Apple Vision Pro Reviews, iPhone Changes in the EU, Tech CEOs Get Grilled, ARC Search App
Download MP3That escalated quickly. Welcome to primary technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We have the initial Apple Pro reviews. We wanna do a cursory overview of those, plus iOS 17 dot 4 is out in beta and there's some big features there, plus Apple's DMA compliance, which that news dropped literally after we stopped recording it last week, so I wanna cover that. Plus the social media hearing with TikTok and CEOs and more.
Stephen Robles:Some Microsoft Google news, maybe some Mark Browser. We'll see. I'm one of your cohost, Steven Robles. And joining me, as always, my good friend, Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. It This was a very long week. It's but it's good. I'm glad we're together.
Stephen Robles:It's a very long week. A lot to talk about. I know I know people are also gonna write in. No. I did not get a new microphone.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I got a new cold. That's what I got this week.
Jason Aten:Much cheaper.
Stephen Robles:So if it's much cheaper but if you're wondering why I sound different it is because I have a cold. But honestly I like my voice like this. So as we record, it's Thursday morning, we release the show Thursday midday, I just got emails saying that my Apple Vision Pro has shipped, which I I mean I could track it in the UPS app, like I know it's been en route for the last couple weeks, but I have the it's arriving February 2nd emails from Apple for the Apple Vision Pro, my $200 travel case, which we're gonna talk about, and and the Belkin battery clip. All of that is arriving tomorrow, and I even I I posted this on social media. I I had a heart to heart with my UPS guy because I was like, you know, they usually they come around 1 PM in the afternoon, and I'm like, that's It's not bad.
Stephen Robles:You know, I know some people like Casey List from the ATP show. His UPS guy comes at like 7 at night which would be terrible.
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah.
Stephen Robles:You know, 1 o'clock in the it's not bad, but let me see if I can get it even earlier. So Yeah. I actually had a delivery yesterday from UPS, and I caught the guy at the door and I was like hey man, I just have a question. I said Friday's kind of a big day for me. There's some, important packages coming.
Stephen Robles:What can we do about this? So I literally have I have his he gave me his phone number.
Jason Aten:Oh, wow.
Stephen Robles:I have his phone number. I'm not Not gonna show it on there, but this is the back of the the UPS. He wrote his phone number on one of these little, like, slips and, told me, listen. Give me a call at this time, and we'll work something out. Vision set.
Stephen Robles:Did
Jason Aten:you slip him $50 or something?
Stephen Robles:No. I did not I did not give him any money or anything at the request. I might Give him a gift card or something because he is very kind to actually do anything. And, so, yeah. We'll see.
Stephen Robles:I might be able to get a little early, but it's coming. And, of course, you canceled your order.
Jason Aten:Usually, when someone says give me a call, we'll see what we can work out, though. There's usually at least something involved there.
Stephen Robles:Well, there there will be. They, you know, I didn't want it to feel like a bribe. You know, I feel like if I would've given him if I would've given him money upfront, that would've felt like a bribe. But I was like, if I
Jason Aten:I feel like if you would've If you would have given him money up front, he would have known there's no way you're getting it because he'd be, like, whatever that guy is giving me money for is probably worth a lot more off the back of my truck.
Stephen Robles:And he did, listen. We we're good at talking about the news, but this is funny. Anyway, so I like, I was trying to be vague about why I wanted it early, and he was like is it big? Like do we need help? Like what is happening?
Stephen Robles:And I was like no no, it's it's not big and so I literally did it. I told him, I was like, listen. I make videos for the Internet, and it's a thing that I'm gonna make videos about. The sooner in the day I get it, just the better it is. And he was like, Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay. That's cool. Like, I have some I have some overnight airs I have to do first, and then give me a call. So we'll see we'll see how it goes. Oh,
Jason Aten:he's like, oh, so you're one of vision. Okay. Yeah. You're waiting for that. Your time.
Stephen Robles:He was a cool guy, though, so so we'll see. But anyway, the Apple Vision for reviews, a lot of reviews came out. Actually not a lot, basically from the from the characters that you would have assumed like MKBHD, iJustine, Brian Tong, The Verge, CNET had 1, and we're gonna talk about those because there were a lot of some questions answered, like our follow-up about the battery icon in Apple Vision Pro, and, ask some more questions actually. But wanna do some 5 star review shout outs. Thank you all for your wonderful support of the show.
Stephen Robles:Every week, our audio downloads, like, increase and so we are find like, people are finding the show and it's thanks to you guys. So we appreciate keep sharing it, keep giving 5 star reviews, and those who did this past week, JVols 283, jcb56, Darth Corey, I just want you to know Jason, he said super knowledgeable co host to Jason Ayton, pointed you out personally.
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:I want you to know.
Jason Aten:Appreciate that. Okay. Thanks, mom.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. There was another one that said and that other guy is pretty good too. But, you know, this guy actually said, Chase. No. Just kidding.
Stephen Robles:And,
Jason Aten:I I get that. I actually have a name badge that says the other guy.
Stephen Robles:Did the internet edit? Okay. Yeah. Mike Eli, a 5 star review. Area vampire, but vampire with a y, so maybe it's not a real vampire.
Stephen Robles:Clclconstsdtravelandminjan17. He actually had a word for you Jason so again he's addressing you directly he was saying our full self driving car segment where we're talking about you know, the Waymo and and Tesla. He said we have to mention beta because full self driving is still in beta, which I feel like it's been beta for what, 5 years.
Jason Aten:A long time. Yep. It's gonna be there
Stephen Robles:a long time.
Jason Aten:But hold on. I just wanna say, if you say a thing will do a thing, but you say it's in beta, That doesn't negate it doesn't mean it can just do anything. If you still call it, like, full self like, if you get iOS 17.4 beta, you still expect it to be iOS. Right? You wouldn't expect it to suddenly be Windows Mobile.
Jason Aten:I'm just saying. Beta is not an excuse.
Stephen Robles:Please address your feedback to Okay. The other guy at primary tech dot f m. Alright. It's not
Jason Aten:The other guy. If you can make that an email address, I would love that.
Stephen Robles:Oh, you know, I think I will.
Jason Aten:The other guy at yeah. I want that.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Alright. So Apple Vision Pro reviews, I watched I watched them all. I watched all the videos. I read John Gruber's, in a, you know, at length review and everybody you know, it was interesting.
Stephen Robles:The first day the embargo dropped, it was Tuesday, like 9 AM, and of course everybody like initial reviews, iJustine, MKBHD. MKBHD I thought was wise, you know, he just did like an unboxing that first review day. He was like, listen, I'm just gonna unbox this thing. We're gonna see what happens. And then he did a follow-up video the next day where he really went into the experience and I feel like we've seen now a lot of footage of the experience.
Stephen Robles:MKBHD specifically showed the battery icon, which we had the question last week, how do you see the battery? And there's actually an icon for the control center. So you can see it here, there's like this little green arrow that kind of floats above a lot of the content. You have to look up at that arrow and then you pinch and you can access the control center which you can also screen record which was one of my questions and you could see, like from a lot of these YouTubers, Brian Tong also did a bunch of screen recordings. This is the persona that's also in beta.
Stephen Robles:We'll talk about that in a minute. But, so that's how you can know you can record the screen. I thought iJustine I thought they all did a great job. I thought Brian Tong's initial video actually was really good because he showed a lot of use cases like what is it really like to use this? Again, I'm getting mine tomorrow as we record so I wanna reserve like our judgments on it for them, but it does feel like, and Nilay said this too, and everybody said the Verge review was like very quote unquote negative, but I felt like this This comment was realistic, like it's a VR headset, you know, I think that's probably the most accurate take, like, you know, you've probably seen Meta Quest 3 reviews or footage, and again, the quality of the Apple Vision Pro, again all the reviewers stated that it's, you know, head and shoulders above other VR headsets as far as pass and screen quality, but when it comes to use cases like watching lots of different sports windows, like Brian Tong is here, It's a it's a VR headset for right now until we see more use cases.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. What was your impressions kind of watching these reviews come in?
