Primary Technology

You can't just love something.

You have to take care of it. Welcome to
Primary Technology,

the show about the tech news that matters.

We've got a follow-up on Muse.

I've actually been trying it and have some
thoughts.

Google sent ideas out that can actually
identify AI-generated images and video.

Microsoft had their big event.

It's rumored that Apple's smart home event
should be coming soon.

We're gonna have some thoughts on AI self
regulation and a ton more.

This episode is brought to you by Eleven
Labs,

Framer, Clean My Mac, and you,

the members who support us directly.

I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles,

joined by my friend and famous co host,

Jason Aten How's it going, Jason?

I don't know. You get mentioned on all the
other podcasts.

I just get trol for

No, no, no. I have I I

I have here a video of you in your podcast
setup talking to

yeah, that's true.

ABC Action News about none other than
Muse.

I didn't mean to Dr. Seuss that.

That's true. That's

But yeah, this is

you were on the news, Jason. Your your
coverage of Muse AI is all over.

It's awesome. Kudos.

I

am absolutely the subject matter expert on
how not to install Mews.

And I have not, to be clear, I have not
installed Muse on my Mac because

of your ~ experience, but I have tried it
on my iPhone and iPad,

and I I have some thoughts, Jason.

I have some thoughts.

All right.

And there was also a big interview with
Alexander Wang and Cleo Abram,

and so we're gonna get into that.

But first, the quote, you can't just love
something you have to take care of it.

Do you have any idea what movie that might
be from?

I have no idea what movie that's from.

It is from the Fablemans movie.

It is no that is a real movie.

You just made that up. That's not real.

Hold on.

It was a good movie.

The Fablemans. And here's the thing.

You can't just love something.

You have to take care of it. And here's
what you can do for this show
specifically.

We are nominated for a signal award.

And so you can both love us and take care
of us.

So here's what we need you to do.

This is our one shot,

ladies and gentlemen.

Okay. I submitted our show for nomination
months ago.

I think it was in July. And I had not
heard,

I didn't know what was going to be
happening with it.

And I saw The Verge talk about how they
were up for a signal award.

And I was like, ~ voting for that is open.

Did we make the nomination? And yes,

yes, we did. So we are nominated for the
best co host team,

and we're the only tech show in that
category,

which is amazing. And

It's amazing.

That's amazing. So we're up for best
co-host team for the Signal Awards.

And we are also up for Best Technology
Show.

We are up against some big names,

including The Verge cast and even Wired.

Now, listen, there's a gold,

silver, and bronze award they give out for
each category,

and there is a listener's choice award.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you all go,

you can vote for us right now.

Voting goes through October sixteenth,

I believe. So next Friday. So I'll talk
about it this episode and next episode.

But run. Don't walk. Vote for primary
technology.

This way now and forevermore we can say we
are an award winning podcast.

That is what I hope. But no, really,

this would be a huge honor. ~ you know,

I've followed these awards because I was
in the podcast movement space when

I was at Riverside and it'll be really
cool to win one.

You have to create an account to vote,

which kind of stinks. So I'm gonna give
you a pro tip,

all right? Because listen, we give we
provide value in this show.

Here's the pro tip. If you use Gmail,

Fastmail, and many email providers,

Outlook and iCloud don't do this,

unfortunately. Do you know the plus do you
know the plus trick,

Jason? You ever use the plus trick?

Yes.

Here's the plus trick. Let's say your
email is theotherguy at gmail.com.

Okay. You can do, and you don't have to
set this up.

This is just built into Gmail and Fastmail
and a lot of other providers.

You can do the other guy, the plus symbol,

like you're adding something.

And any word after that, and then do your
at gmail.com and it goes

to your inbox like normal. So you can do
the other guy plus junk

at gmail.com and you can use that email
wherever you want to sign up for anything.

And then what you do is you create a
filter in your email account that

all email sent to that address goes to a
folder,

skips your inbox, goes directly to trash,

whatever you want.

So that's just a little tip for you.

You can do the plus thing, but you don't
have to do that.

Just we ~ we would really appreciate if
you voted for us.

Links are down in the show notes.

We could be we could be an award winning
show,

Jason.

Yeah, I feel really obligated at this
point to tell our listeners that

Yes. That is not Jason Z.

is not my email address. I just checked it

is someone's email address. Please don't
email that person.

I'm sor Wait, how did you check?

I don't know who it is. It is not me.

How did you ch The other guy.

I just tried to I just tried to create it.

I just tried to take that email address
just in case.

And it's already

taken. So please, please listeners,

don't email that person. It's not me.

Don't don't spam that person.

I promise you

email the other guy at primary tech dot
fm.

That does come to me. Totally fine.

That is your email. Yes.

I will

Absolutely not read them, but you can send
email.

No, he reads them. I know he reads them
because I

No, I d I do read them. I do.

see reply. You can also email the other
guy plus you're awesome.

no apostrophe, because that doesn't work
anymore.

That's

wait, does the does the suffix come
through the email?

Like can you tell that someone has put
that on there?

~ okay, cool.

Yeah. Yeah, you see the plus. You see the
plus.

Anyway, don't email the other guy at gmail
dot com.

I don't know who it is and I honestly

No, no, don't do that.

don't want the blowback.

But you can email

the other guy plus however long of a
sentence you want.

You can send Jason an entire message in
the email address

at primarytech.fm and he'll get

That

I promise you I will not read the whole
thing though,

because I won't

That's fair enough.

Fair enough. We have some great five-star
reviews.

Wanted to give a shout out. Pacific Dark
Tide from the USA says we're a fun show.

Thanks for trying Moo Muse, so he never
has to.

You're welcome. That's our service.

Absolutely.

That is our service to you. Andrew Mika
from Australia,

enjoyable and easy to listen to.

GAPL Pro from the USA, the smartest hour
in tech.

Thank you for that. 67 aluminum plate said
this podcast bullied me into turning

my battery percentage off. I'm sorry.

We didn't mean.

I feel bad.

We didn't mean to bully it, but also get
that percentage off.

I definitely did not I did not bully
anyone.

Turn it off. Okay?

Turn it off. Just kidding. You can leave
it on if you want.

iPhone Duo, you don't need to you don't
need it though.

Jason said that. He said you because it
has the full circle,

you're good. I didn't sorry, I didn't mean
to shout.

That that is true.

It is a more useful icon measurement.

Yeah.

I'm fine with that.

Sorry, I didn't mean to bully you.

Don't don't bully, but also turn it off.

Joshua on YouTube also said he's seen
batteries not included,

short circuit and gremlins. And also Apple
iLovable has also seen batteries

not included. Thank you. There's other
people out there who have seen it.

You have you seen you'd not seen it yet,

I believe

right, Jason?

I have seen it. I don't really remember
it.

You should do it. You should watch it.

And lastly, this was an interesting,

this was a five-star review, so thank you
for this.

But Barty Burns from the USA, they were
asking video podcasts as

a channel for YouTube content.

Would it be scalable for current YouTubers
to pull back from the monopoly

of like the platform to go to video
podcasts again?

This is a great utopia, Barty Burns,

but I don't think so. And

What wait, what

is the question specifically?

Like could YouTube creators post their
content as video podcasts now that Apple

has video podcasts, Spotify, and would
that help,

you know, differentiate their audience
from just being beholden to YouTube

as a platform specifically?

Yeah, definitely not.

Definitely not. One is discovery,

you know, the whole game. That's the big

Yeah, that's that's the only one really.

w the big one is discovery. The second one
is monetization.

And Spotify has monetization, but nowhere
near the level of YouTube,

like as far as AdSense. So it's discovery
is the problem.

monetization. But I will say there are
some YouTubers like Ryan Trahan,

who's a massive YouTuber, so this works
for him.

But he posts his full YouTube videos on
Spotify.

Like you can just watch his YouTube videos
on Spotify,

which he then monetizes and Spotify gives
him a cut.

But there that's yeah, not gonna happen.

But can watch this show wherever you want.

You can even watch us in Pocket Cast.

Did you know that? Our videos in Pocket
Cast?

I did not know that. I I also

You can. Pocket cast HLS video.

You can watch us.

feel like I've watched this video once
when we record it,

so I don't usually watch the video again
later.

I do sometimes go to YouTube and

That's fine. That's fair enough.

You don't you know to watch it.

Yeah.

~ especially because I somebody several
people sent me messages about my hat.

Just like I do think so.

Good mess people like that on YouTube.

They said

So I had to go back

and watch and be like, what did it look
like?

It was a good

hit. It was a good hit. I gotta was it?

It was fine. It was a Rivian hat,

just to be clear. Some that's what people

wanted to know, is what was your hat?

I was like, listen, it was just a hat
Rivian sent me one time.

that's pretty nice. Well, I have a hat
that says I am not a robot,

and I might might break that out next
time.

All right, last thing before we get to New
Kindles Apple Smart Home event,

Chris Peck is on a cruise across the
Pacific and he has brought

our medieval night riding the polar bear.

This is our medieval night in Hawaii at
the USS Arizona Memorial.

You can see the little night guy down
there at the bottom.

So he's all over Hawaii. Here's us at the
beach.

Well, you know.

Not us. They're i the the the the

yeah, the yeah.

Symbolic the symbolicus.

And also Las Vegas. Here's our medieval
night in Las Vegas.

Traveling the world. Traveling the world.

Remember if you're going to Antarctica,

let us know. We want to send you a polar
bear with a medieval night

and we'll do that.

I think if you're going to Antarctica,

we'll send you the pin, but we're also
gonna send you like a flat Steven

to take with you. Like the cardboard cut
out.

~ my mom used to do the flat. Yeah,

We had one of one

so like for school and stuff.

of my brothers when he lived in Colorado
and so like at every Christmas

or not every Christmas 'cause he came home
for that,

but like we used to do family lunches and
he was just standing in the corner.

The flat

Yep.

that's amazing. Yes, well I'll I'll send
you a flat Steven.

I also I'll just tease this. I made a
shortcuts pillow.

Hopefully Apple doesn't get onto me for
it.

But that's gonna be for sale soon if you
want a shortcuts pillow for the holidays.

All right.

I just wanted one and so I figured I'll
just do it.

All right, right after we were done
recording last week,

I believe this was Thursday it dropped,

but Amazon released new Kindles.

So if you're in the market for a new
Kindle or obviously for the holiday
season,

There's a new base model Kindle,

which is supposedly lighter and faster,

starts at $150. There's a new Kindle Paper
White,

starts at $200. So if you like that model,

and there's a new Kindle ColorSoft all the
way up to like three about $300.

So new Kindles are out there. They come in
nice colors.

There's also now a Bluetooth remote where
you can turn the pages

by clicking a physical remote that's
wireless.

So if you want to, I guess, prop the
Kindle up,

or if you have one of those elaborate bed
mounts where it's just like

floats over your head while you're laying
down and you can turn the pages with

the remote, you can do that now with the
Kindle.

So there you go. D

And they now like are essentially
stepladdering these.

'Cause there's like the base kindle and
then there's an aluminum version.

Yes. Yes. That's right.

And then there's the paper white and then
there's an

Yes.

aluminum version. Right? It's like
apparently.

Aluminum is the premium version,

yes. Yeah.

