OpenAI Future Web Browser, LinkedIn is Mostly AI Posts, BIG Audience AMA!
Download MP3We should just be thankful for being together. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We have a fun show, a massive listener, ask me anything, a bunch of you shared questions on social media. So we're gonna spend, like, half the show answering all of those, but we also have some news that OpenAI may be working on a browser, half of LinkedIn posts are apparently AI, and Zoom is trying a big rebrand. This episode is brought to you by 1 Password and by you, those of you who support us directly.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles. Joining me as always, my good friend, Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's a little bittersweet, Steven. Bittersweet. We're recording the day before Thanksgiving.
Stephen Robles:We are.
Jason Aten:Normally, we would be in Florida, which is where you are. And I think at one point, we even talked about trying to do this show in person this week, but we're not in Florida. We're we're still in Michigan.
Stephen Robles:And behind the curtain, I think the last 2 Thanksgivings
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:We actually saw each other IRL in real life.
Jason Aten:Not on Thanksgiving, but the week we had breakfast.
Stephen Robles:We had breakfast Thanksgiving week. Yes. And, yeah, we met in person. So we're breaking the tradition. What happened, Jason?
Stephen Robles:What's going on?
Jason Aten:Well, our kids had school till yesterday. That's the big thing.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay.
Jason Aten:And then our one of our daughters had a big soccer tournament over the this past weekend, and we were originally gonna go to Indianapolis and then just keep driving. Sure. But then the kids had school, and there was just enough things going. Also, we were told that all of the like, most of the hotels where we go on Treasure Island were all closed, and the pool was closed, and the beach was still being, like,
Stephen Robles:Oh, true.
Jason Aten:Groomed or whatever. So we're kind of like, I'm not taking 4 kids to Florida if they can't get in the go on the beach or the pool.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That's kinda
Jason Aten:What's the point?
Stephen Robles:It's actually cold this week too, believe it or not. I mean, not Michigan cold, but it is, like, in the forties. So it'll be a different well, I'm gonna miss our, our first watch of breakfast this year.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:We'll have a lot to resume next year, but last week, for the movie quotes, I forgot to mention it was our big 50th episode last week, and I forgot to actually ask you the name of the movie, which I quoted a movie which I hadn't seen before, 5050, which was perfect for the 50th episode, and I forgot to say.
Jason Aten:I agree.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So 5050, but do you have any guesses as to the movie quoted at the beginning of this episode? It's it's kind of a obvious one because Yeah.
Jason Aten:I think it's Charlie Brown Christmas. Exactly. In Thanksgiving, not Christmas. Thanksgiving. So just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It was Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Yeah. So, you know, day before Thanksgiving where again, one of the listener questions is, one of our favorite Thanksgiving dishes, and so that's coming up later. Or favorite Thanksgiving food.
Stephen Robles:That was from Sean on Blue Sky. So we're gonna get to that after we could do a little bit of news, and, of course, 5 star reviews for a 5 star podcast in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so thank you all for doing that. And 2 reviews, redpixel09, which I feel like this is his 18th review, but listen, that's that's okay.
Jason Aten:Keep at it as long as that says 5. We're good. Just doing it.
Stephen Robles:I just wanna say he said dots on. That's all I have to say about that. And, Aztec 1967 from Canada says we're a must listen and battery percentage on, so you won that one. But that's on. That's on.
Jason Aten:Okay. Speaking of listeners, hold on. Speaking of listeners, you know how, like, I'm I think it's, like, connected. They have all these, like, listeners who keep score of all of the games that they play. I think somebody should go back and figure out how many of the movie quotes I actually got right.
Stephen Robles:That That is true. You've gotten a lot right.
Jason Aten:I'm not going to do it, but I think you've gotten a pretty good number of them right.
Stephen Robles:You've gotten a lot right, surprising amount. So we should we should eventually swap, and, you give me a movie quote at some point.
Jason Aten:And If I do it, it's just gonna all be West Wing references. That's, like, the only
Stephen Robles:Which I have
Jason Aten:not seen. West Wing and Friends.
Stephen Robles:I have not seen friends. Friends I've seen. I could do friends. Okay. Pay that.
Jason Aten:Anyway Exactly.
Stephen Robles:First piece of news. OpenAI might be working on a browser and so they recently released SearchGPT, which is really just part of ChatGPT, where you can click a little button and it searches the web. Well, it looks like they might be taking on Google Chrome. This is an information article where you see the headline and
Jason Aten:Can't read.
Stephen Robles:You just see you see nothing else, but John Gruber actually wrote about it. And in his article where he cut he talked about the information, he said, apparently, OpenAI has hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at Google. And another recent hire at OpenAI is Darren Fisher, who also worked, with Goodger to develop Chrome. And so it seems like OpenAI will be working towards a browser, which interesting timing, because, a, we talked about last week how the DOJ here in the states might force Google to sell off Chrome. Again, we're not gonna know the result of that until next year, but if Google would have to sell off Chrome and OpenAI comes in with its own browser that's actually good, that would give OpenAI a huge advantage where search GPT could be built in, and just like typing in the address bar in Safari, you can default that Google search, and that's why Google pays Apple $20,000,000,000 a year.
Stephen Robles:They could search g p put search GPT as the default in their OpenAI Browser, not to mention all the AI stuff. I mean, think about Apple Intelligence Summaries, which is a big feature of Safari and macOS Sequoia in 18. I mean, OpenAI could put summaries in all the things, if it's had a web browser, where just every website you visit, you just get a summary, a breakdown, and you can, you know, prompt at things to do whatever you want, so that would be an interesting product. I would I would be interested to use something like that, an OpenAI Browser. Of course, it probably goes even farther down the road of, like, obfuscating traffic away from actual websites, because the OpenAI Browser would just wanna give you all the stuff, and it'll probably give you a link way down at the bottom, but I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Would you use an OpenAI Browser?
Jason Aten:That's the interesting question. I think my first thought on this is, yeah, of course, they are. And isn't it convenient that there may be one for sale soon? But
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:I I don't even think OpenAI can afford Chrome if it's really worth what people say it's worth. But it's interesting because it's like, why? Why does OpenAI need a browser? Like, there are lots of browsers. There's there's there's more than enough.
Jason Aten:Right? We we have we have good browsers, like, you know, Brave, Chrome, whatever, Safari, and then there's browsers like Edge.
Stephen Robles:People like that.
Jason Aten:There's, like, there's other browsers out there. Yeah. But it's it's sort of a revealing revealing truth about, like, these tech companies. The best example, if you download edge onto your computer, which I've done, and it's actually not a bad browser, to be honest with you, but it's just Chromium.
Stephen Robles:I can't stand that. The UI, though, the UI is so
Jason Aten:But the worst part about it is every time you open it, do you wanna set it as your default? Do you wanna set Bing as your default search? Do you do you like Microsoft? Will you be my friend? Like, it just constantly and it's it just reveals, like, oh, they see these browsers as the entry point to all of their other services.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And what they don't, you know, especially with search, like that's such, because we have gotten to a point where no one visits, like no one types in www.google.com. Right. You just start typing into the address bar.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And by default, if what you type is not a URL, it will just take you to a search. And so that's where the traffic for all this comes from and searches such, you know, search advertising is such a lucrative business. And so for chat GBT, like, I guess it kind of makes sense because right now you can sort of Jerry rig your default search engine into for Chrome, which we talked about. I did this right. You can download an extension, which somehow creates a preference that does it because it's not a part of any of the dropdown lists.
Jason Aten:It's like chat gbt is not an option unless you do this. But how many people are actually gonna do that as opposed to if they just have a chromium browser and by default chat gbt is the search engine? Like that's that's a ton of traffic. And if anything, open AI has to figure out how are we gonna make how are we gonna make money from this thing we have?
Stephen Robles:Well, I could totally see, you know, you do some searches with search GPT, and it'll give you search results every time, but maybe, like, you go to that recipe page, and the first ten times the OpenAI Browser just gives you oh, by the way, instead of reading all that cruft, here's just the ingredient list and recipe steps, and it just shows you that, like, in a sidebar. And then after 10 of those, it says, well, if you wanna do more, chat gptplus is right here. And, like
Jason Aten:You're having more than a 10 course Thanksgiving dinner, so you have to sign up before you can get another recipe.
