Nintendo Switch 2 Specs and Pre-Order, iOS 18.4 Features, Amazon Bids to Acquire TikTok
Download MP3If I'm gonna get busted, it's not gonna be by a guy like that. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, iOS 18 dot four came out, info about the Nintendo Switch two and how you can preorder it, what they're doing to prevent scalpers. Tariffs is probably gonna make your Apple products more expensive later this year. Jason reviewed the Sigma BF camera, and we have a bunch of other news.
Stephen Robles:This episode is brought to you by Notion, which we're using right now for our show notes, and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, obviously joining from a different location you're watching us on YouTube. But I have here my friend, Jason Aitin, at his usual location. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I'm I'm good. You're, like, so discombobulated today, and I love it.
Stephen Robles:I'm I'm a little discombobulated. I'm in I'm in a hotel room. I'm using a different mic, and my hand's cramping, but I'm I'm I'm trying my best not to move it at all.
Jason Aten:You got your x m four.
Stephen Robles:This is a Shure m v six, by the way. Just saying.
Jason Aten:No. I'm talking about your headphones. You're right.
Stephen Robles:I have my x m fives because I'm using wired headphones. That's right. And I have my MacBook Air. This is the first podcast I've recorded on this, and, I have no screen real estate. So, like, I can't I can only see one thing at a time.
Stephen Robles:I'm either looking at you, I'm looking at the movie quote, or I'm looking at Notion. It's one one of the three.
Jason Aten:That's great. So, yeah, the movie was Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Yes. Because at least, well, Google told me because I've actually never seen that movie. You can berate me about that later. I guess that movie takes place in Chicago according to Google.
Jason Aten:The for a guy with a movie podcast, your your anthology of the movies you haven't seen is pretty big.
Stephen Robles:I mean, maybe, but first people's day off is, like, 19 it it came out the day the year I was born. So I was zero when that movie came out. And I don't think there was, like you know what I mean? Was, like, right before me.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They but, you know, there was a period of your life where DVDs were invented, and there were stores you could go to and you could borrow the DVDs and stuff like that. And, actually, probably you have a library. Anyway, my point is there's 1,700 streaming services right now, and I bet you that this one is like there's I bet you there's a cable channel that just plays it day all day. Like Christmas story.
Stephen Robles:Even in the middle of whatever month we're in. I don't even know what month it is right now. April. We're in April. I'm in We are now in April.
Stephen Robles:We are now in April. I'm in Chicago.
Jason Aten:Change is not that I mean, it's an hour different. It's not actually a month different between us.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I went through a time a wormhole. I'm in Chicago because I'm at Podcast Movement Conference, and, I'm the closest to you I've probably ever been, when traveling. You're you're just a few hours away. I'm in Chicago.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Normally, if we're closer than this, it's because I came to Florida.
Stephen Robles:That's right. That's right. But then we don't record. We only go to First Watch, and we have brunch.
Jason Aten:That's true. We have breakfast.
Stephen Robles:Yep. Yeah. That's right. But yeah. So I'm here and still recording.
Stephen Robles:And, yeah, I'll post a picture of my behind the scenes, like, setup here. Got my Osmo as my webcam, my m v six. Anyway, I don't know what's happening. Hopefully, we're gonna get through this. We're gonna get through this together.
Jason Aten:I'm just happy because this is the first time we've recorded when my video looks better than yours.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It does. It definitely does. I'm using the portrait mode of the built in Mac because apparently the Mac wants you to do something with reactions and anyway, we're gonna talk about that. The annoying pop up.
Stephen Robles:I want us to do some five star review shout outs. We did get I'm so I'm sorry to everyone who has been trying so hard to get us back to a five star show. We did have one one star rating this past week. And, you know, I'm not gonna call them out, but it was apparently that they felt like we were too political during our signal discussion. And I just wanna say, when there is news that has to do with tech and the Venn diagram of politics crosses over, I mean, we can't avoid it.
Stephen Robles:You have to talk about it. And there's even a couple topics today where the you know, whatever choices or things are done here in The United States. Again, this is strictly United States usually, and the EU talking about, you know, their their laws. We gotta talk about it. And, like, tariffs are probably gonna make products more expensive.
Stephen Robles:And so that's, like, tech news, and it matters because people usually buy tech stuff. And so, you know, if that offends you, I'm not gonna say we're sorry, but just we try to keep it as as unbiased as possible just sharing the news and then maybe our thoughts on what it means for users and customers and things like that. But, anyway, that's all I
Jason Aten:wanna say. Yeah. Let me just say one thing about that. Yeah. Steve, I was gonna try to skip right over
Stephen Robles:the No. No. I knew you gonna say something. Go ahead.
Jason Aten:No. First, I actually wanna give credit to the person who left us that review because not they didn't just leave us a one star rating.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:They actually wrote a review
Stephen Robles:They did.
Jason Aten:Which means they put their name on it. So I do appreciate that. That is much better than people who just try to snipe you with one star Snipe. Ratings and then just, like, leave it there. So that's great.
Jason Aten:But I will just echo what Steven said. I think that we have done a pretty good job of of not getting political about things, but it is it just it's just impossible nowadays to talk about what we talk about and not have it cross over into an area where some people are gonna just no matter it doesn't matter which side you find yourself on, you're gonna hear what we say and think, oh, they're on the other side. And I promise you that if you think that you've figured out which side either of us are on, you're you're probably actually wrong.
Stephen Robles:And it's really
Jason Aten:I mean, just
Stephen Robles:And it's really not trying to you know, if if we genuinely think a decision is bad from either side, I feel like we should be able to say that and say, like, this is probably a bad law. You know, we talk about, you know, the EU Digital Markets Act and the whole web browser choice screen. We talked about it on the show, and I think we both agreed that was, like, a silly decision, and it's not a good user experience. That's just sharing how we feel about it, and no one gave us a one star review for that. But, you know Yep.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, that's that. But but we have a bunch of five star reviews because they're still trying to help us out. So Mark Raz from Sri Lanka, international listener. That's awesome. Titan seventy three from The USA.
Stephen Robles:She recently discovered us in his binging the back catalog. That's dedication because that's all it's old news, but we appreciate it. But there's also We
Jason Aten:do appreciate it.
Stephen Robles:It's awesome. But we also do, like, personal second stuff that might be green you know, evergreen. So that's cool. Yeah. Pineapple six six seven, and this is I I want all of these.
Stephen Robles:Battery oh, no. Battery percentage on. You want that. But Apple pencil towards volume buttons, phone and dominant hand pocket, dots on. So I'll take the three out of four.
Stephen Robles:That's good. Dubbzxn two from The USA. PBN Jason, this is not you. Right? You didn't do this.
Jason Aten:No. No. I promise.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Good. Because they said we're their favorite tech podcast. So thank you for that.
Jason Aten:I mean, that part's true.
Stephen Robles:I I
Jason Aten:also think this is my favorite Chuck podcast.
Stephen Robles:Very good. And then Greeny 24 from The USA. They bought a Blu ray drive that I recommended, and, they're ripping away. So that's, yeah, that's fun doing that too. Alright.
