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2025 Tech Predictions: Will Apple Finally Make Siri Good? OpenAI Bubble, and CES Preview!

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Stephen Robles:

My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It's the first show of the year. It's 2025, and Apple talking about voice control in a magic mouse. Plus, they missed their 2024 next gen car play deadline.

Stephen Robles:

The US treasury was hacked. Trump is trying to save TikTok from the ban. We're gonna talk a little bit about our 2025 predictions and the big CES preview in our travel bags. This episode is brought to you by Notion and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your host, Steven Robles, and joining me for the first time since last year, my cohost, Jason Aten.

Stephen Robles:

How's it going, Jason?

Jason Aten:

It's good we made it a whole year. I have to quit now. This is it.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. No. No. There's we're in our next I actually have to create a new folder in my, finder for 2025.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. It's amazing. We're done. That's that's always like

Jason Aten:

We did it.

Stephen Robles:

The the market we did it. That's my mark of, like, the next year is when I create the 2025 folders or whatever the next year is. You know, it's like

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Do you do that? Do you arrange by years in some of your folders?

Jason Aten:

Nope. Not at well, I can't think of a single thing except for taxes. That's it. Just taxes. And that'll be 2024, not 2025.

Jason Aten:

So

Stephen Robles:

I use years because, like, I have a folder for every episode where I have, like, the episode artwork, the thumbnail, and so there's a bunch of things that I save for no reason. I'm a digital hoarder, I guess. But I'd instead of having a folder with hundreds of folders, I'd I'd designate by year. So that that's fine.

Jason Aten:

See, that just creates an extra layer you have to click through to get to what you're looking for.

Stephen Robles:

I love it. It's organization just scratches my brain and I just like

Jason Aten:

But are the folders inside per episode labeled by date or by episode number?

Stephen Robles:

Episode number.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Then that's pointless.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Listen, we didn't need to start the year off like this, Jason. Okay? Listen, what was the quote from I'm

Jason Aten:

done with Happball. Ralphie. It was Ralphie.

Stephen Robles:

It was Ralphie from a Christmas story. I just wanna say My

Jason Aten:

least favorite Christmas movie.

Stephen Robles:

Listen. We watched the Christmas story. I think it was the first time I watched it all the way through. I know we're past Christmas, but it's we haven't recorded since before Christmas. We have a weird time gap here, and we watched I have watched for the first time, I think, front to back with a bunch of family, and it was kind of fun, like, in that group setting, because there are lots of things to laugh at or whatever, but my question is, have you seen the sequel to A Christmas Story?

Jason Aten:

We have seen both sequels.

Stephen Robles:

Wait. There's another sequel?

Jason Aten:

This Christmas Story, basically, it's called Christmas Story Christmas or

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. A Christmas Story Christmas. He Where He's Grown Up. Yes.

Jason Aten:

That's the third one.

Stephen Robles:

That's a third one.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. There's actually a second one in between the 2. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, I didn't know. Okay. Well, apparently, Apple TV doesn't think you should be recommended that second one because at the end of A Christmas Story, it just showed the 2022 A Christmas Story Christmas, which is Ralphie grown up. And so we actually watched it because we were, like, let's see if it's good. I I'm gonna say I actually liked

Jason Aten:

it.

Stephen Robles:

I'm just saying. It was alright. Have you seen it?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. We've seen both of the sequels because we are

Stephen Robles:

Alright.

Jason Aten:

Fully into it. But I guess there's actually apparently, there's another sequel called My Summer Story, which I don't actually know what that means, but what can I

Stephen Robles:

do to say is

Jason Aten:

that something?

Stephen Robles:

So I don't acknowledge any of these things.

Jason Aten:

That's not canon is what you're saying?

Stephen Robles:

It's like Home Alone 34, non canonical.

Jason Aten:

I mean Not not only that, they're just bad movies.

Stephen Robles:

Exact exactly. Exactly. But, Jason, it's crazy. It's 2025. I think we're in the future.

Stephen Robles:

Is this the future now? Right? Are we finally in it? This is the future?

Jason Aten:

I mean, every single breath you take is in the future.

Stephen Robles:

You just blew my mind. I think the I think the episode's over right now. That's that's it. Wait a minute. I can't think about that.

Stephen Robles:

No. But, like, when I feel like movies back in, like, the eighties nineties listen, we don't typically do as much small talk at the beginning, but it's the first one of the year. K?

Jason Aten:

You know what

Stephen Robles:

I mean?

Jason Aten:

And we haven't talked in, like, 10 days. I

Stephen Robles:

was gonna make the joke. We haven't talked since last year.

Jason Aten:

I'm sorry. I I was a little bit more directed.

Stephen Robles:

I feel like when you watch movies when you were well, at least when we were kids, like, in the nineties, early 2000s, like, you would see years like 2025, 2035. It was always, like, that's the future. It's so far out. Now it's, like, oh, here we are. 2025.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. And, yeah.

Jason Aten:

What was the one end of the world movie, like, 2012 or something like that?

Stephen Robles:

Isn't Oh, yeah. Well, that was because of the whole mind calendar thing.

Jason Aten:

Just saying.

Stephen Robles:

I've seen every disaster. So

Jason Aten:

to say.

Stephen Robles:

And I love them all. Okay. Anyway, let's do some 5 star review shout outs. There is a little bit of news, but then I'll yeah. We should get into predictions.

Stephen Robles:

Jason had Jason had an article about what Apple needs to do in 2025. But what they really need to do is put voice control in the Magic Mouse.

Jason Aten:

I don't think that's on my list.

Stephen Robles:

No. It's not. But that's part of the news. Alright. 5 star reviews.

Stephen Robles:

SD travel from the US, percentage on dots off, non dominant pocket. He's all on your side. Dots off, I think it's the first or maybe the second person to say dots off, and back button focus. I think SD Travel is just adjacent a 10, that's fine.

Jason Aten:

I'm here for it. That's fine.

Stephen Robles:

Exactly. Mike Kelly from the USA Ice Cubes and Toilet, he said.

Jason Aten:

Absolutely.

Stephen Robles:

He he did that was the whole title of the review. He didn't, like, put any more context, so I I assume that means he knows what you're talking about.

Jason Aten:

Either that either that or apparently, it's just a thing that they do.

Stephen Robles:

It's just a thing.

Jason Aten:

They have extra ice cubes and you need to you know, they get old and the thing, you just take them out and put them in the toilet. Actually, you could do that. You literally could do that. They're just water.

Stephen Robles:

I mean, you could do that. There's there's faster ways to get them to melt. Charles c from the USA had very nice things to say about the show. Time pilot from the USA, and then someone's literal name in their review was primary technology fan. And now, correct me, I don't know I thought these names were based on your Apple ID or iCloud account.

Stephen Robles:

So someone created an iCloud account with that as the name, just thank

Jason Aten:

you. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

That's 1.

Jason Aten:

I mean, if I had a t shirt, I'd send it to you just for that. If that's really your iCloud name.

Stephen Robles:

The primary technology fan, and they they didn't leave the rest of the name in the review. So I'm not sure what their actual name is, but they're from Switzerland. And this was my favorite review because it just started with Jason is wrong. And that was

Jason Aten:

all I needed

Stephen Robles:

to do.

Jason Aten:

I think by rule, if you live in Switzerland, you're not allowed to say stuff like that. You have to be neutral.

Stephen Robles:

You gotta remain neutral.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Come on.

Stephen Robles:

That's the whole

Jason Aten:

that's the whole shtick. Sorry.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. So anyway, thank you for all those. Give us a you could be the first 5 star reviews in, 2025 because these were all kinda left in 2024. Anyway, I'll leave this 5 star review.

Stephen Robles:

You get a shout out on the show. But let's, let's jam through some news, and then we can get to our predictions and travel because CES is coming up. We're gonna be going there. So Mark Gurman's out here within his newsletter, a power on, saying that this year, possibly late this year, 2025, maybe 2026, Apple's gonna redesign the Magic Mouse finally, so the, charging point, you don't have to put your mouse in the port. You don't have to put it in turtle mode to charge it, but also it's gonna have voice control.

Stephen Robles:

You can shout at your Magic Mouse, I guess, and,

Jason Aten:

does it, like, move on its own? It's like a Roomba? Like, it just mouses for you? I don't understand. What does this even mean?

Stephen Robles:

Apple intelligence magic mouse. That's that's the killer product. That's the AI.

Jason Aten:

Would you use it on a device that doesn't have an m one in it? I don't like, there's so many questions here, Steven. I don't

Stephen Robles:

understand. M one magic mouse. But what would you do?

Jason Aten:

What what would you need it for? To use it on a Mac that doesn't already have Apple Intel? Like, this doesn't make sense.

Stephen Robles:

It's so this is Gurman's quote. Voice control in the new magic mouse, wrote about this one makes sense in light of AI and the fact that Apple is on a decade plus cycle. And when I've heard Big Focus' ergonomics and gestures, you know, I wonder if in that MKBHD interview when he asked Tim Cook about the Magic Mouse, Tim Cook finally realized there was still a product in their lineup. Yeah. And he goes back and he to the team and said, listen.

Stephen Robles:

We gotta do something about this magic mask.

Jason Aten:

They said, AI this thing. But, like, but, honestly, though, like, I don't actually understand. This feels like the kind of thing where somebody whispered something to someone and then they got, like, totally misconstrued because, yes, Steven, honestly, are they gonna put Apple Intelligence in the magic mouse before they put it in the Apple Watch?

Stephen Robles:

No. This this is

Jason Aten:

Like, come on.

Stephen Robles:

And, like, I imagine I'm using magic mouse right here. It's what it's what I use. I can't imagine being, like, compute computer. Yeah. Computer.

Stephen Robles:

Run run a shortcut. Computer.

