Primary Technology

Stephen Robles: 00:00

You're gonna need a bigger boat. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, Google is rolling out age verification along with the whole Internet. Did the iPhone 17 Pro actually leak? The T app has massive data leaks, but it's still one of the top apps in the App Store.

Stephen Robles: 00:16

And Zuckerberg has a huge super intelligence manifesto. We're gonna dissect that and see what it actually says. This episode is exclusively brought to you by you, the members who support us directly. Thank you to everyone who does that. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and joining me back in the studio or his studio, Jason Aten.

Stephen Robles: 00:33

How's going, Jason?

Jason Aten: 00:34

It's good. It's about 35 degrees cooler here than the last time we recorded an episode.

Stephen Robles: 00:39

Envious. It is hot. It is hot down here. You experienced it last week as we were

Jason Aten: 00:43

It was insane. Yeah. And then the next day, we spent the entire day at Disney. We did three parks

Stephen Robles: 00:49

I don't know how you did that.

Jason Aten: 00:49

In fourteen hours. We started at Disney Studios, which in my opinion is the best Disney park. Not please, you do not have to tell us your opinion. I'm just tell

Stephen Robles: 01:00

That is Galaxy's Edge. Right? The that's the Galaxy's Edge one.

Jason Aten: 01:03

Yeah. Yep. It's anyway, and then, we went to, Animal Kingdom after that so that the kids could ride the Avatar ride.

Stephen Robles: 01:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:12

And then we had to finish at the Magic Kingdom so we could watch the fireworks.

Stephen Robles: 01:16

How did you survive that long in the Florida heat?

Jason Aten: 01:20

Barely. That's tough. Really tough. It was really tough. In fact, I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, and the doctor was like, you okay?

Jason Aten: 01:30

How do you

Stephen Robles: 01:31

I mean, you're here.

Jason Aten: 01:32

Trip up. I'm like, I could not have done that six months ago. There's no way. Drugs are wonderful. But it was the day we went to Disney, it was probably 96 all day.

Jason Aten: 01:42

But the thing about well, the one thing about Disney is you you you go into, like, the stores because they're all air conditioned. And at one point at the animal kingdom, our children had ride ridden Expedition Everest, like, three times because there wasn't much of a ride, and it's it's like an actual roller coaster. And they're like it's not a huge roller coaster, but they, like, they wanted to ride, like, a roller coaster. And I said, so I got a great idea, guys. This is the thing we're going to do next because I can't sit here and watch you ride this anymore.

Jason Aten: 02:09

We're going to go to the Finding Nemo stage show.

Stephen Robles: 02:12

Yes. Yes.

Jason Aten: 02:14

Because it's air conditioning in there. It's twenty five minutes of air conditioning. Not gonna lie, telling the story of Finding Nemo in twenty minutes, not great, but it was fine.

Stephen Robles: 02:24

But it's air conditioned.

Jason Aten: 02:24

Was totally fine. It was air conditioned. We got to sit down. And so that's how you survive it. You you go to the stage shows that are air conditioned.

Stephen Robles: 02:31

You gotta do the indoor stuff. I mean, we've literally had, like, a heat index warning for the past two weeks. So

Jason Aten: 02:36

Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 02:37

Yeah. Wild to do that. But oh, hey. I'm glad you survived.

Jason Aten: 02:41

I'm survived, and it's only 62 degrees here in Michigan right now.

Stephen Robles: 02:43

So Yeah. Alright. You don't have to brag about it twice. You're gonna need a bigger boat. You know what movie that's from, by the way?

Jason Aten: 02:49

Come on. It's one of the most I bet you it's in the top 50 most famous movie quotes. It's Probably. Jaws.

Stephen Robles: 02:55

Yeah. It is Jaws.

Jason Aten: 02:56

According Do you know what character says it?

Stephen Robles: 02:59

Well, now now I've revealed myself. No. Because I don't know if I've seen it front to back. I think I've seen it, like, I've seen 60% of it on TV maybe.

Jason Aten: 03:07

That's It was the police chief. I think his name is. Okay. Yeah. Martin Brody played by Roy Schneider.

Stephen Robles: 03:13

Did you know that this news actually just came out that the movie Jaws, they just discovered that shark was AI? Did you know that? Anyway.

Jason Aten: 03:20

I had not

Stephen Robles: 03:21

heard of that yet. That's not true. Alright. We have a bunch of five star reviews. I wanna give a shout out.

Stephen Robles: 03:25

Thank you because I said we didn't have any last week, and so a bunch of you showed up this week. We got Mind Like Water from The USA. You said downloads to downloads, battery percentage on. And apparently, I mispronounced a name in a recent episode. Jamie Dimon.

Stephen Robles: 03:40

Do you know what Diamond. Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon. I don't know why I just mispronounced it again.

Jason Aten: 03:45

He's one of the most famous CEOs in America. Listen. CEO of the most important bank in America, Jamie Dimon.

Stephen Robles: 03:52

Diamond. Like

Jason Aten: 03:53

Like Diamond without the d.

Stephen Robles: 03:54

Like the rock. Jamie Diamond. Okay.

Jason Aten: 03:57

There we retires, he gets the d and he just becomes Jamie Diamond.

Stephen Robles: 04:01

Because that's net worth. Right? DPT2GO from The USA. He likes watching us on YouTube. That's awesome.

Stephen Robles: 04:06

Wayne p one 10 from Central Florida. We actually saved a Sonos Beam, kind of, because, he heard about the AirPlay feature in tvOS 26. And, yeah, he was able to use it again. So that's cool.

Jason Aten: 04:17

So not only does Central Florida save the manatees, we're now saving Sonos products.

Stephen Robles: 04:21

That's right. Hey, listen, I love the manatees. I went to that power plant one time with the family and all the manatees gather around the power anyway, it's a long story. E38383 from Germany, They use the Comet browser for some reason, natural language research, and we're gonna talk about AI browsers later. Not not it's later.

Stephen Robles: 04:38

If you're if you heard me say enough, don't worry. It'll be later. Heath Patterson from The USA. Apple needs to add a sixth star for this podcast. I agree.

Stephen Robles: 04:47

Luke Ireland from The United Kingdom, batter percentage on the phone off on the iPad, which yeah. I I get it. Says also we get better every week. I don't know how that's possible, Jason. We get better every week.

Stephen Robles: 04:59

I mean, one day, I guess, we'll just be the perfect podcast if you get better at Right?

Jason Aten: 05:04

I mean, actually, that's not true. We started out as a five star podcast, and we're perfect. And now we're a 4.9.

Stephen Robles: 05:09

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 05:10

But that is why it would be great if Apple would add a six star because that's the only way we're going to get back to a five star podcast.

Stephen Robles: 05:15

That's true. I will say our our daily show is a five star podcast, and the unedited feed is a five star podcast. It only has three reviews, but it has a five but it's five star. So, you know, Doctor Pepper fan from The USA, we're their favorite tech podcast. And the it's Jason is his name too.

Stephen Robles: 05:32

That's why he likes the show.

Jason Aten: 05:34

I love that.

Stephen Robles: 05:35

So there you go. I'm I got very angry yesterday, Jason, because it finally happened. It finally happened where I believed a video was real to find out days later it was AI. And I was very upset.

Jason Aten: 05:52

This was on TikTok, wasn't it? Yep.

Stephen Robles: 05:54

Yeah. It was these videos about the dumb rabbits on the trampoline and it looks like bad, you know, like Nest Cam footage or whatever of somebody's backyard about these stupid bunnies jumping on a trampoline. I saw the video, I scrolled past it, I was like, oh, that's hilarious. I did not look hard enough because that's the thing. When you're scrolling social media, you're not, like, in journalist mode.

Stephen Robles: 06:17

Like, you're trying to see what's true and what's not. This video with the rabbits, AI generated. And apparently, one of the rabbits, like, disappear halfway through the video, which is, like, the clue that it was not real. But I I didn't realize that until days later, I was ticked, Jason. I was like, I was it happened.

Stephen Robles: 06:37

I was fooled.

Jason Aten: 06:37

You were ticked at TikTok. But also you just explained something that that is the, like, core truth of our time Yeah. Which is that you said you were doing the thing you do, which is scrolling social media and not paying attention to what is true. Steven, think about how many of the world's problems would be solved if maybe people wouldn't do that. Second question.

Jason Aten: 06:59

Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna channel my Nate Baranowski for a second and say, at what age are you just too old to be scrolling TikTok?

Stephen Robles: 07:06

Okay. If you wanted to listen. I'm not even gonna address the second part because there's plenty of content on TikTok that is worth it. I like scrolling it to save videos to then show my family because they're funny, and that's like half of our entertainment. But Alright.

Stephen Robles: 07:23

I I guess when you when you see a video and it's rabbits, your mind is just not, you know, turned on to, like, veracity finding. If if I see a video and someone's, like, claiming something news wise or there's some, like, commentary on law or politics, like, then your mind goes to, okay. What am I hearing? What is the accuracy? Like, what do I think about this?

Stephen Robles: 07:48

But if you're just watching rabbits on a trampoline, I don't know. I feel like you're not just naturally in that mindset. But, it tricked me and I was I was I was not happy about it. And I just felt like now it's full circle. We've talked about this for several weeks about recognizing AI slop and I didn't recognize it.

Jason Aten: 08:03

I mean, I guess the point I'm trying to make is the way you avoid getting duped by watching videos on TikTok is simply just don't watch the videos.

Stephen Robles: 08:12

They're say those videos are everywhere though. You you could have seen that on Facebook if you were scrolling.

Jason Aten: 08:16

I don't yeah. I don't scroll Facebook either. Instagram is literally the only social media thing I open on a daily basis. Yeah. And I just assume everything on there is fake because it's been fake for years.

Jason Aten: 08:26

Influencers are just posting pictures of perfect curated, like, laundry rooms. I'm like, you have never done laundry in your life.

Stephen Robles: 08:33

Yeah. I will say

Jason Aten: 08:34

No one lives in that house.

