The Veil of Utopia: The Mac is 40, Microsoft is $3T, and iOS 17.3 Makes it Harder to Steal Your iPhone
Download MP3If you build it, he will come. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about tech news that matters. Today we're gonna talk about iOS 17.3 and stolen device protection. Netflix is trying to get into live TV, and Microsoft passed that $3,000,000,000,000 market cap value, what that means, Apple Vision Pro and more. And I'm here, of course, with my trusty cohost, Jason.
Stephen Robles:A10. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. Thanks, Steven. How are you doing?
Stephen Robles:I'm doing good. You know, I realized I I haven't introduced myself in the intros yet. I I just start talking. I'm Steven Robles.
Jason Aten:He is.
Stephen Robles:I think it's the first time I said that. I know people probably know that.
Jason Aten:He's the
Stephen Robles:Reason we do this show. No. No. No. What?
Jason Aten:It needs no introduction.
Stephen Robles:That see, I don't wanna assume that. So I'm Steven Robles. He's Jason Aten. That's who you're listening to. Right.
Jason Aten:He has the most recognizable voice on the Internet.
Stephen Robles:Oh, well, that's very kind very kind of you. So we got a lot to talk about today, some news, not all Apple news. Of course, we will touch on Apple Vision Pro a little bit because That'll maybe some rumored sales numbers and elusive reviews and all that kind of stuff, but I wanna thank some 5 star reviews because you guys have been very kind. The support for the show keeps coming, and we really appreciate it. So here are the 5 star reviews this past week.
Stephen Robles:Redpixel09, jdennning, 6r360ry. He's really into the hopsec. We have no idea who that is. Buy more fan, he left a glowing review. Chuckwagon 99.
Stephen Robles:That's a funny name. B ratty48 and all nick enumsartaken7. That was all one word. He said he listened to 2 minutes of the podcast and was the best 2 minutes of a podcast he's ever heard. Now I don't know if he listened.
Stephen Robles:After that, did he keep listening?
Jason Aten:We should try a different format, Steven, it should be a 2 minute show.
Stephen Robles:2 minute show. We're we're already hit it. We're we're at 1:45 recording this.
Jason Aten:That day. We just read reviews over time.
Stephen Robles:It's great to see everybody.
Jason Aten:I gotta say, though, that this is this actually directly relates to what I was just saying before this because, you know, Steven says that there's a glowing review. I just want everyone to know you should read these glowing reviews because most of them are. Steven, we are so glad that you're doing a podcast again. We don't know who the other guy is, but he can stick around.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. They mentioned Jason too. They say we have great rapport, and so no.
Stephen Robles:It's it's both of us, and I wanna thank you all again. We've we've stayed in the top charts. We we slipped a little bit. And so if you have not given the show a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, we would really appreciate it. It's a great free way to support the show, and then we'll tell you about how you can support the show in other ways a little later.
Stephen Robles:We'll get to the news, and then we also have some personal tech about the 40 years of the Mac. Jason had a great piece and talk about a little our history and some of the kind of big influential names that talk about the Mac, at at length. You know a lot of podcasts and articles about it. Then we have a bonus episode about slides which That's that's the selling point right there. I'm talking about It's
Jason Aten:true. Not like the things you ride down at a at a playground, just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. No. No. I should. That's true, I should specify.
Stephen Robles:We're talking about, like, keynote versus Google slides. Yeah. But
Jason Aten:anyway Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Nobody's gonna pay for that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I wanna pay, Cover Iowa 17 dot3 real quick at first because it came out earlier this week for everyone, and, everyone's gonna see I Accidentally shared my movie quotes because I I'm trying to start every episode with a movie quote, so I had a website pulled up.
Stephen Robles:But anyway Mhmm. IOS 17 dot3 is out for everyone. Probably the biggest feature is stolen device protection, and this is likely a response from Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal reporting a lot, last year about people shoulder surfing iPhone passcodes and possibly, you know, then taking a device. Not possibly. They would take an iPhone device, and if you have a passcode in an iPhone, you basically have free rein to do a lot of stuff inside the phone, and so this feature is meant to mitigate that.
Stephen Robles:So stolen device protection, once you enable it, it means that for certain parts of your settings like Icloud passwords, changing your Apple ID password, turning off stolen device protection. It actually requires your biometric authentication, be it face ID or touch ID, in order to change that feature. There's not a passcode fallback. So, you know, sometimes, like, if you wanna get into your iCloud passwords, face ID fails, like, twice, and then it tells you, you know, put in your iPhone passcode and you'll be able to unlock it. Stolen device protection, when it's enabled, you don't get that option.
Stephen Robles:It requires face ID or touch ID no matter what, when you have this enabled. And then if you wanna change some of those settings, You're required to wait 60 minutes before you can make some of the changes, to, like, change your Apple ID password and things like that. So in the event someone did steal your phone and had your passcode that you would have time, namely an hour, to possibly wipe that device remotely by logging into the find my app on icloud.com or, you know, canceling your credit cards, doing things like that. So this is a much requested feature. The one, issue I have with it actually, I don't know if you've kind of poked around with it, but you don't need to wait those 60 minutes, and you also, it'll fall back to passcode if you're in a significant location, which is what Apple calls it, and basically a trusted location, which you have trusted locations in Find My where, you know, you don't have to get notifications if you leave something behind, but this is a little different.
Stephen Robles:If you on your iPhone, you go to settings and then you go to security and privacy, and I'm gonna go do it right now because I wanna show them privacy and security, location services, you scroll all the way down to system services, then scroll all the way down and you'll see significant locations. These are the places that it's talking about, and so this is kind of what the oh, I gotta turn my brightness down. The significant location screen, and the problem is It doesn't, like, tell you what all your significant locations are. It tells you there's a 193 records of significant locations, which and the last time I opened this up, it showed me my local Publix, which is like a supermarket here in Lakeland. So if someone steals my iPhone at that Publix, Does that mean they can turn it off
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Without my face ID? So I thought that was a little strange. Have you enabled it and have you know have you played around with it?
Jason Aten:No. I have not enabled it. I'm actually not even sure that I've updated to 17.3 yet, which would be the reason Oh, my. Why I wouldn't
Stephen Robles:Jason, we do a tech podcast. I don't know if you heard. Hey. We do a tech bot. We talk about Apple.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm still on well, here's the thing. I went around for, like, a week telling everyone, don't upload update your iPhone because it was like You told everyone it was bricking people's phones, and so I turned off
Stephen Robles:Oh, the beta. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Well, I turned off the automatic updates, and so I haven't done it yet. But I I think Oh, I The location thing is interesting. So I hadn't really explored that. I think for a lot of people, they're thinking, like, I don't understand. You can't get into my phone if you don't have both of those things.
Jason Aten:If you don't have my phone in your hand and you don't also have the passcode or my face. Right. And if you have my face, then I have other problems. I don't care about you getting into my phone at that point.
Stephen Robles:It's a Hannibal Lecter problem.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But what or a face off. Isn't that there's that movie, the Nicolas Cage movie. Yeah. There you go.
Stephen Robles:That's right. John Travolta.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But if you did have someone's phone and their passcode, the The real issue was you have always been able to change your Icloud password Right. With just your device And the passcode. And the reason Apple did that is actually, like, very helpful because
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:People will use either a complex password. They're they're trying to get people to use better passwords. And if you use a password that you can't remember, which is kind of what you're supposed to do, and then you lose that password
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You lose everything if you can't get into your Icloud account. And if somebody does that, if they were to turn change your Icloud password, the problem is you can no longer find the phone because you can't use Find My. You can't Recover your data. You can't do any of those things. So Apple's trying to find a way to balance those two things, and I think the way they came up with is actually really smart because
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:You have to Have the device. You have to have unlocked the device. But then in order to do certain things, not everything on your phone, but to change certain features, certain things, you have to do the biometric Authentication twice. So and I was, like, why an hour apart? And it's pretty obvious that if you get mugged and they hold the phone up to your face, Right?
Jason Aten:And then they try to leave. They have to, like now they have to take you hostage for an hour in order to just change your passcode. For an hour. And I feel like stealing someone's iPhone because most of the time, the the people who are doing this at least and, again, we should give a lot of credit to The Wall Street Journal, to Joanna Stern, and Nicole Wynn who Yeah. Who reported on this and literally got to change a major security setting on their phone as a result of their reporting.
Jason Aten:But the people who are doing this, they don't really care about your personal information. They just want your phone so that they can resell it, and they change your Icloud password so you can't find them. So you can't find your phone, so you can't recover it. And so the No one is gonna go through that much trouble just to get your iPhone. It's just not it's just not worth it.
Jason Aten:So this is a step in the right direction.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You do raise an interesting question. Like, what if it happens while you're Not one of those locations.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. So And
Jason Aten:you said there's a 100 and some?
Stephen Robles:There was, like, a 193 locations listed on my device and, like, I would love to know what those are. I'll you can Clear the history so you can start from scratch, but I don't know how those 193 got there to begin with, and so I would love to granularly control, like, I just wanna put my home address. Yeah. My mom's house, and pretty much that's it. Like, I just want those 2 in there.
Stephen Robles:These are actually this is an article from MacRumors. I'll put it in the show notes. These are the things that would require face ID or touch ID if you have stolen device protection enabled, which is viewing your passwords, applying for a new Apple Card, Viewing your Apple Virtual Card, like your numbers, turning off lost mode, erasing all content and settings, things like that. And then the 1 hour delay is enabled if you try to change your Apple ID password, your device passcode, removing face ID, turning off find my, and turning off stolen device protection. I I do think it's a great step for security.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if you've ever been in this situation. You know, people were like, how did people get people's passcodes? I can't tell you how many times I've been at an event. Like, I was at a baseball game a few months ago, and I could literally look 2 rows down and see someone with the big 9, you know, the 10 digit things, and they just put in their passcode, and I Clearly saw the passcode.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:Like, I wasn't even trying, and so I I do think
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:There's a lot of people that don't think about it. They've never had their device stolen and so it's not a big deal. And this isn't like an epidemic. You know, Joanna Stern did find a number of people who this had happened to and it did affect their entire lives, like they lost a lot of money, they lost all their photos. So this has happened.
