Hello and welcome to Connected episode 514. This episode is brought to you by Ecam and Squarespace and one password extended access management and ZO Joe. I am annual chairman Mike who doesn't remember how to introduce the show and I am joined by Federico Matigi. I'll have what you're having today. Yes, I. You good? We're there, buddy. Everything. I'm really tired. I have my sleep plus plus score today was zero. Oh no. Is that even possible? Yeah, it is. It's not good. It's not good.
And I recorded a one hour, 20 minute podcast, then I had five minutes and I started this show. So that's where I am. I'm with a zero school and I'm already into it. 69. No, nice. Just right there. Nice. Nice. You slept well. Yeah. It was a pretty nice rest. You're so happy with that. You're so happy with that sleep score, Steven. You're even jumping ahead of your introduction. We're also joined by Mr. Steven Hackett or I'm sorry. Keena Chairman, Steven Hackett. Hello. Hello, Steven.
Hello, greetings. I had a terrible realization that the iPhone event is probably in three weeks. And I just hated it. Why did you have to say that? So I was talking to Jason yesterday and he said he said, oh, the iPhone events in two weeks and I told him to F off. To this. I think that was just like, no, like as I couldn't believe where he was wrong. It's not two weeks away. It's like four weeks away.
And like all of my emotions left my body in that moment to think that the iPhone could be that close, but he was very wrong. I mean, why is best guess? I'm excited about a new iPhone. I just don't. Oh, yeah. I just can't. I just can't think about it. Oh, I'm really excited about it. But I'm excited about it four weeks away, not two weeks away, you know? Mm-hmm. Because it's a busy time, new iPhone time. And I'm pretty pumped about it. But yeah, I need just a little bit more time.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't even started writing Dias for you. So I do need that. It'll get done. It'll get done. It'll happen. It'll get an LLM to write it for you. That's a great idea. That's where it's going to end up anyways. You know, just just help it out early. Yeah, you know, writing tools. Yeah, you know, that's what I'm going to do. Circle of life. Show me to us, chat, GPT to write for you. I can try. Sure. So I want to do some performance follow up. Please.
Stephens bought another one. Hmm, of course. So currently this is weekly. You're buying one a week when you said you wouldn't buy any. I think the initial conversation me and you had about this, I asked you if you were going to buy any performers and you said no. And we're two weeks into performance and you've bought at least two performers that I'm aware of. At least two. Have you bought more? Aware of. I didn't know the 637 CD money edition existed.
And so when I came across one, I had to do it. Look, what I said would have a money sticker on it. Great. Which is the last time you did this, you bought every color of iMac. And I am worried where you're trending towards. That was 13 computers. And a lot of those were donated. Are you somehow convinced that there's going to be a museum that's going to want the performance? Because that's not going to happen. No museum wants to perform as. But there's also like 48 of them, 50 of them, something.
So that's impossible. Okay. Well, because the way you're saying that it sounds like well, there's only 48 of them. Like it really depends on the tone you're using to say that. And it sounded like you were saying, well, there's only 48 of them. That's how you sound. There is also such as something incredibly funny about buying a computer called money. It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous computer. Are you enjoying performance? I am. And more importantly, the people are enjoying performance.
It's the traffic still through the roof. You still on that output trajectory. Death threats have stopped, which is good. That's always good. You know, that's really when a project turns the corner. Yeah, traffic traffic is good. Traffic is good. Traffic is good. You love it. You love to see it. Love to see it. Yeah, I think I've got maybe three articles left to right. And I'm working on one super long one. I'm going to try to finish that today or tomorrow. So yeah, it's coming along.
Join the party. 5-to-a-pixels.net. Slash. I don't know. It's just on the homepage all the time now. Slash? Slash what? Slash projects. Slash, perform a dash month. Are you being serious? Yeah, I have a perform with you. You don't have a better domain. What is your, why don't you like domains? We have this problem all the time where I'm like, get connected. Pro.co and you're like relay.fm slash connected slash join. The problem URL.
The problem with your vanity URLs is that they don't work over HTTPS. If you as a human being type HTTPS colon slash slash before you type a URL, I don't want you coming to my website. Get connected pro.co. I love it. They work if you just type them. It's only if you type HTTPS colon slash work. They don't always work. I don't think it always works. I love it. This is what you typically talk about on iMessage. It's what you do. It always works.
It works 100% at a time unless you are a sicko who types in HTTPS colon slash slash. I'm going to hover. I'll buy a vanity URL for perform a month. Let's see. Performamonth.com. It's got to be a bike. Performa month. It's got to be a lot of entering me. Hang on, I'm logged into like literally a friend's hover account. Let me fix that one. No, buy on their account. Buy on their account. What are you doing? It's like the opposite of when iBuy domains that the two of you should have.
It's like you're buying a domain for you on someone else's account. Is it? Performamonth.com $17. I mean, look, then this sells itself. What if I just do performa? What if I get it a month? Let's see. We've been doing this show. Buy performa.net for $2,865. That's like performa.com. We're still buying domains live. Well, we're doing this show. That is the mark of a successful podcast when you start buying domains. Or a relationship, even. I mean, you still have the fire and the spice.
Performa.net. That's the demand. Performa.com. But that's not what you want. No. Performa.com. Yes. Oh, guys. No. Guys. Guys. Okay. Guys. Performa.com. Do it. Do it. Decentralized physical infrastructure network. It is a secure plus. Whereas hashing and computer power. And there's infrastructure meets the compound and non-orinals jobs. Still foolish. Still hungry. Still jobs. Performa.com from EM square D team. So they know what they're doing. Still foolish. Still hungry. Still jobs.
They're they're we can ride at the camera. Yeah. This is like when a coin was created called cortex. This is like a thing that happened in my life. That created a lot of. Like a Bitcoin. Yeah. Situation. Yeah. Yeah. No. Like a creep. It's a Bitcoin. There's a Bitcoin. So there's there is often lost people who find themselves to the cortex podcast looking for Bitcoin tips. And they don't get them. You should get performed a blog. That's what you should get.
Well, I'm in the checkout now for performa month.com. But maybe that's too much. Oh, you should buy performa.com blog. That's okay. I should buy. I would back out of it. It's on sale for four ninety nine. That's good. I'm not going to do it. So. Wait, there's not going to be a performer month every year. Come on. It's one and done, baby. So this is going to be like the one month in the arc of human history when this ever happened. Yeah. Damn, that's sad. I can't take that. Oh, man.
