Google’s Doomsday Clock, Apple’s Product Cycle, AI Makes Full Podcasts Now
Download MP3You don't face your fears. You ride them. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Today, it's increasingly looking like Apple is holding an October event, plus it's releasing its first scripted series in immersive video on Apple Vision Pro. We're gonna talk about that.
Stephen Robles:The DOJ is proposing to break up Google and sell off some of its businesses. Uber drivers are using Tesla's full self driving as robo taxis and a ton more. This episode is brought to you by Notion AI, Audio Hijack, and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, coming at you from a lakefront property, which we'll talk about in a second, and joining me, up north, my friend Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I think I'm doing better than you are. Although, you have a nice view, so I'm jealous.
Stephen Robles:So so, listeners, if you don't know, I live in Florida. I live near Tampa, Florida, and we are recording on Wednesday morning. And this evening, Hurricane Milton is likely to just totally run across the state of Florida. And so I brought my family away. We are actually in North Georgia.
Stephen Robles:And we actually found a nice Airbnb. We're going to talk about the escape plan and how I, you know, got here and the whole process in the bonus episode. So you could support the show in Apple Podcasts or primary tech dot fm. And I'm going to talk about that whole process. But if you're watching on youtube, youtube.com / at primary tech show, this is my recording setup for this episode.
Stephen Robles:I have my laptop and iPhone and continuity camera on a fire pit because it was a better elevation. And, yeah. I'm literally on a lake. You might be hearing a motorboat go by right now. I'm gonna run this through every noise removal thing I can, but this is gonna be a very, like, atmospheric, ASMR episode.
Stephen Robles:You're gonna hear some birds. You might hear some fish. There were I heard a dog a while ago. So, yeah, we're we're out here in the country on a lake. So
Jason Aten:I love it. I think this is great. I mean, this is much better than having you do the podcast from the show floor, also known as, like, the eye of the hurricane. So I feel like this is a better situation.
Stephen Robles:Better situations. I thought to everyone in Florida. I mean, my house is still down there. I couldn't bring my house with me, so, hopefully, we're gonna see how that goes. And,
Jason Aten:we're hoping your house stays down there. That would be the ideal scenario.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. And, you know, I took no you know, we left pretty quickly. I'll go again. We'll just save this for the bonus episode, but my entire studio, you know, all my equipment's there. So, hopefully, yeah, it's it's all there.
Stephen Robles:So next week, ideally, we'll be recording. If there's power, that's another big factor. I will be back in the studio, but but we're here bringing it to you from the lake, lake lake episode.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But we also have a ton of 5 star review shout outs. We need to thank so many of you. Thank you all for sending these in. So Cramemboli from Germany said the braided solo loop is better for the Apple Watch. I like the braided solo loop.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I'm with you there. Andy's from Germany, new to the show. Welcome. Musaid from USA, Tractor Boys promoted.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if that's a that's a business name. Maybe they just got a plug. From Great Britain.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:This is the first show they go to to listen to every week, so thank you for that.
Jason Aten:Me too. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Good call. Seth Smith from the USA said the show's informative and entertaining. Thank you for that. Jamie Mandim from Great Britain. Now they had a correction for you.
Stephen Robles:It's called a roundabout, not a traffic circle. Battery percentage off. Loves the show. I guess you said traffic circle last episode.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But I don't live in Great Britain, so it's okay that it's called something different. Someone mentioned this in our in our, member area too, our, social dot primary. F m. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And, I'm like, I don't think that calling it the wrong thing is gonna be the problem because they're like, if you bring your Tesla over here, well, whatever. I'm like, it'll be driving on the wrong side of the road. I have way more problems than whether we call this thing a traffic circle or a roundabout.
Stephen Robles:Now, I mean, you know, things are called different things as far as I know in different countries. You know, you got, like, buttons here, poppers over there. Right? You got getting in line, getting in the queue. Listen, I'm not an expert, but Yeah.
Stephen Robles:The thing things are different. I will say I had the opportunity to, if I wanted to, drive in in the UK, because I actually visited London and some of the countryside many years ago, I decided not to. I thought that would be a bad idea to try and drive on the wrong side of the road. Mhmm. Or excuse me.
Jason Aten:Probably.
Stephen Robles:The other side of the road. On the the wrong side.
Jason Aten:On the opposite side of the road. Yeah. Listen. Here's the thing. We can you can call them a roundabout.
Jason Aten:You can call them a traffic circle. I just call them poor urban planning because they're just a nightmare. Now wait. Thing. So We don't have time to
Stephen Robles:get into this, Jason. I mean, I don't think that a roundabout is, all bad. I don't think this is a chaotic evil here. I think a roundabout has some uses.
Jason Aten:Have you seen people driving in them? They're absolutely chaotic evil in
Stephen Robles:a lot of situations.
Jason Aten:People just don't know what to do.
Stephen Robles:There's a lot of good ideas and good things out there that are used by not good people. I'm just saying. You know, it just doesn't make the thing bad.
Jason Aten:You been at a have you been to an exit? When we stayed in, I think it was the Smoky Mountains, maybe. No. It was when we were in Colorado. You would get off the highway, and it was a traffic circle roundabout.
Jason Aten:No. First, there was a traffic circle, then you'd go a 100 yards and there was a roundabout, and then you'd go again like, there's just to get up the highway, there were 3 of them.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I wouldn't put what
Jason Aten:Not even kidding.
Stephen Robles:Pull it right off the highway. That seems a little
Jason Aten:Listen. I'm not even joking.
Stephen Robles:This this episode is about roundabouts. Excuse me, traffic circles. No. Excuse me, roundabouts. Alright.
Jason Aten:This it's a slow news week, apparently.
Stephen Robles:It's a slow new week. With 3 shadow from the USA, battery percentage on. That's alright. We'll forgive that. And a sabertooth v v one from South Africa.
Stephen Robles:And this was interesting. They just talked about, Amazon Prime Video, which, you know, we talked about, does anyone subscribe just to the video portion for Amazon Prime Video? And they said in South Africa, it's actually more afford it's one of the more affordable streaming services, Thinks it works out to, like, $4 a month. And for them, there's no point in having the Amazon Prime subscription with shipping because outside of the US, they're not they don't get a lot of that, and so it just cost more for something they don't get. So I thought that was interesting.
Stephen Robles:South Africa viewer and listener, thank you for that. Also said battery percentage off because it feels forced in the corner of the iPhone. I totally agree. I agree. That's great.
Stephen Robles:The lighting is changing as I'm recording here outside. You see the sun is now
Jason Aten:You have a nice glow.
Stephen Robles:I have a nice glow right now. Listen, lighting is gonna be on point for this episode. Background noise, to be determined. We'll see. Gotta listen to that.
Jason Aten:That's fine.
Stephen Robles:Alright. So Apple, some news here. First of all, I'm actually I'm excited to see this. It's gonna give me a good reason to put on my Apple Vision Pro, charge it up, take it out of the case. Hopefully, it's still there when I get back to Florida.
Stephen Robles:But Submerged, it's the first scripted, so this is a, you know, fiction, non documentary style, piece of content, and Submerge is going to be it was filmed completely in Apple immersive video, and you're gonna be able to watch this. I'm not sure if they said how long it was gonna be. I'm very curious the length because every immersive video Apple has released for Vision Pro has been, like, 6 minutes, 5 minutes. I think the parkour one was 12. But this is a scripted short film, I guess, or or maybe a full movie.
Stephen Robles:It seems to take place in a submarine, and it's all immersive. It was filmed completely in immersive. I'm actually really excited to see this. I think this is the kind of content that the Apple Vision Pro needs. I mean, it's it's encouraging me to wear it, and I know you wear yours every day, but I I I do not.
