WWDC 2025 + iOS 19, Apple’s Siri Shakeup, OpenAI Raising $40B, and THAT Signal Group Chat
Download MP3See you at the Equator. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Lots of news this week. Apple announced dates for WWDC. IOS 18 dot four should be coming out next week to the public.
Stephen Robles:Plus ChatGPT four o now generates even better imagery. Tested that out. OpenAI is about to close a huge funding round, the meta tell all book, and Jason has the Sigma BF camera in hand. We're gonna discuss that as well. This episode is exclusively brought to you by you, the members who support us directly, so thank you for that.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me with a BF camera and the wrong opinion about the severance finale, my friend Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:Good. I mean, the camera's great. We'll talk about that later.
Stephen Robles:We'll talk about the camera later. Yeah. And we can't, we can't review the severance finale. We don't have time for that. But I just know that through our text, I think you have the wrong opinion.
Stephen Robles:I'm just
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I have a strong, strong opinion about one particular aspect of it, which is, like, the ending of the ending. The only part that matters. Right? It was good.
Jason Aten:It was a good finale. It was compelling until they did they literally took the wrong turn down the wrong hallway.
Stephen Robles:Well, see that okay. No. We're not getting into it. You're not baiting me into this with the we'll have to have another podcast maybe with our friend Nate. We'll talk about that.
Stephen Robles:But there is some other severance news and things on Apple's website that well, we'll we'll get to that in a second. But we have a bunch of more five star reviews. Thank you for keep trying to getting us back to a five star show in Apple Podcasts. I didn't check today if we made it back up to a five star podcast.
Jason Aten:I did check today.
Stephen Robles:And yeah.
Jason Aten:And we are so close, guys. We're 4.9, if you can believe it.
Stephen Robles:We've been 4.9 for three weeks, but, yeah,
Jason Aten:we're 4.9.
Stephen Robles:I don't know how many more we need, but thank you for rating the show across the world. We have Mitch Kuhn from Tampa, which is amazing. He's right off the road from me. Apple Pencil tip towards the volume buttons, battery percentage off dots on. He knows what's up.
Stephen Robles:He knows what's up. Scott k podcaster from Canada. Dave from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. This is oldest tech is a Commodore Amiga three and a quarter floppy disk based solar calculator. I don't even know what all that is, but it sounds
Jason Aten:That's a lot of words.
Stephen Robles:It's a lot of words, but it sounds old. Deepak n one one two from The USA. Jonas Sachs from The USA. Batter percentage on. Tip up.
Stephen Robles:Mixture there. We both won that one. Hokkaido North Country from Japan. We have listeners all the way in Japan, Jason. That's amazing.
Stephen Robles:Awesome.
Jason Aten:Do you translate for that for people?
Stephen Robles:No. No. I don't. Actually, there's actually a Riverside feature that you can now translate, but we won't get into that. But I I think at the his review, I think, was translated.
Stephen Robles:So I'm I'm not sure how that goes, but thank you for that. It's amazing. RSG five twenty six from The USA, Rainbow Dash 13 from The USA, and Time Pilot 84 from The USA. Thank you for those five star reviews. Keep them coming.
Stephen Robles:One day, we'll reach five star rating again in Apple Podcasts. But speaking of severance, I wanna get back to this behind the scenes video that Apple released earlier this week, which is an amazing video. You should watch it. It's just about eleven minutes long. And Apple, it's behind the scenes talking about the editing.
Stephen Robles:Ben Stiller's in it. He's talking with the the people who edit it. I guess there was, like, three editors and some assistant editors. But they talk about what they actually use to edit, which is Avid, I believe, the software. Avid Media Composer is what they use to edit it, but the hardware they use to edit it, Apple puts at the very end, the severance is edited on an iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro.
Stephen Robles:No Mac Studio. No Mac Pro.
Jason Aten:Well, there was a Mac Studio in one of the shots though, I feel like.
Stephen Robles:There might have been, but at the very end, you know, it's Was
Jason Aten:that a Mac mini? Was that a the one you just showed was a Mac mini that
Stephen Robles:It was a Mac mini. And then at the very end, it says Severance is edited on Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro. That's it.
Jason Aten:And there's this
Stephen Robles:one this one shot in the the marching band scene, which if you haven't seen the finale, no spoilers. But in the marching band scene, the editor was talking about how they had so many cameras capturing so many angles, and there was nine bins of nine angles to choose from at times, which would be my multiplication is 81. It's 81. Yeah. I was gonna say 81.
Stephen Robles:And again, Mac mini, iMac, or MacBook Pro. And I'm over here wondering, do I need an m three ultra or an m four max max studio? And I don't I don't think I do. I don't think I do, Jason.
Jason Aten:So I think I think the answer is you definitely need a Mac Pro when it comes out.
Stephen Robles:Mac Pro m four extreme.
Jason Aten:Well and the thing that was funny was he made a comment sort of there were several throwaway lines in that. It was, like, ninety minutes long. It was fantastic. It was better than the finale. Don't say anything.
Stephen Robles:Don't don't stop doing that. No baiting. Okay.
Jason Aten:Go ahead. But he said, he did. He goes first of all, he's like, there's nine banks of nine. And camera shots, we can look at, so I'm doing the math in my head. He's like, they're not all running at the same time.
Jason Aten:Okay. Great. That's fine. Right. But then he's like, we remote into the Mac mini where all the footage is.
Jason Aten:And I'm just like
Stephen Robles:They were saying yeah. Because the editors were not in the same place all the time. They said they remoted into a Mac mini, which a, I wanna know what software they're using to remote in. If they're just like VNC ing, I imagine there's some security there. Also, they were editing in just like people's living rooms.
Stephen Robles:Like, they were did not look like a studio or anything. Like, they were just chilling out in a house. But anyway I
Jason Aten:feel really good about this m four Pro Mac mini sitting at my desk. I do. It's like we can podcast with 81 people, Steven, right now.
Stephen Robles:81 people. I also wanna say from our community, social.primarytech.fm, Paul Meyer says, you went to a community severance, a Pali Fest session where they played the finale with 3,000 people watching. Said it was an amazing experience. Plus, they had a panel with some of the actors afterwards. So that I'm sure that was a very cool experience.
Stephen Robles:And also, whoever is doing marketing for severance specifically at Apple needs multiple raises. Because not only did they do the Grand Central Terminal thing, not only have they done amazing on social media. Look what look what's on Apple's website right now. The Lumen Terminal.
Jason Aten:It's not that it's just on its website. It's like, it's one of the tabs of products you can buy. You can't actually buy it, but it's right up there next to the MacBook Air.
Stephen Robles:What? Like, how who convinced them to do this? Who again, whoever is in charge of this marketing for severance, incredible. Amazing. This is hilarious.
Stephen Robles:So, anyway, good whoever it is, good on you. Well, also reach out. You can come on the show as a guest. We'd love to talk to you.
Jason Aten:That'd be Yeah. Mean, you never saw a tab that said AFC Richmond up there. No.
Stephen Robles:Well, I don't know what I mean, it's not really a
Jason Aten:Jerseys, man. Jerseys.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But Apple doesn't sell other merch, like shirts. You know I mean? Like
Jason Aten:They also don't sell the Lumen Terminal Pro. I'll just be clear.
Stephen Robles:Fair enough. Fair enough. Anyway, it's amazing that they're doing all that. And now the finale was incredible too. Don't let Jason tell you otherwise.
Stephen Robles:Other Apple news, dub dub dub dub was announced. WWDC is scheduled for June 9, and it's gonna be big developer conference, iOS nineteen, all the updates, June. So media invites, those aren't out yet. And so I'm I'm crossing my fingers. We will see.
Stephen Robles:We'll see how it goes. Apparently, if you are a developer, you can apply and maybe win, like, a lotto to be there on for June 9 where you'll be, like, be you can go to the keynote, basically. And so I was about to do that, and then I realized my developer account had lapsed. Like, I have not paid for it. And so I I didn't do that, and I didn't renew it.
Stephen Robles:So crossing fingers for media invite. We'll see. But, yeah, I was like, if we get to it, well, there's some rumors about the iOS 19 redesign and how it's supposed to be a bunch of stuff. But June 9, it's happening. Right
Jason Aten:there at Apple Park.
