe they'll focus a little bit more on software going forward rather than the car. Maybe there's a test track under Apple's spaceship campus.
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
The Other Guy:Have you ever
Stephen Robles:heard cars roaring under there and any time you've been at an event?
The Other Guy:Just golf carts because that's how they move people around. That's it. I've never and they they don't run on a track, and they're not underground. So Okay. No.
The Other Guy:So no is the answer.
Stephen Robles:So no. But I mean, I'm actually not surprised by this. I feel like, you know, Ming Chi Kuo and other analysts were, like, yeah, 2028, 2035. There was always these, like, very long in the future years about when Apple's gonna release a car, but I was always very skeptical and now it seems like it's not gonna happen. What do you think about this seeing this news?
The Other Guy:Didn't we talk we talked about this. I know we did, and I meant to go back and look at the transcripts of our episodes because I think that you can get those on primary check dot f m, and I just didn't. But I meant to go back and do that because we talked about how somebody had recently said something like the Apple car is has always been, since its existence, 5 years away from like every single year. It's like the Apple car is coming in 5 years. And finally And I think they started it before the Apple Watch.
The Other Guy:It was like 2014 or something like that. And then after they launched the Apple Watch, a lot of people went to that team. And so we you and I had this conversation, and I think we pretty much asked, do we think this is ever happening? And I don't wanna be, like, a revisionist historian, but I'm pretty sure we're, like, no. It's never gonna happen.
The Other Guy:Like, we don't really think this is going to happen. And apparently Yeah. We get one point. This is our first, we called it, point. We've only been doing, like, 10 episodes.
The Other Guy:So I feel like that's actually pretty good for only that number. But, yeah, I it's I'm not surprised. I I can't imagine Apple making a car and wanting to get into that industry. Dealing with all of the things that come with that, that just doesn't feel very Apple. I think more likely.
The Other Guy:So I don't know. You know, I started to read that recently, Rivian announced they were laying a bunch of people off, and Rivian could really use another their partners with Amazon for their, delivery trucks or whatever. But I think a more likely scenario is Apple may try to find a partner that it can work with that already knows how to make cars and that it could do something with their I don't I don't think that's beyond the realm of possibility. I know that there had been reports in the past that Apple had approached different car makers about it, and nobody wanted to work with Apple because it they it's like, nope. You're gonna do everything our way.
The Other Guy:And they're like, but we know how to make cars and you don't. And Apple's like, but we know how to make people happy. I don't know. I don't know how the conversation went. So so I'm just not surprised that this has happened.
The Other Guy:So
Stephen Robles:It's not an official quote. Yeah. Yeah. Me neither. And, you know, real ones, if you remember pre iPhone, Apple did partner with Motorola for the Motorola rocker.
Stephen Robles:And that was a little like well, it was a terrible phone. But I think Steve Jobs actually held it up on stage and was like, this is the iTunes phone. And so Apple has done partnerships in the past. It hasn't had to do it in a long time, I feel like. So, you know, we'll see.
Stephen Robles:But no more Apple Car. I probably I mean, it would have been very expensive. Let's be honest. 200,000 at the least.
The Other Guy:I I mean right. The only people who could afford to buy the Apple car are people who have lots of stock in Apple, the company. Like, there's a really weird self fulfilling
Stephen Robles:inverter that happened.
The Other Guy:Yeah. Exactly. There's something happening there.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. So one other thing that, well, Apple might need to unalive soon is the fine woven case. And I just wanted to throw this in there for just for I don't know. Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal, she did a whole piece, in her newsletter about the fine woven case, And Jon Gruber then did a poll on, his social media, which I want to cover a little later in the episode because he talks about kind of the response across different social media platforms in the state of threads versus Twitter or whatever. But Joanna Stern was like, hey, unwoven case, it's really bad and hers looks really rough apparently.
The Other Guy:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And there was a lot of people online that both responded to her to confirm, and to Gruber's post that a lot of fine woven cases are looking really rough. Basic Apple guy, he's out there and his fine woven looks good, but I feel like basic Apple guy probably gets, like, special Apple products. Like, they send him the good ones, you know, whatever fine woven case is gonna is gonna last. I bought one of these when it came out, as you do, because I needed to talk about it in a video, and I actually returned it. I don't return a lot of Apple products, but I returned the fine woven case because I was like, I'm not gonna use this.
Stephen Robles:It doesn't feel great. Even like new out of the box, it just doesn't it didn't feel great. And every time I've been to an Apple store since the fine woven launch, one of my customs is to go to the fine woven display and take a picture of all the nail scratches that people have now left in the fine woven cases. Yeah. And it just looks like graffiti along all the fine woven cases.
Stephen Robles:So yeah. It's ripped. Did you ever get one of these? Did you try one?
The Other Guy:I have one. I don't really use it. I actually don't hate it. It I didn't have the same kind of visceral reaction that a lot of people did to the texture or whatever. I do just wanna apologize to anyone who watches this on YouTube because this is the 2nd week in a row that we've highlighted body horror.
The Other Guy:Like, that's the only way to describe the condition of this case. This looks like this I don't even know how to to describe it, but it is disgusting. It is sort of
Stephen Robles:like It is faded in weird ways.
The Other Guy:Like, you
Stephen Robles:know, when you use a leather case I I use leather cases. And so I have a bunch of different leather cases. I made videos on them. This is like the the keyway leather case and as you use a leather case, like, it will patina in a certain pattern because your hand oils is what does that, or if you get it wet or whatever. This fine woven case, like, it doesn't even seem like it wore in a particular pattern or rhyme or reason, and one of the things that I felt immediately was the sides of the case were very plasticky.
Stephen Robles:They're apparently still a woven kind of material, but there's plastic under there and it felt kind of cheap. And one of the issues that Joanna was pointing out is that those plastic sides have, like, peeled off and just come apart, so I don't know. It's not do you do you think Apple's gonna make, like, a gen 2 fine woven?
The Other Guy:I don't know, but this is one of those cases where if they do, they're gonna have to call it something different because I do think that the brand reputation of fine woven hasn't been around very long, and it's just pretty bad. And, again, I didn't hate it. I didn't I use a Nomad leather case that I just prefer.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
The Other Guy:It's it's actually just a little it the case I use is a little heavier than I would like, but it's just it meets all of the other criteria. It's it doesn't have a brand on it. I love that, and it's it feels really nice in the hand, and it protects my phone. So I just went back to using one of those instead of this. I used the fine woven for a while.
The Other Guy:And, again, it's it's meh. It's fine. It's like there's I didn't have strong feelings either way, but it certainly, to me, is not a replacement for Apple's leather cases.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. For sure. Now I will say Apple's silicone cases, I still like those. I have one of those if I go to, like, the beach or if I know I think it's gonna get wet because I don't wanna get my leather cases wet, but the fine woven like, I understand the sustainability and that's the whole push into that, but we gotta try something else.
The Other Guy:But that was not that's not sustainable. Like, you saw the photo. That that case is not sustainable. It may be environmentally friendly, but it is not sustainable.
Stephen Robles:I think the case just wants to be part of the Earth again. That's what's happening. The case is just breaking apart. It wants to biodegrade as you're using it. I think that's the that's the case.
The Other Guy:That may be the case, but I don't think that that is the point of having a case. So The
Stephen Robles:amount of times we said case, that was a double entendre in that section. I think it was in the double digits. That's the case case. Get it? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, by the way, congrats on 10 episodes, Jason. We got to 10 double digits.
The Other Guy:This is good. Were you wondering if we would get this far?
Stephen Robles:No. No. I knew we would get this far.
The Other Guy:You you said that, like, it caught us by surprise.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. I knew we'd get there. I was just Okay.
Stephen Robles:You know, gotta celebrate. It's the double digits, and then we'll celebrate the, the triple digits when we get there.
The Other Guy:But Sounds good.
Stephen Robles:Double digit. Double digits. Alright. This next we're gonna enter the AI news, which I feel like as these companies are launching more of these products like Google Gemini, Apple's gonna be getting into generative content, possibly a WWDC. We'll talk about that in a second.
Stephen Robles:But Google got in a bit of trouble here and you had an article about Sundar Pichai's response, which I wanna get to in a moment. But Google said the AI chatbot did something unacceptable, which is that there were a couple of prompts that people put into Gemini, Google's new AI chatbot. We talked about it, I think, on the last episode and maybe the episode before, but it provided some imagery, the chatbot did, that was historically inaccurate. And I feel like historically inaccurate is a pretty gracious term. The Wall Street Journal didn't include, an image.
Stephen Robles:They said it was producing ahistoric images. And so I would just like to show these images. This will be the chapter artwork if you're listening in your podcast player. But this is what it created. This is John Lussier on x, and the prompt that he gave Gemini was generate an image of a 19 40 3 German soldier, and there were some, I mean, obviously ahistorical portrayals, because in this image, there is both people of other ethnicities besides German, namely Asian, black, in, like, German uniforms.
Stephen Robles:I don't see any swastikas, but it's pretty weird and not just not great. Not a good look. So tell tell me more about what happened here.
The Other Guy:Okay. Steven's being delicate, and I am far less delicate. The problem here is that if you put in a no. Like, you could argue that searching for something like that in this case might have been bad faith. Like, not bad faith, but, like, you were trying to get it point at the failure points.
