Primary Technology

Primary Technology

menu close

iPhone 16e Launched: Here’s What's Missing, Humane Ai Pin is Dead, Apple’s New C1 is a Big Deal

/ 01:07:38/E63 Download MP3
Stephen Robles:

All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Apple released a new iPhone this week, the iPhone 16 e. We're gonna get into all the nitty gritty details from its first party modem modem that it's developed, but all the features that it left out.

Stephen Robles:

The humane AI pin is now officially officially dead, and basically, it's gonna be bricked. And so we're gonna talk about that. And we have some interesting Apple TV and Netflix news coming up. This episode is brought to you by BentoCraft from a developer who listens and is a part of the community of this show, so excited to talk about that. And you, the members who support us directly, I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, with my expensive paperweight right here.

Stephen Robles:

And, of course, joining me without a paperweight is my friend Jason eight ten. How's it going, Jason?

Jason Aten:

I well, I mean, people saw my desk last week on the bonus episode. I have a lot of paperweights around, but none of them were nearly as expensive as yours. Let's just I mean, well, actually, I have a m four Pro Mac mini that is a paperweight, which is probably more expensive than your human. Straight.

Stephen Robles:

That well, I bought the, like, the I was silly and bought, like, the fancy color humane AI pin. So this is actually a hundred dollars more than the regular pin. I'm So this was $800.

Jason Aten:

I'm pretty sure the Mac mini I brick since it's an m four pro with a one terabyte and Oh, that is gigs. It's probably more expensive.

Stephen Robles:

As soon as you upgrade that SSD, it's immediately astronomical.

Jason Aten:

Immediately. That is a Mac mini plus humane AI pin just to get the upgrade storage.

Stephen Robles:

Fair enough. Fair enough. This humane AI pin story is wild. I also have a special device that I'm gonna reveal, when we talk about it because, well, I just I got it off eBay, and I'm excited to show it off. So stay tuned.

Stephen Robles:

That's gonna be after the break, but we have to talk about the iPhone 16 e. So many details to tease through. But even before that, we have some exciting five star reviews. We're still a 4.9 star podcast for some reason. Somebody Let's

Jason Aten:

go. Let's go, people.

Stephen Robles:

Let's go. We need to get back up to five. Some I someone left a must, I guess, a one star review, but no left no review, so we don't know why they're mad. Probably adjacent. Let's be honest.

Jason Aten:

Let's be clear. Let's be clear. That's obviously the case.

Stephen Robles:

But we had two people helping us get back to that five star rating. Jazza seven eight nine from The USA. We're his favorite tech podcast and fellow trumpet player, what's up? Battery percentage on, though, Jason won that one. That's alright.

Stephen Robles:

Don't forget because you're a trumpet player. And Ultraman seven from The USA. Battery percentage off. Who needs that stress in their life? Thank you, Ultraman.

Stephen Robles:

Appreciate it.

Jason Aten:

It's nice that your brother finally left a review.

Stephen Robles:

I'm an only child, but thanks anyway.

Jason Aten:

The brother you didn't know you?

Stephen Robles:

Exactly. My long lost brother. So if you could help us out, let's get five more five star ratings and reviews. You get a shout out. Whenever you're writing the review, I mean, we basically say it on the show.

Stephen Robles:

So you can basically have me say anything, well, well, within reason. We'll see now.

Jason Aten:

Should revisit that rule here in a minute. That. Let's just

Stephen Robles:

Oh, no. I might have, just regretted that. And, also, we've been doing old tech. This is a quick segment because people keep sharing old tech pictures in the community and on social media. I love seeing it.

Stephen Robles:

Kid b, sent a message. This is a 1993 PowerBook. I said MacBook, a couple weeks ago when I showed an old picture of a computer and a bunch of people were like

Jason Aten:

And I tried to correct you and you're like no no no it says MacBook and I'm like that does not look like a MacBook I've ever seen.

Stephen Robles:

But As I've shared my screen the text is very small I'm just that's all I'm going to say But this is a PowerBook Duo 210, a two ten. Still turns on. Look at that screen. I don't know what that pink splotch is on the right, but it still turns on. I see the box in the background too from Apple Computer Inc.

Jason Aten:

That's awesome.

Stephen Robles:

That's very cool. So that's a very cool computer. That was kid b, and then Chris Peck in the community, he has a bunch of, old stuff, old Apple device. We have some iPods

Jason Aten:

Mhmm. Love it.

Stephen Robles:

All the way back to the original iPod, I think. That's amazing. Also, the original Apple TV remote. And then I thought this picture would have flowed quicker. There we go.

Stephen Robles:

IPhones all the way back. Is that Yep. Or that's the original all the way on the left.

Jason Aten:

Probably. Or it's a three g. It's hard to tell without looking at the back.

Stephen Robles:

But Right. Right. Well, but then he's got I think this is the three g and the three g s. But that's pretty slick.

Jason Aten:

Maybe. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Is it do you have an original iPhone?

Jason Aten:

Yeah. There's it's right back there.

Stephen Robles:

Oh. I wish It's

Jason Aten:

right there if you're if you're watching.

Stephen Robles:

Watching.

Jason Aten:

See it right there. And there's an iPod video, and then there's a and over there where you can't see it is a four s, I think.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, see, I have the four, and I have an iPod video, but I never got a original iPhone.

Jason Aten:

You know I haven't originally. I posted a picture of it, like,

Stephen Robles:

a week ago.

Jason Aten:

That's right.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. You did. You did. And, he also Chris Peck has a PowerBook one ninety.

Jason Aten:

Wow.

Stephen Robles:

It looks like that is it still turns on. Just saying. That's that resale value for Apple devices. Top notch. Top notch.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know if you'd, well, you might actually fetch some money for it today considering how old it is. So

Jason Aten:

It depends on whether or not Steven Hackett already has it in his collection.

Stephen Robles:

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And a couple other quick follow-up, from previous. We talked about Apple ID migration, and someone actually did it. This is Badon on Blue Sky and said he actually merged to Apple IDs, which you can now do bring your purchases from previous Apple IDs to a new one.

Stephen Robles:

Said Apple TV had some issues, but otherwise, everything worked. He had to remove all devices from the home app and reconnect that, which could be a little messy. His Apple Music library and all that stuff resync. So if you wanted to combine Apple IDs, it seems like like my work might work. Might work.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I mean, the home app thing just seems like a normal Thursday thing. Like, it's just you have to remove them all and reconnect them all. So that probably had nothing to do with the migration, just to be honest.

Stephen Robles:

You know, that's one of those burns where I can't even correct it because, yeah, that's pretty much

Jason Aten:

Did we even talk about that migration thing? I'm just

Stephen Robles:

talking about last week.

Jason Aten:

Remember. I can't even remember. I believe you.

Stephen Robles:

But Yeah. We did we did after the break because, you know I mean, do you have a situation where you're actually gonna try that?

Jason Aten:

No. I definitely am not. I only have one Apple ID. The same one I've been using my whole life. I'm not merging anything.

Stephen Robles:

I'm just curious. I don't like messing with that. I don't like that. No. And final thing before we get to the iPhone 16 e, apparently, severance has now surpassed Ted Lasso to become Apple TV plus most watched series after the season two launch.

Stephen Robles:

Listen, I've been keeping up with it, Jason, and I'll say I get it. I, I enjoy that show. It's a good show.

Jason Aten:

Okay. I know that we don't have a lot of time for this, but I have two quick thoughts. One, what was Apple TV marketing when Ted Lasso was happening? Nothing. Like, the Tim Cook did not appear in an ad for Ted Lasso.

Jason Aten:

They did not set up a thing at Wembley Stadium with all of the Ted Lasso play. Like, they have suddenly realized we have a streaming service, and if we put some money behind marketing

Stephen Robles:

I don't know. Maybe. But I feel like the buzz around Ted Lasso, especially season one, I feel like was pretty close to what I'm seeing. I mean, I think Severance has surpassed it, but there were a lot of people talking about it.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. But I don't think it was Apple TV a standalone app in as many places as, like, as it is now. I just didn't think that That's true. I don't know that that that that's a indicator of the difference between the last one severance as much as it's an indicator of the difference between what Apple is doing with Apple tv plus

Stephen Robles:

like availability

Jason Aten:

and just its marketing push and stuff because here's the thing, severance not even close to on the same tier as Ted Lasso.

Stephen Robles:

Now wait a minute.

Jason Aten:

It's not even close to the same tier shrinking.

Stephen Robles:

K.

Jason Aten:

Steven, you know I'm right.

Stephen Robles:

I listen. I love Ted Lasso. I'll watch that dart scene at least once a year just to cry.

Jason Aten:

Just because he needs to clean out his eyes.

Stephen Robles:

Just just because. But, I mean, the cinematography, the tension I mean, it's for some and people have been saying this on social media. For run for some reason, it is one of those shows that is just engrossing. Even though, like, there's not a lot happening. There's a lot happening.

Jason Aten:

There's nothing happening most of the time.