Stephen Robles:Apple Park. Apple Park. So and then this news related happened right after we basically published an episode. I don't know why this keeps happening.
Jason Aten:This is what happens on Thursdays. We've actually been strongly considering waiting until 09:30 at night to record this show because everything comes But yeah.
Stephen Robles:I thought Thursdays is late enough in the week. Usually, you you know, sometimes Apple releases the bad news late on a Friday, but there's just been so much news now, like, on late Thursday afternoons, mostly because Mark Gurman leaks it or whatever. But after all the Apple intelligence and Siri delays that we had talked about in last week's episode, John Gruber's article about something rotten in Cupertino. Apparently, Gurman scooped this before any, you know, kind of official anything, which Apple hasn't made any official announcement. Right?
Stephen Robles:Or did they?
Jason Aten:I don't none. They have made an I believe they made an internal announcement after this leaked. I don't know if they've actually made an official announcement.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly. So what happened what had happened was, apparently, Mike Rockwell, who was in charge of Apple Vision Pro, is now going to be moved to take over Siri and the Apple intelligence features that have been delayed and since we don't know when they're gonna come out. And Mike Rockwell will report directly to Craig Vittorigi, who's over software VP, and John Giandrea, who was actually, like, on stage on John Gruber's talk show after Dub Dub last year talking about Apple Intelligence and all that. John Giandrea is going to be moved out of the Sirian Apple Intelligence team.
Stephen Robles:I forget. Did they say where he might be going? Where he's going?
Jason Aten:I think he's still the head of their machine, like, AI and machine learning. He's just not going to have the Siri part of it. Gotcha. So image playgrounds, Genmoji, whatever else there might be, like
Stephen Robles:Writing tools.
Jason Aten:Writing tools. Like, no. But really, think and maybe, you know, the the first thing I think, like, when he came in there was, like, talk that, okay. Well, Apple's building a search engine, right, for
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Siri or whatever. But I don't you know, because he spent a lot of time at Google. Like, he's obviously a very serious person. It's just it seems like Siri got kinda caught in the middle between this AI stuff and the software stuff, and obviously, it has not worked out Right. At all.
Stephen Robles:Right. So it's a big move. I think one of the other notable changes is John Andre John Giandrea. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Jason Aten:Gianandrea. Gianandrea.
Stephen Robles:Gianandrea. There you He had reported directly to Tim Cook in the role he was overseer. Is that isn't that correct?
Jason Aten:Well, again, his role is, like, head of, know, artificial intelligence and machine learning and stuff. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Right. But now that Mike Rockwell is coming from Apple Vision Pro over onto the voice assistant team, he's gonna be reporting to Craig Federighi, which it seems like Tim Cook and leadership at Apple wants whoever is over that voice assistant team and the failures basically that have arisen. He want they want Craig Federighi to be, like, in charge of that. So I think it's an interesting change. And
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just sent you a picture from iJustine's interview because John Gianandrea was one of the people who was on stage with Tim Cook and Craig Craig Federighi talking about, this was at WWDC, but this particular interview was in the Steve Jobs theater, like, shortly after the keynote. And it was mostly just talking about, you know, the the developments and what was going on. It was actually a very weird interview. We won't get into that.
Jason Aten:But that's John Gianandrea in the middle there.
Stephen Robles:Right. I imagine he won't be on stage on any events this year at the.
Jason Aten:You know, that's tough because, again, as far even Gurman's reporting, like, he's he didn't get fired, and he didn't get, like, moved off of the machine learning at the Apple intelligence, like, stuff. It is specifically the product of Siri is moving over with Mike Rockwell. And, again, Mike Rockwell's chops is not like software development necessarily. He's like a deliver guy. He's, you know, he's Right.
Jason Aten:He's the guy that will get this thing across the finish line. Like, when when it comes to the Vision Pro, he he didn't design the Vision Pro. Right? I think
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Johnny Ive designed the Vision Pro. I mean, it certainly looks like Johnny Ive designed the Vision Pro. But Mike Rockwell's job was keep all of the parts moving that need to be, you know, like, going forward so that this thing actually ships. Now whether it should have shipped or not, we can argue about that, but I don't know that that was a decision that Mike Rockwell made. Or maybe it was.
Jason Aten:It's like we have to ship this thing because we can't ship the next version of this thing till we ship this thing. So
Stephen Robles:Right. So we'll see we'll see what happens. I'm curious the Apple intelligence story at Dub Dub this year because, obviously, that was a huge portion of it last year. That's when it was introduced, and they showed off everything. I wonder if they will reiterate the semantic index and personalize Siri features again, or if it's just gonna be like a mum about that.
Stephen Robles:What do you think? I think do you think they'll talk about it directly? Or
Jason Aten:I don't know. I mean, I had an entire briefing on the semantic index. Wow. Like, seriously, and the, private cloud compute. Like, there was a whole briefing just on that aspect of it, and that is I think they I think that they have to keep talking about that even if it's far off.
Jason Aten:Now I hope that they learned that maybe they shouldn't try demoing it if it's not something that's going to be shipping anytime soon.
Stephen Robles:But in your briefing, there was no demo, right, of the semantic index?
Jason Aten:No. There was definitely not a demo. But to be fair, at that point, what that briefing was about is, like, here's how the technology of this works. Right? We are creating an index of all of these different things so that you know that there's this you give this photograph over here of a you're in a coffee shop, so it's tagged as coffee.
Jason Aten:And then you have, like, this email with your coffee order, so it's, like, tagged as coffee. And so when you ask Siri a question about coffee, it automatically pulls all those things together and figures out which one of these things is relevant to your question.
Stephen Robles:So Right. Right. Well, I'm yeah. I'm curious. Obviously, Apple Intelligence, I guess, they'll talk about because there are still features out there and you have visual intelligence and, you know, maybe they'll add stuff to that.
Stephen Robles:But I'm I'm curious what they'll talk about series specifically. If they'll just yeah. We'll see. We'll see. I'm sure Mark Kermit will have some kind of leak before dub dub too.
Stephen Robles:So we'll see what that's
Jason Aten:That's probably true.
Stephen Robles:IOS 18 dot four is coming next week, and there's some feature changes I'm gonna list in a second. But Apple had a whole newsroom article talking about update coming to AirPods Max, the USB c version specifically, is gonna bring lossless audio and ultra low latency. Along with this announcement, they now started selling a $40 USB c to eighth inch headphone jack, which you can now get as well. But supposedly, this update's gonna unlock 24 bit 48 kilohertz lossless audio. And what I'm curious about, like, when I edit video, a lot of times I just use the built in speakers on my studio display because using AirPods or any kind of headphones, there's either latency or weirdness when you, like, just try to play something in Final Cut.
Stephen Robles:But they're saying there's ultra low latency audio with this update to AirPods Max. Curious how that's going to be. I never got the USB c versions of these because the chip is the same. Like, the inter aside from the USB C port, it's literally the same headphones. It's still using the h one chip instead of the h two.
Stephen Robles:And so these lossless features, it's interesting that they're just coming to the USB c version because, again, same chip as the first version. I don't know why light Lightning couldn't. But anyway
Jason Aten:Well, I imagine it has something to do with the digital audio converter that's associated with the USB c port. Like Right. I'm sure that that's gotta be part of it because and also, I don't know. I imagine that that cable probably has some kind of controller in it to handle that as opposed to just right. Because you have to be able to tell it I'm sending data versus sending power.
Jason Aten:And maybe it's just the lightning version. Either a, it just wasn't worth it because we're no longer selling this product. Right. And or b, but I
Stephen Robles:think also low latency, that's specifically for wireless, which Yeah. It's the same.
Jason Aten:I I mean and that's true for gamers. That's an important thing. I mean, I don't know. Like well But, mean, like, it is weird. So first of all, there's no new hardware here.
Jason Aten:This is just Right. What, a software update coming to the ones that already exist or a firmware update. I'm not exactly
Stephen Robles:clear on
Jason Aten:how that's working, but this is it is such an interesting thing that this is a feature that almost no one will be able to take advantage of.
Stephen Robles:No. But yeah. No. No. We'll see.