Stephen Robles:Let's do, actually follow-up. We don't need to do, like, follow-up follow-up. Let's do
Jason Aten:We've literally never done follow ups.
Stephen Robles:I think we've ever done follow ups. So we'll do a quick one follow-up, and you talked about the Sigma BF camera in our bonus episode just for subscribers and paying members, but you've now posted a review on ink.com. So I'll put that link in the show notes, but, yeah, nice picture. What did you now wait a minute. What did you take the picture of the BF camera with?
Stephen Robles:That's the question.
Jason Aten:I was hoping somebody would ask about that because in all of the pictures so in all of the pictures I took with the Sigma BF, I indicated shot with
Stephen Robles:Shot with the Sigma.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So people would so people would know. Yeah. I just shot those with my Nikon d six two. Okay.
Jason Aten:But I don't z six two. Excuse me. But I did not put that in
Stephen Robles:In the article.
Jason Aten:It's it's actually kinda meta when you're writing a review about a camera because you have to take pictures of the camera with a different camera. Some of the pictures in your article are not going to be about the, are not gonna be taken by
Stephen Robles:the camera.
Jason Aten:Viewing. So, anyway, it was yeah. So I just we talked about this on the, on our bonus episode last week, and so I just wanted to I published the review this morning. I will say I was impressed with this camera. I actually think that if someone is looking for something that is more capable than an iPhone, but you just aren't interested in getting into, like, a full fledged system, I think this is a pretty reasonable option.
Jason Aten:It's very portable. It's it's it's small enough. It is a little heavier than you might expect from a camera of this size because a lot of the cameras that are this size are made out of, you know, some aluminum and mostly plastic. Right. But, but it's great.
Jason Aten:The pictures are, like, fantastic. It has a couple film simulation modes
Stephen Robles:That's cool.
Jason Aten:That are very good. They're not quite on the same level as the Fuji, but, yeah, I I think it was a lot of fun. It was delightful. I was upfront with my headline. I thought it was gonna be ridiculous.
Jason Aten:And mostly that was because I didn't think it could hold up to scrutiny for how how photographers actually use cameras. And I put in my review, I said the ultimate test of any camera is how does it handle an energetic toddler. And I don't we don't have any of those in our house anymore. So I actually recruited some, some friends of ours, and we recorded it. And I went and did a family shoot with them just like I would, like, any other type of thing.
Jason Aten:And it was in the I wanted to know, like, how does it handle different lighting conditions in autofocus? And it was spot on.
Stephen Robles:So The photos look amazing. You know, obviously, we already talked about it, and we shared those pictures early. So if you support the show, you already saw those. But we'll check out the link. I am tempted by this camera even though I have no reason to have it just because it looks so cool, but you probably won't be able to it
Jason Aten:for real. And before anyone asks, I didn't really do any video testing with it because one, I don't do much in the way of video, and two, it doesn't have an internal cam or, internal microphone at all, so you'd have to attach something to it. And so I just I didn't I skipped that part. So don't don't ask me about it.
Stephen Robles:So how's the, no. Just kidding. So b roll. It's like a b roll camera, basically. Like, no audio.
Stephen Robles:Maybe just camera
Jason Aten:USB c for data, so you could plug in, like, DJI mic stuff to it. You could do that. I just I just didn't care.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Well, very cool. Well, that article is in the show notes. Also, is not follow-up, but I wanted to mention the Sofa app.
Stephen Robles:If you're not familiar, I love the Sofa app. It's by a singular developer. It is a great app for, like, keeping track of movies you want to watch or have watched, books, games. I actually use it to as my, like, what movies do we is on the list that we wanna watch as a family or individually? Well, he's added podcasts of support into the Sofa app, and it's like it looks like a pretty decent podcast player.
Stephen Robles:Just came out yesterday, so I haven't had a chance to check it out. But, Primary Technology is actually featured in a lot of the images, so you actually see us in, like, the UpNext, and, you'll see the artwork somewhere. But it looks really cool. I'm gonna play around with it. But if you wanted to test out another podcast app and just use Sofa for, like, saving movies you wanna watch or whatever, that's a pretty significant update.
Stephen Robles:And, I loved it before, and so I'm gonna be doing a video comparing this with, like, other newer podcast apps because there's been a lot of new ones recently. So be on the lookout for that, but pretty cool. Do you use Sofa? Do you use Sofa?
Jason Aten:No. It's good to I might give it a try, but I just don't really have a spot for it in my life.
Stephen Robles:What do
Jason Aten:do They don't do that thing where I, like, wanna pin movies to watch later or something.
Stephen Robles:So do you have any place where you like, a note or whatever where you're like, oh, yeah. Wanna watch that movie sometime.
Jason Aten:No. We usually sit down in front of the computer, open every streaming app, go through the catalog, and then go to
Stephen Robles:And then go to bed.
Jason Aten:Hours and we couldn't find anything.
Stephen Robles:See, that's why you use an app like Sofa, so you don't do that. You you, you know, you hear a movie or you remember, like, an old movie that you saw as a kid and now you wanna show your kids. That's that's what I use. Sofa, I put them in there.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:Just say you should try it out. IOS 18 dot four came out earlier this week for everyone. It's publicly available. I'll put a link to my video about it, where I go about all the features. I say 15 new features.
Stephen Robles:One of those features is the volume icon in the control center changes to blue when you drag the volume up and down, which is not really a huge feature.
Jason Aten:But you're being generous.
Stephen Robles:Calling it a feature. But there's, like, visual intelligence is now on the iPhone 15 Pro. So if you had a 15 Pro and you wanted to try that, you could do it. Plus you can map visual intelligence to the action button or in a control center widget, there's ambient music features. The news plus recipes is probably one of the bigger features, or something that you could try.
Stephen Robles:You have to be subscribed to Apple News plus or have it in your, like, Apple One bundle. But, it's a pretty cool feature. You can, like it gives you the ingredients, the cook time. You can browse by categories, and then you can even, like, set timers while you're reading the recipe. There's, like, a cook button.
Stephen Robles:And you could say, let's cook it, and it'll go into, this reader mode, and then you can, like, set timers just by tapping it in the instructions, which is pretty cool. So I'll put a link to my video in the show notes, but it's fun. I don't know I don't know if Val use it,
Jason Aten:but I want if any of our p if any of my PR friends at Apple listen to our podcast, I would like to, like, talk to the product person for this recipes thing because I still can't figure out why it's a part of News Plus.
Stephen Robles:I feel like they wanted it to be part of, like, under a paywall somewhere. And then where else would where would you put it? They would probably they wouldn't wanna do a standalone app because standalone apps are usually free, like the Apple Invotes.
Jason Aten:Except for the they just did one. The invites app, like, most of those features are part of iCloud plus.
Stephen Robles:Right. But you could download it for free. And so, like, it would be a pretty bad experience if, like, you had to down like, if you downloaded the food plus app and it just said, subscribe. I feel like that's against
Jason Aten:Yeah. But maybe I I think Apple could figure out the freemium thing where it's like
Stephen Robles:That's true.
Jason Aten:You get to look at this stuff, but if you want the timers and the You know? By step and add them to your your,
Stephen Robles:you know,
Jason Aten:shopping list, you have to pay.