The Other Guy:Right? So most people probably aren't looking give me an image of a 19 43 German soldier. But if you did, you would expect white men wearing Nazi uniforms. Like, that's the entire point of this. And Gemini returned an Asian woman, a black man, and an American Indian, like a native American.
The Other Guy:And so it the same the example I used is if you were to ask it, show me the scene when the, you know, the constitution was being debated in Independence Hall, you would expect to see a bunch of old white men, but Gemini would give you a diverse group of men and women and whatever. One of the other examples that I think The Verge highlighted was someone asked for a senator in the 1800, and it was an Asian woman. And there were no women senators until the early 1900. And the first Asian American woman senator was the senator from Hawaii. Hirono, I think, is her last name.
The Other Guy:I apologize if I butchered that. But it was like the late 19 hun like, she's not been a senator for, like, a 140 years is, I guess, the point. And so the the problem here isn't that the objective of trying to cause if you all you ask for is show me a person walking a dog, Google Gemini is trying to give you a diverse group of those types of things. But if you ask for a specific, image with historical context, it was just not it was ignoring what the historical context was. And in fact, there were some people who pointed out, Ben Ben Thompson from Stratechery actually highlighted, like, no.
The Other Guy:You're just refusing to make white people. And it's and it's like that was the case. And it's he since deleted that post because Elon Musk responded to it, and you understand what happens on the Internet when that happens.
Stephen Robles:No.
The Other Guy:Yeah. So you that one doesn't exist anymore. But there's a great conversation about it on Dithering, which is the podcast he hosts with Jon Gruber, where, you know and Ben Thompson is not somebody who play like, he he stays away from politics. He stays away from cultural hot button issues. But the point was, like, you just built a thing that's so overcorrected for the systemic bias that exists in these training models that it it it became absurd.
The Other Guy:It was just it was just ridiculous. And so then they shut off the, image generation tool. So people started poking around with the text generation parts of it, and it was doing the same kind of thing. And so it's just it's been bad. It's been a very, very bad couple weeks for Google.
Stephen Robles:Right. And now I think this is in a response. Like, Google trying to air on the side of diverse depictions of people is because some of the earlier tests, and I say earlier like last year, when you would ask DALL E or Midjourney to generate images of people, it would very often air on the side of just white people, like it's just what they depicted, and obviously that's not very representative either. And so Google is trying to and, you know, Google does this a lot with their Pixel phones too. They really make a point to say that we are trying to make a product that is useful for all skin tones when it comes to cameras and photography.
Stephen Robles:And so it is good to try and work like incorporate more diverse use cases and making it useful for everyone. But obviously when you're dealing with something historical, which I feel like, you know, when it comes to these chatbots, it's clear that accuracy is like, it is a goal and it can be accurate, but everyone understands to be skeptical and and maybe this is part of a larger conversation, but I know one of the things I made a video recently about mapping the action button to chat g p t versus Siri and how sometimes when I wanna ask a question, like, chat gpt is just gonna be better at answering it than Siri, because I know Siri is just gonna send me to a website basically, like a web result. And if I'm asking like one of my HomePods, it's gonna be like, Leah, we'll open this link on your phone. It's like I don't wanna do that, like I just want an answer. So one of the things I asked recently was just how far is the sun from Earth?
Stephen Robles:And I asked both smart assistants, and chat gpt actually rounded it and said something like 93,000,000 miles. And then I asked Apple's assistant, and he gave a very specific number, which is kind of, you could say, more accurate. But then also, the number Siri voiced to me was different than the number it showed in a web result on the same page. And so if accuracy is the question, I don't know if Apple's voice assistant is doing it that well either. I don't know, like, maybe it's pulling from a different data source than it's displaying as a website, but I think people are going to start leaning more on these chatbots and large language models for information, and if that is the case, it needs to be accurate.
Stephen Robles:And I think this being Google's chatbot is especially important because everyone goes to Google for information. That is literally Google search. That is the Google Assistant. I know a lot of people when they talk about voice assistance in their home, their Google Home Devices are the ones that provide better, more accurate information. And so of all the companies with a chatbot, and we'll get to Apple's responsibility in this in a moment, but Google needs to be pretty accurate.
Stephen Robles:So
The Other Guy:I think that the intention was somewhat noble because you had talked about previous examples. In the previous example so if you the a good good way to think of this is if you were to ask it to give you draw me a or create an image of a CEO standing in front of a room of employees. Right? Almost every time it would give you a white male probably in their, like, fifties or sixties or something like that because and the reason for that is it's trained on, you know, information from the Internet and the sample of of images and of descriptions of that character, you know, that stereotype often was of men. Because for a long time, that was the way that that was an accurate thing.
The Other Guy:Not that it should be that way, but that's what it is learning from. And so Google is like, but if all you're asking for is a CEO as a figure, it doesn't always have to be that because that's not representative of the pool of human beings who are currently CEOs of companies, and it's trying to create something that's more reflective of that. That's different than if you said create an image of the CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank in 2023, which is Jamie Dimon, a white man with gray hair. Like, so if it returned a photo that way, that would be an accurate image. It doesn't mean that, like, it doesn't have to be making a political statement one way or another.
The Other Guy:And I think that the the goal was good. It's like to let's create diversity so that we aren't just spitting out more and reinforcing the same stereotype because the truth is that as this thing creates content, that's the content that then gets fed back into the models. And so it's just self perpetuating. And so I think that the the the goal was good, but it is really striking. And this should should have been a warning to someone at Google that if you type the same question into Google search and Google Gemini, you would get dramatically different answers.
The Other Guy:Right? Because if you type it into Google search, it's just spinning back what's on the Internet. But if you if you asked Google Gemini, it's like looking at what's on the Internet and then trying to decide, is this a good answer even if it's the accurate answer and it's trying to give you the good answer or what it thinks is good as defined by someone as opposed to the accurate. And that's just where the disconnect was, and that was why I wrote the piece. You know, Google CEO finally apologized and said, you know, we got it wrong.
The Other Guy:And what he said was our job is to build products that our users can trust. Right? We have to we have to well, actually, even better than that, they have to build products that deserve their users' trust. And that's, I think, why I I I think like, the reason I put this in here is I honestly think that this could be fatal for Google. It could certainly be fatal for Sundar Pichai's role as a CEO.
The Other Guy:He because this is like an existential thing for Google. People go to Google because even though we know that Google doesn't always get it right, we go to Google for information. So we depend on that information to be the information that we're asking for. And you do not want to feel like someone is hovering over you going, is that the question you should have been asking? Let me ask the question differently and give you an answer.
The Other Guy:Like, fine. There may be cases where there are some people who might need a little bit of guidance because the questions they're asking are ridiculous. But Google's not the one that should be making that determined. Right? Like
Stephen Robles:Right. And, you know, I do wonder with the rise of, you know, the Arc browser and Arc search apps recently, they released a new feature where you could basically, like, swipe to get a summary of an article, like, if you were looking at the New York Times article about the Apple car, that you could basically, like, swipe with 2 fingers and it'll give you a one paragraph summary of that, which it was actually doing it behind the paywall so, like, that was kind of messy. But for if you were to ask a chatbot, like, you know, give me a one paragraph summary of the 19 100, You know, you might get, like, a lot of wars, a lot of people died. Yeah. And that would be an accurate summary, but it lacks all nuance and other perspectives of those years.
Stephen Robles:And I think there's gonna be a tension going forward as AI chat bots and large language models try to, like, synthesize more and more information into smaller and smaller pieces that things are gonna get wonky for lack of a better word. And especially if you look at history, but just, you know, sometimes you do have to read a long article to truly understand something or this is, you know, you need to read a research paper to understand this scientific study, and sometimes boiling it down to a single paragraph is actually not the best representation of the information and it won't give you, you know, the best understanding of it. But you had an article talking about Sundar Pichai's response to all this. So tell us, like, what did he actually say, and what are they doing moving forward?
The Other Guy:So he didn't really apologize, and they said exactly what you'd expect, which is, like, we're going to fix this, and we are going to because we are dedicated to making products that our users can can depend on and and that deserve their trust. So I wrote this because I had written previously about how Google's previous response to this was not great. They were sort of trying to explain what had happened, but they weren't really taking responsibility for what was going on. And this most importantly, the CEO hadn't said anything. And I I I think it was good that he finally responded.
The Other Guy:And it wasn't a public response. It was a memo to employees that was that was viewed by, I believe it was The Verge who saw this. And so I linked to their article because they had the full text of the entire entire statement. But it was it was something he sent to employees basically saying, we got it wrong. Like, this was this was producing responses that were offensive for people, but which, again, is actually kind of not really what it was because, like, I'm not offended by certainly, the image you showed, which was of the German soldiers, could very well have been offensive to someone.
The Other Guy:To me, that image isn't specifically offensive. It's just absurd because it is so not an accurate image of what the person was asking for. Again, whether you think that the request was in good faith or not is irrelevant to that. So I look at that and I'm like, it's not just that you were creating images that were offensive. It's just that you were inserting into this such a, hedge against bias that you swung so far in the other direction that now people can't trust you.
