Apple 2024 Tier List, ChatGPT Gets 1-800 Number, Foldable iPad Rumors, TikTok Ban Implications
Download MP3The audacity, the unmitigated golf. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, OpenAI has released a 1 eight hundred number where you can literally call and talk to chat GPT. The immersive camera from Blackmagic is gonna go on sale early next year. And if enough of you support, you can see this show in immersive video.
Stephen Robles:Is the algorithm hiding something? Oh, and we're also gonna go through all of Apple's announcements over the last year and put it in the tier list. I already did this in a video. Jason's gonna tell me how wrong I am. This episode is brought to you by the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast, HelloFresh, and you, the members who support us directly.
Stephen Robles:But I'm one of your host, Steven Robles, and joining me as always, my good friend Jason Aten. How's it going?
Jason Aten:It that's that's good. I'm a little bit, annoyed because you had to choose a quote from what I've already told you is my least favorite Christmas movie. That's so nice. That's actually not my least least least favorite. It's my second least favorite.
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:So my least favorite version of a very popular Christmas movie.
Stephen Robles:It is the most fun quote to say, though.
Jason Aten:That's true. It's obviously the Grinch.
Stephen Robles:Obviously the Grinch.
Jason Aten:But it's it's the Jim Carrey version, which is super not my favorite version of that.
Stephen Robles:It's traumatizing. Let's let's be honest. Listen, I I'm gonna let our listeners and viewers know, you're gonna see something special pop up in the feed in a couple days because Jason joined me and my other co host Nate Baranowski on Movies on the Side to talk about our top 5 Christmas movies. We thought it would be fun to kind of drop that in as a bonus episode. It'll be available to everyone, but, you might see that drop over the weekend, so just giving you a heads up.
Stephen Robles:If you wanna listen to a festive top five Christmas movie show, it's gonna be coming up.
Jason Aten:It was a very spirited conversation.
Stephen Robles:I see what you did there. I see what you did. I I'm so excited because Jason told me he actually called oh, g p t, the 1 eight hundred number and recorded the conversation. I did not expect this, so I'm very excited to hear how this conversation went and, the implications of of yeah, well, other people calling this number. But anyway, 3 5 star review shout outs.
Stephen Robles:Thank you to everyone leaving 5 star reviews and supporting the show. Cooler FM from the USA, dots on, percentage on, dominant hand or dominant pocket. So, dots on, thumbs up. McKay from USA or McSai, he said the deep dives hook them from the show. We appreciate that.
Stephen Robles:And finally, Trappers Hat Stu from the USA, he said back button focus on. That might be another one for our photographers.
Jason Aten:That's right. Back
Stephen Robles:button focus on. There you go. Alright. Let's jump right into it because OpenAI in their 12 days of ship miss, which I think we're nearing the end of these 12 days. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I think that was day 10.
Stephen Robles:Is it day 10?
Jason Aten:Yesterday was day I think yesterday was
Stephen Robles:day 10. Okay. Well, they announced that Chad GPT is now available via phone and via text, but the text is via WhatsApp. So you can call a 1 800 number, 1 800 CHAD GPT, and you get 15 minutes of access per month to talk to the large language model, and you can also message the number via WhatsApp. Though it seemed unclear how many messages a month you would get, I imagine it would be the same as if you had a free ChatGPT account and didn't pay for ChatGPT Plus.
Stephen Robles:But you can literally call and talk to ChatGPT for for 15 minutes a month. I'm so excited. I had no idea you're gonna do this, Jason, but you actually called this number. You do this yesterday?
Jason Aten:No. I did this this morning in yeah. So
Stephen Robles:Early to be talking to a LLM, I gotta tell you.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a surreal experience, but, I am gonna write about this. I have not formed all my thoughts because I literally did this not that long ago. And, one, I was like, well, I could just write about the fact that this happened.
Jason Aten:Right. But, like, that it happened yesterday, so I'm a little late for that. So I'm like, I'm gonna call. I'm gonna see what listen, Steven. I don't think I've called an eight hundred number that wasn't an airline
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:In 10 years. Like, it's been a very long time since I've called the 1800 number. I and I thought I was thinking through through this, like, the one of the big stories earlier this year was how they spent $15,000,000 or whatever on chat.com. Right. And I wonder how much they had to pay to get chat gpt as their vanity h eight hundred number.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And, like
Stephen Robles:It's gotta be way cheaper than a domain. I imagine I
Jason Aten:I'm sure that's true, but someone probably had that combination of numbers already. So I had to figure out who that was. And I was just thinking, like, when is the last time a new eight hundred number was even like, companies don't like, at this point, the reason the whole reason eight hundred numbers existed is so you didn't have to pay long distance.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Right. When is the last time you've made a long distance call?
Stephen Robles:I don't even
Jason Aten:It's been a very long time.
Stephen Robles:I feel like maybe the last time I dialed an 800 number was to upgrade my Internet. I called my Internet service provider, which is gonna be a personal tech segment because I upgraded my speed once again.
Jason Aten:But, Steven, you know me well enough to know that there are a few things in the world I hate more than talking on the phone to anything. Like, I had to call you the other day, and I want you to know, like, it was a it was a really high bar to be like, Steven, can we talk on the phone? I also
Stephen Robles:I also didn't pick up the first time. So I was
Jason Aten:Well and also, I'm sure you were terrified because when does it do I you know what? Like, why would I be texting you saying, do you have a minute for a phone call?
Stephen Robles:That was on the
Jason Aten:show's over show's over, so
Stephen Robles:It was ominous. Next time, you just you should just say tech support needed. 1800 tech support beard f m. You know what? I'm gonna say, can I get the 800 number?
Stephen Robles:1800bea r d f m, beard f
Jason Aten:m o.
Stephen Robles:Let's see if I can get it.
Jason Aten:I should try. Let me
Stephen Robles:get it.
Jason Aten:Okay. So anyway, so I did call this morning. And one of and this is also the so it's the first time I called an 800 number in years. It's also the first time I've used iOS 18.2's new feature. I don't know if
Stephen Robles:I think it was iOS 18 regular.
Jason Aten:Sure. Where you can record phone calls now. The best part of the whole thing. I wonder if I can play some of this for you. Can you hear this?
Jason Aten:What are some common things that kids do to try to have a snow day?
ChatGPT:Kids have some classic snow day rituals. They might wear their pajamas inside out, flush ice cubes down the toilet, or even sleep with a spoon under their pillow, all in the hopes of a snow day miracle.
Jason Aten:What is what? That's a first of all, all those things are true. That's exactly what kids do. You live in Florida, Steven. You have no idea.
Stephen Robles:Jason. We had snow
Jason Aten:days. Long time
Stephen Robles:ago. Time. It's going around. Literally got a spoon under the pillow.
Jason Aten:Literally, my children have done all of these things in the last couple weeks. And by the way, it worked because they've had 2 snow days so far. But the flushing ice cubes on the toilet, a 100% a thing, wearing yours your and all those things are true.
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. I'm gonna need this here it is, the next debate. I need to because I grew up in New York.
Stephen Robles:It wasn't that long ago. I mean, it was I mean, I understand. It was, like, 20 years ago or and well, no, it was more than that.
Jason Aten:But here's the thing. I didn't ask JIDPT what its old people used to do when we were kids. I asked what kids do now, and your children don't even know it's snowed today.
Stephen Robles:They don't know. It's very sad. What do we do for hurricane days? You might ask that.
Jason Aten:You do not flush anything down the toilet. You just get in the car and go. That's right.
Stephen Robles:I need to know from our listeners and viewers, have you ever heard of any of those practices of flushing ice cubes down the toilet, spoon under the pillow? I need to know. But but anyway But
Jason Aten:only if you have children in school right now.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Because if you're, like, our age and you just Then you Trust me. Anyway, so okay.
Stephen Robles:That was awesome.
Jason Aten:Best part of this
Stephen Robles:just the
Jason Aten:but the best part of this call, though, was actually when I it said, hi. This is Chad gbt, and then I hit the record thing. Right. Took me a second to figure out how to do that. So then it says it's gonna tell you that it's gonna I'm gonna announce that it's recording in 3 seconds.
Jason Aten:So it says 321. It says this call will be recorded and chat gbt responded. Great. Let's talk. I was like, I love to be so excited about me recording.
Jason Aten:Exactly. I've never yeah. I've never called and interviewed anyone and had them be like, great. Let's anyway, so the I talked to chat gbt for about 15 minutes. It actually took most of the 15 minutes was me thinking in between, like, what now can I do with the rest of my time?
