Instagram’s Terrible iPad App, ChatGPT Saved Google Chrome, iPhone 17 Event Hopes
Download MP3Case, get ready to match our spin with the retro thrusters. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. It is the eve before the iPhone event, the calm before the storm, but we still have a ton of news. Instagram finally released an iPad app. We're gonna get into if it's actually good or not.
Stephen Robles:As of my face to iOS 26, I have the Pixel 10 Pro in hand. Had a few thoughts about that. Remarkable Paper Pro. ChatGPT may have saved Google from having to sell Chrome, and we get your thoughts about what you're hoping for on the iPhone seventeen event, even playing some listener audio. This episode is brought to you by Insta360 and you, the members who support us directly.
Stephen Robles:I'm one of your hosts, Steven Robles, with a stain on my shirt. I didn't know until I put it on. Sorry about that. And my friend Jason a 10. How's it going, Jason?
Jason Aten:It's good. Hang on. I'm closing tabs, and I am gotta close the, dream list that I have going if I win the $1,700,000,000 Powerball this week. Hang on.
Stephen Robles:Oh, wait a I don't
Jason Aten:want that to distract me while we're recording.
Stephen Robles:We only have to do a bonus episode on what's on your dream list. That's interesting. Interesting.
Jason Aten:Why buy you a new t shirt for one?
Stephen Robles:Thank you. Listen. I want so here's okay. Here's the thing. I'm the first person that wakes up in the house, and so I try to leave it at dark for everybody as they're sleeping.
Stephen Robles:I wanted to wear my Let Tim Cook shirt because the Apple event is coming, and so hopefully Tim Cooks, as they say. And because it's dark everywhere in the house except my studio, I turn on the lights, and I'm like, oh, shoot. But, you
Jason Aten:know Alright.
Stephen Robles:That's what that's what happens. That's what happens.
Jason Aten:It's that's what happens.
Stephen Robles:I forgot to ask you the movie quote last week, which was those aren't mountains, they're waves. Yeah. And so I did the same movie again this week. You know what movie that is?
Jason Aten:It was Interstellar. I I did I did appreciate your best effort at a Matthew McConaughey. Thanks. Accent did not work.
Stephen Robles:Thank you.
Jason Aten:It's okay.
Stephen Robles:It's a great one. I think it was, like, the tenth anniversary earlier this year. Interstellar. It's one of my favorite
Jason Aten:it? I do like that movie. Good movie. It's see, the thing about that movie is it's a hard movie to convince other people that they should watch because it starts out real slow.
Stephen Robles:I don't try to convince them. I just say you're going to watch this.
Jason Aten:You just made that.
Stephen Robles:You're gonna sit down, and you're gonna like it. That's how it goes. Alright.
Jason Aten:I'll try that.
Stephen Robles:IPhone seventeen event is happening Tuesday, 1PM eastern, 10AM Pacific. We are going to do a live primary tech recording. It's gonna be live streaming on our YouTube channel, and, of course, we'll release it to the podcast and everywhere afterward. But if you would like to join us live, go subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's gonna happen at 6PM eastern on Tuesday.
Stephen Robles:I'm going to try and rush and make a YouTube video in between the event and the podcast recording, and then we'll get try and go even deeper in the podcast. But, yes, live primary tech Tuesday, 6PM eastern. We'd love to have you join us live over on YouTube and then everywhere. Hopefully, we got I think we're gonna have some exciting stuff to talk about. We'll get into it later.
Stephen Robles:But, I'm excited. Alright. I still let me ask you this, Jason. This is a personal question. After so many years of Apple events, sometimes I do wonder like, will it ever just be but no, it's not like that for me.
Stephen Robles:I still like, I tell myself, like, you know, it's it's been so many years of Apple events. I think I'm gonna get that excited. And then, like, the day of the event, it's like, oh, man. Apple event. Let's do this.
Stephen Robles:Do you do you still get do you still get the the Well,
Jason Aten:it depends on if I'm there or not.
Stephen Robles:Okay.
Jason Aten:I'm there, it's it's cool, but also it's exhausting. And there have been Apple there have been iPhone events where it's, like, 93 degrees even at you know, because the event's at 10AM Pacific time. And there are days when it's, like, super warm and you're all packed into the upstairs area waiting for to go down and stuff. And in those you have to be there at, like, 08:00 morning. Yes.
Jason Aten:And I'm not like, I sound like I'm complaining. I'm not. I'm just saying it's harder to be excited, and then you look around and you realize, I'm in the Steve Jobs freaking theater. Like Yeah. This is not a bad gig.
Jason Aten:So
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That was yeah. At at WWDC, being in person was very strange because time moves much faster. Like, when I'm sitting at home covering an Apple event, it's like, alright. We got an hour till the event.
Stephen Robles:I'm gonna go make lunch, you know, get all the stuff ready. I'm gonna get set up. And then you're like, alright. Ten minutes, five minutes. It seems like you have all at least a little time before the event begins.
Stephen Robles:But at Dub Dub, it was just like time flew, and I was, like, trying to get eggs that didn't have salmon on them from, Cafe Max. And then it was like, okay. I gotta find a seat, and then, like, boom, like, the event started. So it's it's very different in person, but I'm excited to see what they what they're launching. What they're what
Jason Aten:they're And neither of us, just to be clear, will be there in person this time.
Stephen Robles:None us will be there in person, but that means we get to do a live, podcast recording. And that's
Jason Aten:Listen. I don't want anybody from Apple hearing this, so I shouldn't say it out loud on a recorded podcast. But it is actually easier to cover the events when you're not there in person, just to be honest.
Stephen Robles:I already talked about it, but if you didn't know, when I was at Dub Dub, it was like you're crammed. Like, the seats are very close together. You don't have a lot of leg room. You know? It's not like you have space to, like, really, like, you know, have stuff out.
Stephen Robles:And so I had, like, the thought right before dub dub started, do I have my MacBook Air on my lap trying to do stuff? But then if I'm taking pictures and videos, am I gonna transfer that to my Mac? And I was like, wait a minute. No. It'll probably be best just to do the phone like you had suggested.
Stephen Robles:Think that's what you Yeah. And so, I mean, like the whole time I was just like taking a video of the screen and maybe Tim Cook, and then like, previously typing, like trying to post something and also taking notes because I'm trying to like, you know, do the we were recording a podcast that afternoon, and it was just like, what about yeah. Way easier to cover.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Yeah. I just looked real quickly. I just opened my photos library and put the word Cupertino in, and I have 3,900 images.
Stephen Robles:But you you had been to four dub dubs?
Jason Aten:I've been to three dub dubs and I think three iPhone events.
Stephen Robles:Okay. Alright.
Jason Aten:Plus yeah. No. I those are the only events I've been to in California. I've been to several other, like, Scary
Stephen Robles:Fast event.
Jason Aten:You're right. The Scary Fast event. But those those are in New York City.
Stephen Robles:So Can I just say the Scary Fast branding is probably one of the best they've had for an event because it's so memorable?
Jason Aten:And it happened on Halloween. Whatever.
Stephen Robles:I mean, Apple's good at branding, but, like, that one, they really nailed it. You know? Because there's been other ones like California streaming, high speed was the iPhone twelve event because they were introducing five g, I think.
Jason Aten:So I think it was on, was it on connected where they literally went through a bunch of the taglines, and one of the taglines for one of the early iPhones was like, let's talk about iPhone or something like that. It's like, gosh. What is this one gonna be about?
Stephen Robles:That's funny. And, actually, I would listen to, Andrew Edwards. It was his first appearance on Gruber's talk show, friend of the show, John Gruber, which was awesome for Andrew. And he was talking about how the iPhone five event was the first time it was like there weren't even, like, tea leaves to read. It was like a big five in the invite.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It was like, okay. Well, there it is. So anyway alright. Well, let's let's talk about some news.
Stephen Robles:Real quick, I wanna thank everyone who gave to the Saint Jude fundraiser. This is gonna be going on all September. We've raised over $200 already. This is joined with the relay.fm campaign for St. Jude.
Stephen Robles:I set an audacious goal. I mean, this was wild. $5,000 over the next month. So we still have about twenty six days to reach it. Thank you to all the people who gave.
Stephen Robles:There's names at the bottom, CR Peck, the Paul family, Sapporo, Zach, Brian, Masik, Nick Fitch, Patrick, Anonymous, Paul Milliken, Rob. There's a bunch of people that already gave. Thank you for that. Everybody gives $2. We would blow past that goal.
Stephen Robles:And so appreciate that's the first link in the show notes. Let's give to Saint Jude, which is awesome. And I'm gonna put this link in the show notes again. You can send us an audio message. I'm gonna play some listener audio messages later or write us a message directly.
Stephen Robles:And, yeah, do the audio, though, because I'd love to play it on the show, we can, like, hear your voice. You could be on the show with us, which is pretty cool. And a couple five star review shout outs. Nick w one from The UK. Battery percentage on.
Stephen Robles:Photo default landscape, Apple Maps always. We've never done the Apple Maps, Google Maps debate. I wonder. You're you're an Apple Maps guy.
Jason Aten:Right? I use Apple Maps.
Stephen Robles:I was so afraid you
Jason Aten:were gonna
Stephen Robles:say Waze for a second. I was I was
Jason Aten:So I do use Waze occasionally Sure.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:When I need to be sure about, like, traffic situations and that kind of stuff. But if I need to know where I'm going it's this is a weird thing because I don't think it would matter well, it would matter some. But even if Google Maps, someone could convince me was better, the interface is different enough. Also, it's just full of ads, but it's different enough that it's it's, like, disorienting.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't like it. I don't like I don't like it. I I tried it the other day. Well, I've also had the Pixel 10 Pro for, like, a couple days, and I was like, no.
Stephen Robles:No. Not doing it. Also, Trapper's Hat Stew from The UK gave us a five star rating in Apple Podcast. Give us a five star rating in Apple Podcast. Let us know.
Stephen Robles:Let's start the debate. Apple Maps v Google Maps. You could tell us if you're on iPhone or Android. Let us know. Or Waze.
Stephen Robles:I know there's, like, a Waze community that is, like, all Waze all the time. So if if that's you, let us know. And one follow-up before we get to all the stuff in Pixel 10 Pro. I had complained, last week about I have iOS 26 now beta nine on my main iPhone. I've been running the real beta.
Stephen Robles:Are you running the real beta yet on your main device?
Jason Aten:I'm running the public beta.
Stephen Robles:Oh. Is
Jason Aten:that what you mean by that?
Stephen Robles:I'm running the developer beta nine.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think once the public beta goes up, you should switch. Really? Are you especially our listeners. Yes.
