Microsoft Reignites Mac vs PC War, Scarlett Johansson + OpenAI Controversy, iPhone Badge Hygiene
Download MP3The past is just a story we tell ourselves. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today we have a bunch of news. Microsoft had an event announcing Copilot plus PCs. We're gonna talk about what that means and is Windows back?
Stephen Robles:Open AI debacle with Scarlett Johansson plus the Sonos Ace headphones are now official. Apple Vision Pro finally getting more immersive content. And we have a bunch of personal tech that we're gonna talk about as well. This show is brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me as always, my good friend, Jason Aten.
Stephen Robles:How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. Yeah. It's
Stephen Robles:good. I think say that as, like, just a transition thing. We should we should do something different.
Jason Aten:I know. I feel like I don't know how to answer that question because
Stephen Robles:what am
Jason Aten:I gonna be like? Well, actually, it was a rough morning, Steven.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I
Jason Aten:mean, yesterday was yesterday was a rough morning because we got a text message from our kids when they're on the school bus that the bus driver was telling them that they didn't have school, which seems weird because the bus driver is driving them to school. And then it followed with, like, the email and the message thing they send out that the school did not have Internet, which meant that they also didn't have phone service, which meant that they don't want kids in the building, which doesn't seem like that makes sense, except, 1, the teachers can't do anything if they don't have the Internet because they can't get on the Google Classroom stuff. And 2, I don't think you want a school full of high school students that know that you can't call the fire department if you decide today is a good day to set the trash cans on fire in the bathrooms. So, like, the elementary school students, they just canceled school. And every other student who was already at school, this was, like, 7 o'clock, 7:30 in the morning.
Jason Aten:They're like, we're gonna do a half day. We'll bring your kids home on the bus at the end of the half day, but please come get them right now. So so if you would have asked me the question yesterday, it would have been it would not have been good. But today, it's good.
Stephen Robles:I was not expecting that as the intro to the show. But yeah.
Jason Aten:I just was explaining my thought process. No. No. It's good. It's good.
Stephen Robles:Well, most podcasts do that thing where it's just like, hey. How are you doing? And I feel like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe there's something different.
Stephen Robles:Listeners, let us know. How should we transition that? Maybe we do a song and dance. Yeah.
Jason Aten:If you want Jason to stop talking about completely random stories that no one cares about me.
Stephen Robles:You promised a one minute stand up routine that one time. I never heard that.
Jason Aten:That's true. But it had a tech connection. It was the Internet. I see. I figured you guys the Internet.
Jason Aten:There's no Internet.
Stephen Robles:Does the school have 2 gigabits down, or do I have faster Internet?
Jason Aten:Well, yesterday, they had 0. They didn't have any up or down.
Stephen Robles:Fair fair enough. Alright. We're gonna jump into the news. I do wanna say we have some amazing, 5 star reviews in our Apple Podcasts, but we actually didn't have any this last week, so I can't give shout outs. So here is the goal.
Stephen Robles:We are 33 5 star reviews away from 200, then we'll have a nice round number of 205 star reviews. So if you have not done it yet, if you've already done it, I know there's a lot there's lots of you out there that just keep doing it, but it doesn't count as, like, a new one. Like, Apple Podcasts just it doesn't change the number. So if you have not ever given us a 5 star rating in review in Apple Podcasts, we need 33 of you this week to go there, and we'll have a long shout out section next week in the episode, for all of you who do that. So let's do that, and we're a 113 subscribers away from a 1,000 on our YouTube channel.
Stephen Robles:So that's the ask this week. 205 star reviews in Apple Podcasts, 113 subscribers on YouTube, and I do wanna give a shout out to a listener. Last week, we were talking about Google search, and we were bemoaning the loss of just the plain old blue link results, where you actually just get the results of the thing you search for. So Brad Thornborough on mastodon actually shared this link and we'll put it in the show notes of course, but this is actually kind of a way to hack your Google search back. If you just want the list of blue links to be the default, there's a there's a few options for you, and so I'll put this link in show notes.
Stephen Robles:It kind of walks you through. It's different depending on the browser you use or, like, if you use Chrome, there's some extensions out there. There's some updates on the bottom like a Safari extension and things like that. So if you did want to just go back in time like in the way back machine and get just the regular old Google search results, you can do that. And so yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's very cool. Thank you, Brad. That's fun.
Jason Aten:That is really cool.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I I will say as we're we're gonna talk more about OpenAI and stuff later, but did you listen to the interview with Nilay Patel and Sundar Pichai on decoder?
Jason Aten:I haven't gotten through the entire thing yet, but I have started. It's a
Stephen Robles:very good interview. I'll I'll put the link in the show notes, but he he literally did Google searches and handed his phone to Sundar Pichai and made Sundar, like, answer questions about the search results and the AI overviews. And it was Yeah. It was very good. So kudos.
Stephen Robles:That was it was a good
Jason Aten:interview. Yeah. I don't know why people sit down with him anymore. And he like because he he does not he asked them, like, the questions. The questions that everyone's wondering, like, if I could talk to Sundar Pichai right now, what would I ask him?
Jason Aten:And he just which good. That's what he should be doing. It's exactly right.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. He he he has he has the good questions. So and speaking of interviews, Microsoft had a big event, and I watched the interview with Joanna Stern and Satya Nadella. I thought it was a great kind of overview about what Microsoft announced, and so I'll put a link to this interview as well. But Microsoft had their event earlier this week.
Stephen Robles:The big announcement was Copilot Plus PCs, which is a bit of a name. But in this interview, and then we'll put a couple articles in the show notes as well, basically Microsoft and the Snapdragon chip, that's kind of the big news from this event, is like there's a snapdragon chip that now has an npc, which is a neural processing unit, is going to run a bunch of AI stuff locally on these new Windows laptops, including a Surface Pro and a Surface laptop, and one of the main features is the recall feature where this is a re I think there was a Mac, a third party app that tried doing this for the Mac. I think it was called rewind or something like that. Yep. Microsoft is basically announcing recall.
Stephen Robles:This is gonna be available on Copilot Plus PCs that have the snapdragon with the n p c part of the chip where you can enable this, and everything you do on your Windows PC will be captured by the on device AI. These you know, what you do won't be uploaded to the cloud. That's why the it's an on device AI feature, and you'll then be able to search your not just your computer, but basically everything you've ever seen. And so if you saw a leather couch at some point and you forgot where you saw it, did I see it on the web? Did I see it in a social media post?
Stephen Robles:Was it in an email? You'll be able to search your Copilot Plus PC, and it will bring up exactly, you know, all the instances where you've seen a brown leather couch. Even if it's not intact, even if it was just an image of 1, the AI on your laptop will be able to decipher that image as a brown leather sofa and then feed you that image. And so that's one of the big on device AI features that Microsoft is touting, and I think it answers the question because you have mentioned many times on the show, what does an AI computer even mean? Because most AI is in the cloud, and this interview with Joanna Stern, Satya Nadell is kind of explaining that.
Stephen Robles:So I I find that interesting, plus we could talk about the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop in a second, but would you use a a recall feature like this?
Jason Aten:Well, okay.
Stephen Robles:I know you had a bunch of other things you were gonna say, and then I asked that question.
Jason Aten:No. That's okay. I wrote this I wrote them all down. It's fine. I have such mixed feelings about this because this is this is, like, the holy grail of computing ability.
Jason Aten:Right? Because the number of times this happened to me yesterday. I was working on an article, and I'm, like, I had read a statistic, but I didn't remember where it was. And it was, like, sort of a tangent. So it wasn't like I could just go through my browser history and be like, which one of these articles?
Jason Aten:Because none of the article titles that you could see in my browser history were like, here's the article with that statistic, Jason. Like, it wasn't it was but I couldn't figure it out. But so I had to open 75 pages that I had opened the day before and reread all of them to try whereas I could have just, like, I knew actually what the statistic was. I just needed the context, and I also wanna be able to link to it. So I had to go back and find that where I could have just typed in the number and been like, when have I seen this in an article?
Jason Aten:Right? Like Right. That would be great. And, yeah, I would never want this on my computer. Like
Stephen Robles:So you would so you would not
Jason Aten:I don't know. But it's for it it just there's so you know, in light of what we just learned about the bug in iOS, 17.5,
Stephen Robles:where the deleted pictures come back.
Jason Aten:Is this really a thing that you want to have the ability to have? Like, just imagine that and I'm not even talking about nefarious stuff or, like, things that some people might consider inappropriate. The number of contexts where you might be doing a thing on a computer, you know, looking through things, searching through things that have a really useful I mean, as a writer and as somebody who who is constantly looking for stories, the number of times that I'm pulling up articles that I'm like, I kinda don't want my kids to, like, you know what I mean? You go down these rabbit holes and you're just like, out of context. My kids would be like, dad, why were you reading this?
Jason Aten:What is this that even why do you have 76 Taylor Swift articles in your history? Like, whatever it might be. Like That's what you put.
Stephen Robles:Why were you researching clogs? Yeah. It's
Jason Aten:like, what is it?
Stephen Robles:On the weekends.
