Primary Technology

Stephen Robles (00:00)
Was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for personal financial gain? Perhaps. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Big news this week, Apple released a new app called Invites and Jason doesn't know why they did it. So we're going to discuss that. Sonos may be releasing a stream box this year amidst other layoffs. Google also has layoffs coming. ChatGPT Search is now free. You don't even have to sign in. And the first explicit app is now in the app store, at least in the EU. And there's a bunch of controversy around that.

Plus we're gonna talk about big game streaming in our personal tech segment and I got some questions for Jason. This episode is brought to you by One Password and you, the members who support us directly, I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and Jason is here with Ethernet now in his hut or shed or whatever you call it. Hey Jason. How's it going?

Jason Aten (00:44)
It's good. I had ethernet before just to be clear. just, you know, cut the cable. You cut the, we did a whole, we did a whole segment on the underwater cables being cut. This was just really cold weather and I just cut it in a door. So now that's right. Now my cable's not running across the floor. It actually has a proper Jack in the wall and it's like, I feel so accomplished.

Stephen Robles (01:04)
That's amazing. Now I did a quote from a movie to start the show. I've never seen this movie, but it has to do with something we're talking about in the show. Do you have any wild guesses where that quote's from?

Jason Aten (01:15)
Well, it talked about time travel, exploiting the knowledge of the future. So I start thinking about time travel in movies. And the only one that relates to things we're gonna talk about today is the John Cusack movie, what's it called? Hot Tub Time Machine. Just explained it to you. I just used my O-1 reasoning model in my brain and I even gave you the chain of thought right there.

Stephen Robles (01:30)
How do you do this?

Honestly, that is, have you seen that movie?

Jason Aten (01:42)
It's actually a funny movie. There's like three of them, aren't there? I'm pretty sure there's more than one. I went to college. I watched a lot of movies.

Stephen Robles (01:47)
Anyway, yeah.

Fair enough. I'm consistently impressed that you can guess these movies. Yes, it was from Hots of Time Machine.

Jason Aten (01:57)
It's

almost like I should be on your movie podcast. It's true, I have been on your podcast.

Stephen Robles (01:59)
You were you were

We'll argue about wicked but I do that because the app that's in the EU app store now the first explicit app that Apple Approved at least that's what hot tub will have you believe the name of the app is hot tub. So that's why it was related

Jason Aten (02:14)
That's the only reason I got it because I'm thinking it's about time travel in one of the things that run down is hot. So I use my contextual clues.

Stephen Robles (02:21)
That's

what they teach you in the SATs, you know what mean? Use the CONTRACLUS. Reading Comprehensible.

Jason Aten (02:25)
It's

a real long time since I took the SATs.

Stephen Robles (02:30)
It's very

true. All right. We have a five star review. Shout out. Forgive me. This is not how you pronounce your last name, but I think it's Ed zucchini. That's It seems like exactly how it's spelled. So that's not what it is, but it's a five star review. says we're an informative, fun and enjoy the banter and opinions on the show. And then he just got on my bad side by saying percentage on and then non dominant front pocket for his phone. For the five star rating, leave his five star rating review. Our new goal, 305 star ratings. We're like 25 or 30 away. So

If you would leave us a five star rating review on Apple podcasts and we'll give you a shout out on the show. And last week, last two weeks, we talked about old tech. If you have your old tech and send us pictures of it and a bunch of you did, which is super fun. So I wanted to show off old tech. This is rhymes with stolen on blue sky. And this appears to be a MacBook. Is that a G three?

Jason Aten (03:21)
Oh

man, is that a Macbook or is that old Powerbook?

Stephen Robles (03:25)
It said Mac, but it said MacBook like right here. could see it on the, on the screen. So this is an old style MacBook. I'll make this the chapter art so you can see it. This is a look at all the ports on this thing.

Jason Aten (03:35)
There's Firewire 400 on there. Yep.

Stephen Robles (03:38)
You got fire wire?

It has an S-Video port! And, and a VGA! What the

Jason Aten (03:48)
And a RJ, whatever that is, 45. A telephone. Exactly.

Stephen Robles (03:53)
Ethernet and telephone jack as a speaker headphone jack and a microphone headphone jack. This is what I want to see on the M5 MacBook Pros right here.

Jason Aten (04:02)
It's a phone jack and an ethernet port. That is just bananas.

Stephen Robles (04:05)
Amazing.

That's amazing. it doesn't look, is that Apple logo on the bottom as well as the top?

the box with the feet, you know what I mean? And then Apple logo on top and Apple logo on the lid inside.

Jason Aten (04:19)
They've gotten really stingy with those Apple logos.

Stephen Robles (04:22)
They don't even glow anymore. That's it. Well, that's amazing. So we'll put that as a chapter art so you can see that that's rhymes and stolen on blue sky. And then this is from Ryan via email, still rocking the 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt display as his primary. And then the 27 inch Apple cinema display vertically and a USB Apple keyboard hiding under the desk. But those, those displays have been around for a long time, Jason.

Jason Aten (04:47)
Aside from the fact that they're not retina, they're still killer displays to be honest with you. I have a 20 inch cinema display. I keep meaning to bring all this stuff up here so we may have to do this one more week because I meant to bring up the old Apple TV, the 20 inch cinema display, bunch of the old stuff that I still have. All of it still works, I just don't, I'm not using it obviously. Other than the fact that they're not retina, those are actually really, really good displays.

Stephen Robles (05:07)
I mean, these displays look good.

That's really good. So there's that. And then finally, Chris Peck in our community commented, this is an old Mac cube, which now serves as a stand for his old i7 Mac mini. He's got an old Mac on an old Mac, old Macs all the way down. So there you go. All right. Keep sending us your stuff. This is really fun. So you can email us podcast at primarytech.fm, comment on the episode. I'll actually start linking our community episode post in the show notes.

So if you want to join the community and comment on the actual episode post, it'd be great to keep it all in one place. We can have a whole thread of old tech pictures. I'll put that link in the podcast show notes. So it's just be easier to find, but super fun seeing everybody's old tech. And we got to get into the Apple invites app because Jason and I are about to argue about it. But I just have to say I finished silo season two. It was very good. That was very good. Maddening ending, of course. I mean, basically a cliffhanger, no spoilers.

Jason Aten (06:05)
Intense.

Stephen Robles (06:10)
but it was very good. That was, it was a good season.

Jason Aten (06:13)
You should all be watching. I'll be watching Silo. And Steven, yesterday, in honor of the post, the text you sent me that you finished Silo, season two, I started Severance season one. I'm almost through the first episode, I can't, unless I'm traveling, there's no time when I can sit down and watch a 45 minute show. But I don't think that if I had watched this without a recommendation that I would keep going, because I just have no idea what's

Stephen Robles (06:25)
did you want to present

Just you have to watch it. So there's three episodes of the second season at night. You have to watch the first three cause it gets.

Jason Aten (06:48)
But I gotta watch the whole first season first is what I'm saying. I never watched several. you season one. Yeah, so I watched the first episode and I have no idea what's happening. I'm like, all right, everyone likes this, so I'm gonna keep going.

Stephen Robles (06:51)
you- you never saw-

hour

through, by the end of the first season it will

Jason Aten (07:05)
blow

your mind. I'm just expecting to happen based on silo. This is a minor spoiler from the beginning of season one. But if you haven't watched that yet, what I'm expecting is that none of the people who are in episode one will be in episode two, because that seems to be what Apple decides to do, because that's what happened in silo. None of the main characters are in episode one and all the people you think the show is going to be about are gone by the end of the first episode. It's like, what is what's happening?