Stephen Robles:A 100%, I mean, a 100%, it would be just, like, that maximum search query and then upselling people on on chat gptplus. So I could totally see that, being part of it. I would, I would be interested to use it. Yeah. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:We'll see. But also, I I will say 9 to 5 covered this, the shortcuts for Chat GPT. What's actually they they do a lot of shortcuts actions, to their credit, so you can use it without actually opening the app, but there's actually a search GPT extension action now. So if you want to create shortcuts where, you know, you press the thing on your home screen or the action button and you type in a search query, you can have that default now to search GPT using the web rather than just kind of an ask chat GPT conversation. So I think they're really trying to make the play to do more, you know, they want people to use it for search.
Stephen Robles:I've not gotten into the habit of using it. Do you still use it pretty often, like, for search?
Jason Aten:I do because it's still set as my default. To be clear, I don't know that they want people to use it for search. They just want people to use it. And what they have discovered is the thing people will do on a regular basis is search. They don't they're not as likely to just go to chat g p t to do other as many other things.
Jason Aten:But, like, if you just look at the number of queries for chat g p t versus the number of search queries, they're like, hey. There's a lot over there. If we could capture some of that, that's what we need to do. Yeah. So I'm I'm still using it all the time.
Jason Aten:I it's still my default search. I will say that I have started to learn. There are definitely things that I would rather use Google for. So thankfully, in Chrome, there's just a shortcut. Colon g, it'll default to Google search.
Jason Aten:I think you can actually, like, Bing is the same. There's different ones. And there are certain things where you were just because it's faster. Like Google search is still insanely faster compared to chat gbt search. But if I actually need an answer or something explained, check search is like infinitely better than Google search at this point.
Jason Aten:Like, yeah, it's not even funny. Like, I googled possum under deck advice and all I got was s e o garbage about all kinds of things. But when I goo when I did the same thing with chat g Jeff chat GPT search, it gave me, like, 7 things I should try Oh. With links to different things. And these are the most successful.
Jason Aten:And in this Reddit thing, they suggest this, but someone had this bad experience. Like, I'm like, this is exactly what I wanted.
Stephen Robles:You could've just asked me, SSR GPT because I have dealt with 4 possums in my last house, and, I got the big cage. I did tuna fish. I did orange slices. I I was a master at capturing those things after a while. Anyway, that was the old house.
Stephen Robles:The like, Spotlight. I will say I've been using Spotlight more on my iPhone just as, like, a overall search tool because especially for definitions, like, if there's a word or something, I'll just swipe down, type the word, and I wish I could reorder these search results. On the Mac, you can reorder Spotlight results. I don't think you can on the iPhone, but you can just get the straight dictionary definition if you scroll down, and you tap it, and then you get the, you know, definitions, the source, all of that. And I will also just search, you know, if there's an actor or whatever trying to find it.
Stephen Robles:I use call sheet a lot, you know, if I'm looking up a specific movie or TV show, but a lot of times, I mean, they give you the Wikipedia result pretty quickly. Sometimes they'll give you other results. I feel like Apple should really inject more results in that, like, I'm gonna search spotlight, or they do this when you type in the address bar on Safari. They will try to, like, preload websites and have you jump straight to it, and I used to just completely avoid those, because I was, like, just give me the Google search, but now if I start typing something and I see a website that I recognize and I can just go directly to it, I will do that, And that totally obfuscates the search engine entirely. That's just Apple giving you what it thinks you want.
Stephen Robles:And I'm curious your thoughts on this. Should Apple have ever built a search engine? We could argue that Spotlight maybe is that. I think they can juice it up a little bit and have it be a little more preemptive in giving you results and trying to direct you certain ways, but should that should Apple have done more there, like, in the search thing?
Jason Aten:Yes. I mean, I think there's no question Apple would have built a search engine were it not for $20,000,000,000 a year. Right? Right. I I don't think there's any question that Apple and I think Apple is one of the only companies that could build a search engine to compete with Google.
Jason Aten:And the reason for it is not like, we think about, like, well, Microsoft is a pretty capable tech company, and they built Bing. The problem is not the search engine technology part of it. It's the flow of traffic. Right? Customer acquisition.
Jason Aten:What are people clicking on? Right. And so Apple has an extraordinarily you don't underestimate the advantage that they have in that because they right. Right? Like Right.
Jason Aten:Google is obviously searches from safari are extremely valuable to Google because they are willing to give $20,000,000,000 back to apple just to be in that position.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And so apple, absolutely. There's I don't think there's any question they would have built some kind of a search And maybe they wouldn't have built a, like, maps.apple.com. You'd have searched.apple.com. Maybe it would have just been the Siri search. Like, maybe that would have been the search engine.
Jason Aten:And to some extent, they have because of what you just said, they have built obviously search. They just have made it more subtle than, you know
Stephen Robles:And it's not something that they tell you to go do a lot. You know, they don't say, like, use spotlight to search the web. But one of the things we we forgot last week, I was listening to the Verge cast, and they talked about one of the other DOJ remedy suggestions for Google and Chrome was that Google would be required to license their search data, basically, and that they would have to provide an API for a company to build a search engine and or browser with Google's search and click data, which that's really the the value is Google has decades of information of what people click, where they click, how they search, and that is what would allow someone to make a great search engine. That would be interesting if it does go that direction, where the DOJ forces Google to license their click data and, you know, search information, and then OpenAI could actually incorporate that into a browser with ChatGPT, and or even Apple. Like, maybe Apple stops paying Google for the being the default search, and instead just licenses their click data, and Apple starts doing their own.
Stephen Robles:I think that would be an interesting future too. Maybe less likely, but yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I feel I wrote an article for Business Insider a couple years ago, which I can't read because I no longer have an account at Business Insider and you fall behind the paywall. And so I'm, like, actually looking at this article in the Google Docs when I wrote it because I don't exactly remember. But the point was that, you know, were it not for that $20,000,000,000 Apple absolutely would have built a full fledged search engine and that they are constantly sort of quietly building it into to Siri. And I I don't know.
Jason Aten:I think I actually think that the only the most logical outcome and I think I heard Ben Thompson talking about this, that maybe the reason that the DOJ is pushing so hard on the whole, Google antitrust, enforcing them soft chrome and whatever whatever is to really it's more about Apple. It's like we're going to do all of these things. We're gonna cut off the the deals Right? Where they were going to pay for it. We're gonna force them to do this.
Jason Aten:We're gonna it's really they're trying to say apple. We'd really like you to build a search engine, which is funny because they're also suing apple. So like
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But here, I did wanna say this. I have heard multiple people talking about, and it feels like just glossing over this idea that what the DOJ is asking for is for Google to license out its technology and make search just sort of a platform that anyone could build on top of. And my question is, why would Google do that?
Stephen Robles:Like, well,
Jason Aten:I don't I don't think Google can possibly give up on the search engine. Right. There's just too much invested in it.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But they're definitely not going to make it better if they have to share it with competitors.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:This doesn't make any sense.
Stephen Robles:No. It would just die. I mean, they would not up, you know,
Jason Aten:I don't know. I just don't understand, like, how the it's it's like you built this thing that makes a ton of money and now you have to make the money making part of it available to everyone else. It's like, I don't. Is that really how the world works? I don't know.
Jason Aten:I don't get it. We don't live in the EU. Come on, people.
Stephen Robles:Oh, no. Oh, no. That's this is where we get one star reviews, and they say Jason's not after.
Jason Aten:Oh, gosh.
Stephen Robles:That that's what happens. But, anyway, we're not gonna know any results of that till, like, April, May, and even later of next year. But I wanna say you wrote an article talking about an outage, Microsoft had a huge outage yesterday, Tuesday of this week.
Jason Aten:I think it was Monday, Oh, it
Stephen Robles:was Monday Monday was the outage and they had a very cryptic response which the response is interesting which is what you wrote about. I also think it's funny that they, not funny, but you know they said it on x, you know, that's where they they mentioned the outage and it's like there was another day too, recently when Blue Sky was down for like a little bit and then people were posting about it on x and it felt very early Twitter days.
Jason Aten:Where when
Stephen Robles:you've the fail whale would happen on Twitter and then people would post about it on what Facebook, Myspace, email lists. I don't know. So it was very like almost it felt like full circle deal, but yeah, Microsoft's response was cryptic. So what what did they say?
Jason Aten:Well, first of all, this was an outage to Outlook and to Teams. Teams, which I feel like
Stephen Robles:Everyone's so relieved.
Jason Aten:Very happy. Thrilled.
Stephen Robles:It's the best idea. But I do
Jason Aten:think that if you make an email platform that 400,000,000 people use and it goes down, you should do more than just be like, oops. Sorry, guys. Like, they didn't even say sorry. Their response was just so weird. And it is.