Jason Aten:Because it's much more stable
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah?
Jason Aten:Than the developer bable.
Stephen Robles:Beta?
Jason Aten:Developer bable.
Stephen Robles:Some something just happened. It was a glitch.
Jason Aten:I just glitched. It was
Stephen Robles:a glitch. Really? So you did so you're on the public beta for your iPhone?
Jason Aten:No. Not on my main I'm sorry. On my secondary iPhone. I'm using the public beta, the one that I'm looking at right now. I'm I don't have any real reason.
Jason Aten:I still am annoyed with the unlock screen liquid glass stuff. So
Stephen Robles:I will I will say one of the weirdest things so if you're on your home screen and you swipe down to look at your notifications, if you do it quickly, it just, like, blows away your notifications. You don't see anything weird. But if you, like, hold that tray so, like, right now, I'm, like, pulling down the lock screen and it's, like, liquid glassing. But if you go slowly, it shows, like, the lock screen over your home screen icon, and it feels like a like a bug. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:This does not look and then when you let it go, you know, it'll blow away all the other things, but it looks a little funny. I'll be real.
Jason Aten:It is kinda weird. I agree. But I think and there are people who agreed with me that I think that the look and feel is gonna it'll grate on people after it's no longer new feeling.
Stephen Robles:One of the things I didn't really have this as a main topic, but I I do think it is apropos. One of the things that I I'm not crazy about with the liquid glasses, like, in things in messages where you're tapping a lot, where you're, like, tapping a conversation, you're tapping the back button, you're tapping the compose window, Liquid Glass does this little, like, flash, like a glimmer every time you tap a UI element. And when you're in an app where you have to tap a lot of UI elements, like messages, if you're tapping to different conversations, it gets a little bit like, can we stop with the the little you know what I mean? I don't know.
Jason Aten:Right. Just think about all of the extra energy your iPhone has to use to do that. We're like people are worried AI is gonna boil the ocean.
Stephen Robles:These liquid glass effects. I do like, you know, I'm I'm gonna I was gonna say I like it. You know what our podcast artwork looks like now in the beta? Have you seen that?
Jason Aten:In the beta?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. So the Apple podcast app specifically.
Jason Aten:You don't mean, like, we have a beta version of our podcast Okay. I was like, what do
Stephen Robles:you No. No. No. In iOS 26, if you your episode artwork for a podcast episode, when you go to the page, it is now edge to edge, which I think looks kinda cool. They do, like, feather the top and, like, blur it out, so depending on what I put at the top of those things.
Stephen Robles:So I I think I like it, maybe.
Jason Aten:But that could be a thing that was true even without liquid glass. Oh, sure. The thing that I think that's an important piece to distinguish. And in fact, I'm working on an article about this that is, like, the seven best things about iOS 26 that are are not liquid glass because I think there are a lot of good improvements. I just think that if they only did those improvements and didn't do the liquid glass, this would be a thumbs up update.
Stephen Robles:That's a good point. I think, again, Apple is optimized for, like, its own content. So, like, the Apple News Today podcasts, you know, they use just, like, a single photo usually for their custom episode artwork, and that looks great because it's just a photo that then blurs towards the top. But if you have, like, complex artwork, I don't know. It's a little it's a little iffy.
Stephen Robles:It's a little iffy. Like, the I was in omnibus with a Ken Jennings and, like I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. I'm curious when people get it in hands or if you're already running the beta, let us know what what you think of the liquid glass.
Stephen Robles:It's it's different on your daily driver. I'll just say that. It's different when
Jason Aten:One more more question about iOS. Well, just 26 in general.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Aten:The fact that I now am getting actual phone calls on my iPad and on my Mac is not good.
Stephen Robles:I tell you, you gotta turn all that off, man.
Jason Aten:I did, but why should I have to turn it off? Why can't I just some why can't the crazy people just turn it on?
Stephen Robles:I've had to I've had to turn that off forever because you could always forward calls.
Jason Aten:But now it's like this unified interface on your Oh, yeah. There's an actual phone app on your Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't I don't know about that. I mean, since I
Jason Aten:No. It's it's insane that there's a phone app on your iPhone.
Stephen Robles:It it is kinda funny. Well, we'll talk about insane apps on the iPad with Instagram too, but, yeah, I I turn I turn off all that. I actually for some reason, when I went updated the beta on my main iPhone, it re enabled, hey, dingus, like, to listen for it. And I was like, oh, no. Don't do that.
Jason Aten:I just don't know who was in the meeting that thought, here's an idea.
Stephen Robles:We're not
Jason Aten:Let's put a phone app on the iPad.
Stephen Robles:Listen.
Jason Aten:We know all of our iPad users already have iPhones. Other than children, there cannot be any iPhone iPad users that don't have iPhones. And children who have an iPad and don't have an iPhone do not need to get phone calls.
Stephen Robles:They don't. They really don't. But anyway, all of that was to say, the one big thing like in Safari on iOS 26, if you go with the compact address bar, I lost the ability to quickly access my tabs. And then Oscar on Blue Sky said, if you haven't heard, you can swipe up on the three dots to get to your all tabs. So this is basically a new gesture if you're using the compact view in Safari.
Stephen Robles:So, basically, if you're on iOS 26, you got the compact view, you swipe up. Of course, that didn't work very well. Anyway, you swipe up on the three dots, and then you get your tab view. So it is kind of one gesture away, not a single tap. You can switch to the larger bottom address bar like I showed last week, but there is a gesture to do it if you wanna do that.
Stephen Robles:So I went back to the compact and we'll try it. We'll
Jason Aten:see. I think if your UI requires a secret handshake, though, to do a thing you used to be able to do, then you didn't do a very good job.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I don't know. And the ATP guys, they were not about the compact either, it seemed like, listening to that. But, anyway alright. Well, good a quick word about the Pixel 10 Pro.
Stephen Robles:It's I already put it back in the box, so I'm a send it back. I wanted to I wanted to try a bunch of MagSafe accessories with it. I made a video about it. Yes. All MagSafe accessories work with it.
Stephen Robles:That's the bottom line. I also tried the 100 x zoom. You know, uses AI to basically remake the photo. It was fine. You know, when I took my my son was actually playing around with it more than I was, and he was taking pictures of, like, things on the wall, like, the room.
Stephen Robles:And it was pretty interesting when there was text in the whatever he was taking a picture of, Google's AI in the 100 x zoom would, like, over sharpen it. And sometimes it would be, like, even sharper in the photo than it is on the wall. Like, I have this one wall art that's like a map, and so it has, like, Atlantic Ocean or whatever. And, like, the font is a little you know, it's not super clear. It's it's a painting, basically, canvas.
Stephen Robles:And so he would took a picture of it with a 100 x zoom from across the room, and, like, it just sharpens that text right up, and it makes it, like, fun you know, like a digital text almost. I was like, okay. That's not a real representation, but I see what it's doing. And then I had a pool floaty that I took a picture of. And when something has, like, hard lines and shapes, like a pool floaty, like, it's basically like an illustration, type thing, hardens and sharpens all those lines, and it looks very clear.
Stephen Robles:But if you do other things like a person, which it won't Google said it won't, like, AI generate a person. So if you try to do people from a long distance, it won't, like, try to make somebody. But if you do something like an eye, like, if you he did a 100 x zoom on my on my eye, it starts looking really weird. And it's not it's not really a useful, AI improvement. And I took one of, like do I have a eve outdoor camera on a barn in the backyard.
Stephen Robles:And so I tried doing the 100 x zoom. It didn't really improve it very much. It wasn't like, oh, wow. I could see that camera crystal clear now. It was like trying to it looked like AI generated imagery, honestly, a lot of times when it was, like, nondescript objects.
Stephen Robles:So I don't know. You know, maybe if you were taking a picture of a landmark and you get a better photo or, you know, you're in San Francisco, you take a picture of the bridge from the 100 x zoom and it sharpens a little bit. I don't know if that's something people want, but I don't know. I'm sending it back. That's that's that's that's my
Jason Aten:only thought.
Stephen Robles:It's fine.
Jason Aten:Oh, that's that's that's a good review.
Stephen Robles:Thank
Jason Aten:you. That's really helpful for the people who weren't gonna buy one anyway. I think
Stephen Robles:Thank you.
Jason Aten:Here's the thing. Like, it's really hard to come up with the scenarios. Like, Austin Mann or is it he is he the one that does the iPhone reviews every year? Yep. He could probably figure out good uses for this because he's he goes, like, to Iceland or just like, and that's what a 100 x zoom is useful for is, like, landscapes that you want to fill a frame, but you're four miles away.
Jason Aten:Right? Like, those are the types of things that are kind of useful. Also, I think was it on the verge cast where they were talking about using this? And, like, if it in a lot of cases when it encountered text, that the camera just, like, had a stroke and wasn't sure what to do with, like, text characters.
Stephen Robles:It's like Yeah.
Jason Aten:Oh, I'm an LLM. I don't understand words. It's like, wait. Actually, that's supposed to be the thing you understand the most.
Stephen Robles:Know. You just said words to me. What are you talking about? But yeah.
Jason Aten:Right.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It's it's not great. So anyway, that's that's mine. I I every year, always wonder, like, maybe I should make a I switched from iPhone to Google. But here's the thing.
Stephen Robles:It would never be an honest video because the moment that I sit down and wanna control my Apple TV, I have to reach for my iPhone. Because I just, by default, control my Apple TV from my iPhone. Or if I wanted to, like, control part of my smart home, I would have to break out my iPhone. Like, there's so many parts of the ecosystem that just does not allow and you could say it's lock in or whatever, but there's just so many moments in a day where there's so much friction to try to say, I exclusively used an Android phone for a week. It's just not yeah.
Stephen Robles:It's not tenable.
Jason Aten:I did that. I switched to Windows and Android for a week so I could write an article. Okay. And it was fine. It was totally fine.
Jason Aten:I had a Surface Pro seven and a Google Pixel three a at the that's how long ago this was. Wow. And not even, like, a 10 like, not even a pro. Nothing like that. Now to be fair, like, a Pixel three a compared to whatever my iPhone was, I think it was, like, an 11 pro at the time.
Jason Aten:Not a fair comparison. But other than, like, Ulysses, which is my writing app
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Pretty much everything else I was able to have a comparable substitute on on a Windows PC on the surface. But I still it did I was real happy to go back for a lot of the same reasons that you're describing. Like, everything else in my life is Mac oriented.
Stephen Robles:Well and, you know, I I set up the phone with everything. I put my Slack, my email, all my social media apps, like and it's all that stuff works great. Like, I could use all that on an Android phone just as well as an iPhone, but then I'll try I will wanna copy something that I copy on my Mac and paste on my phone, and then, like, it's game over already. Like, I can't do that with the Pixel. And there was even something I was trying to figure out how to send something to the Pixel phone.
