Primary Technology

Stephen Robles: 00:00

There's no place like home. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today, we're gonna talk about actually a couple rumors about the Mac Mini, a new redesign and an M4 Chip, plus Apple Podcasts is now on the web for anyone to use. Bunch of AI news, OpenAI partnerships with Conde Nast, and a very special personal tech segment. We're gonna talk about what's on our Mac desktop.

Stephen Robles: 00:22

But this episode is brought to you by 1 Password and from you, all of you who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. Joining me as always, my good friend, Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?

Jason Aten: 00:32

It's good. It's good. I I'm I'm a little worried about you. You look kind of like you're making a hostage video right now. But

Stephen Robles: 00:38

Listen. Here's the deal. I'm reporting live from the show floor at Podcast Movement in Washington, DC. Actually, I'm not at the show floor. I literally booked a booth that is supposedly for podcast recording, so I could be on the show floor.

Stephen Robles: 00:51

So I could actually say it, and it'd be legit. But, then I went by the booth yesterday, and they were like, yeah, we don't have Internet in here and we can't do, like, remote guests. And I was like, okay. Well, I've been good to know. So here we are.

Stephen Robles: 01:04

Beautiful.

Jason Aten: 01:05

Listen, when I recorded from the show floor, I just wanna say well, actually, technically, there's never been a time when Steven said that we were recording any of us were recording from a show floor when we've been anywhere near the show floor.

Stephen Robles: 01:16

So we'll

Jason Aten: 01:17

get there. We're gonna get there.

Stephen Robles: 01:19

I will say I actually recorded with Micah Sargent, from the Twit Network, and he's on clockwise a lot. But I recorded with him at the podcast movement, like, literally on the show floor in the Shore booth, like, expo hall, all the noise going around. It was one of the Apple Insider episodes, and I actually used Apple's voice isolation filter on both of our audios, and it was incredibly good. Like, extremely listenable. Like, you know, you hear some background noise when someone, like, laughs real loud.

Stephen Robles: 01:50

I actually did a great job. So that was actually on the show floor. This is not Alright. I'm in my hotel.

Jason Aten: 01:55

Well and I do and I do appreciate that you tossed the softball movie quote from, I think it's from the Wicked sequel. Right?

Stephen Robles: 02:02

You mean you mean the Wicked? Oh, yeah. I guess it would be a sequel, not a sequel.

Jason Aten: 02:06

Nope. I was right. You were right.

Stephen Robles: 02:08

The Wicked is the prequel. That's that's root for loop.

Jason Aten: 02:12

Also known as the wizard of of the

Stephen Robles: 02:14

The wizard of the With the last place. Thank you. I will say I'm looking forward to the wicked, movie Yeah. I agree. With the

Jason Aten: 02:19

I agree.

Stephen Robles: 02:20

Looks I think it's gonna look very good. But, anyway, we have some news today. I do wanna give a 5 star shout out. We have 1 5 star shout out. Keep them coming because we wanna give more shout outs, but this this shout out is all that matters.

Stephen Robles: 02:30

Emmanuel Sabwami, And here's why it matters. Because he said battery percentage off as the Lord intended and Apple Pencil tipped to volume. So he's he's got my iPad,

Jason Aten: 02:41

put forward. Steven, it was nice of you to use your burner account to leave us a 5 star review. I appreciate that.

Stephen Robles: 02:47

No. No. Emmanuel is a he's a he's a real person, and so keep those coming. Oh, and I do wanted to call out our 3 in one charger poll. We talked about what do you have by your bedside to charge your devices?

Stephen Robles: 02:58

Are you, like, an all cables guy? Do you have a 3 in one charger? I'm I'm going to send Jason a 3 in 1 to actually try. That's that'll be forthcoming. But kid b commented in our community, he's got 4 power bricks and cables to charge all the various devices, which listen.

Stephen Robles: 03:15

I mean, to each his own. But the poll, not a ton not a ton of people, but the poll says 65% of our community, social dot primary tech dot f m, use a 3 in 1 MagSafe charger on a nightstand. So it seems like a majority uses a 3 in 1, And then next most is 17% for MagSafe and Apple Watch Pucks. So just the the the cables as they go. Then 2 in 1 and then straight lightning cable.

Stephen Robles: 03:39

So 3 in 1, I think it's winning out in our community. You can keep voting if you want. But

Jason Aten: 03:44

Yeah. I'm not at all surprised by this, but I also still don't care. Like, I mean, I'm not surprised. And I'm also not I'm not even arguing that it's not necessarily, like, a great solution. I'm just saying it's the thing that works, and I'm not gonna keep thinking about it.

Jason Aten: 03:57

I will use whatever you send me, though.

Stephen Robles: 03:59

But I just wanted to say, if you have 4 power bricks in a power strip, by your nightstand, don't do that. Here's what you should do instead. Get something like this. This is an anchor one. There's lots of different kinds like this.

Stephen Robles: 04:11

It was actually just cheaper the other day when I checked it. It was, like, 30 or $40. But anyway, you can get one of these things that has, like, 4 USB ports, 6 USB ports, and you just plug it into one outlet. And now you can plug all your cables into, like, a single, you know, dock thing almost. I'll put this in the show notes.

Stephen Robles: 04:28

The Anker charging station 9 in 1 USB c power strip or whatever. So so don't don't live the 4 brick lifestyle. You don't you don't need to do that. At least do this.

Jason Aten: 04:37

I can I can cosign that? That that would be reasonable.

Stephen Robles: 04:40

Okay. We do have some, some news. We're gonna go pretty fast and, because I do wanna get to personal tech. In our bonus episode, I wanna talk about conferences because that's where I'm at. And I know we've both been to many.

Stephen Robles: 04:51

And so, but the first thing, Apple Podcasts is now on the web. And so this is something that just launched earlier this week, actual Apple News. And let me go to my my web browser again. So you can go to podcast.apple.com. You can literally listen to podcasts here.

Stephen Robles: 05:08

If you log in with your Icloud account, it will sync your Apple Podcasts. Like you'll see your followed shows and your up next queue, and you can manage all that. And you can listen right here in the browser. You can even subscribe to shows. So here's primary technology.

Stephen Robles: 05:25

You can subscribe for bonus content and ad free episodes right here in, in the web. And this means you could do it on Windows and Android. Although I imagine the Android experience wouldn't would not be ideal. But, yeah, it opens up Apple Podcasts to more users. I know people are asking, like, why?

Stephen Robles: 05:43

Like, why would Apple do this? Again, if maybe someone works on a Windows machine and but uses Apple Devices everywhere else, maybe because it's their work laptop, now they can listen to their Apple show, you know, their podcasts in the web. And I think, you know, the subscriptions, I don't know how many we'll get from Windows, but Yeah.

Jason Aten: 06:01

And I mean, this seems as though it kind of follows the same I mean, they just did the maps on the web as well. Like right? Right. This seems like a a direction that they are definitely heading. So

Stephen Robles: 06:12

And I and I think it'll be better too. Like, podcast episodes, it is possible they show up in, like, Google searches, maybe Apple Intelligence searches. And previously, it's actually linked to an episode. It really wanted to open in the podcast app on a device, whether it's your Mac or your iPhone, and it wasn't a great experience if it if you tried to load it directly in the web. And so this might be better for linking to specific episodes and someone clicks it who doesn't have Apple Devices, which is great.

Stephen Robles: 06:41

It doesn't have all the features. There's no, transcriptions, so you can't read the transcriptions. There's no chapters. You can't access the chapters here, and it doesn't look as nice as the stock apps. But I I'm still holding out, and I still think Apple should do an Android app at least, because, again, there's no Google Podcasts anymore.