Jason Aten:Or, like, just all of those scenarios where you might be, like, doing that. Do you want that accessible to someone who gets a hold of your computer? Like, for your coworkers, I don't know, the the cops. Just all these scenarios.
Stephen Robles:That that is a big question when you think about in the workplace because of these Copilot. I mean, imagine I imagine many employees would love this feature and will probably force it to be enabled on many Copilot plus PCs that they distribute to their workforce. But, you know, mobile device management platforms, I'm not sure what they might use on the Windows side, but, you know, you have, like, Jamf and Kanji on the Mac side. If this was a feature that could be forced on or off on work machines, and then an employer can basically see everything that you have done? I'm cure I didn't hear anything about that kind of business use case.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious if this might be something that Apple builds into WWDC because with all these AI features, I I mean, obviously, we're, like, Apple people, but I think I would trust Apple a little more with a feature like this, and maybe they would do something the way they capture the information, maybe less like just taking constant screenshots of your screen. Maybe there's there's a different mechanism they can use. But I also feel like this feature is only gonna be useful if it was across all your devices because sometimes I see things in a social media post on my phone, sometimes I'm looking at a website on my Mac, maybe my iPad, and unless it is somehow accessing all of that, which would then require the cloud, which is, I understand, then the privacy security thing, but with Apple's Icloud advanced data protection, and if some of that stuff can go in the cloud, I don't know. I I'd obviously be more inclined to trust Apple with that kind of feature, but I could see how this is really useful. Even like that, pendant that the third party company was trying to launch where it just basically recorded the audio all the time, like, if you were in meetings, I I could say it's useful, but it does it's starting to air a little bit on the creepy side.
Jason Aten:I think I would be inclined to trust Apple more. Sure. And I say that as someone who has recently been locked out of their Apple ID several times. And it's it's so weird. And with the news of the the funny thing about the whole Apple people were having their photos come back is every headline.
Jason Aten:Every single headline is, like, bug in iOS results in resurface deleted nudes. And I'm thinking the number one thing people delete on their phone are screenshots. Come on. Let's be honest. Right?
Jason Aten:You screenshot a thing and you're like, I need to remember this later. And then you go and you delete it. I pulled up my, my deleted, like where you can go to the recently deleted. And I was like, I mean, I don't even know if these were resurfaced because it's all just screenshots of random stuff from, like, all over the time. But That
Stephen Robles:is true.
Jason Aten:I I would be more inclined to trust Apple. But the but, again, my thing is not you're creating a repository of what you've thought was ephemeral and making it permanent. And you're so you're you're that mental model is very, very different. But again, this is the, like, this is spotlight on steroids. No.
Jason Aten:Not even
Stephen Robles:on steroids.
Jason Aten:Like, this is just, like,
Stephen Robles:be
Jason Aten:the next level of it. Yeah. Spotlight. It's like quantum spotlight computing because the ability to not just find files on your dot or yeah. Because Spotlight has actually gotten pretty good.
Jason Aten:Right? You can you can look you can I remember the time when it was like, now we can read the words in a PDF? Like, that was amazing. But now it's like, what if it can just we know everything, every website you visited, every every image you file you open. Because, like, if you think about, like, if you open a bunch of photos, like, most of the photos on your computer are named, like, d s c 1705-536.
Jason Aten:IMG. There's no score. Searchable metadata. But if you could just type into Spotlight the stuff that Google showed off, for example, when when's the first time my kid was in a pool? And it can just, like, know all those types of things, especially or what was the pull up the photo I was looking at this morning because I don't even remember when it was or whatever it was.
Jason Aten:Those things are amazing. It's just I have a lot of questions before I'd be like, yeah. Turn that feature on.
Stephen Robles:I think there is some pressure on Apple with WWDC looming what they're gonna be doing, but I don't know. Did you I know you took some other notes. What other thoughts did you have about this whole Copilot Plus PC and as the is the Mac versus Windows debate? I don't know if this has any bearing on that.
Jason Aten:Let's take those 2 things separately. The first thing about the Copilot Plus PC, it's a terrible name. Whatever. It's Microsoft, so that's fine. But I do think it's important if you're just kinda getting this news if we're if we're your first source of this news, I just wanna explain this part that, basically, they're creating a marketing name for a set of capabilities
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:That a PC has to have for it to be considered a Copilot Plus PC. So Dell, for example, could sell 2 XPS thirteens, one of which is capable of, you know, having the name of Copilot Plus PC and one that doesn't. And I think the reason for that is essentially what well, I think there's two reasons. 1, Microsoft is saying we're building this stuff into Windows. In order for it to run effectively on device, it has to be capable of this stuff.
Jason Aten:That's one reason. And so they just wanna they want if you buy it for you to be sure you're going to get a good experience when you try to do these things. And the second reason is they conveniently picked a standard that beats out the MacBook Air, which leads to the other thing that you asked about. It's like Mac versus PC back. I think it's great for Mac and PC to be, like, pushing each other.
Jason Aten:I don't think that the debate today is the same as it was 15 years ago. Right? And
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Because I think that most people, like, I don't actually see that many people using PCs in the wild, but I know that way more people use them. That's also true of Android devices, to be honest. If I'm at a soccer game, one of my kids' soccer games, and I just looked down at all the people taking photos, It's almost all iPhones and a couple of Android devices, and yet I know that in this country, it's 5050. Right? So I don't think that that that people are sitting there on the fence like, should I buy this Copilot Plus PC, or should I just buy a MacBook Air?
Jason Aten:I don't think that that's the conversation people are having. But I think for Microsoft, my one of Microsoft's reasons for making Surface products is to push the innovation envelope in the PC world and to challenge its its partners, the OEM manufacturers, to, like, do better. Right? Like, there's I remember a story about, I think it was Nilay Patel, the Verge, telling a story about how he was at an event in in Panos, Bennett, who was formerly the head of service and now is at Amazon, strangely. But anyway Right.
Jason Aten:And he was walking around, and there was all of these different Dell PCs, Asus, HP, whatever. And and it's kinda like, why are you showing me all these things made by other people? And he's like, no. Look at the hinge. That's my hinge.
Jason Aten:They're all using our hinge. Like, they're designing all of these things, and then they're trying to get them out there.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:I don't think that there's a lot of people who are MacBook Air people who are gonna be like, let me buy this $33100 Dell PC instead.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:I think it's interesting. I and I hopefully, that will push Apple to, you know, kind of step up its game. So
Stephen Robles:It was funny, you know, the Microsoft has said, you know, they're 58% faster than the MacBook Air, which presumably one of the things that John Gruber pointed out and a bunch of people pointed out was like all these PCs have fans and so Yeah. That's a, you know, a different like that's kind of a different computer and there was obviously no comparison to MacBook Pro. It was just faster than MacBook Air. It also said better battery life, like 20% longer battery life than the MacBook Air. So, okay, maybe, but, like you were saying and I just looked up the statistic because I was curious.
Stephen Robles:In my mind, it's always that PC and Windows is the overwhelming market share of, you know, computer users, and I was just curious and I just this is Statista, which I think is a Statista? I don't know. That it's a semi reasonable source of information?
Jason Aten:Yeah. No. It is. It's it's used all the time.
Stephen Robles:Okay. That's what I thought. So this is the last, like, 10 years from January 2012 to September 2023, and you could definitely see the trend of Windows usage from starting at 80% over 10 years ago down to about, 54%, and Mac gone from under 20 to about over 30% usage. So, you know, that idea that quote unquote 90 something percent of computer users are Windows, like, I remember hearing that statistic years ago, and maybe it's different on, like, if you look at the enterprise side and you take servers into account or whatever, but when it comes to, like, anecdotal, like, you go to a coffee shop, what do you see? It does feel like you're saying, you you just don't really see PCs a lot.
Stephen Robles:I'll see, like, one HP Yeah. And then it's a bunch of MacBooks. And I think to your point, I don't know, probably, I saw people in some of the articles saying, like, yeah, the Mac versus PC wars are back on or whatever. Like, I don't know. I I don't know if these features are even AI Copilot Plus, which I don't even know if a normal person is gonna know that Copilot Plus means AI.
Stephen Robles:Like, I think there's kind of a weird branding thing there, but I don't think this is gonna draw people to an operating system yet. I think it's still kind of the ecosystem as a whole and as I was talking about these features, like the recall, is only really going to be useful when it's cross device. Windows is never gonna be able to do that Right. Because it doesn't have a mobile platform.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:And you could say it has a tablet platform, but really the phone is what's, I think, the key part of it. I don't know if it could work with Android. I doubt Google would want a Microsoft recall running on their Android device. They would want a Google one, but Google doesn't have a desktop operating system. Right.
Jason Aten:Well, they have Chrome OS. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But, I mean, again, for, like, majority of people, it's but if you're not in education, you're using a Mac or a PC. And so I feel like Apple is still kind of uniquely positioned if this kind of recall and AI features cross devices are what's gonna be prevalent. Apple's kind of the one player that can do it across the ecosystem like the Mac, you know.
Jason Aten:When you put up that that you're showing that article from The Verge about all the different copilot plus PCs that have been announced And what I think is interesting is what they're talking about are, quote, the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. Apple has never made the claim that the MacBook Air is the fastest p Mac PC. Right? Like, you're so you were like, well, let's take the engine. Now what what Microsoft knows is the MacBook Air period is just the best selling app.
