Is Anyone Keeping Apple Vision Pro? OpenAI Coming for Google with AI Search, Prime Video Price Gouging
Download MP3Fear is the mind killer. Welcome to Primary Technology, a show about the tech news that matters. Today, we're gonna talk about the mass wave of returns of Apple Vision Pro and whether or not I'll be returning mine. Google had a pretty great Super Bowl ad, Amazon Prime stripping more and more features from their bottom tier, Apple has an AI image generator that they're actually talking about, OpenAI working on web search, and more. This episode is brought to you by Audio Hijack, my favorite audio recording application on the Mac.
Stephen Robles:We're your host, Steven Robles, and I'm joined as always by Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It it is very good. It is good. It's not only what it's good.
Stephen Robles:You're being snowed in. Right? Aren't you buried in snow right now?
Jason Aten:I am. I'm in my igloo right now recording this. It's a very nice igloo though, thank thankfully.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's that's very good. Yeah. You actually have a bespoke office in the backyard. I'm still working up to that.
Jason Aten:I do.
Stephen Robles:I want I want that shed.
Jason Aten:The downside is that when it's snowing like it is right now, I cannot run my heater and have Internet out here for reasons we don't need to get into. So I actually have a a heating pad on my seat right now. So if at some point my lips turn blue, we're just could we be done?
Stephen Robles:Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You can't run the heat and your Internet at the same time. Is that what I heard right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. Haven't I explained I thought I've explained this to you. So our Internet my Internet out here runs between 2 Google
Stephen Robles:over by carrier pigeon or whatever.
Jason Aten:It is. We whisper it out the window. No. It's because it's running along. I have Ethernet over power adapters at both ends, so it sends the Ethernet over the power line.
Jason Aten:The problem is when you turn on the mini split, it draws too much amperage and the Internet is like, nope, sorry, I'm getting out of the way. It's like standing in the middle of a freeway and it doesn't want to get hit by electrons or however that I don't know how that works, but I don't have Internet and heat at the same time. So it seems like a problem I should solve at some point, but not today.
Stephen Robles:Well, at least we don't record, high definition video podcast every week, on on set Internet. I I will say ladies and gentlemen, if you've not followed my YouTube channel, you know I'm obsessed with Bandwidth.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:I'm still trying to figure out how to make a t shirt that says like obsessed with speed or need for speed or something with, like, the speed test needle to 2 gig. Yeah. I'm I'm working on it. If anyone else wants to work on it, please please do.
Jason Aten:It should be encouraging to you that I did choose Internet over heat.
Stephen Robles:Well, I appreciate
Jason Aten:I chose to have the Internet.
Stephen Robles:I appreciate that. We would not be talking if we had chosen the other.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:But, my 2 gigs up and down have little bearing on this call because we're we're at the mercy of your power over or Ethernet over power.
Jason Aten:Can I borrow a gig or 2 from you, please? It's like
Stephen Robles:I would love to send you a gig. I wish I could send you a gig. Oh, that'd be great. We got a lot to talk about. Oh, I'm curious, you know, I got my VisionPRO sitting right here.
Stephen Robles:It's my last day to return it today as we record, and so we're gonna talk about a wave of people, actually going to return it and some people who couldn't even buy it, because their eye prescription wasn't supported. Before we do, had it many 5 star reviews. Thank you all for supporting the show with those 5 star reviews. We didn't make a 100 yet And so I have a suggestion. If you haven't left a review, you're gonna want to hear it because I think it's gonna be hilarious.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, 5 star reviews from
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:Bryce 1, Jenna Koehr, who had a personal tech question, which we'll be closing out the show with that. It was pretty fun. Peabody 42, one of the things we asked last week is leave your notes app that you might use, and they use Apple Notes, which I think is underrated. It's a great notes app, but also Evernote for work. Now I thought Evernote was, like, fossilized.
Stephen Robles:I guess Evernote is still alive.
Jason Aten:Theoretically, it is still alive, but it has been stripped for parts mostly. And, I I mean because listen, I'm I'm an OG Evernote Evernote user, and I actually canceled my Evernote subscription this year or last year, actually. So
Stephen Robles:My, I was gonna say former friend, but he's still a friend. William Gallagher. I know he has a huge Evernote database. I don't know what he's doing with it. Pkev says love the podcast with the other guy.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe, who knows who the other guy is? There you go. Robert I surface reviewer 1976, and their one word written review just said nerds.
Stephen Robles:5 stars. All they wrote was nerds, and so here's my here's my request this week. For us to get to a 100, I know a lot of times you don't know what to write, you don't want to write something long, everyone just go to Apple Podcasts, give a 5 star rating, but leave a review, and you could just say nerds, and I feel like if we had a couple dozen reviews that just say nerds with 5 stars, I think that'd be hilarious. I would love that screenshot.
Jason Aten:People are gonna think that we ask people to tell us what their favorite Halloween candy is.
Stephen Robles:Nerds are a terrible candy. I'm just gonna say that out.
Jason Aten:Right? I would agree with you.
Stephen Robles:The only thing worse is candy corn. How do you feel about that?
Jason Aten:I I I'm gonna soft disagree with you because I don't wanna get into the argument right now, but we should definitely actually, that's one of the original things of our friendship was
Stephen Robles:That's true.
Jason Aten:I would randomly be places, and I'd
Stephen Robles:chips in it
Jason Aten:or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Like pretzels and stuff.
Jason Aten:Yes. That's true.
Stephen Robles:Which they had a they had a, are we allowed to say Super Bowl
Jason Aten:Yes. On on
Stephen Robles:the spot case? Yes. Are we gonna get in trouble? You can't?
Jason Aten:I hope so.
Stephen Robles:So you know these laws?
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Oh. I
Jason Aten:know all of the laws.
Stephen Robles:So I don't have to say the big game anymore.
Jason Aten:No. You can't say the Super Bowl. We can refer to it as the Super Bowl.
Stephen Robles:Because during the Super Bowl, Reese's had another new version come out which was like caramel or something. Yeah. Anyway, we're gonna talk about Super Bowl ad later. So Apple Vision Pro returns. There's been a wave or at least seems like on social media because everybody who returns has to post about it.
Stephen Robles:I think follow him on threads on Twitter. He's a great follow, but he returned his, and he was he was like a fan of the device. It wasn't that he didn't like the device. It was just the sentiment that he and I think a lot of VisionPRO owners have right now, which is it just doesn't don't use it very often, and b, for his face specifically, it was uncomfortable to use. And so if this device is uncomfortable to use, I you know, I I could totally understand.
Stephen Robles:Keeping that would be a hard sell because unless you're going to use it for a long time, if it's uncomfortable to do it, yeah, I could do it, but I I have a similar sentiment. Well, first of all, you didn't secretly buy an Apple Vision Pro this past week, did you?
Jason Aten:I still have not bought 1 or returned 1.
Stephen Robles:So Okay. Well, look at that. That's one less return in a in Apple's cube.
Jason Aten:My theory about the returns is that the people who bought them because you said it was a mass wave. I know that you were just using slight hyperbole because it's kind of like I feel like all of the people who returned them are people who bought VisionPro and have YouTube channels, which is in good reviews of them and have decided they
Stephen Robles:need The Venn diagram of people who have bought VisionPros and have YouTube channels is very overlapped.
Jason Aten:But I've also feel like it can't be more than, like, a1000 people. And from reports, Apple has sold something like 200,000 of these. So I don't know if it's a mass wave, but I mean, there are legitimate reasons. I think you mentioned Parker who developed, like, potentially, like, a burst blood vessel in his eyes. I'm not directly saying it was related, but after using it for a while, like, I I I probably wouldn't continue to put something on my face either if Yeah.
Jason Aten:I burst a blood vessel in my eye. So I I can understand why some people are thinking this isn't for them.
Stephen Robles:I totally get it. So I will be honest. So I've now had it for 2 weeks. Here it is. I didn't even put it on to start this episode.
Stephen Robles:The Thank you. The Lord. I also share the sentiment of I've not used it very much in the past 2 weeks. After that 1st weekend and we're trying to make videos about it and review it and talk about it, in my day to day life, working, whether sometimes watching stuff at night, I just don't find myself putting it down very often, a, because when it comes to productivity, I know some people are like I wear this thing 8 hours a day and I work in it. And I just have to say I tried multiple times to mirror my Mac screen into Applevision Pro.
Stephen Robles:It's cool for a few minutes, but when it comes to actually managing Windows and working, like, productivity, I I just far prefer my studio display, which is a nice big screen. None of it is blurry. Right? Because I'm looking at this window. Nothing is blurry, no foveated there's no foveated rendering, and I just find like command tab is really cool on the keyboard, you know, that's a fun shortcut as is just all the other keyboard shortcuts I use all the time when I'm working.