Stephen Robles:So it is, I'm I'm looking forward to this. The trailer's on YouTube right now, And, I man, I'm you're gonna have immersive video while you feel like you're drowning in a submarine, and, frankly, I just can't wait. I think it's gonna be great.
Jason Aten:I love that you froze on, like isn't that, like, the director watching, like, the dailies or something, like, using a vision pro? You're watching it using a vision pro? I don't I think this is terrifying. I don't know why anyone would wanna watch a horror movie in the vision pro. Like, there are some things that you just don't wanna do, and I promise you this is one of them.
Jason Aten:I don't yeah. What I really need if I'm watching a thing about a submarine, like, all of the people getting hit by a torpedo and imploding is to feel like I'm also there. Yeah. Can't wait.
Stephen Robles:Absolutely. It's gonna be terrifying. You know, I might have to, like, yank the Vision Pro off while it I feel like I'm about to drown, but I also think that this is the kind of content that is gonna make it's gonna be proving the concept of Apple Vision Pro. Like, it this is a reason, to maybe maybe not buy 1, but to if you had bought 1, like me, to actually take it out of the case and use it. And, yeah.
Jason Aten:Do we know what the Vision Pro like, is it like if you're in a dream, if you die in a dream, you die in real life? What happens in the Vision Pro?
Stephen Robles:That is a good question. I don't I mean, you are kinda jacked in. You got that battery pack with the cable. I don't I mean Yeah. It's risky.
Stephen Robles:So but, anyway, that comes out October 10th, I believe, at 12 noon EST.
Jason Aten:So, like, so, like, if you have listened to this when we release it That's
Stephen Robles:right.
Jason Aten:You can also go and buy a VisionPRO and then watch the Submerge.
Stephen Robles:Exactly.
Jason Aten:I don't think you should, but you should only do it if you already have one.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. So that's coming out. That's interesting. And it is more and more looking like there's going to be an October Apple event. Mark Ervin Mark Ervin over there with his Power On newsletter over at Bloomberg, talking about how Apple is slowly moving away from its annual product release strategy, which, you know, Apple had been, at least on the iPhone every September, you know, new base on the iPad every fall, Apple Watch, and says they might be moving away from that strategy, but that also includes an October event.
Stephen Robles:And what I thought was really interesting, this went around, the the Internet. So there's a bird very it's chirping. So
Jason Aten:It's very excited about this event. Bird. Very excited.
Stephen Robles:The bird is ready to go on, this, but this was wild. The a Russian YouTuber seems to have gotten his hands on the unreleased M4 MacBook Pro, maybe a base model M4. It doesn't look like it's M4 Pro or M4 Max, 14 inch, And actually, it's a whole like unboxing video. And then there's another, short form video from a different creator also supposedly showing the m 4 MacBook Pro. Legitimacy, Jason, what do you think?
Stephen Robles:Is this like the thing? Is that the m 4 MacBook Pro?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I mean, it's a lot of work to go through for the base level m 4. Like, it's this is not an m 4 max or m 4 ultra. Like, there's nothing about like, we knew that this item existed, right? Like this is the thing we knew was going to happen.
Jason Aten:And so I don't know, like something makes me feel like maybe, but also it's just such a weird thing to leak. It's not like, Hey, here's the M4 ultra in a laptop. Right. Or the extreme things things that have never happened before. And let me show you like the geek bench test on that.
Jason Aten:It's like, no, here's a white box with some specs that say m 4.
Stephen Robles:Here's the next chip that you were already a 100% sure Apple was going to release at some point.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And you can already buy a device with this in it. Right? Like, I have an m 4 Mac m iPad right here. IPad Pro.
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:That's that's a good point. So, you know, everybody's maybe we'll get the m 4 MacBook Pros and all that. But, also, Gurman is saying that we're going to get the app maybe updated iPad mini, m 4 Mac Mini, but also that Apple Intelligence with 18 dot 1 should release to the public, I think, at the end of this month, he was saying, so the end of October, which Yep. We just got another developer beta, like, a couple days ago, the 6th developer beta, which can I just can I just say, Jason, off topic? I just cannot wait to be off the beta train.
Stephen Robles:My app icons on the home screen just, like, disappear sometimes. Like, are you on you're still on the beta train. Right? Aren't you running?
Jason Aten:I am on the beta, and mostly it's because my children think it's cool when the Siri glows even though Siri doesn't do anything different.
Stephen Robles:Do anything.
Jason Aten:They just think it's cool that it glows. They asked me all the time. And listen, I'm gonna tell you this is since you've already derailed us. That's great. This is what podcasts are for.
Jason Aten:My my youngest son is like mad at Snoop Dogg because he keeps talking about how you can buy these phones with Apple intelligence and you can't, there are no phones that Apple is selling that have Apple intelligence, unless you're running a beta. Right? You you have to be running a beta in order to be using Apple intelligence. And so they're asking me all the time about like getting the phones with Apple intelligence. And I keep having to I've I've given up.
Jason Aten:Apple has won this battle at our at my house because they it's like this thing where they feel like if they just keep saying the same thing over and over and over again, people like us who know that this is just crazy talk, we just give up. Yeah. And so it's caused it's caused some problems.
Stephen Robles:It's strange. And so so tell me, what do you think about this this different, quote, unquote, release cycle, which, you know, there were a few products on the annual release cycle, but Apple has always, you know, plugged in other events. I think about the whole the first Imac, m one Imac event, which was, like, an April thing, and a bunch of stuff came out then. We got the m four iPad Pro this spring. We'll do stuff in a press release.
Stephen Robles:So I don't know. Does this have any bearing on
Jason Aten:Well, here's the thing. I don't know that it's fair to say that Apple has an annual release cycle for anything other than the iPhone. And the reason the iPhone has this is because it is the single most important consumer product in the history of the ever. In the history. It's it is.
Jason Aten:It's just the most important product that anyone makes, period. It is. It is. That's just the way that it is. It makes the iPhone alone brings in more money than, you know, 470 of the fortune 500 companies.
Jason Aten:Like it's just, that might not be exactly correct. But the point is it's like ridiculous how much money Apple makes just on the iPhone. And so that's the one that consistently they have to ship one every September. And if they didn't, there'd be real repercussions, not just for Apple, but for app developers, for accessory makers. There's, like, this enormous economy that is just all based around the iPhone.
Jason Aten:And so everything else, I think if I've tried many times to figure out, like, what in the world is Apple's release cycle? Because, you know, last year we ended up with 2 Mac books released. Like,
Stephen Robles:that is true.
Jason Aten:I don't even understand. And then they released the 15 inch Mac book air in June at WWDC. And then they re re refresh, refreshed them in like, was it March or April of this year? Like there wasn't even a year. So like, I don't know that there's any rhyme or reason to it other than these things are ready to ship, and let's let's ship them.
Jason Aten:I do think they probably try to like, there's gotta be a minimum. Right? Those MacBook Pros, they were pretty close together.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. They're pretty close. But other than that Do you think you know, thinking about the annual release cycle for the iPhone and how that's kind of nonnegotiable a a lot of people were saying that this year's iPhone upgrade was not significant. I don't know if I agree with that. I feel like the ultra wide 48 megapixel camera, the 4 k 120, just the overall camera system on the new phone, I think is an upgrade.
Stephen Robles:You know, I don't know if I I don't wanna say significant or insignificant. It was an upgrade. But, you know, the camera control, I know you've been using it. I have not been. I really don't.
Stephen Robles:I I don't use it. I wonder if that annual cadence does make it Apple tries to put features maybe before they're ready or maybe features that are made a bigger deal than they actually are for the sake of it feeling like a more significant upgrade. And it always like especially during the event as you're watching it, sometimes it feels like, you know, they're saying a lot of superlatives right now, but it also does feel like this feels a lot like last year's event. Like, it does you know what I mean? Does it does it feel that way to you?
