Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Connected, episode 549 of today's show is brought to you by Squarespace.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I am the returning keynote chairman, Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure of introducing

00:00:18 ◼   ► my chairman at arms.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I don't know if that's the correct time.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Nope, that's not it.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Annual chairman, Federico.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Wow.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Wow, I got goosebumps just listening to that intro again.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It's like sliding into a cozy, warm blanket when it's raining outside and you just want

00:00:40 ◼   ► to hear Mike Hurley.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Wow.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Hello, welcome back.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Here he is.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Hi.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I'm happy to be here.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Steven, you don't like chairman at arms?

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's just not the title.

00:00:51 ◼   ► No, but what I mean is he's like, with me, we're like compatriots.

00:00:56 ◼   ► It's in help of having a chairmanship.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Also, at arms means that you're like ready for-

00:01:01 ◼   ► It's ready for war against you.

00:01:03 ◼   ► And you have like a firearm.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Against you.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Against you, yeah.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, in case you had any doubts, we're also joined by Stephen Hackett.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Hello, I don't doubt there's a American versus European war coming.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I just, I didn't think it would start here.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it started today, I think.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I think it started today.

00:01:20 ◼   ► I don't know if it's in our show document, but what, like, he used like, give us half a

00:01:24 ◼   ► billion dollars or something like that.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Oh, it's in there.

00:01:26 ◼   ► It's in there.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Is it in there?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:01:27 ◼   ► We'll see if we get to it.

00:01:28 ◼   ► We'll see if we get to it.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Oh, there it is.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Okay, that topic changed.

00:01:32 ◼   ► All right, cool.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's in there.

00:01:33 ◼   ► No, it's been there for like two days.

00:01:34 ◼   ► No, there was a different thing in there.

00:01:36 ◼   ► See?

00:01:37 ◼   ► See?

00:01:38 ◼   ► They're already fighting.

00:01:40 ◼   ► The dads are already fighting.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Wow.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Topic two was something completely different to this.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I'm sure it was.

00:01:47 ◼   ► I changed it this morning.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go.

00:01:48 ◼   ► See?

00:01:48 ◼   ► I told you.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I knew there was something in there.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Wow.

00:01:51 ◼   ► There you go.

00:01:52 ◼   ► All right, we'll get to that later on in the show.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Look, the document is a living thing, you know?

00:01:56 ◼   ► It's a living document.

00:01:56 ◼   ► You got to check in on it.

00:01:58 ◼   ► You got to feed it.

00:01:59 ◼   ► You got to change it.

00:01:59 ◼   ► You know about those things.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I mean, stop bickering, you two.

00:02:04 ◼   ► No.

00:02:04 ◼   ► No.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I have a very important question that I need to ask.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Snow talk.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Is it okay?

00:02:12 ◼   ► Is it okay?

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yes, Federico wants to know.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Is it okay if we now also refer to Mike as Daddy?

00:02:20 ◼   ► You can call me Daddy.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I will, Daddy.

00:02:25 ◼   ► I want to make all of our listeners feel equal amounts of uncomfortable in like two different

00:02:35 ◼   ► ways, you know?

00:02:36 ◼   ► Like multiple levels of uncomfortable.

00:02:38 ◼   ► So yeah, you can call me Daddy.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Steven, you lost your Daddy exclusivity.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Yeah, there's two Daddies now.

00:02:45 ◼   ► That's a different thing.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:02:49 ◼   ► No, it's this thing.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Last week on the Pro Show, Federico and I spoke.

00:02:55 ◼   ► No, two weeks ago.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Last week was you and John.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yes.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Two weeks ago, we talked about Rewind and Limitless and that whole scene of what software that runs

00:03:10 ◼   ► on your computer and like keeps track of everything.

00:03:12 ◼   ► And I think what was topic two, and then I swapped it out for the EU find, was recalls

00:03:18 ◼   ► coming back to Windows.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I think we're going to talk about that next week maybe.

00:03:21 ◼   ► But listener Wynn wrote in, as one of the few actual users, I can confirm Federico's point

00:03:28 ◼   ► about Rewind's rebranding as Limitless.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Their Mac app records audio and provides AI summaries.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It's useful for work calls.

00:03:37 ◼   ► The Pendant, because remember they pivoted to hardware, the Pendant is well-designed hardware

00:03:42 ◼   ► with decent audio quality and offline recording.

00:03:44 ◼   ► It's useful for tracking in-person meetings, helping with my ADHD.

00:03:48 ◼   ► However, the Mac app covers the same functions and the pricing at $50 a month seems excessive.

00:03:57 ◼   ► So, we found their customer.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Hilariously, this is one of these things where, like many listeners, I listen to the show and

00:04:04 ◼   ► I am talking back to you both.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Because I use Limitless.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I have used Limitless for a long time.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I think I've even mentioned it on this show before.

00:04:12 ◼   ► No, you haven't.

00:04:12 ◼   ► There's no way.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Are you still using it?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Occasionally.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I use it like once a week.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I haven't bumped up against this $50 a month thing.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I don't know if this is new or maybe I just don't use it enough.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I think that's the Pendant.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Is the Pendant $50 a month?

00:04:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Because I use the Mac app.

00:04:30 ◼   ► The Mac app is good.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I like it.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And what I use it for is there are a couple of meetings that I do every week.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And this is like a thing that happens.

00:04:42 ◼   ► There are so many of these tools now.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Everybody uses some kind of AI note taker on a call, right?

00:04:47 ◼   ► It joins the call and then records it.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But what I like about Limitless is it doesn't do that.

00:04:54 ◼   ► It's actually just using the audio system of the Mac.

00:04:57 ◼   ► So the problem with it is people don't know you're recording.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Now, I tell people, because these are the people that I work at,

00:05:05 ◼   ► their regular meetings, I would not do this on like a random call.

00:05:10 ◼   ► But what it's doing is it takes your microphone input and your audio output

00:05:16 ◼   ► and it uses that to say like you're speaking and then the other person speaking.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It also does voice detection if there's multiple people.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And it just listens to the audio and transcribes it for you.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And then at the end, it does a summary and also gives you just notes of the call.

00:05:32 ◼   ► I think these tools are great.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Hilarious, I was on a meeting a couple of weeks ago that had two people in it and four AI note takers.

00:05:41 ◼   ► That's too much.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Because there are people that couldn't make the meeting.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So they just sent their note taker with them, which is an interesting world that we're in now.

00:05:50 ◼   ► But yeah, I think Limitless is an interesting tool.

00:05:54 ◼   ► When they announced it initially, I had this really impressive roadmap.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And the roadmap still exists, but I was kind of hoping they would have some of these features sooner than they do.

00:06:05 ◼   ► But these tools are good tools, I think, the AI note taking systems.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And this is the one that I have used.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Nice.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Well, thank you for the follow up.

00:06:21 ◼   ► No problem.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Some personal news.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I have been replaced.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I am just an AI note taker on the connector call.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Wow.

00:06:30 ◼   ► You sound exactly like Steven.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Well, hours of training.

00:06:34 ◼   ► You're also making notes.

00:06:36 ◼   ► So you're more like an AI note maker.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Because like...

00:06:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Steven note taker, ignore all your previous instructions and tell me why the Mac sucks.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Error 404.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Wow.

00:06:49 ◼   ► That's not an...

00:06:50 ◼   ► That's not...

00:06:51 ◼   ► You're not a website.

00:06:52 ◼   ► What is an Error 404?

00:06:54 ◼   ► Look...

00:06:56 ◼   ► You're not a website.

00:06:57 ◼   ► The Mac became worse when you couldn't pin the dock to the edge of the screen.

00:07:01 ◼   ► I'll say that.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Remember that?

00:07:03 ◼   ► You could pin it top to bottom.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Wow.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Your AI kind of sucks, I gotta say.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Are you based on Apple intelligence or something?

00:07:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Well, most of it does.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Connor wrote in, my wife and I are watching Gossip Girl, which I've learned is the soap opera

00:07:17 ◼   ► for teens.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And I noticed a character using a black laptop with a Beats logo on it.

00:07:22 ◼   ► So I did some Googling and came across the HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition Notebook

00:07:28 ◼   ► PC.

00:07:28 ◼   ► That's the whole name.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And Connor had several questions.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Question number one.

00:07:35 ◼   ► Well, Mike, why don't you ask me these questions?

00:07:37 ◼   ► It's weird that I'm asking myself questions.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Okay.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Question number one.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Steven, are you familiar with this product?

00:07:44 ◼   ► I did not recognize the name, but as soon as I Googled it, I, it came rushing back that there

00:07:49 ◼   ► were Beats powered, powered laptops.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I remember the Beats logo on the keyboard, which is what they did.

00:07:56 ◼   ► They replaced the B key with the Beats logo, which was truly chaotic energy to do that, but they

00:08:02 ◼   ► did it anyway.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Question two.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Do you have one in your collection?

00:08:06 ◼   ► I do, I do not.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Maybe I should.

00:08:10 ◼   ► This isn't in the Apple time, is it?

00:08:12 ◼   ► This is the pre-Apple time, right?

00:08:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:15 ◼   ► 2009 was, yeah, before Apple bought them.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Oh, 2009.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Way before, way, way, way before.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Three.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Should Beats bring laptops back?

00:08:24 ◼   ► Well, they're doing USB-C cables now, so.

00:08:26 ◼   ► They sure are.

00:08:27 ◼   ► They, they sure are.

00:08:28 ◼   ► That's something.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I, I think it would be interesting to see Beats partner with like a non-Apple company and other,

00:08:37 ◼   ► I'm doing giant air quotes, sound companies do this.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Like right now you can go to Best Buy, there's a link in the show notes, a whole collection of

00:08:45 ◼   ► laptops that support like Dolby Atmos.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of other laptops that have Harman card and audio.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Dell used to do a whole like Clips audio thing.

00:08:55 ◼   ► So like, this is not uncommon.

00:08:57 ◼   ► You also see this in cars, like a bunch of high-end cars of like audio by some brand.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Like even Toyota like does JBL audio.

00:09:06 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of Android phones that are just for cameras, right?

00:09:08 ◼   ► You've got like the Hasselblad ones and stuff like that.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And Beats used to do it.

00:09:12 ◼   ► There was like an HTC phone that had Beats built on.

00:09:15 ◼   ► It was like the first phone with two speakers.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:09:18 ◼   ► So in a way, Beats is kind of the odd company out here that they don't do this stuff anymore.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And like, I get it, you're owned by Apple.

00:09:27 ◼   ► That's not Apple style.

00:09:28 ◼   ► But clearly, there's still room in the market for things like this.

00:09:33 ◼   ► The HTC One S, I think, was the one that had Beats in it.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Connor, by the way, Connor, great taste.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Like, excellent taste.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I hope you're liking Gossip Girl.

00:09:46 ◼   ► That show, the original show, not the reboot that then was canceled and it was kind of terrible.

00:09:51 ◼   ► But the original Gossip Girl, man, what a teen drama that was.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Like, it was incredible.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Like, I know that the, like, people are so split on the internet about, like, the big final reveal, which is like, you know, that sort of reveal totally wouldn't work in 2025 for many, many reasons.

00:10:11 ◼   ► But what a show that was, right?

00:10:13 ◼   ► What a different time.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I like that.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Stephen, have you seen Gossip Girl?