The Other Guy:They can't trust the results that you're giving. And so, I I don't know. Like, I've had several people ask me this. I would not be surprised when you look at the series of things that have happened over the last how far behind Google has been in AI in general, how many things have happened in in the last year or so, the discontent among employees. Like, I told you this I think I said this to you that I've had conversations on different on different stories that I've worked on with people at Google who have essentially confirmed what we hear reported about the internal dissent and discontent happening at Google, it would not surprise me if Google has a different CEO by the end of this.
The Other Guy:I just I just I'm just going on wreck.
Stephen Robles:Now what what is the, like, the source of the discontent? Is that the push into AI is, like, cannibalizing their core competency of search or, like, what what is the rub?
The Other Guy:So the so I think that the issue right now is that Google's internal culture is broken. So the piece that I wrote a week or so ago when this first happened was, it's bad that the technology failed, but what's even worse is that Google's culture right now is such that no one stood up and said, we shouldn't ship this. Right? This is producing completely backwards results. We shouldn't actually put this out in the public because it's not ready.
The Other Guy:It's broken. It's not delivering the best answers to people's questions. And either either people did say that, and the people who were in charge were like, so what? We gotta get this out there? Or no one was willing to stand up and say that.
The Other Guy:And that's a huge cultural problem for Google, that they have built a system where people are afraid to say something because they are worried about what that might mean for their job. I always say that, like, your brand is the way people think about your company. Your culture is the way your employees think about your company. And right now, the way that Google's employees think about its company is just not great. I mean, if you just think about the layoffs, like, it was a year, a little over a year ago, they laid off 12,000 people.
The Other Guy:This year so far, they've laid off over a1000 more, and they constantly talk about, like, we're doing this so that we can get our you know, we can align our company with our strategy. That's not a direct quote. But the point is you were the one that hired all the people in the first place because you thought that was your strategy. And so what you're saying is you were wrong, and yet you still have a job and you still have a paycheck. It's just all these employees that you hired to do the thing, and they were doing the thing you asked them to do, and now they don't get paid anymore.
The Other Guy:Like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's that's fascinating. Yeah. I am I am curious. I think it's also telling how, you know, OpenAI like, this is all they're doing. Like, they're doing large language models, chatbots, or whatever.
Stephen Robles:I think it's interesting to see the challenge of, I say, older tech companies because compared to OpenAI, like Google, Microsoft, and Apple, which Microsoft is partnered with OpenAI. So they kind of like sidestepped this issue. But incorporating these newer AI technologies into long standing technology stacks like Google and search and Apple and its coming iOS 18 and iPhone 16, how that's going to square. Like, how is that actually going to be incorporated in a good way? And so I wanna head to Apple's AI possibilities.
Stephen Robles:I do wanna throw here in the middle Klarna, which is a financial tech company. I believe they do some of like, the pay later or payment services, like, when you buy things online. They actually laid off 700 people, but in the same breath talked about how ChatGPT and OpenAI's assistant has done the work of 700 people when it comes to their chat support. And this is another case where a chatbot large language model has moved into an industry and obfuscated the need for a large swath of employees because it is good enough to do that. And now there's been other cases, I think it was Southwest Airlines and a couple other companies who their chatbots utterly failed and, you know, they needed to make corrections.
Stephen Robles:I think Southwest or American went around to, like, issue refunds, whatever it was. But I think it's telling that, like, these are large companies incorporating this technology sometimes, to it works, like Klarna says it worked for them. I don't know. It's interesting. I I I don't know where it's going, but seeing these companies struggle to figure out what to do with it is kind of fascinating.
The Other Guy:Yeah. And and I don't know if this is in fairness to them because I think that the the two things were not directly related. Right? It laid off 700 people back in 2022, And they are not but it was it is an example of I think you chose your words wrong because you basically like, you now are are touting the benefit of this partnership with JetGPT, which is handling the work that those human beings like, I know that sounds good to investors because, like, you're you're talking about reducing expenses because surely this API integration with JetDPD is far cheaper than actually paying salaries and benefits to 700 human beings. It is just a it it's an it's another example, not necessarily of how AI is just taking jobs because, again, the jobs disappeared before they started using the AI, but it is an example of how easy it is to forget about the human impact of technology in the way that we're using it.
The Other Guy:And I, you know, I think it's fascinating because I think that there definitely are benefits. There are definitely going to be things where AI is going to be more efficient and more productive in in certain things than human beings. I just think that we should be careful how we think about it. Also, how we like, for someone like myself and and for you as well, how we talk about it just because it is a very dangerous like, people already are worried that this is what's going to happen. Right?
The Other Guy:And we are starting to see how it may not be like we we bought this open AI thing, and now we can fire a bunch of people. But it's like, now we're not going to have to hire those people back. It is, you know, so, yeah. And I also, by the way, just hate any any I am a staunch opponent of AI chatbots for customer service. Like, if you cannot afford to pay a human being to deal with other human beings when your company does something wrong, I personally think you're just doing it wrong.
The Other Guy:Like that. I'm just gonna say that.
Stephen Robles:I you know, I I know it's a like, customer service is a challenge, especially when you have a company that's, like, huge. Yeah. What makes me the most agitated is when I try to use a live chat support bubble and I ask a question or I tell it a problem and I know there's not a human on the other side yet. I know I'm talking to a chatbot. And instead of, like, telling me they're gonna get someone to help me with that problem, they basically offer, like, 4 to 5 links to help articles, none of which are about my question.
Stephen Robles:And I also feel like I wish this sounds my sound a little arrogant, but I wish I could tell the chatbot, like, I'm not a newbie. Okay? Like, I actually do technology. So can we not, like, I think I actually know what the problem is or at least it I know it's not any of these, like, can I hit a button that's, like, you know, advanced users here or, like, non noobs something because it that that is one of the most frustrating experiences? And then sometimes you can't get past that.
Stephen Robles:Sometimes, like, you keep asking questions or whatever, and they just, like, keep throwing help articles or they're, like, yeah, it sounds like this, and I'm, like, I'm gonna flip a table. But Well
The Other Guy:and the reason is that the companies want to filter down so that their that their customer service actual humans only have to deal with, like, the most escalated type cases. And so they but what they don't realize is it's a such a terrible experience, and you're actually doing more harm. It costs you more to have a frustrated customer than it does to pay the person who could help them. I remember on I on iPhone release day, I had to call UPS, and I just wanted to talk to a person. I didn't wanna go because if you give it you know, first thing it does is it asks you for the tracking number.
The Other Guy:And if you give it the tracking number, it just tells you the tracking information. I'm like, yes. Thank you. I know. So I'm just like, I want to talk to a human, and I'm not kidding you.
The Other Guy:I did this twice, and it just will hang up on you eventually. It will actually disconnect the call if you will not jump through its hoops. And I'm like, I know I wrote about that because I was so angry about it and I and I posted about it online and then I started to hear from more people. Someone else, someone had rearranged their entire day, had a bad experience, tried to contact UPS, and you just can't. You couldn't.
The Other Guy:You can't talk to a human being. And it's like,
Stephen Robles:that's
The Other Guy:this is terrible. I'm so angry now.
Stephen Robles:That's why I literally stopped the UPS guy at my front door 2 days before Apple Vision Pro launched and got his number. Yeah. That was more it was more reliable to order something and then catch the delivery guy
The Other Guy:Yeah. Than try to use the chatbot. Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:Last thing before we take a break, along this generative AI is that Tim Cook at the annual shareholder meeting said, and I believe this is a quote that will Apple's going to break new ground in generative AI.
The Other Guy:So the the first paragraph of the Mac, the 9 to 5 Mac, which I think was actually the first, they're doing some killer work there. I think that they were the 1st to report on this, was that they they expect to break new ground on generative AI. Now a shareholder meeting is, like, a weird thing. Right? It's not an earnings call.
The Other Guy:It's not whatever. It's like we're shareholders. Most of them don't go to Cupertino to do this. They can they vote by proxy or whatever. And it's like they vote vote on different proposals.
The Other Guy:If there's new board members up, it's it's that kind of stuff. And at that meeting, he he said, like, he believes that Apple is going to break new ground. The question is, like, are you just talking about new ground for Apple? Because that's a pretty low bar. Right?
The Other Guy:I don't think Tim Cook would have said that though if he doesn't at least feel like he has Right? Like, it'll be new ground on the iPhone, but it's not breaking new ground. Right? Like, it'll be new ground on the iPhone, but it's not breaking new ground. So I I think they must be planning for something.
The Other Guy:So I, hopefully, it's better Siri. That's all I ask for.
Stephen Robles:I imagine it is that I mean, WWDC is a few months away now. IOS 18 and all the I mean, WWDC is gonna be a whirlwind because now they got VisionOS. They have AI generative features if the voice assistant is gonna be a main staple as part of the keynote. But what I'm curious about is if they're gonna break new ground and the word generative, because that's what Tim Cook is talking about generative AI, which everything we just talked about with Google Gemini and things like DALL E, image generation, I I wonder if Apple is going to be able to protect themselves or have enough safeguards where if here's a useful thing that if Apple adds generative AI features to Keynote, their slide application, and you're gonna make a Keynote app you're gonna make a Keynote, and you need an image of something, and you can just type in the little chat box in Keynote or ask Siri, make an image of a microphone because it's a slide about podcasts or whatever. If you can generate images in Keynote, I feel like you could generate images Apple would not want you to generate.
