Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, Steve.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I was wondering where that was going.

00:00:32 ◼   ► You know, like the artist formerly known as Prince.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Maybe you should rebrand to a symbol, like Prince did at some point.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Could I use the command symbol? Apple probably has that trademark.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I don't know. Find a Unicode character that works for you and become that.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Okay. Yeah, maybe.

00:00:50 ◼   ► The podcaster formerly known as Stephen Hackett.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Hello, Federico.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Hello.

00:00:58 ◼   ► You doing okay? You doing all right?

00:01:00 ◼   ► I am very energetic today.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Yeah?

00:01:03 ◼   ► Not because of coffee, but because like just it's been a nice day.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Yeah, just life. Just life.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Stephen, it's not Wednesday.

00:01:14 ◼   ► It's not.

00:01:15 ◼   ► And I think we got to explain why it's not Wednesday.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Yes, we normally record on Wednesday and yesterday, Wednesday, I got home from taking kids to school.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It was about 9 a.m.

00:01:29 ◼   ► You know, we were going to record at noon and all of a sudden I'm going to reenact it for you.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Okay.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I'm just sitting in my office doing show prep, you know, looking at email, just doing my thing.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And suddenly I hear a crashing sound outside, like a tree.

00:01:47 ◼   ► It turns out it was a tree branch.

00:01:49 ◼   ► And then I hear zzz, zzz, zzz, boom.

00:01:52 ◼   ► I was like, wow.

00:01:54 ◼   ► What is happening?

00:01:55 ◼   ► What?

00:01:56 ◼   ► So I gingerly stick my head outside.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Gingerly.

00:02:01 ◼   ► I didn't want to, you know, I was like, what is happening?

00:02:03 ◼   ► It was very windy.

00:02:04 ◼   ► Good word.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It was very windy.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And a couple of doors down from me, a huge tree limb fell out of this tree and pulled the power lines down.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Power lines on my street run behind the houses and it pulled them down.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And there's a, there happens to be a telephone pole on the very back corner of my property with a transformer and like a bunch of electrical stuff on it.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And it was on fire.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Like, so I called like the utility.

00:02:34 ◼   ► They have like an emergency phone number.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I called them.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I was like, hey, you know, a tree limb fell.

00:02:40 ◼   ► This thing made a bunch of noise.

00:02:42 ◼   ► A bunch of smoke came out.

00:02:44 ◼   ► The fire's out now, but like, I don't have any power.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And they came out.

00:02:49 ◼   ► They were out there.

00:02:50 ◼   ► They were out there pretty quickly.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And they're like, oh, we got to send a different crew out.

00:02:53 ◼   ► They're going to have to like restring these power lines and get on like two different poles and like reconnect it all.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And I, we do have a whole home generator, which is great.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Like I still worked yesterday, but what I didn't really think about when we put the generator in a couple of years ago was like, it's great to have power when the power's out.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And you have not been to my house, which I find, uh, horribly and personally insulting, but.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Oh, not that you know.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Oh, are you here right now?

00:03:24 ◼   ► Surprise.

00:03:25 ◼   ► You've been living in my attic for years.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Uh, the power out is all the time because I basically live in like a forest and, uh, the generator is really loud.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It's like, I did a test recording, like with the door shut.

00:03:39 ◼   ► I was like, I can't, we can't do this.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So anyways, we're here on Thursday.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Hello.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Like I, I, I have felt off now for two days.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's like, I define my schedule, like what I'm doing at work during the week.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And like Wednesday is connected.

00:03:55 ◼   ► It takes almost all day.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Like we do a lot of prep.

00:03:57 ◼   ► We record it.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Jim edits it.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I get it published.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Like it's a large percentage of my Wednesday.

00:04:02 ◼   ► So yesterday I just sort of like walked around aimlessly, like connected.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Wasn't there to ground me.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Anyways, sorry, this happened.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Obviously glad that everything's back.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Like, yes, uh, it was very exciting.

00:04:18 ◼   ► There was a guy here at some point yesterday who just like had some wire, like thick wire,

00:04:23 ◼   ► like wrapped around him and just like shimmied up this pole.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Like he was some sort of like Indiana Jones character or something.

00:04:30 ◼   ► It was wild.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Like just, just, wow.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Does Indiana Jones climb things?

00:04:34 ◼   ► That may have been a bad example, but it's all back now.

00:04:37 ◼   ► No lasting damage.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Best I can tell.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And, uh, and we're here and there's a lot of follow-up to do, which is good.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Shout out to the, shout out to the power line.

00:04:48 ◼   ► You know, that's right.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Please, please stay connected.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Uh, follow-up.

00:04:55 ◼   ► You were talking about your vision pro being your new night computer.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So you don't, uh, you don't, uh, you don't upset or distract your partner.

00:05:05 ◼   ► She's trying to sleep.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And we were talking about how it sort of struggles in the dark.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And several people sent this in, um, about using an IR illuminator.

00:05:20 ◼   ► So this would basically be like a light that just emits infrared that the vision pro, I

00:05:25 ◼   ► guess, can use that to like track your hands and stuff.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Um, and you went out and tried this.

00:05:31 ◼   ► How did it go?

00:05:32 ◼   ► Now, Steven, you know me, right?

00:05:36 ◼   ► I do.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Better than you know yourself.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:40 ◼   ► You know how much I browse Reddit and especially this sub, this subreddits for people doing weird

00:05:47 ◼   ► hardware things.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Do you, do you, or did you realistically think that I hadn't tried this?

00:05:56 ◼   ► You hadn't.

00:05:56 ◼   ► You had already tried it.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Last year I bought, I bought a, an IR illuminator from Amazon.

00:06:04 ◼   ► It's this thing that sort of looks like a, like a home security camera.

00:06:10 ◼   ► It does.

00:06:11 ◼   ► But it's not a camera.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Uh, it's got a bunch of like, uh, I don't know.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:15 ◼   ► LEDs.

00:06:16 ◼   ► It's not the right word.

00:06:17 ◼   ► It's got a bunch of like things that project infrared.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I put it.

00:06:22 ◼   ► So my idea last year was like, okay, I'm going to put it next to the TV.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Uh, so that's what I'm lying in bed.

00:06:28 ◼   ► It's sort of illuminating with infrared, the bedroom.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And the moment that Sylvia walked in, once she was back from work that evening, she looked

00:06:37 ◼   ► at that and she was like, what is that?

00:06:39 ◼   ► And I explained, oh, it's infrared lights, um, to illuminate the environment when I'm using

00:06:45 ◼   ► the vision pro in the dark.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And she looked at me and she was like, you're going to return that to Amazon tomorrow.

00:06:55 ◼   ► But to be fair, to be fair, to be fair, to be fair, I did a test that afternoon.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I closed all the blinds at like 4pm.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Uh, and I lay, uh, sort of laid in bed and it didn't really have a, an appreciable change

00:07:11 ◼   ► on, on the performance of the vision pro in the dark.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Like it didn't, like it wasn't better in any meaningful way.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Uh, so yeah, uh, it's fine.

00:07:21 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:07:22 ◼   ► I, does that mean Federico's blackout curtains?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Uh, Jason wants to know from the chat room.

00:07:27 ◼   ► So, um, this is an interesting question because it led me to, uh, this is a whole thing that

00:07:34 ◼   ► I had to realize a couple of years ago with John that I think there is a fundamental difference

00:07:40 ◼   ► between Europe and America when it comes to, uh, blocking out light from your windows.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Um, that's really all that separates us.

00:07:48 ◼   ► If you think about it.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Yes.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Well, if you think about it, that's the key difference.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Really.

00:07:52 ◼   ► We have what you may call it like a shutter, I think.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Um, or like I don't have, well, I have curtains obviously, but they're more ornamental.

00:08:04 ◼   ► than anything.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Uh, we have, do you know what a rolling shutter is, Steven?

00:08:09 ◼   ► Like a, like a proper shutter?

00:08:11 ◼   ► Like you have a window and the.

00:08:12 ◼   ► It's like, uh, it's not fabric, right?

00:08:15 ◼   ► It's like.

00:08:15 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Material.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Plastic.

00:08:17 ◼   ► It's plastic.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Like it's plastic.

00:08:19 ◼   ► And, uh, in, in our old apartment, we used to have like manual rolling shutters.

00:08:24 ◼   ► So there will be like, um, not a rope, but like this, this thing that you were like a

00:08:30 ◼   ► little string that you were supposed to like unroll yourself and lower.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Shuttle manually.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Now in our new apartment, we have, uh, electrical shutters.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I think, I think in the U S people would refer to these as blinds.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Blinds.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Blinds.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:45 ◼   ► We have blinds.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:46 ◼   ► So when, when the blinds are closed, everything is completely dark.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Uh, yeah.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So that's, that's how I was able to do it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Uh, and I got my blinds connected to Amazon, to Apple, to Google.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Thanks to my fancy home automation stuff.

00:09:00 ◼   ► But in any case, um, I got a funny vision pro related follow-up for you as well.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I was using the vision pro in, uh, last night in bed.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I put it on.

00:09:11 ◼   ► My girlfriend is sleeping.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Everything is completely dark.

00:09:14 ◼   ► My dogs are sleeping, put it on and everything starts moving.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Like all the windows begin moving.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Like in vision OS, like your application.

00:09:22 ◼   ► In vision OS.

00:09:23 ◼   ► In vision OS.

00:09:23 ◼   ► I should have mentioned, I, let me clarify.

00:09:26 ◼   ► All the lights were shut off, but my TV was still on.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Important clarification that you will understand in a minute.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Everything starts moving and the vision pro starts saying, uh, are you in travel mode?

00:09:39 ◼   ► If you, if you are on a fast moving airplane or train, consider enabling travel mode.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I was like, well, obviously I'm, I'm sitting in bed.

