WWDC 2024 Announced, Amazon Can Read Your Palm, Apple Sues Over Leaks
Download MP3Let them fight. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, Apple officially announced the dates for WWDC, and there's some easter eggs in some of the tweets from people like Rick Jones. We have to talk about that. Apple officially got sued by the United States Department of Justice.
Stephen Robles:Wanna touch on that. A matter of wait till May for new Ipads. Amazon has a new app that scans the palm of your hand to unlock your account. Threads is now in the fediverse and Jason has a surprise for me, and I have literally no idea what it is. This episode is brought to you by all of you who support the show directly, so thank you for that.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles. And joining me as always, my good friend, Jason Ayton. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I'm good, Stephen. This is the podcast of the sick people apparently.
Stephen Robles:So This is like listen. This is dedication, everybody, because
Jason Aten:It is.
Stephen Robles:I I'm still in Los Angeles. I'm in a hotel room, which is my this is not a virtual background. This is this is my hotel room in Los Angeles. I have my a totally different setup, laptop, everything, but we're doing it. It's 6:30 my time.
Stephen Robles:I don't even know what time it is where you
Jason Aten:are. 8:30? It's like 9:40 9:41.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Yeah. Something like that.
Jason Aten:It's like a 3 hour and 10 minute time difference.
Stephen Robles:We both we both have sick voices, but listen. It's gonna be great. I forgot to pull the 5 star ratings and review because I I've been at a conference. I totally forgot. So we're gonna save those till next week.
Stephen Robles:And then all of you who do leave a 5 star review in Apple Podcasts and a rating, we will, just give you a shout out next week along with those who did it this past week too. So but I was excited because Jason has a surprise. I had no idea what he's about to tell me or show me, but he teased it last night, and I'm I'm excited and terrified.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna send you 3 photos here in a second. I also just wanna give Steven credit because Steven is committed enough to the bit that I gave him a quote today, and he didn't even know what movie it was from. I think it's applicable when you think about all of the things that Apple has been involved with lately, but I this is your this is your job, listeners. Leave us a 5 star review and tell us what movie that's from.
Jason Aten:I think everyone knows except for Steven, but I think that's I think that's your challenge. So Not gonna look it up. Alright.
Stephen Robles:I'll read the reviews soon. It'll be good. Now you just sent me 3 photos. I'm very excited about what you just said.
Jason Aten:Did you you've got the photos. Right?
Stephen Robles:I got the photos.
Jason Aten:I sent Steven three photos essentially of a cable running through my backyard to my office, and then I sent him a speed test,
Stephen Robles:from the
Jason Aten:so I got basically, I now have Ethernet in my office because, as these listeners will know, I have not had reliable Internet out here. And I got so tired of it. I I literally just strung a 100 foot eat cat 6 cable through my backyard, out a window in my living room, into my office, like, through the door. And, so now I actually I sent him the, download speed. And on Wi Fi, you have to admit this is pretty good.
Jason Aten:It's not 2 gigs up and down, but on Wi Fi, it's, 714 up down and, 824 up. So yeah. Very good. Yeah. Very
Stephen Robles:good speedboat. Jason, this is a wonderful surprise. Thank you for this. Are you gonna bury this thing?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna bury it, but it is still only 30 degrees outside. So we're gonna wait till it warms up a tiny bit. But I personally just think that the week I think there's something to be said for the irony that the week that I have Ethernet in my office is the week that Steven was trying to figure out if he could tether to his phone and use continuity camera at the same time because he's in a hotel room.
Jason Aten:I just there's just some bitter
Stephen Robles:The irony.
Jason Aten:Bittersweet irony there. Yes.
Stephen Robles:The irony is there. Well, Jason, thank you so much. That is a wonderful gift. Consider it a belated birthday gift, to have you fees. And then next week, I'll be back on my normal fast speed.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna be recording an 8 k quality. Gonna be sharing all the videos. It's gonna be great. Not that bad.
Jason Aten:So now I have to get a new camera too, apparently.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. You added the lights, though. The lights in the background look good.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And you thought that was gonna be the surprise, but, see, you already knew about the light. Yeah. I did. Right.
Jason Aten:Right. Right.
Stephen Robles:That's what I thought. I'm actually impressed too if you're watching this on YouTube, youtube.com/primarytechshow. I'm using my iPhone in continuity camera mode, and it's doing a really good job because it's actually very dim in my hotel room right now. And I only have this, like, one lamp, like, to my right right here, and it's doing great. Like, it's not even sunny outside.
Stephen Robles:Like, it's still night. Like, outside is dark, and so iPhone's doing a great job with a continuity camera. I just have to say. And this is the first time using my AirPods Max in, like, a year because it's the only wired headphones I brought. So there you go.
Stephen Robles:Earlier this week, Apple officially announced WWDC. The dates, it's gonna start June 10th. It'll be that week, June 10th through 14th. Obviously, the keynote's usually on Monday, June 10th. So that'll be the announcements for all the OS updates.
Stephen Robles:The invite image, I thought was interesting. There's a lot of memes going around of, like, like it's vvdc24. And I thought it was interesting design choice.
Jason Aten:A Volkswagen is coming to Washington DC this year.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Yeah. Makes total sense. Seriously. That was interesting.
Stephen Robles:Colors, you know, it's fun. A basic Apple guy had a fun animation where he, like, made this say air power, and he was like, that's the surprise coming to MTC.
Jason Aten:Uh-huh. He's committed.
Stephen Robles:The press release, you know, obviously doesn't tell anything about what they're going to be announcing. Just says they had their Swift Student Challenge, and developer is gonna have amazing new tools or whatever. There's gonna be the in person quote unquote keynote event where you can go watch in person a video. You know, they'll be inviting press and stuff. But Greg Joswiak, still posting on Twitter, notably, when he's posting stuff like this.
Stephen Robles:I think it's interesting. He said, mark your calendars. June 10th 4 14th. It's going to be absolutely incredible. And, of course, he capitalized the a in absolutely and the I in incredible.
Stephen Robles:And you can if you wanna read the tea leaves, which, you know, you gotta do as Apple fans of AI. Absolutely incredible. So it seems like he is I don't know. Do do you think I mean, it's gotta be on purpose. Greg Joshua is not gonna do anything not on purpose when he's posted on Twitter.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think, yeah, I think it's pretty clear that there's I mean, I don't know. I think the other thing of note with the BBC is it seems that they're pretty committed to this format now. I think they really like Right. The way that they're doing it because if you read the press release, they're actually saying we're holding this online.
Jason Aten:Right? WWDC as a conference is now a fully virtual conference, And then they have a special event on the opening day, which is you normally, the keynote, and then they do some other things during the day. And then there's, like, the state of the union and some kind of a party at night. So they they seem to really like that. And, I mean, it does seem to work well because they you know, there's fewer people that can attend.
Jason Aten:But, I mean, it's Apple Park. It's like, if you want to have homecourt advantage for whatever it is you're going to do, this seems like the way to do it.
