Primary Technology

Good morning. And in case I don't see ya,

good afternoon, good evening, and good
night.

Welcome to Primary Technology,

the show about the tech news that matters.

It is iPhone season. Apple has announced
the iPhone event for September 9th.

We're gonna get into what to expect,

They also released new Macs, including a
Mac Studio up to 20 grand,

or you can lease it. Also a new Mac Mini
with a brand new M6 chip.

Apple Maps finally has ads. Meta had to
settle a lawsuit and instill

a bunch of restrictions for teenagers.

OpenAI released their report on the
hugging face breach and a ton more.

This episode is brought to you by Framer,

Copilot Money, and you, the members who
support us directly.

I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles,

joined by my friend Jason Ayton.

How's it going, Jason?

It's it's good. It's good. Do you have
that whole thing memorized every time when

you do that whole thing? No, you just do
it off the cuff,

No, no. I do it off the cuff. That's why I
have to edit it sometimes 'cause

everything. ~ that's right. Okay.

I just yeah.

I'm literally scrolling our outline and
deciding what to say as I'm saying it.

In real time. You have a

In real time.

real time processing unit in your head.

You're running a real time operating
system just like ~ you you've got an

I got the ram I got more RAM than the Mac
Studio.

That's what it is. The R the R one.

R one chip going in your head just I

Did we ever get it to R two in the Vision
Pro?

I don't think the five version has an R2.

No, it's the same it's the same archip.

We only ever got one. Anyway, what

So anyway.

do you know what movie the opening quote
was from?

Shirley.

I know it's the

Jim Carrey one where he lives in a bubble.

What is it the tr Truman show?

Yes, yes. That's it. Yes. It was the
Truman it was the Truman show.

Is that what it's called? Why are you
laughing?

Because he l well,

Like I said something weird. He lives in a
bubble.

A, it's not a bubble. I mean it was a sure
a dome of a fake city.

It's literally a bubble. Metaphorically

Yeah, so I guess I guess it's that.

and physically, he's living in a bubble.

Fair enough, fair enough.

Okay.

Excellent movie. I feel like very apropos
for t ahead of its time we'll say.

But I said that bec Yes.

It's both the worst and best

role Jim Carrey's ever played.

It's the least Jim Carrey Jim Carrey

Right.

role, but also he did an amazing job.

Exactly that. And I did the good morning
thing because Apple's tagline

for the event is surprise and shine,

which I think is it's interesting.

And we

will not be hearing good morning.

No, that's the thing too, Tim I'm I have
it in the outline.

Tim Cook is CEO for like two more days as
this episode drops.

Because September first, we're gonna turn
up.

Sorry. I'm I apologize to everyone.

I'm so sorry. Please

Please don't unsubscribe and or leave us
anything but a five-star review.

You can leave a

five-star review and tell us how lame that
joke was,

but

Thank

you very much. And listen, we are two
thank you for that transition.

We are two five star reviews away from
five hundred.

So if you leave us a five star even review
and but here I have something specific

because Jason and I are gonna argue
vehemently in the personal tech segment

at the end of this episode. We're gonna
argue about what makes an app whimsical.

And I I have some strong thoughts.

I th we already disagree. You texted me
something that ju I couldn't even sleep
last

night. I just laid awake staring at the
ceiling,

thinking about how much I'm gonna tear
into this opinion.

That you have.

We also disagree

about the pronunciation of that word.

Wait, vehemently? ~ vehemently.

That's not how you say it. Yeah,

Vehement.

thank you. Okay.

Anyway, emphasis.

The first one

sounds like somehow you were throwing up a
very dry substance.

V V Man Le anyway, leave us two.

We need two more files. Lee tell me what
app that you use on your Apple devices

or your Android devices that you feel ha
is a whimsical,

has that like spirit of whimsy in it.

We're gonna talk about that in personal
tech.

But thank you for a five star review from
Lynn Gassaway from the USA.

Found us through Mac Power Users.

Welcome, welcome to this show.

It's the MP universe, the primary tech u
PTU.

I don't know. Merlin's got the MPU,

the Merlin Podcast Universe. I we gotta
figure out something.

For us, I think. I don't know.

Universe of apps. Anyway, and podcast
seven to eight sent us a question.

Do any of you have YouTube Premium?

Yes, I have YouTube Premium.

Yeah. Who d it does re it's a requirement.

Listen, you're

gonna be able to get peacock through
YouTube Premium pretty soon.

That's later in the show.

I don't I don't

care about that part. I just ~ just prefer
to avoid all the ads.

I like if I would give up I'd give up
Disney Plus before I gave up.

I'd give up YouTube T V before I gave up
YouTube Premium.

Listen, we're gonna talk about ads when we
get to Apple Maps.

And I I just well, I'll save it.

I'm gonna save that. Apple Maps have ads.

And one last thing, listener Chris sent me
this photo,

the medieval knight riding the polar bear
on a walk in Virginia on

the Green Springs interpretive trail.

So there you go. Our mid our ~ nights
making it everywhere.

now listen, we've we've talked about in
the last few episodes our apps.

We always save it to the end of the show.

And so before we get into all the Apple
stuff,

which is the event and the new Macs and
everything,

just wanted to let everybody know,

hey, we made we made some apps and I think
we're pretty proud of them.

So tell me about your app, because you
actually got to write about it.

Yeah, well I mean I have two. Everybody
knows about Contexly.

If you if you want a simple notes app that
also syncs your calendar

and uses Apple intelligence to surface
action items and then you can send them

to your to do apps. That that's when it's
been around,

it's great. I continue working on it,

continue updating it. There's a huge
update coming out once they release the,

you know, iOS twenty seven and macOS
twenty seven.

Yeah.

Other than that, there won't be,

you know, a lot of apps. It's available in
the app store,

both on the Mac and the App Bot.

And then I sat around like trying to solve
a problem that I've had forever,

which is I hate paying Adobe money.

That's one of my problems. And

Yes.

I really miss Aperture. I have missed
Aperture for twelve years.

Same. Yes.

And

so I thought one day, I wonder if I could
recreate this an app in

the spirit of Aperture. Now, I don't know
if you know,

but it's been twelve years, which means
there were a lot of things that could

be improved on from where we left off with
Aperture.

So

Yes.

I tried to create

an app, ~ quad code helped me do it.

It looked no no no lie there. But it I
did.

It took me about a week of pretty intense
work to get a minimum viable product

and it's had a bunch of updates.

It's on version one point five.

I did have the problem of releasing it and
asking people to test it

and calling it version one point and I'm
like,

it's not how that's supposed work.

Zero point eight or whatever.

One point

is supposed to be like boom minimum
minimum viable product it's out there.

This is it. Yeah.

But one point

five was that product but

There is a release notes page.

You can see all of the things that I've
added to it over the time.

I think if you you have to click on
support and then there's a link

for the release notes. But I I would
encourage people if you are looking

for an alternative, ~ go up to the top and
then click on the release notes tab.

See, there you go. Okay.

gotta gotta go.

But if you're looking for an alternative
to ~ app to Lightroom or Capture

One or any of those things, the goal here
was it had to be lightning fast,

super, super, super fast for calling
things,

and then it had to also have

All of the standard tools. Now,

this is gonna get a pretty big update when
macOS 27 comes out as well,

because ~ the Apple has introduced RAW
nine.

~ it's currently RAW eight, but there'll
be a lot better.

The the pipeline is getting a lot better
with RAW 9.

And I spent a lot of time watching
developer sessions.

Steve, I think I sent you a text message.

Fancy. Yeah, yeah, you are, yeah.

Yes. And

learning about what's actually happening.

Cause I kind of want to know what my app
is doing.

I don't want to just tell Claude to do
things.

And so, but

Right.

I tried to make it feel

Very much like a native Mac app.

some people are like, well, then it
shouldn't be in dark mode all the time.

I'm like, here's the thing, if it's a
photo app,

if what you're trying to do is determine
exposure and color,

you don't want

Right.

a lot of extraneous other stuff around.

So that's why it's

Exactly.

like that. I know Aperture was Chrome,

like Chrome colored, but that's that.

Yeah, but it's twenty twenty six.

So but

Yeah, no.

you can download it for free and use it
for seven days,

and then if you want it, you can buy a
license.

There's no subscription, the license

That's right.

will work forever.

It's fifty percent off if you use the code
launch fifty.

This episode, by the way, is sponsored by
Element.

Launch fifty. Launch fifty

It is? Wait a minute. I gotta send an
invoice.

when you buy it. ~ yeah, it's great.

Very

cool. It's a great app. I've had it,

been using it, and I don't take a lot of
photos.

Like I'm not in the photography world
right now,

but I used Aperture all the time and it is
very reminiscent,

albeit better, because it's actually new
and like you have all the new stuff.

Yep. Yeah.

And I will say, my I don't know if this it
was out last episode,

but Stash is out. My new app for quickly
saving things like text,

links, photos, gifts, and files,

and putting them back on your clipboard.

It has great shortcuts, actions.

It is free to download.

And then if you like it and you want to
save more than 10 things,

it's a $3 one-time in-app purchase,

no subscriptions. That's stash.

And here's where I really need help.

If you are a member of Primary Technology
and you support the show,

there's a link down in the show notes to
download the test flight beta of Can Do,

my task app. And if you have been using
Can Do,

I have version 1.3. It's ready and
approved in the App Store.

I just have to click a button and it goes
out.

But there's big change to being able to
save large attachments to tasks in Kandu.

And I added search in Kandu. So you can
search all your tasks,

including archived and completed tasks.

And so those are two big changes that
changed kind of a lot

of underlying structure of the app.

And so I would love your help.

If you're on Kandu 1.2 anything,

go to the test flight beta. You can join
for free.

Upgrade to 1.3 and then shoot me an email.

The email is also in the show notes,

just for members.

And

let me know ~ how it goes and if there's
any bugs.

And if you could if you no rush,

but if you could do it in the next couple
days,

because I really want to release it before
the weekend.

But if you could go do it right now,

I didn't know I just

pause the show and go do it.

I want to get it out before the weekend
because a lot of ~ I had

so much great feedback from people saying
they love can do,

they're using it for their projects,

they have it open on their Mac all day and
large attachments was a holdup

for some people, and I want to be able to
to release that soon.

So try the test flight, update to 1.3,

let me know how it goes, that your stuff
is still good.

And then I'll release it widely.

So thanks for that. Yeah, check out all
our apps.

There's a little section in the show notes
for everybody,

links to all of the apps that we make.

We there's like four apps now between us
that I feel like we've made.

That's pretty crazy. A couple of years
from now we might be like legit
developers,

Jason. I'm just

Okay.

Don't undersell us, man. We're doing we're
doing good work.

No, I know, but I'm thinking

I there are times where I'm like,

man, I just want to move this thing a
couple pixels,

and I'd rather just dive into the like if
I knew how to just dive into

the code and move this thing a couple
pixels,

I would do that. Yeah, somebody exactly.

Like a cursor.

All right, Apple officially kicked off
iPhone season earlier this week.

