The Ethics of Tech Reviews, Humane Ai Pin Backlash, Game Emulators Come to iPhone
Download MP3They were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today we have a massive show. We're gonna talk about the ethics of technology reviews and the backlash to MKBHD's humane AI pen. I ordered yet another AI gadget.
Stephen Robles:We'll see if it comes before the pin. IPhone has a game emulator in the App Store right now. Awesome dynamics is literally creating Terminator. More physical media has died, and Jason has a special surprise for us. He got an Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:So we're gonna talk about that in a personal tech segment. This episode is brought to you by all of you who support the show directly, and for that, we thank you. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. Joining me, as always, my friend, Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. I've learned a lot this week, Steven, and I can't wait to talk about all of it.
Stephen Robles:You've learned a lot about yourself. You've learned a lesson about love and about Appolition Pro. Yeah. You've learned it all. You've learned it all.
Stephen Robles:At the
Jason Aten:same time. Yep.
Stephen Robles:It's we have so much so much to cover. I'm I'm excited to to talk about tech reviews because I have so many thoughts. So many thoughts. Couple of 5 star review shout outs. Web 1032 gave us a 5 star review shout out.
Stephen Robles:Battery percentage on. Sorry. Nobody's perfect.
Jason Aten:Thank you so much.
Stephen Robles:Hey. Yep. So keep those coming. We wanna give 5 star review shout outs at the top of the show for those of you who leave them, And wanna ask you this, share the show far and wide. There's still people that are discovering the show who follow Jason and I on, like, social media and stuff, but they actually still hadn't heard about primary technology.
Stephen Robles:So we would appreciate if you share the show. I wanted to, like, come up with some kind of, like, social media ambassador prize or contest. I don't have any of that formulated. We should probably talk about it. But one of the things I love to do is get t shirts.
Stephen Robles:I'm wearing a basic Apple Guy t shirt right now, the, Commander 1 if you're watching on YouTube. Youtube.com/primarytechshow. But I would love to get some Primary Tech t shirts, maybe especially before, like, dub dub season, but
Jason Aten:I
Stephen Robles:don't know. I mean, Jason's a photographer. I can make t shirts. I don't know if either of us are necessarily merch experts. Would you would you consider yourself a merch expert?
Jason Aten:No. Okay. I had to even think about what would that mean. Merch expert. No.
Jason Aten:It sounds very contraband ish. But
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm not sure. But we would I mean, we want t shirts, and so we're gonna think about oh, I'm asking all of you, the audience out there listening, watching, if you make designs and t shirts, you know, we don't want you to do work for free. We could maybe figure something out, but reach out to us because we love to have some cool t shirts, for primary technology. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And one other question, we mentioned this review last week, who got the movie quote at the beginning of the show, which that's what we do at the beginning of every show. I say a random movie quote. That's applicable to the subject matter of the episode, so it's not just totally random. He did the Godzilla versus MUTO, but he was asking about is there a shortcut to create a reminder when the daily reading goal has not been met in Apple Books? This is another way to get your question answered on the show is leave that 5 star review.
Stephen Robles:And I know there's a ton of you who've already left 5 star reviews, and you're gonna update your review. But if you ask a question there, we'll do it. Don't see actually the reading goals for books. I'm looking right now in my shortcuts app, and there is not, like, get reading goal or get status of reading goal, so I don't know if there's a way to do it offhand, but I'll do some more research and get back to you, in the future as well. So need to talk about tech reviews.
Stephen Robles:One quick thing before that I'm in the Washington Post, Jason.
Jason Aten:It's very exciting. Hey. Before we before we let you tick your horn, I wanna let you do that. But I did wanna say, so Steven said you can leave us questions in the reviews, which is absolutely true. I will just say there is a, like, slightly better chance that we might answer them if you, like, send them to us on social media or email us at, I don't know, what is it, podcast@primarytech.fm?
Stephen Robles:That's right. Podcast@primarytech.fm or the other guy at It's true. Primary tech dot f
Jason Aten:I did get an email I did get an email to that email address one time. Yeah. Yeah. I feel really bad because now I don't remember what it was about, but it was like a follow-up to something I had said. I mean, I'm gonna look it up.
Jason Aten:But, anyway, all I'm trying to say is sometimes if if especially if you're updating your review and you add something and it's at the bottom, and we we we may not see
Stephen Robles:that
Jason Aten:there is a question in there, We will look. I try to keep Steven honest by checking all of these things that he puts in here. But if you email us or send it to us on social media, you have my word that we will give it our best, effort to try to answer those questions if we can.
Stephen Robles:Yes. Absolutely. So you can email us. The email's in the show notes as well. You could just get it there.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Just real quick, I just wanna say the Washington Post, a reporter reached out to me. His name was actually is Chris Velasco. He used to write for Engadget back in the day, and then before that, he wrote for TechCrunch. And we tangentially had heard of each other around then, but he's writing for the Washington Post now.
Stephen Robles:And he reached out to me, via email and did a little interview with me on the phone yesterday about shortcuts. And so I'm in the Washington Post. It's not like an expose. It's not about me. It's about shortcuts.
Stephen Robles:But there's, my one of my TikTok videos is in there where I talk about shortcuts, and he mentions me multiple times and links to some of my YouTube videos. So that's fun. Although, I wanna thank you, Jason, personally, because I think you were probably the first, like legit publication to quote me in an article, and that was actually what helped me get verified with Twitter when it was actually a verification process and not just something you pay for.
Jason Aten:Not just $8 a month or whatever. $8 a month. That was actually, how I a month.
Stephen Robles:That was actually, how I got verified because I was able to link to the several articles that you had quoted me, and I think one was about smart home. The other one might have been about shortcuts. I don't remember, but, yeah, I appreciate it.
Jason Aten:So I'm I do I feel good that I was able to save you the $8 a month at that time anyway.
Stephen Robles:At that at that time.
Jason Aten:I provided you with that service. You're welcome.
Stephen Robles:And and it does say that now Twitter brought it back where it says verified since the year, so you can actually see when somebody's verified. Anyway, let's talk about tech reviews.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:MKVHD, after we published last week's show, shared his review of the humane AI pin, which the title of his video is the worst product I've ever reviewed for now. Like all the other reviewers, I think that's an important detail, like David Pearce at the verge, who was also very negative about the pin, and many other reviewers. I watched several reviewers. Joanna Stern had a review at the Washington at The Wall Street Journal. Everybody was negative about the AI pen.
Stephen Robles:It is not like MKBHD has not been the only negative review about this product, but because of the title, maybe people went up in arms about this. And typically, MKBHD has either like mid range or positive reviews about products. You know, I watch pretty much all his videos, and when he talks about a product, oftentimes they're good or great, And this is something behind the scenes because Jason and I are also both tech reviewers in different ways. Jason reviews products for ink. I'll do reviews on my YouTube channel at times, and I wanna talk about a review I did many years ago for the original Apple Watch.
Stephen Robles:But part of the thing about being a reviewer is choosing the products you review, and I know for me, oftentimes I choose not to review products I know will be bad. Like Sure. I will get emails from companies that wanna send me something, and whether I pretty much have a good feeling it's gonna be bad or the company was in the news for, like, privacy and security issues, I will choose not to review those products. And just like a journalist at a publication, the stories they choose to write, while as being as unbiased as possible, is in itself part of journalism, is choosing what to cover. So number 1, the humane AI pin needed to be covered.
Stephen Robles:The company has started it's a new start up. This is their first product, 2 ex Apple employees, tons of publicity. Obviously, the humane IPN is everywhere, at least in the tech sphere, and people are interested about it, so it's necessary to cover. I think that's, number 1, important to remember. And then number 2, as you review a product, the backlash, I'll I'll specify first, because this was kind of the tweet that really brought everything to a head.
Stephen Robles:This was a tweet by Daniel Vasalo and it has like, whatever, 22,000,000 views right now. He said, about Marquez's review of the humane AI pin, I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this, namely that it's the worst product I've ever reviewed, when you have 18,000,000 subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility potentially killing someone else's nascent project reeks of carelessness. 1st, do no harm. Which I think is like a medical oath?
Stephen Robles:Isn't that for doctors?
Jason Aten:Right. A Hippocratic Oath, I think.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's part of the Hippocratic Oath, Oath, not the oath of tech reviewers, which there is no oath. So this tweet made the rounds everywhere and brought much conversation on both sides, whether Marquez's right to do this, whether this was responsible, or whatever. And I I want us to get to our thoughts in a moment, but to to close the story, MKBHD then published a follow-up video, which he doesn't often do directly about commentary about his own reviews, but his video was, do bad reviews kill companies? It has almost 3,000,000 views right now as we record, and he talked about his stance on basically reviewing products as a whole.
