Apple’s AI Partnership with Google, U.S. vs Apple, Long-Term Vision Pro and M3 MacBook Air Reviews
These aren't the iPads you're looking for. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today we're talking about Apple's possible partnership with Google Gemini or Open AI and bringing that to iOS 18. Where are the new iPads? Human released a new video about their pin walkthrough.
Stephen Robles:Apple has some more legal troubles and we're gonna do a long term review of Apple Vision Pro and the M3 MacBook Air. This episode is brought to you by all of you who support the show directly, and for that, we thank you. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me as always my friend Jason Ayton. How's it going Jason?
Jason Aten:Slowly. It's going very slowly this morning.
Stephen Robles:Jason says slowly because his bandwidth is affected by the cold weather up there apparently. And, I feel like
Jason Aten:Something like that.
Stephen Robles:The juxtaposition between my bandwidth situation and what Jason was about to hotspot off one of his phones Yeah. In order to record this. So you have some kind of microwave, transmitter or something. Right?
Jason Aten:I had been debating between whether I should get one of those point to point extenders or just run an Ethernet cable on the ground. That. An Ethernet cable on the ground is certainly the ideal scenario.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:The thing is, it's 16 degrees outside right now. You can't dig anything into the ground. So that's gonna have to, like, wait just a little bit longer. So I was gonna take issue with one thing, which is if you're gonna have a bit, it actually has to be a bit. I I I take that that is not a movie quote.
Jason Aten:Let's just be honest.
Stephen Robles:Listen. Yes. If you're if you're new to the show, I try to start every show I try to start every show with a movie quote. That was a little adjusted movie quote, and I've actually done 2 Star Wars quotes in the last as many weeks, I think. I need to widen my quote thing.
Stephen Robles:I would just say the temperature where Jason is right, what did you said? 16 degrees?
Jason Aten:It was It it is well, it's actually up to 20 now. So there we go.
Stephen Robles:20 degrees. And the high where I am is 83 degrees. So just in case anyone's wondering. In the almost the end of March, Jason, that's crazy.
Jason Aten:Why don't we record this show live in person? That's what I wanna know. Why don't I come to Florida every week and just record this with you?
Stephen Robles:Do it. Do it. Do it. You're Delta, Triple, Diamond or whatever. Talked about on the bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. We got some 5 star review shout outs. Wanna do that and then we're gonna get into Apple and AI, Gemini, all of those things. So 5 star reviews, thank you to all of you. You get a shout out if you leave us a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcast at the top of the show.
Stephen Robles:So g I s Adam, they said, you need to root for the other Michigan team. I don't know what that means.
Jason Aten:It means he's not a Michigan State fan, but I in preparation for this, this is the only preparation I did for this entire episode is I put on my Michigan State. And I do think I just wanna say thank you for leaving a 5 star review. Hopefully, what I'm about to say doesn't change that, except leaving that comment in the month of March is especially rich because Michigan state just made their 26th straight tournament. Tom Izzo is the has the longest streak, and I will just ask where the other Michigan team is right now.
Stephen Robles:Sports ball.
Jason Aten:They're not in the tournament. Let's just say that.
Stephen Robles:Sports ball. Thank thank you for that. And now we're gonna have 2 one star reviews. This is gonna be our second one
Jason Aten:star review. No. No. No. No.
Jason Aten:No.
Stephen Robles:A bunch of people wishing me happy birthday in the reviews, so thank you for that. It's probably funny for people to see these reviews and be like, who's happy who happy birthday? Anyway, machete 818, donkey with a bunch of names after it, clip head, Beaulig, poker Chris. That was a happy birthday. Ethan, thank you for this.
Stephen Robles:He said no battery percentage. The no battery percentage people are coming out of the woodwork, Jason. He doesn't do battery percentage.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:I thank you to Elan 2020. Jdoug457 also, no battery percentage visible on his iPhone. I think the tables are the turntables, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Add Paul r, get some very nice comments to say.
Stephen Robles:And I read Pixel 09, He was actually asking what we used to transcribe. So we, host the show with transistor.fm and they have a AI transcription tool. And I do that instead which is more accurate. But anyway, that's what we use. So let's jump into the news.
Stephen Robles:There's rumors and talks going around. This is initially reported by Bloomberg that Apple is in talks with Google, possibly letting Gemini power AI features on the iPhone possibly this summer with WWDC happening in June, iOS 18 and all that, and also other rumors that they're also talking to OpenAI might be in negotiations with both and or trying to see which one is gonna do it. Parker Ortelani actually had an interesting screenshot. He was like, wouldn't it be amazing if you could choose which LLM model powered your iPhone features, where you could choose Google Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT and all that. I find this fascinating.
Stephen Robles:You had a great article talking about, you know, the 3 ways this is going to improve your iPhone experience and and we'll get to that in a second. I find this really interesting that OpenAI might power Apple's AI features in addition to Microsoft's AI features. Microsoft Copilot is literally OpenAI or Google Gemini. Like I understand Apple might be behind on the whole AI LLM development and modeling for their software. But these it just seems like 2 very wild partners.
Stephen Robles:I I mean, I can see it happening until they develop their own. This happened with Google Maps. If you remember, Google Maps was the launch partner on the original iPhone until Apple launched their own Apple Maps, solution and things like that. So I don't know. What do you think what do you think the probability is?
Stephen Robles:What do you what do you think of this?
Jason Aten:2 things. 1, I think it's actually a good sign that Apple is trying to find a partner to do this because they are far enough behind that at this point, like, they just can't wait until they get it right. And as we have seen watching these other companies do this, it's hard. It's not just something you can just spin up overnight. Google's been working on this even longer than OpenAI, you know, necessarily OpenAI.
Jason Aten:I think the second thing I was I heard a really interesting take, I think, from Ben Thompson that Google is the only company of these, really, that has the scale to take on, what, A 1 and a half 1000000000 iPhones. Right? If you just think about that, you you can't just like, OpenAI, you know, has a partnership with Microsoft, but think about the increase like, how much more of a burden that would be on their compute power. And the really the limiting factor for all of these generative AI is compute. Right?
Jason Aten:That's why they had to partner with Microsoft because there was no way they were ever gonna reach scale without that. Google really is the only other company that has the capability to, take like, just imagine what would happen if all of a sudden there's 2,000,000,000 iPhones and they're all suddenly using a generative AI feature. Right? You can't you know, Anthropic, all of these other smaller companies, there's just no way that they could take on that kind of skill. So Apple really was limited in what its options were, and you're right.
Jason Aten:It's really just OpenAI with its partnership with Microsoft or Google with Gemini.
Stephen Robles:I was just trying to pull up the stat of how many Microsoft Office users there are globally because OpenAI and Copilot, you know, is part of that. There is 1.2 Microsoft Office 1,200,000,000 Microsoft Office Suite users globally. I don't know how many of them have access to Copilot, but that seems like a big number too.
Jason Aten:But all of that compute is happening on Microsoft Azure. Right? Like, oh, it's not necessarily happening. Like, OpenAI is not hosting those servers and stuff. So so, like, the same servers that are hosting Microsoft Office are also hosting the interaction with with Jet GPT.
Jason Aten:So, yeah, the point is there wasn't a whole lot of options that Apple was going to have, and so I I think it'll be interesting. They obviously have a huge search deal, so they're obviously friends. Right? I shared with you that photo of like, what was it, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai having dinner. I thought that that was like, when someone posted it, it was, oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:Ian Bremmer posted that. That photo is actually from, like, 2017, but it is still really interesting. It's like, oh, yeah. These two people do know each other pretty well and have done some deals. And so, you know, it's not surprising that they would do it.
Jason Aten:I think the I think everyone expected Apple was gonna just do this on their own, but I actually think it's smart in this case to figure out a way to make it happen sooner rather than later.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I I find this photo interesting because the Internet, you know, a photo like this, it it would did the rounds on threads and such just a couple days ago, and people feel, I don't know, immediately just think it's like a a recent photo. And like you said, this photo
Jason Aten:was from
Stephen Robles:2017 and that's one of the, issues with context, I guess you could say, with the Internet and social media. But anyway, these 2 are friends. Right. They do have it's the $1,000,000,000 deal for Google search being the default search engine on iPhone. Right?
Jason Aten:$20,000,000,000 deal.