Jason Aten:

How mad is everyone who has, like, a previous generation iPad Air that doesn't run Apple and tell them it's gonna be? How mad are you gonna be if there's, like,

Stephen Robles:

you could

Jason Aten:

just pick up a $99 Magic Mouse? I don't understand.

Stephen Robles:

I don't that is very strange. I have no idea. Whatever. That's a magic mouse. But and speaking of, may possible misses, but a real miss, Apple said next gen CarPlay was supposed to debut in 2024.

Stephen Robles:

This is article from The Verge, but you can also still go even right now. This is a live web page for CarPlay on Apple's website. And under the next generation of CarPlay, which I think they showed off, like, 2 WWDCs ago. I think that was I

Jason Aten:

think that's right. It was not this most recent one.

Stephen Robles:

Right. It was, like, 2023. They showed off this next gen carplay where it would take over your entire dashboard, including, like, speedometer and everything, And it still it still says, here as we record what January 2, 2025, that the first car models will arrive in 2024. Spoiler. They they didn't.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah.

Jason Aten:

I don't think so. I don't I don't know of any any vehicles that say that they're supporting the next generation of CarPlay, and I would be real surprised if it's gonna happen. Well, here's the thing about this, though, Steven. I bet you that someone from Apple would be like, oh, but, actually, the something something something technically does. It just doesn't look anything like that.

Jason Aten:

It doesn't like, I don't know. But, like yeah.

Stephen Robles:

I would think they would have updated the web page then. I mean, I'm sure everybody was on holiday, but maybe update the web page.

Jason Aten:

Well, we already know that they fired all the copy editors for the website. We had this conversation a couple months ago when it when they introduced, like, 16 lines of text to say that they put the m 4 in the Mac. Come on.

Stephen Robles:

I thought I thought the next gen car play that the only, like, preview was maybe an Aston Martin Mhmm. Or something like that. Here, this is a car and driver article that I will include, but this was in 2023 December.

Jason Aten:

Yep.

Stephen Robles:

So this was a year ago, and it was that Aston Martin and Porsche previewed that this next gen car play was gonna happen, but then over the next year did did nothing about it.

Jason Aten:

So maybe, technically, if a car maker announced that they're going to put it in there, then Apple can still be, like, oh, yeah. I mean, it's 20 it was 2024 when they said that. I don't know. I just think I don't think that this is a product that needs to be in their lineup.

Stephen Robles:

I don't think my 2011 Kia Soul is gonna get next gen car play either.

Jason Aten:

Neither is your Tesla. Let's just be honest.

Stephen Robles:

That it doesn't doesn't even have 1st Right. Whatever. No car play. So that was that. Now, Gruber had an article talking challenging to OpenAI for the next year.

Stephen Robles:

They were talking about there was, like, an investor brief or something. The OpenAI board of directors shared a post talking about what is necessary for OpenAI in the coming years to continue advancement, basically saying they need ridiculous amounts of capital to continue, succeeding. Basically on this promise that, listen, we're ahead, and we'll stay ahead as long as you keep pumping money into OpenAI. With what what they're promising, unclear, but and and Gruber made this interesting comparison to Netscape and basically how Netscape went public super quickly, I think like two and a half years from, like, inception to actually being able to buy a stock of Netscape. And he's making the comparison to OpenAI, but OpenAI is still trying to transition to a for profit company.

Stephen Robles:

I don't think we correct me if I'm wrong. There's no official OpenAI is now a profit company. Like, it hasn't happened yet. Right?

Jason Aten:

Correct. And I think, like, at least Elon Musk, for one, is suing them, and I think that possibly other. Like, there's at least one state that's trying to prevent. I think wasn't California trying to prevent it from happening or something like that? So

Stephen Robles:

Something like that. Yeah. So it's still unclear when they'll be able to go at the for profit company, which has to happen before an IPO publicly, you know, initial public offering. That's the IPO when it goes on the stock market and things like that. And so Gruber is basically saying, like, it really feels like a bubble, specifically OpenAI, because of these big promises.

Stephen Robles:

He he does acknowledge, like, OpenAI right now currently offers, like, one of the best AI chat bots, which I would agree. I use it all the time. It's a good product, but the promise of how much better it can get that OpenAI is trying to make remains to be seen. And so maybe when we get to our predictions, we could talk about this, but it does it feel like a bubble?

Jason Aten:

I think it's anytime someone says we need an unimaginable sum of money, if you just look up what is an investment bubble, that is got to be the definition. And if it's not, it definitely should be the definition. But, again, like, this is this is not surprising because we've talked about this a bunch of times on this show, like, economics 101. Let's not economics 101. But the point is, like, companies at some point have to transition from a point where their primary activities are to encourage investors to give them money to their primary activity is trying to encourage, like, consumers or customers to give them money.

Jason Aten:

Open AI is trying to get customers to give them money, and there's plenty of money coming in. Like, I don't know. I'm I I think their run rate is, like, $1,000,000,000 or something like that. I that could be completely wrong. I'm just pulling that out of thin air.

Jason Aten:

Let me ask you.

Stephen Robles:

Well, their their last investment was their last round was $6,600,000,000 which was

Jason Aten:

But I'm just talking about their revenue. Their actual cost of revenue.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

So, like, they're bringing in money, but it is it does take an astronomical sum of money to train these models. And then the other thing is, like, the newest model that they released, which is what, o 3 or o yeah. I think it's a o one was there's a new model o 3, and

Stephen Robles:

I o one was the reasoning.

Jason Aten:

And then there's o three, which is their advanced reasoning model, which is not available publicly yet. But I think I was reading over the holiday that it takes something like $20 per query to do that. And it's, like, that's an astronomical amount of money just for, like, typing in. Can you show me how to change a spark plug in my car? Right?

Jason Aten:

Like or something like that.

Stephen Robles:

Like, it's it's reasoning, Jason. This is reasoning. But It's,

Jason Aten:

Regardless of that, think about it. If you're Microsoft and you are selling access to this, but you're charging $30 a month, were you this is not sustainable. And so the amount of money that they need to sort of build this sort of thing up and to try to bring in customers because what? Jet gbt is the fastest growing tech tech product ever, and yet it still hasn't reached that critical threshold of having enough people giving them money to pay for the techno the the compute behind that.

Stephen Robles:

And I don't think the $200 a month pro subscription is going to be the answer to that, because I see pictures or screenshots of people on social media canceling that, realizing I don't think this is getting me anything.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I don't think that that's gonna be the solution. Just, yep.

Stephen Robles:

Not the solution. So I think we should make some OpenAI predictions, as well when we get there. But also, this could be a short term prediction. We'll see. Trump is petitioning the Supreme Court to stay the ban on TikTok, which goes into effect or supposedly goes into effect January 19th.

Stephen Robles:

That's when it's scheduled, which is a day before his inauguration. So he is, I forgot what it is, but he filed a brief with the court saying, you know, he he believes that he is he alone has the negotiating power to fix this and make a deal with ByteDance or TikTok so it doesn't have to, be banned. And so he's asking the Supreme Court to stay that. We'll see. Again, he's not president yet.

Stephen Robles:

The ban is supposed to go into effect January 19th. He's inaugurated January 20th.

Jason Aten:

Yep. The yeah. The next day.

Stephen Robles:

We'll see what happens, but it's interesting. He in his first or last reelection, he was wanting to ban TikTok. He pushed for the TikTok ban, but now he is, you know, he says he is uniquely positioned to, to understand why it's needed and and why it shouldn't be banned. So we'll see. We have, like, 2 weeks.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. And and that's it hard to know what's gonna happen because say whatever else you wanna say about incoming and former president Trump, he is extremely transactional. Right? It'd be because the whole reason that a TikTok ban was gonna happen in the first place is that he was really mad at a bunch of teenagers who went on TikTok and said, hey. You know what you should do?

Jason Aten:

We should troll temp Trump by reserving all the tickets for one of his rallies, and then no one show up. And that's exactly what happened. And then he thought, like, this is a national security threat because people didn't come to my rally. So we should ban it. And so they convinced Microsoft to buy it, and then that didn't happen.

Jason Aten:

And then Oracle is running a server in Texas that is like, there's a children's museum where you can go and watch TikTok moderation happen. It's like a that's like a real like, there's some weird stuff going on. I don't think the Supreme Court is gonna do this. I don't think they're going to to stay their decision because of the incoming president. Because here's the thing.

Jason Aten:

Congress passed a law. The president signed the law. It goes into effect. Unless that law is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court's not gonna be like, well, the next guy might have a different opinion. There's a process for that.

Jason Aten:

It's a there's a political process for changing those sorts of things. And I don't you know, the the same people who voted to ban TikTok can't also be like, yeah, but the new guy should get a chance to decide on this just because he likes to crack now. So I don't see this like, the Supreme Court is say what you want. You may not agree with all their decisions. They're nothing if not process driven.

Jason Aten:

Right? Like, they're not gonna just be like, oh, there's a guy who might have a different opinion, but that again, like, the the incoming president can't just ignore a law that bans TikTok. He's like, he just can't, like anyway.

Stephen Robles:

So you so, we'll make this our first 2025 prediction. So you think Trump's, petition for to stay the ban will not go through, and January 19th, TikTok will go away here in the United States and go away with the biggest air quotes. Basically, they have to be taken out of the app stores and may not be able to access without a VPN, things like that. You think that

Jason Aten:

that's I don't think both of those things are necessarily connected because the Supreme Court is already hearing an appeal from TikTok. So I think they could just tell Trump, you don't have standing, like, sorry. You know, go play golf. Yeah. But then they could also not they could also say that the law was unconstitutional for other reasons.