Stephen Robles:I do think, you know, some features Apple will update and put it on by default. This is not. This is you have to physically opt in, like manually opt in and enable this. I almost wonder maybe you should have been opt out. Do You think they should've kept it on by default, or is it it would be hard to
Jason Aten:I think they I think they did it right, and I'll make the case for why. This is a thing that most people don't need. Just to be candid, like most people because if you if you were to read the reporting, this is a is a very much a social engineering thing. Right. The people who are having this happen to them are at a bar.
Jason Aten:They're interacting with people that they don't necessarily know. They've just met them for the first time, and it turns out that those people are just trying to put them in a situation where they will Do what you described at the baseball game, which is just type in a passcode, and then they do that. The now the thief has the passcode. In some period of time later, they just swipe swipe the phone from the person And leave most, like, the average person is is not in that situation. You described it, that it's not an epidemic.
Jason Aten:No. It's Still a bad thing that happens if it happens to you, and it's still a Right. A vulnerability of the device. But I think for most people, The inconvenience of, I just wanna change my iCloud password, or I just wanna turn off, you know, whatever it is. I just wanna change my device passcode.
Jason Aten:I just wanna do these things. But having to wait an hour to do that, most people will get super annoyed and not want anything to do with that. So and the nice thing, it is a toggle you could Choose if you're going on a trip somewhere, you could turn this on.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And then if you get home and you don't need it, you could just turn it off. Like, you'd have to wait an hour to turn it off probably.
Stephen Robles:But Follow-up if you're a trusted location. Just go to your supermarket.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Oh, that's true. If you get home, just don't do it at Publix. Anyway, so I think they made the right call in this case. I think there are other situations where they maybe Should have done it differently.
Jason Aten:But I do think for most people, this is not this is not a level of protection that they probably Really need, but it is good to know that they have provided a way to get around because really security is always just a trade off. Right? It's a trade off to your convenience. And Apple, I think, is erring on the side of we can make your device more secure. It will be less convenient.
Jason Aten:You decide if that's if you're okay with that.
Stephen Robles:So basically, every bouncer at every bar. They should say, let me see your ID. Let me see your stolen device protection. Let's make sure it's on.
Jason Aten:Let's turn it on.
Stephen Robles:Every bar. That's just what they do. Yep. That was the major feature of 17.3, and the other big one was collaborative playlists, which I think people will enjoy using. So you can create a playlist or set one of your current playlist and send a link or have a QR code be scanned, and you can have other people add songs to that playlist.
Stephen Robles:You can add songs back, Reorder it, and then you can even react with emojis to other songs that people have put in the list. I actually did this, in the YouTube video that I did for iOS 17.3. I actually showed a QR code on screen and I was, like, let's see how many people we can get collaborating in a playlist. Well, the number is 100. 100 is the max.
Stephen Robles:Okay. That is that is the max number of people. This was a playlist we put together. It's, me and 99 others.
Jason Aten:Awesome.
Stephen Robles:And, the first song I put in there was Never Gonna Give You Up. I was trying to Rick Roll everybody Yeah. Right from the start. I thought that
Jason Aten:I feel like that's a good band name though, Steven Robles and 99 others.
Stephen Robles:Be good. But it's all trumpet music. It's all trumpet music. So
Jason Aten:Okay. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. That's be a brass choir. Alright. So that's interesting.
Stephen Robles:I think for our bonus listeners and our members. We're gonna do a Primary Tech collaborative playlist, and so you'll need to listen to the bonus episode, which you can support the show in Apple Podcast or at primary tech dot f m. And I will do one, for for you guys, see what songs you come up with. And, don't don't spam the list with like 10,000 songs. I had one user do that.
Stephen Robles:Out of, like, out of nowhere, it was like there's 10,000 songs in this playlist. I was like, what? So anyway, that's one of the the risk you run into. So Yeah. 10000 songs, 607 hours, is the my current YouTube playlist.
Jason Aten:Wow. Isn't there wasn't that tag oh, no. That was a 1,000 songs in your pocket. You've way exceeded the capacity of the original Ipod, so good job.
Stephen Robles:That's it. That's it. Oh, I have an Ipod right over here. Where'd my Ipod go? Here, this is an Ipod video.
Stephen Robles:This was my first iPad.
Jason Aten:I got one back there on the shelf. Oh, mine looks a lot like that, but mine's white. It's right back there on the shelf. So
Stephen Robles:The iPad video was the glossy front and then, you know, the iPad classic, which came out later, was like the matte matte finish. But Okay. This, I had sold my or gave away my original one. So I I literally bought this on eBay just to have, like, a prop, because I like having it.
Jason Aten:Oh.
Stephen Robles:So it does work. You can plug it in, but with the latest macOS you can't add songs. It doesn't say
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's what happens to my iPad. It it it'll turn on, and it'll even keep it charged, but you can't do anything to it because if you try plugging it in, it's like Looking for Itunes, which hasn't been available on a Mac for a while now. So I wonder if I plug it into a PC because they still make Itunes for PCs.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. I have Windows computer
Jason Aten:somewhere. Alright.
Stephen Robles:I'll have to try it.
Jason Aten:I'll I'll try and I'll let you know. Good content.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Yeah. Try try and let me know because I might, I'll run-in a virtual machine if it does work. Alright. So alright.
Stephen Robles:So to to expand past Apple, Microsoft briefly crossed the 3 $1,000,000,000,000 market cap value, which I'm not, like, super Wall Street, knowledgeable or investor, but I know this is a big deal. And, yeah. This was they actually crossed Apple, briefly
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:As far as market cap value for for, like, one day. It was a couple weeks ago, but they crossed it. I mean, it's a big number. So can you tell me about it?
Jason Aten:So this is actually the second time well, it's actually not just the second time, but it is the second time in the last couple years that Microsoft And Apple have been sort of going back and forth in last it was a week or 2 ago. Yeah. Microsoft was above Apple mostly because Apple had come down. Microsoft had gone up. And then yes was it when Wednesday?
Jason Aten:Tuesday or Wednesday? I can't exactly remember which day it was. They did briefly cross $3,000,000,000,000. Apple It's just above $3,000,000,000,000 right now.
Stephen Robles:Wednesday.
Jason Aten:But the reason I think this is interesting has absolutely nothing to do with Apple, actually, and more to do with the fact, The reason that Microsoft is back here. Right? Microsoft is the largest tech company for a long time, mostly because of Windows. Right? And then a few years ago during the pandemic when everyone was, Like, using Teams and stuff.
Jason Aten:They became they they got bigger as well. It's true. Like, they during the pandemic when remote work was suddenly a necessity for basically everyone, All the that productivity software became even more important for people. But the reason right now that they're where they are is because of OpenAI, chat gbt, and the way that Microsoft is building it all into all of their products. And I actually think it's fascinating.
Jason Aten:I Did write my they they had an event back in, I think, September, which was, like, purportedly, like, at least on the surface, No pun intended. Supposed to be an event where they were going to introduce surfaces.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That was good.
Jason Aten:That was really the reason for the event. But they introduced 2 weird surfaces, Like a Surface Go laptop, which is, like, their ultra boardable, pretty much useless computer. And then, I mean, they make some really good computers that just isn't one of them. And then they made the I think it's the surface maybe studio, but it's the laptop that sort of folds around and does interesting things. And then the entire rest of the the presentation.
Jason Aten:In fact, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was how they were launching these copilots, and And they were putting them in everything. You can have a copilot in Windows. There's copilot in Excel. There's copilot in in Bing. There's just, like, all of this stuff.
Jason Aten:And I think it's really interesting, and I might even write about this because Microsoft is on the verge of becoming the largest company in the world again Because it's doing the thing Google can't do. You would expect Google to be the one that is completely owning this. Actually, that's not it. That's the soup Surface Studios, not the Surface laptop one. Sorry.
Jason Aten:We're looking at screens. So if you're just listening to this, this is the worst podcast You
Stephen Robles:can go to no. No. You can go to youtube.com/atprimarytechshow and see all the things. Now this was actually a tech event you, actually went to. Right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I actually went to it. It was in New York City. It was it's one of their laptops. It's the Surface laptop that folds out and does interesting things.
Jason Aten:We'll find it and anyway.
Stephen Robles:You know, this is this is just indicative, like, naming things.
Jason Aten:You know how I am with names.
Stephen Robles:Well, but also Good. But also, like, I I know we're not talking about Apple right now, but The line of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and then just different sizes, and then Right. It's just very clean. And this is, like, just looking at Microsoft websites, like, Surface Pro 9, Surface Go 3, Surface Laptop 5 Laptop Stoo like, it's very I don't know. I don't think it's
Jason Aten:It's the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is the one that I'm referring to, which is a laptop that folds down and the screen, like, does
Stephen Robles:Here it is.
Jason Aten:Yep. There you go. Thank you. I really I I feel better. I appreciate you stalling there for a minute so I could, like, look in my notes and remember what it was.
Jason Aten:Anyway, the the crazy thing, we just spent 5 minutes talking about it, and that's more time than Microsoft spent talking about these The event when they actually announced them, just to be clear, because all they wanted to talk about was AI. And going back to my point, which was Right. They are it's such Such an interesting thing because you would expect a company like Google, which for all intents and purposes, everything Google does is what we would call AI. Right? It's machine learning.
Jason Aten:It's Trying to discern what it is you think and then give you back answers that you like. They talk about I mean, the whole Samsung event, a lot of that was AI. Was Google's features with AI. And the problem is Google or Google is not really able to do the the thing it really wants to do, which is including AI in search because, one, It it just lies to you. Right?
Jason Aten:Not Google, but AI. Generative AI just makes stuff up. So there's a huge reputational risk. Yeah. There's a huge reputational risk for Google, And there's also a huge revenue risk for Google, so it's having a hard time.