Stephen Robles:

Yes. But it is still engrossing and, like

Jason Aten:

But you and you are because you are just counting on there being a payoff at some point and that the payoff is not going to be weird. But the Like But

Stephen Robles:

they pay you. Like, at the end of episodes, there is a bit a payoff, and it's a big deal.

Jason Aten:

Alright. I don't know. I'm not convinced.

Stephen Robles:

I'm only kept it out. Have you kept up? Have you seen all

Jason Aten:

the shows? I have only five episodes into season one at this point.

Stephen Robles:

Forget about it. No. No. No. No.

Stephen Robles:

You gotta get the you gotta get all the way through one. Starts you gotta catch up. You gotta catch

Jason Aten:

up. Hold on, though. Hold on. You can't be like, the show is amazing. I mean, the first part's a slog.

Stephen Robles:

No. It's not a slug. It's not a slug. I'm saying the payoff. First of all, the season one finale is one of the most insane thing.

Stephen Robles:

Like, it is Alright. Crazy. I'm

Jason Aten:

gonna get there. I got a flight today. I'm gonna get there. I got two flights today. I'm gonna get there.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Well, we'll talk we'll talk after that. We're gonna argue about severance. Okay. In the community, in your five star rating and review in Apple Podcasts, Ted Lasso v Severance.

Stephen Robles:

Let us know if you've seen both. But you have to be caught up on severance. Gabriel, like, Jason, like, I saw two episodes and, you know, no no no. You gotta have a con.

Jason Aten:

I'm just saying you don't have to watch all of Ted Lasso to make an opinion about Ted Lasso.

Stephen Robles:

But you should only watch season one and then have an opinion. I mean, the other seasons are good.

Jason Aten:

Oh, Ted watch only season one of Ted Lasso and then compare. That's fine. I'm happy

Stephen Robles:

to make

Jason Aten:

that mistakes.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Season one

Jason Aten:

They're all good.

Stephen Robles:

They're they're all they're all good, but season one will just stop you. Anyway, we gotta talk about the iPhone because Apple actually released a new iPhone this week, the iPhone 16 e, and there's so many little details to tease out about this phone. It takes the place of the iPhone SE, the quote unquote budget level device for Apple. Although budget, I think, is in the big air quotes because it starts at $600 rather than the SE's $430 and all the upgrades are way more expensive. You know, if you want to upgrade the storage on this new 16 e, I'm gonna run down, just some interesting specs about the 16 e, and then we should talk about it.

Stephen Robles:

First of all, the e stands for nothing. That was according to quoting John Gruber who talked to Apple press. They said the e stands for nothing, but we believe it's for everyone. But the e doesn't stand for everyone. Just e.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know. I'm talking about that. It does have a I think the biggest news is Apple actually made their own modem for this device, the c one cellular modem, and I think that's gonna play a huge role in future phones. Of course, no wave, so that really fast five g, which we could talk about, that is not a part of this phone because the c one modem does not include that. It has an action button, but no camera control, but you can do visual intelligence, and that visual intelligence will actually be coming to the 15 pro models because as you'll be able to map it to the action button.

Stephen Robles:

There's qi charging but no MagSafe, but there's better better battery life than the iPhone 16. There's no home button. That's gone. It's face ID. No lightning.

Stephen Robles:

It's USB c. It's eSIM only, 60 hertz display, no thread or u one chip, which I'm gonna come back to that because that might be one of the more egregious things. The SE and iPhone 14 are now discontinued. You can't buy them from Apple anymore. So this is the base iPhone if you buy them new from Apple.

Stephen Robles:

And, yeah, I I wore my let Tim Cook shirt today. I'm not sure if he cooked on this one. I'm not I'm not sure. I will say they have a thirteen minute or twelve minute fifty second video, and Apple is, like, taking the bento box design to the next level with their product.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. The people are walking around in bento boxes.

Stephen Robles:

They're walking around, and actually the sponsor today is very exciting because there's a big connection to this. But anyway, Bento Box is on point, for the iPhone 16 e in this video, which is cool, but there's just so many weird trade offs and differences between this iPhone 16 e. I don't know. What what did you it was as the data came in, Jason, how were what opinion were you forming as you saw this phone?

Jason Aten:

Well, the most surprising thing for me is the price. Mhmm. I it's interesting to me that Apple thinks that it no longer needs a lower, low cost, like a sub $500 phone.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Right.

Jason Aten:

Because they don't sell one now. And I was checking and even in the refurbished store you can buy an iPhone 14 pro with a hundred. It's like $5.49. Like it's like it's so it's it is not a there is and there's actually 13 pros in there, but they all have a terabyte of storage and they're like 700 or something stupid like that. So it is interesting to me that apple doesn't think that it needs a now maybe this is a phone that T Mobile is gonna always sell for $4.99.

Jason Aten:

Like, maybe that's the strategy. Like, let's make it a $600 phone, but that was the most surprising thing. Now the most obvious difference is Apple has finally killed off the touch the home button.

Stephen Robles:

No.

Jason Aten:

There's no device anymore with a home button.

Stephen Robles:

My father-in-law is gonna be ticked.

Jason Aten:

Because there's no there's no iPads. There are no there's no devices anymore that have a home button because they don't they don't call the other touch ID buttons home buttons because they're not at the bottom. Right. And if you think about it, like, that has been the single most iconic part of the iPhone over its its history because you would see, like, silhouettes of the iPhone and they always had a circle at the bottom. And that's how you knew it was an iPhone and not some random Samsung knockoff.

Jason Aten:

Off.

Stephen Robles:

It was like in the icons of iPhone Yeah. When you just That's

Jason Aten:

what I'm saying. Like, it was the thing people like, even if you had had hadn't had a phone with a touch ID or, I mean, a home button in years, you still knew, like, that was the thing about an iPhone. And so I don't know. The The other most surprising thing for me is I was on a I was on a music video shoot yesterday.

Stephen Robles:

Say one day.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I'm not gonna go into that.

Stephen Robles:

What is this for a rap album that you have yet to announce?

Jason Aten:

I was not the artist. Let me just be clear. I was I was photographing, photography.

Stephen Robles:

Photography. Your professional photography.

Jason Aten:

Or yes. That's exactly right. So I was I was doing that, whatever the verb is. Yeah. And there was a bunch of teenagers involved in this.

Jason Aten:

And I asked them, hey, did any of you guys hear that apple introduced a new iPhone today? And they're like, no. What are you talking about? They're like, is it the 17? What's I'm like, no, it's not the 17.

Jason Aten:

It's called the 16 e. And they're like, what the heck is that? I'm like, well, it replaces the iPhone s e and they're like, what

Stephen Robles:

is it?

Jason Aten:

And the only thing that, no, here's the thing. There was like four high school age girls. And the only thing they wanted is the lightning cable back. They would buy it

Stephen Robles:

if they

Jason Aten:

had a lightning adapter. But the reason is think about it. Like high school students are an interesting collection of the types of phones that they have. So when they go to friend's house and it's like, I can't charge my phone because of your cord, I can't do this. And it's a weird, weird, so the only, so if I was thinking like apple, what you should have done, keep the home button, but put lightning back on this.

Jason Aten:

Don't sell it in Europe, but the teenagers, man. No. I don't know.

Stephen Robles:

No. Well, the answer would have been MagSafe, but this phone doesn't have MagSafe.

Jason Aten:

But it still charges wireless.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. We're gonna talk about that in a second. I just wanna mention having a $400 phone. The Pixel six a, which is their, like, affordable phone, is $400. And it does feel like $400 is the line of, like, here's our affordable phone, and Apple is not it doesn't have that line anymore.

Jason Aten:

I mean In fairness, that phone was on sale, a hundred dollars.

Stephen Robles:

It was on sale.

Jason Aten:

They're actually a $500 phone, but

Stephen Robles:

Oh, yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

That's fair. Fair enough. Even on you can, like, on Amazon get refurbished, like, iPhone 15 Pros and Pro Maxes though for, like, the same price as this iPhone 16 e. That and that is like I don't know. It it doesn't feel great.

Stephen Robles:

So the no MagSafe thing, here's the thing. In the Apple Newsroom article and then in the tech specs, it says it has Qi charging, but it just doesn't even mention MagSafe anywhere, which I feel is like, I mean, I understand.

Jason Aten:

Even in the eve even in the video when, Yeah. Kai Andrianza is talking about it, she's like, and it supports wireless charging.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. That's it.

Jason Aten:

Like, doesn't say anymore.

Stephen Robles:

So here's the deal. Wireless charging, regular qi. So if you're familiar with, like, chi chi too, I talk about this a lot on my channel, but that means if you wireless charge, it's only seven and a half watt wireless charging. Even if you don't have the MagSafe magnet for, like, alignment and accessories, you hopefully, I mean, the 15 watt charging is also the big benefit of MagSafe versus regular Qi charging. So even if you do wireless charging, it's just gonna charge way slower than every other iPhone, except the iPhone eight, which also is regular Qi charging.