Jason Aten:I I And the people who can did not buy AirPods Max.
Stephen Robles:Correct. Correct. I actually I I posted this on social media. I actually got a pair of Sony x m fives recently because they were on sale on Amazon, and I was like, I wanna see what all the hype is about. I've never tried a Sony headphone over the ear headphones.
Stephen Robles:I didn't have XM threes or fours or anything. So trying it, I do like it. There's definitely a difference in build quality, which being plastic, they're lighter than the AirPods Max, and I think a little more comfortable, especially over long periods. But I'll do a full I'll do a full video. But do you have the x m fours?
Jason Aten:No. I have x m fours and fives. I just made the comment that I mean, x m fives are improved in a couple ways except for that they made the case bigger. Right. So the x m fours are actually the ideal travel headphones because the case is very small.
Jason Aten:I my favorite are my Bowers and Wilkins, but even that case is a little bit bigger than those those Sonys. But, yeah, the people who are buying who care about lossless audio are buying, like, you know, Hi Fi Man or Focaltopia or stuff like that. They're not buying, you know, AirPods Max.
Stephen Robles:No. No. They're not. They're not. So a iOS 18 dot four, the release candidate is out right now.
Stephen Robles:Public version should be coming out next week. I'll have video on it. Stay tuned for that. But there are some updates, big ish features. Visual intelligence will be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro.
Stephen Robles:So if you didn't upgrade to the 16 but you wanna try it, you'll be able to map it to the action button and use a control center shortcut if you wanna be able to access it that way. Ambient music gets added into the control center, quick access for that. The mail categories comes to iPad and Mac, and there's a bunch of other things like Apple Podcast app gets new widgets, Prioritize notifications is a new feature where you can actually say what apps you wanna prioritize notifications from on the lock screen, new emojis, Apple News plus Food, and those recipes, which we've talked about on previous episodes. And the Apple Vision Pro app where you can actually easier guest mode starting that from your iPhone. And also, you can, like, send media, like, basically add video or different things to your Apple Vision Pro from your iPhone.
Stephen Robles:You don't have to put the Vision Pro on just to, like, add something to your up next. So that's cool. Do you use the mail? Well, you use Spark. Right?
Stephen Robles:You don't really use Apple Mail anymore.
Jason Aten:I use Spark. The I only use Apple Mail. This was funny because you I had to use it this week for you, Steven.
Stephen Robles:For me?
Jason Aten:Because I switched my personal email not my personal, my let's call it my work ish email
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:From Outlook to Gmail, and you cannot import an archive of emails into Gmail. It's just, like, not possible. You cannot put them up on Gmail server
Stephen Robles:Interesting.
Jason Aten:To have them indexed. So they all live in actually, I moved them all to iCloud, and they they are synced all into and so in my in the mail app, I have a, one archive folder of basically every single email back to, like, 02/2003 or something that. Yeah. It's amazing. And so I want you had asked me a question about WWDC, and I knew which email address it came to.
Jason Aten:But since that email address is no longer Outlook, it's I couldn't search in that, so I pulled up in the mail app. So really all I ever use it for is cold storage, that mail app.
Stephen Robles:That is fascinating. Okay. I actually use the default mail app everywhere. I like it, except for that the snooze feature is not really a snooze feature. But I
Jason Aten:Which is why one of the one of the reasons I don't use it because
Stephen Robles:it's so
Jason Aten:good in Spark.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Spark is great. It is one of the reasons I use SaneBox because I basically have snooze features that way. But, anyway, I don't use the categories anywhere. I don't like the categories in mail.
Jason Aten:No.
Stephen Robles:I don't yeah. No. No. No. No.
Stephen Robles:No. No.
Jason Aten:No. My wife almost made me buy her new phone when the update happened and that happened to her thing. She just was so repulsed by the idea that suddenly her inbox looks so different. She's like, I can I believe can I have my old phone back? Can I please, like, get rid of I'm like, actually, I could just turn off
Stephen Robles:the seats? Turn it off. Yeah. Just turn it
Jason Aten:She's like, okay. Fine. But if it ever comes back, I'm getting a new phone.
Stephen Robles:Calling it. I'm calling it. Alright. So that's the Apple news. We might get to some of the rumors later if we have time.
Stephen Robles:But OpenAI and ChatGPT has some news. They released image more a better image creation using ChatGPT four o model. And so if you were on X or some of the other social media platforms, there was thousands of Studio Ghibli. Is it Ghibli or Ghibli? Studio Ghibli.
Jason Aten:I think it's Ghibli, but I don't I'm not a Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Sorry. I apologize to everyone for mis however I mispronounced it. But there are a bunch of like anime esque imagery that people were creating with the Chatuchiki four o images. So there was that and there's also some funding news. But I did wanna show you, I generated an image of myself here.
Stephen Robles:I gave it a picture of myself to to make into anime. And so you can judge, Jason, whether or not this is good. This will be the chapter I'll work to so you could see. Here's the picture I gave it. Right?
Stephen Robles:See that?
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:And here's the the anime version.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:Not bad. I feel like it
Jason Aten:I don't watch enough anime to tell if that is what anime should look like, but it's what I imagine you would look like in one of those cartoons.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I feel like the picture I gave it, it, it did pretty good. So, anyway, people people were doing this with all kinds of stuff.
Jason Aten:If you were a character in a Pokemon movie, that's what you would look like.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm down I'm down for that. I'm down for that.
Jason Aten:Now wait. I thought didn't so do you pay for ChariGBT?
Stephen Robles:ChadGPT Plus.
Jason Aten:Yeah. You do pay for it. Okay. Because I was like, I didn't think you did. And if I Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:I just remembered that they're saying it was which is not surprising because of how overrun x was by these images. Sam Altman posted like, hey. You know, this was a little more popular than we expected, which by the way is literally their playbook. Hype a new thing, grossly underestimate how popular it will be, and then have to, like, throttle it back for people.
Stephen Robles:Like, you
Jason Aten:jack actually, you're just faking us out every time. You're just doing the same thing. You know exactly what's gonna happen. You just wanna keep running that same play over and over again. So I did, but I didn't it's like they're not gonna roll it out to the free tier for, they say, a while.
Stephen Robles:Right. Yeah. For a while. But it is it is pretty cool. People are doing, like, famous events and making them anime, which was interesting.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway, the other news is they're about to close another huge funding round. Is this, a record breaking round or their record or all funding
Jason Aten:round? This would be the largest round ever because their previous round, which was something six point something, was the largest funding round at the time, and that was, like, $6.06 or $7,000,000,000, and this is obviously more. $40,000,000,000 is obviously a lot more, and it and it will value the company at $300,000,000,000, which is just just bananas. But they need that $40,000,000,000 because, you know, NVIDIA GPUs, they're just not getting any cheaper.
Stephen Robles:What's wild, though, they are still not profitable. Correct? Well, right. If you have
Jason Aten:to raise $40,000,000,000 to pay for stuff, it's because you aren't making that money from customers. But like seriously, that $40,000,000,000 is not because they're gonna hire a bunch of engineers. It's not because they're looking for software coders. It is to pay for electricity and for GPUs. Like literally, that's what the money's for.
Stephen Robles:Here's the, here's what I will say though. ChatGPT, it's a pretty great product. And I was thinking, like I did a video recently about the 35 apps I install on a new Mac when I start over from scratch. And I realized, like, ChatGPT is pretty key, and I do use it all the time. And one of the things I did a a video for Riverside recently, and it was, like, you know, the 10 learnings from Diary of a CEO podcast or whatever.
Stephen Robles:And I was, you know, I was like, okay. This might take a while. I have to watch a bunch of videos. And then I was like, now wait a minute. I could probably do this another way.
Jason Aten:Another way.
Stephen Robles:So I basically found a bunch of videos that talked about the strategies the podcast uses to grow, downloaded those videos. I made them into m p threes. I transcribed them all. I gave all those transcriptions to ChatGPT and basically said, like, what are 10 things that you could learn from this? And phrase it, like, with some supporting material or whatever.
Stephen Robles:And I was like, it blew my mind that something that would have been an all day process of, like, you know, pulling this, finding where these clips are, what is useful, what's duplicate. Like, JGPT did it in a few minutes, and I was like, this is pretty great.