Jason Aten:It's like for more information, visit something something something, and they gave this long number. And I'm like, well, I get why they're posting this on x because no one is going can find whatever that thing is that they just told you to read. I just think it's really weird because I they it seems like I have not seen a conclusive explanation for what happened, but it seems like somebody, like, they they implemented some software and the software just was like, oh, we've we've we've identified a recent change. Well, what is a recent change? Did somebody, like, trip on a cord and unplug a server?
Jason Aten:Did somebody insert code? A recent change could be a hack. Right? Like, I mean, it seems pretty clear that it wasn't, but I'm just my point is if you just messed up, because think about it, like, this is exactly what happened with CrowdStrike over the summer, where basically they just injected a bad piece of code and it automatically updated on 1,000,000 and millions of Windows PCs and suddenly flights are canceled for a week. Like, I feel like you should do more.
Stephen Robles:I just wanna read the status. This was on x. Microsoft well, the handle is MSFT 365 status, and it says, we've identified a recent change which we believe has resulted in impact.
Jason Aten:Not a sentence by
Stephen Robles:the way. That doesn't make any sense. It goes on, we've started to revert the change and are investigating what additional actions are required to mitigate the issue. For more information, please refer to m0941162 in the admin center.
Jason Aten:Okay. I'm on it. Like, and I by the way, so I still have a a Microsoft account just for fun. Everyone should have one just for fun, but I could not I couldn't figure out how to find that. I mean, I looked.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I know what the admin centers, but I could not figure out how to find that issue anywhere. And I don't have high enough admin privileges in my admin account.
Stephen Robles:Can I just say I? I got to delete, like, Internet account off all my Apple devices the other day. It was a thing on the side I was doing, and now it's over. And it was a wonderful feeling to be able to delete that Office 365 account everywhere. Because of all the accounts, which I have Fastmail, Google, and one other one, the Microsoft one constantly needed me to re authenticate.
Stephen Robles:I had to log in into Fantastical and even into, like, the built in iOS accounts, like, regularly. I don't know if it was, like, once every other month or something. And I had to use that Microsoft Authenticator, which we've talked about in the past, is the bane of my existence. I just can't stay in that thing. And now I just I never have to deal with it again.
Stephen Robles:I have no Microsoft Anywhere.
Jason Aten:I still use Microsoft Authenticator, but only because I don't know how to move all of the two factor validations out of it. Like, it it just doesn't seem like well, here's the thing. I have I use it because we have to use it to get into the CMS. So I use it multiple times every single day. And so the idea, like, I don't want to spend any bandwidth on figuring like that's it's I know you make fun of me, but I literally have Microsoft Authenticator on my home screen because it is legitimately one of the apps that I have to hit all the time.
Jason Aten:But I've said this, the beautiful thing about it is I just tap it. It copies it to the clipboard, and I can paste it on. I can do like, it's the best reason for Universal Clipboard is the Microsoft Authenticator app.
Stephen Robles:There's gotta Jason, it's it's gotta be, like, 5 steps max. You just you go to your account settings, you go to privacy and security, and set up the 2 factor in Icloud passwords.
Jason Aten:But do you know how many of these things I have? I have a lot of them I have to set up. I have to change over my
Stephen Robles:Well, so you use that as your 2 factor?
Jason Aten:It is my 2 factor app. Yeah. For everything.
Stephen Robles:Jason's drafting himself by just flashing. He just flashed all his 2 factor, but they're all expired by the time his airs. Yes.
Jason Aten:They're only good for 15 more seconds.
Stephen Robles:That's the only
Jason Aten:person who can do it if we're not streaming live.
Stephen Robles:If we're streaming live, maybe that would be an issue.
Jason Aten:Whatever. You want my Twitter account? Just
Stephen Robles:oh, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Jason, you should never have done that. That's a terrible idea.
Jason Aten:But at the time, there were no two factor.
Stephen Robles:One password? One password wasn't doing it?
Jason Aten:Not when I not when some of these were set up.
Stephen Robles:Really?
Jason Aten:My Squarespace has had 2 factor on it for, like, years.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. I mean, well yeah. Oh, man. Well, I will say I'm I'm gonna do a video on this eventually, but passkeys are even kind of more difficult to move over. Basically for a lot of websites, you have to turn off 2 factor and then re enable it in order to set it up in a different app, which is a pain in the neck, and most people don't do it.
Stephen Robles:There's not a really way to transfer it, although a lot of 2 factor codes, there's like a token, like a text string, like if you set them up in one password, you can actually access that text string, you can actually just copy paste that into like Icloud passwords in a login and it will just add the 2 factor code automatically. So for 2 two factor, most of the time there's a string. I don't know if that Microsoft one, if you go to, like, edit it, if it will actually give you the the string of text, but when it comes to pass keys, that is a harder process. You basically have to go to each website individually and say, can you please give me another passkey? And then it's, like, well, listen, we already gave you one.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if we wanna do that. You have to be, like, what what are you saying?
Jason Aten:Well, let me tell you. Well, I was just going to tell you. I have it on good authority
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:And by good authority, I mean, from the CEO of 1 Password that the Fido Alliance is adding, portability to the passkey standard. So you will be able to just eventually move them over. And and 1 Password and Apple are both part of that, the Fido Alliance. I think they're both actually on the board. And so, like, they're committed to it.
Jason Aten:So there it is come I mean, I literally asked that question as we were headed from the, convention center to the hotels. Like, I have a question.
Stephen Robles:You guys sound like in the backseat of a car?
Jason Aten:We're in the backseat of a van. Yeah. I was just like, I got a quick question for you. And, and he's like, well, here's what I can tell you. It's coming.
Jason Aten:It's like it has been approved as a part of this standard or it's like, whatever. I don't know how standards work, but it is like, yes, it is a part of that standard. So it will be coming. I do I will just say I do like it. So, like, for example, the Tesla app, I do have it set up in in passwords because it didn't I did not add 2 factor to my Tesla app until one day I got an email that someone had ordered 75 t shirts out of my Tesla account.
Jason Aten:Super not cool.
Stephen Robles:75 Tesla t shirts.
Jason Aten:Yep. From they just went to the merch store and just started ordering stuff. Like they
Stephen Robles:didn't buy a car. They just bought t shirts.
Jason Aten:Well, you can just put only the users by the put a deposit. Actually, I don't even know if from the Oh,
Stephen Robles:yes.
Jason Aten:If you could buy a car. But my point is, like, they went into my Tesla account, bought a whole bunch of merch, and I'm just like, this is dumb. And so I was able to cancel it. I was able to deal with it, but I was like, I should probably lock that one down.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Like it did.
Jason Aten:And at the time when I did it, it just asked, like, the passwords app just popped up and was like, do you want us to handle this for you? And I'm like, yes. Apple, please handle this for me.
Stephen Robles:It does and it hand it handles it well. Although It does
Jason Aten:it great.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Well, well, I'll make a video about the passwords app because there's still a lot of things I want for that. But anyway, alright. 2 quick 2 quick news things and then we can get to the listener questions. I saw this article from Wired LinkedIn.
Stephen Robles:Apparently, first of all, this headline. I'm sorry if you have some kind of, reaction to this headline. I don't know why you would put a GIF like this in the top.
Jason Aten:Without a warning. Come on.
Stephen Robles:I know. You need you need a trigger warning. This is, like, disturbing. Anyway, if you're listening to the show, just go to this Wired article and well, just be prepared because you're gonna have a visual disturbance.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:On this thing. It's also terrifying because it's just dismembered hands all over the thing. But anyway, apparently over 50% of LinkedIn posts, 54% of longer English language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated. I thought this was hilarious. I have to stop sharing the screen.
Stephen Robles:This wired it just has stuff going all over. Stop.
Jason Aten:It is very weird.
Stephen Robles:It is very weird. 54% of LinkedIn posts, and listen, I will say, I try to be active on LinkedIn because for job stuff, you know, whatever. I post over there, But when I I don't scroll because a lot of times when I scroll LinkedIn, I see these long posts, I'm like, wow, that I mean, okay, I get it, but this Wired article now makes a lot of sense. It does feel like people are just throwing, I don't know, a 30 minute podcast they did, or they just did a voice memo, and they're throwing it into AI and say, make a LinkedIn post. And I don't know why LinkedIn especially like, it doesn't feel like that, even on threads or I mean, there's engagement bait on threads, but but it doesn't feel like AI generated.
