Apple Intelligence Deep-Dive, OpenAI’s SearchGPT, More Weird AI Gadgets Coming
Download MP3Sometimes in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Tons of news. Apple Intelligence is in the iOS 18 dotone beta. I have it on my main device.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna go in deep and talk about all the features there. Lots of AI news. OpenAI announced their search GPT feature, plus the friend, the new AI hardware. Let me see if I bought that or not. Logitech is considering a subscription mouse and a ton of other news.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. And joining me as always, my good friend Jason A10. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. I only have one beef to pick with you off the bat as I think that's the second minority report quote you've used.
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute. Really? Is it the second one?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I thought for sure. We've done I'm not gonna change it. About minority report several times in context of all of the AI things. But
Stephen Robles:well, I'm actually impressed you got that quote that you actually knew as my artist.
Jason Aten:I feel like this is a challenge. I I we never officially, like, made that, but after last week, pulling the dress or, yeah, Independence Day out of thin air
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I was like, let me let me just see if I can do this.
Stephen Robles:That's gonna be my goal my goal now. If you if you're new to the show, what I do is actually quote a movie at the very top of the show, totally out of context, apropos of nothing. And then, I think I'm gonna see if Jason can figure out what it is. So I'm gonna go more and more obscure quotes.
Jason Aten:Okay. Well, then I'm gonna not be able to get them. Well, you know I watched a lot of movies, but yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But tangentially, I I try to find it tangentially related to what we're gonna talking about. And, today, because I literally put the the 18 dot one developer beta on my main iPhone, I feel like that that was apropos that Okay.
Jason Aten:In order
Stephen Robles:to see the light, you have to risk the dark.
Jason Aten:Okay. Well, my my other question for you was because I know we we did get some feedback about our overemphasis on sports on this podcast. And so I just wanted to know how much Olympics you have been watching, Steven.
Stephen Robles:As someone who usually cares nothing about sports ball, I actually get into the Olympics.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:I I even got Nomads,
Jason Aten:France special edition The trailer.
Stephen Robles:Watch band.
Jason Aten:You know that they're cutting your head off for that.
Stephen Robles:Well, we're not talking about the opening ceremony. Okay. That is not on the agenda. But, no, I have been watching a bunch of Olympics. I enjoy the Olympics.
Stephen Robles:I also, this year I've enjoyed like the TikTok commentary on the Olympics from just random people talking about this anyway. That's gonna be the bonus episode, Jason.
Jason Aten:We're
Stephen Robles:gonna talk about the Olympics and, I think the the social media angle I think would be interesting about that too. So Okay. Anyway, we don't have any 5 star review shout outs from Apple Podcast reviews. What we need you to do is let us know in the Apple Podcasts. Give us a 5 star rating and review, and would you pay an annual subscription for a mouse?
Stephen Robles:Because Logitech thinks one day you might do that. We're gonna talk about that. So leave us 5 stars, review there, but I did want to start with a community question. This comes from social.primarytech.fm. We have an amazing community, almost 200 people now, interacting and engaging and it's a lot of fun.
Stephen Robles:And this was actually from a Steve Penney, listener and watcher. He actually went to the Relay 10th anniversary in London, which is amazing. He met Casey Lis and David Smith from Widgetsmith. So super cool, that he got to go to that and congrats to relay. They did their 10 year anniversary, which is awesome.
Stephen Robles:But he's in Finland. A very international audience, Jason.
Jason Aten:I don't know. That's great. Yeah. I love that.
Stephen Robles:And he's considering an Apple Vision Pro, but is not sure about the whole app store situation. The Apple Vision Pro is available in the UK but not in Finland yet, and I know that I've heard some people finagling certain things like changing, you know, creating an Apple ID based in another country and setting your region and language to a different country, and he's wondering if he did all that, would he be able to access apps on the App Store in Finland? To which, I don't think so, but I'm asking the audience out there watching and listening, if anyone out there has done an Apple Vision Pro in another country and has made it work and it's not like totally just bonked with like not being able to do anything, let us know and maybe we can help out, Steve Penney as well, get his Apple Vision Pro. He's still using it? I see someone on threads now every day asking, does anyone still use Apple Vision Pro?
Stephen Robles:And I I just I I can't take the time to reply to all of them. I wanna say, yeah. I know one guy.
Jason Aten:One guy. That's me. Yep. I'm still using it every single day. I did see this in the in the community, and I actually thought that this thread was gonna or this post was gonna go in an entirely different direction.
Jason Aten:And I thought it was going to be a story of how he wrote wore the VisionPRO to the Relay 10, and I thought that would be that'd be great. You definitely would deserve a shout out for that. So I don't I mean, I don't
Stephen Robles:I don't know if it'll work.
Jason Aten:I don't think it's worth, what is that, €4,000 if you also have to jump through all of those hoops.
Stephen Robles:That's the thing. That's the thing. And it'll probably come eventually.
Jason Aten:And, you know, you gotta imagine Disney plus is probably region locked. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's gonna know your IP address and know that, like, you aren't supposed to be using this app and all that kind of I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I just That was the because I also think not only is it based on the region the Icloud account is based in, but I also remember early on I had looked it up that Apple was also using location via IP to block certain things. So you would probably have to use a VPN also, to make it all work. That's just it's Are
Jason Aten:there any VPNs on the VisionPRO?
Stephen Robles:Well, you might have to do it, like, at the router level.
Jason Aten:You know what I mean? Yeah. So I just reiterate my point. That's a lot of work for a really expensive thing. I'm not saying the vision pro hands down is not worth it.
Jason Aten:I'm just saying it's not also worth all the extra work. I don't think yet.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Alright, Jason. Apple Intelligence. We have our first look on it. Here was the here was my crisis.
Stephen Robles:Okay? I was literally getting groceries. This was Monday? This was Monday. I was getting groceries at publics, as you do, and I started seeing all the posts come in saying Apple Intelligence is available, Ios 18.1 Beta, you can get it right now.
Stephen Robles:So you go shoot. Okay, well, I make videos on this stuff, I should probably make a video on it. I didn't know at the time whether it was available for like macOS Sequoia and iPad. I didn't know if it was just on the iPhone. So I had this like a whirlwind of thoughts.
Stephen Robles:Do I go buy an iPhone 15 Pro from the Apple Store just for this and then maybe return it in a couple weeks? I'm like that's that seems like a lot. Do do I see if it's available on Macquis Sequoia? Which then Andrew Edwards replied on one of my posts. He said you can do that.
Stephen Robles:I was like okay, I could do that, but I really wanted to make a video of it on my phone And I was like, well I can always downgrade. It's a pain in the neck, but you can downgrade back to like I was 17 after you upgrade to a beta. I was like, I'm just gonna do it. So I just got home, started the iPhone updating to the beta while I'm putting the groceries away. I was going to do a physical backup to my Mac, but it was taking too long.
Stephen Robles:And I saw that I had an Icloud backup from the night before. Was like, the Icloud backup will be good enough. And so I did it. I have I have the 18.1
Jason Aten:that YouTubers do that math in a very different way most people. Like, I have to get this done now so I can get this video up. I don't even have time for a backup.
Stephen Robles:But I will say I mean it paid off in the end. I mean that video on the, my the Apple intelligence features for iOS 18, 24,000 views in like 2 days
Jason Aten:so Nice.
Stephen Robles:For me that does pretty good. So was it worth it? Ask me in a couple months because I will say this thing is it is buggy and I've had a bunch of people ask like should I put it on my main device? Like listen, the reason why I did it too is I'm less dependent on my iPhone on a day to day basis today than I was several years ago when I worked
Jason Aten:at a
Stephen Robles:job where I was like doing more on my iPhone. Now my Mac is really the mission critical machine and my iPad, strangely enough because of all the podcast stuff. And I don't run the betas on my Mac Studio or my new iPad Pro keeping those on 17 and on whatever Mac OS is current what is it what are we on now?
Jason Aten:14 right?
Stephen Robles:Sonoma. Yeah yeah. Something like that. Just just kidding. So keeping those on the normal stuff, but I was like, you know what?
Stephen Robles:My iPhone I am going to podcast moving in a few weeks, and I'm a little worried that, like, I won't be able to hail an Uber or something, but I'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I'll bring my Rabbit R1, and maybe it'll hail an Uber for me. No, it won't. So anyway, it is on my main device. I did it for you, for the podcast listeners, for the viewers on YouTube, and now I can I feel like I can actually speak to the features of Apple Intelligence as though I like, I'm using it?
Stephen Robles:Like, I'm using them every day. I'm getting text message summaries, I'm getting email summaries, all of that Apple intelligence is happening. There's a lot still not there, like, we don't have Genmoji, we don't have the generative image stuff, like, in notes, and we don't like Siri is is not intelligent yet, like overall.
Jason Aten:It's better.
Stephen Robles:Slightly better, but it can't do the, contain like contextual awareness of your information. Like, what's Sure. Like, my what's my driver's license number? What's my license plate number? Can't do that yet, but it's slightly better.