Jason Aten:

I don't think the Supreme Court's gonna do that, but I don't but I so I think that let me be clear. I think that it's better than 50% chance that TikTok gets banned. I don't know what that means exactly, but I think there's a better than 50% chance that TikTok gets banned. I think there's, like, a 95% chance that the supreme court is not gonna entertain Trump's motion.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Well, I'm gonna take the opposite. I think there is a less than 50% chance that it gets banned.

Jason Aten:

How much how much less? Because I'm, like, 50.7%, just to be clear.

Stephen Robles:

I'm gonna say 40%.

Jason Aten:

Okay. So we're not that far apart, just to be clear.

Stephen Robles:

I'm just taking it a different stance so we can then say who's

Jason Aten:

right there. Great.

Stephen Robles:

So I'm yeah. I'm saying 40%. Come January 1920.

Jason Aten:

I'm writing them down.

Stephen Robles:

I'm writing this down. Writing it down. So whatever episode is after that, he could say

Jason Aten:

Nope. I just wanted to know. I just wanted to record it for posterity.

Stephen Robles:

It's good. It's good. That's, we are also recording, but, yes, that I think TikTok is not like, nothing will change. I think everyone's gonna be scrolling TikTok January 20th. Mhmm.

Stephen Robles:

So we'll see. Alright. 40%. 40%.

Jason Aten:

I'm 40% sure that they are not going to get banned.

Stephen Robles:

40% sure. Okay. Alright. Let's talk about how the US Treasury was hacked. Jason's saying what Apple needs to do in 2025.

Stephen Robles:

An exploding cyber truck over in Las Vegas, which is also connected to where we're going this week or next week at CES. But before we do, I wanna thank our friends at Notion. This is one of like the it's amazing that they're our 1st sponsor of the year, and it's one of the easiest sponsors because we're just we use it. We're using it right now. We're just using it to record this episode and every episode of Primary Technology.

Stephen Robles:

This is where we do all of our show notes. Every week, there's a shared page. Me and Jason are in there posting links and articles and all of that and makes it easy to collaborate. It's free. We're just collaborating, just the 2 of us, and so it's free for us to use.

Stephen Robles:

Plus, you can use Notion AI to do a bunch of stuff. I'm not even reading from the script. I'm just telling you what we do using Notion every week to organize this show. But Notion also has the powerful AI tools, and there's no shortage of AI tools out there. We just talked about OpenAI being a huge one, but a lot of times you have to switch back and forth.

Stephen Robles:

Even the ChatChippity app, you gotta copy and paste text in there, But when you're in Notion, everything is just right there, can be in your workflow. And like I said, we use Notion all the time. Jason used it during our year end review episode, trying to get it to summarize all the different pages. But Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects in one space. It's simple, beautifully designed.

Stephen Robles:

There's now shortcuts on the iPhone. That's not on script either. I'm just telling you, you can do shortcuts actions with Notion, and again everything syncs across all your devices with the Notions app and on the Mac, iPhone, iPad. Notion is the one place to connect teams, tools, and knowledge, so you're empowered to do your most meaningful work. And the fully integrated Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger, doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds.

Stephen Robles:

Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies including primary technology, not implying that we're a Fortune 500 company. Just just just tagging that in there at the end. And you can send less email, cancel more meetings and save time searching for work all using Notion AI. There's what you do. Try Notion for free when you go to notion.com/primarytechnology, all lowercase letters.

Stephen Robles:

The link's also in the show notes below. Notion.com/primarytechnology. Try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today when you use our link, supporting primary technology. So that's notion.com/primarytechnology. We use it every week literally for this show.

Stephen Robles:

Thanks to Notion for sponsoring this episode. Alright. The US Treasury was hacked, Jason, by you gotta say it like that when you say it.

Jason Aten:

Is that how that is that how the word is pronounced on podcasts?

Stephen Robles:

It's hacked. Okay. Yeah. It's hacked. Chinese hackers, they stole apparently unclassified documents in a major incident, but US Treasury was breached and seems concerning, but also I don't know.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know. You might follow this stuff more than I do, but, like, doesn't this happen periodically? Like, there's there's, like, a breach and something happens.

Jason Aten:

Well, it's interesting when they say that US Treasury was hacked. You're like, oh, man. Where's all the money? But it's not that's not this was not like Fort Knox. No.

Jason Aten:

Gold repository was, like, broken into

Stephen Robles:

It's not an ocean's 11 job. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

This is just not what you think. So, yeah, it sounds like there was a third party software provider that notified them that a hacker had gained access to a security key, which basically would be the type of thing that would give you access to certain systems, and it allowed them to override some security protocols. And it's like, I don't know. I don't think they've said exactly what was accessed, but this is the kind of thing where it's like, did you access some computers and you were reading someone's Outlook email? Or, like, I mean, you know what I mean?

Jason Aten:

It's like Right.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

And it does so they did say that it it is a they were they did access computers that involved end users. So that does make it sound like they were accessing computers that human beings were unit using as opposed to, like, servers that are keeping track of, like, your taxes or something. I don't know. Like Right. And so it's it is certainly concerning, but I have to imagine that the US Treasury is one of the highest potential threat targets if for no other reason than it is where your tax records are stored, which are supposed to be kept confidential.

Jason Aten:

But you can certainly imagine that if you're like, a Chinese government operative, having access to peep to, like, specific people, not like you and me, I don't think they care about our taxes, Steven. Like, if if someone from China wants them, come I got them in my Dropbox. I'll share the link right now. It's really not that exciting. Like, it's really like, what do you care?

Jason Aten:

But there are people for whom their taxes could be more problematic. Right? Certain charitable deductions that they make, you know, contributions that they make, whatever sources of income that they don't really wanna talk about necessarily. Like, maybe they're not illegal, but they could just be embarrassing. It's what I'm trying to say.

Jason Aten:

Right? And so you can imagine that that's the kind of thing that people would want. And again, I'm not suggesting that what they were going after were tax insurance. I'm just saying that's one of the reasons why the treasury is probably a a pretty high threat target. And so Right.

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Higher than my 2024 folder of primary technology.

Jason Aten:

What you would think would be a really high target except for we've made them all publicly available in a feed on the Internet, so you can just listen. You don't have

Stephen Robles:

to And I don't save the raw file. So it's literally just the edited You

Jason Aten:

don't have

Stephen Robles:

to hack

Jason Aten:

Steven's, computer

Stephen Robles:

for this. No. You can just download from the RSS feed. There was also a Cybertruck so CS Las Vegas we're going there soon we're gonna talk about our travel bags, very soon in the personal tech segment. In front of Trump's hotel in Las Vegas there was a Cybertruck that quote unquote exploded.

Stephen Robles:

I actually there was a video you can watch. It's not like the truck blew up exploded, but there were some explosions in the truck. There was a fire, it happened right in front of the Trump, International Hotel in Las Vegas, And it seemed like maybe person purposeful. It was not that the truck battery or anything mechanical in the Cybertruck went wrong, and that caused the explosion or fire. But there was some fireworks, gasoline canisters, fuel camp fuel canisters, and large firework mortars found in the truck bed and apparently that was attached to a detonation system and that's what the driver, detonated.

Stephen Robles:

So, and here's a if you're watching, there's a little video clip of the truck on fire in front of the hotel, but one person did die. Several were injured, and so that's an unfortunate. Weird. Just kind of a weird thing.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. It is very weird. I mean, the person who died was the person was the driver of the truck. And so it it's very strange because yeah. The the problematic narrative here is like, oh, like a cyber truck exploded.

Jason Aten:

It must have been, you know, that dangerous battery, but it had nothing to do with the battery. Like, in it's by the way, this would have been a lot worse if that battery had exploded. Like, it's got a pretty big battery in there and it's big bad. Yeah. But it is sort of a weird like, we don't know anything.

Jason Aten:

The FBI is investigating it as a potential act of terrorism. The fact that it was a cyber truck parked in front of Trump's hotel makes you feel like there's probably something going on there. And then the fact that it was loaded with fireworks, it's it was, like, loaded with explosives. It was detonated. Like, this is this is super unfortunate.

Jason Aten:

I thought what was kind of interesting, and I think that we're gonna, like, hear more about this, is that the both the Cybertruck and then the truck that was used in New Orleans, for the attack there were both rented on the app Turo. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's like a pure pure. It's like Airbnb for cars, essentially, kind of thing. And maybe that means nothing because if what you wanted to do is rent a car to do something terrible, you might not wanna go to enterprise, like, because they're gonna take a lot more of your information or whatever. And so, yeah, I think it's kind of it's kinda weird, and it it's weird that this stuff is happening at the same time.

Jason Aten:

They it may not be related at all. But but the other thing that's interesting is it's just like our news media. I think a big it's a big deal when a car explodes in front of a hotel, especially a hotel in Vegas, especially the one that has the Trump's name on it. But I also think it's just a sign of, like, Cybertruck explodes is a much bigger headline than, you know, Kia Soul explodes outside of Tampa.

Stephen Robles:

Which I don't think any Kia Soul has ever exploded.

Jason Aten:

So Probably true.

Stephen Robles:

Kudos to my to my old car.

Jason Aten:

They just die a quiet death along the side of the road.

Stephen Robles:

It is sitting in the back, over here. But, yeah, the Turo app, if you're not familiar, it's basically the Airbnb, but for rental cars

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Meaning private owners can put their cars up to be rented, and you can book it and use it as a rental car, but you're dealing with a private owner rather than, a company like Enterprise. And so apparently the Cybertruck was rented in Colorado, driven to Las Vegas. They actually could follow the track that it took because it had to charge. Yeah. So there's all the there's records of where this truck was charging and things like that.

Stephen Robles:

So that is true, I didn't realize the the New Orleans truck also, which if you didn't hear that news there was a it was called a terrorist attack but I think they're still investigating the motive behind it, but there was a pickup truck that drove into a crowd in New Orleans and I didn't realize that that was also a Turo rental, which is interesting.