And so

yeah, anyway, and then there's a kid's
version,

which I think is just a regular version of
everything,

but with kid friendly colors.

Designed by like artists and stuff,

Something like Yes.

and you get something called Amazon

Kids, which I don't know what that is,

but I don't think I I don't know how I
feel about that.

One, I just wanted to show this picture of
the little remote.

Here's a little remote with the two
buttons and ~ link it what.

This is the

most Jeff Bezos thing of all time,

which is people compla the number one
complaint about a Kindle is bring back

Yes. Right.

the buttons. We

launched the page turn buttons.

We missed the good old days when that
janky

Yes.

thing you could push a button and it took
fourteen minutes to redraw the screen,

but we just loved the buttons and they're
like,

Well, what if we didn't get the buttons on
the thing?

We just gave you a remote with buttons.

Like, I'm sorry,

Yes.

this is not the easiest way to solve this
problem.

Alright, we'll give you buttons,

but it's on a separate remote and it costs
extra.

It's a separate thing. Who w what?

I will say my kids ~ enjoy Kindles.

We got Kindles for my youngest two last
year,

and my ~ my middle son, he reads anime on
the Kindle,

which is fun. We discovered I bought him a
Kindle Color Soft because I was like,

anime, this will be great. But all the
manga and I'm sorry,

you don't read anime. You read manga,

you watch anime. But all the manga that
you buy in the Kindle store is

all black and white.

So there's no color. Like the covers are
color and that's it.

All the manga's in black and white.

So don't get a Kindle color soft if
reading manga is your priority.

But he li he likes the Kindle and my
daughter uses her Kindle too.

But those are the kind of devices where
they will last for a decade

and you really don't need to buy any.

Yeah, I still have I think a second gen
Kindle or something.

Yeah. Yeah.

It

it doesn't have a keyboard or button,

so it's whatever the first generation that
of the base Kindle that didn't have

a keyboard or button.

Right. And I will say the Amazon kids
parental features

are the most bizarre, difficult to
understand and set up parental controls.

They even beat screen time on Apple
devices as I think the worst kids settings

because it's like do you sign in with your
account?

Do you create a kid's account and sign
with it that?

But then how do you t it's it's bizarre.

So anyway, that that's a mess.

And I am s three devices away.

From trying out the new screen time
settings in iOS 27.

I

Mm.

have finally got it down. It was at
probably 20 devices I needed to update.

And right now I'm gonna look to see what
the update is.

Three devices. My mom's iPhone,

which I'm gonna update tonight when I go
over to her house and eat dinner.

My mom's iPhone, a Mac mini,

and an iPad that have been updated,

but for some reason screen time doesn't
register it yet.

Mm.

So one day.

One day I'll try the new screen time
settings and make a video about it.

One day.

Yeah, I know we're gonna talk about

my screen time settings adventure later,

but I and I cannot wait. Well,

Wait, your screen time settings?

What are we gonna talk about?

it's

just weird that something is in screen
time settings.

You got it on the rundown, we'll get to
it.

~ that's right, that's right. Okay,

yes, we'll get to that. All right,

then I was hoping that we would have news
of an Apple event happening next week

because so many rumors about the home pad,

Apple's new are pushed back into the smart
home.

There are a bunch of leaks now from leaker
PDFU recently on the scene,

but he's leaking all the things now where
he leaked a partnership supposedly well

Bloomberg said this, Mark German over at
Bloomberg said that

Apple is going to be partnering with LG to
make smart home products

for the Apple home line. They will be
labeled and branded as LG products,

not Apple products. And PDFU shared full
on renderings and images

of what these products might look like.

There is a smart lock, might be LG.

There's a number keypad. Obviously,

we'll work with all of Apple's home key
stuff.

There is an LG thermostat that will be,

you know, sold in Apple stores,

kind of blessed by Apple as a

Apple HomeKit device and a temperature
sensor.

And so all these things, and these are
they're also FCC fil filings

for these devices. So it looks like these
devices are real.

Unfortunately, you know, this partnership,

I'm sure, is years in the making.

It's a little bit unfortunate that Apple,

who prides itself on privacy and security,

especially in Apple Home, partnered with
the company that had the huge breach

of trust in their LG TVs, where their
smart TVs were just recording

Yeah.

audio nonstop of people. That's
unfortunate.

Yeah.

But anyway.

I guess it'll be their devices.

I'm really hoping the smart lock doesn't
look like this,

Jason. I don't prefer this look of a smart
lock.

I don't What do you think of this?

The yeah, I mean, I don't know personally.

Like we have the one that just looks like
a deadbolt.

That's the only thing I ever want.

You have a level lock.

I don't want

yeah, I don't want buttons. I don't want
any of that.

So I just because it's the most
inconspicuous thing.

It just looks like a deadbolt.

Sure.

And if you

walk up to it with the little thing,

you just tap it on it and it unlocks,

or I can do like I don't d locks don't
need to look techie.

I don't think most people want that.

It's complicated because like the level
luck,

while really good.

And mine, by the way, has a key.

You can just put a key in it.

You could just put a key in it.

Some people prefer not having a physical
key backup because they don't want like

the even chance of being picked,

I guess.

Have

have they has that ever happened to them?

I mean, we've

No, I know it's not

had d deadbolts for a really long time and
yes,

that does it's doesn't the number is not
zero,

but that's not an experience most of us
experience.

But

No, no, I get it.

I do I do have a level lock thing I want
to go into for a minute,

but please continue. I'm sorry.

Well,

I will just say on the lock thing,

when it comes to design, I have the Schlag
Sense Pro.

~ they didn't send it to me. I bought it.

And I do think it's one of the nicest
smart home locks.

It's like a just a rounded wreck,

pretty inconspicuous. There's actually no
keyhole.

~ but it works with the ultra wide band
chip where you can just approach

it ~ compared to like the Akar ones that
are really big.

But anyway, very curious to see.

We might get an announcement today,

and I'd like to pontificate a little bit
about,

you know, if if we will see it.

Please. That's we

have a podcast. That's what it's for.

That is a podcast pontificate,

that alliteration. The the other rumor I
just wanted to cover is that Apple will

allow home pods to be grouped in four for
surround sound.

So this is supposedly all these smart home
announcements,

which again, Apple has not made anything
official,

~ but this is all from Mark German at
Bloomberg from PDFU the Leaker,

but that you'll be able to pair four home
pods,

well pair, but you'll be able to group
four home pods for full surround sound
with

the new Apple TV four K. ~ these are all
the rumors.

Now, I was fully expecting everybody was
saying there's gonna be an event.

Mark German said there's gonna be event
October thirteenth.

Now, typically, when Apple does an event,

they announce it a week ahead of time,

which would have been yesterday or
Tuesday,

sorry, two days ago. Tuesday, as we
record,

that was a week. That's usually the
timeline they announce an event.

Sometimes, and I believe this was someone
at nine to five Max said,

for the scary fast event, which there was
like a physical event in New York

and a couple other places, but it was
mainly a live stream.

They sent invites out for that six days
before.

That would have been yesterday.

It's been totally silent.

But for that

one, that was I mean, I was at that event.

Yeah,

You were at that event, yeah.

and I'm pretty sure I just got a phone
call and was like,

Can you come to this thing? We'll send you
details later,

really? ~

yeah.

interesting. So maybe there is that and we
won't hear about anything.

Here's my prediction. I'd be curious your
thought.

I think we're gonna get something Friday,

tomorrow as we record. And Apple's gonna
like tune in Tuesday at this time

for a special event. And there might be
some in person gatherings with hands

on in New York and London, Los Angeles or
whatever,

but it's gonna be a live stream at a
certain time and that's where they're
gonna

announce it. But they're gonna

They're gonna announce it. Drop it on
Friday.

That's my prediction. What do you say?

I don't know. I also think it's equally as
possible that there

is no advance anything that we see
publicly about it,

but that there may be people there.

But if they do this in New York,

it's like I don't know, seventy people,

right? Like they

Right. It'll be small.

don't well, they're not gonna announce
that they're doing an event because

if that's what's happening, right?

Did they even say anything about the scary
fast event in advance?

I can't remember.

I believe they announced they said tune in
for a video at this time.

But was it just like a Twitter post from
Jazweak or something?

I think I think so.

Okay, so like

I think so.

that's that's a little bit different.

But I just think we have to th Okay.

Let's think about this. A brand new
essentially category for them.

I mean, the Apple TV is not a home device.

I know it is a home device. I have a story
about

But the home pad.

that, but like this is not they don't have
a home device.

It's a brand new category. Okay.

But they also have no idea how this is
gonna go.

And

I think that that tells you a lot about
the type of event they're gonna have
because

if they announce that they're having an
event,

they have set the expectations.

Right. Whereas if they just do this thing
where they're like tune into this thing

at 7 p.m. Tuesday, there's some people who
are there.

They've already gotten briefings during
the day.

They're gonna release their their first
impressions like at the same time,

essentially. So YouTube is just gonna have
the Apple's event and a bunch of

MKBHD and I Justine like walking around
the penthouse like you know this townhouse

Right, right, right.

doing it. They're not gonna that doesn't
require them to announce it to

the rest of the world. And that is a much
more low-key way of

of rolling out something that they didn't
they have no way of knowing

how people will respond to this.

Yes, the super like enthusiasts are like,

please give us some stuff. But the

True.

average person already has 14 Alexas,

three Google Home devices, a Roku.

That's fair.

That's fair.

And

maybe two hopom home pod minis they forgot
about in the bedroom.

Like, do you know what I mean?

Fair. Yeah, that is fair. The Scary Fast
event it was announced

on October twenty fourth. It was teased

Okay, so it was a week ahead of time.

it was teased with media invitations and a
web animation and then the event

was on October thirtieth. Late like Monday
evening.

It was like eight PM Monday evening.

So it it was still like a it was six days
before,

Well and sorry,

but yeah.

to be clear, that actually wasn't an
event.

That was literally just a video that got
released at that time.

Everything that they had

And then a hands-on.

the hands-on was all beforehand.

But you actually had you were invited to
like sit and watch the video with other

people, right?

~ there were some people who were invited
to stick around to watch the video,

but not everyone was. I did not

Right. ~

stay to watch the video because I flew
home.

I watched it on a plane. I actually
watched it on a plane on my

I re I do remember that. I remember that.

Yeah, that's that's right, that's right.

laptop. But the but it was not like a
quote event because everything that

had happened at a quote event had already
happened during the day.

Our briefings happened in like at 10
o'clock

Interesting.

or something. I was sitting there,

I was in the briefing with Gruber,

like, and then then there was like group.

~ hands on like you went they took you to
like,

okay, there's all the laptops,

there's the Mac minis. Did they do

Okay.

iPad pros then? No, that was separate.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, we'll see. I mean, these are pretty
strong rumors from multiple sources.

And so I'm excited next week. I've been
waiting years for this thing.

And so yeah, we'll see. We we will report
back.

I also have Muse checking the scouring the
internet hourly for any signs that this

event is official. That is what I found
Muse to do.

What

Muse is actually doing is booking the
townhouse in New York right now.

Give me your Amex, please, Steven.

And

Listen

and reaching out to all of the press.

