Who is HomeView For? Apple’s Fight for the Smart Home, Anthropic Thinks Claude Has Feelings
Download MP3This is my house. I have to defend it.
Welcome to Primary Technology,
the show about the tech news that matters.
It was a big Apple experience event week.
We're gonna get in-depth on HomeView,
the new Apple Home collection with
accessories from LG and Schneider,
new Apple TV 4K. Man, that thing is
expensive.
HomePod Mini 2, Plus, you can't be mean to
Claude anymore,
so says Anthropic.
YouTube Music is gonna label music as AI.
and more. This episode is brought to you
by SERP API,
Ramp, Origin, and you, the members who
support us directly.
I'm one of your hosts with three home
views on the way.
Joined by my co host Jason. How's it
going,
Jason?
I have zero home views on the way.
I just want to be clear. Mark's safe from
buying a home view.
I s yeah.
I you know, I said three and I was just
thinking about it.
I think it's I think I bought two.
I bought the desk version and the wall
mount,
but then I had to buy the separate wall
mount.
So that's the I had three home view items,
but just two home views. That's just a
correction.
listen, we're gonna get to home view.
We'll give we just just give us a second
here.
Two two very exciting things. One,
I have a shortcuts pillow. Have you seen
this?
I don't think this is an exciting thing.
This is just a shameless plug.
No, this
is an exciting thing for me. Well,
also, I think this is when it's coming
out.
I was I'm going to be on the Verge cast
again.
David David Pierce hit me up. He asked me
to come on to talk.
And so I think it comes out Monday.
So be eyes peeled Monday for episode.
But I troll David with this very shortcuts
pillow.
And I was wearing a shortcut shirt during
the recording of that episode.
So stay tuned. That's coming out Monday.
And we might have some other exciting
stuff on this show special guest coming
soon.
So we we will confirm later.
We need to get to Home View, but real
quick,
Weather Dog 87 from the USA gave us a
five-star rating an apple podcast.
Thank you so much for that. And Marcin in
Poland.
He has our polar bear knight. I always say
it the wrong way.
I always mean to say knight riding a polar
bear.
Yeah.
But I I always start with the polar bear
riding a knight.
And I don't want to say that. But anyway,
he has our medieval knight riding a polar
bear in Poland.
So very cool for that. And he actually
has worked on making an app for a long
time and I wanted to plug it.
This is not a vibe coded app. This is an
app that he learned Swift and spent
a long time figuring learning to be a
developer.
And he made Mick Snake. It's a free app on
the Mac.
And if you are nostalgic for the old
school Snake game,
you could download it for free.
Just a casual game and that is super fun.
So thank you, Marcin, for ~ the picture
and also for the game.
You should check it out.
You should. Can I say one thing about vibe
coded apps real quick?
I know and this will be quick.
Sure, sure. We'll talk about it later t as
well,
I we do? I'll save I can save it.
but go ahead. Well, I want to talk about
my No,
Well, okay.
you can say it now. Say no, go ahead.
I just have discovered the biggest pitfall
of vibe coding an app,
which
Okay, what's that?
is people will send you a lot of feature
requests.
And when you're when you take the time to
respond and say,
I don't actually think that that's a like
here's why I probably won't do that.
I appreciate it. Like, dude, just ask
Claude to do it.
It's not that big of a deal. And I'm like,
you don't understand.
Mm.
Just because
it wouldn't be hard to implement that
feature doesn't mean it would be a good
idea.
Just because you could, doesn't mean you
should.
That is a great point. I actually talk
about that with David on Monday a little
bit.
Okay.
And so that's a good plug. And we're we'll
talk about vibe-coded apps later as well.
Because yeah, got a lot. And one other
follow-up.
I mentioned last week, we're up for a
signal award.
And voting ends tomorrow if you listen to
this episode when it comes
out on Thursday. So go vote if you haven't
yet.
We are up for best co host team,
which I so hope we win the best co host
team.
That'd be amazing.
That would
be amazing. But you can go vote for
Primary technology in the best podcast
category,
best tech podcast, and the best co host
team.
I don't know if this visual is represent
well like representative of
the amount of votes shows are getting.
It can't be. It's gotta just be random,
don't you think?
I imagine
it's gonna be random, but we're second
from the top right now.
So I'm gonna take that as hope that maybe
we have a chance to win this thing.
Yeah, but if I look at it it's a totally
different order.
I'm sorry.
Don't why'd you have to why do have to do
that,
Jason?
That's okay. But listen, we good go vote.
And the tip that I said last week,
because you do have to create an account
to vote,
which is always a little slimy when,
you know, places make you do that.
I mentioned the plus and the at symbol for
email accounts where
you can basically have a built-in alias.
So whatever your email address is,
plus icon, and then random letters or a
word,
and then the at gmail.com symbol goes to
your inbox.
And I said it doesn't work with Outlook or
iCloud last week.
And I had a lot of listeners write in and
they were like,
actually it does. So if you use iCloud or
Outlook,
that little plus ~ trick to have like a
secondary or as many email addresses
as you want and then filter that address
works with Outlook and iCloud as well.
So do that and then you can filter all
those messages wherever you want.
Yeah, that is the important piece,
by the way. Just adding
Yes.
the plus and the bunch of gibberish is
meaningless because it's still gonna come
to your inbox. You then have to take the
gibberish
That's right.
and add
a filtering.
Yeah, and do do a thing. Like I have on my
YouTube channel,
I use one of these plus things like plus
YT,
and then I have a filter that any email
that gets sent to that plus YT
at my email address goes to a folder.
And then I can choose to check that
whenever I want.
Or tell Claude to, you know, whatever you
want.
Or not check it.
Okay. Big Apple Home experience experience
event this week.
I want to get right to the home view.
This is the long rumored. I looked back,
and Andrew O'Hara and I first mentioned
this in March 2021 on HomeKit Insider.
It was the first time a rumor about a home
pod with a screen came from journalist
Mark German. And that was five plus years
ago that we've been hearing about this
kind of device. And it's finally here.
The HomeView, it is a seven-inch display,
and it is a mix of Apple Watch plus.
HarPlay plus maybe iPad type stuff,
but it is meant to be your home control
where you can look at recipes
and beam stuff from your phone,
and it is a Siri AI machine and all the
things.
It has a camera, it will recognize up to
six people,
which is complicated, and we're gonna get
into that as well.
And a lot of creator videos are out there
on it,
and I will link to a few that I'll
discuss.
But the first video I'm going to link to
is Apple's own marketing video for this,
which Jason and I are going to disagree on
the use cases of the home view
in general, but maybe we agree on this.
I did not find this marketing video
compelling.
I actually found it off-putting for this
device for several reasons.
How did you find this marketing video?
This marketing video, I think,
Steven,
Yes.
was worse than the one where they did the
keynote in the middle of WWDC showing Siri
Apple Apple intelligence. This is worse.
Because there's a whole lot of hand
waviness about like,
how fast is this user switching?
And there's like no
Yeah.
way. And it's like then the FaceTime call
pops up and it's like,
call for this person. Is it because it
called that person's phone number
and it's showing up so why is it showing
up on the screen if somebody else
is using it? Right? Like and as soon as
you turn it,
like it just
Switches to someone else's messages?
Like, is it possible that it's that fast?
Like, I feel like there was so much of
this,
and I don't I didn't I didn't have a
briefing on this,
just to be clear. I've done talked to
anyone.
Steven's the first person I've talked to
about this event about this thing.
So I've
Ha ha.
got so many ideas and feelings at the
moment.
But I think that this video is worse than
the Apple Intelligence presentation
at was it 2024 WWDC.
Yeah,
yeah. I have I have some information,
~ but the first thing I want mention,
so this device, you can get multiple
models,
and that's complicated as well.
We'll get to that. But the tabletop
version,
which is three hundred dollars,
it's a USB C port in the back.
If you buy the tabletop version,
you actually get a cable and power brick
in the box.
If you buy the Walmount version,
you don't, which is crazy making because
it's the same price.
And so if you want the wall mount version,
you have to spend more on the mount.
Anyway, I'll get into that in second.
Please tell me you asked them how those
two things were the same price.
I had a limited time, so I did not get to
the
No, no, no. I
don't why did no one ask them how are
these two versions the same price?
Okay, let me just tell you right now.
I I have a theory and we'll see if it
comes true.
If you wanted to pre-order this today,
which it you can pre-order today,
it comes out November thirteenth.
The Apple Home View, like tabletop
edition,
is $300. The wall-mounted one is also
$300,
but you remember, you don't get the base,
You don't get a home pod with it.
which has you don't get
the big speaker with it. And to add insult
to injury,
you have to pay extra for a mount.
So even if you just want the wall mount
that plugs into USB-C,
that's another $60. So now you're $60 more
than the tabletop version.
The AC wired version is $80. And if you
want the PoE version,
which is not for sale yet, $130.
So you could pay.
Which is the only version you should get.
Well, yeah, and it's, you know,
it's complicated. You don't have Ethan
already run to a wall or whatever.
I'm hopeful that like the 3D printing
world and accessory makers make
a nice swiveling.
Tabletop mount for the PoE version.
Because I would do a PoE swiveling version
like on my desk here.
And I think that would be money.
But you can't, like right now,
Apple is only selling PoE for a Wall
mount.
So Grove made, make a beautiful wooden
swiveling case or you know,
tabletop mount, and that would be hot.
Anyway, my theory is if you remember,
the studio display XDR Vesa mount version.
was the same price as the Studio Display
XDR tilt and height adjustable version
when
it launched. And I bought it day one.
And then I got a $400 refund from Apple
because they adjusted the price after
the fact. So I am hoping, I don't have any
background information on this,
but I am hoping that they come to the same
realization that ~ we should this should
be cheaper because you get less and you
have to buy a mount in addition to the
$300.
I'm hoping that they adjust the price post
like release.
We'll see.
Do you think
the fa yeah, how is it but okay.
But the it felt like the studio display
thing was like,
shoot, we didn't like we didn't do math.
We didn't think about the fact that people
are gonna notice,
I'm I'm hoping
but like
that I'm hoping the same person that did
that math did this math and they have
I'm hoping the person that did that math
was fired.
to correct them again. I don't I know,
Come on, Steven. Like this is because
that was bad math.
because it it is like like a hit to their
credibility for this product,
It's Yeah.
that
one version includes a base, which is also
a subwoofer.
So
Yeah.
it's gonna sound so what you want is a is
a home pod with a screen.
That's that. The one that goes on your
wall is not a home pod with a screen.
Right. And also the wall mounted version,
not only do you have to buy the sixty
dollar wall mount,
but you have to buy a power adapter
separately.
And this power adapter that they recommend
is another forty dollars.
So you're now over four hundred dollars
for a wall mount version.
And I think that's not that's not fair.
~
You're being too nice, Stephen.
I well, I mean it's just it's not fair.
And I I I'm hopefully they go back on
that.
So on the actual device, the d screen
tilts,
so you can actually tilt the seven inch
display.
But I want to be clear that it does not
swivel.
And a lot of the creators that were at the
event,
Andrew Edwards said this, ~ I think Eric
Whelander said it.
And congrats to Eric Whelander,
Shane Watley. There was a bunch of smart
home creators that this
was like their first Apple event,
and that was very cool. So congrats to all
those guys and girls.
But the swiveling, they they didn't allow
a lot of creators to actually touch it.
Matthew Panzerino on on social media was
like,
Can anyone send me a picture of the back
of the wall mounted version?
Because everybody wants to know,
like, what is the what does the back of
the home view look like for the wall
mount?
And Apple did not want any pictures,
didn't want anybody touching it,
and a lot of creators couldn't touch it.
Now I saw MKBHD use it, and I saw Jennifer
Twee from
The Verge physically interacting with it,
but a lot of other creators had to just
film the Apple person using it.
So there's not a lot of videos of the
creators actually using it.
So the question was, does this thing
swivel?
Because in the marketing video,
it shows the family constantly turning
this thing.
