Samsung Clones AirPods + Apple Watch Ultra, Zombie Apple Blogs, Are Folding Phones a Thing?
Download MP3Good artists copy, great artists deal. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today we're gonna go over Samsung's unpacked event where they they basically command c, command v, some things from app. But anyway, we'll get into that. Plus AI generated content farms are taking over old Apple blogs.
Stephen Robles:Kinda sad. We're gonna talk
Jason Aten:talk about that too. Apple Intelligence, we might
Stephen Robles:not see it until 2025. Epic Games v Apple once again over in the EU. Will we ever get a digital driver's license in Florida? And a ton more. I'm 1 of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me as always, good friend, Jason Aten.
Stephen Robles:How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I'm good. I just wanna know, what movie was that quote from?
Stephen Robles:Listen. It was not a movie quote. I I wouldn't Wait.
Jason Aten:It is.
Stephen Robles:Oh, wait a minute. It is? Oh, is it the Michael Fassbender Jobs movie or something?
Jason Aten:No. Pirates of Silicon Valley. Oh. See? You inadvertently stumbled into a movie quote that you didn't even know was a movie quote.
Stephen Robles:That is amazing. Yeah. No. It was originally a Steve Jobs thing. Right?
Jason Aten:Well, in Pirates of Silicon Valley, they attribute that quote to Steve Jobs. And then I think It's really a isn't it really a Picasso?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I think if you Google it, it's like Pablo Picasso said this first, but listen. Anyway but I
Jason Aten:just wanted to I just wanted to you I did. You I just love the fact that you told me it's not gonna be a movie quote. And I'm like, nope. That's actually a movie quote.
Stephen Robles:Matter of fact. Okay. That's great. That's great. Also, I forgot to mention this episode is brought to you, by you, the members who support us directly.
Stephen Robles:So thank you for that. Oh, 2 bits of housekeeping. We're gonna do 5 star reviews in a moment. But I do want to mention next week. It's mid July.
Stephen Robles:And I'm actually going to be traveling. I don't I told you where I was going. Right, Jason? I told you what I was doing.
Jason Aten:I think so. Yeah. I think so.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna be in New York. Just just spoilers. Okay? And I'm probably gonna stop by a couple Apple Stores so if anybody's in New York next week at an Apple Store let me know because I don't know it might be kind of fun I'm gonna go to the glass cube bring my whole family there do some sightseeing, but we're I'm gonna be gone next week, so we're gonna take a week off. It's our 30th episode this week.
Stephen Robles:We've made it past the the half year, the halfway point, so we're gonna take 1 week off. Don't fret. The very next week we'll be back and then of course we're gonna stumble into tech season for the fall, which is just probably gonna be massive things happening, and so no episode next week. We will miss you, and we will see you the week after that when we'll be back with a vengeance. I don't know if with a vengeance is the right thing to say.
Stephen Robles:Probably not.
Jason Aten:That's a little bit of It's a little strong. Little bit too much energy, but I also just wanna say that I promise you that a Steven is wandering through the Apple Stores of Manhattan, which feels like a good movie title, honestly, the Apple Stores of Manhattan. But anyway, it could be your, like, biopic. But anyway, he will not be thinking about us.
Stephen Robles:Now wait now wait a minute wait a minute. No. I do think about it all the time. Oh, now you just said biopic, and and you always
Jason Aten:You're gonna say it's a biopic.
Stephen Robles:Well, I'm I'm gonna ask because you always get on to me how you pronounce words and stuff or how I pronounce words. I used to say bi biopic and then I feel like I heard people say, no. It's biopic because it's a biography picture. Is there an official way to say it? Is it what how do you say it?
Jason Aten:I mean, according to Reddit, it's the thing I said, but that doesn't
Stephen Robles:mean anything. Jason. I don't. Listen. Reddit might be good for Google search, but it's not good for for me.
Stephen Robles:I don't.
Jason Aten:It's probably biopic, but that's such a clunky
Stephen Robles:A clunky word. I like that. Yeah. Biopic. I I'm down with biopic, so I'm a go with
Jason Aten:that. Because biopic feels like an epic. It feels like it's a combination of a biography and an epic as opposed to a bi I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. No. No. Definitely.
Jason Aten:Just made that up.
Stephen Robles:Biopic. Well, let us know, listeners. Leave us a 5 star review in Apple Podcasts and tell us do you say it? I don't know how you're gonna phonetically spell it out, but biopic or biopic, which 5 star review shout outs. We had a number of them this past week.
Stephen Robles:John Faugh from the USA, Ba Dolan from Canada, which I immediately agreed with him because he said Jason is wrong, and I I identify with that. But he was
Jason Aten:You stopped reading the rest of the sentence. It didn't matter. It didn't matter what the rest of it is.
Stephen Robles:He said, but he said you were wrong about RCS, and I guess he was saying because it's, it's meaningful. He's looking forward to it. So, okay. We hear you. Veesla can from Canada.
Stephen Robles:And then Luke Ireland from Great Britain. I don't know how that works. Maybe his last name is Ireland. I assume it's well, what Great Britain is just the right island. Right?
Stephen Robles:And then the United Kingdom is the whole deal? I gotta watch that CGP rave video.
Jason Aten:Great yeah. I think Great Britain is the name of an island.
Stephen Robles:Well, anyway Isn't it? Thank thank you. Thank you for that. And, he said battery percentage on. Nobody's perfect.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, 1 question.
Jason Aten:Those of us who we're we're being critical if nobody's perfect and we're just rambling about what is the difference between the UK and Great Britain and
Stephen Robles:what I watched that CGP Grey video, like, 3 times. Okay? And I I feel like I've never met. We're gonna get into Samsung Unpacked in a second. I just wanna ask Jason a question.
Stephen Robles:I have not told him 1 way or the other. Do you think I bought that e ink device, the books Palma? Did I buy 1? That's my question.
Jason Aten:I feel like there's probably a better than 50.50 chance that you did.
Stephen Robles:I did not. I I resisted it.
Jason Aten:I'm hoping you did not.
Stephen Robles:I did not I did not buy it. I kept seeing people keep posting about it like it's some kind of, amazing device, and I just I didn't do it.
Jason Aten:Here's here's how I knew you didn't. Well, first of all, as as a rule, anytime a headline has a question mark in it, the answer is basically no. Oh, that's
Stephen Robles:1 of your rules. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Right? So then there's that. But then secondly, if you had bought 1, you would have not said, did I buy 1? You would have just said, Steven has a surprise for Jason and I'd have been like, oh, I know you bought 1 of those and you bought another stupid thing.
Stephen Robles:Oh, speaking of, well, we have a humane news later in the show, but I just want you to know I did cancel my humane subscription and so my pin is now a paperweight because it doesn't do anything. Because once you cancel the subscription, it just bricks the device, which is great. It's great. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:What do I do with it, Jason? Do I put it in a drawer? Do I
Jason Aten:I think you should at least try to put it on eBay.
Stephen Robles:Maybe I should put it on eBay.
Jason Aten:You know, podcast and YouTuber sells Yeah. You know used gently used. Yeah. Very gently. It really hasn't been used.
Jason Aten:You could sell that thing in, like, basically, like, new condition.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Well, I wonder if I bring you to the Apple Store, will they recycle it for me? You know, they recycle things for you.
Jason Aten:Oh, but I don't think they want that thing anywhere near anything.
Stephen Robles:Security concern.
Jason Aten:They're like, you know the you know they left. Right? They're no longer a part of this company. We don't want their stuff here.
Stephen Robles:And they left again. Anyway, that's the news for later in the show. We're not the spoilers. Spoilers for that news later. But first, the big event this past week was Samsung Unpacked where they announced a bunch of new devices, new phones, namely the, the Z Flip 6 and the Fold.
Stephen Robles:Listen, I'm you're gonna have to help me care about this shit because I want, like, I see this news pass and I'm like, okay. Yeah. Okay. So they got the 2 new phones and then more interestingly they released this watch which is the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra, we'll get to that in a second, and their smart ring and their earbuds. I'll put, MKBHD's video in the show notes where he talked about all the devices.
Stephen Robles:He's probably used them for 3 weeks already as per usual. His video came out before the event actually started, I think. He just kinda pushes it out. It's amazing. Anyway, yeah, he talks about all the devices, the the folding phones.
Stephen Robles:Let me just ask you right. Let me just ask you right now. Are folding phones gonna be a thing in 5 years? Are they just gonna are we actually gonna have like, is it gonna be a thing?
