Primary Technology

Primary Technology

menu close

Google Pixel 9 Event, How Much AI Photos Is Too Much? Apple vs Patreon Creators

/ 01:06:33/E35
Stephen Robles:

Let me suggest that you take a vacation from yourself. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, Google had its big pixel event and shut off a bunch of AI features in Gemini. It called out Apple a bunch of times too. We're gonna get into that.

Stephen Robles:

Apple's gonna be taking 30% cut from those who support creators on Patreon. That's made in the news. Google breakup might be considered by the Department of Justice and a ton more. This episode is brought to you by you, the members that support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles.

Stephen Robles:

And joining me, as always, who didn't go to the Google event, my friend Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?

Jason Aten:

It's good. It's good.

Stephen Robles:

Have you you went to the Google event you've been to Google events. Right?

Jason Aten:

I've been to several Google events. Yeah. I've been to well, I've been to several Google IOs.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, okay. Which is yeah. They get

Jason Aten:

So that's their developer event. But, like, with Google, it's all who knows? Like, they leaked everything before this event anyway. So I was like, what are we doing?

Stephen Robles:

It is true. But you had an invite. You got invited at least. You just each of them.

Jason Aten:

Yes. And I thought about going, and I wanted to. It's just a little bit too busy. But at least this was not one of those times I'm like, yeah. I'm going, and then I just don't because that does happen sometimes.

Stephen Robles:

Which you did Which you did recently, I think.

Jason Aten:

Recently and, yes, a lot. Yeah. Like, CES, I think I was planning to go to until I just didn't go to the airport.

Stephen Robles:

That one yeah. That one was I almost went with you because I actually had a press in my Yeah. Interview. But, anyway anyway.

Jason Aten:

That'd have been fantastic.

Stephen Robles:

We're gonna talk about it because it was a bunch of AI stuff, plus there's actually new hardware, which, you know, it's pretty interesting hardware. Let's talk about that. But first, some 5 star review shout outs. Thank you to everyone who leaves us a 5 star review in Apple Podcast and Spotify. You can do it there too.

Stephen Robles:

But me, 4366-5644. Hope you know who you are. Rizzo's dad seventy eight, battery percentage on. Nobody's perfect. Turn it 22 times.

Stephen Robles:

Is that a reference? Do you know is that a I've not heard that.

Jason Aten:

I don't know. I don't know. Is that, like, how long it takes to screw in a light bulb? Probably not.

Stephen Robles:

No. You break the light bulb 22 times? That'd be a lot of

Jason Aten:

You probably would.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Probably would. Anyway, that's a reference. Let us know. And Rel Miss, thank you for those 5 star reviews.

Stephen Robles:

Also, did you know the, movie reference with the opening quote?

Jason Aten:

I was hoping you're gonna ask, but then I was hoping you wouldn't ask this quickly. I'm gonna go with almost famous.

Stephen Robles:

No. It is a total recall quote. Really? The, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Total recall. Let me suggest you take a vacation from yourself, which Google kind of announced a a recall ish feature. Microsoft literally has a feature called recall. I thought it was applicable, you know, that made sense.

Jason Aten:

From your side. I'm googling this.

Stephen Robles:

Searching the quote. Searching the quote.

Jason Aten:

You're right.

Stephen Robles:

2 other quick shout outs, from our community and listeners, which is fun. Last week, we talked about how Apple should make a Fire Stick style streaming stick because Google Chromecast is killing the Chromecast even though they're still doing a set top box. But this is saw BHP on threads. This might be AI generated, but listen, that's fine. If you wanna make this AI generated fan art, I'm here for it, and I will share it on the show.

Stephen Robles:

But I thought this looked pretty cool. He generated, like, an Apple, Fire Stick, basically. But what I think is even more interesting is that Apple TV remote with the glossy black, but with the current button layout style. I know that would be a fingerprint magnet, but that thing looks pretty cool. I just want to say.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. That's not exactly the current button style. There's no like, the volume buttons are not a rocker on the side, but it there's less buttons on that one for sure.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's true. I thought it was I mean, yeah. Apple.

Stephen Robles:

Make a stick like that, sell it for no cheaper than your other Apple TV, a $100, and, you make bank. There you go.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I think that they, yeah, I think it'd be great. I mean, they're I mean, I don't think we even have it on our list, but they're talking about the, Mac mini mini.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, that was that's right.

Jason Aten:

But I don't I wonder if, like, you can't stick like a a 17 in that, so I don't know.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, yeah. That that's fair enough. Anyway, you could take a m one. You could take an m one in anything. It's like a m two in the goggles.

Jason Aten:

Okay. Real question though.

Stephen Robles:

Yes.

Jason Aten:

So what would you actually need this for? Because every TV you could buy in the last, let's say, 5 years, you can just you can just airplay to it anyway.

Stephen Robles:

My travel not the travel device. I bring it when we get when we travel. Stick it in the hotel TV. You know, you don't have to bring another cable because the HDMI port is literally part of the stick. You know?

Jason Aten:

Mhmm. Where are you going on vacation that the thing you really wanna do is watch stuff on your Apple TV in the hotel?

Stephen Robles:

Listen. When you you

Jason Aten:

have a full

Stephen Robles:

day at

Jason Aten:

the beach. Places to go on vacation.

Stephen Robles:

A full day at the beach. Everyone's tired. It's 8 PM. You know, we we put on a, you know, Zoo Tampa. We put on, watch a fail army.

Stephen Robles:

You know, how we do.

Jason Aten:

I I forget you don't watch sports, so you can't just turn the TV on to find something. But I promise you there's always gonna be either Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, you know, or some some, you know, Ben Stiller movie. Right? Always will be on at least TNT, TBS. Hit or miss.

Stephen Robles:

Hit or miss. I I refuse. I refuse. But, anyway, one other, Christopher Erickson actually sent us this thing, which looks pretty cool. This is from a company called Poolside Factory, and it is basically a Raspberry Pi that has been modded to fit into 30 pin dock connectors and make it an AirPlay destination.

Stephen Robles:

And the one use case most people would probably use is the old school ipod Hi Fi, which had a 30 pin connector. I think basic Apple guy still has one. And so you can actually stick this, Raspberry Pi adapter in there. It's $50. Stick it in there, but now you have an AirPlay speaker.

Stephen Robles:

And listen, a good speaker is a good speaker. You can use your, ipod Hi Fi for as an airplane destination. I thought that was pretty cool.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Originally, I was thinking that the Venn diagram of people who have a Raspberry Pi and have still have one of those speakers is there's it's probably a perfect circle because the only people who but, I mean, like, I do think it's funny that, like, you're, like, it's been modded. Literally, a Raspberry Pi is nothing if it's not modded. Right? Like, it's just that's the whole purpose of it.

Stephen Robles:

That is the 30 pin. Yeah. It's got a 30 pin, dock right there. And, you know, I guess you could no. Don't do this.

Stephen Robles:

You You know, there's a lot of hotels and stuff. I don't know why I keep talking about hotels. They still have 30 pin, like, radios or whatever. Anyway, I'm a get off this. Anyway, that's cool.

Jason Aten:

You should never plug anything No.

Stephen Robles:

I don't do that.

Jason Aten:

30 pin or otherwise into anything in your hotel.

Stephen Robles:

This is kinda like a personal tech thing, but I so if you you go to a hotel and there's, like, one of these new style lamp bases or one of these, like, things where there's a bunch of USB ports and you could usually USB a. You could plug a USB cable in there to charge your device or use one of the bricks that you have carried with you. What do you choose?

Jason Aten:

You always use a brick That you brought. Like, you never yeah. You never should plug I

Stephen Robles:

agree.

Jason Aten:

A bare USB cable into anything that is not yours.

Stephen Robles:

I agree. Never do it. I don't know.

Jason Aten:

It just feels dirty. It just

Stephen Robles:

Well, that it is. Like, I don't know the wattage coming out of that thing. I don't you know, I I trust my cables, but I don't trust what, what that thing's spitting out. So, I want my brick in between my device, the cable, and the and the wall. So yeah.

Jason Aten:

Yes. Your USB devices need to wear protection. It's important.

Stephen Robles:

Anyway, moving on. Google Pixel's event is stuck there at the end. Pixel, the Pixel 9, the Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the Pixel Watch 3, and Pixel Buds Pro 2 all got announced, earlier this week. Google had a live event, which, listen, I wanna give Google credit for doing a live event. You know, they did a lot like, people on stage, they had some celebrities.

Stephen Robles:

I didn't know who they were, but they did live demos even though they're AI tools, like, kudos for the live event. I I still miss the live Apple events. But anyway and the demos were a nice time, like, during Apple events where you can actually, like, write stuff or, like, take notes Yeah. Back in the day.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. They don't move at a lightning speed.

Stephen Robles:

Oh my god.

Jason Aten:

Because people actually have to walk on and off of stage.