I mean, there's going to be an event now
if Muse has anything to say about it.

Just there may not be anyone from Apple
there.

It will be. That's

the th that's the thing. We're gonna talk
about Muse 'cause I I have

I have many thoughts about it.

So anyway, did you did you say what you
were gonna say about

I want to say about the level lock real
quickly.

the level lock? Yeah. Sure.

I did okay, I love our level lock.

That's

hard to say out loud a lot of times.

But anyway, it's great. It's perfect
because I can control it from my like

I have a sh I have a widget for it on my
on the my control center.

Like it's great. if I walk up to it,

it'll on lock like I can make it unlock.

All these things are fantastic.

but it stopped working, Steven.

Why do you think it stopped working three
weeks ago?

What would be the potential causes of
something like now it still worked in the
app.

Like

the level lock app, but it did not work in
the home app.

What could I have possibly done that would
have caused that to happen?

I'm not

Was it updating

to like T V OS twenty seven on something?

No, I swapped out an Apple TV.

The Apple

~

TV in our bedroom stopped connecting to
the internet,

and an Apple TV is like just not useful if
it's not connected to the internet.

So took the one out of my office and I put
it there.

And that Apple TV is the closest one to
our front door.

And

Mm-hmm.

I like had to like bug, you know,

like try to reverse engineer what could
have possibly happened.

I'm like, you know, the only thing because
I had also gotten a new iPhone

in that same time span. I thought maybe

Right.

that's the problem.

I like, you know what, I bet it's the
Apple TV.

And as soon as I rebooted the Apple TV,

took the battery out of the level lock and
put it back in,

everything works. So here I'm just telling
you,

don't

Right.

swap out your Apple TVs unless you are
prepared for that to have ramifications

for any thread device on your in your
home.

But how many Apple TVs do you have?

Like before you sw.

On that level we have two. The other one

is significantly farther away from that
front door.

But usually I mean, usually if you have
multiple Apple TVs and you just unplug
one,

your Apple home should reassign a
different Apple T V to be like the

hub for the house.

Sure.

But and supposedly you can manually choose
that in the home app.

Like you can actually say use this Apple T
V as my as my home hub,

but to your point, no one really knows
what happens in that app.

No no one knows. Yeah.

Yeah, there it is such a black box that
you just there's

like there's like thread whispers going
through the air and if they find a thing,

they find a thing. And I just assume

That's it.

that it's because it was the closest one
that that's the one it was using

all all this

Right.

time. And then once we disconnected it and
plugged a new one in,

it was like I'm a lost lock, I don't know
what to do.

And that's so I just went into my home
settings and there is now

an option for active home hub,

which it will show you what Apple TV is
chosen as like the main one.

And it has chosen my studio Apple TV,

which I don't want because I run the betas
on that.

So I'm gonna turn off automatic selection
and I'm gonna choose my newest Apple TV,

which is my family room Apple TV,

and let's see if everything breaks.

Because I also as I was going into the
settings,

I saw in my Apple home one hundred and one
issues,

which usually means

devices disconnected, so who knows,

maybe that's why my office was freaking
out during the pre show.

So this is interesting because the home
hub f and my house is the living room home

pod, not is a living room home pod,

it says, is the

Home Pop.

hub. But that Apple T V would have been
the border router.

So

Right.

without that, it doesn't matter which one
is the hub.

If it can't reach that, it would that's I
think what was the problem.

Right. And I just went back into my home
settings because I wanted to see

if I could choose a home pod as the hub,

which you can, and the automatic selection
toggle toggled itself back on.

So that might just be a placebo.

It might just make you feel good while
you're changing the settings

and then and then change back.

This is like every

time I remove Muse from the settings for
full disk

Exactly.

access and it just puts itself back there.

It's like I didn't have access.

Well, anyway.

so can't wait for the Apple Home Hub.

It's gonna solve all these issues.

Very excited. That was a little tongue in
cheek.

Microsoft had a big event. The Microsoft ~
Surface Laptop event.

It wasn't necessarily like, you know,

a Windows event. Anyway, they had a big
event.

The two big announcements that I walked
away with,

they announced a new Surface Laptop Ultra.

It's funny using that Ultra naming
convention before Apple as far as ~ you
know,

laptops.

This thing is expensive. It starts at like
$2,600.

And if you spec it up with a terabyte and
more RAM,

it can go close to $6,000. But it has the
RTX Spark chip,

18 core RTX Spark, 500 5120 GPU cores,

and 24 gigs of RAM. That's the base model.

One of the coolest features, and Microsoft
actually spent some time on this,

is the magnetic USB-C port.

Which typically to have a nice magnetic
connector like MagSafe,

it's a proprietary connector. You know,

Apple has the MagSafe and that's just
Apple stuff.

And Microsoft actually made the USB C
charging port.

It has this little like magnetic
connector.

And so it's just USB C. So technically you
could just plug a regular USB

C cable in there as well. But if you use
their little special charger,

you can have the little magnet snap in
there like it's MagSafe.

Yep. Yep. Yeah.

And that was cool. That was

cool. It actually works from very far away
too.

I saw people just kinda like

Flicking it towards the charger and it
finds its place pretty quickly.

So that's the breakaway USB-C port.

And then the other big thing was Copilot.

They're really pushing Copilot to try and
be,

you know, all the AI stuff. They announced
something called hybrid intelligence,

where Copilot can work with your apps and
tools and the files

on your local computer. Think Codex or
Claude Co-Work,

but for Windows and Copilot being that.

So they're they're turning that up.

trying to get you to use it. And also the
Windows search experience.

They added a bunch of quick actions,

almost like trying to make the a launcher.

And it has cool animations, it has cool
features.

It also seems like I don't know.

I'm I don't know. Do do we have do people
enjoy Windows,

Jason? I don't I honestly don't know.

That's

I

wow don't want to really open that can of
worms.

No, that's not open at K Let's open it.

If you enjoy Windows, that's great.

Yeah.

I I

don't love Windows, mostly to be fair,

because I

Yes.

have done the experiment of using it for
an extended period of time

for the purposes of writing an article
about it.

Like I wanted to know. I switched to a
Google device and a and a a surface device

as well.

Microsoft makes great hardware.

They really do. The surface devices are
fantastic.

Yeah, they do. Yeah, yeah.

If I was

if I was gonna be forced to switch to
Windows,

I would want a surface laptop for sure.

That's right. That's right.

Like that's that's

without a without a doubt. because they're
basically just MacBook Pro ripoffs.

It's fine. Like that's a I mean,

they it is. It's like positioned as an
alternative to the MacBook Pro.

Fair. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.

They even have the magnetic connector for
the power,

right? It's like which people talked about
how amazing that was,

and I'm like, that's not great,

because that means you have to give up one
of your USB C ports for power.

The

Fair.

beautiful

thing about Magsafe is you you still get
the other ports.

Right? Like I think

That is that is true. That is true.

that's yeah, anyway, but the I don't know,

like I I know people use Windows computers
for two reasons.

One, that's just familiar. It's what
they've always used their

Sure, sure.

whole life, or their job requires it.

I don't think there

Yeah.

are any there's no one who's redoing it
for school because you either have

a MacBook or a Chromebook. Like that's
just the way it is.

You're just and there are very few people
I think

Who just wake up one day, evaluate all of
the options and are like,

I think I'm gonna go with the Asus.

Like

Which

the one the one huge area, and it's in my
own house,

the call's coming from inside the house,

is gaming. Gaming PCs.

Okay, fair.

And that's a thing where my we got my son
a gaming PC last Christmas and

he uses it every day. Like he loves that
thing.

And my son, my old my older son,

he we got him a MacBook Pro for his
birthday earlier this year.

And at one point he realized that he could
download games on a MacBook Pro.

Like I never told him that. And I was
like,

~ yeah, I mean you can.

And so he was like, wait a minute,

I could download like Epic Games on the
MacBook Pro?

I was like, I think so. And turns out he
cannot run he cannot play Rocket League

on a MacBook Pro because the Epic Game
Store blocks that,

I guess, doesn't allow Rocket League.

Specifically,

Interesting.

he could play Fortnite, but he can't play
Rocket League.

I don't know why. ~ but my son's gaming PC
obviously can,

and that's one of the main games that they
play.

And so that use case I totally understand.

And his use case is basically like turning
on the PC,

opening the Epic Games or Steam app and
launching a game.

You know, that's the whole

Right.

that's the whole i experience.

But yeah, let us know. I mean,

aside from the gaming aspect, I'm sure we
have Windows users that listen.

You know, are these features interesting?

Because this is the hybrid intelligence
feature that's part of Copilot,

where it can access your files,

take actions for you, and even use local
models.

And I'm curious

how powerful this is as opposed to things
like Claude and ChatGPT.

Like is this comparable? I'm not gonna
install this on my son's gaming PC to
test.

So if if you're out there and you listen,

leave us a five star rating review or
shoot us an email and let us know.

Like, yeah, hybrid intelligence,

super excited, Windows, let us know.

Yeah.

And no one's buying this though to play
games specifically.

Like every PC that I've ever been b like
review unit they've given me,

I've I'll download like Xbox Store and
Steam.

And the only thing I want to do is run
Microsoft Flight Simulator.

And I they have yet to send me

Yes, that.

a computer that'll actually do that.

Because it is so graphics intensive that
it's like you need at

~ so I yeah.

least sixty-four gigs of memory.

You don't actually need that.

But like in order for it

Yeah, yeah.

to be a good experience, like none of
these things that I've ever ha given is

I'm my son actually has the Microsoft
Flight Simulator on Xbox Series

S and it's it's pretty cool. I mean it's a
fun game.

I might buy an Xbox for that then.

It's really fun. He even has like the ~
like the physical controls.

Yeah.

Like he asked for that for his birthday
and like my aunt got it.

Like those are pretty cool. So anyway,

~ I say, you know, people say in our
reviews that we're one of the we're

a great Apple centric podcast.

And I try to say like we're not so we're
not really Apple centric,

but I think I just I just gave up a hand
right here because we didn't

Well, we are Apple

people who use Apple products almost
exclusively.

Not entirely, but almost exclusively.

But like, yeah, we still cover the other
stuff.

Yeah, I mean yeah. And we're gonna talk
we're about to talk about Muse for a
second.

That's definitely not Apple.

I

mean it's running on Apple devices,

but

Alright,

well we're gonna we gotta get to that
because I've been I've been trying

it in depth. So we're gonna try Muse,

ChatGPT, some things out there,

and Google synth ID so you can actually
detect at least some AI generated content.

We're gonna get into all of that.

But before we do, I want to thank our
sponsors and our friends.

This is a new sponsor. I actually use them
a lot,

and so I'm excited to actually sponsor the
show.

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So I've been using Muse, Jason.

I've been

Hmm.

using Muse in preparation for this week's
show.

Okay.

And you've been using it too, you said?

You've been running it?

I've

been using it more than apparently anyone
on the internet.

No, I'm just kidding. Or it's been using
me.

~

That has been using your data more than
anybody.

So here's okay. So I've been trying it.

I downloaded the app on my iPhone and my
iPad.

Muse for iPad just came out this week.

So you can have the dedicated app there.