Stephen Robles:Let me ask you, Jason. I I dove in. What do you what are you running the Apple Intelligence on, if anything?
Jason Aten:I actually was a little bit behind because the first so I saw Joanna Stern, I think, was probably the first post about it because she had an article clearly, like, she knew that it was coming, which that that's just how that works. And I'm not saying that in a bad way. It wasn't quite as, obvious as Marquez posting the Samsung video as the Samsung event starts. Like Right. Exactly.
Jason Aten:And then actually there was a behind the scenes video. It's like they'd add those things for like a week or something. I don't know. Right. Yes.
Jason Aten:Maybe not that long. But anyway, and then I saw your post, and it said something about you have to have an iPhone 15 Pro. And I was like, ah, well, crap. I have a Pro Max. So I I thought literally your words were that it was only available in 15 or what is it?
Jason Aten:18 point 17.1.
Stephen Robles:What 18 dot 1.
Jason Aten:18 dot 1. Thank you.
Stephen Robles:It was available.
Jason Aten:It was only available in the 18 on the 15 pro, not the pro max. But then I heard you then I saw you say, like, alright. Forget it. I'm gonna run it on my thing. I'm like, alright.
Jason Aten:So I'll update. Because I'd already been running the the beta on a second device, the second 15 Pro Max. And so I was like, oh, well, that's fine. I'll just update to the 18.1 beta instead of the 18.0 7 or whatever the heck we were on or some beta 18 beta, whatever.
Stephen Robles:Nail it.
Jason Aten:You know how hard words are. Nails names are so hard. Anyway, I just so I did. I updated the phone. I went on the waiting list.
Jason Aten:It did not take very long to be on the waiting list for the phone. And then I updated, I have a MacBook Air that has been running Sequoia. See, we'll just go with that name for now. And so then I thought, well, let me update that one to the developer beta 15.1.
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:So I did, and I just got off the waiting list 15 minutes before we started recording.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's weird that it took that long. Is it your main iPhone or the backup? Oh, no.
Jason Aten:No. No. It's a second iPhone. No. I'm not a monster.
Jason Aten:I wouldn't put it on my main iPhone. Actually, here's the thing. I'll just be completely honest.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:It's fine. If you run it on your main phone, it's gonna be buggy and glitchy. The the single worst reason the single worst, like, ramification of running these betas, especially this one, I think, on your main device is you're just going to have 0 battery life. Right? Like, for the most part, it's not that's the biggest hit, I think.
Stephen Robles:Usually, yes. Although, I don't know if my battery life just wasn't that good before, but I've actually found it to be pretty decent, when it comes to battery life on my Pro Max.
Jason Aten:So just because the pro max has the largest battery that Apple has ever put into a phone.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But it wasn't great before. Like, when I was running 17.5 or whatever, it was a little it was a little weird. But, anyway, let's talk about the features because Apple Intelligence, we were able to try some of these features, the summaries, the writing tools, and then also have some thoughts about control center and photos now that I've been living with it on my main device. So yeah, we should talk about that but summaries.
Stephen Robles:So summaries are interesting. This is the video I did. I'll link this down into the show notes. But on Macro Sequoia, I show the summaries in mail. So any email message you get, you can the little summary button at the very top, you can click it and it will summarize the email there, but you also get summaries for, like, in the preview, like, in your inbox of your messages in mail.
Stephen Robles:I found summaries to be pretty good. Sometimes they are helpful. If I'm looking at a specific, like an individual message, and I click summarize, I find it will reveal certain key info. Although, I do find when I have an email chain, so there's been lots of replies back and forth between myself and someone else, sometimes the summary is pulling, like, the main key points from, like, earlier messages, and I get no information on what the latest message was. So again, we're in early days.
Stephen Robles:This is the first, like, this is not a review. I'm just saying my experience. I'm curious how it's gonna do with, like, longer email chains because it's giving you one summary for the whole conversation. But for individual messages, I find it pretty good. For those email chains, you know, it's okay.
Stephen Robles:And text summaries have been interesting because when I get a text message, it will show me the summary and there's this little symbol that you see, in the text summaries. I'm actually gonna go to, what it looks like so you can see it. I'm gonna share my screen and I'm watching youtube.com/primarytechshow, but this is a text message that you get in Apple Intelligence, and you see this little symbol under, Nicole's name, and that's telling me this is not actually the text message, this is a summary. And some of these summaries have been useful, some of them have been I don't like, not exactly what the message was saying, and sometimes, like, not really helpful. So it's it's hit and miss, but it's cool because if you get sent a really long message, in the notification, like in the preview, you will see the summary rather than the full message, and on the Mac and the iPhone, if you click see more, now you actually see the whole message, which makes more sense.
Stephen Robles:I feel like for a long time, clicking the see more would just open the reply thing, which, you know, makes sense too, but, but this this is cool. So I I'm like playing around with it. It looks fun. Has you have you had any experience, like, the summaries or anything like that?
Jason Aten:Not really the text one because I don't to to my backup phone. I I mean, I do have it signed into my iCloud account, but I'm not just carrying it around looking at it all the time. It's like pick it up to do a thing. So I don't but, I mean, I wrote an article. I know, like, we can get to part of that, but I the whole thing I think that Apple did really well with Apple Intelligence is this, the summarization of information that you want both in Safari and in Mail.
Jason Aten:I'm definitely looking forward to the Siri interactions, but I think that this is the kind of thing that is super subtle because it's not like a flashy, super exciting, let's make a weird picture of my grandma with a cape and send it to her in a text message. It's not that. Right?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But this is the kind of thing that every time you use your mail app, which is a thing people do all day long, it's gonna save you a little bit of time because I I would agree that though some reason not perfect yet, but its ability to pull out, like, you know, need to schedule a meeting about this. And the subject line might not have said that. Right? And it's it's yeah. So I think that I think it's great.
Jason Aten:I think that both the Safari and the mail summaries are fantastic.
Stephen Robles:I think so too. And even more so the summaries for articles. So this I I didn't discover my first video, but this is in my macOS Apple intelligence video. And it's a little weird because this is different than the Safari summaries that Apple announced during the keynote, that is like a Safari feature. So for Apple Intelligence, when you're looking at an article on your phone or on your mac, if you go into reader mode, then there will be this little summarize thing.
Stephen Robles:You click it, and it will summarize the article you're looking at in a single paragraph, and you'll see that in that action, it's actually there's a little Apple Intelligence logo next to the summarize. So this is doing it in real time, meaning when you tap summarize, it's pulling the text from the page, summarizing it, and giving you a paragraph. Whereas, if you remember during the keynote at WWDC, there's a feature coming to Safari that's not Apple Intelligence, which means more people will have access to this. Anyone running macOS Sequoia or iOS 18, that some reason Safari, including like the table of contents view, that is gonna be available and it's separate. That's actually not a real time thing.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if you have heard of this, but when that happens, it's actually something happening on the back end where Apple is summarizing these things server side, and providing those summaries in Safari for specific pages, that's why it's not available everywhere. So if you are running the beta and you don't have Apple Intelligence, you will not see summaries on every web page because that feature is specifically something that Apple has to do proactively on articles or web pages. Whereas, the Apple Intelligence feature can run-in real time no matter what web page you're looking at, because it's literally pulling from the text right there as you run it. It. So I hope that distinction makes sense, but basically you'll also for websites that do have summaries that Apple has processed on the back end, you'll basically have 2 options.
Stephen Robles:Like you can see kind of the ready made summary that has happened and processed server side, and then you could also generate an Apple Intelligence summary based on the text that you're seeing. So is that the understanding you have as well?
Jason Aten:I think so. Yeah. So there's a there's an update to Safari, like you described, and then there's also the Apple Intelligence component, which will just you can tap that some. And it it is a little bit confusing. I wonder how many people will actually use the Apple Intelligence part because you have to be in reader mode for that to even do anything.
Jason Aten:Whereas the the new version of Safari on macOS, for example, you'll just have that as an option. You don't have to go into reader mode. It'll just have that you you'll pull it up, and it'll just have that summary for you.
Stephen Robles:Right. And then I think it'll be in the highlights area, which the highlights, again, is a different feature where if you're looking at like a business web page or whatever and you're trying to find the address or phone number, that Safari will automatically surface that for you. So I I really like the article summaries. That has been useful. And then the other thing that's available right now is writing tools.
Stephen Robles:There's little things like Siri improvements and things like that, but writing tools is where you can select any text in an app and you can pull up the writing tools or tap the Apple Intelligence and then you can rewrite it, proofread it, and then you can reword as like friendly, professional, and stuff like that. And this has been pretty cool, especially you can pull summaries as well. So you can select a bunch of text like I did, add a video transcript, and I had it summarize it. It'll do that. You can also get me like bullet points, like tell me just the key points from this huge amount of text I just selected.
