Apple’s BROKEN AI Promise, M4 MacBook Air Review, iOS 19 Redesign
Download MP3You can handle the truth. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Huge show this week. We're reviewing the m four MacBook Air. Me and Jason have them in hand.
Stephen Robles:I've been testing them. And the m three iPad Air. But the big topic this week, Apple Intelligence, which is officially delayed. John Gruber wrote a whole dissertation. Jason has thoughts.
Stephen Robles:I have thoughts. We're gonna get them all out there. That's gonna be after the break. Plus, iOS 19 might have some huge design updates as well. This episode is brought to you by Green Chef and you, the members who support us directly.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and Jason doesn't know this yet, but it's actually my birthday today. And as always, I'm joined by Jason Aiten. How's it going, Jason? I dropped that on you right then.
Jason Aten:Wow. I didn't how did I not know that?
Stephen Robles:I don't well, you know, I'm not like I'm not publishing it around out there, but
Jason Aten:Hang on. I'm gonna put it on my calendar.
Stephen Robles:Well, exactly what I wanna be doing. Now I wanna be doing this podcast. I get I get to do it. I love making this with you and our listeners, and we all get to be a part of it. So, yeah, today I turned 23.
Stephen Robles:No.
Jason Aten:You know, the other thing that happened today, we, like, that we pulled up this morning and our kids, like, about lost their mind is that five years ago today, exactly, we went and picked our kids up from school because it shut down for, like,
Stephen Robles:two That it so that was a weird It was
Jason Aten:weird birthday for you, probably.
Stephen Robles:I remember that distinctly whenever I was trying to think, like, when did the world shut down? I was like, oh, it was my birthday
Jason Aten:2020.
Stephen Robles:It was literally today, exactly five years ago. And can I just say thinking that that was five years ago breaks my brain?
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's why our kids lost their mind. They're like, wait, what? What?
Stephen Robles:Five years ago. So weird. Glad we're not during that time.
Jason Aten:I know. I'm glad.
Stephen Robles:I'm glad I have a MacBook Air to talk about. Me too. And then, yeah. Well, alright, well, let's get into it. Let's get into it, because we have a bunch of some five star reviews.
Stephen Robles:Listen, we've been talking about trying to become a five star show again in Apple Podcasts. Here's the thing, there's been so many of you so graciously leaving us five star reviews. A majority, it seems, like in The UK. So we're like the top 30 or 40 show in The UK for tech shows, which is amazing, because you're all leaving So here's what we need. Keep them coming.
Stephen Robles:But also, if you're in The US, we're trying to be a five star show in The US too. So listen just everybody from every country around the world. Let's just leave five star. But we are still a 4.9 star podcast. We almost have 300 reviews though, which is exciting.
Stephen Robles:And shout out to craig c nineteen eighty six from The UK, Luke Ireland from The UK. That's that's a bit of irony. Luke Ireland from The
Jason Aten:From The UK.
Stephen Robles:From The UK.
Jason Aten:Wow. There's a lot of levels there. It's like
Stephen Robles:There's a of levels there. B rating 48 from The USA. Cyclone Jack 62. Yeah. I know he's in our community as well from The USA.
Stephen Robles:Battery percentage on. Mhmm. Phone in right rear pocket. We got another this is the second rear pocketer, I think, in in as many weeks. R u for reals with a z from The USA.
Stephen Robles:This big question about keeping an m one Pro MacBook Pro or trading it in for an m four MacBook Air. We're gonna talk exactly about that, in a few minutes because we both got them in hand. Matt w from The UK says he cannot miss the show. And Rick the wolf from Canada, he calls us informative and pleasant. Thanks, the other guy.
Stephen Robles:Informative and pleasant. And we have one old tech. One old tech figure. This is from John G. This was I think it was his phone, but it has an iPhone five s still in mint looking condition.
Stephen Robles:Look at that thing.
Jason Aten:Nice.
Stephen Robles:That was the final year where the camera was flush with the back of the phone. Do you remember those days, Jason? I mean,
Jason Aten:only be well, you know, the funny thing is the original iPhone, the camera wasn't actually flushed. There was like a little
Stephen Robles:There was a little lip.
Jason Aten:Around
Stephen Robles:it. There was a little lip. And then the iPhone three and three GS was like a bowl that you can, you know You
Jason Aten:could rock that thing back and forth,
Stephen Robles:get your baby to Yeah. Exactly. Then the four and five, those were the years with the flush flush back. Those were nice. Those were nice.
Stephen Robles:Although I still think this this usually goes around, Jason. Let's just start with a controversy. What would you say the best iPhone design is to this day? I I always go to the iPhone four being in my, like, top three, maybe even top two. It's easy to say, like, the latest design because it's like, I mean, it looks great.
Stephen Robles:Got great hardware. But when it comes to just the overall aesthetic, the iPhone four, still one of my favorite.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But in in high so at the time, yes, but in hindsight, that screen is still so small.
Stephen Robles:Well, yeah, the screen was small, but the just the design of the phone, the rails on the edge, the glass back that was, like, single color, look good.
Jason Aten:I got one right. Right.
Stephen Robles:Do you go over there? I have my mine's in a drawer. Should have even put
Jason Aten:it out. That one's right there. I'm not going to get up and go get it because that will
Stephen Robles:be Well, was I'll ask this. IPhone four or five, which design did you The five had the two tone back. That's the only reason why I say the four. But the five had the bigger screen.
Jason Aten:I think the five probably.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Nobody's perfect. Alright. Let's talk about some
Jason Aten:But listen, you keep calling me the other guy and yet reviews keep coming in. They're like, we don't know his name but we agree with everything.
Stephen Robles:No. I don't know. I haven't seen any of those. I haven't seen anything there. Alright.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Are we still doing the movie quote?
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I asked you last week. I asked you last week what it was. Okay.
Stephen Robles:And the
Jason Aten:Yeah. You asked me for, like, three weeks the previous three weeks because we hadn't done it.
Stephen Robles:I know. We had to catch up.
Jason Aten:It's weird to me though that you picked one from a Broadway show this time.
Stephen Robles:What?
Jason Aten:Okay. Don't tell me you don't know that a few good men was originally a Broadway play.
Stephen Robles:I gotta be honest.
Jason Aten:Written by Aaron Sorkin. Come on.
Stephen Robles:I didn't know that. I didn't know. Oh, what?
Jason Aten:You have a movie podcast.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's not a it's not a Broadway show podcast. You know what I'm saying? Although, sometimes it is.
Jason Aten:I was gonna say.
Stephen Robles:Sometimes we sing some Broadway numbers.
Jason Aten:You're being real generous with yourself there.
Stephen Robles:I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And then, of course, the quote is about Apple getting hammered about Apple Intelligent handling.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's fun watching, you know, Jack Nicholson yell and scream about Apple.
Stephen Robles:It's good. Intelligent. That's that's that's the that we should do a mashup. Okay. Let's talk about here's the this past week has been crazy because last week Apple released a bunch of products, announced them, then all the embargoes lifted or whatever, and now the products are out in the wild.
Stephen Robles:We both have the MacBook Air to talk about. You have the iPad Air. I wanna mention first the Mac Studio because I did not buy one yet. I'm, waiting to see what I think about it, but I wanna point to two reviews. One is iPhonedo.
Stephen Robles:Had a great review, lots of comparisons for the Mac Studio with the Ultra Chip, and his intro is wild, to his video. He did like a Severin style robotic arm. I don't even know how he did it, but his intro is amazing. But he does some great comparisons of the studio. Also, Tyler Stallman had a great video.
Stephen Robles:He runs it through Lightroom tests, LLMs, Final Cut, Premiere, all the things. So if you wanna learn about the ultra like, the m three, watch their two videos. And, of course, The Verge has their review where Chris Welch, I believe it is. Yeah. He he puts it through its paces as well.
Stephen Robles:No video, but he talks about it. I mean, basically, the m three ultra's ridiculously fast. And I am humble enough now to admit that I really don't need the ultra. So my my debate now is do I keep my m one Max, or do I upgrade to an m four Max, or do I just run everything off my, MacBook Air?
Jason Aten:Well and I do like that the verge's take was basically, you know, a week is not enough time for us to actually review this.
Stephen Robles:That was
Jason Aten:Too much computer. It's, like, too much
Stephen Robles:It's a lot of computer. It's amazing to see, like, the compile times or, like, exporting from compressor. Like, it's ridiculously fast, and they got ones with, like, one twenty eight or five twelve gigs of unified memory, so it's like, it can do all the things. Like, there is no there is no seal. Crazy fast.
Stephen Robles:That's how that goes. Now, a device I do not have, but you have, and you actually wrote about was the iPad Air, the m three iPad Air. And, yes, unsurprisingly good.
Jason Aten:Yeah. How how is it? Well, I'm curious. First, I wanted to do a little test. I have both an I an m two iPad Air
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:From the previous year because I'm really lazy at sending things back and an m three. And I'm just wondering, can you tell the difference? Now Can you tell which one
Stephen Robles:is it? Okay. Wait. Well, can you one's upside down, but I think I can still tell I'm down. Wait a minute.
Stephen Robles:Oh, logo. Yeah. There you go. There you go.
Jason Aten:Sorry. Well, you know, it rotates, so to me, looks like it was correct because the screen was right. Right.
Stephen Robles:Now one's pink and one's blue. So I assume the pink one
Jason Aten:Purple and one is blue.
Stephen Robles:Excuse me. The purple one, I believe, is the m two. Is that correct?
Jason Aten:No. The blue one is the m two. The the purple actually, yeah, you should have known this because last week, I said, I hope they send me a sky blue Right. Because everything else I have is blue. So but the yeah.
Jason Aten:They're exactly the same is the point. Even the colors are the same. You could buy an m two in this color. You can buy an m three in the in the blue. They're exactly the same, but I don't I think that's fine.
Jason Aten:Like, people complain that there's really no difference between them. I there are a couple of very minor differences, but it's only because the m three can do, like, more video encoding and ProRes decode, and there's a couple of things you get for Yeah. You get so you get a couple of things for free with the m three ray tracing. Hardware accelerated ray tracing is on the m three, but that's just because it's on everything with an m three. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, it came with that generation. It's it's great. Like, I I don't know. There's people are like, well, this is such a boring update. So, like, this is what happens when you just make the products a little bit better every year, and I think Apple knows that people we have an iPad Air that still has a home home button.