Stephen Robles: 06:59

Google shut that down. So the only stock option is YouTube Music, and, you know, people have varying opinions on that. For audio only shows, you know, my it's not the greatest experience. Pocket cast is on Android, but I think there's room. I think Apple should, put it on Android.

Stephen Robles: 07:14

I think it'd be good.

Jason Aten: 07:15

And I'm guessing that they just happen to know that there are enough people who are including a link, and they're just using the Apple Podcast link. And if you're on a device, like you've mentioned, that doesn't have Apple Podcasts or, like, even if you're on a Mac, if you're not using Apple Podcasts on your Mac, that's not the greatest experience to click on a link and have it open in in that. So it I do think it makes sense, and it also obviously makes it they don't have to develop an app, which is so funny because Apple for a long time was, like, just make web apps, and then they're like, no. No. No.

Jason Aten: 07:43

No. Everything should be an app. And now we're back to Apple's making its own web apps. So that, like, you could run the same thing on other devices and stuff. So I don't know.

Jason Aten: 07:50

I don't know that there's a lot to read into it other than it does kind of make sense. They're just trying to make these platforms that they sort of shepherd available everywhere. And so I don't know. I think it's a good

Stephen Robles: 08:02

thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good thing. And I wonder the rumor I wanna talk about.

Stephen Robles: 08:06

This was a couple weeks ago, and I don't know if we wanna get into rumors and stuff here. I know that listen, the iPhone 16 is coming soon. I think that's a rumor that we could safely say is probably accurate. The iPhone 16. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 08:18

Did you happen to hear I was just listening. I was a little bit behind. But did you happen to hear? It was funny because, on Gruber's podcast, he had Christina Warren and he was talking about how the difference between how Apple will talk about software coming in the future, but they just won't talk about hardware and his essentially, what he said was, like, even if Greg Joswiak was sitting here on this podcast and you asked him about the iPhone 16, he wouldn't even acknowledge the existence that this is a product that is going to have not only would he not tell you about the features, he they wouldn't not even acknowledge that it's a thing that's coming. Right.

Jason Aten: 08:50

Right.

Stephen Robles: 08:50

It's so it's so funny. Actually, there was a a past podcast movement. There was, some people from the Apple Podcast team at the conference, and the iPhone, it would have been the 14 announcement, actually went out during the conference because, it was, like, late August conference and the iPhone event early September. And so I I couldn't tell if they knew the event you know, it was going out because it was they're not the iPhone team. It was Apple Podcasts.

Jason Aten: 09:20

Right. But

Stephen Robles: 09:20

it was it was very, like, hey. Look. There's a new iPhone event. Well, they wouldn't even say iPhone event because they don't there's, like, even They

Jason Aten: 09:26

didn't say that that's what it is. Right?

Stephen Robles: 09:28

Yeah. It's it's always very, like, there's an Apple event. We don't know. You know, who knows? It could be a

Jason Aten: 09:32

Could be anything.

Stephen Robles: 09:33

It could be new rechargeable double a batteries. Apple

Jason Aten: 09:36

I mean, it could be the 5th Apple pencil in the lineup. Who knows?

Stephen Robles: 09:40

That's that's what we need. So, you know, I've on this show, we've talked about rumors in the past, but I my personal feeling you could tell me how you feel about it, but I think it might be useful and or fun, like, much closer to things coming out. And basically, I think the most accurate rumor person right now is Mark Gurman. If he says something, and it's usually, like, a week or two before an event, he's been pretty spot on. Like, the whole m three event where we got, like, the m three pro, m three max, like, he nailed all of that.

Stephen Robles: 10:13

He called that all those chips would be coming out at the same time. And so I think once we get that close to an event, it's it's useful to talk about it. But otherwise, like, it's just sometimes it's fun, you know, if it's a new product. Like, there's been rumors about the HomePod with a screen. More of those rumors came recently.

Stephen Robles: 10:27

But also we've had those rumors for, like, years. Like, I've talked about it for years. So I I this might be controversial. I don't think it is as news so much as just kind of, like, fun to talk about sometimes. I I do think it's useful if you're trying to advise someone whether or not to upgrade right now.

Stephen Robles: 10:44

Like, if someone was saying like, I have a video on my YouTube channel about setting up your iPhone. It's like an hour long video, and I have people commenting now, like, yeah. I'm getting a new iPhone next week, and I'm gonna watch this video again. And I'm like, oh, man. Maybe don't do that.

Stephen Robles: 10:58

Like, maybe maybe wait. But, also, most people, most non techie people, maybe they don't care. So I do think maybe rumors are useful if you're trying to advise someone, like, maybe wait. Maybe don't buy, Mac Studio today because there might be an m 4. So, you know, something like that.

Stephen Robles: 11:14

But I don't I don't know. What is your general feeling? Because you write, you know, for ink.com. I don't know if have you ever

Jason Aten: 11:19

heard a rumor there? Okay. So a couple first of all first of all, Steven Steven clearly has post traumatic rumor disorder. Like, he is very, like it's just a thing where you've had to, like, exist for a while. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 11:32

So I can recognize that.

Stephen Robles: 11:33

But it's it's so hard too because I feel like in the last 4 or 5 years, like, the random Twitter users who will post things, it's very difficult. And then there's other, like, Majin Bu or whatever, and some that love to dream. And, like, sometimes they were accurate. Sometimes they posted actual pictures of devices, but she it was just so hard to tell, like, what is legit. So I don't know.

Jason Aten: 11:53

Yeah. And I don't really care much about iPhone rumors, to be honest. I don't care about I don't care about, like, the specifics of, like, oh, there's there's this camera thing or this because I do think on the one hand, it does spoil the fun just a little bit. I'm not faulting the people who report the stuff necessarily. I'm just, like, saying it doesn't doesn't matter to me.

Jason Aten: 12:09

I think, like, for me, there are things that are interesting. Like, for example, the one that we didn't cover that I think you were sort of alluding to, I thought it was interesting because it's about a product that just hasn't been updated. And it's like, oh, maybe they're actually gonna do something interesting with this product. And so, like, to me, I think those are 2 totally different categories. 1 is like chasing down every feature and spec of a thing that we know is coming.

Jason Aten: 12:29

And the other one is like, maybe Apple's rethinking a thing that could be kind of cool to talk about what that might mean, even though we don't know like exactly what it is. And, and I don't care. Like I don't care about the iPhone rumors cause I'm just going to buy it. Like it doesn't, it makes no difference. Like what, whatever they added another button for the camera.

Jason Aten: 12:46

Okay, good. I was going to buy it anyway. Like that's not a deciding factor for me. And now and as far as for writing, I, I definitely have written about I guess you could call them rumors, but generally, I will cover something if there are enough reports about a thing. And I think that the outcome is interesting enough.

Jason Aten: 13:03

So, like, technically speaking, I wrote this morning about a I brought a piece about it's not tech related, but it's about how Starbucks' new CEO is gonna commute a 1000 miles from California to Seattle because he doesn't wanna move to Seattle. Now, like, he didn't come out and say that. Right? But his offer letter includes a bunch of this information. So I'm writing about these reports and basically saying, this seems like a dumb idea because it feels like if you're the new CEO, you should, like, go meet the anyway.

Jason Aten: 13:26

But in that case, it's like Starbucks didn't come out and say, this is what we're doing. So I guess, technically, it's a rumor. But my point is, like, I feel like there's an interesting lesson there. So I think the same thing applies with hardware. It's like, I think some things are interesting enough to talk about.

Jason Aten: 13:38

Like, I wonder what Apple's thinking about here. Right? They're gonna put a camera button on the iPhone. Yay.