Jason Aten:Because honestly, that I understand that Steven doesn't believe me. Literally, if you ask one of my children, that is exactly the answer that they would give you.
Stephen Robles:Like Okay.
Jason Aten:Word for word. So it, like, hit it out of the park. But I then did the same thing with just voice mode on the app. I did the same thing with voice mode on the chat.com in the browser. I did the same thing with Siri pushing the thing down on here.
Jason Aten:Although the the Siri interaction with chat g p t I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:Did you start by saying using chat g p t?
Jason Aten:I didn't have to because it did it. Okay. But it completely mangled what I was asking because the first time I asked the exact same question every single time and the first time series I'm sorry. Dingus' interaction told me things that kids like to do on a snow day. Right?
Jason Aten:Like they might go outside and build a snowman. I'm like, no, no, you misunderstood. You did not understand this. Anyway, the I started thinking like there are definitely easier ways to interact with chat, like there's clearly easier ways, like all of the things I just mentioned voice mode on the app. I think the easiest way to interact with chat gbt is to push the Siri button on the side of your phone.
Jason Aten:Like, that's how my kids think that this is a walkie talkie now because I just walk around like asking me questions, holding the button down, right, And, getting responses from chat gbt. Although that's the least useful in the long run, meaning the interaction with the voice assistant on your iPhone because, like, you can't really do anything with that.
Stephen Robles:You can't You can't follow-up.
Jason Aten:And I think can you copy and paste maybe? I don't even know if you can do that out of interface. I haven't tried that.
Stephen Robles:What I've discovered is, like, the newer Siri is so hypersensitive to you saying anything after your request, and this is probably a setting that I could turn off. I don't I don't know if you know for sure, but, like, when I I'll hold it, I'll do a request, and if I'm, like, with my kids and I asked the dingus a question, and if my kids start saying something, Siri will just start listening again. Yeah. It never completes the initial request because it's now added multiple things. Is there a setting for this?
Stephen Robles:I forget.
Jason Aten:I I don't know. Like, continue listening or something, but you can't tap out of the Siri interaction because then it just stops doing anything. So it's it is kind of annoying. While you find the setting, I'll just I'll just tell you my theory. I so chat gbt is doing this because they are trying to make it familiar.
Jason Aten:Like, they're trying to offer channels to interact with chat gbt in ways that are familiar to people. And this again, we don't call a hundred numbers. So who are they trying to make it familiar to? It's like boomers. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, they are trying to expose people who still make phone calls Right. With the ability to talk to Chad g p t. I think it's pretty cool. It's very limited in what you could do because right? Most of the things I'm doing is, like, summarize this or explain this or whatever.
Jason Aten:You can't do any of those things on the phone because you can't like, it just says it to you. I recorded the conversation, but if I hadn't recorded the conversation, it's like ephemeral. I couldn't do anything with that information later. So, the WhatsApp thing is also interesting. I I I you can they've made it really easy.
Jason Aten:There's a QR code. You just scan it, and it opens a chat in WhatsApp with chat gpt. And it's basically the same experience as chatting with the app. The difference is, again, if you use WhatsApp, but you don't wanna download the chat gpt app or go to chat.com, everyone knows how to send a text message. And now you can just send a text message to chat gpt, which is basically what you're doing when you're using the app.
Jason Aten:But they're just so I actually think it's really brilliant that they're exposing it. The other thing, Steven, last last thing on this is it occurred to me as I was talking. OpenAI says that they are not going to use these conversations to train their large language model. However, they did I I I did a service to our listeners, and I dug through all of the terms and conditions about how they're using it. And they do review them, and I I think it's almost a guarantee that they're going to use it not to train the LLM, but just to improve the experience.
Jason Aten:But if you wanna have a good voice assistant, you need your voice assistant constantly listening to real people talking.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm. Right.
Jason Aten:Deducing what they're saying. Because what it essentially has to do is speech to text, text analysis, feed that into the LOM, give you back a response, and then say it. And the trickiest part of that, as we know from our friend on the iPhone, is the listening to what someone's saying, understanding what that is, turning it into a query, and then providing an answer. So I like, in that sense, I think it's brilliant. Also, the people who are likely to use this are the demographic of people that they probably have the least experience with interacting with because it's like my parents.
Stephen Robles:Right. Although, I will say I I don't think my there is zero chance my mom will call 1 800 chat gpt and talk to it. But it's it was it was just bizarre to hear you play that recording though because I mean honestly, it just it sounds like one of those automated phone trees that you get, but it's actually
Jason Aten:Except you could ask it anything, and it won't understand it and come up with information. So it is a 100% like that except for it. I hate those phone trees because they never do a good job of, like, giving you information outside of a set response set of responses. Whereas with chat gpt, that set of responses is essentially infinite.
Stephen Robles:So while you were talking, I did look up the settings, for Siri. If you oh, the dingus. Excuse me. So if you go to Apple Intelligence and dingus, there's no setting there that appears to to affect this, but if you go to accessibility and then dingus, and by dingus I mean s I r I, there is a setting called require quote dingus for interruptions, and I think that's the newer feature where you can interrupt while like during the request, which is, you know, what all these large language models do. So I just turned on that toggle, and I'm gonna try something.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna say I'm holding the side button instead of saying dingus. Generate an image of a medieval knight riding a polar bear. Now I stopped holding the side button, and it's not listening to me anymore, I don't think. It's still glowing, which is confusing. Oh, no, it is still listening to me.
Jason Aten:Yeah, because if the glow changes as you're talking, it's
Stephen Robles:It's still listening to me, so that's not even an interruption, but it's maybe it'll figure that I don't know. I'm not crazy about this the the new dingus. I'm I'm really hoping that the smartest dingus comes soon.
Jason Aten:You have to walk into your cone of silence to use Yes. The stereo energy and then you
Stephen Robles:You ever see that chamber that supposedly, like, has 0, decibel, like, reverb and echo?
Jason Aten:Yeah. An anechoic chamber.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The one that Apple has, it has all, like, the point I actually think it's a death chamber because it's got all those pointy things that are, like, pointed at you and you're just, like, whatever.
Stephen Robles:I wanna try it. People are saying, like, oh, people can't last 45 minutes. I'm, like, I think I could last. I think I could do it. That's but that that's my talk.
Jason Aten:Isn't that from that it's a Steve Carell well, it's not originally a Steve Carell movie, but what is it? Get Smart where they have the cone of silence. Oh.
Stephen Robles:Do you
Jason Aten:ever see that movie?
Stephen Robles:I have. I'm scared.
Jason Aten:Wasn't it, like, Steve Carell and, like, Anne Hathaway or something like that? It was it's a funny movie.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, that's that's for movies on the side, Jason.
Jason Aten:You you Yeah. Sorry. I'm I'm confused because I you know, we recorded an episode. Yeah. I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:It was all good. Well, thank you thank you for doing the Lord's work and calling the 1800 GPT and having that conversation. Anyone else calls it. Yeah. Let us know what what kind of conversation you have.
Jason Aten:If I can get it published soon enough, I will send you a
Stephen Robles:link and
Jason Aten:you can include it.
Stephen Robles:Now what's exciting is if we have enough supporters in 2025, you can have primary tech in immersive video because Blackmagic's Vision Pro immersive camera is going on sale in early 2025 next year for a measly pittance of $30,000. But now we need 2, so we need $60,000. So that means divided by 5, we need 12,000 of you to support the show, which is more than less than every week, but we'll figure it out.
Jason Aten:I mean, theoretically, what is it? $5 a month?
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:So we actually only need a 1,000.
Stephen Robles:Oh, for the year? Oh, that's true.
Jason Aten:We're not gonna buy one of these every month.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna add continually add angles. This is gonna be the most immersive podcast you've ever seen.
Jason Aten:Wow. No. Please do not send me 12
Stephen Robles:of these cameras. Nobody wants that. But this was so, you know, Apple announces in I think it was Dub Dub, the keynote.
Jason Aten:I I think that's true. I don't remember, but I remember seeing this.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So this is it's gonna be specifically for recording immersive content. Listen, we'll see if, you know, the Vimeo app, and we talked about that a few months ago, you can actually host spatial video just that you capture with your iPhone or Vision Pro to Vimeo, and then use the Vimeo app and Apple Vision Pro to do to experience that immersive video, which is interesting. There's still no first party way to do it. So I I, you know, I imagine maybe Apple will announce something early next year where you can they would have to You
Jason Aten:can watch spatial video in the photos app.