Stephen Robles:And so I don't use it for work and when it comes to watching stuff I've I've watched like an episode of For All Mankind with my wife, not in Apple Vision Pro obviously, if I want to watch a video with my kids. Like, I've never I'm not gonna put this on. I'm not gonna be the only dude wearing it because then, hey, what am I gonna do? AirPlay from this to the Apple TV? So I just don't find myself using it.
Stephen Robles:If I'm ever by myself, no one's around, and I have a few moments to watch something, that's maybe when I think about putting it on. And I am traveling a couple times in the next few months and I'm a 100% looking forward to using it on the plane and probably a hotel room, but it is, for most people, a very expensive device to have sit around
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Just for most of the time.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think that it's it's probably like it's a tough sell, I think, for a lot of people who who like, the question is, what would people do with this in their everyday life that they couldn't already do with a Mac or with an iPhone or with an iPad or whatever? And I think I just think this is the thesis that I have is it's a very expensive device for someone to buy not having a reason to buy it. And one of the arguments is, like, well, but the Apple Watch. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, people buy the Apple Watch, and Apple didn't figure the Apple Watch out until the 2nd or 3rd generation. I'm like, yes. But the original Apple Watch was like $350 It's a lot. And it did do one thing that you expect from a watch, which is it tells time. Right?
Jason Aten:So it's a little bit easier to buy a $350 digital watch, which is an expensive digital watch. Don't get me wrong.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:And it took a while for Apple to figure out the software and to realize that the thing that this is really going to become is a health device. It took some time. I mean, the original iPhone, same thing. There was no app store when the iPhone that's, like, the thing we think about with the iPhone is being able to put third party apps. But you could still do things with it.
Jason Aten:And, again, the original iPhone was, like, what, $500? Right? So I
Stephen Robles:think it was like 6 or 7 at first and then, like, the price dropped.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So, okay, fine. It was still like, it was not $35100. Yeah. So I think that there's just this difference in terms of, like, do you have a use case for this?
Jason Aten:And does it lie you know, where is the balancing point between that use case and $35100?
Stephen Robles:The last video I made about it, which none of these videos are performing great because I think everyone's tired of VisionPro. But anyway, the one the one comparison I made was like, how would you feel about buying a top of the line iPad Pro, which in my video I show, like, you can spec this thing up to over $3,000, if you didn't know. And this is a now almost 2 year old thing, like the M2 iPad Pro, it was released fall 2022, you know, because we didn't get any new iPads in 2023. So it's a pretty old device. Buy it new, spec it out with 2 terabyte SSD, cellular data connection, Magic Keyboard, you're talking over $3,000, and for most people, spending that amount of money on an iPad is, like, probably a visceral reaction.
Stephen Robles:I think, like, the average person, most people at most think about spending 5 or $600 because I've actually bought refurbished iPads, like, for my kids in the past. You can get them on Amazon for like 200, 250, and a couple year old iPad is actually really a good iPad because Apple's processors are really good. And so knowing that you could spend that amount and get an iPad like, spending over $3,000 on a big iPad Pro that you might only use to look at articles and watch stuff when you're traveling, which, again, I feel like is an interesting parallel to Apple Vision Pro. Like, would you be okay doing that on an iPad? Because if you're not, if you don't feel good about spending over $3,000 on an iPad Pro that you're not sure how you're gonna use, then you really probably shouldn't try the Apple Vision Pro because at least try to get one because it's going to sit around a lot.
Stephen Robles:Like, I it sits on my desk. I charge it every once in a while because the standby battery is not great. Like, if you if if you have the battery connected to the Apple Vision Pro, which Apple recommends you do, like in their support articles they say you can keep the battery connected so it syncs your stuff when you're not using it. If you keep the battery connected, the next time you pick it up, it's dead. Oh, I've left it overnight several times.
Stephen Robles:The battery has been at, like, 90 something percent, and the next day it's at, like, 10 or 20%, and then it's dead and you have to charge it. So, like, not great standby time, unlike an iPad, by the way. I could pick up an iPad after days and you still have, like, enough battery to use it. And so it's just I get it. I get why people are returning it.
Stephen Robles:And some people, like Zach Hall from 9 TO 5 Mac, he actually wanted to get one, but his strength prescription for his eyes was act is actually not supported. And he, I forget who he was, but he talked with someone on social media. And, basically, when it's over a certain number, I think if the cylinder has, like, a greater than 5, deviation he actually puts his prescription in this article for 9 to 5 mac. It'll be in the show notes. He just can't get Zeiss inserts for this powerful, of needed prescription, and so he just can't even use it.
Stephen Robles:He's tried contacts, those don't work. Of all the devices Apple sells, probably the most finicky when it comes to you gotta get your prescription, you keep it charged, you wear it on your head, the light seal. I was listening to Gruber and Adam Lisagore talk on the talk show about Gruber got a different size light seal from his online order than his in store experience.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:Like, they measured his face in store, and they got him a different size. And now I'm like I also have that thought in the back of my mind now. I was like, oh, shoot. If I go to a store, will they give me a different size light sealer? Would that be a better experience?
Stephen Robles:All of that just finicky. Yeah. I get it. I get it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I so one thing I'm curious about is whether it would change your mind. So you mentioned Gruber on his one of his other podcasts that he does with Ben Thompson, dithering, which is a subscriber only podcast that they do twice a week. And they were talking, and I think it was 1 of the 2 of them said that one of the upcoming betas was going to include multiple support for multiple Mac displays in Vision Pro. And then separately from that, Ben Thompson has said that he has heard from people at Apple who are using vision pro right now with multiple Mac displays and that they are higher resolution that they're they fixed the resolution thing.
Jason Aten:So I'm curious, like, if you could do that, if you could have 2 Mac displays inside your Vision Pro, would that make a difference for you? And they were higher resolution.
Stephen Robles:I'm a one monitor kind of guy.
Jason Aten:Okay then.
Stephen Robles:Even with the option of multiple monitors, I don't prefer it. I prefer to use multiple spaces in desktops and mission control just because I feel like, again, your eyes are at a place on screen. If I'm looking in the middle of my monitor, if I wanna have other windows somewhere, rather than turning my head or turning my eyes to see a secondary monitor, I rather just swipe with 2 fingers on my mouse.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And move the desktop until my eyes stay right where they are, and now I see new content, new new screen. And I get, you know, people maybe were like day traders or whatever. They have like 18 monitors and they're looking at every stock Yep. And every penny that changes. So I understand there's some use case for it.
Stephen Robles:I think video editors, which technically I am, like you like having the preview full screen over here and then Final Cut over here. I get that that's the thing too, but honestly the studio display is just is big enough. Looks great. I don't need another one.
Jason Aten:Alright.
Stephen Robles:It's great.
Jason Aten:Not you're not convinced.
Stephen Robles:I'm not convinced. You know who else is not convinced about the Apple Vision Pros? Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of META.
Jason Aten:That was quite the setup I just gave you by the way.
Stephen Robles:Thank you thank you very much. The META CEO went on a meta platform, namely Instagram, to talk about the META Quest 3 and how it's better than the Apple Vision Pro. Yep. Like, he's been getting hammered on social media about this video and you have a whole article on it. It's a great article.
Stephen Robles:I want you to tell me your theory.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And tell me what you think about it. Because you said you might be right about something, which I don't I don't disagree. Yeah. I think just what's weird what's weird is it sounds like defensive and it's a it's a weird play. Now Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I posted a couple things to be funny, after this because that's what you do on the internet. Number 1, but I posted like reviews that I would love to see Apple execs give.
Jason Aten:Yeah. That was pretty good.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Thank you. It's it it's it did that thread did well. But, basically, you know, I would love to see let me share this. I would love to see Craig Federighi review the Facebook app.
Stephen Robles:I think that'd be hilarious. Just see him hammer it. I'd love to see Eddie q, who we've not heard from for a while. I'd like for him to review the humane AI pin. I feel like that would be hilarious review.
Stephen Robles:Johnny Suruji, I want him to review a $199 Chromebook. I think he would just tear that thing to shreds.
Jason Aten:It would be amazing. Literally, he would rip it in half. He would just take it apart. He'd just be like, this thing is garbage.
Stephen Robles:Hulk out. Yep. Rip the Chromebook in half. That would be amazing. He'd get the views on that.
Stephen Robles:Deirdre O'Brien, which is the Apple retail store, she's over Apple retail. I'd love for her to review an AT and T store because I've been in a couple recently and those things are rough. John Ternus reviews the Pixel tablet and of course Tim Cook reviewing Siri, which you know, that could that last one was like a little too real.
Jason Aten:Yeah.