Stephen Robles:You or you don't get the ingredients. Kidding me. You get you get half the ingredient list, and then it's blurred out. The second thing.
Jason Aten:In fact, now I'm thinking that was the original plan that Tim Cook came up with, and someone was like, dude, let's just stick it in noosebumps.
Stephen Robles:Stick it in noosebumps. Yeah.
Jason Aten:It is worth the grief. And it's it's kinda weird
Stephen Robles:to get to. You have to go to, like, this this magnifying glass tab and then go and then there's, like, the food plus section. It's not even, like, one of the main tabs on the bottom. So so When you
Jason Aten:say the magnifying glass tab, is that the search tab? Is that what you mean by Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I didn't know if it actually said search or browse, and so I didn't wanna, like it's the no. See? It's not. It's the following.
Stephen Robles:Another reason to update your phone, which you wrote an article about this. One feature I actually didn't cover in my video is, it's one of the best features yet according to this Inc.com article. Why don't you tell me about the feature since I didn't
Jason Aten:cover it? Be clear. This is this is tricky because it is tangentially an iOS 18.4 feature in the sense that your iPhone has to have I iOS 18.4 on it, but it's actually a Mac OS
Stephen Robles:Fifteen fifteen to 15.4. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Feature where now if you buy a new Mac and you didn't have a Mac before, you can use your phone to set up your Mac in the same way that you could previously use your phone to set up a phone or use your Mac to set up a Mac. Yeah. And it will log into your Apple account. I think that's what we call it now.
Jason Aten:Your Apple account.
Stephen Robles:It's your Apple ID iCloud mobile me account. That's what it's called.
Jason Aten:It's yes. It's your
Stephen Robles:It's your iWeb account.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Anyway, that thing Yes. You just log into that and it will it will copy that information over. It'll start downloading all your iCloud data like your photos. If you use iCloud to store stuff, iCloud Drive, it'll start doing that.
Jason Aten:And that way when you download apps, it will sync all that stuff with iCloud as well. I think this is smart. And the reason I call it one of its best features yet is I think that this is the type of feature that is easy to overlook, but does the thing that Apple does best, which is just make your computer work the way that it should work. And if you have spent years setting up iPhones by just bringing them close together or a watch, the fact that you can now do that on your Mac is, I think, it really streamlines that. And it's also super good for Apple because now think about the number of, like, students who have iPhones and Chromebooks, and they're about to go off to college, and they're like, can I throw the Chromebook away, please?
Jason Aten:I need a Mac, but they don't have they can't use migration assistant to go from a different Mac, but now you can literally have all of your stuff right there.
Stephen Robles:Yes.
Jason Aten:And I, you know, I compared it the list of things like continuity cam camera, universal clipboard, sidecar. Yep. Those types of things that are just, like, features that are baked in when you're a part of the entire ecosystem that like, the real reason I can't switch to Windows isn't because of some, like, Linux kernel or we you know, whatever, like, the Unix kernel in the base. It's those types of features that really make using your computer easy.
Stephen Robles:100%. And, like, I I have a Nothing Phone three a. I've I've flashed it on this podcast a couple times. And I was like, I wanna I wanna use this to like, for a full weekend, total like, put my iPhone in a drawer so I can really give it a go. And I could say, what what is it like to use this phone full time?
Stephen Robles:And so I did I started doing that, and then I sat down and we were gonna watch something. And I went to go to the Apple TV remote on my phone, and I was like, oh, wait a minute. There I can't do that from the Android phone. Right. And, like, I can't control my smart home from here.
Stephen Robles:And it was, like, just the minutes in, there was already too much friction to be like, well, let me just get my iPhone. So it's all those, like you're saying, those continuity features where it's and and I think there are apps maybe, like, that you do universal clipboard from Android to Windows. I'm not sure. I feel like I don't know if I would trust them, but but all of that, it's just quality of life. They're great they're great features.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Now maybe maybe, not to get political, maybe we're gonna have to see Apple, like, open up some of these features to third parties.
Stephen Robles:Never happened. Didn't do you remember
Jason Aten:I mean, DOJ is literally suing over,
Stephen Robles:like I know. The Apple Watch
Jason Aten:and AirPods and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So
Stephen Robles:we'll see. Dan, is this a fever dream, or do you also remember when FaceTime was announced with the iPhone four that Steve Jobs said they were gonna open source it, and they were gonna make it available for other platforms? It wasn't that didn't he say that?
Jason Aten:I think you're right.
Stephen Robles:I thought
Jason Aten:I don't know why, like, whatever happened. They they, you know, they they promised that they were going to do that. I'm guessing the reason that they didn't is that one, none of the other platforms cared. Right? Like, they didn't want to.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:Because you can now sort of, like
Stephen Robles:You can send a link.
Jason Aten:FaceTime, but it's still Apple software. Yeah. Exactly.
Stephen Robles:It there's no FaceTime app on it.
Jason Aten:It doesn't work with Google Meet.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. I think it was just a no one reads books anymore moment where it was like, you know, this, but then that. So, anyway, that was a cool feature. The setup with your iPhone's kinda like how setting up a new Apple TV, you can, like, hold your iPhone close to it and, you know, does all that.
Stephen Robles:But there's another feature. This is not a feature. This is a bug, and it it is the worst. And it is this message reaction. And this is, like, all over the Internet now where anytime your camera or any camera or you open your, you know, meeting software, we're using Riverside.
Stephen Robles:Anytime the camera's accessed, macOS pops up this thing telling you to turn on reactions, which is a bad idea because then you're just gonna get a thumbs up during a very serious meeting or something, or you're gonna send fireworks as you're being laid off.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Let me explain what happened here. Okay. When the it was WWDC, what, like, 2022, '20 '20 '3. I can't remember which year it was.
Jason Aten:When they rolled out these reactions features, and I actually thought it was pretty cool at the time. The problem was this was still when a lot of things were happening on, like, Zoom, for example, and you might show up to a memorial service on Zoom, and suddenly you're scratching your brow with your thumb up and, like, fireworks go off or
Stephen Robles:something. Lasers.
Jason Aten:And it just or you're in, like, this the others are reports of people, like, in therapy and, like Oh, yeah. Know, the in the therapist, like, does this just to, like, is an encouraging thing. All of a sudden,
Stephen Robles:like, bubbles are coming
Jason Aten:up or
Stephen Robles:something. Right.
Jason Aten:And it was a bad thing. So Apple made it so that the third party software like Zoom or Google Meet or whatever could, by default, deactivate reactions. So the the software can decide that. So Zoom just decided, nope. We're turning it off.
Jason Aten:Same thing here is, like, Riverside is like, no. Let's not have reactions on. You can go back and turn them on. You can click on the little thing and turn them on. Right.
Jason Aten:So if someone at Apple thought it was important to put up a notification to tell you that this feature you don't care about has been turned off by the software you're using Mhmm. And that you should turn it back on by clicking on the little green thing. And you're looking at this and you're like, well, I just want the notification to go away. So what do you do, Steven?
Stephen Robles:You click the x.
Jason Aten:If you want notification away. What would you do?
Stephen Robles:You click the x. It's right there.
