iPhone 17 Pro Leak, 15 Years of iPad, Shopify Requiring Staff to Use AI, How Tariffs Will Affect Apple Pricing
Download MP3That will be $1,500,000, please. I'll take cash, check, or transfer. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We might have an iPhone 17 case revealing the new body style, and the Instagram app might finally be coming to iPad, a bunch of AI news where the Shopify CEO doesn't wanna hire if AI can do the job, plus news on tariffs, how that's affecting tech products. And we're gonna choose our most nostalgic Microsoft products because they celebrated their fiftieth birthday recently.
Stephen Robles:This episode is brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, wearing a little shirt here in case you recognize it if you're watching on YouTube. And I'm joined by Jason A10. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:Good. Is that your Matrix t shirt?
Stephen Robles:No. It is not, Jason. This is the sever this is the the macro data refinement. Mic the my the micro refine anyway.
Jason Aten:There's numbers on his shirt. That's all you need
Stephen Robles:to There's numbers on my shirt. If you watch Severance, get it. It's from, you know, Base Cap guy. He's got the shirt. It's a friend of the show.
Stephen Robles:Do you know the quote? You know the quote from the beginning of this episode? That will be $1,500,000, please. I'll take it in cash, check, or a transfer. I'm not greedy.
Stephen Robles:I just want my half. Mhmm. This is a tough one. I'll try to do something that might be related to, like
Jason Aten:That's an old movie.
Stephen Robles:An old movie. Nineteen eighty eight.
Jason Aten:Rain Man.
Stephen Robles:Oh my goodness.
Jason Aten:You said 1988. That gave it away.
Stephen Robles:That gave it away?
Jason Aten:Well, it's that old. I wasn't thinking it was that old.
Stephen Robles:Like Just the release here.
Jason Aten:It's Charlie Baker. Right?
Stephen Robles:That, Charlie Babbitt, apparently. Babbitt. Babbitt. Yeah. But that's pretty good.
Jason Aten:I could've written it.
Stephen Robles:Nineteen eighty eight gave you Rain Man. That's pretty impressive. Okay.
Jason Aten:I I'm I'm a savant, man. Listen. I'm a movie I'm a movie's Rain Man.
Stephen Robles:Listen. Gotta have eight fish sticks. Can't have four fish sticks. You know what I mean?
Jason Aten:Got it.
Stephen Robles:That's yeah. You gotta see the movie. Anyway, we do a five star rating and review shout outs on this show. And Jason and I, we had a pre pre episode discussion. I thought about moving it later in the show because if you're a brand new listener, you might be wondering who are all these people that they're talking about.
Stephen Robles:But I decided we decided. No. We wanna keep it on the top of the show because these are the people who love the show, gave us a five star rating. And so we have chapters both on YouTube and listening. And if you wanna jump to, like, the first topic being Apple, you can use the chapters.
Stephen Robles:But we wanna give shout outs to everyone who left us a five star rating and review, and there's a ton all around the world. Tech guy UK Seventy Eight, battery percentage on. He said there's no debate, which I disagree. I think there's a debate, but that's okay. Cottard Crank from The UK, battery percentage off, said Apple Pencil fell off and disappeared but used to point to the left.
Jason Aten:I mean, if he'd put it the other way, it'd be fine. He probably still don't where
Stephen Robles:it is. No. No. No. He was you know?
Stephen Robles:Lymphio Muebels from USA. Carmela's Jewelry from The USA. A lady tech enthusiast, which super fun to hear from. She says I love their banter and always learn something new. Thank you for that.
Stephen Robles:J b fifty one fifty from The USA, their tech favorite or the best tech podcast according to them. Keaton from The USA, they said I won't even knock off a star for unbiased reporting of relevant political news. Just throwing out there as a subtweet for everybody else. Andrew from Australia, R S G Five Twenty Six from The USA, Inman Thirty Three X from The USA. Let's all keep the battery percentage off.
Stephen Robles:I agree. And pretend we wear Vision Pro every day. Jason, you still wear Vision Pro every morning?
Jason Aten:I slipped a little bit, but almost. I mean, I still use it most days, and I'm not using it on the weekends anymore.
Stephen Robles:Not on the weekends.
Jason Aten:Mostly because I'm trying to do less work on the weekends.
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. Fair. Oh, fair enough. Because it's a it's a work device for you. It's where you do your research.
Stephen Robles:It
Jason Aten:it is. I don't, like, I don't do things like watch, you know, television shows and stuff. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. I still wear it at least once or twice a month. But I did wear it when I was traveling last week to Podcast Movin', and we're gonna talk about that in a second.
Stephen Robles:And one old tech shout out. This is from Christopher Erickson over in, I believe, Sweden. Forgive me. He taught me how to say from IKEA. But he found some old Apple tech in his attic.
Stephen Robles:These pictures look like it might be from a horror movie. I don't know.
Jason Aten:It does seem terrifying.
Stephen Robles:It there's a super old phone, some sauce. But that's a what I what Mac is that? The g three? The little
Jason Aten:That's the that is the iMac. Yeah. No. That's the g four iMac.
Stephen Robles:G four iMac. The g four iMac, he's got that in his attic. Also has even older the layer of dust on this one is impressive.
Jason Aten:Wow. I can't even see what the yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's don't even know that is. I can't even see it. But the back says it's the Apple display, CRT display. And then, look at this. The Macintosh Performa
Jason Aten:6,300.
Stephen Robles:Performa 6,300. Got that in his attic. Man, you should try to plug those in, Christopher, and see if they still work.
Jason Aten:You should blow out all of that insulation first, though. Like, that picture is that thing is there's a lot of stuff in there that could catch fire if you if you light that up right now.
Stephen Robles:I'm just telling you. That's right. Clear it out first. We'll put the I'll put the picture in the chapter or two because that's pretty cool. But thank you for that.
Stephen Robles:Share with us your old tech if you want. You can do that in our community, social.primarytech.fm, or email us. Also, have an announcement. This is a little housekeeping. No.
Stephen Robles:I mean, Jason, he's acting surprised. He already knows. Was at podcast movement, and I heard from multiple people that listeners of shows, they, you know, may they might be listening in their car. They might not be able to click the links of the articles that we're talking about. And so some people like to receive the show notes via email.
Stephen Robles:So I set up a newsletter. I set up an email. And so this is gonna be the top link in the show notes. If you wanna sign up with your email, you're gonna get exactly one email a week, and it's just the show notes, but in your email. And so if you want the show notes in your email, so you can click the links or refer to the articles that we talked about and then we showed here on YouTube, you could sign up.
Stephen Robles:And, it's it's just automated. It just takes the RSS feed episode notes, and it sends it to you. And there you go. You can do that.
Jason Aten:Does it include the links to actually listen to it? Like, what if I just wanted to use the email to tell me when the show has published, will it have a link to open it in podcast or Spotify or wherever?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So it has a link where if you tap, like, the title, it'll take you, I believe, to, like, primarytech.fm, and then you can click your podcast player. But I'll I'll put I'll put a couple other links to, to to things there too.
Jason Aten:But Good stuff.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And I'm not automatically moving anybody over. So, like, if you're in our community and you want the newsletter, please sign up separately because I don't wanna I don't wanna move people over. You know what I mean? That feels a little shady.
Stephen Robles:Shady.
Jason Aten:Aggressive.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Feels a little aggressive. Alright. Let's start out with some quick Apple news. First of I wanted to share this story, which was a video that Apple posted on their YouTube channel.
Stephen Robles:But it was a survivor who used the emergency SOS on Apple Watch. Did you see this video?
Jason Aten:I'm I'm watching it right now. Okay.
Stephen Robles:No. I did
Jason Aten:not see it before here.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Great.
Jason Aten:But it's from Apple Australia.
Stephen Robles:Apple Australian. So this was a swimmer off the coast of Australia who apparently was pulled out to sea, couldn't even see land anymore, and used the emergency SOS on his Apple Watch Ultra to call emergency services. And he was rescued out there. It seems like without Apple Watch, he would not have survived this. And so Apple tell stories like this periodically, especially, like, during their big events like Dub Dub.