Jason Aten:Not for $1900 or not. Like that I mean, I actually have a fold.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I
Jason Aten:think it's 5 right here.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:It's not the new 1. I'm not MKBHD. They don't send me these weeks in advance. In fact, they probably don't remember that I still have this 1, to be real. Actually, if
Stephen Robles:you send that back.
Jason Aten:If you send me a label, Samsung, I'm happy to send this back. I don't actually
Stephen Robles:a label.
Jason Aten:I mean, I don't know where to send it. It wouldn't make it to just be like, put it in a box and put Samsung on it. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's how it gets.
Jason Aten:Here, unpack this.
Stephen Robles:That's how it
Jason Aten:works. It's exactly how well, it does work for, like, the North Pole in the White House. But beyond that, I'm pretty sure you have to have an address. But, anyway, speaking of which, my cousin lives used to live in North Pole, Alaska. It was real fun sending stuff to the North Pole.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Anyway,
Stephen Robles:our flip phone is going
Jason Aten:to be
Stephen Robles:a thing in 5 years. That's Well,
Jason Aten:here's the thing. Are you do you mean flip fold flip phones or foldable phones? Because those are 2 different things.
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't know which I roll my eyes harder at, but but tell me. I mean, I I don't think I think they're both. I'm just gonna say it right here. This might be an unpopular opinion. I think they're both gimmicky.
Stephen Robles:I've not I've not not used 1 personally. I've seen them out in the wild. I've seen people at hotel desks take their fold and flip it out and make a small tablet, and it looks like something. But I don't know. Is this a thing?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I actually had lunch with somebody a while ago who I did not know was a very hardcore Apple enthusiast because they have a they have a fold. Oh. And I thought that so I'm assuming if you spend $2, 000 on a Samsung device, you're, like, all in on that. And the reason was, the person told me, is that they really like having the largest screen size.
Jason Aten:But, obviously, they don't you know, They wanted a screen size bigger than what you could get in an iPhone or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:But you don't wanna just like, you can't just carry an iPad mini as your phone. Even if you get cellular on it, it's just not practical as a device. Yeah. And so they really they they use it with the stylus. They use it for taking note.
Jason Aten:So I can see it is a niche product or niche. I don't know. We'll go either way. But, I feel like it's a I don't think they're ever gonna be a mainstream thing. I think even if Apple makes 1, they're still because they're just so expensive because the technology, first of all, doing and Samsung's actually gotten pretty good at the foldable screen Right.
Jason Aten:Technology. Google as well. The Pixel Fold is actually a pretty cool device by the standards of Pixel phones, which I mean, like, people don't really buy Pixel phones. That's the thing that's really weird, except for you and I. We both have them.
Jason Aten:But I
Stephen Robles:don't know.
Jason Aten:I don't think
Stephen Robles:Well, I have a Pixel 6 80.
Jason Aten:I have
Stephen Robles:a Pixel.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm saying you have a Pixel something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Pixel phone.
Stephen Robles:Fair. Fair. Fair.
Jason Aten:So I think it's gonna I actually thought that the flip phones are probably more practical for people. Because if what you want is a normal phone that you can make smaller, that's kinda cool. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Anyway, so they released new version of this. Even MKBHD was like, yeah, they're spec bumps. You know, they're nicer phones, the front facing screen. Okay.
Stephen Robles:That's cool. I'll put a link to his video, in the show notes. But then also, I think the bigger thing is, at least this is what I saw more of, is the Galaxy ring, which is Samsung's health tracker ring. And there's a bunch of these rings out there. There's like Oura ring, I think ultra human something has a ring.
Stephen Robles:And so now the Samsung Galaxy 1 is here. I don't know, I mean these are interesting, people ask online, like, why would people buy something? It's $400 for a smart ring. The main deal is, like, fitness tracking and whatever. I guess if people don't like wearing watches, especially to sleep or just don't particularly like to wear them in general, that the ring is going to be the answer for that.
Stephen Robles:I think it's an interesting idea, I've been kind of wanting to maybe try 1. I don't wanna buy 1, but I'll try 1. But, yeah, I think that this is interesting. I do feel like on the scale of will foldable phones versus smart rings actually last longer, I do feel a little more bullish on the smart ring thing. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:How do you feel about smart rings?
Jason Aten:I I don't know how I feel specifically about smart rings, but I do feel like there should be a device that is not just a watch that gives you those health, like, metrics and that kind of thing, your steps or pulse, whatever. Because there are people who like to just wear normal watches. Don't they don't necessarily wanna have to wear an Apple Watch or a Galaxy Watch or whatever they are. So I do think I think that, like, I've I think I don't know if I've said on this podcast before, but I have definitely said before, I think it'd be great if Apple made something that was basically all of the sensors of an Apple Watch without the display. Right.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:you could just wear it and get get all your stats and your data without having to necessarily, you know, wear a watch because you could wear that. I see people wearing 2 watches. I don't understand that lifestyle. Right? What they they'll either wear, like, a mechanical watch on 1 hand and a smartwatch on the other.
Jason Aten:Or sometimes you see them wearing a smartwatch on 1 and, like, a fitness band of, like like, a Fitbit or something on the other. And I don't I don't understand that. Yeah. This, you could at least wear, and you would just it'd be less it's it's just a ring. Right?
Jason Aten:It's probably a chunky ring, but it's just a ring.
Stephen Robles:This is a chunky ring. I saw there was a cool animation. There's, like, a charging case, and when you open the case, there's, like, a little light ring that goes around which is actually telling you the battery percentage because there's no display. You know, so you kind of figure out that kind of stuff. But, I'm interested in this.
Stephen Robles:I'd like to try it. I think $400. I mean, obviously, we're early days in this. But okay. You got the rings, and then you also have the Galaxy Buds 3, which are, I mean, just straight straight knock off, Jason.
Stephen Robles:I mean, this
Jason Aten:This is basically the the rejected design of the AirPods 2. Right? This is like the AirPods 2, but we didn't quite decide to go with this form.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. They have a soft silicone tip, so, you know, that's airing, you know, towards AirPods Pro, but it's I mean, it is such I mean, all of this is like marketing. I mean, this is like AirPods. These are straight command c, command v, Samsung you know? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:They did this so fast.
Jason Aten:And and the best part is that they when they were talking about how they discovered no. They they discovered that adding the stems after extensive research makes them more comfortable. Amazing. And I just think this is especially good because when you think about, like, the main criticism of iOS is that, you know, 8 years after it comes to Android, Apple talks about it like it's a brand new feature. Right?
Jason Aten:And here we have, like, essentially a direct copy of the well, it's not quite the original AirPods. I guess it would be the AirPods 2, which how old are those? 5 years now at this point?
Stephen Robles:Maybe.
Jason Aten:I don't even know. The original AirPods came out, what, in 2017?
Stephen Robles:2017, which yeah. That's So
Jason Aten:they're probably, like, 20 2. They're probably, like, 5 year old it's a 5 year old design, and Samsung is like, we just discovered after a ton of research that these would be more comfortable. And we're, like, like, yes. Exactly. Research.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:So there's that. And then there's also the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, which I'm gonna put Snazzy Labs tweet in here. This is the 1, like, John Gruber linked to it, everybody said, because I think it is the most, you know, I just okay. What are you doing? Here it is.
Stephen Robles:This is the Apple Watch Ultra on the left and the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra on the right. And I mean, yeah. I mean, they are different in a sense, but I mean, it is just very much like they use the same name, Ultra. And Yeah. I mean,
Jason Aten:it's just That is the worst part. That's literally they called it the same thing. They didn't even call it a different, like
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Now people are saying it's hideous, which it actually is a circular watch face, but then the casing is, like, a rounded rectangle, probably to, like, deal with the band connectors and things like that, has more buttons than the Apple Watch Ultra. Well, I don't know if it has more buttons. It's got 3 buttons on the side, whereas, you know, the Apple Watch action buttons opposite the digital crown and such.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, I mean, yeah, command c command v. I don't know what else to say.
Jason Aten:I mean, it looks actually like if you took an Apple Watch Ultra and you in a what is it? A Panerai, which is a mechanical watch? Are you familiar
Stephen Robles:with those? You reached behind me. I don't I'm not familiar with that. I don't know.