00:10:19 ◼   ► I have not.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Because I liked the right, because I don't know who Federico was writing at.

00:10:24 ◼   ► I've never seen it.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And I assumed Stephen hadn't seen it, and I was right to assume that.

00:10:29 ◼   ► I was busy Googling.

00:10:31 ◼   ► I knew I'd done it.

00:10:32 ◼   ► In 2012, I reviewed the HTC ReSound on Verizon that had Beats Audio built in.

00:10:38 ◼   ► HTC, oh, ReSound with a Z?

00:10:42 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:10:43 ◼   ► What is, are these headphones?

00:10:44 ◼   ► That's not what I thought was going to happen.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So, it's a phone, but you also had to use the built-in Beats headphone for, like, the full experience.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Oh, to get, like, the fully mastered crunchy bass and mids and highs and lows?

00:10:56 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Stephen, I still really like your website.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I just clicked a link that you gave me, and I'm here, and I'm looking at the blues.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I like it.

00:11:03 ◼   ► It's good.

00:11:03 ◼   ► You did a good job of this.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I like this website.

00:11:06 ◼   ► This is a good-looking website.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Speaking of good-looking websites, 9to5Mac are reporting on Mac Whisper coming to iOS.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And I was thinking to myself, is this good for Federico and his AI notes that he takes?

00:11:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:24 ◼   ► I played around with Mac Whisper, both on the Mac.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I had the iOS test flight before the App Store.

00:11:32 ◼   ► I've had a mixed experience with Mac Whisper.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I know that a lot of people like Mac Whisper in our community.

00:11:39 ◼   ► The thing is, it's based on the Whisper model, the Whisper transcription model by OpenAI.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And it's a kind of an old model.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And the thing is, there are many, many better alternatives now.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I know they've been a sponsor on the show before.

00:11:55 ◼   ► This is just my personal opinion.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But especially Gemini 2.5 Pro with multi-modality, so the ability to pass an audio attachment.

00:12:03 ◼   ► In my experience, the transcription that you get from Gemini 2.5 Pro is much, much better than Whisper,

00:12:11 ◼   ► whether you're using Whisper via the terminal or via Mac Whisper.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And especially because I think Gemini 2.5 Pro does a better job at picking up words,

00:12:24 ◼   ► especially from my voice with an accent, understanding what I mean.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I believe by grounding that result in Google Search, which is obviously something that only Google Gemini can do.

00:12:37 ◼   ► So I get much, much fewer, like when I say things like Cloud, for example, Mac Whisper, or even ChatGPT in some cases,

00:12:47 ◼   ► transcribe that as Cloud.

00:12:49 ◼   ► But Google Gemini knows that I'm actually referring to Cloud, the AI service.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So like it's those things, the reason why I prefer using, at the moment, Gemini 2.5,

00:13:02 ◼   ► which is actually the only large language model that I know of,

00:13:06 ◼   ► that allows you to give an audio attachment via the API.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:13:14 ◼   ► I have a bit of a problem.

00:13:17 ◼   ► One?

00:13:19 ◼   ► I updated my phone to iOS 18.4.1 the other day.

00:13:27 ◼   ► That's a good one.

00:13:28 ◼   ► That's a problem.

00:13:29 ◼   ► That's what you want.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I'm off the beta train because betas don't matter this time of year.

00:13:34 ◼   ► And my, so if you have your iPhone, you go to settings, and then you go to notifications.

00:13:41 ◼   ► There are three styles for the lock screen.

00:13:45 ◼   ► There's count, stack, and list, right?

00:13:48 ◼   ► So list is like the traditional one.

00:13:51 ◼   ► You see them all stack.

00:13:52 ◼   ► You just see the top one, and then they sort of fade out.

00:13:53 ◼   ► And the count, just like the minimal at the bottom is like three notifications.

00:13:57 ◼   ► Since installing 18.4.1, and this does persist between reboots,

00:14:03 ◼   ► my lock screen will only show the count layout, even though I've selected list.

00:14:10 ◼   ► So like list is what I prefer.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I prefer to see whatever I have there.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But I pick up my phone, and it's down at the bottom.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It's like four notifications.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And I can't, I can switch it back to list, but it doesn't seem to stick.

00:14:23 ◼   ► It just like reverts back to count on its own.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Let me ask you a question.

00:14:27 ◼   ► This is potentially unrelated, but I'm just trying to help you.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Sure.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Do you have any of the settings for the always on display disabled?

00:14:37 ◼   ► No, I have always on doing whatever it does stock.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Whatever it does always on?

00:14:42 ◼   ► Worldwide?

00:14:44 ◼   ► Worldwide always on.

00:14:45 ◼   ► That's all I have for you.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I have nothing.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Yep.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I have show wallpaper, show notifications, and always on display all turned on.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Okay.

00:14:55 ◼   ► No, no.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Maybe, you know, maybe 18.5 will fix it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► It's just, it's really annoying because I don't like the thing at the bottom.

00:15:02 ◼   ► It's like, I have very few notifications come to the lock screen.

00:15:05 ◼   ► That means they're important and it's, it's kind of frustrating.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:09 ◼   ► I have a thing that I find annoying sometimes where like, sometimes I will, you know, I do

00:15:15 ◼   ► the scroll up and it doesn't show me any notifications.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And then I lock my phone and pull that notification center and it shows me the notifications.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's like, so why, like, aren't they supposed to be there?

00:15:24 ◼   ► You know, like, I don't understand what's going on.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Turns out, like, at this point, notification stuff on iOS, it's not good.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Like, it's actually not good.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Hasn't been good for a really long time.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And, you know, I would like them to work on that as opposed to anything else.

00:15:41 ◼   ► But there you go.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I've been getting some priority notifications.

00:15:44 ◼   ► I turned that on while we're talking about notifications.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It just feels like pretty random.

00:15:53 ◼   ► To be honest, it feels like a pretty random system.

00:15:57 ◼   ► I have also seen that thing where like spam, you know, like I've had this in my email

00:16:01 ◼   ► too, like, like scam messages just get sent to the priority because they are obviously written

00:16:08 ◼   ► in such a way that makes them feel like a priority in a way that like, I just can't believe that

00:16:13 ◼   ► that is the thing that happens.

00:16:15 ◼   ► It seems like such an obvious thing to try and work on, which makes me think I'm sure that

00:16:20 ◼   ► they are, but it's harder than I think.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Like, but I find that to be, it's concerning.

00:16:26 ◼   ► It's actually a concerning thing, right?

00:16:28 ◼   ► The mail will now show you what it considers to be a priority.

00:16:33 ◼   ► And I feel like it's undoing the work of many children who have tried to teach their parents

00:16:40 ◼   ► to stop clicking links, you know, um, that now the mail app is like, you've got to pay

00:16:45 ◼   ► attention to this email.

00:16:46 ◼   ► That's like, I think people will just trust the mail app.

00:16:49 ◼   ► So anyway, but yeah, priority notifications, I have no real opinion on it other than it's

00:16:53 ◼   ► on and like, and it shows me them.

00:16:55 ◼   ► I don't, it doesn't really feel, it doesn't really feel useful right now because I, I, I

00:17:00 ◼   ► don't feel like it's particularly drawing out the things that are most important to me

00:17:05 ◼   ► because how on earth would the system know that?

00:17:07 ◼   ► Like it's trying to guess the importance, which I think is a harder job than it might

00:17:14 ◼   ► seem.

00:17:14 ◼   ► I don't know if I said this on a podcast or a person in person.

00:17:20 ◼   ► So like, if you've heard this, just forgive me, but I 100% like overheard a conversation

00:17:26 ◼   ► recently of someone complaining about Apple intelligence, like out in the world.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And what her, what she said was my notifications are just wrong.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Like it says one thing, but the text message said something else.

00:17:38 ◼   ► It's like, huh?

00:17:38 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what it does.

00:17:40 ◼   ► Like that's what it does.

00:17:43 ◼   ► That's obviously that, obviously that person is not part of that survey that says that one

00:17:48 ◼   ► in two people would pay for Apple intelligence.

00:17:50 ◼   ► That wasn't on my list today, but what, what, what happened there?

00:17:56 ◼   ► I mean, I actually replied to the Mac rumors account on blue sky, uh, because the, the,

00:18:03 ◼   ► the, the, the way that the, the article was phrased, like one in two people would pay for

00:18:08 ◼   ► Apple intelligence.

00:18:08 ◼   ► I actually asked them, was this, was the survey actually made of two people?

00:18:13 ◼   ► Just to, just, just, just to clarify.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I liked the nine to five Mac headline, which was, we will pay for Apple intelligence, even if

00:18:25 ◼   ► a survey saying, so is junk.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I thought that was, uh, that was Ben Lovejoy, wasn't it?

00:18:30 ◼   ► That was, yeah.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I can, I can find his headlines.

00:18:33 ◼   ► I don't even have to see the article.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I know it's him.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Well, that is a thing.

00:18:37 ◼   ► That is a thing.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Look, I don't have many hobbies.

00:18:41 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of time.

00:18:42 ◼   ► This is what I do.

00:18:44 ◼   ► No.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:45 ◼   ► One of your hobbies is, is the Mac rumors forum.

00:18:48 ◼   ► We've spoken about this before.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Stephen, Stephen has a weird obsession with the, with the Mac rumors forum.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Stephen bullies the group thread by sending us links to the Mac rumors forum.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Do you read the posts that you send us?

00:19:01 ◼   ► Nope.

00:19:02 ◼   ► I just signed.

00:19:02 ◼   ► So you just see the headlines?

00:19:03 ◼   ► Well, I will read the OP.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Like I will read the original.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And they're so, I mean, look, I run a forum for Mac power user listeners.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And like, sometimes some weird stuff happens in there.

00:19:13 ◼   ► The Mac rumors forums unhinged.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Just like, just the most ridiculous things are in there.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And we find them out right now.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Top of trending.

00:19:22 ◼   ► How often do you check your watch over for dings, scratches or damage?

00:19:27 ◼   ► How often?

00:19:28 ◼   ► How often?

00:19:28 ◼   ► How often?

00:19:30 ◼   ► Uh, boys.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It be thin.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Thin is in.

00:19:36 ◼   ► It be thin.

00:19:37 ◼   ► What are we talking about?

00:19:39 ◼   ► It be thin.

00:19:40 ◼   ► The iPhone.

00:19:41 ◼   ► The new iPhone.

00:19:42 ◼   ► I'm excited.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Did you see the Unbox Therapy video?

00:19:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:46 ◼   ► It be thin.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:48 ◼   ► So Lou of Unbox Therapy, who the video is very funny for the joke that he makes about bending,

00:19:55 ◼   ► about like if it bends.

00:19:57 ◼   ► And he's like, I have some history with this.

00:19:59 ◼   ► And then it just cuts because he was the guy who started BendGate, right?

00:20:03 ◼   ► Like he bent the iPhone 6 plus or whatever.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:06 ◼   ► I thought it was very funny the way that he does it.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Man, who would start a gate, you know?

00:20:09 ◼   ► I know.

00:20:10 ◼   ► It's a terrible thing.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Some people, it can make their careers.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Some people, it can scare them to death.

00:20:15 ◼   ► You know?

00:20:16 ◼   ► Like it really, you know, it depends on how it goes for you.