Jason Aten:Okay? Like, we like, and those are the people that are probably thinking now to be buying a new iPad Air, and these are gonna be just freaking amazing.
Stephen Robles:Like Now you got the new Magic Keyboard Yeah. With the iPad Air, which is basically like the updated iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. Right?
Jason Aten:Nope. It's not all. It's the old one with a function row.
Stephen Robles:What do mean?
Jason Aten:Trackpad is still the same. Right? The trackpad is a physical trackpad, not a haptic or whatever
Stephen Robles:Interesting.
Jason Aten:Stuff. And it's also not, metal on the top or whatever, you know, like the new. It's not the aluminum. It is basically the old Magic Keyboard with a better hinge. Right?
Jason Aten:They did they did adapt the hinge, and I think that it does do a little bit more of the, like, the tilting. So it's kinda like if you took the old one and the new one and you merged them together, you would get this one. But it it has the same tactile feel and everything, same trackpad as the old one. Although, I I think they said the trackpad's a little bit larger. It's actually amazing.
Jason Aten:They added a row of keys, made the trackpad a little larger, and it's all the same size. I don't understand how that works.
Stephen Robles:Because it's just less blank space at the top.
Jason Aten:Physics is just weird like that, I guess. But, anyway but, yeah, it's great. Like, I don't
Stephen Robles:I
Jason Aten:don't love I have a love hate relationship with the Magic Keyboard. It's the best overall typing experience on a keyboard for an iPad.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But it's like, I love the thing the thing I love the most about an iPad is how light it is compared to, like, a Mac, and then you put that thing on there, and it's heavier than a MacBook And you're just like, what are Why
Stephen Robles:are we doing this?
Jason Aten:And so
Stephen Robles:yeah. Okay. Well, cool. I mean, nice. I the iPad Air exists.
Stephen Robles:It's out there. Now I wanna get to the MacBook Air. Great. Because we're talk we're talking about Air. Here it is.
Stephen Robles:We both have our MacBook Airs in sky blue. If you hold it at the right at the right angle Mhmm. At youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Go follow the show. It's right over there.
Stephen Robles:Here's the thing, Jason. I got this laptop yesterday. It's maxed out, not not with an m four Mac, just m four, pun intended. As soon as I took it out of the box this is my first MacBook Air. I said this on social media.
Stephen Robles:I've never owned a MacBook Air personally. This is my first one. I've always done MacBook Pros in the past. So as soon as I took it out of the box and I wonder if they make the box heavier than other MacBooks, because when I picked up the box, the box felt heavy, but then I lifted the computer out and I was like, this is amazing. This form factor, the thinness, the lightness, like, I love everything about it.
Stephen Robles:Like, look at you could you could cut yourself. You could cut yourself on this this laptop. So razor thin. But anyway, I love this form factor. Now, the first thing I did was not migration assistant.
Stephen Robles:I always like have that decision to make. Do I do migration assistant? Do I start it up from scratch? And I started from scratch. Do you what do you do when you set it?
Stephen Robles:Do you
Jason Aten:So I have a time machine backup that is just for review.
Stephen Robles:That's brilliant.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because I do this enough times that I just literally restore from a time machine backup. That's smart. It doesn't copy my whole Dropbox folder over, which is a terabyte. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, it doesn't copy all of the things I need, but it has all the apps that I want, and it has enough of my personal data that I'm like, can can use it as a normal machine Right. But without like, it doesn't have my whole photo, like, downloaded to it.
Stephen Robles:Right. That's smart. I I was about to do migration assistant, and then I saw in my old m three MacBook Pro, I say old, like a year and a half old, that it had Zoom installed, and I don't need Zoom anymore. I had to have that on there for something else. And so I'm like, I'm not gonna do migration assistant.
Jason Aten:That's the reason.
Stephen Robles:That's the reason. But listen, like I focused forty five minutes and I was actually able to like speed run. I should have recorded it. Installing all the apps, moving the license keys because I try to install the least amount possible, you know. So it's kind of like, you know, you finally got compressor, audio hijack, whatever.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, I did all that. My first concern because I was gonna have them side by side was the display. And I'm literally staring at my MacBook Pro display, which is the XDR display, Or no. The MacBook Pro, which is the XDR, and then the MacBook Air, which is like regular display. You know, side by side, you notice a little bit of difference.
Stephen Robles:As far as like the colors and all of that, not a big deal for me, which I was very thankful for. Like, I see the difference obviously, but it's okay. Brightness is another part of it. I don't think that's gonna be an issue. The ProMotion, I felt that a couple times because MacBook Pro has ProMotion.
Stephen Robles:Right? It's got the higher refresh rate.
Jason Aten:Uh-huh. Yep. One twenty. Yep.
Stephen Robles:So that I felt that a couple times, but not enough to bother me. The bezels on the MacBook Air are a little larger, which that I have to it'll be fine. I'm not usually comparing them side by side. But then I started I was just using it. I used it to edit a video in Final Cut.
Stephen Robles:I exported a video through Compressor. I did my transcriptionist, put, you know, give it an m p three file, get the transcript out of it. And, yeah, it's a little slower at some tasks than the MacBook Pro, obviously, because it's not a pro chip. Like, the export through Compressor took a little longer, but it can do all the things I needed to do. And the form factor is just wonderful.
Stephen Robles:It's great. It's a great computer. I love it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And you have a Mac Studio.
Stephen Robles:And I have a Mac Studio.
Jason Aten:I mean, the this is I think, I I the MacBook Air, I well, the only thing I could come up with to talk about was the keyboard, so we can talk about that in just a minute. But the it's amazing. I think that the but it's just it's like it's been amazing for a very long time. Even the last Intel MacBook Air was amazing. Right?
Jason Aten:It just wasn't very powerful, but that wasn't Apple's fault. But the m one, the m two, the m three, the m four, this laptop has been fantastic for a very long time. And in fact, I had an m four MacBook Pro base model that I saw in with 16 gigs of memory. Like, I was able to compare them. And if you think about it, like, is selling this computer with a better display and more ports as a pro device.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, essentially, that's what's happening. And so if you're willing to give up the promotion, the, you know, mini h you know, mini LED display, Right. Give up some a cup you know, one HDMI port. An HDMI port, a SD card slot, and then one USB c port, right, or Thunderbolt port.
Jason Aten:If you're willing to give those things up, this is, like and save yourself a thousand dollars or whatever once you start configuring them. Like, this is a great, great device for most people, and it has the benefit of being so incredibly thin and light. And it doesn't it doesn't seem like it should make that much of a difference, but it feels like there's a threshold at somewhere around, like, two and a half pounds that once you go over that, it's like, now I can feel like I'm carrying a thing. And once you're under that, it's like it just it's like, oh, yeah. This is great.
Jason Aten:There's in fact, there were times I was carrying around this laptop over the last couple days that I had to, like, check. Is it in there? Did I forget it in there? And the crazy thing about that is I've been using a MacBook Air for most of my professional life. I've been using a m three Max MacBook Pro for a little while now, but the MacBook Air has always been, you know, my favorite.
Jason Aten:And the the fact that you can run an m m four and essentially do all of the things that you might wanna do on your laptop is pretty pretty amazing.
Stephen Robles:It's amazing. It is amazing the the weight difference. Because you have a do you have a 14 inch MacBook Pro that you can compare? Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Is wild. The weight difference when you when seemingly, like, just looking at them, you think these shouldn't be that different in weight. And I need to look up the exact weights. And obviously, it is it is thinner. So and I I imagine that's battery, I guess, that's taken up the and the ports, maybe, like the IO stuff.
Stephen Robles:But it is, I mean, noticeably lighter. And that makes it way easier throwing it in a bag, just carrying it out to the patio and working out there. It's it's been great. And I mean, it's like I don't know if they'll ever be able to get that much thinner. Mean, those USB C ports are like almost at the at the edge there Right.
Stephen Robles:Of the bottom side.
Jason Aten:You saw what they did with the 13 inch iPad Pro, which is literally the width of the USB C port. So they they got a little bit of work they could do on that.
Stephen Robles:But That is true. I will say I missed or I was expecting MacBook Air to be etched on the bottom. So if you have a MacBook Pro, you know, it actually has MacBook Pro etched into the bottom of the of the thing, but they didn't do that for the MacBook Air. Is it too thin?
Jason Aten:They eliminated it on the, you know, on the on the m one, it used to be right under the display.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:And they eliminated that as well. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. I just I I don't know. Maybe it's too thin. If they etch it in, they have to, like, sacrifice something.
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
Jason Aten:It's like Bono. You don't need the name. You just know. You just know who it is.
Stephen Robles:You just know. It's the only sky blue. We're gonna talk about the keyboard in a second. The sky blue color, it's it's very muted as everyone literally has said. It's it's fine.
Jason Aten:It's basically the same colors as the shirt I'm wearing and Which is gray. I'm literally wearing the same color as I'm wearing my Sky Blue shirt in honor of
Stephen Robles:Look at that. Look at that. I didn't even notice you were holding the computer up. Literally. Literally.
Jason Aten:They're exactly the same.
Stephen Robles:Blends right in. Now you had told me before I got mine, because you got yours a little early, that the keyboard is different. No one has Apple did not say anything. There's nothing official about it. But immediately, as soon as I started typing a few sentences, I I noticed, like, for some reason, the keyboard on the m four MacBook Air, and you said the m four MacBook Pro also.
Stephen Robles:Right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So this has been the journey I've been on. When I got a when I got the m four MacBook Pro, review unit, which was a really rough time because they sent me a Mac mini, an iMac, and a MacBook Pro. And I'm not complaining, but it is just hard in in, like, what I do to review three different devices in the amount of time they give you for an embargo.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. But have two days.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I had an m three max MacBook Pro. So any MacBook Pro things I wanted to do, I had a device that I was, like, gonna use. So but I used it, and I found that when I was writing, I way preferred to use the m four MacBook Pro. And I started thinking, like, this keyboard legit feels different.
Jason Aten:It feels much more tactile. It feels crisper. It just like I don't know what it is. I didn't think anything about it at the time. I just filed that in the back of my brain.