Jason Aten:There is one you didn't mention that I will mention for the audience, which is Joanna Stern's review for The Wall Street Journal
Stephen Robles:Oh, yes.
Jason Aten:Which was, if you don't pay attention to her stuff, you really should. She actually had an interview this morning with, Ben Thompson And Stratechery that that that's fascinating. If if you if you're a Stratechery subscriber, you can go read it or listen to it. The thing about Joanna Stern is she's like, these look like ski goggles, so I'm going to wear them skiing. Right?
Jason Aten:Literally. And then she Literally. Yes. She did. Literally went skiing with them.
Jason Aten:And then she she did a really good job of showing what it would be like for a normal person to use these. Like, she wore them cooking, which the Crouton app was very clear you should not wear them cooking, but she did. And it's like, you could place a timer over The actual thing that you're cooking on the stove. And if you have multiple things on the stove cooking, you can put multiple timers. So she did a great I really liked hers.
Jason Aten:I just wanted to throw that out there. And for someone who's thinking, why would I want one of these? I actually would recommend her review probably over the others. I think that MKBHD, his second video, did a very good job of of walking through sort of, like, the practical pieces of The technology. Right?
Jason Aten:It's a very good overview just from a tech perspective. And I actually think that the service that The Verge's review did was It's very much more philosophical. Right? It's like, why does this thing exist? What do we what does it mean?
Jason Aten:And and they were, You know, Neil, I was very, very consistent in saying, this is the best version of this that's ever existed. The question is why does this exist? Right. And I think that's really good. So Those are the 3 that I the other ones were great too.
Jason Aten:No shade to anybody who put in an effort to put one of these together. I think that if you were If you're short on time, I would watch them in that order. I'd watch Joanna's, then I'd watch MKBHD, and then I'd watch The Verge because they those combine to give you a really good, I think Brian talks was, like, an hour and something long. So there was a very in-depth in his review as well. So that's great.
Jason Aten:But I just wanted to make sure to call that call out Joanna's because If you're wondering what it would really be like to wear this in real life or if anyone would, she wore it for basically 24 hours.
Stephen Robles:Shit. She even
Jason Aten:wore it on CNBC the next day.
Stephen Robles:I did listen. Vis I I I'm so sorry. I've I've missed forgot hers. I did watch hers because I watch pretty much any review video she does. You know, when it when it comes to Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Reviewing tech products, She really goes above and beyond to do something different.
Jason Aten:Yep. Like, she's going to
Stephen Robles:be different. I remember when the satellite SOS feature came out for the iPhone, she literally went to an island to test the SOS satellite feature. So absolutely. And I've been following Joanna Stern, Nilay Patel from, like, their old Engadget days. Like, I read them back then.
Stephen Robles:This is my next. Shout out to the OGs who know what that is and now The Verge Yep. And Joanna Stern at Wall Street Journal. But One thing I would need to ask you because you've actually tried it, Nilay in his review said that you get this vignetting around the image when you're in when you're wearing Apple Vision Pro that it's not like the field of view is not completely like your peripheral might see these vignetting around the edge. Then I had someone actually, direct message me, I believe from Apple, saying in the pass through maybe you see that but in the fully immersive, if you do the Digital Crown and fully immerse yourself in an environment, You don't get that vignetting.
Stephen Robles:Do you remember if you see this or not?
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. So that's a good question. And just Just a kind of level set. If you are watching this on YouTube and if, you can see sort of like the example of this that The Verge put in their video. If you're not, if you're just listening to it, when you To a safe place, you could go look at the video.
Jason Aten:It's like Mount Hood, and they've simulated the experience because VR is really hard to explain what you're seeing inside of a headset. Looking at what they're showing here, I don't remember anything that was, like, that dramatic, right, where it looks like you're looking through binoculars or something. Right. But I will I I think the important piece of that is when I tried this in June, it was like we went to the keynote, went to this demo. It I remember the experience.
Jason Aten:I don't remember anything about the the edge cases because I didn't get to use it for 6 days. Right? And And this is not the kind of thing I can promise you that when you first put it on, this is not what you're gonna notice. You're not going to be thinking, there's a little bit of vignetting around the edge or, my field of view is obstructed. Director because all you have to do is, like, turn your head and your field of view will will change.
Jason Aten:And so I don't remember I definitely don't remember it being that dramatic. I don't re really. It wasn't a thing that I noticed at all, But again, I wasn't picking it apart. I was just sitting there enthralled by the dinosaur that was coming into the room. So
Stephen Robles:I'm fully prepared to be enthralled by the dinosaur.
Jason Aten:Did you know that Jon Favreau made the dinosaur experience?
Stephen Robles:No.
Jason Aten:I just learned this today from that Vanity Fair article that you've shared. I read the whole thing, all 45 100 words.
Stephen Robles:Did okay. So that was the that just came out, right before we recorded. Vanity Fair has an article with Tim Cook and the first images of an Apple executive wearing Apple Vision Pro and this just just came out. Vision. I'll show, I'll show some of the images from the article and I'll put this article in the show notes as well but yeah, this this is like the first time we're seeing something like it.
Stephen Robles:Oh good this article's this one's on us apparently I can actually access this article. That's good good to know but yeah this is the article from Vanity Fair. Here's Tim Cook. If you're watching youtube.com/primarytechshow. There he is wearing the headset hiding the battery cable conspicuously, you know, as you do.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Also here, you see the battery cable in this image. This is the cover,
Jason Aten:image it seems like.
Stephen Robles:Vanity Fair. Yep. I gotta be honest, how cool or normal you might look or not wearing a headset like this. I feel like Tim Cook, obviously these are very staged photos and they probably was very careful, but He doesn't look wild wearing it. I feel like he looks pretty good.
Jason Aten:I think you're right. I think he that he was photographed well. Yes. I think the more interesting thing piece about this is, To my knowledge, this is the only press that Tim Cook has done on this. You know, oftentimes, we'll see him actually Go to join Joanna Stern and do an interview, that kind of a thing.
Jason Aten:And and, actually, it made made Jaws available for this article too. See, this is the service I provide. I Speed read this 46 100 word article as soon as I saw it so that we could actually talk about it. But I thought
Stephen Robles:That's thanks to the other guy. Okay. So all
Jason Aten:the other guys well, I mean, literally well, that's because my job all day long is to read things fast so that I can then decide what to write about. So I am very good. That is the one service that I can provide to you. Yeah. I read things fast.
Jason Aten:But, I mean, so, like, they made, Mike Rockwell, Joswiak, Tim Cook All available, not to The Verge, not to The Times, not to The Wall Street Journal, to Vanity Fair, which I think says a lot about What Apple thinks about what it needs to do to make this a, mainstream. You know, this is similar to the way they approach the watch. Yeah. Right? When it was they were going to GQ, into fashion, into that kind of thing.
Jason Aten:So I I think that was pretty interesting that that's where you first get the look is in Vanity Fair. So
Stephen Robles:Every time I was watching one of these reviews and reading an article, the analogy that just keeps coming back is the Apple Watch launch. You know, especially from the curated photos that we saw last week where Apple had these people come in, try the Vision Pro, photograph them, that they are trying to, like, insert this product into mainstream culture, not necessarily tech bubble culture. They are trying to say that this is not just for nerds or that VR is only something that you play games in. Again, seeing some of the influencers they had in those pictures and this Vanity Fair article, like, Vanity Fair. Like, this is a Yep.
Stephen Robles:I would say, a cultural affecting publication. Interesting not the New York Times, not, you know, not some of those other ones and maybe we'll see other like GQ articles, who knows, in the coming weeks. But I think it's very interesting and it keeps feeling like the Apple Watch, especially as I'm watching reviewers, MKBHD, Obviously, there's some cool use cases today like watching 5 basketball games at a time or experiencing a movie. It seems like the universal positive from all the reviews was that watching a movie in Apple Vision Pro is the best. Like Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It is probably I think it was Neil I said it. It is it's gonna be the best TV experience that most people have, and investing, like, you can buy an OLED TV today, like, 65 inches and you're gonna be approaching VisionPro cost if you buy a high end one plus audio.
