OpenAI Raises $6.6B, October Apple Event, More Sites Testing Paywalls, Jason Tries Full Self-Driving
Download MP3Technically, I was never alive, but I appreciate your concern. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, OpenAI had a massive funding round, one of the largest in history, but Apple chose to back out. We're gonna go into that, a rumored October Apple event with m 4 max. What is happening with Apple software?
Stephen Robles:More websites are putting up paywalls, and Jason did a full self driving test for over 250 miles. This episode is brought to you by Audio Hijack, and you, the members who support us directly, I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. And joining me as always, my friend Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I am good. The robot did not kill me, so that's good.
Stephen Robles:So the quote at the beginning, did you recognize the movie?
Jason Aten:Well, I'm assuming it's I, Robot.
Stephen Robles:It is I, Robot. Yes. I did. I mean, OpenAI, talking about full self driving, which you survived that. So, yeah, I, Robot.
Stephen Robles:That was it. Yeah. Alright. We have a bunch of news, and we always say it's gonna be quick, and then we go, for a for a long time. So we're gonna get right into it.
Stephen Robles:But you, you got some other phones with you today. It seems like you've got more phones. Youtube.com/addprimarytechshow if you'd like to see, but Jason's gonna hold up.
Jason Aten:I mean, I actually have well, this could be fun because I have a lot of iPhones sitting at my desk right now. But the thing I keep thinking about over the last week, because I Apple did send me some review units. And by the way, the the iPhone 16, fantastic. It's the best base level iPhone they've ever made. I mean, you can you it should be because it's the most recent one they've ever made.
Jason Aten:But even just compared to the pros, compared to everything else, it is fantastic. But
Stephen Robles:I've just just to that to that point, I've seen sorry. Okay. That's That's alright. I saw Federico Vatici and David Pierce at the verge. I think they're officially going non pro this year because the sixteens are that good, and they actually look really good.
Stephen Robles:So, anyway yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And they look really good, which brings up an important point, which is I don't understand how Apple thinks these two phones are the same color.
Stephen Robles:Jason is holding up the blue iPhone from last year, the 15, and the blue
Jason Aten:And the ultramarine blue. This is amazing.
Stephen Robles:Maybe it's the best color. Ultra is in the name. So it's like
Jason Aten:an ultramarine. It is the best color I Apple has ever put on an iPhone.
Stephen Robles:It looks really good. My mom just got that color iPhone. It looks amazing in person. Can you hold up last year's iPhone 15? Because my wife actually helped me make my most viewed tweet ever when she said, is this hospital white?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That's what she thought that color was.
Jason Aten:It doesn't even I mean, it actually looks closer to the natural titanium
Stephen Robles:It does.
Jason Aten:Honestly, than it does to the blue phone from this year. Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:Listen, Apple changed the ink cartridge. That was the deal. The ink they changed
Jason Aten:the cartridge. Bought a brand new printer.
Stephen Robles:They got that laser that layer the, is the laser printer? Yeah. Laser. Because I have an inkjet. Inkjet, you gotta buy ink every other page.
Stephen Robles:Laser is, you buy the Tony. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, the new phone, that's very nice. I am I have one day to decide. Am I gonna keep the 16 pro max or should I go down to the 16 pro?
Stephen Robles:And I'm very close to saying maybe 16 pro, maybe in white. But I I don't know. I I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Jason Aten:It's a big phone. I have one of those 2 in the desert brown.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. The desert what do you think of that desert titanium now that you have it in, in front of you?
Jason Aten:I I'm glad it's a review unit, and it's not the one that I'm paid for. I mean, it's cool. Actually, the sides, I think the sides look amazing.
Stephen Robles:The sides are cool.
Jason Aten:The back, I'm I'm less enthusiastic about, and I do tend to use my phone without a case. So it does matter to me. I feel like this is definitely the phone you get if you know anything about color trends, which I don't, or if you wanna have the phone that everyone will know is the new one.
Stephen Robles:Well, thankfully, I am both a fashionista, and I like people to know how to use phones. So that's why I get Desert Titanium. No. I don't know. I'm I saw a video.
Stephen Robles:I forgot who it was from. We went through all the colors, and the the white one this year is, like, stark white. It looks like more white, and it actually looks really good. But Yeah. Anyway, there's a big news this week, but that's that's iPhones.
Stephen Robles:We have 3 5 star reviews this week. We were also in the top 100 tech podcasts in 4 countries this past week, the USA, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, which is awesome. So thank you all for doing that. And 5 star reviews from KE9 Fox from the USA. Olivier 111 started listening a month ago and loves the show.
Stephen Robles:It's always nice to hear with people, like, discovering the show recently. You know what I mean? There's people joining all the time. And Nate Eregion, I feel like he's starring in the Lord the Lord of the Rings, Rings of Power, maybe? Isn't that a place in Lord of the Rings?
Jason Aten:I I mean, I've never heard of Nate, but
Stephen Robles:Well, Eregion. Eregion. It's a very cool name. But he says that we help make tech news understandable and accessible, and that's that's what we aim to do. So that's wonderful.
Stephen Robles:Thank you for those. Give us a 5 star review, rating and review in Apple Podcasts, if you'd like, give a shout out at the top of the show. And let's jump into it. OpenAI, they had a massive funding round this past week. It was rumored.
Stephen Robles:We had covered it in past episodes, but they raised $6,600,000,000 to build larger AI models, which means they are valued, you know, the Shark Tank math, at $157,000,000,000. And this was led by Thrive Capital, and the goal is because they're trying to train more AI models, especially reasoning AI models. Apparently, that's expensive, and here in the Verge article, it talks about that a $100,000,000,000 models are not far behind. That was a quote from the Anthropic CEO, Dario Emote, and apparently, a $100,000,000,000 to train an AI model. I I don't know what is so expensive that it needs to be trained on?
Stephen Robles:Did they they just put the money in like a
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's like a ATM machine. You just or like a casino machine. That's like a slot machine. You just feed it in.
Stephen Robles:I was just thinking that are like the ticket machines or like fun central or whatever and just sucks up the money. I don't know. But tons of money. So that is the funding round they got. I did look up other large funding rounds because $6,600,000,000 is apparently the biggest funding round a company has had.
Stephen Robles:And xAI, back in May of this year had $6,000,000,000, so pretty close. That's Elon Musk's AI company, but open eyes at 6,600,000,000. And under that, earlier this year, actually Waymo, company Jason can't stand, that makes self driving cars. It's it's $5,000,000,000 and then Epic Games actually $1,500,000,000, invested by Disney earlier this year back in February, which is interesting. So a lot of money a lot of money going around, opening ass funding around.
Stephen Robles:I've did have you tried the o one model, the reasoning model? I think maybe we talked about this one.
Jason Aten:I have. I did. I've done it a couple times on purpose and then a couple times on accident.
Stephen Robles:You forgot to choose the different model in
Jason Aten:the back window. Yeah. I have so it has done some things that didn't need to do. But let me I wanna
Stephen Robles:play a quick game
Jason Aten:with you Oh, yeah. While we're talking
Stephen Robles:about this
Jason Aten:open app. Yeah. I'm gonna name a company. Please. I want you to tell me if you think it's gonna be bigger or smaller than OpenAI based
Stephen Robles:on this current valuation. K? Okay. That's good. Disney.
Stephen Robles:Oh, shoot. Well, but but I don't well, I don't have knowledge of of, like, how
Jason Aten:Just guess. Bigger or smaller?
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna say Disney is bigger.
Jason Aten:K. You're right. That's correct. Disney's market cap is about a 170,000,000,000. Just Goldman Goldman Sachs.
Stephen Robles:Smaller.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, Goldman Sachs is a 155,000,000,000, and this will be bigger. How about how about Lowe's?
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's true.
Jason Aten:The home home improvement place.
Stephen Robles:Yes. Lowe's. I wanna say lower, but I feel like you've thrown this in here to, trick me. But I'm gonna say I'll say lower.
Jason Aten:Yep. You're correct.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Lower. Okay. Uber. Higher.
Jason Aten:Nope. Uber's gonna also be smaller. So they're valuing OpenAI as a larger company than Lowe's, AT and T, Goldman Sachs
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Uber. It is kind of mind boggling. They're putting it in the same category as as as these other companies, like Disney, Verizon, Comcast. Like, these are companies that have been around for a very long time, and we know what they do, and we know what people will pay for their services. And right now, the interesting thing is nobody's paying for I mean, not no one, but people are not paying nearly enough money for open AI services as what it's costing the company.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And so that's why they're raising all this money is it is really expensive to run these, you know, models to train them because in all of this money is like compute. Did you see the story not that long ago that they are re powering up 3 mile island? One of the reactors that they shut down a couple years ago in micro Microsoft is
Stephen Robles:Really?
Jason Aten:Microsoft is gonna just yep. They're they're paying to have it re like, turn back on, and they're gonna just use all that energy to power their their cloud computing for AI. Like, that's how much energy is required. Yeah. It's, like, crazy.
Stephen Robles:My good couple other interesting points of I believe, this is from the Verge article. Apparently, Sam Altman has asked investors not to invest in competing AI companies like XAI and Anthropic, which I've like, they call it a rare move here. I feel like that's not usually something a company does. Right? A CEO can't be like
Jason Aten:Well, well, the reason they say that it's a rare move is if you think about, like, how these funding rounds work, you usually have a, like, a principle. And I think in this case, it's Thrive Capital that it that basically works with open AI to say, yeah, this is how much money we're gonna raise, how much is it gonna be worth, but then thrive capital, which is investing like a $1,000,000,000 goes out and finds other investors to be a part of it. Right. And so that was, you know, for a while that included potentially Apple. We can talk about that in a minute.