Stephen Robles:And I was like, I guess the easiest way is to email it to myself. Because I looked up, like, the hacky airdrop apps that you can get on Android, and there are apps that kinda do it, but you need to install something on your computer or whatever. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, I'm out. I'm sorry. I just I'm not not doing this.
Stephen Robles:And, yeah, that's all I got. But anyway
Jason Aten:You know, it's not gonna be worth the views.
Stephen Robles:It's just not
Jason Aten:worth the views.
Stephen Robles:It's not gonna get a of views, and it would not be totally yeah. Anyway, let's talk about another app that's not great. The Instagram app on iPad. They finally launched it fifteen years after Instagram came out. We now have, quote, unquote, an official Instagram iPad app.
Stephen Robles:Jason wrote an article. It'll be in the show notes. It's not what anyone asked for, and I could not agree more. I have it on my iPad here. First of all, you open the app.
Stephen Robles:And for a second first of all, if you already had the Instagram app installed, like the iPhone version, you just update the current one. This is not like a different app. The same Instagram app. When I first opened it, was like, wait a minute. This first of all, it just looks like the two x version of the old Instagram iPhone app, just formatted slightly better.
Stephen Robles:Two, it defaults to Reels, not a feed. You don't get the feed like you have in the Instagram iPhone app. It just goes straight to Reels. You have to go to this little, like, person
Jason Aten:People. Yeah. It's like a totally different
Stephen Robles:The difference.
Jason Aten:Steven, I'm sorry. I shouldn't start because I have so many feelings about this.
Stephen Robles:I just wanna say one other thing, and then, yeah, tell me all your feelings. Talking about if you wanna use the the screen real estate of an iPad effectively, don't do stupid things like this. This is your notifications view in Instagram. There is an entire half of this screen not being used, and there's nothing you can put there. It's like, what is this?
Stephen Robles:This is literally just the iPhone with, like, your activity on one side, and that's and that's it. And then if you go into let's see. Will it actually rotate? Look at this. If you rotate it into landscape, this is such a waste of space.
Stephen Robles:This is not even like, a third of the screen is the app, and this is all blank. What what who thought this was a good idea?
Jason Aten:Nobody thought it was Steven, this is a spite app. Sure. They do not they it's like, fine. You guys are gonna make us make this eventually. And, you know, the crazy okay.
Jason Aten:First of all, this is a terrible app, and it's a terrible Instagram experience. And the reason it's a terrible app is that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which owns Instagram, is like, fine. If we're gonna make an app, we're not gonna actually make an Instagram app. We're gonna make a Reels app, and we'll put some of the other Instagram stuff in there because the only thing we care about is Reels. Why?
Jason Aten:Because TikTok. Right. We don't want you going to TikTok. Here's the thing. Like, first of all, people are not using TikTok on their iPad to my knowledge, really.
Jason Aten:Like, it's an iPhone app. Right? And but Instagram as a brand is a photo sharing app. I understand that probably the data would show most of the content uploaded to Instagram is not photos, and that's fine.
Stephen Robles:It's real.
Jason Aten:Like, I'm I accept that. But in concept, it is still like the app that started as a photo sharing.
Stephen Robles:The icon is still like a camera. Like the original
Jason Aten:Yeah. Exactly. And it's and the people who have been asking for an iPad app for more than a decade know it as a photo sharing app and wanted an Instagram app be on the iPad because it would be a much better experience for looking at photos on their iPad. Now here's the thing. I know that when I open my my Instagram feed on my iPhone, okay, there's a photo.
Jason Aten:There's an ad. There's another ad. There's another ad. There's then I see reels suggested, and then there's another ad. Like and then there's oh, that's a person I actually know.
Jason Aten:So, like Right. The feed is already garbage. That's fine. But opening automatically to Reels is not what people were asking for. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And the only reason they're doing it is they're like, well, we have to I think, Steven, without question, that if we don't boycott this app, this is gonna come to the iPhone. The the next version of the Instagram app on the iPhone is gonna be this.
Stephen Robles:You're probably right.
Jason Aten:A 100%. They're just
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:Soft launching the fact that when you open your iPhone soon in the future, it's going to be default reels because that's what they want you to do because they don't want you going to TikTok. Shoot. And it's like
Stephen Robles:You're right.
Jason Aten:I just feel like you shouldn't have made the iPad app then. You just shouldn't have done it. Because, Steven, I'm looking at this right now. First of all, I don't know where this reel is from. Oh, it's making noise.
Jason Aten:Stop. Why are the icon like, the home icon should mean the same thing on your iPhone and on the iPad.
Stephen Robles:That's a yeah. That's a great It
Jason Aten:shouldn't mean the same thing. You should not have created a new icon just to see what's in the home feed on the iPhone. And then you have like
Stephen Robles:because there's no reels there's no reels icon on the iPad app like there is on the iPhone. Like on the iPhone Right.
Jason Aten:It's just the home icon. It's like, wait. But on the I on the iPad, if I wanna get to what I normally would see, you have to tap something else. And guess what? You can't change
Stephen Robles:What's default?
Jason Aten:What's defaulted to the home.
Stephen Robles:Well, to see the so bad. To see the people or to see the feed, you have to click this people tab, which to me does not signify a feed.
Jason Aten:No. That should be like my followers that I or something like I don't know what that's supposed to mean. It's kind of like the people app, people icon on the Vision Pro.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:You're like, what does
Stephen Robles:this do? These are people.
Jason Aten:What is this?
Stephen Robles:And also, the reason why people wanted this for so long, like you were saying, the original intent was photography, and this app does nothing for photography in Instagram. And I'll give an example. I'm gonna say friend of the show because I interviewed him twice on the Apple Insider show. Maybe we'll have him one day on primary tech. This is Austin Mann's Instagram account on the iPad.
Stephen Robles:One, there's a huge white space here on the edge of the app. Why? Why didn't we use this space to show photos? And the photos are cropped in that still weird vertical, like, three to five or whatever that aspect ratio is. So you don't even see more photos on the Instagram app.
Stephen Robles:And also, like, I can't even view the photos in a nice way, like, Like, look how big the screen is.
Jason Aten:In in and also, even if you open them in the feed, like, if you go in and you look at them
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:Look at how small the photos are comparative to the space that's available. What is happening?
Stephen Robles:And So, Steven,
Jason Aten:they just didn't want us to have an iPad app. It's like you can't have nice things. But if you're going to make us give you nice things, we're gonna do something different from what you asked for. And the truth is, probably a lot of people will just get over it, and then they bring it to the iPhone.
Stephen Robles:That will be unfortunate, to be real. Because honestly, I already see a bunch of Reels in my home feed. And as a creator, when you post a Reel, you can choose whether or not to put it in the feed. I think you get more exposure and views when you just do that by default. So a lot of my home tab is already feeds and not and not photos, which is unfortunate.
Stephen Robles:But even, like, even the Reels experience, it's not great. I mean, there's just so much, like, white border and and wasted space around this. I don't know.
Jason Aten:And when you go to when you open the app and it defaults to the home feed, which is all Reels, it's got a black background. But then when you go to people, it switches to white. It's almost like it's trying to make it worse for you to look at. It's like they're this is very clear what their priorities are. Their priorities are not what their users' priorities are, which I think is just bonkers that they just
Stephen Robles:yeah. That's bizarre.
Jason Aten:It's like
Stephen Robles:black on the home tab.
Jason Aten:It's so stark. I know. It's so stark and it's, like, terrible. So, there one of two things is gonna happen. This is gonna be what we get on the iPhone, or we get to look forward to one of those very thoughtful and contemplative posts on Instagram from Adam Messieri talking talking about why they did this.
Jason Aten:And we've heard your feedback, and we understand how you feel.
Stephen Robles:They understand how you feel and do not care one either.
Jason Aten:Literally couldn't care less. It's like, we'll talk about this in the in the bonus content about the Elon Musk ads thing. It's like they found a knob and they realized they could just keep turning it up and no one will stop using the app.
Stephen Robles:That is wow.
Jason Aten:It's a spite app, Steven.
Stephen Robles:It is a spite app after fifteen years and it stinks.
Jason Aten:I know. If we did titles based on that, spite app would have to be the title of
Stephen Robles:the title. Was just thinking a second ago how I'm going to title this episode, and I don't know how strong
Jason Aten:Instagram releases the spite app.
Stephen Robles:Well, I was curious how, what our tolerance was for strong language in a title. I don't know if we wanna say Instagram's iPad app sucks. Is that is that too strong?
Jason Aten:Instagram's spite iPad app. I don't know. But I I mean, my my headline for my article was they finally gave us an iPad app. It's not what anyone asked for.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I mean, that's yeah. That is true. Oh, man. Okay.
Stephen Robles:Well, we'll talk about the title talk about the title afterwards. This bleep. I'll maybe I'll put bleep.
Jason Aten:This bleeping app.
Stephen Robles:Instagram's iPad app bleeps. But people won't know. People won't know what that means. Anyway, it's not great, but I think this is the future that we have. All right.
Stephen Robles:Let's say AI news. Anthropic had another funding round. Anthropic are the makers of Claude, which I've been using or did use more often trying to make my app. Oh, I should've put my little blog post in here to talk about how I failed how I failed to make a a podcast app. I'll I'll pull it up real quick.
Stephen Robles:Anyway, Anthropic, they have another funding round. They completed a funding round of $13,000,000,000, which now the company has a $183,000,000,000 valuation. And so, yeah, they're going for it. I think when it comes to code, Anthropic has really kind of positioned themselves as the go to LLM for that. And so yeah.
Stephen Robles:And I tried it too. It was pretty good.
Jason Aten:I mean, Claude's fine. I use it for some things. I actually find that there are some instances where I prefer it to chat GBT. In my case, I'm not talking about building defunct apps that were probably never gonna work because it was more than just an interface on a phone. It was gonna require a lot of other things.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Was almost no. It wasn't close to work. I'll be honest. It wasn't even close.
Jason Aten:But, I think that I think it's good though that there are a couple of options, right, that are, like, real options. I mean, I know that there's also Grock. I understand that in some cases, Grok is really useful. I do still find it hard to take it seriously.
Stephen Robles:Downloaded Grok because I actually made a video that just published about the 10 AI apps I use every day. And I had tried Grock for little bit to see, like, would I actually use this for any context? And one, I just felt like I didn't have room for it. Like, I used Chateappity for a few use cases specifically. I use Perplexity now for, like, my searching, and I use Comet for, like, two or three tasks every day.