Stephen Robles:Like, is this annual cycle for something like the iPhone, would we get more innovation if it was less? I don't know if that's true.
Jason Aten:No. But, also, I do think this is an important point. And I think our listeners probably, like, understand this, but we forget about it because we care so much every year. But that's not the like, Apple's gonna sell a 150,000,000 of these things, and there's like 4,000 people that care about the incremental update each year. And most people are buying, you know, upgrading to an iPhone 16.
Jason Aten:My mom, for example, upgraded from a 13 pro massive up grade. And she upgraded because she was headed to Iceland. They're actually there right now. And she asked me, should I buy a new camera? I'm like, no, you shouldn't buy a new camera because if you're gonna go to Iceland and you wanna get good, good, you know, photos, you also have to invest in $7,000 for the lenses.
Jason Aten:And do you really want to be carrying that around? Or you can drop a grand on an iPhone 16 pro. She's been sending us photos. They're amazing. I asked her, I texted her the other day and I said, are you, you know, how do you like your new phone camera?
Jason Aten:And she's like, it's amazing. Right? Like it's. And so that's, that's the thing going from a 13 pro to a 16 pro huge, huge upgrade. Also, I know that people say that the pro model sells the best.
Jason Aten:I don't know if that's true. I have a hard time believing that unit sales of the pros are more than the base iPhones. Maybe the dollar amount is more, but if you were on a, like a 15 and you upgraded to a 16, I think that is a huge upgrade. Right? Because you've got you, you know, you have a better camera system, you got the action button and you got the camera control.
Jason Aten:And, you know, I just feel like overall we might be looking at the wrong areas for the improvements because there's just only, there's only so much you can do every, every single year. And they map these things out and it's like, well, this year we can do this. And then next year we'll do this. And so I just, I think if you look at it in a 3 year cycle, I think the thing about apple intelligence is it does have the opportunity to move the needle more because if everyone, I don't know, apple, I'm sure has this mapped out somewhere, but they probably assume people are on like a 3 year upgrade cycle. Imagine if they could take that and turn it to a 2 year upgrade cycle, get people to upgrade every other year instead of every 3rd year.
Jason Aten:That's a huge impact on their bottom line. And so I don't know. I think we won't know that for a couple years, but I I feel like no. I don't think it's a problem that it was a, quote, incremental up upgrade.
Stephen Robles:And I do think once Apple Intelligence actually exists and Visual Intelligence, I'm not sure if Visual Intelligence will be coming with 18 dot 1 or if that's a later feature. But I feel like once that's out in the world and people see other people using it, that might be an impetus to be like, I want that. You know, yes, you could have done that with Google Lens for years, but it wasn't readily accessible. Like, people didn't know, like, how to do that or where to go, and it's a third party app or whatever. But I do wonder if that will be, you know, drive a little more sales.
Stephen Robles:And I'll say my mom, she went from iPhone 12 to iPhone 16. It was, like, a 4 year gap, and, it's a great upgrade. Man, 16 is great.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Just the just the camera quality alone is a massive upgrade for a lot of people. You know, the 5 the 5 x telephoto, the overall quality. I mean, the 12 the iPhone 12 does not have the 48 megapixel, you know, rock. You know, it's not gonna give you the 24 megapixel normal pfeek JPEG, whatever the heck those
Stephen Robles:people are called.
Jason Aten:So Yeah. So those are those are huge upgrades. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Huge. So at the yeah. That's interesting. Alright.
Stephen Robles:Do you got anything else on that? On the on the annual update?
Jason Aten:Not on that. No.
Stephen Robles:Not really. Okay. So we'll keep an eye on it. Maybe later this month, we'll get a frighteningly fast event. Terrifyingly fast event.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Before we get to the DOJ and breaking of Google and more news, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Notion. And I don't know if you friends know that Notion powers this very podcast. Jason and I have been using Notion from day 1 to plan every single episode. We collaborate and share in those notes, put the links, attachments, all that kind of stuff.
Stephen Robles:Even the PDF for this very sponsorship was in a Notion note right before, we got to this spot, and Notion is amazing. I I love Notion. I also use Notion for my personal video planning, which my channel just hit a 100 k, which is, really fun. So thanks, everyone, if you subscribed over there. That's that's cool.
Stephen Robles:But Notion powers that too. All the planning and my project management for Notion is there, and now Notion actually has AI built right into the system. And the new Notion AI, it's a single AI tool that does everything, search across Notion and other apps, generate docs in your own style, analyze PDFs and images, and you can chat with it about everything. And like I was mentioning, it's a perfect place for your tasks, track your habits, great for personal and work stuff. Notion AI uses knowledge from GPT 4 and Claude when you chat with it on any topic.
Stephen Robles:And unlike other specialized tools or legacy suites that have you bouncing between 6 different apps, Notion is seamlessly integrated, infinitely flexible, and beautifully easy to use, so you're empowered to do your most meaningful work. And Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, and teams that use Notion send less email, cancel more meetings, and save time searching for their work and reduce spending on tools. And honestly, I've used Notion AI even just like having text in a Notion doc, you can select that text, then you can have Notion do all the things like reformat, paraphrase, and all of that. Then you can prompt Notion AI to do even more and generate more content based on that topic, which is way more than just like Apple Intelligence writing tools. You know what I mean?
Stephen Robles:And, also, Jason, actually Jason actually interviewed the Notion CEO was semi when was that?
Jason Aten:It was a couple years ago. It was when they were really pushing out the, Notion AI. So it was like I guess it was last year. It was February of last year. Did a did an interview with them.
Jason Aten:There's an article. There's a link. You can actually listen to the interview we did as well just about how the the thing I thought was interesting about it at the time was that Notion was you know, this was not that long after chat gbt came out. And at that point, it was like, this is a cool tool tool, but really it's just a toy for a lot of people. Whereas then you started to see companies like Notion build it in in a way that's super useful.
Jason Aten:I I I just asked I use Notion as well for not only this podcast, but every article I've ever written. And I just literally asked it. What is the first article I wrote about Tim Cook? That's it. That's that's the only prompt I gave it, and it looks through my entire database of stuff, found all the articles I've ever written about it.
Jason Aten:And it says based on the search results, the first article you wrote about Tim Cook appears to be be Elon Musk tried to sell Tesla to Apple why Tim Cook wouldn't take the meeting, published in 2020. And it gave me a summary of the article I wrote. Like, it it's great. It's fantastic.
Stephen Robles:I think I remember that exact article, actually, because that's when that's when we first started arguing online. It was Yeah.
Jason Aten:Probably. It was
Stephen Robles:during that time. Listen, you could try Notion for free when you go to notion.com/primarytechnology. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com/primarytechnology to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're supporting the show. Notion.com/primarytechnology, and that episode or that link is in the show notes as well.
Stephen Robles:Thank you, Notion, for sponsoring this episode. With the the DOJ, I'm breaking up Google. This has been kind of not in the works, but being talked about for a long time. If you're just tuning into the show, you might be hearing a bird in the background because like I mentioned earlier, this is lakefront episode. So we'll see how
Jason Aten:I love it.
Stephen Robles:Noise removal does that. But the the DOJ is looking to break up Google. This would be a huge antitrust case and, you know, when you look at Google and all the different parts of the business, obviously, Google search, massive part, and honestly, the biggest part of their actual revenue business. Then, of course, you have YouTube, Chrome, Android, all these different services, all under the umbrella of Alphabet. I I'm curious your thoughts on this, Jason, because breaking up Google, it's like, what what would you break up to actually rid it of its monopoly on different things?
Stephen Robles:Like, to break Google search is basically, like that's, like, 90% of the company as far as revenue, so I'm not sure how that would work. And, I mean, Chrome, the web browser, everything's based on Chrome now anyways. Chromium is the engine that powers Microsoft Edge and all the other, like, brave. Right. Everything's Chromium except for Safari.