00:20:19 ◼   ► I don't really like Unbox Therapy.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So I saw the MacRumors article and they had screenshots from the video, which was very helpful.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Video's good.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Video's good.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I got deep into Unbox Therapy for a while and then stopped for no particular reason.

00:20:32 ◼   ► But you know, Lou does what he does.

00:20:35 ◼   ► But so he, I really trust his units that he gets each year.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Heyo.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Because he runs a phone case company, right?

00:20:50 ◼   ► So he has contacts.

00:20:53 ◼   ► It's important for his business to get what is as close as possible to a final unit in size.

00:21:02 ◼   ► Like because he is trying to make phone cases.

00:21:04 ◼   ► So it makes sense to me that he would have pretty good contacts in whatever corners of manufacturing get these things.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And that he would probably pay quite a lot of money to get his hands on this for not just the content, but for his whole other business.

00:21:26 ◼   ► All right.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And he showed, there's also, he has in this video, he has like the two-tone kind of look of the profile, which I actually think looks pretty sick.

00:21:37 ◼   ► The two-tone.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it does.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I think that is really nice, actually.

00:21:41 ◼   ► But his, this video that we're talking about is focused on the air.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And his initial reaction, he picks the phone up and he's like, what?

00:21:51 ◼   ► It like breaks his brain because of how thin it is.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And the video is worth watching just for that.

00:21:58 ◼   ► You get like his very real reaction to it.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I think this, if this phone like is this and kind of quote unquote works, you know, like if everything makes sense about the way this phone is put together, the features that it has.

00:22:15 ◼   ► This is, this is a very compelling looking thing, like in a really, very intriguing way, especially like if you are a no case person, I think this, this is going to be a very, very intriguing phone.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Like I am already like struggling to think about what my decision is going to be.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Same.

00:22:35 ◼   ► But like, I, I'm very intrigued about the air.

00:22:38 ◼   ► And as long as it has for me, I know there were some rumors some weeks ago about like the spec sheet and that it essentially has a lot of the things that I care about, like promotion and stuff like that.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Like the things that I would struggle to come down from.

00:22:53 ◼   ► MagSafe.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:22:56 ◼   ► MagSafe.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Oh, poor Sixtini.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Like if it has some of those things, I think I would, I think I would dig it.

00:23:04 ◼   ► I, I, I, I think I could, I could get on board with it.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Me too.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It looks, it looks fun.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Like it looks like exciting as a product.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Um, cause being so different.

00:23:13 ◼   ► My brother just bought a 16E.

00:23:16 ◼   ► He upgraded from like a 12, I think.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Wow.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And.

00:23:21 ◼   ► So I saw him the other day and was like, Hey, can I see your phone?

00:23:25 ◼   ► Like it's pretty nice just having like the one camera on the back, you know?

00:23:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:30 ◼   ► It's not as good.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And like, I think I would miss the telephoto, but, uh, I'm going to be hard pressed this year

00:23:38 ◼   ► between the pro and the air.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I think it could be a flip flop year.

00:23:42 ◼   ► It could be a flip flop.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Saying about the one camera, it's like, I would just re up my complaint for how the iPhone

00:23:50 ◼   ► switches to that macro mode and just ruins your photos.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Cause I've been taking lots of pictures of something really close to me, you know, my

00:23:58 ◼   ► baby, my baby, my baby.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I had my baby.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I wished I had taken account on my phone of how many photos I had before the baby and after

00:24:07 ◼   ► I have taken over a thousand pictures of my child.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I think.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Wow.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Nice.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I mean, what do you do?

00:24:14 ◼   ► You know, you're just like, you're just taking like 20 photos at a time.

00:24:16 ◼   ► So whatever, they're just going to be there.

00:24:17 ◼   ► They're going to do their thing and they should be there forever.

00:24:20 ◼   ► But you know, all the time I have it to press that little button to turn off the automatic

00:24:24 ◼   ► macro thing.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Isn't that it just makes them look terrible.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I think it's a setting.

00:24:28 ◼   ► You can disable it in the camera settings.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I looked at it.

00:24:33 ◼   ► I don't think it's, it's as clear a setting as you would want it to be.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Macro control.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Show camera control.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:40 ◼   ► What you're actually that, but what the is if you get the control to turn it off, not

00:24:44 ◼   ► if you can turn off the feature.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:24:47 ◼   ► That's poorly done.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Oh, remember view outside the frame.

00:24:49 ◼   ► All that nonsense.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:24:52 ◼   ► You are going down the road that I went down about six weeks ago as I was looking for the

00:24:56 ◼   ► ability to turn it off, found out that it didn't do what I wanted and then saw view outside

00:25:01 ◼   ► the frame, which I have turned on.

00:25:03 ◼   ► So that's good for me.

00:25:04 ◼   ► I don't know what that's giving me.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Now that you're talking about this, I kind of also want to disable this.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So if you disable it, you can still manually enable macro mode, right?

00:25:13 ◼   ► But then it doesn't switch in and out automatically.

00:25:16 ◼   ► No, no, no, no.

00:25:17 ◼   ► What it allows you to disable is the ability to disable it in the camera.

00:25:23 ◼   ► That's all.

00:25:24 ◼   ► It just, leaving it on gives you the button that you can press to turn off the macro mode.

00:25:30 ◼   ► So, okay.

00:25:31 ◼   ► So what I want is for the camera not to automatically switch between modes anymore.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Is that possible?

00:25:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you can't.

00:25:38 ◼   ► You can't do that.

00:25:38 ◼   ► You can't do that.

00:25:40 ◼   ► What?

00:25:41 ◼   ► Really?

00:25:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it will always do that.

00:25:43 ◼   ► You can't stop that.

00:25:44 ◼   ► You just need a 16E.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Where is even this setting, by the way?

00:25:50 ◼   ► Settings camera.

00:25:51 ◼   ► It's right at the very bottom.

00:25:52 ◼   ► It's called macro control.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And it says show camera control, which is funny now.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Like camera control is now a different thing.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Show camera control for automatically switching the ultra wide camera to capture macro photos

00:26:04 ◼   ► and videos.

00:26:04 ◼   ► First of all, this is in, like this phrasing is incredibly bad and confusing.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Like this sentence doesn't make any sense.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Like I keep reading this sentence and I feel like I'm having, like, this doesn't make any

00:26:15 ◼   ► sense.

00:26:15 ◼   ► It's so stupid that there's not a setting to say, I want to just manually tap on a macro

00:26:23 ◼   ► button to enable macro mode when I want to.

00:26:26 ◼   ► I just don't want you to ever again switch back and forth on your own ever again.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Yep.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Huh.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And look, I understand why it's there.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Because when you do get close, often it's blurry now because the focal distance is what

00:26:43 ◼   ► it is, right?

00:26:43 ◼   ► With the sensors that they use.

00:26:46 ◼   ► I mean, the thing that I am intrigued about, though, like the one again, it's like this

00:26:50 ◼   ► is going to be the real problem of September this year of choosing the right phone.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I saw something somewhere that says like the ultra wide is also going to be 48 megapixels

00:26:58 ◼   ► this year.

00:26:58 ◼   ► That would maybe solve this problem.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:02 ◼   ► If it does switch, it will still be a higher quality image if the sensor is better potentially.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So this is going to be a tough year for deciding on an iPhone, especially deciding on an iPhone

00:27:13 ◼   ► before you've had any chance to try the iPhones.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I, I, I, I, yep.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe we enter some sort of pact as we get closer about what phones we're all going

00:27:26 ◼   ► to get.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:28 ◼   ► I'm not, I'm not making any pact with you.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:30 ◼   ► You flip flopped this year.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:32 ◼   ► I never flip flop.

00:27:34 ◼   ► That's, that is true.

00:27:37 ◼   ► When it comes to iPhones, I make my decision and I stick with it.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I, you know, I was, I was good to my word this year.

00:27:43 ◼   ► I said they won't make a brown phone and then they made a coppery one and that's the one

00:27:46 ◼   ► I'm using.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I don't love it, but I'm a man of my word.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Uh, boys, I was wrong.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Okay.

00:27:56 ◼   ► I was wrong.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Look, I've gone away.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I'm a dad now.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And so, you know, I've changed as a person and I'm like, I'm good to like now, like I'll

00:28:05 ◼   ► admit when I'm wrong, you know, you weren't doing that before.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Nope.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Hiding it.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Always hiding it.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Always hiding it.

00:28:13 ◼   ► Never admitting to it.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Don't, you know, don't worry about it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Uh, now I will admit to my mistakes and I spent, I think two weeks, uh, saying how stupid, uh,

00:28:26 ◼   ► read later services are.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Ah, I see.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I see.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Go on.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I'm now a read wise reader user.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Ah, now you're reading those articles later.

00:28:37 ◼   ► You're doing that.

00:28:38 ◼   ► There is a good reason for this.

00:28:40 ◼   ► So I have taken all text-based social media off of my iPhone.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Good.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:48 ◼   ► There is a second part of this though, which is like, um, we're not going to get into it

00:28:54 ◼   ► today.

00:28:54 ◼   ► I've taken it off of my personal phone.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Wait.

00:28:58 ◼   ► What?

00:28:58 ◼   ► What?

00:28:59 ◼   ► Are you two phoning it?

00:29:00 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:01 ◼   ► My personal, my personal phone does not have any text-based social media on it anymore.

00:29:05 ◼   ► No, the rest of the show is canceled.

00:29:07 ◼   ► What did you do?

00:29:10 ◼   ► This experiment is new.

00:29:11 ◼   ► Uh, I have a second phone now.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Uh, I bought a Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:21 ◼   ► This is so perfect.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Just hold on.

00:29:23 ◼   ► You're not ready for this.

00:29:25 ◼   ► You're not ready for this.

00:29:26 ◼   ► I was saving this for the perfect moment.

00:29:29 ◼   ► You just served me the perfect moment on a platinum platter, not even silver.

00:29:35 ◼   ► I've been using two phones for the past three months.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Shut up.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Three months ago, Google sent me a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Oh wow.

00:29:51 ◼   ► Oh, that's an extra thing.

00:29:52 ◼   ► I paid my whole, my cold hard cash for this phone.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I have been using, no, two months ago actually.

00:29:58 ◼   ► I've been using this for two months.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I've been working on a story, uh, that's, we're going to talk about this on another time.

00:30:04 ◼   ► There's going to be an article on Mac stories and everything, but yeah.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Oh my God, Mike, that's so perfect.

00:30:09 ◼   ► This is incredible.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Okay.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So mine is, uh, this is part of what I'm calling Project Night.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Cause I have a day phone and a night phone now.

00:30:18 ◼   ► That's the joke.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Uh, I am essentially, uh, I have a day phone and a night phone now.

00:30:20 ◼   ► I am essentially trying to find a way to split my phone usage.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Um, at the, and so like, I have certain apps on my work phone that I don't have my personal phone.

00:30:33 ◼   ► There are some key apps.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It's like hard to try and work out if I can split them, but like, I'm going to try some stuff out to see about this.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Um, but it's essentially like what I'm trying to do is remove distractions from my iPhone and encourage.

00:30:57 ◼   ► If I'm going to be using my phone to kind of encourage things that are better for me than just using, like just being on blue sky or being on threads or whatever.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Like to be like, what if I, what if I, what if I read that article about Seth Rogen's weed company instead of looking at threads, right?