Jason Aten:Microsoft on the other time on the other hand has none of those problems because nobody uses Bing, and nobody depends on Bing. No. I think It's true. Like
Stephen Robles:It's true.
Jason Aten:No one used Bing before chat gpt was built into it, and then they just do it for entertainment. Nobody really uses it as their way of Accessing information on the Internet.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:So Microsoft is doing the smart thing. They're building these AI tools into the places where people will actually use them and where they'll Actually, be really useful, which is summarizing your information you already have. You have a spreadsheet of Right. Data, and it does things. It'll tell you stuff, and then it Cross reference that with your emails, and it can look at the documents you have, and it can just do all these things that Google's gonna get there, but they're much more cautious, much more worried about the reputational The risk of all of this where Microsoft's just letting it fly, and it's working because, right, the investors are like, give us more.
Jason Aten:This is the future. And for a company like Microsoft, which basically dominated the personal computers and then missed out on the Internet and missed out on mobile Right. They see this as the next platform wave, and they're like, we're there. And so I just think it's fascinating.
Stephen Robles:That is interesting.
Jason Aten:I think Microsoft is a Sort of under the radar boring company because we just think of them as, like, the people that make Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, which we'll talk about later. But really
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:Really, they're making those products really interesting using AI, so
Stephen Robles:That is good. I mean, honestly, I I don't think about I feel like when people talk about Microsoft software, it's either begrudgingly or, like, yeah, I know that exists or I have to use it. You know, Microsoft Teams Right. I think so many companies during the pandemic and afterwards were basically forced to switch to that because their companies already pay for Microsoft Office, and they were like, we're not gonna pay for Zoom premium when we already have Microsoft Teams. Like, we have food at home.
Stephen Robles:We're not getting takeout. We have leftover spaghetti and meatballs in the fridge. And that's basically why a bunch of people had to start using Teams. Although I've never heard anyone speak, like, positively about Teams, like, they just love Teams. You know, they say it works, which obviously it's a Microsoft product.
Stephen Robles:Like, of all the things, reliability is is what they're gonna focus on. Right. But when it comes to their other software like Office, I mean, it's decades old when you think about Microsoft Word. And in all the conversations about the 40 years of the Mac, which we're gonna get to later, some of the talk was, like, Microsoft had to really come with their software in those early days for it to really start picking up some steam and some user base. And so, like, Office has been around forever, but Like you're saying, I do think it is telling that Microsoft is, like, all in on the AI.
Stephen Robles:We talked about the copilot button that Microsoft is gonna replace on the keyboards of their computers, which is, like, replacing the Windows button Yeah. With a Copilot button. They obviously believe in the AI. So, yeah, I agree. I think it's fascinating.
Jason Aten:Well and, yeah, you you talk about Microsoft in the early days of the Mac. That's like, it was in what is it? 1997 when Steve Jobs comes back to the company. He gets up on the on the stage to Give a keynote at, I think, Macworld, and there's this this giant video of Bill Gates overhead looking down at him because Bill Gates had Microsoft had invested money and said we Commit to putting our products on the Mac. There probably wouldn't be a Mac today, maybe not an Apple today had that not happened.
Jason Aten:And so you're right. So Microsoft like, it it is just Super interesting. They're very content being right under the radar. You know, they have a cloud services business, which is smaller than Amazon's, and they're fine with that. Like, they have I mean, they wanna grow it, but, like, in all of these spaces, it it doesn't matter.
Jason Aten:They have so much room to run, which is weird for a $3,000,000,000,000 tech company Always been basically dominant be and it's because Right. They're just quietly doing their thing. Right? They're just client and and they have such a wide install base. You're right.
Jason Aten:Teams basically beat Slack not because it was better, but because every single enterprise salesperson from Microsoft is like, why are you paying $8 a month for 30,000 Black licenses when we just give you this as part of Windows 365 or whatever.
Stephen Robles:So I will say, you know, for our Apple audience though, I'm gonna complain about one Windows thing, which is I have this one online email account that I need to use for a work thing, and it requires the Microsoft Authenticator app Yep. Which I I don't know if you're familiar with this, but
Jason Aten:this is like a
Stephen Robles:I use it every day. Do you really? Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Stephen Robles:You use it to save like your 2 factor authentication codes or you use it for like just for a bespoke login.
Jason Aten:I for it's just the thing I like to carry around is the my Microsoft Authenticator app. No. I have to use so here's the thing. There is a service, VPN that I have to use in order to get into the CMS to publish articles. And so I just now use it for all my two factor stuff.
Jason Aten:Every two factor code that I have. Now I know I can move those over to passwords app. I probably should do that. But, like, yeah, I have a whole whole list of them. Is it like am I If you show that, is that a really bad idea?
Jason Aten:You'd have all my g factor codes.
Stephen Robles:I mean, just depends what what information's on screen.
Jason Aten:All my g factor codes for, yeah, for, like, Discord, Instagram
Stephen Robles:Jason, wait a minute.
Jason Aten:All these things. I'm using it for what's wrong with it? It's just a 2 it's just an authenticator. There's Google, Microsoft, like
Stephen Robles:The login that I have to do, it's not their normal two factor login. It's like a special
Jason Aten:The thing that says tap the number tap the tap number 88 to confirm On this login?
Stephen Robles:You literally get a notification from the app. You have to tap that, and then you have to put in the 2 digit number you're seeing in your web browser in the app. Yeah. Then it scans your face. Like, why can't it just be a passkey or a normal two factor code?
Stephen Robles:Like, it is I guess maybe for all the suits, it feels more secure that you have to, like, put in a 2 digit number specifically each time. You just can't autofill it when I'm trying to log in to this one account.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I get it.
Stephen Robles:It's not good. But, Jason, don't use that for your two factor codes, Icloud passwords.
Jason Aten:But when I started using this, that wasn't an option.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Fair enough.
Jason Aten:And now they're all in here.
Stephen Robles:And it is it is difficult to, like, move them all over. Although, you can import
Jason Aten:The next thing I know the next thing I know, we're gonna be recording this podcast on Teams. Just a downhill like you can't avoid it.
Stephen Robles:No. No. We record on Riverside exclusively, just so everybody knows.
Jason Aten:I just wanted to get see, I sent you out perfectly. I think you're welcome.
Stephen Robles:That was a good setup. That was a good setup. Alright. We got to talk about Apple Vision Pro a little bit because supposedly Ming Chi Kuo is out here throwing numbers and so he's saying Looks like Apple sold a 160 to a 180,000 Vision Pro units during the first preorder weekend. One of the things I thought was interesting is After that initial wave of preorders and it would say it's unavailable, you know, for in store pickup, a couple days later, Apple said in the Apple Store app, tune back in they didn't say tune back in.
Stephen Robles:They said come back on the January 23rd at 3 PM Eastern to check for more availability, and this was the first time I'd ever seen an Apple product do that. And so I was actually on the MacBreak weekly podcast at 3 PM, which we'll talk about a little later, And I I told them, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna check this stock. So you might see me have to scan my face again, which of all the thing like, of all the, You know, I I wish you didn't have to scan your face every time you wanted to check Right. The stock. Right.
Stephen Robles:I wish I would just save it. Can I just save my my face is not gonna change that much, like, day to day? Can I just save my face cam? But anyway, so they actually opened up more availability, and I checked all the Florida stores That at that time, when they kind of restocked or they opened up more stock, there was an Apple Store that was that had an 8 AM appointment on launch day for February 2nd. The only problem was it was 3 and a half hour drive away.
Jason Aten:Oh.
Stephen Robles:I thought about it. I thought about it. I was gonna be the wild person and, like, drive there the night before, stay at a hotel, and I was, like, no, It's not that serious. I mean It's just not it's not that serious.
Jason Aten:You already have one coming to your house. They have people who will bring them to you. You don't actually have to drive all that way.
Stephen Robles:But but I did I wanted the in store experience. There were also rumors that there was gonna be like a special bag. Like I guess on the iPhone launch It's like a special bag, but you only get that if you pick it up in store. So anyway So that was it looks like it's, you know, sold a 180,000 units. If you try to order online right now, March, like late mid to late March is the delivery date, so it did slip whether or not that's, you know, a lot of sales or just the limited stock.
Stephen Robles:I do find it interesting, you know, we're not sure what the review story is gonna be. It's late in the week now. It comes out next Friday. Like, everyone's gonna have it in their hands next Friday. You're gonna have are you wait.
Stephen Robles:Did you cancel your order yet?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm yeah. I did. I'm not I don't know.
Stephen Robles:You did cancel your order? Yeah. Not even a week. You still had time.
Jason Aten:No. Because they were good. They I've I'm pretty sure they charge people's credit cards pretty quick. So.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. They did already they charged it very fast.
Jason Aten:Then I have to start doing paperwork, so I didn't wanna have to do paperwork.
Stephen Robles:Wow. Okay. Well, one of us will have an Apple Vision Pro, next time. Now I we're not gonna I I can't I can't record, like, after I get the Vision Pro, because it's probably gonna be like 2 PM Friday afternoon. So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:We'll just do a normal show next week, so everybody knows. And then the week after, I'll join the show with Apple Vision Pro on my face, and Jason will will not apparently because he canceled his order.
Jason Aten:I will. I mean, I did cancel my order. That doesn't mean it's that I I mean, you just told me I could drive. Well, it's not 3 and a half hours for me. It'd be, like, 23 and a half hours, and I could go pick one up at in Tampa or wherever.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And honestly, a lot of the stores, actually near me, They don't have a launch day, but you can still pick it up February 3rd February 4th at a lot of different locations.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:So It's the availability is there even if it's just not for the exact launch date. But, anyway
Jason Aten:It is amazing, though. If you think about it, a 180,000 Vision Pros is, like, very small number compared to Number of iPhones they probably sell on preorder, but that's over $600,000,000 worth of VisionPROs that they just sold.
Stephen Robles:Pretty good. Plus accessories. I mean, those accessories aren't cheap.