Stephen Robles:

So yeah. Exactly. So, you know, new Pixel devices, they they look fine. The Pixel 9 starts at, like, $800. Pixel 9 pro starts at a thousand.

Stephen Robles:

The XL is 1100, and then the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, $1800. Olding phones are still very expensive. Very expensive.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I mean, it is basically 2 phones.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Okay. Fair. You got a big screen in the middle. I get it.

Stephen Robles:

Listen, I I like the design of these Pixel Nines look pretty good. They flatten the sides. I'll, you know, how the iPhone kind of is now. And, edge to edge, pretty much screen, very tiny bezels. You know, Google does a nice job designing these phones.

Stephen Robles:

How do you feel about this camera bump? This camera bump is, like, seriously a plateau on the back of this phone.

Jason Aten:

I mean, you just have to pick, you know, make your choices here. And I feel like I I hate them all, so I don't care anymore. Like, all of the the the iPhone camera bump is terrible. This is, I think, better than the iPhone 1. Woah.

Stephen Robles:

Wait a minute. Wait. Wait. Wait. You think this bump is better than the iPhone camera bump?

Jason Aten:

The iPhone camera bump is just this weird collection of circles that stick out from the back of your device in the corner. Like, at least this is it's not technically symmetrical because

Stephen Robles:

Don't don't leave us a one star review for Jason's bad take here. I just need to This

Jason Aten:

is not even a subjective take. Objectively, all of them are bad. Right? Object they are all objectively, they're all bad.

Stephen Robles:

I would say I mean, I'm looking at this thing, which is a very elongated pill on the back of the Pixel 9 and Pro. Like, this thing is huge. It looks like the, who's the guy from Star Trek with the visor? What's his name? You know who I'm talking about.

Stephen Robles:

Right? Cyclops is the expert.

Jason Aten:

I mean, there there there are several people, but yes.

Stephen Robles:

He's the old school anyway, this is like a very, very pronounced now listen, if it takes amazing photos and pixels usually do, that's great. But if you're saying that that camera bump is somehow less obnoxious than this I mean, look at the the iPhone camera bump. I mean, it's discreet compared to the the Pixel 9 Pro. Look at that.

Jason Aten:

I have never been a fan of the 3, like, holes just sitting there. I don't know. I just but I I think they're equally terrible, all of them. It's but, also, there is not a good way to do this without making your phone a quarter of an inch. You know?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. You would have 3 quarters of an inch thick. So

Stephen Robles:

Although I take that battery. Let's be honest.

Jason Aten:

3 quarters of

Stephen Robles:

an inch thick. Maybe not. Maybe maybe not that thick. We'll put a link.

Jason Aten:

By the by the just by the fold then. You've got the same thing. That's how thick your phone would be.

Stephen Robles:

Anyway, I'll put a link to MKBHD's video. He did a of course, he has all the devices. You know? He did a overview of it and I watched it. I like that the green color, although it's very pale, but he did that.

Stephen Robles:

I think kind of the bigger news is with all these devices, Google showed off a bunch of AI features, Gemini features across the board that are coming to all of these hardware wise, you know, there's no reviews yet. Even MKBHD was just kind of giving, like, initial impressions and look and, like, these are really great phones that no one buys. That's usually the Pixel story. It's like Yeah. You know, Google spends a lot of time building this hardware, and they look great.

Stephen Robles:

They take great photos. They're fast. Tensor, G4, but no one buys them. Everyone who still buys Android phones just go with the Galaxy. So that's the, that's the Pixel story.

Stephen Robles:

But couple features that Google announced that are AI AI features. So the screenshots feature. There's now an app on these Pixel phones called Pixel screenshots. Yeah. Just screenshots.

Stephen Robles:

Yep. And basically, it will try to parse all the screenshots you take on your phone to do a Microsoft recall style AI, like, whenever you search for something, it's gonna pull it up. And I I find it interesting, like, I don't know if screenshots is gonna be the most robust memory of of the phone of what I've done on my phone. Like, I don't take screenshots that often, but, you know, it's going to, it's gonna try and put it all together. I'll, Microsoft recall style, like, fine.

Stephen Robles:

I feel like I don't know if Google touted this as, like, a unique pixel feature, but Apple Intelligence, when it actually comes out, I feel like is doing is kind of doing this. You know, the demo that Apple showed off at w at Dub Dub was Craig Federighi saying, like, oh, will I have enough time to get to my kids musical if I take this meeting? And it's basically doing this kind of parsing of let's look at this photo, it had today's date, here's the time of the musical, here's your current location, and I feel like probably more robust, view of all that data, but the Pixel is trying to remember all the things. I mean, am I missing something here? It's just a Well,

Jason Aten:

here's the thing. This is the best thing Google's ever made. I'm I'm not even kidding.

Stephen Robles:

Really?

Jason Aten:

Because you gotta walk around and talk to, like, normal people for a minute because That

Stephen Robles:

is true.

Jason Aten:

I promise you, if they show you their camera roll, it's 70% screenshots. Mhmm. Maybe not 70. Maybe that's a little bit much, but it's I bet you it's, like, 60%, high 50% screenshots because people are like, oh, this I need to remember this thing or I wanted to. And that's how people, like, remember things who don't use, like, to do lists or whatever.

Jason Aten:

Mhmm. They just take screenshots on their devices, and so their camera roll is obnoxious. In fact, that is the single reason that we don't use the family shared Iphoto library because it would just be full of screenshots that my kids and my wife take, you know, of a funny Instagram reel or a a website they're visiting or a calendar thing.

Stephen Robles:

They don't save it. They don't use a little the bookmark save the real thing.

Jason Aten:

Steven, these are normal people. Like, these are not people who think about these things. There's a built in immediate way to do this and that you just squeeze your phone, and that's what they do. The problem is then you have to try to go back and figure out what what screenshot was it. This is I think this is like a real world use case that Google just nailed.

Jason Aten:

And I don't know this for sure. I'd have to, like I didn't spend enough time looking at it, which I guess is technically my job here, so I should have. But if it takes them all out of your photos library and only has your screenshots in the screenshots app, this would be like manna from heaven because that, like, would solve 2 problems. It would make it easy to find the things you screenshotted, and it would clear up all that clutter That is true. In your photos library.

Jason Aten:

I'm I'm serious. I think that this now I don't think that this is a reason to buy a Pixel, and that I think is Google's biggest problem. Right? It used to be that you could buy a Pixel, like a flagship device for, like, what, 500, $600. And now they're getting up there, like, 800.

Jason Aten:

They're competing with the Galaxy and the iPhone. Yeah. I think that if Google really wants people to buy them, these phones, which are on par feature wise with anything made just like hardware feature wise with anything made from Apple or Samsung. Yeah. They really are.

Jason Aten:

Like, they're great devices. They're just they just need to be $200 cheaper, and that's how Google because because what it's like, what is the reason for them to exist? Yes. These Gemini features, I think, are a reason, but it's not enough of a reason to get somebody who's buying, you know, a Galaxy s, whatever we're on, 24, to switch over to a Pixel. And it's definitely not gonna be enough to get somebody to switch from an iPhone.

Jason Aten:

But I do think features like this, they actually make the experience of using the device better.

Stephen Robles:

Sure.

Jason Aten:

And I I think we, like, we should be all for that.

Stephen Robles:

For sure. And I'm I'm curious how Apple Intelligence will treat that. You know, they use an example at Dub Dub of actually taking a picture of the musical program or whatever. But if you take screenshots, there's data there that Apple Intelligence could parse. And Sure.

Stephen Robles:

I'm I'm still on the, iOS 18 dot 1 beta. Just throwing that out. On my main iPhone. I didn't downgrade my iPhone. I downgraded my MacBook Pro because it felt I didn't like it.

Stephen Robles:

It was too buggy.

Jason Aten:

It's it's it's fine, dude. It's not gonna catch on fire any sooner than the humane AI AI manual, so you're fine.

Stephen Robles:

Fair enough. But I was looking through the Photos app in iOS 18.1 beta 2. They have beta 2. And if you go down to the utilities section, they have kind of the, the areas like hidden, recently deleted, duplicates, and I don't think this was in the Photos app for iOS 17, but there's also things like documents, QR codes, handwriting, illustrations, map, and it is separating things out. So you could go to like the QR code section and it shows you all the pictures that has a QR code.

Stephen Robles:

And I imagine that, you know, Apple Intelligence hopefully will parse that. But also if you try to search for, like, something you've handwritten and took a picture of, like, it would bring that up. So I I might like that wasn't an iOS 17. Right? Those those No.

Jason Aten:

But you know what was in iOS 17? Is one that said screenshots.

Stephen Robles:

Right. There is a screenshots feature for sure.

Jason Aten:

But I'm saying I don't see it in that list.

Stephen Robles:

Well, that's because there's another list called media types, and that has things like.