Jason Aten:I'm like, this keyboard is different. And then when I got the MacBook Air, I'm like, this keyboard is exactly the same as the m four MacBook Pro. It there's a slight slight feeling difference, which I think is just due to the fact that the that the body of the MacBook Pro is deeper. Right? So it just feels like you're typing into a, like, a larger space kind though maybe there's a little bit more sound response just because of the size of the case.
Jason Aten:I don't know how to talk about keyboards, so I'm making all of this up. But No. It is different. And the and I asked. I specifically asked.
Jason Aten:I said, what this keyboard these keyboards are different. You've you've changed something. There is definitely something different about it, and Apple would not say a word. And which I actually take as validation because Yes. This is the kind of thing that had they not changed anything, they would have wanted to dispel because they would they know I'm gonna write that the keyboard's different.
Jason Aten:And if that's not true, they'd want to say, no. We didn't actually change anything. I have not seen anyone else write about this or talk about it.
Stephen Robles:Same. I've not seen it anywhere. I'm now, like, going back and forth just doing, like, doodly doodly on each keyboard on my MacBook Pro and for each key is a little it feels firmer. Yeah. Like, it's less mushy, and so it and I I think that gives a little more, like, clickity, little more clickity.
Jason Aten:But it's not necessarily louder.
Stephen Robles:It's not louder. No. No. No. Not louder.
Stephen Robles:Just the feel. Yeah. The feel is, like, less Yeah. Yeah. A little crisper and it's very nice.
Stephen Robles:Like typing on it. And maybe I'll do more writing finally. Write a newsletter. I write my I write my newsletter once a year. You can subscribe at beard.fm.
Stephen Robles:So, you know, you're definitely not gonna get spammed on that newsletter. But, yeah, like, I think
Jason Aten:it's spammed because you'll forget that you subscribed since it's been a year since you got the last You'll
Stephen Robles:think it is,
Jason Aten:but it's not. It's not. You did subscribe.
Stephen Robles:You subscribed.
Jason Aten:Two issues ago, three
Stephen Robles:That's right.
Jason Aten:You subscribed.
Stephen Robles:Three years ago, you subscribed. This computer is wonderful. I'm glad I got the 13 inch. I was waffling between the 13 and the 15 And then, I think you told me this, but basically, like, if you're wanting a computer to be small and light, get the small and light version.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Makes total sense. Yes. The 13 inch does not feel super cramped. I mean, if you're editing video, sure. It's gonna be less you know, you have to work it out.
Stephen Robles:But, I mean, this and this is gonna be insane. But when I do have to, like, travel, which I actually travel with my Apple Vision Pro unlike Jason. When I do travel and I take this MacBook Air, I'm a strap that Vision Pro on and then I can have an ultra wide display and you can edit with all the real estate that you need. You get the best of all worlds. You got the light Four
Jason Aten:day HDR, burn out your retinas.
Stephen Robles:Well, the other thing too is like display wise, if the thing I want a great display for is editing video, well, listen, I could just strap some micro what is it? Micro LED mini Whatever. Whatever they are. The the micro OLEDs on my eyeballs with the Vision Pro, and there you go. You have it.
Stephen Robles:So I got the lightest computer on my lap and the heaviest one on my face, and it'll
Jason Aten:be great.
Stephen Robles:It'll be great. It's yeah.
Jason Aten:It's it's it's like you took your $999 MacBook Pro MacBook and you turned it into a $5,000 contraption that requires two separate parts of battery an external battery.
Stephen Robles:Exact exactly. It's totally insane, but hey, it'll be exciting to work in that in that environment. So anyway, I love the MacBook Air. It's a great computer. I I still have, like, a couple days to decide.
Stephen Robles:My trade in kit comes in tomorrow, I think. And so I have another day to change my mind, but I'm pretty sure I'm sold that I'm gonna keep the MacBook Air and send my MacBook Pro away. It's serving me well.
Jason Aten:I think that for a lot of people who have a MacBook Pro, I I I would be very surprised if the MacBook Air couldn't accommodate those needs. Yeah. And I also think, yes, the MacBook Pro has it does have a better display. Absolutely. Like, if you comp like, if you compare them side by side, especially if you're watching, like, Apple TV or something like that on the app.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, there's a I mean, you get HDR on the on the MacBook Pro. You don't on the MacBook Air. That's great. But if you're just using it and once you put the MacBook Pro away, you'll never think about it again.
Jason Aten:You're not gonna be, like, watching something on your MacBook Air and be like, it would be really nice to have that MacBook Pro. Like, it's just not gonna happen. And and if you're on a plane, the MacBook Air is so much nicer.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:And the and the other thing I I wrote about this morning, I that if you think about it, the MacBook the MacBook Air in 2022, which was the m two, was $11.99. They raised the price by $200. Today, adjusted for inflation, that MacBook Air would be almost $1,400, but instead they went back down to $9.99. It's a it's a steal. Like, I don't understand how Apple is, like, doing this, but it is like, they have they are being very generous in that.
Jason Aten:I mean, maybe the margins are just so high to begin with. Well, I mean, the truth is, like, this is the last device to get the m four other than Right. The Mac Pro, which I don't actually think is coming. I just don't think so. We talked about that.
Stephen Robles:We we talked about it. That'd to
Jason Aten:see. And I heard I heard on another podcast someone saying they're gonna wait to see what happens with the Mac Pro before they buy one of them. Like, you're thinking about it too much. Just buy the Mac Studio now and and enjoy it. It'll be amazing.
Stephen Robles:I like how you said on another podcast I don't know. Because last episode, we mentioned his name 80 times.
Jason Aten:I know. That's why I was trying to
Stephen Robles:be He didn't wanna say it this way.
Jason Aten:I didn't want his Google alerts to be going off.
Stephen Robles:I'm not gonna ruin it. I'm not I'm not gonna say it. One thing I'm speaking about the price, and we talked about tariffs shortly in the last episode. Interestingly, the MacBook Air, I don't know if this is actually gonna focus on the words, but assembled in Vietnam. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And I actually tracked this through the UPS once I got the shipping notification. Yeah. Sure enough. Comes from Vietnam, goes through Hong Kong, but I guess the tariffs, because it originated in Vietnam, wouldn't affect this.
Jason Aten:That's interesting, Steven. You're breaking some news here.
Stephen Robles:That's it. That is what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I I tweeted
Jason Aten:my looked at the bottom of my MacBook Air before I wrote that article this morning.
Stephen Robles:Well, I'm just saying it says assembled in Vietnam, and I probably showed my serial number. I don't know if that matters on the the show, but, anyway. But, yeah. So that that might again, one of the reasons why the the tariffs might not be affecting this price. Great computer.
Stephen Robles:It's great. The other thing you were mentioning, the display I stare at a studio display all day, which does not have HDR, which does not have ProMotion, and Yeah. It's fine.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The MacBook Air display is not worse than the Studio display.
Stephen Robles:It's the same. It's the same. So it's like, I really should have no qualms about it. And if I and honestly, the best display Apple makes right now, of all their devices, Gwen Nelson said this on social media yesterday, actually the iPad Pro, the Tandem OLED.
Jason Aten:Oh, absolutely.
Stephen Robles:A hundred percent. Display. And I I have one of those already. And so if I really want just the best display so I can watch a scene from Interstellar, which I I don't do regularly. But if I wanted to and I just wanna see the best display that Apple has to offer, well, I have that.
Stephen Robles:It's the iPad.
Jason Aten:And you have that Vision Pro thing, which is also a pretty darn good display. It's not quite as good as the iPad Pro, I don't think. But the nice thing about the MacBook Air compared to your Studio Display is that the webcam is about 17,000 times better. And it's not even great, but it is so much better than the Studio Display webcam. I logged on to this to record this podcast with Steven, and it it was on the studio display, and Steven's like, you should go back to bed.
Jason Aten:Like, what's wrong
Stephen Robles:with you? It just Jason's video when he first joined, I was like, what is going on? I was like, the white balance is off. The I don't know. Your background
Jason Aten:I was in a dark cave. Yeah. Was real dark. Everything's fuzzy.
Stephen Robles:It was just because it was using studio camera.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Continuity camera listen. If you're gonna do any kind of video content, yes. Use continuity camera with an iPhone way more than the studio display.
Jason Aten:I said that right in my review. I'm like, everything in one little section. I was like, yeah. They updated the camera. But if you do if you need your camera for a lot of things, you probably have an iPhone.
Jason Aten:Just use that.
Stephen Robles:Right. Alright. So that's the MacBook Air. Great. Leave us questions in the community post, social.primarytech.fm.
Stephen Robles:We had some new members recently join, which is awesome. Over, like, 200 something people there, and we we are almost at 2,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing. So listen, you know, there's my birthday. Not to pull that card, but I want you to go over to YouTube. YouTube.com/@primarytechshow.
Stephen Robles:Well, subscribe. And a couple quick news stories before we get to this long listen. We're gonna go do a deep dive. A lot of people enjoy the deep dives, and I have I have a whole extra note that I have not put in our shared notes, so Jason can't see it. I have a whole note about Apple intelligence, and it's about to go off.
Stephen Robles:But
Jason Aten:Hold on. Before you move to, like, the software things
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I know you glazed over the Mac Studio, but I discovered something that did. I did not review a Mac Studio. They'd only send me things with the word air in them. I mean pro.
Stephen Robles:I guess
Jason Aten:they send me pro things too, but they do not send me studio things.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Which I think I got a studio display. Anyway, okay. I didn't realize this until I was listening. I think it was the most recent episode of upgrade where John Gruber foreshadowing was the guest. And that was a great episode.
Jason Aten:It was basically an episode of the talk show, but just in the upgrade feed. But the the m three ultra Right. Is not two m three max chips because there are things on that chip that do not exist on the m three max like Thunderbolt five. Oh. The m three max does not have Thunderbolt five, but the m three ultra does.
Jason Aten:So they it is very so, like, they were calling it basically the m 3.5 Ultra. It's almost like they there's something about they couldn't get the m four Ultra done in time or something like that, but they were able to do this stuff. I just I just thought that was really interesting, the max like, they're it is so confusing, but that actually just makes it more confusing because they didn't just have a bunch of m three max chips around and, like, sew them together because that's how that probably works. There's actually different
Stephen Robles:stuff on that Yeah. They sew it together.