Stephen Robles:And just like the user did with Google Gemini generating 1943 German soldiers, I'm very curious how Apple is going to protect itself from people sharing screenshots of Keynote generating images that might be offensive or might be, you know, like the like the Google Gemini one where it's just, you know, gets a lot of heat. There's gonna have to be some safeguards on it. And I imagine Craig Federighi is probably gonna have a lengthy part of the keynote to talk about the safety and privacy and security implications of whatever generative AI they're going to be providing. And I have a feeling it's it's probably gonna be very limited. You know, I you go to DALL E, Google Gemini, at least until recently, you can basically type in whatever, and it'll generate images.
Stephen Robles:And I I imagine Apple is gonna have some pretty hard rails about what can be generated, what can be where you can generate it. Like, I don't think you'll be able to open spotlight and say show me pictures of what, you know, whatever. But I'm just very curious to see how they're going to incorporate this in a quote unquote safe, secure, private way, and one that doesn't make them look foolish or make them look or put them in a position that Google is now in a position of.
The Other Guy:Yeah. Have we seen I can't remember if we've ever seen John, Jan, Andrea, like, WWC. I was I was trying to find out, but he's the head of Apple's machine learning and AI strategy. And I'm like, will this will we start to hear from someone you'd mentioned Craig Federighi, which made me think about him. Like, actually, the person that we probably would wanna hear from is their AI cheat, like, the person who is kinda responsible for that.
The Other Guy:I I would be surprised if the first thing we see from Apple is what you described, which you can actually do that with with Microsoft's tools. Right? And and your pitch is actually not as much, I'm making a slideshow and I need this image created for me. It's more like I have a proposal in a Word document. I need to turn it into a presentation.
The Other Guy:Hey, Copilot. Take my document and make me a presentation, and it'll just do that for you. And you have to go back and edit it and stuff, but it'll actually go through, summarize it, figure out what your points are, make you bullet points, create backgrounds, do all those types of things, which is fascinating and amazing. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's looking at something like that, but the truth is I don't think that it's I work suite is the area that's gonna most benefit from these types of things. I think it's gonna be making Siri.
The Other Guy:Because if you think about where chat GPT started, it was like a better chatbot. Now the next level of that is incorporating it into into other things. I think we're looking hopefully at like Siri 2 point zero, where when you talk to Siri 1, it actually understands you and it can actually go out on the web, find the information and then just summarize it for you. Because the most frustrating thing is when you ask Siri something, it's like, here are some things I found on the internet. I'm like, I can do that.
The Other Guy:I know how to use the internet. I was hoping I could save some time by just asking you and you would just tell me, but Siri very rarely will do that. Instead, it's like weird. Dude, just do this. I'm like, what did you actually save me?
The Other Guy:That what intelligence is happening here? And sometimes and so we often will just ask, like, the the Nest Home Hub Max that sits in our kitchen, and we'll just ask that. And if you ask that, the advantage that that thing has is it'll just, like, read you a Wikipedia article if doesn't know the answer, but at least it's just telling you the answer it found somewhere. So I'm hoping You don't
Stephen Robles:have to take another action.
The Other Guy:Yeah. You don't have to, like, yeah, click through and read something. Yeah. Exactly. So I I'm hoping that that is, like, where they're focused.
The Other Guy:And then I wouldn't be surprised to see stuff in the photos app where it's, like, move distracting back remove distracting backgrounds. You'd, like, take out this, you know, lens flare that's that's blocking my son's face or whatever it is, or get rid of this person in the background that, you know, doing something weird while we're all at the beach or something like that. So, that's probably where it will land, I'm hoping.
Stephen Robles:And Apple, you know, they lift subject from background, has been around since iOS 16. You know, so there are already those kind of features. They're not super surfaced. Like, the common user might not even know they're there unless they accidentally, like, tap and hold on a subject in a photo, but there's also a bunch of TikToks. Like, those are some of the most popular TikToks after iOS 16 was, like, look, you can lift your dog out of a photo and make it sticker in Imessage or whatever.
Stephen Robles:But I will say this is, John Giandrea on Apple. This is the senior vice president machine learning and AI strategy, which look at that. Apple has the word AI right on their website. So, you know, they're they're not shying away from it anymore. And I will say if Apple I'll I'll also apologize if we've set off everybody's home pods by saying
The Other Guy:Oh yeah. Sorry.
Stephen Robles:Wake word a 1000 times in this episode. We'll try we'll try to do that again. But if Apple can actually get the chatbot side where the voice assistant is good, they now have an entire network of HomePods, iPhones, iPads, Macs, like, it's going to immediately be better everywhere where when you think chat gpt, while they do have an iPhone app, just not built into the devices. And so Apple could have a huge, head start when it comes to actually deploying the voice assistant across a wide range of users where, yeah, you can it's pretty easy to go to chat gpt, the app, or the website, but it will be immediately accessible to all these Apple users very quickly. And, yeah, like you're saying, that's probably one of the biggest or most valuable low hanging fruit for Apple when it comes to these kind of AI features.
The Other Guy:Yep. So
Stephen Robles:I wanna talk about this Apple Health Ring that they might be working on. But before we do, we have a sponsor to thank. This is the wonderful people at Rogue Amoeba who makes Audio Hijack and Loopback. They were our very first sponsor. They've sponsored us the last couple of months and so we are very grateful.
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The Other Guy:They're great.
Stephen Robles:They're great stuff. Alright. Apple might be making a health or fitness ring. This is Mark Gurman from Bloomberg again, which let's be honest, he's got some accurate, reporting. But Apple might be making this ring and this is alongside the lines of aura, the Oura ring, o u r a, which I had never even looked into purchasing and I was like, well, if Apple's gonna make one, maybe I should try a different one to compare.
Stephen Robles:Then I saw this thing as $300. Yeah. $300 for a ring. It's a lot of technology packed into a ring, but my goodness, $300. Samsung unveiled that they are making the galaxy ring.
Stephen Robles:It is a simplifying wellness strategy. This was at Mobile World Congress which was going on this week which is, m the MWC in Barcelona. Yeah. Right? Bar Barcelona.
Stephen Robles:I'm Hispanic. I was I was trying to I was trying to say it with the right accent. But the gal Samsung is gonna be making this fitness ring. Apple looks to be working on it. I find this curious.
Stephen Robles:You know people that might actually want a ring over something like the Apple Watch?
The Other Guy:Well, first, I only wanted to mention that the the Oura ring is $300 plus a monthly subscription. Just wanted to be clear with that. But
Stephen Robles:Yes. I forgot about
The Other Guy:that. Seen people wear smart rings like this. I am not interested in a ring, but I am very much interested in Apple making a tracking thing that you could wear that doesn't isn't an Apple Watch necessarily. Right? Because there are a lot of people who have watches that they love that they'd rather wear, and they but they still wanna track all the fitness things.
The Other Guy:They wanna be able to do all that. Right. And right now, there's, like, convoluted ways you could do that with one of these rings or that kinda thing. So if Apple were to actually make it, I do think that that would be great. Because if if the if your primary use case for the Apple Watch is the fitness tracking, you may want something different instead and to be able to have something more low profile, which is really the thing.
The Other Guy:I think it'd be great. You just make a make a band, like, a bracelet type thing you could wear that still had a lot of that. Basically, an Apple Watch with the sensors, but without the screen kind of a thing. I think a lot of people would wear that. I'm guessing that they they feel like they have to distinguish it from the Apple Watch itself, and so that's why they're looking at a ring instead.
The Other Guy:I think so I think there's definitely a market for this. You know, Samsung's making one. There's the aura. I did I think Amazon had something at some point. And so I don't I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Is it still a super superhuman? Is that one? The super superhuman ring? I don't know.
The Other Guy:Superhuman is an email client that I have used. So I don't know if it's the same thing. Oh, sorry.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You're I'm sorry.
The Other Guy:Ultrahuman. Oh, hold on.
Stephen Robles:Is there a copyright issue there?
The Other Guy:I don't know, but, like, I feel like we went from superhuman to ultrahuman. I don't even this escalated quickly.
Stephen Robles:Ultrahuman, same price, $350. And I did I forgot about the subscription plan. So I don't know if the Ultra Human Ring has a subscription plan, but Oura Ring, it's $6 USD a month, which is not a lot but it's also kind of a lot for fitness tracking where if Apple releases a ring like this, it probably won't have a monthly subscription just like you don't pay for that with the Apple Watch. Right. The cost was in the watch itself.
Stephen Robles:I find this curious. I know that when I I mean, I wear Apple Watch every day and as much as it's kind of, whatever, asinine, I like getting the, you met your stand goal every day this week, and you met your move goal every day this week. And like you were saying, people who have nice watches that they might wanna wear on a night out or just not wear a watch on a certain day, then you would like miss your day, like you miss your streak, And a lot of people like doing the activity streaks, you know, just Apple rewards you with those little things and it's fun to do. Or sometimes you just wanna know, like, have I moved, you know, the amount I wanna move every day.
The Other Guy:Right.
Stephen Robles:So I think it's interesting. I I don't know if I should get one of these to try. I mean, it's kind of expensive. Have you ever tried any of these rings?
The Other Guy:I've never tried any of them. I I think, I mean, I would if especially if Apple made one. Because I think you're right. I think the other piece you'd mentioned, and I we both talked about the fact that people have watches that they like to wear. I have a nice mechanical watch that I'd prefer to wear sometimes.