Jason Aten:Yep. You You
Stephen Robles:know, if you wanna buy a Sonos Arc and a Sub, you're well over $4,000 now. So when it comes to a theater experience, a lot of them were saying like that's clear and away one of the best things to do with it today. But as I prepare to make videos about it and use it and figure out what it's for, I keep watching the app story and I'll put this link in the show notes as well. This is a directory basically, I'm not sure who has been putting it together. I think it's, okay, written by Hirshunduru, it looks like.
Stephen Robles:He's,
Jason Aten:Those guys.
Stephen Robles:These guys are putting together this website, basically curating a directory of apps that will be available for Vision Pro, and there's some great ones. Shortcut buttons, Matthew Casanelli shared this on social media, and this is gonna be one where you can actually put shortcuts in VR space or AR space around your home or wherever and run shortcuts by tapping them. I'll be a 100% trying that on day 1. There's a lot of mindfulness apps, that are gonna be available for meditation and mindfulness, putting yourself in different environments, but this website is showing all the different apps. There's a great apps, Vision, Cast Away.
Stephen Robles:I'm very curious how that's gonna work. That's from Voorhees. I believe is it is it John Voorhees' son or is it?
Jason Aten:He has a son, I think his name is Finn.
Stephen Robles:Finn Voorhees. Finn Voorhees is the developer and I know John Voorhees was like sharing these things because and Cast Away is an app where because you can't capture video directly into Apple Vision Pro, he's doing it through the iPad Airplane Apple Vision Pro, which I guess you can do? So he had, like, Nintendo basically connected that way and then playing Mario in Apple Vision Pro. I was very careful just then to say Mario and not Mario as I know it to be pronounced because I'm from New York. But anyway, I'm watching the app story, but all of these apps which all look great, I think it's still going to beg the question what is going to be the use case that I look at the Apple Vision Pro and pick it up to do something with.
Stephen Robles:You know when I think about all my devices, like I love tech just for the sake of it being technology and and what they're capable of and the techs or the specs or whatever, but when I look at my iPad, in the end I think of it as a tool. Yep. When I'm going to edit the audio version of this podcast, I reach for my iPad and Apple Pencil because it's the best tool for that job for me. When I look at my Mac Studio that is a tool for editing video and doing all the other things related to that. When I look at my iPhone, like it is also a tool, and while it's a communication device, probably primarily, I do a lot of productivity on it like I was reading articles on it last night in preparation for this show.
Stephen Robles:Yep. And so will Apple Vision Pro become a tool for some use case in the coming years. We're not gonna know it in these early weeks I think. It's gonna take some time. But that's the question I have in my mind like is it going to become a visual in the toolbox for creators or any kind of productivity for anyone where they say this task, this use case, I want to do it on Apple Vision Pro because it's the best tool for that thing as opposed to my iPad or Mac.
Stephen Robles:That's what kept coming to my mind.
Jason Aten:This is not based on my experience using it. This is based on more the reviews and just thinking about this. And, you know, we've we've learned because I think it Was The Verge that actually just flat out asked and was given an answer that VisionOS is based on iPadOS. And I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind, Really? Because when they say you're basically wearing an iPad on your face, you are.
Jason Aten:So any of the software limitations Essentially, that that are true in the iPad. Now I that I should be careful because one of the biggest limitations on the iPad is the complete essentially, the complete lack of window management, which is different on the Vision Pro. You can have lots of things and lots of places to do.
Stephen Robles:All the stage manager bros, they're coming for you.
Jason Aten:Vision. That's fine. I'm in. It's all good. But, but I think that you, yeah, you can make things work on the iPad.
Jason Aten:There are people who do that, but there are a lot of things that you can't really make work. And so I will be interested to see how that story goes. I think it's compelling. I think it would be great. But if the only way to Do what some people will consider real work is to, you know, connect your Mac book pro to it and have your Mac in it.
Jason Aten:And, I mean, they're just working on your Mac. Like, what do you like? It might be great, but it's, it's not even better than a studio display at that point because you're limited in the resolution of the screen. You can make it bigger, but if the thing that you're doing all day on your Mac I so I'm I think that that is a piece of the story that we don't know yet, and it's gonna be, I think this answers the question of why did they go to van go to Vanity Fair because all the tech people who are gonna buy one of these did not need to be convinced. They're just gonna buy one of these.
Jason Aten:It's In order for this to become Apple's next platform, it has to be more than just you and I. Not even I, but you and all the other people who one of these. It has, you know, a 180,000 units in the opening weekend is not going to be a successful platform for them. That's a I mean, that's more niche than the Apple TV. Right?
Jason Aten:If they can't sell a couple million of these a year, then it there's it you're not going to see the ecosystem developed that way. So, that's the piece I think will be really Interesting is will you be able to genuinely do real work on this for long periods of time? So
Stephen Robles:And I'm I'm obviously going to be using it a ton this coming week and so I'll save more time in the next episode where I can share my my personal experience from it. But one last thing before we move on to 17.4 and more news, the digital persona thing.
Jason Aten:So Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Everybody did this, you know, Vis, Nilay and MKBHD and Joanna Stern, they all had like a FaceTime call and they showed it, in Apple Vision Pro. This is Brian Tong's video and he actually posted a video of just the entire FaceTime call just so you could really see this at length. The process by which you create your persona is you take the Apple Vision Pro off your face, you turn it around so the outside glass is facing you and all the cameras and you smile, you turn your head, you do all this stuff, and these are the personas, if you're watching on YouTube, of what they look like. And listen, like, everyone's, like, knocking on this. This is a beta feature.
Stephen Robles:Obviously it's uncanny valley. Like, these are digital projections of human beings, but it's also not bad. Like, Brian Tong doesn't look bad in this persona thing.
Jason Aten:No. But did you see the one with Joanna Stern?
Stephen Robles:Yes. Her persona did her dirty. I will give
Jason Aten:you that.
Stephen Robles:And, like, weirdness of, like, whatever your hair and jewelry is doing like iJustine in this video. Her necklace was kind of like off to the side, like you can't change that after the fact. Right. So, yeah, however you are captured, A lot of your everything basically but just your face is kinda frozen in time from your hair to your clothing to your jewelry.
Jason Aten:And this is literally the part of VR that Really no one has figured out yet. Right? Facebook doesn't hasn't done any better. They're very cartoonish. When we did the demos, this was a part of it, but we didn't we I didn't Create a persona because it didn't matter because the person on the other end was an Apple employee, but they had a persona.
Jason Aten:So we did a FaceTime call and I could see their persona. At the time, it was because I didn't know the person and didn't know what they looked like. Their persona was great, but these are people who you can see Thousands of hours of footage of it. And so you really can tell the difference between those. And I feel like, I don't know how people will feel about vision.
Jason Aten:This, unless it gets a lot better. I mean, yeah, you mentioned Apple says this this is a feature in beta. So this is basically the full self driving of Vision Pro. Right? It's still in beta.
Stephen Robles:Nice.
Jason Aten:Let's hope that it's not gonna stay in beta for the next 7 or 8 years. I guess The hope that it gets better very quickly.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I think this feature has to exist for the very fact that they believe video calling in the workplace and FaceTiming is going to be a term feature. I mean Zoom has announced that they're gonna be there on day 1, I believe Webex also, Microsoft Teams, so they're all gonna be, like this is a needed feature because
Jason Aten:Yeah. We need to
Stephen Robles:be able to make video calls in Apple Vision Pro. So I think it's gonna be improved on as fast as Apple can, but you know, I do think it's interesting to see how much Apple Vision Pro can track because you have to remember, like, these people's actual faces are in the headset. Yeah. And any eye movement is being registered by the sensors inside the headset, and you can see there's a lot of eye movements. Like, you could see iJustine's eyes like just open wide right there and like you could see her looking at the other participants and when they bring their hands into view you're basically seeing what Apple Vision Pro is tracking.