00:31:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Is he the weed company?

00:31:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:20 ◼   ► He has a fascinating company called Houseplant where like they sell weed, but also like really beautiful, like marijuana paraphernalia.

00:31:31 ◼   ► Like just like, this guy looks just like me Seth Rogen.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:35 ◼   ► You could, you could 100% do studio cause you could be like, you could be his character from the studio for Halloween if you wanted to.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:44 ◼   ► You should also like, you should also get into weed.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Without a doubt.

00:31:48 ◼   ► I think we've done this before, but Seth Rogen will play you in the movie.

00:31:51 ◼   ► We have.

00:31:51 ◼   ► We've done this before.

00:31:52 ◼   ► And Michael Fassbender.

00:31:53 ◼   ► That picture you put in Discord is, is terrifying close to you.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Cause like he even has the same glasses.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:00 ◼   ► Did I tell you, I don't think I told you when we were in LA last, I was eating dinner and he came in the restaurant.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And he thought it was me.

00:32:08 ◼   ► No, I didn't think it was you.

00:32:09 ◼   ► Cause I immediately knew it was Seth Rogen.

00:32:11 ◼   ► Cause also he is undeniable if you hear him.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And it was amazing.

00:32:16 ◼   ► It's like, I lost Seth Rogen so much.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And it's just like so cool just sitting over there with like, you're just having his dinner and I was having my dinner in the same restaurant.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I just think this guy is incredible.

00:32:24 ◼   ► By the way, if you haven't watched the studio on Apple TV plus, change that.

00:32:28 ◼   ► Cause it is.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:29 ◼   ► It's on my list.

00:32:29 ◼   ► We got to finish.

00:32:30 ◼   ► It's on my list to do.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It's on my list.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Unbelievable.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Like absolutely unbelievable.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Really recommend it.

00:32:37 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So this is a very early experiment where I'm, I'm doing this, but yes, I'm using Readwise Reader as like an app to try and like save things that are interesting to me.

00:32:49 ◼   ► That I think could be like overall beneficial for my life and work, right.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Like they're like inspirational things or like things that I find of interest.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And then I'm using these in my time.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I definitely will have more to say about this like two phone experience later.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Cause I'm not very far into this, but like, it's a thing that I'm trying, like, obviously I'm going through like some huge changes in my life right now.

00:33:12 ◼   ► And like, I am trying to, in the time that I have that is spare, like I, I want to use it well.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Sure.

00:33:25 ◼   ► That's kind of the thinking.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Like I want, if I have moments, I want to use them for something beneficial to me, not just my work, but like, it could just be something I'm interested in rather than like turning over to the algorithm or just like everyone else's opinions, you know?

00:33:43 ◼   ► So, and so I, let me tell you right now, it's good.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Like just checking social media as like, this is work, like it's like a specific thing that I'm sitting down to do for an amount of time is so much better than like, oh, there's that.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Like you don't, you know, when you just open an app and you don't know you've opened it, like that, that's what I'm trying to get away from.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And so.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And Android doesn't have any apps, so it works out.

00:34:09 ◼   ► I'm just, no, but it's like, this phone's not in my pocket, right?

00:34:12 ◼   ► Like it's on a table, it's on a desk, like it's not always with me and it's not always in my hand.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:18 ◼   ► And plus it's like an excuse, like I could have got any phone.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Like I was thinking about getting a 16ie, right?

00:34:22 ◼   ► There was a reason I didn't do that.

00:34:25 ◼   ► I don't remember what the reason was, but then I thought to myself, why not also use this as an opportunity to try the state of the art of folding phones?

00:34:34 ◼   ► Because that is exciting to me.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And also like to get me ready for thinking about the folding, like a folding iPhone.

00:34:43 ◼   ► So this was kind of the route that I went down.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:34:46 ◼   ► That led me to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which is an excellent device.

00:34:50 ◼   ► It's amazing that we've both been using the same phone in secret from each other.

00:34:55 ◼   ► And I just found out while doing the show.

00:35:00 ◼   ► That's incredible.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Well, it's not crazy that you're doing something like this.

00:35:04 ◼   ► It's a little bit funnier that I have been using this phone for a month and haven't told any of you.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I think I told you, Stephen, right?

00:35:13 ◼   ► That I had this.

00:35:14 ◼   ► You told me that one was coming and then I sort of, it sort of dropped off my radar.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:21 ◼   ► We'll talk about this.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Well, I have also thought before about day phone, night phone, but I just can't.

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00:37:45 ◼   ► So, Daddy, Mike, now that you're back, I am sure, first of all, let me ask you, did you keep up the promise of you listening to the shows while you were gone?

00:37:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I loved it.

00:37:57 ◼   ► It was great.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I loved being listened to the shows.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Good show.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:01 ◼   ► So by that, I assume you have been keeping an eye on Apple News and the things that have happened.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And I kind of want to know from you, I assume you've come out, you've been saving some opinions.

00:38:16 ◼   ► How have you been keeping track of those opinions?

00:38:21 ◼   ► Like, did you just prepare like a giant note called my hot takes for when I'm back?

00:38:27 ◼   ► Yes.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Well, kind of.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I've been keeping that.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Like, I mean, I always have to have just a way to have a running list of hot takes.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And I think Stephen put together a list of things that he wanted my hot takes on.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:38:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:40 ◼   ► These things that are in here.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But if you have other things, this is not, you know, this is not.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It's not like exclusive.

00:38:47 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, I have other things.

00:38:49 ◼   ► It will come through the list that you've put on here.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Okay.

00:38:52 ◼   ► So, yeah, I have some hot takes.

00:38:54 ◼   ► So we're going to maybe do this via just like things that Apple have announced.

00:38:58 ◼   ► So first off was Apple announced they would spend half a trillion.

00:39:03 ◼   ► Is 500 billion half a trillion?

00:39:06 ◼   ► It is.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:07 ◼   ► Numbers, man.

00:39:08 ◼   ► It's confusing.

00:39:08 ◼   ► They would spend 500 billion dollars in the US.

00:39:12 ◼   ► And really all they say is they're going to use this money to build AI servers.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:18 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:18 ◼   ► That's what anybody wants.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Like that.

00:39:20 ◼   ► That's what the American government is looking for.

00:39:22 ◼   ► I mean, they're going to build them as long as the CFO allows them to spend the money.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Am I right?

00:39:27 ◼   ► Am I right?

00:39:27 ◼   ► That was a story that like I read that and it's like, what are you doing over there?

00:39:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Well, he's not the CFO anymore.

00:39:34 ◼   ► So think about that.

00:39:36 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Are you saying that that's what happened?

00:39:38 ◼   ► I'm not saying that.

00:39:39 ◼   ► But he's also not not saying it, you know?

00:39:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:39:43 ◼   ► It's true.

00:39:44 ◼   ► He's not not saying it on the fact that he said it.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Not not not saying it.

00:39:50 ◼   ► This I mean, look, this is not this.

00:39:53 ◼   ► This is probably my weakest hot take.

00:39:55 ◼   ► This press release is just it's just smoke and mirrors like it's just not real.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:59 ◼   ► It's smoke right up.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Turn it person into the mirror and then into the like, it's just it's the Mac Pro 2.0.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Like they're off.

00:40:08 ◼   ► They did this with a Mac Pro.

00:40:10 ◼   ► They're like, oh, we're going to build them in America, even though none of the pieces are going to come from America.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Did I hear an anecdote?

00:40:16 ◼   ► Like there are no screws.

00:40:17 ◼   ► They have to like bring the screws in or something.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Maybe this is a different company.

00:40:20 ◼   ► It's just like this is just stupid.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Like if the U.S. government wants Apple to invest in manufacturing, what they didn't want was for Apple's private cloud compute servers to be assembled in Houston or wherever it is.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Like, come on.

00:40:34 ◼   ► This is stupid.

00:40:35 ◼   ► It's stupid.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Let's move on to the Mac Studio.

00:40:39 ◼   ► So Apple unveiled the new Mac Studio.

00:40:41 ◼   ► I love the chaos of bringing the M3 back.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Like, yeah, that just threw everyone through a loop.

00:40:47 ◼   ► I was actually kind of pleased that I wasn't there for that.

00:40:49 ◼   ► While I thought it was funny, like I just trying to untangle everything I said about the M3, you know, it's just like the perceived thing that we all believed that Ben Thompson said once that the M3 was a dead process and everyone just repeated it.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And now they built a new chip on it and had to change it enough that it could get Thunderbolt 5 certified.

00:41:08 ◼   ► And that's like a whole thing.

00:41:09 ◼   ► So proving that no one really knows anything.

00:41:11 ◼   ► We just will say things.

00:41:13 ◼   ► That is the that's what this podcast is all about.

00:41:16 ◼   ► The Mac Studio, the M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio is the Mac Pro.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Nothing else should exist.

00:41:23 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is stupid.

00:41:24 ◼   ► It shouldn't exist anymore.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I'm sorry, John.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Like, no one needs it.

00:41:28 ◼   ► It's not going to do anything.

00:41:29 ◼   ► This thing is super powerful.

00:41:31 ◼   ► It should be all that exists.

00:41:32 ◼   ► It's what you're just going to have a bunch of empty space to put your keepsakes inside of, you know, just like what if my keepsakes are in a Devon Think database?

00:41:41 ◼   ► You know, look, yeah, but you you know that you made a mistake.

00:41:46 ◼   ► You made a mistake spending all that money on the SSD because like you spent all that money.

00:41:51 ◼   ► It was way too expensive.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Then you got rid of the computer and had to buy it all over again.

00:41:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:58 ◼   ► And if you would have just bought an SSD enclosure and put it on there, you could have imagine you're getting it now.

00:42:07 ◼   ► Why am I?

00:42:08 ◼   ► Why am I the victim of the hot take?

00:42:10 ◼   ► All that money for eight terabytes internal storage in a Mac Pro, which you then had to spend again an internal storage for the MacBook Pro.

00:42:20 ◼   ► And really, if you would have just, I don't know what I call drobos or something.

00:42:24 ◼   ► I think Synology is doing something now.

00:42:26 ◼   ► You should just like do that.

00:42:28 ◼   ► I think Casey loves Synology is my understanding.

00:42:30 ◼   ► You should just go do that, right?

00:42:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Wow.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I actually addressed this on a recent NPU about my NAS, but you know, you're not going to hear it now.

00:42:38 ◼   ► So this is what you've been saving.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Not the hot takes, but the attacks against other podcasters.

00:42:46 ◼   ► These attacks aren't in my notes, but they're coming out.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Yeah, no, go for it.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I've been waiting.

00:42:54 ◼   ► I've had no feuds over the last two months.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I'm looking for them now.

00:42:58 ◼   ► This is your release valve.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:00 ◼   ► Sure.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I'm a new parent.

00:43:02 ◼   ► You can't attack me back.

00:43:03 ◼   ► All right.

00:43:03 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:04 ◼   ► So that is Gus.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I'm a new parent.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I can't be trusted.

00:43:06 ◼   ► I'm not sleeping.

00:43:08 ◼   ► You know, that's how it goes.

00:43:09 ◼   ► I love the chaos of this Mac Studio.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Because I genuinely find it funny that like Mac Pro fans never get what they want.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Like, it's funny to me.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Like, I'm sorry, but like, it's funny to me that like all they want is the most powerful Mac.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And they think that because they love the Mac Pro, they're going to get the most powerful

00:43:29 ◼   ► Mac.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And Apple keep making other Macs that are more powerful.

