Tech’s Chaotic Evil Era: TikTok “Ban”, Apple Allows Side-Loading
He's the lisan al Gaib. Welcome to Primary Technology, the podcast about the tech news that matters. This week, even bigger changes to the App Store and Apple in the EU. TikTok might be close to getting banned or have to be sold here in the US. Some AI news, especially a weirdly photoshopped photo of the royal family, and we'll have a grab bag of topics at the end.
Stephen Robles:This episode is brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me as always is my friend, Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I'm good. How are you?
Stephen Robles:I'm doing well. I'm sorry. I did the Lisa and Al Gaib thing because I just been loving the memes. And I see a lot of those memes on TikTok, ironically, which we should talk about later.
Jason Aten:The only ones I see, ironically, are the ones that you post. I can tell how much you love them, which is a it's a Dune 2 reference. Right? Just in case Yes. Anyone here has no idea what you're talking about.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:It's a Dune 2 reference. At least that I gave was in the first one, but the do the memes are really coming from Dune 2. And, yeah, we're gonna have to talk about TikTok in a little bit because because you are staunchly against the use of TikTok, it seems like, but I'm not. I
Jason Aten:don't know staunchly, but I don't use it, and I don't let my kids use it. So there you go. Are you just banned from the house? Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Not that you're against it.
Jason Aten:They may ban it from the US. It's already been banned from our house. So it doesn't matter to me at all.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay. We're gonna get into that because I do it's interesting there. We have some 5 star review shout outs. Real quick before we do that, I wanna thank you all.
Stephen Robles:We did pass the 500 subscribers on YouTube, so thank you all for doing that. If you haven't yet, go ahead and subscribe to that YouTube channel. We have a great video version over there. I share short form clips during the week and we were back into the top 50 tech shows in Apple Podcasts last week so thank you guys for that. And so now, you know, kinda asking everyone, do you did 5 star reviews, you subscribed to YouTube channel, and so now we ask you to spread the word.
Stephen Robles:Tell everybody Primary Technology is the tech podcast they should be listening to if they enjoy that kind of content and 4 or 5 star reviews this week. Forgive me if I mispronounce this name. It's, a I don't know how to say it. It's just a bunch of random letters. Thank you for your 5 star review.
Stephen Robles:Sean Hudgins, battery percentage on. People are still leaving that in the That's fine. You can keep doing that. Nicholas Bridle, he wrote a significant review. He was very kind words.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Battery percentage on Apple Maps user, of course. But our final 5 star review this episode was on my team. CPL Forrest Gump, he's also from Florida, maybe it's a Florida thing, battery percentage off. I think the first one.
Stephen Robles:The first one.
Jason Aten:I think you might be right. And you're very excited about it, and we're gonna get to the brave thing later, but this feels like the same thing where you finally found one and you're celebrating it as if it's a 100% increase or something. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's called confirmation bias. That's what it's called. Confirmation
Jason Aten:bias. Resetting the, the x axis.
Stephen Robles:Exact oh, man. Brave. I feel bad. No. I don't feel bad for them.
Stephen Robles:I shouldn't have posted that graph. Anyway, we're gonna talk about that too. Alright. We have to talk about the App Store and the EU Epic Games Escapades. Going for a little alliteration there.
Stephen Robles:Right after we recorded last week's episode, we were talking about how Apple rejected Epic Games' Sweden developer account, which looked like they weren't gonna be able to do a 3rd party app marketplace in the EU. I think that afternoon, like Thursday afternoon or maybe Friday, Apple reinstated the Epic Games account and are going to allow Epic Games to do third party app marketplaces because they now have a Swedish developer account that's active, but Apple also announced even more changes coming to the App Store in the EU. Seems very fluid. It just seems like this continues to evolve in Apple's policies coming forward, and so this was the actual developer newsroom release. This actually came out, earlier this week on Tuesday, telling you about the more flexibility that app marketplaces and third party developers are going to be able to have, and so we know about the alternative app marketplaces linking out to purchase.
Stephen Robles:Again, this is all EU only. Just keep that in mind, but the biggest change from this newsroom article is that web distribution is going to be possible, meaning if you're a developer in the EU, you will be able to release your apps or allow users to download your third party app directly from a link on a website without even having to be in a third party app marketplace or a, like, the Apple's App Store, and so you can just have that direct download link, which is pretty wild. This is, I think, the sideloading that most people think of when they think sideloading. Like, let me just go to a website, download an app, and install it on my phone. And in the EU, it seems like this would be possible.
Stephen Robles:Now there are some big caveats. I don't know if you saw these. There are some big things that so if you are a developer in the EU and you wanna offer this, this direct download link from Safari to be able to download an app, You have to have have had an app that had more than 1,000,000 first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior year.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:So you have to have an app, so a million downloads in the prior year. I think that's that's weeding out a lot of smaller developers or new developers that, you know, might wanna try and do this. You actually have to have basically a record of an app that's downloaded a lot. Also, you have to, have a an account, I think, in good standing for 2 years was the was the other thing. I'm trying to look here.
Stephen Robles:Have to only offer apps from your developer account. Be responsive to communications from Apple regarding your apps distributed through web distribution, which seems like a very ominous bullet point. Yeah. Okay. Whatever that is, but here it is.
Stephen Robles:Be a member of good standing in the Apple developer program for 2 continuous years or more. Jason, guess who has not had a developer account in good standing for 2 years or more is Epic Games.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, so, technically, it doesn't say the previous 2 years. It does just say 2 continuous years or more. So it is Apple does a really good job of being very unclear when they try to expand and provide more information about things. For example, I just was thinking about this, and I read the 1,000,000, you know, first installs as you had to have essentially had an app that added a 1000000 customers in the previous years.
Jason Aten:Though, this looks like the same language that they used when they were talking about the core technology fee, which really this is what that's about. It's about the the point is they only want people to be able to do sideloading who are going to be paying them the 50¢ per download, 50¢ euro, whatever we've decided that's called. So but if that's true, then it isn't just so hypothetically, that would mean it wouldn't just be 1,000,000 new customers. It would be first installs, which Apple considers an update during that year. So if you had either a 1000000 downloads of your app or some combination of downloads of your app plus updates of your app during that year, then you would be eligible.
Jason Aten:But, again, the point is the same, that this is gonna mean that you're paying 50 half a euro for every single one of these. But can I go back to the epic thing for just a second? Because there was this really fascinating Twitter thread between John Gruber and Tim Sweeney. I don't know if you saw this. Oh, no.
Jason Aten:Based on that thread I'll, drop a link to it real quickly here if I can figure out where I put it in my, my browser because I have a 173,000 tabs open right now. But,
Stephen Robles:tab groups.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Tab groups. Tab groups would not help me right now. But, but in that conversation, it was pretty clear that the application that Epic put through was just automatically approved. This was not, like, something they negotiated with that because there was some speculation.
Jason Aten:It's like Apple knew that this had happened. So why did they then, you know, can their, can their account after the fact? And so they it turns out that Apple this was just an automated thing. It happened in about it took about 3 days for it to be approved. And it was, like, one day Phil Schiller woke up and was like, wait a minute.
Jason Aten:I see a list of new app developer things and epics on there. Who how did this happen? I I gotta email somebody. And so I feel like the whole thing was just, like, a very strange confluence of events. I'm just dropping this link for you in our in our little Imessage.
Jason Aten:But it actually started with a a chat from or a post from Ryan Jones, who is the developer of Flighty, that Tim Sweeney responded to, then John Gruber responded to. And Gruber and Sweeney went back and forth for a while, talking kind of about the whole thing. It was actually fascinating just to kind of, you know, Tim Sweeney says, we applied for Epic Games Sweden account under Apple's normal process, and Apple approved it in the normal way. We don't know what their process is to go through to approve accounts, but, like, they didn't call up, you know, Tim Cook and be like, hey, dude. We're thinking of doing this.
Jason Aten:Is that is that possible?
Stephen Robles:Right. And, you
Jason Aten:know, it was just we just they just fill up the form, hit submit, and 3 days later, they had a developer account. And then someone at Apple realized, oh. So then Apple kicked them out again. And then as you and I predicted, I just wanna make sure that we're on record getting our points here. As we predicted, the the EU made them do it anyway.
Jason Aten:Right? It because the response from Epic was basically after a swift inquiry from the European Commission, Apple has decided to reinstate our developer account. So it's like somebody at the European Commission called up Tim Cook and was like, what are you doing? And the stakes are very high for Apple. I didn't realize this, but the penalty for not complying with the DMA is I think I've heard both 10 or 20% of your global revenue.
Jason Aten:So for a company like Apple where their global revenue is, like, $400,000,000,000, can you imagine if they got a fine of somewhere between $40,000,000,000 and $80,000,000,000? Like, they're not gonna mess around with that. Like, that's Apple makes a lot of money, but they're not like, that is more money than they make selling Macs and iPads. Like, you know what I mean? It's not combined, but you get what I'm saying.
Stephen Robles:Their entire
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Mac business
Jason Aten:It's like in a single fine. Yeah. They'd have to call Google and be like, I'm we're gonna need you to up that search deal just to cover our fines in the EU.
Stephen Robles:We have all turned the deal. I need to use that DARS Vader quote because every week, we
Jason Aten:have altered the deal. So, anyway, I just wanted to clarify what had exactly happened because there was some question about why would Apple give them in the account and then take it back because of the tweets? I still think it was pretty thin skinned that Apple took it back because of the tweets, but it's almost worse that Apple really had no idea that they had given them the account in the first place.