Stephen Robles:Yep. And that's kind of impressive because you could see, you know, every finger, the details of what they're doing, so just for that alone, it's interesting to see how much Apple Vision Pro can track and and how accurate that can be, and the details in the face, like, obviously, there's also kind of, like, Vis Vaseline on the film, you know, I think on purpose. They're they don't wanna be too detailed because then it's gonna really show the the lack of, you know realism if they try to go hyper detailed. So I think this like fuzzy, you know, MKBHD and Brian Tong's hair is like blurry basically. Like, they're not it's not hyper detailed.
Stephen Robles:You know, I think it's doing what they what they need to do, but I'm curious to see what my persona's gonna look like. I'm terrified.
Jason Aten:I'm curious to see what your persona's gonna Like, we're gonna FaceTime tomorrow. I actually think to, maybe they considered this, but for some people, I wonder if they would have just rather Stick my emoji in there. Right? Like, because if it's not real, it's Right. Like, the question is, you can just do, like, basically what But what Meta did, which is you're just a cartoon avatar.
Jason Aten:Right? Good or bad. You're just but everyone's like you're a cartoon avatar. It's fine. You judge that very differently than these personas where you're Where the expectation is you're so close, which is impressive.
Stephen Robles:Impressive.
Jason Aten:But you're there's enough of a gap there that you're, like, maybe just give me the option to be my memoji because I know that that doesn't look vision. Really? It looks like what I wish I looked like, I guess. But it's it's it it would be fine because they can do the same tracking. Like, you can do the memoji thing.
Jason Aten:I think you can even do that in FaceTime right So I don't know.
Stephen Robles:You can yeah. You can. I, yeah, I would be curious if that's something you can do in Apple Vision Pro. But So Anyway, I'm getting mine tomorrow. I'm gonna be making a ton of videos about it.
Stephen Robles:So, You know, I'll link my own YouTube channel down below. Go over there.
Jason Aten:Should. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Go there and subscribe. I have lots of ideas to, to try. I don't wanna give it here on the on the show because, you know, I won't be stealing my dears, but no I'm gonna have a I have a bunch of I'm not gonna do like a review for a while. If if you see any YouTube reviewers getting this on Friday and also putting up a review video on Friday. Just know it's not a review.
Stephen Robles:That's a first impression. Let's just
Jason Aten:be real. Yeah. Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:And I might do that, but we'll but we'll see. So right as we finished recording last week, huge news dropped from Apple and, you know, Jason, he texted me and he was like
Jason Aten:I've never been more angry in my life.
Stephen Robles:Really? One of, like, a, like, huge, huge announcement. And so just real quick, you've probably seen this already on the Internet. But if this is the only tech show you listen to, which would be totally fine with us Yeah. We covered
Jason Aten:it all.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. We cover it all. These this big news, Ios 17 dot 4, the first beta and now the first public beta is released, and this is bringing sweeping changes not only to, like Apple Podcasts transcripts, which we'll talk about in a second, and some of the features you'll get as an iPhone user, but what you have heard from sideloading for years, that term, It is kind of basically almost coming to the iPhone in the EU, and so the The biggest highlights is because of the DMA which is the Digital Markets Act.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Is that
Stephen Robles:what it stands for? Yeah. Yeah. The Digital Market Act. This thank you.
Stephen Robles:This is the EU law that has been passed and is basically requiring Apple to open up the iPhone specifically to 3rd party app marketplaces, and that's the term because App Store is actually, I think, trademarked too.
Jason Aten:Trademarked. Yes. Correct.
Stephen Robles:It's like vision as see, I read I read, Jason. This is what I was doing last night Yeah. On my phone. I was reading. Okay?
Stephen Robles:I read I read John Gruber's visual word for word, which I will also link in the show notes, I highly recommend, but app third party app marketplaces will be available in the EU on the iPhone, Meaning meta or Google. You would be able to go to their website, google.com or whatever, Download an app marketplace, not individual apps. Individual apps have to be in a marketplace, that's one of the rules, but you can have a third party app marketplace on your iPhone that would allow you to download apps, say like WhatsApp or Instagram, and you would be able to download it not in Apple's App Store, although They could choose to leave it in there as well, but there would be a 3rd party app marketplace, another icon on your iPhone, this is just EU only, where you can download those apps from those third parties, quote unquote, directly. There's still a bunch of rules that these apps have to follow. They have to be notarized.
Stephen Robles:You still have to meet Apple's privacy and security stipulations, and there's different like payments, and we'll get into all the details there, but this is a huge deal in the EU. Notably, this only affects iPhone, so it's not like you can get third party app marketplaces on iPad.
Jason Aten:Right. That's correct.
Stephen Robles:That's correct. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. Also, another change, Game streaming apps, this is a global change. Xbox Cloud and the PlayStation gaming, game streaming apps, Those will be able to be native applications now on the iPhone and iPad.
Stephen Robles:That's a global change. Before, you'd have to do the weird, like, Safari thing and add it to your home screen, in order to do that, but this will be, built in, or you can get it the app directly, from the App Store, and also third party browsers, Browser engines, and so this is WebKit, which is the browser engine for Safari, had to power all the other browsers. So if you downloaded the Chrome app or the Brave or Microsoft Edge app for your iPhone, the engine that's rendering those web pages is actually the same as Safari. They all had to run WebKit. Well now, and this is going to be again just the EU, that Chrome can use their browser engine that's different than WebKit, same with Mozilla and Firefox, and those different browsing engines, will power those apps.
Stephen Robles:So for the first time, it'll actually be a different browser engine in the back end of those apps. What what what else did that I missed here. What
Jason Aten:are the big ones? Okay. Well, there's a big thing that you missed, but I do which is the core technology fee, which I wanna talk about in a second. But but the first thing I wanted to say about this is that we we called it side loading at the beginning, and I think some people are like, I don't know what that means. Some people are like, oh, I know exactly what that means.
Jason Aten:This is probably neither of those things. So sidelining loading, what most people think of is I could just go to facebook.com and download the app, Right onto my phone without having to go through an app store. That's what people genuinely or generally think of as sideloading, or I can go to Epic's website and just put for what you could do on Android. You could go to Epic's website, download Fortnite. It's a pain because you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to do it.
Jason Aten:Meaning there's a bunch of scare sheets between You visiting the website and you playing Fortnite that way. This is not bad at all. You still will only be able to get apps through what they call alternative app mark marketplaces or Apple's app store. You still have to download them that way. And Apple will still be reviewing any apps that go into those alternative app stores, Although they the DMA prohibits them from reviewing them for content.
Jason Aten:So they'll be, you know, reviewing them to make sure that there's no malware involved, that they're That they still comply with sandboxing, those different types of things. But I just wanted to, like, clarify that because I think people, if the headline is Side loading is coming to the iPhone. It's not a free for all. Right? And the other interesting restriction that Apple put on these marketplaces is you can't just have one just for your own stuff.
Jason Aten:If you're going to offer 1, you have to establish your re your app review guidelines. You have to do but like epic can't just have one for its own games. Right? Meta can't just have one where you could download WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and, threads or whatever. You they have to be open to anyone, Which leads to the other piece, which was the core technology fee.
Jason Aten:So I the first thing the first headline I saw about this after we recorded was the Mac stories article that said the the App Store commission is going away in the EU. Because if you choose to distribute apps Outside of the iOS app store, you don't pay Apple any commission on those purchases. Right? You still would pay if you pay them, if you distribute them within the app store. But that commission has gone down right from 30 15 to 2013.