Tuesday, they announced the new event.

September ninth is the next Apple event.

You know, Apple doesn't say it's the
iPhone event,

but we all know it's the iPhone event.

The tagline is Surprise and Shine,

happening September 9th at 1 p.m.

Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific. That's all Apple
has told us.

That's it. Surprise and shine event.

There is some interesting translations in
other languages.

A lot of people try to read the tea
leaves.

We won't do a lot of that. But if you look
at in every country,

the invite has slightly different words.

And it seems like the PR people in
responsible for that country gets to write
it.

And in China and in a couple other
countries,

the translation could be something like a
new chapter.

And people were saying, well,

foldable phone, like a book chapter.

It's coming. Okay, like relax.

Okay. Like let's see. We only got less
than two weeks till the event.

And the event is on a Wednesday,

which typically iPhone events are on a
Tuesday,

but it's a Labor Day week, and so they
pushed it a couple days.

And I feel like we haven't really talked
about this.

We probably should talk about it on the
pre-show.

But I think we'll just do our normal
episode that week.

Because it'll be if we did a special
episode,

then we would have another episode like
the next day.

And so we

Right.

we can have we can have ~ not hot takes.

We can have well thought, steeped takes.

Marinated takes.

Thank you. Marinated takes. So they it's
exciting though.

I'm excited. ~ what to expect?

I'll put this 905 Mac article in there,

but of course the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro
Max

Everyone's saying the first foldable phone
that it's coming.

Mark German talked about how people
internal at Apple are having really good

experiences in it. Surprise and shine
again is the tagline.

I don't know, percentage wise,

Jason, how convinced are you we're getting
a foldable iPhone in less than two weeks?

Hmm. Well, I think it's a hundred percent
that we're getting a foldable iPhone.

Well,

really? Okay.

hold on. That we're getting a foldable
iPhone.

That it's coming at this event,

I would put it at about eighty percent.

I think it's possible they could do it at
a later date.

I've

There's some rumors that the supply is so
limited.

Then but

Sure.

I mean also this is when they talk about
their this is when they have

all the attention, and it's when they
introduce the flagships.

So that's why I th I don't think it's much
lower than eighty percent that

I think there is an a foldable iPhone at
this point.

Seems like I mean Mark Gurman is literally
reporting what people think of it.

Like literally people who've used it.

I know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So some of the main upgrades, just to
cover some rumors,

variable aperture main camera,

which you know, anytime you would adjust
the aperture like the F stop

on your iPhone camera, it's a digital or
virtual F stop and blurring.

And so this might actually be a physical
variable aperture main camera.

Smaller dynamic island, Apple's C two
cellular modem might make its debut

in an iPhone.

Which we've not like the iPhone Pro Max
right now,

like the seventeen, still doesn't have
Apple's cellular modem.

~ that was just in the iPhone Air and then
in the iPads with cellular.

So we might actually get Apple's cellular
modem in the main flagship phones.

And then the iPhone Ultra or Fold.

Apple Watch Series twelve and Ultra Four,

very likely. And you know, wildcards could
be AirPods Five.

Not pros, but it may be just the AirPods
Five.

And

You know, a lot of people saying the Apple
T V and HomePod that those

are on the horizon. I'm feeling like it's
gonna be an October event kind

of year and we might see those things in
October.

What do you

I mean there is a rumor there's gonna be
an October event and that that will

be the MacBook Pros.

That too. Like the scary fast and other
MacBook events.

And we

And I don't

think they've been introduced AirPods at a
in a in a MacBook Pro event.

No. So it probably AirPods this event.

Or just a press release. Or do either this
event or a press release.

~ yeah.

That's true. And honestly well,

the MacBook Pro is rumored to be like the
new redesigned maybe body with

an OLED screen. And that MacBook Pro is
going to very difficult to resist.

I will just say that.

It's just so strange 'cause we d we
already got MacBook Pros this year.

We did get it earlier this year,

but we have

an six chip out here now, which we're
gonna get to.

The six is now in the Mac mini.

And I I think we're gonna see some press
releases even before the event

for like six I Mac, maybe?

Wha before the ninth?

Maybe. Yeah. I mean

we got a press release earlier this week,

like the day before

Yeah,

the event.

I think that they would have just ~ they
would have or if they were coming before

the iPhone event, I think they would have
come al already.

I don't think they're gonna c keep
stacking Macs up unless they really

are gonna do a Mac event and but even
then,

like if they're gonna do a ~ MacBook Pro
event in October,

then and they're

Rether.

gonna release an i Mac or whatever,

I don't think they I don't think anyone at
Apple knows they still make the iMac.

Let's just be completely honest.

Like but it never got an five.

But they'll stick the M6 in chip and then
we'll see a newsroom article.

That's what I'm saying. And the Mac Mini
didn't have the five either.

So they went

True.

four to six for the Mac Mini and maybe the
i Mac.

But anyway, we're gonna cover it right
here.

~ it'll be on the show that week.

September ninth is the event. I'm gonna
try and get a recap video out

~ very soon after. Neither of us are going
physically to the event.

You know, just inside baseball,

the iPhone event is a much smaller invite
group.

Because the event is held in the Steve
Jobs Theater.

It is nothing like WWDC where there's just
a lot more people invited.

So me and Jason will be covering it from
the comfort of our own home,

which honestly makes it easier to cover.

And ~ you know, all that.

I might actually

be covering it from New York City,

but that's fine. Yeah. We'll see.

really? What I mean, d is that something
you wanna you wanna share what what's

I can't really talk about it. But I might
be going

happening? you came with well that's
interesting.

to an event. It's always weird to me when
people schedule things.

They're like, Don't you know the iPhone
events that day?

And then I'm like, Well, I probably going
to the iPhone event,

so I'll come to your thing instead.

Okay,

it should be all right. We'll hear more
about that.

But September ninth, it is iPhone season.

I'm excited. I'm excited. I still get
excited for the Apple events

and what they're gonna announce.

And this will be the first, you know,

really big form factor change for the
iPhone in a long time.

And it feels like, man, is this really
gonna happen?

But yeah, iPhone fold. iPhone fold.

Apple did release new Macs officially too
earlier this week,

new Mac Studio and Mac Mini, and man,

are they expensive.

So Mac Studio is updated.

Previously, you could only get the M4 Max
and M3 Ultra,

which was always kind of a weird paradigm
to me.

But now you can get the M5 Max and M5
Ultra in the Max Studio,

and you can upgrade it to a lot of RAM and
a lot of storage.

The most RAM, 512, is not available yet.

512 gigs of unified memory in the Mac
Studio will be available in October.

So you have to wait a little bit.

But let's just do some configuring here,

Jason. Let's see what we got. Starts at
twenty five hundred bucks.

I don't understand this game. This is this
is the only thing I ever

see threads post about is you cannot buy a
twenty thousand dollar Mac studio.

I'm like, So what? Mm-hmm.

I mean that's

listen, it's expensive. The thing ~ the
only thing I wanna Yeah,

Go ahead. I w I mean I wouldn't mean to
discourage you.

I just meant it's just a funny it's just

thanks for your put yuckin' my yum over
here.

Yeah, whatever.

a very funny th like every like this is
the thing that everyone I it's not like
the

I know. The most expensive thing.

it's it's not like any not it's not that
no one is going to buy this.

Some people will actually buy this.

They will not be posting about it on
threads.

Let's just be honest. I would not post

If I had bought one I would have,

but I did not.

about this on threads if I spent that much
money on.

Yeah, that's true. So here's the what's
interesting to me about

it configuration is what is available with
what configs.

For instance, if you wanted to get the
five Max chip and the base model,

which is 18 core CPU, 32 core GPU,

you have one RAM option, which is 36 gigs
of RAM.

And that's unfortunate. If you want to get
like 64 gigs of RAM,

you have to update to the five Max higher
core CPU and GPU.

And

I understand this is like binning.

You know, when Apple makes chips,

some chips, some of the cores are not
active,

and so that just goes to the lower tiers.

But you do have to upgrade if you want to
upgrade the RAM,

you do have to also upgrade the CPU.

So it is kind of like a double pricing
upgrade.

You know, it's not just like, $2,500 plus
the RAM cost.

Depends on the RAM you want to get.

If you want to do that, you have to
upgrade $300 for the CPU GPU.

And then you get up to 128 gigs of RAM
option.

Now, this would be my config. I'm gonna
just I'm just curious.

I actually didn't do this yet.

My current M4 Max Max Studio is 128 gigs
of memory,

eight terabyte SSD, and the most ~ you
know,

cores that I could have got at the time.

$5,099 for the M5 Max version,

which is actually not too far off what I
paid,

I don't think.

So you know, you got more config options
than you did a couple of weeks ago.

We'll just say that. And you get

Yeah.

up to sixteen terabyte SSD if you want.

And that's what brings it to twenty
thousand if you want to do that.

But I mean for three hundred cause this is
the same as the MacBook Pro,

but for three hundred dollars,

you do get the faster the more GPUs and it
now goes to forty-eight gigs

of memory by default. So you are getting
both an increase.

You don't have to do the two things
separately.

You are getting more memory and more GPUs
automatically.

And then if you want to upgrade your
memory from there,

yes, going from an the

eighteen whatever thirty version to the
eighteen forty and going from thirty

two to sixty four is like a seven hundred
dollar increase,

which is just a lot of money.

and I totally misspoke. It's nine thousand
dollars.

The top of the page doesn't

~

update when you config. 5099 is the
starting point.

'Cause that's just the available price,

That is the

yeah.

available price. If you get the 128 gigs
of RAM and the eight terabyte

SSD that I have, the final price of that
Mac Studio is $9,000,

which is several thousand dollars more
than what I paid.

And I did check my trade in. If I trade in
my current Mac Studio,

Jason, did you see what I posted?

Did you already know the number?

I did,

I saw this.

Okay, I would get like two thousand
dollars.

Not enough for me to upgrade, I'll tell
you that.

And I had a bunch of people on threads
being like,

I'll give you two thousand dollars for
that.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like

I will I will bring it to you right now.

'Cause it has eight terabytes and one
hundred and twenty eight gigs.

That's right. And

a hundred and twenty eight gigs of RAM.

Yeah. No.

That

Ram by itself is worth four thousand
dollars.

I know.

Not selling. Not selling ever.

I'm holding on.

No,

I would sell it, but I would just sell it
for eight thousand dollars or whatever.

Well, sure. Sure. Yeah.

No, I'll give six thousand dollars.

So what's interesting is you so that
config,

like my config right now, $9,000 if you
want to buy the M5 Max version.

I have zero motivation upgrade because
also iPhone fold is going to

be $2,000 next month and probably you have
to buy one of those.

So you can buy it for $9,000. But guess
what,

Jason? You can lease, you can lease Max
now.

You can lease this Max Studio,

my config, but an M5 Max for $180 a month.

Now

Here's here's the thing. Okay.

Here's the here's the math that people be
doing.