Stephen Robles: 13:44

What? I also think I think back to the iPhone 14 pro where it was we're going from the notch to the dynamic island, and that was, like, some of the biggest rumors back then. And it was, like, is it going to be a long pill or is it going to be a small pill and a hole punch? Like, there's rumors I got both. And ironically, if you look closely at your 14 pro Both.

Stephen Robles: 14:08

Or your 15 it is it is both. It is both because, like, underneath the the glass is a hole punch for the camera and a small pill for the speaker. But when you have the screen on, it looks it's a long pill because Apple, like, wants to obscure that little gap and make it look like a solid island. So it's dynamic on its own.

Jason Aten: 14:29

They just mask out the pixels.

Stephen Robles: 14:31

Yeah. Right. So I like it. In that sense, like, it was interesting because, obviously, people had seen the hardware or maybe had seen it on, but there was so much confusion because it was like, how is this going to work? So, like, I actually think it'll be fun, but, anyway, there's lots of rumors about the iPhone 16.

Stephen Robles: 14:47

We'll talk about them when we get, closer to the event because we don't even have an invite yet. You know, we don't we don't know when that's gonna happen. But one rumor that has interest me because I'm probably gonna buy this thing. This was Mark Gurman over over at Bloomberg talking about how Apple's gonna update the Mac Mini probably by late 2024. So that's what we're approaching, fall 2024 with the M4 Chip.

Stephen Robles: 15:09

So totally skipping over the M3 Chip Generation which, remember, there's been some 3 nanometer processor issues and Apple really wanted to get past that kind of M3 line. So go directly to the M4, but they'll also get a design, a major redesign, for the hardware smaller, maybe even like half the size or, you know, maybe like a big Apple TV size. But anyway, it'll be a smaller Mac Mini, And I just wanna say I'm probably gonna buy this thing pretty hard, because I have

Jason Aten: 15:41

What does that mean? You're gonna, like, literally throw your credit card at the person at the counter?

Stephen Robles: 15:45

Like, what?

Jason Aten: 15:46

You buy the Apple Card.

Stephen Robles: 15:47

Like, when I ask that button.

Jason Aten: 15:49

When I

Stephen Robles: 15:49

Apple Pay it in the App Store app, I'm just gonna click it so hard. I'm gonna click that side button so hard.

Jason Aten: 15:54

YouTubers say smash the like button, but Steven's gonna be over there smashing the buy button.

Stephen Robles: 15:58

Smash the buy button. Because, a, it's probably gonna be very reasonable. Like, I think what is the Mac Mini started like 600 right now or something like that?

Jason Aten: 16:06

At the most. Yeah. I think that's probably true. Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 16:09

So m 4 chip, which is probably gonna be amazing for that price. But also, I have a Mac Mini still running. It's an Intel, like, I5 which makes me it's irk. But it's running HomeBridge for, like, a couple devices and it's running my, like I can't say it because this goes on YouTube and last time I talked about it, they, like, told me it went went went against community guidelines, so I can't talk about it. But I have an elaborate system for, getting videos to my kids' devices so they can watch it.

Stephen Robles: 16:40

That's all I'll say. If you wanna know more, I'll put a link in the show notes about it. But, so that Mac mini just stays on all the time, to do that. And, you know, updating the OS, like, it's kinda slow. So, yeah, I'm a get this.

Jason Aten: 16:54

And just to be clear, it's not the videos that caused the community guideline violation. It's just the system of maybe do how you're how you're sharing. Yeah. Yeah. You can't I can't can't say no

Stephen Robles: 17:04

can't say anymore. Because,

Jason Aten: 17:06

this is the this is my favorite thing. It is so early. People don't even understand. So listening to Steve and trying to wrap his brain around whether or not there are words he could use to describe a thing that he's not gonna talk about. Back to the Mac Mini.

Stephen Robles: 17:18

What? Back to the Mac Mini. No. I think it'd be great a great redesign. I mean, it had the same design

Jason Aten: 17:28

for what? Like, aside from turning space gray, it's had the same design for over a decade? Like 14 years. Something like that.

Stephen Robles: 17:29

Wasn't it, like, the the white plastic originally?

Jason Aten: 17:32

Well, that was the Apple TV originally. It was, like, the white plastic.

Stephen Robles: 17:36

The first I'm gonna find it now. Go ahead. You talk. I'm gonna find the first Mac Mini.

Jason Aten: 17:40

Go ahead. You talk. This is how podcasts work.

Stephen Robles: 17:43

It's your

Jason Aten: 17:43

turn. I think buy buy me buy me some time. Where's the hand button that I can push to raise my hand to say I wanna say something? Does Riverside have one of those? Because I really should have a podcast.

Stephen Robles: 17:52

You should do that. Okay. Never mind. You bought me enough time. This was the look.

Stephen Robles: 17:56

This was the original Mac mini.

Jason Aten: 17:57

Alright. You're right.

Stephen Robles: 17:59

The white plastic, had the super drive on the front.

Jason Aten: 18:02

Did you just generate that with with a dolly?

Stephen Robles: 18:04

No. No. No. There's no generation. Nope.

Stephen Robles: 18:07

Yeah. The Mac man look at this. Look at this thing. Look at all these ports on the back, Jason. This has why is that picture so small?

Stephen Robles: 18:13

This has, like, the the d v I v g a

Jason Aten: 18:18

Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 18:19

4 USB a's, headphone and microphone input, firewire. How's that 4?

Jason Aten: 18:24

I think it even has, like, the Kingston lock port on the back. It's got

Stephen Robles: 18:27

the Kingston. Yeah. The security slot. So, no, this thing was legit. This was the first Mac mini plastic.

Stephen Robles: 18:33

So anyway

Jason Aten: 18:34

I can't believe there's not a FireWire port, though. I'm kinda disappointed.

Stephen Robles: 18:37

There is. It's right here. It's right here.

Jason Aten: 18:38

Oh, okay. It's next to the Ethernet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. FireWire 800.

Jason Aten: 18:41

Yeah. That's pretty amazing.

Stephen Robles: 18:42

Yeah. Exactly. I was expecting a, of of a, what is the RGA 45, like the telephone jack for the modem?

Jason Aten: 18:48

That'd be pretty amazing. Now I think that the Mac mini is such an interesting product because it's like, I don't really know who the market for it is other than people who want, like, the most inexpensive desktop that you can get for, like, to run Mac OS because I think that most people would just buy an Imac. Right? I mean, although Apple has not given a ton of land either, but, like, Apple clearly knows some things about this. And for the people who really use Mac minis for those interesting little use cases that you just described that we can't talk about, it's having a smaller, you know, form factor really does make sense.

Jason Aten: 19:23

And it is kinda silly that it still has this huge form factor because the only reason for that form factor in the is running an Intel chip is so you can put fan a fan in there. Right? But the m 3 or the m 2 doesn't have a have a fan. There's no reason to put a fan in it. Like, there is no fan in this thing, so you don't need all that extra space.

Jason Aten: 19:39

I guess maybe the m two you can do with the m two pro. You can do it with an m two pro. So maybe there is a fan in that. So I don't know. But I just feel like I think it's interesting because I'm glad they're keeping the Mac mini around.

Jason Aten: 19:51

I think it's really interesting that you can actually get it with, like, an m two pro at this point. So maybe they will also include an M4 pro or whatever That's a pretty robust machine if for a lot less money than a than a Mac studio So I think that's really interesting

Stephen Robles: 20:06

The port situation will be the interesting part because right now, I think the Mac mini

Jason Aten: 20:11

2 USB c ports. That's it. 2 USB c. That's it. Ah, that's fine.

Jason Aten: 20:15

For power and one for your monitor. That's it.

Stephen Robles: 20:18

I mean, yes. It's not enough. I mean, it'll it'll have probably the Ethernet jack and a headphone jack, but, yeah, that'll probably be it, which, nah, it's not enough.