Stephen Robles:Excuse me. 20,000,000,000. So like Google and Apple already work together and money changing hands. I wonder if Tim Cook in this picture is like, hey listen, what if we hit Google Gemini and you get search default and we just call it a wash? Just say probably not.
Stephen Robles:He typically probably Yeah. Probably want Google to pay them to use Gemini as the default because then Google Gemini will get a ton of learning data. That's the thing too is know, one of the reasons why it's such a valuable arrangement for Google to have Google search as the default search engine. 1, because it's just used a ton more because most people don't change the defaults on their phone, and so anytime anyone searches in Safari by default it's using Google search. But that's also a ton of data and traffic as Google Ads will be served in those search results, but also just the data that Google gets to make Google search even better and has put it leaps and bounds above other search engines, even like DuckDuckGo and Bing and all that kind of stuff.
Stephen Robles:This is why Google is the best. Although there was a good podcast, from Neil Patel recently on Decoder about why Google search might be getting worse over time. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I think it was interesting to me.
Jason Aten:With Mia So to, I think it was, who is their, like, their search Google platforms person. So, yeah, I I I think that it I I think it'll be slightly different. I think Apple will absolutely be paying for access to this at this point, mostly because it is just so expensive right now to run it. Yeah. And there isn't really a way for Google to monetize it.
Jason Aten:Know, because I don't think Apple is gonna be this isn't gonna be a thing. Well, I don't think that this is the type of thing where Apple is going to build it into, like, Apple 1 as a bundle where you're paying an extra $20 a month to have access to the the generative AI features. Because people are gonna be like, no. You put it on my phone. It should just work.
Jason Aten:I shouldn't have to pay you more money. And So I do definitely think that Apple is probably gonna be paying and then figuring out a way to monetize that down the road. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's interesting. So you had a great article talking about the ways that AI is going to or ways it will benefit or change the iPhone to make it a lot better. I did a video like months ago about this as well because I do think there's huge implications for large language model type features on the iPhone. You have 3 great points here.
Stephen Robles:Obviously, Siri being one of them. Jim Dalrymple from the Dalrymple Report and the website, The Loop, he's been on social media just lambasting Siri the last 2 days, basically saying he's given up using his HomePods because Siri is so bad. Yeah.
Jason Aten:He just set him on fire. He's like, get out of here. Kick him up.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Yeah. He was really upset and and and Jim Dowerpool is like a musician, longtime Apple Pundit, and so the main thing he's doing is trying to play songs, which should be a very easy thing for HomePods to do by asking the voice assistant, and he just has ways a lot of issues with it. And I will say my kids yell at HomePod Minis all the time to try and play music, and it does not go well most of the time.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I've I've turned off the listening first for the wake word on all of our actually, I've turned it off on everything except for my I think my watch. Right? Like if I if I shout it out into the ether, the only thing that should be listening is my watch. Partially because for a long time, I was so frustrated by the fact that I could be like 3 rooms away and I'm like just talking to my phone and I'm like, K iPhone and a home pod, like in the living room just as like, And And I'm like, I'm not talking to you.
Jason Aten:Why do you think that you should be the one that answers this?
Stephen Robles:It is it is frustrating. I'll be in my living room. And I also have the wake word turned off on my Ipads and iPhone and mainly do it through my Apple Watch. Because I find the Apple Watch Ultra microphones and assistant is actually pretty fast to respond that way and it's consistent in activating it.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:And so I'll be in the living room and I'll lift my watch and I'll be like, hey, Ifo. And it's my HomePod that's across the room, my HomePod mini that does exactly the same thing. It's like, what do you want? It's like, no. Stop.
Jason Aten:It's like when you're having a conversation with somebody at a coffee shop and somebody, like, from 3 tables over, you can tell they've been listening and they just start interjecting and it's like, excuse me. What are you doing? No one invited you to this conversation.
Stephen Robles:So Why are you dropping eaves? Yeah. So, yes, obviously, the voice assistant on all of Apple's devices could use a lot of improvement. Shortcuts is another great reason. I was looking for a link to one of my shortcut videos in your article here, but I didn't find any.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:Oh, well, send me one. I'll add it. That's I don't have a problem. But but my general thesis here was, like, I so shortcuts is amazing, but the functionality of shortcuts shouldn't require you to actually use the shortcuts app to be building them if you had the ability to just say to your phone, hey. The example I used, and this is a because this is a real world example where I had to build a shortcut to do this.
Jason Aten:Hey, make me a shortcut that turns off my outside lights every night at sundown or turns them on every night at sundown and then turns them off 3 hours later. Like, shortcuts can do all of that. Right? But you have to go in and you have to build it, whereas using Google Gemini as a large language model to interpret all that and to have the ability to interact with the different capabilities on your phone, I personally think that'd be amazing. Or imagine if you could just That's the kind of thing that will make people like, this is super functional, way more functional than just, you know, make me a photo of the founding fathers just to see what, you know, what will come out.
Jason Aten:Right. Exactly. Like, these are the things that people would actually use all the time. And there's so much functionality and shortcuts that is it's gotta be the most underused app on the phone. Like, come on.
Jason Aten:It has to be because most people just don't even either know it's there or know how to use it at all. So
Stephen Robles:Listen. I'll I'm gonna put one of my shortcuts videos in the in the show the script the show notes because 2 out of the top three ways people find my videos on YouTube is shortcuts. Yeah. And so I there's a huge interest for it, I think, even just simple automations. And like you're saying, it's it is intimidating for people who've never done it and it's you know, there's a ton of actions behind the scenes and Apple has a gallery with some premade shortcuts, but it's, you know, it's hard to to get used to it and the power of shortcuts is it can probably automate your specific task, which will make your work easier.
Stephen Robles:And that's why I think some of my most popular videos on the channel are shortcuts videos. But I also think Final Cut and Xcode are 2 huge use cases for large language model type input and AI features. Xcode, obviously, for developers, you know, auto filling certain code. I'm not developers. I don't know all the lingo, but, Final Final Cut is also way behind when it comes to a lot of AI features.
Stephen Robles:If you use Adobe Premiere, there's a plugin called Autopod, which can basically take a podcast a video podcast like this one and automatically cut between the video depending on who's talking, and it does it in a few seconds. And it just boom. That's something Final Cut should be able to do automatically. It already has multicam features and plugins like Final Cut should do that. Also like transcribing the audio in Final Cut and editing it via text.
Stephen Robles:Adobe Premiere can do that. Apple should do that too, just right there built in. I also feel like Iwork, which is a whole term, but, you know, pages, numbers and keynote, massive implications for that kind of stuff, especially writing in pages and then asking the prompt to help you reword something or generate more text, and then to translate that into another application, meaning if I have some bullet points in pages, maybe I'm putting together a talk, like I'm doing a podcast movement next week. I can select that text and ask the Apple assistant, make this into some Keynote slides with some stock imagery. Like, that's something other tools can do right now, and would be extremely powerful if Apple's iWork suite, which is all Apple apps, you know, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and it would be great if it could do that.
Stephen Robles:And also, we're gonna talk about humane AI pin in a second. One of the things I saw in their latest walkthrough was Imran, one of the co founders, asked his AI pin, like all he did was tap it, and he said make a spreadsheet with the top tech YouTube reviewers with subscriber count and put it all in a Google spreadsheet. And it made the spreadsheet form. Like, I was that's the only prompt, it was very short, and I was really impressed that it could just make that spreadsheet down and then you could download it or whatever. Numbers is right there.
Stephen Robles:And while Numbers is great and can help you make charts and tables, to just be able to ask a large language model type assistant, hey, make this data into a chart, and it just does it automatically with a labeled y axis and it just does it, you know, that would be great, which I do have to give a shout out to, Nate, friend of the show, friend of ours personally. He sent us, this was a post that was going around on threads and then he sent it to us directly, but it was basically like hall of fame unlabeled y axis, and, it's let me pull it up real quick. It's this actually from Spotify, and, the culture of me posted it on threads. Unmarked y axis hall of fame. It was Spotify reveals the number of artists generating, you know, whatever, certain amount of money and the y axis is just number of artists.
Stephen Robles:That's all it's saying.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Which which would be fine if it was to scale because the the problem with this chart and the reason I think it got put in there is if you happen to notice the far left bar, which is 23,400 is lower than the far right bar, which is 1,250. So it's like none of these things are at the same scale. That's the problem with this chart. Not just this poorly labeled.
