00:00:11 ◼ ► Yeah, that's right. You have to come to my house, don't do that, and, you know, steal the file from MXP3, don't do that either.
00:00:27 ◼ ► Well, then we should, do we have, is that the pre-show then? Should we just move right along to follow-up?
00:01:00 ◼ ► And then it got changed to the more adult and appropriate listing about the member special,
00:01:31 ◼ ► All right, so we have a new member special we also did last week, but we never talked about it.
00:01:35 ◼ ► So we have a brand new member special, the completely original, not copied from anywhere,
00:01:43 ◼ ► And among other things, you can hear some of us get perturbed about what is or is not a game console.
00:01:53 ◼ ► Yeah, we've actually done one top four before, and I would not, I'm not going to make the totally
00:01:59 ◼ ► original joke because my original conception was it is that it is, it is duly licensed.
00:02:05 ◼ ► We have licensed the top four format from someone we know with an inside line on top four.
00:02:10 ◼ ► And this is our second top four, and we didn't do it as a tier list because there's just not enough game consoles really to tier them, I suppose.
00:02:21 ◼ ► As you'll see if you listen to the episode, it's kind of hard to rank consoles any way that's not personal simply because of the role they fill in our lives.
00:02:30 ◼ ► So if you are in for some game console nostalgia, this is the episode for you, ATP top four game consoles.
00:02:42 ◼ ► Yeah, a lot of nostalgia from three, well, two 40-year-olds and a 50-year-old, so a 40-ish-year-old.
00:03:09 ◼ ► The feedback we've gotten has only been mildly grumpy, which for a member special, I consider that to be a personal victory because usually we make everyone amusingly upset, which is not by design, just kind of happens that way.
00:03:23 ◼ ► If you don't know how to do that or if you don't see a member special in your feed, that's probably because you are not a member.
00:03:29 ◼ ► So if you go to ATP.fm slash join, J-O-I-N, then you can become a member and you can give us a little bit of money each month or a not insignificant amount of money each year.
00:03:47 ◼ ► I need to look this up because every time we talk about this, you try to speculate a number and I tell you it's too low, but neither one of us actually ever looks it up.
00:03:55 ◼ ► So anyways, there's somewhere in the vicinity of 30 of these and I think they're all fun in their own way.
00:04:19 ◼ ► And I noticed at the Ubiquity subreddit, somebody posted how I use my Apple Vision Pro to retrofit unify access points and finished homes.
00:04:28 ◼ ► And it's a like, it's a video where the voiceover is regular speed, but the video has been sped up.
00:04:35 ◼ ► If you have five minutes with which to kill and you're in a position that you can watch a video safely, you should pause the podcast right now and watch this video because seeing it without the description will make it land that much better.
00:05:01 ◼ ► So, they use these USDZs that are in the files app and they just drag them into 3D space.
00:05:07 ◼ ► And what they do is they take like iPhones and Pepsi cans and Iron Man and they put these things in 3D space to mark out like walls.
00:05:21 ◼ ► So, it begins with this person in the garage and they put like a couple of Pepsi or like a Pepsi can, an Iron Man, something else in there.
00:05:28 ◼ ► And then they go upstairs to see where those cans are because, I'm sorry, I left out the important part.
00:05:40 ◼ ► So, they just put them right in the ceiling of the garage and then they go up to the second story and they see exactly where that thing is.
00:05:49 ◼ ► But effectively, they're poking a virtual hole through the ceiling slash floor to see where they can get access to all these different things.
00:05:58 ◼ ► And they use iPhone models to map out where walls are because iPhones are roughly rectangular shaped.
00:06:09 ◼ ► I haven't really had this need, but just in principle, I'm so mad that I never thought of this.
00:06:13 ◼ ► And for all of the many problems that the Vision Pro has, things like this are just so cool.
00:06:19 ◼ ► And earlier today, I went to a library, as I often but not always do, to do prep in the morning.
00:06:24 ◼ ► And I went and I got a little room in the library to myself and I put on the Vision Pro and did Mac virtual display.
00:06:31 ◼ ► And I got to tell you, if you have a Vision Pro and if you don't, if you haven't tried Mac virtual display, you've got to try it because it's so cool.
00:06:43 ◼ ► You know, I watched that video, too, and I had the same thought as you, kind of like the measure app on the iPhone where you can, like, supposedly measure things in real life.
00:06:51 ◼ ► So they put the soda can in the garage and then they walk through a door, walk up some stairs that are, like, not straight stairs, but, like, stairs that kind of circle back on themselves, go into another room, and then they see the soda can poking up.
00:07:14 ◼ ► As they leave the room, go through several doorways and up a winding staircase and into another room and see the soda can, and it's roughly where you think it would be.
00:07:30 ◼ ► Like, find, like, a known good spot where, like, I know that this spot in the ceiling here corresponds to that spot on the floor on the upstairs thing, and do it with something a little bit smaller than a three-foot-wide Pepsi.
00:07:44 ◼ ► Because I know from experience using the measure app on your phone that just uses the camera and your screen to, like, draw these little lines and measure things, it's not that accurate.
00:08:02 ◼ ► Well, you know, we've talked about this long ago, but one of the reasons why I was really interested in putting fiber in the house is because, if you recall, in the garage, we used to have the furnace for the entire house.
00:08:16 ◼ ► And we've since gone to a two-zone system, so there's a furnace in the attic, furnace in the crawl space.
00:08:21 ◼ ► And that ductwork is empty, and what I had planned to do was run fiber through that ductwork because that's a direct path from the garage all the way into the attic, easy-peasy.
00:08:29 ◼ ► Well, that ductwork, it's behind drywall, but it goes through the corner of the primary bathroom, like our bedroom's bathroom.
00:08:36 ◼ ► And so what I should do is stick a Pepsi can in there and then in the garage and then run up to my bathroom and see if it's approximately where it should be.
00:08:51 ◼ ► Steve Gibson on this Security Now podcast covered the SSD longevity issue in episode 1023.
00:09:04 ◼ ► If you rewrite every sector on a drive on a regular basis every 6 to 12 months, the problem goes away.
00:09:10 ◼ ► His Spinrite app, S-P-I-N-R-I-T-E app, and we'll link it in the show notes, will do this.
00:09:42 ◼ ► Reading from The Verge, Fortnite is once again available on the iOS App Store in the U.S.
00:09:51 ◼ ► Epic asked the judge in the Epic vs. Apple case to order Apple to review its Fortnite submission to the App Store on May 16th.
00:09:58 ◼ ► Yesterday, which I believe was the 20th as we record this, maybe it was the 19th, it doesn't matter.
00:10:02 ◼ ► Anyway, recently the judge said in the filing that Apple is, quote, fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or hearing, quote.
00:10:09 ◼ ► And that if a resolution wasn't reached, the Apple official, who is, quote, personally responsible for ensuring compliance, would have to appear at a hearing next Tuesday.
00:10:20 ◼ ► Shortly after Fortnite returned to the App Store on Tuesday, Epic and Apple filed a joint notice saying that they have resolved all issues from Epic's May 16th filing.
00:10:31 ◼ ► Epic also recently rolled out a new promotion to encourage its players to use its payment systems.
00:10:35 ◼ ► If you use Epic's system in Fortnite, Rocket League, or Fall Guys on PC, iOS, Android, and the web, the company will give you 20% back in Epic rewards that can be used for other purchases in its games or on the Epic Games Store.
00:10:46 ◼ ► The app shows that 20% bonus when you pick which payment system you want to use to buy V-Bucks.
00:11:22 ◼ ► But yeah, so this whole thing was interesting because, you know, the rulings in this case were, you know, basically Epic, you lost.
00:11:31 ◼ ► The App Store is allowed to exist, but Apple, you're not allowed to stop people from telling about better payment methods.
00:11:45 ◼ ► But still, Fortnite wasn't in the App Store because Epic broke their developer agreement and Apple banned them.
00:11:56 ◼ ► I mean, it doesn't say explicitly, but does this ruling or the follow-up ruling where Apple got spanked for disobeying the original ruling, does it mean that Apple has to let Epic back in?
00:12:10 ◼ ► It's like, okay, here's the rules of the App Store, but still Apple can kick people out of the App Store for breaking rules, even if they were rules that existed a long time ago.
00:12:17 ◼ ► So it didn't seem to me that anything having to do with this court case meant that Apple had to let Epic put the, put Fortnite back in the U.S. App Store specifically.
00:12:35 ◼ ► They're just like, because Epic pulled it themselves and then resubmitted because they have content refreshes they needed to do.
00:12:39 ◼ ► And Apple, I was just like slow walking and say, we're just never going to look at it or whatever.
00:12:43 ◼ ► But Epic went and ran to the judge and said, hey, mom, Apple's not letting us put our app in the store.
00:12:49 ◼ ► And the judge basically said, oh, you should probably let them put, you know, Apple can resolve this.
00:13:01 ◼ ► Now, it's not a slam dunk that the judge would have said, okay, you have to actually do it.
00:13:05 ◼ ► But Apple, I mean, to, you know, I was going to say the Apple's credit, but the bar is so low here.
00:13:23 ◼ ► You've already lost, you know, you won the thing that you cared about, which is the App Store can stay.
00:13:27 ◼ ► But you lost the thing about steering, and you lost it hard and twice, but you're still appealing or whatever.
00:13:42 ◼ ► But apparently, they finally, cooler heads prevailed, and they said, you know, why don't we just let it back in the store?
00:13:50 ◼ ► So they did, they didn't have to go before the judge, and so we are, they are spared that punishment.
00:13:57 ◼ ► If you want Fortnite on your iPhone, and you're not in the EU, you can get it again now.
00:14:02 ◼ ► Yeah, this is one of those, like, we only record once a week, and it seems like that's not actually enough to keep up with all of Apple's legal problems.
00:14:13 ◼ ► Yeah, court filings and public battles, especially when it comes to Epic and Tim Sweeney's just making statements online, you know,
00:14:20 ◼ ► this is going to happen, and that's going to happen, and Apple's not doing this, and Apple's mostly just sitting there quietly,
00:14:23 ◼ ► and the judge is saying things, and issuing rulings, and, you know, weekly cadence is pretty good,
00:14:30 ◼ ► Yeah, but the good thing is, like, in this case, I don't think Apple, for a second, wanted to let Epic back in the store.
00:14:37 ◼ ► But I think what happened finally was, you know, it's almost like when, you know, when you have somebody you care about digging themselves a hole,
00:14:47 ◼ ► and they just keep talking, and they keep digging, and you just keep thinking, oh my god, stop talking,
00:14:54 ◼ ► Apple finally realized that if they get themselves back in front of this judge, only bad things will happen.
00:15:13 ◼ ► and if the judge issued, say, another injunction, I don't know how the legal system works, sorry,
00:16:29 ◼ ► and now we'll make some portion, depending on which button people pick in that dialogue.
00:16:40 ◼ ► assuming that the current injunction, which forces Apple to permit everyone in the U.S.