That hit me hard. Like this month and then it's done. And it's how life is, man. It's a vapor. I don't like it. We're here one day. I don't like it. Next day, we're gone. iOS 18.1 beta two is available now. And it rolls in the 18.0 beta five changes that we spoke about. So like photos at changing and stuff like that. And it gets the Thanos mode in Safari. I don't understand how, but Federico has been able to try up intelligence.
Yeah. Yeah. Now it just works via the basic method of setting your language and region to English and United States. They, they got rid of the like, like very system, like very deep system level stuff. Region check. I mean, do you think that was intentional? Yes. Because I mean, you must want as many users as possible trying this now. And yeah, no, as long as you say, we go, but as long as you say, well, your region is United States.
The language is English, you know, we don't know where people go with their devices. I mean, is it going to be legal in September? Who knows? But for now, I have been able to try Apple intelligence. I put back 18.1 on my iPhone and on the iPad. It's, I would say there's a couple of nice things, but it's mostly underwhelming. So this is like the notes that I've been saving for the past couple of days. I can very much confirm that I don't think I'm ever going to use writing tools.
I appreciate how it's a sort of feature that's been built system wide everywhere. Even though it kind of works, it's a little bit janky in apps like Obsidian. When you try to do the proof reading in Obsidian, and it tells you that you got to change the whole document. I don't think it must be, it's either, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it's like an Obsidian bug because they're doing some weird things with their cross platform engine or whatever.
Yeah, I doubt Obsidian is using the pure stock text engine. Yeah, exactly. I can't imagine that they're doing it. Exactly. It's running Android on iOS somehow. But no, more like sort of high level conceptually speaking. Like I don't think I'm ever going to use writing tools because writing is my job and I just prefer to have a human editor looking at my stuff or just me coming up with words. So I don't think I'm the target user for writing tools at all.
I kind of like the summaries for notifications, for messages like in mail, how it summarizes the body of an email and you can see the summary in the main inbox. That's been convenient. Something that they've added in beta 2 in mail is, you know, you know, when you open an email, you have the summarize button. Yeah. For newsletters now, it pops up like a pop up that says, summarize is not intended for this type of content. Would you still like to use it?
And you say, yes, I don't know why they've done that. I don't know why they've done that, but they've done that. Interesting. Interesting. I hadn't noticed that. Yeah, I think so far, the summarization has been my my favorite feature like today, for example, I got a couple of texts from John, by the way, I was just able to summarize a newsletter. So that seems to be kind of heteromies. Yeah. Interesting.
I liked seeing the summaries for John, like John sent me like a couple of long messages and I got a summary on the lock screen. That was cool. I think so far, my favorite feature of all is Type 2 Siri with a big asterisk, which is Siri still dumb as ever. I don't think like if you ask me, you know, without even looking, like, don't look at the screen, just judge Siri by its responses. I wouldn't been able to tell you that this is a smarter Siri powered by AI. Because I don't think it is.
I don't think it is. This version isn't anything except like you can stumble over your words. Like there's nothing like it's not me, right? It's just they've only changed, they've only changed the look of it. But it doesn't seem to be any smarter than before, especially a keeping context between multiple requests. Yeah. Yeah, that stuff's just not in the beta yet. Yeah, maybe it's just not there.
Likewise, it's supposed to know a lot about your devices, like, XP was supposed to do on Samsung phones, also not in the beta. I believe that this version is what it is supposed to do is you can restate yourself, right? And like, it shouldn't understand. So you can say, like, what's the weather on Wednesday? No, I mean, Thursday. Yeah, we're gonna understand that. It's also supposed to, you're supposed to be able to say, like, you know, me and Jason both had the same example. Where is Stephen?
He tells me, where is Stephen? There's what's the weather like. It should understand that. But it's from all of my testing, it is not understanding that. But this version currently should be able to do that. But things like personal context and like Stephen was saying and the app control. None of that is in here yet. No, it's not even coming this year. I don't think so. Yeah, and I just go back to what I've said before. They should not change the serial UI until they have all those features.
Mm-hmm. That said, I do like Type 2 Siri. Because I, there's a couple of things that I really like using Siri for. That is like checking my schedule, creating reminders, you know, that sort of playing music. And with Type 2 Siri, I get to save time. Because typically like, I would use Siri. But what if it's like 1am or 2am and Siri is sleeping? And so I want to save time with interactions on my phone. But I can speak because there's a person next to me sleeping.
So I've created, this is sort of my, my TG hack for you today. I've created some text expansions for like common syntax that I use Siri for. So for example, and you can do this like in settings, general keyboard text replacements. I created one that is like the letter like R, R, R. So I just need to type the R key on my keyboard three times. And it expands into remind me to. So like I can quickly create a reminder with Type 2 Siri just by doing that. Or like I created SSS. Same idea.
It expands into show me my schedule today. So the things like this, I think, are really convenient with Siri. Especially if you create like this little sort of macros with text replacements. That's something that I think I'm going to use a lot. Otherwise, I mean so far, except writing tools. There's no image playground. Not that I'm ever going to use it. There's no custom emoji. It's just writing tools, Siri UI, Type 2 Siri, and summaries in notifications and mail. So mostly underwhelming.
And I think we're obviously going to talk about Google in a few minutes. Yeah, it's obviously very early. And they are compared to other tech companies. I think it's pretty clear that they are very much behind. So I'm thinking I find so funny. When you're using iMessage and someone sends you a message. And the system wants to recommend my response. Oh yeah. Yeah. They're terrible. 100% of the time. They don't sound like me at all. And most of the time are things that I would never say.
And like I'm convinced that there is nothing new going on in that system. It's the same quick type system that has always been. But now they just make it look fancy because they're trying to find some of the word in the system to be like, hey, it's AI. But like I don't, it doesn't feel like that was gotten literally any better.
Like for example, something with me and my mom, every single day my mom asks me multiple times because she's, I love my mom, but this just tells you how are you, how are you, she'll just send me this multiple times a day. And pretty much all the time I say like, yeah, everything's good. How are you? So this is essentially I answer the same way every day. Every time I get an message from my mom, it goes and I said that it's not the answer that I use.