Stephen Robles: 08:35

I will say there was, you know, there was an earthquake, off the coast of Russia, I believe, and it caused a tsunami in Japan and then also in Hawaii. And I saw I saw people actually know on Instagram posting about it who live in Hawaii, and I was like, oh, shoot. Okay. I'm I hope they're okay. I'm curious what happens.

Stephen Robles: 08:52

And then I did see, like, footage of the tsunami from, like, a plane supposedly. Like, someone was, like, filming as they were taking off and you see the wave, you know, hit Japan or whatever. And I did have the thought, like, now because of these stupid rabbits. Am I what am I am I watching something real? I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 09:09

And, like

Jason Aten: 09:09

And in that moment, what did you do?

Stephen Robles: 09:11

You know, I saw enough content about the tsunami where I was like, I don't know if that video was real or not, but I know the tsunami warning was real and I know my friend that I follow that's over there is okay, so I'm not gonna investigate this any further. Because, I mean, there was nothing I mean, okay. If it's fake, I'm not gonna do anything different. Didn't share it. You know, I didn't share it.

Stephen Robles: 09:30

I'm not Russia

Jason Aten: 09:32

was hit by the one of the largest recorded earthquakes, and it caused a tsunami, but I'm not gonna look into it anymore.

Stephen Robles: 09:36

It's good. But that's what it was. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's what happened.

Jason Aten: 09:39

I guess what I'm wondering is, like, the answer was gonna be, like, go to a news source you already know and trust and see if they're talking about it. Like, that the number of times when someone will text me, like, a thing they saw on Facebook and be like, have you heard about this? And I'm like, in six seconds, you could have just searched three websites Yeah. Yeah. And found out that, no.

Jason Aten: 09:59

This is not real.

Stephen Robles: 10:00

Well and I and I had seen news articles in passing from sources about the tsunami and about the earthquake. So I knew, like, the event was real. Whether this particular video was real or not, I just, you know, didn't care. But, yeah, it's I don't know. It's a different world.

Stephen Robles: 10:15

So speaking of verification, the Internet is trying to verify your age. Everything on the Internet is. This is due to laws that have been in The UK and are now more widespread, know, spreading, and companies like Google trying to get ahead of it. And so Google's answer is actually using AI to do age checks, they're basing it on like activity on YouTube. So the kinds of videos that someone is watching, they're gonna try and determine age by that activity, by search activity, by the videos they watch.

Stephen Robles: 10:46

And if they discover if this algorithm tags someone as maybe they're 18, Google is going to automatically apply certain restrictions, ala, like, parental controls. And if that happens to your account, then you can either submit your government ID or take a selfie to verify your age and hopefully unlock your account back to, like, adult status. I cannot I wish I could see the time when this clocks someone as 18 because of their search activity, but someone sends in a selfie and it's like a 60 year old dude with a long beard. And someone at Google has to be like, whoops. That's that was not right.

Stephen Robles: 11:27

So what's interesting about this is this is gonna roll out to more and more companies because this is just how laws are going. Even here in The United States, there's more age verification requirements of companies. But the age verification, a lot of times, is not handled by the first party of the service. And so there's the article from The Verge talking about age verification, how there's various third parties that are doing age verification, whether or not it's actually secure and private, how long they actually keep whatever information you've used to verify your age, which often can be a picture of your driver's license. Or a lot of times, they, you know, have you take a selfie of, like, holding the driver's license next to your face.

Stephen Robles: 12:06

And so it seems like there's some calls for a universal tool of age verification for the Internet rather than all these, like, third party services. So it does feel like a cart before the horse, like, is moving a little faster than the systems in place are actually good to do it kind of thing. So anyway, did you have any thoughts, age verification?

Jason Aten: 12:26

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm gonna try to keep them real brief. One, I think keeping, let's say, kids against kids away from obscene content is a noble cause. I don't think it should be the job of the government requiring tech companies to do that. That feels more like a parenting thing and having tools to do that because I just there's a lot there.

Jason Aten: 12:50

Secondly, if that's your goal, age verification is a way to do that. And and just taken alone, if you believe that it's worthwhile to keep, for example, underage people away from adult content, then age verification seems like a good way to do that. The problem with it is the most reliable way to do that is to make someone upload their identification Right. Which defeats the entire purpose of having a free and open web because you are now and even with all these, like, is Google gonna, like, store your name and address and then suddenly link it to your search history? Like, probably not.

Jason Aten: 13:23

Like, that would be detrimental to Google in the long run. Right? They would, like but that's not necessarily the case of of some of these other companies. Right? They're are they now building a is this how we get to a face ID national database because everyone has to upload their like, I'm not trying to sound conspiracy theorist.

Jason Aten: 13:39

What I'm saying is, I think objectively, everyone should think this is a bad idea even if you think that keeping like, I don't want my kids finding any of this content online. I don't. I like I don't even like my kids using regular old YouTube sometimes because just because of what the algorithm might decide to show them next. Right. And I don't even think it's gonna be obscene because I think you have to try pretty hard on YouTube to find some of that kind of content, but I don't necessarily want them having mind rotting conspiracy theories fed into their veins through through the YouTube algorithm.

Jason Aten: 14:11

And so I personally, like, have very strong feelings about what kids should spend time with online. I'm not sure that I'm not this age verification laws feel like the kind of thing that politicians do because it makes them able to champion a cause without actually thinking through what it does to personal liberty. And I do think, call me a libertarian, call me whatever you want, that that preserving personal liberty is actually more important than the government being in the business of restricting websites. I think that that becomes a very slippery slope.

Stephen Robles: 14:43

Well, it's also interesting because at least The UK's laws, it's affecting Blue Sky, Reddit, Discord, even Spotify. And so all of those companies are needing to enact these age verification procedures. And like I said, they're all using different stuff. Like, Blue Sky is using an epic game system called Kids Web Services. Reddit is working with Persona.

Stephen Robles: 15:04

Discord is partnered with KID. And so, yeah, it's just like a mishmash of stuff. But I'll I might get, like, something like Discord. It's not necessarily a social network, but obviously you can have lots of different kinds of content in there. But I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 15:19

I have to maybe develop more thoughts, but okay. Thank you for sure.

Jason Aten: 15:22

And it would be different if it's like I mean, I don't think this is gonna be the case, but like, okay. Fine. I mean, because Discord was I mean, Slack's gonna be next. Microsoft Teams. Like, they're they're fairly similar.

Jason Aten: 15:32

Like and so but it it would feel very different if I had to upload my I I mean, I would hope not because if I'm using, an employer login to access my Slack account, then I feel like you shouldn't also have to upload your ID. But if you did, you're like, well, whatever. This is work. My work already has all my information anyway. It just gets weird when you're like, Google is gonna decide which algorithm you get if it thinks you're an adult or not.

Jason Aten: 15:53

But, honestly, like, Google is the one I would be the least worried about because, one, they'll probably be pretty good at it. Right. Right? And two, again, it would like, Google has a strong incentive not to blow this because they are so big and there's so much at stake. They don't want the headache of of doing this wrong, but that's not I mean, you listed three companies that I've never heard of.

Jason Aten: 16:16

Kids web services, Persona, and KID. Like, who are those people?

Stephen Robles: 16:20

Right. And and that then opens them up to data breaches and or leaks because if they are holding tens of thousands of driver's license images with selfies, I mean, that's prime information for someone to get for nefarious reasons.

Jason Aten: 16:37

Yeah. When I when I was traveling internationally during COVID, I had to do, like, the you had to do the swab thing in order to get back into The US. And one of the services that I had to use, you had to, do a face scan and then upload your ID. And I just assume now my anyone everyone in the everyone in the world has my ID. Like, I just assumed that because

Stephen Robles: 16:55

Worth it.

Jason Aten: 16:55

Now and in that case, I really wanted to go home, so it was worth it. Like, I really wanted to get back into The US, so I was willing to do that.

Stephen Robles: 17:02

Yeah. Well, that's it's an interesting point, and I'm gonna move this topic up because if listeners and viewers have not heard of the Tea app, there's this Tea app. This is specifically for women who can sign up for this app and then basically red flag other people to warn women about, oh, this person's actually married, or maybe I dated this person and they're they're not, an unsavory character. And this app, blew up in popularity, is still in like the top three, top five apps in the App Store on the iPhone, but it has had multiple massive data breaches. And so, like, to your point, how what will people trade their information for?

Stephen Robles: 17:51

Apparently, an app like this, people will trade for it. Because even though this app has literally leaked, like, phone numbers and text message conversations, According to this report from four zero four, messages between users have been leaked, cheating partner information has been leaked, and phone numbers that were sent to one another. Like, these these are massive data breaches. And during Fireball, John Gruber, he, you know, went through and just yesterday looked at what are the top apps, and the Tee dating advice app was still number three in the App Store. And so it's like, I do wonder, like you're saying, you just assume your ID and identity is out there.

Stephen Robles: 18:31

I do wonder if we're approaching a time where people just are inoculated to that, like, warning system of like, yeah, okay, I guess my stuff is out there, but if I get this benefit with that I feel is valuable enough, I guess I'll just trade that. And this tea app seems to be one of those cases.

Jason Aten: 18:49

Yeah. I mean, that doesn't feel like it's worth it. But here's the thing. Humans are are motivated very strongly by things that we don't always consider rational, like ability to gossip about other people. Sure.

Jason Aten: 19:03

I'll give up, you know, my I mean, the headline literally says DMs about abortions and cheating.

Stephen Robles: 19:08

Like Right.

Jason Aten: 19:09

I don't know that that trade off is worth it, but also no one who is using this originally well, first of all, a lot of people who are using this probably haven't read four zero four media and didn't anticipate that the things that they would send would become public. And people just people just don't they don't think about it. And also they just don't consider the possibility that, like, if I send a private message, I think it's right there in the word private. Like, I assume it's going to say private.

Stephen Robles: 19:33

Direct

Jason Aten: 19:33

message. That's probably not a fair assumption to make.