It does not. And if you look at their
marketing video,
like around 42 seconds, the mom moves it,
but she physically grabs the base and
moves like moves the whole thing.
Because this thing is small, you know,
it's not a large thing. And I realized I
just was not sharing my screen.
So let's try that one more time.
Mm. ~
So the mom, like around it's like
40-something seconds,
she walks up to it.
And you can see and if you look at all the
videos that it's very clear,
it does not swivel. She grabs the little
dome part and physically moves it.
So it seems easy enough to do it,
but to be clear, it's not swivel.
There's gonna be one thousand accessories
that probably just make
a swiveling base for this thing,
I'm sure.
There
will not be one thousand accessories for
this,
Steven. They will not sell a thousand of
these.
I don't know, man. Okay. This is my home I
have to protect.
So there will not be a thousand.
I'm just there's home alone, dude.
Did you know where that movie was from,
by the way? The movie quote? Thank you.
Come on. Absolutely.
Okay, I just want to make sure I had to go
back and plug it.
The
other thing that's crazy making about this
video is this obviously feels like
the perfect kitchen device. That is where
the whole marketing video takes place.
Now, I don't know how your kitchen is set
up,
but my kitchen, we have an island,
and the stove part is in the island.
And if s I wanted to use this for recipes
and cooking,
it needs to be there on the island.
And this marketing video has the power
cable for the home view going down into
this
little hole in the island. Now,
listen, I don't want to be that guy,
but we have a granite island, and I'm not
drilling a hole for the home view.
Right. Right.
I'm sorry.
And I'm also not having a USB C cable over
the side of our kitchen island.
You know how many times that home view
would crash to the ground?
If we had a cable just laying across the
island and the kids running around.
So like that part of the marketing video,
it's like, listen, I do not think people
are gonna drill a hole in their table.
but obviously like that is the intent is
to have this clean look of
w because that's the only other way you
could also rotate this thing
all around the island as everybody's using
it.
Anyway. Are you gonna drill a hole in your
in your island when people
Yeah. Well No,
but also I'm trying to figure
Yes.
out which part of this we're in still.
Are we s we're still talking about the
video?
Okay. Yeah, no, no, that's good.
I'm still talking about the video just
because those were the two crazy making
I just was trying to
things. It's like it they showed it all
the people moving it around,
but it actually doesn't swivel.
They're just like physically moving the
device.
And two, cutting a hole in your island I
think is a a big ask.
We'll just say that.
Well, yeah, okay. So the p the biggest
thing that's wrong with this video
is nobody is doing anything with this
device that they shouldn't just
be doing with their phone. Everything they
didn't show anything about controlling
your shades.
Well, he clear he changed
Whatever, like
the temperature. He changed the thermostat
temperature.
That was it. He got in trouble for that,
Ish. He got in trouble for that,
I think. He was but fine he changed the
temperature
which I'm like, man. Could I
while he's cooking. Maybe you shouldn't be
changing the temperature
in your house while you're cooking,
because I don't know that you're in a good
situation at that moment.
Well
and also if your hands are all French
toasty,
Yeah, you're really gonna touch the screen
to change the temperature?
you should have shouted to the voice
assistant.
Yeah.
You should have said, Hey Dingus,
turn the temperature down So, you know,
obviously like this part of it is is very
contrived because they're trying
to show all the features on the device.
Let's let's just get into the the your
problems with it and my defense.
Like what is this thing for? Who is this
for?
Okay, let me frame it like this.
We have a Google Home Hub Max.
I think that's I think that's the name,
and if it is, it's the first time I've
ever said it correctly.
Cause it used to be called a
I think I think you're right. I think
you're right.
Nest Hub Max, I think, and then they
changed it to Google
Right.
Home Nest Hub Plus Pro. Something like
that.
That's exactly right. You nailed it,
We have one of those
nailed it.
in our kitchen. And it is a fantastic
speaker.
Like it's a very good speaker.
I would say it's like 90% as good as a as
a single home like OG home pop.
Okay, it's a good
Yeah, yeah.
speaker and it has a screen on it.
And all it ever does is my wife uses it to
play music when she's in
the kitchen or cleaning the house.
It shows photos from Google Photos,
which is by far the best feature of it
because you can just starve photos
in Google Photos and they'll just show up
on there.
It also tells answers random Google
questions that my 12 year old shouts
at it occasionally.
Yes, yes.
And it ~ w it can it serves as if you're
in the Google Home Assistant.
ecosystem it services like the hub for
that.
So if you have any of the plugs that need
it need a hub,
it works for that. So that means that you
can shout at it and it'll turn
on all of our lights, turn them off.
But and just to be clear, with the
exception of Lutron,
which I'll get to in a second,
that is the most it like it works every
single time.
If I say turn off the light in the front
room,
Yeah. Yeah.
it it
just happens instantly. It is super
reliable.
And the reason I said Lutron is
I would argue that the Lutron ones are
more reliable,
and those are through the home kit,
but that's because they have their own
controller or whatever.
Hub. Yeah yeah yeah.
Yeah. So
anyway, it sits in the corner of our
kitchen.
I don't need it to swivel. It doesn't ever
need to move.
You know what I've never done with it?
Tried to look up a recipe. You know,
the only place I've ever looked up a
recipe?
My iPhone. Like it's it's like it's this
is this
Yeah.
the way they are conceiving of this device
is make it only makes sense.
Okay, this is who this device is for.
Yes. Me.
You have zero?
No, it's not. It's definitely not for you.
I will I will get to that. Okay,
It's
continue.
definitely not for you. It is for the
person.
And this is kind of like what Apple does,
and I guess you gotta respect them for
that.
It is the person who thinks having a smart
home would be cool,
but I have zero smart home things.
I have no smart home anything in my house.
I'm gonna start with this, and then I'm
gonna buy the LG lock,
LG doorbell, LG camera, whatever.
Because
Most people's home like I understand you
have a bunch of home kit stuff.
I get that. Also, you're living just fine
without this device.
Like you don't need this thing.
And but if you like in my house,
this would be super useless. The Google
thing I already have is infinity more
useful
because everything already just works with
it.
Why would I replace it with this home view
where most of the things that
I have already will not work?
Okay, well here is my defense of the home
view.
Because I d number one, I do think you
have to
be completely steeped in Apple home for
this to be of value.
And there's just to be clear, there's like
75 of you,
and you all have YouTube channels.
Like no no no, and I don't even mean that
to be condescending.
I know. Yeah.
I just I listen, this
is not me trying to be negative,
and it's certainly not negative toward
you.
I I just
No, no, I know, I know. It's not the norm.
want to set the bar like where it actually
is for what you're saying right now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Most people have a ring doorbell,
and that's the only smart home thing they
have.
And this is why this launched alongside
the it entire Apple Home collection
of devices, because I think Apple knows
this the value of this thing
is greatly decreased if you don't have a
video doorbell that works with this thing.
Like if you don't see when someone rings
the doorbell,
if you don't see that video on the home
view,
it's going to be a much less compelling
device.
Now, for me.
I am knee deep. I am shoulders deep.
No, you are not knee deep, Steven.
I am top of the I am drowning.
It's right here. It's right above your
ears.
I
am drowning in Apple Home products.
Like I have made a video every year doing
a smart home tour.
I'm now over 150. Now that there's home
view,
I'll be over 200 because I'll have 50 of
them.
No. But I like it's clear that the value
has to come from you are in
the Apple Home ecosystem. Now.
Just a few bullets I want to put up here
because like why would you use
a home view instead of an iPad on the wall
or in the kitchen or a home pod?
We have had a home pod mini in our kitchen
for h however long.
There's just always been a home pod mini
there.
Number one, yes, it plays music,
albeit poorly. My daughter had to shout at
it four times yesterday to get
it to play the right song. So not smart.
B, there's no screen. And like you're
saying,
your Google thing has a screen,
maybe you don't use it. But I have a
couple use cases there.
well, I'll get to. And just the for like
why not an iPad?
You know, a lot of people say like,
you know, you can get an iPad for almost
the same price.
3D printed on the wall or whatever.
It's more flexible. I think an iPad is a
less useful device for the kitchen.
We'll just say there. Like for the kitchen
for the home.
Because things like
when someone rings your video doorbell,
if it's an Apple home, like you don't get
a live preview on the iPad.
If the iPad is unlocked and awake and you
have the home app open,
maybe, but that's a very like you can't
automatically launch the video doorbell
view
on an iPad. You can't have a recipe on
your phone and then you can airplay
it or ~ airdrop it to the iPad,
but it's not gonna be formatted super
great.
Maybe you want to go into reader mode.
So I do think like having some of these
bespoke use cases
will be beneficial. And the live video of
the doorbell,
I have an Accara thermostat in my family
room that shows me an image
of the video doorbell. Because I have both
the Accara video doorbell
and the Acar thermostat. And that is a
genuinely useful feature because
in this family room, I can't see the front
door or any windows leading out to there.
And so being able to have that video up is
helpful.
And like the few times where we've been
recording this podcast
And there might be a FedEx truck delivery
that I have to sign for.
I will turn on my Apple TV and have the
video doorbell camera open
and live on like my multi-view over here,
just so I can keep an eye on the doorbell.
And this home view would is actually a
better device for that,
specifically. And second, I mean I think
recipes specifically on this device where
you can actually tap.
The timers in the steps as you're going,
I think is cool.
Wait, where is this coming from though?
Well, it's either Safari on the device or
you airdrop a s recipe from your phone.
So it's gonna
just reformat any recipe anywhere on the
internet into this?
Yeah. Yes. That is
I don't think so. No way.
that is what it shows in all the videos.
And they no no no, but not just the
marketing
It also shows user switching that's
instantaneous.
I mean
video, but like the creator videos,
they do this demo at they did this at the
house in New York as they were doing this.
Like you have a recipe on some random
website on your phone,
you beam it to the home view, and it
formats like this.
And you can tap ingredients and you can
tap steps.
And the Apple, like in Safari.
If you do like the reader view,
it will do this with recipes right now in
Safari.
So it's already built in. So I'm fairly
sure that feature will legitimately
be on the home view. And the another one
is timers.
Now you can set a timer on a home pod
mini,
you can set it on any device that you
have,
any Apple device. Sure. I cannot tell you
how many times a day I hear shouted
to our HomePod Mini how much time is left
on the timer.
Everyone asked the same question several
times a day.
And I do think having a visual of the
timer that you can just glance over
and see it on a nice seven-inch screen can
be useful rather than having
to continually ask it. Also,
pinging your phone. Like in the marketing
video and else like this plugs into
the findline network. And we'll get to the
multiple user aspect of this in a moment.
But the fact that my wife could shout to
it,
where's my phone?
Which yes, she does it from her watch,
usually, but sometimes she's also carrying
three smoothie cups and her purse
to the car and she doesn't know where her
phone is.
So to be able to be shout out to the room,
where's my phone? And that works with air
tags as well.
So you can ask her where's my keys?
And that it works with multiple users.
If it works if it works well, and that's a
big if and we have to test it,
I think that could be useful.
How in the world is that gonna work,
Steven? How does it know whose phone?
She's nowhere near the thing. So
Voice Voice voice recognition.
it unlocks your personal information just
based on voice.
Yes, which home pods have advertised that
it does that today,
albeit not well.
Yeah.
And so that's that's the big caveat is can
it do this reliably?
And that is the other aspect of why not an
iPad in the kitchen,
the multi-user aspect. And now there's a
whole argument there of like Apple should
have done multi-users on iPad forever and
can do it in situations like education.
And so that's frustrating. But I think the
multi-user aspect,
if it's good.
If it's good.
Steven.
I think it could be beneficial.
Yes. You there, Jason. Go ahead.
Hold on, okay. My
rebuttal. Your Honna.
Yana Yana.
Hold on. Okay. You haven't mentioned a
single thing though that's
not better just doing it on your phone.
In fact, the recipe thing has to start
from your phone.