Jason Aten:It includes Microsoft, Nvidia, all these companies, plus a bunch of other, like, investment groups, venture capitalists, and they put all that money together, and that's where the investment goes. And so it is hard to then say to all of those downstream, right, piles of money. You can't take any of that money and put it somewhere else because a lot of them typically, what you would want to do is if you are just trying to hedge your bets, you would want to invest in multiple different places. Right? But what OpenAI is there is saying, you know, no.
Jason Aten:We not only want to take your money. We don't want you to so they're, like, trying to foreclose investment in other places as well. And it is really interesting. Like, this is a very competitive move by OpenAI. You mentioned the list of of of previous large rounds of funding, and you noticed that 6,600,000,000 is just above 6,000,000,000, which was the previous highest raise, which was x AI.
Jason Aten:Right? The AI part of whatever the conglomerate that Elon Musk is putting together to turn Twitter into something
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Else. I don't know. Some constant because it was not bad enough that Twitter was a constant stream of just sewage. Now it's gonna be AI generated sewage.
Stephen Robles:Not not only get off of a tangent here, but I'm still on x, formerly known as Twitter. And I will say it is it the algorithm for the, like, for you feed is really changing. It feels a little bit like it's going towards that world star feel. I don't know if you know what that is.
Jason Aten:World star.
Stephen Robles:But it's where you basically see, like, videos of people fighting in fast food places and angry people, in public transit, and it's, like, I don't know why I'm seeing this. I don't follow anybody like this. But, anyway, the other thing that was interesting, the OpenAI has to transition to a for profit company, which up to this point, it had been like a nonprofit running the profit arm or whatever. And if they don't turn into a for profit restructure, then investors can actually ask for their money back. So if OpenAI doesn't restructure, within 2 years, this was reported by Axios, investors can ask for their money back.
Stephen Robles:So it is clear OpenAI is going to move to that for profit model very soon and they're gonna try and make, Irobot with this. I mean, they really think they're gonna make reasoning models, and I will say one of the jokes about JAGPT 4 0 when it first came out was, like, it doesn't know how to spell strawberry. If you ask it how many r's are in the word strawberry, it would tell you, like, 2, and it didn't know, like, it couldn't count them, and I don't know if this is a big advance, but if you ask the o one model, it knows how many r's are in strawberries, so that 1,000,000,000 of dollars puts good work there to know how to spell strawberry. But namely, as you were saying, it was rumored that Apple might have been in that funding round, which Apple Intelligence, which should be coming this month. We're in October right now, Jason, and Apple Intelligence should be launched with 18.1 to the public sometime, and ChatJBT not launching this month.
Stephen Robles:That integration should be coming soon, likely in 18.2 or 3, and so those rumors were that Apple will be an investor as well. They were not in this funding round for OpenAI. So, yeah, tell me about that.
Jason Aten:Well, I think that the there's a couple things. 1, I suspect that it was all always gonna be sort of an outlier for Apple to join this because they just don't do this sort of thing. They will buy companies, and they don't talk really about it, but they're generally companies you've never heard of.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:But they are companies that end up playing well, except for beats. That was one that you've heard of. And now they make cases.
Stephen Robles:They make phone cases.
Jason Aten:I mean, the reason they bought beats was because they needed a streaming service. And at the time beats really had the only real competitor to Spotify. Right. The beats music app. And so they turned that into the apple music app.
Jason Aten:Right. And then they also had, you know, whatever Jimmy Iovine and
Stephen Robles:Jimmy Ivy,
Jason Aten:whatever. And then I'm about to pay roll for a while. Right. Like you got to hang out at Apple Park,
Stephen Robles:which is
Jason Aten:a cool gig. Yeah. Doctor. Dre. Exactly.
Jason Aten:And so I did hear I don't know. I think I don't know who have it might have been connected, but they wanted to know, like, did they ever replace them? And does that person's business card just say, like, Steven Robles, doctor Dre? Like, is that the name of a title that they have there somewhere? I don't know.
Stephen Robles:But Raul, is he a medical doctor? No. I'm just kidding.
Jason Aten:I'm not really sure how that works.
Stephen Robles:I don't
Jason Aten:think so. But I guess you can just pick whatever you want. Yeah. I don't know. I will call you doctor Steve.
Jason Aten:Thank you. But I think that it was always gonna be kind of an outside chance that Apple would be a part of this. But I also think that Apple is such a conservative company when it comes to this kind of thing that I don't think that that, a, the fact that they wanted the OpenAI wanted it to be exclusive, I think, pushed Apple farther out. Like, OpenAI sees itself as a position where it can demand pretty favorable terms for itself. It's a huge valuation, a $157,000,000,000 like we just talked about is larger than a lot of current public companies.
Jason Aten:And Apple probably, it just got to a point where it's like, this is just a little bit too spicy for what we're interested in. And you have to think they still really want Google to get on board with making Gemini available as a part of the, let's call it, the extended Apple Intelligence universe, right, where you can use Apple Intelligence on device. You can use their private cloud compute, and then you can also send stuff to chat g p t when Siri gets really confused. Well, they don't want that to be limited to just chat g p t. They want quad in there.
Jason Aten:They want Gemini in there. And I imagine that that was gonna get a lot more complicated if they stuck $1,000,000,000 into OpenAI.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious that that time I mean, how slow Apple Intelligence has been rolling out now. We don't even see OpenAI integration at the moment. That might not even be coming until next year, 2025. Gemini and Anthropic integration? I mean, maybe Ios 19?
Stephen Robles:I mean, it's gonna be a long way out, but I and can I just add we've talked about this before, I think on last week too, just how, like, Apple Intelligence is being marketed with the iPhone 16? I was listening to a podcast last week. It was a techie podcast that has dynamically inserted ads. Twice, I heard an ad with Snoop Dogg
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And somebody from T Mobile. And the ad was Snoop Dogg saying, go get your iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence at T Mobile today. He said it twice, like those exact words. And then at the very end of the ad, there's, like, the really fast talking disclaimer, and they were, like, Apple Intelligence available next month or available in October, whatever. And it's, like, this feels like that's the kind of stuff you hear on, like, TV infomercials when you have like or like med like medicine and, drug type commercials.
Stephen Robles:And to hear that with an Apple ad, like, it was so bizarre because again, I can't remember a time in the past where it was, like, you buy this product now, and Apple is saying, iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence, buy it today, and you I mean, you don't get it. If someone Right. Buys an iPhone 16, like my mom got a new iPhone 16, she upgraded from an iPhone 12, There is no Apple intelligence on that device. I'm not putting her on a beta, and most people don't do that. And just see, it was so bizarre to hear that ad twice in the same podcast episode.
Stephen Robles:Did you hear that same ad?
Jason Aten:I've heard it multiple times. Even in fact, when we were talking about the ads last week, maybe, that was the one I actually kept thinking about. I kept thinking it was a TV ad, but I think I actually kept hearing it on podcast. But, yeah, Snoop's trying to get you on the AI bandwagon. And I think it is yeah.
Jason Aten:I think it's it's interesting. I I actually think though that it's possible that Gemini might come sooner than we think because I feel like this is actually a relatively easy I mean, we're just talking about, like, an API connection and you clear and Gemini obviously has that available at this time at this point. And so it's really just a matter of, like, the business terms, right? Those people getting together. I think there's also the reality that apple might have just looked at open AI, open AI and was like, that is a train wreck.
Jason Aten:Like do a apple is pretty averse to chaos factories and open AI is, is just like, I mean, seriously, like Tim Cook does not wanna be spending Thanksgiving this year, calling up board members at open AI saying, please stop firing CEO. Like, right? Like, especially because everybody who reports to the CEO generally has left in the last couple of months. It's like, I just don't think Tim Cook wants to spend his Thanksgiving that way.
Stephen Robles:No. He's gotta find out, where to put all the vision pros laying around his office if he's out of here.
Jason Aten:I thought it was MagSafe pucks.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's right. That's what it was. MagSafe pucks. That's right. That's right.
Stephen Robles:That was a year ago. That that feels like a decade ago when when Sam Altman was ousted. What in the world?
Jason Aten:Worst vacation of my life.
Stephen Robles:Time. Time's so weird. Anyway, that's that's the OpenAI funding round. So I will be following it and, you know, if any models start taking over humanity, you'll hear it here first, as long as we can still upload a podcast. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Alright. We have talked about Apple software. I don't know what is happening recently, but I'm gonna pull up a bunch of 9 to 5 Mac articles here because iPadOS 18, you know, that software update that was supposed to come out several weeks ago, came out for iPhones, still not on M4 iPad Pros. If you didn't get it the moment it was released, which I did, of course, and it has not bricked my m 4 11 inch iPad Pro yet. But iPad OS 18 is still not released, to the public.
Stephen Robles:If you are on 17 and you go to the settings general software update, you can't get it. There's no iPad OS 18 available yet due to some bug. Probably. There were new betas yesterday, at least for public betas in 18 dot 1, but the public release of 18 for the iPad still not there. There's weird watch bugs.
Stephen Robles:WatchOS 11.1 beta 3 were bricking devices or freezing devices, and they had to roll that back. That's not great. There was a weird weather bug. This is Zach Hall from 9 to 5 Mac, where he and others were getting warnings about excessive heat in California even though he doesn't have any location of California, like, in his weather app. It was just a rogue excessive heat warning that iPhone users were getting.
Stephen Robles:What is happening? The software, Jason. And I complained about this. I know peep people people thought I was, like, making something up or something. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Did you see my post about the the space on the bottom of the
Jason Aten:Yes. Let's get to that in just a second.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Go ahead.
Jason Aten:I'm writing down the reminder to contact Chance Miller and 9 to 5 Mac and see if they'll sponsor this episode since we just moved to, like, 3.
Stephen Robles:There are mention 3 are.