Jason Aten:Yes. That travel case, you're right, is, you know
Stephen Robles:200 bucks.
Jason Aten:Probably helping to boost that a little bit. But I think about that in the Context of people were talking about, like, they're yes. That's a small amount of demand, but it's a very expensive I would love to know when the new MacBook Pros came out, how many people bought those on launch Right? Was it more than a 180, like, I don't know. But that's the only device that Apple sells that's really comparable.
Jason Aten:I mean, the Mac Pro, obviously, but I assume no one buys that. But, like
Stephen Robles:Don't buy it.
Jason Aten:So I don't know what what the other comparable thing would be. It's like buying 3 and a half iPads, basically. So I I that It feels like that's a pretty successful launch. I don't know what Apple's expectation was, but if the if the date if the shipping dates are slipping, it seems like Apple sold what it expected to.
Stephen Robles:Apple sold what it expected to. So there's gonna be a lot of people, at least I know in Florida because, you know, launch day's sold out, there's gonna be a lot of people wearing Apple Vision Pros around. I'm curious if we will see reviews like with normal Apple launches. You know, I looked back to the Apple Watch because I feel like that was the last time a major product category was something that Apple was entering. And The Verge had a review of the original Apple Watch come out April 8th, I believe, 2015, which was 2 days before preorders opened.
Stephen Robles:Preorders opened, like, I think April 10th, and then it was, like, April 20 4th was the launch date where you would actually get it shipped to your house if you bought it. So that was like reviews, then preorders, then the actual launch. Recently, for, like, iPhone and iPad, now it's been more like preorder, reviews come out a few days before the launch, and then there's the launch of the product. Right now, we there's, like, a week span between now and the actual launch of this product. There's still a possibility we'll see a few reviews maybe Tuesday, Wednesday of next week before the product actually comes out, but I have a feeling, I don't have any data on this, It's gonna be a lot less, like, you know, with the iPhone and with iPads, you can go on YouTube, like, whenever the embargo lifts, and there's, like, a 100 videos you can watch with the products.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Maybe not a 100, but you can watch, like, 20, 30 reviews, early reviews of products at the embargo date. I just feel like that's not gonna be the case with this. A, Apple didn't have a problem selling it. I don't think they're trying to sell a ton more right now. Like, they can wait until normal people get it.
Stephen Robles:But, b, I almost wonder you can tell what you think, Jason. Apple did this weird, like, pre press things, you know, where they had, like, Al Roker and MKBHD, Nikhil Neil Patel.
Jason Aten:I'm still bitter about that, by the way. I L Roker really. That was where I draw the line. I can handle MKBHD.
Stephen Robles:Still little. Yeah. I get it. I get it. So, you know, they do this thing where Apple took the pictures of the people wearing the Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:They've been very carefully curating the story, except for what these tech people post on Instagram. And I don't know, I almost wonder if Apple rather it just get into the hands of the masses before a bunch of colored commentary is put out there about it from early reviewers. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Okay. I do have thoughts. Yeah. Comparing it to the Apple Watch, I think, might be the wrong comparison because people knew what to do with the watch. Right?
Jason Aten:The Apple Watch was new, but it wasn't really the first wearable device, But it was, you know, watch wearable device. But it was new, and it was it was unique and different from anything else that had come before. But people understood, Like, you put it on your wrist. Right? You do all you have to do is do you want, like and, actually, was the original Apple Watch in multiple sizes or if it was only one size?
Jason Aten:I don't even know.
Stephen Robles:It was 2 sizes. It was
Jason Aten:38 import. Size do you want, little or big? Right? The the bands, the there's nothing to like, they just work. Right.
Jason Aten:They're interchangeable. They're super easy. Like, there was very little about that. The there weren't as many failure points. I mean, the software wasn't amazing on the original Apple Watch, but it was still especially Looking back, but but people knew what to do with it even if Apple wasn't sure what it was for yet.
Jason Aten:Reviewing it was not difficult. Right? Whereas this, The Vision Pro has so many potential failure points. You know, did it fit wrong? Did you not know what you're doing?
Jason Aten:They so they have handheld this much more In a in a very different way because
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Because it's such an expensive device and because there are so many failure points. And I just reflect back to WWDC Having sort of the hands on experience, the demo, and afterwards, there was an opportunity. We were sitting in we were sitting in a little Seating area with, like, some product people, not the people who had done the demo and a couple of other media press journal type journalist type people who were sitting there, And we were given a chance to ask some questions, and they didn't wanna ask answer any tech questions. Right? And in fact, one of the things that they said was, You know, today is not about tech specs.
Jason Aten:It's about the experience and which is a very apple thing to say. But I think that the point was that if once you put this thing in the hands of a reviewer who knows how to review technology hardware, They're going to be poking at it and prodding at it, and they're not necessarily gonna not that they won't talk about the experience, but Apple wants To just sell you the experience right now. They are selling a very specific story, and they want to control that for as long as they possibly can. And you give this thing to MKBHD, and he's gonna like, who will do an amazing job? I really wanna see him review this thing because he's one of the best tech reviewers that there are Other than, you know, the best voice on the Internet Internet, Steven Roberts.
Stephen Robles:I'm trying not
Jason Aten:to trademarked.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:Anyway I appreciate it. But, you know, he's it's not going to just be about the experience. It's gonna It's gonna be about how this thing was built. What kind of technology is in there? What is that technology doing?
Jason Aten:And so I think what Apple wants to the kind of the impression I got was This thing is amazing. The technology, we figured it out. Just put it on and experience the experience. And so I think they're trying to keep that Sort of veil of
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:The It's
Stephen Robles:like mystery.
Jason Aten:Utopia. Utopia. It's a veil of utopia. Is that a thing? There's a there's a title for you.
Stephen Robles:That's part of the episode. Absolutely.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There you go. So I think that they're trying to maintain that as long as possible and Moving, you know, and then they'll move past that once they're in people's hands. So
Stephen Robles:Thank you for the episode title. I have one question before we move on from Apple Vision Pro because you used it.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:When you're wearing it and it's on battery, where is the battery icon? Can you see, like, the battery percentage in your view. You remember?
Jason Aten:I never saw 1. Now that doesn't mean that there wasn't one, but listen. You have to Realize that it is a sensory overload because not only can you see the room you're in, but there's just all kinds of interesting things, and things are sort of, like, lighting up. By lighting up, I mean, Indicating that this is the selected inter piece of the interface as you move your eyes around. So everything you look at suddenly becomes a thing that you can just, like, select By pinching your fingers together.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So a battery icon was not a part of the demo. I don't think that they were really concerned with you, but I I'm sure you could have just asked Siri how much, You know, battery do I have left?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But I mean, people love putting the actual number percentage in their battery icon, which don't do that.
Jason Aten:Do it.
Stephen Robles:I know everybody does No. No. See, this we're on the opposite side of the spectrum here. Don't do it. You don't need that much granular.
Jason Aten:I thought it was better when they only had the number and not the fill part of it.
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. No. No.
Stephen Robles:No. No. Alright. You don't need the it's not it's not that Siri. Look at the widget.
Stephen Robles:You can look at the widget for the percentage. You can, Just swipe down from control center. You can see the percentage. Don't stress yourself out. You know what I mean?
Stephen Robles:Life is short. You don't be thinking about your battery that much.
Jason Aten:But I I tried it for a while and my life was way more stressful, honestly. Really?
Stephen Robles:That's interesting. Well Yeah. With Apple Vision Pro, like, I'm curious because 2 hours on that battery.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:And if you wanna start a movie, you kinda wanna know what that percentage is at. So I was just curious, like, are you gonna, like, Have to look in the upper right hand corner of your room. Do you have to, like I don't know. I just want I wanna if anybody knows out there who maybe tried VisionPRO or you just know? Where where's the battery?
Stephen Robles:Where's the battery icon? I just wanna know.
Jason Aten:That's an important piece of information that we would like to break exclusively on this podcast. So somebody reach out to us. Let us know where
Stephen Robles:is the
Jason Aten:battery indicator.
Stephen Robles:Where is the battery indicator? Alright. Gotta talk about, Netflix getting into live TV, side loading on the iPhone in the EU, in in the Apple car, and then we'll get some personal tech. But we actually don't have a sponsor for today's episode. Our wonderful sponsor Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba, they have a couple episodes coming next month, but I thought I would take a moment and say, a well, they're not gonna hear this because I'm gonna cut this out for the members.
Stephen Robles:But thank you to all the members who are currently supporting the show, Unmemberful, and directly in Apple Podcasts, and so we are appealing to you viewers who are on YouTube, listeners in your podcast app. We would really appreciate your direct support, and you can support primary technology. There's 2 plans, $5 a month or $50 a year. I actually had a couple people reach out, said they wanna do the $50 annual on Memberful, and so that's now an option. You can go do that.
Stephen Robles:So you can do a whole year, you can do a month, and you get an ad free version, which means you wouldn't be hearing this right now, which is kind of an ad for our own show, but Hey, I think we should we're gonna do it. And then you also get bonus content. We have a bonus episode that comes out every week alongside the main episode, and we talk about interesting stuff. This week, we're gonna talk about slides, keynote, Google slides, Jason's experience, with most was it middle schoolers?
Jason Aten:Where Where
Stephen Robles:did you who are you talking about?
Jason Aten:They're high school students. A high school journalism class.
Stephen Robles:High school journalism class. It's very interesting. Yeah. So we would love your support. If you can't do that, we totally understand.
Stephen Robles:Enjoy the show, the free version. Watch on YouTube, listen everywhere, put it on repeat, whatever you'd like to do. You could also support the show with that 5 star rating and review. That'll also help us out. But We appreciate your support.
Stephen Robles:There's lots already supporting the show and we really appreciate it. So, you know, we'll put the links in the description. We appreciate it. Jason, Netflix is getting into live TV in a with of all of all sports? No.
Stephen Robles:Not sports. What do you call it?