Stephen Robles:I I wanna say, MKBHD, if you look at the definition of cool in the dictionary, I'm pretty sure his his picture is underneath for two reasons. 1, he is very obviously transparent. Like, when he's talking about technology, it's clear that he's speaking from his opinion, but his very informed opinion, extremely informed, because he has done tech reviews for a long long time, and he has reviewed many tech products. So he is speaking from experience, but he's speaking honestly. Like, I never get the feeling that he is putting on for a company because they sent him a free product, and KBHD needs no free products, and we'll talk about that that aspect of tech reviews maybe in a moment, but also cool in the sense of he was able to explain this without feeling defensive, which is very difficult.
Stephen Robles:You know, I did not get the feeling that MKBHD was being defensive about this. I truly think he was trying to explain, like, what it means to be a tech reviewer, and that was his point and reply to this original tweet that was kind of lambasting him. He basically said, we disagree as to what my job is, which I think is the crux of it. And I have some thoughts because I've had experience with reviewing products, but I find this just a fascinating commentary. And so I'll get to my thoughts in a second, but what what were your thoughts as you saw this unfold over the last week?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think well, 2 things off the bat. First, it I there was really only one that I could find person who took issue with the review. Right? There were a couple of other people who maybe added on to the replies in really it really sort of magnified this weird perception that people have of this because, like, the the most searing indictment you can make of him is that he wasn't as hard on the Cybertruck.
Jason Aten:But the only reason people that made people mad is they just don't like the Cybertruck, and they don't like Tesla, and they don't like Elon Musk. And so it's like, why didn't you say bad things about this thing so you obviously have no credibility, which is just not true.
Stephen Robles:I I just wanna interject there. I did see other a good number of other people, both on threads and Twitter, calling MKBHD out for being unfair with specific examples, such as the Pixel 6 a. MKBHD said it had a 60 hertz refresh rate, and it felt slow. But when he reviewed the iPhone 13, 14, 15, which has a 60 hertz refresh rate, he doesn't mention it's slow, to which I would say, I actually have a Pixel 6 a and my wife has a 15 with a 60 hertz display, and the 6 a feels slow compared to the 15.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Also, the 6 a has a processor that's the equivalent of the original Macintosh to, like, a Power Mac. Like, it's Yeah. Right? Compared to the iPhone 15?
Jason Aten:Come on.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it does have a tensor chip supposedly, but it it feels slow. Like, the bottom line is MKB is due when he reviews a product, it is for the viewer, which we'll talk about, like, who are tech reviews for. It's for the viewer, and if a viewer's real life experience would be that swiping on a Pixel 6 a is gonna feel slower than swiping on a iPhone 13, then that should be what he said, even if the technical spec matches. So anyway
Jason Aten:Right. Well and, also, like, yes, every person who reviews products has some kind of a bias. That's irrelevant to this particular part of the conversation because the I think, that rose above sort of, like, into the mainstream because he he I think, that rose above sort of, like, into the mainstream because he he has 18,000,000 subscribers. So Marques Brownlee, MKBHD, is the Taylor Swift of the tech reviewing industry. And what I mean by that is he's sort of singular and that he, like, the he is on a different, like, platform than even the Joanna Stearns, the Grubers, whoever.
Jason Aten:Like, I have told this story before that I was at WWDC last year. And as I was you know, you walk into the circle. Right? The the the the spaceship. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And let's say you come in at, like, 12 o'clock, and Cafe Max is at, like, basically, like, I don't know, 3 ish o'clock. And so you have to, like, walk around. And as I'm walking, there's just a mob of people. They're all taking photos and selfies. And I'm thinking for sure, Tim Cook standing there.
Jason Aten:Right. Or Craig Federighi or someone. And no, it's MKBHD. He's the most famous person at WWDC, even though Bob Iger was there. Right.
Jason Aten:Well, he wasn't there, but he was on stage. Wait, he wasn't actually on stage. He was in the video that they showed
Stephen Robles:us anyway. Anyway.
Jason Aten:Anyway. So he is on a different level, and he does have 18,000,000 subscribers. But what I mean when I say that he's the Taylor Swift of this industry is that he's also incredibly savvy. Right? Yeah.
Jason Aten:He knows he picks the products that he knows are gonna be interesting to his audience, and he gives them an honest review. He doesn't have to review everything. He has no obligation to do that. Just like Taylor Swift doesn't have an obligation to play a concert in x city or y city. Like, she knows her audience, and she doesn't.
Jason Aten:And the fact that he put that second video up just shows how how savvy he is because he was able to sort of understand what was happening, and he didn't have to be defensive. He didn't, like because the the vote like, the level of criticism was actually pretty small. It just got amplified by a bunch of people saying, what are you even talking about? This is such a terrible take, and it took on its own life of it. You know, it's it's a life of its own.
Jason Aten:I just give him a lot of credit. There was a Walt Mossberg reply on threads that I linked to in an article I wrote, which is like, Walt Moss barker said, I've always admired his reviews, and now I admire him even more. And my point was like, well, that's about it. It doesn't get any better than that as far as, like, an affirmation or a compliment. And so I just think that it took on a really weird life of its own.
Jason Aten:And I think it's simply because he does have this huge platform. And I think that the point that the original person was trying to say is, like, you shouldn't punch down. Okay. And I think that's fair. Right?
Jason Aten:It would be completely inappropriate from for Marquez to make a video trashing one of your videos or one of my articles. That would be not fair. Right? We neither of us have the ability to sort of adequately defend ourselves to that kind of thing.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But humane has spent years hyping this up as the biggest product that is going to be released. They did a Ted talk. They did a, you know, all these different types of things. They have been it has been the most mysterious company for, like, the last 5 or 6 years, and they were positioning this as the device that will break you free from the terribleness of your smartphone. I I don't know anybody who hates their smartphones.
Jason Aten:I'm not really sure. So it absolutely deserved to be reviewed by him, and his review is exactly the same as everyone else. Last thing I'll say, sorry, is that the if you read through the replies to Vassallo's original tweet, it's a bunch of people saying, dude, you this is a terrible take. And he keeps going back to the thing saying, this title isn't honest. It's just sensational.
Jason Aten:Well, first of all, obviously, Marquez has to create titles that reflect what they're going to, what the art what the video is about, but that will be interesting to its audience.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:He flat out says in the review, this is, like, the worst product I've ever reviewed.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And he just made that the title. So it's it is honest. It is not sensational. I so if Marquez really believes that this is the worst product he's ever reviewed, how can someone come in and be like, this is not an honest title? I just, like it
Stephen Robles:just doesn't make any sense. Well, and also for YouTubers like myself and maybe in, like, the 100 of 1000 of subscribers instead of 1,000,000, there is an element of how do I package my video so people will click it, and sometimes making a slightly sensational title or thumbnail is the answer to that. But when it comes to MKBHD specifically, he requires no clickbait for people to watch his videos. Know, when the Apple Vision Pro launched, his were the only videos getting millions and and millions of views every time. Like, he published multiple Apple Vision Pro videos.
Stephen Robles:They were one was strictly an unboxing video and, like, the the title was unboxing Applevision Pro. He does not need to be sensational to get the views. So if he puts it in the title, there is a different timbre because of his size and popularity, because he does not need to be sensational to get the views. So if he puts it in the title, it's obviously something he feels strongly about. Now there was a quote in his follow-up video addressing the backlash where he says, quote, I don't have any duty to any of the companies whose products I cover.
Stephen Robles:It is only the people watching the videos. I think that's very important. When you review a product, technology or whatever, you are reviewing it, if you're a creator, for your audience. The people that you're going to that are gonna be watching your video, they may be making a buying decision. Maybe they are gaining knowledge to then recommend or not recommend products to their friends and family who might think about buying it, and so the video is not for the company, which I understand is a tension, because there are some YouTubers, and this is a practice on YouTube, where a company will pay for a review, and that gets really sticky.
Stephen Robles:And I've I've been in this situation. I have never accepted money for a review. If a company wants to send me a product for me to review, whether it's HomeKit or technology related, they send me the product, and they might say, like, this is going to be a paid review or whatever. I say, no. Like, I don't want to accept money for reviews.
Stephen Robles:This way, I can say forever into the future, I have never been paid for a review, because I think that's an important distinction. Now there are other times, if you watch my social media, I posted a video about actually this microphone that I'm using right now, the Earthworks Ethos, and I posted a short video on Instagram and YouTube shorts. That was a paid ad. Like, that Earthworks ethos paid me to make that short video, and in that sense, it was not necessarily a review. I wasn't doing like a long form video of it.
Stephen Robles:I've used this mic already for many years. I've already promoted it just because I love it so much, and so for that, it was a a good match to say, like, okay, if you want me to actually make a dedicated video talking about this microphone for 60 seconds, I can do that. But that is very different than saying, I'm gonna publish a 10 minute video, and you pay me a $1,000 to review this product. Because then as a reviewer, you're semi on the hook to say, like, if I ever want this company to work with me in the future, if I say that this is a really bad product, am I shooting myself in the foot? And so I do think creators have to be very careful, especially in this paid review category, which, again, I'll reiterate, any review that I've done on a product, I've never received money for.