00:17:26 ◼ ► like stay on the injunction that they filed to say, like, wait, let's wait until we fight this.
00:17:31 ◼ ► If they don't get that, and therefore, if they have to, like, go through an appeal to turn this over,
00:17:56 ◼ ► HelloFresh makes it easier to fit quick home-cooked meals into your schedule every week.
00:18:01 ◼ ► They curate delicious recipes like pasta primavera, chicken Dijon, pecan-crusted trout,
00:18:14 ◼ ► by bringing customers even more convenience without compromising on taste, health, or homemade quality.
00:18:19 ◼ ► Their new ready-made meals offer chef-crafted, flavorful dishes that are ready in just three minutes.
00:18:25 ◼ ► So no matter how much time you have, if you want to sit down and chop a whole meal, you can do that.
00:18:46 ◼ ► And of course, they offer flexible deliveries so that whatever you need, whenever you need it,
00:18:57 ◼ ► I've personally used HelloFresh and I've had their ready-made meals and they're really good.
00:19:06 ◼ ► So feel great with meals that fit your spring schedule and make the season even more delicious.
00:19:34 ◼ ► All right, with regard to fiascos, let's talk about Mark Gurman and the Apple Intelligence fiasco.
00:20:02 ◼ ► This is mostly the juicy quotes, because like I said, when we talked about this in episode 635,
00:20:07 ◼ ► it was from a report from the information, which really got the scoop on like all the inside info from Apple folks.
00:20:14 ◼ ► And there's not really anything in this report that is just not more of the same, you know,
00:20:39 ◼ ► Cook, who is generally known for keeping his distance from product development, was pushing hard for more serious AI effort.
00:20:49 ◼ ► He was constantly frustrated that Siri lagged behind Alexa and that the company didn't yet have a foothold in the home like Amazon's Echo smart speaker.
00:20:57 ◼ ► So this is the first I'm hearing of this angle where like this is obviously pre HomePod, right?
00:21:01 ◼ ► So this is, you know, before they had anything that was like the, you know, the Echo in the home.
00:21:13 ◼ ► It kind of explains why the HomePod project existed or got, you know, reportedly it came out of the Apple TV project.
00:21:25 ◼ ► But if this is true, that he's a big believer in AI and was frustrated that Apple didn't have anything like the Amazon Echo, he didn't do a good job of changing that.
00:21:43 ◼ ► And what has happened is Apple is really far behind in AI and seems to have taken a lot of missteps along the way to what will eventually hopefully be the right path.
00:21:53 ◼ ► So that's, you know, regardless of what some anonymous report says that Tim thought about AI at some point in the past, look at the results.
00:22:00 ◼ ► That's why it's surprising to hear that it was the top person in the company that they were really wanted Apple to do this.
00:22:09 ◼ ► When JG started at Apple in 2018, almost immediately he concluded the company would need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on the kinds of large scale testing and image and text annotation required to train the machine learning models.
00:22:25 ◼ ► He got enough money to hire some top AI researchers away from Google and to expand the teams responsible for testing and data analysis.
00:22:40 ◼ ► He didn't see it as a core capability for personal computers or mobile devices and didn't want to siphon resources away from developing annual updates to the iPhone, Mac and iPad operating systems, according to several colleagues.
00:22:50 ◼ ► Craig is just not the kind of guy who says, hey, we need to do this big thing that will require big budgets and a ton more people.
00:23:02 ◼ ► We talked on earlier episodes about how he wanted to buy a bunch of GPUs and the CFO said you can get them, but only have to start and then more slowly after that or whatever.
00:23:10 ◼ ► So it seems like when he landed at the company, he was pushing for things to be in the right direction.
00:23:15 ◼ ► But sort of the the other folks who were there, like Craig, being responsible for essentially the sort of annual cycle of like, what does Apple do every year?
00:23:30 ◼ ► We talk about how difficult it is for developers to keep up with the Apple update treadmill.
00:23:33 ◼ ► But if you're inside Apple, you have to actually generate that treadmill every year and ship it.
00:23:44 ◼ ► This is actually what we should be doing is this big other thing, like to be a very successful executive in Apple, to be as an effective operator, as I described Fede Riggi in that earlier episode.
00:23:58 ◼ ► And the way we do things is every year I don't go to my boss and say, hey, hey, give me 500 new employees and millions and millions of dollars because they've got this harebrained idea.
00:24:08 ◼ ► New versions of all our major operating systems that work with all the new hardware, with new APIs and new features.
00:24:14 ◼ ► I'm not going to be down here asking Tim Cook for money every time I have a harebrained idea.
00:24:27 ◼ ► But, you know, back in 2018, when you look at this, it's like, well, Craig is doing what he's supposed to be doing.
00:24:35 ◼ ► In the world of AI, you really don't know what the product is until you've done the investment, another longtime executive says.
00:24:57 ◼ ► Anyone who was paying attention to the market there should have seen it and jumped all over it.
00:25:02 ◼ ► Within a month of ChatGPT's release, Federici used generative AI to write code for a personal software project he was working on.
00:25:15 ◼ ► The whole like, oh, you should have known, you know, Apple needs to know what they're building ahead of time.
00:25:22 ◼ ► I would argue even today, a lot of the biggest AI companies are kind of like, we're not sure how far this can go.
00:25:42 ◼ ► They're not sure exactly what it's going to be good for, but they know it's useful for a bunch of stuff already.
00:25:50 ◼ ► Like, that's what new companies and startups and people on the edge of new technologies, that's how they can act.
00:25:57 ◼ ► But Apple can't be like, anytime there's something that could potentially be good, we need to just start investing in it as hard as the biggest startup.
00:26:04 ◼ ► So I kind of understand that and whoever they're quoting here of saying, like, they could just look at open AI.
00:26:10 ◼ ► It's like, yeah, there's a million startups doing stuff, but you don't know whether they're going to be successful.
00:26:15 ◼ ► Now, arguably, given the timeline of Federighi waking up and saying, wow, this LM stuff is really good.
00:26:26 ◼ ► But the sort of, you know, armchair quarterbacking, even people inside the company, just because some people were very enthusiastic about open AI and everything.
00:26:35 ◼ ► Until open AI had shown that they had the goods, it's, you know, it's not the time to tell Apple, you have to invest in this because there's, I'm sure there's people who work for Apple.
00:26:53 ◼ ► So Apple was late, but, you know, I still feel like condemning the company for not getting on it as early as open AI was, is asking for a bit much.
00:27:05 ◼ ► Well, okay, I'm not sure about that because Apple has so much money that all they can think to do with it is buy their own stock back.
00:27:22 ◼ ► Like, I don't think that's necessary, especially like when there's something really exciting in technology that is, you know, causing a stir and pushing a lot of, you know, products and investment forward.
00:27:36 ◼ ► Maybe that's a good reason to have a bunch of R&D projects and to invest more often in things.
00:27:47 ◼ ► It's like, again, hindsight 2020, it's like, look up all the R&D projects Apple has, whatever they're doing with the robots and like, not just like the car and stuff that we hear about.
00:27:54 ◼ ► But like, I'm sure there's tons of R&D projects where they're doing tons of things set, even just in software, setting aside all the weird hardware stuff that they're surely doing, figuring out new materials or whatever.
00:28:07 ◼ ► That's what I feel like the hindsight thing is like, oh, well, but you have all this money.
00:28:15 ◼ ► It's easy to say that now, and I agree that they were late, but I don't agree that they were so egregiously late that like in 2018, they should have known that open AI was going to be the next big thing, because that's asking for a bit much.
00:28:26 ◼ ► Like it wasn't clear to the world until a year or two later, and it wasn't clear to Apple until maybe a year too late.
00:28:32 ◼ ► So I'm going to ding Apple for being late, but I'm not going to ding them for predicting the future and saying this is what we should invest it in.
00:28:39 ◼ ► And you may be right that there was like surplus budget that someone should have spent on this.
00:28:44 ◼ ► Obviously, again, in hindsight, they should have or whatever, but I get the feeling from all the random stories that I read that there's tons of research projects that Apple is doing all the time, most of which go nowhere.
00:28:54 ◼ ► So I don't think they're being stingy and like, oh, we're just going to buy our stock back because we can't think about what to do with their money.
00:28:59 ◼ ► I think they invest in the things they think are worth investing in, and they just made the wrong call on this particular one.
00:29:06 ◼ ► But anyway, it's hard to tell from an article like this because it's obviously this is going to be all about, you know, why Apple missed.
00:29:26 ◼ ► I think the way it seems the way it looks to me is Apple is a company that has that its ability to hustle has atrophied because they've had so much success and success in ways that have allowed them to build up walls to preclude competition that they really don't seem like they're they're trying very hard in a lot of areas.
00:29:54 ◼ ► There are in some sure they are trying very hard in some, but it seems like the company in general lacks any kind of hustle in most areas.
00:30:04 ◼ ► Like I do think they are leading in things like, you know, laptops and, you know, computer power and like processors like they're really good at all that stuff.
00:30:12 ◼ ► But like when it comes to like new areas, certainly most areas of software, I would I would describe this way.
00:30:26 ◼ ► And I think it's because they have just gotten so used to not needing to compete much in those areas because of the walls they have built that it seems like they've lost the ability to to really like bust their butt and actually get out there.
00:30:44 ◼ ► Gene Andrea has absorbed much of the blame for the delays and false starts, according to several employees and people close to the company.
00:30:50 ◼ ► They say he's found it difficult to fit in with the members of Apple's innermost circle who have worked together for decades and run the company like a family business.
00:30:56 ◼ ► And he's learned, like senior transplants before him, that this makes it difficult to enact change.
00:31:00 ◼ ► Apple's leadership is a realm of forceful personalities who are ultimately judged on bringing new products to market.
00:31:21 ◼ ► Others say Gene Andrea isn't hands-on enough and doesn't drive his workers particularly hard.
00:31:26 ◼ ► Quote, every other team at Apple, at least in engineering, is balls to the wall, get it out, get it out on time.
00:31:41 ◼ ► There's much more about this, about jealousy, about the perks that that team is getting or whatever.
00:31:52 ◼ ► and making what seemed like a very good hire and allowing that person to spend a lot of money
00:32:26 ◼ ► The EU App Store warning that we were talking about a week or two ago, I think last week,
00:32:37 ◼ ► Apple told me this external payments warning has been in place since the very beginning
00:32:59 ◼ ► I think this blew up a bit yesterday on May 14th, because despite the fact that it had been
00:33:03 ◼ ► around since March 2024, few of us had ever seen it before because so few apps in the App
00:33:08 ◼ ► Eitling includes a link to Apple's own developer documentation for its DMA compliance features,
00:33:15 ◼ ► To help users understand whether an app contains an alternative payment option, the App Store
00:33:19 ◼ ► will display an informational banner on the app's product page to identify the developer's
00:33:24 ◼ ► When downloading an app, users are also informed if the app uses PSPs, what does that stand for?