And I started talking to it. ~ I'm gonna
plug this thing before we

get into the details. I'm gonna plug
Jason's bit on the news.

It's about twenty eight minutes

Yeah.

in on the ABC Action News. And I also want
to link to this interview with Cleo Abram

and Alexander Wang. He is

Works for Meta. He was in the Meta Connect
event recently talking about Muse.

This is a great interview with Cleo and
Alexander Wang.

You can kind of hear their vision for it.

If you listen to this, like they are very
optimistic.

And Alexander's very optimistic on the
future of what these agents can do.

She asked him, like, what is your not five
year plan,

but what is like the future with all these
AI agents?

And Alexander Wang was basically like,

listen, people can pursue their hopes and
dreams.

And we believe the world is just gonna be
awesome.

Like I think those were his words
verbatim.

And he, ~ they're very optimistic that,

you know, this is gonna save people time
and money.

He said that multiple times. This will
save people time and money

and will allow them to pursue their dreams
and live their best life thanks

to Muse AI. He he literally said all that.

So anyway, I think they'd interview.

So did Muse AI help me live my best life?

Well, I think there's sorry. ~

No, go ahead. Go ahead.

you sent me a very specific piece of this.

Yeah, yes, thank you, yes.

Which I think is an important piece
because I've not heard from Alexander
Wang,

just to be clear.

This is

He says, and when the product is live and
when people are using Muse,

if we get any user reports that are like,

Hey, this did like a crazy thing,

we take that so so seriously and we like
really try to make sure that

we understand exactly what happened.

Really? 'Cause I think all you do

That is verbatim. Verbatim from the
interview.

is go around and tell people

that what they said happened didn't
happen.

It doesn't seem like you're trying to
understand it at all.

In fact, I've been trying

Yes.

for weeks to understand what happened.

I have had some very nice conversations
with someone at Meta,

but it's very obvious that because I'm a
journalist,

that it's tricky for them because it's
like they know I'm gonna write

a follow-up piece as soon as we figure out
what happened.

And it's like, well we're not just it's I
wanna give them credit.

This is not what they are saying.

This is what it feels like they are
saying.

We're not sure we want to know exactly
what happened because then someone might

write about exactly what happened and it
might not be what we thought.

So I just like you can say things like
this in a podcast interview,

but that is so disconnected, I think,

from the experience people are actually
having because it doesn't seem like
they're

actually trying to understand what
happened.

Right. And that I literally sent you a
screenshot of that portion

of the interview because as I was
listening to it,

I was just like, Really? And I I I am
curious

Yeah.

if this interview was recorded before your
news went so big.

Mm.

You know, because this is a very highly
produced interview.

Cleo Abram really, you know, she has great
production value in her videos.

Sure.

So I imagine this was recorded shortly
after Muse launched.

Or yeah, maybe before. And so like

Or before. Because they

did offer access to some people.

I mean Ben Thompson's has talked about
that and he's like,

No and he didn't get around to using it in
advance,

but yeah.

So I think I wonder the timing of when
this interview was recorded,

but I thought that was hilarious knowing
everything that you've been going through.

So I've been trying I've been trying Muse.

I wanna give you a few use cases,

f some that I think were actually really
good and some that totally failed.

And so one of the things as an independent
business now,

health insurance plans are the bane of my
existence.

Open enrollment is coming up, and trying
to figure out and compare plans

is really difficult, especially for a
layman like me who's not in this world.

And so one of the things I asked Muse
about were healthcare plans for 2027.

And it gave me a bunch of information.

It also said that plans aren't really
publicly available until the until

the end of October, ~ where all the
details are out.

But it already gave me some
pre-information like,

well, these brands are no longer in
Florida.

You know, this person, you know,

this company left the region.

And here's some like general pricing on
bronze and silver plans.

And it said, Do you want me to provide a
report once all these plans

are live and send it to you? And it's
like,

Absolutely. Why not? And this is the thing
where I didn't have to give

it any data per se. I did tell it I'm a
family of five and I told it our ages.

And it's going to compare these plans when
they come out and give me a report.

And that's an air a place where one,

having a web browser available to it.

That's always on in the cloud is great.

Because I don't have to have this running
on a computer of mine.

It doesn't have to use like a browser
extension like Claude or whatever.

And so that seems like a great use case.

We'll follow up when it finally gives me
that report and we'll see

how useful that actually is. Asking it for
information about your own meta accounts,

like you had said, it's great for that.

So I just asked it what were my best
performing Instagram reels recently

and analyzed what might have made them
good.

Or made them highly viewed and shared.

And it gave me some advice on that,

on hooks and different topics and
formatting and all that kind of stuff.

So that was pretty good. General knowledge
things,

I bought my iPad b bought my wife a new
iPad Pro.

I bought her an M5 iPad Pro because she
just started Orchestra season yesterday

and I wanted to get her a nanotexture
version,

traded in the M2 iPad Pro, got like $500
back for that.

So got her new iPad. Didn't realize M2

Accessories do not work with the five iPad
Pro.

Yeah, do you want to know what the most
egregious example of that is?

The smart folio keyboard. Works with the
M2,

Please go ahead. The smart folio keyboard.

but does not work with the M5.

And the other egregious one is my wife
actually used the Logitech Combo Touch

keyboard, which she really liked.

And I asked Muse if it would work.

And the problem is the magnets are
different.

The iPad might still fit in it.

I'm not sure I didn't try it, 'cause I had
a bunch of moffed cases,

so I just gave her one of those.

But the also the Apple Pencil.

I realized she couldn't use her Apple
Pencil anymore.

I had to get her an Apple Pencil Pro.

I was like

This is why sometimes like people in just
like in the normal world when they upgrade

their Apple devices are kind of
frustrated.

And I'm like, I get it. I get it now.

Yeah.

So Muse gave me all that information.

Muse was like, well, it doesn't work with
the Apple Pencil and it doesn't work with

the Long Logitech Combo Touch.

So you'll need to get new versions of
that.

I was like, okay. Now here's where it
starts breaking down.

I needed new mats for my car.

My passenger and driver mats are just
messed up.

There's like a kink in them, and it's like
right where my foot

presses the pedals. And so while I'm
driving,

sometimes it feels like it gets caught
under the pedals and there's like

a very stressful moment. And I was like,

let me just get new mats for the car.

And I'll just ask Muse, because I'm trying
to use it for all the things.

So I told Muse, here's my model car,

here's the year. I need front passenger
mats.

Find me something. And it found me several
options.

It gave me three options, differing
prices.

It gave me the like rubbery weather mats.

Which was fine because they said like they
were the highest reviewed.

I wanted carpety ones. So I asked a follow
up,

give me the carpet type mats. So I went
and found it.

The cheapest they were available was at
Home Depot.

And it said, Do you want me to buy them
for you?

And so Jason, I was trying to go all in.

I said, Go ahead. Go ahead, Muse.

Buy it for me. Let's do it.

YOLO.

YOLO. So I follow up. I give it I gave it
my home address.

I'm like, Meta probably already has that
somewhere.

~ and also my phone number so we could do
the order process.

It said you can either check out yourself
in a browser

or connect link by Stripe and I'll buy it
for you.

And link by Stripe is like a payment
service provided by Stripe and I trust
Stripe.

So I went ahead connect created a link
account connected a payment method

and then you connect link to Muse and then
Muse can use that payment method.

So I did all that I connected it.

I all right, I connected the thing,

Muse. Don't screw me over. Like,

here's a payment method. ~ and so it went
through,

it said, all right, I'm gonna do this,

yada yada. And it got to the end and it
said,

listen, I got a problem. I can't check
out.

The Home Depot website won't let me check
out.

So you can either take over and just click
check out,

like just click buy, or I can like send
this to you.

Like, let me know what you want to

And the option to take over in the
browser,

I tried that first, because I was like,

let me just try to keep staying in the
Muse app.

I clicked, it's like a little browser
preview in the Muse app.

You have to tell me if you see this
before.

Yep. Yes. yeah, yeah.

Okay,

you've seen it. So a little browser like
in the Muse app.

This is on my phone. I'm on my phone now.

So I click into the browser, and it's like
if you VNC or remote into

a computer where you're like using the
trackpad,

dragging around your finger and trying to
tap to click on the elements.

Trying to do this on this tiny,

tiny little screen. I couldn't rotate it
for some reason.

So it's like a widescreen desktop monitor
on my iPhone.

Like the little strip across the front.

And I'm trying to move this mouse and like
go over to the checkout button.

I try clicking it, just I couldn't do it.

I just couldn't buy it. And this whole
process had taken me probably like

30 minutes at this point. So I just went
to the Home Depot app.

I searched for the item and I bought it in
like 30 seconds.

So

Yeah. Well,

and just to be clear, it's not like you
were doing that.

That's actually literally what you're
doing.

You were just controlling a

That is what I'm doing.

little VM Linux computer in the cloud.

That's right. So that experience was
lackluster.

And I appreciated that if finding me a
product,

and then I didn't know where to go.

I knew, well, let me just go to the Home
Depot app and I will just buy this thing.

And I but I did buy it. They supposedly
arrived today.

So we'll see if they actually fit my car
because I just bought the same item that

Muse suggested. We'll follow up.

But that was interesting. It kind of
failed at the last step,

but it was trying really hard.

So that was that. I did also ask you for
things like,

hey, I don't know, scour, Reddit.

And see if any of my videos have been
mentioned in like the shortcut subreddit

or whatever. And I f and it pulled a bunch
of posts.

And apparently my Raycast video has been
shared in Reddit and my other videos.

And now I have it monitoring for the Apple
smart home event.

It's checking hourly. It said,

I'll check every three hours if anybody
says anything about this Apple event.

So no Muse, check hourly. This is
important.

And so it's supposedly checking hourly.

It's gonna notify me. So mixed mixed
experience.

I see the use case. I also see to your
point.

the over eagerness because there was one
time,

like we just I get a notification from
Muse randomly and it was like,

Hey, there's news about the iPhone duo and
how developers can submit apps

for twenty seven dot one. Do you want me
to prepare a video script for you?

I said, No, get out of my face,

Muse. I don't want that And

Yeah.

also don't don't be proactive about that
kind of stuff.

Also, don't

Like

you know me, I don't use scripts.

Exact yeah, exactly. I don't script
anything.

So that you know, it's a l it is over
eager,

like you said in in past episodes.

I see some use cases there, and in my
mind,

one, I'm not gonna ever download it on my
Mac.

Two, if there's any kind of research or
very difficult

to parse task, like health insurance
plans,

I might go to Muse and try it there.

I also wonder, I mean I could do this with
Claude or ChatGPT as well.

And I might have to compare to see how
good it is,

but that has been my experience in the
last week.

What is what is yours?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really useful.

Like

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

it just really is useful. I've been using
it almost now I only use it on my phone.

You have your own computer,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

you can just do what you need to do up
there.

You can stay

Yes.

away from mine, that's fine. ~ it is a
well and that's

a shame because there would be a lot of
cool things that it could do on a Mac
mini,

but I'm just not sh

It doesn't behave well enough and has not
earned my trust,

like I say to my children. I need you to
be

Yeah.

trustworthy in these small things and not
and

Yes, yeah.

then we'll trust you with more
responsibility,

Muse. And you failed literally the first
test.