Jason Aten:If there's an x there, you would click on the x. But, Steven, what would happen if you clicked on that x? Now, I mean, if looking at the picture, nothing will happen because it's a photograph. But guess what? In the real notification, the x does nothing.
Stephen Robles:Nothing. It's so annoying.
Jason Aten:Literally does nothing. You can click on it. Like, I watched one of my kids click on it for, like, three minutes the other day, and I'm like, just click on the green micro
Stephen Robles:And then it goes away, which is
Jason Aten:And then it goes away.
Stephen Robles:So weird.
Jason Aten:You know what's really weird? If you click on the green The camera. Camera.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:It doesn't bring down the drop down menu. It just makes the notification go away. Like, is like first of all, the notification should not exist. No one needs this. No one needs to know that Zoom or Brave has turned off reactions.
Jason Aten:What is the worst thing that's gonna happen? You're gonna be sitting in the meeting and you're gonna do a thumbs wait. You got your reactions on.
Stephen Robles:I just know I just did a manual thumbs down.
Jason Aten:Okay. But, like, you like, no one has ever, like, been sitting in a meeting, did a thumbs up, and was disappointed the reactions didn't go off. And if you did, it was just because you're being goofy and you just go do what you just did.
Stephen Robles:Exactly.
Jason Aten:No one needs a notification, but if it's going to be there, Apple, you have to you have to fix this. If you have not noticed, like, it has been trending on threads and Reddit
Stephen Robles:and Yes.
Jason Aten:Twitter, and people are just mad about this.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. But here here's a there you go. If you're watching on YouTube, I just put fireworks on.
Jason Aten:And I texted you back in December, and I was like, what the heck is going on? Yeah. Why is this happening?
Stephen Robles:You did. You could and you you would have been the first. You would have been the first in the wave to notice this.
Jason Aten:I should have written about it then.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway, yeah, it's annoying. Hopefully, I guess 15.4 1 maybe. We'll see if that comes out soon. But, yeah, that's annoying. Now what's not annoying, Nintendo Switch two.
Stephen Robles:And I know we don't talk a lot about video games on this podcast, but I'm excited about the Switch two because, I'm a Smash Bros fan. I'm a longtime Nintendo fan. There's some interesting things. The Switch two is more expensive. First of all, I think it's a hundred and $50 more than the previous model.
Stephen Robles:It's gonna be it was $4.04
Jason Aten:49, 4 50.
Stephen Robles:4 fifth $450. It is still an LCD screen, so it's not OLED like the Switch OLED.
Jason Aten:The Switch OLED.
Stephen Robles:It's kinda weird. It's ten eighty p resolution on the actual Switch, but then when you put it in the dock, you do finally get four k out of a Nintendo Switch, which has not been the case. The the old Switch, even in the dock, was ten eighty p. So we finally got four k. There's more internal storage, 256 gigabytes.
Stephen Robles:And there's a bunch of new accessories that Nintendo is going to release with this, but notably one of them is a camera. And so there's you can buy this camera. It's called the Switch two camera for $50. Connects via USB C. You can also just connect a USB C webcam.
Stephen Robles:It says that some work with it in the fine print. You don't necessarily have to buy Nintendos, although it has seemingly a nice little stand or whatever. But you can use your own USB C stand. But there's a couple interesting things. One, they're introducing game chat.
Stephen Robles:It's actually gonna be a button on the Switch controllers to interact with other players. And this has been something that Nintendo hasn't really done, to, you know, to talk to other players through this kind of stuff. I don't even know in Fortnite if that was a thing, if you played Fortnite on the Switch. But but I guess there's gonna be more interaction with online friends or other gamers. And the preorder process is really interesting.
Stephen Robles:So they're trying to cut down on scalpers and stuff. And so you have to basically, like, sign in with your Nintendo online account if you wanna try and get on the early preorders. And when you sign in, you show what interest you have in what model. And you'll only be able to preorder if you have something like, I think it was seventy something played hours on your on Nintendo Switch online account. So they're gonna check how many hours you've actually played on the Switch, and only if you've actually played can you even preorder the Switch too, which, I mean, it seems like a pretty genius way to, like, limit the amount of scalping you can do on this.
Stephen Robles:And I'm I'm concerned because my son's been playing on his PlayStation more than the Switch, so hopefully, we have that many hours. I don't know if we do. But
Jason Aten:I think it's fifty hours, but, yeah, that is still a really interesting it's like, if you haven't been I'm gonna write I'm gonna write about this. But if you're not a big enough fan, we won't take your money and
Stephen Robles:give you this thing. Exactly. Which which, again, like, of all the game systems, again, I don't I don't do this very often, but the Nintendo Switch, though I remember the Wii, when the Wii came out. Nintendo game consoles are just notoriously hard to get on launch day because, you know, I don't know if there's been preorders on past game systems, but it's just people go nuts. And they they just buy it, and then people buy multiple to then scalp it.
Stephen Robles:Then you can get, you know, Switch on eBay for a thousand dollars when it really only cost 300 news. So I I totally get why they're doing that. And, I guess you'll only if you sign up so I actually did this. I I signed up with my Nintendo online account so I can hopefully preorder it. I believe April 9 will be the first wave of preorders or something like that if you do this early sign up, but you only have seventy two hours.
Stephen Robles:Nintendo's gonna send you an email letting you preorder it, and you only have seventy two hours to respond, and then you lose that preorder status. And then you'll have to just see if you can get one on launch day, which is in June, I believe. So, yeah, Nintendo's, really doing it, but Switch two. And the game, the Joy Cons, we can actually turn into mice, which is super weird.
Jason Aten:Do you remember, Steven, when people were scalping the Vision Pro for, like, $5 then shortly after launch because you couldn't get those either?
Stephen Robles:That that's wow. I do remember that name.
Jason Aten:Bought one for more money than $3,500, I wanna hear from you. I wanna know how you feel about that now.
Stephen Robles:They feel bad. I can tell you that.
Jason Aten:But if you were one of the geniuses that's because right now, if you buy one on eBay, it's, like, $40 and throw in a box of Wheaties, and I'll send it to you.
Stephen Robles:So it's so bad. Alright. So we we do have to talk about say, I'm gonna save it for after the break. I wanna mention tariffs, mention so who's interested in buying TikTok, and we'll talk a little bit about AI and things like that. But, before we get to the break, Jason had one other follow-up article.
Stephen Robles:Last week, we talked about the tell all meta book, and now you've, you've written a thing to so if you don't wanna read the book, can go read Jason's article.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I I did I did the work for you. I read the whole thing, and I just summarized the four most surprising leadership
Stephen Robles:Lessons. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Lessons that you could get out of that book. So and, basically, it's just like, don't be a bad person.
Stephen Robles:I feel like that's leadership and life, I feel like. Right? That's everything. Evergreen principle. Evergreen principle, don't be a jerk.
Stephen Robles:That's all you gotta do. Alright. We'll we'll link that article in the show notes too, and check it out. Alright. Let's thank today's sponsor, which is Notion.
