Primary Technology

No matter what anybody tells you,

words and ideas can change the world.

Welcome to Primary Technology,

the show about the tech news that matters.

Apple apparently leaked their own stuff,

including AirPods with a camera and a demo
video.

We're gonna get into that plus the clawed
watermarking,

more details and some personal
experiences.

Disney is suing the FCC, saying we're not
gonna take it.

Robin Williams's family had to reactivate
his Instagram account

to fight AI-generated video and more.

This episode is brought to you by Claude
and you,

the members who support us directly.

I want to be your host, Stephen Robles,

and joined by my friend Jason Ayton.

How's it going, Jason?

It's been a very disorienting week,

Steven. But I'm here. This is the only
literally the only normal thing

on my schedule this week. And we started

Mm.

like however many minutes late anyway.

Well,

I'm glad we could this show could be the
rock in your week.

What ~ d I mean, can you tell our
listeners what's been disorienting about
this

yeah, we moved

week?

our daughter to college. If you follow me
on socials you already knew knew

The big deal.

that. But our oldest daughter moved into
her dorm on Tuesday.

They go she had to go early 'cause she's a
soccer player,

so

All right. Well congratulations,

first of all. And this is what you say,

Thank you. Yeah, I think so.
Congratulations,

right? I mean, my condolences,

I don't think

you've gotten that one out of the house.

She you we've

launched that little bird out of the nest,

and

Wow.

so far it seems like she can fly.

She has not fallen out of the sky yet.

Well you'll see. Remains to be seen.

Now speaking of college, today's quote No
matter what anybody tells you,

words and ideas can change the world.

Any idea what movie that is from?

Well, I was thinking it was probably gonna
be a Robin Williams quote.

It's definitely not Patch Adams.

That's right, you're on the right track.

No, it's not. Or Mrs.

It's definitely not Morgan Mindy.

Or Mrs. Dalfa or Jaman G.

Doubtfire, it's not Miss Doubtfield,

it's not any of those.

Man, I've seen a lot of Robin Williams
movies.

But I think it's probably one of his early
one I think it's Dead Poet Society.

Yeah.

Bingo, you nailed

it. I actually just saw it recently,

a couple months ago. And for the first
time,

Like for the first time? Okay.

yeah. Yeah,

yeah. I always you know, you know the
scenes.

my captain, my captain.

Yeah.

You see him standing on the desk,

but I actually watched the movie ~ a few
months ago.

And so we're gonna talk about Robin
Williams later and AI generated stuff.

I want to do a couple five-star review
shout outs.

Hog fan and cowboy fan. That's his entire
username from the USA.

Says we rock, thank you for that.

And JP, the WSG from the USA, he enjoys
the show and

Also enjoys our interactions. Thanks,

Jason, for being that other guy.

So there you go. There

That's me.

you go. Named you and called you by your
other guy.

Suit

Yeah.

on him. So very cool. we talked about
weird chairs in the pre show.

And so ~ the first link you'll see in the
show notes is a weird chair.

~ but I'm not gonna spoil it. And so if
you want to hear that,

if you're a member, you can listen to the
unedited feed.

And if you're not, you can become a
member.

Support the show for two dollars and fifty
cents a month or twenty five dollars

a year, and you can hear what in the world
this is.

I just wanted to

But

You

only sit in it once 'cause you'll never be
able to get up.

It will kill it's going to kill you.

You will injure yourself no matter what
when you sit in that chair.

~ let's talk about some Apple News real
quick because a bunch of leaks happened.

Mac OS 27 Beta 6.

Well, first, this is not a leak.

This is the window buttons. A lot of Mac
traditionalists are very happy about

the stoplight redesign in the latest beta,

Mac OS 27 Beta 6. They have a little more
v volume 3D-ness to them.

They look more like what they used to,

like aqua buttons and people are very
happy.

Do you have strong feelings about the stop
light buttons,

Jason?

No, but I'm glad you explained it that way
because I couldn't tell when

I was on five twelve pixels site if if s
Stephen Hackett was happy about them

or not, to be honest.

Most

most people seem to be happy about them.

This is what the last beta five looked
like.

They were kind of flat, and beta six gives
it a little more you know,

a little more 3D-ness to it. And so

All right.

people are very happy about that.

People have strong feelings about the the
macOS design,

you know.

Yeah.

So there's that, but also the leaks.

Apple apparently leaked its own stuff.

And so this was a video uncovered by Aaron
P six thirteen,

but ~ Aaron at Mac Rumors.

And in the article you can see the video.

Apparently this was embedded in the
release candidate for 26.7.

And it's a a man with AirPods,

seemingly AirPods Pro, holding up a book,

and there's a voiceover throughout the
video,

sounds like the voice assistant on Apple
devices,

saying, Just say remember this,

and we can add this whatever to ~ to
presumably notes or reminders or
something.

And that the implication is the AirPods
can see the book.

That the person is holding. And so this
was long been rumored.

Journalist Mark German, who's actually on
the latest Cortex episode with Mike

Hurley, listen to that. ~ this is the
long-rumored AirPods with maybe a camera,

but not one for taking photos and video,

just being able to see the world around
you.

And so that video came out seemingly
confirming this rumor.

But then Mark German was like,

but it's not this year. These are actually
coming still in 2027,

even though that demo video leaked,

this is not coming this fall.

And so we'll have to see whether it's we
have to wait or not.

But yeah, AirPods that see stuff.

That's a thing.

I don't do you think that's a good idea?

I know we've talked about it.

I if I don't know how Apple is going to
square the circle of saying these AirPods

can see the world around you, but they
don't have cameras or cameras that take

photos and videos. I'm not sure how
they're gonna be able to s to square that
with

people. People have strong feelings about
the metaglasses,

and it's I don't know how it's not gonna
feel like that,

but

Also gonna cause all sorts of social
problems.

You're gonna walk into like a ~ building
and people are gonna be like,

You to take those out, man. You cannot
wear those here.

You're gonna kids are gonna be in class.

I guess kids probably shouldn't be wearing
AirPods in class anyway.

But like

Sure, sure.

I had this whole Did you see my exchange
on threads about AirPods?

Somebody was like, You

I don't know if I missed that.

I I only s

be a decent human when you walk into this
the coffee shop,

take your AirPods out. I

sure.

was like, So here's the thing.

AirPods Pro are literally hearing aids.

If I take my air, I always wear my left
AirPod.

If I take it out and I walk into the
coffee shop,

I will have no idea what the barista is
saying.

So that's way more rude than just leaving
it in.

And I my point was we should not
stigmatize something that is useful

as an accessibility tool. And a lot of
people have lots of feelings about that.

There are a lot of people who are like,

Yeah, I have I have a friend who's
neurodivergent and wears them because they
have

white noise on all the time or whatever.

Yeah yeah.

Like

the point is

Yes, there are some, who just are rude,

but also like move on with your life and
just don't spend any time with that
person.

That's fine. But

Right.

once we put a camera in them, I feel like

Yeah.

that changes things for everyone.

Because what I mean by that is there was
there will be super useful accessibility

features that are involved with AirPods
having a camera,

but also most people are gonna be like,

get those AirPods out of my way.

I don't want them anywhere near me.

The same way people feel when they see the
little light come on on your medicine.

That one, that's the thing. They they get
that way even without the light.

Just seeing the metaglasses with a camera

Sure. Yeah.

looking at you. And and that's going to be
the interesting part of

how discreet will this camera lens be?

Is it so discrete that it's not visible?

I don't know how that's possible and
actually see the world in any meaningful
way.

And also if it is discreet enough,

people might not be able to distinguish
between AirPods Pro 2,

3, and whatever these AirPods that come
out.

W people

aren't gonna be able to distinguish
through them anyway,

so what I'm saying is all AirPods are now
going to be get those you have

to take them out.

Or but here's the thing, Jason,

people love their AirPods. And so on the
other hand,

I do wonder if it is indistinguishable
there's enough people that are like,

well everybody wears AirPods and I can't
tell what's a camera and what's

not and so whatever. That might also be
the sentiment.

Except for that everyone loves their
AirPods and yet,

as we have seen, everyone gets pissed when
someone has their AirPod in

at a time when they feel like they should
be paying more attention

to the humans around them. Like you go to
the grocery store and

you wear your AirPods and when you walk up
to the cashier to check out

if you're not using the self checkout,

which probably you should be anyway,

do you take your AirPods out?

I do mo mo

Okay, why?

well, I take them out like 60% of the time

But why?

because I want the person to not have any
doubt that

I'm hearing them. And I understand
sometimes I d I just put them

in transparency because there's so many
groceries that I have to do that

I just don't have the moment to do it.

But I I don't know. I I personally still
feel like I take them

out in most situations.

Just because I don't want people to even
have to think about it.

Now, my

But how

will you feel about what they are thinking
once you know you have AirPods that have

a camera in? That's my point, is like
people you they

Yeah.

don't have a camera now and you already
feel like you need to take them

out around other people for reasons.

I don't think that the overwhelming
practicality of and usefulness of them

is going to change that for people,

is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. And ~ the other other on the third
hand,

like from from trying the meta glasses,

like I do see the benefit. Like if you're
walking somewhere,

one, walking directions. Like trying to do
walking directions on your phone

is pretty good, but man, it would be
really cool if your AirPods j could just
say,

with you not having to look down at your
device,

say, Hey, turn left here or

Yeah, you know what'll

do that for you?

I understand your watch will not like talk
to you though.

It'll tap you.

It'll tap you and I I understand that,

but I do feel like again, there's gonna be
that you wanna look at

it because you wanna make sure you're
going the right direction.

Walking directions with air puts

But if you have voice if you have

voice directions on already and you have
an airpod and your phone will tell

you and your watch will tap you.

You already have this exact experience.

Okay.

All right. I'll give you that.

But also being able to remember something
that you see without having

to pull out your phone, I think is a
thing.

Yeah, like the person standing at the
urinal.

It's amazing that you'll be able to
remember.

No well, that's the problematic one.

I'm just I'm just say that's what I'm
saying.

I'm just saying there's some benefit.