Stephen Robles: 19:36

Yeah. So and I don't know if it's still in the top in the app today, but, yeah, just wild. I mean, massive data breaches, I guess nobody yeah. People don't care, I guess. But speaking of data breach, I'm working on my transitions today.

Jason Aten: 19:49

I love it.

Stephen Robles: 19:49

You think you think this is the iPhone 17 Pro? This was an image shared on X by user Skyfops. And supposedly, looks like this guy, he's holding two iPhones. One in one hand looks like the current 16 Pro maybe, taking a picture of a second iPhone in a weird case that seems to mask the back of the secret iPhone. And that second iPhone really looks like a lot of the models and renderings you might have seen online with the camera bar at the top, the flash and LiDAR sensor that's, like, oriented on the right side, and the cameras on the left.

Stephen Robles: 20:26

And, yeah, people are like, maybe this is the actual iPhone 17 Pro out here in the wild. People are like, oh, this dude's getting fired because the last thing know, we just talked about Jon Prosser and leaks last week. Like, this dude's probably doing what Apple has paid him to do, which is to test the phone in the real world. And it's a risk that, yeah, someone might take a picture, but I don't You think that's legit?

Jason Aten: 20:46

I don't what I don't understand is why are these things always, like, discovered by people whose accounts are called Fox Puppy or something like that? Like, I don't like It's fair. Right? I know. There's a lot of things.

Jason Aten: 21:00

Like, the question is, is this bunnies jumping on a trampoline, or is this real? And if it's real, what actually is it that's real that we're looking at? I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 21:10

Like Yeah.

Jason Aten: 21:11

Is that the new iPhone?

Stephen Robles: 21:13

Who knows?

Jason Aten: 21:14

I mean, maybe, but but who cares? Like, also, the person who said this, like, how do you know? Like, they just definitively are like, I just spotted a test development iPhone in

Stephen Robles: 21:24

the world. Well, that's

Jason Aten: 21:25

yeah. And what's this guy doing? Why is he taking a photo with one phone of another phone? Is he, like, videoing the reception bars go up and down? Maybe he's

Stephen Robles: 21:35

He's probably reporting on bugs or maybe he's, like, testing the camera. And so he's, like, you know, rather than take a screenshot, he's taking a picture of the interview. I don't know.

Jason Aten: 21:43

I know. I've just there's a lot of questions about this. I have a lot of a lot of questions about, like, the choice of sunglasses. The fact that he has sunglasses on because it seems very hot, but he also has a vest and a long sleeve

Stephen Robles: 21:54

shirt on.

Jason Aten: 21:57

Although everyone else is wearing long sleeves, so, like, what is going on?

Stephen Robles: 22:02

Alright, Nancy Drew. Yeah. We'll save you.

Jason Aten: 22:04

I just have a lot of questions.

Stephen Robles: 22:05

May maybe it's bunnies on a trampoline. Who knows?

Jason Aten: 22:08

I I mean, I think it's really a picture of a dude. After that, I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 22:13

It's definitely a picture of a dude holding some phones. What phones? At least one.

Jason Aten: 22:18

Who knows? Probably two. We just don't know anything more than that.

Stephen Robles: 22:22

That's it. I don't listen. We're gonna know in, a month. Like, if Holy smokes. It's

Jason Aten: 22:27

almost August.

Stephen Robles: 22:27

I mean, tomorrow is August as we record, and then the iPhone event will be a month later. So we we will know. We will know. Speaking of things that are actually real, though, Skechers, which I always think their name has a t in it, but it does not. Skechers released a shoe that has a place for an AirTag so you could find your kids.

Jason Aten: 22:46

Do you remember, though, when I gotta find this. When Apple first

Stephen Robles: 22:49

The Nike the Nike thing. Right?

Jason Aten: 22:51

No. Listen. When Apple first put out AirTags, explicitly said, you should not use these to track pets or people.

Stephen Robles: 22:59

Oh, yeah.

Jason Aten: 23:00

And every useful accessory for an AirTag is to track your pet or your people.

Stephen Robles: 23:06

This is well, I thought you were gonna talk about before the Apple Watch, there was actually that special Nike shoe with the little inch

Jason Aten: 23:14

The link to your phone or whatever? Link to

Stephen Robles: 23:16

I don't know if it would yeah. Had to have been your phone and to track your fitness stuff before the Apple Watch. And it reminded me of this. Like, it was a special Nike shoe with an insert. But, yeah.

Stephen Robles: 23:26

Supposedly, these are, you know, up to nine year old shoes. They're making that size. And so you can put an air tag on your kid. And yeah. In the MacRumors article, says Apple says the air tags should not be used to attract people.

Stephen Robles: 23:41

But, I mean okay. So supposedly, my youngest is now aged out of this because she just turned nine. So I guess this isn't for her anymore, which she actually has an Apple Watch now and the family setup. And technically, if you wanna see where your family is and you're using the Find My app, you can just do that because the Apple Watch shows up there. But, I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 24:02

Would you air tag your your five year old?

Jason Aten: 24:04

No. I mean, I don't have a five year old, but I also think this is one of the, this is just asking for additional layers of anxiety because the putting an AirTag in a shoe as a parent, setting aside the fact that, like, don't. But if you were, like, inclined to do that, you're expecting that you're going to know where your kid is all the time. The thing about AirTags is they are useless if they do not ping some kind of a device. Now there are a lot of iOS devices out there in the world.

Jason Aten: 24:35

So, like but also, like, if you're going for a walk, how many people around you are gonna be getting the notification that there's an AirTag following you?

Stephen Robles: 24:42

Oh, that is true.

Jason Aten: 24:44

There's so many problems.

Stephen Robles: 24:45

I was thinking like, if you're at a busy park and, you know, at times you try to keep an eye on your kids, especially when they're younger, just try to watch them like a hawk. But there are those few moments where you might lose track of them for a minute, and so you frantically try and look. I mean, would it be useful if they're in range to be able to pull up the Find My app and actually see an arrow on your iPhone pointing towards your kid? If that actually worked, maybe. But that range, I feel like, is probably not big enough to cover, like, the bench where the parents sit and the park where the kids play.

Stephen Robles: 25:20

You know, I I don't know if it'll reach that. But also, like you're saying, I actually don't think a lot of people know how Find My stuff works because I just did a video on Find My cards, like, for your wallet.

Jason Aten: 25:31

I watched it, just so you know. I wanted to make sure I had the good one, and apparently I don't.

Stephen Robles: 25:34

But Well, which one do you have?

Jason Aten: 25:36

I have the Nomad one, which I really like.

Stephen Robles: 25:38

I made a mistake in the video, and I pinned a comment correcting it, but apparently the Nomad has a charging light.

Jason Aten: 25:43

Yes.

Stephen Robles: 25:44

I just think and put it upside down on the little battery pack. And so I've I've I'm like, should I delete this video? I'm like, no. It's probably fine. So the Nomad one is is one of the best because it has the charging light.

Stephen Robles: 25:54

So, yeah, good choice. But, people in the comments were asking, like, will this work with an NFC wallet? Like, one that blocks NFC technology. And and I'm telling, like, actually, Find My is basically Bluetooth, and it just pings devices that are nearby. I don't think people understand, like, how it works.

Stephen Robles: 26:12

People Right.

Jason Aten: 26:13

Yeah. It basically just sends out a ping, and it'll send out a ping even if the devices are off, if it's if it's not an AirTag, for example. And then it just the they basically created, a backhaul across iPhones to cellular networks to send messages back to mothership to let you know. Like, it really is. It's actually pretty ingenious because it's just purely passive, and it works no matter what.

Jason Aten: 26:35

So

Stephen Robles: 26:35

Right. But, I mean, if there are no iOS devices in range, then you're not gonna get a location. You know? So in

Jason Aten: 26:42

And then you're gonna be super worried, like Right. Why is my kid not not

Stephen Robles: 26:46

on you? You know what? It almost might be a better system to find your kid's shoes than to actually find your kid. Because they

Jason Aten: 26:52

Well, this is what I was thinking at first. I'm like, who's losing their shoes this much that they need to put an AirTag in their shoes? Because shoes are pretty hard to, like your wallet is a thing that could fall, like, in the couch, but I've never had my shoes fall in the couch.

Stephen Robles: 27:03

Jason, when your kids were little, they didn't lose their shoes all the time?

Jason Aten: 27:06

My kids didn't put their own shoes on. Like, we had when they were little, we had to do that. I Our kids still lose their shoes all the time, but we usually know where they are.

Stephen Robles: 27:14

I know. Like, we've had friends come over here. Our kids go over friends' houses, and sometimes shoes get left. I don't know how. It might be a Florida thing.

Stephen Robles: 27:22

Sometimes they walk without shoes outside, which growing up in New York was against the it was against the law. You would get arrested if you walked outside without shoes.

Jason Aten: 27:30

That's that's true here.

Stephen Robles: 27:31

Yeah. It's true. So I don't I don't know. Maybe that's why. But yeah.

Stephen Robles: 27:33

Anyway, you can air tag your kids, or the shoes at least. Don't implant an air tag. Don't don't

Jason Aten: 27:39

You should here kids, swallow this.

Stephen Robles: 27:41

I know it's a big pill, but no, just kidding.

Jason Aten: 27:44

Don't It's gonna be fine.

Stephen Robles: 27:45

It'll be fine. Don't do that. Also, people always ask like, do you get Precision with these like Find My card trackers and stuff? And I have to explain every time like, nope. The only thing you get Precision Find Find My with is AirTags, AirPods Pro two case, and then Apple Watch iPhone to one another.

Stephen Robles: 28:01

Those are the only Precision Find My devices because the u one chip is Apple's proprietary chip, and that's it.

Jason Aten: 28:08

Well, that's why they all have a little beep. They make a sound.

Stephen Robles: 28:11

Well, you also get the arrows, the arrow on screen.

Jason Aten: 28:13

No. I meant, like, the wallet things, for example. That's why they beep.