Stephen Robles:You do get the product and, you know, people do on social media, they're like, well, you got this product for free and so you're not gonna be honest or whatever. I have to say, after doing this for, like, a year or 2, even as short as I've been doing it, free products is not that attractive anymore. Like, I say no to way more products because I just don't need them. I have too much stuff already. Like, that's no longer, like, a motivation, to really do it.
Stephen Robles:And so a lot of times, I'll just buy something. Like, I've reviewed some Anchor charges recently. I bought all those. The ESR car charger, I just bought it. And so I'm just buying those things, and then I can review it and really feel like I have no skin in the game, which I bought my AI pin, which I still haven't got.
Stephen Robles:And so so I bought a Rabbit R1, but we'll get to that. And one other thing I'll just mention briefly, the very first big review I did for a tech product was for Apple Insider. It was in 2015, and they actually allowed me to review the original Apple Watch in April 2015. I got the original Apple Watch on day 1 on launch day. I used it for several days.
Stephen Robles:I forget maybe it was about a week, and I reviewed it long form here on the website, did all these pictures and all that. It was my first one. Very grateful for Apple Insider allowing me that opportunity and and experiencing that. And in Apple Insider reviews, they gave it a star rating. I gave it 3a half out of 5 stars.
Stephen Robles:Now if you remember, the original Apple Watch was not great.
Jason Aten:It was bad is what you meant to say.
Stephen Robles:It was Now there were some things that were good about it, like getting text messages and notifications being able to respond, really cool. Some of the widgets, only first party widgets. Some of those were were decent, and it was a new product category, and the fitness and everything was exciting, and so I gave it 3a half out of 5 because it was not good in many areas, and I say that in this review, but it was still, like, exciting, and the hardware was beautiful, like, I thought 3a half out of 5 was fair, and I don't regret it even to this day. The comments on this review at the bottom were so polarized. Half of them were, you're an idiot, this deserves 5 stars because this is a groundbreaking new product, the first in this product category, and the other half were, like, you're an idiot.
Stephen Robles:This deserves a one star because it's a piece of garbage. It doesn't run third party apps well. And in that moment, like, you know, you have the initial wave of, like, oh, I did something wrong. And then I had the realization, when you do a review like this, MKBHD is no exception, you're not doing it for those vocal commenters. The most vocal commenters, the most vocal repiers on social media, their opinions are not the masses.
Stephen Robles:And, honestly, many times the review is for those either very quiet commenters or silent watchers.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Because they're the ones just doing research, just trying to learn about a product, and so in that moment, I realized, okay, you really need to not it's hard, it's hard, not consider what people will think about your review, but honestly use a product for a decent amount of time and provide feedback as you experience it. That's all you can do. On the experience you have using technology from the past, with your knowledge of the, you know, the world, the tech space right now, and that's that's really all you can do. And that's exactly what MKB each did, and his review matched everybody else's. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I bet it sticks.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Absolutely. I have 3 quick thoughts on this because I think you just touched on something that's really important. So I'll get there in a second. The first thing I actually wanted to say because you had said that the you know, he doesn't have any obligation to the company, which is true, and that the review is not for the company, which is also true.
Jason Aten:I will say, though, his review is actually great for Humane because they if they care about what people like MKBHD are going to say about their products, they are going to have to make their products better. Right? It is actually a good thing for a company to subject itself to criticism. And it does seem likely that there was no one inside of humane who's like, this isn't ready. So, like like so you put it out into the world, and the world is like, this isn't ready, and it's not worth $700 plus $24 a month as a monthly subscription.
Jason Aten:Somewhat like, I had responded to something and the response was like, this is so irresponsible to criticize an experimental product. My response is like, if you're charging $700,
Stephen Robles:it's not
Jason Aten:$24 a month, you can't call it experimental. You are asking real people for real money for a thing that they're going to expect to do do things, and it just doesn't do those things very well. And so the second thing was, I feel like I should say this because I know that our executive editor, my executive editor listens to our podcast. I've also never been paid for a single product to review. It's a little different because I don't make YouTube videos with the exception of this podcast.
Jason Aten:But, I feel like I should say that, I do have companies that will send me things. I mean, I have a surprise. But, I mean, I've been given products to review. I I use them. I I write reviews about them.
Jason Aten:I send them back. Sometimes I don't write reviews about stuff. I have a couple of things right now that companies are like, would you like to try this out? And I'm like, sure. That sounds interesting.
Jason Aten:And it turns out it's not a great product. And I'm like, 1, it's not necessarily worth my time to write a bad review. 2, it's not a product that matters that much that it requires my particular perspective on it. And so that's fine, which leads me to the third point. I think it's okay for reviewers the the reason people like MKBHD, the reason people like your videos about different products, the reason people read my articles is they want the opinion behind it.
Jason Aten:They want that take, they want that perspective because they trust that person's opinion. Right? So if you, if you watch one of Joanna stern iPhone reviews, it's because you trust her take because it's relatable. And you think I trust this person. I I she's answering the questions that that I have.
Jason Aten:Same thing is true with Marquez. Most videos I watch of Marquez's, I've probably already had a briefing about the product with the exception of, like, the EVs. But, like, all the other things, like, irony but I still learn things. Right? I trust his take on them.
Jason Aten:I am happy to consume that content be even though it's it's his opinion. Right? And that's fine. That's what a review is. It's giving your opinion about a thing.
Jason Aten:It is not an objective news story where it's like, this thing was released, and here are the proposed specs. It's not that. It's like, what is it really like when it comes in contact with the real world? And so I think that's an important perspective for people to understand. I will just circle back to the beginning.
Jason Aten:If the argument is this isn't fair to the company, I would argue that the company should take very close note of all of the things that people are saying. And not just Marquez, but David Pierce. David Pierce is I thought David Pierce had a great video and review at The Verge. The only difference is, and The Verge is amazing, like, have huge respect for them, they just, their video didn't have 18,000,000 people subscribed to it. And so they didn't, it didn't quite rise to that point where one person is like, hey.
Jason Aten:And I'll be honest. Like, the first thought I had is, are you are you invested in humane? Like, you seem real upset about this. And actually and actually, Nilay Patel, the editor in chief of The Verge, had a very good response on threads where he said, essentially, it feels like this is less about the product and a lot more about a lot of AI hype pros, I think you might have called them. Worried.
Jason Aten:Go ahead. You can read it. I don't have it in front of me.
Stephen Robles:He says, quote, sure feels like the humane review debate is actually the collective anxiety of a bunch of AI founders who are worried their products can't actually do the things they claim, and poisoning the well of reviews is easier than fixing it.
Jason Aten:Yep. There you go. So I I actually think that says it about as well as anybody. So
Stephen Robles:For sure. And so three other quick things I'll say about it and we'll move on. You know the humane response to MKBHD's review was actually very, like, friendly. They were like, we appreciate the feedback. Sam Sheffer who's been one of the biggest, like, advocate, like ambassadors, he's on the Humane team.
Stephen Robles:Sam Sheffer, like, said, I am friends with MKBHD. Like, here's a selfie with the 2 of us together. Yeah. I appreciate his feedback. So Humane's response does not even match the backlash that these other randos are having on MKBHD's review.
Stephen Robles:2, MKBHD said in his follow-up video, offering feedback to a company like this does not kill the company. Bad products kill companies. That's that bottom line. But also, a wise company will take the feedback, and he uses an example of the first Razer smartphone that he reviewed. He actually shows a clip from his old video, the first Razer smartphone.
Stephen Robles:The haptic vibrator in the phone was just garbage, like it made the phone sound weird. It sounded like it was broke. And the next time Razer released a phone, the CEO or founder or whatever, at the release, looked at MKBHD and said, you gotta try the haptic feedback thing because it's way better. Yep. That's the kind of response that a company should have.
Stephen Robles:Almost, you know, Apple they don't call it out that directly, but, like, butterfly keyboard versus magic keyboard. You know, they they Yeah. Since they celebrated the return of of the magic keyboard and laptops. Last thing too is, Walt Mossberg, he told a quick story of when he did early in his, technology career. He was, like, walking the trade show Florida conference, and some random tech founder or CEO was, like, you know, you're killing my stock price because you reviewed my product and your review was bad.
Stephen Robles:And he was like, Walt Mossberg just shouted back, I don't care about your stock price. You know, he's
Jason Aten:Not exactly what he said. But the point was, it it that's not why he writes stories. He couldn't possibly care less about a company's stock price. He didn't own stock in any of the tech companies that he found that he covered. And it that's, yeah, it's a gross misunderstanding of MKBHD flat out says, we disagree about what my job is.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Exactly. But I'm also gonna link your article in the show notes because I feel like your headline is just as as cutting. The AI pin review reveals its fatal flaw. It's not bad tech.