Stephen Robles (07:28)
That was kind of true. Yeah. There was a big like all the advertising for the first season of silo was people who are not in the show anymore. Anyway, Apple released a new app earlier this week after a bunch of rumors, code name confetti app. Apple invites is now live on the app store. It's a free first party app specifically for creating, organizing, and inviting people for events. And so it has a bunch of interesting features, you know? So the first thing is this is an iCloud

plus a feature basically, because in order to create events and actually invite people, you have to have an iCloud plus subscription. So you can join events and RSVP even without an Apple ID or iCloud plus subscription. But if you want to create the events, you have to have iCloud plus. So any of the levels of iCloud plus for that 99 cents and up. So this app is pretty cool. So you can,

You title it, you have a date and time. can put it in a location for event. And even it will automatically pull the weather, which then you can't remove from it, but it'll pull the weather for the event for that date and time. And then you can send out invites and people can RSVP. You can also do pretty cool things like create a shared photo album when you create an event and even a playlist, an Apple music playlist that then invite people who are invited in RSVP can contribute to that shared album.

and also access the music playlist for that event. They do have to have an Apple music subscription to listen to the playlist, but they can at least access it. Now there was a, it's, know, then you can send notes and updates for the events. And I actually did a test where I created an event for like a shortcut stream. And I put the public link in my video description. Cause I was like, what is the maximum amount of people that can respond to an invite? And very quickly it started crashing for people.

It turns out 100 guests is the max. And after that, it shuts down. So I actually have the event. There's a hundred people listed and it's like 58 going 30, maybe some said no. I'm like, I don't even know why you RSVP to this to just say no. anyway, so once a hundred people have RSVP'd the event closes and it doesn't give an error. Like this event has been maxed out. It just says error.

So you just get an error when someone tries to RSVP that which is not a great experience. So a hundred guests maximum. And also there was a lot of question. Me and Jason Snell actually went back and forth on mastodon because he felt like the only way you could respond on a Mac is if you have an Apple ID, an Apple account. And there's apparently a very weird behavior where if you want to respond to an invite that someone sends you from the new Apple invites app, you can respond with just an email.

which is why if you have an Android phone or if you're just a Windows and Android user, you can respond in RSVP to events. It'll do it through your email. You basically put your email in, you'll get emails when there's changes to the events, like hosts can add notes. But apparently if your email is a part of Apple's, like Apple ID database, it then forces you to use the app, which is a really weird behavior. And so Jason Snow, we kept going back and forth. He was like,

You have to have an Apple ID to RSVP. And I was like, no, you're not. don't know. don't. Here's a two screenshots of me doing it with two different email addresses. kept going back and forth. And apparently if it's an Apple ID associated email address, they make you do the app thing, which is kind of silly, or at least log in with your Apple ID. So that's unfortunate, weird behavior. And it's also unfortunate that this is iPhone only. And we're going to talk about several apps that Apple has released recently. That is that, but what, what, what problem do you have with this app, Jason, because you're very worked up about it.

Jason Aten (11:19)
I don't

know if I'm worked up about it. I tried to get worked up about it and I just couldn't because I don't understand. Like I don't know. My job is when I see things like this. I mean, I think it's very well done, although it does kind of look weird. Like even though I listen anytime that you have to go to iCloud.com for something, it's a weird experience because that is such a weird website. Maybe it's because we're used to like,

comparable Google experiences or Microsoft experiences where there's just about a trillion features happening all at the same time and everything's interconnected and you go to iCloud.com and you're just like, is there anybody here? Hello? Like, does anyone know that this still exists? It's just very sparse. And so to incorporate it into that kind of feels weird. I understand like if you don't have an iPhone or you don't have an iCloud account, then you have to like do that. This does sort of feel like a...

an Apple sanction pyramid scheme because everything in here is like oh wait your friend doesn't have iCloud account so they can't do this oh they're gonna have to sign up for Apple music to listen to the playlist oh there we're gonna make a shared plate you know photo album but you gotta have an iCloud shared photos or whatever like that it's like they're just trying to get you to evangelize all of your friends by inviting them to like a barbecue or something like that it's like it's like we're selling uh what is like that like the berry juices or something like that where it's like literally you just have to like keep the money your friends to do more

So I don't know, but I genuinely try to figure out like, why does this exist? Why is this a feature that Apple decided to make out of all of the things we would like Apple to do? I don't think on anybody's bingo card was let me invite people to a barbecue because you know what works really well for doing that? Like group text messages.

Stephen Robles (12:57)
It does seem like a lot of people had the argument, why wasn't this just built into the calendar as a feature? Which reasonable, you know, this is a feature that Fantastical has where you can, you know, offer availability and schedules, things like this. But yes, this also just kind of as a straight up like calendar invite. Like you could do that too. You don't have the shared photo album and playlist thing or whatever. But maybe it's a Trojan horse for Apple intelligence because you can create the image playgrounds as the backgrounds.

for your events like I'm showing here. No, probably not. But you can do that.

Jason Aten (13:30)
That's actually not, I mean, that's the thread I kept trying to pull on is how does this benefit Apple intelligence? And I'm like, well, maybe they need more personalized data because they don't want to make it so that you can expose like third party apps. mean, they've talked about the App Intense thing that's supposed to be coming, but even that I'm like, I still don't get it. This is a very long game that they're playing with this app. And then maybe it's just like clips. It's like somebody had an idea and you're like, whatever, you've got something. You got some 20 % time, go ahead and work on this thing.

Stephen Robles (13:59)
We're going talk about clips in a second because that's one of the many apps that Apple has forgotten about. But anyway, I do think I went to my, my daughter was invited to a birthday party recently and the family used a service to organize the information. I forgot what it was called. I'm trying to look for the link here, but it was basically like a web app that has all the information. here's what it was. It was called part of full.com. Have you heard this?

Jason Aten (14:27)
Never.

Stephen Robles (14:29)
So this is like, guess a service where you can do exactly what Apple invites is doing. I had not heard about it until this birthday party, but it's basically an app that you can download, create an event, and then you can invite people and then you can add the location for the events and all that kind of stuff. Now, there's this, you have event, right? You have Facebook events. And I will say most of the apps and services to do this kind of thing.

planning an event that you might be inviting people not directly in your contacts. There's a lot of options. I think they're all kind of mediocre and stink and they're all kind of cumbersome to actually create an event and use. And so the one pain point I think this does solve is making it easy to create and host the event. Like you have enough options in Apple invites, allowing people to mark a plus one or a plus five. If they can, you know, bring someone to the event.

adding the location easily, getting directions. And again, it all works better if you just have the app on your iPhone. But I do think it makes it easier and streamlines that process. You can also add notes. And when you add a note to an event, people who have the app get a notification. People who signed up with just an email address, like an Android user, they would get an email that there's an update for the event and you can send that out. Rather than having to manage like a group text, that might be a combination of SMS and iMessage.

Or trying to do a Facebook event, which I don't want to go to Facebook for anything. And I think that gets convoluted. So I do feel like there's a place for a good event organizing app and maybe Apple did it. I don't know that that's, that's how I feel. It's for moms, like moms, like birthday parties, maybe field trips, that kind of stuff.

Jason Aten (16:17)
Okay, what do you think there's a higher demand for in the Apple ecosystem? This app or a good mesh Wi-Fi app or router?

Stephen Robles (16:28)
I understand like more people would probably buy the wifi router than this app.

Jason Aten (16:34)
I just think the number of things that were like, why hasn't Apple done this yet? And then they're like, here's Calendly, but prettier because it has image playgrounds or whatever. Again, I think it's well done. I played around with it. I think that of the options that exist. So this is probably the problem. One, I'm just not the, I just don't like people enough to want to invite them to things. So that's probably one of the problems. The second problem is that I just don't fully understand the problem that's trying to be solved.

by this and maybe there is a very real problem. in our lifetime we've never used any service to invite people to our kids birthday parties. We literally just send them a text message. I mean there was a time when they were really little that we made fancy cards and we sent them to people, know, because whatever, they're like babies. But now it's just like, hey tomorrow we're gonna get together for this kid's birthday, do you wanna come? Like literally that's how it works.

