Humane Ai Pin Reviews, Apple Vision Pro Aims at Business, Microsoft’s Silicon Fantasy
Download MP3May thy knife chip and shatter. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Early reviews of the humane AI pin are out, so we're gonna touch on those. Apple released a new resource paper on a possible large language model, maybe coming to a future iOS. Plus, they're really trying to get business users to use Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:Google's AI photo features are coming to more devices, including the iPhone and a ton more. This episode is brought to you by you, those who support the show directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. And joining me, as always, my friend Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:Good. Mostly you're gonna be joined today by my allergies, so I apologize in advance. If it looks if I just start crying, it has nothing to do with Steven. No. No.
Jason Aten:No.
Stephen Robles:He's I'm
Jason Aten:not that I'm not that emotional. It's just my eyes are on fire for the next
Stephen Robles:And they're not on fire from using Apple Vision Pro because you don't have one.
Jason Aten:I do not have one. That's not why they're on fire. I do not have that problem. Maybe it would be better if I could just wear something over my face all the time. That is true.
Jason Aten:Honestly, during COVID, I didn't have allergies for 2 years because I was wearing a mask all the time and the pollen I defeated the pollen. So
Stephen Robles:Couldn't get to you.
Jason Aten:But for the next 6 weeks, pretty much, I just wanna rip my eyes off. So I apologize in advance.
Stephen Robles:So I I do not suffer from allergies. So I I am, I guess, one of the lucky ones.
Jason Aten:But Yes.
Stephen Robles:My my wife and all my kids do so. Yes. It's crazy. I I said another Dune quote, and I won't typically duplicate movie quotes at the beginning of our episodes, but Dune part 2 is going to be available to stream on digital. You can buy it this Tuesday, April 16th, you can watch it, which is only like a month and a half after it releases released in theaters, which is a crazy quick turnaround, but maybe they're expecting, like, another huge, like, flow of cash, which I am one of them.
Stephen Robles:I pre ordered it already. I will be watching it next Tuesday. But yeah. Because had you seen it in theaters?
Jason Aten:I haven't seen June 2, but here's I wanna touch on this because I didn't know where you're going with the movie quote. But this is you can draw a straight line between this and Taylor Swift. Seriously. She no. I'm not kidding.
Jason Aten:She taught the Hollywood Studios how you do this. Because if you think about it, right, she sold a $1,000,000,000 worth of tickets for people to come see her live.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Then she released her concert in the movie theaters and sold, I don't even know, several $100,000,000 worth of tickets.
Stephen Robles:Yep.
Jason Aten:Then she released it for renting on digital platforms. Right? And then she released it on Disney Plus as a streaming thing. And all the Hollywood studios are, like, just sitting there with calculators going, oh my gosh. She sold the same movie experience to the same people four times, Four times, Steven.
Jason Aten:Right? The same people went and saw it live, saw it in theaters, rented it, and then streamed it. She just Repurposed. She figured out, like, the secret formula and all which is amazing because she's not a Hollywood executive, and yet she did a far better job of
Stephen Robles:the Understand.
Jason Aten:Release windows than any studio ever has understood. And so now we're gonna start seeing that where it's like, okay, well, we've hit the tipping point of where the, you know, the box office receipts are going down. Now let's make it available on for purchase, and then we'll make it available later on probably max. Right?
Stephen Robles:Honestly, that's makes total sense. I also, this is the this is the first time we've actually jumped right into a topic when we were talking about streaming
Jason Aten:right
Stephen Robles:streaming right now because I saw a clip from the Hot Ones show where, you know, the guy eats hot wings and asks actors things and he was talking to Matt Damon asking about, like, why studios or actors can't make movies that they used to, maybe like the smaller films that wouldn't make as much money, and Matt Damon was talking about how back when VHS and DVDs were a thing that studios could really depend on, like, a second wave of income from those DVD and VHS sales, which I imagine also, like, played into, like, Blockbuster or whatever because they would probably buy a bunch of copies of the movie just to rent out, and so that second wave of income has not really existed recently because of the streaming services. So I do wonder, to your point, if, you know, Dune Part 2 is, like, there's still hype around the movie now if we release it just to purchase, not stream. You know, it's not like you'd be able to stream it on Max or wherever for free with your subscription, but to actually pay $30 to watch it at home only a month later, I think that's probably smarter than waiting 6 months, because if someone has the the patience to wait 6 months to buy it on digital, they have even more patience to wait for it to come out on Netflix or HBO Max, and so, like, they're not gonna pay $30, But just watch it just a month after it was out in theaters for $30, that's way cheaper than movie tickets and probably more likely people will do it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And at this point, everybody who is willing to pay money to go sit in a theater to watch this movie has already done that. So let's just either let them pay again to watch it at home or all of the rest of us who haven't been to the theaters who would like to watch it. So
Stephen Robles:That's it. Let them well, anyway, the other quote you were talking about was let them fight, which was last week's quote. And you said someone reached out to you about it?
Jason Aten:Well, no. So we I think it was 2 weeks ago, but we told people in their 5 star reviews
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. To tell
Jason Aten:us what the quote. And then you and I forgot that that was what we had asked people to do. Correct. But I do think we should give credit to it looks like it was sldash41 who you gave them credit for the 5 star review last week, but the title of the review is Godzilla versus MUTA, which is what it's from the first Godzilla move. Not first Godzilla.
Jason Aten:The what is it? 2017 Godzilla movie. The fight between the 2. So I just wanted to make sure that we justly called out s l 41. Thank you not only for the 5 star review, but for actually, like, paying attention and doing the thing we asked.
Stephen Robles:And doing and doing the thing. And a few people actually, I don't know if it was last week, or I cut out the movie quote in the video version last week because I was just in a rush to edit, and we actually got a couple complaints. They said we missed the obscure quote at the beginning, so it will remain. We will continue doing it, of course. Great.
Stephen Robles:And other 5 star review shout outs. Remember, if you give us a 5 star rating on review on Apple Podcasts, you get a shout out. So m slur 146436 29 aperture, battery percentage off, Jason. Just want you to know we had one person mention the battery and it was off. Bigpapa0205 and Kevin JT.
Stephen Robles:So thank you for those 5 star reviews. It was very fun.
Jason Aten:That's great.
Stephen Robles:Alright. So today, April 11th, as we record, this was supposed to be the day that humane AI pin was shipping to those who ordered first or priority orders. I don't have mine yet. I don't have a shipping notification, but reviews dropped. Multiple reviews are out, including David Pearce at the verge as an official humane AI pin review.
Stephen Robles:We got a long video showing him using it around New York City and talking about it, so we'll put this link to the review in the show notes. I obviously wanna talk about this way more when I have mine, in hand, and hopefully that will be soon. Yamane said that they're gonna be fulfilling orders all April, and, I should have not tried to play this video while I was, talking because I was trying to mute it, but instead anyway, so if you watch on youtube.com/atprimarytechshow, you get visuals too. Yeah. Anyway, he used the pin for a while, and basically the main takeaways were the hardware is really cool, especially for the first hardware device from a new company.
Stephen Robles:You know, this is Humaine's first device and service, and, so the hardware is cool, and the when it works, it's cool. But according to David Pearce, he felt like one out of 3 times is when it worked. There was much higher percentage when it just either gave misinformation, like, misidentified a building or a brand and basically made something up. Hallucinating is the term we use when an AI model, actually makes it up. Or he said it would just overheat and stop working.
Stephen Robles:There's several parts in the video where the pen is like, the AI pen has to cool down for a moment and, just give us a second. It's like, well, that's not a great experience. I've experienced that on my iPhone sometimes here in Florida, especially at the beach. You know, it'll say, like, too hot. You know, you gotta wait a second.
Stephen Robles:But that's been maybe twice in the decades that I've had iPhone. So, you know, that's not a great experience, for a device that ideally you wanna be able to use. It doesn't even have a screen. You know what I mean? For overheat.
Jason Aten:It's not just that you wanna be able to use it. It's not ideal for a device you wear on your clothing to get extremely hot.