And so we're just gonna keep you on the
phone where you're nice

and sandboxed and whatever. But it it does
things like so I put

~ something on marketplace and was like
very strict.

I'm like, don't give anyone my address.

Here's the price that it's you know listed
for.

I

Okay.

would probably take this amount.

But I don't want you to negotiate down
unless somebody offers you that amount.

Like I don't want you to like,

if someone says what's the lowest you'll t
take,

be like, You can make me an offer.

And if that number is this number,

you can take that number. And then you
need to tell me and I will work

out with them the stuff. And even then,

it's like, boom, so and so is ready to
pay.

They've got this amount, they're ready to
go.

There's a police station located here,

here, here. This is a great public
location.

Do you want me to send them that address?

I'm like, I no, no, no, what don't what
don't you understand about?

I will handle that.

Don't yeah, don't do that.

Right. It just couldn't resist

the temptation to be helpful.

Do the thing that yeah.

And it's like stop

being so helpful because I've already like
I know what I'm not gonna have anyone

come to my house. I'm also not driving f
like thirty-six minutes away

to this police station on the other side
of town to do this exchange.

I I have a system for that. So I just want
you to like e even it didn't

do the bad thing. But it was like,

Right, but it was Can I

Could I please do the bad thing?

Could I please

please?

Can

I have just a half an hour more of screen
time,

Dad, please? And I was like, No,

Yeah.

you're done. So it is still very,

very overeager. I do ask it once a day to
summarize my last four

or five text messages and it's like I
can't see your text messages.

I'm like, okay, just checking.

Thanks, Mutis. I appreciate that.

I like that. I like that. Just

I do appreciate

I just check it. Now it could actually be
lying to me.

It could just be like, read his text
messages.

That is true. Whatever you do,

Just don't tell him that you're reading
them.

don't let know. D don't let know.

Tell him you can't access them.

We're reading every message.

So it could just be theater.

I don't know, but whatever, I feel better
about it.

That's fine. So anyway,

I can't wait to talk about security
theater.

Yeah, go ahead.

but there is so there's a piece of this
that

I think is a critical flaw.

And it's not just the full disguise thing.

That there's that there's that part.

The critical flaw is the ideal scenario
for this would have been I'm willing

to take this if they offer it,

blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Respond to messages, n

Get a find something find out if
somebody's serious,

give it all these parameters. It just does
all the things.

But I don't trust Muse for various
reasons.

Which means every time it went to respond,

it has to ask me to allow it to send that
message.

Now, I could tell it allow always.

Steven, there's zero chance I'm gonna tell
it allow always.

Well that's how the YouTuber got his
address sent to a low baller when was it?

I'm not gonna do that. Not just

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

for that reason, even if I gave it super
strict because if I go allow always,

how do I know it's not gonna be like the
best thing for Jason is for me

to set up this meeting at the police
station forty minutes away.

And then the guy's really angry with me
and he's at a police station.

It's like he's it's just like I'm being
scammed.

I don't want that conversation.

No, no.

And so

so it's not as useful as it could be
because I don't trust it.

And I feel like

That's the thing.

that i in order for these things to be the
most useful,

they need to have access to everything.

Because being able to triage all of your
messages,

all of your emails, whatever, being able
to tell it,

hey, could you find that photo we took at
the last cross country meet

of my daughter last year and and text it
to her?

Amazing. But there's zero chance I'm gonna
give it access to all of

my photos and all of my messages.

Like so I don't know. I think it's it is
definitely the direction people

are gonna head. Like this is the future of
this sort of interface.

And that's where I think they nailed the
interface and the just the ease of entry.

Because if I wanted to help my

mom research Medicare plans or whatever,

this is the easiest,

like lowest barrier to entry and useful AI
that she can use.

Because if she downloads the ChatGPT app
or the Claude app.

or even Gemini, like she might get some
answers to it,

but I don't think it has as much agency,

like

Right.

to use, you know, a word, to actually like
go out and like really go

in depth and and research these things.

And it's it's friendly. I think Muse
actually,

they they meta for all of their faults
understands how

to make something approachable.

And this feels very approachable.

And I feel like I can ask it to do
whatever and it's gonna try something,

you know, varying degrees of success,

but it's gonna do it. And that is
something where Chat GPT and Claude

do not feel approachable. And even Siri,

you know, the Siri app on the Apple
devices when you update is good.

You can ask it the questions and it will
give you answers.

It is not as useful because there's not an
always on VM with a browser,

virtual machine with a browser.

that it can just be using in the
background for you.

You know, if you turn off the screen of
your Apple device in the middle

of a Siri thing, like it's done.

It's over. Like it might finish whatever
prompt you gave it,

but it's not going to keep researching and
gathering data and then give

you a follow up report a couple hours
later.

And so I think Muse has made the most
approachable thing.

I just wish it wasn't the worst when it
came to privacy and security.

That's all.

Yeah, and

that's all a function of the fact that
literally they've given every single
person

a computer in the cloud. Like an actual

That's the deal.

computer to do this stuff. And if you just
think about the progression,

OpenClaw required you to have a Mac mini
or a Mac somewhere running all

the time for it to do anything.

It had to have internet access and and it
would use your browser

and it would whatever.

Meta's smartest move was no one's gonna do
that except for the nerdiest of nerds,

of which we are like that's fine.

Yeah, yeah.

But

I wasn't even willing to install OpenClaw
on something.

I was like, I

No.

don't know, I don't want a little like
critter running around inside my computer.

That seems terrible. So I didn't do that.

So Mood Meta's like, Well, we'll just give
you the computer.

And so the next step is Apple's done this.

They have private cloud compute.

Right, right.

Why on earth

can you not just ask Siri, hey,

research the best Medicaid options,

get back with me with the ones and explain
and you know in a set

of instructions for how I would sign up.

And Private Cloud Compute just does all
that.

And then Siri

Right.

pops up with an ex an interface.

Because I would absolutely give Siri
access well,

Siri already has access to my photos and
my messages.

It already is access. Yeah.

And I could say

to it, find the last photo from the last
cross-country meet our daughter instead
of.

And what's funny is Apple has built-in
features like the notify me and Safari,

which can do an hourly check on a website
for something,

but it has to be very specific and you
have to describe that change,

and the result might not be exactly what
you want.

But you can't the computer's

And the computer has to be running.

Sorry.

Well, that's not the case with the Safari
notify me.

That actually, when you create that
notification,

it actually lives in iCloud.

Hm.

And

even if your device is like off or
whatever,

you might get that notification on another
Apple device.

So the remind me feature, that's the
private cloud compute part.

Like that's running in the cloud that it's
checking that website.

And so it has that ability, but you can't
pair that with like the Siri

AI requests and do something like tell me
about all the healthcare plans when they

come out at the end of this month and give
me a report.

Because describe a notification of a
Safari is not going to give you a report.

It's just going to tell you that something
changed on this website.

And you would have to then re-ask Siri AI.

And I don't know this for sure,

but it doesn't feel like Siri AI can use
the web as thoroughly

as something like Muse. And maybe it's
just because Muse is a VM pri

a computer in the cloud with a browser,

and Siri AI is not really like that.

It's kind of pulling on world knowledge
from a database that it has scraped,

and it is not, I don't think, live,

active browsing the web. Correct?

Is that is am I right there? I don't
think.

Well, it can do real time search.

It can do real time search, but I don't
know if it can like use a website.

That's

Yeah, I don't think so. No, no,

no. It doesn't have a access to a browser.

right. And that that I think is the the
main fundamental difference.

And for that, yeah, I mean, I think I
Musei is gonna be useful.

So Good No no no that was a good.

Well, in the sorry, go the best the best

model is like just like that. I said to I
said to Muse.

I said,

Also I put mine in a tux, by the way.

Hey and you're talking okay,

good. I didn't even know you could do
that.

I should do that. But I told it,

I said, Hey, ~ I I did this at A ABC
Action News hit.

Could you just let me know when it airs?

And it was supposed to air during the
morning morning show.

And it sent me a note saying, Hey,

they aired a story about Muse,

but doesn't seem to have your interview in
it.

And then

I saw the message saying that it was
actually gonna air at four o'clock.

They're four o'clock news. I said,

Hey, it looks like it's gonna run at four
PM today,

so we should adjust accordingly.

Done. The watches adjust, I'll keep
checking every thirty minutes.

But now ~ but now it knows the segment
airs four PM,

so the real watching starts then.

Well you don't have to tell me all that.

It's fine. This is stupid. But if it says
in posted by around nine,

I'll let you know. ~ and I'll I'll send
you something you could send

to the producer to find out what happened.

They didn't offer to send it, which
whatever.

And I said, Okay.

Then I at five ten, I said, Did you get
the link?

It said, here it is. I found it.

The four PM full broadcast just posted.

~ the standalone clip is not there,

but I'll let you know. Meaning they had
run the broadcast,

but then the

Right, right,

news stations clip it apart. And then
about an hour and a half later it said,

Up, your your segment's up. Here's a link
directly to it for me.

And your part starts at this time thing,

which is great.

That's cool.

It did a thing. S here you should be able
to do that.

I

should just be able to have that
conversation with Siri and Siri should use
private

Yeah. Right.

cloud compute to do all that stuff.

Yes. And it does it right now.

And that's that's the unfortunate part.

I will say so you never customized your
your Muse little guy?

No, it's still called Muse. Let's see.

Well mine my guy is called Jarvis.

I didn't name it, it just kinda came up
with that name,

but you see the little tucks the guy has
on?

Wait, you didn't name it?

No, it just started it just called itself
Jarvis from the from the first thing.

And look, he's got a little bow tie and a
tuxedo.

It didn't ask you. Here's three
suggestions.

What do you want to call me? Okay.

maybe you did ask me that. Maybe you

did. But anyway, but I but I prompted the
tux part.

'Cause the

I'm gonna write an article. Muse changed
its name,

I didn't ask it to. I'm kidding.

Well I say the

first thing I did was I asked it to look
like Alfred,

like a Batman's Alfred. And he created
like a whole like person,

like an like an older gentleman wearing a
tuxedo.

And I was like, that's a little too far,

buddy. I just meant put yourself,

your furry self, in a tuxedo with a bow
tie.

I think I literally said that.

And he was like, got it. Okay,

here we go. Yes. Now it looks like a
penguin,

And now it looks like a penguin,

so that's fine.

yeah, exactly.

So I got happy feet muse running my ~ my
health insurance.

Which is a crazy sentence.

Ha ha that's it. I gotta clip that.

All right.

~

no he's changing his avatar right now.

We'll see what happens. I gave it some
commands.

okay, yeah, we'll do a follow up.

All right, let's do a little lightning
round.

There was a bunch of ChatGPT news.

I do want to point this out, and I'm gonna
be linking this in Top Five Tech,

my weekly show, ~ tomorrow. But Kyrgyzot,

in a nutshell, the YouTube channel,

they've had some banger videos on AI.

They did one on AI Slop, and they did this
entire video,

this was just published two days ago,

about the hugging face breach and open AI.

And it is, you know, about a twenty minute
video.