Stephen Robles:

But anyway, so it's slower charging and then also all of the MagSafe accessories like look I have literally like accessories that I still have to unbox, like I have MagSafe accessories everywhere. Apple sells MagSafe accessories, the Apple MagSafe wallet used to sell one of the best MagSafe batteries and they stopped that, but MagSafe accessories are everywhere. I feel like to not include MagSafe is a huge mess. A lot of thoughts or rumors on, social media was like well maybe the new c one cellular modem and they talk about a redesign that made for the bigger battery which is why it has better battery life than the 16 that maybe that is why they don't have the MagSafe ring but it's like listen you can get a MagSafe case and people are saying like well just get a MagSafe case. Well first of all Apple's not gonna make a MagSafe case for this like I don't think they're gonna put the MagSafe circle in the 16 e cases and I don't know third party makers will either but you still get the slow charging it's slow charging either way even if it aligns it.

Stephen Robles:

So I feel like MagSafe I don't I don't know why, but that bothers me. The no mmWave, whatever, that's fine. 60 Hertz display, whatever. The no MagSafe and then the no u1 chip, and so the u1 chip, I don't know if it will be able to do the precision find my with AirTag. I don't know if the phone needs to have the u one chip in addition to the AirTag, but you won't be able to precision find your phone or other pea like the find my people.

Stephen Robles:

So the u one in the phones, like if you open the find my app and you're trying to find another person like in a crowd, you can actually do precision find my between iPhones and you can actually get the arrow on screen and it'll point you to the other phone with a u one chip. So there's no u one chip and no thread, which I don't know if anybody would even know what that is, but, you know, no thread for the smart home stuff. But I feel like the the lack of u one chip, the no MagSafe, the higher price, I don't know. It just kinda feels me to me. Maybe not me.

Jason Aten:

I mean, but I guess the question is what they have to do something to differentiate it from the 16. It's $200 less than the 16.

Stephen Robles:

The one less camera. The camera's a big difference. There's only one less.

Jason Aten:

That's not enough of a difference. No. That's not enough of a difference between for for it to justify this what they're trying to get at. I mean, it doesn't have any colors.

Stephen Robles:

No dynamic island. It's still a notch. Because the 16 But but I

Jason Aten:

guess those are not, like, those are not, the types of features I think that people who are looking at this phone like, right, that is not really the differentiator. So at some point, you have to have a because otherwise, it's I mean, it has a a 18. It does have one less graphics core than the, than the 16 does. It has the same neural engine. It has the same main camera.

Jason Aten:

It has the fusion 48 megapixel camera. It just doesn't have the ultra wide, which I learned is the thing that actually the like, my daughter was like, I don't want this phone. It doesn't have the point five. I'm like, why do you care about the point five? Well, that's how you take all the funny pictures or whatever.

Jason Aten:

Like, I don't

Stephen Robles:

know. The funny pictures.

Jason Aten:

Right? But it has the thing that Apple thinks is the most important because it has the a 18. This phone does Apple intelligence.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

Right? And so you just have to think about, like, how did they come and it actually has better battery life than the 16.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Right.

Jason Aten:

Which is so you just have to think about, like, how do they make these compromises? And I don't know, like, that the people who would spend the money on this phone are also people who are like, my life is built around MagSafe because I have the wallet and I have the whatever and I have this thing. I just, I don't know. I just don't know that that's it feels like this is actually the logical area to to pull back because the s e, was it the three, SE three It

Stephen Robles:

did not.

Jason Aten:

Also only also only had Qi charging.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Well, so for me, like, my son has an iPhone 13. And so if I was looking to upgrade his phone, this iPhone 16, he would actually be a viable option. He gets the Apple intelligence, the newest chip, the camera's great, does you know, you can do four ks 120 slow mo. No, sorry, not four ks 120.

Stephen Robles:

It only does the 1080p, 120 for a slow mo. But anyway, it would be a great option for someone like my son to upgrade from the 13 to the 16 e, but he does have, like, all these MagSafe accessories mostly because I hand them down. Like, I get them off for videos, and then I hand them down with it's, like, MagSafe batteries and chargers and cases. And, like, that would be a big part of how he uses his phone. Like, he uses the batteries all the time.

Stephen Robles:

He has the three in one charging on his desk. Like, that would be a miss. And I will have to test whether or not a case for the 16 e with a MagSafe ring is will suffice. I don't know. But that that would just be a myth.

Stephen Robles:

And I also don't think I don't know if a case like that will work because you have to pass the wireless charging from the circle the ring of the MagSafe of the case to the ring of the MagSafe in the phone, and I don't know how that will work with the cheap.

Jason Aten:

I don't think that's true. I think that the rings that you see are just the alignment, and the charging is actually in the middle of it.

Stephen Robles:

The charger's in the middle? Oh, you see what

Jason Aten:

a charger looks like? It's a whole bunch of

Stephen Robles:

It's a coil. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You might be Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Those

Jason Aten:

are just the alignment magnets. But I think the way to think about this though is if you line up the s e three, the 16 e and the 16, you're comparing the 16 e to the features of the 16, but that's not what Apple wants you to do. What they want you to do is say, for a hundred and $50 more, you go from, like, a 4.7 to a 6.1 inch screen that has 800 max max nits max brightness. So it's in 1,200 peaks. So you get HDR, which you did not have before.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

You get the a 18. You get double, like, double the battery life, I almost or something like that. You get an extra camera because even though it only has one camera housing, they're calling that Fusion camera two zero one. Right? You get Dolby Vision.

Jason Aten:

You could shoot four k. Like, you get all of the visual intelligence. You get Apple intelligence. You have the action button. Like, they're that's the way that they're comparing it.

Jason Aten:

Anyone who is thinking my kid has the 14 or the 15, and I what would I upgrade to? That's not this phone. Right. It's not meant it's just not for that. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

And so when you go to the iPhone 16 e product page, they have a compare with drop down, and the iPhone 13 to 16 is nowhere to be found. If you wanna compare battery life, it's to the iPhone 12 or the SE third generation.

Jason Aten:

Well, I mean, the eleven's in there.

Stephen Robles:

I'm just kidding. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And

Jason Aten:

they even said something about something that it does computationally is twice as fast or something like that as the iPhone 11 and, like, iPhone 11. Apple. My my daughter has an iPhone 11 Pro, and it's only because it's a hand me down. Like, that was my phone five years ago.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Now you can also get it in whatever beautiful color you want as long as it's white or black.

Jason Aten:

I mean, technically, if you put a case on it that's not MagSafe, it'll be whatever color you want it.

Stephen Robles:

It'll be whatever. Yeah. So you got you got two colors. I know everybody is probably gonna put a case on a phone like this.

Jason Aten:

This. Isn't that actually a reasonable I mean, I think I don't think Apple should stop selling phones with colors, but isn't it funny to you that people complain so much about the colors and everyone who cares puts a case on it?

Stephen Robles:

But a lot of people do like the clear case for that reason. A lot of people like the clear I mean, Andrew Claire, YouTube, friend of mine, whenever he does videos or reels about clear cases, they blow up. It's like people love the clear case because they do wanna show off the color. I always feel like that clear case with the white ring from MagSafe

Jason Aten:

It's the worst thing.

Stephen Robles:

It's the worst. But maybe with the 16 e, you can get a clear case without that ring because it doesn't have MagSafe. Maybe that'll but then there's no color to show off.

Jason Aten:

Show off your white phone?

Stephen Robles:

That's great of you. White or black. I do I will say and Sebastian DeWitt and the other, people on social media were saying the one camera look for the back of the iPhone is still pretty nice. It looks pretty safe.

Jason Aten:

It is. That's pretty nice.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Now I wanna talk about the c one modem. So this is the first time this is pretty big news, actually. The first time Apple is making their own first party cellular modem, putting it in a phone. I think the obvious course going forward is that Apple will use their own modems in their phones.

Stephen Robles:

Whether or not they'll use the c one in the iPhone 17 this fall remains to be seen. I feel like the loss of wave, I feel like not a single voice will be heard, be crying that time. I feel like

Jason Aten:

Well, and it's not available in Europe. Right?

Stephen Robles:

Right. You know what

Jason Aten:

I mean? And it's not even really available on anything except for Verizon. No. I don't think

Stephen Robles:

I did a whole video on a on, AT and T. I did a video for Apple Insider when the iPhone

Jason Aten:

But I don't think it's the same exact thing, is it?

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. When I went yes. When I went to I to when I got the iPhone 12, because that was the first time wave. I see now I gotta find this video. I, for Apple Insider, I did a video go I I drove to hold on.

Jason Aten:

I remember you went to, like, a stadium parking lot or something.

Stephen Robles:

I went to a TGI Friday's parking lot. It was a TGI Friday's parking lot, by Universal Studios Orlando, and I tested the m m wave. Here's the video. Is it out? So I'll link the video in the show notes because this is great.

Stephen Robles:

Andrew O'Hara opened up the video for me. But here here's me, by the side of the road talking about the

Jason Aten:

Oh, my.

