Primary Technology

If you don't step aside, I'm gonna fold
you in half.

Welcome to Primary Technology,

the award-winning show about the tech news
that matters.

this week the iPhone Duo reviews are out.

We're gonna comment on a bunch of them.

We might even get it in hand during the
show.

We'll see. Also, Apple now has another
event,

pro until, next week. Walmart wants AI
agents shopping for you.

Claude announced their agent like Muse,

but it's Claude Duet, and there's a ton
more.

This episode is brought to you by Copilot
Money and Claude,

and you, the members who support us
directly.

I'm one of your hosts, Stephen Robles,

joined by my award winning co-host,

Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?

That's literally true actually.

It is now

If it wasn't

for me, we would not have won one of those
awards.

It lit I'll 100%. Thank you to everyone
who voted.

I turned off my camera instead of sharing
my screen.

Thank you to everyone who voted in the
Signal Awards.

We have won not one, but two Signal Awards
best co-host team.

We have won silver and in the technology
category we have won bronze.

And we were in great company in both of
those shows.

You know, thank you all. And now you're
gonna hear me

say award-winning podcast every time.

No, no, you won't. but I did put the badge
that we are

a signal award-winning podcast on our
website.

And I'm gonna be making a T shirt so I can
just wear it around saying

I won an award. Mostly I'm just gonna wear
it around my mother so she knows that

This just so you know,

I won an award. This podcasting thing.

we actually do a thing, okay? This is an
award.

Yeah. Yes.

So thank you, thank you to everyone who
voted and taking the time to do that.

And now forevermore, we can say we're
we're an award-winning podcast.

So that's super fun. and also speaking of
podcasts,

I did want to plug I was on the Verge cast
~ earlier this week talking about

all the the vibe coding things,

and David invited me on. So we'll link
that down in the show notes.

It's in Apple Podcast on YouTube.

And yeah, I even got to troll him with my
shortcuts pillow because

I had my shortcuts pillow and I wore my
shortcut shirt.

And yeah, it was a super fun episode.

So just check that out.

Amazing.

All right, and we have one five-star
review shout-out,

Davinger from Barbados. And this was a
funny connection because when

we were talking about Apple TV and how
they're set up in conference rooms

and what happens if the owner is in
Barbados,

well, he's a listener in Barbados.

That's

Awesome.

so fun. So, Davinger from Barbados,

thank you for that five-star review.

And leave us one in Apple Podcasts.

We can give you can get a shout out on an
award winning podcast.

~ if you leave us a five star rating and
review.

That's it.

But also

don't try casting stuff from Barbados to
wherever we are.

Like it's not gonna work. Are you gonna
ask me about the movie quote?

Yeah, yeah, don't do don't do that.

yes, the movie quote. I know,

You you need to make yourself a note
further down to check.

I need to put it under the five story
thing.

Yeah, I don't

know for sure. It's feels like it's a
there's a quote from Thor that's very
close

to that.

Yeah, it's not a mar it's not in the
Marvel universe.

But

I d okay, then I have no idea 'cause I was
like,

Well did he did Steven misquote something?

Because it's like something along the
lines of it doesn't say fold you

in half it's like you're gonna need
medical attention or something like that.

But ~ okay,

no no no.

I don't know.

It is Fast and the Furious six.

Yeah, did not see that movie.

If you don't type a sediment to fold you
half,

but you know, fold. Duo. I felt like it
was it was appropriate.

That's great. But

Yeah.

I still have never seen that movie.

Have you seen any of the Fast and Furious
movies?

I've seen at least

I've seen up to Tokyo Adrift, which is
three maybe.

Okay. Three. That's

the third one, yeah. There I think there's
a thirteen now.

~ and the cars fly, I'm pretty sure,

in the latest ones. Anyway, we're gonna
get to the iPhone duo reviews because

all the videos are out there, and we have
thoughts from the people

who have had thoughts. But next week,

it is non-stop, Jason. Apple has yet
another experience,

quote unquote. And we didn't talk about
the distinction between these two,

but I think they have said it is at one PM
Eastern in Los Angeles.

On October 28th, which is next Wednesday,

being an experience, I think it means
there's no live stream.

It's going to be press release drops,

and then a bunch of creators have been
invited to take hands-on footage

and share things on Reels or whatever.

And Apple's probably gonna publish some
videos on their YouTube channel about what

is announced. But the tagline is Pro and
Tel.

Seems like we're gonna be getting this,

every all the rumors say the new touch
screen MacBook Pro,

which I still have trouble wrapping my
head around.

But I had trouble wrapping my head around
a folding iPhone,

and now we have that.

now. So I don't know. What do you think?

Do you touch screen macro pro,

you feel pretty sure about it?

I mean Yeah.

I mean

I I'm w I'm confused by that potential
product.

I don't understand 'cause it's gonna have
an six in it apparently,

which is a dead end. I d I don't there's a
lot of things I don't understand about

the possibility of this product.

And I don't think I'm just being

He yeah.

ornary, I'm just confused. Like I know a
lot of people are like,

It'd be cool to have a touch screen at
MacBook Pro and it's gonna have

an six which is a higher number than an
five and I'm like But that's

not exactly how it all works.

Yeah. Some of the s

So so I'm just confused.

some of the rumors say it'll be ~ five Pro
and five Max,

same chips. Red.

Okay, that would be fine, but

we do already have those MacBook Bros.

Okay, good.

Here's the here's my prediction.

~

I think it's going to be an M6 MacBook Pro
baseline.

It'll be like the new baseline MacBook
Pro,

but the M5 Pro and Mac's higher tiers just
stay the same.

And this new touch screen is at a price
premium because of the form factor

and display, not because of the chip.

And it won't be like the ultra.

But will the t

will the new sc touch screen be coming to
the five Pro and Max versions?

That doesn't make any sense,

I don't think so. I feel like it doesn't

Steven.

make any sense. And this was probably
totally inaccurate,

but I think that's just what I'm calling
it.

No, no, no. You're probably

totally right, but it does not make any
sense.

It's absolutely a thing that they would
do,

but what I don't 'cause they did that with
they've done that before.

I don't remember which generations.

Yeah, where they update they ba they
update

Yeah. The base one.

the base one. I don't know if it was the I
forget what it was.

But yeah, there's like

So maybe they'll

maybe they'll do an six MacBook Air?

~ now that would be a problem.

'Cause I might update my M4 MacBook air.

But it'd be a problem,

but it wouldn't probably not have a touch
screen.

So there's just lots

No, no.

of confusion happening here.

It is confusing. i Mac might be updated to
the M6 next week,

and all the rumors say iPad Mini.

Again, like it's Pro Intel.

So I think we're gonna see iPad Pro with
M6,

because the iPad Pro for the last couple
generations has been the first device

to get the new chip. They got the M5
first,

I believe, it got the M4 first.

And so I think and this is the first year
it didn't.

You know, the M6 Mac Mini was actually the
first device to get

the two nanometer process.

So

I think we're gonna get the iPad Pro with
M6,

and maybe somehow the iPad mini becomes ~
a part of the iPad Pro lineup because it's

always been priced and feature set wise
been more on par with that than the Air.

Like the iPad mini has always been more
expensive than the Air.

And so I wonder if they might somehow
merge that lineup,

give it all the M6, maybe not the iPad
mini,

but hopefully. And then we do that.

But we'll see. We'll see. I actually ~
resurrected my iPad mini.

Not resurrected, but

I actually found it 'cause I had given it
to my son,

I didn't realize. And so I re commandeered
it back.

And so I'm watching my front door camera
from it as we record this episode.

But

Yeah,

I am in the market for an iPad mini
because I've got not the S seventeen
version,

the whatever the other one is,

The yeah. ~

and it's getting slow and

it the I the thing that's wonderful about
an iPad is you can leave it

in your bag for four days and when you
take it out you should still be able

to use it. But that one, that's not true.

It

Right.

it'll be dead after thirty two hours.

And I will say after using an five iPad
Pro for the past year,

going to the iPad mini is I've just I
didn't even restore from backup.

I was just using it as like a brand new
setup.

You could feel the slowness and also the
lack of promotion.

yeah. I don't care about

Like it's not it's not great.

the promotion thing, but it should not
take fourteen minutes to load Apple News.

That. So we'll see. We'll have it'll next
week's episode we'll cover

all the thing that will be announced.

But I've also seen some creators invited
to this for the first time.

~ and so it's an interesting crowd being
invited to this Pro Intel event.

Like Federico Fitti is being invited,

which you know, he's doing all the local
AI stuff and Mac Studios with

all the agents on it. So that's curious.

I also saw like Christopher Lawley's
invited,

who he's a big iPad guy. So maybe,

you know.

iPad Max and seems to make sense.

But anyway, iPhone Duo reviews dropped
yesterday.

The embargo lifted, I think, at like 8
a.m.

and I saw a bunch of review videos watched
out.

I've seen every iPhone Doo review video
that was available,

I think. I actually got to the end of
YouTube and YouTube said,

You're done. You watched them all.

That's it. that's not true. But I did
watch a lot a lot of these reviews.

I want to call out a few specifically and
we'll be commenting to them throughout.

Joanna Stern did the work as she is wont
to do and built a custom device with

~ the help of this gentleman to fold the
iPhone Duo nonstop during

her week of testing. And she folded the
iPhone duo over 32,000 times using this

machine. She calls it hingey, and she was
testing the hinge to see

how durable is this hinge, which would
have been my first concern with

a foldable phone is like how is this hinge
going to fare?

And I won't spoil the specifics.

You should watch her review video.

It's a great review overall, but for the
hinge test especially,

very funny. And ~ yeah, I'm not as worried
about the hinge.

We'll just say that.

Yeah. I mean this is kind of like the
people worried that you could bend

the iPhone Air and then we found out you
absolutely cannot,

no matter what. And he's like,

Right. Yeah, Jaws like t d t like told
people to try it.

try it. Do whatever you want. Every time I
hand it

Yeah. Go ahead.

to somebody and I'm like, nah,

try it. I am a little nervous,

but I'm like, I know that they can't.

But people are super anxious. They're
like,

Really? You think I could bend you you
tell I can't bend this?

And people have this glistening look in
their eye,

like, I want to try, but also I don't want
to destroy the phone.