Stephen Robles:It does that pretty well. You can even have it make a table, like a spreadsheet, from data, and I did that with a kind of specifically like data points and it did pretty good at that too. You can also make a concise version. I think these writing tools are going to be really helpful in many cases. I do wish, you know, it you can't prompt it still and the ChatGPT integration is not there yet, which will be coming later.
Stephen Robles:So it's not like you can select a bunch of text and tell it, make this into a blog post, which is something that ChattyPT could do very easily. This is literally just proofreading, summarizing, changing the tone, pulling key points, and or making a spreadsheet out of the data. So it's very much Apple is not gonna add or like, you can't prompt it to do specific things like make 5 social media posts from this text. That's still going to be a chat gpt function, and once that integration is live, I imagine you'll be able to do that built into the apps, but this Apple Intelligence feature is very much like take the text I have written and either summarize it or take text I've copied and summarize it, make it sound different, give me key points, give me a table, and that kind of stuff.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So you'll be able to copy something that you found somewhere else, put it into notes, and tell it to rewrite it so that it sounds different so that you can use it for some that's not a way this is supposed to work.
Stephen Robles:Ish ish because you can tell it, you know, there's not there's not an open text box to say make this sound like this. It's very much like you have these sandbox options.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:It can be friendly, it can be professional, or you can just rewrite. And you can tap that rewrite button as many times as you would like and Apple Intelligence will keep rewriting it, but you can't like insert specific qualifications or say in this way or in this style. Like it's not catchypt
Jason Aten:yet. How long do you think it'll be before Tim Cook decides to start billing you on Apple Pay every time you tap that rewrite button? Not very long. Just every time you tap a button, you just just gonna get 3¢. No.
Jason Aten:Well, so I think that I think I'm a I'm actually a very bullish is that the right term? Yes. I'm bullish on Apple Intelligence, generally speaking. Yeah. I do think that, like, I think the notes app is great, but but I don't write anything in the notes app.
Jason Aten:And so the ability to write like, it doesn't make sense to have that be the place you can go. And I know you can do it in in other places, Apple places where you can put text in all of those things. Yeah. Mail is is possible. But for example, like Superhuman, the mail app,
Stephen Robles:and I
Jason Aten:think this as well will already read an email, suggest a reply to that email. You can tell it to write a reply, and then you, it will also do that in your voice, because it will just, one of the options you can say is like, analyze my emails that I've written so that you know how I would write this and have it just do that. And you can't still can't do that in Apple Mail. Right? That's still not an option that it and Apple didn't talk about being able to do that sort of thing.
Jason Aten:Yes. You could say to Chad gpt, here's what someone emailed me. Write me a response. But that's like that is not the seamless workflow that I think people are going to expect. So I'm I'm really interested to hear see, like, where this is going to go because I think that I would much rather use these features built in.
Jason Aten:I I had a moment where I thought, oh, am I switching back to Apple Mail? No. I'm not. But but well, here's the thing. Because every other mail app already does this, They will already summarize your emails for you.
Jason Aten:The only thing that they don't do, I shouldn't say every other one, but superhuman and spark, which are the 2 that I use fairly regularly, they already do this. The only thing that they don't do is replace the preview in the inbox view with that summary. I can live like they will. Like, in they're gonna look at that idea and be like, that's a great idea. Why aren't we doing that?
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:What about the priority notifications? Would they do that kind of at the top?
Jason Aten:So in Spark, yes. You can if you say someone is priority, then it'll just it shows up in a separate section, and it's highlighted so that you know. And in superhuman, you have what you call the VIP, which is essentially a sorted filter, like a search filter view. Like, you tell it who the VIP is. And so then when you click on that tab, it only shows you those.
Jason Aten:So it's the same kind of a thing in a different way. Apple is just doing it completely of its own. Right? It's completely deciding what those things are. And my experience using it, so good at it.
Jason Aten:But I it'll just be interesting. Like, no, I'm probably not switching back to Apple Mail, but I definitely using it as I'm going through it. I'm like, this is actually pretty cool. It's like the features they've added. I'm more looking forward to because they don't and correct me if I'm wrong.
Jason Aten:One of the things they talked about in mail is the ability to have different filtered views of of, like, your receipts or whatever. Like, there was a there was a converse there was something they were talking about there, and that has not shown up yet. That's the thing I'm really interested to see. Like, will it give me better control over how my inbox is organized?
Stephen Robles:Which I don't think that's an Apple Intelligence feature actually because I think
Jason Aten:I think you're right.
Stephen Robles:That was an iOS 18 in the in that part of the keynote, and so you'll be have like priority, travel, newsletters, or whatever, and those sections should just be there, which it's not in the beta right now, so we'll see. But that was it. I'm glad you said smart reply because that is the other feature that is kind of live ish. I don't see it all the time, but I do see it in some text messages and in some mail where when you reply to a mail or in a message that has kind of a specific this or this, so I wrote myself an email. I was like, we have a wedding this weekend, chicken or fish?
Stephen Robles:So this the smart reply will actually bring that up, so right above the keyboard you'll see chicken fish dot, and when you choose one of those options, it will actually compose, like, a full response. It won't just say chicken. It'll say, hi, Steven. Chicken sounds great. Thanks for checking in.
Stephen Robles:So it actually does this whole message with that smart reply, and that is both in text messages and mail. I have seen multiple times when I'm texting someone, they ask me a question, and as I'm about to type on the keyboard, there's, like, some options kind of pre made for me, which I know Gmail and there's been lots of features like that for other services, but it's pretty cool and I haven't used any yet to like a real person. I would just do it kind of for that test, but that's there. Yep. That's cool.
Stephen Robles:Yep. The other feature, tell tell I don't know if this is Apple intelligence or not so you have to tell me but call recording, gonna be on iPhone, meaning in the phone app specifically, when you, are gonna call someone, there's a little record button now in the top left corner. I don't I don't think this is Apple Intelligence. I think this is just built into 18 dot 1.
Jason Aten:I think it is actually part of Apple Intelligence because it's not I'm just looking right now to see, yeah. So it's under the Apple Intelligence news release where it talks about that when a call recording is initiated while on a call, participants are automatically notified in once call ends. Apple Intelligence generates a summary to help recall key points.
Stephen Robles:So the maybe the summary is Apple Intelligence. The only reason why I think this might not be Apple Intelligence is because transcriptions in Notes is coming to iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia without Apple Intelligence. So if you're just on like the public beta right now or don't have Apple Intelligence, you can go to the Notes app like I showing here. You can do a voice recording and get a transcription right then, and that is not Apple Intelligent, that's just kind of built in. So out of the call or actual recording part that, you know, maybe you're right, maybe that's Apple Intelligence only, but it's it's pretty cool.
Stephen Robles:I called myself, called my Google voice number and basically when you tap the little symbol to record it actually will announce to both parties this call is being recorded. So there's a little like the little Siri voice comes on and it says this call is being recorded. Like if you're some kind of you know customer service call center person and then it'll start recording, and you see it right here on the iPhone. There's, like, the whole waveform. It tells you how long you've been recording, and then you can stop the recording separate than actually ending the call.
Stephen Robles:So you could just press stop on the record part, then end the call, and then you get that audio recording in notes, and you get the transcription of that recording as well. So, like, journalists, this feels like amazing, I imagine. Being able to record just from a regular phone call, get a summary and transcription of everything that was said. Like, look at this. This is super cool.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I have not had a phone conversation with someone about a story in years. It's almost all
Stephen Robles:What do you do it on? Just Riverside, of course.
Jason Aten:I just make it. No. I'm just kidding. No. I mean, it's usually like a Zoom call or a Riverside call.
Jason Aten:Definitely a Riverside call most of the time, but also Zoom or Teams or Google Meet, which is Yeah. It's usually let's just put it this way. It's usually not up to me.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I do see one right here. Yeah. Which is what Apple uses. Yes.
Stephen Robles:I did see someone on social media saying, like, this is gonna be great for podcasters. No. Don't use this feature to record a podcast because it's gonna be low quality and it's gonna sound bad. You don't get separate tracks. That's why I need to use Riverside.
Stephen Robles:That's good. I work for Riverside.
Jason Aten:He does I
Stephen Robles:also use it.
Jason Aten:Not sponsored it. They've sponsored in the sense that they've let us have Steven for this period of time.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Ex exactly. I paid for my own account. This is this is, our Riverside account. But that a lot of Apple intelligence again, I'll be playing with it on my main iPhone every day because I'm living with this thing, but a couple other Ios 18 features, oh and before we move on let me shout out I'm going to link Jason's article because he talked about the summaries specifically on ink.com and so check out that And, like you've been saying here, the best features are kind of boring.
Stephen Robles:That's that's good.
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, they just are. Like, it's not the the my point was there are things that people will think are exciting that are coming, image generation, Genmoji, stuff like that, the chat GPT integration. But I don't think that those are the best features. I think the best features that will actually improve people's, like, quality of life are these these things that we were just talking about. Like, the because they people use email all day long.