Jason Aten:

Have you ever used Turo?

Stephen Robles:

I thought about it, I downloaded the app, and I looked at it, and I was like, I don't know. I just, I didn't feel like I don't know. I didn't really have a good reason to use Turo, and I was just, like, I just go with the things I know. I'll use enterprise or whatever. But have you?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. We used it one time, and it was on a trip with my daughter, and the person was, like, an hour and a half late. And it was pretty disappointing.

Stephen Robles:

So is that like they'll bring it to you?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. So they were supposed to, like, meet us at the airport kinda thing. And there's supposed to be 2 vehicles, you know, and they the driver of the one gets into the other one and leaves and leaves us the first one. And they were, like, an hour and a half late, and then they made us, like, walk to long term parking. It was anyway, I'm not it's probably not Turo's fault.

Jason Aten:

It was just, like, it's hard to recommend because it was not a great you know, you walk up to the Hertz counter. And generally speaking, as long as they have cars, although I've had some bad experiences we can talk about about Hertz another time.

Stephen Robles:

I don't I don't do Hertz. I'm an enterprise guy.

Jason Aten:

You know, Hertz was the company that was, like, reporting its own vehicles stolen when, like, they just lost track. People would, like, their rentals and they would, like, lose track of it. And so then they call the police and report them stolen. And peep the police would show up at the people's houses in the middle of the night and, like, repo the cars and, like, arrest them. And it's, like, what?

Stephen Robles:

What are we doing? No. No. Thank you. No.

Stephen Robles:

I try honestly, I just believe that I can just Uber anywhere even if it's, like, the middle of nowhere. So I never even I don't think really about renting cars very much.

Jason Aten:

Really?

Stephen Robles:

Anyway, I mean, I've I've Ubered in other countries. I've Ubered Yeah. Just pretty much any city I've ever been to in the US, you know, major cities, obviously, you can Uber, but even, like, here in Lakeland, Florida, you can Uber Yeah. Or Lyft. They're both available.

Stephen Robles:

And that's, like, a small town, not metropolitan at all. And I've hailed an Uber so I could drop my car off in a mechanic and get home. Yeah. It's, like, it's just they're just I I just believe they're everywhere. Do you do you feel like

Jason Aten:

I think it depends. So, like, when we went to Arizona for our daughter's soccer tournament, we're gonna be it's, like, 35 minutes away. And not From

Stephen Robles:

the airport.

Jason Aten:

From no. From the hotel. So, like Okay. The hotel and the airport were very close, but then we had to drive, like, 35 minutes. That's not an Uber ride that you wanna take.

Jason Aten:

Right? And try to find one back and stuff like that. And we were gonna be doing multiple things. So at at some point, there's just, like, if you can rent a car for a $100 a day, that's probably gonna be a better deal if you're gonna be doing a lot of trips. But if I go to New York or especially in other countries, no, I would.

Jason Aten:

Oh, well, first of all, I'd never rent a car in another country. Like, no

Stephen Robles:

chance. Right. I did. So just little backstory at I used to work for a travel company. And me and the CEO, we were in Germany, and we were doing stuff or maybe it was the UK it was one of the 2 and he arranged a car because we were driving around to like different touristy sites and it was my job to take photos and video and then do marketing things after that And he asked me, he was like, do you wanna drive?

Stephen Robles:

And it was in the UK, because I would have to have driven on the left side of the road, and I was like, no, I don't think so. I don't think I wanna try this today, because there's a lot of roundabouts. Yeah. And I have to do the roundabout the opposite way. I don't even know how that works.

Stephen Robles:

So, no, I'm good. Mhmm. I'm

Jason Aten:

just Speaking of roundabouts, Steven, I watched a video yesterday. I think it was a BBC video on YouTube because this is what happens when you click on one video. It shows you everything.

Stephen Robles:

You get

Jason Aten:

all this happened. I was looking I wanna ask you this later, but I watched one of your videos about the 2 about the travel 2 in 1 chargers, the MagSafe alternatives. And I'm kid you not, my entire feed was just people wanting to tell me about these things. I'm like, no. I already got the answer.

Jason Aten:

Thank you very much. But, hey, my friend Steven had the perfect video. Anyway, we we'll talk about that later. But there is an underwater roundabout in the Faroe Islands. So the Faroe Islands are, like, north of of the UK towards Iceland, like, out there in the middle of nowhere.

Jason Aten:

They're part of Denmark, I believe. And they built this system of underwater tunnels to connect all the islands. Right? Because it used to be that the only way you could get between the island. It's kinda like Hawaii.

Jason Aten:

It's not like Hawaii, but it's sort of like Hawaii.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so

Jason Aten:

they built all these underwater tunnels. And in one point, there is a roundabout where 2 tunnels connect. And I just think that that is the most amazingly bananas thing I've ever heard of.

Stephen Robles:

I just found a picture. I have to show this. This is I mean, this is like the ice hotel or whatever in that country that I, like, wanna see one day.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. That's exactly yeah. Underwater underwater roundabout.

Stephen Robles:

The world's 1st undersea roundabout. Wow. That's slightly terrifying, but amazing.

Jason Aten:

Isn't that amazing?

Stephen Robles:

Here's where it came. Woah.

Jason Aten:

I love it. Anyway, sorry for derailing, but I felt like this was worth it. I'm just

Stephen Robles:

sharing random views. That's

Jason Aten:

terrifying. I

Stephen Robles:

like it. Dude, if you're not watching, just watch this clip just to see the I'll use this as the chapter art. I'll make a special chapter for the

Jason Aten:

4 You gotta warn people. This is Whoo.

Stephen Robles:

It's a terrifying picture. This is the guy that greets you into this underwater roundabout.

Jason Aten:

He's the guy that collects the tolls.

Stephen Robles:

You gotta pay that guy or you cannot He's the yeah. He's the the the troll guy on the, the Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yep. What is your name? What is anyway, okay.

Stephen Robles:

Netflix on Christmas day, and then we'll get to our predictions and such. Right. I'd watched the Tyson fight on Netflix, or at least tried to, and I've told myself I wanna try and watch the football games that are happening on Christmas Day to judge the streaming, and I totally forgot. Totally forgot there were football games happening on Netflix Christmas Day on the livestream, but you watched it, and then you even wrote about it. So what, how'd that go?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Well, I mean, they definitely did not have the problems they had on the Tyson fight. Everyone who's worried, like, they figured it out. I don't know if they just, you know, bought more HP servers, Best Buy, stuck them in a rack somewhere, but they they got it taken because that's how it works. Right?

Stephen Robles:

They switched to Mac minis. There's a bunch of Mac minis Yeah.

Jason Aten:

That's super not how it works. But they they figured it out. They managed to pull it off. They both games, I I guess there were some people that said that at the beginning of the first game that they may have had a couple of, like, just a short glitches or whatever. But by the time that game was going, it was great.

Jason Aten:

And the, the one thing that's kind of cool about this, if you think about it, I saw someone complaining about the apple sports app because it is so fast to update that it is generally updating faster than even your in ground wire in the ground cable TV. Is that because most people don't think that you're, you know, if you have Xfinity cable, you think like that's literally real time, but there's probably a 2 or 3 or 4 second delay. Like, that's just like physics or whatever. It's probably not physics, but it's just something.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Physics. Something. Signal cable.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. And so but if you're watching on YouTube TV, we're used to the fact that it's probably gonna be, like, 35 to 40 seconds behind because that's just kind of the way that kind of thing works. And that's fine. It doesn't really matter to us. We're just watching it, but it does mean you probably don't wanna be scrolling on x or Twitter or something like that while you're watching because you might get spoiled.

Jason Aten:

Although people were real mad that the Apple Sports app is faster than actual just live television. Right? But when you're watching the games on Netflix, there's no live over the air or cable version of that game. The only way to watch that was on Netflix. So everyone was kind of on an even, even par.

Jason Aten:

You weren't like, technically, it was probably a minute behind the actual game, but it everyone was a minute behind. So to

Stephen Robles:

me, honestly, it was

Jason Aten:

the same. So, anyway, they pulled it off. It was very good. The thing I thought was especially interesting is that they managed to create a pretty like, they knew what they were doing when they asked Beyonce to show up in Houston, Texas to play music from her new album live for the first like, she hasn't done a concert tour on those songs. This is the first time she's ever played them.

Jason Aten:

It's a country album. She's in Houston, Texas, which is her home town. I mean, Houston got smoked, so that was bad. But she's in her hometown. It was a it was a fantastic, concert.

Jason Aten:

You know, she had, Post Malone, and, what's his name? Shaboozy was there. And then her daughter was in the in the dance troop or whatever. That's not what you call it probably. But anyway,

Stephen Robles:

the dance troop. I know what it is.

Jason Aten:

But anyway, one of her backup dancers or whatever. And the whole thing that came off, like, very well. And what was what was wild about it is, like, Netflix bet a lot of money on Christmas Day football. And I think it was worth every penny. I think that 11 minute Beyonce show for them was probably worth every penny that they paid.

Jason Aten:

Sure. Because they created sort of a halftime moment that was it felt as big a deal as, like, the Super Bowl.

Stephen Robles:

So Okay. Well, that's great.

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Alright. Alright. So Netflix now doing the live thing. I will say that the streaming thing is funny. It's it's a challenge now New Year's Eve if you try to watch the ball drop, because we were watching on it was Hulu Live TV.

Stephen Robles:

My father-in-law pays for that, and so we were trying to find we we did the Ryan Seacrest Yeah. ABC. New Year's Eve or whatever.