And the it's really

Right, exactly.

hard to convince someone it's gonna be
totally okay.

I think this is the same kind of thing.

Like they I don't think this is the least
surprising part.

I'm glad Joanna did this. She is

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

fantastic at coming up with a thing that

Yes.

feels both mundane and incredibly clever
at the same time,

right? It's just checking the folding.

Because no one

Yes.

else did that. Everyone else just kind of
like oot and odd over different things.

But this is the least surprising part that
Apple would have made sure that

the hinge would not be a problem.

Right. And John Turnus, he's a hardware
guy.

Johnny Saruggi's down there. He talked
about the hinge for like twenty minutes.

So also, as you were saying, coming up
with that kind of unique ~ way

of reviewing a device, I'm gonna make a a
call here.

If anyone is in Florida and is or knows a
carpenter,

a woodworker per se, I have an idea for a
video that I wanna do soon.

And just reach out. Just just email me at
the email in the show notes.

I'm looking for someone ideally in Florida
so we could like work

on something together. But we kinda it has
to be fast,

so they have to be kind of available.

So I'm just gonna throw that out there.

Just throwing that out there.

But to be local and available.

And yeah, do stuff with wood. Do stuff
with wood.

Well. Do stuff with well. I found someone
on Facebook Marketplace

who makes alligator wood carvings.

And they're actually amazing. But I don't
know how how they would fare with

a technology product made out of wood.

You know what I mean? I don't know if
that's the same skill set.

I'm not in that, but anyway. ~ I also
wanted to call out why do I keep turning

off my camera when I mean to share my
screen?

I think Riverside moved these buttons
because I did this during Mac Power users
too,

and I was like

no, I did it with Gentui. our episode,

which you should check out that episode if
you didn't see that,

Gentui came on. We talked about the home
view.

But anyway, ~ MKBHD's review, obviously.

Not that he needs a shout-out,

but the intro clips that he has of the
iPhone Duo.

I saw on Instagram someone from his team
shared that they built a custom

rig for one shot in this opening montage
of his iPhone Duo review,

which is when you see each iPhone duo
unfold at different angles.

And you kind of see it. This is the shot
right here,

if you're watching, you kind of see it
like layer out.

They built an entire machine to bend the
iPhone duo at those angles precisely

so they could film it. Wild. Wild.

Team effort.

Amazing.

If I hear app compatibility one more time,

though, I'm gonna lose it. I'm gonna lose
it.

And I don't

That's that's the thing for you.

I feel like we don't even need to talk
about that.

Because this feels very like in every
review.

In

every podcast that I've heard talking
about the iPhone Duo,

one of the main like knocks on the device
is that quote unquote apps have

not been updated to take advantage of the
screen.

And so you have black bars on one side,

you might have letterboxing. The app might
be really small thing in the middle.

A, I think it's ~ problematic to ha to
criticize that major like

by default when devote like the phone is
not out yet to the public.

And a lot of apps were actually being
updated.

as reviewers were making their review,

like both Neil A Patel and Joanna Stern
said they had to re or Joanna

had to refilm the section about that
because apps that she talked about

got updated during the week of her review.

Yeah, like Instagram.

Yeah, like Insta yeah, Instagram and
threads.

And so I don't think that no, I do think
this is very much like

the original iPad launch when everybody
was freaking out that you have

to hit the 1x2x button to zoom in an
iPhone app and it looked terrible.

Yes, it did look terrible and that was a
poor experience.

But also a year later, or even less,

like that was a non issue. So I feel like,

yes, if you go with the iPhone Duo,

you're gonna see some black bars,

but I don't think it is a major issue.

How do you feel about

Well,

okay. There are three states. There are
apps that have not yet been updated

for iOS twenty seven and on the duo
they're gonna suck.

Those are the little mini

Yes.

apps in the middle of the screen.

Those are gonna be super bad. So if you
have apps that have if you

use an app regularly that has not been
updated for iOS twenty seven,

you probably do not want to get a duo yet.

Because the experience of using it is just
not going to be good.

Then there are apps that have been updated
for iOS twenty seven and those apps will

appear better if

But they will have nothing in the what
does they call the sidebar?

Like where the control panel stuff is.

Yeah.

They're just

that'll just be black. Okay. But the app
will essentially fill it

the outside screen and will be better on
the inside screen.

Okay. And then there are apps that have
been updated for the iPhone Duo.

Now here's the thing. And they talked
about this in the VergeCast,

which is that most of the current apps
that have been updated for the duo feel
like

AI slap updates. That's like the phrase
that they use because they don't

Sure. Yeah.

feel very th thought out and considered.

They just sort of fill the screen.

Right.

And the truth is that is probably how most
people are updating their apps.

They're just saying, Claude, make this
work on a duo.

Because can you imagine, Steven,

the amount like this is not updating for
another size.

This is updating for like seven different
possible app states and scenarios,

which is a v like

Yes.

for my app, contextly, which is not an
inherently complicated app.

It took me a very long time just to
wrestle with what should this do

on an iPad which can rotate, right?

Yeah. Right, right.

Like is it which is an

insane level of complexity for an app that
has multiple panes and stuff.

I haven't even bothered to to update it
yet because it is updated for 27,

so it won't be the worst case scenario.

I do want to update it for this,

but also how many people that are using
this are going to be using my

app and so there's a lot of like thought
process there because it isn't just

Hey Claude, make this look better.

It's well, what you did here, is that the
way that someone would expect this

to perform in this particular situation?

It is a ton of work. And I think it is a
fair critic criticism of the device that

it is essentially Apple is just expecting
developers to put in a very large amount

of work for an iPhone that introduces a
lot of complexity

for for what?

Right. And to your point, like as I was
trying to update can do for the duo,

the bend state is one of the hardest
things because you can open

the iPhone duo completely and you have
basically an iPad mini.

You have a seven inch screen, and if your
app looks good on an iPad,

it'll probably look good on that.

But as soon as you start closing that
hinge,

which a lot of people will probably do
just for the heck of it,

because it's fun that you can have a phone
that looks like a book,

you know what I mean?

Now you have a gutter in the middle of the
duo,

and you have to decide do I put content
there?

Do I not? If I don't, does it look like
there's just a bunch of blank space?

And so you have to make a lot of decisions
about that.

And I think Meta, ironically,

has been the fastest at updating their
apps.

So Instagram, threads, they look okay.

TikTok is one that is who knows when it
will be updated.

But like as you can see, if you look at it
on the outside screen,

it is a ~

Dark rail on the right side, just a black
rail,

and then the whole app is off to the left.

And this is how I think a lot of apps are
going to be,

especially on that outer display.

Like your bank app is gonna look weird on
the iPhone Duo probably for the next year.

Like like my credit union is not going to
update their app anytime soon.

So I like it took them like years just to
put t like touch ID,

face ID. And even after that, it it said
like add touch ID,

but it was like years of face ID already.

But it was biometric, so it just kind of
worked.

Anyway, so yeah, there's gonna be weird
experiences.

And and I'll in the weird experiences
category,

there's also things that Apple,

I think, has to figure out. And Marquez in
his review,

he does the dual doom scrolling ~ example
where he

has TikTok on one side and Instagram reels
on the other with the iPhone duo open.

And this is a problem that

You might have had before, like on your
iPhone right now,

if you put a video in picture in picture
and it's playing in the background like

a YouTube video, and then you go to a
social media app like Instagram,

what happens? Typically, the video will
pause and the reels will take over because

that's what you're actively using.

And then if you press play on the picture
in picture,

the real audio will stop. But the iPhone
Duo now introduces something a little new.

You know, you could kind of do this with
the iPad.

But

with the iPad, even in windowing mode,

there's still an active app on the front.

There's always a window that's the active
one.

And with the iPhone Duo, if you have it
open and you have two apps side by side,

the iPhone Duo sees them both as the
frontmost app.

And so as Marquez like scrolled,

it would like play the audio from TikTok
sometimes,

and then sometimes it would play it from
Instagram.

And it was not consistent ~ kind of to
what it was doing.

And so that's something like

~ no one should be scrolling these two
apps side by side.

Like this is just a funny reel or
something funny to put in a video.

But that's a behavior that, you know,

Apple has to decide what is the iPhone
gonna do what what is the iPhone

duo gonna do with that situation.

Yeah, and it I think it is a fair
criticism that they didn't figure that

out in advance. Right?

Sure, sure.

'Cause you like this shouldn't have caught
them by surprise.

You and

Right.

I there's no way to consider every
possible scenario that people are going

to come up with, but this actually doesn't
seem that weird.

Like it didn't take Marquez very long to
figure out this is weird.

Right. Right.

What if we did this? Like and

that's exactly what people are gonna going
to be doing.

And so I don't know. I think I I do think
app compati compatibility will improve.

Yes.

I do think that there are many apps that
people use that won't be updated

for iOS twenty seven because they aren't
really being updated,

period. And those are just gonna

Right.

suck on this device. And so you're gonna
have to look for a different device.

And then there are a lot of developers who
are going to have to think about

it and really can't start thinking about
it until they have one in hand.

Right.

Right.

And so it's it could be a little bit of
time before that's the case.

Who had a time? So I wanna we'll get to
like some of the positive aspects

in a minute. You know, because I do think
Chance Miller at 9 to 5 Mac,

I'll link his review down in the show
notes,

he was very positive about it.

Like, and I think a lot of of the reviews
had a similar refrain of this is fun.

Like this is a fun device. It is
different.

Like this is the first time we've had a
very different kind of iPhone

in a long time. Many people said the
iPhone 10 was kind of the

last time this happened. But even then,

the iPhone ten was more similar to the
iPhone seven than the iPhone Duo

is to like the eighteen or seventeen
today.

Like this is just a whole new paradigm for
using an iPhone.

Yes, foldables have been out there
forever,

but if you're someone like me who have
never owned a foldable,

I've

You've never owned a Voldable?

No. No. I've used them. Like I had I have
a friend with a

Galaxy Z Fold 7 and I played around with
that,

but I've never owned a foldable per se.

Okay. Gotcha.

And

there was a point in the last couple
months where I was like,

maybe I need to get a Galaxy Z Fold 8 just
to see,

like just for comparison. And there were
like the Verge compared to the Z Fold 8,

but then I was like, but if I am like most
Apple users

or people in the Apple ecosystem,

they likely have never used a foldable
phone.