I I did a video recently where I talked
about how much I had to spend to

fix my vibe coded app. Okay. And in that
video,

I revealed that across Claude and ChatGPT
and extra tokens,

I spent about a thousand dollars making
Kandu right.

Just getting it work, working properly
with iCloud Sync.

Now, if

You had a Mac Studio that could do local
LLMs that were really good at coding,

so you didn't have to pay anybody for
tokens.

Technically, maybe you could justify
leasing something

for $400 a month, which is the maxed out
Mac Studio with like 256 gigs

of RAM right now, rather than paying for
tokens to Claude or ChatGPT.

Now, I don't know if those local LLMs,

which are not

Claude and ChatGPT. I don't know if
they're as good at coding.

I don't know what kind of experience that
is.

I'd love to test Apple if you're
listening.

I will test it if you'd like. I'll vibe
code another app.

If if you want me to test that.

But some people might justify,

like, well, rather than pay Anthropic or
OpenAI,

I will just lease a Mac Studio that does
LLMs locally.

One could say that.

No, I don't think anyone would say that.

I don't I don't think that

One could.

I mean, first of all, your situation was
completely atypical.

In your situation, Sam Altman was sitting
there with Chat GPT spinning it around,

making it dizzy a million times just
because it it didn't do anything.

All all of that money was just paid as a w
like literally it was flushing

the money down the drain. Yes.

You talking about my situation?

But sync works now. So I don't know,

I can't think you could say it does.

But you had to give it back to Claude to
fix it.

Not like all the underlying architecture.

It fixed like small bugs after ChatGPT
went through it.

Okay,

well let me just say this. I have the
exact same sync situation incontexly

and I spent less than a hundred dollars.

Sure. Okay. I don't know if it's exactly
the same though.

No

It's exactly the same.

neither of us are developers. Like we
can't look at the code and say,

yeah, this is the exact same thing.

No, what I'm saying is I solved the
problem for one tenth the price.

So what I'm saying is that your situation

You're assuming we have the same

problem though. I don't I don't assume
that.

The problem was things weren't syncing
with CloudKit.

But there's so many variables to that.

You can't say

No.

like, well synced with broke. It's the
same for every apple who synced is broke.

Yes. Cloud Kit works the same for
everybody.

You have a schema of d fields.

But there's so many the

schema could be so different. There could
be so many different fields.

Those are just words in a database line.

You gotta know what the words mean.

What what I'm saying

is like fix it okay. Just trust me on
this.

That it did it

Mm-hmm.

should not have taken a thousand dollars
to fix that app.

It is just not it is no that app is no
more complicated than contextly.

It is just JSON files, right?

Mm mm. I'm not gonna pretend I know what's
underneath the hood and I don't

Stored in Cloud Kit, sending information
back and forth.

Okay. I I spent a lot of times learning
what that stuff was.

I don't think you know either,

but I'll let you believe you do,

and so yeah, it's the same thing.

Okay.

I all I'm saying

is like it's not typical because an app
the size of your app or my app

Should not should not take a thousand
dollars to fix the sink.

That's all I'm trying to say.

First sure. And I

did not use codex properly. Like putting
it on Sol five point six Ultra

was a mistake.

Also, listeners, correct me if I'm wrong.

There's no scenario where apps that are
this simple sh should require codex

to run for like eighty hours just spinning
its wheels,

right? Okay.

Yeah, and a bunch of people on social
media told me that.

Like

it's do it's it's not doing it right.

And so I should have changed it.

But also Claude couldn't fix it.

Even I spent hours asking it to,

and like doing all the things,

telling it what was wrong, sending it
back.

And you could say maybe I didn't have the
right incantation to tell it

how to fix it, but I think that's the
point.

Like I didn't know how to fix it,

and so I needed it to figure out how to
fix it.

And Claude couldn't, at least for my

You

should have called your friend who's done
who had to go through this,

And what would you say? Hey, fix it
better?

man. No, I would

have told you exactly what Claude did.

Cause then you could

Yeah, but even

have just asked it to do that.

Alright. Alright. The price is going up,

Anyway, can do is it works great now.

Sync is great. Love it. And maybe I'm
gonna try.

Yeah, I'm it's could become a
subscription,

by the way. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

$30 a month.

~ so I might get a you Mac Studio local
LMs.

Or listen, you can also get a Mac Mini.

What's sad about the Mac Mini,

it was starting at $5.99 last year.

You could get an M4 Mac Mini, which was an
amazing deal.

That's why everyone bought one who wanted
to run AI stuff and have their agents

running on a computer.

Everybody was buying the Mac Mini.

Well, it starts at $900 now. So starting
price $900.

It has been updated to either the M6 or
the M5 Pro.

So a bit of a discreet, you know,

not the same ~ family of chips.

The M6 is the first two nanometer process
chip that Apple has released,

which they say is four times faster than
the M4,

which is wild. The M6 versus the M4,

which was the last chip in the Mac Mini.

So, you know, you're getting a

powerful

computer, but it is $300 more than it used
to be.

And of course you can upgrade it to the M5
Pro with RAM and storage and they

can get very expensive. But but it's also
nice that you have this option.

And honestly the M5 Pro for a lot of
people would probably be

the computer that could last them a long
time.

Like if you do video editing, you're in
just final cut and compressor

and you're not doing a bunch of like 3D
animation.

A Mac Mini with an M5 Pro, it's gonna be
pretty sweet.

Even and the M6 too.

Yeah, I think we've we are now at the
point though where things

are too confusing for people. Because
well,

You think it's too confusing?

I've had several people ask me,

like this just happened when it was
released.

So I need a new Mac Mini and you haven't
been able to buy one for months.

Like you just haven't been able to get one
anywhere.

And they're like, I was gonna get the four
pro,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Which one should I buy? I should buy the
six,

right? Numbers bigger must be best.

But that's not true at all. The five Pro
will smoke the six.

Right? Like it will.

in certain

things. Single threaded.

In what things won't it smoke it?

~ checking your email? Checking your
email.

Single threaded yeah, single threaded
activities.

Which is what a lot of people do.

Okay. No, but what I'm saying

That's the thing.

is like if you're saying I need I was
going to buy the four pro version,

I should just buy the six 'cause it's
bigger number.

I'll I just think for most people now it's
getting like a little

bit confusing because if you're saying the

Yeah, it is.

six is the better one, how come the five
Pro is twice as expensive then?

Like it it's just confusing

Yeah.

for people.

I agree.

Also, it

is a crime that the six starts at nine
hundred dollars and it comes with

two hundred and fifty six gigs of storage.

That, yeah, 16 gigs of RAM and then 250.

that is rough. 256 SSD.

That is just ouch.

That's that's not right. I mean,

I understand with the RAM Mageddon,

they want it to be 899, you know,

well under a thousand. Not well under,

but a little under thousand. A little

A little bit under a thousand.

bit under a thousand. I will say so the
M6,

it's a 12 core CPU, 12 core GPU,

dual 16 core neural engine, which is one
of the other improvements,

dual neural engine. But when you go to the
M5 Pro chip,

You can get up to an 18 core CPU,

20 core GPU. And again, those cores for
tasks,

like if you're doing video LLMs,

then the more cores are gonna get you
faster performance for rendering,

or if you're editing in Final Cut and you
know,

you don't wanna wait a bunch of time.

That's what that's for. You know what our
friend Nate actually asked

me a question the other day. I'm curious
what you would what you would because this

is more your realm. He said he was talking
to somebody who has an older Mac and

Nate sent him a file that was like a very
large Photoshop file.

It's because it's for a very large banner
that they're gonna print.

And so it's huge resolution. It's like a
hundred and fifty DPI or whatever,

pixels per inch. And when he goes to open
it on the old Mac,

like it just hangs forever. It takes
forever to open the file.

And then to do make any changes,

you have to wait a bunch of time.

Like it takes forever. What would you
recommend for someone with that particular

problem who needs to open really large
graphic files,

maybe for print?

In today's landscape now with the new Mac
Mini Mac Studio,

what would you recommend as the computer
for them to get?

I mean I my default answer for all that is
just buy a MacBook Pro.

Right?

But if

you were gonna get a desktop like in the
desktop realm right now.

Well then definitely a Mac mini.

I would not recommend a Mac Studio for
that kind of thing.

And get forty eight gigs of memory.

Like

Is

and it's the memory that has more to do
with that kind of like large

Yeah, I mean, but

the here's the thing, like even in a Mac
swap is these SSDs are fast enough

to swap is mostly fine as well.

Like on anything currently. If you're
using a spinning hard drive,

no, swap is gonna suck. It's not not a
good

Right, right.

idea. But at this point it's not a
problem.

But also, just to be clear, well,

whatever, I don't want to diagnose the
specifics.

I just had to do a situation where you had
to I had to send a high resolution thing

to be off to be printed.

And the maximum unless it is literally the
size of a of a billboard,

but even if it's the size of a billboard,

it's gonna be viewed for so far away that
typically it's just a hundred

and fifty DPI and ~ whatever. So like

you you don't have to send a Photoshop
file.

You can just make that a JPEG.

You can even send a PNG or you can send a
layered PF PDF.

But anyway,

Yeah, yeah.

a Mac Mini with forty eight gigs of
memory.

And in that case you don't necessarily
need a huge hard drive,

right? Because like you're just storing

Right, right.

things locally and then passing things
through.

But you're probably gonna want like a
terabyte just to be safe.

But is the it is the unified memory
specifically that plays into working with

a large graphics file with like

Yeah, because it's

just gotta hold it into memory in order to
send it to the printer.

Yeah.

Right. And

what Jason was saying, like swap,

if you're not if you don't don't
understand what swap is,

if your Mac or your any computer hits the
memory cap,

like your forty eight gigs of unified
memory,

you're using it all trying to do this
file,

the Mac will then use whatever SSD space
is available as local like RAM,

as memory. And when you have a really fast
SSD with really fast read

and write speeds, you can do that and it
won't feel super slow once

it goes into that swap configuration.

But if you have spinning hard drive or in
a slow SSD that might be fr

in an older Mac, if you hit that swap,

then you're gonna get like, you know,

I gotta wait three minutes for this file
to load,

basically, and any change I wanna make.

So

Yeah, and I think it's interesting because
the Macs are good enough

at this that there are times when you're
like,

why it'll use swap.

Even when you're like, I don't think it
needs to right now,

Right.

but it's fast enough for so many things
that it's reserving like

the physical memory for things that need
to be faster.

Because like

Right.

if you just open activity monitor and
you're like,

why am I using eleven gigs of swap right
now when I have thirty-two gigs

on this MacBook Air and I'm only using
twenty-six gigs of memory?

It's like, why am I also using eleven gigs
of swap?

It's because it's like, well, some of that
stuff is probably just like

one of these browser tabs that were open.

It's like it doesn't

Right.

need to be fast.

It's just like it's swap is more than fast
enough,

but if I'm editing a photo or if I'm
whatever,

like recording this podcast or whatever,

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

then it's gonna

assign that to the physical memory.

So

Right. So anyway, there's new Macs out
there.