Jason Aten:Anything you can do to make your email more useful to you is going to make a much bigger difference in this grand scheme of of your, like, life than the image generation tool, which, by the way, seems cool, but not that useful. Like, it's so restricted. They've put so many, like, the the such a tight fence around that that I don't know that it's the thing where people are gonna be like, yep. This is why I'm upgrading my iPhone.
Stephen Robles:I am curious. I mean, people are gonna try and make all kinds of terrible imagery and like inappropriate images and I'm curious how far Genmoji will allow people to go, but I do think if you're making a presentation, like I was making some slides yesterday, if I wanted an image of like a microphone but like a nondescript one, if it can do that in Keynote, which we don't I don't know if it could do it in Keynote, it does it in Notes. That's the demo that Apple did during the keynote, but if we could do it in the application keynote, that would be useful. So we'll see. And the one other, I forgot to mention this, was the Apple Intelligence focus mode feature, which if you have a focus mode, there's a new toggle now at the very top, intelligent breakthrough and silencing, which means even if you don't have an app or person able to send you notifications in a specific focus mode, that Apple Intelligence will see is this important and show it to you anyway, basically.
Stephen Robles:It it does that, like for some reason my garage door, that notification doesn't come through when I'm in a focus mode, but now it does because I have the toggle on for these focus modes and it will, you know, it'll set us, hey garage door opened and you know that is something that I would like to see so I appreciate that. And maybe I should just add the home to my focus mode as apps and send a notification. But anyway, so, yeah, that's the Apple Intelligence focus mode thing. I do want to talk about 3 features in iOS 18, though, that are not Apple intelligence related. I'm curious your thoughts if you've played around with them, but Control Center.
Stephen Robles:Control Center got a big update, Very customizable now, you can have lots of controls and, you know, I did my I went all out made a bunch of smart home controls on my smart home page, and I have my favorites page, which looks a lot like Control Center did before because I don't know what to do with it just yet, but everything's much circular, more circular. There's more circles.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:That's what I could say here. You know, I haven't taken the time to put, like, shortcuts and stuff there yet because I already have shortcuts in, like, widgets on, like, the today view of the phone. So I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about control center? I
Jason Aten:have none. I have zero thoughts about control center because, again, it's not my main phone, but I do I mean, it looks I do think it looks better functionally. I don't know. And it's it's less grayscale. It's kinda weird how, like, the volume and brightness things are have colors in them and stuff now, and it's like you know?
Jason Aten:I don't I think it's fine. I think it's nice that you're able to do more things on different screens and add different things. Ah, I'm just boring. If you haven't noticed the thing. Like, I just don't care.
Jason Aten:I don't need that. I like it's the way it is. It's fine. I don't these are features for people who spend a lot of time thinking about the way their phone should be. And I don't I just don't.
Jason Aten:I don't spend any time thinking about how my phone should be. I set it up so that it's functional. And the most thinking I do is every once in a while, when it when an app wants to update, I'm like, have I used you in the last 3 weeks? And if the answer is no, not only can you not update, but I just delete it. Right?
Jason Aten:That's it. That's the only thinking I do about it. And every once in a while, I look at the fitness app on my home screen, and I think you are aspirational. I have not opened you in a very long time, but I can't move you from the home screen because then I will never ever open it. So That's it.
Jason Aten:That's the extent that I spend thinking about it.
Stephen Robles:So the one thought I had was I did try to organize the control center more to my liking and if you find the home screen like that process of customizing your home screen frustrating, I feel like the control center process is even more frustrating. Like tapping and holding on controls and trying to move these bubbles in a very confined space. And if you go too far, like, oh, we'll create a new control center page for you, and then it, like, jumps down a bunch of pages. So the management side has been a little annoying which is I think why I have not gone in to customize it even more, but we'll see. I'll leave time time will tell on that.
Stephen Robles:Photos has, one of the biggest redesigns in iOS 18. I've seen people who have been running the betas for longer be like they had the full range of emotions, like, they thought it was terrible, and then they thought it was great. I am in the getting used to it phase, so I won't, judge it too much, but it is very different. I will say that. Like, the whole photos app organization and how you get to different sections and what you're seeing, it is different.
Stephen Robles:I do like, you know, some of the things like this is, the favorites tab and we just did a, you know, a trip to New York a couple weeks ago, and if I go there, it actually has, like, this little, like, video preview at the top and then the still photos underneath. So, like, that's kinda cool. I mean, it shows some interesting things there. And with Apple Intelligence, you'll be able to say, like, make me a slideshow of so and so or this topic or this thing, and it'll do that. So it seems like the functionality is really cool, but I'm not sold yet on the whole, like, navigation.
Stephen Robles:So I don't know. The jury's still out. Have you had any time with it?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Although, ironically, I've had the most time with it in the VisionPRO, which is it's actually great for the VisionPRO. This is a interface that is just designed to be immersive, but I don't. I think it's better, but I hate it. I think I think it is argue it is objectively better
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:At doing the thing that Apple is trying to do. The thing is, I just don't want it to do the thing that it's trying to do, which is to surface things. It's it's making it better at surfacing photos because, like, that's the thing we care about. I think it might just be the fact that I I spent so much of my professional career career as a photographer that I am very particular about how these things are organized, and it's very easy for me to, like, just I just have this, like, pinpoint of, like, oh, yeah. I go there for this thing or I do this and I can find that footage or that, you know, photo here or and I have lots of albums and I have lots of things.
Jason Aten:And those types of things are harder to use on the new version. I just want to be able to, like, look at my photos, and they didn't solve the one thing that I really wish that they would have solved, which is, like, you can't you still can't put something like, most people just use their library view. Right?
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Yes.
Jason Aten:But anything you you can't change that view, that's not a change global. You can't hide a photo from there or delete a photo from there and still have it show up somewhere else. Right? You don't have it's not an inbox of photos. It's just all it's the all mail thing.
Jason Aten:Right? And so I wish that it was more like this. I wish that photos was more like Gmail and that I could do whatever I want to them and it was nondestructive. But, yeah, I I think it looks great. I just Yeah.
Jason Aten:Don't prefer it because I was
Stephen Robles:Used to it.
Jason Aten:You know, you've essentially eliminated a layer of hierarchy and moved them into different places, And it's more about, like, we just wanna show you things, tap here, and be surprised, which I think is lovely for a lot of people.
Stephen Robles:It is cool to see photos you took a long time ago and never went back to what like, to look at. So, like, yeah, that is cool. I will say I've not done this. I didn't realize that there's, like, a whole customized, area Yep. Where you can uncheck and check collections and reorder them, and so I need to go in and do that because one of the things I wanted to do was go to my recently deleted and undelete something, and like the amount of scrolling you have to do to get all the way down to the bottom where your recently deleted are, it was just a lot.
Stephen Robles:And I was like, well, wow, that's really far away, and it took me a while to get to it. Or even just, like, to see your media types of, like, just way down here at the bottom, and my photos were, like, way up here. So, yeah, I need to go in and and customize the collections and stuff, but jury's still out for me on that one. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but lastly, the one feature that I can unequivocally say I like and I think is good, RCS. I did not think I did not think this was gonna be the thing, but as soon as I updated it on my main phone, I was like, oh wait a minute, I can now text some people I know with Android phones and try out this RCS.
Stephen Robles:And it was great. It's great. It said in the little, text field, it said text message RCS and, I'm gonna go to the conversation here.
Jason Aten:Still green bubbles.
Stephen Robles:It's still green bubbles, yeah, but, you know, it says text message rcs oh, you can't even see it. It says text message.rcs in the little send thing. I got ellipses, I got delivered receipt, I got read receipts. It's red, it's not read. I'm sorry, I saw that go around social media again.
Stephen Robles:Red receipts. You read the text, I read the text, they read the text. Anyway, you know, you get all that delivered, red ellipses, group chats will be better. I was actually I was I'm glad RCS is here. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. You probably don't text any Android people. You just say
Jason Aten:I do, but I No. I just don't I don't care. Like, it's funny.
Stephen Robles:Main device yet. You get you got it has to be in your main device when you're just gonna naturally text someone, and then it's like, oh, I could see that my message was delivered, and I never knew before whether this person got my text message or not.
Jason Aten:I'd never think about that unless it's one of my kids, and they all have iPhones. That's it. I don't care. Like, if
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:It'll still tell you though, if a if a message fails, even if it's a text message, it'll say message failed. Like It's a black box.
Stephen Robles:You know, because sometimes it'll say message failed, and then the person will reply to the message that supposedly failed. And I'm like, you know, you've experienced that, right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I also just think that, yes, I'm not trying to be just cranky about this. I just think how privileged our life must be that the thing that we really care about is did I get a notification or or or a indication that something are they showing?
Stephen Robles:Are they talking?
Jason Aten:Listen. This this these are features for people to think a lot about their phones, and I just don't think that much about my phone. I just use it.