Jason Aten: 20:27

Bet you it'll have a similar lineup to whatever the m two version has now. Don't you think? Like, I don't think the only reason to reduce this them is for the size, but you're still gonna have a HDMI, and you're still gonna have probably, like, 2 USB c. I don't know if you'll have USB a. That might be what you lose, but we're at the point where Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 20:44

I don't I'm fine.

Jason Aten: 20:45

The only thing I have with USB a on the end of it are lightning cables, and I'd like to get rid of all of those. So Okay.

Stephen Robles: 20:50

So here are the tech specs for the current Mac mini. If you get the so you get 2 thunderbolt ports, HDMI, 2 USB a's, and Ethernet. So you get the m two pro, you get 4 thunderbolt 4 ports. So you do get more ports with the pro model.

Jason Aten: 21:08

Got it.

Stephen Robles: 21:08

So I almost yeah.

Jason Aten: 21:09

I bet you I bet you if they can, they're gonna keep that same general port distribution. Maybe they just lose the USB a. I don't know. USB a. Maybe the HDMI?

Jason Aten: 21:18

But the original the only thing I disagree with you on that is the original rationale for the Mac mini was bring your own monitor and keyboard.

Stephen Robles: 21:25

Yeah. Yeah. They probably have an HDMI monitor and would wanna just swap it.

Jason Aten: 21:28

They're not running you're not running Pro Display XDRs if you're buying a Mac mini. Like, that's just not the situation.

Stephen Robles: 21:34

Studio display. It's good combo. That's it.

Jason Aten: 21:36

It's a great combo, but it is it feels like completely out of balance. Right? Like, it feels like the thing's gonna tip over. You spent $1500 on a monitor and $600 on a computer.

Stephen Robles: 21:46

But you could use that monitor for decades.

Jason Aten: 21:48

Well, I don't

Stephen Robles: 21:48

know about decades. I mean, I've seen that.

Jason Aten: 21:50

Been around for decades. The panel has. So yes.

Stephen Robles: 21:53

The Apple Cinema display, I mean, people use that for a long time.

Jason Aten: 21:56

I have one of the aluminum ones in my basement still. And if it was retina, I would still be using it today. I loved that. That was my favorite monitor of all time.

Stephen Robles: 22:03

That's a thing. One, like, my studio display now, like, that's probably gonna be just fine for a while. Like, I'll probably upgrade my Mac Studio if an M4 Ultra comes out sometime, but no desire to upgrade the monitor, which, of course, Apple doesn't have a new studio. Like, there's nothing to upgrade to, and I'm not getting a pro display.

Jason Aten: 22:23

The upgrade is $4,000 Steven. So I don't think it's worth it.

Stephen Robles: 22:26

4,000. 6,000 with the stand.

Jason Aten: 22:28

Well, that's true. Your studio display off the stand and put something else on it.

Stephen Robles: 22:33

I do have a Visa mount, but I don't know if I would trust the cheap Visa Visa mount that I use for my studio display with a $5,000 pro display stand. Fair point. So those are Apple rumors. We'll we'll cover the iPhone 16 rumors, coming soon, but one more before we take a quick break. So Sonos Jason, I don't know what Sonos would be doing over there, but apparently in a Reddit AMA, the Sonos CEO, Patrick Spence, said, actually, we know everybody hates the current app the new app, but we can't downgrade back to the previous app for reasons.

Stephen Robles: 23:06

So sorry. This is interesting because, 1, the The Verge reported previously that Sonos was considering just reverting to the old app. That's not something Sonos, you know, confirmed or said anything about. The Verge reported that they were considering it. So the CEO kinda confirmed it because that they were considering it because he said, actually, it's not possible.

Stephen Robles: 23:24

Yeah. I I just I boggles my mind. Do you know how big Sonos is as a company? How many employees? I have no idea.

Stephen Robles: 23:30

I don't

Jason Aten: 23:30

know how many employees they have. No. I'm I mean Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 23:33

I mean, they're a long standing I don't know. I I would think a pretty significant kind of substantial company. Just I would think. You know, I see their behind the scenes videos of, like, making the Era 300, and they have, like, labs and stuff where they test this, and they work with, like, professional musicians. And I'm like, how did this happen?

Stephen Robles: 23:50

I would love I would love for Nilay Patel to get the CEO on decoder or whatever and just, like, ask him, like, what what happened? Where this went out the door, the Sonos app, to such disdain and brokenness. Like, I don't know. It's crazy.

Jason Aten: 24:05

Yeah. So I think if I remember correctly, Sonos is a company, the size of the company, not the number of employees, but, like, the value of the company, is about half of Bose. Okay. So that puts it in good context. Right?

Jason Aten: 24:14

Because that those are very similar companies. Now Bose has been around a lot longer, and Bose also makes a lot more different types of products, like headphones. I mean, I understand Sonos just got into that game. So I'm not a Sonos person. I have a lot of respect for what they make.

Jason Aten: 24:28

I'm just I'm not opposed to Sonos. It's just like, I haven't, like, fallen down that rabbit hole yet, And and I'm just trying to avoid that as long as I can because it will be an expensive rabbit hole. I know. But so I I'm not personally, like, I don't I don't have, like, firsthand experience in what people are missing from the old app versus the new app. So I'm just looking at this as, like, an overall, the experience that you're providing to your customers.

Jason Aten: 24:50

And all I know is people are totally not happy about it. And, and they are living in that really, really difficult place, which is like, we see a better future. We gotta go through some stuff. We gotta wander in the wilderness for a little bit to get to the promised land. But the thing is they're at this point where they have not given a reason to the their customers to go with them.

Jason Aten: 25:09

Right? They're all, like, about to stand on the on the far side of the red sea, and they're like, nope. We ain't going. Sorry for adding all of the biblical articles here. But I think people can understand what I mean by that.

Jason Aten: 25:21

They're like, but that's where their customers are at. They're like, we don't see it. We don't see the benefit that you think is going to happen. So what my point there is that I feel like the real problem that they have, like they have a tech problem. Right?

Jason Aten: 25:33

Because the stuff just doesn't do what people expect it to do. But what they really have is, get out there and explain this to your customer's problem in a way that they can understand. Because when you change something, right, they you you owe it to your customers to explain to them what the benefit's going to be and and, like, give them that, like, hope. So just to round out the biblical references there. So I'm just saying, I just feel like their real issue that they have is, yes, the app the new app is bad.

Jason Aten: 26:01

It doesn't do things that people want. Either solve that problem or you better do a much better job of explaining to people, like, why it is that you need to do this. Because if I understand correctly, and again, not a Sonos person, the main reason for launching the app had a lot to do with the headphones and the headphones is, I mean, I think most people who have spent the amount of money you have to spend on Sonos stuff already have a $450 pair of headphones. Right? So those headphones, you're really talking about like an entry point for new people that like, Hey, you don't have a pair of 400 for your headphones and you also don't have any Sonos stuff Buy these instead, and then maybe you'll buy other things.

Jason Aten: 26:40

And for those people, they have no history with the app. That's fine, but you cannot leave all of your existing customers behind when you do that. That's there you go.

Stephen Robles: 26:47

The customers that built your company, for sure. Anyway, I just AirPlay, to my Sonos speakers, and that's fine. I just don't even I don't even open the Sonos app.

Jason Aten: 26:55

I just AirPlay to my HomePods, and they are also fine.

Stephen Robles: 26:58

I I will say the AirPlay to Sonos is not as good of an experience as the previous app was because the AirPlay is, like, kind of slow. Like, I'll I can groups click several speakers and, like, it'll take a few seconds. The music will start playing. And then if I want to, like, adjust volume on one speaker individually, I can, like, drag the slider a little bit. I let go, and then the slider, like, jumps back.