Stephen Robles:That's that's true. I don't know
Jason Aten:how hot it's getting, but I will tell you that I have had iPhones that overheated. And you touch them, and they're like, okay. We're going to put you in a, you know, an ice bath or something right now because they, you know, it's mostly because of the screen trying to compensate for the fact that the sun is very bright and that heats the whole thing up. But obviously, this doesn't have a screen, and so it's it must be working real hard. But I'm not sure I wanna be wearing something that is going to have to shut down because it's too hot.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. The so that, you know, it's still missing some features. I like how in the virtual review, they just say really slow even when it does work. So, you know, again, I I appreciate the aspirational nature of this product. I think of Yeah.
Stephen Robles:All any product recently, aspirational is the most, germane word to use to describe this. I still love nerdy stuff, and so I'm excited to use this. He also, in the video, showed the ink display, the laser ink display, which would project on your hand and as you would expect it's really awkward to use that and not a great experience. He said just trying to put in the pin to unlock the device, which you have to do every time you detach the little magnet off the back and take it off your clothes, which you'll be doing several times a day because the battery is not gonna last all day. So you have several batteries you have to swap out, and you'll have to unlock it with this lasering display multiple times.
Stephen Robles:So, you know, it's it's a finicky thing. It's obviously a gen one product. You might even say a beta product, but I'm excited to try mine. Hopefully, I'll get it soon, but we'll put a link to this review, in the show notes. You can watch David Pearce ask it what buildings are.
Stephen Robles:He may the first part of the review is basically David Pearce just saying, like, what is this? Look at this. What is this? And it correctly identified Bulbasaur as a Pokemon, but did not identify, like, a lot of other things.
Jason Aten:The the New York stock exchange or whatever.
Stephen Robles:But Yeah.
Jason Aten:I I I the only thing I take exception to is I don't think that humane can get away calling this a beta product because they're charging $699 for a plus a monthly subscription for, like, the cellular service or whatever. So Yeah. And it's notable that in the Verge's vision pro review, which was not exceptionally positive, it was sort of I think the headline was something like it's magic till it's not. So the point was, like, it's really cool except for the you hit a wall, and then it is terrible. They gave that a 7.
Jason Aten:They gave the humane AI pin a 4, which is a fairly low score by verge standards.
Stephen Robles:That is
Jason Aten:a Meaning, like, you like, you have to earn a 4 is, I guess, what I'm trying to say. And and and it sounds like the humane AI pin did. And I think that the $700 price point factors into that because if if the takeaway is it just doesn't work half the time, I think people expect more than that from a product that they're going to pay this much money for and that has been hyped up this much. And Yeah. Sure, I am I I give them, like, the grace that it's probably going to get better, but this is the device that they're selling right now, and they're Yeah.
Jason Aten:Asking you for $700, and it doesn't work half the time. That seems problematic.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And, you know, I feel like we've almost been spoiled by how good so much technology is today. You know, as I was traveling to Los Angeles the other day, I took an Uber to, like, an Apple store and literally the only thing I brought with me was my phone, you know, like the clothes on my back and my phone, and to get back to my hotel, I knew I was gonna have to hail another Uber to get back, and I didn't even think about, like, oh, no, what if the Uber app just, like, crashes on me and I can't order a car? Somehow my phone dies and I can't turn it back on. I don't even think about that.
Stephen Robles:I don't even think about will my phone not work in an hour, which if you use computers for multiple decades like Jason and I, that was not always the case. I mean, my compact Precerio when I was growing up was not reliable. There were times where it would just die
Jason Aten:Control alt delete was, like, the first thing you had to learn on a PC.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. So and I I wasn't using Macs back when I was, like, in junior high in high school, so maybe it was more reliable. But that reliability, I think, is something normal people just take for granted now, which I think and and rightly so because stuff is really reliable like iPads, iPhones. I remember when I was in college, I would record our concerts that I was playing in with my G4 12 inch PowerBook. I would set up GarageBand on the front row, hit record at the beginning of the concert, get on stage to play, so I wasn't even looking at the computer for, like, an hour and a half, get down off the stage when the concert was over, and hit stop, and I never lost a recording.
Stephen Robles:I mean, and I recorded probably like 8 or 9 concerts a year for 4 years, and it was just reliable. Like, garage me was just reliable. So the fact that it doesn't work 2 thirds of the time, I I do think is a problem. So
Jason Aten:Yeah. We'll
Stephen Robles:see. Also, while I was on that Verge, you may not have a review, I just saw this news about Sonos. So I'm gonna throw this in there. Apparently, there's a new Sonos app coming May 7th, and it's, like, totally redesigned and stuff. And so this guy do you have Sonos stuff?
Stephen Robles:Do you use Sonos?
Jason Aten:I have 0 Sonos things in our house. I mean, I I don't know I don't know where we would have room for them. I mean, our television set up in the living room, which is where we normally ever watch stuff, just has 2 HomePods. And you know what? They're original HomePods, and they still work just fine.
Jason Aten:They do. They don't disconnect randomly. They they they work fine. Like, wait.
Stephen Robles:You say they disconnect randomly, but no.
Jason Aten:I'm saying they don't disconnect. I hear people talk about this all the time like that that they have gremlins living in their home pods. And I'm like, I don't think I thought about our HomePods in 5 years. They just went fine.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Well well, there you go. Well, I I use a bunch of Sonos stuff. And to your point, I had to unplug my Sonos Beam from the wall and plug it back in to get it to reconnect, so I don't know. Maybe this app will fix it.
Stephen Robles:But there's that. Alright, some Apple news. Ios 17 dot 5 beta 1 came out, recently, for the developers, and there's some stuff in there, including a new puzzles collection within the Apple News app, and I just wanted to mention this because, listen, I'm a die hard Wordle and connections player, and you're gonna have to pry that out of my cold dead hands for me to try it. No. Just kidding.
Stephen Robles:No. But for real, I do do it every day, and we do it with some friends. And so I appreciate Apple trying to get into the, puzzle game with 17 dot 5. I don't know if I have enough bandwidth to add more puzzles to my daily life, but looks cool. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Do you do any of those? You do
Jason Aten:Wordle connections? I mean, Wordle, yeah. Like, only because my daughter still does Wordle, and so that's kind of a fun thing. But I just I don't I don't have a lot of time in my life just to play games. I hear people talk about it.
Stephen Robles:It's not humble bragging, Jason. You have time to play Wordle.
Jason Aten:Well, Wordle, sure. But Wordle takes, what, 3 and a half minutes?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Connections could take longer depending.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So, I mean, I'm I think this is great. I think it's it's
Stephen Robles:Yeah. No.
Jason Aten:It's great. Clearly, like, games has been a huge part of the New York Times' strategy. And so it does make sense that Apple's like, maybe there's something there that would increase engagement. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:Maybe you could play this on Apple Vision Pro. No. I'm just kidding.
Jason Aten:Probably don't do that. Yeah. Or your Humana AI pen. That'd be be fun.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. They with a laser ink display.
Jason Aten:I don't know.
Stephen Robles:This was probably the bigger news was that Apple released a research paper. This is not the first time Apple's done this. This has been several time in the last year where they released a a research paper on, like, large language models and AI. This one was interesting because there was a number of screenshots showing different UIs on the iPhone and explaining how this large language model, Ferret UI, f e r r e t, would be able to, like, perform certain tasks or at least read what's on screen and then interact with what's on screen. And they trolled every shortcuts user, Matthew Casanelli, Viticci, and myself by basically putting screenshots in here of shortcuts.
Stephen Robles:Look at this. Shortcuts talking about the large language model. There's nothing really like I'm gonna say impressive. It it's this research paper is not saying, like, you can ask it to create an advanced shortcut for you and it will do it. It's not revealing that, but it is saying that this large language model can identify, you know, parts of what's on screen.
Stephen Robles:It will understand, like, make me a simple shortcut or or whatever. So anyway, this is just another point looking towards WWDC for iOS 18 that I think we're really gonna hear about l I think that I think Apple is just gonna say AI. I think they're just gonna say AI at WWDC and they're gonna talk about it in multiple contexts and I think this is just another another point to that argument.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I mean, they've been sort of leaning in that direction ever since they announced the M3 MacBook Pros. Right? That was really the first time they because it was the best computer ever for AI, which then the MacBook Air with M3 is the best computer ever for AI, which is just a funny thing to say about something that mostly happens in the cloud. But it's like it has Wi Fi 6E.
