Apple Sues Leaker Jon Prosser, AI Browsers Are Actually Useful, AppleCare One Bundle
Download MP3You complete me. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, I was 26. Beta four is out, and the glass is back. But the public beta is still not out yet, least as we record.
Stephen Robles:And so we're gonna talk about the betas. Also, OpenAI's ChatGPT agent, that's what was announced last week after we recorded. Sonos named a new CEO. Apple Sue's John Prosser, we're gonna talk about that. And I have lots of thoughts about AI browsers.
Stephen Robles:This episode is brought to you exclusively by you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and we are recording live from the show floor because me and Jason are actually sitting right across from each other for the first time. Hey, Jason.
Jason Aten:Well, and by the show floor, you mean the back conference room of a courtyard by Marriott.
Stephen Robles:It's so weird if we actually, like, look at each other in the eyes. And so I don't know if we're ever Jason's gonna do not even doing it.
Jason Aten:It's like crossing the it's like ghostbusters crossing the Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Across the street.
Jason Aten:You can't do it.
Stephen Robles:So, yeah, we're in the random meeting room at a courtyard in Orlando. And so, hopefully you enjoyed I don't know. We're gonna see how this energy is. We're gonna see how the recording goes, but, yeah, let's let's do it. We have also no five star reviews this week, which is again, just an affront to us personally.
Stephen Robles:No, I'm just kidding. So here's what we need you to do. Leave us a five star rating and review in Apple podcasts and let us know. Do you use an AI browser or not? And if you do, what's your preferred one?
Stephen Robles:Because I have so many thoughts now and I actually have use cases where it's been useful. Now you use Dia, said, right?
Jason Aten:I mean, I've downloaded it and used it for two days. So saying I use it is an exaggeration. You found
Stephen Robles:a couple of use cases though.
Jason Aten:Have used it.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So we'll talk about, yeah, browsers in the personal tech segment. Alright. But let's talk about it. IOS 26 developer beta four came out earlier this week, and I put it on all the things, of course.
Stephen Robles:I'm running it on my iPad and my secondary iPhone, and which is probably a bad idea, the MacBook Air I'm using to record right now because I didn't didn't think I would be using it to actually record this podcast. But there were a couple of changes. The glass has come back somewhat. So beta three, you know, the glass became more opaque, trying to help visibility and all that kind of stuff. And now it's more glassy again.
Stephen Robles:I keep returning to the iOS seven example of how it started out super hairline thin, and then it got thicker over the summer during the betas. And I don't ever remember waffling like this, where Apple like made it more opaque and then rolled it back to be more transparent. I don't know, is this the most they've responded to, like, x feedback? Okay.
Jason Aten:This is this I just had a realization. This is gonna be it's really hard for me to yell at Steven when we're sitting across the table from each other or tell him I don't care because he's sitting right there.
Stephen Robles:That's fine. You can tell me you don't care.
Jason Aten:But Thanks for good pocket. No.
Stephen Robles:It's not that
Jason Aten:I don't care. I just think that it's also possible to read a lot into changes of a beta. And there is a reason that Apple is really clear, like, please don't review the betas. It's because they're betas, and these betas are just for developers to figure out, like, how do APIs work in their apps and how will this new interface look in their app if they adopt these, you know, SwiftUI or whatever whatever. I'm I'm not a developer.
Jason Aten:I don't even know. But I so I think that, it's almost like it feels like they dialed it in, and they realized it was gonna be counterproductive for people trying to build apps. And so they're like, okay. Hang on. Let's just let's just switch it.
Jason Aten:And then I think we believe that the public beta should be out this week. In fact, probably by the time you listen to this, there's a good chance that that'll be available. And so what we're seeing in beta four is probably the first thing that the public will see. So it is more liquid glassy, but I just don't know. It definitely seemed like the first change they made where they basically eliminated all the liquid glass was a response, but I don't think it was like people mad, change it.
Jason Aten:And then people mad, we changed it, change it back. I don't think that that's what's happening. I think it's more of a we need to just make this so that developers will use it and then we'll dial it in. But, yeah, it does seem like a lot of changes.
Stephen Robles:I am curious how the third party app story will be this fall. Like new iPhone, iOS 26. I know even now using my iPad, you know, I'll jump between Ferrite to edit the podcast and jump between like liquid glass Apple apps. And it is a stark difference. Like, it's pretty jarring, the UI differences.
Stephen Robles:So, okay. And a couple other updates, the notification summaries, didn't you write a whole article about this? About the Apple- Yeah,
Jason Aten:they're bad. They're real bad.
Stephen Robles:Well, they're back, Jason. They're back with a huge warning of like, don't trust these. Like verify the actual information. It's just like, okay, fine. I don't you glad they brought him back?
Jason Aten:Well, I think that so we're here. The reason we're in Orlando in a Courtyard by Marriott back room, which I appreciate they put us as far away people as possible, so it'll be hopefully quiet. It's because our daughter's playing in a soccer tournament here, and for some reason, Orlando is the only place you can do a soccer tournament with this many people in July. It seems ridiculous. But, so we have, like, a WhatsApp group for all the people, all the parents and everything, and it summarizes those.
Jason Aten:And it one of them I don't know what the combination of messages is at this point, but the message simply the summary simply said, too tired to continue, not going to go on or something like that. And I'm like
Stephen Robles:I can't go on.
Jason Aten:This is this like, what's wrong? It's very disturbing when you see that in a group chat for a soccer tournament. So, I don't know what they're doing.
Stephen Robles:I forget. Do you leave summaries on for everything for, like, your messages and emails and stuff, or did you turn all those off?
Jason Aten:I don't have notifications on for my emails, so I don't get summaries of emails.
Stephen Robles:Sure. But met like text messages?
Jason Aten:For text messages, I think I do have it on, and then that's basically the only thing I think I get. It's like WhatsApp and messages. It's fine. I pretty much ignore them. I don't care.
Stephen Robles:I say I only get mail notifications for VIP. So just very specific senders. And I do get those on my lock screen. I have summaries turned on for those and text messages. And I do like the mail one sometimes because especially if it's a VIP, it's nice to know what it's about.
Stephen Robles:There was, I was working on some videos recently and I got an email from the person who I sent the videos to and the summary was just like, Videos approved. And I opened the email and it was a much lengthier email, but it was basically like, Yeah, okay, that's great. I was glad I got to know they're right on the lock screen. And the last thing, there's actually more options for the unknown callers. So they're gonna have the call screening is the new feature in iOS 26.
Stephen Robles:But previously there was like one option for just screen all the calls, but now you can either say never, like don't even show me unknown callers, which is kind of like what the current setting is in iOS 18, the silence unknown callers. There's the ask the reason for calling. So it'll send them to that call screening option. And then there's the silence one. So it'll be silenced, but they get sent to voicemail and all that kind of stuff.
Stephen Robles:I think the never don't even get to leave a voicemail. I think it just shows the numbers in the missed calls list, but there's actually no option to leave a voicemail. And yeah, that's the kind of phone calls I want.
Jason Aten:I don't want any phone calls. That's I'm saying. Unable to ask reason for calling. I I just imagine that someone calls and it's, why are you calling Jason? You know he doesn't wanna if you are calling Jason, it's clear you don't know him because he does not wanna talk
Stephen Robles:to So you're spam. Definition, you're spam. So I think I'm gonna the ask reason for calling obviously because I want to try the call screening. Public beta should be out probably if you're listening to this on the day it drops as you should, it's probably gonna be available today. So keep an eye out.
Stephen Robles:I have a video that talks about a 100 features of iOS 26, Jason. 100 features. It's very thorough.
Jason Aten:I gotta be honest. I'm probably not gonna watch that one right now because I'm on vacation.
Stephen Robles:Is thirty minutes. It is a thirty minute video, but everyone else should watch it beginning to end. Apple announced AppleCareOne and should also be available today. I think it's The US only. I was reading a newsroom article and it talked about US.