Stephen Robles: 27:21

And I gotta wait a second, and then you'll see the slider kind of just phantom move where I had put it originally. So the airplay to those is not ideal. Like, the home pods, I think, are more responsive in that way, but it works fine. Like, it works.

Jason Aten: 27:34

You know, it works fine for me. I have a 2011. I think it is. Bose SoundLink Air. You can't even buy the thing anymore.

Jason Aten: 27:40

You can't even update the firmware anywhere. Bose will will pretend like they never made it if you ask them about it because, like, it's just like, this is obsolete. It were it's an airplane. It may not even be airplane too. It's probably airplane 1.

Jason Aten: 27:51

It works every time. It's, like, 13 years old, and it works every time, and it sounds amazing.

Stephen Robles: 27:56

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 27:56

And it's like, that's the that's the bar you have to get over, Sonos, Is this thing that is 13 years old, I just say play to the Bose thing and it just does it every time.

Stephen Robles: 28:04

It does the thing. I'm curious. I've heard the, ATP guys talk about this a lot. Do you have a shower speaker? Do you do that?

Jason Aten: 28:12

No. I don't understand the shower speaker thing. I don't I I mean, I will say there have been wanted to listen to something and I'm multitasking. And so I will just I'll just take my iPhone in the shower because it's waterproof and just set it over on the little thing and listen to stuff. But I I do not have a separate I did not buy a $400 Sonos Roam or move or something to put in the shower.

Stephen Robles: 28:35

I've not done that yet. I I did buy one of those, like, $20 Bluetooth speakers that has, like, a suction cup on the back. I did this a long time ago, and, like, it sounded terrible. The connection was not great. I'd never wanted to charge it, so I don't have that anymore.

Stephen Robles: 28:51

But I I have thought about a shower speaker only because my work generally does not enable me to listen to podcasts while I work because I have to listen to the videos I'm recording, and I have to edit or I'm literally recording. And so I've thought about maybe maybe shower time can be more podcast time, but and I have a Sonos Move. Like, I could drag it in there. Man, that that's a big that's a big speaker to just play a podcast. I don't know.

Jason Aten: 29:14

Yeah. What you really need is what I have, which is a kid who plays a sport that requires an hour and a half driving each way to practice, and then you have lots of podcast time.

Stephen Robles: 29:23

That's true. We we we do have a half hour drive for, for dance instead. So but anyway

Jason Aten: 29:26

There you go.

Stephen Robles: 29:27

We have some other AI news, OpenAI and Anthropic. But we actually have a sponsor this week, And so we are glad to say that this episode is brought to you by 1password. Now this is not, the 1password you might know as far as, like, on the individual level. This is 1password for, like, top end security. And so, you know, if you work at a company and there's an IT and they have a lot of rules for the devices that you use in the company.

Stephen Robles: 29:53

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Stephen Robles: 30:25

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Stephen Robles: 31:01

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Stephen Robles: 31:20

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Stephen Robles: 31:41

Yeah. I still use it in the enterprise enterprise setting. Like, for teams, it's it's one password is very good for that. Just wanna say.

Jason Aten: 31:48

Steven, I, I did a thing.

Stephen Robles: 31:50

You did a thing.

Jason Aten: 31:51

I put the 18 point 2 no. 18.1 beta 2 on my main iPhone.

Stephen Robles: 31:56

Your main iPhone? Listen, you're burying the lead. We're 40 minutes Hold on.

Jason Aten: 32:03

Okay. Okay. I'm I'm saying this in response to the one password thing because I have been a big one password fan, and I'm still a one big one password fan. But I will be really interested to see how I because my problem was using the second device with it on there. Didn't even have cell services.

Jason Aten: 32:17

Like, I never amused it. So if I'm gonna do this, I have to be having it on my main device. Battery life be damned. It doesn't it's fine, but I'm gonna have to figure it out. So, anyway, it'll be I'll be really interested to see how the 2 play together because I still use one password for my personal stuff.

Jason Aten: 32:30

And I'm just really interested in doing a AB comparison with the password app. So that's that's my only reason for telling you that I did that.

Stephen Robles: 32:37

No. No. That'll be interesting to hear. But that's wow. That's wild.

Stephen Robles: 32:40

I've actually found battery life to be pretty good on the beta 2, of 18 dot 1.

Jason Aten: 32:44

Yeah. I figured beta 2, it's pretty safe, but I know that there will be some apps that just that's that's the thing about it is there would just be some apps that don't work super well. But I did spend enough time testing the apps that I use on a regular basis. I think that they're mostly fine. So

Stephen Robles: 32:59

Yeah. The one the one app that gave me trouble in the beta one was the PlayStation app. Whenever my son requested more time, it kept crashing. So Oh, yeah. Sorry, son.

Stephen Robles: 33:08

I had to run the

Jason Aten: 33:09

beta one. It gave me a lot of trouble too, but that's because I don't have a PlayStation. So it was like, what are you doing?

Stephen Robles: 33:13

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Alright.

Stephen Robles: 33:15

Let's do, let's run through some AI news. OpenAI is making more deals with publications to include their data in training and in search. So Conde Nast has signed a deal with OpenAI, which includes things like the Atlantic or the in addition to companies like The Atlantic and Vox. And so the Conde Nast deal includes the New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and Wired. And OpenAI will be able to use that data in chat gpt queries and also the search gpt prototype.

Stephen Robles: 33:47

So interesting, in contrast to other AI companies who are being sued because they have not Right. Sought these deals out. But it seems like OpenAI is trying to go about this, you know, the most, I don't wanna say upstanding, but the most reasonable way possible trying to actually get permission to use this data. Did you join the wait list for search GPT? Just curious.

Jason Aten: 34:10

I have not yet. I have not yet. I probably should, but I was still on the search on the wait list for Apple Intelligence, but not it's fine. It was actually weird when I added it to my second my main device. It's like you're you're I didn't have to join the wait list.

Jason Aten: 34:25

It's like you're already on the wait list and, like, 7 seconds later, it's like apple intelligence is here. It was like really a weird weird thing. So I don't know if it just knows based on my apple ID, but I think one thing I wanted to correct is open AI is actually one of those companies being sued by the New York Times. Like, that's the biggest lawsuit in this is that open. And I think there's an important framing that that people should get these deals.

Jason Aten: 34:49

It is so interesting the incentives on the on the two sides because for the publishers, this is not an editorial decision. This is not like, let's give more exposure to our stuff. This is purely a business decision. And it shows you the difference between the business side and the editorial side of most publications because the business side is essentially saying our industry is doomed. Let's just get whatever we can while it's while we still have an opportunity.

Jason Aten: 35:11

Right? Because that's really the case And on on the well, it's beyond it's more than just open AI, but on the AI companies, this is basically just don't sue us money. Right? Because they've already done all of the scraping of all of the content. Now, obviously, they haven't scraped new content.

Jason Aten: 35:26

Right? If you're if I write an article today, it's not gonna be in any of these models. But this is essentially, like, yes, let us use it in the future, but also promise don't sue us for what we've already done. Because, I mean, that is the like, did you see that Eric Schmidt thing, the former Google CEO who basically said, like, if you're a startup AI company, what you really should do is just go out and steal all of the stuff and then hire a bunch of lawyers to clean up the mess. And, and the thing is literally that's the story of what Google did.

Jason Aten: 35:53

And it's also the story of what a lot of tech companies did. And we are now in the higher lawyers to clean up the mess phase of AI. And this is what this is. The lawyers are like, go out and make deals with all of the people who might Sue you. And then it's, it'll be cheaper because you won't have to pay the lawyers as much money to go through the lawsuit if you're going to end up settling them anyway.

