Pixel 10 Gets ‘MagSafe,’ Google’s AI Camera Went Too Far, is iPadOS 26 Actually Good?
Download MP3That's a contraband item, ma'am, because it is illegal in every state except Texas. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Google launched their whole Pixel 10 lineup, which now has MagSafe. Believe it or not, they call it something different, but we'll into that. The Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor saga continues.
Stephen Robles:OpenAI had a billion dollar revenue month. Notion added a new offline feature, and fine woven cases may make a comeback. This episode is brought to you by CleanMyMac and Insta360, and, of course, all of you who support show directly, I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, obviously not at home in my studio. Tuning to you live from Dallas, Texas. And I'm joined by my friend as always, Jason A10.
Stephen Robles:How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:I like that we're always friends. That's nice. That's the best way to be introduced. But, yeah, I'm good. I I am in my home studio, which is like, there's no place like home.
Stephen Robles:There's no. I can't wait. Can't wait to be back. I will say, everything's bigger in Texas is the saying. And, we are at the Gaylord Resort
Jason Aten:Mhmm.
Stephen Robles:Here in Texas. And my goodness. First of all, the place is huge. There's statues of bulls in at least five locations around the resort. And there's signs that say, please don't get on the bull.
Stephen Robles:But then there's just the chairs in the lobby, huge. It's silly, but I guess everything in Texas, including the chairs, are way bigger, which is why I did a movie quote about Texas at the top of the show. Do you have any idea, because I don't, what movie that is from?
Jason Aten:No. I think you just made it up, or you asked JCPT to make it up or something.
Stephen Robles:I saw this quote on two different websites, so I think I've corroborated that it is an actual movie quote, supposedly by Thomas Hayden Church as Dwayne LaFontant in Over the Hedge.
Jason Aten:You just made all of those words. I think from now on, you you are not allowed to ask me movie quotes unless you you've seen the movie.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Probably. But I was trying to find something with Texas because I'm in Texas right now. We actually have some five star review shout outs. Thank you all for continuing to do that.
Stephen Robles:Alex Polar Bear from The UK said we're informative, engaging, witty. If someone from The UK says we're witty, I think we're doing a good job. You know what I mean? S Gernani from The USA had very kind words and WBMC thirty six from The USA does love listening to me and the other guy. He knows the inside joke.
Stephen Robles:He knows the inside joke. It's fine. It's fine. Listen. You helped us break news last week about the blood oxygen sensor on Apple Watch, which was a software update that re enabled it.
Stephen Robles:But I didn't understand the rigmarole that Apple is going through to re enable this. And so after the news last week, I started hearing about how this is actually happening. And apparently, Apple is getting around Massimo's original lawsuit, which basically was going to stop imports of the Apple Watch that had the blood oxygen sensor enabled by processing blood oxygen data on the phone instead of the watch. And so Apple is basically like, well, it's not I guess because the actual patent is on the processing on the watch.
Jason Aten:Or like the display of it on the watch.
Stephen Robles:The display, I guess. So you won't be able to see the data on the watch when you update your Apple Watch, but you'll be able to see it on your iPhone because that's the workaround Apple came up with. And now we're gonna break the same news again, but, well, slightly different news because Massimo has now sued US customs over Apple restoring the Apple Watch's oxygen tool. This is a feature that probably two people care about because, a, I don't know if it's very accurate, and, b, people even haven't had it. And I just think it's hilarious that this is still just going back and forth.
Stephen Robles:It's still the news.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Well, just let's clear up a couple of things. First of all, by breaking news, what Steven means is that I got an email as we started recording, and I just read part of it on the show. The only reason we broke news is that we were the only podcast recording at the time that Apple sent out the email. At 9AM
Stephen Robles:last Thursday.
Jason Aten:Don't wanna take too much credit for this, but I haven't even written about it yet because by the time I got around to it, everyone else had already written about it. But the other piece of this that I think is very I will take issue with one thing. I think it's actually a great feature, and it actually works very well. We have said you were talking about Yeah.
Stephen Robles:With the finger thing.
Jason Aten:We've compared it to the finger thing, And I actually was at the doctor today just for normal reasons. And when they put the thing on my finger, I made my watch do the thing. The the only real difference is that your watch takes longer. Right? Because you have to wait
Stephen Robles:thirty seconds. Do think your mileage may vary, though, because I think my mom, when she had the feature, she thought she was dying every day because it would tell her her blood oxygen was like 92%.
Jason Aten:Tell her to take a deep breath. Seriously, like that's actually the best part of this is that when it says, like, 93%, take, like, five deep breaths and do it again, and it's like, I got up to 97.
Stephen Robles:Oh, really? Well, 97. 97. 77 is not good.
Jason Aten:No. 97.
Stephen Robles:Oh, okay.
Jason Aten:I got up to 97.
Stephen Robles:The hotel Wi Fi, I thought you said 67. I held
Jason Aten:my breath for a long time and I got down to 77 and then I passed out.
Stephen Robles:Okay, you know what, I've never done that. I've never done the deep breath and then retaken it. I'll try it. But anyway. But also, think it's hilarious.
Stephen Robles:Massimo is suing US customs, not Apple, because they're the ones that's supposed to be blocking the watch. It's just this is just hilarious.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I haven't first of all, like, you didn't actually send me the link, so I can't actually
Stephen Robles:I put it in Notion. Put it in Notion, which Notion's in the news this week.
Jason Aten:Notion talks about Notion.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna talk about Notion.
Jason Aten:Put it oh, there it is. Okay. You did run it nicely.
Stephen Robles:The hotel Wi It takes a while. The hotel
Jason Aten:link didn't show up for a while.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna blame everything on the hotel Wi Fi. If I mess up, let's say hotel Wi Fi.
Jason Aten:So I was so I my watch have an Apple Watch Ultra two, but I bought it before they killed this feature. Same. And I also have an Apple Watch series seven, which was before they killed the feature. Like, so both of those have it. I actually forgot that the series seven had that feature.
Jason Aten:Like, it seems like that's too old to have blood oxygen, but it is the one I wear every night, and it's nice because it does. It gives you the overnight vitals. It helps you when you're with your sleep tracking, and it it because it doesn't it will do it passively. Like, you can tell it to do it, and it takes thirty seconds, but it will also do it passively. And the experience for someone who's, like, on your watch or on my watch is you can just open the app, and you can just tell it to do it.
Jason Aten:It tells you to hold your wrist still. It takes thirty seconds, then it gives you a number, and it's great. And you just go on with your day. And if you have a watch that was sold to you since 2023
Stephen Robles:A series eight, nine, 10, or you have a watch in the last year. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Yeah. The experience is, first of all, you have to get an update on your phone. Right. Then you have to get an update on your watch. And then I believe you have to, like to get that update, you have to, like, open the ECG app or something.
Jason Aten:I was here I heard I heard John Gruber talking about this, I think, on dithering about the absurd process of doing this. And then it will, like, allow you to take a reading, but it will not show it to you. You then have to go to your phone. It's which to be fair, that actually is a consistent experience because if you use the ECG feature, it will not show you the report from that on your watch. You have to get that on your phone and it pushes a notification.
Stephen Robles:But it tell you like everything's normal. It'll tell you
Jason Aten:you don't have a, well, it will tell you you don't have AFib. It will not tell you everything is normal.
Stephen Robles:It will
Jason Aten:tell you you don't have AFib. You just know. Yeah. Yeah. But, anyway, so I just think it is actually weird because it turns out that the patent was for something very specific, which had to do with processing it on the watch, I guess Right.
Jason Aten:And then displaying the result on the watch. And so Apple's like, whatever. We we don't have to do that. We have the phone. And by the way, the phone is way more capable of processing and displaying things.