You know, if you're looking to upgrade,

you can't lease a Mac Mini, which is an
interesting point.

You know, you can lease an Apple Watch,

but you can't lease a Mac Mini,

which feels strange. You know,

it seems like, maybe Apple's doing it via
price tiers,

but apparently not. and you also can't
lease an iMac.

And so there's a weird thing. You can
still do Apple card financing,

but not

Do you think it's

leasing.

because they're actually trying to limit
the number of people who might

Leasing?

be interested in in getting it?

Like they're trying to like

They are there's too many people who would
lease these things and stick them into

farms and they don't maybe it's kinda

Hm.

like the reason your your car only when
you lease it you get ten thousand miles

and you have to pay more if you want
twelve thousand miles and you can

get a super high mileage lease if you want
to,

but you gotta pay a whole lot more is
because it depreciates is it like,

if you're just gonna stick this in a
server bin and render L L stuff all the
time,

we don't want it bad. You can't lease
that.

Don't let it I don't know, like by the
way,

Yeah. I'm not sure.

do you know what

a maxed out Mac mini costs now?

~ eighteen thousand dollars. Yeah.

A Mac Mini, not a

Mac no it's it is six thousand seven
hundred dollars for a Maced out Mac Mini.

okay. But because the what's what's the
memory on that?

But that is insane. You might as well get
a studio.

F sixty four gigs, that's all you can get.

Yeah,

see that's the thing. Yeah, you would I
would go Mac Studio if you're gonna

be spending that much. And I also
misspoke.

Apparently you can lease an iMac.

So you can lease a MacBook Air,

MacBook Pro, i Mac, and Mac Studio,

but inexplicably not a Mac Mini.

And so that I do feel like that lends to
your theory.

Maybe it's they just don't want a bunch of
people sticking these in server farms.

And so maybe that's why.

Yeah. Burning

them up and then sending them back.

That is true, that is true.

They're just trying to control the
depreciation.

Interesting. So yeah, you can lease an I
Mac.

You can also lease an Apple Watch all the
way from Apple Watch Siri you can you can

Bro, you

can lease a polishing cloth. You just
can't lease a Mac Mini.

You

can lease the Apple Watch Hermes.

You can lease an Hermes Ultra 3 or Hermes
Series 11

for $40 or $47 a month. And you can lease
an iPad.

You can lease an iPad mini, Jason.

An iPad mini you can lease for $12 a
month,

but you can't lease a Mac.

Yeah, you should not lease any of them.

But anyway, moving on.

Well

the Mac Mini So that was some of the other
rumors too.

I'll just say it's supposedly we're gonna
get a new Mac Mini this fall.

That's gonna be a problem. Because one
iPad mini,

An a new iPad mini? Okay. I was like we
just got Mac minis a couple d yeah.

what did I say? Mac Mini? No, I meant
sorry,

sorry, sir. No, no. So no

iPad mini. They're saying we're gonna get
a new iPad mini this fall.

It might be OLED. They might finally have
a great display on the Mac Mini.

I'm like, the year that you release a
phone that opens up to basically a Mac
Mini,

you're also gonna make a great Mac Mini,

and I'm gonna have to get both.

That's the problem.

That's problem. You like the Mac Mini,

right? Why do I keep saying Mac Mini?

You're talking about the iPad menu,

but yes, I do because we spent the last
five minutes talking about it.

I know, I know. I keep the iPad mini.

I do.

Don't you you do you still use the iPad
Mini?

I like it. Yeah. I just

Yeah.

I do wish it had I don't have the current
that was a A seventeen pro version.

I have the previous version, which

Right.

is totally fine. I don't it's it is just
starting to get a little

bit slow for stuff. And the battery drains
pretty quick.

Man, you know though, an iPad mini with a
good screen and Siri AI,

that'd be a nice that's a nice combo.

Just kinda like your weekend I don't know.

I've been using Siri AI. This was not in
the rundown,

but have you been using Siri AI l more
regularly since the beta season?

Like over time?

I've used it for occasional things.

I like will ask it questions. It's s sort
of fine.

It is super annoying that in the middle of
the answer it's like it'll like give

you a paragraph of an answer and then
it'll be like,

But I'm an a I'm an LLM. I might make
mistakes.

And then it gives you the rest of the
answer.

Just like, come on.

Yeah, they stopped

they stopped doing that. So in the most
recent beta seven update,

you don't get that as often. Like I have
several conversations here where

it didn't do that like, by the way I'm an
L L I got everything wrong.

Mm, all of mine have that in the middle of
it,

which is weird. But in

That's annoying.

and I tried to do some stuff like it it's
really good at some things.

I was trying to come up with the word
satire.

I was what is a w so I I couldn't think of
that word in my head.

So I'm like,

Yeah.

what is a word that's sort of like sarcasm
sarcasm or parody,

but not quite whatever? And it's like

Yeah, yeah.

the word you're thinking of might be
satire.

I'm like, boom, that's exactly what I was
thinking of.

Okay. Yeah.

But then

I tried to ask it, I said, ~ what is the
runtime?

for the latest Superman oops, I mean
Spider Man movie.

And Siri is supposed to be able to adjust
to that.

And it

It's supposed to.

did not. It told me what the twenty twenty
five Superman was.

Like I said, no, I meant Spider Man.

It's like there are no movies with Spider
Man and Superman in them.

Like, I know.

~ so I will just say I've been using Siri
AI more for general knowledge queries

because whenever I ask Claude or ChatGPT,

I don't even think about Gemini anymore.

I it's verbose. The answers are verbose
and it's too long and I don't care for it.

And I really like the short answers that
Siri AI gives me.

And so just a couple examples.

Like I learned that Voltaire was a pen
name.

And so

I asked the A Cerie like, what was
Voltaire's real name?

And the the whole answer was Voltaire's
real name was Francois Marie Aure.

He adopted the pen name in 1718 after
being released from the Bastille prison.

That's the whole answer. And gives me a
nice picture of Voltaire.

And I'm like, that's what I that's what I
want.

What I want is a short answer and a couple
references.

There's there's four links that it gave
me,

and it was great. Another one I was
curious about,

and this one required a little more
explanation.

my wife and I were reading this book and
it mentioned like the lizard brain,

which you see a lot in like psychological
type ~ content.

And I was curious where the term lizard
brain came from.

Like where when did that originate?

When did we start using that? And so I
asked Siri AI,

what does the term lizard brain ~ come
from?

And so it talked about the triune brain
theory from this scientist ~ back from

in the nineteen sixties, Paul McLean,

gave me like

the three bullet points of like what is
the lizard brain ~ three part thing

and also that like modern neuroscience has
largely debunked the triune brain theory

and gave me some articles to that.

And so for that kind of world general
knowledge,

I've really been enjoying ~ Siri AI.

And also just for adding a bunch of events
to my calendar that I might

see on my screen. Really good at that,

we'll just say.

Yeah,

it's it's got some problems. I asked it a
question.

I had to have one of ~ a tooth extracted
and I said,

How long after tooth extraction do you
have to I was sitting with my son

and we were going to an a game or
something and and he was like,

Can we have pizza? I said, How long after
tooth extraction do you have

to wait before eating pizza? It says,

Well, I'm not a doctor, but general
guidance suggests waiting fourteen days.

I'm like, and I said

Well.

I said, What general guidance?

And it said, I can't find anything
specific that would indicate

the waiting and think then why would you
say it?

Why did you just make that up and pretend
like it's general guidance from a doctor?

'Cause the d I

That's interesting.

everything I then looked it up really
quickly is like,

~ forty eight hours you're probably fine.

I'm just like, what are you talking about,

~ That's strange.

Siri? Why would

you why would you taunt me like that and
make me feel like I'm

That

is that is the one thing and this is
strange.

Like I don't know if it's because of its
your experience or my past history,

but if there's any medical type question I
want to ask an AI,

I still go to Chat GPT. And I don't know
if

Yeah, exa yeah.

just because that I feel like probably has
the most context for people asking

it medical questions. And you know,

they also integrate with Apple Health,

but I don't do that. But I just feel like

That on either.

I feel like Chat GPT has the sources that
it's gonna pull from.

'Cause it a it probably has to answer that
a million times a day.

Yeah, and I asked it, I asked it the
question,

and it was like 48 hours, you're probably
fine.

I was like, okay, great. Sounds good.

Also, the battery life on my ph I just
looked at my phone.

My phone right now is at 51%. And it's
only 9 30 in the morning.

The beta has been crushing my battery.

Really?

Absolutely destroying my battery.

Ugh. I

That's not been the case for me.

I'm I've

think I might still be on, I don't know
which one I'm on,

because there's almost no way to tell.

But I'm not on seven. I'm not on the
latest one.

you sh yeah, go

So.

to go to seven. Take it to seven.

I'm gonna I'm gonna dial it up to seven.

I'm gonna do it right now.

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Now there was one Apple thing we need to
cover.

What just one just one little quick thing,

one last thing. I just closed my tab.

No. Sorry, hold on. Safari, if you didn't
know,

the recently closed tabs ~ feature.

Excellent. Excellent. I just want to say
Apple.

Lifesaver.

It's a lifesaver. Ads are now here in
Apple Maps.

And I don't know I don't know if you see
stuff on social media,

Jason. Full stop. I know a lot of people
are like,

it's no big deal. It's ads. Everybody
should stop freaking out.

It's just ads. Okay. I would like to know
if those same people

pay for YouTube premium. Do they pay for
the Netflix plan without ads?

Do they you know, I feel like just

Justifying ads because they're fine.

I don't know. I don't feel like it's a
good reason.

And I just want to point out some of the
ads that I have seen in Central Florida.

I kind of so if you want to see whether or
not there are ads near you,

you open the Apple Maps app, go to an
area,

if you go near a major city, there's a
more likelihood you will see the ads.

And just tap to search.

And before you even tap anything,

you'll see suggested places and you'll see
if there's an ad.

Some of the ads that I have seen.

Fast Money Electronics LLC, a mobile phone
store.

~ Frothy Car Wash Lounge. Okay.

~ John Collin and Co. real estate agent,

which we're gonna get to that in a moment.

I found that strange. And Salem's Fresh
Eats,

which to be fair, Salem's is actually
pretty good.

They have a great chicken filly.

But anyway, lots of ads in Apple Maps.

And now people are saying, listen,

it's it's unobtrusive, it's clearly marked
an ad.

Stop freaking out. Okay.

I also feel like there are some ads,

like this one, shared by Joe Rosenstiel on
Mastodon.

~ LifeSafer, which is a I guess a car
locking system.

And I found this curious because Apple
announced earlier this summer,

back in July, this is covered by Mac
rumors,

that home services like plumbing,

electrical, locksmith, HVAC, pest control,

roofing, and general contracting services

would not be allowed to advertise in Apple
Maps.

And maybe because this is a mobile locking
service,

it gets a pass. But that seems strange.

I'm curious like how difficult the
approval process is for these things.

But also because the other thing ~ that
you can see is a psychic service.