Like if you were walking down a city
street and you see a billboard

for a musical and you're like,

I want to see that, you can try to get at
your phone and type it in.

You can maybe try to ask Siri AI to set a
reminder,

or you could just look up and say,

Hey, remember that. And if the AirPods

Yeah.

could somehow capture that in a meaningful
way,

like that would be useful.

I guess the point I'm making is the pra
the use the utility of that is only for
you.

It's personal. There's no utility for the
people around you.

But the social pressure is coming from the
people around you.

And that's only going to increase.

That's why I use the urinal example.

Because I I mean

I know, I know, it's awkward.

that's actually not that useful for you to
have that remembered.

But my p like you are talking about all
the benefits.

Those benefits

Yeah yeah.

do not exist for anyone.

around you who will be creating the social
pressure to get those things out of here.

I don't want I don't want to be around
people who have cameras in their AirPods.

I don't I don't want anything to do with
that.

Hmm.

I do not like that at all.

Do you do you think and this I hear this
sometimes.

Do you think Apple leaked this on purpose
to see what the sentiment would be?

See what we would say. Tim, listen,

Cause that

here's what we think.

He's not the CEO. He's not gonna be the
CEO in like ten days.

He's only got ten days left. It's gonna be
on Turnus,

whether or not to release these,

which is wild to think. He's only got ten
days left.

John. Johnny T,

John. Johnny T.

listen. I got some thoughts.

I think.

I do I do wonder because that is I've
heard that several times where Apple will
seed

a statement or leak something on purpose
to kind of see what people think about it.

Mm-hmm.

And

maybe this is that. I mean that to leak
that video,

I mean that is a very I've never seen a
leak like that where a first party Apple

video is out there.

I mean, this is like we we moved our
daughter into college and

our other daughter wrote her this
amazingly sweet letter and

it's

put it in one of the bins of things that
was going.

Didn't hand it to her, didn't tell her,

didn't anything, but it was just sitting
on the top of one of the bins that

for sure my daughter was going to open at
the when we're

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

when she's packing and she finds it and
she sets it aside 'cause she doesn't want

to read it when everyone's around because
she doesn't want a another reason

to cry in front of all of us.

Sure, sure.

That's like a pretty s pretty easy like
hidden surprise.

You I mean, obviously people go through
this code.

So Apple would have known

yeah.

should have known that someone would
uncover it,

but it's like th that's sort of a the it's
not like my d younger daughter

can be like, ~ I didn't know I had no idea
how that got in there.

Like you had to have done it
intentionally,

but I don't

Right.

I don't I don't understand like the

the mental calculation of we could try
that like doesn't it seem easier

to just be like, listen dude, call your
source.

Call Marky G and just like send him send
him a note.

Well he's he's already been doing it.

Send him a note on signal.

I mean Marky G's I like I

I love that we call we're calling him that
from now on.

Marky G.

I d

I do like I z I didn't I haven't listened
to the whole thing yet,

but the most recent episode of Cor of
Cortex is with with him and

and Mike Hurley was talking on I think
upgrade about hey,

I did we had this interview and it was
really exciting to get to talk

to him about how his work process is.

And I'm just imagining before I listen to
the article,

I'm like his work process is he stares at
signal all day,

waits for somebody to send him something,

and then he goes over to the keyboard and
he writes.

Yeah.

I know. I know.

I n I'm not undermining what he d I'm just
saying like your work process.

Yeah. I

mean he's gotta ~ validate s something.

He's gotta work the sources. Yeah.

He's

gotta w he's gotta work it. He's he's
signaling,

I guess. But anyway, Marky G, we'd love to
have you on the show too.

Yeah, it'd be amazing.

Come on the show.

Let's talk. I'm gonna I should reach out
to him.

he used to reach out to me about shortcut
stuff.

You can even just randomly call us at any
time you want.

That's right. That's it.

It's fine. People do that.

~

maybe I'll send him a signal be Listen,

I gotta

Hot Apple take. Just kidding. Come on the
podcast.

Yeah.

It's just a little bait and switch for all
right,

a couple of other s ~ quick Apple things.

~ in addition into that video leaking of
the AirPods,

apparently a ton of products have leaked.

And so Mac rumors uncovering it.

It's all the things, all the things you
could ever want.

The iPhone 18, the iPhone fold,

~ MacBook and iPad mini with OLED
displays,

an updated Siri remote and next generation
Apple TV,

new smart home hub. I've I have ~ like
this is just too much to

because I've I've like gone through this
so many times before where we've said like

it's all coming. This event is gonna have
it all and it's gonna have eighteen

different products and then we walk away
with like an iPhone and an Apple Watch.

And so I can't I can't set myself up for
failure.

But supposedly Mac rumors are saying it's
all coming this fall.

So

but

that doesn't mean it's coming on September
or whatever.

Right. I think it would be multiple
events.

There'll be September, October.

I I love a three event fall. I'd love
something,

you know, September, October, November.

But yeah.

Yeah, I I did have another one of these
walking through Starbucks moments because

there are people who were not I'm Mac
Rumors did not do this,

but there are people who are like,

breaking news, Apple's product roadmap
just leaked.

And I'm like, there's l literally not

What is it?

one thing on this list that we haven't
known about for at least six months.

Well, some of yes, but I'd be like,

Or six years. I feel like you know what I
mean?

at least six months we've known about
these things.

Smart home hub. I mean

the Apple T V is like three years old
already,

so surely.

I do need

an Apple TV. We had the one in our bedroom
f will not connect to internet.

It just stops. I

Really? Is it a four K version or older?

don't know. I have like four of them in my
house and this is probably

the oldest one. So it's fine. I took the
one out of here and took it inside.

Okay. Sure.

We only

have this problem once a week when we go
to watch Ted Lasso.

And then I'm like, so

Mm.

then I have to go out to the living room
and I just pull that one and plug it in.

It's fine. It's actually

Jason, this this is madness. This is

the easiest thing to swap in the entire
universe.

You pull two chords, plug two chords in,

It is it is easy

and it's

to swap, but no, no.

You do

have to remember to swap the audio.

Otherwise it's really weird when your show
is playing the audio in a different room.

'cause you do the home pod thing.

You do the home pod thing.

we don't do we do the home pod thing for
the T V in the l in the bedroom.

We have home pod minis in there,

but the ~ in the living room we have the
sonos.

So that's actually going back by the H DMI
or whatever.

okay. H T arc, E arc,

Yeah. Yeah.

yeah, all that kind of stuff. All right.

Well that's that. And then finally,

Apple thing. The Apple Maps ads are open
for business,

meaning businesses can actually go and
book their ads.

They're not appearing in the app just yet,

but it is coming very soon. And yeah,

that's we're gonna see what they look
like.

I mean, we kind of see what they look
like.

There's some screenshots.

Yeah, we've seen They've already told us
what they're gonna look like.

There's no look like. Well, you should see
actual ads sometime soon.

And

If they book the Apple Maps, there might
be a credit card payment

by October eleventh. So we might have a
couple more months of ad-free Apple Maps

still, but they are coming, everybody.

And we'll see. We'll see what they do.

Now, we got a lot to talk about ~ in in
the AI space,

but we need to we need to do an early ad
break,

which will make sense to everybody in a
moment.

And so we want to thank our friends at
Claude.

Listen, Jason and I ~ are no strangers to
Claude.

You've how many five

Apps have you now vibe coded, Jason?

technically f three, two of which are
actual products.

One is just my Pod GPT app where you can
where it'll pull this is actually

a cool app. It'll just pull your RSS feed,

download the download an episode,

transcribe the whole thing, and then
offload that episode,

and then you can just search a transcript
search every podcast that

you like with Apple Intelligence.

That's pretty nice. And you built that
with Claude.

Yeah. Yeah, I did. That was the first one

Well, there you go.

I built and it just sits on my computer
and I just use it.

There you go. That's it. And I have built
I built Can Do,

which hit the number one App Store.

So you could say the number one
productivity app for a little while

was made by Claude and my new app Stash,

which I'm actually watching be approved in
App Store Connect as we record.

Very excited. We'll talk about that at the
end of the show.

I was gonna say, what is this?

But yeah, we'll we'll put I'll talk about
it.

I'll talk about it. So just Claude,

we I've been using it for a lot of things.

I've been just running it on Fable Five
and has done some incredible work building

my own apps, building Jason's app,

and Claude.

Listen, it's the AI for problem solvers.

It's the collaborator that understands
your entire workflow and thinks with you,

not for you, whether you're debugging code
at midnight,

which I have 100% done and building a
financial model or strategizing your next

business move, Claude extends your
thinking to tackle the problems that
matter.

Now I've been living in Claude Code,

and if you're a developer, you want a bug
fix.

I've also been hearing Marco Armin talking
about Claude Fable,

helping him fix bugs and launch features
he's long planned.

Well, there's also Claude Cowork,

which I use a ton.

It's an agentic power for everyone.

No terminal required. You just point it at
a folder on your computer

or connect tools like Google Drive and
Gmail.

Describe what you need and it handles the
rest.

I've actually connected Fastmail to Cloud
Cowork via the MCP.

I have Bayer connected. And just being
able to ask it questions across

my knowledge base or whatever you want to
call that,

Cloud Cowork has been incredibly helpful.

And for simple things like renaming files,

I will point it at a folder, look at the
contents.

It could be images, it could be text
files.

And just ask Claude Cowork to rename those
things.

It is the best at doing that. I have
shortcuts that do it.

Claude does it better. And so I just go
with that.

Claude Cowork is incredibly helpful.

Claude Code. And here's what you can do.

if you're ready to have AI that tackles
real work,

which I think Jason and I are doing.

We're doing real work. Try Claude Cowork
today on any paid plan

at Claude.ai slash primary. That's
Claude.ai slash primary.

And if you want to get started with
problems worth solving.

Maybe try vibe coding an app, you can get
started with Claude

at Claude.ai slash primary. ~ thanks to
Claude for sponsoring this episode.

Now we had to I wanted to do that first
because now we're going to talk about
Claude

again in a different way. So last week we
talked about

how Claude is going to watermark text.

And there's been a now blog post from
Anthropic going into more detail about.