Jason Aten:It's the best one ever for AI. But this is interesting because I think that this is where people will start to, feel the benefits of AI as more than, like, I type something into chat GPT. Because just imagine being able to, like, read an article and say, summarize this and send it to so and so, or, like, do complex tasks that that it where the the AI system, let's call it Siri in your compute in your iPhone is able to interact with the things that are on your screen in more complex ways and understand that. And that's really where the benefit of the LLMs comes in. And it's the ability for it to understand, do a thing, and then give you back information in a way that you can understand as opposed to what Siri, for example, does now, which is like, I don't understand, but here's some web links to something else that you We've we've
Stephen Robles:sent a Wikipedia article to your phone.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's what Siri does. So I think that this would be and I think the multimodal part of it is for it to be able to make sense of things like images on a screen, a video that's on a screen, and take information from that. And, you know, I I don't know. Maybe you could be watching a YouTube video and and ask your phone, could you show me more videos that are like this, or could you show me information about this thing that's not in the video?
Jason Aten:Your your device would then be able to understand what that is and do something with that information. So
Stephen Robles:Which we were actually talking on social media, yesterday, talking about reminders and messages and how you would really like to be able to link to a message, basically like long press on a message, and I just did a video about this on the YouTube channel, like all the different things you can long press on on your iPhone. And you can long press on an individual text message in a thread, but there's not really any things you could do with it after that. So you long press on it, you can like add a sticker, copy, translate, and speak, but it really needs a share button. And one person pointed out in the replies of that thread that you used to be able to say, remind me of this on your iPhone, and it would basically do a deep link to that Imessage in a reminder, and then you can say, you know, we're on mute this time. So I'm actually he said it doesn't work anymore.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna try it right now, live on air. Let's say, remind me about this text tomorrow at 9 AM. So if I ask so I just asked Siri to do that. It actually did it. It actually linked the the Imessage thread in the reminder.
Stephen Robles:That's great.
Jason Aten:That's great that Siri will do that. But also, if I'm somewhere where I don't want to have to talk to my phone, I should just No.
Stephen Robles:I know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Like, this and honestly, as I thought more about because somebody did respond, like, I use Siri plus reminders all the time. I will just my wife will say to me, hey. Could you start the dishwasher after so and so gets on the bus? And I'm just I won't remember.
Jason Aten:So I just will say to my device, hey, remind me in a half an hour to do this thing. Like and it works every time. And it's, honestly, it's my favorite feature of the watch. I just talked to my watch. Remind me of this thing later.
Jason Aten:That's great. And it's great that it is somewhat context aware. It is so bizarre to me, and this is also true of Apple Mail, that you just don't have a share sheet that allows you to easily go between things. And what's what's wild about that is, like, I use spark email, and spark email has all of these capabilities for, you know, I can have an email or I can have something, and I can just tell it, like, add this to things or add this to reminders or add this to whatever. So, why is it that 3rd party system services, like, have better access to stuff like this then?
Jason Aten:And my point is, how often do you get a message that you wish you could remember later because you're not at a good time to do something about it? And one of the responses that I got was like, well, it would be wonderful if you could just mark it as unread. I don't want that red dot bothering me all day. I don't need that overhead mental baggage. I just wanna be able to tell, you know, long press on my phone and say, add this to reminders and just
Stephen Robles:That's it.
Jason Aten:Let it remind me 6 hours later. Basically, I wanna snooze it, but have it show up in a different context. Because when I sit down to go through tasks, I don't wanna have to swipe through messages. Like, who wants to do that? No.
Stephen Robles:No. Right. Exactly. Also mental baggage. That would be a great book title if you ever want to like write about that.
Stephen Robles:That's that's pretty good. So this is I just wanna say in reminders, this was the reminder I just created. So it says, Trevor Williamson was the text message conversation I was looking at and it has a little message icon next to it. And I'd I also wanted to mention you can actually drag and drop from messages to reminders. I don't know if I could do this backwards, but like if you're in messages, you can actually tap and hold on a conversation.
Stephen Robles:You can't do this with an individual message, but you can actually swipe over. I don't even know if I'm still holding the conversation.
Jason Aten:I think you are.
Stephen Robles:And then you can drop the conversation, and it will create a reminder with a link to that text message conversation that way, which is an interesting drag and drop, function. Like, it's really hidden. Didn't know you could do that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's just about as discoverable as what you were talking about with Notion. Right?
Stephen Robles:I know. Yeah. It's wonderful
Jason Aten:that you can do that finger gymnastics. I was not even sure what you're about to do. I swear I thought you were about to throw your phone. I don't even
Stephen Robles:know how to do that. I'm I'm actually gonna do a whole video on, like, everything you can drag and drop Because you can actually do a lot of drag and drop on iPhone, but it the finger gymnastics are crazy because you have to keep one finger on screen at the whole time and then swipe home with the other finger. Like, it's it's not sustainable. So I totally agree. You should just be able to long press on an individual text message and create a reminder with that.
Stephen Robles:It's
Jason Aten:it's like, wait. You can do the Siri thing, and we're not going to add long press, but what you can do is long press and hold on the screen and then just do a bunch of other stuff. And that's so much easier. I'm really bad. Thank you, apple.
Stephen Robles:Not great. I will I am gonna put in a shortcut. I should in a super in a future video, where you could, like, copy the clipboard and create a reminder with the the text, but you can't get the deep link to a specific text message through shortcuts or any other way, which I found interesting. Like, I know there's deep links to mail, like you can get a deep link to an individual message in mail if you use the Stock Mail app. And I thought you could do that with text messages too, where you could get a deep link to a specific message.
Stephen Robles:So I'm gonna ask the primary tech show, army out there if anybody knows of a way to figure out how to get a deep link to an individual message, not the conversation, but an individual message. I don't think there's a way, because, like, Jason is saying, you long press on the message, there's no options. There's no share.
Jason Aten:Add an exclamation point or you can reply. And if you click more, it doesn't like what it doesn't even do anything you'd expect.
Stephen Robles:It's a way to go. It goes into a different mode, which then lets you basically forward the message to someone else.
Jason Aten:Yes. That's that's what more should be. Yep. Absolutely. Like, yeah, you click more and it all it does is let you highlight more messages.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. And then and then forward those messages to someone else, which is not in it should not you should not have a more menu option for just copying the text basically to somebody else. But anyway
Jason Aten:Anyway.
Stephen Robles:This has been our rant on messages on iOS 17. Maybe iOS 18 and LLM will fix it. I
Jason Aten:you know, I just feel like this seems like such an obvious thing. And, yeah, in this the shortcut things is great that you can use shortcuts to do a lot of things. The deep link thing, I don't know if that has anything to do with the blast door, which is their their sort of sandbox around messages that doesn't because that way, that's how they protect you from if you have an someone sends you an image, but really that image has, like, some sort of embedded malware. Like, it doesn't go beyond messages and stuff like that. So I don't know if there's some I don't know if it has anything to do with that, but I just feel like shortcuts is a great solution, but it should not be the only way to do these things because I feel like the of the 2,000,000,000 iPhone users, there has to be less than, like, a 100th of a percentage of the like, you know what I mean?
Jason Aten:Like, they're not they're not hundreds of millions of people using shortcuts. There has to be a better way.
Stephen Robles:There's 100 of 1,000 because they've seen my shortcuts videos.
Jason Aten:There may be 100 of 1,000,000, but out of 2,000,000,000, I just no. No, Steven. That's just me. I just watch them over and over.
Stephen Robles:You just watch them on repeat? Thank you.
Jason Aten:And I haven't learned anything, so I'm really sorry.
Stephen Robles:No. No. That's not. No. No.
Jason Aten:K. I'm just kidding.