Stephen Robles:And maybe, you know, I didn't get a lot of likes from from Apple people probably because that last the last one I I snuck in there, but I think what's interesting and then later in this thread, I had people that were like, yeah. If you think back, Apple used to hammer a lot of or, you know, talk about other individual products in their keynotes a lot. And to their point, Steve Jobs era, like the iPhone launch. Yeah. He literally had a slide with, like, blackberry, trio, whatever.
Stephen Robles:Like, he used to, like, directly address competitor products, and when the iPad launched, he directly addressed netbooks. You know, he didn't say a specific model or brand, but he put a netbook on screen that says, like, nobody likes these things. So I understand, like, in the past, Apple has addressed other specific products, but, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think Apple has done that in quite a while. I don't remember in any Apple event recently. The the closest they get is when they talk about the m chips, and they'll say the m three max is this much faster than the leading desktop graphics card or whatever, And, like, maybe in very, very small asterisk font is the, like, the model they're talking about.
Stephen Robles:Usually, you have to really go and search on their website what that claim is based off of, like what product, but there's rarely an Apple exec directly reviewing or talking about another company's device. And having, like, Mark Zuckerberg in a weird, like, Instagram reel, like, talk about how his product is better than Apple's product. It felt weird to me, like, in a weird defensive way. So I don't know.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Don't
Stephen Robles:tell me your theory.
Jason Aten:Well, yeah. And I mean, in those in those keynotes, Apple doesn't say, like, our the m series graphics are better than the RTX 40.90. They don't specifically, like, you know, the the 40.90 is it's I tried it out thinking it was, you know, gonna be okay. And I was convinced it's not they don't do that. Like, you're right.
Jason Aten:I mean, the last thing, the most obvious example of Apple doing that are the Mac versus PC ads with Justin Long, right? Where they, when those were humorous and they were like, that was a long running thing that they did for a long time. And that was really an effort to, you know, they once they're on Intel, right, they were trying to, like, equalize different things. But
Stephen Robles:That was still Steve Jobs era too.
Jason Aten:Oh, absolutely. I mean,
Stephen Robles:it was Absolutely.
Jason Aten:Yep. It was still Steve Jobs. So the thing about the video and the reason that I wrote about it and the part that I think that Zuckerberg got right is that he says that the quest is a better product for the majority of things that people use mixed reality for. Right? Which is true, actually.
Jason Aten:It is a better but the reason has nothing to do with the technology. I don't think anybody, including Mark Zuckerberg, would argue that the VisionPRO is not the very best technological feat in this category of product. I don't think he's arguing that the that the quest is more well made with better better materials and better technology. What he's just saying is it's better to use for the things people are using. It's lighter.
Jason Aten:You don't have to carry a battery around. Like, that's the thing he talked about, you know, in in his little review there. My point was that is definitely true. And I don't think Apple cares because they don't think Apple sees this as a device that people will use to do the things that they're currently using VR headsets for. They're just, that's why they call it spatial computing.
Jason Aten:They don't call it AR, VR, MRI. Like, they're not using any of those terms. They're using spatial computing. The problem and the reason I think that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's observation is a problem for Apple is no one is doing spatial computing. It's just not a thing that's a part of the way anyone works.
Jason Aten:And if you want to get people to do that 35100, or you could spend more than 4th, I mean, if you're really, really going to go all in on spatial computing, you're no, no question. You're spending more than $4 on this thing. And for $4, you can get an M3 Max MacBook Pro with, you know, 2 8 terabytes of hard drive space or something. And maybe that's not actually true because hard drive space or, you know, storage space is expensive. But my point is
Stephen Robles:It's expensive.
Jason Aten:No one's using it to do those things. They're gonna Apple want you can't even play games on the Vision Pro. Although, breaking news. As we're recording, Apple announced, I think hold on. I'm looking.
Jason Aten:12
Stephen Robles:I just saw that news that
Jason Aten:Unique spatial games in Apple Arcade for Vision Pro. So there's 12. There's 12 games that you can play that are unique. And then there's, I guess, 200. And this is, like, Super Fruit Ninjas Now, Out, Synth Riders, Wildflower.
Jason Aten:So I don't know anything about any of these games, and I do not have a Vision Pro, so I can't just Lego Builders Journey, actually, that looks sweet to be a perfect ground to be. But I don't think I'm gonna buy I'm not gonna buy a VisionPRO just for that, just to be clear.
Stephen Robles:Now wait a minute. Some of these already existed. Like, this Synth Riders. Yeah. I actually installed this and my friend Jacob played it, like, the day I got VisionPro.
Jason Aten:Yep.
Stephen Robles:So that's that's already existed. These these have been in the arcade, I feel like.
Jason Aten:Yeah. So this may not actually be new news. Apple may just be talking about it right now.
Stephen Robles:Coming soon. Coming soon. So Alto's Odyssey, Honestly, I'd be down for playing that. Envision Pro. The Gibbon 1.
Stephen Robles:Okay. So I will put a link to this Apple Newsroom article, but the the headline was Apple Arcade for Apple Vision Pro takes players into a new dimension with 12 unique spatial games and more than 20 yeah. So I don't know if it was there's some coming soon ones, but, yeah, you can you can get these.
Jason Aten:K. So there was absolutely nothing breaking in that breaking news segment that we just did, so my apologies.
Stephen Robles:That was exciting, though.
Jason Aten:But I
Stephen Robles:saw the newsroom thing.
Jason Aten:I was like, what was that? But so then I guess it actually just makes my point that there's still nothing that you can, if you're what you really want to do is those types of things. The quest 3 probably is a better product for most people. If that's the case, it's just apple is trying to create a they're sort of piggy. It's kind of, it is very similar to the way apple piggyback on smartphones, but turn them into a completely new category.
Jason Aten:The thing is at the time, the gap between the smartphones that you might buy, but BlackBerry palm, whatever, and an iPhone was not nearly the same as, I mean, at the beginning, Zuckerberg says, you know, the quest 3 does all these things, and it's, like, 7 times less expensive, which is a real thing that matters to people.
Stephen Robles:It is a real. And I I did see a list. Some of the people who returned their Applevision Pro were like, I returned it and got a Meta Quest 3. This shot right here though, this is the funniest shot of this entire video which is if you're listening. At one point Zuckerberg is like, and this entire video is filmed on the high res pass through cameras of the Meta Quest 3.
Stephen Robles:And they cut to the shot of the guy that's actually wearing the Quest 3 facing Zuckerberg. And then you do you're not expecting it. And so the first time you see it, it is kind of just hilarious. So click Jason's article. Go to it because he has the video embedded and you could just watch it there.
Stephen Robles:Yep. And it's kind of hilarious. But I I think it's interesting. It it it's weird because it feels defensive that, like, the may like, the CEO of another like, one of the 4 huge tech companies or maybe there's 5, whatever, and I feel like that would be like Sundar Pichai being like, you know, the iPhone 15 is really not that different than the iPhone 14. Like, I feel like that's that's what this feels like.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Or, Satya Nadella being like, you know, Excel is better for spreadsheets than macOS numbers. Did you know that? You know, I feel like it has that kind of and that would be weird.
Jason Aten:I I think you're right except for it would be more like if Sundar Pichai got on did a video because Apple released a search engine, and he just started doing searches. And he's like, oh, these blue links are garbage. Right? Like, that's exactly what it would be.
Stephen Robles:That that that is interesting, which we're gonna talk about search engines, in a little bit because OpenAI has some news there and there's some rumors of AI in Apple's camp, for that. But anyway, I thought it was interesting. Go watch Mark's video. But the the last thing I'll say, which I don't know if I missed it, you watched the, the big game. Right?
Stephen Robles:Or the Super Bowl. I'm still afraid to say Super Bowl. I don't know why. You you watch the big game, I assume.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But here's I wanna just put your mind at ease. If we get this podcast to a point where the NFL cares that we call it the super bowl, we should just throw our own party. Okay. Like, I think it'll be fine.
Jason Aten:Maybe we shouldn't put it in the, title of the episode, but we can say the words as often as we wanted. It'll be fine. I just I just wanted to say that first. And I did watch both the big game and the Super Bowl at the same time on the same television.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Very good. Now I don't think I've I've stepped away for a couple times, but I saw most of the commercials, which I thought was actually a decent year for commercials. There were there were some good ones. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I don't remember seeing an Apple Vision Pro a new Apple Vision Pro ad. Did I miss it or there was not one?
Jason Aten:I I didn't I did not see one. But, I mean, Apple's big thing during the big game, see see what I did there, was the halftime show.
Stephen Robles:So you just did
Jason Aten:it. It was Usher. So I I think all their their focus was just on Apple Music.
Stephen Robles:Which side note on tech related, but, you you know, I watched that halftime show. It was pretty good. And and halftime show was sponsored by Apple Music, like, Apple Music put it on or whatever. Yep. It was a moment when Usher is, like, roller skating with a bunch of other roller skating dancers on a platform.