Stephen Robles:Pretty amazing. SOS from the Apple Watch. I have get my cellular back up on my Apple Watch because AT and T, like, screwed up my plans, which that would be the story where Apple Watch Ultra may save you, but AT and T is gonna screw you over. I'm not sure. But yeah.
Stephen Robles:Wild, to hear about some of those survival stories. That's Apple Watch Ultra. And then I wanna talk briefly about Apple TV plus and Apple Vision Pro, which I heard you started watching the studio. I knew Apple was originally.
Jason Aten:I did.
Stephen Robles:It was a great show.
Jason Aten:That.
Stephen Robles:And I don't know if you saw this quote from Seth Rogen, but he did an interview with Variety. Seth Rogen, he's starring in the studio. I think he's also, like, executive producer of it. But the premise is like it's a what is it? A parody?
Jason Aten:It's a Hollywood satire.
Stephen Robles:It's a Hollywood satire about, like, a a movie executive.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But he's a movie executive. He's running an industry. He's dealing with the, I guess, the existential question of, like, do you make money do you make movies that make money, or do you make movies that win awards, and can you do both and whatever.
Stephen Robles:So hilarious show, if you haven't seen it. But this quote, apparently, when Seth Rogen was pitching this to Apple, it was clear that he was gonna need a lot of cameos, which if you don't know, Martin Scorsese is in the first episode, Charlize Theron, director gladiator director? What's his name? Ron Howard. Wait.
Stephen Robles:No. That was Ridley Scott. But anyway, Ron Howard is in episode three. And so there's, like, a ton of cameos. And Apple was like, you'll never be able to get all the cameos you need to make that show.
Stephen Robles:Apparently, they told Seth Rogen that. And Seth Rogen said, oh, we need to prove these MFers wrong. So I thought that was hilarious. And it's it's a good show, so you should watch that. But while I was traveling last week, I watched a bunch of Apple TV plus.
Stephen Robles:I watched Shrinking, which you have mentioned. And I did watch a lot of it in my Apple Vision Pro because I was in a hotel room. And I just have to say, and if Zach Khan is listening from Apple or anyone on the Apple Vision Pro team, there's one flaw to the Apple Vision Pro that I don't know how to get around. And that's if you're watching the shrinking show and you start crying, the Apple Vision Pro is just all wet, and I don't know what to do about that. Have you ever had that problem?
Stephen Robles:You don't you don't cry probably ever.
Jason Aten:Not in my Vision Pro. I do not.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I don't know what to do about that, but it gets wet.
Jason Aten:Well, actually, that's not true because I have really bad spring allergies, and the other day I was using it, and I realized I just couldn't see anything, and I'm, like, pulling the lenses out, trying to, like, clean them off and stuff, and I realized, nope. Just my eyes. My eyes are just full of allergies right now.
Stephen Robles:Just full of that.
Jason Aten:I did have that experience, but
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So that's the only thing about Vision Pro. But I enjoyed watching that in the studio in there. And, of course, the Severance finale. I like I've watched little clips of it again, but anyway.
Stephen Robles:Alright. I'll stop talking about Severance.
Jason Aten:No. It's good.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. We should we still have to debate the finale sometime. Maybe by the time season three comes out. Two other quick Apple things.
Stephen Robles:A supposed case for the iPhone 17 Pro has leaked. This is from leaker, Sonny Dixon. I'm gonna put this link to the Mac rumors article. It looks like a clear case for the new iPhone 17 Pro with the big camera cutout that you might have been seeing around the Internet where it just looks like a huge bar. Apparently, that's the case is just another piece of information that points to met might be what it looks like.
Stephen Robles:And I still don't know how I feel about it, Jason.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean
Stephen Robles:Don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of feelings there, but I do have a question. Uh-huh. What I we talked about this a little bit. I think we're probably gonna talk about this every year.
Jason Aten:But why do you think anyone cares?
Stephen Robles:About the camera bump?
Jason Aten:Just in general about whether the new iPhone's going to look like, won't we know? Like, in September, we'll know if it looks different. Why like, I just I wonder why, like, why anyone cares.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I mean, it's just the intrigue. People like
Jason Aten:It's just interesting.
Stephen Robles:Knowing what's happening.
Jason Aten:No one left to buy iPhone seventeens because apparently they're buying all of the iPhone sixteens in the world right now. I got like, no kidding. I I I posted this, but on Monday, I think it was, or maybe it was Tuesday, I got no less than six people texting me and they're like, which iPhone should I buy today?
Stephen Robles:Really? Yes. Real people doing it.
Jason Aten:Just it one day one day. Hey. Somebody would text me about some other random thing, and they're like, while I have you, if hypothetically I was buying an iPhone today, what should I buy? I'm like, why are you buying it today? Well, it's gonna be $1,200 tomorrow and then a thousand you know, $2,500 a day after that.
Jason Aten:So, yeah, people are buying them.
Stephen Robles:That's interesting. One, there was a think it wasn't there a spike in Apple stock because of the that everybody's, like, rushing to the stores?
Jason Aten:Well, no. There was a spike yesterday in a lot of stocks because most of the reciprocal tariffs were paused.
Stephen Robles:Right. We're We're gonna get to We have a whole we have a whole tariff section.
Jason Aten:You asked the question.
Stephen Robles:I know.
Jason Aten:Know. I know.
Stephen Robles:Right. You're right. But, yeah, tariffs come later. But so iPhone 17, I don't know. We'll see.
Stephen Robles:If the camera's way better, I mean, we'll we'll see. Instagram app finally might be coming to iPad, by the way. And this is reported by The Information, which shows you absolutely 0% of their article. Just shows you the the headline. So there you go.
Stephen Robles:But I wanted to mention here, did you know, Jason, the iPad is 15 years old?
Jason Aten:Do you mean Instagram is 15 years old?
Stephen Robles:No. The iPad.
Jason Aten:Oh, the iPad. Well, also Instagram. Right? They're both 15.
Stephen Robles:Oh, is it? Oh, okay. That makes sense.
Jason Aten:Because the Instagram launched in 2010. But
Stephen Robles:Oh, they're both
Jason Aten:That is that is kinda crazy.
Stephen Robles:The iPad was announced by Jobs in January 2010, went on sale April 2010. So right just this month, I turned 15 years old, which is
Jason Aten:So it's kinda crazy because these two things were meant to be together. Literally. They were connected at birth.
Stephen Robles:Ish. Definitely ish.
Jason Aten:And they never have coexisted together. This but here's actually why this is interesting that Instagram is actually working on because this is what happens when you have just even the littlest amount of competitive pressure. You like, in if you have just watched Instagram over the last eighteen months with threads and with all of the video stuff and with the follow the following feeds and all of those different things, it is what happens when you have TikTok or you have whatever. Like, you have some kind of competitive pressure. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Also my Instagram account is messed up. That's another story.
Jason Aten:That's an evergreen statement right there.
Stephen Robles:Well, that's it's messed up for a variety of reasons, but I got supposedly early access to the edits app, which is Instagram's, like it's gonna be, like, cap cut competitive.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's it's doing its best to to compete. But I wanted to ask you about the iPad being 15 old. Did you get an original iPad that that launch year? Do you remember?
Jason Aten:Well, I don't remember when the first iPad that I got was. I think it was probably the garbage one, which I think wasn't the the three.
Stephen Robles:The three.
Jason Aten:And then I think I quickly got an iPad four. So I don't remember. Gosh. Could I even find out?
Stephen Robles:I still have my iPad two. It can still turn on if I charge it. And and it went through every one of my kids throughout all the years. That one, I saw my iPad two. I had an original iPad, the cellular version, actually, but I I think I sold it because I don't have it anymore.
Stephen Robles:When it came out, I was working at a job where I was doing music stuff, and I so wanted it for digital sheet music. And that was my original use case for the iPad and the FourScore app, which was one of the earliest apps that you can get on iPad. It was an incredible app. I still use it today. My wife uses it when she's practicing flute.
Stephen Robles:It was amazing. But, yeah, I I remember, I think I'm pretty sure I had it that year, not at launch, but later that year. And then I think I had pretty much every model after that. The iPad three, like you said, it was the first one with a retina screen, but it was, like, underpowered to support the retina screen. So it would get hot and it was slow.