Stephen Robles:Our last Apple thing and then I will move on. The big Department of Justice antitrust case with the United States DOJ suing Apple, there was a judge assigned, Michael e Farbiars, but he's actually recused himself from the case. No specific reason was given, but there is a rule mentioned in the announcement, canon 3c1d, which says a judge must disqualify themselves from proceeding when the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned. And I'm curious, in a case like the DOJ versus Apple, I feel like anyone who uses a smartphone is gonna have some impartiality about something. If they use an iPhone, there's probably some impartiality.
Stephen Robles:If they're an Android user, there's probably some impartiality. So I'm curious, maybe he has like a a friend or relative who works at Apple maybe? But I found this interesting that something caused him to the judge to recuse himself from the case. And I don't know how anyone I don't know, would
Jason Aten:I mean, it could be as simple as, like, someone has an, you know, a a retirement account and, like, they realize, like, I have, you know, $800,000 worth of Apple stock in there or something. I mean, who knows? And that's pretty benign. Like, judges are allowed to have their money invested. The point is you don't want a judge that appears as though like, that's the the impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
Jason Aten:That doesn't mean that the person would do a bad job. It's just that you don't wanna give either party the appearance that whatever decisions get made along the way Right. Could be because of this other thing. Maybe they have a spouse who once worked at Apple. Maybe they have a kid who worked on the thing that, like, sold a company to to Apple or who, like, it's just, there's a lot of options.
Jason Aten:But like, I actually saw somebody mention this and like, well, you know, a lot of judges come from the Department of Justice. Yeah. But every single case that the US brings, they can't have a new judge just because that judge was once an assistant US attorney or something like that. Like, the judges are generally pretty good at being impartial in those sort of situations. So my guess is it wasn't that the judge was thinking, I can't fairly decide this case.
Jason Aten:It was that there's some circumstance that people might look at and say, hey, you know, they they were they were not impartial.
Stephen Robles:My theory is this judge went to an Apple store, got a demo of Apple Vision Pro and it changed his life. And he said, I can't speak a bad word about this company. Apple Vision Pro changes everything. Or
Jason Aten:maybe this judge, their favorite hobby is cloud game streaming. And so
Stephen Robles:Fair. Fair. He's a
Jason Aten:heavy Game Pass user.
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:And it was just like they realized, you know, somebody shared a picture from, like, a, you know, a Labor Day barbecue, and there's, like, 7 Xboxes lined up with TVs. And they're like, maybe this is not a good look for the judge on this case. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Or he just plays Fortnite and he's mad. It's not on
Jason Aten:the app. Okay. Well, that's possible. That's what
Stephen Robles:it is. That's what it is. Alright. To Google, I thought this was funny. Google, the AI editing tools in Google Photos, many of which were announced with, like, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro last year, a lot of those features are gonna be on iPhone and other Google Phones if you use the Google Photos app, and this is starting May 15th, I believe.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, May 15th. All these tools not all these tools, but many of these AI editing tools will be coming even if you use Google Photos on the iPhone, which I always find ironic, like, Google basically just puts a lot of its features on iPhone. Maybe this is why Google is not being sued by the DOJ because they are they share their features across platforms. But you'll be able to do things like the photo unblur, which, you know, if someone was a little blurry in a photo, it makes it clearer, the magic eraser, and you'll be able to do all this on your iPhone or older Google Phones, and there's some specifications in this article about which phones will do it. 2 features that will not be coming to iPhone and other phones that will still be exclusive to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro is the best take feature, which was arguably one of the better features launched recently where you take a bunch of photos of the same group of people and it will let you choose faces for each person, so everyone's looking at the camera and smiling, and the audio magic eraser, which is it would basically clean up background noise or whatever if you were filming a video.
Stephen Robles:So those remain exclusive to the newest Google Pixel Phones which, let's be honest, not many people probably have but that's their, you know, they're keeping those 2 for themselves.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I the only thing I wanna say about this just for our audience because some people may be tuning out right now and be like Google, Android, whatever. I just want to throw out, Google Photos, by far the best way to back up your photos from your phone, to have a second backup. I have Google Photos on my phone, and I don't really ever use it for anything except for it just automatically sucks all of the photos that I take into Google Photos. So I now have them in 2 places.
Jason Aten:It's not like I plan on going anywhere, but it's so it's so nice to know that, like, if you got locked out of your Apple ID because somebody stole your device and change whatever happened, like Right. You have a second copy of them that's just and everybody has a Gmail account. Right? Like, it's just attached to your Google account or whatever. So I just I thought I'd throw that out there for for users that if you are an iPhone user and you're not using Google Photos, like, just download the app and let it just do its thing in the background.
Jason Aten:It's fantastic.
Stephen Robles:I agree. I I tried it with multiple apps years ago because Dropbox also has a functionality where if you have the Dropbox app on your iPhone, you can tell it to back up your photos, you know, give it full access to your library.
Jason Aten:Really, really wants to back up all of your photos on every device you install Dropbox. Let's just be clear.
Stephen Robles:It really does, but I found Dropbox's implementation to not be as good as Google's. I know I I do think Google Photos, if you want a backup of your photos, it's the way to do it. I did that as well, for a long time. I stopped syncing it because every once in a while, Google Photos would, like, start backing up and my phone would get really hot, and I was, like, a little you know, it happens.
Jason Aten:Because you're at the beach, apparently. You just keep like you like to keep rubbing that into the rest of us.
Stephen Robles:No. No. But you did burning my phone. But my wife has it turned on and I still have all like a basically all my photos up probably till, like, 20 18, 2019 are backed up in Google Photos. And then shared library is something that I use a lot.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if you use shared library with your family, but, shared library is a great feature on the iPhone where, you know, you can basically, when you're taking a picture, select this photo to go to the shared library, meaning you, your partner, or just trusted contacts, like you will all get these photos in your library once it syncs to Icloud. Or you can select a bunch of photos and move it to the shared library after the fact. And so that's what I do. So if, like, we were at an event, it was like an end of school year, celebration earlier this week, I took a bunch of photos and then that evening, selected them all and moved it to the shared library. And so now they're on my wife's iPhone and Icloud account as well.
Stephen Robles:And so that's kind of currently my, quote unquote, backup solution, but I'm probably gonna turn Google Photos back on. It's probably a good idea.
Jason Aten:It is. It's just a great way to have a second copy of all your photos. And it is actually a really easy way to share libraries with like, if you just wanna take a collection of photos and share them with someone, they don't necessarily have, iCloud is fine because you can just download them now. It used to be kind of cumbersome, but it's great. So you don't have to worry about who you're sending them with.
Jason Aten:You can send them that link, they can open it, and they can add them to their own library if they're using Google Photos. Compared to like the Dropbox thing where people are like, you gave me a Dropbox link. I don't know what this is. It's not a very good photo viewing experience. So I just I think it's great that these features are coming as well.
Jason Aten:I just think, like, there's probably a lot of our audience who are like, Google Photos. What? And I'm like, you should probably download it. It's worth it.
Stephen Robles:It it is worth it is worth it. Listen, I mean, you know, I understand the consternation of using Google services, but Google Photos is great. Everybody still uses YouTube. You know, I see I see some people post on social media like, I don't use any Google services except YouTube. Well, okay.
Stephen Robles:That's a pretty big one.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:That's a pretty big one.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Did you see the Washington post article? This is really about they just wrote published an article a couple ago about how YouTube is the single most important app on the Internet. It's, it's and I think if you think about that, like, it is where people figure out how to change light bulbs in their car, right? It is where people figure out how to cook certain things.
Jason Aten:It is where you get entertained. It's where, like, oh, you find out reviews of new devices you want. It's like, it is just, it is the, and it's also by far the single most successful online economy. Right? It does such so much a better job than Facebook, than TikTok, than Instagram, than any of those things.
Jason Aten:The creator economy on on I'm sending you this link. On YouTube is so much more and so, like, the idea that people are like, you know, I don't use any Google services. Really? Come on. Like, you don't ever watch a YouTube video.
Jason Aten:It is the 2nd most popular search engine after Right. Google search. Yeah. And it is it is I the number of videos that are just upload like, how is it possible that Google is able to run a service where people are just uploading an infinite amount of video content every single minute. It's just kinda mind blowing.