Now I feel like the computer should have an idea about what's going on here. And it never does. And so yeah, I just find it to be very strange. One thing that is in the beta that I think is pretty cool is the photo memory stuff. So you can have it build a custom memory within photos. And that's actually pretty sweet. Sundays, MPU, which is not out now, but it will be out in a couple of days.
We talk, the whole episode about Apple Intelligence and we talked to a good bit about that, but in short, you can have it, you basically prompt it to put a memory together and it takes a minute, but it puts something together for you. And it's nice because the previous versions of this feature were kind of limited and what it would consider memory worthy. And now you can just make your own. And so that image buried in there, but it is, it's a nice addition. Yeah, I agree.
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Go there now to check it out or thanks to ecam for the support of the show. Mike, we talked about Apple Watches for kids and we are and we hear from some people, right? What does people say? So I have two pieces of follow up that I thought were interesting coming from different sides of the experience. So an anonymous user wrote in and said, I'm 14 years old and I've had a cellular Apple Watch for three years. It does almost everything I want it to.
Contacting parents, looking things up, playing podcasts and more. The only things that it can't do are play games, take photos, and listen to Spotify, the way I believe you can probably use Apple Music. I don't feel like I'm missing out on too much that is important, nor do I feel the pressure to get a real phone. So I really like this. I also felt bad about myself because this 14-year-olds feels better adjusted than me.
I also feel bad because this 14-year-old is listening to us, like in general. No, and that's just good for them. This is good for their development. I'm sure. Is it? Okay. Yeah, we're helping the youth. We are? We are? We are? We are? We are? We are? We are? Okay. We've been doing this for long enough now that we are starting to get those comments, right? And have we spoke about this after the BWDC? For me, like, 23 or whatever. And I think Steven, you had it then and had it in 24 as well.
Well, like people are like, hey, I've been listening to you since high school. This 14-year-old person was three when we started podcasting together. Yeah. Three. So you know, where raising them right is what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, really, if humanity survives in the next 150 years, because of us, yeah. Why did we never consider starting a cult? Or family night. Night, you know. You know? We get it. It's like we've got to have a great question.
We could have gone into so many more lucrative businesses instead of doing podcasts. We can be persuasive, you know? People like us. People like our level marketing schemes. Yeah. I mean, anyway, Eric said, we had a quote set up for child Apple Watch for my son when he was in fourth and fifth grade, which is 10 to 11 years old. It was great because we had a way, he had a way to contact us and we had a way to contact him. And it wasn't with a phone.
The contacts were locked down and the school time limitations worked well. We would even use the walkie-talkie feature when we were on family trips. We never had any issues setting up from a different phone. I really recommend it for parents that want cellular connectivity. I think this just sounds really positive.
And to me, I notice this is an incredibly small sample size, but like this feels like a good, a good solution for a young person to have a level of connection and to be able to use some things that they care about without necessarily getting themselves lost into a iPhone. If they don't want to lose themselves on the iPhone, you don't want that for them. So I thought, this is good feedback. I was happy to get it. The walkie-talkie is one of the best Apple Watch features that nobody uses.
Or when I say nobody, I mean, it should be so much more popular. There should be an iPhone version of it. I really, and I know that it sounds funny because a bunch of people are like, oh, the walkie-talkie is silly. Well, I think it's actually a very good feature. And it should be like, I would have liked to see Apple invest so much more in it. Like have an iPhone version. Have you be like a real multi- multi-platform feature across the entire Apple ecosystem? And it's just on the Apple Watch.
And so few people know about it. It's a shame. I just opened my walkie-talkie app on my Apple Watch. And I have friends you've invited. And there are three people who I invited that did not accept my request to be a walkie-talkie friend. One is Federico. Yeah. One is Steven. And one is OTJ. Yeah. Yeah. You probably did it during one of the podcasts. And you know, to prove a point. And we said no. Yeah. Humbering. This is like when you open-found my friends.
And then it's like Federico can see your location. You know, like Apple. This thing that you guys are doing is bordering on creepy. Like, that you see each other's, yes. That you see each other's location. No. Why do you need to see if I'm like at the supermarket or I'm at home? I don't need to, but I just like to feel connected to you. That sounds like a guy who's going out committing crimes at night. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. He's a great question. Why don't you want me to know where you are?
You know what I mean? Well, I don't know because it's slippery slope. Like, today it's checking my location. Tomorrow is like, hey, teach you can I sleep with you in your bed? You know, like, I mean, that seems like a pretty great progression if you ask me. But like, I can't stop feeling the fine mine thing. That's how slope works. That's a great one. My thing with the fine mine is I feel I have no problem having fine mine with a bunch of friends.
But the point when someone gets weird, I would remove them. Yeah. You know, it's like you overstepped. But like, I think it's fine. But I also will say I respect that you don't want to. But hey, you have the ability to federally go whenever you want to see Bariah. And I'm happy for you to have that information about me. I never do because I feel bad checking. I just want you to know you have the opportunity to do it. If you want to see where I am, just open fine mine. You can see. No, thank you.
But I never do. I actually never do. But you can. I just want you to know that you can see where I am. If whenever you want. Do you guys want to know where John is? John Voorhees is right now. Yeah, tell me what John is right now. I will say if I'm at home and John is at home, we're 512 miles apart. That's kind of nice. I bet you like that, Danny. I'll brand. Yeah, for John. Wow, there's a lot of pizza places near John. It's come on. I was like scrolling around his neighborhood.
Hey, John. Hey, John, go get us a pizza. Good as a pizza. Happy anniversaries. Everybody. Hey, it's the week. Happy anniversaries. It's the week of anniversaries. August 11, 2014, Mike and I published a letter announcing this here, very podcast network. And that's that's on five 12 pixels now for everybody read. On August 12, 2020, green gate was fixed in iOS 13. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why do you always find a way to? In case then why have we still heard about it for four years?
Well, Apple says they fixed it. Ah, okay. So there's a conspiracy. Always. Why do you know this? Because it's on my calendar every year. My god, like my personal work calendar. I'm sure some people just need to do more work, you know, rather than have things like this in their calendar. Maybe. And then that's why couldn't it be on the vision pro call the other day? I was celebrating green gate. Yeah. What's the busy cell? I like to honor the holiday privately, as they say.