Jason Aten:It is amazing. I mean, we're gonna talk about something in a minute that I was writing about, and I had I had a question that I knew the bottom line answer. It's kinda like when you're in high school and you're like, you got the answer right, but you didn't show your work. I needed to, like, I needed to show your work part. I knew Right.
Jason Aten:I I knew the answer, but I didn't know why. So I just asked it a question, and it gave me, like, I don't know, 10 pages of charts. Like, here's this feature, here's this product, this one, here's the difference between them. Like and it was very and it's like, good. That's what I I needed that information so I could explain the why.
Jason Aten:So it was very good.
Stephen Robles:And then the deep research stuff.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Very, very good.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I've only used it a couple of times. It's it is it is very good. It is very good. But So that's Che GBT. Now there's a couple of things I'm gonna need you to tell me about, Jason.
Stephen Robles:One, I saw in the ether that there was this meta tell all book. I don't know much about it. So if you could who wrote this book and, like, what's it about? Yeah.
Jason Aten:We'll do the quick version because this is the and the the most important thing you need to know about this book is that if Meta hadn't thrown a fit, you would have never known about this book. Right? Most people were not gonna read this book, and it is now a bestseller because Meta wanted to make it so you could never hear about it. The book's called Careless People. It's written by Sarah Wynn Williams, who's a former director of global policy, and it essentially just details her time working you know, her job was essentially to make connections between Meta's executives and, like, heads of state, for example.
Jason Aten:So the beginning of the book tells the story of they're at, like, a state dinner somewhere kinda thing. Like and so it is a it is a very behind the scenes book, and Meta actually filed an arbitration. I was gonna say they sued, but they filed an arbitration case to stop her from being able to promote the book because apparently she signed a nondesperagement agreement when she left as part of her severance agreement. And it the crazy thing about this is, like, most people would have never paid any attention to this book except for they call it the Streisand effect, right, where Barbara Streisand, there was pictures of her house on the Internet, and she threw a fit about it. And so no one was ever gonna see the pictures on the Internet until she threw a fit about it, then never once saw the pictures of her house.
Jason Aten:So that that's where that comes from. It's the same kind of thing here. This book, I have no idea how much of it is true. The problem for meta is it doesn't matter because it just confirms all the things we think are true. Right?
Jason Aten:That these people have very, very thin skin
Stephen Robles:I see.
Jason Aten:And are greedy. Like, are pursuing
Stephen Robles:That's like
Jason Aten:pursuing greed at
Stephen Robles:the It's like a rabbits are furries. Right? Yeah. Okay.
Jason Aten:But the consequence of it the reason that it's so interesting is that the consequence of those things are not good. When you look around the world at the different places, one of the things they talk about is the the genocide, the the was it in Rwanda? In the house, when Facebook went into that country, it enabled, like, the rebels to like, it just there's all of these different things that are just not not great. And so, that's the book. It's actually a very good read.
Stephen Robles:Oh, interesting.
Jason Aten:Though, it's funny that the author is like, my takeaway from this, I did write about it, What you wanted, Meta, was to make sure no one ever read it. So you made it so the author couldn't promote it. So now the author is sitting at home cashing checks because it's an international bestseller because of what you did. It's like and they they they just they totally misunderstood the incentives. Meta's incentive was to refute anything that wasn't true and try to get you to dis to disbelieve it.
Jason Aten:And the author's like, just buy the book and decide for yourself because if you buy it, I get paid. Right? Like, it's like there's such a misalignment of those, she doesn't have to argue with you about what's true. Right? And so now she's being subpoenaed before congress to talk about the contents of the book.
Jason Aten:And, anyway, it's
Stephen Robles:Was there anything, like because you have it. Was there anything, like, incredibly shocking that you would have learned behind the scenes at Meta that didn't expect? Or
Jason Aten:I don't know that there was anything shocking because shocking would be, like, something that you totally did not expect. Right. The book definitely makes Sheryl Sandberg look really bad. And Sheryl Sandberg was known you know, she came from Google and went to Facebook, was the chief operating officer, and is largely credited with basically making that a company because she was the adult supervision kind of thing. Right.
Jason Aten:Similar to how, Eric Schmidt was at Google when he became CEO. Right. And, obviously, Sheryl Sandberg wasn't the CEO, but her Mark Zuckerberg worked very closely with her, and it just makes her look you know, her big thing was sort of this. She wrote the fem feminist work manifesto lean in kind of thing. And the this book makes it seem as though, like, no.
Jason Aten:That's not the real Sheryl Sandberg. She's just like you might have expected from a very opportunistic, greedy, career oriented, climb over the top of the dead bodies you leave in your wake kind of a person. So that that was a little bit like but, again, I mean, it and I should be clear to say this book is being compared to previous whistleblowers like Francis Haugen who who who really, like, blew the whistle on Facebook a couple years ago Right. And released all this stuff about how Facebook was targeting young, especially girls to get them addicted to Instagram. That's like a super brief summary of it.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:She had receipts. Like, she literally had thousands of documents that probably she shouldn't have had, but as a whistleblower, she got them released into the public. This book doesn't have any receipts. So it's hard to know what in here is is a fable and what if it's actually true.
Stephen Robles:I see.
Jason Aten:But it basically all lines up with what you think is probably true.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Interesting. Okay. Well, thank you. I'll probably
Jason Aten:It is a good read, though.
Stephen Robles:It is a
Jason Aten:good read. Recommend it. It's a I mean, here's why you'll like this, Steven. It's I don't know why I said that, and now you're gonna be, like, either really happy or very offended. But the the chapters of this book are all, like, maybe seven to eight pages long.
Jason Aten:You know, four to eight pages long. So there's it's it's written as, like, stories. They're little snippet stories of different things. It's not like it's not like reading a narrative that starts on page one and ends on page 300. It's, all of these different things.
Stephen Robles:So Okay. I do. I like that kind of format. Okay. There you Maybe I will read.
Stephen Robles:We'll see.
Jason Aten:Good stuff.
Stephen Robles:Now the one other story I need to tell me about it, because I know this was big in the news. Basically, some message was sent by well, why don't you tell why why don't you tell me what happened, and then we can talk about secure messaging apps.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Okay. So there's there's two things you should know about this. This is an enormous story even though, like, probably our audience is like I don't know. That's like politics.
Jason Aten:Who cares? Right? That's fine.
Stephen Robles:That's how I feel.
Jason Aten:So, essentially, there's a group of individuals that included the vice president of The United States, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, the central intelligence agency, the CIA director, and the director of national intelligence among other people. And they had a group chat on signal. And I think it's Mike Waltz, who's the national security adviser, added someone to this group chat. And that someone was Jeffrey Goldberg, who's the editor in chief of the Atlantic. He just got added to this group chat.
Jason Aten:No one is sure how or why this happened, but he's added to this group chat, and he kind of ignores it until they start talking about the the an a bombing that's about to happen in Yemen. Okay? And this happened a couple weeks ago, and he tells this very he the the headline of his original story was something like the the secretary of defense texted me war plans for bombing Yemen or something like that.
Stephen Robles:That. Yeah. Exactly.
Jason Aten:And it's literally what happened, and he thought it had to be fake. But he sat in his he tells the story that he sat supermarket waiting and scrolling on x to see if there would be news re you know, reported about this thing that happened. And when it happened, he's like, this is real. Wow. And so he eventually left it.
Jason Aten:He waited a couple weeks, and then he published the story. And then the administration was like, no. No. No. No.
Jason Aten:No. He's lying. There was no classified information. So then he went to the administration and he said, we're gonna publish these text messages. Is there anything you'd like redacted?
Jason Aten:And so they published them. They published the there's one thing that was redacted, which was a message that included a name of somebody, the CIA person that was in there. So, anyway, they published them all, and it's kinda bananas because I don't like, my I wrote an article about this talking about the different types of, of encryption. Right? And my thing is, like, I don't really know much about goes what goes into war planning, but I assume that there's already, like, a communications infrastructure for this that's already a solved problem.
Jason Aten:Right? I think they they have this figured out. There are secure telephone and video systems. They have these things called SCIFs. Do you know what a SCIF is?