Stephen Robles:So, like, like, what what would you even break up?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So this was basically the Department of Justice was they filed what they consider like their proposed remedy framework. So they're telling the judge, we may be asking for these things. And this is the case where the judge already found Google. This is the one that we got the ruling the summer, that Google is a monopoly.
Jason Aten:That was the first phase. Google is obviously going to appeal all of that, but then we move on to the remedy phase of it. And so the the department of justice is essentially saying, we think that one of the potential remedies is breaking up Google. And specifically some of the things that they could do is say you have to divest yourself of Chrome or Android or these other things that allow Google to kind of have this like stranglehold on the search search market. They also could very well look for, like we talked about this, the difference between like structural remedies and behavioral remedies and like a behavioral behavioral remedy would be, you can no longer pay apple $20,000,000,000 to be the default search engine.
Jason Aten:Like that that's an oversimplification, but that would be a behavioral remedy. They're definitely gonna ask for that stuff too. But I think they're also this filing indicates that they are are leaning strongly towards asking the court to force Google to break apart some of its businesses. And I mean, it could be as simple as like, not as simple. It could be everything from Google has to separate out its ad tech business from its search engine, which doesn't make any sense because you have no search engine without the ad tech.
Jason Aten:Right. That's where it makes all of its money. But you just have to look at, like, you know, Android, for example, is technically open source. But if you want to have certain things you have to have, like, you have to Google requires Samsung and other vendors to do things like you have to have the place. If, you know, if you want the place to work and you're gonna have any apps, you also then have to have Chrome.
Jason Aten:You also have to have all these other things. And so I feel like it could be really interesting. It is worth mentioning that just because the DOJ asks for it doesn't mean a judge will go along with that. Right? It's still up to the judge eventually, but I it's getting real for Google.
Jason Aten:And this is the closest we've ever been. You know? Isn't there like that nuclear clock? It's like how many seconds to midnight are we like from the yeah. The doomsday clock.
Jason Aten:Google's doomsday clock just tick a couple seconds closer to midnight. So
Stephen Robles:You know, I almost wonder thinking about how could Google be regulated to maybe benefit others besides Google. It's in a nondestructive way. I almost feel like and I don't think the US government could actually be, like, this nuanced to pass laws effectively, but to almost regulate search to a point you know, I think about AI overviews. I think about all the sponsored search results you see before you see other things, how the drop in traffic to a lot of websites. I experienced this both in work.
Stephen Robles:You know, you've heard it from people like Nilay on Decoder interviewing small businesses. They're like, that drop in Google search traffic has been one of the most detrimental things to their business in years, and I almost wonder if forcing Google to somehow allow more competition in their search results, You know, like, either, you know, sponsored links have to be, like, 5 links deep on the home page, or something like that, which still means Google will have lots of people paying for those ad spots, because if they're not already on the front page of Google, that's how you could do it. But that other websites, small businesses, have a chance to actually be seen in normal Google searches, whereas I feel like increasingly, there's little to no chance. Even big companies, that are that have been trying to do the SEO game for years, like, there are no tactics now that they have to be able to get back up there in the search results. Even if it's a long standing brand, the reputable company maybe even belongs on the home page.
Stephen Robles:It's, like, not even possible to get there. So I don't know. Is that crazy talk? Like, am I, like I don't know.
Jason Aten:I don't think any of it's crazy talk. I remember do you remember the days when there was, like, 2 sponsored links at the top of the Google search results? And there are searches now that you do them, and there's, like, 10. And you're just, like, is there anything organic in here anymore? And the answer is pretty much no.
Stephen Robles:Well, I'm like like, I did I've done searches recently, and it's, like, AI overview. Like, especially if you like, if you're on mobile, which is I imagine most of the people that are using Google search, and if you're on iPhone, it's the default. The AI overview takes up the top 50 to 70% of the screen.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And then under that, if you have even 5 sponsored links, you are not seeing any organic search result until 2 scrolls away. And Yeah. I've even started to get to the point where, like so again, hurricane wise, I had to Google, is it okay to put ethanol free gas in a car? I don't like, I'm just I had to look at
Jason Aten:I have so many questions, but we don't have time.
Stephen Robles:That was the only gas available. And so I googled it, and it was the AI overview that came up. It told me that the source was kellybluebook.comkbb. Com. So I was like, okay.
Stephen Robles:I think I trust this AI overview result, because I see the source it's coming from. I scrolled down a little further, and it was like a Google answers, where you know, this is not the AI overview. This is just like Google giving you answers that you can then expand and say, well, other people ask this. I never clicked to a website. I got an I got an answer in the AI overview.
Stephen Robles:I got a confirming answer that, yes, it seems to be okay. And spoiler, we drove all the way up to Atlanta and it was fine, so okay. I I guess it was right. It was on a tank of ethanol, free gas. And so I like, I never went to I didn't go to kellybluebook.com.
Stephen Robles:I didn't go anywhere. And that is, like, the current state of what happens when people search for something, is that they get the answer they're looking for maybe 7 out of 10 times without going to a website, and I feel like that alone, like, selling that to another company just to allow someone else to do AI overviews and sponsored ads at the top, does not seem like it would help the consumer, but maybe somehow regulating that, so like, hey, listen. The first three links need to be organic. I don't even know if there's a law that can work, but that feels more like it would benefit users more than breaking Google up. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I mean, I will just go on record saying I am not a fan of courts or regulators telling businesses how to, or not to make money. Generally speaking. I mean, they should, they have to follow the law, whatever, whatever, because then you end up with situations like, for example, the most obvious example of this in my mind is the EU forcing apple to switch over to the USB C. I think apple should have done it. They should have done it a long time ago.
Jason Aten:I don't think the EU should be in the business of telling apple to do that because now we're in this very weird situation where like, can apple get rid of a pork? What if they don't want to have any pork? Like, this just like, they shouldn't be, these people are not product designers. They should not be, you know, doing that sort of thing. And the same thing I think is true for software on the internet.
Jason Aten:And just in general, do we, should courts be saying you have to have this many organic links versus this many paid links. And these, this is how it goes. That's different though, than saying you can't just scrape all of Yelp's data or Kelly blue book in this case and serve it up to the reader. In when the entire reason that that link exists in the 1st place or that webpage exists in the 1st place is to get traffic so that they can monetize their own business. Right.
Jason Aten:That's a totally different situation. And so I've, but I don't know what the solution to that is because again, as soon as you get a regulator or a court going into do that, it gets really messy. And you end up with like situations right now where apple in the EU is trying to finesse its way around the use regulations to open up the app store and open up the, you know, iOS. And you have these like constant back and forth and the courts are gonna, or the regulators are gonna see, you have to do this. And apple, like, finds a way to do sort of what that was without doing the thing that everyone actually wants them to do.
Jason Aten:Right. And so I don't know. I mean, the another example of this, like the jet, I think it was just yesterday that the, another district court in the epic versus Fortnite case issued an injunction that essentially forces Google to allow the third party app stores without all the hoops that you have to jump through. And they cannot prohibit in app payments from other sources. And so essentially, all the things that Apple is being forced to do in the EU, Google is now going to be forced to do here in the United States as a result of that case.
Jason Aten:So, I mean, like I said, I think Google's doomsday clock is ticking closer to midnight.
Stephen Robles:When, you know, a business' strategy many businesses would say, you know, organic reach or organic search content, organic traffic is making content that you would put out there and pick up by Google search. And so the answer in recent years has been, well, video content. Do organic video content, and that will help reach a wider audience. That's largely part of my full time gig is organic video content. And where do you put that?
Stephen Robles:YouTube. Yep. Google. Google, which is Google. And I think about when someone does a Google search, for me, as a YouTube creator, it's a great benefit that my videos might come up in Google search.