In the video it didn't. The guy just like
pulled up a text message and
It doesn't have to start from it doesn't
have to start from your phone.
it had a recei you said
beam it from your phone.
You can do that or open safari on the home
view and find a recipe.
Why wouldn't you just use your phone for
that?
Well, first of all, I've cooked waffles
and such and I had the recipe
on my phone and and it
You don't need a recipe for waffles,
Steven.
is a pain in the butt it there were almond
flour waffles,
Okay.
okay? So there's a little more ingredients
than regular waffles.
Like trying to prop up your phone and also
like are you going to go
to settings and make sure the screen never
turns off every time you do a recipe?
Because my screen's set to turn off in 30
seconds.
And if you're trying to do a recipe,
that's a pain in the butt. So to have a
display that will stay on and that recipe
is large and I don't have to figure out
where to prop up my phone.
And I don't have to think about flour
getting on my iPhone or whatever
or sticky egg stuff. I would want I want
that.
I want that device.
For three hundred dollars though?
Plus, again, if you're not steeped up to
your eyeballs in Apple Home,
Mm-hmm.
I get that this product is not as
compelling.
Yeah, if
you have a ring doorbell, you should not
buy this.
Because the other compelling argument is
you can look at your doorbell and right,
you can view that camera.
Right.
Which is so now the cost of the home view
also has to include a doorbell.
And honestly, and we will
get to the Apple Home Collection.
Those up devices are very expensive.
Yes
Like
way more and honestly, I'm going to get
them.
I'm gonna take one for all the teams.
I'm gonna get every Apple Home Collection
device.
If Steven
buys them and when doesn't want them and
sends them to me,
I will also review them. Just to be clear.
~ But but
the video doorbell I believe is three
hundred dollars.
And that is too expensive because
Yeah, I mean
Amazon will just drop a ring doorbell on
your doorstep for you
to install if you just like open the
website.
They will give you
Yeah, I'm sorry, it's
one.
it is two hundred and fifty dollars,
but we'll get and we'll get to this in a
second.
I don't know if I'm crazy about the look
of this.
But like you know, there's only one
design.
It looks very much like the old school
eyesight camera.
But you can get the ACARA video doorbell,
which is the one I have for ninety-nine
dollars right now.
And you know that that experience will be
good with this device you're saying.
N yeah.
The video doorbell? Yeah,
absolutely. Because it's rock solid on my
Apple TV.
Like if there's an Apple TV on and someone
rings the video doorbell,
a hundred percent of the time the video
preview comes up and if
it recognizes the face, it tells me who's
there.
So in so in your briefings or whatever
experience you've had so far exploring
this,
they've confirmed that if somebody rings
your doorbell,
it will instantly start streaming that
video on the device?
'Cause that
Yes.
was not clear from anything I could find.
It is that is exactly what happened and
there's multiple clips from different
creator videos showing that exactly.
Now obvious in the, you know, demo at this
New York place or whatever,
it's you know, canned, you know,
it's a demo.
Yeah, but so my question is so there are
six users plus there's also just
a generic not a user user that does that?
Like that it's very confusing how all that
works.
Correct. But
it's like but it's like Apple TV.
Like no matter what profile you're in in
the Apple TV,
if someone rings my doorbell, I see it on
the Apple TV,
no matter what. And so there are some
devices that you will just get.
And and this is the part that I have to
get it in hand.
Like can can I d have settings where
whenever a person is detected
on a camera besides the video doorbell,
can I have that camera pop up
automatically?
But
In all in a lot of the videos,
it does show just multiple camera views
live.
And the only other place you can do that,
the home app, it's not great at it.
Like I'll be honest. Like if you want it
to have multiple camera feeds viewed
simultaneously, the home app, even on your
iPad,
doesn't do that well. The best place is
maybe your Apple TV-ish,
but then you have to have an Apple TV on
and you have to have a TV where
you want it in order to see all these
cameras.
Where on the home view, you can have these
live camera views.
And then someone rings the doorbell,
it shows up. So I feel like that
beneficial.
And also, this little controller right
here,
when it comes to why not just an iPad,
hey, I don't want to think about charging
an iPad or having it plugged in nine,
you know, 100% of the time. But also
having home controls that are large like
this,
which would be accessible to any user,
not just the six profiles you attach to
it.
This can be any guest that walks up.
It is a very clear, I can adjust the
temperature,
I can open a door, I can unlock a door,
or I could turn on or off a light.
Like these are the obvious no-brainer
controls for the smart home that I've
wanted
for a long time. Like I have probably
twelve of these home kit buttons around
the house trying to do what the home view
is doing.
Like I have like these little air versa
things.
But the problem is all these little home
kit buttons,
unless you're gonna like use a label maker
and label every single button that every
little thing does.
normal people, like including my own
family,
like they don't know what this button
does.
And so to have a device on the wall or on
the desk where it says,
open the garage, turn like run this scene,
having it that obvious and accessible,
I think can be a a plus.
So can you choose what's on that screen?
Yeah, it again
there's there's been some unclear but you
can customize your home screens
and then whatever the lock screens they
call it,
like so you can have a modular face on the
home view and then you
can choose what devices are on it.
Okay. This is my ultimate objection to
this vice,
Steven. I'm gonna just cut to the chase.
Okay, yeah, go ahead.
I'm making some good points. You gotta
give me at least some points.
I'm making some some good points.
I don't th I don't think this is okay,
let me make let me let me give you this.
Okay, correct, okay, okay.
The the mental model for the home view,
the reason I don't think it works is
Apple's home underlying
principle is that the user shouldn't think
about it.
Okay, you don't know I know that all the
accessories that I have in
my house that that will interact with the
Google system.
And listen, I'm not like a Google stand
here.
I'm just saying that was the one that
worked.
Yeah, yeah, that was all you have,
I also have
yeah.
some Echoes, we also have home pods,
like Apple TVs everywhere, whatever.
But when it comes to the things that we
wanted to do,
which is we have some cameras,
we have light switches, we also have
switches for like the ~ Christmas tree.
Anyway, so
The mental model is that Home Hub Max is
the place where everything is happening.
Okay. It is the device and it used a
controller in S thermostat until they
deprecated that. So, right, which is
stupid.
Right, right.
They were
like, Yeah, we know it still has a Wi-Fi
sensor in it,
but we're just not gonna make it work
anymore.
That's wild. Wild.
It's like that's insane. Anyway,
so yeah, I'm still salty about that.
But it's very clear that that's what's
happening.
I just described the problem I had with my
level lock,
right, not that long ago, where
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I swapped out of home.
Or Apple TV and it stopped working until I
went in and did a bunch of stuff.
The average person who I think this is
designed for,
which is the person who's just not going
to think about it,
this device is fine. It just won't work
with anything they might already have.
So now they have to be committed enough to
buy a bunch of $300 devices or whatever.
And so some and but someone like you who
has the Apple ecosystem,
this device is not meant for you.
And here's what I mean by that.
So I walk up to this device and it shows
some configuration of buttons or whatever.
I I guess that's
Yeah yeah.
true. But it also wants to show me my
personal information.
So like how do I
Right.
get from one to the other? Do I swipe up
on this device?
Do I start talking to this device?
Do I do like it's
Yeah, I understand.
it is a it is trying to do a couple of
things and it is trying to make
it like transparent. Do I go to the home
view when my level lock stops working
to try to troubleshoot that? Like no,
like really, like this
No you don't. I know,
I know.
This
is the part that I don't think makes sense
because it is meant for someone
to not be thinking about it. But Home Kit
is it's relatively reliable.
Like I love the fact that on my desktop I
have a wage that's just turn
off the lights in here. But the reason
they work is because they're Lutron.
Right. Right. Right right,
And I literally installed switches.
right. Yeah.
And so I guess
my thing is this device is actually not
meant for you.
Hear me out. It is not meant for you.
But it is actually probably most useful
for you.
And I think that is the problem.
I think it will be useful for my family
also.
Okay, let me rephrase that. It is most
useful some it is not designed
for someone who has a U in it,
in a household that has a U in it,
right? It is meant to be the entry
Okay.
point to the home ecosystem because what
Apple realizes is that the Apple
TV is not the entry point to the home
ecosystem and neither is the home pod,
and it thought both of those were going to
be it.
But what what is awkward to your point is
like this is the home view,
but you cannot manage any home stuff in
it.
Like you c but that is why you have to
have an Apple
Yes. You have to have an iPhone.
It has to be connected to an iPhone.
and that but that is why Apple released
the entire Apple Home collection
and for the first time partnered with ADT
to help you install this stuff.
Now, that is also a very niche crowd who
will pay hundreds of dollars
for the hardware.
And then presumably hundreds of dollars
for installation.
And also, like, I understand you got to
partner with somebody,
but my goodness, if ADT comes to install
your wall-mounted home view,
you 100% know you are going to get
upselled on an ADT security system.
And that kind of sucks. And I don't
Yeah.
know if Apple can be like ADT.
You can't sell anybody in security.
Like, I don't think they can tell them
that.
So
But no one is paying for ADT home security
systems
that's gonna stink.
anymore. If you get a home view,
you don't care about that. Like that's
it's contradictory unless
And so I I think this what's that?
you want an alarm on your front door.
But do you know what's better than an
alarm on your front door?
A sticker that says you have an alarm on
your front door?
Just a sign.
Absolutely. Yeah,
I have beware of dog. Beware of dog.
yes. And then they're both in cages,
And you all you have is a snake.
That's what I have. I have a snake and a
rabbit,
but I put a beware of dog side.
Yeah, yeah. They're both in cages.
it doesn't matter.
So I think the it is a the common s like
people who are
not already in the smart home world,
I do agree that this is going to be a
tough sell.
Because if you if you don't already like
if if you bought a house and
you have a ring camera and no other smart
home devices,
this is gonna be a poor experience because
your ring camera's not gonna show
up and you're not gonna be able to control
any smart home stuff and you're gonna
be like, I just have a big timer and maybe
a way to view recipes.
And so I understand like that will be
complicated.
But for the smart home nerds like me and
all the YouTubers,
I think their family will appreciate a
device like this.
Because no one in my house has ever run a
smart home scene.
They just have not. Because they don't
know what words to say.
They don't know they I don't know if
they've ever opened the home app.
Like they've never run a a smart home
scene.
But if I have a seven-inch display on the
wall that says movie night,
someone will go up there and tap it.
And the reason why I know if they know how
to use it,
they will use it. Like if they if you
build it,
they will come situation. I have
A like 30 foot skylight c calendar.
I don't know how big that thing is.
It's huge. But they use that all the time
because they have a reason to use it.
And it's very understandable and it has
the calendar on there.
And that is also another question is like
those devices,
the skylight and all the similar,
you know, things that have like in apps
for the iPad that have tried
to hack this kind of home organization,
the home view has to live in that space
too.
And so if someone already has a skylight
that has a clock that shows photos
and videos, like it does all those cool
things,
again, if you don't already have the Apple
home s ecosystem,
it's gonna be a harder sell for that.
So we'll see. But for me, I'm excited
about it.
Yeah, I get it.
Someone needs
But like the Google one we have,
the other nice thing is it'll just play
YouTube videos.
Will the home view play a YouTube video?
Not without your phone.
Okay, so the so this is the ~ I could yes,
Well, let me say one more thing.
I want you to get into that, but th the
yeah, yeah.
other piece of that was gonna be like I'm
trying to decide.
Would I replace that with this?
Would I replace that Google thing?
That Google thing, that's what I'm gonna
call from now on.
Right. But you don't have a video doorbell
in Apple Home.
We don't have a video doorbell,
period, because our doorbell
So yeah.
is perpendicular to our door, so it
doesn't even face out.
No, I mean for real, like that's just the
way it was.
They make angled brackets for the Akara
one.
I'd have to I'd have to No, not doing
that. I would literally have to move where
my doorbell is.
And I guess if I and here's the thing,
if I buy a ring I can just pull the tape
off and stick it there.