Jason Aten:It's like, oh, you can make anything look like any this is actually pretty close to the one that we looked at with, Brave, you know, where it's just like, I would just start this chart anywhere. But except for what Spotify did is they reset the chart each time they drew the bars. It's like there's no relation whatsoever. So
Stephen Robles:Exactly. So thank you, Nate, for sending that. But anyway, there's huge use cases and implications for large language model type features. I feel like it has to happen at WWDC. I mean, there's so much rumors about it.
Stephen Robles:Mark Gurman has said it multiple times, iOS 18 on the iPhone. And that will be one interesting tidbit. Is it gonna be iPhone only? Are we gonna see AI features across the platforms like macOS, iPad and iPhone? Or is it gonna be very kinda specific under the hood use cases where Apple says the word AI, which they were kind of hesitant to do before, but Tim Cook has repeatedly said in the past year, we're gonna make a lot of, I forget the exact quote, but basically we're gonna really move forward with AI this year, how far across the platforms it's gonna be.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:I have a prediction.
Stephen Robles:Oh, boy.
Jason Aten:I think that the main okay. So I think, and I have no information because people wouldn't tell me this kind of thing anyway. But I think the primary focus will be on the iPhone because that's the device that 2,000,000,000 people carry around and use, and that most people where most people will interact with this type of a thing, a large language model, generative AI. And it I think that it will mostly be branded as so that it will be, like, the that will be the I'm sorry. I was trying to not set up My
Stephen Robles:home pot, 3 rooms away, just woke up. Yeah. And
Jason Aten:that's my favorite thing is when it doesn't know what you're saying and just asks you. I'm like, you don't have to do that. Anyway, I think that the and I think it will sort of like Microsoft just branded everything as copilot, which it is nice that they branded as a word you can say out loud loud without setting off people's devices. That's really nice. But anyway, that's just because Microsoft doesn't have any devices.
Jason Aten:But I think they will brand it that way, and they will and it'll be sort of the over incumbent. It will be more than just the, you know, current voice assistant. They will sort of expand all of its AI into that. And then I do think that they will talk about ways that are coming. I don't I don't know that they'll be built in yet because it's if you look at what Microsoft did with copilot, I agree with you that it'd be great.
Jason Aten:I don't know that I care whether it's in anything but keynote because as we've already discussed, there's no reason to use numbers or, I mean, pages is fine, but, like, no one is really creating text documents and pages. So it'd be would be better is if on your Mac, if you can say, hey. Take this Google Doc that I have and turn this into a keynote, you know, presentation using this data and just your Mac just does it. I think that I don't think we will see that at WWDC. I I I think it'd be amazing.
Jason Aten:But if you just imagine the that's a much bigger lift. It's not like plug in large language model, and now suddenly all these things can do this. So I I think it's coming, but I think that's probably the the next step. I think they have to get the stuff on the iPhone first. I think they just have to get that out.
Stephen Robles:For sure. Well, I'm excited to see. We're a couple months away. Invites for the WWDC should be coming soon. Apple usually announces Dub Dub at the end of March, sometime in April.
Stephen Robles:So in the in the next 2 or 3 weeks, we should be hearing more at least when the WWDC
Jason Aten:Yeah. They usually announce the dates, and then they give people time to start to buy tickets for developers and that kind of stuff. And then usually, about 3 weeks ahead of time is when they send out the invite. So
Stephen Robles:So we will see. We will see coming soon. I also wanna throw this in here. Brian Tong, who was one of the early Applevision Pro reviewers, long time journalist. He was at CNET a long time ago doing the Applebyte.
Stephen Robles:And he got pretty wild access to several people at Apple, including Greg Joswiak, and that he just rode around in a golf cart for 40 minutes interviewing these people about the iPhone and the iPhone camera. He had a filmed it all on iPhone, of course. Pretty wild level of access for Brian Tong. Congrats to him. He asked Jaws at the end what his favorite three iPhone models were, and I think he cheated.
Stephen Robles:Should I do a spoil? Did you watch that? Did you watch the the interview?
Jason Aten:No. I didn't, but it was funny to me because the person that you were originally showing was Kai Andr Ant who's the head of Yes. IPhone product marketing and not Joss. I just wanted to there you go. That's Kai Andr Ant.
Stephen Robles:She's the
Jason Aten:head of you probably most people have probably seen her in the keynotes. It's like she does the iPhone, and then Joss does the iPhone pro. So anyway, what what what were his three favorite ones?
Stephen Robles:I will. If if you don't wanna be spoiled, go what you could watch the last few seconds of this video and then come back. But Joss had his favorite 3 iPhone models were the iPhone 15, the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is just so cheating, so Apple marketing spiel, like, can we be real, please? Let us
Jason Aten:be real. Except for that it except even he admits that nobody likes the iPhone 15 plus. Come on. Nobody wants that one.
Stephen Robles:So yeah. I think he he did mention the 15 plus and and as he explained it. But, anyway, that was totally cheating. Joss, if you're listening, you need to tell us your actual real favorite 3 iPhones, which let's do real quick, Jason. Favorite 3 iPhone models.
Stephen Robles:3 generations. You can't do 3 models of the same generation, like 3 different fifteens. I'm gonna say I'm gonna say, yes, iPhone 15 Pro Max because it's the best iPhone yet, of course. But my other 2, I'm gonna say the iPhone 5 s because that one had the first touch ID, and it was just extremely thin. The size was really it was right before the 6 where the iPhones got big, and I just one one of the nicest designs still.
Stephen Robles:And the camera was still flush to the back of the iPhone. So the iPhone 5 s and then, actually, I'll say number 1 because I still think this is one of my favorite iPhone designs, I think one of the most iconic. The iPhone 4, which was my first iPhone. You could say 4 s. It was literally the exactly the same.
Stephen Robles:There it is. Jason got it. The iPhone 4 and 4s. I think that's number 1 when it comes to hardware design model. That was the antennagate model where Apple literally gave away bumper cases for everyone who bought an iPhone 4 at launch because if you held it a certain way, you lost cellular connectivity and Steve Jobs said you were holding it wrong.
Stephen Robles:But I still think it's one of the best, hardware iPhones to this date. Jason, what do you mean?
Jason Aten:Yeah. My antenna still doesn't work on mine. And that's why I, you know, that's why the Internet's so bad out here. I've been trying to tether to this iPhone.
Stephen Robles:Even hotspotting to hear 4.
Jason Aten:But no. I would say I would agree the 5th I like the 15 pro max because I love the 5 x camera. It is just so, so good. Is it I don't know. Gosh.
Jason Aten:And I love I do like that it's lighter and the titanium. That's all that stuff's true. I mean, I have a lot of affection for the original iPhone. I actually still have one of those sitting right here too. But, I mean, it was relatively speaking, this thing was not great.
Jason Aten:It was just mind blowing. Right? It was it was slow. It was slow, and there was a lot of problems with it, but I still you know? Man, this thing is light too.
Jason Aten:Wow. For having a Sure. I just realized that picking it up anyway.
Stephen Robles:It was only had a 4 gigs of memory. This the thing's so light.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's true. You couldn't actually do it. It was actually made out of plastic. It was just it was just a a display.
Jason Aten:Anyway, I also really like the, honestly, the 11 pro. I really like that feel, that my daughter has my old 11 pro now. And, you know, I had the it was the soap, the the, you know, the bar soap design with the slippery sides. But, honestly, every time I pick that up, I'm like, this was nice. I really like it.
Jason Aten:And it was I think the I think it was the first one with the 3 camera system. So that was kind of a cool upgrade over I don't think that the 10 s, you know, or whatever had it. So anyway yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Yeah. It was very good. Yeah. The the iPhone 11 also was, like, the last of the hyper thin models because it didn't it was still rounded edges.
Stephen Robles:And then once we went to iPhone 12, it started getting thicker again for more battery. But Yep. No. It's good it's good choices. Good choices.
Stephen Robles:Has your have do you have a series 9 or Ultra 2 Apple Watch, by the way?
Jason Aten:I have an Ultra 2. Yes. And I probably have a series I probably have a series 9 in a drawer somewhere that I am supposed to review.
Stephen Robles:How how's your battery life been on 10 dot 4?