Jason Aten:They do. It's just there's a bunch of Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Well, and that's you know, I listened to the ATP guys talk about the processes between the m three and m four and how three nanometer there's, like, you know, different process in the chip fabrication or whatever. And that's what I I was curious if the m three ultra is on one of the newer processes, the m four chips or on one of the old ones. And maybe that's a clue to say maybe there's a actually, it's not on the m three pro and max process. Maybe it's on something newer. So I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I think I fixed it probably I fixed it probably to a teardown. I don't know if they I don't know if they could tell from the the processes, but anyway, it is interesting. I'm not gonna get an ultra. I can't justify it.
Jason Aten:I I mean, you don't even really need an m three Max, do you?
Stephen Robles:Like No. Take it take it easy. Take it No.
Jason Aten:No. No. I'm not being I'm not throwing shade, but I'm like, I'm sitting here with an m four Pro Mac mini, and Listen. It is faster than that m three Max laptop sitting over there. So, like
Stephen Robles:I'm sitting I'm sitting here with an m one max max studio, and it's amazing, and I I'm never waiting around.
Jason Aten:And this Mac mini would smoke it, and so I'm just saying if you were gonna upgrade
Stephen Robles:No. I'm not gonna I need the ports. I need the ports. I use all the ports. We've got we went over this last week.
Jason Aten:You're right. But do you know how many Thunderbolt docks you could plug into it? Three.
Stephen Robles:I don't I don't want more points of failure. No docks. Like, Edna mode. No caps. No docks.
Stephen Robles:No. Alright. Let's talk about iOS 19 briefly and Sonos. A bunch of rumors have been coming out, basically, Mark Gurman. But I'm gonna use this picture because Mac rumors look it looks cool.
Stephen Robles:There's this huge thought that iOS 19 is gonna be a massive redesign across all of Apple's operating systems, maybe even more than a redesign, but a revamp, changing how they look, making things more consistent, some VisionOS inspiration in the iconography, going to, like, the little circles and such. Everyone, like Mike Roman is saying, gonna be the biggest change since iOS seven, which if you remember, if you were around, iOS seven was the big update from, like, old school iPhone OS to, like, more modern. IOS seven famously was, like, just wispy everything, could barely read text, hairline thin, back buttons, and all of that. But this looks like it's gonna be taking a lot of design cues from VisionOS. Listen.
Stephen Robles:You know, this is one way to distract us from Apple Intelligence. But, also, I I just wanna see some more bug fixes, hopefully, along with the design changes because that's what I experience more often. Like, you know, autocorrect just stopping in my text messages and screen time still being woefully bad. You know, that would be nice, in addition to a huge redesign. I also feel like when iOS seven came out, a redesign was needed.
Stephen Robles:Like, it was starting to feel pretty dated, especially compared to other mobile operating systems at the time, like the Palm Pre. But I feel like I don't know. Are we clamoring for a redesign? Is this exciting, Jason?
Jason Aten:I am not so there are peep there there are two camps of people. There are people who think that eventually all technology things should change just so that they'll be different so that they can, like it's sort of like the endless scroll on Instagram. You need more content to just get that little endorphin thing going on or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:I don't like, I hear this about the Apple Watch. People are so insistent that the Apple Watch Apple is gonna be a failure if they don't do something to redesign the Apple Watch. And the way I look at it is, like, no. The Apple Watch is just the logical end form factor of what that device should be. Right?
Jason Aten:They might make a couple tweaks. They came out with the Ultra. They made the screen a little bit bigger, But I don't think it's ever gonna, like, suddenly be a square with flat sides.
Stephen Robles:Like Well, it's in MacBook Air. Like, what what more is going to happen to this computer? Like Right. It is so thin. Like, it is a display.
Stephen Robles:It's a keyboard and trackpad and some ports. Like, I don't know where this is gonna go.
Jason Aten:No. It's right. Exactly. And I don't mean may maybe it could conceivably get a little bit thinner, but it doesn't need to. It is it is the right form factor for this product, and that's great.
Jason Aten:I mean, wedge was great too. I mean, they obviously changed it. The reason though they changed it is because they made the screen a little bit bigger, and they stretched it out, and they put the notch in and that kind of stuff. So that gave them the opportunity. But I think that when you, like, look at it, the software, there are things that I think should be different.
Jason Aten:You mentioned maybe this is just a way to distract all of us from Apple Intelligence. I think the problem is it might be distracting Apple from Apple Intelligence. It's like, there's so much
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Resources going to the and it's like, when you think about redesigning software and I'm not a software engineer, but I feel like this is a pretty general principle. If you are going to and this is like companies changing their logo because they just feel like it's time to do a refresh. And the only people who are thinking about it's time to do a refresh are the people who, like, are inside the company and are just bored and need something to come up with to do. I don't think that iOS needs a redesign. Now it is true that, like, on the Mac, on the phone and the iPad, and then on the vision o and the vision pro, there are sort of three different design languages, but they feel appropriate for those user inter interfaces.
Jason Aten:Right? Right. So I don't and if they wanna, like, sort of coalesce them together, I think that that's fine. I do not think that we need a visual overhaul to iOS, for example. I think it's I think it's mostly fine.
Jason Aten:And I think it just introduces more failure points where where app developers, many of whom are not user experience designers, are just gonna end up with worse performing apps.
Stephen Robles:You know what? It's funny. The the circular design that everyone's saying, you know, is Vision and it's inspiring everything. I don't know if people remember. The Apple Watch exists, and it's had the circular icons forever.
Jason Aten:Well, and I think that means sort of that frosted, slightly translucent kind of, like, hovering windows. But you have to have that on the Vision Pro because, like, you have to see through them and know that there's a wall there. Right? Like Right. I don't need that on my phone.
Stephen Robles:And people have been saying, like, the Apple invites app has kind of that newer design language, and that's where Apple is going. Listen. I'm also I'm not opposed, like, cool. Like, let's refresh some stuff. We can make it look even more modern, I guess.
Stephen Robles:Fine. I think the bugs is really, for me, like, let's not forget the bugs, please.
Jason Aten:Sure. But is you gotta ask yourself whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze because even with iOS 18, I think what was my phrase? There are people living in my house who were very upset about it even though there wasn't that much. But the control center was a huge change for someone if you're you're used to swiping down and all of a sudden the things you thought you were gonna see are in a different place. Even if you can rationalize that that change is better because someone like Steven can customize it and do all these different things.
Jason Aten:For the average user, first of all, Steven's not the average user. He's way above average user.
Stephen Robles:Thank you.
Jason Aten:But most most of the people using those 2,000,000,000 iPhones or whatever that are out there, you there's a real cost involved when you make those kind of changes. And I don't just don't know if it's worth it. Because even if you make it prettier, people are still gonna be like, yeah. But where's the button that I used to press to do this thing?
Stephen Robles:That is true. I think it's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I'm not the average user.
Jason Aten:You are an above average user. That's the exact quote I just wanna be clear.
Stephen Robles:I would change my email signature to above average user. So we'll see. I mean, Dub Dub's just a few months away. We might see invites coming out soon. And the last thing I wanna say before we get to Apple Intelligence and all that, Sonos, which was rumored to be developing a streaming box, canceled it.
Stephen Robles:So looks like this is a report from Chris Welch who's been reporting on Sonos for the last couple years in-depth, and they're not, doing it anymore. And I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed. I guess I get to save some money this year and not buy another streaming box. But now less competition for Apple TV, and we don't have another alternative in the marketplace. So I was kind of looking forward to it, but looks like it's not happening.
Jason Aten:I think this is mostly a function of the fact that right now they have an interim CEO who is trying to get them focused back on the things that actually matter. And maybe that would have been really cool, but this is kind of like the car project. It's not nearly the same scale. But Right. Like, Apple had a car project, and all of a sudden, they're like, oh, shoot.
Jason Aten:LLMs. Like, we should probably be focused on that, not doing a car. Where, like, Sonos, like, streaming boxes, none of them are great. The Apple the Apple TV is a fantastic. It's way overpowered, like, for what you needed to do.
Jason Aten:Sure. The interface is, like, fine. Right? It's like there's I don't know what better interface you're going to get other than just a good voice interaction, which whatever. We'll talk about that.
Jason Aten:But, I mean, there isn't really a need because this thing was not going to be cheaper than the Apple TV.
Stephen Robles:Well,
Jason Aten:no. Right? So it's not like this is going to fill a spot in the market. You have Roku, Fire, Chromecast at one end, and then you have the Apple TV. And then isn't there like a the NVIDIA shield
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Something like that.
Jason Aten:And some other probably, you know, bespoke whatever things that, like, feed the things through the ether or whatever. But, like, I don't know. Like, it makes sense to me that this got canceled because I'm not really sure that it really had a spot.
Stephen Robles:Focusing on what you're doing well. Look at that.
Jason Aten:Or or the things you're already doing terrible.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Focus on fixing those. Yeah. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:Like your app. Talking about Sonos here. We're gonna get to the Apple Intelligence is gonna be gonna be a dissertation. It's gonna be I got some thoughts.
Jason Aten:His got feelings.
Stephen Robles:I got feelings. I do. Before we get to that, wanna thank our sponsor for today, which is Green Chef. Green Chef is the number one meal kit for clean eating. And I have I have some pictures of a Green Chef meal that I made I'm going to reveal in a moment.
Stephen Robles:I was I was excited. I'm learning to cook more and more thanks to these kinds of services, but Green Chef sends organic fresh produce responsibly sourced proteins and chef designed recipes in every box for satisfying, nourishing, convenient meals. I actually found out that my barber uses this, and I had no idea. I was I was at the haircut, and he was like, oh, yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I get this to do all the the dinners. That's amazing. Listen. Green Chef makes it easy. Ditch the fads and create healthier eating habits that last with real clean foods.
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Stephen Robles:Now I actually I made something here. I'm gonna share some pictures. This was this was me cutting an onion and tomato. This is really just for Nate because
Jason Aten:Is this the second time you've cut an onion?
Stephen Robles:It's like the fifth time. This is like the fifth time I've cut an onion. Let me look at that chopping skills. I don't know if those are good skills or not, but I cut it. I cut the onion.