Stephen Robles:It just feels like someone stole someone else's post. But on LinkedIn, it just feels it's like it's AI generated because it's so business y and, like I don't know. Do you get that feeling?
Jason Aten:My feeling about LinkedIn is that it is who, I mean, the only thing that ever happens to me on LinkedIn is I get a massive amount of people promising to give me sales leads. What?
Stephen Robles:I give names all the time. Constant
Jason Aten:constant, like, in in my inbox in there from people who wanna sell me things, and I every time I mark them as, like, spam, I get told by LinkedIn, no. No. No. No. No.
Jason Aten:That's not spam. That premium member can send you as many of those emails as they want to because that's the whole point of LinkedIn. And then I'm like, I'm about to delete my account because I'm not really sure. But I don't because I get asked to, like, share my articles on there and stuff, which to be fair, like, that makes sense. But, yes, I would a 100% feed 1 of my articles into chat gpt and be like, could you make me a LinkedIn post?
Jason Aten:Because I'm not gonna, like, not write a 4 paragraph summary on it. So And
Stephen Robles:so and it's like LinkedIn rewards these long posts, which most people are probably not gonna sit there and write a bespoke post for LinkedIn. They're gonna take their blog article or their newsletter and just run through chat gpt for it. I do find my LinkedIn DMs are all people that are podcast promoters. They all wanna say, like, we can get bigger more listeners for your podcast. That's what they say.
Stephen Robles:We we can get bigger listeners for your podcast.
Jason Aten:Bigger listeners.
Stephen Robles:I mean, bigger listeners. Okay. Like, bigger ears.
Jason Aten:You have small listeners now. We're going to use some big ones.
Stephen Robles:And then my Instagram DMs in my request, it's all people saying, like, it's all the same message, and it also feels AI generated. Like, oh, I see that your YouTube channel has some views, but your thumbnails suck. Would you like us to make you thumbnails? Or or would you like us to edit video video edit for you?
Jason Aten:No. Well, the weird thing for me about Linkedin is, yes, I 100% believe that most of its AI generated. Like, I actually wouldn't be surprised if half of the accounts on Linkedin or AI generated. But like, so it it's an interesting thing for publishers because, like, I'll write an article and then LinkedIn has, like, these featured topics. Right?
Jason Aten:And they'll take articles. So I've I've had articles in the past, like, around prime day or whatever it was. And I had, like, an article that got, like, 89,000 impressions just on LinkedIn. But when you look at your, like, your stats for traffic, it's like, oh, there was, like, 14 people who clicked through to the article from,
Stephen Robles:like, yeah.
Jason Aten:But what's the point of that? Like, how is that even useful? Like, I don't
Stephen Robles:get it.
Jason Aten:Wow. The click through because it's here's the thing. LinkedIn rewards you for basically summarizing your entire article, so I don't need to click through to read your article. You Right. You just had to write the whole thing, which is basically what Elon Musk has said about x.
Jason Aten:Did you see the thing recently where he basically he confirmed, yes, we do. We devalue links. If you wanna put a link, put it in your second post, put it as a reply. But I think just linking out is lazy is basically what he said. And it it's and so what he wants you to do is pay for a premium account and then write your whole long form content on x.
Jason Aten:It's like, no. That's
Stephen Robles:I don't click any of those expand to read the full thing. Yeah. I just don't I just don't. I actually like Blue Sky actually has I think the shortest character limit now and I I kinda like feeling that again like, alright, let me let me revise this post and actually make it short. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I think Yeah. I think it's good. Alright. Last, I get more AI news. Zoom 2 point o.
Stephen Robles:They're they're gonna rebrand, they're gonna relaunch as an AI first company without video in its name. So originally Zoom was Zoom Video Communications, they're gonna rebrand to just Zoom Communications with a big focus on AI. Of course, during the pandemic, Zoom, you know, stock price usage, everybody got on Zoom, and it became ubiquitous, like everybody used it. But now several years later, as people are going back into the office and using less video conferencing, it is not, growing as fast or even doing as well. So they want to rebrand, so it's not just video communications.
Stephen Robles:And I have listened to the Zoom is it the CEO that was on Decoder and talking about how eventually you can just have an AI avatar in your meetings. I mean, this is literally something that Zoom has said and somehow thinks it will be productive. They have a bunch of AI avatars of people talking about stuff as opposed to the real people, and that's gonna be a feature that they're going to to use. I mean,
Jason Aten:no. This this feels to me okay. First of all, I love the Fast Company headline. Fast Company is the sister publication of ink, just for whatever it's worth. But their their headline is Zoom just rebranded itself to Zoom.
Jason Aten:It's like if you have to explain the subtlety, like, first of all, when apple went from apple computer to just apple ink, I don't think that anyone had to explain what that meant. Right. It was obvious at that point, the iPhone was the product. Like they were no longer just a computer company. Fine.
Stephen Robles:But if
Jason Aten:you are like, we went from being called zoom video communications, Inc, to just zoom communications, Inc, like, and you have to write a whole blog post to explain that. I don't really think you accomplished what you think you accomplished. And also this really feels to me like a one trick pony that broke one of its leg. And now it's trying to figure out what a 3 legged pony could do. No, seriously, like this, this is a thing.
Jason Aten:This you are the this is your thing. You you were successful because you did a thing better than anyone else at the time. No one used video calls. Like before the pandemic, like the only people who had to sit through video calls were like pharmaceutical sales reps and maybe like people who were doing online college or something
Stephen Robles:like that. No one just FaceTime, like, family and friends.
Jason Aten:Sure. FaceTime. Yes. A 100%. But that's different than you have to sit on my computer.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because you used to have to, like, I still have to use Webex and I have to, like, download the software and I have to click on a link and I have to do the thing. But Zoom was like, boom. You click on a link, which actually, that was, I think, the the the change because it used to be, you have to, like, type in this meeting code and do all the stuff where Zoom, you're like, click a link. And if you didn't have the software, it downloaded it instantly for you.
Jason Aten:It did some shady things to get around Apple's installation stuff, but people were like, fine. Just I need to get on a meeting. Right. So it exploded. And now it's it's like, well, we have to do other things.
Jason Aten:And it's like, maybe, maybe, maybe you don't. Maybe you don't have to do other things. Maybe you could just keep doing this one thing really well. Right. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I I try to use Zoom the least amount as possible. And Mhmm. Apple doesn't use Zoom. Apple uses Webex.
Stephen Robles:Like when you
Jason Aten:Which is just mind blowing because Zoom is better than Webex.
Stephen Robles:Is it? I mean, Webex is fine for me. I feel like what I I mean, I don't mean I don't like any of them. I'm always curious why Apple doesn't use a FaceTime link which I know they don't have all the controls and like administrative like waiting rooms probably.
Jason Aten:If only they knew someone who could add that stuff to their own product.
Stephen Robles:You can't, but like if you didn't know, you can literally copy a link when you're in your FaceTime call and anyone can join, like a Windows PC. Yeah. Someone can load that in their browser, someone on their Android phone, like you can have anyone join a FaceTime call and you can have, like, 30 plus people in a call, like, you can do that right now for free and you don't get all the controls and stuff and whatever, but, yeah, it's I mean, you can do it, but
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay, Zoom. I I don't I mean, listen. I don't need an AI avatar talking to another AI. Like, what are we even what are we doing?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I feel like if I had to have a meeting with my AI avatar after the fact to figure out what happened in the meeting that my AI avatar went to, maybe it would just be easier for me to go to the meeting. I think I I did write about this recently that it's like, if you're trying to come up with reasons to make it easier for people to not go to meetings, maybe you should have less meetings.
Stephen Robles:Listen. That, jobs before, when there was a heavy meeting culture. And if you look at what job products are actually accomplished, The amount of hours spent on actually doing things is so small compared to just hours on meeting. Preparing for the meeting, having the meeting, debriefing about the meeting, finding out what actually are the action items from the meeting, because no one communicates clearly often in those meetings. Like, that's that's the job.
Stephen Robles:Like, your job is meetings. And I still remember I forgot where I heard this, but it haunts me to this day. Like, choosing a career is just deciding what you want to email about, which is as as my YouTube channel has grown now, I do I'm just dealing with emails now, and I'm maybe I should just hire someone to deal with the emails because brands and stuff. Anyway
Jason Aten:I will say that that was the one killer feature of Hey email is that they had the gatekeeper was so good that you get to decide. And if you said, I don't wanna hear from this person, you never heard from them again. And Spark actually does that really well, on the actual soft on the on the client's side as opposed to the server side. It does a really good job of that as well. But I did send you a link from this article that I wrote, which is basically how all of those AI note taking apps.