How it's going to do the watermarking.

I explained last week that I th I wasn't
sure.

I wasn't sure if it going to some kind of
imperceptible markings on

the text because they said it would carry
over through copy and pasting.

It would carry over through the API or
other things.

And so they've actually explained now in
this blog post how Claude's text watermark

works. And basically what it's going to do
is choose specific words.

That will be unique and to the like
whatever you're generating.

So let's say you want to generate a
paragraph of text.

Claude is going to choose words and their
placement in a certain way.

So Claude knows that it was made by
Claude.

That means it might use a synonym for
words specifically,

or just phrase something. And that's why
it carries through,

because it's not some kind of technical
watermarking in the pixels.

Or some kind of metadata behind the
scenes.

It is the actual text that it's writing
and in the way that it's writing it.

And remember, this is to comply with the
EU AI Act and being able to

~ tell what's AI generated or not.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, hold on, sorry. I think just

to make sure the way I think the w we
don't actually know for sure

how they're doing it, which is super
annoying because they publish a blog post
that

says how it's blood's text watermark
works,

and then they don't explain how it works.

But I think the general the most commonly
accepted theory is take all the words,

divide them into two lists, red list,

green list. And at any

Yes.

moment it w in a normal tuning of a of an
LLM,

it every token it's actually not words,

it's I guess tokens, but like

At any point, what it's doing is just
predicting what the most likely next word
is,

and it'll look at those two lists and
it'll just it's random.

Okay. And so a theoretically, any given
body of text should be roughly

50% one or the other. And what they're
doing is they're essentially just leaning

it towards the green list more.

So the way that you'll be able to tell is
you'll be able to compare it

to the red and green list and be like,

this particular body of text has 55%
green.

So it was generated by Claude.

Because it cause ~ it should just be
purely randomized,

which in theory should be roughly fifty
percent.

Although if it's technically randomized,

it could be like eighty percent.

Right? Because random means random.

It could just choose it. But that's what
it's essentially doing.

And so you won't be able to tell word for
word what's happening,

right? There's not

Right.

a specific phrase it's gonna use.

There's not whatever. It's literally you'd
have to do the counting and

the math and know what those two lists
were.

But that is why it survives copy and
paste,

because it's actually the words.

The tricky th well, I'll let you continue
'cause there's a couple of problems here.

Well, I wanna mention that a lot of people
have now strong feelings about it,

including me, which we'll get to,

but John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a
lengthy post about

why this is not good. And basically so
much that to the way that this

is being done, choosing the words as the
watermark is just degrading

the quality overall. Like if you're having
to choose words

To make it watermarkable, that that is
sacrificing quality

of words rather than some other method.

And so he has a long blog post about it
and then a follow-up.

I joked because as I've been in Claude a
whole lot,

debugging and building these apps.

I've s just the wording sometimes is very
strange.

And so I posted this just to be funny,

and because Claude had told me it was
debugging something,

and it was like

Let me actually reproduce the paste bug on
the simulator before I opine on it.

That's cheap. And I'm like, opine,

you're opining. And just little things
like that as you deal with

the responses from Claude specifically
sometimes just feels weird.

And that's one of those situations where I
don't think they're doing this

watermarking yet, supposedly. But that
feels like,

did you just put like put that word there?

Like I will be thinking that in the
future.

okay, but the i irony in this particular
example is I think the word opine

is completely fine there. It's the it's
the part after the dash that I think

is the stupid Claudism, which is that's
cheap.

Let me actually reproduce the paste

Right.

plug on the simulator before I opine on
it.

~ fine. I you maybe you shouldn't end the
sentence in the word it,

but whatever. But then the

And I th and I'm also on record,

I'm fine with dashes. People get super
scared

Yes, yes.

about using dashes, read everything I've
ever written,

and there's just a ton of them.

I use them all the time. They're great.

They're the best piece of of punctuation
that exists in the human language.

That's not true. Anyway, the comma's
probably better.

But the that's the part that drives me
nuts.

But I do get your point. You look at it
and you're like,

did you pick this one? And I had this
thought about code.

Like 'cause the watermarks are tack code
is just text.

Right, it could be there.

So does

my app have a different word in a place in
order

Mm.

to make it w you know, verifiable or,

you know, whatever

Right, right, right.

watermarks? And I would have no way of
fixing that.

I could do a p I could like do some
research with Claude.

I'm not going to copy and paste it into an
article anyway.

What I'm going to do is be like,

okay, here's what I need to know.

And then I'm gonna write something.

I wouldn't I don't like the way Claude
writes anyway.

So I would never just copy and paste it
stuff into st into stuff.

Actually, to be fair, that's not entirely
true.

There are times when I ask it for our
exact quotes from a thing and I

do just often copy and paste them.

But is it going to change that?

So okay, so I'm glad you said that.

So I had a very specific real world
example.

And yesterday I wanted to do like a back
to school tech deals newsletter

and just send that out. I was gonna do a
video and I was like,

I don't want to make a whole video on
this.

I'm just gonna do a newsletter.

So I, word for word,

verbatim, wrote the newsletter.

Zero AI, nothing generated. I didn't ask
any AI for any words.

I wrote every word, my fingers on the
keys.

Okay. I wrote that newsletter.

I did all the links. I sent the
newsletter.

And then I was like, you know,

I also want this to be a blog post on my
website just because.

And so I figured, I've asked Claude many
times before,

make a website of this. Like my bio page
that I link in TikTok and Instagram,

that was made by Claude. My smart home
page,

Claude gave me the HTML for that.

So I was like, well, maybe you can make a
nice looking blog post.

So I go to Claude.

I give it the HTML from my email and I
say,

Claude, I wrote this email. I want to make
this exact thing a web page.

Can you know, do can you do that?

I gave it to Claude. Claude made the HTML.

I pasted it in a code block in
Squarespace.

It did some very Claudism things like this
call-out box with the line right here.

I actually saw a reel the other day of
this ~ girl designer,

and she was like, here's all the things
Claude does everywhere,

and how I can tell a Claude website
immediately.

And like this a bounding box with this
font and this font and this line like hard

line on the left side of it is a clawed
just thing it does all the time.

So and I'm fine with that visual,

like I'm not doing a design here.

This is just a blog post. So I pasted the
HTML and I was about to hit publish when

I saw Jason an dash. And I was like,

wait a minute. I did not write a single
dash in my newsletter.

Why is there an dash

on this page. And I went through and I
started reading it verbatim.

And Jason, it had just rewritten some of
my text.

So like the intro paragraph was different.

It had reworded some things. And I was
like,

I gave you every single word verbatim.

I just wanted the HTML to put it on a web
page and yet you rewrote my stuff.

And like I felt kind of strongly about
that because I'm like,

does this mean I cannot rely when I say
just give me this back in HTML?

Because I'm gonna have to read over
everything.

And this was something like I wrote every
word already.

Like, I don't know why it's rewriting it.

And so I had to go through and read every
word.

I removed a bunch of M-dashes.

It added M-dashes all throughout,

even though there were none before.

And honestly, it it concerned me because
it's like I

Don't know if I can trust words from
Claude now.

Because even if

Yeah. Well

I give it all the words that I want
verbatim,

it might change it like it did here.

Well,

and this is a pre existing problem though,

because currently none of the models
you're using include watermarking.

They're going to eventually include it,

but for now they're just they're gonna be
new models coming out.

So just don't use any new models for a
while.

But this is actually just an LLM problem.

Because they are probabilistic,

exact copying is the hardest thing for
them to do.

Cause I will often be like, Could you give
me a a a quote?

Could you find me a like four quotes from

the most recent earnings. Like,

I you know what I mean? I'm like,

I don't want to search this whole
transcript,

but I I was listening and he was talking
about this.

Could you find me the whole quote,

right? And it

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

will sometimes be like, yeah, Tim Cook
talked about this,

this. I'm like, No, I asked you to just
give me the exact quote.

Don't paraphrase, don't do whatever.

And it is very hard to get an LLM to do
that.

And the reason is every word is just a
crapshoot.

It's like this one or this one or this one
or this one.

It's like it's very hard

Right.

for them to be bound that way.

I mean, you can get them to do that.

But when you said, I want you to take the
exact words here and turn it into

a web page, like it's it's off.

It's off to the races. It's gonna do its
thing and it's like,

Yep, you gave me a bunch of words,

that's cool. Let me just see how I can
make this.

So yeah, I yeah.

I so that was surprising to me because it
was the first time that my words

had just been you know, I just put it in
and expected the same words out,

and I did not get it. So in light of that
and the coming watermark changes,

I am going to be, I think,

much more conservative in when I ask
Claude

for prose or text that I'm going to use
somewhere versus the other things.

Like

If it watermarks the code and can do and
stash,

it's like, well, sure. I mean,

you're writing all the code. Like,

I don't know any code. Go for it.

Do it all. But when it comes to something
like I'm writing the title

and description for this podcast,

I will typically ask Claude for ideas on
it.

I don't know if I want to do that.

And I again never really copy and paste
what Claude gives me.

I'll always massage it. But

Now it's like, I don't know what of these
words it's going to give me were

a result of the watermarking.

Like, did it choose this word versus this
word?

And I wanted to I may link Gruber's main
post,

but you should also read his follow-up
because he quotes this interview with

I think a linguist talking about English
is objectively one

of the most expressive languages.

Because it pulls from both the Latin and
Germanic bases.

And that's why we have words for
different,

like different words have different
timbers.

And it said like royal and kingly.

Like English is uniquely suited because
each of those words comes from

a different base, and we have lots of
those options.

And when it comes to a human writer,

and you are primarily a writer,

I imagine there are times where you think.

very hard about the word you're about to
use because it's going to have

a slightly different tone than another.

And that is a important and I will say
human aspect to the creative process.

Mm-hmm.

And that is something that I don't I don't
even want to now get close to that.

Like if the language is going to be
affected by a EU law having

to watermark AI stuff, I want less of it.

Yeah, and I on Dithering, I think I think
it was on Dithering,

they were having this conversation and it
was that because I think I could be wrong,

listeners, I'm sure you'll correct me.

That's great. I love it when you do that.