Stephen Robles:I Yep, customers in The US can sign
Jason Aten:up So for AppleCare
Stephen Robles:I know someone on social media was asking me it's US only. So what this is, you can bundle your AppleCare plans. And I like to take credit for this because I released a video about every subscription I pay for on my iPhone, and there are many AppleCare ones, which I like Dan Moran on Mastodon. Dan Moran, famously of Jeopardy! Fame, but also of Six Colors and various podcasts.
Stephen Robles:He was like, How do you pay for so many? And it's like, if you have multiple kids with multiple devices, I mean, you have probably a lot of AppleCare One things, right?
Jason Aten:Well, we have a lot of AppleCare.
Stephen Robles:A lot of AppleCare.
Jason Aten:And every month my wife's like, Why did we get charged three ninety nine six times? Well, have watches.
Stephen Robles:Well, right? Well, now this might solve it. So AppleCare One, you can bundle it. So three devices is gonna be $20 a month. So that could be your iPhone, your Apple Watch, maybe your AirPods, something like that, and you can add additional devices for $6 a month.
Stephen Robles:And it seemed like if you go to the AppleCare website, so I'll put these links in the show notes, there is this device picker where you can actually see what are the plans for Apple Vision Pro. And so you can actually do Apple Vision Pro iPhone and AirPods for $20 a month, which is actually $5 less than just the Vision Pro. So if you have a Vision Pro, I feel like you're gonna immediately save money because that's like a $20 plus or some discount for it. But then, I guess it depends on the model too, so it's model pricing. But also like iPad, you can do like iPad, iPhone and AirPods.
Stephen Robles:And I have I mean, like I said, I have AppleCare on many things. So I'm curious. Hopefully, they just do an easy calculator. Oh, wait a minute. Let's just how's it going?
Jason Aten:I knew that was gonna happen at some point. Weird though that it was just a random person walking in.
Stephen Robles:Totally leaving that in. Someone just opened the door and probably assumed this was not being used. Only to see.
Jason Aten:They were supposed to put they asked me what name they should put on the door and I, for real, have sold them primary technology, but that was It is not on the
Stephen Robles:door, yeah. I just, that's why the podcast just stopped because someone was walking in. Should I do this live Jason? I think I'm probably gonna dox myself. I'm gonna try and get coverage and let's see if he'll actually I was hoping it would just tell me like pricing.
Stephen Robles:Will you just tell me like how much I'm gonna save?
Jason Aten:I mean, it's gonna be 19.99 a month till I
Stephen Robles:cancel it. But if I add all the devices currently in my plan, oh, look at this. Okay.
Jason Aten:But here, hold on. There's two things about this I think that are really worth mentioning. One is you can add products that are up to four years old. Even if they're not if they don't currently have AppleCare, I'd it's I think you have to take them into an Apple Store because it does say they have to be in good condition. So I'm wondering if you actually have to have them looked at in order to do that.
Jason Aten:But I think this is actually really smart because this is a thing that Apple rolled out three years ago with what they call Business Essentials, which is for businesses. So, like, if you have an employee and you hand them a laptop and an iPhone or a laptop and iPhone and an iPad or some combination of those devices, you could put them on on Business Essentials, and it comes with what they called AppleCare Plus. And well, that's that's not a new name. But, like, it comes with AppleCare Plus for up to three devices, and you get two repair credits a year, for that. And so it made it really easy to, like, just manage devices for employers, and that you could use them for things like damaged iPhone screens or replacing logic board.
Jason Aten:It doesn't matter. Like, you get two of those credits a year. The credits thing I don't think is the same with the person. I think that those rules are the same as they were before, which is essentially as long as you keep paying for it, they'll just keep repairing them with the with the $29 copay or whatever they call it, deductible. But this makes total sense.
Jason Aten:Like, it always perplexed me a little bit, like, why do they do this for businesses? They know that people have all these devices, and the chances of me breaking all three of the devices I might put on here are pretty slim. Right? But it does make a lot of sense. And but what do you do, Steven, if you have, like, a watch, an iPhone, a Mac?
Stephen Robles:We're gonna do it live right now because I just clicked the get coverage button on the AppleCare website and it opens settings on your Mac. So I guess you can do it, you know, I guess, bring because that's where all your devices are. And this shows all the devices signed in for me because your devices are eligible for an AppleCare plan. I can only select one for some reason. I don't know why.
Stephen Robles:So let's just try AppleVision Pro. Let's just see what happens. I'm gonna tap continue. My iPhone is not there, and I wonder if it's because I'm on the iPhone upgrade program, and that has AppleCare built in. So I didn't see that one.
Stephen Robles:I also did not see my family devices. So this is giving me a little AppleCare what it's about. I I know what it's about. Okay. So it recommends the $20 a month AppleCare one, and then save up to $22 a month when you protect Apple Vision Pro and the m four iPad Pro and MacBook Air.
Stephen Robles:So I can cover those three devices for $20 a month, where I was just covering my Apple Vision Pro for $25 a month. So that's pretty good. I'm gonna
Jason Aten:Yeah. Don't have AppleCare on my Vision Pro because it's not actually mine.
Stephen Robles:Well, and you don't take it anywhere.
Jason Aten:That does not leave my office trip. No. It's not.
Stephen Robles:See, exactly. I'm gonna do upgrade coverage, Jason. We're gonna see what happens.
Jason Aten:I had to pack six children, an ox, three mules, and, like, a bunch of clothes.
Stephen Robles:Now this is gonna dox me, so I'm gonna have to, let me stop sharing my screen. But it's asking me to sign in. Now it only lets me do the group three devices. It didn't let me choose like all my Apple devices. So I'm gonna have to see what it actually does once we go past that, but automatically this is saving me money.
Stephen Robles:And so I think if you're like me and had 18 AppleCare subscriptions for various devices, this seems like a better deal. And it's a great deal for Apple because it's insurance and probably barely any overhead. All right, it says, Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Now it says devices to add. We're doing this live.
Stephen Robles:So if you wanna watch this part of the episode, highly recommend youtube.com/addprimarytechshow. It says choose devices to add. So let me add more for $6 a month. And oh, look at this. I can add all these other things.
Stephen Robles:I'll add my AirPods. I don't add my Apple TVs to AppleCare, okay? I'm not that, just saying. My HomePods, I don't do my HomePods. I don't do my Mac mini because that sits in a closet.
Stephen Robles:The iMac is not mine. That's still a review unit. Oh, but my Ultra two. So it does not seem like you can do your family devices in a group plan, unfortunately.
Jason Aten:So like you couldn't do your MacBook Air and your wife's iPad and Correct. Your
Stephen Robles:son's It does not appear to allow you to do that. But I can add these and add this device to your plan at no charge. Sure, let's do it. Okay, well, anyway, this seems like a good deal. If you have multiple Apple devices can like, apparently it's telling me to go through and like add other ones, which I just didn't, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:We'll see how this shakes out, but yeah, it looks like it's good deal. So I'm
Jason Aten:doing it. And they do have on that page, I just was looking while you were doing all of that. You can just actually type in a serial number of one of your devices to find out if you could still add it. So if you have a device that hasn't been a part of AppleCare and you're like, can I add this? Just type in the serial number.
Jason Aten:It'll check to see how old it is. Let you know if you can add it. I'm definitely gonna do that because we have at least one iPad that
Stephen Robles:Well, and now on the settings screen, shows under AppleCare, my AppleCare one devices. So the Air, the Vision Pro, the Apple Watch Ultra two, and I thought I added the MacBook Air. You can add an iPhone on the iPhone upgrade program, it seems like. Let me add my MacBook Air. I thought that was already a part of the bundle.
