Alexa Will Send Your Recordings to Amazon, M4 MacBook Air vs M4 Pro, Pebble Smart Watches, Pixel 9a Loses Camera Bump
Download MP3Someday when spring is here, we'll find our love anew. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, we're talking about the Pixel nine a new Pebble smartwatches that are pretty limited. Apple might be in trouble again, especially in the EU. Are voice assistants really listening all the time, and we might get to some iPhone 17 rumors.
Stephen Robles:This episode is brought to you by 1Password and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me on this first day of spring, who's also getting snow, Jason Aitin. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. I think you should have mentioned that the bonus episode is just gonna be clips of you trying to get through the introduction 16 times.
Stephen Robles:Listen. That was if you're watching on YouTube You won't know. You're gonna see a lot of cuts. You're gonna see a lot of cuts. Because I was so thrown off because we start every episode with a movie quote, and today is the first day of spring.
Stephen Robles:So I searched movie quotes about spring. I was we were talking about it before we started recording, and you literally said the quote before I said it.
Jason Aten:I gave Steven a suggestion, and it was the quote he planned on using, which is from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Stephen Robles:So, man, I I don't understand how now you're like a precog. I That was like a minority report situation. Listen.
Jason Aten:I have four children. I've seen all the movies, Steven. Like
Stephen Robles:That's fair. Yeah. I I know. I know. Anyway, we have the the biggest topic this week is the amount of five star reviews we got, which is going to be a whole segment, which if you didn't know, if you're new to the show, you leave us a five star rating and review an Apple Podcast in any country.
Stephen Robles:We give you a shout out at the top of the show, and people write whole blog posts. I think there were a couple generated by ChatGPT. I don't know if you saw this. A couple. A couple.
Stephen Robles:There's a couple, but that's hilarious because it's an inside joke. So we're gonna get to that. But there's also some news. I have my MacBook Air in hand. Jason has a different computer that he just bought, which I don't understand, but he'll he'll explain to us.
Stephen Robles:So we should do it. Let's get into it. First of all, we wanna say thank you because we had two goals that we talked about in recent weeks. One, we wanted to hit 2,000 subscribers on YouTube. Guess what?
Stephen Robles:Boom. We're now at 2,000 o one if you look at our channel. But thank you to everyone subscribing over on YouTube. And, recent episodes have been doing good in the viewership. Well over a thousand views per episode, so appreciate that.
Stephen Robles:And for all of you leaving five star ratings and reviews in Apple Podcasts, we are now over 300 reviews in Apple Podcasts. Somehow, we still have not achieved the five star rating. I don't know, Jason, if it will if it will happen. I don't know how averages work, but
Jason Aten:Yeah. Math is hard.
Stephen Robles:We need 1,000 more five star reviews, basically. So keep them coming. Listen. If everyone who listens to this show left us a five star rating and review, we'd have well over several thousand five star reviews. I'm just saying, just doing the math, we might become a five star show then.
Stephen Robles:So so do it if you can. And listen, we're gonna give shout outs. This is I'm gonna try and do lightning speed, but still, you know, everyone leaves funny comments and then they tell us their preferences. So I'm gonna try and do this quick. Barty Burns from The USA.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Lengthy shortcuts post. I'm gonna try and talk about that in my YouTube channel. Steve in British Columbia, Canada. Get all of Jason's preferences when it comes to battery and phone, but I'm not gonna get into that.
Stephen Robles:Trying to get slim from USA. Apple Pencil tip up. So that was on my side, but battery percentage on. Sepmer from Belgium. Battery percentage on, left rear pocket.
Stephen Robles:He said iPhone four design was the best design. He's on my side there. Beamer on a Beamer from USA, battery percentage on, bunch of stuff. Old tech though, he had a RadioShack TRS 80 pocket computer and once surfed the digital waves on a 300 baud modem. You even know what that is?
Stephen Robles:I don't even know what that is.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's like when you used it to plug it into a phone line.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay. Like a 56 k. Except for stuff.
Jason Aten:If you do the math, it's a lot slower than what you just described.
Stephen Robles:So Oh, I see. Okay. I see. Fron Bessora from Spain. Battery percentage off.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. IPhone in the dominant pocket. Appreciate it. Dots on Mac. I'm gonna come back to that dots on the dock on the Mac.
Stephen Robles:That's a hard sentence to say. Russ o 756 from USA, M Forty Forty from Israel, Walf Wintergard from The USA. And he said battery percentage on, phone and back pocket. Pencil tip away from falling buttons. You won on all accounts.
Stephen Robles:Thrash 10. I turned off my oh, this was good. I turned off my battery percentage on the iPhone to try something new. It's been strangely enjoyable, maybe even a bit relieving. Thank you, thrash ten.
Stephen Robles:I think that's what you would experience. Definistrator nineteen, five stars as a belated birthday present. Thank you. That was the last week. Better percentage on.
Stephen Robles:Pen Apple Pencil tip towards the volume buttons, and then phone in whichever pocket I have access to at the moment. That's funny. Shahad from Canada, better percentage on. Dot's on. Happy birthday, Steven.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. S r l seven seven four one from The USA. They want a video on Apple Podcast. Now listen. I'm a take a little break here because whenever we whenever we talk about meta the meta discussion about podcasting on this podcast, I just wanna say video is possible on Apple Podcasts, but you have to have an entire separate RSS feed just for the video.
Stephen Robles:That means hosting a whole other show and then doing all the double posting. What Apple needs to do is what Spotify did, which allows me to go in and upload a video and attach it to an episode that already exists. That's what I do in Spotify for creators. So, anyway, if Apple's listening, that's what you need to do. And then, hopefully, one day it will come.
Stephen Robles:T Walt from USA. They said this is the one I think might have been ChatGPT. They said Primary Tech has been the absolute favorite podcast since 1973 when it was only available on eight track tape.
Jason Aten:Do you know what those are?
Stephen Robles:I've seen them.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:I've never held one.
Jason Aten:Also But
Stephen Robles:I've seen
Jason Aten:Also, what year were you born?
Stephen Robles:Nineteen eighty six.
Jason Aten:Wow. You're younger than I thought, Steven. Well, I was not born in 1973 either, so I was just curious if if any we didn't know we were second generation podcasters on this show.
Stephen Robles:I did I did not know that. Although, if there's ever a way I don't know if there's a way to actually get a digital podcast file to on an eight track. I'm sure there are devices to do that. That'd kind of hilarious. Or maybe a LP.
Stephen Robles:Alright. We're just get two more, three more. D h f k f j g k f u. Sorry. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I don't no. No. Not like that. It's a difficult name. I don't know what that name is.
Stephen Robles:From The USA, Lonely Crow from The UK were their first Apple show or Apple podcast that they subscribed to. Thank you. We're not gonna technically Apple only. It's just a slant. It's a heavy slant because, you know, that's just our experience.
Stephen Robles:And that was it. That was all the five star reviews. Thank you so much to all of you all over the world for doing that. Keep them coming. Maybe one day will be a five star show again.
Stephen Robles:And I did have some old tech I wanted to show because this was from Shahab at I believe it was in the community. This is the iPhone collection from Shahab all the way back to the original iPhone. Looks like he's got the three g and the three g s four five. Skipped the six generations maybe. What was that white box?
Stephen Robles:Do you remember, Jason?
Jason Aten:I have no idea. But I just wanna be clear. Technically, is an iPhone box collection. Well Because I have a lot more iPhone boxes than I have iPhones, just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:But no okay. Now hold on because he's gonna be like, well, now wait a minute. I sent another picture.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:He does have the picture of the phones. Great. He does have the picture of the phones. Now I don't see the original there.
Jason Aten:It's got
Stephen Robles:he's an
Jason Aten:He's got an AirPort.
Stephen Robles:This listen. This picture, this will be the chapter.
Jason Aten:The old Mac mini. There's a g four cube in there.
Stephen Robles:Four cube. Got an Apple Vision Pro casually on the bottom shelf.
Jason Aten:Next to a g four cube. They're probably about as useful as each other to most people.
Stephen Robles:Wow. You still use the Apple Vision
Jason Aten:Pro today? Put it on this morning. He's got an iPhone or an iPod video still shrink wrapped and a HomePod mini still shrink wrapped.
Stephen Robles:That does not shrink wrapped. Got a red is that a red iPhone seven? That looks pretty nice.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Project Red right there.
Stephen Robles:Got a five c in the lime green. Still has the jet black seven plus, I believe. That's those jet blacks. It's been a while. The nice collection.
Jason Aten:And just a random 60 watt adapter sitting there on the shelf or whatever that is, the plug.
Stephen Robles:That yeah. That's that is pretty funny. It's good. So very cool collection. Thank you for sharing that, Shahab.
Stephen Robles:That'll be the chapter artwork as well. For the first topic, wanna talk about how much I love the MacBook Air. I know this might this is, like, old news because I'm new to the MacBook Air game. But because this is my first MacBook Air ever, I am discovering the love of having a thin and light computer for the first time.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Because I've never I've never had one. And it's wonderful. And I think it's great. That's my review. No, did
Jason Aten:It's wonderful and I think it's great.