Stephen Robles (17:25)
I mean, I do think there are times like I think of kids field trips, those kinds of things that you do need a more organized system than just a group text because there's more information a part of that. And so I think there could be a place for it, but I don't know. I also think it was funny at the bottom of the newsroom, Apple news article were announced to Apple invites. It talks about additional iCloud plus premium features and

You probably know these already expanded storage, like be able to save your photos, private relay as a feature, hide my email. And I just want to point out. Apple does still remember that HomeKit exists because it's in this newsroom article as a benefit for iCloud plus because HomeKit secure videos here and it allows you to capture and review home security footage in an end to end encrypted format. Now in a second, we're to talk about all the apps that Apple's forgotten about. And one of the things that also forgot about is that HomeKit secure video is still 1080p maximum.

Also, they never added controls for pan and tilt cameras. So I have several cameras like my Akara E1, I have a Toppo 2K that if I want to pan and tilt I have to go to those apps because HomeKit just doesn't support those actions. And 1080p maximum.

Jason Aten (18:42)
And it's been years two questions. The first question is do you think that they remember it exists or do think this is just a text expander snippet that they put at the bottom of pressure releases like this because I think it's probably the latter second question Are you familiar with working genius like the it's like a one of those profile things where you can like find out This is the where your working genius is it's the things that give you energy when you work and then you have like a working I don't remember what it's like

Challenge or I can't remember what the one more but it's like the thing that exhausts you and though there's one of them called tenacity and Tenacity is like the ability to see something through to the end, right? So you start a project that's like you're you're good at ideation or you're good at whatever and tenacity is the ability to and Apple For things like this has zero tenacity. It's like here's a great idea Let's put it out into the world if they're not quite like Google where Google will just ceremonially kill things off right Apple just

puts them out there and then if there's not enough energy out there in the world to sustain it, they just quietly reassign the people working on it to other projects and then they just keep existing. And that is definitely HomeKit Secure Video and a bunch of other stuff.

Stephen Robles (19:46)
Well, and HomeKit Secure Video is even more maddening because if you log into iCloud.com, Apple Invites now has a nice little new app icon and you can do that in the iCloud website. But HomeKit Secure Video is in a menu drop down, but does nothing when you click it. And it's so annoying because I would love to just be able to access my recordings from the web so I can download them easily because downloading them in the app is super annoying. But speaking of apps that Apple may have forgotten about and Sean Plattgis pointed this out on Mastodon.

You know, journal app that is still iPhone only and we're in its second year of existence. Sports app was launched iPhone only has not changed clips. I mean, I think it's just been forgotten about, but that was iPhone only as well. Why, why Jason? Like one of the things, and this, this was a going on social too is like Apple talks so much during like dub dub and to developers about like developing with Swift and how you can write once and

deliver everywhere like you can create an app that runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac and because of all the, you know, reformatting UI, it just works. Apple's Tagglehead just works. Why are there first party apps? iPhone only. There's no Mac journal app. There's no iPad journal app. And it's like, what's the deal?

Jason Aten (21:04)
Yeah,

there definitely should be a journal app on the Mac. That doesn't make any sense. I don't know about the iPad, whatever. that, I don't think you can get too worked up about. I don't think you can get that worked up about the journal app not being on the iPad, but it is sort of ridiculous that it's not available on the Mac. Now.

Stephen Robles (21:08)
and iPad.

Even

if the journal UI was just still like this tall skinny list of your entries and you just move the gradient like put more gradient on either side at least that yeah, it's in the native app

Jason Aten (21:27)
But I think they know like, when are you likely to make a quick entry and take a photo of a thing that's happening? It's probably on your phone. And if you're do a longer thing, you're probably gonna do it on your mic. The Clips app, I kind of understand why it's only on the iPhone because like, that's what it's intended for. They're trying to fill a void on the iPhone. To that extent, I kind of get why the Invites app is like, you can access it on a computer, but we're not gonna build an app for it because it's really meant to be like a social and social is the thing people do on their phones.

But in principle, I absolutely agree with you. But as you start to be like, it just looks ridiculous. like you went through the work of making the app and the iPhone and the iPad are running the same set of, you know, it's the same software. It's the same SDK. It's the same API. Everything is just like make it work. If any company can make it work, I would think that they would be able to do that. That's why I just wonder, like they don't see these as here is an Apple first party app. They see them as here's a way you could use your iPhone.

And I think that's an important distinction.

Stephen Robles (22:24)
Okay. All right, Jason, I want, I want to do some role playing. Not like that. We're not in the hot section yet. No, no, no. Not like, not like that. I want you've been in a lot of Apple, like PR, meetings and stuff. I want you, I want you to pretend to be the Apple PR person and I'm to ask you a question and I want you to answer as though Apple were answering it. Okay. You'll be able to do this. You'll get it. So let's say we're in, we're in our little virtual meeting. They say, anybody have any questions? I click a little raise my hand button. say,

Yeah, how come Apple Invites didn't get an iPad app? What do say?

Jason Aten (22:56)
We don't have any, we don't talk about future products.

Stephen Robles (22:58)
No, they wouldn't say that. No, they would make us. All right. Ask me.

Jason Aten (23:03)
They probably would not say anything. They would probably say like we deliver products that we think our customers want to use and we don't have anything to say about that at this time.

Stephen Robles (23:10)
No, I feel like they would have an even more flowery answer. Ask me. I'll be the...

Jason Aten (23:14)
Okay, hey Steven, whatever you said, what's answer?

Stephen Robles (23:18)
We believe that people love using their iPhone for communication. It was one of the original points that even Steve Jobs said on stage, they probably wouldn't say that. But when it comes to being a communication device, we believe Apple invites, especially integrated with your shared photo albums and Apple music playlists, that the iPhone is just the great and ideal place for Apple invites to live.

Jason Aten (23:38)
I mean, that was a really good audition for a job in their comms department.

Stephen Robles (23:44)
Thank you. I'll look, I'll look at the, uh, what. Anyway, that's the Apple invites app. I'll put a link to my, my walkthrough. do the whole thing. I even like send an invite to my Android device and see how that works and all that good stuff. So, all right, a couple of the short news and we need to get to the hot tub.

Jason Aten (23:46)
Check your email see

We have to get to the hot tub.

Stephen Robles (24:04)
We need to get to the hot to have soon, but some rumors of Sonos and unfortunate news about Sonos. And then I want to talk about Sonos just for a moment, but it looks like Sonos is reading, readying its streaming boxes from Chris Welch at the verge. And he has a lot of scoops. Like over the last couple of years, he scooped the Arc ultra and the sub gen four. Yeah. The Sonos ACE headphones like, the app read. mean, Chris Welch has been covering this.

Jason Aten (24:27)
The headphones.

He's the Mark Gurman of Sonos.

Stephen Robles (24:35)
That is exactly Mark German. Yeah, I really is he's the marker so so it looks like they're reading a streaming box Seems like it's be expensive like two to four hundred dollars But might do more than just streaming box because it'll be integrated into like their audio stuff could also be like an HDMI switcher type box which would make sense for Integration with their audio devices. So, you know plug multiple devices into the streaming box plus it will stream

with its own UI and then it'll be integrated with your sound system. We'll see. It might be coming later this year. I'm to get one just more so to test and review. I really don't think this would replace an Apple TV in any input in any of my rooms, but we'll see. That's also the debacle that's gone on with their app and that design curious how well they do with the UI of a streaming box. Cause most UIs are terrible.

Jason Aten (25:15)
Court.

Stephen Robles (25:33)
And that's one of reasons why Apple TV is so popular in that space. also in light, unfortunately, Sonos lays off like 200 employees. That news came from Bloomberg, but yeah, they're still not doing well, but going to try and release some new stuff. So.

Jason Aten (25:50)
Okay, when you get the box, you're gonna be excited about it. I mean, you just are. But when you do the review, I think it's important that you think about it from the context of somebody who already has an Apple TV and hasn't yet bought it and thought it's really cool. Because I think it's, I'm sure Sonos will do a good job. Although, I don't know that that's as much of a given now as it was a year ago, because this is a lot of software, right? But I think it's important to...

think about this from the context of like, should, I don't know, this is another thing why I absolutely know ISONOS thinks it should exist because they want to expand their ecosystem and not be dependent on whatever, other people's devices. But I don't understand why anyone who, like this feels like we already know what the market is for this. Is there really room for another one?