Jason Aten:

Oh, so it's less confusing. This is

Stephen Robles:

that has the screen recordings and screenshots feature. Yes. Anyway, it's a little spoiler, a little teaser. I actually have a shortcuts video coming out soon about like, how you can delete your screenshots and screen recordings automatically on a daily basis. But anyway, just stay tuned to the channel for that.

Stephen Robles:

But anyway

Jason Aten:

That's good.

Stephen Robles:

So yeah. So okay. So that's the Google screenshots feature. I I I somewhat agree. I think this is a good feature.

Stephen Robles:

I I didn't know that it was gonna move all the screenshots actually to this app and not keep it in your photo library. That's actually

Jason Aten:

Well, I don't know that for sure. I'm I'm I'm trying to be clear. I didn't read it closely enough to know that. But I think Okay.

Stephen Robles:

It might be fake news. But anyway

Jason Aten:

I mean, it does say pixel screenshots makes organizing, recalling, and using your screenshots a breeze.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Okay. That's good. That's good. The one I think the feature that I have stronger feelings about, interesting feelings about, is the magic editor which is the photos editor on the pixel.

Stephen Robles:

Google is already doing things like the magic erase, you know, like search a subject or whatever, circle it, and and make it go away, whatever. But now it's going even farther and really putting basically AI generative tools in the camera app. So not only can you remove subjects and move subjects, but straight up just add stuff to the photo. And, like, here's an example where they made this child look like they're in front of a volcano with an aurora borealis behind it, where in reality it was just in the backyard of their house. And okay.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know if making it that easy is great. And two things on it. 1, they did a live demo at the event, And he was the the demo is asking, make put a hot air balloon in the background of this picture. And one of the generated images really looked like a potato, not a hot air balloon. And that was pretty hilarious.

Stephen Robles:

So there was that. But then I also saw Sebastian DeWitt. He's on the team at Halide, the camera app and Keynote, the video, app. And he he said this quote, like, making making believe, like, this might happen in the future. And it's a kid talking to his parent.

Stephen Robles:

And he's, like, wow, mom. I can't believe these photos are my 3rd birthday. Can't believe there were all these flowers and hot air balloons. And then this is the parent responding, no, sweetie. That was just something we added for no reason on our Pixel phone.

Stephen Robles:

And I think, yeah, I think that is a good encapsulation of like, what are the ramifications of significantly changing the photos, not just removing a subject or making someone smile like the best take feature, but literally replacing everything in the photo. And maybe there's a revert feature, like, maybe you can just say, like, show me the original. But a lot of times, like, people don't do that. At least, you know, maybe I'm not in touch with normal people, but I feel like if someone's showing photos on their phone, they're just scrolling through the photos and, like, look at all these photos. And if they made edits to it, like, they're just showing whatever is there.

Stephen Robles:

And if, like, 10 years from now, you're showing pictures of your child's 8th birthday and he's just sitting in front of a volcano, I imagine family members would be like, where did you guys what is this? Where did you guys go for his birthday? And I

Jason Aten:

don't I don't know if that's I don't

Stephen Robles:

know if that's great, Jason. How do you feel about that?

Jason Aten:

Okay. Think about it like this, Steven.

Stephen Robles:

Yes.

Jason Aten:

This is for real. There are 3 scenarios.

Stephen Robles:

Yes.

Jason Aten:

I think there's probably 27 or something, but we're we're just gonna cover 3 of them this morning. 1, when you take pictures of your kids, it's because you wanna remember the way you felt at that moment in an experience. So you're not gonna do this. You're not that's not like, for people who wanna just remember stuff like, this is a fake demo is what I'm trying to say. Like, they really did it, but it's not a real thing that anyone's gonna do.

Jason Aten:

This so if you're trying to do like, no one's gonna be deceived by the except for the scenario 2, which are people who take photos and post them on Instagram, and and none of that's real anyway. Literally nothing that influencers post on Instagram is real life. Like, 0% of it. I know I just made some people mad, and I'll take your 5 star review and your hate

Stephen Robles:

It's a at the same time. A hate comment. Just leave it under a 5 star review to have a podcast.

Jason Aten:

A 5 star review.

Stephen Robles:

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. I wanna push back on just that one point because I understand what you're saying, like, normal people would ever, like, just keep the photo.

Stephen Robles:

You were a photographer in a previous life, and a lot of times, someone who is not a photographer, it will oftentimes ask for changes to a picture that they think would make it better, but in the end makes it look horrible. Whether it's like cranking the saturation or doing weird things to the lighting. And I feel like the the thing that was holding all those pictures from becoming terrible back then were photographers being like, I'm not doing that. Or like, that's not possible. And to now give these tools to people where you literally just snap the photo and then tap the sky and say, make aurora borealis or whatever.

Stephen Robles:

I feel like that like, people probably will do that, I would think. Right?

Jason Aten:

Okay. So yes. Yes? Yes. Although, as terrible as that photo was, it's still better than a lot of the things people asked you to do when you're a photographer with their wedding photos and stuff.

Jason Aten:

It's like anyway What was

Stephen Robles:

the weirdest request I ever got? Do you remember? Like, what was, like

Jason Aten:

Well, I mean, it was pretty regular to be like, could you add in this relative who couldn't come to the wedding into this group photo? And then they send you this, like, dark photo of the person in, like In

Stephen Robles:

their bathroom.

Jason Aten:

Like, scrubs or something. And I'm like, could they have at least dressed up and taken a photo before I added them to this? Come on. It's like, that's weird. But the weirdest one, I think, was when I was asked to Photoshop and a couple of people who wouldn't come to a wedding because there was, like, a whole divorce situation.

Jason Aten:

So I was actually given a a wedding photo that involved one of the people that were getting married at their previous wedding. And, like so the the request itself was just, like, there were so many layers of weird. But the third thing I the third scenario of this is Yeah. People who are just having fun. Like, that photo that they showed to test it, it's just fun, and it's totally fine.

Jason Aten:

And I think that that's okay. And you're right that people will, like I guess my point is we shouldn't worry about those scenarios. Like, this is not nearly as big of a thing as, like, what wasn't it the Samsung flip that Samsung now has a deal to give them to police officers as bodies

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

As body cameras. And literally, the feature that they, like, touted for that device is that it will, like, remove or add things to photos. Is that really what the police should be carrying around to capture evidence? Like, that's a way bigger problem.

Stephen Robles:

AI generated body cam footage. There's no problem there. No issues.

Jason Aten:

Right. You've seen what's Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah.

Jason Aten:

Why does the suspect have 7 fingers? This is the weirdest we're like what was the movie with Harrison Ford? The the fugitive. They're looking for the one armed man. Now we're looking for the man with 7 fingers on his left hand.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. What could go wrong? But, anyway, I think this is like It's okay. Peep I think it's I think it's stupid, but I think it's fine people. Like, there are a lot of stupid things that people enjoy.

Jason Aten:

Right? Like Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

I mean, I get, like, doing something fun with your kids. Like, I totally get that. Like, let me take a picture of you in the backyard, and then we can make it look like you're a Jedi. Like, I get that part, but people just take things the too far. Like, they're just like, let me do this to every picture.

Stephen Robles:

And I guess the the part that I think about is when you look at really old pictures, like your parents' physical photo albums from, like, decades ago or you just look at pictures, like, the oldest pictures in your camera roll, some of the best stuff about those pictures is the weird stuff in the background. Like, I have a picture from my freshman year of college where it's me and my friends in the dorm room and, like, yeah, it's cool to see me and them at that time, but also, like, my Dell tower PC is in, like, the background on the desk and, like, the printer that I had and, like, all this weird stuff, like, the physical photos I had on my desk, you could see in the back of this picture, and I feel like those if you start removing that kind of stuff regularly to just focus on the subject, I do feel like you will have lost something years from now because I don't know that's like part of the pictures like the weird stuff in the background and I don't know that that's the part that I'm like okay yeah have fun like I'm not saying don't have fun like have fun make yourself look like a Jedi or a sasquatch or whatever but I don't do it to every photo.

Stephen Robles:

You know what I mean? And I'd Yeah.

Jason Aten:

No. And I agree with you. I I just come down on the side of I don't think anyone should do it, but I also just don't care if they do, if that makes sense. Like, can I have those two positions in my head? It's, like, fine.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I get it. Well, so this is another feature that I have less strong feelings about, which is the the add me feature.

Stephen Robles:

And this is where you can take a photo. Let's say you have, you know, 3 people. They all wanna be in a photo together because they're on a trip, but someone has to take the picture. And you don't wanna ask a random stranger, which I do feel like maybe we'll lose something in those interactions because it's one of like the few human interactions that's like socially acceptable. But anyway, so the add me features, you basically take a picture with some of the subjects in the frame and then you go to the add me feature and it will show like a ghost image of the subjects you already took a photo of.