And so I thought maybe.

the

perspective will be interesting to say,

I've never used a foldable, and now here's
what I think about my first one.

So I don't know. I was on the fence of of
that,

but do you feel like cause you have like a
pixel fold,

I know you've tried foldable phones.

Do you feel like having used the Android
foldables informs you for

the iPhone duo or like how do you feel
that colors it?

So when

I've used I've used at least two
generations of Samsung folds,

maybe three, I can't remember.

F including like a fold three.

I've also used a flip one of the versions.

I can't remember

Okay.

right now which ones. And then I've also
used Pixel Fold,

like the two and three maybe, or s several
gener whatever whatever

the most recent one is included.

And I like foldable phones.

Because I like my phone and I also like
the iPad mini a lot.

Right, right.

And I and

it's not exactly the same because like the
pixel fold you open

up is essentially like four by three or
square or whatever.

It's like not

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

anyway, I think it's great. The biggest
drawback is I don't like Android

on a device and it mostly

Right.

that's not as much a criticism of Android
as it is this device is never gonna feel

like mine 'cause all my stuff is already
in these apps.

And it's not just Apple's ecosystem.

It's like flighty and you know

Fantastica.

Do you use Fantastica? Yeah.

U Ulysses and Fantastical and all these
apps

that are just like iOS basically only.

And so that's really the reason that I'm
like,

I can't use the Pixel Fold. But I really
liked it and I would like to.

Apple actually like took it a like further
than I feel like just taking

a Pixel Fold or whatever and making it run
iOS.

And in some ways that's what you expect
from Apple,

because it does not feel like most
foldable phones from Android really took
Android

and considered what should this do on a
foldable device.

And I think Apple has done that.

The problem is

They have such a large app ecosystem that
they need everyone to catch up.

And just like the Vision Pro, the question
is like,

is it going to be worth the effort to
catch up?

Right, which unlike the Vision Pro,

I do think iPhone Duos are gonna be
everywhere.

I saw I think it was an article this
morning that there's just huge lines
already

in at Apple stores waiting for the iPhone
Duo because there's some

They're scalpers,

Steven.

There's some scalpers, but I think there's
actually some legitimate people that want

to buy an iPhone Duo tomorrow on launch
day.

And I do think it's good for Apple because
there have not been lines

for a new iPhone, I don't think,

for a very long time. So that's good.

They've generated a lot of excitement.

Yeah. Yeah.

I

just I will be interested in knowing w
because I wrote an article,

right? They said that the the demand has
been nothing short of extraordinary.

And my question is, compared to what?

Right? Compared to what you were
expecting.

So did you just calculate wrong compared
to what you could produce?

Right? Did you and there were reports that
Apple had to

cut its production essentially by like
sixty percent because it was just

Like they're just really hard to make
because Apple has a very high standard.

So it's like, were you expecting to sell a
million of these and

you sold ten million? Were you expecting
to sell a million of these,

you sold two million, but you could only
make six hundred thousand because

of the you what I mean? It's we just don't
know.

And so I'm not trying to like poo poo this
at all,

but I am saying it we should be careful
and at the same time,

the fact that if people are lining up,

that's just a very tangible, visible sign
that people are genuinely excited about

this. I think

Comparing it to the Vision Pro,

I've now compared two devices in a row to
the Vision Pro.

Yeah.

Is not fair, especially in this.

I think the home view is much more likely
to be a Vision Pro than the Duo.

I don't know that the duo will be a raging
success,

but I think all all reports so far sh
suggest it's sold at least

ten times more Vision Pro than the Vision
Pro.

Yeah.

And I've heard from some people in the
know that the amount of iPhone duos being

produced a day is much lower than any
other iPhone because of

the challenge of making the device and the
you know,

the hinge and everything. This is a Apple
store Apple Galaxy Macau,

and this is forty eight hours ahead of
launch and you can kind of see the line.

~ this is the Yahoo article down in the
show notes.

I don't know last this might be the first
time I linked to a Yahoo article.

~ but yeah, people lining up. What do
people do for 48 hours waiting for this?

I don't know. ~ but I one thing I see I
saw across the reviews,

though, Apple Pencil support is coming in
27.2 for the iPhone Duo.

And there's been people like sharing some
reels.

Max Weinbach on X showed, like,

here's the Apple Pencil writing on iPhone
Duo.

You just have to update to 27.2.

And all the reviewers.

didn't include Apple Pencil talk in their
iPhone Duo review.

And so I am curious for a certain subset
of users,

will the Apple Pencil support be the
differentiator that makes it worth dealing
with

some of the stuff? And I have a couple
apps that I want to try day one,

which I think is today. I have my eye on
the on the driveway.

~ and that will be the thing.

And I also, along with the Apple Pencil
support,

I think.

How people feel about and use iPad is
going to play into how they feel about
iPhone

Duo. Because if you have never liked iPad,

but love the iPhone and then Macs and all
of that,

but if you just don't like iPad or have
never found good use cases for iPad,

if you're not affectionate for the iPad
mini,

I don't know if the iPhone Duo is going to
speak to that user as much

as someone who is in the iPad world and
loves using iPads.

And like

I did a whole video a couple months ago
like how I use iPad every day.

And I really do use my iPad Pro every day,

if not just for editing daily podcasts,

but also for building shortcuts and when I
work whenever I'm not here in the studio.

I like using my iPad every day.

And if you are not in that camp,

I wonder if the iPhone Duo is just less
attractive because you don't think about,

what if I had an iPad in my pocket?

You know?

See, I disagree a little because ~ I think
I was thinking that exact thing.

This is why we're an award winning
podcast,

Jason, because you said this one,

That's what distracted me from what I was
gonna say.

Is but for

the other one.

my real the real reason though is I think
the paradigm of the iPhone

Duo is so different from the iPad that if
you are buying this because

you want to have an iPhone that turns into
an iPad,

you're actually gonna be really
frustrated.

It doesn't have any of the multitasking,

it doesn't have a slide over, which I
think it should have slide over

for crying out loud. That would be amazing
on this phone.

Yeah. I mean it does have

Like

split view. You can put two apps side by
side.

It is not split view though. It is not the
same thing as what we're used

to on the iPad.

How is it different than just putting two
apps side by side?

I'm just saying the functionality on the
iPad is you have a lot of options

for how you want to do that. Do you want
to have that be like sixty forty?

Do you want to have it be half and half?

yeah yeah. One third, two third yeah yeah
yeah.

Do you want to have it too?

Yeah. There's just a lot of different
options and you can tap a button

at the top and you can swap things out
where so all

Right.

of the things you were used to,

all the gestures you were used to,

you have to learn a whole new set of
gestures to

It's all new. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

do this. They didn't just lift I I think
it probably was the right choice because

I think Apple is precious about this as an
iPhone.

This is not an iPad. And I also

Right.

think that

If you think about it, if you had to error
on one side,

people will always use this device as an
iPhone and then they will open

it up and use it as a larger phone screen.

Right.

It has to always function as an iPhone,

right?

Right.

So if

you had to error in one direction,

you had to go that direction. It does not
have to always function as an iPad.

That's the extended version of it.

And so there are certain constraints that
if you made it like an iPad that would

sort of break

the experience of using an iPhone.

So that's probably the right option.

They would have to like merge the two
things back together and come up.

But either way, this is gonna have a
separate set of paradigms because
everything

on it, like when I put an app on the you
know well,

the weird thing is like if you make an
iPhone app and you want to make

it on the iPad, it's the same app
actually.

It's just has different views,

right? Like you just it just identifies
which operating system it's running

on and adjusts things accordingly.

So it wouldn't be that difficult for it to
do both of those things.

But it doesn't surprise me

that they did it the way they did it.

I just think you were saying if you love
the iPad,

then this might make more sense.

I actually think if you have zero
experience with the iPad,

I mean if you hate the iPad, I don't know
that you want to do it.

Like that's an expensive way to find out.

That's what yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you

but if you just never most people have
never used an iPad,

believe it or

Well, and most people, even like tech
nerds,

just don't have uses for the iPad.

And I'm not saying they should.

I just don't think they, aside from
reading articles and watching videos,

if you don't see the iPad in any sense of
productivity or usefulness,

then the open iPhone duo just becomes a
TikTok player.

Which is how so many of the video reviews
showed it.

They were like,

Yeah, you can scroll reels big and you can
watch Christopher Nolan's Odyssey

as Nolan intended because it's the right
aspect ratio.

And it's like, yeah, it will be good at
that,

but that's not how I use an iPad.

I I do watch videos on iPad, but I use an
iPad to edit podcasts

and to build shortcuts. And so those are
the use cases I did

not see reviewers trying, because I just
don't think they've ever used

an iPad that way or don't care to.

And this is

An

interesting juxtaposition because Gruber
had his review published last night.

He has strong words for the iPhone two O.

Yeah,

he says he says the outside screen is the
worst iPhone they've ever made.

He said the outer device is by far the
worst iPhone Apple has ever made.

It's a miserable fat little thing.

But the inner device is a splendid,

joyful, beautiful tablet with a UI that
out iPads the iPad.

Now, I feel like the first part of that,

while harsh, might be accurate.

Although, I don't know.

The iPhone 3G was pretty rough.

That's why the 3GS and the speed
improvements was like a big deal.

Worst iPhone Apple has ever made,

like that's that's tough. But to say that
this will be the best iPad,

that this out-iPads the iPad, that I take
issue with.

As an iPad user, like my M5 iPad Pro is
pretty sweet.

Like,

Yeah.

I really like that thing. And so to say
that the iPhone Duo is gonna out-i pad
that,

that again, to me is

This is coming from someone who doesn't
use the iPad except for watching videos

and movies.

Okay,

but honestly you don't think it's gonna be
just as good at editing podcasts

and making shortcuts? Like the two things
you suggested,

this device is gonna have zero problem
doing.

It's g 'cause you already

Yeah.

used to edit iP podcasts on an iPad mini
and this

yeah.

is infinity power more powerful than any
iPad mini ever made.

Well, in the editing podcast, that's like
the first thing I want to try.

Because I do think the iPhone Duo might be
the best device for that ever that Apple

has ever made. But when it comes to like
building the shortcuts,

that is something where screen real estate
and windowing does play a factor.