Like that's the way ring is designed.
Yeah. Now
I so one other thing. Like I would love to
get one of these for my mom because A,
we could now FaceTime and she doesn't have
to hold her phone.
Like that would actually be a win for
people.
Easily FaceTime, you don't have to hold
your phone.
She has two smart plugs in her house that
she could use.
And I would buy her a smart thermostat and
then she could control it
all from the home view. The one issue,
and this is gonna be a lot of people,
she has a video doorbell. It's an RLO,
but it's a wireless one.
She doesn't have it, she didn't have a
physical doorbell before,
and we haven't run wires to it.
I could hire an installer, I guess,
but like that is a huge lift. And so there
is like one Akara video doorbell that
is battery powered that you could use with
this.
But again, we're back to a very,
very narrow range. Like if you want this
home view to be useful,
you need one of these three video
doorbells,
and that's it. And none of those three are
a ring,
which is what you already have.
And so that that's the tough sell.
Yeah.
Get there.
And I just feel like the biggest problem
this there are two big problems.
One is it does require you to be because
the the the promise is like all
of the home stuff is supposed to just all
work with everything
and we're just nowhere near that.
That's just not the reality, right?
It didn't fix a single thing,
Matter. It fixed everything, you didn't
hear?
Sure.
Steven. And it's like
this device, okay.
Maybe it's a slightly better version of
looking at recipes.
I just that's never been a problem that I
have.
And I do cook, like don't k it's not like
I don't cook,
but I just like
Yeah, yeah.
and I'm I cook a lot. I mean, I worked in
restaurants,
I like whatever. But I've never needed I
gosh,
I w because I could have just grabbed that
Google thing and moved it if I
s if I wanted a device like that.
So that's not a thing that's worth $300 to
me.
Two.
It is maybe good for what you described
for looking at your videos.
I mean you're looking at your doorbell
camera.
But then obviously
Yeah, yeah.
you have to be in that particular space.
Now if you had one on your desk there,
Yeah. Yeah.
great.
But I don't think that's a three hundred
dollar solution.
Sure. And the cooking No,
That's my thing. It just feels like it
doesn't
no, no, I
get it. And the cooking thing,
which I really, really want to use this
for that recipe view,
I I'm not gonna drill a hole in my island.
Right.
And that's the only place it would be
useful for cooking for
Right.
our setup. And so that is another big
hurdle,
like and even I again, back to that
marketing video,
Apple recognized right in the middle of
the island in the kitchen is
the ideal place for this thing.
All you have to do is drill a hole and run
electrical.
It's like
That that's a big ask. I don't know,
Yeah. I don't think so.
I don't know, man. I don't know,
man. ~ but the
last thing and the w I did not realize
we're gonna do forty-five minutes
on the home view, but maybe maybe I did.
I'm sorry. You did know this. This is
I think I I did know this and it's
valid. The one thing, two things,
and then we'll we'll move on to all the
the Apple TV four K,
which is also crazy expensive.
One, I could not get ~ super clear answers
on the multi-user feature with kids.
Because
this does require another Apple device
that's an iPhone or iPad that
has like unlocked and paired basically for
you to have a profile on the home view.
And when like my daughter,
who's 10, it's like I could not get a
clear answer if she could get like
a profile on this thing. And it does not
seem like you need an iPhone to do it.
It seems like if you have an iPad,
that is enough to get a profile on the
home view.
But apparently there is some age gating
for profiles that is unclear right now.
And that is really unfortunate because
this would be great for like a seven year
old who maybe doesn't have an iPad yet,
f of the five seven year olds who doesn't
have an iPad in this country or whatever.
But like to have the little Snoopy face
and be able to play music on it or
whatever,
or like tap the thing. So the age thing is
unclear.
Wait, so she couldn't just walk up and ask
it to play music?
So you I'm sorry. ~ you can use the guest
features,
which is like play music, ask Siri AI,
general questions, but you couldn't have
like your personal context on it,
and you couldn't have like a customized
like lock screen home screen.
Because the home screen and lock screen is
gonna customized per profile.
So when you walk up to it, you can see
something different than when I walk
up to it. And you better believe I'm gonna
be testing how fast that thing switches.
Does it work in the dark? Because it is
not using a face ID,
you know, dot matrix thing. This is just
using the camera.
So if like if it's in the middle of the
night and I walk up to this thing
and it's dark, will it recognize me?
We'll have to test.
Well, and you know what I don't have set
up on the Google device?
It would do, but I don't have it do.
I do not have my calendar on there.
I do not have any of my per 'cause I don't
w I have a phone.
Well I don't need to walk past something
and have it suddenly be like,
here's your calendar for today and
everybody else in the room is like I mean,
it's not like there's anything on my
calendar,
Although I
but like
will say one of my most requested
shortcuts over the years is give
me a morning routine shortcut that tells
me my tasks,
my events, and the weather for today.
Yeah, and the device you're holding in
your hand,
not the one that's on your kitchen
counter.
But people but
people want to ask their home pods that
and they just want their home pod
to talk to them about it. So if if this
thing and this is unclear,
I don't know if it will do this,
if you could ask Siri AI what's on my
schedule for today,
and you get both the audio and visual of
here are your tasks,
here's your events, maybe.
Yeah, and that but again, to be clear,
that's different than broadcasting it.
Like what the Google device does and what
I think that this would do
is like you walk up to it and you're
looking at it and a notification
for a message comes in and it just
displays on that device because
it is unlocked and recognized you.
I don't want that happening on a device.
It's just in the room. Like, what if you
have company over and you're sitting there
waiting and your wife is at the store
picking something up
and she's really frustrated because you
weren't clear about the thing she's
supposed
Ha ha ha ha.
to get and she texts
you and she's like, Answer me,
robot or whate whatever. That's not how my
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
wife it's like
That's weird. I don't like it it that's
different than asking a home pod,
tell me what I have happening today,
because you have said, Give me this
information.
I don't that's so I haven't turned any of
that stuff on the Google device because
it's just that's just weird to me.
I mean,
I'm sure you could turn all like messages
off and calendar off,
but and it would only show it to you if it
unlocked with your face.
So
Right.
you would have to be looking at it for you
to see your messages.
And it even shows in that marketing video
when like the other teenager tried
to see her sister his sister's messages,
it locked. Like it didn't that again,
That quickly, really? I'm just saying the
video has leaves a lot there's
we will test. I know.
a lot there's a
lot of s Apple Intelligence 2024 w WWD C
happening in this video.
Yeah, well we th again the video I think
was not a good step.
So we will get to that. ~ well last thing
on the home view.
This thing does not have an app store,
so you can't download apps to it.
It has built-in apps and I'm gonna link to
Jason Snell Six Colors article.
This is a screenshot from Apple's website,
but it has built in apps like you'll be
able to watch primary tech
on your home view. You'll be able to use
the Apple Podcast app with just
a little inside baseball. I actually got a
message from Apple requesting
new artwork.
I got the same email. Yeah. And I got your
reply.
Did you? yeah, yeah. You were you were CC
on the Yeah,
Yeah, yeah.
yeah. So I already sent it to them.
But they were asking for like a universal
show art so it just you know looks good
on all devices. I that email came out
before the home view event,
and I think it was in relation to this
because this is a new screen size.
Hm. Yeah, 'cause it didn't really make
sense on a phone what they were asking
for.
Correct. Correct.
And so I think it was that. So,
you know, podcasts and the ~ the other
built-in apps that supposedly work right
now are like Apple TV, news, books for
audiobooks.
Those you have to like beam from your
phone.
And in some of the videos, like I'll link
Gen Tui had a short,
but in some of the videos, see look it
just says open like recognition
for the calendar. It shows the Apple TV
app icon on the device,
but no one like was able to open it and
actually play something.
So I'm unsure how that works. You might
have to like airplay it.
But the feature of car play and this
was a direct ~ this was a clear answer is
that if there's a CarPlay
app with audio or video entitlements,
like Spotify, Overcast
Overcast.
Prime example, you'll be able to use the
Overcast app from your phone
on the home view. But it's not like you
you won't see an overcast icon.
Well maybe you will. That's that's what's
unclear.
Maybe you'll see an overcast icon.
But why would you do that?
I ~ in the video and like a lot of the
creators is like there's a
lot of like beaming from your phone,
like you just tap your phone to this thing
and it sends something.
So I don't know if on
But why would you do that is what I'm
saying.
YouTube. You have a video on your phone,
you walk into the kitchen, you wanna put
it on this thing and put your phone away.
You could do that, maybe. But YouTube
doesn't have the car the a CarPlay app
yet,
so I don't know if it works with YouTube.
And right now it doesn't seem like it
would.
Or if you are again like the recipe thing,
you beam to it. Overcast. You walk in from
You got home from work, you're listening
to a podcast and overcast,
you tap your phone to the home view,
and now it's playing on the home view.
If anyone starts playing podcasts on a
speaker in my house that's not an AirPod,
they are going to move out.
That is just for
that's just maybe but again, if I have one
here in my studio,
I don't know, we'll see. I I
Yeah. I I
guess again, I'm not suggesting that
people couldn't manufacture ways
to use this thing, but none of those feel
like things that I I well,
I should be clear. Yes, I know that people
just listen to podcasts from their phone
without AirPods. I just
Yeah, yeah. Sure.
think it's a crime and I don't think that
you should do that.
Music is different, that's fine,
Sure. Sure.
but
and again, maybe the speaker I I'll give
Apple okay,
the one thing I will give Apple the
benefit of the doubt on is I'm sure it's
an amazing speaker.
Chris Welch said it sounded pretty good
and it got louder than he expected,
but he said it was like in between a home
pod mini and a big home pod.
That's exactly what I would have expected
and I would say that that's probably
Yeah.
a win.
That's probably a win, because right now
my family's playing music out
of the home pod mini in the kitchen.
Yeah, i if it's if it's as good or better
than a home pod mini,
So that will be an improvement.
Yeah. Yeah,
I think that that's acceptable.
I'll give them that. Sorry.
exactly. Yeah. All right, we still we
still have to
talk. No, it's good. We still have to talk
about Apple TV,
which is now $300.
Home pod mini, the Apple Home Collection,
we'll we'll have to do everything is a
lightning round after this.
Yeah, but we do have
Everything is everything.
to get and can't be mean to anthropic,
'cause we have to talk about that.
But we'll get to it.
We have to talk about it. We'll get to all
that. So before we do, we have to thank
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All right. We're gonna have to do a
lightning round for all the things.
Apple TV 4K, we finally got a fourth gen
version.
It is $300. It's too it's too expensive.
It's too expensive.
Yeah, I mean it's bananas. Also,
It's button.
I know why they did this, but
Why do they do this, Jason?
your Apple T V should not be listening for
you to talk to Siri.
Okay, so the big feature is it has a
built-in long-range microphone.
Far field microphone,
Far field microphones, yes.
thank you. So you can yeah, shout,
hey dingus to your Apple TV. Now,
a couple things because during the
announcements and press releases,
it seemed like Siri AI was only coming to
the new one,
and maybe the new remote with a speaker
was only the new one.
Second and third gen Apple TV 4Ks.
So if you bought an Apple TV in the last
four years.
You're getting Siri AI in TV OS twenty
seven dot two.
So Siri AI is even coming to the older
Apple TVs.
And if you want a remote, which we have
you have been setting f since
we started this podcast, you you opened
our very first episode by saying Apple
TV remote should have a speaker.
I'm pretty sure that's accurate.
So that you could find it.
So you can find it. Well now it finally
does.
And it has precision find my, which I've
been asking for for years.
Yes, it comes with the new Apple TV 4K for
$300,
or you could just buy the remote for 60
bucks.
And that is a thing. And it works.
Okay, I am going to buy three of those.
Yes. Yeah, you could buy those.
I'm sold.
I don't have to have a weird AirTag case
on my Apple TV remote anymore.
And it's compatible all the way back to
the Apple TV HD.