Stephen Robles:

The 3rd person can now swap out with one of them, stand like and the phone will kind of like tell you like where to stand, and then it will add you into the photo. And honestly, like, I'm down with this feature. I feel like this is less like, I understand, like, that photo didn't happen quote unquote, but if there was someone who was could have been there to take the photo, it would have happened. I feel like this is less heinous than, like, the generative stuff. I don't know.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. And this no one is going to miss okay. That's like, I was when I was photographing things, photographs is only

Stephen Robles:

Well, now you're a writer. You're a professional writer now. You're great with words.

Jason Aten:

It's it's obvious. Things. But no one would confuse we're taking a portrait with you captured a moment that just happened, and it's the you captured a moment that just happened that is, like, the problem. This is just you're making a portrait, which is completely a staged event anyway. Right?

Jason Aten:

Like, those people weren't just randomly in that position when someone came by with a camera and took the picture. So I I this doesn't bother me at all. Like, did that moment happened? No. But it wasn't a moment that happened.

Jason Aten:

It was people standing in front of in this case, we're looking at a photo on the on the website. And MKBHD in his video had a really good demo of this. Like, he did it with 2 people from his studio. Like, they just showed how it worked. I think, like, it's it's great.

Jason Aten:

Like, no one is gonna come back later and be like, oh, you 3 weren't actually standing there together. It's like, well, we were in the same like, this is just I feel like logistics at this point.

Stephen Robles:

I do the like, there's one picture that Google is demoing. It's 3 friends, and it's like, there are 2 friends in the first picture and one in the second. I mean, you know how you feel a certain way about that. But

Jason Aten:

Oh, wait. How do you decide who's the third one? Is that what

Stephen Robles:

you're trying to say? Second.

Jason Aten:

Also, do these people not have, like, Pixel watches? Could they not have just set the phone down on a

Stephen Robles:

rock Well, you don't

Jason Aten:

and done it?

Stephen Robles:

You don't always have a rock or a tripod, you know, I've tried to I've we were literally when we, were in New York a couple weeks ago, I tried, I wanna take a photo of the family we were visiting altogether and I didn't have a tripod or whatever, so they had this, like, ping pong table, and I tried to, like, precariously, like, stack things and listen. It's a pain in the neck. You know, this if if it was this feature on iPhone, I might do that. Do you ever think

Jason Aten:

I mean, I use our I use the my watch to take a photo exactly once every single year, and it's why I'm in Florida for Thanksgiving because there's literally 45 people who come to Thanksgiving Right. Dinner. And we and we set up the phone, and I use my thing, and I just tap it and yeah. Once a year.

Stephen Robles:

I I same. I do it, like, once or twice a year. And it's cool it's cool, when it happens. But alright. The last thing about the pixel event, you had an article about this.

Stephen Robles:

I wanna hear your thoughts, but Google did just outright talk about Apple multiple times, call it out. The one obvious part that I saw was when they were talking about these generative images. They were like, now that RCS is on the iPhone, you'll be able to send these in high quality to your friends. And I was like, I I guess Google just promoted RCS on the iPhone, like, that's, cool for Apple, I guess. But, like, yeah, I thought that was interesting.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, we have to talk about the watch in a second. But, you you had mentioned about a couple of the times they called it out directly. Do you remember?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. So yeah. Because in that case, they did call it out directly. Several of the other times were not quite as direct, but it was pretty obvious what they're talking about. And the The Verge actually has a really good article that's, like, every time that Google sort of put Apple on blast.

Jason Aten:

And I wrote about really one of those times that I think is especially problematic for Apple, which is Google basically pointed out that they don't need to send your data to a third party to do Gemini stuff. Right? Whereas Apple can do certain things on device, and then they do certain things in the private cloud compute. But for anything else, you're gonna get a prompt to say, do you wanna send this to chat GPT? Or in the future, Apple has made it pretty clear they'd like to use other, you know, LLMs like Gemini or Complexity.

Jason Aten:

Complexity or anthropic Claude, whatever. So Google just basically sort of poked at Apple in a spot where I think highlights that, you know, did Apple really need to do the chat gpt thing anyway? Like, is it that hard to just open the chat gpt app? No. It's just it's really not.

Jason Aten:

It's a little bit more streamlined, but it really is. I mean, it's it's it's kind of the same thing with the, Google search deal, which we talked about the the DOJ thing. It was like you're sending you're getting all this money for sending your users to what you have said. Like, I've written many times about how Apple like, Tim Cook gave a speech in Washington DC a couple years ago in front of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, I think it was. And he literally just talks about, you know, we're different than the big tech companies that just wanna slurp up all of your data so they can show you ads.

Jason Aten:

That's not an exact quote, but it's basically the sentiment of what he said. And who do you think those tech giants are? It's Google and Meta. Like, that's who he's talking about.

Stephen Robles:

And Amazon.

Jason Aten:

But yeah. But, I mean and then and so then you're gonna send in like, OpenAI does not exactly have a stellar reputation at this point for respecting anyone's rights. It it it is. And so

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. And we we have a story in a few moments about, chat gbt, but I think it is odd and surely one, like, I don't know how many years it'll be. 5 years from now, like, there will be no third party integration. Like, it'll just be Apple Intelligence all the way down. The generative part, one of the reasons I kept the 18.1 beta on my phone is because once Image Playgrounds and Genmoji launches, I really want to see like, how far will Apple let you go in image creation as well.

Jason Aten:

Not very. But yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Not well, not very. Which side note, Grok, which is the x a I, opened their image generator. The story. They are so crazy. Grok just let you generate pretty much whatever, And it is it is not great.

Stephen Robles:

Like one of the images I saw was someone generated Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in an airplane cockpit with the twin towers on fire like in the distance. And like, that's a terrible like, that's not great. That's not good. And anyway, with the amount of AI generated stuff I see shared on Facebook, like information, I'm just I don't know. But surely one day, like the Google Maps integration and YouTube being a default app on the original iPhone, I have to imagine that the Chat gpt integration is not, like, forever.

Stephen Robles:

I mean, do you think do you think it's forever?

Jason Aten:

Except for I mean, you'll know it's forever or not if you are able to upgrade to chat b g p t pro or whatever they call it in within an interface within Apple because you know they're taking 30% of that subscription then.

Stephen Robles:

Well, I think you can. I think they did say that that you can well, they you can log in with your chat gbt account.

Jason Aten:

Right. No. I'm saying Sign. Right now, you can use it just for free. And there if there will come a time in the future, and I think it will happen as soon as there's multiple choices for users, when you will then be offered the opportunity to do an in app subscription to whatever the paid tier is for either Gemini or for chat gpt or whatever it is.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

That's the only reason chat gpt could possibly be wanting to do this distribution deal. Like that, why else would they be doing this? They're they're paying for all of these queries.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

Apple's not paying for them. They're paying for all this compute to do all these things. There has to be an upside for them and that has to be that eventually they're gonna offer the opportunity to upgrade to their paid tier and Apple's gonna take 30%.

Stephen Robles:

Right. That that's sticky.

Jason Aten:

Like this is so obvious.

Stephen Robles:

The 30 percent the 30 percent man. That's yeah. Okay. So I wanted 2 other things before we move on from Google. I forgot to mention the Pixel Buds Pro 2 which I've never tried.

Jason Aten:

You didn't forget. You just didn't mention. Well,

Stephen Robles:

it's fine.

Jason Aten:

It's fine.

Stephen Robles:

I wanted to mention it for one reason, like they're trying to compete with the AirPods Pro. They're $230. I've never heard Pixel Buds Pro 2. I don't know what they sound like. The one feature I thought was interesting was you can, like, twist it to lock it in for a more secure fit because it has this, like, little, tab or whatever that'll hold on to your ear better.

Stephen Robles:

That's a good feature because I feel like

Jason Aten:

Sure.

Stephen Robles:

At the AirPods Pro 2, I have to go with the, comply foam tips so they don't fall out of my ear as much. Do you do that? Do you use the stock?

Jason Aten:

No. I just I just use the stock.

Stephen Robles:

Did they fall out though?

Jason Aten:

And then, I mean no. I mean, I always have a real an anxiety attack when I, you know, am wearing them and I go into the bathroom, and I'm like, what if this falls out into the toilet?

Stephen Robles:

Well, yeah. Well, I'm not

Jason Aten:

just That'd be the worst case scenario.

Stephen Robles:

For me, it's my main, activity is grocery shopping. And so when I'm wearing AirPods Pro grocery shopping, like, they always slowly fall out if I use the stock silicone tips, but the Comply foam tips, they're like ear plug material, and they they stay in way better. So, anyway

Jason Aten:

I thought you were gonna talk about the the Gemini integration

Stephen Robles:

Oh. Into these Oh, sure. Yeah. You could talk to Gemini. That's the that's it.

Stephen Robles:

Right? I mean, that's you could have a

Jason Aten:

I mean, yeah. You without having to, like, basically use your phone. So yeah.

Stephen Robles:

So it's like but if your phone's not anywhere near, like, you could still talk to Gemini?