Stephen Robles:It's wonderful and I think it's great. That's the headline. I will say I did a video. Video did well, so thank you if anybody watched that. I compared it to my m three Pro MacBook Pro.
Stephen Robles:I held it precariously over my pool and then put it precariously on the ledge of a pool. Basic Apple guy, you know, struggle with that. But anyway, I compared it in my Final Cut editing, compressor exports, Pixelmator stuff. The m four MacBook Air is a powerful machine. Compared to the m three Pro specifically, it's actually faster at some things.
Stephen Robles:Like, it actually did a compressor export faster than my m three Pro MacBook Pro, but the MacBook Pro did a Pixelmator super resolution, which, like, uses all the ML stuff to add resolution to an image. And the Pro did that faster. So basically, it's like depending on your workflow, some things might be faster, some slower compared to the m three Pro specifically. But for that reason, my m three Pro is gone, Jason. It is in the wind.
Stephen Robles:It's flying back to Apple as a trade in. I'm I'm keeping the m four Air because it's wonderful. Typing on it. Several people actually in the comments of my video mentioned, yeah, I feel the difference typing and I don't know why like, Apple didn't say anything. No official anything, but typing is definitely better.
Stephen Robles:And so yeah.
Jason Aten:I was a little bit disappointed that you didn't you didn't give credit to where
Stephen Robles:you heard
Jason Aten:about this for the first time as if you came up it's fine.
Stephen Robles:Don't know. But did I well, in the video
Jason Aten:You're like, yeah. And my cohost, he thinks this too. No. He told you. Your cohost told you that this is going to be the case.
Stephen Robles:That is fair.
Jason Aten:Fact, your cohost gave you advanced information even before the reviews dropped that the typing was different.
Stephen Robles:You know what's funny is? I'm gonna do an accessory video on this m four air, and I'm gonna I will have a segment in the video where I just put your face on screen.
Jason Aten:Please don't.
Stephen Robles:And I'll say public service announcement. No. PSA.
Jason Aten:Nope. It's fine.
Stephen Robles:Jay's at eight. I don't know. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.
Jason Aten:Now quick question, though. Yeah. Your m three pro MacBook Pro was probably, in a lot of things that you do, faster and more powerful than your Mac Studio. Correct? I'm curious why you didn't get rid of that one and just hang on to this one for a while until you upgrade your Mac Studio.
Jason Aten:Because it's like it seems like you it was an interesting decision you were kind of faced with because you could have just slotted that thing and turned it into, a desktop laptop.
Stephen Robles:Here's the thing. My m one Max Max Studio, it has 64 gigs of unified memory, two terabyte SSD, and I think there were you know, there's usually two options for core counts on the m one Max's, And so I got the higher one on this Mac Studio when I got it. And I still find this to be faster than even my MacBook Pro on exports through Compressor. And when I need when I'm multitask, meaning I'm, like, transcribing an audio, I'm editing video, I'm exporting a different video. My Mac Studio never hiccups or slows down.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if the Mac m three Pro did either, but it did not export as fast as my Mac Studio. I don't know the reason behind that. I don't know if it's the core count or whatever. Plus ports, Jason, we already talked about this. I am not giving up a single port and using a Thunderbolt dock.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, the the m four AIR is wonderful, and so I kept that. But you decided to not if you you got a new computer, and you decided not to get an air. Well What do you do?
Jason Aten:For sure that the m four air was gonna be the thing, and it's great. But here's I've been using MacBook Airs for a really long time, and it's great. And but there was a part of me that's like, hold on. I can basically keep this for, I don't know, six or seven years before I send them I'm just kidding. I don't keep them that long.
Jason Aten:But, I mean, it's like, oh, it it would be pretty silly to do that. But just public service announcement for all of our listeners, there are actually some insane deals right now. B and H Alright. Right now has some Yes. Ridiculous deals that essentially amount to a free RAM upgrade.
Jason Aten:And so Right. Yeah. I was looking at different things, and there's an m four pro MacBook Pro now sitting on my desk because it just it's and it's and it is actually faster in a lot of ways than the m three max MacBook Pro was and a lot of stuff. And so
Stephen Robles:Now you got you got the one that had 48 gigs Yep. Unified memory? Yep. See, B H still calls it RAM. Apple doesn't like saying RAM anymore.
Stephen Robles:They say unified
Jason Aten:memory. You know why? Because B and H knows that no one knows what the heck that means.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. So this is this is the one you got. Right?
Jason Aten:No. That's a 16 inch there, buddy.
Stephen Robles:Oh, my bad. My bad. You got the 14 inch. Okay. Just yeah.
Stephen Robles:I was wondering why this is more expensive. But you got the 14 inch with the 48 gigs.
Jason Aten:And the one terabyte.
Stephen Robles:But it's only one terabyte SSD. That's
Jason Aten:That's fine. It's fine.
Stephen Robles:I know. I know. This is the one you got.
Jason Aten:Right? Yes. That's You got the 48
Stephen Robles:gigs, one terabyte SSD for $2,400. This is basically, like, $200 away from the MacBook Air I just got, but very but powerful.
Jason Aten:Ports, Steven. Ports. We just talked about ports, But
Stephen Robles:those actually that's actually not the well, the ports I need listen, I have very specific port needs. Okay? Anyway, I'll go link to this computer if you wanna buy it. Affiliate link, %, just saying. It'll be in the show notes, but yeah.
Stephen Robles:There you go. Do you have do you have affiliate links?
Jason Aten:No. Affiliate links? What is that? No. I'm just kidding.
Jason Aten:No. I'm not allowed to do affiliate links, Steven. I'm a journalist.
Stephen Robles:Wow. Excuse me. Excuse me. I will not say I'm a journalist so I can continue doing affiliate links. Oh, there we go.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, I love my MacBook Air. Jason got a new MacBook Pro. Leave us questions in the community. I I really love the Air though. Typing on it is wonderful.
Stephen Robles:I brought it the battery also, love the battery life. That is one another noticeable difference. I didn't talk about it a ton in the video, but I can leave this thing on standby, like not use it for a day, and it still has a lot of its battery left. I can also if I'm doing just like menial tasks, that battery like barely moves. Like it like I used it for maybe like two hours last night, just typing in my community or whatever, and it was like 5% battery.
Stephen Robles:After a couple hours, I was like, this is
Jason Aten:MacBook Air, great. Best computer for most people. For almost
Stephen Robles:every problem.
Jason Aten:When I say most people, I mean, like, 97 and a half percent of people.
Stephen Robles:That half percent. You may or may not be in that
Jason Aten:half probably two and a half percent of people for which a MacBook Pro or a desktop of some sorts makes more sense. Sure. MacBook Air for everyone else.
Stephen Robles:So now that we started several this is all gonna be cut out, our listeners and viewers don't realize this. But we've had like four recordings so far because I keep messing up. I accidentally stopped a recording. And now I don't like, the time is usually like how long we've been going.
Jason Aten:I just think
Stephen Robles:it's not on my You know what? This is why you get paid the big bucks.
Jason Aten:And subtract about seven minutes from that. We've probably been recording for about eighteen minutes.
Stephen Robles:We've been recording for three hours so far. It's The only The only thing I wanna say I returned my first Apple review unit yesterday, and I looked back because last year and I said it in the video, but the AirPods four, Apple sent me those to review back when those came out in September. And, you know, they tell you, return them by this date. Jason usually goes two years longer than that
Jason Aten:date, and then he'll return. Listen. I said Listen. You're very large box back just last week with a whole bunch of things that, had been in here for a long time.
Stephen Robles:So they gave you
Jason Aten:the MacBook Air in there. There was maybe
Stephen Robles:Are you for real? No. I'm
Jason Aten:kidding. Twenty eighteen iPad Pro. Say. No.
Stephen Robles:I looked back at the email because they tell you, like, please return by this date. Obviously, it's just a suggestion as Jason can tell from experience. But my six month date was, like, March 22. And so I beat it by, like, three days. And so I've the one product that I've sent back, at least has been on time.
Jason Aten:What did you send back? AirPods four?
Stephen Robles:AirPods four. ANC and regular. But the next I think the next thing that they send me that I to return is an iPad mini, and we will see I'm probably gonna go past six months more than that. I'm gonna be honest. But I'll send them an email.
Stephen Robles:Do you send them an email to, like, request more time or you just, like
Jason Aten:It depends on what it was. Right. Generally, like, I have a lot of review units, and so I tend to, like, twice a year just box a bunch of things up and send them back. And I feel like as long as I keep doing that, that if there's a thing that they're like, we would really like this back, I'll absolutely put it in a box and send it back immediately. I will I'm not very good about requesting an extension to those review loans.
Jason Aten:But it's not because I'm trying to be, like, mischievous about it. It's just because I just, you know, it's it's the first day of spring. I gotta go box up a bunch of stuff to send back, and then I'll do the same thing in the fall kind of a thing.
Stephen Robles:The the the biggest one for me is gonna be the iMac because they sent me the m four iMac to review, and that's just gonna be a pain in the box and I was like
Jason Aten:Well, the good thing was so when I got the m four iMac to review, I boxed up the m three iMac and sent it back in the same box that they sent me the m four in, and I just sent it back. Wow.
