So last week we talked about the Hot Tub controversy on Alt Store. Hot Tub is the adult entertainment app that made its way to Alt Store, the third party app marketplace in the European Union. And a lot of our conversation was focused on Alt Store describing it as the first...
Apple approved porn app for the iPhone. And I think we got a little bit mixed up when we were talking about the notarization process in the European Union. We got some feedback on it from a few people, including Steve Trouton-Smith.
and mayo you have some clarity on what exactly that notarization process entails yeah because we basically said offhandedly that notarization for ios marketplace apps does not include a human review right it's just purely automated that is just wrong the notarization process Apple says through a combination of automated checks and human review it helps ensure apps are free of no malware viruses or other security threats functions promised and don't expose users to egregious fraud so
And I think this has come up before maybe with Delta and something where Riley Testa was upset that Apple had like seen the app, but they weren't allowing it. And then, oh, they conveniently allowed it after they changed the app store rules to allow.
emulators globally right so like it wasn't it wasn't just like oh an automated process was then sitting there it was like hanging on a queue where at some point some human eventually says yes or no right and they can essentially delay the rollout of these alternative these apps on these alternative stores because
Apple still has to press say yes with a human at some point. And obviously at the moment, there aren't that many apps that go through this process. So it doesn't seem like it should take that long. But at least on some cases, it's taken like months for an app to get.
the human approval to go through even though this is technically the the app store that has nothing to do with apple at all um so with hot tub somebody apple did look at it and obviously they're forced to allow it because of the rules But they obviously kind of knew what was coming down the pipe, right? And this also relates to another instance of notarization in the EU where Apple rejected a Mac emulator app from being available in alternative app marketplaces in the EU.
because of copyright concerns, whereas technically what Apple should have done is let the app through the notarization process, then gone after the developer after the fact for those copyright concerns, because it's Apple's copyright. Through the notarization process, Apple is not allowed to proactively reject something because of copyright concerns. That's after the fact, after the app is available. It's up to Apple to defend their copyright or whoever, whatever other party.
is upset about an app being available to defend their copyright. So it is Apple having weaponized notarization in the past that I think does lend some credence to Alt Store saying that, yes, this was an Apple-approved app. even though in the big picture of things, I think Alt Store knew exactly what they were doing with that wording. Yeah, the truth in those words is not accurate to what actually happens, right? Because if you asked anybody at Apple, do they approve?
hot tub they'd all say no um so we you know we get it they obviously did a bit of a stunt here um but the fact that there is a human involved and apple seems to be overstepping its reach on the human involvement um it may be something that the like the eu digital markets act enforcement team come back around on at some point it's like well you can't do that anymore but that's how it is at the moment
The Powerbeats Pro 2 are official. We've talked about these before. These are the follow-up to the first generation Powerbeats from 2019. They were leaked a few times and Apple has officially announced them and I've been using them for the past couple weeks so we can kind of dive into everything that's new here. A couple of big things right off the bat, I think. Apple H2 chip inside.
That's a big one because a lot of the recent releases from Beats have used a custom Beats chip, not an Apple audio chip. So even though the first generation PowerBeats used the H1 chip, I was kind of concerned when the PowerBeats 2 rumors emerged that... Beats would reverse that strategy and use its own silicon inside. That's not the case. So with Apple's H2 chip inside, you get the full suite of AirPods features. So that's...
One-touch pairing, audio sharing, find-by integration, personalized spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, iCloud pairing, Siri integration, in-ear detection to automatically play and pause music. and the ear tip fit test in the settings app. Some of those features aren't available on Beats products that use their own silicon, like in-ear detection.
That's a big upgrade in and of itself to have that H2 chip instead of the custom Beats chip. And another interesting tidbit too powered by that H2 chip is that you get the ultra-low latency. lossless audio feature that's currently available only on airpods pro 2 for apple vision pro oh but that's on these two okay yeah whether or not anybody in the world is going to use powerbeats pro 2 with a vision pro not so sure about that
But it's a nice feature to have. And notice the rather subtle difference between the two modes. Yes, yes. It's interesting, like, so it gets the H2 chip and it gets the features you mentioned, but there's still some... AirPods Pro exclusive things or AirPods exclusive things like conversation awareness, right? It doesn't have. So like it won't duck. And it doesn't have any of the hearing tests or hearing aid features from AirPods Pro 2. It doesn't have dynamic.
Or what's it called? Adaptive audio. Where it can intelligently raise and lower the volume of what you're listening to based on your surroundings. Which I turn off on my AirPods. I like it when I'm walking through the city. Because you have a big truck past you or something. And it's pretty quick to...
boost the audio while that truck passes you and then lower it back down to where it was so it's definitely something i noticed missing so that's the that's the adaptive transparency mode thing right yes right so i sorry i meant the what do they call is it called personalized volume um there's a there's a airpods exclusive feature it's not on i don't think it's on the the power beat pro either uh where it will like supposedly based on what your preference is
and lower the volume like the actual like percentage of the volume bar on your behalf and i found that to be really unreliable apple says personalized volume adjust media volume on your airpods based on environmental conditions and your volume preferences yeah so i found that not to work very well at all um when i first got the new airpods 4 um
like I would be walking down the street and I feel like it was like hearing my breathing sometimes and using that to change the volume level. It would like round me lower and raise it. It was very odd. So I turned that off. But that's separate to like the adaptive mode of transparency, noise cancellation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And Powerbeats Pro 2 don't get either of those. Oh, yeah. But they do get active noise cancellation and transparency mode as separate options, which is different from the first generation Powerbeats Pro, which had neither of those features.
It's interesting in my testing, I think the active noise cancellation on Powerbeats Pro 2 is better than on AirPods Pro 2. And the reason for that... is that the Powerbeats Pro 2 design and the fit is just so snug and so precise that you're inherently getting a much better fit than you can on AirPods Pro 2 because of that ear hook that goes over the top of your ear.
and essentially forces the Powerbeats Pro 2 earbud into your ear. Yeah, it's like planting it in place, right? Much firmer, much more secure than AirPods Pro 2.