Stephen Robles:And I've actually had several videos, like my screen time parental controls, the first videos I ever posted, still come up in Google search results. And that is where traffic for those videos still come from today, like 4 years later, which is amazing. But again, it is still all under the purview of 1 company. And if they decide, we're gonna all just put sponsored videos there when creators pay to have their videos pushed to the top of results, that's what we're gonna prioritize. And I I it's problematic, because then you get, like, just less and less traffic to the actual content creators, and I don't mean just video and social media influencers, I mean websites, blogs, kellybluebook.com or whatever companies trying to create something that provides value, but can't get that to their potential customer because Google is just taking that and serving it up in a AI overview, and then that's it.
Stephen Robles:So it's it's messy. That is messy. What's also messy, Jason, apparently, your experience last week of full self driving in the Tesla, has inspired a wave of taxi drivers to do it as well. No. I'm just kidding.
Stephen Robles:That's all made up.
Jason Aten:I hope it wasn't inspired by my thing because they definitely did. Was it the bonus episode or was that the regular? Regardless, they certainly were not paying attention if they were inspired by it. Let's just be clear.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So this is Uber and Lyft drivers are using Tesla's with full self driving, okay, capability, which is is it a $100 a month? Is that currently what the pricing is for
Jason Aten:you? Yeah. You can you can rent it for yes. You can subscribe to it for a $100 a month or I think there's, like, a one time purchase of, like, $8 or something
Stephen Robles:like that. Something. Right? That's what I thought. Which I thought, like, for a while, it was, like, 200 something a month.
Stephen Robles:I thought they ex Tesla, like, experimented with, like, a higher full self driving subscription, and it seems like they have less.
Jason Aten:I think what's happening is that Tesla, in order to ever make this work, needs lots more people using it so it can get the data about, like, why did it run into the median until they can sort of try to figure those things out until they needed to make it cheaper. And yet it's still a very expensive thing. This is a, such a weird story because this is not like the way Mo, which is like you get into a car, you know, that the car has no driver, right? You sit there's no one in the front seat. You sit down, Ben Thompson, extra tech re actually had a really great, like he was at so enamored by the, the way most that he took in San Francisco last week or whatever that he, and he wrote about it, like, and he did several podcasts about it.
Jason Aten:But the point was like, it walks you through the whole process of what's going to happen. And it worked very well and all of that's great. That's not what we're talking about. This is people getting into an Uber into like maybe a model X or a model Y or a model 3. And the drivers are basically using full self driving in that situation as a way to reduce their own stress so that they can work longer hours so that they can earn more money.
Jason Aten:And I'm like, this is listen again. I tried to drive to Chicago with all of full self driving. Now I will say that around here, my kids love it. They'll get in the car and they're like, would you please have the Tesla drive? And, like, what are you trying to say about the way I drive?
Jason Aten:Well, my kids, the the way they know that I have full self driving engaged is because it drives the speed limit. That's what they tell me. They're like, it drives exactly the speed limit, and you don't, man. But
Stephen Robles:Wait. Wait. Wait. Are are you are they implying that you don't go fast enough or possibly too fast?
Jason Aten:I don't think that that's what they're implying. I don't think they're implying that I don't go fast enough. I I think
Stephen Robles:that they're
Jason Aten:not applying. I'm not admitting to any of this. I'm simply telling you what I think they're implying. Right. Actually I do think, I think the distinguishing factor is it goes exactly the speed limit and like doesn't waiver either way.
Jason Aten:And I do not. But anyway, my point is like around town, it's actually pretty good. It does a pretty good job. It did. It doesn't know what to do sometimes.
Jason Aten:Like when you get to driveways or whatever, it did try to pull into our neighbor's yard the other day. It was not a good experience. But anyway, I don't think I would want there's really 2 problems. 1 is full self driving is not great for this situation because a driver could be if a driver thinks this is gonna make it so I have to do less work, then I don't think you wanna be in that car. And secondly, how does the passengers know?
Jason Aten:Now an average passenger who doesn't have a Tesla or who hasn't been in a Tesla with full self driving is not necessarily going to realize that that's what's happening. Now if I got into the back of the car, I would know because I could see on the screen, the the screen changes and the way the interface that shows up is distinct from cruise control, auto steer, and full self driving. So you'd be like, excuse me, but I need you to be driving, or I need you to let me out right now.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. This is not not a great practice. I did I saw a video when I was considering buying a Tesla of a Uber driver who had 2 Teslas and basically would charge 1 while he was driving the other Uber around town, bring it home to charge, get the other. Like, that seems like an interesting solution to trying to get more drive time, whatever, out of a day using a Tesla. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Full self driving, especially when a passenger is not aware, is not great.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And there there was an accident in that Reuters article that it was talking about. So not great. And obviously, there's no regulation on this, at least as I know right now. So Uber and Lyft probably need to, like, drum up some agreements to say, like, you will not use full self driving. So if you owner of a Tesla, who have done self driving, if you got into an Uber, go into a conference or whatever, and you could tell that the driver was gonna was using full self driving, would you say out let me out?
Jason Aten:I would say, hey, bud. I was thinking I was paying you to drive. If I wanted the Tesla to drive, I would've gotten in a way more.
Stephen Robles:Hey, bud. Do I get a discount for you actually not doing the work?
Jason Aten:Right. I I and I think, like, I can understand. So on the one hand, let's be honest, like, Uber drivers don't make a ton of money and, and you are dramatically limited by time. Right? If it, if a ride, if your average ride takes 22 minutes, you can only do so many average rides also your own personal energy level.
Jason Aten:Right? Like you can only fit an x number of rides in a day, and you also can't use the entire day because you're going to have to sleep and you're gonna get tired and driving around all the time like that. That is grueling work. And so I can understand the desire to make that easier and to maximize your ability to make more money. Right.
Jason Aten:If you're driving, if you're gonna drive for 8 hours and you have to take an hour nap in the middle of that, like, I'm not suggesting that what they're doing is taking the nap while they're full self driving. I'm saying like full self driving or auto steer, it does. It is less stressful to drive because you do still have to pay attention. You do still have to be able to take control, but the car is doing part of that workload. And so I can understand that, but I think that what is what is represented by this is just sort of the systemic problems with the ride culture or the, the the, gig economy type thing where we're sharing rides because you have to work so much in order to make a living to do that.
Jason Aten:And that's just not healthy. And so, like, maybe maybe we should be thinking about, like, the driver should be getting paid more of the fare as opposed to Uber. You know? Like, I I just think there's gotta be a better solution than I'll just flip on full self driving, and maybe the guy in the back seat won't know that I'm just sitting here.
Stephen Robles:I've never experienced full self driving, so I'll have to you know, if I if I got into an Uber and he was running full self driving, which I don't know if I could tell or not, I I don't know. I would just see, like, well, let's see how this goes. But, yeah, at the end, I'd be like, do I tip you or the car? That's probably what I'd say at the
Jason Aten:end. Nice. Nice.
Stephen Robles:There you go. Alright. There there might be an AI tool that replaces us, Jason, but before we get to that, we're gonna talk about Google's new tool. I wanna thank our second sponsor. This is the first episode where we have 2 sponsors, which is amazing.
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Stephen Robles:You can even put those volume levels in the menu bar of your Mac to keep an eye on them while you record. That's what I do for this show and for every video I make. And then you can do other than record that audio, obviously, lots of different formats, WAV, MP 3, whatever you'd like, but you can also route audio to different output devices. You can even throw things like EQ and compressor as blocks in these audio chains. You can even livestream from Audio Hijack.
Stephen Robles:All of it is just built into the application. It's so easy to use. Scheduling is another cool feature. I didn't mention this last week, but you can schedule recording sessions, so say date and time, start recording this session, and then stop at a certain time. I would do that sometimes when I wanted to record portions of, a piece of entertainment, we'll say, for my movie podcast, and I wanted a little audio clip.