Stephen Robles:Jason's being one of the I think this is a great feature. I think for group texts, group texts, this is gonna be great.
Jason Aten:You know what's great for group text? WhatsApp. Every group text I have is in WhatsApp.
Stephen Robles:Listen. I have
Jason Aten:WhatsApp? Steven? WhatsApp?
Stephen Robles:I use it. I have 2 group chats from that guy that I was just texting. I have a WhatsApp group chat with him and, Nate. My friend, Nate. And we're in WhatsApp because he has an Android phone.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna say something right now and I might get some heat for it. WhatsApp is garbage.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:I do not like WhatsApp at all. The UI, the design, how it functions, I do not like it at all. Plus it's a meta property. I don't know why everybody loves to defend WhatsApp, but I I don't like it. Not a good app.
Jason Aten:It is okay. That's like yes. It is owned by Meta. Right? But it is also that's like saying Instagram.
Jason Aten:It's owned by Meta. I don't know why people share photos with that app. It's owned by Meta. Like, there's no No. No.
Jason Aten:No. No. No. No bet like, it is the thing that you use for that in WhatsApp for group. Listen.
Jason Aten:If the thing you care about is group messaging and threaded replies and all of that, WhatsApp is so far superior to messages, not just the going between cross platform iOS and Android. Like iOS messages, group messages with only iOS people are still trash. Like, it's horrible.
Stephen Robles:What do you mean horrible?
Jason Aten:Compared to WhatsApp, just the way that the replies are in the way that things like, it is just not a good tool for group messages. WhatsApp is so much better. And listen, you're talking this is the guy who is not exactly, like, a meta fan here. Right? I'm not I'm just saying that, like, it is so much better.
Stephen Robles:Why are replies better in WhatsApp, like, in a group tech?
Jason Aten:I don't know because Facebook spent more time thinking about it? Oh, you don't mean, like, the existential like, why are they better? You're asking, like, the feature.
Stephen Robles:Like functionally, why why do you find it better? Because like I've I've seen replies in this group chat in WhatsApp and this is the exact same thing as the Imessage group chat, it basically shows you the message that it was replying to and then shows you the reply. I mean, functionally in UI it's pretty similar. My my consternation is, even simple things like WhatsApp's delivered and red iconography, this very tiny blue check that is easy to miss and it's like, is that one check or blue check? Like, I think just that clarity of Imessage telling you delivered and read.
Stephen Robles:Like give me the whole word. It's not it doesn't give up that much space. You're just putting it under the last message. Just do that. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:That listen, I know WhatsApp is very popular everywhere in the world and may maybe this of all the things, this is gonna be the thing. I thought the the pencil tip in the wrong direction was gonna bring out the the the crowds. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Well, I think, objectively, this is not I don't even think this is that controversial other than between the 2 of us. I think, like, the world has just decided that for group message, like, especially outside of the US, it is less of a thing in the US. I thought you were gonna say that, like, the group messages you have were with all the people overseas that you have to, like, work with. You probably just have to use, like, Teams for that or something stupid.
Stephen Robles:But Well, when I worked for a travel company, I did use WhatsApp back then because I worked with, like, tour guides and stuff in in Europe and the Middle East, and yeah, they all used WhatsApp. Fine, but even like the way WhatsApp connects to your device, you can only have this connected to 1 iPhone at a time because it's still based on your phone number. Like that base level decision on how WhatsApp works, I think is inferior to where Imessage can be on it. You can have it on as many iPhones as you want because it's based on your Icloud account and you could, you know, it doesn't matter what phone, whatever, like, just that and that might be just be a limitation. It It shouldn't be a limitation on WhatsApp though because you should just be able to create a WhatsApp account, no phone number like you could with Imessage and just use WhatsApp and just have, like, a username.
Stephen Robles:Isn't that I think that's how other group chats work.
Jason Aten:Well, and I assume it's so it has to do with encryption and keys and stuff that, we don't really understand. And obviously, it's hard to compare the 2 because Apple makes the iPhone and makes iOS and makes up messages. Listen, I would rather use messages. Don't get me wrong. Like, I like messages.
Jason Aten:I use it all the time. But I'm just saying for group messages and for group messages that involve people who are not using iPhones. Like, especially that use case, WhatsApp is just it's just a lot better.
Stephen Robles:Once RCS is widespread, once 18 dot o comes to everyone. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:But let listen. Maybe I'm wrong here. Again, I I have, like, 2 group chats on WhatsApp that I use, and I just I don't prefer it. So, let let me know listeners. This maybe this is the viral decision.
Stephen Robles:I need to make merch about battery percentage, about iPad and Apple Pencil tip, and now something about WhatsApp.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:I probably yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Okay. That's Apple Intelligence iOS 18.
Stephen Robles:Let's run through some other, quick news and then I want to get to the AI stuff about, like, friends and and whatever. But, real quick, I wanna say Tim Sweeney had a terrible take on Find My. Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and such, he replied to a 9 to 5 Mac tweet about how Find My is available in every country except Korea, and Tim Sweeney's over here saying, this feature, talking about Find My. This is Tim Sweeney in his tweet saying, is it super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn't exist. Years ago, a kid stole a Mac laptop out of my car.
Stephen Robles:Years later, I was checking out Find My, and it showed a map with the house where the kid who stole my Mac lived. WTF Apple. How is that okay? Honestly, that seems like a great advertisement for Find My. The laptop that you had stolen?
Stephen Robles:You can still track where it is and maybe get it back. And, John Gruber, of course, he had a a wonderful takedown. This one sentence in his article, he said, thieves deserve privacy too is quite the take. It's quite the take. I don't know what Tim's really thinking.
Stephen Robles:Do you think is he, like, broken somehow? Maybe he glitched. I I don't know.
Jason Aten:That's what the kids say. I feel like this is one of those perfect examples of the I don't wanna get into a cultural conversation, so I won't. I will just say that we live in a time when we just assume that even the good things that's our enemy does have to just we have to find a reason for it to be bad. Right. We this is kind of, like, the bet the best other example of this was, how is it that Mark Zuckerberg became a hero?
Jason Aten:Because there was a worse villain. Right? Like, he was gonna cage fight Elon Musk, and everyone was cheering for Mark Zuckerberg. Like, there's this world where we have to, like and I feel like for Tim Sweeney, it's just apple equal bad. And so this feature must just be terrifying, but it's it's like
Stephen Robles:What?
Jason Aten:So what you're saying is it's terrible because it works. Like, I don't under like, it is the worst possible like, it'd be one thing if it's like, why I knew someone who was being stalked in the stalker dropped an iPhone in their backpack and then could see where they were. Like, that's yeah. That's not cool. Like, there's that's a problem.
Jason Aten:And we should like, that was the whole air tag argument, which is not like, that's one thing. This argument though is just, I don't think you're saying the thing you think you're saying, because what you just said is to everyone is like, if someone steals your lap, actually apple did a commercial about this, about someone who like left their laptop in a, in a, in a shop or a cab or something like that, and was able to find it. It was one of those goofy ones with the, the, what are those, the underdogs or whoever they are like, and they had to give a presentation like this is that story. Only someone stole it, and years later, he could have recovered it. It's like Yeah.
Jason Aten:I I'm sorry. Yeah. He's broken. Deeply deep. So he needs to do some deep soul work because
Stephen Robles:He he glitched. He glitched. That was weird. Anyway, also, I listened to the decoder episode with Nilay Patel and the CEO of Logitech. I don't know how to how do I pronounce her name?
Stephen Robles:Hanneke Faber?
Jason Aten:Sounds good.
Stephen Robles:Okay. That's she's the the new ish CEO of Logitech. In the interview, Eli asked her about smart home devices and she was like, yeah, I don't know if we're selling those anymore. And every HomeKit user was just like, no. Did she just announce the death of the HomeKit devices from Logitech?
Stephen Robles:Turns out she was wrong live on the air. Also telling that she didn't know that Logitech is still selling and making Logitech Circle View, which is my video doorbell, the Logitech Circle View Cameras, which I also use. So I don't know if that means Logitech's HomeKit, devices are not long for this world.
Jason Aten:I mean, she's new. Right? Like Yeah. She was very focused on selling you a mouse you have to pay for for the rest of your life. So
Stephen Robles:Well, so that so the other thing was she's trying to grow the businesses. She's focusing on more enterprise use cases, and she said in the interview that she would like to figure out how she can sell you a mouse based on a hardware subscription, and she's been she basically said in the interview, if we make a good enough mouse that is beautiful and designed and the hardware is great, I'm like, what kind of mouse is this? I mean, is this kind of dynamic?
Jason Aten:Does it massage your hand when you're using it?
Stephen Robles:Well, like, it's a Swarovski crystal, inlaid mouse. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Oh, good. Something that would shatter on the floor if I drop it. That's what I want for a mouse.
Stephen Robles:Glass and aluminum.