00:33:36 ◼ ► Apps that contain an alternative payment option are required to present users with a disclosure
00:33:39 ◼ ► prior to each transaction or link out to purchase to help them understand that the purchase isn't
00:33:53 ◼ ► Like, as we said, when Apple, you know, implemented its supposed compliance, we said, you know,
00:34:02 ◼ ► And lo and behold, if you make it really unattractive, nobody uses it, which is exactly what Apple
00:34:11 ◼ ► I love, like, yes, we were indeed wrong last week when we said Apple just started to become
00:34:20 ◼ ► You just never noticed because we made it so unattractive that no one ever wanted to use this.
00:34:33 ◼ ► data broker websites online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make
00:34:53 ◼ ► So what's, the reason this is all possible is that there's these data brokers out there
00:34:57 ◼ ► that collect and buy and sell and make available your personal info to anybody with like two
00:35:04 ◼ ► So what Delete.me does, they can protect your privacy from all these data broker sites because
00:35:09 ◼ ► they will go and file takedowns and opt-outs for you across every data broker they can find.
00:35:15 ◼ ► They figure out the procedures, you tell them, you know, your info, what you want to be removed,
00:35:31 ◼ ► And, you know, once you understand what they're doing, it makes a lot of sense why, first of all,
00:35:38 ◼ ► And second of all, you don't want to do it all yourself on these hundreds of data broker sites.
00:35:51 ◼ ► The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash ATP and enter code ATP at checkout.
00:36:11 ◼ ► Reading from there, Apple is working on a software development kit and related frameworks
00:36:14 ◼ ► that will let outsiders build AI features based on the large language models that the company uses for Apple intelligence.
00:36:39 ◼ ► And as an example, I can imagine, you know, being able to ask this, you know, AI thing.
00:36:46 ◼ ► Given all the information you know about my pins in CallSheet, for example, show me movies that have, you know, at least two of the actors I've pinned in CallSheet in the same movie.
00:36:58 ◼ ► I don't think I'm doing a good job verbalizing that, but hopefully you know what I mean.
00:37:02 ◼ ► Or, you know, maybe show me a podcast that are similar to ATP, you know, Overcast or something like that.
00:37:09 ◼ ► And I'm really trying not to get my hopes up because oftentimes Apple really doesn't like to give us a long leash with which to run.
00:37:19 ◼ ► And I mean, I think we talked about last week, the week before, that, you know, Ben Thompson's been calling for this for months now.
00:37:32 ◼ ► This is what Marco wanted out of Apple Intelligence and has complained since WWDC 2024 that he was not getting.
00:37:39 ◼ ► Because, you know, last, you know, last WWDC, you know, there's been a lot of the recent stir up about how, you know, Apple Intelligence stuff that was debuted in last WWDC was delayed or seemed like fabricated in some degrees.
00:37:58 ◼ ► And so you've just announced a whole bunch of features that developers have no way to use.
00:38:01 ◼ ► All of iOS 18 has gone through with Apple Intelligence, you know, slowly appearing in bits and pieces.
00:38:10 ◼ ► And so, you know, these days there is actually a lot of utility that apps can have by using LLMs or, you know, other advanced AI models like transcription, for instance, which would be relevant to me.
00:38:28 ◼ ► And the only way for apps to do this to date has been to either bundle in a giant model into your app and, you know, and run it on the device, which is, you know, huge and cumbersome and requires, you know, some advanced knowledge to actually get it to work.
00:38:43 ◼ ► Or you could call it to a web service and use some kind of API, which is very expensive.
00:38:50 ◼ ► Or you could host your own on your own servers and have your app talk to your servers and do it server side, which is also very expensive and requires, you know, very, you know, advanced knowledge and everything.
00:38:59 ◼ ► So what I hope and what I hope for last year and what this sounds like maybe we'll get is whatever Apple intelligence is currently capable of doing with its models, let apps have an API to do similar things.
00:39:18 ◼ ► You know, when you look at the history of software development and the advancement of computers, you know, what really makes the tide rise and lift all boats?
00:39:32 ◼ ► But when what really raises the standards for everybody is when the platform, when they add APIs to make things that used to be difficult, easy for everyone, that helps everybody.
00:39:46 ◼ ► You know, it used to be back in the days, basics of like graphics and sound APIs and then networking APIs got added.
00:39:53 ◼ ► And then over time, we've gotten much more advanced APIs that like the platform vendors offer nice API layers on top of complex things that, you know, are maybe hard to do yourself if you're not an expert in those fields.
00:40:07 ◼ ► And then individual developers like me can have an app that does pretty advanced things because I didn't have to write every little detail of like the UI framework, the graphics layer, the animation layer.
00:40:21 ◼ ► But even I haven't written a lot of the audio engine, like I wrote the parts that generates the samples and processes them and I didn't even have to do that.
00:40:28 ◼ ► But like there's a lot of parts about like routing it to different speakers and stuff, the whole airplay layer, like I didn't have to write that, you know, so there's a lot of power when the platform owner makes an API to make otherwise complex things possible, easy and free to do on device to all developers of all sizes.
00:40:48 ◼ ► We all win, including Apple, because then more great apps are available for their platforms and therefore more people buy their hardware and use their platforms and Apple's APIs in many ways in many instances throughout time have been class leading.
00:41:07 ◼ ► So certain things are way easier to do with Apple's APIs than they are on competitors' APIs.
00:41:13 ◼ ► So that also tends to bring you better apps or the best apps or apps come out first on your platform, which has been an advantage that Apple has enjoyed a lot with iOS.
00:41:23 ◼ ► So there's huge value in the platform vendor offering amazing APIs to make complex or expensive or tricky things easy.
00:41:33 ◼ ► And Apple also has this amazing asset that the iPhone is a really fast computer and has a lot of resources.
00:41:42 ◼ ► And even though we've complained about, like, you know, RAM in the past limiting LLM models and stuff like that, the reality is compared to other platforms, the iPhone and, of course, also the Mac, which would presumably also benefit from some of these APIs, Apple's hardware is really good.
00:42:05 ◼ ► So they have the hardware grunt to do on-device LLM processing to an extent and generally to a greater extent than most of their competitors in most ways.
00:42:17 ◼ ► All of Apple's developers are writing software for these supercomputers that people have in their pockets.
00:42:24 ◼ ► So, like, you know, from my point of view for Overcast, if I wanted to offer transcription, I could do a whole server-side thing.
00:42:36 ◼ ► And I don't really know much about server-side hosting of AI models and stuff like that.
00:42:49 ◼ ► And it might, at the end of the day, not even be able to be worthwhile because I might just lose too much money on it.
00:43:04 ◼ ► And I can't use it whenever I want, but I can use it when they're plugged in and charging overnight.
00:43:09 ◼ ► Like, there's, like, a huge resource there of all these iPhones that are sitting around that could do local computation for our apps.
00:43:16 ◼ ► Now, if Apple wants to enable a whole bunch of developers like me to be able to make cool AI features in our apps from big to small,
00:43:28 ◼ ► like, it could be as simple as a basic text summarization API so that I can summarize things in table view cells the way they do in mail.
00:43:40 ◼ ► And it could also be more advanced stuff like transcription or like, you know, generation based on prompts, like, you know, text synthesis.
00:43:51 ◼ ► If Apple makes those available as APIs and those APIs are not fatally restricted, then we can do a lot with that.
00:44:08 ◼ ► And we all also, you know, that generates maybe some iPhone lock-in, which I know Apple loves, because the iPhone is really good at this stuff and usually is a generation ahead of Android phones and computational power and stuff.
00:44:36 ◼ ► I don't expect the models on the phone to be competitive with, like, flagship chat GPT and stuff like that, models that run on giant servers.
00:44:46 ◼ ► But I hope whatever they're shipping on the phone, if there are APIs for it, I hope it's decent, at least.
00:44:57 ◼ ► Number two, I hope that the apps are allowed to use them in an unlimited fashion bound only by, like, power constraints.
00:45:05 ◼ ► So obviously, if your app is being used in the foreground, you should be able to use LMs and whatever these APIs might be in an unlimited way.
00:45:19 ◼ ► Like, you can use all these things as much as you want when your app is in the foreground.
00:45:25 ◼ ► Like, they have the system I mentioned earlier about being able to use power when your phone is plugged in and charging overnight.
00:45:35 ◼ ► And you can register for a background processing task, which you basically tell the system when your app launches,
00:45:41 ◼ ► hey, if you get a chance to have, like, unlimited power, let me do this and wake me up and call me when you're ready.
00:46:01 ◼ ► So these are typically scheduled when you're charging your phone overnight, like most people do.
00:46:05 ◼ ► And so, like, any, all the iOS limitations on, like, how much CPU time you can use in the background over the course of a minute or whatever,
00:46:14 ◼ ► So if we can do things in that mode, that process things with the LLM APIs or the AI APIs, whatever we're calling these, great.
00:46:29 ◼ ► I hope they're not limited in ways they don't need to be, like, they absolutely need to be.
00:46:41 ◼ ► Like, not just a couple of really narrow uses, but a more broad way to access their capabilities and a more broad set of capabilities
00:46:54 ◼ ► Look, I'm leading the charge about complaining about, like, the way they treat developers and everything.
00:46:59 ◼ ► You can paper over a lot of the way they treat developers if they enable us to make really good software for the computers that we have.
00:47:16 ◼ ► So if they enable us to make great software for their platforms, we can whistle past a lot of the ugly stuff.
00:47:26 ◼ ► A couple of people in the chat room are pointing out that the typical Apple pattern is they will roll something out that only their apps use or only the OS uses
00:47:55 ◼ ► If you're late, that means that Marco was complaining because he felt like he should have had these APIs last year.
00:48:00 ◼ ► But, of course, last year was the first time that even Apple was using them in a major OS update.
00:48:04 ◼ ► So, yeah, if you're late, that's, you know, I'm not, I think you'd be feeling better if 2023 Apple did the stuff that only they could use in 2024.
00:48:16 ◼ ► And second is tangentially related to our past discussions of the various DMA requirements in the EU of saying, basically, when Apple adds a feature to its platform, it needs to be available to third parties.
00:48:27 ◼ ► This is another place where this will be difficult for Apple to comply with because, and again, it's not just Apple.
00:48:35 ◼ ► The usual way to do it is you roll it out first as a private thing and shake it out and make sure you figure out what works, what doesn't, you know, like figure out how useful it is.
00:48:48 ◼ ► And then a year later, you can say, OK, now we have something that we can make an API because, of course, once you make something an API, Apple tends to support its APIs for a very long time.
00:48:58 ◼ ► And it's like, well, if Apple could get it right on the first time and the first try and say, here you go, it's a new API and it's available for Apple's apps and for third party apps all at the same time.
00:49:11 ◼ ► That's so much harder than saying we're going to give it a year where just Apple apps use it to figure out like how it works and work out the kinks and figure out what we want the API to look like or whatever before we commit to it for third parties.
00:49:23 ◼ ► Maybe that's one of the reasons that Apple's APIs are usually pretty good because they do, as they say, dog food it themselves and use it themselves internally.