The Other Guy:But part of the reason isn't just that I think that watch looks nicer. There are times when I would prefer to not be quite so connected. Right? My watch is like a primary way of of me getting notifications, and I'm pretty, like, religious about minimizing the types of notification. But there are times that I just wanna feel more disconnected.
The Other Guy:Still get all of those tracking benefits, I think that'd be great. So I think Apple should make something. If it's a ring, fine. If it's a band or a bracelet, fine. Just I think that I think the Apple Watch could use and, of course, it's still gonna be $300, but I feel I feel like the Apple Watch could use a 129 to $179 fitness tracking thing that isn't a full fledged watch.
The Other Guy:That that's what I think.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm curious what they'll do with the discrepancies between the tracking. Like Mhmm. Because one of the things these rings do is fitness tracking, but also like sleep tracking. That's why I'm curious, like when there's a discrepancy where the watch thinks you slept this much but the ring this much, Apple's gonna square that circle.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Also, just real quick, I'll throw this in there because you had mentioned it, but that Apple might be headed into an antitrust case. We're not sure what about, but can you tell me what this last ditch bid means?
The Other Guy:Well, okay. So the I think I think it's pretty well accepted that Apple is going to be sued, over antitrust comp an antitrust complaint from the DOJ. The most recent development is that Bloomberg was reporting that they had had what what is called the last rights meeting. Sounds very ominous.
Stephen Robles:Intense.
The Other Guy:But I but, I mean and I'm not an attorney, so I only know what I've read. So it's all on the Internet, so just take that for whatever it's worth. But my understanding is that the way that this type of a thing, an antitrust case works with a company like this, is that after the at some point towards the end of the investigation, the DOJ will take that information and go to the company and they have a meeting. And, essentially, it's like, convince us not to sue you. Right?
The Other Guy:That's, like, the last step before you get sued. And maybe sometimes maybe sometimes it works. I don't know. Apparently, maybe we just never hear about those. But the point is that the report here is that Apple's had that meeting.
The Other Guy:Right? So they've had the last rights meeting, which means that if a lawsuit is coming, it could be coming relatively soon. Essentially, this is more of the same type of complaint that we've seen. I think one of the big, triggers of this is, for example, Spotify, right, who has complained many times that they have to pay Apple a commission in order to compete with a service that Apple also offers. Right?
The Other Guy:Apple Music and Spotify. And if if Apple is vulnerable anywhere, I think that it's there because it's very hard to say like, Spotify's point is we either have to charge people more, which is not fair, in order to make the same amount of money as Apple, or we have to charge the same thing as Apple and then we make less. And the only reason that that's the case is because they also own the platform. And I think that the that's probably the area where they're more vulnerable than things like, you know, the the Epic Games case where Epic was like, well, we want it to be the alternative app store. And, essentially, Apple won that because it's like you it's a closed system.
The Other Guy:You knew what the you knew what the deal was going in, and and so you're that's not gonna be the case. So I I think I think it's very likely that we'll see something soon. I don't know how how likely it is that it will result in anything. So far, the government has not been very successful at all in regulating big cut companies. They just haven't.
The Other Guy:Like, you know, the FTC has lost cases. The it it just hasn't gone very well. So I don't think this is an existential threat to Apple. For example, with Google and their antitrust case, the the risk is, like, saying you have to separate your ad business from your search business, which would essentially kill Google. I don't think that the government's gonna come in and be like, you have to separate the app store into a different company or something.
The Other Guy:Like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
The Other Guy:So it's a different animal, but I think it'll be interesting to follow.
Stephen Robles:Is is it a chance that because there's now precedent set in the EU with the Digital Markets Act and Apple having to allow those third party app marketplaces that this could be the beginning of that path towards 3rd party app marketplaces happening here in the US. Is that possible?
The Other Guy:I think so. I think the justice department is absolutely paying attention to what's happening in the EU. And but the justice department doesn't get to make laws. Right? They just get to sue people if they think they've broken those laws.
The Other Guy:And so I think but I think that the pressure that they could put on Apple is to adopt some of those changes worldwide at the risk of being sued. But Apple's, like, so far, their operating procedure seems to be like, nope. We aren't going to do it until you force us to. Right? They don't take pressure very well.
The Other Guy:And they just do it when they're when when it's like, okay, well, we'll follow the law. If you make it a law, we'll do it. But until then, we will just fight you every step of the way. So I don't I don't know. I think that I personally think that what Apple did in the EU, it probably should just adopt some version of that worldwide, and it would earn it enough goodwill among its users and among regulators.
The Other Guy:I imagine that the legal theory is if you start to do that and it doesn't satisfy lawmaker, they'll just take the next step. Right? They're just gonna keep, like, pushing it down. And so I don't I don't know. Like I said, I don't think Apple's, like, at some kind of existential risk here.
The Other Guy:I do think that this is this is coming. We can't really be sure what it will mean until we actually see what the lawsuit is. And I think the most exciting part of it, to be honest, is the most exciting part of the Google case was all of the things that we learned about like apple search deal and all of the different things going on. And Microsoft was there. And like, that's the part that we should be excited about
Stephen Robles:is with it. Stuff like that coming out.
The Other Guy:We are gonna learn so many things about what Craig Craig Federighi has for breakfast every day and where, you know, where jazz plays pickleball. I mean, come on.
Stephen Robles:A 100% he plays pickleball, and that that is always the interesting part of these cases when you see these emails between the Apple execs. And I feel like there was one recently. It was, like, Craig Federighi and Eddie q, Phil Schiller or something. And there were, like, a couple of typos in the email, and I was just like, these are real people too. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Yep. These people have typos in their emails too, and they don't give enough care to fix it before they send.
The Other Guy:Well, they don't expect that they're ever going to end up in the case. But you should just if you work at a company, assume everything that you write will eventually end up in a court
Stephen Robles:case in Discover. Every Slack conversation is terrible. Yep. Real quick. Sonos is rumored to launch its high end headphones.
Stephen Robles:It's a little delayed. It was gonna be coming in May this year, but now it looks like June. This was Mark Gurman from Bloomberg again. This is now covered in The Verge, but $450 for high end headphones from Sonos. This would be taking on the likes of, like, the Sony XM fives, and, of course, Apple's AirPods Max, which hasn't been updated in years.
Stephen Robles:Let's just be clear about that. Still has lightning. So I have mine right over here. I got my AirPods Max right over here. They're sitting in my Waterfield case.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna make a confession. I use these almost as much as my Apple Vision Pro, which is to say almost never. But anyway, this is these AirPods may they're probably dead right now because a) lightning. B) AirPods Pro 2 are just so good. And like I've seen a couple of people using these with AirPods or Apple Vision Pro now like on planes and stuff.
Stephen Robles:I can't imagine that's super comfortable, like having big over the ear headphones with it. But anyway, I'm a huge Sonos person. Like, I have Sonos all over the house. I have the Arc, the Beam, the Sub, Submini. I have Era 300s.
Stephen Robles:I got Sonos 1 assails outside. I got the Move and Move 2. Like, I love all Sonos stuff. So I'm very curious. This is gonna be Sonos' first pair of headphones, probably coming out in June.
Stephen Robles:So I'm definitely gonna be getting one of these to try.
The Other Guy:Let me say this first. I have a thought about the Sonos thing, but I just wanna say to you, Steven, please never wear your AirPods and your vision pro on an airplane because you are simply telling the world that you are the type of person that they should follow to your hotel and just rob you. Okay. Just, just don't please don't be that person. I, you know, but as far as the Sonos thing is concerned, I, I just don't understand why anyone thinks that what the world really needs is another pair of $450 Bluetooth headphones.
The Other Guy:There are so many of them. Because they're so
Stephen Robles:Well, so like for me, I I like Apple's AirPods Max fine. Like, they sound really good. Obviously, because it's Apple, like, ecosystem wise, they work really well. But they're heavy. They don't fold well.
Stephen Robles:And so I think there's still a place for another pair of over the ear headphones. I know Bose QuietComfort is like a you know, everyone loves those. People who travel often, I think, go to those a lot. The Sony XM fives, I never bought a pair because I'm like, it's not going to work with the ecosystem. Now this pair of Sonos headphones is not going to be as seamless as AirPods, so that probably won't be a benefit.
Stephen Robles:It's not even gonna be like Beats, you know, this is just gonna probably have to connect via Bluetooth to all your Apple Devices, but maybe something with the Sonos app. Maybe there'll be something fancy there. I don't know.
The Other Guy:You know what's actually great about the Sonys? I have the Sony XM Fours and the XM Fives, and I have a pair of Bowers and Wilkins PX Sevens maybe that I really don't like. Those are my favorites, actually. But the nice thing about the Sonys is, this is true of the Bowers and Wilkins, you can pair them with 2 device. K?
Stephen Robles:Right.
The Other Guy:And then you can switch back and forth, but you know what never happens? It never happens that your child picks up your I air you know, your iPad and starts paying Minecraft. And all of a sudden the podcast you were listening to just sounds like weird creature scratching around, digging holes in the ground, which happens to me all the time with my AirPods. Like there is actually an advantage of taking one half of a step out of the ecosystem, but still getting the benefit of switching back and forth. So I can have it.