Jason Aten:Because I've been in meetings where the person doesn't show up, and it's not their avatar that shows up. It's just a robot that shows up and transcribe records and transcribes your meeting. And it's like, you didn't care enough about this meeting to, like, not to show up and you're gonna just record it. And you nothing says I don't care about your meeting more than sending your robot to transcribe it after that. Also, it's really weird.
Jason Aten:It's like there's supposed to be 12 of us in this meeting and there's 3 robots and the 9 of us are like, should we should we keep talking? Because we kind of needed that person to
Stephen Robles:do. We need to address the robot.
Jason Aten:Also, it's weird because it's like if you're in the meeting and like the meeting organizer is like, we're going to record this meeting. Everyone's like, yeah, cool. That's what happens. But when someone else just sends a robot and you know that that's recording, it's it just I don't know. Don't do that.
Stephen Robles:It feels weird. Yeah. It feels weird.
Jason Aten:Don't just send your robot.
Stephen Robles:Is the robot judging me? Does it have I don't know. Feel a certain way? Does did it laugh at my joke in this meeting? That's really what's important going on.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, alright. We're gonna talk about, our personal tech, which is a bunch of listener questions. We got some great ones. Jason asked me what 3 shortcuts would I keep if I could only use 3, which is just send me on a spiral.
Jason Aten:I I wanna just say, this is how you know how well I know my co host is I knew the question now.
Stephen Robles:That was good. That was that was a good question. But before we do all that, I wanna thank our friends. Now the the sponsorship was not planned. We talked about them, and Jason interviewed the CEO.
Stephen Robles:But this episode is sponsored by 1password. But it's not it's it's not the like consumer 1password, although I still use that as well. This is 1password extended access management, and we've talked about it before. But listen, every company has to have IT security and privacy and basically every employee tries to get around it because that's just what you do. When you have a device that's super locked down, people try to still figure out how to get around it and go to websites they wanna get to or install the apps they wanna install even without that IT approval.
Stephen Robles:But when they do that, it opens their devices up to issues, malware, viruses, all of that and lessens the privacy and security of the company as a whole, and that's when you get unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, non employee identities and things like that. And most security tools only work on the paved roads that the IT puts down for the company, but a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts when people get around the system, and that's what 1 password extended access management is for. It's the first security solution that brings all these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. One password extended access management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDMs, like mobile device managers, can't.
Stephen Robles:It's security for the way we work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Intra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. So even if this is not you or, I mean, if you're in charge of the IT of your company, I think it's a great thing to check out. But if you know the person or you work at a company and the security practice is maybe a little, send them this link. You check out one password.com/primarytech, That's the number one password.com/primarytech and we'll put that link down in the show description, in the show notes, so you can just click it there. Send it to your IT director, say hey, I heard about this on a podcast and I think it would really benefit the security of the company.
Stephen Robles:IT people love when you tell them what to do, but still, it's worth a shot. It's worth a shot. So one password.com/primarytech. That link is down in the show notes as well. Thanks to 1password for sponsoring this episode.
Stephen Robles:We have a ton of listener questions. Oh, before we do that, because Jason doesn't have affiliate links, I'm gonna plug my own affiliate links. I I was very proud I was very proud of my Black Friday list. I created a little Amazon list here. You can go to beard.fm/gifts, and, I put basically the only, like, tech that I use and know, or there are great deals on, like, Apple devices, but, yeah.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna put this list in the show notes because, one, it'll support, me personally. You're supporting me if you buy things from this. These are all affiliate links. I'm tired of people saying you're not like, people don't, disclose affiliate links. Capital a f f.
Stephen Robles:These these are all affiliates. But I will say, AirPods are on crazy deals for Black Friday. You can get AirPods Pro 2. Let's see what it what what is it right now? $153, Jason.
Stephen Robles:150 cheaper than AirPods 4 with noise cancelling.
Jason Aten:Is that the is that the version 2 with USB c?
Stephen Robles:Yes. These are AirPods Pro 2 with USB c.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:153.
Jason Aten:Which is ridiculous that we have to, like there are 2 versions of AirPods Pro 2, just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:There are no. But these these are the new ones, and it's cheaper than AirPods 4 with noise canceling, which is 168. But you can get whichever one you want now. And I'll just mention, Anchor this little Anchor cable management thing is really fun. They're little magnetic blocks, and you can put cables through it, and then it's like a cable management thing.
Stephen Robles:And this HOTO screwdriver, have you ever gotten one of these?
Jason Aten:No. But I so I watched Steven's video. Steven has a really good video where he basically talks about all of these things. And I did I was like, oh, I might have to put some of these things on my list. So I'm gonna be sending Steven's affiliate links to everyone that I know.
Jason Aten:And I just buy anything on this list and it's fine. But the one I was interested in was the the anchor power prime power bank. And so I love that you're like, this is how I charge my blinds.
Stephen Robles:Like, first of
Jason Aten:all, the fact that you have to charge your blinds is just everything you need to know about Steven. But secondly, that he bought this thing that you can't take through airport security because they will think it's a bomb for sure.
Stephen Robles:Oh, for sure.
Jason Aten:It's what he uses to charge his blinds. I love it.
Stephen Robles:It's great, though. It's the anchor prime power banks, 27,000 milliamp hours. I charge my my smart smart shades with it, but I also, I'll it can charge my laptop. It can charge my laptop almost all the way if it's dead, and that's what happens. Like, I go out on the patio, I forget to charge my laptop, and it's dead.
Stephen Robles:I just bring this little block out there.
Jason Aten:How about your Tesla? Will it charge the Model s?
Stephen Robles:No. No. It doesn't it doesn't charge it doesn't charge that.
Jason Aten:Just checking.
Stephen Robles:No. No. Alright. We have a the rest of the show is all gonna be answering your questions because we've got a ton
Jason Aten:of questions.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be so fun. Alright. I'm gonna answer your question first because this sent me a spiraling. You can only keep 3 shortcuts. What are they?
Stephen Robles:Now for the record, if I go to my shortcuts app right now, it's so buggy I don't even know if it's going to show me a number for all shortcuts because yeah. 708. I have 708 oh the brightness is too far up. Anyway, I have 708 shortcuts right here. There they are.
Stephen Robles:A lot of them are requests from people, that's what I make videos about. But if I had to keep 3 shortcuts, I did nail it down. Number 1, I have a shortcut that helps me format the video descriptions for the Riverside videos I do, and I make like 3 to 4 a week, and that saves me a ton of time. And so I would a 100% keep that one. And likewise, I have a second shortcut that formats our show notes.
Stephen Robles:So what I do is when we're done recording, I have all of, the links we talked about in a tab group, and I'm actually gonna share my screen so you can see it. If you don't watch so, you can go to youtube.com/primarytechshow. You'll see here on the left sidebar, every past episode has a tab group
Jason Aten:Wow.
Stephen Robles:Here on the left. Because what I do is, I can click the little three dots and there's a copy links option, and that copies all the links to the tabs in that tab group. And then I have a shortcut that basically formats the show notes, so it formats all the links that I wanna include. It also has all kind of like the boilerplate stuff I include in every episode, like social.primarytech.fm. I put our merch in there.
Stephen Robles:I put, all the stuff that's normally in there. And then the shortcut lets me checkbox several articles and then sends those articles to Chatchept to get a title and description for the episode. And so once that shortcut is done running, I basically have the show notes almost all finished, and I will massage the title and description because I don't like, you know, what Cheggi Boutique does by default, but it gets me started, and that saves me a ton of time. That's the only way we can do this show every week. So that shortcut is a key, key shortcut.
Stephen Robles:And finally, I have a shortcut for when I record a video, and that I use almost every day, because not only does it run a HomeKit scene, I run it here from my little Today view, it turns the brightness on my iPhone screen down to the perfect brightness to film with my settings, and like just trying to figure that out every day would be a pain in the neck. And then it also jumps me to the display settings, so I put auto lock on never so the screen doesn't turn off, and then after 3 seconds, it jumps me over to the accessibility display settings so I could disable auto brightness. There's no shortcuts actions to manage those directly, so I have to go to the settings pane, but there are URL schemes to jump to those settings. So it does that, so my phone is ready to be filmed, and most of the videos I do my phone is on screen, And that allows me to be ready to film super fast, plus it runs my HomeKit scene to get all the lights ready. So those are the 3 shortcuts that I would keep.