Jason Aten:I have not noticed a difference in the battery life, which just means that it doesn't ever get low enough for me to care on my on my watch. I will say on my phone, the battery life has been garbage lately. I don't know if the 2 things are related. So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Some of the sounds are going on. I actually have had to put my Ultra 2 in low power mode to make it through the day. Otherwise, it it goes to, like, 10% by mid afternoon and then dies. So there's something software going on.
Jason Aten:Do you spend the whole day on a walking treadmill while you're at your desk or something and it's counting steps the whole time?
Stephen Robles:No. Not even that. I don't I don't even know what's going on, but a few people have, reported issues. So anyway, we'll
Jason Aten:see. Alright.
Stephen Robles:I wanna mention the as we're talking about AI, the humane AI pin, they released another walk through video. They said the first shipments of the AI pin for those who pre ordered I pre ordered on day 1, so I should be getting it on April 11th. That was the drop date they said for the 1st batch of AI pins. If you order one today, you can get it by the end of April. You might wanna hold off on ordering it because, you know, wait for the reviews to see what happens.
Stephen Robles:Right. It was a much longer demo. It's about 18 minutes. They showed off all the different pieces of functionality and features. There are many features that are going to be coming later in a software update.
Stephen Robles:Things like holding up a book or an object and asking the pin to recognize it or talk about it or search the web for it and buy it. All that's going to be coming later. There's also going to be API access for developers that'll be coming later as well. Some of the use cases are really cool. Like I mentioned the spreadsheet, Imran at the end asked, what the AI pen thought of his fit, like the clothes he was wearing.
Stephen Robles:Took a long time to actually answer but, it said it liked his fit. Now one of the one of the things that's very telling is every time one of the presenters, Imran, and Sam Sheffer did this too. He had a lot of short form videos recently. As soon as they ask the pin something, they keep talking about what the pin is doing. I think to kind of cover up how long it takes the pin to actually
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Say anything, like, if you think Apple's voice assistant takes a long time to respond, like, the AI pin is taking a long time. Like, it's large language model type time. Because if you think about it, if you use chatgpt or Copilot or whatever, like when you ask it a request, you know, it fills out the text. And when you're doing it on the web or in an app, you know, you can see the text start forming, so you can start reading it. But the AI pen, I imagine, has to wait for the text to fully form, and then it will start reading back the answer to whatever your query was.
Stephen Robles:And it takes a while. And so you can see in this video, oftentimes, there was one time one of the, one of the girls who were presenting, she sent a request and didn't immediately speak after and it felt like you were sitting there for a while. This was her prompt. And so, you know, that's interesting. Also, a lot of the features like catch up, which will basically tell you like catch up about your day that might include text messages and events or whatever.
Stephen Robles:And asking it to search your text message conversations sounds like really cool features, but it would mean you have to use the AI pin for all of your conversations for it to really be useful. Because if you have a different phone number for the AI pin, it does not sync with your phone like an Apple Watch. This is like a whole different phone number. It would be green bubbles if you were texting iPhone users. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Just SMSs. So if you wanted to use those features like catch up or summarize my text messages for the day, that means you will have to have been texting from the AI pin all day every day. And again, I just do not see pretty much anyone doing that in reality. And so a lot of these features, I think, are we'll see. Remains to be seen how useful they will be for all of us who have iPhones, which is everyone.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:Yeah. We'll see.
Stephen Robles:Did you watch the news? I think
Jason Aten:it was, I no. I think it was at the I think it was The Verge. I think it was Allison Johnson's review where she was at a demo of it, and, like, they would tell the thing to do something. And they just like you said, the person who's giving the demo would keep moving on to talk about something else, and then, like, 45 seconds later, the pin would respond and be like, oh, you should go to dinner here or what. I don't remember the exact scenario was.
Jason Aten:And then at one point, the thing just overheated and shut off because it's like, nope. Nope. Working too hard. Sorry. That's too I can't answer that particular question.
Jason Aten:So there are certainly I think that it's fascinating, and I think that there are some real world benefits to this type of a device. I just wonder whether or not this one is going to hit that tipping point because of the because of those limitations, and we are so used to instant responses even even from Siri, which is not obviously instant. But we're just so used to being if it fails you, at least it just it's fail mode is here's a list of links on the web. Right? You, we, which is very familiar to all of us.
Jason Aten:If this thing what's the fail mode, It just doesn't give you a response or it shuts down because it worked too hard and needs to take an app or something. So I don't know. I think I'm really interested to hear what you think about it. I agree with you. People should not order them right now until people like you who did order them actually get them.
Jason Aten:Not just for the sake of seeing the reviews, just for the sake of making sure that, like, they're actually putting them in boxes and giving them to UPS and they're showing up at people's houses.
Stephen Robles:And they they were showing them packaged up to to be shipped from the factory. So I think it's it's really happening. 2 other just funny moments. Apparently the OS for the pin is called Kosmos or cosmos. I don't know man.
Stephen Robles:That that feels a little too punny for me. But you got cosmos and then at one point Imran, you know, he he was a little better in this video than previous videos. And, again, he was formerly of Apple. You can go back and watch him for, I think, the iPhone 6 Keynote or 5 Keynote, like, you know, both cofounders originally worked at Apple or pre previously. And he says, in the middle of the video, there's a green field in front of us.
Stephen Robles:And then he just goes on to keep talking about the pin. And it was it was very like that should have been my quote for the opening of the episode. It was very like, oh, b boy. Like, I don't know what
Jason Aten:you mean.
Stephen Robles:I guess is that the Windows XP desktop? Is that your hope for the future of AI pins? I don't know. So anyway, if you're interested, watch the video. I will be wearing it.
Stephen Robles:If it arrives April 11th, whatever podcast we record after that, I'll wear it. I'll put it right here, and I'll just keep asking you things throughout the whole podcast, to bug you.
Jason Aten:It's such good podcasting. It's gonna be wonderful. I can't wait.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be great. And it has the audio bubble or whatever, the I don't even know.
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, let us know what you think of of the humane AI pin, but, I'm excited I'm excited to review it. I'm gonna wear it around and see see what people think of it. Real quick before we take, a quick break and we're gonna talk about the iPad rumors. Where are the new iPads in our long term review of Apple Vision Pro and the MacBook Air? Mister Beast signed, I think, his first big deal with a streaming company.
Stephen Robles:It is a $100,000,000 deal with Amazon. He's gonna be making a contest type reality show for the streaming platform, much like a lot of the videos he does on his own channel. I think it's interesting for, several reasons. I mean, one, he's already the biggest YouTuber making a ton of money. But he also spends a ton of money on videos.
Stephen Robles:If you watch him in some of the Colin and Samir interviews, he talks about he spends upwards of like $3,000,000 sometimes on his videos, which if you watch them, he's like going to private islands, and he's like throwing trains into not throwing, but driving trains into a ditch. So I imagine that stuff costs a lot of money to do. Yeah. Maybe he's maybe he's tired of spending his own money, so he wants to spend somebody else's money like Amazon. But it's a $100,000,000 deal.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be the show is going to give away the winner, which MrBeast usually gives large sums of money to whoever wins his contest. There's gonna be a $5,000,000 prize, which is going to be the biggest game show prize ever, which I would expect nothing less from a MrBeast game show. It has to be the biggest and most ever. Yeah. But and he also said he went to Amazon because they're gonna give him basically full creative control, meaning Amazon's not going to apparently force his hand in any way or control the product.
Stephen Robles:They're totally going to give MrBeast full access. And Jimmy Donaldson is MrBeast's real name. So what did you think about this? You had the article.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Did you I don't know if you saw the Conan Sameer interview that he did. It's about an hour. It's a little over an hour long. And it was interesting that, like, that was how he chose to sort of announce this.
Jason Aten:I I should just clarify, like, the reporting I think Puck first reported back in January that the deal was gonna be worth a $100,000,000. He wouldn't exactly confirm that, but he also didn't not confirm it when he was talking to Collins here. So it seems pretty clear that that's roughly what the deal was worth. But the the reason I actually wrote about it was listening to him talk. It was pretty clear that there are any number of streaming services that probably could have and would have given him the same amount of money.