Jason Aten:If you use Apple's payment method, it gets complicated. Read Gruber's article, But the you wouldn't pay any commission if you're if you're, selling apps in the outside of the App Store. But every developer who has more than a 1000000 installations of their app will now have to pay Apple Vision. A half of a euro. I don't know how to say 50¢ of a euro.
Jason Aten:Oh, that's
Stephen Robles:a good question. I don't know.
Jason Aten:A half of a euro.
Stephen Robles:That's good.
Jason Aten:Which Whatever 50¢ is in euros, that's what you would have to pay to Apple on an annual perpetual basis for each VISI installation of an app per user. So, like, if I downloaded Fortnite on my phone and I lived in the EU, Epic would have to pay Apple 50¢, 50 year half of a year, whatever. You you know what I'm talking about Right.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:For that. And then they'd have to do that every year. And then it got confusing. People were like, wait. What if, you know, I've already got it installed on my phone.
Jason Aten:Great. This you know, Spotify isn't not gonna have a problem, except it an
Stephen Robles:original installation counts,
Jason Aten:but also an Visi counts, but also an update count. So the first time you put out an update, you're gonna get charged for all of those people who already had the app on your phone. So Apple Apple knew what they were doing. Vision. The reason that I think that that is significant is that's essentially Apple's way of preventing this from actually happening.
Jason Aten:Because the amount of because here's like, I think it was I'm almost positive it was Ben Thompson on Dithering who essentially said Apple basically responded to the DMA by weaponizing free apps. Right? For for the longest time, you could put an app out on the App Store. And if that app was free, Facebook, Instagram, those apps don't cost users anything
Stephen Robles:nor do they talk to companies anything.
Jason Aten:Like Well, right.
Stephen Robles:Right. You know, they have to pay a $100 a year developer fee or whatever.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:But like it does not cost Meta anything to have their app in the App Store because it's a free download. Yeah.
Jason Aten:That's what it was. Yeah. Because you don't pay anything for that app or for a subscription. That company, that developer doesn't pay anything to Apple, but now they will. They'll have to pay.
Jason Aten:Now this doesn't you know, Apple Apple makes a big point of This only applies to essentially 1% of developers, but it's the biggest. It's the only 1% that matters for this because it's the only 1% of developers who would be capable of of putting up an alternative app marketplace. So my my take on this, I put this in my newsletter, was essentially Apple is sending a very big message. I'm not sure it's the message that they should be sending, but I think that they are essentially setting the stage Because they know that once this is available in the EU, it will be unavoidable that this will come to the US.
Stephen Robles:You think so?
Jason Aten:Right. There's no way that congress is gonna look. Absolutely. Give it a give it a year, maybe 2 at the most before because Congress already has the Open Markets Act sitting there. They just can't get it passed, but there's no way they're gonna look across at Europe and be like, oh, you guys are doing it, but we're just gonna sit here and not do anything.
Jason Aten:That's true. I I think it's pretty clear that it's coming in. Apple wants to say, okay, is, do you just Facebook, Microsoft? I mean, think about like my thing about Microsoft. How many iPhones have either Outlook or Word or some version of, a OneDrive, like Teams.
Jason Aten:Especially, Yeah. All these apps on there. So, like, these these companies do not now there's a catch, though. Right? They can avoid all of that by just saying, nah.
Jason Aten:We'll just stick with the system that's existed all along. So they get to choose, and it's only if they choose the new business terms that any of that applies. So Apple's basically saying, How badly do you want out of this system? Because we could make it worse.
Stephen Robles:Which Epic Games would be the one. I would think that would Sure. Get out of the system. Although, to you know, if you're in a third party app marketplace, you have to allow other apps into your store
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:Into your marketplace. So I'm curious, like, Would Epic be cool with that? I mean, maybe they would. Maybe they don't care.
Jason Aten:That was their whole thing. That that was actually the whole thing they wanted. There there are this is why it was ridiculous that they were suing Apple and Google. I lost to Apple and they won against Google. Whatever.
Jason Aten:What's weird about it is Fortnite doesn't care that there's a middle man. They just wanna be the middle man. Right? They just wanna be the one collecting the commission. They don't think a commission is bad.
Jason Aten:They just don't want it to be Apple collecting the commission. They want to have their own app store. What I think will be interesting, I don't know how the how the counting works, but if Epic has a app store, they have to agree to the new terms, which means they are now on the hook for vision of half of a euro per installation. But do they also have to count installations of apps sold through the App Store? I don't know.
Jason Aten:Like, that would be really interesting if that's because that would seriously disincentivize epic from wanting to offer apps in the app store that are free. Right? Right. Because you're not gonna distribute Facebook's app if you have to pay the half of your house. So I don't know.
Stephen Robles:And a couple other interesting points. This is from Gruber's article. Like I mentioned before, sandboxing of iPhone apps still stands and so privacy and security should remain, like, at the level that app store apps possibly will see, also because no private APIs will be allowed even from apps from third party marketplaces. So that means something like I always use this example, Audio Hijack which runs on the Mac has, like, greater access to your audio devices, Viz, than than just using the regular APIs that macOS provides. That's why if you install Audio Hijack, you have to, like, restart your computer and open yourself like a kernel something or other.
Stephen Robles:I don't even know the terms, but you basically have to tell the Mac like, hey hey hey, I want to, like, allow this app to do its thing. Let me do it. So a private API would be like if Audio Hijack, release an app for iPad, we'll say, and it actually gave you controls over your audio input and output devices, visions that that's not an API Apple already has and provides developers and says, like, yeah, you can use these features of the hardware in your app. A private API might be like a developer doing that without Apple directly, providing that API. In this case, with the EU laws, private APIs are still not allowed.
Stephen Robles:So even if you have a third party app marketplace with a bunch of apps that do things apps in the App Store can't do, like, there's still no private APIs allowed, so you won't get any kind of, like Right. Feature additions that you wouldn't get because It's in the App Store from Apple. Like, so no private APIs. That's hopefully, I explained that okay, but no private APIs.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Let me say let me say something about that. Think of it this way. I think the journal app is a really good example. Apple's journal app can do things that day 1 cannot do because Apple's apps have access VISU APIs that it does not make available to developers.
Jason Aten:Those are private APIs. And so you so day 1 in the EU could not decide we're gonna go to the alternative app store, and we're gonna just put our mouth on that hose of information that's is coming. Right? Those are not public APIs. Those are private APIs.
Jason Aten:So those are things that Apple, you know because Apple makes the platform. It can do certain things with what's happening on the platform that other apps cannot do. So that, I guess, is that a maybe a distinction between what a public API and a private API is?
Stephen Robles:Yep. That's good. And 2 other quick things, if you choose to put your app in a third party app marketplace, you can't go back in, like Ever. Once you're
Jason Aten:Well, you can go back in. You just can't go back to the other terms. Right. You're gonna pay the core technology fee forever. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Right. So you can't right. So I think that's just an interesting you can't yeah. And then Apple can't reject on copyright in these 3rd party app marketplaces in the EU, which means, again I'll go back to like Casey List, the ATP, he released the app Call Sheet, which the App Store review stopped him because there was like an image of Pixar movies because of course it's it's a app about movie casts and crew and whatever, but app Apple rejected it at first because it looked like copyright infringement because it was an image of a Pixar movie in the app. Well if apps go through the 3rd party app marketplace in the Europe, then you they Apple can't reject based on copyright, which means Right.
Stephen Robles:Someone could release an app that's like Tim Cook wearing funny costumes or whatever and, like, Apple can't reject because of that or Right. Or or, you know, weird whatever whatever copyright issues, that's not something Apple will be able to reject, a base. So I think that's interesting. I don't know what's
Jason Aten:going on. Apple won't be able to. In theory, if Meta puts out a store, they're going to because they don't wanna get sued by Disney or by whoever. Right? So it it isn't I don't have any I don't know anything about EU copyright law, so I'm Just I'm just saying things right now.