Stephen Robles: 28:16

Oh, yeah. They beep so you can

Jason Aten: 28:17

It's like you the whole point is get you close enough

Stephen Robles: 28:20

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 28:20

Yeah. That when the beep starts, you should be able to hear it.

Stephen Robles: 28:22

Exactly. It falls on the couch.

Jason Aten: 28:24

I do think everything should have fine my, though, because I have one of those anchor batteries that, has a little cord, and now I can't find it.

Stephen Robles: 28:30

You can't

Jason Aten: 28:30

find even think I took it on my trip, and I but I don't know where would be in my house. And I'm like, if this had Find My

Stephen Robles: 28:36

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 28:36

Everything should have Find My.

Stephen Robles: 28:37

You should put an AirTag on it. I actually

Jason Aten: 28:39

My coffee mug should have Find My. Everything.

Stephen Robles: 28:41

Journey has this water bottle, don't know if you've seen, where this has Find My. But the Find My is like this, this little, like, orange yellow thing that you put in the top. I can't get it out. Oh, no. Here we go.

Stephen Robles: 28:54

So like this this is the Find My device. It's this little, like, yellow puck. And so you can wash the thing, put the puck back in. Also, this is a MagSafe ring. So I guess if you're like a gym person, you can like put your phone on there and watch something while you're working out.

Stephen Robles: 29:09

So it's kinda cool, but

Jason Aten: 29:10

It is. But Steven, there's a fatal flaw.

Stephen Robles: 29:13

What's that?

Jason Aten: 29:14

Nothing that is capable, nothing that is intended for the purpose of Find My should be removable from the device.

Stephen Robles: 29:21

That's the thing.

Jason Aten: 29:21

Literally, that defeats the entire purpose of Find My is that you have to take the thing out in order to wash the device, and then you it's counting on you remembering to put the thing back in.

Stephen Robles: 29:31

Yes.

Jason Aten: 29:32

And if you can be counted on to remember that, you should not be losing your devices in the first place.

Stephen Robles: 29:36

So I get it. But I agree with you. Like, Anchor, like, all the big, battery things, like this one with the retract Yeah. Like, put the Find My.

Jason Aten: 29:43

All have Find My. Put the plug share thing from twelve South can have Find My in it. All of these batteries can.

Stephen Robles: 29:49

And also Apple put it in the Apple Vision Pro so the three people who own one and Jason can find it.

Jason Aten: 29:55

Mine's right there. It's really easy.

Stephen Robles: 29:57

It never leaves a thing. Oh, that would be great. And also Apple listen. There's rumors that there's gonna be a new Apple TV this fall. Put Find My in the room.

Stephen Robles: 30:07

And not the janky Find My where you can just like see if it's in the room with you. Like, put the arrow on the screen, let the remote be able to make a noise because the remote can't beep or anything right now. Do those things.

Jason Aten: 30:20

That is actually shocking.

Stephen Robles: 30:23

That remote is amazing.

Jason Aten: 30:24

The devices Apple has made, the remote for the Apple TV is not do they think okay. Conspiracy. Do you think it's just because they're like, enough people lose them and have to come and buy a new one?

Stephen Robles: 30:33

No. They're not nickel and diming that bad. I mean Wait. Wait. Well, let's let's see.

Jason Aten: 30:39

Because they

Stephen Robles: 30:39

have earnings today. Maybe we'll follow-up next week. We'll see.

Jason Aten: 30:42

What could you break I want somebody one of the analysts to break out. Could you break out from your home section how many of those are Apple TV remotes and just from people who lost their free

Stephen Robles: 30:50

I bet I bet you the peep I bet it's a very, very tiny percentage of people who have actually ever bought an Apple TV remote by itself.

Jason Aten: 30:59

But I bet you it's not zero.

Stephen Robles: 31:00

Alright. Here's here's what we need you to do. Listeners and viewers, let us know. If you haven't left us a five star rating and review an Apple podcast, do it this week and let us know. Have you ever bought an Apple TV remote just on its own?

Stephen Robles: 31:11

You can tell us yes or no. You can also comment on YouTube. Let us know in the community. I I don't think I have ever bought it.

Jason Aten: 31:17

I have never, but I did buy one of the before that one came out, one of the third party ones that you could get. Oh, yeah. Because the previous ones were so slippery that it's like, I don't wanna touch this anymore.

Stephen Robles: 31:27

Well, also am at a place where I have two remotes like this that are USB C and the rest are lightning, and I just refuse to use lightning anymore because, you know, I upgraded my magic keyboard and mouse recently. So I'm like, if it dies, it dies. And I'll just use my phone as the remote because the phone works fine as a remote, you know, the app. I prefer this, you know, just because it's clickier and easier to, like, navigate. But anyway, I'm gonna put the remote back.

Stephen Robles: 31:51

Also, a I did I'm gonna do a video on the tvOS 26 beta features. And the one feature I'm most excited for is the aerial screen saver. You can now pick and choose which to hide. And the reason why that's so valuable is because when you do the aerial screensavers, some of them are just super bright, like the one that I think it's like Dubai. It's like a top down shot of Dubai.

Jason Aten: 32:15

Yeah, the over Yeah, the aerial view.

Stephen Robles: 32:16

Yeah, and it's just like blindingly bright. So if you're at night and it does like a nice underwater aerial aerial, but, you know, a nice underwater screensaver, then does the aerial of like green fields, and then it's like, boom, you're blinded. White buildings.

Jason Aten: 32:31

Are you just sitting there watching the screensavers on your Apple TV?

Stephen Robles: 32:34

Here's what happens. Okay? I say, hey, you wanna watch something to the wife? And so I turn on the Apple TV and then we start talking about something and then we'll talk for an hour and then the screensaver's just like going in the background. That cannot be

Jason Aten: 32:45

And then you get blinded and then you get blinded.

Stephen Robles: 32:47

Then you get blinded. That cannot be my only I can't be the only one that experiences that because back in the day, it used to be the same thing, but with the DVD menus. We would load a DVD, it'd be on the menu, and then we'd start talking, and the DVD menu would loop 1,000 times. You never experienced that?

Jason Aten: 33:02

I mean, we do have times when the screensavers are on, and I do like the Apple TV screensavers a lot. But I don't ever I've never once noticed that there's a contrast difference between them. And we have a really nice OLED TV, so we would see it. But I just I generally, if the Apple TV's on, it's because we want to watch something.

Stephen Robles: 33:18

Do you go This is not tech related. Do you go from, like, bright lights in the room to just dark when you go to sleep, or do you have, like, a dim mode for, like, the evening time?

Jason Aten: 33:29

No. We just turn the lights off, and the only light that's on is the TV the light oh, not the TV. We just leave it on all night.

Stephen Robles: 33:36

Just leave

Jason Aten: 33:36

it on. Screensaver. It's a

Stephen Robles: 33:37

big old one.

Jason Aten: 33:38

Watch them. They're on, but I'm not no. No. In our kitchen, there's like an over the sink light that stays on all nights. That way, whatever you can it's not Right.

Jason Aten: 33:45

Right. Right. But like, yeah, we just go from lights on to lights off.

Stephen Robles: 33:49

See, maybe that's the difference because I have I have an LED light strip behind the headboard and that's our evening lighting. So there's no overhead lights because it's so bright. It's it's 10:00. You don't want those bright lights. Anyway.

Jason Aten: 34:03

I don't wanna talk about your evening lighting.

Stephen Robles: 34:04

You can watch my smart home tour if you wanna see what that looks like, because I did include it in that. Speaking of AI videos on TikTok and verification, TikTok is rolling out kind of fact checking, basically community fact checking like X has in their community notes, but TikTok footnotes will be coming soon. It's gonna be launching widely once current contributors say that they are good enough. And when there's a video that's kinda fake, I mean, I guess maybe this would have saved me from the AI rabbits on the trampoline. But, Footnotes.

Stephen Robles: 34:35

I don't

Jason Aten: 34:35

know about love. I I was just gonna say I love all these companies are thinking that the best way to do content moderation is to just let the community do it, and then you have to content moderate the community notes.

Stephen Robles: 34:46

But it's it's the biggest jujitsu move because it's like if they were to say we're gonna fact check everything, now it's on the platform to do it, and they actually have to verify it. But when it's community notes, it's like, this is just, you know?

Jason Aten: 34:58

But it's not actually helping because the community notes just become an argument over political viewpoints. Yeah. Yep. I mean, it I'm not making this up. Like, that's

Stephen Robles: 35:08

what happens. Yeah. I know. That's what it goes.

Jason Aten: 35:09

Well, that might be true for you, but you're wrong.

Stephen Robles: 35:11

This plant.

Jason Aten: 35:12

Because you voted for the wrong person.

Stephen Robles: 35:13

This plant will turn into a political discourse. I cannot believe.

Jason Aten: 35:17

That plant is actually rabbits jumping on a trampoline.

Stephen Robles: 35:20

I'm so mad. So mad about the rabbits. Alright. Let's talk about Mark Zuckerberg's Superintelligence Manifesto. This is the actual manifesto page on meta.com/superintelligence, and it's a very self serious, seems like a big thing manifesto.

Stephen Robles: 35:39

And he's talking about what superintelligence is, what it means for the future of humanity and technology. And, yeah, July 30. This was yesterday. And, you know, it's funny. This this kind of page would have just been what you saw on the web back in, like, 1998.

Jason Aten: 35:55

This was the Internet.

Stephen Robles: 35:56

Right? Was the Internet. And for some reason in 2025, this does kind of feel, oh, this is a serious thing because there's no, you know, there's no chrome around it. There's

Jason Aten: 36:06

no Yeah. That's what I told you when we started is that's how you know it's a manifesto because it's just black words on a white background.

Stephen Robles: 36:11

Yeah. Exactly. So Zuckerberg is basically trying to legitimize his superintelligence program and what it means for humanity and the future. And I think this line in the manifesto is hilarious. The intersection of technology and how people live is Meta's focus, and this will only become more important in the future.