That's kind of my argument with the AirPods 4 with noise cancellation. I don't think it's like Apple puts like a worse version of the noise cancellation in there. I feel like it's almost probably the same algorithm, the same... computation on airpods and airpods pro it's just the airpods pro get the physical advantage of the seal right with the with the silicon tips and powerbeats probably have a very comparable noise cancellation
system but they also have an even better physical design for sealing out sound yeah and the design of powerbeats pro 2 is the first generation powerbeats pro had the big over ear hook the huge charging case, the huge kind of bulbous thing that went in your ear that rested on the outside of your ear. Powerbeats Pro 2 iterated on that in a few different ways. So the actual bud is much slimmer than the first generation model.
The ear hook is noticeably tighter, so it doesn't branch. It's not as wide, if that makes sense, as it stretches out. It's a much slimmer and shorter ear hook that just perfectly fits over the top of your ear. And making the earbud design and the ear hook design so much smaller allowed Beats to make the charging case significantly smaller. If you go back and read or watch any first-generation PowerBeats Pro review,
They will all mention how big and unwieldy the charging case is. And on Powerbeats Pro 2, it's still big. It's bigger than AirPods Pro 2. It's bigger than like the Beats Fit Pro. but it is, according to Beats, 33% smaller than the first generation Powerbeats Pro, and it's significantly lighter. So it's a huge step in the right direction, and I think it's probably as small as it could possibly be while retaining that earhook design.
And it now has USB-C for charging instead of lightning. And for the first time in any Beats earbuds, it has Qi charging, which is a huge quality of life update. Yeah, the new case. is kind of proportionate to the size of the earbuds right whereas the old case was just ginormous it just had a lot of like padding in it and it didn't even have wireless charging uh coil so it was like why why is it this big
The quote unquote flagship, but maybe not the flagship feature, Powerbeats Pro 2 is heart rate monitoring. So each Powerbeats Pro 2 earbud has a heart rate monitor built in that measures. Your heart rate in your ear from both buds synthesizes it to give you a, not an average, but a reliable number as it's continuously taking your heartbeat. That's all well and good. It works just about like you would expect it from a hardware perspective.
And it's interesting, too, that Beats actually calls out that the PowerBeats Pro 2's heart rate sensor is derived from the Apple Watch. So it has, like, literal, like, green lights on it, just like the back of an Apple Watch does. Yep, on each bud. It's...
During the briefing that I did with Beats in New York City a couple weeks ago, they had the actual heart rate sensor. And it's so small. It looks just like a speck of dust or something. The work that they did to get one of those into each earbud is actually really impressive.
And again, I think it's interesting that they specifically call out how it's derived from the Apple Watch. There was some clear collaboration between the two companies on that, which is interesting. They feel closer together again, whereas for a while it felt like... Apple kind of shunned beats to the side as like a derivative company that isn't really allowed to be playing with the adults in Apple Park, right? Whereas...
This one feels like they've had more cross-pollination, cross-collaboration. Obviously, you have to have a lot of OS integration to make this happen at all. Probably a lot of the work is also running concurrently with getting this ready for future AirPods Pro models, but still.
they obviously you know it's not it's not it's not like beats could do this on its own it clearly needed collaboration and you also now have the h2 chip back in the mix as well so the apple and beats relationship feels tighter than ever or at least of late right I'll say from a hardware perspective, yes, with the heart rate sensor, with the H2 chip. But the software side of things, it certainly feels like there's some arbitrary Apple decision making going on here. So the heart rate sensor.
works via the Apple Health app. So the Powerbeats Pro 2 are constantly taking your heart rate when you're wearing them. You can go into the Health app, view that heart rate data. Then PowerBeats has also teamed up with some launch partners to integrate heart rate data from PowerBeats Pro 2. So that's Peloton, Nike Run Club, Ladder, Slopes, and a few others.
Powerbeats Pro 2 do integrate with any app that supports accessing and recording data from the health app using the HealthKit API. But with those partners, there's a little bit of extra software work that those developers have done in their apps to support Powerbeats Pro 2. So pretty good integration with third-party apps, pretty good but basic integration with the health app. But where things kind of fall down is integrating with Apple Fitness Plus and the workouts feature of Apple Watch.
You can use Apple Fitness Plus without an Apple Watch, but one of the key features of Apple Fitness Plus is the on-screen heart rate bar. I can't remember what they call it, but it shows your heart rate as it moves between different zones. A really cool feature that does a great way of visualizing your progress during a workout. But that feature only works if you're wearing an Apple Watch.
fitness plus does not have the ability to tap into heart rate data from other devices to show those on-screen metrics so would it even record the heart rate so it records the heart rate in the health app it just won't show them while you're doing the workout
Correct. Yes. And it even shows up on the post-workout screen if you do an Apple Fitness Plus workout. It just doesn't show up in that on-screen bar during the workout. So you don't get like the live metrics, which is one of the things that kind of set Fitness Plus apart, right? And then from an Apple Watch perspective, historically, you've been able to pair external heart rate monitors with the Apple Watch. One of the big companies in that space is called...
Polar, I think, and they make like chest straps and arm straps that can measure your heart rate. You can pair those devices with Apple Watch, and then when you do a workout, the heart rate data will come from those external devices, not from the Apple Watch itself.
People do this for a variety of different reasons. It really extends the battery life on your Apple Watch. There are some people who, because of tattoos or other things, the heart rate sensor on their Apple Watch just doesn't work right. For some types of workout as well. Yes.
wrist-based heart rate monitoring is just not as good as having like chest straps. Chest strap ones are far more accurate. They get much better data readings. So naturally, you would think that you would also be able to do the same with Powerbeats Pro 2. You could. put them in during a workout, choose them as your heart rate data source for a workout on your Apple Watch, then start that workout. For whatever reason, that's not the case. I don't know if this is on Apple or if this is on Beats.
But it feels like a very basic integration that should be there. Because now you have this situation where Powerbeats Pro 2 have built-in heart rate sensors. But if you wear an Apple Watch, there's basically no reason. there's no benefit to that feature on Powerbeats Pro 2. They've done such a good job of integrating it with third-party apps and certain places around the iPhone, but that lack of...
integration with the Apple Watch is just kind of bizarre to me. It just pretends like the watch doesn't exist, really. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And even on the phone, if you're trying to use the Apple apps... You can't start a workout independently on the fitness app on the iPhone at the moment. So like you can do fitness plus workouts, but if you just let you want to go for a walk and you want to track, you know, your calorie burn with your heart rate attached to it.