Stephen Robles:And it still had the 30 pin connector. And then the iPad four, again, retina screen, but they updated the processor and gave it a lightning connector. And that was really the the better one to get rather than the three.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So I just found my receipt for my iPad with Wi Fi plus cellular for Verizon thirty two gigs black third generation.
Stephen Robles:Third generation. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Which I don't know for sure that I never like, that I didn't have one before that. It's you know what I mean? Like, I don't know what that is. Talk about a wave of nostalgia. I literally just went into my mail app because that is still the best one for searching for things, which is surprising if it's iCloud.
Jason Aten:But I typed in apple.com and just scrolled back as far as I could go and wow. Just so many old, like, Apple store shipment notifications for old like, all this stuff. And I'm just like Yeah. So I'm gonna be busy for the next just carry on without me for a minute if you don't mind.
Stephen Robles:Do remember do you remember your very first Apple product?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a MacBook Pro.
Stephen Robles:Do you remember, like, the year?
Jason Aten:Yeah. It was the titanium MacBook Pro. It was an 800 megahertz with a with a super drive.
Stephen Robles:Wait. MacBook Pro or PowerBook?
Jason Aten:PowerBook. Sorry.
Stephen Robles:Oh, it was PowerBook. Okay.
Jason Aten:It's not a MacBook Pro. It was PowerBook. Yeah. The the TI book.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And it was, like, 02/2002 or '3 maybe?
Jason Aten:That was, like, that would have been a little bit earlier than that one. Earlier? Because I think '20 02/2003, they came out with the
Stephen Robles:The g four. Right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, it was a g four.
Stephen Robles:Oh, what?
Jason Aten:Hold on. Yeah. TI book release date. I thought it was more like 02/2001.
Stephen Robles:But Oh, okay. It might be. I remember my first Apple product was an iPod video, which I got in 02/2005. And then later that year, I got my first Mac, which was the g four twelve inch PowerBook. And so I know g 04/2005, I know that coincides.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The Titanium PowerBook was introduced in January of twenty 02/2001.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:And I don't know if I bought I don't know if those ones had the super drive or not, but I when I got one, it was with the super drive. Gotcha. So it's probably 02/2001 or 2,002, and I believe I got an iPodge right around that time, but I don't I don't remember exactly.
Stephen Robles:Like the first. The first. Have a 02/2001. That was a
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm gonna find this. Somewhere out there is my Titanium PowerBook g four. I'm gonna find it.
Stephen Robles:I I can't even talk about it because I sold my g four twelve inch PowerBook, and I still I regret it to this day, Jason. To this day. Alright. That's enough nostalgia. We'll get nostalgic about Microsoft in a little bit.
Stephen Robles:But let's talk about some AI news. The one I find fascinating is this Shopify CEO, Tobias Lutke. He actually had an internal memo leak that he sent to the Shopify staff, basically saying, don't hire unless if AI can't do the job, basically. And so they had several stipulations in this internal memo, and I'm I'm curious your thoughts on it. But this also feels like in the age of AI, this is what more and more leaders and companies are probably gonna do.
Stephen Robles:And so the four main points, he says AI proficiency is now mandatory when working at Shopify. That using AI effectively is no longer optional. It is a baseline expectation for all employees regardless of role. This marks a significant cultural shift. So everyone has to be proficient at using AI, which I'm curious how they measure that too.
Stephen Robles:Like, can you type in the chat GPT box? Or Right. And do you actually meme. Yeah. Guess, can you actually integrate it into your workflow?
Stephen Robles:Which, again, like, I don't know how you gauge that or if it's, a good integration. But anyway Yeah.
Jason Aten:I just don't know what that means because, like, I think about all the things I use AI for, and it's usually like, tell me about this thing that just happened, or I can't figure out how to loosen this, like, bolt on my sink. Whatever. That's a bad idea. But, like, you know I mean? Like, some kind of thing.
Jason Aten:Like, I when I looked and I definitely use it for work, but I also don't work at Shopify. And I guess maybe there's a lot of code completion type stuff, but Oh, sure. It is a weird, like, you have to be proficient in AI. Okay. Like, again, what does that mean?
Jason Aten:Do I have to be capable of creating an AI tool or do I just have to know how to type things into g iGPT?
Stephen Robles:You need to build and train a model on your laptop or you're fired.
Jason Aten:I'm on it.
Stephen Robles:That's one. Two, non use of AI requires justification. So employees must demonstrate why AI cannot be used before requesting additional resources like staff or time. That's pretty heavy.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Again, what does that mean? Is that like, I wanted to hire an engineer, and I can't just use whatever Chat you a team. To do that or something? Like, that's what I don't understand.
Stephen Robles:I guess I mean, if if someone on a team wanted to hire, like you're saying, a developer, I guess they have to prove that ChatGPT can't do it, which seems like it'd be really tough because ChatGPT will give you a bunch of code, but you actually have to, like, spend a lot of time to make sure it actually works and maybe even fix the bugs. Anyway, AI and product development. AI must be integrated into the early stages of all projects, basically. And then fourth, performance accountability. Shopify is adding AI usage to its performance and peer review criteria, making AI adoption part of how employees are evaluated and rewarded.
Stephen Robles:So, I mean, that's going all in. Like, this this guy obviously believes, like, AI is the answer to all these things. I'm curious your feeling. It that that that feels a little too much too soon. Like, yeah, AI can do some things, and it can maybe speed up some workflows, and you can use it in here and there.
Stephen Robles:That feels like too far too soon. Right? Like, this to Well this hard?
Jason Aten:What it really feels like is, what what do you mean? Like, if it it's kind of a all of those are is this just marketing speak? Right? But it no. Because it's an internal audience.
Jason Aten:And so it's not just like, it makes sense when you hear companies just randomly throw AI into the middle of sentences when they're talking to investors and stuff. You know? It's like, we just had the best AI quarter we've ever had. Like
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:What does that even mean? Right? But this is not that. This is for for an internal audience. And it it feels very abstract, and I'm not really sure.
Jason Aten:Because, again, I'm just thinking about all the tool. And, granted, maybe there's just, like, a lot of AI tools that you and I are not familiar with because we're not but imagine if your boss said to you, it's mandatory for you to use AI in your job. What does that mean? Like, okay. Fine.
Jason Aten:I have to get transcripts out of, like, videos? Like, okay. Fine. I was gonna do that anyway because I don't really wanna sit there and listen to it and collect the whole thing.
Stephen Robles:If I generate my Slack profile picture with ChatGPT, does that count?
Jason Aten:I mean but it's like you I could understand if your boss is like, no. You can't hire someone to listen to your videos and transcribes them to just use an AI tool, but it feels like that's not what this is. This this is something because you don't have to tell people that. Like, people will take the path of least resistance. We'll do that anyway.
Stephen Robles:Well, also, the one, like, AI must be integrated into the early stages, even prototype phase of projects. That feels like, I don't know, like, one of the core competencies competencies of humans versus AI, I would think, is like genuine originality and creativity since AI literally has to be trained on things rather than you know, everything that AI does is based on something else. It's been trained on content. And so to be integrated in the early stages, I'm like, isn't that I don't know.
Jason Aten:But, also, is that just take the brief description of the product feature you want and plug it into ChatGPT and say, what should I call this? Like, is that integrating it in the early phase? Because, honestly, ChatGPT is great at that.
Stephen Robles:Right? Sure. Sure.
Jason Aten:It's great at giving you a list of here's 30 things. I can then look at one of them and be like, you know what? I that's interesting. Let me iterate on that or something like that. So it's it is good.
Jason Aten:It's like, Chad what ChadGPT, I find, is really good at is getting you from blank sheet of paper to something's on the paper that I can do something with, not like the the thing is done. Right? But it Right. The worst phase for anyone creative is blank sheet of paper. Like, you can imagine, like, okay.
Jason Aten:I need to do some videos. Let me generate some ideas based on whatever.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:That that's useful. But again, you don't have to tell people to do that. Like, we will do the thing that makes my job easier automatically. No questions asked.
Stephen Robles:Right. I do think you know, it's funny because there are many other industries and jobs where there's great resistance to it. I think where I was in an environment, like an educational type environment, and the use of AI by students was being policed. Students were not allowed to use Chateappete to do some of their assignments or write papers, which I understand. If the assignment is to write a paper and you ask Chateappete to write it, you didn't do the assignment.