Stephen Robles:So Well, and I've seen other recent posts about if you're a creator making content, no other platform is going to surface a video you uploaded years ago to someone searching today, like Right. In Instagram, your real post video from 4 years ago, no one is ever gonna see that again. Right. Like, the algorithm is even find it again. Can't even find it.
Stephen Robles:Like, it's never gonna show it. And yet, I'll go on YouTube, and my 2 boys are doing more skateboarding now, and so they'll ask for, like, tutorials on how to do a trick, a skateboarding trick, and I will search for this trick and see the videos and many of them that come up in the top are, like, 9 years old. Yep. 5 years old, and they have millions of views and, obviously, still getting views because I'm about to watch it. Yep.
Stephen Robles:It's because it's a great resource and that is something unique to YouTube where it rewards quality content, which I think is a difference. I'm not saying there's not quality content on other platforms. TikTok, there's really incredible creators on there, very unique creative perspectives on there, but TikTok does not reward that kind of creativity like YouTube does. And so if you, you know, present a piece of information that's worthwhile, it's done with quality, you're providing value to the viewer, like, you're saying YouTube is the one platform that will reward that for literally years. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And even I, like, the first video I ever published to my YouTube channel is about screen time settings on iPhone. I've filmed it in the pandemic, like, with my iPhone. It was not great video quality, not great audio quality, but I'm still getting views on those videos today because I get comments. I'll see comments where people either ask or they'll say thank you for this, and it's like no other platform that's algorithmically driven is going to surface those kinds of old things. And I I guess you could argue Google search can do that too.
Stephen Robles:I mean, depending on what you search, although we talked about Google search last week and it's getting worse and maybe that's not as true presently, you know, an article from several years ago would be something that, you know, if it's read by a lot of people and a lot of people found it valuable, it would be prioritized. So, yeah, I I'm I agree.
Jason Aten:Well, and the one difference between Google search and YouTube search is that the barrier to entry for YouTube is not high, but it is certainly higher than publishing text on the web. So there so if what you really want is to figure out how do I change the headlight in my car, the answer you get from YouTube will probably get you the answer faster and be easier to understand than scrolling through 75 pages of, like, auto repair places or just people who are trying to sell you something else. Right? Because the YouTube creator who put that up, if they're monetized, they just make money off of the ads that play. Right?
Jason Aten:And there is that doesn't mean YouTube is perfect. Like, the reason every single video, even to replace the headlight on your on your car is, like, what, 8 minutes long is so that they can get a mid roll ad or whatever. So it doesn't mean that it's not it's not I'm not saying it's perfect, but the barrier to entry is just high enough. There's just enough friction there that it is not complete garbage yet.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. No. And I'm hopeful about it. And speaking of money, let's just say you can watch primary technology on YouTube.
Stephen Robles:And right now, we crossed 600 subscribers.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:So thank you for that for all those who did that. But as Jason was saying, in order to monetize on YouTube, you do need a 1000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. The 4,000 watch hours on our channel, we're gonna achieve that pretty quickly, but we need you. And so this is the ad spot for today's episode, and so our members don't get this because they've already supported the show, but you, viewer, you listener, if you're listening to this in your podcast player, go over to youtube.com, search for primary technology, or just click the link down in the show notes and go subscribe to the YouTube channel over there. We wanna try to get to a 1,000 this year.
Stephen Robles:I think we're gonna do it pretty easily, but we could do it faster if you go there and follow and subscribe to the channel there. And you can also support the show directly. We've got more and more people doing it every month, and we really appreciate the support. They're not hearing this because they're they're subscribers so I cut this out. But so you know we're thanking them.
Stephen Robles:And you, we're thanking you if you can go over and support the show either directly in Apple Podcasts, $5 a month, you get ad free version, this portion cut out, but also bonus episodes every week. Today we're gonna talk about buying appliances, which is Jason's about to go off on appliances, and I am too because I had to get a repair part for my fridge and that was a hassle. Anyway, so you get bonus episodes and you get the entire back catalog of bonus episodes when you start supporting the show now. You can also do it at primarytech.fm. Sign up through Memberful, monthly or annually, and you get a feed with the bonus and ad free episodes all at once.
Stephen Robles:And so we thank you for those who do it. And if you can't do that, we understand 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts is also very helpful. So thank you for supporting the show. And now, back to Google Gemini and OpenAI getting in a little trouble for harvesting a bunch of data from what we were just talking about, YouTube.
Jason Aten:Speaking of YouTube, yep.
Stephen Robles:Look at this. Look at this synergy. Basically, they millions of hours were supposedly ingested by OpenAI to train chatgpt and Google Gemini, which I almost feel like maybe Google is okay ish to, like, train its LLM model on its service. You know, it's it's Google. Anyway, they're getting in little trouble because it's being discovered that they've been transcribing basically a ton of millions of hours of YouTube videos training their LLM models, and I think this is gonna be an increasing issue as we go forward with more AI models, where if you do a Google search and it surfaces some AI generated article that was created because an LLM scraped a YouTube video, and now you've basically stolen a view from that creator and video because the search result is this AI generated text based on it.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. It's getting messy, and we don't really have tools or laws to help with this just yet. And I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I mean, if you were trying to create a large language model that was capable of understanding humans and returning information in a format like natural language, YouTube seems like the obvious place to go, right, because it is literally just 1,000,000,000 of hours of humans, generally speaking, talking about things. Right? So it totally makes sense. I think the problem here is, you know, there was a interesting, interview between Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal and as Amina Maradi, who was the chief technology officer, then for a very short time was the CEO when Sam Altman was kicked out.
Jason Aten:And now is back as, I think, the chief technology officer. And Joanna Stern just asked her, like, so what did you train it on? And she's, like, publicly available information. So She's like, so you mean, like, YouTube? And she's like, publicly available information.
Jason Aten:Like, I don't really know how that works. I'm like, you're the chief technology officer. You cannot say you do not know how this works. But, like, literally, Joanna Stern says, like, so, videos on YouTube. And her answer is like, I'm not actually sure about that.
Jason Aten:But, they definitely don't wanna get sued. That's the reason that she's answering the question. She absolutely knows whether videos on YouTube were used. She just doesn't really wanna say it on the record. And even for Google, I think the problem here is that when you upload a video to to YouTube, you're not thinking that this will then be used to someday train a model that could replace what you're doing as a creator.
Jason Aten:Right?
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:That's not the thing that you're like, sweet upload. Let me push the upload button and now my career is over. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:That's not the way that this is supposed to work.
Stephen Robles:You know, I I made a whole YouTube video yesterday, and I'm not I didn't publish it because, I don't know, it didn't feel right. I'll put it in the show notes of this episode so the the real ones wanna go watch it. But I had some thought about, you know, the future of the creator economy with all this AI stuff, and we talked a little bit about, you know, last week and the week before, but I do think that I'm still semi optimistic that with all the rise of AI generated content that people will gravitate more towards a trusted voices mentality when it comes to a topic. And kind of like in the old days of the Internet where you would go to a website if you wanted to learn about a topic, you know, for me, in, like, the aughts, it was Engadget. I would go to Engadget every day because that's where I got my tech news.
Stephen Robles:And I trusted the voices and the people that were there. At the time, it was actually Nilay Patel and Joanna Stern and all of them at Engadget. And I think going forward, when it's as it becomes harder and harder to identify what's AI content, what's real, I think people will be like, well, I'm not even gonna try and figure that out. I'm just going to go to the people, the names that I trust to talk about a thing. And that's why if you're a creator today, if you're a writer like yourself, you make videos, you make podcasts, that really making sure that trustworthiness is almost one of the top priorities in everything you say and do.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be more meaningful in the future because people are gonna ask themselves, who can I trust about a topic? And if it's smart home or shortcuts, maybe they'll come to me. And there's all there'll be multiple trusted voices. They can go to Shane Watley or Eric Wielander for smart home stuff because they're trusted voices. And I think that's gonna be the goal in near future, to become a trusted voice, almost like old school news anchors.
Stephen Robles:And in my video, I talked about when I was growing up in New York, there was a name I still remember, Chuck Scarborough. He was like the NBC Channel 4 news anchor, and I saw him, like, every night on the 11 o'clock news, and he was a trusted voice. Why? I don't know because I saw him every day. He reported on the news and it was just a name that I, you know, could identify and if I say, oh, he's saying it, then I can believe it.