Stephen Robles:You do it, but, I mean, are you gonna capture something on a $30,000 camera just to watch it in the photos? I'm saying Oh, no.
Jason Aten:I meant you You're saying okay. So you're not talking about, like, to do it for yourself. You're saying if you have the 3 friends you have wanna watch the thing You
Stephen Robles:would be dad of the year, I guess, if you buy this just for family videos.
Jason Aten:Yeah. No. You should definitely not do. It's weird enough to walk around with a vision pro on your face to take videos. Instead, you're walking around with this, like, droid on your shoulder.
Jason Aten:Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:Look crazy. Crazy.
Jason Aten:It looks like it has a tape door too. It doesn't that look like it has a door for pulling out a cassette
Stephen Robles:tape or something? Yeah. It's it's got yeah. I don't know what that is.
Jason Aten:Wouldn't that be amazing if they're recording spatial video and a $30,000 thing and you pull out, like, a You get one of those mini
Stephen Robles:2 seconds. You get 2 seconds of recording.
Jason Aten:Mini DV.
Stephen Robles:Mini DV take. Anyway, I yeah. I'm just hoping for more immersive content. Oh, which I I should mention, I didn't even put this in the notes, but now it jogged my memory. I finally updated Division OS 2.2 because it's publicly available for everyone, and I tried the ultra wide Mac virtual display.
Stephen Robles:Jason, that thing is pretty cool. I'm not gonna lie.
Jason Aten:It is.
Stephen Robles:It's really good.
Jason Aten:It is.
Stephen Robles:I was sitting in my car editing a shortcuts video while my kids were at dance practice, and I was like, I don't care, I'll look like a crazy person. So I put the Vision Pro on and sitting in my car, and I mean, ultra wide max screen, because that was the one thing where I don't like editing on my laptop because it's a smaller screen, and I'm used to the studio display, so I'm like okay, bigger screen, but what previously the bigger screen, it was still, like the aspect ratio and everything was still confined to like with a computer, but being able to do an a wide display from my MacBook Pro and edit in Final Cut and still have other windows open, and then I even went to the ultra ultra wide display, whatever that that biggest setting is, and it was like this this is too much. This is too much display for one person to handle. I couldn't do it, but, it's very compelling. You prefer the the ultra ultra wide or the just the
Jason Aten:so most of the time if I'm using it, I'm not using my Mac. But if I'm using right. If I'm using the Vision Pro. But if I am, I do I do like the ultra wide. It's I I like being able to have lots of room for activities.
Jason Aten:You know?
Stephen Robles:You have to, like, you have to literally turn your head to see the whole display. Like, it wraps around.
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be floor to ceiling.
Stephen Robles:I mean, you could
Jason Aten:size it in a way that you can still see it and stuff. But yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It was it is very cool, though. And I might, might keep it charged and actually use it again, so we'll see. Yeah. But more immersive content next year because of a new camera.
Stephen Robles:I hope that'd be cool.
Jason Aten:More immersive content that you don't have to make yourself for $30,000 is what you're saying. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:And then this was one of the rumor. This was from Mark German from Bloomberg. This is The Verge reporting on it, but that Apple might be working. The first foldable, I feel like that Gurman is rumoring an 18.8 inch creaseless iPad by 2028. This would be 3 something years from now, but a super big iPad that actually folds I don't know if I'll be into this.
Stephen Robles:I actually went from the 12.9 inch iPad down to the 11 inch because I like the more portable side size, but I guess this means maybe you could have the best of both worlds, portable iPad and it's so thin now. I mean you could put 2 iPad Pro M4 iPad Pros together and it's barely more than a piece of paper thickness. I guess fold? That was a joke, I mean it's more than a piece of paper, but you know what I mean, it's super thin. But you know have 2 of those sandwiched together and then open up to a big screen?
Stephen Robles:I don't know, it might be compelling. I still am it's hard for me to imagine Apple doing a foldable device, I don't know why. It just doesn't feel appley just yet. You feel
Jason Aten:I think it's inevitable that Apple will do a foldable device. I think they are trying to figure out they're, like, looking at the market, and they're like, well, that's what they're doing. We have to do it different and more complicated. Like, this is exactly what happened with the vision pro. Right?
Jason Aten:The quest exists.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And people like it, and people buy lots of them. And they're $400 or whatever, you know, $500 for those things. And Apple is like, hold my beer. Here's a $35100 device with 0, you know, specific content in like 13 apps. And it's, and it doesn't stay charged if you leave it on your desk for more than an hour and a half.
Jason Aten:It's like, what? Like just make the thing like you could have just, if they would have made a $500, it probably would've been $800, but essentially, quest competitor
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:They would've sold a lot of them. Imagine, like, if they just had positioned it as with for, like, the because if you think about, like, what are the best things about using the vision pro? For the most part, it is not the pass through. The pass through is good, but you don't need it. It's not it's it's irrelevant.
Jason Aten:Like, you don't need pass through for the Mac virtual display. You can be sitting at Yosemite. You don't need it to be playing games. If you're watching a movie, you probably are turning on an environment. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, the theater or something like that. So I this to me, I think it's inevitable they're gonna make one, and I think I think they are way overthinking it. Just put 2 of these phones together. Boom. And it's it's perfect.
Jason Aten:It's like I just I don't know. I just no one needs an 18.8 inch iPad. Like right? The the 13 inch iPad is great if you wanna and I thought about this a lot, Steven, because I've been trying to figure out what the right iPad size is.
Stephen Robles:Oh.
Jason Aten:Is it the 13 or the 11? I personally am a big fan of the 11, but that's because I use a laptop almost all the time. Sure. And I don't need to replace my laptop, so I need a different device. If you don't have a laptop and your main device is a computer, then 13 inch is perfect because you can slap it in a magic keyboard, and now you basically have an iPad and a laptop.
Jason Aten:Right? The 11 inch is not great as a laptop. Let's just be honest. It's just not.
Stephen Robles:It is not. So I'm going to, actually put a link to this because Federico Viticci over at Mac stories just did his, final story of the year, which is his, I feel like, lifelong quest to be all in on an iPad Pro and never use a Mac again. And it's he says he seemingly has achieved it, and so his whole article is how he uses the new 11 inch iPad for everything. And he went from the 12.9 inch down to the 11 inch, now he uses it with an external monitor when he's doing like desk work and stuff, but he, he said he's achieved it. He's doing everything on iPad including podcasting, including all of his work and, nothing else using the external monitor when he's there.
Stephen Robles:I I think, because I have I literally have it right here, I feel like the 11 inch iPad is the perfect size iPad to be an iPad, to both be a tablet and to be a quasi laptop when you want it. Not better than a laptop, but better at being both, because I feel like a 13 inch iPad is better at being a laptop, but it's not as good as being a tablet. And I feel like the 11 inch now stay with me the 11 inch is being better is better at being a quasi laptop than the 13 inches at being a tablet. Like I feel like this magic keyboard on the 11 inch, I would rather deal with doing laptop things with this size than try to do tablet things where I actually hold it and use the Apple pencil with the 13 inch because it's too big. You know what I mean?
Stephen Robles:Does that make sense?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just think it's you just have to figure out what's your primary use case, and if your primary use case is I wanna hold something in my hand and read, watch, edit podcasts, right, the 11 inch is great. If the primary use is, like, I wanna sit down with the keyboard, write, do stuff like that, get the 13 inch because you can still pull it off of the stand and use it. It's just if if it's not as ideal for that kind of a thing.
Stephen Robles:Sure. But if if you could do both, if you could have an 11 inch and then have, I guess, an 18 inch iPad No. For the big things. I don't know. I don't know.
Jason Aten:That's terrible. I mean and also Federico Vitigi was known to rip the head off of a Mac to use like
Stephen Robles:He has he has done these things.
Jason Aten:He's been on a journey and so I'm glad he feels like he's finally figured out what he's doing.
Stephen Robles:He's on his spirit quest, to to find the the final form. But, anyway, I'll put a link to that article. And oh, and one other aptly related thing before we get to is TikTok gonna get banned. I saw this yesterday. Someone on social media, sent it to me.