00:49:31 ◼ ► Most of the things that like, you know, like when Swift UI came out here, that came out for everybody at the same time, didn't it?
00:49:36 ◼ ► Well, no, because they were kind of using it on the watch before you knew it was Swift UI.
00:49:41 ◼ ► There are exceptions, like it is possible to roll something out both internally and publicly more or less at the same time.
00:49:53 ◼ ► I don't think wanting like basic LLM and modern AI APIs on your smartphone platform in 2025 is being impatient.
00:50:02 ◼ ► And you can kind of judge by looking around at the rest of the industry to see like, look, they're all shipping this stuff.
00:50:14 ◼ ► Oh, and the other thing I'll add here is that I feel like this is a perfect fit for the model that Apple has used with some of its other developer services.
00:50:23 ◼ ► Like, I don't know the names of these, maybe you two do, but like the various like CloudKit APIs where you get a bunch of stuff for free.
00:50:30 ◼ ► But then if you go over a certain limit, either it starts being charged to the user's iCloud storage, for example.
00:50:43 ◼ ► It's like, it's a great thing that Apple does that platforms can do is say, this is too hard for a small group of developers to do on their own.
00:50:49 ◼ ► So we will vend this API, but this API does cost us money to run, but you can use it for free for a small number of customers for a small number of requests for a small number of calls.
00:51:20 ◼ ► We're saying all the models that run on device are going to be crappy and burn your battery.
00:51:27 ◼ ► Apparently, through Private Cloud Compute, you can run it on our servers, which costs us money.
00:51:37 ◼ ► I really hope that's part of their announcement is not just you can use our dinky text summarization engine on the phone and kill your user's battery.
00:51:48 ◼ ► And I get X number of requests for free, but then you start charging me or whatever, because that doesn't have to run on the phone.
00:52:05 ◼ ► So for instance, maybe one of the ways that Tim Cook will start squeezing more profit out of developers, if they can't, you know, hike the rates and keep looking for everyone's, you know, keep looking under everyone's couch cushions and be like, hey, it looks like you got some income coming some other way.
00:52:20 ◼ ► One of the ways that they could grow the services revenue more would be, hey, you know what?
00:52:26 ◼ ► These new APIs that everybody wants to use that even run locally, you have to pay extra for those like that.
00:52:57 ◼ ► But I would be careful because then, you know, as devices get bigger and better over time, Apple would have more of an incentive to not make the on device models or at least the publicly available on device models to not make those better.
00:53:11 ◼ ► Like you want to be real careful what kind of incentive you give Tim Cook because he will squeeze every single cent out of whatever he can without regard to the quality of the software experience.
00:53:26 ◼ ► I mean, again, there's this there's precedent here with all the CloudKit APIs and stuff that I've so far have not been a slippery slope that has led us into doom.
00:53:45 ◼ ► Like if if things are starting to get squeezed, you know, they will never accept less money as the solution.
00:53:53 ◼ ► Like, look, we have search ads came up in the meantime and now we have to pay to get our apps installed.
00:53:57 ◼ ► You know, in addition to paying Apple to 30 percent, like there's just if there's a way for them to squeeze us, they will.
00:54:02 ◼ ► So if if they get into the business of charging us to use private cloud compute, that could create a bunch of very bad incentives that over time I think would not be good.
00:54:11 ◼ ► Well, that's a competitive market, though, because apps are out there now saying, please enter your open API API key here that you're already paying for.
00:54:19 ◼ ► It's not like we're locked into using Apple's private cloud compute APIs, which currently don't exist.
00:54:30 ◼ ► Well, the other thing is, like, if they are making you pay to use their private cloud compute, you would probably also start looking around other APIs as competitors.
00:54:45 ◼ ► Once once you're already going out to a server and paying for it, I bet you have a lot of other options that are that would be better and or cheaper than Apple's.
00:54:56 ◼ ► So if Apple wants people to use it, they have to like you just look at the cloud code APIs.
00:54:59 ◼ ► There's lots of other APIs you can use for data remote databases or sync engines or just rolling your own AWS.
00:55:22 ◼ ► It just seems mostly like that you'll be able to use the on-device models, which is less interesting to me because I feel like the on-device models are, like you said, are going to be dinky.
00:55:30 ◼ ► And even if they're not dinky or they do what you need them to do, they are going to they're running locally and they're burning your battery.
00:55:42 ◼ ► Like I don't actually I would love to see a survey of like all the apps that are shipping.
00:55:45 ◼ ► Now, how many have shipped their own models and eat up the, you know, disk space on people's phones or whatever versus how many use API keys and what the what the the best practices these days.
00:55:57 ◼ ► But if you can run on device, maybe it's better to do it over the API anyway, just because it simplifies everything about installation and everything.
00:56:10 ◼ ► Somebody posted about it recently about the LG app that tells them when their laundry is done.
00:56:15 ◼ ► And I instantly they had said they had said it at the same time that I got a notification that my laundry was done from this very same LG app.
00:57:11 ◼ ► OpenAI is buying IO, lowercase IO, not the really good Peter Gabriel album, but instead a hardware company founded by former Apple design chief Johnny Ives and several other former engineers from his time there, including Scott Cannon,
00:57:24 ◼ ► We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, and researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing, Ivan OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a joint post.
00:57:37 ◼ ► The IO team focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco.
00:57:52 ◼ ► From the announcement, as IO merges with OpenAI, Johnny and Love From will assume deep design and creative responsibility across AI, excuse me, OpenAI and IO.
00:58:06 ◼ ► IO, which has been around for like 10 minutes, apparently, has just earned or sold for $6.5 billion.
00:58:26 ◼ ► Join a company that gets bought out for $6.5 billion, and you're one of the founders slash early employees.
00:58:45 ◼ ► And we had on the show rumors about this before, that Johnny Ive was working with OpenAI and some kind of AI thing.
00:58:54 ◼ ► And in fact, I didn't get the quote for it here, but I believe there was a quote from Johnny basically dissing the Humane pin and the Rabbit R1, saying, yeah, those are bad products.
00:59:10 ◼ ► This is a paraphrase, but Johnny Ive is not one to say things like that, but he was pretty blunt in saying, yeah, they didn't do a good job, and we're going to do better.
00:59:26 ◼ ► So what this is is they put together like a kind of a single-serving site and a video associated with it.
00:59:57 ◼ ► It is 10 minutes of navel-gazing and talking about how San Francisco is the best place in the entire world, which, as a born and bred East Coaster, I take major offense to, but that's neither here nor there.
01:00:09 ◼ ► It was so vapid and silly and weird and a lot of words were said, but nothing was really accomplished.
01:00:24 ◼ ► Sam and Johnny both believe in the same thing and have the same values, as far as Johnny knows, and they both really care about the future of technology, and they want to help people with technology, and they believe in beauty and truth and all these other things.
01:00:40 ◼ ► And I'm watching this, and it's like, I don't know Sam Altman that well, but the little I know of him makes me suspicious whether he actually shares his value.
01:00:49 ◼ ► I've seen Johnny for many, many years, but following his career very closely, read at least one complete book on him, maybe two.
01:01:01 ◼ ► Sam Altman, I know less about, and what I have seen makes me think, hmm, that's what you would say if you wanted Johnny Ive to buy his company and have him join you.
01:01:12 ◼ ► So I'm wondering how that relationship is going to, because if you watch the video, you think, Johnny Ive found the next Steve Jobs, and it's like, dude, it's Sam Altman.
01:01:24 ◼ ► It's that guy, or he got kicked out of his own company, and like, just, I'm not saying Sam Altman's a bad person.
01:01:29 ◼ ► Like, I don't know that much about him, but he just does not seem like a Steve Jobs caliber visionary, but he fancies himself one for sure.
01:01:37 ◼ ► In this video, he plays himself up as one, and like, you can do that if you're not sitting next to Johnny Ive when you do it, because I feel like there's a little bit of a resume imbalance there.
01:01:48 ◼ ► But then you get Johnny being like, I think, like, my whole career has been leading up to this.
01:01:52 ◼ ► Like, all that time I spent in Apple was just a warm-up back, so I'd be ready to do this thing.
01:01:56 ◼ ► And it's like, all right, Johnny, whoa, okay, all right, just, you know, I love the confidence, you know, a lot of ability there.
01:02:05 ◼ ► But anyway, like, so we mentioned the Humane Pin and the Rabbit R01, both of which we talked about on past episodes of the show.
01:02:13 ◼ ► The things that were headwinds, as they say in earnings call, for those two products are still things that OpenAI and I.O. and LoveFrom have to deal with.
01:02:34 ◼ ► They were not allowed to integrate with Android or iOS in the way the product, like the ones they were making, needed to.
01:02:46 ◼ ► Second thing is, Humane and Rabbit had the problem where their entire products hinged on, you know, large language model AI things that they did not make.
01:03:05 ◼ ► So, plus one for OpenAI there, because if you're building a product on top of someone else's thing that you don't control and don't have ability to improve, it's a big weakness.
01:03:14 ◼ ► But then the third thing is, we don't know what this product is, but I'm not the one who brought up Humane Pin and Rabbit.
01:03:22 ◼ ► Johnny did, and everyone thinks it's some kind of post-phone thing that you can use an LLM with, and, you know, maybe you don't need a screen.
01:03:40 ◼ ► Those type of products are essentially a way for you to get access to OpenAI's AI technology.
01:03:49 ◼ ► And Johnny has been talking, making the rounds, saying, like, oh, you know, people on their phones and the consequences of that, and we could get away from that and have a more human interface.
01:03:58 ◼ ► I don't doubt Johnny Ive's ability to make an innovative, attractive, nice thing that connects human beings to OpenAI's technology.
01:04:09 ◼ ► Where our doubts come in is, can the thing that it's connecting me to do what Sam Altman and Johnny Ive hope it will be able to do?
01:04:19 ◼ ► OpenAI, unlike the other companies, is empowered to make that happen, because so far they've made a lot of things happen with LLMs.
01:04:29 ◼ ► But right now, I have never seen any AI-based technology that is able to do the things that a successful Humane Pin or Rabbit R1-type product needs to be able to do to be useful.
01:04:44 ◼ ► And all the demos, it's like, I talk to it, it does these things, it's so useful, I ask it questions, you know, everything's great.
01:04:50 ◼ ► But in real life, if you've actually used these products, you know they can't do that yet in a way that is not frustrating, right?
01:04:58 ◼ ► You really, especially when you've got no screen, no keyboard, you're not at your computer, you're just ambiently, it's like a thing that you carry with you.
01:05:06 ◼ ► In the video, Sam Altman makes this weird analogy of like, just think if I wanted to ask ChatGPT a question, what would I have to do?
01:05:13 ◼ ► I have to go into my bag and take out my laptop and open a web browser, and it's like, dude, you take out your phone, why are you not saying that?
01:05:22 ◼ ► Right, but I felt like he wasn't saying that because one of the products they have is kind of phone-like.