Stephen Robles:But I think to resist the AI tools, especially in an educational environment, I think you're doing a disservice to those students because they're gonna be entering a world like this Shopify CEO, but even even other companies like where you will be at a disadvantage if you can't use AI or if you don't know how to integrate it. So I do think there's value in figuring out, like, where it fits, but to enforce it like Shopify is doing it, that's fascinating. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Well, and the interesting thing, just wanna touch on that because I think that's actually a really important point. And I think I told the story on this podcast, maybe on the maybe on our bonus episode about my son who
Stephen Robles:Alright.
Jason Aten:Literally just typed a question into chat GPT and turned it in. And the teacher was like and he's 10. And the teacher's like, this is really, really good. This is a little bit too good for a fifth grader. And he just asked him.
Jason Aten:He's like, so? And my son just admitted it right away. And we had to have a little talk about it, but but the the reason that it was obvious to the teacher of what had happened is that my son just knew that if he typed a thing into, it would spit out an answer. He doesn't know anything about how to evaluate that answer. Like, that is still the value, and I think that's why schools push back on it because knowing how to use the tool is great.
Jason Aten:But the reason that AI these AI tools are useful to you and I is that we have thirty or forty years of experience judging reality. So when it gives us something, we either, a, know, yeah, that's not quite right. Or, you know, like, I remember recently somebody asked a question about, like, why was Steve Jobs fired the first time from Apple? And I'm like, I I pretty much know the answer, but let me see what Chad GPT says. And it and Chad GPT gave me the answer back that Steve Jobs left Apple to go become the CEO of Pepsi, which conflates the fact that Steve Jobs had hired John Scully who had been at Pepsi to become the CEO of Apple.
Jason Aten:Wow. And I'm like but imagine if my 10 year old is like, all I know is that if I ask ChadJPT a question, it'll tell me something. But I'm have a lot of experience with Apple, and I'm like, nope. Steve Jobs, never the CEO of Pepsi. Pretty sure that Right.
Stephen Robles:Not happen.
Jason Aten:But it but that's that's an important piece of it. And so learning how to learn is important so that you can then evaluate the garbage that comes out of all these chatbots.
Stephen Robles:Learning how to learn. That's deep, Jason. I'll also say so one of my use cases for ChatGPT is every time I make a video, I transcribe it. I give that to ChatGPT, and I ask it for title and description ideas for YouTube. And I've been doing, like, best apps or whatever for this and that and best whatever.
Stephen Robles:And the last couple weeks, it's basically been saying the best apps of 2024. I could refuse to say 2025. And I don't know. Like, surely it knows what year it is, but for some reason, it's not. Like, it's it's stuck in last year.
Stephen Robles:It's almost like it's funny. It's like the human brain. Once the year changes, it takes you a couple months to think about it.
Jason Aten:So It's writing checks. It's writing the data on checks out of the checkbook, and it's, like, still updating them the wrong thing.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. So I don't know. Maybe it's becoming more human. Maybe maybe it's becoming more human. I don't know.
Stephen Robles:But a couple other AI news. Meta was caught maybe cheating a little bit with their AI model. So Meta has Llama, right now Llama four. And one of the big differences between Llama and the others, like, ChachiBT and the other AI companies, is that Llama is open, and so people can, like, get in there and look at the code. And so Lama being an open platform, it was impressive that in their latest model, it seemed to perform better than ChatGPT four o, I believe, and then the Google's two point o, or I think it was or one or Gemini 2.5 Pro, and it got a higher score.
Stephen Robles:But turns out after people were poking around in the actual model used in the testing, which it's LM Arena, apparently, is where this testing is done. I believe it's probably, like, language model arena. And, apparently, Meta used this experimental model, and it might be the case that Meta has been making models specifically for this testing platform, LM Arena, to make it seem like the models are smarter than they are, just, like, knowing how to tweak the conversational settings to kind of trick it. And so it was a little bit like, is MetaGaming their AI scores? What does that even mean?
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Like, does it matter, like, long term? But but they're doing something shady, which I feel like not not something new for Meta.
Jason Aten:So That part's not surprising. Not surprising. It is weird. I'll just say, like, Llama, it's so interesting that Meta is doing this because I feel like the primary motivation for for Facebook, Meta, whatever, to have its own LLM that it can build on is this idea of, like, instantly targeted personalized ads. Right?
Jason Aten:Being able to show you and I a personalized ad that's like, hey, Jason. You should buy a belt. I'm like, thank you for that. Right? Like, just all of that kind of thing.
Jason Aten:Like, just wait. You know, you and I have talked about this before. Like, you go on to Instagram, you click on a thing, you buy the thing you clicked on, and then for the next week, all you see are ads for the thing that you just bought. I'm like, that's dumb. Just wait till you, like, you suddenly are getting the ads that are like, Jason, we know how much you like belts.
Jason Aten:You should buy another one, and here's the best one we found. Like, that's what's going to happen because we're gonna be able to on demand generate these things. And yet a large part of what Facebook is doing is they're just they're building this open source models that they want other people to build on. And I think, though, the reason for doing that is just to hedge against Gemini, you know, Google and and whatever. They don't they wanna make sure that there's another player out there.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:But, also, like, it doesn't I don't ever hear anyone. Like, I've other than you and I talking about it right now, I've never had a conversation with anyone about Llama or anything that Meta's building. Right? Except for the the fact that people are constantly like, how come when I search for something in Instagram, it automatically tries to give me this AI gen. I was like, I just wanted to re I couldn't remember the person's profile name.
Jason Aten:And all I wanted to do is type it in, and it's like, ask Meta AI or search. And you're just like, what what are you doing?
Stephen Robles:Listen. I'm a tell I I didn't know if
Jason Aten:I was gonna
Stephen Robles:share this story, but I wanna share it because
Jason Aten:I'm so glad.
Stephen Robles:Meta's I don't even know what the lava systems. I'm just upset because Instagram listen. Instagram is, like, my smallest following, so it's not a big deal. But my son, he wanted to start posting on Instagram for reels and skateboard videos and things like that. So I like, okay.
Stephen Robles:Well, let me set this up. And I tried to use the new teen setup feature, which I don't know if you've seen this, Jason, but Instagram now has the you can set it up as a teen, and there's, like, parental controls or whatever. So I was like, okay. Well, let let me do this teen setup and see how this goes. Apparently, somewhere in the process, it asked me if I wanted to add my son's Instagram account into my meta accounts.
Stephen Robles:And I was like, well, I am asked I do want it to be like a child account that I manage. So, yes, let's do that. And once it did that, it apparently like, meta accounts is something different where when I added his Instagram account to mine, it took the birthday of my son's account and made that the birthday for all my Meta accounts. So now my personal Facebook, my personal Instagram, all of it thinks I'm a 15 year old.
Jason Aten:You have discovered the secret to antiaging, Steven.
Stephen Robles:No. But it is also the secret to now my my profile is private, and I can't make it public again without the, quote, unquote, help of a parent. And I'm like, what is happening? And then when I try to change my birthday, it says, well, you recently changed your birthday, and you have to wait a few days to change it again, which this was like four days ago. And so now I'm like stuck, and I'm like approving follower requests in Instagram like an animal because my account is private, and I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna try it again right now. I'm going to my meta
Jason Aten:This might explain why you have the smallest following on Instagram.
Stephen Robles:It says, you've, Leah, you've recently changed your birthday. There's a limit to how many times you change it. So I removed my son's account from my meta accounts thinking, well, maybe it'll snap back to what it was. It didn't, spoiler. And so now I'm still a 15 year old.
Stephen Robles:And then
Jason Aten:I love that you join according to Facebook, according to Instagram, you apparently joined Instagram when you were, like, three and a half months old. Just based on when your birthday was and the date you joined Instagram.
Stephen Robles:And so so I tried contacting support. That was no help. They were like, well, yeah, you changed your birthday recently, so you can't change it back. But I didn't change it. I was just trying to add my son.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, then I tried because we actually have a primary technology Instagram account that's just out there. I don't really post anything to it. But I tried making that my parent to then see if I could change my birthday through that account for the
Jason Aten:You can't just make anyone your parents, Steven. There's like laws of
Stephen Robles:Apparently, primary tech show could not be my parent, and so I wasn't able to do that. So now my Instagram account is stuck in private as a teenager. And anytime it's, like, even close to 10PM, it's like, time to shut down for the night. Instagram.