Stephen Robles:So I should just wait for the m five iMac. That's interesting.
Jason Aten:Would there be an m five iMac? Interesting question.
Stephen Robles:We'll talk about rumors later because there are some rumors we wanna talk about. I wanna talk about the Pixel nine a because Apple released their quote unquote budget phone recently, iPhone 16 e, which costs $600. Right? Isn't it $5.99?
Jason Aten:Correct.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. $600. So the Pixel nine a was announced. It's not available for preorder yet, but, of course, MKBHD already has his review up. So I'll put that link in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:This is the Pixel nine a. It will be $500. You'll be able to preorder next month in April. So undercutting Apple's, quote, unquote, budget phone by a hundred dollars, notably, two things. There's no camera bump on this phone.
Stephen Robles:Pixels have recently had, like, that bar across the top, like it's the visor from the Star Trek guy. Now there's no camera bump. They just straight up made the phone thicker. And what people have been asking for for years from all the phone makers is, like, take away the camera bump, just make the phone thicker, and add more battery. That's exactly what Google did.
Stephen Robles:The battery in the Pixel nine a is even larger than, like, the XL phone, like, the recent XL phone. So it's a larger battery, no camera bump. I'm curious, Jason, how do you feel because we might get to the iPhone 17 design rumors. How do you feel about this look? The no camera bump, no bar look in 2025.
Jason Aten:I mean, it's not that different than the 16 e.
Stephen Robles:True. That's true.
Jason Aten:I mean, these
Stephen Robles:are bump on the 16 e, but it's not significant.
Jason Aten:And the I mean, it's more like just a camera.
Stephen Robles:It's just a camera. I I like it. I think this is a cool look. And especially if you get, like, a fun color, I mean, I think it looks really cool, the the Pixel nine a. I'll put a chapter artwork.
Stephen Robles:You could see it if you're just listening too. But I'm, yeah, I'm down. I I'm always tempted to try Pixel. I don't know if I will I mean, I don't know if my audience cares about it, but it looks cool. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I do have did we talk about the Nothing Phone on the show?
Jason Aten:No. Because you started talking about it six minutes after we finished recording because, you know, you didn't think that would be something you'd wanna cover on your tech podcast.
Stephen Robles:That's right. I did get this because I've tried Pixel phones in the past, and I'm never crazy about it. So I did get a Nothing Phone three a. They didn't send it to me. I just I bought this because I wanted to try it.
Stephen Robles:And so I'm gonna try it a little more. We'll talk we'll talk about that later. But anyway, it's nice. I like the the aesthetic. It's fun.
Stephen Robles:But I like you know, I think I would like if Apple made the phone thicker and take the camera bump away, or do you or do you not want a thicker phone? Would you make that trade off?
Jason Aten:If it was thicker, the weight class of the 16 as opposed to the 16 Pro, then probably it'd be fine.
Stephen Robles:That is true. It would get very heavy. It would get very heavy. Also, it makes phone heavy. No.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if this does it or not. But the c one chip, Apple's first party developed cellular modem, which is only in the iPhone 16 e right now, not in any of the new iPads or anything, Turns out, it looks like it's outperforming Qualcomm's chips when it comes to cellular and things like data speeds. Average data speeds are faster on the c one. Do you think we'll see this in the 17 lineup, or we're have to wait another year? I don't
Jason Aten:know if it'll be in the 17 lineup, but I think it's pretty clear that this is where Apple absolutely wants to use this. That's been true for they wouldn't have spent a billion dollars on Intel's modem business if they weren't gonna like, they didn't they're not just writing that down. They're gonna do something with it, and they're apparently not putting it in Mac.
Stephen Robles:It's so annoying.
Jason Aten:So I'm sure that they're gonna be putting it in, you know, iPads and iPhones soon. So
Stephen Robles:That's cool. Overperforming. Then another I don't know if it was big, but another announcement, if those, listeners and viewers remember the Pebble smartwatch. This is like years ago back was it before the Apple Watch? The original Pebble was before the Apple
Jason Aten:that's true. Yeah. I think so.
Stephen Robles:I believe yeah.
Jason Aten:Was true. Yeah. Well, it launched in 2012. So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Apple Watch was 2015. So yeah. Yeah. This was one of the first quote unquote, like, smartwatches.
Stephen Robles:And then, obviously, once the Apple Watch came out, Pixel watches are out there, Samsung Galaxy watches, kind of went away for a while. Well, it's it's back. Pebble Watch, you can actually preorder it right now. It doesn't start shipping until December, so you're gonna have to wait a minute if you wanna get your Pebble Watch. Two different watches.
Stephen Robles:It has e ink screens or they call it epaper screens rather than a digital screen. And, of course, because it has that besides the digital screen, you're gonna have amazing battery life on a Pebble watch. The only problem is they say 30 battery life, IPX eight water resistance, custom watch faces. That's a big feature distinct to Pebble watches. And someone a couple of people asked me if I'm gonna review one of these, and I'm like, here's the thing.
Stephen Robles:And there was actually a whole blog post from do you know how to say his name? Eric Eric Eric Michikoski. He wrote a whole article about why the Pebble Watches can't do all the things that the Apple Watch can, much of this because of how Apple locks down iOS and how it can't communicate. And so here's a whole list. I'll put a link to this blog.
Stephen Robles:All the things that the Pebble Watch can't do, like send text messages or iMessages, take actions on notifications. I don't think any of the I don't know if health stuff would actually sync or not. But, you know, if you wanted an Apple Watch for the functionality, you're not gonna get that from a Pebble Watch because it's just limited. And no smartwatch can because of the limitations that Apple puts on it. So it's an I don't know.
Stephen Robles:It feels like an odd product to try to launch right now. Right?
Jason Aten:Well, okay. So this is interesting because, Eric Majakowski was, like, the person who created the pebble in the first place. Right? Right. And then that was, I think, where they bought by Fitbit, which became a part of Google maybe maybe.
Jason Aten:And Google has just decided they're going to open source pebble o s because they're not using it. So, like, whatever. So they they open sourced it, and so they he just decided he's gonna recreate this because he wanted it to exist in the world. Right? And so I think he's also the same guy that did beeper.
Jason Aten:Remember the whole that I think that's now owned by Automatic maybe? I'm not sure.
Stephen Robles:Anyways. Yeah.
Jason Aten:So the I mean, he has some like, he's pretty well respected as someone who who knows what they're doing. And I think this is more of a it's kind of a novelty. It's sort of a like, someone who just really it's like the same kind of people who maybe bought the the what was that thing called? The r one the r one? The was it the
Stephen Robles:Wait. Router one?
Jason Aten:Yeah. The people who just like For the Hemian AI pins? Yeah. Exactly. No.
Jason Aten:They got a Maybe not the Hemian AI pin that's a little bit more expensive than this thing. But people who who who were fans of Pebble and later Fitbit and that kind of stuff is a slightly different audience than people who are fans of the Apple Watch. So, yeah, it is a much more limited thing. But I think I think that it's gonna probably, as a novelty at the price point that it's selling at, be really cool. Because if what you want is some something that'll tell you the time, track some data on your activity, that's great.
Jason Aten:The problem is, yeah, the next level thing for most people is notifications. And because if you like, on your watch, for real, do you use any apps that is not the time, maybe the weather, and maybe, like, tracking things?
Stephen Robles:The only one I
Jason Aten:Home maybe? Home app.
Stephen Robles:I do use the home app on my watch, and I do use Anylist for grocery shopping because it's nice not to have to hold the phone and check items off as you're shopping.
Jason Aten:Okay. Great.
Stephen Robles:I use Anylist. That's like the one app that I use. Otherwise, it's just all
Jason Aten:app still is basically just serving you data from your phone.
Stephen Robles:%.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So Yes. The and then that so that's essentially still in my mind lives in, like, the notification category because it's, like, just stuff like that. Like, there's not very many things people are using. Like, you're not using a trail app, right, to go hiking random trails, that kind of
Stephen Robles:thing. No. No.
Jason Aten:No. So I feel like for a lot of people, this is gonna be really interesting. The blog post obviously points out why it's problematic because Apple doesn't let you do all these things, which leads into another topic that we have to talk about. But I Yeah. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I just thought it was really I it's good that people are trying things.
Stephen Robles:Hundred $50 for the Core two Duo version, which is kind of a hilarious name, if you remember the Intel Core two Duo processors. That's got a 1.2 inch screen. The Core Time two is 225. One and a half inch screen, but that's also a touchscreen. So it looks like no touchscreen on the on the cheaper one.
Stephen Robles:But What's cool Yeah.
Jason Aten:What's cool about that Core two Duo is he says that the name is so there was a Core two before, and the Duo means it's a do over. So it's like redoing the one he did before. So and he's having fun with it.
Stephen Robles:That's no. That's fun. Listen. I'm I'm I love Gedget. This is fun.
Stephen Robles:So the thing is with Apple not allowing smartwatches like this to work like an an Apple Watch, I don't I almost said iWatch. I don't know why. Wow. It almost just came out. Don't have to wash my mouth.