Jason Aten:But Yeah. The the one thing I was going to just clarify, I you said this, but it could have people may have missed it. It's we're only talking about m 4 iPad Pros at this point that are but if you have any other iPad, iOS 18 is available, which actually makes it more weird. Like, what do they do to the m fours that they, like, put some sort of, like, self destruct kill switch. It's like mission impossible.
Jason Aten:There's a kill switch in in iPad.
Stephen Robles:Chip the chip, I guess, the m four chip, because it's the only Apple device with that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And so I think that I think that at this point, they're probably just waiting for 18.1 to come out. Right? Like, it's like, why would it this if it's gonna come out in a week, don't put it 18 back out and then just release this new one because the 2 things it's like, we fixed the bug. Let's not even bother fixing it in there.
Jason Aten:Let's just not have people blow it. But they didn't say anything
Stephen Robles:about it.
Jason Aten:That's the part that's super weird about it is it just didn't seem. And at least the watch one, which I think is bad. Anytime you put a piece of software on your, on your device and it breaks it, that's not good. It is at least a beta. Like that's like, it's a little bit more forgivable for a beta to bring, like I've had betas not recently, but I've had betas brick devices before.
Jason Aten:Like I actually put a bit, it was a couple of years ago where I put a beta on a device and I can, I could sit here and watch the battery just drain? Like it was not super fair, but like you could, and within 5 minutes it went from like 80% to 62%. And I'm like, yeah. So we just did a hard reset. We just like started on that, but that's understandable on a beta, but it's really weird that they that they've pulled it and that they haven't said anything.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:That's kinda what Apple does. And I really wish that they would just be a little bit more self aware that that's not a good look and maybe just extend a courtesy to your users and just explain why and maybe even saying, hey. We had to bail on this. We can't tell you why it's super secret, but we are gonna release 18.1, and you'll be happier. I promise.
Jason Aten:Like,
Stephen Robles:something I don't know. Something. It's it is it's just odd. And then I also I mean not to mention other things like screen time which is still buggy as whatever. I mean
Jason Aten:That's not an that's not a version 18 bug.
Stephen Robles:No. That's just a everything that's a everything issue. And I know this this is not a bug, but I posted a I posted a picture of this saying, like, you know, why can't I fit another row of icons on my phone? People claimed that I was making this up, that I photoshopped the picture of the screenshot, and so I literally did a video showing, if you remove which you can go to settings, home screen app library, and remove the search icon there, so you you don't have that, and I only have one home screen, so I don't have any home screen dots, and then you do the large icons, which you can do in iOS 18. This is what your home screen looks like on a 16 Pro Max, and, like, look at that space right there, like, super bizarre, and then I was, like, I wish I could put another row of icons in there, and I had so many people they were, like, what do you expect to happen then if you add something back?
Stephen Robles:It's, like, well, what happens now when you have a full home screen and you add a widget? Stuff moves to another home screen. Like, this is not home.
Jason Aten:That happens even if you don't add a widget. That's just, like, the default behavior of
Stephen Robles:That's like launch. Okay. And then I posted a video about the control center, which I redid my whole thing, and people have, like, done videos of, like, what it's like to try and customize control center, and it is herding cats, whatever other analogy, like, stuff flies everywhere, and because the control center has, like, multiple pages and the built in pages, like, the smart home page or whatever, like, is already full, if you go and try to, like, move something on this first page and it jumps down, it'll jump down like 4 pages, like, it goes, like, way down, and it's just it's not great. I am advocating, like, I don't know if you remember you could do this, back in the day with Itunes and iPhone, you could actually manage your home screen on your Mac, like, you could actually move icons around with your mouse on your computer. I think they should bring that back, especially with all the customization options like control center.
Stephen Robles:I understand Itunes is not a thing anymore. Finder is right there. Finder, that's how you sync your iPhone now. You back it up. You can customize things already.
Stephen Robles:I don't know, give us a a better way to do that or at least some kind of, like, let us make changes without trying to reflow all the icons and then, like, a save, so you're not like, stuff's not moving around constantly, because honestly, it took me probably 30 minutes to get my control center, like, I knew what I wanted to put there, but it took me 30 minutes to get this just, like, set, and then even then this, accessibility for hearing icon, it's a bug in the 18 dot one beta, will not go away no matter what. It's just I don't know. Something's going on, Jason.
Jason Aten:I I I am not one to ever say what I'm about to say. Oh. But Android does this fine. And the problem is like the whole reef. Did you see like the thread from, Federico VTT G about how, like he was trying to move things around in the thing about the iOS 18 is you can put the app icons anywhere.
Jason Aten:I mean, there's still a grid, but they don't have to be continuous. Right. You can put them anywhere. So you put them somewhere, and then he has a video of trying to put another app somewhere. And all of a sudden, the ones that should be sticky
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:They just start to reflow.
Stephen Robles:They just move around.
Jason Aten:It's like, what are you even doing? Like, how is this even a thing? Whereas again, like I'm, I use an Android phone very rarely. And actually right now I'm not using it at all because I'm carrying the iPhone 16 and the 16 pro. And cause I'm trying to do a lot of photography with the 16 to sort of get a sense of how, like the differences and stuff, but it's like on the Android phone, you just put things places and they just stay there and they have no like awareness of anything else that's going on.
Jason Aten:And most Android phones look chaotic because you just put things wherever, but nothing nothing wakes up and it's like, oh, you you're moving something over there. And the point that, the teaching made was now moving one app almost always requires you to move 2 apps. It's like, why the additional complexity?
Stephen Robles:What is going on? I don't I don't know. It's it's bizarre. While these rumors have nothing to do with software, we might get a hardware though, where we can, complain about other software things.
Jason Aten:Do do you think do you think there's an actual event coming for sure?
Stephen Robles:So here's the deal. I mean, everyone's Mark Gurman's saying there's an event this year or at least Apple's gonna release a bunch of stuff. MacRumors, everybody's saying October event. If our listeners remember and viewers last year, we had the scary fast event on October 30th, I think it was, with, like, day spooky Halloween. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Here's here's my hope. They do an October event, and the superlatives just keep getting more and more outlandish. So it was scary fast last year, and it was talking about the m 3 pro and m 3 max MacBook Pros. Now we have frighteningly fast this year.
Jason Aten:Oh, you think they'll do it at the end of the month?
Stephen Robles:I don't know, but I think it would be a great a great kind of, like, multi year gag where you have, like, scary fast, frighteningly fast, terrifyingly fast, and then I don't know what you go after that. Maybe maybe they change it, but I think they should go for a hat trick. That's a sport that's a sport term, Jason. Just so you know, I know some sport terms. Also because it was in connections a couple days ago, but a hat trick.
Jason Aten:Except it wouldn't be a hat trick. It would be a 3 peat.
Stephen Robles:Well, then what's a hat trick? I thought it was a 3.
Jason Aten:If you score 3 goals in the same game, but you're talking about 3 different events happening Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's the same thing. Same thing. 6 to 1 half dozen of the other. Anyway, I think there's going to be I think there's gonna be an event. YouTuber Andrew Edwards, he, like, posted a picture yesterday of him, like, holding a little invite card to, an Apple thing, and he was, like, I can tell you next week.
Stephen Robles:And I was, like, alright, buddy. So there's apparently something, some announcements coming. I think there's going to be an event. I don't know if it's gonna be, like, everybody come to Apple Park. I think it'll probably be, like, the scary fast where maybe some people go to New York, which didn't you go there last week?
Stephen Robles:I was
Jason Aten:at the scary fast event in New York last week.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You were at the scary fast event. Event. So, you know, they do the stream thing. They invite some reporters and and creators, and, I mean, there a lot of stuff they could announce.
Stephen Robles:M4 Mac Mini, M4 Imac. That was actually one of the rumors as well. An updated iPad mini, which there's been lots of rumors, like, Best Buy has this thing in their system for a new Mac mini, a new SKU or whatever. Mark Gurman also said an iPhone SE, a redesigned iPhone SE finally getting rid of the home button, could be coming as well. So I think I think so.
Stephen Robles:And if if the m four launches, like, in a new Imac and a new redesigned Mac mini, they could, year over year, improve the MacBook Pro, m4, Pro, m4 Max. Like you have said, the m 3 chip and that's processed. Apple's trying to get away from that quickly. So I think we're gonna see it. I think we're gonna see a bunch of hardware this month.
Stephen Robles:What do you think?
Jason Aten:I think it's possible. I don't think that anything's happening next week. I don't know what that picture is about.
Stephen Robles:Next week. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But I think that, like, there would have been if they were having an event, there'd be invites. Because even the scary fastest event, like, they send out invites. Like, watch this thing next week.
Stephen Robles:Right. We got a couple weeks, though. I mean, if they do it at the end of the month, you know, we can send that out next week.
Jason Aten:I just was responding to the I can tell you about something next week. I have no idea what that would be about, but I don't think that it's an event. The scary fast event was actually weird because it's the first time that I've been to an apple event where they essentially gave us an in person presentation. Right. A small group of people ahead of the, of the of of the streaming event because the streaming event was like 7 o'clock at night or something.
Jason Aten:8 o'clock.
Stephen Robles:Right? Right. Yeah. So
Jason Aten:they they did an in person thing in New York City where they went through all of the stuff. They let us see all the devices, which at that event where the Mac were pros and the Mac are the Imacs. And then you could write your story. You're embargoed. And then they had like a watch party later on to watch the thing.
Jason Aten:I watched it on the airplane on the way home because I just wanted to go home.
Stephen Robles:I couldn't even stay.
Jason Aten:I literally just watched it on the airplane. It's fine. At that point, I w I didn't want us to have to spend the night in New York and come home and waste another day. I just flew home. But anyway,
Stephen Robles:I get it.