Jason Aten:Go to bed, Steven. Yeah. I Yeah. I will I'll connect you with somebody who can help you after this.
Stephen Robles:Oh, for real?
Jason Aten:Yeah. For real. Oh, shoot.
Stephen Robles:I didn't realize you had the hookup.
Jason Aten:I'm just saying.
Stephen Robles:You're gonna connect me to llama? Llama four?
Jason Aten:I'm gonna I'm gonna send you directly to a chatbot
Stephen Robles:that will me out?
Jason Aten:Tell you congratulations on your fifteenth birthday, Steven. We're excited for you. No. I'll just, like I think I will just okay. I have had this experience recently not with that.
Jason Aten:Although we do have both of our daughters have teen accounts, and there are some the the most frustrating you think screen time is bad? The most frustrating thing is if we can be like, you get two hours of Instagram a day. I don't care how you use it. I don't want everyone to be bothered by it. Never send me a screen time request.
Jason Aten:Never talk to me about it. Just if you've used two hours on Instagram, I don't wanna hear about it. You're done. Right? Like, whatever.
Jason Aten:Well, there are times when I think at one point, it was like, maybe it's an hour. I can't remember. But there was times when they're we're at a soccer tournament, so she's posting pictures all day or whatever like that. And so, like, she would reach that limit, and so she'd be like, can I just have a little bit more time so I can put together this recap post or something like that? But it doesn't tell you.
Jason Aten:Like, you don't get a notification for that. You have to tap on your notifications, and it will appear at the top of the notifications that so and so has asked you for more time in Instagram. But it actually there's, like, no actual notification for that. So she could just be, like, sitting there, sending the message, and just waiting for me to respond, and I'll never know if she doesn't also text me. It's like, what kind of a weird system is this?
Jason Aten:And Meta makes it so that that whole association of accounts is so Byzantine and so convoluted. I was trying to help an organization create a child, not a child, a like a organizationally child, like a subaccount Right. On Instagram. And if you don't go into the meta accounts and do it that way, they won't be associated, which means you can't connect it via API to certain, like, you know
Stephen Robles:Hosting services and things
Jason Aten:like that. Exactly. Yes. Figuring out how to do that is almost impossible.
Stephen Robles:Right. Exactly.
Jason Aten:It is almost impossible.
Stephen Robles:I it is so busy.
Jason Aten:You have to have a PhD in in D U M B. Bureaucratic comradery. Like, it's just unbelievable.
Stephen Robles:I think it is it is ridiculous. So, anyway, though, I just wanted to vent a little bit because it's all week, my Instagram account's been like, Hey, teenager. I have a full beard and I have three children. You can see my pictures. Anyway, last AI news, and I'll throw it to you.
Stephen Robles:This is about Anthropic. They've they've been trying to upsell you, Jason. Is that right?
Jason Aten:This is true. Yeah. I got an email the other day that said so I I paid for Claude like a lot of people did when it first came out just to try to check it out and that kind of stuff. And Claud is Anthropix chatbot, just like Chachibi Tees, OpenAI's. And at one point so I subscribed to it.
Jason Aten:I think it was $20 a month, and I was like, I'm not gonna I'm not paying for all of these. So I canceled my pro plan with Claud. And I got an email just I guess it was yesterday saying, we noticed that when you left Claude's pro plan, that the reason was that usage limits were probably getting in your way. Like, I didn't tell them that. Right?
Jason Aten:It's like, we noticed that likely it was because usage limits because you could only send so many requests or whatever. Right?
Stephen Robles:Did you actually hit that when you were using it?
Jason Aten:No. I used it twice even. I paid $20 and used the thing twice.
Stephen Robles:You used it. Like, it's
Jason Aten:not usage limits thing. Like, is that we noticed that when you left, the usage limits were likely getting in your way. We've built something new. Introducing the max plan designed for those who need expanded access to Claude for the most important work. Substantially more usage to work with Claude.
Jason Aten:So I canceled my account because I did not want to pay them $20 a month for something I only used twice. And so their solution is I could pay them $200 a month for 20 times more usage even though I never got close to it. So basic they have a $100 a month tier and a $200 a month tier, and I don't really know what that means because the email simply says you get five times more usage or 20 times more usage. 20 times more usage for double the cost does seem like it's a better deal. I don't really understand how the math adds out, but I don't even know more than what.
Jason Aten:Like, what are these limits? At least with, like, ChatGPT, when they said that if you pay the $200 a month plan
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You get this many queries to deep research. Right. Right? You get you know what I mean?
Stephen Robles:Like, It was pretty clear.
Jason Aten:Some sort of a quantity associated with it, so you'd know. But this is just like, no. Five x. This is this is a typical, what I what do they call those? Bezos charts where there's like a line that means absolutely nothing.
Jason Aten:Apple's really good at that too.
Stephen Robles:There's no x or y axis. It's just a curve.
Jason Aten:So it's like, it's more. It's 10 times more efficient than this thing that you don't know what it is. Right. So yeah.
Stephen Robles:That's hilarious. It's amazing these companies. I mean, I guess people are paying for them because for these plans to exist. But also
Jason Aten:That's literally the reason it exists is because, yes, there are people who will pay for it.
Stephen Robles:Can can we also stop calling everything max? Everything is max. I know we already got
Jason Aten:pro There's pro and there's max.
Stephen Robles:Pro and
Jason Aten:there's There's no There's only three adjectives you can use to describe something, and everyone is using them. Gonna integrate. Uses them now. Apple uses them. Claude uses them.
Jason Aten:ChatGPT uses them.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna use AI in my my job right now, Shopify CEO, if you're listening. What are 10 other words for Macs? I'm asking ChatGPT right now. This is how this is how you use AI in your okay. Here's 10 other options.
Stephen Robles:Peak
Jason Aten:Hold on. Before you say any of them
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay.
Jason Aten:You're gonna Steven's gonna explain this to us, and it'll be the perfect example of why they just use the same words over and over.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. These aren't great. Okay. So if you're using max as maximum, other words are peak, limit, top, cap, ceiling, upper bound, extremum, I didn't know those word, Zenith, Apex, and utmost. Now I don't know about you, but iPhone 17 Pro Apex?
Jason Aten:No. It's the 17 Apex ceiling. Oh. That's the zenith.
Stephen Robles:Then maybe yeah. 17 Zenith. Yeah. IPhone 17 Pro utmost. Rolls right off the tongue.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, if you're using Max as a nickname, you should also consider Maximus, Maxwell, Maximilian, Maxi, Mac, Mace, MJ, Max and Max and Mako. I don't know why it gave me all those.
Jason Aten:Because it's a
Stephen Robles:it's a
Jason Aten:name for a person.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Anyway, I'm I'm up for the iPhone 17 Apex. I'm down for that. Let's do it. Let's do it.
Stephen Robles:Chat GPT unmost.
Jason Aten:Let's manifest this as the kids would say.
Stephen Robles:I don't like that word. That's it's like most mass this.
Jason Aten:Also, the when you start this is the thing. When you start to hear your kids say words that are cool among teens that have been around for a very long time and we gave up on saying them because we realized that we just sounded stupid. And now you're like, I'm both old, and I'm completely out of touch.
Stephen Robles:Wait. Like what? Like what?
Jason Aten:Like that. Like, the the kids are like yesterday, we had a our daughter had her first track meet. Yeah. And it was such bad weather, and they got to a point in the meet where my daughter's school was so far ahead of the other two schools that there was no chance that anyone else was gonna beat them. So they're like, should we all just agree that the meet's over?
Jason Aten:And they decided yes. And my daughter walks off the track, she's like, I manifested that. I did not wanna run that 200 meter dash. So I manifested it. I'm like, stop talking right now.
Jason Aten:I love you, but I'm going to leave you here in the rain.
Stephen Robles:Like, what are you, storm from the x men? You can't like, get out
Jason Aten:going on.