Jason Aten:

ABC. Yep.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. And and, like, I kept going out and refreshing it a couple times just to make sure it's, like, at the latest moment possible. But when it would got to, like, 11:58 on the TV with the ball about to start dropping, my son with his Apple Watch is, like, it's midnight already.

Jason Aten:

Same. Our youngest son was so we weren't quite that far off. It was, like, maybe 13 seconds off, and he's counting down. And we're, like, you be quiet. Stop talking.

Jason Aten:

You are done. And everyone else is, like, we're just gonna pretend that we're gonna go on the TV. He's, like, no. It's already midnight. We're, like, it doesn't matter.

Stephen Robles:

I was trying to tell everyone, like, let's we're just going to make this the time. Like, just everyone, let's look at the ball drop, and let's all just be on the same page. And then, like, I think it was both my sons. They were, like, hey, happy new year.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. So, like, all of these parents are talking about how the thing you do now is you just could like, if you have young kids, you just can show them last year's ball drop at, like, 9:15 or something, and they won't know the difference. Those parents apparently do not have children with Apple Watches because if they have an Apple Watch, they are they are so independent, you don't even understand.

Stephen Robles:

Well, I think, you know, once it hits New Year, at least for that evening, maybe the next morning, you have that notification on the Apple Watch.

Jason Aten:

The fireworks. Happy to You

Stephen Robles:

get fired up. Yeah. I feel like it tapped me maybe, at midnight. I can't remember.

Jason Aten:

I was wearing my Apple watch, but when I put it on the next morning, I did get the fireworks.

Stephen Robles:

You did get it. Okay. Yeah. I posted a little video on social media, but it's a nice little little thing. It says happy new year with your first name.

Jason Aten:

Thanks, Greg.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Anyway, streaming has ruined New Year's Eve. That's that's the

Jason Aten:

I don't think it's the streaming that ruined New Year's Eve.

Stephen Robles:

But it's it's people, giving up the the time.

Jason Aten:

I don't know. My favorite New Year's Eve show I don't even I'm assuming they still do it, but it's the what is it? Anderson Cooper and, what's his name? His buddy, Andy or whatever. Now what's his name?

Jason Aten:

Some of our listeners

Stephen Robles:

Andy and Andy?

Jason Aten:

No. It's not. But, anyway, it but they're both completely hammered, and so we can't watch it with our kids. Like

Stephen Robles:

You say you don't watch it with your kids?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. No. We can't. CNN, New Year.

Stephen Robles:

New Year's Eve live. No. It's Andy and Anderson.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Andy Andy Cohen. Yeah. I I was right. He made me second guess myself.

Jason Aten:

Anyway anyway Oh. But they're they're they're absolutely hilarious mostly because Andy Cohen is hilarious. Anderson Cooper's drunk and laughing at Andy Cohen the whole time, and it's just it is it is worth watching, but you can't watch it with kids. Let's just say that.

Stephen Robles:

It's all you need. It's all you need. Alright. Let's do some predictions, and we'll kick it off with your article

Jason Aten:

Okay.

Stephen Robles:

Saying what Apple needs to do in 2025, which, is make a HomePod with a screen. No. That's not what you said. Listen.

Jason Aten:

I'm so mad about this. I had to write about it finally because I you hear all these people talking about, like, yeah, all the products Apple's gonna make. I don't I think the one thing that they have to do is they have to fix the Siri experience that they have to deliver the experience that they promised. And if they had not made a promise and they had not changed that stupid glowy interface that appears when you activate the voice assistant, I, I don't think it'd be as big of a deal. I think that the Snoop Dogg commercials, all that stuff, talking about apple intelligence, fine, that you can, you can argue that that was just like, it's not false marketing, but it's certainly like slightly misleading because people are like, well, this isn't all that different or whatever.

Jason Aten:

But I think, like, the one thing people actually want is to say to what was the example I even used in the article? I can't even remember. But, like, to be able to, like, talk to it and have it do things on your behalf to have it to, like, say to your iPhone, you know, like, find out what my flight lands and reserve an Uber to my hotel. Like, that's such a simple thing to be. Like, that is the killer application.

Jason Aten:

And in Siri should absolutely be able to do all of those things because it has access to all of that information. But right now, it can't. And part of the reason it can't is the fact that, like, third party apps, like Uber, for example, have no motivation to interact with Siri. Right? Because they want you to open the app to book the thing to do whatever.

Jason Aten:

So it means Apple is probably gonna have to, like, fork over some money or figure out the economics of this or do some kind of thing to incentivize apps to be a part of it, and that is just not Apple style. But I think I personally think that making this happen I I argued that it was a bigger deal than the iPhone 17. I know a lot of people will argue with me on that. Yes. Apple's gonna release Apple the iPhone 17 before they do this because there are just 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars that depend on it across the economy.

Jason Aten:

Right? From manufacturing jobs to third party people who make cases to whatever. Like, I get it. Like, there's the first sentence of the article is, like, there's literally nothing more certain in tech than Apple in September is gonna release a new phone. Yes.

Jason Aten:

It's gonna happen. Right? Even during COVID, it happened. Right? They did it a month late, but it's still gonna happen.

Jason Aten:

But I just think that they have got to fix Siri. So

Stephen Robles:

So, I mean, I agree. I also think, you know, we we have the listeners with varying opinions about the photos app. Some people agree with your and I think my feeling that the redesign is not great. Maybe you had stronger words for it.

Jason Aten:

It was bad.

Stephen Robles:

There are some people who feel like, no. No. It is good. You just have to get used to it. I'll all I know is what I see on, like, TikTok and social media from non techie people that nobody likes it.

Stephen Robles:

And everyone's Yeah. Everyone's basically, like, saying Apple put it back. And and there's even just like I was I saw one post where someone was like, where are my favorites? And I totally get it because it's, like, it is honestly, I don't know. I don't know where your favorites are.

Stephen Robles:

Could be in a bunch of different places. It could

Jason Aten:

be in a different place depending on the time of the day, and when your phone thinks you might wanna see a certain thing, it will show you a different version.

Stephen Robles:

And then even, like, someone asked me on, in a YouTube comment because I was making shortcuts and you could you used to be able to make a shortcut that just opened a photo's album where you just press the shortcut and it'll open that direct album. And because of the photo's redesign and I guess some of the changes, like, that's not an you can't do it anymore. Like, you can't just have a shortcuts action to open a specific album. And honestly, like, you can, again, customize your photos experience. Like if you scroll all the way down to the that's too bright.

Stephen Robles:

If you scroll all the way down in the photos app in iOS 18, there is a customize and reorder section, which I do recommend doing because it makes it a little more usable. You can uncheck certain categories and then reorder them. But even, like, I've done that, and so it's a little easier to find my albums, but even so, like, it's just not And and, like, having to kind of scroll down to get to this, like, all photos view, like, I I it's it's not great.

Jason Aten:

It's not it's worse than that. No. I think photos is Apple's version of the Sonos app.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Okay. Alright. So, alright. Here we start our prediction.

Jason Aten:

The parallel is pretty close. Right? You broke a bunch of things that people wanted to do because you wanted to improve a different type of experience, but that's not what people actually wanted.

Stephen Robles:

And maybe, you know, Apple said Apple Intelligence was gonna be able to do, like, more fun photo slideshows or whatever. I mean, they did slideshows before. Like, they did moments and memories, and there was a for you tab before. And I like, I do I think I do miss the tab, like, navigation at the bottom where you just had, like, photos and I I forget what it was. The the long lost days of the tab bar.

Jason Aten:

My my wife said and she hates it, by the way. And the thing the here's the reason I care about this so much is that because whenever apple changes something in a piece of software, I get yelled at. I don't actually work there. I did not make these changes. I do not design software for apple.

Jason Aten:

But if if if I update the software, I'm one of the people in my home's phones. And then if they don't like the software, they're mad at me. They're not mad at Apple. And so I take this very personally. But the the thing is, like, if you open it up and you have not, you're not want someone like you and I.

Jason Aten:

Right? If you just look at this, you interface, you're like, how do I edit this photo? And it's like, they're like, what do I do? And I was like, we get to hit the little thing that has, like, all the little fader suggestions. And my wife's like, you know, it worked really well, the word edit.

Jason Aten:

Like, she's so mad at the way that they changed these things. And I just, you know, the only thing I would say on the other side of that is it's like my wife post photos to Facebook. And I realized not that long ago that I don't think she cares if any of her Facebook friends see those photos. The single killer app in Facebook is every day. It shows you your photos on that day in the past.

Jason Aten:

And so she's just creating this like time capsule rep record. So I imagine some of the things that you and I think are stupid in the photos app. Like, show me memories, show me trips, show me whatever. Every time I've seen a demo of those things, I'm like, who cares? Like, if I wanna see photos from my trip, I just search for the location.

Jason Aten:

I don't need you to AI generate a thing, but I do think that I, that I may not typical. I think that average normal users who don't spend as much time thinking about this, they think that's cool. Like, oh yeah, that trip we took to Alaska. Here it is. It's right here.

Stephen Robles:

I well, I will say there have been times when usually it's, like, birthdays where sometimes I don't know about you, but, like, especially adult birthdays, my birthday, like, parents' in laws' birthdays, get to a point where it's like, what do we do now? Can we throw out a movie? They're like, we just had cake, we did maybe a gift or 2. And honestly, one of the more enjoyable activities I have found at that point is to go to the photos app and see if there is a memory about the person. And if you have that person's birthday in their contact, I found the photos app pretty good at being like, hey, here's photos of so and so throughout the years.

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

And actually throwing that up on the TV, air playing it, it's actually that is pretty good. Like, I I give photos that, but it was doing that in iOS 17. Yeah. It's not even an iOS 18 feature. And I actually have created shortcuts because people ask for them, where you can create a shortcut that just shows you photos you took a year ago.