Jason Aten:It's all, it's all good. So that was interesting. So like, I don't know. It seems like Apple's trying some different things in terms of the way that they're doing events like that is that's totally fine. But yeah, I, I think we'll see the, I think we're gonna see a Mac mini.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:I think, I think we'll probably, I don't think they're gonna update the Imac this year. I just don't think it's gonna even get the M4. I think it's like on every other year thing. I just don't think it's a high enough volume product and it doesn't sit in a place where people need the latest chip. Right?
Jason Aten:If they
Stephen Robles:don't wanna keep making the M3 because of the process or whatever. Why not?
Jason Aten:I think they have plenty. I think they have more than enough for another year's worth of IMAX is the fair.
Stephen Robles:Fair. What about
Jason Aten:So I I actually think the one that is most likely, and I know there's no rumors about this, but with that philosophy, I feel like the MacBook air needs to get updated. I understand they released them in the spring, the m three ones, but it but that's I it has to be their highest volume single SKU, Mac. And so that would be the one I would think they'd wanna get off of that process.
Stephen Robles:Well, I I no. I don't think we're gonna see these, but rumors like Mark Gurman is saying that home device, a HomePod with a screen might be coming in the future. Again, I don't think that's this month. And then, also, this is something Oura Ring recently announced, that they have a new Smart Ring model, updated design, new sensors for 349. Apple's not gonna announce this this month, but you know down the line with that smart home device with a screen, HomePod with a screen, a ring?
Stephen Robles:Maybe Apple will do a fitness ring. We talked about this like one of our first episodes because Samsung, the Galaxy ring is also out there. Yeah. People people like people like these health smart rings. Have you ever tested one of these?
Stephen Robles:Have you have a company ever sent you one to, like
Jason Aten:I've never tested one of these. I wouldn't really I don't like and rings are a hard thing, like, to test because I gotta size them and all that kind of stuff. But I just think apple should make something. It doesn't have to be a ring, could be like a fitness band without a screen, but I think there are a lot of scenarios where people would prefer $149 thing, a 100 and whatever, $79 lower tech thing with just some sensors that's accumulating your fitness statistics without having to necessarily wear the watch. Because I do know there are a lot of people who would prefer to wear even a Garmin maybe, but they want to take advantage of the advantage of the apple health ecosystem and they would wear a band or they're wearing a mechanical watch or whatever, where I just, I feel like there is a space there for apple to do something.
Jason Aten:It does sometimes feel like apple wants to, it's like the vision pro is a perfect example. It's like, if we can't do it all, we're not doing any of it. And so maybe maybe they're like, no. The Apple Watch is everything. It gives you the screen.
Jason Aten:It gives you notifications. It gives you the sensors. Right. And I'm like, yeah. But maybe there's some space.
Jason Aten:I think there's a market of people who would buy I don't know if it's a ring, but either a band or a ring or something. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Well, and I heard, Alex Heath, when he tested Meta's Orion AR glasses, I listened to the episode where he talked a lot about the wrist sensor that he that you have to use to control it, and he was very bullish on how intuitive that was, how responsive it was, and he thought that that might be a technology that is integrated into more of these kinds of headsets and glasses, because it's a nondescript thing that, can read your impulses, basically. And so, yeah, I think a device like that either from Apple whether it's a ring or a screen less wristband. Yeah, maybe. Bring back the, you know, all those accessories that used to exist for the ipod that were like lanyards and socks and things like that, you know, bring out a fitness thing.
Stephen Robles:Do you remember I think this was before the Apple Watch, it might have been it was like a partnership with Nike and Apple sold like this little pill shaped disc that you put in your shoe to track steps. And I think it synced, like, but only with the Nike app or whatever. And I'm not sure if it was, like, with the model iPod or with one of the first iPhones or something. You remember that little Nike?
Jason Aten:I do. I kinda remember it. Yeah. I never paid money for something like that. But
Stephen Robles:no. It was, way it was way back in the day. I'm not even gonna be able to find it because it was probably decades ago. So but anyway, one last thing before we take a break and thank our wonderful sponsor this week, Audio Hijack. I do wanna mention that Christian Selig, he had made, I mean, the only and best YouTube app for Apple Vision Pro called Juno, and unfortunately, the Juno app has been removed from the App Store after Google saved the YouTube, App for Apple's headset, because it violated its API and trademark policies.
Stephen Robles:This is really sad. I mean, if you're not familiar with Christian Selig, he also made the Apollo app for Reddit, which was an extremely popular app, and once Reddit shut down third party apps, that was gone. And now Juno, which I used on my Apple Vision Pro whenever I put it on my face, because it was really the only good way to watch YouTube videos. It was a great app, worked well. That has now also been removed from the App Store.
Stephen Robles:So I don't know if Christian is going for some, record of how many apps he can get to a level of success that's, like, really successful and then all of a sudden get kicked out, which is it's nothing he's doing, but it's unfortunate. And of course there's still no YouTube app on Apple Vision Pro. Like, you can't. It's not there yet. YouTube has said it's in their roadmap, quote unquote, but we don't know how far away it is.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, it really stinks for, for Christian Seeley.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's such a weird thing for YouTube to care about because first of all, according to Christian, well, he wasn't even using the YouTube API. Right. It was basically just a browser wrapper. Like it's just showing you YouTube.
Jason Aten:So all the ads still play. Like this is, this is the best case scenario for YouTube. It's like, you didn't have to do anything,
Stephen Robles:but
Jason Aten:people will continue using your service in this new platform. He's a much better look, to be honest, UX designer than anyone at Google is. Right? Like, this is a way better. You listen.
Jason Aten:I'm not kidding that if if YouTube puts out a YouTube app, it will not be this good. It just won't for the vision, but it just won't because they don't, Google doesn't think about it that way. And they don't care that the way that, I mean, it's understandable that a huge, massive, one of the biggest companies in the world is never gonna care about something like this as much as like a independent boutique developer would. But it's just, it's such a weird thing for them to get all riled up about and be like, no, you can't do this. Like, there's no confusion.
Jason Aten:He called it Juno. He didn't call it, like, tube u or something, like, to try to, like, confuse you. Right?
Stephen Robles:Right. The letter u tube.
Jason Aten:It's just so weird.
Stephen Robles:It is weird. It's unfortunate. But I will say whatever Christian Tielig makes next, I will be on the lookout because he makes incredible apps. And so, yeah, support him if you ever see his apps come out and it was it was a great app. I mean, it was Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It was one of the few reasons I put on the Apple Vision Pro, which I've now started tagging you whenever someone asks on threads or Twitter. Who still uses Apple Vision Pro? I say
Jason Aten:I've noticed.
Stephen Robles:At Jason. You see you see them now. You see them now. But we still have a big news about I wanna talk about paywalls, which might be coming to websites like CNN and The Verge. Amazon's gonna be adding more ads to Amazon Prime, so we're gonna get to all of that, but I would like to thank our amazing sponsor this week.
Stephen Robles:They were actually our launch sponsor for the show. Our very first episode was sponsored by Rogue Amoeba, who makes Audio Hijack and Loopback, and they are sponsoring again. I could not be more happy because this is the one of those sublime moments when a sponsor is like, like, I personally use I have used Audio Hijack for years. It recorded every podcast I've ever done. I use it literally every day to record my videos, and Jason and I are literally using it right now, to record the audio that I use for the audio version of this.
Stephen Robles:But listen, Audio Hijack is the best way to just record audio on your Mac, and not just audio from microphones and audio inputs, but it is an incredibly powerful application. It does simple things like I actually have meters, little audio meters, in the menu bar on my Mac, so I can see my audio input, and I'm actually recording a backup of Jason's audio because you can pull audio from an application. So we're using Riverside and Brave right now to record our video, and I'm pulling that audio into Audio Hijack and recording a backup. And you can create those chains in there, plus there's lots of powerful features like adding EQ and volume effects. So if you wanna livestream, you can actually do that with Audio Hijack as well, and it is just amazing.
Stephen Robles:I also love how, in the menu bar, you can now actually have all your sessions, and so I don't even have the Audio Hijack, like, window open on my computer. I just go up to my menu bar, click run on the primary text session right before we record, and we're recording, and it is just amazing. You can record all different formats, a WAV MP 3. It is amazing. I also use it for my movie podcast.
Stephen Robles:Sometimes if I wanna pull a little audio clip, I can do that with Audio Hijack too and record audio file. Listen, it is just the best, and if you pair it with Loopback, if you've never used Loopback, powerful application if you're trying to do complicated setups with, like, audio interfaces and feeding audio back so you can monitor it in the room and even monitor with, like, AirPods and other thing, like, it is amazing. Jason, you use Audio Hijack all the time. Right?
Jason Aten:Yes. Because you tell me I have to. I am a little bit disconcerted that you have to feel like you have to record a backup of my audio, but I have to
Stephen Robles:do I do it every I do every listen. I never I record all the audio. I've never I've never because of Audio Hijack and because of how I use it, I don't know, knock on wood or whatever, I have never ever lost a podcast episode or recording. Like, I have never ever had to say, it's gone. It's just never happened.
Stephen Robles:That's the reality. That sounds great. Yeah. You need to go try it. Amazing.
Stephen Robles:Thank you for a sponsor, but here's what you do. Through the end of October, so you have this month, you can get 20% off Audio Hijack, Loopback, or their bundles by using the code techxx. You can actually see it right here on the page. You can also go to macaudio dot com/primarytech. That link's in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:20% off Audio Hijack, any of their bundles, or Loopback with the coupon code techxx. It is I can't say enough good things about it. Absolutely love it. Use it all the time. Go try Audio Hijack.
Stephen Robles:Download it today for macaudio.com/primarytech, and use the promo code techxx. Thanks to Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode. They're the best. Thank you, Paul. They're the best.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Amazon is gonna add even more ads, and you send me you put this link in the note, and I tried to use the macOS Sequoia hide distracting items. The problem is there's nothing to read.