Stephen Robles:But and then add this device to your plan at no charge. Right? Because you're gonna have three devices for the $20 a month. So that's that's the deal right there. Look at that.
Stephen Robles:I got my MacBook Air, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Ultra two in one plan for $20 a month, and then I can add other devices if I wanted to. This is a great deal. Yeah. Sold. Literally, literally.
Jason Aten:Literally, on the show. Literally on the show. This episode is sponsored by Apple Care One.
Stephen Robles:Okay, let's do some non Apple news. Sonos announced that its interim CEO has become the full CEO. He's been the interim CEO, I think since January, so the last six months. But this is Tom Conrad and people, the app has slowly improved. They've added more features to things like the Sonos Ace headphones.
Stephen Robles:And so he's now official CEO long term and makes promises about customer satisfaction and all that. So, well, hopefully, we'll see a new Sonos going forward.
Jason Aten:I mean, maybe. We'll see. I mean, We'll see. He does I mean, his message he posted was basically like, yeah. We know it was bad.
Jason Aten:Thanks for the feedback. We're gonna try to fix it. Because, like, the previous CEO lost his job basically because the app.
Stephen Robles:He did.
Jason Aten:It was bad. Right. They post they made an app. And this if if it's worth mentioning, like, this is still one of the biggest boondoggles because Sonos owned the music, the home music
Stephen Robles:speaker thing.
Jason Aten:Yeah. There might be some people that take issue with the high end. I'm talking about more
Stephen Robles:rants and all those. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They're not the Louis Vuitton of music. They're like
Stephen Robles:Leo Skeppy is not talking about Sony anyway.
Jason Aten:They're like Who do they know,
Stephen Robles:by the way? Do you know who Leo Skeppy is? Your kids have not introduced you to him?
Jason Aten:I don't know who that is.
Stephen Robles:Never mind. Mind. Forget I ever
Jason Aten:said it. Sorry. That reference went over my head. Okay. Good.
Jason Aten:I did get the movie reference, though, by the way.
Stephen Robles:Didn't ask me, but
Jason Aten:it was Jerry Maguire.
Stephen Robles:Okay. I thank you. Yeah. I looked at you as I said it, but you weren't looking at me.
Jason Aten:It was terrifying. I couldn't make eye contact. But, anyway and and so they appointed Tom Conrad, who was, like, their chief product officer at the time and previously was, I think, CEO of Pandora. So, like, this guy knows music at least. And so I'd be I'm optimistic.
Jason Aten:He's got a period of time now where he has a lot of experience at the company, and he's now been made the permanent CEO so he can actually do some of the things that maybe he thinks they need to do. Sonos is is, like, a great brand, though.
Stephen Robles:Like
Jason Aten:Yeah. Their brand is high end home audio kind of thing, and so high end wireless syncing home there's a lot of qualifiers. But the point is they have this brand, and they probably can still salvage it if they do the right do some do some of the right things. And it does seem like Tom Conrad is interested in doing those right things.
Stephen Robles:So and I I still love my Sonos stuff. I never use the app because all my Sonos are like home theater setups. So I just watch stuff on the TV. But sometimes I'll play stuff, you know, and AirPlay works great for Sonos still. So
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I mean, they still work better than HomePods, and I love my HomePods. I don't understand people do your HomePods still work? Do you actually still have first or second gen HomePods?
Stephen Robles:I have my kids have first gen big HomePods
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:And they repeatedly tell me how bad they are.
Jason Aten:Really? Because we have two first gen HomePods that are our main speakers for our the Apple TV, which is connected to our main, you know Oh, yeah. LG g three or whatever OLED TV. They work flawlessly all the time. Like, they never now we don't let them listen to us.
Jason Aten:They don't respond to any Right. Voice commands. We don't touch them. They literally just play sound from the Apple TV and they work every time. But I do hear a lot of people saying like that theirs don't even do that.
Jason Aten:So I'm like a little bit nervous.
Stephen Robles:I think your mileage may vary. I know the I have three original HomePods. They're all in my boys' room. And there was one update, I think it was eighteen point zero where I could never get them to like do the update. And ever since then, they've been pretty wonky.
Stephen Robles:And I think my kids will use them to play music once or twice a year, just because it's so frustrating, the experience. And it's more so just like airplayed to it. But the HomePod mini has been rough too. Do you have HomePod minis?
Jason Aten:I have we have four HomePod minis. Two of them, again, are just TV speaker. Actually, technically, they're all just TV speakers, but two of them in our bedroom. The other two are in my office, but I almost never turn that TV on. Oh, that's right.
Jason Aten:But I do use them to listen to music sometimes, and they're fine. I mean, they're okay. Mostly, for a long time, I used them as the temperature sensors in my office Oh, right. Because they well, I mean, it was always just cold in there before I got a heater. But it was kinda cool that, like, your your HomePods and I would put them at opposite ends and see what the difference in the temperature is.
Stephen Robles:Oh, that's pretty slick. That's pretty slick. I think if you have them in that kind of permanent TV setup, they end up working more reliably because they just have them do the one thing, which this is a tvOS 26 feature, don't know if you knew, but you'll be able to set AirPlay speakers as default on your Apple TV, which you couldn't do before. You could set HomePods as default, but you couldn't choose like a Sonos speaker to be the default Apple TV speaker. And with TVOS 26, you can.
Stephen Robles:So if you have like a Sonos Arc or Beam, you can say, use this as the main Apple TV speaker the whole time.
Jason Aten:The only thing I have that's an AirPlay speaker is this Bose SoundLink thing that sounds amazing except for it won't play music except for if you plug it into the the headphone jack at the back.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Well, that's
Jason Aten:It's well, it sounds so good, and it was, one like, of their portable ones. You can put batteries in it. You can put d batteries in that thing. It's not meant to be portable, but it does sound amazing. It's a nice bookshelf speaker, but the AirPlay on it seems to have long it it, like, it'll recognize it, and you go to to connect it and it just never does anything.
Jason Aten:And then you look over at it and you realize it's, like, gone to sleep. You're like
Stephen Robles:I will say for a very long time, I used a pair of Bose bookshelf speakers with an eighth inch headphone jack to an AirPort Express. The entire time I lived in my old house, which was like ten years, that was our bedroom TV speaker setup. Apple TV to the AirPort Express, which you could It was set as default. Like I never had to adjust the settings
Jason Aten:to it.
Stephen Robles:And it worked great.
Jason Aten:Yeah, this was our AirPlay speaker for our Apple TV in our living room before we got the HomePods. And then it moved out to my office and it's never been the same.
Stephen Robles:Big HomePods though, as TV speakers are they're great.
Jason Aten:They're they're fantastic. They're great.
Stephen Robles:And they actually have, like, that surround effect. So
Jason Aten:It makes me mad though every time the kids are like, can we go downstairs and watch a movie? Because downstairs we have, like, this $200 Samsung soundbar with a sub on a Samsung ten eighty p LED
Stephen Robles:Oh my god.
Jason Aten:70 inch television that we've had for a very, very long time and the kids wanna go down and watch that. I'm like, nothing about that setup is better. It's a
Stephen Robles:80 p.
Jason Aten:It has a subwoofer.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And so when they're watching, you know, and or or whatever, they can feel it.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:And I'm like, you could feel it just fine with the home the HomePods actually do a very, very good job. They're not the same, but they
Stephen Robles:They do. They do good bass, especially the
Jason Aten:They have a great bass. They really do.
Stephen Robles:Can I interest you in a sofa with a subwoofer built into the No? There's a video on my channel about that. Okay. Moving on. Last week, we pontificated about what OpenAI was gonna announce during their livestream on Thursday.
Jason Aten:I can't believe we
Stephen Robles:got We were totally wrong, was I don't know why we missed this, but OpenAI announced ChatGPT agent feature. This is supposedly rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers. I don't have it yet. And have you seen it?
