00:04:01
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Yeah, it's a real fun time in Apple support land, I'm sure.
00:04:08
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We have proof that this is, thanks to me, via our feedback form.
00:04:16
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So we said, if you could prove that you were the one, as which we all believe, that if it can be proven that you were the one that spurned the purchase migration, we would call you king of the K-Base.
00:05:39
◼►
It's like that thing where it's like, you know, when someone says, like, Apple delayed the thing and like, you can't delay something that was never announced.
00:05:47
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And it's like, yeah, but we all know what it means, though, don't we?
00:17:32
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It has a 6.1-inch OLED display with a notch, has an action button, USB-C, the A18 chip with Apple intelligence, a single 48-megapixel fusion camera.
00:17:45
◼►
So, like, where it just, it crops in and does the, like, the, I think it's the central 12 megapixels of the sensor to give you, like, a 2x zoom.
00:17:54
◼►
It is, and it has Apple's first ever cellular modem.
00:17:58
◼►
And apparently the remarkable power efficiency of Apple Silicon, including the first Apple-designed modem, the C1, means that it gets 26 hours of battery life.
00:18:08
◼►
Yeah, I looked up that the hour video playback battery stat, just rearrange those words, Jim.
00:25:37
◼►
And, like, I'm very interested to see how it performs in the world and if it is actually bigger, like OTJ speculates.
00:25:43
◼►
But the C1 is maybe the most interesting thing about this phone to me, that Apple, after so long, and God knows how much money, has shipped their own modem.
00:25:53
◼►
Yeah, this is the only interesting detail, in my opinion, for a phone that is too expensive for what it does and does not.
00:26:35
◼►
I don't think that would necessarily be, maybe it could be about quality.
00:26:40
◼►
But my thought there is that it could be about quantity, that the 16E is not going to sell like it's four other siblings, and let alone combined.
00:26:50
◼►
And so maybe you start it with what could be a lower product, or lower volume product.
00:27:14
◼►
Because I just, this has taken them so long to do.
00:27:19
◼►
Like, it has been years now where there has been, like, Apple's getting ready to debut its modem.
00:27:25
◼►
Apple's getting ready to debut its modem, and they haven't done it.
00:27:27
◼►
And they have, like, poured not just the money into buying this, but also there have been, they have Apple have lost more money with, I think it's, it's either Qualcomm or Broadcom or both.
00:27:38
◼►
I don't remember who provides, like, the modem technology.
00:27:40
◼►
They've had to renegotiate deals where they have lost more and more money because the prices have been going up.
00:27:47
◼►
Like, they've been trying to get this thing out there, and it's taken them a long time.
00:27:51
◼►
And I'm just very keen to see how this actually operates at scale in use.
00:27:59
◼►
That is going to be, it's an interesting story, I think, to see.
00:30:20
◼►
And I think the fact that it has the 48 megapixel camera in it is actually pretty decent.
00:30:24
◼►
Like, if you're going to have a cut-down solution, I think a 48 megapixel, megapixel, megapixel, single lens is better than a, like, 24 and an ultra-wide.
00:32:42
◼►
I'll text you all my thoughts about the episodes then.
00:32:43
◼►
I mean, I was just going to text you as like a friend.
00:32:45
◼►
Like, I wasn't going to give you like show feedback.
00:32:47
◼►
But if I have show feedback, I'll write in, you know, like a real listener.
00:32:52
◼►
I don't want to abuse my position as a host, right?
00:32:57
◼►
But when I'm not on the show and just like text you all my feedback, I'll send it in like a good listener.
00:33:01
◼►
Federico, we just open Notion and there's like red letters, like, you know, like in a horror movie, it's like etched on the glass over the sink.
00:39:47
◼►
You think it's going to get away with it?
00:39:49
◼►
Welcome back to the Quizzes, the quiz show of in a podcast where I, Mike Hurley, quiz my connected co-hosts randomly and by surprise on a variety of varying subjects.
00:50:25
◼►
Actually, there are things that I've done on printers in the past where I've messed things up.
00:50:29
◼►
Like, you know that you want to print something on, like, print something on two sides of a page of paper, but you put the wrong one in and you print over the thing.
00:50:37
◼►
Yeah, but LLMs can't get things right now.