Jason Aten:But the important distinction is it doesn't the EU it's actually just a good example of the EU didn't really know vision, what it's doing, because, for example, why is iPadOS not affected? Is it because there's not enough iPad users? I mean, it's still it's still the exact same stuff, And it's because they were clearly targeting the iPhone. And so Apple created these guidelines to just sneak under the letter of the Exact law regardless of what they meant. And this, I think, is another example.
Jason Aten:Apple you know, the EU is saying Apple cannot reject these apps based on their content, and Copyright would be a function of content. Right. And so then the question is, like, okay. Well, I mean, you're gonna would you rather have us reject your app, or would you rather have Mickey Mouse come to your house? It's like Right.
Jason Aten:That's what's going to happen.
Stephen Robles:Disney will come for you.
Jason Aten:Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:And the other the last thing here I'll say is the big content thing is Apple not being able to reject apps based on content is like pornographic apps, like, this would allow
Jason Aten:Apple Gambling. Historically. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And gambling. Those kind of apps have not been allowed, like, this was a whole thing with Tumblr, the Tumblr app, and the App Store because there was content on Tumblr that was deemed in that category, at at least Apple put it there and they, you know, I'm not sure if they're in the App Store now or not but I know that was an issue for a while, but that would be something where in this EU law with 3rd party app marketplaces, those kinds of apps could quote unquote be installed through those marketplaces on the iPhone, and so that might be a big economy over there. We'll see we'll see. But I'm also curious.
Stephen Robles:I I don't know this. Is the UK included in this?
Jason Aten:Do we have to do geography and politics now? Okay. Do you remember Brexit?
Stephen Robles:I remember Brexit, so they're not a part of it.
Jason Aten:So no. They're not a part of the EU. It's And none of this applies. Yep. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Because there were a lot of people on social media was like, UK? I was like, I don't
Jason Aten:think so. EU. They're not part of the EU.
Stephen Robles:Okay. There you go.
Jason Aten:They've opted out of the EU's app store. They are on their own Separate political marketplace.
Stephen Robles:Core British fee. Just kidding. There you go. If you're if you're listening in the UK and and you're mad about this, let let us know.
Jason Aten:Email to the other the other guy at primary tech dot f m. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I am doing that later today.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:100%. 100%. Alright. Alright. I wanna talk about the social media hearing with the government and a little Microsoft Google news.
Stephen Robles:Before we do, just wanna let our listeners know thank you again for all those supporting the show. And we have some sponsors coming up in the coming weeks, but not on today's episode, which means it is a great opportunity for you, listener and viewer, to support the show directly. There's There's been lots of you doing it already which is amazing and we thank them. They're actually not gonna hear this because I'm gonna cut this out for those because they already support the show. So That's how the ad free version works.
Jason Aten:But we thank them. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. You can support the show. $5 a month, $50 a year, and there's been some of you doing both of those, which we really appreciate. You can support the show directly in Apple Podcasts or on Memberful.
Stephen Robles:We have a link at primarytech. Fm for bonus episodes, and you can do either one. We appreciate all the support, and if not, if you can't afford that or whatever, we hope you enjoy the show. 5 star rating and review is free to give in Apple Podcast or Spotify, and so you could do that. But now's a great opportunity to support Primary Technology, and, yeah, thank you.
Stephen Robles:Thank you for your support. Social media hearing. I saw a couple clips of this come up on TikTok, Ironically enough.
Jason Aten:Ironic because TikTok's CEO was there.
Stephen Robles:That's why. Exactly. And, like, the line of questioning. So this was a senate hearing about social media and, like, child abuse. I'll let you take the because you actually wrote about this on inc.com.
Stephen Robles:So why don't you explain What exactly what this was and takeaways?
Jason Aten:Yeah. It was so it was a senate senate hearing on on social media, and it's essentially a hearing about the harms that social media can cause. So for a long time, there have been sort of 2 intersecting avenues of this harm. 1 is, what you might expect. Social media platforms are sort of a hotbed of distribution for material that Just probably shouldn't exist on the Internet.
Jason Aten:It certainly should not be intersecting with young people. And the thing is social media networks have been terrible about How they handle young people, it's sort of like the whole cigarette thing. It's like if you could get someone hooked on cigarettes when they're 12, then they'll be a smoker for life, and that's worth a whole lot of money. But really nobody objectively would say that it's good to get 12 year olds hooked on cigarettes. In most areas, you're not allowed to be on social media till you're 13.
Jason Aten:Like, most most Social media platforms will not allow you to have an account, but all you have to do is make up a different birthday. Like, there's just so many things there. And and this hearing involves some emails, and and Meta especially where, essentially, these emails were executives at Meta saying, like, Like, well, we know that this is a problem, but they just wouldn't put the resources towards doing anything about it. And so senate the senate, because they like to haul, You know, tech CEOs before them and ask them questions that really have no answers. They did that.
Jason Aten:They did this yesterday. Linda Yecorino from x was there, although It was easy to forget she was there because nobody actually asked her questions. The CEO of of TikTok was there, and They didn't actually ask very many questions about the topic, which was presumably supposed to be about the harms to teenagers. Really, they just asked them about, like, Are you a part of the communist party? Because it's
Stephen Robles:a tech.
Jason Aten:Yes. Which is he's from Singapore. Like, it's it's ridiculous. That's the thing. And I wrote about this because The thing that's getting most of the attention is that during the hearing, one of the senators, Josh Hawley from Missouri, was grilling Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the founder of Facebook, about some of the statistics.
Jason Aten:You know, it it was something like 37% of teenagers from the age 15 to vision. There's 13 to 15 have experienced unwanted nudity on the app. And his question was not like, what are you doing about this? His question is like, who did you fire? Mark Zuckerberg is like, what?
Jason Aten:What's your question? And he's like, who did you fire? It's very Batman sort of like, who anyway, he said,
Stephen Robles:who did you fire? Who did
Jason Aten:you fire? I do
Stephen Robles:it when I'm sick. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And so then he said, have you ever even apologized to these people? You're on national TV. Do you want to? And I this this moment, you just have to think about, like, First of all, Mark Zuckerberg is not a super charismatic person. He comes across as a robot.
Jason Aten:He does not come across very empathetic, but he is very smart. And in that moment, he stood up and he turned around and he did. He apologized sort of.
Stephen Robles:He did.
Jason Aten:He didn't actually apologize for anything he had done. He apologized for what people had gone through. So It really illustrates that nobody's actually well, congress is not actually trying to solve this problem. They just want to look as though they are Trying to hold people accountable because it's good for television. It's good for creating political sound bites.
Jason Aten:But I don't give Mark you know me. I don't give Mark Zuckerberg much credit for anything other than when he was gonna take on Elon Musk in a cage fight that I would have paid to see.
Stephen Robles:I would have
Jason Aten:paid a 100%. And I'm pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg would have won. I'm willing to give him, and that was actually the highlight of his career. He's never looked more like reasonable and people were rooting for him. And I think he I think he did the absolute right thing by standing up to apologize at that moment.
Jason Aten:But I think that the entire like, nothing Will come out of the hearing yesterday, but it is helpful to know that it happened.
Stephen Robles:So Ted Cruz was asking him. He had the screenshot, and it showed, you know, this is sensitive material. Do you wanna see it? Like see anyway was like a small link at the bottom and then there's the big button of like look away and Ted Cruz is asking like why is that see anyway link there? And Mark Zuckerberg I think adeptly said like, sometimes the algorithm is wrong and that's why we put it, like we're not sure sometimes, like the algorithm is not sure.
Stephen Robles:And I I see this sometimes on Instagram where I would be going through stories and I see someone that I know well, personal friend, I know they don't post anything outlandish, and it'll be blurred out with a little eye icon saying this is hidden because this might be sensitive. Do you wanna see it? And it's like a picture of a sandwich, but maybe the algorithm thought it was, like, severed limb, I don't know, so it was you know, it'll obscure it. And I think again, Amari Zuckerberg answered honestly, I don't think he's hiding anything, but an interesting fact that came out after that was they did ask how large are the content moderation teams of these companies? And Facebook and I believe it was TikTok said about 40,000 people are basically like the cumulative number of who you know our our moderation teams and then I think there was another platform I forget who I I mean, I think it was x.