Stephen Robles: 36:32

That is, I feel like, trying to pull the Steve Jobs. We're at the intersection of liberal arts and technology, and he's just reframing it basically and trying to trying, you know, say something that weighty. So we'll link this manifesto in the show notes. It's interesting. I don't know if he says a whole lot.

Stephen Robles: 36:51

You know, it's one of those things where there's a lot of corporate speak and such. But what I would, if you are interested, encourage you to read is Om Malik's commentary on the manifesto. And Om Malik, previously of of GigaOm, the website actually got to interview Om on the Apple Insider podcast, years ago, and he's a fascinating dude, extremely smart. But his commentary, I think, is very, germane. I think it's hilarious.

Stephen Robles: 37:19

He also calls Zuckerberg paranoid and Machiavellian. I you sure? But he also breaks down how, like, Mark Zuckerberg loves to do manifestos, and he has this, like, chart where he talked about Zuck's manifesto in 2012 and 2017 and 2019. And just this is just something that Mark Zuckerberg does periodically, seemingly to legitimize Meta's existence and plans and what they're doing. And so I wanna read just a couple pull quotes.

Stephen Robles: 37:47

This is from Ohm's commentary on it talking about Zuckerberg. Ohm says, most CEOs defend their existing moats. Zuckerberg systematically abandons them. He understands that Facebook's real asset isn't the blue app. Instead, it is the graph of human attention and relationships.

Stephen Robles: 38:06

Each pivot is about preserving that graph while migrating it to new interfaces. And throughout the article, Ohm talks about the different transitions where when Instagram and WhatsApp were threats to Meta's business, they just bought them. And when the mobile, revolution was happening, Meta went all in on mobile. And so there is that, foresight to be able to make those decisions. The next poll quote, Ohm says, Zuck has competitive anxiety.

Stephen Robles: 38:32

By repeatedly talking about being, quote, distinct from others in the industry, he's tipping his hand. He's worried that Meta is being seen as a follower rather than leader. Young people are flocking to ChatGPT. Programmers are flocking to Claude, and so on. And finally, he says, the memo reads like someone trying to convince shareholders that this time the moonshot will work.

Stephen Robles: 38:52

However, I have learned not to underestimate Zuckerberg and his CEO skills. And notice, Oum is not saying he's learned not to underestimate Zuck and his skills in general. It's just his CEO skills, meaning painting the company to look like it is the most forward thinking of all of them. And so it is just an incredible breakdown of what this is. You know, I don't think Zuckerberg reveals anything in his memo about plans or what superintelligence actually is or what it will actually do.

Stephen Robles: 39:23

But Zuckerberg is very good at saying things that look flowery and important, and I think that's the takeaway. But what did you think?

Jason Aten: 39:32

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, okay. The the part about the manifestos every there's a cycle of manifestos that that happens with Zuck every few years. The most recent one before this was about how the metaverse was gonna be the thing.

Jason Aten: 39:45

And I actually think that this is really interesting. I was I wrote this down before we started. Now I can't find the paper. Here it is. Because if you remember, the metaverse was essentially Zuck's idea that you will interact with all of your friends while wearing a headset and they're somewhere else.

Jason Aten: 40:03

Like, you'll you'll go to movies together in the metaverse Right. With your friends, apparently. You'll play video games in the metaverse with your friends. And it kind of occurred to me that Mark Zuckerberg lives in such a world because of his wealth, because of his position. Like, I don't say this to be mean, but, like, I don't know that Mark Zuckerberg has any actual human friends.

Jason Aten: 40:24

Like, the the way we think of, like, acquaintances that he can just hang out with and just do things with. Also, I'm not sure that Mark Zuckerberg can hang out in the metaverse. Like, just right. Imagine, like, if you just were walking around, like, whatever and

Stephen Robles: 40:37

Not as in itself. You cannot

Jason Aten: 40:38

be Is that Mark Zuckerberg's avatar over there? Like, yeah. It it would just be a miserable experience virtually. So I think and if you just think about it, like, what was Facebook? It was meant to be, like, a place where you interact with your friends.

Jason Aten: 40:50

The metaverse, a place where you're gonna interact with your friends. And now Meta is rolling out AI features of basically AI virtual friends. Like, so there is a through line of I don't know that the anxiety is just competitive with Zuckerberg. I think that there is actually something there about this. You get you get yourself into a place because of I mean, he's been extremely successful, so, like, no shade there.

Jason Aten: 41:14

But I don't know that he understands the way that actual people want to interact in the real world. And I and they did so they just keep feeding whatever they think is the next version of what has worked for them in the past, which is what Oma's talking about. It's sort of like grabbing attention and leveraging your social graph to to multiply that effect. And but but what he doesn't seem to really understand is like, but actually people do like real human interaction even if they don't realize that at times. That is the thing that people really want.

Jason Aten: 41:42

Yeah. And his the manifesto is interesting in a couple ways. Clearly, Meta want Zuckerberg wants Meta to be seen as a leader in AI. Right. No one thinks that.

Jason Aten: 41:57

That doesn't mean that Meta isn't good at it. Like, llama, it's open source models. Like, I'm not saying they're bad. Like, I don't know enough about any of this to be able to say they're good or bad. My point is, like, most people still call it Facebook.

Jason Aten: 42:09

Right? Like Right. They had a hard enough time getting people to like, I have a hard time every time I write the word Meta when I'm referring to the company. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 42:15

Because it's like, I almost want to refuse to give in to this absurd name change that you did and then wanna pretend like it didn't happen because there is no metaverse still. So I think that there is this sense that that we're so far behind. We recognize this is important, and we're going to reposition the company as a leader by writing this. And if the way you're trying to position yourself as a leader in an industry is by writing a manifesto, you have a lot of work to do. Because if you like, ChatGPT, maybe not the best models, absolutely the leader.

Stephen Robles: 42:51

Right.

Jason Aten: 42:51

They just are. Like, no they don't have to convince you that they're the most used AI chat platform. They just literally are. They don't have to write manifestos about that. They don't have to like, they do the weird videos with Johnny Ive.

Jason Aten: 43:02

Fine. Like, whatever. But they can do that because they are literally the leader. They are the most they have the most mind share. ChatGPT is, like, dangerously close to becoming, like, the Kleenex of AI.

Jason Aten: 43:14

Right? Like, every it's just ChatGPT. People pull up Google every time I say Google Gemini, they're like, Che Gypti? I'm like, sure. Sure.

Jason Aten: 43:23

You say perplexity, people are like, Che Gypti. Right? And if you were trying to tell someone about, hey. Did you hear about Claude? They're like, what's that?

Jason Aten: 43:29

I'm like, it's like JatchiBT but from another company.

Stephen Robles: 43:31

Like, they're

Jason Aten: 43:32

at that point. Right. And so meta, like, no one knows what llama is, and people hate, at least everyone I've ever talked to about it, hate the fact that every time you start typing something into the search bar of Instagram or Facebook, it wants to, like, do some sort of AI jujitsu. Or I saw this the other day. Someone I know posted about someone who had passed away, and the AI suggestions below are like, what were their accomplishments?

Jason Aten: 43:55

I'm like, you should stay away from this post. Oh. Right? Like, it's just so bad. Like no one wants that there, but meta's entire future depends on people believing that they're going to figure this out.

Stephen Robles: 44:08

That's yes, I agree. And that's part of, in Ohm's commentary where he says, you know, just using the phrase superintelligence as a marketing phrase, and I'm reading from Ohm's article, Zuck is making his efforts feel superior to mere artificial intelligence because it's superintelligence, not just artificial. And so just, I mean, it's just a word. You know, there's no actual difference in what they're making.

Jason Aten: 44:32

I mean, I think the idea because I don't know what ever happened to artificial general intelligence. I think the idea of super intelligence is that the AI models can improve themselves. Oh, okay. And that's the first sentence of his thing is, like, over the past few months, we've begun to see glimpses of our AI systems AI systems improving themselves. What does that actually mean?

Stephen Robles: 44:49

Yeah. That's

Jason Aten: 44:49

this. Begun hold on. Like, not we've seen glimpses. We've begun to see glimpses. There's so much, like, couching in that, and the improvement is slow for now, but undeniable.

Jason Aten: 44:59

Like, what does that mean? Like, it moved a comma? We Like, I don't understand.

Stephen Robles: 45:02

We've almost begun to kind of see in the future that this will almost be really cool.

Jason Aten: 45:09

We've definitely possibly started to see this.

Stephen Robles: 45:11

Yeah. Exactly. But What? The other thing, and this is from Olm's article, he says, Zuck is trying to make his efforts feel superior to the mere artificial intelligence of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. You know who's not mentioned here in Ohm's article or Zuck's?

Stephen Robles: 45:29

I mean, which Zuck didn't really mention anybody else, but Apple is nowhere to be seen like, in almost comparison here. And I think that is unfortunate and telling because, yeah, Apple doesn't really belong in that sentence. Is like, trying to make his efforts feel superior to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google because I don't think there are efforts from Apple that would compare, that you could say something.

Jason Aten: 45:53

No. But I mean, I made the argument that Apple just shouldn't. Apple should just build the best devices to use AI. It just shouldn't care about what that AI is.

Stephen Robles: 46:00

Bro, okay. But here's the thing. Let let's let's let's look back at the manifestos that Zuckerberg has written because if there's anything that Zuck can do, it feels like identify the shifts in the industry. And so in the manifestos, he had one in 2012. That was the mobile transition crisis.

Stephen Robles: 46:20

You know, basically, everything was going to mobile phones. Zuck missed it. Facebook missed it. Apple, obviously, was a huge part of that. 2017 was like post election backlash platform responsibility.

Stephen Robles: 46:32

Luckily, Apple could dodge that because they don't have a platform that requires content moderation or anything like that. Privacy backlash and regulatory pressure in 2019. Apple's always been about privacy, and so that's kinda built into their, you know, oeuvre. 2021 platform dominance, iOS changes. Apple literally initiated that with the whole app tracking transparency and not being able to track that, and now it's AI disruption.