Stephen Robles:Which is strange because I have always thought that Apple promoted that their App Store review was a human process, and I feel like I remember images from years ago of, like, the app review, like, station. I feel like it was a do you remember this? It was
Jason Aten:like a picture of a desk and
Stephen Robles:it had, like, like a Mac, an iPad, an iPhone, and if there was, like, a human review, and that was years ago, so maybe it has changed, but I always thought it was human review, and that that's why it took long. And so is this new that it's automated?
Jason Aten:Well, hold on. There's a difference between App Store review and creating a developer account. Right? I have a developer account. I promise you no one looked at my application because I've never made an app.
Jason Aten:Only reason I have a developer account is because that we used to be the only way you could get the beta
Stephen Robles:to get the beta. Right?
Jason Aten:You don't need one now. And yet I still have a $99 a year developer account for who knows what reason.
Stephen Robles:Which you don't need to pay that. Right.
Jason Aten:You don't need to
Stephen Robles:pay that for the betas anymore. Right. Change.
Jason Aten:I could stop paying for it, but whatever. My the point being that you the process of creating a developer account seems to be automated. But, yes, App Store review actually submitting the apps is not an automated thing. So
Stephen Robles:Alright. So now you had an article, and, I would like you to share the one thing. Apple's plan to allow sideloading on the iPhone doesn't address the one thing anyone cares about. What is the one thing anyone cares about?
Jason Aten:Yeah. The one thing is the money. Oh. Like, that's the only thing developers care about. Like, here this is why I I wrote this this morning because Apple's gonna allow side loading.
Jason Aten:Developers are still gonna be really, really angry because they're still gonna collect the 50¢ euro per per download in, you know, installation. The Right. Like, I think we should just be clear about this, that the only thing either of these groups developers and I'm not throwing shade at developers. I understand why they care about the money. They care about the money because they don't feel like they're getting value out of the relationship from Apple, which is fair.
Jason Aten:Like, they don't feel like they're being treated well. So paying 30¢ of the money that they or 30% of the money they bring in feels like a rip off if you get rejected from the app store. If you're a small developer, you get rejected because of some random like, remember the call sheet. You know, we've we've talked a lot about call sheet. We both love that app.
Jason Aten:I wrote a review of the app. Yeah. You know, I've talked with Casey List about it, and he kept getting rejected for random things. It's like you have photos of you don't have images of movies in here. It's like, yes.
Jason Aten:It's a movie app. Like, it's gonna have photos of I'm sorry. That's a copyright, you know, restriction. So I feel like if that was if it was a more seamless process, developers might feel better about it. But the truth is they want third party app stores because they wanted to not pay Apple anything.
Jason Aten:Well, Apple's like, well, we're gonna make you pay anyway. They wanted loading because they wanted to not if Apple would and what I said in this article is if Apple would just lower the commission to say, oh, I don't know, 10% on everything except for games, developers would all use the App Store happily because of the benefits that they do get from it. They just wouldn't feel like they're being extorted and having their business held hostage. And then the flip side of that is Apple's focus on the money. Right?
Jason Aten:That's the thing that Apple seems to care the most about is actually making the experience worse for users. The fact that you can't sign up for Spotify in the app is ridiculous. And the fact that Spotify can't really tell you why you can't sign up or where to sign up is a terrible experience for users. And it is, I think, a tragedy that Apple is so focused on collecting pennies that it is missing that bicker point. So that was the that was my article.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:They're just alright.
Jason Aten:You you can tell I have feelings about it.
Stephen Robles:I do wanna point out this one other interesting thing. This, again, John Gruber was talking about an app found in the App Store called Deal Machine, and this was interesting because it's available here in the US. It's a real estate app, and, apparently, this app is getting away with directly linking to an external website to start a subscription, which is flagrantly against the current app store rules here in the US, but somehow, I don't know if this app is still live. I wonder if Apple, like, ejected it out of the store as soon as Gruber posted this article. But when as soon as you download this app called Deal Machine, you basically see a splash screen asking you to choose a tier, and there's, you know, a free trial, and then you have to go into a tier, which is either a $100 a month all the way up to $500 a month.
Stephen Robles:And when you choose your tier in the DealMachine app, it sends you out to Safari to make a payment via Stripe, totally bypassing Apple's in app payment system. And, again, this is just wrong, like, this is against Apple's App Store guidelines here in the US, and there's some horror stories of people unable to cancel their subscription because this is not a built in Apple subscription. It's not on that subscription's page in the settings of your iPhone. They are trying to, like, contact the company directly, and it's a bit of a mess for some of these users, and that's a hefty subscription. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:500 to a $1,000 a month, or I think some of them are a year, and I just think this doesn't feel great, again, in light of all that's going on in the EU, and it seems like there's some arbitrary rule changing sometimes and Apple just kind of, you know, moving goalposts at times. And this again is like and then apps like this, like, just kind of skirt and somehow go under the radar and make it into the App Store. I don't know how an app with a splash screen and a $500 subscription per month, as soon as you open the app, would get past app review.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:But, apparently, it did.
Jason Aten:It's funny because there's this phrase on the Internet called getting fireballed, which is not obscene. It's just that if you sometimes if you get linked to from Jon Gruber's blog during Fireball, it can crash your website because it sends so much traffic. Like, this is a thing that would happen frequently to small websites when he would link to them. And it's usually sort of a catch 22 pop up, generally a positive thing because you just got all this traffic. I feel like this is a totally different version of that because I can't I mean, we know for a fact that people like Phil Schiller and Greg Joswiak read during fireball.
Jason Aten:Oh, absolutely. This poor developer I shouldn't say this poor developer because they're charging $500 a month subscription.
Stephen Robles:They're it is not
Jason Aten:poor. This is unfortunate for them that it came to this per it's kind of like we were just hiding right over here. No one was paying attention. I promise you everyone is paying attention
Stephen Robles:now. Everyone everyone sees it now. The app is probably not even there anymore. One other I just wanna mention this in light of all the EU stuff. The other thing that happened in 17 dot 4 was that default browser choice screen that comes up when you update in the EU.
Stephen Robles:We talked about that, and there's been, you know, whether that's a good experience for users or not. But Brave Browser, which is a Chromium browser, you can get it on your Mac, you can get the app on your iPhone. Well, they posted this graph on threads saying since 17.4 and that splash screen for choosing a default browser, that their, uptick in users, you know, has this very big line going up, that once that happened, 17 dot 4 released, all of a sudden, it shot up, and a bunch of new users are now using Brave because they're arguing that users now have a choice and are at least surfaced the option, and when people are given the option, they might choose a third party app. Now, okay, that's their argument. One of the issues was this graph, which the the y axis always seems to get people, and Apple included.
Stephen Robles:Sometimes when they talk about those M chips, those y axes are very strangely, you know, calculated. This graph basically shows that on average, they had, like, 7000 to 8000 installs on iPhone, and then once 17.4 happened, it jumped up to 11,000, which is 3,000 more downloads in the or installs in the EU, and there's probably over 100,000,000 iPhone users in the EU. So that's context. Like, 3,000 users, you know, for a third party app, that might be great. Brave is a pretty big browser, I think, so I don't know if this is a huge difference, but also in light of the all the users in the EU, iPhone users, this is probably not this is a minuscule percentage of people who have installed Brave, and also, like, don't mess with your y axis to make it look like it's a huge jump.
Stephen Robles:Like, maybe start at 0, maybe I don't know. What what should they have done differently with this graph so they didn't get all this blowback?
Jason Aten:So first of all, I wanna say I've interviewed Brendan Eich, the CEO of Brave, on stage at Web Summit before we've, and he is certainly not a fan of the way the Internet exists today, which is essentially a duopoly between Apple and Google. So I wanna just there is a little bit of feelings involved there. So
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:Although his I generally speaking, I would have said his bigger beef is with Google, which is why you would you wouldn't build another Chromium browser if you didn't have a beef with Google. But in fairness to them, this is literally the exact kind of graph that Apple uses at every presentation it does about everything. Right? They are just taking a cue from the masters of graphs that mean nothing. Right?
Jason Aten:So at least they put numbers on the side, which is because apple has put up graphs that don't even have numbers. And you're just like, this is our computer compared to something we don't know. Like we don't like, no one has a clue what it is that they're talking about. So I do just want to give them credit for that. But this backfired immediately because people were pointing out that you put out a graph that made it look like your installs had quadrupled.
Jason Aten:And really, they maybe went up by 50% and you went from 8,000 to 11. Now is that per day or is that total people using it in the EU? I don't know. Like, it's hard to say what that means. So what they should have probably done differently is waited over a course of, like, just 3 months and said, here's how this has made a change because the the I I don't remember who it was I saw that posted this.
Jason Aten:But one take
Stephen Robles:Uber commented.
Jason Aten:Well, one comment was, like, people were just confused. Right? Like, there's an I mean, the browser ballot is terrible. It doesn't mean that people may yeah. There you go.
Jason Aten:There's one of our Apple graphs that have
Stephen Robles:This was during the scary fast event where Apple released the m three lineup, and it's like
Jason Aten:What does it even mean?
Stephen Robles:The the y axis Yeah. The y axis just is labeled relative performance. So I feel like if you if you label an axis relative by default, it's already nebulous. It's like You
Jason Aten:can just draw lines anywhere you want, put numbers, and be like, this is just, you know, relative. It's all relative.