01:05:25 ◼ ► But anyway, here's the thing, like, so many of these companies, including OpenAI, have stars in their eyes about, if things keep advancing the way they are, pretty soon we'll have a thing where we can just talk to it and it will do what we want it to do.
01:05:41 ◼ ► And if anybody could do it, they're a leader in the industry, so I'm not saying they're not going to do it.
01:05:49 ◼ ► And so this whole product, this whole Johnny Ive-powered $6.5 billion acquisition, huge amount of investor money, depends on them being able to put something in that thing at the other end that you talk to that isn't insanely frustrating and that can actually do all the things that you want it to do.
01:06:10 ◼ ► Amazon, which we'll get to in a future show, announced that they've redone their Dingus product, I don't want to say the name.
01:06:18 ◼ ► And we're like, well, look, they've done what Apple couldn't do, but they've barely shipped it and it's not totally working.
01:06:51 ◼ ► But they're like, but imagine if it was just like your friend and you could talk to it and do stuff where it's like, that would be cool.
01:06:57 ◼ ► So don't make a product whose entire existence depends on that existing unless you're sure that by the time this product comes out, supposedly next year, you will have something that does that.
01:07:11 ◼ ► And I'll feel bad if Johnny makes a beautiful, thoughtful, humane, sorry, humane hardware product that connects to an LLM that just makes a lot of mistakes and frustrates everybody who tries to use it.
01:07:53 ◼ ► Well, so the first one I don't first one I don't hate at all, because, again, like I said, if anyone's going to do it, it's going to be the leader in the industry and not like humane or rabbit.
01:08:02 ◼ ► So but all I'm saying is they need to do it, because no matter how good that hardware is, the LLM has to fulfill the promise of that heart.
01:08:15 ◼ ► And the problem with all the other products that are like that is like, well, I try to use it for its intended purpose and it doesn't work.
01:08:44 ◼ ► I think open AI is valuable enough that at some point it is possible that open AI and Apple might merge in some form.
01:09:02 ◼ ► And that's also like that's part of why I'm predicting that this might happen down the road.
01:09:12 ◼ ► But I think something like that could happen because open AI is both really good at AI, which Apple is not, but also has really good product sensibility, which Apple lacks.
01:09:25 ◼ ► Apple has, as we discussed last time, they they really don't have clear product leadership under Tim Cook.
01:09:46 ◼ ► Not tomorrow, but, you know, I think there is an actual possibility that Sam Altman has the right kind of product sense to actually bring a lot of good to Apple if he had enough power to actually execute on what he wanted to do.
01:10:04 ◼ ► But I think that is a possibility down the road if Apple's own AI efforts don't work as well as they want them to if they're not very competitive and if AI starts to actually really disrupt Apple's core products, which I think it has the potential to.
01:10:36 ◼ ► And 40 is not old, old because he was young when he was on that stage with the two collars, but that was a long time ago.
01:10:45 ◼ ► I mean, because you said a minute ago, he's young and he's still learning, which I think that is true, but he's already 40.
01:10:57 ◼ ► Yeah, but I'm telling you, he has really good product sensibility, and that is rare in this business.
01:11:12 ◼ ► But the Apple, you know, the prediction that Apple is going to buy one of these AI companies has been going around for years.
01:11:22 ◼ ► They're they're smaller, they're less expensive, and they actually have really good technology.
01:11:27 ◼ ► So they're kind of behind OpenAI in a lot of ways, but they've done a lot with what they have.
01:11:33 ◼ ► Buying OpenAI is fraught because Microsoft is heavily invested there, and there's a whole nonprofit connection in that whole drama.
01:11:42 ◼ ► Like Apple having to buy one of these companies, like you said, because they have the potential to disrupt Apple's business.
01:11:54 ◼ ► And then we'll see if the, depending on what administration is active at the time, whether that merger is even allowed to happen.
01:12:04 ◼ ► Apple's track record with making big acquisitions, then integrating the people who used to be in charge of those acquisitions is uneven.
01:12:16 ◼ ► Other companies, those executives, even if they're still at Apple, they don't set the world on fire.
01:12:23 ◼ ► Like, if they find a place at Apple, and Sam Altman strikes me as the type of person who would almost not be happy in that,
01:12:30 ◼ ► and would be looking for the door as soon as whatever his golden handcuffs let him leave Apple.
01:12:41 ◼ ► I think he will accept a buyout for enough money, but I think he'd be itching to go do something new because, like, that company he was on stage for at either Macworld or WWDC was not OpenAI.
01:12:59 ◼ ► But I'm not currently, again, I have limited knowledge on Sam Altman, so I'm basing this not on a lot of information.
01:13:05 ◼ ► But the information I do have makes me think he would not make for a great Apple executive.
01:13:13 ◼ ► But I do agree with you that Apple sure is headed on a course right now where they're going to have to buy one of these AI companies,
01:13:20 ◼ ► even if it doesn't turn out to be a huge threat to their business, even if it just turns out to be an essential thing that's out there.
01:13:26 ◼ ► The Tim Cook doctrine, which I mostly agree with, is own and control the primary technologies.
01:13:30 ◼ ► If it's real important for every company to have a great model and Apple doesn't have one and can't make one, then you got to buy one.
01:13:38 ◼ ► But the other companies have their own LMs that are way ahead of where Apple is and they're iterating on them.
01:13:50 ◼ ► Yeah. And I think, you know, the more prudent thing for Apple to do would be to buy an established large team that has built these, but not necessarily open AI the company, because as you mentioned, there is a lot going on there.
01:14:03 ◼ ► You know, open AI also does like, you know, spin off a lot of talent through all the messiness, like a lot of talented people.
01:14:13 ◼ ► Yeah. A lot of talented people flee open AI and go somewhere else and start their own stuff.
01:14:17 ◼ ► And so there's a lot of smaller AI companies out there that Apple could buy or, you know, somehow.
01:14:22 ◼ ► I mean, that shows like Google being smart for whatever they bought DeepMind, like that Google was so much farther ahead of the game on this in terms of making acquisitions and making it work.
01:14:33 ◼ ► I don't know if you two watched it, but Google, once they finally settle on a name for their thing and call the Gemini a few years ago and stop calling the thing barred, they are just iterating.
01:14:44 ◼ ► Like you can you can again, Google's product sense, maybe not great, but the Gemini model and the things it can do in the rate it's advancing.
01:14:53 ◼ ► Right. And again, like this is like this is why this is critical technology for the modern era.
01:14:59 ◼ ► Like talking about owning and controlling, as you said, like Apple needs a strong AI story on their platforms right now.
01:15:07 ◼ ► They have no AI story. We'll see, you know, the rumors from these articles that they're like they're getting there, maybe.
01:15:12 ◼ ► But, you know, there's a lot there's a large amount of space between getting there, maybe and there.
01:15:18 ◼ ► I do think that long term what will happen is Apple will end up buying one of the medium sized AI companies.
01:15:25 ◼ ► But I would not rule out the possibility that somehow Sam Altman ends up like heading up a large part of Apple.
01:15:32 ◼ ► And I think and I'm not saying like, you know, next year, but maybe like within the next 10 years, maybe I think he's somebody to really watch because he does show very strong product sensibility.
01:15:58 ◼ ► But so I think they're going to make a because, you know, what we saw with the with the humane dumb pin is that having some kind of like wearable for AI lookup type stuff is not completely a terrible idea.
01:16:13 ◼ ► They just did a terrible job of it and they kind of picked a bunch of wrong decisions on the way there.
01:16:17 ◼ ► But what a lot of people kept saying was like, this should be the Apple watch, like the Apple watch should just do these things.
01:16:25 ◼ ► And so I think this is actually very likely to end up being some kind of watch that we know Johnny loves making watches and he's decent at designing them.
01:16:38 ◼ ► We know that the watch is a physical role that a lot of people will have in addition to their phones.
01:17:03 ◼ ► Also, despite the success of the Apple watch, which is largely successful, it's it's far from ubiquitous.
01:17:08 ◼ ► Not everybody has an Apple watch and changing your smartwatch or adding a smartwatch to your life is a much smaller, you know, request.
01:17:17 ◼ ► And it's a much smaller competitive burden to overcome than replacing your phone or replacing your computer.
01:17:24 ◼ ► Although speaking of phone, though, what do you think about the barrier to platform integration?
01:17:37 ◼ ► They can show notifications like they can't interact with them necessarily, but they can do that.
01:17:41 ◼ ► I was like the interactions that Apple allows between the iPhone and third party watches and the iPhone and Apple watch are very different, which is a thing the EU is trying to make them change.
01:17:51 ◼ ► But that is a barrier to entry where you they won't be able to easily do everything the Apple watch can do in terms of platform integration.
01:18:03 ◼ ► But you never know which integration features that someone with an Apple watch is just expects to be there.
01:18:09 ◼ ► And when they find out the Johnny Ive thing doesn't do it, it will be a little bit of a problem.
01:18:13 ◼ ► Like platform integration is a tool that Apple has to preclude competition in this area.
01:18:20 ◼ ► But I think the watch is the area that like a well-designed, like a Johnny Ive designed product could look really cool.
01:18:46 ◼ ► Lots of smartwatches exist that aren't Apple watches, and they do just fine in the market.
01:18:56 ◼ ► And, you know, the EU keeps trying to crack open more capabilities out of watches from the iOS.
01:19:07 ◼ ► Like if you imagine the Humane AI pin done far better as a watch, that actually could be something.
01:19:15 ◼ ► And when you have OpenAI and Johnny Ive, those are two massive titans in these respective areas of physical design of small electronics.
01:19:26 ◼ ► And in particular watches and the AI backing of it, I think that could really be something.
01:19:46 ◼ ► So, you know, they could have a subscription to some, you know, to carriers and you just use like the existing, quote, smart watch plans that carriers offer for like 16 bucks a month or whatever.
01:19:58 ◼ ► And it's an it's enough of a category that like people are willing to take risks with watches and wearables and stuff that they wouldn't take with their phones.
01:20:21 ◼ ► So that's why people are thinking one of them might be screenless and one of them might have a screen.
01:20:30 ◼ ► And the reason they go with brooches and necklaces and stuff is based on even this video, they kind of make it seem like, oh, like if I take out my laptop, I won't have heard the whole conversation that we had.
01:20:42 ◼ ► So it seems like they're leaning towards something like those various pendants that are constantly listening to you and everything.
01:20:46 ◼ ► So if you put something on your wrist, but you have your hands in your pockets, it's harder to pick up audio than something that is around your neck or, you know, an open eye nose ring.
01:21:03 ◼ ► If it's a family of products, there's probably going to be one with a screen and one without.
01:21:16 ◼ ► But I'm thinking I'm thinking more towards like the low end one that doesn't have a screen.
01:21:27 ◼ ► But it seems like it has to be somewhere where I can hear your voice and potentially see what you see and hear what you're hearing.
01:21:38 ◼ ► But anyway, what I keep coming back to is there's lots of if you gave me a magic AI that could work the way everyone who raves about AI thinks AI will someday be able to work.
