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Hello and welcome to Connected episode 513. I am your keynote chairman, Stephen Hackett, and I am joined by annual chairman, Mike Hurley.
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Hello, Stephen Hackett. It's a pleasure to be here and there. It's even more of a pleasure, oh my God, to introduce Federico Vittucci back to the show. I'm just so excited. I can't even speak.
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Hello, Federico. Hello, I'm back. And if that's the effect I have on you, well, I'm very, very happy. You always tie my tongue Federico.
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Everyone's back. I should say this episode is made possible by NetSuite, Fitbot, ExpressVPN and Zojou. I miss that. We're really struggling today.
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But welcome back Federico. And the pro show this week, which is the longer ad-free version of the show that we do every single time, you came with some notes from vacation.
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It was a real roller coaster of highs and lows of technology in 2024.
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Mostly lows. Mostly lows. Mostly lows. But some realizations on everyone's part. And it's 20 minutes today, so if you want a good chunky pro show.
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20 minutes of epiphanies, really. Realizations and takes. Yeah. Yeah. It was useful. It was a useful vacation to realize a few things.
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But yeah, it's good to be here. I can't wait to do it, as somebody used to say.
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Federico, how have you been celebrating performer month so far?
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Mostly by being confused by the idea of performer month, because I feel like one day I was at the beach and I opened Mastodon, you know, as you do.
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And I saw an announcement of performer month and I had no idea that Steven was planning this.
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And I still kind of, I wanted to ask you, Steven, do you feel like maybe you're not enough of a busy person to also have this project?
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I have been quite surprised at the length of these articles so far.
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Follow up, Steven. Can I delegate some of my tasks to you? If you are so inclined.
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I can't. I can't do any more. I am very busy.
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Well, it seems like you have time for performer month. Yes, you definitely have an amount of time on your hands.
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The trick of performer month was that I started in early July. I've been writing these for a while and most of them are written now.
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So this is big year of Luigi energy right now, which lasted for two years. Like performer month has lasted for three months.
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When we first talked about this, Mike, you asked me if I had bought any performers.
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And at that point I had bought one for a photo. I have now bought a second one. I bought a 631 CD on eBay.
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Of course. You see now, I feel like if we go back to the last episode, you were very much like, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that.
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And now you've doubled your performer.
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This will be, this should be the last one. It's like the only one I didn't have in this body style.
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Uh huh. Sure. This is like, you know, that thing where it's like, if you take a grain of rice and you double a grain of rice and you, you doubled your amount of rice for every piece, like for every square on a chessboard that by the time you got to the end, it's more rice than there is on the planet.
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Are you familiar with this idea? I don't know if this is true. This is what I imagined the performers situation is going to be.
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I've seen like on Instagram, cause I'm too old for Tik TOK was like, do you want this banana or should I double it and give it to the next person? And then 30 seconds later, someone has said yes to 72 bananas.
00:36:22
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Still, the Think Boot+ hybrid, it's a real product from Lenovo shipping at some point in China.
00:36:30
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00:48:54
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Because of the suggestions coming from multiple data sources.
00:49:00
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And now, actually, in iOS 18, Journal can gather those media suggestions from different podcast apps and different music apps.
00:49:09
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Oh, good, I didn't know that. That passed me by, and that's really good news.
00:49:14
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It should have been doing that for a long time, so I'm happy that it can do that now.
00:49:17
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And so that idea of, like, here you have one single quote-unquote "database" journal that can gather those recommendations from multiple places,
00:49:31
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It's a great update and you should go check it out, especially because of the highlights, and if you're a shortcuts person, because of shortcuts.
00:49:39
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According to Mark Gurman, Apple is looking to develop a plastic-based Apple Watch SE that is "more kid-friendly" with potentially "a better array of colors".
00:49:51
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There's an interesting article about this from Wes Davis on The Verge, and Wes is talking about, like,
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"Oh, maybe this could be just a more fun Apple Watch to wear, but if you like the things that are most recent, it's still going to be an SE,
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so it's going to be held back from whatever other updates there are to the Apple Watch line."