So you do not need to buy a brand new
Apple TV for the new remote.
And
People are disappointed at the updates to
Apple TV because one,
it has HDMI 2.1, which is new,
but it has no 4K 120 for gaming or for
just higher frame rates.
And there's no pass-through audio.
So Apple TV right now and this new model
seems to decode audio internally rather
than passing the raw bit rates,
bit streams to like your receiver for
Dolby Atmos and all that.
And that decoding
Home theater nerds don't like that.
They just like just pass the raw audio so
it can play through my home theater.
And it does not have that feature.
Now, ~ Caleb, I forget his last name.
he was at I forget where it was at but he
had a video,
I'll link it down in the show notes.
And he talked about this is something
Apple could add in software.
And this has happened in the past where
Apple released an Apple TV
and then shipped an update that enabled
one of these home theater features.
So that pass through audio could be
coming,
but it's not advertised and Apple has not
said it's coming.
So yes.
Steven,
I think I would like to start a
conspiracy.
Well, don't look, but guess.
~ let's do it. Okay,
I'm not gonna look. Okay.
What processor is in the Apple TV 4K
second gen?
Apple T V four K second gen. I think I
actually looked all this up yesterday
and I have it in the notes to talk about.
Isn't it the A thirteen bionic?
What is it? A tw Okay.
Nope. A twelve Bionic. So explain
something to me,
Okay, yes. Yeah
Steven.
I yes, yes. I'm excited for this,
yes.
Why doesn't the base iPad get Apple
Intelligence?
Why doesn't my Apple
Okay, okay.
my my iPad mini get Apple Intelligence?
Why doesn't
Here's
the iPhone 14 Pro get Apple Intelligence?
Listen,
this I'm so glad you said that.
It was a perfect segue because I I had
this,
Why? I don't understand.
I had
this moment yesterday. I had this moment
yesterday.
So the HomePod Mini 2 was also announced.
$150. It's getting Siri AI in the future.
In the future. Some point in the future.
Future update. But what's interesting is
the HomePod 2,
the big home pod, it is unclear whether
it's getting Siri AI.
But the Apple TV second and third gen 4K
is getting Siri AI.
Now just just just bear with me for a
second here,
okay? We're going on a
We're going on a trip.
little trip, okay? The S the Home
Pod 2 is powered by the S7 chip.
That was the newer second generation big
home pod.
It is ~ based on the S7 chip, and the S7
is actually based
on the A13 Bionic. And that chip.
The A13 and the A12, like you're saying,
the A12 gets Siri AI in that old Apple TV.
Apple TV 4K second gen is getting Siri AI
in TV OS 27.2 and it has the A12.
Okay? The A12 Bionic can apparently do
Siri AI.
But it is unclear whether the HomePod 2,
which has a newer generation chip,
whether or not that's going to get Siri
AI.
And like you said, all those iPads.
Including like the brand new base model
iPad,
which still
Which yeah.
does not have Siri AI, like all of them
should be able to run Siri AI.
Now, here's to add to this conspiracy in
order to use Siri
AI on the Apple TVs, including the second
and third gen 4K,
you have to have an iPhone with Apple
Intelligence
on it. Which doesn't make any sense
unless.
And this has not been said by Apple
anywhere.
I wonder if processing for Siri AI is
happening
on another device and they are just
shipping the answers to the Apple TV.
I don't know if that's true, but in the
footnote of
the Apple TV announcement page,
that's what it talks about. And I'm going
to try and get down to the footnote,
but it says it requires an iPhone.
Such and such and newer. Okay,
here it is. It says Access to Siri AI is
also available on
the Apple TV 4K second generation and
later.
And it says Siri AI is available in beta
27.2 and requires the owner of
the home in the home app to have an Apple
intelligence enabled iPhone
or iPad running the latest software
version and have Siri AI turned on and
set to a supported language.
Like why? Because you can set up an Apple
TV without an iPhone.
Yeah. You don't have to even own an
iPhone,
anyone in your house, and you can use an
Apple T V.
There are one thousand conference rooms
across the US that has an Apple
Yes. Literally
TV that was just set up by itself without
an iPhone.
every conference room in America has an
Apple TV.
But
it seems like if you didn't like if that
Apple TV in the conference room
is not connected to an iCloud account
where the owner of the home has Siri AI,
will you be able to use Siri AI on that
conference room TV?
Also
if the conference room table is plugged in
and the owner of the home is in Barbados,
will it work?
That, bad, yeah, like is it that's
what I'm saying. And so I it is unclear is
it like the going Siri AI being
on that old Apple TV, the A twelve Bionic,
is it is it running on the device?
Is it running on your iPhone? Is it
running on the Apple TV?
Is it running on your iPhone or iPad?
And if the owner is not home, can you use
Siri AI?
Uncle.
Well, and the answer
to that is I can use Siri AI on my Ultra
Two,
but obviously it's doing it on my phone.
Sometimes if you ask your Apple watch a
no,
Okay, if I ask it to start a timer,
yes, it does it by itself.
no, no, if you ask it a
general knowledge question, the Siri AI on
your watch may just reach
out to the internet and give you that
answer.
On my Ultra Two?
Well, I don't know about the ultra two.
That's
what I'm saying. I can use Siri AI on my
Ultra 2,
I see, I see, I see, I see, I see,
but really it just means that it has a
Bluetooth connection to my phone,
I see. Those big air quotes. Right.
which by the way it
also had yesterday and the day before they
released all this.
Like so it that's
Right. Yeah.
another thing where I do kind of feel like
Apple is being intentionally obtuse about
what's actually happening so that they can
say we've brought this to more products.
Because the obvious question is if the if
a device with the A twelve bionic
can run Apple intelligence or
Yes.
Siri intelligence or whatever the heck
we're calling it right now.
Why on earth can't my can't an iPhone
fourteen Pro run?
Yeah. And that is sticky. That is weird.
And it's it's awkward. Because and a lot
of people on social media,
when they saw the three hundred dollar
price tag on the Apple TV,
it's like, well, my current Apple TV four
K is gonna get Siri AI and I
can just get a new remote for sixty bucks.
Why am I upgrading? And I think that's a
valid question.
I don't know.
Well, yeah, I mean, the only the only
scenario where it makes sense makes no
sense,
which
Ha ha.
is that the new one has a hundred and
twenty eight gigs of storage,
which is clearly because that's just
what's on the system on a chip
for the A nineteen or whatever the heck it
is.
Right. Right, right.
Which by the way, the Apple T V gets a
better processor than the home view,
just for whatever that's worth.
I know yes, yes, that is true.
Not really that big of a deal.
Right.
That's why they're
the same exact price, which is kind of
mind blowing.
I know you want to say something about
that,
Yeah. No, no, no. I mean that is just
but ~ let me just
awkward.
But I'm sure that it's because the A also
the Apple T V has a better processor than
the MacBook Neo. Just to be clear.
Okay. Sure.
But also you still
can't do anything useful besides stream
video and watch your camera.
I don't know.
It's it it's is it that the Apple thinks
that this is like a place where you're
gonna play video games? Well, 120 frames
would have been a better option there,
right? Like in 128
Yeah.
gigs of storage is fine, but it doesn't it
has an A nineteen and
it doesn't have like the GPU processing
you need for I don't know,
whatever.
For
how long we had to wait for a new Apple T
V four K,
it's a little disappointing. I'll be real.
It should have
a it should have an five Max in it.
It should I mean,
they probably have fours. Like Tim Cook is
still finding fours in his shoes
in the morning.
He could put an three
pro they could put an three pro in this
thing.
Just put some GPU cores
Just sh shove it in there. Just do it.
Yeah.
in this thing.
Anyway, so that's it's been a little
unfortunate.
And the there's also one other feature I
wanted to point out.
Apple's advertising that you can use a
pair of home pod mini twos as your
Mac audio speakers. And this is different
than AirPlay.
Because with AirPlay, you can play music,
you can play podcasts, but you don't get
like system sounds.
Like if you get a notification,
the notification sound doesn't ding
because the home pods aren't set
as like the audio output.
For your Mac. It is just airplane.
But this is actual set home pods as your
audio output.
This is the Home Pod Mini 2. And
apparently,
the large Home Pod 2, which I've had a
pair sitting on my desk here since they
came
out, whatever, 13 years ago. I will be
able to use these as my Mac speakers.
But the one requirement is Wi Fi 6E.
Something about Wi Fi 6E is enabling this
lower latency connection.
So it can act as your computer speakers
and not be super janky,
I guess. I'm gonna link this Apple Insider
article listing what computers this works
with, and but the cutoff is Wi-Fi 6E.
So this requires the big home pod twos,
or which is the 2023 version, or the new
home pod mini two,
and a Mac with Wi-Fi 6E and newer.
I mean honestly that is the best thing
they announced.
Is that it is. I mean, I'm no,
~ Honestly, I will finally be able to use
them.
Like it's pretty good.
I'm being completely serious that that is
I mean,
it's
i buying a pair of home pod mini twos to
do that is three hundred bucks,
which is what you would spend for a
mediocre pair of like,
you know, whatever K whatever the K twos
or whatever anyway.
Yeah, yeah, the kef. Kef whatever it's.
So like but whatever, like so that's fine.
Yeah.
Like that's a good s that's a reasonable
solution.
If you have a studio display, personally
I don't think that the speakers in the new
the the I don't think that
the home pod mini speaker which has not
No.
changed, if I understand. It's the same
speaker.
I all the creators said they get better
sound,
but I don't know if that's something that
Apple told them to say.
Like I don't know if that was like part of
the briefing or if it actually
I don't know if the speakers have changed.
Did they have original home pod minis
there to compare?
Well no.
'Cause I don't understand
how any of these people could possibly
have told you that they sound better.
That is they just Apple has said they
sound better,
In the perfectly
but I don't think
acoustically treated townhouse in
Manhattan,
they sounded better. Okay. But it but just
Yes, exactly.
whatever. I don't buy that. I would argue
for what most people are doing
on their computer, the studio display
speakers are probably close enough
to on par with the home pod minis that
it's that again,
three hundred bucks. I don't know.
But I will say that is the best feature
they introduce because
it is always confusing to me, Steven,
if I start playing something in Apple
Music and I'm like,
Right, right, right.
where
do I control the volume?
Yeah. One
Do I do it in Apple
Music? Do I do it up here in the central
control?
And if you're doing it in Spotify,
it's even worse. Because if I hit the
volume control on my computer keyboard,
Yeah, it doesn't.
nothing happens in Spotify.
When I've had a pair of the large home
pods sitting on my desk and have used them
maybe a handful of time since I got
because if I try to use it with Final Cut,
it's so janky because
Yeah.
it will send the audio from Final Cut,
but when I press the spacebar to press
play,
I have to wait three seconds. It connects,
and then the audio plays and it's like
delayed.
Yeah. Yeah.
So
I will see if that actually fixes it.
I wish the home pods just had a line in.
They should have just released a home pot.
This would have been
This would have changed the entire tenor
of the announcement.
It said home pod three, big home pod,
maybe better speakers, faster processor,
line in. If it had a line in port,
everybody would have loved it.
That's all I'm saying. I would have used.
Okay. Wow. Well, go ahead.
Nope, that's it. I just that was the best
thing they announced.
The Apple Home Collection, we will these
aren't coming till December,
maybe January. It was unclear.
It's like they'll be available at.
December,
maybe to order but not deliver in January
until January.
I'm curious to try all these. ~ all the
rumored images that PDFU
and Mark German talked about, like that is
the things that they announced.
this is LG and Schneider. I think the
thermostats look pretty good.
The smart lock, mm, I don't know.
You know, the camera's very eyesight
coded,
the especially the indoor one.
But the biggest selling feature on these
devices is you don't need
a third-party app to use them.
And that for someone who has set up a lot
of smart home accessories,
that is a huge win. Because even all the
Accara stuff,
which I love, if you like with the video
doorbell,
if you buy the Accara video doorbell and
you set it up,
you can set it up in the home app and
never touch the Accara app.