Jason Aten:

I mean, it says without, quote, taking out your phone, which, you know, doesn't necessarily mean that it's not I mean, the the none of these earbuds do anything if they're not connected to a phone. Let me look at footnote

Stephen Robles:

2 down here. Gemini mobile app. Yeah. So you you don't have to take your phone out because but it's still using your phone for the Gemini model. It's not the built in.

Stephen Robles:

But one day one day you might have a Gemini built in. But the the other interesting feature I wanna talk about from the Pixel Watch 3, which Pixel Watch 3, it comes in a new size, 45 millimeters, $400. The one feature I was like, they have a no pulse detection which means if it detects that your pulse has stopped which is not good, that it will dial emergency services automatically and use your location to find you. And I thought that was interesting, like there's obviously a bunch of other things that have to be a part of that, like if you take your watch off, that it knows your watch is off and you're not just like pulse 0, But you know that that kind of stuff and false positives. I'm curious how you know how that will work.

Stephen Robles:

But I do think that's a maybe a good feature like curious that Apple who has like fall detection and will alert you if your heart rate drops below a certain level and that's actually saved lives and, like, it will dial 911 if it detects you have fallen and you don't tell it to not dial 911 in, like, 10 seconds.

Jason Aten:

Right. The the

Stephen Robles:

pulse zero thing, like, I don't know. That's this seems like a good feature. I feel like Apple should have that. What do you think?

Jason Aten:

I mean, I don't I I I think that's an interesting feature. I don't it there feels like there's gotta be a reason Apple hasn't done it yet because I can't imagine no one when Apple has had that thought, especially with crash detection and fall detection. But I will say fall detection, like, there's there's, like, times when you, like, stand up and, you know, walk around the corner, and it's like, it looks like you've taken a hard fall. And I'm like, I know I'm not as nimble as I used to be, but I just stood up. That's it.

Stephen Robles:

You get up from the the dinner table. It looks like it took a fall there.

Jason Aten:

There was no fall involved. It's like, I mean, I could understand if you like like Steven smash your hand into the, you know, the threshold every time you walk through the door. Yeah. That's different. It would I could but it's like, I didn't do anything that resembled a fall.

Jason Aten:

Why do you why do you

Stephen Robles:

think that it's not? Down in your car, looks like you might have fallen. You

Jason Aten:

said Right. I think that that what the Apple Watch really needs is kind of how it has the warning if it's too loud, and it's like Yeah. Increased exposure to this time or this this volume level of over time will damage your ears. What it needs to do is, like, you need to relax a little when you sit down, buddy, because it seems like you've fallen. You're going to break your tailbone.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Yeah. Slow down a little bit. Yeah. I will say the fall detection, it does get set off, at random times.

Stephen Robles:

My son was wearing his Apple Watch when we were at the beach a couple months ago, and it was a little wavy, and it definitely it definitely had the fall thing, like, pop up, and it was, like, it looks like you've fallen. And, like, because we were in the water, you know, the Apple Watch doesn't respond as well to touch because he was, like, trying to cancel the the SOS thing. He was like, I'm not I'm not falling. So, he did cancel it. No police came.

Stephen Robles:

But I I still remember I don't know. I've told the story before. I don't know. On this podcast, but there's also the feature on the iPhone where if you I don't think it's hold the side button and volume up or you click it 5 times, or that it will call 911 automatically and just, like, send emergency services to your current location. And I remember several years ago, my dad was, like, gardening in the backyard and he had his iPhone in his back pocket and it was in such a way that it was, like, squeezing the phone and, he he was just in the backyard doing whatever and the police came to the door and they're like, we got a call.

Jason Aten:

He swatted himself is what happened.

Stephen Robles:

He swatted himself. And so yeah. I mean, if they if that stuff's already built into the devices, I feel like, you know, the no pulse thing. Maybe

Jason Aten:

I actually hate that feature that if you just keep squeezing your phone, it does that because if for some reason you like, this has happened to me twice in the last, I don't know how long, 2 months, where I'll pick my phone up, and it's in standby mode on my on a charger. Yeah. And the screen just doesn't turn on. It just whatever reason, won't turn on. So I'm like, I need to restart it.

Jason Aten:

Well, restarting your iPhone is, like, there is some weird convoluted combination of up, down, up, up, up, turn it around 3 times and spit or something. Yeah. But I just you used to just be able to squeeze it and hold it until it shut off, and then you'd feel a little, you know, haptic response, and then you could turn it back on. You do that now, and a siren is gonna go off, and police are showing up at your house. It's like, I was just trying to restart my phone, man.

Jason Aten:

Just leave me alone. It is true. So I'm looking at this is

Stephen Robles:

if you go to the iPhone settings, it's in the emergency SOS, part of the settings. Mhmm. Press and hold the side button and either volume button to make an emergency call, and then you can also do, call with 5 button presses. If you rapidly press the side button 5 times, a countdown begins and an alarm sounds, and the iPhone will call emergency services. And you can also have call quietly enabled, so it'll do that emergency call and just not do anything, which if you have all that enabled, you might be calling 911 every day and you have no idea because just triggering it all the time.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. You're the little boy who cried iPhone. They're just gonna stop responding.

Stephen Robles:

It's like,

Jason Aten:

he's just got his phone in his pocket again.

Stephen Robles:

I think, yeah, looks good. I I actually we another we have another quick story. We sent the fire alarm off at a friend's house because we were cooking wings or whatever. Fire department came and they were like, listen. You do this again, you get charged, like, $500 or whatever.

Stephen Robles:

Like, if it's a false alarm. So don't don't cry wolf when it comes to police.

Jason Aten:

Stop burning your wings.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Stop burning the wings. We didn't know. It's the first time using an air fryer. Anyway, so are you I'm not I don't think I'm gonna be getting a pixel to review because I don't think anybody who follows me cares.

Stephen Robles:

But are are you, gonna get one of these? You know what? You review them. Did you review because you have a Fold. Right?

Jason Aten:

That's a Galaxy Fold.

Stephen Robles:

Galaxy.

Jason Aten:

I I've never reviewed a Pixel Fold, although I would like to. But I mean, I will, I've asked, so we'll see what happens there. I mean, if I had gone to the event, maybe it would have increased my chances.

Stephen Robles:

Listen. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna come out to your event. I'm not really gonna watch it live, but you wanna send me a phone.

Jason Aten:

But, I mean, honestly, like, that's not a terrible deal for that. Like, you know what I mean?

Stephen Robles:

Oh my god. I mean of

Jason Aten:

all, you give the they gave they gave interviews to Joanna Stern and and gave devices to to MKBHD before the event anyway. It's like, if you're gonna do that, what do I need to fly all the way out

Stephen Robles:

there for? MKBHD's video literally dropped as the event started.

Jason Aten:

And this is the second thing in a row. Right? The Samsung event, the same thing happened.

Stephen Robles:

Happened. Yes.

Jason Aten:

And and then it's this one. It's like, so should I just watch his?

Stephen Robles:

No. I was I didn't have that thought of, like, you know, his face is probably gonna be shorter.

Jason Aten:

I mean, he has more subscribers than they do. So Fair enough.

Stephen Robles:

He almost has as many subscribers as Apple now. He's only he's approaching 20,000,000. But, anyway alright. So there's some other little news. That's the Google stuff.

Stephen Robles:

If you want us to talk about the Pixel phones, let us know. We'll petition Google. But, Patreon, they announced well, not announced, but they said that coming this fall, Apple in November, the in app purchase system, is going to change and actually start taking a 30% cut from supporters which wanna support a creator, and they do it directly within the app. So there is a Patreon app for iPhone. In it, you can do all the Patreon stuff, communicate with people that you support or whatever, but you can also start supporting someone monetarily directly in the app.

Stephen Robles:

And up until this point, Patreon has lived in kind of this nebulous zone where, you know, Apple has certain products where they won't take the cut, like physical products, which is why the Amazon app exists. It's because you could buy all those physical devices, but you can't buy ebooks or in Kindle books in the Amazon app because a digital product, Apple will take a 30% cut. And here it seems as though, now they're gonna start taking it from well, this is not a digital product nor a physical product, but it has now gone out of the gray area, and Apple says we are gonna start taking a 30% cut from those new memberships, which means less money to the creator and also to Patreon, but also to the, creator as a whole. And so Patreon is trying to say, like, let's, can we do something about this and maybe not, Like, can we not change this? Well

Jason Aten:

and it's more nefarious than that because Apple also said, if you don't offer subscription, you have to continue offering subscriptions in your app or you cannot have the app. So the option of saying, you know what? We'll just not offer subscriptions in the app anymore. Apple's like, no. No.

Jason Aten:

No. No. You can't do subscriptions in the app anymore. Apple's like, no. No.

Jason Aten:

No. No. You can't do that change to try to

Stephen Robles:

avoid, you know, paying this 30%

Jason Aten:

fee, or we will just get you know, we'll just turn off your app. You have to offer subscriptions, and you have to use in that purchase so that we get the 30% cut. And Yeah. You you say they live it they've lived in a sort of a gray area. I in my article that I wrote this morning, I equated it to Uber.