Jason Aten:Aluminum.
Stephen Robles:I tried saying it like Johnny Ive. I couldn't do it. But she was saying if you make a nice enough hardware mouse that people would keep it forever and pay a hardware or well, pay a subscription for software updates for the mouse, which I'm, like, I don't know what kind of software would be worth paying annually for for a mouse. And I've used Logitech's, like, software utility to try and program all the different scroll things or whatever. I didn't care for it.
Stephen Robles:I went back to my magic mouse. It was just easier and it worked great. So anyway I just wanna say, basic Apple guy, he posted this which is pretty good. He's saying, the magic mouse unlimited clicks annual plan. $25 a year to which I said if it had USB c and I could use it while I charged I might pay that.
Stephen Robles:No I wouldn't pay that. I would not
Jason Aten:I mean, I have an MX Master 3. I think that's what the thing is called. We all know I'm not good at names, but that's what's written on the bottom. So I'm assuming that that's what it's called. And this is a good mouse.
Jason Aten:It's, like, probably the most popular mouse among people who don't use magic mice. I don't want to ever pay for this thing. Like, a mouse is a thing that just gets grosser over time. There is no amount of goodness you can put into it. There's no amount of beauty you can design into this thing Right.
Jason Aten:That within two and a half years, it's just gonna be a greasy, disgusting, like, there's just it's in the bottom. There's, like, I don't know what that I don't know what that is stuck in there. I'm not even gonna try to get it out.
Stephen Robles:Like Remember the mice so they actually had the roller balls? That's what it would be.
Jason Aten:Yeah. This is a depreciating asset. No one is going to pay a subscription fee for it, even if it included a new one every year. No. I'm in the first thing that I do whenever I use any third party thing like this is I just turn off all of the, like I don't need your software, just whatever the default thing that my my Mac thinks it should do, just do that.
Jason Aten:Just if that's fine. I don't yeah. It's disgusting. The idea and the mouse.
Stephen Robles:Well, you know, I'm glad we could vehemently agree about mice.
Jason Aten:And I well, listen. And I will say the magic mouse is one exception because the top is glass. Right? Like, it doesn't it gets kinda greasy, but you just wipe it down with an alcohol little Right. Thingy.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. I do have, I actually use the, do you what what what cleaning thing do you use? Do you have any of them?
Jason Aten:You wanna know what cleaning thing I use?
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just buy a box of these.
Stephen Robles:Alcohol swabs. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And they're like the these are what they give you. This is what they use right before they give you a shot. I just open one of these, and it's perfect. It's the perfect amount of thing to clean basically anything. So
Stephen Robles:I still use, you know, everybody raved about the Apple polishing cloth and whatever. Maybe it's great, but I do WHOOSH. I do the WHOOSH cleaning stuff. This is my WHOOSH cleaning cloth. Don't know which way is the right side up.
Stephen Robles:But the WHOOSH, sprays and WHOOSH wipes, they're great.
Jason Aten:WHOOSH. I did buy something. I think it's these little things. I don't remember. They used I used to have one that had this must not be one of them because it doesn't have a logo, but someone recommended some, you know, microfiber cloth things that you could buy.
Jason Aten:And you got, like, a pack of 5 of them. They have a little koala bear on them or something like that. And I just I just bought those, and I've never looked back. You can clean them. Like, you can just let them do anything.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:There you go.
Jason Aten:This is a solved problem, Steven.
Stephen Robles:This is a solved problem.
Jason Aten:It does not require a subscription.
Stephen Robles:Well yeah. Anyway, well, I wanna talk about some a news. We gotta get to the friend necklace. But last week, right after we recorded or published the episode, OpenAI announced their search product, which Sam Altman, I think, for a long time had denied that they were doing, but now it's it's air search GPT. The prototype is there.
Stephen Robles:You can't use it publicly. There's a wait list you can join, which I joined the wait list right away. I've not gotten access yet after a week, but this is OpenAI's, response to web search. It's just gonna straight up be a search engine run by chat gpt.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There's probably a device you could buy that would give you priority access to that wait list. No. Wait a minute. 4 or $500, you could probably move up a list.
Stephen Robles:Will this device help you?
Jason Aten:I don't think that's gonna do it.
Stephen Robles:The Rabbit r one? What about this device? What about this device over here? Which oh, I I have to say I I was proud of this and one person actually commented on it. But on my, iOS 18.1 Apple intelligence, thing, I put the Rabbit r one and the the human AI pen just in the background as paperweights.
Jason Aten:Those are the most expensive props you've ever acquired for your YouTube career.
Stephen Robles:It is true. I oh, I think I don't know if I said this on the show, but I canceled my subscription to the human app, and so I'm not paying them anymore.
Jason Aten:So will it do will it do anything?
Stephen Robles:You know, I haven't even tried.
Jason Aten:Okay. I mean, we know it won't even charge because it'll set up it'll catch fire, but I just was curious if we'll do anything else.
Stephen Robles:I did get an email that my I lost access to my Tidal account, which I didn't use once. I tried to play music from it and never Did
Jason Aten:it come directly from Jay z? Did he did he email you and tell you that he was because that would be worth it.
Stephen Robles:That's what my Apple Intelligence told me. Email from Jay z. Your title account is expired.
Jason Aten:I would be terrified
Stephen Robles:if that was
Jason Aten:the case.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. But anyway, you know, this is a big deal. OpenAI doing a search product and we I don't have access to it, you know, we can't talk about it in-depth, but this is big, you know.
Stephen Robles:This is like going head to head with Google, the biggest search engine, whose answer to AI searches, weird AI overviews, and Reddit results. Honestly, I'm gonna I'm this might be something I use a lot. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious how much it will actually link out to other websites and, like, will this actually bring you know, will this steal traffic from website producers and people or not? We'll see.
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, it's currently not sending any traffic to websites because it doesn't exist. So unless it steals a significant market share from Google, which also has basically stopped sending traffic to websites.
Stephen Robles:True.
Jason Aten:So generally speaking, websites are just host. Either way, the whole AI thing has has made that for sure. So I don't I don't know that this will be the thing that kills the websites. I think, you know, I think we can still blame that one on Google.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Fair. Also speaking of AI, Instagram, is now allowing creators.
Jason Aten:Steven, this is the worst thing I've ever seen.
Stephen Robles:This is bad.
Jason Aten:And the fact that Adam Messeri can even announce it with a straight face in an Instagram post is because I don't I I like him, but this is worse than the subscription mouse.
Stephen Robles:This felt like an onion
Jason Aten:article yes. Weird. The first calendar. To check the calendar. Are we being trolled?
Jason Aten:Is it April 1st? Come on.
Stephen Robles:I saw people talking about this, and I could not wrap my head around, like, is this real or not? Turns out it is real, and Meta is rolling out something called AI Studio where creators can create custom AI chatbots that are supposedly like themselves to interact with their followers and audience. This feels like dystopian. This feels not great. I understand the problem they are trying to solve because, in all honesty, like, I experienced this, like, for a long time on my YouTube channel, I answered every single comment.
Stephen Robles:Even if the comment was like, you suck. I answered every single comment. I said thank you for your service. Thanks for your engagement. I answered every single comment.
Stephen Robles:And I I do my best now to still do that, but it does become harder and harder. And, like, there is this weird relationship, like, if you care that these people, you know, that people care enough to watch and listen to stuff I make, I do want to engage with them, and I do want to reply to them, and the tension of there's too many comments to answer them all, otherwise, I'll just be up all night, Like, that is attention to manage as a creator. I don't think this is the right answer, because I can't imagine that would feel good on the audience side.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:To to message a creator and get a response that clearly it'll be labeled AI, you know, as the interface shows, it's like AI Steven Robles. You know, it'll tell you that it's AI. That can't feel good. Right?
Jason Aten:Right. Yeah. Well, listen. I am someone who who I was so tempted to write an article. This is stuff that I do when I get mad.
Jason Aten:I I threaten into the void to write an article. I don't actually threaten any human or company. I just in my mind and I tell my wife I'm going to write about this. And then I usually don't and I just get over it. But I've, have you ever tried to get ahold of like FedEx or UPS?
Jason Aten:You can't talk to a human. There's almost no scenario on, with which you can get to a human being, and it is maddening.
Stephen Robles:Don't even care accepted my UPS guy for my application.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't even care. Yeah. We've talked yeah. We have talked about this.
Jason Aten:I did write actually sort of an article about this. But, anyway, to me, what this tells me, you know, Instagram was a place to for human beings to share photos with the people that they knew. Right? You could follow your friends and you could and it is clear to me, Instagram no longer thinks of itself as that. It thinks of itself as a influencer economy platform.
Jason Aten:Right? I I hate the influencer economy thing. Listen. The only influencers that I have any support for this is, I know I'm gonna get canceled and I'm very sorry about that, but is like the AF, the division one athletes in sports where they're never going to get paid, but are able to get paid because of the name and likeness stuff now. Right?