00:09:47 ◼   ► You know, this bed is not moving.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I'm not, I'm not traveling anywhere.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I'm not on a train.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I'm not on a plane.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And it kept insisting that travel mode, uh, was supposed to be engaged because I was

00:09:59 ◼   ► moving.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Uh, and, and it was very disorienting and kind of, it was actually kind of making me sick.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Um, I was like, well, why does it want me to enable travel mode?

00:10:10 ◼   ► And so I removed my vision pro.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I looked at the TV and Steven, you will never guess why the vision pro was being tricked into

00:10:22 ◼   ► thinking that I was flying.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Was, was the, was the TV showing something that looked like it was fine.

00:10:29 ◼   ► An Apple TV screensaver was showing an aerial view of some incredible planet earth.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I took a picture that I'm going to post later.

00:10:40 ◼   ► It was showing an overhead view of the Alps or something.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And it was convinced that I was like looking down from an airplane or something, which I

00:10:52 ◼   ► took, I removed, I removed my vision, but I was like, Oh, this is incredible.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I got to take a photo.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Uh, like, and even if you take this, actually, let me share this photo in this cord in a minute.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to share that on social media later.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Uh, if you take a look at this picture, right?

00:11:09 ◼   ► I mean, if that, even if I was looking down at the earth from a plane, right, this kind

00:11:18 ◼   ► of view would be pretty dangerous for me because it would mean that I'm like parachuting down

00:11:24 ◼   ► from the plane because I'm looking straight down at the mountains, right?

00:11:29 ◼   ► If you take a look at that photo, like that's not a view from an airplane seat.

00:11:33 ◼   ► No, that's the view that Tom Cruise has on an airplane in a Mission Impossible movie.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Yes.

00:11:41 ◼   ► The moment, the moment that I turned off the TV, the travel mode notifications stopped.

00:11:49 ◼   ► So yeah, there you go.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Machine learning, right?

00:11:52 ◼   ► That's bonkers.

00:11:53 ◼   ► You know, the thing on like TV ads, like Apple and Amazon, others, they'll have like

00:12:00 ◼   ► some tone or something where the Siri or Alexa or whatever won't go off in people's houses.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Like if they're just watching TV and there's an ad on, they need that for the screensavers

00:12:14 ◼   ► on Apple TV, like a little thing like embedded in it.

00:12:18 ◼   ► So the vision pro knows that, no, this guy's not really on an airplane.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:12:25 ◼   ► And lastly, there continue to be some confusion, it seems in this court, in terms of exactly

00:12:30 ◼   ► what a blind is.

00:12:31 ◼   ► So I'm also just going to, I'm just going to share another picture in the discord for people

00:12:36 ◼   ► so that I can make myself clear.

00:12:38 ◼   ► That's pretty much what I have.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Please tell me what the proper name in English is for this thing.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I would say blinds.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:48 ◼   ► That's what I have.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Glad we cleared up.

00:12:52 ◼   ► The premier window dressing podcast on Relay.

00:12:55 ◼   ► That's what we're going for this week.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Okay.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Connor wrote in, again, Connor had the bridge keyboard that they bought when Bridges out

00:13:03 ◼   ► of business the last time.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:13:05 ◼   ► And they had written in previously saying that their bridge keyboard had imploded and we asked

00:13:11 ◼   ► what that meant.

00:13:11 ◼   ► So this is what it meant.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Yes.

00:13:13 ◼   ► First, the rubber feet fell off and then the hinge failed, causing the iPad to fall back

00:13:18 ◼   ► 180 degrees.

00:13:20 ◼   ► And then the keys began to fail.

00:13:22 ◼   ► The smart keyboard folio has been incredibly refreshing.

00:13:26 ◼   ► It is so light, but I miss backlighting.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Well, Connor, first of all, thank you for the follow-up.

00:13:33 ◼   ► But let me tell you, Stephen, do you remember a few years ago when I was also annoyed by the

00:13:41 ◼   ► lack of backlighting on an Apple keyboard and I stuck a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stickers

00:13:49 ◼   ► on the keyboard?

00:13:50 ◼   ► Oh, I remember.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Connor, you may consider that if you want.

00:13:55 ◼   ► I get it.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I mean, look, it worked.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I had a glow-in-the-dark keyboard.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So maybe that's something you can do with the smart keyboard folio.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Nathan had a question.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Hypothetical.

00:14:15 ◼   ► If Apple were to only offer Apple Intelligence as a standalone service, how much would you

00:14:21 ◼   ► be willing to pay for it as a one-time unlock or monthly subscription?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Jokes on you, Nathan.

00:14:27 ◼   ► They would have to pay me to use it.

00:14:29 ◼   ► I would not pay for Apple Intelligence at this point.

00:14:31 ◼   ► No, Nathan, seriously.

00:14:34 ◼   ► At this point, I wouldn't pay for Apple Intelligence.

00:14:36 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything worth paying for.

00:14:43 ◼   ► if at some point in the future, that App Intense feature really works and they're able to ship

00:14:53 ◼   ► it and it works as advertised and it's incredible, I would give them, you know, $3 a month if

00:15:00 ◼   ► it really works.

00:15:01 ◼   ► But it doesn't.

00:15:04 ◼   ► But this is hypothetical.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So realistically at this point, why would you pay for it?

00:15:13 ◼   ► Right?

00:15:13 ◼   ► There's nothing.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I went back and forth on this next one, including it in the show, and I decided to include it

00:15:24 ◼   ► just for like the historic marker.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:15:30 ◼   ► Someone who put their name in the form as not Mark Gurman.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And look, we don't do DNA testing on our feedback.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Like, who knows?

00:15:38 ◼   ► But not, Mark Gurman wrote in.

00:15:40 ◼   ► It's a shame to hear that Federico is thinking about going back to the Mac because this year,

00:15:45 ◼   ► iPadOS is getting live window resizing and positioning similar to MacOS and VisionOS.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:53 ◼   ► What's the expression?

00:15:54 ◼   ► Fool me once.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Shame on...

00:15:56 ◼   ► What's the thing?

00:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Not Mark Gurman.

00:16:01 ◼   ► Sure, sure.

00:16:03 ◼   ► I'll believe it when I see it.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I mean, if they do it, great.

00:16:09 ◼   ► If all they do on iPadOS is live window resizing and nothing else, it's still not going to change

00:16:16 ◼   ► the fact that the kind of openness and the kind of apps that you can use on MacOS these

00:16:24 ◼   ► days, especially with this new generation and new wave of AI tools, just cannot exist

00:16:30 ◼   ► on iPadOS because of the limitations of the platform.

00:16:32 ◼   ► The issues go way deeper than live window resizing.

00:16:38 ◼   ► So, I mean, that would be a welcome enhancement, but I think the issues are more fundamental

00:16:44 ◼   ► than that.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I do too.

00:16:46 ◼   ► But, good call, Stephen, including it for the historical context.

00:16:51 ◼   ► If they do ship it, we know that not Mark Gurman was a...

00:16:56 ◼   ► We have our own leaker, so to speak, you know?

00:16:59 ◼   ► Everybody's a leaker these days.

00:17:01 ◼   ► You have all these new leakers that have information.

00:17:06 ◼   ► We have our own.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Yeah, not Mark Gurman.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Not Mark Gurman.

00:17:11 ◼   ► NMG.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And lastly, a little bit of follow-out.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I'm going to call this Happy Birthday OTJ.

00:17:20 ◼   ► It's not his birthday.

00:17:21 ◼   ► But John wrote yesterday, or two days ago, yesterday, on Blue Sky and probably other places,

00:17:28 ◼   ► 10 years ago, I launched an app and knew it was going to change everything for me.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I wasn't sure how, but by the end of the year, I was writing a Mac Stories, and I knew there

00:17:37 ◼   ► was no going back after getting a taste of doing my own thing.

00:17:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Congrats, John.

00:17:43 ◼   ► We've been working together for 10 years.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And in fact, it was thanks to our former co-host, Michael Hurley.

00:17:52 ◼   ► We need to thank for introducing John to Mac Stories.

00:17:55 ◼   ► I believe Mike pushed John, convinced John 10 years ago to approach me for a story that he

00:18:01 ◼   ► was working on.

00:18:01 ◼   ► And I'm very glad he did, because, you know, he's my business partner now.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So, yeah, man, I can't believe it's been 10 years, but-

00:18:10 ◼   ► That's wild.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:12 ◼   ► But yes, congratulations, John.

00:18:14 ◼   ► That's awesome.

00:18:15 ◼   ► A lot of stuff happened 10 years ago.

00:18:18 ◼   ► I saw also Brian Mueller put on Macedon that it was 10 years of carrot weather this week

00:18:24 ◼   ► as well.

00:18:25 ◼   ► It's like-

00:18:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Wild.

00:18:27 ◼   ► A lot of anniversaries, you know?

00:18:29 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:18:32 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is made possible by Google Gemini.

00:18:36 ◼   ► I tried Gemini a couple of days ago, Gemini Live, where you talk to it.

00:18:40 ◼   ► And you guys have a full-on conversation with this thing.

00:18:44 ◼   ► I asked it to give me some ideas for hosting an event.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And when it starts giving you results, you can just stop it and say, okay, well, what about

00:18:52 ◼   ► something a little bit more low-key for a smaller group?

00:18:55 ◼   ► That's definitely my speed.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And then it adjusts to that, and you can keep going until you get an idea that you want.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Brainstorming Things is a great use of Google Gemini.

00:19:05 ◼   ► It's so good if you don't know where to start or if you hit a wall with something.

00:19:09 ◼   ► Just go to Gemini and it helps you get the ball rolling.

00:19:11 ◼   ► But you can use it for all kinds of stuff.

00:19:14 ◼   ► If you want to learn something new, you can have it give you advice.