Jason Aten: 36:10

So I think, like, I think that as a user, this stuff is great because you're gonna have access to more content to be when you when you use these tools. For the publishing industry, this is mostly terrible. It's a little bit of money now, but you're basically just buying your own death, which is a weird, weird thing to think about. For the for the AI companies, this is, like, brilliant. Because again, you're just, like, you're just, like, paying some amount of money now to get access to the stuff that you've already basically been using anyway.

Stephen Robles: 36:37

Right. Put an article as the Eric Schmidt quote because it was it was wild. He was basically saying just steal all the stuff, and if you make something that no one uses, then it doesn't matter because no one will come after you because you don't have a big enough product or company for people to care and you're not making any money. But if your product does blow up and makes money and is big enough where people wanna sue you, well, you should have enough money to hire lawyers to, like, fight them off. And it's like Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 37:03

That's insane.

Jason Aten: 37:04

Yeah. He's basically saying the strategy for success is steal a bunch of stuff and build on top of it. And if it doesn't work out, who cares? Like, you did a bad thing, but no one will come after you because no one cares about because your product failed. And if you do succeed, oh, man, you might have a target on you, but you'll be so successful that you and, literally, this is the story.

Jason Aten: 37:20

Like, this is the guy who ran Google. Like, he ran Google and he was the adult in the room. He was the adult supervision. Right? Like, and yes, it's so funny.

Jason Aten: 37:29

You know what the best part about that quote is that he looked at the camera afterwards and said, you know, this is off the record. Right. Or not. Right. But he's like, he's like, that's all off the record.

Jason Aten: 37:37

And it's like, no, it's it's really not. It's being recorded. And then he made somehow he made them. Well, I mean, it's probably not so hard for the former CEO of Google to get something taken off of YouTube, but it did. He got the video, got taken off of YouTube because he realized this is a pretty bad look for the guy who used to run Google and is still pretty associated with it.

Jason Aten: 37:55

Yeah. And then at that point quote me.

Stephen Robles: 37:57

Yeah. He did Eric Schmidt said to the camera and do not quote me. This is quoted in the Verge article.

Jason Aten: 38:04

And it says at

Stephen Robles: 38:04

this point, the interview said the interviewer said you're on camera.

Jason Aten: 38:09

Oh my goodness.

Stephen Robles: 38:10

It's just wild. But, to a side note, I did sign up for the search GPT wait list, and they had, like, an initial email go out saying, like, some people have made it. I did not make that first cut. So, that was that.

Jason Aten: 38:23

Do you think that you'll get an invitation to the iPhone event first or to the search gpt list? And which one would you rather have? And I know that there's actually one answer that There's there's only one answer.

Stephen Robles: 38:33

I would rather the iPhone event, but I'll probably get search gpt. I'll probably get access to that. Okay. Good. But I'll just say so in addition to other AI company news, getting sued, this is Anthropic, which is the Amazon backed AI startup.

Stephen Robles: 38:49

They're getting sued, by a California federal court because several book authors said that Anthropic was trained on a bunch of books, including these particular authors' books. And, obviously, they didn't get permission for that. And so Right. Anthropics getting sued.

Jason Aten: 39:03

Yeah. I mean, it's base this is basically the same thing as what the New York Times is doing, essentially. Right? They're basically saying you took all of our content that's copyrighted, and you're using it to train your models. And we didn't agree to that.

Jason Aten: 39:14

And we aren't getting anything from that. And essentially what their the argument is that the copyright copyright law prohibits what they're doing. It's they're like, they've literally downloaded and copied 100 of thousands of copyrighted works. Right. And they just in, and in their case, these works were often taken from illegal sources in the first place.

Jason Aten: 39:32

So the authors are arguing like someone stole my book and put it on a website. Right. Like just publish the copy of it over the, and then you scraped that. And you think that that's okay. And anthropic's argument would probably be like, well, we're just reading the stuff that's already out there.

Jason Aten: 39:44

We're not the ones that stole it from you.

Stephen Robles: 39:46

Right.

Jason Aten: 39:47

But you still made an illegal copy. It's just so these are so, like, messy.

Stephen Robles: 39:51

All of this is like the ultimate if a tree falls in the forest. Like Eric Schmidt's quote is basically like, you know, if a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it, you didn't break the law. But if someone notices

Jason Aten: 40:00

What he really says is if you go and cut down all of the trees in the forest and no one hears it, you didn't do anything wrong. But if someone notices, just give them some money.

Stephen Robles: 40:09

Right. Exactly. And I will also point out that Universal Music sued Anthropic last October because of lyrics. And they were saying they they asked the Anthropic AI chatbot, whose name is Claude, about the lyrics to Katy Perry's song Roar and basically generated an almost identical copy of the lyrics, which is cop you know, a copy copyright. So It's Yeah.

Jason Aten: 40:30

Well, the argument is you couldn't possibly have created an identical copy of those lyrics if you didn't also have a copy of those lyrics that you were not allowed to have. So

Stephen Robles: 40:39

And I

Jason Aten: 40:39

mean, this this is like, just to be clear for, like, our listeners, this is the fundamental thing that will change the the direction that this AI stuff heads because either the entire business is founded on massive copyright violation, which is probably the case because otherwise, why is open AI open AI going out there and making all these deals. Right.

Stephen Robles: 41:01

Right.

Jason Aten: 41:02

Or it just doesn't matter. And courts will be like, Nope, this is all fair use. What you're doing is just like transformative, which I don't think is the case. And I don't think that that's what a federal court, but one way or another, either the, oh, the enormous potential of these AI companies is going to be dramatically diminished or the value of the works that we make as copyright holders is gonna be just obliterated. One of those two things, they can't both be true.

Stephen Robles: 41:24

And I think open AI has enough momentum now and has made enough deals where I think that's probably the future. Like, there'll be deals made, You know, if you have a personal website like your recipe website, obviously, OpenAI is not gonna make a deal with you. They're gonna steal your content. And, like, they know most people that have, like, at that level don't have the funds to, like, take OpenAI to court to sue them over that. So No.

Jason Aten: 41:48

I think I think you're right. The companies who are in a position where they can just keep pushing forward are already the largest companies in the world, which means that that you are essentially going to just further entrench those large, large companies because they're the ones who can just make the deals and pay out the money and do the do the whatever. It's not even just about who has the capability of building out the infrastructure. It's who's big enough to absorb the hit that's coming from doing this. And that just means that it's I think that that will fundamentally shape this in a different direction than if it was possible for really interesting startups.

Jason Aten: 42:22

Like, I think it's good that there was open AI and anthropic and perplexity and all these different things, but I don't I think we're gonna get down to, like, there's OpenAI, there's Gemini, and maybe whatever Apple has, and obviously Llama from Meta. That's it.

Stephen Robles: 42:32

Right. Right. Yeah. Alright. Last couple of quick things, before we talk to about Mac desktops.

Stephen Robles: 42:37

But Google also has a privacy class action lawsuit about the, syncing of data.

Jason Aten: 42:44

Yeah. Let me help you out here.

Stephen Robles: 42:45

Yeah. Please.

Jason Aten: 42:45

Because I would essentially, Google was basically saying that if you were not logged in to, like, Google, that that none of your personal information was being used. But Chrome was actually collecting personal information without people's permission even if you weren't logged in. And because they were choosing, please don't sync my personal information with the browser with my Google account, but it turned out that Google Chrome was doing that anyway. And, actually, I think I wrote about a while ago, Google basically said we're gonna delete all that information that we collected without permission. But now and at the time, I think it was like 2020.