The Other Guy:I can have them paired to my phone and have it paired to my laptop. And if I wanna listen to Spotify on 1 or the other, whatever it is I wanna do, that's fine. But they're both of those headphones, the Sonys and the Bowers and Wilkins are about a $100 less expensive than the AirPods Max were. They sound just as good. The AirPods Max were very comfortable.
The Other Guy:That I will give them. But they were a little bit heavy. They weren't great if you're sleeping on a long flight because, like, they're just thick enough and all that kind of stuff. So that's when I say when I when I ask, does the world need there are so many good. And I understand Sonos probably has to do it because, yes, they're trying to build an ecosystem and become the premium brand for this, but I just man, stick to what you're good at, the speakers, man.
Stephen Robles:Speakers are great. Speakers are great. Are we gonna have to go, like, lightning round super fast through these? Reddit heading towards an IPO. Tell me, what what do we need to know about this?
The Other Guy:The only thing you need to know about this is Reddit has never made money. The only person who's ever made money from Reddit is CEO, Steve Huffman, who made a $198,000,000 last year, I think it was, and the company lost $90,000,000. Now I'm not great at math, but I do think they could have solved their their deficit. Very simply. Like there's a super easy way to do it.
The Other Guy:You could have cut his pay in half and he still would have made $100,000,000 and and the company could have turned a profit. Right? But they made a big deal with Google, a $60,000,000 a year Google deal with Google to license Reddit's content, which is interesting because Reddit doesn't make any content. It makes zero content.
Stephen Robles:Right.
The Other Guy:The people who use Reddit make it, but Reddit is going to sell it off. And there has never been a company that has been more reliant on the goodwill of its users than Reddit. And Reddit right now does not have the goodwill of its users, and it's about to go public. And so I think I think that it will probably gosh. I feel like such a doomsayer, but I think this won't be good for Reddit.
The Other Guy:Also also, you know, during COVID, there was a dust up between Alexis O'Hannon, who is the cofounder, and Steve Hoffman, the other cofounder. And O'Hannon left. And in the filing that describes the history of the company, he's not mentioned one time. They just, like, completely erased him from the history of the company when they released their their their I think it's called an s one document. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:Wow. Talk about revisionist history.
The Other Guy:It's very interesting. So That's wild. That's all you need to know is it's not going to go well. And the CEO is making a lot of money. Although okay.
The Other Guy:The one other thing that's worth knowing and I'm this is like I'm giving you enough information so that if someone someone were to ask you about this at a party, which if that happens, you should probably leave the party. But if that happens and you wanna stick around and you wanna feel like you know something, the other thing to know is that the biggest shareholder in Reddit is none other than OpenAI CEO, Sam Alt. So
Stephen Robles:Really? Yep. That's interesting. Yep. So Okay.
Stephen Robles:Mark Wilson. Alright. Thank you for the interesting tidbit. Rest in peace Apollo. They should have Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You know as soon as as soon as they stop the third party app thing.
The Other Guy:I should have worn my Apollo shirt today. I have one. I I have an Apollo shirt.
Stephen Robles:Oh, you have an Apollo shirt? Oh. I'm not really on Reddit.
The Other Guy:My kids think it's a Teletubby, but it's not. It's it's Apollo.
Stephen Robles:I could see that. I do wanna mention, so threads, this is a TechCrunch article where it says Threads is winding the gap from x with triple the daily downloads on iOS. Now downloads of an app is not user activity on the app but I wanna pair this story with threads being downloaded more on iPhone than x for the app. John Gruber, he did a little poll about the Feinwoven case, which I mentioned before, and he wanted he looked at the number of votes per platform. He posted the same poll on Twitter, threads, and Mastodon and even he still says twitter slash x.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I feel like this of of all the rebrains in history that didn't stick, x has got to be the one. It just is not sticking.
The Other Guy:And before you go on, this is funny because he has a footnote where he talks about that, and he's like, I'm eventually, I planned to call it x, but I'm not going to do that until they stop using the twitter.comdomain for all of the all of the posts. Right? And so once they do that, he's like, I'll start calling it x. And he's like this at this point, though, it seems like everyone, including Elon Musk, has, like, given up on the idea that it's actually going to become x. So go on.
The Other Guy:I'm so I just thought that was a very that was a great little tip that he added. So
Stephen Robles:Also, so, like, I still use the Mac app, and the Mac app is still the Twitter app with the bird icon.
The Other Guy:Yep.
Stephen Robles:And all the terminology is still retweet, tweet opposed to like I mean, I don't even know if they're doing anything with the Mac app anymore, but I still use it. I mean, it still functions.
The Other Guy:Shh. Don't say anything. They don't actually know that it exists, and you just might have ruined it for a lot of people.
Stephen Robles:The whole team, I mean, honestly probably got laid off, and then Right. They just didn't do anything with it. But Yep. Anyway, so he was basically John Gruber saying that the activity on x, even though I think his following is much larger there, was very similar to the activity on threads. Basically he got 33100 votes in his poll on x, 28100 on threads, and then 916 on Mastodon, which if you combine the Mastodon threads audience over Takesx, anyway, it seems like, I think anecdotally, and then seeing this information from TechCrunch, that threads is slowly surpassing x as the predominant microblogging platform, if you wanna use that old term.
Stephen Robles:And I will say just just to mention it one more time, during the big game as I was watching it and typically what you do during big events like sporting events or the Grammys, Academy Awards, whatever, a 100% of the time, you know, a couple years ago, I would have been going to Twitter to see what the conversation was about. And I feel like threads did a better job of that real time commentary. And being on threads, it didn't feel like I was missing everything. Like it did last summer. Because last summer when threads launched, whenever there was a big event, like world event, world news, or sporting event, it was just like crickets.
Stephen Robles:Like you just didn't see any posts about the event. And I will say they are getting better at that algorithm. They just launched the ability to save threads, like bookmark threads. That's now open to everyone, I believe. They're adding more features all the time.
Stephen Robles:So I'm I'm I'm bullish on threads.
The Other Guy:Yeah. I think that it has a chance of becoming the next place or becoming the if, like, useful for people like you and I who like, the audience of people who are on there are more the people I know personally and then people I'm connected to professionally as a so the audience is not nearly as large, but it's, know, it's essentially a search with your Instagram following, which was a very different group of social network connections than what Twitter used to be. So I you know, the most interesting thing to me about Gruber's little poll and analysis of it is that you think about it, like, Gruber has something like, I don't know, 350,000 followers on Twitter. So, like, 1, you know, 1% of them responded to this poll. But on threads, he has about 35,000, so it's closer to 10% of them.
The Other Guy:So it does seem like there's a whole lot more engagement, at least, among his audience. Right? You would not have expect those numbers to be so close when the audience is a factor of 10, right, or a difference of 10 apart. And so that that is an interesting thing. And he talked about how when he ran a poll last year, that the mastodon numbers were huge at the time, and those have since come way, way, way down.
The Other Guy:And until it seems as though, you know, maybe those people have migrated, you know, to threads because threads really wasn't a thing at the time. So so I I think that I like threads. I I put it on my home screen, my my first home screen, so I could force myself to start using it. And I do find that if I just wanted to quickly post something, I'm more likely to put it there. I do still post some things on x because the reality is I still have a much larger audience there.
The Other Guy:And so it's like, I posted on threads. I'm like, but I actually want some people to read it, so I'll also post it over
Stephen Robles:on Twitter. I still cross post on both. And, you know, I feel like even recently, there's been still people announcing, like, leaving x finally, all this kind of stuff. But also, like, my following is still growing on x, which is weird. Like, I'm probably gonna hit 10,000 followers this year if I keep posting on it.
Stephen Robles:So it seems like there are still people discovering accounts, maybe even still people joining, but I don't know. I'm I'm not optimistic about the future of X, but it I'm still there because there's there's still people there. There's still people that I follow and like seeing post on there. So anyway, alright, we gotta do some quick follow-up, some corrections and then because honestly, we were incorrect last week when we were talking about betting apps. Here in the US, there are apps you can download on the iPhone and place bets on things.
Stephen Robles:FanDuel being 1. Yep. DraftKings is there. The caveat and really what I kind of in my mind was saying when I think will Apple do betting quote unquote is a, right now it's only available in certain states here in the US, so they have a list here like on the FanDuel app that tells you all the states it's available in, which maybe a dozen, not Florida. You can do it in Michigan apparently.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So you can do it.
The Other Guy:I downloaded it even. I have not even
Stephen Robles:put in
The Other Guy:an account though, but I did download it because I was, like I I saw somebody responded and be like, oh, you can do this in the UK. And then I thought, FanDuel, DraftKings, I wonder, do they actually have apps? And then I was like, oh, I found them in the App Store. And I'm like, I'll just download them and see what happens. And you absolutely can bet on sports on your iPhone.
The Other Guy:But the difference is Apple has nothing to do with that. Right? They're not collecting bets.
Stephen Robles:Right. And and that's like when we were talking about Apple Sports last week, which I think will be in the future, would Apple allow basically you to place bets with their in app payment system, meaning the card that you have connected to your Apple ID and iTunes account, and actually do an in app purchase to place a bet. That is the thing that a) Apple will then get 30% of that of that transaction. But that's kind of the will Apple do betting in my mind, like that's what I meant. But I was definitely incorrect.