Jason Aten:So we'll just do that instead. And everyone who has a watch presumably has a phone, and the only people who likely don't have a phone are your kids. Right. And it won't do it on, I think, under 18 anyway.
Stephen Robles:Right. And my kids have watch as ease, which don't have that feature anyway, so it doesn't even anyway, there's a bunch of Google news just today. Earlier today, it was the Pixel ten event. But the first part of the news actually crosses into the sports ball category, so you'll have to speak to this.
Jason Aten:Very curious where this is going.
Stephen Robles:I don't know if you knew I had an arch nemesis.
Jason Aten:Is this the person that made fake TikToks of you?
Stephen Robles:No. No. This person, he doesn't know that he's my nemesis, but it's Wait Stephen a minute. And the the reason why
Jason Aten:I know Stephen Curry.
Stephen Robles:I know him. The reason why is because ever since he came on the scene, the default pronunciation for my name is now Stefan. It doesn't matter if it's Chick fil A drive through. I will literally I've complained about this before. I will have a mobile order and I'll say mobile order for Steven.
Stephen Robles:And they scroll through their little tablet and they're like, yeah, we don't have that. I was like, Steven R. And they'll look at me dead in the eye, and they'll say, Stefan? And I say, yeah, that's me. Stefan Curry is my arch nemesis.
Stephen Robles:But anyway, that's my, he's apparently going to be an adviser on the Google Pixel products, which might sound funny, but apparently more for the health, Fitbit, and that side of the products. I don't know if he's gonna be speaking into, like, software UI and hardware. I doubt that. But but he is actually going to be a, adviser.
Jason Aten:Is this, like, when Alicia Keys was the creative director for what's that? Like Oh. BlackBerry or something? I hope this works out. I don't know.
Jason Aten:Who is Alicia Keys? The who Alicia Keys
Stephen Robles:That sounds like it might be right. Creative director. The fact that BlackBerry would have a creative anybody, like
Jason Aten:I mean BlackBerry. Yeah. BlackBerry. They parted ways in 2014, and then the company went bankrupt. But, yeah, in 2013, she was named BlackBerry's creative director.
Stephen Robles:The fact that they had creative anything is hilarious.
Jason Aten:Like Yeah.
Stephen Robles:There were there were BlackBerry phones that were fine. I had the BlackBerry tour. I think, like, one of the later BlackBerry phones, but that's lense.
Jason Aten:Yeah. They couldn't afford to pay her anymore, I'm pretty sure.
Stephen Robles:But anyway Right. Probably that. So Google did announce a bunch of Pixel things today, including the Pixel 10 lineup. They had some interesting announcements about Gemini and the smart home, which we'll get to, and something that, I'm actually pretty excited about. So the Made by Google event, Pixel 10.
Stephen Robles:The biggest change here, you there's a Google Tensor five chip, which Google says that there's a significant improvements over performance over previous models. The cameras, there's now three cameras on every pixel. And so different things. But, basically, they all have a telephoto. They all have a wide.
Stephen Robles:They all have an ultrawide and improved stabilization, 10 bit HDR video. They lay off three cameras now. And this is the crazy part, everybody, MagSafe. They have they don't call it MagSafe. They call it some weird pixel something.
Stephen Robles:I forget exactly what it was. They call it PixelSnap, PixelSnap magnets. But all the Pixels can now work with all of your current MagSafe devices. And the Pixel Pro, the 6.3 inch models I guess, so the Pixel and Pixel Pro, they're 6.3 inch. They have 15 watt q two charging, which is like normal MagSafe.
Stephen Robles:And the larger 6.8 inch phone has 25 watt q 2.2, which we've talked about on this podcast. I know this is probably the least interesting thing to most people, but I am jazzed by this because I'm like, 25 watt wireless. But listen, if you wanted to, your entire MagSafe charging ecosystem, which as you know, I have many, you can now use it with a Pixel phone.
Jason Aten:That's Steven's like yada yada yada Tensor g five. But let me tell you about this ridiculous thing. Actually, I think Pixel Snap is a great name. They just should've used it for the camera control. Pixel Snap literally means take a pic.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't really think this is the most interesting part It is not. Of
Stephen Robles:No, it is not as all. I just want to make a big deal out it because it's me. But I want to get into the AI camera stuff, but there's also So there's the Pixel Pro Fold as well. They say it's more durable, like dustproof, things like that. And then they have their own chargers and cases and stuff.
Stephen Robles:There's a bunch of AI features, and maybe you've read them more than I have. But I'm basically looking at it, AI everywhere. They have a visual intelligence type feature, like for Gemini Live, basically kind of like that, but a little more powerful, imagine. More translation features, similar to what Apple was doing, like voice translate and translating in messages, things like that. So what did you what did you see?
Stephen Robles:Or what was the most interesting thing to you?
Jason Aten:Well, I thought the most interesting thing is that they had Jimmy Fallon, like, doing this event.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:So And they had Steph Curry at the beginning. Like, I think it's interesting that Google is positioning a lot of phones that really no one is going to buy as being, like, the mainstream pop culture devices. Now I'm not I don't mean any shade towards Pixel's phones. I just mean that, like, they are one of the smallest brands within the Android ecosystem. So, like, take half of the smartphone ecosystem.
Jason Aten:Right? And then take a small piece of that pie, and that is the Google Pixel. But I so I don't that part of it's hard for me to sort of, like, wrap my brain around. I don't know if it's like, this is how we get more attention for this. I like, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:It is a shame because if I was gonna use an Android phone, I'm actually I might actually use nothing phones because I think they're at least visually interesting hardware wise. But if I really had to use one as my full time device, I would use a Pixel just because it's the raw Android experience. I think the Gemini features are interesting. A lot of them feel gimmicky, killed by Google. It's a meme because a lot of times Google talks about these features, and then they just kind of either disappear, go away, people don't use them.
Stephen Robles:I never heard best take. You remember with the Google Pixel eight, I believe it was, the best take feature where you can take several photos and then Google magically choose the one where everybody's looking at the camera. Like, I have not heard about that since, like, since the launch. And so I don't are people using it? I don't know because a lot of people aren't using Google Pixel phones.
Stephen Robles:So
Jason Aten:Right. I don't know. And I mean, people who use Google pixel phones are, like, Android purists for the most part, because you get the purest version of Android because it's Google. Yeah. I don't know.
Jason Aten:I mean, listen. They're gonna be great. Every time I've been at a Google event where they've had their hardware, it's all very good. Right? I was Yeah.
Jason Aten:When they released the first fold, I was at that. It was at Google IO, I believe. And, you know, like, they're they're fantastic. I have a Google
Stephen Robles:You have a foldable.
Jason Aten:Pixel seven a sitting right here.
Stephen Robles:Oh,
Jason Aten:sorry. I've used the foldable. I don't own one. So, like, listen. They're they make good hardware.
Jason Aten:Like, Google and Microsoft both actually make really good hardware. It's surprising. You don't think of it that way. I just it's hard to know, like, is this important because Google the reason I mentioned that is Microsoft makes hardware so it can be like, hey, PC makers. This is what you're supposed to be doing so people will keep using Windows.
Jason Aten:Those guys over there in Cupertino are spanking all of you. Like, come on. Let's like like, they will seriously like, they obsess about the hinge, and then they show every you know, all the other OEMs how to make them. In some respect, Google's doing that ish with the devices, except for there's already a couple of companies, mostly Samsung, that are making these designs that people want. And so it's just it's like Google is putting a lot of effort into this.