Stephen Robles:X was like, yeah. We got a couple 1,000.
Jason Aten:They do not have a couple 1,000. They have 3 people, and the only thing that they do is they take down posts That pick on Elon Musk too much. That's it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Exact exactly. So that was all good. But but to what you were saying, that apology from Mark Zuckerberg, again, Robot or not, is he an android? Who knows?
Stephen Robles:But he's smart.
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. Mark Zuckerberg is
Stephen Robles:a smart guy, and I'm sure he has read The Prince by Machiavelli and knows all the political strategies, and he did, like, he basically called the senators bluff.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You know, my my last thought is just I I wish that during these hearings, They could recruit people from the tech industry to actually ask the best questions to these CEOs. Because I mean to get the c like the meta CEO, x, TikTok, they get all these tech CEOs in the room multiple times a year, Like, last year, I know there were multiple instances. They also had, like, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella on a I don't know if it was last year or the year before. You know, they had these they had these hearings sometimes over a video or whatever and it's like I would love, honestly, like, Nilay Patel, who is a lawyer and a tech journalist to be, like, to ask some questions because I feel like they would be a Just a more knowledgeable question because these I don't think these centers understand the actual, like, technical side of some of these platforms about Say moderation or how algorithms work with that kind of stuff. So that's I wish.
Jason Aten:I I think well, I think the problem is actually bigger. Now that we're gonna strain the politics, I'll just say this. Josh Hawley is a very smart person, like, very smart. He was attorney I think he was attorney general at Missouri. He's extremely intelligent.
Jason Aten:It is not that he does not understand how this is working. It is just that his objective is not to figure that out because his question is, who did you fire? You know, you didn't do anything. And mark Zuckerberg immediately starts to try to explain, like, actually, that's why we're investing 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars in whatever, whatever, whatever. And he's like, no, who did you fire?
Jason Aten:And it's like, you're not actually interested if you, what you really wanted. This is what I wrote. If you really wanted to know what META is doing to solve this problem, you would let him answer the question. You wouldn't just keeps shouting, who did you fire?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:As if that was the only it's like the gotcha question, the asking yes or no questions that don't have yes or no answers. That's that's what Congress does. And so it's not really that surprising that that we're not actually gonna solve some of these problems because the people who are put in charge of Of making regulation or making laws. Yeah. They're really interested in making regulation and making laws if that's the thing that will help to advance their political career.
Jason Aten:It's just the televised hearings are not where that sort of thing happens. It's just about Right. Being on record saying a specific thing or yelling at a tech CEO. And listen. Like, None of the people who were there are blameless.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, they've all created these platforms that have caused real world harm to real people, and they should be held accountable. This is just not how you do that. This is just how politicians score points. I'm gonna stop ranting before I start talking about self driving cars again.
Stephen Robles:No. That's good. That's good. Vid last couple things, Microsoft and Google earnings news. Apple actually has an earnings call like as we record today, and listeners I would just be is to know.
Stephen Robles:You can comment on the YouTube video or you can reach us on all the different social media, like if you like to hear about that kind of stuff, if you're curious about like Apple's earnings calls directly, or if you just, you know, I'm just curious, if you want, but basically 2 articles will kind of share either both cover both at the same time, but Microsoft they announced a lot of their revenue and gaming is now their 3rd largest business. In case you were curious, the biggest business are like cloud services and Office, I think, or the those are 12. Right? Those are the top
Jason Aten:2. Well, they're they're Windows. They it's weird how Microsoft does it. If you actually look at their earnings report, It's, like, broken into a 137 categories, and so it's actually kind of confusing to, like, exactly know what's going on. What was the news that was interesting is because of their acquisition of Activision Blizzard that their largest, like, gaming, right, is, like, becoming one of their largest businesses because It's it's like they're absorbing all of that revenue that's produced by the company that they bought.
Jason Aten:And so it's like Microsoft, we yeah. They make Xbox. Like, are in the gaming thing, but it's becoming an even bigger part of their business, so.
Stephen Robles:Right, exactly. So that's, that was interesting. It is office and cloud revenue are the top 2, and cloud like Microsoft Azure, I remember that they, like, sponsored the Daring Fireball talk show when it was at WWDC several years, like, Azure is like a huge, supporter of or provider of cloud services even for like iOS app developers. So Yep. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yep. That's a huge business. But also Alphabet reported on their revenue, and I think some of the interesting takeaways is that they spent $2,100,000,000 last year on severance for layoffs that happened during the year, which is a lot of money to fire a lot of people. But I assume that means
Jason Aten:that Well, they laid off yeah. They so they laid off 12,000 people last January. Right? They announced it. It was a big, huge It was while everybody was laying people off, basically.
Jason Aten:And and it was interesting because in December, the CEO, Sundar Pichai, said vision. That that lay that round of layoffs was actually one of the most difficult periods of that that company, which is saying a lot. I mean, Google's been around for, what, 25 years? They it's like That round of layoffs, he's saying, is one of the biggest challenges that they've been through. And I have I've written about this several times, and I've heard from people at Google who have said To me directly, the the last year of working at Google has been one of the most difficult in terms of its culture and the way people feel about working there.
Jason Aten:The other interesting thing about their earnings is that they're still making a ton of money. Right? Google is doing just fine. But but the what happened is that Google's ads, you know, search ad business and its YouTube ad business didn't do quite as well as people thought that they were going to do. And so apparently that Bad bad news even though it's like you're making as much or more money than you've ever made, but you didn't make quite enough.
Stephen Robles:Vision. And when I also I feel like once the severance packages pass or whatever, that's gonna be a couple $1,000,000,000 that not going out Plus all the salaries that they were paying, for those people. But, yeah, the YouTube ad revenue is interesting, especially me doing YouTube and Yeah. Being a part of that community. The expected was 9,211,000,000.
Stephen Robles:Still made 9,200,000,000. So it's just the point one, which is, I guess, 10 $1,000,000? $10,000,000.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, you're right. It's it's not that they yeah. People who care about stock prices, right, analysts, What they wanna see is that you beat it by 10,000,000, not that you were like, they just want you to be exceeding expectations because that shows that you're That you're moving in the right direction. So the but the bottom line is, like, Microsoft is now the largest tech company.
Jason Aten:And what's the largest company in the world? They've surpassed, like, Apple for real at the moment. That that probably continue going back and forth. But, again, we I think we talked about this. It's entirely because of their AI play.
Stephen Robles:Right. Well, again, let me know if if you want to hear more about earnings and stuff and especially like Apple's earnings. Let us know. If there's any, you know, any interesting tidbits that come from the earnings calls which there rarely is, you know which is something like I used to listen and wait to see like does Tim Cook or whoever say anything interesting on these calls aside from numbers. Not real I mean, they're not gonna give away any kind of, like, product news.
Stephen Robles:You know what I mean? Like, does not.
Jason Aten:No. The only reason it's interesting is that this is the quarter that they report. This is their Q1 earnings report, which is actually the last 3 months of the year. Right. And so they're gonna report their holiday sales.
Jason Aten:So it is a big deal. Like, it this is the if you were ever going to care, this is the one to care to. They'll actually Have a call later today that I will be listening to, and I'll write about it. You can just read it. Like, just follow me on something and just read it.
Jason Aten:And, then let us know if you think there's anything worth talking about there.
Stephen Robles:That's a great plan. Read what Jason writes at the other guy.
Jason Aten:Always.
Stephen Robles:At no. Yes. Always. Absolutely. And we're I actually have a link that I save, which just goes to all the articles that Jason writes.
Stephen Robles:I'll put that link in the show notes at the very top.
Jason Aten:That's amazing.