Stephen Robles:We've been using Notion this entire time because it powers the show notes for every episode of primary technology, keeps us organized, Jason and I collaborating on that. And Jason's like, he does pro level stuff. He he uses, like, the AI. He'll put a transcript in there and ask it to summarize it. He does all the things.
Stephen Robles:I'm not even reading from the script right now. I'm just telling you how we use Notion. Actually, recently did a webinar with Notion and Riverside. I don't know if I can say that. But, anyway, yeah.
Stephen Robles:So I mean, it was a public webinar. It's fine. But listen, Notion. Why do I love Notion? Again, for all the reasons I just stated.
Stephen Robles:It can be your document and project management. I did video planning in there using the Kanban style boards. Love all of that. And, the power of AI built right into Notion. Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects in one space.
Stephen Robles:It's simple, beautifully designed. And then again, you can leverage the power of AI across all of that that you put in there. Put your transcripts in there. Put long form text, and then you can ask Notion AI to summarize or expand or give you ideas, based on what you have in the app. And the fully integrated Notion AI helps you work faster, write better, and think bigger doing tasks that normally take you hours in just seconds.
Stephen Robles:So save time and write faster by letting Notion AI handle that first draft, jump start a brainstorm, or turn your messy notes into something polished. You can even automate tedious tasks like summarizing meeting notes or finding next steps. Notion I Notion AI does all this and more and frees you up to do the deep work. Notion is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies and, more importantly, primary technology. So try Notion for free when you go to Notion.com/primarytechnology.
Stephen Robles:That's all lowercase letters, Notion.com/primarytechnology to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. Notion.com/primarytechnology. That link is in the show notes as well. Thanks to Notion for sponsoring this episode.
Stephen Robles:Now we're gonna talk about something politically related, tangentially political. Alright. So everybody relax. Just just hold up. Not gonna be long.
Stephen Robles:But the bottom line is Trump announced a bunch of tariffs yesterday, sweeping tariffs across multiple countries, including China, where many products come from, Apple products. 46% tariff for Vietnam, which we talked about on a past episode. The m four MacBook Air, which I'm using right now to record this episode, came from Vietnam. And so this laptop, in a couple days, would have had a tariff applied to it, as Apple tried to bring it over into The United States. So there's sweeping tariffs.
Stephen Robles:Not sure what this means for other countries, and how they will respond, but I do think I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty guaranteed, like, things are likely to get more expensive. Correct?
Jason Aten:Well, that's the point of tariffs is to make things more expensive because you want no. No. I mean, like, for real, like, the whole point of a tariff is you charge a tax on an imported good. Right. The theory is that it incentivizes companies to instead make those goods in The United States instead of making them overseas.
Jason Aten:And but, of course, like, the problem with that is that, like, you can't just randomly start making MacBook Airs in The United States. You have to have a factory, so you have to build a factory, so you have to do all those things. So in the meantime, if you add I think Vietnam is, like, I don't know, 64% or it's, like, 40 some percent tariff that they've added to those goods. That price is going to have to get added because if if if a MacBook Air selling price is a thousand dollars 46% for Vienna. The MacBook Air is a thousand dollars.
Jason Aten:That's a $460 tariff on that. I promise you Apple's not going to eat that cost. Right? Right. There there's just no way.
Jason Aten:And so that price will get passed on to consumers. There's obviously the possibility that the administration can offer exemptions for certain things. There's some talk about the whole like, China, the tariffs have gotten extremely high because what was announced yesterday is on top of, like, the 20% that was already offered there. And it's like, well, maybe we lower the tariffs if you're willing to sell TikTok or something like that. Like, there there is no.
Jason Aten:I mean, like, I'm not even
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. That was
Jason Aten:the the kind of thing that's happening right now is these kind of negotiations. This tank the stock market is not responding well to this Right. Because the cost of all of these things is going to go up in a way that neither the companies nor consumers can absorb. So you can just imagine if everything that Apple imports goes up by 46, people will just stop buying Apple stuff, and that's not good for Apple's shareholders because it's not you know what I mean? And so this this has got some very real impact on, like, the stuff that we all buy.
Jason Aten:I just put in my preorder or my register, my interest for this switch because I'm like, well, can we get it before the tariffs? No. You can't.
Stephen Robles:No. You can't.
Jason Aten:I mean, it's not gonna work that way. So it's gonna be it's gonna be, one, interesting to see how these companies decide to handle this. Some of them are probably going to be able to find ways to be somewhat exempt. Like, Apple has done a very good job of this in the past. But, again, like, this is pretty across the board, and, and it's just it's gonna be really difficult.
Jason Aten:I think one of the prevailing mentalities is, like, most other companies I mean, most other countries, excuse me, charge pretty significant tariffs on goods coming from The United States, which disadvantages US producers of these products. Right? And so by adding a tariff on the imported version, it's meant to sort of balance that out so that it incentivizes, like, fine. You're gonna charge us a tariff, then we will disadvantage your producers if you're gonna try to import them here. And the the hope is, like, the whole point of a trade war is somebody will eventually be like, you know, okay.
Jason Aten:Fine. I give. And and then you can deescalate it. The question is like, well, when when when is that part going to happen? Because until then, things are just gonna be very expensive.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious. Do you think Apple will raise any prices before the new iPhone comes out in September, or will they wait for that new product cycle to possibly increase prices, like, with the new phone?
Jason Aten:Okay. I think, one, Apple has incredibly smart people trying to figure that question out.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Two, so I think there's a couple possibilities. I think what has made all of this difficult is that if you remember so when I said the thing about the TikTok sale, I actually mean that quite seriously. I think that there's a view inside the administration that tariffs can be used as a negotiating position. Right. If you don't do this thing we want, then we're going to put this tariff on your goods.
Jason Aten:And so so that's actually a valid, like, negotiating position. If you need a country to do a thing so for example, with Canada and Mexico, the argument was we're gonna put tariffs on your goods unless you do something to stop the flow of narcotics into our country across the border. I don't know if any of that stuff is true, but, like, that was the argument. Okay? I'm not passing judgment.
Jason Aten:I'm not being political. I'm just explaining what happened.
Stephen Robles:That's what happened.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just wanna be clear. And so but then, like, on day one, they were, like, delayed. Right? And then they were reduced, and then they were this, and then there's so I think what's hard for some of the companies is it's like, we actually don't know.
Jason Aten:Do we take it seriously or not? Is this a real thing? And it makes it very hard to plan because if you don't know if the tariffs are actually gonna go into effect, then you don't know, like, how do we adjust our prices? So I'm sure there are actuaries at Apple that are figuring all of these things out and trying to decide, like, what the prices should be. I think, a, it's likely that when the next round of whatever a product is that comes out, that it could be more expensive.
Stephen Robles:Mhmm.
Jason Aten:The other thing is I think that there are gonna be cases, and I don't know if this is true with Apple because Apple is so large at scale, and it would be pretty devastating to them both as a brand and as a business. But I think we're gonna start to see companies that are like, actually, that thousand dollar MacBook Air is now $1,300.