Jason Aten:And I don't know if it's just to keep Samsung and Apple for that matter honest, but the funny thing is, like, it puts them in such a weird situation because Google can't market their devices against Samsung. Right? Because they're they're Android devices. So who do they always reference? Apple.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do switch from iPhones to Pixels? I mean, I did we did have this conversation.
Jason Aten:I would tell anyone who wanted to switch to an Android phone, you probably should just buy a Pixel.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, absolutely. And I would do the same. But a couple of interesting AI features too. One, like, there's gonna be, like, a contextual awareness thing where, like, magic queue is the name for it. But if you're, like, you're on the phone and you need to call the airline, it will proactively suggest pulling up your flight information.
Stephen Robles:So that's interesting. Almost feels agentic, I would say, which maybe we'll do this in the bonus episode. But I have been trying to make another app. I'll save it for the bonus episode.
Jason Aten:That's how he's teasing the bonus episode.
Stephen Robles:I'm teasing the episode because I'm talking about the next app that I'm trying to make and the maddening experience it has been, but the camera. And I will always, I mean, Eli Patel and the Verge are always like, what is a picture? He will talk about it in-depth, I'm sure, whenever he's back from his paternity leave. But the Pixel phones are saying that they have this super res zoom where it'll go from 30x all the way up to 100x. But they say they're using AI, even generative AI, to make that 100 x image actually look decent.
Stephen Robles:Now I feel like that's crossing the Rubicon. If you're at 100x zoom and part of that photo is literally generated by AI so it actually looks like a reasonable photo, I don't think that's a photo. That's an AI generated image. It's based on a photo.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But no one needs let me just say this very clearly. No one needs a 100 x digital zoom photo. Like, just no one does. Like, what do you need that for?
Jason Aten:Why are you what?
Stephen Robles:If if my kids are playing sports you I mean, your girls play soccer. Like, if you could get a really cool close-up photo in action but the problem is this is not gonna do that. This would probably look insane if you try to do a 100x Zoom while someone's running around a field. You know? But I think that's the hope that one day you can get that action or if you're at a concert and you're in the nosebleed section, you can take a picture of, you know, whatever, Taylor Swift down there, and it actually looks like a real photo, then you're AI generating people.
Jason Aten:Okay. So here's a tricky thing. No. I don't think it's a photo. Also, I don't think people care.
Jason Aten:Here's what I mean.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:When I used to photograph this was mostly true at the peer point of my career where I was photographing, like, weddings, which is a thing that basically every photographer does at one point in their career. It I had this philosophy that people were not hiring you to photograph the details and to photograph the moments and the portraits. They're photographing you. They they're hiring you to help them remember the way they feel at their wedding.
Stephen Robles:That's really
Jason Aten:And those photos are the way they do that. But what people really want is like, oh, this moment is cool. I want to remember this feeling. And if the whatever AI voodoo magic they're putting into these things help people do that, that's what people actually care about. That doesn't mean now in a in a wedding, was shooting with the d you know, Nikon d seven seven hundred and d seven fifty.
Jason Aten:Before that, you know, d 300, d 200, whatever. It doesn't matter. You were taking actual photos. Right? You actually had to capture those moments, and you had to be able to intuit what was going to matter to people.
Jason Aten:But but most people with a phone don't. They just it's like, I like the way this looks. I like the way this feels. I want to remember this experience that I'm having in a way that just brings me back to this feeling. And in that regard, I think people are gonna be, like, thrilled if AI makes their photos quote look better.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I guess so the verge in their article, they had this image where they took a picture of the little android robot, like, across the room. And I guess the AI, like, it's pretty blurry and gross, and then it processes it. And then it hardens the edges, and it tries to look a little more real. You know, If someone was traveling, maybe they're in a big city and they wanna take a picture of a skyscraper like really far away, like you're saying, they're remembering the moment of them standing there.
Stephen Robles:That's really the feeling they're after. Maybe. I I really wanna see and I didn't get a chance. MKBHD posted a review of all these phones, like, before the announcement, I think, or, like, when the announcement was happening. And I didn't I haven't gotten a chance to see whether or not he tested the camera, like, with people because I imagine doing the super res zoom on people's faces can't be a great
Jason Aten:yeah. Sure. Also, the thing I think that the AI should do is when you are trying to take a picture of a three inch tall Android figurine from across the room, it should just say move closer. Like, there is a better way to get a good photo of that, and it's just like walk over to the side of the room and take the picture. Like Yeah.
Jason Aten:I don't understand.
Stephen Robles:I will say so in his video, I'll link his video in the show notes. I was trying if you heard music playing in the background, it was MKBHD's video. So I was trying to see what it was gonna do. It's trying to he was testing a little bit. He did not seemingly do an in-depth version or review of this photo feature, but he did show he does show a couple examples.
Stephen Robles:And, yeah, I guess he's saying, like, oh my goodness. It changed the color of the sky. So we took a picture here of, like, I think it's a Brooklyn Bridge, and the original photo has, like, gray sky. It's a cloudy gray day. And he used the AI to enhance it, I guess, or whatever, and turned the sky blue.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, that's not a photo.
Stephen Robles:Oh, guess that's so you can prompt it now too. You just
Jason Aten:add Price generative. You just tell it. Yep.
Stephen Robles:That's but that's see, that's that's not remembering them. Well, anyway.
Jason Aten:You could also have just taken that photo and given it to chat GPT and said, make the sky blue in this photo, and it would create you an entirely fake version of a photo. Right? Like, was I
Stephen Robles:don't know. It's nice to have it right in the camera. I mean, I'll give the Pixel that, you know, if you could just do it right there. I will say, of all the Apple intelligence features that you can access right now, I do feel like the photo cleanup is actually one of the best. Do you Absolutely.
Stephen Robles:Ever use
Jason Aten:Yeah. On every photo. No. Do.
Stephen Robles:Every photo. Remove all the people from every photo.
Jason Aten:I just take the
Stephen Robles:yeah. Family portrait, wipe
Jason Aten:them Just constantly getting rid of distractions and
Stephen Robles:That's hilarious. I mean, but no. But I've done that. I've like, I think we were I don't know if it was a museum or something, but I took a picture, you know, us, like, our selfie, weird people in the background, cleanup. It works really well.
Stephen Robles:Like, it's one of the best features.
Jason Aten:Well and I think that if you could say to the camera app, especially on the iPhone, because what happens a lot when we for one, the cameras on the iPhone are are especially the main camera and, obviously, the ultrawide are pretty wide angle cameras. And so or lenses actually. And so it's really hard to get a square, like a head on square shot, in most cases. And so what people end up getting are distorted. Like, why why they they don't really know, like, exactly what feels weird about the photo, but, like, something doesn't feel right because it's, like, not you weren't perfectly, like, horizontal or whatever.
Jason Aten:If you could just type to your thing, please, like, make this not look skew or make it not look weird or whatever. Like, those kind but what it would be doing then is, like, lens distortion correction that's different than change the sky, which is also, by the way, different than, you know, remove these people or, like, I don't know. It is weird.
Stephen Robles:It is weird. I'm curious your experience. So I'm here at a conference. There's hundreds of people. I've been taking a lot of photos with people because people who use Riverside, they see my face on the website all the time.
Stephen Robles:I feel like nine times out of 10, people are taking vertical photos. And I imagine it's because they wanna share it to their stories. Do you find that to be true? Like when you see just random people taking photos, vertical versus horizontal, like what's the split?
Jason Aten:I mean, I don't spend a lot of time just watching random people take photos.
Stephen Robles:When you're in,
Jason Aten:I will say people. I will say that I I think typically, like, if I watch my kids or their friends, they're always just taking vertical photos. Like literally they just know no one takes horizontal photos anymore except for like actual photography people.
Stephen Robles:But what do you do?