Jason Aten:The thing that he really cared about was that Amazon was willing to give him full creative control. And I guess I have to give credit to Amazon because we have picked on Amazon Prime Video for, like, a while now because it's, like, it's sort of the streaming service. I saw someone post recently on threads. They were talking about the maybe it could have been x. I can't remember.
Jason Aten:It doesn't matter. But the person was talking about the like, he went to Amazon instead of Netflix, and their take was, like, how bad that was gonna be for Netflix because Amazon is the 2nd largest streaming service, which is technically true, but that's only because of the 200,000,000 people who subscribe to Amazon prime and get it by default. So when you count those, like, I don't think that's how many people are consciously paying for prime video. And in fact, they're probably like, oh wow, there's a streaming service over there. That's really cool.
Jason Aten:But I think it's actually a sign like, there was a time, where people were going to Netflix from the studios because it was the place where they had creative control. At the DealBook Summit, Shonda Rhimes, who, you know, created, you know, greatest anatomy in, you know, a bunch of other shows, went to Netflix to do shows because she saw the it is a way to sort of break away from that studio system and to have more creative control. And now this is sort of like the extension or the finale of that where, like, the guy who's coming from YouTube and there's no question that people will watch the show wherever he puts it. The guy has 240 some 1000000 subscribers. He in the last year alone, he had over 3,000,000,000 views.
Jason Aten:I don't know anything about YouTube. You do, but I think that's a lot. Like, that feels like a very lot. Right?
Stephen Robles:It's a it's a very lot. Yes.
Jason Aten:But think about it. Like, he has as many subscribers as Netflix does. Like this guy has the same platform as Netflix. Now there's a slight difference because it doesn't cost you anything to subscribe to a YouTube channel. But the point is he has the audience.
Jason Aten:And so the fact that Netflix was not willing to give that kind of creative control, I think is a is kind of a bad sign for Netflix is like you've basically just become a studio. Right? Like, and Amazon Amazon has nothing to lose because no one knows they have a streaming service. Like, they they could just do it. Like, just just yeah.
Jason Aten:Here's a $100,000,000. Make us something great, and we trust you to do it. So I
Stephen Robles:am very curious how and if his audience will follow him. Because as we talked about last week with the whole TikTok thing, it is very hard if you've built an audience on a platform, whether that's TikTok or YouTube like misterBeast, to then translate that audience out. Now MisterBeast has done it because MisterBeast Burger, MisterBeast Feastables, chocolates, he does sell millions of those things as well. So he actually translated his online audience to the real world with real physical products, namely chocolate bars and burgers. So if anybody could do it, it's probably mister beast.
Stephen Robles:But I I am curious how because honestly, like buying a chocolate bar at a gas station that you're passing through and from a brand you recognize, okay, actually going to a different streaming service that you might have never used before just to watch a bespoke show from even if it's your favorite creator. I'm curious how that audience if it will move and what percentage of it will move. And if Amazon will see some kind of spike in sign ups? Again, like, I feel like everybody has it because everybody has Amazon Prime delivery anyway. I have Amazon Prime.
Stephen Robles:I have not watched anything on in over a year probably. So I do watch Rings of Power. I do watch Rings of Power, and Rings of Power is coming back this summer. So
Jason Aten:It's also terrible. They
Stephen Robles:spent Jason.
Jason Aten:They spent $715,000,000 on it. I think I made that point in the article that it's like Amazon has nothing to lose. Like, how much money they spend on the Lord of the Rings spin off? And it was bad. It was just not even good.
Stephen Robles:I'll I'm not saying it's to the quality of the, like, the original trilogy or even the Hobbit trilogy, but I don't know if it's horrible. Cinematography is good.
Jason Aten:Is it to the quality of $715,000,000? Like
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I gotta rewatch it. Ask me after season 2.
Jason Aten:You don't have to rewatch it. Most people that was another stat that I saw that most people didn't even make through a third of the episodes before they bailed. Really?
Stephen Robles:Now also, I understand if you're a Lord of the Rings like Faithful and you've read the simerillian or whatever, I think people had more problems with it with the more background knowledge they had. I do not have those. I do not have those.
Jason Aten:There are I don't mean to derail this conversation, but don't let anyone tell you that they've actually read the, like, no, because it is not it they have not. You might as well read Beowulf. I was in New York City a couple years ago when the, JPMorgan library had a Tolkien, exhibit. And I'm actually a big like, I one of my my favorite books I've ever read was a Tolkien, autobiography. And, anyway, I went to the whole thing and I they had copies of a lot of his original drawings for Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and they had copies of a lot of different things.
Jason Aten:And I just wanna know that even those die hard of his fans, don't let them tell you. Very few people have actually read. It's it's a hard read. It's a very hard read.
Stephen Robles:I I've heard it's hard. I have not I have not tried it. If you've read The Simerillian, leave us a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And don't look up how to spell simarelia. Goodness.
Stephen Robles:You have to be able to spell it without looking it up. That's the proof that you've read it. So
Jason Aten:Well, I was just gonna say the reason it's not really canon is because it wasn't he didn't he it was published after his death by his son. Not no shade to his son, Christopher, but it's it's like I don't know. Anyway, so moving moving on. Sorry for derailing us.
Stephen Robles:I think today's bonus episode is gonna be about Lord of the Rings. We I didn't have a plan yet.
Jason Aten:I can't wait.
Stephen Robles:Well, I think it'd be about that. Alright. So I wanna talk about where are the iPads and Apple has some more legal troubles. But before we do, I want to take a second and thank our members who don't hear this, but you who have not supported us yet. This thank you is for you because when you start supporting the show, you get an ad free version, meaning this section, they'll jump right to the iPad stuff.
Stephen Robles:This will be cut out as any future ads and sponsorships will be because those who support the show. Get the ad free version and you get bonus episodes every week. And if you support the show, you can do it directly in Apple Podcasts for $5 a month or 50 a year, or you can do it through rememberful@primarytech.fm and click bonus episodes. You get the full back catalog of bonus episodes right now. We talk about all kinds of fun stuff like TVs, talk about physical media, Jason went to we don't know what conference he went to, it was either Zoso or South by Southwest, You can listen to last week's episode, for that and we're going to correct it in this week's bonus episode, but you get all of that.
Stephen Robles:And so we want to thank you for supporting the show. If If you haven't already, you can do that again directly on Apple Podcasts or at primarytech.fm or if you can't do that, again a 5 star rating and review and subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/primarytechshow, and we would greatly appreciate it. And either way, thank you for listening to Primary Technology. Jason, where are the iPads? Where are the iPad?
Jason Aten:I have I came prepared. I have a lot of iPads right here. That doesn't even have my iPad Pros over here. I've got a mini.
Stephen Robles:I got my mini right here.
Jason Aten:Got a, this is a 9th gen. This is a 9th gen.
Stephen Robles:Got that.
Jason Aten:Right here. So just just this looks like an iPad. Right? It's a 9th gen. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And then I also have
Stephen Robles:have it
Jason Aten:right here. My favorite I listen. I have my favorite iPad of all time. This is one of the original iPad Airs. The original iPad Air?
Jason Aten:I mean, come on.
Stephen Robles:The original iPad now the Air iPad Air 2 the original iPad Air 2 was one of the best because that one got a lot faster than the original. And I will say Maybe I'm gonna be right. Maybe we're gonna talk about iPads for the bonus episode because I got a lot of I got a lot of emotions and thoughts about iPads. That's gonna be the bonus episode. We'll talk about we'll talk more about our history of iPads.
Stephen Robles:But Okay. There's been rumors that Apple is going to announce new iPads and Mac rumors, 9 to 5 Mac, they're all saying it's gonna happen. Then this is hilarious. MacRumors posted Apple to announce new iPads on March 26th, and Mark Gurman just quote tweeted it and said, not true.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Think about the level of confidence you have to have as the preeminent person to just be like, nah. Nah. Nice try, guys.
Stephen Robles:Just two words. Not true, which is just I just laugh so hard. And then MacRumors posted, like, a follow-up saying, oh, okay. Yeah. I guess not the 20 6th or the 9 to 5 Mac.
Stephen Robles:Claim of iPad announcement on March 26th. Not sure. I just listen, MacRumors 9 to 5 Mac guys. They're all great. I'm sure there was lots of talk in the Slack channel about this.