Stephen Robles:And I just didn't really have a place to use Grok, and I asked it for a couple, like, video title and description ideas. Like, I do chat chippy tea, and I wasn't crazy about the answers. And so I was like, alright. Well, no. I'm not gonna use it.
Jason Aten:Well, you know, here's an interesting thing, though, because in some ways, like and there are actually a couple things I'll use Gemini for. Mostly, if it's, like, something super long and I wanted to summarize it because it has by far the largest, I think, token window, like, that it'll accept the most stuff. So there are some things I'll use Gemini for. And Gemini's fine except for I forget about it because I don't have a Gemini app on my computer.
Stephen Robles:If there was a Gemini Mac app, it would be a big difference, honestly.
Jason Aten:It would be a big difference. You're right. If I have to open it and go to gemini.com or whatever. But I have realized that the killer application for these things is that they you can have them remember everything. And if you are doing certain tasks in different places, that falls apart.
Jason Aten:And this happened for me just yesterday. I took the transcript from that ad thing. That's the best way I can describe it. I put it in, and I I read I was reading through the transcript, but as I was reading through it, I asked ChatGPT, give me the highlights of this. And it literally responded saying, you'll find this important.
Jason Aten:Oh. Because it knows what I've written before, and it knows what research I've done before. Yeah. And I've even started doing this thing where I will just copy the cop the text of articles that I produce, I'll just, like, remember this, and I just put it in there. And because sometimes what I'll do is I'm like, I need to work in the four things that X just announced, but I don't want to write that.
Jason Aten:So I'll be like, give me a paragraph that just explains the four things that they just announced or something like that. And I usually have to tweak it, but I'm like, I don't need to create that piece of it from from scratch. And it by giving it all of my stuff, it it remembers. You know? Or I can literally ask it right now, what would be the best thing I should eat for lunch?
Jason Aten:And it remembers all the conversations we had about health stuff.
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Right. But if I was having some little place don't go to Cracker Barrel. It does tell me that Cracker Barrel is a bad idea no matter what the logo is.
Stephen Robles:That's right. Sorry.
Jason Aten:But my point is, like, it remembers these things, and it will tailor its answers based on what it knows that you prefer. But if you were doing just certain tasks in different places, then you're you're you're kinda diluting that effect.
Stephen Robles:That is true. That is a I that's why I still lean on ChatGPT. And, also, the most my most AI usage happens within Shortcuts, and all of that is through ChatGPT. So I still have a majority of things there, but I have defaulted now to Perplexity for search, and that has been a really good experience. I'll talk about it in the video.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway, I'm also gonna put a link to my short little blog post talking about my failed effort at making a podcast app. And, basically, I tried to do it. I tried using ChatGPT five at first, and then I basically got to a point where I would tell ChatGPT five the errors because the build for the app would keep failing, and it wouldn't fix them. Like, I I kept saying, like, hey. Can you fix these errors?
Stephen Robles:And it would be like, no problem. I got it. And then I would try to build again, and I would get the exact same errors. And I'm like, something funky is happening here, and I it's not doing what it thinks it's doing. And I I told it to go file by file, error by error, and I was supposed to just get the same errors.
Stephen Robles:And so then I switched to Claude. I even ended up I I don't know if I said this on the show last week. I ended up playing paying for Claude Max because I Woah. I hit my token limit. I'd never done that before, but I hit my token limit.
Stephen Robles:And so I didn't pay for the $200 a month. I just couldn't swallow that. So I paid for the $100, and I got a month of Claude Max. And Claude was able to fix the errors, allow me to finally build and run the app again in the simulator. And you could see here, like, in the Xcode beta seven of Xcode 26, you can actually sign in with your Anthropic account now and use Claude in this dedicated window in Xcode.
Stephen Robles:Like, you don't need to have the Mac app off to the side or use the ChatGPT work with this app. Like, it's literally built right into Xcode and had access to all your files, and it can just jump around and make changes across multiple files, which may or may not be dangerous. And in my case, it I found, like, it was just not it was just not working, and it wasn't telling me, like, how to fix it. And so this was as far as I got, Jason. I got the podcast app to a place where I could follow our show, and it pulled some episodes, but it was like not the recent episodes, nor was it the full list of episodes, nor could I play an episode, nor could I go into an episode to see the episode details.
Stephen Robles:And if I try to follow another show, it would fail. So I
Jason Aten:was Also the date of those episodes appears to be the date that it pulled them in, not the date that they were published.
Stephen Robles:Jason, here's the thing. I have discovered that when you make it an app that seems on the face of it like, oh, a podcast app. All it has to do is check the RSS feed, pull in the episodes, download it, and you just play it. Right? No, Jason.
Stephen Robles:Every little detail, you have to tell the app to do the thing. Yeah, you have to tell it.
Jason Aten:Yes, that is how software works. I'm not a developer, Listen, and I know
Stephen Robles:I know that, and everyone probably knows that, but until you actually start getting in there and being like, No, listen. When I refresh this page, I want you to pull the episodes in reverse chronological order, put this information in the list. I want it to have a play button. I want it so when you tap it, it actually shows it, like, every single thing. And I would go through that process with Claude, and it still just would not like, I could never get an episode to actually play.
Stephen Robles:Like, it would it would load and it would anyway, I wrote a little thing. I'll put the link into it. I'd I'm calling it right now. I'm I'm pressing pause. I'm not gonna keep trying building that.
Stephen Robles:It is a sunk cost fallacy situation. And so I'm not and shout out to
Jason Aten:Also also, there are good podcast players out there.
Stephen Robles:Well, but here and here's the but here's the thing. This is why there's so many task apps and note taking apps and calendar apps because everyone's brain works a little bit differently. And while there are so many amazing podcast apps out there and I shout out Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro, Newcast, Q, Fountain, GoodPods, Apple Podcasts, I shout them all out in the blog post. Like, they're all amazing apps. And now that I've tried to build one, even more amazing.
Stephen Robles:Like, that they all work and that they're all good and that they're reliable and they sync across your devices. Like, it is astounding to me. But there is still a place, like, in my heart of hearts where I'm like, I still would love a podcast app that's a little different than all the ones that are already out there. Because I used I set up Pocket Casts again when I was trying the Pixel 10 Pro, and I was like, man, I really love the customization options and the up next queue in Pocket Cast. It's just the best up next queue that's rock solid.
Stephen Robles:It syncs the best. Your play position, Pocket Cast syncs better than Apple Podcast. It's just rock solid even across my Android phone, my iPhone, and my Mac. And so it's like, I love that up next queue in Pocket Cast. Apple Podcast doesn't have it.
Stephen Robles:But I really love the design of Apple Podcasts, the way it displays show art, the now playing page, the transcript view. I love the UI and how that looks. And so I want both. I want an app that looks as good as Apple Podcasts with all the functionality and the rock solid syncing of Pocket Cast with that up next to you, and that app doesn't exist. And that's what I thought I could create, which I I can't run.
Stephen Robles:I can't. And neither can Claude or Chatuchibi Tea right now.
Jason Aten:You know what's actually a good podcast app? When you are in a show and look listening to episodes, There's a lot of things I don't like about it, but the interface of Spotify is actually a pretty good podcast app.
Stephen Robles:It's gotten much better surprisingly. And, it doesn't cut off.
Jason Aten:I don't it philosophically because it's using its own thing and it's streaming it separately and all this kind of stuff. But but there it is kinda useful in in in some ways. You can you can create playlist with podcasts in ways. And, like, if you're already using Spotify for I don't actually pay for Spotify anymore. We had that whole conversation.
Jason Aten:We're just an Apple Music household now. But there are times when what it does well better than almost any of the other ones. This happens to me every month. I don't know why. I probably should email about it.
Jason Aten:But every month, my Strathecari subscription turns off auto renew. So it expires that I just stopped getting emails and podcasts in the show feed, and I'm like, I don't know why. Like, no matter how many times I say auto renew, it just turns off. And then it unsubscribes me from emails. Every time I go into the interface, the stratechery.com and log in and everything, oh, you've unsubscribed from emails.
Jason Aten:I'm like, I have not unsubscribed from emails. I promise. And then it's like auto renew is turned off, and I'm like, oh, so my subscription lapsed. So then I go and I resubscribe, and then I try to, like, have the shows refresh. Yeah.
Jason Aten:And it doesn't and it, like, takes forever. Podcast is like, I don't I don't know. You're not getting these episodes, and I'll try to add it again. I'll try to add it to Apple Podcast. The one place where it happens seamlessly every single time, Spotify, instantly.
Stephen Robles:That's what that's interesting. And I I will give Spotify and literally every other podcast app credit because Apple Podcasts still doesn't understand how to parse paragraph spacing. What what is this if you're not if you're not watching? This is the our our show notes in Apple Podcasts, and there is just insane space, like, in between paragraphs. And I don't do any funny formatting either.
Stephen Robles:Like, I'm literally just using, I don't even use header things anymore. I just try to space things evenly, and Apple Podcast just refuses to display the show notes properly. Whereas Pocketcasts Yep. Show notes look wonderful. The bold, the links.
Stephen Robles:Pocketcasts. This is this is why I thought there was still room for another podcast app, but it will not be made by me because because I don't know how to do that.
Jason Aten:Your best bet is to just keep finding bugs to Apple and have them make theirs better. I'm still waiting for the bug I planted about the fact that it strips chapters out of the member episodes. I'm hoping that that happens.
Stephen Robles:It's not a bug. They know they know it. They they know that I complain listen. I literally see someone from the Apple Podcast team at every podcast conference. And every time I see him, I say, hey.
Stephen Robles:Chapters, subscriber audio, WTF. And he's like, yeah. We know. We know.
Jason Aten:But the weird thing is when I so, like, I had a conversation recently with the product manager for Apple Podcasts, not a PR person, but actual product. And and he's like, I didn't know that that was a thing. I guess we should look into that.
Stephen Robles:As as we will discuss in the bonus episode later, sometimes people within companies, they don't, communicate clearly or
Jason Aten:They don't talk.
Stephen Robles:They don't they don't talk. Alright. We still have so much to get to. We gotta talk about Apple's AI powered search powered by Google that might be coming in the future and how ChatGPT saved Google from selling Chrome quite literally. And so, yeah, we're gonna get into into all of that, but I wanna thank our sponsor for today, which is Insta three sixty and the camera they launched, the Insta three sixty Go Ultra.
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Stephen Robles:Look how small this thing. Love this thing. So cool. I I don't have one. I kinda wanna get one.
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Stephen Robles:We gotta we gotta try lightning around some of these, although I don't know how we're gonna do it, but we're gonna try. So I wanted to get your thoughts on the remarkable paper pro move. Because you you things down still. I know you do it even while we're recording a podcast while
Jason Aten:you I do.