Stephen Robles:Sorry, I forgot who it was and I immediately bought it. I'm a sucker for these kind of things. This is from the company Elevation Lab, and they have made something called the time capsule for AirTag. And what this is, a basically a enclosure where you can take the back off an AirTag, which is typically a CR 2032 battery. You take that out, and this time capsule mimics the battery, the 2032 battery, so the AirTag thinks it's char it's powered, but then you could put 2 double a's in this enclosure and Elevation Lab is claiming 10 year battery for the AirTag.
Stephen Robles:So if you basically want a decade of AirTag tracking and never have to think about the battery for those 10 years, you get these, time capsules. You can get a 2 pack for $30. That's what I did and I'm like, I wanna try this. I wanna see, like, hey, does it still work? Like, does it really fool the AirTag into doing it?
Stephen Robles:And I imagine so. And if this I mean, 10 years nothing about it. Now I will say AirTag batteries are pretty great, like, I think I've only changed minds after, like, the 2 year mark. That's when I get the low battery warning. So they they do last a while, But a 10 year AirTag?
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Is this is this an attractive idea to you?
Jason Aten:No. This is dumb. Yeah. I think.
Stephen Robles:No. It's
Jason Aten:a 10 year air tag. Like it's a it's a $29 thing. You just have to double the price to do to use it with double a batteries, and you're saying it'll last. But I just the whole point of an air tag is how small it is, and you can just stick it in with things. Like, if you wanna carry that thing around the luggage
Stephen Robles:keychain, but for your, like, check-in luggage that, you know, the the one time You
Jason Aten:don't check luggage, dude. What's wrong with that?
Stephen Robles:Oh, not sorry. Carry on. Carry on luggage. You know, something like that. I don't know how to take luggage.
Jason Aten:But I mean, if you're carrying it on, how far away from you would this ever gonna be that you would
Stephen Robles:use it? This idea. I think it's brilliant. Well, I don't know it's brilliant yet, but I got a couple, so I'll let you know because I'm I am
Jason Aten:gonna try. You're starting to sound like me. It's brilliant. The best idea I've ever heard.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I'm actually gonna try it, but there's also rumor that Apple's going to update AirTag next year in 2025 with an updated ultra wideband chip because the latest iPhones and Apple Watches actually have the ultra wideband chip, like, version 2, but AirTag is still on the first version. So there might actually be an improved AirTag, and you might wanna wait before to see if this would actually work.
Jason Aten:But speaking of AirTags, I do I did wanna just mention I only wanna mention this because this is hilarious. But Apple did finally, like, roll out their little find my partnership with United Airlines, and they're gonna make it available to other airlines. They released that. That went live this week. And, the best part about it is that I was sent the release and I clicked on the link to read the page on United's, but you know, their newsroom posts.
Jason Aten:And it was page not found, which is just super ironic for a story about airtight compatibility. The page was not found. They didn't do that on purpose. Literally, the pay they gave me the wrong link or something. Well played.
Jason Aten:But but I do think, like, I think Apple, is I I would not be surprised if we do see some more AirTag advance. Like, that to me is a rumor that makes more sense.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because and the AirTag was announced 3, 4 years ago.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I don't think there's a lot you need to do to it. And I think the the concept of make the battery user replaceable, probably the right choice. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Jason Aten:Because the only other way you could do it to make that thing useful is to make it rechargeable like USB c, but that just dramatically changes the the Yeah. Form factor of what you could
Stephen Robles:have. And I have and I have some find my devices, like, from ESR that are rechargeable, but it uses this weird, like, contact based recharging thing instead of USB c. And, like, I don't wanna keep track of a different charger. You know? Like, just
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:No. I don't wanna do that.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Alright. One last, story before we have some exciting stuff. We're gonna talk about the short form socialpocalypse and my Apple tier list. But we are getting closer to possibly seeing TikTok get banned here in the US. There is an impending ban supposedly on Friday, January 10th.
Stephen Robles:There's gonna be one last time where TikTok can appeal to the Supreme Court to stay the ban further, but if not it, it looked like it might be happening. And, again, we kinda go through these waves where, like, last year it seemed to get very close. Again, it seems like it might get banned. Here's my question to you, Jason, because I was asked this by a group of people the other day. They were like, is TikTok really gonna get banned here in the US?
Stephen Robles:I was like, okay, well, what does it mean if it gets banned? It means Apple and Google will have to remove it from its app stores, so you won't be able to download it if you didn't already have it. If you already have the app downloaded, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's probably still gonna work. Like, the app is not gonna be removed from your device.
Jason Aten:Well, those two things are not the same. Right.
Stephen Robles:I know. Yeah. But like
Jason Aten:I don't think it will work.
Stephen Robles:You don't think it'll work?
Jason Aten:Because ISPs will not be allowed to host the services that are associated with it. So you may have a dead shell app on your thing. And if you had cashed video and stuff, it should continue to work. But like the ban is not on Tik TOK, the app existing in the United States. It's the the onus is on the app stores and the service providers who who are doing that, and they're basically saying, you can't have this app on there anymore.
Stephen Robles:Well, here's here's my theory. If it does go through, I think the United States teenage population will become immediately familiar with VPN apps. Like like many countries already do, like places where certain apps are banned or services are banned, and people quickly learn about VPN apps and being able to obfuscate where they appear from and in what countries. I think that will happen. I do think TikTok will lose some momentum if this does go through because there will be a segment of users that just don't wanna deal with that and don't wanna, like, figure it out.
Stephen Robles:But and I've seen all the creators, like, already kind of bemoaning this because they've built one entire big platform on a single app, namely TikTok. I see a lot of TikTok creators try to move that audience off to other platforms like YouTube for monetization and just more stability, and typically it is harder to move that audience because they're on TikTok, and they don't really care to, like, go to YouTube and subscribe to your channel. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see, but it's, it's getting close. Do you think this is gonna gonna happen?
Jason Aten:So I think that the okay. I think the most likely scenario is that the Supreme court like delays the implementation so that it has enough time to like consider things. But I don't think that the Supreme court is going to, I don't think it's going to outweigh the okay. The the argument that TikTok is I'm sorry. There's this is multilayered.
Stephen Robles:I mean, this is an
Jason Aten:onion that we have to peel back without crying. The the TikTok is trying to argue that banning this is an infringement on the first amendment rights, not of TikTok, but of the people who use the platform. That argument's not gonna go anywhere because they can just make their art. They can just publish their content in other places. Right?
Jason Aten:So you're not restricting their first amendment rights. No one has a first amendment right to use tick tock. The government can't just can't like punish you for saying things on tick tock. Those are 2 very different. And again, I'm not an attorney, but this doesn't seem complicated to me.
Jason Aten:Okay. So that's one piece of it. I don't think that that will outweigh the national security implications because the 6th, was it the 6th circuit? I can't remember which court of appeals essentially upheld the law because they are saying that Congress using its discretion, considered the national security implications and decided that it was a threat. And that's why they passed this law.
Jason Aten:And the court should not be over like, shouldn't, is not in a position to second guess whether or not those reasons were legitimate, that they should defer to congress to say you all are the ones who have the information, and you're the ones that make the the argument and make these decisions. So I don't think that that that's gonna happen. I think it's possible that it could get delayed. And if that happens, I think it's possible that either the law could get repealed because president Trump has decided that TikTok is what helped get him elected this time, which is weird because last time it was what helped the other guy get elected. It's it's it's very fluid.
Jason Aten:It's a very fluid situation. So I think it's possible that if the Supreme Court does stay this, that the cut the congress might act differently to to reverse it. I think I mean, the most logical situation is, like, sell this thing to Walmart. Like, I mean, so seriously, they would buy it. They would buy it in a heartbeat.
Stephen Robles:They get all that visio ad
Jason Aten:stuff. Listen, Walmart would buy this. Like, just tell us a dollar amount and we'll write you a check, like in a in a heartbeat that they would, because it is literally like the home shopping network. Like, that's what TikTok is now. And so they would absolutely
Stephen Robles:I feel like ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, though. They're not gonna do that.
Jason Aten:No. They absolutely don't want to. That's what they're saying. But this is sort of like, you know, how every well, what's about to happen right now? How every time when they're like, we have to raise a debt limit or, like, the world will end or whatever, and there's, like, some compromise that could be made, but no one's willing to compromise because they're just trying to like, it's a they're making a I don't know if ByteDance is bluffing or not here, if they really are refusing to sell or if they've had some, I feel like that they've had conversations with Walmart or Amazon.
Jason Aten:Like those are the 2 most obvious people or possibly Microsoft because Microsoft apparently will buy any feral social network that's available on the market. And they almost tried to do it before. Like, literally, they tried to get them to buy it before. Satya Nadella has already said it was the weirdest, like, 3 days of his life. That was before this is Sam Altman got fired and rehired in a week.