They explain it in such detail and it's
understandable and their animations

are so good. If you want to understand why
the hugging face breach was

a big deal and what actually happened,

this is the video to watch. It is
brilliant.

And they talk about this is why like here
are the dangers.

This is these are the dangers that we are
calling out.

And so highly, highly recommend this AI
just crossed the terrifying line

is the name of the video. It's from
Kyrgyzstan.

I will link it down in the show notes.

Brilliant. It was a brilliant video.

Explained it super well. So there's that.

~ and you should watch that. Here's all
the the other news because OpenAI

had a bunch of announcements this week.

Visual ads are going to appear alongside
image generation results.

So they're just putting more ads in
ChatGPT responses,

trying to be profitable. OpenAI.

Also, OpenAI is adding text watermarking
to ChatGPT and codex,

like Anthropica added text watermarking.

They're only doing it in the EU,

so this is only for users in the EU,

which is the law that these companies are
having to abide by.

This is why Anthropic added text
watermarking,

but they did a global thing where all text
is watermarked.

OpenAI is just watermarking it for
customers in the EU.

So there's that coming soon. Go ahead.

Well, I don't

think it's a law that they have to.

Hold on.

It's not a law that they have to,

it's a law that they're trying to abide
by.

~ because enable enabling opt in
watermarking for API customers.

So API customers, it's an opt in thing.

And it's not like you're saying,

it's not a law, but I think they're doing
it proactively to yeah.

Yeah. I think it's

like I think it is that they must ensure
that their outputs are marked

in a machine readable format and
checktable,

but like there are pe like I think like
SpaceX A I S I,

whatever the heck they're called now,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

has

said they're just not gonna do this.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't

know. I I don't understand the way that EU
does things.

I mostly try to ignore it, except for when
it starts to affect what we do here.

And I don't like that at all. Fought a
whole war to not have the stuff over
there.

Right. my

So the Texas Watermarking is coming at
least to the EU.

They also announced GPT six and new
intelligent UI in the ChatGPT app.

So think visual intelligence-ish.

~ you know, it's kind of like that,

but it was just gonna give you more rich ~
visual results.

So if you ask ChatGPT something like,

How do I build this bicycle? This is an
example they give in the video,

it will give you full on diagrams and
visual aids.

and charts and graphs in addition to just
the text output.

So there'll just be more, you know,

rich results kind of like that.

I also read this article and I wanted to
plug it.

OpenAI released the progress on 300 math
research problems.

A couple episodes ago we talked about the
millennium math problem that OpenAI claims

an internal model solved. And there was
maybe it was trained or pulled research
from

a mathematician who was already working on
the ~ the math problem.

So there was some, you know, debate there.

Or controversy there. But now it's
supposedly there's like three hundred math

research problems. No millennium problems,

these are other research problems that are
supposedly unsolved.

And OpenAI is saying that their unreleased
model is solving these

or working or close to solving these.

And mathematicians and researchers are
just kind of a little concerned.

They're like, What's what's the deal?

What's going on here? So I thought that
was interesting.

Go

This is sort

ahead.

of like when Elon Musk says that,

you know, AI is gonna solve chess.

Or when Elon Musk says you'll never have
to drive a car.

And it's like, I like to play chess.

Also, I I like driving my car.

It's like, this

Right.

is what these researchers they've given
their life to doing.

You don't have to solve some of them and
like let them do their let them have their

nice math.

Well and the researchers were saying we
want to solve these because

it is advancing the human race and its
knowledge and we'll

Yes.

be able to, you know, open doors as humans
and just having the AI give

us a solution is not the same process ~
that

The

journey is the reward, Steven.

Thank you. Thank you. And they said even,

~ we do not endorse this practice.

We asked them to stop testing advanced
mathematical problems on proprietary
models.

And this is a board of research and
advisory board.

So I thought this was interesting too
because last week,

and we're gonna this is gonna be a bonus
episode topic,

we talked about the AI self-regulation
accord that was signed by

all these companies last week ~ with
Donald Trump.

And this is one of the situations where

There are advisory boards telling OpenAI,

please stop doing this. And they are
apparently not stopping anything.

So just keep that in mind when you hear
about self-regulation and

how much these companies are actually
abiding by that.

And I wanted to plug this Wall Street
Journal article.

There's several OpenAI researchers that
have been fired from the company.

And they said this is a quote from their
letter,

open letter, these fired open AI
researchers.

They say, quote, as an industry,

we do not yet know how to safely develop
and deploy models that we cannot monitor.

Open AI and other frontier companies
should not move forward with developments
that

further decrease the ability to monitor
AI.

And I alluded to this in a I think it was
last week's episode,

but there are some self-improvement
practices that these frontier models

and companies are using.

Where AI models are being used to improve
the models rather than humans being

a part of that process. Part of that ~ has
resulted in turalees,

where these models are communicating to
each other in ways that we cannot read

or understand. And that's what these res
researchers are saying is that

we don't yet know how to safely develop
and deploy these models that

we cannot monitor. And they are saying,

Stop. Don't do that. We have to figure out
how to monitor it first before

we have these models improving themselves.

And so again.

Not trying to be doomsday ish or or like
induce fear,

but these are people who have worked at
these companies and

are researchers saying these are things
that we need to slow down,

especially the monitoring of these models.

So just putting that out there.

Self regulation. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah,

I don't think that the reason they're
doing it is be you the reason

you self regulate so performatively is
because then the people who might write

the laws are like, like I guess you're
trying you're doing some stuff,

right? Because the people who are gonna
write the laws have

no idea what's happening. Like just and
that's that's fine.

That's not their specific job.

But if it's like no, like look at look at
all these really strong restrictions

and regulations we put into place,

it's like, I mean, I guess that sounds
about right.

Whatever, just do your own thing.

Can't wait to talk about the bonus
episode.

It's gonna be so it's gonna be so good.

It's gonna be best bonus episode ever.

I've been preparing myself mentally.

I've been I literally last week I sent
Jason the topic for this bonus episode

because I've been thinking about it all
week.

This is the only time he's ever commanded
me to do anything.

And it was, I need

It is true. It's true.

you to listen to this episode.

And and then I was super confused because
he started talking about the bonus.

And but I was like thinking he wanted to
do like an emergency podcast on this.

And I was like, I was like,

~ no no no no.

he goes, I need to talk to you.

and here's the thing. In the preview that
showed up,

all I could see was, Jason, I need to talk
to you about.

And I was like, About what? About what?

that's pretty

And it's

like raining outside. And when it's
raining,

you can't like the

Nothing works on a touch screen when it's
I'm I'm trying to swipe up to get

I didn't try to frantically get ~ no.

it to do it and I'm just brushing water
like,

what does he need to talk to me about?

'Cause he used my first name.

Sorry, I induced to the terror.

I did well yeah.

It's like this these are the messages

I have trauma from because it's like you
know,

~ sorry.

my wife

is like, I need to talk to you about the
fact that the dishwasher wasn't loaded.

That doesn't happen. But I mean but the
point is like,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry.

Stephen, what did I do wrong?

I will be care I'll be more careful on the
the text message.

It's fine, it's fine.

But

but I there's I've been thinking about
this bonus episode for a week.

~ so anyway, all right, let's get to it.

So the last of the lightning round,

Google synth ID, this is where it's been
announced many times.

There's been many partners that said we
are going to,

you know, build in Google synth ID so you
can tell whether AI generated video

and images are generated by AI,

but there's been no tool to detect like
can I actually give

a piece of media to a detector and it
tells me that synth ID is there,

that this is actually generated.

Well the tool is now live. So you can go
to synthid.com,

I'll put a link down in the show notes,

and you can give it a photo, a video,

or an audio file. It has lots of different
formats you can upload.

And it will tell you if there was Google
SynthID in the generation of this media.

And it will sit tell you if this there's a
digital watermark and whether it's

AI generated. Now

Remember, this is it only detects media
that supports synth ID.

And right now that's Google, OpenAI,

NVIDIA, and Cacao. I'm not familiar with
them,

but it can only detect stuff generated
there.

So if you generate something with Apple
Intelligence,

you know, that wouldn't trigger a synth
ID,

although Apple says they're going to
implement synth ID in the future.

If you generate something with Claude or ~
other AI tools like Quinn,

like an open model.

That does not synth ID. You like you won't
be able to detect synth ID in there.

And this also does not detect text.

So that text watermarking we talked about
that Anthropic has already launched

and OpenAI is launching in the EU.

It does not detect text at all.

This is for images, videos, and audio,

but it's there and you can try it.

And let us know if you find a piece of
media and you're curious

if it's AI generated, try this tool.

See if it tells you. There you go.

Synth ID. And

I'm gonna start checking everything.

sorry, just check it all. Just check it

You had an article. sorry, this is the
paywall,

to open it in Apple News. Speaking of AI,

you talked about an Apple intelligence
feature that you had to turn off.

Walk me through this.

Steven,

it's the ~ this is the most annoying thing
about macOS twenty seven was that

Yes.

every single place that there was there
there's two things to annoying about this.

First was that it was happening,

right?

Yes.

That there everywhere you go, there's this
little tiny bubble.

And if you hover over it, it becomes right
with Siri.

Yes, yes.

Every

single place there's a text field.

So sometimes that little text bubble meant
you couldn't actually

get focused into the like so if you opened
the ChatGPT app and that bubble appeared.

You actually couldn't type into the chat
GPT thing because

the bubble was essentially over where the
cursor needed to go in order to type.

Like it wouldn't recognize that you
clicked in there to try to type.

And it was the

Yes.

most frustrating thing in the world.

The only thing more frustrating is trying
to figure out how on earth do

I turn this off? Because you would think,

open the settings app, go to Siri.

There'd

Yes.

just be a list of all of the Siri features
there.

And you could just decide.

Which of the Siri features do I like and
which of them make me want

to throw my computer into a river?

Right? And I'll just turn those off.

And that's not how this works,

Steven. Did you know where you go to turn
this type of thing off?

I'll be honest, I read your whole article
'cause I did not know where to

go and I only learned it from you what you
said.

You have to go to screen time,

Steven. Do you use screen time for
yourself or just for your kids?

Yeah.

Just for my kids.

When have you ever other than that like
the notification pops up on Sundays

and it's like your screen time usage?

And I have that notification on.

Exactly, yes. Right. It's there,

I'm like, that's interesting. I don't
care,

but it's it's there, whatever,

it's fine.

sure.

It's like, yeah, I was traveling last
week.

I used my phone more. It's like wow.

But anyway, you have to go into that.

Then you have to turn on content
restrictions for yourself.

Right, yes.

And then you can click on one that says
Siri,

and then you can turn off some places
where Siri might appear.

Now, to be completely

Ridiculous.

fair, that feature or those controls do
need to live in screen time

so that you could turn this feature off
for your kid.

Right. Right.

So that I understand. But it is like
mind-numbingly absurd that the only

way that if there's something annoying on
your computer that you can make

it not be annoying.

is to enable the content restriction on
your own device and turn off Siri.

I'm like, what what on earth? And the fact
that these things are all turned

on by default. Now I haven't s I have the
last time I set up a Mac

was this Mac Mini. I know that it asks you
like,

do you want to turn on Apple Intelligence?