Jason Aten:So we we know, a runner who ran with our daughter who's a division 1 runner, and she's posting all the time, like, on on she's, like, 25, 30000 followers or whatever. And she's gotten some sponsorship deals for that. Well, professional runners do not make lots of money at any point in their career. So I'm like, good for her. Go.
Jason Aten:Like, you are, you deserve to have an opportunity, but she's actually doing a thing. Like, she's a runner. She's a division 1 runner for like a university. She's actually doing something, and she's a lot of the people that I think Instagram is catering to are not that.
Stephen Robles:And I think there's a distinction between, you know, influencer and creator, whereas I'd I feel like for a long time, and I think there's still a large part of it now, someone who is a creator that might also get brand deals are doing a thing.
Jason Aten:Sure.
Stephen Robles:Whether that's reviewing tech products or sharing the news, whether it's their commentary or whatever, or, you know, even something like a beauty vlogger might be actually offering tips and, like, helping someone figure out how to do makeup. Like, I think all of those are legitimate, like, they are doing something. There also seems to be that maybe you're talking about, like, influencers for the sake of influencing? Like, it's basically a home shopping network style creator. And, again, if so if it's someone let's say it's a couple doing home goods, If they are legitimately, like, reviewing products and, like, every once in a while, you actually hear, like, a negative take, like, maybe this product isn't good, I would still maybe say they are doing something, but when it's so clearly just an influencer, I'm gonna put them in that category, strictly selling products, which I feel like TikTok has become like, there's so much TikTok, like, shop stuff.
Stephen Robles:That that doesn't feel great.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just don't like it. I don't like it at all. I I don't begrudge anybody from, like, having a hustle and and and using that. I just don't like the fact that Instagram now sees itself as that's what we're here for.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And it it does. And honestly, I I think TikTok too. I think
Jason Aten:For sure.
Stephen Robles:I I see more TikTok shop videos, like, percentage wise than I see stuff like that on Instagram, but I also don't I don't scroll Instagram reels and so maybe that is just as bad. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And I have less of because I literally see 0 TikTok shopping because I see 0 TikTok. I just don't even I never I never I don't even have that app on my phone anymore. And so when they made you create an account to even use it, that was the point where I'm like, nope. Not giving you not signing in. So
Stephen Robles:I did. Yeah. So anyway, this this Instagram thing I think is unfortunate. I'm curious how long that lasts and if it's yeah. I
Jason Aten:just the the shocking thing to me is someone, you know, someone pitched this in a meeting and no one in the room said, guys, this is stupid.
Stephen Robles:I mean, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, for the last AI gadget thing, I would like to mark my mark myself safe from not having purchased an AI gadget.
Jason Aten:I'm proud of you.
Stephen Robles:I did not purchase this.
Jason Aten:This is progress. This is progress. What is it, Steven? Explain it to us.
Stephen Robles:This is called Friend. They got the best domain, friend.com. It is a necklace that you can buy for $99, and I will put both the website and the trailer in the show notes. This necklace is something you can tap with your fingers and talk to it, and then you will get notifications from your friend as though it were a person talking to you. So think the Instagram AI creator thing, but just a straight up AI persona talking to you.
Stephen Robles:And this feels, again, a little dystopian. Sandwich Video did this trailer, and Adam Lisagor has been on social media kind of like defending this, so I'd, you know, again, this I just saw this yesterday. But this is basically a device that will talk to you in in as much as, like, the in the video, it's someone watching a video, a movie, and the the friends send a notification to their phone, like, oh, this looks this is a great movie, and I don't know, like, I don't know, Jason. Like, I guess the idea is for a companion, like it's an AI companion that you wear so it's listening to what you say and can respond to it proactively, and then you can talk to it. You still have to look at your phone to see responses.
Stephen Robles:I don't know, Jason. It's a little
Jason Aten:Yeah. The only time I think that I would be no. I'm not I don't ever think this is a good idea. I just don't understand that, like, maybe maybe I have a core philosophical, like, I I love technology. I I'm sitting at my dad.
Jason Aten:I literally sat down the podcast this morning and I had to, like, shove things out of the way that were, you know, technology related. And I'm like, I have too many things on my desk. I can't you I can't podcast with 6 laptops on my desk. Right? I just but I don't understand why we think that these core social interactions should be replaced by something you know is not real.
Jason Aten:Like and I don't I I it isn't this doesn't seem to me like it's marketed for people who are socially isolated for whatever reason. This is just marketed to people to and it's like, why would you market a thing to replace actual human interactions as opposed to filling a need for people who maybe, for whatever reason, lack that. And I absolutely think that there are people who are in that situation, but I don't I don't understand. I just I don't know. Even for $99 Steven, I I beg you to not not buy this.
Stephen Robles:It is $99 no subscription ships Q1 2025. So it's not even coming, like, in the next few months. But, like the example it has here on the website, you talk to it, speak your mind I'm reading from the website. Speak your mind or gossip about what your friend overheard. Pause.
Stephen Robles:Your friend, and your friend is namely this AI device around your neck, will think for a moment and come up with something good to say, and then you read. Check your phone to see what your friend said. Well, at least we're outside, is the response to the friend. Had to this person. Like, this, how it works, this little three step process, oh, man, it just feels very I I don't know the right word for it.
Stephen Robles:You know, social media is typically painted in a bad light because it's that's painted as not real relationships, that it's like quasi parasocial relationships. This feels like not even parasocial. This is like Paranormal.
Jason Aten:Oh, maybe that's not the right word. Sorry.
Stephen Robles:Well, but it's close like, it's close to it. It's like this is not even like this is not a person you're interacting with at all, even if you don't know them. Like even if you're arguing with someone on social media, at least that's another person, hopefully for the most part, this is very much, literally just talking to AI, and they and the AI is responding in a way that sounds friendly. I don't know.
Jason Aten:It's basically a chatbot that's always listening, and then you can ask it questions, and it will just make up a response about a thing. And the funny part about it is, does it even need to really be listening? Because it could just have a, you know, 7,000 responses or whatever. But I I wanna see how outraged Tim Sweeney is about this mass surveillance thing because I just it gets always listening.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So and the website says when connected via Bluetooth let me share the screen so you could see it if you're on on YouTube. Friend, when connected via Bluetooth, your friend is always listening and forming their own internal thoughts. We have given your friend free will for when they decide to reach out to you.
Jason Aten:Wonderful. What could go wrong?
Stephen Robles:That that line, that feels weird.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because clearly they have not given it free will. Like
Stephen Robles:At that, the
Jason Aten:To to my knowledge, that has only happened once in the history of the universe where where one being gave another being free will. And I don't think that this is it.
Stephen Robles:I don't think this is it. I mean, to say to say that with a straight face, I mean, obviously, so much programming has gone into, like, here's how often you should respond and when, and here's, like, the frequency of whatever, like, that's not that is not free will. We can get a philosopher as a guest on the show.
Jason Aten:This is even more pretentious than humane and I didn't think that was possible.
Stephen Robles:Humane is marked safe from being the most prestigious AI startup now.
Jason Aten:I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:I I
Jason Aten:mean, good for Adam Littaker for, you know, getting paid to make the video, but I just feel like I I don't know. I just yeah.
Stephen Robles:I don't know the like, there's a real I understand. Like, there's a real problem. People feel isolated and they need, like, to feel relationship or whatever with someone. They need to feel connection. Like, I understand, like, that could be a problem.
Stephen Robles:Someone feels isolated. I don't think this is a good answer for that. I I I but I don't know. If I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't think it's a good answer for that and I think it's irresponsible to be positioning it as one.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I think so. Well, anyway, let's, brighten the mood with some earnings.
Jason Aten:Well, listen. This we can make this really short because we've already gone long, and I know we wanna do personal thinking about this episode. But, like, the bottom line is the companies that you thought, they're making a lot of money. Right? And the reason, generally speaking, right now is AI.
Jason Aten:Like, basically, that's the case. Because most of the Internet advertising. That's just true. So, like, Meta, Google, whatever. And Meta was it's I mean, it did better than people even expected.
Jason Aten:Right? Like and it's also forecasting that it will do better in the future. So they're spending a ton of money on artificial intelligence, and those are the areas that investors wanna hear that companies are spending a lot of money on. And so investors are thrilled that, you know, Meta's gonna do that. And in Meta's case, I will say the one thing that's interesting about it is the reason investors care about that is that they that Meta is building these large language models of its own llama, and it's and it just the big it's big news is it's releasing these as, like, open source.
Jason Aten:Anybody can use them as the foundation for their model. And the reason is, basically, they don't want to get trapped into someone else's ecosystem again because Right. That's literally what happened to them with app tracking transparency. Right? They they that is put them on a course where they're like, we don't wanna be beholden to anyone, which as a business is a smart thing to do, like to not be beholden to anyone.
Jason Aten:So, so Matt is doing that, Microsoft
Stephen Robles:tank. Yeah. What is that?