Jason Aten:I don't think I have it. Let me open my ChatGPT.
Stephen Robles:And so I've heard it's a slow rollout. Maybe they've actually paused the rollout. Side note, The Verge, if you subscribe to The Verge, they've added this thing where you can follow topics and authors. Yeah. And that's amazing.
Stephen Robles:And so kudos to The Verge for adding features like that for subscription, which is something we do all the time here at Primary Technology. We add features for our subscribers, like our daily show, like the unedited feed where you can hear the guy interrupt us when he walked into this conference room. Anyway, so agent features, I'm excited to try this. I'm really curious because when we talk about AI browsers in the personal tech segment, I've been doing some agentic things that are really simple, but are super valuable and can save a lot of time. And so I want to try this.
Jason Aten:I think this is great because one of the things I did was so the people who are in charge of they're called coaches, I guess. They're in charge of the soccer team. They have this whole itinerary of activities for the girls while they're here, and I just put it into Jet GPT, I was like, what time do we have to do this tomorrow? And it'll look at it, and it'll just tell us. And so it's basically like it's looking at our calendar, but I didn't have to add all the things to the calendar.
Jason Aten:I'm just like, what time do we have to be where for what? And it just I can just ask it questions about that information, and ChatGPT is great at that. If you give it some information, you can then ask it all kinds of questions. How long do we have to go from the game to the dinner? How long do we have between this and this team meeting?
Jason Aten:How long do we have for this? What time do we need to be where? How long will it take us to get there? Like, all these questions, it's great at that. So not having to actually import a PDF or whatever, where it could just look at your calendar or whatever, I I think this this is obviously what Siri should be able to do.
Stephen Robles:Well, now that I've been using AI browsers too, there's so many tasks where I'm like, goodness, I just wish my Mac could do this.
Jason Aten:Sure.
Stephen Robles:Or I wish Safari could do this. And I know we're so far from it ever being able to, which is kind of frustrating. But all right, we're gonna save AI browser stuff because I'm gonna freak out about it. This happened like in a good way because I'm excited about it. John Prosser, notable Apple leaker, who made lots of videos about iOS 26 Liquid Glass.
Stephen Robles:Apple has sued him. This news came out Friday of last week after we recorded. And if you are unfamiliar with the story or if you haven't heard it yet, basically, Prosser gets these leaks. And in this lawsuit that Apple has, again, is suing John Prosser, there was an Apple employee named Lipnick. I forget his first name, but Lipnick worked at Apple, had an iPhone running an early developer build.
Stephen Robles:And it seems as though this other character, somehow gained access to Lipnick's phone with the beta on it, basically through, like, social engineering, like figured out his passcode, got access to his Find My, so it was able to track when the phone was left by itself. And then Ramachchiuti, when he had the opportunity, FaceTimed John Prosser, and John Prosser screen grabbed or screen recorded Ramachchiuti going through the iPhone and showing all the things. Lipnick has been fired from Apple, unfortunately. You know, what exactly fired for? Maybe he didn't secure the device properly.
Stephen Robles:Maybe maybe it was intentional, though it does not seem so. And Apple is claiming in its lawsuit that Prosser and Ramachyati actually conspired to obtain this information illegally because it's trade secrets, and so it is against them. John Prosser on X responded to the MacRumors article saying, this is not exactly what happened. I have, quote, unquote, receipts. And he posted a screen grab of an iMessage conversation between him and this Ramachillati character, and Prosser's asking, how did you get this?
Stephen Robles:And Ramachyati basically being cagey and not telling him how he got this information. So it's possible that Prosser was unaware that Ramachyati did this passcode, find my tracking, and all that unsavory activity. It's possible he was not aware, but he was still obviously involved in this whole process. And this is likely going to have major ramifications for John Prosser. I don't what happens if John Prosser is totally absolved of these things in whatever coming court case there is, if he can just keep doing what he's doing.
Stephen Robles:But his shtick of being the Apple leaker, I feel like by nature, he's gonna have to be more careful in the future if he continues to do it. I would be surprised if he does. But, you know, the last time there was actually legal action do you remember if there was legal action in the Gizmodo case with the iPhone four?
Jason Aten:Well, I mean, they sent like
Stephen Robles:goosebumps But to people's he wasn't charged or sued, I feel like.
Jason Aten:I don't remember.
Stephen Robles:I feel like they did some you know, Apple did some thing to obtain the device and maybe even try to eliminate some of the the pictures or data that he had. But I don't know if that Gizmodo person was sued. And if you're unfamiliar, before the iPhone four launch, which was the first major redesign of the iPhone, it was a huge leak. It was an Apple employee left it at a bar, and someone from Gizmodo obtained the phone, and they posted leaks on the website. In that case, there was not this coercion or deception to try to obtain the phone.
Stephen Robles:It was literally an Apple employee left it, and that was his, you know, mistake. But this case is different. Tell me what you thought when you saw all this come out.
Jason Aten:I thought, one, this is the best thing that could happen to Jon Prosser.
Stephen Robles:Just for publicity?
Jason Aten:Just yeah. I mean, if you get sued for being the Apple leaker, I feel like, you know how much mileage he's gonna try to get out of this?
Stephen Robles:But what if he can't leak anymore after this?
Jason Aten:I mean, okay. First of all, Jon Prosser's, I no. I'm not picking on you, but, like, he's not actually a leaker. Right? The only people who could leak are the people on the inside who have the information.
Jason Aten:So he's just I don't know what we need a name for the people who trade in leaks from someone else. Because, like, John Prosser doesn't have anything to
Stephen Robles:A a what do you call, like, a a not a profiteer, but, like, a
Jason Aten:It's it's like the, tabloid. He's a tabloid journalist who who tabloids and leaks, I guess. I don't know. Like
Stephen Robles:So are you saying Mark Gurman is a tabloid? Bloomberg is a tabloid. No.
Jason Aten:I'm just kidding. I think there's a difference between Gurman and Prosper.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Let's let's get to that in a second.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's
Stephen Robles:like you wanna talk
Jason Aten:about I
Stephen Robles:wanna talk about Okay. But anyway, so
Jason Aten:Okay. I think in this case, though, I think the thing Apple wants the most here is to prevent them from sharing any future information that they may have gotten from this. I think that's the main purpose of this lawsuit. I could be wrong. I mean, they're asking for damages.
Jason Aten:They're asking for judgment. They're asking for other stuff. But one of the things they're asking for is, you know, an order prohibiting them from releasing future inform or other information. I think that's the thing that they want the most and would probably settle on as opposed to the actual because what are the damages? Like, I don't know.
Jason Aten:Like, the guy that got fired, he got fired because he clearly wasn't following Apple's policies. And I think it says that he didn't report it. So it happened, and then he didn't report it to Apple. So you just get fired because you're not following the policies. I think in Prosser's case for his reputation, if that's the reputation he wants, I think this is probably good for him because it gives him it gives a lot of credibility to what he was reporting.
Jason Aten:If you report something and you get sued, it's like, see, it was real, obviously. And, I mean, we already know that some of it was real because we've now seen the actual
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Beta. Was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:I don't know. I just think it the person who the guy in the middle, Ramachanima. Yeah. That guy. I'm not even gonna try to say the name.
Jason Aten:I think it's pretty clear, like, essentially, social engineered hack. That's probably illegal. Could be sued. Could actually be charged. The only question is whether or not Jon Prosser was a part of that scheme, whether or not he was, like, a coconspirator on that scheme.
Jason Aten:I think as a general rule, that's probably a thing as good as being sued by Apple in this case is probably good for his reputation. I just think that that's like a a bridge too far. Right? Finding a finding an iPhone four in a bar and then taking it apart and reporting on it, like, that feels like it's all fair game.
Stephen Robles:And he and Prosser in the past has supposedly gotten information like he was wrong about it, but he claimed to have information about an Apple Watch redesign with square sides. He was wrong about that.