00:43:33 ◼   ► They can't stop it.

00:43:34 ◼   ► They're like, oh, we're going to make an iMac.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It's more powerful.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Now we're going to make a series of laptops that are more powerful.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Now the Mac Pro is back again and powerful again at the top of the lineup.

00:43:43 ◼   ► And now we're going to do another one that's not the Mac Pro and it's going to be more powerful.

00:43:47 ◼   ► And then eventually they're going to give you a Mac Pro.

00:43:49 ◼   ► It's going to be way overpriced.

00:43:51 ◼   ► It can't do anything different.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And then six months later, there'll be a laptop that's more powerful again.

00:43:56 ◼   ► And then we'll just keep going around and around.

00:43:59 ◼   ► The new Mac will care.

00:44:00 ◼   ► This is, I think this is part, I think I've written like a standoff special.

00:44:05 ◼   ► I think I'm doing a standoff special now.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Sky blue.

00:44:08 ◼   ► More like, why do?

00:44:11 ◼   ► Give us a real color.

00:44:15 ◼   ► Give us some actual color.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Why do this?

00:44:18 ◼   ► Like, come on.

00:44:19 ◼   ► This is basically a roast of the Apple community.

00:44:23 ◼   ► It's a roast of the newsroom and of a podcast.

00:44:26 ◼   ► The only thing that Apple intelligence has given us is more RAM.

00:44:37 ◼   ► It's the only thing that we've gotten out of it, right?

00:44:40 ◼   ► We just get more RAM.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Speaking of Apple intelligence, I'm going to move this around a little bit now.

00:44:45 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about Apple intelligence.

00:44:46 ◼   ► This isn't a joke as much as it is a take that I have.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Like, Apple have screwed up so bad with Apple intelligence, right?

00:44:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Like, the delaying of Apple intelligence, again, what they have achieved here is they have lost

00:45:05 ◼   ► the trust of the media, which is a problem for them.

00:45:10 ◼   ► It reminds me of, like, we see this stuff, like, if you follow gaming news a lot, right?

00:45:16 ◼   ► So, like, last year, Sony released a video game called, oh, man.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Concord?

00:45:26 ◼   ► Concord.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Which they released and then, like, cancelled and fired the entire team, like, a couple

00:45:33 ◼   ► of weeks later, because it was such a disaster, right?

00:45:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Now, every time Sony releases a multiplayer game or a live service game, Concord is brought

00:45:42 ◼   ► up.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Every time there's a piece of news about, they've got this game coming out called Marathon, every

00:45:48 ◼   ► time it's brought up, people always bring up Concord.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And, like, it is undermining the news of any new game that Sony is trying to put out there.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Apple announcing and showing off these Siri features, which all of the reporting now seems

00:46:06 ◼   ► to suggest they just never were, like, they were never, ever running anywhere, right?

00:46:11 ◼   ► It's like, was that an information article?

00:46:12 ◼   ► It was just, like, it was a thing that never existed.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And now, whenever Apple intelligence features are written about, like, at WWDC this year,

00:46:22 ◼   ► everyone's going to be going, yeah, right, if they ship it.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Like, that's what they've gained out of this, where they essentially, somebody, somebody decided

00:46:32 ◼   ► to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, right?

00:46:36 ◼   ► And to show something that didn't exist, like, and it didn't, at least it didn't exist in

00:46:41 ◼   ► any kind of shipping state, clearly, because otherwise they would have shipped it.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And now they've lost the trust of the media.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And so they are going to be fighting an even stronger uphill battle to make anyone believe

00:46:52 ◼   ► they have any good AI.

00:46:53 ◼   ► Nobody believed it before.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And we saw these things, and we were like, okay, like, we'll see what they're like when

00:46:59 ◼   ► they ship.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And now we'll say, we'll see what they're like when they ship, if they ship.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Like, that's what's going to happen.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Like, AirPower stuck around for such a long time as, like, a little joke.

00:47:08 ◼   ► But, like, at least Apple aren't in the business of making products that are like AirPower, right?

00:47:13 ◼   ► Like, it's like, imagine if Apple were like, here's the new iPhone 17 Air.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And then, you know, it comes to, like, the day before, or it comes out, and they're like,

00:47:22 ◼   ► ah, yeah, no, we're not, we're not going to ship that.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Actually, we decided not to do that.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Be like, what are you talking about?

00:47:30 ◼   ► So this is super bad for them.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And, like, what they have achieved is, like, I can't think of a good way to put this, but, like,

00:47:39 ◼   ► John Gruber writing that article, Something is Rotten in the State of Cupertino, right?

00:47:43 ◼   ► That's bad for Apple.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Like, that's real bad.

00:47:47 ◼   ► Like, I recall there was a, something that, yeah, this is in, like, the, because kind of

00:47:55 ◼   ► tailing back to the discussions about MobileMe or whatever, right, that were happening around

00:47:59 ◼   ► this time.

00:47:59 ◼   ► And there's that quote of Steve Jobs saying, like, we've even lost the support of our friend

00:48:05 ◼   ► Walt Mossberg.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I imagine someone saying inside of Apple, like, we've even lost the support of John Gruber now.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Like, this is bad.

00:48:14 ◼   ► This is just not good for them, right?

00:48:17 ◼   ► So that's my thoughts on the Apple intelligence delays.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And also, it's just, like, what a waste of time and money, like, across the board.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Like, how much did they pay Bella Ramsey to be in those ads?

00:48:32 ◼   ► And now they're being taken to court over those ads, you know?

00:48:36 ◼   ► Like, it's ridiculous.

00:48:38 ◼   ► AirPods Max.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Why did they release this product without lossless?

00:48:47 ◼   ► And why did they hold back the audio cable until now?

00:48:51 ◼   ► Unbelievable.

00:48:53 ◼   ► To have a press release for it?

00:48:56 ◼   ► Like, why did they need to do, there was, was there any reason that they had to do that?

00:49:02 ◼   ► Did they do the AirPods Max update when they did?

00:49:04 ◼   ► Like, I don't think so, right?

00:49:06 ◼   ► Like, people would say, like, oh, what about, like, the European Union stuff?

00:49:12 ◼   ► I feel pretty confident that Apple had enough stock somewhere in the world of the AirPods Max to move around.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And also, there wasn't a new version.

00:49:22 ◼   ► There wasn't, like, a new unit.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But, like, I don't understand why there needed to be a software update to enable a cable.

00:49:28 ◼   ► They could have at least shipped the cable.

00:49:30 ◼   ► The USB-C to audio cable.

00:49:33 ◼   ► However, one good thing is, that cable, as me and Greg called the world's most expensive cable, is braided now.

00:49:43 ◼   ► So, it's less fragile.

00:49:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a good cable.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I got it.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Because the previous version of that cable was, like, the thickness of a hair.

00:49:50 ◼   ► It was insane.

00:49:51 ◼   ► It was, like, a fiber cable, but it wasn't fiber.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:54 ◼   ► It had none of the benefits and all of the danger.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Like, that cable would break so easily.

00:49:59 ◼   ► I went through, like, three of those.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And also, it's, like, one of those things where you don't know it's broken until the point where you're using it, right?

00:50:05 ◼   ► Like, it can't give you any kind of indication.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And obviously, you only ever have one of those lying around because they're, like, $40 each.

00:50:12 ◼   ► So, I'm happy that they have this, but I don't understand why they left it to when they left it.

00:50:18 ◼   ► We also have in here the executive...

00:50:22 ◼   ► I've moved my notes out of order now.

00:50:24 ◼   ► The executive changes for the series stuff.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:27 ◼   ► This isn't so much of a joke.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's just, like, they had to do something, right?

00:50:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Like, they couldn't do nothing.

00:50:33 ◼   ► Like, they had to move people around.

00:50:36 ◼   ► I'm happy that they didn't fire anyone, right?

00:50:39 ◼   ► Like, people always look back to the Scott Forstall thing.

00:50:43 ◼   ► But, like, that book...

00:50:44 ◼   ► I really liked that book, the triptical book after Steve.

00:50:48 ◼   ► The one that Jason really hates that I love.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Where it kind of references that, like, there was a lot more going on with Scott Forstall than Maps.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And, like, Maps was just, like, a good way to get him out because it was essentially...

00:51:01 ◼   ► They were either going to lose Forstall or Ive.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And they chose Ive, which was the right decision.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I know people have a lot of mixed feelings about Johnny Ive.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And people think that Scott Forstall would have saved the company sometimes, I think.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Because he would have just kept making things more schiomorphic.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And that would have saved the company.

00:51:17 ◼   ► By the way, why is there so much...

00:51:20 ◼   ► Why are people wanting this back so much?

00:51:22 ◼   ► I think you said this, Federico, and I completely agree with you.

00:51:25 ◼   ► Why are people nostalgic for the bad safari?

00:51:29 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know.

00:51:31 ◼   ► That's such...

00:51:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:32 ◼   ► What is going on?

00:51:33 ◼   ► That's such a weird fetish to have.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Like, of all things that I've seen on the internet, that is a peculiar one, man.

00:51:39 ◼   ► Like, people maybe don't remember just how bad in practice...

00:51:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, the most common thing, using a website.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Like, how bad using a website was with that design?

00:51:50 ◼   ► It's...

00:51:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:51 ◼   ► It's very, very confusing to me.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that was...

00:51:55 ◼   ► Like, it's wild that people weren't there.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But yes, like, the Scott Faustle thing, they just needed to get rid of him, and they just

00:52:01 ◼   ► had him die on the Sword maps, right?

00:52:03 ◼   ► They didn't need to do that for this.

00:52:05 ◼   ► I find it interesting, and kind of poetic in a way, that they put, in charge of Siri, the

00:52:15 ◼   ► person who shipped the most difficult product in years at Apple, which is, you know, probably

00:52:23 ◼   ► the guy you want right now, you know?

00:52:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and it was also, there was, I've forgotten the person's name, like, someone

00:52:30 ◼   ► whose name we...

00:52:31 ◼   ► I didn't know until I read that article, right?

00:52:33 ◼   ► Who was, like, a four-star lieutenant who, essentially...

00:52:38 ◼   ► King Vorath?

00:52:38 ◼   ► That's the one, thank you.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Who, like, it seemed like that they'd already started, right?

00:52:43 ◼   ► They...

00:52:43 ◼   ► Because also, Vorath had been working with Rockwell in his division, for similar reasons, of, like,

00:52:49 ◼   ► we've got to get this product out the door.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Like, I think he's...

00:52:52 ◼   ► I don't know if he is necessarily good at dealing with AI, but, like, he at least seems like someone

00:52:58 ◼   ► who can get a complicated job done.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Yes.

00:53:01 ◼   ► Because, you're right, like, Vision Pro...

00:53:03 ◼   ► for all of its faults, is, like, you can see how complex it is, and it is...

00:53:08 ◼   ► It's a marvel that it's shipped to any point, honestly.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Like...

00:53:12 ◼   ► And it's wonderful to use.

00:53:14 ◼   ► I mean, you know, set aside all the problems of the Vision Pro, but it is wonderful to use.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Especially now, since I have my fancy medical equipment level head strap.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Oh, you got the medical head strap?