Jason Aten:It does depend on what I'm taking the photo for. If I'm taking a photo, because it's like, this would be a fun thing to share as a story or whatever. I will just take it vertical.
Stephen Robles:If I am explicitly taking a photo for a story, of course, yes, I'll take a vertical photo. But any other time I'm taking any photo, selfie or otherwise with somebody, I default to landscape. And then here's this is the this is the thing now. Please leave us a five star rating and review an Apple Podcasts and tell us what is your default? If you're gonna take a photo or a selfie or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Let's say you meet the celebrity you've wanted to meet. You know what I mean? I feel like that's the scenario. You mean, you don't even what? What does that mean?
Jason Aten:But I think that's different. If you're taking a selfie, people typically hold it horizontal, right? Because you got two faces next to each other.
Stephen Robles:The people at this conference, they've been doing it vertical too, but how
Jason Aten:long are their arms?
Stephen Robles:Everyone has massively long arms. Wow. If you had, because that's the scenario. If you had that one chance to take a photo with that celebrity, that person you looked up to, and you hand your phone to someone, do you ask them to hold it landscape or vertical? What would you do?
Stephen Robles:Who's I mean, I never be.
Jason Aten:Who would you I would, first of all, never hand my phone to someone. Second of all
Stephen Robles:No one's gonna steal your phone. Everyone's got a phone.
Jason Aten:I don't I don't I would never walk up to somebody and ask them if I could take a selfie with them.
Stephen Robles:I know. Like there's 0% Because you've at multiple events and I couldn't believe you didn't take selfie.
Jason Aten:There's no chance I would ask anyone. But
Stephen Robles:your family, you were recently down here in Florida, you were at Disney World. If okay. You're saying you don't do it. Let's say you actually had a friend with you that You
Jason Aten:would walked into Mickey.
Stephen Robles:Let's say you had someone you trusted to take a photo, to hand them your phone. You're gonna take a photo of your family standing in front of the Millennium Falcon. Do you tell them to hold it horizontal or vertical?
Jason Aten:Well, it depends. Okay. This is a complicated question because framing is everything.
Stephen Robles:Oh my.
Jason Aten:Okay. I No. No. Because, like, for example, I'm looking right now. I got a picture of my four kids, and they're in front of the tree of life.
Jason Aten:Well, that picture has to be vertical or else you're not gonna have the tree of life in it. Right? Sure. Well, there's a picture of us in front of the magic kingdom with the train station or whatever behind us. That one's horizontal so that all six of us can be in the picture.
Jason Aten:They just depends.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Maybe, maybe I'm an overthinking, but I still wanna, I still wanna, I still default landscape unless there's a tree or I'm posing at Instagram stories. But anyway, anyway,
Jason Aten:now I will, I will say this. I will default. If I can't decide, I will always take it horizontal. And there's two reasons. One of them is purely just practical, which is I use the camera control.
Jason Aten:So just being able to tap on it and tap again is this is like I don't like to try to do that with my thumb. But I use the camera control button to take almost every picture that I take. So I can just whip it out real quickly and just, like, do that real quick. I just took a bunch of pictures of
Stephen Robles:No. No. Hold on. I'll I have stop you right there because I just saw the back of your phone. And you got onto me a little while ago for the patina on my leather case.
Stephen Robles:And I just want if you have not watched
Jason Aten:It's just from the leather. It's from the MagSafe thing.
Stephen Robles:Those stains are from just MagSafe.
Jason Aten:They're not stains. That's just worn. It's just because it's worn. That's worn now.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Okay.
Jason Aten:So what you're seeing is the substrate. Have worn this down to the substrate.
Stephen Robles:You gave me a hard time for my patina on leather, which is a natural process.
Jason Aten:Because you had a brown leather with green marks all over.
Stephen Robles:No. It was not anyway. It was not that bad. Anyway It
Jason Aten:was that bad. Anyway But here's the other reason to default to horizontal. We are so not talking about Google anymore.
Stephen Robles:That's fine.
Jason Aten:Let's get back there. Because I find that if you do a good job and you frame your subject in the middle of a horizontal image, you can still crop it vertical if you want. That's But you can't crop a vertical image horizontally almost ever.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. They they yes. That is part of my reasoning as well. Anyway, alright. We'll get back to Google.
Stephen Robles:This was interesting. The Google Smart Home Gemini for home is going to be replacing the Google Assistant on things like Nest smart speakers, which you actually have some Nest, Home Hub Max Ultras.
Jason Aten:I do. I almost said I have one right there, but that's not true. That's actually just a tablet, a Google Pixel tablet. It looks like it looks like one of these, but that's because it literally never comes off of that base.
Stephen Robles:Well, Google Gemini will be on the Nest Home Hubs, and it should be much better at things like natural language input and understanding your requests. And this is what we need. This is probably why the HomePod with a screen has been delayed forever because you need this kind of natural language parsing, like an LLM in the thing for it to be really good. Now Alexa Plus was announced months ago. And from what I've heard from Jennifer Toohey at The Verge and others, it's either not around or not that great.
Stephen Robles:I think two people
Jason Aten:I think they've said 100,000 people have access, which is like, wow, there's a lot of people. But you're like, well, first of all, there are a billion Alexa.
Stephen Robles:Well, how many of those people know they have access is the question? Because, like
Jason Aten:Well, that's only six people, and it's none of the tech tech journalists.
Stephen Robles:There might be a bunch of people with Echo shows that never do anything with it except play music, and they might have Alexa Plus.
Jason Aten:They just set alarms. You don't that's the thing about most of those devices. You don't it's like, what does it even do for you? Now something with a screen makes sense because the we have one of the whatever name you gave it, things sitting on our kitchen counter, and it's used all the time because the kids will walk up to and ask a question. And it shows photos.
Jason Aten:That's actually the best feature. Do you remember this, Steven, the time when the photo frame thing was a thing that the
Stephen Robles:digital picture frame?
Jason Aten:Yeah. But they were terrible. Because you had to first of all, had figure out how to get the pictures off of your computer onto, a mini SD thing, stick them in there USB. Load dump them on there, Yes. The whole thing was a complete mess.
Jason Aten:And literally now, if you use Google Photos, you can just favorite the ones you like, which is a thing people are used to doing, and then it will just show them in the rotation. It is amazing. And it pairs them next to each other. Like Oh, really? You you know, so it'll show vertical ones too up, but it, like, it'll do it based on either the location or what's in the scene or whether they're your pets or whatever it is.
Jason Aten:Anyway, that's the best thing about the home stuff.
Stephen Robles:Right. Well, and now I mean, I always always heard that Google Assistant on Nest devices was always better than the voice assistant on HomePods anyway, just as it stands today.
Jason Aten:Well, yes. That's a 100% true. Even doing very little, it was you could set more than one timer, for example.
Stephen Robles:Right. So it was already better, and now Google Gemini on these devices. That is an interesting proposition. You'll you'll have to let us know. I I don't have any Nest devices or speakers, so I don't know.
Stephen Robles:But that's also what we need on HomePods. Because honestly, my kids shouting at HomePods trying to get them to play a specific song, it's maddening.
Jason Aten:Do think, though and tell me what you think about this, Steven. This is an interesting topic on a day that there's nothing else happening. I don't know that the idea of ambient AI that you talk to and that it talks back is the model that people are ready for. I think it has to have a screen. So I don't think HomePods were ever going to work.
Jason Aten:I mean Because think about the decision tree that goes in your head. If I walk up to a device with a screen and I ask it a question, it can present me with multiple options at the exact same time. And I can either tell it what I want or I can tap something or I can whatever. But if it has to talk to me, I have to wait. It's like calling customer service and you have to wait through nine options.