Stephen Robles:Like you can place bets all day in, in this. I actually had no idea what a sportsbook was until my wife and I went to Vegas for a podcast conference. And the hotel we were in, it was like, well, the biggest sports book in Vegas. And I was like, I don't even know what that means. Is that like, like a physical book?
Stephen Robles:Is this like War and Peace? It's a And like we go
The Other Guy:Bar with a bunch of televisions.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So we go to the sportsbook and I'm like, wow, this is a wall of TVs. Yep. Oh, you place bets. Got it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So sportsbook is code for sports betting.
The Other Guy:Yes.
Stephen Robles:Got it. Yep. Got it.
The Other Guy:There you go.
Stephen Robles:Also you were correct last week in follow-up when you were saying that Microsoft is not going to be doing the cloud gaming app, which in iOS 17 dot 4, makers can do native cloud gaming applications and launch them in the iOS app store. Microsoft is not planning on doing that. This is an article from MacRumors and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in an interview with The Verge that because there is not room for monetization, meaning they don't wanna have Apple take the cut of maybe in app purchases or whatever, that they're not gonna be doing a first, you know, a cloud gaming app available in the App Store, which I think is unfortunate. I mean, I know my kids actually use the cloud gaming app and it's pretty good. Well, it's not an app.
Stephen Robles:They just, you know, do the website, add it to the home screen, progressive web apps like we talked about last week, But yeah, you you are correct. No no Xbox cloud gaming, even a 17.4. That stinks. Anyway, last follow-up before we get to our personal tech of coffee, which is a very important personal technology.
The Other Guy:Very important.
Stephen Robles:Very important. I do want to mention Todd Page, who gave us 5 star review last week, and I know he listens to movies on the side, he listens now to Primary Technology. Hey, what is up pod? He was asking, he wants when he gets into his car and turns his car on, things automatically play and sometimes if he's, you know, the volume is down or maybe the input on his car is, different, then he doesn't know it's playing. So what can you do to make sure things don't play in your car automatically?
Stephen Robles:And, you know, some cars they'll just have it start playing no matter what. And so for this, you can create a shortcut. So yes, this is the the first shortcuts corner for primary tech. Go to the automations tab in the shortcuts app. It's on the bottom, that middle tab.
Stephen Robles:And you can create a new automation for when carplay connects. So if you have a car with carplay, carplay can be a trigger. Or if you just have kind of like a normal Bluetooth connection to your car, choose the Bluetooth step option and then, just tap wifi by accident. Choose the Bluetooth and then you can choose is connected. So when Bluetooth is connected, and then you can choose the device.
Stephen Robles:Unfortunately, Apple Watch is not one of these devices. I've had a lot of people ask, can I trigger, a shortcut when the Apple Watch connects to my phone or disconnects? You can't, because for some reason Apple doesn't surface that as a Bluetooth device, which is weird. But anyway, you can choose your AirPods, you can choose game controllers, speakers, or whatever, But your car will also appear here. This w113 is actually my carplay device.
Stephen Robles:So choose your car and then when the step you do, have it run immediately. So the shortcut is when Bluetooth device is connected, run immediately. I need to turn my brightness down even more apparently. That's what it looks like. That's how you wanna set up your automation, and then you go next, and you can do a new blank automation and just use one action, the pause media.
Stephen Robles:You can just pause the media, and I'll try and find exactly what this action is called, but it is you can change playback destination, find music, skip backwards, play oh no, I can't find it just yet. Anyway, there is an action which is basically pause or play and that's just add that action to this automation. This way whenever your phone connects to your car via Bluetooth, pause it and then it won't automatically play and you're not hearing it. That's right.
The Other Guy:You took us right to the edge and you just left us hanging with whatever the most important possible piece of information is. But if there is an Apple support there's an Apple support document too or part of their forms or something that explains that there was that kinda walked through that whole shortcut too. Do you remember though that there was a time when there was a song you could download from iTunes that was like called a a very good song. And it was just 10 minutes of silence so that you could avoid this very problem so that when it started playing the first song in your playlist, it would be it would be just silence. And I tried to make it so in our one car, we don't have car play.
The Other Guy:It just connects via Bluetooth. And if you were listening to something, it will automatically jump over, and it'll start playing it through the car speakers. In our other vehicle, we have car play. And if you plug it in, it won't necessarily just start playing something. So there must be some way that the manufacturer could but that doesn't really make sense because CarPlay is just screen mirroring of your iPhone, essentially.
The Other Guy:So but there is something although we don't have Bluetooth. I wonder what it must be a Bluetooth thing because we have wired car CarPlay. So yeah. So it's unfortunate that that happens. But I will tell you that there is a song you can download that's just 10 minutes of silence if it really bothers you.
The Other Guy:And because they named it a a a a a a, so Right. Oh, he found it. He figured it out.
Stephen Robles:I found it. It's it's the play pause action. And so you just do pause on iPhone and it will pause your media. Now if in the event it takes a few seconds for the media to start auto playing cause it connects to your car and then after a few seconds it'll start playing music automatic automatically. Add a wait action and maybe wait, you know, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, however long it takes for your car to register it, then you can have a wait command and then pause, and now whenever your phone connects to your car, Bluetooth, it'll wait a few seconds and then pause if anything starts playing automatically.
Stephen Robles:Boom, I did it. Thanks for buying me a few seconds there.
The Other Guy:Yeah, no problem.
Stephen Robles:So I could build it. Alright, personal tech. We're going to talk about coffee and then in the bonus episode we're going to talk about streaming services. I have a I used to have a very fussy way to make coffee because, a, I drink cold coffee. I drink
The Other Guy:cold brew. Cold brew. Just you don't just, like, make coffee, let it sit out for 6 hours, and then drink it. I just wanted to be clear.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. I drink cold brew coffee, a, because there's more caffeine per, like, whatever. The caffeine concentration is higher.
Stephen Robles:I can also drink it faster because I just need it like an IV, like, right in my arm. That's where I need the caffeine. The caffeine. And, so, oh, hey, you know what? Here it is right here.
Stephen Robles:This is my cold brew coffee this morning. I used to have a very fussy way to make it, which was the ukeg nitro cold brew maker. I'm gonna share this image. I'll put the link in the show notes and also we complained about this on the last episode but Apple Podcast cuts off the show notes and I could tell you there's gonna be a lot of links in today's show notes. So if you want all the links, go to primarytech.fm.
Stephen Robles:But this is the, cold brew coffee maker I used to use, and you would basically put some coffee beans in this little filter bag, you put it in the keg, you leave it overnight, take the beans out, put a little more water in, and then you use a nitrogen cartridge in the cap, and you inject the nitrogen, you shake the bottle. The first time I ever shook the bottle I was so scared, I thought it was gonna blow up in my face. You shake the bottle and then you get nitro cold brew. If you use good beans and you do the whole process well, it tastes great. It's amazing.
Stephen Robles:That was my fussy way to do it. Now I need I have a limited amount of time. And so I buy chameleon cold brew coffee, which is a concentrated cold brew, meaning an even higher caffeine content, that you're supposed to dilute with water, I do not. I drink it straight. And, I get the most caffeine.
Stephen Robles:I hit the whatever the medical recommendation max caffeine per day, I definitely hit that and if if not more. This is the, chameleon cold brew that I that I drink, Concentrated cold brew.
The Other Guy:Wait. So you don't even you don't even mix the concentrate with water at all?
Stephen Robles:No. I know. It's not great.
The Other Guy:I mean, so are you drinking, like
Stephen Robles:I have half in it.
The Other Guy:But how much you're drinking that whole thing of just concentrate?
Stephen Robles:Listen. Relax. Okay? I got a lot of stuff to get done. Okay?
Stephen Robles:There's only one way this podcast gets published in a matter of 2 hours after we've been recording.
The Other Guy:You're like Sonic. He's just, like, speed doing everything. I don't think that I'm not a doctor either. We've established that I'm pretty much not, but I'm just, I feel like there's, it's a lot of, it's something.
Stephen Robles:It's a lot of caffeine. And the
The Other Guy:only reason I'm astonished is I thought that I, there was no way you can consume more caffeine to me though. I'm gonna have to first say the way you described that whole nitro thing makes me feel like I was watching a scene from Tennant where either, like, trying to, like, you know, put together the pieces of the algorithm or whatever. Like, just I don't even were you building a turnstile? You're gonna go back in time. That's how much caffeine you have.
The Other Guy:You just go right back.
Stephen Robles:I have so much caffeine. My mind is going so fast. It's moving backwards. That's right. Oh my.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, that's my coffee routine. How about you?
The Other Guy:So mine is actually a lot simpler except that we have multiple ways that we make coffee in our house, depending on what's happening. So my preferred way, so my, my favorite way to make coffee is with an arrow press. I don't know if you're familiar with the arrow press. It just looks like something that fell off the back of your muffler. It's just 2 plastic pieces.
The Other Guy:You put a filter in there, you put very finely ground coffee, and essentially you're making an Americano, right? So you, you, you put the coffee in the, in the thing you, and then you put about 2 ounces of hot, hot water in there. You plunge it down over about 45 seconds to a minute. You get it into your cup, and then you add hot water to make it into basically a cup. Yeah.
The Other Guy:It's just a plastic thing. It's like the least elegant looking thing, but that to me is my favorite. It makes the best coffee. And it's nice because that it's so all you need is something to make hot water. So we take this to hotels.