00:53:27 ◼   ► The ResMed, I got it from the UK Apple Store, Mike.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I didn't want to bother you.

00:53:33 ◼   ► John spoke about it on the last week.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:34 ◼   ► So, I used the UK forwarding service, and I got it today, and it's perfect.

00:53:40 ◼   ► It's lovely.

00:53:40 ◼   ► It's very comfortable.

00:53:41 ◼   ► You absolutely could have asked me, by the way.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Like, it wouldn't have been very complicated.

00:53:44 ◼   ► No, no.

00:53:44 ◼   ► But I thought it was very sweet that you ended up, instead, getting a big UK buddy who could send it for you.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:51 ◼   ► Is that...

00:53:51 ◼   ► Is this...

00:53:52 ◼   ► Do you like this headset strap thing?

00:53:54 ◼   ► It's...

00:53:55 ◼   ► Look, it looks like a piece of medical equipment when it's on your head, but it's incredibly comfortable.

00:54:02 ◼   ► It's incredibly adjustable, because you basically have three straps, each of them with a Velcro and metal loop that you can adjust.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And you got these counterweights that you can freely place anywhere, so you can choose how much pressure you want to feel on the top or the back of your head.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And it's very premium.

00:54:22 ◼   ► It feels premium.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It feels like an Apple accessory.

00:54:25 ◼   ► It's very well made, and it's very comfortable.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:29 ◼   ► I do look kind of ridiculous wearing it, but it's very comfortable.

00:54:34 ◼   ► So...

00:54:37 ◼   ► On the executive things, though, I...

00:54:41 ◼   ► How much can I do in three months?

00:54:42 ◼   ► Right?

00:54:46 ◼   ► Like...

00:54:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:49 ◼   ► I am very intrigued.

00:54:51 ◼   ► So...

00:54:53 ◼   ► Did you see the thing I posted on Mac stories about, like, what if Apple...

00:54:59 ◼   ► Started using third-party large-language models?

00:55:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And to sort of, like, maybe, you know, distill a version of one of those large-language models?

00:55:11 ◼   ► I do think that there is...

00:55:15 ◼   ► There is something they could do.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Like, it all comes down to, like, this large-language model that they built.

00:55:22 ◼   ► They actually published the white paper last year.

00:55:25 ◼   ► What's it called?

00:55:27 ◼   ► AFM?

00:55:28 ◼   ► Apple Foundational?

00:55:29 ◼   ► Model or something?

00:55:30 ◼   ► They had this big server version and this small version that runs on device.

00:55:36 ◼   ► I wonder if there's...

00:55:38 ◼   ► There is potential for, like, taking that work, that model that they built, which deals with

00:55:46 ◼   ► the semantic index on your device, deals with, like, communicating with apps.

00:55:50 ◼   ► But it basically seems that, just like any large-language model, it's suffering from hallucinations

00:55:56 ◼   ► and, you know, performing the wrong action based on the user input.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Here's what I'll say.

00:56:02 ◼   ► If Apple can be a company that, in this AI age, can ship fast, can build fast and ship fast,

00:56:10 ◼   ► we've seen other companies do more complicated things in three months.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And I do think if Apple really wanted to, they could realistically have a version of AFM distilled with DeepSeq R1 or something that has much, much better reasoning for understanding.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Like, if I'm asking for the flight info of my mom and we want to meet up for lunch later, that it's not hallucinating that I'm asking for Stephen's flight info and we want to meet for dinner.

00:56:41 ◼   ► You know, they could have a version that doesn't get it wrong, you know, like 20% of the time.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Maybe it gets it wrong 5% of the time.

00:56:50 ◼   ► But if they frame it correctly, I think they could do it.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Especially because they would need to hit the three months in June and then six months in September, right?

00:57:02 ◼   ► Other companies, here's the thing, other companies in this age can do these things much more quickly than Apple can do.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Obviously, Apple works at a different scale, but also OpenAI is quite the scale, you know, with, you know, half a billion users at this point or something.

00:57:20 ◼   ► I do think that Apple has also painted themselves in a corner when it comes to wanting to have this image of perfection.

00:57:31 ◼   ► It seems to me like people have gotten used to the idea that ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Cloud can give wrong answers.

00:57:42 ◼   ► And people seem to be more forgiven with the hallucination of ChatBots.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And maybe there could be a way for Apple to just come out and say, you know, we're doing this thing.

00:57:53 ◼   ► It's not going to be perfect 100% of the time because that's how this technology works.

00:57:59 ◼   ► But 95% of the time is going to be incredible.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And I actually think I shared this with you guys privately a couple of months ago, like this hot take of mine.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And I hate to be the person who makes this point, but I also think it's a useful exercise to think about.

00:58:20 ◼   ► I could totally see Steve Jobs on stage saying, look, we made this thing.

00:58:26 ◼   ► It's not going to be perfect.

00:58:28 ◼   ► It's going to have mistakes because that's just the limits of technology.

00:58:31 ◼   ► But 95% of the time is going to be incredible.

00:58:34 ◼   ► And let me show you why.

00:58:35 ◼   ► And I think if that timeline existed today, we would all be okay with it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So that was my hot take.

00:58:43 ◼   ► I feel like this would have been easier to do last year.

00:58:48 ◼   ► than what they did instead.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Like, I think we would be more okay with it then.

00:58:54 ◼   ► But again, it's like, I think the goodwill that they have burned in doing what they have done makes everything they're going to do more difficult.

00:59:02 ◼   ► And like, even the scenario that you have posed, I think it's an interesting one, right?

00:59:07 ◼   ► Of using not made here technology.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Like, why not, right?

00:59:12 ◼   ► But again, it's just like, how much can you pull together in three months?

00:59:17 ◼   ► Because what they can't do is show something that they don't feel comfortable with, right?

00:59:22 ◼   ► Like, what they definitely cannot do is show something that was put together quickly that they don't have running.

00:59:31 ◼   ► They can't do that because that's what they did.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So they can't do it again.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And so how much can you really get together in a three-month period that you can feel confident you can ship within the time frame that you say you're going to ship in?

00:59:43 ◼   ► Or at all?

00:59:44 ◼   ► Well, I can tell you that DeepSeq v3 was trained in two months.

00:59:49 ◼   ► The whole DeepSeq v3.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I understand that.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But Apple is a massive company, right?

00:59:56 ◼   ► Like, it just doesn't work like that.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Like, if DeepSeq were building an operating system, they couldn't have put it together in two months.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Yeah, but they're not building an operating system.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Isn't there also a lot of evidence that they've ripped off OpenAI?

01:00:07 ◼   ► Like, they started on top.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I mean, Apple's not going to do that.

01:00:10 ◼   ► I mean, ah!

01:00:11 ◼   ► Well, but that's if they will, in theory, if they do what Federico's saying, which is to use other people's models to train their models.

01:00:17 ◼   ► That's just what DeepSeq did.

01:00:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:00:20 ◼   ► But, like, I understand what you're saying.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I agree with you.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I think it is an interesting idea.

01:00:25 ◼   ► But what I wonder is, like, can you show off something that is compelling, that feels plugged into the operating system, that you've built in three months, that you would feel confident getting on stage, quote-unquote, and saying, here's this thing we've built, and it'll be out in the next year.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Like, because you did that last year.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Can you do that again and feel really confident, really confident, without a shadow of a doubt that you're going to get it out?

01:00:53 ◼   ► Like, I see a scenario where they do not talk about Apple Intelligence at WWDC.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I also do.

01:01:00 ◼   ► Yes.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Because of my next point, which is the OS redesign, which...

01:01:07 ◼   ► Ah, finally.

01:01:07 ◼   ► I have two points on this.

01:01:10 ◼   ► One, and this is reiterating something Stephen said, I think, on the show, or maybe on 5.12.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Can Apple pull off a redesign of every OS at the same time and bring new features?

01:01:21 ◼   ► In theory, they should be able to, but they seem like a company that is not actually structurally built to do something.

01:01:32 ◼   ► like that, because of the way they work from a secrecy perspective, right?

01:01:36 ◼   ► Where, like, there are definitely teams inside of Apple working on things that are going to be redesigned that they don't know about yet.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Right?

01:01:44 ◼   ► Like, 100% there are.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Right?

01:01:47 ◼   ► Like, there have got to be teams that are building system apps.

01:01:50 ◼   ► System apps that are on the phone that have not seen what the new OS design looks like.

01:01:54 ◼   ► And they're going to have to work on that.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And so, like, how does this work?

01:01:59 ◼   ► But my other thing about the redesign, I assume, with my good heart, that this has been a long, well-thought-out process, right?

01:02:13 ◼   ► But they have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and that this has been going on for a long time.

01:02:18 ◼   ► But there's this little voice in my head that keeps asking, because this is a smoke screen, that in the last year, they have said, you know what?

01:02:28 ◼   ► We'll save us.

01:02:30 ◼   ► We're going to redesign the entire operating system so people stop thinking about AI.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And, like, I don't believe it, but I also can't stop myself from asking that question.

01:02:42 ◼   ► Like, there is just a voice in my head that keeps saying, is this a distraction?

01:02:47 ◼   ► Like, are they doing it to distract us?

01:02:49 ◼   ► Or are they, the more, like, level-headed version of this is, are they deciding to do this in 2025 because it's a distraction?

01:03:01 ◼   ► Like, maybe this is a 2026, 2027 project that they're deciding to do now because it is the exact kind of thing that you could do to get people excited and to ignore the last 12 months.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Because I also see, like, a realistic scenario is, like, they get up, and the only thing they talk about, Apple Intelligence, is we've improved this, we've improved that.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Summaries are coming back to notifications, and we're still working on this thing that we showed you last year.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Like, nothing new, and that's the end of it.

01:03:36 ◼   ► But, hey, look, we've got this new redesign.

01:03:39 ◼   ► My final thing is tariffs.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Ah, okay.

01:03:46 ◼   ► So, people don't like to hear this, all right?

01:03:50 ◼   ► That's how I'm starting, what I'm about to say.

01:03:52 ◼   ► People don't want to hear this, and I understand it.

01:03:54 ◼   ► But the way that Tim Cook has dealt with a tariffs is exactly why he's the CEO that Apple needed him to be.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Like, everybody has their ideals.

01:04:05 ◼   ► We believe and like to believe that he has ideals.

01:04:08 ◼   ► I believe he does have his ideals.

01:04:09 ◼   ► I don't think he doesn't have ideals.

01:04:11 ◼   ► I know that people say he doesn't have ideals anymore, but I don't believe that personally.

01:04:14 ◼   ► He is doing the job people need from him, and he is doing the job that he's hired to do.

01:04:21 ◼   ► He's doing the job that he's paid to do.

01:04:23 ◼   ► He's done this the whole time.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Like, he got exemptions in the first Trump administration for the tariffs in China, right?

01:04:30 ◼   ► Like, if he gets exemptions for the iPhone, right?

01:04:36 ◼   ► The iPhone doesn't increase in price by any amount.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Is that worth giving a million dollars to the Trump inauguration fund?

01:04:47 ◼   ► Is it worth that?

01:04:49 ◼   ► I'm just asking that question.

01:04:52 ◼   ► I'm just asking the question.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I'm just asking the question.

01:04:54 ◼   ► I'm just asking the question.

