Primary Technology

Stephen Robles: 00:00

Human beings are a disease. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, Apple had a secret all hands meeting after their earnings call about AI and what they're gonna do about it. ChatGPT five is likely launching today. News from Perplexity, Ghost six point o, and we have some fun personal tech at the end.

Stephen Robles: 00:18

This episode is brought to you by 1Password and you, the members who support us directly. I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, and I'm always joined by my friend, Jason Aten. How's it going, Jason?

Jason Aten: 00:27

It's good. It's very good. I do not have a Colt, so I'm thankful.

Stephen Robles: 00:30

Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's just me. It's not a new mic. Everyone asks me whenever I have a cult.

Stephen Robles: 00:33

Do you know what the movie that quote is from though?

Jason Aten: 00:35

Well, only because I suggested that you find a quote from, like, The Matrix or so it's The Matrix.

Stephen Robles: 00:41

It is The Matrix. It is The Matrix. It's Agent Smith. He's like, human beings are a disease. Well, I have a disease.

Stephen Robles: 00:47

So they

Jason Aten: 00:47

You have to say it in the Hugo Weaving voice, though.

Stephen Robles: 00:49

I know. I remember that when I finally realized that Agent Smith was also Elrond in Lord of the Rings, blew my mind. Just blew my mind.

Jason Aten: 00:59

Blew your mind.

Stephen Robles: 00:59

I've known her for a while. This is not a recent discovery. I was just just wanna point that out. Alright. We have some wonderful five star review shout outs.

Stephen Robles: 01:07

Thank you. Keep them coming. One day will be a five star rating once again. But jdoc seventy six from The USA, Ryan Bulac from The USA had very kind words to say about the show. Rob from Florida from The USA.

Stephen Robles: 01:19

Hello fellow Floridian. He said bunnies on a trampoline was his review title. I think he's just trolling me at that point, but that that's fine.

Jason Aten: 01:25

I think so.

Stephen Robles: 01:26

And then E38383 from Germany. We have actually had a couple people say, because we asked last week, if you've ever bought an Apple TV remote just by itself rather than just use the one that came with it. And E38383 bought an Apple TV remote because he had the black all glass one, dropped it, and it broke. And so that caused for a replacement one. And And then someone in our community, I forget the name, I'm sorry, but he say he bought a Apple TV remote because he thought he could pair two remotes to one Apple TV so he and his spouse, I guess, could fight over the Apple TV in real time.

Stephen Robles: 02:02

I don't even know if you can do that, but he's just trying.

Jason Aten: 02:05

I don't know if you can do that, but you definitely should not do that.

Stephen Robles: 02:07

You definitely should not. Just let the spouse win. You could do that with two iOS devices though, because you can open the remote app, I think, on multiple devices on the same WiFi.

Jason Aten: 02:17

Can you? Or because I I don't know. No one else in my family knows that they can use their phone, I'm not going to tell them.

Stephen Robles: 02:22

They don't know you can do that?

Jason Aten: 02:24

No. They know I can do that. No. I always thought it I always thought it was like an I like an iCloud login thing. Like I thought you had to be signed in on the device and the Apple TV with the same iCloud login.

Stephen Robles: 02:34

No, because listen, I have a lot of Apple TVs in this house and one of them is not signed into my iCloud and I can still control it. If you're on the same network on the WiFi, then yeah, you can do it.

Jason Aten: 02:45

Also, I know it's not called an iCloud login. Your Apple It's account, not even an Apple ID anymore. It's an Apple account.

Stephen Robles: 02:52

Oh, that's right. Apple account. Can I just say they really should, I don't know if they should combine it or what, because you have icloud.com for all of like your iCloud services? But if you ever wanted to generate an app specific password, like for Fantastical, you have to go to appleid.apple.com. And it's like, I feel like those two things should be the same thing.

Stephen Robles: 03:11

Like your Apple account page, you know what I mean? Like I should be able to do the things on appleid.apple.com that I Anyway, just a thought. Apple should

Jason Aten: 03:19

Interesting. I've never thought about that at all. Not even for a long Listen,

Stephen Robles: 03:25

this is the sick brain, I guess. But no, no. Let's let's get into the real news because right after our last episode, Apple had its earnings call for quarter three. They made, beat expectations. They're still making a bunch of money.

Stephen Robles: 03:38

Revenue was $94,000,000,000 third quarter record, up 10% over the year ago quarter. Mac revenue was up. IPhone revenue was up 13%. Services revenue was up 13%. The only category that or two categories that were down are wearables, home accessories was down 9%, and iPad down 8%.

Stephen Robles: 03:58

And of course, I'm gonna link the six colors because they have all the great graphs. But as per usual, if you look at that Apple quarterly revenue by category, iPhone, 47% of the revenue is still iPhone, and services is now 29%, I think a growing piece of the pie. So good quarter for Apple, meet expectations. The one, couple interesting tidbits. We're gonna talk about the secret all hands meeting they had the next day at Apple Park, but Apple sold its three billionth iPhone during this quarter.

Stephen Robles: 04:29

Three billionth with a b, which is wild. And then they were asked about would Apple be open to acquiring a company in relations to AI? And Tim Cook, you know, I don't think Apple often is open about this, but Tim Cook said, quote, we're very open to a merger and acquisition that accelerates our roadmap. We are not stuck on a certain size company, although the ones that we have acquired thus far this year are small in nature. And so, I mean, he said on the earnings call, they're open to acquiring a company to accelerate the AI efforts with an Apple.

Stephen Robles: 05:05

Well, there

Jason Aten: 05:05

you go. They better accelerate those plans because they're all getting more expensive as we talk, all of those companies. And Apple has a lot of money, but they don't like to spend it. And also I feel really bad because every once in a while I have to I feel like I have to nitpick Steven and it's not that I'm I'm just saving Steven from the people following up with us.

Stephen Robles: 05:22

Yes.

Jason Aten: 05:22

That was during the analyst call, not during the all hands meeting. Correct. Correct. I just wanted to be clear.

Stephen Robles: 05:27

No. No. No. Yeah. That was all during the the earnings call.

Stephen Robles: 05:30

Yep. That was all during call. And then there's some quotes from the the all hands. Yeah. Apple made made a bunch of money, you know, great.

Jason Aten: 05:37

As they do.

Stephen Robles: 05:38

As they do.

Jason Aten: 05:39

This is what Apple does. They made a bunch of money. There was an interesting thing here, if anyone cares. And I would agree. I would just recommend you just go look at 6callers.com because Jason Snell does a very good job of this.

Jason Aten: 05:50

But one of the things that was really interesting was that Apple you know, China is Apple's second largest market, and it's probably its most important growth market because there's a lot more opportunity for growth overall in China than there is anywhere else. In in China, sales had actually started to go down because of low cost Android devices that you can just, buy, you know, they just throw them at your houses. They drive by kind of a thing. Right. And Apple actually lowered prices of some devices in order to qualify for a subsidy that the government was handing out, which is interesting.

Jason Aten: 06:26

Like we're used to subsidies from your phone. Imagine if like the US government was just like, if you buy a phone that's under $750, we will give you $200

Stephen Robles: 06:34

That's it.

Jason Aten: 06:35

That would be weird. But anyway, so Apple saw 4% growth in its China sales, and that was a thing that the analysts were very happy about to see Apple turning that around. I do think it's interesting. Apple has always been, like, the premium brand. Right?

Jason Aten: 06:49

And it's like, yet the only way to get sales to grow in China is to lower your prices and get a government subsidy. I don't know what it means. I just think it's a very interesting position for Apple to be in. I think it's actually probably kind of a problematic sign that they're they're they're increasing their sales there, but only doing it by

Stephen Robles: 07:09

Low cost of price.

Jason Aten: 07:09

Cheapening the brand. Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 07:11

Interesting. I think this chart is also interesting. The products and services total profit, and you could see the green line of these mountain peaks, which is guess what iPhone launches every year. And so this goes back five years, it seems like. And that services revenue is that, ever increasing purple line.

Stephen Robles: 07:28

There you go. All those iPhones.

Jason Aten: 07:29

Which makes sense because you only buy an iPhone once every couple years, but you pay for the services every single month.

Stephen Robles: 07:35

That's the thing. That's the thing. So that was the earnings call, which happened last Thursday. And then on Friday, there was a little secret all hands meeting, Tim Cook and Craig Federighi both apparently spoke at. This is, of course, Gurman is the source.

Stephen Robles: 07:51

You know, he's talking about this all hands about AI and how Tim Cook says it's ours to grab. I'll put the Bloomberg article in there if you subscribe there, but the Verge article as well talks about it. And so in this secret all hands meeting, Tim Cook, in speaking about AI, said Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab, which I feel like the first half of that quote is very, like, Winston Churchill, like, well, Vito and Rito and then he's like, this is sort of ours.

Jason Aten: 08:19

Maybe we should do this.

Stephen Robles: 08:20

This is sort of ours to grab. Lost a little steam at the end of that quote. But he told that to employees. And according to people aware of the meeting, Cook said, we will make the investment to do it. Seems like whether that's hiring people or maybe paying people so Meta stops poaching them, maybe that means that.

Stephen Robles: 08:37

So Tim Cook, that was his poll quote that we got from this secret meeting. And then Craig Federighi, he was saying I did the wrong quote here. But Craig Federighi was basically talking about that they're commit oh, here it is. This is from Nine to Five Mac article. The work we've done on this end to end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed.

Stephen Robles: 08:55

Frank Futurghi said, this has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned. There is no project people are taking more seriously. It's funny, this was an internal all hands meeting and it feels like some of these pull quotes, it's like they knew it was gonna get out. And so they wanted, I don't know, that they wanted everyone to know, like, there is no project people are taking more seriously inside, but.

Jason Aten: 09:19

I think that they forgot to remind the people at the all hands meeting that there was to be no quotes or attribution that Apple says.

Stephen Robles: 09:25

Right. Yeah. They needed to to have that, this is on background. Okay?

Jason Aten: 09:30

The staff member I mean, the the press is much well more well behaved when it comes to this sort of thing than Apple employers. But, also, I don't think Apple has an all hands meeting that they don't. I mean

Stephen Robles: 09:40

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 09:40

They don't invite more than four people into a room

Stephen Robles: 09:42

That's right.

Jason Aten: 09:43

Unless they have a c, you know, chief in their title

Stephen Robles: 09:46

Right.

Jason Aten: 09:46

Unless they expect it to get out.