I think you should be able to say yes.

Then I think you should be able to go into
that Siri because you have

to actually go into Siri to say,

give me the new if you have an older
device,

give me the new Apple Intelligence.

Right.

Because you get put on the wait list at
first,

Right, exactly. Right, exactly.

right?

Give me the new Apple Intelligence and
then have it say,

Do you want image generation? Do you

Right.

want cleanup? Do you want writing tools?

And I think you should it should be very
clear that if you do,

you're going to be annoyed for the rest of
your life.

I've never used writing tools.

It's so saddle.

Not one time. Except for when it was

first like announced in the first beta,

which was I think two years ago,

Yeah. Yeah.

was the first writing

tools.

Yes.

I did

because I wanted to see if it was any good
and it wasn't,

so I never used it again.

I will say I use the pronunciation and
grammar checker,

not intentionally, but if I've written an
email and I see the blue underline,

I'll double check and I'll say,

Did I make an error? And it catches some
errors.

And but I I wish it would separate out
writing tools from like proofreading
check.

And I don't know if those are the same
thing.

But it's funny because Apple will give you
granular controls over what notifications

get summarized. Like you get like four
options

For what notifications to summarize,

but you don't get options for if you want
writing tools or that little bubble.

And I will say that little Siri,

like the Ask Siri bubble, I see it
sometimes in the weirdest places.

Yeah.

Like just random places. I might be,

I don't know, scrolling on something in a
social media app or like a browser

or in a third party app. And I just see
that little bubble.

And I'm like, what is I don't even know
what's gonna happen if I click that.

I know. It's

like you go to enter your f credit card to
buy whatever thing you were trying

to buy in the Siri bubble. I'm like,

are you gonna just make up a number for
me?

I mean, will you pay the bill Siri?

Yeah. Ask Siri, like what are Jason's
credit card numbers?

That'd be great. Or just maybe you'll just

Put those in. Let me c I can just ask.

AI generate a credit card number.

That seems like problematic, but whatever.

Yeah, it's weird. Yeah,

so the the S tier thing is weird,

but you can turn it off and Jason has the
instructions.

So go read, I'll put the F.

Yes, and there and there

are. And to be clear, I am actually pretty
sure that it will not show up

in a field for a credit card. Just to be
clear,

No, I don't think I don't think it does.

that was an ex that was a joke and
exaggeration.

It that was a joke.

But

it should there should also be the ability
to say,

only turn it on in these apps.

Like Grammarly, for example, gives you the
ability to say,

I only want it on these websites or I only
want it on these apps on my Mac.

If I'm in something it's something else,

never show me any of the Grammarly
features.

I can be like, I only want it in Ulysses.

I don't want it in notes. I don't want it
in contextly.

I don't

Don't want it in whatever and it'll

Right, right.

you should have that kind of control for
writing tools.

'Cause it's also like any time I right
click,

ask Siri as an option. So like I'm just
gonna right click on this website

in a blank open space. I have no idea what
let's try it.

I'm gonna ask Siri.

And you, by the way, cannot turn that off.

And you can't turn that off. I just ask
what is this?

I

And it's

every single right click menu in the
entire system has that.

And in the files. And okay, so it's giving
me a summary of the entire webpage.

But that's everywhere.

But c sorry.

No, no, just that being everywhere is a
little like I wish it wasn't.

That's all.

But can we

also and we couldn't see that because you
weren't screen sharing that window,

but that's okay. Yeah, it's fine because
it wasn't a safari window.

really? my bad. ~ right,

It was a it was a it was a Siri

it's on top of it.

window. But the b broader point of my
article that I just will make

for our audience is I'm not saying writing
tools are bad.

I don't want to use them. It is that all
of these companies

are completely redesigning every surface
to try to get you to do things because
they

think that the number one reason people
aren't using the features

is because they don't know that they
exist.

And I'm like, No, I'm not using it because
it's bad and I don't want it in my face,

right? Like I can make that decision
myself as a grown up and I shouldn't have

to navigate four levels deep into screen
time settings in order to turn it off.

Yeah, yeah.

Same. And I've actually seen this
complaint on social media and I've been
feeling

it too, but when I go to edit this the
video version in Riverside,

right after we're done recording,

co creator is always open by default in
the Riverside editor.

And I never use that ever. Like I don't
want to prompt because I know exactly what

edits I'm making. I'm gonna overlay some B
roll and that is it.

I don't wanna ask co creator anything,

but there's no setting to like hide that
by default.

And it's like you're saying it's one of
those things where all these companies
just

want to really make sure you know that
this AI feature exists.

And it's like, just give us some toggles.

Just give us some toggles. Turn it off.

It's the Mac.

Like let us do Mac things and control what

The Mac. Exactly.

we want to have happen.

Exactly. So go to Jason's article.

He walked you through how to turn that
off.

Last couple things, the Sky Dance deal is
now official.

Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery
have completed their merger.

And now this is a Voltron.

That's too that's too positive.

This is a rat king of streaming services.

my gosh.

This

is a rat king. Because if it's Paramount,

it's War Brothers Discovery films,

like the DC Universe. It's HBO,

CBS, CNN.

Discover all of it just under one re one
roof and it is Sky Dance.

That's that's it. That's the tweet.

That's it.

It's g

yeah, they came up with they had to they
had to like change you couldn't have

the two brands right. What is it gonna be?

Paramount Paramount Warner Brother
Discovery?

Like come on, you can't do that.

Warner Warner Mount. No. War Warner Mount
Discovery.

War please no.

Parabros.

Parabros Discovery. So anyway,

that's it finally happened. So we have one
less streaming service.

Or one you know, one anyway, I don't even
know what it.

Here's the only thing I care about.

Does

Yeah.

this mean that my Walmart plus
subscription gets me that whole thing?

That and does my free HBO because of ATT?

Is that going to go away? That's what I
want to know.

Absolutely. You're definitely losing that
now.

That's I'm hoping not. I'm hoping they
just don't

Don't you think?

even know.

I mean ATT is like three owners ago at
this point for Warner Brothers.

I know. But it's it's

lasted ever since. I still have HBO,

so hopefully. ~

~

also stu a coup last couple of streaming
things.

Prime Video is gonna get the Emmys next
year.

So the Oscars have gone to YouTube,

the Emmys have gone to Prime Video,

and broadcast television is slowly dying.

~ so there's that. And Disney Plus will
stream the Super Bowl next year,

which I was I mean, Disney Plus owns ESPN,

but they also have a deal now where,

yeah, they're gonna have the Super Bowl.

Right there on Disney Plus.

So if you want to watch the Super Bowl on
a forty second delay,

you can just do it on Disney Plus.

That's it. That's it. All right.

Personal tech. This will be quick.

I just want to tell you I finally
installed Tail Scale everywhere.

And it's good. It's fine. It's really
good.

Good. It's amazing. It is the

best free piece of technology I think that
I've put on my Mac in a long time.

Way better than Meuse.

Yeah.

Being f being free, it is an incredible
tool.

And I remember what tripped me up the
first time was you don't create

an account for Tailscale. You have to use
another service to sign in.

So you can sign with your Google account,

or you can do like sign in with Apple.

And the reason why I was halted the first
time is the Mac Mini I wanted to

use it on was the one that Perplexity gave
me like last year.

And I wasn't signed into my iCloud
account.

And so I wasn't sure if I use sign in with
Apple.

Will I be able to connect that Mac Mini
with sign in with Apple to Tailscale?

Because you have to sign into your
Tailscale account on every Mac that

you install it on. And because I didn't
know the answer to that question,

I just never went forward. And because you
and David Sparks were like Tailscale,

Tailscale, Tailscale. I was like,

all fine, fine, I'll do it. And turns out
if you do sign in with Apple,

I would create your account on like a
legitimate or a Mac or Apple device that

you're actually signed into your account
because then it's easy to authenticate.

But if you do it on a Mac that's not
signed in,

you just sign in on the web and it will
authenticate via the web browser.

You sign in with Apple, you have to type
in your iCloud,

you know, email and password, do the two
factor thing,

but then you can use sign in with Apple
even on a Mac or device that

is not signed into your iCloud account.

And then TS Code works great. And the
other holdup was,

you know, a VPN that's always on.

And Blue Kibo on YouTube actually left a
comment.

And said if you don't turn on the exit
node feature,

where you can make all your internet
traffic go through one of the exit nodes

on your Tailscale network, then your
internet is not going through the VPN.

Tailscale is smart enough to only use the
tail net when needed and

not when you're accessing the internet.

And so I've been keeping it on my Macs all
the time,

and it's fine. I don't notice any internet
speed issues,

nothing. And on my iOS devices,

I have a shortcut automation.

So when I open the screens app,

where you access actually control the
remote computers,

Tailscale turns on automat the VPN turns
on automatically when I open the

app and it turns off when I leave the app.

Sometimes that doesn't work because I'll
be multitasking

on my iPad and I might have opened the
screens app and I keep it open,

but I'm also going to other apps and then
it never like turns off.

So I also created a shortcut that just
toggles the Tailscale VPN.

And the only reason I toggle it.

On the iPad specifically, is in the top
right corner in the status bar,

if you have a VPN on, you see the little
VPN tag persistently.

It's just on all the time. On the iPhone,

you don't see the VPN unless you swipe
down from Control Center.

Yeah.

On a Mac, you don't see anywhere visually
that you're connected to a VPN.

On the iPad, you see that VPN label all
the time when a VPN is connected.

And I just don't like that.

So I have a little shortcut on the home
screen that I can just tap it

and it toggles the tail scale VPN off.

And I don't know. I know it's asinine,

but it just bothers me. And so I have an
easy way to turn it off on my iPad.

Yeah,

I don't keep it on on my iPad or my phone.

Yeah, because I just I mean, I don't need
they don't need to

be connected to Tailscale all the time.

I will turn

Right.

them on if I need them to do something.

But the really the important piece is the
computers that you want to

be able to access via Tailscale should
always be on.

So that way

Right, right.

you don't ever have to worry if I'm
somewhere

else, I can always access them.

So the Mac Mini and this MacBook Pro
always,

always on. My MacBook Air, ninety nine
percent of the time it's on.

The only exception to that is I can't log
on to the VPN to publish articles

if I'm connected to

Right.

Tail Scale. It's just weird. At some point
VPNs are like duking it

out and they're like trying to figure out
who should be controlling this.

And there are different protocols where,

you know, some VPNs require certain access
to whatever encrypt the packets.

And if somebody else is trying to do that,

they're like, Bro, he's he's he's over the
line.

He's he's touching me. He won't leave me
like it's like two brothers fighting.

Right. Yeah.

I don't know anything about that.

But

So that's the only time I turn it off is
for like the ten minutes and then

I just turn it right back on. And weirdly,

I don't publish I'm not publishing
articles from the MacBook Pro.

So they don't actually turn it off and
leave it off.

I just do it from my MacBook.

Do you manually go to like settings VPN to
toggle it on or off?

No, I just have a menu bar icon and I just
click on it and there's a slider.

You can click you can click connect.

But on your iPhone and iPad.

No, I have a connect I have a I have a I
have it right right there.

Right there. It's a little control center
icon.

Is and you can put a

you could put a VPN in your control center
just like a native action?