00:19:19 ◼   ► You can ask it to explain something like Bitcoin in simple terms.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Or you can have it quiz you on microbiology.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Imagine being a student and you've got this personal tutor on hand.

00:19:29 ◼   ► So go check it out.

00:19:32 ◼   ► See how it listens to you, responds, and adapts to your style of conversation.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And it is free.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Our thanks to Google Gemini for their support of the show and all of Relay.

00:19:45 ◼   ► So just before we set down to record this episode, Stephen, the Mark Gurman, so not Mark Gurman, but the actual Mark Gurman, published some breaking news on Bloomberg.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Bloomberg reports that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John John Andrea to execute on product development.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Mike Rockwell, the head of the Vision Pro, is now taking charge of the Siri team.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So apparently John Andrea is still at Apple, will continue to oversee the testing and other AI-related technologies in a larger AI role.

00:20:27 ◼   ► We know what that means.

00:20:28 ◼   ► But Rockwell will now report directly to Apple's Craig Federighi, head of software.

00:20:34 ◼   ► And Rockwell is now in charge of Siri and making sense of, I guess, how to ship a proper next-generation Siri.

00:20:44 ◼   ► This, I mean, I was both expecting and not expecting this.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I'm kind of curious to know what you think, Stephen.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I figured that there would be some changes, but maybe not at this high of a level.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Like, this is a...

00:21:01 ◼   ► Yes, yes, yes.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I mean, John Andrea came from Google, and at the time, we were all very excited about that and seemed like a very good hire.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And I think it was a good hire.

00:21:12 ◼   ► He's got a lot of experience in these things.

00:21:14 ◼   ► But very clearly, Apple's not made the progress that they should.

00:21:19 ◼   ► And I think somewhat clearly, at the very top levels of the company, they're holding him responsible for that.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Now, whether he is or he came in and the technical debt is too great, we don't know.

00:21:36 ◼   ► I mean, there's a lot of this that we don't know.

00:21:38 ◼   ► But I was a little surprised to see a change at such a high level.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And Mike Rockwell led the Vision Pro project, I mean, for years in secret, and then was there at its launch and has brought that device into the world.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And while it's not a perfect device by any means, it is an incredible feat that it's here.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Say what you will about the Vision Pro, and I mean, I've been a critic of the Vision Pro myself.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But two things you've got to admit, they shipped it, and Vision OS is really, like, it's a triumph of a new OS built on a completely new platform with really good design.

00:22:26 ◼   ► You know, set aside the platform ecosystem or lack thereof.

00:22:32 ◼   ► but, like, Vision OS is incredible, and they shipped it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► They shipped this completely new product.

00:22:37 ◼   ► You know, again, set aside the price and the launch and the weird PR strategy, but they did it.

00:22:45 ◼   ► They shipped it with a brand new operating system that is the, like, Vision OS is the reason why people still sort of are excited about the Vision Pro.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Because whenever I put it on, I think, oh, Vision OS is so cool, right?

00:22:58 ◼   ► So, clearly, Rockwell seems to be the sort of leader that is able to ship.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And I think that's probably what matters right now.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I think so, too.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And in the chat room, it was brought up that, you know, well, he seems to have a lot of expertise in the Vision kind of AR, VR area.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And I would imagine that that's gained over time.

00:23:28 ◼   ► And while that seems like it may be a loss for that team, although his sort of second-in-command is going to be heading it up.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I think at the highest level, it's more important to have somebody who knows how to get a team to get something out the door than having, necessarily having lots of expertise in that particular thing.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Now, Mike Rockwell is no dummy, and I'm sure that whatever he has to learn, he will be able to do quickly.

00:23:55 ◼   ► And so, I think that that is, I think it's a very interesting move.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It's not one that I would have guessed that it would be Rockwell.

00:24:04 ◼   ► But as Gruber wrote, just, I mean, as this was breaking, basically, this also means that Siri is moving under Craig Federighi's group.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And that is a change, and we'll see how that goes.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I mean, Federighi now has more under him than I think at any point, probably, that we know about.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And that's also, like, an interesting reporting change here.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:24:34 ◼   ► So, if you think about this change, there's an argument to be made for the fact that Vision OS itself and the entire category of, let's say, Vision products, right?

00:24:49 ◼   ► Assuming that there's going to be multiple Vision non-pro products, like whether that's glasses or another cheaper headset, but Vision products will benefit from a better artificial intelligence, right?

00:25:03 ◼   ► Especially, I mean, you look at what Google is doing, for example, with Android XR and the Gemini integration.

00:25:11 ◼   ► You know, Gemini is a sponsor, but aside from that, like what they showed off, a product pretty similar to the Vision Pro and Vision OS, clearly inspired by Vision OS, but combined with an artificial intelligence that works.

00:25:26 ◼   ► There's obviously potential there.

00:25:27 ◼   ► There's obviously potential there.

00:25:28 ◼   ► And one could say, you know, you could make an argument that Vision OS could be a lot better today if only it had a better theory and proper AI features to make sense of your surroundings, to make sense of your windows, to help you sort of combine the spatial nature of Vision OS with, you know, better artificial intelligence.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And that's not here today.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So maybe it is a surprise to say, oh, they put the Vision Pro guy in charge of Siri, but if you sort of remove yourself from that and sort of take a look at the bigger picture, I think it actually makes sense.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I would not expect anything drastic to change in the short term.

00:26:10 ◼   ► You know, I think that they've got work to do.

00:26:14 ◼   ► There was a report, I think also by Gurman, that the personal, what were they calling it, like the personal intelligence stuff, that that was working like 80 or 85% of the time.

00:26:28 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, I mean, who knows, uh, there were also, there was also a quote from an example, an Apple executive in that report that sounded like it was written by an LLM.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So I don't, I don't know what's going on about like swimming to Hawaii or something.

00:26:38 ◼   ► It was very strange.

00:26:39 ◼   ► It's going to take some time for this to get underway.

00:26:46 ◼   ► And I think Rockwell has an uphill battle, but he, like we're saying, he had that with the Vision Pro and Vision OS and edits here.

00:26:56 ◼   ► And, and I think it's, it, the Vision Pro's shortcomings, like the hardware is too expensive and too heavy.

00:27:04 ◼   ► There's not a lot of third party app support.

00:27:08 ◼   ► Like, I don't think a lot of that lays at his feet necessarily.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And so, uh, I think he's probably in a good position to, to make this move.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And I hope it's the right move because Apple does need to get this under control.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And, uh, and I guess we'll see, we'll see what happens.

00:27:25 ◼   ► Um, if you were John Andrea, what would you be doing?

00:27:28 ◼   ► Would you be, I mean, he's, he's apparently doing all this research.

00:27:31 ◼   ► There's also a team like Gurman just loves the robotics team at Apple.

00:27:35 ◼   ► You know, maybe, uh, he's doing some stuff with them.

00:27:39 ◼   ► It sounds like, do you think he's going to be at Apple in a year?

00:27:42 ◼   ► You know, I don't know what kind of contract he has, but like, if you were him, would you be looking at an exit?

00:27:48 ◼   ► I would be, I think, you know, nobody likes to get removed from their job.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Just look at Mike.

00:27:57 ◼   ► He's not here anymore.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And, and he can text me about that one.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Right now, without knowing anything, I, if I were to bet, you know, well, $5, I would bet $5 on John Andrea not being at Apple within a year.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:21 ◼   ► I'm going to my calendar.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Do, do, do, do, do.

00:28:25 ◼   ► March.

00:28:26 ◼   ► What's the day?

00:28:27 ◼   ► The 20th?

00:28:27 ◼   ► Yes.

00:28:30 ◼   ► All right.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Uh, $5 bet.

00:28:33 ◼   ► John Andrea not at Apple.

00:28:37 ◼   ► How does this bet work?

00:28:39 ◼   ► I'm going to say he is still at Apple in a year, just to take the other side.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:45 ◼   ► So in a year, if he's still at Apple, I owe you $5?

00:28:48 ◼   ► Yep.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Federico says he will be gone.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I say he is still there.

00:28:55 ◼   ► What about, uh, what about inflation though?

00:28:58 ◼   ► It is an inflation-free zone.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I want to talk about politics.

00:29:01 ◼   ► $5 is $5 in this, in this world.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:05 ◼   ► No, no tariffs for me.

00:29:07 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:07 ◼   ► No tariffs.

00:29:08 ◼   ► Uh, that's the end of my kid's spring break next year.

00:29:11 ◼   ► That'll be fun.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Uh, okay.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It's on my calendar for one year from today.

00:29:14 ◼   ► If I were him, I would take my money and, uh, I was, I was talking to Chance Miller about

00:29:20 ◼   ► this and he agreed.

00:29:21 ◼   ► He's like, I'd go buy a house on the beach and not use an AI product anymore.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:29:26 ◼   ► Uh, it comes out, uh, this comes out the same week that we have all discovered that Siri doesn't

00:29:33 ◼   ► know what month it is.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:35 ◼   ► I was playing around with this and you really cannot get it to tell you what month it is.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:42 ◼   ► It tells you that it, that it doesn't understand.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Which is concerning.

00:29:48 ◼   ► I was playing around with it.

00:29:50 ◼   ► I think I, I took some screenshots.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Let me see.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Uh, so I asked Siri, uh, variations, uh, a bunch of variations like what month is it?

00:29:59 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:30:00 ◼   ► What is the current month?

00:30:02 ◼   ► Was my other question.

00:30:03 ◼   ► It, it, Siri replied.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It was Saturday, March 1st, 2025.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Then I asked in which month are we in?

00:30:13 ◼   ► Sorry, I don't understand.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Then I asked, what's the current month?

00:30:18 ◼   ► Question mark.

00:30:19 ◼   ► It was Saturday, March 1st, 2025.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And then, and then finally I asked, please tell me the current month.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And he asked the Chad GPT and Chad GPT came back and said, the current month is March.