And so that begins the separation of what
is an iPad versus what is

an iPhone Duo open. Because my 13-inch or
even an 11-inch iPad Pro with windowing,

where I can have shortcuts, I can have
Claude.

I can have Safari open with the shortcuts
community.

Like just being able to have those three
apps in Windows on the iPad screen makes

the iPad a great device for that specific
task that the iPhone Duo won't

be able to compete with because you just
you don't have windowing.

I can't have three apps open like that.

Sure. And and short and that's not
nothing.

So that will be it. Yeah. Yeah.

But

Yeah. It's very niche.

I was gonna say, I don't know how many
people are in your shortcuts community,

but that's the entire segment of people
who care about the thing you just
mentioned.

And that's great. I'm I have no shade
towards any of them.

At least five thousand people.

We'll just say that. I don't know,

I'm just I'm just saying that is not

but it's a very small yeah, small piece.

There's no one at Apple who thinks of the
iPad as that.

And there's no one outside of your
shortcuts community who thinks of

the iPad as that. So when Gruber says
that,

no,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

there's zero consideration to having three
windows open to create shortcuts.

Like just nobody cares.

But I also

I also think about Nate, our friend Nate,

an artist, and people who might use iPad
with Procreate for drawing.

Again, the iPhone Duo might be an
interesting device for on the go,

but I'm sure that segment of the use would
want a 13-inch iPad to have

Sure.

the screen real estate. So all that to
say,

like the power of the iPhone Duo with the
A twenty will play into things like

editing a podcast. But I do think to say
it's out iPading the iPad.

That feels like a a step too far.

But isn't that like, okay. I don't know.

I I think I I haven't used one,

so I can't specifically argue with Gruber.

I will say that if you took a if 'cause
I've written many times about like

MacBook Air. In the MacBook Air,

out MacBooks, any other MacBook.

That doesn't mean that a 16 inch MacBook
Pro isn't better for editing video.

It just means that

Sure.

overall the best form factor you can get
in a Mac laptop is a 13 inch.

MacBook Air because it is just the perfect
combination of it's enough power

for almost anything that you might want to
do.

Sure, sure.

~

it is it is small and it's lightweight and
it is dependable.

I have an M4 MacBook Air. I don't know if
I'm ever gonna get rid of it.

I'm not even kidding. Like I just love it.

Yeah.

It's dialed in, it's maxed out,

it has whatever thirty two gigs of memory
and and two

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

terabytes of storage. I'm just gonna keep
it forever.

And you know what I'm gonna do?

Anything I need to run more powerful than
that,

I'm just gonna run on that Mac mini over
there.

Sure, sure.

I get and that's a that's an interesting
distinction.

We'll have to see. And let me let's get it
in hand and let me try and edit

a podcast on it. I if it or if it arrives
in the next one or two hours and

we get it getting a review unit,

this audio version of this show will be
edited on iPhone Duo and I will report
back.

And you'll probably see it on YouTube.

I want to talk about some of the other
weird intricacies of things like

the camera and the dynamic volume buttons,

touch ID. There's a lot of weirdness
there.

Before we do.

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I'm really just doing it's just a joke.

I keep saying award winning podcast.

I won't do that for

I just just want to keep plugging in.

I mean, but it's true, it's not just a
joke.

Listen, ~ it's true, and it will always be
true that this

is an award-winning podcast.

That's yes.

It is for it is forever true. So there's a
bunch of weird intricacies about

the iPhone duo. And one of them,

I think Brian Tong ~ showed this the best
in his video.

When it comes to having the duo open with
the camera,

because of the orientation of the physical
camera on the device,

when you're holding the iPhone duo

In

portrait open, the camera is in landscape.

So if you're recording a video or taking a
picture,

there's huge black bars on the top and
bottom of the video.

And if you try to rotate the device,

it will just have black bars on the other
side because the camera

is just not oriented with the open version
of the duo.

And so it is backwards basically of how
you would expect.

If you want to, you know, take a portrait.

Photo, you have to hold the duo.

If you have it open wide, you have to hold
it in landscape physically.

That's weird. A lot of the reviews said
that underscreen ~ face camera

or center stage camera, like don't use
don't take it for pictures,

don't use pictures. Don't take it,

don't use it to take pictures.

Like it's not a good camera. Use the
outside camera.

But as Brian Tog is showing in his video,

when you want to take a selfie with those
back cameras,

it is a very awkward experience.

Like you have to kind of

Claw grip the open iPhone duo to hit the
shutter button,

unless you hold it with your left hand,

but then the like it's a weird motion to
like hold the iPhone Duo left side open

with that rear facing camera facing you,

and hit the camera button because it's
like right there on the edge,

and that you have to weird claw it,

and there's not a good like maybe the
volume button's on top,

but your arm is now farther in front of
you.

Like he said it was just a weird
experience taking selfies with this
device.

It's doable.

But you might have some precarious
positions of your hand while you're doing
it.

Mm-hmm.

So

This seems weird. I guess I understand why
the orientation thing is the way it is.

That feels like the kind of thing Apple
would have put the effort into engineer

in order to not make that be the case.

Because I get it. It is based on the
orientation of the back half of the phone,

Rice.

right?

And so which is all which when it's open
is always different than

the orientation of the entire device,

right? Because it's a half of it.

So that's vertical. But I mean,

they already solved this on the selfie on
the face.

Time camera, right? And the selfie camera

Right.

allows you to rec shoot and record in
either orientation.

Now that camera's not as good.

I understand that. So maybe the cost of
doing that on a higher mega forty eight

megapixel would be hard.

Right.

The this is a premium, premium,

premium device, right? It starts at two
thousand dollars.

This is gonna be the kind of thing that
once it gets out there to people

is gonna be it's gonna wreck people's
brain because they're gonna be like,

I don't understand why my phone is so
dumb.

And it almost seems as though the better
option would have been to do it,

they don't call it open gate, but it's
essentially open gate,

right? Like b whatever yeah.

Yeah, we square resolution. Yeah.

And have it automatically adjust
accordingly.

That feels like it would have been the
right the right option,

although I don't know how that works on an
ultra wide.

I guess it could be the same, but you
would have needed two of them is my point,

right?

Right.

And supposedly the forty eight megapixel
main camera,

the iPhone Duo, is a new sensor.

It is not sharing the sensor. Like people
will say it's close to the iPhone

17 E or maybe the iPhone Air. And yes,

in numbers-wise, but this is a unique
sensor to the iPhone Duo.

Like Apple had to make something new for
this device.

And so with that in mind, I feel like they
could have made something

new that was then so different that it
worked for this.

Or maybe maybe turn

The camera's ninety degrees, so the camera
plateau is vertical.

Like that's how the iPhone seventeen is.

Well, the reason they didn't do that

though is because then it would have been
super messed up if it was closed.

And they

Right. If it's closed it would have been
yeah.

must be assuming that people are mostly
going to take pictures with it closed.

Which I don't actually think is a terrible
assumption if you have to make one.

Again,

Right.

this goes back to the bias in favor of the
iPhone instead of the iPad.

It's like if you have to choose one,

you choose the one that you think people
will use it the most.

And I do think that the likelihood is that
most people will take photos with

it closed most of the time.

Think so. And then it does have the the
quick take feature or smart take where

you can set it up and it will
automatically take photos when you pose,

still wise. And so maybe it's like
planning for that.

But some of the other weird quirks is the
volume buttons,

which I forgot about this since the
announcement,

but every review talked about the volume
buttons are on the top when closed.

And then depending on how you are
orienting the open iPhone duo.

They might be on the side or the the other
side or the bottom.

And it is awkward.

Now there is a setting in the iPhone Duo
where you can have it

be dynamic volume buttons. So it will
change which is volume up

and volume down based on orientation.

And that is how some iPads do it.

And there had not been a setting on iPad
to turn that off.

I think on the iPad right now,

like the the volume buttons are dynamic no
matter what.

So this is the first Apple device where
they give you a setting to

say keep the buttons persistent no matter
what the orientation or have them change

to be dynamic. And it seemed like a lot of
the reviewers were saying

you want the dynamic because there's going
to be times when the you're holding

it open watching a video or reel and you
tap the up volume button,

but if they're not dynamic, it's actually
the bottom and it's just clearly feels

like the opposite of what it should be
doing.

Which again, it's a challenge of a device
that you can hold basically

in any orientation.

And you have physical buttons that don't
move.

You know what I mean? Like it's

Right.

a natural challenge.

Is it are you sure it's the first one?

I'm pretty sure that when they switched
that on the iPad Pro or the iPad

was it the iPad Air originally that had
that feature?

I'm pretty sure that there's a feat
there's a isn't a setting in iPad

OS for that very thing. Cause I remember

Is it? 'Cause I I remember it being okay,

I'm going.

them switching so that the right

Yes.

button and if it's up at the top was
always going to be increase.

Right, you know what I mean? And it they
got

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

it.

backwards or something and it wrecked a
bunch of people's brains and then there

was a feature you could turn you could
choose to adjust that so that

the the one that's up when it's portrait
orientation is always increase.

Is volume up. Right.

But I don't

but by default it's not that

Right. Well, I'll have to look to see if
that was actually a setting.

I remember it breaking my brain.

~ and here's this nice little image of
YouTube and ~ it looks like threads are

Yeah, that's insane.

blue sky. You know? So the volume buttons,

I would turn on the dynamic volume button
stuff.

this way it works. Apple is also working
on a reachability feature where people
were

saying if you tr if you want to use iPhone
Duo in your left hand,

it gets pretty

uncomfortable because that side of the
iPhone Duo when closed has a sharp corner.

You know, it's it's in the shape of a D,

and if you're right-handed, it's in the
great orientation,

but if you're left-handed, you're gonna
have a sharp corner digging into your
palm.

So it doesn't seem particularly ~ nice for
left-hand users,

which Brian Tong apparently discovered he
uses his mostly left-handed

Yeah. I use mine

and was having trouble with it.

always left. I it's weird people talk
right hand,

left hand I'm right handed. I do
everything with my right hand except

Yeah. That

for use my iPhone.

makes no sense to me. I don't understand
that at all.