Stephen Robles:I was soaked later. Europe and even and The US are trying to move Apple to get Apple to actually allow devices like this to function more like an Apple Watch. The EU is, you know, through the Digital Markets Act, doing things. And if you remember, the Department of Justice here in The US also has a case against Apple that's open. As you know, I don't know when we actually see the trial or when it's gonna happen.
Stephen Robles:But one of the main points from the DOJ case is also smartwatches and exclusivity of the Apple Watch with iPhone. So they could, in the near future, actually be pushed to allow things like Pebble Watch to be more functionable. Is that more functionable?
Jason Aten:Super not the right way to say that.
Stephen Robles:Super not the right word. No. To function better. Well, you'll have more better features.
Jason Aten:You just added lots
Stephen Robles:of Functional. I don't know what
Jason Aten:You combine functional and pebble, and you got functionable.
Stephen Robles:Brilliant. Yes. But yeah. So I don't know. Do you think I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Will we see movement there? EU or
Jason Aten:Well, the EU is literally just saying you have to do this. Like, the digital market tech already gives them the ability to do this, and the statement from the EU is literally just, we're just enforcing the law. Like, this is what the law says. We are going to make the countries. And their statement was something along the lines of, like, doesn't matter.
Jason Aten:And this is interesting because there's so much politics behind it, but they're like, doesn't matter where your company's based. If you if you exist in the EU, you have to follow our laws. And by law, this is you have to open up your platform to allow third parties. Honestly, this is this is so weird, Steven, because on the one hand, I hate what the EU is doing. I don't want product designed by governmental regulators.
Jason Aten:That's just a terrible, terrible outcome for everybody. Right? Because they think interop this is their statement. Interoperability enables a deeper and more seamless integration of third party products with Apple's ecosystem. The problem is, like, there's a whole different level of things that Apple is never going to want to let happen.
Jason Aten:So think about if you have a third party device that all of a sudden has access to all of your messages. Right? There's no way you've lost the ability to keep those things end to end encrypted all the way through the cycle because now they're being exposed to a third. And how is that third party device handling it? Is it uploading it from an app on your phone to a server somewhere and then downloading it to that device?
Jason Aten:There's this is a lot more than just, hey. Make make it so that I can buy a Pixel watch and use it with my iPhone. Right? And Right. Also, why shouldn't Apple be able to build devices that work better with its own devices?
Jason Aten:I I don't understand that argument. It's like you're we're saying that just because Apple's big, and to be clear, they're the biggest company on earth, so, like, fine, But that they should no longer be allowed to innovate. Like, right now, I don't think we wanna do anything to slow down innovation at Apple because they already seem to be struggling on that front in some ways. Right? Let's make it as easy as possible.
Jason Aten:Fair.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. So And there's other so and other countries too. Like you sent me a couple articles here from websites that I can't read, like the Financial Times. The Brussels
Jason Aten:Well, that's the EU. Brussels is the EU. Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:It is the EU. All again, I just every anytime I go to the Financial Times, it just amazes me. Like, when you click a link to their article, this is what you see. The headline is smaller in font than the try unlimited access, only a dollar for four weeks. I mean, hilarious.
Stephen Robles:Just hilarious. But there's also a Fast Company article about the EU and Apple and tech and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's all there. Okay. I wanna talk about Alexa Plus AI voice assistance and trying to convince people that they're not listening.
Stephen Robles:That's what I should have said in the intro. I'm gonna hold on. I'm gonna I'm gonna drop a marker. I'm gonna add
Jason Aten:a can't wait to I'm gonna watch this whole episode because I have no idea how it's gonna turn out.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna keep this in the show, but I'm gonna I'm recording just a little bit because I wanna put it in the intro. We're gonna talk about whether voice assistants are actually listening and how to convince family and friends that they are not. Okay. Yeah. That's what wanna put in the intro.
Jason Aten:I'm so happy. What? No. That's great. I'm so happy.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Okay. And speaking of security, like we just did, I'm gonna try I try to do a transition. This show, I just feel so off the rail. I don't know what's going on.
Stephen Robles:It's the first day of spring. Think I'm just throwing
Jason Aten:allergies, Steven. Just can always blame it your You can blame
Stephen Robles:it on your I don't have allergies. Trying to help you. I don't have allergies.
Jason Aten:I'm throwing you a softball across the plate. That's a sport. I'm just trying to help you out here.
Stephen Robles:I know that softball is a sports ball. But what I what I wanna talk about is I wanna thank our sponsor for this week, which is 1Password. And listen, we talked about security and privacy, and that's important, especially if you're at a business, a brand, and you have a bunch of devices that are distributed to a team. You gotta keep that stuff secure and private and people not doing their own thing, downloading apps and other identities on their devices. But what happens is when you use mobile device managers and some of the other services, it really locks down devices, then employees are, like, frustrated because they can't do what they want with their devices.
Stephen Robles:Well, there's an answer to that, and it's 1Password extended access management. It's the first security solution that brings all the unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected. Every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. OnePassword extended access management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDMs can't.
Stephen Robles:It's security for the way we work today, and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Intra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. And I'll say I worked at a place where I had to use a mobile device manager to manage, like, 60 plus devices. And all the time, I had people come and they were like, can't do this with my phone. I can't do this with my iPad. How do I do this thing?
Stephen Robles:So just get around all of that by using one password extended access management. Or if you experience that frustration at your workplace, maybe, you know, send a link to your head of IT. They love having suggestions like this. That was a little sarcasm, but, you know, you could try to do it in a tactful way anyway. So secure every app device and identity, even the unmanaged ones at 1password.com/primarytech.
Stephen Robles:That's all lowercase. Link is in the description. You can click it there. That's 1password.com/primarytech. And thanks to one password for sponsoring this episode.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I forgot to do I wanted to alright. Real quick. We talked about the new MacBooks. I meant to do this earlier, but I'm gonna do it now. You talked about you restored your m the new m four MacBook Pro you just got.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You restored it from a time machine backup. Right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. So we talked about this, I think, last week or the week before that I have a time machine backup that is just for review devices. And, basically, my habit of that is I use it to set up a review device, and then at the end of the review device's life, I do a time machine backup. Right? So I have a current so I'm not backing things up to, like, six years ago or whatever.
Jason Aten:And so that's what I use. And I actually just when I wanna set something up quick, it gives me, like, 85% of what I want. It just does not add my Dropbox, and it doesn't add my photo library. Why? Because I can just add those from the cloud, like, in the background instantly, and it's quicker, and it's and I never know what size hard drive I'm gonna get or storage I'm gonna get on a review unit, so I can't have, like, 1.6 terabytes of stuff to put on there.
Jason Aten:So, anyway Right. So I that's what I used to set up this. And the reason for that was to traditionally, I have bought two terabyte storage on most devices. This one has one terabyte. Was like, great.
Jason Aten:And from the moment I lifted the lid, attached that drive, and had everything ready to go was twenty six minutes.
Stephen Robles:That's pretty great. I'm gonna time my setup when I eventually get a new Mac Studio. But one of the things that has I always we talked about this, do I start it from scratch new? Do I use Migration Assistant? I've used Migration Assistant in the past for something, I forget what.
Stephen Robles:But I decided if and when I get a new Mac Studio, I'm gonna start from scratch yet again. One, because I was able to set up my Mac my MacBook Air pretty quickly. It took, like, forty five minutes from scratch. But I wanna show you my system settings screen, and, hopefully, I don't dox myself or anything. This is the login items part of system settings telling you, like, applications that are gonna start up when you restart your computer.
Stephen Robles:And here's the thing. I come in here sometimes, and I don't I don't know what's happening. It's like you walk into a room and stuff's happening, and you don't know what is, and everybody kinda freezes and looks at you like you're not supposed to be there. That's how I feel when I go to this login items and extensions page. And, you know, I would love to make this window wider so it looked better in the video, but you know what?
Stephen Robles:System settings doesn't do that even though it was recently updated.
Jason Aten:It says something. I mean, you have some things that I understand why they would wanna be in the startup. Elgato, whatever, whatever, Hazel, whatever. There are three different Opel camera pieces of software
Stephen Robles:in here. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is why I don't use migration assistant because if I get a new Mac, I don't want any of this stuff. And if I were to try and go and, like, delete all the little files in the library folder and application support that have to do with all these little things, like, you would never find them all.
Stephen Robles:You'll always have that rogue folder or whatever. And, also, I feel like I'm gonna mess something if I delete the library folder I'm not supposed to. 0wcdriveguide.helper. I don't know what that is, but I don't want it on a new Mac Studio if I get one. I have a Google LLC.
Stephen Robles:What even is that? What is that? Because Google Updater is
Jason Aten:different. Eye lock. It doesn't tell you if you click on it, does it? No.
Stephen Robles:No. You get zero information. You can't even, like, right click. You can't option click. Nothing.
Stephen Robles:There's also so like you said, the Opel Camera. I had to test some webcams, videos on Riverside, so Opel Camera installs, like, 18 different helper applications. So I got these over here. I have Reincubate because I tested out Camo, but I'm not using anymore. Setapp.
Stephen Robles:You have like Setapp, but also like a Setup Limited. What is that? Universal audio. I don't even use a universal audio on like,
Jason Aten:I'm looking at your list, and I'm like, I feel like I should have Rogue Amoeba in here somehow.