Jason Aten:Press 1 for this. Press 2 for this. And you have to go through the whole thing. And then by the time you get to the end, you realize, wait. Was it number 2 or number three that was actually the option that I want?
Jason Aten:So I don't think that the voice only option I think it's overrated. I don't think it it's gonna be a long time before it's good enough to do that. Can a HomePod voice only walk you through a recipe?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I somewhat agree. I mean, I feel like there's a place there's a HomePod mini in my bedroom that I use to run my goodnight scene, to play music sometimes, and to turn off my Apple TV. Like you can ask your HomePod to turn off your Apple TV. Like those very few use cases, like I'm fine with that.
Stephen Robles:And I don't think I want a screen because it's on my nightstand and it's very small and unobtrusive. Sure. So I think there's still a place for that speaker only use case. But in the kitchen, 100% it needs to have a screen. And just like when I ask a voice assistant something, which is not often, just seeing the words on screen so I know it's hearing me correctly is a reassuring part of that process.
Stephen Robles:And so just seeing that on the screen of a Mobot or a Nest, I think, is a benefit, plus giving you the options of yes, no. You know what I mean? Or you know, show me a two playlist or give me a couple of song ideas and then being able to pick it just by tapping. Yeah. That's a huge advantage.
Jason Aten:Well, and the HomePod mini in your bedroom, though, doesn't have any need for AI. It would be better if it understood you. That's fine. Right. But you're not asking it AI things.
Jason Aten:In fact, everything you ask it to do, you could ask your watch.
Stephen Robles:Correct. Yeah. I could. I also it is a testament though of still how annoying HomePods are because if I can have a HomeKit switch to run my good night scene, I actually have that. Even though I could just talk to my HomePod or my watch, I would rather just press a button and it just runs the scene.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Also, your watch is like four generations more powerful than your HomePod. HomePod mini anyway.
Stephen Robles:They're HomePod mini. Supposedly we get to know HomePod Mini this year. Those are the rumors. I don't know what would be new about it.
Jason Aten:New colors, man. They gotta do the new colors.
Stephen Robles:The colors, man. Like I said that. All right, last Google news. The Pixel Fold, Pixel 10 Pro Fold. I don't know which name is worse.
Stephen Robles:The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold or the Samsung Galaxy s twenty five seven Fold or Fold seven. Anyway, fold folding phones. They said that it's dust resistant. There's a it's a non gear hinge. So, supposedly, the hinge is better.
Stephen Robles:Virgil's hilarious for having, like, an Apple article pulled up on the Pixel Fold in there.
Jason Aten:On the Virgil's website, on Google device.
Stephen Robles:That's hilarious. I still see a little bit of a crease, which, you know, it's there.
Jason Aten:You're never not gonna see a crease. You're literally not it's never gonna be is that the goal, do you think? Like I mean is not gonna be the standard.
Stephen Robles:I can't imagine Apple releasing a foldable that you see a big old crease down the middle.
Jason Aten:You're it's a it's I don't gosh. Something happens to be wrong. I don't think it's yeah. There's no way. Because you you if you just think about the mechanic of what's happening there, that screen has to be it has to increase in size in order to fold.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. No. I get it. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:That is true. Listen. If anyone can overcome physics it's not Apple. So, yeah, there'll probably But be a anyway, I don't know. I'm still I wanted to try the Fold seven because everybody said it was so thin that it was amazing.
Stephen Robles:I never got to. I didn't wanna drop $2,000 on it or buy it and return it. And so, yeah, I don't know. I probably won't try this either, but it looks it looks kinda cool.
Jason Aten:You didn't wanna do the was it Jerry Riggs everything who, like, did the bend test on his $2,000 Samsung fold?
Stephen Robles:I don't. The YouTube channel is not big enough to sustain to sustain snapping foldables.
Jason Aten:Do you ever do and it didn't snap. That's, like, the the takeaway. But do you ever do that math where you're like, this video would have to literally do a million views in order to make it worth it?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It would. And because I don't have a single million view video on my channel, I do not assume that a Pixel Fold video would do that.
Jason Aten:All right.
Stephen Robles:So yeah, I don't do that. All right, wanna talk about Notion has a new feature, OpenAI is a billion dollar month, and this fine woven case leak is pretty hilarious. But first, wanna I thank our friend. I'm actually super stoked about this first sponsor because they have a brand new feature I'm literally going to try as soon as I get back on my actual Mac. But CleanMyMac, you've probably heard about CleanMyMac.
Stephen Robles:It has tons of features for helping you get stuff, extraneous files and storage, free up disk space, clean your Mac. But here's the thing here's the thing, Jason. I I don't even know if you know about this.
Jason Aten:I probably
Stephen Robles:new feature called Cloud Cleanup. Cloud Cleanup, Jason. And what it will do, it will actually you can connect it to your cloud services like iCloud Drive, and then it will go and clean up your cloud storage. Restore order everywhere on your Mac and in your cloud. It reveals large files that take up your cloud storage, find redundant local copies cluttering your Mac.
Stephen Robles:I'm super stoked about this. I mean, I already pay for eight terabytes of iCloud storage for across my family, which is I know it's insane. I know it's insane. But so often, I wanna clean up some space, make room in my iCloud drive, and trying to figure out those files. You can yes.
Stephen Robles:You can do it on your Mac, but it's just not I'm I'm excited to try this cloud cleanup feature. It also works with other cloud services as well, so it can work with your Google Drive, with your OneDrive. And so I am super stoked for cloud cleanup. It'll also help you take control of clutter all over uninstall apps. That's another great thing.
Stephen Robles:You know, if you install apps outside of the Mac App Store, but you wanna delete that app or uninstall it, a lot of times it leaves those little files in the application support folder.
Jason Aten:Adobe.
Stephen Robles:Adobe, one of the worst offenders of that. But and Zoom, which I have not I've still avoided installing Zoom on my new Mac Studio. It can also clean up stuff from your messages. So if there's any big attachments like video files and other things, it's taken up your iCloud storage because it's in messages, it can take care of all of that stuff too. So here's what you do.
Stephen Robles:You can get Tidy today, which is CleanMyMac. Try seven days free and use the promo code primary tech for 20% off. You can go to the website clnmy,likecleanmy,clnmy.com/primarytechnology, and use the promo code primary tech to get 20% off. Try it out. I'm gonna be trying that cloud cleanup feature immediately, upon going home, and hopefully, maybe I can maybe I can downgrade my iCloud storage and actually save money on it.
Stephen Robles:Probably not, but I'm gonna try it anyways. Alright. Thanks to CleanMyMac for sponsoring this episode and our friends at Insta360. I'm actually recording this before the embargo drops for what I'm about to discuss, which is wild. But this is We're living
Jason Aten:in a time warp.
Stephen Robles:We're living in a bookshelf in the interstellar. This is Insta360's brand new pocket camera, the Go Ultra. They price about the size of an Oreo. So it's a funny comparison. Weighing just 53 grams, it can shoot up to four k 60 footage.
Stephen Robles:It has a built in magnetic mounting feature, so you can just throw this on different magnetic things. You can also get, like, a pendant to wear it around your neck. It has an easy clip if you wanna put it on a hat. It's lightweight portable. You can get that hands free peanut like, point of view kinda thing.
Stephen Robles:But the magnetic, you know, stick it on your fridge if you're gonna make content in your kitchen, maybe some cooking content. Trying to pronounce all that stuff clearly. You can use that magnetic stuff to put it right there. It's got a one one point two eight sensor. You're gonna get great four k 60 video.
Stephen Robles:It's I p x eight waterproof up to 33 feet. You can take it in the pool, seventy minute runtime. And with the action pod, it adds up to two hundred minutes. Plus, you can fast charge it from zero to 80% in just twelve minutes. That's pretty wild.