Jason Aten:Okay. I have 3 also.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. Yeah.
Jason Aten:But only because I only have 3 shortcuts. Literally, I have 3 shortcuts. I have a shortcut that will unmount all of the hard drives so that if I'm about to record something or I currently I'm using this Mac mini, but typically I use a laptop and it's better to unmount the drives before I unplug the laptop from the studio display. So I just have one. It just sits in my dock without a dot in it.
Jason Aten:I just click on it when I want to unmount the drives. The second one is I have it one that I only ever use on my phone because if I tap it, it just sends a text message to my wife that says headed home. Yeah. And then it opens the maps app and gives me directions from wherever I am to home, which is funny because I usually don't actually use that part because I'm usually headed home from a place that I know how to get to.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Right? But traffic, I'll I'll check directions for traffic.
Jason Aten:Sure. But it is kinda nice. And then the third one is a shortcut that I have that I can that opens just a text field. I can type in an article idea, and it creates a Ulysses draft with that. Whatever I type in there is a headline, and then it adds it to things to my list of articles that I need to write because and that's actually that shortcut is actually my action button.
Jason Aten:Oh. Because that happens a lot where I'm like, oh, shoot. I need to I wanted to write about this thing. So so those are only 3 that I even have. I I do need to add.
Jason Aten:You said something, I think it was last week because they were a sponsor, that Notion has some shortcut integrations.
Stephen Robles:Just to add it.
Jason Aten:Really love is for that to also then add that to my my content calendar. It can. I'm at the work on that. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. The the Notion actions, they're new, and, you can now add stuff. I will say on that, the one where you text your wife that you're headed home, you know, you could also get your travel time from your current location to home and text that.
Jason Aten:I mean, sometimes I might wanna stop somewhere on the way. I'm just kidding. That's not true. That's not true.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay. That's fine. That's fine.
Jason Aten:It's not true.
Stephen Robles:And what
Jason Aten:are you
Stephen Robles:doing in your business? Isn't it so much fun? It's not true.
Jason Aten:Well, I should have my location anyway, so she can always she can help me out and see. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:Alright. This was Jason from the community, which you could join at social.primarytech.fm for free, and we have discussions over there. It's a great time. Over 200 people have joined the community. But he says favorite non Apple tech of the year.
Stephen Robles:A favorite non Apple tech. This is this is tough. I I don't actually don't have an answer yet. Do you know?
Jason Aten:Is it gotta be something that was introduced? We can make it up because he didn't say. Something that was introduced this year.
Stephen Robles:I mean, if it's something that you just use all the time, I feel like that would also apply. They were non Apple tech. I also I was
Jason Aten:I probably would go back to oh, yeah. I know what I'm gonna say. Okay.
Stephen Robles:Go on.
Jason Aten:I just have to find Oh,
Stephen Robles:he's funny.
Jason Aten:This is ridiculous, though, that this is my answer. But it's true.
Stephen Robles:Just kidding.
Jason Aten:No. This is my favorite non Apple piece of tech that I use all the time.
Stephen Robles:The Belkin MagSafe.
Jason Aten:This is just the Belkin MagSafe MagSafe thing to stick on the top of my laptop screen. Yeah. I use it. I use it every day. So I do I actually really like this.
Stephen Robles:I will say okay. So 2 things. I was gonna reach I was gonna reach for them, but I don't know. My headphones might unplug. Let me see what I have over here.
Stephen Robles:I will say the my favorite battery, Anker, they made, like, basically the perfect MagSafe battery. This is the 10000 milliamp hour ultra slim. It's on my gift list if you go to that Amazon link. But this is the best MagSafe battery, and I love MagSafe batteries, not only for when I travel or if I'm going to, like, SeaWorld later this week, I'm gonna bring a battery in case my phone dies. But even when you have people over the house, like, for the holidays, if you have friends and family over, and their phone is dying, rather than, say, go tether to a wall, just handing someone a battery, especially if they don't know these exist, is just a really cool feeling.
Stephen Robles:And they're like, what? You can just this charges my phone? And yeah. And so Anker basically has has perfected the, the MagSafe battery. Look how thin that is.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But speaking of things that stick to your phone, my other one this is what I should have said. It was this Nomad leather back. This is my favorite thing. I love this.
Stephen Robles:I am I am now a back only phone user.
Jason Aten:It's weird.
Stephen Robles:I use the I use the Nomad one. I've been using the Sooty for the last week just to switch it up, but I love the back only because it feels like I don't have a case, but I have a case. I will say
Jason Aten:And I like it more than I can explain why. Like, that's the problem I have is
Stephen Robles:when people
Jason Aten:are like, why do you like that? I'm like, I absolutely love this. Yes. They're like, why? And I'm like, I have no idea.
Jason Aten:I cannot rationally explain why it's so great, but it just is.
Stephen Robles:I will say, I dropped my phone the other day, and, I was getting out of the car, and it slipped out of my pocket, and I had the Nomad leather only back, and I was like, oh no. What is gonna happen? But I had my screen protector on, which I had not been a screen protector guy until this year, but with the back onlys, I've been doing a screen protector. Screen was flawless. Screen protector protected it.
Stephen Robles:And I did get a little nick on the corner of my iPhone 16 Pro Max. I don't even know if you'll be able to see it.
Jason Aten:Not really.
Stephen Robles:You can't even see it.
Jason Aten:I drop mine every day, and this thing just pops off the back. Seriously. And it does actually have a little tiny nick in the case.
Stephen Robles:Why do you have it? Why do you drop it every day? What are you doing?
Jason Aten:I drop it all the time.
Stephen Robles:It's fine.
Jason Aten:I don't really know why.
Stephen Robles:My wife just first all the time. For
Jason Aten:a person who never uses a case, I drop my phone more than I should.
Stephen Robles:But Apple AppleCare is my case.
Jason Aten:I do. Yeah. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:Alright. This one was a good question. I think we need we both need to go to our Icloud subscriptions. This person, Jason on x, was asking how many subscriptions do we pay for? I feel like if we open it up to outside of the Apple subscriptions, we'd be here forever, because we have, like, the streaming services you pay for and then, like, whatever is Frontier, Internet subscription.
Stephen Robles:But anyway but I feel like the subscriptions in are attached to our Icloud account. Maybe we could count those real quick.
Jason Aten:I mean, the first 15 of them are all just AppleCare
Stephen Robles:for all
Jason Aten:of the devices. Yeah. Same. Same.
Stephen Robles:I have all these AppleCare ones. I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I have 8 AppleCare subscriptions,
Jason Aten:and
Stephen Robles:I do the month I do the monthly because I wanted to just go beyond the 2 years. Just keep going.
Jason Aten:The one thing we don't have an AppleCare subscription on is my wife's Apple Watch SE, and she just chucked it across the room the other day. And and so now now she's it's actually funny because she's using a, Apple Watch Series 9 that I don't have a use for, but it was it's sized for my wrist. She's wearing a phone on her watch.
Stephen Robles:It's her phone. Yeah. It's huge. So besides the Apple Care subscriptions, I'm gonna just run through that. I'm gonna run down mine.
Stephen Robles:I have the Apple 1 subscription. I pay for Apple 1 Premier. Apple Podcast Connect, you have to pay $20 a year to offer subscription audio, like bonus audio and ad free audio, so I gotta pay $20 a year for that. Bear, I pay for Bear, $15 a year. A call sheet, I pay for call sheet annually.
Stephen Robles:I have my Chat GPT subscription in here. I've been trying out Croissant for cross posting, across Blue Sky threads and Mastodon. Fantastical, which I know people feel not that paying for a calendar is crazy, but I pay for Fantastical. Fourscore, digital sheet music. ShareShot for screenshots.
Stephen Robles:It's a great app. GoodNotes 6, I pay annually for. I pay iTunes match. I did listen. I'm I'm never gonna stop paying for it.
Stephen Robles:I pay for Ivory from Mastodon. Magic Lasso, I actually still pay for as my ad blocker. Mhmm. I'm subscribed to my own bonus episodes for movies on the side. My kids wanted it and the subscription is too for it.
Stephen Robles:So I'm paying myself minus whatever Apple takes. So it's not You're
Jason Aten:losing money on your own show.
Stephen Robles:I really am. I really am. I pay for the New York Times games because I like to use the app and have my stats saved. I'm paying for key for peacock this month because we wanted to watch The Voice. So I'm paying for peacock for 1 month.