Stephen Robles:And then 0 like, if it was a performance axis, I would think maybe 0 to a 100%, like, when it's peak performance, but the y axis is 0 to a 150. Like, 0 to a 150 what? I don't know. I don't know what that means.
Jason Aten:Units of something, but we don't know what they are. So and in fairness to Apple, again, these are what are called Bezos graphs because Jeff Bezos is the person who originally started putting out graphs like this that mean absolutely nothing where they're not properly labeled. But I think Brave may have a point. It's just that they didn't do a very good job of articulating that point because it's kind of like, this is actually the exact same thing we're gonna talk about with the Kate Middleton photo. It's like you just lost your credibility because of this thing that you did that made us not be able to trust you.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But I we we it will be very interesting to see the effect on Safari users in the EU based on users having to be given a choice, right, to in what browser they want to install. The thing is you can already download Brave. You can already the whole list of browsers are already available in the App Store. None of them are new. Right?
Jason Aten:Chrome is an option, and yet people still use Safari. So Right. I don't know that it's gonna make a huge difference. Good for brave if they picked up some extra users, but it was it Gruber or was it somebody else who was, like, maybe they were just maybe it was an accident. Maybe people were just confused because this browser ballot is so ridiculous.
Jason Aten:People just tap things so they can get past it.
Stephen Robles:Right. Brave posted this image of the splash screen, and in this image, Brave is at the top, but they said the list of browsers is randomized. Sure. So if you're in the EU and you update 17 dot 4, it's not like Brave is the first choice all the time. I would be curious if micros like, for Microsoft to release a graph, hopefully one that makes sense, about is there an uptick in Edge downloads since 17 dot 4 in the EU, maybe because Microsoft is a more well known brand, but to Brave's credit, probably way too late, for the backlash to be subsided, but they posted another graph with the y axis going from 0 to 12 and a half 1000, and then its new install volume.
Stephen Robles:And, like, you do still see the uptick. You know, again, you can make this y axis 0 to a1000000, and then it would just look like a flat line. So, you know, I I'm not exactly sure what people want. Yes, there were more installs of Brave than on average after the 17.4 update. I that's also not indicative of usage.
Stephen Robles:Like, there might have been a bunch of people who downloaded and installed Brave and was, like, oh, wait a minute. I can't access my Icloud tabs
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Or something, or all my bookmarks aren't here? Never mind. I'll go back to Safari. So, like, this doesn't tell the whole story.
Jason Aten:Well and it isn't. The the ballot is really just select your default browser. So what this is essentially saying though is people were selecting Brave as their default browser, and then they went to download it. So think about what that means. These are people who didn't already have Brave on their phone.
Jason Aten:So, like, did they not even know it existed? Are they really choosing it as their default browser if they didn't like, it has a nice icon, I guess. I don't know. Like, it seems to me as though, like
Stephen Robles:That is true.
Jason Aten:It's just that's the percentage of people who got the browser ballot and Brave was first, and they just tapped through and, like, wait. What did I just do? Because if you tap one of those links, it takes you to the App Store to download that particular browser. And I think then once you download it, it also changes the setting maybe or may I don't know. Somebody in the EU can let us know what happens next.
Jason Aten:But all I wanted to be clear is, like, if you were to go down and choose Safari, I think it would do nothing because it's already on your phone, and it would just leave the default setting alone. So this means these are people who chose it as their default browser and didn't even have it on their phone. So I don't know what that tells you.
Stephen Robles:That is that is true. Anyway, let us know in the EU. Also, by the way, in case you're gonna try and use a VPN to download, like, a third party app or whatever, one of the things that Apple is doing, I think we mentioned this on the past episode, but they are also using, like, geolocation to see if you are in the EU or not and if you would, like, be allowed to install 3rd party app marketplaces or now install apps via the web with the new web distribution options. So if you think that, like, using a VPN here in the US to make it look like your IP address is coming from Europe will let you download Fortnite in a couple months or whatever, like, it's not the case. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's not the
Jason Aten:case then. I think if I remember correctly, I thought that there was, like, three things that they take into account. Your the the location of your Apple ID. Right? What country your Apple ID is associated with, your actual location.
Jason Aten:And I don't even remember what the other ones, maybe whatever address you listed. So, like, it's not like you can just tell it, I'm in the EU. Let me just get all those those different features. You have to like, it would be a lot of work for someone.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You have to get a burner, you know, Apple ID somehow set up in the EU. Oh, yeah. It's like, it just doesn't feel like it's worth it. I know there are people who
Stephen Robles:do the office every location.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Exactly. I know there are people. Well, maybe it won't even let you do it if you have location services turned off. Like, because it if it's depending on that to tell it where you're at, you probably do have to have that on.
Jason Aten:So it's probably not worth it, really. Like, third, sideloading is not why is a user why? Unless you're trying to download apps that are just not available. Okay. But, like, other than that Yeah.
Jason Aten:It's just a technical curiosity, I guess, for some people.
Stephen Robles:I mean, gaming is a huge deal. Like, if my kids could download Fortnite directly to their iPads or iPhones from a website, they would do it. Like, that would be enough for them. I think users maybe like us, like, there's no app that I want that I can't get already in the App Store, which, I think, when you're in kind of, like, the productivity world of Apple, it's like calendar app, task apps, you know, there's a wealth of third party apps you can get directly from the App Store, and third party developers, like but I think maybe games is probably one of the big use cases. So anyway, we'll see.
Jason Aten:Just buy your kids a PlayStation. Just get your kids a PS 4. They can play Fortnite just fine. It's cheaper than all of this.
Stephen Robles:But, Jason, it's it's not portable. The PlayStation is not portable and, like, my kids will try to do cloud gaming and I think PlayStation has this one where you can, like, play your console, but it's basically, like, streaming the video to your device. And even in the same house, on my ridiculous 2 gig speed Internet and my Wi Fi that's really good, it's not a good experience. Like, it's like, playing it is not great. So that's why I say maybe maybe games are the option.
Stephen Robles:But I want but I mentioned VPN because a lot of youths Youth. Here in the US might be very get they might get very familiar with VPNs because TikTok might get banned, and so this has been going around in the US government, and the House of Representatives passed a bill to force TikTok either for the Chinese owner, which is ByteDance, to either sell TikTok to, I guess, a US company or ban the app. So the house of representatives passed this bill, and now it's going to the senate, And the if the Senate decides to do this, it is possible that TikTok either has to be sold and then it's on ByteDance in China, whether or not they are actually gonna sell it, it would be probably a huge loss of revenue, ongoing for them, or, the app might get banned. Now, this would be a situation where I think a lot of people would get very familiar with VPNs very quickly, because I imagine if it was banned quote unquote here in the US, switching over to like, millions of people already have the app on their phone, using a VPN will probably allow you to use this.
Stephen Robles:But I will say, because I I do use TikTok and we'll talk about this we'll get into why or why not in a minute, but one day, earlier this week, if you open the TikTok app, there was a splash screen from TikTok of, like, call your congressman, which
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Anyone who uses TikTok, probably, like, the Venn diagram of people who use TikTok and call people on the phone, like, the circles don't even touch. Yeah. It's it's it's not even a Venn diagram. It's just too mixed up.
Jason Aten:And then add people who know what a who knew who their congressperson is, and that circle is just way off in the corner. Right? Like, there's no overlap between those things.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I get it. I mean, it was desperate, but I don't think it's gonna happen. I was trying to find a, a screenshot of this. Here's this is from, Mashable.
Jason Aten:This is what the screen in my article.
Stephen Robles:Looked like.
Jason Aten:Put it in my article too.
Stephen Robles:Oh, was it in your article?
Jason Aten:Let me
Stephen Robles:just share your article.
Jason Aten:I'm sorry. Well, while you're doing that I
Stephen Robles:didn't know I was
Jason Aten:you're doing that, let me I wanna back up just so people may remember that the Trump administration tried to ban TikTok. Right? They tried to force them to sell to Microsoft. And the basic reason for that was because teenagers were using TikTok to organize basically a protest or no. They were organizing this thing where Trump was having a rally in in tick talkers were reserving all the spots for it and then not didn't show up.
Jason Aten:And so, like, no one was at this this event. And so Trump got really, really, really mad at tick tock. So he was gonna ban it. He was gonna make Microsoft buy it. Satya didn't know that there was an interview he did where he talked about that experience.
Jason Aten:And he's like, it was basically, he's like, it was just the most bizarre couple weeks of my life, like flat out this. I don't even know what was happening. Yes. We tried to buy TikTok and then all of a sudden poof, it was gone. And so that happened.
Jason Aten:And then after after a while, people got distracted by things like, you know, the election and whatever else was going on after that. And Sure. People lost interest in worrying about it. And then at some point in the very recent future well, last year, I think it was, Montana passed a law to ban TikTok, and a federal judge said you can't do that. Right?
Jason Aten:That is still under appeal. Right. Then at some point, the congresspeople, members of congress, members of the senate have received, like, briefings. Like, this is a little bit unclear, but the reporting is that sometime in the very recent future, they've received a briefing about the national security threat that is TikTok. And then all of a sudden, it was like, we have to do something.
Jason Aten:And so there is actually a subcommittee on China ish in the house, and they had a hearing on this. This bill kinda came out of nowhere. It's it's a bipartisan bill. I can't pronounce the democratic senator. I apologize.