Stephen Robles:So Well, I'm excited. We got the official dates. It had been, like, the 1st week in June, the last couple of years, but now June 1st is a, Saturday I think and so I don't know I guess they wanted to move it move it a week but I'm excited to see Vision OS 2.0. We see that. It should be a very, very fast paced event because of all the OS updates they're gonna have to cover.
Stephen Robles:Hopefully I'm hoping we see HomeKit and some smartphone things. We didn't really get anything last year or I don't even know if the year before. There was kind of like offhand mentions of HomeKit but not like additional categories for smart home devices. Matter was mentioned, but we still haven't had a ton of stuff. We have Matter devices now, but not really, like, new categories yet.
Stephen Robles:Robot vacuum should be coming soon ish, but anyway, I'm excited for it, and, of course, all the AI features that should be coming with iOS 18 and, macOS. So I think we should do a wish list maybe closer to the event. We can do a wish list predictions. And so that'll be coming do that, like, late May or something. But I also wanna think about we don't have to say it right now, but do you think what the macOS name is going to be?
Stephen Robles:We don't have to make our predictions now. Okay. I'd
Jason Aten:like to say start thinking about it. Okay.
Stephen Robles:You gotta start thinking about it. I've I've predicted El Dorado for, like, the last couple of years and have been wrong each time, so I'm gonna change mine up. So I gotta think And this will be the year? This will be the year. So we'll see.
Stephen Robles:My computer also just went into light mode, by itself, and so I'm gonna change that because if you were watching, you'll see everything just went
Jason Aten:Your face just turned into a ghost, Steven.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Yeah. The lighting. Well, maybe there's better lighting. So, anyway, so that's WWDC.
Stephen Robles:That's really all the details we have on it, but nice to know the dates. And I mean, Jason, you don't know if you'll be going, if not until you receive an invite, right? Like they send those press invites later.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Normally, I think if I remember correctly for w w w d c in the past, they send the invites. So, like, for a normal Apple event, it's, like, 2 weeks out. Right? And then for, for WWDC, it's like 3 weeks ish.
Jason Aten:So they do give you a little bit more time, but it's not gonna be until probably like mid mid to late May before they send out media. But I mean, I'll definitely go. Like, I was there last year for the app provision pro. I certainly would wanna be there for to hear in how because the the advantage is it's on one hand, it's actually easier to cover the keynote itself from home. It just it is going to Apple Park is very cool.
Jason Aten:But if what you're trying to do is write several stories about what they're talking about, it's easier to do that from home because you don't have to go from watching it to try to find somewhere to sit. But the advantage is that that you will then often get in person briefing. So last year, had the vision pro briefing and also had a 15 inch MacBook Air Briefing, which was great. Right. And so I will like, I'll definitely go.
Jason Aten:I've already marked the dates off on my calendar, assuming I get an invitation.
Stephen Robles:So And last year, the hardware we got was actually the M2 Ultra in the Mac Pro and Mac Studio, and we got the 15 inch MacBook Air, I believe. Yep. That was released at WWDC. Yep. And then, of course, Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:So it was actually a big hardware year last year, Vision Pro being, you know, kind of the the new category and announced. So, you know, I think Mac Pro we'll probably see Mac Pro and Mac Studio again. That seems like the WWDC developer type hardware, you know, the more powerful high end stuff. So we'll see. I'll be excited.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I don't know if I'll be tempted to upgrade my M1 Max Mac Studio because it's it's so good. Like, my M1 Max Mac Studio is it never slows down, never gives me any issues, so I really don't need to upgrade it. But an M3 Ultra, that would be very nice. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't know what you would do with
Stephen Robles:all that power, but record this podcast Yeah. At the same speed that we do now.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I I do feel like you do need something to not keep up with my bandwidth. With. That's where at that point now, I am no longer the limiting factor. I I I do I realize that what I should have said about WWDC is that I'm not coming unless Steven can also come so we can record our podcast live.
Jason Aten:That's what I should have said. So thank you for
Stephen Robles:your service.
Jason Aten:Hook us up, Apple.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Now, speaking of Apple, there's a lot of suits going on. Obviously, as per usual, as soon as we were done recording last week, Jason literally predicted on the show, you were like, within minutes, Apple's gonna be officially sued by the DOJ, and it happened. Yep. And so that was right.
Stephen Robles:And so every other podcast has now covered that. But I just wanna mention it briefly because you had a good article about it, and we could talk about kind of the highlights of it. But there's other lawsuits going on, namely Apple is suing a former employee over leaking information. Now I find this interesting. I'm gonna make a prediction who I think he actually this leaker was talking to, but this was reported by MacRumors.
Stephen Robles:Andrew Audie? I don't know if that's how you pronounce it or Aud. Apple is suing former employee, Andrew Aud, seeking damages in excess of $25,000 where the lawsuit alleges that over a 5 year period, Odd used his Apple issued work iPhone to leak information about more than half a dozen Apple products and policies, including its then unannounced journal app and Vision Pro headset, which I can see Apple will be pretty mad about the Vision Pro leaking. So I find this interesting. Apparently, he sent over 1400 messages to the same journalist through signal who ought to refer to as Homeboy.
Stephen Robles:Now now there's not there's not that many, like, reputable leakers anymore. Like, if you discount, like, all the random Twitter leakers and stuff. Right. And so who I don't have no information on this. It doesn't say who he was communicating with.
Stephen Robles:Obviously, it's through signal. But homeboy, I think it might be Prosser. But anyway, I think he was he was
Jason Aten:yeah. Well, it does say that I mean, it does make the connection that he was using it to con connect to to communicate with the journalists at The Wall Street Journal on a phone call. And then that same month, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was named in that story published a report on it. So I I took it as that that's who they were refer that that's who they're saying he talked to. And I have interesting feelings about this because I don't not think that reporters should report on things that they're given by people who from inside companies.
Jason Aten:But it does get kinda weird when what you're reporting on is nonpublic information that isn't, like, malicious. Right? Like, do we I don't know. I feel weird about I mean, yeah, as a as a someone who likes Apple and likes products that they make, I always wanna know what's coming, but that doesn't I don't know. It's strange.
Jason Aten:It's I'm not saying don't send me stuff. I'm just saying I do sort of feel weird about, like, for I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, Apple should have definitely sued this guy. And also, why are you using your work phone? I mean, that's the come on. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, I think the thing we've learned, if nothing else is like, why why would you use your work device? You don't own it. And, yes, the company can a 100% do what they want with it to get the information. Like, I don't know. This was a very poorly planned heist.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. This was not Ocean's 11. Danny and Osho would
Jason Aten:not have
Stephen Robles:done it this way. No. I I do find it strange to use a work device. Apparently, when the employee, I guess, thought he was gonna be caught or whatever, he tried, like, deleting a bunch of messages in, like, the bathroom at Apple Park, I guess, like, another day.
Jason Aten:Which is where you go when you're about to get caught, apparently.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. That's what they do in the movies. But yeah. That yeah.
Stephen Robles:Don't use your work iPhone at Apple given to you by Apple to send leaks about Apple. Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. As but, you know, curious.