Jason Aten:Well, see, I was just trying to set up the paywall conversation that we're gonna have here in a couple minutes, apparently. Yeah. I just saw that realized that that was a terrible link to share with you. There's actually a good Ars, Technica article about it as well, but essentially Let
Stephen Robles:me just say for our audio listeners, listen to the Financial Times, and when you go to this link, the headline is smaller in font than their limited time offer, say, 40% on standard digital. And the the headline is in smaller font that says Amazon to increase number of advertisements on Prime Video, and you see nothing else of this article, no preview, no lead, nothing, and, yeah, then you just have to pay, and, like, the whole web pie the whole web page is there, subscription offers and stuff like that, like, amazing financial times. Wow.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I I shouldn't. I so when I clicked on it originally, I think I must have been in that weird Twilight zone where it's like, oh, we'll let you see this article because apparently I had not opened a financial times article on the, this browser on this computer. Anyway, whatever. So the the reason I put this in here is I just, I hate it.
Jason Aten:I hate the idea that they're putting up, putting ads in it anyway. Yeah. And that they're just basically saying, pay us more money if you don't want the ads. I understand from a business perspective why they're doing it. I just hate everything about it.
Jason Aten:But what I hate even more is that they have a dial somewhere and they're like, well, nobody has unsubscribed and, you know, enough people have said no one's gotten enough mad enough about it. So let's turn that dial up a little bit and we're gonna find the sweet spot of just how many ads that we can show them before people start to churn or to cancel. And honestly, I just think that that's the wrong way to go about it. I understand it's the bean counter way to go about it, but it seems like such a terrible way to treat your customers. Like such, like no one forced you to put prime video as a benefit of prime in the first place.
Jason Aten:You decided to do that. Right. You're using prime video as a way to keep people paying you for prime. So now to disassociate that and to start thinking like, well, how far can we turn this dial before people get really mad and how much more money can we make? But like, again, from a business analyst perspective, I do understand that.
Jason Aten:I just think it's a crappy way to treat your customers.
Stephen Robles:Well, it was unfortunate because how it happened, like, whatever by paying for Prime annually for all the shipping benefits, you had a Amazon Prime Video with no ads forever. And then it's not like they launched a cheaper tier that was ad supported, like that was how Netflix did it, I believe that's how Disney Plus did it, where you can, like, pay less than you were paying, but you get ads. Amazon is like, nah, what you are paying, we're gonna shove ads into that, and if you wanna pay more, then you can go ad free. And I would almost like, we've been watching Rings of Power, the series, and for some reason, I expected an Amazon Prime original show not to have ads because that's just how I think about network original shows, like Apple TV plus original shows, HBO Max original shows. There's just not ads, like Hulu, like Shogun or whatever.
Stephen Robles:There's no ads, but to even shove ads into your, like, original content, that feels where I don't know why, but that feels different to me. Like, I understand if you're gonna watch a movie on Amazon Prime Video for free, quote unquote, and it's not available anywhere else, so you put some ads in there. I kinda get that because it's, like, you know, you're getting to see a movie you would have to pay for elsewhere. For Amazon Prime Video Content, which I would think a streaming service wants to prioritize its own content and try to, like, make that be a reason that people actually sign up for it, and then to shove ads into that also. And also, the ads are much louder than the content.
Stephen Robles:Like, we're watching Rings of Power, and Galadriel is, like, he's just talking very softly and saying, love the Rings. And then it's, like, Airbnb. It's, like, oh my goodness. Can we can we not? Can we, like, adjust the volume here?
Stephen Robles:So I don't I don't know. I I I agree. More ads is not great, and, yeah, I don't know. But we all pay for it.
Jason Aten:Well, and the the problem is that streaming services make more money on the advertising side than they do, for having you just pay for their service. And Amazon couldn't introduce a cheaper tier of prime video with ads because nobody's paying for actually the last time I said that someone emailed me and said, actually, there is a tier that you could just pay for prime video. And I then I responded and said, how many people do that? And I didn't get an answer. So the point was, if you're signed up for Amazon Prime, you're not paying anything separately for prime video, which means they couldn't introduce a cheaper tier.
Jason Aten:They weren't gonna make Amazon Prime cheaper for people who weren't going to get the who you know what I mean? For people who are gonna get the ads. So they had to do it the opposite way, which is charge more. But this feels exactly like the Verizon story we talked about a couple weeks ago that I wrote about where Verizon is just very slowly tightening the screws on anybody that's on an old plan because they wanna get you to pay for a higher price plan and to ditch the Disney plus bundle. And the reason they're doing it is just because they can.
Jason Aten:They just because they can. Right? You who's gonna cancel Amazon Prime Video? 0 people because you're just paying for Amazon Prime and getting it anyway. So I feel like the people looking at the numbers are like, well, nobody can't canceled Prime.
Stephen Robles:Of course not. I mean, I literally would watch nothing on Prime and not cancel it.
Jason Aten:I never watch anything on Prime, and I don't cancel it because we pay for it for the shipping and the whatever. Like, it's not a it's not a it's not a thing. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So talking about advertising and paywalls, 2 interesting websites. News came out that CNN is likely going to be adding a paywall, so some articles will be behind a paywall for CNN, which has long been, you know, you just go with whatever CNN article and read it, and also The Verge. Vox Media is the owner of The Verge. Jim Bankoff, he's kind of the owner in Vox Media. They have like SP nation, Vox eater, all of that.
Stephen Robles:They might be considering a paywall as well for The Verge, which would feel you know, I almost tweeted at, Nilay Patel just to kinda see, like, hey, what's whatever. And he's very careful to say, like, he has nothing to do with the advertising money side of The Verge, so he can report honestly and not have to do anything about it. I wonder if this would change that dynamic a little bit, or at least kind of you know, you might not control the ads or speak into the ads that show up on your website, but if people can't read the articles your website is writing unless they pay, you know, I don't know how that how that changes, but I think it's interesting more and more websites, and I this is also on the heels of last week. Imore, the Apple website who ran for more than a decade, shut down. You know, you write for a website, inc.com.
Stephen Robles:Your articles are not behind the paywall. They're just there to read. As a writing journalist, well, how how does this feel? Like, is this inevitable? Are there viable options?
Stephen Robles:Is it just not lucrative enough? Like, what is happening?
Jason Aten:If I don't answer that part of the question, ask me again just one second. Because I wanna say something about CNN, Amber. Because I think there's 2 separate things. One, the CNN paywall was reported, I think, first by Brian Stelter who works at CNN. He's their media report.
Jason Aten:So, like, it's happening. Yeah. And and, right, like, this is not speculative at this point. The other one was broken by, I think it was Oliver Darcy who, status dot news, which is his substack, I think. And he I think he was actually at CNN or maybe I don't know.
Jason Aten:Anyway, but CNN is doing the early stage experimentation where essentially what they do is they have this algorithm running in the background and they're like, we think this person would pay because of the number of articles and the time on page and all this stuff. So they they ask they present them with the paywall. Like, Hey, no more articles for you, unless you pay. Whereas if somebody doesn't read CNN very often, they just maybe click on the thing once they're probably never going to see this at this point. Okay.
Jason Aten:This is how publications do this. They use this sort of dynamic thing where they're trying. Now there are publications like the New York times, which is like, you get 3 free articles a month, and then you have everybody has to pay. That's true for everyone. Right?
Jason Aten:Like you can try to gain that system and there's certainly ways to do that. But like, that's just, they make their money somewhat on ads, but also from people paying. And that makes sense because then you used to always have to pay to get the New York times because someone would bring it to your house. Right? So there's that piece.
Jason Aten:The verge is interesting because, to my knowledge, no one at the verge or Fox News has confirmed that this is a thing that they're going to start doing. But I do agree that it feels very different with a site like the verge, which, you know, you've many times talked about how Neil Patel says he's, they're gonna watch revolutionize the world with blog posts or something like that. And so, like, the idea of a blog post feels very different than the idea of, like, a new site that you have a paywall for. I guarantee you, though, that there is no way that they would make this decision without the editor in chief involved, because this is a very this is about as fundamental a change as you can make to the relationship between your readers and the site. And so
Stephen Robles:And he's and Eli's very bullish about federating and, like, sharing things across, act using ActivityPub, which is the engine behind things like Mastodon and threads, also federate in the Fediverse, meaning you can see threads posts on Mastodon and vice versa, an open protocol for social media. That's the promise of ActivityPub, and Neil has been very bullish about The Verge, really experimenting with Activity Pub, some articles going in that way, and people not being able to comment on, like, articles through Mastodon because they support Activity Pub. And so to go behind a paywall, even for some articles, it seems antithetical, but again nothing's been confirmed by The Verge. I also think I did not realize, like you just said, that there's some kind of algorithm algorithmically driven paywall that these websites are using where, like, does this will this user pay for this article? That is fascinating to me and feels even worse for some reason.
Stephen Robles:Like, I you know, the New York Times model, 3 free articles or pay and pay, that makes sense and I feel like is reasonable. And I always debate maybe this is the month I start paying for the New York Times, and then at the end of the month, I say no, it's not. But at least I understand that model. But to to have the algorithm decide, well, like, should we charge this person for this article? That that feels strange to me.
Stephen Robles:But Yeah. Would make money, I guess.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So the part I wanted to just say about being someone who work right? Yeah. So ink does have a subscription Right. Like, thing you can pay, like, pay for it, and they do have a paywall.
Jason Aten:It's just, I don't know the details of how that all works, but there is, like, some degree of a paywall, whatever. As someone who, like, writes for a living, the the important piece there is the for a living part. Like, there has someone has to be making money for this to happen. And the problem is if you look at the last 5 to 10 years, every referral source has essentially said, why would we send traffic to this random place? We wanna we want Facebook, meta, Instagram, whatever, Google.