Stephen Robles:

Like, I can run a shortcut, and it'll just pull all the photos from a year ago, and you can do multiple years or whatever. So I do think I agree, like, for more normal people, and if you can get in the habit of doing it, there are some good things there in, like, the for you curated over time, memories. Again, memories was something that already existed. The iOS 18 redesign, honestly, has made it, I feel, like, harder to even find them, like, unless you reorder those categories. Because now, like, you have to scroll kinda pretty far to get to the memories.

Stephen Robles:

So it's not great. Honestly, if if Apple said the iOS 18 photo update is that we have turned we have enabled a toggle that lets you hide screenshots, and that was the only change they made, people would be raving about it. Yeah. People would say I was 18, the best update ever. Because honestly, that is the one new thing that I definitely use.

Stephen Robles:

Like, I hide the screenshots Right. So I don't have a bunch of screenshots in my, photo thing, like, when I'm looking at all my recents, but that's everything else. Yeah. Alright. So here okay.

Stephen Robles:

Here's some some prediction questions for you. Do we think Siri with the oh, sorry. I said it out loud.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I've said it like 7 times. I'm not gonna be that mad at you.

Stephen Robles:

Do we think dingus? It's too late. I don't know why everybody's saying it. Is going to get the semantic index update with contextual awareness and being able to interact with app intents in your data. Is that coming in 2025 this year?

Jason Aten:

I think that the chances are greater that they rename it to dingus than that they actually deliver on what they promise. No. The

Stephen Robles:

only thing is gonna happen.

Jason Aten:

I think the rumors are 2026. I think they have to do it this year. I I just, I can't. They're so far behind. And I I think the I okay.

Jason Aten:

This is so revealing though. I think about the mindset of apple because I think that in their mind, they're like, what are you gonna do? Use a pixel? Like, right? Like, in their mind, they're like, you're gonna keep using an iPhone.

Jason Aten:

You may not like that we haven't done this, but since you've never experienced that, you don't really know what you're missing. And maybe your friends talk about this cool thing. But your friends who use Android have been talking about cool things that they can do, like rearrange their home screen for 10 years, and you were still using an iPhone. So I think that they probably just don't care. I don't think it's coming this year.

Stephen Robles:

I'm gonna say it's gonna come this year.

Jason Aten:

I hope so. I really hope you're right. I wanna lose this one.

Stephen Robles:

I almost want to predict that it will come before WWDC, because if they talk about Apple Intelligence again with the same exact features they did last year, which the semantic index was a large part of the Apple Intelligence presentation, like Craig Federighi walking through, oh, you took a picture of this program of your kid's musical. It's gonna tell you whether or not you can get to it in time after your last meeting. Like he already did all that. And so to rehash all of that at another wwdc, I think will not go over well. And so even if it is a limited version, like, maybe we don't get the 3rd party app intents just yet, but a version of the dingus that can look at your calendar, look at your text messages, look at your photos, and figure it out.

Stephen Robles:

Because you can't even ask it right now, show me a picture of my driver's license, or what's my car license plate, because Apple said at Dub Dub, you would be able to do

Jason Aten:

that. Right.

Stephen Robles:

That it would be smart enough to do that. I think those things, the Apple first party app, features, I think those are gonna come in the first half of this year. The app intents and the third party integrations, that'll either be later, like iPhone 17 time or maybe 2026. But I do think we will get a smarter dingus this year.

Jason Aten:

I think that if Apple can release a smart enough dingus that you can say to your phone when you come back from z e s, where did they park my car? And it knows your car, and it gives you walking instructions on the map. Apple's a $5,000,000,000,000 company by the end of the year. Seriously, though, because these are the types of things that people's mind will explode. And it's like, if my phone can just do all of these, like, look Apple's thing for years, this is what I should have written about is like, it just works.

Jason Aten:

Right? And this is the perfect example you have, even without the 3rd parties, apple can do most of these things first party. Because even if I use the fantastical, but guess what? Everything's still in my calendar app on my iPhone.

Stephen Robles:

Exactly.

Jason Aten:

I don't ever open it, but it's all there. Everything is still there. Same thing with the mail app. Same thing. Obviously, I use messages, but, like, all of those things are first party.

Jason Aten:

It has access to all of that information. The the I feel like I don't maybe this is a harder problem to solve. Like, it seems easy to us because we don't know anything.

Stephen Robles:

I think but, like, the parked car thing, that's something that Apple does already.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. That's true.

Stephen Robles:

When you park your car someplace like

Jason Aten:

Internet Bluetooth. Yep.

Stephen Robles:

You can open the Maps app, and it will show you your parked car. And so you might even be able to do it now, like, ask the dingus, where's my parked car? I'm not sure. But to preemptively do that and connect it with, I don't know, remind me when I land where my car is

Jason Aten:

Right.

Stephen Robles:

Like that kind of query, I feel like should be possible Yeah. This year.

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

But we'll see. Alright. Photos app, is it going to get another redesign or revert in iOS 19?

Jason Aten:

I think I think they're gonna, I think they will tweak the interface to make some of the things that they didn't realize that people care about, like easier to get to, but I don't think that they're gonna revert it. That just doesn't seem very apple. Like they didn't. Okay. I think the the the, precedent.

Jason Aten:

That's the word I was looking for for this is safari when they did the tab that when they changed the position of the tabs and all that kind of stuff. And then they're like, okay, fine. You hate it. We're gonna stick with this sort of mental model, but we will make it easier by giving back. Like, they kinda compromise a little bit.

Jason Aten:

I think that that's what we're gonna see with photos.

Stephen Robles:

I think, yes. I'm gonna make a weird prediction. I think the tab bar will come back at the bottom.

Jason Aten:

I thought we were talking about Safari still. Sorry. No.

Stephen Robles:

No. I

Jason Aten:

was like, wait, what?

Stephen Robles:

The tab navigation Yeah. At the bottom. Okay. I think that's honestly a major part of people's psyche about how to get around photos. Because just go to albums or for you or recent photos.

Stephen Robles:

I forget what it was. But I think that I think there'll be some kind of tab navigation at the bottom again.

Jason Aten:

Oh, so that's interesting because and I would I don't think so. And the reason is, I think the model here is infinite scroll. Right? Which is what you do in every single other app is just infinite scroll. So

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Well, we'll see. It's a weird prediction. I don't even know if I fully believe it, but I'm just gonna throw it

Jason Aten:

out here. It'll make it interesting.

Stephen Robles:

It'll make it interesting. Okay. Another one another question for you. New display from Apple in 2025.

Jason Aten:

You mean standalone? You don't just mean, like, that the iPhone 17 gets, all that? Okay. I just making sure.

Stephen Robles:

Either a Pro Display XDR or Studio Display or new product. Will Apple release an updated or new display in 2025?

Jason Aten:

Yes. I think it'll be more expensive than the studio display, and I don't think they'll make the XDR anymore.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, really?

Jason Aten:

Who's buying that?

Stephen Robles:

John Saracusa, Marco Arment.

Jason Aten:

But they but I don't think either of them would have bought that if the studio display had existed at the time.

Stephen Robles:

I feel like Saracusa would have. He wants to know every pixel is is the most pixel that can be. You know what I mean?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. But it that it's not any more high resolution. I mean, technically, it is because it's bigger. It's just HDR or x d. It's not even really HDR.

Jason Aten:

Is it? It's not even full true HDR.

Stephen Robles:

It's right. Like, the iPad and iPhone screens are more HDR than XDR.

Jason Aten:

Last year's 13 inch iPad was more HDR

Stephen Robles:

than that. Right.

Jason Aten:

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Stephen Robles:

Yes.

Jason Aten:

So So

Stephen Robles:

So I think Apple loves things with lots of margin. And I feel like the Pro Display XDR probably has got a lot of margin built into that thing. So I'm I'm gonna I I don't think it's gonna go away, but I will but I'm gonna agree. I think there will be an updated display this year, either new or updated, and it'll probably come around dub dub DC. That's my prediction.

Stephen Robles:

I agree.

Jason Aten:

Alright.

Stephen Robles:

And also, along with that, will we see the M4 Ultra this year? Okay. Which we did not get an M3 Ultra.

Jason Aten:

Okay. So my prediction was going to be that they will put the M4 in all the Macs. So I by the end of this year, which just seemed like a logical, like, yes, that's easy. So I do think that that means that we will get an M4 Ultra this year because they're not gonna release the studio Mac Studio or Mac Pro. I don't think we'll see another Mac Pro.

Jason Aten:

Do you?

Stephen Robles:

Oh. That's a good one. I no. I think we will.

Jason Aten:

In the

Stephen Robles:

same form factor? Same form factor. Zero work, just swap out the chip for an M4 Ultra. I think they need to say they have a Mac Pro.

Jason Aten:

Mhmm.

Stephen Robles:

I think they just need to be able to say, like, this is our pro Mac machine. Because they don't like, the Mac Studio, they talk about for professionals and for this and for that, but they don't they don't call it a Mac Pro, and I don't think they would. I think if they try to call the Mac Studio a Mac Pro, people would be like, no, it's not.

Jason Aten:

Right.

Stephen Robles:

But I think I think they're gonna keep the Mac Pro around. It will not it will not be the computer to get for pretty much anybody, kind of like how the Mac Pro is now. But they'll just put the M4 Ultra in there and say, cool. There it is.

Jason Aten:

Do you think there'll be anything higher than the M4 Ultra?

Stephen Robles:

No. I don't think so.

Jason Aten:

Okay.

Stephen Robles:

I think I think I know there were rumors like M4 extreme, but there's been rumors of like a a more Ultra than Ultra chip since the 2 generation. I don't think I don't think so.

Jason Aten:

The M4 Ultra. The M4 Ultra Pro Plus.

Stephen Robles:

The ultream. Extra ultra. Do you think it's gonna be something more?