Stephen Robles:And, obviously, we don't know who this might be, but Mark Gurman is still probably one of the most well sourced leakers. And we don't refer to him as a leaker a lot because he writes for Bloomberg, you know, a very well established journal.
Jason Aten:Mark Gurman. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But he's leaking, like, stuff. And so he must be receiving this information one way or another. And Apple's taking, you know, measures when they discover these leakers internally. So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I I not that I worry, but, like, I want these guys gotta be concerned about their job, I imagine, if they keep publishing leaks. I mean, Mark Urban might have multiple sources. I don't know. But it just seems like a risky proposition.
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. No. I would agree that it it's you yeah. It is from a reporter standpoint, like and Mark Gurman is generally and even in this case, the story that they referenced in the Wall Street Journal wasn't some sort of you know, it was a journaling app, which was the, like, the first story that they referenced in here. This is not, like, top secret futuristic stuff.
Jason Aten:And I will say that there are times, it doesn't seem like this is the case here, and I'm not saying this about specifically Apple, that companies will use those relationships to seed stories that they want to get out. Right? I don't think there's been a Google Pixel device that's been announced be without being leaked first in the last, I don't know, 5 years.
Stephen Robles:I think Google is just straight leaking them first.
Jason Aten:That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't think I think they're like, well, no. And we'll pay attention if we just announce it. But if we leak it, they'll cover that. So let's leak it first and then announce it.
Jason Aten:So That
Stephen Robles:is true. That's funny. I was speaking of the other lawsuit. It was official last week on Thursday. And let me just say the one time we record on a Friday, no news breaks on Thursday.
Stephen Robles:This week we record on Friday. Doesn't, you know, is there any news?
Jason Aten:I'm pretty sure iPads are coming at 1 o'clock today, just so that you know.
Stephen Robles:Now, okay. Well, now that you just said it, I'm just gonna throw it in right here because I was so upset. Speaking of Mark Gurman, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg said iPads are not gonna be coming till May. We're gonna have to wait till May for new iPads.
Jason Aten:This reminds me, isn't the what is it? Motel 6, which is like, we'll leave the light on? I just picture Steven has been sitting on his front porch with the light on waiting for the new iPads to show up for, like, weeks. And it's like, Steven, you gotta go back inside. Come back out.
Stephen Robles:Oh, no. It's like the meme of the guy, like, sitting on a park bench, standing staring off in the distance. Yeah. That's been me. And now it's just a skeleton because there's no iPads coming anytime soon.
Stephen Robles:No. That's fine. Soon. And I'll I'll just wait, which I wanna talk about in the bonus episode this week briefly. I visited the Apple Tower Theater store here in Los Angeles.
Stephen Robles:Yep. And it was very cool. Have you been to that one?
Jason Aten:I have not. I'm a little bit jealous. I
Stephen Robles:It's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. So, anyway, we'll we'll talk about that. I'm also gonna do a vlog about it. I did videos.
Stephen Robles:And I have to say, well, I'll I'll talk about it in the bonus episode, but the employees were very suspicious as I was walking around filming, talking.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because no one's ever done that before in an Apple Store. I mean, come on. I mean, Steven's done it before in an Apple Store.
Stephen Robles:I did. Yeah. And I was like, I thought Apple Tower Theater of all Apple Stores, like, their grand open. But I guess, you know, these people might not have been there for the opening, but, like, I Justine had a video about it to Brian Tom. Like, I am not the first, but Right.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I got some funny looks. But, anyway Can
Jason Aten:we go back to the DOJ suit for just a second? Okay.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. That's where I'm going. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Okay. Great. So I just wanted to throw. So one thing I would suggest because I don't think it's worth recapping the whole thing because it's been done a bunch of times since here. That was just our bad timing.
Jason Aten:I'm gonna write another piece about it because I have some additional thoughts, but I would just direct people if they wanna hear a very good back and forth on the sort of legal versus practical sides of this. One of Ben Thompson's podcast is called Sharp Tech. I think you probably have to subscribe to his holster tech remodeling model to get it. He does it with a guy named Andrew Sharp, and Andrew Sharp is a lawyer. And kinda go back and forth about the legal parts of it and and the the takeaway, which has kind of helped me to form where you know, where I stand on this is that, like, the DOJ picks some really weird things to sue Apple over.
Jason Aten:Right? The thing everyone cares about, the only thing anyone cares about is the App Store. Right? That's the thing people care about. And this lawsuit is not about the App Store store at all.
Jason Aten:Right? Anybody who has a beef with Apple right now is upset because, you know, you can't subscribe to Spotify in the app because it's like they don't have a link because Apple would charge them 30 percent 30% commission. At the same time, Apple has Apple Music, which competes directly with Spotify. Like, those are all the things that are just like, people get may get mad about. The problem is and you have to imagine the people at the DOJ right now are just so mad at Epic because Epic decided to pick that fight and lost.
Jason Aten:And so now it's, like, settled law. Like, Apple, you know, Apple will tell you that 3 courts in the last 3 years have said that Apple's business model is legal. Like, they will just tell you that. They will let you know that we our business model now the question is, should they continue to hold on to it so so tightly? Because and this is the point Ben Thompson was making is because of the App Store, because of all the enemies Apple has made, now what the DOJ is actually attacking is their vertical integration.
Jason Aten:Right? Like Apple for years has just talked about how they build software and hardware and services that all go together. Right? And their famous three word, like, tagline has always been, it just works. And the fact that it just works is the types of things where, you know, you can copy something on your Mac and you can paste it on your iPhone, or you can drag your cursor off of your screen of your Mac, and it'll just go on to your iPad.
Jason Aten:Or, you know, you your iCloud, most of the time, just works. Or you could pair a new Apple Watch to your phone by, like, holding the little thing up to, you know, the swirly little whatever happened. And then all of your stuff is just there. It just works. And you've probably had the same experience.
Jason Aten:You can tell your parents, just go buy an iPhone. It'll just be fine. It'll work. You don't you'll have to call me less often for help. Right?
Jason Aten:But now that's where the DOJ is going. The the the the Apple Watch was one of the specific things that they called out as you design the Apple Watch in a way that if people buy an iPhone and buy an Apple Watch, they're less likely to switch because that Apple watch won't work with Android. And so I don't know if the DOJ is gonna win, but if they do, I don't think things are gonna be much better for Apple users specifically because what they're trying to break apart is that integration.
Stephen Robles:So I'm gonna put 2 articles in the show notes. 1 is Jason's article, and he has a great part down, at the bottom, really, the 5 points that the DOJ is bringing against Apple, cloud gaming services, the NFC chip in the iPhone for digital wallet payments. As you know, right now, if you wanna pay for something, you can put your bank, a debit card, or whatever in your Apple Wallet, and then you can use Apple Pay for that. But the DOJ is suing because they believe, like, Wells Fargo or whatever should be able to use, like, tap to pay outside of Apple's Wallet app, which there's security ramifications there. You know, Apple's using the secure enclave, generating a random number every time you do Apple Pay.