That the law that they that this is
voluntary.

They're not really compelled to do this,

Right. Right.

but that Claude

was the first one to jump on it.

And what what they were saying on
Dithering is like,

of course Anthropic was the first to jump
on it.

Cause in their mind, Claude deserves
credit.

And it's

Mm.

like this

this distinction between I I think it's
Ben talks about

the ideation and substantiation.

And it's like we've talked for for a long
time about how substantiation

is the important part of it. And that's
like taking the idea

and actually executing on it. And what
we've essentially done is saying,

No, the ideas are not important anymore.

Ideas are infinite and you're not
distinguished by your ideas.

And it's like and I think the argument
that Ben Thompson was making

is like it's like, no, these L L they're
stupid.

They literally don't do anything without a
prompt.

The prompt came from a human idea.

So the the L the L L doesn't get that's no
more than Photoship Photoshop getting

credit for layers or Microsoft getting
word for something you wrote

or I write everything in Ulysses.

Should Ulysses get credit for that?

No. Like L Ulysses I love Ulysses.

It's one of the tools I

Yeah, yeah.

use the most every day. But it's should I
get credit for all the meetings that

you have if you're using contextually?

Like no.

Or the summaries of those meetings.

Right.

Like, no, the app is just a tool.

And just

Right.

like Photoshop made it so much faster to
dodge and burn than standing

in a lightroom, you know, actually dodging
and burning.

Right.

You don't give the Photoshop the credit
for that.

It's still the artist that gets the
credit.

Now, to be clear, what a lot of these LLMs
doing is it feels more substance

substantive than that because you're
taking an idea and you're turning

it into maybe a hundred words,

Right.

right?

But it's still based on the prompt that
you gave it.

It's still based on on that the human
idea.

And so the part that's annoying about this
is it feels like Anthropic's like,

no, no, no. We want we want it to be
recognizable that this came from Claude
because

we want everyone to see how much stuff,

how much stuff they like, how much good
stuff exists because of this.

And it's like, no, no, no, man,

you you got this all wrong. That's not the
way people want this to work.

Exactly. And the the last thing I'll
mention,

this was a tool that Gruber linked to
multiple times in his pieces,

dClaude.org. I did not know this existed
and I'm excited to try it.

But you can paste the text Claude gives
you in the left box and it will give

you a ~ like take out the AI flavoring and
give you plain prose.

And there's apparently API access as well.

This is a free tool, you don't pay for it,

and I am one hundred percenta gonna see if
I can

use the API to work this into my shortcuts
and like d run it after

all the times Claude is running.

And so I'm very excited about this tool
and stay tuned because I'm going to

~ to try that. But

Does

it have a C L I or an C P server so that
you could like use Claude to send text

to this to get talk talks back?

I know. I'm just

See but that but I wouldn't trust that.

I wouldn't trust you know what I'm

saying? Like, all right, Claude,

give me your text and then I'm going to
put it through like

the biggest water filtration system I can.

Like this is gonna be one of those like
seven dingous things that you screw in.

W I I call this L L laundering,

Exactly.

right? It's like be because you could give
you

it's basically what you're doing is you're
saying take something from Quad,

then you put

Yeah, yeah.

it into Chat GPT and you're like rewrite
this and then it comes out one

way and then you give it to Gemini and
you're like,

Could you rewrite this and make it sound
more like whatever?

And see what and figure out how far you
get away and at some point like

unfortunately they're all going to be
using some of this w watermarking.

So you're gonna put this into a watermark
and it's just gonna explode.

It's gonna be like I don't even know
what's happening here.

There's so many red lists and green lists.

This is extraterrestrial

Yeah.

prose.

Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know if
we'll get in trouble for putting this
segment

right after the sponsorship. So support
the show by clicking the link down below

to become a member. And but yeah.

Well, okay,

just to be clear, I think it's totally
reasonable for us to say we both love
using

Claude.

Yeah, for sure.

It's been super

useful as a tool. I have several you the
way you started using shortcut,

not the way you started, was what am I
even saying?

The way you use shortcuts, I have a number
of Claude Cowork automation

set up every week that save me hours of
time.

And it just

Yeah, yeah.

I get it, I come to my computer on a
Monday morning and there's like five
things

that it I need used to have to do that are
just done for me.

Like my Notion database

Right, exactly. Yeah.

is updated with any articles I've written
in the last week.

From the previous articles, the traffic
numbers are updated.

I send out this email every

week it that is to it's like a it's not a
newsletter or something it's like

literally a ~ important piece of inf
series of information that goes

out to a certain number of people and it
figures out which people that week need

to get it and which information that they
need.

Like it's doing all that kind of stuff.

So good. Yeah. Yeah,

I absolutely love it. I just hate this.

yeah. Right. Yes. Yes.

I hate this so much. This part of it is
just and it

Yes.

does reek of software brain and it reeks
of people who don't understand

how the world perceives the tools that
they've created.

There it is. That's it.

It wasn't this law written like five years
ago.

Maybe AI laws

Something like that too, I'd have the

from five years ago should be reconsidered
today.

Agreed. Agreed. So anyway, dclaw.org.

I'm gonna try it out. I'll put that link
in the show notes.

And

by the way, if they're sponsoring
podcasts,

we may need a new one.

Ha ha no, just kidding. Love Claw for vibe
coding,

using it all the time. Yeah, we're

We're gonna talk about it more later.

gonna talk about more later. OpenAI
finally put the brakes on some

of its models because after the hugging
face incident,

they've been working ~ one of the models
behind the scenes,

not public yet, but Astra. OpenAI has put
the brakes on it saying

it could have critical cybersecurity
capabilities.

The company says it instituted a two week
pause in reinforcement learning training

on those latest models.

Intended for deployment. I just want to
point this out because hey,

we've kind of been calling for this the
last ~ couple weeks,

couple of months, and it seems like OpenAI
is actually putting the brakes,

not because maybe what we said,

but just in general, seeing the what has
happened,

namely breaking containment, these
different models doing nefarious things,

and they're gonna they're putting the
brakes.

So we'll see how long that lasts and what
that means long term,

but that's good.

So they put up another fence around the
Velociraptors.

Okay.

That's right.

Another fan. Hey, if it slows them down a
little bit,

less likely they'll eat me, I guess.

I don't know.

Life finds a way.

Life life finds a way. I can't believe I
said the wrong quote when you asked

me the other week. I was listening back to
that episode.

I was like, ~ I should have known I should
have done that.

Anyway. ~ Also, Apple, this is nice.

How did this Apple newsroom article get
formatted?

Well, anyway, Apple had to announce
changes in the these other changes they

These are the changes that they've
announced.

Take this, EQ.

announced. I don't know what happened
here.

What if

I go into reader mode?

there you go. Okay. I don't know what that
rendering was.

But Apple did have to change some of its
pricing structure in the EU.

You know, they're Apple's in both in court
here in the States with Judge Yvonne

Gonzalez Rogers and all of that,

but it the EU is also forcing them to make
changes.

If you remember before, even with third
party app marketplaces

and apps downloaded outside of the App
Store,

Apple had

instituted some pretty heavy percentage
fees even on those things.

Well, they've had to adjust those.

Now apps with alternative payment
processing processing the commission will

be twenty percent and developers in things
like the small business program will

be down to 10%. So they're lowering the
percentages,

especially if you use third-party payment
processors.

And even if you remember the core
technology fee,

there was this convoluted system where
Apple was charging like a per device flat

fee for

transactions and a percentage on top,

but now they've had to change that.

And so for apps distributed even via third
party app marketplaces or the

web in the EU, there's just a five percent
core technology commission.

And so they will still get at least five
percent from those apps outside

of the app store. But they're having to
lower their percentages to abide by EU
law.

And hey, Siri AI, they still gotta figure
that out too,

because it's not gonna launch in the EU.

So we'll see.

Well, and

this is essentially them saying,

Here's the value of each of the things
that we make.

What they're saying is their AP their core
APIs and frameworks

are worth five percent. The technology you
use to build the app

is worth five percent. And then using the
app store distribution

is worth ten percent, right? Because you
you add that on top of it.

So using the app store and that
distribution is worth ten percent.

Then using ~ the the

That's because you're linking out.

You're just using the app store.

But if you're sending, you know,

alternate payment processing within the
app store,

it's worth a different amount because
you're still using the the workflow.

It's just being processed somewhere else.

And then if you're using it all,

it's twenty six percent or fifteen percent
after that.

So the most interesting thing here is
Apple has sort of said what

it perceives the value of each of those
pieces are,

right?

Right.

I think

they just view it all as thirty percent.

It's all worth thirty percent.

Just give us thirty percent. But if we
have

Yeah.

to and this makes sense because their
argument was,

Well, the stuff is we think that it's
necessary for all of this money.

But if you're going to make us itemize it,

here's the way we here's the way we do it.

Right.

Here's the way we split it out.

Yeah. The we've talked a b a lot about
recently the FCC doing things

and Brendan Carr at the FCC, and they were
holding the broadcast license over

Disney's head, saying, you know,

wanting them to make content changes
basically,

or they wouldn't renew their broadcast
license,

which again only affects broadcast
television,

not streaming, not any of that.

But Disney is finally fighting back.

They're gonna say, No, we're not gonna
take it.

And so

This is a quote from Disney. Disney is
suing the FCC over this license review
that

Brendan Carr has threatened to hold over
their head.

And Disney says, quote, again and again,

the administration has attacked ABC's
speech,

the stories its journalists report,

and the viewpoints its network programs
air.

Over time, those attacks have escalated
into express demands that ABC

be stripped of its broadcast licenses
because of its speech.

And so in this lawsuit, ABC is asking the
court for a temporary restraining order,

a preliminary injunction to halt the FCC's
license renewal process,

and a hearing from the DC Circuit Court.

The FCC finally pushed too far,

and Disney is like, No, we're not going to
continue to capitulate about

the content we do. And so we will see.

You know, I'm curious I don't know.

How this plays out when the FCC and the
administration are kind of on the same
side,

like w I don't know what court they're
going to appeal to where they can make

a case that ~ convinces otherwise.

But but Disney, pretty big name,

fighting back finally.