And then August 18, 2014, so that'll be this weekend. 10 years since we actually launched the network. So we announced it a weekend advance, launched it the next week. Mike and I will be hosting a special episode of what is normally our members only podcast called backstage. But we are going to publish it in the departure's feed for everybody. Is it a little tradition that we do kind of an annual Q&A? And so look for that early next week.
That, well, this is also 10 years of connected is on Sunday, too. Because we published the first episode of all those shows on the same day. 10 years have connected. Yeah. Definitely remembered. Yeah, so that is we're hitting that too, which is incredible to think about. Do we feel like, have we learned anything in this past 10 years? Are we better people than when we started? Are we worse people? Are we same people?
Do we feel like we made significant progress as human beings in this past decade? I think so. I think so. Yeah. I mean, we're not worse people. That's for sure. Yeah, I feel much more put together. And I will just say that there's something kind of nice about it. 10-year anniversary traditional gift is aluminum. We all like apples products. So everyone's getting a MacBook Air. Nice. I look forward to it. Not true. Aluminium. You guys are getting performance. Sorry. It's all I got.
They're not made of aluminum. No, they're not. They're all made of just beige plastic. Mm-hmm. I guess there's some probably some aluminum inside. It's a lot of its stamp steel. They're pretty terrible. It's probably made with iron. It's rusty on the inside. It's rusty on the inside. It's rusty on the inside. That beige polycarbonate, or whatever plastic is made out of, just it was really bad at rust. It's just like the oxidization would just get in there. What is that plastic?
Do you know what it is? Like the plastic bodies of those machines? I don't. Like what is the actual plastic? I'm not a plasticologist. I expect it opposed before the end of performance for more plastic. Here we are. Dr. Drain. Come to Memphis. Help me test this stuff. What's going on? Someone's got to know. I mean, are in told plastics, are in told plastics like some kind of polycarbonate or something? Like, isn't that the generic term for it? Polycarbonate, I believe, is a type of plastic.
It is. It's like, okay. See? We can still learn new stuff after 10 years. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just making this up. But I believe it is a type of. But I don't think it is the only thing that someone would consider plastic. Anyway, I look forward to all the plastic follow up. We're going to get. But anyway, yeah. It is weird. Like 10-year anniversary is like strange because we just did the whole thing a couple of weeks ago, which felt like the 10-year anniversary in London. But it wasn't.
It is actually this weekend. So yeah, thank you to everybody who's listening to this podcast for 10 years. Even if you came in in the middle, we appreciate you. And we'll do this for at least another 10 years. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.
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So switching gears here, I wanted to talk about a specific category of app that I think is going to be popular over the upcoming year. For sure, we have two examples now that are available in test flight. I'm referring to the upcoming versions of the new version of Reader by Silvia Ritzi and Project Tapestry by the Icon Factory. Now we've covered the both apps before. The Icon Factory, if not mistaken, did a crowdfunding campaign for tapestry.
Yeah. Which is now in test flight. I believe they're also going to make a Mac version because they reached their crowdfunding milestone during the campaign. Both apps are trying to solve a... Well, here's the thing. I don't know if they're trying to solve a problem or if they're coming up with a solution for a problem that we didn't know existed. I don't even know if the problem exists in the first place, but they are coming up with an approach. That's the thing. They're coming up
with an approach. And the idea is to unify web timelines from different services, from different content providers, into a single interface. And this is something that's been on my mind for the past week or so. Because first of all, I really wanted to finally try these apps, been putting these off for the past few months. And I thought, well, it's about time that I actually try and set up both Reader and Tapestry for myself and see what the deal is.
And then I'm... And in doing this, it all started because of an actual problem that I have that I want to discuss with you guys. And then more broadly, I also want to talk about this concept. So the problem that I had was that I realized not by using screen time, just by something that I realized myself, that I am wasting way too much time in the official apps. And this is
important, the official apps for Reddit and YouTube. And that's because both apps, obviously, they're using the algorithmic homepage with content suggestions based on, you know, your taste, your patterns, your history, whatever. They're doing that. They're getting the claws into you, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And they are very effective to the point where it's kind of scary. This is true for both YouTube and Reddit. Both are services that I use a lot. And I got a lot of
value out of both Reddit and YouTube. That's the thing. I don't feel bad about using Reddit and YouTube. I have made some incredible connections on Reddit. I've discovered and learned a lot of things on Reddit. And I also spend a lot of time watching YouTube. It's basically replaced
regular television for me. I pay for YouTube premium. I get so much value out of it. The problem is that on balance, I also spend way too much time basically being distracted by the content suggestions on the homepage to the point where over the past month, especially on multiple occasions, I've realized after wasting like an hour, you know, before going to bed, instead of playing a video game, just mindlessly scrolling Reddit or YouTube and like watching for two minutes
and then moving on to the next thing. So many times, it has happened where I was like, you know, I don't feel good about myself doing this. And so I started thinking, is there a way for me to just go back to a feed of just my subscriptions? You know, and maybe everyone's in a while. I mean, obviously I'm still going to use the official YouTube app for search, for, you know, occasionally checking out a new channel or whatever. But like, is there a way where on a daily basis, my regular
usage is, I just want to see what's new from my subscriptions. Basically, approaching Reddit and YouTube, like I do with RSS, like just let me just give me a feed of new content from the people I follow, from the creators I follow. And Kating the chat is mentioning use App Limits. That type of approach doesn't work with me. Maybe it's a problem of like intention. Maybe I don't have a, you know, maybe my will isn't strong enough. But I don't think App Limits will do what
you want though, because it's not a time thing. It's a, it's a, like if you set yourself a 30-minute daily limit on YouTube, that's not going to solve the problem. Like if you have a one hour video from a creator that you like that you want to watch, you then can't watch that video. It's not a time thing. It's an attention thing. Yeah, it's an attention thing. And so I thought, well, maybe, maybe that could be a way for me to see if this idea of, well, we're going to combine multiple
timelines into one. Maybe that's a way that this is going to work for me, where I can just see new content from my existing subscriptions instead of being recommended, an ocean of things, and only 20% of them, you know, have actual lasting value in my brain. So I set up, I think tapestry is very early in development. I think reader is further along so far. So that's what I set up. I set up reader with Mastronon, YouTube, RSS feeds and Reddit. I have a bunch of problems with,
with this type of app is what I've realized over the past few days. Not we readers specifically, I think my problem is with the idea. It did what, well, it mostly did what I set out to accomplish. And that is sure, I can just see a bunch of YouTube channels and their videos and I don't see anything else. And it is convenient to be able to replace five icons on your home screen with just one icon. The problem is that, and maybe this will get better with, with both apps by the final
release. Maybe it's very early. I'm just saying that so far my experience has been that I've replaced five apps with one app that is not better at anything for those individual experiences. For example, Mastronon, yeah, I can scroll my timeline and reader keeps my position. And it's got the best icon position thing I've ever tried. No joke, it's incredible. But I cannot do anything else. Like, I cannot boost, I cannot like, I cannot reply. It's just, it's just a read-only mode from my timeline.