Jason Aten:He was wrong.
Stephen Robles:He had information about a Mac Mini redesign, which maybe he was like partially right, if at all. I feel like the Mac Mini redesign was not what he said.
Jason Aten:Also, I think it was obvious that they were probably going to redesign it.
Stephen Robles:Sure. And so, you know, he is I wanna talk about leak culture again in a moment because I wrote a little thing, but I
Jason Aten:Oh boy.
Stephen Robles:I will say, you know, Jon Prosser, he has videos besides leaks. I don't know if you ever saw his Tim Cook documentary style video.
Jason Aten:It's popped up in my feed. I've never actually clicked on it because it's from-
Stephen Robles:Well, listen, and listen, I was the same way. I was like, what is this gonna be like? But I wanna give John Prosser total credit. That documentary style video about Tim Cook is actually excellent. The production is excellent.
Stephen Robles:The information, the storytelling, he's a great producer of stuff like that. And I think if he can never report on leaks again, he could do really well in that kind of video, which may take more work. There's also a bunch of unsavory news on social media about render artists not being paid by Prosser, and I've seen several people come out talk about that. It's hard to substantiate that and know what's facts there. So his character aside and how he is behind the scenes, I think he could do well in those kinds of videos.
Stephen Robles:Now when it comes to leaks, I wrote a little thing when this came out because I did the Apple Insider podcast for four plus years covering leaks with something we just did because that was part of Apple Insider's stick. And I also I texted someone at another major site that covers this kind of stuff because I asked him, well, one, what is the difference between Prosser and Gurman? And he said, well, one, people are just giving Gurman this information. He is not doing anything to obtain it, And so can't really be prosecuted for social engineering something or trying to get trade secrets in an illegal way. People are just sending in this information.
Stephen Robles:Why are people sending in this information? This person I was texting, and I'd be curious if you have any thoughts, basically anonymous notoriety that they get to see their leak in a major publication, namely Bloomberg. It could be people inside Apple who are unhappy, and so are leaking things as kind of a retribution or gotcha to Apple because they're just not happy with something in the company. So there could be several different motivations about why they send leaks to Gurman. But what Gurman is doing, reporting on these leaks, like Apple can't really prosecute it in the same way because he is not actively reaching out and obtaining these things.
Stephen Robles:At least that's what the person told me and seemed to make sense to me. Now, it comes to leaks in general, well, before we get to that, any thoughts on that, like the difference between Gurman and Prosper?
Jason Aten:I think one of the differences, and I understand some of our audience may think that this is just nonsense to say this, but Gurman works for Bloomberg.
Stephen Robles:Right. That is a fact.
Jason Aten:They have a, they have an they have a editorial policy. They have an ethics policy. They have all these things in place, and they vet this. Like, Gurman can't publish something. Right.
Jason Aten:I promise you. Like, he does not publish any of these things without being able to substantiate it to someone. Right? They he doesn't just traffic in, quote, rumors necessarily. His newsletter maybe strays a little bit closer to that because it's a little bit more freewilling.
Jason Aten:But if Gurman publishes an article, there is there is a a news organization that's standing behind that in a different way. Like, I could start a YouTube channel, right, this second. Wow. Or you you you ordered AppleCare plus one or whatever. I could just start a YouTube channel right now and just start publishing things.
Jason Aten:But there's no editorial, like Right. Governance or what policies there. And so there is a there is also a difference in terms of the protections afforded to a journalist in that sort of environment versus somebody. And it doesn't mean it's weird. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I don't wanna get into the debate about, like, is a YouTuber a journalist? Some perform that function, but being a YouTuber doesn't make you a journalist because you can just publish anything.
Stephen Robles:I do think this case with Prosser specifically might change the dialogue about whether a YouTuber is responsible or have is held to a standard different than whatever, a poop poster. I don't wanna say the bad word.
Jason Aten:Sure.
Stephen Robles:You know? On social media. Although there have been X accounts that used to leak stuff. Love to Dream was a prominent leaker on X and had to stop, I think because of some legal action on Apple's part several years ago. But the journalistic thing, Mark Gurman, his sources are named internally, he just never names them in the story.
Stephen Robles:So like you're saying, I'm sure Bloomberg can say, these were the names of the sources and they gave us this information freely without coercion, without us paying them.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I think that, you know, Gurman's at a point now because of his reputation where people will just give him information. But even if that happens, he still is gonna require those people to substantiate what they give him, that kind of thing. And I I I imagine, like, when Gurman was wasn't he a nine to five guy I'm sure that he was hustling to get sources. Right?
Jason Aten:Like and I'm sure he was building those relationships, and he was and once you get a scoop, you get more scoops.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:I was like, I I occasionally have people that that email me stuff, not anything interesting because I've never published it. And I just don't care enough to do the work to try to substantiate it. It's it's hard. Like, if somebody just emails you and is like, you know that this is a thing that's about to happen, it's like, okay. Well, can you can you talk to you?
Jason Aten:Can you send me something? Can you show me this? Can you, like and it's just not for what I for, like, the kind of stuff I write, it's just not really worth it. But I those people that send you things generally fall into two categories. One, somebody who's really upset about a thing.
Jason Aten:Right? And then secondly, someone who, like, you just you kinda called it, like, anonymous notoriety, which is a weird concept. But there I think there are people that just get a thrill of, like, I know a thing and I want the thing I know to get out there even if I can't take credit for it.
Stephen Robles:Know it was because of me that this got out there. Now leaks in general. So I wrote a thing because at Apple Insider, we did a lot of leaks. It was part of the gig. It's still a part of the culture.
Stephen Robles:I I never was really drawn to to wanting to report well, let me say this. I was drawn to cover more leaks when I was doing Apple Insider because I saw the success that people like Jon Prosser had. Jon Prosser, Sam Cole, people on X who would leak things, huge following, huge views on YouTube. And as you can see from Jon Prosser and Sam Cole's channel, it draws a big crowd even now, which you would think the leaks would not be as attractive as they are, but for some reason people love to hear and see them. But the problem is your credibility is then based on predicting things in the future, which is not you're gonna have a hit or miss.
Stephen Robles:Even Gurman is not a 100% accurate. And Sam Cole's website, AppleTrack, he actually started that website as a thing basically to see how accurate leakers are. So even himself and Prosser, and he has Gurman on there, he keeps track of what they predict, what are the leaks, and what actually comes true. And there's been times when Gurman is spot on with the M3 Pro and Max line. I think he called it exactly the chips they were gonna announce, all this kind of stuff.
Stephen Robles:But there are times when Gurman is not right, where he says they're going to launch this thing. I mean, many times has he said the HomePad with a screen was gonna be launched this year? And even now again, he has said, Oh, it's been delayed till 2026, which is like, delayed? It's never been announced. It doesn't exist.
Stephen Robles:Apple's never said it. And so for me personally, while it was attractive to think about leaks as an audience grabber, I don't want to do that personally. We talk about rumors and leaks on this show because I do think sometimes there's value in buying decisions. Like when a family member asks me, should I get a new iPhone? I'm like, well, iPhone 17, you might have more options because the iPhone 17 Air is gonna exist.
Stephen Robles:And maybe there's a new this might be a new feature that you would appreciate. So don't buy a phone in August, wait. And so things like that I think can be valuable, and that's why we share them on this show. But to build an entire YouTube channel or following based on the leaks is not something that I'm interested in. I would rather say, Let me teach you about the 100 new features in iOS 26 that you can use right now.
Stephen Robles:And that's that's the kind of video I wanna make. So
Jason Aten:Yeah. I just think that, like, when you if you the the thing about reporting on rumors and leaks is one, yes, you you trade in a little bit of your credibility every time because you might be wrong. And if you're right, you build up a little bit of credibility. But, like, you and I could just, like, make some things up right now, and there's a chance that three of them would be right. If we guessed the the 20 things, three and it's
Stephen Robles:like A broken clock is right twice a day.