Stephen Robles:And I think we're almost gonna be moving back towards that trusted voice economy rather than, like, what's the top result in a Google search. So I think that might be I'm optimistic for creators for that economy. You just have to make sure you're trustworthy and you're you're doing good stuff. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yes. Because I think the thing that the teens want the most are the old school news anchors. Listen.
Stephen Robles:On YouTube. I know. Yeah. I know you're being facetious. But if you if you look at TikTok, you know, a clear example of maybe what a younger generation is looking for.
Stephen Robles:What are they you know, they go to that and the algorithm feeds them videos that are like, but they also identify with creators. Like Keith Lee is again a prime example of he became a trusted voice, where people are like, I'm gonna watch every Keith Lee video. And like an old school news anchor, it became like, this is the person I wanna see every night because I trust what he has to say or he entertains me, and I know it's him, and I like you like you just develop an affinity for him. I think that's why the podcast medium is special still, especially audio podcasts, because when you listen to someone's voice for hours on end, for years on end, you just develop a connection and it's like this person has said things that I agree with or that I trust and so I'm gonna keep listening to them. So I think the young people do want news anchors, they're just not called news anchors.
Stephen Robles:They're just
Jason Aten:called creators, they're just called YouTubers.
Stephen Robles:They're YouTubers. And and if TikTok still exists, who knows?
Jason Aten:Well, Anne, just to close the loop on all of this Yes. Which is one of those phrases I hate, close the loop. But
Stephen Robles:Open the kimono.
Jason Aten:Totally different connotation.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Aten:I don't even know what I was going to say. No, the just linking it back, the wall, the wall Washington post article
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:Says points out that among teenagers, YouTube is still more popular than TikTok.
Stephen Robles:There you go. So yeah. That's it. That's it. Alright.
Stephen Robles:Well, let's, okay. We're gonna go back to Apple and then we got some grab bag stuff. And I want to talk about our personal tech segment at the end, which is fast Internet because I'm obsessed with it. And there's way faster Internet than we thought possible. But Apple is really pushing on Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:I I get PR emails a lot about Apple Vision Pro. And now the next push is into businesses, spatial computing and businesses. And so this is a newsroom article that came out just a couple days ago talking about all the business use cases. Some I think are unique. Some it's like, okay, looking at analytics in augmented reality, okay, Microsoft 365 is still like pushed in these newsroom articles and it's like, listen, people know what Word and Excel are.
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't know if that's the selling point for Apple Vision Pro or Webex and Zoom. But, there was one use case I thought was interesting. They keep pushing JigSpace, Lowe's style studio. If you wanna design a kitchen, you can do that in AR now. The one, use case that I thought was interesting here was KLM, which is the airline, instead of training on physical airplanes for maintenance, which I imagine they would still be part of the process, but they can train techno technicians using Apple Vision Pro and using that kind of augmented VRE space, to train on airplane maintenance, which that felt like that was kind of one of those use cases where I thought early on, like this would be really useful if you could like overlay instructions onto the thing you're looking at, or be able to, you know, a car engine or an airplane like this is saying, you know, be able to identify that.
Stephen Robles:So really pushing hard on the business space. I don't know. I I my Vision Pro is still not even, like, here in the office. It's over in the other room. I haven't even updated it to the latest software.
Stephen Robles:I was gonna do I don't know what to do with it. But I will be watching Dune 2 on it. I'll tell you that. I wanna be doing that.
Jason Aten:Well and I actually think that this is an interesting sort of point for everyone, and that's that you know, I so I published an article this morning, and my take on this is that Apple is actually starting to figure out what the killer app is for for the Vision Pro and its business, which is weird because everyone who has been talking about it, at least in our circle, are not thinking about enterprise use cases for this. They're like, I wanna watch June 2. I wanna, like, watch the MLS highlights, which was a dud. You know, I wanna, like, be court sided in at the NBA finals wearing my vision pro, like and have my spatial persona buddy sitting next to me, and we're watching again. Like, that's the future that people imagine, and I actually think probably we're gonna get there.
Jason Aten:Okay? But think the way that we get there is be by building out sort of the platform and the way that that's gonna happen is with businesses. And I sort of as I was thinking through this through, kinda related it to think about laptops and smartphones. Right? Laptops originally were designed for people who were road warriors.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, when you were a kid, did you have a laptop at your house? No. You had like a clunky PC sitting on the thing and you
Stephen Robles:had a
Jason Aten:console. Like there was a computer thing that you did, you had to go to and everybody shared the same one because they were expensive and they were big and they were just slow and whatever. Same thing is true with smartphones. Originally, smartphones. I remember, like, one of my, like, first jobs after smartphones existed, I was working for FedEx and the people who had smartphones, like the Blackberries and the were the salespeople, the people who had to go out and have access to their messages and have those types of things.
Jason Aten:And it was it took time, but, like, they built out sort of that platform. And then eventually, Apple came along and was like, we have a better idea. And it turns out that they were right, and they made that into a consumer device. And and in fact, early iPhone days, you couldn't take your iPhone to work. Right.
Jason Aten:You still had to use your Blackberry because it had all of the corporate security stuff built into it and all that kind of stuff. And now you can have an iPhone that has both your business work, iCloud, and your personal next to each other because of the mobile device management and stuff. And so I actually think that Apple is hitting on something that's really important because you can't figure out what to do with your thing that you spent $35100 on. Right? And nobody everyone I know who has a vision pro is like, yeah.
Jason Aten:I use it maybe once a week and
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Or I use it because I need to write about it or do a video. And I'm like, that's not what the vision pro exists for is just to make content. It exists for real world scenarios. And I think that Yeah. You know, the Porsche one was really interesting too.
Jason Aten:The example that they showed of, like, the race engineers can be monitoring with a 3 d version of where the cars go and, like, all these in in camera dash and dash cams and monitoring, you know, the speed and all that kind of stuff. Like, those are things you cannot do without spatial computing. Right? Right.
Stephen Robles:You just
Jason Aten:you can't. You can't do that on a computer screen. It's not the same. The the KLM thing that you mentioned, that doesn't exist in the same way if you're just looking at a 2 dimensional screen. And so I think, honestly, I think that this is the direction it's gonna go for a while, and it's gonna seem super boring to all of us.
Jason Aten:But do you know who is willing to spend 35100 dollars on a device that makes their people more effective, takes less time to train people? A 100% companies. Right? They will just throw money at something that makes their people more productive and saves them money somewhere else. And I think that as a result, that will that is what will build up the ecosystem of experiences and apps and that of thing.
Jason Aten:So it it's boring, but I think it's what will get us there.
Stephen Robles:Well and and I'll say last week, after we recorded the show, on Friday, I actually did the spatial personas with James Rath. He's a YouTube creator. He's also visually impaired, so he's gonna be doing a whole video on kind of the accessibility from someone who's visually impaired perspective on Apple Vision Pro. But it was the first time I tried the spatial personas. I would have tried it with Jason, but he doesn't have one.
Stephen Robles:But anyway So I will say it was much cooler than just a regular FaceTime, because the disembodied head and hands being able to float around in the space is much more useful than like being relegated to the little box. And, like, we opened up a free form document, and we were both able to collaborate on it like we were sharing a whiteboard. And then we even played, like, a Battleship. There's a game app on the Apple Vision Pro where you could play, like, checkers, chess, Battleship, although they called something else probably because it's copyright. And, like, if we were sitting across from each other at a table, I was at Mount Hood by the lake playing Battleship with James, and honestly, it was a really cool experience.
Stephen Robles:Felt it felt different and and, like, good, like, I would want to do that again. But the free form whiteboarding thing, it wasn't perfect, and it's a little awkward like sharing it, but I could definitely see, you know, creative sessions that you might have had with a physical team in person. One day soon, like, you might just be able to do it from a completely remote team. And it feel like and it did feel like I was with James, both of us, like, drawing on his whiteboard. Like, it felt, much different than if you were to just share your screen, like, using Zoom or whatever, and trying to whiteboard on your computer.