Stephen Robles:So there's a bunch of stuff, like, a bunch of details I imagine will come out in the court case eventually. The super apps thing, I think, is kind of silly. I mean, the only app trying to be this in the US is X by Elon Musk, and it is not that at all right now. This is super apps are typically like, WeChat in China, where you use that app for everything, like paying bills, you know, sending money back and forth, communicating, whatever. So we don't really have super apps in the US, so that's a little strange.
Stephen Robles:But the argument is that Apple's, restrictions has prevented the innovation of super apps. Although, ironically, I've heard this on several podcasts, anytime a company, say, Meta, tried shoveling a bunch of stuff into a single app, people don't like it and they eventually break it out. Right. Which is why you have, like, Facebook Messenger as a standalone app. You have WhatsApp as a standalone app, Instagram, Facebook, threads.
Stephen Robles:Like, it also might just be a cultural thing. Like, Americans would probably maybe prefer more standalone, like, isolated experiences. But anyway, 3rd party messaging apps, obviously, SMS, which is kind of weird because RCS is gonna be coming to iPhone very soon, probably in the next year. And the Which
Jason Aten:the lawsuit completely ignores. The lawsuit doesn't mention that. It also ignores the fact that they that Apple is now allowing cloud streaming services, cloud gaming streaming services, and that Apple has opened up the NFC chip in the EU. So, like, it ignores all of those things.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And, again, none of us are lawyers. Jason reads more law than I do. I did read, like, the PDF. You can read the court case.
Stephen Robles:You know, it's public. Sure thing. I'll put a link to the PDF in the show notes too. One of the things I find interesting, and this was on the ATP podcast, John Sirakusa made this distinction. If you look at what the EU has done with the Digital Markets Act, that was not a court case to try and convict Apple of guilt that they did something wrong.
Stephen Robles:That was passing laws to change how Apple has to function in the EU. This is a court case where the DOJ is trying to prove that Apple broke the law with something they did, this is not necessarily establishing new law to change how Apple functions in the future, which might be part of what the judge or jury, however this court case comes out in the end, it might result in that, but it feels a little backwards. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but it feels a little backwards like maybe the DOJ or the US government should have tried to enact or pass laws to change what it would find, like the DMA, like the Digital Markets Act in in Europe, rather than trying to do a court case to convict Apple of guilt in breaking the law. So I don't know. I again, not a lawyer.
Jason Aten:Well, let me let me just so just for our listeners, in case you don't listen to as many podcasts as Steven and I as I do, which would be a normal thing. Like, we it it's good for you. Like, I mean that sincerely. Yeah. That the the DOJ is suing Apple under a law that at this point is a 134 years old.
Jason Aten:The Sherman Sherman Antitrust Act, which was started for, like, railroads and oil companies. Right? And the first thing that they have to do is prove that Apple has a monopoly. And they have said that Apple's monopoly is in a category called performance smartphones. I don't know, Steven, if you know what performance smartphones are.
Jason Aten:I it's just a thing they made up and they made it up. The other thing that they did is they're doing it based on revenue. So Apple, they're saying, has 70% of the revenue in this category they made up. Again, not a lawyer. I feel weird that we have to keep saying that.
Jason Aten:Just we're not lawyers. We should just put that on our our show, you know, the the show thing or whatever. Like It's a tagline. We just need to make it clear. And and sorry.
Jason Aten:So take this for a grain of salt, but this is just common sense. And that and I looked because I had heard several people say this, but that revenue is not how they define market share. The you know, if you have a monopoly, it's not based on because on how much revenue the percentage of revenue you have in a given market, it's based on the total, like, units or or how that you know, however that pays off. So the total number of iPhones Apple has a larger share of the revenue because it does charge more for, like you know, Pixel is less expensive than maybe, an iPhone. But if it's, like, $800 versus $600 for the same like, the same number of people bought one.
Jason Aten:It's just Apple made more money off of it. That's not doesn't give you more of a monopoly just because people are more willing to pay a larger amount if the same number of people are actually buying them. And so the DOJ, as far as I understand, has to first prove that Apple has a monopoly and then it that it is leveraging that monopoly power in order to push out competition. Because it's legal for a company to push out competition. Like, that's what companies do.
Jason Aten:Right? If you open a bakery, you don't want someone opening one next door. You would just try to, like, not have that happen. But if you own all the bakeries, you can't then try to squash the one bakery that's trying to trying to trying to open.
Stephen Robles:So The performance smartphone category specifically, like, irks me because it's like, if you are arguing that only performance smartphones can do these things like cloud gaming or super apps or integrate with a smartwatch, like, that's just apparently not true. Like, you could buy a refurbished iPhone SE for, like, 300 something dollars Yep. And you have the exact same operating system as an iPhone 15 Pro Max and arguably could do all the same things. And cloud game gaming of all things has no bearing on the performance of the hardware on your device, except for maybe Internet speed.
Jason Aten:Or refresh rate of your display. Maybe. Like, maybe.
Stephen Robles:But, like, to to make that distinction is clearly just to peg Apple and, like, to paint Apple in a more negative light. There is no, like, basis in reality when it comes to this performance smartphone category. And I've been following Walt Mossberg, who's a longtime journalist, has covered Apple. I interviewed Steve Jobs many times. He did the All Things d conference with Kara Swisher, Swisher.
Stephen Robles:And again, Jobs was there multiple times, but he's had multiple threads. I'm gonna put this one in the show notes. And he does a really good job, like, kind of going back in time and talking about the reason why the iPhone was so innovative and how it actually broke apart some of the monopolistic tendencies, especially of things like wireless carriers, when it launched. And if you remember, the iPhone just launched. It was Xyngular back then, which then came with AT and T.
Stephen Robles:But the CEO came out, and the announcement was the iPhone will be exclusively on Xyngular, And Steve Jobs and Apple did that because Xyngular was the only carrier that was willing to have the iPhone and not have any say in what was on the phone. Because back then, carriers were extremely granular of, like, you know, putting apps or bloatware or whatever, and the smartphone makers just didn't have the same kind of freedom that they do now largely, ironically, because of that Apple, when they launched the iPhone. And so Walt Mossberg, you know, he's retired now. You know, he's not really covering things, but his threads have been great, about this, talking also about the 30% cut and how that was revolutionary because, honestly, carriers were taking large cuts back then, from the developers and things like that. So, anyway, I was putting a couple of his threads in the show notes, but this is also gonna be multi years.
Stephen Robles:Like, this is not gonna be resolved anytime soon. This is not gonna change anything anytime soon. This could be like 5, 10 years. You know, the verge we're like doing under or over for 2030, like 6 years from now. It's gonna be a long time before anything comes of this.
Stephen Robles:I think one of the most interesting things will be the emails that come out, like Apple execs. You know, because we've had emails come out in the past where they're like, we don't wanna put Imessage on Android because it gives people an easier option out. So, you know, we can see something like that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So the lesson here is don't use Imessage on your work phone and don't use email. Right? Like, that's what we've learned today on the podcast.
Stephen Robles:That's it. Yeah. They should just that'd be all those Apple execs. They should just have one big Imessage group chat. Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:Yeah? Let's do that. Then it's not it's never gonna come out because it's double end to end encrypted. They got the the crypto, whatever that was that came out in 17.4, the quantum quantum security.