Jason Aten:Entertainment. It's technically Sort of sports, but they're getting into the least authentic live TV you can pass. Like, there is There is layers of nuance of, like, you're you're you're making a point of you're getting into live TV and it's sports, but it's Pro wrestling. It's Listen. It's I'm not knocking pro wrestling.
Jason Aten:I'm just saying No. No. Like, that's a stretch because it's the least, I don't know. I don't even know.
Stephen Robles:Probably the least when it comes to being live or not, I don't know. I I've not watched wrestling, so I don't wanna disparage Any live wrestling watchers. But anyway, Netflix strike struck struck a deal.
Jason Aten:Yes. Struck. They struck.
Stephen Robles:Stroke a deal.
Jason Aten:They they came up with a deal.
Stephen Robles:That came up with a deal with the WWE. And in January 2025, so 1 year from now, They will be the exclusive streamer, I believe, of WWE Monday Night Raw. It's like a $500,000,000 deal. It's gonna be for 10 years. This is a 10 year deal, which is a $5,000,000,000 commitment.
Stephen Robles:Netflix did it. I mean, I think this is telling, a, that like, getting into live TV I have an experience with my mom's antenna that I'm gonna talk about in a second, but, like, getting into live TV is differentiating it. I don't know if you've seen more and more, like, Netflix is becoming I saw an article recently that it's kinda becoming like old school cable where They're licensing some of the movies that you might wanna see. They're licensing more of the TV shows again because these other streaming services realize that's how you make money. Okay.
Stephen Robles:This is interesting. I'm also curious. You know, I know there was lots of talk with Apple TV and football maybe, like, a year ago or 2 years ago, which didn't pan out just yet. But are streamers gonna be getting into more live TV sporting events, you think?
Jason Aten:I mean, so this is actually sort of confusing Because I I was actually just looking this up because I was pretty sure that the WWE, they had their own streaming service maybe, and then they became a part of Peacock.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:I'm pretty sure that for a long time, they were part of Peacock. So I was just looking this up to try to figure out, like, how does that work? So wrestling was already on streaming, and now they're going to be streaming on Netflix instead of on Peacock. And I'm probably Getting some of these details wrong because I don't
Stephen Robles:It says right here, WWE's current deal with NBC has Raw airing on USA Network until October 2024. So it seems like that deal ends October this year, and then Netflix picks it up January 2025. Got it. And Netflix will become the exclusive home of, quote, raw in in the US.
Jason Aten:Which is quite the thing to claim. Anyway, I so I think Sports is always, like, the holy grail of television. Right? Because it is
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:The thing that, one, draws the most viewers. I mean, if you look at the charts that they put out of the, like, top 100 Show, you know, television broadcast over over course of year. Right. 97 of them are the NFL. 1 of them is the college Championship.
Jason Aten:One of them is the Oscars and one of them is I don't you know, some other random some other random thing.
Stephen Robles:Probably the big game. Right? We can't say the s word.
Jason Aten:I can say the Super Bowl.
Stephen Robles:It's fine.
Jason Aten:So But that's one of the that's one of the 97. We're not, like, saying
Stephen Robles:Well, they're not gonna get taken down for saying it?
Jason Aten:I don't know. Does YouTube have do they do content strikes for saying the word? You just claim you're having a Super Bowl party if you're a high school middle school youth group because then there's confusion about, like, the trademark. But I'm pretty sure, though, We can state that it exists in the world. In fact, I'm sure
Stephen Robles:they look like us too.
Jason Aten:Anyway Okay.
Stephen Robles:I know. I was always afraid to say it because I knew it was, like, a big deal. That's why everybody said, like, whenever you go into, like, back in the day, Circuit City
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Or you know, the supermarket now is like, the big game, food, the big game TV sales, the big game. You know, you can't Yeah. See. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because they do yeah. Anyway, I I think we're I think we're fine.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:If we get to the point where we have enough people watching this, the people from the NFL see this, then, like, I will We'll deal with it. That'll be great.
Stephen Robles:We've made it. We can hire a lawyer at that point.
Jason Aten:We can reedit the show, cut that piece those words out. You can add the big game.
Stephen Robles:Complete it out.
Jason Aten:We'll do 80, you know, dub well, we dub this episode for anyway.
Stephen Robles:The big game.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Anyway, so I I do think that that is the I mean, As we mentioned, like, MLS Design, Apple TV
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Major League Baseball in just different places, the Thursday night games on, on Prime Video. Prime Video had a Friday, Black Friday game where you could, like, watch the commercials and, like, scan QR codes and, like, buy anyway. Yes. I think that the streaming services are going to do everything that they can to get as much sports as possible. And it might've been on, it was either on, Ben Thompson's stratigraphy podcast, you know, in one of his articles or it was dithering where they were talking about, like, expect to see more ESPN stuff designed for, like, streaming services for, like, the Vision Pro, for example.
Jason Aten:So I think that, like, that is yes. That's the direction this is headed. Wrestling, I don't know. But yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. When it comes to live TV, I'll just say so my mom has had a TV for, like, 14 years, and and it was starting to blip out. And so it was time to get her new TV.
Jason Aten:She's had the same TV for 14 years, you're saying. Okay. She said the same thing. You made it sound like she just got a TV 14 years ago, and I was like
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. No. We we had a tube TV my entire, childhood.
Stephen Robles:She needed a TV. No one was blipping out, so we got the new one. And she had an antenna, one of those like $15 squares with a rounded corner antennas you put near your window to get local live TV channels for free, which is still a thing you can do, and it still works pretty good most of the time. We got this new TV in, and for some reason with the exact same antenna setup, a lot of the main channels like Fox, NBC, and CBS We're like starting to like blip out with the green and the other stuff like you just it was unwatchable. So I was like, oh my goodness.
Stephen Robles:Alright, live TV. So I tried a couple other antennas, it wasn't working, and then I looked into I don't know I don't know if you subscribed to any of these or if you ever looked into the prices, but I was like, what does YouTube Live TV, Sling TV, What do they cost to get your local channels live, to just stream it on the Apple TV in their app? YouTube TV is, like, $75. Sling to get local channels is, like, 60 something dollars. Hulu Live TV to get local channels is also $70.
Stephen Robles:The last time I had looked, They were like 30 to 40, which I almost considered paying, and I was like, it'll just be easier. She could just stream all this. She has, like, the cloud DVR or whatever. When I saw $75 for YouTube Live TV, I was, like, no. I'm gonna make this work.
Stephen Robles:So I literally bought, like, 3 different over the air antennas. I was over there, like, trying to get it to dangle from the windowsill to see, like and I found the exact spot where the antenna needs to be to get all the local channels for free in HD, and that's that's what we're sticking to. I'm not paying $75. It seems crazy now for that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We do pay for YouTube TV, And we it was really, like, a kick in the gut because we so we had had Hulu with live TV for a long time when that first came out and when we cut cable for good. And then it started It it started to get more expensive, and not only that, Hulu has this thing where you can pay for Hulu without ads. Right? And so we get Hulu as a part of the Disney plus bundle with our Verizon phone, if you can follow that road map.
Stephen Robles:Yes. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And and we pay for Hulu to not have ads. So we're paying, like, $5 a month for the Hulu, Like, the whole bundle. Right? And it also has, like, ESPN streaming service. The thing is, some shows on Hulu, even if you pay for no ads, still have ads Because of the deal they have with, like, FX or whatever the the station might be.
Jason Aten:And not only that, you could be watching a Kids movie like The Croods or something. But if that movie is on, let's say, FX
Stephen Robles:Right. Then you
Jason Aten:you get whatever ads are on FX. And those ads sometimes Are not appropriate for children watching it. And so we got rid of the so the the the live TV, and we moved over to YouTube TV. And you're right. It was, like, $45 at the time.
Jason Aten:It was a great deal. It is less of a great deal now
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Especially
Jason Aten:because the only thing we use it for is basically, like, we were just we're talking about watching live sports. We love watching, you know, our Michigan State basketball and football, that kind of thing. Well, Michigan State football wasn't that fun to watch this year, but we we enjoy and the Lions, Lions, Alliance. Alright. Playing San Francisco next week for the NFC championship.
Jason Aten:So, anyway, it's a lot of money for that, but it honestly is a better option in a lot of ways if you have, like, An Apple TV because you just never have to worry about it, and we can take our Apple TV wherever we want, and we just have TV. So
Stephen Robles:Yes. So this is Hulu Live TV and Disney plus $77 a month. The no ads, Hulu, same package basically is $90 a month. You know, my mom is not watching sports.
Jason Aten:Right. She
Stephen Robles:wants to watch like Wheel of Fortune when it's on. Right. You know, those those kinds of they're like the the network dramas or whatever that are on at 8 PM and it's like that's no. So anyway Yeah. Over the air antennas, just so everybody knows, they still work.
Stephen Robles:You just find the right one, you gotta find the exact spot by the window, free. You don't have to pay anything a month. Just throwing that out there.
Jason Aten:You Just have to buy a new one every 15 years. Years ago, I got
Stephen Robles:a new one. Yeah. No big deal. No biggie. Alright.
Stephen Robles:We gotta talk about sideloading. This was an article in the Wall Street Journal, and it looks like because of the EU and what they've been you know, the laws that they're passing, that in the next possibly the next version of iOS 17.4, that, at least in the EU, sideloading might be something that is enabled, and people in the EU might be able to, quote unquote, sideload apps. Now this This article from the Wall Street Journal does not talk a lot about the specifics of what that will look like, which, granted, Apple has not shared anything, and so Curious what this is gonna look like, but with the whole anti steering that we talked about last week, where if a developer puts a link in their app and a user follows that link out. Apple is still gonna get 27% of purchases made from that link, and developers are gonna have to, like, provide a report. Side loading as a benefit to developers or game makers like Epic Games to not have to pay Apple's tax, quote unquote.