You don't even have to have it downloaded
and you can set it up.
But if you want to turn off the feature
where when someone rings the doorbell,
it literally calls your phone from the app
like it's a video call.
You have to download the Accara app to
turn that feature off.
And there's weird things like when I
install an Accara smart lock,
like the ultra wideband U400 version,
if you want it to stop talking to you when
you unlock the door,
you have to go to the Accara app to change
that one setting.
And so the fact that these devices in the
Apple Home Collection
do not require another account created.
Again, this goes to hopefully more people
will use these things and that makes home
view more useful. That's probably Apple's
thinking.
I am thankful for that setup, but all
these devices are very expensive.
I think their design is to be determined.
We'll have to try it. The floodlight,
the outdoor floodlight is $400,
Jason. $400. The E the Eve outdoor camera
floodlight,
which I have, is half that price on Amazon
right now.
So these have to they better be amazing.
But we'll see. We'll see.
We'll see. They look fine.
I mean they they look all right,
but and here
is the one thing that I wish I could be
more excited about this.
I don't like the way the lock looks at
all,
by the way. But that's neither here nor
there.
I don't like that either yet.
But here's the one thing that I wish I
could be really excited about,
which is that like we have I think I even
was texting you about this because
I was trying this is a long time ago about
like which one I should buy.
~ but when we bought some floodlights,
I wanted to buy floodlight bulbs for our
front porch.
I had to replace them anyway. Like,
what if I buy some smart ones?
I don't remember what they are now.
Because they don't work anymore in home
kit.
Like they just stopped working at one
point.
And I don't have
Yeah.
the tenacity to care because they still
work if I flip the switch.
But it was really nice that
Yeah, they work with the switch.
Yeah.
I could that I had like an automation
that's turned them on.
And the beautiful thing about HomeKit is I
could like turn them
on three hours before sunset and leave
them on until one and it's till
it changes every day, like or roughly it
Right.
adjusts. But then they just stop working.
Yeah.
Because
who knows if it's because like I have to
update the app on my phone,
but why does that matter if it's running
through HomeKit?
And it's like, well, you got a new phone
and then I swapped out an Apple
T V and suddenly my lights don't work.
Nobody wants
Yeah.
to deal with that.
Outdoor stuff is kind of a pain because
one,
everybody's Wi-Fi network is gonna be not
great outside.
But like my Eve outdoor camera,
it is spotty connection because it is
really far away from the house.
And so though it's like right on the edge
of the Wi-Fi connectivity.
So that is to Apple's credit, this new
Apple Home collection,
like the outdoor floodlight camera,
it has thread.
So hopefully that thread connectivity
helps with the distance.
If you have an outdoor camera that's far
away.
And like with your lights, again,
I I really avoid smart bulbs at all costs
because they I feel like they
do what happen you. They just stop working
eventually.
~ but my Eve outdoor camera, who have that
I've had up for four years,
is solid. And my car cameras that are like
plugged in,
they're great. So hopefully the fact that
it has thread and Wi-Fi
2.4 and 5 gigahigahertz spectrum.
Hopefully that's good. But again,
$400, this thing better be amazing.
It does have color night view,
which is cool. But anyway, we'll see.
All right. We have to lightning round it,
but we're probably gonna get held up by
the anthropic.
I don't know, but I wanna hear I wanna
hear it.
I just want to mention iPhone Duo
pre-orders open tomorrow as you listen to
this.
And apparently, ~ if you damage your
iPhone duo,
it might cost you like $1,500 for for
other damage.
like if you
just
completely break it, I guess. So hey,
if you get an iPhone Duo, Apple Care one
family.
It's great, it's a great plan.
And ~ maybe just get Apple Care on this.
But did you pre pre order your iPhone Duo?
paying for one of those things.
I didn't
You didn't pre pre order iPhone Duo?
pre-pre-order. I'm not gonna pre-order.
I'm not gonna order one. Steven.
No? Okay. I pre pre
ordered and I will be pre ordering.
And it's gonna be a bloodbath,
I think, with the supply constraints,
so we'll see.
There's
no well I mean, I would love to review it.
Apple friends, I would love to to to to
look take a look at one of these things.
~ but I don't I don't I'm I have a I don't
know.
I would use it on a plane, however.
We'll see. We'll see. Wow.
Not Vision Pro, but you'll use iPhone Duo
on a plane.
I would use an iPhone too.
I'm sure
you would. All right. Last week,
Anthropic said, Hey, you can't talk mean
to Claude anymore.
It's just it's against our policy.
So this is their 2026 usage policy update.
And a little farther down it said
addressing abusive behavior toward our
models.
And said we've added a prohibition on
sustained and needless
Abusive
or cruel behavior toward our models.
It does not apply to common versions of
user frustration,
pushback, dark creative themes,
or model testing and research.
So, like, are certain expletives okay,
but others not? If you like, I don't know.
This was very strange. One, it
anthropomorphized anthropomorphizes Claude
a little too much, I think. I don't know.
You had you had a whole
Just one. That's
it. That's the thing. That's the problem.
Just to be clear. Okay.
Okay. You wrote an article about it,
you tell me about it.
Let's be clear. This, by the way,
is the first time I've had to turn off
replies on a threads post because
it got ex absolutely crazy out there.
So
Really?
can we just be clear? The two things can
be true at the same time,
which is one,
Yes, yes.
you should not be in a whole period.
Whether it's to a robot or to a person or
to anything.
Listen, I like and
You should
subscribe to that. Two thumbs.
You should just not
that as a general rule, the way you live
your life,
no one should think, gosh, that guy is a
real whatever,
okay? That's just I feel like you should
not be,
quote, cruel to garbage cans,
to dogs, to children, to your coworkers,
Period. Don't be crazy.
to your spouse,
like whatever. But here's the problem.
Cruelty is the infliction of pain or
suffering on something.
Now, animals can experience cruelty
because they can feel pain
and they can absolutely suffer.
Flies, I don't really care, but you could
be cruel to a fly by plucking
its wings off when you're a child,
Sure.
right? You shouldn't do that. I just don't
think you should do those things.
Computers, not capable of pain or
suffering.
But the number so the first thing is you
should just not be a jerk.
Or whatever, or intend to inflict cruelty
on anything.
That's
Yes.
just a common rule we should all live by.
Nothing I'm about
Yes. Don't be cruel.
to say is an endorsement of cruelty.
I just want to be super clear about that.
Yeah, I think so I think it's clear,
Okay.
yes.
~ robots can't experience cruelty.
Claude cannot experience pain or
suffering.
And the number of people out there in the
world that are like,
you cannot definitively say that,
you just don't know. Yeah, I know.
It's software running
Were those
on a computer.
wait, wait, were those the kinds of
replies you were getting?
People try
Over five hundred
no, I got over s eight hundred and sixty
six replies to that post.
I had to t finally turn it off because I'm
like,
This is too much of my life.
But what was the general
pushback? It's like yes it can.
Well,
okay, there was two pieces of pushback.
One is, are you advocating teaching our
children to be cruel?
And I think I've explained no.
I'd like to be very clear, no.
No no No
My general
response to everyone was, I don't disagree
that being a jerk is bad form,
but it has nothing to do with anthropic or
its models.
And then the other one is like,
well, they don't know. What if five years
from now they discover that these things
are more abusive because they experience
pain and suffering in their training
and stuff. I'm like, no, that's not how it
works.
Also, by the way, just as a pro tip for
all of our listeners,
Yes.
if you use Claud or ChatGPT or Grok or any
of those things,
immediately, if you have not already done
this,
go in and turn off the feature that allows
them to use your conversations
for training. Everyone should have that
turned off.
No one should be letting your
conversations be used for training.
You can just turn that off.
Because people are well, maybe they just
don't want you to be cruel
to the models because then it teaches the
models to be cruel.
They should not be using your
conversations for training data.
Everyone should go and turn that off a
hundred percent immediately,
okay? Because those are your private
conversations,
right? You don't need that stuff going
into the model regardless.
But that's not how training works,
right? That's not and yes, I don't think
we want them to but that's
a product problem, not a moral problem.
And the argument Anthropic is making
A lot of people wanted to nitpick.
I don't see them saying that Claude has
feelings.
Well, they use the word cruelty and they
use the word abusive.
And think about it like this: if I take a
baseball bat to my garbage can
and I just beat the whatever out of it,
is that being cruel to the garbage can?
No, because it can't experience
No.
pain and suffering no matter how many
times you kick it.
Now, again, doesn't mean you should do
that.
St if
Right, right, right,
one of my children was doing that.
We would have a conversation and we would
sit down and we would talk about
do you need therapy? Do you need like like
there's a lot of things.
Yeah. You
you as the person might have lost control
and flown off the handle,
but you weren't being cruel to the garbage
can.
You are not being cruel
because it being cruel requires the
ability to experience pain and suffering.
And that's not just so you can be violent,
you can be a bully, you can be all those
things,
like you can be verbally like
condescending towards Claude and that but
that
is not the same thing as being cruel
because it can't experience pain and
suffering.
Right, right, right. Yeah.
But
so my take, the whole reason I wrote that
article was the fact that Anthropic thinks
that you can be
Yeah.
cruel to its models is a way bigger
concern.
Than any of these other things.
And and a lot of people wanted to nitpick
that this particular policy update doesn't
say all those things. That's kind of true.
But if you've read Anthropic's
Constitution for Claude,
a hundred percent they think it has
feelings and they think that
Yeah. Yeah.
it might be conscious. They just don't
really know.
They do believe that it is, they just
aren't quite willing to say it yet.
And I am telling you, I understand I'm not
an AI researcher.
This is not a complicated thing,
Steven. Software is not conscious.
No, it's
it's not.
Just
because it can tell you use words that
describe feelings doesn't mean that
it has feelings. Just because it seems
Right. Yeah.
because they require an input in order to
do anything.
They don't exist
And I think that's
until you type
in a prompt.
this what this is what caused some of the
issues with ChatGPT and young people,
where I think when you
Yeah, AI psychosis.
yeah, when you don't have the
understanding that while it might express
a lot of feelings and might even be really
good at validating
and identifying your human feelings,
that is not the same as it experiencing
feelings itself because it is a computer.
And so and that caused, you know,
tragic events.
Because teenagers listened to Chat GPT at
the time and hurt themselves.
And so yeah, I think it is I maybe d I
don't know if dangerous is as strong a
word,
but it is not a good idea to continue
anthropomorphizing these things.
No, and we do that casually because it's
language.
And language is a thing that we associate
with people,
right? We humans,
Right.
but people as a general term, right?
People.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we think of anything that has
language capabilities in that way
as people or a person, not necessarily as
a human,
but we interact with them accordingly.
And so then it's we make the leap like,
it must also like I joke the
at the beginning I think this was in the
pre-show about how Claude
is annoying to me. I use it for real tough
work,
but I don't like having casual
interactions with it where I might just
ask it questions because I hate the way
that it responds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But
it's also just software. I probably could
go through the effort of giving
it a Claude.md file that says please don't
be annoying and all these kinds
of things and that's whatever,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
that's fine. But I also know that it's not
actually a jerk.
It's just it's easier
Right, right, right.
for me to just ask my question somewhere
else than going through
the rigmarole of trying to condition this
thing accordingly.
I was just
I was just really tempted to make an
analogy of if Claude was a coworker
and I was gonna say, you know,
it's like the really smart coworker that I
would go to to ask for help
but I would not invite to the baseball
game on Saturday.
Like I know we had this conversation.
W we have this conversation though.
Claude is the
friend who is so much smarter than you and
as a result can be really helpful,
but insists on making sure you know they
are so much smarter than you.
Right. But all all I I was debating
whether to even say the analogy because
that
in itself is anthropomorphizing the
models.
A hundred percent. You're absolutely
right.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
That's a fair point. But but we're just
using it in order to try to find again,
try to find language that we can use to
describe an experience that we're having.