Jason Aten:

Right? Uber is a platform with an app, and people come on to that app as drivers. Right? Those are those are the content creators ish. Right.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

And then there are people who need a ride who are like their supporters, and they pay money to Uber, and Uber sends money to the driver, and the driver does a thing. Patreon is a platform that allows people to do a thing. In this case, it's like make YouTube videos or write books or what like, you know, whatever it might be. Write a newsletter or some kind of thing. And people can support that by paying money to Patreon, and then Patreon sends the cut to the the the creator at this point.

Jason Aten:

The only difference between those two things is that Apple looks at making YouTube videos as having a 100% margin, and so they see an area where they can extract value. Whereas, driving an Uber doesn't scale quite in the same way. But in but I think that that's the wrong way to look at this for two reasons. One is, essentially, they're paying you to do a thing which is make a YouTube video.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

Or for us, like, make a podcast or something. Like, we're still doing a thing just because we are more efficient and able to do it for a 100 or a 1000 or 10000 or a 1000000 people at a time, whereas Uber driver can literally only drive, you know, what, 4 people at a time, one ride at a time. I feel like that's the wrong thing for Apple to be doing. And if they were going to do that, what they should be doing is taking 30% from Patreon's cut because Patreon is who has the app on the App Store. And I was listening.

Jason Aten:

I think it might have been Ben Thompson who was talking about the real ridiculous thing about this is that most Patreon creators would qualify for the small business program because they they have less than $1,000,000 a year in revenue. Absolutely. So they'd only pay 15% instead of the 30%, but Apple is is basically just basing it on Patreon.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

So everyone will pay 30%. So this this is the this is one of the worst things. This is almost as bad as the little privacy pop up that Apple started putting out there in the new version of Mac OS that asks you every single week if you wanna continue allowing apps to to screen record or whatever. This is bad because Apple has spent decades talking about how much they are fans of creators, right, and how much they build things. And my my closing line for this article was that, you know, for I've always thought of Apple's catchphrase, we can't wait to see what you do with it as a is the company's way of telling creators that it's proud to build the tools that they use to make art or work or whatever it is that they do.

Jason Aten:

But, really, it just seems like what Apple means is we'll be watching to see what you do with this so that we can see if there's an opportunity to extract some value.

Stephen Robles:

The thing too is for creators, and I think what you said is is a really great point. Like, if the Apple small business program, when it comes to in app, the cut is if you make under a $1,000,000 a year, Apple will only take 15%, and like Jason was saying, a vast, vast probably 99% of creators on Patreon are making way less than $1,000,000 and should not be paying

Jason Aten:

From Patreon.

Stephen Robles:

From through their Patreon, supporters, and so I should not be paying 30%. But also, man, I I have a couple of Patreon pages, one for movies on the side, and and, and others, and like, I've I've also supported many other Patreon pages, and many make public how many support those pages. It is hard to have that be a significant source of income as a creator, and if you're trying to be, like, a full time creator with whatever that is, like, not only is it hard to gain those, subscriptions, but it's not that much money usually, even for the bigger creators. Like, that's not usually their main, quote unquote, biggest source of revenue. It's usually still sponsorships or whatever, and so to basic you know, to not attack, but to to target that business Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Of all things, like, you know, it's one thing for Apple to make Spotify mad and Netflix or whatever, but like, Patreon specifically, like, that for the creators who are on Patreon, like, that that this feels dirty to me, like, and I don't Yeah. And because I'm also on the Patreon app and, like, I don't have a ton of subscribers, so it's not gonna, like, affect me very much. But, man and also, apparently, if you want to continue offering subscriptions to your members, it has to be a subscription and not one of these, like, one time deals. Because, like, Patreon does have the option of, like, giving a one time gift to creators. So if you wanna just, like, give $20 and maybe a creator is, like, you know, send $10 my way and you'll get a shout out or $10 and I'll answer a question live on the air, like, there's not gonna be that option in the app because Apple doesn't have, like, a mechanism for that, and they're gonna force subscriptions.

Stephen Robles:

So if you wanna still offer people to be able to support you directly in the Patreon app, you have to offer a monthly subscription or annual, and it's like Yeah. This is not great. Don't do this.

Jason Aten:

No. It's not great at all.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Anyway, well, it remains to be seen that that change is happening in November. We'll see if Apple changes anything between now and then, but, also some changes with Spotify because

Jason Aten:

Nope. Nope. Not Spotify.

Stephen Robles:

Not Spotify.

Jason Aten:

Sonos. Sonos.

Stephen Robles:

Well, no. I wanna talk about this. So the Spotify pricing, this is

Jason Aten:

Oh, okay. Because you were you said in the beginning that Spotify was gonna revert their app, and I was worried you're about to go to the grocery store again, but yeah. It's okay.

Stephen Robles:

That was a mistake.

Jason Aten:

I'm not being critical. I was just like, hang on. I'm gonna stop you now.

Stephen Robles:

That was a mistake. Well, that was a mistake at the beginning. So knows my revert there, but Spotify, actually, because of changes in the EU, they can now actually show pricing in the Spotify app. You still can't, like, change your plan in the Spotify app, but because of all the, like, the DMA and the EU regulations on iOS, Spotify is celebrating the fact that it can at least show pricing in the app.

Jason Aten:

Right. Which

Stephen Robles:

Yep. Yeah. And Spotify has this whole page where they're, like, still very mad about all the things Apple and not allowed to do, whatever. So but, yeah, a small movement there. They can show pricing.

Stephen Robles:

No links. Can't do a no links to, like, sign up for that plan, but, they can show it, which is something. And, one other thing that some of the laws have been changing, this is, Apple's been doing this weird thing in the newsroom where they do, like, quick reads where it's, like, not a full article, but it's like this mini article, but it's hard it's hard to get the URL, so I'm not crazy about it. There's, like, no picture. But anyway, this is in the Apple newsroom, but then in 18 dot 1, once that comes out, 3rd party apps and developers will be able to access the NFC contactless payment system in an iPhone, the secure element, which is where, like, those payments come from, and be able to, integrate that in their app for tap to pay, basically.

Stephen Robles:

So for right now, if you wanted to pay with iPhone, you know, you have to use Apple Pay, you have to go to the Wallet app, you know, you have to double click and all that kind of stuff, and coming in 18.1, it is opening up a little more where third parties can build those kinds of tap things, in it. So I imagine someone like, PayPal or whatever, you know, could just start doing a tap to pay directly in the PayPal app if you wanna pay from your, like, PayPal, account instead of going directly to the Apple Wallet app. And so that opens up some of the things. Again, just a slight more open thing, but yeah. That's that.

Jason Aten:

You you did you meant you didn't mention the one thing.

Stephen Robles:

What's that?

Jason Aten:

Which no one knows the answer to this yet. But it says that one of the requirements for this is that you have to pay fees. What does that mean?

Stephen Robles:

You have to what? You have to pay

Jason Aten:

Apple talks it says in that there in that bottom paragraph, it says it requires that you have this entitlement and pay the associated fees. What does that mean? The services Apple gonna charge people to offer this NFC? I don't know. It's gonna be real interesting.

Stephen Robles:

Is it? Because I don't know.

Jason Aten:

I have no I literally have no idea what it means because there's, like, no more information.

Stephen Robles:

Information anyway. Yeah. Isn't the doesn't Apple pay doesn't Apple get a cut of every Apple Pay transaction? I think I think I thought it was a Because

Jason Aten:

they are the provide like, they are the they're, like, the merchant provider or whatever. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

So, anyway, so now the app that actually might revert is the Sonos

Jason Aten:

I'm sorry.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. No. It's good. And this Sonos app thing has just been so wild because such an utter failure now listen, I have the new Sonos app because I went to Sonos stuff, like, it's not great, but the level of bad at which, like, people believe this to be, so much so that Sonos is considering just relaunching the old app, and The Verge had an exclusive report that Phones was gonna lay off a 100 employees because of this app crisis and apparently, affecting sales, I guess, of Sonos speakers, and so they have to lay off a 100 employees, like, that's really unfortunate, but my goodness, what a fail.

Jason Aten:

That is a brutal app redesign right there.

Stephen Robles:

I just don't to go to have to revert to the old app and you know and I I don't know why this thread got a bunch of views but I posted last week like how does a company like, listen, Humane, they released a product that wasn't great, but also they have a small team, and you can have that kind of like bubble effect, whatever. Sonos is like, long standing, big company, has already sold millions of products. How do you not test it more internally?

Jason Aten:

Well, and you're the premium audio product, like, the the consumer level.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

And your reason for success is that you offered a superior experience.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

Right? And then you release an app that just burns set that all on fire.

Stephen Robles:

Right. And that yeah. It's just amazing to me, like, wouldn't you have like, make all of your Sonos employees live with the new app for a month and, like, get some feedback or something? Apparently not. Apparently, that's very strange.