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But I think, Stephen, you put this in the show notes, and I wasn't sure exactly what you wanted to talk about this,
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but I actually saw it and was thinking for you, as a dad, a dad of teenagers as well especially,
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what do you think about the Apple Watch as a device for kids?
00:50:36
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I know we're touching the third rail of podcasting now, we're just talking about parenting,
00:50:42
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so I won't mind if you decide to rip cord and parachute right out of this conversation.
00:50:47
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But do you have any thoughts on this as, like, what you think of the Apple Watch as a device for kids,
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and/or what you would want feature-wise the device to have to be a good device for kids?
00:50:58
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I don't have any first-hand experience with the Apple Watch school time features, right?
00:51:03
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They rolled out a few years ago. I know Marco talked about it at length on ATP a couple of times,
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and it seemed pretty buggy, and now I think they just have, like, a dummy phone set up for their son's watch. Crazy.
00:51:14
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So I don't have experience with the software side of it, but from the hardware side of it,
00:51:19
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like, if this makes the watch more durable, cheaper, and lighter weight, those are all three great things
00:51:26
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if you're going to put a watch on a kid, or even if you just want to buy a watch yourself.
00:51:30
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Like, I think what's most interesting about this rumor to me is not the kid angle,
00:51:35
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but it's the more diversification of the Apple Watch line in ways that we haven't seen before.
00:51:42
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You know, we have the SE, which diversifies and lowers the price, but to your point, Mike,
00:51:47
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it does that by cutting features and giving you old stuff.
00:51:50
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And this would probably still be true in this version, but it would be the first time they've moved downstream
00:51:57
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or downmarket in terms of the build and the materials, right?
00:52:04
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They've had ceramic, they've had titanium, they had actual, literal gold in the beginning that people try to forget about,
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but they've never kind of gone the other way.
00:52:14
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And so, yeah, I think it would be great if you are putting an Apple Watch on a kid,
00:52:18
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but if you're not, you're just looking for a more affordable watch that maybe is in fun colors,
00:52:26
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like if a boy can dream, then this is interesting to me through those lenses.
00:52:31
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I can imagine the benefit, the thought of why an Apple Watch could be good for a kid, right? Because it's not a phone.
00:52:41
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If you don't want to give them a phone, but you can contact them, they can contact you and Find My would work if it was cellular.
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But yeah, it's an interesting, I don't know, it's an interesting idea.
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The idea of making, see, here's my thing about this though.
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It seems weird to me in a way to be like, "Hey, we made this Apple Watch for kids."
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Is there anything, did you do anything other than make it out of plastic? I don't know.
00:53:19
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Yeah, I think if they do this, the price has to come down more. That is a huge knock against the SE,
00:53:26
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at least in its original design is that it wasn't that much cheaper, right? They haven't really gone down to where-
00:53:36
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They brought it down a bit, it's 250 now. I think when it started, it was 300.
00:53:41
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It's 199, 179. If they can get down there, I don't know if this is enough to do that, but boy, that's intriguing to a whole new section of potential buyers.
00:53:55
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I love my Apple Watch Ultra and I plan on going to the Ultra 3 this year. I'm on the original Ultra now.
00:54:03
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If they made fun color plastic watches, that's really interesting. I think people would be intrigued by that.
00:54:11
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I just found a whole page on Apple's website called Apple Watch for your kids.
00:57:20
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00:58:55
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Beta check in time. We've got now two tracks.
00:58:59
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IOS 18 Beta five is out and then happened.
00:59:05
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18.1 has not received any updates, which is weird.
00:59:08
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We'll get to that first in 18.0 betas. Mike, you talked about.
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In dark mode, you can have dark mode with light icons.
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There was something that you want to do. It's confusing.
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Let's do it again. Originally it did what I want and then they changed it that if you had if you wanted to use dark mode, it forced you to have dark icons.
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Now, actually, in beta four and of 18 and in beta one of 18.1,
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Pranjay wrote into let us know and I'm very happy about this. You can do it.