Stephen Robles:It's just a bad idea.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well and look, I and to be clear, I I think it's clear from my article. I don't I have not used the humane AI PIN, so I didn't even try to review the tech. That's not the point. The point is they set out to create a product to replace the smartphone without stopping to consider whether or not anyone needs a product to replace their smartphone, because all of the reviews, David Pierce hammered on this.
Jason Aten:Like, I can't even connect it to my Google Calendar, so I can't even say what's my next event. Well, I'm gonna have to carry my phone then. Right? And the next article I wanna write, it won't be the next I actually write. But the next thing thing I'm thinking about on this is, like, the perfect solution for this already exists.
Jason Aten:It's a smartwatch, right? It connects to your phone. It has access to all of that computing power, all of that connectivity, you wear it and you wear it in a place that's not weird. Right? You don't have to wear it on your face or your chest.
Jason Aten:It's just in a place where you've been wearing things for 100 and 100 of years and gives you access to that. And if Apple would just make Siri better, like, I feel like they could dominate the humane AI pin category with something that already exists.
Stephen Robles:Every review of the humane AI pin has been bad. Yeah. So this is MKBHD. Like, if you search for humane AI pin review, the Virgin review was negative. MKBHD is negative.
Stephen Robles:Mister Mobile, his review was negative. It was not great. Mister WhosetheBoss, his view his video has 2,100,000 views also, and his title is, I tested the humane AI pin. It's not good.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Universally reviewed as not good. Even though I don't even know what this is. The humane ad pin is so bad. I would find I would think there would be more backlash if somehow MKBHD came out of the game and said this thing is great. Like, his review matches the consensus.
Jason Aten:Even Joanna Stern was like, I thought it would be really cool, but it's literally not.
Stephen Robles:It's literally not. That was what
Jason Aten:she said.
Stephen Robles:And, you know, if that should also be a signal to you, a consumer or people watching the reviews, okay, maybe there's one outlier who says they like the humane ad pin, but every reviewer or most of them that I see on YouTube saying it's bad, it's probably a bad product. And guess what? I I haven't tried it yet. I imagine it's a bad product. I imagine if and when I ever get one, even though I pre ordered on day 1, if I ever get one, it's probably gonna be a bad product, but anyway.
Stephen Robles:So your take about AI gadgets though, I do wanna mention the Rabbit r 1, the other AI gadget that is scheduled to come out, they actually have their pickup party next week, and so they're gonna be shipping the first r one rabbits to people. We're gonna probably see reviews of this next week. It's another AI gadget using a large action model, whatever that means. I did not preorder one of these at first, and then the rabbit team actually reached out to me, earlier this week because I had a video talking about the r one, the Rabbit r one, and the HumanAI pin and how just a better Siri would beat them both. That video actually did pretty good numbers.
Stephen Robles:It got a couple 100000 views. So they actually reached out because they wanna use a clip from my video during the launch party. So if anyone's at this Rabbit r one launch party, please film whatever launch video because I wanna know in what context they're gonna use my video because I told them, sure. I don't care. Use a clip for my video.
Jason Aten:You're just wanting to beat MKBHD getting mentioned on stage at the iPhone or the at was it yes. The iPhone event. Yeah. There
Stephen Robles:you go. I'm I'm, yeah, totally fine with that. I'm yeah. And, also, while I was in the, email thread with their team, I was like, hey. Can you send me a review unit?
Stephen Robles:Because I'd love to review.
Jason Aten:Of course.
Stephen Robles:And they said, oh, no. We're only sending it to people who have pre ordered it. Well, I quickly pre ordered it, and I sent them my order number. I said, well, here's my order number. If you wanna send it out early, I'd love to review it.
Jason Aten:I thought they sold out of them. I thought, like, they had, like, 20,000 available and they sold them all or something.
Stephen Robles:Well, they said they're sending the, like, reviewers who have bought them. They're gonna try and expedite those. So again, to be clear, I have now paid for my own Rabbit r one and I paid for my own HumanAI pin, neither of which I have received. But when you see reviews of them, they are not paid reviews.
Jason Aten:This will be interesting because you probably will get your r ones faster Probably. Which is, I think, the take I've heard is that that's, like, indicative of the difference between the 2 devices. The r one is much faster. And here, I even said this in my article, which was simply, like, that the r one is actually great because the fatal assumption that Humane had was that they that people wanted an AI powered assistant assistant that was separate from their smartphone. And I don't think that that's true.
Jason Aten:And the good news is we get to have that conversation because the r one is literally designed to interface, not just with your smartphone, but you log into your Uber account, your Spotify account, your whatever account. You can't do any of those things on the AI pin. You can't say, you know, get me an Uber. You just can't do that with the AI pin. You have to have your phone.
Jason Aten:So the rabbit are 1 though, you can do those types of things and it has a screen. Right? It's like all of the things that are wrong with the humane AI pen. Yeah. Presumably will be better.
Jason Aten:I still think it's weird that you're essentially paying a monthly fee to have, like actually, you're not, but you're paying for a device that's essentially, like, using machine robotic AI to control an Android phone in the cloud somewhere. Something like that. It's virtual Android phone.
Stephen Robles:Something super sketchy.
Jason Aten:It's a little weird. I think they gotta workshop that a little bit, but at least they're moving in the right direction. Right. So
Stephen Robles:on last thing, and then somehow we'll get through the rest of the news today. I wanted to mention this because Nothing, another startup hardware brand, which you can look at MKBHD's reviews of the Nothing Phone and, like, he offered honest feedback and Nothing is very good at, like, taking feedback and then improving on their product, they released new earbuds, which this might not be very interesting, but at the very bottom of this Verge article, they talk about the new earbuds, that they'll become more capable in the months to come, and the company plans to add chat gpt integration to its smartphones and earbuds. And I found that interesting only because if you're going to have a separate device that can talk to chat GPT, earbuds seems like a way better piece of hardware than a separate device like a pin or whatever because, a, you're gonna use those earbuds anyway to listen to stuff. Sure. And and if you're gonna interact with chat gpt, there's a microphone in those earbuds.
Stephen Robles:You can do it in the privacy of your own head, and that seems like, an integration that might be worth it because put the smarts right in the things you're already wearing in your ears. So I thought that was interesting.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think that's I think that's a good point. I don't know that I want my earbuds getting really hot while I'm
Stephen Robles:in my ear.
Jason Aten:But because they but they'd still have to have, like, yeah, I think that's a better solution than wearing your best Sunday brooch, you know, and talking to it when you're standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange and saying, tell me what you see.
Stephen Robles:Your brooch. Your corsage. Yeah. The cros the humane AI crosage. That's what's gonna be all the rage at the next prom.
Jason Aten:I'm all for it.
Stephen Robles:Homeschool dance. Alright. We have we have a bunch of other stuff I wanna get to. We're gonna I don't know. Maybe try and do a 20 minute lightning round of all this other stuff.
Stephen Robles:We can
Jason Aten:do it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Just got a bunch of pro. I do wanna take one second. I wanna thank our members who support us directly. Thank you for continuing to support the show.
Stephen Robles:There's increasing numbers every month, and so if you have not, we would appreciate your support. $5 a month, you get an ad free version, so this part's cut out. Also, you get bonus content every week. I think Jason has an update on his appliance story
Jason Aten:from last week. I forgot. I've lived a lifetime since then, Steven.
Stephen Robles:With a 1000 lifetimes. This is the Gandalf that comes back to you. Yeah. So we're gonna hear about Jason's continued appliance saga in the bonus episode today. We have bonus episodes every week when you do that, so you can support the show directly in Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:You can go to primary tech dot f m and support us, through Memberful there. And I do wanna ask, this is kind of for everyone, but so those of you who don't support the show yet, you can answer this question and then go support the show. You know, I would like to find a way to, like, communicate, like, better than social media, you know, because sometimes, you know, there's lots of listeners out there, Some are on X, some are on threads, some of you are emailing us directly. I would love to have a platform where we can all just like talk and stuff, those who listen to the show. And for me and Jason, I'm not crazy about Discord, but maybe Discord's the answer.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. If if you would wanna if you would join a Discord server for primary technology, let us know. Reach out via Twitter, x, or email us podcast at primary tech dot f m. But I would like to start, you know, really fostering a community where we can all, like, talk about stuff. Because we have amazing listeners.
Stephen Robles:We got some follow-up from last episode. That's the kind of follow-up that would be great in, like, a community discussion. So, anyway, thank you for supporting the show. If you don't support us yet, we love and appreciate your support. $5 a month, $50 a year, or give us a 5 star rating and review an Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Stephen Robles:We appreciate that as well. Alright. The first game emulator app is out on the iPhone. Did you try it yet, Delta?