01:21:50 ◼ ► You could you could put it in a potato and people would be like, I need one of those potatoes.
01:21:57 ◼ ► Like the value of a thing that you can actually talk to and have it do things for you reliably is so huge.
01:22:04 ◼ ► They people will buy literally anything that would do that because it's not the potato they care about.
01:22:10 ◼ ► So I feel like this is really on Sam Altman and Johnny can just, you know, fulfill his little desires to make a beautiful object.
01:22:20 ◼ ► Like because it's all about, you know, because on the flip side, if he makes a beautiful thing, they're like, this is the best hardware I've ever seen.
01:22:29 ◼ ► Like if it comes up something no one ever thought of before and when you talk to it, it behaves like the humane pin.
01:22:48 ◼ ► I think that's that you can you can sell that to me pretty easy in a figurative and literal sense potentially.
01:23:13 ◼ ► Like they're in the phase where they're not big like Apple, where it's a machine that produces billions of dollars of profit.
01:23:23 ◼ ► So they have collected a huge amount of investment, but they are burning money like crazy, including spending six point five billion dollars of their stock, not money, but stock to do this acquisition.
01:23:46 ◼ ► And 2026, if they meet their self-stated goal of, you know, premiering something in 2026, it's going to be an interesting time.
01:24:05 ◼ ► But like, you know, take your time, guys, because we know that the thing you are sort of hinting that you're going to make does not yet exist in the public.
01:24:15 ◼ ► But I mean, no matter what, can you imagine watching Johnny effectively competing with Apple?
01:24:25 ◼ ► Like, you know, he gave that interview last week or rather it came out last week where he basically like insulted the smartphone.
01:24:32 ◼ ► And what he said, you know, he basically said like, you know, everything in this video, he's basically said like all the platforms we use today are decades old form factors.
01:25:04 ◼ ► I think this is, I'm very optimistic between Johnny's seemingly renewed drive to do cool new tech
01:25:12 ◼ ► and Sam Altman's good product sense and the amazing resources they both have at their disposal.
01:25:20 ◼ ► I really hope that Johnny is not just like, has, you know, bamboozled by the promise of a thing that doesn't exist.
01:25:35 ◼ ► I think of it like, you know, a million times we've talked about touchscreens and the iPhone.
01:25:41 ◼ ► And it was, you just had to make them just good enough where you passed over the threshold.
01:25:45 ◼ ► And if it goes from this annoying interface that no one wants to use to like, oh my God,
01:26:02 ◼ ► It's already crossed the threshold for like, this can do tons of useful things, uh, you know,
01:26:08 ◼ ► That's why these are popular companies we've talked about all the time and limited applications
01:26:14 ◼ ► Like Google was just showing off their, uh, you know, real-time translation or whatever.
01:26:18 ◼ ► Like the LM was originally made as a thing, like the original LM paper basically was talking
01:26:24 ◼ ► about doing translation from like, you know, one language to another, like human languages,
01:26:28 ◼ ► Fast forward to 2025 at Google IO and they're showing the seventh revision of their thing where
01:26:34 ◼ ► you talk and it translates in real time with like a human sounding voice to a person at
01:26:56 ◼ ► Here's the budget, go make all the arrangements, go to all the things like, or not even let's
01:27:01 ◼ ► just say like, ask it questions and have it give you truthful answers, have it do what you
01:27:07 ◼ ► could do if you had access to Google and could turn up all the AI results, look something up,
01:27:13 ◼ ► find some information, you know, put it together, figure out, read a couple of web pages, figure
01:27:31 ◼ ► And that's the promise of something with no screen, no keyboard connected to an LLM that's
01:27:38 ◼ ► So I wish we had a better name for that, but that's what everyone is trying to make and
01:27:44 ◼ ► And so here we have a new, a new contenders entered the ring with a stacked cast, Johnny Ive
01:27:56 ◼ ► I'm like, Johnny, I really hope this is real because I, because I, I believe Johnny is sincere.
01:28:07 ◼ ► Especially since, you know, from what it seems, Johnny has the A team of Apple expats, whereas
01:28:13 ◼ ► I'm not so sure that Humane and some of these other, and Rabbit and some of these other companies
01:28:21 ◼ ► Marco mentioned the people, people who have left, left open AI and Anthropic has a lot of
01:28:26 ◼ ► And there's a lot of good people from DeepMind at Google and like the, the smarts for AI, people
01:28:33 ◼ ► working at the cutting edge of AI technology are spread pretty well throughout the industry.
01:28:40 ◼ ► You wouldn't know it from the, from the results the company has produced, but I'm saying like
01:28:47 ◼ ► So that's not the secret sauce, but yeah, but Johnny Ive has, has some people with experience.
01:28:53 ◼ ► Um, you know, in the later use of Johnny Ive, when those same people are at Apple, some of
01:29:00 ◼ ► There's a lot more leeway when you're entering a new product category to be fanciful and go full
01:29:21 ◼ ► Except potentially Sam, which I mean, to come back to what Marco was saying, I'm sure Johnny's
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01:31:29 ◼ ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP and let's start with Harrison who writes, I'm in grade
01:31:41 ◼ ► I decided to send my question now because based on Ask ATP times, it could be answered while
01:31:56 ◼ ► For me, very briefly, I went to school in a lot of different places because we were moving
01:32:01 ◼ ► a lot at the time and I went on a trip when I was in fifth grade and I was going to school
01:32:06 ◼ ► in Naperville, Illinois and we went to some like, I want to say it was a college campus.
01:32:11 ◼ ► I couldn't tell you where it was, but we did like a night or two there, which was really
01:32:15 ◼ ► And then when I was in high school, I feel like I've told the story somewhere very recently,
01:32:19 ◼ ► But when I was in high school, I was a member of the Future Business Leaders of America,
01:32:31 ◼ ► And when you go to school, to high school in a little podunk state like Connecticut and
01:32:37 ◼ ► you decide that you're going to join the statewide competition for, I want to say it was called
01:32:45 ◼ ► It was typically like marketing and sales and things like that where you would like take a
01:32:53 ◼ ► I placed second in the state of Connecticut and that entitled me to go to nationals at Disney
01:32:58 ◼ ► And so myself and a few other people and our teacher, I think it was maybe five students
01:33:05 ◼ ► and the teacher, all went to Orlando and stayed in either the Swan or the Dolphin, I forget
01:33:09 ◼ ► which one, and were told, you know, you're going to be here for a couple of days, you'll
01:33:40 ◼ ► By three o'clock in the afternoon, we were, I remember sitting in the back of a Volkswagen
01:33:44 ◼ ► Jetta that was being driven by a former student of the same high school that we were in, except
01:33:51 ◼ ► he had moved down to Orlando and he was taking the rest of the people I was with to go get
01:33:55 ◼ ► like cold cuts and, and sandwich bread and whatnot, because all of them came down to Walt Disney
01:34:03 ◼ ► And so they knew they weren't going to be able to eat for the three or four or five days that
01:34:14 ◼ ► If we didn't take the sink in the like, not bar area, but like kitchen area and turn that
01:34:50 ◼ ► Uh, I, I went to band camp every, all four summers preceding my four years of high school.
01:35:01 ◼ ► Uh, it was each time it was like about a week, I believe maybe a little, you know, a little
01:35:07 ◼ ► And we would go up to like one of those, you know, like campground kind of things, you know,
01:35:23 ◼ ► Um, that was like when we got our, like when you're in the drum section, you kind of move
01:35:30 ◼ ► So like, that was like, you know, we're learning the new, you know, oh, now this year I'm on
01:35:35 ◼ ► Like, you know, so you learn the new instruments, you get to flirt with all the people that you
01:35:52 ◼ ► John, so I'll first give my least favorite trip just because it's, uh, when I, when you
01:36:00 ◼ ► say a school trip, this is literally the first one that I think of, um, uh, in fifth grade,
01:36:06 ◼ ► uh, my elementary school, uh, uh, took us all, uh, to, uh, go on a whale watch off Montauk
01:36:18 ◼ ► It's not an ideal, not ideal time to learn it because whale watches, if you've ever been
01:36:22 ◼ ► on one are long and they're not going to turn that boat around just because you're puking
01:36:34 ◼ ► I still remember what the ground looked like when I got off the boat after being stuck on
01:36:42 ◼ ► I also remember that it was cold and rainy and they wouldn't let me back in the cabin of the
01:36:46 ◼ ► boat because I was puking my brains out and I was cold and I had short sleeve shirt and
01:36:51 ◼ ► And yeah, that's not the great, not the best way to find out that you could violently seasick.
01:37:16 ◼ ► was, uh, uh, it was part of the, part of the way they used to do school back in the, uh,
01:37:22 ◼ ► late eighties and early nineties was they had a, uh, G and T program, which was not gin and
01:37:28 ◼ ► And so they would separate the nerds from the rest of the population for maximum bullying
01:37:44 ◼ ► Uh, and we, it was supposed to be like someplace like scientific where we were going to like
01:37:49 ◼ ► study some environmental thing or whatever, like, you know, it's a high school trip, right?
01:37:56 ◼ ► And yeah, there's maybe some science was done and some learning happens, but it was mostly
01:38:00 ◼ ► like Marco's band camp anyway, where we ended up going, like, I forget how it was kind of
01:38:04 ◼ ► like a committee where the teacher kind of knew where the places we could potentially go.
01:38:08 ◼ ► And I don't, I think they made it seem like that the kids were like, had input in it, but
01:38:25 ◼ ► And we slept in, uh, we spent, uh, some time in, uh, like a day or two when we got there
01:38:35 ◼ ► Uh, and yeah, it's just, I mean, it's really, it's like a Canadian version of, uh, Marcos
01:38:45 ◼ ► Uh, at one point we were trudging through the Canadian wilderness in pants that were absorbing
01:38:55 ◼ ► And we came around the corner and there was a moose standing right in front of us, like
01:39:09 ◼ ► And we just all stood there with our mouths open and the moose looked at us and took off
01:39:20 ◼ ► We went to go see icebergs and I was also seasick, but I managed not to puke in a Herculean
01:39:25 ◼ ► effort of embarrassment of standing in just the right part of the boat and bending my knees
01:39:37 ◼ ► I'm sure someone from Newfoundland can tell me what it is, but I've long since forgotten.
01:39:46 ◼ ► It's like, it's maybe like the size of like the length of a pencil and like maybe three
01:40:01 ◼ ► Well, anyway, I, I just to, to give clarity why I remember that I did not eat seafood for
01:40:11 ◼ ► I eat shrimp and calamari, but like, other than that, I don't really eat seafood at all.
01:40:20 ◼ ► So that was a little bit, uh, exciting, but yeah, that's, that was surely the most memorable
01:40:47 ◼ ► You think you're not going to care what like the, the back room at your first job looks like
01:41:22 ◼ ► Josh Kincaid writes, what's the significance of the tire markings on the bootleg feeds cover
01:41:35 ◼ ► I put a link to it if you don't know what it looks like, but it's a, it's the wheel from
01:41:40 ◼ ► And the wheel has like a tire markings, like on the sidewall of the tire on your car tire.