You physically can't do that in the iPhone fitness app. It doesn't let you start a workout. It just doesn't have that in there as a button you can press. It exists on the Watch app, but not on the phone app. So really, you've got Powerbeats Pro.
If you don't have an Apple Watch, you're kind of forced to download a third-party app and use a different service than Apple's to get this done. And if you do have an Apple Watch, you're less inclined to want to buy a Powerboats Pro because you're already getting your heart rate data from somewhere else and it doesn't even let you override them.
with the ear based detection if it was better for a certain scenario like a certain type of workout so really they're kind of like disincentivizing you from using other Apple stuff which is like the most like the antipathy of the classic
the classic argument right where you have apple stuff you buy more apple stuff it works better together this is like it kind of works with the iphone but if you've got an apple watch you really don't need it or you don't it's not going to give you an extra benefit on the heart rate monitoring side And if you don't have an Apple Watch, well, you have to download a non-Apple app to actually start a workout in the first place, which is kind of bizarre. It's very bizarre. And you have to think that.
When AirPods Pro 3 come out probably later this year, they're expected to have a heart rate sensor and body temperature sensor. You have to think that that extra special sauce on top will be there for AirPods Pro 3. Like I'm willing to bet. you'll be able to use AirPods Pro 3 to the full extent with Apple Fitness Plus. I almost guarantee that you'll be able to pair AirPods Pro 3 as a health device to your Apple Watch and use that heart rate data instead of the watch's heart rate data.
Those things just don't exist with Harabeats Pro 2. Yeah, I could maybe see an expanded fitness app being like an iOS 19 thing, right? Where it's on the schedule because... they know that the airpods are coming and they might have told the parents be like yeah we're working on it but it's just not like the release schedule isn't aligned to get that out right now and it's not considered important enough so they're like look we're doing it but it's not ready yet yeah
The watch thing is more... It's like if you've gone out of your way to do the iPhone integration for this for right now, you know, with iOS 18.3, why is the watch like completely ignored? Like it's not even like acknowledged, you know? Yeah.
You speak to Beats and it's almost like the Apple Watch isn't a product that exists. That is odd. Even if the acknowledgement was just... No, there's no real advantage to using the... sensors in the buds over the watch to just use the watch like it's almost like they just turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn't exist they don't even say oh it doesn't even matter you know what i mean it's like a weird situation that it's in
So that's the heart rate stuff. It's disappointing, but I think it's a cool proof of concept about what could come from future AirPods Pro. Because the funny thing is, you could now have somebody who wears Powerbeats Pro because... They're better for workouts and AirPods because they have the ear clip thing, right? So they fit over and they don't fall out and, you know, they're a bit more sweat resistant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They have an Apple Watch on because they want to track their workout, but then they still need a chest strap as well because the power beats won't do the heart rate tracking. So you could have someone with power beats on, a chest strap and the Apple Watch with three heart rate sensors when really these things should be more harmonious.
And I guess it is easy inside of our Apple bubble to assume that everybody has an Apple Watch. And that's not the case. I mean, during every earnings call, Tim Cook says like.
Three quarters of Apple Watch buyers are new to the platform. So there are still a huge number of people who don't wear an Apple Watch for whatever reason. So it is nice to have this other Apple-sanctioned... product on the market to get that heart rate data oh sure but it shouldn't be like one or the other right exactly yeah
you should be you should be the the best customers like oh they have an iphone they get power beats pro they get more into fitness stuff then they want to start using fitness plus and then they want to get an apple watch and like you know then ideally each thing builds on each other so you get a best the best experience at the end not like
Where there's this weird grid of compatibility and this doesn't actually work when you have this turned on or whatever. So hopefully this stuff gets resolved. And I think you're completely right. And when AirPods Pro 3 come out, there'll be more ecosystem support, right?
Because Apple loves to market Apple Watch and AirPods as a standalone unit. And the Powerbeats will benefit from that as an afterthought. But it is a bit disappointing that they are the afterthought in this case. Because if you have... The heart rate monitoring will work with Android, right? With PowerPoints Pro. Because you can even build it into the Beats app. You can kick off a workout right from there. It's just a single button in the Beats app. Tap to start a workout. And your data.
There is saved to whatever the Google equivalent of the health app is probably just Google health or whatever. And it syncs to third party apps on Android that support that Google health API. So yeah, the Android, even though. the Powerbeats Pro 2 used the H2 chip and not the Beats chip. That in the past, Beats has said they used that chip because it allows them to do better compatibility with Android.
Powerbeats Pro 2 have the H2 chip and offer just as good compatibility with Android as any other Beats product. And in that one regard of being able to start a workout by tapping a button on your phone, it's actually better than. the integration you get with iPhone. The cross-pollinization of the Apple platforms is just weird. Other than the heart rate stuff, sound quality, I don't...
tend to talk about sound quality too much in reviews because I think it's based on people's preferences more than anything. But one thing I will say about the sound quality of Powerbeats Pro 2, it is so, so bass-driven. To the point where some songs, if you think of like a piano ballad or something slower, it just doesn't sound very full, very rich, if that makes sense. Because the iconic beats sound profile.
Years ago was this super bass-heavy, super bass-driven sound. I feel like in the years since the Apple acquisition with things like the Studio Buds, the Beats Fit Pro, even the new... Solo 4s, the over-ear or on-ear headphones, they've backed away from that super bass-heavy sound profile just a bit. But with Powerbeats Pro 2, it feels like we're rocketed back to like the 2014.
beat sound profile and it's a little bit weird it's a little bit jarring beats makes a point to mention it in all of their marketing get the bass thumping as you work out it's like one of the lines in the marketing so i see where they're going with but it is
If you're used to other recent Beats products, or even if you're used to AirPods or AirPods Pro, be prepared for a lot more bass if you put on Powerbeats Pro. Yeah, it's a strange outlier given their recent trend of becoming more balanced as a sound signature.
And this has kind of gone back in the other direction, despite also seemingly being one of the more integrated Apple products that they've done in terms of the hardware design, right? So it's kind of a weird dichotomy there. But overall, you think these are good, right?