Stephen Robles: 09:48

What's that quote? A secret is the only secret if it's kept by one person or whatever? Yeah.

Jason Aten: 09:51

Pretty much.

Stephen Robles: 09:52

That's what you tell the second person, like, it's over. So they're, you know, big internally about all the AI stuff. I well, I'm I'm curious because Craig Federighi says that their Siri roadmap, they've somehow exceeded the promises that they made. Of course, it seems like he's referring to WW twenty twenty twenty four last year with a personalized assistant, which never launched. And that's what and we I don't know if we we talked about the Google ad.

Stephen Robles: 10:19

I forgot to put that in here, but did you see the Google Pixel ad where they were just hammering Apple?

Jason Aten: 10:24

Did did

Stephen Robles: 10:26

You didn't see that?

Jason Aten: 10:26

Didn't have to watch it.

Stephen Robles: 10:27

No. Oh my goodness.

Jason Aten: 10:29

I usually write about these. It's been a week, so I haven't seen it yet.

Stephen Robles: 10:32

Oh, man. Well, it was, you know, aptly timed, I guess. But Google is advertising its Pixel ten, which the event is August

Jason Aten: 10:41

Which it hasn't actually announced yet.

Stephen Robles: 10:42

Which it hasn't actually announced yet. The event is on August 20. But this spot from the Pixel, honestly, I mean, really good as far as, know, tear you know, getting into Apple on this. But they're basically saying, like, if you buy a phone with the promise of AI Yeah.

Jason Aten: 11:01

The quote was, just change your phone if you bought a new one because of a feature that's coming soon, but it's been coming soon for a full year.

Stephen Robles: 11:07

Exact exactly. And so they, you know, I I don't they that's true.

Jason Aten: 11:15

So, Steven, do you think that that who do you think this ad is for?

Stephen Robles: 11:19

I don't know because no one buys Pixel phones anyway.

Jason Aten: 11:21

It's not for iPhone users.

Stephen Robles: 11:23

It's not for

Jason Aten: 11:24

It just really is not for iPhone users.

Stephen Robles: 11:25

And what

Jason Aten: 11:26

I'm It's probably fun for Google to do this.

Stephen Robles: 11:28

That's all it is.

Jason Aten: 11:29

But it cannot have any measurable effect on iPhone. Now I I should say if you were an iPhone user and you were thinking of switching to a Android device, I would say that the percentage of those people going to a Pixel phone is probably higher than just average people buying an Android phone. Sure. Because Google does actually make pretty good hardware.

Stephen Robles: 11:51

Right. And if you want the pure software experience like you would on an iPhone with iOS, then the Pixel

Jason Aten: 11:56

Or the best cameras. Like, they do a very good job with that kind

Stephen Robles: 11:58

of thing.

Jason Aten: 11:59

So but I just don't understand. I feel like this is the kind of ad that just makes Google feel really good about

Stephen Robles: 12:04

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 12:04

Like Google, but really they're like, hey, look at us over here.

Stephen Robles: 12:08

Well, and it's a very clear win to knock Apple on this because everyone like because Apple made a big deal about Apple intelligence all leading up to the iPhone 16 and after. Snoop Dogg was out there talking about Apple intelligence. They were selling iPhone 16 based on Apple intelligence. And then the big part of Apple intelligence never shipped. And so I think it is, you know, it's a good dig because it is accurate.

Jason Aten: 12:32

So you would say that picking on Apple like this would be low hanging fruit?

Stephen Robles: 12:36

Listen, I'm gonna have to end the show right there.

Jason Aten: 12:39

It's I mean, that was That was pretty good.

Stephen Robles: 12:41

That's pretty good. Can I let me ask you a personal question?

Jason Aten: 12:44

Okay.

Stephen Robles: 12:44

I we recently had a friend. They had a Samsung Galaxy S 25. They broke it. And because their kids had iPads and iPhone devices, they wanted to switch to the iPhone for better access to parental controls. And so they switched from the iPhone.

Stephen Robles: 13:01

As anyone who switches, it's a long learn You know, it's a learning curve. It's steep, you know, to try and get used to it. And they are not They don't like it, of course. They're like the iPhone.

Jason Aten: 13:12

They don't like the iPhone?

Stephen Robles: 13:13

They don't like the iPhone because like everything's different. Everything's a different place. You know, it's just This is not a techy person. They're just like, it's very different. Just don't like it right away.

Stephen Robles: 13:20

But the one thing they keep saying is that my Samsung Galaxy took better pictures. And I'm, you know, that's fine. I'm not I'm not here to like prove anybody wrong. Whatever. I'm not gonna like have an argument about it.

Stephen Robles: 13:31

But then it was it was really a traumatizing event, Jason. My wife, she asked me, so do the Samsung phones take better pictures than the iPhone?

Jason Aten: 13:41

Your wife asked you this? My wife

Stephen Robles: 13:42

asked me this. And the blood drained from my face. And like it did the dolly zoom that he does in Jaws, which side note to the rabbit trail. We actually watched Jaws the other day because that was last week's quote. I realized, I don't think anyone in my family's seen it.

Stephen Robles: 13:57

I don't know if I saw it front to back. It's rated PG when you rent it, not a PG movie. Just want everybody to know. Lots of blood.

Jason Aten: 14:03

And you gotta adjust for inflation.

Stephen Robles: 14:05

You gotta adjust that for inflation. It's closer to an R than PG. But anyway, my wife asked me that question and like, I probably went into a longer explanation that I should have, and it probably just like sounded like Charlie Brown or whatever. But what would you say to someone who's like, so does Samsung take better picture?

Jason Aten: 14:22

First of all, I wanna know when your wife asked you that, was your response to her the same where you just say, I'm sorry, I've got to end the show. Don't you tell your wife?

Stephen Robles: 14:29

Yeah. It's like, listen, we gotta go. Well,

Jason Aten: 14:32

I I'll

Stephen Robles: 14:34

tell let me tell you what I said. And you tell me if I you think this was said, all the top end phones take great photos now. They take different kinds of photos. Some people might prefer how photos look from a Samsung versus Google versus iPhone. There's one feature that I hear from Android users that are like, My Samsung Galaxy has 100X zoom, iPhone only has five, so the Samsung is better.

Stephen Robles: 14:58

And that's like a clear just feature point that is usually stated as like, this is an objective fact, and so the iPhone is worse. And I don't feel like going into a diatribe of like, why that's bogus or why the 100x is like kind of fake. I told my wife that, and I explained the whole moon photo thing from a few years ago. But, anyway, what what would you say to that question?

Jason Aten: 15:22

Well, first of all, I would say, yeah, if you only take photos of the moon, Samsung's better because it will just give you a photo of the moon regardless of what it actually looks like in the sky right now. So that's that's fine. Right. If that is your use case. I my response would be, are you happy with the photos from your iPhone?

Stephen Robles: 15:36

Right.

Jason Aten: 15:36

Like, what is it you're like, what would better be? Like, you know what I mean? Like, and how are you measuring that? And if you are happy with the photo but what I think the person who said that to you was saying is they just look different, and I'm used to Right. The contrast and the color science that Samsung is using.

Jason Aten: 15:54

Apple's is a little bit different. I don't like them. And I could understand that because I feel like it's the kind of thing where I I have a Nikon camera. I shoot Nikon. I've shot it for, I don't know, a very long time, twenty five years.

Jason Aten: 16:09

And there are times when I'll pick up a Canon camera. Great camera. Canon r eight. Fantastic little camera. You can put a 70 to 202.8 on it.

Jason Aten: 16:19

Like, all that stuff, it's a and I hate it. And I don't like the way the photos look. And it's not they're not bad. They're great. It's just different than what I'm used to.

Jason Aten: 16:27

The camera, the buttons are in different places. The worst sin that Canon creates is that the dials move in the opposite direction, and you can change that. The problem is this camera that I had picked up with someone else's, so I'm not gonna go changing the settings on them. It is either of them better? Absolutely not.

Jason Aten: 16:42

They're this they both produce incredibly high qualities, images, and the same thing is true with, like so what I would just say to somebody is, like, what is it about your iPhone photos you don't like? What are you looking for? Because the reality is they will just look different.

Stephen Robles: 16:54

Right.

Jason Aten: 16:54

And if the person who's saying that the Samsung photos are better, what they're really saying is they just that's that's what I'm used to. It's what I'm comfortable with. And then you get something different and, and it's like, I don't know if it's it's not that it's better or worse. It's just it's different.

Stephen Robles: 17:11

Yeah. I probably should have just said that. I also went into a tirade about HDR and like, well, maybe the iPhone over processes sometimes and that's, you know, sometimes I do

Jason Aten: 17:19

pro No one is thinking about that.

Stephen Robles: 17:21

I do pro raw and less is the problem. I like, ah, I failed this. So anyway, I'm now developing this argument for one day when I get asked again, should I switch to Samsung for better photos? Because I need I need a defense. I need a legal defense.

Jason Aten: 17:35

Well, yeah, the question really is what is it you don't like about your current photos? And it might be like, I don't know. The people are always out of focus. And like, doesn't matter what camera you use, you're just a bad photographer.

Stephen Robles: 17:44

But it's it's not even I don't think it is an objective, what do you not like about the photo? Like, I don't think anybody I don't think even the most dedicated Samsung user, who's not like super techy, would say, Well, this and that. Like, these are the points of why I don't like an iPhone photo. It's just this like visceral, like, Well, Samsung has 100x zoom and the photos look better. And it's like, that's such a subjective Like, I don't know how you argue that, but

Jason Aten: 18:11

Well, and that's kind of the point, I guess. Yeah. Because if I'm asking them about what don't you like about your photos Yeah. Yeah. Then you're asking them to start to define the subjective part of it because objectively, they're they're basically the same.

Jason Aten: 18:23

In fact, in some cases, I don't know about Samsung, but in a I mean, Apple doesn't even make the photo sensors. Right? Like, for a long time, they were using Sony sensors. I don't know if that's still true or not, but, like

Stephen Robles: 18:34

Right.

Jason Aten: 18:34

What is it about the whole thing? And chances are what you don't like is the pipeline, like whatever Apple's doing to it. Right. But you can actually get the photos without the pipeline. And guess what?

Jason Aten: 18:42

You'll hate those too. They'll be disgusting.

Stephen Robles: 18:46

I like the pro raw ones. And that's the thing. Show I show my wife a couple photos that I took with pro raw of, like, devices that I was gonna use in thumbnails. And she was like, oh, wow. It's a great photo.