Stephen Robles:So you can just see oh, just stay up to date right there.
Jason Aten:I appreciate that.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I'm gonna say I wanna move our personal tech to the bonus episode for our
Jason Aten:Perfect.
Stephen Robles:Paid supporters which is going to be the quote unquote best or most influential Mac software. And this is because I listened to the upgrade episode where they had like John Gruber and John Siracusa and Stephen Hackett, they're all talking about Mac and Jason was right, it's a great episode.
Jason Aten:It really is.
Stephen Robles:I hope my one of my goals is that when the iPad hits 10 or 20 Well, no. 20 years, it would be, that I would be on something like that. I would, like that sounds like a fun episode. Or we will do that. We will host.
Stephen Robles:I mean, there
Jason Aten:is a way you can be on that. You have a podcast.
Stephen Robles:I want some of these guys, though. I want some of these guys to to to be on it, but we'll see. Yeah. We were we were right to, the talk show in the Apple podcast top chart last week.
Jason Aten:That's amazing.
Stephen Robles:I I was, like,
Jason Aten:maybe Thank you, friends.
Stephen Robles:John Gruber will be on the show sometime.
Jason Aten:But the iPad, I mean, we could invite Federico Vatici. There's quite a few people
Stephen Robles:on YouTube?
Jason Aten:Yep. And there's, the one guy from
Stephen Robles:Fernando Silva?
Jason Aten:There's Fernando Silva. Yes. That is who I was gonna talk about, but I really felt bad saying there's that one guy. I'm the other guy, and then there's the
Stephen Robles:one guy. The other guy. That one is not perfect. Fernando is a good friend of mine. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:That would be good. Yeah. We'll do an That'd be well, that's a couple years away because iPad came out 2011.
Jason Aten:I think that sounds about right.
Stephen Robles:Like, 2011. So we're like we just passed the 10 year. Anyway, We'll figure
Jason Aten:that out. 15. We could do
Stephen Robles:15 years. We'll do 15 years. 15 years sounds good. So we're gonna talk about, you know, favorite most influential Mac software, but before we go, I do wanna just touch on this Arc Browser thing because this is something like you know, it it floods social media. Everybody's like posting screenshots of themselves using Arc Browser, and I personally don't Typically do any kind of third party browser thing on my iPhone or iPad.
Stephen Robles:1, because I knew the browser engine is exactly the same. You know, if you try to use Chrome, you know, like I talked about before. But this ARC thing is a little different where so I did a search, so you download it's a free app, you can just try it. You download it and you do a search, and the first time I did it, it just showed me, like, Google results, and I was like, well, why would I do this? I didn't realize you have to Tap the browse for
Jason Aten:me option. Yep.
Stephen Robles:So I searched for a thing, I did the browse for me, and basically what it does, it uses AI, I assume, some kind of large language model on the back end to basically create this like mini webpage for you and pulls information from lots of different sources and will link YouTube, the sources they're talking about, and tries to answer your question or find the information you're looking for in a like visually appealing and easy to parse way. Yep. And me and my kids were talking yesterday about the difference between fur and hair in mammals, and is there a difference? Vision. Listen.
Stephen Robles:It's you know, it's kind of conversations I have with my kids in the car on the way home, and I searched once I got home Just on Google, the difference. And you know, lots of articles pull up, Google tries to surface, like, the top thing, and I was like, alright, I saw this Arc vi search app everywhere, let me try it. And so I tried it, and it actually provided a really helpful, like, little page of information saying, basically, on a Molecular level, they're exactly the same. Hair and fur is like a protein and it's like it's the same thing whether it's human hair or animal fur or whatever. But colloquially, we say fur for animals and hair for humans and that's it.
Stephen Robles:And and, you know, it but it provided it in a, like, A really nice way to quickly see, like, what what is the answer to this possibly that's not, like, a difficult question, but it was hard to find a good answer on Google.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:And so what? I think it's interesting and also shows what Google might be heading towards because Google has talked about their AI quote like search results and what will appear at the top of search results in Google, so it was interesting. I did find it useful. I'll probably not use this very often, but I'm gonna keep it on my phone. Did you try it?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I mean, I did the thing that is I didn't search for hair and For that was not a conversation that we had. I did the more logical thing that any human would do with this as I just typed in my own name. It's not like Oh. And and said, browse for me.
Jason Aten:And and and I was actually really you know, if you ask chat g p t to write your bio and you have some amount of stuff stuff on the Internet. It will find that stuff, and it'll try to write a bio. But it was, like, completely wrong. I was born in the hills of West Virginia, spent years, and, you know, like, I'm which is it's not true. So it It just makes things up if it doesn't find the answer.
Jason Aten:This, on the other hand, was really, really interesting. Like, it did a, like, it did a good job of of Summarizing those types of things that found stuff that I wouldn't have normally thought. And I thought, well, this is a good research tool. And so I just started typing in, like, names of people that I either had interviews with or people that I was gonna be having a meeting with or that kind of thing. And I'm and it was actually really useful for that.
Jason Aten:The piece that I feel like is missing, and I don't know that this capability has necessarily come because there is a browser available for the Mac, the Arc browser. I believe that that's true. I don't know that this is part of that, but if it was, I wouldn't use it as my main browser. But an App on my Mac where I could do that and just have, like, the little window open on the side if I'm having a a conversation with somebody. I would a 100% do that.
Jason Aten:I would much rather that something like this be built into, like, Notion, which is where I'm already doing all that kind of stuff. But it it does a really good job of Finding information, and then it tells you where it got the information so that you know, and you can find more information. But I I I don't know that I will use it As it it would definitely not be my regular way of searching things, but I think that if I go to a Google search and I'm like, just summarize this for me. This this would be a good way to do that. So
Stephen Robles:I did I did search for myself as you
Jason Aten:Which you should do.
Stephen Robles:Which you should do. And you know it's it's pretty accurate. You know it pulls my profile photo from different websites and such. And it talks about, you know, I make podcasts on YouTube, you know, it says Riverside. Fm which is accurate.
Stephen Robles:Primary Technology is not listed, so Arc, Can we update the servers, please? And, yeah, even okay. Yeah. And it has my website, like, my a link to my x account and YouTube channel and all that kind of stuff. So it did did a pretty good job.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So, apparently it says It thinks that Apple Insider, I led IT initiatives, which is not accurate. But
Jason Aten:And it's interesting because I looked you up just now. I thought, who am I talking to?
Stephen Robles:The other We
Jason Aten:are the so it does say host the Apple Insider podcast, which is no longer true, and other tech related It should say other tech related shows with the other guy. Right? Where there's just a lot of others. Yeah. But it does I mean, nickname known as the bearded teacher in some online profiles.
Jason Aten:That's what it says. So it's interesting what it pulls up. So it seems to be doing real time searches. Like, it does It does not just have profiles on us. Right?
Jason Aten:Every time you search something, it is going through and creating this little it's like a dossier. I feel very, like, I'm, You know, having this little yeah. It's it's great.
Stephen Robles:Wow. Yeah. An AI generated dossier. Maybe that's the show title at the
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. There you go. It's a
Stephen Robles:little long, but AI dossier, maybe. That's it. That's all. Let us know listen if you were using that. And, again, if you haven't, give us a 5 star rating and and review in Apple Podcasts.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna go record a bonus episode, which if you'd like to hear that, support the show directly in Apple Podcasts or at memberfullprimarytech.fm. You can sign up there monthly or annually, but if you can't do that, 5 star review and rating is wonderful. And let us know if you wanna hear more about Apple earnings or any feedback from the show, you can contact Jason and I. Both are social media handles from all basically everywhere like threads, Mastodon, psalon x. You can check all of that in the show notes and links Everything we talked about are down in the show notes as well.
Stephen Robles:We need to talk about Apple Podcast transcripts, but maybe we'll talk about later. We'll talk we'll talk on it, so because that's a big deal. But anyway, thanks for listening. We'll catch you.
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