Jason Aten:They don't actually care if you if someone is looking for information about sending you to the site where the information is, they just wanna give you the information till you stay on their site. And so it is very, you know, in order to have an ad supported business, you have to have you have to have a stream of referral traffic coming to your site that you can then show ads to. And as that starts to go down and you've built a business based on that, you have to come up with something else. And it is reasonable to say to people, if you are enjoying this content and you would like us to keep making it, you're going to have to pay us for that. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, because it's just, that's just sort of like the way the math works out. And so the problem is every site that isn't like the New York times or the wall street journal that started with a paywall and started with a subscription business is having to make a shift. And it feels to customers and to readers, like you're, you're changing the agreement that we had, which is that your stuff was available. I could read it whenever I want. And if you just think about like the, the fan base and the sort of the affection that that fan base has for a site, like the verge is based on, like, this connection.
Jason Aten:It's, like, you're making a thing. We love that thing. We will come and read it at your site. And now all of a sudden, it's, like, wait. Do you not want us to come and read it unless I pay you?
Jason Aten:Like, it's just a weird thing.
Stephen Robles:Well, I also feel, one, I wish RSS everybody should just get back into RSS, but then also news publications have to actually support that, which right now The Verge does. I'd be curious if they would continue supporting that if they put things behind a paywall. I imagine they would not. But, you know, I feel like informa like, will there be a time where, like, just quality information? Like, there's something that that needs to be accessible, right, at least somewhere.
Stephen Robles:And sometimes I feel weird, like, you know, Mark Gurman, he writes at Bloomberg. You know, you can either play pay for the Bloomberg subscription to read his articles, you can get his newsletter, which he has some of the news there, or you can just read what he has written basically, on 9 to 5 Mac and Mac rumors and just, you know, kinda see the information there. Sometimes it feels that that feels a little strange to me, and sometimes I see people tweet about, like, news from a Mark Gurman article, and they'll say, like, at the very bottom, like, you know, hyphen Mark Gurman. Sometimes they'll tag them, sometimes not, and then Mark Gurman will come in and reply and be, like, yeah, I reported on this in the Bloomberg. Here's the link.
Stephen Robles:And it's like, well, but yes. But if I go to that link, I can't read it. It just feels weird to me sometimes, like, when when there's this information that, like, is being, like it's not hearsay reported on, but it is being, like, 2nd or third degree level down reported on, but the original source is shrouded. And so someone like me who's just an average person, like, I can't actually read it. I mean, I can pay for it, but if you pay for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, like, you pay for all these things, The Verge, CNN, like, people are not gonna pay for all these, and maybe that's what apple news plus is trying to do, but I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I, I have unfinished thoughts about it, but it it doesn't feel like a great time. I don't know if it's some of that stuff.
Jason Aten:It is interesting that there's literally an entire ecosystem and just completely built on writing about mark Gurman stories at Bloomberg, so that you don't have to pay for the pay wall. Like, and it's, it's interesting, like the amount of, there, most of these are not enormous publications. Right. But they're like sites you and I read on a regular basis, but like, they are essentially siphoning value off of the work that is being done somewhere else because they know that there's a large amount of people who will not pay the 30, like Bloomberg's expensive. Like, let's just be honest, right?
Jason Aten:They will not pay the, they got to pay Mark German. Sorry. Like they, but these people will not pay $40 a month for like 6 articles a month about like the apple rumors. So there is an entire cottage industry of sites that are just they're not entirely dedicated to that, but you're right. If if I see that Mark Gurman has written about something, I know that I don't have to pay for Bloomberg because at least 3 sites that you and I could both name right now.
Jason Aten:We'll write about the story. I constantly did it
Stephen Robles:on this podcast with the Financial Times article where I couldn't see it. Yeah. And so I went to the Ars Technica one, which yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't know how to feel about it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Even personally.
Jason Aten:I but I think it's tough because we it's hard when things that we've always had were free. Now we have to pay for them. Right. This is it. It's just, it's kind of like the opposite of the Amazon thing, right.
Jason Aten:Where they're adding ads. The video ad thing is such a lucrative business. Unfortunately, for websites, it's not a lucrative business anymore because of the referral traffic drying up. And so it's like, I'd rather have a 100000 readers and have them pay us for that as opposed to 10,000,000 and collect pennies per impression.
Stephen Robles:Right. And it is you know, there was, like, the golden age of streaming where you could cut cable and pay $10 a month and get all the stuff that you got for cable, and now we're at a place where now streaming is just cable. Like you're just paying that much a month, probably for less content or or less content you actually wanna watch. And it I don't know. It feels like maybe this is a similar time where there was like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:There's more and more paywalls going up. And, anyway
Jason Aten:And not only that, they're literally bundling together.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:The independent streaming services are literally creating bundles
Stephen Robles:Which was cable.
Jason Aten:Saying, here you go. Right. Yeah. It's like, haven't we done this before?
Stephen Robles:Yes. Yes. So for ink.com, like me paying a subscription because your articles are not paywalled. What is that for?
Jason Aten:So I don't know how the paywall works. I'm happy to, like, ask somebody, but I do know that it's not it's like, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I'd have to find out. I'd be ignorant about how, what, I mean, you can actually pay for the print magazine. Like you can pay us for the print magazine, but there is a digital subscription.
Jason Aten:And as far as I know, I'm doing a terrible job. And I know that my editor listens to this. So I feel like I should have been
Stephen Robles:more of a person.
Jason Aten:No, it's okay. She'll she'll send me a slack message and she'll just be like, this is the answer. And I'll be like, that's fine. I'll tell, I'll tell our people, but there is a digital subscription. Right.
Jason Aten:Okay. Here we go. It's $1 for 3 months. And then it renews at $19 per year. And what you get is you get unlimited access to the digital issues, I think.
Jason Aten:And I don't know if this is true, a 100% true. So forgive me for saying this wrong. I think that there is a limit to the number of free articles that you can less read on inc.com in a month. I think every, again, I don't know the specifics of that, but that's actually not in my mind, a very unreasonable thing because it accommodates the casual user who then might come back and be like, this is really good. Okay.
Jason Aten:Now I'll pay for it. Right. But if you're a dedicated reader, I don't think $20 a year is a difficult thing to pay for.
Stephen Robles:That's the best news, pricing I've heard because everything else is 30, $40 a month.
Jason Aten:So Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's a that's a great deal. Ink.com. Alright. I wanna hear about your your self driving test, but there's there's 3 articles here. This is the part of the show where I asked Jason, why don't you tell me about this?
Jason Aten:Okay. We're gonna do this real quick because we don't have a lot of time. The first one is the, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but like WordPress is the CMS that basically, I don't know, 80 night. Every website is a lot of WordPress. And there's this really weird fight going on right now.
Jason Aten:WordPress is like, there's this, there's an open source part of it, which is like the code, the powers WordPress, but then there are all these places where you can pay for like hosting with WordPress. And so there's like wordpress.organdwordpress.comand automatic, which owns wordpress.com and is also like the primary steward of the WordPress project. And then there are all these other things like, so, so recently Matt Mullenweg, who is the CEO of automatic, which also owns pocket
Stephen Robles:gas. They used to, I don't know if they still do.
Jason Aten:And like medium. I don't know. They own a bunch of things. It's just sort of this strange conglomeration. Maybe it's, I don't know, Tumblr.
Jason Aten:I don't know. Anyway, you're
Stephen Robles:just saying words.
Jason Aten:I'm just saying things that I don't know who belongs them. And I think that it's automatic. If there's stuff out there that you're not sure who they own, who owns it is probably automatic. And he was at a conference for WP engine and he stood on stage and he called WP engine a cancer on WordPress, like at their event. Wow.
Jason Aten:He said this thing and S and he, his argument was like, they don't contribute back to the project. Right. There's like an agreement that if you're using the license, you're supposed to contribute certain number of hours to like development for the greater project. And he's saying that they're spending not that the, I think that like the statistic was something like automatic devotes, like 4000 hours a week to WordPress. Whereas WP engine was like devoting like 30 hours a week or something.
Jason Aten:I don't even know. And so now WP engine is suing them and basically saying you're you're trying to extort us. You're abusing your position. And the whole thing is just so bizarre. I don't know what spurred this right now.
Jason Aten:I don't know what the motivation here is. Like, I don't know Matt Mullen wig, but I do actually know people who do know him. And most of them are, like, this is weird. Like, I don't know what's happening right now. So yeah.
Jason Aten:It's just bizarre.
Stephen Robles:You were right. Pocket cast is still owned by Automatic as is WooCommerce, SimpleNote, Gravitar, like, the profile image thing, like, they own a lot of stuff. So yeah. It
Jason Aten:is Beeper. They bought Beeper.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Remember Beeper, which is, like, the service where you're supposed to be able to get your messages on Android or your Imessage on Android? Like, they Tumblr. I was right. They do own Tumblr.
Stephen Robles:They do own Tumblr.
Jason Aten:Very much. I wasn't just saying words.
Stephen Robles:I could mess Tumblr day 1, pocket cast, cloud up. Yeah. Jetpack. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff under that umbrella.
Stephen Robles:So Interesting. And then also, Epic is suing Google again.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think that they had just paid a lot of money on their retainer for the lawyers and thought, well, let's just use some and see who else we could sue because they beat Google once. Right. They beat them. And now they're basically suing because they're saying that Samsung and Google have sort of colluded because Samsung has this feature called auto blocker, which essentially prevents you from downloading unauthorized software on your device.