00:30:33 ◼   ► So.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Apple.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Incredible.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Right?

00:30:37 ◼   ► What are we doing?

00:30:39 ◼   ► I mean, what are we doing, man?

00:30:41 ◼   ► Like.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Let me try again.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Siri, I'm begging you.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Please tell me what month is it?

00:30:47 ◼   ► Oh, he's asking Chad GPT.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:51 ◼   ► This is going to work.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:30:54 ◼   ► It's March right now.

00:30:56 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:30:56 ◼   ► If you beg Siri, if you beg Siri enough, it's going to tell you.

00:31:01 ◼   ► It's great.

00:31:02 ◼   ► I used, uh, this is not in the outline, but I use the deep research thing on Chad GPT.

00:31:07 ◼   ► the other day.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Okay.

00:31:09 ◼   ► It's wild.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Like it went off and like did its thing.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And then I came back to it, you know, maybe 10 minutes later and it like had written all

00:31:17 ◼   ► this stuff, had all these sources.

00:31:19 ◼   ► It was pretty interesting.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's interesting.

00:31:23 ◼   ► It's interesting.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Everybody's calling it deep research now.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Like all these companies, they all have deep research.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Uh, it's kind of funny how the entire industry is sort of settling on the same names, um,

00:31:34 ◼   ► which on one hand is kind of funny on the other, it kind of.

00:31:37 ◼   ► It kind of standardizes the features, which, uh, which is at the very least, it's nice

00:31:42 ◼   ► that the same feature is called the same in a bunch of different places.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:48 ◼   ► It's all, it's better than 4.0, but the O is not a zero or sometimes a zero.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I know.

00:31:54 ◼   ► I can't ever tell.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Oh, oh, one mini high.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Oh, three, oh, three mini high.

00:32:01 ◼   ► You know, I've been, uh, I'm, uh, you know, redoing my network and I got a bunch of ubiquity

00:32:07 ◼   ► stuff.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Uh, they copied Apple and like pro pro max.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And like, but at least, at least I know what that means because Apple does it.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Same thing with, uh, is it Dell did their laptops or HP?

00:32:20 ◼   ► One of the laptop companies did it.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:22 ◼   ► They have the Dell, the Dell, the Dell pro and the Dell pro max.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Uh, but it's better than like 4.0 mini hyphen deep research underscore V2.

00:32:32 ◼   ► What are we doing?

00:32:34 ◼   ► Agreed.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Okay.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I want to change gears a little bit because this, this came out and I just texted you

00:32:42 ◼   ► a link and you were like tiny topic.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Like here it is.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Uh, this is, we're talking about the Zins Quattro wireless charger pro four.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And Federico, I want you to paint a word picture of this thing for our listeners.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Okay.

00:33:00 ◼   ► Imagine this.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Um, you just got married and, and you want to, and you want to move from your apartment

00:33:12 ◼   ► to a house, right?

00:33:13 ◼   ► You want to live in a big old school family house.

00:33:17 ◼   ► You want to have a, you want to have a proper home from your family.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Sure.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Uh, and you want to, and you want to build, you want to build your own home.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Uh, and so you start from the foundation, right?

00:33:27 ◼   ► You start from the foundation and you keep going and you realize, well, we're going to have

00:33:30 ◼   ► an entrance.

00:33:31 ◼   ► We're going to have a patio.

00:33:32 ◼   ► We're going to have, you know, uh, a hallway goes into the living room.

00:33:36 ◼   ► There's going to be a kitchen.

00:33:37 ◼   ► There's going to be, you know, maybe, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe a little studio

00:33:41 ◼   ► at the ground floor.

00:33:42 ◼   ► But then you realize, well, we've got to sleep somewhere.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:45 ◼   ► And so you realize, well, you know, we're out of space at the, at the floor level.

00:33:50 ◼   ► We've got to go, we've got to go higher.

00:33:51 ◼   ► And so you build a stairway, you build a staircase and you have a second floor.

00:33:56 ◼   ► That's where all your bedrooms are going to be, you know, bedroom for you, bedroom for

00:33:59 ◼   ► the kids, uh, maybe another studio, uh, maybe even an attic at some point.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Um, and you start building multiple levels.

00:34:07 ◼   ► But what if I told you that your home is, that your home is not a home.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Your home is a wireless charger.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And what if I, and what if I told you that you're looking at a multi-story wireless charger?

00:34:24 ◼   ► It's a little home for all of your devices.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And each of them goes to sleep on a separate floor.

00:34:32 ◼   ► This is a multi-level wireless charger where you can put different devices in different

00:34:41 ◼   ► little bedrooms at different levels.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Um, it's incredible.

00:34:46 ◼   ► So you're looking at a two level, two layer MagSafe certified charging stand is the official

00:34:54 ◼   ► name.

00:34:54 ◼   ► Uh, it has four wireless output, uh, surfaces.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Each of them is 15 Watts, G2 certified.

00:35:05 ◼   ► It comes with a 65 watt power adapter and it's $150.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Um, this thing is incredible, especially, and this is a, this is a, a long-term follow-up.

00:35:18 ◼   ► If you recall, Steven, many years ago here on this very program, we talked about a previous

00:35:24 ◼   ► Zens wireless, um, charger that I acquired.

00:35:28 ◼   ► I think it was like 2019 or 2020, something like that.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Um, remember the wireless charger that I got that was making a noise because the charger

00:35:39 ◼   ► had fans inside.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I do.

00:35:42 ◼   ► That was made by Zens.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Now Zens is back and they're bringing multiple floors with them.

00:35:47 ◼   ► So, uh, $150, you know, the dream of air power lives on, on multiple levels.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Literally.

00:35:55 ◼   ► It's, uh, this is like, this is like Mike's nightmares as a product.

00:36:04 ◼   ► You have, you have a, you have a, a little, you know, you got a little lasagna of, of wireless

00:36:12 ◼   ► chargers going on here.

00:36:15 ◼   ► To me, it looks like a biplane, you know, like the plane with like the two levels of

00:36:19 ◼   ► wings from the old times.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:22 ◼   ► It's just very funny.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Uh, I mean, don't get me wrong.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I do love this product.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like just looking at the photo, I'm not buying it because I know, knowing this company, I know

00:36:34 ◼   ► this thing is going to sound like it's going to take off like a, like a rocket or something.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:39 ◼   ► Like an airplane.

00:36:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I mean, like a biplane.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

00:36:43 ◼   ► I mean, cool idea.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Lots going on.

00:36:47 ◼   ► That's for sure.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Like, you know, but you know, for, for the family, everybody can put their device on it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► You know, you can do, you know, four iPhones charging at the same time.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Not too bad.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:02 ◼   ► It's, it's one of those things.

00:37:05 ◼   ► Like when you see the devices on it, it makes sense.

00:37:08 ◼   ► But if you just walked into my kitchen and this was on the counter with no devices on it,

00:37:12 ◼   ► you'd be like, what, what is that?

00:37:14 ◼   ► You know, you will put, you know, you, you know, if you saw that in the kitchen, you know

00:37:19 ◼   ► that somebody will put the salt on it.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Just think, you know, it's like a little, it's like a little shelf for my spices, you

00:37:25 ◼   ► know, a little spice rack, man.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Just got to bless the people over at Zenz.

00:37:33 ◼   ► They're making, they're making wild stuff.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Yes.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Thank you, Zenz.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:37:37 ◼   ► This leads me to a question.

00:37:38 ◼   ► What are we using for our charging these days?

00:37:41 ◼   ► I got the Belkin.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure it's called something boost charge pro because that's all the Belkin can

00:37:51 ◼   ► use as a product name.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I got it from, it's the Belkin one from the Apple store.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Is it the cube?

00:37:57 ◼   ► It's no, no.

00:37:59 ◼   ► That's the anchor.

00:38:00 ◼   ► If you recall, I upgraded from the anchor cube to the Belkin.

00:38:04 ◼   ► Again, I'm 90% convinced it's called boost charge.

00:38:10 ◼   ► something, something, uh, every Belkin product is usually named boost charge, some combination

00:38:17 ◼   ► of pro or Unicode characters.

00:38:19 ◼   ► So it's one of those from the Apple store.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Is it the Belkin boost charge pro two in one?

00:38:27 ◼   ► See, there you go.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Does it like fold out?

00:38:31 ◼   ► No, it doesn't fold out.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Oh, that, that one folds out.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Well, if you can find it, we'll have it in the show notes.

00:38:37 ◼   ► And if not, uh, good luck to our listeners, I guess.

00:38:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Do you, do you, do you, do you want to bet five more dollars that it's called Belkin booster?

00:38:46 ◼   ► Oh, no, I'm sure it is.

00:38:47 ◼   ► I guarantee you it is.

00:38:48 ◼   ► There's the Belkin boost charge two in one magnetic.

00:38:51 ◼   ► We say it doesn't fold.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Maybe Apple doesn't sell it anymore.

00:38:55 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:38:56 ◼   ► I got it.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I got him.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Uh, wait, it's not called boost charge.

00:39:01 ◼   ► I am shocked.

00:39:03 ◼   ► You owe me $5.

00:39:04 ◼   ► I am, oh no, no, no, no, hold on, hold on.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Belkin boost charge pro two in one with MagSafe.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:13 ◼   ► See?

00:39:14 ◼   ► Drop that in the discord.

00:39:15 ◼   ► People can see it.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Um, my charging has not changed in a long time.

00:39:20 ◼   ► I'm using the now, uh, discontinued, which makes me very sad, uh, studio neat material dock.

00:39:28 ◼   ► I've got one on my desk that the phone stands up so I can use the, um, standby mode, which I really like.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And then my nightstand, it's just like the, the old flat one, uh, with an Apple watch puck next to it.