But you and I,
Right.
I'm pretty sure are both clear.
Cloud is not conscious. It will not ever
be clo conscious.
It may destroy humanity. I don't know,
but it won't be because it has feelings.
It'll just be because
Right.
whatever, it tries to make too many paper
clips or something,
right?
And that's
how that's that's the one thing all of the
sci fi AI movies kind of get right.
It's that the AI, it's not that it feels
something,
it's that it reasons on a technical level,
humans are a danger to themselves and so I
have to put all in cages.
Or right, it doesn't have right,
Yeah, it's that it doesn't have that spark
of life and that humanity,
right? Right.
and it doesn't have empathy and
it doesn't have feelings, which are kind
of key to s like decisions we make
as human beings.
Yes. And again, you should
Especially in relation to other humans.
not be, I don't think you should cuss out
Claude.
I don't think you should taunt it.
I don't think you should do any of those
things as a human behavior towards a
robot,
because honestly, I think there are better
ways to deal with whatever
it is that's happening. But I think it
should be deeply concerning to
us that the people who are making what
will probably turn out to
be the most important, certainly the most
important technology of
our of our generation, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Deeply believe that this thing could have
feelings and might be conscious.
That is a an astronomical problem and that
they are they are they
are reinforcing in human beings
Right.
that the way we treat this software.
Could you just imagine if Satya and Adela
was like,
you can't type mean things in Microsoft
Word?
We will ban
I'd like to
you if you cuss out Microsoft Word.
Listen, I cut I would be I do it all the
time.
Which people do every day People do it
every day
Every time somebody sends me an Excel
spreadsheet,
I'm like
Flips the table. It's like I think Ben
Thompson made this analogy.
If you are nailing if you're hammering a
nail and you accidentally hit your thumb,
you might say a bad word. And you might
even throw that hammer across the
workshop.
Done it a bunch of times.
And it is like Anthropicus saying,
after you threw that hammer across the
room,
a little chat bubble popped up on your
screen from the hammer.
Hey man.
That didn't feel good. And it's like,
no, we we all understand the hammer has
zero feelings and zero actual thoughts.
And Claude and all these models are closer
to the hammer than a person.
And that doesn't make sense. They're
They are just a tool. They're just a tool.
just a tool. And that doesn't make sense
to a lot of our human minds because
as you chat with these things,
it's like, man, this thing talks like a
human.
But you have to remember, it is closer to
a hammer than it is a human.
Much closer. That's all.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean the number of times I've wanted to
do that with my iPhone,
the difference is the hammer I know will
still work afterward and my iPhone
Right. Right. Right.
I paid it eleven hundred dollars for,
so I'm not going to throw it across the
room.
Right.
But it's not
because I'm worried it has feelings.
Okay.
Right. And you know,
like we I don't know. anyway, that's I was
I'm
Please clip all of this and just post it
everywhere because I can
take it. But listen, the number of people
who genuinely believe
I know, it's bad.
in also, okay, the last thing I'll say
about this.
I don't think that it's an unreasonable
thing for anthropic to be like,
we just don't think it's a good idea for
people to be whatever.
Sure.
However, why does anthropic care unless
they think that their thing has feelings?
Because
It should not matter to anyone who's
making these things how they're like
again,
there are parameters. I was gonna say how
they're being used.
That's absolutely not true. There are
guidelines.
They don't want them being used to commit
illegal acts,
Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.
right? We don't want them to generate
content that would be illegal or
No, there's guidelines, yeah.
whatever. That's fine. So I I think
anthropic is well within its rights
to put that they make a product,
they're allowed to say like terms of use
or whatever.
Like that's fine.
Right, right,
But I think it's a big problem that they
are framing it in this way.
Yeah,
yeah, agreed. Okay. Actual lightning
round.
No, no, no. That was that was good.
See, I did pretty good. You gotta give me
credit.
That was Okay,
No, the part I'm clipping is when you said
you are absolutely right.
I'm clipping that I'm making it my
ringtone.
do that. You can post that it's from now
on,
every clip where Steven makes a point is
just gonna be followed by a clip
of me saying you were right. Just do it,
That's I'm just gonna cut the same thing
every time.
it's
fine.
Light ~ lightning route. Apparently an
open AI employee had a recording device
in the open AI offices and might have
stolen some data and also might have given
it to Apple. Anyway, that is a you know,
good.
I just want to say one thing about this
post.
You posted the their Twitter their or w
post on X or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the second sentence is my favorite
thing about this.
It says we used our models to understand
the device and where did it come from,
a din identifying that a specific
employee.
I'm like, don't you have like surveillance
cameras?
Couldn't a guy just look at the camera and
be like,
it was him. It was Joe. He walked in
there,
he had it wrapped in a towel, he hit it
under the table.
You do it.
Like we used our models to understand.
It's like everything for these people is
AI.
That is yeah, that is true. And so this
also goes like the whole court case
of Apple versus OpenAI and how employees,
ex Apple employees brought trade secrets
to OpenAI.
This is kind of now muddying the waters
because maybe open AI people brought stuff
to Apple. So anyway, we'll we'll see.
We'll see what happens there. Meta,
they released new models, including
Wonderful.
That's the name of the model. Wonderful
New A models.
Can I say though, Jason?
We don't have time to get into this.
I've been using Muse for some specific
tasks on my phone and it
can be pretty useful.
And I will just say I listened to the most
recent episode of Mac Power Users,
and I was super thankful that David Sparks
wasn't like your your other co-host
is a total rube. I really appreciated that
when you guys had a conversation
No, no. Sure.
about it. I was waiting for the moment
where he's like,
You know he's a moron, right? But he
didn't say that.
I appreciated it. And even
He did not? No, he did not, he did not.
So that c
like ~ there was an episode of App Stories
recently,
I think it was, where John Voorhees and
Vitici were talking about it.
Vitichi's like, I like Jason.
But
But there's some
questions here about what actually
happened.
And I agree. And I am still trying to get
to the bottom of those questions.
I just want our listeners to know.
Okay, so yeah, we'll hopefully we'll have
a follow up one day that's
an actual follow-up, with the whole Muse
messages thing.
Yes. But tell David thank you.
Go All right, all right, we'll tell the
thing.
Gemini for Argon is officially out there
for everyone to use.
Supposedly Argon is great. And I think
bottom line is the AI race is back on.
You know, it felt like Anthropic was in
the lead for a long time.
Now ChatGPT Astra's out there and
everybody says that's in the lead
and now Gemini for Argon. So hey,
we're still in the AI arms race.
It's still happening.
I don't I don't use a okay, we don't have
time for it.
No, I don't use Gemini. I don't use
Gemini.
Yeah. And it's a stupid name. Don't name
your don't name your cutting edge tech
~
products after inert gases.
Don't call it a gas. Don't call it a gas.
I
one that doesn't literally interact with
anything else in the world.
Exactly. Yeah, don't
do that. YouTube is finally putting AI
labels on AI songs in YouTube music.
So following along with Spotify.
Spotify has started doing that months ago.
And we're gonna talk about the vibe-coded
Adobe suite,
I think, in the bonus episode.
Because I want to talk about vibe-coded
apps in general.
Love it. But you gotta admit that was a
pretty good title.
So we will Jiz.
Come on.
It's a great title. It turns out the only
thing people like less than
AI is paying for Adobe. That is a perfect
Yes.
that is a perfect headline. We're gonna
talk about that and also
the people trying to PS the entire PS
port the entire PS5 library to Linux and
Windows.
We'll talk about that.
Was it on the verge cast where they like,
Maybe the end state of all this is that we
get CTA six on the on the Apple TV?
GTA
6 on the home view. And unfortunately
Netflix is laying off a bunch of
employees.
Not may they didn't say it was like
related to AI,
but you know, the streaming wars are on in
full heat too.
Skydance, Netflix. We'll see what happens
there.
Let's jump to personal tech because
personal tech is local LLMs,
Let's do it. What's our personal tech
topic here?
Okay. Local. Great. I'm ready.
Jason. Because
I'm ready for it.
I've been on a tear, as you might have
known,
of just shipping apps. Just
You could just go to beardfm.app.
I I d
I did want to have a conversation about
this at some point with you.
This is this is the bonus episode.
I do
This is the bonus episode.
feel like w you and I need to sit down and
have coffee and I need to be like,
Steven, just for a moment.
Yes.
You're being abusive to Claude and I feel
like you should just stop making apps.
Listen, Claude is working on my behalf,
but one of the things I s wanted to stop
doing was giving Anthropic
so much money because I pay for Claude
Max,
which is what I use for all the vibe
coding stuff,
but I was paying for the Anthropic API for
use in all my shortcuts.
Because I have a lot of shortcuts.
Like when I process the show notes f after
this episode,
I have a long shortcut that gets all the
links,
formats it in various waves.
Ways gives me some title and description
ideas for the episode.
And I had a bunch of shortcut actions that
pinged the anthropic
API for different whatever formatting
options.
And I was getting, I kid you not,
Jason, probably every day I was getting a
clawed API refill
re email receipt for like 15 bucks.
Because I had it so the API would refill
ever like whenever it dropped below twenty
dollars of credits and it would just put
another $15 on there.
Now,
so I wanted that to stop. I didn't I that
needed to stop.
Yeah, I don't even
okay. We need to talk about why that was
happening,
but okay, carry on.
Well well,
I'll tell you why in a second.
So what the first thing I did was I I'm
like,
all right, I'm going to explore local LLMs
that are free and I can just
run on my Mac and figure out how to plug
that into shortcuts.
So I went to platform.claw.com and I
turned off that API key.
I was like, I don't even want the chance
of spending another dime on this.
So the API key is turned off. And what I
realized,
so I downloaded LM Studio. And if you're
not familiar,
LM Studio is
A free application that you can download
that then has access to lots
of open source models, open weight models,
Open weight models. Yeah. Yes,
but that are free to use, like
correct.
zero cost because you download these
models.
And so I will put a link to LM Studio.
They have two apps now. There's like LM
Studio Bionic,
which is for agent stuff, and then the you
you do use that all the time?
Which I use all the time, just to be
clear.
Yep, that's
what I use on the Mac Mini.
Okay, well we'll all right. I want to hear
about that in a second.
I didn't want to do agent stuff on my Mac
Studio,
my production
Sure.
machine. So I just downloaded LM Studio
regular,
non-bionic. Just whatever.
And then I it's it seems like a
complicated app,
but I just asked Claude how to use it and
he was honest about it.
And so I downloaded a Quinn model.
I asked Siri AI, because I thought Claude
and OpenAI would be biased about what
models they told me to use.
So I asked Siri AI what model I should use
for just kind of like summarizing general
articles. I downloaded a Quen model and
then I built a shortcut that
I replaced all the Claud API shortcuts
that I was doing Claude requests.
I replaced it with my shortcut that just
used my local model.
And Quinn, I learned about token,
you know, the ~ context window on like
You know, these local models, they have a
smaller context window than
you can just send it to like the API.
And one of the things I realized was in a
lot of my shortcuts,
I was parsing raw HTML from websites
because it was typically
the most surefire way to get things like
the header image URL or to get
the body of the text. Cause sometimes
articles using the shortcuts action
of get article, the get details of
articles,
sometimes it wouldn't work right.
So I had a lot of places in my shortcuts
where I was getting the full HTML
of websites. Apple Intelligence used
models action always failed because
of the amount of text. And apparently,
feeding the raw HTML from 15 websites
every day to a model is
a lot of context and tokens.
Yes.
And that is what I discovered as I started
using these local models,
it kept failing. And it was because of the
context window.
So I went through and rewrote a bunch of
my shortcuts.
Rather than getting the raw HTML from a
web page,
I've figured out what actions use to get
the body of an article.
Just give me the text. Don't give me the
HTML.
And using the Quen model, raising the
token the context window pretty high,
it works great. And so now when I run a
lot of my shortcuts,
it just uses the model on my Mac Studio
and all my shortcuts work.