Stephen Robles:A recent update to Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba software
Jason Aten:It limited
Stephen Robles:doesn't require the kernel installation Okay. So you probably don't have that. Like, the audio capture engine is not necessary anymore. That's fine. Like, I understand.
Stephen Robles:Rokamibia, I actually get what that is in this list. The other things I don't understand, I'm not gonna install Zoom on my next Mac Studio. I'll just use it in the browser if I ever need to. I don't this is this is why I start from scratch. And if this is just what's in the login items and extensions, who knows what's hiding in that library folder
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:That I don't know. And so that's that's why I do what I do. That's also why I use Hazel. If you didn't know what Hazel was, pro tip. Hazel's a wonderful application from, Noodlesoft, and you can do, like, automations based on files and folders.
Stephen Robles:So you can say, whenever a PNG file hits my desktop, like a screenshot, move it to this other folder or do these actions with it. I use that with Plex, which we'll talk about in a minute. But Hazel will also when you delete an application that you had installed that wasn't from the App Store you know, if you install something from the Mac App Store, deleting it is you know, because it's sandbox, deleting it is pretty clean. But if you try to delete an application that you installed for, like, a d m g file is it d m g? D m g.
Stephen Robles:D m d m g. Right?
Jason Aten:The DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone? Is that what you're talking about? North Korea.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for your help. Thanks for your help. If you if you try to, like, delete an application that you just installed from a website, there's gonna be all these files and folders. And Hazel, when you delete it from your applications folder, will search your library and application support folders. We'll try to find all the folders and files related to that app, and we'll ask if you wanna delete those as well.
Stephen Robles:So I love Hazel for that, but it tries the best it can. Some apps are just sneaky, and they just they just slide stuff in. That's why I start from scratch. That's I just wanted to say that. I wanna talk about voice assistance because Amazon had an announcement earlier this week that it's taking away the option, and I'll put a link to Jason's article in the show notes, the option to toggle on or off the ability to to restrict recordings being sent to Amazon for is it training or interaction?
Stephen Robles:You had the option.
Jason Aten:Okay. So here's the thing. Your Alexa devices, for the most part, handle most of the voice commands on device. That's why you had to be very particular about what you say. Right?
Jason Aten:Because it's listening for a very specific combination of words, and it can handle most of those commands on device. And then when it needs data from the cloud, it just sends up a request for the weather or for the sports score or whatever it was. But it doesn't actually have to send your a recording of your command up to the cloud. But with Alexa Plus, you can't handle I mean, there's, first of all, devices that are just they're just dumb. Like, a $35 dumb speaker that they throw in a box of, like, you know, popcorn
Stephen Robles:Right. For Prime
Jason Aten:not gonna just you can't handle that kind of thing. And so they're gonna now record you. It used to be that you could tell it don't set you know, save my recordings and send them to the cloud. And, yes, in the past, one of the reasons they would do that there's a big controversy. This actually affected both Amazon, Google, and Apple where they would be sending recordings of your interactions, and then they'd review them by humans.
Jason Aten:Right? And that was a big deal. So Amazon added an option to say, don't do this. Don't don't send my recordings to the cloud. They are eliminating that option.
Jason Aten:You will no longer have the ability to say, please don't do that. And the reason is you can't use this Alexa Plus without sending it because the devices are not capable of parsing your like, the the the large language model is not running on that device. It has to be running on Amazon servers.
Stephen Robles:It's not on your Echo Dot on your Bedrock.
Jason Aten:It's running on Amazon servers, which, by the way, power most of the Internet anyway. Right? Like, AWS. Right? They're gonna send it to the cloud.
Jason Aten:And so they are eliminating that feature. And I think it like, my take on this was, no. You shouldn't eliminate that option because guess what? If I have four stupid Echo Dot things that my kids use as alarm clocks, they don't need Alexa Plus. I don't need them to but, also, I don't necessarily want recordings of my children in their bedrooms being sent to Amazon for any reason.
Jason Aten:Right? Because once it gets sent to the cloud, yes, they say that they delete it immediately afterwards, but this is not a thing that's necessary for everyone. But this is just so indicative of what tech come. It's the same thing with Apple pushing Apple intelligence on on every device. Right?
Jason Aten:I'm sorry, but if I buy an iPad Mini, do I need Apple intelligence if all I wanna do is watch Disney plus and read, you know, Kindle stuff? Like, it's Right. So, anyway, I I think they're handling it wrong. I do think there's a quote in there that I put in there. It's like we, you know, we are, what does it say?
Jason Aten:As we continue to expand Alexa's capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon Secure Cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature. Letting people not have their recordings sent to the cloud is not a feature. That should just be the way that it is. Right?
Stephen Robles:So here's the thing here's the thing about voice assistance. And if you didn't know, if you have ever had an Alexa device and you have an Amazon account, you can actually go and see everything that it has heard and recorded you say. And so I'm actually here on my Amazon account, and it said this was when I had that I got that Echo Show 10. I was like, maybe I'll try Amazon Alexa Plus and make a video about it. And then all it did was show me ads and I immediately returned it.
Stephen Robles:Apparently, there are settings to turn it off.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Put it in kid mode, by the way. Pro tip, everybody. Put those things in kid mode and it makes it a lot easier.
Stephen Robles:So these were the few requests that I made when I had that show 10. I said add stevia to cart, liquid stevia. Now here on Amazon's website, so you can again, you log in to your Amazon account, you go to voice history, like, can see all the things that it heard you say, and you can delete the recording. So I'm curious if that will go away. I guess that's that's what they're saying is you won't be able to to delete it.
Jason Aten:Well, it's a little bit different because essentially, you must not have okay. There's a difference between having the recording and having them sent to the cloud. Right? And so the and I don't know. Obviously, these are sent to the cloud because you're looking at it on
Stephen Robles:the web I know. I'm
Jason Aten:not looking browser. A web browser. Not have had that feature turned off, the feature turned off. So Yeah. So I would imagine that if and I guess I could just look while if you talk for a second, I can just look and see.
Jason Aten:But I'm guessing that, like, someone who had the feature turned on wouldn't be able to see this. And it won't be that you won't be able to delete the recordings. You just won't have the option to not have them sent in the first place because Amazon says that it's only gonna use the recording to process your request, and then it will delete.
Stephen Robles:But I also feel like likely a very high percentage chance that Amazon is gonna use the request to train its LLM
Jason Aten:on Well, and that's the part that I you can't find I could not find in their privacy policy yet.
Stephen Robles:That so that's the thing. Now the whole LLM side of it and training is one thing, but I just wanted to ask briefly what and and this is for the audience too and for Jason, but I'm curious to hear you can go to social.primarytech.fm and comment on the post for this episode or just hit us up on social media. All our links are in the show notes. But when it comes to speakers with mics in them, that could be a HomePod. That could be an Echo.
Stephen Robles:That could be a Google Nest device. Very like, we are at a time now I feel like it it increased in, like, concern and then just became an assumption, and the concern lessened that my devices are always listening to me. I have had multiple family members and friends just say that as, like, a thing, as a fact, and just basically accept it now, like in recent years. Like, they just assume their devices are listening to them all the time. I've mentioned this before on a past episode.
Stephen Robles:If you read the book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he talks about research that marketing companies have done and all the method methods they have to target you and your interests that are so much more reliable and better than what you say audibly, but your activity online, your connections between your purchases and vendors. You have the same email address likely for your Target account as you do your bank account, as you do your credit card account, and all that information being connected. Like, advertisers can find out what you want without listening to what you say. And, actually, their methods are better than just hearing what you're talking about. But it is very, very hard to convince someone that their devices are not always listening.
Stephen Robles:I think news like this exacerbates that fact. The news and I Jennifer Toohey from The Verge, she had a good video explainer talking about what this actually means. And, of course, Jason's article read that in the show notes. But when someone who's not techie hears, Amazon removed the ability to sit to not send recordings to the cloud or whatever. People will be like, yeah.
Stephen Robles:Duh. They're listening all the time anyway. And that's like that statement too, there's nuance there. Like, are your devices like if you have, hey, Dingus activated on your HomePod, is your device always listening? Kind of.
Jason Aten:I mean,
Stephen Robles:a %, yes. %, yes, but only listening for the wake word. And then once it detects the wake word, then it's actually taking whatever you say after that as a request and maybe doing something with that. Maybe sending it to the cloud, maybe trying to process on device, like when you ask, hey, Dingus on your actual iPhone or with Amazon now, know, sending it to the cloud, maybe training it to LLM. So it's such like a nuanced statement to try and parse to say, yes, but and maybe it doesn't even matter.
Stephen Robles:Like, maybe people are just kind of giving up and being like, whatever. Like, just listen to everything I say. I don't know. How do how do you approach that with, like, people who say that?
Jason Aten:Okay. Typically, though, what people mean when they say my devices are list listening is they mean Instagram on their phone. No. Like, really. Like, that's what people think.