Stephen Robles:I would actually set a schedule so it would record from an application, say a web browser, while it's streaming something, and then it would stop automatically and I didn't have to sit there for 2 hours and wait for it to stop. So that scheduling feature, super cool. And then I love how you can have multiple sessions. So you can create a session for a podcast, create a session for your videos like I do, and all those sessions live in the menu bar. And you can just click run, and it'll start running that recording.
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Stephen Robles:Thanks to Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode. Jason, this thing has been going around. The new tool from Google, which we were just talking about, as they're taking all the search results away from people, they might also take, the podcast away from the people. Namely, I can't show this article because of buying a paywall, but basically, Google has a AI model that will train itself and generate a podcast episode based on whatever hosts you feed into this thing. And, yeah, it'll just, just do our job for us week to week.
Stephen Robles:I don't see any problem with this at all.
Jason Aten:Well okay. So what what basically, what it'll do is you can point it at text, like, documents. So you could take it. You could take, like A transfer. Or you could take well, but back it up a level and you could send it, like, 3 articles about Apple's quarterly earnings and say, make me a podcast about that.
Jason Aten:And then we'll just do it. The one the one example I heard, I don't remember which podcast I was listening to. It might've been sharp tech. They, somebody took a document that was like a Google doc and it was just the word poop, like a 1000 times. And these 2 co hosts, these AI generated co hosts did a whole podcast about it.
Jason Aten:And they're like, what does this say about, you know, some of them are capitalized. That raises some interesting questions. And what should we like? It's it is like, it is crazy. And the point I think I'm almost positive it was sharp tech because the takeaway there was like the thing that it's it's it's actually very, I don't wanna say good, but at at the creating the feel of a podcast, it is very good.
Jason Aten:You mean you mean
Stephen Robles:you mean creating the feel of 2 dudes just making things up?
Jason Aten:Well, it's a male and a female, but, yes, it's Okay. But it's like they're in but they're a little bit too they take it a little too seriously.
Stephen Robles:Right. And the podcast is some times do.
Jason Aten:That's true. But I feel like it's like the one way you could tell that it's not real because no humans could actually have that conversation for that long. We would we would just we would just start laughing or we would not be able to the bit for 10 minutes. Right. We could not do that for 10 minutes.
Jason Aten:On ATP this last week, they actually played, Marco created 1 B based on one of John Syracuse's articles and they actually played like the whole thing. And then they played more of something else in the bonus. So you, if you want to hear what this sounds like, the latest episode of ABTP has quite a bit of it. And it's like, it's very cliche. It's they talk themselves in some circles as LLMs do.
Jason Aten:I don't think anyone's going to be super confused, but I mean, it is a very, very convincing demo. Like it is, I think to a passive observer, like if you just were walking into a room and this is playing, you wouldn't automatically be like, that's AI. You would just be like, what are you listening to?
Stephen Robles:That's fascinating. But honestly, the the more of these tools I see come out, like, you know, the more concerning it might seem to get, the more optimistic I am about the direct audience creator relationship because Yeah. You know, you look at the website, like right now, there's not gonna be a successful podcast completely generated by AI, at least in the next year or 2. There are websites that are just generating AI content as articles, even big websites, and it is not that you know, people click on them. Maybe some people will be fooled, but I think it actually strengthens the connection that an audience will have to the creator that they trust for news on a topic.
Stephen Robles:And I think that the surge of all these new tools and AI content, I think, is just going to, exacerbate that even more, where people will be like, I know I can get a AI overview or an AI generated podcast about a topic, but I actually wanna hear this person talk about this topic. And I think it makes room for even more creators, and I think that's why one of the reasons creator based accounts or businesses are successful when they're based around a personality yeah. I think it's very hard to grow kind of a faceless brand right now in 2024, because people are looking for that kind of, like, human connection. Like, I want a human that's talking to me about whatever it is. If it's smart home, if it's Apple stuff.
Stephen Robles:And so Yep. You know, it's it's interesting, and obviously, you you know, a few years from now, this technology is gonna be insanely good, and it's gonna be weird. But I I don't know. I think people will even become more discerning. Almost like people are becoming discerning now of spam, phishing attacks.
Stephen Robles:People still fall for it, of course, but I think people over time will become more attuned to being like, that that reads like a AI generated something, and I'm not crazy about that. So I don't know. Do do you do you feel like that's the trajectory, or do you think people just be like, yeah. AI. It's good enough.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But it yeah. And I think in this particular example, AI the the problem with these podcast examples is that I mean, I understand you could say this about a lot of podcasts. That's fair, but they don't, there's no, or like humans are good at synthesizing information and coming up with like takes, right. Coming up with opinions about them, coming up with new and interesting ideas based on existing information and in LLMs are just not right.
Jason Aten:They just spit out gibberish based on like, I don't want to say just based on cliches, but they don't create new ideas. They may inspire new ideas in us. Right. Because you could use an AI and like notebook LMS thing is that it is designed to let you upload a bunch of information and it will surface key insights, but it can't come up with those insights. Like it doesn't have any insights.
Jason Aten:It can just look at things and like it can't, it can't make those connections that humans can make. And so in that sense, I think that's why, like, I don't know what the time limit is on these podcasts, but I think it's like 9 minutes or something like that. Because at some point the LLM is just gonna just talk itself into circles. Like you can't, How long can you do that? I mean, we have proven we can do this for, like, an hour, but I just feel like at least at some point, every once in a while, you and I are like a a blind squirrel.
Jason Aten:We find that acorn and we just, like, get it out there.
Stephen Robles:Basically, what you're saying is AI is a long way from trumping humans' ability to BS for over an hour.
Jason Aten:We I think that's true.
Stephen Robles:We are still
Jason Aten:If for no other reason, and then there is not enough compute power in all of those data centers to gen think about that what that says about the human brain. The amount of computing power that goes on to just spit out random stuff like this.
Stephen Robles:Honestly, total side note. Just talking about AI, whatever. I saw a video the other day on IBM's quantum computer in New York, and how they're building this, like, 2nd generation quantum whatever. I just this lady was explaining what this quantum computer is doing, and how most computers, the bits are either on or off, 10. You know, that's the computer language.
Stephen Robles:And in quantum computing, the bits are in a superposition and can be on and off at the same time. And I had two thoughts. 1, this is gonna open a black hole in the middle of the Earth. No, I didn't. No.
Stephen Robles:1, that show Dark Matter, I need to finish that TV series, because it kept talking about superposition, and I think maybe I'll get it if I watch that show. And 2, these people are brilliant, and the technology is wild. And I think back also to Apple's announcement about Imessage encryption, and how it was building Imessage encryption to overcome even quantum computer, like hacking, basically, and it was just like I don't know. I was just kind of amazed. It was one of those moments where I was like, wow.
Stephen Robles:There's, like, crazy technology out there. Quantum computing. And they showed this, like, crazy cooling system and how it basically has to bring the chips down to near 0 Kelvin in order for these chips. And they said, like, in this tube where the chip runs, it is literally colder than any other place in the universe, and they've built this I'll find the video. I'll put it in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:It is it was wild. I I I get into that kind of stuff. I had no idea what they were talking about, but it was fascinating. I don't know either.
Jason Aten:I just know that quantum computers are like Schrodinger's cat. Like, they're both dead and alive at the same time. Yeah. It's basically also, I do think we should have named this podcast side note. So because
Stephen Robles:That's pretty that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Maybe we'll come up with, like, that'll be our, like, side pro anyway, that's it. That's good. Leave leave a note for later.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Couple other, news things that are talking about, iPhone cases. I don't know if Jason's stuck with his choice, but with hurricane Helene and hurricane Milton, Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet service, and T Mobile actually partnered where you can now, if you're on T Mobile, send SMS texts over Starlink satellite. And they just, launched this recently, so you have access to this. So if you have T Mobile, and it seems like this is live for pretty much everyone, which is a great, thing that that they launched here and created.