Stephen Robles:Take notes. And this is like a phone size Remarkable.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I want this. I so I'm currently using the the remarkable paper pro, which is big. Right?
Stephen Robles:It's very big.
Jason Aten:It's this thing. Yeah. And I like it. It's great. It's color.
Jason Aten:It's there's lot things I like about it. I'm just having a hard time figuring out, like, carrying this and an iPad and a MacBook Pro. Like, it gets a lot. You know? But this other thing, the remarkable paper pro move would be fantastic.
Jason Aten:I did reach out to them because I'm like, you know, you sent me this one, and then you just announced this other one. New one. Thanks for the heads up. But so I'm hoping to maybe try it out. But this, I would I would absolutely use this.
Jason Aten:Like, I could see this replacing paper for me in some ways. I do love being able to write down on paper, but I think this would be the thing I would wanna So it's just this miniaturized version of the Paper Pro. And the I think the main drawback to it is you can't use a keyboard, but that's fine.
Stephen Robles:But, I mean, that size of device, you know Correct.
Jason Aten:You don't yes. If you're what are you doing if you're trying to attach a keyboard to something the size of a small notepad? Because even an iPad mini, it's like, what are you doing attaching a keyboard?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. This is a picture of it in hand. It's a nice portable size. I mean, this would be great for travel. And Yeah.
Stephen Robles:If you like the the Moleskine or the FieldNotes style notebooks, I think they're going after them. I've I see a lot of people talk about Remarkables, especially on YouTube. I've I've never tried one because I don't typically handwrite stuff, but I don't know if it's cool.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It is. It's cool.
Stephen Robles:Very cool.
Jason Aten:I'm looking forward to it.
Stephen Robles:Alright. Apple, Mark Gurman is saying that it is rumored they're gonna come out with AI search sometime in the future. As with Gurman, it's, you know, maybe it's next year, maybe it's years from now. But they're trying to do a version of Dingus, the voice assistant, that has world knowledge answers, and it's possible that it will be powered by Google Gemini. Supposedly, Google and Apple are in talks to put Gemini in to power this AI model to do this search.
Stephen Robles:And this is just like, fine, I guess. I mean, I I wonder how much Apple is still putting in efforts to build its own LLMs to do this kind of stuff rather than be dependent on and maybe this is a stopgap. Use Google Gemini until they do finally build their own. But man, Apple Siri search powered by Gemini? Okay.
Stephen Robles:I guess.
Jason Aten:I mean, I don't think that's gonna be the marketing name.
Stephen Robles:No, that will not be the marketing name. No. It would be an LLM running on Apple servers, and so they'll have privacy and security benefits from that or whatever. But I don't know. I guess it's still and there was also news this week.
Stephen Robles:I didn't put a link to it, but several other AI team members on Apple left to go to OpenAI and Meta earlier this week. So, I mean, I don't know who's on the team anymore. I don't know how big that team was, but it's definitely smaller than it was a few months ago. So
Jason Aten:Yeah. And I don't I've said it before. I don't know that Apple should be trying to make its own flagship LLM, you know, Frontier LLM. I I'm not sure that that's the best and I think Apple could be very, very, very good at it except for that they make the iPhone, and that's their top priority. And so what they should be thinking of is how do we make the iPhone better?
Jason Aten:And it takes all I mean, like, it takes a lot to do what Google is doing, what OpenAI is doing, what Anthropic is doing. It takes a lot first of all, it just takes a lot of NVIDIA GPUs. A thing that Apple is probably not gonna spend, you know, dollars 40,000,000,000 on is Nvidia GPUs considering they won't even put them in their computers anymore. Right? Like they're not buying Nvidia GPUs.
Jason Aten:And so I don't know. I think finding the right partners is probably for them the way to go.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You're probably right. And also all the
Jason Aten:And they've already partnered with Google. Like they have the search deal. They like, they already are it's like working with someone that they're comfortable working with because they're not a startup. They are a big company and Google should be better. They should be better than they are, but they should be better at this than anybody.
Stephen Robles:And that was specifically for, like, a world answers type assistant. So I I guess it still leaves room for there to be, like, Apple's own assistant powered for, like, the semantic index and all the personalized stuff that they promised that has still not been delivered. So we'll see. But, also, with the Google news, this was big. So the Department of Justice case and Google had been going on.
Stephen Robles:There was a possibility they would have to divest Chrome and all of that. But US district judge Amit Mehta has said Google does not have to sell Chrome, and so they are safe for now. And the reasoning, I think, is pretty fascinating. Why don't they have to sell Chrome? It's because there's more competition.
Stephen Robles:Jason had the article ChatGPT just saved Google from having to sell Chrome. Basically, the judge was like, actually, since this case began, which I didn't realize it began in 2020. Yep. So it's like a five year old case since that which makes sense because since 2020, the competition has risen. And the judge was saying now that ChatGPT and other AI models are people are going to those for search results.
Stephen Robles:Google now has more competition than ever. And so now it doesn't have to sell Chrome. It doesn't have to it does have it can still do the deal with Apple. So they can continue paying Apple $20,000,000,000 a year to be a search engine on iPhone. But help me with the details.
Stephen Robles:It doesn't have to be an exclusive deal.
Jason Aten:Well, they're forbidden from having exclusive deals. So, like, in the case of the Apple search deal, like, Apple is paying I mean, excuse me. Google is paying Apple to be the default search engine. So they're actually paying for placement, which means no one else can be the default Right. Search engine.
Jason Aten:You you can set whatever search engine you want, but, like, the one that comes out of the box is Google. But what Google is actually paying for is the traffic that that comes from that. So, like, so whenever you use Safari and you go to Google and you do a search and you click on an ad and Google makes some money and then they funnel part of that money to Apple. It's a traffic acquisition cost. So Google can keep paying for that.
Jason Aten:Right? They can keep paying Apple money for the traffic that comes through. What they can't pay for is the that they're doing that in return for being the default exclusion of anyone else. So they can't have an exclusive contract. They can continue to now why would Google do that?
Jason Aten:Why would Google keep paying for traffic coming from Apple? Well, one, because it's an incentive for Apple to not make its own search engine. Right?
Stephen Robles:Right.
Jason Aten:Two, it's an incentive for Apple to not take money from Microsoft or DuckDuckGo or Ecosia or any of the Akagi or any
Stephen Robles:of those other default because that's not the precise
Jason Aten:deal. So that'll be an interesting thing. Like, will there have to be a choice screen? Will there have to be like, I'm not sure. I'm not the lawyer.
Jason Aten:I don't this is first of all, Google's appealing the liability part of this trial. There was two parts. There was a liability part where they were found to be a monopoly in violation of antitrust. Then they had a wow. Then they had the remedies trial, and then this is that's what this part was.
Jason Aten:This is the solution. Google's appealing the first part, which is we're no. No. No. No.
Jason Aten:No. We're not a monopoly. And, honestly, this result could help them. Right? It's like people are using AI.
Jason Aten:We're not a monopoly kind of a thing. So I don't know how that's gonna turn out. If that if that gets overturned, the remedies don't matter. Right? Like, because you can't you can't be punished for a thing that appeals court then said you didn't actually do.
Jason Aten:So we'll we'll see how that part of it turns out, but Google, like, was facing huge potential remedies for this. Right. And they I think they got off pretty well. The one thing I think Google is super not happy about is they are going to be required to share certain data, and that data includes the search index.
Stephen Robles:Right. And that could be used by other potential search engines or people trying to make it. This is Right.
Jason Aten:Because they're correctly like, currently sorry. Okay. Like, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, a lot of those, they just use Bing. Right? There's really two search engine indexes that are, like, out there in Google and Bing, and Bing will license theirs.
Jason Aten:You could you and I this is what you should have done with Claude. You should have just made a search engine because you could just license the data from Microsoft. They'll just let you do that. Right. Google will now be required to do that.
Stephen Robles:So the DOJ had asked Google to stop the practice of, quote, compelled syndication, I'm reading from a CNBC article right now, which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. And then the DOJ said in a press release, the court's ruling today recognizes the need for remedies that will pry open the market for general search services, and the ruling also recognizes the need to prevent Google from using the same anticompetitive tactics for its Gen AI products. It also says Apple stock rose 4% on Tuesday after hours because Yeah. Google can
Jason Aten:because people thought it was gonna be worse. They were worried. Like, this is good news. It's not the greatest of news for Apple. You know, the greatest news would be, like, just the whole thing gets overturned on appeal or whatever.
Jason Aten:But this could have been a lot worse because they could have said Google which I think the judge probably was thinking, we could order that Google stop paying for traffic acquisition cost, and he even said this, but that only hurts other companies. It doesn't hurt Google. It actually makes it better for Google because it's now cheaper for them to do the thing that they're doing anyway.
Stephen Robles:Right? True.
Jason Aten:So it did not go that far. What he said is it cannot be an exclusive contract.
Stephen Robles:Right. So interesting. No chance then that someone is going to buy Chrome because it's not gonna have to be up for sale. And
Jason Aten:this Right.
Stephen Robles:This was your other article. I think we've we have the most of your articles in the show notes today.
Jason Aten:Well, this one was an old article.
Stephen Robles:It was an old article.
Jason Aten:Are you talking about the Perplexity one?
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I have a couple weeks old.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I'm just saying I called this. It's never gonna happen.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Perplexity is not
Jason Aten:gonna They're and even if Google had been forced to sell it, OpenAI for sure would have bought it before Perplexity could have even, like, woken up, gotten out of bed, and gotten to the bargaining table. Like, OpenAI would've, like, shooom. Because what do you think they're raising all that money for? Like, they have so much
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. They have
Jason Aten:so much more money.
Stephen Robles:So much money. But yeah. So Google doesn't have to sell Chrome. Perplexity's not buying it, and we'll see what happens with the search index data if other search engines can somehow come up. But also with Google, there was some confusion about Google Gmail passwords and what to do with them, and you had to basically issue a correction for the Internet.
Stephen Robles:You had to correct everybody.
Jason Aten:I I tried to help. Yeah. So I tried to do my part, but it was also, like, a useful thing because, okay, the short version of this was there was a sales face Salesforce breach. Google uses Salesforce. It it no Gmail credentials were leaked except for a lot of information about, like, Steven works at this company and here's whatever whatever.
Jason Aten:So, like, people who do phishing attacks could reach out to Steven and be like, this is Google. We see that your Riverside account has been compromised. We need you to click this link and change your password kind of a thing. And you're like, gosh. They know where I work.