Jason Aten:You're not familiar? Just Google it. Panerai. You'll and you'll look at
Stephen Robles:it, and you'll be
Jason Aten:like, oh my gosh. That's literally what they just they just made. And that was actually the word that I was like, how do you I got to figure out how to say this before I before I say it to Steven because
Stephen Robles:Because I'm going to call you out? No, I don't know.
Jason Aten:He won't have a clue. But for sure, if someone corrects it, he's gonna enjoy it. But anyway, I sent you a link so you can just see, like, it looks exactly like that form factor. And a lot of people a lot of people love them. A lot of people think that that form factor with a circle inside of essentially a square is kinda weird.
Stephen Robles:So Squircle? Is that what you call it? Well, squircle.
Jason Aten:Basically. I
Stephen Robles:think I've heard that. This is oh, so you sent me how do you say it again? Panerai?
Jason Aten:Panerai. It's an Italian word, so I'm assuming that's how say it. Panerai. Okay. Okay.
Stephen Robles:So this is the oh, yeah. That is very much that's that's it. There it is.
Jason Aten:Yep. Yeah. Okay. So
Stephen Robles:Well, you know, there you go. New Samsung devices. I'm cur I mean our percentage oh, you know, I should I will say this. I'm sure our actual listener percentage, who are Samsung Galaxy something users, is very small. If you are out there, I wanna hear from you.
Stephen Robles:Say, yes, I use a Galaxy Fold something, and I listen to primary tech. We would love to hear from you. I wanna know if you're out there. But, also, we had 1 episode. This This is messing up our analytics, Jason.
Stephen Robles:We had 1 episode a few weeks ago, where it got something like exponentially more downloads than our other episodes, like, which looks great on paper but it's not accurate, like it got like 8 to 10000 downloads from 1 source, and the source is called something Samsung free. That's the story, which I I don't know what that is. I imagine it's some kind of content form. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Samsung syndicated our podcast is what you're saying.
Stephen Robles:It just says Samsung free. That's the source, you know, because I we could see Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Cast, those are, like, the top 4. But for this 1 episode, Samsung free, it's just, like, rocketed up and downloads and it's, like, well, I mean, our total download
Jason Aten:They do have a podcast player. Samsung doesn't Samsung make a podcast player?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But, Jason, the
Jason Aten:But maybe they, like, maybe they surfaced it.
Stephen Robles:Maybe. I mean, it was just a single episode though, like, it was just 1 episode, so may even
Jason Aten:And it wasn't even where we talked about Samsung is what you're saying? It was just random? It was
Stephen Robles:episode wasn't about Samsung. So I don't know. Maybe there are literally thousands of Samsung users out there that listen to the show or at least listen to that 1 episode, which okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's but anyway. So Samsung Okay. I have
Jason Aten:1 thing to say about Samsung. Yes. 1 more thing about the event. It's about the event more specifically or more broadly. I actually think that the device is whatever.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Like, they're they're what they are. And to be fair, Samsung's make Samsung pretty much makes the the best Android devices. So, like, that's great. And I think it's good to have them pushing the edge on certain things so that Apple can do them late years later, and then Samsung can capitalize. It's a it's a happy ecosystem.
Stephen Robles:The circle of life.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But the most interesting thing was that Rick Osterlo, who is the head of Pixel and actually Android now at Google Right. Was on stage for the 2nd Samsung event in a row. There was a Google executive on stage talking about features, specifically AI features coming to Samsung devices. And when Google had its event, it was sort of like, maybe they're gonna maybe they really are all in on this device thing, and they're not gonna be so invested in the Samsung thing.
Jason Aten:But now I think it's pretty clear, like, Google sees Samsung as the premier flagship Android. Android devices. Right? Like and I think that that's an important thing to know. I think everyone else already knew that.
Jason Aten:But it's interesting, like, Google seems to really be going in on that because they are they are definitely taking every opportunity they can to have their people at the Samsung events to talk about Google specifically as it relates to these devices.
Stephen Robles:So That's interesting. And, yeah, there are Gemini features. Then then they announced, like, Gemini coming to Galaxy devices and so on and so forth. So yeah. I just noticed the WWDC badge you have hanging behind you from the bookshelf.
Stephen Robles:It's kind of as a You like that? I see that. I saw that. That's just what I just want you to know. Alright.
Stephen Robles:This this news
Jason Aten:I leave you east I should just I'm gonna start leaving you Easter eggs all the time.
Stephen Robles:That's pretty good. This news was crazy this past week. So if you were unfamiliar with kind of Apple blogs 10 plus years ago, the unofficial Apple web blog was 1 of the sites that you could go to kind of for Apple Rumors and News. You know, there was a bunch of sites back then, like, Mac and N was another 1. Of course, Imore, which still exists, a little different now, but, you know, all these kind of, like, plus Apple Insider was there, 9 to 5, MacRumors, all of them.
Stephen Robles:But the unofficial Apple web blog, it was not it was it was kinda midsize site back then, but apparently an ad agency called WebOrange has purchased the domain, and basically what they've done is create the site, quote unquote, again, so, like, you can now go to the unofficial Apple web blog, but it's entirely AI generated content. Like, the copy, the articles, it's all AI generated. Basically, the thing that we've been talking about for months about this is kind of the worst part of AI and what what is possible, this is what it is. It is this ad agency buying a domain, which, you know, the the reason why is that the the name and domain will still has some, you know, pull when it comes to Google search and SEO, and so using that as, like, the top level domain means that it will get some traffic, but everything is AI generated. But the most egregious part of what Web Orange has done is it has taken the names of journalists who used to write at the unofficial Apple web blog and current Apple journalists, like friend William Gallagher, and they basically create AI generated bylines, but use their name, which again is an SEO play.
Stephen Robles:Because if you Google William Gallagher, 1, you get his Wikipedia page, which I'm still jealous of. I still don't have Wikipedia. But anyway, you know, William Gallagher, you would you search his name or Apple. It's going to come up in search results, but they have done AI generated bios. So the like, it's just not right.
Stephen Robles:It's wrong information. And also the pictures. The pictures are totally made up, like, I assume either AI generated or just stolen images from somewhere. So Isn't
Jason Aten:that Linus from Linus Tech Tips? No. That picture looks like.
Stephen Robles:It looks like it looks like him, but it is it is definitely not William Gallagher. Okay? Right. I can tell you that.
Jason Aten:We know what he looks like because he has a Wikipedia page.
Stephen Robles:Thank you.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:But that is definitely not William Gallagher. Christina Warren was was also very vocal because she used to write for the unofficial Apple web blog, and now they've made up a picture and byline, but are still using her name on the site. And, you know, I'm not sure the legal precedent about what, you know, can be done against this ad agency, but this is the most gross thing that you can do with AI generated content, and it was done to an old Apple blog, which is, you know, close to home for many of us, and so it is unfortunate that this has happened. I don't know, like, how the story moves forward as far as I don't know who like, who can sue? I imagine the unofficial Apple web blog sold their domain or their property to someone at some point, and it just went Well, it
Jason Aten:was owned by Yahoo. It
Stephen Robles:was owned
Jason Aten:by Yahoo. It was a part of Yahoo's conglomerate, and then they sold, I guess, the brand assets to this other place. So I think that whatever web orange or whatever actually owns the brand. And I don't even know, like, if it's just recreating our it's so so weird. I think Christina Warren's well, she had a great quote.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:I'm not gonna repeat it because we will get an explicit tag. But the other part was, like, you know so I think she said, that she thought the worst thing that would happen is, like, that the archive of it would just go away. Right? You wrote all this stuff. Right.
Jason Aten:The site's gone, and everything you wrote is just gone. She's like, but this is way worse because this is, like, a AI, you know, manipulated version of all of that stuff. And so that's really it's it's so weird. Yeah. Sometimes this kind of thing baffles me because it's like, do what do you get out of doing this that is worth more than the fact that you have to, like, walk around this planet and people know that you're just scum.
Stephen Robles:I mean, but but, like, who who is it? Like, I don't even know. This so I didn't wanna show it, but this this is it. This is I'm not gonna put in the show notes, but this is the current form of the unofficial Apple web blog. It has I think the like, that's the logo that, the website used to use And then all these articles, I mean, it's just AI generated.
Stephen Robles:You could see like all these articles from July 10th. You know, this is like 5 articles from July 10th. They're all they're all AI generated. I imagine if you click 1, like, yeah, it's just gonna be and I don't even if you go to the bottom, there's a authors tab and let's see Paul Terpstra which is Brett Terpstra was the writer and I think they changed the first name maybe and then look this is So
Jason Aten:now that there's William Gallagher again. It's what it's not.