Jason Aten:That's true. Of course, if the company owns the device and then they get they get subpoenaed for it, then the company has to hit over the device. So then you have one of the ends. But anyway,
Stephen Robles:one one tangential article, I want to mention to The Wall Street Journal, their profile on Phil Shiller. You know, he was an Apple Fellow. He was, I think, kind of stepping back from some of his, responsibilities at Apple. But now with all of this App Store, the DMA in the Europe, and then now this case in the DOJ, Phil Schiller's coming back with a vengeance and really trying in, defending Apple and being out there. Supposedly, he's working, like, 80 hours a week now because of all of this stuff.
Stephen Robles:And so I I think it's interesting that they're still leaning on Phil Schiller. I mean, obviously, he has the years of experience. He can speak to things like the original iPhone launch and some of the stuff that they had to deal with then. He's he's gonna be getting a whole whatever 3rd wind, which he's been at he's been with Apple since like 1987 or something like that. He left in the nineties for a little while then came back with Steve Jobs
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:And then was at Apple for like 30 something years after that. He's been with Apple for a long time and it seems like he's about to have, like, a third, section of his career with Apple now in the courts. That's gonna be the last stage of his career with Apple.
Jason Aten:Yeah, we really appreciate how much work you did to launch all of these killer products that everyone loves. Now we would like you to come back and just do this. But Defend apple. Yeah. There was this quote in that article that you have on the screen there.
Jason Aten:We talked about how Cook, often just allows the people who work for him to just handle their area of responsibility and how he just defers to Shiller on a lot of the app store matters. And I thought that it's interesting. You know, this is one of those people familiar with the matter kind of quote. So somebody somebody wanna make it very clear that if you're mad about the app store, you're mad at Phil Shiller. You're not mad at Tim Cook.
Jason Aten:Like somebody wanted like, that was that was placed there for very important. And, you know, we had that email that Tim, or that Phil Schiller sent to Tim Sweeney over the epic rejection of their developer certificate. And it's pretty clear that, like, nope. That was Schiller's email. Right?
Jason Aten:That was not Tim Cook said email this guy. We don't want him in here. That was like Schiller woke up in the morning, saw the list of new developer certificates. He's like, uh-uh. We're not doing this again.
Jason Aten:These people, they're not coming into our app store. And it's I mean, for better or worse, whatever you think of Phil Shiller, who was a genius of product marketing, like, the current state of the App Store is his. Now I don't think that that absolves Tim Cook because Tim Cook is the one who sets the direction. And if if Phil Schiller is making poor decisions about developer relations and how he is choosing to be less than gracious with developers, I do still think that that comes back to Tim Cook, which was the point of the article I wrote. Like Right.
Jason Aten:Tim Cook is missing the most important thing, which is you could have avoided all of this if you'd had just been a little bit more reasonable with people. Like, think about this. I mean this sincerely. What if Apple had just said a year ago, fine. Games, 30%, everybody else, 10%.
Jason Aten:That's it. 10% just 10 they would have lost $0 probably. That that article you you referenced mentioned that when they cut the developer fee for the small business program to 50%, they lost, like, 0% revenue. Like, it didn't change. Right?
Jason Aten:It it was insignificant. But if they would have just done that, they would have had a very little change, and nobody's gonna argue that skins in, you know, some video game. It's just it's fungible. Like, it's it's there's no cost involved there. So I I think that they could have just avoided so much if they had just been like, you know what?
Jason Aten:Forget it. We don't we don't need we don't need 30% or 15% even from Spotify and Netflix. And I don't know, maybe Netflix would have come back for temporary. Like there is a value to having access. Maybe not Netflix because they don't really need the App Store.
Jason Aten:They have 250,000,000 subscribers. But there's a whole lot of it. Like, I bet you that Kindle would probably let you buy books. Like, I don't I don't know. I just feel like there's a there's a there's a dollar amount or a percentage, excuse me, that they could have solved a lot of this for sure.
Stephen Robles:Well, as it develops and more news comes out, we'll be covering it here on the show. And speaking of Kindle and Amazon, I don't know if you saw this.
Jason Aten:See, I just thought you were
Stephen Robles:gonna have this good transition. Apparently, Amazon 1 is launching an app where you can sign up for its palm recognition service. You know, if you would have posted this on April 1st, I would have thought it would be an April fools like article. It's just seems it's kind of bizarre. I think this is for correct me if I'm wrong, but, like, Amazon has a few, like, physical locations Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Where you can, like, go and shop and it basically intelligently, sees the products that you're taking and then will charge it to your Amazon account basically upon leaving. It's not like the normal checkout experience. Right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So, basically, these are stores. Amazon Go is I think what they're called. And you can walk in, and you can scan a QR code on the app. And, basically, it just watches you with cameras and whatever you take off the shelf and leave with, you just get charged.
Jason Aten:But not only can you scan the QR code, you can just scan your palm, which is the creepiest thing I could possibly imagine. I don't want my palm print at Amazon. Now I'm not suggesting Amazon. It's like, what good is my palm print if it gets gets leaked? It's not like your Social Security number, but I still don't think it's
Stephen Robles:one of your will be leaked.
Jason Aten:I mean, what would you do with it except for buy stuff at an Amazon go store? And there's, like, 5 of them, and you have to, like, be like, come on. If you if you need the groceries that bad, I'll be happy to just cut the check for you. It's a
Stephen Robles:good spot. I guess I'm just wondering, like, why we needed another weird biometric authentication when we already have like touch ID, face ID. You know, you can do funny things like Windows PCs will have facial recognition that's not like face ID where the whole, like, scanning the dots on your face and reading depth, but just kind of more like camera driven. So I don't know why we need some kind of, like, astrological palm reading, for, like, unlocking our Amazon One account. But I agree.
Stephen Robles:That's strange. So that was the that was the Amazon thing. And then this happened last week after we recorded too but threads is now in the Fediverse. And so if you're on threads here in the US, this is a beta feature, but you can go to threads is like newsroom articles, like, pretty bad. They basically just like keep adding text to this announcement of threads' launch back in last July.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's like there's no there's no straight link to the announcement about the Fediverse. I don't know. Like, yeah, this is not a great way to explain.
Jason Aten:They just must want the same permalink. It's gotta be the reason. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I guess it's strange. Anyway, so this was, March 21st. Activitypub, which is the open source Fediverse integration. You can now, if you're here in the US, turn on the beta metaverse posting on threads. So I did it immediately, when it was launched.
Stephen Robles:And, basically, what it means is that your threads account and posts to threads will be available to users anywhere in the metaverse, namely services like Mastodon. So let's say you're on Mastodon, you have mastodon dot social account, or maybe even set up your own server for Mastodon. Now you can follow threads accounts that have federized federated. I don't know why I couldn't it couldn't make it work. Federated.