Stephen Robles:I've heard that name.
Jason Aten:I'm not sure. It's a it's it's basically a hardened closet that you can go into and no one can listen to or see. It's a secure compartmented information facility. Anyway, they have all these things, and these guys are just using signal on their iPhones to text each other about bombing this this terrorist in Yemen. And so then there's there's a lot of political questions like, I think maybe you shouldn't be doing this.
Jason Aten:We're gonna set that apart.
Stephen Robles:Well, I know can I just wanna I just wanna say one thing because we're about security across different messaging apps? Any security, no matter what a a company like Apple builds into it or a signal that promises, like, the human element is still the weakest link. Yes. Because I have a relative who uses iMessage, which is like end to end encrypted. Apple had like a whole article about how it's prepared for quantum computing and with taming Post
Jason Aten:quantum computing. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Who and this person does not have a passcode on their iPhone. So it doesn't matter how much encryption is between those blue bubbles if you could just literally press the home button because the his button still is Well,
Jason Aten:and I think I think, technically, if you don't have a passcode on your device, it's not encrypted.
Stephen Robles:Oh, for real?
Jason Aten:I think that's true. I think because the the point of putting in the passcode is you're decrypting your device.
Stephen Robles:Your device, but I feel like the messages are still end to end encrypted.
Jason Aten:Oh, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Because I don't
Jason Aten:think you can turn back.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. We'll have to we'll have to make if anybody has information on that, I'd curious. But, again, like, human element is still the weak link.
Jason Aten:Like Yes. My my last paragraph was it's worth mentioning, however, that it does not matter how private or secure an encryption is on a messaging platform. If you include someone in a group chat and send a message to the group, they're gonna be able to read the message. Right? The problem here has nothing to do with encryption, everything to do with human error.
Jason Aten:Most of these offer a secure form of end to end encryption for consumers, but there's no guarantee your messages will stay secret if you text them to a journalist.
Stephen Robles:How did how did this article do? Because this was or no.
Jason Aten:Well, I just published
Stephen Robles:it this published it.
Jason Aten:I'm so curious. Yes.
Stephen Robles:This is amazing. So the well, we'll put link Jason's article, but, basically, talking about Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage.
Jason Aten:Well and well, let me say one thing. The reason this is a big deal is what if the person who'd been added to this group chat was not the editor in chief of The Atlantic, who is a pretty serious person who waited two weeks before publishing anything, did not reveal the contents until the administration was like, oh, he's either lying or none of this was classified. And he said, okay. Well, then we're gonna publish him, and they didn't ask to have anything redacted, which is actually an interesting You cannot you like, he can't you can't first of all, he's a journalist, and you texted the stuff to him. So he's not obligated to keep it a secret, but he did anyway.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right? You can't also say none of it was classified and then be mad at him if he publishes it because you just said it wasn't class like, which is it? But, anyway, what if that person hadn't been that? What if that person was just a random who's like, I see an opportunity to sell these secrets to the highest bidder. Let me get on x and find a, you know, hooty rebel and and see what I can do.
Jason Aten:Like Right. That's the problem. Like That's
Stephen Robles:the problem.
Jason Aten:They got lucky that the I mean, it's actually dumb luck that you sent them to a journalist, and now that's all public. But, also, you sent them to someone who apparently is more careful with national secrets than the people in the text message chain.
Stephen Robles:This is first, I would think I don't know, again, the internal workings of administrations and politics, but I would think that there would be some kind of proprietary communication, like text communication, like, built into whatever, like, the the highest offices of the United States government. Like, I feel like it would not be signal or telegram. Like, it would be White House messenger or something like or is
Jason Aten:I think the general thing is this type of stuff's not supposed to be happening on an iPhone, period. Right? This is the stuff that you go into a secure room with a secure video conferencing system, and you you message all the people. And it's like you have they have their own secure version of Zoom. Right?
Jason Aten:Like Right. Where they can all it's all encrypted end to end. And not only that, but, like, the lines are hard like, it's just a different type of thing. It is not a consumer product that you can download for free on your iPhone. I think and, again, I'm not like, I don't care about the like, I don't think that anyone questions the mission that they were doing.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, that that part of it is not really up for debate necessarily. It's just the you would assume that the people in these positions would be tech savvy enough to, a, know that this is probably a bad idea, and, b, realize when someone has entered the chat and you don't know who they are.
Stephen Robles:That's I mean, I guess, you know, there's a bunch of people in a chat. And, people every so everybody's so busy, like, just not taking the time to to look and, like, pay attention.
Jason Aten:But Which is why you don't send the time you're gonna drop a bomb in a group chat.
Stephen Robles:Fair. Did just look it up, and I I remembered correctly that Obama was actually the first president to use a smartphone while in office. He used a Blackberry.
Jason Aten:His Blackberry is famous. Yes.
Stephen Robles:The famous Blackberry, not an iPhone for security reasons. And, And, you know, there were smartphones before that. Know, you could have done all the Palms, the older BlackBerrys. Like, there were Windows Mobile. Like, presidents could have used smartphones, but it wasn't until 02/2008 with Obama.
Stephen Robles:And now, of course, you know, Trump has, I assume, an iPhone that he tweets from or whatever. But it's just wild. So so you have the article about the the messaging services. You got Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage, and you have, like, pros and cons of each.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I also threw in Telegram and Messenger just because people were going to ask. But the idea is, like, which ones are the most secure? Yeah. The reality is probably, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal are all pretty equivalent in terms of their security, the encryption.
Jason Aten:In fact, WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol. Right? So their encryption there is and I'm Apple uses its own proprietary encryption, and its encryption is probably hard, more hardened. It is probably stronger. The reason I say probably is the difference is signals is open source, and so it can actually be inspected.
Jason Aten:And they can actually look at it and make sure that there aren't any bugs or flaws or anything in there, whereas Apple doesn't allow third party researchers to do that. But Apple does say that it is its encryption is designed for post quantum computing. Right. Meaning, if you think about why that matters is right now, all of this encryption is strong enough to resist what computers are capable of doing today. Because literally what happens is computers just try to guess your key.
Jason Aten:And if you use a long a 28 character key, it's gonna take them seven million years to figure it out. But a quantum computer could do that in maybe forty seconds. So Apple is building its encryption to resist it. And the reason that, again, the reason that matters is there's no such thing as a quantum computer that can do that at scale today. But what if somebody took your phone and just held on to it for the next fifteen years until it was possible?
Jason Aten:Apple is building its encryption today to resist that possibility in the future. So that part of it is except for the problem with Apple's encryption is as soon as you text somebody on Android, there's no encryption. Zero. Zip, zilch.
Stephen Robles:Well, now now I thought there was a recent update where RCS got intent encryption.
Jason Aten:I don't think if you're sending it to Android that that's true, is it?
Stephen Robles:I thought I thought I saw a an article, and Gruber wrote about it. I'll have to find it, but I feel like there was an update recently. I can't find anything
Jason Aten:Well, I'll update my article. It says that I think I don't think it has started yet. I think they have said that they will eventually.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But what I I will still sit stand behind my analysis of it that if you send something in signal, it doesn't there's no option for encryption, not encryption, whatever. If you send something in iMessage, there are multiple levels of how that message might be delivered. In the worst case scenario, it falls back to SMS. Right.
Jason Aten:You could think you are sending something that is in in in encrypted. But if you were sending it to an Android device that doesn't support RCS, which is actually a thing that exists in the world.
Stephen Robles:Right? Sure.
Jason Aten:Then it would just fall back to an SMS. And you so so I will stand by the fact that, like, it is a little bit more complicated. In the best case scenario, Apple's is the most secure, but it also has the worst fail failure option.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Right. So
Stephen Robles:Which is, like, nothing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Facebook is adding it to mess its Messenger app. WhatsApp is, also and and encrypted with a signal protocol. The downside to WhatsApp so the benefit of WhatsApp is it's the best for group messaging. The downside of it is that
Stephen Robles:It looks terrible.
Jason Aten:Well, whatever. The real downside of it is that Meta collects the metadata, no pun intended. So Meta knows who you're messaging. They don't know what the message are, but they do collect and store different metadata information. It's it's not entirely clear what they do and they don't they don't collect, but they are able to.