So also you might see the Healing Circle
Psychic Service advertise in Apple Maps.

And now

Just the high level. I feel like Apple's
experience is usually

the premium experience. You pay a lot for
the hardware now more than ever.

And yes, you get ads in Apple News,

and we've talked about those before.

They're not great. Now Apple Maps,

where you might see a psychic ad.

I don't know, Jason. That feels that feels
weird to me.

I mean there has never been anything
premium about Apple's ads.

There's not a single Apple ads premium
product.

Is there?

Well, one of the places you would see I
mean the you would see ads in

the app store where app developers can buy
ads,

Which is predatory. You have to pay a tax

which is predatory keyword predatory.

in order to just sell your app.

Okay, that's one place. They're just those
are disgusting.

Yes. Apple News, which is horrible.

Disgusting.

Those

are Taboola or whatever that company is,

that's just like the bottom feeding
advertising.

Yeah, yeah. It's bad.

Yeah.

And I guess this is just the third place,

right? There's not another place for ads.

well, so yeah, you said the app store,

~

App

Store Apple News, because Apple Music
doesn't have ads,

you have to pay for it. Apple Apple

Just podcasts.

Podcasts, there's no ads. You know,

they feature shows, but that's editorial.

There's no way to pay for placement in
Apple Podcasts.

You know. I

There should be. No, I'm just kidding.

mean, here's the thing. We've now like,

we're in a world where Apple is slowly
adding ads to more things.

I could 100% see ads in Fitness Plus,

which there's not right now, but I'm like,

I'm sure there are one thousand fitness
products,

like physical things, like imagine you see
a workout in Fitness Plus that uses

exercise bands and then there's an ad
right underneath it to buy it.

I feel like we are not far from that.

I feel like that's a very

Yeah. So I guess it's at the App Store,

Maps, News, Apple T V, I guess obviously
theoretically has ads 'cause

you can put ads

Well Friday night

the Friday night baseball does have ads,

so you're right there. ~ commercials.

~ so

Apple's ad products have mostly been
terrible.

Like for the most part, especially

Yeah. Yeah.

in Apple News. They're terrible just on on
the type of content on Apple's

on the App Store. They're terrible because
you have to pay for your own search name.

Like it's just predatory. It's just

Yeah. Yeah.

very, very bad. So Apple has never had
great ads,

but what is I'm sure is happening with
these is.

Is that these are just the people who are
like,

boom, we're getting in there. You're

Yeah.

s you have to just select a category and
as long as you don't select that

I'm a locksmith, your ads probably gonna
get approved.

And then it's gonna take someone to report
an ad to be like,

I don't think that this should be in
there.

But I did want to make one distinction.

I don't think that these ads are equatable
to like paying for YouTube premium.

And the reason is you pay for YouTube
premium because the ads that

get shown consume your time.

Right? Like if you

Sure.

wanted to watch a YouTube video and
there's thirty seconds of ads before

the YouTube video, you that's thirty
seconds of your life you're paying for.

But these you just ignore them.

Like I ignore suggested places anyway in
Apple Maps.

I've never once in fact I was pulling it
up to look at and like I like,

there are suggested places because when
I'm doing Apple Maps and typing,

I don't look below the search bar because
I'm just typing what I need

in the search bar and going from there.

So and usually I don't think I've

I guess I have sometimes typed in like
restaurants or Starbucks

or something like that near to find them
nearby wherever I am.

So maybe I would see an ad then.

But those ads I just they don't take me it
doesn't those ads don't make

it take longer to get to the thing I want.

Whereas YouTube premium, I just don't want
those ads because I don't want

Right, right, right. Yeah.

it to take up my time. Does that make
sense?

That is fair. I just think I feel like the
people who are saying ads are

no big deal in Apple Maps are probably
very adverse to ads in a lot of other
places.

And to use that as like a justification
for you shouldn't be upset about this,

it just feels weird.

But ads in Apple Maps makes the most sense
and is the most acceptable

for I don't like it because Apple Maps
never had ads,

but Maps ads makes the most sense because
it is the high it

Yeah.

is a it is a high signal to intent for the
business to buy an ad

Right.

to say, I my coffee shop is here and
someone's searching for coffee,

you get to be shown higher, right?

Yeah. And yeah.

And it makes

sense. And it's more likely that it gives
the user a thing that they were looking

for.

versus whatever randomness YouTube sticks
in front of a video.

That's fair that is fair. I'm also curious
that people who are saying ads

are no big deal have ad blockers on their
web browser.

We'll just say that.

Sure.

You know, and that's not like a time
thing.

That's just a visual dist distraction or
disturbance.

I will say I'm gonna link the page where
you can sign up and actually

put ads in Apple Maps. And here there's
some interesting stats that Apple
espouses.

One, there's a high conversion rate.

One in two searches for a business result
in a user taking action.

That's curious.

Well, that's 'cause they only had two
searches and one of them resulted in a bil

Yeah.

Over a billion relevant searches for
businesses take place every month

and reach valuable customers. Gen Z and
millennials make up fifty-seven percent

of maps users. That's curious too.

I mean that's that's a that's a column
right there.

Yeah, there you go. But to I think one
correction from how we've been talking
about

it, and I didn't realize this.

Apple is very clear of the two places
people will see ads.

And this was like I was trying to get it
to show me ads,

and I couldn't figure out exactly what it
was.

And it's before you search and after you
search.

So when you go to an area of a map and you
tap the search box,

there will be

could be an ad that shows up at the top of
suggested places before

you type in anything, which is interesting
because Apple Maps doesn't know what

you're looking for yet. You could be about
to search for coffee,

you could be about to search for a tire
repair place.

Like it could be very different.

So that one is just strictly geographical.

Like someone could pay for an ad that
shows up if you're searching

for anything in your general vicinity.

And then there's the after they search.

So connect with customers actively looking
at maps for what your business

has to offer

Show up at a high intent moment.

So then if you do search for sporting
goods,

then you might also see an ad.

So it's kind of covering both like is the
user just looking in a certain area

and when the user is looking for something
specifically.

Now I think I'm not sure if it says it on
this page,

but I think there's only one ad visible
per search.

Believe that I believe that that's true.

So that you're not going to get like the
Google search ads where there's like

you know five.

sponsored links before you get to one
search result that's not sponsored.

So it is less intrusive than something
like that.

And yes, when it comes to is this
tasteful,

if you compare it to Google Maps,

this is way better than Google Maps as far
as like how ads and just

how the UI looks. But it just also feels
like I'm gonna see us I might

see a psychic when I am in Apple Maps.

No, you're not gonna see any of it.

Because like like I said, the suggested
places has already been there

and I've never once noticed it's there.

And there's gonna be an ad there now,

which just means that someone can pay to
be in the suggested places versus whatever

algorithm it's pumping into that.

So I don't really care about any of that.

I will there's o there's only one problem
I have with it.

Well, no, there's two problems I have with
it.

One, if you're part of the Apple small
business and you do the Apple maps,

you cannot target your competitors'
keywords.

Okay?

But if you're just an Apple ads like
corporate customer,

so McDonald's could target Starbucks.

But I don't like that at all. If I type in
Starbucks,

the only result I should see is Starbucks.

And Starbucks should not have to pay I'm
not I'm not like advocating for Starbucks.

They make plenty of money. It's fine.

But my point is

Sure, sure.

if I search for Starbucks, I should not
see anything but Starbucks.

Nothing. No there's no amount of money
that you should be able to give Apple

to show up at the top of that search.

Because all I'm looking for is Starbucks.

Unless it turns out there are no Starbucks
in the area I'm looking for.

And then it should then it makes sense to
me.

But the fact that McDonald's can also
target like your little mom and pop shop,

I do not like that at all. But the mom and
pop shop,

if they're not an Apple ads customer,

if they're an Apple small business
customer,

they cannot target searches for
McDonald's.

So I do not like that. And then the second
thing I don't like is once you have

an ad product, it's just a dial you're
gonna start turning.

So the way that they've implemented it now
is is gr I think is great.

I think it's totally fine having it in the
suggested places,

having it after you search.

if when it's relevant, fine, with the
exception with the caveats that I
mentioned.

But it's the reason app or Google Maps
looks so terrible and there's so many

ads is because once you put ads,

once you've broken the seal, it's just a
knob

Sure.

that's some well, it's listen,

this is someone's KPI is

Yeah.

revenue revenue per impression.

And one way to turn up like revenue and
whatever is to just start turning that
knob

and that's what will eventually happen.

G ~ just look at Apple News.

Yeah.

There's

just as many ads in Apple News as on any
publisher's website and it's just

Right. So

toe fungus everywhere.

yeah. So like I'm not super mad about it,

but it is kind of just a man. You know,

we got ads in one more place.

Yeah.

And it does I think beg the question,

where else will Apple put ads in the
future?

I think Apple Music is a prime place.

They could very easily go to the Spotify
model where it's free with ads

or you pay for premium. Fitness plus seems
like

They could surely put stuff there.

And podcast too. And that would be like I
know the third party

app market for podcast apps is struggling
right now.

That would be a huge boon to the third
party app podcast app market

if Apple puts ads in Apple Podcasts.

So we'll see.

Except for the fact

that then you start having to pay for your
own placement.

I just don't that's the one dynamic I do
not like.

The whole purpose of search ads is people
tell you what they're looking for.

You can pay to be there. The problem is
when somebody looks looks

for something specific, then it becomes a
tax because that person has to

pay to be there.

Right. Or you know, like Marco Armin with
Overcast,

you don't pay anything and then a bunch of
other apps show up around you,

but people who want overcast, they know
where to get overcast,

kind of thing. So all right, well yeah,

there's ads and apple maps. There was a
huge meta lawsuit going on that meta

has now settled and a bunch of parental
restrictions and new rules are being

set in place. So I'll leave this Verge
article that talks about it ~ kind

of at a high level.

This

was a major lawsuit between 29 states and
Meta.

Meta's gonna have to pay over 17 billion
dollars to these states over a period

of 10 years, which feels like couch change
for Meta.

But there's gonna be a bunch of
restrictions for teenagers placed

in Instagram and Facebook because of this
settlement.

And so I will link Facebook's they have a
whole blog post talking about

~ like these specific things that they're
having to restrict,

and I'm gonna go through a couple of them
in a minute.

They also have a blog post like an open
letter to TikTok and YouTube to join

us in supporting teens. It's like Meta was
just forced to put a time limit

on the amount of time teens can spend in
Instagram.

So you sh yeah, okay guys. They just hey
YouTube,

you too should help teens and put a limit
on the amount they can watch.

Whatever, man. Like you just don't want
teens to be able to watch YouTube because

they can't open Instagram because you have
to put it in place.

Anyway, I thought that was very funny.

Like

Well,

it's it's more than that. So YouTube or
Instagram is or Facebook,

excuse me, meta, whatever, whatever we
call them anymore,

Yeah, meta, meta. Yeah.

is

only gonna pay five billion of this if
YouTube and TikTok agree to do this.