Stephen Robles: 18:54

And it's like, yeah. I mean, you can you can also edit a photo and probably make them look indistinguishable. Like, you just took a a photo right out of camera on a Galaxy and out of the iPhone, you can edit it and probably make it look exactly the same. But anyway Yeah.

Jason Aten: 19:06

If you take an iPhone photo and crank up the saturation and the contrast, it will look exactly like mean, fact, Apple did that.

Stephen Robles: 19:11

They have the styles. But cranking the saturate that, you know, I remember I worked at Circuit City and I remember that saturation was cranked on some of those TVs and that's immediately where consumers went. They're like, oh, that TV looks way better. It's like, actually everybody looks like a clown because the saturation But is cranked to a just at a glance, if you see this one and it looks washed out because this one's cranked so high and the contrast is at a 100, then people just think, oh, that one's better.

Jason Aten: 19:38

Yeah. Well, that's why all of the screensavers on those TVs are like a bowl of apples panning across, bright, vibrant colors. There's no pink

Stephen Robles: 19:45

Oranges, like, on a black background, just kinda anyway.

Jason Aten: 19:48

The honey dripping down.

Stephen Robles: 19:49

Yeah. That listen. That was a valuable tangent because I had an existential crisis about that. So, anyway, but I wanna touch on it. You wrote about the four words that Tim said.

Stephen Robles: 19:57

You said change the narrative. What what four words are you talking about here? About this AI AI?

Jason Aten: 20:01

Scroll down. What did he say? The AI all handedly. He he his the point was

Stephen Robles: 20:05

Apple must do this.

Jason Aten: 20:06

Nope. That's not it. It's we've rarely been first. Oh, yeah. Which is actually an important thing to think about, and I think what Cook is trying to tell his the employees and probably the rest of us is that Apple's strength is not pioneering new uncharted territory.

Jason Aten: 20:24

That is just not what Apple is good at. What Apple is good at is beginning to see how people are using a thing and then figuring out the better option for that. Okay? And so I think that this was not saying Apple will be super successful at this. What Apple's what Tim Cook was, I think, trying to say was, look.

Jason Aten: 20:43

We we didn't invent the smartphone. We didn't invent the PC. We didn't invent the tablet or the m p three player, but the versions that we introduced are the ones that everyone eventually settled on. Like, no. That's the that's the standard bearer.

Jason Aten: 20:58

And I actually think that that's an important point because, essentially, the narrative has just been Apple is behind. And I think it's like, if think about it this way, like you already mentioned the quote where he says that they're gonna make the investment.

Stephen Robles: 21:12

Right.

Jason Aten: 21:13

Really? Because Apple's, like, capital expenditures were, like, $4,000,000,000, which is less than half of what Google increased its capital expenditures. Like, they're they're playing a very, very different game. They're not trying to be the frontier model developer. Right?

Jason Aten: 21:30

And so I think it's not really realistic to compare them in that way. But what Apple has to get correct is fixing dumb Siri, like making it a useful thing that you can do. Right? Like, we got comments from people about, like, the whole health stuff. Right?

Jason Aten: 21:47

Like, this is what people want to be able to do. Right. That's the part Apple has to get right. And once they see that that's how people are trying to use this stuff, I do think that they will probably figure out how to pull it together.

Stephen Robles: 21:57

Here's I'm gonna take a little bit of a devil's advocate approach because the next part of the quote from Tim Cook, it was PC before the Mac, smartphone before the iPhone, tablets before iPad, m p three player before iPod. All of those things are true. And I would say in all those categories, PC, you know, I guess debatable, Apple did create the consumer the wide consumer product in those categories, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. I think in all of those scenarios, the timeline for when the thing launched, namely a smartphone or an m p three player, and the time that Apple came out with theirs was years. You know, it was years when they before m p three, before iPod.

Stephen Robles: 22:36

I don't think they have years to get there with AI. Like, I don't think they have the same time scale to get the iPhone right that they had to get the iPad right or the iPod because there wasn't like huge competition for tablets before the iPad. Yeah, the iPad wasn't the first tablet, but we also didn't have a slew of other high end really good tablets. Whereas today, they've obviously not first to AI, but we also have ChatGPT. We have Anthropic.

Stephen Robles: 23:08

We have Perplexity. We have Llama. We have Gemini. Copilot, we've been with ChatGPT. But it's like it's not the same landscape.

Stephen Robles: 23:16

I think things are moving so much faster in the AI realm. I mean, CHEJPT five is going to be announced later today, and I don't think they have the same amount of time they did then. I don't think it's like an infinite timescale. I don't think it's like, well, it doesn't matter how many years it takes us because once we do it and we do it right, then everyone's gonna use what we did. I don't think AI is in the same category as those other hardware devices because there's already so much good out there and it's already getting so ingrained in people's workflows.

Stephen Robles: 23:44

Like, I'm already using Chachapita in a bunch of places. Now I'm using Perplexity Comet for a bunch of tasks. I I just don't think they have the same amount of time they did for those categories.

Jason Aten: 23:54

Yeah. We talked about this previously. The smartphone was twenty years. Right. I don't think they have twenty years.

Jason Aten: 23:59

No. They don't. Don't think Apple thinks that they have twenty years either. There's obviously some window of opportunity for this, but that window of opportunity, I think, is defined by Apple Apple's earnings, their iPhone sales revenue was up 13%. When that number over year over year starts to be consistently negative, that's when their time's up.

Jason Aten: 24:19

Because that means people are switching from iPhones because Sure. Most of iPhone revenue is either well, all of iPhone revenue is either someone who's never had an iPhone and bought it, bought an bought an iPhone. Right. And they talk about switching. Right?

Jason Aten: 24:30

They've talked about that many times. The rest of it is Steven buys a new iPhone every year. Right. When Steven stops buying a new iPhone every year, that's when the time is up because that means people are switching to other devices, whether it's because Samsung has a 100 x camera. That doesn't seem to have ever moved the needle.

Jason Aten: 24:46

I don't think that would be the thing. This is what you and I were talking about. Apple has to be the best device or Apple's devices have to be the best devices for AI, not necessarily build it themselves. Right. I think that the Siri thing is probably the exception to that.

Jason Aten: 24:59

They do have to be they have to figure that piece of it out because people will eventually go. So that window, I don't know if that's ten quarters from now, ten years from now. There's some window of time at which Apple will have to have delivered this or people will start to leave. Right. But right now, you can run ChatGPT on all the devices that you're using.

Jason Aten: 25:20

There's no threat to Apple. No one's leaving Apple's device. And Apple, the thing they care about is, are we still selling devices right now? And the answer to that is absolutely yes. In fact, they may be selling more because of ChatGPT.

Jason Aten: 25:32

I don't I don't know. But, like, they we're not at a point right now where p because the alternative is you switch to Android.

Stephen Robles: 25:38

Well, and but the threshold is when something becomes valuable enough to your life workflow that you switch. Like Perplexity Comet again. I I did a video last week. It blew up. It was great.

Stephen Robles: 25:52

You know, was showing 10 ways to use Perplexity Comet, and it's clear people are very interested in what it can do and want access to it. Now I've not switched my default browser to Perplexity Comet. I'm still using Safari for privacy and security, but also I have all my bookmarks, profiles, whatever. But I am doing single tasks. I'm moving single tasks over to Comet because it saves me time or it's easier.

Stephen Robles: 26:17

And that's the slow shift that people will experience. It's like, oh, well, this is easier like web search. This is easier in ChatGPT or Perplexity. I'm gonna start doing that one task here. I'm gonna start doing two tasks there.

Stephen Robles: 26:30

And as that number increases, eventually, then there's the tipping point of, oh, actually, if I just get this other device, more than 50% of the things that I do will become that much easier, and then I'll switch. And obviously, I don't think we're there yet. And like you're saying, you can use Chatuchipotine Perplexity on your iPhone right now. But even Sam Altman, he actually tweeted this this past week or earlier this week. He was saying, Someday soon, something smarter than the smartest person you know will be running on a device in your pocket, helping you with whatever you want.

Stephen Robles: 27:02

And this was an interesting quote because we know Sam Altman is working on a hardware device with Johnny Ive. They have not said what it is or even how big it is. This is the first clue that it actually is something that will fit in your pocket. And so it's clear that OpenAI, I would say the leading name or the leading brand for AI for most people, is gonna have a device that you put in your pocket. Even if it's not a phone yet, I don't think people are gonna carry two devices in their pockets going forward long term.

Stephen Robles: 27:33

And if it's eventually the choice of the device that does all the ChadGPT stuff or the dumb Siri, I think that, you know, then it might affect the bottom line.

Jason Aten: 27:42

I don't think that we're anywhere close to people like

Stephen Robles: 27:44

We're not close. We're not close.

Jason Aten: 27:46

Be because do you think that in a scenario when OpenAI puts out a device, they're gonna stop shipping a ChatGPT app on the Mac

Stephen Robles: 27:54

No. No.

Jason Aten: 27:54

IPhone? 0% ChatGPT. Because there's 3,000,000,000 iPhones I'm

Stephen Robles: 27:59

saying it's up

Jason Aten: 27:59

to it's going to take OpenAI to sell 3,000,000,000 of whatever weird thing that they're building in?

Stephen Robles: 28:04

Question is, will it take Apple longer to get their act together in AI? That's the only question.

Jason Aten: 28:08

But what does Apple actually have to get together? You can run ChatGPT on the iPhone.

Stephen Robles: 28:12

Right. I don't and, again, I only knew what was possible with an AI browser when I used it last week. And so

Jason Aten: 28:20

You did it on a Mac.

Stephen Robles: 28:21

And I did it on

Jason Aten: 28:22

a Mac. Zero threat to Apple. 0% threat to Apple.

Stephen Robles: 28:25

Yeah. But I think I think it's it's a a single grain of sand, and it just start when you just start putting grain after grain, eventually, it's like, I don't know, maybe a device. Because honestly, the the things that Perplexity Comet can do in a browser are amazing, and I want now my whole computer to do that. Would I ever switch from a Mac to an AI hardware computer? I don't know.

Stephen Robles: 28:46

But I know I I don't think Apple is going to have that level of automation and control in AI on a Mac for years. Like, that's probably years and years away. So I don't know. I'm just saying.

Jason Aten: 28:57

I think that the the I I think the window of time is shorter than Apple thinks but longer than we think probably. Right? Like, because we Sure. And you and I are using these things because we we we're just we're interested in it.

Stephen Robles: 29:13

Right.