Stephen Robles:I thought it was a very cool moment. Like, I thought it was a fun halftime thing. 100%. A bunch of people said this, but Apple should 100% have an immersive experience where you can watch the halftime show in Apple Vision Pro immersion. Like, seeing those roller skaters, like, go by or whatever, it'd probably make you sick, but it would be an amazing experience just to see that, halftime show in Apple Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:Also, Alicia Keys, who's one of the 3 or 4 immersive videos you can watch right now, was also part of the halftime show. Yep. Spoiler if you didn't see it, but she was there she was there singing. But there was no other ad for Apple Vision Pro and so I thought that was interesting. I thought that would be a kind of a prime opportunity for it, but notably Apple competitor, Google, I thought actually had a really good ad and you also wrote about it, but it was an ad for Google's it was kind of the pixel.
Stephen Robles:It was honestly you know, Apple is usually known for, like, the emotion pulling ads and videos, and I I I'm gonna give Google credit. I feel like they've done a good job in recent years. When they do do an ad, it's actually really good. And I thought this one really stood out, and it was highlighting the accessibility features of the Google Pixel phone. And this gentleman is taking pictures where he is visually impaired and can't really see the screen very much to, like, take selfies or to take talking about the the accessibility feature from it and how it would be used in real life.
Stephen Robles:And, well, you wrote the whole article about it, but I assume you liked it too.
Jason Aten:So Google has done this a couple times over the last however long. There was the first one I remember was they it was about, they called it Parisian love, and it was, like, all it was is someone typing words into the search box, and it's like study abroad in Paris. And it's like, how to say hello to a girl in French, And it's like, where to buy flowers in France. And then it's like wedding chapels in Paris. And then it's like, where to buy a baby crib.
Jason Aten:Like, it's a it's a whole love story, all just, and it was really touching. And it's like, all you see is a person typing in words into the search box. And you're like, wow. Like Google did a really good job of telling stories and they have done that consistently. You know, I think it was in 2020.
Jason Aten:It was probably my favorite was it was like, I think it's a Google assistant feature where it's all you hear is the voice of an old man talking about his wife who you presume is is deceased. And he'll say something like, remember that her favorite place to eat was such and such or whatever. And then Google Assistant will tell you those things. It will it'll save your memories for you. And this feature, is really I think it's it's an important thing for us to, like, call out when companies pay attention to the accessibility features that make their products better for everyone because we don't think about it.
Jason Aten:Like, I can see the screen on my phone. If I want to take a picture, I just hold it up. I can push the button. There's multiple different buttons now that I can even push. It's like, it's very easy for me to do that, but there are a lot of people for whom that's not the case.
Jason Aten:And Google actually used a a director who is blind. There's actually a link to a video of a behind the scenes with the director. I think his name is Adam Morse, who can only see, like, peripherally. So his screens are enormous, so he can actually, like, take take it in. And it was his idea to put the, like, Vaseline over the lens to sort of simulate that experience of using a phone when you can't to take pictures when you can't.
Jason Aten:And the yeah. Just like you described, the phone will say and it's using AI to detect, like, there are 2 faces, and then it'll say, move the camera down for better framing. And then you just have to hold it, and it will take the picture for you. And I just think that it's a reminder that and it's to me, like, this is one of the things I like about our show is that we're sort of talking about how technology relates to everyday lives. It's a reminder that the most important part of technology are the people and the way that people use it.
Jason Aten:It's not just how cool are the features, because this is a very cool feature, but it's also a very important feature for a lot of people. So it's a good ad.
Stephen Robles:It's a it's very true. So, you know, kudos to Google for it. There was 2 videos. 1 is Brian Tong. He actually did a video about the accessibility features of Apple Vision Pro, which was something that was not, you know, talked about a lot during the initial launch.
Stephen Robles:I think by nature of the device, you feel like how, you know, can accessibility even be a thing on something like this? But he actually goes over those features. And then there was actually a gentleman, I'll try and find the link for the show notes, but who is visually impaired and, like, went through the VisionPRO experience and talked about it. And, and that was that was really good too. But, you know, the accessibility thing is a big deal.
Stephen Robles:And and I will say I really try and I've not done a good job recently, but like when I post things to social media I've had people who will say like would really love to follow your content but whenever you post a picture, you don't put the alt description in and I don't know what it is. Mhmm. And it's something that I I don't think about. And it's something that
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:All of us, you know, if we sometimes take a little more effort and, you know, not only will it help someone but you can reach like a much wider audience. So that's why I think we hadn't talked about it after it re released, but the Apple Podcasts app in 17 dot 4 bringing transcriptions Mhmm. That's like a huge deal. Like, that's a whole swath of people that can now experience podcasts who could not listen and maybe some, you know, and now they can read the entire transcript. And Apple is doing, like, that automatically.
Stephen Robles:And to be clear, so in iOS 17.4 in the Apple Podcasts app, transcripts will be available for all episodes of all podcasts if creators allow them, and Apple is actually going to transcribe it it themselves. If you don't upload a transcript Yep. In your podcast host, they just transcribe it on their end, and they will have that transcript available in Apple Podcasts, which is pretty amazing. And so kudos to both, like, Apple and Google and I'm sure other companies, you know, have accessibility features like this, but I thought Google's ad was particularly effective and,
Jason Aten:you know,
Stephen Robles:see how real people will use this.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I agree. The only thing that's kinda interesting, and I heard of somebody I don't remember who it was, but it was on a podcast talking or maybe it was on social media. But about that podcast feature, then maybe it should be optional only because if you have a subscriber only podcast, do you want text generated that could easily be copy and pasted and shared screenshots of otherwise? Because if peep if it's if you've created a paywalled show, now you're making it you know, you can't share that audio.
Jason Aten:Well, you could, but you have to jump through a bunch of hoops. So maybe, like, it should but you're right. Apple's just making it accessible for everyone, which I I'll be honest. Like, if you had to on one side or another, I, like, I think that's probably the right choice. But it is an interesting one because there are some people who are not trying to be who are trying to be unaccessible, but in an in an intentional way.
Jason Aten:Right? They're trying to make it. So, like, one example would be like Ben Thompson. If you you have to subscribe you can subscribe to Stratechery, and you can listen to his podcast, which is just a him reading his article. So you you could already get his article, but maybe he doesn't want the transcript to be available in the player for various reasons.
Jason Aten:I don't know. So it is kinda interesting, but, yeah, I'm not arguing against accessibility. It's just interesting the choices that they make. So It
Stephen Robles:is interesting and I'll have to see it's still being implemented like on the back end because we're in the beta period right now and even like Apple side is not supporting everything. So we'll have to see it. When it actually launches 17 dot 4, which all the big changes like side loading, cloud gaming, like, all that's coming in 17 dot 4, which might be coming pretty soon. We'll talk about it more more then. We got some other news.
Stephen Robles:Amazon Prime, Apple's AI photo image generator, which was pretty wild, and some other things about OpenAI. But before we get to all that, we want to thank our sponsor for today. They're back. You remember them. Audio Hijack, mac audio dot com slash primary tech.
Stephen Robles:I love Audio Hijack. We're using Audio Hijack right now actually, because that is what
Jason Aten:We are.
Stephen Robles:We run. We record with Riverside to do the call and that's what we use for the video and then of course you get on compressed wave audio. But audio hijack, I run it right in the menu bar and it feels like a utility. Like I literally just right as we were starting the call, I click my audio hijack symbol in the menu bar. I have sessions for everything, which is an amazing feature of audio hijack.
Stephen Robles:So I have a session that's set up for primary technology. I have a session for movies on the side. I have one for my videos. Like, whenever I record a video for YouTube, whether it's my channel, Riverside, I have a session that records my other microphone and they're all set up and you can autofill things like dates and if you want a counter for, like, episode numbers, you can do all that in the audio hijack window and it's just running in the background recording uncompressed wave audio. Actually, help Jason figure out how to do that.
Stephen Robles:You can set up uncompressed wave audio.
Jason Aten:That was very nice.
Stephen Robles:Appreciate it. Recording block. And it is just extremely powerful. And audio hijack is super easy. If you wanna record audio maybe from a microphone input like I'm doing right now, but also record audio from, say, a browser.
Stephen Robles:So right now I'm actually recording a backup of Jason through the audio coming through the Brave web browser, and Audio Hijack lets you pull the audio from the browser, remove my input so I just have Jason's audio, and I can record that in a separate file. All of it is just drag and drop these blocks. You can have recording blocks, input blocks, and they have super powerful features like compressor, EQ, even transcription blocks now that you can put in the chain of whatever audio you're doing, and it will apply those effects, it will transcribe the audio, and it just makes it super easy to record audio from anywhere. And you can even livestream, which, well, you know, Jason and I have talked about on the back end, if we wanted to do some livestreams for the show. So anyway, if you want to hear that, you know, let us know.