Jason Aten:No.
Stephen Robles:Oh, Jason. Now I I Well, here's
Jason Aten:the here's the here's the reason why.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:Downloading a game emulator is not the end of that sentence. There are, like, 9 things you have to do after that or else it's not really all that useful, and I'm not doing any of those things.
Stephen Robles:I quickly discovered that downloading this app and doing nothing else does nothing.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:You know, when you open this app on your phone, all you have is a blank screen with a plus button.
Jason Aten:You have to feed it. You have to feed it.
Stephen Robles:You have to feed it. You have to feed it roms to play games. But I actually watched the video from Fernando Silva over at 9 to 5 Mac, and he mentioned this website. So I'm gonna put I'll put the blame on him. He told me about this website.
Jason Aten:This is the last episode of our podcast.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. You go to this website. That's all I'm gonna show.
Stephen Robles:It's right there. I'll put it in the show notes. Not even gonna say it live on the air. But you could you download ROMs from this website and then you can play games in this emulator. And I just have to say, I downloaded Kirby for the regular Nintendo and I downloaded Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 and I literally played it on my phone And it was kind of magical.
Stephen Robles:I will be honest.
Jason Aten:Wow.
Stephen Robles:I've never been into game emulation. I've never tried this on any of my devices. But doing it on your phone, being able to play these old school games on your device, I think it's like, it was fun. And then I showed my son, who has iPhone 13, and he was like, cause he's played something because I my Nintendo 64 is still at my parents' house and my regular Nintendo is still at my parents' house playable. Wow.
Stephen Robles:These machines are playable. So they've played these old school games on the systems. And so when he was like, woah, you can play like the old school Smash Bros on your phone. Yes. It is kind of magical.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to the ATP guys this week talking about this, and the the only thing that kept going through my mind well, 2. 1, this does seem like Apple is simply trying to preempt the alternative app marketplaces because that seems like it's the most logical reason to have an alternative app marketplaces for apps like this that weren't allowed before. There are other types of apps that I don't think Apple's ready to allow, but this is a big one.
Jason Aten:But the the weird risk here is, like, it says something about retro game continent, like but it doesn't define what it so there's a whole lot of we're just gonna have to guess what Apple means by this word. And Yeah. When you're making something that if that like, Nintendo makes games emulated on the switch from, like, you can play, like, double o seven. Right? Like, Golden Eye or whatever.
Jason Aten:Like, it's emulated, basically. So I don't know. I just it feels like something that I think should exist. I'm a wholeheartedly, like, onboard with that. I just I'm not sure how long it will survive because
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:You know, some of the companies that made these games are not going to think that this is as cool as the rest of us do.
Stephen Robles:And there was a bunch of emulators that tried to get in the App Store and Apple denied or kicked out. So it's curious that this is the one that finally made it through. We'll see if it stays, but it's cool right now. You should try it. It's it's totally free.
Stephen Robles:The roms are free if you go to that website.
Jason Aten:It only cost you 3 to 5 years. If you download the roms.
Stephen Robles:Supposedly, if you had to listen, I've only I only downloaded game
Jason Aten:Is this the VHS rule?
Stephen Robles:Is this the VHS rule? Meaning if you own the game already, if you own the physical thing, you can have the ROM. And I I own all those. I I own I have the 10 of 64. I could play right over there.
Jason Aten:Welcome to primary tech lawyers dotfm.
Stephen Robles:No. We are not as we have said on numerous occasions, we are not lawyers.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:Not lawyers. But if I was a lawyer, I would immediately sue, Boston Dynamics for creating The Terminator. That's how I transition. I just had to mention this. Boston Dynamics, who's made the Atlas robots, and if you ever watch their videos, they're both incredible
Jason Aten:Amazing.
Stephen Robles:They're amazing and terrifying. They made the they put Chad GPT in their little dog robot. All I'm saying is this was how they announced their newest Atlas robot. You go to youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. I'm showing it right now.
Stephen Robles:The way this thing gets up from the ground in a contortionist, like, gymnast fashion and then has ability to rotate its head, body, and legs 360 degrees. It has, like,
Jason Aten:a terrible Steven, this is a sort of video, isn't it? This is a 100% one of those body horror AI generated videos. I don't believe you.
Stephen Robles:It is totally body horror, but robot body horror, which is a new genre I didn't know I didn't like.
Jason Aten:This is a
Stephen Robles:totally new genre.
Jason Aten:It's not quite as bad as human body horror, but it is terrifying to think that this could exist.
Stephen Robles:And it does. And it does. This is the new Atlas robot. It has, like, a Pixar lamp style head. I'm glad they didn't try to put a human face on it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So it is absolutely terrifying, but it's also incredible the work that they do at Boston Dynamics. So this is the robot. All I'm saying is like, I paused it in this weird contortionist pose. All I'm saying is don't let Chad GPT get near this thing.
Stephen Robles:Don't Please. Let any the Gemini don't get any let it don't let any AI large language model get near this robot.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because I
Stephen Robles:feel like once it does, I mean, it's over. Right?
Jason Aten:I mean Yeah. The last thing you want is your humanoid robot to hallucinate. Do you remember the whole Kevin Roose from the New York Times with Sydney and Bing? You really want this thing to tell you to leave your wife? Come on.
Stephen Robles:This is not good. Not good. And then, just in one other terrifying AI news, Microsoft now announced VASA 1. It's a lifelike audio driven talking faces. So what this does is it can take a still image and make it sing and then animate it like a video.
Stephen Robles:So I'll put this link in the show notes. You can also go to you our YouTube channel, subscribe to the channel, or you can watch it there. These are AI generated videos. Now it's generated off of a still image, but the realism of the singing is pretty wild. They also have one with the Mona Lisa, which is actually horrifying.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Actually the worst thing I think I've seen today. It's still early, but it's the worst thing I've seen today. And again, do not put this in the Boston Dynamics robot either. Although No.
Stephen Robles:If we could actually get full musical performances from the Boston Dynamics robot because of this, I might be in favor of that. You might convince me.
Jason Aten:Just one more job that AI is going to kill.
Stephen Robles:Not at well, an entire robot AI powered Hamilton performance would be pretty wild. It would be revolts. It would be revolts.
Jason Aten:The humans the humans do a pretty good job. It's fine.
Stephen Robles:No one's replacing Lin Manuel Miranda in this lifetime. We'll just say that. So
Jason Aten:I mean, well, that's a hot take that I think
Stephen Robles:we're alone because Maybe I should maybe I should step that back. I should walk that back. We'll see. But he's, you know, he's he's at the top of his game right now. But anyway, that's a Microsoft VASA.
Stephen Robles:That's terrifying. We'll put the link in show notes. Also, I wanted to mention this because we had a bonus episode, actually now a couple months ago where we talked about physical media, how Best Buy was removing it from the stores, and now Target, they haven't officially announced, but the president of physical media, whoever that is, they apparently That's
Jason Aten:a Twitter account, by the way, not like a position at to a target.
Stephen Robles:There's not a company called physical media and this person is the president. But, you know, this he is saying Target sources are telling me that they will stop selling physical media in store and online by 2025, which is next year. Whether or not this is true I mean, Best Buy officially announced that they are doing that, physically stopping selling physical media. That's what we talked about in our bonus episode a couple months ago. Now it looks like Target is following suit.
Stephen Robles:I actually just saw a video from Digital Trends, a big YouTube channel, that Amazon might be, like, deprioritizing physical media Blu rays and stuff if you wanna buy it online, which the few times I've wanted to buy a Blu ray, because sometimes. And so, you know, I think we are slowly marching towards the death of physical media, Jason.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think you're right. I'm gonna have to look into this and talk to Target about this. I mean, when I wrote about Best Buy doing it, like, it was one of the most widely read articles I had written in the last, like, 12 months. People, like, have lots of feelings about this sort of thing, which is funny because I really just wanted to ask the 1,000,000 or so people, When's the last time you bought a DVD?
Jason Aten:Do you own a DVD player? Why are you so sad about and it's really just, no. But I remember going to do this. Like and it and that means I can never do that again. So
Stephen Robles:But there are people like John Siracusa out there. And if you're like a real home theater enthusiast, you will still get a better visual and audio experience watching a physical disc than streaming it because
Jason Aten:I think that's debatable. I mean, you said there's people in the world like John. There are very few people in the world like John Syracuse, who I really think is amazing. He's one of the cohost of ATP.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:But he is also very particular about a lot of things that in a way that most people are not particular about them. And I feel like, I mean, yes, Blu ray DVDs are going to be a higher quality than streaming something in 4 k on Netflix. Is it how how much higher? Like, we watch things on our Yeah. You know, OLED TV that are in 4 k.