Stephen Robles:It's the false image of William Gallagher.
Jason Aten:So do they change all the names?
Stephen Robles:I think they changed the names.
Jason Aten:They've they realized they were gonna definitely super get sued if they were using real people's names and putting them on articles that they did not write. So now they've kept all their pictures that are actually not them and just made up other names.
Stephen Robles:This is heinous. Look how many writers they supposedly have.
Jason Aten:They supposedly But, you know, the here's the only thing I will say. Now I'm not excusing this at all because I agree with you. This is gross. There's just no words for it, but this is not actually AI's fault. That right there is Google's fault.
Jason Aten:Fair. Because the whole reason you do this is you buy a site that has some level of domain authority, which is a Google thing. Right? This is a reputable domain on this type of thing. You publish ridiculous crap content that that is that Google will send people to.
Jason Aten:Listen. I had this experience yesterday. I wanted to understand how something worked. And so I googled it, how this that's
Stephen Robles:I didn't know how to use my dishwasher, so
Jason Aten:I googled it. No. That's not what it was. It was like a thing that happens like, it had to do with, like, shipping and stuff.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay.
Jason Aten:So I Googled it. The first thing that comes up, it was actually part of the snippet that, you know, Google summarized. I was like, oh, that's that looks like it's gonna have my answer, and I click on it, and it's just, like, nonsense. It's like the most surface level answer to a question. It's like the whole Internet is just that.
Jason Aten:We talked about this.
Stephen Robles:We had
Jason Aten:a whole I won't go on the rant, but the this is Google's fault. I mean, it's also this whoever the idiots are that are actually doing it. Right. But the reason they're doing it is they can get traffic for this, which they can then convert to money through advertising.
Stephen Robles:I would not that we'll ever see this, but I would love to know, like, what what actually is the money generated, like, what is this Web Orange ad agency earning from this? I mean, 100 of dollars, is it 1, 000 of dollars? Like, what would make it worth it? But if the problem is it probably costs $0 to do, like, once they acquired the domain or whatever, the AI generated stuff, I imagine it's, you know, marginal or minimal the cost to actually do it because it's just chat gpt probably generating these things. I would like to coin a new phrase though because you're I don't know if it's crap tent?
Stephen Robles:How do you how do we combine that and content? Crap. Crap. For this kind of website. Anyway.
Jason Aten:We'll just call it garbage.
Stephen Robles:It's garbage.
Jason Aten:But I I mean, in in you're right. This is it's actually if you think it, this so it is partially AI's fault. Because if you had done this in the past, you would have had to hire a bunch of writers. And you might hire a bunch of writers, like, in a country where you can just hire people to cheaply crank
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Garbage. That's fine. But now you don't even need to do that. You can just do it with the AI, and and I get it. And in a case like this, like, the real money in this in content generation like this is in affiliate links.
Jason Aten:Right? You write a article about here are the 7 best whatever, and you get 3 of those people to give you money to have a link in that article. And sometimes, like for credit cards, it's like $900 a referral. You can make real money. That's why all of these random companies that you don't expect to be in the credit card game are doing that.
Jason Aten:Like, CNET. Why are you writing reviews of the American Express Platinum card? I don't because it's $900 every time somebody clicks on that link.
Stephen Robles:Oh, sad.
Jason Aten:This there's no reputable affiliates who are gonna pay money to be a part of a site like this. Right. So it's just Google AdSense or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Right. I don't I'm future, Jason. I don't know. I don't know. I've been getting a
Jason Aten:It's just a numbers it's just a numbers game. You get x amount of traffic, it's worth x amount of clicks, and those clicks are worth pennies apiece. But you add them up and, like, they're hoping for a lot of pennies.
Stephen Robles:I have to say, I've been getting more AI overviews in my Google searches and I I don't like it. I don't like it. There's been multiple times where I'm trying to search for a thing and the AI overview is, like, maybe is this the answer I'm looking for? Is this what I wanna read? And then it's, like, oh, not really.
Stephen Robles:And then you have to scroll so far to actually, like, pass the sponsored ads, you know, things to actually get to the first website that is, like, the number 1 the actual number 1 result of this search. I I'm not, optimistic. I don't think this is great. But
Jason Aten:Well, it's it is so it's terrible for most of the things we normally search for. And I don't know if it's terrible because it's worse information or if I feel philosophically that it's terrible because it's like I wanna I want the I want the source. I wanna read the article that the human being with the expertise wrote.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:The the only things at this point that it's that I think it's good for are the types of searches that we just know Google won't do a good job. So, for example, I was trying to find some piece of information about a particular soccer player the other day, a a woman's national team soccer player. And I'm not gonna just go through all of the past rosters for, like, years, but I could type a really random question. Like, give me a list of all of the, you know, whatever types of soccer player, like, you know, African American soccer players who played from this period of time and have been in at least 1 World Cup. And and generative AI will do that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because it'll parse out all those searches. It will know it's essentially you doing 7 searches and collating the responses. Right. The AI will do it.
Jason Aten:So for those types of things which you would never Google because you just know that Google will be like, hey. Here's a bunch of random lists of whatever. So but for normal things, I agree with you. It's just like, no. Please just give me the please let me pick the information.
Stephen Robles:I will say I saw this on actually this morning. It was this person asked Chachi Petit to draw instructions on how to mount the TV to a wall, and it looks like at the beginning, it looks reasonable
Jason Aten:Perfect.
Stephen Robles:Ish aside from cutting a hole in your wall, but it says, you know, use the Nailed it. Stud finder, whatever. Basically, the the joke is this TV is mounted screen facing the wall. So that's what
Jason Aten:Also, he redrawed drywall that wall really quickly because he cut through all the paneling to expose the studs. And also, what do you need a set finder for if you can look at the studs because you've ripped the wall away?
Stephen Robles:He literally just stripped the entire wall and then rebuilt it between steps 12. Like, completely redrawn.
Jason Aten:Explain that. I'm really upset.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's it's amazing. And then it has studs, and then I don't know what this other word is.
Jason Aten:No. I think studs is the arrows pointing at him because he wants to redo that wall in 2 seconds flat.
Stephen Robles:And then he is the I mean, he has the he connects the mount to the back of the TV seemingly properly except the TV's backwards. There's nothing actually anyway.
Jason Aten:Where do you get where do you get the glue to hold the TV? It's like it's like a it's like a 65 inch television. It's just he's drilling straight from the back all the way through to the wall. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:Maybe that's why he had to call.
Jason Aten:You can't see you can't see the screen anyway, so who cares? That's why I
Stephen Robles:cut a hole in the wall, so you could see it from the other side of the wall. It's like a frame TV, but it's built into the wall. Anyway, we're safe from, the Terminator ending right now
Jason Aten:because I think you're right.
Stephen Robles:Chat gpt does not have a mount TV. But speaking of Chat gpt and OpenAI, we had talked about last week that Apple was going to have an observer position on the board of OpenAI considering the integration with Apple Intelligence, that Microsoft already had a seat as an observer on the board. Well, the Financial Times is now reporting that JK, Microsoft, and Apple are going to drop those seats because of antitrust scrutiny, And I'm I'm not sure maybe, you know, antitrust either from I think from the EU mainly, but also the US, it seems like. But antitrust authorities are, like, this is a little, you know, a lot of big companies all in the same room or whatever, and so it looks like neither Microsoft nor Apple will have that observer seat on the board. Of course, that's not to say that Bill Schiller is not gonna take some meetings with OpenAI.
Stephen Robles:You know, it's just not an official position.
Jason Aten:Well and that's actually what they're saying. So Microsoft had a seat for basically 9 months. Although there's a theme emerging here with OpenAI and leadership. It's, like, basically, things happen in a week. You get a spot on the board and you're gone.
Jason Aten:You get fired and you get rehired. Like, these like, there's anytime you hear news from OpenAI, wait a week and see if it's still the news or if it has changed because, you know, I distinctly remember last year trying to be on vacation for Thanksgiving, and I my kids are like, why are you working? I'm like, it's all Sam Altman.
Stephen Robles:It's all Sam Altman's fault.
Jason Aten:But so Microsoft actually just resigned. They resigned from the board. They're like, well, we don't really need a seat anymore because y'all are doing a good job. And so we'll just we're we're cool, and we don't wanna get sued. And then Apple just essentially is is not going to to take a seat.