00:39:42 ◼   ► It's great.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I've used them for a long time.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Like the way they look and you have to bring your own MagSafe stuff to that, but that's fine with me.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Wow.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:53 ◼   ► I'm just straight up putting the Italian Apple store link in the show notes.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Just.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Yeah, do it.

00:39:57 ◼   ► Do it.

00:39:58 ◼   ► In Italian.

00:39:58 ◼   ► That's what that link is.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:01 ◼   ► The boost, uh, Unicode symbol for an up arrow charge trademark symbol pro two.

00:40:10 ◼   ► All of that is in capital letters.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:14 ◼   ► So it's yelling at you and then two and one and the rest of it, uh, not in all capital letters.

00:40:22 ◼   ► That's a, that's some chat GPT levels of branding on Belkin's part.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:30 ◼   ► This episode of connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.

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00:42:24 ◼   ► Last week, we teased a column that you had coming about the iPad and software on the iPad.

00:42:34 ◼   ► That is out now with a just absolutely savage title, the iPad's sweet solution.

00:42:41 ◼   ► In this article, you talk about how some of the most powerful and kind of well thought out software titles for the iPad aren't iPad apps, but they're actual web apps, PWAs.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Before we get into some of the specifics of this, could you give us an update on like what PWAs are, how they interact with iOS and iPad OS, what they can do on these devices?

00:43:08 ◼   ► Because I know this has changed over the years, but what's the current state?

00:43:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:13 ◼   ► So I'm not a developer, so I'm going to try my best.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So the PWA stands for Progressive Web App.

00:43:20 ◼   ► It's basically a web app that from Safari, you can save to the home screen on your iPhone and iPad.

00:43:28 ◼   ► That's the sort of thing that Apple tried to get rid of last year as part of their, quote unquote, DMA compliance.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Everybody complained, and then they reversed their decision saying, ah, we thought we had to get rid of PWAs, but turns out they can stay.

00:43:43 ◼   ► So nice try, Apple.

00:43:44 ◼   ► In any case, you've been able to save web apps to the home screen for ages now.

00:43:49 ◼   ► They have web app, Progressive Web Apps on Apple platforms, specifically on iOS and iPad OS in this case.

00:43:58 ◼   ► They have gotten slightly better over the years, not as much as they have on Android.

00:44:04 ◼   ► On iOS, a couple of years ago, they added support for web push notifications, which didn't used to be a thing.

00:44:13 ◼   ► So now you can say web app, it opens in full screen, it uses WebKit, obviously, due to iPad OS limitations.

00:44:21 ◼   ► It supports push notifications.

00:44:25 ◼   ► So if you're saving things like Todoist, for example, you can receive push notifications for the Todoist web app as a PWA on your iPad.

00:44:33 ◼   ► But they come with all sorts of limitations.

00:44:37 ◼   ► For example, they do not support share extensions, which is something that I think on other platforms is technically possible.

00:44:47 ◼   ► There's a bunch of other things that web apps saved on the iPad cannot do that they can do on Android.

00:44:54 ◼   ► One of the other ones, for example, when you're browsing with Chrome on Android and you come across a website that offers a PWA, Chrome tells you, they show you a little notification that says, if you want, you can save this as a web app to your home screen.

00:45:12 ◼   ► And so you got that easier installation flow going on Android, on iOS and on iPad OS, it's all a little more manual.

00:45:18 ◼   ► You got to go into the share sheet and you got to say add to home screen and then you save it.

00:45:22 ◼   ► So, yeah, there are a bunch of limitations for PWAs on iPad.

00:45:27 ◼   ► They are better, I think, on the Mac.

00:45:30 ◼   ► You know, you can do the whole Safari add to dock thing.

00:45:34 ◼   ► And when you save a web app to your dock on macOS, I think you retain access to Safari extensions, which is also something that you don't have on iOS and iPad OS because those web apps, they open in full screen.

00:45:48 ◼   ► They don't show you any UI Chrome around them.

00:45:52 ◼   ► So you're just limited to whatever is offered in the web app.

00:45:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:57 ◼   ► So that's sort of the gist of it's a feature that has been that has existed forever.

00:46:02 ◼   ► And it has slowly improved over the years on the iPhone and iPad.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Do they show up as like individual windows in the app, in like the app switcher view?

00:46:15 ◼   ► They do.

00:46:15 ◼   ► They do show up in the app switcher.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Okay.

00:46:17 ◼   ► They do show up in Spotlight.

00:46:19 ◼   ► I don't think they show up in the app library, if I'm not mistaken.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I think that's right.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So that's why, so that's why I was putting them on my home screen, obviously, and in my dock.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Okay.

00:46:29 ◼   ► So in this piece, you talk about how these PWAs are the truly, quoting you, desktop class layout

00:46:42 ◼   ► and experiences that you can get on the iPad.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And you point to a couple of reasons for this.

00:46:50 ◼   ► One being Apple's app store policies.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I think that's the biggest reason here.

00:46:58 ◼   ► But you also talk about the constraints of iPadOS.

00:47:05 ◼   ► And you have this great insight here that this also extends to the Vision Pro, which we'll

00:47:13 ◼   ► get to, uh, we'll get to in a minute, but let's start with the, with the app store.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Um, what, I mean, we've talked about the app store for years and the problems with it, but

00:47:24 ◼   ► what do you, you see as like the high level reasons a developer may look at the web and

00:47:31 ◼   ► look at the app store and choose the web, knowing that there are trade-offs for their

00:47:38 ◼   ► software if it's web only?

00:47:40 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's a very good question.

00:47:42 ◼   ► And I think, I think one of the, one of the key factors to consider that it's been, it's

00:47:50 ◼   ► been, uh, how many years since the introduction of the app store?

00:47:54 ◼   ► We're going into seven, 17, 17.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:58 ◼   ► So there's a, there's a whole generation of kids, um, who were born and raised during

00:48:06 ◼   ► the app store era.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And in schools, they were most likely trained on using Chromebooks and using web browsers

00:48:15 ◼   ► and using web apps.

00:48:19 ◼   ► and some of those kids, uh, you know, who maybe showed an interest in programming, uh,

00:48:25 ◼   ► most likely, uh, decided to develop for the web instead of for the app store because they

00:48:31 ◼   ► were familiar with the web because some of the biggest services that they were using alongside

00:48:36 ◼   ► those web first computers, but the likes of Google docs or Slack or notion or Google calendar,

00:48:43 ◼   ► they were all web apps.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And I think it's only natural that they gravitated toward a, a web experiences, not just because

00:48:52 ◼   ► of the, what they were using in school, but also because if you are making that, if you

00:48:57 ◼   ► are making that sort of calculation for yourself, like if I want to be a programmer and I want

00:49:02 ◼   ► to make whatever I want, what should I make?

00:49:05 ◼   ► And, and you look at the app store, right?

00:49:08 ◼   ► And you look at the limitations of iPadOS and you look at all the restrictions that you have in

00:49:12 ◼   ► terms of like, can I make whatever I want?

00:49:14 ◼   ► No.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Uh, one, because there are no APIs to make whatever you want to make.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And two, because even if you were using some private APIs in a clever way, Apple would reject

00:49:24 ◼   ► you.

00:49:24 ◼   ► They, they wouldn't approve your app that sort of tries to push the boundaries of what, what

00:49:29 ◼   ► is possible on an iPad or on an iPhone.

00:49:31 ◼   ► Um, so I think it's only natural that we're now, you know, 17 years into this app store

00:49:37 ◼   ► era and there's young developers now entering college or entering the workforce because maybe

00:49:43 ◼   ► they're just fresh out of college.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And I think naturally they are gravitating toward the web.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And if you, and I think our current AI and LLM era is only compounding that because all

00:49:56 ◼   ► of these AI services and all of those APIs, they're all based on the web.

00:50:00 ◼   ► They're either based on the web or, and this is the other sort of angle of my story.

00:50:04 ◼   ► If you are a young developer, if you are a 20 year old and you're like, I want to make

00:50:09 ◼   ► something, you know, I want to make something cool that uses AI or uses RAG or uses one of

00:50:15 ◼   ► these new technologies.

00:50:15 ◼   ► What should I make?

00:50:17 ◼   ► And you look at your whole spectrum of devices that are available to you.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:21 ◼   ► And I think you, and I think you, you, you, you go about it in two ways.

00:50:26 ◼   ► You're like, well, either I make something on the web, right?

00:50:30 ◼   ► Because of all these new web APIs and all these new LLMs and all these new things that I can

00:50:34 ◼   ► do with, with, with cloud and Google and open AI, uh, or, or I get into the whole open source

00:50:43 ◼   ► local AI stuff.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And if that's the case, if the second, if the second scenario is the case, you're getting

00:50:50 ◼   ► a Mac or you're getting a PC, but you're getting a, you're getting a proper desktop computer.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And so the result is that if you look at the landscape today, like, let's say you have

00:50:59 ◼   ► my job and like, my job is to look at new apps, new and interesting apps coming out.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And there's two kinds of them.

00:51:06 ◼   ► The first one is web apps.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And the second one is cool Mac apps that are doing new and interesting things with local AI

00:51:13 ◼   ► on your computer, on your Mac.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Um, and I think that's a combination of factors that ultimately only Apple is to blame for

00:51:24 ◼   ► not being able to sparehead this, this, this generation of new programmers of new developers.

00:51:34 ◼   ► And I know that they're young because I get emails from them, right?

00:51:37 ◼   ► They're all kids.

00:51:37 ◼   ► They're all, you know, fresh out of college or some of them even still in high school and

00:51:41 ◼   ► they're making stuff, they're building stuff and they're usually do it on the Mac.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Uh, they're usually do it on the web.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Um, and I think that is something that I've been feeling for quite some time.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Uh, but the, the fact is besides the artistic tools and some niche utilities on the iPad,

00:52:04 ◼   ► most of the innovation that is happening right now for the kinds of email pitches that we

00:52:10 ◼   ► get at Mac stories, they're either AI apps, either local or web-based, or they are indie

00:52:18 ◼   ► young developers, but even like, you know, you, you, you, let's say you, let's say you are a seasoned

00:52:32 ◼   ► Mac developer.