Jason Aten: 29:13

We like it. When I talk about the number of people who have said to me, like, you put all of your medical information into ChatGPT, I didn't know you could do that. Like, we're still so far beyond the event horizon. Like

Stephen Robles: 29:25

That's fair.

Jason Aten: 29:26

We're so far off before this happens. Like, there's we're not the tipping point how many metaphors can I use here? Well, that was the tipping point.

Stephen Robles: 29:32

Here's an interesting point, though. My kids, which my oldest is 16 now.

Jason Aten: 29:37

The children of a tech YouTuber. Okay. Go ahead.

Stephen Robles: 29:39

Okay. Sure. But don't do your kids use ChatGPT?

Jason Aten: 29:43

My son does for coding all the time.

Stephen Robles: 29:45

Okay. I think the younger generation is going to have more of a vernacular of just AI stuff. And as we're starting the school year, my oldest son, he's doing a lot of Shakespeare stuff this year, and he and my middle son, they have to do a lot of research. Guess the two tools I sent them for those topics. For Shakespeare, Google's Notebook LM, they have an entire Shakespeare model that you can literally go in, ask a question, and it's incredible.

Stephen Robles: 30:15

I've already tested it and used it. So I sent my oldest son that for Shakespeare. And then for when it came to research, I gave them access to Perplexity. Neither of which are an Apple product. Now they're using it on the iMac here in the family room, and they're using it on their iPad or whatever.

Stephen Robles: 30:29

So sure, they're still buying the Apple hardware, but I'm not telling them to just use Safari. I'm not telling them to ask Siri. You know what I mean?

Jason Aten: 30:38

Yeah. But I I don't know that Apple cares about that as much. Apple has Siri.

Stephen Robles: 30:43

But Tim Cook is saying we we must do this. Obviously, they care. He's saying we have to figure it out.

Jason Aten: 30:48

Yes. But isn't part of figuring it out deciding which part of the conversation you and I are having right now is actually the important part.

Stephen Robles: 30:54

Sure. Sure.

Jason Aten: 30:55

Because I don't know for sure because we assume that what Apple's saying is Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab. We will make the investment to do it. I think everyone hears that and assumes that what he's saying is they're building a competitor to chat with GPT, but they have would have to spend $40,000,000,000 to build a competitor to chat GPT. And the fact that they just aren't tells me Apple is taking a different tact.

Jason Aten: 31:20

And that was, I think, the point he was making is Apple took a different tact with the iPhone. It took a different tact with the Mac. It took a different tab with tablets. I can't say that word that many times, but that I think that they are still trying to they are still I I I'm pretty sure that the most important piece for Apple is the Siri piece.

Stephen Robles: 31:38

Yeah. Well, I and the different tact, it was still the same it was still the device. It was still a smartphone, a tablet, an m p three player. Like, it was still those things.

Jason Aten: 31:47

Well, and the fact that he used those examples tells you the thing that they think is most important is the device that you use it on.

Stephen Robles: 31:53

Right. But that might they're not making a device that you use it on. I mean, they they are They the iPhone and the iPad.

Jason Aten: 31:59

They make the single most

Stephen Robles: 32:00

important But in the device. In that example that he's using, they made the iPhone, they made the iPad, they made the Yeah. Mac. What are they making for AI? Because OpenAI thinks they need to make a hardware device and and maybe it's

Jason Aten: 32:14

because Well, hold on. This is actually really interesting. Yeah. I don't think so he does go on and say that AI is big is bigger or bigger than the Internet smartphones called computing and apps. I get that Right.

Jason Aten: 32:23

As a platform. Apple's one of the most dominant successful platform companies that there is. I do think it's an important distinction. What OpenAI is doing in terms of building a device is like Meta wanting to build a smartphone. Now it'll be more successful maybe than that because you got Johnny Ivan.

Jason Aten: 32:41

You also have, like, not Meta. But

Stephen Robles: 32:43

And you have billions

Jason Aten: 32:44

of dollars. What I mean by that is that they don't have a phone. Right? They have zero device. They are only running on other people's devices.

Jason Aten: 32:54

So to some extent, they're probably trying to build a hedge so that they're never beholden to Android and to iOS. So that's understandable. That does not mean Apple has to build a AI they have the iPhone. Like, if they want people to keep buying iPhone, they just have to make the iPhone the best way to use.

Stephen Robles: 33:10

The reason and I guess my point is when OpenAI makes a hardware device, that device will run all of the ChatGPT and AI features unhindered. No sandboxing. It will do whatever you want with the hardware that it has. Apple will never allow ChatGPT or Perplexity to have access to the hardware at that level. Like, the ChatGPT app will never be able to send a message for you.

Stephen Robles: 33:37

The ChatGPT app will never be able to control your smart home. Apple will never never allow that because it's sandboxed and only Apple's voice assistant has access to those things because of privacy and security. And so if Apple is never going to allow that, then Siri has to be that good. And that's what I don't know if they have enough time for because ChatGPT and whatever OpenAI does in their hardware device, it's going to do way more than the ChatGPT app on the iPhone. Just don't we don't see it yet.

Stephen Robles: 34:10

We don't have

Jason Aten: 34:10

it yet. So next year, OpenAI ships a device. Yeah. It will have unhindered access to ChatGPT.

Stephen Robles: 34:15

Right.

Jason Aten: 34:15

Do you know what it won't have? Any of your personal information.

Stephen Robles: 34:19

Right now until you put it in there.

Jason Aten: 34:22

Well, how are you I mean, that's the same thing then. Like, you're saying ChatGPT won't have it on the phone. It's not gonna have it on some other device just because they make their own device because all of your data is already on your iPhone.

Stephen Robles: 34:31

Right. But again, if the value is there, I'll add my calendars to it, my email accounts. I'll add all that stuff. And I don't know. We'll see.

Stephen Robles: 34:40

We'll see how it does. This am not I don't know. I'm coming across real down on Apple, and I'm not. I think I don't know. I just don't know if they understand this landscape.

Jason Aten: 34:50

Well, this is why I said they reframed the narrative because I think that Apple is taking a they're they're getting beat up because they haven't succeeded. They haven't met the expectations, and what they're saying is y'all have the wrong expectations for what we should be doing right now. And if you hit at the advent of the smartphone given Apple grief for not having a smartphone, Apple will be like, give us eighteen years. We will blow smartphones. Like, every smartphone that's made is basically a follow on from what Apple makes.

Jason Aten: 35:21

Sure. That's true with tablets. Even the Mac. The Mac may not be the most it macOS obviously has a much smaller market share than Windows, but every good Windows computer is basically a MacBook air with some other slight change. Right?

Stephen Robles: 35:36

Sure. Sure.

Jason Aten: 35:37

The surface devices, all I have an Acer device here. Like all these things are just, oh, that's how we make laptops. And then they just do

Stephen Robles: 35:44

that. Right. I I guess we will have to see if Craig Federighi is right in what he said in the secret all hands meeting that they have surpassed what they announced, and it's and the voice assistant is even better now than what they said. That will we'll see. We'll have to see.

Jason Aten: 36:01

That'll be great.

Stephen Robles: 36:01

Do will they actually deliver on that? Because it's not an iOS 26 as far as we know. Maybe when the iPhone 17 launch comes and they say more about it, But we're over a year past when they announced Apple Intelligence and we still have not seen it. So we'll reserve I'll reserve full judgment. Let's see.

Stephen Robles: 36:19

Let's see it. Let's see it.

Jason Aten: 36:20

Alright.

Stephen Robles: 36:21

I didn't think we were gonna talk that was good. Didn't know we were gonna talk about

Jason Aten: 36:24

We gotta just go off on a

Stephen Robles: 36:25

More tangent.

Jason Aten: 36:26

You know, what'd you say, run your bicycle down the hill or something?

Stephen Robles: 36:28

I don't know.

Jason Aten: 36:29

Don't know.

Stephen Robles: 36:30

Yeah, roll the ball. Alright, listen. We gotta talk about Apple's US manufacturing commitment, Chad GPT-five. There's a bunch of other lightning round news that I wanna get to. But before we do, we wanna thank our friends at 1Password, especially Trellica by 1Password.

Stephen Robles: 36:48

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Stephen Robles: 37:10

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Stephen Robles: 37:51

They need to use their devices. Well, 1Password and Trellica can help them do that in a secure and private way. 1Password is also an award winning password manager as trusted by millions of users and over 150,000 businesses from IBM to Slack. Plus 1Password is ISO twenty seven two twenty seven zero zero one certified with regular third party audits and the industry's largest bug bounty. So take the first steps to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even unmanaged shadow IT.

Stephen Robles: 38:21

So learn more at onepassword.com/primarytech. That's onepassword.com/primarytech, all lowercase, and the link is in the show notes as well. But thanks to onepassword for sponsoring this episode. Alright. So we're gonna roll down the hill.

Stephen Robles: 38:35

We're gonna talk more about this in our bonus episode because this is yeah. There's there's news here. But anyway, Apple has committed an additional $100,000,000,000, making a total of $600,000,000,000 to American manufacturing, both building factories and bringing jobs to America. And, yes, there was the news about Tim Cook bringing the little glass thing from Corning, to president Trump, and that's part of this. Apple and Corning partnered to manufacture 100% of iPhone and Apple Watch cover glass in Kentucky.

Stephen Robles: 39:07

So the glass will be manufactured here in The US. It was previously thought, I think, that all the glass for iPhones was manufactured here, but apparently not because now it's bringing a 100%.

Jason Aten: 39:17

Well

Stephen Robles: 39:18

Ish?

Jason Aten: 39:18

I don't know what this means.

Stephen Robles: 39:20

Yeah. I don't

Jason Aten: 39:20

They partnered to make a 100%. What if they've been doing it for years? Like, does that change anything?

Stephen Robles: 39:25

Oh, that's true.

Jason Aten: 39:27

I don't know. Like, I'm just

Stephen Robles: 39:28

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 39:28

I'm just saying this is there's a lot of words here. Yeah. And I don't fault Apple for any of the words. I just don't know what any of them mean. Does that make sense?

Jason Aten: 39:38

Like, I understand why they say all these words because this is what you have to do right now. Yeah. Yeah. Is say these words. I just can't figure out for the life of me what any of it means in terms of actual stuff.

Stephen Robles: 39:52

We're gonna we're gonna talk about well, the

Jason Aten: 39:55

Stuff.

Stephen Robles: 39:55

We're gonna we're gonna talk about stuff in the bonus episode. So you yeah. If you wanna support the show

Jason Aten: 39:59

The censored, gatekeeped group.