I think these are great. I saw a couple headlines. Maybe it was MKBHD's review, which said that these are better than AirPods Pro. I specifically didn't go that far in my review because I think it's two different categories of people. I think for the fitness-focused person who's looking for the most secure in-ear fit possible, you can do pretty much any workout in the world and ensure that your Powerbeats Pro 2 won't fall out of your ears.
The Powerbeats Pro 2 are perfect for those people. AirPods Pro 2 are by far easier to put in and take out because you don't have to do the ear hook. So if you're just a casual person, you know, putting them in while you... do the dishes or walk the dog or something, then you'll probably be more inconvenienced by the earhook design than benefit from it. I think what's interesting is that it's another example of the Powerbeats lineup.
coexisting in a form factor that Apple won't make while also offering the features that you can get from AirPods, if that makes sense. It's doing what Apple refuses to do, right? Which is make AirPods in different form factors. We have AirPods 4. And we have AirPods Pro. Largely the form factor for both of those things has been the same. Don't forget AirPods Max. And AirPods Max, God, sorry. $550 for headphones that don't work with a wire.
And these exact Beats model we're talking about right now have the H2 chip in them, which the AirPods Max do not. Every release from Apple and or Beats is just more example that the AirPods Max should not be on the market at all right now. With your comment about the fit for workouts and stuff, it is interesting to think about when they do the AirPods Pro 3 later and they have the heart rate sensor in them and they're going to be like, well, you can use when you do workouts. It's like...
Yeah, but your workout headphones also have the... Do you know what I mean? AirPods are great, and I guess a lot of people do use them in the gym and stuff, but they're not 100% designed for hard workout situations because they can just fall out or whatnot. But...
I guess I just proved my own argument because so many people wear them in the gym regardless, even if they do fall out on occasion. Because I think AirPods Pro fit me pretty well. Like, I don't have many issues with them, but they do fall out sometimes. Like, if I'm outside and it's hot and I'm sweating, there's...
good chance that they might fall out. And I don't think, I think the vast majority of people who work out probably experience that same thing. So for that reason, it's great the Powerbeats Pro 2 are on the market. If you put aside the AirPods Pro comparison,
I think these are great headphones. The heart rate stuff is innovative. The new form factor is just so good. It's so slim. They're so much lighter. The charging case is so much smaller and now has Qi charging. The H2 chip is great. Performance is great. Sound quality is pretty good with the disclosure that it's very bass heavy. I think this is the perfect second generation revision for a product, a product that is super well loved that went.
five and a half years between updates this is the perfect iteration it touches pretty much every aspect of the product it addresses most of the complaints that people had about the first generation it adds some new stuff on top If you are looking for a pair of earbuds that is first and foremost focused on workout and fitness, then there's no option on the market that comes anywhere close to what you can get with Powerbeats Pro 2. I was very impressed with them.
I continue to be super impressed with Beats, and we kind of touched on this earlier, but I do think PowerBeats Pro 2 are a great example of maybe some increased collaboration between Apple and Beats with the heart rate sensor, with the H2 chip.
And everybody benefits from that, too. Nobody benefits from Apple treating Beats as the outliers or the weird kids in the corner. To have this better collaboration between the two companies, I think, is great. And it really shines through with PowerBeats Pro, too.
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What do you think, about 90 minutes or so? So the Apple TV app has finally made its way to Android. This has been a long time coming. A long time coming. And... I think it's about what everybody expected. I'll let you take over and explain it. But I think they kind of did everything right. It just took them way, way, way too long. Yeah. Like the TV app in its current form actually launched in 2016.
which was the version this is obviously pre-apple originals right this was the version that they launched on the apple tv box but it would have the its only feature essentially was to collate your different um shows and movies that you're watching from all sorts of different services and put it in one queue and then have the iTunes store alongside it right so that incarnation of the TV app was released in 2016 then obviously it had to transform a little bit when TV Plus came out
which was in 2019. I think it was with the 2016 generation or strategy, it was obviously like the TV app is just a feature of iOS, right? It's a feature of the Apple ecosystem.
When they started doing their own subscription, it became much more murky. And really, the TV app from back then should have been on Android from the beginning. But it just wasn't. They brought out the TV app on... non-Apple platforms from the beginning but it wasn't phones and tablets it was you know Amazon Fire Stick or Roku or you know the Samsung Smart TVs so they already had this kind of strategy where like we need to be on more screens than just
apple tv 4k iphone ipad mac but they for whatever reason they're this blind spot when it came to mobile as in competitive to the iphone android they were on google tv they came to cable boxes you know even more recently they even put their own channel on prime video right on the prime video app They made deals with various cable companies and, you know, they put TV Plus content on Canal Plus in France, for one another example. All this stuff, even like in the UK, Virgin Media.
You can watch TV Plus directly on your Virgin Media cable box and you can subscribe through that and do all the shebang. But for whatever reason, Android phones and tablets was a huge blind spot. it became pretty obvious that, to me at least, that Apple's strategy with TV Plus was not to just be like this fun marketing thing that makes people want to buy an iPhone. It was a standalone subscription.
And the way, if you want to be a standalone subscription, you have to be on Android as well. And it was complete nonsense that they didn't do it. And I don't know if there was like an executive who was really against it. Or they didn't want to take on the technical debt of it. Or some combination of the two. Or maybe it was always on the to-do list. They just kept deprioritizing it. But the headline news is they finally changed their mind.
And as of right now, if you have Android 10 phone or tablet or newer, which is quite an old generation at this point, so a lot of devices support it, you can go to the Google Play Store, you can download the Apple TV app, and it works. The refrain that TV Plus was just like a marketing add-on or a way to sell iPhones never sat right with me. Yes, it was true that when you bought an iPhone, they gave you a year free for a while and then...
Even now, you get like three months free. But, and everybody would like throw that at me when they were like, oh, this isn't, you know, T Plus isn't like meant to be a serious service. It's just like a add-on or a, you know, a bonus or a perk of the iPhone experience. The thing that no one would ever acknowledge.
you only got that year trial, that three-month trial once. Like, it's not like you buy an iPhone every year, they keep giving you TV Plus as the perk. You get it one time, the next time around, you have to pay for it again. You have to pay for it using your own money, right? So...