Jason Aten:Whereas with Signal, it's completely anonymous. You can completely that's why journalists use Signal because someone can set up a Signal account and be completely anonymous. You are not required to attach it to any identifying information. Whereas iMessage is obviously attached to your phone number in your iCloud account. WhatsApp is you have to have a phone number attached to it.
Jason Aten:So there you go. That's the was that the short enough version?
Stephen Robles:No. That's good. That's good. Yeah. We'll put Jason's article, and we'll follow-up about the RCS intent encryption because, I'm curious about that.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Let's do it. Let's do I was gonna say lightning round. Glenn, a listener of the show, suggested we should do a Thunderbolt round. Okay.
Stephen Robles:Thunderbolt. You know? There's no more lightning anymore. Know, USB
Jason Aten:C round.
Stephen Robles:USB C round. First of all, John Prospero from Page Tech supposedly has a first look at the iOS 19 redesign, which if you watch his video, there's like a few frames basically, where he shows what the updated interface might look like, including the kind of glassy circles from Apple Vision Pro, some of the, like, frosted overlays, which and he says this in the video. If you go to, like, the Apple Sports app today and you click the little top right menu or the Apple Invites app that was recently announced, and you'll see kind of these even rounded more rounded corner type overlays in John Prosser's video, which I'll link below. You know, it's it's VisionOS esque VisionOS esque, and it's the the the glassy frosted glass or whatever look. I don't know if that feels like a major redesign.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it is a redesign of sorts. And he says at the end of his video that the icons, which many people were thinking on the iPhone and iPad might go to full on circles like they are on VisionOS. And he says at end of his video, like, no. The icon shape is staying the same. And then more context, Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg, again, pretty notable leaker, he said, nah, all these things that you're seeing right now about iOS 19, they're not representative of the actual redesign.
Stephen Robles:So Gurman was saying, actually, no, There is a redesign, but it's not what you've been seeing everywhere. So who knows? We'll know in a couple months. But, well, what's your what's your over under? You think we'll have circle icons on the iPhone?
Jason Aten:No. But I do wanna nitpick one thing just to be clear. Mark Gurman is not a leaker. Mark Gurman is a journalist who has very good sources, many of whom are leakers. Right?
Jason Aten:There's a distinction there. Right? Mark Gurman doesn't have firsthand information about any of this that he is leaking. He is just reporting on what people, for whatever reason, think that they should be telling him.
Stephen Robles:Just to be just to be fair. I wanted to ask you this because we I didn't talk about this earlier when we mentioned the whole Siri shakeup with John, Gian, and Drea, but Mark Gurman appears to have had either a transcript or a recording of the internal meeting with the Siri team at Apple where they talked about things aren't going so well. So to have a transcript or a recording of that meeting means someone inside Apple recorded it and sent it to Gurman. And no one else, like, no one else has this information. And Gurman is singular in that he reports on this stuff, and no one else has firsthand contacts and information.
Stephen Robles:It also appears that Gurman has multiple people inside. Like, imagine to have as much information as he does, he would have to have people on the hardware side and the software side because even within Apple, a lot of the time those teams don't communicate, you know, because of secrecy and things like that. So to have multiple people inside Apple feeding information, also even recordings and or transcripts of internal meetings, which seems, at least to me, very risky as if I was an employee of Apple and wanted to keep my job. In your opinion as a journalist, why would someone do that? Why is someone giving Mark Gurman this inform if they're a personal friend, I get it.
Stephen Robles:To have that many personal friends inside seems, like, unlikely. But, like, what is the motivation of the people inside Apple who are working on this stuff who I would think want to make a great thing and then show it to the world at the event, the Apple event? But why are they sending this up to Gurman?
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, there's usually a couple of reasons why that could happen. One, sometimes people will leak information because they think that something is bad or wrong. So the perfect example of this would be The UK sending that letter to Apple requiring them to add a backdoor. So that was either someone from Apple leaked that because they're like, we need to get this out there, but we can't say it on the record because it's illegal. Or somebody in the UK government who knew about it and was like, this is a bad idea.
Jason Aten:So that's one type of a situation where that happens. I also think that there are just people who are like, Gurman's the most well known one, and I kinda wanna have a little bit of juice with Gurman. And so I'm gonna just send send this stuff. I think that it is sometimes as simple as the human need to be like, I know a thing and now I'm cool because I give you a thing and then I get to see it in writing. Like, I feel like that's probably part of it.
Jason Aten:The other option is that Gurman and Tim Cook just have breakfast every other day and he's like, I need this out there.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. It's just because he said
Jason Aten:he might have multiple sources. I'm like, or he just has one. Yeah. One very well placed source. No.
Jason Aten:That's not what's happening. Promise. No.
Stephen Robles:No. It's just it's weird to I'm just curious the motivation of these people inside Apple, wanna get because even if you get juice with Mark Gurman, for what? When you leave Apple, is he gonna hire you on the technology team for Bloomberg? I don't think so.
Jason Aten:There I mean, but there is a you know that this is true. Like, there's something about I know a thing no one else knows, and it's gonna just feel so good to tell somebody who could tell everybody. I don't know. There's just a thing
Stephen Robles:Yes. I mean, I don't know. It just it's it seems weird. But
Jason Aten:I agree. I think it as as I mean, I have had people reach out to me with stuff. And here's so here's the other thing for Gurman. I've had people who have reached out to me, not nearly on the scale and not nearly as exciting. Just random things.
Jason Aten:But if I can't find some way of confirming that, I can't even like, there's nothing that's useless to me. So if a random person just emails me like, did you know that Tim Cook's about to retire? Like, that's a stock market moving event. You can't just publish that. Right?
Jason Aten:You can't.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:So you have to have some kind of confirmation. The same thing would have to be true. So when you have a recording of a meeting, as long as you're as he can confirm that those voices you hear are actually the voices that they are purported to be, that's pretty good confirmation.
Stephen Robles:Right. Wild. Curious if you did that with a voice memo on the iPhone. Was he wearing an AI gadget?
Jason Aten:A wire. Somebody's wearing a wire. That's so
Stephen Robles:strange. And I I'm curious if Apple talks about it internally and being like, do you find the mole?
Jason Aten:I mean, there are people who have this like, Alex Heath has the same kind of connection at Meta. Right? He has so many he has published multiple all hands meetings from Meta. And Right. And, you know, Casey Newton, the same kind of thing has the
Stephen Robles:same Chris Welch with Sonos. He's a person.
Jason Aten:Yes. I think he's actually potentially on staff at Sonos. Just I'm just I'm kidding. I'm not saying that to to ban on him at all. I'm just saying he is very well placed there.
Jason Aten:You know, Tom Warren at Microsoft, those kinds of things. There are plenty of they all work at the verge. Basically, just the verge.
Stephen Robles:And Gurman Hebloomberg.
Jason Aten:And Gurman.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Alright. This Thunderbolt round, it was not fast. But okay.
Jason Aten:Well I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:No. No. My fault. We'll we'll jam through these. Supposedly, of the rumors of the iPhone 17 is that we'll finally get to eight k video, which we've had four k video for, I think, since, like, the iPhone six s.
Stephen Robles:I think it's been a long time. So maybe eight k video.
Jason Aten:Yeah. This is the lossless audio on the of the cameras on the iPhone.
Stephen Robles:But if you have eight k video with two lenses, then maybe you could do four k spatial video for Apple Vision Pro. You know what I'm saying?
Jason Aten:Sure. But those yeah. Maybe. We'll see. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I think, yeah, I think I'm surprised this is what you said. The biggest benefit of eight k video is that you can shoot it and then you can, like, crop it in.
Stephen Robles:Crop it in. Yeah. Yeah. It's a huge that's a huge, huge benefit for sure. And also Apple Watch, you send this to me as well, that this is from Bloomberg, so Gurman, that they Apple might be working at AI features in the Apple Watch utilizing cameras, which you have said in the past to your credit, put a camera in the thing.
Jason Aten:Well, I have said in the past that the Apple Watch is the ideal AI device. Put a camera in it or not. I just want credit for having said when those stupid Humane AI pins and that stupid r one whatever you put on your desk, that orange thing, that thing. Yep. When those things came out, I'm like, no.