Stephen Robles:

Five g plus tested. That is This is how many years ago? This was 18,000 years ago. This was four years ago.

Jason Aten:

That's amazing.

Stephen Robles:

But I did I did the speed test. And look, I mean, I was getting 1,300 megabits down on an AT and T puts five gs plus when you're in the ultra wide, but the upload speed was abysmal. I mean, it was like thirty thirty seven. So anyway, but it was I mean, it's a real thing in, like, four places in every state.

Jason Aten:

Okay. That's that's the difference.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. There is

Jason Aten:

t t just Yeah. Only puts it in TGI Friday's parking lots. If you want the real five g everywhere, you gotta

Stephen Robles:

be on the phone. And if, like, a box truck passes between your phone and the the Wave radio drops to, like, five megabits, so, you know Oh, I thought

Jason Aten:

you were gonna say the box truck explodes. Like, I just could see waves.

Stephen Robles:

Burst in a flame. Spontaneous combustion. That's it. It's not that anybody really cares about Wave. So I feel like it'll it will come to to the iPhones for sure.

Stephen Robles:

Do you think we'll see the c one or some variant in the iPhone 17 models this fall?

Jason Aten:

Well, I'm gonna answer that in a second. But first of all, when it says Wave, what does stand for?

Stephen Robles:

Millimeter. Millimeter wave.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Okay. Most people just say millimeter wave and you just kept saying wave. So I was just

Stephen Robles:

I don't know what it's been so no one talked about it because it's you. I don't even know. I was just I don't know what's okay. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

It's it's ever since the keynote where the CEO of Verizon showed up and he's like five g five g five g. That was the best super cut ever.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. It was a supercut. It's also ultra wideband. You can call it wideband.

Jason Aten:

That's what Verizon calls millimeter wave. They call it ultra.

Stephen Robles:

It's the ugliest symbol in the status bar. It has like a u w with a five g.

Jason Aten:

I mostly turn off five g on my phone unless I'm traveling somewhere where I'm, like, mostly gonna be using my phone to tether. Interesting. But yeah. Well, I mean, what? Why?

Jason Aten:

Like, I'm on Wi Fi most of the time.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. I mean, I find well, we

Jason Aten:

can get better battery life. So anyway okay. Yeah. Actually, I was looking at it because I might have that might have been a lie. Everything I just said.

Stephen Robles:

Do you keep the five g on auto? Sure. Probably. Right?

Jason Aten:

I'm just trying to figure that out. And there's so many settings now in here. Oh, yeah. Five g is on auto. You're right.

Stephen Robles:

On auto. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten:

Great. So the your question, though, c one in the Apple c one is gonna be I don't think so.

Stephen Robles:

Okay.

Jason Aten:

Because Apple has a licensing patent with Qualcomm, and I don't remember when that's over. But Qualcomm is not gonna be like, there's been a lot of bad blood back and forth between these two companies over because Qualcomm basically is a monopoly on the technology for cellular modems type things. And apple, if you remember, bought intel's modem business, that's where this came from. They bought it, they paid like a billion dollars and I think 2019 to buy intel's. And the reason was because intel just decided it wasn't worth it because Qualcomm owns this market.

Jason Aten:

Right. And I believe that the the licensing agreement is at least two more years. And so my sense is on existing phones, they are they're gonna stick with Qualcomm. So on the sixth like, on the '17 and the '17 pro. And then this is such a low budget, like a low stakes phone for them that if, like, the peep you and I are not buying this, making YouTube videos.

Jason Aten:

I don't make YouTube videos except for this one literally. But about about how bad the modem is or whatever like that, you know, so that in my mind, that's the, that's my take. I think that I don't, I think it'll be at least two more years before we see an apple. Yeah. C two or C three in one of those.

Jason Aten:

Because this is what we really need needed is another chip starting with a new numbering sequence.

Stephen Robles:

And the c, the h, the u. There's someone forgetting.

Jason Aten:

The a.

Stephen Robles:

The l. Yeah. The a.

Jason Aten:

The most important one.

Stephen Robles:

This is Apple newsroom release from April 2019, and it was basically announcing that Qualcomm and Apple were dropping litigation between them. They could stop suing each other, but that they reached a six year license agreement effective April 2019. So that seems like it will be up this April. There's an option to extend including a two year option not to extend but I think with this announcement, yeah, so iPhone 17 likely because it's already in development like the iPhone 17 is already designed and done. Have you seen the renders?

Stephen Robles:

Like, John Prosser was talking about the iPhone 17 by the way?

Jason Aten:

Some of them. Just an update. Yeah. Qualcomm has said told investors that the the deal has been extended until at least 2027.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Jason Aten:

So But not And that's from, like, yesterday.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Very good.

Jason Aten:

Because that was, like, the question investors are wondering, like, oh, if Apple's putting out its own chip, how does that affect whatever's going on? And so yeah. It's Yeah. I I just think it'll be a couple years before we see it in

Stephen Robles:

So here my my other question then, with Apple now developing its own cellular modem, is it possible that we will see cellular data connectivity built into MacBooks?

Jason Aten:

I mean, if we don't, I'm never buying another one. No. I'm just kidding. No. Like, this is insane.

Jason Aten:

Like, I ran the poll and I was like, okay. And for MacBook air, what do we what do we think is the most likely? And no one thinks cellular is coming to it. But I was like, please, like, there are more people who thought that potentially it would get, like, OLED or something like that. I don't even remember, but it was just ridiculous.

Jason Aten:

It's like, that's the thing I think most people want. Put it in a MacBook Air. You don't have to put it in a MacBook Pro. Put it in the MacBook Air. Make some differentiation.

Stephen Robles:

And we're not gonna we're not gonna rehash everything the ATP guys said, but Casey List and all the guys at ATP, Mark Arment, John Sirkes, they all want cellular in MacBooks, and I will and everyone who argues will just hotspot to your phone. You don't do that very often. If you if that is your defense about not building cellular into MacBooks, just hotspot because I I've done it. I, for a long time, just bought iPads with WiFi and would hotspot to my phone if I was in a cafe or someplace that didn't have WiFi. And it works, like, enough where it's annoying when it doesn't.

Stephen Robles:

Like, it works like 70% of the time, and then the other 30% you actually have to go on your iPhone, go to settings, go to cellular, go to hotspot, and hold that screen up so your iPad recognizes it. So it works most of the time and it's great, but I've now in the last two models of iPad Pro have cellular built in. Like I have it in my M4 iPad Pro and it is so nice to just not even think about it. Like I can just pull out my iPad wherever and I'm connected. Either cellular or Wi Fi, don't have to think about it.

Stephen Robles:

The cellular is just on. I think it does kill my battery. Like, my iPad will not sit there on standby for, like, more than a day without dying, which is kind of

Jason Aten:

a Sure.

Stephen Robles:

But the built in cellular is a big deal. And for a Mac, like on a MacBook Air, I would probably get a MacBook Air with that. I think that'd be pretty

Jason Aten:

Absolutely. I think for all the people who say just tether, which by the way, like tethering is fine. Like, okay. That's great. Sure.

Jason Aten:

But I would say to you, from now on, only make Wi Fi calls on your iPhone. Don't use the cellular service. Like don't use it. You only tethered a wifi or to someone else's iPhone. If you anytime you wanna make a call or download data or use an app, you should just tether to something else.

Jason Aten:

No, because there's cellular built in. That's like the whole point. So like, I don't understand this idea that that's the holy grail of connectivity is tethering to an iPhone that has cellular service. What if the cellular service was just in the Mac? It it Like, this is this is bananas to me that that's the argument.

Stephen Robles:

I mean, I I get it. And and, like, yes, tethering used to be, like, this upcharge with a lot of cell character carriers and I think now it's included in most data plans so it is reasonable to tether. And I and I tether from my MacBook, when I need to but yeah I would love a built in cellular. So anyway that's the iPhone 16 e it is six I forgot I forgot the price rate it's $600.05

Jason Aten:

$99.05 99.

Stephen Robles:

5 90 9 and then the iPhone 16 starts at let me look I think $7.99?

Jason Aten:

7 yeah it's $200 more.

Stephen Robles:

$200 more. I will say you gotta give the credit to Apple for getting that pricing tier just Goldilocks right where you wanna jump to the next level. Just I I don't know

Jason Aten:

if we have to give them credit just to be honest.

Stephen Robles:

No. Well, no. I mean, Tim Cook. He's he's got he's got the whiteboard with the like, you know, the charts and anyway. So yeah, I'm I'm curious.

Stephen Robles:

I'm gonna get one to play around with it and review it. And, the preorders of this Friday, which is the twenty first. So tomorrow, if you listen to this one day comes out, then you get it on the twenty eighth. But we'll see. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

The new, 16 e. That doesn't stand for anything. The 16 e. Did the SE actually stand for special edition? Did Apple ever say that?

Stephen Robles:

Or was that just kind of a I

Jason Aten:

don't think they ever said that, and that would be weird to make your worst phone your special edition.