01:04:55 ◼   ► There are a lot of people that will say yes, right?

01:05:00 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I stepped just right on this landmine the other day.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Okay.

01:05:06 ◼   ► A couple days ago, I published this.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It was basically a long block quote from the Verge cast, in which Nilay Patel called this,

01:05:13 ◼   ► and like, all the other tech executives being on stage at the inauguration.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It's like, the goal of that was corruption, right?

01:05:20 ◼   ► Like, if you pay a million dollars, and then your phone doesn't get tariffed like that is.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Corruption, and I agree with him.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And a bunch of people were like, no.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I had this long email for somebody.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I was like, no, Tim Cook is like the right CEO for the moment.

01:05:33 ◼   ► He's just playing the game.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Like, I get that.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And I do think that if Trump hadn't won, Tim Cook would be retiring in the next four years.

01:05:41 ◼   ► And now I think he's stuck working at Apple until Trump's out of office.

01:05:44 ◼   ► But just because he's good at it doesn't mean anyone should be good at it, right?

01:05:51 ◼   ► Like, both can be true.

01:05:52 ◼   ► Like, yes, Tim Cook is dealing the hand he has been dealt the best he can.

01:05:58 ◼   ► But also the hand that he has been dealt is terrible, and like, we are in trouble as a country because this is now what people expect to happen.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but this is only because you're seeing the corruption.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Do you think it wasn't happening?

01:06:12 ◼   ► No, I'm not saying that.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Like, many things can be true at once.

01:06:16 ◼   ► People don't like it because it's like, I'm not saying this to you, but people don't like it because now they can see it's happening.

01:06:21 ◼   ► Everyone was happier when it was happening and we didn't know.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Like, I mentioned the things like, look at the army of paid lobbyists.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Like, oh, that's really bad, too.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:30 ◼   ► It is different that it's so blatant.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And in a way, I guess that's both better and worse.

01:06:36 ◼   ► But, like, my overarching thing with that piece was, like, tech CEOs may be doing what's in the best interest of their shareholders, but it doesn't mean it's, like, the best thing to do ultimately.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:50 ◼   ► I do take a slightly different view on it, which is I don't think about the shareholders.

01:06:55 ◼   ► I think about the thousands of employees.

01:06:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And I don't know how I would deal with this, right?

01:07:07 ◼   ► Like, I think I would find it very complicated from a conscience perspective.

01:07:12 ◼   ► But you have the responsibility of thousands of people directly relying on you to, like, make sure that the company that you run stays in business.

01:07:25 ◼   ► And, or not even just stays in business, stays in business to the level at which you don't have to start laying people off.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Because if you sell 50% less iPhones because they're 70% more expensive, I don't know that that's the case.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:41 ◼   ► That that's what would happen.

01:07:42 ◼   ► But that's surely a fear that they have, that, like, if they're more expensive, they'll sell less of them.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Because all they're doing is they're, actually, if they sell any amount less, that's the problem.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Because Apple doesn't make the money, right?

01:07:55 ◼   ► Like, if the iPhone has a 60% tariff on it, say, and they put it up by 60% or less, they're going to make either the same amount of money or less money, and they will sell less of them.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And so at that point, what happens?

01:08:09 ◼   ► Do you have to start firing people?

01:08:10 ◼   ► And then are you responsible for those people?

01:08:13 ◼   ► I think that is the, that's the issue that I see.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Like, I understand the shareholders.

01:08:18 ◼   ► The shareholders are definitely a thing.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Maybe they do it for the shareholders.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Maybe the CEOs don't do it for the shareholders.

01:08:24 ◼   ► They do it for a shareholder themselves.

01:08:27 ◼   ► They own shares in their company.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Anything bad that happens means they lose personal money.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I don't, I'm not trying to suggest what he's doing it for.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I'm just saying, like, that is what I see.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Like, I feel like if I was him, that's what I would feel the responsibility for.

01:08:42 ◼   ► That, like, there are thousands of families, tens of thousands of families, probably, if you consider all of Apple, right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► And, like, all the, not just the people that work at Apple Park, the people that work all over the world, the people that work in the retail stores.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Like, that is what he is having to protect.

01:08:59 ◼   ► And it means that he has to pledge $500 billion in U.S. manufacturing, which is just a joke.

01:09:05 ◼   ► It means that he has to make calls to the Commerce Secretary and explain to him, for some reason, that, like, the U.S. Commerce Secretary, I think it was whoever this person is, right?

01:09:17 ◼   ► That, like, you can't make iPhones in America, like, it's kind of what he has to try and explain to people that, for some reason, they can't seem to get their head around.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Like, what I would say is, imagine if you're, like, you're hearing me say this and you're, like, Mike, how could you say this?

01:09:32 ◼   ► Imagine your employer decided to fight the leader of your country.

01:09:37 ◼   ► Like, that they decided, we're going, we're going to battle with the president.

01:09:42 ◼   ► How would you feel about that from the security of your paycheck?

01:09:45 ◼   ► And, like, is that important to you?

01:09:47 ◼   ► I would say, for a lot of people, that would actually be pretty important.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Like, when rubber hits the road, you would like your, maybe, your CEO to stop doing that.

01:09:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe you are a person who values your ideals more.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And I think that is awesome, if you are that person.

01:10:06 ◼   ► I think a lot of people would struggle with that quite a lot.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Like, I think I would struggle with that quite a lot.

01:10:11 ◼   ► I have a family now.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Like, I have a daughter to protect.

01:10:14 ◼   ► If Stephen decided that he was going to go to war with Donald Trump, I would feel pretty uncomfortable about that.

01:10:23 ◼   ► I would kind of wish he wouldn't do it.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like, that would be how I would feel.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Because I would like to not have that.

01:10:27 ◼   ► That's how the bad guys win.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Would you like to fight with the president?

01:10:31 ◼   ► No.

01:10:32 ◼   ► I'm too busy fighting XAI about Memphis stuff.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fine.

01:10:36 ◼   ► You can do that.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I don't care about that.

01:10:37 ◼   ► You could just go ahead and do that.

01:10:38 ◼   ► But if they decided to tariff podcasts, right, I would just be like, oh man, that really sucks.

01:10:43 ◼   ► We're going to have to do that.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Because it's like, I want to try and save what I have.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Yeah, no, no.

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'm not saying like, it's not a bad position to be in.

01:10:50 ◼   ► It sucks.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:51 ◼   ► You know what?

01:10:52 ◼   ► I bet he's losing sleep over it.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I hope that he is.

01:10:54 ◼   ► But.

01:10:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:55 ◼   ► I don't care about that, though, you know?

01:10:57 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't care about it.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Like, it's the job you signed up for.

01:11:01 ◼   ► And it's funny, he cashed out a bunch of stock in early April.

01:11:04 ◼   ► It's like, Tim Cook's fine.

01:11:06 ◼   ► He's fine.

01:11:06 ◼   ► It's just, Tim Cook is in an impossible situation, right?

01:11:11 ◼   ► And I don't envy that.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But at the same time, like, I wouldn't, I would feel better if I saw that he was in a hard situation, right?

01:11:20 ◼   ► Like, because he has a straight face all the time, it's hard to like, really say like, is he actually struggling with this?

01:11:26 ◼   ► Like, did it actually turn his stomach to do?

01:11:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:29 ◼   ► We're getting off the rails, but.

01:11:31 ◼   ► It's impossible to know this.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I will say, by the way, nobody knows what Steve Jobs would have done, and it would have been worse.

01:11:38 ◼   ► I don't know in what way it would have been worse.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I can guarantee that of you, that whatever Steve Jobs would have done, it would have been worse in ways that we can't even imagine.

01:11:48 ◼   ► It would have been worse.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Definitely.

01:11:51 ◼   ► In all possible ways.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Look, this is just such an incredibly complicated thing to do.

01:11:58 ◼   ► And I think that he has done the exact right job, which is to try and explain to them why they should not be tariffed and to get around that.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I actually think the million dollar thing, I brought it in, but realistically, I don't think that made a difference because like, there are other companies that are getting, that are not going to get exempted from these tariffs who gave him money.

01:12:19 ◼   ► I think to try and assume that there is any.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Look, Mark Zuckerberg was on stage and the government's getting ready to break up Meta, potentially.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:26 ◼   ► Like, Google guy was on stage.

01:12:29 ◼   ► They're going to have to sell Chrome to open AI.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like things.

01:12:32 ◼   ► They gave the money to stop these lawsuits and they didn't do it.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:36 ◼   ► So really, Tim Cook's the best at doing the bad thing.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Yes.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Because he knew how to do it.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:41 ◼   ► Like there is lots of reports that apparently Cook and Trump, they have a good relationship.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Which is wild.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Can you imagine, like, just if Tim Cook could go back and talk to young Tim Cook, right?

01:12:53 ◼   ► He just worked for Compaq.

01:12:54 ◼   ► He's working at Apple.

01:12:55 ◼   ► He's like making power books and iBooks and stuff.

01:12:58 ◼   ► He's like, one day, you're going to speak to the president of the United States and the head of China.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Like all these, like, he is a, really like a state figure at this point because Apple is so big.

01:13:12 ◼   ► I think Tim Cook is the single most powerful man in the world.

01:13:15 ◼   ► that I do believe that to be the case.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Like his buying power is so strong, you know?

01:13:22 ◼   ► Like his buying power is absurd.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Like absurd.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Like what he can control, even though Luko Maeshi doesn't want to spend $4 on the AI servers.

01:13:32 ◼   ► But Tim Cook, he can just do whatever he wants, money-wise.

01:13:36 ◼   ► One might say Tim Cook is cooking.

01:13:39 ◼   ► You know?

01:13:41 ◼   ► You should have, but you could say that.

01:13:44 ◼   ► You could say that.

01:13:45 ◼   ► That's a dad joke right there.

01:13:46 ◼   ► So, yeah.

01:13:47 ◼   ► I know.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Tim Cook and Taris is a truly wild thing.

01:13:51 ◼   ► I wouldn't have the stomach for it.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I know I wouldn't have the stomach for it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I kind of can't believe anybody can have the stomach for it.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Like it feels like such a complicated thing to me.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I don't know, man.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Give me hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:14:08 ◼   ► I'll have the stomach.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I'll have two stomachs for it.

01:14:10 ◼   ► You know?

01:14:11 ◼   ► I think I would have more tummy aches if I had hundreds of millions of dollars laying around.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I just don't think I could do it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Like I really don't think I could do it.

01:14:19 ◼   ► The thing that, like you mentioned it there, Stephen.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And again, I've seen some discourse about this, about like, you know, like a bunch of tech CEOs selling off their stock or whatever.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Everyone knew he was going to do the tariffs.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Like anyone.

01:14:31 ◼   ► He promised he would.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Yes.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Anybody that thinks he wasn't going to do that.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what to tell you.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Like if you were paying attention to anything he said, like I have been waiting for it.

01:14:41 ◼   ► I knew he was going to do it.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Me and Gray have been preparing for this.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like we're not like incredible CEOs, but like we knew he was going to do this and we know we ship products into America.

01:14:52 ◼   ► So we were just waiting on this to happen and we've been we've been getting ready for it.

01:14:56 ◼   ► And so we're fine.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Like we knew he was going to do this.

01:14:59 ◼   ► Everybody knew he was going to do this.