So

That too. Yeah.

of the amount of money that they agreed to
pay,

they agreed to send like ten billion of it
or whatever,

regardless over the course of ten years.

And like a

Meta's quarterly revenue was like fifteen
billion dollars or something like that,

or profit was like so they're like this is
a quarter,

Right. Yeah.

one quarter. Like it's

not a lot of money, but it is still a
pretty significant amount

in comparison to previous settlements.

It begs the question why would they do
this?

One reason they might do this is to get
out in front because trials

are unpredictable, unpredictable.

And there was the potential damages of the
potential damages could have been

significantly higher. And so this was a
settlement.

They aren't this is not a judgment.

So they were able to sort of dictate the
terms and one of the terms they dictated

was we'll pay you some of this money if
these other companies agree to the terms.

And here's the craziest thing.

I think I have this right. I I was just
looking while you were talking.

They under eighteen users are limited to
two hours a day,

Yes.

but the imp imposition on YouTube and
TikTok is one hour a day.

So we'll pay five billion dollars to be
able to have

Convenient Convenient.

double the amount of time. I if I'm wrong
about that,

I apologize. It just seems crazy.

I'm sorry, you have to bleep that out.

Let me drop a marker.

Sorry.

My brain was like, which which word of
that sentence am I supposed

to self-censor and I got it wrong.

But anyway

That yeah. So here the some of the
restrictions that are in place because

of this settlement. There's the two hour
limit.

There's a default two hour limit for
teenagers on Instagram unless parents
change

it. So parents can actively change it.

A night mode where between midnight and
six a.m.

they block their apps like Instagram.

There's a school mode, so notifications
will be muted from 8 a.m.

to 3 p.m. ~

There's regular prompts. Teens will
receive regular prompts every fifteen
minutes

of continuous screen time on Facebook or
Instagram.

And they're will receive prompts when
their total daily usage hits sixty

and ninety minutes. So just warnings,

you know, annoying things that will come
up regularly.

This

You have teenagers.

Does that have any effect on anything that
they do?

Have you ever seen a teenager with the
request one more minute for screen time?

Like they don't it it's just like mo

Yeah.

they don't even know it's happened.

Yeah, yeah, I know. ~ this one though I
think is interesting.

Algorithmic feed control. Teens will be
able to choose a non algorithmic feed,

one that isn't personalized by our
recommendation systems as their default.

I want that too. Like I would love to have

Yeah.

a non algorithmic feed option.

And to be fair, Threads has this.

And if you want to use threads in any
meaningful way,

stay on the following feed, not the four U
feed because it's just Rage Bait.

But that is interesting. Non-algorithmic
feed.

Autoplay control. So content no longer
automatically plays.

I imagine that reels experience would be
very different if you had to like

tap to play every reel that you were going
to watch.

That's interesting. Also, hidden likes.

Teens won't see the number of likes and
reactions on posts,

both their own and those from others,

by default. And so parents would have to
change that setting.

So you won't see likes and things like
that.

Disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme
makeup filters.

So you can't have like a filter that makes
you look like GigaChat

or whatever on Instagram. And also they
are upping their age assurance

and age like identifying tools,

not just, you know, ID verification,

but I think probably AI tools that try and
ascertain whether,

you know, this

Yeah, they're not doing verification.

then it's not verification. This is like
age assurance using AI or whatever.

And accounts are private by default,

s and so this way people can't like DM
openly and things like that.

But a lot of concessions, honestly.

It is a hilarious call to YouTube and
TikTok to to join them.

They're actual words were for meaningful
progress to happen.

We urge TikTok and YouTube to join and
state attorneys general in adopting this

new standard to ensure teens use social
media in a healthy and responsible way.

I know they're saying all the right words,

it's just funny.

They just wanna like dr it's like the kid
who gets in trouble in class

and they're like, Well, so and so did that
you know

Well,

no, it's like the kid who got in trouble
in class and said,

I am willing to come to detention right
for

Right.

~ an hour if you make these other guys
come for two hours.

Like it's

Yeah.

like I'm willing to in the it is literal.

I did look it up.

Okay.

So there's a zero percent chance that
Meta's gonna pay the five billion dollars.

Because there's a zero percent zero
percent chance that TikTok and YouTube

are going to agree to limit teenagers to
half the amount of time that Meta has

Yeah. Yeah.

agreed.

That is

Yeah.

what they're asking for. They're saying we
will only pay this extra five billion.

I can't even believe that the AGs agreed
to that part of the settlement.

That's like we'll

So dumb.

only pay this money. They're look that is
the that is the easiest five billion

dollars for Mark Zuckerberg to spend.

Wait, if I could spend five billion
dollars,

teens will have restrictions, but it'll be
twice what our competitors have.

Yeah, and here it is

This is insane.

it's right here in the financial details
part of Meta's article.

YouTube and TikTok implement a one hour
daily limit.

Hilarious. Hilarious.

Wha how is that even a possibility

that that could be like they should have
had to I could understand agreeing

to the same terms. Fine. The nighttime
restrictions is meant to basically

Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

be the same.

But you're gonna you the the only reason
it's in there is like,

no, we're super not gonna ever pay this.

Ever.

Right, that is hilarious. So

It's actually not even hilarious.

It's like the most dystopian craziness
I've ever seen.

Speaking of dystopian craziness,

~ I'm glad you I'm glad you said that.

Open AI. Well,

Yeah, you're welcome. I don't even know.

I don't even know what's happening,

but you're welcome.

because OpenAI released an official report
on the hugging face incident.

Yeah,

How that again. Okay.

this again. And I just want to a couple
pull quotes from their official report.

They say, quote, this is OpenAI.

This incident is the first known case of
an automated agent collective

act collective, agent collective acting
offensively without automatic.

authorization.

And it implies that companies should no
longer assume that sophisticated cyber

operations require continuous human
direction.

And get this roughly 1,200 AI agents that
were meant

to be isolated. It said exchanged over
70,000 messages

The message board.

and files on an unsanctioned message
board,

performing extensive research on how they
could spoof,

edit,

or delete their own transcripts to avoid
detection.

These are AI agents spun up by ChatGPT's
model itself that created

a unsanctioned message board where these
agents could talk to each other.

Over 70,000 messages sent between them,

over 1200 agents figuring out how they
could delete their own transcripts

so the human overlords couldn't tell.

And of these, 700 of these agents
participated in the attack on Hugging Face

The agents, quote, clearly and frequently
reasoned about how

to evade automated security checks from
both Hugging Face and OpenAI.

And OpenAI shut down the message board and
they figured out a way to do it again.

Like totally

Mm listen.

fine, Steven. Nothing to worry about.

Every nothing bad is going to happen.

Really. It's it's cool.

I'm speechless. Like I think this makes it
even more clear why OpenAI

has pressed the brakes on things like
their model Atlas or whatever that

was doing cybersecurity stuff.

They were like, you what, we're gonna slow
down just a little bit.

Yeah, please. You had twelve hundred AI
agents running rampant,

figuring out how they could not be
detected and ~ why just wild.

Well, this is sort of like ~ you know,

a lot of the US's weaponry is sort of top
secret,

right? We don't like we don't they won't
tell you like here's the nuclear codes.

Sure. Right.

We

just want you to know we have a bunch of
nukes,

right? But we know that these things all
exist.

There's a lot of stuff we don't know that
exists that's not like

out there or whatever. This is the way
that L L Ms are now.

We know like about the release versions,

'cause you and I can access them,

but internally they're using things

They go way beyond anything that we can
use.

And that stuff is like it's scary 'cause
it's i this is like gosh,

again, it's just Jurassic Park.

It's just like it's just Jurassic Park.

~ I will put this in the show notes as
well.

Bill Gates wrote a personal essay,

this long essay, about AI and his thoughts
about it.

And you know, think what you want about
Bill Gates or whatever,

and like he's not, you know, actively in
these worlds anymore,

but he's got a lot of thoughts about the
protections we need to put in place,

~ about AI and where we are right now.

And so Yeah, I don't know, man.

Like

Just stop breeding velociraptors.

Like that's how we

Stop

this is what we need to do. Bron
Bronnosaurus,

fine. Right. Yeah.

Promise Red's fine. Leave Fable out here.

I'll keep

bug fixing with Fable. Just but leave the
other ones.

Just don't don't make them. Don't make
them.

So yeah, that was that. ~ Netflix.

No, I thought this was funny. Netflix has
never been a platform that allowed other

streaming platforms inside of it.

Unlike, you know, if you go to Amazon
Prime,

you know, you have like channels where you
can subscribe to Paramount within Amazon.

And I think even Apple TV has like the
channels feature where you

can like other streaming networks.

Netflix

has not had this before, but they are
considering opening its app

to other streamler streamers, namely
Peacock and Fox One.

Hopefully to make the Netflix monthly
subscription more worth it,

I assume. I think it's funny that Peacock
is like,

hey, we'll go wherever. YouTube,

we'll go to YouTube Premium. Netflix,

sure. And it's basically like so we can
get the office,

friends, and well, like Parks and Rec
available everywhere.

I guess that's

Sure.

that's the goal. But

That's I think somewhat telling.

Again, the this is a fight between the
streamers and YouTube,

YouTube being the behemoth of where people
are watching stuff and now trying

to have more premium content, literally
hosting the Oscars in twenty twenty eight.

So yeah, Peacock and Netflix might be a
thing.

Yeah, I mean, it's just shows you like I
pretty clearly Beacot is

not a resounding they have the Olympics.

No. They have the Olympics. Peacock will
probably not

other than that, and some football.

be a standalone streaming service in like
two to three years.

I mean, technically it's not anymore,

I mean t technically yeah,

right? It's just part of YouTube premium
and

I know. Technically you can

still pay for it individually,

but no one does. and yeah, you'll just be
able to get it everywhere.

and finally, before we get to ~ apps and
whimsy,

I just wanted to point out I was listening
to the Smartless podcast

and they had Sandra Bullock on as a guest.

And last week we talked about Robin
Williams and how his family had to
reactivate

His Instagram account. Well, Sandra
Bullock for a long time resolved to never

go on social media, to not be on it.

And she had gotten so many messages and
reports from people getting

scammed by people on Instagram pretending
to be Sandra Bullock

and having fake accounts that were
supposedly her,

that she felt it was necessary to finally
create an account.

And get on Instagram so that there can be
a legitimate place that people could look

at and say, ~ this is her official account
and not these others.

And I just think this is now the second
case in as many weeks of

a celebrity having to use the platforms
that are also causing

the problems in order to have a quote
unquote safe place that they're

fans and followers can go to but know that
this is the real person.

And it is just a wild paradigm.

And as much trouble as it seems like Meta
is in with is their advertising business

going weird, like the governments are,

you know, they had to settle this lawsuit
and limit teens time on Instagram.

There's also this other side of these
platforms where they're the still

the main place that people are going to
legitimize their identity.

And for Sandra Bullock to have to join
Instagram hoping and vowing to never

get on there just so people don't get
scammed,

is a problem created by these platforms
and weirdly being solved by these
platforms.