Stephen Robles:And so you can use it everywhere. To bag a free sticky tabs with the Go Ultra, and it can help you mount the camera anywhere from winter down jackets to outdoor jackets to backpacks with your Insta three sixty Go Ultra purchase. You can get that with the purchase. Head to store.insta360.com and use the code primary. Available for the first 30 purchases only, which is wild.
Stephen Robles:For more information, you can check that link down in the episode description. That's store.insta360.com. And when you're ready to buy it, use the promo code primary to get that deal. So the links in the show description are thanks to Insta three sixty for sponsoring this episode. I wonder if I this is interesting.
Stephen Robles:We always talk about is OpenAI making any money. They did not say profit, but OpenAI logged its first $1,000,000,000 month, apparently. Its $1,000,000,000 revenue month was this past July. I guess, I mean, it's making more and more money. I don't believe they talked about profit in here, so how much money they're actually making from that revenue versus what they're spending.
Stephen Robles:Their compute is pretty you know, the compute cost, both energy and dollar amount, is pretty significant. I actually did you watch the Sam Altman interview with Huge If True, Chloe Abram?
Jason Aten:I did not. I did see it in my feed.
Stephen Robles:It was it was pretty good. I actually watched it while I was traveling. Chloe Abram's a great interviewer. I had never really heard Sam Altman talk at length, like that in an interview style, so that was, you know, a curious experience. He definitely thinks before answering any question.
Stephen Robles:And she kept all it in. Whenever she would ask him a question, he would look off into the distance, and then he would start talking. He says their greatest obstacle right now is just the pure energy and compute cost of all compute stuff that they're trying to do.
Jason Aten:I think it'll be interesting. Obviously, they're not a public company, so we just don't know this stuff. But I don't think that they're losing money. There's a reason they're raising as much money as they are is because they're spending it. They're still in the phase of we're spending the money that we're raising, not spending the money that we're earning.
Stephen Robles:Right, and they're not public about their burn rate, I don't think, right? Right. Startup When company is in that pre public phase, they'll talk about how much money they're spending to make a dollar. So sometimes a company might say, It's 1.5 for every dollar. So we're spending $1.5 to make a dollar, and that's why they need the investment to keep that pace up.
Stephen Robles:I But don't think they've ever talked about that publicly. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So we have no idea.
Stephen Robles:Do you still think they'll go public this year? We had talked we had talked about this
Jason Aten:Well, it's a very complicated thing because they've gotta figure out how to do the whole we're a quasi Profit. Public company within a within a company, within a nonprofit. And that there's a lot for them to work out for that first. So I don't know. Like, it's all I don't think so this year.
Stephen Robles:I feel like not either.
Jason Aten:They will But it could vary with me. It could happen, like, October like, it could happen on Monday. Like, we just don't know.
Stephen Robles:That's true. Because we did I think last year when we talked about this, we it did feel like it was gonna be this year, like, 2025. Yeah. But given that there's not even rumblings about it.
Jason Aten:I bet there's some rumblings somewhere. They're just not loud enough for us to hear yet.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I see. Okay. Ear to the ground, I guess we have to be. I don't know why I said that like Yoda. Anyway, Notion announced a new feature, which actually I think is pretty exciting, working offline in Notion.
Stephen Robles:If you ever use Notion, which we use Notion to do our show notes, the ones that Jason and I share. If you wanted to make a change or see, you know, whatever, you kind of you need Internet, you know, to do all that stuff, and it's not really made for working offline. But apparently now you can. It's something you have to actually think enable. I don't know if it's like per document or per space, but you can make something available offline now and then work on it whenever.
Stephen Robles:And then when you connect back to the Internet, it will sync the changes like many, many other apps do. But you use Notion a lot, Bradley.
Jason Aten:I do. Use it a lot. Don't so I was trying to think about this. Am I ever somewhere where I need Notion and don't have the internet? I don't
Stephen Robles:because even on a plane,
Jason Aten:you know? Yeah. But, I mean, it's like, if I genuinely don't have the Internet, I probably can't do the things like, I don't just do Notion things, I should say.
Stephen Robles:Right. Just, like researching.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm web I'm clipping web files, saving them as articles, reading them later in Notion. Maybe I could do that ish, but I'm only doing that when I'm also trying to, like, be able to find other things. Maybe I'm taking four or five of them, and I'm trying to summarize them, and you still have to have access to the Internet for any of the AI features or if I was gonna put them in ChatGPT. That's true.
Jason Aten:I can write without the Internet, but I very rarely do. And I don't typically write very much without the Internet because I can't put it into the CMS if I don't have internet access. Right. So I, so I do think it's very cool. I think like this, you know, Google docs has this kind of thing.
Jason Aten:Can you make these things available offline? Dropbox for that matter. Like all these, it's a good feature. I was just trying to think of like, do I ever use Notion when I don't have the Internet? And I think the answer is no.
Stephen Robles:It's increasingly, I'm just never without Internet. Just go
Jason Aten:Well, that's yeah. That's the other piece of that. You know?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Only when a hurricane may or may not hit Florida. That's pretty much the only time. And even then, if the generator is running, think we still have Internet.
Jason Aten:Awesome.
Stephen Robles:You know? Alright. Last thing before we get to some personal tech. Finewoven. It might be coming back with the iPhone 17 series this fall.
Stephen Robles:This was a leaked image. I think this was Majin Buu on x. This is a looks like a pretty legitimate phone case. This is for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, tech woven, not fine woven. This is now
Jason Aten:Maybe no one no one's gonna know. No one will figure that out, Steven.
Stephen Robles:No one's gonna know. It's like that TikTok meme. No one's gonna know. Your kids probably know about that. Anyway, tech woven, I don't know.
Stephen Robles:I mean, it looks like it's almost denim jean material instead of the kind of very font on
Jason Aten:What you're saying is it's equally bad.
Stephen Robles:Listen, I'm still a leather case guy, and like I said on the last episode, I think it was the last episode, I even have my own leather case color coming out just to be real.
Jason Aten:I don't get Apple's thing. I I understand that they there's they would they probably feel there's a degree of intellectual dishonesty to be like, hey. We're the environmentally friendly, and then we're doing leather. I like, I'm not gonna get into the whole whatever, like, complexity of that. But Yeah.
Jason Aten:This stuff is it's gonna just be bad. It's it's not gonna be any
Stephen Robles:It's not gonna be we'll see if it shows nail marks.
Jason Aten:Be better. Mine will Also, are we prepared for the minion phase of iPhones?
Stephen Robles:The single goggle over the
Jason Aten:I don't this is I this is not good, Steven.
Stephen Robles:Listen. I I mean, I have I think I showed it on camera. I I don't know if was last week or the week before, but the iPhones yeah, I did. Yeah. The case from Ondar in my code.
Jason Aten:It's not good.
Stephen Robles:I don't know.
Jason Aten:This is really the path we're going down now? The Ginster will.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. I mean, we have to see it in person, I guess, but all the mock ups and the models, like of the big bar at the top, I don't know, man. I don't don't, at a glance, I don't love it.
Jason Aten:The only redeeming so first of all, the it's the the phone back is one thing. The cases are another thing, and the cases look ridiculous. But almost no one is ever gonna have to deal with the case that's not on the phone, so maybe it'll be okay.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't know. I'm I'm cautiously not pessimistic. Cautiously terrified. What's in between optimistic and pessimistic?
Stephen Robles:I'm cautiously meh about what this I
Jason Aten:mean, chaotic neutral. Chaotic good?