Jason Aten:But anyway, so I just think, like, I think that it will not disappear on the 19th. I think that it's likely that the Supreme court will stay now if the Supreme court is like, Nope, like the issue, they refuse to issue an injunction on it. I think things get really interesting and I think it will get turned off for a while.
Stephen Robles:Interesting. Okay. Well, we'll see early next year. I'm thankful I did not build my platform on TikTok. That's all I'm saying.
Jason Aten:And I, I wanna say this. I am somewhat sympathetic to, I don't use TikTok. I mean, I I'm aware of what it is. Right. But Instagram reels gives me more than enough of that.
Jason Aten:Right. So I understand TikTok. I understand that people use it for search for I get all of that. I'm not, but I do think like, if, if you, I don't know that it's a compelling argument. No, it's just, it's not a compelling argument that we can't close this thing down because creators have built their entire businesses on it.
Jason Aten:The, the, you think about like, that's not the, there've been times when it's like, we need to build a minor league baseball stadium. So we're going to raise all these buildings. And the small business owners who have all the shops in those buildings are like, Hey, but you're taking away our livelihood and they get compensated for it. It. But they literally invested in a physical infrastructure and hiring employ.
Jason Aten:If your entire businesses, I stand in front of a mirror with a video with an iPhone and I do a dance and I publish it and I get 3,000,000 likes. And so brands come along and want to pay me to make other videos. I feel like you'll be fine. You should be able to find something else to do with your time. Don't you think?
Jason Aten:Like, I don't think that's a compelling argument. I mean, you're a creator. You are on YouTube. I understand you have a different perspective.
Stephen Robles:I'm more sympathetic to the creators because while they might not have invested money in a physical brick and mortar location, they have invested years of their lives making content for a platform that promised monetization and opportunity. Like, yeah, not only did brand deals come along, but TikTok, even though this is like a joke that TikTok creator fund and monetization is not good and doesn't pay very much, there was the promise that you could build a platform here and sustain yourself as an individual creator. And I've I'm on TikTok. I do enjoy watching it. There's a lot of funny stuff on there.
Stephen Robles:I save funny TikToks to show to my kids, and I find more content that I would enjoy on TikTok than Instagram reels and Facebook reels and even YouTube shorts. So I do think there is a value there, and it is a shame because I do think there are creators I think of, Strawhat Goofy. He's a movie reviewer, and he is one of the creators where he built a platform on TikTok. I think he's got, like, 3,000,000 followers, but that did translate to where he's now invited to movie premieres and Comic Cons and he's speaking at events. And so for him specifically, he was able to translate that, I think, into more of a long term career move.
Stephen Robles:Because now, like, he's at the red carpet. Like, he's he's now kind of crossed into, he's outside of the bubble of the social media platform. But there's other creators. I think of the guy, he talks about, like, historical events, but in like, he basically acts them out in dramatic ways, and it's very compelling. And he's really entertaining, and he's, like, he's, you know, sharing history in an interesting way.
Stephen Robles:And he has not crossed over because by the nature of his content, there's not really a place for him to go, except to try to go to YouTube or Instagram or whatever. And so if TikTok were to shut down, like, a creator like that, and there's probably 1,000, tens of 1,000, that would not have a sustainable work, basically. And so I'm sympathetic to that. I also think it is just more proof that, and we're gonna talk about algorithmic platforms in a moment, that if you base your business on one of these platforms, you cannot depend on it long term. Like even YouTube, where I feel like it's probably the most stable of the platforms, at least for me, it is the most consistent monetarily, the most consistent in audience, where I know that if I do the right things according to the algorithm, I will get people to watch the content, is the most predictable.
Stephen Robles:I still don't feel like I'm gonna trust it for the next 10 years. Like I don't know what it means. So I do think maybe this will be a rude awakening for a lot of creators, but you do have to think about where can I what other place can I have on the Internet? We talked about this one last week, like is it a website? Is it a newsletter?
Stephen Robles:Can I have another part of my platform that is owned by me and not an algorithmic and I'm not beholden to this algorithmic platform where if the app goes away or if the algorithm changes, all of a sudden I don't have an audience? And that is I mean, you have a minimum a few choices. The email newsletter list, podcast is kind of in one of them, although it's a little more like nebulous. It's not like I have an email list of people I can just, you know, contact everyone who listens to this podcast directly, but it's less algorithmically driven. People who visit your website every day, which is things like what the verge is basically banking on, but also a subscription based there.
Stephen Robles:Or membership communities like Patreon or Circle, like we have for this, which is social.primarytech.fm. So I do think creators are gonna have to, especially on TikTok, like again start thinking about that, but it's hard to move it. And a platform like TikTok, if you mention the word YouTube or if you say go to my Instagram or go to my website, every creator already knows, like TikTok is going to derank that video and not show it to a huge swath of your audience, even if you have millions of followers. So you are at this disadvantage of, like, I especially TikTok. I can't mention these other places for people to find me because then TikTok won't show that video to anyone, but I have to do that in order to sustain my creator focused business.
Stephen Robles:And so I am sympathetic to TikTok creators in that sense, that they've kind of had their hands tied in a certain way. And I'm thankful that a platform like YouTube, they will let me put links in the video in the video description and call it out and not like, the algorithm is not gonna shove that video in a closet. Like, it will still be seen by thousands of people. So that's how I feel.
Jason Aten:Okay. Counterpoint. I'm not sympathetic at all. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:When you
Jason Aten:build your business on someone else's platform, you have to play by their rules, and you can't complain about it because you've and I don't mean you personally.
Stephen Robles:Right. But I'm
Jason Aten:not like, think about that. You just said TikTok is a terrible place to try to build an audience because it's not your audience. So I'm sympathetic to the people who have decided that they're going to monetize their inability to build their own audience. Like, that just seems like super bad business to me.
Stephen Robles:I understand. But, like, also, like, for again, let's say you were on TikTok, and for the 1st year, you grew an audience and your videos that mention your email list get shown to your followers, and then they change the algorithm on the back end that you have no control over. And it's like there was a not that there was a promise, but that there was an expectation that it worked this way for a year or 2 and now it suddenly changed without notice or warning. It's like, isn't it?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Why would you wanna put all of your eggs in that basket where they could just change it? So, like, I'm just saying that's a terrible like, as a rational person, that's not a great place to build your entire business. The other thing I was going to say, though, is that none of that's an argument for the government shouldn't ban it. No.
Jason Aten:Right. That would be like saying, that would be like, listen, I spent 5 years, peddling weed for this guy and suddenly the government's gonna come along and throw him in jail. You can't throw him in jail. I built a business on this. If the government is and I'm not suggesting that people who are using TikTok are doing something illegal.
Jason Aten:But what I'm trying to say is, like, if the government decides this is a national security threat, the argument can't be yes, but people who built their business on that platform will lose their ability, especially because, like, you can just do that on Instagram. Right?
Stephen Robles:That see, that is what I'm not sure is right because you would think you would think. But as a creator who is on multiple platforms, it is different. Like, you can post the same exact video on TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts and it will perform differently. Not just because of the algorithm, but the audience is actually different. You said it yourself.
Jason Aten:Sure.
Stephen Robles:You don't use TikTok Yeah. But you do use Instagram Reels. So that TikTok creator who built an audience on TikTok, their videos, like, you're probably not gonna care for them because they're not geared toward Instagram reels, because that audience is different. Just like if someone's gets Facebook reel views, that's definitely a different audience than the one on TikTok. So it is not the same as, like, I can just do the same thing on a different platform.
Stephen Robles:I dare say it is different. Just like my long form YouTube videos, I could post those somewhere else, even like TikTok or whatever or Instagram. I think you do, like, 10 minute videos, but they're not gonna perform the same there because it's not made for that platform and that audience. So I do think it's not, like, just copy paste. It is a different you would have to become a different kind of creator.
Stephen Robles:So I'm not saying this has anything to do with the government or the ban, but only that that is why I'm sympathetic towards the creators who now kinda have to figure out what to do. And then I I don't think it's wholly that they made a bad decision to build an audience on TikTok. Maybe it was they should have, like, you know, had contingencies or redundancies, but yeah.
Jason Aten:I wanna be clear. I don't think they made a bad decision. I think they made an uninformed decision because most and this is not a this is not an insult to to anyone who is a trader on any of the platforms. But most of them did not start out thinking, how could I create a business plan that would allow me to make a lot of money by making videos? They just started making videos, attracted an audience, and then realized that it was a thing that they could monetize.