01:41:51 ◼ ► I looked at it and I realized I no longer remember what the, I know we had meaning behind them
01:42:05 ◼ ► I looked it up and I said, we need to put this in a show because if I've already forgotten
01:42:10 ◼ ► I need it burned into audio so that at some point in the future I can say, oh, we talked
01:42:30 ◼ ► Hey, you, you remembered the, the, the name and face of the person who drove Marco around
01:42:50 ◼ ► We'll put a link in the show notes to something that shows you like what the numbers mean.
01:43:00 ◼ ► If you're starting from like sort of left to right, going around the wheel clockwise, and
01:43:08 ◼ ► And most, most tires you see are going to be car tires, even though this is a Mac pro wheel
01:43:23 ◼ ► So I got someone when we did this, I got, I asked around on probably Mastodon back then.
01:43:31 ◼ ► Because real tires have like, you know, 255 millimeter for like a big sports car tire or
01:44:05 ◼ ► tread material, which seemed appropriate for the Mac pro wheels, uh, a two inch rim diameter
01:44:18 ◼ ► I couldn't look up what all those numbers name, but it's like each number corresponds to how
01:44:35 ◼ ► So it's P 40 slash 25 B two 32 and then Z, which is the speed rating and Z, which Marco
01:44:42 ◼ ► knows about because I made a big stink stink about that when we were in Germany, because
01:45:12 ◼ ► Well, it's a good thing you have Casey with you to tell you the tires have speed ratings
01:45:35 ◼ ► If you want to find that number, look at maybe the door sill on the driver's side door, but
01:45:38 ◼ ► it does tell you what the maximum air pressure you're ever supposed to put in these tires
01:45:57 ◼ ► You can't see them at small sizes, but if you get a podcast client, they can zoom it in and
01:46:03 ◼ ► And then finally for this week, uh, friend of mine, Matt, Matt Richardson, who does incredible
01:46:21 ◼ ► But anyways, Matt writes, I'm a Canon shooter and I've always splurged on good glass, but for
01:46:34 ◼ ► I'm not sure if I should switch to cheaper or lighter zooms or maybe stick with good glass
01:46:46 ◼ ► So first of all, if you need long reach, like if you need like, you know, a good zoom reach,
01:46:52 ◼ ► you're going to be looking at pretty heavy lenses unless you want them to be very low quality.
01:46:57 ◼ ► The other thing is, you know, what Matt said, you know, at the end, like maybe stick with
01:47:10 ◼ ► I would suggest when traveling, if you're okay with that perspective and that being like your
01:47:16 ◼ ► only perspective on the camera, I would say absolutely get whatever the pancake lens is for
01:47:27 ◼ ► Cause when you compare the pancake lenses to any other like decent quality lens, they're
01:47:37 ◼ ► And, you know, just not, not only in terms of like sheer weight and space in the bag, but
01:47:45 ◼ ► Like pancake lenses generally weigh approximately nothing compared to any other lens you can put
01:47:55 ◼ ► Um, so that is, I would say the, the budget option is get a pancake because pancake lenses
01:48:09 ◼ ► Um, but they tend to be very small, very light and usually pretty inexpensive, uh, depending
01:48:22 ◼ ► What makes camera lenses big and heavy often, not always, but often part of that is it has
01:48:30 ◼ ► to account for like the distance between the lens and the sensor on the, on the mount and
01:48:37 ◼ ► If you get a compact camera that has a, it has a built in lens, you can usually achieve
01:48:45 ◼ ► the same quality and speed in terms of aperture as a much larger lens on a detachable system.
01:48:53 ◼ ► So that's, I'm talking about things like the Fuji X100, the Leica Q, like, you know, that,
01:49:02 ◼ ► I don't know if they're still doing that one, but, uh, but you know, like the Leica Q is probably
01:49:05 ◼ ► the flagship in this market, um, the new Fuji, uh, GFX 100 RF, which I happen to have gotten.
01:49:14 ◼ ► Isn't that an, no, I thought you were talking about the one that's like a solid block of
01:49:29 ◼ ► It's basically a medium format X100 and it's, I just, I've only had it for a couple of days
01:49:38 ◼ ► Uh, but that kind of thing of like, you know, when you, when you look at the size of something
01:49:43 ◼ ► like an X100 or the GFX 100 RF or a Leica Q, like when you see like how big of a lens is
01:49:51 ◼ ► needed to achieve that aperture and that focal length on that size sensor, it's always much
01:50:02 ◼ ► So if what you're optimizing for is small size for travel and, you know, small and light for
01:50:11 ◼ ► I mean, obviously these are, you know, you're talking about buying a whole separate camera.
01:50:18 ◼ ► Um, but that might be worth looking into if you want like a fancier or an upgrade pick,
01:50:24 ◼ ► but what you should start with, like for now, if you don't want to get a whole new camera
01:50:37 ◼ ► So this isn't really what Matt is asking and I'm sure he knows this anyway, but I'll just
01:50:42 ◼ ► Um, I'm in a similar situation where I don't want to be carrying around these big lenses and
01:50:47 ◼ ► my advice for travel is the way to deal with this trade-off is to get a smaller sensor.
01:51:00 ◼ ► And then I have my AP, APS-C, uh, size sensor on my other camera and it has a 70 to 350 lens
01:51:09 ◼ ► And the 70 to 350 lens is smaller on the APS-C camera than the 24 to 70 is on the full frame.
01:51:16 ◼ ► So for people who don't speak, speak camera speak, uh, there is a very small zoom range
01:51:22 ◼ ► lens on my, on my big sensor camera that only goes from 24 millimeters to 70 millimeters.
01:51:37 ◼ ► If you look at the camera app on your iPhone, even if you don't have a real camera, now that
01:51:40 ◼ ► they put like a little millimeter equivalents that you can see 70 to 350, that's a pretty
01:51:46 ◼ ► And if you've got a 70 to 350 on a full frame camera, even if you've got the cheapest one
01:51:55 ◼ ► So what I'm getting at is the lenses for APS-C sensor cameras are so much smaller and lighter
01:52:04 ◼ ► Like, yes, you are sacrificing by having a smaller sensor, but if you're on vacation and
01:52:11 ◼ ► There should be plenty of light for an APS-C sensor, you know, you lose some pixels, but
01:52:24 ◼ ► I don't know the Canon line or whatever, but Mark was introducing the new camera thing.
01:52:28 ◼ ► So I'm going to throw it in there to get a camera with a smaller sensor because all the
01:52:36 ◼ ► If you want to stay with interchangeable lens cameras, not detachable, an interchangeable lens
01:52:57 ◼ ► You either, if you want an interchangeable lens camera and you want it to be full frame,
01:53:10 ◼ ► Like it is what it is, but you can get around that by getting a camera with a smaller sensor.
01:53:14 ◼ ► And yes, the cameras that are an interchangeable lens where the thing is built in, they can be
01:53:26 ◼ ► And I feel like it, especially like if you want to keep the size and weight down, you're
01:53:36 ◼ ► than you would from that same focal distance in a non-interchangeable lens camera of the
01:53:40 ◼ ► Because the, the good non-interchangeable lens cameras are either horrendously expensive,
01:53:48 ◼ ► They're not as big as they would be if they had an interchangeable lens, but since they're
01:54:00 ◼ ► If you don't travel that frequently, this is a good consideration to maybe rent cameras.
01:54:09 ◼ ► And like, you know, you can, you can actually rent one of these small, compact, fancier cameras
01:54:14 ◼ ► Or, you know, some, some lens that you wouldn't normally buy, you know, for, for constant use,
01:54:33 ◼ ► Like, so look, look at a bunch of, let's say you decide you're going to do like a non-interchangeable
01:54:38 ◼ ► Narrow it down to a model or two, then rent the one you're thinking of buying as sort of
01:55:00 ◼ ► What I have found is that they are not better enough than an iPhone to be worth carrying.
01:55:08 ◼ ► But like, don't go with smaller sensors than APS-C if you want it to be better than an iPhone.
01:55:14 ◼ ► Within the APS-C family, if you really want a very, very small but very high quality APS-C
01:55:43 ◼ ► But like, when you look at like, you know, the challenge is like, you know, how Fuji takes
01:56:00 ◼ ► The only reason I don't use the Ricoh GR3X more is because like the handling of it is very
01:56:11 ◼ ► But if I want to have a good camera with me to be able to capture good images at the small
01:56:20 ◼ ► But I personally like the larger offerings from Fuji better just in terms of handling and
01:56:33 ◼ ► Renting is a good idea and definitely the pancake lens category if you can, if you don't mind
01:56:50 ◼ ► One of the many perks of membership is all those awesome specials we were talking about
01:57:00 ◼ ► Every week we talk for usually like, you know, another 15 or 20 minutes on some bonus topic
01:57:07 ◼ ► This week that topic will be, as John put it, meanwhile in Europe, what's going on with
01:58:45 ◼ ► But it does a really, really good job of showing you top to bottom how CarPlay Ultra works.
01:59:04 ◼ ► Like the tachometer, the speedometer, a lot of the error indicators and things like that.
01:59:11 ◼ ► The car will render them itself, but it's doing it in a visual language that Apple provides.
01:59:19 ◼ ► And so when you initially connect to CarPlay Ultra, one of the things that happens is Apple downloads a whole bunch of assets and resources and whatnot into the car.
01:59:28 ◼ ► Such that whenever you turn that car on henceforth, it will actually use Apple's UI, I believe, even before it connects to your iPhone.
01:59:38 ◼ ► And then it will obviously use regular traditional CarPlay as well as have this new Ultra stuff on top of it.
01:59:45 ◼ ► And the Ultra stuff will integrate with the onboard infotainment for things like the backup camera, for perhaps unique settings that they couldn't really figure out a good way to do in the CarPlay world.
01:59:57 ◼ ► If you control HVAC or your air conditioning using the car, like if the car has dials, it will be reflected in CarPlay.
02:00:09 ◼ ► That being said, some of the gauge clusters that you can choose between, I like that they let you choose between different gauge clusters.
02:00:17 ◼ ► I like that they work with the car manufacturers in order to build at least one or two different gauge clusters.
02:00:23 ◼ ► So the Aston Martin, you know, looked like an Aston Martin in the corner of the speedometer.
02:00:27 ◼ ► It said, I don't know, something like hand-built in Britain or whatever the case may be.
02:00:38 ◼ ► But anyways, the point is, you know, they work with the car manufacturer to do these things.
02:00:43 ◼ ► But then they also have like a purely Apple interpretation where you can have like one of the dashboards was, or gauge clusters, was a bunch of like horizontal progress bars.
02:01:07 ◼ ► I don't think I would go out of my way to get a car with CarPlay Ultra, but I think I would really like it if I had it.
02:01:16 ◼ ► So we talked about this a much more extensive discussion of what was then called Next Gen CarPlay, the Next Gen CarPlay architecture, in episode 593, right after WWDC last year.