Jason Aten:I mean, like, I think that's actually true. It's not just a thing Apple says. Right. And anecdotally, it bears out that if you go anywhere, you just see MacBook. And we have we have them like a half dozen of them in our house.
Jason Aten:Like, it's just they're they're everywhere. Right? So they pick the one that's the most popular and they're like, this one's faster. But I have a couple of Dell XPS laptops. If you if I I mean, it's heavier than a MacBook Pro.
Jason Aten:Right? These are not these are not MacBook Air, the same category. Right? You know what I mean? And and the thing is the MacBook Air can handle, like, all of the things that you wanna do.
Jason Aten:And we've seen what the m 4 can do, right, in the in the iPads. So put one of those into a MacBook Air, and you have essentially the exact same performance. And Apple says that that was, what, 38,000,000,000,000 operations per second.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:And Microsoft just said that the cutoff point is 40, which is feels like that the percent you're talking about a very small percentage difference at that point between the fastest, most intelligent Windows species ever built and the entry level Mac. Like I
Stephen Robles:I also and I also feel like when these companies have these events, Microsoft, Google, whatever, how much they talk about another company's product, I think, is telling. Yeah. Where the last time I remember Apple directly I feel like we recently talked about this. Directly mentioned a competitor product was, like, the iPhone launch when Steve Jobs showed, like, blackberries and palm trios on a slide. And then at the iPad launch when, you know, it was like netbooks.
Stephen Robles:Wasn't a specific netbook, it was just like netbooks. Since then, we get the charts where we see like processor comparison, but not like hardware device comparisons where Apple is like this Copilot PC or this Windows laptop Right. Is this much slower or MacBook Air is this much faster. You know, they compare it to their own chips, and then they do the very obscure graphs of their chip speeds. And so I just think it's, you know, interesting that it's Microsoft and Google and these companies that seem to constantly be comparing their products to other companies products rather than just touting the what it can do.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But didn't you love those Pixel commercials that were out coming out last year where there's, like, the Pixel on the iPhone? I mean, that was great. Like, good for good for Google.
Stephen Robles:That was funny.
Jason Aten:But the companies that that decide to pick that fight are always doing so from the position of the perceived underdog. So what Microsoft is basically saying is that in this category, we know we're the underdog. Now Microsoft can say that, though, because Microsoft actually makes very good hardware. The all of the Surface stuff is great. That's just not their primary business.
Jason Aten:Right? They're making hardware because they know that most of the stuff that other PC makers make was it just sucked. And they're like, we can't keep selling Windows and Office and whatever. I guess you can sell Office to Mac users, but, like, why? They can't keep doing that if you don't make better stuff.
Jason Aten:So please make better stuff, and here's a good example of it. And it's work. It is absolutely work. If you look at the PC laptop designs today compared to a while back, you know, 10 years ago, It's completely different. And a lot of that is, a, the MacBook Air, and then Microsoft was like, you guys should do more things like the MacBook Air.
Jason Aten:Here, let's show you how to do it. So that's impressive.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. And which the last thing we'll say about the the Microsoft event was they announced hardware, the Surface Pro, which the Surface Pro is their device that has the detachable keyboard and is basically a tablet, you know, laptop combination, and then the Surface laptop, which is a straight laptop. Yep. The Surface Pro, I find interesting.
Stephen Robles:I've heard from a couple of the reviewers who are at the event that the lappability was actually pretty good on the Surface Pro, which it has the weird, like, kickstand out the back, but that it was a much more stable typing experience. But, also, what I the one feature I thought was really cool was on this Surface Pro, previously, if you detached the keyboard, it was useless. Right. It wouldn't work at all. But in this new model, they've actually put Bluetooth in the keyboard.
Stephen Robles:So if you detach it from the Surface Pro, it will stay connected and you can still use the keyboard, which I find it's great because if you're at a desk and let's say you have like a mount where you want to put the Surface Pro up and then still use the keyboard that's normally attached to it as the keyboard, you can do that, which then made me think about my iPad Pro. And it's like, you know, the Magic Keyboard, it's a little different because the Magic Keyboard has, like, the back, and that would be weird to kinda have it Mhmm. On there. But it would be nice where if I put my iPad Pro, like, on a stand or a mount, which I do have one coming. They act that it's hard to find stands that actually are for the new iPad Pros, because the magnets are different, but I actually have one coming that's gonna work with my 11 inch.
Stephen Robles:It'll be cool if I could put that on the stand and then not have to pair another keyboard to my iPad, just keep using the Magic Keyboard that I already type on all the time with it. So I think that was cool. The Surface laptop, I think, is less interesting. I mean, it's just a laptop, but
Jason Aten:I mean, the Surface laptops, just to fair, are very, very, very good laptops. Like, if I was Yeah. Going to buy a PC laptop, I would buy a Surface laptop for sure. Just want to throw that out there. I think the Surface Pro, though, is one of the most interesting devices because it's not a great tablet.
Jason Aten:It's not it's not a great one because Windows is not a great experience for touch or whatever. We've had that conversation before. But I do think that the that the Surface Pro is great. And I think the one thing we didn't really mention, I think you touched on it sort of just slightly, is that the whole point of all these is that they're now ARM based. So this is like the end of Microsoft's decades long.
Jason Aten:Well, like, it's like they're they're the end of their decade long attempt to transition Windows to ARM, and it has not been very successful until now. In fact, they released a Surface Pro 10, maybe, that was, like, based on an ARM chip, and it was terrible. Like, people were like,
Stephen Robles:just it's it's the bad one. Don't buy
Jason Aten:the bad one. It's the bad one. Right? It was in and now Microsoft is,
Stephen Robles:like,
Jason Aten:all in on that because that is how you get the power efficiency. It's how you get the the, you know, the better performance per per watt, all those things that we hear Apple talk about all the time. Right. I think that the the Surface Pro like, we had a kid who made it through COVID school, homeschool, you know, homeschool using a Surface because it was like the device we extra had around, and he could just do Zoom calls on it all the time. And it was great.
Jason Aten:And then they put Minecraft on it, and it was fine. And it it probably caught fire at some point because Minecraft was brutal to that thing. But but I think Microsoft I wanna give them credit. They make they do actually make really good hardware. Both the laptop and the Surface Pro are are very good, and it's the reason that everyone wants Mac OS on the iPad.
Stephen Robles:Oh, my we're not getting into that. I got too much I got too much
Jason Aten:We got too much to talk about. Speaking.
Stephen Robles:We do talk about I will say Microsoft knows how to do colors on their devices. I'm just throwing that out there because I keep seeing so many so many people taking pictures of the new iPad Air in Apple Stores, and they're like, here's the blue one. Here's the lavender one. And it's like, there's no color there. No.
Stephen Robles:That that's not a color.
Jason Aten:No. If I take the SmartFolio off of that iPad, you wouldn't you'd be like, it's gray.
Stephen Robles:Yep. It's a it's all gray.
Jason Aten:I asked my kids, what color do you think this is? They're like, it's silver, dad. What do you mean? What color is it? I'm like, no.
Jason Aten:This is the blue one. They're like, no. It's not. They lied to you. They misprinted the box.
Jason Aten:It's not the blue one.
Stephen Robles:Apple, change the ink cartridge. Let's get some colors, especially on the pro devices. I'd like some colors now. I'm ready. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I like, I wanted color. I'm still kinda let me ask you that. What what iPhone 15 did you buy for yourself? Yourself?
Jason Aten:The titanium. Because what what's the point? None of them have color. I'm just kidding. The only one has some color.
Stephen Robles:I still regret not getting the natural titanium color. I think that was the best color this year. I went with the blue titanium, which like if you look at it in the perfect light Oh, that's
Jason Aten:up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Those are very different.
Stephen Robles:Very different. But it's basically like this and the black, they're so similar. Like Yeah. Unless you have just the perfect angle of light, like it just looks like it, you know, you know, like if you look at this, it's dark. Yep.
Stephen Robles:You know, colors and my listen my favorite color is green okay and the one time they made a green pro phone was the iPhone 13 pro, but they released the green mid cycle. So I didn't get it because because I get them at the launch date. So green apple. Let's see a green iPhone 16.
Jason Aten:Isn't it isn't it Jason Snell that has the theory that, like, the more pro the product gets, the more boring the colors get?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, the iPad Pro is the pinnacle. It's like light gray, dark gray.
Jason Aten:But at least they aren't even at least they aren't pretending, like, there's colors. Yeah. Like, they are with the Air. At least with the Pro, they're just like, you can have light or dark. Just pick which one you want.
Stephen Robles:That's all you get. That's like okay. I wanna talk about OpenAI, and I'm gonna try and weave this story in the chronological order, and then we can
Jason Aten:I'm looking forward to this.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna try it. So shortly before OpenAI's event, which was last week where they announced GPT 4 o, prior to that event, Sam Altman had a tweet, and his tweet was a single word, all lowercase because he doesn't believe in capitalization, just said her. That was his tweet. Then OpenAI had their chatgpt4o event where they had the voice assistant, then they yelled at it to get more and more emotive and emotional, and it sounded a little weird, and eventually it came to be that, man, this voice sounds a lot like the movie Her, where Scarlett Johansson voiced the character Samantha in that movie. And, you know, obviously, Sam Altman tweeted literally the word heard just days before the event, so it seems a little strange.