Stephen Robles:That's hilarious. Alright. It's time it's tariff time. So listen, if you think saying the word tariffs is political, please use the chapters and skip forward to Microsoft's fiftieth anniversary birthday or whatever. And I will be honest.
Stephen Robles:I was trying to avoid and did not care about tariffs. I tried not to, But then this happened, which even my kids got. Like, oh, we don't like tariffs. It's because the the Nintendo Switch two preorder was supposed to happen earlier this week, and then due to tariffs, Nintendo delayed it. The preorders did not start.
Stephen Robles:I think they did start in other places like The UK. You were able to preorder a Switch. But here in The US, due to tariff concerns and unknowns, you couldn't preorder it. And this alone has made me upset. I wanted to
Jason Aten:order it. And you know who got the worst deal on this?
Stephen Robles:Who's that?
Jason Aten:I believe it's true that Nintendo also paused the preorders in Canada because Canada is very in fact, I can drive to Canada from where I live in, like, an hour and forty minutes.
Stephen Robles:You're very close to it.
Jason Aten:And so I think that they were trying to avoid the fact that suddenly there would be millions of Americans crossing the border into Canada to buy bootleg versions of the Switch two, and then they wouldn't sell any in The US once they you know what I mean? Like, so they had to pause them in Canada as well, which is just insane. So
Stephen Robles:Well, apparently
Jason Aten:this whole thing. Yeah. Go ahead.
Stephen Robles:Apparently, the launch date is still June 5, which we'll see. So but the actual news is tariffs have come and gone. Was you Trump made an announcement about tariffs that were gonna be hitting, like, 10% across everybody and then much higher percentages on certain countries. And then just yesterday, April 9, Trump said on Truth Social that he is putting a ninety day delay on many of the tariffs or a ninety day pause except for China who he doubled down and is tariffing them even more, I believe.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yesterday morning, we woke up and it was a %, and then he just randomly changed it to a 25%.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And then he voided all of the reciprocal tariffs above 10% everywhere else except for China because he says that they're very unfair to the world markets or something like that, which I don't I don't I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So that so that that
Jason Aten:Lack of that China has shown to the world's markets. And world's markets is in capital. And I don't know if you have these in, Florida, but there is actually a store near here called World Market. And I thought and it's mostly imported stuff from around the world. And I read that tweet, and I thought to myself, he's really upset.
Jason Aten:Has he been shopping at World Market or something? Like, what's going on?
Stephen Robles:I did not know that was the thing. But those are just the facts. It's just tariffs has happened and now unhappened, but they're still happening kind of. But the tech angle, this was wild. In order before the delay of the tariffs, and even now, even though it's still affecting China, like, delay did not affect China, and that's where a bunch of Apple devices are still made.
Stephen Robles:Apple is trying to beat the tariff deadlines by just shipping over as many products as it can before they hit so they can be imported and not be charged that tariff. And so there's supposedly all these planes coming over with Apple product freights. But what I thought was interesting, Ryan Jones here on X actually did some back of the napkin math, I believe you call it. And so how much is five planes full of iPhones? And so a seven this is the math he's doing.
Stephen Robles:Seems accurate, at least close. But a seven forty seven freighter, big airplane, carries 300,000 pounds And weight, you know you know, you can't really measure volume. You don't know how they package these things. But weight is something that you can say, well, the plane can only hold this much weight. So what does that mean?
Stephen Robles:A boxed iPhone is point nine pounds, and so that's 350,000 iPhones per plane. And, again, it's probably generous, probably a little less with just how they fit or whatever. And so that's 1,750,000 iPhones that it could ship in five planes. And then he did more math saying there were 224,000,000 iPhones sold last year and then 500,000 a day in quarter two. And so if five planes of iPhones came over from China, that's basically eleven days of inventory for here in The US.
Stephen Robles:And that's just just The US. Eleven Days. That's just Yeah. Wild.
Jason Aten:Well, okay. You said this seems accurate, but what you really mean is, like, yeah, there's numbers, and I don't know what you're talking about. So I'm just gonna assume that this is all correct. But there are some assumptions here. We don't actually know how many iPhones Apple sells in a year.
Jason Aten:We just base it on what we think the average number average sale price is divided by the amount of revenue that they say. Right. We also don't know exactly how much of that revenue would be distributed in different places. So there's that. But the most important thing is I think that this is all just hogwash because if you go back to the report, it's saying that that most of them are items over $3,000.
Jason Aten:They're trying to bring as many things over, especially items those are not iPhones, buddy. MacBook Pros. That thing no. That thing's full of Vision Pros, man. They're getting as many I'm
Stephen Robles:just kidding.
Jason Aten:No. But it's it's it's it but I'm just saying, like, those are not iPhones. Now I'm sure there are iPhones on there. But I think that if you're thinking about what the maximum impact of a tariff is going to be, the the if it's based on the value of the product that comes over, not the retail price as we were Right. As we were reminded, the value of the product, a MacBook Pro, a Mac Studio, even a souped up Mac Mini or whatever is gonna be much more Affect adversely affected by tariffs of a 25% than an iPhone.
Jason Aten:So I think that that's probably there's a lot of assumptions going on, but your point is that it's not that much of a supply that they're able to bring over.
Stephen Robles:Right. Even if the numbers are wildly off, I mean, we're talking weeks of supply, not, like, enough supply to figure out to to outlast this tariff war, which, again, what what is actually gonna happen? What is happening? It seems like again, I'm not a economy expert nor a political expert. Feels a little bit like a game of chicken.
Stephen Robles:Like, who's going to cave first with tariffs as far as, like, China, US, whatever. But I and then the other point is, again, not to be political, but
Jason Aten:it seems know that if you say not to be political, you're just being political? Is it? I'm just kidding, Steven.
Stephen Robles:No. Don't know. Don't know. The only the only point that I will make is the announcements that Trump is making wherever about tariffs, I'm gonna put this one up about TikTok and the ban, these things keep moving. Like, they're just very just clearly moving targets.
Stephen Robles:And I don't think that's one side or the other. It's just clear, like, there's gonna be tariffs, and then now there's a delay of tariffs for ninety days. TikTok is gonna get banned, and now there's a TikTok delay on the ban. And there was even TikTok was supposed to have a buyer by last weekend. That that didn't happen.
Stephen Robles:And so
Jason Aten:And you know and you know why it didn't happen?
Stephen Robles:Was it?
Jason Aten:Because he slapped tariffs on China. They had an agreement apparent this is reporting. They had an agreement in principle, and that but it required the approval of the Chinese government, and they just they weren't they decided they're not they blew the whole thing up by adding those tariffs to China. But going back to the tariffs thing for a second, I and the plane specifically, I think the way to think about those planes is that their dollar cost averaging, this is not we just shipped over the next twelve days of supply early. What this means is we now have twelve days of supply that we can then filter into all of the normal supply chain gonna continue moving.
Jason Aten:The supply chain is not stopping. It's not like Apple has to stop selling phones in twelve days. They're gonna continue doing all of the normal things, but you just bought a bunch extra. You're leveraging against the future cost. And so imagine if you, like, if you thought the price of gas was gonna get more expensive and you just went and bought a bunch of gas, right, that you could fit into as many gas cans as you had Right.
Jason Aten:So that over time, you could be adding that gas as you're continuing to buy gas. So the more expensive gas actually dollar cost average cost
Stephen Robles:you over time.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. And so that, I think, is a better way of thinking of it. That twelve days worth of supply, maybe they're expecting that to last them sixty days, and it brings the overall cost. And, actually, Apple's probably not gonna raise I'm almost sure they're not gonna raise the price of an iPhone in the next sixty days.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So they're just it's mitigating against how much of a hit they might take to their bottom line. Right?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:So I think that's a more important way. And in that perspective, having twelve days, full days of supply that you could spread out over. I mean, I don't know, do the if you do the math, but like you could lower the impact of the tariffs by something like 20%, you know, because twelve days out of 60, that's a big deal for a company like Apple.
Stephen Robles:Right. So I think the real life implication of whatever's happening, like, just like the normal people, there were reports that customers were going to Apple stores trying to buy Apple devices hopefully before, like you're saying, prices are raised. You said you even had people texting you.
Jason Aten:I had six people on Monday or Tuesday asking me, I'm going to the store today. What do I buy?