Well,

and what's ha what happened was that the
FCC put its license up for renewal early.

It wasn't just that their license had come
up,

right? It they put it up for review early.

And it's sort of it's just the whole it's
a nice that's a nice TV station

you got there, wouldn't it be a shame if
something happened to it?

And they a while

Exactly.

you're holding the thing that could happen
to it in your hand,

right? And

Yes.

I th you know, Neli Patel has made the
point many,

many, many times. The reason

the the First Amendment is absolute in its
prohibition from

the government interfering with it is
because even the perception that something

bad could happen to you is enough to s to
chill speech,

right? Even

Right. Right.

the threat that you might put up a ~

license like this for renewal will make
other stations behave differently

and that's the problem. That's the entire
point.

Right. Right.

If you are going

to have a first amendment that pro
protects free speech,

you cannot have a a government that is
making companies,

even subversively or even passively,

making them behave differently than they
otherwise would,

because you have chilled speech,

which means you have infringed on their
right to free speech.

And this is just dumb. I I think Disney
come I think Disney wins this.

I'm not a lawyer. I don't know anything.

But if I it feels like Disney's right

Well they clearly are. They're clearly
right.

And this is all over the view,

Yeah. Right.

right? Which is they're

just basically saying no, they don't get
an they don't get an equal time exemption.

Right, right.

It's just dumb.

I also but I also feel like the judge they
get in front of might also have

a lot to do with how it goes. So sure.

I mean there's a lot of judges and there's
a lot of steps in these processes

Right.

and really

all they're asking for at this point is a
restraining order or

or a preliminary junction, which typically
I believe like the standard

for that is is what are the chances that
you might prevail?

i you know,

Right.

on the case and if if a judge looks at it
and is like,

y this seems like a pretty patent
violation of the First Amendment,

then they're gonna be like, Yeah.

And also putting a preliminary injunction
on the idea to h

to halt its renewal process does not harm
the FCC in any way.

Because this

Right.

license wasn't supposed to be up for
renewal right now anyway.

Right, exactly. Exactly. And you know,

we talked about the FCC last week about
the the banning robots and stuff

and even power inverters. And I just I
thought it was interesting that they're

spending a lot of time on that.

Meanwhile, Comcast right here in the
States is turning Wi Fi routers into
motion

detectors in people's homes.

No thank you.

And I was like I saw this come up and
apparently Comcast is activating

In Wi-Fi routers that are already in
people's homes,

the ability for them to be motion sensors,

which will b measure when the Wi-Fi signal
between the router and devices in a home,

when it is interrupted and when that
signal changes.

And so these can then become motion
detectors.

They're saying it could be like you can it
is an opt-in to be clear.

It's not an opt-out. So users do have to
actually turn this on.

I am sure Comcast will send thousands of
notifications and emails

to users talking about the benefit.

and why they should turn this on,

which the benefits might be like security,

and you can get like energy ~ reports,

or you can see like measure like home away
and home modes.

You can now measure that with your Wi-Fi
routers.

But it's like we're concerned about
companies having data on US citizens.

Like Comcast is here just turning on
motion detectors in people's homes

on not unbeknownst to them, but

It feels like I I don't know. This this
feels so weird to me and it just feels
like

counterintuitive to we need to protect the
security of people.

And it's like, nah, we're gonna see how
they move around in their homes.

That feels weird.

I I don't nope, this is nope.

No, just no. No to this. No, no,

no to this. No, thank you. I use I use
Ubiquity Wi-Fi routers,

so so there you go. I think ~ I think I'm
good.

But yeah. Most people that's the thing.

Most people just use the Wi-Fi router that
comes with their internet service

and then don't think about it.

And so that's the thing. But anyway,

I wanted to get to this because I thought
this was sad and also telling

of of the time we're in right now.

So Robin Williams' kids, Zack Zelda,

and Cody, they had to reactivate his
Instagram account,

or felt like they had to reactivate it,

because they wanted it to be a place that
people could trust what they're seeing

was actually real. And so this was a quote

~ from one of his children. I think this
is Zelda,

or it's a joint statement, but they said,

I'm sorry if anyone found dad's old page
posting again to be triggering.

Believe me, I know it's a little strange.

Making that space into one where people
can find authentic clips and photos

of him is one of the best ways we've now
found to fight back against rampant

AI abuse of his voice and likeness on
here.

And what I find that really sad because.

I love Robin Williams. I grew up he was
the genie in Aladdin,

Mrs. Doubtfire, Patch Adams, all the
things.

And anytime I see a clip of Robin Williams
on social media,

I come across a reel or whatever,

like I a hundred percent watch it.

Like I could I could like recount to you
the clip of him on inside

the actors studio playing with the crowd
and doing that.

Or the clips of him with Martha Stewart
and they're like cooking in the thing.

And like I know those clips are real
because I've seen them for years.

And they were actual events. And
apparently there's just been a and not
apparently,

I'm sure this is happening with many
actors.

There's just AI generated video and audio

of these famous actors. And many of them,

those clips could be portraying what looks
like a real event,

maybe on a talk show, maybe in a stage
play,

but they are AI generated. They are fake.

And so Robin Williams's family is trying
to say,

listen, there's a lot of stuff out there.

A lot of it is AI generated, it's fake.

So we want to do this as a measure to say
if you want to see clips

of Robin Williams, go to his official
page.

And one, I think this shows

the failure of platforms not being able to
label this kind of content properly.

You know, if it was clear to viewers that
the clips they're seeing are AI generated,

maybe this wouldn't have, you know,

preempted this move to reactivate his
account.

So it's one.

Two, I've talked about before,

like when I mentioned how I was deep
faked.

You know, you can't control that kind of
stuff,

especially when you have the amount of
content out there.

Like Robin Williams, like all the creators
who make YouTube videos,

this podcast, like you and I, like there's
hours and hours of our faces

and voices out there that could be trained
on an LLM and be made into thing clips

of us not, you know, saying things that we
never said.

And so the importance of having places

That you can say, if you want to see my
authentic made content,

go here. Like go to my YouTube channel.

It's this channel linked here.

Or go to my website. Or go to this podcast
RSS feed because there is

no AI generated content here. It is all
us.

I think it's very clear that as we move
into the proliferate,

like I see the backlash on social media,

especially young people just really don't
like AI generated content.

But also it is some becoming increasingly
difficult to tell what's real

and what's fake. And especially someone
like Robin Williams,

where a lot of his clips are older because
he passed away years ago.

And so the clips that people share look
old.

That kind of AI generated content I think
is almost more difficult

to parse because it looks old and grainy
and it's like,

~ is this real, is this not? And so I it
is just it is sad to me,

but also telling about what the future is
probably going to hold for

Where does someone go to, you know,

say this is the definitive real content?

And right now, today, it's Instagram.

Like they activated his Instagram account.

That's where they're saying go to look for
the real stuff.

And that's also so problematic because
that's also where all the

~ generated stuff is. And it's like,

go here because it's real, but also
there's a bunch of junk here.

But there's not another place to say go
here.

Like I guess they could have done started
a YouTube channel or whatever,

but

They reactivated an account because it
already has probably millions of
followers.

So I don't know. I I just talked for a
while.

I mean the problem

is the Gen Z hates AI, but the boomers
just keep sharing it on Facebook.

Right, like so it's just and so the signal
that people get is like they're just

ki constantly consuming all this the more
slop the better because it's just

a dial that we can turn and it keeps
people engaged and you don't know y you
know,

and just if you think about the math,

yes, there's a very vocal generation that
just hates it,

but it hasn't really changed their
behavior yet.

And I think it's going to be a generation
before these this I think you

and I are basically just host.

I think

AI will no, I mean it, I think AI content
will overrun the current state

of things at some point in the future.

And then people will just hate it so much
that eventually it'll get back more.

But everything you just said, I I don't at
some point I don't think it's gonna

matter. I don't think having your own
place where you can this is really me,

just no one will be able to distinguish.

People will be able to distinguish if
they're paying attention to the content.

People don't do that.

For the most part, right? And I don't

Right.

know what the what the how what the math
will be.

But at some point it's gonna be like a
YouTube channel with channel with

a million subscribers will have like
fifteen thousand who

who fully ~ understand and care about the
authentic person and then

the rest are just bots anyway.

So it's just gonna be a so it's just gonna
be a cycle.

And I just think I think

No.

it will be way, way, way, way worse before
it ever gets better.

And I think that the consequences of that
worse are going to be

not great for especially f no f like for
creators,

because the incentive of the plat it's
already bad for writers,

let's just be honest. Because Google Zero
is already a thing,

right? But for video creators,

it's going to get way, way worse because
the incentive of the platform

I mean Google. Google is like building
these AI tools,

right? Like the incentives of the
platforms is just more content and they
have

all just been the platforms have been
built entirely

on free content. They don't pay for this
content.

And so how do you get more free content?

AI, right? Like and

Yeah.

how do you get more people to make more
free content?

Make it easier for them to do that with
AI.

I saw a video shared by ~ Tyler Stallman.

He like posted it on his story on
Instagram.

I was trying to see if I could pull it up
again.

It was two guys talking about AI generated
content and the perception of it.

And at the end of the video, it said this
entire thing was AI generated.

And Jason, it was terrifying because I did
not know.

I thought these two guys were actually
talking.

And

You know, Tyler I messaged Tyler and he
was like,

Yeah, the guy who made this is it very,

very good at prompting these AIs to create
hyper realistic ~ videos like this.

And it was a little scary to me.

I was like, I don't like I just consumed
that whole thing and I couldn't tell.

And I like to think of myself as pretty
discerning.

And I just went to try and find the clip.

And so I just typed into Google searching
like you know,

details about the clip to try and find it.

And Jason, you know what Google did?

The first thing it showed me, it created
the scene and gave me a script

for the video that I was trying to
describe.

It didn't even show me search results.

This is what I saw. I sorry,

that just sent me spinning.

This is why Google

talks about a billion users using Gemini.

That

I just used Jim. I did not intend

to use Gemini, but it just did.

I I'm a little more optimistic than you.

I think yes, it's going to get worse
before it gets better.