Jason Aten:So it does make sense to me that it wasn't really a super thought out, super, like, whatever. It's like, I get that. And then things then you get to the point where you're like, wait a minute. I don't actually have full control over my audience, or I really should be able to import this audience somewhere else, but I can't do that because of the platform restrictions. And you're so invested in it at that point that it does make it very difficult.
Jason Aten:All I'm saying is that looking at it from the outside objectively, all of the fact that it's so difficult means, like, maybe that's not the best place to be building a long term business. I don't know what the career lifespan of somebody on TikTok is anyway. We there's no way to know because it's so new. Right? So And
Stephen Robles:the the last thing I'll say, I do think if you are a creator on a platform like TikTok, you do have to kind of shift your mindset, not that you're a TikTok creator, but that what is it that you are actually doing that is of value to your audience? Are you entertaining people? Are you informing people? Are you inspiring people? Like, what is the thing that you are doing in your videos?
Stephen Robles:And then you do have to think, how can I translate that to a different form factor? Whether that is longer form videos on YouTube, where you might have to shift how you create your content or the style, but what you are good at and what you do is translatable, like the your argument, like you can't if you succeeded on TikTok and you have a 1000000 followers, you do have the ability to succeed somewhere else, you just might have to translate the end product a little bit to actually tailor to the platform, but that's also the game of now being a content creator. What works
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:On different platforms? See, I knew we would have no problem having a full length episode today, Jason, because
Jason Aten:You'd be the people like the deep dives.
Stephen Robles:This is this is a deep dive. This was a deep dive. Alright. Well, we're gonna have another deep dive. I want Jason to tell me where I was wrong for the Apple tier list of 2024.
Stephen Robles:And, we're already talking about our short form socialpocalypse, and so we're gonna get to that too. But before we do, I wanna thank 2 good friends. The first is the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast. It's an incredible show talking about data and security from just with fascinating interviews. It's an listen data and how we use it's an ever shifting landscape and as listener of this show, primary technology, you understand how important it is to stay informed and up to date.
Stephen Robles:That's why you need to listen to Data Citizens Dialogues podcast brought to you by Calibra, the leader in data intelligence. On the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast, you'll hear industry leaders unpack data's impact on the world from big picture questions like AI governance and data sharing to more nuanced questions like how do we balance offense and defense and data management, and you'll hear firsthand insights about the data conversations affecting all kinds of industries with guests sharing unique stories from the world's largest companies. And so if you like deep dive like from this show, this is another show to get into. In one of the last episodes that I heard, Ruben Messine was talking about data decentralization and how you can make it accessible in more places to more people but still maintaining security and privacy which is a tough challenge for any company and brand. That's a fascinating conversation.
Stephen Robles:Highly recommend. Be part of the data conversation and start listening to the Data Citizens Dialogues podcast today. You can follow Data Citizens Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast and that link is in the show notes as well. Thanks to Data Citizens Dialogues for sponsoring this episode, and our good friends at HelloFresh. Every time I load this website, my eye just snaps to that everything bagel with cream cheese, because I'm from New York, Jason, and I know what snow is.
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Stephen Robles:That applies across 7 boxes, new subscribers only, varies by plan, but that's 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com/ free primary and HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit. Now thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring this episode. Well let's continue our, death of the social media algorithms and platforms. I'll talk about I'm just gonna throw this in here.
Jason Aten:This is such a happy pre Christmas episode.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna get to the Apple tier list, don't you worry. I wanted to just include this New York Times video. I thought it was pretty interesting. Talking about how all the algorithms across social media feels like there's just a sameness of content, which if you just follow the biggest names, the biggest accounts, it does feel like there's a, you know, a sameness as you look across the landscape. And this video, I think, thankfully, is encouraging people to find, like, smaller outlets, independent shows, like Primary Technology.
Stephen Robles:We are an independent show. We're not part of any network. We don't have any, person telling us what to do. I don't think.
Jason Aten:I mean, Steven tells me what to do because he just writes it in that order,
Stephen Robles:and then we talk about it. I just put links in the doc. Anyway, but it was an interesting video, but talking about the sameness in algorithm, now, like right now on my computer, we've talked about this problem before. I have every I have all the social media and the apps open. I got Blue Sky over here, I got threads, I got Mastodon.
Stephen Robles:I cross post to all these things. I use the croissant app. It is, I feel, not sustainable. I think we are in a short form socialpocalypse. I can't I just can't imagine this last thing.
Stephen Robles:Now the fediverse and what is it, ActivityPub is the other, framework that supposedly will democratize social media where you can post where you want and then everybody else on the Internet could supposedly follow where they want. I I am less and less optimistic because I feel like we're just getting, I don't know, farther and farther away from that dream. But Threads over here is supposedly doing well this was Zuck a couple days ago saying Threads' strong momentum continues, now 300 +1000000 active users monthly and a 100000000 plus daily active users. But Jason was very mad at this statistic because it's like, you can find threads post anywhere. You open your microwave, what there's a thread posted.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You start your car Well, no.
Jason Aten:No. What there is is there there's an Instagram post. Yes. The where there's a thread post that looks like an Instagram post in your microwave. Like, they're just It's a rat.
Jason Aten:Blatantly like Yeah. I mean, like, listen. I get it. They bootstrap the whole thing on the Instagram social graph. That was brilliant.
Jason Aten:I understand. But now it's like they're like, this was the this was for me the, the straw that
Stephen Robles:Birth cam's back.
Jason Aten:Threads his back or whatever. Yeah. Where I am now in my little Instagram notifications
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Getting threads posts. Like, you know, you get a little butt, you get the little, red badge on the heart telling you like, oh, someone followed you or someone replied or someone like you think, nope. Just here's a threads post from someone I don't know. And I do not follow that you might be interested in. It was one thing when they were putting them in the feed.
Jason Aten:Okay? Like that to me was garbage. I hated it. I hated it. I hated it.
Jason Aten:Now they're trying to stuff them into your notifications. And I think I I think it may have been on the verge. I don't know for sure. It may have been on, either decoder. No.
Jason Aten:Not decoder. It could have been on dithering or it could have been on. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don't remember who said it, but I a 100% agree. The problem is, and this is especially true at meta, the the it it was definitely Ben Thompson, and it's a I'm narrowing down the podcast that could be on.
Jason Aten:He's like, I don't use Facebook anymore. And the reason is they started shoving everything into the notifications.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:So I eventually I just turned off notifications, which meant I never opened the app anymore. And so that is becoming the case with Instagram and with threads. And the problem is that someone's, you know, KPI is engagement through notifications sent, and so they just keep turning that knob up. And now they're turning it up for threads, and it tells you how scared they are of, like, blue sky, which is ridiculously small and by comparison. But they're like, nope.
Jason Aten:I mean, it maybe not scared, but they're like trying to cut it off before it be could become any kind of competitor. And I just but I feel like you hate your users. You don't think of them as people using a service. You see them as numbers that eventually you're going to monetize and you wanna make sure that they don't slip out or leak to something else. And so you're doing I'm gonna write about this.
Stephen Robles:You gotta write about it.
Jason Aten:I'm so mad. It's not gonna make a difference. No one cares.
Stephen Robles:No. No.
Jason Aten:But it makes
Stephen Robles:me so mad. So after Zuck posted that 2 days ago, Hank Green, big YouTuber, creator, said honest question, does seeing a threads post on your Instagram feed count as a daily active user? I've seen fishier things in this world like when Google counted YouTube as Google Plus usage. Yeah. I remember Google plus I'm old enough.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And Mark Zuckerberg replied to him, said, no, you have to tap on the post and open threads while logged in to be counted as a daily active user. But to your point oh, and look, there's Nate Gorby, listener of the show. But this is to your point, like, yes, Meta is trying to get people to click on these threads in Instagram, so they go over to the threads app and they count as a daily active user. And it's basically Meta leveraging their Instagram base, which is huge.
Stephen Robles:I mean, Instagram is what the 2nd biggest social media network in the world after Facebook, which is all Meta. Sure. All the same. And so they're just trying to leverage that to keep their ads growing. And you can tell like you're saying I do think Zuck and Mosseri and Meta are a little, concerned about Blue Sky because they're like threads is trying to basically match Blue Sky shot for shot as Blue Sky launches features.