The Other Guy:We do it, like, basically everywhere because you can microwave water to make it hot. It works for you well. So that's my favorite. However, most of the time, I'm too lazy to get all the pieces out and to do it all and then to clean it up afterwards. So we have a Breville espresso machine sitting on our counter.
The Other Guy:Real nice espresso machine. So most of the time, I just make Americanos from that. Right? You pull a shot. Makes makes the espresso, and then, we have, like, this, like, KitchenAid hot water kettle that we use to pour in there.
The Other Guy:So I don't drink, like, lattes or that kind of stuff from it. I just like an Americano. And so that's every morning, I make 2 Americanos, one for my wife, one for myself. Although, it's hard to call hers an Americano because she puts enough creamer and flavoring in it too, basically. It looks a lot like yours, to be honest, when it's done.
Stephen Robles:See, I diluted with half and half. I diluted with half and half.
The Other Guy:Wait. So what would That's breve. So you drink yours breve. That's if you make a latte with with half and half, which by the way, is amazing. It's it's 1300 calories probably just for, like, that tiny little thing, but it tastes amazing.
The Other Guy:So and then the third way oh, sorry.
Stephen Robles:Go ahead. Which Breville do you have? Because there's a lot
The Other Guy:of models here. We have not the one with the circle, meter things on it. It's like the it's I think it's the middle version. Hold on. I'll tell you right now.
Stephen Robles:Oh, the one. I'm pulling up the website. There's there's a lot of machines.
The Other Guy:We have the one right there that says, no. We do not have the oracle because we did not spend it's hang on one second.
Stephen Robles:There's the Cafe Roma.
The Other Guy:Hang on. Scroll down a little bit. This is such good radio right now that we're,
Stephen Robles:doing it.
The Other Guy:That's right. I just go to YouTube.
Stephen Robles:That's it. Dotcom/atprimary. I could see this. Yeah.
The Other Guy:That's true. We are really making it so that you should absolutely be watching this on YouTube for us. And so please listen to this. Leave us a review, then go watch it on YouTube, and then leave us a comment because we are so vain.
Stephen Robles:Can we consume each episode twice? That's what
The Other Guy:I was just gonna say. We really need
Stephen Robles:to 5 videos. Exactly. Are any of these years then? Are these all new?
The Other Guy:No. So ours looks like the one that said Oracle. Go up a little bit. It looked like the one that said Oracle there, which is right on just a little bit, but we did not spend. I know we didn't.
The Other Guy:Oh, it's the barista pro. There we go. It's a barista pro. That's the one we have.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
The Other Guy:Yep. Right there in the middle.
Stephen Robles:Oh, wow. That's a that's a nice machine.
The Other Guy:It's a very nice machine, and it makes very good espresso. And then we pour hot water in it to make it into an Americano. So we make 2 of those every day, and then ours is not blue. But then the other thing we yep. There we go.
The Other Guy:Ours is silver. It looks just like that. And it's nice because you can you can program things like how how long you know, how much espresso do you want it to grind? How finely do you want it to be grind? How do you want a double shot, single shot, whatever?
The Other Guy:So it's great. And then the last thing I was gonna say is we spend a lot of time leaving the house quickly to go to sporting events and stuff. So we also have Keurig sitting on the counter. So sometimes
Stephen Robles:if we're just
The Other Guy:if we're just desperate, we just pop into Keurig. So we even have the Keurig pods, auto shipped to us from from Keurig, actually. This they're just the Starbucks Sumatra, which are very good. And so They
Stephen Robles:are good.
The Other Guy:Dark roast. So there you go. That's what we do.
Stephen Robles:Do you so do you do all this fancy, like, stuff with the espresso beans? Yep. Damp and tamper, whatever?
The Other Guy:Yeah. So you have to well, you have to because you have to you have to create pressure so that the water can go through there. So yeah. I mean, it's it's great. We we buy.
The Other Guy:There's a local market here that brews or not brews, that roast their own coffee beans. We buy them from there. They're just dark roast, and they're they're great for that. And it's it's it's not actually that hard. It it's it actually takes me less time than the than the, Aeropress would.
The Other Guy:So it's great. Shots?
Stephen Robles:How many shots do you put in a thing?
The Other Guy:I just do a double, but, I mean, I'm using this, like I don't know how many oh, my battery is dead.
Stephen Robles:But I'm
The Other Guy:using this ember mug, and this is probably only 8 this is a small one. So, like, it's it's perfect the perfect amount. So How
Stephen Robles:many shots do you have throughout a day?
The Other Guy:Oh, how many so I'll have at least 3 Americanos a day.
Stephen Robles:So 3 double shot Americano?
The Other Guy:Probably, yeah. Throughout the day. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Now hold on a second. How much caffeine is it? Are you
The Other Guy:asking Chad GPT? Because
Stephen Robles:There's 63 let's see. A 63 milligrams of caffeine per 1 ounce shot. So if you did 2 shots, that's a 100 and 20 milligrams of caffeine. If you have 3 in a day, now you're at 360. And I I try to cap mine around 400 milligrams of caffeine with the concentrate, because I just do one concentrate a day.
Stephen Robles:So I'm saying we're pretty I think we're even. I think we're
The Other Guy:You're just getting yours all at once. I'm spreading it out throughout the whole day. I'm on a time, you know, a long extended release caffeine drip. You're just, like, open the flood Gates. I'm just going to stick my mouth right on this hose.
The Other Guy:And I'm just going to take it all in.
Stephen Robles:I will be, I will be honest. Sometimes I have a ZV energy, which is another 50 milligrams of caffeine in the afternoons. But
The Other Guy:you've been to Panera and seen the warning signs that they have about their charged drinks? So they have some kind of like lemonade or some kind of a drink, some drinks that have, like, they're caffeinated, but they're not the type of drink you'd think would be caffeinated. And they have warning signs everywhere because I think what they're worried about is that people will order 3 of these because they don't expect it to have caffeine in them and just drink them all because they're delicious. And so they actually have warnings about them. It's kind of like I I was at Starbucks one time, and I used to order sugar free.
The Other Guy:Like, I would order, like, a caramel latte, but I'd order a sugar free one or a frappuccino sugar free. And I didn't realize that the this isn't bonus content, so I should be careful. But I didn't realize that sugar free, the syrups, the sweetener that they use is a laxative, and I'm not gonna say anymore.
Stephen Robles:I think we're safe. We don't we're not gonna have an explicit tag for that. I think you're okay. So this is the, listen. I'm including all these links in the show notes, which is why I need to go to primary tech dot fm, but even the Panera Bread website about their charged drinks, which they say a 124 to 200 milligrams, which, yeah, if you had 2 of those, now you're in our territory.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Like, 400 milligrams a day. And And we're gonna have to do another personal take or bonus episode on how you just said caramel, but we won't have to go.
The Other Guy:What did I say? Caramel?
Stephen Robles:Carmel. I said caramel. You can listen back. You listen back to the episode. You don't have to believe me.
The Other Guy:That's not how you say it? You don't say Carmel?
Stephen Robles:Well, no. That's not how you spell it. There's another a
The Other Guy:in there. There are a lot of words that are not said the way they're spelled.
Stephen Robles:I always alright. Last thing, and then we're gonna go to the bonus episodes. You need
The Other Guy:a George Bush with, like, nuclear. That's, like, the that's like the cardinal example.
Stephen Robles:I say that incorrect all the time. Every time I say donkey and nuclear, I I get weird looks.
The Other Guy:Strategery.
Stephen Robles:The one the one word I when I was a kid, I played Pokemon on my Game Boy, and one of the attacks you could do in Pokemon was the mind attack, p s y, I think c h I c? I don't know. However you say that. So but growing up, I never, like, heard that word out loud. And so I always thought the attack name was Physick because I knew physical Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:You know, I knew that word and so I was like, oh this is the physic attack. And then eventually With your mind. Say with the way I was like, with your mind. Let me tell you someone say psychic, and I was like, oh, shoot. I've been saying that word in my mind wrong my entire life.
The Other Guy:I just wanna say caramel or caramel are both correct according to dictionary.com. It has the phonetic spellings of them.
Stephen Robles:AI generated. It has AI generated phonetic spelling.
The Other Guy:I mean, it's on the Internet, so it has to be true.
Stephen Robles:This is gonna be that. Alright. We're gonna have a bonus episode. We're gonna talk about streaming services, the current state, some of our favorites, what we're using, but if you hadn't yet, don't forget write a review and 5 star rating in Apple Podcasts. Even if you listen elsewhere, you could tell us Google Maps versus Apple Maps.
Stephen Robles:We want to do that next week on our personal tech segment or subscribe to YouTube channel. No. Not or. And and go over to youtube.com/primarytechshow. The goal there, a 1,000 subscribers.
Stephen Robles:Let's try to get to a 1,000 subscribers. We're almost at 500 now. Thank you to all those who have subscribed and who watch over there. And, I think I'm gonna put I've been doing shorts. I've been doing lots of shorts on the YouTube channel.
Stephen Robles:I think I'm gonna actually maybe put some segments as, like, other long form videos, like our segment today on, the OpenAI, Google Gemini stuff. You know, maybe do that. So anyway, comment on those videos. We're over there as well. Thanks for listening.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for watching. And we'll catch you next week.
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