And that's not what I want from Mastronon with RSS feeds. Sure, I can scroll a list of feeds, but I don't have folders. I don't have all the other options I have in my main RSS reader. With Reddit, it works, but I don't have the sorting options that I get in the Reddit app. That I also get in third party Reddit apps. Like I tried Norwall again. I think spoiler, I think that's one I'm going to set up again. Norwall version two instead of the official Reddit
client. But like my takeaway is that it's a good idea on paper to take timelines from multiple services. But the thing is, those services are not just timelines. They're also interactions. They're also like additional features on top of the post that you read in your homepage. And you're taking just the basics of those services and you're combining them in a single view
that is not necessarily better than the original service. Does this make any sense? What I'm saying, like you're taking a bunch of things, but the experience and aggregate, like it's not better than the original? Yeah, I absolutely don't want any applications like this. Like I backed the tapestry app to support the icon factory just because I appreciate them. But this is not an app type that I'm looking for because all of these things, so let's just for example, imagine like what are all the
things I want to put in here? It might be Reddit. It might be a couple of RSS feeds, via YouTube subscriptions, masterlons and threads. They're also different from each other. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like for me of like putting all of these things together, like what I'm looking at some masterlons posts and here's a 45 minute YouTube video, like I'm supposed to watch that now. Like it doesn't, this stuff, it doesn't match with,
like for me, I go to an app because I want to get the content that the app provides. Like I start at the app level and then go into the content that's there, not like show me any possible medium of content and I will just consume that content. Like that doesn't, that doesn't make sense to me. I think what you, what you want is third party applications for the services. So like,
I was going to recommend now all to you. Like that was when I was more of a Reddit user, that was the app that I used and I liked it specifically because you could turn off the front page. Like you just, I never saw the front page of Reddit. I only saw the subreddits that I cared about. And I would assume like what about an app like, what does it play? By, yes, that's exactly what I put on my home screen. Yeah, like so then you can kind of maybe have more customization over YouTube. Like that,
feels like more of me. Like people that want these kinds of apps great, but like I don't, like it just makes sense to me that I wouldn't even want to see really like, I don't want to see my master on posts and my threads posts in the same app even because to me, I treat them so differently. The threads are mastered on a very different experiences for me. Like with threads, it's algorithmic and that I kind of want that. Like I, yeah, I find interesting things on threads.
And master on is where I'm actually keeping up with people and I want to read everything. So like, even they're different for me. I feel like and maybe maybe you know, six months from now, we'll do a follow up and I'll say I was wrong. I just needed to wait a little bit more for the, for development on these apps to be further along. But right now, it feels to me like,
and I'm going to try and find the right words for what I'm about to say. It feels like this idea, it all started with, oh, hey, activity pub is neat and we have interoperability between services. And my impression is that starting from that foundation, it got a little out of hand to the point where you're like, well, why don't we also roll in YouTube and why don't we also roll in Reddit? Like, I think maybe going back to the original idea of just, it's just activity pub.
Instead of like, let's combine wildly different sources into one UI, you know, I mean, you're literally combining a timeline based thing like Macedon or activity pub in general with a community forum board like experience such as Reddit with video playback. That's YouTube. And I mean, we haven't even mentioned the fact that reader also wants to do podcasts. Like, it seems to me like, you end up in a sort of situation with like, like the Homer Simpson car, like try to do everything
all at once. And you're, you don't necessarily excel at any of those individual things. And that is this weird thing of like, we're now in this decentralized world. So people want to make apps that are more centralized than ever. Just super app is the super app. Steven, what do you think about these experiences? All these things? Yeah, I mean, Mike, I think I'm right in line with you. I just sort of struggle with apps that put very different types of content together. And even seeing
federated posts on Macedon from Threads users, like kind of strikes me as a bit weird. And, you know, maybe that's just kind of an old way of thinking. And, you know, maybe any more time on it. But these, these really just sort of hit me kind of, kind of weird. And it's not for lack of polish. You're like, good ideas in these apps. My, my issues kind of category wide, not even specific with these two. And I think especially when you make, when you're mixing in, it's one thing
of it's all just words, right? Like if it's RSS and social media posts, like all that together. But when you start mixing in videos and audio as well, that's really kind of when, when you lose me. Yeah, it's like, I mean, obviously we make very specific types of podcasts by a large that are long form, right? It's just a very strange thing for me to imagine somebody is in an app and they're reading master on posts. And then they see an episode of connected and they're like,
y'all play that now. It just doesn't make sense to me. Like just because you can access all of this content. I'm not sure, you know, you should like, what is it like to, just because you have all this power like this immediately is it like kind of thing. But like, look, maybe that maybe that I'm the problem here where like just because these are options that are available doesn't mean I should use them. You know what I mean? Like, if I don't want to have YouTube videos in an app
like this, just don't connect my YouTube account. And like, yeah, that is fine. But there's even an even different, even different apps of the same type of media like I'm just not sure that I want that. I think I agree with you, Steven. Like, I'm not sure that I actually like having threads posts in master done. I agree, actually. Like, I'm happy that it's there for the people that want it because like, why not? But I don't know. They feel, they just feel very different. Yeah. And I,
and I have my threads account federated, right? So there are people who want to follow me on a Macedon, I post different mostly different things on those two accounts, a lot of cross promotion with performer life. But that only comes once in a lifetime, you know, everybody needs it. And sometimes it's good to get two posts for about a month. It's true. You might, I forget that that, you know, that's happening. Yeah. I feel like there is some, but like, there is some benefit
to the idea of, I just want to see my subscriptions. But at the same time, the value that I lose, and I know it maybe sounds ridiculous, but the YouTube channels that I follow on more than one occasion, for example, the comments can be useful. Like, you know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm checking out a walkthrough for how to install Linux on an ROG ally, which is something that I did. I was going to say that's a very specific example. Maybe some, maybe someone might want to do this,
I don't know, you know? And occasionally there's, maybe I'm running into some kind of vision, there's a comment in the video that says, I had this issue by the way, and I did this. Like, and so you lose all of that experience if you're just consumed that service in a read-only mode. And I'm not sure I feel like, and read it on tapestry, by the way, I'm calling out because they're currently in test flight. There was a crowdfunding campaign. They're from two high-profile