Stephen Robles:Well, as one should know because of the Disney fiasco, Scarlett Johansson was in talks, or OpenAI at least reached out to her, asking if she would literally be the voice of chatgpt4.0, to which she declined. Even up to days before that event with OpenAI and ChatJPT 4 0, that OpenAI was reaching out to her, and she had the receipts, and there's a long statement. This representative for Scarlett Johansson actually sent the statement to The Verge talking about last September Scarlett Johansson received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current Chatt gpt 4 point o system, this is Scarlett Johansson, and how that system would be called Sky, the voice that you hear in chatgpt4 0, going through this statement. And she says even 2 days before the chat JPT demo was released, mister Altman contacted my agent asking me to reconsider before we could connect and the system was out there. So that means she did not approve her voice to be used, and she believes that her voice was in fact trained or some AI was trained on her voice, and that's what was in that demo, that it was Scarlett Johansson's voice trained by AI.
Stephen Robles:There were many statements out there. OpenAI denied that they trained an AI on Scarlett Johansson's voice, again, despite the fact that Sam Altman literally tweeted the word her, the movie that Scarlett Johansson stars in. And the latest update, apparently, this is from The Washington Post that a document shared that OpenAI did hire another voice actress or an AI to be trained on for that gpt4o demo. So this actress must have sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson because the voice is still very much like her voice, but that they did in fact hire someone else, which, again, the timeline seems a little strange being that 2 days before the OpenAI event, Sam Altman was still reaching out to Scarlett Johansson, and maybe it was just he wanted the name recognition. He just wanted to be able to say Scarlett Johansson's name during the event or whatever.
Stephen Robles:But apparently, according to The Washington Post and statements that there actually was another actress that OpenAI hired to train the thing. Overall, this is just very messy, not a good look for Sam Altman or OpenAI, especially as they are trying to make a bunch of deals with big names, which we'll talk about in a second, like big deals with the Wall Street Journal and things like that. It just feels kinda gross, and they also OpenAI has announced that they're kinda pulling back, maybe correct correct not the flirtiness, but kind of the the flirtiness of that chatgpt4o voice code name Sky, they're gonna dial it back a little bit. Yeah. It's not as like that.
Jason Aten:Well, they've actually turned off the Sky voice at this time. Right. They've turned
Stephen Robles:it off.
Jason Aten:They've turned that you can't use that voice. You can't flirt with it at all. Like, it's they dialed it back so far at 0 right
Stephen Robles:now. Not that that's what everybody's doing with it, but
Jason Aten:It's pretty much what everybody's doing.
Stephen Robles:Just okay. Yeah. Okay.
Jason Aten:So what's the what is even the point of having it? What is what is even the point of having a voice assistant that sounds like the voice in her if you're not just flirting with it. Like, come on. That's the connection I want you to make.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yes. Anyway, well, we can have a deeper discussion.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We can talk. There's more important things to talk than that. But Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Okay. OpenAI is, like, business model seems to be someone says this would be a cool idea. And then someone else, Sam Altman says, do it. And then someone else comes along and says that was a bad idea. And then Sam Altman says, pretend we didn't do it.
Jason Aten:Like
Stephen Robles:that's the business.
Jason Aten:That is the entire no, no. I'm I'm I'm oversimplifying, but not by much, because all you have to do is look at Joanna Stern's interview with Mira Mirati, who is the chief technology officer asking her when you built this Sora text to video generator, did you train it on? What did you train it on? And her answer was like publicly available data. And she says, so YouTube.
Jason Aten:And she goes, I don't know about that. How do you know you are the, you are the person responsible for the technology. How do you not know about the technology? Like the, and you
Stephen Robles:can tell you get
Jason Aten:well, you could tell the calculation she's doing is, what do I have to say to not be sued? Like, seriously, that's the kind that's the thing that they're having. And so, of course, they're gonna put out a statement that's like, well, no, of course, we didn't train this on Scarlett Johansson's voice in her the movie that our CEO loves and adores. Like, we we would never do that kind of thing. It's just it's merely a coincidence.
Jason Aten:And I think it was Casey Newton in platformer who's like, their excuse is basically that our our CEO tripped on a trail of banana peels and, like, oops. Like, that's actually, like, the description that he uses. And I feel like I feel like the biggest issue for this is 1, you know, the the future of large language models and generative AI entirely depends right now on whether or not these companies can just rip off the Internet. Right? Whether that's a copyright violation or not.
Jason Aten:Like, that's the question. And, you know, the New York Times is suing OpenAI. We're gonna we're gonna see some outcomes to those lawsuits. It's probably gonna take a while, but maybe that answer that question will get answered. It's funny because open AI has approached a bunch of publishers to make deals with them to do this kind of thing.
Jason Aten:And some of the responses have been, what are you talking about? You've already taken all of our content. What, what is the deal to be had here? You've already trained on it. So like, what are we supposed to do?
Jason Aten:You're saying you'll give us some amount of money to do this. You've already done it. Like, we can't say no. Right? Because it
Stephen Robles:And so I just wanna mention it because as you're saying that, so the latest deal was that OpenAI signed a deal with News Corp, which, I believe is the company behind the Wall Street Journal.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They own the Wall Street Journal.
Stephen Robles:They own the Wall Street Journal, and so there's a multi year agreement for OpenAI to access current and archived articles. This is in addition into other deals that OpenAI has already made with the Associated Press, the Financial Times, the People Publisher, and political owner, Alex or Axel Springer, and so they already made a bunch of deals, they're making more, and I think it is also important to remember that Apple is also supposedly in talks to make a deal with OpenAI to put that chat gpt integration on the iPhone. This is what Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has been reporting, I think, over the last several weeks to couple months is that Apple was kind of searching what AI LLM to put in its iOS 18 and future products, and it was like maybe Gemini, maybe OpenAI's ChatChippity, and it looks like OpenAI is the close one. But I cannot imagine Apple wanting to announce at WWDC a partnership with this kind of fiasco of a company that is just constantly in in the news. I mean, both positively because they're still making exciting things, but a lot of negative too.
Stephen Robles:Like, I don't I don't know. Yeah. That seems like an odd partnership for Apple specifically in such a for such a public company like OpenAI and publicly negative.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, in Apple and the thing Apple Apple and open The thing apple and open AI, that's a hard words to say together, have in common is that their businesses are built on the necessity of trust. Right? Apple has made it a huge they talk about privacy and security, privacy and security. We respect users privacy and security.
Jason Aten:We believe privacy is a fundamental human right. You have to believe that they mean that and that the features that they're building won't resurface your deleted photos. Like, you just have to believe that that's a thing that they care about. Right? And for the most part, Apple's actions in the way that they build their software and their products, for the most part, I think supports that.
Jason Aten:There's some questionable things around, like, scammy apps and the App Store and that kind of stuff. Those are sort of, like, edge cases. But for the most part, like, people generally believe it. And the reason they believe it is that Apple hasn't built like, honestly, the reason is because Apple's business model is not built on serving relevant ads. Right?
Jason Aten:Because if you've ever seen the ads that Apple serves, they are not relevant. They are not good. That is not their primary business. It's very obvious that not what they're doing.
Stephen Robles:They but they do the annoying part is they do try, and I I actually did a video on, like, weird privacy things that Apple has in their settings, and you can actually see the profile that Apple has has in their settings, and you can actually see the profile that Apple has built for you Yep. In how they advertise to you. Like, you can go on your iPhone into settings, security, privacy, ad preferences, and, like, when I go there, I see, like, movies, action adventure, fantasy Yeah. Disaster movies or whatever. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Like, and you you could see. And it's a general profile. It's not as detailed as, you know, profiles that probably Google has on you and other, you know, advertising, networks or agencies or whatever, but but Apple does try.
Jason Aten:Well, but you know what mine says? You have turned off personalized ads preventing Apple from using your information or interactions. So they have no they have none of that. So, like, it's not an obvious setting, but they do at least give you the option of saying, if you just want the garbage ads, we'll just show you the garbage ads because you're not gonna click on the ads in Apple News anyway. So what do we care?
Jason Aten:Like, it's not that big of a deal. But open the app
Stephen Robles:more ads in Apple News. Let me just say it, dude. It feels like there's a lot of ads.
Jason Aten:And they're bad.
Stephen Robles:Then they're not good.
Jason Aten:They're the worst ad product in the history of ad products, and all ad products are not great. But they're so, like, I do not wanna be reading the article about Caitlin Clark, you know, in her first game in the WNBA and see the ad for the toe fungus again. It's just like, come on. What are we? That's not even an exaggeration, but I wanna just finish my point, which was simply the open eyes business, which is essentially a business that some people legitimately believe could bring about the end of humanity.