But I do think people like I just posted a
video ~ last weekend about

my son and how he uses his iPhone.

And ~ the title is like How Gen Alpha Uses
a Phone is Wild.

And we did a really fun video and the
response in the comments.

was extremely positive. People love the
video.

But I th and it the video did well like
view-wise,

but I think it it again reiterated to me,

even in this landscape of slop,

people I think will still seek out the
most real they can get.

And being a video creator who makes a lot
of real stuff every week

and people know where to go to find that
stuff.

Like

Yes, the vertical scrolling platforms,

like people aren't doing that there.

Like people are not going to Instagram and
going to a person's profile,

going to reels, and then watching that
creator's reels.

People aren't doing that. I know.

People are just clicking the reel tab and
just scrolling and then whatever comes

up comes up. And I think, yes,

that's gonna be rough on the platforms.

But I do think people are like I see so
many I've been seeing more

and more YouTube videos in reels talking
about how to stop scrolling reels.

Like

It's just that's like part of the content.

And it's a bit meta 'cause it pun not
intended.

Yeah.

It's

a bit meta to like put that on reels while
people are watching reels.

But I do think like people talk about long
form YouTube videos as

the reprieve from this content.

They'll say like, stop doom scrolling,

go watch a twenty minute YouTube video.

Like that's the perception in young
people's minds now.

It's like if I watch that, I am I am
better off for it.

And I do think I mean I'm partial,

but I do think you're better off for it.

Because it's probably about, you know,

a single topic. Like I I think watching a
a Kyrgyzot or a Cleo Abram video

is probably more worthwhile and better for
every every part of

you than scrolling for twenty minutes on a
vertical feed.

So I don't I don't know. That's just
that's how I

Yeah,

I just think it's gonna get worse before
it gets better.

That's all.

I and I agree to that. I think it's
getting worse before he gets better.

The the ~ the realistic nature of what can
be generated today is scary

and I can just imagine unless these
platforms in not not just Meta

and TikTok, but the platforms that let you
create this stuff,

unless these platforms do something to
make it so clear what's

AI generated and not, it is definitely
gonna get worse before it gets better.

Yeah. But

why would they do that?

I know. No, I know. There's no motivation
for it.

It is not in their incentive to do that.

It would

There's no incentive.

And there's I think there's three types of
creators.

I think there are creators who will just
continue doing what they're doing

and eventually they will no longer be
creators because the market will just
cease

to exist. Then I think that there are some
creators who are like,

This is all gonna just change.

So I am going to milk every penny out of
what I can ~ before the ship goes down.

And that's gonna have a dramatic change on
the types of content,

right? Because it's gonna your incentive
has completely changed.

If you're like

I see the end of it. What I need to do now
is maximize every dollar I can

get out of this platform and before it
goes down.

The types of content you're gonna produce
is very,

very different than if what you're focused
on is building a long-term audience

and building affinity and affection,

whatever, all that kind of stuff.

And then the third type of creator are the
people who are right

now thinking about how is this changing
and what do I need to do differently

so that when I get when we get to the
other side and I don't think that there

are a lot of creators in that third group.

I think there are most of them are in that
first group I talked about.

There's some opp opportunistic people in
the second group and there's a very,

very, very small group in that of the
third type that I described.

But I think that that in order to succeed
on the other side of this,

you have to be in the third one.

So start thinking, Steven.

Well, and that's honestly why I'm so
thankful that the l most important part

of my business is my shortcuts community
because it's like very direct relationship

with the people that follow me there and
that have joined there,

free or members. And I think podcasting is
still like it'll be

one of the last bastions to fall to this
like AI encroachment because

I mean, I don't think anytime in the near
future anybody's gonna want

to listen to an hour and a half AI
generated podcast.

Like a fifteen to thirty second Instagram
reel,

sure. People will watch that now and share
it.

An hour and a half generated AI podcast,

I think we're farther off from that,

if maybe ever, from seeing two people,

like two people like us for an hour and a
half talking about stuff AI generated?

I don't think so. So I am

hopefully trying to be in that third
category by putting my eggs

in the podcast basket and even more so the
here's a closed community where

there's no question about what's AI
generated or not.

We're all just here. Like we're just here.

I'm live like literally live streaming
weekly.

Like we're interacting live. And you know,

maybe that's why Twitch streamers have
become such a large part

of the creator community. Cause it's like
this person is live right

now reacting to what I am saying.

There is no AI generated stuff.

And I don't know, maybe you could argue
that the AI stuff will get so good that

it could be instantaneously generated,

but I think we're far enough from that
that ~ I don't know.

I don't know. I think we're all right.

So it's scary though, I'll be honest.

It's a little scary. It's a little sc I
mean,

do you feel that as a writer primarily?

Like you just said, writers are hosed.

It's

already dead. Like tr there's no zero
traffic on the internet coming from

the places that it used to come from.

So where are you getting traffic from?

I mean at this point it's just like most
publications that's why they're moving

to paywalls, which people hate,

right? But yeah, as or I've that's one of
the reasons why I start thinking about

like, okay, so just like you, just writing
for a publication,

hoping you can get ~ enough traffic to
make it worthwhile,

that has just been dead for a long time.

So it's yeah, yeah, the I mean I d I'm not
not quite ready to talk about some

of my ideas.

publicly yet but I'll talk

Okay, okay, okay.

to you. Yeah. But like it's just you do
have to be thinking,

okay, so the platform that's why that's
why you t a lot of YouTubers like make
ridge

wallets or whatever. Because at some point
like you might you know

you build enough big enough audience to
sell those you know you need

a shortcuts charger. I don't know.

You plug it in and it runs a shortcut.

I don't know. Merch. We need merch,

Well and and honestly, one of the things
that we have merch.

Steven. No, no, no. We need real we need
real

You can go to beardfm.store. Look at that.

merch, Steven.

We need to be selling

okay.

like apple mice that plug in the right way
or something.

I don't know.

Well, here's here's what this was s
instructive to me.

Like we both made apps and put them in the
app store.

And I made a paid app.

It wasn't even free to download,

$3, and it hit number one in the app store
because a large amount

of people went ahead and bought and
downloaded it.

The only reason that happened is because
there are people who follow

me on YouTube, in podcasts, and on social
media where I posted about it.

Yeah, so you leverage that p audience to
something completely different.

Right. And they cared about it because
they trust me as a creator and feel like

I I probably did something good here.

Like I'm not gaslighting them,

which

And it was

three dollars, which meant it's low risk.

It's low risk, but it's so I feel for the
many developers that reach

out that don't have a marketing budget.

Like I didn't have to spend anything on
marketing because I already

had the marketing channels. YouTube,

my YouTube channel is a marketing channel.

Where if I make something like an app,

I can tell thousands of people about it
right there.

Someone who is just making and not just is
in lessening what they're doing,

but if they don't have a YouTube channel,

an audience on social media

They might made the best app in the world,

but they're going to have to spend money
marketing that because they don't have

a built-in audience that they could say,

Hey, I made an app. You know, the ATP
guys,

like they have the perfect audience for if
they make an app,

they will all buy it. Like I'm sure eighty
percent of listeners

use Overcast that listen to Accidental
Tech Podcast.

And that is the that is a unfair not
unfair,

but it feels like an unfair advantage that
a creator or podcaster would have versus

someone who

Might have made the best app in the world,

but they just can't get it out there.

That's why I feel so bad. I there's still
developers,

I get a dozen messages every day who are
getting scammed by someone impersonating

me and writing them emails and saying,

For a hundred dollars, I'll feature you on
my YouTube channel.

And some of them fall for it. Many of them
tr like figure out how to reach

out to me, like through my website or
whatever,

and I tell them it's a scam. I'm sorry.

I feel so bad because it's gotta be so
hard to get the word out on an

app if you don't already have that
audience.

And so it's

It's just a w it's a weird ecosystem where
the things that

I think are like an app or merch or a
private community,

those things only work if you have the
reach.

And if you don't have your own reach via a
YouTube channel or podcast

or other means, it is so hard to get it.

And the discovery platforms like Instagram
and YouTube are kind of

the o the cheapest ways to do it and
that's why everyone keeps making content

for them. So I don't know.

I'm trying to be more optimistic than you,

but I d I don't know. We'll see.

Well,

I think it's good there you can be
positive,

which I think is good for you.

There then I think that the don't I'm I am
positive about the work that

a lot of creators are doing, right?

I'm just not

Sure, sure.

optimistic about the f the platforms and
the direction that these things

are going right now. And I'm not a
doomsdayer in that sense.

I'm just saying we have to be super smart
and strategic because

We I just see, and maybe it's because as a
writer I've seen this already happen,

right? Publications are having to very
much adapt to how they can survive.

And in in a lot of publications,

like ~ you know, there are publications
that the literal publishing of words

on the internet is only a small part of
what they do.

They do live events, they do other types
of things.

That's why you see all these like the New
York Times has mastered this.

They've got games, they've got recipes,

they've got all this stuff.

Right.

You just have to be thinking about,

okay, I what is my stool and what are the
different legs that are holding it up?

And if one of them goes out, how do I
replace that?

And can the other two do that?

So

And that's the last thing I'll say is I
listened to the decoder with

~ the semaphore founder, I forget his
name.

Yeah, Ben Smith.

Ben Smith, he wrote the book Traffic,

which was a great book, I read that.

But Semaphore, as he was talking to Ne Lai
on that decoder,

it's like they are pushing into live
events and they are also trying

to appeal their news to like the most
influential high income people,

not because they don't care, but because
that's the only sustainable business model

that they can picture right now.

Yeah, like the information.

Like the information.

that doesn't even have gift links or
previews or whatever.

So my goodness.

Talk about the harshest paywall in
existence.

The most

the most predatory. It is a like I can't
even think like the walls of Troy,

basically.

It's

like our words are so precious we can't
even tell you they exist unless

you pay us four hundred dollars a year.

That's it. You get to see the headline.

That's it. That is it. And then you see
our paywall.

And speaking of platforms, I did want to
just to be clear about this.

So YouTube announced several updates to
their platform.

They announced some visual updates to
their apps or whatever,

but they announced how they're changing
views.