developers, but they're not the only apps doing this. I've seen some other examples. There's another app called Feed with like five ease that Nilean previously reviewed on Mac stories. It looks beautiful. And it's sort of trying to do the same thing where like, oh, you can subscribe to your RSS, YouTube channels. There's a bunch of sources, YouTube, Reddit. And like, I get the idea, but this sort of aggregation, I don't know, historically, it's never worked well for me. And I thought
this time, it could be different. And so far, it hasn't been different, where at the end of the day, I'm still seeking the original source for the original experience. And the intercommunication is fine, and it's fun. But I feel like I'm losing too much value for that to be a permanent replacement for the five different icons on my home screen. Do you know if like, the old read-out is going to continue? It seems like it will. Because it sounds like from the, there's a new teaser homepage
that says, like, this will be a brand new experience. I think the old reader will be discontinued obviously, but it'll stick around. I do want to say design-wise, it's incredibly polished. And I am sending a lot of feedback to Sylvia. I sent them like a giant email last night. Because I do think there's a place like, well, what if I mastered on time nine in reader was interactive? Like, what if I could boost and compose? And like, at that point though, is it a time nine
or is it a mini-masterdown client inside of reader? Right? So I do think there's a place for like actual mini-clients within a single app, but that's something that is very different from just saying read multiple timelines into one. You're actually building several functional, read and write clients into the same UI. And I don't know if that's what Sylvia wants to build, or I don't know if that's what the icon factory wants to build. Maybe I'm just being a little
funny, Daddy, but I like my RSS the way I like my RSS. I don't really want to get that all intermingled with everything else, you know? But it's an interesting topic. And I think it's something that we will continue to see because of activity pop, because of this idea of like, well, let's just make everything decentralized. And it's funny because after making everything decentralized, you're feeling like the push from like the pull from the other direction of like, well, but what if we
we could centralize it again? I guess that's just that's just human nature. I don't recall maybe it was like an old Bentham's and Oracle months ago saying that it's in humans nature to like centralized services because they're comfortable and easy to use. And you know, they have all the benefits of blocking. I think it's funny that it's happening now, but maybe there's a world in which multiple decentralized services can retain all of the benefits and all the features even in a centralized
UI. Maybe that's possible. So far, I'm not convinced, but maybe there's a maybe it will be possible. This episode of Connected is brought to you by one password extended access management. Imagine your company's security like the quad of a college campus. There's nice brick pathways between the buildings. Those are the company-owned devices, IT-approved apps, and managed employee
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These, of course, like all Google Pixels, massively leaked beforehand. We do a lot about them. We got some links in the show notes to some videos and some posts, the verge, MkbHD, etc. I think let's start with the hardware, and then we can get into the, what is a photo situation, because that's increasingly messy. Mike, I'm really curious what you think about these. Something about these designs and colors kind of screened microally to me.
It's all pink and green, baby. Let's go. The colors of the 9, amazing. They're so good. Yes, I would very much like them. The colors of the phone that I am the most interested in, which is the Pro Fold. It's just white and black, and that's not so exciting. I think in general, all of the phones look really good. I think Google has the very polarizing, I think, very bold camera bar for the pixel line.
The Pfizer. At least they're trying something. You can even like it or not, but they're trying to make it into a design element, because it is always ugly, no matter what anybody does. The camera area on a phone is always tough. Take a good hard look at the back of your iPhone. No one wants that. It is what we're stuck with. I do like this more rounded look on the Pfizer this time. It looks like it's looking at you, which is nice.
And at least with the Pixel 9 and the 9 Pro, compared to other phones, it is at least the whole way across. So your phone on the table is not going to bounce around. If you care about such things. If you have a case, for most people, I think that's as big of a deal, but you live the case of life. It's a good life. Case list. Case list. No, no. It's just the case list. So I just don't have cases. That's all it is.
Let's talk about the fold in particular. So it's 6.3 inches outside, which is in between the two prosized phones. And then eight inches inside. So that's what iPad mini-ish. I mean, there's always the aspect ratio thing, right? Which is very different. Eight inches is the size of an iPad mini, but this is square. So it's not like physically big and then iPad mini-ish. That's always really complicated. Math. But it is it's a tablet inside. I think this is of the best looking of these types of
devices. Yeah. I think Samsung has done a good job over time. And I think they've refined the design of the Z Fold a lot. But there's still, I think, pushing up towards the, this is like a phone on the front, like a regular phone on the front. The OnePlus Open, which I know is a phone that Federico has lasted over for a while, I think it is also so simple. Oh, I let it. And I sold it. You did have it. Yes. I did have it. Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. It's great phone. Yes.
Yes. That is similar in like it on the outside is more, more phone-shaped. The previous pixel fold was what was called like passport size where it was like a bit. Yeah, it was more squat, squat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's shorter, you know, like, yeah, kind of funny looking, but actually very comfortable, it seems. But all of the people that have had hands on with it are saying that like the front just feels like a regular phone. It's super thin when it's
opened. It looks kind of like iPad Pro thin when it's open. So when you close the thing, it's thicker than a normal phone, but not by an incredible amount. So this looks like on the face of it from a hardware perspective, this looks to be about as good as you could make this product right now from like a usability perspective. That's how it looks from videos and from what other people are saying, do you feel the same with that Federico? I know that you have
and similar intrigue to me with these types of devices. I... This device for me is the dream. And I was so close to pre-ordering one. Yesterday, the only thing that stopped me is basically how it went with the OnePlus Open. A device that I absolutely loved. And I think and eventually maybe we should... I have all of these in my notes. I think the OnePlus Open was doing multitasking. I had some multitasking ideas much more interesting than the iPad. Not that it's
a high bar, but like some actual novel multitasking ideas for that form factor. But the only thing that stopped me from pre-ordering one was that the problem is what I do for a living and the fact that I don't like the Android app ecosystem, it's not even Android, the problem. Like I could use Android just fine. And you know, as we'll see, maybe I'll even use... I would even use AI more on Android. But my problem is it's just... It's not as fun as iOS for the types of apps that I like to use.