But but Brian Tong does it too,

so I don't know I I mean

I actually

a lot of people. In fact, I feel like
you're one of the few people

I know that that's not the case.

But you put it in your left pocket.

Because I use it with my left hand.

I think that's a chicken and egg thing.

I think I think you started that habit and
now you don't w which

one actually started.

I don't think so because I was thinking
about like all these people

are like left handed, the iPhone duo is
gonna be terrible for people

who are left handed and then I heard Ben
Thompson be like,

I'm I don't I don't know if he said he was
left handed or not,

but he's like I use my iPhone only in my
left hand and I like,

Yeah, me me too. Like using it in my right
hand feels

I don't I don't get that.

weird.

Really? I don't get it. Leave us a five
star reading and review.

Please remind us. Do you use if you're do
you use it in your dominant hand

or your non dominant hand? And I know

Well no but

see I don't okay. I don't know if that's

Well you know what I mean?

I don't know if that's the right question
though.

I think there's a two part question.

I thought that's how we phrased it.

Okay.

Do you use it with your

right hand or your left hand and are you
right handed or left handed?

Leave us a five star rating in review and
let us know.

~ very curious. So that is gonna be and
then the reachability,

because this is a squat iPhone,

like I think this is the widest iPhone
ever,

you know, as far as, you know,

from left to the right side of the
display.

And so that's why Apple is working on a
reachability feature side to side.

You know, reachability right now on the
iPhone is from top to bottom because every

iPhone has just been tall and taller and
taller and taller.

but they're working on something to
actually go left to right.

So that's interesting. We'll see that.

And I don't know. We have to get it in
hand.

I want to get I I give mine today.

Next episode, we'll talk about personal
experience.

I'm gonna do a ton of videos on it.

But I'm still excited for it. I feel like
this is a a fun div it is new and fun.

Useful remains to be seen. You know,

we'll see how it goes for that.

And how often, you know, everybody was
talking about the cases.

I have I actually I bought these and then
I think Apple is sending me these as well.

But the iPhone duo folio with Kickstand,

Allison Johnson at the Verge was like,

This case kinda stinks because it has

Mm-hmm.

like an elastic stretchy part in the
middle 'cause it has to be able

to fold and unfold. And covering the
screen,

like I understand protecting it that way,

but it will be I don't know, will it be
annoying to have to open

the phone every time you want to use that
screen?

And ~ yeah, we'll see. And then,

you know, the bumper cases and all that
kind of stuff.

So we're gonna be I'm gonna be testing all
the things.

We'll be testing all the things.

What do you got? What do you got over
there?

Are you are you

I'm check I'm stuck on this button thing.

But you can ca you can move on.

I believe

Ha okay.

the newer like our our iPad pros and fives
don't have it anymore.

I think they got rid of it. I feel ~

I thought they did, yeah.

I feel like they changed it at some point
and so some some older iPads

Okay.

I think still have it. Which is just a
weird thing to have i iPad

OS have different settings based on like
for the buttons based on whether

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll

or not I don't know. So you can move on
without me,

that's fine.

just last couple things I'll say the dock
icons being smaller than

all the other home screen icons looks a
little weird because forever on the
iPhone,

the dock icons are the same size as the
rest of the icons.

And so

Mm-hmm.

that's it. There's a different size there.

The fact you can only put four icons in
the right hand rail feels a little like
come

on. Let's move.

It feels like it's an iPhone though,

Steven.

Move it up to five though. I this is a
very different iPhone.

Like let's just if they're gonna be
smaller

But it's but

again, it's still an iPhone.

Yeah. Okay. So there's and then the last
thing is the I Okay.

Well hold on, think about it. I don't know
well,

Yeah.

we don't know if this is true or not.

What's that?

Well, I was gonna say if you're using the
handoff feature,

would you want your s setup to be
different?

But I guess you could still set it up
however you wanted.

Yeah. Yeah, you can just

Yeah, I don't know.

set up. So the handoff feature,

this is a great segue. That's actually the
next thing I gonna I was gonna mention.

You're welcome. I had no idea.

The

a grouber mentioned this and I forgot who
else,

but if you have handoff, which right now
it's just T Mobile,

Verizon said it's coming soon,

my carrier ATT are being a bum and they're
not bringing handoff to it.

Verizon's gonna charge ten dollars a month
for this feature.

T Mobile just charging five. But here's
the thing.

Even if you have the

Handoff

feature, which to be clear, is like let's
say you have your iPhone Duo

and your 18 Pro. You pick up your iPhone
18 Pro and you go out the door,

your cellular plan is on that phone.

And if you go back home, you put down the
18 Pro and you pick up the iPhone Duo,

and when you unlock it, now your cellular
plan is on that phone.

So it's supposed to be a seamless
switching between phones with

the same cellular plan, same number.

Cool. One big problem with that is that
your Apple Watch.

Can still only be paired to a single
iPhone.

And so you can have handoff,

but your Apple Watch, if it's paired with
your 18 Pro,

but you pick up your duo and leave for the
day,

your Apple Watch is not connecting to your
phone.

Like it will not connect to your phone,

it will not share your phone's cellular
connection.

And unless you you can have cellular on
your watch,

but now your watch is either using
cellular all day that you're not

on a Wi-Fi network directly, and

It will still track your health stuff,

but you will not see that health stuff on
your phone until you go back home

to the phone that your watch is paired
with,

and then it syncs up. And that feels like
a miss.

Like this would have been a great time for
Apple to say,

you know what? You can attach just like
your AirPods,

where you can connect them to any device
you have,

and then all of your devices signed into
your iCloud account will just connect

to your AirPods automatically.

Man, it feels like this would have been a
perfect time to say,

And your Apple Watch too. So if you pick
up your duo or you pick up your 18 Pro,

your cellular plan carries over
seamlessly,

and your Apple Watch will just know what
phone to go to because that's

the phone that you unlocked most recently
or whatever.

That feels like living that two-phone
lifestyle is more complicated than just

the cellular handoff.

Yeah, because I actually think the
cellular handoff is pretty simple.

I mean, I don't know anything about how
any of this stuff works.

But if you just imagine you're standing at
a whiteboard and you're like,

how do we make this work? You just say
both of these eSIMs are active on this
line,

right? And

Right.

cellular is just only active if you've
unlocked it most recently.

But they're both connected to cellular all
the time.

They just are. They're always connected.

to the carrier because the carrier has to
be able to instantly say this

is the phone. So all that's really
happening is that the phone that hasn't
been most

recently unlocked unlocked has no data,

which is not a problem because you're not
using it.

So that's fine.

Right, right, right.

And won't ring, right? Incoming calls will
only come to the one that's been unlocked

most recently. That actually feels like a
fairly easy problem to solve.

The Apple Watch is a extremely
complicated.

We just talked about like the Siri
features which use the exclave,

the secure exclave to go from

Yeah, yeah.

one device to the other.

I don't know that you can switch those
things that quickly because of

the way that those things are paired.

It's just a Bluetooth connection.

It's an encrypted Bluetooth connection
that's only available between

two specific devices. And so you're
introducing a whole other level

of complexity to that just because I
unlocked my phone.

And I think that they envision that you're
going to basically have

a primary phone and a not primary phone.

So your watches are probably always going
to be connected to your primary phone.

And the other one is just like your I'm
living my best life phone.

I don't know. Now

I

chances are pretty good that if you're
just living your best life,

you probably want your Apple Watch to be a
part of it.

Right.

But I don't know, maybe the conspiracy
theorists are right.

They just want people to buy more ~
cellular I ~ Apple watches and then

it doesn't matter. By the way,

I don't know. I d it feels like yeah.

sorry,

by the way, I had a real big problem with
my Apple Watch recently.

It was like dying at like six PM and I
could not figure out my Apple Watch Ultra

Two would just die at like six PM.

I'm like, what on earth is happening?

Steven, what do you think was the problem?

Was it cellular was on? You didn't know?

All

the time and it basically it was paired
with my phone but was not connecting

Yeah. ~ yeah.

to my phone. So it was just running
cellular all the time.

And an

Apple Watch Ultra Two running on cellular
all the time does not make

it sixty whatever hours. yeah,

But it's it's also four years old now.

Three

it

does great. I mean it's gonna it it's
still at a hundred percent

and I've been wearing it for three hours.

Okay, well, I've been wearing mine for not
twelve hours,

probably nine hours. I'm at eighty four
percent.

But

Yeah. You're sleeping most of that time,

but yeah.

yeah, I know. But but I'll just say the
the series twelve ceramic battery life

has been fine. Just as a two week follow
up,

I end the day like around thirty to forty
percent.

It's fine. So I I don't know. I feel like
the Apple Watch pairing to the iPhone,

Apple could have figured this out,

like in some way. Even if it's you have to
pair it with both iPhones once

to like make the connection, the secure
connection.

But what is the problem?

If like you're saying, let's say you're
you have your Apple Watch paired

to your iPhone eighteen pro, but you're
going to the park and you wanna bring your

duo for whatever reason. Well,

you can either not have your Apple Watch
connected to anything,

so you won't get notifications on the
watch,

you won't be able to use it, send a text
message,

whatever, or you have to have cellular on
that whole time.

And like you just said, that's gonna kill
the watch battery and it'll might

die while you're out there. And so that's
the issue of

Of not being able to at least use,

even if it doesn't do the secular secure
exclave stuff,

like okay, don't do the audio intelligence
stuff,

at least connect to the iPhone to share
the internet connection.

So your watch has connectivity,

gets the notifications, but isn't
depending on its own cellular network.

You know what I mean? That.

Sure, I mean

the solution is you just carry both

Or just buy two watches, a watch for each
phone.

You know what mean? Ceramic for the duo.

Ultra for the 18 Pro.

Wow.

Don't do that. No, don't do that.

All right. Last, last iPhone duo thing.

I just wanted to show ~ Austin Mann did a
dedicated camera review for the duo.

And listen, bottom line, the duo,

you're not gonna have the same camera
experiences on the 18 Pro.

You don't have the telephoto camera.

But also the duo camera, pretty good.

you know, he's took a bunch of photos,

he went to Iceland.

And ~ yeah, he's watching the Secret Life
of Walter.

that's a great callback. Secret Life of
Walter Mitty watching on

the plane to Iceland. Well played.