Stephen Robles:Like, it did feel like we were both interacting with a shared space, and I think that's unique. And like you're saying, that's that's a business use case. Yep. And, you know, if maybe that allows remote teams to collaborate more or better, then, yeah, that that might be the thing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And you know what cost more than $35100 is flying people to meetings. Right? And if you just sit there and look at a whiteboard, that doesn't seem like a very useful way to spend that kind of money. But if you had a remote team of people and they had had that kind of technology that they could use for that sort of thing, I think well, Ben Thompson from Stratechery talks about, like, just using the Oculus for the horizon work rooms and having meetings that way and how much better that is than Zoom.
Jason Aten:And I think that Cortex guys talk about that occasionally where they will meet in that. And my like, the perception there is that what Apple is doing is sort of a step in that direction, but even better because Apple has all of the other things that you want to do. Right? Your free form board, your different types of, the the content that you actually need to work with. Your work is actually on your devices as opposed to, like, with the Oculus.
Jason Aten:It's sort of a cumbersome way to get your device and your information in there. So I think that, again, what you just described, really cool as a consumer. Right? I could see people doing that sort of thing. Like, hey.
Jason Aten:My, you know, my your kid goes off to college and you wanna play chess with them and you have vision pros and you can sit down and do that kind of stuff. But, really, that's primarily a business use case. And, yeah, it will eventually make its way, I think, to consumers.
Stephen Robles:For sure. But what needs to happen before people can sit in there for hours is not get headaches, or other things in this little bit.
Jason Aten:Do you get headaches? Or do you just not use it enough?
Stephen Robles:I mean, I've used it, like, I've watched I watched Avatar Way of Water for 3 and a half hours in it, and I did not get headaches. You do get eye fatigue because your eyes are like you know, the screen is just a couple inches from your eye, but your eye thinks it's focusing like a couple feet away. And so there is some fatigue there. And I find I have to purposefully blink more in Apple Vision Pro because when you're for some reason, like, I guess you just don't naturally blink as much. I don't know if it's because it's enclosed and maybe they don't I'm not sure why.
Stephen Robles:But I do notice I have to blink more. But anyways, this is, an article from the New York Post saying that users are suffering from super dark black eyes after wearing the Applevision Pro for the first time. I'm not sure. It's the first I've ever heard of something like that. But obviously putting too much weight on the cheeks and some people getting headaches, from just a couple hours in the AppleVision Pro.
Stephen Robles:And again, future models, Applevision Air or whatever, I think it's probably gonna help some of these. The eye thing though I mean the distance of your eye to those screens is not gonna change. And I'm not sure, like, how Apple could address that. I'm also curious percentage wise, like, how many people are actually dealing with this. But
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think it's a very that's the important part. A very small percentage of people are probably dealing with this. But if it's more than 1, then it's now plural. VisionPRO users get a headache or whatever.
Jason Aten:Right?
Stephen Robles:You only need 2 to to
Jason Aten:be able to say that. And it could be the person who wrote the article and someone else that they talked to. I'm not throwing shade at whoever wrote the article. I do think it's important because remember we had the same story about the massive wave of returns that were happening And it turned out it was, like, 6 YouTubers all returned theirs after they make their video, and then they made a video about returning it. Like, it is important to have context.
Jason Aten:But I do think it's an important point that if Apple wants people to wear these for a long period of time, then they need to take that feedback. I think that they probably will work on this sort of thing because wasn't there a report recently that Apple was working on the ability to use this with different vision impairments without having to have the inserts, right? That they were going to try to come up with a way of dealing with that either in software or hardware without having to go through the process of ordering those Zeiss lenses, which would be great if you then wanted to share it with a spouse who had a very different prescription or something like that. So my guess is that they're absolutely thinking this through because they have invested a lot into this platform. They I do not think that they wanna see this go the way of the Newton.
Jason Aten:Right? Where it's like, oh, or or even like the original home pod where, like, it came out and then, like, they couldn't sell out the stock. And so you could buy a new home pod 6 years later and the manufacturer date was like the day they launched or whatever. So I I think that they're probably working very hard on the kind of things that we're talking about.
Stephen Robles:There's also this article is like 1 wrote 1 Redditor. Yeah. And the Redditor also wrote like, I don't know, sourcing like that. This is the New York Post. Like, this is it's, like, legit.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. That'd be a little weird.
Jason Aten:I mean, also, it is the New York Post. I I mean, just Okay.
Stephen Robles:Fair. Fair. Fair. Fair. Fair.
Stephen Robles:I'm not gonna include that one in the show notes. Anyway, alright. Real quick. Mini lightning round, last two things. Microsoft is confident that Windows on ARM, which I feel like I've been hearing about for 10 years, is finally gonna beat Apple Silicone.
Stephen Robles:Silicone, silicone.
Jason Aten:Both of them. It's gonna meet the silicone cases and the
Stephen Robles:silicone cases. People mad. I well, on the Apple inside of podcast, I said silicone one time when I meant silicone and the wave of emails like, why can't I can't believe it? They're very similar words. Okay?
Stephen Robles:These are not like very similar.
Jason Aten:They're one letter different. So I I it's understandable.
Stephen Robles:Silicon. Anyway, they think that these new I think what is it? The Snapdragon X Elite Processors will finally be the performance Windows has been looking for to beat Apple's silicon. I'll leave it when I see it.
Jason Aten:Well and I think an important piece of this is, at least as far as I can understand, the the article, you know, the Tom Warren article, Tom Warren is one of the preeminent, like, Microsoft reporters out there. So, like, his sources are pretty good. But I think that what he's kept putting or or reporting on here is internal beliefs. Like, Apple or Microsoft is not running ads saying
Stephen Robles:No.
Jason Aten:No. No. We're gonna beat the m three max or the M3 Ultra.
Stephen Robles:Like Right.
Jason Aten:But I and to be fair, Microsoft has been of all of the non Apple hardware makers creating really good hardware, like the Surface laptops, the Surface Pro. Like, that stuff is good. If you have what you want is a Windows device, that stuff is very good. I think it will be very interesting to see what they actually come out with because micro the the important piece here is that Microsoft doesn't have a 100% control over the Snapdragon X Elite. Right?
Jason Aten:They it is not a processor that is only tailored to exactly what Microsoft wants, Where Apple Silicon, they can make all of the trade offs and choices based on the end result and the performance that they want for their product. Right. And so I think that that's that's what the piece that is gonna be really hard for them to overcome. Obviously, they're working very closely with Qualcomm on this. But I just think that it's a pretty big you know, they aren't making this claim publicly, so I feel like we we can't drag them for it.
Jason Aten:But I do think that they are they could be overly confident of what they think is that they're going to be be able to be even an m 3 MacBook Air. Like, honestly, I I have one sitting right here. I could use this thing all day and never once wonder if there was a better computer out there.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Well this is they're gonna have an event next month it looks like. It's gonna be, an event in Seattle, the AI PC's and they're gonna unveil Microsoft's gonna unveil what its the future, its vision is for their computers. So we'll see. You know, competition is good.
Stephen Robles:And also the this is from, Engadget, ISPs, so Internet Service Providers, are going to be required to roll out nutrition labels, much like the privacy nutrition labels that you see in, like, the app store for privacy and security. But these nutrition labels are gonna have to reveal all the hidden fees and other things that Internet service providers don't, put on their websites and on their pricing page. Also, like data caps and things like that. And so if there's a data usage policy and then throttled after it, they'll have to make these more visible, more known to users, using these kind of nutrition label style things. I find it curious that I don't know how nutrition labels became the thing that we call all these things.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if there's not a better word for it.
Jason Aten:Well, it's just the metaphor that people understand that on a box of cereal, there's gonna be this thing that it's standardized by the FDA so that you can quickly discern that. But I don't do people pay attention to new I mean, I know some people do don't send me hate mail because it's really important to you. I personally have to look at them because I have a nut allergy. So, like, the way you find out if there's nuts in a thing is by looking at what the ingredients are and stuff. I think it's kind of funny if they're actually going to make them look like this.