It never made sense to me that that was their goal with it thing. They were just always kind of sitting on the fence in terms of actually committing and going the whole hog. And finally, in 2025, they've gone the whole hog. And so now it doesn't matter what phone you own, you can...
go and get the TV app for your phone and watch TV Plus Origins through it. And I think, honestly, more significantly than even being able to watch content on it, it's just the on-ramp to get people to subscribe in the first place. Because, like, I don't know about you, but I don't watch much TV on my phone, right?
Zero, basically. Yeah. But I do use my phone to sign up to the service in the first place. If someone mentions a show, I might go and add it to my queue, right? Or might at least go and look at it. And that was just something that for half the world was basically impossible because there was no Android phone app. It was just a bizarre situation. And in fact, on the Google Play Store, you could search for Apple TV and it would come up.
Because it would show you the Google TV app listings. And then you click on it and it would say not available for your device. The worst experience in the whole world, right? Someone mentions to you how good Severance is or Silo or Slow Horse is or something.
Oh, I'll watch that. What's it on Apple TV? All right, I've got my Android phone out. I have no thought about the ecosystem or any consideration of business strategy, right? I've just searched for this show that someone's recommended to me. Click on it. It wants me to download an app. The app doesn't exist for my device.
immediately you're going to be turned off and turned away the workarounds that existed you could theoretically go to the website at tv.apple.com and watch it through a web browser but you'd get Bad video quality. It was really hard to sign up in the first place because the web interface for like making an Apple ID is like awful.
and myriad of other issues you shouldn't get like notifications or casting or all of these features that a native app would actually be able to offer that the web app can't similarly if you had the google tv app before today so like you had an android tv
The Android TV app would not let you actually make an Apple ID or make an account that would actually subscribe you to the service. You had to make the Apple ID on another device and then you could log into it on the Google TV device. No one... in their right mind is going to go through that many hoops to watch a show that doesn't have brand equity because none of Apple shows had
intellectual property brand it's not they got the office on there do you know what i mean like it's they're all original productions so nobody has this like affinity to something that had that much interest in going you know jumping through all these hoops it's hard enough
It's hard enough for Apple to convince iPhone users to watch TV+, let alone people that didn't even have an app for their phone. So it was a ridiculous situation that I spoke to them on several occasions and they would just kind of like, ignore you. But I'm glad that they finally actually got their act in order because it became even more paramount when they started getting like MLS, right? You know, exclusive streaming provider for Major League Soccer. If you're a Major League Soccer fan...
you're really mad if you're an Android user until yesterday. It was just a ridiculous scenario. And even speaking to, they did an MLS briefing a couple of weeks ago in the run-up to the new season. And that's when they announced like the Sunday Night Soccer Initiative and they announced that now they're going to be putting MLS as...
cable channels on Comcast, Xfinity and DirecTV. So you could literally go to your cable guide and it'd be in the EPG. There'd just be channels for MLS and you could watch through that because they said, because they just want to be on every device and every platform.
And at the time I was like, yeah, but you're not on Android. Well, at least now that situation has been resolved. So here we have... a way for an Android user who doesn't have any Apple device of any kind, has never had made an Apple account before, has never even heard of iTunes, right, can now go to their app store, the Google Play store, download the Apple TV app, and they can create an account.
And they can subscribe using Google Play's billing. So you don't have to use like Apple account billing. You can subscribe through the Google Play in that purchase system to... either apple tv plus or mls season pass if you do happen to have an applied d on another account or you somehow got family sharing with a friend you can just log in to your account right but if not you can have your phone you have no association with the apple
well before you can now actually watch their TV shows on your phone. Or what most people are going to do is make the account on their phone and then go and download the Roku app or the Amazon Fire TV app and actually watch the shows on there. So all of this nonsense... that they subjected approximately half the world's population to that might have been interested in watching an Apple show for the last five years has finally gone away. It's not perfect because...
This is very much a 1.0 release of this Android app, right? So it is missing features. So it doesn't have any notifications at all, which you'd kind of hope a native app would because when new episodes come out...
It can prompt you, which is what happens with the TV app on the iPhone. You can't do that on the Android app at the moment. Neither can you do any casting. So obviously on the iPhone side, you have AirPlay. On the Android side, you have like Google Cast or Google Chromecast. It doesn't sound like...
that will be a long-term thing. They kind of implied that they're going to do casting support on the Android app. It just hasn't made it for the first release. Notifications seem further off, but at least for casting ability, I think that'll be coming soon-ish. But it's not there right now. But still, this is like giving a...
What was the Steve Jobs saying? Giving a glass of ice to someone in hell. You've gone from literally nothing at all to a pretty competent solution where you can actually do what most people want to do is they hear about severance, they find out, they subscribe to whatever they need to, and then they can watch the show. whatever platform they want to do it. So I'm actually so thrilled that this is finally out of the way because now they finally got the Apple TV app everywhere.
maybe now they can focus on making the Apple TV app good everywhere, which is a whole different barrier. But at the very least, they've at least got full distribution now on every single platform because for whatever this black hole was where they didn't do it before, it was just...
literally nonsensical because they even did it for music, right? Apple Music is the exact same thing but it's for music rather than TV. They've had an Apple Music Android app from like day one or at least within the first year. TV was just a blind spot for them and they finally...
Got the ducks in order to be able to offer it. They have a decent phone experience now on Android. They have a decent tablet experience on Android. And in some ways, the Android Apple TV app actually makes me envious because we spoke about it before. I don't...
care about the itunes store i don't rent or buy movies really i don't use any of the channels apple tv channel stuff the cross app pollination queue thing kind of gets in the way and i think it's just generally confusing and it overloads the
Apple TV app on the iPhone when what I basically want to use the app for is to go and watch some of my TV Plus stuff and get my weekly fix of severance or whatever. Well, the Android Apple TV app doesn't support the iTunes store and it doesn't ever need third-party app integration. So it's actually simpler.
It only has TV Plus MLS, and that's it. And so if you look at the tab bar of the iPhone, of the phone app, for instance, on Android, the TV app has an Apple TV Plus tab, it has an MLS tab, it has a Downloads tab, and it has a Search tab. so much clearer about what I think most people come into the app these days actually want. Where you look on the iPhone, the tabs are like home, Apple TV+, store, library, search. Where some of those tabs exist only to...