Stephen Robles:This is also like, Apple's satellite texting, although that is limited to iPhone 14 and iOS 18 and newer. And I just wanted to mention this because, my mother-in-law, she's gonna she's still in Florida, actually, during this hurricane, and I told her, like, hey, make sure you upgrade to iOS 18 because then you can message via satellite. I unfortunately forgot. She has an iPhone 11. She does not have an iPhone 14 or newer.
Stephen Robles:And so that that is a shame, like but, again, not that this is a reason to upgrade, but 1914 14, 15, and 16 iPhones, you know, to be able to satellite message, and I actually used this once in the beta period, because I was somewhere that didn't have service, and it it worked surprisingly well. And I know there are a lot of stories out of, like, North Carolina and Tennessee where people were using satellite SOS messaging on their iPhone, to get the word out, and so great that this technology is out there and that companies, even like T Mobile and StarLink, are actually, you know, working to get this out to more people. SMS via satellite. That's that's great.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I've used the satellite feature on my iPhone twice. It was both times were last week because Verizon decided that it was going to have an outage
Stephen Robles:for It's
Jason Aten:just, like, an entire day.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:Yeah. For an entire day, but it did have a little s it had a little satellite thing up there, and I was yeah, So Yeah. You could do that.
Stephen Robles:This is
Jason Aten:great, though. Like, I think it's great that in situations like this, I was just thinking, how did you not, on the way out of Florida, pick up Starlink to take to your Airbnb? Because this we would have solved all of these problems. I would have but, you know, you need that line of sight. And I would say there's a lot of trees
Stephen Robles:around here. That's all I'm saying.
Jason Aten:There's a lake in front of you.
Stephen Robles:You sure would just send the satellite out on a little,
Jason Aten:Just float it out on the wall yeah, man.
Stephen Robles:I should've rec I should've recorded this podcast in the middle of the lake with a Starlink satellite next to me. That would've been
Jason Aten:What could go wrong?
Stephen Robles:Great great YouTube material. Alright. Last thing before we talk about iPhone cases, and maybe you can kind of bring me up to on on the latest news of this, but this was Brazil is actually going to reinstate X in the country after banning X Cross Country. And yeah. Can you maybe explain this a little bit of where we are at now?
Jason Aten:I can't at all, but I'm gonna pretend no. So I think what happened, if I remember correctly, there's a S I don't know how the Supreme court works in Brazil. It's probably different than in the US actually. It's gotta be different because can you just imagine like justice Thomas is like, you have to ban these people from Twitter. That's essentially what was happening.
Jason Aten:Right? This Supreme court justice has like been tasked with apparently cleaning up the internet. So he told Elon Musk, you have to ban these accounts that for whatever reason were considered bad. And they were like, nah, we're not going to do that. So they banned all of Twitter slash X from the entire country and started finding the country.
Jason Aten:And they like froze the bank accounts to get the money. Sounds like there was like some, some stuff going on there, but eventually like they, there was something where the money went to the wrong bank. I don't, I don't know. Some weird stuff was going on, but the bottom line is apparently the fees have been paid. The fines have been paid.
Jason Aten:I don't know if the people has been blocked. People have been blocked yet, but the good news is for all of the Brazilian listeners that we have, you can return to X. If that's the thing you think that you would want to do. There's so many things about this though, that we could talk about that we're not going to, but like, how is it possible that there's just like a random Supreme court justice that can be like, you have to ban this person from your platform. And if you don't, we'll ban your entire company from this entire country.
Jason Aten:And if, and then we'll charge you a bunch of money and then we'll just go into your bank and get the money. Like
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:There's a lot of layers to that that I just don't fully understand, Steven.
Stephen Robles:And, also, this was last week news, but Russia I don't know if they actually banned or if they went through with it, but they wanted to ban VPN apps from the country.
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. And Did they got the thing that happened? And they yeah. Yeah. And and they've been removed from the app store.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So Russia banned yeah. So there's no more you can't get a VPN app in Russia, but I know Gruber had an article about it with the actual step by step. You actually don't need a VPN app to access the Internet through a VPN. You can actually set a VPN up manually. You need to have all this detailed information, and it is a bit of a longer process, but it is possible to still use a VPN on your iPhone to access the Internet without an app.
Stephen Robles:But the fact that you would ban third party VPN apps, that's what you would use basically if a country decided to ban x or ban a social media platform or a website. You would jump into a VPN so you could access it because it looks like you're somewhere else. And, you know, for a country to to just ban or remove them all from the App Store is is really something. And, you know, it puts Apple in a weird position with the App Store. I mean, they just have to acquiesce to whatever country.
Stephen Robles:And this has been their party line. Like Tim Cook has even said, we operate in a lot of countries. Countries have different rules for the app store for us to be able to work there, and we have to work with the countries on that. That also means, like, we're moving a bunch of VPN apps and for maybe an unsavory reason. So it's yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's it is weird. And the reason so, like, in a country like Russia, they pay attention to all the Internet traffic in the country, and they can just flip a switch and they can ban things. I think that's happened to, like, Twitter in Russia a while back. I feel like I feel like I wrote about this.
Jason Aten:I don't actually, I just tried to Google. I can't remember if I would have written about it for anchor business insider, but I can't find the article. So who knows? But where like they have these kill switches, but also these con con countries, they just monitor all of the internet traffic. And so they don't allow VPN apps, 1, because then they can't.
Jason Aten:Right? Because if you're using a virtual private network, the Internet service provider can't see any of your information because it's traveling through, like, this private tunnel. But then also, they're able to ban what other services and apps are available. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. This was a article from PCMag I put in there. This was, back in September 26 that Apple complies with Russian, censorship, pulls more VPNs from Russia's App Store. Pretty wild. Alright.
Stephen Robles:Personal tech before we get to our bonus episode of of hurricane escaping. What k are you what case are you using now with your iPhone? You stick with the silicone?
Jason Aten:I got no case. I'm not using any case at this point. So the case I prefer the most, I mean, I still only have 2. I have the silicone and I have the beats. I do like the the beats, but I cannot deal with the fingerprintiness.
Jason Aten:I can't, like, go in public with a case that looks that bad. It just is so bad. It is. It's embarrassing. And yeah.
Jason Aten:And the silicone case to me, I just don't, I don't like the feel of trying to put that into my pocket. And it's so it's
Stephen Robles:just hard to get out all
Jason Aten:those strange Lee. I don't understand this. Maybe somebody can explain the physics or chemistry or whatever, but the silicone case on the iPhone 16, which is a blue, like it's like a super blue to go along with the ultra Marine. It feels different and less grippy than the black one. I don't understand.
Jason Aten:Maybe this is just a placebo effect. It wouldn't be a placebo, but whatever because they're both actual real things. But I it's a weird weird experience that I'm having. So on the iPhone 16 that I've been carrying around, although I never put that one in my pocket. So maybe that's why I don't care, but I'm not using any case.
Jason Aten:And I do have one. I do have one tiny scratch.
Stephen Robles:You just drop it
Jason Aten:as a result. No. I've not dropped it. But me, where do these scratches come from, Steven? I'm so careful with this phone.
Jason Aten:I did one right over the selfie camera now. So that's
Stephen Robles:Here's the here's the thing. Like, I've thought about going caseless. A, I feel I don't know. Having having the larger pro max, it's almost harder to go caseless because it feels like it's harder to grasp one handed, and it feels like it's gonna fall out. Like, balance wise, it's just like it feels like it's tipping out of your hand.
Stephen Robles:And with the case, you at least get a little more grip on it. But I mean, no case. I mean, did you drop that thing? I I know I
Jason Aten:dropped them. I drop it all the time and it's been fine, but I don't know where the scratches come from, Steven.