Jason Aten: 43:18

Maybe they dismissed a case against them. But, the federal court or the appeals court has actually just said, nope. We're gonna reinstate this case, this class action lawsuit, and we're gonna actually let this go through the the process to see, like, whether or not this is a whether this was a violation of law. Obviously, Google disagrees, but I I think that it's like because this was actually like, Google agreed to to do that as a part of a settlement with this to give me makes the stuff go away. But but the but the plaintiffs were like, no.

Jason Aten: 43:49

No. No. We we think this should go forward. And, so, again, I think there's never been a more, apropos time for Eric Schmidt's, quote because he would have been the CEO. It's like, we're just gonna do it.

Jason Aten: 44:03

We're literally just gonna do what we want, and then we will hire the lawyers to clean up the mess. And this is one of those messes.

Stephen Robles: 44:08

This was also in light of the previous case about incognito mode, where there's a lawsuit because even in incognito mode, Google's, you know, tracking all the data and keeping track of it. So yeah. There there's that. Alright. Last two things I just wanna get to quickly.

Stephen Robles: 44:23

These are more yours than anything. I just thought. Apparently, Microsoft Teams, app was updated, and you have a new single app for personal and work, uses. I just have to say, who out there is using Microsoft Teams for any personal use? Who would who would do it?

Stephen Robles: 44:44

Who?

Jason Aten: 44:45

I don't even understand. I feel like I'm a pretty informed tech person and I've heard people talk about this before. I don't even understand how is it possible that there were 2 different apps that you'd have to have. Right. Like let's just grant that there might be somebody who has a book club and for whatever reason, the person who started the book club had a Microsoft account.

Jason Aten: 45:06

It was like, oh, teams is free. Let's let's just use that or whatever. But they would have had to download a separate app and do like, I don't even understand like what they imagine if Slack was like, well, you can have Slack over here for your book club and then you have to download a different Slack for your work. Like, this yes. This is makes this should have been what happened, but, like, I don't understand how we got to this point, Steven.

Jason Aten: 45:27

This makes no sense.

Stephen Robles: 45:28

I don't know. But also, you know, it's funny. I see on social media, a number of people on TikTok, they were like, my company just moved us from Gmail to Outlook. And it's people reacting like crying and just hating life. And it's like it's it's funny how the sentiment is about Outlook and Office 365, especially from like younger demographics.

Stephen Robles: 45:51

And like, I get it from the enterprise perspective. Like, you're gonna buy Office. Outlook is right there. Like, it can power your email. Like, you have everything in the box, so to speak.

Stephen Robles: 46:01

Which, I mean, Google Workplace can too if you're if you wanna use Google Docs, which I think a lot of probably maybe older school companies are like, I want an app on my computer to do my word documenting. You know, that might be that might be why, they lean more towards Microsoft. And also just like the name and, you know, longevity of Microsoft having been doing it forever. But, yeah, I would I wish teams on no one. No one should.

Jason Aten: 46:28

Yeah. Spe speaking of what you just mentioned, I mean, we'll have to talk about a different time, but I just moved my personal domain from my personal email domain from Microsoft Outlook to Google. It was not any easier, Steven. Gmail is weird.

Stephen Robles: 46:45

You should have gone to Fastmail. I should I should have,

Jason Aten: 46:49

that's why go to Fastmail?

Stephen Robles: 46:51

Why wouldn't you?

Jason Aten: 46:52

Why would I not? Why would but I mean, I needed the okay. It doesn't matter. But but all I'm gonna say is Gmail is weird because you cannot take an archive of emails that you have saved, which like so like, if you have a, I can move my, all of my old Outlook email. I can open the Apple Mail app and I can just drag all those emails into a folder on my iCloud server.

Jason Aten: 47:15

And I have them forever to your Gmail. I cannot have all my old email in my new Gmail account because you can't upload it's not Imap. You can't upload things to the Gmail server in your email inbox. It's just impossible. It's just the most weird thing ever.

Jason Aten: 47:29

I'm sorry. We don't have to dig digress. That's what I'm asking. It was it listen. It was harder than getting a washing machine or refrigerator, and you know how I feel about those things.

Jason Aten: 47:38

You you

Stephen Robles: 47:38

have some bad experiences. That is true. That is true. Alright. The last thing before Mac desktop, I just wanna point out that Waymo I'll look for this to just be an ongoing bit because we talked about self driving cars, many episodes ago and how ridiculous the Waymo cars were.

Stephen Robles: 47:52

Well, they have a new model of the Waymo. This is the 6th generation system. It has, I think, more discreet sensors and cameras. It's almost more like a minivan style rather than

Jason Aten: 48:03

So instead of wearing a crown, it looks like a party bus. Are those speakers on the outside? It looks like that thing's gonna drive down the street and break your windows.

Stephen Robles: 48:10

Bumping music. Yeah. But, yeah, new Waymo car. I think it's already on the road apparently, in select routes. But, yeah.

Stephen Robles: 48:19

Self driving cars, Jason. Full self driving cars. I say

Jason Aten: 48:23

that. They're still trying. They're still trying.

Stephen Robles: 48:25

What is it? The level what are the levels again? Is it, like, levels 1 through 6?

Jason Aten: 48:29

I think 5. I thought 5 was

Stephen Robles: 48:30

like 5?

Jason Aten: 48:31

I think so.

Stephen Robles: 48:32

And 5 is like, we should all stay in

Jason Aten: 48:35

our houses because the robo taxis have taken over the world.

Stephen Robles: 48:38

Okay. That's level 5 is the terminator, robot. Okay.

Jason Aten: 48:42

I was gonna think I, Robot, but, yeah, basically Oh, yeah.

Stephen Robles: 48:44

I, Robot. Yeah. But, anyway, yeah. New robo techs. Full self driving.

Stephen Robles: 48:49

Sort of. Kind of. Anyway, Mac desktop. Here's my question, Jason. This is the personal tech segment.

Jason Aten: 48:55

I appreciate you. I appreciate you clarifying that

Stephen Robles: 48:58

for us.

Jason Aten: 48:58

We're not the personal tech.

Stephen Robles: 49:00

When you go to the finder preferences and you can decide I think it's finder settings. You could do this show these items on desktop. Yes. And then you have 4 options. You have hard disks, external disks, CDs, DVDs, and iPods.

Stephen Robles: 49:20

I didn't know there's still a setting. That's amazing. And then connected servers. Those are your 4 options to show things on your Mac desktop in per in perpetuity. What do you have checked there?

Jason Aten: 49:33

Hard disks, external disks, and I also have the Ipods one checked. I'm not sure why. CDs, DVDs, and Ipads. I have no CD drive, no DVD drive. And I, I do have an iPad sitting back there, but I have not connected it to this computer for,

Stephen Robles: 49:46

it won't work. It won't say it won't do anything.

Jason Aten: 49:48

It won't do anything. So I do. So my impetus for this question was I wanted to know, like, how do you use your desktop? Do you just put everything on your desktop and just leave crap there? Do you use it as like a temporary holding space?

Jason Aten: 50:03

Do you never put anything on your desktop? What like file what folders permanently live on your desktop, if any? That's what I was curious. Nothing? So it's just blank?

Stephen Robles: 50:12

That's correct. Well, so the things I have checked in that item list, I have CDs, DVDs, and iPods checked even though I never put any of those in my computer.

Jason Aten: 50:20

Clearly that's the default.

Stephen Robles: 50:22

I I uncheck hard disks and external disks because I have multiple external disks for, like, my video files and it would have, like, it would basically be 4 drives on the desktop, and I ain't doing that. So I have those unchecked. The only thing I have checked is connected servers because I do have a a Synology NAS that I will connect to. And if it's not connected for whatever reason because it was, like, a power blip or something, I I wanna know if it's connected or not. And I do access that pretty often.