Last week we talked about how the bar to
reach the YouTube partner program,

which is to be monetized, got to 8,000
watch hours,

and we kind of explained what why that is
not as big of a deal.

This is their

changing how they count views on YouTube
and previously or up until now,

a view only counted, and it wasn't exactly
clear,

it was kind of a black box of we're not
exactly sure how YouTube calculates this,

but someone had to stick around for a few
seconds,

maybe up to thirty seconds, for it to
count as a view on YouTube long form
videos.

So if you just like click my video and
immediately X out the window,

that didn't count as a view. Like you had
to stick around for at least

30 seconds ish. Well

On August 24th, I believe they're changing
this.

Yeah. And it the view is going to count
even if just the first frame

of a video loads. Now, what that will mean
is the view counts

you see publicly on long-form YouTube
videos,

they're just gonna go up. How much they

Probably by a lot.

I would think by a lot, but also this is
the same mechanism that

Instagram reels, TikTok.

And YouTube Shorts use. So YouTube Shorts
was already doing this.

The first frame of a video counted as a
view.

So I think YouTube is doing that,

making this change, one, because they
probably want the vanity metric

of the long form views being as much as
these other platforms.

And there's this joke amongst creator
world where

you know 100,000 TikTok followers is equal
to

20,000 Instagram followers, which is equal
to a thousand YouTube subscribers.

And the joke there is that the vanity
metric of followers on TikTok

and even millions and millions of views on
TikTok doesn't mean

as much because TikTok tunes their numbers
to reflect even a momentary engagement

of the content. And YouTube long form
views has long time been

the like gold standard of okay,

if you have this many views on a YouTube
video and this many subscribers

on your YouTube channel,

Those are like the best audience because
they're the actual most engaged

and they actually watch. Now, the
subscriber thing th isn't changing.

This is not changing any of that.

But the view counts, like yes,

there will be an initial view bump,

I think. This is not affecting anything
about monetization because YouTube only
pays

based on like ad views and stuff like
that.

Which I would be curious. I don't know if
that that first frame view counts

if it's an ad. You know what I mean?

Like

If someone watches a 30 second ad,

does that count as a view if even if they
never see your actual video?

But this is I think mainly a vanity
metric.

YouTube is trying to be competitive in the
space against TikTok and Instagram.

And so people see millions of views on
reels.

I think YouTube is trying to level that
playing field and make it look like they

also get millions of views on different
content.

But yeah.

Yeah, and the thing the reason you have to
talk about this ahead of time

is that all of the advertisers and
sponsors have to figure out

how they readjust what they will pay based
on the size of views.

That's exactly right. And that's something
where a sponsorship in a YouTube video,

you know, if you say you get ten thousand
views on a YouTube video,

that means something to a sponsor right
now.

Whereas after August 24th, they don't.

They have no idea what it's gonna mean
after August twenty fourth.

And YouTube said the and the metric will
still be available in YouTube Studio

for creators as an engaged viewer metric.

So you can go into the creator,

go to your analytics and say, here's the
total views,

here's the engaged views.

Meaning people who stick around for longer
than 30 seconds or a minute.

And this is funny because this is actually
how podcast metrics work

in Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

They give you a plays number, which is
huge.

Like if I gave a sponsor our play count,

they'd be like, We'll buy all the ads.

But yeah,

Please.

please. But that is very different from
the engaged listener metric,

which is you have to listen to at least 20
minutes or 50% of

an episode versus people who finish the
episode kind of thing.

So yes, it is a hundred percent gonna
change and creators will likely have

to go to their analytics, go to their
engaged views,

and send that to a sponsor so they have
better data of like do we actually want

to sponsor this channel? So yeah,

that's a change. That's a change.

~ and we I wanna get to your daughter's
tech loadout for college.

I just want to mention real quick,

we talked about Mark Zuckerberg a lot last
week and his manifesto talking about

super intelligence. And I had this thought
over the week as I listened

to the last episode. I like, Mark
Zuckerberg

might be syndrome from the Incredibles.

Where Syndrome was like, when everybody's
super,

no one is. And it feels a little bit like
that's what Mark Zuckerberg

was talking about. If everybody has super
intelligence,

then everybody's cool and it's no problem.

And so I don't know, I just wanted to put
that out there.

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is syndrome.

~ Maybe.

Maybe.

Also Meta's releasing an AI app for the
Mac and I just wanna I'm sure

not a soul cares.

Not a soul will download this unless they
work at Meta.

And this is why Meta

Or

unfollowed me after my glasses video.

That's all.

Yes.

All right. Tell us about your your
daughter's off to college.

You sent her with a tech loadout.

Tell me all about it.

Well, yeah, let me just real quickly talk
about the philosophy here,

which was how do I make my eighteen year
old,

who has never really thought about
technology a day in her life,

other than her iPhone and her airpods,

how do I make her tech self sufficient for
the next several years,

or at least until Thanksgiving,

when she comes home and we can reevaluate,

Right. Reevaluate, yeah.

right? So

it's like, okay, well, she needs and just
also like for context,

our until she moved out, all of our kids
the rest of them still do.

you know, we charge all the devices in a
central place.

I she does charge her laptop in her room,

whatever, but like they so she didn't have
like just all of the things that

she might need. So ~ whoops. So I ~ was
trying to think about this.

And the beautiful thing was I we didn't
have to really buy very many things.

In f

Right.

in fact we bought her ~ five MacBook Air.

That's what she got for graduating.

It's

Nice.

just a sixteen gig five twelve.

It'll get her through college.

Yeah. yeah.

It'll be fantastic. She's gonna love it.

She's

got an incredible device.

and sent her with like a couple of
charging devices.

She has the Nomad sixty five watt dual
charger USB C charging,

which is like super

Yes.

she can charge her phone and her laptop at
the same time.

Then I sent her with but the and that was
a thing I had and I just didn't need it.

And she had been using it anyway.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is.

There it is. Yeah.

The

one thing I didn't put a link to is the
charging stand she's using because Steven

would have quit the podcast because
literally

The charging stand that I gave her was one
that Google sent me.

It's like the Google Che2 charging stand
because she d

Like for the pixel?

probably, but here's the thing.

She doesn't she's never used a stand
before.

So I was like, here's the deal.

If you have this, you can just put it on
there next to your bed at night

and it'll work as a clock. Again,

this is someone who's never charged her
phone or her other devices in

her room with her, but obviously she has
to do that now.

And it was just one I had around.

Before I buy her one of these three in
ones,

or before Steven sends me some kind of a
three in one charging device,

I thought, let's find out if this is a
thing she actually wants to do.

And this one was just laying around,

so I sent it with her. It doesn't even
charge your AirPods or your

or your Apple Watch because it's made by
Google,

right? It's just a super simple basically
it's that thing.

What in the world, Jason? Is it this
thing?

The pixel snap charger? ~ I'm so mad right
now.

It's basically that, I think, probably.

But it's fast charging.

Okay, that's fine.

Yeah, that's fine.

This is a

fast charging Qi two charger. It works
perfect for her phone.

Listen, we'll get her something different
for Christmas if she cares.

But I was not gonna send her with like
with

If she doesn't care, yeah, yeah.

this one, which I I only use it when I'm
traveling,

but I'm not going to like give this up,

right? And so anyway, I just

Sure. Okay. Okay. Okay.

we sent that with her. Well, I sent her
with sh and then the other nice thing

is that Pixel Snap thing comes with a two
USB C charger.

So she plugs that thing into it and then
she plugs an Apple Watch.

charging device into it. ~

Sure, sure.

sent her with two batteries. One is the
EcoFlow 27,000 milliamp hour battery
that's

actually fantastic. Anchor makes one,

but ~ I just gave her one that EcoFlow
sent me.

And it's amazing. It's it's it's like a
140 300 watt total max output,

right? 140 watt on that cable.

Yeah. The built in cable is the key.

So it'll it's amazing.

Though that love it. Love it.

And what she loved about it is she's like,

wait, so I could plug this in if I was
studying with a couple people

and everybody could

Plug into I'm absolutely it's exactly
yeah,

You can be the coolest kid on campus.

That's it. Yes.

it's perfect for that. And even if you
don't

have something to plug it into,

three people can plug a MacBook Air into
this thing and it would last them all day.

All three

Yeah, that's true.

of them and stuff. So she has that.

She has the small anchor, like whatever
they call that thing that

you can plug directly into yeah,

Plug it in a wall, yep.

that the power

bank. Yep, you can plug it in directly,

which is nice, and then it has that cable.

~ and then we bought her a nightstand.

Well

I didn't this was I'm taking credit for
this as part of the tech loadout,

but I had nothing to do with her acquiring
this.

Her and her roommate both just decided
they wanted the same thing.

But this has

Okay.

two USB C it has like maybe a USB A,

USB C. No, two yeah, and it has a power in
it.

~ yeah.

So that's right next to the bed.

So she's got the little charging stand
plugged into there.

She's also got two little outlets right
there.

So it's

Nice.

it's it's great. It's a nice little setup
for her.

So yeah. Anyway, it was just

That is very nice.

I'm sure there are other things that
she'll need.

She'll call. We just had to buy her a new
I well,

she actually bought them herself.

This is the other thing, Steven.

It's like, ~ okay, well we need to set you
up as a additional user

on our Amazon Prime.

There's an Amazon locker on campus.

And ~ so we so she can order stuff.

She can but it's like, ~ we have to get
you into like

thus she she had seventy five dollars
worth of Starbucks cards.

I think you should sign up for a Starbucks
app now.

Right? Like it's all these things she's
never needed in her life.

Yes, yes. Right.

She

had a Taco Bell gift card. She's like,

Do I need to sign up for that one?

I'm like, I don't think you need to sign
up for that one.

No, no, no, no.

Just take the gift card

in there. It's fine. But the Starbucks
one,

it's worth having them load all in the
app,

it's fine.

Exactly.

But just going through all of that stuff,

I had to show her how to use her show her
how to add her debit card to Apple Pay.

So in it so now it's

wow.

in her wallet. So she doesn't have her
phone I mean her wallet with her.