Stephen Robles:That would stink. Well, we'll see. The tariffs go in effect, like, in days. Like, this is not this
Jason Aten:is not something that's, like,
Stephen Robles:weeks and months away.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The first round goes into effect in, like, less than a week.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm trying to see it here in the verge article, but, yeah, it's, like, less less than a week. So, anyway, we'll see we'll see what happens, to the prices of things. Also, like you just mentioned, the the TikTok, will someone buy TikTok? This has been a long time coming where the administration Trump administration delayed this TikTok ban.
Stephen Robles:If you remember that TikTok went dark for, like, half a day or, like, six hours or whatever. Then it came back because this this was delayed. But we're still running up on a deadline where, there's a law that has passed that TikTok needs to change or dive you know, needs to divest and have a different like, a a US owner or some at least stakeholder. I'm not exactly sure what the requirement is, but companies are making bids to buy TikTok. And we have pontificated in the past what US companies might be interested.
Stephen Robles:And apparently, Amazon is very interested in buying TikTok. Others include, technology giant Oracle and Blackstone, the private equity firm. You might have heard that name elsewhere. But and and there's, like, weird deals where it might be, like, multiple investors that will then buy part of TikTok, and so they'll be not just owned by one like Amazon, but there'll be multiple stakeholders. So curious again.
Stephen Robles:And this and this ban, I think, again, is just, like, days away, which so something has to happen off the Saturday. The Saturday deadline
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:That TikTok has to change its ownership, structure. So we'll see. I mean, is it is it possible the administration can delay it again, or does it actually have to happen right now?
Jason Aten:Well, is it possible?
Stephen Robles:I guess anything's possible. Let
Jason Aten:me just do the quick recap on this if you don't mind. So Please. Right? There's a law passed a little over a year. It was, like, April twenty fourth of last year.
Jason Aten:I mean, that's when it was signed by Joe Biden who president at the time that said that TikTok had to they listed them as a company, you know, as a company that was controlled by a foreign adversary. So the law says essentially that they cannot be owned by any any their owners can't be controlled by a foreign adversary, which is China in this case. So it has to have an American owner. Okay? What that actually means, maybe it's up to some interpretation.
Jason Aten:Could you just have a bunch of American investors pump a bunch of money into TikTok? And so now they have 50.1% of it. And now is it American owned? That's not I don't think what the law means. It's like, it has to have an American owner.
Jason Aten:It has to become owned by a company in The US. And so it is weird that they're now talking about, like, they may have to delay things again because the the current delay, the seventy five day delay because this law went into effect on January 19, and the supreme court upheld it. The current delay was just Trump saying to the department of justice, don't enforce this law for seventy five days. Like, there was actually no mechanism in the law for the delay that is currently happening. The only delay that was allowed was a ninety day delay to finalize a deal, but there was no deal in place at the time.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right? So this was just literally a letter from Donald Trump to the Department of Justice and then the Department of the Attorney General writing a letter to Apple and Google saying it's cool if you put it in the App Store. Right? Because if you remember, Google and Apple had taken it out of the App Store, and it was out of the App Store for, like, more than a month.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And
Jason Aten:so it is back now. So so what happens on Saturday? I think that unless there's an actual deal, it goes it's no longer going to be available in the App Store. Right? And we could be in a situation again where all of the content on TikTok is served up, I think, mostly by Oracle and potentially AWS as well.
Jason Aten:Like, those companies will be prohibited from doing that. So now you asked, is it possible they could delay it again? Under the law, no. Like, there is no legal mechanism to do that. I'm not entirely sure if that matters.
Jason Aten:Right? Because at this point, like no. No. And then I'm, again, I'm not trying
Stephen Robles:to be political, but, like
Jason Aten:Oh, no. I think we've seen that it doesn't really seem to matter because it's like if if the Department of Justice who is the people who would enforce the law are told by the president don't enforce the law, it doesn't really matter what the law says.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You just gonna keep up. But you are gonna have companies at some point like Apple and Google heard me like, you gotta figure this out because we can't keep living in this limbo. Right. Because they would be exposing themselves to enormous liability down the road Right. For continuing to break the law.
Jason Aten:And I don't think that they want to do that. So I don't I don't know. Like, Amazon actually makes sense, but it sounds like according to the New York Times that no one's taking it seriously. Right? Like, the other company that's put in a bid is Applovin, which they, like, monetize apps.
Jason Aten:They're, like, a giant ad marketplace and app discovery and analytics and all that kind of stuff. And they're, like, a hundred billion dollar company. Like, they could probably I think it's they wanna buy it, and they want I think it's Steve Wynn, the casino guy, who is gonna, like, help finance it or whatever. So there's there are some things that are happening, but it's it's so funny to me that it all happens at the last minute. It's like you've got a year.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, a year to figure this out, and it just you cannot whip up a you cannot whip up a deal like this over a weekend. It just doesn't work that way.
Stephen Robles:This will be honest, though. This was me in college. I had all semester to write the paper. I was not writing it until two days before, likely one day.
Jason Aten:But the paper didn't cost
Stephen Robles:you $80,000,000,000. I mean No. But
Jason Aten:Like, you need lawyers and banks and merger and analysts and consultants, and you gotta figure out, like, how do I make a business case? Because no matter what company buys this, they're gonna get sued by shareholders. Like, that's the board is gonna get sued. Like, that's a % guarantee. Like, it's just gonna happen.
Jason Aten:Like, that's just the cost of doing business. So you have to have all of your ducks in a row. So that's why I say, like, companies like Apple and Google, they take this kind of thing very seriously because no matter what the Department of Justice says, we they may not prosecute you for this. You're going to like, they're accountable to the board of directors is accountable to shareholders, and they don't wanna be sued. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, they don't wanna be held liable for, you know, securities fraud because you ignored a federal law that says you can't do this thing and now late like, it's just it gets complicated.
Stephen Robles:It's complicated. Well, we'll see what happens on Saturday.
Jason Aten:Please no please no one star reviews. I'm just telling you what I'm just telling you guys There's no there's
Stephen Robles:no floating. I think we should say not to be political, but then be something totally unrelated. Like, not to be political, but visual intelligence. Poor. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Okay. It is not well, it's great. No. Just kidding.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, one of the couple of quick pieces of news, and then I wanna get on to Jason for his travel accessory article on Inc.com. This one
Jason Aten:Which I thought was the most benign safe article I've literally ever read. Not huge. Even has a problem with.
Stephen Robles:Well, two things. But, anyway, I will talk talk about it in second. We'll talk about it in a second. Did Elon Musk announced to OnX that his AI company, xAI, has acquired X, the social media platform, for in an all stock transaction. So now they are one company.
Stephen Robles:I I have not seen any changes in terms of service or really any articles. I I don't think about, like, what this might mean for content on x and training the models, but curious acquisition. Talk to me about this. Because I
Jason Aten:I I asked you,
Stephen Robles:like, what what does this actually mean?
Jason Aten:See, see, see, it was like, do I keep posting to X? What's going on? Now the reality is X has been sharing all of its content with XAI anyway.
Stephen Robles:Well and let me say one thing. I've I we we can talk about ChadGPT and the Studio Ghibli thing in a second, but I I anything I post online anywhere, I assume will be some model. I mean, ChadGPT, you can ask it anything, and it will answer you. It's been trained on everything. And so, yeah.