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You can change this again so you can have dark mode on or off on your devices.
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It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to change your whether you use light icons or dark icons.
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So I now have dark mode on with light icons.
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But what's really funny is whenever I search for an app, they're always in dark icons.
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That seems like a bug. Yes, it's definitely a bug. It's just funny to me.
01:00:08
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But yes, so I am happy about that now. Widgets by default show dark.
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But I can get by with that. The icons are more important to me because by and large, I don't like Apple's dark icons.
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And so and also that some of the third party apps that I've seen that have dark mode tinting on their icons.
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I don't like that either. I want to be able to just like I've always done choose my icons where I have choice.
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And so I prefer to have that rather than the system just making a blanket switch for me.
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But yes, so beta 5 is now out. There is no beta 2 of 18.1.
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So the bad scenario that we were talking about with John last week has happened.
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And so now I'm expecting Federico has done this. We'll get to that in a minute maybe.
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If you're doing a review, you kind of have to go back now because we have no idea if or when.
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It is super weird to me that we have this. I'll actually listen to Mike wrote in to say,
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unless something changes around Apple intelligence, wouldn't we be looking at a future where there is two versions of every release?
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Since AI is only supported on the newer phones, wouldn't it be true until they drop support for the other phones?
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And this is an interesting question, but I think the answer to this is no.
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Like the scenario where we have this 18.1 beta is just because they are trying to get these features ready for October and they want more time with it.
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There are untold amount of feature flags that are turned on and off in like, say, for an iPad OS, right?
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There are some devices that have run iPad OS 18 beta 5 or whatever, but they don't have stage manager.
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They don't need separate versions of iOS for that to occur.
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So like going into the future, when it comes to iOS 19, they're not going to need to have two versions of 19.
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One that has Apple intelligence and one that doesn't because they're just able to, as we spoke about, as we assumed and is the case with Federico,
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they just lock him out of being able to get those features. But it's still technically in the operating system.
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He just can't turn them on. So I don't think that this will be a thing that we get forever.
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But it is super strange to have currently two versions of the same operating system on different betas concurrently.
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And now the features have diverged and I guess it is not clear now to understand when those features will merge again.
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Right. Right. We're going to talk about the photos changes in a minute. Those are in 18.0 beta 5, not an 18.1.
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There is also bugs in 18.0 and 18.1 that are different. It's very strange.
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And like so right now. I have one phone on 18.0 beta 5 and my carry phones on 18.1.
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And it's like it's a mess. Like I really thought 18.1 would be in lockstep with the changes in 18.0.
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It's just like plus Apple intelligence thrown in on top. But it doesn't seem to be what they're doing.
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At least of this recording. Maybe in a couple of days we'll know more. But it's weird for now.
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Federico, can you tell us about those photo changes? Yeah. So I was really surprised by this.
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We spoke about the photos we designed before and how after an initial shock, we kind of, you know, especially Mike and I,
01:03:47
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we really liked where Apple was going, you know, with the sort of half view of your recent photos and then the collections below and the customization and the carousel at the top that allowed you to pin different collections and swipe between them in the carousel.
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Well, so the carousel is gone. And that's the thing that makes me really sad because it was probably my favorite feature of the redesign. And now it's just been removed.
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I'm happy that at least this was kind of like a good news bad news thing for me when I saw the headline. I just thought that they got rid of all of it.
01:04:26
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But like they still have the split screen. But there's just no carousel at the top. And while I did like that, the thing I liked most was just having the split screen where you've got, you can get to your images if you want to, but you can also get to all the other stuff way faster.
01:04:43
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But it's a shame to me because I really liked how customizable everything was. And I don't really understand what this deals with, but they obviously have had enough feedback about it that they wanted to change it.
01:05:05
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Yeah, and it seems like the grid now takes slightly more space than before on the page. And you have to wonder if they listen to this criticism enough, how far down can you push the grid until you revert to your original design?