Jason Aten:Kind of depends on the idea that you trust the people making it not to be the end of humanity. And when the CEO goes out and essentially just seems like blatantly lies about something so obvious that it does not instill confidence. And when the the chief technology officer is like, I don't even know if we what's YouTube? I mean or here's the thing. When asked why they scheduled the event the day before Google, they're like, oh, we didn't even know Google IO was this week.
Jason Aten:Like, you can't do that.
Stephen Robles:Ridiculous. It's ridiculous.
Jason Aten:You think that they it's like they think this is just a game, and it's like, oh, we'll just we'll just do the things anyway because we're too big. We're too important. We're too powerful. We have too much money behind us. And and there's too like, and it probably doesn't help that Microsoft has Microsoft has $10,000,000,000 in it.
Jason Aten:And when the board tried to fire the CEO, Satya Nadella, was like, I'm sorry. You can't do that. So, like, they do probably have this feeling of invincibility. And that's unfortunate because I think that what they're trying to build is really cool, but it could also potentially be really dangerous. And it would be nice if we could trust the people who are making it.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point. And you had an article, and the link will be in the show notes about this. Sam Walton made the one mistake, which you've you've kinda summarized, but tell us one more time, like, what your premise of this.
Jason Aten:Well, here's the thing. I yeah. This is what I was trying to say is I think it's bad if they're using intellectual property or represent likeness and representations without permission. I think it's worse that they're just making up stories and think we're stupid and that we'll believe. Because, you know, like, clearly, Sam Altman thinks that this movie is the model for what the future should be.
Jason Aten:And I have not actually watched the movie. You and I are both gonna have to watch this movie soon. Right?
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:But my understanding is it might not be the model that the rest of us want for the future of AI in the world. And so it's kind of a weird obsession. But the the real problem here, I think, is what I just said. He's he really has no credibility to make this kind of a denial because it's such an obvious, like, fictional narrative that he's telling. And so Right.
Jason Aten:You know? And, actually, the other story I wrote last week or whatever was right after their event, several members of their, their trust and safety team is, that's not what they call it, but they're basically, it's like their alignment team, which is essentially making sure that the stuff they build won't destroy humanity. They all just left. And, and, I think Jan Linky or like Leakey, I don't know how to say his last name, so I apologize for butchering that. But basically said, we I reached the breaking point.
Jason Aten:Like, my our the interest that I came here for, the things I believe that this was about are are just increasingly in conflict with the desire to make money from this stuff. And Right. So and so he's gone.
Stephen Robles:It's unfortunate because the end product, like, Chat GPT just announced, you know, they released their Mac app.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's really good.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I I'm now using it all the time rather than the website. I use it in shortcuts and the technology, like, when and if they announce chat GPT 5 in the near future, it's probably gonna be amazing. I think there is this, like, tandem the technology is cool and, like, the demos that they did at the OpenAI event, like, with the math problem or whatever, looks super cool. There is the other hand of, like, how useful is this in the real world to most people, which I don't think it's there yet.
Stephen Robles:I think there's there still needs to be, like, a bridge that says, like, here's how you can use this in your daily life to make your life better. But it's just unfortunate that this it's colored by all of this company culture that seems pretty toxic. And I I am just very curious what WWDC is going to bring if Apple I you know, is Apple I don't you know it more than I do. A lot of people there's always a lot of rumors before an Apple event, like, oh, Apple just changed x, or Apple just cut this, and it's like Apple plans more in advance than that. You know, they're not Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Making last minute changes to their keynote the week before
Jason Aten:They've already videoed that keynote. I'm pretty sure.
Stephen Robles:Probably, which I did see some thoughts of, like, I wonder if they're gonna do, like, a live but streamed presentation because they might change things last minute, but, yeah, again, who knows? That's just all speculation. But will they actually announce a partnership, or are they just gonna have they rolled their own? I mean, you know, Mark Gurman's been reporting that there might be inking a deal with OpenAI, but that might just be as like hedging because they're LLM. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:We'll have to see.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But I I'm WWDC is gonna be a big event, I think.
Jason Aten:I think you're right. I think I think but I don't think they're changing it based on what Google did it open or at IO or what Microsoft did this week at build or what open AI might or might not do with ripping off. And and that's the only thing. Last thing I wanna say about it is Scarlett Johansson's voice is just not recognizable because of that you can identify it just about anywhere. So this is not like they just found some random person and was like, yeah, we like your voice.
Jason Aten:It's like it's pretty distinctive.
Stephen Robles:And also don't mess with her because Oh, yeah. The the fact is she is the highest grossing female actress of all time. Yep. You can look up. That's the stat.
Stephen Robles:And remember, Disney, like, with the whole Black Widow movie
Jason Aten:Disney CEO Bob Chapek basically got fired because of her. It's not an exact direct link, but he was like, we don't care about talent. Whatever. We're putting your movies on streaming, and you're not you know, you were promised back end, but we don't really care about any of that. And he's not the CEO anymore.
Stephen Robles:At least not then. So if Scarlett Johansson could take on literally Disney
Jason Aten:Yep. I
Stephen Robles:don't know, OpenAI. Maybe don't mess with it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Maybe you should have called Bob Chapex. See what he's doing right now.
Stephen Robles:Know what he's doing. Anyway, that's that's OpenAI. We'll be following along. We have some other news like the Sonosays headphones, Apple Vision Pro Apple Vision Pro content, and Jason's gonna talk about a unit of measurement with my name. I don't know what this means.
Stephen Robles:I'm very excited to hear it. And then I think we have some personal tech segment, but I wanna take a moment and thank all of those who support the show directly. They're not hearing this because they actually get an ad free version, and so you can do that directly in Apple Podcasts. You can go to primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes. Not only do you get an ad free version of the show, but you get bonus episodes every week, and even if you start supporting the show now, you get the entire back catalog of bonus episodes.
Stephen Robles:Had several members actually reach out and say they actually want the video of the bonus episodes as well. So guess what? We're doing that too. And so I'm releasing the bonus video. I did it last week.
Stephen Robles:I like hid it in the show notes to see if anybody would find it, and sure enough, we had members who did. And so you're gonna get a video version of the bonus episode. It'll be linked in the show notes of the bonus episodes, And, of course, you get the audio version. And I think we're gonna talk about, is Pixar dying this week? Because I I have a special affinity for Pixar.
Stephen Robles:We're both fans, and it's not looking good for Pixar. So I think we're gonna talk about that in the bonus episode this week. We have great bonus episodes in the back catalog. So anyway, if you could, we would appreciate if you supported the show. You could do it monthly.
Stephen Robles:You could do it annually. Links are all in the description. But if not, we love that you're a part of the community, and you can join the literal community at social.primarytech.fm, where there's almost 200 of us now interacting about the different episodes. Lots of fun posts. We have members creating a post on, like, what's on our nightstand.
Stephen Robles:That was that was a fun, like, seeing what everybody uses on their nightstand and devices and tech and stuff. So join the social, the community there, and also you can give us a 5 star rating. Remember, we're trying to get to 33 more 5 star ratings in Apple Podcasts this week and so you could support the show that way, and we're just glad you listen and watch the show, and so we appreciate it. So thank you to those everywhere who listen and watch Primary Technology. Sonos officially, finally, after being leaked by the Verge multiple times and basically everybody knew what it was before it was launched, Officially, I'll announce the Sonos Ace Headphones.
Stephen Robles:This is very much taking on the high end over the ear headphones a la AirPods Max. They come in 2 vibrant colors, white and black, and it is $450. Being Sonos headphones, there is some integration with, like, if you have a Sonos soundbar on your TV, and you want to switch the audio of, like, the movie you're watching to the headphones, you can press a button, and the audio will switch to the headphones, so there's some ecosystem continuity there. They have spatial audio, active noise cancellation, Dolby Atmos, USB C connection, unlike AirPods Max, and a 3 and a half millimeter headphone connection. You get 2 connections in these headphones.
Stephen Robles:This is a steal. You got a actual headphone jack and USB C and not lightning. Connects via Bluetooth, obviously. Works with Apple. I think you could pair it with up to 2 devices, so if you do have an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac, and an Apple TV, you are gonna have to do some switching if you go with these, but they look very nice.
Stephen Robles:They gave some press, like, early access to try them, some time ago, but there's no, like, actual reviews out just yet. It's just been, like, hands on times. They come out June 5th. If you preorder now, it ships June 5th, so we're a couple weeks away. But they look cool.
Stephen Robles:Curious how they sell. Do these tempt you at all? No. You you got them.
Jason Aten:They literally I I have no I mean, I'll review them. I would love to just, like, play around with them, but I don't understand I mean, I say this as someone who has a collection of $400 ish headphones. Yeah. But I don't understand. Like, it just seems like every company is like, oh, oh, that seems like the right price point to target for this type of headphone.
Jason Aten:But I don't I don't know why. Because, like, you could put on a pair of, like, AKG, you know, headphones that are just wired or whatever, and and they still they sound great. I mean, the is it just a Bluetooth? I don't fully understand what the the situation is.
Stephen Robles:It's the metal, extender pole
Jason Aten:and the neck and ear cups. Yeah. But I mean, I feel like in, and yes, the AirPods max were nice. The their their big I feel like the AirPods max were less better than other Bluetooth over the ear headphones. I think
Stephen Robles:the ear pod for is worse. Sorry. I just have to tell as a writer, you said less better as No. No. No.