Stephen Robles:I just thought it was hilarious. Anyway, supposedly, I mean, again, Apple did not update a single iPad in 2023. We went an entire year, no iPad updates. Okay. That's fine.
Stephen Robles:M2 iPad Pro is really good. M1 iPad Air is really good. We got a newish iPad just right before the the new year, so okay. We need some new iPads, Jason. And I know people are want I post about this stuff on the different social medias and people are like, what do you even want in a new iPad?
Stephen Robles:Why do you even care? You get an M2 iPad Pro right now. It's an it's an amazing machine. Like, you you should not want anything more. What's that song?
Stephen Robles:You Can Ask For Anything More? Is that, Annie? I forget. I forget.
Jason Aten:I forget. I gotta catch up on a musical theater reference. I said I got the movie references down, now I gotta do musical theater too.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So here's here's what I want, which is The Godfather quote. What I want is a guarantee.
Stephen Robles:No more attempts on my father's life. No. So what I want from new iPads, first of all, the rumors are that there's gonna be mica OLED. So the iPad Pro at least will have an OLED screen which would be better than the mini LED which is only in the 12.9 inch model right now. There's been recent rumors that there might be a matte screen option both a glossy and matte screen which first, this is a newish rumor.
Stephen Robles:That'll be interesting. We have nano texture options on the Pro Display XDR, but other than that there's not been a matte screen option since 2011 maybe? You used to be able to get a matte screen MacBook Pro, like matte or glossy. You remember that? You could choose 1 or the other.
Stephen Robles:On the MacBook Pro?
Jason Aten:I mean, I know you could do it on the Studio Display in the XDR, but maybe you're right. You know what? Was it maybe it wasn't the MacBook Pro. Was that the MacBook?
Stephen Robles:I think you could. Hold on. Last model, MacBook Pro with matte screen. I have to this is the real time searching.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We're not good at we're not very good
Stephen Robles:at this. The last time there was a MacBook Pro sold with a matte display finish was 2013. So you could get a 2013 MacBook Pro. It was non Retina because I remember I actually got a MacBook Pro in 2012 and it was the first Retina screen. 2012 was the first time you could get a Retina screen MacBook Pro.
Stephen Robles:It was the unibody style but there was no Retina and matte. But there was still a base level MacBook Pro that didn't have a Retina screen that you could get with a matte screen. And that was the option, on checkout. Like you could do that. So I'm trying to find any pictures or evidence of this.
Stephen Robles:I want to I'm pretty sure this was the case, but anyway. So new ipads might have matte screen which seems very strange to me. I don't know how that would work with a laminate type display on an iPad, But you have that. M3 obviously is an upgrade. Here's why I want new iPads.
Stephen Robles:Number 1, my main iPad, my only iPad right now is this iPad Mini. This is a 3 year old iPad, and the display is still kind of meh. No promotion. The weather widget is still janky. And I edit this podcast on this iPad.
Stephen Robles:I edit the audio version in Ferret on this, and it's fine. It can do it. I miss promotion on my larger iPad. I talked about that saga of how there was an iPad in my house that dropped on the sleep button and now it's broken. Anyway, so I don't have this is my only iPad right now.
Stephen Robles:I didn't drop it. It's for the record. Anyway. So I want to get a big iPad Pro again. I've always I've gotten the 12.9 inches model the last 2 years because it was the only one with the mini LED screen, or XDR display as Apple calls it.
Stephen Robles:If you wanted to get, the 11 inch iPad Pro, it did not have that better screen. So I am hoping, now that Ive used an iPad Mini as my only iPad for a while, I want a bigger screen, but not that much bigger cause I have a 14 inch MacBook Pro. So what I want is an 11 inch M3 iPad Pro with an OLED display. Same display that will be on the bigger one, so I'm not sacrificing any display quality on the 11 inch, and a new magic keyboard maybe with a function row of keys, at least a keyboard backlight button to be able to adjust keyboard backlight on those function keys. I would love that.
Stephen Robles:And, honestly, that would be enough for me. Maybe we get a 3rd gen Apple Pencil. Who knows? That's not as important to me but it would be cool to see what Apple does there. Oh.
Stephen Robles:And the camera moved to the right orientation because the base model iPad right now that you get for, like, 4.99 or whatever has the camera on the long edge. You talked about this because you reviewed it.
Jason Aten:Uh-huh.
Stephen Robles:The camera's on the long edge, and that's where it needs to be on the iPad Air and the iPad Pro. That's why I hope they move that as well. That's why I want new iPads.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:Face closed.
Jason Aten:Okay. So quick follow-up. Mac tracker, fantastic app. Absolutely. Essential.
Jason Aten:Does say that the year there was a 15 inch display 1680 by 1050 that had glossy or anti glare. So maybe that would be what we're talking about. Like, I don't know. I don't know what that means. But, anyway, so there we are confirming that Steven is not completely crazy.
Jason Aten:I don't know whether they called it matte display or whatever. But, anyway, under the iPads, This is easy for me. Although, I'm I am curious why the iPad mini is the only one, in my opinion, that is desperately overdue for some kind of an update, but it's still I have an iPad mini. I love it. I can't figure out what I should use it for because every time I try to use it to read books on a Kindle app or something, I get distracted, and so I just pull out the actual Kindle, like, an actual Kindle to read books on.
Jason Aten:So I do think that the iPad mini could use an update. Everything else, literally, the only thing I care about is put the camera on the right spot. That's the only change that they need to make. Like, you could put the m 3 in the Mac in the iPad Pro, but it's an iPad. It has an m 2 in it already.
Jason Aten:What I don't understand what the problem is. The Mac the iPad Air has an m one in it. Right? I don't think they've updated that to the m two yet. No.
Jason Aten:Because they do. So they released 2 generations of MacBook Pro since they've released a single new iPad, so I don't understand. I do agree it's been too long. I think that it'd be great. But, honestly, people talk about the iPad right now as needing updates desperately, but it just really doesn't.
Jason Aten:The base, the 10th generation iPad, amazing. Right? They've, they updated the form factor, so it looks like the rest of them. And they put the camera in the right spot. Other than the weird dongle thing you have to use to charge the the Apple Pencil, the 1st generation Apple Pencil, beyond that, it's I mean, it has USB c.
Jason Aten:It's great. The you can still buy the 9th gen iPad if you wanna save a little bit of money. The iPad Air is fantastic. The iPad Pros. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I mean, OLED displays would be great. All of those things, I just feel like man, I don't know. It's an iPad and the things that we do with iPads. Like, what do we need to know that display for for editing podcasts? Probably, like, you wanna, you know, like, be able to see those waveforms watching podcasts?
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. No. Yes.
Stephen Robles:You can watch this podcast. Listen. I I When I had my 12.9 inches M2, there were some times where I just wanted to watch something and until maybe Apple Vision Pro, which we'll talk about in a second, it was the best screen in my house. Like, the mini LED screen on the 12.95i pro was amazing. If you're gonna watch something that was very dark, like it had very black blacks, like, that screen was the best just for, like, watching.
Jason Aten:It's not better than your MacBook
Stephen Robles:Pro. Not I guess not now. Is it mini LED? Is the new MacBook Pro mini LED? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:They're HD.
Stephen Robles:I just like the iPad screen better. There's no notch. You know what I mean? Anyway, I
Jason Aten:I think There's gonna be if they put the camera in the right spot. There's gonna be a notch on the next iPad. Just a few hours.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that'd be that'd be interesting. Oh, also smaller bezels is the other rumor, but I have also heard from a couple birdies that supposedly no other birdies. So this is like double hearsay. Apple might not continue or update the iPad mini, which would be very unfortunate. But if you look at their other product lines, like the iPhone, the iPhone mini has gone away.
Stephen Robles:There's usually 2 sizes, you know, the regular and the plus or the Pro and the Pro Max, and they might just go to 2 size iPads, 11 inch 13 inch across the Pro, the Air, and the base model, which I know there's a lot of iPad mini fans out there. I actually did a video with a pilot several years ago with Apple Insider, and, like, that is one use case where the iPad mini is, like, the de facto device because in these smaller planes with very tiny cockpits, the iPad mini, like, is the only one that'll fit a lot of times and is ideal for them. Honestly, like, they probably don't care for an update. Like, the iPad the current iPad mini is probably fine for them. But this thing is also $600 now, 3 years later, you know?