Stephen Robles: 40:02

Yeah. Uncensored version of of that story. So stay tuned for the bonus episode. We'll talk about that. But later today, we're recording before the actual announcement, but OpenAI is going to announce ChatGPT five.

Stephen Robles: 40:14

The event is gonna be at 1PM eastern. It's gonna be a livestream. Sam Altman's been teasing it on X. They said livestream Thursday, and the s in stream is a five. Very, very sneaky, I guess.

Stephen Robles: 40:28

Sure.

Jason Aten: 40:28

And more importantly, they use capital letters.

Stephen Robles: 40:31

All caps. Yeah. That's true. Sam Altman, he only posted them in all lowercase.

Jason Aten: 40:35

But think about it. The five would have looked really weird if the rest of the word letters were lowercase. You gotta think these things through like a

Stephen Robles: 40:42

Yeah. Brand. Like a, I don't know.

Jason Aten: 40:43

Branding. Yeah. Exactly.

Stephen Robles: 40:44

Yeah. There you go. So we'll see. We'll talk about it next week once we have we'll see if we have ChatGPT five in hand and whether we're playing around with it. I've seen news that, like, the advancements in these models, we're not gonna see the kind of leap forwards that we did with, like, 3.54.

Stephen Robles: 40:59

So I don't know. Temper expectations maybe, but I'm excited to see what they announce. We'll see.

Jason Aten: 41:04

I mean, okay. Are you using 4.5, or do you just use four for everything? And no one else listening right now has a clue what I'm talking about.

Stephen Robles: 41:10

But We're talking about Chantel. They know they know, Chad.

Jason Aten: 41:13

No. But I'm saying, like, no. The point is no one changes the models, really.

Stephen Robles: 41:16

I use well, I use four o.

Jason Aten: 41:19

Yeah. Why? You know why? Because 4.5 is better, but so slow compared to four.

Stephen Robles: 41:25

Right.

Jason Aten: 41:25

I mean, it's not that slow, but I'm saying compared to Yeah. Type thing in, get instant answer Right. Right. You get better answer with 4.5, but it takes 10 times as long.

Stephen Robles: 41:33

Yeah. So I use four. I use four. Well, maybe five will be fast and good. Maybe that's the idea.

Jason Aten: 41:38

Oh, isn't this one of those you choose? You get there's three things. You get to pick two Fast of Good, fast, and cheap. Expensive.

Stephen Robles: 41:43

Good, fast, and yeah. Exactly. Take them as cheap.

Jason Aten: 41:46

So you can, but only on the $200 a month plan.

Stephen Robles: 41:48

See. Yeah. No. I'm not I'm not jumping to any 200 month plan. But anyway, so we'll we'll talk about that next week, but that's happening later today if you're listening when the show comes out.

Stephen Robles: 41:57

Also, OpenAI did release local models that you can literally download and run on your Mac. No Internet access required. I'm gonna put a link to this nine to five Mac article in the show notes because they walk through how to actually use this. And you have to basically download this application at Olama, and then you run a couple Mac terminal commands to download the model. And then you have the this application that you just use the local models in.

Stephen Robles: 42:24

People have said that have done this that it's fast, and it's good. Obviously don't get all the same features you would, like, with the Chattypati app, like deep research or the agent mode and stuff like that. But you have a local model that you can run right there on your Mac. No Internet required. Have you done this?

Stephen Robles: 42:40

Did you do this?

Jason Aten: 42:40

Definitely no.

Stephen Robles: 42:42

Okay. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 42:42

But also to be clear, you can do things that don't require any access to the Internet if you run them without like, right, this doesn't have access to current world knowledge.

Stephen Robles: 42:52

Correct.

Jason Aten: 42:52

It only has access to But no web no web searching. You know? So you could you could feed it a PDF and say summarize this. Correct. Or you could say write me a story or whatever, but you couldn't say, like, anything that requires current information.

Jason Aten: 43:05

Correct.

Stephen Robles: 43:06

But, yeah, local model. There you go. I I'm not doing this just for the record just because the ChatGPT app works great and I don't need it.

Jason Aten: 43:13

Yeah. It's wonderful. I don't I'm I'm good. I have a good internet connection. Steven has been fighting for years to have the fastest internet connection on earth just so he doesn't have to run this thing locally.

Stephen Robles: 43:22

That's exactly right. Can I tell you that Frontier supposedly I have the five gig plan right now? Five gigs up and down for my internet connection. And Frontier just said there's now a seven gig plan available to me. But it's 80 more dollars a month.

Stephen Robles: 43:35

That I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that.

Jason Aten: 43:37

Steven, you need to just ask them, please stop sending me marketing because it's giving me anxiety.

Stephen Robles: 43:42

But then I get to take a screen grab of it and tag Casey Liss and I'm trolling him with my internet speed. So, you know, that's that's that's almost worth it.

Jason Aten: 43:50

So it's worth it. Yeah. It's not worth $80

Stephen Robles: 43:52

Not

Jason Aten: 43:52

80 but it is worth it.

Stephen Robles: 43:53

But it's worth it's worth what I'm paying now. So Instagram launched a couple new features. One, you can repost, basically retweet photos and stuff. And there's a new map feature where you can see friends' locations on a map, like if they posted a story and the location was tagged or posted a photo. I did a little post yesterday saying, like, if you wanna make sure to turn this off, here's where to do it, where you can go to the Instagram settings and turn off the location for that map thing.

Stephen Robles: 44:21

It is a straight rip from Snapchat. If you didn't know, Snapchat has, like, Snap map where you can see people post.

Jason Aten: 44:27

And reposts.

Stephen Robles: 44:28

And reposts.

Jason Aten: 44:30

That's TikTok, I guess, technically.

Stephen Robles: 44:32

Well, listen. I mean, Instagram has been doing this for years. I mean, stories, that was a Snapchat feature.

Jason Aten: 44:36

It is nice though that they have built an app where we can just do all the best things that we like at other apps in one place. Isn't that nice of them?

Stephen Robles: 44:44

It's so nice of them, to take everybody's ideas and features and make it their own. It's, I guess. I don't know. You know, I'm on Instagram and I was trying to like grow my following there. And I don't know, it seems hard and not fun.

Stephen Robles: 44:59

So I just go there to see my friends' pictures of

Jason Aten: 45:02

It seems hard and not fun.

Stephen Robles: 45:04

I mean, I've grown a YouTube channel, and that was possible. And I don't know I don't know what the secret is on Instagram, but anyway.

Jason Aten: 45:11

You have to pay attention to what the kids are doing. And the kids, I will say, are very excited about the repost thing. I don't know why. Now I'm not even my my daughter's like, you need to write about this. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Stephen Robles: 45:21

I don't think you have say my eyes.

Jason Aten: 45:22

Write about this. This is very cool. Though you can repost things. I'm like, okay. Well, why do you wanna do that?

Stephen Robles: 45:29

Like, don't Why did you say why? Like, why is a big deal?

Jason Aten: 45:31

I said well, I just asked, like, I don't know why you wanna do that. She's like, because you could repost things. Okay.

Stephen Robles: 45:37

I imagine I imagine in, like, high school or middle school, like, that would be a

Jason Aten: 45:41

Oh, a 100%. All they do is repost things, but you have to do, like, the whole, like, weird share to your story from the

Stephen Robles: 45:48

Yeah. Yeah. It's a little weird. Alright. Some other little news.

Stephen Robles: 45:51

Perplexity, again, I did my little video about the browser last week, but then Cloudflare came out here and said that Perplexity is using stealth undeclared crawlers to evade website no crawl directive. So any website can have a file in their server structure like the robots. Txt file. That basically tells these AI and large language models whether or not they can crawl a website for the data. And Cloudflare is accusing Perplexity of using strategies to get around this block.

Stephen Robles: 46:27

So if websites have basically tried to block perplexity from, you know, scrubbing their website, that perplexity is getting around it. And CloudFare has a long dissertation about how they tested it and what they're doing. And so I'll link the CloudFare article in the show notes. But then also Perplexity responded, and they were like, nah, bro. We're it's we're not doing the bad stuff.

Stephen Robles: 46:48

We're we're good. And they wrote about why, and then the Perplexity CEO was all about it. Now this is not the first time Perplexity has been in the news about, like, privacy and security. And people in the comments of my video, I did show the TechCrunch article where Aravind, the Perplexity CEO, said that we're gonna track everything in the browser to serve ads. And then Aravind had a tweet where he clarified the statement, and he said that's not exactly what he meant.

Stephen Robles: 47:14

So this is like the second or third time that Perplexity is, I don't know, has had to defend their actions and maybe it's

Jason Aten: 47:23

How many times? How many how many times do they get, Steven?

Stephen Robles: 47:27

This is

Jason Aten: 47:27

No. For real. How many like, I don't think that they quite understand. You're building a thing that at some point you're going to need people to trust you.

Stephen Robles: 47:36

And

Jason Aten: 47:37

if everything we hear is and, like, at this point, I just assume perplexity. Like, when he says that's not exactly what we're doing, I assume that what he means is clarification is instead of we're gonna track everything to show you ads, he's like, literally, I'm gonna just track everything.

Stephen Robles: 47:51

I'm gonna look at everyone's

Jason Aten: 47:52

I have a hard drive sitting on my desk

Stephen Robles: 47:54

That's right.

Jason Aten: 47:55

With everything Steven does in his browser. That's right. And, yeah. And then I'm gonna pick ads to show Steven. Like, I don't know what what clarification he's trying to make, but at this point, the fact that, like because the original story, if I remember correctly, was that Perplexity was just blatantly, like, ignoring

Stephen Robles: 48:11

Yes.

Jason Aten: 48:12

Robots. And so now they're not ignoring it. What they're doing is they're creating fake bots that are technically not them, but doing the same thing. And they're like, but we're following the the rule of this convention. They're just definitely not following the spirit.

Jason Aten: 48:24

And I think once you try to start making that distinction, you should already know you're wrong.

Stephen Robles: 48:29

Yeah. And if they were hoping because Aravind, the CEO, was on Decoder with Alex Heath, I believe. And he said that he would be open to being acquired, and there's been a lot of talk about how Apple should acquire them because of their capabilities with search and what they've done with their app. And this is not the kind of activity you want on your record if you want Apple.

Jason Aten: 48:52

If you want Apple to

Stephen Robles: 48:53

If you want Apple to acquire.