So basically that backwards compatibility with the iTunes store, the library tab, you can't actually put Apple TV Plus content in the library tab. The home tab has who knows what listed on it in various ways. It just hides the actual thing which made people want to see, which is the streaming stuff. And I would...
be quite favourable towards the Apple app becoming more like the Android app in terms of its layout and design just to make it more streamlined and make what I think most people are coming to the app to do, TV Plus, much more simple.
I don't know if that's going to happen. I hope it will. But it could also just be the case that they kind of just have two tracks where they have the Apple TV app on Apple platforms and the Apple TV app everywhere else. Because it's already the case that there are some...
like some LG smart TVs have the Apple TV app, but it doesn't have anything but TV Plus in it. And other ones also have the iTunes store. So they've already had this kind of like two run track. So it's not a guarantee that like what this Android app represents is where the... the Apple side of the world will be going but I kind of hope it is because the TV app continues to frustrate me and although the Android app is way more stripped down
If you don't have iTunes store purchases and rentals to worry about, I think it's a better experience because it's just easier to get what you actually want to see. That's one area where we've always disagreed on the TV app, I think, because I like how the TV app serves as an aggregator for...
all of the other streaming apps, whereas you use it just for TV Plus. And I do even use channels sometimes. I always subscribe to Paramount Plus when there's a new season of Survivor airing. So just do that right in the TV app so I don't have to jump out.
to the Paramount app to watch Survivor every week. If they really care about that kind of features, they need to do it better, in a better way. I think... That's fair, yeah. I don't know how... Obviously, we don't have the stats on this. I have to assume...
that most people going to the Apple TV app these days are going for it for TV Plus stuff. I could be completely wrong about that, but I think that's a pretty big portion of the market. And if you're the Apple TV Plus department, I feel that's what you care about the most. Right now, the TV app design basically dilutes everything, so everything's a bit mediocre. I think if they want to keep the third-party integration around, they need to rework it in a way where both sides or like...
both parties can be happy where if you're only coming to the TV plus experience, it can like hide tabs or stuff is in different places organized differently. So you're not confused by the rest of it or bogged down by the rest of it. What do you think they should do with a store? You could have a store. If you really want to keep the store around, you could still have a store tab. Or you just have it in like a dot dot dot menu. It's like dot dot dot more.
Which, by the way, is what they do with music, right? With the iTunes Store. The iTunes Store still exists as an app on the iPhone. Yeah. But practically speaking, the music app is only about Apple Music, which obviously frustrates some people who bought a load of music in the past. But if you're looking forward, I think most...
customers coming to the app now and to be fair the customers that i think apple cares about the most is the streaming side and so that's what they prioritize i think correctly um If they really care about the iTunes store, they would have made a bigger effort to get it on the Android app as well. But they haven't. So I think you can kind of see where their priorities lie. And it's always better in my head for...
the software to reflect the priorities of the company not to try and hold on to the past and like just because it's like compatible or you know we have to support this tiny fraction of people who used to do it this way like i think the prime video app the prime video app is not perfect But it does a better job at offering streaming options, channels, and store content than what Apple does. So the Apple app is just subpar.
And that makes a stripped down version like what we see on Android where it only has TV Plus and MS to worry about better in my books. See, as previously mentioned, before you'd have all these issues where you can even make Apple accounts on... the Google TV app, alongside the release of the Android app for TV app for phones and tablets, they've also...
fix the situation where now if you have the google tv app on the living room experience you can subscribe with google bill and you don't have any of these weird restrictions where you first have to approve it on apple device and do all this you know seesawing and running about so they've just basically made it work as it should have worked from the beginning which I'm very happy about kind of like Apple Music on Android they do say that they're trying to use like
native android ui components they use like the android context menus when you long press and stuff it still kind of looks like an apple app but they do use some native android components um it seems to me that apple is a better steward of Android design and components than Google is of iPhone design and using native iOS components just because of how bad Google is at adopting things like dark mode, split view, support, proper multitasking support on the iPad.
Apple, at least, they take their time, but I think you get a pretty, at least based on the screenshots and videos I've seen, you get a pretty solid experience with the TV app on Android and the Apple Music app on Android has always been. Great. And we've talked about it before, but it gets features before the iPhone music app does in certain instances. That's why it's always just been so weird that there's never been a TV app on Android, given how good and how...
long the music app has been there. I don't know what the exact impetus was for Apple to finally do this. The two obvious things are Severance Season 2 and MLS, and I think actually... MLS might have been the bigger push because if you look at the geographic breakdown of where Android is the dominant platform and where.
MLS is a hugely popular sport. I think there's a lot of overlap between those two categories. Yep, like Brazil and Spain and stuff. Especially with Messi, right? A lot more of those people just have...
It's a lower-income environment, so Android's way more popular. I... think this is something that even if MS didn't exist they should have done it from the beginning anyway right so they're catching up to what their strategy that should have been from the beginning and maybe there was like one person who was in some sort of VP position who just didn't want to do it and they finally left and someone else has now been able to like stamp over it
get it sorted because it was just ridiculous before how it was um some people have seen this as like i think you can frame it as oh apple's desperate to get more tp plus subscribers so they've finally been like okay we're gonna do an android app I don't really see it in that way. I mean, obviously Apple would love more subscribers TV+, but I don't think rushing out an Android app is like what's happened here. I think it's more of like a...
This is in line with their strategy from the beginning because if it was going to be an Apple exclusive thing from the start then they wouldn't have made apps for Fire Stick and Roku and all this stuff. It was just this was like a weird outlier in their strategy in terms of implementation and they finally...
caught up to where they should have been years ago um so i don't really see this as like a something out of desperation or something out of like a panic it's more like someone's finally prodded the bear enough to get them over the line you know and And here's the app. And you can take Severance as an example. Apple has enough content now and enough of a base of viewership that they can actually take a show and make it very popular. At least...
relatively popular right and so that's only going to increase the network effects more where someone else mentions oh this show's good i want to go and check it out oh you got an androphone where it's actually really annoying and painful to do so i'm just not going to bother for the next because as soon as someone
tries once and they give up they're not going to try again for years right you lose someone immediately for a long time as soon as they have one bad experience and so at least now i think you can argue that like there's enough shows on the service that
it's more of a recommendation than it ever has been in terms of like someone else might actually be able to say oh you can go check this out now because you'll check out this this and that and the android apps here i don't think it's actually that complicated i think it's just something where it should have been there from the start and they just didn't do it
And now they've done it. I don't think it's like, it wasn't like a master plan. Like, we're going to wait exactly five years before we roll out the Android app. You know, like, it was just a mis, it was a misjudgment that they finally corrected. And a pretty decent time because, yeah, the new MLS season is starting. Severance is popping off. And I'm sure Apple's hoping that other releases they have through the year will also become more popular.