Stephen Robles:So you could follow, like, my threads account. So at Steven Robles at threads.net. You can follow in Mastodon. You can search in Ivory, the Mastodon client, and find my threads profile there. And whenever I post to threads now, including replies, like I at mentioned somebody and that showed up too, those posts will be sent to the fediverse, and you you can read them, wherever you want in, like, your Mastodon client or other federated social networks in the future.
Stephen Robles:This is a one way thing to keep in mind. Replies may eventually be able to go backwards, meaning if some like, if you reply to one of my federated posts in Mastodon, I eventually, one day, not today, should see that reply, like, in my threads app when I go to my notifications, and then we should be able to communicate that way. But right now, it's really just one way, and this does not mean you'll be able to sign in to your threads or meta account in an app like Ivory and scroll your followers in threads. Like, that is not, what threads is trying to do. There is a bit of a, like, lock in.
Stephen Robles:Like, threads wants you to use the threads app if you want to see posts from people on threads. And so this is really just to you know, for someone like me, I have, like, a 1000 something followers on Mastodon, but almost 7,000 on threads. And so, like, for me and I asked because I was curious what people were gonna do. Do I just, you know, post on threads? It gets sent to Mastodon.
Stephen Robles:They would have to follow a new account, but I think you can also merge accounts with Mastodon sometimes in a certain way. I don't know if it'll work with this, but, anyway, it's gonna be a little confusing for a while. But bottom line, this is like the first time that a social I'll say platform, but it's more of a social, like, back end allows someone to see posts from a person on their platform of choice wherever the original poster did it. So you could see my thread post in your Mastodon app because of the fediverse. And maybe this is the future of social media?
Jason Aten:Are you bullish on this? It's not the future of social media. I'm gonna say that right now.
Stephen Robles:Well, there is.
Jason Aten:Here's the thing. Most of the people listening Yeah. Stopped listening a minute or 2 ago. And it's not your fault. It's just that this is so cool and nobody cares.
Jason Aten:Right? The the thing I found, like, over and over no. They would have come into thirds on this. There's, like, not that many of them that care that much about this. And here's what I mean.
Jason Aten:So I kept seeing the other day, and I I tried to, like, find one of the posts on threads where people were talking about, like, oh, so I went over to see how many of the people, you know, on threads have turned on Federation and, like, only, like, 20 of the people who follow me on master. Right. Because threads is like one step more nerd than Instagram and Instagram is as normie as it gets. Come on. Like, it is the text version of Instagram and nobody using Instagram.
Jason Aten:No one, like, less than 1 tenth of 1% of the people using it because there's, like, a1000000000 of them. Right? 2,000,000,000 care about any of this stuff. I think it's very cool that they're doing it. I don't think it's gonna matter for a very long time other than is, like, an academic thing because it's, like all think about what you're just saying.
Jason Aten:It's gonna be confusing for a while because you're not gonna be able to get replies for now, but you can get replies. But if you do this, then you can merge your accounts maybe because in some places, master lets you do. And and a lot of people are like, wait, what is even mastodon? Like, that's I I've just I like, I'm not I have a mastodon. Yeah.
Jason Aten:When's the last time I used it? I don't remember.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I don't even know. I've never seen you post on it. I don't think.
Jason Aten:I yeah. Like, I used it for the 1st 3 days when it became a thing when everyone was leaving Twitter, and then I was like, well, no one I know is here. So, like, goodbye.
Stephen Robles:Well, let us know if you care by leaving us a 5 star rating and review an Apple Podcasts. And you could say I love the fediverse.
Jason Aten:You can email the other guy. It's totally fine.
Stephen Robles:I do think it's interesting. I listened to, Nilay Patel's decoder episode where he interviewed the Blue Sky CEO. You know, and they're trying to do it's a different protocol, so it's not interoperable with ActivityPub. Ironically, like, someone tried to build a bridge between ActivityPub and whatever Blue Sky uses, and ActivityPub people got, like, mad about it because they were like, which is
Jason Aten:You know, we want it everywhere, but we want it our way. Right? We want we're the most open walled garden that there is.
Stephen Robles:So it's so strange. So I don't know. Anyway, leave us a 5 star rating review. You could just say, I love the fediverse, and, that'll let Jason know that he
Jason Aten:But only do it if you if you actually really mean it and you actually like, I'm not opposed to it. I don't think, like, I think it's great. I think it's good that Metta is, is participating in this way a 100%. Like I turned it on. I turned on the federation.
Jason Aten:I just don't think most people care. Even people who listen to tech podcast, the people who do tech podcasts care. But the people who listen to them for the most part are like, crap. Crap. Do I have to figure out another thing?
Jason Aten:The answer is no. You don't have to figure out another thing. If you are happy with threads, just be happy. It's good. It'll be fine.
Stephen Robles:So you can leave a 5 star rating review. You could say, I love the fediverse, or I don't care about the fediverse. You could do it either way. That'll be the next the vote. Like, battery percentage on or off.
Stephen Robles:And we'll see what everybody says. Alright. I was talking about some weird Apple privacy settings, and then we have some other articles out. And we do wanna get I wanna get to the Disney logo redesign.
Jason Aten:Please keep
Stephen Robles:those redesign. But I just wanna take a moment and thank all of our supporters who support us directly through Apple Podcasts and through Memberful. They get a bonus episode every week. This week, they're gonna get a bonus episode about my visit to the Apple Tower Theatre store and so if you wanna listen to that episode, you can also access the entire back catalog of bonus episodes immediately when you support the show. You can do a free trial if you would like just to listen to a couple episodes, see if it's something you'd like to sign up for.
Stephen Robles:So you can go to Apple Podcast directly and and subscribe there. $5 a month to $50 a year supporting the show that way, or go to primary tech dot f m. You can support the show through Memberful, and you can listen in any podcast app you would like. Same price, $5 a month or $50 a year. And your direct support really means a lot for the show.
Stephen Robles:And if you can't do that, we just love that you listen. You can go subscribe to the YouTube channel, youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. And, of course, leave us that 5 star rating and review. I know some of you leave, like, multiple 5 star ratings and reviews because you, like, keep on participating in the in the thing, in the, like, questions that we're asking. So I do wanna figure out, you know, I don't know if there's some kind of other community type method.
Stephen Robles:I don't wanna do Discord. I don't like Discord. But some other I don't know. We gotta think about a way we can interact.
Jason Aten:As long as it's federated, that's fine.
Stephen Robles:We will only interact in the fediverse even though replies don't go backwards.
Jason Aten:That's not the same thing I just said, but I actually do like that. There are people who keep updating their review. It's kind of like the meta post that you just shared. It's like my review just keeps getting updated because I wanna participate. I I
Stephen Robles:love ads. Ticks the top. And it's fine. I love it. Keep doing it.
Stephen Robles:We'll just keep we'll keep giving you shout outs. That's cool. So we thank you those who support the show who don't hear this because if they get an ad free version and this section gets cut out, but thank you who will support the show this week and access those bonus episodes. We appreciate you. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Now I wanted to mention this because Joanna Stern had an article about it. Gruber shared it. And I actually did a video on it, which I shamelessly, tweeted at Gruber or posted on threads at Gruber's. See if he links it. But there's a setting this was prompted by the Apple Journal app, so in iOS 17, there's a setting that people are slowly discovering, which is the discoverable by others setting in, your iPhone settings now with iOS 17.