Jason Aten:And they've turned that on. They, by default, which it wasn't the case in the past. So like, if you wanted to download a 3rd party app store, you can't because Samsung has enabled this feature that will say you can't download malware. And so they're making it harder to do this thing that Google has like in theory, on Android, you've always been able to do that. And so they're essentially suing the 2 of them for colluding to make it harder to keep, or to keep app stores off of the Samsung devices, which on Android.
Jason Aten:Samsung is the dominant market.
Stephen Robles:So And then finally, the very exciting news, Microsoft
Jason Aten:This is the best news
Stephen Robles:No. You tell me what is
Jason Aten:No. I'm just so alright. Like, the thing we all hate is that all of this stuff that you used to just be able to buy, you not have to pay a subscription for Photoshop, right? Also Microsoft office, you used to just buy a box and you had Microsoft office in it and you could use it until like your computer would no longer run that software anymore. Then you had to pay money.
Jason Aten:Like most people probably pay $25 a month if you want access to, like, Word and PowerPoint and and whatever. Now you can just office 20 2024, you can just buy it. It's like a $150. A 150. Just include
Stephen Robles:$150 doesn't include Outlook. If you want Outlook and commercial use rights, $250 one time, but you do not get feature updates, which I, you know, I guess that's the trade off, you know? Right. So okay. There you go.
Jason Aten:But I mean, that would cost that's like even $250 is less than it cost you for a year of just paying for Windows 360 or Microsoft 365. So
Stephen Robles:That is true. Well, I won't be buying it, but but there you go. You can buy you can buy it.
Jason Aten:Me me either.
Stephen Robles:You buy now.
Jason Aten:I would buy Photoshop or, like, I would buy it because I would pay if I could pay $1500 for creative for everything that's in the Creative Cloud, just pay for it and just, like, use it. I would I'd do that. Updates? And just run until it what do you what are they updating?
Stephen Robles:I mean, Lightroom, the denoise AI features, Photoshop with the generated features, like, that's still just in beta now, I think. You wouldn't get any of that stuff.
Jason Aten:I I mean, that's a fair point, but I I just it's like well, I guess I was gonna say it's like my TV. I don't ever I want my TV to just keep working the way it works.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But you want the the Apple TV to keep getting updates, which then you just buy once, but then you got app
Jason Aten:But the Apple TV is software. I don't think of my TV as software. I just want the TV to work exactly right. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Right. I disconnect my TV is not even connected to the Internet. I turn that thing off. Yeah. If it's the first thing I do, and if there isn't a setting, I will crack the thing open and find the Wi Fi antenna and take it out.
Stephen Robles:You know, we had a old, TV die once, because my son actually threw something at the screen. He was 2 years old at the time.
Jason Aten:So it didn't die. It was murder.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But, we totally took it apart, and that was kinda fun. It's like, you know, you see all the computer stuff in there. Used it as a kid. Alright.
Stephen Robles:One actually, I snuck one last thing in here. You know, we talk about Christian c league and the Juno app and how it's going away, but I mentioned many episodes ago, we want to support developers making good apps, from our communities, so you can mention us there. But I do want to mention there's a new app, Croissant, came out which is an awesome cross posting app, that you can go to mastodon, blue sky and threads at the same time. It's a app from Ben McCarthy and Aaron Vay and yeah croissant. So if you want something, if you're in the really into the Feta verse, I still have blue sky on my phone but I haven't been posting on it so I'm thinking about maybe start again just because it's easier to cross post.
Stephen Robles:Croissant, great app. There you go. Yeah. Put the Mac stories article in there and you can get the link from there.
Jason Aten:Good stuff.
Stephen Robles:From there. Alright. You drove you did a full self driving. I can't believe you put full self driving in the in the headline of your article because you don't believe that that exists.
Jason Aten:I mean, that is what they call it. That is the name of the feature.
Stephen Robles:This is part of the saga. You have to listen to our bonus episodes because Jason's Tesla has been, like, in repair. Right?
Jason Aten:I put a picture of it in there. Yeah. So, yeah, the super short version of it is my Tesla is missing a wheel. And so, finally, I was able to convince the people who are going to pay to fix it to let me just take it to Tesla, please, because the high voltage battery started to die. And so that was bad.
Jason Aten:And so Tesla just gave me a model 3 to drive. Like, they're like, boom. Here you go. Just take a model 3. It's not bat model 3.
Jason Aten:It's actually red, but whatever. And so they were like, here you go. Just take it. Yep. Bring it back.
Jason Aten:When we're done, we'll just call you. We'll just send you a message in the app. When your thing's done, you just agree to bring this thing back. It just instantly shows up in my app just like my other one. It only has the only weird thing for me is it only has the Bluetooth phone key, which means I have no key to this car.
Stephen Robles:That's what I keep.
Jason Aten:My phone.
Stephen Robles:Key cards?
Jason Aten:The the rent. Nope. The loaner doesn't. It just they add it to your app. And so it just has the phone key.
Jason Aten:But I I got in it the first time, and I'm like, this has full self driving. We're going to try this. And I had to drive to Chicago last weekend. And so I thought, let's give this a shot. And the short version of the story is full self driving is very cool, but it is not very good.
Jason Aten:It is not, it is not very good at all. It is. So it, the first thing I did was I drove from like our, the high school that our kids attend. This is after like a football game. And I, it drove it basically home and it did fine.
Jason Aten:It stopped at the stop signs. It waited for traffic to clear it, pulled onto the thing. It followed the speed limit. It, it, the only hiccup on that drive was I came to a traffic circle and, you know, there's a thing about human intuition. Like driving is a lot of feel.
Jason Aten:There's a lot of feel involved. You don't really think about it, but if you're driving on a road, that's 45 and there's a traffic circle, you'd be like, you have to slow down. Right. You cannot take a job. There's no traffic circle you can take at 45 miles an hour.
Jason Aten:And the Tesla doesn't realize that until it's like very late in the process. And so there was a lot of heartbreaking when we got to that traffic server, like it did it and it navigated the traffic circle and it went out the right side, which to be fair is actually more successful than a lot of humans because humans do not understand. Do you have traffic circles in Florida like anywhere?
Stephen Robles:2 or 3. Yeah.
Jason Aten:In the whole state. It's a big state and you have okay. Well, there are 2 to 3 on the way from here to the high school where my kids go to school. So it did it did, like, navigate it, but it's like one of those things where I think that the cameras, they don't they're not looking far enough ahead and preparing for what's going to happen. They're dealing with things in such a shorter response time that oftentimes those responses are like, woah, traffic circle.
Jason Aten:Let's slow down because we can't take this at 45 miles an hour kind of a thing. I I'm like, what would it do if it well, and you maybe I don't know if you've experienced this, but then the other thing is like, it'll sometimes think that there's a a car coming into your lane and it's like, boom. It's like such a sudden, like, thing. I'm like, no. That car's fine.
Jason Aten:They just drifted. They're just not paying attention. It'll be okay. It'll lead you to, like, slam on the brakes.
Stephen Robles:Video of someone drove their model model 3 into, like, a cemetery, and then this started like like, people started popping up on the screen because the car thought they were, like it was detecting That's That's terrifying. That's like I would exit immediately. But anyway,
Jason Aten:I that's amazing. That's that is a perfect YouTube or TikTok video. But so I drove it to Chicago. I was like, let's just see if it can get from my house to Chicago. And it pulled out of the house, pulled out of the neighborhood.
Jason Aten:It pulled a guy on the highway in the right place. And it, you know, the route planning is great in a Tesla. I have no beef with that. We can talk about your CarPlay experience at some point, but like, I actually think the Tesla's software is fine. Like I don't need CarPlay in my, in my Tesla.
Jason Aten:I haven't, I've never wanted CarPlay in my Tesla. I like CarPlay, but it's fine. And so it got on the highway and once we got closer to Chicago or anywhere where there's construction or basically anywhere where there's other cars, it starts to do weird things. Like it'll automatically decide which lane it should be in. It'll automatically change lanes.
Jason Aten:It'll put the blinker on and then it'll merge over there and it does a pretty good job, but then it wants to get back. And it's like, you got over to pass the semi truck. The semi truck still exists. It did. This is not a video game.
Jason Aten:It didn't just disappear. And it kept trying to get back over way too soon. And there was an there was, I think, at least a half dozen times I had to, you can cancel it by just hitting the blinker, turning the blinker off. It'll not try to merge. I had to do that, like, at least a half dozen times.
Jason Aten:There was another time where
Stephen Robles:cancel the merge, but not turn off the self driving.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So it turns on the blinker, like, in advance of it getting ready to merge.
Stephen Robles:So you know when it's gonna change. It's not just
Jason Aten:So, you know, you have about 2 seconds. And the and the first time I waited, I'm like, well, this is way too early, but maybe it's just telling me, and it was, but then it started to like, it was gonna get over. And if you cancel the blinker, it just comes back. So, yeah. And, but it, and then there was a time when it was, we were doing one of those like crossover things.
Jason Aten:So like you had to run the highway on this side, you cross over to the highway and the other side and both directions around the peers are doing construction over here. And it was like, it just pretend like that wasn't going to happen. And I'm like, no legit. We have to go over there. And I had to like take over.
Jason Aten:And then the last time was weird when it was like, around Chicago, crazy, like the one highway splitting into like 3 different things and it, and we needed to be in the left one, but we were in the right lane. And then all of a sudden, 2 more lanes up like a peer to the right, because it's like, and it just like goes straight over because it's like, I'm supposed to be in the far right lane because that's what I was driving in. And then it's like, the thing you realize is no, actually I have to be all the way over there. And it like tried to cancel itself going over and going back. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna handle this because my kid's in the car and I don't want us either either of us to die.