Stephen Robles: 50:51

So I actually keep the connected servers checked. But other than that, I try to keep nothing on my desktop. You If I take a screenshot, it does save to the desktop, but I'll probably quickly drag that wherever I need to, and then it's gone. And if I ever need to hold a file for a couple of days for whatever reason, I will put it in the downloads folder. And I use my downloads folder as, like, my inbox, I guess, of files on the Mac because I clean the downloads folder constantly.

Stephen Robles: 51:25

Like, any document that's there is because I actually have to do something with it and once I'm done, like, it's gone. Now sometimes if it's a document like an Amazon return so I need to return something to Amazon and so I have like the label, the QR code that UPS is gonna scan. I'll leave it on my desktop just so I can access it on my phone when I walk into UPS, and then that's it. But other than that, 0 folders, 0 stuff. Autoplay range.

Jason Aten: 51:54

Yeah. So permanently, I have the Macintosh hard drive icon Yeah. And a Dropbox folder. And generally, there's nothing else unless there's a thing. So, like, for example, this recording will end up on my desktop.

Jason Aten: 52:07

My audio hijack recording will end up on my desktop, and then I'll put it where I want it. Right? Like, but I did not wanna dig through things to figure out like where things go. And the only things that end up in my downloads folder are literally things I've downloaded, mostly from an app that, again, we probably can't talk about because it's YouTube. And so those things will end up in my downloads folder and then I move them where I want them.

Jason Aten: 52:26

But everything else I just have I just I like okay. I did a thing. I put it on my desktop and then I put it from there to where I want it to go. So there are, like, times when I'll accumulate 6 or 7 things on my desktop and then but they always get cleared out by, like, feet at the beginning of the day or whatever. I do have when I have hard drives mounted, I do have them show up on my desktop.

Jason Aten: 52:46

My main reason for that is that's my queue. So I remember that they're there. Right now you have a like, on my laptop, it's like I need to know that I have a bunch of hard drives connected right now so that if I yank this cord out of the side of my thing, I need to make sure I unmount them first. Right? And I do have a shortcut that will do that for me.

Jason Aten: 53:01

I that's like one of 2 shortcuts I've ever built in my life. It's one that will unmount all of my drives, but I still need to know that they're connected. So having them on my oh, hi there. Having them on my desktop is like my visual reminder. Oh, yeah.

Jason Aten: 53:14

There's some things you should take care of. Also, I just, like, treat my desktop as, like, the grand central station. And it's like, I just go there to I I don't ever, like, open finder to go to Dropbox. I just click on the Dropbox icon on my desktop. But I was gonna but about screenshots, don't you just have a have a screenshots folder in my desktop?

Jason Aten: 53:32

And that's where clean shot x puts everything. I don't put any of that stuff on

Stephen Robles: 53:35

my desktop. So I don't I use CleanShot for my video recording, my screen recordings, and those go into a folder. I actually use the movies folder, and have a screen recording folder there to save those video files because they're large, and I don't want them syncing to the cloud. And so I don't put it on the desktop or documents because well, I think we should say, I have my Icloud, desktop and documents folder syncing to Icloud, which I do you?

Jason Aten: 54:03

I do not.

Stephen Robles: 54:04

No. Oh, see that see that I think that changes a lot how you use the desktop because, like, when you said your audio hijack is recording to your desktop, like, I would never do that if if my desktop was syncing to Icloud because I have found, like, for recordings or anything lengthy like that where, like, it's writing to the destination constantly, Icloud, like, could screw that up so easily because it'll try to start syncing a

Jason Aten: 54:29

file to the cloud while

Stephen Robles: 54:30

it's still I

Jason Aten: 54:31

don't I just don't do that. I used to do that. I just don't do. There's too many problems. There's a I think the a d p guys talked about this a couple like a month or so ago about why you should just never ever, ever do that.

Jason Aten: 54:39

And I had already turned it off, so I felt really good about myself in that moment. But, yeah, it just you're right. It's just janky, and there's, like, opportunities to lose things. And if somehow, like I don't know. There's just weird sync states, and so I just I've turned that off completely.

Stephen Robles: 54:52

No. See see, I have it on, and and I use my documents folder as pretty much, like, 90% of my work files. Like, my documents folder is where everything lives, so it syncs to Icloud. And that's why, like, when I wanted to downgrade my MacBook Pro from Sequoia back to Sonoma, like, I didn't even have to think about, are there any files I need to get off? Because my desktop is clear.

Stephen Robles: 55:14

There's nothing in my downloads folder, and everything I work with is in the documents folder. And so I never like, I could just reset it, and I know Icloud Drive is going to sync everything. But I do use the movies folder because that doesn't sync to Icloud. For those screen recordings or audio hijack recordings, my audio files go there. And if I have renders, I will do those to the movies folder on my Mac Studio, and then I move those to my Synology once I'm done uploading and doing whatever with them and then I delete them from the movies folder.

Stephen Robles: 55:46

But, yeah, I'd I, I don't touch on the desktop.

Jason Aten: 55:51

Well, and I do the exact same thing. I just do it in Dropbox. I use I like literally everything goes in Dropbox. I just everything is in Dropbox. I don't use, I don't use the documents folder.

Jason Aten: 56:00

There's the only thing that's in there is an Adobe folder. And I don't even know what's in it. And I it's because I probably can't get rid of it. Like Adobe, just like it's

Stephen Robles: 56:07

like a cancer.

Jason Aten: 56:08

It's like a cancer. It's just like lung cancer and it just keeps metastasizing throughout your system. So everything is just in Dropbox and I like Icloud. Like I don't have a problem with that. Like I do have, in fact, Icloud drive.

Jason Aten: 56:20

In fact, I do use it sometimes if I want to quickly get something on, like, my phone, I can put it in Icloud drive and then I can access it. But Dropbox is like 17,000,000,000,000 times faster and more reliable than Icloud. And so it's just like, I've literally never had a failure with Dropbox once.

Stephen Robles: 56:33

I still pay for my Dropbox account and I did use it as my main cloud syncing for many years, but I have found sharing stuff is still cumbersome and not great, like sharing a folder with Icloud drive. But just for my personal use, that documents folder, I found it to actually be really solid and things sync very fast. So, like, if I export a podcast file from Ferrite, so I'm exporting the edit for this show. Ferrite on my iPad, I'll save it to a folder in my documents folder. It's like buried many layers deep.

Stephen Robles: 57:06

It syncs to my Mac in like seconds, and I can upload it to Transistor or host from my Mac because it syncs by the Icloud, like, in seconds. So I've actually found it to be pretty fast and reliable, and I've not lost any files, from Icloud drive syncing. So it's like, I don't have Dropbox on my computer. I still have my account because I have a bunch of files, and I just wanna keep it there. It's kinda like a backup.

Stephen Robles: 57:29

But, yeah, Icloud drive. I use it a lot. I use I use that thing.

Jason Aten: 57:33

That's not where I thought we were gonna go with this, but there we went.

Stephen Robles: 57:35

I knew. It was a strange place. We're gonna go to one more place. We're gonna talk about conferences for a few minutes. If you wanna listen to that bonus episode and get an ad free version of the show, you can support us at primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes or support us directly in Apple Podcasts.

Stephen Robles: 57:49

You can even do it on the web now if you're on Windows or an Android device. You get those bonus episodes. You get the whole back catalog when you start supporting us now, and you can even do a free trial either on, primary tech dot f m or directly on Apple Podcasts. You can also watch the show at youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. All those links are in the show notes as well as a link to one password.

Stephen Robles: 58:09

My thanks to them for sponsoring this episode. Thanks to you for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you

Jason Aten: 58:19

next time.