Jason Aten:Well, Microsoft spending a lot of money right now. A lot of money on hardware. Right? Because Yep. Basically, like, OpenAI, for example, runs on Azure, which is Microsoft's cloud business.
Jason Aten:And that means that they're buying a whole lot of NVIDIA GPUs, like, lots of the the h one hundreds or whatever that are what did we just say? They're $30,000 a piece or something like that.
Stephen Robles:Crazy.
Jason Aten:Yes. And they spend a lot of money on it. And so right now, like, they're, you know, they're listen. Microsoft a lot of money.
Stephen Robles:Like Yeah.
Jason Aten:A lot of money. It's just that right now, the, their AI business wasn't as good as they thought that it would be like, that's the way the stock market works. It's all based on did you do the thing we expected you to do? And will you do, what do we expect you to do in the future? So, yeah.
Stephen Robles:Meanwhile, Nvidia stock surges.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Nvidia reported earnings, I think, a couple weeks ago. It's just that when Microsoft said we're gonna keep buying lots of GPUs, NVIDIA stock, like, went through the roof because it's like, yep. We saw the GPUs. So people are like, great.
Jason Aten:They're gonna they're gonna they you know? That was really the worry was that all of this AI build out was sort of already baked in and that that at some point, like, NVIDIA would stop selling all of those GPUs because all the tech companies would have enough. And, basically, Microsoft's like, nope. We we still need some more, please, and NVIDIAs. More than happy to keep selling them.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:I will the other thing is, Netflix, I wanna say because they have their ad supported tiers. So Netflix beat estimates and ad supported memberships rise 34%. People will pay the least amount that they need versus Netflix service.
Jason Aten:Yes. And Netflix had a very good quarter. And I think the interesting thing here is that, like, their their philosophy of selling an ad supported tier worked because it was they tried to make it the easiest way to get people to subscribe who maybe were password sharing. Right? Like, they were trying very hard to get make it super easy.
Jason Aten:I don't think that Netflix is ever going to be an advertising company. Right? What they're doing is they're creating a less expensive tier, and then they they have an opportunity to then upsell you to not ads. Right? So you can sign up for Netflix.
Jason Aten:You can have ads, and then you can up but, like so we resubscribed to Netflix. We've haven't had Netflix for almost 2 years now, and we resubscribed only because we wanted to watch There's, like, a Simone Biles documentary about her comeback to the Olympics. We actually subscribed for that. We did not subscribe to the the ad tier. Like, I just subscribed to give me the 4 k one because I did not wanna watch ads and I did not wanna watch 1080p or whatever on my, you know, 65 inch OLED TV in my living room.
Jason Aten:So so I don't you know? And, yeah, Netflix is they basically won. They compare them. They're they Netflix basically says, we are the premium content platform, and YouTube is the user generated content platform. Everything everybody else is just nothing.
Stephen Robles:No. That's something. That is something. Alright. Real quick.
Stephen Robles:Let's do a personal tech segment, and we'll go to our bonus episode where we talk about the Olympics. I just wanna know what Apple Watch band do you use, or which ones do you use?
Jason Aten:I have no idea. It's this one that came with the Apple Watch Ultra.
Stephen Robles:It's the trail loop.
Jason Aten:Thank you. This is the trail loop, and it's the only one I use. So but I do have I really like the sole the braided solo loops. I, those are probably my favorite all around. Yes.
Jason Aten:I don't use them because as I informed you many long times ago, the problem is if you have a braided solo loop designed for a series 7 or series 8 or whatever, it you need a size smaller on an Apple Watch because the the literal size of this is bigger. Yeah. The case is bigger, so you are, like, expand you know, doing that. And I'm just too cheap to buy new ones. So I have several of them.
Jason Aten:And if whenever I go back to wearing the series 7 that I have, then that's what I would use. I also have a nomad leather.
Stephen Robles:Oh,
Jason Aten:yeah. If I ever wanna, like, dress it up just a little bit, I do have a Nomad leather one that I that I also like very much. But I I never take I've never changed it off the Apple Watch Ultra. I just always use the
Stephen Robles:same thing. Well, I will say I'm wearing this one. This is the Nomad,
Jason Aten:Trader band.
Stephen Robles:The sport loop. This is their, 2024 Olympic Games version because it's the French the France flag. But I was wearing the blurple which is the Virg's, special color nomad one and because I had never had a Nomad band before, and everybody raves about them and posts about them. So I was, like, I wanna try them. They are very good.
Stephen Robles:I I really like the Nomad. They're very comfortable. They're very good. You know, they're like $60, not inexpensive, but I do like them. I will say I still think the most comfortable are the solo loops from Apple, not the braided.
Stephen Robles:Those are comfortable, but the regular solo loops that are, like, the fluoroelastomer that move comfortable.
Jason Aten:The ones that pull all the hair off your arm?
Stephen Robles:This it doesn't do that to me. It doesn't do that to me. I don't know. I find it to be and I sleep with my Apple Watch too for sleep tracking, and it I find it to be the most the most comfortable. And then when I want to dress it up, I go with the braided loops.
Stephen Robles:And I did buy several for the Apple Watch Ultra 1, and I still use them. I got a couple colors for the braided. I have one solo loop, and now I'm using the the nomads. There you go.
Jason Aten:Yeah. My biggest problem with my biggest problem with the braided solo loops is to change the colors, and then it's hard to find the old colors. Right? And so I spent and so that's why I spent a lot of time trying to find, like, a charcoal one because you couldn't get it anymore. And I did finally find 1.
Jason Aten:Actually, my wife who's a saint, like I don't know how she found it, like, eBay or something that was new in box. But, yeah, I I finally was able to get because you have to not only do you have to find the color of the type you want, but you have to find size that you want. Like, these are not an adjustable thing. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:I will say I do miss the Milanese loop because that was the first one I got with my original Apple Watch. Like 2015 had a stainless steel Apple Watch and the Milanese Loop and I really liked it for dressing up a little bit and it was pretty comfortable, infinite adjustment because it was a loop and they've never made one that worked with titanium. Like there's no Titanium Milanese. And I do kind of wish there was more from Apple directly titanium. Cause I've I've tried Apple Watch bands off Amazon and many of them are not good.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm. They either discolor or they're not comfortable. My wife literally just got one for hers. She has a series 7, I think. The larger size, larger casing size.
Stephen Robles:And she got this one from Amazon. She ordered the right size. One side of the band is the proper width for the casing, and the other side of the band is the smaller width. So there's these big gaps on either side. It's like they it was $17 and it was like they put the, like, 2 mismatching sizes, which is wild.
Jason Aten:That's fantastic. Yeah. I've never once used that. I've heard people like it. It sounds too fancy for me.
Jason Aten:And you're saying the reason they the millen you need it in titanium. You need, like, a
Stephen Robles:It's a little You need a you
Jason Aten:need a millitanium band, does it look like a pro?
Stephen Robles:Which I I think I've worn it once but it's it's it mismatches, you know. It's stainless steel, shiny, Milanese loop with a brushed titanium. And also the Apple Watch Ultra, I feel like, does not lend itself to a Milanese No. You know.
Jason Aten:Like, I don't even like putting the leather one, the Nomad one. And the the nice thing about the nomad leather ones is that they have a little bit of a liner on the inside of them, so they don't get all hot and sweaty sticky against your arm. So That's nice. Kinda nice.
Stephen Robles:After after looking at that. I'll become a nomad stand. But anyway, let us know. If you have not given us a 5 star rating in review yet in Apple Podcasts, what you could do this week, and this is just for those who have not given us a rating yet because I do see some people out there continually giving us ratings which that doesn't count towards the total.
Jason Aten:We do appreciate it, though. You don't have to stop. It's just
Stephen Robles:You will stop. That's fine. We're still a 5 star podcast, which thank you very much. Over 200 rate.
Jason Aten:That's probably gonna change this week, and I apologize in advance. But Maybe maybe
Stephen Robles:it's me on my WhatsApp comment. I'm a little I'm a little scared. I'm not gonna lie. I'm a
Jason Aten:little scared. Between that and our influencer economy. If you're an influencer, you don't have to leave us a comment. It's fine.
Stephen Robles:It is fine. But if you haven't yet, leave us a 5 star rating and review an Apple Podcasts and tell us, what Apple Watch band you enjoy using, your favorite Apple Watch band. Of course, you could watch the show at YouTube. That link's in the description. And if you want our bonus episodes, we're gonna go record one talking about the Olympics and a little bit of a social media angle for that.
Stephen Robles:And you can subscribe directly on Apple Podcasts or go to primary tech.fm and click bonus episodes. You can support the show that way, get access to the whole back catalog unless you get ad free versions of the show. We do have some sponsors coming up, well, thanks to 1Password from last week. And you get ad free bonus episodes, the whole back catalog, and you support the show there. We appreciate it.
Stephen Robles:And for everyone, just thanks for watching. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week.
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