00:52:33 ◼   ► Uh, I'm a seasoned Mac developer.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Oh, you didn't want me to say it.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:37 ◼   ► You are, you are seasoned.

00:52:39 ◼   ► That's for sure.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

00:52:41 ◼   ► But if you're a seasoned Mac developer, your, your new indie app is most likely going to

00:52:48 ◼   ► be a Mac app, whether it's a menu bar utility or, or it's a shortcuts utility or, you know,

00:52:55 ◼   ► it's a text editor, whatever.

00:52:56 ◼   ► And you do it because you have the freedom to release it however you want, whatever you

00:53:00 ◼   ► want to charge, you know, choose your own business model, release it on the app store, release

00:53:05 ◼   ► it on the web, go, you know, sign up for setup and their developer program, whatever you want

00:53:09 ◼   ► to do, you can do it on a Mac.

00:53:12 ◼   ► And so that's sort of, I think the context that was behind the idea of the story.

00:53:18 ◼   ► And, and the end result was me over the past few months working on the iPad to me like, Oh,

00:53:22 ◼   ► look at me.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I'm using a bunch of web apps on the iPad because all of, because these are better experiences

00:53:28 ◼   ► than the native iPad apps that I can download from the app store.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I think there's another element to it though, that the, a lot of services that are on the web,

00:53:41 ◼   ► they'll have an iPhone app, right?

00:53:44 ◼   ► And the iPhone is obviously the biggest target in the Apple ecosystem.

00:53:47 ◼   ► And I just, I can't help but think that Apple hasn't, while they have given developers tools

00:53:54 ◼   ► to take an iPhone app and get it on the iPad, a lot of the examples in your article, like

00:54:01 ◼   ► the iPad apps just aren't good because either the developers didn't take the time or the tools

00:54:06 ◼   ► weren't readily available to like scale it up to make an iPhone app a good.

00:54:11 ◼   ► iPad experience, whereas a PWA, you can load in the web version and, and it looks really

00:54:16 ◼   ► good.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Like the read, the read wise reader one, I think is the biggest example to me.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Like it really startled me in your article, like the difference between the, their iPad app

00:54:28 ◼   ► and their PWA.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:31 ◼   ► The, the, the short wave one was also, I think a good one because you were looking at

00:54:36 ◼   ► a giant iPhone layout as, as the native iPad app suddenly becoming like this multi sidebar

00:54:42 ◼   ► affair.

00:54:43 ◼   ► If you were using the web app and, and short wave is a good example because it supports

00:54:48 ◼   ► a web push notifications, just like Todoist, custom keyboard shortcuts, all kinds of things.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Um, so yeah, and, and that sort of leads into the conclusion of the story spoilers, I guess,

00:55:01 ◼   ► if you haven't read it.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Um, but the conclusion being like, if I'm using the iPad and I mean, goes without saying I love

00:55:10 ◼   ► the iPad, right?

00:55:11 ◼   ► Um, but if I'm mostly using the iPad to work with either a bunch of web apps or a bunch of

00:55:19 ◼   ► cross-platform apps, like Obsidian, for example, why am I using the iPad at this point?

00:55:27 ◼   ► Like sure, because I want a tablet, but also if I were to look ahead to next year, right?

00:55:32 ◼   ► Looking ahead to 2026, if Apple is really coming out with a foldable phone, that is a phone that

00:55:40 ◼   ► expands into a small tablet.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Is there, is there, is there a potential scenario in which that device may sort of satiate my

00:55:50 ◼   ► need for a tablet in my life?

00:55:52 ◼   ► And at that point, should I just get a computer to get my work done?

00:55:56 ◼   ► Should I just get a Mac?

00:55:57 ◼   ► If I'm mostly using web apps, so should I just get a Mac so that the web apps are going to

00:56:02 ◼   ► be the same?

00:56:03 ◼   ► Like I'm going to use the same apps, the same web apps, the same cross-platform apps, but

00:56:07 ◼   ► at the very least, I would also get the ability to use a whole bunch of other indie apps that

00:56:15 ◼   ► I got to tell you, Steven, like I miss them.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Like I miss, you know, not being able to use apps that are from outside the app store.

00:56:25 ◼   ► And it kind of pains me to say it because I worked on the iPad for 10 years, you know?

00:56:33 ◼   ► And I think I exhausted my options.

00:56:39 ◼   ► That's the thing.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Like I did it all.

00:56:41 ◼   ► I tried it all that I could do.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I can do my job with the iPad, but the thing is, there's so much more to my job that I could

00:56:52 ◼   ► be doing.

00:56:52 ◼   ► You know, I miss the days.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I miss the old me, you know?

00:56:59 ◼   ► Like testing and writing about cool indie Mac apps on a weekly basis.

00:57:07 ◼   ► And look at the app reviews that we have on Mac stories and look at my byline and how infrequently

00:57:14 ◼   ► it appears.

00:57:16 ◼   ► And that is the case because there's nothing coming out on the iPadOS app store that I can

00:57:23 ◼   ► write about.

00:57:23 ◼   ► And if you compare and contrast to my app reviews from say 10 years ago, it's like a night and

00:57:31 ◼   ► day difference.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And I, you know, I kind of miss that in my life.

00:57:36 ◼   ► So.

00:57:38 ◼   ► We mentioned the vision pro and how it has basically inherited a lot of these issues because vision

00:57:49 ◼   ► OS owes a lot to iPadOS.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I think they're, they're obviously very similar under the hood, but the app store slash developer

00:58:00 ◼   ► situation that Apple finds itself in, as much as it has potentially hurt the iPad, it has

00:58:07 ◼   ► really hurt vision OS adoption.

00:58:09 ◼   ► I think.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's, uh, it's really the same story.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Um, at the very least vision OS, this is the thing from the story.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Like it has the same limitations as iPadOS.

00:58:22 ◼   ► I'm also mostly using web apps on the, on the, on the, on the vision pro, but here's the funny

00:58:29 ◼   ► thing about it.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And this is another point that I tried to make in the story, but we all made fun of the vision

00:58:35 ◼   ► pro and the fact that it costs, uh, $3,500, right?

00:58:38 ◼   ► Um, the iPad pro that I was using specced, you know, with nanotexter, one terabyte cellular,

00:58:46 ◼   ► magic keyboard and everything is exactly $3,500.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:51 ◼   ► In terms of like the Euro to USD conversion.

00:58:53 ◼   ► So it's the same price, but price being the same and absolute limitations being the same

00:59:01 ◼   ► at the very least, vision OS gives me better multitasking because I'm not limited to four

00:59:07 ◼   ► windows at once.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And it would give me the escape valve.

00:59:12 ◼   ► That is, uh, the, uh, the Mac virtual display.

00:59:15 ◼   ► So at the very least for the same price, very high price, uh, that I would pay for both devices

00:59:22 ◼   ► with the same underlying iPadOS app store limitations.

00:59:28 ◼   ► One of them though, gives me unlimited windows and incredible integration with macOS.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So price being high price being equal, I think the vision OS product actually comes out on top.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And that's kind of funny.

00:59:47 ◼   ► If you think about it, if your Apple is probably don't feel very funny, but there is something

00:59:53 ◼   ► to it, uh, but a lot of it's like making, I don't know.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Like I, I usually have a pretty good sort of like sixth sense for these things and I have

01:00:10 ◼   ► a, and, and it's, and I kind of feel it in my bones.

01:00:14 ◼   ► I have that sense again, that the iPad as a product for Apple is sort of entered its sunset

01:00:24 ◼   ► era, maybe has for a while.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And I think that looking ahead at the next year between the incredible things they're

01:00:31 ◼   ► doing with the Mac lineup and what's happening in AI and what's happening with vision OS and

01:00:40 ◼   ► what they're going to do with the foldable.

01:00:41 ◼   ► I have a sense that not much that, that the iPad lineup is in, in, in its, you know, it's

01:00:51 ◼   ► not that what's the, the old expression, I think from Steve jobs, you've got to choose

01:00:57 ◼   ► the right horse to bet on, right?

01:01:00 ◼   ► When you pick a technology, I don't think the iPad is the right horse at the moment.

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01:02:33 ◼   ► Our thanks to Turbulence Forecast for the support of the show and all of Relay.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Well, the iPad may be a bit of a bummer, but we got some good news.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I did not have this on my bingo card a year ago.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Pebble is back.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Yes, they are.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I'll just say up front.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I'm just going to say, I never really understood the appeal of these watches.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Okay.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I know that it's a cool project.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I know there's probably a lot of cool people working on it.

01:03:12 ◼   ► It's just my personal opinion.

01:03:14 ◼   ► I don't think they look nice.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I think they look kind of dorky.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And explain to me why this is exciting.

01:03:23 ◼   ► I think it's exciting for people who want to tinker.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Okay.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Good enough.

01:03:28 ◼   ► All right.

01:03:29 ◼   ► I'll take that explanation.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:31 ◼   ► I knew that would speak to you.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And as we get into it, it is not necessarily aimed at a bunch of Apple users for a bunch of reasons.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Although in his blog post, Eric talks about something like 40% of people interested in it run an iPhone.

01:03:54 ◼   ► But he also talks about how iOS is limiting to products like this.

01:04:00 ◼   ► We're going to get to that in a minute.

01:04:02 ◼   ► But there are two watches over at repebble.com.

01:04:13 ◼   ► There's the Core 2 Duo, which has a 1.2-inch black and white e-paper screen.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So this is like the classic Pebble.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Remember like the Kickstarter 100 years ago?

01:04:24 ◼   ► Plastic frame, $149.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Start shipping in July.