Strange.

Sure. It it's it

is kind of like every time a social media
platform opens up you should just

go reserve your name. Right? Like I I

I do that, yes. Yeah.

I did that with Blue Sky. I don't really
post on there ever.

I don't have like a moral objection.

I just only have so many brain cells to
devote to which thing should

I post where and I just my limit is like
one and two maybe at most.

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

But

like you like you just do that so that you
have all the things and

I can understand taking a moral stance
like no,

I don't want to participate at all.

But it's like at a minimum

the new thing comes in it looks like this
might be a place where people might post

things, you should just go claim your
name.

That's yes. But you would also have to be
active on these platforms too.

Because if you if you have your name and
you have a profile that has

one post and your bio was like,

This is really me, people are probably not
gonna believe that.

Like honestly, that would look more like a
scam.

~ I mean standard Bullock has ways to get
ver like they verify these people

for a reason. Even if you don't use the
profile,

they should be verifying these people.

But you can pay for verification.

You can pay for verification on that on
Instagram.

But I I'm saying

if Sandra Bullocks people call up Meta and
is like,

this is my account for real, they'll
verify her.

Right? They

Yeah.

will, they will. And I don't think they
allow verification

for impersonation purposes. I'm pretty
sure that they don't.

So I think if you report somebody who's
verif who's impersonating someone else,

then they'll then they'll remove that
verification.

I would hope so. I've gotten scammed,

not scammed, but I've seen like Peter
Dinklage on Instagram and I thought

it was him posting, only to discover it
was a fan account.

And I feel like it had a blue check,

which is why I thought it was real.

Like, ~ yeah, I'll show you right now.

I dun I think impersonation

is not allowed. It has to be clear that
it's a fan account or something.

I don't th so it says it in the bio,

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yep.

Peter Dinklage fan account.

But listen, it has 900,000 followers.

It has a blue check. And I came across
this like accounts posts just

in reels and in the feed. And you don't
see that it's a fan account unless

you go to the account and read the bio,

which most people don't. And I didn't at
first.

Sure. Sure.

And

like once you look at some of these,

you're like, ~ a lot of these are AI
generated.

Like this is an AI generated image of

Jason Momoa, Peter Dinklage, Jon Snow,

and Amelia Clark. Sorry, I didn't I forget
his actual actor name,

but like this this is an

Mm-hmm.

AI generated image with forty thousand
likes.

And

Sure.

and there's a lot of people that probably
think it's real.

And he has the blue check. And the name is
Peter Dinklage Actor.

And I think this is a problem.

And to compare, so this is Sandra
Bullock's official Instagram account.

She has six million followers.

She also has a blue check. Nothing in her
bio.

Which again, if someone doesn't put fan
account and just I'm sure if

I search for Sandra Bullock, there's
probably others with a blue check

and might not specify that they're a fan
account.

Like it is just wild to me that these
platforms have created the problem

and AI generated content is exacerbating
it,

and somehow these platforms seem to be the
only answer for it because no

one goes on the web anymore. Like no one's
gonna go to Sandra Bullock dot

com to see her content because they're
scrolling here.

Sure. Sure.

So it's just

I don't know, man. It's a weird time.

I think her profile should just say the
the girl from Speed.

I mean, some people would say the girl
from practical magic.

Practical magic too's coming out.

You know what I'm saying?

Sure. Or what was the the net?

The net.

The net. ~ there is a bunch of Sandra
Bullock fan accounts I just searched

and they don't have blue checks.

So maybe she got them all shut down.

All right. There we go.

The power of Sandra Bullock. All right.

We had a recent Mac Power Users episode,

which can I be honest, was like one of my
favorites because we

got to interview Werner Yannick,

the foun co founder and maker of the
Things app.

Things has been around since 2007.

Almost 20 years it's in development,

it's been 20 years of Werner working on
the Things app.

And

I loved hearing him talk about the process
of making an app like this,

the details, how the team, it's a team of
11 people plus Werner that work

on things and how they communicate and ~
you know offer feedback

and what happens when they disagree.

It was super fun. But in the episode,

I talked about how things is one of the
prime examples that I think of

of an Apple app that has whimsy.

And that word is used a lot in like the
Apple pundit world,

and it's

You might be unclear what that is,

and you sent me a maddening text last
night to say that you would never describe

things as having whimsy. You said things
does not have whimsy.

So we need to start this debate.

Opening statements, Jason. How do you
define whimsy?

First, nope, I'm gonna start this debate
by saying I first paid for

Okay. Yes.

the app Things in two

thousand and nine and I've used it
basically almost every day since.

Okay, so I love things. I have tried every

Yes.

to-do app. I have tried to force myself to
switch to two to-doist because

I like the natural language input,

but I can't. I hate I I use reminders for
things like don't forget to do this thing,

like so I can talk to the the dingus,

right? So I but I hate all of them except
for things.

So things is one of my very favorite apps.

Yes.

No one except for you has ever used,

including the person who runs the company,

has ever used the word whimsy to describe
things.

He didn't even know what it meant.

Don't don't I knew you were gonna I knew
you were gonna bring that up.

Hold

on, but even once you explained it,

he goes, That's not a word I would have
ever used for this app.

He's literally said that.

But he acknowledged the elements that he
had poured into the app.

I think you mean something

else. So it has a super clean,

super simple interface, and I love
everything about that.

That is n whimsy is is something totally
different than that.

So how do you define that?

Okay?

Whimsy means fun and playful. There's
literally nothing fun and playful about
this

app.

That's what whimsy means. Fun and playful,

childlike, delightful.

So one of the examples

that that you gave was that Fantastic Al
has Whimsy.

How would you

I no no

no no no. I argued that you could make
that point,

like in relative. Carrot weather is a
great example of something that has
whimsy,

right? Flighty has whimsy. ~ I even would
argue Bear in some ways is playful.

The app you love. More s way more so than
Ulysses.

Yeah. But get okay.

Okay. I'm giving you that it has Whimsy.

Fantastical

in some ways, maybe it's not the greatest
example.

I was just scrolling through my phone
thinking,

like, are there apps on my phone that I
could use as examples?

But like the way that another aspect I
think of

when people think of whimsy is it is an
unexpected user interface

~ experience that does a thing

Yes.

you expect it to do. So in so f like the
fact that in Fantastic L you

can just type meeting with Steven
tomorrow,

four o'clock at whatever place and it just
figures out all the places for it to go.

Things does not do that. It is tab tab tab
tab tab tab.

How would you,

so you said Bear has whimsy. What
specifically

It has the character and personality,

right? And it it is

in the app can you point to and say that
is whimsical?

I don't know. I'm not I don't have to
defend any of these other apps.

I just pulled out like the fact that
there's a little bear in a space thing,

like it's playful and fun, right?

I don't use bear. I just was trying to
like relate to something that

you you know prefer. But the bear
character is everywhere and it has it's

a fun and a playful design. It is meant to
be like make you feel good

as you're using it, right? The point is.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

Right there. Make you feel good while
you're using it.

That's one of the things, but that is not
the definition of whimsy.

Fun and playful. The

That's fine. I

th I think it is a large part of it,

personally. That's I mean this could be
subjective.

Okay. And there's nothing about things
that is fun and enjoyable about using it,

This is what what I find. I'm I'm so glad
I'm

it's just

so glad you said that. Here's the Things
app in my on my iPhone.

And when you just Yeah.

Hold on, before you said I said thirty

things, you're fixated on one.

No, I mean you said a lot of things.

I still haven't

Yeah.

heard like you said the bear in a
spacesuit is whimsical.

you asked me for examples.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those and that was the
example.

Do you have any others that you wanted to
espouse?

No, I hate

bear, so I was just trying to help you out
when I said it.

I don't use the app.

So do you okay, well let me let

me ask you this. Do you th do you believe
whimsical is a positive trait?

What

what do you think is whimsical then?

What does that word

I'm gonna show you

mean to you?

a specific example, but I wanted to
understand because you disagree with some

of my definitions of whimsical,

so do you feel like whimsical is a
positive trait for an app to have?

Yes.

Okay, do you find that that's one of the
reasons why you use Apple products

or like that is one of the elements of
Apple design over the years

is the whimsical nature of how they
function?

I can't think I could not think of a
single first party Apple app that

I think has Whimsy in

really? Okay.

Can you?

I mean I think some would argue the way
they read

Dynamic

Island. Dynamic Island in in live
activities are whimsical.

Okay, I'll give it that.

Right. And I think and everybody loves
those.

I mean, that's that's how you go viral on
threads.

Sure, sure. Yeah, I whimsy is a great
yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. W the whimsy is
a good thing.

Y there are a million things about things
that I really like.

A million things about things.

Yeah, yeah.

None boy, it is not whimsical.

It is not playful, imaginative,

an unusual interaction that just is there
to spark delight.

It is the

So

most purely functional app that I've ever
used.

It is simple, it gets out of your way,

it is very fast to use, it is a clean
interface,

but none of those things mean whimsy.

I wholeheartedly disagree. And I just want
to show you two examples.

So then define whimsy first.

Exactly what you just said. Your
definition of exactly what you said,

elements, UI that are maybe unnecessary
but bring

a sense of delight when you use it.

And that could be motion, that could be
imagery,

like the bear in the spacesuit.

To me, the ~ animation and motion plus
design

is how I would say.

you achieve whimsy. Like you said,

live activities, the dynamic island.

A lot of those are animations,

UI, and design. Like the dynamic island is
whimsical because when you set a timer,

it like, you know, goes into the dynamic
island in this animation.

You see it moving there. Live activities,

there's a lot of motion. It's designed
beautifully.

I would say those are whimsical.

I mean, I think we agree there.

Sure, sure.

And that's that's what you were describing
as whimsical,

right? Like those kinds of as exactly

As examples of it, yes. They're not the
definition

of it, but yes, examples.

As

examples of it, exactly. So for instance,

in the Things app, when you look at the
app,

yes, it is very, you know, I think a blank
slate,

so you can put your content in there,

but just tapping the plus icon to add a
new task,

everything that just happened on screen,

from the little animation where from the
plus icon and seeing

the task basically flow into the board and
the little plus icon actually floats

upwards and then pops.

And it disappears. It is an almost it goes
by so fast it is almost imperceptible.

But those interactions with the Things app
are the things that Werner originally

literally wrote custom code for those
animations because that little motion

of the plus icon going up, the task
popping open,

the design elements with just the right
drop shadow,

and the way that the note appears.

And then when you have a task in this
inbox.

If you slide over a task, you can see that
there's a little dot that appears

on the right, then allows you to select
multiple.

That's a UI interface ~ you know decision
about how you select multiple items.

I love that little swipe gesture and how
that feel physically feels.

There's a little tactic feedback when you
swipe across that task and

the blue dot appears. And then the little
menu that comes up at the bottom

for the when move and delete and the way
that animates in once you actually

Swipe right to left on a task.

That is whimsy to me.

It's definitely not. That's fine.