Stephen Robles: 46:55

And so if you look at, like, the big moves of tech throughout those years, Apple has been a part of every move. And sometimes Apple initiated those moves, whether it was with the privacy and security, obviously, with the mobile transition. And, you know, I would even say, like well, I was gonna say cloud services, but I think they might have been the most, like, consumer facing part of that. But you also have, like, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Services and and AWS probably being, like, the biggest players, and that matters to enterprise more than, like, the consumer. But Apple's not even in the conversation.

Stephen Robles: 47:32

And I know you're saying maybe they don't need to be. They just need to make the devices that run it. But Apple tell me if I'm wrong. Apple at its heart is a software company. Yes or no?

Jason Aten: 47:44

I would argue no.

Stephen Robles: 47:46

But wasn't it true that Steve Jobs like, mantra was in order to be a great software company, you have to make your own hardware. And the hardware has been a vehicle for Apple to innovate and make great software. Wasn't it that way?

Jason Aten: 47:58

I mean, the first product Apple ever made was not software.

Stephen Robles: 48:01

You mean the like, the Mac?

Jason Aten: 48:04

Well, the Mac was not the first No.

Stephen Robles: 48:05

It's not the first one.

Jason Aten: 48:06

Apple. But

Stephen Robles: 48:08

it ran Mac o like, whatever.

Jason Aten: 48:11

No. I mean, it was just a logic board. Well, surely, it was just a you do a thing with this. We've just given you, like, the essentially in our what it would look like to us today is like a bucket of components and like

Stephen Robles: 48:22

But I guess I I understand, like, Apple's profits and how it makes money is hardware. Obviously, they're trying to make services more

Jason Aten: 48:29

than Services.

Stephen Robles: 48:30

But They're trying to make it services, but it's still largely hardware. Like that's where Apple the iPhone is still 50% of its business, just the hardware profits of the iPhone. But I always thought, because of how it was talked about internally, whatever, that it was a software company that made great hardware because you need to do both. And if there's any truth in that, still, I'd feel like being on the AI in the conversation would be important for a company that makes software because that's what software is moving towards. Software is moving towards AI, more AI stuff.

Stephen Robles: 49:07

I mean

Jason Aten: 49:08

Sure.

Stephen Robles: 49:08

The AI browser I've been using, Comet, for the past week, and I've found more and more use cases. I'm like, this browser can do so much that I didn't even think was possible. And now I look at Safari and I'm like, that don't it doesn't do anything for me. It lets me see websites, but that's about it. You know?

Stephen Robles: 49:25

I don't know.

Jason Aten: 49:26

Yeah. I I I guess I don't really know for sure if if you could say whether Apple is a hardware or a software company in the way that Microsoft is basically a software company. Right. Samsung is basically a hardware company. Google is a company.

Jason Aten: 49:40

Like, I I think it's harder to really pin what Apple is in that sense because you can't no one wants to run macOS on something made by Acer. Right? Like and likewise, like, you wouldn't you wouldn't want to, like, take a iPhone and run Android on it. The the the link between those two is so important. So I don't know what what the people inside of Apple think of themselves first and foremost as I do think though that, like, you know, Apple doesn't have to build all of the websites on the Internet for Safari on mobile to be useful to people.

Jason Aten: 50:16

Right? It doesn't have to build most of the apps in I mean, most of the apps in the App Store I shouldn't say most of them. Most of the apps that I use on my phone are not made by Apple, and I like them much better than the version that Apple makes. Even the apps that I use of Apples, like, for example, the Notes app. I hate looking at the Notes app every time I look.

Jason Aten: 50:37

I like, it's hard for me to believe that this is what the way Apple thinks a Notes app should be. Maybe I just hate the yellow color. I don't know what it is, but, like, I love Ulysses or Bear or whatever so much better, but there is a lot of functionality in the notes app that I'm like, no. If it's just a quick thing, I'm just dumping everything into the notes app, and I only use Ulysses to actually write articles. Right?

Jason Aten: 50:56

Like, I would much rather use a third party app in many ways. And but I think that that to me is the parallel with AI. It's like, no. Just make the very best devices and the best software platform so that ChatGPT is incredible on the iPhone. Like, make it so that everyone who wants to use ChatGPT is like, gotta get an iPhone.

Stephen Robles: 51:16

Okay.

Jason Aten: 51:17

And I think they can do that because, obviously, Android is going to always be biased towards Gemini. Right? Like, always. It just because it's made by Google. Like, this is always

Stephen Robles: 51:27

Well, so this is a clip of Steve Jobs at the All Things D conference, and he's basically talking about how Apple makes beautiful boxes for software to run on. And he's talking about the Mac, and he's talking about the iPod specifically. And at the end, at the very end of this little video clip, which I'll put in the show notes, he says the big secret about Apple is that it views itself as a software company.

Jason Aten: 51:53

Sure.

Stephen Robles: 51:54

Now that's fourteen years ago, so maybe that's not true anymore. And maybe that was just his internal monologue that they think of themselves as a software company. But also, like like you're saying, yeah, they should make the best devices for running AI. But because of how Apple approaches security on devices and privacy and sandboxing, I don't think it can be.

Jason Aten: 52:20

Yeah, but nobody cares. Nobody

Stephen Robles: 52:22

don't think cares it about cares that now because kind they don't see the value. But I think when AI becomes like just water we're swimming in, when, maybe it's AI browsers, maybe not. But if someone starts using AI browsers and sees the and wants it now on all of their devices because it can do all these things for them, Apple doesn't have those features, will Apple allow you to use a default browser that's AI that actually runs something different than WebKit? Supposedly in the EU, that law is changing, and they're gonna allow non WebKit browsers or whatever. But will it have the same tight integration that Safari does that integrates into the whole OS?

Stephen Robles: 52:58

Are they willing to do that? Because that's what it would take to be, like, the best device for AI is to allow those AIs to run at the system level. To do Right.

Jason Aten: 53:08

And I think that Apple has to recognize that its values of privacy and secure security is slightly separate from privacy. Well, actually, it's very separate from we put them together, but they are actually two very different things. Apps can't steal your your like, maliciously steal your information is different than you can't share your calendar with whatever. Like, those are two different things. I think the I think that what's important for Apple to recognize is that human beings have shown that the benefit like, for example, I have we've talked about this.

Jason Aten: 53:41

I literally every time I get a test result back, just screenshot it and dump it into ChadGPT, I'm like, tell me what this means. I don't care if ChadGPT is built like, they're they're not building it right because they don't care about me personally. Right? But, like, whatever. Like, the benefit of being able to do that so far outweighs any potential risk that, like, my potassium level is gonna be out on the Internet somewhere or someone's gonna start trying to sell me bananas so I can, like, literally eat more.

Jason Aten: 54:07

You know what mean? Like, I don't care.

Stephen Robles: 54:08

Like,

Jason Aten: 54:08

whatever. Show me the ads in Instagram. All I need to know right now is, like, what does this mean and what actions do I need to take? It would be so much better, so much better if I could, like, tap a thing and all that information just goes straight into the health app.

Stephen Robles: 54:21

Right.

Jason Aten: 54:22

And then I could literally point ChadGBT at the health app and be like, what are the trends in my vitals changing over the last week? What does it mean? That's what Apple should do a 100%, and it's what people want.

Stephen Robles: 54:32

Right.

Jason Aten: 54:33

It's no one is worried about, like because if we make the proactive decision to say, please let this AI model that can make sense of this information as opposed to the super guarded version that Apple is doing and listen. I appreciate that Apple protects private. I've written about it, like, at least a dozen times. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 54:48

Right? Like, it is a hugely important thing. But I think what people have proven over time is that some of the benefits of trading off some of that are far more worth it to people because of the improvement that it can have for their life.

Stephen Robles: 55:02

Right. So you think, no, there's not a future where AI gets so tightly integrated with some phone platforms that it would tempt people away from the Apple ecosystem. Is just the Apple ecosystem that strong that people will just keep using it even if the AI experience is inferior?

Jason Aten: 55:22

No. I think that people will eventually migrate to the best AI experience. And so if that's not on the iPhone, I so right now, I think I've heard people talk about the blue bubbles. Like, I don't think that that's the single biggest thing. I think it's, like, my photo library.

Jason Aten: 55:37

Like, I'm not moving to an Android device because my entire photo library and believe it or not, like, the reason people were so mad and the reason Apple had to revert the photos app is I think they probably saw that, like, oh, this was our strongest lock in. People are starting to, like, not like this very much. We see an increase in downloads of Google Photos and people are uploading their entire photo. The next step is I move to an Android device. Like, I think those are the kind of things that made a difference.

Jason Aten: 56:04

I think that if there was a better I think I think chat GPT chat GPT is a big indicator of this. Like, people want to use that. And I think that the chat GPT app on the Mac and the iPhone are fantastic. But if that experience was better on another device, I think especially when it comes to, like, the voice assistant type stuff, I absolutely think that there's a future where people will start to move away if Apple isn't focused on building the best experience. And I don't think Apple's voice assistant at this point is going to be it.

Jason Aten: 56:32

Because you know what? Literally the I often use the chat GPT app. I, you know, I use it a lot, but I also very frequently hold down the side button and say, hey, Dingus, ask chat GPT this thing.

Stephen Robles: 56:45

Right.

Jason Aten: 56:46

So I never just say, hey, Dingus. What's the answer? Because I know already

Stephen Robles: 56:50

Right.

Jason Aten: 56:50

It is not going to have a clue.

Stephen Robles: 56:52

It has

Jason Aten: 56:52

no idea.

Stephen Robles: 56:53

It's actually faster to just tell and ask Chad GPT.

Jason Aten: 56:55

Right? It doesn't even know the NFL exists, so don't ask it any questions about it.