Stephen Robles (26:39)
Well, and if it makes a play to be a home theater receiver rather than just a streaming box, because you know, to use a sono system right now, which people, a couple of people asked me on social media, like, why do you love sonos? Because I said, I was going to buy this box. It's like, I know if I love sonos like that. I like their home theater solutions because the cost versus quality versus simplicity, like they do hit that Venn diagram.

better than most like their soundbars are some of the best soundbars in that price range and the ability to integrate rear speakers and a subwoofer and it pretty much just works most like once you have it set up like it just works that is valuable to me like the bedroom set up with a Sonos beam and a sub mini it's perfect like I wouldn't want to do anything different now you could put a pair of home pods in there as well that doesn't sound as good

as a Sonos Beam and a Submini. I did a whole video where I compared like all these different setups, but that's why I like Sonos for that. I would not personally get Sonos just for like music listening. Like if I wanted a pair of speakers in a room, I would probably just get a HomePod or a pair of HomePods, but it's nice for the home theater aspect of it. So if it can be, but to use it, you basically have to use the eARC port, like on a TV, not eARC, I'm sorry.

Arch channel audio return channel you have to go HDMI out of your TV into like the Sonos beam or Sonos arc soundbar and so now if you if you have three HDMI inputs on your TV that's taken up by one and let's say you have your other two HDMI's you want to Apple TV your PS5 and literally anything else a video game system a Blu-ray player if you have that now you're kind of up a creek like what do I do with the HDMI inputs so I could see how a Sonos streaming box

could solve that problem if it has like four HDMI ports and an out. Well, now your TV's HDMI port is open because you don't have to use the audio return channel. So now you have four inputs and the Sonos streaming box can be your receiver and also powers your audio home theater. So I imagine that will be the angle that the Sonos box does, but it has to be really good at being a streaming box and really good at being a home theater receiver. And that's a tough

line so we'll see if they can do it.

Jason Aten (29:07)
Anyway, you're gonna have fun with more toys. Good for you.

Stephen Robles (29:09)
I mean, I have

three flare sitting next to me. posted a picture before we started recording because one of the chargers broke and I didn't know what was wrong. So now I three, I have three.

Jason Aten (29:19)
I don't even know what that means. Oh, these are like...

Stephen Robles (29:22)
These things these are home the home speaking of home kid these are yeah, I like putting about my head and pretending I'm a stereo

Jason Aten (29:24)
hope you

Are they just lights? That's all they are.

Stephen Robles (29:31)
you don't have say just lights like that, okay? I mean, yeah, they're lights.

Jason Aten (29:34)
They're not speakers. They're not going to like answer questions for you if you shout into the void they don't

Stephen Robles (29:40)
They're

rechargeable home kit lights. use thread. So they usually is pretty good. One of them is dead. I can't even tell which. This is OK, here we go. See, look, it's it's now lit up. This is how I pretend I'm a stereo just like this. But this in the background of all my videos, there's one on the shelf. Gotcha. And it stopped working, I think, because the charger broke and it would look funny. It looked too dark in the background of my video. So I had to get another one. Anyway, I have three of them now.

Jason Aten (29:47)
It rhymes really well.

Stephen Robles (30:09)
That's a long story.

Jason Aten (30:10)
This is the saga. It's not a story anymore. Saga.

Stephen Robles (30:13)
All right, real quick. You wrote an article about Google. Apparently, speaking of layoffs, Sonos laying off, it looks like Google might be laying off soon. They actually haven't done it yet,

Jason Aten (30:22)
No, they've been offering buyouts. there was their new CFO has said that everything's on the table and they're going to be looking for additional ways to reduce costs. The most expensive thing at almost any kind of company, except for maybe opening eye is the people. Right. And so it's been long expected that Google is going to do a round of the layoffs. But before doing the round of layoffs, they actually have offered people in the, they call the, it's basically the devices and platforms.

Division there that's Android Chrome also pixel nest Google photos ever all that stuff That's all they merged those two groups a little while ago under Rick Osterloh and they are offering basically buyouts to get people to leave willingly and I actually think that that's the way you should do this if you're looking because you know, it's a couple years ago Google laid off like I don't know wasn't it like 15,000 people or 12,000 people or something like that and I was real mad and then a year later they laid off like a thousand more and it's and

Google has a little bit of a cult, not a little bit. Google has a culture problem right now internally. The people aren't super happy and which is weird because I mean, no shade against people who work at Google, but most of the people who work at Google, if they were to get laid off and get some kind of severance would be fine for a little while because they probably make a pretty decent amount of money. But no, it's never a good deal to show up to work one day and find out that you're no longer going to have a check to pay your mortgage or whatever. So I think it's much better to give people control over their own destiny. Let them make that decision.

So I don't know, we'll see how many people take the, take the buy-offs. This was actually a thing that the employees had been asking for. essentially, if you're going to do layoffs, would you please offer a voluntary buyout first? And I don't know that the, that doing this was in response to that, but certainly it's, it's a good luck for Google that they're actually, that they're actually doing it this way.

Stephen Robles (32:11)
The only thing have to say is in your sub headline, you say Google will offer severance to employees. And when I first saw it at a glance, I thought, wait, they're to sever employees. This is power of.

Jason Aten (32:18)
up in the rain.

The

word did exist before the television show.

Stephen Robles (32:25)
False. It originated with the television show. and last, that's not true. Last little bit of news, I just pulled the window out, so now I can't share it. What happened? Anyway, the last thing is OpenAI for ChatGPT search. used to have to be logged in to use ChatGPT search, but now it's making it open for all. And so you can just go to chat.com if you want that they have that domain and you don't even have to log in. You can just use

Chat GPT with search and get some results. And I was just curious, cause I know last time we talked about it, you were using it fairly often. Do you still find this like in your workflow pretty often? Really? It's still default.

Jason Aten (33:03)
I use it all the time.

So in one of my browser so it's weird because I I I did an interview last week with NPR on the chat or then the search wars and stuff and one of the questions was about like What is it most useful for and how often are you so using it? And I do find that in my unique situation There are a couple of searches I do that Google is better at because I do like site searches and most of the time that's like I'm looking for my own articles, know, cuz you can type site

and then any website and then you can type words after that and Google will only search that website and chat, gpt doesn't do that very well at all. And so there are times when I search, so I have one browser where it's my default and I have one browser where it's not. But I actually find that it don't even bother to just use the, I just use the app now, the chat gpt.

Stephen Robles (33:49)
Interesting. A lot. Well, I'm still not in the habit of using it to be honest, but I might, I might start because Google, the Google searches is still lackluster in my opinion. Although unfortunately the Google AI overviews or maybe fortunately, I don't know. When I searched Google now, I get the AI overview like 90 % of the time. And it does give me an answer. Like the answer I was looking for will be in that AI overview. And I do have to ask myself the question, do I just take this at face value?

Or do I spend a few minutes to actually try and find this answer in an article? And honestly, I just, yeah, I just take the AI over.

Jason Aten (34:29)
So here's an interesting thing that just happened. You were talking about the Apple Invites app and it's limited to 100 people. And I thought, there's a number. So I searched Google and I said, would the Apple Invites app be limited to a certain number of people? And it came up with the answer, it's called the Dumb Bar number, which is the maximum number of people that any human being can maintain social connection with. But it's actually 150. The Dumb Bar number is 150. Science says you can only maintain a

like a personal relationship with 150 people. So what's interesting about that is it got the answer half right. There is a number, which is the max. Now that's clearly not why Apple is doing this by the way. Like I was just, but it got the actual number wrong. So in that case, you could have been like, if you would have used that information and put it in your video, it would have been completely different. Didn't that just happen? Like some person, like a news person totally said the wrong thing on the news about something because they just looked it up in chat GPT.

Stephen Robles (35:28)
It's so sticky anyway. All right, we have to talk about the hot tub app the first explicit app

Jason Aten (35:33)
Steven, I don't know how I feel about the fact that you just keep wanting to talk about this app.