Jason Aten: 48:54

What Apple will do though is they'll just ban you from the App Store.

Stephen Robles: 48:58

Sure. Sure. But so anyway, Perplexity, I don't know. They keep defending their actions, but it feels like, how yeah. You can't keep doing this.

Stephen Robles: 49:06

So Yeah. Don't don't

Jason Aten: 49:07

Don't protest too much.

Stephen Robles: 49:09

Yes. So stop. Stop doing that. Okay. More lightning round stuff.

Stephen Robles: 49:14

Ghost, which is a website and newsletter platform, released Ghost six point o. And the reason why this is a fast at least I was fascinated by it. You can now connect things like Blue Sky, Threads, and Mastodon through the Fetaverse with things like ActivityPub Protocol. So now you can post something on your website and actually have it sent to all the social media platform Not all, but the activity pub platforms. And then people who interact with your posts are basically interacting with your website and the post that you've, you know, added there.

Stephen Robles: 49:49

And this got me very excited because, you know, if you listen to Neillai Patel and The Vergecast, he talks about this all the time. They're working to get The Verge on this like fetaversed social media type thing. And I was like, I might switch my website platform because it's tiring having to post to 18 different social networks at once whenever I just wanna post something. And if I could actually have a website and I actually post my content on my website, but then it could also be available on other platforms for people to follow, that seems like an attractive solution. And so I'm actually going to try this.

Stephen Robles: 50:20

I'm actually emailing Ghost. We're going back and forth right now about moving my website and blog stuff over. But I think this is a I don't know. I think it's fascinating. I'm excited to try it.

Jason Aten: 50:30

Super exciting.

Stephen Robles: 50:31

I know you don't have a well, you have a personal website, but I get you

Jason Aten: 50:34

Yeah. I mean, I also have a newsletter

Stephen Robles: 50:36

You have a newsletter?

Jason Aten: 50:36

In in a year. Not very good at writing my newsletter. And I've actually looked at ghost and I just feel like the CMS part of it is just terrible to use.

Stephen Robles: 50:46

Have you tried have you looked at it recently though?

Jason Aten: 50:48

I mean, this was like two weeks ago.

Stephen Robles: 50:49

Okay. Well, that's pretty recent. Yeah. I mean

Jason Aten: 50:51

But it was pre June o, so I don't know. Maybe they made some things better, but

Stephen Robles: 50:54

I will say I'm a longtime Squarespace user. I've built hundreds of sites. I still prefer their like WYSIWYG editor. I was playing around with Ghost last night. Was because the one page I would have to remake if I were to move website platforms is like my smart home device shopping list, basically, that I have on my current website.

Stephen Robles: 51:14

And it would take a lot of work to do it in Ghost, and I wasn't exactly sure how to make columns. And so that, you know, I'd have to figure stuff like that out. But but this whole activity pup thing, mean, know, I don't know. It's interesting to me. Also, I'm thankful for this, I think.

Stephen Robles: 51:30

But Disney and Hulu announced that next year, they're going to fully integrate Hulu into Disney, and the Hulu app will go away and be phased out. And yeah, I think this is fine, because it's super confusing right now. Where where to find Hulu content? Do you look good Do you go in the Disney plus app? Do you go to the Hulu app?

Stephen Robles: 51:50

I'm curious how this will affect Hulu Live TV, specifically to

Jason Aten: 51:53

Yeah. My I'm very curious because of the amount of time I spent switching.

Stephen Robles: 51:57

Right. And my father-in-law subscribes to Hulu Live TV specifically. That's how he watches all his stuff. So I will he have to is the will there

Jason Aten: 52:05

be He's saying it's gonna be combined with Fubo?

Stephen Robles: 52:07

Oh, great. Sure. Sure. Okay. But is he gonna have to go to Disney plus to watch live TV if there's no Hulu app?

Stephen Robles: 52:14

You know what I mean? I don't know.

Jason Aten: 52:16

I don't know, but I'm I'm having heart palpitations right

Stephen Robles: 52:19

now. Don't do that.

Jason Aten: 52:20

Do that. Because are you Oh, so many things to we're a Hulu Live TV

Stephen Robles: 52:25

You are.

Jason Aten: 52:26

Family now. Remember we had this conversation? That's what I thought. Saved $35 a month by switching to Hulu, but it took me three hours in a chat to get them to let me give them more money.

Stephen Robles: 52:35

Right. Well, anyway, I guess maybe it'll be confusing, but that that's gonna happen next year. So get ready, I guess.

Jason Aten: 52:42

I don't understand what's happening, but I'm gonna be so upset. Mostly, I'm gonna be so upset because I'm gonna have to explain to my wife why we're now using a different a third service in, like

Stephen Robles: 52:52

Somehow your fault. It's your fault, Jason.

Jason Aten: 52:54

Oh my goodness.

Stephen Robles: 52:55

Why, Jason, did you do this to us?

Jason Aten: 52:57

I have to leave all these tabs open so that I can come back and read them. Like

Stephen Robles: 53:01

What do I what do I do now? Alright. And last thing before we get to personal take. This was the article you put in here, and this is what it looks like when you don't subscribe to Bloomberg.

Jason Aten: 53:09

Oh, do you need me to give you a gift article?

Stephen Robles: 53:11

No. That's fine. No. But just tell me, this is OpenAI talks to

Jason Aten: 53:15

Oh, yeah. They're just gonna make a bunch of money. I mean, they're gonna raise a bunch of money, and they wanna valuation's their gonna be $500,000,000,000, which I just felt like is like, wow. And the reason that just shocks me is not that I'm saying that OpenAI is not doing something crazy. It's just like, man, the pure bet and speculation that this is going to be the thing and that this is the company that's gonna solve the thing.

Jason Aten: 53:40

Right. Like, I'm like, $500,000,000,000? Like That's a lot. That's that's that's big. Right?

Jason Aten: 53:47

Like

Stephen Robles: 53:47

That's a lot of money. Well, how much now Figma just went public last week.

Jason Aten: 53:51

Yeah. And I think they spiked at something like 60,000,000,000.

Stephen Robles: 53:54

So just in perspective, I think that's good.

Jason Aten: 53:56

I mean, $500,000,000,000 is Netflix size, Mastercard, like Yeah. Bigger than ExxonMobil. Like, come on.

Stephen Robles: 54:05

I mean, had what? The fastest growing and most widely used, you know Sure. Product, namely ChatGPT. And didn't Sam Almond said, like, the the daily active users is gonna be, like, something crazy soon?

Jason Aten: 54:16

Yeah. It'd be really interesting to actually see how much money are you making because we know you are spending a lot.

Stephen Robles: 54:22

That's the thing.

Jason Aten: 54:22

But is the actual amount of money that and and they've said that they are, I think, they've said that they're, like, revenue positive on the user subscriptions, which just means that, like, the amount of money it costs them to do the tech for a user's queries is less than what they're charging those people, but that does not take into account building the models.

Stephen Robles: 54:41

Sure. Sure.

Jason Aten: 54:42

Right? That just means if I pay $20 a month, it costs ChatGP or OpenAI less than $20 a month

Stephen Robles: 54:48

For my request.

Jason Aten: 54:48

To do all the stuff that I'm doing. Yeah. Exactly. But they had to build the models first. Right.

Jason Aten: 54:52

Well, this this that little piece.

Stephen Robles: 54:54

This was the news earlier this week that ChatGPT hit 700,000,000 weekly users. That's up four times from last year. And this, I think this goes back to the conversation we were having before, is ChatGPT and AI stuff like pervasive? Now, I know you're gonna say 700,000,000 users, most of those are probably just using it on the iPhone. You're probably right.

Jason Aten: 55:13

Also, most of them are probably not paying $20 a month.

Stephen Robles: 55:15

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Jason Aten: 55:17

I mean, for sure they're not paying

Stephen Robles: 55:20

20 But dollars it's a lot of users to have, and if you can have features or value that encourage people to upgrade to whatever, then, you know, that's a good it's a good sized user base. Just saying.

Jason Aten: 55:32

It's a very, very big bubble. Hopefully, it doesn't pop.

Stephen Robles: 55:36

A couple personal tech things. We had a little time. We're good. So I need you to roast my home screen. I posted this the other day.

Stephen Robles: 55:42

Everybody had thoughts. This was my my current home screen.

Jason Aten: 55:46

Oh, yeah. That home screen. Your your phone home screen.

Stephen Robles: 55:48

My phone home screen. And I I posted I tweeted or whatever. And I said, wanted to put some new apps on my home screen, namely Perplexity because I'm using it for web search stuff now. I wanna see if I wanna use that as my default web search tool and FoodNoms because I've been using that regularly. And so I was saying I need two more spots on this home screen.

Stephen Robles: 56:09

Now I don't have enough characters to provide more context, but the two widgets that I have on my home screen, it looks like a long weather widget and the podcast widget. Those are both stacks. And I have like four to five apps in each stack. And I'm not getting rid of either of those stacks. People were like, well, just get rid of the podcast widget and just use the app, and then you got three more.

Stephen Robles: 56:28

No. I use though all the widget stacks, and they have lots of apps in them. So I'm looking at the actual apps, and I don't know if you saw what people recommend that I do, but I and I did

Jason Aten: 56:37

I did not.

Stephen Robles: 56:37

Okay. Good. So I did do something. I did remove a couple. What two apps do you think and just for those listening, these are the apps I have on my home screen.

Stephen Robles: 56:47

Maps, clock, photos, camera, things, home, wallet, Instagram, YouTube, Slack, Bear, YouTube Studio. Then in the dock, I have Safari, Threads, Messages, and Blue Sky. Bunch of people rose to me for having Blue Sky and Threads in the dock. I'm terminally online. So just, there you go.

Stephen Robles: 57:07

And so I wasn't looking to change the dock. But what what two do you think I should move if you were seeing this?

Jason Aten: 57:11

I mean, I'm gonna just ignore the dock. Thank you. Though I don't think that either of those belong in the doc.

Stephen Robles: 57:16

Fair

Jason Aten: 57:16

enough. I I understand having them on your home screen, whatever, whatever. But there's nothing else on your home screen other than maybe things that would make sense in the doc. Maybe for you, YouTube studio. I don't know.

Jason Aten: 57:27

I mean, you're a YouTuber, so whatever. I have no idea how often someone uses YouTube studio, the app.

Stephen Robles: 57:32

I go there.

Jason Aten: 57:32

I remember I mean, well, I remember an an interview with was it Austin Mann? Is that who

Stephen Robles: 57:40

it was? Mike Hurley on the Cortex?