02:01:34 ◼ ► It's been a while, like, because they announced it, and like, we didn't hear anything about it.
02:01:39 ◼ ► And then they waited from 2022, 2023, 2024, they like re-announced it, but then they had sessions on it, WWDC.
02:01:45 ◼ ► So we really got the nitty-gritty detail that like all the questions we had were essentially answered.
02:02:04 ◼ ► And just to refresh with the questions that we had from before, the answers that we got at technical depth in 2024, when you get into one of these cars, there, you don't need an iPhone.
02:02:17 ◼ ► Like, everything, there's, you know, there's an instrument cluster in front of you, there's a screen, there's all this stuff.
02:02:29 ◼ ► And if you don't have an iPhone, don't worry, you're not going to see any of this crap, right?
02:02:33 ◼ ► So what that means is that anyone who uses CarPlay Ultra, any car company, they have to make a full interface for their car, because they can't assume that everybody has an iPhone.
02:02:43 ◼ ► But if you have an iPhone, and you get into the car, and you pair it and initialize it and say, yes, I want to use CarPlay Ultra, then essentially every screen in that car is covered with CarPlay stuff.
02:02:58 ◼ ► And as Casey noted, it's not just all projected from your phone, there's a bunch of stuff that the car itself is projecting, because you have to make it so that when you get in, like the screens can light up.
02:03:07 ◼ ► And you know, like, you don't have to wait for your car to connect to see your speedometer, for example, right?
02:03:18 ◼ ► And part of the technology they have is that the sort of quote, unquote, native car interface can punch through that interface for regulatory reasons.
02:03:26 ◼ ► And for practical reasons, the regulatory reasons, you got to have like the, the warning lights and whatever jurisdiction says you need to have these warning lights have to be visible.
02:03:33 ◼ ► And you have to show this like, that's all sort of the quote, unquote, native car interface.
02:03:40 ◼ ► Even in the Aston Martin, it's like this, there's very strict regulations about what like the, the fuel gauge or the oil light or the not the fuel gauge, but like there's, the warning lights do have lots of regulations around them.
02:03:54 ◼ ► So those punch through and they don't always match the rest of the interface because those you can't restyle as easily.
02:03:59 ◼ ► And then things like the backing up camera, the 360 camera and the Aston Martin, the thing that controlled like the seat massaging, that was a punch through of the native interface, punching through the Apple interface.
02:04:13 ◼ ► Some of it projected from the phone on like sort of the main, you know, CarPlay screens and then the instrument cluster stuff that's downloaded into the thing.
02:04:26 ◼ ► Because you have to, you have to do, because not everyone has an iPhone, do a full interior design for your car software.
02:04:31 ◼ ► And then allow people with an iPhone to cover all of that with an interface that you, in cooperation with Apple design to be a blend of Aston Martin or whatever your company is and Apple's aesthetic.
02:04:45 ◼ ► And they talked to the nice Aston Martin designer and he put a brave face on it and saying, oh, we love this or whatever.
02:04:51 ◼ ► But it's like, if you're a car designer, like, do you want to work with Apple to design an interface that is part Apple, part Aston Martin?
02:05:00 ◼ ► I think you just want it to be Aston Martin and Apple should get what it needs to get for its apps to display.
02:05:15 ◼ ► It's not a high volume model, but I, the questions still we had of a CarPlay Ultra are no longer about how it works.
02:05:27 ◼ ► I mean, obviously Apple was able to make it happen with at least one car maker after, you know, three years of trying.
02:05:48 ◼ ► Like, what if I just want CarPlay on the middle screen where I can just see my music and maps and stuff?
02:05:59 ◼ ► But anyway, this, this is a good, we'll have a better market test if the other car makers and their supposed list of people who are going to support this comes out.
02:06:16 ◼ ► It just seems like something that appeals to Apple and maybe appeals to people who really dislike the aesthetic of their car and prefer the aesthetic of Apple.
02:06:26 ◼ ► They want, they want the Apple look because they think their car is ugly or unappealing or not as nice.
02:06:31 ◼ ► But, and CarPlay is, the color for Ultra is extremely flexible and able to be modified and themed and changed or whatever to look more like the other cars.
02:06:40 ◼ ► But in the end, it, it looks like because it's supposed to look like a blend between Apple and the car company.
02:06:47 ◼ ► I don't really want Apple blended at all with my instrument cluster because I don't see them as a car company.
02:06:55 ◼ ► I want them, I want Apple to show me an app interface because I see them as an app company.
02:07:08 ◼ ► And I don't think Aston Martin is excited about CarPlay Ultra either, but they are a trusted partner of Apple.
02:07:22 ◼ ► There was, there was a really good segment on the Verge cast about this a couple of days ago.
02:07:26 ◼ ► So I would say if you're, if you want to hear more about this, listen to that because they did a really good,
02:07:31 ◼ ► Um, I think the, you know, obviously when you look at what Apple debuted and what we talked about back in 2022,
02:07:38 ◼ ► uh, about like their next generation CarPlay, this seems like it is a little bit of a step back from that.
02:07:45 ◼ ► Um, this is a little bit more like we're going to compromise and we're going to have some stuff designed by us, some stuff rendered by our phone, not everything and not everything.
02:07:55 ◼ ► Um, you know, some, we're still going to have some of your UI show through when you feel like it, uh, or when you refuse to, you know, give it to us.
02:08:03 ◼ ► But they announced that in 2024, the punch through stuff was there when we talked about it in episode 593.
02:08:08 ◼ ► So, but like, you know, so anyway, this, this is a bit of a walk back from what they did, you know, a few years back or what they demoed, but could get apparently nobody on board with.
02:08:18 ◼ ► I think this is a more approachable version of it that for the automakers, but it's very clear.
02:08:25 ◼ ► Like when you watch the video and when you kind of, you know, listen to some of the details here, it's very clear.
02:08:43 ◼ ► I think it's much more likely they're going to do a few boutique integrations like this with the Aston Martin.
02:08:56 ◼ ► That being said, it did appeal to me more in the Aston Martin demo and like what we were seeing there.
02:09:03 ◼ ► It appealed to be more there than the original version they shut off in 2022 for the next gen CarPlay.
02:09:11 ◼ ► Ultimately, I don't want the entire dashboard and instrument cluster of my car to look like an iPhone forever.
02:09:26 ◼ ► And I don't want my car to be boring and safe and bland and to always look the same no matter what car I have.
02:09:33 ◼ ► I like the personality that cars bring, you know, sometimes it's not as nice of a user experience in certain ways, but I don't want everything to always be the same.
02:09:50 ◼ ► Like when you, when you, when it showed like navigating through those setting screens, I just wanted to die.
02:09:55 ◼ ► I'm like, you're in an Aston Martin and you're navigating through these like big gray table rows.
02:10:02 ◼ ► And then occasionally you have the Aston Martin's own UI punch through to show a totally incongruous art style view of the seats.
02:10:10 ◼ ► Like it's just, it's not, it's nicer in some ways and certain parts of it I did think looked nice, but I don't want every car to be like this.
02:10:25 ◼ ► I think this is going to be a very rarely implemented thing, but it's a fun, it's a fun thing.
02:10:35 ◼ ► And overall, like I do like CarPlay as a whole, but I think what CarPlay is today and every other car, which is a rectangle, the phone projects onto the screen.
02:10:56 ◼ ► Like, you know, one of the nice things about this is not necessarily that it has to take over every screen in the car.
02:11:02 ◼ ► But one of the nice things about CarPlay Ultra as shown here is that by having more integration with the car, you can have things like, for instance, the climate control, like the status, like the temperature and everything that can be displayed on the CarPlay home screen, like next to your CarPlay stuff.
02:11:19 ◼ ► That kind of integration, that could be nice here and there, you know, depending on your car model and how it's displaying stuff otherwise, that could be nice.
02:11:25 ◼ ► So I think this, this has a lot of potential to be like nice little upgrades here and there, but I cannot imagine most automakers agreeing to it.
02:11:33 ◼ ► That's why I was asking if you could just do the main CarPlay screen, like, because then you would get the integration where you can see your AC control or the current temperature and stuff.
02:11:40 ◼ ► But you didn't have to say, okay, but take over every screen in the car, including the instrument cluster.
02:11:55 ◼ ► It has looked the way it looks for its entire life, basically, like it hasn't ever really gotten a redesign.
02:12:01 ◼ ► So I'm curious to see, like, you know, as Apple allegedly redesigns, like, all of its OSs that we'll see in a couple of weeks, if the rumors are true, I wonder if any of that gets to CarPlay and how that affects this announcement.
02:12:15 ◼ ► Like, how it's going to look, like, do you want Apple to redesign software and all of a sudden your entire car looks different?
02:12:25 ◼ ► Like, that was a terrible experience to have your car all of a sudden get redesigned and all of a sudden you can't find your defroster anymore.
02:12:43 ◼ ► And it seems like I'm glad that they are willing to walk back some of the ambition and hubris they have with that original design to actually work with automakers instead of just fighting them with everything.
02:12:54 ◼ ► So we'll see if anybody actually ever, you know, adopts this in a car that I ever want to own.
02:13:23 ◼ ► Yeah, but Porsche, like, is at least a little bit more of a common brand and a little bit less expensive.
02:13:30 ◼ ► But if you're buying an Aston Martin, you're buying an iconic look more than you're buying, like, raw, sheer numbers.
02:13:43 ◼ ► From 9to5Mac, here is supposedly the list of car makers that had pledged to support what was then known as next-gen CarPlay from 2022.
02:13:51 ◼ ► Land Rover, Lincoln, Audi, Volvo, Honda, Nissan, Ford, Porsche, Jaguar, Acura, Polestar, Infiniti, and Renault.
02:13:58 ◼ ► And Mercedes was on the list, but Mercedes has since come out and said, no, hell no, we're not doing that.
02:14:08 ◼ ► And obviously, Aston Martin has actually shipped it, even though they weren't on the list.
02:14:11 ◼ ► So, from this 2022 list, how many of these people are still pledging to support what is now known as CarPlay Ultra?
02:14:19 ◼ ► But, yeah, it's been a long time for a single car company to actually produce a product with this,
02:14:28 ◼ ► And it's not a very good test bed because so few of these will sell, and it's not representative of the overall market.
02:14:35 ◼ ► But, yeah, I kind of agree with Marco that I don't want all my cars to look like Apple stuff,
02:14:40 ◼ ► mostly because I don't think, I don't particularly like how, for example, any of the Apple instrument cluster things work.
02:14:46 ◼ ► And one of the things I choose a car based on is whether I like the interior and the software.
02:14:55 ◼ ► Like, oh, I love everything about this car except for the inside, except for the screens.
02:14:58 ◼ ► But I don't have to worry about that, because when I get them with my iPhone, they'll all be replaced with the Apple thing, and I like that.
02:15:02 ◼ ► But I would prefer to choose a car where I like everything about it as it comes out of the box,