Stephen Robles (35:37)
Because it's a big deal. mean, this is like the first app of its kind and the response from Apple about this app, think is curious. We're not in the EU, so it's not like we can even download this app. But anyway, before we do, I want to thank our sponsor for this week's episode, which is One Password, specifically One Password Extended Access Management. Now I actually worked at a place where I was in charge of the mobile device management of all the whole team. So I was using a program.

Jason Aten (35:43)
I agree.

Stephen Robles (36:06)
And we had iPhones and iPads and Macs in there. And honestly, like when you try to apply blueprints and securities and all that kind of stuff, it gets complicated, but also more often employees just get frustrated because they're trying to do something with a device and it's been locked down or something happens and they just don't feel like they have the access to their equipment that they need to use to get the job done. So one password extended access management is the first security solution.

that brings those unmanaged devices, apps, and identities where employees will try to go around and do their thing. It brings it all under your control and it ensures that every user credential is strong and protected. Every device is known and healthy and every app is visible. One password extended access management solves the problem. Traditional IAM and MDMs like mobile device managers that I used can't. It's security for the way we work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta, Microsoft Intra and in beta for Google Workspace customers.

And also just one password in general. I still use it in team settings. Like I use it with the Riverside team and I still share vaults with different teams and just having one place where you have access to all these things where it's always updated and it's easy to just share passwords. One Password makes all of that really simple and seamless. And so got to try it out. Even if you're not in charge of the IT of your brand or company, maybe share this with someone or if there's been some pain points, extended access management from One Password.

Great suggestion. So secure every app device and identity, even the unmanaged ones at onepassword.com slash primary tech, all lowercase. The links in the show notes below, you can just click it there, but that's onepassword.com slash primary tech. Now thanks to one password for sponsoring this episode. So I want to cover this sec, this app. I just want to tell the little story about what happened. And I, we were talking before the show. I like the whole, like people have said repeatedly recently, they've

appreciate a deep dives into a topic. And so it's kind of what trying to frame, you know, like what's the one topic going to deep dive into. And so I think this, this warrants that because it's a, it's a big change for Apple. So alt store is in the EU and you can listen back to some of our episodes from last year because of the DMA, the digital markets act, right? There can be third party apps, either side loaded or even third party app marketplaces.

Jason Aten (38:22)
Correct.

Stephen Robles (38:29)
On the iPhone, this is just in the EU. AltStore is one of those marketplaces. And so they tweeted earlier this week. iPhone, I'm reading their tweet. iPhone turns 18 this year, which means it's finally old enough for some more mature apps. Introducing Hot Tub, the world's first Apple approved explicit adult entertainment app. It's now in the AltStore pal. Now one phrase in there, I think really got an Apple's craw or whatever you, whatever that phrase is. Apple approved app.

And to say Apple approved in this context is very different than what you might think of as Apple approving an app or the app store because of being the DMA and the policy changes in the EU. Apple is not approving apps based on content or whether or not it breaks some of their specific rules. It's really just has to sign and approve an app just by like letting it through as long as it

meets whatever security requirements or it's very low bar. And so here in the U.S. Apple still has policies where explicit apps are not allowed in the app store. So that's why you can't get this app in the regular app store like here in the U.S. But in the EU because of sideloading in these third party app marketplaces, they can do that. So Apple was not happy about this. They had a statement that they issued here and says,

Quote, are deeply concerned about the safety risks that hardcore porn apps of this type create for EU users, especially kids. This app and others like it will undermine consumer trust and confidence in our ecosystem that we have worked for more than a decade to make best in the world. Contrary to the false statements made by the marketplace developer, we certainly do not approve of this app and would never offer it in our app store. The truth is that we are required by the European commission to allow it to be distributed by marketplace operators.

like AltStore and Epic, who may not share our concerns for user safety." So that was Apple's statement. They're clearly not happy about this. Specifically, AltStore saying Apple approved it, which I do think it is... They were not careful with their... Maybe they were careful with their words and they just specifically wanted to be, I don't know, inciting as in their announcement. Then Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, who, you know, he doesn't like the App Store either, nor Apple.

They were in a whole court case several years ago. Tim Sweeney, when asked about this situation, said,

competition. Listen, Tim Sweeney just wants to be able to have a bunch of people pay for Fortnite skins on the iPhone and Apple not take 30%.

Jason Aten (41:31)
That's

it. That's the only thing he cares about. I just want to be clear about that point.

Stephen Robles (41:35)
But, but he will exploit any situation that could lead to that end. Like, like he is here and saying like this highfalutin, like taking this quote unquote moral high ground. Listen, he is just wanting people to be able to buy V bucks on the iPhone. That's literally.

Jason Aten (41:55)
Yeah, and Epic isn't hosting this app, by the way. It's worth mentioning that even Epic will not host this app.

Stephen Robles (42:01)
Exactly. So I, last thing I wanted to point out, following on the story, John Gruber had several articles about it. I'll link to this one in the show notes, but he actually recalled an email between a developer, MG Siegler reported on an email exchange between Steve Jobs and customer Matthew Browing. And basically it was a disagreement on an app. was a Mark Fiore's comic book app was blocked.

Initially from the app store, this is back in 2010, you know, so just a couple of years into the app store, uh, because there might've been political satire and this email to Steve jobs was like, this should be allowed in the app store. This does not break any of your rules. And so this is Steve jobs is response. He responded to this email and Steve jobs said, if you're his app will be in the store shortly. That was a mistake. want to just, just sit there for a second. I think, and Gruber says like, man,

Steve Jobs knew how to write an email. Just that simple like admission of like, this was a mistake. I don't know the last time Apple has really done that. Like just said, we, hey, we made a mistake, but Steve Jobs wasn't afraid to say that. So I think that's, I don't know, worth pointing out. said, however, this is Steve Jobs now. We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want that can buy an Android phone.

Jason Aten (43:22)
Buy your mama pixel is what he just said.

Stephen Robles (43:25)
I'll never be your mom, but yeah, bye bye somebody

Jason Aten (43:28)
Just that's where that, yeah.

Stephen Robles (43:30)
So I think, I think it is interesting. Steve Jobs believed that Apple as a company had a moral responsibility to keep that content off the iPhone. think that's interesting. That's a moral imperative from a tech company about blocking certain content to its users. Not even profit or like money, like money is not part of the equation, at least to Steve Jobs here.

Now this gets really sticky because in the 15 years since that was 2010. So in the 15 years since that time, it really felt like Apple has been pushing on its app store rules and pushing on developers and rejecting apps that even try to point people, you know, the anti-steering ruling that happened a couple of years ago, you you couldn't even link to your website from an app. So users could buy and not have to, you won't have that 30 % cut from Apple to developers.

Like Apple was so stringent on those rules for such a long time. It feels like now 15 years later, that when Apple rejects an app because of that or some in app like Hey.com, that was another huge situation where David Hannah Meyer Hansen was very vocal to say Apple rejected our app because we just tried to let people create an account elsewhere and just log into the app. And Apple rejected it because they said the app doesn't do anything when you install it. Again, it just felt like a money play, like Apple was trying to get the 30%.

And so when Apple has a statement now about this hot tub app in the EU, it, it now has mixed emotions because it feels like, well, every story I've heard about Apple and apps in the last 10 years, it has been money motivated that Apple just wanted the 30 % cut. But now we have this situation and at least Steve jobs felt like it wasn't a money thing. That was a moral imperative. So I don't know. I'm curious, Jason, like, can we tease that out? Like is, does.

Do you think Apple still feels like it is a moral imperative or like, don't think it's money. I don't know. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. probably took a lot of notes because I. I keep it kind of

Jason Aten (45:37)
I had to take a lot of notes. This is

the first thing I want to say is alt stores. This is super bad for alt store. Riley test it. No, I'm serious. You're you're playing with a version of fire that you're I mean, even Epic doesn't want this. So like, let's set aside for a second the moral imperative part of it. I want to I have some thoughts on that, too, as a peer brand exercise. Big mistake because the Delta emulator made him a hero.

the fact that he was going to make an alt store that apps could go to, made this guy a hero, and now he crossed the line of this is an Apple approved app. Apple would have just ignored the rest of, they would have never issued a statement about this. Never wanted to talk about this. There's no scenario where Apple would have commented or anything. Ask me the question that they would have asked the PR person and the person would be like, not even a response, right?