Jason Aten: 57:42

Yeah. And he's like, I'm checking it every 15.

Stephen Robles: 57:45

Oh, that'll do that. That's crazy.

Jason Aten: 57:46

So That's crazy. People do use it a lot, but, this is actually easy. You just don't need the clock app, and you don't need the wallet app on your home screen.

Stephen Robles: 57:54

Okay. So okay. So people said clock app, wallet app, and camera, that those were the three that I should remove.

Jason Aten: 58:01

Now I mean, you do have a dedicated button on the side of your phone for the camera, so you don't need the camera one either, but I'm like, you literally don't need the wallet app because you can just double tap the

Stephen Robles: 58:12

Okay. Home

Jason Aten: 58:12

That's and then that's

Stephen Robles: 58:13

what people said. Now here's my thing. I use my Apple card for everything, purchases.

Jason Aten: 58:19

Sure.

Stephen Robles: 58:19

And so that's why I have the Wallet on my home screen. When you double click the side button, you go to Apple Pay. You don't go to the Wallet app. And I don't wanna activate Apple Pay just to look in the Wallet app and see a transaction or whatever. And so I don't think a double click on the side button is a good solution for that.

Stephen Robles: 58:37

I don't know if I jump in the wallet often enough to make it on the home screen, but yeah, that's why I didn't.

Jason Aten: 58:45

I go in my wallet app frequently, so frequently that every time I do a pull down to search, it's the very first thing that shows up. So, like, you don't it knows what to do.

Stephen Robles: 58:54

Now some people say put it in the control center, and that option I'm more, obliged to. I I put I'll put it in the control center if I need to replace it. But

Jason Aten: 59:02

I'm sure you have a reason for all of those apps, but you definitely don't need the clock app or the wallet app or the camera app.

Stephen Robles: 59:08

So I removed the Clock app, and then people were like, why do you need the Clock app? The time is in the top left. I don't use the Clock app to tell the time. I use it to set alarms.

Jason Aten: 59:18

Right.

Stephen Robles: 59:19

And I don't know about you, but I don't do repeating alarms and just leave them on all day. One, because the little alarm icon then stays in the status bar. But two, for some reason, I like manually setting an alarm every night. And so that's why I have it there. Do you do that, or do you just rely on repeated alarm?

Jason Aten: 59:38

I think I turn on the alarms every day. Right. But I still don't think you need the clock app. No. Mean, if it's a thing you only do once a day, a pull down is fine.

Stephen Robles: 59:48

That's and That was the reasoning. Was like, okay. I took the clock app out, and I took the camera app out because I have I never touched the camera control button, and everyone was like, do you have a dedicated button to launch the camera? Just use that. And I often just click the camera from the lock screen, and so I remove the camera.

Stephen Robles: 01:00:07

And so we're gonna see how it goes, but those are the two I removed. I added Perplexity and FoodNoms, and then yeah. So anyway

Jason Aten: 01:00:15

What what does Perplexity give you that ChatTPT does not?

Stephen Robles: 01:00:18

I'm trying to use it for search.

Jason Aten: 01:00:21

Yeah. But you can use ChatTPT for that.

Stephen Robles: 01:00:23

Correct. But I like the search better in Perplexity because it gives me the sources and stuff, like, right away. So I'm just try I'm just trying it. I'm just trying it.

Jason Aten: 01:00:31

ChatGPT just gives you, like, the footnote right there.

Stephen Robles: 01:00:33

Well so I also put ChatGPT in this widget stack at the same time. So I got them both there. I will use ChatGPT for, like, I I take I wanna take a picture of something and ask it how to do whatever. And so the widget for ChatGPT is nice because you have the camera. You have the chat thing.

Stephen Robles: 01:00:51

And so I can just, like, go right into sending ChatGPT a picture. But this is not my current home screen. The order now is all messed up. So every time I think I'm tapping wallet, I'm tapping food knobs. So, you know, I gotta get used to the muscle memory, but this is my new home screen, so we'll see how it goes.

Stephen Robles: 01:01:05

Alright. What is it? Can you share your home screen? Do you mind sharing Sure. So send me a send me a screenshot because I'm curious.

Stephen Robles: 01:01:10

This, you know, this is my Corollion CGP gray bit. You know, they share their home screens and roast them.

Jason Aten: 01:01:14

We can. I'm I have not cleared some notifications that have come in since we started, so I'm not Uh-huh. I'm not gonna hear any being held responsible for any of that. And it's actually slightly different than it was. I have you'll notice that our member area app is on the home screen.

Jason Aten: 01:01:29

Oh. Okay. So should I just read these? Okay. I'll just read Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 01:01:31

Yeah. So this is not Jason's home screen if you're watching.

Jason Aten: 01:01:33

So I have a a stack at the top which is showing the weather app. It also has things, know the weather app's gotten a little bit better, but the weather app still won't cuss at me, and it doesn't because

Stephen Robles: 01:01:58

I like you like it snarky?

Jason Aten: 01:02:00

Carrot weather is I think the the maps are better, and it just seems to do a better job of, like, tracking when well, what I like about this particular widget is it will switch. So sometimes this widget will be like rain is starting in four minutes, and it'll show you. Like, it just automatically changes.

Stephen Robles: 01:02:15

The built in weather windows that too.

Jason Aten: 01:02:16

Just I don't care.

Stephen Robles: 01:02:17

It doesn't matter. I'm not switching back. CareWeather is a great app. I mean, no no

Jason Aten: 01:02:20

My whole family uses CareWeather, it's

Stephen Robles: 01:02:22

Oh,

Jason Aten: 01:02:22

really? Will just not hear anything otherwise.

Stephen Robles: 01:02:23

Okay. Bye.

Jason Aten: 01:02:25

And then the so that's at the top. Then there's a row with notes, photos, Ulysses, Instagram, Circle, which is the app we use for our member area. You should become not even our member area. Just our, like, community. You should just join our community.

Jason Aten: 01:02:37

It's free. You don't even have to be a member. Just join it. There's, like, 200, 300 people in there. It's, like, it's great.

Jason Aten: 01:02:43

But I keep forgetting that it exists, and so I'm like, I should have this. This is what I do. I put apps on the front page sometimes aspirationally to make myself That's good. Use them more. Because my rule is it cannot go on this page if I don't use it every day.

Jason Aten: 01:02:55

So That's good. And then I have the health app, which I understand people think that that's a silly thing to have, but I'm literally putting my blood pressure in there multiple times a day and tracking meds. So it's just easier. MyFitnessPal, it has not been on my home screen until recently

Stephen Robles: 01:03:08

Right.

Jason Aten: 01:03:09

But it is now. MyFitnessPal, which is where I track food and weight. The Slack, yes, have notifications. Those have all come in since we started recording. The ChatGPT app, Microsoft Authenticator, which I have to use to get into, our CMS.

Jason Aten: 01:03:21

I would not have it on my home screen except I literally have to open it multiple times a day, and I do not want to have to go through the extra swiping and stuff. And also because I typically use that app using the iPhone mirroring on my Mac. So having it right there on the home screen makes it a lot easier to navigate through the through the phone. So that's why that's there. It would never be there otherwise.

Jason Aten: 01:03:43

Just to be clear, Asana, Lightroom, and then I have a stack that currently is showing, the Tesla app, and but it also has two shortcuts, one which is called new article idea. So I can tap that, type in an article idea, and it adds it to both Ulysses and the things. And then I have and then the other one is just says headed home, and when I tap that, it texts my wife that I'm headed home. Right. It will also open the maps app and give me directions home.

Jason Aten: 01:04:10

I don't usually need that part.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:12

Now okay. And then on the dock

Jason Aten: 01:04:13

go home.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:13

You have

Jason Aten: 01:04:14

Hold on. I just and then there's the music app and then pocket casts in that.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:17

Oh, and that's okay.

Jason Aten: 01:04:18

Yep. And then in the doc, I have messages, spark, which is my primary email app of choice, Safari, and things.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:26

Okay. Badges on things, And Asana.

Jason Aten: 01:04:31

Yeah. Yes. Because Asana, I almost never use unless I need to go into it to deal with something for for projects.

Stephen Robles: 01:04:39

Okay.

Jason Aten: 01:04:39

And so that's why I have to have badges or else I'd literally never open that app. And the things one is just a helpful, way for me to know that it's like a reminder to me that I do need to go because I am pretty religious about setting the due dates for things. So stuff only show up in the in the today view of things when they actually have to be done. So that's kind of my reminder. But what I typically do, just to be clear, is I add things to things.

Stephen Robles: 01:05:04

Yes.

Jason Aten: 01:05:05

And they go into the inbox and then I triage them either with the date or whatever it is. And then I sit down and I literally write on one of the analog OggMonk Yeah. Analog cards, my actual to do list for the day. So what the badge on the things is, once I've added them to this card, I can mark them off, but it's still a new enough process for me that I will just forget that I have to go do that. So that's why I have badges on things.

Stephen Robles: 01:05:29

Okay. Interesting. The one I would have a question about is you said you only put an app on your home screen if you use it every day. Are you using Lightroom every day?

Jason Aten: 01:05:38

I do use it pretty regularly.

Stephen Robles: 01:05:41

Really?

Jason Aten: 01:05:42

Yeah. Yeah. I well, actually, here's the other thing. There are no other apps that I use this frequently. I think actually, that's probably true.

Jason Aten: 01:05:51

And I was not going to have a missing tooth there. And so it was kinda like, what would I put there? What do I use? So Lightroom, I probably don't use every single day, but I do actually use it quite a bit.

Stephen Robles: 01:06:03

Do you take a pro raw photo and then bring it into Lightroom? Is that why?

Jason Aten: 01:06:06

So all of the photos I take with not no. All the photos I take with my, mirrorless camera, I was gonna say DSLR, but it's not technically a DSLR. My Nikon go to Lightroom because they're all raw photos. Everything that's from my iPhone just stays in the photos app. But I do sometimes that's I guess the answer to your question is yes.

Jason Aten: 01:06:27

I have taken raw photos with my iPhone and then processed them in Lightroom because the processing in the photos app is garbage. For raw photos.

Stephen Robles: 01:06:34

So And then

Jason Aten: 01:06:35

So I mean, I did have I used to have WhatsApp there for a while because the our oldest daughter soccer team, that's what they use for all the parent communications. And actually, after we went to Florida, I was so tired of having notification or badges on that. Have I moved it off the home screen?

Stephen Robles: 01:06:50

I see.