Jason Aten:His his name is actually in this article.
Stephen Robles:Congressman Raja.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There thank you. And Mike Gallagher, who's a republican, they they've put this bill forward, which would essentially make it illegal for Google and Apple to host TikTok in the app stores if it was controlled by a foreign national, or it would be illegal for other services on the Internet to sort of serve it up. So this was, like, wasn't really clear whether this was gonna pass or not. And then TikTok dig what you just described.
Jason Aten:They put up this scare sheet. You could not get past it. There was the only options you have were forced with the app or tap that link that says call. And when you called, you put in your ZIP code, which by the way, TikTok does not use precise location tracking. They just use general location tracking.
Jason Aten:You just gave them your ZIP code. They now know exactly where you're located if you did this. And they and apparently thousands of people called their congresspeople. Many of them having no idea what they were calling to talk about. It was just, please don't ban my TikTok.
Jason Aten:Right? I just I saw this thing. You wanna get rid of TikTok. That would be bad. And the question is, are you old enough to vote?
Jason Aten:And the people are like, no. I'm 13. Well, you shouldn't have a TikTok account, and I don't care. And then they passed it 50 to nothing. Right?
Jason Aten:It had the exact opposite effect that TikTok like, they they vastly overestimated their pull from doing this. And they've Wow. And they've seen other like, Uber has done this notoriously. Right? They would go into a city.
Jason Aten:They would recruit a bunch of drivers, start recruiting a bunch of, riders, and then they would be, like, lobby your your local city council to make sure that they don't block us or whatever. So this now we're at the point where this week, the house of representatives actually passed this bill. They actually like, it is now going to the senate, and it was passed by a pretty large majority. It was, like, 265 or, no, 3350 2 to 65. This was not a small, like, thing.
Jason Aten:It's now going to the senate, and president Biden has already said that if the senate passes this bill, he'll sign it, which would force within a 180 days for ByteDance to either divest of TikTok or for them to be removed from the app stores. So it's not exactly a ban, but there are a lot. There's a 170, I think, million, US users of TikTok. So this has a real impact on people. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But also Yeah. The the the the objection to this from a lot of people is like, well, this is a first amendment issue. Right? Like, you can't block TikTok. That's where people have the right to speak on whatever platform that they want.
Jason Aten:It's not really like what the First Amendment says. It doesn't say you have the right to say anything you want anywhere you want. Like, the US can say you can't you can't have TikTok. You can just post your stuff on reels. Like, it's it's really not a first amendment issue.
Jason Aten:It's just a we think this app is bad. We don't want it in our country. So TikTok
Stephen Robles:is fascinating to me for a couple reasons. 1, when that Montana law was going through, whatever it was doing, Hank Green, who's a really big YouTuber, and he's a huge TikTok following. He's very active on TikTok. He was like, that's I've built this huge following, and I guess what's fascinating to me is TikTok has allowed a bunch of new kinds of creators to reach a level of prominence so quickly. An example would be Keith Lee, the food reviewer.
Stephen Robles:I think he was also an MMA fighter, so he might have had an audience previously, But there are a bunch of people that you would have never heard of before. There's a guy that I follow who talks about, like, World War 1 and 2 history in, like, really funny and creative ways, and he just, like, posted a TikTok that he got a brand deal through it. He now has a 1000000 followers. Literally, like, not to be disparaging, like, he was no one. Like, he like, no one knew who he was.
Stephen Robles:And the fact that it has allowed that to, like, happen to these kinds of creators, I think is cool. Like, it brings people who have the creative capability and knowledge and ability to explain things, like, there's a bunch of, like, really great creative people on there which can't really translate that audience to another platform. Like, so many TikTokers because the money situation is so bad on TikTok. Like, if you try to be a even with millions of followers, you will make maybe a few $100, $1,000 a month, even with 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of views, and it's only here in the US. Canada doesn't have a creator fund.
Stephen Robles:There's no monetization in Canada, and I'm not sure how it is out in other countries outside the US. So, like, even though it's not a great platform for creators to make money, it has been a platform to create audiences. And without TikTok, I don't know if these people would have been able to create a platform on YouTube or whatever, and this was indicative. And the flip side of that, I've been listening to a lot of Nilay Patel decoder episodes about algorithmic platforms Yeah. And the downfall of society or whatever.
Stephen Robles:And to that point, the reason why I have TikTok is it was during the pandemic. It was literally 4 years ago, like, yesterday, because I rest I still remember it was on my birthday, March 13th, 2018.
Jason Aten:Birthday was yesterday? Wait.
Stephen Robles:My birthday was yesterday.
Jason Aten:Hold on. We have to stop for a second. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I didn't know this. You this is the kind of thing your podcast partner should know.
Jason Aten:Well Well,
Stephen Robles:you know, I feel weird about, you know, I thought all day about posting, like, hey, it's my birthday. And I was, like, what am what what is that? What am I gonna what am I asking people?
Jason Aten:I don't know. But listeners, listen. If you have not left a 5 star review yet, please make that your birthday present to Steven leave him. And if you're watching this on YouTube, leave him a comment and subscribe, but I just want your review to say happy birthday, Steven, please. It'll be super confusing for people later, but I this isn't I'm sorry.
Jason Aten:Go back to TikTok now, but your birthday, 4 years ago, keep going.
Stephen Robles:Go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. If you're gonna do one thing Yeah. If everyone's that's listening right now subscribe to our YouTube channel, we will have thousands of subscribers. That would
Jason Aten:be amazing.
Stephen Robles:So that'll be great. Happy birthday, Steven. You could do that. That'll be amazing. Thank you very much.
Jason Aten:K. TikTok.
Stephen Robles:So 4 years ago, on my birthday is when the world shut down.
Jason Aten:Okay. That was not a good birthday. Let's make this birthday better, please.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Thank you. But but that was 4 years ago. And so the world shut down, everybody was home, and it was in that moment where I was, like, well, I'm home. Let me try that's when I created my personal YouTube channel.
Stephen Robles:It was in 2020, and I created a TikTok account. And the first TikTok video I ever posted was ironically a shortcut, okay, which is how I've been making, I don't know, audience everywhere, shortcuts.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Thank you, Matthew Casanelli, if you're listening. You have inspired me. And it was a shortcut about how to, like, automate changing your wallpaper every day using an Unsplash API. Like, it was the most nerdiest thing ever. That first TikTok I ever posted, literally in the first 36 to 48 hours, got 700,000 views, the most views I had ever gotten on a piece of content I had ever made, and 10,000 followers on TikTok, literally in days.
Stephen Robles:And in that moment, I was, like, this is amazing. Maybe this is a platform to make a go at content creation. And so I did, But just to give you some perspective, 4 years later, I now have, I think, 21,000 followers, which is not commeasurement with that day 1 growth. You know, it's like that brave browser growth.
Jason Aten:That trend line did not continue.
Stephen Robles:The trend line did not continue nor like, I remember I did for a while, I would post TikTok videos, like, clips of my long form YouTube, and I would say, go watch the full thing on YouTube. And I would literally get comments on TikTok of people being like, we're not going to your YouTube, bro. And I was like, Right. If you're gonna create content on a platform, you have to basically create it for that platform and for the audience on that platform and not expect them to follow you elsewhere. If people really, really love your content, like, they'll find your YouTube channel and subscribe, but you can't just keep call to actioning them every video, like, it's it just doesn't work.
Stephen Robles:So I realized maybe it's not a great platform, at least for my kind of content. Again, other content creators, maybe they have succeeded. So I find TikTok to be fascinating because that has been my personal experience, and I see funny Dune memes. Mhmm. And I save those memes and I show them to my kids.
Stephen Robles:And I have not seen those memes elsewhere. And I could just use Instagram reels or whatever, but it takes months for trends to get to Instagram reels, like, it's just accurate, like, you'll see dune 2 memes in a couple months
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:On Instagram reels. Like, that that joke is just reality.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And TikTok is just where everything happens at first, so that's why I like being on there. I I still feel a little icky about privacy and security, like, it does feel like that. I I don't know what that app's doing in the background, but also, like, well, too late now. It's been on my phone for a number of years. But yeah.
Stephen Robles:So that I don't know. That's my feelings on TikTok, and that's why I I actually don't know I don't know if I would care if it gets banned because, honestly, my audience didn't work on there. I don't like, I'm not trying to build it on there anymore. But I don't know. It's helped a lot of people, helped a lot of creators get an audience whether that's been beneficial or not.
Jason Aten:So And so okay. So TikTok has an algorithm that is by far the most effective at serving. If you want to know a person, just look at their for you page. Just it'd be terrifying. Right?
Stephen Robles:It's
Jason Aten:no one wants to show their for you page because it's probably, like, I didn't want you to know that I like watching how, you know, cute little baby cow videos. Like, I just was hoping no one would know that about me. Like, seriously, like
Stephen Robles:I was wondering what you're gonna pull there in the moment and, like, okay. That's pretty safe. That's pretty safe. There there was one, like, congressional hearing where they were grilling the TikTok CEO, and the congressman was, like, all I see on my for you page page is blah blah blah blah. And it was kind of embarrassing.
Stephen Robles:And it and it was like, well, if you're seeing that on your for you page
Jason Aten:Yeah. You
Stephen Robles:that's what you want.