Stephen Robles:I don't know. The last thing I wanna say about Apple, if you don't wanna make bovine leather cases, just use cactus leather. Just use vegan leather. There's lots of companies that make good cases. Ondar being one of them.
Stephen Robles:Ondar had a cactus leather case in white that I really liked. Moffed makes vegan leather cases. Bellroy makes vegan leather. Like, the cases are good. They're gonna be way better than this one.
Jason Aten:A lot of the vegan leather cases, though, are, like, synthetic. Right? And that's chemicals
Stephen Robles:just as much. Well, then do the cactus leather. I mean
Jason Aten:I guess And I guess Apple probably, don't you think, feels they have to offer cases? Because people walk into the store and wanna leave with well, mean, they could just let other people sell the cases in the store.
Stephen Robles:Well, and they're the only cases you can have an Apple logo on your case too. I don't
Jason Aten:want any logo on my case.
Stephen Robles:Well, some people like that. Some people like having an Apple logo on the back.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Because you might not know who that minion belongs to.
Stephen Robles:I still like the silicone cases. I always I always get one Apple silicone case a year for when we go to the beach. That's it.
Jason Aten:So that way when it's not sticky and the sand will stick to it better?
Stephen Robles:Well, so it's easy to clean out. I don't wanna bring leather to the beach. It's gonna get all wet and nasty. So anyway Okay.
Jason Aten:Fair point.
Stephen Robles:Alright. We have a couple quick personal tech items. You had some good questions.
Jason Aten:I just keep adding them. I'm sorry. We don't have to talk about them all.
Stephen Robles:No. No. You wrote an article because of Sloan Newsweek. You wrote an article about the iPad update, but I legitimately want to hear your thought on it because, iPad OS 26, it's finally quote unquote what Apple should have done with the iPad for a long time, make it more like a Mac. Again, I've been at this conference.
Stephen Robles:I've not had chance to read it. But you're generally optimistic and positive about this.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think it's okay. There are two things I was trying to point I was trying to make in this. One, I think with the exception of Spotlight on the Mac, which is great Yeah. The update to Spotlight, that the iPad got by far the best update.
Jason Aten:Most important update of all of them. Because on the iPhone, it's like it's just a different way of looking at the same exact like, you don't use your phone any different with iOS 26.
Stephen Robles:It's fair.
Jason Aten:There's nothing different about it. Like, right, we
Stephen Robles:we Shortcuts, actions, but I hear you.
Jason Aten:No one is going to use their phone any different except for Steven. But, like, when we got widgets, that was a big interface to difference. When we got the expanded control center where you could, like, move things around and have multiple pages, that's, like, that's different. Even when there's a physical button added when it was the action button or the control camera control. Like, that's people will use Liquor Glass is just like, now you can't read your notifications because the picture shows through.
Jason Aten:Like, it's not and you it's you're gonna use your phone the same except for that the experience will give you a headache. Like, that's that's the difference here. But on the iPad, things are very different, and I think it's great. I think it's very good. I don't you and I talked about the whole, like, Mac like, whatever.
Jason Aten:I don't they don't need to put MacOS on it. That's fine. This is very good for what most people are going to want. It's still there's I didn't say this in the article. There is a part of me, though, that's going to feel a little bit like now you are literally brushed up right against that edge, but you can't get through it, which is like you can't just run Mac apps.
Jason Aten:Right? And you can't go behind the scenes and, you know, you were talking about writing an app. I was telling you I wrote a web app. I can run that web app in the terminal on my Mac and just do things to it. And I can just, like, dink around and, like, make my Mac do whatever the heck I want it to do.
Jason Aten:And you can't do any of that on an iPad, but now you can make your iPad sort of look like the way you interact with the Mac. And so do you think
Stephen Robles:you can't use text expander? You can't have a clipboard manager. You can't.
Jason Aten:Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, we're so close now that I actually, I think Apple's like, great. Here we go. We did the thing you all want.
Jason Aten:And people are like, actually, you're so close. You should just go all the way. But I think it's great. I think that, like, I was using preview on the iPad just just just yesterday because I I had my laptop. I had to deal with, like, I had a a document that I needed to, like, verify, like, 10 things.
Jason Aten:And so I just put that on my iPad, opened it, and made it in preview, and I literally just used the pencil and checked things off as I was going through and doing stuff. I think it's great so much so that I actually put the public bay beta on my main Mac, iPad Pro. So
Stephen Robles:Now here so I have one question, and then I have a thought. I want to get real close to the camera to share this.
Jason Aten:I know. I'm so anxious right now.
Stephen Robles:Are you primarily have you primarily tried iPadOS 26 on a 13 inch iPad?
Jason Aten:I've almost I I have it installed on a 13 inch m three MacBook or iPad Air. Okay. But I don't ever use that.
Stephen Robles:So you've been using it on an 11 inch? Yep. Here's the thing.
Jason Aten:So I first installed it on my m two.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And then I was like, no, it's good. I'm gonna just actually I'm I'm I'm in on on '26.
Stephen Robles:Listen. Here's the thing. We get real close. I don't know if I'm crazy about it. Okay?
Stephen Robles:Here's the thing. I I turned on windowing, and, like, one of the things I did last night, I was recording for primary tech daily. Couple of those episodes are generated this week because it's crazy. But I did record one here in the hotel room, and I just wanted bare notes on one half, and I wanted the, FairRight to record the audio in the on the other half of my iPad screen. Now prior to iOS 26, I could open Bear.
Stephen Robles:I could flick open the dock, tap and drag Fairrite to the right side, and boom. I'm in split view. Now I have to open Bayer. I have I can't drag from the dock in split view. I have to drag the one of the corners to put it into a window mode.
Stephen Robles:And now that I'm in window mode, I can flick it into the left side. And then I have to open FareWrite, and I have to drag the corner again so it becomes a window, and then flick it over to the other side. And now I have finally achieved the same split view that I could have done much quicker prior to iPadOS 26. Now, yes, I could just leave that as a space, and just that arrangement with Ferrite and Bare should just be like that. But then once I'm done recording, I've read off bare.
Stephen Robles:I've recorded the audio. Now I want Ferrite full screen. And so if I make Ferrite full screen, now I have to and I can't previously, if you were had two apps up at the same time on iPad, you could just drag the little white bar in the middle all the way to one side, and the one app would go full screen. And you'd be just in that app. You can't do that anymore.
Stephen Robles:The farthest it'll go is like a twothree, onethree split. And then you have to basically the little stoplights and X out the one app or hit the green button in the stoplight to full screen the other app. That's one of the things I would do in split view most often, and it feels much more cumbersome now with iPadOS 26. And I don't I don't know why. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.
Jason Aten:I mean, you could still use, like, Stage Manager if you wanted to.
Stephen Robles:Well, and that's that's the thing. But I also can't have multiple instances of FerriT open, don't think. So, like, have it in a split view with Bayer in one stage and then have it full screen in another stage. I don't think you can do that.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know if this, whoops. I don't know if this is like a technical thing. There are the one thing I do miss, which is similar to what you're just saying, but I don't think that they could have this this many variations of complexity is like slide over.
Jason Aten:Slide over was fantastic because you know what I had in slide over? I had spark, I had messages, and I had Slack.
Stephen Robles:Right. Right. Right.
Jason Aten:Right. So I could literally just slide it over no matter what I was doing and swipe between those three things, and that was what I just I really enjoyed doing that. And and you don't get that now. So, like, if you want and I don't even think you get it if you just use it in window mode, like, full screen mode. Like, you've lost all of the things you talk so what they should have done is that you stay in that mode and you could just stay with the past, do or not I mean, like, use those features if that's what you wanted to do if you're used to doing that.