Jason Aten:Does that give us does that give us credibility? But the other thing is you're you you're only as good as your last leak. Is that how it would work? Like, you just you have to constantly be hustling in that regard, and it's in I think it's interesting because the alternative is, like, well, do you just report on PR nonsense that companies send you? Which is also not necessarily fun.
Jason Aten:One of the things I like is, like, I get to have an opinion about the things that I write about. So I I mostly am writing about things that we already know to be true because they've either been reported somewhere or I've seen the thing or I've had a briefing about it. But I don't just write the story about what just happened. I get to write about what I think about what just happened, which for me is, like, the sweet spot because I get to just pay attention to what's happening in the world and then have opinions about it and then write about it as opposed to, okay. Well, I need a I need a scoop or I need a whatever.
Jason Aten:Because even like, you just look at people like Alex Heath or Tom Warren or something like It's like, who are very credible in their area. But also, like, Alex Heath, his whole thing is, like, he gets recordings of Meta meetings. What happens if that stops? Like, someday I mean, Meta, I promise, is trying real hard to not Have that Have that happen? And, I mean, other than Bloom or, Gurman, who I'm pretty sure his source is Tim Cook, so that should continue for a while.
Jason Aten:Everyone else, it's like, what happens if they find the person and you just have to work so much harder to get the same stuff.
Stephen Robles:And I do think, like, Chris Welch, previously at the verge, which is now he's at Bloomberg, which is, again, kind of funny, another leaker. He was like the Sonos.
Jason Aten:Yeah, he's why there's Tom Conrad's the new CEO of Sonos.
Stephen Robles:But he was always His track record was, I think close to 100% because the Sonos Ace headphones, new version of the Ark and Sub, he nailed all of those.
Jason Aten:He saw them.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, he saw them. So listen, we're gonna leak something right now. You ready?
Jason Aten:That's a weird sentence, but
Stephen Robles:Apple is going to release an m five iPad Pro. That's the leak.
Jason Aten:I mean That's it. They never did an an m three. So it's
Stephen Robles:kinda risky. You never know.
Jason Aten:It is kinda risky.
Stephen Robles:You never know.
Jason Aten:But they did a one, two and a four and the two is still the best because it has the Smart Folio keyboard.
Stephen Robles:I've had so many people asking me like, what keyboard should I get? And yeah, was, you know, it's the Smart Folio, but you can't get it on the new one.
Jason Aten:You can't. And it makes me crazy because this display is so much better.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, let us know. Leave us a five star rating on review. Leave us in the review. You could say whether you want us to do more leaks or not, but we're not going to whether you say it or not. So just let you know.
Stephen Robles:You can let us know. If I'm curious, like and I'm not immune to it either. You know, if I see I look at the the iPhone 17 models that leak and all that kind of stuff, but it's not, you know.
Jason Aten:I don't and I don't know what the thing that it's it's sort of just the attraction of the unknown, why people like seeing the leaks. Because there are other tech podcasts that do spend a lot of time talking about the rumors about the next devices. And I think what can happen is the rumors never have the full story. And so you I often will then see when the products are released. This happened especially with the square edged I r watch.
Jason Aten:People are then super disappointed by the ultra. And it's like, this thing's amazing, and the battery lasts six days. Like, what more do you want? I don't understand.
Stephen Robles:The other thing I wanted to mention last thing, it's interesting how some leaks get even mainstream where big YouTube channels that don't typically cover leaks still talk about it. They'll make videos about the iPhone 17 right now. You can go on YouTube and see from really reputable people I met at WWDC. And not to say that that makes them unreputable, but I think just by nature of sometimes if there's no news, the leaks are the news. So
Jason Aten:You gotta feed the algorithm, man.
Stephen Robles:The algorithm. Listen, that's why I like RSS. RSS, Viva la RSS, no algorithm between you and the episode. No
Jason Aten:distribution. You have unlimited distribution, zero audience, but it's great.
Stephen Robles:That RSS gets injected right into your vein. That's how the episode is delivered. All right, before we get to AI browsers, do wanna mention the Trump administration did talk about AI and how it's going to be in everything. It has the AI action plan and some notable things that he was saying that the AI plan, he wants to accelerate AI innovation here in America, building American AI infrastructure, which is probably data centers and GPUs, I guess, and power. And he wants to lead international diplomacy and security around AI.
Stephen Robles:And this which interesting quote, thought. They want to prohibit the federal government from contracting with large language model developers unless they, quote, ensure that their systems are objective and free from top down ideological bias. I don't know if they know how LLMs work.
Jason Aten:Problem with this fundamentally is if you have there's literally no way to but if you did, someone would think it was biased because it didn't agree with them.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point.
Jason Aten:That's what we mean when we say no ideological bias. What we mean is like, it agrees with me.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point.
Jason Aten:That means someone else is gonna think that it Right.
Stephen Robles:I just because if yeah. Like, if you were to ask an LLM whenever the so the next election, 2024, '28, '28, I guess.
Jason Aten:Steven is 2025.
Stephen Robles:I was '26, 2024.
Jason Aten:IPhone 17.
Stephen Robles:2028. In the twenty twenty eight election, like, if you ask an LLM, objectively, who would make the better president? Is no answer that anyone would say is then objective.
Jason Aten:Well, and here's the thing. If they answer that thing gets you back, it's like, I'm you know, I that's a personal decision. I can't give you that. You're like, she's biased against my person.
Stephen Robles:Well, yeah, exactly. So I I don't know how that could be achieved, but, yeah, more AI. We're gonna do lots more AI apparently.
Jason Aten:And I I the other thing I saw that was interesting about this is, like, yes, they're gonna not contract with with LLMs that have some kind of a political bias. But, like, again, like you said, do not know how these things work?
Stephen Robles:They're literally trained on what humans have done.
Jason Aten:But I think a bigger thing is that we didn't really talk about, but the is part of the whatever large beautiful bill or whatever thing that people do. Right? It's like there there's states are not going to be allowed to regulate AI for ten years or something like that, which I do think there is an advantage to having one set of regulations for this kind of thing. Because right now, a lot of the regulation we're in Florida. I live in Michigan.
Jason Aten:Our cars are basically determined by the regulations in California. Right? Like, that's just the way that it kinda works. And I do think that that's not a good system where one state can set some sort of a standard that then has to affect every other state. And in some cases, like, I'm not advocating for pollution.
Jason Aten:Like, I drive an electric car. I'm trying to avoid pollution. Whatever. But I think that, like, there are a lot of things where states should have the opportunity to set the regulations that they think are best. AI, though, I think it's we just don't know enough.
Jason Aten:Like, I'm not sure anybody should make laws yet. It and that's not to say it should just be a free for all. I just don't think we know enough about what's happening or what how these things work. The people that make the LLM still don't quite know how. They take them they take a model and it does the thing.
Jason Aten:Like, I I don't like, could someone could Sam Altman explain to me why ChatGPT is able to take that PDF I gave it and tell me how long I have to get from I don't think it could because it's just it's just turning them into tokens and then predicting the next token. It's like, I don't know how it's doing that. So maybe having laws would not be a good thing. This which is why it's just kind of absurd to be like, well, we're only gonna work with LLMs that don't have a political bias. Like
Stephen Robles:I don't think yeah.
Jason Aten:I don't understand.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Alright. So I want to talk for a personal tech, AI browsers. Do want to mention side note, the latest decoder episode, which was hosted by Alex Heath. I was listening to it on the drive over here, so we could do this in person.