Jason Aten:No. The I I let me finish my thought. I think they are less
Stephen Robles:Shoot. I'll try to catch you.
Jason Aten:They are less better than the, than their competitors than the AirPods Pro are of other Bluetooth in earbuds. So what I'm saying is that the the the gap between Bluetooth earbuds and AirPods pro is, like, big. The gap between the AirPods Max and these Sony XM fives that I have sitting right here,
Stephen Robles:not very big. Small gap.
Jason Aten:Not very big at all. These in fact, these are a lot more comfortable on a long flight. I'm just gonna be real honest with you.
Stephen Robles:So yeah. That's the thing is these the one thing that does tempt me a, I have a bunch of Sonos stuff in the house already. So they Yeah.
Jason Aten:I have 0, so that's why I'm not buying these.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Well, that that makes total sense. But comfort, these do look comfy, I will say. It looks like the headband has more padding. You know, the AirPods Max is just like rubberized metal rods.
Stephen Robles:It's like the top that lays on your head. Yeah. So this does look like it has more padding. The ear cups look comfortable. I had a couple friends actually get to try it out.
Stephen Robles:Sonos let them wear it for a few minutes and they are comfortable. They sound very good, obviously. Of course, they're gonna sound good. I wore the AirPods Max on a flight to, like, a 10 and a half hour flight, last summer. And I will say around hour 6 or 7, AirPods Max, not so comfy.
Stephen Robles:No. Like, it does get a little, like, heavy. Yeah. They But also, like,
Jason Aten:the head's clamping force. Yep. That's the thing. Clamping
Stephen Robles:it's a little too strong, and it it not for so, yeah, not for me. And, honestly, I I mean, I don't know if I should admit this, but I don't use my AirPods Max. I don't wear it.
Jason Aten:Yep. I'm so glad you said that. I have to make I have to make a note real quick.
Stephen Robles:They've sat they've sat in their their Waterfield case, which is a beautiful case. Love all the Waterfield stuff. I have not taken them out maybe since. You know, I tried to do it with the Vision Pro because I saw all these, like, cool people wearing AirPods Max and Apple Vision Pro, and I was like, oh, I wanna try that. That probably is great.
Stephen Robles:Terrible experience. Doesn't fit great. Like, it doesn't go over the solo NIP band. I don't know what everybody's doing with that. So I tried it for that, and then I and then that was it.
Stephen Robles:So I've used it once in the last year to try with Apple Vision Pro, then I took it immediately off. So, no, I don't I don't use that. If there was ever I want I would love for you to answer this question too. If there was ever an Apple product, I would not buy again. I'm not gonna say I regret buying, but that I wouldn't buy again.
Stephen Robles:Knowing what I know now, going back in time, if there was an Apple product I would not have bought, it would be AirPods Max. I think it would be that, which you probably didn't even did you buy them?
Jason Aten:No. I did have AirPods Max. I do not have them anymore.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Did you sell them?
Jason Aten:I no. Yeah. You got rid of them. I was like, this is dumb. But Steve So
Stephen Robles:is that the that's probably the one product. Right?
Jason Aten:Steve yeah. That I would not. I mean, Steve and I have 4 pairs of Bluetooth over the ear headphones.
Stephen Robles:Because we would be doing these flexes all the
Jason Aten:time. That's
Stephen Robles:the yeah. We we know.
Jason Aten:All of these, like, other things that I have that you can put in your ear. But, like Yeah. So but but the truth was the only time I wear over the ear headphones as opposed to in ear, like, earbuds Yeah. Is on long flights.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Like, that's the only time, and they just were not the best for that. Like, the battery lasts the least. They're the least flexible because you can't plug them in. Oh, you can get that weird cord, I guess. The lightning to 3 and a half millimeter or whatever.
Jason Aten:The headphone jack. Yeah. But did, you're talking about the Sonos and, like, how miraculous that it is. They have they have USB C and, you know, the headphone jack. Every every other pair.
Stephen Robles:Every other one.
Jason Aten:Look at there's a headphone jack and there's USB c. And I could open up all these other ones. They all have it. It's all I mean, these, you can even I could even be wearing these right now to monitor. Like, I could plug them directly into my Scarlett and use them to monitor.
Jason Aten:Right? Like Yeah. You can't do that with with AirPods Max.
Stephen Robles:Well, that was the thing. Yeah. AirPods Max, if the battery was dead, you could not use them as passive headphones. And that was unfortunate because I remember I had, like, a, like, $75 cheap pair of Sony Bluetooth over the ear headphones, and that's what I actually used to podcast with because I could just plug in the headphone cable. Battery could be dead, didn't matter, they were just passive headphones.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Yeah. Apple. That'll do it. Remains to be seen if these Sonos will do that, but anyway, they look cool.
Stephen Robles:They look comfy, so that's fun. Yeah. Apple Vision Pro has some new content coming. Finally, some new immersive content. What If, which we talked about, I think, last week or a couple weeks ago, there's gonna be a What If immersive story experience.
Stephen Robles:There's a new trailer that dropped for it, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Again, show notes get cut off after a certain amount of characters in Apple Podcasts. So if you want all the links, you can go to primarytech.fm because the full show notes are there. But this app is coming out May 30th, they announced. So next Thursday, you'll be able to actually try this on Apple Vision Pro, but also coming out this Friday.
Stephen Robles:So tomorrow, if you're listening to this when the show comes out, parkour. It's gonna be the next episode in the immersive video series, in their adventure series. So the first one was that High Line video, which was a was very good, like, was one of the more impressive experiences in Applevision Pro, and that was gonna be a parkour one, which I imagine this kind of movement would be pretty exciting. You know, parkour.
Jason Aten:Every you're just gonna be throwing up everywhere.
Stephen Robles:Just people jumping over you maybe? I don't know. This comes out Friday, so May 24th, you'll be able to see immersive parkour. And I just say, like, these are the kind of experiences that is going to actually, encourage me to put on Apple Vision Pro to, like, watch something, which are you still using it every day?
Jason Aten:Every day. Every morning?
Stephen Robles:Yep. Every day. That's amazing.
Jason Aten:Until I until I write the article. You have to I'm just sticking with my bit. Yeah. Yeah. So I do I did want to say about the can I say something about the show notes thing real quick?
Jason Aten:And now, promise it relates because I just discovered it seems ridiculous to me that the caretaker of podcasting, which is what Apple basically is, cuts off the show notes. And I wonder if you think it's related to the 5 gig Icloud storage, like they're so stingy on storage space that they won't even let you upload characters into the podcast notes.
Stephen Robles:Text. I mean, text is like,
Jason Aten:then you explain to me why. Tell me why
Stephen Robles:Single digit kilobytes.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Friend of the show, Zach. I'm sure he's the well, he's not really. I don't know. I've never met him before, but he you know?
Jason Aten:He's right. Could you can you do something about
Stephen Robles:this, please? You you got have a good relationship. He's not on that team anymore, but I I've
Jason Aten:Still.
Stephen Robles:I've bemoaned to there's 2 thing well, see, now now we're on it well, now we're on podcast apps, Jason. Now you got me worked up. So this is what the listeners are here for. You got it 55 minutes in. Podcast apps.
Stephen Robles:Here's the deal. Okay? Apple, 2 things. 1, don't cut off my show notes. And b, 2, I did a Merlin Mann.
Jason Aten:I've never seen him more angry than don't cut off my show notes.
Stephen Robles:I love podcasts. Don't cut off my show notes. B, don't take the chapters out of subscriber audio.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Because here's the deal. If people literally support this show directly in Apple Podcasts, $5 a month, $50 a year, to get bonus episodes and ad free versions, the chapters are stripped out of my m p 3, And Apple takes an hour to process that m p 3 for subscribers, which I could have this show published a whole hour earlier
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:If Apple just don't touch the m p 3 file. Just don't touch it. Just leave the m p 3.
Jason Aten:And for that privilege, they charge us 30%. Thank you so much. It's so kind of you.
Stephen Robles:Thank you for stripping out what you have. No. Don't strip out the chapters, and no other podcast app, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Cast, I mean, the Kindle podcast. I don't even know. No other podcast app cuts off show notes.
Stephen Robles:But for some reason, Apple Podcast caps out of 4,000 characters, which is it seems like a arbitrary
Jason Aten:I'm just saying they've been they they do have a reputation for being stingy and free storage space. That's that I think there's a connection there.
Stephen Robles:But the show notes are not in Icloud. They're they're not there.
Jason Aten:Steven, I understand the actual technical part of it. I'm just saying philosophically, there has to be a connection, or else you explain it to me.
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't know. Mine the notes are in our RSS feed. It's not on Apple's anyway
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:Don't cut off the show notes.
Jason Aten:Intend Stephen Cove.
Stephen Robles:You just say a word that it's triggering. I went from Pocket Cast. I used Pocket Cast for years years, like, probably 10 years plus, and Apple Podcast added some really cool features, like transcriptions. The the show art looks really cool in Apple Podcasts and custom chapter artwork, the whole player changes to match the colors. Like, it looks really cool.