00:51:52
◼►
What I, I think we can all agree, from the first time we saw this product, we knew it wasn't going to work.
00:52:00
◼►
So, in that sense, you could say it was scam-ish, because you've got to assume that they also thought that this wasn't going to work.
00:52:10
◼►
But I also don't, actually, as I say that, I don't know if they believe that, because they really seemed, I mean, this is why, like, a lot of people are taking a level of glee in this, because, because of the way Humane positioned themselves.
00:52:28
◼►
Like, they kind of made this bed for themselves by saying all the things they said, presenting everything in such a grandiose way.
00:52:37
◼►
And, I kind of, like, imagine doing all of that, and, like, I think that they genuinely believed that they were going to change the world, at least at some point.
00:52:45
◼►
Like, whether it was before the AI pin or not.
00:52:47
◼►
Like, they were building something before the AI pin that then became the AI pin, because they thought they were going to disrupt smartphones.
00:52:53
◼►
Imagine doing all of that and having that belief in yourself, and you end up putting AI into connected conference rooms.
00:53:22
◼►
Which, again, I think there was an element of obviousness to that.
00:53:27
◼►
Clearly, they were good pitch people, right?
00:53:29
◼►
They were able to pitch people to get investment.
00:53:31
◼►
But, like, it's just a truly crazy thing to have happened, I think.
00:53:35
◼►
And there's a whole bunch of people without a job now, because I don't think, you know, I think most people working at Humane were laid off.
00:53:43
◼►
There's a whole bunch of people who purchased Humane AI PIN, spent, you know, around $700 or $800, depending on the version that you got, and then the monthly subscription.
00:53:56
◼►
Used it for less than a year, and they were informed with a 10-day notice that the PIN would stop working.
00:54:17
◼►
If only this company had the same class and style that the CEO had in terms of fashion style, that would have been nice.
00:54:27
◼►
But, no, sadly, no, that's not the case.
00:54:29
◼►
There is this thing, too, where, like, I agree that that amount of notice is incredibly short.
00:54:36
◼►
The other part of it, though, is, like, maybe no one was using them, so maybe it's not that bad.
00:54:43
◼►
Like, apparently, like, according, you know, I was looking up, according to The Verge, as of August 2024, there are only 7,000 humane AI PINs in the hands of consumers.
00:54:57
◼►
So, like, maybe of those 7,000 people, there, like, maybe of those 7,000 people, there, like, wasn't really anybody actually using it.
00:55:06
◼►
It's like, I'm not, I'm, like, defending it, but just, like, while on the face of it, my initial reaction was like, oh, my God, I can't believe that you've given people such a short amount of time.
00:55:14
◼►
Maybe they just knew it was fine because, like, no one's using it.
00:55:22
◼►
7,000 people bought this product, which I think, and there was at a point, there were, remember, there was a point where there were more units being returned than bought?
00:55:34
◼►
So, like, that was 7,000 people left who hadn't yet returned it.
00:55:38
◼►
Now, of those 7,000 people, you've got to imagine, I would say, at least half, at least, although I would say probably more, at least half of those people bought it to make content about, right?
00:55:52
◼►
Like, that they are an influencer or a YouTuber or a technology journalist, like, whatever, they bought it as, like, a little curiousness.
00:56:01
◼►
But most of the people that, I would say probably half of the people that had one probably bought it because they wanted, but they weren't planning to, like, make it part of their life anyway.
00:56:11
◼►
It was, like, a thing that they bought.
00:56:13
◼►
Well, if these people were smart, here's what they should have done.
00:56:17
◼►
Sell any leftover inventory for, like, less than half the price and release on GitHub a jailbreak tool and documentation to jailbreak your PIN and install whatever software you want to install.
00:56:31
◼►
So that the people who had it could jailbreak the PIN and I'm sure some kind of modding community would have spawned up and you would have made a bunch of extra money on the site.
00:56:41
◼►
So here's the thing about that, because I had that thought, too, and I thought about Pebble.
00:56:48
◼►
It's probably up to HP because HP now owns all of the patents and everything.
00:56:55
◼►
And if they're going to use whatever they did as the basis of whatever they're going to do within HP, they're not going to do that.
00:57:01
◼►
The same way when Pebble, you know, Pebble got absorbed, all the stuff went away, and now the original guy, like, has the rights back and is starting it over.