Jason Aten:They, like Right. Like, this must be for real. Or they were calling from a 650, which is Mountain View, phone number saying we're Google's tech support and your employer Riverside has asked you to do this thing, and you're like, oh
Stephen Robles:my that link and then you're kidnapped immediately.
Jason Aten:No. But your Gmail account might be. And the problem is, and this is I actually wrote about this almost a year ago. Your email I included this in the article. Your email, though, is usually your pass to everything.
Jason Aten:Right. Right? Yeah. I I did an interview with Cloudflare's chief technology officer who said, like, if you don't have a good password on your email, the rest of your life is pretty much wide open because every single service out there does password reset to your email. Yeah.
Jason Aten:So if they can get to your Gmail account, now they can reset your bank password. They can reset your Twitter password. All these different types of things. And so what I wrote about was just, no. Google didn't issue a blanket warning that everyone should change their Gmail password because it was all breach, which is what some places were suggesting.
Jason Aten:I said, but Google has been telling you for a while you should just stop using a password on your Gmail account Right. And use a passkey instead. Because you know what can't be phished? A passkey. Right?
Jason Aten:Because you you don't even know. You're you're like, there's nothing you even know. The user just authenticates either with face ID or Right. Touch ID or your iPhone or whatever. And, the most important line in this entire thing was that you should never give anyone your password to anything.
Jason Aten:Right. You should definitely not give anyone your Gmail password, especially if someone calls you and pretends to be tech support. You should not give them your password. Even if your son calls you to do tech support, you should not give him your Gmail password. Okay?
Jason Aten:Like, don't ever give out your passwords and even better eliminate. Don't use passwords.
Stephen Robles:But also, Willie, there's just a quick question. So I use and enable passkeys on any account that allows for it. But if a passkey fails for whatever reason, there's always a fallback that you could put in your password to log in, but it usually does require the two factor authentication code. So does enabling a passkey then obfuscate the risk of someone getting your password, or they just put like, companies just also force the two factor if you have pass keys in it. Like, I don't
Jason Aten:Well, what you just described, I'm not sure is accurate because if you were using a pass key instead of a password, there is no fallback to a password. Right? Because the account is only off
Stephen Robles:the Amazon has I set a pass key in Amazon.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:If I go to log in to Amazon and for some reason I don't use my passcode, I can still just put in my password and then my one time password, the six digit code, and then I'm in. And I don't need a passkey.
Jason Aten:See, I wasn't I don't know. Like, I think you might need to turn off the password on that account then for the passkey to be as effective. Right? So because if you're using a passkey, your device is essentially authenticating on your behalf and you've authenticated the device using face ID or touch ID or whatever like that, you don't have any access to the code. So I'm not I don't know for sure how Amazon is doing doing that, but there are devices so, like and maybe this is like a transition thing because there are, like sometimes you log in to an account and it's like, use your we're gonna send you a link, use your authentication code.
Jason Aten:You're like, I need a different way to get in. Right? And even like Maybe that won't always be the case.
Stephen Robles:Maybe that's why. Because even like Best Buy supports pass keys, but also I feel like Best Buy never asks me to authenticate with a pass key. Like I enabled it, but I can like, I'll have to look into maybe just turn off the password option. But, anyway, let us know. If there's any password experts out there or, like, security experts out there, I'll let
Jason Aten:because, like, on my on my Google accounts, the ones that I still have, I don't ever get asked for a password anymore. I only get asked to use a passkey.
Stephen Robles:Alright. I gotta I gotta look up. I'll have get more information on it. If any security ethic is out there, reach out. Let us know.
Stephen Robles:Podcastprimarytech. Fm. So last piece of news before we talk about what to expect the iPhone seventeen event or what we're hoping for, This also news came out this week. Amazon, along with so many other companies like Disney plus and HBO, are cracking down on account sharing. And so October 1, less than a month away, Amazon is gonna end that family setup where you can share Prime with I think it was up to five family members.
Stephen Robles:In this new plan, you'll be able to share it among two adults, but they have to be in the same household, so the same, like, shipping address. And then you can also have kids on that account for, like, your Kindle or other devices. But I know for me, I had my mom sharing my Prime account. I think I had my mother-in-law sharing my Prime account, and then my wife was also in there and me. So those four people, four adults.
Stephen Robles:Well, immediately, my mom is just gonna have to get her own now, my mother-in-law as well. I'll be able to keep me and my wife on it because we have the same shipping address. But, basically, I mean, this is another, like, Amazon trying to just get more subscriptions, trying to increase the service revenue, increase recurring revenue. But, yeah, you won't be able to share with as many people anymore.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Two things. One, it's only $14.99 for an entire year for the first year.
Stephen Robles:Only for the first year. It's full paid subscription after.
Jason Aten:But it's still fifth only $15 for a year. Like, fine. You can push this one off for a while.
Stephen Robles:Push it off for a year. Yeah.
Jason Aten:Secondly, this is what happens when companies have gotten every single person in the world to subscribe to their thing. Right. And there's no new households to subscribe, and your kid has gone off to college, and they're like, why are we still shipping stuff to them for free? We this is the easiest way to continue to add subscribers. True.
Jason Aten:Also, like, the free shipping thing is real expensive. I see this as different than Netflix, which is like, you're just using the same password and you don't live in the same household, so we are going to shut off your Internet forever and come to your house and unplug all your devices. Like Right. This is a little bit different because, literally, people have to get in a truck and drive them. Right?
Jason Aten:And so I do think that it's more justified for Amazon, and Amazon is actually being super generous. They're basically saying, pay for a month and we'll give you 11 for free. And then, like, that's a pretty soft ramp compared to, like, Netflix, which is like, you gotta pay for it and sign up for the ads version and stuff. Like, at least Amazon's not like, if you pay the $14.99, all of your stuff is gonna come with ads plastered all over it.
Stephen Robles:Right. I need to check my my mom was also on my Netflix account because she watches Korean soap operas. I need to
Jason Aten:Oh, what does she think of k pop demon hunter?
Stephen Robles:Well, she won't she won't watch that because it has the word demon in it. But Come on. You knew you knew that was coming. But she's not she loves she even she's learning some Korean words, but I have to see if she can even log in anymore. She hasn't told me that it's kicked her out yet, but Netflix, they were cracking down on password sharing.
Stephen Robles:Absolutely. Maybe it's because we never opened Netflix at our house that they don't care.
Jason Aten:That's probably why. They think you've moved, actually.
Stephen Robles:That is true. I don't think we've opened it. We haven't finished our season of the crown, and we haven't watched an episode in, like, a year.
Jason Aten:Which does sort of beg the question of, so why are you the one begging you're just a real
Stephen Robles:nice guy. You know? And I when I was traveling, I did there was some show that I downloaded episodes to watch. I mean, I was watching Drive to Survive when I traveled to to to dub dub. But, anyway alright.
Stephen Robles:We had a bunch of listeners reach out what they're hoping for at the iPhone seventeen event, and we'll share our thoughts too. So I actually got some listener audio uploaded some audio clips. This is so fun. This first one, the name they left was Oops. I don't think that was a mistake.
Stephen Robles:I think they did it on purpose. This is not necessarily a question, but they were sharing where they listened to primary technology on their commute. And so here's Oops. The doors are closing. Please stand clear of the doors.
Stephen Robles:They they recorded the BART in San Francisco because that's where they were listening to primary technology.
Jason Aten:I think though that this is a message about the iPhone 17 plus. Oh. The doors are closing if you like the basic plus device because there's no longer gonna be one. The doors are closing.
Stephen Robles:That's
Jason Aten:deep. Step away from those doors because there will no longer be one.
Stephen Robles:That's good. There you go. That was poetic. So that was that was oops. Thanks for that.
Stephen Robles:I also love the idea. I was curious, so I was actually looking up some of our analytics. And we we don't have you don't get a ton of information from podcast downloads of, like, where people are. And it's all based on IP address, so that could also be obfuscated. But it does look like we have a bunch of listeners in New York, specifically, like, the city area and also San Francisco, which makes sense.
Stephen Robles:Makes sense. But I also love the idea that, like, Oops was there listening to primary technology, recorded that audio clip. I mean, then there's a good chance that there's someone else listening to primary technology also on the BART taking a commute every day. I don't know. We need some kind of secret sign or whatever.
Stephen Robles:Maybe we should get maybe we should do pins or something. Maybe that's what I'll make the medieval knight riding a polar bear. I'll make it into a pin.
Jason Aten:And I mean, we do have, like, the battery percentage shirt.
Stephen Robles:No. We got the shirt. We got the shirts. I know, buddy. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. I want something even more discreet, like a secret handshake. Like, I don't know. We'll see.
Jason Aten:The thing about a secret handshake is you have to, like, walk up to someone and do a secret handshake.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. No. You gotta be How
Jason Aten:would you know who to do it?
Stephen Robles:If you would, maybe I'll
Jason Aten:The battery percentage hat is actually quite perfect because everyone who's listening should just buy a battery percentage hat. And when you see another one, you'll know. You'll know they know you know.
Stephen Robles:You can go to primarytech.fm/merch, and you can still get all that stuff. Thanks to basic apple guy. He he designed a low battery stuff. So you can get the low battery. You can get the PTS stuff.
Stephen Robles:But, yeah, you can do the hat. You can get battery percentage off hat right there. That could be your sign. I still wanna make a pin. I kinda wanna make a pin now.
Stephen Robles:But, anyway alright. So this next one, this was actually an audio message. This is from David. Letting us know what he's hoping for for the events. Let's listen from Dave.
David (Listener):Hey, Steven and the other guy, David from Plainsboro, New Jersey. What I'm looking forward most at the Apple event is the iPhone 17 Air. I think the killer feature that nobody's talking about is a plus size phone at the weight of an iPhone 13 Mini. I'm not too worried about losing a camera. I'm a pull the phone out of my pocket, point and click kinda guy, and I'm not worried about a smaller battery.
David (Listener):I have a forty minute commute to work each way. I plug into Apple CarPlay, so I always have a full battery on my phone. Happy birthday to Jason. See, I do know your name. Keep up the great work, guys.
Stephen Robles:That was an awesome message from David.
Jason Aten:That was the best thing that's happened on this podcast.
Stephen Robles:That's what
Jason Aten:I Basically.
Stephen Robles:That's what I say. I would love oh, because he said happy birthday to you?
Jason Aten:Well, both. Just everything. Like
Stephen Robles:I know. Love about that. Yeah. Send him more audio messages. I would love to play him on the show.
Stephen Robles:But I he's excited about the iPhone 17 air, the weight difference, which I do think the ATP guys are talking about this too yesterday. The the 16 pro's a heavy phone. It got heavy. Yeah. You know?