01:04:31 ◼   ► You can get it in white or black.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And then there's the Core Time 2, which is the color screen, which they did right at the very end.

01:04:40 ◼   ► They had like this, the Pebble Time line, which the Pebble Time was the name of the product.

01:04:46 ◼   ► They had a couple of them.

01:04:47 ◼   ► 1.5-inch, 64-color e-paper screen.

01:04:51 ◼   ► It's touch-enabled.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Has a metal frame.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Comes in more options for finishes.

01:04:58 ◼   ► $225 will ship starting in December.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Both have 30-day battery life.

01:05:06 ◼   ► Both have IPX8 water resistance.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Both have step and sleep tracking.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Both have a microphone and speaker.

01:05:13 ◼   ► This is not a Kickstarter.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Like you can pre-order them.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Pebble got sold to Google 100 years ago or got sold to Fitbit.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And then Fitbit got bought by Google.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And then in January, Google open-sourced Pebble OS.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And now Eric is back.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Eric, I cannot, I don't know how to pronounce his last name.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So I'm just calling him Eric.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Oh, me, me, me, me, me, me, Gikovsky, Migikovsky.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Sure.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:05:41 ◼   ► He was behind Beeper.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Remember that?

01:05:44 ◼   ► And then was a partner at Y Combinator.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Like successful in many ways.

01:05:49 ◼   ► So he's back with this.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's for people who want to tinker.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I think it's particularly for people who are in the Android ecosystem where this watch has more access.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And, you know, I think there are a lot of people who choose Android because it's more tinker friendly, you know, to go in and customize things.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And, you know, if you want something like this, it's going to probably work better on Android.

01:06:18 ◼   ► There's a somewhat spicy blog post that's in the show notes talking about ways that Apple, the way that iOS is built means that Pebble and other third-party smartwatches for the iPhone, for instance, can't send text messages or iMessages, can't reply to notifications or take actions on them.

01:06:45 ◼   ► And then they're also dependent on the iOS app being open all the time.

01:06:49 ◼   ► So if it gets closed in the background or is closed by the user, then the watch basically falls out of sync with the phone.

01:06:58 ◼   ► And it's interesting timing that just this week as well, the EU orders Apple to open up access to iOS notifications.

01:07:09 ◼   ► So there's also a link to that.

01:07:10 ◼   ► Apple, of course, not a fan of this.

01:07:14 ◼   ► And they have their own statement to it that, you know, they're unhappy.

01:07:18 ◼   ► But it is going to be a limited experience on the iPhone compared to Android.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And honestly, I think that's a bummer.

01:07:27 ◼   ► I think this is an area where Apple should open up iOS.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Yeah, obviously, I agree.

01:07:35 ◼   ► But that's the, you know, that's the European in me talking.

01:07:40 ◼   ► I understand the appeal for tinkerers.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Like, that's a good enough angle, I think.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:44 ◼   ► You know.

01:07:44 ◼   ► It's a big market.

01:07:45 ◼   ► It's a market big enough for this company, I would think.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:53 ◼   ► From that perspective, like, if this is not an Apple Watch alternative, but it's like a little thing that you can put on your wrist and you can tinker and run whatever software you want, then I get it.

01:08:04 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me of those e-ink screens that everybody's going crazy over these days, like that you can program however you want.

01:08:11 ◼   ► I know that Quinn at Stasyn Labs did a video a few weeks ago about this e-ink display that he's using, and he did this really cool automation using shortcuts and webhooks on Zapier, I think, to put some data on that e-ink display in the kitchen.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's called Terminal.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Very cool.

01:08:30 ◼   ► Terminal, thank you.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:32 ◼   ► So, yeah, from that perspective, I understand the appeal then.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Cool.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And maybe I should get a pebble.

01:08:41 ◼   ► Put some shortcuts data.

01:08:43 ◼   ► I pre-ordered one in black, just the basic one.

01:08:49 ◼   ► It's not going to make me switch away from my Apple Watch, but I am interested in this, and I think that there is, I think there's room, especially if the EU gets what they want here, like, there's room for this to improve over time.

01:09:04 ◼   ► And so maybe it's a great time for Pebble to come back, you know, maybe it could be more compelling than in the past.

01:09:11 ◼   ► But I also like hardware startups, right?

01:09:16 ◼   ► Like, hardware is really expensive and difficult.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And in that blog post, he's like, look, we're funding this ourselves.

01:09:22 ◼   ► It's not a Kickstarter.

01:09:23 ◼   ► They've got the leeway to do that.

01:09:26 ◼   ► And this has like a thousand percent chance of being better than the humane AI pin.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Like, I also find it refreshing that this has not been, like, the Pebble has not been rebranded as like an AI-powered smartwatch, right?

01:09:38 ◼   ► Like, it just does smartwatch things.

01:09:40 ◼   ► And that's, I think that's very interesting.

01:09:42 ◼   ► So what I'm, what I'm hearing is Widget Smith on Pebble, right?

01:09:48 ◼   ► I'm not saying that.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I'm not saying that.

01:09:51 ◼   ► But you're also like not, not saying it.

01:09:53 ◼   ► I mean, did underscore talk me into ordering it?

01:09:56 ◼   ► Yes.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Yes.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Yes, he did.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:00 ◼   ► I mean, the headline writes itself, Widget Smith developer buys an Apple Watch competitor product.

01:10:10 ◼   ► We're not, you know.

01:10:11 ◼   ► You're going to get me in trouble.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Like, come on.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Too late, already saved on the Mac stories, CMS.

01:10:17 ◼   ► The top of hacker news.

01:10:18 ◼   ► I mean, if I were in the Android ecosystem, I would be super psyched about this.

01:10:26 ◼   ► As an iPhone user, I'm mostly doing it for my job.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Like, I think it'll be interesting to see how this goes.

01:10:32 ◼   ► But yeah, Pebble's back.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Not, like I said, I thought they were dead and gone, right?

01:10:39 ◼   ► Like, did you have a Pebble back in the day?

01:10:43 ◼   ► No, never.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Never.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I did.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I did the Kickstarter way back in the day.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And in 2013, I reviewed it.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And I'm just, I'm going to do the annoying thing and quote myself from 2013.

01:11:06 ◼   ► The Pebble's big feature is its ability to show notifications from the iPhone on its screen.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Remember, this is before the Apple Watch.

01:11:12 ◼   ► Coupled with the built-in vibrator, this makes it easy to check in on a text or email without having to pull out your phone.

01:11:17 ◼   ► When a notification comes in, it pops up on a screen, staying there until it's replaced by a newer message or is cleared by the press of a button.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Keeping the watch and phone connected all day does impact the battery life on the phone.

01:11:30 ◼   ► While it's not draining my phone dramatically faster, it is a noticeable change.

01:11:35 ◼   ► So, yeah.

01:11:39 ◼   ► There you go.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And I also talk about how it's, iOS at the time didn't have a notification setting to send to Bluetooth.

01:11:47 ◼   ► So, like, it just, you had to, like, go in and, like, disable and re-enable notifications.

01:11:52 ◼   ► It was kind of clunky.

01:11:53 ◼   ► I'm curious how much of that clunkiness remains 12 years later.

01:11:57 ◼   ► My guess is a lot of it.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:01 ◼   ► The EU, you know, they're just big Pebble fans over there.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:09 ◼   ► This episode of Connected is brought to you by Incogni.

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01:13:40 ◼   ► Lastly, we have some iPhone design leaks.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Okay, what are we looking at here?

01:13:46 ◼   ► To talk about.

01:13:46 ◼   ► So these are models leaked by everyone's friend, Sonny Dixon, who has a very, I think, mostly good track record of these things.

01:14:02 ◼   ► So these are dummy models of Apple's, that's the name of the company, Apple's upcoming iPhone 17 line.

01:14:11 ◼   ► So we have 17, 17 Air, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And looking at these pictures, this does not, it does not seem extremely cohesive to me that this is all one family of iPhones.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Yeah, you got, you got the, the, the, the, the, the, the, so they're basically, it looks like for the iPhone 17 Air, so the slim one, they're basically going to copy the design of the camera bar on the Pixel.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Very, very much so.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And on the Pro ones, they're doing a higher camera bar.

01:14:51 ◼   ► So you're looking at a rectangle that extends, like it's not a square, just in a corner.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:56 ◼   ► It's a, it's a, it's, it's about the same height, but it extends all the way to the other side.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:01 ◼   ► If you took, if you took a picture of your, of the current iPhone Pro and in Photoshop, you grabbed the edge of that raised camera area, whose name we're going to talk about in a second.

01:15:13 ◼   ► And drug it all the way over.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And like, I don't mind that look, but where this falls down for me is in, if you look at the two camera iPhone 17, according to this, it looks like it does now.

01:15:29 ◼   ► It's just like two stacked cameras on a little raised area.

01:15:33 ◼   ► It does not have the bar.

01:15:34 ◼   ► And to me, that's the one that stands out.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Like if you're going to commit to this camera bar or like visor thing and things that they call it on the Pixel, like do it across the board.

01:15:45 ◼   ► But the, the base 17 feels out of step with these other designs.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And that, that, that's the one that jumps out to me.

01:15:54 ◼   ► My main problem is that, um, it looks like there's a lot of wasted space, uh, in between, especially on the Pro phones, in between the right most lens and the other items on the right side.

01:16:12 ◼   ► So the flash and the LIDAR sensor and the microphone, I suppose, like, it looks like there's a lot of wasted space in the middle.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Uh, I had a, I had a fun theory that it's never going to come true, but can you imagine if like that wasted space, it's not actually wasted space, but can you imagine if underneath that area, there's actually, there's actually like a whole bunch of sensors that are, you hold on, hold on, hold on.

01:16:42 ◼   ► So, you know, the rumor of iOS 19, right?