Stephen Robles:It's not like you get a discount. So I don't know. I I like to just see them do something, change the camera orientation, give me an 11 inch. That would be nice. And, follow-up to the follow-up.
Stephen Robles:I have found a sketchy video here.
Jason Aten:No. Sketchy video.
Stephen Robles:No, it's not sketchy. But this is the these were the two options for the MacBook Pro. And so you have the glossy screen on the right and Apple did call it the anti glare screen. They didn't call it a matte screen. That's kind of what the vernacular was for everybody that covered it.
Stephen Robles:But if you got the anti glare screen option on the MacBook Pro, it would look like the one on the left. You wouldn't have the black bezel around the display and it would still be the older style matte display, which if you remember, before 2008, 2008, fall 2008 was the first unibody MacBook Pro, and from there forward it was the black bezel around the screen glossy display by default, and they just offered the anti glare for a couple years after that. It seems like 2013 might have been the last year, but that's what it looked like on the left. It had the silver bezels, matte or anti glare display, and, yeah. I feel justified.
Jason Aten:And I think that that was actually the year they introduced the retina. Right? So they introduced retina, and then they kept the previous Yes. As an option. You could get a non retina that was the anti glare.
Jason Aten:And probably, it would defeat the purpose of having retina density of pixels and then also have an anti glare coating over it. Like, that just defeats the purpose.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And and to be like, the anti glare matte displays, you don't get as much color definition. Like, you don't get, like, the p three color gamut and all that kind of stuff just because the display technology, whatever, it's not as sharp, saturated. I'm not sure, but that's why it eventually went away. But, you know what?
Stephen Robles:I'll put that video in the show notes because I just want everybody to know,
Jason Aten:I remembered. I remembered.
Stephen Robles:I appreciate that.
Jason Aten:I'm glad.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, we might not see no iPads till April, which is unfortunate but that seems like what it's gonna be. And finally before we talk about the Applevision Pro M3 MacBook Air, Apple has some more legal troubles, not only in the EU but also here in the US that the Justice Department here in the United States sought to sue Apple for antitrust violations. And this is also from pressure from Meta, Microsoft X, Spotify all kind of coming against Apple's new App Store policies. I think the crux of it was that Apple was still gonna be charging a percentage, transaction fee even for purchases outside of their in app payment system. So if you did add like a 3rd party payment system in your app, Apple was still going to take a 27% cut instead of 30.
Stephen Robles:So you saved Right. 30% or whatever. And now everyone's speaking against it and so United States Justice Department, like another antitrust violation. I know you had more articles about it. What do you think?
Jason Aten:Well yeah. So there are 2 2 separate things. We'll just real quickly. The first one is we've we talked before about the fact that the likelihood is that Apple was going to be sued. The latest reporting from Bloomberg is it's gonna happen today.
Jason Aten:So we haven't had a chance to read it. So everything we say right now will be completely obsolete in probably 20 or 30 minutes. So we won't say a whole lot. We'll probably have more to talk about this when we actually see the case. But, essentially, the justice department is alleging, you know, that Apple has sort of, leveraged its platform and is a monopoly and that they are going to be, you know, this isn't the first time apple has been sued over antitrust particular issues, you know, but the point is like the, the crux of the issue here is I understand.
Jason Aten:I'm gonna have to wait to see the lawsuit are things like why can't other payment apps use the NFC chip. Right? Or why can't like, there are features and capabilities that are beaten built into the phone that only Apple is able to take advantage of, which disadvantages competitors to Apple's particular products. And it's the same idea where it's like, if you own the platform, you shouldn't be able to use the platform to advantage your own product and not make those things available to other other products. And so not a whole lot more we can say about that until we actually read read it.
Jason Aten:The the other one is is interesting because Meta, Microsoft X Match, which is, you know, all the dating sites, that kind of thing, have filed an actual, briefing to protest Apple's compliance with the DMA. Right? They are not happy with the way, that Apple is, well, actually, I don't even know if it was the DMA. I guess it was the the I I'm sorry. I got all that wrong.
Jason Aten:You can edit this out if you want. This is they are protesting the the, essentially, the concession that Apple had to make as a result of the Fortnite case, right, which involved linking out to other to
Stephen Robles:other steering. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Thank you. See, this is what I have steering here or Steven here for. And they are like, no. Apple is not even complying with either the letter or the spirit of that particular ruling because of what you described. Like they're being very restrictive in how you can send customers out and they're still gonna collect the same amount of money.
Jason Aten:And then the argument that is being made is that that is not reflective of either the letter of the of the law or the spirit. And I just thought it was interesting, like, meta. Okay. I understand. Like, they they're not big fans of Apple, although at the same time, they don't sell apps.
Jason Aten:Right? They don't charge for their apps. So I don't know why that's as big of a deal with the exception of the fact that Apple is gonna start charging for in app boosting of posts. So maybe there's that piece of it. Microsoft Microsoft and Apple are not, like, arch enemies anymore.
Jason Aten:Right? They they do a whole lot of stuff. So Spotify and match group have been a part of this from the beginning, so I can understand that. I just thought it was interesting. Like, Apple's not making any friends.
Jason Aten:Right? And even the people even the people you think might be their friends are definitely not happy with the way that they're conducting themselves.
Stephen Robles:Well, and I do think it's this might be another step in the direction of the United States passing legislation like the European Commission with the DMA, Digital Markets Act, where Apple might have to allow 3rd party app marketplaces here in the US. Because now there's precedent, like Yeah. That's over there in the EU, even sideloading, downloading an app via a website, like true sideloading in the EU. And so I think I don't know how long it'll take, I don't know how many years, but I imagine, eventually, it's gonna be coming here to the states as well. And this seems like kind of the first step towards that.
Stephen Robles:But anyway yeah. Not making any friends.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just think Apple needs to look at it and yeah. They're not. And they should just look and say, like, what's the ultimate end goal? Let's just do that.
Jason Aten:Like, come on. Right. Exactly. Let's go to that. Let's just make the concessions and make everyone happy so we can move on with our lives.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Alright, personal tech. Let's do some long term reviews of the Apple Vision Pro, which I don't you know what? I even have mine around here? Hold on.
Stephen Robles:I gotta find it.
Jason Aten:He doesn't even know where it is. I gotta find it. It doesn't really That's really the only thing you need to say about your long term review. Right there. That was brutal.
Jason Aten:That was brutal. I don't even know where it is.
Stephen Robles:I don't even know where
Jason Aten:it is. I have a $4,000 computer, and I can't remember where it is. It's great.
Stephen Robles:Well, it doesn't have it doesn't have Find My. There's no Find My, so I can't even do precision tracking. I can't even find it. Listen. So this, this it's a long term review, but it's not gonna be a long review.
Stephen Robles:Listen, I use the thing like I use the thing once a week, if not less. Because here's the deal. I know there's some people online, they're like, I work in Apple Vision Pro 8 hours a day, and my eyeballs love it or whatever. I am not one of those people. I shared my Mac screen multiple times, both my Mac Studio and my Macbook Pro to work.
Stephen Robles:It's cool. It's more useful for my Macbook Pro if I'm, like, editing video and I just want a larger canvas because it's helpful when editing video to just have more display space. It is more useful but I still prefer just editing on my Studio Display. The studio display is like perfect size for me and editing like it's great. So I don't prefer to work in it.
Stephen Robles:I don't prefer to be in it that long, like 6 to 8 hours. I don't prefer that. And watching movies is great. There was a moment, I think it was last week, where it was the evening, I was by myself, and I was like, I'm gonna watch something. I can get my Applevision Pro out and, like, do the whole thing.
Stephen Robles:I I've been using the Waterfield case now so I have to take the solo knit loop off to put it in the case. Like, do I wanna put it all together, put the solo knit in, put it on the battery, wait for it to start up, because we don't use it every day, it takes like a minute to start up after you plug in the battery. And then I'd, do I wanna do all that? Do I just wanna watch it on the TV that's right in front of me right now and it would take me 5 seconds to get to the thing to watch. So I didn't even watch even then, the ideal scenario where I would watch it that has happened multiple times and some of those times I have got VisionPRO out and done it, but it's just so there's so much, friction to just getting to experiencing something in Vision Pro and so limited use cases for it.