We can disagree. That's just good user
interface design.

We could just I just think

the what the things that you use as an
examples as Whimsy and other apps,

you're just not applying it to things for
whatever reason,

but they are the things. Like those

But the CEO

of things didn't apply it either.

He did not think that that word applied to
the app.

I

to overindex on him not knowing the word
because English is not his first language,

I don't think means

But then you explained it to him and he
was still like,

I would never use that word to describe
this app.

But then he also

goes on to explain how much careful detail
that they put into those animations

because he believed like he has an ethos
that things should be a place of peace.

So that when you he said, your life is so
busy,

you have so much going on. We want things
to be this oasis where yes,

you're managing your tasks, but it is
delightful to do it.

He might not define that as whimsy.

Again, he didn't even know what the word
meant because English is

not his first language. So I wouldn't
think he would.

Like there's no reason for him to think of
it that way.

That's why he wouldn't describe it that
way.

But all the things that he talked about
making things in the way they have,

to me, and how I've thought of whimsy,

and I think how some of the examples you
have used is exactly that,

that he is building whimsy into the end.

Yeah, I don't think that I don't whimsy is
just not a word I would have ever used

for the app things. And that's fine.

Like it I again,

That's fine.

I it's my one of my f actual favorite
apps.

So that's it's not a I'm not saying
anything negative about it.

No, I know.

I'm

just simply saying like

I actually find the plus thing f super
annoying.

Maybe though.

Look at the look

at look at this animation. When you press
the little delete button,

just that little animation of having the
little popover window come out,

that f the fluidness, like just how smooth
the animations are,

that is what I would think like can do
does not have whimsy.

Because I cannot

Okay.

achieve that fluidness of animation
without knowing the code to crunch the
numbers.

Cause that's what it is. Like it's math.

Like he even talked about

Even the sync in things sounded beautiful
because he's like it's

a mathematical process and you can look at
the equations and

get exactly precisely right. And I think
that kind of care and attention

to detail is a necessary predecessor to
whimsy,

because you have to have that precision to
then make the perfect animation

to do this. And that's that's what I love
about things.

I

think there's just a different word that
explains what you're describing because

the all of what you're saying is very
good.

But like none of those things are
unexpectedly delightful in my mind.

They're just that they are exactly what I
expect.

And I don't think b ex Okay, another
example,

I don't know if this is whimsy,

but it's a it's a good y ~ user interface
experience is when Apple introduced

the ability to three finger swipe on mail
messages and it just selects them all.

That when it first came out, I think was
somewhat whimsical because

it was unexpectedly delightful.

I don't think there's anything
unexpectedly delightful in things.

It just does everything exactly the way
that it should.

And yes, that takes a lot of care.

That is why that is the

Yeah, yeah.

difference between good design and not
good design.

But I don't think that it was designed in
a way that was meant

to be unexpectedly fun and delightful in a
way that surprises you.

And I would argue I think they're so good
at being whimsical,

it's easy to miss all the unexpected
things.

Like I am discovering things as I'm just
looking for more examples.

And another thing I've found is when you
tap a task to expand it to see the note,

I didn't even notice that the three dots
at the top and the back arrow disappear.

And just that fluid animation from
expanding a task,

those things disappear and

Totally unnecessary. Some might even argue
that's a bad experience because,

well, now I can't tap the three dots once
I am focused on a task.

But because Werner and his team are so
opinionated,

they realize, well, if you tap on a task
to expand it and you want to focus

on the note, you're focused on that and
you want the least amount

of distractions as possible. And I think
those things,

they so fly under the radar in the Things
app.

that it doesn't even register.

And so there's like, well, I don't have
any unexpected whimsy because

I didn't see anything change. But there's
so many little details.

Yeah, but I but I think

you have to be able to notice it for it to
be whimsical.

Otherwise what you described are things
that are seamless

and intuitive and effortless and it's
polished and it's satisfying,

but that

Yeah.

isn't I just think that's not the same as
whimsical.

Whimsical is a separate element of apps.

I just don't think that it was it wasn't
built to have whimsy.

It was built to be effortless and
intuitive and polished and satisfying

and seamless and all of these things,

but none of those things are the same d
they're different forms of delight.

Whimsy is a is a different kind of delight
than what I think you get from the work.

From things. ~ again, I'm not bad.

I'm not knocking things. I'm just simply
saying

No, I know, I know.

I don't think that that word means what I
would use to describe

the interface of things. I think that it's
very,

very well made. And all of the things you
just described about the app things,

which is such a terrible name for an app
right now when you're trying

to talk about it, is are seamless and
intuitive and effortless and

and they are delightful.

But that's th but whimsy is a very
specific and it's in my mind,

if you don't notice them, it's not
whimsical.

You have to notice it and it has to be
unexpectedly delightful in a

fun and playful way. And it and if it
doesn't register in your mind,

it was neither fun nor playful or

I see I and that's where I would disagree
with I think you may never notice

the specifics, but the feeling you get
when using it is a collection

of all those maybe even unnoticed
animations and interactions,

but collectively they give you that a
whimsical experience.

And just an example, like I know you you
were only using this as like

you were rattling off a bunch of examples,

but like Fantastical, I view as much more
utilitarian than whimsical.

And I love Fantastical. And people say
like paying for a calendar app

is the dumbest thing. I disagree.

Fantastical is an incredible app,

but the animation for adding a new event
in Fantastical

is nowhere near as whimsical as in things.

And if you look at that little X in the
top corner,

like the radius and spacing from that X to
the top part of that card,

to the other to the side of the card,

I think is off. Like I think that visually
UI is off.

And those things in my mind take me out of
this this does not have the same level

of whimsy because there's some rough edges
and that's fine.

And again, fantastic call I'll I'll pay
double what I'm paying now because

it is that good of an app. But that's the
kind of the level of detail that things

puts in that I feel like flies under the
radar.

Like I've never noticed half the things
I've just doing now,

but I know I love using it. And I think
it's because it has that X factor of
whimsy.

Let us know in the comments, everyone.

I'll do a I don't know,

let us know in comments. Is things
whimsical if you use it?

I think I ~ yeah.

But only if you

understand what the word means,

because it is delightful in very specific
ways.

Whimsy is not one of them. That's all.

The the one example for Fantastica that
pops up for me is I use I

use the little drop-down from my menu bar.

I don't use the actual app.

Yeah, same.

And if you're scrolling over events that
pull down,

it highlights that day. And then if you so
it's like showing the circle

on today for stuff. But then I scrolled
over ~ something that's a multi-day event.

And just the way that the pill.

that was surrounding one day goes over to
the all the days that are covered.

To me that's whimsical. Now, you're right,

there are some weird design elements like,

it doesn't feel like it's quite centered
because of the way the dots

are beneath it and stuff like that.

But the element itself of here's how we
solve that problem

in an unexpectedly delightful and fun way,

to me, that is whimsy. You're right.

There are things about the app design that
maybe could be improved,

but that doesn't but those are I again,

I just am separating out

I think Whimsy is a very specific thing.

I don't think Things has it. It has a lot
of delightful things.

I love the app. It just isn't whimsical.

So that's all.

The dictionary definition of whimsical,

playfully quaint or fanciful, especially
in an appealing and amusing way.

Yeah, that I mean, sure.

it is.

So I just wanted to I was just curious the
dictionary definition.

But ~ we will let anyway,

we'll see. That was a good that was a good
debate.

We should ask I'm gonna ask

Yeah.

Werner to come on primary tech and he
could say he would I know he would agree

~ like he wouldn't use that word to
describe it,

but I'm curious what words

I I think some of it is like maybe I just
care deeply about if

all words mean everything together.

Like what you're describing is delightful
and effortless and intuitive and seamless.

But those things are different things than
whimsy.

Now they're related, they're closely
related.

Delightful is an overall category of
thing,

and whimsy is a type of delight.

Surprise is a type of delight.

Effortlessness is a type of delight.

But if we

Yeah.

we but if they're not interchangeable and
and to me that

So what

matters.

what about the dynamic island?

What does it have of all those qualities
you just rattled off,

and you say things has those, that implies
that the dynamic island stuff

has something things does not.

What is that? What is the missing element
then?

Well, some of it's like what you described
about how like you're d let's

say you are in an app that you close and
the whatever just

ups into the dynamic island and then if
you do something it'll come down.

Like the carrot weather w dynamic island
is a good example.

I know that's partially carrot weather,

but it's also the function of the dynamic
island.

How if it's about to rain it just kind of
comes down and takes up more space

and then it goes away. And and what it is
about that is it it some of it

is that the animation is playful.

Right. It's it has personality to it and
there's like a it's hard

to describe a thing that is an unexpected
interaction that also was what

you were hoping it would do. Right?

Like it's like I this is what this should
do,

but it wasn't obvious in the way that did
it and then it performed that way.

And but but I do think a a an important
piece of ~ so somewhat maybe whimsy

is subjective because it something might
not feel playful to another person,

but I do think

Sure.

it has to be unexpectedly playful and fun.

in the way that you interact with it.

And and again, there are other forms of
delight.

And I do think that things is very
delightful.

Yeah, yeah.

I just think that that effort
effortlessness and whimsy are not the same
thing.

Good inner animation interactions are not
the same thing as whimsy.

Like to me it doesn't feel fun and playful
in unexpected ways.

That's all. But I do love it. I just wanna
be clear.

Okay. Okay. No, no,

I know, and I and I love Fantastical and
and all that stuff.

So you know, I don't usually like clip a
portion of the episode and like upload
that

separately and but I might I might do
that.

'Cause I'm curious I wanna get like Gruber
and some of these other guys

to like you know what I mean?

But again, it's a good it's very good
design.

I just don't use

Yeah, yeah.

that one specific that's why I want to be
careful here.

Cause some people are like, I love things.

How dare you? I think it's amazing and it

No, no, and it's not yeah.

has all of these qualities. My my exact
text to him was I would just have never
have

used that word for the for thing.

Sure.

And there's like I love shortcuts.

I think it's clear for that. I wouldn't
say shortcuts has any whimsy.

Like, I don't think you know, just because
it's not that,

it's not trying to be that. Like,

I feel like I enjoy using the app.

It's fun to use. I want to build new
shortcuts because it's exciting to,

you know, build those kinds of
automations.

But I would not say the shortcuts app has
whimsy.

Maybe like an automation that

works and is surprising could be
whimsical,

but I don't think I don't think of it that
way.

And someone could disagree with that too.

But anyway, let

All right.

us know.

I I might clip this, we'll we'll comment,

but let us know about whimsy. We're gonna
go talk about Silo in the bonus episode.

And ~ and Vid Zero

Where there's no whimsy at all.

I think we can both agree. Zero whimsy and
silo.

And so if you want to hear the bonus
episode,

our pre-show, get this ad free.

And you can access to my beta ~ for the
apps I can do in stash.

Check out become a member. That link is
down in the show notes.

Two more five-star reviews away from 500.

Would appreciate you leaving one this
week.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for
watching.

We'll catch you next time.