Stephen Robles:That's what they see the ads that are
Jason Aten:That's what people think. They're like, my phone is always listening to me and see, I got an Instagram ad that shows that my phone is obviously listening to me. And the point you were making is that actually they don't have to listen to you and even Meta doesn't have to listen to you because it know it's okay. Fine. That's what they normally mean.
Jason Aten:I generally speaking, I don't think that that Instagram is listening on your phone because Apple is not a fan of that. Right? Apple's not a fan of that.
Stephen Robles:Right. And you can actually get like, that's the one thing on the iPhone. You get the little orange dot or green dot in the status bar when the microphone or camera is active. Right. And that's why if you do something I did a recent video where if you turn on sound recognition.
Stephen Robles:Like, there's an accessibility feature on the iPhone where it can recognize door knocks, baby crying, smoke detector alarms, things like that for people who are hearing impaired. If you enable that feature, you're gonna see that little orange dot all the time because the the microphone is listening all the time.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So for your other devices, though, are they listening to you all the time? Yes. They are always listening. Well, here's the no.
Jason Aten:But here's the thing. Like, literally, there's no way for it to know that there's a wake word being said if it isn't listening for that wake word. That's different, though, than is it recording what I'm saying? Is it whatever? So all the time, those devices, unless you are smart like I recommend and you turn off the HeyDengus on everything except for your watch.
Jason Aten:Like, just turn it off on all your HomePods. Turn it off on all your other devices. Oh, when you're when you're setting up a new Mac and it asks you if you wanna do no. You don't wanna do that. Okay?
Jason Aten:Just anyway. But even then, like, there are still times when your other devices are always gonna be listening for you to say that. And once you do, then they start a recording because it's a computer. Like, computers don't have an ear and a brain that, like it has to be able to process that command, and so it does. It may creates a little bit of a recording, and then it processes the recording, and then it gets rid of your actual, like, voice interaction.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, that part of it. But in this case, the next step, if it has to send it to the cloud is it's gonna actually take a recording, send that to the cloud. And so is that your device is listening to you? In a literal sense, yes.
Jason Aten:Is there someone at Amazon that's gonna go through and, like, know everything you're saying? Probably not. I will tell you that there was a time when I did a briefing with Google for one of their, home hub, one of the smaller little ones, the Nest Home Mini Hub thing. I again, I don't know the names of any of them. Doesn't matter.
Jason Aten:And it has sleep detection on it. Okay?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:So all of a sudden in your mind, you're like, how does this device know I'm sleeping? And this particular device has no camera, and they spent a decent amount of time reiterating there is no camera on this. And the reason is they want you to put it on your nightstand next to your bed, and no one wants a camera pointed at them when they're in bed, like, any reason. Like, just there's no scenario where you want that. And Yeah.
Jason Aten:The point is you have to be able to trust the devices. Right? You have to trust the people who are making these devices. And I think you're right. What we've learned is most people just don't.
Jason Aten:They just don't try. They just assume the worst But
Stephen Robles:also no one's gonna stop using their phone or their other devices. And so they just accept it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. We clearly don't care that much.
Stephen Robles:And and they would have made it, like, five seconds into your explanation just then. And then they would have been like, yeah. Okay. Whatever. Like, people just check out.
Stephen Robles:Like, they don't like, not techy people. They our audience too they were locked in on you. I'm just saying, like, when you try to talk to to your father-in-law about your device and not
Jason Aten:listening. Well, that's because they stopped after I said, of course it's listening. And they're like, see? Okay. And then
Stephen Robles:they just moved on. It just moved on. But I wanna convince you now because you you you think you are more now convinced that they are listening. Is that right?
Jason Aten:Well, I just what I think I said to you before we recorded was I am less convinced that they're not always listening even though I know that they're not just because what I'm really convinced of is they do such a good job of being able to surface content based on whatever things that you are interested in. And I I couldn't think of a specific example, but there have been a number of times recently where I'm like, maybe they are listening because of something that pops up in the Instagram feed that we just had a random conversation about a thing we don't normally talk about or it's not a because it's if you start seeing ads in Instagram for the place you wanna go on vacation, it's probably because you did, like, a Google flight search or you went to Marriott's website or you did all these things, and all that information is connected in the background and then Facebook. Although Or Hold on.
Stephen Robles:Or you liked a post from a friend who went to Cancun, and so Facebook is like, maybe you're interested in Cancun.
Jason Aten:Right. Or And that happened. I do have a favor, and I would really like it if Google and Amazon and Meta especially would be a little bit smarter about the content they shove in our faces. Because if I just booked a trip to Cancun, I don't need to see ads for Cancun. If I just watched a YouTube video about how to replace the light bulb in my car, I'm not suddenly a light bulb car aficionado.
Jason Aten:I don't need my entire feed to be filled with it, but that is exactly
Stephen Robles:what happens. Seventy eight Camaro's light bulb.
Jason Aten:It's like, oh, you search for one light bulb changing video. Here's 73 more. No. I'm done. I've moved on.
Stephen Robles:Here's here's what here's what I wish AI would do. And if Apple Intelligence did this one thing, it would be worth it. If somehow it knew what things I have purchased or services I already pay for so that any ad for that thing is automatically hidden from me. For instance, I have paid for Squarespace for one thousand years. I should never have to see a Squarespace ad anywhere, ever again.
Jason Aten:On television or on an Internet or anywhere. If
Stephen Robles:it well, here's the thing. Like, Apple is actually uniquely positioned to kind of say like, they probably wouldn't do this for privacy and security reasons, but, like, I'm logged into Squarespace on my Apple computer, and I it's in my Apple passwords. Of course, I know they're using that information. But, like, on my Apple TV, if I was streaming something, they should know, like, he already pays for Squarespace. And, like, don't show me that ad.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Or I don't need to see ads about random charging things because I'm gonna buy it anyways. Need I
Jason Aten:need to tell the streets looking for charging things to pick up. He doesn't need
Stephen Robles:the charger?
Jason Aten:No ads.
Stephen Robles:Hasn't any charger? Haven't been had a charger in a while. I would just say, like, all the MagSafe charges that I have bought, I see duplicate ads. Like, I already own that. I own that.
Stephen Robles:Right. I already have that. It would be amazing if all the platforms knew what I have already bought. Like, here's the other thing. I'm looking for a new office chair.
Stephen Robles:I think we've talked about this before. We did. But I keep yeah. I do we don't know. Well, I'm starting to look again.
Stephen Robles:I hadn't bought anything yet, so I'm looking at the Herman Millers or whatever. And now all Jason, because I searched on Facebook Marketplace for Herman Miller chairs. I cannot walk outside my front door without seeing a Herman Miller ad. It's they're laying on the ground. Right.
Stephen Robles:They're they're in the trees. They're everywhere, but I get it. Like, they immediately understood that I was interested in this thing. And the amazing part is I'm getting ads for chair companies I never heard of, but that are like immediately, hey, we're better than Herman Miller. Hey, did you see this test we did against Herman Miller?
Stephen Robles:Like, that's the power of the algorithms behind the scenes. Now just use that power to never show me ads for things that I already paid for.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Would I get that the internet is based on ads. That's fine. I hate it, and it's whatever. But at
Stephen Robles:least in the show.
Jason Aten:At least stop showing me the ones for the thing I literally bought three minutes ago.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Thank you. That if there's any change we can bring to the world through this podcast, hopefully it's that.
Jason Aten:No kidding, Steven. I clicked on an Instagram ad and I bought a thing, and the next day saw 16 more ads for the same thing I just bought.
Stephen Robles:I think that platform especially Why?
Jason Aten:I it. Bought it.
Stephen Robles:Through the Instagram with it. I know. I know. It's ridiculous. Anyway, that's fine.
Stephen Robles:Okay. But you had another article talking about Apple's trust or the benefit of the doubt.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, this is similar to what we did in and I just wanted to expound on I had written back in in December that the one thing Apple needed to do is deliver on its Apple intelligence promises.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:And then it didn't, obviously. And then we had a lot of kerfuffle about that, and I kinda just wanted to circle back on it. And I just so, yeah, I just the the risk to Apple is we we when Amazon says they're gonna put a flying drone in your house, it'll be your security camera all the time. We're like, whatever. Amazon just says stuff.
Jason Aten:When Tesla's like the robotaxis are coming, we're like, okay. Maybe. Whatever. Probably not. And but when Apple says that we're gonna do a thing, for the most part, believe them, Not just because Apple always delivers the things that it says, but because, like, we trust them at a different level.
Jason Aten:And when they put their most, you know, likable spokespeople up there to to promote something that they just they're nowhere near that, then they've the risk to them is not that Apple intelligence is bad. The risk to them is now they've they've they've lost the benefit of the doubt. And every time someone you know, Apple says a thing, they're gonna have to work harder. They're not gonna be able to skate by just on the, well, we'll just kinda, like, speak it into existence. Right?
Jason Aten:The whole reality distortion field, the Right. Reason that people believe Steve Jobs is, one, they believe that he could make it happen. Right? Right. But he had a a large degree of trust.
Jason Aten:And so I just think, yeah, I think the real risk to them is just, man, trust is your most valuable asset. And once you lose it, it's it's real hard.
Stephen Robles:Two suggestions I have if Apple's listening. One, go back to live events. People on stage talking about stuff.