Stephen Robles:The only use case that I prefer right now is watching something and the friction to get to watching something on Apple Vision Pro, which there's still no Netflix app. I'm not going to do it in the web browser. Like using Safari in Apple Vision Pro is like not a great experience. It's hard, like, typing. I just don't want to do it.
Stephen Robles:So even watching something, there's enough friction where I just don't I don't desire to to do it. Now, I'm traveling next week, going to Podcast Movement in the hotel. Maybe Apple Vision Pro is going to, like, it's going to be great there because it'll be my content. We'll see how it works with, like, captive WiFi networks. I'm curious how well that's gonna work, where, you know, you have to, like, log into your hotel room or whatever.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Traveling might be the kill use case. Everybody who posts a video of Apple Vision Pro on a plane is, like says it's amazing. It's great. Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs, he recently posted it. He was, like, yep.
Stephen Robles:Use it on a plane. It was cool. Got some funny looks, but, yeah, that was fun. But honestly, like, I just don't find use cases for it and watching something is the cool use case, but I just don't do it, very often, like once a week or less. So if you were thinking about getting one, maybe not right now, go do the demo in the Apple Store.
Stephen Robles:You can get the wow factor, and then wait for a much cheaper version or more use cases and apps down the road. But, yeah, that has been my experience. And
Jason Aten:Also, if you're if you're think if you're thinking about getting one, make Steven an offer because he has one available that doesn't give her his very update.
Stephen Robles:Listen. If there's an update or whatever, I got a screenshot. You know, I have to put it on to screenshot the software update screen or whatever so I could post that on social media.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's a good reason to spend $4,000 on a computer is to take screenshots to put on social media.
Stephen Robles:Maybe Visual Studio is 2.0. Maybe it'll be amazing. Yeah. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I also just wanna say that anybody who is post taking photos of themselves wearing 1 on a on an airplane and saying it's amazing is only wearing it on an airplane so that they can take a photo of themselves wearing it on an airplane so they can post it on social media to say that it's amazing. Let's just be real honest here. So I actually asked, I may write about this at some point because there was a I had a really interesting conversation with the flight attendant. First of all, almost no one is wearing these things on airplanes. You would think that they were, if you live in like the tech bubble, like us, where people post about it all the time, but I've asked them and the flight attendants just think you're weird.
Jason Aten:If you wear 1 on a plane, the flight attendants think that you're just bonkers. And so not that that's a reason not to, because there's a whole lot of people that are bonkers on airplanes. That's fine. But I just, anyway, so, all right. That was the vision pro.
Jason Aten:I, on the other hand, have been living with the MacBook air, which I do know where it is. It is right here. I still have it. It's right here. And it's, you know, I was just picked it up and noticed, honestly, the fingerprints aren't that bad.
Jason Aten:I think the coding part of the fingerprints is good. It's just, it's dark. Right? And so darker materials like this are just gonna show them more. I will say, and I think Steven, I may have said this to you at one point, but the, I think that the m 3 MacBook Air was the the the computer that I was sort of waiting for.
Jason Aten:And I've been using the m three max MacBook pro. So I am not using I mean, I'm not hurting for computer. Right? It's a Right.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:It's the best computer. I think right now I would argue it's the best computer that apple is making. And the thing I think constantly is if I could get more than 25 gigs or 24 gigs of memory in a Mac book air, it would, it would be a deal. I'd sell my office and I'd just buy one. It'd be a deal breaker.
Jason Aten:Like it is, what do
Stephen Robles:you need that much gigs for tabs?
Jason Aten:Future proofing. Because honestly, I think if I could get more than if I could get 32 or 64 gigs of memory in a MacBook and a m 3 MacBook Air with 2 terabyte storage, I I would probably buy it and plan to use it for a very, very long time. 32, I'd be happy with. I don't need 64 in a MacBook Air because the stuff, I mean, I do like podcasting. I do some things where I do take advantage.
Jason Aten:I was using Whisper yesterday, and that's the first time I've heard the fan spin up on this MacBook Pro. Like, it's because it's doing on it's doing on device, you know, AI generative AI stuff. And the MacBook Air does all that kind of fine, but it definitely takes a bit longer. I don't know if memory would necessarily help, but it is loading that language model into memory in order to do it. And so, I think that the I mean, you everyone knows what the MacBook Air is.
Jason Aten:It's fantastic. The M3 is is is amazing, and I think it will you know, carrying it around to, like to south by southwest, not XOXO was was great instead of carrying around my MacBook pro. And so I think I probably will be switching back to the MacBook air. So, yeah, it's amazing.
Stephen Robles:Oh, so it's a very good computer. Is that what you're saying?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, everyone knows that it was a very good computer before and really it's the wifi sixty that pushes me over the edge. That's not true because we've already talked about how slow my Internet is right at the moment. So it doesn't really
Stephen Robles:up and down.
Jason Aten:Is not gonna 60 is listen. I have fiber at my house. It's just that I'm 40 yards from my house right now. That's the problem.
Stephen Robles:And it's traveling over by carrier pigeon. I'm bringing each kid.
Jason Aten:My dog, my dog just runs back and forth with the Internet.
Stephen Robles:Carrying the bits. Yeah. That's why there's a delay. That's why there's a delay. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm always tempted by the MacBook Air because it looks, I mean, so thin and light. But I love my I have an M3 Pro MacBook Pro. I love it. And I use that SD card slot sometimes and that's enough to just have me keep it.
Stephen Robles:And I do like the display, again, I guess I'm a display nerd, but I like the mini LED display on the iPad Pro and I do like the display on the MacBook Pro. And so I don't know if the thinness and lightness is enough trade off, especially when I'm carrying Apple Vision Pro and USB microphones in my bag anyway, like, the weight difference is probably negligible from, you know, Air to Pro, but I am tempted by it all the time because it does look very nice.
Jason Aten:Steven, I have a solution for you, though, that would solve your your laptop problem, your iPad problem, and probably your vision pro problem. Buy an OLED television, and then you'll never have to worry about having the nicest display in your house be on a laptop or an iPad or a vision pro. Just buy 1. It'll save you so much money because you'll never have to worry about it. Because I like nice displays.
Jason Aten:We have a very, very nice OLED television. I I do agree that the MacBook Pro has an amazing display, and it's also really nice because it gets much brighter. So if you're in a situation where, you know, you're outdoors or whatever, which we're not right now because it's 16 degrees out. But if you're in that, like, it is nice. But the other benefits of the MacBook Air, the fact that it is so light, so thin, so and yet still so powerful, and the battery lasts forever.
Jason Aten:That's the other thing. The the battery lasts because it isn't powering such a high powered screen. It lasts for such a long time. But if you just buy an OLED television, I mean, you have, like, 2 home theater systems. I can't believe you didn't get at least one OLED between the 2.
Stephen Robles:I don't know why. It is a weird thing. Like, I I've I've spent money on a Dolby Atmos 7 dot 1 system in one room. I have a, Sonos Arc and Submini in another room. For some reason, like, I struggle to spend money on TVs.
Stephen Robles:1, because I feel like the gap between the $600 TV and then if you want to get a nice OLED, you're in like the 3,000. And I just I don't know. I feel like like I don't personally use it, the TV, like my kids use it more. Like for their video games, they would probably love it. But I actually don't personally use it enough to like I guess justify it.
Stephen Robles:So and I'm not gonna put the nicest TV in our bedroom. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Just imagine when Dune 2 comes out on Max being able to watch that on an OLED. And I'm speaking as someone who just watched Dune 1 on an OLED. And I'm just I'm just I'm just telling you, it's a pretty people buy new TVs every 10 years. You buy a new laptop every 18 months. I'm just doing the math here.
Jason Aten:I'm trying to help you out.
Stephen Robles:You know, when Dune 2 comes out, maybe that'll be the time. I will consider an OLED TV because
Jason Aten:And we'll know we'll know if Steven bought this if his wife forces him to cancel this podcast
Stephen Robles:because I think it's gotta be a fun topic. So if you want to listen to that bonus episode, subscribe to Apple Podcasts or go to primary tech. Fm, click bonus episodes, and you can support the show there as well. Don't forget 5 star rating and review an Apple Podcast or subscribe oh and and subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/primaritectshow. All those links are in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:And just so you know, next week's episode, we're gonna release it on Friday instead of 30 because I'm at Podcast Movement. Jason's going to another conference
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