Jason Aten:Probably shouldn't say. But yeah. Because you shouldn't say that out loud. Clearly, this congressperson didn't understand how effective that He
Stephen Robles:didn't get it.
Jason Aten:Algorithm is. And so that piece of it though is is one of the reasons why TikTok so it has all of the problems that every social media platform has, except for that it is, in some ways, extra engaging because of how effective that algorithm is. So it does bring people in, but none of that would be as big of a deal if it wasn't sort of under the thumb of the influence of of the Chinese Communist Party. Because some people talk about, like, the risk of them sharing information with on Americans with China. But, like, let's be honest, Steven.
Jason Aten:Like, it would be maybe embarrassing if someone saw all the videos that people cared about in TikTok, but China doesn't care. They just don't care about, like, they have other things to worry about. Right. But the one of the things that came out was the ratio of content after after, I think it was October 7th, that was either that was pro Israel versus pro Palestine was, like, 95% pro Palestine versus 5% pro Israel. So regardless of what side of that issue you're on, it's pretty clear that there was a slant in the algorithm trying to push a very specific agenda, and that agenda benefits China, not just benefits, you know, people who wanna consume content.
Jason Aten:And this is why TikTok's stunt backfired so much because if your job is to make laws that you think will protect the privacy and security of Americans and all of a sudden your phone starts ringing off the hook because teenagers were seeing a message on Tik TOK that told them to take action. You just, it just proved your point, right? It literally just proved your point that this is an app that is serving the purposes, not just of the general public, but, it imposes a risk. Because imagine if the Chinese government decided that the thing that it should be showing was vote this way or don't vote this way or don't vote at all, or, you know, you can vote by mail or you not vote by mail. You can vote on the Internet or you can vote by cell phone.
Jason Aten:Right? These are all things that have appeared like in. Especially in the past election where people were getting text messages that said, don't go to your polling place, save time, just vote here on this link. Well, you, by the way, you can't vote on the Internet people. You have to either show up in person or vote by mail, like absentee.
Jason Aten:Like that's, that's it. That's the only way it's allowed in this country. And so that is the risk. So so I think that if I don't know that, like, we don't our kids do not well, let's be honest. My kids might have TikTok.
Jason Aten:They're not supposed to. But, you know, their kids, they do things they're not supposed to. So I don't wanna exhaustively say my kids don't have TikTok, but my kids are not supposed to have TikTok. I have 2 children who are technically old enough to have TikTok accounts. I just don't think it's beneficial for them to have one more thing to scroll through.
Jason Aten:They do have Instagram and it's funny, the verge, had the verge. They recorded a live episode of The Verge cast at South by Southwest. We'll talk about that, I think, in our bonus episode. But in that particular episode, they were they were drafting streaming services, and somebody drafted TikTok in the free category. And later on, somebody tried to draft reels, and they're like, that's not a streaming service.
Jason Aten:I'm like, sure it is. It's just TikTok 2 weeks later. Like, it is TikTok, but later. Right? So our kids do have Instagram.
Jason Aten:And and if it was not owned by the China, you know, by by Dan. So Biden says not the Chinese government, but it is has influenced by the Chinese government. If it wasn't, I still don't think we would let them have it because of all the other reasons, but it would make it less of an issue for most Americans because you would at least feel like the content that is being served isn't there because someone has their finger on the algorithm trying to influence public opinion about issues that might benefit a foreign government. So Right. That's my TikTok rant.
Stephen Robles:No. No. It's good. And it's part of a larger conversation, which maybe we can save for another time, but I literally have been hearing Nilay Patel talk a lot about algorithmic fees and he's been interviewing people on decoder. And it is interesting that once everything went algorithmic, I think, you know, Twitter used to be chronological only, and then Twitter went algorithmic, and now everything, every social platform is algorithmic.
Stephen Robles:Yes, you can go to your following feed on threads, and you can try to go to your latest tweets on Twitter, but it's several taps, and a vast, vast majority of users just don't do it. And So if anyone's looking at social media, YouTube included, it's an algorithmic based content feed, and that means those algorithms, not that it's sentient or that there's someone behind that we know of like pulling the levers and dials, but it basically feeds in or creates the trend. I think a a fascinating example is the Stanley Cup phenomenon, which
Jason Aten:Which you have to give a disclosure.
Stephen Robles:Disclosure is, I talked about this on the movies on the side podcast. I think it was a bonus episode. But we have Stanley Cups. Anyways, a long story. But if you look into that, there's there's several, like, long YouTube videos that talk about the Stanley Cup phenomenon.
Stephen Robles:And, basically, what it comes down to is the the marketing guy who used to work at Crocs actually and was able to make Crocs go viral, namely on TikTok through a variety of mechanisms, influencers, things like that. He left Crocs, went to Stanley, and now Stanley has had its moment where it's blown up on social media, trend, like, you see Stanley Cups everywhere now. I think it's interesting for two reasons. 1, how that algorithmic feed look on your phone can translate into a physical product going viral in real life. I see Stanley Cups everywhere, which is wild, but also, like, that was basically largely the direction of one person, namely the marketing person at Stanley who was at Crocs, who figured out enough of the bullet points or the steps to do to create that cultural thing on social media that translates to real life.
Stephen Robles:And that is powerful and beneficial if you're a company wanting to sell a product, but can also be somewhat concerning when it's trying to, you know, promote or whatever ideas. You know, I think that and that affects on a generation. And so one way or the other, I I find it fascinating. I don't know if as a whole, like, on the scale of Dungeons and Dragons, like, morality chart, is TikTok a chaotic evil? Is it neutral evil?
Stephen Robles:Is it I it's not good. No. Like, I'm not putting it in the good category. I don't know if it's neutral, but it's an algorithm Yeah. And I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I I just find it to be fascinating.
Jason Aten:Okay. Two closing thoughts. The first closing thought is I just wanna when when Steven says it's a long story, I don't know if you've watched Dune 2, but, essentially, that is the story of Steven's quest to get I would recommend you just I I mean, I have no no stake in the game. I'd recommend it's worth subscribing to this to the member's edition of movies on the side just to hear that story. I'm I'm you can tell I'm a big fan of that movie.
Jason Aten:I mean, I've been on at least one episode, so you should go listen to that one too. You have. But that it is worth it. But then my second actual real point was I think the best example, I'm kinda surprised you didn't mention this, of the effect of TikTok is Widget Smith. Right?
Jason Aten:Widget Smith was an app that when Apple introduced, was it Ios 14 that had widgets for the first time ish?
Stephen Robles:15.
Jason Aten:So when when they when they first came out no. I was 14. I guess I should look at my own article that I have up right here. But I interviewed David Smith shortly after that. And I mean, it was his app.
Jason Aten:Widget Smith was downloaded at the time over 50,000,000 times, And it was entirely driven by teenagers on Tik TOK, just showing off their, you know, aesthetic, just, you know, home screens that they were able to create. The funny thing is almost none of them are using widgets. Right? Like, they're all just using I you're using widgets with to create icons that they can. They're basically, like, shortcuts or whatever.
Jason Aten:But, anyway, so that is, in my mind, the best example. That's great. Wonderful for for David Smith and Widget Smith. Like, that's amazing. That's by far his most successful app probably that he'll ever make.
Jason Aten:And it's entirely due to to TikTok. But imagine if the thing that went viral was something else. Like that's all you have to ask yourself. Imagine if that kind of ability to drive that, which in this case was great. What if it was in, you know, in the case of the the war in Gaza or or, like, this next election?
Jason Aten:Like, we have high stakes happening all the time. And imagine if 50,000,000 people instead of downloading an app were like, I've been influenced by this, and it's gonna change the course of an election or something. So Yeah. Well, the late okay. The last TikTok thing because, yeah, just to wrap this up then is is there is a this morning on CNBC, former treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, who most people have no idea who he is, but doesn't matter.
Jason Aten:He was a, like, film financer and an investor, then he became the treasury secretary. He has said he's forming a group to buy TikTok if this law passes. So the good news there is that you may not lose your TikTok. It may stick around.
Stephen Robles:And I listen. I I'll be to admit, like, I am conflicted also. Like, would it be good if it was gone? I don't know. Honestly, I would trade today TikTok for Vine.
Stephen Robles:Give me back Vine.
Jason Aten:Wow. That's a deep cut. It's supposed to be
Stephen Robles:I will make that trade today. But honestly, like, that's another funny I don't know. On TikTok, sometimes you will see comments, a lot of comments sometimes, like, this would have killed on Vine. Like, people there's still nostalgia for that platform, and I just I do feel like Vine was just ahead of its time because TikTok early TikTok was basically what Vine was doing, like short videos that looped. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's it. And that's what Vine was. It was just a little too soon maybe or, like, creators weren't ready for it. I don't know. And you still see a lot of Vine stars on TikTok and they're very, like, you know, very I think king batch is one of them, and you see a lot of the other ones.
Stephen Robles:But anyway The
Jason Aten:2 problem the 2 problems the 2 problems vine have was 1. I think the videos were limited to 6 seconds, which is which is maybe they picked the wrong number. And then 2, they got bought by Twitter, which is not necessarily known for its exceptional product capabilities. This is before it became X. I'm just saying in general, Twitter was never known for having, and like Twitter was notoriously fragile.
Jason Aten:And so they probably couldn't host videos longer than 6 seconds looping because like they are not YouTube and they are not TikTok or even Facebook. So, yep, I can't believe
Stephen Robles:And to Twitter had history of, like, kind of fumbling acquisitions and new features like Periscope Yeah.