Jason Aten:No one wants to wear that or carry it around. You're already wearing the ideal AI device. Right? This I mean, it's not a joke when I say that I turn off the listening to Siri on every device except for my watch. Hey.
Jason Aten:Because it's the only one I ever want to respond to anything. Right? Like, it's just so yeah.
Stephen Robles:I get it. Alright. And then finally for the Thunderbolt round, delete your 23andMe data if you haven't yet. 23andMe went bankrupt. They're being bought out.
Stephen Robles:And I actually did 23andMe a number of years ago for me and one of my kids and my wife for various reasons. And I was like, okay. I'm gonna delete my stuff. So you can go in and, like, download your information in, like, PDF format, which I did. And then I told them to hopefully delete everything.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, it's one of the one of the things about some of these startups and DNA and information like that. But have you
Jason Aten:ever done No. I've never done that. There was a there was a great, I think it must have been on threads from Joanna Stern. She's like, the things that we've learned this week, like, don't text war plans to journalists. Don't give your DNA information to a company that is one, you know, bad quarter away from a yard sale.
Jason Aten:Like like, all of these things.
Stephen Robles:Yard sale with your DNA.
Jason Aten:Exactly. Because, I mean, they're, you know, they're gonna sell off all of the assets, and one of those assets is a huge database full of all of this DNA information. And you can just imagine how appealing that's going to be to x AI or OpenAI or one of those companies. Right. And I think that the current CEO, what Wojiki, what is her first name?
Jason Aten:Anne, I think is her first name, wants to buy it. And in fact, she offered to buy it. But this is a company that at one point was worth 2 or $3,000,000,000 and is now worth something like 25,000,000. Like, bad deal.
Stephen Robles:That's wild. Okay. So we have a little time. That was a Thunderbolt round. And so for our personal tech, this is a % inspired by the Accidental Tech Podcast.
Stephen Robles:If you subscribe to their show and support them, they had a bonus episode recently about their websites. And Casey
Jason Aten:I've not listened yet.
Stephen Robles:You haven't listened to it yet?
Jason Aten:Not that one.
Stephen Robles:There is a moment where John Siracusa says a bunch of words in a row. And he says in this bonus episode how his work was basically as a web developer for many years. Like, that was his life. And it's about at the hour mark if you listen to that episode of ATP. It's the bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:But he, like, rattles off a bunch of words. And it was like when you see in movies or shows when, like, a superhero who's in their, like, plain clothes does something that might give away that they're a superhero, like Clark Kent runs a little too fast or, like, throws a bowling ball a little too hard. It was, like, one of those moments where, like, Syracuse just broke for a second. It's like, wait a minute. This guy, he's a superhero.
Stephen Robles:And it just I listened to it to, like, several times. I was like, it was just a because I was actually listening at, like, one and a half speed, which I don't normally do, but I had a lot of episodes to get through. And at one and a half speed, it was like almost unintelligible. And I was like, oh wait, I need to go back. And it was fun to hear.
Jason Aten:It was almost unintelligible. That's funny.
Stephen Robles:For me anyway. But I thought it'd be interesting to talk about our website journey. You you have a website, a personal website, aside from where you write it, Inc. I have a personal website. And so eventually, I wanna get to, like, what are they on now, which is probably not as exciting.
Stephen Robles:But I was curious if you could recall back to, like, your first or oldest websites for yourself. And what did they at least what did you build them on or what might have like, what kind of content did you post? And I'll give you some time to think about it because I'll share a couple things. I think the first time I ever had a website, it was iWeb because I was a dot subscriber. I paid for dot mac, was like a hundred dollars a year.
Stephen Robles:That's where I got my first Apple email address, which is still my Apple ID today. And I just searched, and for some reason, still has an iWeb page on their website with a video. This video is just living here showing you how to use iWeb. I did not expect this to exist, and I'm so happy it does. And now it is documented forever because it's in this episode.
Stephen Robles:But I think iWeb was probably the first time because it iWeb was an application on the Mac. And if you paid for a dot Mac account, they would basically let you build a website in iWeb, the app, hit publish, and it would be publicly available. Like, you you couldn't really connect, like, third party domains, and it wasn't like a full on hosted website where you had FTP access or whatever. But it was pretty cool. Like, you could build your own website, publish it from your Mac, and it was on the Internet, at least on your on dot Mac or whatever.
Stephen Robles:So I think iWeb was probably my very first one. I can't remember exactly what I put on it, but that was the first. And then for many years after that, basically end of college and in my first full time job, I remember my very first job interview. I was just personally starting to learn about web and how to make a website. And in the interview, I was asked, hey.
Stephen Robles:Can you make us a website in addition to all these other things that you're gonna do? And I was like, yeah. No problem. And at that moment, I had never published a website personally besides my iWeb web. But but I was confident I was pretty close to being able to do it, and so I could do it.
Stephen Robles:And so those early years of me figuring it out, I'm gonna show that I'm not showing this for anyone to, like, sign up or look this up. But I remember I I bought a hosting account, shared hosting on WebsiteSource, which I didn't even know what it was. WebsiteSource. And I I didn't really know what to do with it or how to use it. It really took me a while to figure out, like, what do I do with this?
Stephen Robles:And I remember I used the app, which is still around. It's still a good app, Cyberduck, which was a free app for FTP access to upload files. But that was my first web hosting. And then for many years, I built websites using this application, which is still available, which you can still use today, and I'm sure it's probably really good right now, but RapidWeaver. And RapidWeaver was like the Mac users simplified Dreamweaver.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it was nothing like Dreamweaver. But obviously, the name was meant to evoke Dreamweaver as an idea. But I used RapidWeaver for many years to build many websites. I eventually started making websites for other people, and they would pay me to do it. And I love RapidWeaver.
Stephen Robles:And, basically, RapidWeaver was you design it on your Mac in this application, this native application. It felt like other Mac apps. It was familiar. And then you would publish it. You can hit publish, and it would send it to whatever your hosting provider is.
Stephen Robles:I remember it took me weeks to figure out what directory in the web host I was supposed to be publishing to so this website was actually live on the Internet. What is a domain, and how do I connect it to the web host? Like, it was a complicated world back when I was doing it. But I did it. I built many websites on that, and I had a personal website where I did start blogging and things like that.
Stephen Robles:And it was really fun. After RapidWeaver, so many other services came out where this whole process was just made easier. WordPress, obviously, being the most the forefront. I had tried WordPress, I think, briefly and just wasn't about it. I just I I wasn't crazy about the back end UI.
Stephen Robles:I didn't like the idea of constantly having to update plug ins or whatever. And so I think after my RapidWeaver days, pretty shortly after, I found Squarespace. And, I mean, this was before they, like, advertised literally everywhere. This was before the Super Bowl ad. I think I probably heard them from, like, back to work with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin for the first time.
Stephen Robles:And once I started creating Squarespace websites, like, it was over. Like, I was off to the races. I was like, this is everything I needed to. I'm totally good. I need nothing else.
Stephen Robles:And if you go to my personal website today, which is beard.fm, It is it is built on Squarespace. And I actually have some of my earliest videos on my YouTube channel is about Squarespace because you can do a lot with it. Like, you can host a podcast on Squarespace, and you can do a blog. You can even now do online courses and membership areas and all kinds of stuff. And I I really love Squarespace for how easy it is, and I never have to think about it.
Stephen Robles:And that's really the goal, like, because I don't update my website a lot. But when I do post something, I wanna just not have to think about it. I'm happy enough with the design. Look. Primary technologies right here on the homepage.
Stephen Robles:Nice. The latest episode. Boom. Right there. And so Squarespace was the answer and is still the answer for me today, and I really like it.
Stephen Robles:So I've I built so many Squarespace websites. I'm trying to find this I'll try to find it, and then I'll I'll show it after you. But I am on Squarespace's website as a Squarespace expert. They, like, gave me that little title, I guess, because I have so many Squarespace websites behind the scenes.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:So I'm proud of that. But, anyway, I don't know. What what can you tell us, Jason, of your website history and or whatever you wanna say about it.
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, I'm just gonna start by saying that I am a member of their circle gold because I have built so many websites.