Jason Aten: 01:06:51

And I had notion there for a while because I do use notion, but I don't really ever use it on my phone.

Stephen Robles: 01:06:57

Sure.

Jason Aten: 01:06:58

So I'm like, why do I have that there? So then I was moving things away and I'm like, what's the next most likely app for me to use? And it was not the clock app and it was not the camera app. So Lightroom

Stephen Robles: 01:07:07

Now you you use the camera control to launch camera? Yep. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:07:10

And I have it set to not change any modes or anything. It's literally just open the app and fire the shutter.

Stephen Robles: 01:07:17

Alright. My last question is apple notes and Ulysses on the home screen use both of those? Like

Jason Aten: 01:07:22

I do. I use them. So notes is where everything goes except for things I'm writing. So if I open the notes app, there are like draft emails. I'm helping my daughter write to soccer coaches.

Jason Aten: 01:07:34

There's, you know, like I do a podcast with our church. Yeah. I've, all of the prep that I do for that is in notes, Like, everything I'm I have, like, some pinned notes for, like, our kids' Apple IDs and passwords because they yes. They should go in one password. Whatever.

Jason Aten: 01:07:49

They're in I don't care. They're not my accounts. Like, whatever. So, like, anything I'm any note I need to take, I just pop open the notes app and I just put it in there real quickly. Ulysses is literally just these are the things I'm actually writing.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:02

Okay.

Jason Aten: 01:08:02

And the reason it's on my home screen is that there are times when I will have put something in there and then I'll have a thought and I wanna quickly be able to add it to that even if I'm on my it's like, yeah, this is the thing I wanted to write about. Not like here's a topic. It's like I've already decided on the topic. I'm going about my day and I'm like, oh yeah, here's a thought for that Tim Cook article. Like I should say this and so I can pop it open.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:22

Now. Okay. Totally get it. This is why I use bear because I could do bear for everything. Bear for long form, short form.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:30

That's why I like it. I like it all

Jason Aten: 01:08:31

a lot. I could do, so here's my thing. I don't want my writing in my notes in the same place to in my mind.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:39

Sure.

Jason Aten: 01:08:41

Like, my book writing is also in Ulysses, so all actual writing happens in Ulysses. All capturing of ideas happens in notes. I with the with the I should clarify. All of my professional writing. Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:08:53

If I'm writing an email for my kid, it's just gonna go down.

Stephen Robles: 01:08:55

Notes. Yeah. I get it.

Jason Aten: 01:08:56

And and the but I don't wanna write my, like, articles or stuff in notes because as I've said before, the interface is just complete trash, and I hate it with a passion. And if I could download themes for the notes app, I would I would a 100% if I could make notes have the same functionality for theming as bear, I would do that in

Stephen Robles: 01:09:16

a heartbeat.

Jason Aten: 01:09:16

But I'm always gonna have the notes app on every single device. So it's it's good for that.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:22

Totally get it. Also, your battery percentage is on, unfortunately. Of course it is.

Jason Aten: 01:09:26

We've stayed consistent As it should be.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:28

We've stayed consistent across our home screens. And then the last thing is, so your wallpaper, it's like a black honeycomb, but very

Jason Aten: 01:09:36

Metal. Yeah.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:37

Yeah. It's just very nondescript.

Jason Aten: 01:09:38

I've been using it for a long time, and it's the only way I can tell what apps are which.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:42

And where I'm over here, like

Jason Aten: 01:09:45

Yeah. I hate that so much. Really? I can't so actually, here's an interesting thing. I was thinking about this when we were talking about the photos, taking photos thing.

Stephen Robles: 01:09:52

Yeah.

Jason Aten: 01:09:52

I think it's similar to me. Every time I try to change my wallpaper of my phone, I always go back because it just feels weird. And the iPhone 16 that I'm using as a camera right now that I don't actually own Right. Just has whatever the stock iOS 26

Stephen Robles: 01:10:11

Right.

Jason Aten: 01:10:11

Background is because when I pick it up, I don't want it to be mine.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:14

Sure. I get that.

Jason Aten: 01:10:15

Like, it's different. I have to use a different wallpaper, and I could change the wallpapers on that. Now the lock screens, I change all the time. Like, right Okay. Right now, right now it's like the roof of the Steve Jobs theater.

Jason Aten: 01:10:27

Like and I also have one in my family. I have the photos one. I have, when when they brought back the original lock screen, which was the fish.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:37

The fish.

Jason Aten: 01:10:38

Yeah. Like, when you so I have I I'll swipe through those. I don't swipe through them for, like, modes. Focus modes. Right.

Jason Aten: 01:10:44

Some people do. I just swipe through them because I'm like, let's go with this nomad water one today or something like that. So I'll do that. Like, that doesn't bother me, but the but but the home screen back I mean, yeah. The background, it's the same on everyone.

Stephen Robles: 01:10:57

Interesting. Okay. We might need to do next when there's a slow news week, we should do, like, focus modes, today view, and all that because I was

Jason Aten: 01:11:06

This would be this would be real easy because I have, like, four different focus modes, and I realized they actually literally all do the same thing. They block the same things, and they allow the same thing. I

Stephen Robles: 01:11:15

don't know.

Jason Aten: 01:11:15

Why do I have four of them? I just need one that says focus on and one that says focus off.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:20

We are. We'll have to get into that another time because I have a bunch of focus modes that work with fantastical and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, before we get to our bonus episode, you had an exciting news because you you posted this on social media, but it made me wanna go on a quest to find my original PowerBook.

Jason Aten: 01:11:36

Yeah. I I reclaimed my hold on.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:40

This is Jason's original PowerBook.

Jason Aten: 01:11:44

This is the first Mac I ever bought.

Stephen Robles: 01:11:46

Shoot. So that's

Jason Aten: 01:11:47

In 2002 or '3. I don't actually remember what year it was. But it's a g four PowerBook. This it's an 800 megahertz. It has a super drive.

Jason Aten: 01:11:56

This one has I I looked just recently at the configuration. It has a 150 gig hard drive spinning hard drive, which is a weird number now when you think about it. And so I had sold this many, many, many years ago. I think it was, like, February '9 to someone who was at our church at the time, and you they used it as their work computer for a long time, and then it got whatever, stuck in a closet somewhere for years and years and years and years. And through a weird quirk, the the church that we actually attend now bought that building, like, ten years ago.

Jason Aten: 01:12:34

And I had said to the production person there a while back, hey. If you ever happen to come across this power book, the titanium power book, then it's mine. I mean, it's not mine anymore. It just was the first Mac I ever bought. I would buy it back, whatever.

Jason Aten: 01:12:49

Like, no. And he's like, I think it's probably around here. Two years later, a week or so ago, I he was like, hey. You should come to my office. I think there's something that you might wanna see at my desk, which is a terrifying thing for someone to say.

Jason Aten: 01:13:00

Yeah. Out of context. Could you come into my office? There's something I want you to see. And this was just sitting there, and I was like, it's amazing.

Jason Aten: 01:13:08

So I now have it works. It boots up. It's pretty snappy That's awesome. Because it's only running 10.3 or four or something like that. I ran I opened Final Cut, opened a project.

Jason Aten: 01:13:18

Everything's like, it's great. The only thing is it won't connect to Wi Fi.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:21

Sure. This is Wi Fi, like, b or whatever.

Jason Aten: 01:13:24

Well, it may not even be that. It's, like, the password. It doesn't use the same security protocol.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:29

Oh, WPA, whatever.

Jason Aten: 01:13:30

So Right. And then it also, the battery doesn't seem to charge, which is understandable because it's like a fifteen year old battery. Yeah. It's actually a third party battery at this point, so it only works plugged in. So

Stephen Robles: 01:13:44

Well, I'm I'm happy that you got it back. I'm also jealous.

Jason Aten: 01:13:49

It also weighs 75 pounds,

Stephen Robles: 01:13:51

just to

Jason Aten: 01:13:51

be clear. And this was thin and light at the time.

Stephen Robles: 01:13:53

It was. It was a sleek looking computer. Man, I

Jason Aten: 01:13:57

I cannot believe how much it weighs. I It weighs at least three MacBook Pros, at least.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:02

I'm so jealous. I really want to track down my original G4 12 inches PowerBook. I had told this some random dude, I think through Craigslist, and I looked through my Apple ID email, my iCloud email, because I think that's the oldest email I have. The problem is I wouldn't have created that until I got my Mac. So I don't know what email I would have used when I bought the PowerBook.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:26

Because I did buy it directly from Apple. I don't know what email I used at that point to order it. It might have been my college email address, which of course I no longer have access to.

Jason Aten: 01:14:37

Oh, yeah.

Stephen Robles: 01:14:37

So I can't even go back because I was just looking for this I wanted to find the serial number so that maybe I could search eBay for the serial number and see if I could buy it back. But I just realized I might try to log into my old Craigslist account to see if I can go back to, like, the message history of of who I sold it to, and maybe I could reach out to them. But I really want mine back. I don't have my original PowerBook, I don't have my original iPod video because I used that somewhere and I left it because I was like, I'll just leave it here and let them use it, and then I don't know where it is. So anyway, I'm glad I'm glad for you, though.

Stephen Robles: 01:15:11

I'm happy for you. That's fun. Alright. Let's talk about we need to talk about, Tim Cook's 24 carat gold gift, and I have a secret announcement that not even Jason knows what I'm about to talk about. And so I'm gonna do that in the bonus episode.

Stephen Robles: 01:15:21

So if you wanna listen to the bonus episode this week and then listen to all the past bonus episodes and future ones, Get a bonus episode every week, ad free version of the show every week. You get the daily show Monday through Friday. You get the unedited raw audio of the show every week. You can support the show at join.primarytech.fm or support us directly at Apple Podcast, and you get all those benefits, all those places. You can also join the community.

Stephen Robles: 01:15:45

Like Jason was saying, we got several 100 people in there. I look at all the comments that are left under the episode post, which I post every week when the episode goes up, and you can do that at social.primarytech.fm. And we'd love if you left us a five star rating and review and Apple Podcasts, and let us know what you could roast my home screen in your review. What what app or Jason's. Roast Jason's too.

Jason Aten: 01:16:07

Roast mine, but don't say anything about the authenticator app. I can't. I mean, I'd like

Stephen Robles: 01:16:11

Tell Jason to remove the authenticator app.

Jason Aten: 01:16:13

I mean, I just can't.

Stephen Robles: 01:16:14

And then and that leaves that five story review. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.