Stephen Robles:And the latest episode is with, I was not on their website yet. I forget it. It's with the Mirage App CEO, which is an AI video generator app. It's a great episode because Alex Heath is talking to him about what does the future mean for all this AI generated video. And the Mirage CEO is basically saying, right now they have models that can generate video at an infinite length because a lot of I actually used Vio the other day legit, and those videos are capped at eight seconds, both computationally because it's exponentially harder computationally once you get past eight seconds.
Stephen Robles:We talked about that in the episode, but also cost and all that kind of stuff. So he says Mirage and others have models that can do hours, and it's much less computationally involved, which is pretty wild. But he was basically saying in six months, six months to a year, we'll be at a place where video and audio can be generated and it will be almost indistinguishable. And he was talking about some of his models that it can generate things out of whole cloth. It doesn't even need a photo.
Stephen Robles:It doesn't need any kind of base material. It can just generate stuff. But if you give it a photo and Alex Heath said the Mirage CEO asked for permission. They took a photo of Alex Heath and then generated a video of Alex Heath talking. And while the voice didn't sound like him, Alex Heath said the image was freakishly accurate.
Stephen Robles:And so again, I want to keep talking about media literacy. And this was an interesting interview because at the end, Alex Heath was like, what do you think one hundred years from now? Because the Mirage CEO was like, we've done some thought experiments on what would one hundred years from now be with all the AI generated content. So one hundred years from now, what does it look like? And he thought, the Mirage CEO, that the worst case would be no one trusts anything, video, photo, written, and only depends on eyewitness testimony, Which he said ironically is what it was like a hundred years ago when there wasn't any photos, there wasn't any video.
Stephen Robles:There wasn't that much written word. It was just people's eyewitness testimony, which is kind of hilarious, especially when you think of ancient documents and how people critique the reliability of what happened a thousand years ago, maybe it would return to that. He said that might be the worst case scenario, which I feel like, and the main difference would be the speed of correction. So if there is an AI generated video that shows someone saying something that they didn't, the correction can come much faster now than it could one hundred years ago, because you just couldn't get an eyewitness testimony around the world in seconds. But best case that we would have some kind of watermarking and people would And he had actually really interesting idea.
Stephen Robles:He thought watermarking AI generated video would be less useful than marking legitimate video. And he thought maybe in future models of the iPhone and other phones, that when you record a video that it could have some kind of cryptography, not like cryptocurrency, but like code or cryptography hashing that could actually mark what device captured this, who captured this, where were they, what was the time and date, and that that information could be secured so that a video could be verified as true rather than trying to verify a video is AI generated. And I thought that was a really interesting concept, and that made me a little more hopeful because I feel like, especially for journalism and how much just random people's videos are used on the news and stuff, that that would be, I feel like, a noteworthy system to say, We were sent this video. Again, you have to have some kind of software or something to decode and say like, this is legitimate. But yeah, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I thought that was interesting.
Jason Aten:I just think in order to become a CEO of an AI company, you have to be able to say, we're making this cool thing that could destroy the world, but it's probably better that we make it because it's gonna get made anyway. Right. But that's such a weird argument.
Stephen Robles:Not great. That's not great.
Jason Aten:That's such and they believe it wholeheartedly that, like, yes, this thing could be used for terrible purposes, but we're going to keep building it because someone will build it. I'm like, but what if no one did?
Stephen Robles:I think that's literally you should really listen to it when you're back from vacation because Alex Heath asked the Mirage CEO, like, You know this is going to be used for mal intention purposes. Why are you doing it? And he was like, Well, the way capitalism goes, someone's going to build it, so we're gonna do it.
Jason Aten:Someone's gonna make the thing and we want the money. That's what they're saying.
Stephen Robles:There is the optimistic or altruistic idea of, Well, we're gonna try and do it in the most responsible way possible. And on their website and in their mission statement, try to tell their users, Use responsibly, basically like the alcohol warning.
Jason Aten:Yeah, we're gonna make it in the least offensive way because you will give us money. We will not be the bad guy. That's really the reason.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So anyway, I want that to lead into AI browsers because I went from using no AI browsers to using all the AI browsers. I used Dia, I got invited to Perplexity Comet and I've been using that. I started paying for Gemini. I was not paying for Gemini previously and I started because I'm now testing like what works best where.
Stephen Robles:And there is differences in that. Yeah. But I will just say I am now very bullish on AI browsers and what it can do, especially when it has the agentic component. And I'll be honest, until now, the whole agentic thing, I'll be like, whatever. A computer can poke around on a website to book you a flight, order your DoorDash, great.
Stephen Robles:But then I had one use case that has become invaluable, and that is this. When I upload the subscriber audio for this podcast or for The Daily Show, Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts does not let you upload the audio and just say publish this when ready. You literally have to sit there, and the processing could be ten minutes. It could be twenty minutes.
Stephen Robles:You never know. And I personally just have to refresh the page, wait for the little publish button to turn purple, and then click it. Now Apple could solve this by just saying publish when done like every other podcast host does, but it doesn't do it. So I opened Comet, the Perplexity Browser, and I logged into the Podcast Connect, I uploaded the audio for The Daily Show, and I told the Comet browser, Listen, there's a publish button on this page. It's grayed out.
Stephen Robles:I want you to refresh this page every minute. And then when that button turns purple and becomes clickable, I want you to click it. And I was like, I didn't know if it could do it or not. Jason, it did it. And I don't have to watch it.
Stephen Robles:I could just leave that tab open, do something else, and it refreshed the page every minute. As soon as the button turned purple, it clicked it for me, and I don't have to think about it. And that sounds so silly, but there have been days, and if you subscribe and notice this, I apologize, there have been days where I have not published The Daily Show to Apple Podcasts specifically. It happened twice because I didn't stick around to hit publish. I just forgot.
Stephen Robles:I uploaded it, I hit save, and then I started doing something else, and I forgot to hit publish. I'm like, This browser can do this mindless task for me and probably be more reliable than me trying to remember to do it. I'm in. And this is how Shortcuts is too. People ask like, I can't get into Shortcuts.
Stephen Robles:I don't know how to use it. If you can find one thing that is valuable enough that you do often that it can do for you, you'll use it for that, and then by nature you'll find other things to use it for, and I had been finding it, and it's wild.
Jason Aten:They wouldn't give me access to comment, and Steven was rationing out his invites to someone else.
Stephen Robles:Assumed you made It's
Jason Aten:not like the guy you do a podcast with should be able to experience this so we can talk
Stephen Robles:about Honestly, I complained about it on X. Mentioned Perplexity and somebody at Perplexity DM me and gave me an invite. I'm just saying.
Jason Aten:But so I was using Dia. And so do you remember I think the first example of this, well, was Edge. You could use, like, you could talk to Bing, which no one does. No one use Something like that. Use Edge and you shouldn't talk to Bing.
Jason Aten:Let's just clear that up. But it has, like, the little Bing sidebar thing where you could, like, whatever, and no one did that. And now you can have essentially an AI chat. So this isn't necessarily the agent thing you're talking about. But in the DiaBrowser, like and this is the browser company.
Jason Aten:They had the ARC browser.
Stephen Robles:The ARC browser.
Jason Aten:And they're like, just kidding. We're not gonna do that anymore. We're doing a different browser. Why they didn't just call this ARC Yeah. Two point o or something?
Jason Aten:I don't know.
Stephen Robles:Doesn't make any sense.
Jason Aten:What because I don't think they had such a large install base that people would have been confused if they would have added this feature. But I can load a page and just start asking the browser questions about the page. And it'll just do the I I I loaded we use this thing called Parsley, which is how we track traffic and stuff and sources and stuff. And I could just load it and give it, like, six months at a time and say, tell me what the top performing articles on this page have in common. Tell me what the top sources that are referring to different types of articles.
Jason Aten:Which types of articles perform best based on which sources? And it's just giving me all this analysis based on a web page that it's able to look at. That kind of thing is insane because that's the kind of stuff I like, these websites don't have these tools built in. A lot of people are trying. But, like, if it's just built into your browser, it just completely eliminates the need for the services that you use to have to also build it in.