Like in the apps, you know, I was almost going to say boutique apps, but that's sort of how it feels in iOS sometimes, right? All these, you know, very designed, opinionated apps from indie developers. That's what I like. And it also happens to be what I do for a living. And so given that up, would be an issue for me. Like I wouldn't know and I wouldn't know what to do with that device. Could I get it? Like as a second device to just use for watching videos and reading books?
Yeah, but I mean, it's an expensive device. As a fancy window. $1800. It's very expensive. But like my dream right now is the Apple version of this. The iPhone that you unfold and it becomes like a square-ish tablet. That is the dream. Like I would be all over this device if it didn't run Android. That's my only issue.
The current rumors are real like one to two years away from a folding phone, but all of the rumors are pointing in different directions just to what form factor this is actually going to be. So there isn't anything right now that feels locked on one way or another. Like there are some people who are saying it's going to be like a Z Flip and some people are saying it's going to be like a Z Fold. Like it's one is just to take your iPhone and fold it in half
and the other one is take your iPhone and open it up. I genuinely think both devices in Apple's lineup would make sense. I think personally, I actually don't know which I'd prefer. Do I want my iPhone to get thicker and heavier again? I don't know if I want that. Really. Like I like the idea of having a tablet all times, but do I want it at the expense of a thicker heavier phone again? I don't know. Like that's an interesting question to ask, right?
Because similar to you, Fedor, I've tried all the form factors of these devices, but I always end up moving away from them because it isn't the operating system experience that I like. No. But is that also saying that maybe I don't find the experience overall compelling enough? Like I actually don't know the answer to that. Truly. But this device being like Google version
of Android would be the nicest version of Android. They seem to have done some work and they've refactored the form factor of the device to make it so that you're going to get more like full screen applications and less like black bars on the apps that they were having before. Like a little box and pillow boxing. Yeah, it looks really nice, but I had a similar thing to you where I was like, you know, let me go take a look and there were two things that happened. One
1,800 pounds. I was like, well, they're not. And it's like shipping on September 4th. Like, well, no, I definitely don't want that. So I just didn't do anything. But I'm intrigued for the reviews. Yes. Same. Yeah. Steve, did you order one? I did not order any Pixel phones. I think my Pixel is a 5A, but I've sort of given up on like, I used to keep an Android phone around and like use it every once in a while. And it's real. So I wasn't ever doing that. So.
Yeah. I also just think everybody that says that like, let's just be real. Like you just want to have an Android phone because you think that the device looks fun. Like, you know, we don't have to to all say the same thing of like, oh, it's my testing phone. We don't test anything on these phones. We just think the phones look cool. So we bought the phones. And for a while. And I mean, in for a while, like, the mine was in this in the era of a, or they could do cool knife photography.
The iPhone wasn't right to it. Yeah. They feel more similar now, I guess. It's not about photography. That's one of the downsides of the fold is it has worth cameras. Yeah. Yeah. Which Samsung also does, right? On their foldables? I think that's changed as of this year. Okay. That was always a thing that like, especially the Z Flip, it was always like two years behind. But they made the Z Flip more expensive this year. And one of
the things you got in the trade-off was a current camera. Federica, you mentioned AI on these phones. Obviously, that's an increasingly important thing to Google, especially on the pixel phones. There are several kind of scattershot features they mentioned. One is an AI weather report, which is hilarious. It's like, it takes so long. Like in the demo, it takes so long to generate the report. It's like, I already know what the weather is now. I've seen it all.
Yeah. These go outside. The screenshots app, I think, is really interesting. So this is a separate app from the photos application. It gathers all your screenshots. It does a bunch of text searching. It's like, you can go through them and find things. If this works, I think it's actually really interesting. And potentially more interesting than just like a filter in Apple's photos app to get to your screenshots. And I think the idea here is like, eventually, I could just like take a
picture of an important thing. And I asked my assistant about, hey, what time is that meeting that I took a picture of the fire for? That is kind of the future. I think a lot of people want. I don't know if the screenshots app on the Pixel 9 is going to get there or not. But I think we're moving in that direction. And to me, at least, that's pretty exciting. This is the thing that I think I saw. I was like, oh, I actually want this on my phone. I will be shocked if Apple doesn't come up
with a similar screenshot app. I think this is exactly what they could do, say that it's processed on device that you take the screenshots. It's not like the OS continuously scanning what's on your screen. It could be a nice way to sort of release some of the pressure for like text search and data detectors and all that sort of stuff from photos, especially now that they're sort of rethinking photos more around discovery and people, trips, pets. I think this is exactly the
sort of thing that Apple should do. And it would be very surprised if they don't show off something like this within the next year. Why is this a separate application called screenshots? Well, because that's what people do every day. People take a lot of screenshots every day. But you see, Steven described a scenario that I also heard David Piss describe on the Vergecast, which his app would not do, which is I took a picture of something. Yeah, I realized
that as I was saying it's not the perfect example. David Piss said the same thing. He was talking about he goes past the library and they have like their dates up when they do a book sale. David Piss is smart and handsome. He's very smart and handsome. And like I just don't, I don't this should also be able to search stuff inside of photos I've taken of things is the way that I look at this. Like not just screenshots, right? Like I would like an app that searches all of that.
Right? Because like if I took a picture of a poster, I would want that too. As well as I took a screenshot of a website thing. I mean, look, realistically, I don't want any of these things. I want recall. That's what I want. Well, yeah. That's what I want. But now everyone's I think that this app may have been different and then this app changed. Like because it is isn't they're clearly dipping their toe in to the water of this, right?
But they're like, oh no, it's just the screenshots that you choose. Like this is the first step towards. Oh, you think it was three years time when then when they're de jaminai, I just couldn't just tell you everything you've ever seen on your phone. You think it was more like windows until a month ago and then we're like, nope, nope, nope, nope. I think that that's possible. I do think that's possible because it is it's. This isn't this is
an interesting thing, but it's still not solving the actual problem that people have. Like if you've made this application, you have addressed the idea you have thought about and are addressing the idea of people are interested in things and they know they've seen them and they want that
information later because for me to use the screenshots app effectively, I have to know I want to take a screenshot of the thing that I might want to remember later, but that isn't how my brain works that I will proactively know what I want to remember before I realize I need to remember it.