01:05:23
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Right now it still covers, I would say 70% of the screen. It used to be more like 60%. It used to be less. And now the grid is more prominent. But you can still see your pin collections and your recent days. You just have to scroll a little bit more.
01:05:42
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Actually, no, you can see your recent days and your people and pets.
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Yeah, but of course you can change those around in order.
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I would be really surprised if there were any more significant changes here. I feel like they've made this change and now they'll push this. This will be it.
01:06:02
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Yeah, but yeah, that's what they've done with photos. I continue to be a fan of the new design and especially the recent days is really the thing that does it for me. The categorization of photos by day while removing. Although it doesn't always do a perfect job.
01:06:21
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And this is probably because my phone is indexing everything again because I had to downgrade, which was a horrific experience that I don't wish on anybody.
01:06:32
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But still, so for example, right now my recent days, it's not doing the best job because it's showing me a screenshot, for example, under yesterday.
01:06:42
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And I bet it'll soon be gone as soon as the more indexing is done on the device. Just a matter of time. But yeah, I think this is the version of photos that is shipping and I continue to be a fan.
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Despite the fact that I really like the carousel and swiping from my recent photos to my favorites. And now that's no longer possible, but maybe someday it'll come back.
01:07:08
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And then there's a new feature in beta 5 called, what is it, distraction control in Safari?
01:07:20
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What is this? Can you explain this feature? And so I've also seen people refer to this as like a surprise. Has this not been mentioned before now?
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It was rumored that Apple was going to work on a way to let you remove like ads and other distracting elements from websites.
01:07:39
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You've helped me because I saw, I was reading a MacRumors article in the show and it's got a video too that shows how it works.
01:07:46
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And they're like, this is a surprise feature. And I was like, but I knew about this. And I was looking through Apple's like preview and couldn't find anything.
01:07:53
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But that you've now reminded me what I knew, which was the rumor.
01:07:56
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Yeah. So the idea is that you have this feature on the Mac, iOS and iPadOS to hide distracting items.
01:08:06
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Such as Apple mentions like signing banners or content overlays. Like, I don't know, the boxes that get you to sign up for a newsletter, for example.
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You go to the page menu, the page menu being like the place where everything is like stuffed into now. Like reader, website settings, like all that. It's called the page menu.
01:08:30
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So you go there, you tap on hide distracting elements. And the first time you do it, the system tells you that it's not like a permanent ad removal.
01:08:45
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So this is the thing that Apple is doing. Like they tell you this is not a way to permanently remove ads or other areas that frequently change content.
01:08:59
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Apple is saying that basically this is a way for you to hide static elements that you just don't like on websites.
01:09:09
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But if those elements change on a regular basis, they're still going to show them to you.
01:09:15
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So this is Apple basically trying to circumvent the discussion regarding, well, do you hate web publishers now?
01:09:24
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Because you get people to hide advertisements and banners from websites.
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Therefore, helping people, you know, therefore helping people, you know, not seeing the ads and those publishers suffering because of the feature that you have built in the browser used by hundreds of millions of people.
01:09:41
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Like they're trying to sidestep that controversy by saying, well, we don't block ads.
01:09:47
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We just let you hide distracting elements that don't change often.
01:09:51
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But if they do, we're going to show them to you because maybe it's an ad and the publisher needs to make money.
01:09:56
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We don't want, they're saying, we don't want to be in any capacity.
01:10:01
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We don't want to be in this business of content blocking.
01:10:04
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We just want to have you, we just want to make you have a nicer, more pleasant experience with Safari by hiding things you dislike as long as they don't change on a regular basis.
01:10:17
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Now, I think it's a clever approach to sidestep that controversy, but I still have concerns because like a site like Mac Stories, for example, we are, or Daring Fireball for that matter,
01:10:34
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we have a single ad that changes usually on a weekly basis.
01:10:40
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Now, if you try now and you hide that ad, that's gone forever.
01:10:50
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That's because it's not a Google ad that changes on every page reload or every day or I don't even know how Google ads work these days, honestly.