Jason Aten:And
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:You know, also, where will you go to get this information? Because for example, on a box of cereal, it's on the box cereal or in the app store, apple has these privacy nutrition labels, but it's right there when you're downloading the app. So what I it'll be weird to see how effective this is, but yes, I'm not usually a fan of regulation. This is like a no brainer, please. And thank you because there is no worse corporate steward of our trust than Comcast in their competitors, not just Comcast, their top, their competitors.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Cause I remember during COVID there was a period of time when I think Comcast waived this for some period of time, but it turns out that like your home internet probably has a data cap, which no one ever thinks about. Right. You, I understand why on my mobile phone, maybe that's true, but on your home internet and at a time when we had 4 kids on zoom school and I was working remotely on zoom all day. And the only other thing in the world we could do is watch because you couldn't go anywhere.
Jason Aten:Every month we were exceeding that. And at one point, Comcast wanted to charge you like a $100 extra a month for it. They did waive it for part of the pandemic, but I we that's one of the primary reasons we switched because Comcast around here, you can get 1 gig up or 1 gig down, I mean, and fast enough upload speeds. But we're, like, we're switching to fiber because they don't care. They don't they don't put a cap on anything.
Jason Aten:They don't nickel and dime you for, you know, whatever. And so I think this is good that that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Making them reveal this information is going to put competitive pressure on Right. Why are you charging these fees? Why are you doing this?
Stephen Robles:Right. The one piece of information I wish would also be included in this, and from this article it doesn't look like it will be a part of this initial rollout, is what they're doing with your data.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:Like, what data ISPs collect and who they sell that data to. Because, I mean, if you didn't know, they do that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We talked about this last week, didn't we? They know everything that
Stephen Robles:you are
Jason Aten:doing on the Internet. They know Steven and I are talking right now.
Stephen Robles:The yeah. They do. They're listening in. Hello.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Hello, ISP.
Jason Aten:Hey, Comcast. What's up? Yeah. Actually, I don't have Comcast, so they can't hear hear this.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. They hear. But I think that would be eye opening, and I and I imagine there's probably some lobbyists from the ISP's that would fight that, for reasons. But I think that would be really valuable and helpful to know as a consumer to be like, who are they selling it to? How much of it are they selling?
Stephen Robles:Should I look more into using a VPN on my home internet? Which I do not. Like I'm I'm not like a whole home VPN thing but I don't know. If I saw some kind of weird data about it, I might I might investigate.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But, I mean, you can't use a whole home VPN because you are so obsessed with speed, and there's no VPN that's going to get you to that point. So
Stephen Robles:Speaking of speed.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:For our personal tech segment. You're welcome. I had to bring I had to bring up this article. Thank you. Apparently, Aston University researchers have developed a technology, a piece of hardware that can take the current fiber optic cables that run the Internet around the world, which I think think was in a bonus episode a few weeks ago where we talked about the undersea Internet cables Yep.
Stephen Robles:That literally bring the Internet across the oceans, which those are also fiber optic cables. Well, these researchers developed a piece of hardware that exponentially increased the speed capable using the same cables, so no new infrastructure required as far as fiber optic cables, but then it can send data at a speed that is 4,500,000 times faster than the average home broadband. The academics transferred data at a rate of 301 terabits or 301,000,000 megabytes per second using a single standard optical fiber cable. And, I mean, I'll just be honest. I need to get Wi Fi 58 now or whatever it whatever that will be.
Stephen Robles:But I'm I'm excited for this.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I think so, like, this is good. I mean, this is an academic thing. I just all I wanted to say about this is I think it's good for them to keep pushing the envelope on this sort of thing. At some point, and I I don't think we're there yet, but the ISP or the connection point, the pipes is actually not the limiting factor anymore because all of your data is served off of a CDN somewhere.
Jason Aten:So it's servers like there will come a point in time where we have exceeded that, but we are so far away from that at this point. Like, this article says that the average broadband speed is 69 megabits per second. So that means that there are people who are paying for internet whose maximum speed that they're capping out at is less than a 100 megabits per second. Right. And there's a whole lot of people who are below that.
Jason Aten:Right? Because Steven's got like 26 gigs a second or something like that, which means he's way offsetting his average for a lot of people. So there's a whole bunch of people with like 5 up and down. Like
Stephen Robles:I know. And I listen. I'm sorry. I'm, we we want you to have better Internet. And then hopefully Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:Hopefully, this this will bring it to pass. But
Jason Aten:I think then then the FCC just recently, I'm, I'm partially making this up because I don't remember all the details, but I believe
Stephen Robles:that it's true. Trustworthiness. That
Jason Aten:the FCC recently changed the minimum required speed to call it, broadband. I I I don't know if it's, like, 25 megabits up and down or something like that. I know Steven's gonna look it up for me while I keep rambling for a second, but I'm pretty sure they do.
Stephen Robles:You're right. You'd know you're right. You're right. So this is, let me share this article. You called it.
Stephen Robles:The this was still trustworthy. This was accurate. The FCC just quadrupled minimum broadband Internet speeds. The new definition of broadband raises the standard to 100 megabits down and 20 megabits up. This was from March 15th.
Jason Aten:So that means it used to be that they could call it broadband if it's 25. Think about that. They could call it broadband Internet if all they were giving you is 25 megabits per second.
Stephen Robles:And 3 up. Yeah. 3 megabits up was considered broadband. So yes.
Jason Aten:I can run faster than than that, Steven. And I have not run-in 20 years, but I can run faster than 3 megabits a second.
Stephen Robles:I would like you know, I like that the visual. How fast would 3 megabits up be if it was someone running down the street?
Jason Aten:Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:And I was sad. So personal tech in the near future, we're about we're less than 2 months away from WWDC. 2024, we're gonna see iOS 18, Vision OS 2 point o. And so Jason and I are going to reveal our list for what we are hoping to see, maybe what we think we'll see. So we wanna hear from you guys.
Stephen Robles:You can email us podcast at primary tech dot f m. You can send us, replies on threads or x. All of our social handles are in the show notes. But we wanna hear what are you looking for in iOS 18 and maybe bugs that you hope are fixed. Screen time.
Stephen Robles:Still hoping for screen time to be fixed. Amen. A little approve screen time request from my Apple Watch. It used to work.
Jason Aten:It used to work. Mine still works, but my problem is that all of a sudden screen time will just, like, turn off on some of our kids' devices, and then I will look at the what they've been doing. And it's like, you have 17 hours of YouTube from yesterday. How I don't remember approving a
Stephen Robles:request once.
Jason Aten:That much. Yeah. Like, I don't know. Could you just have them at your phone looping YouTube video? Were you just really trying to help Steven's viewer count?
Jason Aten:Is that what you were doing? That's where
Stephen Robles:it's coming from.
Jason Aten:Steven's approving my kids is screen time request.
Stephen Robles:I'm getting the request.
Jason Aten:This cable that I ran from my house to Steven's house is just approving screen time requests constantly.
Stephen Robles:That's right. So, yeah, that would be great to be fixed. But, anyway, let us know what you are wanting from Ios 18, iPadOS 18. Love to see some upgrades to iPad as well, but we're gonna do that in a in a episode soon, probably May, as we approach WWDC because there'll probably be rumors about what's gonna be coming. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You know, Mark Mark Erman, he'll probably tell you. But we're gonna go and record a bonus episode about appliances, which have you heard have you listened to John Saracusa about his many escapades?
Jason Aten:Well, they're one of the most classic
Stephen Robles:The fridge?
Jason Aten:Famous, yeah, episodes of ATP of all time. It was ATP. Right? I think it was ATP not not,
Stephen Robles:Reconcilable Differences.
Jason Aten:I can't remember which of the two shows it was, but it was 12.
Stephen Robles:About it all.
Jason Aten:It was preparing the way for the fridge. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I think that would have been a rectives episode where he was talking about his new fridge. But anyway, we're gonna talk appliances, which is definitely technology tangentially related. But if you wanna listen to that, again, support the show on Apple Podcast. You can go to primary tech.
Stephen Robles:Fm. Support us on Memberful. Or give us a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate that as well. Thanks for tuning in and listening.
Stephen Robles:We'll catch you next week.
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