Jason Aten:That was, I guess, going to be Phil Schiller. I think it was Jason. Was it Jason Snell who called him Phil Schiller, the seat filler or something like that, I think is what he said. Yeah. I think there's an upgrade this week.
Stephen Robles:It was
Jason Aten:it was good. But but instead of having official board seats, they're going to have what they call stakeholder meetings. So they're gonna so so OpenAI is gonna regularly meet, probably not with them together, right, with Microsoft and with which honestly, like, is sort of a distinction without a difference. Right? Like or difference without a distinction, whichever way that saying is supposed to be.
Stephen Robles:Without a difference. Like, when you It it
Jason Aten:really means the same thing, really. But, you know, anyway, we'll go with yours.
Stephen Robles:I've I would I would love to know if this moment happens where Phil Schiller is there and he's in a meeting with Sam Altman and the OpenAI guys, And whoever that Microsoft CTO tries to walk in
Jason Aten:Kevin Scott.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. And Phil Schiller just goes, just give us a second. I have to imagine that's how that power dynamic is, but I don't know. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, the the the antitrust thing, really, right now, antitrust just means big tech company bad.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right? That's what antitrust means at this point
Stephen Robles:in history. Tech companies try to do something together, more bad. That's
Jason Aten:Yeah. More bad.
Stephen Robles:More bad.
Jason Aten:But I think the the logic behind it is Microsoft, big company, lots of power. Right. 1 of the most viable companies on earth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, you know
Stephen Robles:Sometimes it's doubles.
Jason Aten:The the GPUs get, you know
Stephen Robles:The NVIDIA print.
Jason Aten:They they turn on all the GPUs, and then NVIDIA prints more money. Exactly. Basically, that's how it works,
Stephen Robles:actually. Yeah. That's how it works.
Jason Aten:But, well, with Bitcoin, it's literally how it works. But, anyway, so they're just looking at it and they're thinking, like, we don't want the most influential AI company right now, which is clearly OpenAI, in bed with Microsoft because there are this is already a hugely hugely dominant platform. And they and, really, the issue is not is not OpenAI. It's do you do they want Microsoft having that much influence over the direction of this new type of platform? And essentially the argument is, no.
Stephen Robles:Not so much. We we really don't. Not so much. So, when you said the most influential AI company, I thought you're talking about humane because sorry.
Jason Aten:Nope. You still can't justify that purchase, Steven. I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:And I think to further justify the fact that it was a poor purchase, 2 humane execs are leaving the company, 1 being Ken Kocienda, originally from Apple, responsible for the Apple software keyboard, all that, and also the humane strategic partnerships lead Brooke Hartley Moy is also leaving and they're both going I think they're going to found a startup, a AI fact checking startup.
Jason Aten:This is wild.
Stephen Robles:Which are they gonna use AI to fact check AI or
Jason Aten:That's the question.
Stephen Robles:That is the question.
Jason Aten:Or will they just sit there and and add community notes to everything posted by by AI saying, not true. It seems like a really, really big job.
Stephen Robles:Everyone at that this new company just knows to their screen, just scrolling slowly. Content. Yeah. Anyway.
Jason Aten:Clearly the answer has to be both because if you're going to fact check AI, you're going to need AI to do the fact checking. So here's what's really weird about this. Okay. Humane. Wow.
Jason Aten:It's the trajectory of that company is just, like, astronomical when you think about it because they had been around for a long time. It was so mysterious, and no 1 knew what they were working on. And I remember when Ken Crescendo went to That's a big deal. Right? Like, yeah.
Jason Aten:Because he has a lot of credibility. Yeah. And and maybe that's why he's trying to he's trying to leave humane with a little bit of humanity so that he can do something else. But, I mean, he, like, he invented the keyboard on the iPhone Yeah. Basically.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's his claim to shame. I'm just saying. His name is his too many words that rhyme me right now, Steven.
Stephen Robles:It's early. It's early. It's July.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Anyway, but Yeah. No. Yeah. Humane it's just so
Stephen Robles:I don't know if it's sad or if it's like it's hubris. Right? Like, it's hubris.
Jason Aten:It's Icarus. They flew they flew too close to the sun.
Stephen Robles:Because, I mean, they were so mysterious for so long. I have to I will give them credit on, like, the marketing side because they generated so much interest in that first, like, 6 months to a year when no 1 knew what they were doing. It was, like, we knew humane existed. They had some weird videos with people wearing all black running in the forest. That was literal video that they launched, and and, like, everything was, like, wow.
Stephen Robles:This might really be some this is very interesting. No 1 knows what's happening, and then Ken Casienda at a TED Talk, that was the first time we saw the humane AI pin in real life, and he held out his hand, and we saw the e ink display, not a e ink, the digital projector, whatever you call it. The laser. And it was, like, I think from that moment forward, the skepticism, like, hockey stick curve just way up because we saw the device and we're like, wait a minute. What is that supposed to do?
Stephen Robles:And then, obviously, I have it right here. Let me just get it.
Jason Aten:Well and just to just to clarify, you said it was Ken Caschena that did the TED talk. It was actually Imran.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's right. Imran.
Jason Aten:Just I don't want any more shame
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. No. No.
Jason Aten:For Ken. For
Stephen Robles:no. No. Yeah. It was, in my mind.
Jason Aten:Yeah. You said that they you know, you give them credit for the marketing. I have to be honest. I don't.
Stephen Robles:It's okay.
Jason Aten:And here's my reason. Fair. They made a lot of promises. They did not deliver on a single 1. If you make promises in your marketing, you have to keep those promises.
Jason Aten:Otherwise, we use a different word. We just call that, like I'm not gonna say it's fraud, but, yeah, it's likely you're lying. You're just making things up.
Stephen Robles:But I think that's that's why I give them credit before they promised anything because all the early marketing said nothing. It said nothing about what they were doing.
Jason Aten:Except for we're going to change the we're gonna break you free from your smart phone, but we're gonna charge you a monthly subscription for cellular service. Like, I don't what what are you even talking about? So
Stephen Robles:it's so again, I don't know if it's sad. I don't know if it's sad, but it's it's just it's disappointing. Look. Here it is.
Jason Aten:I do think just to be clear. I do think it's good that people are trying things. Right? And on the scale of 0 to complete fraud, humane is much closer to not fraud than rabbit was. Like, right?
Jason Aten:That's just a joke. There's a lot
Stephen Robles:of news coming out about rabbit.
Jason Aten:Steven's got 1 of those too, by the way.
Stephen Robles:I got
Jason Aten:this 1 too. This is a depressing segment of the show for Steven.
Stephen Robles:This is listen. This is gonna be a a moratorium. This is the last time I'm gonna show these devices on camera unless some crazy news happens. Here's the here's
Jason Aten:the unfortunate thing, Steven. The the books, Palmar or whatever, probably long term would have been a much better buy. You could have bought
Stephen Robles:5 of them. It would have been cheaper than both of these.
Jason Aten:Yeah. You could have bought 5 of those. 5 of them for them.
Stephen Robles:Could buy
Jason Aten:1 for everyone in your family, and you probably would love them. I still don't think you should get 1. No. I'm
Stephen Robles:not gonna get 1.
Jason Aten:But
Stephen Robles:Anyway so sit well, anyway, I don't know what to think about that. That's humane. Execs are leaving. What do you think? A year from now?
Stephen Robles:How long before humane just dissolves?
Jason Aten:I think it I think it's not gonna dissolve. I think someone will buy it because there is some interesting technology
Stephen Robles:in there. Yeah. But it'll be someone not interesting.
Jason Aten:It'll probably be LinkedIn.
Stephen Robles:LinkedIn, who historically has no hardware products at all. Maybe. Yeah. I can see.
Jason Aten:It will not be LinkedIn, but I'm just it'll be something weird like that where you're like, why is Microsoft buying a social network for job hunters? Like, I don't get it.
Stephen Robles:Neil Hippoduck keeps saying HP, which I could see that. I mean, HP bought the Palm 3 and Palm.
Jason Aten:Well, that was at a time when HP was known for making consumer devices. At least there was sort of, like, a connection point there. They still
Stephen Robles:make laptops, don't they? They make laptops.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess there's 2 versions of HP. There's like the 1 that makes servers and the ones that make mid mid level PC, you know, Windows laptops.
Stephen Robles:Epson. Epson is gonna buy Humanae and make an AI
Jason Aten:powered computer. I think the most likely 1 would be, like, Amazon. Don't you think? And you're gonna tap it and then and toilet paper is gonna show up on your doorstep.