00:57:10
◼►
So, like, that may be on the Humane people, but I think it's probably also on HP.
00:57:16
◼►
I saw some, I mean, there probably is patents and intellectual property, but I saw some reporting somewhere that this deal did not include the hardware at all.
00:57:27
◼►
Like, Humane did not buy any of the hardware.
00:57:29
◼►
I think the bigger problem for why they can't do that is, do you remember that they had to do a product recall about the batteries?
00:57:39
◼►
Humane said if they had not sent that battery recall to you, they would refund you the amount of the battery.
00:57:45
◼►
So, like, even if they wanted to do that and could do that, they still would have to deal with the fact that the batteries weren't good in these things and that they could catch on fire?
00:58:03
◼►
I mean, I would say Silicon Valley disappoints me in many ways at times, but I have got to believe that nobody would have invested in them now.
00:58:39
◼►
Like, you remember when the reporting came out about them wanting to sell this company, they were looking for somewhere between $700 million and a billion dollars.
00:58:47
◼►
Like, that's what they were looking for if they were looking for, if they would want to sell.
00:58:53
◼►
So that gives you an idea, I think, of how little interest there was in acquiring anything of this company, from the people to the teams to the technology that they've patented.
00:59:10
◼►
And it is easy to make fun of and, you know, maybe part of it is deserved.
00:59:13
◼►
But like, it sucks that people are going to lose their jobs and it sucks that people have to go to HP and do things that they joined a cool startup to do something cool.
00:59:22
◼►
And now they're making printer firmware.
01:02:40
◼►
It's like, I just, you know, this is an interesting point from Aaron in Discord.
01:02:43
◼►
It says, I wonder if they were hoping to find enough of an interest where they could iterate on feedback and continue to grow a new product market.
01:02:49
◼►
And, like, that would have been interesting.
01:02:52
◼►
But that's not all the way that they position themselves.
01:02:56
◼►
Like, if they would position themselves like that, I would have a little more, and I think everybody would have more sympathy for this team and, like, this company and these products.
01:03:09
◼►
But the problem was always, what you said, Stephen, like, that they, you know, you can't, you can't bootstrap Apple.
01:03:19
◼►
Like, you can't just be like, we're going to go from zero to Apple.
01:03:24
◼►
Like, that's not a thing that you can do.
01:03:33
◼►
Like, that's not how they became what they are.
01:03:37
◼►
It's not how any big technology company became what they are.
01:03:39
◼►
Like, people kind of, I feel like, had a little bit more earnestness to what they were doing than just to be like, we've changed the world, everyone.
01:03:52
◼►
And they have objects perfectly aligned on them.
01:03:55
◼►
You know, it's just like stuff like that, where it's like, oh, you've been in an Apple design lab.
01:03:58
◼►
Or, you know, you saw one in Wallpaper magazine, and you've done that.
01:04:02
◼►
Like, it's just, none of it, there wasn't a, they did subsequent videos that were better, which had more personality to them.
01:04:11
◼►
And I think if they would have come at it from that regard, rather than the original one, this story, I don't think it would have been significantly better, but people may have had more empathy for them at this stage, I think.
01:04:27
◼►
Like, I don't know if you guys saw those videos, but I was watching all the videos.
01:04:30
◼►
But they were doing kind of like OS, talking through, like, their OS, Cosmos.
01:04:37
◼►
And there were, like, little jokes in it.
01:04:39
◼►
And, like, Imran was looking in a video, and he's asking for a fit check.
01:04:41
◼►
And then, like, someone was laughing in the back.
01:04:43
◼►
Yeah, it was just stuff like, it had more of an actual real personality to it than the initial stuff that they did.
01:04:50
◼►
And so I think it would have been different if they could have actually seen, like, human people, rather than this, like, we have delivered this product to you from heaven, you know?
01:05:42
◼►
They reach out to data brokers on your behalf, request that your personal data be removed, and then they deal with any objections from the other side.
01:05:52
◼►
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01:06:02
◼►
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01:06:46
◼►
Well, I hope you boys like using ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude, because it sure seems like the Apple alternative is going to take a while.
01:07:00
◼►
We have a new report by Mark Gurman saying that due to recent internal struggles with getting the Siri overhaul, you know, getting it together, it seems like it could get delayed.