Jason Aten:All of them. Them.
Stephen Robles:Was a live streaming thing.
Jason Aten:They fumbled it all. Everything. Just anything they buy.
Stephen Robles:Fine. Periscope. Yeah. Everything. But anyway, we are we're actually gonna try and do a lightning round because we do I do have some things that I wanna mention.
Stephen Robles:Before we do, I wanna thank that this episode is brought to you by our members that support us directly in Apple Podcasts or via Memberful, and you can do that today. You get bonus episodes every week. You get an ad free version, meaning this section will be cut out and we just go right to the next chapter, and you can do that directly in Apple Podcasts. We make it easy there. $5 a month, $50 a year, and you get the bonus episodes and ad free versions.
Stephen Robles:I will say there are no chapters for the audio in Apple Podcasts. Not on me. Apple strips my chapters out for subscriber audio. I don't know why. So if you love chapters as much as I do, because I really love putting chapters in custom chapter artwork, what you can do is go to primary tech dot f m, click the bonus episodes link, and you can support us via Memberful, and that feed you get when you support us that way.
Stephen Robles:It can be the only feed, you know, it can you get all the episodes, the full episodes and the bonus episodes together in that feed. I post everything in both places, and that means you could support the show, get ad free versions and the bonus episodes there as well. And if you can't do that, we understand. That's why a 5 star rating and a subscribe on YouTube means a lot. So thank you to everyone who supports us directly, although they didn't hear this because they got the ad free version.
Stephen Robles:But thank you to those of you who will support this show, because of this. So we thank you very much.
Jason Aten:Wonderful.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Lightning round. Lightning round. Here we go. I just wanna mention because I've been watching The Crown a lot on Netflix that this image of Kate Middleton, that was posted.
Stephen Robles:Apparently, she's the future queen of England. She posted this picture. She had surgery maybe a couple months ago, unclear what exactly the surgery was, where our family's been kind of cagey on it, and she has been out of the public, eye for quite a while since then. And there's been questions like, is she okay? What's going on?
Stephen Robles:Royal Family has been kind of mum, pun intended, on that. And so so I ended it. Anyway, Kate Mills posted this photo. It was Mother's Day in the UK earlier this week on on March 11th, and so it posted this photo and, like, you just look at it, you just glance by, like, okay, cool, like, posted a photo, she looks like she's doing well, good to go. Well, as people do on the Internet, they dove into this photo in-depth, saw a lot of weird app apparitions or whatever, like the sleeve on the sweater.
Stephen Robles:This is, like, poor healing brush technique in Photoshop. Like, where's the cuff of the sweater over here? Like, something funky happened here. And also, like, are Kate Middleton's arms really this long? Like, this seems kind of like an odd thing.
Stephen Robles:Maybe those hands were detached. Who knows? And there's also, like, hair weird hair stuff going on. Again, like, poor healing brush, technique in Photoshop. You know, hand is a little odd.
Stephen Robles:So just just some weird things in this photo. And it was getting a lot of backlash because it it seemed like, you know, if you're already not saying a lot about what happened and then you release a photo that seems heavily doctored, then it looks even more suspicious. And the Rowe family came out after all the backlash, and they were like, Kate Middleton said, yes, I did Photoshop. Sorry, my skills are not great at Photoshop. I did adjust this photo, whatever.
Stephen Robles:A, would she not have a person to Photoshop for her? Like, may maybe she's maybe she's photoshopping on her own. Like, that's cool. You know, work on the skills. That's great.
Stephen Robles:But that's kind of curious. And number 2, I just think this kind of opens up the conversation about as AI generated content becomes more prevalent, the Sora, OpenAI video generator, They've been doing some interviews with MKBHD and Joanna Stern. They're gonna be releasing Sora later this year and being able to generate that video in minutes, you know, like, do a prompt, it makes video, I think, I don't know, I think it's interesting that everyone's eyes are gonna be looking for stuff, I think, AI, which is, I guess, good, but I don't know, might be harder and harder to to to recognize it, and I don't know. I just think it's gonna be an interesting time as we head into the next couple years with all this AIGeneria stuff. What did you think about this story?
Jason Aten:Everything about this story is weird. Like, I don't even know what to think about any of it because, I saw a take, which I this is, like, think the one I agree with. The problem with this photo isn't that she photoshopped things necessarily because we we briefly were talking about this before we started recording. I don't know what that means. Obviously, there's some weird stuff happening.
Jason Aten:Does that mean that they took, like, 4 photos and she sort of tried to piece together Positive. The ones that were the like, and then if that's the case, like, that's fine. That's I mean, get a pixel. It'll do it for you without even having to think about it. Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:But best take.
Jason Aten:Yeah, exactly. So like do that instead. But the take that I heard that I agree with is the problem with this photo is that what the public wanted was a proof of life photo, right? Like And if you got a proof of life photo that looked like it was AI generated, you probably would not send the money. Right.
Jason Aten:You would not like if you got a proof of life photo and the person's holding up a newspaper and the date on it looks like you just drew it in with a Sharpie. Like people are gonna be like, I don't think that this qualifies. And that's really the problem with this photo. I don't understand any of the politics of like the Royal family. I don't understand any of the implications of like, what are surgery?
Jason Aten:Like none of that stuff matters. There's rumors about all kinds of weird things happening, but the one piece, I guess that's a takeaway for our listeners is this is not the last time that this is going to happen, not with the royal family, but where a photo is gonna come out, people are gonna start looking at it. And all of a sudden, it's like, did that really happen? And I guess that's a good thing because right now, AI is getting much more convincing at this kind of thing. But I, yeah, it's the whole thing's weird.
Stephen Robles:And I'm I'm just glad that there are Internet people out there who are gonna be picking apart every photo that's posted from here henceforth to eternity and letting us know whether it looks funny or not. I want that. I want people to do that.
Jason Aten:I I don't know if I agree with that, but it's probably a useful service to some extent.
Stephen Robles:With the rise of AI generated content, I feel like that would be a very useful skill. You know? You got cybersecurity. You got AI generated content security. I don't
Jason Aten:know. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I want somebody looking at it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. My my favorite thing is people who point out all the things that you put wrong and stuff. Like, that's my favorite. I love that.
Stephen Robles:Well, yeah. That's true. Yeah. Exactly. Apparently, this news came out that Apple Vision Pro was used in surgery to quote unquote eliminate human error.
Stephen Robles:This is a 95 Mac article. This is weird on several levels. 1, yes, the Apple Vision Pro was in a surgery. 2, I said a I don't know. 1, 2.
Stephen Robles:2. It wasn't the surgeon wearing the Apple Vision Pro. It was one of the, like, aids that hands equipment to the surgeon. I think that's an important detail. It wasn't the person actually, like, doing the surgery.
Stephen Robles:And it was the Apple Vision Pro was basically like identifying tools and making sure that the tool the aide was picking up was act was the right tool. I'm not like, there's no screenshots of what it looked like or screen grabs of like how you know, it was it's all just kind of like text. They're telling you, like, recalling what had happened. Okay. That's interesting.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, I don't know. It's that you still don't have an Apple Vision Pro.
Jason Aten:Nope. I still don't have an Apple Vision Pro. And I'm I'm I'm okay with that. I mean, unless somebody wants to send me one, and I'm okay with that too. But I will say that if you ever get ready for surgery and the surgeon is wearing an Apple vision pro, you should get up off the table and you should leave.
Jason Aten:Even if you're under anesthesia, I'm just saying like, you should bail immediately. I don't care. Just take that hospital gown and run because you do not want your surgeon wearing a vision pro. Can you imagine? I mean, if the thing just failed in the middle of your surgery, it's like, okay, we're going to cut this.
Jason Aten:You know, we're going to heart transplant. We gotta, we gotta cut, make the cut right there. Wait, where I can't see anything.
Stephen Robles:You just hear the ball. She reads the Go dark. Just go dark. You don't
Jason Aten:want that bad stuff.
Stephen Robles:Amazon is gonna let sellers paste a link and AI can make the product page. This kind of goes along with the AI generated or altered photo of the royal family. I find this interesting. You know, this might seem I don't know what this seems like to people. I've used Printful to make, like, merch for podcasts, and they do a really good job of just kinda, like, generating images of the product on stock models, basically, and, like, creating those images for you and making it easy to use those then when you wanna sell your merch.
Stephen Robles:And using AI to do it, I think it makes sense. You know, I imagine Amazon will keep an eye to make sure, like, these AI whatever generated product pages are actually representative of the product being sold. I'm sure the reviews would go down really fast if it was a difference between what you got and what you saw on a page, but I thought this was interesting. You you had put this in here. What did you think about it?
Jason Aten:Well, I only have 2 quick takes because this is the lightning round. The first one is I I think you're super optimistic to think that Amazon is gonna do any checking of anything. Have you seen, like, when Kara Swisher's book came out, there was immediately, like, 30 AI generated versions of the book that, like, were all available on Amazon. And, I mean, I'm pretty sure that care switcher probably could get Andy Jesse on the phone and they are still all on Amazon. So I'm not sure that that's the case, which leads to my second point.
Jason Aten:All of these AI tools have one goal, which is to eliminate friction. Right? They are making it easier to do a thing. All of the things that it's doing right now can be done by humans and computers as it as we all exist today. They're just making it faster and easier.