Jason Aten:But I just wonder if it's just too complicated to try to have iPadOS have that many different versions of how windows are supposed to interact.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And I guess I just find, like, if you are if you love the windowing because you can have three, four, five apps all windowed at once, then I get the iPadOS 26 implementation is better. But if, like me, you had a maximum of usually two apps that you wanted to just see side by side, I feel like that is more cumbersome to get into that view. And if you could just drag an app from the dock to one side and immediately go into just that fifty fifty split, that might solve what I'm looking for. But just in my experience the other night, was like, I don't know if I love this.
Stephen Robles:And I don't know, maybe they'll change it, but that's my thought. That's You my
Jason Aten:missed those three dots in the middle there that let you
Stephen Robles:I just miss being able to drag from the dock and immediately enter fiftyfifty mode. That's all I wanna do. I wanna have a full screen app up, and then drag an app from the dock to one side or the other, and it's split fifty fifty.
Jason Aten:I mean, can go between the side and the full screen by just hitting the green traffic light.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, but you have an app full screen on the iPad and then fifty fifty split another app with one step. And previously, you could Well because you could just drag an app up and and split Technically can.
Jason Aten:How? Just you toggling that the green that green button. So I have the two apps side by side and I can drag one or the other over using the little, there's a little handle in between them. But if I go to eat the app, I want full screen. I go up to the traffic light and I hit the green.
Jason Aten:It goes to full screen.
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:If I hit it again, it goes back to side by side.
Stephen Robles:Right. But to a like, starting from scratch, if you want it to fifty fifty split apps, you have to
Jason Aten:Don't don't you only have to start from scratch once, though?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. But not if you're going, like not if you wanna see bare full screen sometimes and then see fairy full screen. I don't know. Maybe this is an asinine complaint, but I don't know. That was just my use case.
Stephen Robles:We'll see. I'll try.
Jason Aten:Just trying to help you.
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Alright. Last thing, cable choices before we get to our bonus episode. You said what kind of cable do you prefer?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I just realized I had like 12 different braided cables on my desk for various Yes. Reasons. I've also got one of Apple's Thunderbolt cables, which I understand is a different thing. Steven, don't even understand because some of these cables are 240 watt cables, so that's good.
Jason Aten:I have in my and I've got a magazine. I've never taken into consideration how many watts of cables okay for because Yeah. Doesn't the Mac just deal with that? Like
Stephen Robles:Well, and and even the biggest MacBook Pro doesn't charge a 240 watts. I think it's like 100 at the most, 120 maybe.
Jason Aten:Right. That's true. So anyway, I was just curious. Do you have a favorite? Do you like braided cables?
Jason Aten:I know you like your tacos.
Stephen Robles:I have my tacos. I literally have a bunch tacos on this hotel desk right now because I'm using you all the USB cables. I like braided cables the most. I like basis braided cables. That's usually that's a lot of what my cables are.
Stephen Robles:And I'm trying to see if I have one to pull up. But, yeah, I like those cables the most. That's like I literally am connecting I have one connected to this USB microphone. I have one connecting my iPhone to my laptop for continuity camera. I like the braided basis cables.
Stephen Robles:It's
Jason Aten:my preference. Now I've noticed that and maybe this is just me, but I've noticed a thing that I didn't think I ever had to care about, which is a lot of these chargers here have you can't even necessarily plug like, I don't think you can plug this in if you had a case on your iPhone.
Stephen Robles:Well, that is why I can't unplug anything right now because then I'll kill my
Jason Aten:because everything will stop.
Stephen Robles:But I like the Basis ones because the connector fits into a regular iPhone case port, USB C port. Because there are a lot of them that are too big for that. Even
Jason Aten:This is why I'm still carrying around Apple cable. I have two of them
Stephen Robles:in my little bag. Don't have do that because this actually, this braided one is from Anker, and they have one that is small enough to fit into your iPhone case. But yeah, I like
Jason Aten:the So you don't carry any Apple cords with you?
Stephen Robles:Only the MagSafe charging cable for my laptop.
Jason Aten:Because I really like in my my bag to have the Apple ones because they're much more low like, they're so thin. They're like nice and they're nice cables, but they take up zero space.
Stephen Robles:Right. I, yeah, I've got, I went with BASIS. I just got a bunch of I Brady like them. Last thing, did you see Quinn Nelson's Snazzy Labs game show that he did with Yes. You did watch it all the way?
Jason Aten:Wait, are you talking about the one that Mike Hurley did?
Stephen Robles:Yeah, yeah, he hosted it.
Jason Aten:Okay, yes, I saw that. I saw that. If I The Apple brand quiz.
Stephen Robles:The brand style guide. Yeah, And the one thing, you should go watch it. I'll try and find the link.
Jason Aten:I watched the whole thing.
Stephen Robles:Yeah, watched the whole thing too. I was saying our listeners should go watch this. It's a fun game show. He Mike Curley basically asks questions about Apple's style guide. And one of the questions were, how does Apple want you to refer to their laptops?
Stephen Robles:Do they prefer laptop or notebook? And I thought that was an interesting question because Do you remember the answer?
Jason Aten:Yeah, they're laptops.
Stephen Robles:They're laptops, but they didn't always used to be that. Because I feel like if you think back to like iBook days, they called them notebooks. Isn't isn't that true?
Jason Aten:Maybe. I don't remember. Like the Performa, was the Performa a notebook or was it a laptop?
Stephen Robles:Well, it's what Apple called is what I'm saying.
Jason Aten:Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:IBook site colonapple.com/newsroom. Let's see who can find this first. When was the last oh my goodness. The first one is a 05/01/2001 Apple unveils all new iBook. Here it is.
Stephen Robles:Oh, I need to share my screen so everyone can see it. So you can see the proof that I was, that I was right. Apple today introduced an all new iBook, the lightest and smallest full featured consumer and education notebook on the market today weighing just 4.9 pounds, the new iBook. Wait a minute. I have to keep going.
Stephen Robles:The first ten twenty four by seven sixty eight resolution 12.1 inch display in its class FireWire for video editing up to five hours of battery life, Jason, starting at $1,300.
Jason Aten:Mhmm. But why is that surprising?
Stephen Robles:Because you can get an m four MacBook Air today for a thousand. That's amazing. Well,
Jason Aten:one, they didn't have m fours back then. And two No.
Stephen Robles:No. I'm just saying, but just the cost of that laptop, it just seems wild. That doesn't seem wild to you?
Jason Aten:No. No. That seems normal to me. That's That seems about right. Then then because they had, like, because then the MacBook Air was supposed to come in, like, as a I don't know.
Jason Aten:I have nothing except for that that thing had FireWire, and it was awesome.
Stephen Robles:That it did. But now I now I wanna just quickly compare. I'm gonna look for the m four MacBook Air newsroom article. Here's the MacBook Air. So they did use they did use to call them notebooks.
Stephen Robles:That was their preferred nomenclature back then in 02/2001. And here on the m four newsroom page, let's see, does it call it? Yep. It says I need to do a command f. Search for laptop.
Jason Aten:Right there in the subhead.
Stephen Robles:World's most popular laptop delivers more value than ever. There used to be notebooks according to Apple. Now they're laptops. There you go. All right.
Stephen Robles:We're gonna record a bonus episode. I'm gonna complain a little bit about Chatchipati and trying to build my next app. So you wanna listen to that? Get an ad free version of the show. Get the daily show.
Stephen Robles:Get the unedited raw feed of the show. All of those are benefits if you support the show directly in Apple Podcast or at join.primarytech.fm. Also, leave us a five star rating and review in Apple Podcast. Let us know what's your default photo orientation. Are you a landscape or a portrait by default?
Stephen Robles:And you can also watch the show on YouTube, youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.
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