Jason Aten:I don't think having the DVD would make it better. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I will. I will just say this. I still have some Blu rays of, like, Star Trek, like modern Star Trek movies or whatever, and I do find it is it looks slightly better, mostly because there's like 0 artifacting, cause it's not buffering from the internet. But this could be solved if things like the Apple TV went back old school and let you download the movie Yeah. But, like, if you just look at the the data, like, if you rip a Blu ray movie, the data it's like 40 gigabytes, 30 gigabytes.
Stephen Robles:Like, that's the that's the movie file size, so that data is, like, the detail and everything of the movie. Whereas when you download a movie, even from Apple TV that you just bought, it might be 8 gigabytes, 5 gigabytes, maybe at the most 10. So just the sheer amount of data, which I would think equals, like, detail and quality, the sheer amount of data you're gonna get from a Blu ray is more, and you're not gonna have to think about buffering or all that kind of stuff. So is it noticeably more? Like, can your eyeballs actually see it?
Stephen Robles:That, I think, is debatable. Is it worth it? I from my purchasing power, I would say no because I bought Dune 2 on digital, and I'm probably not gonna buy it on Blu ray. So whether it's worth it or not, I think is debatable, but I don't know. Listeners can
Jason Aten:tell us. I do just wanna say there is one other way you could solve the problem of buffering and artifacting, and that is you just need faster Internet, Steven.
Stephen Robles:You know what? That's exactly right. I need faster Internet. That's that's always the it always comes back to faster Internet.
Jason Aten:I'm not gonna lie. I waited, like, 2 minutes to say that because I was, like, this is the guy who has the fastest Internet I know and he's complaining about artifacting? Come on, dude.
Stephen Robles:I don't I mean, listen. I don't see it and there is oh, as with anything, there's that convenience, like, quality pendulum and streaming something that convenience wins it Yeah. Because it's still close enough. But Alright. I wanna talk about you getting trolled though.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You got trolled, because you posted a bad take.
Jason Aten:I don't know if I got trolled or if I got dragged.
Stephen Robles:I think it was a little bit of drag. It felt a little bit like the day you were the main character on the Internet for your headlines. But
Jason Aten:Awesome. Here's the thing. It's okay.
Stephen Robles:They got me.
Jason Aten:I'm a good sport.
Stephen Robles:It's awesome. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But it's here's the thing I just wanna say that I learned about the Internet because I've been a tech columnist for a while, and there are things I learned about the Internet that are new every single day. So, clearly I should just be on the record saying, yes, Apple does update its first party apps that are not system apps through the app store. Apparently, you can even, like, update the app store through the app store. I learned that's not a thing, but that's what it said in some of the replies. But I don't have pages in numbers in GarageBand on my phone.
Jason Aten:So I just don't ever see that sports app was the first time. And all I said was, I don't remember the last time I saw a first party Apple app with an update in the App Store. I just don't see do you see them often? Like, it doesn't it's not something I see very often. So suddenly that meant that what I was saying is that apple doesn't do that.
Jason Aten:I don't know. Like to be fair, I don't actually think the words I wrote were a bad take All apparently what I meant was a bad take. But I, a 100% will own the fact that, like, yes, Apple does update its first party Apple apps. I just don't apparently have final cut on my iPhone. That was one of the ones someone suggested, which
Stephen Robles:there is no final cut
Jason Aten:on your iPhone. Right. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:Imovie.
Jason Aten:And just to be clear, I was very inarticulate, which is a bad thing for a writer. I was specifically only talking about the iPhone because, yes, like, all of those apps update on my Mac on a very regular basis. Like, I don't pay any attention to it, but it is just very fun funny to me that this was the thing that people decided like
Stephen Robles:to hammer you on.
Jason Aten:Yes. And I am just like, I have gotten messages from people like, but I do stand by my take of who is using pages on their iPhone.
Stephen Robles:Okay. So first, so first of all,
Jason Aten:what monsters are I'm sorry. I should actually be careful because if our 5 star rating ratio starts to go down, this is going to be why, and I apologize.
Stephen Robles:Don't rate it just based on Jason's take because I'm gonna I'm gonna reply.
Jason Aten:What we really need though, loyal listeners, is I really need all of you to leave us 5 star ratings because who knows where the trolls may go
Stephen Robles:next. They might go to our reviews. The only bad take I would say is quote tweeting all your hate comments.
Jason Aten:That's a bad I didn't quote them all. I only quote tweeted about half of
Stephen Robles:them. You quote threaded a few.
Jason Aten:I quote quote threaded the ones that I felt were especially nice.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's
Jason Aten:There was one person who is, like, literally building a social friend. It's it's like build is, like, the friendly social app, and they came into my mentions to tell me how stupid I was. And I'm like, you seem
Stephen Robles:nice. Yes. Yes. I saw that. I saw that post.
Stephen Robles:I will say, I get it. You don't see it very often. I do have pages numbers in Keynote on my iPhone. Oh
Jason Aten:my gosh. What's wrong with you?
Stephen Robles:And I was for several reasons.
Jason Aten:Keynote, yes. I Keynote was the one mistake I made.
Stephen Robles:Thank you.
Jason Aten:Because it actually is useful because you can actually control Keynote event. But I don't have to do that very often except for when I go to my kid's journalism class.
Stephen Robles:Sure. But in the same way, numbers I have some budget and project spreadsheets in there, and sometimes if I'm asked a question, either by my family or I'm trying to check a number, and I only have my iPhone with me, I will open the Numbers app and look at a spreadsheet. It's the magic of Icloud, Jason. All those docs are everywhere. The page is 1.
Stephen Robles:I understand your argument. I do not open pages on my iPhone to write anything. Here's the only thing I use pages on my iPhone for. Sometimes, my kids want to print a picture or something, and if you just print from the Photos app or you try to print from, like, the web, who knows how it's gonna be formatted, what size it'll be on the page. You don't have granular control over, like, zooming and scaling in the print dialog.
Stephen Robles:So what I do is I open the pages app on my iPhone, start a new blank document, import the image there, and then I know, like, this is the 8 and a half by 11 that's about to be printed out, and I can size whatever I want, the images or whatever, on the thing on my phone and print it from my phone. And I just find pages to be the easiest way to do that. Yeah. Because it's
Jason Aten:I I do understand that there are some life and die life life and death situations where you have to print something immediately from your phone that you could not wait till you got to your computer to do that. That does that does make sense. But no, I do stand by the idea that, like, who's using pages on the and the problem with and this is the mistake I made. Then when you ask that question, people will find a way to answer your question.
Stephen Robles:That's if
Jason Aten:you say who is using pages on their iPhone? Oh, well this one time I had to print the photo from my, from my kids. They're like, it's like, Oh, I'm I use it all the time to write. I'm like, nope. No.
Jason Aten:I mean, because honestly, Steven Yeah. Do you use pages on your Mac? Really?
Stephen Robles:On my Mac?
Jason Aten:Do you really use pages on your Mac?
Stephen Robles:I do. I do, because I have to
Jason Aten:deal If you had to write something, you're not opening pages. You're opening Google Docs.
Stephen Robles:I'm opening I'm opening bare.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:If it's for work, it'll be Google Docs. Yeah. But, like, I write long form of bare. But I do use pages for things like I have some invoices that I do regularly that I have in I have in pages. And so I just duplicate the Pages document, change the numbers, change the dates, send it.
Stephen Robles:You know? Do you wanna
Jason Aten:know what I the only thing I use Pages for? The only thing. And listen, Pages is actually a really good app.
Stephen Robles:It's a good app.
Jason Aten:In my opinion, the best page layout app you can get for free
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Absolutely.
Jason Aten:Easily. But, you know, the only thing I use it for is I when I take screenshots of app like, apps. If I'm writing about an app and I take a couple of screenshots on my phone, like, of the screen of the views. You know, when I did this when I did the call sheet review recently. And then I just open pages on my Mac, and I dump them on there, and I take a screenshot of them laid out.
Jason Aten:That's it. That's the only thing I use it for is laying out screenshots.
Stephen Robles:I there's a We should build a shortcut. You could build a shortcut for that. Then you it'll be even faster. It'll be even faster. Pages also I I did use iBooks author back in the day to build some interactive books when I worked in the travel industry.
Stephen Robles:I that was another app I still wish existed because they brought a lot of those features into Pages but not all of them. And so Pages is also like for ebook, like you publish an EPUB, you know, you can export an EPUB file, using Pages, and I have done that once or twice, you know, if I was more of a writer maybe.
Jason Aten:But not on your iPhone. No. No.
Stephen Robles:But you can't. You can export an EPUB from your iPhone. Do you? Anyway. Anyway.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, let us know. Everyone who has pages on their iPhone, they're gonna write, and they're gonna Yeah.