Jason Aten:That's not always a good thing. I think that people who are listing things for sale on Amazon, it should not be this easy because Amazon is already a wasteland of crap. Like, come on. We do not need to make it any easier for people to list alphabet soup.
Stephen Robles:That's true.
Jason Aten:You know, dongles and charging cords and just all of the things. I mean, there are already, like, it was what, 4 or 5 weeks ago, a couple months ago when the story was like, all of these randomly generated, you know, products that were on there and like the way you knew it is because the Virgin had a huge story on this, where it was like, you go into the description and into the description, it would say this, you know, I'm a large language model, so I'm not able to do this. Like, wait, what?
Stephen Robles:Oh, right.
Jason Aten:I don't think we
Stephen Robles:need to be
Jason Aten:making it any easier. If you are selling something on Amazon, you can take the time to upload the photos and to write the description. Like, I don't I don't know. I'm not saying this is end of the world kind of thing. I'm just saying we don't always need to eliminate all the friction because sometimes bad things happen.
Stephen Robles:That's that's a good point. I would not want to have been in an era where Craigslist allowed it AI generated listing.
Jason Aten:I'm just hopeful that the large language models did not ingest Craigslist as one of their sources of content.
Stephen Robles:I don't know about that. Alright. I wanna get to a personal take which is EVs and whether or not we pre ordered a Rivian R2. But real quick, the Oscars were last week on Sunday. Oppenheimer took home best picture.
Stephen Robles:Robert Downey Junior got his first Oscar ever for a supporting actor. Oppenheimer, I thought that was pretty fun. But here's Steven Spielberg taking a picture. Okay, wait a minute. First of all, what is it with In N Out and Famous People?
Stephen Robles:I've seen pictures of Paul Giamatti eating at a at a In N Out after an award show. Steven Spielberg is now taking pictures of his In N Out Burger in, like, a tux. What is it just just because it's In N Out in California?
Jason Aten:Well, have you ever had an In N Out Burger?
Stephen Robles:I haven't.
Jason Aten:Okay. So, I mean, it's it's like a has a cult following. I don't know why Steven Spielberg, who is one of the most acclaimed directors and is a billionaire, thinks he needs to take a photo of it. Like, I don't really understand that I go to in and out burger and I get really excited if I go to California, but I don't take photos anymore. Like it's not, this guy can literally have it for every meal every single day.
Jason Aten:Like he could own, he could just buy in and out probably, but I don't, so I don't know why, but that wasn't the point of this. The point was I think the case, but, yeah, I don't I can't help you.
Stephen Robles:The case is he has a fun. Do you have a way? So would you would you put have you had, 5 guys?
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. We have 5 guys around here. Yep.
Stephen Robles:What would you put in and out or 5 guys?
Jason Aten:So probably just because we're not just because, but I would probably go for in and out mostly because there's a 5 guys a couple miles from our house, so I could get that anytime. So it doesn't feel quite as No.
Stephen Robles:But objectively objectively Mhmm. If you you can only either have 5 guys or In N Out if you ever go out for a burger for the rest of your life. Which would you choose?
Jason Aten:I would probably pick In N Out. But but I like 5 guys fries better, so can I go to both?
Stephen Robles:They're better. Can
Jason Aten:I go to both?
Stephen Robles:They're better. Yeah. No. Well, I mean, I don't know. I I just I'm gonna say I would go with 5 Guys.
Stephen Robles:I I find In N Out Burgers to be overhyped.
Jason Aten:Listen, though.
Stephen Robles:Exhibit a.
Jason Aten:Well, they are pretty hyped up in this photo of Steven Spielberg taking a picture of them, but that picture is gonna win an Oscar. But I the problem with 5 guys is that you can get a cheeseburger and a Coke, and it costs you $35.
Stephen Robles:It is expensive. So Unnecessarily. So I think yeah. Anyway, so this is Steven Spielberg, acclaimed director, taking a picture of his 5 or his In N Out Burger, excuse me, with his iPhone, I assumeingly 15 Pro, with a fine woven case, and this case looks nasty. This case looks rushed.
Jason Aten:It looks like it looks like he used it to make the cheeseburger on. Like, he set it down as like a as like a cutting board, and he just assembled the cheeseburger on top of it.
Stephen Robles:I don't know how like, I I do think that that there's probably a through line of people, like, who buy all the new iPhone, like, famous people, celebrities. Like, they're just gonna buy the Apple product. Like, they're not going on Amazon to buy a third party case. They're not going to Nomad. Like, they're just gonna buy all Apple down the line.
Stephen Robles:They're gonna buy the Apple phone and the Apple case. And so the choice for the for people who do that now, it's either silicone or fine woven. I don't correct me if I'm wrong, I don't see Steven Spielberg using a silicone iPhone case. I like the silicone cases. I think they're great cases.
Stephen Robles:I just think Steven Spielberg, he wants something he wants the premium case. Steven Spielberg.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:He can do that. And, so he would go find Woven, and after I don't know. What? 7 months of use? About 6 months of use?
Stephen Robles:It just looks pretty weird.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So Yeah. I don't yeah. My fine woven case looks great, but that's because I haven't used it in 6 months, so
Stephen Robles:Let's make a prediction, Jason. IPhone 16 event. Okay? Mhmm. Is Apple going to release fine woven v 2 and talk about how it's way more durable and better?
Stephen Robles:Or I know they're not gonna go back to, bovine leather because they have this whole sustainability thing. They could just go vegan leather. Yeah. Like a vegan leather The
Jason Aten:problem the problem is vegan leather is plastic. Right? Like, most vegan leather is plastic. So that's, I think.
Stephen Robles:What about cactus? I don't
Jason Aten:know what that is. Sounds painful.
Stephen Robles:Because I actually
Jason Aten:I do not I do not want an iPhone case with cactus on it. I'm sorry, but you can't fit that in your pocket. There's no way.
Stephen Robles:No. No. Listen.
Jason Aten:This is the worst idea ever. That's a lot.
Stephen Robles:You gotta be sold out. I have in, Andar, the white or blanc aspen case is white cactus leather, and I really like the case. It's it's a nice case. It feels leather like. It doesn't feel exactly like leather or smell like leather because it's cactus leather, but it's high quality, like, and I use the case a lot.
Stephen Robles:I like it. They could do that.
Jason Aten:Maybe, but it I feel like all those, every word you just said, you just made up. I don't even know what any of them meant. I'm just like but to answer your question
Stephen Robles:What do you think?
Jason Aten:I think that what they will do is come up with a new version of fine woven. I do not think that that's what they should do, but that is what Apple will probably do because they've already they were already working on the second version. And be you know, before they release the first version, and maybe they'll incorporate some changes. My the problem with fine woven is it's fabric. It's it's fabric.
Jason Aten:Like, you do not want a fabric case. It's you know, I have a nice pair of headphones right here, and they have, like, a fabric y material, but you know what? They don't I don't spill things on that. I don't set it. You know?
Jason Aten:I don't like it doesn't come in counter
Stephen Robles:It's gotta be a messy Yeah. If you're getting stuff stuff on your headphones, that's a messy
Jason Aten:If that's the case, if I'm getting something on my headphones, it's because, like, somebody tried to stick gum in my I don't understand. Like, there's no I don't think fabric belongs on a phone case. I just don't.
Stephen Robles:Look at this case, Jason. Yeah. Cactus leather, white, on our and it's a nice case. Yeah. Just saying.
Jason Aten:That looks great. I don't know what cactus leather is, but it looks really good. It's just is it made out of cactuses?
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
Jason Aten:Is is this just a phrase they made up so that they can, like like, it's a marketing term, but that's fine. It looks great. I mean, yes. Buy that one. I mean, I will highly recommend that to anyone who doesn't want fine woven.
Jason Aten:There are a 1000000000 cases. Like, I also personally I I mean, I have a Nomad, Halloween mother case. It's wonderful. I don't like, leather is actually nice. I understand that makes me an enemy of the earth.
Jason Aten:I don't buy that many leather things. I don't have leather pants. I don't like, none of that stuff. I just I just I'm just saying it's like it is there's reason that it's being used for so many products. It's very durable.
Jason Aten:It lasts a long time, and it looks better the more than it ages unlike Steven Spielberg's mayonnaise smeared fine lemon case.
Stephen Robles:I'm going to put self servingly, my video where I review all like pretty much the top leather cases. John Gruber actually linked to one of my leather cases. Oh, you
Jason Aten:got fireballed.
Stephen Robles:Speaking of group.
Jason Aten:There you go.
Stephen Robles:I got fireballed. There
Jason Aten:you go.
Stephen Robles:So I made it to do well. But, anyway, I'll link to this video. There's a lot of great leather cases out there from 3rd parties. You can you can get the the bovine leather. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Alright. But I'll put Great. I'll put that out there. Alright.
Jason Aten:Real quick.
Stephen Robles:Personal tech. Yeah. The Rivian had an event. Yeah. And, the the r 2, the r 3, and the r 3x, which look like very cool cars.
Stephen Robles:They look very cool. I've seen I see a couple Rivians around, New Tampa where I am, and a lot of hype. I watched MKBHD's video on it, and you were, like, how have you not reserved one of these yet?
Jason Aten:Yeah. You were talking about something something about replacing your hamster mobile. And I thought, if you don't have a deposit on an r 2 already, I don't know what's wrong with you. So and and, honestly, watching this event, the thing that just pained me the most is that's the company Apple should have bought. Right?