Jason Aten:Yeah. It is. It's heavy.
Stephen Robles:You know, you travel a lot. You're taking your iPhone out on the BART because you're listening to primary technology while you're commuting. I actually I think I am actually excited for the Air. I didn't think I would be, but I'm curious to see what it is. Do you you have any excitement for the air?
Jason Aten:I'm gonna save it till after we get to our listener. Okay. But I think what we should do is after the event, send us questions that you have, audio questions. Yes. That so because we're gonna do another show on Thursday.
Stephen Robles:Right? Yes. Will.
Jason Aten:Yes. So and we'll answer them then.
Stephen Robles:Yes. That's great.
Jason Aten:Okay.
Stephen Robles:That's great. That's great. The link will be in the show notes just from now on. But just because yeah. This is awesome.
Jason Aten:Perfect.
Stephen Robles:Colin from Oregon sent us a a message. Says, Steven and Jason, huge fan of your work. Excited, honestly, for the base 17 model. Question. And, actually, I'm probably gonna upgrade my wife to the base 17 because she's on the she's on the 15.
Stephen Robles:And so this is Colin's question. I have a 15 currently. Should I upgrade to the 17? What are your thoughts? Love the show.
Stephen Robles:Thank you, Colin. Should you upgrade from a 15 to a 17? You know, as always, we have to wait till the phone comes out. So I feel like we should answer this question once we actually know what the main differences are. If you have a 15, correct me if I'm wrong, but you do not have a dynamic island.
Stephen Robles:The 15 was a 15 dynamic island or a notch?
Jason Aten:You you do. You have on the 15, there's a dynamic island. That was the year So it came to that phone,
Stephen Robles:I feel like, as always, it's always like, is it you'll have a camera. You'll get the camera control button if you think that would be beneficial to you. I think that's all we know that the big difference is. Think we have to see what the camera upgrades are gonna be to know how worthwhile it is. You know?
Jason Aten:Yeah. I mean, I don't know if this is a plus or a minus. Apple iPhone 15 doesn't have any Apple Intelligent features because it's running the a 16 bionic. Right? So it is not running, like, literally any.
Jason Aten:Now I don't know that that's super drawback, but you will notice a difference. Like, you're going to get some of those things. You'll get the notification summaries. You'll get some of the other stuff.
Stephen Robles:You'll get cleanup in photos, which is actually a good good feature.
Jason Aten:So, I mean, that could be and you also don't have camera control on the 15.
Stephen Robles:And if you like shortcuts, the Apple listen. Honestly, the reason why I would say Apple Intelligence is if you're into shortcuts and you have use cases for them, the Apple intelligence action in Shortcuts, I think makes a big difference, more reliable than the ChatGPT action. You can use Apple's models or ChatGPT in Apple's Apple intelligence action, and it's actually really good. So
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think I think if you have, like, if you have a 16, it's a slightly more difficult decision to make. Right? I think that if you're coming from a 15 like, I don't know know that I would normally recommend people upgrade just two years. Right?
Jason Aten:I think usually you should be able to make it three years, but I think that the difference between the 15 and the 16, there was enough of a upgrade there that the 17 is gonna just continue to be better. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that the 16, so I would assume that this would continue, is capable of spatial photos and video because they realigned the cameras and you cannot do that. I understand. Like, most people that you'd have to also have a VisionPRO to care.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:But there is something to be said for, like, why don't I want the camera system that will just do the things? And then later in the future, if in a year and a half Apple introduces the Vision Pro Air Max Plus, and I can watch all those videos and it's only $999, maybe I would change.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And that could be you know, one of the things with all the rumors of new iPhones, the what's not in the rumors usually are features or capabilities that Apple launches or announces that you wouldn't know just from seeing the model, like the physical model of the phone. And so maybe, this this is just a wild thought, that they somehow allow you to watch spatial video on an iPhone screen, obviously, not to the immersive nature of a Vision Pro, but with some kind of depth. And the only reason I suggest as much a possibility, you can do a spatial scene on the lock screen using iOS 26 right now on your iPhone 16 or 15. Basically, it will use whatever depth information it can gather to separate subjects from background.
Stephen Robles:And you can create a spatial scene on your lock screen. And it looks kinda cool because you can, like, move the phone around. You see the elements shifting, and it does feel like the static image that you took has depth. And so maybe maybe they allow you to kind of experience spatial video in that way, just on a phone screen as well. Who knows?
Jason Aten:Yeah. The last thing, I think, if I remember correctly, that the 15 still wirelessly charges only up to 15 watts.
Stephen Robles:Correct.
Jason Aten:And the 16 and newer will probably at least be the 25 watts. Right? That is true.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. That is true.
Jason Aten:I can't believe Steven didn't mention that. What are what are we doing?
Stephen Robles:Well, I did a whole video on that. Didn't wanna. Alright. It's Faron sent us a message, said, we'll not be getting an iPhone 17 Air. I got the 16 Pro last year.
Stephen Robles:I always upgrade to a new phone every four years.
Jason Aten:That that's probably smart.
Stephen Robles:That's probably smart and reasonable. Also, that'll feel amazing going from you know, that means he went from a 12 to a 16 Pro. That's pretty good. And that means Yeah. His next phone might be the iPhone 20 if Apple goes through all the numbers, which they never did an iPhone nine, they had an eight and a 10.
Stephen Robles:Do you think, Jason, they're gonna do an iPhone 19?
Jason Aten:I don't think that the fact that they didn't do the nine had anything to do with they don't like the number nine. I think that they were just at the ten year anniversary.
Stephen Robles:Sure.
Jason Aten:And they wanted to release release the iPhone 10. And I think that they wanna release the iPhone 20 on the twentieth anniversary. Don't you think?
Stephen Robles:But then that would be next, well, next year, the it'll be the 2027 because it was announced in 02/2007. So that means we would get the iPhone 18 next year and then the iPhone 20.
Jason Aten:I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe.
Stephen Robles:That's curious.
Jason Aten:Maybe.
Stephen Robles:Well, we'll see. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Maybe they'll release them both.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. It could be
Jason Aten:a release. Did the 10, but although they did the eight and the 10. Right? But, like Right.
Stephen Robles:IPhone 20 could be, like, all screen.
Jason Aten:It's gonna be the iPhone 33. It doesn't like, who knows? It's all these names.
Stephen Robles:Alright. A couple other listener comments. Wayne said, how's it going? Steven Robles and tech journalist Jason Atin said, you're not just the other guy.
Jason Aten:I appreciate it. Yeah. Appreciate it, Wayne.
Stephen Robles:So I was wondering if you think Apple will actually increase the prices for the iPhone with the exception that they they increase the base storage in all iPhones. And also is YouTube premium the best, social media subscription? Well, that's yes. No. No.
Jason Aten:Hey. That wasn't a question. He just said it is. He just said, I believe that it is the best
Stephen Robles:social subscription. We agree.
Jason Aten:Yeah. It's the best thing you can pay for on the Internet, really.
Stephen Robles:That's it.
Jason Aten:No. For real. It just really is.
Stephen Robles:Like I mean, iCloud iCloud's I think iCloud is actually pretty good too because you get the photo backup, device backup.
Jason Aten:But you that part of it? Okay. That's but they're yeah. I still think YouTube preview.
Stephen Robles:It's pretty YouTube preview is pretty good.
Jason Aten:For a thing I experience every day
Stephen Robles:Yeah.
Jason Aten:YouTube premium adds more to the value of my life. Probably in real tangible terms, iCloud is more. Yeah.
Stephen Robles:You just don't But I can see It doesn't you'll see.
Jason Aten:But here's the thing. I could replace iCloud with Google Photos, Dropbox, Fastmail. All things you would have to pay for though? So I'm just saying.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it.
Jason Aten:What could you replace YouTube premium with?
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah.
Jason Aten:You still have the YouTube experience.
Stephen Robles:That is true.
Jason Aten:So it doesn't suck.
Stephen Robles:That is true.
Jason Aten:Anyway, but the question was Pricing. Will they increase the price? Yes.
Stephen Robles:You think they're gonna increase the price? So right now, iPhone six I don't know. IPhone sixteen, seven ninety nine, iPhone 16 plus, $8.99. Both start at one twenty eight gigs of storage, and you can get up to $51,200 for each increase of storage. Oh, no.
Stephen Robles:It's a $200 increase from $2.56 to $5.12. I think they're gonna keep this is my prediction. They're gonna make the iPhone 17 the same price, $7.99. The iPhone 17 Air will be $9.99. So they'll increase the plus right now is $900.
Stephen Robles:The iPhone 17 air will be a thousand bucks.
Jason Aten:But that's the price of the pro. Right?
Stephen Robles:The price of the pro starts at $9.99.
Jason Aten:That's what you just said, though.
Stephen Robles:You just said a thousand bucks. The plus is $8.99. I think the iPhone 17 air will be
Jason Aten:the same price as the pro. That's my question. You think that they would release two different phones at the same price. There's no way. They'll 0% chance
Stephen Robles:they might increase the 17 pro price.
Jason Aten:Oh, or people are saying that the air will be more expensive. I think that I think it may be an upgrade. They were saying that the Air will be more expensive than the Pro, and I don't think there's they can't I don't think there's any way that that could make sense that they would make the Air because there's no product lineup where you have an Air and a Pro, and the Air is more like, the MacBook Air is not more expensive than the MacBook Pro, and the iPad Air is not more expensive than the iPad Pro.
Stephen Robles:Although well, that's complicated though because the MacBook Air 15 inch is more expensive. So the 15 inch MacBook Air starts at $11.99. And if you go to MacBook Pro let me see. Where's the buy button? Oh, no.
Stephen Robles:It starts at $15.99. Never mind.
Jason Aten:Yeah. And even if it did, it doesn't matter. The bigger one starts at $24.99.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. You're right. You're right. Yeah. I don't think I think the iPhone Air is gonna be $9.99.
Stephen Robles:They're probably gonna raise the price of the 17 Pro to $10.99 because there's also a gap right here. Right now, the 16 Pro is a thousand. Pro Max is 1,200. So they can move that Pro phone to 1,100 and keep the Pro Max at 1,200 or increase the price of that also. But I do, yeah, I do think they're gonna keep the $17,800 bucks.
Stephen Robles:I don't think they're gonna change that base iPhone 17 from the 16, but they they might increase the Pro. Is that what you think?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I don't and I don't know. Like, the 17 Air is gonna be a like, why is it it's gonna be a worse phone. It's just thinner.
Stephen Robles:The body there's something that looks that different, and that is that thin. I think I think people are gonna go
Jason Aten:It has a worse battery, worse cameras.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Know.