Stephen Robles:And so, like, if you follow Mosseri on threads, who's the Instagram CEO, but that means he's also over threads, a weird conflation of, like, what is what is what.
Jason Aten:And technically, he's not the CEO. He's just the head because they they only give the CEO title to people who actually founded the businesses that they buy.
Stephen Robles:That's right. Right. That's right. Not CEOs.
Jason Aten:It's true. Like, that's for real. Unlike Microsoft that has 72 CEOs.
Stephen Robles:And, like, there was basically a lull in, like, threads feature launches, I would say, until blue sky really started ramping up after the election. And now, Moser is, like, you could soon be able to use an image from another post without even, quoting it or reposting it. Like, well, that's weird. You'll be able to schedule a threads post. So that was a day before, he's bragging about the active users.
Stephen Robles:Oh, and oh, guess what? We're gonna find a way where you can do a collection of profiles and then follow everyone in that collection, which is exactly how Blue Sky
Jason Aten:Starter packs.
Stephen Robles:Starter packs for Blue Sky, which is exact
Jason Aten:Also, you can set your default feed that you see when you log in Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Exactly.
Jason Aten:If you're part of the test. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually.
Stephen Robles:So you could you could just tell that, like, they're they wanna make sure you don't have a feature reason to go to Blue Sky. Like if there's a feature you like on Blue Sky whether it's starter packs or scheduling posts or whatever that threads will have it. We'll have to see because it is annoying still to me, like as a creator, if I wanna post a link to my YouTube video. Blue sky, I can post a link in the regular, like just in the post, and it's not gonna be shown to less people or less followers because I put a link. But on threads Right.
Jason Aten:If I
Stephen Robles:put a link in a post, it's gonna be seen by less people. And so I started doing a little experiment recently where I do the thing, I didn't wanna do this, where I just post with my thumbnail, no link, and then I put the link in the reply. And sure enough, yes, it gets way more engagement, it gets way more views. And it's annoying that, like, you have to game the system because threads doesn't want you to leave the platform. And so for that, I like blue sky, but also there's just not the user base just yet.
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
Jason Aten:Also the question is how much engagement did the actual link post get? Probably almost 0.
Stephen Robles:There was one video recently where it was actually like threads actually showed up in the YouTube analytics as a source, nowhere near a main so it was like single digit percentage source. It was a the shortcuts video I posted recently, 4 days ago, where it actually has, like, a 147 likes for the threads post, and that link actually got a little more traction, which never before had a link got traction if I put it in the actual first threads post when I mentioned the video. So negligible, yes, but it is a noticeable difference, which is just annoying because the algorithm just deprioritizes that. So anyway, it's socialpocalypse.
Jason Aten:It is.
Stephen Robles:The doom of the clock.
Jason Aten:It's terrible.
Stephen Robles:I want you to
Jason Aten:tell me
Stephen Robles:where I'm wrong, Jason. I did a video Oh,
Jason Aten:this is your tier list. Hold on. I have to open a link to a YouTube video so give
Stephen Robles:me one second. I'm showing you the tier list right here.
Jason Aten:Because it's gonna probably, like, blast
Stephen Robles:No. No. No. Like, I got a tier list right here. I'll put a link to the put a link to this video in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:This was my tier list, which Base Capital Guy actually designed this and then he made it downloadable, so anybody can go to Base Capital Guy dot com and just do your own tier list. So I did I did the tier list, I ranked all the things, the operating system updates, the hardware releases, and there's a lot of devices we could talk about, but I wanna I wanna see if you would have rated anything differently, especially the one device I gave an f, which was the AirPods Max update. Was that
Jason Aten:I don't I don't think that actually qualifies as even being on here, but if you're gonna put it on here, it should get an f.
Stephen Robles:That's what I said. I was like, I don't even know this is a new product, but it gets an f either way, like, yeah.
Jason Aten:I think you rated Apple Intelligence too high. I think Apple Intelligence is
Stephen Robles:I gave it a c for the record.
Jason Aten:It's too high.
Stephen Robles:That's too high. What did it
Jason Aten:I don't know if it'd be an f, but maybe a d. But I feel like if if iPad was 18 is a d c, I would put that as, like, a c because it's, like, whatever it's there.
Stephen Robles:It's calculators.
Jason Aten:It's a calculator.
Stephen Robles:That's all you gotta say.
Jason Aten:But it didn't get worse. It didn't get worse. What did you what would you have rated iPadOS 17? Like, it's not worse than that. It didn't like, they didn't break a bunch of stuff.
Jason Aten:They just forgot about it, and it just released like, it's just there.
Stephen Robles:Like Okay.
Jason Aten:So I don't think that's a problem, but I feel like yeah, the AirPods Max, what are they even doing? But I think Apple Intelligence is at best to d because the only good thing about it is the chat g p t integration. It's like your best feature is someone else's and I can do it easier if I just opened their app. So that to me, and it just it's, I think the gen emoji are fine ish image playgrounds is just a horror show.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:It's just weird. The writing tools the I think the writing tools could be interesting for people. My first of all, the suggested responses in, like, text messages, ridiculous. Like, I would never respond that way. It's like my son will send me a message saying I just got home.
Jason Aten:And the suggested response is, like, great exclamation point. Glad to hear it. I'm like, in my life, I've never sent that. Like, why do you not read my text messages and just know that my response is gonna be like, okay. Or thumbs up or whatever.
Jason Aten:Like, I don't even understand that. So, and also Steven, I don't know if you saw this, but I I've been on this thing about the, notification summaries because I feel like they're just terrible. And recently the worst possible notification summary that you could send a parent showed up on my phone. It said, I don't know if you can even read that. Someone, someone.
Stephen Robles:Substitute needed for second game invasion at school.
Jason Aten:Now, I'm sorry. There should be like a hard filter that says you don't send the parent a message that says invasion at school. And then there was, the follow-up. So I did notice that as new messages come in, it'll update the summary, and it'll even update parts that were previously, like, summarized. It, like, it takes into some context.
Jason Aten:So this is the one I got, like, the next day.
Stephen Robles:Invasion left. Container and treats were left behind.
Jason Aten:So I'm like I I posted about this. I'm like, so it's like the purge except for instead of killing your family, they bring you baked goods. Like, what are these now just so you know, what it was summarizing was someone left an Invisalign at an event.
Stephen Robles:Oh my goodness.
Jason Aten:And it summarized that and they didn't just summarize the message. It actually, it actually summarizes the word Invisalign into invasion. It's like you you can't do that. You should not be
Stephen Robles:doing very different things.
Jason Aten:Yes. And so I'm like, this is this is not good. Now, whatever. Maybe for text threads, it should not be on for the new stuff. It's fine because if you got 5 news articles and it's like, you know, South Korean president has been impeached and this has happened and this has happened.
Jason Aten:But so I think Apple Intelligence should be a d at best. The rest of them are fine. I do agree. The m the m four iPad Pro is definitely s tier. I can't, like, think of anything else that would be s tier.
Jason Aten:I think that the
Stephen Robles:Well, let let me ask
Jason Aten:you this. Sorry.
Stephen Robles:So, I I think you're right. I did have a couple comments on that video. Apple Intelligence probably should be a d. Apple Vision Pro, I put it as as a c tier. Do you agree or disagree?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. If we had been
Jason Aten:doing this together, which would have been fun, but we didn't do it together. So
Stephen Robles:But that would have been a good idea.
Jason Aten:I I would have probably taken it at either b or c.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think I don't struggle with the fact that there's not as much content because that's not really how I use it. Right? But and this is the guy who uses it almost every day It's
Stephen Robles:not me.
Jason Aten:Except for when I'm on a plane. So so I I I think I'm still more bullish on it than the typical person, I think. But I should say this. Anyone who paid for the vision pro probably ranks at a C I am still using a review
Stephen Robles:here. So
Jason Aten:I, my perspective is clouded a little bit. I get way more utility value out
Stephen Robles:of it than what I paid for it
Jason Aten:because I paid 0.
Stephen Robles:Right. Okay. Well, anything else that you, you hardly.
Jason Aten:I was trying to think of anything else should have been an s tier. I do think maybe the M4 MacBook pro, the base model is deserved. It's it is probably the best base model MacBook pro that they've ever released released. It's got the 16 gigs of memory and that M4 is like ridiculous. I don't know.
Jason Aten:And for Imac, is it an a tier? I don't know. It's the same. I don't know. Maybe.