Stephen Robles:I'm trying out Q, the podcast app. I pay for Screens 5, the VNC app. I pay for Sofa, Transcriptionist, VidAngel. You can go listen to movies on the side for that. Watch Smith, underscore David Smith, Apple Watch, app for custom things.
Stephen Robles:And, yeah, I think I think that's it. What do you what do you
Jason Aten:I'm paying for a lot of things I didn't know I was paying for, so this has been both helpful and depressing.
Stephen Robles:This has been instructive.
Jason Aten:I do. I mean, I have an Apple developer account. I have an Apple one. I apparently, at one point was paying for bear, but I did cancel that.
Stephen Robles:Well, you use Ulysses. Do you pay for Ulysses?
Jason Aten:Yep. I use Ulysses. Call sheet, Carrot Weather. Yeah. Jet GPT.
Jason Aten:Apparently, I pay for drafts, which I'm not gonna do that anymore.
Stephen Robles:Drafts is a great app. I I use it. It's a great
Jason Aten:app, but I don't I don't need it. I don't use it for anything.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Literally, I haven't opened it since I somebody said you should check out Drafts, and I did. And, anyway, Fantastical, Finalcap Cup Pro for iPad.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. I pay for that too.
Jason Aten:Flighty. Yeah. I I pay for the mods bonus episodes, not because I my children wanna listen to it because they don't they don't know it exists, but I listen to it. And I like I listen. I'll I'll say it again.
Jason Aten:I'll say that the bonus episodes of mods is my favorite podcast. Just anyway. Thanks. It's true. Fotomator.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Fotomator. Okay.
Jason Aten:Pocket cast, an app called Transmit, which basically I is just it's like a FTP thing. It's just basically, it's used for putting things on AW or on AWS, like, on Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I used to use Cyber Duck. Cyber Duck was the Mac app we used to.
Jason Aten:There you go.
Stephen Robles:It's free.
Jason Aten:TripIt's actually, I don't pay for TripIt Pro anymore because I get a free subscription to that. So let's cancel that. I have 2 subscriptions. Live Ulysses, whisper transcription, widgetsmith, and, YouTube premium, which shows up as YouTube music. And I go to cancel it every single time.
Jason Aten:And I'm like, oh, actually I want that because YouTube premium is the best deal. Yeah. See, there is.
Stephen Robles:There's a few things I pay for directly. Like, I pay for YouTube premium, but directly through their thing. So yeah. So that that's some of our Apple subscriptions. That that was one.
Stephen Robles:Now Jason's gonna spend the rest of the show canceling his.
Jason Aten:I I already did. I canceled 15 while we were just sitting here, but that's okay. You didn't ask the if not iPhone, what device would you want to use?
Stephen Robles:Oh, sure. Okay. So back to Jason. Yeah. Okay.
Stephen Robles:So if not iPhone next question. If not iPhone, what device would you use?
Jason Aten:I think I would probably use the, Galaxy Fold.
Stephen Robles:Real? The Galaxy Fold? I thought you were gonna go Pixel.
Jason Aten:Well, I think the Pixel Fold would be great, but they haven't sent me one to review yet. So I'm withholding my my judgment on that one.
Stephen Robles:You would like the Fold, though. You like flipping it out?
Jason Aten:Listen. If I'm gonna go something that's not an Apple device, I'm gonna go all the way, and you might as well just get Most expensive. The thing. Android tablet's terrible, and so you might as well get the best 2 in one combination thing you can get. So that's I think that's what I would do.
Stephen Robles:I would probably go Google Pixel 8 Pro. Is that that's the latest one. Right? Is it or the 9 Pro?
Jason Aten:I think they're on the 9.
Stephen Robles:Whatever the latest Google Pixel Pro is because camera's great. I would want a pure Android experience. That's probably what I would do.
Jason Aten:I will just say Yes. My favorite Android phone ever is this OnePlus 8 plus pro
Stephen Robles:thing that they I
Jason Aten:don't know. I can't remember what it's called. It was a terrible name. But the only reason I don't use this as my Android phone to carry around when I don't have a different one is because it doesn't have 5 g. And the thing I most frequently do with the second device, because it's on Google Fi and my phone is on Verizon, is it gives me another option for tethering when I don't have a good option.
Jason Aten:And this one doesn't support 5 g, so it's like, yeah, you're you're dead to me. You just go on a different
Stephen Robles:Yeah. The one plus had some great phones for a
Jason Aten:while. I loved this phone, and it's it's, like, a great size. It's and it's, like, basically the size of the iPhone Pro Max, but, like, half the weight.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's pretty slick. Okay. That's pretty good.
Jason Aten:So That's
Stephen Robles:good. Alright. Spencer on x was saying, what is one tech product that you can't do without on a daily basis besides your phone? I would say my Mac. I mean, my Mac is where I get everything done.
Stephen Robles:What would you
Jason Aten:I would say my AirPods. I literally use them constantly, and I could use I think I would prefer to use a Windows PC. I would not prefer to use a Windows PC, but I would prefer to use a Windows PC before I prefer to not have AirPods.
Stephen Robles:Really? I see. I well, because you're
Jason Aten:I have them in all day long. Like Yeah. I wear them. And I would actually rather leave home with it with my without my iPhone than without my AirPods. Now that doesn't make any sense because what I'm gonna
Stephen Robles:do is I'm gonna have to turn the lights. Yeah. I get it. I think see, if it was me this is the John Gruber question. Would you rather have an Android phone and a Mac or an iPhone and Windows?
Stephen Robles:I would probably go Android and Mac, because the Mac is, like, Final Cut, where I edit videos, like, I need that. I need audio hijack. Like, to do the work that I do, yes, you can find alternative tools. But it would be way more disruptive for me to figure out how to do it with Windows than just using an Android phone.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I get that. That makes sense. I I could do it because mostly what I do is type words onto the Internet. And that is a thing you can do fairly well.
Jason Aten:Although, it does bum me out how many you don't think about this as a Mac user. How many Mac only apps there really are that are so good? Like, Ulysses is not available
Stephen Robles:Right. On Well, Fantastical is coming to Windows, they actually announced.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But, like, Bear is not?
Stephen Robles:No. Audio Hijack is not.
Jason Aten:All the writing apps I'd want to use, none of I'd have to use Google Docs, and I just do not wanna write in Google Docs.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Alright. Let's switch it up favorite Thanksgiving food. This is from Sean on Blue Sky.
Jason Aten:Pumpkin pie.
Stephen Robles:Apple pie?
Jason Aten:Pumpkin pie.
Stephen Robles:Oh, pomco. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie. You put whipped cream on it? Yes.
Stephen Robles:Of course.
Jason Aten:Do you wear pants when you leave the house? Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:That that was quick. Okay. I would say I'm torn. My mother-in-law makes a, like a almond covered sweet potato casserole thing, and it's really good. It's almost like a dessert.
Stephen Robles:But my wife makes a pumpkin cheesecake, and the pumpkin cheesecake is very good. So I would I would have to go with one of those.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The almond thing, I would die for that. I mean, literally, it would kill me. I'm allergic to nuts, but it sounds good.
Stephen Robles:You're allergic to almonds? Oh, no. No.
Jason Aten:I'm allergic to tree nuts. So Oh, well
Stephen Robles:disregard the package I sent you because it's all
Jason Aten:We are we we were walking through we were in Indianapolis. We were walking through this Christmas market. Our kids were going ice skating, and they had, like, the toasted almond things. And my wife so desperately wanted to buy some. And then she's like, but I don't wanna kill you today.
Jason Aten:I was like, thank you.
Stephen Robles:Today.
Jason Aten:And then, for Thanksgiving, we're having her parents over, and her mom loves, pecan pie.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:And so she was gonna make a pecan pie, and she's like, will anyone else eat it? And my wife is like, probably not. Also, Jason would die. Right. And so we bought her, like, a very, very small one.
Jason Aten:It's, like, it's the cutest little thing. It's but it's weird to think that something so small could just make me dead.
Stephen Robles:Make you dead. My wife is also definitely allergic to pecans and walnuts specifically. And yeah, whenever there's, like, a roaster around Yeah. Like, Christmas time, like, just forget about it. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Justin on Blue Sky, some people were saying they're gonna pronounce it Blueski, like Blueski?
Jason Aten:Nope. That is not a thing.
Stephen Robles:The logo, like, the image the brand is literally a sky. Like blue sky.
Jason Aten:A blue sky.