01:16:46 ◼   ► That it's going to look a lot more like visualized.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Obviously one of the things of the, of vision OS is the, how windows are styled and windows are translucent because they pick up the context of your surroundings or windows behind them.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Like they reflect the colors and the surface and the lighting and the shadows of the real world.

01:17:07 ◼   ► Oh boy.

01:17:07 ◼   ► Now, can you imagine if these iPhones had sensors in that quote unquote wasted space that could be used in a low power efficient way?

01:17:19 ◼   ► To like run a constant scanner to tint windows on your phone based on where you are in space?

01:17:29 ◼   ► I love this.

01:17:31 ◼   ► They're never, they're never gonna, they're never gonna do it, but one can dream, you know?

01:17:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:36 ◼   ► A fascinating theory.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Um, some, like some flip phones use like a similar area for like a tiny screen with like little widgets.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Little widget.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Little widget.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Little widget.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Little widget.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Little widget.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Um,

01:17:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Realistically, it's just, it's just a whole lot of empty space.

01:17:57 ◼   ► You know, you know what it reminds me of?

01:17:59 ◼   ► Uh, if you, if you're, uh, go in system settings on the Mac and like how much space between there is a label and the switch, like way on the other side.

01:18:10 ◼   ► It's like, what if we turned that into hardware?

01:18:13 ◼   ► You know, what if we put a bunch of space in between, uh, what if you left aligned and right aligned and in the middle, there's nothing.

01:18:22 ◼   ► You could drive a car in the space in the middle.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Look, I'm all for the phone being updated.

01:18:28 ◼   ► And I, I think the renders like from John Prosser and others, like, I think it looks interesting.

01:18:34 ◼   ► My, my main complaint is that there's a real lack of continuity in this design, especially with the 17.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And like, why not put that thing in a camera bar as well?

01:18:46 ◼   ► Um, the other thing that comes out in these reports and, or that has continued to come out is that the whole back of the phone, at least on the pro models, may not be glass.

01:19:00 ◼   ► That this raised camera area may be offset, like from an aluminum body.

01:19:06 ◼   ► And then there's kind of a window of glass for MagSafe and the charging and, and all of that stuff, which I think could be really interesting depending on how they, how they make it look.

01:19:17 ◼   ► You know, is it going to look like there's a window of glass back there?

01:19:20 ◼   ► Um, we'll see, you know, it's, it's the possibilities, like in my mind are really kind of broad and how this could look.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And like, what if the color is slightly different between the glass and the aluminum?

01:19:32 ◼   ► Like, I think there's some interesting things Apple could do here.

01:19:34 ◼   ► I just think when you walk into an Apple store and maybe this is the point, you're going to walk into an Apple store and the iPhone 17 is going to look old compared to the air and the pros that have that, that full width camera bar thing on the back.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And in the past, like a couple of years ago with the 15, remember the 15 like didn't get the new processor.

01:19:57 ◼   ► It got like a hand me down and it's just, I don't think Apple should punish the entry level iPhone in, in undue ways.

01:20:10 ◼   ► I understand that it's going to be, you know, like, yeah, it doesn't have promotion.

01:20:14 ◼   ► Like they should change that, but I understand there are going to be specs that are always better between the regular phone and the pro phone, but I think they should look basically the same.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I don't disagree.

01:20:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:28 ◼   ► But we'll see, you know, we'll see.

01:20:31 ◼   ► It's March.

01:20:31 ◼   ► We got time.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:33 ◼   ► We have, uh, six months.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Jason says, this is what true tone.

01:20:41 ◼   ► That's what they could call it.

01:20:43 ◼   ► They could reuse that name.

01:20:44 ◼   ► True tone is the thing that matches the screen temperature, right?

01:20:51 ◼   ► Like to the light in the room.

01:20:52 ◼   ► Yes.

01:20:53 ◼   ► Yes.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Which is different from night shift.

01:20:55 ◼   ► That's the thing that removes the blue light from the screen.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:00 ◼   ► You know.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Lots of names.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Everything gets a name.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:03 ◼   ► A lot.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Speaking of names.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Do we need to talk about this post?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Do we have to?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:21:12 ◼   ► You don't like Mesa.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:13 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:21:16 ◼   ► I, every once in a while in the Apple community, especially somebody comes up with a nickname

01:21:22 ◼   ► for something.

01:21:24 ◼   ► MacBook escape.

01:21:26 ◼   ► They, I just wish that this is like, I think this is how I'm most similar to Mike in this

01:21:36 ◼   ► regard.

01:21:36 ◼   ► I have a profound dislike for convincing people to call something, something that it's not the

01:21:44 ◼   ► official something, you know, or the, the, the way regular people refer to that something.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like, I keep hearing camera, like, I keep hearing camera, like, and it all happened sort of suddenly.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And, and then everybody started calling it that.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And I got it at some point in my replies, like, oh, what'd you think of the Mesa?

01:22:04 ◼   ► Like, what, what is a Mesa?

01:22:06 ◼   ► And so like, can we just, you know, most people, most people just call it the camera.

01:22:12 ◼   ► First of all, they don't even call it the camera bump.

01:22:14 ◼   ► You know, most people in real life would just say, oh, that's a huge camera.

01:22:18 ◼   ► You know, like they, they, they don't, but, but camera bump is a normal English word to

01:22:26 ◼   ► describe what is objectively speaking a bump.

01:22:30 ◼   ► But no, we had to complicate this.

01:22:32 ◼   ► We had to sound extra fancy to say, well, no, actually the bump is the Mesa and the lens is

01:22:39 ◼   ► the bump.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Like how many names do we need to have to describe what is a bump?

01:22:45 ◼   ► This is like when everybody suddenly realized, oh, instead of calling them colors, we can call

01:22:51 ◼   ► them colorways.

01:22:52 ◼   ► And that's, and that's, and that's going to make us sound much more professional.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Like I just have a, just like MacBook escape, like other examples now.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Well, uh, I can think of them, but there have been some, and I've always, it's like this

01:23:11 ◼   ► collective thing that starts happening, this hive mind that starts calling things with a very

01:23:19 ◼   ► specific nickname for no particular reason, other than somebody came up with it.

01:23:25 ◼   ► We better now all follow and call it that like we were, we were, we were perfectly fine calling

01:23:33 ◼   ► it a camera bump or just the camera, but no, we had to use Mesa.

01:23:38 ◼   ► This is what I think about still in my free time.

01:23:43 ◼   ► I see that.

01:23:43 ◼   ► I like that you used y'all in your post.

01:23:46 ◼   ► That made me feel good.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:48 ◼   ► You're, you're rubbing off on me.

01:23:49 ◼   ► What can I say?

01:23:50 ◼   ► You know?

01:23:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:51 ◼   ► It's sometimes, I think y'all is a very good way to describe and correct me if I'm wrong,

01:23:57 ◼   ► because I mean, you are a person who uses y'all on a regular basis, but I think it's a,

01:24:02 ◼   ► it's a perfect expression to refer to a bunch of people without upsetting, upsetting anybody.

01:24:07 ◼   ► You know?

01:24:08 ◼   ► It's like, y'all, come on.

01:24:09 ◼   ► You know?

01:24:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:10 ◼   ► No, it's great.

01:24:10 ◼   ► It's very, it's, it's crowd pleasing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It's convenient.

01:24:14 ◼   ► See, that's a good, see, that's good English, y'all.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Like it says everything it's supposed to say without sounding like Mesa.

01:24:21 ◼   ► You know?

01:24:22 ◼   ► Y'all.

01:24:23 ◼   ► It's, it's, it's so clear.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Everybody understands it.

01:24:26 ◼   ► You know?

01:24:27 ◼   ► Ah.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Words, man.

01:24:30 ◼   ► How do they work?

01:24:32 ◼   ► They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna kill me.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Words are gonna kill me.

01:24:35 ◼   ► I hope not.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Well, if, uh, if you want to remember Federico fondly, you can read his website, maxstories.net.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Uh, when he was alive, he was the editor-in-chief, but now it's John.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I guess.

01:24:53 ◼   ► It would be John, right?

01:24:54 ◼   ► See the successor?

01:24:57 ◼   ► No, I don't want, I don't want to have this conversation with you.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Okay.

01:24:59 ◼   ► You got to think about these things.

01:25:01 ◼   ► You got to have a succession plan.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, we don't for this podcast.

01:25:07 ◼   ► That's not a thing.

01:25:09 ◼   ► But in business, you should.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Uh, anyways, Federico is the editor-in-chief of maxstories.net.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And, uh, he's Vatici across social media.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Uh, Mike is still on paternity leave, but, uh, he'll be back at some point.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Uh, just, you know, think about Mike.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Blow a kiss into the air when you do.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:25:32 ◼   ► I didn't know what I was doing when I started that sentence.

01:25:34 ◼   ► At a, at a cue style, you know?

01:25:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:36 ◼   ► That was weird.

01:25:38 ◼   ► Uh, you can find my writing at 512pixels.net and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay,

01:25:44 ◼   ► uh, each and every Sunday.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week for making the show possible, uh, the fine

01:25:51 ◼   ► folks over at Google, Gemini, Squarespace, Turbulence, Forecast, and Incogni.

01:25:56 ◼   ► Thank you so much.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Uh, if you want to support Connected directly and get longer ad-free versions of the show,

01:26:02 ◼   ► uh, you can do that.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Go to getconnectedpro.co.

01:26:06 ◼   ► That's seven bucks a month.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Uh, and you also get access to the Relay Members Discord, a newsletter, a couple of members-only

01:26:12 ◼   ► podcasts, and a whole lot more.

01:26:13 ◼   ► If you had feedback, feedback, or follow-up for the show, uh, there's a link in the show

01:26:18 ◼   ► notes, or you can go to connectedfeedback.com, leave us a note.

01:26:22 ◼   ► And until next week, Federico, say goodbye.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.