Well played. But the ~ you know,

pictures he takes with the iPhone Duo,

they're they're beautiful. And so,

you know, you'll get good pictures.

Sophies might be awkward, you know,

you don't have the telephoto, but it's
fine,

I think, for most people.

Yeah.

And I'll just say your photos won't look
like Austin Mann's.

I mean Austin Mann could take this brawny
that's back here that doesn't even work

and get a great photo out of it.

He could take a literal paper towel roll
and make a better picture

Absolutely.

than me.

But you know, he's Austin me. He's Austin
Me.

And twenty seven dot two, again,

that's where Apple Pencil support comes in
for the iPhone duo.

I want to be talking about that
specifically in my videos.

So anyway, all that's coming. We'll talk
more about the iPhone duo when

we actually have it in hand. Not that we
had any ~ we were not at a lack

for words this week to talk about the
iPhone Duo.

But yeah, we'll also have all the new
announcements to talk about next week too.

All right. Lightning round.

Let's talk about Walmart. They're like,

bring on the AI agents. If you want to
shop with your AI AI agents,

just just go for it. ~ you know,

this is where Amazon blocked Muse,

so Muse couldn't shop on it. I have had
some pretty poor experiences trying

to get Muse and other agents to buy things
for me.

But apparently, if you want to buy from
Walmart,

Walmart's like, bring it on. Let's do it.

And they now accept Apple Pay.

Kudos

Yeah.

to Walmart.

I mean, I wrote about this too,

so you could have just shown my article.

That's totally fine. But yeah.

Wait, wait, you d wait today? Was it
today?

~

was it today? No, it was yesterday.

It was last night. I wrote about it.

it la it was last night.

It's fine. Here's

the thing think about this real carefully.

These are the two largest companies in the
world by revenue,

right? They're like within three billion
dollars of each other,

which is kind of insane, right?

Although shopping wise, Walmart is bigger
because Amazon's numbers include AWS.

So like whatever. But

sure.

Amazon is obviously the world's largest
online retailer.

Walmart is not, right? They about
twenty-five percent of the revenue comes
from

online market online sales. Most of re am
~ Walmart's revenue comes from people

walking in the building and buying things
and taking them home.

And likewise,

Amazon makes about 70 billion dollars a
year from ads that it forces sellers

to sell and then forces us to wade through
ads for garbage on their site

in order to find the

Yes.

one thing that we're actually looking for.

So Amazon cares very much about your
eyeballs looking at its website

so it can charge money to the sellers to
show all of that garbage on

its it's the worst experience.

Amazon is the single website where an
agent would be the most useful thing

in the whole world because it is I hate
it.

I hate everything about its website.

It's so bad. And

Yeah, I think it's warranted, yeah.

and ~ Walmart makes like six billion
dollars a year from ads,

and a lot of that is from Visio,

right? With its connected TV advertising
stuff.

~ yeah, that's true.

So the point is.

Walmart doesn't have the same problem as
Amazon because it's fine if

the agents are shopping on your behalf
because it doesn't care that much.

I mean, it cares a little bit about ads,

but what it's

Not.

basically saying is that is not so much of
a business for us yet.

But this agent agentics shopping thing
might be in the future the way

so we should just get there first.

We should it's like the if someone's going
to usurp the iPod,

it might as well be the iPhone,

right? It's that kind of a mentality,

Sure, right. Right.

and I think that that

makes a lot of sense. And what they're
doing,

sorry.

Not I know this is lightning round,

No, it's good.

but

I think this is super interesting.

Walmart is essentially building the
technology to make this even easier.

So if you say to ChatGPT, here's a photo
of a dorm room.

Could you buy me could you find me the
futon and the bookshelf and

the whatever for my daughter? You can just
give that to ChatGPT.

Walmart's basically building an MCP server
for

Mm.

agents, so they don't have to click around
the website and try to log

in and make transactions. They can just go
straight

Right.

to the shopping platform to do that.

And when you do that, it will actually
create a profile in your Walmart account

for the agent. And you can give permission
to the so just like you could have

What? Okay.

like you and your wife have separate
shopping profiles,

you it'll create one for you for the agent
and you can be like,

you are authorized to spend up to fifty
dollars,

a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars.

You can either give it the permission to
make the purchases on its

own or require approval when it finally
when it gets to that point of making it.

And you'll be able to see a record of the
agents purchases separate from your own.

They're like just enabling

~ my word.

all this. They're building an MCP server,

they're creating agentick profiles,

and they're just like leaning all the way
in.

They're like, listen, we we're going to be
the preferred way to use agents to shop.

Because the truth is, you can basically
get everything you can get

on Amazon at Walmart. With the I mean,

there's not specific brands necessarily,

but like you're

Right, right.

looking for a new charger, you can get one
at Walmart.

It's not going to be a problem.

And so they're just like, what if we were
the place

Or people who wanted to do this.

We can experiment with it now.

It actually doesn't cost us that much
because even if all of

our ad revenue disappeared tomorrow,

it's less than one percent of our total
business.

It's like fine. Whereas for Amazon,

it's like ten percent of its total
business.

Big deal. So

Mm.

anyway.

That well honestly, that's super
interesting.

You know, Walmart for years has been
trying to compete with even just like

the two day delivery that Amazon gives
you.

And like you can pay for the Walmart.

Don't you pay for Walmart plus for like

We have Walmart

Plus, but here sorry, I wasn't gonna say
the in Target is actually the same.

Buying things online from Walmart and
Target is so much better of

an experience than buying them from
Amazon.

You know why? Because it shows up in two
hours.

Yeah, it's fast.

Why?

Because I live four miles away from a
Walmart.

Now I also

Right.

live almost the exact same distance from
an Amazon place,

but they still won't deliver it the same
day.

It'll just come the next day. So they have
leveraged all of their

See th Yeah.

stores as distribution centers.

Can I do you remember or have you seen the
well who's

the ~ Kara Swisher's co-host on Pitchfork?

The not Pitchfork, the ~ Scott Galloway,

pitchfork. Are you talking about Scott
Galloway?

Okay. Pivot is the name of the podcast,

thank you. He had a t what is it?

by the way. Isn't it Pivot?

Pivot. I was I don't know why I was
thinking pitchfork okay,

yeah, pitchfork is like the music thing.

Scott Galloway had a talk.

This could have been five years ago,

called The Four Horsemen. And I will he
write he wrote a book.

Yeah. He wrote a book. He wrote a book.

It's called Four Horsemen. It's right back
there.

I didn't you have it? Yeah. So I

Yeah.

will I will put the talk. This is from
eleven years ago.

And I remember watching this video where

he talked about Amazon, Google,

Apple, and Facebook at the time,

before it was Meta. And I have

returned to this talk multiple times over
the years because it is wild

how many things he called correctly.

And one of them was that Amazon would have
to get into the physical brick

and mortar space. And a few years after
this talk,

they acquired Whole Foods, which is,

you know, their their brick and mortar
space.

And a bunch of the other things that he
talked about in this talk just

it was just wild. This is gonna be my top
five tech ~ link this week.

For what to watch, because I think it is a
it's it was just wild.

So w whatever you think about Scott
Galloway,

like this talk I think is fascinating and
you know worth a watch.

But Walmart and Target,

you know, that two hour shipping,

thankfully, I Amazon has a close enough
thing to me where I can order

a lot of things for three hour delivery.

I can pay like two or three dollars and
get it in two or three hours.

That is not the case, like you're saying,

for most people in the United States.

Like most people do not live that close.

~ but Walmart competing on that.

Now, plus the agentic thing, I was just
complaining to my family the other day.

Anytime I try to buy something on Amazon,

I cannot go to my cart without trying to
be upselled on bananas.

I don't know why they think I'm gonna
order a bunch of bananas along with

my MagSafe battery every time.

But I can like I have to see two
additional screens before I get to

my cart with like whole food things to
buy.

Like, do you want a banana?

Do you want eggs? I'm like, I no,

I do not. And honestly, the this I'm not a
futurist or one whatever,

but if Amazon continues to fight the AI
agent shopping aspect of the business,

I think they could lose because to to some
market share to a player like Walmart.

Because honestly, if I could just tell an
agent,

buy me toilet paper and paper towels,

and that could be it, and I don't have to
think about it after doing that,

that's tempting to me.

Because doing that in Amazon, while it's
not a ton of friction,

I open an app, I search for the thing,

I choose the product, you know,

I have to look for which one was my
previously purchased because I just want

to buy the exact same thing. And then say,

no, I don't want bananas. If I could
offload that and only just give

it a prompt that it runs like that is a
tempting thing.

And like you're saying, paper towels and
toilet paper,

I can get it from Walmart or Amazon and it
doesn't matter.

Yeah. Well, and

So curious. I'm curious about that.

Amazon is not opposed to agentic shopping.

It just wants it's building its own Alexa
agentic shopping,

which you know is gonna suck. It's just
not gonna be good.

There's just because the incentives are
different.

Yeah, it's not even right, right.

The incentives are

we have to if we build this thing,

we have to figure out a way to get the ads
in front of you because that

Right.

is such a significant part of their
business model.

It it is bananas that they keep showing
you bananas.

Let's just be honest. But

Ha ha ha.

you already explained why. They bought
Whole Foods.

Now

Right, exactly.

The the only thing that's wrong,

and I was wrong, the name of the book is
actually called The Four,

not the Four Horsemen. The Four Horsemen
was the lecture.

Okay. Yeah.

But

the problem with that actually is Whole
Foods was their effort into getting into

pr to groceries, right? You cannot go into
a Whole Foods and buy Amazon things.

Right? They don't have Amazon brand
charging cables in there.

Right. Right, they don't have my magazine
battery.

It's it's just it's whole

yeah, you can't there's not an anchor
section in there,

right? Like it's it's Whole Foods.

And so they have all the Whole Foods
stuff.

It was their the one product category that
they could not store

in warehouses and deliver in two days is
groceries.

So they needed a grocery store,

so they bought Whole Foods. That is not
their physical brick

and mortar business because they're what I
think Scott Galloway is getting into

is like they needed to have Amazon store.

And every time they've tried, they have
not been able to figure it

Failed. Failed.

out because they are thinking

of it as an Amazon product and experience,

not as a r physical retail. And I actually
think

That as Walmart catches up and target to
some extent,

that it is going to be harder and harder
for Amazon.