Jason Aten:Remember the photo you and I looked at last week of what the Apple car was supposed to look like? And it was redo it was like a Tic Tac with wheels. It was ridiculous. This is what Apple should have have been making. And really the r three and the r three x are just they're fantastic.
Jason Aten:But the this I mean, this car is for Rivian. The reason it's important is it's, like, starts at $45,000 instead of $75,000. So I think they've tapped out the market of people who are willing to spend close to a $100,000 on a vehicle because once you do some of the upgrades, it's these are these are not cheap cars, but they are too. Starts at 40 $5,000 they're not gonna deliver them until what does it say? 2026 or whatever?
Stephen Robles:2020.
Jason Aten:So you have to wait a little while, but like, you know, if you can keep that hamster from mobile running a little bit longer. I mean, I introduced my my 9 year old to Flintstones yesterday because for some reason, he had heard about it and wanted to know. And he's the his most fascinating part was the way they drive the cars with their feet, you know, going underneath of them.
Stephen Robles:So, I
Jason Aten:mean, if you can keep the hamster mobile going a little bit longer, Flintstone style, this is this is absolutely the vehicle that the people it's people should buy. They're gonna sell, especially the r three, which won't come out until after they've started delivering these. They're gonna sell as many of those as they can make. Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. The r 3 again, I watched MKBHD's video on it. The r 3 is, like, close to a kind of a hatchback style smaller.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's a crossover. Yep.
Stephen Robles:It's a crossover. Might I imagine it'll be even cheaper than the r two, so it might come down to, like, 40, 35, maybe even. I did the the $100 reservation fee is refundable. Yep. Yep.
Stephen Robles:So you can't just reserve one of these for a $100. A $100 is refundable in 2 years or whatever if you decide not to get it. 2 years is a long time, and I was, like, alright. I'll do it. So I'd as soon as you take to be that, I resolve Oh,
Jason Aten:I'm so happy. To have an art cruiser. So happy. You're officially a a tech YouTuber. You're over the Pazan and Arabian.
Stephen Robles:So I was, like, I was on social media and I was, like, well, I would love to work with an EV brand today. I'll review whatever car you want. I'll take that piss car that MKBHD is the worst car he's ever reviewed. I'll try that. I think tell me if this is a good idea, Jason.
Stephen Robles:I think this would be funny. If listeners are still listening to this point of the episode, you can get a sneak peek. I thought about doing, like, a car review video of my 2011 Kia Soul.
Jason Aten:Oh.
Stephen Robles:In the style of MKBHD. Like, just reviewing the hamster mobile and the 212,000 miles that I put on it. Would that be funny? Like, in a fun way. Do I
Jason Aten:think it's a good idea? No. Do I think you should do it? Absolutely. Because it would be hilarious.
Jason Aten:I think it would be so good.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna do it.
Jason Aten:Do it in the do it in the
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna do it.
Jason Aten:In the, style of Doug DeMiro and do, like, the quirks and features of a of a 12 year old car.
Stephen Robles:I yeah. I think I'm gonna do it. I think it would be funny. Listeners, let me know if you if I should do it. I think I will.
Stephen Robles:This looks like an amazing car. Of course, I want it. No carplay, which everyone argues about, but I don't know. I mean, you drive a car that doesn't have carplay. Do you you miss it?
Jason Aten:No. It's it's fine because I don't like, Tesla, their software's fine. It's good. Like, I don't love that they change things on me occasionally, and you lose like, you have to re put buttons in places again. But I have a Tesla that actually has physical controls because mine's a little older, so I don't have to use the screen for as many things.
Jason Aten:Tesla's, software interface is is great. It's better than any other car manufacturers. It's not better than CarPlay necessarily, but it is, like, fine. I don't miss having car play in that car. In the Rivian is the same thing.
Jason Aten:Rivian, there's literally only 2 companies that know how to make software for cars, Rivian and Tesla. Like, seriously. Like, it's true. Everybody else, garbage.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Look at this tent too. This tent that goes on top of the r two, that looks very cool. Yeah. That was very cool.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I give you that. Anyway, there was that, unfortunate story of of a woman who passed away in the Tesla because it it fell in the water Yep. And she couldn't get the door open, which, you know, people probably unhelpfully are like, there's a manual way to open the door. This is why you need to read the manual.
Stephen Robles:And it's like, yeah. Okay. Well
Jason Aten:Well, the problem is that she accidentally put the car into reverse instead of forward, and this and she apparently had told people that this has happened to her many times. I don't know which version she was driving, but there are several where it's like, it's like a swiping motion with your hand. I mean, you're on the screen or like a motion sensor as opposed to like, I have a physical stock that I can adjust where I'm going. So, like, it is the there's a reason that cars have certain controls and taking them away doesn't make them better. I I the last thing I wanted to say about the r two is the reason I think that this car is gonna be amazing is I think that the best in the R3 as well, the best crossover electric that was made right now is the Polestar, like the Polestar version 3.
Jason Aten:I think it's an amazing, but it's $79,000 So just compare that to being able to buy like the R3, if it comes in at like $37,000 or something like that, or the R2, which is a little bit bigger than the Polestar 3. But just when you compare those things and I've driven actually the, the fun thing is, when you, if you go to San Francisco and you rent a car from Hertz, it's probably gonna be a Polestar. They have about a 100 like, every Polestar that's ever been sold, I think, is on the Hertz lot in San Francisco's airport. And they're really they're great to drive. They're they may have air they have car play.
Jason Aten:So, like, that that's amazing. But the nice thing about it is if you get the, the Rivian, you can save yourself about $40,000. So there you go.
Stephen Robles:See, there's also I feel like this is maybe what Craig Federighi drives, the Lucid Air.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:Which so this this is the Lucid Air. Starts at 71, $74,000. The sunroof on these look wild, but then this is the the Polestar.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:Polestar 3 also starts at 17.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And Polestar does make a sedan. There's the Polestar 1 and the Polestar 2. One is fully electric. 1 is a hybrid.
Jason Aten:The Polestar 1, I think it is actually really rare. It's really hard to find them. It was actually a hybrid vehicle. The Polestar 2 is a sedan. The Lucid, I was at Lucid's launch event, and this is it.
Jason Aten:I was actually surprised to see that there you can get one now for 75,000 because when I when I was at the launch event for Lucid, the the lowest priced model was a $150,000. And so they have come down. And and people like, the Lucid, their advantage is they charge really quickly, and they have very, very long range. They make they have the best battery technology, basically, of any of the electric vehicles, and they were their their CEO was the person who designed the model s. And it's like he left and he's like, we're gonna just do all the things better that Tesla didn't do with the vehicle.
Jason Aten:And so, like, they they have some real chops. They just haven't been able to sell enough of them maybe because they were a $150,000 to to, like, be sustainable. But lucid, absolutely. Like, if they can if they can start turning these things out in volume, they're making a great vehicle. They have an SUV.
Jason Aten:It's kinda ridiculous because I think it is, like, $200,000 or something like that, or they're working on one. But anyway, I just, yeah, the Lucids are great. All of them are great, but the thing that's great is now you can buy a very good electric vehicle for less than $50,000 which is the thing that that that Rivian had to do if they were going to to to make it, basically.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I'm excited for Rivian. I'm excited to maybe I'll get 1 in 2 years. I'm excited for them to sponsor the show and give us some demo cars.
Jason Aten:Listen. I've tried to I couldn't even yeah. I'm not gonna get into it. But this is one thing people noticed, and this was a thing that was going around. People were noticing that in a lot of the photos.
Jason Aten:So the Rivian's charge in the front. There are the r one s and the r one t. Right. But the r two and the r three have their charging port in the back, and people are like, well, that's really weird. The reason why is they have NACS ports on them, which is the Tesla charger port.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And the Tesla superchargers, you you back in. Right? So that so they are standardizing this. I'm assuming that most of the electric vehicles we start to see going forward are going to have the ports moved to the back so that you can back into a supercharger until you can park it. But that's great because that means that the R2 is going to have the NSCS charger charging standard built in.
Jason Aten:You won't need an adapter. You'll be able to go to any supercharger in America and use it in in charge this vehicle, without having to worry about compatibility. So
Stephen Robles:That's really cool. Well, I reserve mine. 2 years from now, we'll see. We'll review it.
Jason Aten:I promise you, you will use it more often than the Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:Listen. I have not used it in over a week. I'll be honest.
Jason Aten:Okay. So next next week here's the thing. Next week, we have to do a semi long term review of the Vision Pro and a semi long term review of the MacBook Air that I've been carrying around with me, the M3.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's good. Alright. That's good. I'll I'll have him make a note that about that in a second. Okay.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, we're gonna go to bonus episode. Jason went to South by Southwest. He interviewed Delta's CEO, so I wanna hear about his experience down, if you wanna down in, Austin, Texas. If you wanna hear that bonus episode, again, support the show, Apple Podcasts, go to primary tech dot f m. You can support us through Memberful there.
Stephen Robles:Get access to all the you get all the back catalog of bonus episodes. We have a great one on physical media. We have talk about oh, those we have a great bonus episodes. I forget all we talked about. But anyway, they're
Jason Aten:all they're all good. We can't pick
Stephen Robles:our favorite child. Come on. Exactly. Exactly. You should check that out.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna go record now. Again, 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcast. If you haven't, subscribe to youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. All those links are in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and watching.
Stephen Robles:We'll catch you next week.
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