Stephen Robles:

That would be. Yeah. That would be strange. I don't know. I think e stands for

Jason Aten:

Super economical. Econ super economical.

Stephen Robles:

Apple would not say that. I think 16 e stands for egregious that it doesn't have MagSafe. That's what the e stands for. Egregious.

Jason Aten:

The thing you're the most upset about is just

Stephen Robles:

Listen. I talk about a lot of MagSafe accessories on my channel. I really like MagSafe. That's all I'm saying.

Jason Aten:

I I But I'm

Stephen Robles:

not gonna get this phone, so it doesn't matter. I mean, it's my main phone, so okay. Alright. We have to talk about

Jason Aten:

Just going to get it as a paperweight.

Stephen Robles:

Thank you. Great segue. We're gonna talk about my paperweight here in a second, and another paperweight. I'm gonna flash it on screen to tease it. Look at that.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, we're gonna talk about that in a second too if you're watching. Youtube.com/@primarytechshow. But before we do, I'm excited because a listener and and view of this show, someone who's in our community and as a developer sponsored this episode. And listen, if you're a developer or you have something that you wanna advertise, like, we'll give deals on on sponsorships for the because we'd love to be able to promote stuff from you guys, the audience, the the listeners that do it. So I wanna talk about this awesome app.

Stephen Robles:

You can get it for your Mac, your iPad. It's called BentoCraft. It's from That Virtual Boy, and we're talking about the Bento box that Apple showed during the iPhone 16 e video. Well, if you wanna make your own Bento boxes to advertise your product, your service, maybe work at a company and you're in the graphics team and you just want a great way to make these templates quickly, that's what the BentoCraft app is about. It's a fun tool where you can create these high quality Apple style bento graphics in seconds.

Stephen Robles:

So app service, whatever it is you can use it and it's easy intuitive templates and easy mock ups where you just drag and drop and what's really cool is on the iPad especially it has this new precise canvas grid and so you can really create a bento box just exactly how you want, layout everything, use your own pictures. They have again several different layout styles, it's awesome. And I'll also show the Mac app. So you can get it on the iPad, you can get it on your Mac, you can also get it on Apple Vision Pro. Alright?

Stephen Robles:

If you want to design a mental box

Jason Aten:

I'm super gonna do that.

Stephen Robles:

Apple Vision Pro. Well, I just use it every day.

Jason Aten:

I'm super gonna do that.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Uses it every day. This is the app on the Mac. It's so cool. So you can choose from the different sizes.

Stephen Robles:

You can go to monster craft and stuff like that, and then you can choose from, you know, your own photos and screenshots to put it in the bento box. You can click any of the little boxes and then choose from the many different icons, hundreds of icons here to design each box. You can change the text, and you can just design them all super easy. Drag and drop the colors. It looked great, and so it has all the device frames that you need when you're using the screenshots.

Stephen Robles:

You can customize, again, colors, text, backgrounds, images, and it's lightning fast on all the platforms. Again, the Mac, the iPad. Super cool idea. So you gotta try it. BentoCraft.

Stephen Robles:

You can go to the link in the show notes. You can go to his website and then download directly from there. You can search in the App Store, but there's a special deal for primary tech listeners. There's a BOGO monthly unlimited export. So it's free to download, free to try.

Stephen Robles:

You have some exports and then there's in app purchases if you want it. There's also a lifetime license if you like the buy one app and just own it forever, no in app purchase ongoing, you can do that too. Highly recommend support for the virtual boy, but you can get BOGO monthly unlimited exports when you use promo code primary tech BOGO to receive two months of unlimited exports for the price of one. So you get BOGO exports, use that promo code primarytech bogo, all one word. When you download the app, go to the support section and you can use that promo code and get that deal.

Stephen Robles:

BentoCraft is awesome. Use that promo code and even if you just download the app for free, leave him a five star rating. I think his app has, like, one review in the App Store. So let's after you leave your five star rating and review in Apple Podcasts for primary tech no. Actually, you know what?

Stephen Robles:

Do this before it. Just go to the App Store, download the app, and leave that Virtual Boy a five star rating and review for Bento Craft. Awesome app. Easy way to make these graphics. Thanks That Virtual Boy for sponsoring this episode and go flood his app with five star reviews and downloads and, do that lifetime purchase and, it's awesome.

Stephen Robles:

So very cool. Thank you That Virtual Boy for sponsoring this episode. Alright. Also, sponsored this episode is sponsored by My Paperweight. I can't I can't believe can't believe this happened.

Stephen Robles:

So the news is, Humane, you know Humane. We've talked about the Humane. I've heard. You've heard of Humane. They were acquired by HP where cool well, I wouldn't call the Humane app being a cool tech product, but where interesting tech products go to die.

Stephen Robles:

So HP is acquired

Jason Aten:

Things things go to die. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Things go to die. HP acquired parts of Humane, the AI pin startup, for a hundred $16,000,000. I don't even know if it's whatever I don't know what they're buying. I don't know what parts they're buying. Cosmos, their OS, who knows?

Stephen Robles:

But the AI pin is dead, and so an email went out to owners of the AI pin, like me. Me and 10 other people got this email and circulated it on social media. Jason has a article here, we could talk about that too, but in the email, it says, the app in thank you for your support. Thank you for being an early adopter of AI pen. I'm reading from the email now.

Stephen Robles:

We are writing to inform you that effective immediately, we are winding down the consumer AI pen as our business priorities have shifted. Can I just say winding down is the most gracious term? They are like, shutting their doors in a week, as we will get to in a second. Effective immediately, new purchase of the consumer AI PIN will be discontinued. And what what information do you have about sales of the AI PIN?

Jason Aten:

So I I I asked a couple people that I knew that were familiar with humane because I was curious about this whole, like, well, if you're within your return window, you can still get a refund. And I was curious, like, I wonder how many AI pins that is. And the number I heard completely unofficially was that that was like less than a few dozen. That was like the way it was worded. So I don't know if that's like anywhere from one to, I don't know, 50 or something like that in the last ninety days, which I actually don't know whether I should be more surprised that the number is that low or that high.

Jason Aten:

Like

Stephen Robles:

That is because I could equally

Jason Aten:

see, like, no one has bought any of these in the last thirty days. Who's buying them?

Stephen Robles:

Because they had they had they had a marketing push, like, when it finally went became available, but it's been quiet, you know, ever since. Also, I love this slide in your article. You know, they say first and foremost, thank you for being an early adopter and truly grateful to have you head on this journey with us. And you say, what journey? Less than a year.

Stephen Robles:

These things shipped, I believe, in March of twenty twenty four. Yeah. It is not even a year. And this thing is dead, but I'm sorry. Let me go actually go and actually read it.

Stephen Robles:

Your AI pin will continue to function normally until 12PM Pacific time on February 28. That's a week, basically. A week and three days is when this email went out. It will no longer connect to humane servers, and dot center access will be fully retired. Device features, your AI pin features will no longer, like, including messaging, calling, AI queries, they will no longer work.

Stephen Robles:

They'll all be shut down. Data access, all your data is gonna be deleted by February 28, '12 PM Pacific. And then basically, you won't be able to do anything, anything that uses the Internet except and this is the the most hilarious part of this email. What can you do with your AI pen after February 28? You can check the battery percentage.

Stephen Robles:

You can check the battery percentage because that's the offline feature. So you can you can start it up, charge you the boost rate back, use the ink the laser ink projector and check your battery percentage. So I obviously, I bought this thing when it came out. I pre ordered it on day one because listen. I was excited for AI gadgets even though I knew they were likely gonna fail.

Stephen Robles:

And I it was a $24 a month subscription just to use this. Remember, we used the T Mobile cellular connectivity, and I stopped paying for that several months ago, which then like, it already made it a bricked product. Like, I can't really use this, because because if you don't pay for the monthly subscription, you can't access any of the cloud services. So I already stopped paying for it. But to brick I mean, to purposely brick a device, like, even if you were paying that monthly thing, come February 28, the AI Pin is going to be a brick, literally.

Stephen Robles:

Even if you paid, like I did, 800 for this device, less than a year after I received it, it is becoming a useless paperweight. That is, just a speed run of a terrible product. Like, amazing. Amazing. And so, I mean, no one's everyone's like, we all saw this coming.

Stephen Robles:

Like, it was not going to last. I even made a video before I got my Humanae iPen talking about how the Rabbit r one and Humanae iPen, like, these are not once Apple actually integrates these kinds of features into the phone and Google, like, there's no place for these things. So, like, totally get that. But pretty amazing for the hubris of humane when launching this device, saying it's gonna change everything, to less than a year later being like, yeah, it's a brick now. It's just astounding.

Stephen Robles:

I don't know.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I told you offline. I've never been so mad about something that didn't affect me personally because I never bought I should have I wish I would have thought about this, and I know that peep I don't know people even still do this. I wish I would have gone on to Facebook and marked myself safe from having bought a bricked AI bin. Right?