Jason Aten:Well and just to be clear, yes. Uh-huh. I was proved wrong that, yes, Apple's first party apps do update
Stephen Robles:They do.
Jason Aten:In the App Store outside of point releases.
Stephen Robles:I just Not not all of them.
Jason Aten:No. And I just don't have really very many of those apps that people started like, Garage Band clips. I didn't even know I didn't even know what the clips app was. I had to look it up because I deleted off of my phone every time.
Stephen Robles:But I was
Jason Aten:Like, what is this?
Stephen Robles:The only thing I'll say in your defense, like, there are apps like shortcuts, which will only get new actions when there's a point update, but you don't see that.
Jason Aten:Mail or messages or any of those. They only update that way. So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You don't see the update there. So I get it. I get it.
Jason Aten:I'll take my trolling. It's fine.
Stephen Robles:I I just wanna mention this because we talked about the undersea Internet cables a couple episodes ago in the bonus episode. Yeah. And now The Verge has an incredible story. The incredible I mean, the reporting is amazing, but also just the animations and web design of this story is amazing. I'm scrolling through it right now just very quickly, but, like, it's awesome.
Stephen Robles:And so
Jason Aten:Their art direction is top notch.
Stephen Robles:Oh my goodness. You know, they did this with, early on when the Verge first launched, they talked about, like I don't know if it was bunkers, like, underground bunkers. They talked about something. But anyway, they've they've had a few stories like this that are just visually amazing and visually from a webpage perspective. And, you know, you could still tell a great story and do amazing reporting on a website, which is what Neil Patel says all the time.
Stephen Robles:It's the last website on the Internet. And, this is a really good story. So if you wanna learn more about the ocean cables carrying your Internet across the Atlantic and Pacific, you can, check that out.
Jason Aten:And soon, I'm looking forward to the in the in investigative reporting that they're going to do about people using pages on their iPhone because clearly somebody was listening to our conversation.
Stephen Robles:So bitter. You're gonna get you're gonna get more trolls now. You're fighting more trolls. All the trolls are coming up.
Jason Aten:Listen, like, It's fine. People can use pages on their iPhone. I'm just saying it's not the most common use case. Can we at least agree on that?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Oh, yeah. I agree. Right? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's not it's not common at all. Alright. We gotta talk about personal tick because you got an Apple Vision Pro, finally.
Jason Aten:I did.
Stephen Robles:Finally. Tell me about it.
Jason Aten:Well, I also should clarify. I did not buy an an Apple Vision Pro. I just wanna be real clear because I know that there are people who are listening to this who'd be like, you seriously bought one of those, and I did not buy one. Apple did send me one to review. They sent me a review unit.
Jason Aten:It took it's funny to call it a review unit at this point because it's been, what, 6 months, 6 weeks, 8 weeks?
Stephen Robles:It's a long term usage unit.
Jason Aten:I mean, but but that's great. I am going to, like, be able to do some more reviewing, especially with some different types of applications and experiences. And that's great. I just I will say I've used it every single day since I've had it. It came last week.
Jason Aten:It came actually the day after we recorded. I think they had to time it to my optical insert things because it'd be real weird for it to show up and not have those. And anyway, the first thing I will say is the 1st day I used it, it was terrible. I don't know why, but, like, I I but I think it's because I was using the solo the the band. They'll wrap around your headband, the knot.
Stephen Robles:The solo.
Jason Aten:You know? Yeah. Thank you. It was a terrible experience. I did get headaches.
Jason Aten:Wow. Whatever. I changed the band, and it completely changed the experience of using it.
Stephen Robles:So I
Jason Aten:will just say for all of you YouTubers who are using it and getting headaches, you may not look as cool, but the over the top strap works really well. The dual loop. Yeah. I so I've used it every single day. I think most of what people are saying about it being bad is sort of tainted by the idea that a lot of the people I hear talking about how bad it is, I think, have buyer's remorse from spending $3,500 on it.
Jason Aten:And I don't actually have that problem at this point because I did not spend $3,500.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And so, because even a lot of the people I know who reviewed it and maybe who got review units from apple, they still bought one of their own. And so I think that they're sort of like, what did I spend $3,500 on this thing for that? I'm going to use it to justify that price. I can just use it. And so I was surprised though.
Jason Aten:The so I I like I was really looking forward to I did the MLS thing, which I agree with everyone was dumb because, like, you just let me stand on the field for the whole entire warm up or the whatever. Like, it was it was it was That
Stephen Robles:would be enough. Just look around, see the
Jason Aten:Absolutely. But and I did the whole going to Disney plus and go to the scare floor or the Disney theater or tattooing
Stephen Robles:Did you do the the high line or the rhino immersive?
Jason Aten:I haven't done those yet. I haven't done those yet. Well, we did, I think the High Line was one of the ones we did at WWDC. So I have done some of those things.
Stephen Robles:You did the Alicia Keys rehearsal room?
Jason Aten:Yep. We did that stuff. So Okay. But the in the immersive environments are great. I did I like the, throne room, the iron throne room in, the max app.
Jason Aten:That's pretty cool. Yeah. By far, the best thing about the vision pro are panoramas. Like,
Stephen Robles:those are cool.
Jason Aten:It is like emotional.
Stephen Robles:It is.
Jason Aten:It is in a way that I did not expect the immersive experiences. I totally knew what to expect because I had done that. And they're done very well, but I have panoramas dating back to I was using crappy iPhones because they are not very good photos, probably 2012. I don't know when they added the panorama feature, so I could be wrong about that. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But I have them from, like, you know, Christmas morning with our 4 little kids, a panorama of our living room. I actually have panoramas of our house when we walked through it when we were considering buying it. Right? So it was like standing in that room. What was somebody else's stuff at the time?
Jason Aten:But it's like, wow. We have I have them of our backyard from many years ago before we did lots of stuff. I have one. I have a bunch of them from Alaska when we did a trip 2 years ago. I am so glad that I took panoramas for the last 10 years.
Jason Aten:Not because I was gonna get a vision pro someday. In my opinion, there's so much better than spatial video. Like, the panoramas are just they're not as immersive in the sense that they feel 3 d. I'm not impressed by 3 d. In fact, I spent a lot of time in the Disney plus app trying to figure out how do I watch endgame, not in 3 d.
Stephen Robles:And you have to choose the you
Jason Aten:have to choose the Imax version. Apparently, I'm like, can there just be a setting that says 3 d is terrible. Please don't make me watch anything in 3 d. I just wanna see the normal movie.
Stephen Robles:It's bad. Apple TV app, if a movie has 3 d, it asks you 2 d or 3 d, like, right when you press play. Yeah. But in the Disney play yeah. It's it's a little annoying.
Jason Aten:It thinks everyone wants 3 d, and I'm like, nope. I just wanna watch a normal version of this movie. Because, honestly, like, the 3 d version. I started watching, I I listened to your review of Wet Water. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And I thought, oh, I gotta watch this, and I'm like, nope. Not watching this in 3 d.
Stephen Robles:It it was weird. Right?
Jason Aten:I can't make it I'm not gonna make it through this movie. I it it'd be hard for me to make it through it in 2 d not doing it in 3 d. Just not gonna happen.
Stephen Robles:It's apparently 48 frames per second and the 3 d in the Disney plus app. For whatever reason, it felt like a video game cutscene the entire time. That's all I'll say. I reviewed it on movies on the side, but I it I struggled. Like, I was traveling, so there was nothing else to do.
Stephen Robles:So I did watch the whole thing. I did not enjoy a minute of it.
Jason Aten:Well, the so then the other thing that really I knew that it was gonna be cool. We wouldn't normally think this, but I think the most encouraging experience I had because I'm hoping more people will do this. And I to be fair, I stole this from Casey List. I think he talked about it on Upgrade when he subbed for Jason Snow, but it's the Gucci app. And I don't know if you've done this yet, but if you
Stephen Robles:download because I heard him say it.
Jason Aten:But Yeah. And so if you watch the first thing that happens when you open the Gucci app is it wants to show you this documentary about the new creative director, Sabado Da Silva. I I can't I don't know his last name. It doesn't matter, because I don't know who he is, but I watched the thing, and it's, like, starts out just as a 2 d video. And then all of a sudden, the environment becomes immersive because you're, like, on the street where he had the, you know, his runway show.
Jason Aten:And you can, like, turn around and look, and there's the church and there's it. And it's like, more companies need to do stuff like this where they're taking advantage of creating content that utilize it's not a 3 d movie. It's not an immersive experience. It is a video Right. That then becomes immersive throughout different parts of it.
Jason Aten:So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's pretty cool. So have you captured spatial video on your iPhone and watched it in Vision Pro and it it was not impressive?
Jason Aten:Yeah. But, I mean, I captured video of spatial audio of me sitting in my office, which is not that impressive because I can just look at my office. It's like, oh, yeah. It looks just like this. So
Stephen Robles:So I I would encourage you to maybe, like, if one of your kids has a soccer game soon or some sporting event, like, to take spatial video of that event and watch it. Which night?