Stephen Robles:

So yeah. They might revert back to the old app. Honestly, I just airplay usually, yeah. You know, because airplay works with all sorts of stuff, but but I also get it, like, it's it's more annoying to manage multiple speaker groups in airplay, and it can be a little more delayed. Like Mhmm.

Stephen Robles:

Like, you tap a Sonos speaker and it's like, is it gonna go? Is it connecting? But anyway yeah. Sonos. Also, the Department of Justice, this is not official yet, but the New York Times had a report about some of the, solutions, quote unquote, that the Department of Justice might be coming up with in regards to the Google violating antitrust law, which that verdict, you know, it was decided.

Stephen Robles:

The judge said Google is violating the law, but now comes, like, what does the DOJ do about it? What are the ramifications? And so, apparently, they're considering breaking up Google, possibly breaking out, like, Chrome and Android from Google's business, and I guess making that a separate company. There's also talk about, Google not being able to do the exclusive deals, like, with Apple for the Google search thing. None of this is final yet.

Stephen Robles:

These are just some of the, I guess, ideas being tossed around in the Department of Justice, but I I read Gruber's article because, like, breaking up Google and, like, you know, breaking out Chrome and Android, that's not really where Google makes its money anyway. Like, it get it gets data Right. For its search where it does make money, but, like, that seems like a like a strange choice. Like, I would think Google search would be the thing that has to be broken out, but I I don't know.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Generally, like, the the remedy phase, there's 2 different options here. 1 is behavioral. So that would be like you can't enter into this contract with Apple. Like, that's a behavioral thing, or you you have to put up a browser choice, although that would be a a behavioral remedy imposed on Apple because of this.

Jason Aten:

Right? Like so those are behavioral remedies. Then there are structural remedies, which is what the the government pursued against Microsoft but didn't get it where they wanted to break apart Microsoft. The, the what is he? An assistant attorney general for antitrust who, who oversees the antitrust department at the at the Department of Justice, Jonathan Kanter, tend to prefer structural remedies.

Jason Aten:

And so that seems to be the reason why, like, there's all these stories that this is probably the direction that they're gonna pursue. But remember, like, the the Department of Justice doesn't get to decide. And what seems like the play here is that the Department of Justice is gonna ask for the most that it can ask for.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

And then Google's gonna come back and say, how about we just do this and try to settle it? Like, really? Like, that's probably what's gonna happen. But if if the Department of Justice comes in and they're like, maybe you just shouldn't, like, enter into these contracts or whatever it might be, like, that's that's a much like, there's where do you go from there? Right?

Jason Aten:

Because Google's gonna anyway, so that seems to be where most of these stories are coming from is that the Department of Justice tends to wanna prefer structural remedies. Gotcha. So at some point, they're gonna they'll probably settle that phase. And and that was like people forget, like, the Microsoft. The the most linked the the longest part of that whole thing was the remedies.

Jason Aten:

And they actually, like, had a settlement, and that settlement is what actually, like, went up through, like, the supreme court. Like, it was a long drawn out process. And so it took a couple years for them to get to this point. Who knows how long it's gonna take for them to actually get get get through

Stephen Robles:

this? Right. The next one, my son actually sent me this article. This is, Ars Technica. Chat gpt unexpectedly began speaking in a user's cloned voice during testing.

Jason Aten:

Turn it off.

Stephen Robles:

This is this is, in the realm of creepy AI stuff.

Jason Aten:

Just shut it down.

Stephen Robles:

This is a fairly chat gpt, like, worker, someone working on chat gpt that was, like, interacting with chat gpt and in, like, a voice conversation. And then all of a sudden, it began ChatGPT began responding audibly in the person's cloned voice. So like as you could clone your voice with things like 11 Labs or whatever, I guess it stopped using its ChatGPT audible voice and started talking back as the other person, which would be incredibly creepy if that actually happened, and it's like they have a bunch of explanations about, like, why this was and, you know, errors in, like, the prompt or whatever, like behavior, and it's like, I don't know about that man. I don't know if I want. If Chaggy Petit starts talking back in my voice, and I've never trained it intentionally, that's a problem.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. There's no explaining that you can do at that point that will make it okay. No. You've if you've already lost that argument.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Like, the the training thing. Sheesh. Anyway Yeah. Well, that was fun.

Stephen Robles:

Well, thanks for that. And, yeah. Hopefully, change your PD doesn't, turn into Skynet. That's what we all hope. And then now this last article before we get to a personal tech.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know if you saw this, Jason. This is, like, I had to really read all about this before I understood it to be real because it sounded just like a like a weird I just didn't think it was real for a while.

Jason Aten:

Let's go to take place in Florida.

Stephen Robles:

Listen, yes it does, that is that is true. So apparently, a couple were staying at a Disney resort. The, wife was is a very was severely allergic to nuts, both peanuts, and so they looked on the Disney resort for Disney restaurants that was more catering to nut allergies. The couple has dinner at this restaurant. They let them know about the allergies.

Stephen Robles:

Apparently, someone at the restaurant got it wrong and served nuts to the wife, and she unfortunately died there on the resort like on Disney property, like, or at least, passed away from what happened in the restaurant. That's very sad, terrible. So now there's a court case where the husband is taking Disney to court, suing them for obvious reasons. And Disney wants to dismiss and not go to court for this, because in the terms, like agreements or whatever, when you sign up for Disney plus the streaming service, and when, this man bought a ticket to Epcot for the trip, there's apparently some clause in those agreements that talk about, like, non arbitration or whatever, and that, like, you won't go to court with Disney. I don't know the exact thing, but anyway, Disney wants to dismiss it based on that clause in the terms of agreement for when you he signed up for Disney plus the streaming service, where you stream stuff to your TV.

Stephen Robles:

And that I mean, what what why would you even like, you're Disney. Just throw like, give 1,000,000 of dollars to this person. It won't matter to your bottom line, but instead you fight it because of a terms of service for Disney plus? That seems wild to me.

Jason Aten:

This is what happens when lawyers get to make decisions. Right? Lawyers should just advise companies on things, but they should not get to make these types of decisions because this is just I mean, it's just it's stupid. Like, maybe it's legally. I don't know.

Jason Aten:

I have no idea. I mean, the reality is if it gets the arbitration, though, still has the same can have the same binding outcome as a as a court case. Right? It's just it's much more difficult for consumers to deal with, and they always have you have to pick an arbitrator and, you know, whatever. Like

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

But it's it's just so dumb.

Stephen Robles:

I don't understand. And so there will be, like, a settling outside of court if this even goes through. It's just this leaves the case out of court. But

Jason Aten:

Well yeah. So, like, if if there's a forced arbitration agreement, they would remove the case from court in into an arbitration proceedings. But if they reach a settlement in the arbitration or if the if the arbitrator found for the plaintiff, it still has the same force as, like, a legal judgment. It's just a much more cumbersome process for consumers that don't have all this money for lawyers. So I was just like, wow.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. It's dumb.

Stephen Robles:

And also, like, one of the arguments that I think the husband's lawyers is making is, like, that clause, at least for the Disney plus thing, it was, like, through a link in the terms of service, through a second link, and then that's where the clause was, and it's like Yeah. You know, if it's not plain anyway, this is this is the terms of service that we all agree to everyone. I mean, this is anyway, alright. Let's, let's raise the mood, Jason.

Jason Aten:

Okay. Let's do

Stephen Robles:

a personal tech question.

Jason Aten:

What are we gonna do?

Stephen Robles:

I want to know, what is your nightstand charger? If you say MagSafe Duo, we're turning off the clock yet.

Jason Aten:

Permanently. Not just for today. Just for done.

Stephen Robles:

Just for done.

Jason Aten:

I'm fired. No. It's some anchor round tube like thing that has the thing that flips up at the bottom.

Stephen Robles:

Got the tube thing.

Jason Aten:

Do you know is that the official name?

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. It's the anchor the anchor 3 in one tube thing. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

It's the It's not a 3 in one. Do you Oh, it's not a 3. It's it's not a 3 in one. Night.

Stephen Robles:

I'm I'm literally searching anchor 2 in one tube thing. That is what I searched.

Jason Aten:

Good luck with

Stephen Robles:

I think I might have found it. I think it's a 2 in 1, MagSafe. Now see, this is, I don't wanna YouTube.

Jason Aten:

It looks like the square the it looks like the 3 in 1, but it doesn't have the thing that slides out, and it's it's cylindrical. Cylindrical? So So so so in it's a cylinder, not a cube.

Stephen Robles:

I'm telling you, the photographer the photographer is Yes.

Jason Aten:

It's that one right there. That's exactly what I have.

Stephen Robles:

The anchor Maggo 6232 in 1. Okay. So you do so you do a 2 in 1. Now what now wait a minute. Is there no Apple Watch charger on here?