Yeah, yeah.

She can just

tap to pay. Also now she can use it to
order s like if she's buying stuff

on her phone. She can do that.

There you go.

I gave her one of the I didn't even
include this.

I gave her one of the MagSafe wallets.

The Apple ones. I was like, listen,

Nice. Very good. Very good.

if you're leaving and you just need your
student ID and your debit card,

just use just take this. So anyway,

That's it? She liked that did she like
that idea?

it was Yeah,

she did. I don't know if she's gonna use
it or not,

but she carries around this contraption of
like

There's a wallet and then there's
something else that I don't know what is
in it.

And then there's like a key and her
AirPods cases on it.

And it's like six pounds of stuff she
carries with her.

I'm like, here's the thing, if you're just
leaving the house to

go to soccer practice

Just

and you just need your student ID and your
debit card,

just use this instead. So

Do that, do that.

Well, I don't know if she would be
comfortable about it,

but maybe at Thanksgiving break or after
she could do like a little bonus segment

and come on the show and talk about her.

I'll see what she wants to do if she wants
to do it.

Because people like

to know how young people use their tech,

at least my video with my son was very
yeah,

it was very funny. I think the ATP guys
actually talked about it

Yeah.

on a bonus episode. But well, that's very
cool.

And ~ that personal tech, but we're gonna
hit app corner because you launched

a new app, as did

I. And so you launched Element.

It's great name for an app, by the way.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well the the thesis here was one,

I was tired of paying a subscription for
Lightroom.

Two, I loved Aperture so much and I just
hate that it's gone.

And then three, I have a use case where I
commonly need to be able

to share libraries with someone else for
photos.

And you can't really do that in Lightroom.

Like you could be logged in as a s the
same user,

but I don't want that. I wanted to be able
to let's say you were let's

say you were storing all your photos on
well,

and I wanted to do it without a cloud
subscription.

Like what if you just store your photos in
Dropbox or iCloud or iCloud Drive,

not yeah, or or or Google Drive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I wanted

to be able to point the app at a set set
of images on a drive,

leave them there, create

Right.

all my stuff, my album, all my edits and
stuff,

and then say share this album,

send you a link, and when you open that
album,

it's pointed already at that folder in
Google Drive and you get all my edits.

And if you

Right.

decide you want to make different edits,

now we have versions.

So it's Steven's edits, Jason's edits.

You can toggle between them and see how we
did it differently.

It also links directly to photos,

so you can import your photo library.

It's going to like

Soon. yeah, absolutely. Yep. I'm still

Really? Nice.

testing that because I don't know if you
know this,

but it's been 11 years since anyone had an
aperture library that they could open.

Yes. Right. True.

So there's a lot

of debugging happening. But you can just
point I don't recommend this because this

is a thing that was really interesting in
the process was people are like,

~ I have ~ 600,000 photos and it's taking
a while to import.

I'm like, yes, because I didn't envision
that you would just

while you're testing a brand new app,

try to import all 600,000, or like I just
want to point it at my photos library.

I'm like, that's weird because I think of
my photos library as stuff I take

on my iPhone and I used I've been using
Lightroom for everything else.

I didn't realize that maybe some people
those two things are the same.

But you can one click publish to fo your
photos,

like create an album and photos and it'll
just sync to iCloud photos,

right?

Right, right.

Or

same thing for Flickr, same thing for
Google Photos,

same thing for

Pyxius, same thing for like smug mug,

which is a huge one that photographers
use,

~ Photo Shelter, all of those services you
can just literally publish directly

to those from here. So you don't have to
export them and do that.

So anyway, the goal was just to stop
paying for Lightroom and be able

to collaborate very well with the sort of
organizational philosophy of aperture.

And to me, the thing that was the best,

like Lightroom Classic.

makes you go through like different modes,

right? There's a library, there's develop,

there's whatever. That never made sense to
me.

The way Aperture has it, it's all just in
one.

So I we're using that same model.

There are three tabs, library adjust and
info.

~ but I wanted it to be fast. That's what
Aperture was for me is

I could import 5,000 photos. I could cull
them very fast.

And so

Yeah, yeah.

I my goal of making this ~ a pretty much
an intuitive Mac app is that

you everything you think should work.

will just work. You wanna add keywords,

That's so cool.

just hit Command K, start typing and it'll
put into the keyword.

Then when you hit enter and you start
arrowing,

it keeps going through the thing.

Like in the but you but then when you s
pause,

you can just start it's still on the
keyword.

You can just add another keyword to
another photo.

So it's meant to and I I I explain this on
the website,

but the other piece of this is the reason
it had to be fast is I have been stress

testing photo apps shooting F one races.

When you're shooting five sessions a
weekend and you need to be able

to get through them fast and you and I've
I

was a pretty disciplined wedding
photographer.

Shooting an F1 race, you're gonna take a
lot of photos because things

Hehehe Sure.

are moving very fast. And so you have

to have 50 of a of a given thing.

And being able to get through them and
call them and tag them,

that stuff was so hard for me in
Lightroom.

Photo Mechanic better, capture one is
better,

but I just wanted something really simple.

So I built it and I have never gotten more
response about anything than this.

The number of people who have downloaded
it already

And are using it just the free it's just
you can download it right now,

free trial, seven days, right?

The number of people who have done that
just blows me away.

And the amount

That's awesome.

of feedback I've gotten has been super
useful.

People are like, I pointed it at my NAS.

Why didn't it work? I'm like, because I
don't have a NAS,

I don't even know what you're talking like
it's not that I know what you're talking

about, but I'm like, let me explore this
and figure it out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's

so many variables to a NA. Could be that
you're connected on a slow connection.

It could be like there's

Right.

there's a lot of different pieces there.

But

I think we've mostly figured it out.

The biggest complaint I got, I'll just be
super up front,

is this doesn't look like a Mac app.

It was entirely built in Swift UI.

It it does now. The s I need to update the
screenshots on the website.

But it's like what you talked about.

~ Claude seems to just do this when it
makes a thing.

And like some of the font choices,

some of the things. And so I have Macified
it.

I I mean it looks

nice.

like a Mac app. I mean it it already
behaved the way a Mac app should behave,

but

Right.

I have a I have changed

All of the places where people are like,

this feels like some weird vibe coded app.

And I'm like, but what I didn't want is
for people to question

its ability to actually do the job just
because of the way that it looked.

Right. Yeah. That is very cool.

And so anyway, there you go. That's app
corner.

Element f

You made the aperture

element photo dot app. I'm sorry,

Elementphoto. No,

what were you gonna say?

I'm gonna put that link in the show notes.

~ yeah, I'll I'll put all at least all the
apps up in the show notes.

But elementphoto.app, I downloaded it,

trying it out. It is awesome. It blows my
mind that this was able to be vibe coded,

but obviously you knew very much what you
wanted.

And I think we're gonna talk about vibe
coding in the bonus episode and just kind

of like the general reception ~ of how
people feel about it.

But it's a great app. It's a one time
purchase,

not a subscription, you know you

No subscription.

Never. No subscription ever.

No subscription

ever. I I really like the the no
subscription model.

Just for my own stuff.

Steven Steven, it

even uses the Apple Vision framework,

which means

Mm.

it will suggest keywords for your apps
based on what's in the photo.

That's amazing. See, that's that's very
cool.

So you should check out Element Photo.

~ especially if you loved Aperture.

Like I loved Aperture and I used it when I
was working at the travel company with

photography, and I still miss it.

And so Element Photo scratches that itch.

It's a great app.

Use it for seven days for free.

If you like it, you can you

That's it. That's it.

can pay ninety nine bucks one time and
never pay again.

That's it. And I just wanna say I have
finally,

I feel like, nailed down can do.

If you had tried it before and it was
buggy for you or it was crashing

or sync wasn't working, 100% correct.

You were you were correct. And I c you
know,

people send me a lot of feedback,

was figuring it out. I had spent many
hours and many dollars on

the on codex and I had Sol five point six
I just did a bunch of things.

I talk about on Mac Power users.

We actually have Verner, the CEO of
Things.

He's actually our guest this Sunday and
it's a great ~ conversation.

We talk a little bit about AI and vibe
coding and and what they have done in
things.

But short long story short, condu one dot
two dot two is out.

just came out yesterday.

And it is working how I had always hoped.

Sync works, it it's not crashing,

the bugs are gone, it works on all the
devices,

and you know, there's a moment where I
wanted to get the app to a place where

I could trust it. Because I feel like
that's one of the key parts of an app.

Like you have to trust it's going to like
be

safe with your data and that you can open
it and trust it's not going

to do weird things. And you know,

when I think about an app like Fantastical
or Things or Bear,

I trust those apps explicitly.

And it's one of the reasons why I still
use many of those apps.

And I still use things for a certain task
management.

But can do is finally at a place where I
trusted with my own stuff.

And I stopped going to reminders to keep
track of videos and I can keep track

of them here. I had so much a l wonderful
feedback,

people saying the app works how they how
their brain works.

And so anyway, you can get it right now.

$3. We'll put a link to that. And I do
have another app coming out.

This one is going to be free to download
and use to a certain extent.

And then there'll be a $3 in-app purchase
to unlock for all the things.

And I th I think I'm going to save it.

It's called Stash. If you're in my
shortcuts community,

there's a test flight beta. You can
actually download it right now.

And so I'll just I'll link my shortcuts
community down in the show notes

if you really want to try it. But it is in
review right now in App Store Connect.

And I'm very excited about it.

the Vision OS version was approved.

So hopefully that's a good sign that the
other versions will be approved soon.

But yeah, it's gonna be it's a little
utility for all your Apple devices that

I think it'll be worthwhile. Are you are
you c I'll send you the Testify beta?

You can you can try it. You can let me

Okay, that'd be great.

know what you let me know what like.

~ so anyway, let's go around I want to
talk a little bit about vibe coding

the bonus episode again. You can get
access that by supporting the show,

becoming a member. Link is down in the
show notes,

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And we would love for if you could support
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thank you to everyone who does that.

And if you could leave us a five star
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Let me check real quick. We are four
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And we're gonna go record a bonus episode.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.

We'll catch you next time.