Jason Aten:The, the last thing I'll say is, the best representation of what I think is wrong with it is it doesn't have like that intuition. We, I was at a, I was in a left turn lane on just like a normal surface road. That's like 2 lanes in each direction. So fairly busy road. And I was going to pull into a subway and I put the destination and I was letting the full self driving take me there and it merged over and then emerged over into the turn lane and it turned the blinker on, like it was going to turn in and it, and the traffic cleared and the subway is maybe 70 yards from an intersection.
Jason Aten:And it was clear, starts to turn and somebody turns right at the intersection. Okay. Now as a human, you're like, they're not going to be up to speed. I can still make this turn. Not, or you might even make the turn if you shouldn't.
Jason Aten:Right. Right. But like, you know, like I have the car freaked out. Like all of a sudden it starts stopping, starting the wheel, starts doing this thing like back and forth. Like it's trying to decide, can I go or can I not go?
Jason Aten:And it's trying to do all this math and any human would instantly just know, like, it's fine. They just are turning. Yes. There is a car over there, but they won't possibly be up to speed in the amount of time it will take me to go over. And so, yeah, my bottom line is that car cannot fully drive itself.
Jason Aten:Like it's cool.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And I use, I use the summon feature. It was raining the other day. And so I was at a place there weren't other people around. I don't think I would have done it if there was a lot of people around, but I stood outside the place. I hit the summon.
Jason Aten:You hold the thing down after it figures out where you are, and it just drives itself right up in front of you. It was that's great. That's awesome. But, like, it was going 6 miles an hour. Like, it's fine.
Stephen Robles:The zone feature looks cool. So to cancel full self driving, like, do you just tap the brake and then all of a sudden it disengages, or is there more
Jason Aten:to it? If you tap the brake or you can also, like, the stalk push it back up. So it's the the the gear shifter, I guess you would call it on the right hand side. If you if you pull it all the way down, it'll do it. And then if you, you can either push the brake or you could take control of the steering wheel, which you have to kind of fight against it if you're going to do that.
Jason Aten:But any of those things, if it, if it senses like human intervening, it will stop. But it is like, it is then it'll ask you autopilot. I think it's this autopilot. Maybe it says full self driving disengaged what happened and it wants you to tell it and it'll like you hold down the thing and you can talk to it, which is actually a bad, bad, I understand that the feedback loop has to be immediate because it can't just ask you at the end of the trip what were the seven reasons that you disengaged. But if you just tried to kill me by merging me into semi truck, this
Stephen Robles:is not the
Jason Aten:time to ask me why.
Stephen Robles:He wants it to now play by play what just happened. I think
Jason Aten:you're muted.
Stephen Robles:So in times when it was, like, just doing its thing, like, you're on the highway or whatever, and it's fine, what is it like are your hands still on the wheel? Did you eventually, like, stop doing that?
Jason Aten:Yeah. For a while, I was just sitting there. So in full self driving mode, it uses an internal facing camera to make sure you're still paying attention. Oh. But you do not have to keep your hands on the wheel.
Stephen Robles:You don't.
Jason Aten:But it does require you to continue paying attention to the road and the traffic and the whatever's going on. There's the, basically there's 3 levels. There's like the aware cruise control, which just keeps you going the same speed and distance. That that's one thing you have to keep your hands on the wheel for that, obviously, because it's not controlling. There's the auto steer, which is the middle one, which is essentially what my Tesla has.
Jason Aten:They don't call it auto steer on mine. It's just called autopilot where it'll keep you in your lane. And that one will change lanes for you if you hit the blinker. So if I hit the left blinker, it'll just go over. Right.
Jason Aten:That one, you have to keep your hands on the wheel. And if you don't, it'll be like, put your hands back on the wheel. It'll like flash at you and stuff. But with a full self driving, the only as far as I could tell, the only requirement is it has to set it has to be able to tell that you're still paying attention to the road. So you couldn't, like, read a book.
Stephen Robles:So if you look down at your phone and stuff, like, what does it
Jason Aten:do? If you do that for any length of time, or if it senses you're distracted, it'll just put up a thing on the screen with little, like a little warning that says, please pay attention to the road. And if you didn't do it, if you didn't pay attention to the road, I believe what will happen is eventually it'll say, like, I I don't think it'll disengage. I think what it will do is, like, safely navigate you over to the side and, like, stop.
Stephen Robles:That's fascinating. So if when you were on the highway, were there any times when, like, it was gonna switch lanes and there was a car in the lane already, but it was back far enough? Like, how close of a car like, how close does it get to other cars when changing lanes, or does it wait till it has, like, a ton of room?
Jason Aten:I am a fairly I don't wanna say aggressive because that doesn't feel like the right word, but I'm a fairly, like, I'm a merge over. Like, I know I'm going fast enough that I'm, I'm I'm merging relatively closely, but I'm not going to merge in front of you and stop. Right. The Tesla will like, like it's character, it's calculation of when it's soon enough to merge over is way more aggressive than mine. I'm like that guy's gonna be ticked.
Stephen Robles:Like Like, almost doing a cutting off kind of thing?
Jason Aten:It's it's probably it maybe it felt so quick more like that than it really was. But to me, I'm like, yeah. I just cut that person off.
Stephen Robles:It does it accelerate to kind of make space as it's merging or is it just like,
Jason Aten:yeah, it actually does a pretty good job of that. It actually does. It senses the speed of the traffic and the lane you're going to and the truck, and it won't go over whatever you said is the max. So like, if the speed limit is 70 and you say, I'll go 74, it won't go over 74, but it will match the speed that it senses in the, in the next lane. And then if you're driving in the, like, let's say you're driving in the passing lane, but, but you just are there and other traffic comes up behind you, it must be sensing that because it'll say merging out of passing lane, like emerge you back.
Jason Aten:So it, it actually the lane changing, generally speaking, except for when it tries to smash you into it. No, we expect from when it tries to merge back too soon. Like the mechanics of that. Like there was a time when I was trying to, when it wanted me to go to the left and a vehicle like a big old Escalade suddenly decided to merge to the right. Not quite occupying the same space, but pretty close.
Jason Aten:And the Tesla actually handled that pretty well because it got all the way over and it was able to slow down quickly enough to avoid any kind of an accident. So like that part of it was somewhat impressive. It was not enjoyable or comfortable, but in that it did the, like what it needed to do, which is an abrupt. It's very good at abrupt breaking. Let me put it that way.
Stephen Robles:I imagine the algorithms tweak to favor that. It's like stop now. Stop the car. That's fascinating. I I would love to try it.
Stephen Robles:The summer feature is cool. My my year Tesla Model S has, it doesn't even self windshield, you know. You gotta you gotta turn on the windshield. No. It actually does that.
Stephen Robles:It does the windshield wipers automatically, but alright. Last question. Could we all get to our bonus episode? I wanna talk about camera control and about what was the other thing we were talking about? Oh, charging my car.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Let's talk about that.
Stephen Robles:What was the other thing? There was 2 topics. There was
Jason Aten:Well, it was the the space above the deck we already talked about.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. So let's talk about alright. Well, alright.
Stephen Robles:I'll save it. But, that's fascinating. We're oh, and car play in my car. That's that's what I was talking so I'm gonna
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. Yeah. The charge
Stephen Robles:let me ask you now. Have you ever forgotten to charge your Tesla overnight? And, like, what do you do in that situation?
Jason Aten:I have actually forgotten to charge my car overnight, but I I mean, I have a level 2 charger in the garage. And so as long as I be not driving along, like it's never really been a problem. I have free supercharging on mine and there's a couple of superchargers around here. So if I was like, I have to go to the airport, I could probably like figure that out in enough time to be like, okay, let me stop at the supercharger on the way for 15 minutes. That's one thing I loved about this model 3 is it charges way faster than
Stephen Robles:my model
Jason Aten:because my model s, is a 2018. I believe that the lit well, it'll work on the on the version 2 in the version 3, but it'll only get about 178 kilowatts on the version threes. And the, the version twos are limited to 1 50. And so the fastest I've ever seen mine charges, like 178 kilowatts. This thing will charge at 250.
Jason Aten:Like it is just like we stopped for 20 minutes and went from like 14% to like 70. I was like,
Stephen Robles:that's amazing. What has happened?
Jason Aten:That's what is happening? That was, that was great. I I'm jealous of the people who have more recent model year, especially the model threes and the model wise, I think charge the fastest. I'm like, Oh, that is nice. Now the compromise is this has pretty good range, but mine still has a bigger battery.
Jason Aten:Well, right now it has no battery, but when it gets fixed, it'll have a bigger battery that will have better rate.
Stephen Robles:Gotcha. Yeah. I was I actually forgot to charge it 1 night. I was driving multiple trips, and so I did a supercharger for the first time for me. And that is pretty fun, like, just to see how fast it charges and, like Yep.
Stephen Robles:You know, just sit there and watch something on a little screen. You know? It's it's, it's pretty fun.
Jason Aten:Plug it in and let it rip. So yeah. I mean, I generally am pretty good about it. And in fact, actually, my wife is very good about it. She's like, did you need to plug in did you remember to plug in the car?
Jason Aten:Do you need to plug in the car? So
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna I actually put a widget in one of my stacks because Tesla has a widget and you could see in the widget if it's charging. So I just need to create a reminder nightly that says, like, check to see if it's charging. And most of the time it is. Yeah. Anyway, alright.
Stephen Robles:Well, let's talk about camera control in a bonus episode. If you wanna listen to the bonus episode, you could support the show directly in Apple Podcasts or go to primary tech dot f m. Click bonus episodes to support us there. $5 a month, $50 a year, you get every bonus episode, the whole back catalog, and ad free versions of the show. We appreciate your support there.
Stephen Robles:And if not, you could just leave us a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Pocket Cast. We appreciate all your support there. You can watch the show at youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. And our thanks to Audio Hijack for sponsoring this episode. Again, links to everything down in the show notes and we'll, see you in the bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:Catch you next time.
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