Jason Aten:Steven, I'm writing that article right now.
Stephen Robles:The I WWDC this year should be live on stage.
Jason Aten:I mean, it's probably too late for WWDC this year, but I am I'm not kidding. I'm writing an article that says the the one thing that they need to do to prevent this from happening again is go back to live demos.
Stephen Robles:That, %. And two, I feel like the seeds of this doubt were planted years ago when we started not getting all the dub dub features at the initial OS release. Because all the way up until, like, iOS 14 or 15, it was like every feature you heard about at dub dub in June, you got in iOS 14 dot zero. And maybe there were some bugs. Whatever.
Stephen Robles:It's expected. But you saw all the features immediately. And now we're in this era where we might not get eight we still don't have 18 dot four with some things, and, like, that's coming maybe this month, maybe in April next month, two months before dub dub the next year. And so I think it's a small thing, but but I don't think it's a small thing. I think if they go back to saying everything we announced in June, you're gonna see it in September or at least with the initial launch of iOS, I think that will help build that trust again to say we announce features and we ship features.
Stephen Robles:Like, Apple's great at announcing features, and they're okay at shipping features. Like, ship a lot of features, and some of them you know, you see most of the dub dub features by, like, December. You know, usually by, like, iOS 18 dot two or three that you get around December time, you'll see most of the features. But I think they should go back to just saying we get we announce it, and we ship it, and it's like clockwork. Because I do feel like there were many years where it was like that.
Stephen Robles:It was clockwork. You saw it at Dub Dub, and you saw it in September.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I disagree. The reason why I disagree is Okay. Because two well, two things. One Yeah.
Jason Aten:I think it's fine to stagger the features as long as you deliver them. And I can't think of other than CarPlay two. Anything that they announced at, like, something like that, they promised was coming that they didn't deliver at any point other than, like, Apple Intelligence. And I think the reason for the staggering makes sense. Here's why.
Jason Aten:One, it gets people to continue to upgrade update throughout this the year. Otherwise, you just upgrade to the zero point zero and, like, people don't that's why the emojis don't come until, like, the point two or something because they know that that's the thing that will get people
Stephen Robles:that are fine. It's fine.
Jason Aten:But but the other thing is it allows them to take on more ambitious things that may not seem like a big deal to us without the pressure of it all has to be available on day one. Because if you think about it, when when it goes out, the first thing you're doing is you're dealing with all these bug fixes. It may not be till later in the cycle that they're even able to start working on certain features, and it allows them, I think, by staggering things out throughout the year. That cadence, I think, allows them to do more things that otherwise they wouldn't be doing. I think that that's fine.
Jason Aten:The problem here was not just that it didn't arrive on day one. It's that they were literally saying, this is why you should go out today and buy an iPhone, and it's never coming.
Stephen Robles:But maybe, and I would argue, being more ambitious, maybe at this point right now is not the thing to do. Maybe it is to be more conservative in the new feature side and more ambitious in, like, the shipping, the ones we've already talked about and fixing the stuff that's already out there, maybe. And I listen. I want Apple to be ambitious. I want new features every year like everybody.
Stephen Robles:Sure. But I would like them to be reliable and, like, yeah, I get it. The emoji's not come till dot whatever release, but I think also being clear about it. And I totally get, like, there were some years where Apple didn't talk about a feature because it had to do with the hardware of the new phone in September. Like, that makes total sense.
Stephen Robles:Like, a portrait mode or whatever. I feel like with the iPhone seven something. You know, that was something that wasn't announced until then. So, like, I totally get that, but I don't know. Live events and more more regularity, at least, or more or more consistency slash when you like, you can expect it.
Stephen Robles:You know what I mean? And there's also maybe they were more clear in past years to say, like, this is coming in the spring. This is coming in the fall. Maybe to be more clear about that when it talks about features that might be staggered to say, you'll see this next year. You'll see this in the spring or whatever.
Stephen Robles:It might help. Just might help start building that the the trust
Jason Aten:Well, and the difference in the past is in when they released iOS 16, they didn't run ads promoting the free form app, which wasn't coming until five months later. Right? Or they didn't run ads promoting, like, the emergency SOS changes, which weren't coming until the point three update. Like, that's the biggest difference. I I think I understand why they stagger features.
Jason Aten:It just allows them and because I'm, like, I'm looking at the iOS 16. None of these things are like, oh, you shouldn't be tackling things that are that big. It's just, like, we're able to do more things. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Okay. Well, let's try and do a lightning like an actual lightning round, Jason.
Jason Aten:Love it.
Stephen Robles:Let's try. We don't talk about we don't talk about rumors much, but the iPhone seventeen and seventeen Air, all these rumors have been out there. There's this thought of, like, some big bar across the top for the camera bump. You think that's legit?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I hope not because that case looks like something out of the minions or something. I don't even, like
Stephen Robles:The minion. It's minion case.
Jason Aten:Seriously, don't know. I don't know. It's like a ski goggles on a minion is what that looks like to me. But I I don't know. I just you we've talked about this.
Jason Aten:I don't understand the need for like, the phones are fine. Like, come on.
Stephen Robles:I would listen. But I'm down for the you know, the rumor is the iPhone 17 Air is gonna be like a ultra thin and light iPhone. I'm down to see what they do with that and how that compares, but I don't want the bar, though. I don't like
Jason Aten:the bar. I don't like any of it. There you go. That's that's my take.
Stephen Robles:Okay. There you go. Also, this has been rumored for years, but apparently now Mark Gurman is like, home OS as an operating system is coming this year. I think I just swallowed a net. Hold
Jason Aten:on. I think doesn't the doesn't the HomePod run tvOS or something like that or the
Stephen Robles:I can't even talk. I get listen.
Jason Aten:Okay. We this is a lightning round. Sorry. Pretend I didn't
Stephen Robles:say It runs like a derivative of iOS or something, I thought.
Jason Aten:I mean, they're all a derivative iOS at this point.
Stephen Robles:Right. Yeah. Alright. Fair enough. Anyway, sure, HomeOS would be great.
Stephen Robles:Maybe if it actually, like, actually does other things. Like, maybe two k to four k HomeKit secure video cameras, pan and tilt controls in the home app, better robot vacuum support, better automations and tools that way. I would love to see it. I'm like fifty fifty because it's been rumored for five years. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:What do you think we'll see that percentage?
Jason Aten:Most of the words you said, I don't even understand. So I'm not too worried about it. But I think for people like you and Gentooie, this will be really exciting or really disappointing if it doesn't happen. But if they bring back that home set that they had for WWDC twenty twenty two, I'm here for it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That'd be fun. And lastly, I just wanna talk about Plex real quick because I'm a huge Plex aficionado. Plex prices are actually going up. So as of April 29, we still have, like, a month to get in there.
Stephen Robles:The monthly is going up to $7, yearly to $70, and the lifetime up to $250. I actually bought a lifetime Plex Pass when it was, like, $75, and it feels like one of the best investments ever. Because sometimes I'll rip things and put it on my Plex server, which is my Synology. I do some things that I can't talk about because this podcast is on YouTube, and I'll get the I'll get taken down. But, you know, ask me.
Stephen Robles:I'll I'll send you some links. But I I really love Plex. So prices are going up if you wanna get in there before that. But even with these newer prices, I feel like it's worth it. And I just love the fact they have a lifetime pass, like the ability to actually buy a lifetime pass even though it's way more expensive.
Jason Aten:Did you get a lifetime pass for that Humane AI pin?
Stephen Robles:I won't talk about it. You don't even use you don't use Plex at all, do you?
Jason Aten:I don't even know what Plex is except for it's like a video peer to peer service. I don't know. It's a video server that you own yourself and you can stream to devices.
Stephen Robles:We don't have time with it. At the very least, it's a great app that you can have on all your Apple devices that if you set up a Plex server, which could be a folder on your Mac, it could be a folder on your Mac Mini. That could be your video server, or you can have a Synology or another network attached storage. And then the Plex app, wherever you are in the world remotely or in your house, you can stream the video files you have on that server to your device. So it's like your it's a whole media server, but everywhere.
Jason Aten:Didn't Apple TV used to do that? Didn't you used to be
Stephen Robles:able to that? Don't know if you could still do it. It used to like, there was a computer app on the Apple TV.
Jason Aten:Stuff from your computer. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:But it had to be in your, like, iTunes library, and I don't I don't think that's there anymore.
Jason Aten:Gotcha.
Stephen Robles:Like, I don't think because you can't really, like, drag video files into the Apple TV app. You know what I mean? Fright. I don't think.
Jason Aten:I think you're right.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Correct me if well, someone correct me if I'm wrong. But, anyway alright. Let's talk about, personal tech. Two quick things.
Stephen Robles:With my new MacBook Air, I tried your method of turning the dots off for active apps in the dock. I couldn't stand it. I did it for, like, a week or two. Can't stand it. So I put the dots back on.
Stephen Robles:I tried it, though. I tried it. You should try the battery percentage off, and you can report back after a week. That's what I say. Here's the thing.