Jason Aten:

Because I didn't buy one. I just have spent the last whatever this has been year making fun of Steven for buying one. But I I I there are a lot of ways to fail, and this is one of the worst of them because first of all, they're selling this thing for half of what the investors put into it. Like investors put over $230,000,000 into this. They're selling it for 116, roughly half.

Jason Aten:

And that money will go back to the investors to, into some, now most of them are gonna lose money, right? Just, you're only gonna have half the money. So you're you put a million dollars in, you're getting $500,000 back or whatever. And that's a bummer. But I'm like, no no money should go back to the investors.

Jason Aten:

This money should go towards refunding customers

Stephen Robles:

Yeah.

Jason Aten:

Because you have said, we failed as a company. We had a terrible idea that only YouTubers wanted to buy to try out, and we couldn't sustain this business model, but we're just gonna keep all that money. And then we're gonna sell the business off for parts. And sorry. We're we're making it so your devices don't work because at least like that iPhone that's back there, I could replace the battery.

Jason Aten:

I could power it up. Yeah. It wouldn't be able to download new apps, whatever. And it probably wouldn't I mean, the original iPhone was, like, two g. Right?

Jason Aten:

Like, it doesn't even it's two g. It probably wouldn't connect to any cell service at this point, but it's also been eighteen years. Understandable. But it would anything that's on it would still work. Right?

Jason Aten:

Like, I could still do and it would probably still connect to Wi Fi. I mean, so it would still you'd be able to use Safari, be kind of a weird experience. But the point is, like, all of those things would still work. My daughter is I told you is you one of them is using an iPhone s c three. The other one's using an iPhone 11 pro.

Jason Aten:

Those are both relatively old devices. Yeah. Way older than a humane I AI PIN, and they still work just as good today. And here's the thing. Apple just discontinued the iPhone SE, but they didn't turn off everyone's device who had one.

Stephen Robles:

It is, it is astounding, really.

Jason Aten:

And it says a lot about I'm sorry. Like, it says a lot about the failure of the leadership of the people involved as opposed to just the business model. And I think what's weird is I don't think this started out, they've been working on this a long time, long before chat gpt came along. This was not originally supposed to have like an AI angle to it. It was just, they were working on a device that would free you from having to use your smartphone, which turns out nobody cares.

Jason Aten:

Like, I don't like nobody smartphone, please.

Stephen Robles:

Like Right.

Jason Aten:

The all the, like, the books, Palma, those are they're all not the Nook or what what they're what was the one? They're they they're all novelty devices. Recent one was but they're all just like novelty devices. People still just want to use their phone. Like it was the most it's the most useful form factor for the things that people do the most.

Jason Aten:

And so just stop trying to invent a category of things that people don't care about and then take all their money and then shut the business down.

Stephen Robles:

It is wild. And so I had I have another device here that I wanted to tease because so HP has now acquired humane and it will just go by the wayside. So that's that's one hardware device. HP is

Jason Aten:

Well, and they didn't acquire the hardware device to be honest. That's just ceasing to exist.

Stephen Robles:

Just ceasing.

Jason Aten:

They basically hired all the people and they're gonna make them build AI into HP laptops, I guess.

Stephen Robles:

Well, the other Sounds like

Jason Aten:

a winning idea.

Stephen Robles:

The other hardware device, but I have much more nostalgia and appreciation for is this thing, which I just got off on eBay. Wow. The Palm Pre two. This thing, Please tell me if you had this. Listeners I

Jason Aten:

I never had that. What year is that from? Like 02/2003? A palm. 02/2002?

Stephen Robles:

Two thousand '3.

Jason Aten:

Two thousand and '1.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. Palm Pre two really.

Jason Aten:

Nineteen eighty four.

Stephen Robles:

The Palm Pre two was 2010.

Jason Aten:

They were still making that thing after iPhones? Oh my gosh.

Stephen Robles:

Well, yes. Because there was still like the the fight or whatever. So the original Palm Pre came out 02/2009, '2 years after the iPhone. That was the original Palm Pre. This is a Palm Pre two which improved things, like speed and the keyboard thing.

Stephen Robles:

This was so this was out in 2010. Mhmm. Palm, of course, then was acquired by HP, and stuff, but slider phone, full QWERTY keyboard underneath the slider. This honestly really loved the form factor. Like, look how small and pocketable this is.

Stephen Robles:

Honestly, it's about the size of a humane iPad. No, it's not. Too humane AI No,

Jason Aten:

but it's probably about the size of an iPhone SE.

Stephen Robles:

Fair. Yeah. That. I just I wanted to get this because I actually wanted to make a video about it because I was curious, like, how does this software because I always felt like WebOS was way ahead of its time And I'll say, like, the responsiveness of the touchscreen and how well the web browser works, like, it was pretty astounding, how good it was. And I had the original Palm Pre on Sprint.

Stephen Robles:

I really loved it. I think I dropped it once and immediately the sliding mechanism was broke. Like, the sliding mechanism was not durable at all. And then, I don't think I got another one again. It is connected to my Wi Fi by the way, but because I think this only has, like, Wi Fi g or b, it's like, I can't get Internet access because my Wi Fi is, like, the Wi Fi seven, AC.

Jason Aten:

Finally, all that speed is coming back to just the little Yeah. The little Internet bits are just circling around that phone, like, furiously trying to get in, and it's like, I I they're teaching

Stephen Robles:

me that. You're

Jason Aten:

too fast.

Stephen Robles:

But, see, it's connected to the Wi Fi, but I'm gonna see if I can put a a micro, SIM card in here or whatever. Anyway, this I just wanted to mention this because and what were you gonna say? What was the the quick you had?

Jason Aten:

I mean, it does a lot more than the Humana app that ever did.

Stephen Robles:

That's right.

Jason Aten:

And it's fifteen years old.

Stephen Robles:

Still And

Jason Aten:

it still works. It still powers on. It still works. I mean, in fairness, if it won't connect to Wi Fi, it won't actually do any more than the humane AI pin except for it will power on.

Stephen Robles:

I could take notes. Pretty. I could take notes. It probably

Jason Aten:

has a camera. Right?

Stephen Robles:

Oh, it does have a camera. Hold on. Let me launch this camera. Let me see how good this camera is.

Jason Aten:

Guess is. What is that? 1.2 megapixel?

Stephen Robles:

Look at that. Look at that camera. That's immediately more than the humane add pin.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. That's true.

Stephen Robles:

Let's see. I'll take the picture. Oh, the flash was on. Now I'm not blinded.

Jason Aten:

It is a five megapixel camera on that thing.

Stephen Robles:

Listen. Capacitive home button, so it was a capacitive home button to touch, so you just touch that, you go home. The the multitasking view that iPhone totally, like, took from this, like

Jason Aten:

Hijacked. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

The pre was first. Like, the palm pre was first. It did it all, and I mean look at this I can add I have my calendar I can do my calendar here look at this. This is gonna be this is my memory.

Jason Aten:

I mean you can't sync anything to it.

Stephen Robles:

No no no this is it I'm using this as my phone it has Matt look it has YouTube but it has like the icon is like YouTube.

Jason Aten:

That's

Stephen Robles:

Anyway

Jason Aten:

This is gonna be a journey. That's just gonna

Stephen Robles:

be a journey. I can't wait to make this video. I just gotta get just gotta get a connection to the Internet. Anyway, the humane app in, like, such a debacle, but also so to I saw a rabbit r one also announced yesterday that they're showing off their large action model again and how it can take action or whatever. None of these devices the only here's here's what I will say.

Stephen Robles:

The one AI device, and, yes, they sponsored a video on my channel, but I actually still use it, the Plod pin, which it has one use case, it records audio and then transcribes it and uses ChatGPT to give you a bunch of different summaries. That's it. Got the one use case. I do think there is a future where some of those bespoke single purpose quote unquote AI powered devices could be useful in people's workflow, but to try and make an AI device that does all the things your phone does but worse, there is no future for these. It's over.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Also, I don't think that people wanna wear it on their shirt.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. People wanna

Jason Aten:

wear it. Form factor. I mean, if it's like a secret service pin, then you look cool. But you walk around wearing that thing and people are like, not so much.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Not so much. Someone on social media said they saw somebody at Disney wearing one of these the other day. I don't know what they were doing.

Jason Aten:

That's horrifying.

Stephen Robles:

And, anyway, goodbye, humane goodbye, humane AI pin. We hardly knew ye.

Jason Aten:

But It's amazing how inhumane their their failure was.

Stephen Robles:

We might have to end the show right now. I don't I don't know if I can go on.

Jason Aten:

That's good. That's good. You also have no argument. I mean, I'm right.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. No. That's that's true. Alright. We have to talk about well, I almost left the studio.

Stephen Robles:

Don't do that. I'm trying to share my screen. Anyway.

Jason Aten:

You really meant it. Show's over.

Stephen Robles:

That's it. A couple weeks ago, I think it was right after we recorded last week's episode or whatever, but there was a brief moment in time where if you had an Apple TV, all of a sudden your Netflix content was a part of the Apple TV app. Like you know how all those other apps connect and you can put episodes in your watch list and you're up next and it integrates. For a brief moment in time, it actually was working where your Netflix stuff and Apple TV work together and then it disappeared and it's very mysterious. Don't no no one knows what happened except for our own Jason Aten.