Stephen Robles:Okay. So what the you're staying there.
Jason Aten:Lots and lots and lots. But, okay. I there's no there's a 0% chance I'm gonna be able to get the chronology of all of this.
Stephen Robles:No. No.
Jason Aten:It's fine. I know I've used iWeb. I know I've built plenty of several websites on iWeb, but I can't couldn't even tell you what the deal for or what the deal is anymore. But the first that was not the first time. I I've used I used Microsoft Office Front Page, which was an HTML editor, like, late nineties ish.
Jason Aten:Right? And it was literally editing HTML, and same kind of thing, figuring out where you put these this folder of files to put somewhere, that kind of thing. I will I was going back, and I know that one of my first blogs was on TypePad, and it still exists. It's still there.
Stephen Robles:It's still there.
Jason Aten:Nice. Very exciting because I was running a photography business. And if you're a photographer, you have to have somewhere to publish your work. And it's it's, like, kind of a mind trip here to be like, get
Stephen Robles:the scene on this old stuff.
Jason Aten:There is then had I did at one point, I don't know if it was before or after that, so I can't tell you, but I had a blogs well, I'm blogger. Oh, yeah. And that one apparently redirects to what would have at one point been a Squarespace site that I do not think exists anymore. But I ran a, you know, I ran a photography business for a long time and so had multiple websites for yeah. That that domain is dead.
Jason Aten:So okay. That's the thing. It's like, don't even know, but I I I'm actually surprised that this TypePad thing still just exist. I actually am surprised TypePad that that URL still resolves, like, it's even still just a Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Like, I'm actually shocked that all of this stuff is still that's anyway. But I eventually settled on Squarespace, and that's where like, my current website right now, I don't pay any attention to. Essentially, if you just, you know, go to my JasonAiden.net, it's just essentially a landing page. And it'll be like, go here to read my articles, go here to sign up for my newsletter. There's, like, old blog posts that you can get to, my bio, that kind of thing.
Jason Aten:I just needed to have something
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Out there to have a landing page kind of thing. And it's where I think most people find my email address when they wanna contact me, that's fine. That's great. So, but I I have struggled for a long time because I have a newsletter that's on Substack. Should I just be publishing those things for on my own?
Jason Aten:Because Squarespace could handle all that. I could just write them as blog posts, kinda do the Stratigori model like what
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Ben Thompson does where you publish them as a blog post and then you email them to people. Right. I haven't had time to figure all that out because most of the time if I'm writing something, it's going on ink. Right? Like, there but there are a lot of things I'd love to write about that aren't suitable for that.
Jason Aten:And so I I wrestle with that a lot, but I just have not had time to figure it out. Eventually, I will have more of a website something. My old photography websites still technically exist even though many of the domains don't because you can just find them at Squarespace. Right? Like, there's still so in order to see them, there's which actually is I love that this is true because there are some of my old like, I'm a writer.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right. So finding your old blog boss, like, there's the most recent one I wrote on one of them was about our daughter, our oldest daughter when she was in kindergarten, and I get a hysterical phone call. This is the first week of school. It's, like, the third day of school. And and my wife I was at the grocery store.
Jason Aten:My wife was like, she didn't get off the bus. And I'm like, that's like the worst thing you can possibly hear, and my wife's hysterical. So I we had this really old minivan, and I'm driving that minivan faster than you could ever drive. This this should not have been driven this fast to find the bus, and eventually the bus circles back around and she gets her explanation was just I forgot to get off the bus. Like, I'm new to this.
Jason Aten:I'm a kindergartner. I've only been doing this for three days. I just I was looking at all the pretty houses, and
Stephen Robles:I forgot to get off
Jason Aten:the bus. I forgot to get off the bus. And I'm so glad that I have these things. You know what I mean? Like, that still exists.
Jason Aten:So thanks for taking me down this memory lane.
Stephen Robles:No. It's good. I actually
Jason Aten:Oh, just one more thing. Sorry.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. No.
Jason Aten:Go ahead. Most of the websites I work on today are WordPress, just to be clear. Like, I mean, I don't have word I'm not using one for anything personal, but Inc uses word every everybody uses WordPress. So I'm very, very familiar with WordPress. Yeah.
Jason Aten:It's just more than what most people need when they're doing something.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And so I'm gonna show this page. This is my, my Squarespace, expert page. Woah. This this was they would, Squarespace partnered with ninety nine Designs a few years ago, and you could basically, like, people just reach like, find you on the ninety nine Designs page.
Stephen Robles:And because I had already made, like, a hundred plus Squarespace websites previously, they automatically put me on there. And so these were just the projects I completed through ninety nine Designs for like a year, and it was honestly so overwhelming. Like, this could have been my full time job, but then I realized I couldn't stand making websites for people because they all have infinite changes and designs. I was like, oh, I actually don't wanna do this at all. But I was able to make websites really fast, and people liked them for the most part.
Stephen Robles:But this is my expert page. But I will say there was I'll put our websites in the show notes as well. I did do this one, like, blogging experiment. I used Squarespace. I called it people think, and I wanted to blog every day for a year.
Stephen Robles:Just a short, like, three paragraph blogs or whatever. And I did it, and it's it's hidden somewhere on my main website. But I was proud of that, you know, writing every day for a year, even just a little bit. There was, like, one day I forgot. Like, I missed it, and it went past midnight.
Stephen Robles:And so I wrote about failure because, you know, that's that's a lesson too. But I did. I wrote 365 blog posts, and that was that was pretty fun. But, yeah, it's my personal website. I will say I looked into Ghost recently because I know a lot of people look at Ghost as a blogging newsletter platform and, like, paid membership type features.
Stephen Robles:It looks like an awesome platform. There's no import from Squarespace feature. And to rebuild some of the pages that I have on my website, which like, one of the pages on my website is every smart home device I have ever bought and reviewed. And, like, this page is huge. I have, like, anchor links where you can, like, jump to different categories of the things.
Stephen Robles:And Squarespace has a cool feature where if you're an Amazon affiliate, you give it your Amazon ID, and then there's just a block you can add and search for an Amazon product, and it'll automatically make it your affiliate link. So, like, I have this huge page. And, like, this page alone to recreate in something like Ghost, I saw no way to do that easily or quickly. And I was like, nah. Forget it.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Not doing it.
Jason Aten:I I should say that we are act you can I mean, we've just talked a lot about Squarespace, and it's because we both use it? We are actually the only podcast in America that's not sponsored by Squarespace, so we actually mean it. I just wanna be clear. It is true. That said, if you're listening from Squarespace and you'd like to sponsor an episode, we would love to talk to you.
Stephen Robles:This would have been the sponsor. But we'll talk about you again. We'll talk about you for a month. I mean, my that's my website.
Jason Aten:I mean, I can scroll through my Squarespace account and you can see how many
Stephen Robles:websites are on Same. Also, like, honestly, personally, it is one of my things. Like, I would love to have at least one Squarespace sponsorship even just for a single episode because I've heard it on so many other podcasts.
Jason Aten:It's just validation.
Stephen Robles:It's just validation. I just wanted it. And just for some reason, they have never sponsored any podcast I have done. They didn't do Apple Insider. They haven't done this one.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, maybe one day. Maybe one day.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:Alright. I want you to talk about the Sigma BF, but we're gonna do that for our bonus episode. So So no one got ads today because we didn't have a sponsor, but thank you for those of you who support the show through MemberFull or Apple Podcasts because you supported this episode a hundred percent. And if you support the show, you get the bonus episode. Jason has the Sigma BF camera, which I'm very excited to hear about.
Stephen Robles:And so if you wanna hear that bonus episode and our entire back catalog of bonus episodes, let, you can support the show at primarytech.fm. Click bonus episodes or do it directly in Apple Podcast. I would say do it through primarytech.fm because then you get the chapters. I post it there first or whatever. It's just because Apple Podcast is limited.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, we love your support. We love your five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Help us get back up to a five star rating. We'd love to have you in the community. Social.primarytech.fm.
Stephen Robles:Let's go into discussions on the episodes and hundreds literally over 200 people are there who listen to this show, and, it's awesome to have them there. So thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We're gonna go record a bonus episode. See you next week.
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