Stephen Robles: 56:59

All right. So here's my final thought experiment. Like you're saying, just that friction, like you just know the voice assistant is not gonna do it, and you want it to ask ChatGPT. If we live in some fantasy world where there is like a quote unquote ChatGPT phone, maybe it's an Android phone, maybe it's actually an OpenAI device, I feel like of all the other efforts, like the Facebook phone failed, Windows phone failed, like Android and iPhone were in, the question of is there room for another platform, I do feel like as ChatGPT becomes more integrated into people's everyday lives, and like you're saying, it's just the Kleenex of of AIs, If there was such a thing as like, this this is the ChatGPT phone. So all that stuff you love to do with ChatGPT, now there's zero friction.

Stephen Robles: 57:48

You don't even open an app. It's just gonna do all of this for you, and it's gonna be able to be predictive about your information. It's gonna give you all the things you want on a lock screen before you even know. And hitting that side button for a voice assistant, it is ChatGPT. You don't have to ask it ask ChatGPT.

Stephen Robles: 58:04

It'll just be that. Do you think that would actually I don't know. I feel like that would have a chance of all the other phone platforms before.

Jason Aten: 58:10

Possibly. I I don't know that a new, like, a new device is gonna capture, but I could think it could. The perfect example, when we were traveling, we had to eat at a lot of restaurants. And for someone, like, for me, I have to, like, pay very close attention to the amount of sodium that I consume. Okay?

Jason Aten: 58:27

And so everywhere we go, I'm, like, literally going to the company's website, finding the nutrition page and downloading what is usually a PDF Yep. Of every item on the menu with all of

Stephen Robles: 58:39

the

Jason Aten: 58:39

details. And literally, I do that. I save it in the files app on my phone, and then I import it to ChatGPT. And I just I've asked this question a dozen times over the last week. What should I eat?

Jason Aten: 58:50

Like, literally just ask that question and chattypty is like, well, based on your like, you, you know, having heart failure, this, this, and this, here's my recommendation. Why can't I just do visual intelligence?

Stephen Robles: 59:02

Right.

Jason Aten: 59:02

Snap a picture of a thing and ask Siri the same question and have it and then and then be able to say, great. I'm ordering that. Log it in the food tracking app that I'm using. Like, that's what people want. That is the thing people want, and no one is worried about, like, I'm not worried about uploading these things to like, literally, ChatGPT knows everything I ate for the last week.

Stephen Robles: 59:23

Right.

Jason Aten: 59:23

Every single thing, every meal I ordered, I had to ask it ahead of time. I just wanted to be able to do that. I just I don't want there I want there to be less friction. I want the device to just be able to do that. I wanna be able to set my voice assistant as ChadGPT as a default at this point Right.

Jason Aten: 59:37

And just be able to take a picture with the camera and say, hey, ChadGPT, what's up with this? Like, that whole process because I should have been able to just load those PDFs in Safari, not had to download them and then send them to ChadGBT.

Stephen Robles: 59:52

Yes. Exactly.

Jason Aten: 59:53

That's exactly what I should be able to do.

Stephen Robles: 59:54

Or if you had an AI browser on that device, you could have just asked it to do it.

Jason Aten: 59:58

Absolutely. And so that's the that is the thing that people are going to want. And if you can't do it on the iPhone, but you could do it somewhere else, I think that will become compelling enough for people that they'll be like, that's amazing. I wanna do that.

Stephen Robles: 01:00:10

At the very least, maybe it justifies that third device that Johnny Ive and Sam Altman are talking about, where they know they can't replace your phone just yet, but maybe a third device provides enough value. Like, I'll ask you, on this trip, if you knew you could carry a device that's phone size, or maybe smaller, maybe it is that pendant or whatever, and you can just show it the menu and say, tell me what to eat and then log it to my food tracking app. Is that enough value where you would use that third device?

Jason Aten: 01:00:40

Well, I mean, the perfect example would be like the Google XR glasses that I tried out in in in Google IO. Or whatever. Yeah. At Google IO. Or even if, like, the Metairie bands, if I could just be standing at a call you know what Culver's is?

Stephen Robles: 01:00:53

Yeah. Yeah. We have Culver's.

Jason Aten: 01:00:54

Okay. If I'm standing at a Culver's Right. And looking at the menu board, which doesn't have any nutrition information and say, hey. You can see what I'm looking at. What should I eat?

Stephen Robles: 01:01:03

That's good.

Jason Aten: 01:01:04

Then it goes to Culver's website, pulls up that thing on its own, and it's like, hey. You should have the sourdough melt or the whatever, the grilled chicken sandwich with no seasoning or whatever the heck it's, like, gonna say. Right. And just and then I can be like, great. Log it for me.

Jason Aten: 01:01:15

Right. A 100%, I would never take my phone out of my pocket if that was the case. And I don't care who makes that device because that is, like, real world actual life benefit that and that is the thing that that these LLMs are capable of doing, but the devices are not caught up to that yet. And I don't I think that it I mean, am I gonna get rid of my iPhone? No.

Jason Aten: 01:01:35

Because it's still one of it's still the best way to do it. It just sucks to do it because it's not built to do that. Right. And Apple has prioritized different things. And I'm like, no.

Jason Aten: 01:01:45

Fine. Give the cloud all the information about all the food I've eaten over the last week. All I wanna do is have it help me make better decisions. Yeah. And ChadGBT, it's it is astonishing to me that every day I I take my blood pressure and I put it into the health app.

Jason Aten: 01:01:58

I, log every medication I'm taking. Yeah. All this stuff. The health app doesn't know what my diagnosis is. Right.

Jason Aten: 01:02:05

It has no freaking clue even though it literally knows every single Right. Thing I'm taking. But guess what? Chechi Pitino's exactly what diagnosis I have, and it knew by my symptoms, but then I started asking it questions about the medications and whatever, and it remembers all of that.

Stephen Robles: 01:02:19

Right.

Jason Aten: 01:02:20

And every time I ask it, what should I eat? It knows Jason has CHF. Jason's trying to lower his sodium. I should check the sodium levels on all this food, and then I should put together a menu of the things that he should eat. It just knows all that.

Jason Aten: 01:02:33

Why doesn't the health app do that?

Stephen Robles: 01:02:34

CJ, yeah, I feel you're making my point because in the that's an incredible illustration because the because ChatGPT and OpenAI, I think, are so much closer and could far easier close the gap between the service they provide and the hardware it runs on than Apple is at closing the gap between their software and the service they offer and the hardware. Like, Android exists.

Jason Aten: 01:03:01

But it's a philosophical reasons. It's not technical. They could make this happen tomorrow.

Stephen Robles: 01:03:05

I don't know. They could could they make an assistant like ChatGPT that does the things you're talking about? I don't know. I don't know if they can because they haven't.

Jason Aten: 01:03:12

Well

Stephen Robles: 01:03:13

Visual intelligence can't do it. The the voice assistant can't do it.

Jason Aten: 01:03:16

But I think part of the reason why is the whole sandboxing thing, which don't get me wrong, has benefits, but I think okay. They probably couldn't do it tomorrow. They could have had it already.

Stephen Robles: 01:03:25

They prioritized

Jason Aten: 01:03:27

the fact that what people actually want is to make sense of the information they accumulate in their lives.

Stephen Robles: 01:03:33

And I I think Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:03:35

Put your health information and your financial information, I would say stay away from my finances for now, but I don't want you looking at my bank account, that's fine.

Stephen Robles: 01:03:42

Yeah. Certainly.

Jason Aten: 01:03:42

Not for any bad reasons, but just because that's just different. But my health information is a thing I can't make sense of because I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but I can but I'm a like, I'm literally in the health app, I don't know, seven or eight times a day logging things. It is mind blowing to me that the health app has no idea what what's happening to me.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:01

And and the point is probably Apple is averse to giving you information that might be inaccurate. Because if it tries to predict what you have or give you information about what your symptoms might mean, that introduces the possibility of being wrong. And CHATCHBT has no problem being wrong. And it's usually not. Like, as you were saying, it actually encouraged you to go to the doctor because it was actually accurate in what it was telling you to do.

Jason Aten: 01:04:29

And it literally said, I'm not a doctor.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:31

Right.

Jason Aten: 01:04:32

But based on the things you said, you should go see one. But just that,

Stephen Robles: 01:04:35

and that little caveat, you know, Apple is already making those caveats with Apple intelligence. And if you even in writing tools, if you prompted for something that with the ChatGPT integration, like, Apple tells you check for inaccuracies. Like, it it's already doing those caveats. Do do more. Do the stuff, like, that you're talking

Jason Aten: 01:04:52

But it's also it's already doing some of it. It'll it'll detect AFib, it'll warn you if it if it detects AFib, and it does that passively. Right. It'll also do the cardio fitness, like, your you you if you have low or regular cardio fitness, it'll, like, notify you, hey. This is or it'll it notifies me regularly, like, oh, your baseline resting heart rate has changed over the last couple of weeks.

Jason Aten: 01:05:12

Your resting your respiratory rate while you're sleeping has changed over the last few nights. What it doesn't say is it looks like you're getting healthier. Good job. It doesn't tell you that part of but it also it has so much information, but Apple's so what I what I'm thinking what my point of this is, Apple should just unlock all of that Mhmm. So that users can opt in.

Jason Aten: 01:05:31

Right. And I can just say to chat, like, because what I can't do right now without taking a screenshot of the health app is ask ChatGPT, is my blood pressure getting better or worse over the last month? Right. It doesn't know that because I don't give it those readings. I could take a screen, but I should just be able to ask it, it and should just be able to access the health app or the Withings.

Jason Aten: 01:05:48

I mean, I literally have my blood pressure in three apps on my phone. Same thing with my weights. The it's like

Stephen Robles: 01:05:54

But but the voice assistant on iPhone can't do anything with it.

Jason Aten: 01:05:56

Yeah. I mean, if I ask Siri right now

Stephen Robles: 01:05:58

It won't.

Jason Aten: 01:05:59

Let's just see what what was it gonna do?

Stephen Robles: 01:06:00

Alright. Here we go.