Jason Aten:

For ultium. Ataman. Ataman. Yeah. There you go.

Stephen Robles:

The vibrate the m 4 Vibranium. Yeah. I'd buy that. I'd buy that. Can I buy that chip?

Jason Aten:

I think I don't think they probably will. I don't think that they, I don't think that they think it's necessary. Right. Like for the, I don't think that I think apple thinks of its lineup differently than a lot of people think of its lineup. And I think they know what sells and they know what they need to do to please customers and people who are like, I want an M4.

Jason Aten:

I want the Mac pro to take external graphics card. They're like, that's just not our market. We don't care.

Stephen Robles:

Right?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Just Tim Cook's, like, buy your mom an iPhone and then buy yourself a gaming PC. It'll be fine. We don't care.

Stephen Robles:

Alright. I have 2 more, and then if you have any predictions you'd like to make. Apple, a HomePod with a screen, the thing that's been rumored for, like, 4 years. I think Gurman's saying this year, it'll come out. Are we gonna see some kind of HomePod with a screen home device?

Jason Aten:

Yes. And it will be a disappointment. Here's what I mean by that. I feel like it's getting the VisionPro treatment, which means they're doing too much with it. This I'm like, no kidding.

Jason Aten:

If they just released a speaker stand for the iPad that you can magnetically attach it to it, and then the iPad went into some kind of like home dashboard mode, that would be the killer application. And that's not what they're doing. Right? They wanna think there's this talk of a robotic arm and all these things. And it's like, I feel like they it's like they looked at the landscape of the stuff.

Jason Aten:

They're like, well, this stuff sells okay. What could we do to really juice this up? And it's like, no. What people just want is something they can stick in the, like, kitchen and set timers and look up recipes and see photos of their kids while they're doing stuff. Like, that's what people want.

Jason Aten:

Like

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. I agree. I think it's gonna some version of it is gonna come out this year. It will probably be a disappointment to many. For me, totally immersed in the Apple Smart Home, I'm hoping I don't I'm not predicting this.

Stephen Robles:

I'm hoping it comes with, like, a bunch of updates to the Apple Home thing. Like, there's still a bunch of automations that you can't do in the Apple Home app that's really annoying. Like, you can't create an automation that says, let me know when this door has been left open after a certain amount of minutes, which is ridiculous. Like, you have to do weird workarounds with push cuts and stuff like that. And multi step automations where if you want I have an automation that I I had to create it in the Eve app because Apple Home doesn't support it, But I have a Eve weather outside of the patio that can measure the temperature, and I have an Eve motion sensor out there.

Stephen Robles:

And the automation is just, if the temperature is over 78 degrees or 75 degrees and it detects motion outside, turn on the seal the fans, the patio fans. And, like, just that simple two step automation, temperature and motion, you can't do directly in the Home app. You have to, like, create it in the Eve app. Then it's available in the Apple Home app. You can literally toggle the automation on and off, but it's just very limited.

Stephen Robles:

And so I'm hoping that Apple does more with that, things like HomeKit Secure Video with 2 k and 4 k video streams, so those are higher quality, Maybe even a web view. It still drives me nuts that, like, you can log in to icloud.com, and there is literally a tab and a menu or a menu choice for HomeKit Secure Video with a little camera. It does nothing. Like, it's it's an option. It literally does nothing.

Stephen Robles:

Like, it doesn't give you any information. Like That's great. But I would I would love to be able to go there and see my recordings from all my cameras, like every other smart camera, like Arlo, like Ring, or whatever, so then you could download clips. Because downloading clips from the home app on your iOS devices is super annoying, like it's cumbersome. So I'm hoping that a bunch of home improvements, not not the show, but that there are improvements to the Apple Smart Home, alongside this HomePod with a screen or whatever.

Stephen Robles:

But I do think we'll see a HomePod with a screen, and I'm even gonna predict an updated HomePod mini. I don't know what they're gonna update it with, but it's been multiple years. Updated HomePod mini.

Jason Aten:

You know what I would rather they do? Is just sell a stand alone subwoofer for the HomePod mini.

Stephen Robles:

That would be nice. Listen, a lot of people ask for, like, the home theater setup with HomePods. I had a lot of people ask, like, when I did videos about the HomePod twos, they're like, can I buy 2 HomePod minis as surround speakers? Like, no. Mhmm.

Stephen Robles:

Why? I don't know. Apple's totally let you do that. Right. They don't let you do that.

Jason Aten:

I mean, I you could buy some more HomePods for that. I mean, you can't really do it either with that, but, like No. HomePod minis are not the best back speakers.

Stephen Robles:

No. But you can't do you can't do 4 big home.

Jason Aten:

No. I mean, like, 2 big home pods is pretty good. I understand it's probably not like a Sonos arc with a bunch of era 300 behind you or something like that. I get that. But, like, it's actually a pretty darn good setup.

Jason Aten:

But it would be nice if you could have stair you know, surround by adding 2 more. So

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Alright. So that so that would be cool. And the last question, OpenAI, I'm not sure what prediction to even ask Hardware device.

Jason Aten:

Hardware device.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, really?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Other than there's rumors that they're working on it with Jony Ive or whatever.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, that's true. Okay. So wait a minute. So they'll open a hardware device and also transition to for profit and or IPO. What do you think is gonna happen?

Stephen Robles:

The transition

Jason Aten:

to the, for profit will happen for sure.

Stephen Robles:

100%. What about public, like, IPO this year?

Jason Aten:

I think either they'll transition to for profit and they'll do an IPO immediately or or it'll take them. Like, boom, 5 ball paperwork today. Like, I don't know. I think I think that that's a possibility. I think it but I don't I don't know how much I believe that that's the case.

Jason Aten:

I I think that they would like to rake in as much money as they can. And I think that they would become much more appealing to certain types of software engineer people if they could get equity in the company that they could freely trade. So, but I think a hardware device, in the next 363 days, I think is a possibility.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. I'm gonna say no hardware device.

Jason Aten:

Okay. I'll be

Stephen Robles:

going to do that. But definitely for profit, IPO this year, I'll say. The IPO the IPO probably, like, the end of the year, like, November, December, but IPO.

Jason Aten:

Okay. Alright. Is that the I don't

Stephen Robles:

even know, like, all of this entailed with that if that's even possible. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

I mean, it's possible. You just the the the mechanics of an IPO are much less complicated than, like, your strategy and rationale for it. Right? Like, you just file paperwork. Right.

Jason Aten:

Right. Hire a hire a bank to, like, make that market for you. But, like, yeah. So Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Did you have any other predictions for next year?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. 1. IPhone gets a new form factor this year.

Stephen Robles:

So, yeah. We didn't talk about this a lot last year, but the iPhone 17 Air is the rumor. Yeah. I don't I

Jason Aten:

don't buy that, but, yeah, that's the rumor.

Stephen Robles:

I I I don't I don't know. I I wanna say no.

Jason Aten:

Okay.

Stephen Robles:

They might say it's gotten thinner, like just the iPhone overall. And maybe like the iPhone 17 non Pro models get like dramatically thinner, but also maybe give something up or don't get a feature that the Pros do. But I don't see an iPhone 17, 17 plus 17 Air, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max. That seems like a lot. Maybe new SE this year and that, you know, that could be an ultra thin model or something.

Stephen Robles:

Mhmm. Or just, you know, has a lot less features but the home button finally going I'm gonna say that I'll make this prediction. 2025. This is probably wrong. The home button goes away.

Stephen Robles:

The iPhone SE is updated with face ID and there's no more home button. Mhmm. What do you say to that?

Jason Aten:

I I don't think that will happen for one reason. Yeah. Probably. I think Apple has to keep a phone with the home button with touch ID and not face ID. I think it's an accessibility thing.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. You're probably right. Okay. They could I mean, could they would they do, like, an iPhone SE without a home button model just to have, like, a low cost face ID and then keep around the home button one as, like, some dark place on their website?

Jason Aten:

I mean, they have a low cost face ID version. It's the iPhone 14. You can still buy it on the website.

Stephen Robles:

True. How much is that? Hold on. I think

Jason Aten:

it's like 5.99 or something like that.

Stephen Robles:

Apple.com. IPhone. And let's go oh, yeah. IPhone 14. Look at that.

Jason Aten:

I told you. It's it's 5.99. I told you.

Stephen Robles:

5.99 though.

Jason Aten:

I mean, the SE is like 4 something, isn't it?

Stephen Robles:

It's 3.99.

Jason Aten:

Oh. The

Stephen Robles:

iPhone SE is 3.99, which is what what makes it

Jason Aten:

The iPhone SE though has, like, the iPhone 8 inside of it. Right? Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

It's true. Excuse me. 4.29. The iPhone SE is 429.

Jason Aten:

I think 5.99 is the right price for the iPhone 14 because it is still a fantastic device for most people.

Stephen Robles:

$200 more for an iPhone 7 16. And then you could still get the iPhone 15 as well, that's 6.99. They really they got those price tiers on top.

Jason Aten:

This is what I'm saying. So

Stephen Robles:

5.99, 6.99.

Jason Aten:

All I'm saying is the low cost face ID phone is the iPhone 14.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. If it's not low cost, it's not really

Jason Aten:

low cost. 5.99?

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. I feel like that the $400 price point, like, where the iPhone SE is right now, 4.29, that would be a low cost face ID phone, I think. Because you're still, like, $200 away from that with the iPhone 14.

Jason Aten:

But this is Apple. This is not Samsung.

Stephen Robles:

I know. I know.

Jason Aten:

OnePlus.

Stephen Robles:

You get refurbished phones for for pretty good That's

Jason Aten:

true.

Stephen Robles:

Pretty good deals too. Yeah. But anyway, alright. I don't know, I don't know what predictions to make about Microsoft or whatever else.