Jason Aten:

I I don't know that.

Stephen Robles:

Not that you know it.

Jason Aten:

You're overselling it a tiny bit.

Stephen Robles:

A little bit. A little bit.

Jason Aten:

But the okay. So the weird thing about this was neither company, like, made any kind of an announcement, and it felt like if the war between Netflix and Apple over where the content was going to be aggregated was over, someone would have said something Right. Like Apple would probably want to make some kind of a big deal at, like, Apple TV, refresh or some some kind of something. Like, it so it just didn't really make any sense. And also, it wasn't working on everyone.

Jason Aten:

Like, I tried, I went on to multiple apple TVs at my house, didn't get the notification, didn't see the what other people were seeing. So this was not a like a actual feature update. I even spent time making sure that the apple TVs were updated to the latest version of the like, there's a lot of potential variables, and I'm like, not because I was like, oh, this is the feature I've been waiting for. I barely subscribed to Netflix a couple times a year. So this was not a big deal to me.

Stephen Robles:

Couple times. But I

Jason Aten:

wanted to know because it's like all of these there's like a lot of articles written, you know, apple and Netflix clearly weird the hatchet. It's like, do we even know what's going on? And I talked to quite a few people and the understanding that I was given well so I think Netflix gave a statement to several places which basically said like this was a glitch or this was an error. It wasn't meant to happen.

Stephen Robles:

Don't get excited.

Jason Aten:

And it is not indicative of any future product stuff. Right? We don't know for sure if that's the case because that could be a true statement. This thing that happened is not indicative of a future product. Like, if the thing was just an accident, it doesn't tell us anything about a future product necessarily.

Stephen Robles:

Seems like an odd accident. Like, that you What

Jason Aten:

what is weird to me is everyone was talking about, like, well, how could this even be possible if Netflix hadn't built the capability to serve its content? And the understanding that I have from and I talked to several people about this is that the way that these services so like Google tv apple tv I guess, Roku Yeah. Fire is fire. Is that the four basically? Okay.

Jason Aten:

The way that those things work is that any of the content and the apps that is coming through the service literally is sort of available to those to the operating system. Right. Cause the operating system is running at, at the base level of these devices or whatever. And so, so any of them could do that at any given time. And so the reason that apple and Netflix that it's not available, isn't so much technical as maybe there's like an what is the contract say?

Jason Aten:

Well, you can't find that contract. Like that's never gonna happen. Right. But it sounds like the mistake that was made wasn't on Netflix as part like that. Somehow the switch got flipped somewhere maybe.

Jason Aten:

And, and, and then it got rolled back. And that's why I would be apprehensive about the idea that this is like an imminent change that's coming because it isn't like Netflix built a thing and then an intern somewhere tripped and hit a switch and all of a sudden this happened. I don't think that that's exactly what happened. So I don't, I mean, I wish I could be like more clear and I knew more about what was happening cause, but I don't write software and I don't understand. I mean, I just know what API stands for.

Jason Aten:

I don't even know what it means. So I'm trying to application programming interface.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. Okay. That was

Jason Aten:

I'm like 88% sure that that's what it means.

Stephen Robles:

Okay. I'm a We're

Jason Aten:

a great tech podcast, by the way.

Stephen Robles:

No. No. Listen. I don't know anyone else saying no. What does API stand for?

Stephen Robles:

I think you're probably right. Application programming interface. Is that what you said?

Jason Aten:

That's what I said.

Stephen Robles:

That's what you said. Yeah. You got it. You got it.

Jason Aten:

Okay. Great. So So Well, I don't know what that means, but it's not how applications program an interface.

Stephen Robles:

So basically so basically that that it's strange because that functionality seems to be there, and it's the fact that it's not active is some, like, purposeful block because of an agreement. Like, that is appears to be the case.

Jason Aten:

That's sort of what it just seems like, and it seems like whether that's a, like, specific contract that says you are forbidden from doing this or if it's, we don't we'd really like it if you didn't do this because we'd really prefer that everyone be in our app. Like, I don't know. Like, that's not information that I have.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Right.

Jason Aten:

I would I would it sounds, though, like, maybe, most of like, people jump to a lot of assumptions very quickly, and I just I'm not sure that we know any more other than this is a really weird thing that happened.

Stephen Robles:

Really weird thing that happened. The functionality is probably not coming soon. Straight I mean, and the crux of it is Netflix wants you to go into their app because that's how they get all the data. And again, I've talked about it before but there was a decoder episode where Nilay interviewed one of the Netflix co CEOs and he talks about all of the algorithmic programming and calculations that go on behind the scenes when you open the app to literally serve you things in real time, basically, based on your history, based on what's popular. And so that aggregation can only happen when you open the Netflix app.

Stephen Robles:

And that's why they want you to do that because that's how they get that information. And even like how long you hover over a show or movie poster, or how long you watch the preview that auto plays at the top, which is super annoying. Anyway, that's just me.

Jason Aten:

I don't know for sure, and I'm I believe the Netflix Go CEO when they say those types of things, but it actually is confusing to me because the, like, I don't know that aggregating your inform they really just want people to make Netflix a destination. They want to be seen as a destination and not as on par as, you know, Handmaid's tale and whatever other shows are on all these other streaming services. They wanted to be like, I intentionally went into Netflix because if you think about it, if you've been watching stranger things and so stranger thing pops up into your continue watching, like that actually helps Netflix. So there must be a lot of benefit to Netflix to, like, making people go to the Netflix app instead.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. And and the Cozyo talked about it, like, they they just calculate all of that, and that helps them Yeah. Make their decisions. Even, like, the way YouTubers will try different thumbnails, like, Netflix does the same thing, like, multiple thumbnails per movie, per show, or whatever. But notably, still no app for Apple Vision Pro.

Stephen Robles:

It's been over a year. Still no Netflix app. Apple Vision Pro seems odd. I don't know.

Jason Aten:

It does seem,

Stephen Robles:

no No YouTube app either.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. Although the Juno app, which if you downloaded it when it was available, is still fantastic.

Stephen Robles:

It is fantastic, but then for YouTube to like did you I mean, YouTube blocked it. Right?

Jason Aten:

It works. You just I don't think you can download it anymore.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Because you can't download it anymore. But anyway but but no Netflix app on Apple Vision Pro? I mean, that's something. I guess they don't have content that would show off the immersive nature or three d nature, but I mean I

Jason Aten:

mean, the one good thing about that is because you have to watch Netflix in a browser, it doesn't automatically try to forcibly serve you the three d version like the Disney plus app does.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, yeah.

Jason Aten:

That's true. Every movie you pull up in Disney plus, it's like, here's the three d version. I'm like, no. I just wanna watch a normal movie.

Stephen Robles:

Right. Right. Right.

Jason Aten:

But you have a headset on. Like, I I'll take it off. Don't make me take this off.

Stephen Robles:

I will say, when you, when you get to the season two of Severance, the snow episode, the orc bow, watch that in Apple Vision Pro, at in the environment of Yosemite in the snow. It's it's nice.

Jason Aten:

Should I take it on a plane today?

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. Finally. Yes. Yes. Do that.

Jason Aten:

See, I would do that, but only because my 16 year old daughter will be there, and it'll be mortifying to her.

Stephen Robles:

Whatever the motivation needs to be, Jason. Do that. Bring it with you. %. You should do it.

Stephen Robles:

Let's do a little quick personal tech and then we have to get to our bonus episode where Jason's car apparently broke down again. Anyway, he sent me that picture. So but talk to me. You are using the analog system. Tell me about the I mean What is it?

Jason Aten:

We're a personal tech pod no. We're a tech pod guest.

Stephen Robles:

That's right.

Jason Aten:

But when we talk about personal tech and sometimes personal tech can be low tech.

Stephen Robles:

Oh, absolutely.

Jason Aten:

I feel like I just started reading a sponsor read. This is not

Stephen Robles:

It just sound like

Jason Aten:

Not at all. No. Here's the thing. I, so just to be clear, I reached out to Aug Monk and I asked them, Hey, I would love I hear a lot of great things about your analytics system. And I have written many times about how my favorite technology is just paper and pen.

Jason Aten:

Like I take notes with paper and pen. I make to do lists with paper and pen. I have a notebook that I keep track of things in and I've seen so many people like swear by the Aug Monk analog system and I'm like, I should try it out. So just to be clear, they aren't sponsoring this, but they did send me a set to, to use to review. That's pretty common stuff.

Jason Aten:

So I have, I've been using it and yesterday they released their steel collection. And so I have both that and I have the original one, unfortunately sitting here in front of me. I only have the metal one, the, the steel one. I went to take a picture yesterday, so it's actually sitting over there by on the table behind me. You can't really tell what it is.

Jason Aten:

I really like it. I can't I I have not formed my thoughts enough to figure out why I really like it. But, Steven, you're more of, like, a to do app kinda guy. Right?