Stephen Robles:That's the thing. When you put it
Jason Aten:The scratches don't come from dropping though.
Stephen Robles:Because here's the thing, like, no case, you're gonna put it down on a table. It's like face down. Yeah. That's the screen. My Face up, it's wobbling.
Stephen Robles:The camera bump, the cameras might be touching something. I don't know.
Jason Aten:My table is not made out of sandpaper though. So, like, this shouldn't be I mean, it is not made out of like steel. I don't like, it should not be a problem. Do you
Stephen Robles:ever put anything else in the pocket with your phone? Like your keys?
Jason Aten:So I'm very good about that. I don't. I always, I always put it into my left front pocket and anything else that I would wanna carry goes into the right front pocket.
Stephen Robles:Are you looking?
Jason Aten:AirPods are no. My AirPods are always in my right front pocket. And if I have keys, I put them in the right front pocket. No.
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute.
Jason Aten:But yeah.
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute. I didn't I didn't realize we were gonna have another one of these so soon. You are right.
Jason Aten:I use my my iPhone most of the time with my left hand all the time. I'm not left handed. I'm right handed, but why would you use your dominant hand? Why would you take it up tapping around on your screen when you might need that hand? I don't know what else you need it for, but like, I just always, like, I always use it in my left hand.
Jason Aten:It's just, that's the way it works.
Stephen Robles:Listen, listeners, viewers, listen, I need you now more than ever. I understand we can have different preferences when it comes to battery percentage. I will even admit to being wrong about the Apple Pencil orientation on an iPad, but when it comes to what pocket you put your iPhone in, surely, surely the common sense would be to put the iPhone in the side pocket of your dominant hand. What?
Jason Aten:Or the hand that you primarily use your iPhone with, which I'm telling you is not my dominant hand. But hold on a second. Hold on. First of all, there has in the history of our podcast, which is not that old, never been an issue that matters less. Because the only thing that matters about this, hold on.
Jason Aten:The only thing that matters about this is that you always put it in the same pocket with nothing else. That's the only piece that matters.
Stephen Robles:I I understand that, and I've like, the memes are, like, wallet, keys, AirPods, chainsaw, like, whatever in one pocket, iPhone in the other. Like, nothing goes in the pocket with the iPhone.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:We're totally agreed on that. I just I don't so if you're I
Jason Aten:know why. I know why. Okay.
Stephen Robles:I know
Jason Aten:why I do it this way.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Sure.
Jason Aten:Because if I get into the car, there's, like, the seat belt thing over here. Yes. And so if, like, if that phone is in that pocket, I can't get it out. But if it's on this side, there's nothing over on this side of the me. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, there's much more space because it's the side you get in and out of the car. Whereas there's no console. There's none of those. I'm not saying that that's my argument for it. I'm saying I think that that's why that became my habit.
Jason Aten:Here's the thing. I would be happy to take this wrong be wrong about this and take my points because you just admitted that your your Apple Pencil is wrong, that the bad Look. Like, this was worth it. This is worth it.
Stephen Robles:I've been okay. Just one question. Yeah. You're going to with my left hand. To text.
Stephen Robles:You're gonna text 1 handed. What hand are
Jason Aten:you texting with?
Stephen Robles:All the time,
Jason Aten:I use my left hand.
Stephen Robles:You're texting with your left hand even though you're right hand dominant.
Jason Aten:I yeah. And I use swipe to type too.
Stephen Robles:Shows over. This is that's it.
Jason Aten:Steven wants to know how I text. I I'm not gonna actually send that to my wife. You But, yeah, literally, I use my why would you yeah.
Stephen Robles:Why? You said you're right handed. That's why.
Jason Aten:But it doesn't mean that's like irrelevant. Being left in the right handed, the like, I'm dragging my thumb across. It doesn't take a whole lot of well, maybe it's because I'm I'm not ambidextrous, but maybe I have more motor skills in my left hand than most people because I grew up playing piano. I don't know. Like
Stephen Robles:this, this is, this is totally shocking to me again. We've, we've,
Jason Aten:this is the least important thing that has ever shocked you. Let's just be honest here. The only important thing is that I don't put it in. I always put it in the same pocket with nothing else. And also, I don't know where the scratches come from because there's nothing else in that pocket.
Jason Aten:Scratch.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. Do you wear someone
Jason Aten:is putting sand in my pocket?
Stephen Robles:Do you wear jeans?
Jason Aten:I mean, I've You
Stephen Robles:wear jeans?
Jason Aten:Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, some yeah.
Stephen Robles:Do jeans have that little tiny button thing on the top of the
Jason Aten:pocket? I've I've I've checked to see if that's the thing, and it's not. Okay. That's not what's causing it.
Stephen Robles:Listen. I just I need everyone to comment on this episode at social.primarytech.fm, or comment on social media. Do you place your phone in your dominant hand side pocket? So if you are left hand dominant, do you put it in your left pocket? If you're right hand dom
Jason Aten:You you muted your mic again, which I should just let you not talk, because
Stephen Robles:I accidentally muted my microphone.
Jason Aten:I should've just you got mostly through it.
Stephen Robles:I just I need to know. Do you put your hand in your dominant hand side pocket, or the opposite like a crazy person? I just need to know. I just
Jason Aten:Or does it not matter? And you just use whichever one you just use. But I do think you have to use you do have to keep your phone in the same pocket, but, like, this does seem like it's the kind of thing where it's just a learned behavior as opposed to a, I'm right handed. So that's the phone I that's the thing I have to do.
Stephen Robles:It is it is possible to learn something wrong. Is is it possible to learn it wrong here? Listen, I even if I just like to know I like knowing that a week from now, after this episode is released, and I see all, like, the asinine posts on threads and x asking about, do you put your phone I know it came from our podcast. I know we are originating the asinine topic debates, and I'm proud of it. That's all I'm saying.
Jason Aten:There's so much engagement bait coming from this, I'm sure.
Stephen Robles:We put it there in
Jason Aten:the episode. Did you see? I mean, this wasn't even in our rundown, but, apparently, the Instagram is gonna do something about it. Adam Seri says that the threads is gonna do something about the engagement bay. And I'm like, maybe just take out the part of the algorithm that rewards engagement bay.
Jason Aten:Like, this should not be a hard problem for you to solve.
Stephen Robles:That, also, he, said the f word on threads for the first time, but he put a asterisk where the u was, so maybe he didn't curse. I don't know. But, also, I saw he was talking about, airplane facts with Max, which is on a great count both on TikTok and threads. He's he's an airplane engineer, and he talks about airplane facts. But if you watch any of his videos, you'll see he quickly devolves into explaining other things, namely Lord of the Rings, and it's wonderful.
Stephen Robles:But he basically would he did a quick video of, like, showing how you can reuse zip ties by using a pliers to squeeze the the thing, and you can unzip the zip tie. That's cool. But Adam Mosseri was, like, you know, said the f word on it. And then people were saying in their notifications, all they see is Adam Mosseri's, like, reply as a quote, but they never see the original in the notifications because it only shows you the top line, so it just looks like Adam Mosseri, like, cursing at you.
Jason Aten:Constantly. Just constantly. Constantly.
Stephen Robles:So they should probably fix that too. But anyway, let us know what do you put your phone in your dominant pocket? Let us know. You can join our free community at social.primary tech dot f m. And if you wanna support the show, you can hear our bonus episode where I'm gonna talk about escaping a hurricane.
Stephen Robles:And that's Apple Podcasts. You can support us directly there or at primary tech dot FM and click bonus episodes. And if you haven't yet, we appreciate all those 5 star ratings and reviews from across the world, South Africa, Germany to this week. If you could do that in apple podcast, we appreciate it. And we'll give you a shout out at the top of the show.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching, and we'll catch you
Jason Aten:next time.
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