Jason Aten:

Oh, Microsoft and OpenAI and their deal. Oh. I I don't even know if I believe that. I'm just throwing it out there.

Stephen Robles:

No. I think it'll it'll remain a tenuous, awkward relationship. A marriage of convenience. Yeah. Just and for Microsoft out of necessity, just because they've said, our models are better.

Stephen Robles:

Whatever. You're gonna be with OpenAI.

Jason Aten:

Right. Okay.

Stephen Robles:

Let's talk about I feel like maybe we leave our travel bags for the bonus episode. Okay. So we have more to talk about. But CES starts next week. Officially, it's this anyway, I'm scheduled to get there January 4th, Saturday.

Stephen Robles:

Sunday, there's, like, CES Unveiled, which is, like, the first DISH event.

Jason Aten:

Okay.

Stephen Robles:

I think. And then we got all the CES stuff. I have no idea what to expect because it's my first one. And, like, I've I've just seen the coverage for the last 14 years. I mean, I was following it like Engadget days when, like, Nilay Patel and Joshua Topolsky were at Engadget, Joanna Stern.

Stephen Robles:

And so I was following it all the way back then. And, it's very exciting. It's I expect to see lots of gadgets and tech that never sees the light of day. It's just is in the CEO's showroom. I expect to see a lot of TVs and a lot of smart home weird things, which I'm excited about.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know, like, I'm gonna I'm gonna look to you to even know what to do, like, the, like Monday Tuesday, just walk around the show floor, like, I don't know. So I'm I'm excited, but I have no idea what to expect.

Jason Aten:

I don't think the show floor will be open until maybe Tuesday, but maybe Wednesday. I don't think that the show Oh, really? I don't think the trade show part starts until Tuesday or Wednesday. Ces.tech. We'll find out here, while we're talking.

Jason Aten:

Yes. It was 7th through 10th scheduled.

Stephen Robles:

So 7th is Tuesday.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. But I don't know when the actual, trade show floor opens. But anyway, it doesn't matter. Okay.

Stephen Robles:

But I

Jason Aten:

don't think you'll be walking around Monday is what I'm trying to say.

Stephen Robles:

But Oh, okay.

Jason Aten:

But, typically my approach is I look at some of the usually okay. When you sign up, you probably have gotten 16,000 emails saying

Stephen Robles:

I got a lot of emails.

Jason Aten:

We'd love to talk to you about this gadget that will never see the light of day unless you write

Stephen Robles:

about it.

Jason Aten:

And you're like, I don't write about things. I'm a YouTuber. So no. Anyway, you should be like, I could add it to my pile of discontinued dead AI. I just sit around my desk if you would like to do that.

Jason Aten:

But, so I usually will look and see if there's some interesting things. And then I look at some of the big stuff. Like, so for example, on Tuesday, I'm one of the first things I'm doing is going to Delta's having a keynote at the Sphere, and I really just wanna go to the Sphere. So I'm going to the Delta keynote at the Sphere, if they're celebrating their 100th birthday this year or whatever, which is weird to think that they were commercial airlines a 100 years ago. That doesn't seem possible, but it's true.

Stephen Robles:

In 1925? Yeah.

Jason Aten:

That's when Delta started.

Stephen Robles:

What? Wait a minute. Oh, I need to do a history lesson real quick. Where's, Wright Brothers launch? Wait a minute.

Stephen Robles:

That was 1903. You're telling me 22 years later, Delta had enough whatever to be a company?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, I'm not the one telling you that. I just know that they're celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. So yeah.

Stephen Robles:

What? Okay. Wow.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Air travel continued to be far from comfortable. Yeah. In the anyway.

Stephen Robles:

Delta Airlines began in 1925 when Huff DeLand Dusters Inc. Was founded in Macon, Georgia as the world's 1st aerial crop dusting company.

Jason Aten:

There you go.

Stephen Robles:

That makes sense. So crop dusting first.

Jason Aten:

Well, yeah. I mean, I imagine that if most of the airlines started as we not carrying a 100 people at a time or whatever. So anyway, so that's one thing. So including

Stephen Robles:

the first flight sorry. The first flight took off in 1929. Mhmm. It was on, I'll tell you what, let me I'll I'll include this link in the show notes. Sorry.

Stephen Robles:

I'm not nerding out about Delta's first passenger flight was June 17, 1929 aboard the Travelair s 6000 b, single engine plane with an enclosed cabin, capacity for 1 pilot and up to 5 passengers. It went from Dallas, Texas, to oh, it had to stop at Shreveport in Monroe, Louisiana, scheduled stops and then landed in Jackson, Mississippi. A 427 mile flight took 5 hours Mhmm. And included a half hour stop for lunch in Monroe.

Jason Aten:

That's amazing.

Stephen Robles:

That's amazing. Yeah. Sorry. That's super fun. Okay.

Jason Aten:

So I am the other thing I'll typically do is I'll look at the schedule and find out if there's any of the other big keynotes I wanna go to. So, like, Sony will have a big keynote, and they'll talk more about their electric car or whatever they're gonna talk about. Like, I'm this is something. I don't even know.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. The new PlayStation. You can play the new PlayStation in the electric car. It's like all this kind of stuff. Like, so and, Samsung will do the same thing.

Jason Aten:

A lot of times these companies will let you schedule booth tours. They'll they'll walk through. I don't ever do that. I wanna walk through on my own. I don't want you to know who I am or that I'm there.

Jason Aten:

I just wanna quietly walk through. And then if there was something that I'm like, that's really interesting, I should learn more about it, then maybe I will reach out and talk to someone about that. There's a lot of other interesting things that are often on the schedule. Like, I saw I've I've, the year that Apple sent their head of privacy was on a panel with Meta's head of privacy and a couple other people. Like, that kind of thing happens at CES.

Jason Aten:

So I'll I'll I'll pay attention to what's on those things. And a lot of that stuff that people will email and say, Hey, we're, this is happening, put it on your calendar kind of thing. And so I'll do that. They actually, tomorrow my plan is to go through the schedule and be like, what am I actually gonna be doing for these couple of days and figure stuff out? So, yeah, But mostly When did

Stephen Robles:

you arrive when?

Jason Aten:

I have I arrive on Tuesday, and I fly home on Friday. So

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm excited. Honestly, just to meet a bunch of people.

Stephen Robles:

For us to podcast live from the show floor. Yeah. Absolutely. And then to to meet a bunch of people. I've told most companies just, like, I'm not scheduling anything, like like you're saying, booth walk throughs or even press briefings, because I'm, like, let me just go to your booth and just see what's there.

Stephen Robles:

Like, I don't

Jason Aten:

Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know. Unless you Do you have, like

Jason Aten:

Unless you know so for this is my approach. I just wanna, like, absorb a bunch of stuff. I think of it like a funnel. I just try to get a bunch of stuff in the top of the funnel. And unless so, like, I know I'll write about whatever Delta does because it's their 20 their 100th anniversary birthday, whatever.

Jason Aten:

That's the kind of thing I know. And it's a big deal. They're having it at the sphere. I'll I'll Miami might write 1 or 2 articles out of that. So I I put things on my calendar, and I'm like, oh, like, I went I've been to the Sony keynote a couple times.

Jason Aten:

I've written about their pretend electric car a couple times. And and that that kind of stuff is is I enjoy doing that, and so I'll pay attention to that. But I think I was at I was at the Samsung keynote when they introduced the first little Bali thing, you know, like, a lot of robot thing. So I'll go to some of that stuff because it's good. But for you, if there's I would just try to absorb as many things.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Because your your motivations are different. Like but you could like, the you YouTubers are like, here's 5 things I found that you just won't believe we're at CES or, like, that kind of stuff. That's true. There's lots of crazy stuff, but you're not gonna get that by scheduling a bunch of briefings.

Jason Aten:

You're gonna get it by wandering around and being like, you seriously made this? Like, this is a real thing.

Stephen Robles:

So That's that's that's the goal. Okay. Well, I'm excited to do it.

Jason Aten:

Drink lots of water.

Stephen Robles:

Drink lots of water. Sure. I think it's gonna be cold in Vegas too.

Jason Aten:

I hope so because it makes it easier for me to pack. I put away all my summer stuff.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Right. So well, very cool. We'll be over there. Alright.

Stephen Robles:

We're gonna go talk about what's in our travel bag because I have a new travel bag I'm bringing. And, but literally my desk is covered in things. I did not plan this, but just as I've been trying to plan and finish up a couple videos before going, it's like there's stuff everywhere. Gonna talk a travel bag in our bonus episode, which if you wanna listen to that, you can go to primary tech dot f m, click bonus episodes, support the show monthly or annually. You save a little money that way.

Stephen Robles:

You get all the bonus episodes in the back catalog and an ad free version of the show, or you can support us directly in Apple Podcasts. Unfortunately, they strip out my chapters for the actual main episode. Sorry. That's just what they do. So but if you wanna do it there, you can.

Stephen Robles:

And, you list you should listen to the show front to back anyways, although the chapter artwork is is pretty fun. That's been a lot of time doing. Anyway, if you support the show, you can go to the store bonus episode about our travel bags coming up. You can leave us a 5 star rating and review an Apple Podcast or Spotify, and you can get a shout out on the next show. Welcome to 2025 with primary technology.

Stephen Robles:

Great to be here. We'll catch you next week live from the show floor.

Creators and Guests

Jason Aten
Host
Jason Aten
Contributing Editor/Tech Columnist @Inc | Get my newsletter: https://t.co/BZ5YbeSGcS | Email me: me@jasonaten.net
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Stephen Robles
Host
Stephen Robles
Making technology more useful for everyone 📺 video and podcast creator 🎼 musical theater kid at heart
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