Jason Aten:I mean
Stephen Robles:I cut the onion.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And you didn't cut your finger. That's that's
Stephen Robles:I didn't cut my finger. It is very difficult not to, but There we go. I probably should've used a bigger cutting board. Anyway, this is my green chef stuff, and then this was a it was a ground turkey, cream, onion, tomato soup. It has the queso fresca, you know, a little crumbly cheese in it.
Stephen Robles:Was delicious. I made it all myself. No help from anybody, except from Green Chef, and everybody liked it. My kids liked it. My wife liked it.
Stephen Robles:So yeah. Did you did you make any do you know any remember any recipes you made?
Jason Aten:Yes. And I'm try it's been a couple of weeks since we had a chance to do this last. So I was I know there was a, we did a soup that was actually very, very good. Yes. And I the thing that's weird about this, I'm this is a terrible, you know, endorsement because I can't remember what it was, but I do specifically remember that it was very, very good.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:So, I mean, it's a good endorsement. It's just bad memory.
Jason Aten:Just wish I could remember specifically. Listen. We okay. We have four kids. All of whom play sports.
Jason Aten:We don't even to eat dinner together that often. And so it's kinda chaotic in our house, which is actually what this is perfect for because it took like thirty minutes and everything we needed was right there, and it was fantastic. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:And that's I like it too. I like the compact nature of I don't wanna spend hours in the kitchen, and this Green Chef helps you just keep it all done and compact, know, get it done quickly. And the recipe cards make it easy to follow even if you're not a cook like me. So thrive all year with clean, easy meals from Green Chef. Go to greenchef.com/primary free and use code primary free to get started with free salads for two months plus 50% off your first box.
Stephen Robles:50% off your first box. That's wild. So that is go to greenchef.com/primaryfreeprimary free and use code primary free. That link and promo code is in the show notes too. Just click it there to get started with free salads in two months plus 50% off your first box.
Stephen Robles:Green Chef, the number one meal kit for eating well. Thank you, Green Chef. I wish I had, like, my Swedish chef hat. Actually, I don't have that hat.
Jason Aten:Ancho chicken soup. That's what we had. It
Stephen Robles:was delicious. Ancho chicken soup. There we go. There we go. That's that's the end of the read right there because Jason remember he remembered the meal.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Big news. I'm gonna go through the timeline very quick. We're gonna go through time because as a company would do, if you're going to deliver some bad news, you do it on a Friday at the end of the day. This is what companies do.
Jason Aten:It's called checking it out with the garbage.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. And that's what happened in a very strange way. Last Friday, the day after we published our last episode, Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball and two other news outlets, Reuters and CNBC. Right? I
Jason Aten:think that's correct.
Stephen Robles:They all received a statement from Apple. So Apple didn't release anything first party. There was nothing in the newsroom. No interview. No nothing.
Stephen Robles:But there was a statement, and this is the statement verbatim that John Gruber, CNBC, and Reuters were given. And this is from Jacqueline Roy, an Apple spokeswoman. So John Gruber and others got to quote her directly. Quote, Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done quickly. And in just the past six months, we've made it more conversational, introduced new features like type and product knowledge, and added an integration with JetGPT.
Stephen Robles:We've also been working on a more personalized Siri. That's the semantic index talked about last year in Dub Dub, giving it more awareness of your personal context as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It's going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features, and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year. Now in the coming year, that's Apple speak for anytime between now and 12/31/2025. And, also, in the coming year, does that mean 2026?
Stephen Robles:Maybe?
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's that's the part that's not clear. What does that what do those words mean? And
Stephen Robles:What do those words mean?
Jason Aten:Also, you remember the last time that they said something about, like, we'll be we'll complete the transition to Apple Silicon by the end of the year. It took him, like, a whole other year to get the Mac Pro.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It was
Jason Aten:There's one more, but that's for another day. Turned out it was, like, a lot of other days.
Stephen Robles:A lot of other days. The the biggest asterisk. So in the coming year, who knows what that means? Then we'll talk about the credibility even of that statement. So that was Friday.
Stephen Robles:Then after that statement was delivered through John Gruber, Reuters, and CNBC, Apple did a couple things. They added a new disclaimer on its website in various places. And the disclaimer that that it reads is personal context understanding, on screen awareness, and in app actions are in development and will be available with a future software update. Now that kind of statement we've seen in the past, like, sometimes even in the big iOS up iOS, like, 18 updates. There'll be the features that come out on day one, then there'll be the features that come out in iOS 18 dot three, dot four, or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Apple's been doing that for a while. I still remember the Halcyon days where everything Apple talked about at Dub Dub was actually released with the iOS update, like the first one in the fall. Do you remember those days, Jason?
Jason Aten:Oh, I do. Absolutely. It's only been a couple years that that's not been the case.
Stephen Robles:It's not yeah. Exactly. So there was that, but also Apple removed the advertisement that was on their YouTube channel, and it was a commercial that had aired on TV, But the one with Bella Ramsey talking about the voice assistant personal context, they took that video down from their YouTube channel. So, I mean, it's been uploaded a thousand other places, and you could still see it, but they took that down, which I think is more unusual, for something like this. So that all happened between Friday over the weekend.
Stephen Robles:And then conveniently, all the embargoes dropped for their new products. So Monday through Wednesday of this week, it's all been about the iPad Air, the Mac Studio, the MacBook Air. That's all very exciting. And I wanna talk deeply about this strange dichotomy that we have right now in this moment, when thinking about Apple. But then just yesterday, Wednesday, John Gruber released basically a dissertation, a very long post on Daring Fireball.
Stephen Robles:It will be linked in the show notes. The title being something is rotten in the state of Cupertino. I'm gonna pull some quotes from this in a second. I encourage you read it. This is an interesting statement for a lot of reasons.
Stephen Robles:This basically, what he's talking about is Apple's credibility has taken a serious hit from the promises it made last year at WWDC, the promises it continued to make all the way through the iPhone 16 launch. I actually have a clip I wanna play from that event because Craig Federighi is in the event video talking about personal context and how it's coming soon. And John Gruber makes some salient points about he should've and he's basically getting on himself too, should've called this out as vaporware, from the beginning, mostly because demos of that personal context voice assistant, which I'm I'm gonna say voice assistant from now on, so because I set off my own HomePod a second ago. But being there were no actual demos of those features in person for the briefings. Apple Intelligence briefings included Genmoji, image playgrounds, the writing tools, ChatGPT integration.
Stephen Robles:But all of the personal context, which is like the big update to the voice assistant that's supposed should have been coming, those were never really demoed, and even in person at Dub Dub or in the basically year hence. And he's basically saying that Apple has promised these things, has talked about them multiple times, again, reiterating them at other events like the iPhone sixteen event and has failed to deliver on those promises. Well, that was just yesterday. Thinking about the source, like, John Gruber, he if you follow his work, as many of you probably do, he is typically very defending of Apple's choices. Even at times when it feels like Apple has made a decision to, whatever, remove a product or feature or something like that, he's quick to talk about the reasoning Apple has behind a change that they made.
Stephen Robles:He's critical when there's problems too, this one, I think, being the most surprising. Mean, he had harsh words for Apple. And so a couple quotes from his article. John Gruber says, quote, Apple's credibility is now damaged. Careers will end before Apple might ever return to the level of if they say it, you can believe it credibility the company had earned at the June 2024, basically before Dub Dub and when they announced all this.
Stephen Robles:Another quote, the fiasco is that Apple pitched a story that wasn't true, one that some people within the company surely understood wasn't true, and they set a course based on that. And then he goes on to say, you can stretch the truth and maintain credibility, but you can't maintain credibility with BS. Gruber uses the full word, but I don't want an explicit tag. And the more personalized voice assistant features, it turns out, were BS. Final quote I'll read.
Stephen Robles:John Gruber harkens back to the MobileMe days when Steve Jobs called a meeting and was basically like, WTF, what is MobileMe supposed to even do? It doesn't do that. What are we doing? And John Gruber says, quote, Tim Cook should have already held a meeting like that to address and rectify this Siri and Apple Intelligence debacle. If such a meeting hasn't yet occurred or doesn't happen soon, then I fear that's all she wrote.
Stephen Robles:The ride is over. When mediocrity, excuses, and BS take root, they take over. A culture of excellence, accountability, and integrity cannot abide the acceptance of any of those things and will quickly collapse upon itself with the acceptance of all three. I encourage you to read Gruber's entire article because he he makes some great points. But, again, that is some harsh words about the most valuable and profitable company in the world saying that the ride is over, and now mediocrity has entered.
Stephen Robles:And we're talking about just Apple intelligence and the voice assistant contextual awareness specifically. So I this was quite a bomb, that he dropped yesterday. I I have I have some thoughts on this, but I wanna pause for a second if you wanted to interject anything to set this up before we move up.
Jason Aten:Yeah. A couple of things. So I was thinking after I read this, and I've listened to to Gruber talk about this on two podcasts now. He talked about it on Dithering, which is the twice a week fifteen minute podcast he does with Ben Thompson. And then also, again, on on the episode of Upgrade from Monday, he he, Jason Snell is bringing in some guests because his cohost, Mike Curley, had a baby.
Jason Aten:Well, his wife had a baby. And so he's taking some he's on he's on paternity leave. So Right. And I was like, I really need like, I've been thinking about this for a while. I should write about it.
Jason Aten:And then, like, I just looked, and I'm like, I did write about this. I wrote about this in January. It said the one thing that Apple needs to get right in 2025 has has nothing to do with the next iPhone. And the part that I just would point out is it's like the second to last paragraph. I said, the point here is Apple has to get this right this coming year partially because it's so far behind, but more importantly, because it made a promise.
Jason Aten:And as a company, you have to keep your promises. Right? Like and that's Gruber's point. I think there's two completely separate problems here. One is Apple can't figure this out, and that's that's bad.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, they should be able to figure this out. It's obviously a very complicated problem because they have to essentially build a totally parallel version of contextually aware Siri alongside the one that can control your lights and and figure all that out. But the bigger thing is there was a meeting somewhere where someone said we should we should promote this, and someone else said we shouldn't promote this. And as Gruber's point is, like, someone made the call to start promoting this, and they should not have.
Jason Aten:And that's the the problem. And I was at WWDC. In fact, I was trying to remember, but I think I might have been in the briefing that Gruber was talking about. And and it's it's he's like, there's like you know, I was in a briefing with four or five people. I'm like, I think I might have been one of them, actually.