Stephen Robles:A blue sky. It's a blue sky. Anyway, Justin on blue sky was saying, what's one of your favorite items you own that doesn't require any power source? This is interesting. So basically, like, your non techie item.
Stephen Robles:Jason's still gonna pull out a techie item. He's gonna say his phone keeps No.
Jason Aten:It's easy. My
Stephen Robles:Oh, the note
Jason Aten:my notebook.
Stephen Robles:The notebook.
Jason Aten:Yep. This is my this is the most important productivity tool I have.
Stephen Robles:Oh, he has to do. Have you tried the remarkable stuff? You ever thought about trying the remarkable?
Jason Aten:I reviewed the remarkable one, and I have a friend who swears by the remarkable 2. Okay. And then there's now there's, like, the color one. Right? And so I I would I would give it another shot, but I don't wanna carry another thing.
Jason Aten:Like, it doesn't replace an iPad for me, and so I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I wanna say something like the little HomePod stands I have on my outlets that hold the HomePod mini.
Jason Aten:That's So
Stephen Robles:that's still it's still connected to the thing. And then I'm really struggling to think about things that I have that don't require power, that aren't also related, to the power. I do like this finder pillow. I put this in a lot of the background in a lot of my videos.
Jason Aten:I was just gonna say the merch you're wearing right now is pretty sweet.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Ptsmerch. There you go. Primary tech.firm/merch. No.
Stephen Robles:I will say I really love reading a physical book on the patio. And so I'll say my patio chair because I would say the book, but I like reading multiple books. And so it's Yeah. Quite hard to say. I will say one of my favorite books just because, Creativity Inc.
Stephen Robles:If you've never read Creativity Inc. Is the story of Pixar, well, Jason's gonna pull it he's got it on his back. Yeah. I see it right over there. Highly recommend Creativity Inc.
Stephen Robles:Harry on Blue Sky asking smart home for Christmas decorations. Do you have any Christmas decorations on, like, smart home stuff?
Jason Aten:I mean, not yet because we're not monsters, so our Christmas decorations are not up yet.
Stephen Robles:It's not that early, Jason.
Jason Aten:They will be by the end of the day. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. They probably will be up by the end of the day. We, I was gonna look them up, but we do have we just have switches that are at HomeKit compatible. I I don't know what they are.
Jason Aten:They're probably something you recommended. So whatever you're about to say is probably what I have. Maybe. And they're super reliable and they'll only so as I've said before, we live in a we're a very inclusive home. We have all of the smart home things happening at the same time.
Jason Aten:And all of the lights in our house are on the Google system because you didn't have to have a hub. Like if you had one of the nest things, like it just, it all just worked. But the thing you can't do very well on there is set routines and what you can do really well in the home kit is set routines. And so like we have the outs, my office out here has lights on the outside. They're on the Lutrons and I can just set up shortcut or a home automation that just like, come on.
Jason Aten:What I love about it is I say, come on 1 hour before sunset and stay on for 3 hours. Right. Exactly. And it
Stephen Robles:just does it.
Jason Aten:It just does it. Like, And it changes throughout the year. It's, like, perfect. And then for the Christmas lights, we just have all these little switches and, they're all just set to, like, they come on at 5:45 in the morning and go off at 7:30 because everyone's gone. And then they come on again at, like, 6 and turn off at 9:30.
Jason Aten:So it's great. Yeah. I love it.
Stephen Robles:That is great. But I don't know I don't know what
Jason Aten:they are. I'm gonna look them up while you talk.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Yeah. Well, I was I don't actually have lights outside. I've been looking at some of the, like, govy. Like, you can get, like, cute like, long house lights, and they're all smart.
Stephen Robles:I haven't gotten any of those yet. But there's Christmas lights that my kids have in their rooms that's, like, strung around their beds, and those are on just smart plugs. They're on, like, the Maris smart plug. They turn on or off. You know, at night, they run their good night, good morning scenes.
Stephen Robles:And that's basically the extent, and, yeah, maybe I'll get some outside ones this year, but just the thought of having to hang a bunch of those things, I just yeah.
Jason Aten:No. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Do you find what they were, the things?
Jason Aten:I'm looking. How do you keep looking? But Amazon, like, freaked out on me. So
Stephen Robles:Well, I'm gonna show okay. Well, I'm gonna go to the, the threads post, which if you're talking about engagement, we got the most replies here on threads. I'm just saying.
Jason Aten:Nice. They are me, Ross, by the way. Smart plug mini. Yeah. I bought, like, a 5 I bought, like, a, oh, I bought 2 4 packs of them.
Jason Aten:So I have lots of them around.
Stephen Robles:They're good. They're they're pretty solid.
Jason Aten:Like I love it.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, I'm gonna answer, like, maybe 1 or 2 more, and then we'll save the rest for the bonus episode, which we're gonna go record. But I wanna redo because p.mill on threads asked, what's your favorite everyday carry non tech item? Similar question, as before, but I forgot this is what I should say, because I'm so sad about this. This is the Grovemade task knife, and I absolutely loved this knife.
Stephen Robles:They sent it to me, like, years ago, along with like a desk mat or whatever. And I just would keep it here on my desk, and I would use this to unbox all the things, and cut open boxes and tape, and cut open packages. And I loved the design of this knife, the weight of it felt great, the little Grovemade logo. I love this knife. And I took it out of the office to unbox, I think, the dream vacuum I recently did a video about.
Stephen Robles:And now I've lost it, and I can't stand it. And I'm I'm close to just rebuying it, because I've looked everywhere. It is not inexpensive. It is $56, although I think it's on sale. It's normally $70.
Stephen Robles:So it's it's on sale for 56. But I just really, really liked this knife. This is not a sponsored thing. I just I really liked it. And I'm and I'm sad that I lost it, and I don't know where it has gone.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, that's my favorite. You have an everyday carry? Good.
Jason Aten:My it's sort of, tech adjacent, so I'm I'm gonna just go there anyway. But I bought this little it's from Nomad, but it's basically just this it could
Stephen Robles:fit in
Jason Aten:a key chain. Yeah. But it's just USB c, tiny little thing that I always have, and it, like, sticks together so it fits in a pocket perfectly. So I guess it's technically not non tech, but it's not like a device or a gadget. But I really like this little guy.
Jason Aten:He's really useful. I use it all the time.
Stephen Robles:Do you so, like, you use it all the time, but it's, like, super short. Right?
Jason Aten:Like Yeah. But it's perfect if I'm, like, sitting at my laptop and I just need to, like, plug the phone in real quick or plug something else into it real quick. And I don't need, like, one of these super long cables or whatever. And it's also nice because it just always is in my in my bag. So I always have this with me, basically.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Interesting. Okay. Maybe
Jason Aten:it's a terrible idea. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:No. I keep seeing it around. And and it was like in the Verge's gift guide and I thought about it because I was like, it looks really cool. Yeah. I don't know when I would use it, but I don't know.
Stephen Robles:It looks cool. I will I will say there's a, I saw this in the Verge gift guide and I can't can't find it right now, but there was like an electric kettle, like an electric tea kettle, but it was like stupid expensive. It was like a $150 for like a really nicely designed one and I it looked really cool. I mean, there's no reason to get one that expensive. I have like a $20 one and it eats the water just fine, but It
Jason Aten:gets just as hot. It boils.
Stephen Robles:It boils. It looks just cool. All right. So I think, looking at some of our other questions here on threads, maybe we'll just do this in the bonus episode.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:But the Apple rumor we're most excited about, how does one go about starting their own website or blog? That's interesting. We'll do that. And then do we use large icons on our iPhone and multiple home screens? Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Let's talk about that
Jason Aten:Alright. All in
Stephen Robles:the bonus episode. So here's what you do. You go to Apple Podcasts, which I pay $20 a year for to offer ad free episodes. It's in my subscriptions. And you can support the show there, although you won't get chapters because I already if if you didn't also if you didn't know, there was a little Easter egg after the end credits of last week's episode where we rant a little bit about Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, so you can support the show there if you wanna do it directly on Apple Podcasts and it'd be in your subscriptions or you can go to primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes. If you support us there through Memberful, you get all the chapters, you get an ad free version, and you get bonus episodes and access to our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can listen to over the holidays all those bonus episodes that, you've missed. And so those links are down in the show notes as well as to 1password, our sponsor. You can get our merch down there. And overall, just happy Thanksgiving.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for listening. Thanks for your 5 star reviews. Keep those coming. And we'll catch you next week.
Creators and Guests