And will the existence of the Android app double their market share? Of course not. But it definitely helps. There's some... One final comment was some, I saw someone tweet like, oh, it doesn't really make a difference because only 15% of viewing happens on mobile for streaming content. Everything else happens on laptops or TVs.
I really think the onboarding experience is a big part of it. Where people get the phone, they hear about a show. Oh, Severance, what's that on? Apple TV? Oh, interesting. Okay. They get their phone out, they go to the app store, they search Apple TV. Before literally this week.
That would be a dead end. And they were just stuck. And is anybody going to go to any more effort than that to see this thing? No, it's not going to happen. Now they search Apple TV. It shows a listing that they can download. They can subscribe from there. they can watch the show, they can get a free trial, they can start the show. Even if they don't end up watching the show on their phone that much...
the existence of the Android app is a huge win. It's almost just like marketing to be in the Play Store with an app that actually works, you know, if you're not actually going to use it to watch the content on. So that's that. Our long national nightmare of no TV app on Android is finally over. Happy Hour This Week is brought to you by HelloFresh.
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When we use Shopify, we sold wallpapers through 9to5Mac, right? Indeed, we've used Shopify to sell wallpapers to readers. And it really does make the process so easy to get things up and get going. because we always want to focus on the content and what we're offering to readers. And using Shopify allowed us to put that first. Then when we were ready to launch, we were able to do so super easily with Shopify.
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First, Alibaba and Apple have officially struck a deal to bring Apple intelligence to China. So the context here is that in order to launch AI features in China, Apple has to do so in partnership with a Chinese-based company. The information had previously reported that Apple had agreed with, who was it? I don't remember the name of the company. Yeah, Baidu. Baidu, yeah, Baidu.
And apparently that never actually came to fruition because yesterday the information said Apple had struck a deal with Alibaba. And then today in an interview, the Alibaba CEO confirmed that that was the case. And he said, Quote, Apple has been very selective. They talked to a number of companies in China, and in the end, they chose to do business with us. The information report yesterday also included a tidbit that Apple did at least experiment with.
DeepSeek as one of its potential Chinese partners, but decided not to go forward with that integration, that could always change in the future. And who knows why they decided to not go forward with that partnership, whether they were unhappy with the results. of the AI integration or concerned about DeepSeek's privacy policy. But for right now, it seems like Apple is tied to Alibaba as a partner. It might just be unit economics and scale. Yeah.
You could have a really good model in name AI company in the US, but Apple's probably going to go with either. open ai or google gemini just because they're the biggest ones that can handle apple right millions of millions of users right and they have the servers and they have the infrastructure um to do it so you could have smaller models that are good or performant or whatever but
you know apple needs distribution here more than anything really and you're only gonna get that with the big the big companies so they've obviously picked alibaba in this case i also wouldn't be particularly shocked to hear that they You know, it's more of a piecemeal thing where some AR features provided by Alibaba, other features provided by Beidou, and, you know, it will go on as time moves on. Kind of in the same vein that we expect in the US.
Where you write them out, it's ChatGPT is the only third-party provider source. But we expect at some point they're going to add Google Gemini.
Obviously, Apple has its own AI models with the Apple intelligence stuff that runs on device and in private car compute. But then you look at visual intelligence and what do they have? They have two buttons there, one for a Google search and one for chat GPT questions. So it's all a bit of like we're taking partners from left, right and center and trying to...
make this like this hole um so yeah obviously right now to ship what they can they've done a deal with alibaba but i wouldn't necessarily expect it to be like everyone else is now completely locked out I think it's going to be a constantly evolving thing where Apple gets different partners on board for different kinds of features as they need it. And we didn't talk about Apple's earnings for Q1 on the show, but one thing Tim Cook touched on was that...
China revenue was down 11%, but then he attributed that to markets where Apple intelligence was not available saw slower year-over-year performance on iPhone 16 than in countries where Apple intelligence is available. It's obviously easy to use that as an excuse. And it's clear that the Chinese market does... It is a bit of an excuse, right? There are other factors that I'm thinking you could even acknowledge. Just...
More interest in local brands of late, economy situations, foreign exchange is another factor. It's just such a competitive market in China too. It's the most competitive smartphone market in the world, probably. Yeah, because the local players have a lot of sway when you have the government recommending them over the iPhone. So that's one factor of why they spring up. And the Chinese...
Preferences also don't perfectly align with what Apple makes in California, you know? So the iPhone and the Apple brand has a lot of cachet, but features or functionality, foldables, for instance, are maybe more appealing to Chinese markets. And so the iPhone's just... fallen down the list of popularity in recent years and obviously that could very well change both maybe because of apple intelligence launching in the country but more likely is the next time apple makes a dramatic redesign
to the iPhone, it'll see another boost in China. Yeah, the Apple intelligence excuse is kind of funny because, you know, this was the holiday quarter. So October, November, December. Apple intelligence was only in the US until like... Yeah. Early December. So for two-thirds of the quarter in which he's talking about, I guess he's only comparing year-over-year performance of the iPhone 16 versus 15 in the US? It would seem that way, yeah.