01:07:14
◼►
So, we were expecting iOS 18.4 to have the teased and pre-announced Siri integration with apps and intents, with the ability to chain multiple requests to Siri in your favorite apps together,
01:07:34
◼►
have Siri execute all of those actions seamlessly, as well as Siri being able to draw from your personal context, so to be able to infer and find information based on the things that you store in your apps, in your notes, in your task manager, in your photos, in your email, whatever.
01:07:50
◼►
Now, it seems like these features may or may not make 18.4.
01:08:05
◼►
They, according to government, Apple has been discussing lately the idea of maybe shipping them in iOS 18.4, turned off by default, or just postponing them to 18.5.
01:08:21
◼►
I kind of wanted to get a vibe check from you guys.
01:13:39
◼►
So, first of all, I think it's interesting that this report is coming out a couple of weeks after that other report about that new person that was put in charge of Apple Intelligence.
01:14:02
◼►
The other thing, I was listening to you and Jason on Upgrade, and you were raising this interesting point, like, what's worse, what could have been worse for Apple not to pre-announce anything at WWDC, or was their approach correct?
01:14:23
◼►
And could there have been bigger damage if Apple hadn't shown anything last year?
01:14:32
◼►
And I get the argument, and I think there's something to it.
01:14:35
◼►
But at the same time, the flip side of that is that with this timeline that we're in, Apple has basically accelerated as fast-tracked Apple Intelligence becoming the same running joke that Siri has been for the past few years.
01:14:53
◼►
Like, you see the memes on a pretty regular basis on Blue Sky these days.
01:15:00
◼►
I suppose you can also see them on threads.
01:15:02
◼►
I suppose you can also see them on X, if you're still using X.
01:15:05
◼►
But, like, the memes of Apple Intelligence summaries or the memes of Apple Intelligence image playgrounds, like, it is becoming a running joke.
01:15:14
◼►
And it's becoming this, like, the vibe that I'm getting from those posts is, like, most people would typically, those are people who are not attuned to tech news as much as we are.
01:16:16
◼►
I spend, I spend a lot of time on the line.
01:16:20
◼►
And I, so, here's the thing I see, is that people, people who are sort of kind of into tech, they tend to be more forgiving.
01:16:33
◼►
Like, toward this new generation of companies, like the ChatGPT, or Anthropic, or DeepSeek, or God forbid, Perplexity, or even Gemini, to a lesser extent, than they are toward Apple intelligence.
01:16:56
◼►
Like, is it a general dislike toward Apple?
01:16:59
◼►
I'm sure, you know, there's a component there.
01:17:02
◼►
You know, Apple, the premium company, they make you spend a fortune to buy a phone, and then they give you something that is not working.
01:17:08
◼►
But, arguably, Google also makes you spend a fortune to buy a pixel or a pixel fold.
01:17:13
◼►
And I think, I think I've landed on a personal theory that I wanted to share on the show.
01:17:19
◼►
So, I think, when it comes to AI, Apple, eventually, they will probably need to understand that they will need a fundamentally different approach in communication.
01:17:33
◼►
Because all of these AI companies are very much open about what they're building, the flaws of their existing products, and how they want to make them better.
01:17:48
◼►
It's a new approach, isn't it, to technology?
01:17:50
◼►
You have never seen, especially with Tim Cook's Apple, you have never seen Apple publicly say, yeah, we know this is not great, but we're going to make it better.
01:18:02
◼►
Apple never says it, like, according to Apple, and this goes back to something that Jason shared weeks ago, and I continue to repeat, according to Apple, any product you mention is the best one, the greatest, the most versatile, the fastest.
01:18:19
◼►
You will never hear Apple say, yeah, we know this is not great, but we just want to release it, and then we'll build it up from here.
01:18:27
◼►
That is the approach that all these other companies have.
01:18:31
◼►
And I think, in the AI space, if Apple wants to be taken seriously, and wants to be taken in a more forgiving manner, they will need a different approach.
01:18:44
◼►
I may be wrong, we'll see when and if eventually this features ship, we'll see if and when a Siri large language model ship.
01:18:53
◼►
I am dying to see how Apple is going to treat a large language model compared to Google or OpenAI or Anthropic or Meta.