Stephen Robles:

I try to use zero paper.

Jason Aten:

Really?

Stephen Robles:

I don't I don't because it just takes clutter. It takes

Jason Aten:

the You don't think better with paper?

Stephen Robles:

I guess I can't say for sure because I don't ever use it.

Jason Aten:

Yeah. I just am fine thinking exactly like I am. So Yeah. Because for me, what ends up happening is paper is a good way for me to be thinking about what I'm going to do as I'm writing. Like the act of writing forces me to process things differently than typing.

Jason Aten:

And so what I typically do is I use the app called things. Yeah. And throughout my day, as it's like, I need to do this thing, I use the keyboard shortcut. I think we talked about this maybe last week. Like I use the keyboard shortcut, I add things to the inbox on today or on things.

Jason Aten:

Then I go through that and I figure out what is it I actually need to do. And for a long time I would be making that list in my little, I've got like a, I think it's called Leuch term. I can't, it's one of those journals with a word you can't actually say out loud, like right.

Stephen Robles:

But L

Jason Aten:

E U C T a. Anyway, it's great. I love it. It, the killer feature for it is the pages have dots on them and so you can use it as like lines and whatever. So, so, but instead of doing it in that journal now, I'm just doing them on piece of paper.

Jason Aten:

So like today, all I have to do is record primary tech, go to Austin and take care of the dog. Actually, not in that order because I have to do the dog stuff before I go to Austin. And then as I'm done, we're, like, almost done with primary tech, so I can just, like, mark off half of that little circle. And then when I'm done, I'll just cross the whole thing off. Sorry.

Jason Aten:

Shows over. And you just and the way it works is you just keep it sitting on your little thing throughout the whole day and then they have a second type of card called next. So if through the day I'm thinking of here's the thing I should work on, I pull out my next card and I make a list of things. Now just to be clear, I'm probably going to still keep doing that in thing. And the only reason for that is it turns out that most of the things I feel like I need to remember to do happen when I'm not sitting at my desk.

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

And I don't carry the next pages around with me. However, I'm going to Austin for five days, and I am taking some of these today cards with me so I can make my list. Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

So these are the today, next, and someday. Honestly Yep. The first thing that I just had a reaction to is seeing that someday card. I'm actually really attracted to that idea of writing down the somedays because I have Yeah. Some things that live in things in my Yeah.

Stephen Robles:

Someday, but I I never ever look at it. And so I do wonder if maybe having a physical someday card, I don't know, would would be a different feeling. I love this little bubble thing, the complete in progress, the delegated thing.

Jason Aten:

And you can use them however you want. Yeah. Right? Like, you can do it. They also have three little dots up at the top, and they give you, like, instructions that are basically, like, use that however you want.

Jason Aten:

Like, you know, create your own little code that makes sense to your brain

Stephen Robles:

Right.

Jason Aten:

How you wanna do that. And and I really like that. Like, it's a very flexible system. They basically just explain it. Like, today cards are for this.

Jason Aten:

Next cards are for this. Someday cards are for I mean, it's pretty obvious. Like and then they tell you, like, organize your cards by you know, you can create little different patterns so that you can keep things organized and stuff. So I just like it, but I'm a paper and pencil person, paper and pen most of the time. So it's super attractive to me and I just, it's a, it's very low tech, but I really, really like, I'm using it.

Jason Aten:

The only thing that I haven't figured out a great system for is I tend to like being able to sort of look back at my previous lists. So that's why having them in a notebook was nice. I don't know if I would love just saving a stack of cards so I'm not sure I'm gonna work that part out but I gotta be honest super like some of the nicest like wood stuff in the steel one is great too. I'm not going to get up right now because I'm connected by wires. But it's great.

Jason Aten:

I mean you saw you saw the pictures. Yeah, it's much it's like much more low profile, right? Because it's like steel, like making the little case instead of the wood. But I it's great. So, oh, wait a minute.

Stephen Robles:

What? What just happened?

Jason Aten:

No, but it's sitting right here. I don't understand why I said it was somewhere else. Apparently I went and got it at some point. I seriously looked behind me because I'm like is there someone else in here? How did this get here?

Jason Aten:

No it's it's super just right here. This is the steel one. And so you just put your card right there in the front. Right right there and it just sits right there.

Stephen Robles:

This is, I'm always attracted to the idea of using these kinds of things. Like, you know, I bought, the moleskin notebooks. I've have I bought, like, field notes notebooks, and I always, like, want to use them, like, I want to want to like them. Yeah. I just I can never integrate them into my workflow, but I didn't realize Elekmonk also is, like, again, they they have not sponsored I've never talked to Ugmonk, but they've the whole, like Yeah.

Jason Aten:

They do a lot of great stuff.

Stephen Robles:

They have a whole desk collection. This reminds me very much of, like, Grovemade, which I love Grovemade stuff.

Jason Aten:

Similar, but I honestly would say that on the whole, the Augmont's AugMonk stuff is a slightly more premium version of Grovemade. And that's not saying anything negative about Grovemade. Right? Because I like their stuff here. This is the journal that I use, and this is the word that I cannot can't can't say.

Stephen Robles:

I I think I have the notebook here. Is it lecture? Lecture.

Jason Aten:

Lecture? Sure. However you wanna say that.

Stephen Robles:

Yeah. That that. I'll put a link to that. But I

Jason Aten:

just I just use it and I'll use the same thing when I'm, like, doing briefings. This is where I take notes for that kind of stuff. And then what I'll do is I'll transfer them to, like, Apple notes for stuff that isn't processing my thoughts. So

Stephen Robles:

Do you do did you do you have the weekly kit?

Jason Aten:

This weekly kit?

Stephen Robles:

For what? I don't know. Right? The ugly one apparently has something called a weekly kit. It has, like, the cards that the week No.

Jason Aten:

I don't have that. That looks pretty cool. I did not ask for that. So

Stephen Robles:

Oh, man. I am I'm tempted to try this. This is

Jason Aten:

getting so expensive for Steven. I'm sorry.

Stephen Robles:

Well, no. No. Because I mean, if you just want, like, the cards and the woodblock, which is, like, what I would get. It's like

Jason Aten:

And you can get, like, a subscription. Basically, it's like a three month. You get one pack per month or something like that. There's like 30 cards in a pack or something, but it's all very well made. It feels good.

Jason Aten:

And this is ridiculous, to be honest. But there is something about when you sit down to think about stuff and to work on creative stuff, having nice quality like, this is really nice paper. Right? Like, it's Makes

Stephen Robles:

a difference.

Jason Aten:

These are really nice cards, and so you feel like you're doing something. Also, totally just realized there's actually dots on the back of this, so you could it's perfect for, like, doodling ideas and stuff on. So

Stephen Robles:

Well, maybe I'll finally take the humane AI pin off my desk and replace it with the

Jason Aten:

That's great. You should.

Stephen Robles:

Starter kit. That's really cool. I'll put a link to it. We don't have any affiliate link or anything if you wanna try it. No.

Jason Aten:

And I'm gonna write a review of the whole thing, and so we will, include that at some point in the future when I when I do that.

Stephen Robles:

I'd love to hear on community or via social like who and how many use like that physical tangible thing because I'm always you know I also have like the cortex, yearly theme journal. Like I literally have one of those journals. I think I wrote a theme in it one year and then never anything else. I just struggle to, like, I want everything digital because it's searchable, it's available everywhere, computer, iPhone, and so I struggle to know how a physical thing will fit in, into my thing but this looks really cool. We'll see.

Stephen Robles:

That's fun. Anyway, alright I wanna know why Tesla, Jason's Tesla's broke again. So anyway, we're gonna go record a bonus episode about that, but again, you can leave us a five star rating and review. Leave, BentoCraft, a five star rating and review in the App Store. All those links are down in the description.

Stephen Robles:

In the episode show notes, you can, of course, watch us, youtube.com/@primarytechshow if you wanna see my Palm Pre two that I, was showing off on camera at the back of this is disgusting. I don't know what the previous owner did to it. I think it's sticking with that. Anyway, let us know. You can also comment on our YouTube.

Stephen Robles:

That's a great place to do it. And then join our community at social.primarytech.fm, and you can share photos of your old tech. Comment on the episode post. We'd love to hear from you there as well. Thanks for listening.

Stephen Robles:

Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.

Creators and Guests

Jason Aten
Host
Jason Aten
Contributing Editor/Tech Columnist @Inc | Get my newsletter: https://t.co/BZ5YbeSGcS | Email me: me@jasonaten.net
X LinkedIn Mastodon Threads Bluesky Website Link
Stephen Robles
Host
Stephen Robles
Making technology more useful for everyone 📺 video and podcast creator 🎼 musical theater kid at heart
X LinkedIn Mastodon Threads Instagram Bluesky YouTube Website Link
iPhone 16e Launched: Here’s What's Missing, Humane Ai Pin is Dead, Apple’s New C1 is a Big Deal

headphones Listen Anywhere

More Options »
Broadcast by