Stephen Robles:But maccharter.com plus amazing other applications like loopback, which I use loopback in conjunction with Audio Hijack often if you want to pull in, like, multiple audio sources and route audio different places. Or if you just want a simple, like, one button to record audio, but if you're like me and you've tried to use QuickTime in the past, sometimes it could be a little flakily little flaky. Let's just be real. Audio Hijack's apps are never flaky. I don't think I've ever had a drop recording in Audio Hijack, like, ever.
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Stephen Robles:$20 off Audio Hijack when you use coupon code primary tech, all one word, that'll be in the show notes. You can click the link in the show notes, use the promo code, and this is going through the 1st week of March. So they extended the deal. They come on to sponsor again. Everybody go get it.
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Stephen Robles:Thanks to Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba for sponsoring this episode. I love Audio Hijack, one of my favorite episodes.
Jason Aten:I feel like I should be concerned about the fact that you you had to tell everyone that you felt feel the need to have a backup of my recording alone because somehow, Steven's not convinced that I'm gonna actually do it. It's okay.
Stephen Robles:No. I don't I know you're I'm a redundancy guy. I used to record Riverside Audio Hijack and I had a sound devices, MixPre 3, that recorded to an SD card. I used to record to all three places just for my audio.
Jason Aten:I I get it. Although, in fairness, there was at least one episode of this show when we got done and I realized I had not started audio hijacking and was very thankful that Steven did not need my backup recording. So there we go.
Stephen Robles:That's it. And I I literally use it every day. Every video I record, every podcast. I I use it all the time. It's amazing.
Stephen Robles:Alright, speaking of audio, kind of a good transition. Amazon is removing an audio feature from Amazon Prime.
Jason Aten:Alright. I was wondering how where you how you're gonna land that one, but you did it. Good job.
Stephen Robles:So, basically, Amazon recently announced that their Amazon Prime video tier that comes with Amazon Prime, like, if you just pay for Amazon Prime for delivery and that, you know, you get the Amazon Prime streaming service. Well, they recently inserted ads into that tier, and so you have to pay more if you want no ads for Amazon Prime Video. And now Amazon also drops features like Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos Audio unless you pay for that ad free tier. And, like, I guess times are tough over there or something. But I feel like this this is a nickel and diming situation to the nth degree.
Stephen Robles:Like, to charge an additional $3 a month, The ads to no ads thing, fine. Like, Disney did it. Netflix is trying it. Does Netflix still have an ad supported tier?
Jason Aten:Yeah. But here's the difference, and this is an important difference. And this is I have not written about this latest thing, but I probably will because it just makes me so angry. Because what Netflix did is they said, how about if we make a plan that has ads and we make it cheaper than the one you're paying for now? Right?
Jason Aten:Same thing with Disney plus. How about if we introduce an ad supported tier that is less expensive than the one you're paying now? But if you like what you have right now, now, everything's the same. You don't you can just keep paying the same amount of money. We'll probably raise the price a little bit in in the long run because that's what we do.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But everything's the same. Amazon is like, what we what are we gonna do? Like, we've been giving this to people for free for the last however many years if they pay $139 a year for prime. So there's really no way we can monetize this without just charging people extra.
Jason Aten:And what they're doing is they're going to charge you extra for the exact same experience that you've always had. And I think my purse, it was one thing when they're like, well, we're adding ads into the main service that you've been getting all this time. And if you don't want the ads, you can pay more. Oh, now that apparently didn't motivate enough people. So we're gonna take away Dolby vision and Atmos unless you pay the extra amount.
Jason Aten:And so to me, it's like, you are taking away features for the same amount and you're making the experience worse for the same amount. And, and Amazon prime, there are some, you can actually just subscribe to prime video. I've never met a person who does that. But after I wrote an article, I was contacted by someone from Amazon who who told me, no, no, we've we've had this tier. You can do that.
Jason Aten:And I asked, does anyone? And they didn't get a response. But regardless, I don't know anyone who's like, yeah. I pay for Netflix and Prime Video. Like, that's just not a thing that people are doing.
Jason Aten:It's like we get Prime Video because we pay for free 2 day shipping or whatever. Right? Like, so they're just they're just there's no way for them to monetize that without doing this sort of thing. And my my take on that is then you're doing it wrong. Like, you've built this system Yeah.
Jason Aten:All backwards if you can't if you can't do it. So
Stephen Robles:I would never pay for Amazon Prime Video by itself. Right. I will never pay to upgrade because I also I don't I don't know about you, I don't think I have ever watched anything. The last thing I watched on Amazon Prime Video was the Chris Pratt, like, was it Terminal something? His like kind of espionage military show.
Stephen Robles:Terminal List. The Terminal List.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:I watched that which was I don't know. It was very violent, it was okay. But I never go there to watch anything and so I have no desire to pay more for an ad free version or Dolby Atmos. I just I just don't and there's been a lot of talk about this online too of, like, is Apple TV the the new HBO or whatever? Like, how do the streaming services rank as far as content?
Stephen Robles:I forget who it was, but someone, like, actual like, a journalist wrote an article about how no one watches Apple TV Plus or whatever.
Jason Aten:And then
Stephen Robles:there was, like, uproar. Like, everyone just, like, flooded their replies, like
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:What are you talking about? Even Gruber was in on it. He was, like, actually, there's a bunch of things I watch on Netflix. So I feel like in in the, like, pantheon of streaming services, yeah, like Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, HBO Max, I don't see Amazon Prime Video like in the top 5. Like I don't like I see Peacock and even Paramount Plus above it.
Stephen Robles:I mean the Super Bowl got me to sign up for Paramount Plus and I could that that was more than I could say for Amazon. So I don't know. I I don't see it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, the last thing that we watched on Amazon Prime, we I think we watched a Thursday night football game on Amazon Prime. The maybe
Stephen Robles:Okay. There
Jason Aten:was I don't know. So, like, Thursday night football is their marquee thing. Right? Like, that is their marquee. That's why they paid all the money to have the Thursday night games because people will watch.
Jason Aten:And so I imagine that there's some inkling that they could get those people who care enough about Thursday night football to then pay more. But you're still gonna I mean, it's a football game. The whole point is to have ads. You're still gonna have it. You're not getting an ad free experience, but maybe maybe people wanna watch football and Dolby Vision and I don't know.
Jason Aten:But I I just think the entire thing. I I don't like this. I mean, Disney, at the same time, like, a week or or 2 ago, sent out an email to people saying, yeah, we're we're not cool with the password sharing anymore. And by the way, we're gonna track you so we can make sure that you're not sharing your password with people outside of your household. We're gonna like and I'm just like, man, this whole this whole I just yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's cable again.
Jason Aten:Creepy. Yeah. It just makes, yeah, it just makes me feel very icky about the way it's like, it's like whenever a company looks at a bunch of people who are paying them, instead of trying to convince people who are not paying them to pay them, they're like, what could we do to get more money out of your pocket? And I'm just like, come on.
Stephen Robles:Which which I think in order to be fair, Apple does feel like that sometimes too, especially with Icloud storage still being at 5 gigabytes on the free tier for the last 1000 years.
Jason Aten:A a company not giving you enough of a thing for free? I I mean, I would agree with you that, like, it would make sense to be, like, yeah. Everybody gets well, I mean, what because what would the number be? Really, it'd have to be 256 if you're gonna say, well, you can back up your iPhone. Right?
Jason Aten:Like, you know, everyone should back up their iPhone to iCloud. But the point is, like, I don't think it's just yeah. I agree with you. That seems like poultry. There's some number bigger than 5 gigs that could be a little bit.
Jason Aten:Like, they're not saying, well, you were paying $20 a month for a terabyte, and now you're gonna be paying $20 a month for 750 gigs and will delete it all after one day. Like, I don't know. Like
Stephen Robles:We should return to this when we finally learn what satellite SOS is gonna cost because Apple has been giving that for free and has not said anyone what it's gonna cost, but everyone's had it for free since the iPhone 14.
Jason Aten:But they did say this is free for a period of like, they're upfront about it and they also there's, like, 7 people who needed to use it. So That's true. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I never thought I would be on the the devil's advocate side of, Apple charging for things. I will just say, the the the Icloud storage thing, I think the free tier should be 50 gigs. Like, 50 gigs, I think, is the next tier up. I think you could pay, like, 99¢ or whatever for 50 gigs. And I think for people who don't use our phone very much and it's really just backing up their photos, I think and and people who take a lot of photos, it wouldn't be enough for them, which then I think warrants paying for more iCloud storage.