Stephen Robles:Right. And so to your point, I don't know. Like, the prices are not gonna change in the next sixty days, even if whatever happens with the tariffs. I do think there's probably consideration on the next iPhone lineup come September, and we might see price raises. I have no basis for this, but I feel like even if prices go up, Apple's probably gonna do, like, 1 or $200.
Stephen Robles:I don't think they're gonna do 30 to 40% to, like, one to one cover the tariffs. That just no data just doesn't feel like they would do that. Do you I mean, how do you feel they would do that?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think the more likely scenario is that for every 10% that they increase the tariffs, you're going to get another notification in the settings app to sign up for a service.
Stephen Robles:Every percent.
Jason Aten:You laugh, but you actually know I'm that that what
Stephen Robles:I'm saying
Jason Aten:is a % true.
Stephen Robles:It is it is funny because I have an iPhone 14 here that I'll do betas on, and it's not signed up for anything. There's an iCloud account on it, but it's not there's doesn't pay for Apple One, doesn't pay for any Apple services. And the amount of notifications that I have to, like, clear on that phone about iCloud storage, about News plus, about Fitness plus, about Apple Music, it is pretty wild.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Just this morning, I posted a photo that was in my iPad that said, image creation tools are here. Open image playgrounds. In the settings app, there's an ad to get me to open it. And I and I wrote I'm like, yes.
Jason Aten:I know that it exists. No. I don't ever want to open it on my iPad. The fact that I have not opened it is not that I don't know it's there Right. But that it's a terrible app.
Jason Aten:You don't need to tell me about it. In fact, you just made me think less of you settings app because you told me about this app that I don't wanna use. So but I do think there's I I say that somewhat jokingly, but I actually think it's true that Apple in their in they're doing the math that it is better for us in the long term because we don't think that these tariffs will last forever Right. To absorb some of the costs and continue being able to sell phones because the real money we make on the phones sure. We make 35% margins on it, but the real money we make is the 70% margins on all the services.
Jason Aten:And as long as we can keep getting people to pay for more in app subscriptions where we collect 30¢ for doing basically nothing, the more we can get people to sign up for, you know, iCloud storage because we only give them five gigs of whatever. Like, the more we can get people to sign up for fitness plus and Apple TV plus and all those different types of things, that's better for Apple in the long run because that is their growth engine. And I think that they will protect that at all costs, even if it means eating some of the margin on the hardware.
Stephen Robles:Yes. But I would point out I'll put a link to Jason Snell's last Apple quarterly revenue thing where he has a bunch of charts. IPhone revenue, meaning just the hardware, which is what would be affected by tariffs, is 56% of their revenue. Like Yep. More than half of the company is just iPhone hardware sales.
Stephen Robles:And so if tariffs ate into a significant portion of that, I mean, yeah, they could eat some of it, but that would be, like, a significant hit to their bottom line. And services, while it is a growing portion, it is the second biggest portion of the pie. Literally, the pie that I'm showing here on screen, it's 21%. And so they can push people more towards those, but the iPhone is still far and away such a massive part of their business. I mean, they would have to do something if the margin
Jason Aten:Scroll down scroll down just a little bit farther on that chart. I know this is really good podcasting. Oh, it doesn't show you. Okay. The thing yeah.
Jason Aten:There's that's the interesting piece of it because the when you look at the services, it's yes. It's a much smaller total part of the pie in terms of the revenue that it generates, but the percentage of that's almost all profit. Right? The services revenue is one thing, but the services profit, because the margin on its services is, like, 77%. Just think about it.
Jason Aten:Like, every dollar it collects in App Store commissions is just free money for Apple.
Stephen Robles:Right. Which is a majority of that services revenue, but they are also spending billions of dollars on, like, original content for Apple TV plus.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But you they could spend $10,000,000,000 a year on original content, and that would only be half of what Google gives them for the default search placement. Like, no. I'm serious. I like and that's just free money.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:That's So what I all I'm trying to say is, like, yes. And that totals that total revenue for the iPhone is worldwide, and we're only talking about The US. And so it's a fraction of that, and they could they are going to maintain the price point because that that revenue dollar amount will not change if they keep the price point the same. Their profit is what's going to change. Right.
Jason Aten:And what I'm arguing is that they'd rather take a hit on the iPhone's profit margin. Even if they took a loss on every iPhone that they sold for a short period of time, Apple will be fine. They can afford to do that. They have so much cash on hand. Like, it's just ridiculous.
Jason Aten:That is beneficial to them to keep that services line growing up going up because that services line going up is what keeps their stock price up.
Stephen Robles:And that's what this part of the chart Yeah. On the six colors, that that service is just gradually going up, whereas the product profit graph, it's widely you know?
Jason Aten:Well, that changes be that's the total, which means and then you just notice that every four every I think it's Apple's first quarter, which is our fourth quarter or whatever.
Stephen Robles:It's when Apple comes out.
Jason Aten:It's the yeah. It's well, it's actually the holidays.
Stephen Robles:The holidays.
Jason Aten:Oh, it's really when it's a big deal. And, obviously, they time the iPhone coming out to that. You see it in in total dollars, that profit goes way up because they sell a lot more.
Stephen Robles:They sell a lot more. Yeah. Well, that was good. I I appreciate that that explanation. That was good.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Let's talk about something fun. Microsoft. Microsoft.
Jason Aten:You said fun.
Stephen Robles:Well, listen. Microsoft Microsoft has had some fun things over the years. Microsoft celebrated fifty years. They had a big event with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Sundar Pichai, and they were all no. Satya Nadella.
Stephen Robles:Sorry. Sundar Pichai is Google.
Jason Aten:Pichai is the CTO.
Stephen Robles:Satya Nadella is Microsoft. But they did a big event. Did you listen to that that VergeCast where they played clips from the event?
Jason Aten:I did not listen to Vergecast where they played clips, but I watched a video of the event.
Stephen Robles:Oh, well, Balmer did Balmer did his, like, developers yell again
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Which is what he's famous for. There were also some protesters at the event. I think it was twice protesters actually, like, stood up and started shouting, and they had to be removed. They were actually Microsoft employees, and they've since been fired. That was news just yesterday.
Stephen Robles:So that kinda put a a it tainted the event a little bit. But talking about things Microsoft has made over the years, The Verge has this awesome top 50 things that Microsoft has made, Clippy being number 50, which David Pierce of The Verge was like, was Microsoft just, like, way ahead on AI assistance and just Clippy was too soon? Maybe. Maybe. But there's also a bunch of other things in this list.
Stephen Robles:Some the things that I forgot, some things that, you know, are still great, like the Zune. That was still a cool device. The Surface headphones and just a bunch of other stuff. I didn't realize did Microsoft invent Comic Sans?
Jason Aten:I mean, it's on the Microsoft
Stephen Robles:designer Vincent Canari created Comic Sans in 1944 and was a scourge on society in person.
Jason Aten:'94.
Stephen Robles:Just What? What did I say?
Jason Aten:You said 1944.
Stephen Robles:No. Nineteen ninety Sorry. That's right. Nineteen forty four.
Jason Aten:There were no personal computers, but we were making fun.
Stephen Robles:I had an IBM computer as a kid, and it ran Windows 3.1. And I still remember my dad trying to figure out what to do with MS DOS and how to do c colon forward slash to access the file system. Very fond memories. A couple old Microsoft computer games. Did you ever play commander Keen?
Stephen Robles:You're doing No. King's Quest? You ever play King's Quest?
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah. Like, seven different versions of it. Yes. Fact, you can play those online still. There are, like, emulators online that you can still play.
Stephen Robles:I bet not. I would fall down that rabbit hole so fast. And then do you remember Battletoads? No. Our listeners and viewers, if you remember if you remember Commander Keen or Battletoads, please let me know.
Stephen Robles:And then Starcraft was was big in in high school when we had a Compaq Presario. But I will say
Jason Aten:SimCity? You left out SimCity.
Stephen Robles:I did play SimCity, and I played, like, a weird, like, MLB baseball game, and there was, like, a magic carpet game that came with it. I remember going to, like, Office Depot in Staples and playing the ski game, ski free.
Jason Aten:Ski free. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Ski free on the computers. That was oh, look. And that that's actually in this article. It's number 35. I'll put that as my as maybe second fondest memory because I I played a lot of ski free.