Yeah, because it only launched in UK and other English-speaking domains in the first week of December when 18.2 came out, right? 18.2, yeah. So they obviously see Apple Intelligence as a sales.
pitch and i'm sure in the stores it's a lot easier to sell a new phone when you can say it's got apple intelligence on it when you can say well the phone's here so i mean so like it does give a it does give a sales pitch uh but i don't think it's like the number one reason why sales in China are down right but it certainly helps quell some fears if you can get AI features into the iPhone sooner rather than later another thing this week that like Apple TV on Android was a long time coming
Apple now lets users migrate their purchases between Apple accounts. So you can migrate apps, music, and other content you've purchased from Apple on a secondary Apple account to your primary Apple account. is not something that applies to me, but there is a large group of people who have found themselves with two Apple IDs for one reason or another who are very happy to finally have this option. Because what people would do...
is they would have to sign into two different iCloud accounts on their phone. They would sign into the Apple ID, and then the media and purchases login would be a different account to get that content that they purchased on that older Apple ID.
And now with this, they don't have to do that. They can transfer everything from one account to the new account. It does seem to be a little bit buggy. It doesn't seem to work perfectly well. And you can only do it on iPhone and iPad. So there's no option to do it on a Mac. And I think our colleague Zach, he tried to do it and then for some reason got like locked out of the process and has to try again in 14 days. So it doesn't work.
perfectly there's a bunch of requirements where you can't have bought anything in the last two weeks you can't have this this and this turned on you have to have this turned on you can't have bought something on this like there's a lot of rules and i'm sure a lot of it comes down to like
their contracts with... Yeah, licensing and stuff, DRM. Licensing with music, purchase music, purchase films, et cetera, et cetera. But it's great that they've finally added some... way out for these people that are in this mess because clearly it's a common enough situation that apple supports having two logins on the device on all of their devices um since the beginning right you can
Ever since iCloud's come out, you've always had the option on the setup screen, log in with iCloud, log into App Store and iTunes Store separately. and so it happens and there must be a decent contingent of people out there who are in this exact process and they've literally just been stuck with no other solution but to keep having two accounts going and now they finally even if you've got to go through some hoops at least it's a hoop that exists rather than
just an empty chasm of nothing um this is the kind of feature that would have been more useful for people to release for apple to have released like maybe when apple one first came out you know like three or four years ago because that's a lot of time people were trying to reconcile their apple ids and move iCloud storage and everything to the same account
But it just didn't happen at the time. They finally fixed whatever random tech debt is going on in the Apple account system to get it out the door. But at least there is now some sort of solution for these people that are in this mess. Because until... This week, you just had no choice but just carry on running with two accounts. And if they've now released this process, it at least gives Apple a way to deprecate the login with two separate accounts thing.
Buy iOS 25. They don't have to support that weirdness. They can only let you log in with one account, right? But you've got years to go before that happens. This has been kind of a weird week, I think. We've had a decent amount of news, but there's also the thing hanging over everybody's head is that we're waiting on the iPhone SE4. And it could very well be that by the time you're listening to this.
The iPhone SE4 has been announced if Apple chooses to do it on Thursday, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's not going to happen. Mark Gurman had said... It would happen sometime within the next few weeks. Then in his power on newsletter this past Sunday, he said it would happen this week. It's Thursday. That's not the case. It's still coming. Seems like it might come next week.
Denmark also said that Apple is holding briefings with members of the media on Friday and that the invitations for those briefings are coming from the Apple Vision Pro team. So he speculates that we might get an Apple Vision Pro related announcement. either this week or next week as well. Just from an inside baseball perspective, it's never good to infer what an Apple announcement might be based on the Apple PR team who is sending the emails about the briefings.
but it at least is something you can speculate on. And if you think about what Apple could announce from a Vision Pro perspective, Mayo, you made the good point that the mind immediately jumps to the Sony partnership to bring the PlayStation VR to controllers. to Apple Vision Pro. That's the only thing that makes sense. Because I can see that as like a TVS, AT, TVS. It's TVS. 2.3, I guess it would be, right? Vision OS 2.4, you mean? Yeah. Vision OS 2.3 or 4. I don't know what number they're on.
basically the next beta is coming coming out soon too right the 8.4 beta cycle you can imagine that psvr2 controller support might be in that next beta and so they want to get ahead of it and announce it with a nice little briefing rather than just someone find it in the code yeah um So I think that's the only thing that jumps to my mind in terms of what they might be announcing for Vision Pro.
iPhone SE is obviously imminent probably next week if it doesn't happen this week. You've got 18.4 out in the Ether coming soon-ish. And you also even have the M4 MacBook Air. It could come out anytime soon too. So there's a lot of just random products that are waiting to...
push out the pipeline but this very week we've seen them do the power beats pro we've seen them do the tv up on android they're pretty big announcements that all got you know newsroom um press releases for so they could probably spread out the iphone sc to next week and it would be okay My biggest fear was that they were going to announce the iPhone SC4 on Tuesday, the same day as the Power Beats Pro. And my 3000 word review that I spent a long time on was going to be buried.
buy a phone that looks the same as a phone that was first released in 20, whenever, 2019 or 2020, whenever the iPhone 14 was, 2021, I guess. But I was very glad that that didn't happen. But now from a news perspective, I hope we get the SE4.
And maybe a Vision Pro thing soon. Next week, maybe. Yeah, the 18.4 beta is definitely what I'm most interested in. Yep, same. Just because everyone wants to try out the app intents and the Siri stuff. Even though I think some of that's going to... ultimately disappoint because it's been so hyped up it's never going to meet the expectations i even see people like
get hyped up as if Siri is going to be completely different in this next update. No, no, no. They specifically said the kind of things it's going to be better at doing, right? Personal context on these specific domains of categories and app intent integration. it's not going to suddenly gain a load of world knowledge in the next update. So people need to chill out a bit. But even on the things that they promised for, it might disappoint. But I'm hoping it will actually, you know...
It's probably not going to do everything that you can envision, but even if it opens up a few new different possibilities for stuff, I'd be cool with that. That's what I'm most anticipating for, but obviously... hardware announcements open se or whatever else is also cool but don't forget siri has looked brand new since october so technically that's what's selling all the phones in the u.s compared to other geographies exactly it's the edge lit glow animation
All right. I think that does it for this week. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or you can leave a rating and a review. Find an ad-free version of the show with bonus content each and every week. 9to5mac.com slash join. $5 a month or $50 a year. Send us feedback happyhour at 9to5mac.com. I am on threads and elsewhere at Chance H. Miller. And Mayo, what about you? At BZMA. All right. Thanks, Mayo. Bye-bye.