Jason Aten:Same size screen. How how could it it's thinner. How could it possibly be more expensive?
Stephen Robles:Because it's gonna look different. Gonna say it packs the same power and a smaller
Jason Aten:No. But literally, it doesn't. It's a smaller battery and
Stephen Robles:a smaller Well, chip wise. Chip wise, I'm saying. They'll say it'll, you know
Jason Aten:Then the battery life will last even less if it has the same battery or same size. Yeah. Smaller battery and same processor.
Stephen Robles:Well, no. Because if if you have a more powerful processor, then it doesn't have to run as fast, and so you get better battery life.
Jason Aten:It's I don't I'm not sure that that's exactly mean
Stephen Robles:They could but here's the thing.
Jason Aten:They care about performance per watt.
Stephen Robles:Because this year, it'll be the a 19 pro in the pro phones. Right? And the a 19 in the regular. That's
Jason Aten:usually Okay.
Stephen Robles:They could say they put the a 19 pro in the air and say, you get the pro chip, which gets you better battery life, and that's why they say it's more expensive.
Jason Aten:I don't think you get better battery life from the pro chip. I think you get better battery life because the pro max has a bigger battery.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Okay.
Jason Aten:Well, I don't know. I don't think they can charge a thousand dollars for the 17 air. I'm not really I act so this is my thing. I don't know why the 17 air is going to exist.
Stephen Robles:Because no one buys the plus, and the air will drive more sales than a plus size phone.
Jason Aten:Yeah. But think the people who are going to buy, I don't understand why.
Stephen Robles:Don't I know, man. I gotta I'm gonna hold it in hand. Oh, I I should mention this. A friend of mine got the Samsung Galaxy s 25 z Fold seven, and I held it in my hand.
Jason Aten:Words. Okay.
Stephen Robles:I held it in my hand and used it. It is impressively thin. Yeah. That crease still creasing big time. Like, I don't care what anybody says.
Stephen Robles:Like, it's there. The crease is there. Anytime it's off access just a little bit, you see that big old crease, but the phone is still impressively thin. And I think the iPhone 17 Air might get some people just because of how impressively thin it'll be. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Oh, I guarantee you will. I just think that that's a weird decision to spend more money on a phone that's worse overall just because
Stephen Robles:I think it's be worse. We have to see we have to see the event. This I'm gonna I'm gonna mark this clip right here. We should replay this.
Jason Aten:But arguably, it's going to be worse because the battery, by definition, is gonna be worse.
Stephen Robles:Battery life will be worse.
Jason Aten:And think about it. The other they released the 16 e, which has the best battery life of any iPhone
Stephen Robles:right now. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, it just doesn't do much.
Stephen Robles:Our last listener, question, comment. Well, doesn't it doesn't have
Jason Aten:It just sits there.
Stephen Robles:Well, has to have more intelligence. It's got one camera, you know, no dynamic Like,
Jason Aten:I have an original iPhone back there. Has amazing battery life because I never use it.
Stephen Robles:Never well, it does die. But, anyway. Alright. McGuire said, really hoping Apple pulls a surprise out at this event because a switch from iPhone to Pixel after being on an iPhone for seven years is becoming more appealing. Gemini appears to be delivering a lot of things Apple wanted to with Apple intelligence but was forced to push back.
Stephen Robles:I mean, feel you, Maguire. I've seen, or I listened to a lot of the podcasts that talk about the Gemini, whatever that feature is where it would, like, show you information that you're basically talking about pre proactively. So, like, if someone asks you, like, where were we having lunch again? And it just, like, pops that up in the text message conversation so you can just send it. Those things are cool.
Stephen Robles:I don't know. Do you think we'll see the semantic index, like, in the next year?
Jason Aten:I don't know. I will say for McGuire, like, first of all, if you're thinking of switching to a pixel, why are you listening to this? I'm just saying, I'm glad you're listening to the show. I'm totally kidding. But I will say that if you're thinking of it for that sort of thing, like, honestly, I mean this sincerely, you probably should switch because I don't think Apple's gonna get to that point super soon.
Jason Aten:I think that they I think they will get there eventually. I think though that if it's a thing you're really interested in now, like, Google is really far ahead. Right? And if you're already using, like, Gmail and Google Calendar and all those types of things, it's gonna be even that easier much easier. It's going to work best on Apple Intelligence if you are using Apple's things.
Jason Aten:Right? Because why why is Google gonna hook into this on an Apple device? I don't know. Anyway, so I will just say, like, if what you're really waiting for is Apple intelligence, then I don't think you should, like, hold your breath on that one.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. And I would say return policies on Pixels are great. I'm literally returning this. And the only reason I say that is because until you really try to move to another ecosystem, do you realize how much friction there actually is? And so if you wanna try it, I would say do it.
Stephen Robles:But my caveat would be you'll probably quickly discover especially if like, if all you have is an iPhone and no other Apple device, I'm sure switching is much easier. But if you have HomePods, Apple TVs, other Apple devices like a Mac or an iPad, you will immediately feel the ecosystem friction when you try to use a Pixel. And if you can overcome it, great. This is a cool phone. Takes great pictures and videos.
Stephen Robles:You know, I would be happy if I had like, if I had to use this phone and not my iPhone, like, would make it work, and it would be fine. But the friction is real. Like, you will feel it.
Jason Aten:Yeah. Although I have so I have two friends that are married to each other, husband and wife, and she has an iPhone and he has a Pixel. And I kept I I finally asked him this week. I said, I'm really super curious. How do you two coexist, like, with one of you using a Pixel and one of you using an iPhone?
Jason Aten:And the answer, honestly, she said I don't let him take photos. That's how they that's how they coexist is he's just they have two little babies and she's like, I just take all the photos.
Stephen Robles:And she has the iPhone?
Jason Aten:That would yeah. And she has the iPhone. She's like the she's like the Pixel camera stinks, and so I don't like his photos anyway, so I just take all the photos. Wow. She's like, and the only time I really think about it is if I get a text message and it's a green bubble, but other than that, I just don't wanna take
Stephen Robles:all from her spouse. I know. Gonna be green. I know. Google listen.
Stephen Robles:Google said the green bubble conversation was over.
Jason Aten:Although I thought for sure, though, that that was going to be the thing. He did say that sometimes he's not allowed in group text messages.
Stephen Robles:He used to get an iPad and just log in with an Apple ID so he can do it wrong. Yeah. Anything that you're actually hoping for? I mean, the iPod AirPods Pro three supposedly be coming soon. Maybe some health features.
Stephen Robles:Apple Watch Ultra three supposedly coming. What do you
Jason Aten:think? Yeah. I've I've I'm I'm interested. I'm more more interested in some of the what we normally think of as, like, ordinary improvements each year. I like to see how that affects the way that we use the devices.
Jason Aten:The only thing I want, Steven, is for that ceramic shield to stop scratching so much.
Stephen Robles:It it scratches a lot.
Jason Aten:It doesn't break, but, oh my gosh, like, I the entire time I've owned this iPhone, like, it has just scratched everything. And I'm like, oh, and they won't replace it when
Stephen Robles:it's scratched. I have to
Jason Aten:go outside and throw it on the floor before I can sell it. I don't I would never do that. Never.
Stephen Robles:I know. I I feel that too. I have more scratches on this than I ever have before. And, like, you don't see it when the screen's on, except I do have this one scratch in the top corner. I don't I don't know if the camera's gonna pick up.
Stephen Robles:You don't even see it on camera, but, like, I know it's there and I see it.
Jason Aten:Mine are mine's terrible. I don't I don't know if you can see this, but, like, the entire top by the Dynamic Island, can you see how scratched that is?
Stephen Robles:Oh, I do see the scratch.
Jason Aten:And can you see the same thing at the bottom?
Stephen Robles:Oh, yeah. What in the world?
Jason Aten:I think it's because I was using that back.
Stephen Robles:And not a case.
Jason Aten:So every time I slid it into something, it was just scratching the heck out of those edges. And I'm like, that's but it doesn't break, which is great. But, apparently, your choices are it's going to shatter or it's going to scratch. You can't have both. And it's like, why can't we have both?
Jason Aten:You've, like, literally invented Gorilla Glass. Come on.
Stephen Robles:It would it would be nice to have both. I'm I'm curious. The Apple Watch Ultra three is the last thing, and then we'll go to the bonus episode. The supposedly, it's gonna get satellite connectivity. I'm curious if that comes so you can, like, send messages with satellite, but just with your watch.
Stephen Robles:That'd be cool. I'm curious if they will upgrade the chip and or RAM enough to run some AI features on the watch. And the only, evidence I would say that that could be is the WorkoutBuddy, which launched, with is is launching with watchOS 26. They announced it at Dub Dub. You need your phone right now for WorkoutBuddy to work because it's basically calling to the phone for that I think it's an AI type feature.
Stephen Robles:And so I'd be curious if maybe the Ultra three, maybe even the series 11 can run WorkoutBuddy with the watch itself, not need to be tethered to the phone, and if we'll see some Apple intelligence or other features come to the to the watch Ultra three. We'll see.
Jason Aten:Yeah. I think the I AirPods three is the thing I'm most looking forward to, which is dumb because I have four pairs of AirPods sitting at my desk right now. I don't and three of them are AirPods Pro.
Stephen Robles:But I mean
Jason Aten:Original two and two version USB.
Stephen Robles:AirPods Pro sound AirPods Pro two sound amazing. And if they improve that sound even more, that'd be ridiculous. I think it'd be great. Yeah. And okay.
Stephen Robles:Yeah. Let's go let's go both sides. We're gonna talk about this this ex livestream event because there's some behind the scenes information that you all might find interesting. So if you wanna listen to our bonus episode, get an ad free version of the show, get primary tech daily Monday through Friday, and get a raw unedited feed, which our preshow is just it's getting longer and longer. I think we had twenty minutes of preshow today.
Stephen Robles:You could subscribe at join.primarytech.fm. New people sign up every week. Thank you for that. And so you can get all those benefits there, or you can get the same benefits directly in Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe.
Stephen Robles:It's in your Apple subscription, so it's easy to sign up, and you still get The Daily Show, the unedited feed, all of that in Apple Podcasts. You don't get chapters. It's not my fault. Apple strips them out. I'm sorry.
Stephen Robles:So if you want all the chapters in the show too, join .primarytech.fm. You could sign up there. And, yeah, leave us five star rating in Apple Podcast. Let's start at Apple Maps versus Google Maps debate. Leave us a five star rating there, and send us a message.
Stephen Robles:That link is at the top of the show notes. We'd love to hear in the voice message and play it on the show like we did today. Super fun. But thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.
Stephen Robles:We'll catch you next time.
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