Jason Aten:Okay. Well, let me just say something about that really quickly. There is a difference between asking ChatGPT a question and having it be able to find information on the Internet because it has a search capability. That doesn't mean that the model was trained on that information. Right.
Jason Aten:Those are two separate and distinct things. The model training is sort of how it processes that and understands it, and there's a lot of knowledge that goes into that, but that is meant to, like, form the way that the model works.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Which is separate from if I publish something today and you ask ChatGPT about it, it's gonna be able to find the article, and it's gonna be able to summarize it for you, but it wasn't trained on
Stephen Robles:it. But but when you ask ChatGPT write something in the style of Jason Aitin, if it can do it, that lends itself to like, it was actually ingested a bunch of your work.
Jason Aten:Probably. So that's the only way it could do that. Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty likely.
Stephen Robles:Pretty likely. And even I feel like this is even earlier, Chatuchipiti days. MKBHD made a video where he asked Chatuchipiti to write an intro to the video in his style, and it did it. And it knew how to do it. So it was clearly trained on at least his YouTube videos, likely all of YouTube, most of YouTube.
Jason Aten:So Not only that, but what didn't he ask Sora to make a video of a tech YouTuber? And it had his plan. His plan. Yeah. Exactly.
Jason Aten:So it's like, clearly,
Stephen Robles:you're not just searching right now and doing that. Like, you have been trained. Because I was, like, generating images. So
Jason Aten:anyway Okay. So the XAI thing. So this is another thing that's interesting because what does it actually mean? Very little, except for to the essentially, what they're gonna do is create a holding company that will own both of those two companies, XAI and X. The the reason that this happened is because it allows Elon Musk to assign valuations to the two companies as they formed a combined company.
Jason Aten:Can you just imagine the negotiation between the two companies, which, by the way, are the same group of people? Do you have to normally this is like an adversarial process where two companies that are going to merge decide what the valuation of each would be because that determines which percentage of stock will be owned by each group's investors and shareholders. But it's literally, like, the same six people sitting around the table, and they're like, okay. So now for X, what do we think? And for X like, it's and the reason for doing it is that it is much, much, much, much easier right now for XAI to raise money than it would be for X to raise money.
Jason Aten:Now it's not about like, X has been able to raise some money in the recent, like, months because the people look at X and they're like, well, right now because of, like, Elon Musk's connection, he had like, it's a value there's value there. So they're able to do that. But in the long term, it's it's grok. It's x AI. That's where the money's going to be.
Jason Aten:And this makes it easier to do that, and it makes it a lot cleaner and simpler for them to just funnel all of that content directly from X into those types of things. And so this is much more of a this is a thing that happened on paper, but, really, the thing that happened on paper is essentially just cleaning up some stuff that was already gonna basically be happening anyway.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you. Alright. I I wasn't sure if we should talk about this in-depth.
Stephen Robles:I might save this because I I wanna develop more thoughts about it. But we mentioned the whole ChatGPT four o image generation last week and the Studio Ghibli phase and all of that. So I don't I don't think I wanna rehash it. I wanna kinda see where it goes from here, but, I wanna talk about Jason's travel article instead. So I wanna go right to that.
Stephen Robles:So we'll save Great. We will save this, and I need to develop more more thoughts about it because we we were talking to our friend Nate about artistry and work and all that kind stuff. But
Jason Aten:Who is a fantastic artist. That's why I'm
Stephen Robles:talking him. Amazing artist. I should see if it could generate three d chalk art the style of Nate Baranowski. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Well, the thing about that is it could generate a photo you could post on Instagram of it, but it can't actually put it on the sidewalk like he does.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point.
Jason Aten:A good His job is safe.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point. That is good point. Alright. So here's our personal tech. Jason had a travel article here.
Stephen Robles:I saw it come up in my my RSS. 11 travel tech gear essentials and accessories. You have some very good recommendations here. I would I would make the same recommendations. I have two quibbles.
Stephen Robles:Okay? The first, as you talk about, the accessories in this article, like, the Anker Nano three in one power bank, where do I click to go to that thing? Where where where's the You
Jason Aten:don't know how to Google it?
Stephen Robles:You want people to do this. You're gonna copy and paste it. You're gonna you're gonna send it over here. Oh, now what which one were you talking about? There's 18 different products over here.
Stephen Robles:What is that? What is all this? Listen. As as a YouTuber, as someone who does a lot of affiliate links, link link the thing. Just link the thing.
Jason Aten:Them actually are. If you scroll up to the top I think some of them actually are. I think
Stephen Robles:I You have the plug bug charger. You have a link there, but the that's the only link. The Belkin MagSafe mount, the Crucial x nine portable SSD. AirPods Pro two, you have linked, but this probably
Jason Aten:Probably to one of my probably one of my stories. I just found I just
Stephen Robles:saw an ad. Yeah. It was just to another one of your stories. The Timbuktu, was I was like, oh, what oh, no. There's no link there.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There are so there was a little bit of a technical glitch on there should be photos with some of these. I will get that cleaned up.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I see. So, anyway, that was
Jason Aten:I didn't know you just wanted to edit my article. I thought you actually wanted to talk about the actual choices that
Stephen Robles:I made. There was one well, there is one choice I wanna talk about specifically. I mean, the no. No. All this stuff is great.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I like the, you know, the Anker three in ones. The the Plugbug has fine mice. That's good. I like the the tech bags. I'm still like, I wanted is this the Timbuk two in the picture on the left?
Jason Aten:No. No. That's the Bellroy tech pouch. Okay. That's Timbuk two is the actual backpack.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Right. Right. So I I I want that Bellroy tech pouch. The one that I actually have issue with is the Native Union active power bank.
Stephen Robles:Okay? Now this is only because I have reviewed 1,000 MagSafe battery packs. Okay? But and I actually have the Native Union one as well. So it's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery.
Stephen Robles:And you will see on all these battery descriptions that it can charge your iPhone up to 15 watts. That is false. When it wirelessly, it will never get up to 15 watts. No 5,000 milliamp hour battery can charge that fast. Often, if you read, like, the fine print, these brands say you can charge up to 15 or 20 watts if you connect with a USB C cable.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That's great.
Stephen Robles:Right. But it is not wireless. And so I think, just editorially, should mention that it has to be with the USB c cable if you wanna charge that fast. Otherwise, it's like five watts or at the most seven and a half watts, which the native Union one isn't even Qi two. It's like Qi one.
Stephen Robles:So it's like it's like super slow charging. It does get pretty warm. But I would just I would not recommend this one to people because I would recommend the Anker qi two ultra slim. Actually, I don't know why I didn't pull this up. 10,000 milliamp hour battery pack because that one actually charges, like, pretty fast.
Stephen Robles:Like, it'll charge between eleven, twelve, 13 watts, and it is still pretty slim. I know slim is important, but it it is the one that I recommend. It's my I actually have it with me here at the conference because it's it's the best. But this is the one that I would recommend there. But that's the only one I really have with.
Stephen Robles:Literally two. Hold on. Let me
Jason Aten:it's literally two.
Stephen Robles:It doesn't get as hot.
Jason Aten:Literally two of them.