Stephen Robles:But Amazon doesn't need I mean, Amazon could do its own AI thing. It's got a what's Amazon's model? Don't they have, they they're generative AI to the image tools what Figma used, for the command c command b Well,
Jason Aten:they're definitely the yeah. They're definitely the that's definitely what Figma said. They're definitely the tool that they are the ones that you can throw Amazon under a really big bus, and Figma did.
Stephen Robles:Figma punches piloted that so fast. Not our problem.
Jason Aten:A 100%.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, that's a biblical reference.
Jason Aten:That's a good reference. I've never heard anyone use that reference in reference to tech before, but it was
Stephen Robles:I use it a lot. I use it a lot. I like that reference. Okay. Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg, he is saying that Apple Intelligence, which is not in the betas yet, we had, developer beta 3 come out.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if we're supposed to talk about it, but anyway but Apple Intelligence is not in it, I can tell you that. Mark Gurman is saying we might have to wait till iOS 18 dot 4 before we get Apple Intelligence features on iPhone, and historically, the dot 4 update of iOS software is not till, like, January, February, March time in the last few years. And so we might be actually waiting a while before we get to see Apple Intelligence. And I don't know about you, Jason. I'm not gonna run the beta on my main iPhone because I I don't do that kinda I don't do that.
Stephen Robles:I do it on a side iPhone. Mhmm. But, you
Jason Aten:know, this On a side iPhone that doesn't get app won't get Apple Intelligence anyway.
Stephen Robles:Honestly, yes. It's an iPhone 14, and so we'll be able to test Apple Intelligence on this anyway. But, yes, we might have to wait till which this was early rumors too is that the Apple Intelligence stuff might not launch for a while, but that seems like a long way off. Right? January, February?
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I don't I I'd be interested to know what they're, like, what they're waiting for if it's just, like, we have we don't know if this will support scale. But, again, it's limited to only the most expensive iPhone. So it's not like this or and I guess Macs, but it's not like yes. IPads.
Jason Aten:I understand. But there's an overlap there. No. There's an overlap. Like, I don't think there are very few people who have an iPad who don't have either a Mac or an iPhone.
Jason Aten:That feels like a very small segment of people. I mean, the people that that is true for are probably not going to use Apple Intelligence. If you're like, here, grandma, as an iPad, so you can do email, just the Apple Intelligence is not gonna be a thing. And she probably doesn't have an iPad Pro anyway. So I don't know.
Jason Aten:I think I I think it is weird that it's gonna take that long. I can kind of understand Apple Apple had to say something when they said something. Right. But they are definitely not ready to ship something. But they just don't want the pressure of what are you going to do.
Jason Aten:We told you what we're gonna do. It's just gonna take us some time.
Stephen Robles:I do miss the days, Jason, when I don't know when the last time this was. Maybe I was 14 or 15 when, like, everything that was announced at WWDC happened on launch in the fall. Yeah. Like, Ios 15 dot 0 got all the things and it seems like now, year after year, like, more and more features are kind of just spread out over time, which on 1 sense, I do like the opportunity for Apple to make a big feature release midyear, like the Apple Podcast transcripts was, like, a big feature that came with iOS 17 dot 4, like, cool, like, that's great, but they didn't have that.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. The journal app didn't come right exactly for several months. So I I just I missed the days when it was, like, everything you saw at Dub Dub, he just got it in the fall. Now it's just kinda like it's extended out.
Jason Aten:But Yeah. I think I bet the reason that they had it yet is that they know that no 1 will talk about anything else. Right?
Stephen Robles:Fair. Yeah. And I I understand. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And they need to get the story Apple vision problem. They need to get the story straight for the iPhone 16 before they release the Apple Intelligence. Because they don't wanna be talking about, well, will this run on this, and will this do this, and whatever. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:And they would they could also be waiting for that cycle of iPhone 16 buyers through the holiday season. This way, once Apple Intelligence does come early 2025, there'll be a much larger pool of people who can Yeah. Run it. Maybe. Maybe that's it.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, Apple Intelligence, also Apple and Epic Games. So Ep Epic is trying to release their third party app marketplace in the EU, and they were rejected again by Apple because of an install button and how it's too similar to Apple's get button in the Apple App Store, and also the in app purchases label was too similar to the App Store's in purchase in app purchases label. And now I think since Epic Games these are some tweets from Epic Games. Apple actually has approved it with some changes, requested, I think, from Epic, but I just wanna point this out because, like, Apple just needs to, like, just let him just just let him do
Jason Aten:this. I mean, Steven, I'm actually really offended that you didn't include my tweet because I've and I understand why because I only tweet, like, once every 3 weeks weeks or something. But I on the day that this happened, I tweeted that Apple has rejected Epic's 3rd party app store in the EU for looking too much like an app store. That's literally what they did.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's a good tweet. Wait. I'm going to your page. This is probably right at the top.
Jason Aten:Right? I think I have our our our podcast pinned, and then the next 1 is right there.
Stephen Robles:You do have you do have a thank you very much. Yeah. You have it pinned. Okay. Here's Jason's tweet.
Stephen Robles:I wanna put Jason's tweet first.
Jason Aten:Anyway, I'm really proud of that, but, anyway, I don't tweet often.
Stephen Robles:You did the check notes the check's notes thing.
Jason Aten:Well, here now I don't think it's I don't think it's I I think I can share this, but anytime something like this happens, I get an email from Epic. Right? They'll tell me, like, this is the thing that's happened, and we've just posted this. And that's fine. That's common.
Jason Aten:Like, that's not like I'm I'm glad they do because I only log in to Twitter every or x or whatever we call it now every week because I might not have seen it. So I am instantly, like I'm like, yep. They've and so, you know, the longest piece of content I've ever written on the Internet was a blog post. And my thesis was that just because Apple is is is has the right to do something doesn't make it right. Like, doesn't mean they're not wrong.
Jason Aten:And it was all about the original Apple versus Epic case. Right? Epic, to be clear, was kind of a tool about the way it went about it. Right? And they were trying to be the underdog good guy when really they just want to collect the commissions themselves.
Jason Aten:Right? So They're not So their hands are not clean in this. But the point is Apple has brought on so much, like and you know that in the case where they're where where they and this is the thing. This wasn't even an App Store review. This is just a review for notarization.
Jason Aten:Right? Which should literally just be doesn't set the iPhone on fire. Check. Okay. You can this is great.
Jason Aten:You're good. Like, you can do it. There should be no review of what it looks like, how it functions, any of those things for notarization. It's just is it malware? That's literally what notarization is supposed to be for.
Jason Aten:Is this thing malware? Now to be fair, Apple probably considers anything Epic makes malware, but it's not actually malware. Right? It's not not. And you know that this this went to Phil Shiller's desk 100%.
Jason Aten:This was his decision. Nope. What reason can we have for not for rejecting it? And I guess Apple's argument would be if it looks too much like the App Store, people might think they're downloading things from Apple. No one's confused.
Jason Aten:First of all, it says epic game store at the top.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be the big black logo.
Jason Aten:2nd of all, you had to have downloaded it to your phone.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You had to have jumped through a lot of hoops to get that App Store on your device. You're not gonna be confused about whether or not you're downloading Facebook from the Epic Game Store or from Apple's App Store. Right? Like, it's and and it's and Facebook isn't gonna, like, even if that was the case, Facebook's not gonna just, like, recreate a whole new version of their app just for the EU, just for people not click x s not to track. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, they're not that's not what's gonna happen.
Stephen Robles:I think they it'll finally get through.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They approved it. Apple. That same day.
Stephen Robles:That same
Jason Aten:day, they approved it.
Stephen Robles:They did they did they did find it.
Jason Aten:It's like Apple, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Stephen Robles:That's right. Is that a movie quote?
Jason Aten:Probably. It's like it's a somebody
Stephen Robles:quote. Who is Jurassic Park?
Jason Aten:Well, yeah. They yeah. They did never they they spent so much time thinking about whether they could. They never stopped to ask whether they should. Doctor what's his name?
Jason Aten:Doctor Malcolm or whatever. Jeff Goldblum.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Malcolm, Malcolm Gladys. No. It's not.
Jason Aten:That's actually the name that came to my mind.
Stephen Robles:Ian Malcolm. Ian Malcolm.
Jason Aten:Jeff Goldblum. How's that? The original Imac Yeah. Yeah. Commercial guy.
Stephen Robles:Oh, was he?