Stephen Robles:I don't think it's gonna be a thing. I think even side loaded apps, and this was alluded to in the Wall Street Journal article, is that those side loaded apps are still gonna pay Apple a percentage, probably 27%, like the anti steering, and the only benefit is that they won't have to go through the App Store approval process. But The main reason, again, that developers wanna do that would not to pay the 27% to Apple, and that's probably not gonna be the case. And so I'm curious if this will actually be as as big a deal, because sideloading we've talked about on the iPhone for years, and everyone's like, yes, we want sideloading, at least a very small vocal minority. Is like we want to side load, so we don't have to deal with whatever.
Stephen Robles:And, you know, I'm sure DHH and the guys over at Basecamp and HEY would love side loading, so they don't have to deal with the App Store review process. But there's not gonna be a really likely a financial benefit to these developers.
Jason Aten:So Yeah. And we we we did sort of call this in the sense that when I I think it Was maybe last episode of the week before where I basically said that nobody cares about, you know, steering people to their website. Nobody cares about site. What they care about the 30%, or in this case, the 27%. That's the reason all of these things are nobody I mean, the arguments that people are the developers are making and the regulators are making is that Consumers should have choice.
Jason Aten:People should be able to do have access to do this. People should do what they want with their devices. But, really, I mean, in consumers, that's actually a reasonable argument because the the 30% doesn't really matter to me because I don't have to pay that, you know, separately to Apple. It's just a part of the price. And if the app is $2, Like, would it be a dollar 60?
Jason Aten:No. It would still be $2. The the developer would just be keep making more money of it, and that's the point. The the only thing that matters is that Apple's response is super interesting. I was at Web Summit, which is a big conference that they do in Lisbon, when Apple sent Craig Federighi To give a keynote.
Jason Aten:That's right. Talking about the dangers of side loading. Like it was the most amazing Thing that I have ever witnessed that it was, like, a purely from a straight face. And he says, it says one security Firm found more than 5,000,000 attacks per month on its clients using another mobile platform. He's clearly talking about Android.
Jason Aten:But there's never been this kind of widespread consumer malware attack on iOS. What's the difference? The single reason is that the other platforms allow sideloading, which is hilarious because even Epic, when they were having the fight with Apple, Talking about sideloading admitted that no one does it. Like, no one uses sideloading on Android because it's just, like, ridiculous. It's just so much more convenient for a consumer to just Go ahead and, like, do, you know, just order it through the app.
Jason Aten:Like, just buy your stuff through the app store because, you know, you it's it's a better experience for users. It's and, honestly
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:It's Probably a better experience for most developers. Right? I think it was on on ATP a week or 2 ago where both Marco Arment and Casey List, both of whom who have apps in the App Store said, If they were given the choice to just take the payment somewhere else, they'd probably just use the App Store. Right? Because it's just easier for them.
Jason Aten:They don't wanna mess with it. So I I think that the logical conclusion here and this you have kids, so you can relate to this. But I feel like Apple is very much like The child in the back seat who keeps annoying their sibling. And so finally, you're like, stop touching your siblings. Stop hitting them.
Jason Aten:Stop doing whatever. So they just sit in the back and instead of touching this sibling, they just start wiggling their figures right near the imaginary line. Close. Yeah. It's like, okay.
Jason Aten:Well, we're abiding by the Letter of what you said I have to do, but they're nowhere even close to the spirit of it. And I I just I've said this before. I think it's really in I mean, I love Apple. Apple. We're gonna talk about the Mac in a minute.
Jason Aten:Like, I I love this. You know? It's just interesting to me that this is the approach that they're taking, Which is we will do the absolute minimum to comply as we think we can get away with, and we're going to force you to tell us if we're wrong.
Stephen Robles:And I'm curious, like, what kind of reporting because it seems like they were requiring reporting from developers with links in their apps for steering them out to the web. I'm curious if there will be a reporting required for side loading, and I'm sure there's also gonna be a 1,000 warning screens if you do try to side load an app like, danger, like, this is going to probably ruin your iPhone or whatever. 2, like, personally, I would probably never side load an app. Right. I mean, it would have to be really I don't know what the case would be or what the app would be.
Stephen Robles:There's probably no apps that that would only be sideloaded. Although, you know what, companies like Meta who make apps with maybe not questionable, but they do take a lot of data from You're you know, if you look at those privacy health cards for, like, Instagram threads, Facebook, they try to get all the information they can. I don't know if a side loaded app would have more access to more data on your device. I'm sure Apple would regulate that in the operating system somehow.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They're still sandboxed. I mean, yeah. The that doesn't change iOS.
Stephen Robles:Still seeing bugs. Yeah. That's true. They're not they're not they're not changing any of that. So but I know me personally, I I would still just stick to the App Store.
Stephen Robles:Even on Mac, where you can install an app from anywhere. If I can get an app from the website via a DMG file or download it from the App Store, even if it's a couple dollars more. I'll download it from the App Store. A, I mean, trust security, privacy and all that, But honestly, just ease, because then when I set up a Mac in the future, I know when I log in with my Icloud account, I'll be able to download all of the purchases I made from the Mac App Store in one place, And I like to limit how many different places I need to install the apps that I need. And there are some that aren't in the App Store because they do things that, You know, the App Store won't allow, on the Mac at least.
Stephen Robles:Probably will be the case on iPhone. But I'll also say, you know, when it comes to the quote unquote Apple tax of the 27, 30% or whatever. The one I'm not a developer, so I don't have apps in the App Store, but the one area that I do have experience with is Apple Podcast subscriptions, And I have done I've offered Apple Podcast subscriptions with 3 different shows, including this one, and I've offered Apple Podcast subscriptions directly in Apple Podcasts app and the same subscription for the same price outside Apple Podcasts via Patreon a couple times and Memberful here, and way more people sign up directly in Apple Podcasts.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's just a numbers thing. And, again, like, from my own experience, I get why. Like, you already have a credit card that you know is up to date because you're already you already have subscriptions on there, you're already paying for apps and stuff, and the ease of, like, tap tap face ID and you're signed up for the subscription and the integration with Apple Podcasts, just like the integration with the App Store and the iPhone, and if it's a universal app, You buy it on your iPhone and then you can on your iPad. My kids, if I buy an app and it's shared, they can download it on their devices because we're in the same Icloud family. That ease of use and visibility, like, again, I'm not defending the whole 30% or whatever, but I will say, like, the visibility of being where Apple users are, Whether that's the App Store or offering a subscription in Apple Podcasts, just being in front of more eyes has benefited us personally and me personally in multiple podcasts because more people just sign up when it's easy in the Apple's apps.
Jason Aten:Yeah. In Apple, it seems as though it's kind of like the the idea that, like, if you have a trademark For something, you have to defend that trademark or you lose the trademark. Right? If you if you have a trademark on a thing and somebody else is using it and you just let it go, Essentially, you've diluted your trademark, and now you can't go back later and sort of, like, claim that. And it sort of feels like that's Apple's approach with this.
Jason Aten:They're just, We are going to hold the line a 100% here until we're forced to move it, and then we're only gonna move it that far because we they're they are just trying to avoid it it Feels like they're trying to avoid where that outcome might be on its own, and I feel like the goodwill that they would earn would so far exceed Any of that. I'm never gonna load an app on my iPhone from side loading. I'm just I mean, I've I have a an Android phone. I've never done it on there either. I tried to do it on with Fortnite one time, And I'm like, this is just too complicated.
Jason Aten:And the only reason I tried to do it with Fortnite was during the whole I wanted to see, like, what is it like to side load something? And I'm just like, I'll try it. I'm I'm like, nope. Forget it. I don't I'm never gonna play this game.
Jason Aten:I just don't care that much. So but I was at a speech that, Tim Cook gave in Washington DC in, I think, 2022 to cover, And it was the same thing as the Federighi thing, and he says, like, his quote I'll just read you this. It just says, here in Washington and elsewhere, policymakers are taking steps in the name of competition that would force Apple to let Apps on the iPhone that circumvent the App Store through a process called sideloading, and this is the money quote. That means data hungry companies We'll be able to avoid our privacy rules and once again track our users against their will. So all of that is kind of true, but that's not the reason why Apple cares about this?
Jason Aten:They care about it because of 30%. The EU, who is passing all these laws, they're the reason we have USB c on the iPhone. Should is USB c on the iPhone good? Yes. But should it be a government regulator that determines what components your phone should have?
Jason Aten:No. Absolutely not. Like, Apple should just do the right thing. The regulators should just, like, stop trying to force companies and people to do things. The developers, right, like and I don't mean small developers because I I I feel like there's a very different situation between Epic Games and and Marco Armitt.
Jason Aten:Right? Marco was very successful, but that's not my point is, like, the those huge developers, Netflix is a perfect example. They the experience of using Netflix on the phone, especially if you're a new customer, is worse because Netflix is so stubborn that they won't let you sign up in the app. Although, I there is a funny workaround where if you download one of the Netflix games, you can actually sign up for Netflix in the app. Wow.
Jason Aten:The problem is you can only sign up for the ad supported tier, and you can't change your subscription online because You can you know, it's an in app subscription, so it's this weird kind of a workaround thing. So you can't sign up for Netflix in the app, but you can sign up for Netflix in one of Netflix's gaming apps. Anyway, The point is nobody looks good, and the people who are missing out the most are the users. It's kind of like, don't you just wish that these big companies And these regulators and ever they just start, like, behaving and thinking about who is really gonna end up paying the price, which is the people who use their products. So sorry.
Jason Aten:There's my rant. I didn't think I was gonna write that much on sideloading this morning. I'm glad I had my second cup of coffee.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. That second cup of coffee is coming through. I Yeah. I think it's the same thing with the Apple Watch where it's still surprising to me that rather than just giving Massimo whatever money they want for this blood oxygen sensor patent, that Apple would rather put a banner on the top of their website that says series 9 and Ultra 2 no longer have blood oxygen.
Stephen Robles:Like, these they just doesn't come with it anymore. Same price. Sorry. It does feel a little like
Jason Aten:Were you the one that said that they should just drop one of those Walgreens pulse oximeters into the box with every Apple Watch that they ship just despite the Oh, no. I didn't 10.