Stephen Robles:But for someone, maybe elderly person or just someone who's not, like just doesn't do a lot with their phone, I feel like 50 gigs, like, just moving that tier, kind of like how storage tiers, you know, 32 gigs was like the iPad based storage, and then now 64 gigs is the iPad based storage. I feel like 50 gigs Icloud storage, it would just be as nice. And most people I don't think that would make anyone stop paying for it, because I think when people pay for it they automatically go to the larger storage tiers because they're, like, well, 50 is, you know so I don't know. That's my thought. Make the free tier 50.
Jason Aten:Here's one thing, though. I think that make the only reason they make you pay 99¢ for, like, 50 gigs or whatever is because if you've paid 99¢ for the 50 gigs, now you're definitely turning the backup on. Right? If the 50 gigs was free, the same number of people probably wouldn't even bother to put the backup on because they aren't even thinking about it. So the people who are thinking about I should back up my phone are going to pay the 99¢ to have to have some more storage to back up their photos.
Jason Aten:So I well, I guess what I'm saying is, yes, the 5 gigs seems like a ridiculous number to be giving people for free. But, also, when you really game it out, what would that number be that would make sense? Because I think I don't think Apple cares about the 99¢ a month that it might get for 50 gigs. I think what it might want is for people to actually back up their devices. And unless they just gave you enough to back up your device for free and force you to back it up, like, a lot of people still are not going to do it.
Jason Aten:So I don't know. I just don't know where that number is that actually makes sense.
Stephen Robles:I will just, I wanted to find this real quick. I can't believe I found it. Basic Apple guy, friend of the show. He had this, tweet which was amazing. It was a, the 2024 software update.
Stephen Robles:He made it look like the old school, like, pre iOS 7 days. And the last line in the, fake update notes says, Icloud storage remains unchanged at 5 gigabytes. I just thought it was so funny. Talking about Apple Vision Pro 20 24 also m 3 Chips, Icloud storage, 5 gigabytes. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:I guess Icloud backup is not on by default, like, when you set up a new iPhone.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:You know, as you were saying that, I I was unsure how it was, but I feel like if 50 gigs was the free storage tier, they can just have that toggled on, like, from the beginning.
Jason Aten:That's true.
Stephen Robles:Back to the phone. I don't know. I don't know. That's that was my thought. We'll see.
Stephen Robles:I I don't know if it will ever change, but I think it'll be good. It'll be good. Anyway, alright, we have some other news. I want to talk about, AI stuff because there's actually some Apple AI news and chatgpt or OpenAI, But this is something Apple actually released this study. Researchers at Apple have unveiled something called Keyframer as a prototype generative AI image tool.
Stephen Robles:This was actually a published research paper, they published it in Cornell University, then The Verge has an article written about it, but this is Apple researchers and it is actually utilizing OpenAI's GPT-four as its base model, which I think is interesting, but it's to generate images via text, like DALL E 3 that you would do with chat gpt, but it's nice to know that Apple's working on this. There's been a lot of rumors that this WWDC and with iOS 18 that we're going to see AI, probably not Apple say AI, but a lot of features that look like large language models, generative features, coming at this WWDC, and I'm excited to see that. But I just want to say, if Apple were to implement a tool like this in their applications, imagine Keynote and being able to generate images, animations, graphics in Keynote, like if you're trying to make a slideshow, like that's just one use case of this kind of amazing and then pages too, like if you wanted to generate or make a chart from these cells and numbers, and it'd be you know, it's pretty easy right now, like, Numbers does pretty good at that, but to just be able to type real quick, like, make a 3 d chart of these numbers and make it make sense.
Stephen Robles:And if it was actually good enough to do that, I think it's pretty exciting. So, yeah, they made a thing.
Jason Aten:First of all, I don't know if you remember the days when you could do basically what you described with Clippy in PowerPoint, but I don't think we wanna go back to those days. I'm terrified of the idea that people will be making keynote presentations by typing in make me a planet that spins because anyway. But this particular thing is interesting because the output of this is CSS. Right? This isn't it doesn't make a video animation for you.
Jason Aten:It will output CSS. So the idea would be you could use a a vector graphics file, which a vector graphics file is different than a JPEG in that. It's just math. Basically, it's like draw a line between point a and b, and it doesn't matter how big you scale the image. It it means, you know, it it just creates that on the fly.
Jason Aten:It's a dynamic, image as opposed to, like, a JPEG where it's just pixels that are either, you know, different colors or whatever. And and then you can scale them up bigger, but then it's a defined resolution regardless. And so this is like take the math and then make it do something different and output that as CSS. So you could use this for, like, a transition a swipe transition on a website or, like you described, you could do simple animations in different presentation type things. I think that the the obvious implication is, like, this is step 1, right, of a thing that Apple is experimenting with to build into other things.
Jason Aten:The last thing you said though is actually real where you could just say, make me a chart that shows this, this, and this, and you can do that with copilot already in PowerPoint. And Gemini will is the the goal will be if you are using a Google Workspace account, you'll be able to do same thing in Google Slides. Now I don't think you should. We've already talked about Google Slides. I have strong feelings, and this will not make Google Slides better.
Jason Aten:But I do think it will be interesting to see, you know, as Apple flushes this out. And and it's interesting. Like, I think this might have been first found by VentureBeat, and then obviously other places wrote about it. But I think the Apple just quietly will release these research papers, and you can actually learn a lot about what they think about certain technologies by reading through some of these things and and kinda get a picture of, wouldn't it be interesting if this was a part of your Mac or your iPad or or whatever? So I I don't know what the practical application will be because this is not there was a demo.
Jason Aten:Like, this was a research study. There was a demo. This is not like a beta product or anything like that, but maybe maybe it will be soon.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It would be cool. And and this coincides with rumors like how the iPhone 16 and iOS 18 is gonna have generative AI features and what it it was on the earnings call, which we talked about last week, but Tim Cook really alluded to that AI is gonna be a big thing for them this year. And I think he actually said the word AI this time. He didn't say like Yes.
Stephen Robles:Large language models in the yeah. He actually said AI.
Jason Aten:Well, he was asked specifically about AI and then he said we'll have more to say later this year.
Stephen Robles:That's right. I'm excited for WWDC, honestly. I mean, we're still a few months away, but maybe we'll see each other in person there, Jason. There's a chance. There's a chance.
Jason Aten:That'd be great.
Stephen Robles:See each other there. Just saying. I'm also thinking about WWDC in a sense of, like, Apple has a whole new platform, namely Vision OS, that's now gonna take up a huge portion of the keynote probably too. And so Yep. The pace of those events, at least the last few years watching from a distance, it has felt so rapid fire.
Stephen Robles:It's like iOS 18, iPadOS. Actually, when it gets to iPadOS it's like, here's the iOS 18 features but on a bigger screen. Okay, next. No. Yep.
Stephen Robles:It has felt a little bit like that, let's be real. But all the different plans so I'm curious how they're gonna place VisionPRO in the lineup. You know, I feel like in usually during WWDC, it's like iOS first, the biggest platform, most users, and then they kind of go down the list, macOS usually, towards the end ish and then in any other announcements. So I don't I don't know. I'm curious where they put Apple Vision Pro in the in the order.
Stephen Robles:Do you have a prediction here? Where do you think they're gonna
Jason Aten:put it? I do not have a specific prediction about that, but I've what they typically will do is they'll start with like you said, they may start with the iPhone or whatever, but they will start with, like they have a course set of features they wanna talk about, and they divvy them up among the platforms because a lot of them are the same. Right? And so you get to, like, the iPad, and they're like, well, we still make those. We haven't had a new one.
Jason Aten:But, yeah, it's there. But they'll talk about a feature, and they're like, oh, and by the way, that's also available on the watch and the and the phone. And you're like, oh, well, then why don't you talk about it when you're talking about the phone? It's like, well, because then we would have had literally nothing to
Stephen Robles:say about the iPads that we aren't.
Jason Aten:No. They didn't talk about it. Right. So so the vision pro, I imagine, will either be first or last. Right?
Jason Aten:It doesn't make a lot of sense to just drop it in the middle, but it it it also may make sense for it to be like, hey. We make iPads. And by the way, we make one for your face. And so let's talk about the features now of the VisionPRO because, essentially, they're they're so closely linked in so many different ways. So but and I wouldn't actually be surprised if part of the discussion at WWDC is better ways to convert your iPad app.
Jason Aten:You know, sort of catalyst for vision prototype thing.
Stephen Robles:I also I think it's just wild too. Like, I imagine when they talk about vision OS at WWDC, it'll be vision OS 2, 2.0 or whatever. And, like, we literally just got this in hand 2 weeks ago. You know, it'll be it'll feel probably like a quick quote unquote update for us and maybe with some big changes. You know, there was, someone on threads was talking about how watchOS changed so dramatically from, like, watchOS 1 to 2 to 3 in those early years.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, I'm curious how much it will change and Yeah. So we'll see.