Jason Aten:But I think everything he's saying is absolutely true, and he kinda walks through this hierarchy of how real a thing is. Right? He's and it is true. If you if you go to a Apple event, there are times when Apple will demo a thing for you. And it's not in the betas yet, so they aren't it's not available for you to use, but they will demo it on their devices and show you a thing.
Jason Aten:And that's what happened with a lot of the Apple intelligence features. The next level to that is that it's available.
Stephen Robles:And you
Jason Aten:well, it's available for you to try. Like, there there are times when they'll have a thing where you can, like, you can try out the Apple Watches. They're real. They haven't shipped yet, but they're there. Like, you can actually touch them and you can test them out.
Jason Aten:Right. The next level is they're in a beta for developers, and then the final level is it ships to customers. And what he is saying is all of these contextually aware Siri things were level zero because they didn't even do demos for us. They were just in a a a video. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, they just it's just all, like, vaporware, like you said, but the the only demo of it and, actually, the one thing I feel like I really got wrong in that article that I wrote was I said they needed to deliver all of the things they demoed, and it and and I agree with Gruber. They didn't actually demo. But, I mean, what I was referring to is, like, they showed them off in the keynote. Right? But they didn't actually do demos of it.
Jason Aten:And I think I think the real problem here is not just that Apple is so far behind in delivering this because nobody else has delivered this stuff yet either. Right? No one else has really delivered this.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:So they could take their time on that to get it right. The problem is they promoted it as if it was real, and then they promoted it in a commercial like it was real. And then at the iPhone event, they talked about it again. And their
Stephen Robles:dog is in so many ads talking about
Jason Aten:people rolling up the You're gonna show a clip of of Craig Federighi talking about it again at the iPhone event. And Grubber I like Grubber's point. Why was Craig Federighi the one demoing this? He is the software guy, but he is not the Apple intelligence guy. Right.
Jason Aten:And I I think I will be very surprised. This is the kind of thing someone will lose their job on.
Stephen Robles:So I wanna get I wanna talk about that aspect in a second. So this is a clip. And again, talking about how hard Apple was promoting this. This is from the iPhone event. So not dub dub.
Stephen Robles:This is months later in the iPhone 16. Yep. Later. Yeah. So here's a clip of Craig Federighi.
Stephen Robles:It's like thirty seconds. I'll put it in the audio version as well. But if you wanna see it, head on over to YouTube.
Craig Federighi:And there's so much more to come. Siri will be able to tap into your personal context to help you in ways that are unique to you. And it will be able to take hundreds of new actions in your apps, like updating a friend's contact card with his new address or adding a set of photos to a specific album. With Siri's personal context understanding and action capabilities, you'll be able to simply say, send Erica the photos from Saturday's barbecue, and Siri will dig up the photos and send them right off.
Stephen Robles:So after reading Gruber's article and watching that clip, which Gruber calls out specifically, most of the features that Apple touts is basically like a white screen with just text floating towards you. Yep. That's that's the feature being shown off. It's just in text. And then even the one the couple ones they talk about is like, send these photos to so and so.
Stephen Robles:It basically just shows a video of, like, not someone holding an iPhone, but just like a three d rendered iPhone on
Jason Aten:the generated yeah.
Stephen Robles:Computer generated thing, and it's just pictures being sent via text message. But it's not actually showing anything of the like, no physical because even in that same that was when Craig Futiger was talking about visual intelligence coming to the iPhone 16. And there were several examples of, like, hold the phone up to a concert poster, do visual intelligence, add it to your calendar. Point it at a dog, and it'll identify the breed. I did an entire video about all of that, which it basically does now.
Stephen Robles:Those they fulfilled those promises. But all of the contextual awareness voice assistant stuff that Craig Federighi in that event is promoting is not out. We might not see until 2026. So here's my next question for you, Jason. Gruber talked about AirPower being one of the times that Apple promised something and then failed.
Stephen Robles:And AirPower was, I think, Phil Schiller on stage talking about the wireless charging mat that was gonna change everything, and you'll be able to charge your phone, watch, and AirPods. Never came out. Apple I don't think they ever released, like, an official statement saying it's not coming out. I think it just, like, floated away into the
Jason Aten:e I think they might have. I think there was some or they gave a statement to somebody.
Stephen Robles:I think they gave a statement to somebody like like they're doing here. But this is not the first time Apple has failed in software and the first time they've broken a promise. And I wanna put this in the context of these other failings because in Gruber's article, this really feels like he is implying a shift in the company's culture that might affect it long term. And I am curious if, like, is it really that big of a deal, or is it similar to these other situations? And I'll point out a couple.
Stephen Robles:He talks about MobileMe in the Steve Jobs era, but also Apple Maps was huge failure. Now they released Apple Maps as promised. It was really broken at first and took a number of years to actually fix, and it caused lots of damage in the subsequent years that it was bad and people didn't wanna use it and stop using it. But I will point out today, like, whenever I get on social media and talk about Apple Maps versus Google Maps, it's at least fifty fifty, if not more people saying Apple Maps was well designed. I use it as my default.
Stephen Robles:It's great now. So that was a situation where they did deliver. It was hopelessly broken. They fixed it, and now it's gone back with some credibility. Could it have been way more used earlier on and had a better reputation?
Stephen Robles:Sure. But that was recovered just fine. This next one's not really a failure, but there were many times when Steve Jobs made a promise of something and then it was just never delivered, like FaceTime being open source on multiple platforms. I don't know if you remember that, Jason, but with the iPhone four launch, when FaceTime was announced, because that was the first iPhone with a front facing camera, Steve Jobs said during the event that we're gonna open source FaceTime so other platforms can use it. They did not deliver on that promise either.
Stephen Robles:MobileMe, again, as as Gruber said. So my thing is they have not delivered on these things, and who knows when they will. But I is this indicative of a company culture shift or another one of these just kind of software failings? And like you mentioned, someone's gonna get fired over this likely because of how it was promoted. Scott Forstall was likely the casualty from the Apple Maps situation.
Stephen Robles:So there was a shift there, namely that he shifted out of the company. And so we might see someone from the Apple Intelligence team or someone else shift out. Now Gruber says Steve Jobs was the one to go in and have a meeting and say WTF and push everybody to fix these things. Has Tim Cook had that meeting? Is he one who can have that meeting?
Stephen Robles:Or is it Craig Federighi or something else? But how how do you put those past failings in perspective, and what are the thoughts you have?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So I think the mobile me one is interesting because that wasn't like they said, this service will do email, but it doesn't. Right? And they didn't demo you sending emails with MobileMe, but that's actually just not a real thing. It just it was poorly designed, and they just had to fix a bunch of back end stuff.
Jason Aten:But it still did email, which is was the thing they said it would do. It just didn't always deliver them to you. So, like, that doesn't it wasn't bad, but that was a situation where he's like, you have to fix this. Someone had to come in and say you you had and you had to he had to put the pressure on those people to deliver the thing that they had promised so that it would happen. I am sure, like, there are plenty of, you know, stories.
Jason Aten:Maybe some of them are apocryphal. I don't know about Tim Cook, like, get on a plane. Why are you still here kind of thing? Like, against the assembly line kind of thing. Right.
Jason Aten:I don't think Tim Cook has a problem with What I do think has happened because I can remember WWDC, I think it was the year the Vision Pro was announced. So what is that? Like, two years ago now?
Stephen Robles:That'd 2023.
Jason Aten:Yeah. When when and so this was, like, in the heat of the LLM craze, and Apple did not use the word AI Right. Once. Not a single time. In fact, they didn't use it until that fall when they rolled out the MacBook Pros at the scary fast event.
Stephen Robles:Right? That was the AI These are
Jason Aten:the first devices designed for AI and whatever.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Exactly.
Jason Aten:Although it's funny because I was in a well, I'm not even gonna go there because it was off the record. So, anyway but I just think it's, like, it's interesting how they can, you know, wordsmith some of those things. But I think then you notice, like, they they realize at that moment, like, we have to do something. Because wall like, we are the largest company in the world, and our market cap is based on the fact that the iPhone is the most dominant consumer product in the world. And if if these chatbots and these generative AI tools and these LLMs take hold somewhere else that is at risk, we have to be seen as doing something.
Jason Aten:And so they did so they started trying to figure it out. They were way, way, way behind, and they started making forward promises that they the the and the point I think that Gruber's making, and I would agree, isn't that they shouldn't have been working on it or even talking about the idea that we hey. And, eventually, what we hope to be able to do is this. It's the fact that they showed what looked like those features when those features were not real. Right?
Jason Aten:You can't do listen. I this is a scary place to go. But this is exactly the I think Grubber would be he didn't make this comparison, but it's sort of like when when Tesla shows off the cyber taxi, and you're like, is this gonna be a real thing? Are they actually driving themselves or the robots that were at the event, which turns out they were just actually people
Stephen Robles:Control.
Jason Aten:Controlling them and talking to them. That's like and, you know, you look at Tesla and you're like, yeah. Okay. Fine. Whatever.
Jason Aten:Like, that's kind of their thing. They just say things and whatever. Maybe they make some of them happen. Apple that is not the reputation Apple wants to have. And I think Gruber's pointing, like, if you start to shift where it's like, okay.
Jason Aten:We'll just promise a thing, and then we'll figure out how to make it true later. That's a very dangerous place to be. And if you're doing that because you feel the pressure of we're so far behind, we have to make fetch happen and you can't, right, like Right. Then you shouldn't be making those promises because as a company, you have to keep your promises. It doesn't mean that you sometimes you can't keep your promise because a thing goes badly.
Jason Aten:You should be very careful about how you make that promise in the first place. The airpower is a good example. It's like, yeah, we just can't figure this out, and it's not a high enough priority for us to continue investing in this. So we we hope to do it. We're just not.
Stephen Robles:Right. So my last couple thoughts on this. How much does it even matter to the real world? And I say the real world meaning outside of the tech bubble. Because when I think about what makes Apple profitable, it's selling hardware.
Stephen Robles:And in this very moment where we had just a slew of new Macs like, we just gushed over a new Mac. We just talked about the new Macs.
Jason Aten:It's basically old Mac with a new color and a new chip, but we gushed about it because it's amazing.