Stephen Robles:I don't think I know that, but that's pretty Okay. That's pretty that's pretty good. Just ship it in the box.
Jason Aten:Just ship it next to a separate completely separate pulse oximeter to every single person that buys when it's, like, $10 at Walgreens. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's $66. So There There you go. Anyway, alright. Last thing before we get to, Matt, the 40 years of the Mac as a personal tech.
Stephen Robles:This is another Apple story is from Bloomberg. This originally came from Mark Gurman, that the Apple Car apparently still exists and could debut in 2028. You know what's funny? I was at Apple Insider, like, starting in 2014, and And Apple Insider was actually one of the first to break Project Titan, which was the Apple Car product. And, you know, Jon Gruber actually linked to it on Daring Fireball, and that was We're getting close to 10 years ago, and this Project Titan, like, the fact that this is still around I you know, Apple is obviously still doing something in the car space, trying things, maybe developing things.
Stephen Robles:Mark Gurman says that, you know, they're still going for self driving cars, but more like a Tesla and less like, You know, some of the concepts we had heard in in previous years was, like, Apple's gonna do a car with no steering wheel, and it's just gonna have, like, 2 bench seats facing each other. You're never gonna be able to drive it yourself, like, it's totally automated. Maybe they're going more for the Tesla model, and it is an EV with, quote unquote, self driving, but still like a car, like steering wheel, all that kind of stuff. 2028, 4 years from now, still feels kinda soon. Like, I feel like we're not gonna see a car in 2028, at least I don't think so.
Stephen Robles:And I I don't it still feels weird to me. Like, I don't I don't know how to describe it than just saying, like, it feels weird and I I just doesn't feel like Apple would I can't see it wouldn't be Tim Cook at this point because Tim Cook has said he's probably not gonna be the CEO, you know, by this time. So, like, who? Jeff Williams comes out on stage and says, introducing Apple Car. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And everyone will just think it's the next generation of a credit card because they all sound the same. I think well, somebody I saw somebody post this, I think, on threads. It's like Apple has been saying that the well, no. The reports have been saying that Apple will be launching a car in 4 years for the last 9 years.
Jason Aten:So for 9 years, Apple has been 4 years away from launching a car. And And so I put this in our show notes because I thought, like, is Apple ever gonna actually make a car? And I just I don't think so. I don't think they're gonna make a car. And When you look at the photo, if you're watching this on YouTube, if you're not watching it on YouTube, just find any article that talks about CarPlay 2.
Jason Aten:K? And you'll see the a similar picture to what I'm looking at, But nothing about that was designed by someone who understands anything about cars. Right? That interface is not useful for someone. Like, I love that when you go in there, like, the weather is in 2 different places.
Jason Aten:They're like because you just got random clocks in different places. It's like that do you know anything? I mean so CarPlay. Right? CarPlay is a great product.
Jason Aten:It's not an amazing interface, but the reason we love CarPlay, there's three reasons. One, it's better than any garbage that a car maker puts in With the exception of Tesla actually does a decent job. I wish I could use CarPlay, but Tesla does a good job, and Rivian does a good job. Everybody else, it's just complete garbage. So CarPlay is like a Cold drink in hell for those people.
Jason Aten:So but then the second thing is it's they're all familiar. You, like, look at that and you know exactly what to tap on to open your maps, to open your music, to open your podcast, to Open your messages, whatever it is. And then the third reason is it's like, it's also all of your information that's already on your phone. You're carrying it around because you're just basically interacting with your phone through a different screen. That's that's the reason we like CarPlay.
Jason Aten:Apple, I think, assumes that that means that they would actually be good at doing all of the other things involved in making a car, And it's just not clear that that's ever gonna be the case. And I feel like Apple is either 10 years too early because that's how long it's gonna be before we ever get to, like, Level 5 autonomous driving. Right now, they've said they were gonna do level 4, and now they're saying, like, level 2 plus. Level 2 plus just means that it will do adaptive Cruise control and keep you in the lane at the same time. That's what level 2 means.
Jason Aten:It can do 2 things at once.
Stephen Robles:And to be clear, Tesla Full self driving is level 4. Right.
Jason Aten:But it's not real. So that but that if it was real, that's what it would be. I mean, when
Stephen Robles:it's not driving in Hold on. You say it's not real.
Jason Aten:It's not full self driving. Right? It's called full self driving. The car will not fully drive itself.
Stephen Robles:So cgpgray, He did a video where he took a Tesla Model Y, I believe, on the Dragon's Tale Road in North Carolina. And this was several years ago.
Jason Aten:Which I've ridden on and it is ridiculous and you throw up anyway.
Stephen Robles:It's ridiculous. And he did not touch the steering wheel or the gas for the whole ride and, like, it did it. Like, it it drove the thing. So and this is just my ignorance, like, is that not self driving or, Like, what is that compared to what you're talking about? Like, full self driving completely.
Jason Aten:Okay. Well okay. I have a wait. We have a Tesla Model s, by the way. Before you send me hate mail, You're welcome to send me as much as you want, but before you send it to me, I want you to understand I drive a Tesla every single day.
Jason Aten:Okay? So I'm not just hating on a company. Like, I have a model s, the Nicest one you can get. I just wanna be clear about that. Okay?
Jason Aten:It's not a plaid or whatever.
Stephen Robles:You know, I waited into this, and I did not think about the possible Tesla hoards that might
Jason Aten:It will generate plenty of engagement. This is wonderful. But but let me
Stephen Robles:with everyone.
Jason Aten:Our our other car is a Hyundai Hyundai Palisade. It will also do that. It'll keep you in your lane and keep you going at the same speed on any road in America. Well, what it won't do is be like, oh, Oh, you want to go to the grocery store, sit in the back seat, and I'll get you there. That's what full self driving means to people.
Jason Aten:So that's the reason I say the Tesla is not full self driving. Yes. It will you in the lane. You won't drive off of the road, but that's not the same thing as calling something full self driving. So that's that's
Stephen Robles:Now isn't Aren't there not I feel like I've seen TikToks from people in Los Angeles or whatever where they call an Uber or some ride share, and there's no one in the car, and they just sit in the back seat.
Jason Aten:Waymo.
Stephen Robles:So is that self full self driving?
Jason Aten:Yeah. But have you ever seen one of those? No. They're wearing, like, a Crown of sensors and cameras. They're like mini vans with, like, 4 feet of things on the top.
Jason Aten:So yes. I mean, you know, the monorail is also What's what's the name of the brand? But, like, the monorail is also full self driving. Right? You can get in that thing, and it goes on a track, and it'll kick you all the way around the Magic Kingdom.
Jason Aten:But, like, that's not the thing you're gonna use to go to the grocery store. I'm just saying, when I say it's not real, I'm saying they should stop calling it full self driving. So, anyway, sorry. That was a that was a deep tangent down in a very windy
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. I I wanted to I was actually curious. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I see what you're seeing. So these are the the Waymo cars. I'll put this link in the show notes. W a y m o. Yep.
Stephen Robles:As you as Jason aptly described, this thing has, like, yeah, contusions and growths all over it because it's cameras and sensors and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And they are saying it's, a fully autonomous ride.
Jason Aten:Well, but they only go on specific routes And on specific areas that are you couldn't just get into that thing and be like, drive me to, you know, some place that's never been or is not care in fact, a lot of times, they're very, Very geo fenced in terms of locations. There's a really good I'll I'll send Steven the link, and he can include it. But there's a really good video from a guy named Kyle Connor who does a lot of EV Videos taking one of these around, and it's like, you can only go from certain places to certain other places is which, again, that's not Full self like, I think words mean things. So I get really worked up when we use words to mean things that they don't
Stephen Robles:You're a writer. I get it. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. So anyway.
Stephen Robles:To be honest, Waymo is saying the world's first autonomous ride hailing service. I think even they're very careful not to say, They say take a fully autonomous ride. Right. Like you are saying, they're being careful not to say, like, we have full self driving cars, which Yeah.
Jason Aten:Well, they don't even get cars. They're just using other cars and putting a crown of of cameras
Stephen Robles:on it. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:This is good. This is gonna make for good clips.
Jason Aten:I was thinking that. I was thinking I just gave Steven so much good stuff. So that's
Stephen Robles:me, Cliff.
Jason Aten:It's so worth it to me.
Stephen Robles:Going off. So anyway, I I don't know. I don't know if we'll ever see an Apple car, but I'm also I drive a 2011 Kia Soul. Jason's ahead of me on the car game,
Jason Aten:so Well, you know.
Stephen Robles:You'd be closer to getting it. Anyway I
Jason Aten:just the only reason I have a Tesla is so that when I write things and say things like this and people send me hate mail, I can be like dude, I drive 1. Just leave me alone.
Stephen Robles:It's It's the ultimate justification. Like, listen, do you have a Tesla? No. Yeah. I get it.
Stephen Robles:I get it. Well, I I do know. My father-in-law has a Tesla Model S and he doesn't like to drive it because he's trying to Keep from putting miles on it and I'm like, I don't know if the if you still paying for gas in your Infiniti SUV. I feel like this is Yeah. I feel like
Jason Aten:there's a re it's not worth having just to sit in your garage. It's not it's not
Stephen Robles:worth it. You you gotta drive it. But, anyway, alright. We gotta talk about The 40 years of Mac. So it's the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh, which was the actual 40th anniversary was yesterday's record, which is January 24th.
Stephen Robles:And was this when the commercial aired or was this when the no. This is when it was No.
Jason Aten:The commercial aired 2 days earlier during the Super bowl.
Stephen Robles:Super Bowl.
Jason Aten:So the time 22nd was the one still one of the most iconic commercials of all time directed by Ridley Scott. You know, it's the 1984 commercial where the lady's running with, I think, actually, if you scroll down, you'll see just a little bit of it. But, where it throws the big screen and it's like why 1984 won't be like 1984 or something like that. Yeah. And then 2 days later is when the actual Macintosh went on sale.