Stephen Robles:And I also remember sometimes it will go to screen saver and it will be password protected. But if you just hard reset the PC by holding the power button, it would start up again without the screensaver or password. So I did that. But I'm actually gonna be nostalgic for Windows Phone because
Jason Aten:Nobody's nostalgic for Windows Phone.
Stephen Robles:No. There are there is nostalgia for Windows Phone because it was an interesting and different operating system, the metro interface, which is still alive in Windows today. But I also think Windows Phone garnered some interesting hardware, like the Lumia series of phones where it had, like, crazy cameras and, you know, cool Windows phones. And the one Windows phone I wanna talk about that I was very nostalgic for and still am, the Dell Venue Pro. Do you remember this phone?
Jason Aten:No. Because no one cares about Windows phones.
Stephen Robles:That's not true. People care about this. I need you, listeners.
Jason Aten:Who are the people?
Stephen Robles:Come to my aid in the community. Who
Jason Aten:cares about this?
Stephen Robles:The podcast. Who does it. I need to know. The Dell Venue Pro ran Windows Phone. It was a slider with a full QWERTY keyboard at the bottom.
Stephen Robles:And I I remember I took this with me on an international trip because I was like, I could just put whatever SIM card in here, and it'd be great. Because I remember I brought this and my iPhone, but the Dell Pro. I don't know what it was about it. I thought this phone was so cool, and I I miss it. And it's another gadget that I'm sorry I sold or gave away or lost.
Stephen Robles:I don't know what happened to it. But the Dell Venue Pro, that's my that's my thing. These are big events. Don't you remember the Windows Phone events where they would announce, like, multiple Windows phones? There was, like, Samsung ones.
Stephen Robles:Like, it was a big deal. Like, they tried to make it a thing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I do. And I also remember when they burned the whole thing down and took a multibillion dollar loss on the Nokia thing because, like Yeah. It was just they yeah. I don't wanna make people mad.
Jason Aten:But I feel like I'm actually not gonna make anyone listening to this mad by saying very few people really care that much about Windows Phone.
Stephen Robles:It's fair, but it was it was a third
Jason Aten:It was interesting.
Stephen Robles:It was interesting.
Jason Aten:It was not good. It was not like, but it was interesting. It was a different take. The design language part of it, fine. It didn't work because Windows doesn't work on a phone.
Jason Aten:Like, it's like, it doesn't Yeah. But I do I do agree that it was interesting, and I also agree that at the time, right, Android Android was not nearly as ubiquitous of an ecosystem of devices as it is today. And so having all of these different sort of like, Microsoft just by its sheer size could get people to make these phones. Right? Right.
Jason Aten:The problem is like the phones were interesting, but the phones themselves weren't necessarily amazing either.
Stephen Robles:They weren't great. The the Nokia Lumia phones were interesting, again, because of the camera and the hardware was pretty slick. This is I'm gonna link this event in the show notes. Remember, if you wanna get this in an email, you could subscribe, and you'll get this in an email tomorrow morning. But this was the Windows Phone seven launch event.
Stephen Robles:And the little live tiles, I don't know. I feel like they they were early. This was like early widgets that were supposedly constantly updating. And I I don't know. I thought it was cool.
Stephen Robles:It was a viable third alternative for, like, iPhone, Android, Windows phone.
Jason Aten:It was an interesting third alternative. It was never viable. Like, it just it was terrible. It died. Like and and the reason is because Microsoft couldn't get it out of its mind that it had to be Windows.
Stephen Robles:Right. And, also, they couldn't get the developer buy in. So, like, you didn't have Instagram or whatever on it for I don't know if you ever did. But, anyway, what are you nostalgic for Microsoft wise?
Jason Aten:I'm not really nostalgic for that many things Microsoft wise, but I do really mean, I don't I don't hate Microsoft. We I didn't have a Mac until February and we were just talking about this. 02/2001, I think it was. I was trying to find my first purchase receipt in my email, and I have a lot of them. Anyway, so I grew up in a household where we had a compact no.
Jason Aten:We had a Packard Bell Yeah. Got it. Desktop computer Yep. In our family room back that's where the we we had this conversation about the family computer. Right?
Jason Aten:We had a family computer. And and, originally, we had it and it ran DOS, and my dad created some kind of a menu and you'd push one and it would boot Windows or whatever. Like, it was like and I can remember getting on the Internet. So a lot of my early computer memories are nostalgic It happened in Windows. I think Windows three point o and then '3 point '1 and then '95 and '98.
Jason Aten:I remember all of those things very, very, very well, but I don't, like, look back and think, oh, I wanna do that again. No. I definitely like, King's King's Quest was a big big part of Arcade and Civilization, Myst, those types of games were a big deal
Stephen Robles:at
Jason Aten:the time. Yes. But I think I think for me, I would I I I had a friend at the time who had a Mac. I don't really know which one it was, an s e two or something like that. Probably, this was in, like, maybe 1987, '8, '9, whatever.
Jason Aten:The Mac was relatively new, and Windows was there was no Windows at the time. Right? Like, well, I don't know when three point o came out, but it it doesn't matter. Yeah. And I was super jealous.
Jason Aten:I was super jealous of that Mac interface and all the stuff that you could do. Yeah. Yeah. And so most of my early Microsoft nostalgia things are jealousy of my friend who had a who had a Macintosh.
Stephen Robles:Windows three point o came out May 1990.
Jason Aten:So it was definitely yeah. I mean
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:That makes about sense.
Stephen Robles:Well, yeah. Descent. You ever played Descent, that game?
Jason Aten:There are probably so many things I forgot
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I know. I know.
Jason Aten:That I've played.
Stephen Robles:I But Yeah. It was a I don't know. I I grew up Windows. You know, I didn't start using Mac until college. So yeah, it a big part.
Stephen Robles:But
Jason Aten:I will say that the Windows XP wallpaper, I'm nostalgic for that.
Stephen Robles:That that's number I
Jason Aten:mean it's I mean it for real.
Stephen Robles:I know. I get it.
Jason Aten:Oh, Microsoft Golf. Microsoft Golf.
Stephen Robles:Oh, Microsoft Golf. There you
Jason Aten:That was probably my favorite game. And that thing was just, it was insane, but it was yeah.
Stephen Robles:The Windows XP wallpaper, it's number 27 on the verge's list. It is amazing how iconic that wallpaper is and just, I don't know, immediately recognizable. Apparently, it's a place. I've also seen people on TikTok go to this hill, can recreate this picture. But also Windows just XP is the operating system.
Stephen Robles:The longevity of that operating system in some places. I remember I went to the optometrist, and this was 2013, '20 '14. And I remember Windows XP was running the computer that was doing it. And I was like, I need to find another optometrist, number one. But number two, like, amazing that it has stood this long.
Jason Aten:So Well, that's what happened with the CrowdStrike. That's why Delta couldn't schedule anyone because the computer system that was running that software was still running like Windows 95. And the the the best part about it is if you're running Windows 11 today and you go into the settings menu and you click on just about anything and it opens another menu and then you click on any of those options, you're probably going to see a Windows 95 window pop Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Exact amazing. Amazing. Alright. Well, that's Windows. We're gonna go talk about digital spring cleaning.
Stephen Robles:I'm curious to hear Jason's strategy for cleaning his digital life, if he if there is even is a strategy.
Jason Aten:I'm I'm interested to hear what this topic means.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Well, yeah, we'll we'll talk about it. So we're gonna go record a bonus episode. We didn't have a sponsor this week, so thank you all to for you if you support the show. And if you don't already, you can support the show either directly in Apple Podcasts or at primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes.
Stephen Robles:And you get ad free versions with their sponsors, but also you get a bonus episode every week. And you can listen to the entire back catalog when you support us there. You also get chapters when you support us at primarytech.fm. You can join the community. Come to my aid, listeners and viewers, about nostalgia for Windows.
Stephen Robles:If anybody played commander keen, I'd love to hear it. And you can sign up for the newsletter if you want the show notes and you get all the links in a nice tidy email. It'll be every Friday morning. It'll come out. You can subscribe down below.
Stephen Robles:Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching we'll catch you next time
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