Stephen Robles:

No. Well, how do you charge your Apple Watch?

Jason Aten:

Also, the AirPods charger doesn't really work very well. It just beeps at you after

Stephen Robles:

a while. I, I just

Jason Aten:

have a, like Okay. I just have one of the actual Apple Watch chargers plugged into the wall. What?

Stephen Robles:

That's fine. Does the cable just lay in there

Jason Aten:

on your nightstand? I know.

Stephen Robles:

It's it's horrifying.

Jason Aten:

Oh, my goodness. Though. You know what? It works every time, and I don't have to have something that looks like Frankenstein sitting on my nightstand.

Stephen Robles:

You don't have to have something that looks like Frankenstein. There's so many great options out. Oh my goodness, dude.

Jason Aten:

There are 0 great options. They all look

Stephen Robles:

I literally have, like, 18 videos on my channel about 3 in 1 charger.

Jason Aten:

All of them, and they all look stupid.

Stephen Robles:

No. That is not true. Listen. Oh my goodness.

Jason Aten:

This is the end of our podcast.

Stephen Robles:

Oh my. I didn't realize it was being so controversial. Jason.

Jason Aten:

No. So there are reasons.

Stephen Robles:

What are the reasons?

Jason Aten:

There are reasons well, I don't take this charger with me anywhere, but I do

Stephen Robles:

I wouldn't take it to my house.

Jason Aten:

What's wrong with it? Just because it doesn't charge an Apple Watch, what's wrong with it?

Stephen Robles:

Charge your AirPods or your Apple Watch?

Jason Aten:

Well, actually, all I meant to say is that it's it's a little bit finicky. You're like so when you open that piece up, underneath it is where you can put AirPods. And I'm just I have noticed that if you aren't precise about where you put the AirPods, I I think it's actually more of an AirPods thing, an AirPods pro, actually. Because if you put, like, one of the AirPods that have a not pro version, but that are magnetically charging, they would work fine every time. But if I put my AirPods pro, there's something about the way the magnets line up that after a while, it just the AirPods will, like, beep at you, and then the

Stephen Robles:

Wow.

Jason Aten:

Stand, like, starts to, like, glow. And it's I think that that means that you have 30 seconds to take them off before the house burns down.

Stephen Robles:

I'd like to point out that the dark gray version is no longer available, and the white Okay.

Jason Aten:

I have the dark gray version, so I'm glad I got in before the No.

Stephen Robles:

No. You shouldn't be glad you got in. This is I don't know what no. Don't you need Jason.

Jason Aten:

I'm never going to buy one that has an, an Apple Watch charger sticking

Stephen Robles:

out. Why?

Jason Aten:

Just so you know. I'm never going

Stephen Robles:

Why not?

Jason Aten:

Well, first of all, if you do that, you can't use nightstand mode on your on your Apple Watch.

Stephen Robles:

False. I use nightstand mode all the time.

Jason Aten:

On your Apple Watch? It's facing up. How is that used?

Stephen Robles:

You have not watched every video on my channel because, clearly, you have not seen the best 3 in one charger. That is

Jason Aten:

a very When I say that I've

Stephen Robles:

on the market.

Jason Aten:

That I've right

Stephen Robles:

now, the 12 South Oh my god. 3 in one Deluxe.

Jason Aten:

That thing definitely looks like it will kill you in your sleep.

Stephen Robles:

What are you talking about? This is the worst of all the bad takes, Jason. This is one of the best chart listen. Watch on its side nightstand mode. Phone

Jason Aten:

It's a $149, Steven.

Stephen Robles:

You listen. I don't know if you know this, Jason, but you can use a charger more than once. You buy this once and it literally lasts for years. Years I've been using this charger. You can put your phone sideways, it tilts standby mode, watch nightstand charges your AirPods, clean, low profile.

Stephen Robles:

I don't understand what you're doing over there, Jason.

Jason Aten:

Listen. When I when I said that I watched all your videos, what I mean is I click on them and go through the first ad break, and so that way you get

Stephen Robles:

Oh, I appreciate that.

Jason Aten:

I it's probably true that I haven't watched them all from start to finish because I do have 4 kids and a job.

Stephen Robles:

But Well, you would say a lot of time if you weren't finicky with that AirPods charger on that terrible listen, Anker has some great charge.

Jason Aten:

Do you know do you know what I've never thought about in my entire life? I need a better way to charge my Apple Watch. I've never thought about that. Are you for real? I never thought about it once.

Stephen Robles:

Listen. I don't even know what to say right now. I don't understand. This is wow. Anyway, you should get a good 3 in one charger.

Stephen Robles:

I literally have, like, 18 sitting around here. I'm just gonna send you one.

Jason Aten:

Just send me one, and I'll test it for a couple weeks.

Stephen Robles:

I'll I'll decide which one to send you. Like, I literally just got another one from a company to test because I keep making videos about them. I got this, this this one from, from Kusal, which they actually told me that's how you pronounce it, and that doesn't look anything like that.

Jason Aten:

Definitely not set your house on fire. I do think I do use the MagSafe Duo when I'm traveling, though. I I still carry it in my bag.

Stephen Robles:

I'm down with it.

Jason Aten:

Use it all the time.

Stephen Robles:

I'm down I'm down with the MagSafe Duo, but but the the nightstand situation, Jason, that is a that is atrocious. I can't even. I can't even. I'll send you a 3 in 1. I'll find 1 around here to send 1.

Jason Aten:

Alright.

Stephen Robles:

Anyway, listeners, let us know. Leave us a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcast, and let me know what charger you use on your nightstand or whatever you use to charge your devices at night. If you use Jason's horrible, 2 in 1 plus a standalone Apple Watch cable just flying in the wind, you can still give this a 5 star rating in review. You can let me know. But this is the new

Jason Aten:

If I plug the Apple Watch charger into my lamp, would that be worse?

Stephen Robles:

That would be worse. Yeah. Don't do that. I don't. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Don't do that. But this is listen, this is the next Apple Pencil on the iPad debate. Let me let me know if you're doing, the cables. Now I bet now I think, Basic Apple guy, he might be out there. I he might actually use, like, the MagSafe puck on the end of a cable and the Apple.

Stephen Robles:

Mhmm. I don't know. I don't know for sure. I'd love to hear from you, Basic. Let me know, But let us know.

Stephen Robles:

You can we'll

Jason Aten:

Also, let us know. Hold on, sir. Let us know, but then also talk to a normal person and ask them what they also do. I wanna hear both of these because our audience, I'm guessing, is gonna be a little skewed towards Yes Technology. I think average people are probably like, I don't know.

Jason Aten:

This cable came in the box, and it works, so I'm just gonna use it.

Stephen Robles:

Well, but it doesn't but, I don't know. Okay. Anyway, well, let us know. I'm gonna start a community post on this too. So you can go to social.primary tech.fm.

Stephen Robles:

Send us a picture of your night stay in charging situation. It was a 5 star rating and review. You can do that there. You can also watch the show at youtube.com/atprimarytechshow and support the show either in Apple Podcast or directly at primarytech.fm, and you get bonus episodes, which we're gonna talk about subscribe and save on Amazon. We talked about we're gonna talk about that last week, I think.

Jason Aten:

Not to this podcast. You can't subscribe and save to this podcast on Amazon.

Stephen Robles:

But you can't subscribe.

Jason Aten:

Just your

Stephen Robles:

Well, not on Amazon.

Jason Aten:

On Amazon?

Stephen Robles:

Not on Amazon. I was gonna say Okay. Good point. Good point. We don't have that yet.

Stephen Robles:

Listen. Subscribe and save to this podcast, and we'll send you a good 3 in 1 charger every year. We'll just send you one. Just no. Don't do that.

Jason Aten:

Be careful. This is not binding. This is

Stephen Robles:

not binding. I just Yeah.

Jason Aten:

This is in Florida, I remember.

Stephen Robles:

The last 10 seconds are a joke. Terms of service, you have not agreed to. But anyway

Jason Aten:

You agreed.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. I agreed to that.

Jason Aten:

To take us to arbitration to get us

Stephen Robles:

to No. No. No. No. But anyway, we're gonna record a bonus episode.

Stephen Robles:

If you wanna listen to that directly to have a podcast or primary tech. F f f f f f f. Click bonus episodes. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.

Stephen Robles:

We'll catch you next time.

Creators and Guests

Jason Aten
Host
Jason Aten
Contributing Editor/Tech Columnist @Inc | Get my newsletter: https://t.co/BZ5YbeSGcS | Email me: me@jasonaten.net
X LinkedIn Mastodon Threads Website Link
Stephen Robles
Host
Stephen Robles
Making technology more useful for everyone 📺 video and podcast creator 🎼 musical theater kid at heart
X LinkedIn Mastodon Threads Instagram Website Link
Google Pixel 9 Event, How Much AI Photos Is Too Much? Apple vs Patreon Creators

headphones Listen Anywhere

More Options »
Broadcast by