Stephen Robles:And this is discoverable by others. It looks like this over here. It is specifically for the Apple Journal app suggestions, meaning, let's say you went with friends to the Apple Store Tower Theater, and you all took some pictures. Well, if they're in your contacts and the journal app sees that you're in the same location, you're taking pictures of the same location, the journal app will offer suggestions, and it offers suggestions in all kinds of ways music, podcasts you listened to, places you went, and the discoverable by others means your contacts, and that's the specific point is it's really just your contacts discoverable by others. They can see the photos that you took or they could see like, oh, it looks like you went to Apple Tower Theater with so and so.
Stephen Robles:Do you want to journal about it? And that's what that discover by others toggle is about. You can toggle that off. I'll leave it on because I do use the Apple Journal app and I like seeing suggestions like that, but I want to mention I have a whole video about some of the weird privacy settings that you find in just buried deep in the iPhone. Things like significant locations, which you have no control to see what those significant locations are.
Stephen Robles:You could see information about the, nearby interactions. And I talk about, like, lockdown mode, stuff like that. But there's also, Apple's advertising settings, which I find really interesting. Like, I didn't know this data was in your iPhone where you could access. And Apple tracks some things to basically serve you ads in things like the App Store or maybe in things like Apple News.
Stephen Robles:And it actually, like, puts you in buckets. So it'll say like it looks like you like these kinds of movies or you listen to this kind or you read these kinds of books. And you can actually see in the settings app on your iPhone what buckets Apple has placed you in. And so you can see right here, if you go to the, settings for these kind of advertising on your iPhone, I've been placed in the movie buckets of action and adventure, drama, kids and family, sci fi and fantasy, which to be honest, yes. Those are the buckets that I should be placed in if you're going to serve me ads.
Stephen Robles:And I just I think it's interesting you could see this data. You can also turn this off on your iPhone if you don't want Apple to do any kind of tracking or putting you in any buckets for ads. But these settings are there, and so if you wanna learn about that, I'm gonna put a link to this video. I did the headline more for clicks, but creepy iPhone privacy settings and what they mean. I'll actually link every Apple support article that talks about each of these privacy settings in the video description if you wanna read what Apple says about them specifically.
Stephen Robles:So privacy.
Jason Aten:I I didn't know that that I didn't I saw the article. I, apparently just don't care that much. If you wanna know where I'm at, I'm right here. Well, you you got a Ethernet just across the lawn. I do.
Jason Aten:It's very obvious where I am right now. I have a trail leading to the house.
Stephen Robles:I don't know anything. I like one of those pictures that you send me. I'll make it the chapter art, but, your dog is, like, posed very, estately in the background. I couldn't
Jason Aten:get her to move, and I just said, forget it. You can be in the picture. It's totally fine.
Stephen Robles:That's funny. Alright. Real quick. Let me do some, quick topics, and then, we'll get to the personal tech of how we feel about the Disney plus logo. So 6 colors MLB, had their opening day, which Apple has, you know, the MLB Friday night baseball thing.
Stephen Robles:And so Jason Snell, he's, like, the, Apple tech pundit who's all about baseball. Do you like baseball? I know you like
Jason Aten:We like baseball. Yeah. I mean, I don't watch nearly as many baseball games because there's a lot of them every year. But we like it. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Well, there was a big, Apple Vision Pro push because you're supposedly there's a better viewing experience. We're watching these MLB games in Apple Vision Pro, and Jason Snow had a write up about it. Basically, it wasn't great. It did not go well. Like, it just wasn't a good experience.
Stephen Robles:It was kinda buggy. And, also, just yesterday, March 28th, Apple supposedly released a a a new immersive video showing the MLS, the soccer, I think championship or something from last year. It's like a 5 minute video, and it's the first new immersive video content for Applevision Pro since launch, like, 3 months ago, which I think is saying something. You know, it's just not a lot of immersive content being released. This was also an event filmed months ago, so maybe it takes a long time to put this together.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, not, not great.
Jason Aten:No. And they kind of pumped this up. Right? Like, they basically bought MLS, like, the whole soccer. They just bought the whole thing in and the whole video is 5:5 minute 5 minutes long.
Jason Aten:Like, I feel like if you buy the whole thing, you probably could have come up with some more footage than just 5 minutes.
Stephen Robles:The immersive content is cool. Like I've watched several you know I've watched them all because there's only like 4 things you can watch right now.
Jason Aten:Because they're only 7 minutes long. It doesn't take you very long.
Stephen Robles:Long. You do it.
Jason Aten:I'm a bunch of time.
Stephen Robles:It's awesome. You know, the dinosaur things? Really cool. The rhinos, you feel like they're coming up on you. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But there's just not a lot of content. Oh, it's not You
Jason Aten:can only have so many rhinos.
Stephen Robles:There's so many rhinos. I wanna mention this, Canva, which is the kind of the web app for making graphics, a lot of social media posts. They also have AI tools. They've acquired Afiniti, which is a suite of apps. I don't know if it was cross platform, or was it just, like, iPad and iPhone for you, seriously?
Jason Aten:It was I I think they were available on well, they're definitely available on the Mac, and I think they're also on Windows.
Stephen Robles:I'm almost positive.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:So With the Affinity Suite, they had, like, photo editing. I think there was, like, document style editing, like, InDesign style stuff, like, from the Adobe Suite. And so Canva has acquired Affinity. And, you know, there's a reaction online about this, namely, like, well, Canva's gonna make all this a subscription thing. And one of the nice things about the Affinity Suite is it was one of the few still one time purchase, like, creative software suites where you could just buy it outright and then use it forever.
Stephen Robles:I said there's a bunch of people, like, buying the current Afiniti license with the hopes that they could just use it forever and not pay a subscription later, so that would be nice. But I do think it's a little I don't know if sad is the right word, but consolidation of tools like this, I feel like, is sometimes not the best. Like, I I like having some independent tools for things, and the one in my mind, of course, is Pixelmator. Like, I would be sad if Pixelmator ever got acquired like Affinity did here. Like, I love Pixelmator.
Stephen Robles:I use it on my Mac. That's what I use to make all the thumbnails and artwork for this show, for my YouTube channel. I use it on my phone, and it's a great standalone app, and it's a great alternative rather than paying Adobe a subscription or some other service. And so I I hope there are still those standalone options long term. And, again, there's no word about Pixelmator would be acquired or anything like that, but I think this is just kind of indicative of Canva acquiring apps like this where, you know but also, Figma was Adobe almost acquired Figma last year, and I listened to that decoder episode too, and that did not go through.
Stephen Robles:And so, you know, maybe not all these services will be acquired. They can stand alone, but I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So 1 affinity has said that they will not, they will honor the licenses long term. They're not gonna only go to subscription. And so that's good. And Canva has said the same thing.