Jason Aten:I'm curious
Stephen Robles:how that's gonna go. Yep. Alright. I wanna get to our personal tech question, but real quick, we'll do, like, rapid fire more AI news because it's more it's more of that. But OpenAI, who runs ChatGPT, is reportedly developing an online search product.
Stephen Robles:I think this is interesting, especially compared to, like, the Arc search app or the Arc browser, which we talked about last week. I think it was last week's episode, using the, like, AI basically to generate web page or, like, formulating search results in, like, a more digestible format, but showing you the information rather than, like, just linking you to sources. I think OpenAI would probably be pretty good at it, but I think that would be a huge competition for Google Gemini, which Yeah. I I think Google is supposed to be integrating more and more into the search part of their business. Is that right?
Jason Aten:Yeah. There actually, there was so super, like, short sidetracked from that. There was a very good article that I recommend people read. I believe it was in Wired with Lauren Good talk. It was an interview with Sundar Pichai.
Jason Aten:Essentially, like, the thesis is if anybody is going to cannibalize the search experience, it's gonna be us, which is actually a very Apple way of looking at things. Right? If anybody's going to cannibalize sales of the Ipod, it's going to be apple with the iPhone. If anybody's going to cannibalize size sales of the Mac, it's going to be apple with the iPad. And so, you know, soon after I was talking about how Google has to figure out how to incorporate AI.
Jason Aten:There you go. Exactly. That he just pulled up the article on on the YouTube feed. So and I'm sure we'll put a link to that in case you're just listening to this and you wanna read it. But it's a great it's a great interview talking about, like, what does that future look like for Google when everything around them is trying to take away the link the idea that searches where you type something in and you get a bunch of links.
Jason Aten:Google has been doing this for a while. Like, if you just type in the word flight from, you know, Detroit to Tampa, it'll just try to book the flight. And then now it won't try to book it for you, but it'll show you a Google travel, you know, Google Flights result that you could then book instead of saying you should go to Expedia or you should go to Delta's website or whatever. So I think that this is a you know, we had this conversation when we talked about the arc browser search. Again, names, I can't remember the names exactly, but the Arc Search app.
Jason Aten:And it's super useful for people, but their entire premise is we will strip away the entire web, and we'll just give you the information, and we'll block the ads if you click through to the site. It's like, well, then no one's going to make sites like, where are you going to get the information from in the future? And so no one has figured that out. I think Google is in the best position to sort of figure it out because they've just been doing it. But OpenAI clearly has the critical mass behind people using chat GPT for stuff.
Jason Aten:So, I mean, I've I've noticed lately that chat GPT 4, you know, if I'm just using that interface to get information, it's gotten a lot better even over the last 6 months. Like, it has become a lot more reliable. I have used it to say, you know, I'll say, hey. What was the key point from this company's earnings call and what were what did they report? And it'll give me the answer.
Jason Aten:And then if I go and check it, it's like, oh, that was actually true. It didn't just completely make up a bunch of stuff that isn't you know, Apple made a $1,000,000,000,000. Yes. Well, no. That's not true.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:And I will say, we talked about Google Gemini last week. So I actually went to try some of my workflows that I do day to day, which one of them is transcribing my video, taking that transcript into chatgpt, and asking for title, description, and tags for YouTube. I do that with every video I make at least as a starting point. I pulled it into Gemini to see, which I'm like, YouTube is literally a Google product. I would think Google Gemini would offer a great, basis for title description and tags.
Stephen Robles:Honestly, it didn't do as big as good of a job. Like, I just found it did not give me as robust options, it did not give me as much content in response to my prompt, and I used the exact same prompt in Google Gemini. And and I did upgrade like you did. I signed up for the Google the Gemini Pro Cloud, whatever that's called. So I can do Gemini.
Jason Aten:Gemini advanced that lets you use Gemini Ultra in the Google app. There you
Stephen Robles:go. That.
Jason Aten:I got it for you. So I
Stephen Robles:was using the best yeah. Yeah. I was using the best version of it, but it was still I don't know, I didn't It wasn't as good as useful to me as chat gpt. So, you know, Google definitely has some competing there. And the last, AI thing I thought was interesting was Slack actually adding AI tools into Slack, which we all know Jason's favorite application is Slack.
Jason Aten:Oh, yeah.
Stephen Robles:He likes using it.
Jason Aten:I love it. That's All the time.
Stephen Robles:The one reason why he might buy an Apple Vision Pro is to use Slack in Apple Vision.
Jason Aten:In my face. It's what I need.
Stephen Robles:I will say, I installed it just to kinda, like, say I ran Slack in Apple Vision Pro, and it's not that bad, and I was gonna come on here and tell you I did it, but I immediately deleted it because I never wanna do Slack in there. Yeah. I fully I fully, agree with your, sentiment there. So anyway
Jason Aten:Not that bad is a very low bar for and I just wanna be clear. I actually think Slack is a super useful tool. Like, the idea of Slack and the actual design of Slack, I don't have a problem with. What I have a problem with is the fact that it creates a sort of communication structure that it just becomes very unwieldy and unmanageable very quickly because it's it's it's hard to keep things organized. And a lot of what Slack has tried to do over the last year is make it easier for people to triage and organize different types of things.
Jason Aten:They have a catch up feature that they just rolled out, which is essentially like Tinder for your Slack messages. It's like swipe left, swipe right. Do you wanna keep this? I'm not even that's not even a joke. That's like a real thing that you do now on your phone.
Jason Aten:And I hate it. I hate everything about it. All I wanna know is, like, show me which channels I need to like, I'm I have gotten very good at this and I base the way I've gotten very good at it is I just turn off everything. I turn off all of the Slack features, all of the Slack notifications. And when I'm ready to go and look at something, I just go.
Jason Aten:And I same thing true with my inbox, by the way, for email. Well, well, I'll save that for personal tech because we have a question related to inboxes. So I'll save that piece of it, but I don't think I want Slack to be summarizing a channel for me or telling me I don't know. I'm just not sure.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I mean, there are some channels in some of my Slacks where there are a lot of messages and sometimes, like, they're not mission critical. And so I would I wouldn't mind a summary, but it all depends on how well it does and how accurate it is. And like, can it actually pull maybe the 2 or 3 key pieces of information from these last 100 messages? And, you know, it remains to be seen.
Stephen Robles:I just looked in my I have one I have a Slack that would probably have enterprise features and it does not have this AI thing yet, so we'll see. But it's interesting. I think, you know, summarizing I will say chat g p t is good at summarizing. Yeah. But that is another thing I use chat g p t for is is summarizing certain things.
Jason Aten:I do have a pro tip.
Stephen Robles:Pretty good at it.
Jason Aten:I have a pro tip for Slack, though. Yeah. If you find that you are in a channel for work, for whatever, and that channel just gets so many messages on a constant basis that it's very hard for you to keep up. My simple solution is I just leave that channel. And if anyone in there needs me, they can just DM me.
Jason Aten:I'm not even kidding. I'm like, I don't need that mental overhead. I just, or I guess at a minimum, I mute it and then I only get a notification if someone directly mentions me. So that's what I do. Yes.
Jason Aten:That's a pro tip for you.
Stephen Robles:I do it too. That as funny as that sounds, that that is a pro tip. Yep. Honestly. Yep.
Stephen Robles:Alright. So we have a personal tech from one of our reviewers, Jenna Kaur, and then we have a bonus episode coming next. I'm gonna ask Jason about his Tesla. You still have a Tesla. Right?
Jason Aten:I do. Yeah. I did not return that.
Stephen Robles:I have I have some quest I have some questions. That's gonna be the bonus episode. But for our final segment, Personal Tech, Jenna Core asked, when it comes to email, I think Jason and I probably have multiple email accounts. I know I have Icloud, I have Gmail, I have an Office 365 account I have to deal with, I have Fastmail for my personal mail, I have all these email accounts. Do we do the one inbox to rule them all method and check them all at once, or do we do the thing where we have separate inboxes and check the separate accounts separately, maybe even in separate apps?
Stephen Robles:Jason, I'll let you go first. What is your strategy for this?
Jason Aten:So I was just looking so I would make sure that I could confirm this. I have 7 email addresses that I use on a like regular basis and I use I and I just use one inbox, and it all flows into that one inbox, but I use spark. And one of the things that spark does very well is it triages people versus newsletters versus notifications. And in the things that you don't wanna see in your inbox, it just it's kind of it is similar in a way to to if you just go to the gmail.com to check your Gmail. It categorizes them, you know, like promotion, which I don't recommend.
Jason Aten:It's terrible. I don't think you should use Gmail on the web. But if you do, you can you know, the organizational part. And Spark will do a similar thing. And the nice thing about Spark is if it gets it wrong, if it puts a person in the notification, you can very easily train it.
Jason Aten:Like, nope. This person should always go here. And you can actually create some other groups where you can say, this person should go in priority, so they always show up at the top or this so I do and I have 3 email addresses that I don't care that much about. So I they triage into their own group so they don't show up individually in the inbox. So I know that was a little bit confusing.