Jason Aten:He was in commercials. I don't know if it was the Imac or not, but, like, he was definitely yeah. He was definitely I think it was the original Imac commercial, wasn't it?
Stephen Robles:Well, now I gotta look it up. So original Imac commercial, Jeff Goldblum.
Jason Aten:Imac ad with Jeff Goldblum from 1999. He was a 3 steps guy. Step 1, plug it in.
Stephen Robles:I was Yeah.
Jason Aten:A year of your I'm so right. I'm so excited.
Stephen Robles:I I did not see this.
Jason Aten:Wait. You've never seen this ad before?
Stephen Robles:I was,
Jason Aten:I guess he was the narrator of it.
Stephen Robles:But the ad. He was the he's the narrator, but the phone
Jason Aten:You've never seen the, like, this this the the the 3 steps Imac? The whole thing was, like, step 1, plug it in. Step 2, do this. There's no step 3 when you're on the Internet. It's how to get on the Internet.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So he he doesn't appear
Jason Aten:Well, he did appear in the in the in the next 1.
Stephen Robles:What's the next 1?
Jason Aten:He did 1 in 19 another Imac ad.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I see. Okay. Here's another 1.
Jason Aten:He must have done all the Imac ads back then. But
Stephen Robles:This camerawork is something. I gotta say.
Jason Aten:It's a drone. They flew a drone around a Performa or whatever that is.
Stephen Robles:I don't see him in this 1. I don't see him in this 1 either. Is that his hand? No. That's not his hand.
Jason Aten:I have to do everything for you, Steven. This is
Stephen Robles:great radio. You know
Jason Aten:what I feel? I feel like
Stephen Robles:Oh 0, here. I got it.
Jason Aten:I got it. I got it. To do everything for you.
Stephen Robles:The YouTube the YouTube algorithm. Here it is. Yeah. H f Coldwell with the, the CRTV lines.
Jason Aten:That's Malcolm Gladwell right now.
Stephen Robles:CRTV line. Yeah. That's
Jason Aten:From Jurassic Park.
Stephen Robles:Oh, he's still Jeff he's told Jeff Colton. Look at that. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, that'll be in the show notes.
Jason Aten:I have no idea what we're talking about but just because they
Stephen Robles:should, just
Jason Aten:because they could doesn't mean they should. Okay.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:Wow. The circle of we could do the whole 6 degrees of separation with Jeff Goldblum, Malcolm Gladwell.
Stephen Robles:Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is a podcaster who does revisionist history. Okay? We know Malcolm Gladwell.
Jason Aten:This week, we've reached our tipping point.
Stephen Robles:Okay. That's it. Okay. So real quick, I just wanna, complain again about digital IDs. Apple announced digital IDs in the Apple Wallet's app, what, like, 18 years ago?
Stephen Robles:When was it? They've talked about a real
Jason Aten:long time.
Stephen Robles:And now I think there's a total of 3 states that has it. It's like Idaho, Arizona, Maryland, or something like that. Anyway, Florida, which is where I live, there was a smart ID app that was on the phone that you could get a digital ID, which I did it, and I I emailed them 3 times asking about Apple Wallet support. No 1 ever got back to me.
Jason Aten:You emailed the government agency, and no 1 got back to you? That's shocking.
Stephen Robles:Surprising. Surprising. Apparently, the the app is now, like, it doesn't do anything. So before, you could log in and actually have a digital ID, but in this janky third party app. Well, Florida just shut it off.
Stephen Robles:Like, they press turn they turned it off, so there's none of that. I thought this meant it was, like, before that it was 1 step away from being in the Apple Wallet app as a thing. That was, like, part of the shtick, but no. It's, no. So I guess Florida has to start from ground 0 again.
Stephen Robles:On creating a digital app, they gotta find another third party to, I guess, support it or something. Anyway Yeah. You It's frustrating. I just wanted a digital driver system.
Jason Aten:It's not gonna happen. You should really just delete that 3rd party app.
Stephen Robles:Well, yeah. I'm gonna delete it now because it's probably probably bought by, what is that, Red Orange ad agency.
Jason Aten:You're you're most, you know, an AI generated driver's license. I think that's a crime, actually. I don't think you're allowed to have a fake driver's license.
Stephen Robles:No. No. Yeah. You definitely can't. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:YouTube don't, take yourself off the edge for that. If anybody if if any iPhone users out there actually has a digital ID in their Apple Wallet in 1 of the 3 states that support it, and it actually has worked, like, you've used it somewhere, I would like to hear from you. Social.primarytech.fm. Let us know in the community Digital ideas.
Jason Aten:We don't need your digital ideas. We have many of those.
Stephen Robles:Digital IDs. If you have got it and it actually works, yeah, I'd like to hear about it. So alright. A personal text segment. You had our article here.
Stephen Robles:It's probably something I disagree with. I haven't read it yet. Just kidding. But but you could share what
Jason Aten:you meant. Explain yourself.
Stephen Robles:Why you should delete all the third party apps from your iPhone this summer? What are you what are you telling people to do, Jason? I
Jason Aten:am I am advocating that there is a segment of people who might benefit from an experiment, and that experiment is sort of declaring digital bankruptcy on their devices and starting over. And here's my reason for this is that you could go through and okay. Most people get too many notifications that are useless. They have so much stuff going on. They have permissions for old apps that they've, you know, enabled a long time ago.
Jason Aten:And you could go through and you could, like, do an audit and try to change it, but that's, like, just not worth your time. Because, you know, I subscribe to the you know, I don't have automatic updates turned on on my iPhone. So I actually go through and I look at the list. And if I haven't if I, literally, if I have not opened an app in the last couple of weeks, I just delete it from my phone. I don't update it.
Jason Aten:I just kill it. And then it occurred to me, this is kind of dumb because I have to go through this list every time and delete apps that I don't use. And more often than not, when I look at a list of 50 apps that need to be updated, there's at least 5 or 6 that I'm like, why do I still have that? And sometimes they're apps like when it used to be that when you traveled to the EU or any you know, in Europe, you'd have to have, like, a digital COVID certificate app, or you'd have to have, like, the here's how you get into this country kind of an app. So and so I delete all those.
Jason Aten:But then I thought, well, what what if at some point, it's kind of like if you have to delete all those. But then I thought, well, what what if at some point, it's kind of like if you have to turn a bunch of things off, why don't you just get rid of everything and start over and only add back the stuff that you need? And so I thought, like, you know, I and, actually, I have a friend who does, like, a social media fast in the month of July. And this is 1 of the things that they do where they just they restore their iPhone or no. They re they erase their iPhone, then they set it up new without restoring it from a backup.
Jason Aten:But you put your Apple ID, which is, I guess, now your Apple account. Anyway, you put you put that in. So, so anytime you re downloaded an app manually, because you've decided you need it, all your data will be there because it's all, if they, if they're using iCloud, all your emails will still show up. Like, you can get all that stuff. But you would just start with just the stock Apple apps.
Jason Aten:Now I'm not I'm not suggesting that the Apple apps are necessarily better. Right? Like, I'm I'm not saying notes is better than bear or that mail is better than spark or whatever. But I'm saying only add back the the apps that you actually need when you need them. And I explained the steps to do it, which is actually pretty simple, but I realized that there'd probably a lot of people who were reading this who'd be like, how do I actually do that?
Jason Aten:Because every time I set up an iPhone, all my stuff is just there. How do I set up an iPhone that's so that the iPhone knows it's mine, but without automatically installing all this stuff? I deleted the Facebook app off of my phone, like, 2 weeks ago. I haven't missed it once.
Stephen Robles:Probably a good idea.
Jason Aten:Except Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's probably a good idea.
Jason Aten:The mobile version of Facebook's website is the worst thing ever created. And I know that the only reason that they do that is because they want you to download the app, But I feel like that is abusive. You should not intentionally make your mobile site so bad that people are tempted because, you know, I just don't use that either of them anymore, so you just lost me. You lost that bet.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Anyway It it is really bad. So I like I like where you're going with this. I'm looking I'm in my app store right now on where you see how many apps have to be updated,
Jason Aten:which
Stephen Robles:is this is where you kind
Jason Aten:of go where you delete it. Long press on an app instead of clicking update, you so what I do is I go through that list. I long press on the ones, delete them, and then I just hit update all for the ones that are remaining, just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:You can you you also can just Oh, yeah. If you swipe right to left if you swipe right to left, you can
Jason Aten:do a
Stephen Robles:little, like, delete thing on the side. But as I'm looking at this, I'm, like, ferrite. I'm keeping that loot from your app. Yes, every once in a while sometimes, Sometimes. YouTube Studio, Amazon, Amex.