Stephen Robles:I use apps like Final Cut and Compressor, and part of my workflow is quickly glancing in the doc to see is that app an open or closed, like because it might be doing something. And to not have that quick visual marker, it was like then I actually had to do the command tab and see if it was there or try to find the window that I might've minimized. So those dots, I like the dots.
Jason Aten:Just click on it. I don't understand what you need to know the dots for. Well, why? Why do you what benefits
Stephen Robles:think it just glanced down. I don't have to click on anything. It just glanced down.
Jason Aten:Why do you need to know? In the world of Apple Silicon, why do you need to know if something's running or not?
Stephen Robles:Okay. Here's an example. Final Cut, I exclusively edit off external SSD drives. And so I'll have an SSD drive attached to my computer. When I'm done exporting a video file, I'll quit Final Cut.
Stephen Robles:I'll eject it, and I'll unplug it. If for some reason I see that Final Cut is running, I will not pull out the thing or try to eject it because I know Final Cut, with a % certainty, is accessing that external SSD. So I wanna
Jason Aten:know Does Final Cut, do you have, like, an AI robot in Final Cut that just does things without you do it? Like, you started the thing. Was running.
Stephen Robles:Yes. But, like, a compressor export might take twenty minutes, and so I'll minimize all those windows, and I don't know what the current state is. And then if I do a bunch of other things, I'll have to really, like, did I quit Final Cut or is it still open or what do I need to do? And just glancing whether or not Final Cut is still open or not is information that then I can use to say, oh, let me quit it real quick. Let me eject it.
Stephen Robles:Let me do it. Or if I see that Final Cut is not active, it means, oh, I'm good. I can just unplug.
Jason Aten:I can't understand. But that's okay. That's all
Stephen Robles:I'm just saying.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:I gotta I have found a use case. All the things I found a use case. So
Jason Aten:Great.
Stephen Robles:I feel I
Jason Aten:feel just good. I do have one quick thing too. I know you have another thing. I want you I wanted to just go on the record. I am no more case back.
Jason Aten:I can't do it anymore.
Stephen Robles:Me neither. I got a full case.
Jason Aten:You know why? Can you can you see how incredibly scratched up the that bottom is? Yes. And the same thing is true at the top. We can't see it now because the light came on.
Stephen Robles:Why is it?
Jason Aten:Because of the case. That I mean, because of the back. It doesn't give any protection at that spot. So it's, like, right at those two surfaces are the most likely to get scratched. And it's like, oh, I have to put a case on this.
Jason Aten:I wanted to do the case back thing so badly, but
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I dropped my phone a couple times with just the back on it, and I think I got a small nick on, like, the corner or whatever. And, you know, the two schools of thought, people are like, it adds character. It's part of owning the phone. Just use the phone.
Jason Aten:Not in glass. No. No. No.
Stephen Robles:I am not of that school of fun.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I almost I had I was I was strongly thinking I was gonna have to walk out to the driveway and drop this a few times so that I could take it and have the screen replaced. They won't replace it for a a scratch.
Stephen Robles:No. They will not. Not anymore. You used to be able to be like any little Nick. He'd be like, can I have a new phone?
Stephen Robles:Like, AppleCare? Sure. Why not? Not anymore. No.
Stephen Robles:You gotta shatter that thing. Oh, yeah. Gotta be unusable. But, yeah, I agree. I'm I'm on the case now.
Stephen Robles:I'm using the Ryan London leather case, and look at that patina.
Jason Aten:That's gross. Yeah. It's good.
Stephen Robles:What do you mean gross? It's a leather patina. What are you you have leather stuff.
Jason Aten:That looks a lot like you picked it up after some nachos. My my mother patina is is, like, nice. There's no
Stephen Robles:What is it? What case is that?
Jason Aten:This is the nomad mother.
Stephen Robles:There's no patina on it. That's why it's nice. What is no patina?
Jason Aten:There's no patina.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I see. That's that's not a patina. Listeners, viewers, let let's hold our phone up at the same time.
Jason Aten:Yours is no. Don't put that thing up there. People are gonna get nauseous.
Stephen Robles:This is a patina. I posted a picture of this, and people were like, oh, yeah. It's a good patina. That's how they sounded my mind.
Jason Aten:Looks like you spilled a margarita on it is what it looks like.
Stephen Robles:I don't use my phone with messy hands. All right. I wash my hands all time. I don't like doing that. And if I'm eating something, I'll do the weird, like, pinky little bit a tap with my pinky because it's the only thing without the
Jason Aten:I think this is a problem, but let's talk about your real problem.
Stephen Robles:Listen. I don't think it's not a problem. It's an opportunity. It's that I love charging things. Okay?
Jason Aten:It's that Steven walks down the street and he looks in the window of people's houses, if he sees that blue glow, he's like, they got a new charger. I'm gonna go in and knock on the door and see what they
Stephen Robles:Listen. My audience on YouTube, I think, appreciates that I talk about so many different chargers so they can make an educated decision. Well, what charger is best for them? I sent you a charger. You still use
Jason Aten:the top rest head. Only because I'm too lazy to switch back
Stephen Robles:to
Jason Aten:whatever I
Stephen Robles:had before. Doing no. No. No. I think you found benefit.
Stephen Robles:I'm doing a service.
Jason Aten:It won't charge my AirPods very often. It just blinks a bright white light at me all the time, but so I don't charge my AirPods on there. It's like you have to get it in the exact right spot. The exact don't, it just, there's a white light that just pulses at you. It's like, wake up, stupid.
Jason Aten:You didn't charge them right.
Stephen Robles:That's what it's saying. That's why I like my 12 South High Rise three Deluxe, which is still my favorite, my nighttime fan. But here's the thing. This guy, look at this. First of
Jason Aten:Okay. First of all, Steven, that looks like it's going to kill you.
Stephen Robles:G2, you got the MagSafe puck for your phone and Apple Watch and a place to charge your AirPods. And look at this little indentions so you know where to put it and it doesn't yell at you. But also, look at this. Look at this. Look at this.
Stephen Robles:Three to four USB c ports and these little metal things where you can have your your iPad lay in there, maybe my MacBook Air, maybe other iPads. And there's even a place to like an outlet facing upward. You need to do that. Plus, this is modular. Look at this.
Stephen Robles:You could mix and match whatever things, put it on whatever sides. This thing looks amazing. Here's why I got it. I have a lot of devices to charge and some of them include you know, I don't do you charge your iPad? How often do you charge your iPad?
Stephen Robles:Let me ask you that.
Jason Aten:When it needs to be charged.
Stephen Robles:See, that's the thing. But if that is that's how I do it. But the problem is it always needs to be charged then because when you wanna pick it up, it never has a charge.
Jason Aten:I don't think it's I cannot think of a time that I've picked my my iPad mini is different because I think it's I mean, it's older, but I can't think of a time when I picked up my m four iPad Pro that it didn't have at least 40%, which is more than enough battery for anything I'm gonna wanna do with it.
Stephen Robles:So I have a push cut notification that tells me when my iPad I see. Falls below 25%, and it's all the time. Like, it's regularly. So I got this because a, I wanna put it in a video. But b, I want to test.
Stephen Robles:Maybe just maybe I just charge my iPad every night, and maybe I put my MacBook Air in there. Maybe I just charge the stuff. And also I have, like, my kids' devices that I'll keep in our room and charge. So now I can have everything organized in a nice way with these little things and I still can charge my phone and watch and AirPods and everything. This this seems like a great product.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, I wanna try it out.
Jason Aten:Steven, you're my friend. And I just have to tell you as your friend that you have crossed over some lines. I don't know what it even is, but I just want you to know that that I don't think your family will tolerate that contraption anywhere in that house.
Stephen Robles:They're totally it's gonna be on my nightstand.
Jason Aten:Steven, how your nightstand has to be bigger than my desk if
Stephen Robles:I also got this thing. I get this thing right now.
Jason Aten:Steven, you don't have this many devices.
Stephen Robles:Hey. Can I get this one? Hold on. There you go. Steven.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, I like testing chargers, Jason. I give them away. They all find a second home when I'm done with them. Okay. I've given away lots of chargers to you as well.
Jason Aten:I did get I appreciate that. That was very kind.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, be looking at my channel. I'm gonna put that in a video. So there you go. Alright. We're gonna talk about severance in our bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:So here's what you do. Tell me what your favorite charger is or any of the many things. You can leave us a five star rating in Apple Podcasts. I don't know how many it's gonna take to get back to five stars, but you guys have been showing out. So we really appreciate it.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. If you've already done it, this message is not for you. If you haven't left us a five star rating and review, run. Don't walk and leave that in Apple Podcast. You subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Stephen Robles:Now 2,000 subscribers strong. Thank you for that. And if you wanna listen to the bonus episodes, you can support the show at primarytech.fm. Listen. If you want an Internet with less ads, support the content you love.
Stephen Robles:And you can do that at primarytech.fm. Click bonus episodes. Support us there, or you can support us directly in Apple Podcasts. And we're gonna go record a bonus episode about severance because I don't know, man. I'm tired of the goats.
Stephen Robles:Maybe I'm tired of the goats. I don't know. Gonna talk about the goats. We're talking about the goats. So that's it.
Stephen Robles:Let's go. See you over at the bonus episode. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.
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