Stephen Robles:But it's amazing because we have this weird dichotomy right now where when it comes to hardware and the chips, the m three ultra, the m four max, the actual you know, the hardware of the MacBook Air, the iPad Pro, they have this incredible head start, like or or lead when it comes to this hardware stuff. I mean, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, say what you will, how similar it is, has an incredible camera every time I take photos and videos. It's amazing. Super fast. Like, I never worry or think about having a faster phone.
Stephen Robles:And so we live in this weird dichotomy right now where there's this whole realm where Apple is killing it. Hardware, Apple Silicon. I talk about a lot of bugs or whatever in iOS 19, but also, like, I would I struggle to move from iOS because of things like shortcuts and continuity and the smart home integration, the whole ecosystem in general, universal clipboard, universal control. I use all these features all the time, and they work really well 90 something percent of the time. And so we have this weird dichotomy where all of this stuff is going extremely well, and it's so easy to, like, say, well, I mean, look at this.
Stephen Robles:Like, Apple just did this and the m three Ultra. And so Apple doesn't necessarily have to have anyone buy Apple Intelligence. And that's why I wonder, like, how much obviously, in the tech bubble in the Apple world, like, this is feels like a big deal. But I am wondering, is this a big deal long term for the company, really? As long as I keep doing things like this, which they're obviously capable of doing, the m four and the m five and further chips, the c one brand new chip, does it like, is it really going to affect their bottom line enough to warrant a change, or they just keep jamming on it?
Stephen Robles:Because it seems to me like this feels like more of the Apple Maps debacle than it does some kind of tipping point for the company as a whole. Now I I get Gruber's point. Mediocrity and BS, I don't want those in a part of Apple. And I definitely see that encroaching in in how they talked about Apple Intelligence. I joke about the Snoop Dogg Apple Intelligence ads, but it's wild to me how many times I saw that commercial in, like, the two sports ball events I watched this year.
Stephen Robles:And every time I listen to a couple podcasts, I think the Vergecast is one of them, I hear Snoop Dogg at least two or three times talking about Apple Intelligence. Yep. Clearly, they're pushing it hard. And and I think maybe that's the mistake. They're pushing it hard because they wanna be in the AI conversation, but they're pushing it hard when there's nothing really to push.
Stephen Robles:They're pushing writing tools and summaries for notifications, which is laughably whatever. Like, no one cares. I think they should have just not pushed it as hard. Obviously, they should not have promised something that is not close to ready. But I also think in this weird dichotomy, their hardware and other stuff is still going so well.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if this is the shift of it. I don't know if this is red flags. I mean, is a red flag, but I don't know if this is companies going down kind of thing. I think it's they need to get their act together in this one area, namely the voice assistant contextual awareness. And then I think, you know, two or three years from now, maybe it won't be an issue.
Stephen Robles:But I don't know. How is that how should I think?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Okay. That's fair. Yes. The hardware is great.
Jason Aten:I think when, there was this, like, very contentious period when, Twitter became x, and there was a lot of changes happening. And some of those and what happened was people use the example of, like, well, Elon Musk has been so I'm sorry for keeping him up, but I think there's actually a good parallel here. At rocket ships and at electric cars and it would and all of these things where there are physical limitations, having someone who is, like, breakthrough, figure it out, whatever, but there is still literally the laws of physics involved. Right? There are constraints on that.
Jason Aten:There is not just an unlimited blue sky of, no pun intended, of, like, possibility when it comes to putting a rocket into space. Right? There are laws of gravity and whatever that you have to work on. But software, that's not true. You can literally just screw it up as badly as you want because there's no friction involved in doing that.
Jason Aten:It's just typing code or whatever. So I think and so I think the same thing is parallel with hardware versus some of the these promises in this area. I think Grubers point, there's two things. And I I'm not as mad as he is because I have not had nearly the long standing relationship with Apple and career covering it the way he has. But I think to some extent, there are people in the media who right now feel used and bamboozled.
Jason Aten:Because it's like, in many cases, the reason that Apple does those demos, the reason they do those things is because that's the funnel at which they disseminate this kind of information. And so they are so careful at planting exactly the information that they want for you to to be talking about. And I think that in some places, it feels very wrong to be like, I feel I don't I don't know that I definitely don't feel this as strongly as he does. Because, again, Grubber knows all these people way back. Like, he knows the players, the Phil Shillers on a first name basis, the Craig Federighis on a first name basis.
Jason Aten:He's had them on his on his show. He has met them. Yeah. He's had a he he he's had conversations with Steve Jobs. Like, it's a very different category of of someone covering this kind of thing.
Jason Aten:So I think there's that. I think it's personal. He's like, I should have seen this. I was blinded by the show that they put on, and I took it at face value, which I thought I could do, but apparently, I can't do that. So there's that.
Jason Aten:But the other piece that he points out is this idea that there were people inside the company who a % knew they should not be talking about it the way that they were. Right. And those people were overruled. And that, I think, is what he means by this shift of that's not the apple that I thought we knew because someone, presumably Tim Cook, was like, no. Green light the marketing plan.
Jason Aten:We've gotta do this. And there's people who are like, yeah. But it it can't do any of those things. We can't even demo them yet for the press. We can't talk.
Jason Aten:We can't even show them on a real device doing the things. We are so far away from being able to deliver on this that it's irresponsible to be showing this stuff, and they're like, do it anyway. I think that's the piece that he he he points out.
Stephen Robles:Here here's what I think would be viable for them to do. As was with the CSAM and some of those privacy and security concerns that, again, Apple promised a thing, said it was coming out, rolled it back. Said, actually, we're not gonna do that. Craig Federighi, do it with Joanna Stern, whoever, do it with us. We'll do an interview with you, Craig Federighi.
Jason Aten:Absolutely. We
Stephen Robles:will have you on the show. And just say, listen. We're trying to make this the most private and secure AI assistant possible, and it's taking way longer than we thought. And so right now, you can integrate ChatGPT directly with your voice assistant, and we have all the best LLM apps and services. You have it on your iPhone already.
Stephen Robles:You can get the Perplexity app, Claude, ChatGPT. You can already do those things on this phone. And it's not like even Amazon with their Alexa Plus, which I already returned that Echo Show because I couldn't stand all the ads. Like, they promised a bunch of stuff. Who knows what it'll be when it comes out?
Stephen Robles:Google Gemini, whatever they're doing, like, it doesn't feel like they're closed. Google IO's in May. Maybe they'll announce a bunch of promises. But Google's reputation is the same thing. There's a whole website called Killed by Google.
Stephen Robles:Who knows what they'll keep or what they'll or what they'll throw away. So I don't think Apple needs to feel the pressure to say, like, contextual voice assistant needs to be out tomorrow. Just go publicly and say, like, listen. This is in the future. We're not gonna promise anything.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna focus on a great re they're not gonna say this. We're gonna focus on the next version of iOS that's gonna be incredible. We're gonna focus on making great hardware like we always do. And guess what? People can buy the hardware that they sell right now and still use all of the amazing LLMs that other companies are doing really well at, that Apple doesn't have to do anything.
Stephen Robles:They just have the apps on the phone. And that's the dominancy of the iPhone means you can access all the best of the AIs and the LLMs on this device, just like you could if it was a contextual aware Apple intelligence. And they don't like, people are gonna buy this phone either way. So, anyway
Jason Aten:You know what they should have done is in October of was it October of twenty twenty two when ChatGPT took off? I think that sounds
Stephen Robles:about right.
Jason Aten:They should have, like, the next morning got up and bought Anthropic. Like, just instant Insta buy. Just find the best one that's not OpenAI. Find it and just instantly just just take it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Like, do it.
Jason Aten:Because you can't they can't they can't even the largest company in the world can't buy these companies now.
Stephen Robles:And it's also not like they would be hurting Siri's reputation by not delivering this because nobody likes Siri anyway. Like, my kids who try to yell at their HomePod minis all the time already at their age understand that it's not good, that it doesn't play the songs they wanna play. It can't do the things they want it to do. So it's not like there's high expectations for the voice assistant anyway. Just maybe make it good at what it's supposed to be doing right now and then worry about the contextual awareness later.
Stephen Robles:But anyway
Jason Aten:Well, and actually, some people pointed out that, like, the better thing to do would have been to just to start with making Siri better, period. Right? Like, start with that stuff. And even if it meant you had to have two separate thing, this is that was the problem. They tried to merge these it's like Right.
Jason Aten:You're trying to merge, like, a mainframe thing with an iPhone's guts. Like, it's like you these are completely incompatible to the way that they're doing it. Right? And and you're right because The Verge, they pointed out that, like, a lot of the stuff that Amazon demoed at their recent Alexa Plus thing, like, is this all just vaporware? Because you just said, send a Uber to pick up my friend at the airport, which is not a thing you can tell even in LLM because there's way too many considerations there.
Jason Aten:So, like, is that even real? You're insisting that this is real, but, like, I can't just do that. Steven, if you fly into town, I'm not going to just shout out my echo. Pick up my friend at the airport. Like, what airport?
Jason Aten:What terminal? What friend?
Stephen Robles:How does my friend know where to find it? Should I get the location for? Where do I get
Jason Aten:the Exactly. And how does my friend even know that there's an Uber coming to
Stephen Robles:get them? Do they communicate with the Uber driver when they're at the wrong pickup place?
Jason Aten:Anyway, so, like, all of these things. But I think the difference is you look at Amazon and you're like, there's a they didn't they announce, like, a drone that flies around your house a couple years ago? Like, people look at that and you're like, whatever. Vaporware. But Apple was promising, like, the most significant shift to how you merge voice assistants and LLMs
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:That no one else could do. Right? Google could do this because they make Android fine, but Google has other things. Like, Android is a much smaller part of its overall business considerations. Right?
Jason Aten:Right. Right? It's a search engine.
Stephen Robles:That's Also, no and nobody uses their first party phone, so they still have to work with Samsung or whoever to try and get that integrated.
Jason Aten:True. So, anyway yeah.
Stephen Robles:So Apple, keep your promises, a. B, don't make promises you can't keep.
Jason Aten:How about that?
Stephen Robles:Alright. And more exciting news, Pocket Cast is now on the web for everybody. Just wanna
Jason Aten:I sent you a link from
Stephen Robles:it yesterday. I the link I have the link right there.
Jason Aten:I went to Pocket. No. No. No. I mean, I sent you a pocket cast from the web link yesterday.