Stephen Robles:I mean, there are some here like good like Goodreads. I probably don't need that on my phone. Yeah. I get it. I get it.
Stephen Robles:Meta business suite.
Jason Aten:But you know, and if you did Oh,
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna delete that.
Jason Aten:You can just re download it.
Stephen Robles:It'll take you 12 seconds. I know you just did.
Jason Aten:Microsoft Teams
Stephen Robles:on delete. Amen. So narwhal frio, Panera Bread. I I get I get what you're saying. I guess, I'm more of a but this is so the way I run my iPhone, which I have videos on this, like, I keep 98% of my apps in the app library, and so I have 1 home screen.
Stephen Robles:And I basically search in spotlight for most apps that I wanna use, and it it comes up pretty quickly. I guess I'm I'm more like get people to use focus modes because I feel like, yes, the apps on your phone is a distraction. And I feel like the notifications from apps are the real, like that's the real problem, and badges, which I see people post screenshots of their home screens, and the the badges are egregious. I mean, like, 100 like, any if you have a badge that's over 12, something is wrong.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That badge doesn't mean anything.
Stephen Robles:I understand maybe it's just
Jason Aten:it's just like a Christmas light on a tree.
Stephen Robles:Right. That's that's the thing, like, okay, if you have messages and there's a group message, you have a ton there, okay, but if your mail icon says anything between 12, 101, 473, like, that number is meaningless, Like, you have email. That's all but honestly, if you take that badge off your mail icon, the fact is still true. You have email. Like like that that badge is only signaling that you have email and lots of it and gets Yeah.
Jason Aten:And it doesn't tell you that
Stephen Robles:you have new emails because there's no way you're, like,
Jason Aten:oh, I had 11, 421. Now I have have 422.
Stephen Robles:Right. Like, you're you're thinking your thought process could be, did I wake up this morning? Yes. Do I have email? Yes.
Stephen Robles:Like, that's if if woke up, have email. That's the shortcut. Okay? And so I just the only this is a good personal tech question. The only app that I have badges turned on for is messages.
Stephen Robles:That's the only app I have it turned on for, and even then, like, I'm very I don't get a lot of text from people, and I have focus modes on a lot of times when I'm not working, so the badge there is actually meaningful. Like, right now, I have 2, and if I go there, it's because Nate texted me his Wordle this morning.
Jason Aten:Thanks, Nate.
Stephen Robles:That was that was that was my badge. But now I just looked at it. I have no badges now. No badges. No badges anywhere.
Stephen Robles:We talked about that.
Jason Aten:Remember, you were really ups you were really upset that I had, like, numbers that had accumulated or something like that. I think, on Slack or something like that. Really? But it but, yeah, we had this whole conversation, Steven.
Stephen Robles:No. We did. We did.
Jason Aten:Because I randomly tweeted or threads my home screen not related to that at all.
Stephen Robles:And you're like, we need to talk about those badges. That's And
Jason Aten:I was like, it's like, we need to talk about whatever
Stephen Robles:you want.
Jason Aten:It's your podcast.
Stephen Robles:Is that how I say it?
Jason Aten:No. It's not at all. What I say. Well Yeah. Okay.
Jason Aten:I think what you're saying is actually a really valid thing, except for I don't think that Apple calls them focus modes. Just wanna say that. Focuses.
Stephen Robles:No problem.
Jason Aten:That's it. They don't use the word modes. It's kind of like it's not the iPhone. It's just iPhone. They're not focus modes.
Jason Aten:They're just focuses. But setting that aside, I think that the segment of people who most benefit from what I'm suggesting are people who don't have a lot of self control and have too many social media apps on their phone that they check constantly. That the easiest way to do is to just what? Just delete the whole thing, start over fresh, and then just and in my article, what I suggest is that, like, this is probably not like a permanent sit situation. But maybe for the month of July, delete it all.
Jason Aten:See how much more you enjoy your summer. And then you can add back all of the the the digital overhead if you really need to when it comes, like, on August 1st or whatever. So just give yourself that mental break from some of those things. And that the best way to do that isn't to try to go through 1 by 1 and delete a bunch of the apps that you're like, these are not good. It's probably more just like start over fresh because I feel like that's like, it's sort of like a milestone for you kind of thing.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's good. I actually for my Macs, whenever I get a new Mac, I typically don't migration assistant it.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:I typically set it up as new, sign in to Icloud because I find the Mac, you know, with an iPhone, if you wanna delete an app, it's a much easier process, and I and the iPad, whereas we when you delete the app, you know everything about it is gone, because it's sandboxed. There's not, like, some library folder with support application items in your iPhone that the whatever, Uber app left behind, but the case with a Mac is stuff gets everywhere. And I have tools like Hazel and CleanMyMac X, where if I delete an app, it'll go searching through the library folder and everything, and it'll say, do you also want to delete all these support files? And then I think, yes, I think so. So, you know, I find that the Mac, starting from a fresh clean slate, is, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I find that more useful just in a sense that, like, it's really hard to clean the Mac manually of apps. Apps that you download from the App Store is different because that you can literally just go like, I'll literally go into Launchpad. That's the 1 thing I use Launchpad for, is I'll go into Launchpad and delete an app with the x because if it was through the App Store, I know it will be completely removed, like it is on the iPhone, but, yeah, that's mine. I just so I don't do it for Mac. For Macs, I always start as new.
Stephen Robles:For iPhone, I have
Jason Aten:I mean, you know, just make sure you back it up first. Go ahead and erase your phone. Add things back as you need them. And I even put, like, if if you if you hate this after 2 days, don't redownload everything. Just erase your phone again and then set it up from the backup.
Jason Aten:Just don't don't don't torture yourself.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. That's for you.
Jason Aten:So this is not a permanent thing if you have a backup. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You can you can do an Icloud backup and back it up to your Mac or your computer if you want. You know, it's good to have that physical backup too. And do an encrypted backup because then you'll stay on the phone.
Jason Aten:Try to restore it and you forget your password, you just are out of luck. And then you can't readd Facebook to your phone. Now that's not true because you can just redownload it.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Yeah. No. But I will add to your point, apps that you check whether there are notifications or not, namely, like, social media, things like that. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I could I could see that. Just delete it from your phone for a while. Just a
Jason Aten:thought. We'll see what people think. Somebody actually thank you. I don't who was it? Somebody I went to post that article in the section, the very quiet section of our community for my articles.
Jason Aten:And someone had already posted it
Stephen Robles:this morning.
Jason Aten:Miles, thank you for doing that.
Stephen Robles:Look at that. I mean, the community is great.
Jason Aten:This community has posted more of my articles in this section than I have. So thank you all. I appreciate that. I will get better at it.
Stephen Robles:I. That's why I I set up a Zapier so my videos just go there automatically. But you're there's no RSS feed for your article.
Jason Aten:And the other thing is, like, I also so if somebody posted an article I wrote about Simone Biles, it was about, like, mentorship and leaving. Like, it was I I liked it. It was a great article. I have a gymnast. So, like, there's I have a sentimental attachment to this, but I was like, I'm not gonna share that in the community.
Jason Aten:It's not about tech, but old granny shared it, and I appreciate that. Thank you very much. So and she told me I have to do a better job linking to my article. So then I tried to do that this morning and someone else had already posted it. So
Stephen Robles:That's amazing. That's amazing, though. Thank you, everyone in the community. Thank you for doing that. You can join the community, social.primarytech.fm.
Stephen Robles:I poke around in there. If you at mention me, I definitely see it, and I think I respond to all those, so do that, or you could DM me, in the in the community as well. But we're gonna go record a bonus episode, because I'm going on a trip. We're gonna talk about, do we bring big cameras on trips or do we just bring the iPhone? Is that enough?
Stephen Robles:So we're gonna talk about that real camera versus iPhone in the bonus episode. You can get the bonus episodes by supporting us directly in Apple Podcasts or at primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes. Once you support the show, you get the entire back catalog. You can listen to all those bonus episodes, plus get future ones and ad free versions when we do have ads, and I think we will, soon ish. And then, yeah, give us a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:Let us know how you say biopic or biopic. That's the thing that you can say. That's it. But thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.
Stephen Robles:We won't see you next week. We're off next week. We'll be back week after this. We'll see you in 2 weeks.
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