Jason Aten: 01:06:01

How's my blood pressure doing? No blood pressure data for today was found. Oh wait, hold on. What was my blood pressure yesterday? I don't

Stephen Robles: 01:06:10

even know if I could

Jason Aten: 01:06:10

do that. Oh, it did tell me,

Stephen Robles: 01:06:11

oh, it did tell

Jason Aten: 01:06:12

me what my blood pressure was yesterday, but it doesn't know if it's getting better because it doesn't know if I have any today. So that's a good thing. But here's one thing that's interesting about that is go ahead.

Stephen Robles: 01:06:20

Can you ask it? What has been my blood pressure trend the last month?

Jason Aten: 01:06:24

Is my blood pressure trending better or worse over the last month?

Stephen Robles: 01:06:28

Maybe it's better than that though.

Jason Aten: 01:06:29

Now it's an now it's working with chat GPT. Chat GPT asks, could you provide your blood pressure readings from the last

Stephen Robles: 01:06:35

month so

Jason Aten: 01:06:36

I can analyze trends?

Stephen Robles: 01:06:37

That right there because that's what I can ask perplexity. I can ask chat GPT, whatever, and it will tell me that. Yeah. And Apple has the data. That's what's frustrating.

Stephen Robles: 01:06:45

It's like Apple like, the health app can see it. It has it all.

Jason Aten: 01:06:49

Yeah. And just to be clear, the distinction I'm making is I don't think Apple should spend so much I don't think Apple will do it right. I don't think they are they are philosophically it's like it's like Intel is incapable of becoming a foundry because they are incapable of prioritizing anyone else's business over their own. Right? And so that's why TSMC won.

Jason Aten: 01:07:08

Apple is, I don't think, fundamentally capable of handing over the access to this type of information to a third party, but it should because GIGPT could already do all this if it had access to the data, and I just don't think Apple will ever get there. So that's what I mean when I say Apple should just focus on being the best platform to run AI apps, not trying to do it themselves.

Stephen Robles: 01:07:29

And I guess I'm saying it should reconsider its approach to access to users' data because

Jason Aten: 01:07:36

Yeah. And I see those as combined. Like the way you become the best platform for AI Right. Is letting users run AI apps, letting them set ChatGPT as the default voice assistant and give it the same access that you would give Siri. Well, give it more.

Jason Aten: 01:07:48

More access than you would give Siri.

Stephen Robles: 01:07:49

And I think that I mean, that's been the theme of the show, like thinking back to the Tea app. Clearly, people if people find value in software or a service, they will give up whatever. Yeah. They don't care if you get their DMs or their phone number or whatever, Just provide the value. And

Jason Aten: 01:08:10

And and they will be careless if it was Apple because I don't can you think I cannot think of a single time with the exception of, like, an iCloud photos, like, hack at some point in the past, which you can you can encrypt them now, so you're good. Right. I can like, Apple has, like, 700,000,000 credit cards on file. Have there ever been a credit card?

Stephen Robles: 01:08:29

Right. Yeah. Exactly. That's why people trust it. Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:31

Yeah. Exactly.

Jason Aten: 01:08:32

My point is, like, people will be, like, just take all the data you know about me and just give me useful information about it. People would be fine. Like, everyone would trust it. People trust Google. Like, come on.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:43

Right. How was it? Okay. So that was good.

Jason Aten: 01:08:47

That was the best segment we've ever done.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:49

That was it. Yeah. That was really good. Alright. Well, real quick before we get to a personal pick.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:54

Meta speaking of Meta, again, they had their earnings. Shares are climbing 10%. They're they're making money. I mean

Jason Aten: 01:09:01

They're all making money.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:02

They're all making money. And

Jason Aten: 01:09:03

They're also spending a lot of money.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:05

Also spending a lot of money. It's all on AI researchers, all that. But I this is Microsoft, they've now $4,000,000,000,000 in market cap joining NVIDIA. So now both NVIDIA and Microsoft in the four t club, $4,000,000,000,000 market cap, Apple not a part of that club.

Jason Aten: 01:09:23

No. Apple's actually quite a ways behind. NVIDIA's worth 4,400,000,000,000.0. Microsoft's worth 4,000,000,000,000. Apple is in third place at 3,000,000,000,000.

Jason Aten: 01:09:32

And what's crazy about that is that is a 30 like, they're worth 75% of what Microsoft is worth. Like, Apple was the leader for a very, very long time. Yeah. And, yeah, they've, they are a whole Tesla away from Microsoft.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:49

But And I think, I mean, again, our whole conversation about AI, I think why is NVIDIA and Microsoft in the 4,000,000,000,000 market cap? I mean Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:09:56

It's well, for Microsoft, it's Azure. Right? It's their cloud business.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:59

But it's it's also their partnership with OpenAI.

Jason Aten: 01:10:02

Well, that's all run that's all Azure money.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:05

Sure. But I'm just saying, like, AI related. These companies have figured out how to make money with AI, how to use AI. Apple

Jason Aten: 01:10:11

has done

Stephen Robles: 01:10:12

And I think that market cap is reflecting that.

Jason Aten: 01:10:15

I I would a 100% agree.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:17

Alright. Speaking of, tech companies, I just have to have to call out your article about the astronomer CEO. I know it's it's a silly story, but I think, your article was was germane, and I and it was hilarious. So Astronomer, if you remember, there was the, video that went around with the Astronomer CEO caught at the Coldplay concert having an affair. It's a sad situation, and it was went completely viral.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:42

It was mimicked on, like, every sports stadium for weeks, you know, people redoing the thing. But Astronomer, the company where that CEO was the CEO, he's no longer the CEO, now left, hired Gwyneth Paltrow, who is Chris Martin's ex wife, Coldplay lead singer.

Jason Aten: 01:10:58

And the important thing there is that this happened at a Coldplay concert, and it was Chris Martin who was like, they're either very shy or having an affair.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:05

Right. Right.

Jason Aten: 01:11:06

Sorry. Just clarifying that.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:07

Thank you. And so Gwyneth Paltrow, the ex wife of the Coldplay lead singer, who that was the concert that had happened, Astronomer hired her to do this ad spot. And I just say whoever at the company at Astronomer that, like, thought of this and, like, made it happen deserves all the raise. All the raises.

Jason Aten: 01:11:27

Like Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:28

This is brilliant. The spot was hilarious. It was very, I don't know. It was just hilarious.

Jason Aten: 01:11:34

It was it was brilliant because Astronomer was like, no one knew I I like, I'm a tech columnist. I'd never heard of Astronomer before.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:41

Had no idea. I don't even

Jason Aten: 01:11:43

know what Apache Airflow is. Like, it's like, what does any of this stuff mean? But everyone had heard of the company after that. And in fact, people were like, can the name really be Astronomer? Like, is that real is this a space company?

Jason Aten: 01:11:53

Like, what is this?

Stephen Robles: 01:11:54

Right.

Jason Aten: 01:11:55

And no one had

Stephen Robles: 01:11:56

heard of it, but

Jason Aten: 01:11:56

everyone was, like, googling it. Everyone was looking on YouTube for, like, Astronomer CEO. Right. And now the thing that shows up if you do that is this video where and I love that she's like, we're going to answer some of the questions. And it's like, what the actual f?

Jason Aten: 01:12:10

And then it's like, yes. Astronomer is the it's it is so good. My kids were very confused, because they're like, papa pots, why are you watching this is this an Iron Man movie? Like, what is going on? Like

Stephen Robles: 01:12:22

That is something where after a long acting career that Gwyneth Paltrow is now just Tony Stark's wife in people's minds, especially the youth. But

Jason Aten: 01:12:30

I mean

Stephen Robles: 01:12:31

She also owns Goop, the Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:12:34

She's a great entrepreneur. Like, I mean, this is just

Stephen Robles: 01:12:37

I don't know if what

Jason Aten: 01:12:38

she makes is great,

Stephen Robles: 01:12:39

but she's great entrepreneur.

Jason Aten: 01:12:40

But the brilliance of someone in the marketing department going, we need to do a video. We should do this. Hey. What if we could get Gwyneth Paltrow who is you know, like, like, I don't think she's hurting for gigs to, like, do stuff.

Stephen Robles: 01:12:53

She's not I mean,

Jason Aten: 01:12:54

I don't think she's, like, super active active. I don't even know the last movie she made. It was it had to be a Marvel movie, but the but that Marvel money money is, like, gonna be good

Stephen Robles: 01:13:03

for everyone. You're good to go. You're good to go. Jason's piece is great. I'm gonna link Jason's piece in the show notes.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:09

You should read it talking about that, but it's just hilarious. So listen. We're gonna do a very important bonus episode. We're gonna talk about iPad versus Mac because Jason and I both have reasons to consider this choice, very close to home. So if you wanna listen to the bonus episode, you can support the show at join.primarytech.fm, or you can support us directly in Apple Podcasts.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:31

And the list of benefits, it's literally too long, to actually list here on the show. But you get

Jason Aten: 01:13:35

I thought you meant it's, like, too long. There's two things

Stephen Robles: 01:13:38

that No. No. No. Too t o o t o o. Too long because you get bonus episodes every week.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:43

You get an ad free version of the show. You get Primary Tech Daily, top headlines in just a few minutes. You get the raw unedited audio of the show every week. People say they really like that. And, who knows?

Stephen Robles: 01:13:53

There's gonna be even more benefits in the future probably. I just can't think of any more right now, but we will do it. And so we would really appreciate it. And this this episode was brought exclusively, by those who supported it. So thank you directly on Apple Podcast or join.primarytech.fm.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:08

You can leave us a five star rating and review in Apple Podcast. What was I asking them again? I was saying, let us know. I forgot what it was. It was earlier in the

Jason Aten: 01:14:16

I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:16

It was earlier

Jason Aten: 01:14:17

Our in the our listeners are sharp.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:18

They'll They're sharp. They they know what we're talking about. Leave a five star rating and review. You can also watch us on YouTube, youtube.com/@primarytechshow. We're gonna go record a bonus episode.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:25

Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.