You just put c yeah, tail scale right
there.

It's this little this

~

one right the right there. That's tail
scale.

Well, that's the Tailscale Apps action.

Is that right?

I have no idea what it is, but if I tap it
it turns on tail scale.

I don't know what you mean

Okay.

by that, but like I can just I can just
tap on it and it will turn tail scale on.

And it I can tap on it and it'll turn tail
scale off.

So

Okay, to be clear, Tailscale has a first
party for their app,

control center action, and that's what
you're using.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. Bro,

I didn't know if it was a shortcut that
was toggling it,

not everything's a shortcut.

or I didn't know if like I didn't know if
iOS had a VPN control center action

~ okay, sorry. No, I just

or the

for tail scale. I mean that's the I do use
Proton as my like if

I'm traveling VPN and for that I will just
I'll just go into settings and toggle it.

And to be clear, there actually is a built
in iOS VPN toggle as well.

And ~ if you tap it, I don't know what
happens.

It enables a VPN.

This recording will stop. I'm scared.

And

like I'm doing it on my phone.

So the V a VPN is on, but I don't know
what VPN it connected to and long pressing

it doesn't give me a menu. So that's not
good.

Just use the tail scale control center
action.

Yeah, so whenever I

want to do it, I have three VPNs that I
use.

One is for publishing,

Yeah.

one is Proton, and then one is Tailscale.

And it's not on right now, obviously.

But I mean I'm assuming that if I tap that
and go back to that screen,

yeah, now it's connected. I just didn't
know when saw what I did,

but it tapped that icon in the control
center.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway,

Tail Scale is good. If you want a way to
remote into your Macs,

~ Tailscale is a really good option.

It's totally free and it's easy to set up.

You sign in with Apple and you can do it
even through the browser

and it works great.

And it it does the thing that you need,

which is creates a static IP for that
device in addition

Yes. Yes.

to the V PN. So it surfaces only to those
devices in your tail scale network

so that you can use you can just use a
default screen sharing app if you want,

or you can just connect to the server and
if you just wanted to access your files.

So

that and I was able to delete the port
forwarding rules on my Ubiquity network

for my Macs that I was accessing with
screens,

which removes a point of entry to

Yeah, did you

my

did you hear Ben Thompson's story about
that?

About how he got hacked, so

Yes, he got hacked.

He got hacked. So I was I was glad to
remove those ~ open ports.

So anyway, tail scale, thumbs up.

We need to record a bonus episode.

Last thing I just want to mention this
past week,

it was the fifteenth anniversary of Steve
Jobs passing,

and it was October fifth. It was the
fifteen years.

Tim Cook and John Turnus posted ~ tributes
on X.

And yeah, I still remember when I where

Mm-hmm.

I was when I heard about it. Do you
remember where you were and heard about
it?

Yeah, I do and I remember looking at the
website and I remember look like

I just yeah, it was a it was a big deal.

Yeah. It was a big deal and I Right.

It wasn't totally unexpected, but it was
still

like, wow, I can't believe that happened.

And I wrote a little blog post.

I don't know if you saw it, but I'll link
it ~ in the show notes.

It'll be low in the show notes because we
got a lot of links.

But I called it the weirdest part of
remembering Steve Jobs because when

I bought my first Mac, my PowerBook G4 12
inch,

it was a and when he passed, it was weird
because buying a Mac at that time,

and I was new to the world, I wasn't in
the tech journalism world yet.

It felt like I got that

Powerbook from Steve Jobs. Like Steve Jobs
made that computer.

And I know that's an oversimplification,

and that's not true. There's thousands of
people that work on it,

the hardware, the software, the
manufacturing.

But Steve Jobs, when he was leading Apple
at that time,

was it felt like that. Like when you
bought an Apple product,

Steve Jobs made that product. Like when
you bought an iPod,

when you made a PowerBook. And so when he
died,

it felt like, man, the person who gave me
this tool.

That has now allowed me to edit videos and
record stuff in Garage Band

and fast forward changed my entire life.

It was sad, even though I'd never met the
man,

never spoken to him. And that is a weird
but interesting connection I feel

to a founder CEO. And I just asked a a
question in my blog post

is like, I don't know if any other CEOs
exude that.

One

I think it has to be a founder CEO.

I don't think a non-founder CEO can come
close to that feeling.

And the two examples I give is any CEO
that comes close to that,

I think one is like Zuckerberg,

where I feel like Facebook, like
Zuckerberg gave Facebook to the world.

Like he was very much he was the CEO
founder and that is his product.

Less so with Instagram because they bought
that and WhatsApp because they bought

that. But it feels very much like he gave
like he made Facebook.

And I also feel that a little bit,

and maybe you could speak to this,

like Brian Chesky with Airbnb.

Airbnb feels like

Mm-hmm.

Brian Chesky's product. Like that is his
deal.

And throughout the whole Tim Cook era,

while very successful, obviously,

I never got that feeling where Tim Cook
made one of the products.

Like even Apple Watch or Apple Vision Pro,

which launched after Steve Jobs died,

it didn't feel like this is Tim Cook's
product.

It felt like this is Apple's product.

And I think that's how a lot of companies
run.

Like this is Apple's deal. I'm curious if
John Turnus will skew

or feel any closer. Like all the rumors
this past week has been that

and this is from Mark Erman that Turnus is
being more hands on in the products,

that he's getting more involved in the
hardware design and software.

And so I'll be curious if it feels like
that anymore,

but I don't even know if it's possible
with a non founder CEO.

And so I don't know. Do you have any
feelings about that?

I

mean, I don't know that it's only gonna be
limited to a founder.

However, right, like that's certainly an
aspect that makes a difference.

But another thing that was different at
the time was that Steve Jobs

was literally the person introducing all
of these things.

Whereas

R yes.

now that's not the case. Tim Cook rarely
introduced anything,

you know? Sure. But he doesn't anymore.

He did introduce the Apple Watch,

but not the whole thing. Not the whole
thing.

That's the distinction.

Like, I mean, right, like Steve Jobs was
the one always

Like Steve Jobs sat in a chair.

Steve Jobs sat in a chair and demoed it.

He's the guy who pulled the MacBook Air
out of a of a inner office memo right

Right. Right.

envelope.

He's the guy who sat there with the iPad.

Right. Did you see the n did you see the
New Balance ad in honor?

Right, right. He browsed the New York
Times on the iPad.

I bought them. I bought them.

You bought the new balance. But did you
see the ad?

I'm I did see the ad.

Yeah, where he was just sitting,

It was amazing. Yeah. It was amazing.

they had someone sitting in the exact same
position in the exact same chair.

That's why I bought it. I bought it
immediately.

Yeah. S yeah. Okay,

I bought those new balance shoes
immediately.

that's that is so dumb. I love New Balance
shoes.

They're the same new they're the same

new balance shoes that look exactly the
one like the one Steve Jobs wore during

the iPad announcement. And I have them
coming the I have yes,

Yes. And then they posted a photo of the
of

yes.

of the model sitting in the same position
as it.

But anyway, I think so I think part of it
was because it was him actually doing

the in introductions. But we

Yes.

don't feel that way about the iPhone Pro
cameras with like Kai Andrance.

Like it's just n because there's so many
different people over time.

~ you know, when I've been to Airbnb
keynotes,

it's always Brian Chesky. Right?

He does the whole thing from start to
finish and talks about the whole thing.

Right. Same with Zuckerberg, even today.

Or Sam Waltman at OpenAI and stuff

Same all.

like that. And I think I think st

Mark Zuckerberg actually even more feels
like it because while Steve Jobs

was super influential, he didn't basically
literally control the company.

Because he got fired once, right?

Right right, right.

Like I mean,

like he was not invincible. He was just
very good at doing the thing that

he was doing. So I agree with you.

But I think you could make a couple of
possible exceptions.

Like right now, ~ in many ways,

there I think there are s I also think it
could be the CEO who's in charge when

you come along to a company.

Could be that.

So,

but like for example, they're like Ed
Bastion is very much the voice

and personality of Delta Airlines right
now,

right? Bob Iger was very much like if he
was talking

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

to you about Disney, you felt like Bob
Iger made us this movie.

Right. And they're not founders.

That is tr that is fair, yeah.

Right.

It's just they

were so deeply a part of that culture.

Tim Cook in some ways is a is not an
aberration,

but like he is his skill set was just very
different.

And kudos to

Right.

him for not trying to do a thing he was
gonna not be good at.

Hundred percent.

Right? John Turnus

Hundred percent.

though, I don't think we're gonna feel
that way with John Turnus.

~ just because he's got his hands on the
design more.

Maybe maybe to some extent. I think really
though it's gonna depend on if

if he is the one introducing like the
iPhone duo is gonna feel like he made

it for you. Cause he

Yep.

did the whole introduction.

He did he announced it. He talked about
it.

Yeah. So

So

I'd be curious that, you know,

five years from now, if it will feel I
think it will feel closer to jobs than
Cook,

the Turnus Apple.

Well yes, I think that's true.

but how much so? And that's why it was so
we like I still think about

how weird it is to feel so emotional about
someone dying that you never

met or spoke to. But it's one I don't
know,

it's one of those things. Like it feels
like he made the thing that opened the
door

to my entire career. And it's a I don't
know,

it's a weird thing.

I d

I do think that if Ben Cohen does an
interview with John Turnus for

the Wall Street Journal and puts him in a
room with every single Apple product

that's ever been made, it will feel like
John Turnus knows what they all are.

Unlike Tim Cook, where it's like,

Well

I've never seen that that's yes,

this is that one thing we

And that

made.

and that's the thing and John Ternis has
been at Apple for so long.

I think he has a better shot at that.

And I think Craig Federighi might be the
closest to this idea in Apple right

now when it comes to the software.

Because for the last what five plus years,

he has been doing macOS and iOS,

and he's the one talking about all these
features.

And so it feels a little bit like Craig
Federighi is handing us the OS.

Less so maybe in recent years,

but I feel like there was a period where
it was like,

Air Force One, he is the software guy of
Apple.

It's like I made this for you.

He made this he made continuity camera for
you.

I mean to be honest, the continuity
features,

most amazing thing Apple has ever done.

This is what I'm saying. You're using it
right you use it every episode.

I use it right now. I use the copy

You're using it every episode.

So

from one device and paste on another one
all the

~

time.

All the time. Which has kinda been broken
since I was twenty seven.

I don't want to get into it but anyway.

Well, yeah,

we don't have time to get into it,

but it is weird. You have to a there's a
solve for it,

but it does involve like toggling things
on and off and rebooting devices

and then it works. Okay, I'll do that.

Please give me those instructions.

I need that because I do it on the.

All we have to talk about, we have to give
the bonus episode.

Listen, if you are not a member,

it is worth a prize of admission because
I've been thinking about this topic

for the last week. We're going to talk
about another tech podcast.

Not one you're probably thinking of,

but it might get it might get it might get

Yeah.

a little rowdy. I'm not going to be
honest.

It's getting a little rowdy. So if you
want to hear that bonus episode,

get our probably two plus hour show,

which has the unedited feed. You can
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Click the link down to become a member of
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Thanks for listening and watching.

I'll catch you next time.