They s because the single biggest
competitive advantage that Wal Amazon

has had for right now is its distribution
network.

But here's the thing, Steven. My wife can
order something on Walmart Plus

or whatever. And that membership comes
with free shipping.

Do you know how it gets shipped to us?

A guy goes to the store,

Like individual carrier, right?

Yeah, just gotta yeah. It's

grabs it off the shelf and brings it to my
house.

like DoorDash, but for your packages.

It's delivery, but it's free. Because

Right.

it is shipping. They call it shipping.

And it's like they just go to the store,

grab the thing, two hours later it's been
delivered to you.

And it's like Amazon just can't compete
with that.

Which I do see a lot of random people
delivering my Amazon packages.

So like they have

Sure.

that aspect of it, but they also have this
massive infrastructure that they need

I think that's just overflow staff though.

to maintain. Yeah, it's overflow.

They don't like outsourcing it to DoorDash
or whatever,

Right, right, right, exactly.

so which

actually would be kind of amazing.

Amazon should just let DoorDash people
into their s warehouses and just

let them deliver it within forty minutes.

I mean, it is the same people,

Sure. In some cases,

like to be honest. Like I'm sure these p
like I had a

you're probably right.

I had a friend who like that his side gig
was he would do DoorDash and

he would do Amazon. And I would like we
would be working together and then

he would say, like, I'm gonna check what
what I'm gonna do tonight.

Maybe I'll do Uber, maybe I'll do
DoorDash,

maybe I'll deliver some Amazon packages.

Like that's just a thing that people do.

It isn't the

So

secret that if you pay for the nine dollar
same day delivery from an Apple store,

it just comes from a DoorDash driver.

I don't know if it's DoorDash,

but it is it is a d individual courier.

Yeah,

Yeah.

it is it is a thing. But anyway,

that that's super fascinating.

So no, I'm I'm glad we did that.

Good, good lightning round topic.

That was good.

Mm-hmm.

~ Claude Duet, speaking of agents,

Claude finally announced their Muse
competitor.

So you got Meta Muse, you have Chat GPT
Dots,

and now you have Claude Duet, which I'll
be honest,

I think the name's great. I like all the
music references that

Claude and Anthropic does. So maybe that's
why I'm partial to them.

No, I think it's pretty good. But anyway,

it's a wait list preview now. So it's not
open to everybody.

I joined the wait list immediately.

And this is going to do the things that
Muse does.

And we're going to talk about in personal
tech.

I don't know. I've been finding more and
more use cases for Muse.

And ~ I'm now interested to try.

I mean, if Claude Duet is good,

which I imagine it will be, like I'm going
to leave Muse to the wayside.

Like I don't need it. ~ so I'm curious.

We'll see. We'll see what comes out.

How

do we do in the wait list?

Some random person on X posted a link and
I joined the wait list.

I don't know. I I would just Google it.

Claude Duet wait list.

Alright.

Because ~ it is it. it's right here.

The link is in the video description.

Claude.com slash Claude Dash Duet.

And so I will I'll.

I need to join a waitness, I'll be right
back.

Yeah, you I just need a YouTube video,

not the link. Anyway. It's the just go to
that video and the the link is there.

So that's Claude Duet. More soon on that.

The meta settlement.

If

you remember the Cambridge Analytica
debacle that Facebook had years ago,

well, they had to pay a lot of money.

~ I'm sorry. This is the MetaMuse thing.

The MetaMuse hits like 10 million US
downloads in 40 days.

Super popular. We'll talk about Muse in a
second.

but also Meta was ordered to pay twenty
five billion dollars

for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

And you wrote about this as well.

I'm gonna put your links for both Walmart
and this in the show notes.

Just you didn't I'm sorry, you wrote about
the Netflix layoffs.

Well, I didn't write about this yet,

actually. I'm g I'm going to write yes.

That's right, that's right.

Yep.

I actually will write about this at some
point,

Okay. Great.

but basically

the the moral of the story is story is New
Mexico held out when all

the other states settled for like less
than a billion dollars and they ended

up with the twenty five billion dollar
settlement.

Sometimes waiting, we

I'm

moving to New Mexico or whatever they're
gonna call it in the future.

Whatever you

got. And then finally, you this is what
you wrote about.

Netflix, after laying

Yeah.

off a thousand employees, reported a
record quarter.

What was the deal on this, Jason?

Yeah, they their best

quarter ever in terms of revenue and
operating profit.

I guess their net income was down a little
bit because they had a quarter where they

had a bunch of like non operating income
that would count it as I don't even know

what that means. I'm not a financial
analyst.

It just seems weird to do it six days
after you lay off a thousand people.

But

Yeah.

basically what they're saying is we think
that there'd be a better way

to spend our money than helping these
people pay their mortgage.

So what we're going to do is invest it in
other things instead.

And they also just fired their head of
content team people because like

They're just like, we gotta refocus on
these things.

And they're the truth is the things that
they want to get into are things like live

sports, gonna cost them a ton of money.

Like that it's gonna cost them a lot of
money to do that.

They are doing more ~ like l content
licensing deals.

I think that there's a story recently that
they're just bringing some Disney stuff

back to Netflix. I can't even remember
what it was,

Hmm.

but like they just

they're like, We could pay these thousand
people,

or actually we could just buy better
shows.

So I think they're gonna buy the better
shows.

Interesting. They actually put on the
verge cast they put Netflix

on go ninety scale. They put it little
higher on their risk of ~

And it's

because and I've said this in the thing
and I it's not an original thought,

a lot of people have said it's because
their number one competitor

is YouTube and YouTube pays zero dollars
for the content.

Right. So all right. Well I'll link to all
of Jason's articles down

in the show notes. Personal tech real
quick.

I just want to give a little Muse update.

Still don't install Muse on your Mac.

Still

don't. Don't do that.

Don't. Whatever you do

Any update on your side as far as clarity
or did they?

They stopped talking to me, I guess.

I they did I mean I haven't heard back.

Okay. Well there you go.

I mean I haven't followed up either,

but like they have not responded anymore.

So

Well that's that's unfortunate.

And it well, so still don't install Muse
on your Mac because it's gonna

do weird things. I'm only using it on the
iPhone and iPad app in its little sandbox.

But Jason, I've been finding more and more
useful things for it to do.

And did I tell you how it I couldn't
remember the name of my college intro

to Lit professor? And so I asked Muse and
it found it.

Did I tell you about that?

That's terrifying.

I th I think I talked about that on Mac
Power User,

so I'll s I'll save that story for that.

But

I've been using it more often to monitor
things,

like for the signal awards. I had it say,

I said, let me know when the winners are
announced and let me know if we won.

You know, things like that. But then also,

the I I posted on all four social media
platforms

for apps for iPhone Duo. I said,

hey developers, if you have an app that's
gonna be updated for iPhone Duo,

let me because won't, you know,

I'm gonna make a video. And hundreds of
replies,

as you would expect.

And so I was like, man, that's gonna be a
lot of work to aggregate.

~ threads is already part of Meta,

so it can read all those replies.

Blue Sky and Mastodon are open,

so it should be able to read those.

So I went and I told Muse, I gave Muse the
links to my social media posts across

all the platforms, and I said,

Muse, look at all the replies across all
the platforms,

and just put together a comprehensive list
of all the apps that were mentioned.

and their links that they shared in the
posts.

And this one it worked for a little while.

It took it a couple of hours actually.

And it needed me to sign in to a couple of
social media platforms.

And I wouldn't recommend doing this,

but I was like, whatever. Sure.

It already has access to all your meta
social media play.

It already has access to the minute.

I mean, it's meta. Meta already has access
to them.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And

you know, I use iCloud passwords and one
password,

and I have unique logins. So I'm like,

whatever. You want to log into my blue
sky,

go for it. And so it logged in so it could
read all the replies,

because many of those are blocked unless
you're actually logged in.

I actually had to like go to the little
web browser in the meta conversation

and like tap around in this janky screen
sharing way.

But once I had access, Jason just did it
and it spit out a PDF.

And if I look at the PDF right here,

~ I'll just share it. I'll just share,

I'll screen share this PDF that it put
together.

I also told it to de-duplicate the list.

So it's like if there's any duplicate apps
across the things,

like don't do that. Look at this.

It just has a list of how many apps is
this?

176 apps that it put together across all
those mentions,

and it put together all the links with the
apps that ~ people replied

to my posts with. Like

That saved me probably several hours of
work.

And now I have one place to go and I can
just quickly download all these apps when

I get my iPhone Duo and choose the ones to
to feature and like done.

And like, yeah, I don't like Claude may
have been able to do that with browser

control, but it might have been harder for
Claude,

because A, it doesn't have access to my
meta account,

and Threads is going to be ornary about
logging in.

And I don't know.

I I felt like Muse was the place to go.

Now, Claude Duet, when that comes out,

I would one hundred percent have tried it
there.

But using Muse, again, don't put it on
your Mac,

I mean, Claude would have

but this was useful.

just done this because it can use your
browser.

They can literally use your Chrome
browser,

and if you're already logged in,

It's right.

it

would have been fine.

It would have been fine. And yeah,

it probably could have done it.

I also I mean that browser would have to
be open on a on one of my Macs doing that

task in the background, which might have
been fine.

Yeah. I do that all the time.

I d I do it a lot, but I also record a lot
of podcasts.

So like there are times where I don't want
Claude messing with Brave.

You know what I mean? And I don't know if
I don't know how long it's gonna take,

I'm I like the fact that I can just hand
it to Muse.

And Muse is doing it on its own browser
somewhere else.

Sure.

And I I know the Claude app now has like a
built-in browser,

but I'm looking forward to Claude Duet,

where it can use some VM in the cloud to
do this kind of task.

But use it's useful.

Yeah, and that's the reason

you don't need to install Muse on your
computer is that it already has

a computer in the cloud.

Right. Exactly.

You don't it doesn't need your computer.

So I've had some interesting have you
still been using Muse at all or

Yeah, I mean we we didn't get off on the
best foot,

Y you have a love hate relationship,

so I'm cautious.

or maybe a hate hate.

I do have it so here's the pro okay.