Stephen Robles:So I switched to Apple Podcasts, and I I largely like it. Figuring out how to manage the episodes you're currently listening to is a challenge, and so if you are watching or listening, what I do is, in the library tab of course, the brightness is too bright. So in the library tab of Apple Podcasts, there's a latest episode oh, my word. There's a latest episodes part of the menu, and these latest episodes will just show you episodes that are marked as unplayed in shows that you follow. And so I use the latest episodes as kind of like my cue, like these are the episodes I plan to listen to, which makes sense.
Stephen Robles:But here's the thing, that you have you usually have 3 different ways to see the episodes you want to listen to. There's the latest episodes. If you go to the home tab, there's an up next queue, and this up next queue has a bunch of episodes that of shows you follow and don't follow, but have maybe played a few moments of, or maybe you like added it or saved it or whatever. So that is a different cue. And then, in the now playing screen, there's a continue playing section, and there's a different set of episodes here that may or may not have anything to do with anything else.
Stephen Robles:And if you wanna add an episode to the queue, like I just added the latest episode of Cortex to the queue, now you have both a queue and a continue playing, which is honestly an insufferable way to manage episodes that you're about to listen to.
Jason Aten:And if you put them in the queue, they don't show up in up next.
Stephen Robles:Yes. And up next is not the queue. Right. And continue playing is not the queue, nor is continue playing up next, nor is up next continue playing. They're all different.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So listen. I'll I'll say you don't have to hire me, Apple. Just bring me in. Just give me an hour with the podcast team.
Stephen Robles:Let me ream them out. No. I'm not gonna ream them out. Let me just tell them. Listen actually, all you have to do is look at how Pocket Cast handles your Up Next queue.
Stephen Robles:Just do that.
Jason Aten:Just buy Pocket Cast, please. Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:Do that too. They've been bought and sold, like, multiple times already. I think
Jason Aten:they're automatically like WordPress? Yeah. Automatically owns them.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Automatically owns them.
Jason Aten:Owned them at one point, I'm pretty sure.
Stephen Robles:They've changed so many hands. Apple, scoop them up. I I like their app. Don't get rid of their app, but just they're up next. Just mimic their up next model because then they have this amazing feature.
Stephen Robles:It's what I still miss from not using Pocket Cast by default. In a show, you can set it to either add episodes to the top of my queue or or the bottom. And I love that because there are some shows, my favorite shows, that if there's a new episode, I want to listen to that right away. If for you, it's probably primary technology, let's be honest. But you could say add this to the top of my queue, but shows that I want to listen to but maybe not every episode or maybe whatever, I could say add to the bottom of my queue.
Stephen Robles:And that queue is like scripture. Like, it just doesn't change. That queue is, like, just rock solid. You could play other episodes. You could browse other shows and start episodes elsewhere, and whatever you are currently playing, it'll just move right into that queue, and you don't lose it.
Stephen Robles:It doesn't disappear into the ether, and you can rearrange that cue easily. And there's only one cue. There's not like an up next and then a continue playing in a cue. It's just one cue, and it's just rock solid. And I that's just that's what I want for you, Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:It's what I want for you.
Jason Aten:There's only one cue, sola scriptura. Right? Like, you just you just got the scripts inspired by the holy spirit.
Stephen Robles:Sola podcastura. Sola podcasta. Anyway, I don't even know what we were talking about.
Jason Aten:So tell me what is it. I'm really excited though that I was able to basically pull John Siracusa out of you on this particular topic. It's a
Stephen Robles:little more animated than that. Well, John Siracusa gets animated about windows.
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:Which is an insult he has an insufferable system for windows.
Jason Aten:But anyway,
Stephen Robles:tell me, in our own words, you have Robles unit of measurement. Yeah.
Jason Aten:So I have a question I have a question for you. How many days did you use your VisionPRO before you essentially stopped using it?
Stephen Robles:Straight? How many days straight?
Jason Aten:You can decide how many just roughly how many like, how long was it from the moment you took it out of the box to the moment you're like, this is a waste of $35100?
Stephen Robles:Well well
Jason Aten:Okay. Now maybe that wasn't the decision. But how many days was it before you took it out of the box to the point where you can't remember the last time you?
Stephen Robles:I I will say there was probably a 2 week span where I was using it all the time and trying to make video content about it because that was, like, one of the main reasons why I got it, because I thought these they would be big videos. Spoiler, they were not, because I guess not a lot of people care about Apple Machine but they were like the 2 weeks where I was actually doing stuff with it. And then after that in, like, casual use, I was probably like, I think another 2 weeks, which is basically a month. But, like, another 2 weeks where I would use it multiple times a week. And then over the last 4 months, it's been, like, once a week.
Jason Aten:Okay. So you can't remember when last time you charged it, basically. So roughly a month. The VisionPRO was about a month. K.
Jason Aten:So how about the humane AI pen? It's, like, 3 days?
Stephen Robles:Which which I will be honest. I have not charged in the last week.
Jason Aten:K.
Stephen Robles:That one I gave that one a week. I gave that one a week.
Jason Aten:Okay. How about that rabbit r one?
Stephen Robles:Listen, that thing just it makes me so angry. That thing was like that thing was, like, 3 days.
Jason Aten:You need the podcast app, then you'd feel better about it. No. Okay.
Stephen Robles:I well, they keep updating. Rabbit keeps, like, releasing these updates, and they tweet about it, and they email me about it. I'm, like, great. Let me update and try DoorDash again. And guess what?
Stephen Robles:I for I can't update it. No matter what I do, I keep it charged in. I shake it because that's how you get to the settings. I triple I you have to click the side button 5 times quickly to reset it. It just doesn't work.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, 3 days.
Jason Aten:So so the how about the AirPods Max? And you you just added this one to the thing.
Stephen Robles:I mean, AirPods Max was like that was probably a couple months.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:And then I stopped using it.
Jason Aten:Okay. So I feel like the Roblox unit of measurement is probably gonna be pinned to the VisionPRO. About a month is the average amount of time that you will dedicate to a new device before you're like, this is dumb. Right? And so, like, anything less than that was probably a pretty big waste of It's a flop.
Jason Aten:Your money. Right? So the question is, what will we what do you how are you feeling? This was all a lead up to I wanna know how you feel about your iPad Pro. I mean, that's gonna last a lot longer.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, we're talking, like Oh. A 100 Robleses at least before you buy it. You're and you're gonna stop using it only when you buy a new one. Not because you're like, I don't have a use for this in my life.
Stephen Robles:Absolutely. And yeah. I mean, I still I am loving the app iPad Pro because I'm editing podcasts all the time on it. And, you know, my review video did pretty well, and I I think here's the thing about the iPad Pro. I feel like either you try to use it as a general purpose computer and get frustrated, or you find the 1 or 2 things that's really the express purpose of the device, and that is what you use long term.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:Because I do not break it out to do general computing tasks. If I go on the patio and I want to just, like, do computery things, I have my MacBook Pro. When I want to edit a podcast and when I want to, like, I don't do as much sheet music anymore, but if I was gonna do that, like, I reach for the iPad, no question. I'm using it every day, not super long I'm not using it for hours every day, but I that is the one use case where it is worth it to me because it's a lot of what I do. It makes that workflow and experience way better, and I'm gonna use that until I get another iPad.
Stephen Robles:I will say my iPad mini, I have not charged it since I've gotten the new iPad.
Jason Aten:But you've had it for, like, a lot of time. Oh.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I had it since day 1. I had it for 3 years, and I was using it as my main iPad for the last, like, 7 or 8 months. I still like it. I will say I did read an ebook on the 11 inch, the new 11 inch iPad Pro.
Stephen Robles:It does get a little, like, it's heavy and it's not as nice to read on as the iPad. That's true. So because I was thinking about, like, do I wanna give the iPad Mini away? Do I wanna sell it? I was like, I think for ebooks again, it's like an express purpose device.
Stephen Robles:It's definitely a luxury. I think I'm still gonna want the iPad Mini around to read, because it's just way better. It's just lighter and thinner. But the iPad Pro, it's amazing. And I've watched a couple things on it just at night because I didn't wanna break out the VisionPRO, like, stuff like that.
Jason Aten:So every time you you get a new gadget from now on, we are going to pin it to what is the over and under on this in terms of how long will this actually be a part of your life. And I'm just because I think that's I think it's interesting.
Stephen Robles:I I think well, what's interesting about that too is the one I'm most sad about is the humane AI pin because I was really excited to get it because it's really cool hardware. I do feel like in those first in that first month, I did I was more bullish on it than most. Everybody, like, said it was a terrible device. Yes. There's a lot of things not great about it.
Stephen Robles:The battery like, having to manage the battery is one of the most annoying things, and that's why I kind of stopped wearing it regularly, because I didn't know, like, when do I charge this thing? I don't wanna think about having to keep it charged throughout the day. I'm just gonna stop wearing it. And now there was the latest news earlier this week that Humane is looking to be sold. It's looking for a buyer.