Jason Aten:Maybe I'll take a screenshot of my inbox after I check to make sure that that it's work safe right now and send it in. And you can put that in there if you really want to. But I have one inbox. I just check. It's always available to me.
Jason Aten:The stuff is in there at at at all times. And that generally works the best for me because I just I don't sit there. I don't have, like, I don't have notifications on for my inbox. I specifically choose when I'm gonna go look at my inbox, and then I've gotten very good at triaging. Like, this needs to be dealt with.
Jason Aten:Spark has a really great, snooze feature. So I can be, like, put this back up here in an hour, put it back up tomorrow morning, put it up later today, and I can set times for each of those things. And so if it's like, oh, I really do need to deal with this today. I don't have time now. I just snooze it until later that day.
Jason Aten:And then I then I know that the next time I go back to my inbox, I'll be able to deal with it. I do I don't wanna have multiple email accounts or multiple email applications for different accounts. That just feels like it'd be really complicated. The only the last thing I'll say is I do have the Apple Mail app on my Mac and my other devices, and I will occasionally go to check it. And the reason is that sometimes things end up in, like, a spam folder that shouldn't.
Jason Aten:And the easiest way I found to find that is to just go to the default Mac app and search for different things that believe it or not, people think I'm crazy when I say this, but I actually think that the default mail app has the best search interface of most of the mail tools I've used. So I just keep it kind of like as a I'll open this if I can't find something that I really need to find. So there you go. Was that this was that even the question that somebody was asking? I hope.
Stephen Robles:Probably not. But you talked about email for a while, so that was related. No. No. I I get it.
Stephen Robles:I mean, bottom line is you look at all your email accounts in one inbox.
Jason Aten:Yes.
Stephen Robles:And then you have various organizational methods for dealing with those messages depending what it is. Yes. Yep.
Jason Aten:You just answered my question in 10 last minutes. Thank you.
Stephen Robles:No. No. But that was good. I've tried many third party applications or email. I'm a Apple Mail user on all my devices.
Stephen Robles:I use the Stock Mail app. And I have I just looked. I have 5 different email accounts and then a bunch of e mail addresses, you know, because I have a bunch of aliases for some or whatever. But I use the Apple Mail one, and I do look at the inbox altogether. Like, I look at the all inboxes view by default, and I just deal with all my email there.
Stephen Robles:I don't get a lot of email for several of those accounts, and, pro tip, I don't I think I've mentioned it before, but set up an email filter wherever you have your email. You can do this with Gmail, you can do it with Fastmail, you can do it with Outlook. Set up an email filter where any email that has the word unsubscribe or manage email preferences in the body of text of the email, I skip the inbox and I have it go directly to a folder that I call newsletters. I don't delete it, because there are rare occasions where someone might have wrote one of those words in an email to me personally, and I have to get it, but it cleans up my email so much and prevents me from having to deal with so many messages like that. And I still check that newsletter folder pretty much like once a day at least.
Stephen Robles:And I can just scroll through it. And I'm an inbox 0 person, where I like ending the day with 0 emails in my inbox, and that one filter allows me where I can have all those newsletter type emails go to that folder, and I don't have to, like, move it somewhere else afterwards. Like, it's not sitting in my inbox, and I delete or have to move to a folder. Like, I just leave the ones in that newsletter folder, and I create one for each email account. But bottom line, I use the all inboxes view.
Stephen Robles:I leave all my email there. And I like the stock mail app, save for one feature, which is the remind me later or snooze feature. Apple added the remind me later feature, I think, last year on iOS 16 and macOS whatever, and it's it's not the actual snooze feature. Like every other email app, the snooze feature, when you snooze an email, that email will disappear from your inbox, go away to some like multiverse dimension, and then at the time that you have set, whether you've snoozed it for a day or to a specific time and date, it will reappear in your inbox at that time. Apple's remind me later is like, we're just gonna leave this email here and just send you a notification maybe when you say, which is not useful for me, and I don't think is what most people thought of when they thought of a snooze Remind Me Later feature.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:That is my biggest gripe, and I hope that behavior changes, maybe in iOS 18, where remind me later can actually disappear that email from my view. And so I will use the other email apps on my phone just to snooze emails. I will go to the Gmail app or the Outlook app just to snooze email. I know that's ridiculous. I should probably use Spark or whatever, but one of the other things that I I really like about Apple Mail is the VIP notifications feature, where Apple Mail lets you set specific contacts as VIPs, and then in the notification settings, which you can do on all of your Apple devices, you can still say send me a notification when this VIP when anyone in this VIP list emails me, but don't send me any other mail notification.
Stephen Robles:I want that feature and I use it. And I feel like other apps, like Spark and other third party email apps, they'll have settings that are, like, only notify me of important emails, but that's not enough granular control for me. Like, I want it to be only this person. When this person emails me, send me a notification. When this person emails me and no one else.
Stephen Robles:And so that's why I still like the VIP feature is still good enough where I will overlook the bad snooze feature in Apple's Stock Mail app, and that's what I do. Now Jason's gonna tell me what I should be doing.
Jason Aten:No. Just so you know, you, you can do that in Spark where you can set someone as priority and get note and then only choose to get notifications. So not just, like, notify me about important emails where it's doing that calculation behind your back to decide whatever. You can just say, I only wanna be notified about, you know, priority. So for each email each email account, you can say, for this email account, because I only give this email address to, like, the 7 people I care about, notify me for all emails.
Jason Aten:But for this other email address, only do get some pretty fine tuned controls about, hey. I only want push notifications for new emails that fit these criteria. So just, I mean, I don't care if you use Spark or not. I get I have no skin in that game. I just did want you to know you can do that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Right. I mean, if they wanna sponsor this show, we'll we'll be happy to talk to them, but they don't. And so
Stephen Robles:I'll be honest. As you were talking, I just started to download Spark on my Mac because there's this weird thing where I have a Google email account for work that I need to have, and for some reason, macOS refuses to log in in the mail accounts, like settings pane, I get an error every time. Maybe it's a Google error, but every time I try to log in with this Google account on macOS, it will say like 404 error, can't log in. I can I have it on my phone, I have it on my iPad, but for some reason on my Mac, it won't do it? And I feel like it's a bug, but I can't.
Stephen Robles:I don't know for sure. Anyway, so I'm a try Spark. That that, I mean, it's been annoying because I don't get those emails on my Mac. I have to look at my phone for that one Gmail account unless I go to gmail.com, which, like you said, I don't like doing. I'm gonna try Spark, Jason.
Stephen Robles:Next episode, we're gonna have a follow-up.
Jason Aten:I can't wait. I'm
Stephen Robles:not the user.
Jason Aten:I'm very excited.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I'm I'm excited. I mean, I'm always down to try something. I'll upend my entire note task or email workflow just to try a new app. I do it regularly.
Jason Aten:I mean, the good thing about email is it's generally it's generally nondestructive because it's not like you have to take all of the accounts out of your other one. You could just delete the app and go back and you're usually fine. So there you go.
Stephen Robles:Exactly. Yeah. So I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna try it this week, and then we will follow-up. So let us know, listeners, what it do you are there Spark users out there?
Stephen Robles:Do you use the stock mail app, Apple Mail? You can let us know on social media. Jason and I's all of our social handles are in the show notes. And don't forget, give us a 5 star rating and review. You could just write the word nerd or you can write what email app you use.
Stephen Robles:We wanna get to a 100 5 star reviews this week. So go in there, you can help us out by doing that. And if you'd like an ad free version of the show and you can get the bonus episodes every week, you can support the show directly in Apple Podcasts or you can go to primarytech.fm, click bonus episodes and you can support the show there. People have been doing that and we really appreciate your support. Also, sometimes the show notes will get cut off because I put a lot of links in the show notes.
Stephen Robles:And so for some reason in Apple Podcasts it's cut off for you, go ahead and go to primary tech dot f m and you could see all the show notes in all their glory. And you can also watch it on YouTube. I include all the links there as well. Youtube.com/atprimarytech show. That link is in the podcast show notes if you wanna go watch, subscribe there.
Stephen Robles:We just crossed 400 subscribers, Jason, on the YouTube channel. I don't know if
Jason Aten:That's amazing. 4 I'm excited.
Stephen Robles:That's awesome. It is. It's very it's a lot of fun. So if you haven't been even if you don't watch it on YouTube, just go over there and subscribe to the channel, and, let's try to get to a 1000 subscribers this week. We're just crazy goals for the next week, but we're gonna do it.
Stephen Robles:Okay. You guys are amazing.
Jason Aten:This is great.
Stephen Robles:Let's do it. So let's go we're gonna go over to bonus episode. We'll see you guys there.
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