01:11:00
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You are permanently hiding a source of income for us.
01:11:05
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What if you change the ad banner though?
01:11:53
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Like, are people out there thinking, I'm using Apple's browser and it's not a pleasant experience?
01:12:00
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Or like, are they thinking about the web?
01:12:03
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And maybe if they are having those thoughts, they also know that they can go to the App Store and download a third-party content blocker.
01:12:10
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Like, are there people out there saying, man, I wish that Apple let me hide DOM elements on web pages via HTML because I dislike them.
01:12:21
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Like, it just seems, and especially with all these conversations that we're seeing this year with publishers, smaller publishers suffering because of changes to Google search and AI.
01:12:34
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Read the room, you know? Like, was it necessary to ship this feature?
01:12:40
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Like, it just seems, as with many things on iOS these days, a little out of touch.
01:12:57
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But here's my thing. I haven't used this feature, but I've seen videos of it, right?
01:13:01
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The thing that I find weird about it is like, they didn't really commit.
01:13:08
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Like, I was on the web today and I was reading an article on Variety, right?
01:13:14
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And as I was scrolling, there were videos popping up, there were different weird banners made with AI art all over the place.
01:13:26
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And it was a not good experience to read the article.
01:13:29
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So what I do in these scenarios is I just turn on reader mode and I read it in reader.
01:13:35
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But if I was on this webpage and I was being frustrated by this, and I'd be like, "Great, I'm going to deal with the distractions.
01:13:44
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Alright, so now I've got to play this game for a minute where I tap on a bunch of areas of the article before I start reading."
01:13:51
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Like, I just don't understand this feature.
01:13:54
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And why would I not just use reader instead?
01:13:58
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Why would I sit and press all these buttons?
01:14:02
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And so it's what you're saying. It's like they were like, "Oh, we're going to give people a way to block ads, but we don't actually want to do that, so we're going to do this."
01:14:14
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And so I'm kind of just like, "Why did you do this then?"
01:14:18
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Like, why did you do this? Because you kind of, it doesn't make any, I don't think this makes anybody happy.
01:14:24
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And I can't really imagine a lot of people using this feature because you kind of have to set up this webpage that you're going to read and then close the tab.
01:14:34
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Like, it's weird. It just seems very strange to me as a feature to have.
01:14:40
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But maybe it is me that is out of touch and people want to play this like, Safari hidden distractions game every time they go to a webpage.
01:14:50
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But I know I certainly don't and so I find other ways of getting around content like this.
01:14:57
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And let me tell you, I feel for Stephen in this scenario because these kinds of things, it's what generates so much support email to people.
01:15:07
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Where they're like, "Hey, I can't see this thing!"
01:15:10
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It's like, "Do you have a content blocker turned on?"
01:15:12
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And this is just another one of those.
01:18:29
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Got to redesign Mac stories, you know?
01:18:32
◼►
Well, that's a different topic, but yes.
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01:20:07
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This has been ongoing in the US for a while.
01:20:12
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And of course, we have a link to The Verge, but also to One True John's article talking about what this means and what comes next.
01:20:23
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The headline for people in our neck of the woods is that Google paying to be the default search engine in browsers is not going to be allowed.
01:20:42
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That's obviously going to have some pretty wild knock-on effects in the world.
01:20:46
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Apple being one of them, Mozilla being another.
01:20:49
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I think Mozilla is probably in real trouble because the Google deal to have Google in Firefox as the default browser is the majority of Mozilla's income.
01:26:46
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I think if it's your default now, that continues, but in new installations, when you open Safari, you pick between Google and Bing and Perplexity and search GPT or whatever else.
01:27:42
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And I don't feel like I'm being harmed by any of this.
01:27:47
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Maybe that's just me. Maybe it's naive.
01:27:49
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But I think Apple and Google are going to be just fine without this deal in place.
01:27:55
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I don't think Google's going to suddenly see a massive exodus of iPhone users going to their competitors because they're not paying for those users anymore.
01:28:04
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The funny thing is Google wins big time.