Jason Aten:And in a lot of cases, I suspect that the browser will become a much more useful way to do that because you can have the same experience no matter what you're doing.
Stephen Robles:So I'm gonna I'm gonna share my my comment browser real quick. So if you're not watching, you can watch the segment over youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Works great on YouTube too. Now, Dia can do this as well, but this is Comet. And so I loaded up Sarah Dietschy, guest on the show, friend of the show, her last video talking about her new studio setup.
Stephen Robles:And so I'm just gonna ask Comet the question, what camera is Sarah using in her studio? And based on the transcript that Perplexity and Comet can pull, it just that quickly will say, oh, she's using the FX3. And so this could be a two hour, a three hour YouTube video. If it's an interview, you could say, Give me the key takeaways from this video as a YouTube creator, or even personalize it more and say, What can I do differently about my creation process based on the advice in this video? And just having that contextual awareness, being able to ask it about the thing on screen is huge.
Stephen Robles:Now Dia does that and Perplexity. But what Comet Perplexity's browser does more is that agentic stuff, meaning it can click on the website for you, actually take action on the website. And so one of the other things I did, depending on the use case, maybe this is great, maybe not, but I went to a website, I really wanted to get a PDF from the website and it was making it difficult because I was trying to obscure it through popups and JavaScript or whatever. And so I basically had the website loaded and it also required authentication, which then makes it difficult to get through the code and stuff. And so I asked the Perplexity Browser comment.
Stephen Robles:I said, This page has a PDF on it. I just want to get the raw PDF URL. Find it. And it did. And it actually had to go back and forth.
Stephen Robles:It loaded the file several times. It had to refresh it because it had to watch the resources load in the developer type consoles or whatever, which it's just doing behind the scenes. And it tells you what it's doing step by step. It's saying, All right, we're looking for the XHTML this, we're doing this. And it just immediately, the value was immediately became aware of using browsers like this.
Stephen Robles:And now I'm like, well, man, I want this to do all the things. I even pulled up a Google Sheet. I had a Google Sheet with five different YouTube links. I was doing some research about the top videos that talk about podcasting. And so I had a Google Sheet up with links in the sheet, and I could just ask Comet, look at the five videos I have linked in this sheet right now on screen, and me the things that make these intro hooks high performing.
Stephen Robles:And I could just do it. And it didn't even have to change what I was looking at. And so those kinds of powers that you get from this kind of browser, it's like, one, I'm in. I'm 100% in. I'm gonna try and find more use cases as I go.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna try and make a video once I could figure out enough things to compare. And also how far Safari is behind on all of this stuff. Because Chrome, Google is building Gemini into Chrome like Comet and Perplexity, like the Dia browser. It's only early access right now. You have to pay.
Stephen Robles:But I realized as if you start experimenting with these things, Gemini is really good at YouTube type queries. And when you give it a YouTube link, Gemini will be like, Do you want me to watch the whole video before I answer? And it's like, Yes, please do that. And it does it much faster. I don't know how it's doing it.
Stephen Robles:It's probably just via the transcript or whatever. But I'm like, Okay, well now I want Gemini for this. I know Comet can do this task for me, and I'm excited.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The only thing I am really excited about in this entire conversation is you now realize it's okay to use different browsers for different things. Because I was this I realized, like, I do still just use this is not about AI browsers, but I after our last conversation where you tried to goo like, roast me for using Brave instead of just Safari.
Stephen Robles:I use Brave for Riverside.
Jason Aten:I'm saying I use it for basically all work related things, but I use Safari. If I'm just gonna open Netflix, I'll just open Safari. If I'm gonna which doesn't really does not happen very often, but if I was gonna open, like, Instagram on my Mac Right. Right. I'll just do it in Safari.
Jason Aten:If I was gonna like, so for strictly personal personal things, I just often just use Safari. But for almost every work related thing, I just use Brave for various reasons. Actually, number one reason is because the way that Safari displays a large number of tabs just breaks my brain. I don't even know why. It's just it's terrible.
Jason Aten:It's horrible. But the point is, now if I'm researching an article, I'm gonna probably use Dia. Like, it's so much better for that kind of thing than than either Brave or Safari. It's a so, like, it's okay to have different browsers for different purposes. And Dia did a nice thing where, like, when I opened it for the first time, it's like, do you want me to just import all your information from Brave?
Jason Aten:So everything moved over. My favorites, my logins, my history, everything just moved over. Tab groups, I apparently when we had this conversation, I created tab groups. It moved my profiles over, everything.
Stephen Robles:You know what they can import from? Safari, which is really annoying.
Jason Aten:Dia comment. It says coming soon or something like that.
Stephen Robles:Well, and I actually asked, so I was DMing somebody from Perplexity and they were like, there's some security protocols that Safari has that doesn't allow for that kind of export import thing. So I'm like, all right. Yeah, I'm all for privacy and security, like, I'll let it show But I just
Jason Aten:wanna do the thing. I just wanna do the thing.
Stephen Robles:I'm like, you're an agentic browser. Can you just like click every bookmark I have a Safari?
Jason Aten:Could you just write a script and then I'll just do this? I know.
Stephen Robles:Now I would because then I was thinking like that capability in Comet, that agentic stuff, man, I want that on my computer. So last night there was another thing I was trying to do and I couldn't get the PDF. And so I basically took screenshots of a bunch of different pages and combined it into a PDF. And I was like, I'm over here like an animal doing a screenshot, keyboard shortcut, pressing the right arrow key, doing another screenshot. And I'm like, I just wanna be able to tell my computer, take a screenshot of every page of this document.
Stephen Robles:And that's such a simple task that it should be able to do. And it would be mindless for me. I'm sure there's lots of spreadsheet tasks that you would be able to do. And I'm sure if you use Google Sheets in the browser, Perplexity and these browsers will be able to do formulas for you. If you struggle to do that kind of stuff, I'm sure that's coming soon if it's not there already.
Stephen Robles:So anyway, I'm all in. I'm excited about AI browsers. Resisted installing Chrome on my Macs because I was like, I have Brave. I don't need Chrome. Now I have Safari, Comet, Dia, Chrome, Brave, and Edge all on my computer.
Jason Aten:I still won't install Chrome.
Stephen Robles:I did it because of Gemini because it's
Jason Aten:I still won't.
Stephen Robles:I mean, I don't I don't I didn't install Chrome on my Mac Studio for what it's worth. I only have it on this beta MacBook Air.
Jason Aten:I don't care what they add to Chrome. I still won't use it.
Stephen Robles:I only because I I I wanted the Gemini built in access to see if it would do the agent. I'm basically doing it for a video. Once I do the video, I'll probably stop. Which, by the way, the Chrome icon is in Squirrel Jail in Mac West Tahoe. Like, it doesn't but anyway.
Stephen Robles:Alright. We're gonna have a bonus episode. I wanna talk about Stephen Colbert and what is going on with Paramount. So if you wanna hear the bonus episode, the only way you can hear that is supporting the show, which you can do directly on Apple Podcasts. You can go to join.
Stephen Robles:Primarytech.fm, support us there, and you get ad free versions of the show. You get the bonus episode every week. You get our Monday through Friday daily show, and you get an unedited raw audio recording, which you can hear our interruptions here in this room and a little small talk before the show. So again, links to support us there. You can watch the show on YouTube, search for Primary Technology, and you'll find us right away.
Stephen Robles:And if you can, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening for our first in person recording.
Jason Aten:That's the first time.
Stephen Robles:It's amazing. Jason wasn't ready for that, but that's okay. All right. Didn't know what I expected from you either.
Jason Aten:I I mean, I'm so excited to I mean, I was already here, so thank you for driving all the way.
Stephen Robles:That's right. Alright. We'll catch you next time.
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