Jason Aten:This is actually the opposite of the Figma situation, right, where Adobe was gonna buy Figma. It's like now Canva is going to buy Affinity. And, Canva is like a $25,000,000,000 ish company. Like, they they just have to have growth. Like, then this is a way for them to acquire more users and to sort of fill in some holes.
Jason Aten:And so, I I mean, I'm not, like, really up in arms about it. I do think the affinity it's it's big. It's a great tool. And the best thing about it is you can pay for it once. I think it's on sale right now.
Jason Aten:Like, I don't know what the percentage of it is, but it's, like, a $114 and you get access to all of them. Like, listen. I would I'd do it.
Stephen Robles:It's a great it's a great tool. And I will say, like, Canva's a great tool too. They've added some, like, AI generative tools, and they're actually pretty useful. So Yep. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Just check it out. Alright. So here in our last personal tech before we get to the bonus episode, let's talk more about streaming services. You put this article in our notes, but 9 to 5 Mac was saying that Apple TV plus is the streaming platform with the highest rated content on IMDB, which, honestly, I totally get. I've watched more and more Apple TV plus content.
Stephen Robles:Masters of the Air? Have You see masters of the air yet?
Jason Aten:No. But we just finished watching shrinking, which is one of those shows that we loved, but that I feel weird about telling everyone that we love because I feel like I think it's a show people should watch, but I'm not sure I can recommend it to everyone that I know. But it's a great show. It's hilarious, especially. I just love that Harrison Ford is in a television show.
Jason Aten:It's just Yeah. It just makes me happy.
Stephen Robles:He's good in it. He's very, very He's he's really good. So this makes total sense. And I'll say as as I try to, like, as I try to find content to download, like, as I was on this trip, I really struggled just to find what stuff to watch. I was like, across all the streaming services, I think Apple TV plus is has the most that I would want to actually watch a series on or something like that.
Stephen Robles:And I think even more notably, doesn't make me want to open the app, is the new Disney plus color scheme, the most controversial streaming news of the year, which this is from Fast Company, but you could see this image everywhere. If you updated your Disney plus app, it's gone from the, I think, very Disney blue to this, teal gradient that I don't like. I don't like it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I I understand that. And a lot of people are ragging on this online. And I look at it from a marketing and branding perspective, and I think companies like to change their logos because I don't know if somebody gets bored in the c suite and is like, well, I know what we should do. Let's just make a new logo.
Jason Aten:But in this case, I actually think that there is a legitimate reason. Now I'm not saying that the new logo is better. Please, just wanna be clear about that. But the impetus for this is the fact that now Hulu is inside of the Disney plus app. Right?
Jason Aten:They've talked about doing this for a while, and it actually is in there. So now the Disney plus app is actually, like, different right now. They didn't rename it. They didn't go all max HBO max to max on us like that. It's not just called plus.
Jason Aten:Like, that's good. I'm glad that they didn't change the name, but I do think that, like, it is justified to make a change to a logo when something substantial about the business that a consumer is, you know, buying has changed. And in this case, like, there is an actual change. This version of Disney plus is different than the old version of Disney plus because you now get Hulu inside. I will tell you, I'll be really interested to see how Disney plus handles the they've said that they will be you'll be able to to block non kid friendly content from Hulu from showing up in kid profiles in Disney plus, which is a big deal because, like, Hulu has, like, FX shows and all that kind of stuff that you may not want your young children watching.
Jason Aten:And for a while, I wrote about this years ago, even if you had a kid safe profile and you had an ad free version of Hulu, Hulu didn't have the ability to turn off all of the ads. So sometimes you'd be watching, like, a show, a movie that was on, like, FX, and they would be showing you, ads for, like I don't remember what the name of that show was. It was like about a drug family or something like animal planet or something. Like, things you didn't want your kids to see. Like or American horror Show or whatever that like, it those ads would just pop up.
Jason Aten:So I'll be really interested to see if they're able to really, remove that kind of stuff from that content because that's not what you want from a kid platform like Disney Plus.
Stephen Robles:So I'm curious. I'm actually logging into the Disney Plus app on my iPad over here. I don't see, like, a Hulu category just yet. Is there a plan on Disney Plus that you have to upgrade to to get Hulu?
Jason Aten:So, it should be I I think, actually, yes. I think it's like if you subscribe to Disney Plus, it's something like $2 more for the Hulu content. However, my understanding was that it was supposed to just like, you should still see the tab. Although I have not tried to do it in the in the, in the iPhone app. I have we opened it on our television, and there's definitely a, Hulu tab right on there.
Jason Aten:I was gonna look on the phone. Oh, yeah. So if you open the Disney plus app, you should see the like, you know, you see Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Hulu right there. So I
Stephen Robles:don't know why I don't see that. On my iPad.
Jason Aten:Maybe maybe it isn't if you don't subscribe. Uh-huh. Or maybe you haven't updated on your iPhone I mean, your iPad. I
Stephen Robles:don't know. No. I have the I have the terrible, teal logo on my iPad.
Jason Aten:Oh, okay.
Stephen Robles:Creative. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Well, you just do you do you subscribe to Hulu?
Stephen Robles:I thought I did, so I'll have to check it later. Because I wanna see that, that show gun show. People are talking about show.
Jason Aten:Wanna check and make sure you paid your bill, bud. Sorry. I think No.
Stephen Robles:Why can't I ask you to do this stuff? Anyway, well, yeah, we'll see about that. Anyway, I I know it's I'm not really up in arms about it, but I did I did think their blue logo previously felt more Disney like. I guess that's my only
Jason Aten:I I I will agree with you on that. It did feel more like the the castle logo. You know? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:The castle
Jason Aten:logo. Exactly. I agree.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway alright. Well, I wanna get to, talking about the Apple Tower Theatre. That should be fun. So let us know. Would you like to hear it in our bonus episodes or how you feel about the Disney plus, app?
Stephen Robles:So you can you can talk about, how you feel about the fetaverse and how you feel about the Disney plus app, design change in your 5 star review in a podcast. What did you say?
Jason Aten:Well, I what was the thing we said at the top? There was I gave people very specific instructions for their 5 star review. Go back to the beginning and listen.
Stephen Robles:Go back to the yeah. Go back to the yeah.
Jason Aten:I can't remember what I said. I don't remember what I said.
Stephen Robles:Never mind. We'll see the reviews come in and we'll be reminded of what it was all about. Yeah. Don't forget, you could subscribe to the show at youtube.com/primarytechshow. You can watch us there.
Stephen Robles:Also have some short clips from there, that'll come during the week, and you can support to get the bonus episodes and an ad free version directly in Apple Podcast or at primary tech dot f m. I'll be back to my normal studio in fast bandwidth next week. Although the hotel Wi Fi, I gotta give it credit. It did pretty good.
Jason Aten:Yeah. You only froze, like, twice, so it's good.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. I didn't But the but
Jason Aten:the people watching this will never know because you didn't freeze because of the magic of river
Stephen Robles:That's right. Thank you. Thank you. That's exactly I'm I was here speaking on behalf of Riverside. So there you go.
Stephen Robles:There you go. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching, and, yes, we'll catch you next time.
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