Stephen Robles:Right. Well, it's it's one of the first newer Imacs that I have. I have a review unit unit of that, and it's actually been great. It's, like, a family computer. My kids have been, like, on it.
Stephen Robles:My son started doing logic pro on it. It's it's a great family computer.
Jason Aten:If they had made it so that you don't have the Mac mini on
Stephen Robles:here. Yeah. It's a master.
Jason Aten:No. It's not.
Stephen Robles:That's the Mac mini.
Jason Aten:Am I looking at the wrong oh, I'm looking at I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:You gotta stop folding
Jason Aten:it. I was looking at a version of it that apparently didn't okay. Yeah. I would definitely put the Mac mini. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But I was going to say, I think the m 4 imac is probably a b. Had they made an m 4 pro version of it, then I probably would have put it in a.
Stephen Robles:That would have been nice. Yeah. That would have been nice.
Jason Aten:But So there
Stephen Robles:you go.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I I agree with your s tier for sure.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay. Very good. Very good. And yeah, the the AirPods Max.
Stephen Robles:What are you doing? Anyway, last thing I wanna say, Jason. I don't know if you saw my, my recent threads post speaking of apocalypse. Although, I put I put it on all the social media networks because I did. How did you see my
Jason Aten:Your posts are everywhere. I did. It's it's ridiculous.
Stephen Robles:My latest speed test, I upgraded my Internet yet again, and now I'm getting over 3 gigs on Ethernet, down and up on my Mac Studio. That's right. Look at that. And I'm, I'm gonna do a video on this, I think. Because the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro have WiFi 7.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if you know that.
Jason Aten:I heard. Someone tell me. I guess the guy on the podcast told me that.
Stephen Robles:That's right. I have a WiFi 7 router. I I swapped out one of my UniFi access points. I'm getting over a gig over Wi Fi. So I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I got it.
Jason Aten:Literally nothing.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna get but I got it.
Jason Aten:Very fast. You're gonna do nothing. I wanna tell our listeners, though. This is a pro tip for you. Steven's running this, speed test in this video.
Jason Aten:If you are on a device and you have metered data in any way, never ever run a speed test because that thing uses up a lot of your data.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Like for, like, I did it on a, review unit one time and I just popped in a prepaid, like t mobile thing or whatever. They had like 30 gigs for 30 days. It's like 1.7 gigs used just for speed test. I'm like, I ran one test for like 13 seconds and it used a 1.7.
Jason Aten:I'm like, where's all that data go? Is it on the phone? So like, what is it sending me? Anyway, don't do that. If you have metered data because it uses a whole lot.
Stephen Robles:Hopefully I don't, I don't know if frontier is gonna eventually cap me. No, no, no.
Jason Aten:I mean, if you're on your home wifi, you're fine. I'm talking about like, if you're on a cellular plan somewhere where you only get a certain amount of like data each month. But anyway, so yeah, I don't know why you are so fascinated with
Stephen Robles:Listen, I will say because a lot of people are like, well, you're still, you know, depending on what the CDN speed is for the website you're trying to access or use. All I know is I upload YouTube videos almost every day and those things upload fast. And Yeah. Whenever I'm not home, and I have to upload a 4 k YouTube video that's 10 gigs, it is a problem. Like
Jason Aten:But I mean, counterpoint, I'm out here in my office, which we all know is, like, 30 yards from the house.
Stephen Robles:I'll feel both ways.
Jason Aten:And when we get done record what'd you say?
Stephen Robles:I'll feel both ways.
Jason Aten:When we hit done recording, I move my audio hijack file, former sponsor of the show. They didn't sponsor.
Stephen Robles:Not this episode. No.
Jason Aten:Former sponsor of the show. But I really do use them. And I move it into Dropbox. And by the time I get to the back door, it's already uploaded.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. They're fine.
Jason Aten:It's like a 1.5 gig file.
Stephen Robles:Audio audio is fine. I'm just saying video.
Jason Aten:It's be I know. I'm saying the size of the 5 it's a 1.5 gig file, and it takes me, like, a 30 yard walk to upload so that you can get it. So I'm just saying, like, I only have I only have a measly 1 gig, you know, both ways. So
Stephen Robles:Anyway, I I enjoy my my fast speed even if just to run a speed test and just admire. Yeah. That's that's basically
Jason Aten:And I'm only using and that's your wired speed, isn't it? I'm running Steven doesn't wanna know this, but I'm actually running a speed test right now while we're recording. And I have 780 up and down on Wi Fi.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That's great. That's that's the Google that's the Google.
Jason Aten:And I'm 30 yards from the house.
Stephen Robles:But the Wi Fi do you have the Wi Fi router in the Yeah. The Wi Fi
Jason Aten:router in the Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Going through walls or something.
Jason Aten:Remember, I buried an ethernet cable in my backyard.
Stephen Robles:That's right. I I need to do that, actually. I I know there's a lot of smart people that listen to our show, and I'm I'm trying to get Internet to a barn that we have out in the backyard. I'm trying to figure out the most economical but also reliable way to do that. Yes, I could run an ethernet cable and bury it, but it would be very, very long.
Stephen Robles:And it'd be very laborious.
Jason Aten:It's not hard though.
Stephen Robles:I understand that, but I also would I would need to find out where in like, you have to go in the attic. Someone has to go up there, punch it through. Or I also know, this is gonna have someone's gotta go in the attic either way. But Ubiquiti makes the point to point microwave things, where you can, like, put it on the one side and then, you know, the way you you know?
Jason Aten:You're not gonna do that, Steven.
Stephen Robles:Why not?
Jason Aten:You wanna know why? Because they're limited to, like, a 100 megabytes. Like, there's no way you're gonna
Stephen Robles:do that. Now where they're doing, like like, 60, hertz up there or 60 gig. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's not gonna you're not gonna do that. You're gonna you you would and you'd spend $700 on that. Plus you have to have you ubiquity, like server point or something inside to, like, connect it to you. You're just gonna spend, like, what, $1400 on all of this stuff.
Jason Aten:You're gonna put it up. You're gonna run one speed test in the barn and be like, no, this cannot stand. I and then you're gonna have a bearing and ethernet cable anyway, which is actually the easiest possible thing to bury because you only have to bury it 4 inches deep. They probably tell you you should bury it deeper, but there's it doesn't interfere with anything. And as long as you're not gonna mow you like bury it deep enough to not mow over like you know what I mean?
Jason Aten:Like it's it'll be fine.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, if this is really the best way to do it, the listeners, you can let me know. If anybody does microwave point to point on the building.
Jason Aten:How far how far is the are the 2 buildings apart?
Stephen Robles:It's like 100, 120 feet, maybe?
Jason Aten:Yeah. You don't wanna do the mic I mean, I almost did that because I don't I'm not as upset. I think it's a good solution. I just think that you're gonna end up ripping it out because you're like, no.
Stephen Robles:It's not for me to use. It's for my kids and whoever else is in the barn to be able to just get text messages because the barn, like, is metal, and so the cell service doesn't even get through. So there's, like, no Internet. So Sure. Just anyway.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well let me know listeners. Also, I forgot what was the thing that I said at the beginning to let us know what I forgot I forgot what it was. Anyway, leave us a 5 star rating review.
Jason Aten:You you all remember because you've already heard this. You've heard it. So leave
Stephen Robles:us a 5 star rating and review in Apple Podcasts And also if you wanna support the show, $5 a month, all we need is a 1,000 of you for the entire next year. We can get an immersive well, one of our yeah, 2 immersive cameras and you can watch us in an efficient product. No, we're not gonna do that. But but we would appreciate your support of the show, either by the rating or you can listen to all of our bonus episodes and get an ad free version if you support us in Apple Podcasts. Or if you want all the chapters and the good stuff, if you really the best way to support us is to go to primarytech.fm and click bonus episodes, and you can, support us there.
Stephen Robles:Now we're gonna record a bonus episode that we have not talked about yet. I actually have no idea what we're gonna talk about. But we're gonna get it. We're you're gonna know what it is because it's already in the feed. We're gonna go record that bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:And, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Oh, and also, just so you know, next week, normal episode, gonna be our big year end review. Jason and I, we used to do that annually, so we're gonna do it again. That's gonna be next week.
Stephen Robles:It'll come out on Thursday. And the week after, January 2nd, we're gonna have a a normal episode too. We're just we're going for it. We're here for you during the holiday. We're doing that.
Stephen Robles:That's our tag. We're doing it. Yeah. Okay. Catch you thanks for listening.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.
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