But you start to pretend like this thing was Apple approved and you have gone over a line where you are about to experience the wrath of fire of Tim Cook. mean, yeah, even worse than Tim Cook, Phil Scheller. is just, mean, like, remember how they reacted to the whole Gizmodo thing, like with the phone? this is like a hundred times worse than that for this, for Alt Store.

Stephen Robles (46:46)
and Bill Schiller.

He's probably on a plane over to EU right now.

Isn't that dude in jail for a night?

Jason Aten (47:05)
And what he thinks is, I think it's just a gross miscalculation. He's like, well, I'm in the EU, whatever, whatever, this whole thing, like I'm protected by this digital market, but you cannot go around saying, and here's the reason that this is a huge problem. Until now, the big debate over Apple's notarization of apps in the EU was this, you can't use any judgment.

you just have to notarize that the stuff's not malware or whatever. And clearly Steve Jobs essentially thought the stuff was malware, but the actual technical definition of it, it's not. And so you cannot have it both ways. You cannot push Apple to be hands off on the notarization process, because if I understand correctly, on a Mac, the notarization process is just automated. It's like, literally you submit an app and it just notarizes it and it'll allow it to be installed. So you cannot, on the one hand, say,

That's how notarization should be. then on the other hand, say Apple approved it because it notarized this app to be on. So you're playing with fire that I just don't think like, is it really worth that little marketing to be able to say that this is the first Apple? Like I, I don't know. And it all, not only is it pretty bad judgment, it just says a lot about the character of somebody who's who you have to know that that is not the, the, the marketing tagline for this. Like you just have to know that. And so

Stephen Robles (48:28)
Even the image that AltStore shared with the post. Yeah. mean, that's don't do.

Jason Aten (48:34)
I just don't I don't understand that and so that's the one thing now Apple doesn't look great either because of all of the different Apple App Store you like all that kind of stuff I I think that's probably The Steve Jobs can get away with writing emails like that because he was the founder right he was he didn't have any like Apple emanated from his ethos, right so He could speak on behalf of Apple in a way that nobody else could and so like that's a different

Stephen Robles (49:01)
When

he spoke, it was Apple speaking.

Jason Aten (49:03)
Yeah. And when Apple spoke, was, it would, you would be Steve jobs. And so I, there's a big difference now. So as for whether, I mean, the law in the EU is clear that these apps should be allowed in the interesting thing is I do think that there's still a money piece of it for, I think Steve jobs meant it when he said that this is a moral imperative. I just, it's like, we want to offer a product and we just don't want this to be a part of it. But I also think that the reason for that is because it did in their mind would have degraded their product, right?

I wouldn't, I wouldn't want, I'd be less likely to want my kids to have an iPhone if this type of stuff was it. Now, the truth is it's all available on the web. Like let's not be like naive here. And that was actually Apple's point. It's like the app store is our curated list of the content we want on here and on the web, anything goes like whatever. The internet is still available. So there's that kind of thing. But I just think that I don't think this makes anybody look good.

But I almost see that and I cannot, I can't believe that you'd be so naive to think that Apple was not going to like come down on that sort of thing. Because again, even if you read the response from Tim Sweeney, right? It's like, you know, we don't think that, but we would never put the, it's like contrary to the false statements made by the marketplace developer, we certainly do not approve of this app is what Apple says. And in response Tim Sweeney is like, yeah, it's not on our.

It's not an thing either. So I don't know why Apple like threw Epic in there is if they just saw it as an opportunity to take a dig at Epic as well. But Tim Sweeney is like, we wouldn't allow it either.

Stephen Robles (50:41)
Well, so that was the other statement. It's in this 905 article. It says Sweeney, quote, contrary to Apple's false statement, the Epic game store doesn't carry this app, doesn't carry any porn apps and has never carried porn apps, which is just as funny like switch from what he said a second ago about whatever Apple being so closed down. And Sweeney writes Apple's app store does carry those kinds of apps. For example, they host the Reddit app and you can make the argument that

you will find explicit content there as well. Which, okay, I mean, that is an argument.

Jason Aten (51:15)
And it's also one of the reasons that when Reddit was doing some crazy stuff, making everybody mad, it's like, how close to the sun do you want to fly right now? Because you could get shut down too.

Stephen Robles (51:26)
Yeah. So I just, it is interesting to see Apple's response to these kinds of things. And if one day, I mean, we have the case, I don't know if it's this year or soon, but the department of justice here in the U S that there's still going to be a case about Apple's policies and whether or not laws are passed here that might allow third party app marketplaces like this in the United States. It'll be something that we have to deal with as well. So yeah, Icarus, those wings.

Jason Aten (51:51)
Yeah.

I did. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you'd be so brazen. Not you. Sorry. I know. It's like, it's like everyone eventually has their, what's just at this point called the Elon Musk moment where you grossly overestimated your public persona in the amount of the world that was going to be behind you if you did a thing. And I feel like this is the moment where it's like, you could have touted this and as like the first time this is on an iPhone.

Stephen Robles (51:57)
No, no, no.

Jason Aten (52:20)
Like you could have just made the first one on an iPhone. You didn't have to go that other step because yeah.

Stephen Robles (52:26)
Right. So do you think the moral imperative that Steve Jobs stated 15 years ago, do think that's still a part of the ethos at Apple? is that carried by someone or like Apple the brand, or is that just less of a factor now? Like, do you think it's still there?

Jason Aten (52:46)
If these apps were available on the app store, Apple would be a $10 trillion company. No, not. Listen, I don't say that as an exaggeration. It is so much of a larger industry than most people think because it lives in the shadows and stuff. And if it was purely about the money, Apple would absolutely be taking 30 % of whatever is going on in that kind of a situation.

Stephen Robles (53:10)
You're saying they wouldn't hesitate to take the cut?

Jason Aten (53:12)
It was only about right if it wasn't, if they didn't also feel like there's a moral imperative. Now maybe Apple's like the upside is simply not worth the hit to our brand. And maybe it's not purely a moral stance. Maybe there is some calculating going on. But I think that, like I, I think it's pretty likely that they're like, no, we just don't want to go there. Like we just don't want to be involved in that. We don't want to be collecting 30 % of whatever happens on these apps because it's just.

We're willing to get dirty in some ways with China or whatever, we're just not, we're not going, we're not doing like, look at like, think about the fact that like TikTok is still not available in the app store because there's a law, right? They, they, they, they, they're, they are playing like in the big leagues here, right? They're just, it's just not worth it to them to have, to be dealing with this sort of thing without certainty. So.

Stephen Robles (54:05)
I did think just last thing I'll say about this, you know, talking about Apple's moral imperative, whatever. When Apple TV plus was first announced and Apple was going to say we're producing original content. think even then I was curious, like how explicit, how in all kinds of ways, whether it was vulgarity or nudity, like how explicit will Apple TV plus get? And obviously just taking vulgarity as a line. Like if you look at

Ted Lasso or shrinking. I mean, is very explicit. Um, talking about cursing. so I, that felt like whatever brand Apple was putting forth, like that, that is now a part of it. Like Apple TV plus original content is like something that Apple created and has that level of profanity or vulgarity or whatever. I don't know. I wonder.

Maybe this is a silly question, like Steve Jobs imperative back then in 2010, like, I guess that doesn't apply to TV. Is that just put in a different bucket for people? I don't know. I find that.

Jason Aten (55:14)
I mean, but even their stuff is not. Yeah, I don't know. I think people view the things differently.