Here's my problem with Muse. First of all

I was like, okay, I'm trying to sell
something,

a marketplace. Could you just anytime
somebody sends me a Facebook message?

Because again, Meta already has access to
my Facebook mess.

I mean, they're encrypted, whatever,

fine. But it's Meta. Go ahead.

You can have access to the the garbage
that comes to me in my Facebook messages.

And just let me know if someone is
interested in this thing.

And then I'll tell it, respond to that
person or whatever.

But then it started to like

Three hours ago, so-and-so sent you a
message,

you still haven't responded, and they look
like they're ready to pull the trigger.

I don't I don't like the

You should I'm like, you're

too, you're too zealous. You need to
settle down,

I don't like that.

and then it would say, You should do this.

I'm like, stop telling me what to do.

I don't need you to

Yeah, don't

I I'm a I'm a person. I know what to do.

I've done this before. I don't need any
help.

I just want you to literally do the thing
that I asked you to do.

And the the thing I originally asked it to
do was,

well, whatever, send me a brief every
morning.

Tell me.

Every morning, here are five things that
happened yesterday that could

be worth writing about. And and it would
do that.

But then it started sending me updates
throughout the day.

Hey, post brief, this thing happened.

You should know about it and you should
consider this and this and this.

And I finally had to say, Stop.

I don't want you to make

Yeah, stop it. Stop it.

any I asked you to send me a brief.

I never asked you to update me anytime a
story happened anywhere in

the world that could be tangentially
related to technology.

What

Right.

are you doing? Why do you keep doing this?

And

It it has such a hard time just being
constrained to the goal that you give it.

It wants to just do more and more and
more.

Right. Yeah.

Maybe that's helpful. The point is I did
not ask it to do that.

And it is super annoying and it has made
me want to use it less because

Yeah.

I I don't guess what? You know what I also
don't like when peop when something nags

me all the time? I don't like when humans
do that.

Like no one wants to be nagged by a robot
or a person.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. That was okay.

Yeah.

So anyway.

I do have to do a brief. I've been trying
to get something sold on marketplace.

And to some extent, I hate messages.

Like I hate dealing with

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

that back and forth. So that's it's been
helpful.

But also I don't trust it to not have
someone show up at my house.

So I have to still

Right.

basically babysit it anyway. So I don't
know that it's actually more helpful.

Yeah. And I've been running into that like
yesterday it sent me a message.

Quick one for your iPhone Duo video.

Apple pencil support landed early.

It's in twenty seven dot two. And then it
said,

Launch context if you need a should you
buy Friday angle,

supply is severely constrained.

Most pre orders are slipping into January.

Like I didn't ask it for any of
information.

And I already knew any all that
information.

But like I I don't like that it's
suggesting that kind of stuff.

Like

Yeah,

it's way too eager. Way too eager.

It's too it's too eager. So I'm hoping

And that is the biggest

problem.

I'm hoping Claude Duet is more
conservative on that side.

So that's Muse and Agents. And once Claude
Duett comes out,

we'll you know we'll talk about that.

One other one I just want to throw in
here.

I've been enjoying local models with LM
Studio.

And I've you know have all my shortcuts
now that run the local models,

and I tried a new model, Gemma,

which is Google's open weight model.

I it was immediately making my shortcuts
fail because it was timing out.

And when you use the get contents of URL
action in shortcuts,

it has a limited amount of time it'll run
before it just stops.

And Gemma was stopping that all the time
because it has a thinking mode.

I didn't realize that. So in LM Studio,

I went to my Gemma model and I stopped
thinking.

I stopped at thinking. I said,

Quit thinking, just do it.

Don't think. Don't hit

Don't think, just do. Top Gun Maverick.

And once I stopped the thinking part,

super fast and even better than Quinn when
it comes to summarizing articles.

And so I'm now on the Gemma local model
train and really thinking about trading

in my Mac minis for an six Mac mini.

So we'll see. We'll see. 'Cause I wanna

Wouldn't you

get an five Pro?

I don't I don't know. It'd be more
expensive.

Get an five Pro

or an five just get an five Pro.

Because that's the

But I

only option in a yeah, that's the other
option,

right? Is an M5 Pro.

The two nanometer process

of the M6 got me like I like that idea.

Just to make it a crazy face. And the five
Pro is more expensive.

I just all the only thing I wanted to do
is I'm gonna screen share

in and tell Claude to make a change on
some apps.

Number one. And number two, run the local
model through my shortcuts.

But what I'm sorry. Which

That's

is GPU cores?

What, the local model or the

Yeah.

sure. But it's got two neural engines,

Jason. Two neural engines. It doesn't help
with the AI processing?

That doesn't have any that doesn't help
that at all.

No. Not for the running the local models.

Apple if you're listening, I need an five
Pro maxed out Mac Mini and an

six Mac Mini back 'cause I already sent it
back.

I need those two things so I can do a side
by side test.

Please and thank you.

You don't even need

it maxed out. I mean forty eight gigs of
memory is enough to run

I need it maxed out, Jason. Maxed out.

an most I think four I think

Don't send mixed signals.

I think forty eight gigs is maxed out,

isn't it? What's the most you can put in a
Mac min ~ okay

it might go up to 64. I don't want

to send mixed signals if Apple's
listening.

I want to maxed out. M5 Pro. Hold on,

now I gotta see. Mac Mini. I'm gonna go.

Anyway, ~ that's what I want my Mac Mini
to be doing now,

so I gotta I gotta get one. M5 Pro starts
at $1,700.

Higher, you can get up to 64. And I can
get a one.

64 gigs, you're right. Okay. And you can
get eight terabytes in that thing.

I'm not getting eight terabytes.

Wow, it would cost more than your

I can do one terabyte.

Tesla, but you can get eight terabytes in
that thing.

They would. Thirty three

hundred dollars. See, that's the I don't
want the five Pro.

No. I I'm good with the six, thirty two
gigs of memory,

one terabyte SSD. That's sub two grand.

And if I trade in three Mac minis,

that's like just a few hundred dollars
difference.

That's all I'm saying.

I'm just saying

you're going from twelve cores GPU to
twenty core GPO.

That's for what you want to do.

Truff I'm just telling you. Okay.

Okay, I'll think about it. I'll think
about it.

The good news is you don't have

I don't know why I I don't know making an
angry face.

to upgrade the hard drive, the SSD,

for what you're gonna do.

But then I

sure but I then I also have like the every
time I think about doing this,

which has been twelve times in the last
two days,

because David Sparks has me thinking about
it.

Since Mac Power uses on Tuesday,

because David Sparks traded in all his M2
Ultra no M2 Max Mac Studio for

a M6 Mac Mini. Every time I think about
it,

he

That's my bonkers.

you should listen to that episode because
he got flacked for that from everybody.

Everybody in his community.

Was that this last week's?

two episodes ago, before the Michael
Whalen episode.

He talked about how he traded in his M2
Max.

Listen to this, Jason. Eight terabyte SSD.

Yeah.

He traded that in for an M6 Mac mini.

He could have taken just the eight
terabyte SSD and someone

That's it.

would have just it's like when this like
stripping copper out of an old abandoned

Yeah.

house. He could have just sold the SSD for
probably forty thousand dollars.

He probably could have built an five
Ultra.

I mean, anyway, you should listen to that.

He got a lot of flack for that.

I feel like I did listen to that one.

Maybe

maybe you did, but he's he's the one that
has been convincing me.

It was actually a bonus episode in our MPU
Pro Max feed when he first talked about

it. And then he talked about anyway.

The full

Sparky. I I have nine minutes left of that
episode,

so maybe I didn't get to that part.

It might

be but it might be the most. Anyway,

I've thinking about it since then.

But every time I do, I'm like,

man, I could have an M6 Mac Mini doing all
stuff.

I'm also like, I sit at this Mac Studio
all day,

and it is really nice just to be able to
command tab over to Claude and give

it a command. I'm like, do I want a
separate Mac to do that?

That is the question that I'm thinking.

Do I want a separate Mac?

Not a problem. Claude'll just you just run
you just type into Claude on your

on your Mac Studio and it'll run on the
Mac Mini.

Really?

I do ~ my MacBook Air never runs any of
that Claude stuff on it.

I just I'm using the Claude app on the
MacBook Air,

but it is controlling Claude usually on
this MacBook Pro.

Does

it work consistently? 'Cause every time I
try to do the remote control

for my iPhone with the Claude app it never
works well.

You

have tail scale now, it'll be fine.

~ and you just do the Claude RC command in
the conversation or what do you do?

Hold on a second.

Jason is rummaging around. he's getting
the MacBook air.

Pulling out I'm getting the backpack air
out.

So I can well, because there are three
ways you can do that.

I'm opening like

Okay, so this is the pr this is the thing
I've been running into.

Yes. Tell me. Tell t help me, Obi-Wan.

So Claude

You're my only hope. Because I try to

do the Claude RC command and it never
works well.

So there's the cloud remote control,

SSH or local. And I just SSH into the
MacBook Pro.

And so because I'm using Tailscale,

it was easy. Do you know you know what a
SSH is,

Secure Shell? So it's just gonna

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yes, yeah.

doing everything on the MacBook Pro.

But the interfaces, it's like I'm using
the Cloud app hold on.

If you were using the Cloud app on my
MacBook Pro,

or in your case, the Mac Mini.

Yes.

Right. It

would be doing things essentially using
terminal com command line interface

or whatever to code to whatever,

whatever. I can use the cloud app on my
MacBook Air,

but it is doing the same thing running it
on the MacBook Pro.

It is not like I'm using the Cloud app on
MacBook Air to control the Cloud

app on the MacBook Pro. I'm

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

using the Cloud app on the MacBook Air to
just do stuff on the MacBook Pro.

Does that make sense? Okay.

I know I get

what you're saying. And this is this
dispatch or no?

Okay, we'll talk we'll talk about this
offline.

No. All right, we'll talk about it.

All

right, we'll we'll yeah, we'll talk about
this because I'm ~ I want to

set this up now. ~ so we will we'll follow
up.

We'll follow maybe this is next week's
personal tech.

We're gonna talk about iOS twenty seven
bugs because Jason he's got a rant ~ in
him,

I think, ~ about iOS twenty seven.

And I've

Yeah.

had some issues too. So we're gonna record
if you wanna hear the bonus episode,

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You

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