Jason Aten:So that would be Yesterday, 40 years ago.
Stephen Robles:So there's been a lot of great pieces written. Jason has a great piece. It'll be in the show notes. Jason Snell has written several and just a lot of affinity and nostalgia for the Mac, for the original Mac, and then even for the Mac today. And I'll let Jason really wax poetically about it.
Stephen Robles:I will say in one of Jason Snell's articles, he actually spoke to Steve Jobs at the 20th anniversary, and then he's talked to Phil Schiller at the 30th anniversary, and he was asking them about the Mac's relevance at that point. And to which Steve Jobs said at the during the, 20th anniversary and Phil Shiller at the 30th, this is Phil Shiller's quote, Our view is the Mac keeps going forever, and that's just kind of like the anthem. Because every time there's an iPad OS update or every time, like there's more Mac like features that come to the iPad. Everyone always asks, does this mean the Mac is going away? Like is the iPad the future of that?
Stephen Robles:Or is just as Apple you know, Apple didn't make a Mac Pro for like 6 years. Everybody was like, is the Mac dying? And I feel like, You know, your article, hearing everybody talk about it, the Mac, while it might not have the affinity of younger audiences, like I think about my kids, They don't have a Mac. They don't have Macs. They don't Right.
Stephen Robles:Really use a Mac. They don't even wanna use a Mac. Like I've asked multiple times, like, Hey. If I get an Imac with Final Cut or Logic, would you guys use it? And they're like, we have our iPads, like, it's fine.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And
Stephen Robles:so I I do wonder, like, 20 years from now what the affinity will be. Although I do feel like when my kids really wanna do, like, work work or maybe really make videos, they're gonna want to get a Mac because they're gonna want like real edit video editing software, but anyway. There's just this affinity for the Mac. I feel it too. You know, we I think it was just on last week's episode.
Stephen Robles:We didn't plan it, but we We talked about, some of our first Macs, and Jason actually found a picture of it, which, I'll have to show in a moment. But I I enjoyed reading all about it. I was on the MacBreak Weekly podcast this week. And those guys like Leo Laporte, Andy Notko, like Jason Snell was actually on the episode, you know, they were talking about they were there. They got the original Mac and and they actually had an original Mac, on the show, MacBreak Weekly.
Stephen Robles:1 of the guys had, like, the box, everything that came with it came with a cassette tape that was an audio walkthrough of using the Mac. And the guy actually still had the original cassette tape on MacBreak Weekly. They had the original stickers that came with the Mac. They even talked about how all the people on the team signed the inside of the Mac, and so every one of these original Macs actually has embossed on the inside, of the case all the names, including Steve Jobs' signature. So, I'm just wildly nostalgic, but tell me kind of the angle of what you were thinking in this piece.
Jason Aten:Well, so I wrote about why I think that the Mac is still Apple's most beloved product, and I think that it's hard to remember, especially because a lot of people listening to this weren't around. And I was I was around when the Mac came out. I just wasn't very old. Right? The first, you know, this is, this was 2 years before the, the challenger, you know, Shuttle explosion.
Jason Aten:Like, so this is like this happened a long time ago. And but I think that, you know, people really love their iPhones, but I don't think the iPhone is beloved. Right? They would rather use it. And I wrote in this article that if I was we did this whole thing for if we had to pick 22 things, which would they be?
Jason Aten:And We both set up some version of a Mac and our iPhone, but if I had to only pick one of those, I could get by with an Android phone if I had to. I would pick my Mac.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:I would without a question. There I there there are some very good Windows machines, but my brain just doesn't work that way. My brain works the way that the Mac works, And I would much rather have the Mac. And the and the the real reason is the Mac is built for you to do whatever you want. There's so like, So many times when and and they still sort of say this on occasion, but, like, the tagline was Steve Jobs.
Jason Aten:You can just hear him say, and we can't wait to see what you do with it. Right? Like, yes. That's the Mac. We want, you know, take this thing.
Jason Aten:It is the only platform Apple makes where you can put any software on it that you want, even if it's gonna hose the whole thing. Go ahead. Just do what you want. Right? And Apple tries to sort of, like, put some guardrails up, but it is the truly open platform, and it always has been.
Jason Aten:And there was a great photo of, like, what it was like to use a DOS computer at the time and what it was like to use the Mac. And there's it's like, oh, that's why people have such incredible feelings for it because it was just a complete revolution in the way that personal computers work. And I think it's easy to forget, but I think that, you know, Apple sells roughly as much in Macs as they do iPads. So put in context, the Mac's pretty small. It's like, what, $30,000,000,000 or so in sales last year.
Jason Aten:That's not nothing, but it's not, you know, 100 and some 1,000,000,000 that they sell. It's it's even it's like half of what they sell in services, which is basically app store commissions, Right? And and Google Right. Search deals. So it's it's relatively small in terms of the overall business, but I think that it is a huge part of Apple's brand.
Jason Aten:And I'm glad to see we've been really lucky over the last couple of years. Apple has been making very good Macs, which wasn't actually the case for a while. Right? There was
Stephen Robles:a there
Jason Aten:was a there was a dark period of time there for for pretty much all of the Macs, really, except for the MacBook Air, which is pretty consistently been good since it came out. So I don't know. I just I think there's there's more it's I think it's still very beloved by a lot of people, not just the people that you mentioned, but even people who use it today. My kids don't Own Macs. We have an Imac that they use occasionally for things.
Jason Aten:Now that's my, g 4 Titanium PowerBook. It's still one of my favorite computers Of all time. I I was telling Steven, I found a photo that I took in 2012. It was no longer my primary computer. It was 11 years old at the time.
Jason Aten:It still worked fine. I don't know what version of the OS it was working, but it's like I needed it for a a PowerPoint presentation for something, and something had happened to my laptop at the time, and it ran fine. Like, it was great. So Yeah. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The Mac's a good thing to have now.
Stephen Robles:Hearing everybody talk about the Mac this past week, the level of nostalgia and affinity for it, It does feel like you're saying unmatched by the iPhone and the iPad. I almost feel like people who really love the iPad get a little closer to the same level of affinity as what people do for the Mac. Like, I do feel like like for Lolli on YouTube and Federico Viticci, although less so recently because he's kind of frustrated with the platform. Like, there was a time when, You know, people who really love the iPad really had an affinity for it, and it still doesn't match the Mac by any means, and it is not as long standing. But it does feel the Mac stands unique as a platform that is both extremely powerful and extremely loved.
Stephen Robles:And yeah. I mean, all these guys and you had mentioned the, up the episode of Upgrade And it had, like Yeah. Everybody on it. I'll just say
Jason Aten:John Gruber, John Siracusa, Steven Hackett, Mike Hurley, Jason Snell, Dan Moren Yes. And
Stephen Robles:Shelley Brisbane.
Jason Aten:Thank you. It was like the who's who of people who with the exception of Mike Curley and Stephen Hackett, who all remember the original Mac. Right. Both of them
Stephen Robles:Stephen Hackett, like, has a collection.
Jason Aten:He owns basically every Mac that has ever existed. He just wasn't there firsthand for a lot of them. So, yeah, I think I think that well, Well, and you talk about the iPad. You can't develop for the iPad on the iPad, really.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. You need
Jason Aten:a Mac. Right? The Mac is the platform. So, anyway, it's I would. I told Steven beforehand, which is kind of a rough thing to say before we're about to record a podcast, that this episode, I guess it's 4 90 6, 40th anniversary of the Mac draft, Is in my mind because of the total collection of people that were there, one of the best pieces of content about the Mac that I think has ever been made.
Jason Aten:I think everyone should listen to it if you like History of technology. So
Stephen Robles:Fair enough. Well, I'll put a link to this video version because you should probably watch the video because Yeah. Steven Hackett, whenever he's on screen, Here's John Saracusa in his office, which is amazing. He's got he's got Macs behind him. And then, when Steven Hackett is in there, he's got his original Mac on the bookshelf, behind him.
Stephen Robles:And then of course now I can't actually get to it, but here's everybody on the podcast. I'll put the link in there. You should definitely watch it. But Jason Snell's got the original Mac behind him on the bookshelf. I I don't.
Stephen Robles:Now I do have a a g three tower at my mom's house, and I don't know where it came from or I think someone gave it to us, and it still turns on. And it's still, like, you can load the OS, And that's where we had an amazing recommendation from a listener that because of my affinity for making DVDs on IDVD, that I should make a DVD of this podcast. Take the video, make a DVD, custom label and everything. Mark my words, I'm gonna try my hardest to do it. I'll see I'll see if I can get that old G3 up and running.
Stephen Robles:Run old school iDVD, so I could design the menu. DVD menu. That's gonna take so long. It's gonna be so slow, Jason.
Jason Aten:Well, here's the thing. You could solve this problem a super lot easier. Just plug in any, you know, USB DVD burner. The problem is you wanna You don't even care about making a DVD of the show. You wanna use iDVD again.
Jason Aten:That's that's
Stephen Robles:the only use iDVD.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I have one of those too. I've seen a drawer that if I had to bend over, I I bought out my chair, but I do have basically the same thing.
Stephen Robles:So This is what I used to rip, Ford v Ferrari.
Jason Aten:There you go. That's my
Stephen Robles:Blu ray drive. So we'll put a link to that. So that's the show, our personal tech 40 years of the Mac. We're gonna go record a bonus episode talking about Google Slides, Keynote, and all of that. So again if you wanna listen to the bonus episodes or just support the show, Even you just wanna support, just to support, you can go do that directly in Apple Podcasts or at primarytech.fm.
Stephen Robles:There's There's a link that says bonus episodes and you can sign up for a year or pay monthly. You get the ad free versions and you get, all the bonus episodes as well. You You can follow Jason and I on all the social media networks. All those handles are in the show notes. Don't forget to give us a 5 star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Stephen Robles:You can also go watch over on youtube.com/atprimarytechshow. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll see you over in the bonus
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