Stephen Robles:Like, Humane is trying to be bought
Jason Aten:by the company. That before they released the
Stephen Robles:pin. Which then, like, when I feel like a product is not long for this world, like, the company is not gonna support it, like the Rabbit r one. Like, 3 years from now, Rabbit's probably not gonna exist. Like, I'm then very much disincentivized to try and integrate that product into my life because it's not gonna be it's not gonna be around. So, the I the human AI pin in the Robo's unit of measurement, I think that one makes me the saddest.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:Just because I wanted it to be more of a thing,
Jason Aten:but it's Yeah. It's definitely not. It's definitely not more of a thing. Alright. Stupid.
Jason Aten:Alright. We're gonna revisit this from time to time. I just want to I
Stephen Robles:like it. No. I like I like it. I like it. So, we're gonna do one quick personal tech thing, and then we're gonna go to our bonus episode to talk about Pixar.
Stephen Robles:But for listeners and viewers who wanna hear from you, I'm gonna start a conversation in the community, or you can add us on social media. IOS 18, iPad, Vision OS 2 point o, your wish list for things for WWDC, send them our way, because because I think on next week's episode or maybe the week after. We'll see. Probably next week's episode. We we're gonna do our wish list.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So we'll come, and we'll bring features that we want, like a stand alone Icloud passwords app. We're gonna bring our features that we want, and we wanna hear from you. We want to share those on the show too. So send them in the community.
Stephen Robles:I'll have a post there that you can comment on or add us on social media. So do that, And our our personal tech I I wanna bring this up because I saw something that troubled me, Jason. Mhmm. Something that you posted that troubled me. Oh, and we have to do a follow-up on
Jason Aten:the I just need to know how your homework went. I just we just have to know.
Stephen Robles:Here's the homework. I think we we actually got our, theme on the Internet going. Everyone's, like, talking about the Apple Pencil orientation. I posted this video yesterday. Everybody's talking about it, okay?
Stephen Robles:And, here's how the experiment works. Will get my iPad out. I got my iPad over here.
Jason Aten:Oh it's like an it's like an unboxing.
Stephen Robles:It's like it's like an unboxing. It's not a box. I actually have the Apple Pencil attached. It's not going to be the way, you want, Jason, but here. Alright.
Stephen Robles:You failed. He's looking at the deal. I failed I failed.
Jason Aten:This is homework. Did you did you do it a week though? Did you at least try?
Stephen Robles:I did I did try. I did try. Here's the thing. The new Waterfield bag that I have is not an ad. I actually just keep my pencil in a different pocket.
Stephen Robles:I don't keep the pen attached to the iPad all the time, so it wasn't as, like, big of a thing. But the few times where I intentionally had the iPad on the desk and I'm putting the Apple Pencil, I had to concentrate and say, okay, don't do this, do this. I mean, it's fine. I get it. Alright.
Stephen Robles:I get it. Alright. I'll I'll try it another week.
Jason Aten:No. You won't. Don't don't buy to us like this. Give me another Steve Sam Altman, Steven Steven Robles Altman.
Stephen Robles:Give me give me another week. Let me do it. Give me another week. I'll try that. But for no.
Stephen Robles:For a personal text, we'll do another follow-up on a pencil
Jason Aten:because I
Stephen Robles:don't because it's been a big thing. I I wanna give the, post that I did yesterday a little more time to marinate.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:I am very troubled, Jason, by this, because I saw you post a picture of your home screen. Yeah. You post a a picture of your home screen, and I'm gonna share it right here. I'll put a link to this threads post in the show notes as well. I see I see your home screen here.
Stephen Robles:I see the apps, which we can't even talk about. We're gonna have to I would love to do a cortex style, like, home screen, thing. Let's do
Jason Aten:this again. -What's wrong with the apps on the home screen?
Stephen Robles:-I mean, it's there's nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. But what the thing that troubles me the most are the badges, Mason. The badge.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We'll talk about that in a second, but I do wanna say this. I follow the 2 homescreen rule religiously, which means the apps on my front page are the ones I use every single day. So that's what that's the rest of where the selection came from. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:So this was posted on Saturday. Is that right?
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. While I was sitting at a soccer game, not responding to Slack messages, not responding to Asana tasks, not doing my to dos, and I was apparently not responding to messages either. That's the only reason that literally, I I mean, if I pick it up right now
Stephen Robles:And you were hotspotting. What were you hotspotting? Your vision pro?
Jason Aten:Yes. At a soccer game. No. Probably probably, probably my iPad. I was probably because I was sitting in the car at this point.
Jason Aten:So it doesn't matter, but our oldest had a end of the year tournament, played 3 games. It was hot. I was sitting in the car in the air conditioning and the in between the games.
Stephen Robles:During the games. No. No. No. While your daughter is playing
Jason Aten:in between the games, I was sitting in there. And so, like, if I were to look at my mind right now, like my phone right now, I, the only things I have that's ironic that it's, the cortex state of the hardware episode, but is I have a Slack and I have things like and that's my to do list for today. So, like, that's the those are the only notifications I would normally have. So
Stephen Robles:Do you find here's the so I have no badges except for messages.
Jason Aten:K. 0.
Stephen Robles:I use no badges. Because here's the thing, I use things also, I have to dos in there. I know there's to dos and when I'm ready to do the to dos, I just open the Things app, and I see the to dos. Slack, I know I have Slack messages. If I'm working, I have Slack open, and I see the messages.
Stephen Robles:And if I'm not working, I don't want to see a badge. I'll check it when I want to check it. Same thing with Asana. So I my badge
Jason Aten:Hygiene? Your badge hygiene?
Stephen Robles:My badge hygiene is no badges. The only one is messages because the only people that will be texting me is probably, like, my family and I wanna see the badges. But, yeah, I don't use badges. Do you find the badges useful?
Jason Aten:I'm pretty stingy about badges. Like, I never have badges on for my email. Right. Like, I will you'll there will never be a number on that because I just don't care.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Things only has the things that are due today. So I can quickly be reminded I need to go back in there to do these things that are so that's the only thing that it A
Stephen Robles:lot of to do.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I mean, I have a long to do list every day. Like, I do. And I'm and I put basically everything in there that I can. So, in this the only Slack notifications I get, I just looked at this is I get direct messages and then specific set of keywords and then, mentions but only in certain channels that I'm in for different things.
Jason Aten:So I my point there is kind of like what you said about messages. You're only gonna get you only only care about messages from certain people. This when I get a Slack note if I have a badge on my thing, it's because and if you think about it, if you I that's the only thing I get push notifications for too is direct messages, whatever. And if you tap on it, you don't get the badge. Right?
Jason Aten:So if I've dealt with it if I've looked at it already, the badge is gone. So that's just reminding me something came in you didn't have time to deal with, but it was urgent enough that you wanted to be notified when these things happen. So I just have the badge there for it. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:See, I have notifications for things and Slack for the what like, what do you mean? If I have a mention or a DM, things like that. But they live in the notification center and the lock screen, and I do that because then when I unlock my phone, I can quickly see what the messages are about or who it's from. Or if it's a to do that's actually like, I I will have timer reminders on my things tasks, I could just see the task there on my lock screen or my notification center, and I can either mark it as done, dismiss it, or if it's a Slack message that I don't have to do anything with, or I do, like, I could just tap into it and I go right to the app. And so I don't I just don't do the ban.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So I just only do them for a very specific set of things, and it just happened to be on weekend.
Stephen Robles:I'm not doing any of
Jason Aten:those things. And so, yes, some of those so it would actually been more concerning if I had been sitting at my daughter's soccer game and there was no no no badges because it would have meant that instead of watching soccer, I was actually just dealing with tasks and that kind of stuff. But, no, I I agree. Like, philosophically, I do that. There's you'll I never have badges turned on for email and I only get push notifications for specific people.
Jason Aten:Like because I don't cause other than that, like, yeah. So I'll check my email at certain times. But in in those in messages, yeah, I want if I have a message, I wanna know that I got a message from someone.
Stephen Robles:Then I just wanna do you feel how I do? Because sometimes I see people post screenshots of their phone or whatever and, like, the email has, you know, 43,000, and the Facebook app has, like, 74. And I'm, like, just turn just turn them off.
Jason Aten:Also
Stephen Robles:Like, obviously, you're not doing anything. Right?
Jason Aten:If you have 43,000 on your email app, like, why why do you even have the email app? Because you're not using it ever.
Stephen Robles:Listen. Someone in my family has over a 100,000 in the badge. There's actually a so I I I try I try to help. I try to help people.
Jason Aten:I'm I'm deeply concerned. I don't
Stephen Robles:Just turn off the badges. Anyway, I understand your your method, I think, is a little, you know, it's it's reasonable. But Yeah. Yeah. Turn off the battery.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't think you need it for most of it. Anyway, okay. So future tech personal tech stuff, we're gonna talk about what email apps we use, hard drive hygiene. We got a bunch of that.
Stephen Robles:So follow the show. New episodes come out every week on Thursday. And subscribe to the YouTube channel. Try to reach a 1000 there. Youtube.com/atprimarytechshow.
Stephen Robles:And you can support the show directly. All those links are in the show notes. We're gonna go and talk about Pixar, one of my favorites, and it's making me very sad. And you can watch the video version now if you support the show. I wanna get the bonus episodes on video as well.
Stephen Robles:Well. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week.
Creators and Guests