Stephen Robles:Faster capacity. Like, can I hold on? I've this entire time, I have been muting myself when I have to switch hands because my hands are cramping anyway. Listen. Yes.
Stephen Robles:It is thicker.
Jason Aten:No. No. No. It's not thicker. It is two.
Jason Aten:Literally, look at the difference. Look at the difference.
Stephen Robles:Going to carry an extra battery, that is not that big of a difference to throw it in a bag. It is not that big of a deal.
Jason Aten:It's two. No. I mean, I have both of them. But
Stephen Robles:See? Okay. But listen. Faster charging doesn't get as hot, more capacity. The Anker Chi two is a better option.
Stephen Robles:If you're bringing up batteries because you need to charge stuff and then the native one gets warm. Have you actually used the native one? Like
Jason Aten:All the time. I use it all the time.
Stephen Robles:Doesn't it get warm?
Jason Aten:It's fantastic. It's made out of metal. When it gets warm, it's because it's it's cooling. It's because it's the it's like in it's
Stephen Robles:conductive cooling. No. Call BS. No. I guess No.
Jason Aten:I don't know what I don't know what I just said, but my point is, like, no. It gets warm. Stand by the this I mean, I I love this Anchor one.
Stephen Robles:It's great.
Jason Aten:But it is literally, like, the weight of three of them.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay. That I actually so there's someone at the conference here from Apple, and he was using the Apple MagSafe battery pack still.
Jason Aten:Look at how look how lit.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's thin. It's just it gets hot, barely any capacity, and charges glacially slow. No problem. Anyway, this guy from Apple, he had the Apple MagSafe battery pack, and I was like, bro, it's lightning.
Stephen Robles:It charges slow. And I and I said, get the Anker one. He was like, no. I don't wanna do that. I wanna use the Apples.
Stephen Robles:And he was like, if this one runs out, I have a second one. He had two Apple MagSafe battery packs in his pocket so he could keep his phone charged. I'm like, if you're gonna carry two of those, now you've you've totally undid the whole weight and thickness argument. What are you even holding up? What is that?
Stephen Robles:Oh, the
Jason Aten:It's perfect. This is perfect.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Okay. He's all this is the nomad, like, the tiny USB c cable thing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't even know what it's called.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But
Jason Aten:do keep it in there.
Stephen Robles:It's the emergency
Jason Aten:cable is what it is.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I mean, yeah. Sure. It could is that how you do it, though? Or do you know me?
Jason Aten:I've never done that in my life except for right
Stephen Robles:now. So
Jason Aten:But, also, I don't care how fast it's charging because I'm not playing video games on my phone while I'm traveling trying to, like, keep this thing. Like, my phone it charges my phone faster than my charge is depleting. That's all it needs to do.
Stephen Robles:It's fair, but it's yeah.
Jason Aten:That's That's literally the only thing I need a battery charger to do, and I would much rather have the slim because I wanna be able to, like I I hate the idea of taking this and putting this into my pocket.
Stephen Robles:Sure. Okay. That's fine.
Jason Aten:So the the for the use case that I'm using, I wanna just be like, okay. Shoot. I need to slap a battery on this because I've been traveling all day, and I just need to be to get to the hotel room. So I'm gonna put this on there and not have to even think about it or worry about it. Or I frequently will use this, like, if I'm at a kid's sporting thing and I'm taking video, which does, like Yeah.
Jason Aten:It kills your the battery mostly because your screen is on. Right. Like, it's the video itself is fine, but it's, like, the screen being on. And if you're outdoors, you have to have your screen at full brightness. Right.
Jason Aten:So I can put this thing on there. And, essentially, like, if my phone is at 40%, it'll just stay at 40% for the rest of the day.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, and that's that's exactly what I want. I just got, like, three hours of 40%.
Stephen Robles:Sure. Well, when your readers start emailing you saying, my this battery burned a hole in my pocket, you let me know.
Jason Aten:It's not that's
Stephen Robles:It doesn't get that hot. It gets warm, though. That that was the only one I would take issue with. And I get if you want something thin, I guess. But
Jason Aten:Well, no. And listen. I this is a great battery pack. I love it. And the only thing I would've I wanted to put on there, but it's not really a travel accessory.
Jason Aten:Hang on.
Stephen Robles:Jason's reaching around is
Jason Aten:This one's better. This anchor one is much, much, much better because this is the one that's part of this two in one charger that I have on my desk.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:And it is it is comparatively it's probably the same thinness as the as the MagSafe one, and it's just a little taller.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:Right? But compare like, it's if you just I I hesitate to put these things back to back to
Stephen Robles:back because I know you gotta make sure these
Jason Aten:I mean, they're magnets, but, anyway, like, when you compare those things
Stephen Robles:The thick.
Jason Aten:I I is probably my but you I don't think you can just buy this. That's why it
Stephen Robles:comes with the two in one charger.
Jason Aten:Yeah. This the Anker does
Stephen Robles:have a standalone that they sell directly through Apple that's like that, but it's it's not as good. Like, it's five thousand million hours. It gets really hot. I did a review on it. It's not good.
Stephen Robles:But anyway
Jason Aten:This one is really good. This is probably actually what I would would recommend, and then you can just put it on your desk when you're sitting at your desk. So
Stephen Robles:Alright. Well, I guess it's fine. I don't, I like recommending ones that that are good.
Jason Aten:And just to be clear, I don't not recommend this one.
Stephen Robles:Right. I got you.
Jason Aten:I love it. And if I'm traveling for a long time, I'll probably just take them both. But the nice thing about this this Native Union one is I'm willing to compromise a little bit of charging speed for the light, like the super lightweight and small form factor. Cause if I'm traveling, that's what I care about.
Stephen Robles:Very good. Okay. That's all. That's all I wanted to bother you about. It's just the battery.
Jason Aten:I gotta go back
Stephen Robles:and your stuff.
Jason Aten:Photos and links.
Stephen Robles:Link your stuff.
Jason Aten:Link your stuff. Stuff.
Stephen Robles:You should do you should do affiliate links. Let's do affiliate links. I I I Oh, you can't, but you can't. No. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I I I don't know if Inc has affiliate links for some things, but I
Stephen Robles:I'll send you my affiliate links. You can put them in your article. How about that?
Jason Aten:I don't know that that will work either.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Don't do that. Alright. We're gonna go record a bonus episode about how we back up our photos. And so if you'd like to listen to that, you go to primarytech.fm, click bonus episodes, and you could support the show.
Stephen Robles:You get ad free version and all the back catalog of bonus episodes and new ones, and you get video both ways. I've been doing member video, so I'll cut out the ads for video and a member, episode video. So if you want those, you get all the video stuff. But I appreciate a five star review in Apple Podcast as well. We have another one star one to overcome.
Stephen Robles:Hopefully, this episode doesn't garner yet another one star, but it's okay because we we gotta talk about this stuff. So, anyway, leave us a five star rating review in Apple Podcast. We'd appreciate your support for the show directly on Apple Podcast. You can subscribe there as well. And thank you for listening.
Stephen Robles:Thank you for watching. I'll be back in the studio next week not having to hold this microphone and cramp my hand. See you next time.
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