Jason Aten:You want me to wear the VisionPRO?
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. Do it on your phone. Just do
Jason Aten:it on your phone.
Stephen Robles:No. No.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:Because I I did that Christmas morning where I took a spatial video of my kids opening their presents, and that I watched in VisionPRO. And that was I will agree the panorama is more, like, a visceral like a visceral reaction because it wraps around you and it really feels different. The spatial video is not as much like that because it is relegated to, like, this window in your view. Yeah. But it is pretty cool, and it did have, like, that emotional tinge that you're saying when you capture a spatial video like that.
Stephen Robles:So I would encourage you, you know, just try that, something like that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I did record a spatial video at Christmas this year, and I actually watched that. And it was like, oh, yeah. This I could see this being cool. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But then I did a pan then I opened the photos, like, went down one toggle into the panorama. I'm like, oh, what do I have in here? And all of a sudden, I'm standing back on the shore in Alaska, like, in Seward, and there's just the the bay in the mountains, and I'm just like, holy crap. Like, this is, like, intense. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I will say there's one other app, Zillow. Have you tried the Zillow app?
Jason Aten:You're talking about, like, the buy a house place?
Stephen Robles:Yes. The buy a house app. They actually added immersive experience in their app, and then you can go to some again, it's not all listings, but you can go to some listings. It's like the over $1,000,000 listing listings, of course. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But you can actually it puts you in the house, and you can look around.
Jason Aten:So, like, anybody any of the listings that have those immersive 3 yeah, like, walk throughs or whatever, you can do that in the VisionPRO?
Stephen Robles:It'll show yeah. It'll show show you which listings are immersive and then you can do it. And, like, that seems like a really cool use case. I will say I tried it and, like, it was kind of, like, rendering the whole time and it never got super sharp. So it's not like a perfect experience, but that seems like a cool use case.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But I will say, I mean, I'm still using it once a week. I did bring it to a Starbucks, finally. I finally drummed up the courage. I was at a Starbucks.
Jason Aten:That's fantastic.
Stephen Robles:I was waiting for myself to appear on a TikTok or an Instagram Reel. I kept, like, looking by location, like, anybody post me? Because there were bunch of, like, college students there, and I was, like, surely, they would post apparently, nobody cares. Nobody You were in
Jason Aten:the Washington Post, and you were concerned about getting posted to TikTok in a Starbucks with your vision probe.
Stephen Robles:I was just curious. I was just curious if anybody would do it. No one did it, apparently.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:Dune 2 though, I haven't watched it yet in Apple Vision Probe, and I'm excited to watch that one. And also but I have to say, Argyle, did you try watching Argyle at all?
Jason Aten:Not yet.
Stephen Robles:It's not good. It's not a good movie. Bad movie. Okay. I was kind of I was upset by it because I was very excited for it, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it.
Stephen Robles:Not worth not worth paying. Do you have any other thoughts on VisionPRO, or you wanna use it some more? We can
Jason Aten:I'm I think I will keep using it. I think that it is the 2 the 2 biggest frustrations I have are I wanna rearrange the apps,
Stephen Robles:which is
Jason Aten:weird that I can't because I don't wanna have to, like, swipe several screens to open the thing I wanna open. Also, it's annoying that all your iPad's apps just are in one folder, and you forget about that. So I'm using Spark's mail app, and I'm just like, where did it where did that go? What do I have to do? Oh, I have to go in and do that.
Jason Aten:I forgot
Stephen Robles:it too. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And then the notifications thing where it just dings at you, but it doesn't give you any visual notification anywhere that there's cause you're just like, what was that? What happened?
Stephen Robles:And then you have
Jason Aten:to like, look up, open the thing, look in, it'll show you them. I'm just like, oh, but part of that's because I'm so I have most notifications turned off on all my other devices.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:And so I'm just like, what's going on? I I will confess. I did install Slack. I opened it once. I closed it and removed it from them.
Jason Aten:Like, nope. Never doing that again.
Stephen Robles:I did the same thing. I did the same thing. I got down. Let me try it. And I was like, no.
Stephen Robles:I don't want
Jason Aten:any of that. Because here's the thing. If I really needed to do things where I was using Slack, I would use the virtualization of my Mac screen, right, which is actually really cool. I didn't realize that this was true because this was not an experience that we had when we demoed it at WWDC that your Mac screen actually goes black. Like, the Vision Pro isn't just blacking it out.
Jason Aten:The Max screen actually goes black, which makes it ideal if you were using it in a situation where there were people around you didn't want to see your screen, but you weren't worried about seeing you wearing a Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:Well Which is
Jason Aten:a weird Venn diagram, but That's
Stephen Robles:exactly if you find
Jason Aten:yourself in the middle.
Stephen Robles:But, honestly, like, that's exactly what I did at the Starbucks because I was I was gonna use my Mac and I was, like, I can my Mac is just gonna be black for everybody around, which is great. If you're on a plane or traveling, you know, that's also a great opportunity because, like, you know, someone is gonna be right next to you and would be looking at your screen just Yeah. By the nature of it being something to look at. And so if it can just be blacked out, I think it's pretty cool use case. Yeah.
Jason Aten:So That's fine. So I'm I'm looking forward to using it some more. I'll have more opinions because I'm, you know, 6 weeks behind the curve on this. But but I don't think panoramas are a reason to buy one of these, but I will say that they they are indicative to me of, like, you know what? There are some experiences that someday, like, version 2 of this or whatever.
Jason Aten:There are definitely experiences that you can have that that don't exist anywhere else. And with these I mean, you can do the same kind of thing in an Oculus. It's just you don't have all that stuff already built into the ecosystem. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:I do want us to do, like, that game app sometime where you can play, like, Battleship across the world.
Jason Aten:I gotta set up my persona. I haven't even done that yet.
Stephen Robles:Oh, set up your persona, then we should do, like, a game of, checkers or something. It'd be something Alright.
Jason Aten:Sounds good. Good.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Before we get to, our bonus content, I do wanna do one follow-up. Jenna C. Emailed us. We talked about photo backups last week and about how Google Photos, is a good way to kind of back up all the photos from your device on device.
Stephen Robles:You don't have to do anything else. And she was saying that or they were saying like Google Backup, it doesn't allow you an easy way to get all your photos out of Google Photos. At once you do have to like request your photos. They email you a bunch of zip files and then the photos are in no particular order. So they actually said Amazon Photos, which is free if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, like even for delivery, is a better option.
Stephen Robles:So that is another option out there if you want photo backup. I knew that was an option. I tend to just not be crazy about Amazon apps, UI, and stuff, so I don't use it. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And I do appreciate, Jenna, you sharing that because that's a fair point.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And that
Jason Aten:is it the only pushback I would give is that sort of like saying you're using Backblaze, and if your house burns down, you gotta wait for someone to mail you a drive. Yes. It's not the most convenient thing, but if you're using it as a backup.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Right? Like, it's like at that point, you're just glad that it exists somewhere.
Stephen Robles:Sure. Sure. But do it somewhere. And so Jen is saying she has a good experience with Amazon Photos. That's a great option.
Stephen Robles:I actually started doing the Google Photos sync again. I stopped for a while because sometimes your phone gets hot, but I'm like, probably worth it. You know, my phone's getting hot, my AI pin's gonna get hot, my my VisionPRO's gonna get hot, everything's gonna be hot. So we're in the summer. Let's just do it.
Stephen Robles:Alright. We're gonna get to our bonus episode. Wouldn't you say?
Jason Aten:Burn it down. I said burn it down. Just burn it all down.
Stephen Robles:Florida. Yeah. I actually get so speaking of reviews, I'll just say I needed a pool vacuum. This is one of the benefits of being a YouTube creator. There was a company reached out, they wanted to send me a pool vacuum with one of the things that crawls along the walls and stuff.
Stephen Robles:I accepted no money. No money exchanged hands. But I'm keeping that pool vacuum. And so I will I will offer my my honest review, soon on the pool vacuum.
Jason Aten:Alright. My
Stephen Robles:channel. So there you go. But you should subscribe to this YouTube channel, youtube.com/primatetechshow. We're slowly getting to those 1,000 subscribers. But you can accelerate it.
Stephen Robles:If everyone listening to the show right now we have way more than a 1000 listeners. So if everyone goes subscribe to the YouTube channel, we'll hit a 1,000, like, tomorrow. Go subscribe. You can go to the YouTube channel. Link is right in the show notes or just search for primary technology and do the 5 star rating and review.
Stephen Robles:And of course, if you don't already, we would appreciate your support. Monthly or annually, you get the bonus episode we're about to record and an ad free version of the show. Thanks everyone for listening and watching. We'll see you next week.
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