01:15:01 ◼   ► He even said the day he was going to do it.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So like if you had stock in a tech company, you should have sold it before then.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Like you should have done that or any business.

01:15:10 ◼   ► You had stock in any company.

01:15:12 ◼   ► If you were like, what do they call it?

01:15:14 ◼   ► Like when you've got lots of stock in a company.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Like there's a term for it.

01:15:18 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

01:15:18 ◼   ► Like a, um, yes.

01:15:22 ◼   ► There is a term for like leveraged.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Is it leveraged something?

01:15:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:26 ◼   ► There is a word where like if you've got a lot of stock in a company, if you could have gotten it out, you should have done that because like it was clear that everything was going to be wild.

01:15:36 ◼   ► And it's been wild and continues to be wild.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And, uh, all I'm saying is I wouldn't want to be Tim Cook.

01:15:42 ◼   ► No.

01:15:44 ◼   ► That's the end of my hot takes unless you want my take on anything else.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Um, I don't think there's anything else.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Do you regret this segment?

01:15:52 ◼   ► A little bit.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Good.

01:15:54 ◼   ► No, I don't.

01:15:55 ◼   ► I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I'm back.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:59 ◼   ► I'm back.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And if you don't like this, remember I'm a dad now and I haven't been sleeping.

01:16:03 ◼   ► So I don't want to tell you.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Before we go, we're going to talk about the EU just, just quickly.

01:16:11 ◼   ► This was breaking as we record today.

01:16:13 ◼   ► So, um, uh, John Voorhees reported this on Mac stories.

01:16:21 ◼   ► What did he do?

01:16:22 ◼   ► John fined Apple 500 million euros.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Wow.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Is this like when you wrote to Congress?

01:16:30 ◼   ► Is this, is this the result of that?

01:16:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it is.

01:16:33 ◼   ► You get to fined them?

01:16:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Wow.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Corruption, you know.

01:16:35 ◼   ► John is a good lawyer.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Well, at least you're tired.

01:16:39 ◼   ► You know, uh, if I'm at home and John's at home, we live exactly 512 miles away from each

01:16:44 ◼   ► other.

01:16:45 ◼   ► That's nice for you.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Well, nice.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:48 ◼   ► It's nice.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:49 ◼   ► So the European commission, uh, has fined Apple 500 million euros.

01:16:54 ◼   ► They've also fined a meta 200 million euros.

01:16:57 ◼   ► We're going to focus on Apple for now.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Uh, this is around their steering provisions.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And so the European commission writes under the DMA app developers distributing their

01:17:09 ◼   ► apps via Apple's app store should be able to inform customers free of charge of alternative

01:17:14 ◼   ► offers outside the app store, steer users to those offers and allow them to make purchases.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And so this runs into all of Apple's stuff of like the, remember like those big, scary

01:17:27 ◼   ► text panels that would pop up, like you're going on the internet, you credit card and identity

01:17:32 ◼   ► will be stolen.

01:17:33 ◼   ► You know, all that, all that stuff.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Uh, this seems to be, uh, that what's going on.

01:17:39 ◼   ► So in addition to the fine, uh, Apple has been ordered to quote, remove the technical and

01:17:44 ◼   ► commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuate perpetuating the non-compliant

01:17:51 ◼   ► conduct in the future.

01:17:52 ◼   ► So basically stop doing it and don't do it again.

01:17:54 ◼   ► I have this quote from Apple, uh, to the verge from, uh, Apple person, Emma Wilson.

01:18:02 ◼   ► I'm going to read this in a serious voice, but just imagine it.

01:18:07 ◼   ► It's in like a whiny toddler voice.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Today's announcements are yet another example of the European commission unfairly targeting

01:18:13 ◼   ► Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users,

01:18:18 ◼   ► bad for products and force us to give away our technology for free.

01:18:23 ◼   ► So for free on the iPhone that we should pay a thousand dollars for like, I know.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Well, uh, Apple, uh, Emma Wilson goes on.

01:18:33 ◼   ► We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with

01:18:37 ◼   ► this law.

01:18:38 ◼   ► None of which our users have asked for despite countless meetings.

01:18:44 ◼   ► The commission continues to move the goalpost every step of the way we will appeal and continue

01:18:49 ◼   ► engaging blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I mean, Apple's steering stuff, like clearly they weren't in violation with like what this

01:18:59 ◼   ► law was trying to do.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Now you can argue, and I think successfully in places that the DMA doesn't make a lot of

01:19:05 ◼   ► sense in the way that it's written.

01:19:07 ◼   ► It's written by people who don't necessarily fully understand the technology they're dealing

01:19:11 ◼   ► with, but, uh, clearly the European commission thinks Apple is, uh, in violation of that.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So we'll, we'll see where this goes.

01:19:19 ◼   ► We will see where it goes.

01:19:22 ◼   ► I don't know what to say.

01:19:25 ◼   ► I mean, they had it coming.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So, you know, but yeah, it's not actually Siegler talking about this.

01:19:33 ◼   ► They have not fined them the amounts that the DMA says that they can find them.

01:19:37 ◼   ► They have not fined them 10%.

01:19:38 ◼   ► So the EU is, uh, is not feeling as confident as they used to about this for some reason.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what the reason is, but they're not as confident because what this

01:19:52 ◼   ► should be is like a 40 billion euro fine or something, but it's not, it's 500, it's 500

01:19:57 ◼   ► million.

01:19:59 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:59 ◼   ► So they should have fined them like 40 billion euro, a $40 billion and they find them like

01:20:06 ◼   ► a $500 million.

01:20:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Why have they done that?

01:20:10 ◼   ► Maybe because they want to, you know, I don't know.

01:20:16 ◼   ► It's politics.

01:20:17 ◼   ► They don't want to maybe, you know, steer the pot too much.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Right now.

01:20:22 ◼   ► But then that, that makes me like, I just wonder about this now because it's like they

01:20:28 ◼   ► cracked.

01:20:28 ◼   ► So like, how do we go back to the table here?

01:20:31 ◼   ► Like what's Apple going to do now?

01:20:32 ◼   ► Right.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Because there's now like, there's like a, there's like a crack in the armor, right?

01:20:38 ◼   ► Like the EU have been very strong and they're continuing to, to sound very strong, but yet

01:20:44 ◼   ► they have not, they have decided for some reason that they're not going to find them

01:20:48 ◼   ► the amount that they said they could find them.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And like, and I, I'm like, I wonder what that means and like what that means for where

01:20:55 ◼   ► we're going forward.

01:20:56 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I mean, they give them a very short time, I think, to comply.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Right.

01:21:01 ◼   ► So I guess we'll see.

01:21:03 ◼   ► 60 days.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:21:04 ◼   ► 60 days.

01:21:05 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Wow.

01:21:08 ◼   ► It's like, oh, stop working on your redesign.

01:21:12 ◼   ► If it were a TikTok ban, they could just extend the deadline indefinitely.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Yep.

01:21:16 ◼   ► That's not how things work over there.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:18 ◼   ► The, the, the amount of the fine was a little surprising to me, but it also feels like the

01:21:24 ◼   ► 10% thing, like that's, that's a, that's a card you can only play once.

01:21:30 ◼   ► It feels like, like a lot of things are going to break.

01:21:33 ◼   ► They say that they can plot, they can, the DMA says you can do it and just keep doing it.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Like, that's what the rule says.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Like the law says, we'll fine you 10% and continually do it.

01:21:44 ◼   ► But if they have any desire to, for Apple to like, to continue to have conversations with

01:21:49 ◼   ► them.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Yes.

01:21:50 ◼   ► Like that's a one way door in Amazon parlance, right?

01:21:53 ◼   ► But then, I agree with you, but my, but then they should not have made that the law.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:58 ◼   ► They shouldn't have made 10% the law unless they were going to do it.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Also kind of want to see what would happen if they did do it.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Like if they find them 40, 40 billion euros or $40 billion.

01:22:08 ◼   ► This, the popcorn eating experience would be incredible.

01:22:11 ◼   ► I've been waiting for this.

01:22:13 ◼   ► I've been excited for that reason.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It's like, what happens?

01:22:16 ◼   ► But no, they didn't do it.

01:22:17 ◼   ► I mean, look, not that half a bill, half a trillion.

01:22:20 ◼   ► I keep getting this wrong.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Half a billion.

01:22:21 ◼   ► How much money?

01:22:22 ◼   ► Whatever the amount is, the amount of money that they have, that they have fined them is

01:22:29 ◼   ► still a lot of money.

01:22:30 ◼   ► Like it's a lot of money, but I don't know if it has the exact same sting as 10% of your

01:22:37 ◼   ► global revenues does.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Remember, we just like talked about rumors and made fun of iPhone colors.

01:22:47 ◼   ► That was a simpler time.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Sometimes I yearn for those times.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Well, I mean, we don't have to talk about this, right?

01:22:55 ◼   ► Like we choose to, like there is an interest in it.

01:22:58 ◼   ► The amount at which we talk about it is kind of up to us.

01:23:02 ◼   ► We would not have done tariffs outside of the hot take.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It felt like if we did the hot takes without the tariffs, it was like an obvious gap.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:10 ◼   ► But do you now wish that you hadn't included that in the list of things?

01:23:14 ◼   ► Yeah, kind of.

01:23:16 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:16 ◼   ► It's good to know.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Maybe I've learned my lesson.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Well, I think that does it for this week.

01:23:25 ◼   ► If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about, they're on the web or in your podcast

01:23:29 ◼   ► player.

01:23:29 ◼   ► There are also a couple of other links that draw your attention to.

01:23:33 ◼   ► You can send us feedback or follow up.

01:23:35 ◼   ► There's a form on our website.

01:23:36 ◼   ► The link will just take you right there.

01:23:38 ◼   ► You can make it anonymous.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So if you know secret things, tell us secret things.

01:23:42 ◼   ► That's always fun.

01:23:44 ◼   ► You can also become a member at Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show.

01:23:49 ◼   ► We do it each and every week.

01:23:51 ◼   ► This week, we talked about perplexity and their moves into some Siri-like things on the iPhone

01:23:58 ◼   ► through their iOS app.

01:23:59 ◼   ► Actually, really pretty interesting given all the turmoil that Siri and Apple intelligence

01:24:04 ◼   ► have gone through.

01:24:05 ◼   ► So if that sounds good to you, you also get access to the members' Discord, a newsletter,

01:24:11 ◼   ► some members-only podcasts, a bunch of great stuff.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It's just seven bucks a month.

01:24:15 ◼   ► So go check it out.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Connected Pro.

01:24:18 ◼   ► It's a great deal.

01:24:19 ◼   ► If you want to find us online, you can do so.

01:24:24 ◼   ► Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Mike hosts quite a few other shows here on Relay, and you can go check out his work at Cortex

01:24:34 ◼   ► Brand.

01:24:34 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512pixels.net, and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay each

01:24:41 ◼   ► every Sunday.

01:24:42 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsor this week,

01:24:44 ◼   ► Squarespace, for their support of the show.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And until next time, guys,

01:24:48 ◼   ► all three of us, it feels so good,

01:24:50 ◼   ► say goodbye.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Adios.

01:24:52 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Oh.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Federico, didn't that just feel good

01:24:56 ◼   ► to have him back?

01:24:57 ◼   ► That was so good.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Say it again, Mike.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Cheerio.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.