Stephen Robles:That's right. You shared something. Yes. That was nice. So pocket cast, listen.
Stephen Robles:I use Apple Podcast, but is a pocket cast still the best podcast app? Just throwing it out there. I got worked up there, Jason. I got worked up.
Jason Aten:That's what we're here for. This is great.
Stephen Robles:This is it. I will let's before we get to our bonus episode, we're gonna talk about tethering because everybody's yelling at me, if MacBook MacBooks don't need cellular. Okay. We're gonna get to that. But for our personal tech, I got a harrowing message on my in my Files app the other day.
Stephen Robles:I opened the Files app on my iPhone, and it said iCloud storage is almost full. I have four terabytes of iCloud storage, Jason. Four terabytes.
Jason Aten:What are you doing?
Stephen Robles:Listen, here's the thing. A time, in the day, or at least, I went all in on iCloud Drive. I don't use Dropbox. I don't use Google Drive on my stuff. I just use iCloud for everything.
Stephen Robles:And I also share it with five other people. So there's six people total sharing this iCloud storage. And when I opened the Files app, I saw this message, which I had never seen before, which is terrifying. And then I looked at who's using all the space. I'm using 2.1 terabytes of of everything.
Stephen Robles:And then, you know, my family's using the gigabytes. My my son, he does a lot of video stuff, so I know the videos that are probably syncing to photos, taking up some space. But, anyway, I don't I I deleted some stuff, which your iPhone can, like, point you to your iCloud drive and show you the biggest files. And some of them were, like, old HomeKit Insider recordings. They were still in a folder.
Stephen Robles:I was like, okay. Well, I could delete those. There's a Motts episodes I could delete. Those are already published. I deleted some ones, but I'm but I only recovered, like, maybe a couple hundred gigs.
Stephen Robles:And so I'm now at the place where I'll probably upgrade to the six terabyte level just because. Because I use like, I use iCloud Drive as, like, my everything folder. I use my documents folder on my Mac to where I pretty much put everything except video files and raw audio files. This way, it's available everywhere. But how much storage are you using, Jason?
Jason Aten:Well, let me just say, first of all Yes. Given the conversation we had about Mobile Meet, there's a 0% chance that I would use iCloud Drive as my primary cloud storage.
Stephen Robles:Like, even It's good. It's good now. This is another situation where it's actually good.
Jason Aten:It's not good. It's it is it's it's not it's not better than Dropbox.
Stephen Robles:Not better than Dropbox.
Jason Aten:So many ways. So it's like, so anyway, my iCloud Drive itself, I have a 68 gigs in the iCloud Drive. I don't even and you know what they are? It's like five folders from my Dropbox backed up in iCloud Drive. It's like, Wait.
Jason Aten:You got an inception folder? I just have it doesn't it's not an automatic thing. It's just, like, I think I put there's, like, some archive stuff, and I'm like, I would our wedding photos were in my Google draw or my Dropbox, and I also put a copy of them on the iCloud Drive. It's, like, stuff that just whatever. If if someday I'm like, forget it.
Jason Aten:I'm not paying for Dropbox anymore. YOLO, who cares what's in there? I'm like, oh, shoot. This I need. Right?
Jason Aten:It's that kind of a thing.
Stephen Robles:But Sure.
Jason Aten:Sure. Our iCloud photos is, like, 700 gigs. Our device backups is 275 gigs. It's it's like, honestly, there's just not we don't we we're using 1.9 terabytes of four terabytes now.
Stephen Robles:Oh, so
Jason Aten:My Dropbox is 800 gigs. So if I was doing what you're doing, I still wouldn't. I'd be at, like, 2.7 of four. Right. So, like, you I don't know.
Jason Aten:You're saving a lot of you're some stuff you don't really need to save, I guess, but I don't I don't know.
Stephen Robles:So what but are you so when you get to that limit, are you going to upgrade to, like, the six terabytes?
Jason Aten:Well, I'm hoping that when I get to that limit, several of my children can just be on their own iCloud storage plan. Pick them up.
Stephen Robles:Family plan.
Jason Aten:Just you're done. No. I don't know. I mean, we're, like, almost to half. Now I guess before Apple won, we would have been at the limit because I'm at 1.9.
Jason Aten:Right? So and if I if that was the case, I probably would have just had to figure out I would have started deleting things from the iCloud drive, obviously, because I'm like, I guess I don't really need those things in there. Put them on a SSD or something. But I don't know. I just yeah.
Jason Aten:I guess it's easy enough to just upgrade that to I mean, I think now the limit is 12. You can get up to 12 terabytes in your iCloud drive.
Stephen Robles:You can get up to 12 terabytes. I have plenty of headroom if I needed to. I do wanna point out Tim Chaten on Mastodon. He does the iPad Pros podcast, which I've been on. It does great work.
Stephen Robles:He sent a screenshot of his iCloud storage. His Apple Vision Pro backup is 720 gigs. That's three quarters of a terabyte just for the Apple Vision Pro backup.
Jason Aten:There is literally not 720 gigs of content created for the Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:So he went on to explain, apparently, he uses an app called MoonPlayer, and he has all of his three day three d Blu ray Disc RIPS, which is around 500 gigs of data. And because you can't pick and choose what apps are backed up in an iCloud backup, it has that entire, like, 500 gig library syncing to his iCloud backup. So I think Tim wins the most absurd Apple Vision Pro backup.
Jason Aten:I would agree because, I mean, like, most people, your largest thing should be your iCloud photos.
Stephen Robles:That you would think. Yeah. You would think, which which one was mine? I had well, oh, I don't have it here. I think mine was like photo well, iCloud Drive was my biggest one, and then photos.
Stephen Robles:I'm probably gonna upgrade to the second. Let's do it. We actually have hard drive hygiene as another personal tech segment for another day. That's an that's another day.
Jason Aten:It is nice, though, that you can just kind of do this as you go. Right? So you get two terabytes if you subscribe to Apple one, and then we pay for the additional two terabytes of iCloud plus. Right. And then you can just be like, okay, I just need more.
Jason Aten:And, I could add I could so actually, this is interesting. I don't think you can get six. You would get eight.
Stephen Robles:I'll get eight. Okay.
Jason Aten:Because so there's iCloud plus with two terabytes, iCloud plus with six terabytes, iCloud plus with 12 terabytes. But I think you still keep the two that come with Apple one.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Correct.
Jason Aten:So you would actually have four, eight, or 14.
Stephen Robles:Now hold on. Now hold on a second. I have four I might upgrade this right now live on the show Right now.
Jason Aten:It is it is a hefty increase. But I mean, honestly, six terabytes of storage for $29.99 a month is actually not that bad.
Stephen Robles:Back in the day, it used to be crazy. So right now I'm paying $10 a month just for the extra two terabytes on top of my Apple one. If I wanna get the six terabytes, it says six right here. Oh, no. No.
Stephen Robles:Says because
Jason Aten:still have two.
Stephen Robles:Right? It says your total storage will be eight terabytes. Right. Your total storage so that would be another $20 for four more terabytes because I have four terabytes right now paying $10 a month. Yep.
Stephen Robles:If I pay 30, an extra $20 a month, I'd have eight terabytes. I'm literally about to do this right now. I'm literally about to do this right now. Six terabytes for a total of eight terabytes of storage I just tapped buy. Here we go.
Stephen Robles:Yep. I'm buying it. I now have eight terabytes of iCloud storage, and I never have to think about it again for another couple years.
Jason Aten:I mean, the things that we're willing to throw money at to avoid pop up warnings on our on our devices.
Stephen Robles:I just there it is. Storage upgraded. There you go. I now have eight terabytes of storage.
Jason Aten:This is a very expensive personal tech section.
Stephen Robles:I haven't bought a Mac Studio yet, though. Oh, now see, this is this this is this is why I do it. So now I can look at this line graph in my settings. Look at all that space.
Jason Aten:Except for it says you're only using 3.6 terabytes, which is
Stephen Robles:Well, I deleted a bunch of I deleted a bunch of stuff. And here's the thing, I was deleting big files, and I have one Pixelmator project that is like my thumbnail Pixelmator project for YouTube. And I have a bunch of assets in there that I'll reuse sometimes, like the Apple home tag and the made from MagSafe tag. And as I was deleting big files trying to save space, I accidentally deleted that one. Thankfully, it was still in my trash.
Stephen Robles:I was able to put it back and recover it, but I was very sad for a moment when I thought I lost it. That's why I don't like deleting stuff. I I might be a minimalist in the real life, but I'm a digital pack rat. I want it all. I wanna keep it all.
Stephen Robles:And now I can because I have eight terabytes of iCloud storage.
Jason Aten:That's amazing. Just literally doubled your iCloud storage.
Stephen Robles:Wow. Apple didn't have to do anything to make, the voice assistant contextually aware for me to spend more money just for iCloud storage. And I struggle to get people to convince people to pay for 200 gigs just so their phone could be backed up.
Jason Aten:Well, don't have to do that anymore now. They'll give it to you for free for a phone back to upgrade your phone to the next one. Oh, So they'll give you a free backup so you can transfer it. But you're right. You don't get that backup on and on.
Stephen Robles:Right. Yeah. Alright. Well, I wanna talk about hotspotting versus built in cellular. We're gonna do that for our bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:A couple things. Of course, leave us a five star rating and review, especially if you're in The US so we can get Us Five star rating. But any country, I would love to read reviews from all over the place. Cambodia, from Germany, from wherever. Would love to read them.
Stephen Robles:Peru, Brazil, everywhere. So leave us a five star rating and review in Apple Podcast. We'd appreciate it. Go subscribe for my birthday to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/@primarytechshow. Let's get to 2,000 today.
Stephen Robles:I think we're like 40 or 50 away. Like, we can do it. Go let's
Jason Aten:do I'm gonna call some people.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Go ahead. Go call some people. Send an email list. And then, yeah, we just we appreciate that you listen.
Stephen Robles:If you wanna support the show and get the bonus episodes and an ad free version, PrimaryTech.fm, click bonus episodes. You can get it there, and you'll get an ad free version of the video. I've been doing that every week, and you'll get the bonus episode via video as well. And that's PrimaryTech.fm. Click bonus episodes.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna go talk about hot spot thanks for listening thanks for watching we'll catch you next time
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