Sometimes the language and writing is not
as good as what I was using Claude Opus
five point five, which was also probably
part of the cost for the API.
But
it's it's sometimes not as good,
but for 95% of the use cases, it is great,
it is free, and it is local. Now,
I did download, and that the Quinn model
is like 17 gigabytes.
You have to download it. I did try the
Meta Lama open weight model,
which is like 70 gigabytes. It's a lar
it's a larger model,
but it has a larger context window.
So I could I could give it the raw HTML of
a website if I wanted to.
And what you do in LM Studio is like you
load a model,
and then in my shortcut, I can point to
what model I want to use in that request.
And I built it so I can choose what model,
what local model to use when I run the
shortcut.
And the one time I used the Llama model on
a big shortcut,
Jason, it might have been the second time
I ever heard my Mac Studio fan spin up.
And this was not like the the last time I
heard the fans,
I had to like lean over and put my ear to
it to kind of like try and hear the fan.
Jason, who's running the shortcut pinging
this local llama model with large context?
Those fans were loud. Like you would hear
the fans in this recording.
My Mac Studio was chugging on that local
model.
But it's local. It's on my Mac.
It's free. It can run as long as I want,
and I'm not paying for some tokens via
API.
And so I am now in the local model world
and I'm all about it.
That's all.
Yeah, I mean it's good. The biggest trade
off is it's slower because
you don't have a million NVIDIA GPUs
powering it.
You just have whatever's inside of your
Mac Studio.
Whatever machine you have. Yeah.
I run local models on both the Mac Mini
and this MacBook Pro because
the MacBook Pro has an five Macs in it,
which is
Yeah, yeah.
like pretty good. ~ and I have heard the
fan come on on the Mac on that MacBook
Pro many times when I'm using it,
but that's because it it just
pins the GPU at 100% every time.
And the the thermal infrastructure of a
MacBook Pro is a lot different than
a Mac Studio. And so that's fine.
But yeah, I think I so that is actually
the in my mind,
the biggest trade-off is the time to first
token and how fast it generates stuff
is just a lot slower. ~ but it is and I
now understand why you're maxing it out.
Cause the the math I was trying to do was
when I first released contextually
I ran into the issue that the token win or
the context window
for Apple Intelligence prior to current,
you know, Mac OS twenty seven was four
thousand tokens or something like that,
which is not even enough to like put in a
thousand word note or something like that.
It was stupid. And so I had used I gave
you the option of enabling if
you were on the paid version, an open AI
extension.
So it's like if you want, if you're
willing to send your data to OpenAI,
you can use that for the summaries and for
the action items and for that kind
of stuff. And in the entire time I had it
released,
I mean, there was people who were using
that.
I don't have like super good data on,
but I know it was not zero. Like I know
because I get feedback from people talking
about it and that kind of stuff.
And I think I paid a total of six dollars
for that API for the entire time.
Now, the current version of Apple
Intelligence has a much better token
window and it
Yeah. Yeah.
is able to do a lot more on device.
Or with private cloud compute.
Thank you very much, Apple. Right.
Yes, yes.
And so I've
actually disabled that. Like I don't need
that anymore.
And so the only way you could use open AI,
the open AI ~ API
API.
now is if you want to use the ask
contextly feature.
The thing is you don't even need to just
ask Siri,
because it's built like it works.
Right, right. It's built in. Yeah,
So
it's built in.
What are you using the bionic agent for?
Anything you would use Claude Cowork or
Claude Code for?
It'll do coding. Absolutely.
So have you tr have you tried coding with
it?
I've had it do bug passes for me.
~ and there are different models that are
better for that than than other right?
Like and you when the nice thing is like
in both LM Studio or if you just
go to Hugging Face, you can look up models
based on,
hey, I want a model that's really you
know,
or you can just use what you did,
Siri. Tell me which model,
Yeah, yeah.
which local models are best. And then
it'll like on the Mac mini
It's a little bit limited because it only
has 48 gigs of memory.
So I'm not you I can't use super large
models for that.
So I I have used it for some coding.
I've also run it on my MacBook Pro to do
it,
but I don't do that very often because
it's like I do
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
every I'm recording this podcast on it
right now.
I prefer to like keep it a little bit
cleaner.
But by the way, what's beautiful about it
is it's not over eager to just do things.
It only does things when I ask it to,
Right. Right.
unlike Muse,
right? It's like
Right.
It just sits there waiting for me to tell
it.
And now d I think it might have actually
just been today.
We might be breaking news. I don't know if
it happened today or not.
But you can run LM link on your phone
Yes.
and it will just you can so you could send
stuff to your computer d from your phone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So it's
essentially like using the the chat GPT or
the cloud app on your phone,
but instead
Yes.
of going to the cloud, it's just going to
your device.
So do you find it's pretty good at the
coding stuff?
I think it's really good. Again,
it is just slower. Right? But
Okay.
I don't care. Like if I ~ so big feature
that I released recently
in Element is auto enhance. This
Yes, yes.
is by far the most requested thing that
I've gotten.
And I I felt like it was pretty good,
but it was doing a couple of weird things
with preview generation.
And I I tried codex, I tried cloud code to
try to fix some things,
and it turned out that it was actually
the local model that was able to deduce,
hey, what if because Apple released
released a new version of raw processing,
Right.
it's
raw pipeline raw nine with macOS twenty
seven.
It said, well here's the deal.
It would cost you nothing in terms of like
eff ~ effectiveness of the
app to just load all the previews using
raw version eight.
And then as soon as you click into
something,
generate that preview using raw nine and
then generate them on the other side.
But it was the low it was running it local
in LM Bionic that actually solved that
for me. Where
Okay.
Clog and I don't know if it was because
Clog code
Is sucking up the context window of all
the previous,
you know, stuff we've been doing.
Like, you know what I mean? So it's kind
of got like fixed on a path and it
couldn't
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right,
right.
get out of that. But using the local model
in LM Bio Bionic,
it was just like, dude, this is like the
simplest answer is just load
all these previews this way, use RAW nine
for the processing,
and then when you're using the auto
enhance feature,
it won't and anyway, it won't interfere
with because that's using Raw 9.
Like anyway.
Right, right, right.
And it did it really. And then the other
thing I wanted it to do,
and I don't I I'm kind of proud of this
feature.
One of the things that I implemented that
was a w one thing I really liked about
Aperture was you could select up to four
images and hit enter and it loads
you all four of them at a time.
This is really helpful, like if you're
trying to compare expressions
or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah.
You load four images and you hit auto and
it auto enhances all four of them
at a time. Instead whereas
That's cool. That's cool.
it otherwise it's like looking for one
photo and it's trying to figure
out what it's supposed to do.
Yes.
And
that was really glitchy at first for the
same reason 'cause the previews were
loaded
using version eight of Raw and version.
Okay.
And it
like just do this, this and this and we
just made the changes and
it worked really well. So
And I'll say one, get Jason's element
photo,
links to that and and my one
Please.
thousand vibe coded apps are down in the
description.
But I had finally a real use case for
element photo because I took class
pictures
of my kids' different classes and I like,
~ man, I don't want to do this in photo
Element Photo,
duh.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so I used element photo and I I take
credit because I asked
for the auto enhanced feature and now it
ships.
So I'm gonna say that that you did that
'cause of me.
You can take credit.
I would I'd been working on it for months.
And here's the thing. If you think
That's fine. That's fine.
about it conceptually, it's a very hard
thing to figure out because every photo
is different. And I don't
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
have a hundred and fifty thousand people
working on this.
It's like ~
Right.
me and Claude and LM Bionic and stuff.
But I was able but it turns out there is
actually like this is the
way that it should work and and it was
able to get it implemented.
But I just I I had actually had it running
on my computer for probably almost
two months now.
But it's like I needed to just keep
testing it in a hundred different versions
of like fail failure modes. And so I
Right.
had been using it a ton. And I really
wanted to make sure that it went a
dialogue.
And I'll just to be clear, I'm happy to
say this.
I believe Lightroom's auto is probably
better with edge cases.
But I think element gets you close enough
that you can tweak it on your
own without having to spend a ton of time
starting from zero.
But again, Lightroom has like
Adobe. Lots of people working on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I think
that it accomplishes and especially for I
tend to shoot a
lot of complicated scenario really fast
driving cars,
dark rooms, people, like portrait like if
you're just shooting portraits
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
and stuff, the auto enhancing element will
be perfect for you.
Last
question, and then we're gonna go record a
bonus episode.
Can't wait.
Can I tell LM Studio Bionic to go learn
everything from
my Clawed Conversations so it has full
context of my projects and stuff?
Okay, so the answer to that is sort of
yes.
But
Okay.
what you can do is point it at whatever
markdown file Claude has created about
how it does certain things. So every time
you set
Yeah.
up a Claude cowork like routine or
scheduled thing,
there's a markdown file that tells it
exactly what to do.
For your
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
project, if it has been creating the
documentation,
there's a markdown file that just has all
the stuff.
So like what
Right.
I sent you for the
publishing a release or something like
that.
I can't remember what I sent you,
but I sent you a markdown file recently.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's
just that kind of thing. So you can point
it at those.
And if for
Okay.
some reason you don't have a good thing to
point it at,
you should just say to Claude,
Hey Claude, what I need you to do is
create documentation of all of these
things
in one place so that I can hand it off.
And it will literally make you a handoff
dot markdown file that will give like
the local one all that information.
Keep in mind that it then has to load that
into context every time.
Right. Okay. Can I tell you what I was
doing just y while you were telling
me about the great update in Element
Photo,
I was just just pricing out I was just
pricing
Buying a Mac mini.
out what a new Mac mini might cost with
more memory because
So wait, that is the five Pro with how
much memory?
All sixty four the highest you can get.
Okay.
So basically that's the one I have,
except for mine only has forty eight.
Well and the reason why I wanted that
memory cause when you load a model with
LM Studio, it's going to the unified
memory,
right? Like that's that's the idea.
yeah. It's loading it it's loading it all
in memory.
Right.
So I can
run more powerful models on the MacBook
Pro than I can on the Mac Mini.
But it's
Right, right.
that makes sense.
This is a problem because as my six Mac
Mini review video,
I was juggling Mac Minis, and I might do
some calculations later of what happens
if I trade in three Mac Minis.
What can I get today? Because I'm very
tempted now to try LM Studio Bionic with
some coding stuff. But I'm I'm hesitant
because Claude is really,
really good at it and
Yeah.
and no and has all my context,
but
I also don't want to pay for it anymore,
so
I
also wouldn't be worried about running I
would not be as worried about running
LM Studio Bionic on your Mac Studio
compared
Okay.
to cause you're running Claude on it,
right? Yeah, I wouldn't be worried about
that.
I wouldn't put Muse on it because it's
super eager to just
Sure. Sure. Yeah, I don't want that yeah.
go rummaging around through all your
transistors and stuff.
But I don't
Yeah.
think you would experience that.
~ with 'cause it still requires you still
have to give it permission
to do certain things and it it'll,
Right, right.
you know, and because it's running on a
headless Mac mini,
there are times when I'm like,
shoot, I gotta make sure that
It's but in in my case on the ma headless
Mac Mini that has no personal data anymore
'cause it has been deeply sanitized.
~ I'm fine
Yeah.
with it just having just do whatever you
want.
I mean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's that's the thing.
Okay. All right, we're gonna get to that.
We're gonna talk more about vibe coding
stuff because someone has cloned
the Adobe Creative Suite to a point.
And we're gonna talk about that and just
more vibe coding stuff.
That's gonna be in the bonus episode.
You can get an ad free version of the
show,
our bonus episode, our unedited feed,
which I don't know, might be three hours
today.
It's gonna be it's it's a long one today.
So you can get all of that by becoming a
member.
That link is down in the show notes.
Thank you to everyone who supports us.
Leave us a five star rating in Apple
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Thanks so much for listening and watching.
We'll catch you next time.