Stephen Robles (55:20)
I think, yeah, which yeah, curious. Anyway, anyway, it's, it was a weird story and seeing Apple's response. I just want to know how many people Phil Schiller's Gestapo is going to get with the, with this. But anyway, some quick other quick stories. And then I need to figure out how to stream the big game this weekend. Cause I still don't know if I'm allowed to say Superbowl on the podcast. Apple had its earnings last week, made a ton of money. Spoiler, including they now have 2.35 billion active devices worldwide.

talking about playing in the big leagues and a lot of devices out there. They also had a record breaking revenue for Q1 2025, which includes like December in case you were wondering, I know a lot of companies do quarters differently, October, November, December is their Q1. And so that's why it is very, very high. And so I'll put a link to Jason Snell's six colors article. He does a lot of great charts with that.

Jason Aten (56:03)
November and December.

Stephen Robles (56:15)
You know, iPhone is still a huge piece of the pie. 56 % of Apple's revenue services, 21%. That is the second biggest piece of the pie. Wearables after that, which would be Apple Watch and AirPods, and then Mac and iPad, and even 7 % of the revenue. Also iPhone in general was actually down a little bit as far as, it was negative 1 % year over year iPhone revenue. A little bit down, I think China markets affected that and

Not sure how tariffs will affect it. haven't seen a, know, tariffs are happening here in the U.S. Not sure how that's going to Apple's profits, revenue versus cost of devices later this year. But yeah, they made a lot of money.

Jason Aten (56:58)
They did make a lot of money, but they don't like talking about why.

Stephen Robles (57:04)
So Jason had an article up, but this has shown us too, there's one number it doesn't want to talk about.

Jason Aten (57:10)
Yeah, I mean, we know that Apple is making, you know, probably more at this point. Twenty some. It was like in 2022 is 20 billion a year. And the only reason we know about that is the Google Antitrust case. And Apple, it's just I find it sort of interesting. Apple will tout its services, but it doesn't want to talk about where that money comes from. They They talked about Apple TV Plus. It's not coming. I promise you.

Stephen Robles (57:35)
Not ever.

Jason Aten (57:36)
I love Apple TV Plus, right? I love shrinking. love Ted Lasso. I love silo. I'm going to eventually love severance. hear like, right. But that is not where this money is coming from. It is coming from App Store commissions and it's coming from the Google search deal. And you never hear anything about those. The only thing you hear about the App Store commissions part is there's like this coded language that they use every year where they say, this is, know, we now surpassed a billion subscriptions on our platforms.

And if you ask them like, what does that mean? Is that like a billion people signed up for Apple TV Plus and Apple iCloud and whatever? No, that's everyone who's paying for Fantastical and like whatever else you're subscribed to. And so it's just highlighting all of that kind of stuff. And I just think it's interesting that like there is a big risk to Apple. Apple was just denied. They asked to be included essentially as a defendant in the remedies phase of the Google. Who has to be a defendant by the way?

Right. But they wanted to argue because the biggest like Google is like fine. Tell us we can't pay for search deals anymore. Everyone's going to still use Google. We'll still make all the same money. It'll just be cheaper for us. Right. But Apple's like, no, you can't do like don't do that. This is this is a big part of our services in the services is like 75 percent profit margin. And a lot of the reason why is that 20 billion dollars is just free money. It's just there's no no cost. Right. Even if you said as default, even if you know what is the cost of

Stephen Robles (58:52)
Right.

Jason Aten (59:03)
changing you like one word in the coat. I don't even know. It's probably a little more complicated than that. But even if you allocated all of the cost of development for Safari, it's still 99.9 % profit, right? Like it's just, I mean, I don't know. It's a lot. I just, I think it's interesting. Like I think it's good that Apple is not entirely dependent on the iPhone. The reason the iPhone was down was largely because of China, like because of, you know, in the Chinese market is much more sensitive to form factor changes.

And so there's there'll be a surge in China when the but the the iPhone looks basically the same since the 12 right like right in in so Maybe it was I don't I mean the 12 the 13 the 14 the 15 to 16. They're all basically the same thing. Yeah, and so And so I think it at some point we'll see it we'll see another surge there but right now it that's the same reason why they're likely to come out with the SC whatever the

Stephen Robles (59:48)
Yeah.

S E four, but also the iPhone 17 air, which would be a new form factor.

Jason Aten (1:00:02)
Yep, and could be a little bit lower price possibly like I don't know.

Stephen Robles (1:00:06)
All right a couple of the quick things a new app came out called tapestry for the iPhone and This just feels reminiscent of like the flipboard days what tapestry is doing now is you can basically Aggregate a bunch of feeds you can log into your mastodon account your blue sky account you can add RSS feeds you can add podcasts this is from the icon factory the makers of Twitter if ik and so this app is basically trying aggregating everything and you can have one timeline one feed and you see

everything from all those sources or can create custom feeds where you just see like your RSS stuff or just see blue sky and mastodon posts and I downloaded it to try it out. I don't know if I would prefer seeing it all in one place like this, but I do like the idea of it and I like that there are now social networks and platforms that are open like blue sky and mastodon that even allow apps like this to exist because I don't know if you remember like

first second gen iPad days, Flipboard was kind of like this. Like you could log in with your Facebook account, your Twitter account, you can add RSS feeds and Flipboard would like make it look like a magazine. You could basically see the posts and articles all in one place. And it was kind of fun. Like it was a nice, nice thing. And then all the platforms closed down. And so you couldn't see your tweets or your Facebook posts. then Flipboard became something else, but this feels like an app like that. And I'm glad it exists. Cool.

Jason Aten (1:01:31)
I mean, I'm happy that it exists. I just haven't had time to play around with it. Like I have weird feelings about Flipboard. Flipboard used to be one of the largest sources of traffic for a of publishers other than Google and Facebook. It's just not anymore.

Stephen Robles (1:01:45)
It's not anymore. Yeah. And, lastly, before we get to personal tech, Amazon announced an event. Amazon is having an event in February, February 26th, and it could be more, a lot of AI stuff. Maybe Amazon's voice assistant gets AI infused, whatever. So we'll see. we're trying to finagle our way to it.

Jason Aten (1:02:05)
Yeah, we're trying to. They're having it. I mean, at first it wasn't sure what the event was going to be about, but then apparently there were five invitations and if you line them all up, they spell Alexa. So I think, I think that they're going to talk about the voice assistant. Yeah, there you go. So I think there's a pretty decent chance at this point. That's what they're going to be talking about. Uh, and I am, I am trying to get invited because they're only because they're going to be talking about the AI powered. Well, right there. The, we expect that they're going to talk about the improvements to the AI power voices.

Stephen Robles (1:02:34)
Personal tech, how do I watch the big game? First of all, OpenAI is have a big ad, supposedly. OpenAI is going to have a Super Bowl ad debut, and we're going see what that commercial is like.

Jason Aten (1:02:45)
$500 billion they spent on the Super Bowl ad prog- No, $500 billion? No, I was making a joke.

Stephen Robles (1:02:47)
Is that how much it is for an ad?

No, I'm sorry.

Jason Aten (1:02:53)
All

that money they're raising you thought it was going to go into cloud infrastructure and compute, but they're just making a super bowl ad. That's it.

Stephen Robles (1:03:00)
Super Bowl ad. Wait, how much is a Super Bowl ad?

Jason Aten (1:03:02)
It's like six or seven million dollars for I think a 30 second spot. Yeah, I'm saying it's seven million dollars for a 30 second spot.

Stephen Robles (1:03:06)
Take a while. Wait, so what is your

Did you know that? How do you do this, Jason?

Jason Aten (1:03:16)
I mean, I pay attention to the world around me.

Stephen Robles (1:03:19)
I know but I mean okay yeah it's seven supposedly seven eight million dollars for a 30 second ad. Wild. Anyway so they're gonna have an ad but I was trying to figure out where I'm gonna stream it because I know with all the sports ball that I don't watch I do like watching the Super Bowl. Yes for the commercials but it does feel like you know I actually know a little bit I know the Kansas City Chiefs this could be their third Super Bowl win in three years that's a big deal right Patrick Mahoney

Jason Aten (1:03:42)
Okay, this isn't this is This is a super easy problem to solve. I don't what it's on Fox. Do you have television?

Stephen Robles (1:03:53)
Not where I'm going be watching it now. I have to do it through my Apple TV.