01:28:06
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They don't have to give any of this money away, and they're not going to lose user share.
01:28:10
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They're definitely not going to lose $20 billion a year worth of user share.
01:28:14
◼►
They're not going to lose user share. I mean, let's be realistic.
01:28:17
◼►
Are you two looking to switch away from Google search anytime soon?
01:28:52
◼►
But this deal has just felt gross to me.
01:28:55
◼►
Really, it's felt gross on Apple's side more than on Google's side because there is this thing.
01:29:01
◼►
The company that we previously spoke about putting app tracking transparency in place, right?
01:29:06
◼►
Or you shouldn't be tracked across apps.
01:29:09
◼►
But we'll allow Google to give us money so we will encourage you to use Google.
01:29:15
◼►
And then, "Well, whatever happens out there on Google, I don't know, man.
01:29:19
◼►
We can't control that." We don't know.
01:29:21
◼►
That's always felt wrong. I don't like the fact that this happened.
01:29:25
◼►
But I agree. I don't think that it is of any ill effect to users because people want to use Google.
01:29:36
◼►
And please, I beg you, do not send in feedback telling me that you use a separate search engine.
01:29:42
◼►
I'm sure you do, but you know what I'm saying, right?
01:29:46
◼►
Google is used by everybody in the world, essentially.
01:29:50
◼►
And the amount of people that aren't using Google is so small compared to everybody that is.
01:29:57
◼►
It's the verb for searching on the web.
01:30:01
◼►
That only happens in very specific scenarios.
01:30:05
◼►
And Google is one of the very small amount of companies that will ever exist that their product becomes a verb.
01:30:12
◼►
And there's a very good reason for that.
01:30:13
◼►
Oh yeah, that's a huge deal. And I just don't think consumers are going to suddenly be wanting to move away from Google because this deal falls through.
01:30:25
◼►
And I think people who are already using Unalternative like DuckDuckGo, what's the paid one that some people like?
01:30:31
◼►
Kagi. Kagi is the one I just made a joke about.
01:30:35
◼►
Because it's like, "Oh no, but it doesn't make..."
01:30:37
◼►
Like, if you don't, why would you remember that brand?
01:30:43
◼►
And those people who are already using those, I just... I don't know.
01:30:46
◼►
This is an interesting decision. I think it's going to take a long time to iron it all out.
01:30:52
◼►
And I think the 20 billion Google pays Apple, while interesting to us, is, to a point Mike made earlier, only a small part of this case.
01:31:01
◼►
And there's going to be lots of other things that have to be sorted out because of this.
01:31:08
◼►
But it's a big day for antitrust in the United States because at least the last couple of years, the US government has actually not been very successful in these cases.
01:31:18
◼►
And it's been a bit of a complaint about some of the staff and some of the leadership in these agencies that they haven't been effective.
01:31:26
◼►
And now they have a win, and it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
01:31:30
◼►
And it will be appealed, and it's going to take a long time.
01:31:33
◼►
But this sort of opens a new chapter in tech antitrust in the United States that we really haven't seen here, right?
01:31:41
◼►
There have been Congress people and everything that talked about, "Yes, we've got to regulate these companies."
01:31:47
◼►
Some people a few years ago wanted to break up Amazon between this Amazon.com and Amazon Web Services and their own in-house brand.
01:31:59
◼►
Lots of talk, but this is sort of the starting gun for what is potentially a very huge shakeup in consumer tech, at least in the US.
01:32:10
◼►
But we just don't know how it's going to look.
01:32:12
◼►
There is one lasting effect to Apple, though, that will remain. It's going to be very interesting to see, right?
01:32:18
◼►
So services, yeah, if services is growing, services will keep growing.
01:32:22
◼►
Apple's profit is going to take a massive hit that won't recover.
01:32:28
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That's going to be a problem for them.
01:32:30
◼►
It does not take $20 billion a year to keep the default set in Safari, right?
01:32:35
◼►
That's just money they're being handed and putting in the bank.