01:19:02
◼►
Like, is it just going to be like a closed app where you cannot pick a model, where it's not open source, where Apple doesn't share anything about, like, are they really going to do the Apple version of a large language model?
01:19:20
◼►
Well, I am dying to know, dying to see what they're going to do.
01:19:24
◼►
The one thing that they could do, which would, you know, that I imagine they would do, which has its own benefits, maybe, like, if they actually do get their own LLM together.
01:19:32
◼►
Like, we were talking about the fact a few weeks ago, like, choosing LLMs is quite a weird thing and a complicated thing.
01:19:52
◼►
And, you know, I would hope, here's the thing, if I believed Apple had their stuff together in this, which I don't as of right now because they've not proven it, if I was to believe that they had their stuff together, I would believe that's what they would prioritize, right?
01:20:05
◼►
That they would have, like, a bunch of different models for different tasks, but you as the user never need to request, right?
01:20:12
◼►
At least that would be their attempt at building the product.
01:20:14
◼►
But, like, that would also require them to have genuinely shown that they have any kind of capability right now, and their capability is slim, right?
01:20:23
◼►
Like, well, Apple's LLM capability is what?
01:20:44
◼►
And literally, the only part you can salvage of the images is the Genmoji, because they were trained on a pretty good data set, which is the Apple Emoji, that have a good design.
01:20:56
◼►
But, yeah, just, I kept having this thought of, like, everybody seems to be, and I'm not saying that people are not complaining about Gemini, or people are not complaining about LGBT,
01:21:10
◼►
But, because those companies are so outspoken, they have created this sense of, like, community and openness regarding communication that Apple doesn't have.
01:21:23
◼►
And I wonder if that style becomes sort of the default approach, communication-wise.
01:21:30
◼►
You can literally go on X and send a reply to the person working on Google Gemini, and they're going to reply to you.
01:21:37
◼►
Like, if that style of communication with the public and with developers, right?
01:21:44
◼►
Because there's also a strong developer story here.
01:21:46
◼►
And if that style becomes the norm, I wonder, whether you're a customer or you're a developer, how do you engage with Apple Intelligence when these other companies give you a fundamentally different experience and treatment, if you're a developer?
01:22:30
◼►
It's going to be very interesting to see over the next couple of weeks how this unfolds, because realistically, 18.4 should be available in beta now, and it's not, right?
01:22:43
◼►
So, like, it is very clear something's going on, right?
01:22:49
◼►
Because there's no current beta version of the operating system available right now.
01:22:53
◼►
I think that your theory that it is Kim Vorath, which is the APU that's been brought in.
01:22:59
◼►
I think that is a very good theory of, like, someone has come in and they're like, show me this.
01:23:07
◼►
You know, I think that could be, like, an interesting theory for why, or it could just be that, like, it just doesn't work and they were never going to ship it because it doesn't work.
01:23:15
◼►
But no matter what is going on, it doesn't seem like it's a good thing.
01:23:20
◼►
And again, right, to go back to what you think, back to what you were saying, Apple have a way to prove it.
01:23:27
◼►
They could talk about it, but they don't do that.
01:23:30
◼►
But maybe that's not the era we're in anymore.
01:23:33
◼►
Like, Apple do not own or control this era of technology, right?
01:23:40
◼►
The previous era of technology of personal computers and smartphones, they owned and controlled it.
01:23:45
◼►
So they could set the tone and everybody followed their tone.
01:23:49
◼►
They do not own and control this era for whatever it is, for however long it's going to be, for however successful it will not.
01:23:57
◼►
They're clearly following, right, because they don't have their stuff together.
01:24:01
◼►
And their way of doing things is not the way that things are being done.
01:24:07
◼►
And it will be interesting to see if they just decide to not bother with that or if they change their approach or if they change their approach in a different way.
01:24:16
◼►
Like, maybe they're just like, hey, we give up.
01:24:18
◼►
And we'll just build some really good APIs for people to build on top of and integrate with.
01:24:26
◼►
Well, that brings us to the end of Mike's last episode for a little while.
01:26:19
◼►
And also to everybody else who is making it possible for me to do this because there are a lot of people who have to step up if I'm going to be gone.
01:26:28
◼►
I would like to thank the listeners for also allowing it.
01:26:34
◼►
And, like, everyone's been really cool about it.
01:26:36
◼►
I hope that you enjoy the time without me.