Jason Aten (1:03:56)
Somehow

are you going into like a closet somewhere with like what do you mean? You don't have it? Okay? do not okay YouTube TV. Do you have YouTube TV?

Stephen Robles (1:04:01)
I don't have a coax cable going.

No, I don't pay for any of that. I don't have YouTube TV. I don't have Hulu live TV on.

Jason Aten (1:04:09)
You don't. So do not like watch television programming.

Stephen Robles (1:04:14)
I mean, unless it's

Jason Aten (1:04:16)
You

know, you don't like sports, so this is explaining a

Stephen Robles (1:04:18)
This is what I'm saying, like don't pay for any of this stuff.

Jason Aten (1:04:20)
I mean, I'm sure Hulu with live TV has a free trial YouTube TV free trial. Can you sign up for? Seven days. You can get a seven day YouTube TV free trial. That's what you're going to do, Steven. And you're going to have the app on your iPhone. I mean, not your iPhone on your Apple.

Stephen Robles (1:04:27)
But it's so it's

Apparently Tubi is going to stream it for free.

Jason Aten (1:04:40)
Just get a seven day subscription free trial to YouTube TV. Do you know what Tube is before you Googled that? No, I don't know. Then you should sign up for YouTube TV. I don't know. I'm just saying like, just sign up for YouTube TV for, but don't do it until, you know, tomorrow. And then you get a seven day free trial of YouTube TV.

Stephen Robles (1:04:44)
I shouldn't do Tubi?

What about not the Fox Sports or whatever?

Jason Aten (1:05:02)
It's not on Fox Sports is on Fox broadcast, which by the way, I'm pretty sure are owned by two different companies at this point. I might be wrong about that. Yeah, so I just, yeah, just YouTube, YouTube TV. I want you to watch it. It's not gonna be hard to find a place to watch it.

Stephen Robles (1:05:10)
So confusing, I don't even...

Right. Yeah, I know it's it's always different because like last year I think it was like NBC sports and I had to like do weird things anyway All right. Well, I'll try to do that. Apparently if you want to watch it for free tubi's out there

Jason Aten (1:05:30)
I mean, apparently you can also just watch it on NFL.com or NFL plus the app, but there's probably a Fox app. I mean, there are some, there are some things, but just YouTube TV, just download it or just sign up for a seven day free trial.

Stephen Robles (1:05:44)
Okay, anyway, and lastly show me you had a Mac Mini accessory. I want to see it

Jason Aten (1:05:48)
yeah. I

got the, well I can't see the actual, you can't see the accessory, but I'll show you the box. Yeah, so this is the Satechi, does it say what it's called? Am I showing you the- The hub. The stand and hub for Mac Mini. Here's the thing, I have mixed feelings about this, but I do think it's cool. The industrial design is great. It looks like it just belongs right there with the Mac Mini. It's fantastic. It's just, it's the same shape, just, the Mac Mini sits in there, although it does move around a little

Stephen Robles (1:05:53)
the box.

It's a doc, something or other.

Jason Aten (1:06:16)
But then again, you it has even a little it has a little notch cut in the back of it right there Yes for the power button fantastic Power button. Yep, so you can still stick your fat finger in there It even has like a little instructions like it explains why there's a little notch in there So you can stick your finger in there too. Yeah, but anyway has three USB a ports on the front, which I don't care There's no I don't I don't think I have any USB a cables anymore and it has an SD slot But the killer feature of this thing

Stephen Robles (1:06:22)
All the power

Jason Aten (1:06:45)
is you can stick an NVMe SSD in it and have an additional storage. And so I'm sticking a two terabyte in there and I'm going to have an extra two terabytes of storage with this Mac Mini. And because it's just, it's not like a portable drive that you need to unmount and take away, right? Like it's just going to always be connected. I think it's pretty cool. I do think it's nice that they put those USB ports on the front, just to be clear.

because the Mac mini itself only has USB-C ports on the front. Actually, I think it only has USB-C ports, period, at this point, with Thunderbolt and USB-C. But I only, I have a CalDigit sitting next to it on my desk, and if I ever need to plug in something USB-A, I just, that has one on

Stephen Robles (1:07:29)
That is very cool. I will put a link to it on the website on our, in our show notes on the website. I mean, it's on primary tech.fm too, if you want to do that, but the NVMe slot thing, that's, that's pretty cool.

Jason Aten (1:07:40)
It's

really cool and it's very easy to get to like there's just a little slide off little door for it to install the you just you stick it right in there and you've got a nice little Little bass station and it's it's pretty low profile. It's about like yeah, there you go. That's perfect It's like a I don't know quarter the height of the Mac mini. It's pretty small

Stephen Robles (1:07:59)
I don't know why they put a bunch of A ports on the front though. That is weird.

Jason Aten (1:08:02)
I think it's because there are already seaports on the front.

Stephen Robles (1:08:06)
Yeah, but do one, do two C's, one A, you know what I mean? I don't know. The SD card slot on the front, though, that's nice, too. So if you wanted to get one of these for video editing, actually, this is perfect for that because you could do like a four terabyte SSD. Then you also have the SD card slot on the front. You get an M4 Pro version of these things like this. This could be a video editing machine.

Jason Aten (1:08:09)
Yeah

That's what I was thinking. But I mean, I don't do video editing, but still, I'm so excited.

Stephen Robles (1:08:34)
Yeah, that's very cool. Hundred bucks. Not bad. Not bad. All right. We're go to our bonus episode. I need to ask Jason about the MacBook Air and a chair. I didn't mean to rhyme, but it did. So I can ask you those two questions. If you want to listen to our bonus episodes, you can go to primarytech.fm, click bonus episodes or support us directly on Apple podcasts. And just a little, I know, I'm gonna share some numbers if that's all right, Jason. I didn't talk to you about this before the show.

Jason Aten (1:08:58)
All right, I'm gonna write this down. taking more notes. What are we talking about? sweet.

Stephen Robles (1:09:02)
We're

about to hit a quarter million downloads for the show, which is amazing. 241,000 audio only downloads right now. And our YouTube channel does pretty good too. get, you know, around 700 to a thousand views. Our, we talked about the M4 Mac mini. Our M4 Mac mini episode got 17,000 views somehow on YouTube, which is wild. That's cool. And a total, our channel has 225,000 views. So actually our.

Views on YouTube and our downloads are...

Jason Aten (1:09:33)
million. We're up to almost a half million.

Stephen Robles (1:09:36)
Oh yeah. Altogether. Yeah. Altogether. It's like a half million. I want to share those just because you, mean, if you're still listening at this point in the episode, you're like, you're part of the family. You know what I mean? Like you're in the primary tech community and all that. Uh, but I want to share it because listen, we're still trying to grow, grow the show. get about 2,500 to 3000 downloads an episode, which is amazing for a podcast. That's only a year old. Like you look at the vast average of most podcasts, like that's amazing. Uh, but we still want to grow. And so you can help us by sharing the show when it comes out by

word of mouth telling people who you think might enjoy the show, uh, you know, reposting when I share the episode on social media. And so get the word out there. If you haven't left us a five star rating and review, that'd be awesome. be cool to get to 2000 subscribers on YouTube. We're like 1.8 something. So we can get to 2000 and uh, yeah, we're still trying to do it. We, I know. I enjoy doing it. It's been a fun show. People like the show scene. So yeah, let's share the show, get the word out there. And if you support the show, which you can still do, let's go. We're going to record a bonus episode.

Talk about that as well.

Jason Aten (1:10:35)
I think we should start including features that you have to be listening to the show like iCloud like Apple did with their Apple invites. So we're trying to create a pyramid scheme here. Tell your friends.

Stephen Robles (1:10:45)
I do want to do, we should probably talk about this offline, but I do want to kind of do like an incentive of like, if you share the show on social media, maybe we can give you a shout out or something like that. I know. We did that for MOTS, like, and that was, you know, much smaller podcast, but we had people sharing the show and it was kind of fun. anyway, we'll talk about it. Anyway, the show, get the word out. We appreciate you so much for listening and watching and we'll catch you next time.