Well, that's why the dream. Yeah, and I mean, the dream for me is I know this is going to sound totally dystopian and yes, I know there's an episode of Black Mirror about this, but the dream is like I'm just wearing the Apple glasses and I have a constant memory buffer without having to explicitly say, oh, like imagine the scenario like I'm at the supermarket and I don't recall if I have I don't know carrots or not in my fridge. I'm like, imagine if I could just say Siri, did I
have carrots in my fridge and I know a privacy storage of a blah blah. The idea is total recall without having to take a screenshot without having to take a picture, you know, that's on a, you know, in a very distant timeline, the ideal. This is absolutely going to happen, but just everyone that's trying to do it so far, his do is maybe doing it a little too early or they
need to be the sacrificial lambs for somebody else to come and do it. Like just like fundamentally think about the fact that you can search every I message conversation you ever have with someone. Like that isn't necessarily what you assume when you're having those conversations that like everything you're saying now, you can get in 10 years time. You can just search the text of that. That might be a bad example because I message search doesn't work very well, but it's true.
I say email then. So here's so I have a story of this just yesterday, Kerry sent me a message and Slack. I was like, Hey, do you have my resume and cover letter I sent y'all when y'all were hiring? And she was like putting something together. Don't like the sound of that. And she's not leaving. And she's like putting something together and like came across in a book. And anyway, so I found it. God, you know, just opened up email
and found it and sent it to her and it's like, wow, this is not everything is permanent. You know, and it is, I do think there is there's something to that mic that maybe this was more. I think Jim and I could probably do more, but boy, Microsoft really fell on their sword, you know, spoiler alert, don't store all this in plain text on disk. Maybe maybe don't do it that way. Google and Apple needed Microsoft to do that. And I think it probably set everything back a little ways. And maybe
that's good. Maybe it's not, but you don't want to be caught in the situation Microsoft was caught in, for sure. What about AI generated art and magic editing? Are we excited about about taking a picture? I think in the keynote, there was a picture of like a road and like turn into a river. And suddenly it's a river. Do we need this? Something that we want? No, no, I hate it. No,
we don't need this. I don't like this. This is the, there's one side of AI that I think, you know, if we set aside the conversation on the data sourcing and like just think about the feature. There's a side of AI that is actually useful. And there's the other side where like, yeah, well, the tech made it possible. So why don't we just let you, I don't know. This was a picture
of a road. And now it's a picture of a river. Like, isn't necessary? We said this many times before, like, especially given given the, the world that we live in, you know, misinformation everywhere, fake news on all kinds of social media and websites. Like now your phone can totally modify a picture or, you know, turn a photo into something that never was and or never could be. Is it cool? Yeah. In the same way that you could say, Hey, isn't it cool if I, you know,
I don't know, do something totally stupid? Like, I mean, yeah, but also it's also something totally stupid and dangerous. Hey, would it be cool? Hey, would it be cool if I spent, I think so far, 18 hours writing about performance on a blog? That'd be cool. I just got the AI to do it for you. Can I tell you all? I don't think I told you all this. So I had a meeting at our bank for uninteresting reasons. And the, our new person, like, wanted to know,
you know, about the company and I started anyway, so it's time to story. I was like, you know, back, you know, however many years ago, I met Mike. He was podcasting and I was blogging and, you know, he had me on a show. And the guy who was about our age was like, man, I don't think I've ever heard anyone's story that started like who was who's successful started with blogging. I was like, well, I feel ancient. I mean, yeah, wrong. I was like, sir, let me tell you about the
performance 637 CD money magazine edition. And then they closed up, make a count and we didn't have a company anymore. So sorry. That is very funny. There aren't many people, right? That, uh, uh, there was a very short window of time, incredibly short window of time for that, right? Because now, I don't think people stop blogging and, and five-fill pixels is 16 years old almost and Mac stories is almost 50 or is 15 years old. It's like, you know what? We were right in the band of time.
And, uh, and we made it. Okay. We have to talk about, add me this, this AI, I guess it's AI. I don't miss it. It's also just like, I don't even think you would call this AI. I think this is just a great feature. It's also just photo merging. Uh, and, uh, Mkbhc did an example of in his video, we have linked to that where the situation is you want to take a group photo, but there's no one around to take the group photo, right? We've all been in the situation. It's like, ah, you know,
I don't need to be in this. You two get in it or whatever. Or you want to do like a selfie, but no one's arm is long enough to get it far enough out. And this is a feature that you basically take the first photo and it like figures out how much space to leave and has you like move the phone around a little bit so it gets additional depth information. And then it walks you through taking a second photo with the person who took the first photo and then it merges them. So all
three people in my example are in the photo. And like, who knows if this actually works in the real world? Like Marquez had one example. He said that's all he was allowed to do. But it's pretty sweet. Like, can you explain to me the scenario in which if you're running into this problem, you don't take a group selfie or you don't ask a person nearby to take a picture for you? Well, I mean, sometimes you don't want to ask. I mean, I've been in the situation. I go,
we take a photo of my family. It's like, do I want to hand a stranger at the zoo my phone? Like, that's weird, you know, the scenarios are slim, but exist is the way I would put it. Like, I'm kind of sitting in between the middle of two of you here. I will say as the parent and the group, if it's if it's like a family photo and that's not what Marquez's example was, but a family photo, like the group selfie doesn't usually work if, you know, your kid is half your height or you
want like a nicer looking image. So I actually had this happen recently. So the list family came to our home in case you wanted to take a picture and I've gotten to everyone. In case you had to balance his camera very precariously on a brick wall. That sounds like the time thing. And like, when I saw this feature, I was like, it would have been easier if you were to just take in the picture and then come and take the picture in that case isn't the picture, you know what I mean?
Yeah, but I agree. These scenarios are very slim. Like most of the time you could just take a selfie because it is rare that there is a group. Plus I think today selfies are better than especially like I'm putting my phone over there picture, you know, especially if you do them in slow motion, you know, slow. Usually, usually I just you should just ask someone nearby to take a picture with me and here's what I was actually here's my tip for you. Obviously you got to hand
them the phone on the lockscreen. So all they can do is just take a photo. But when you approach a stranger with your phone, asking for a picture, you want to make it clear through various signals that you can outrun them if they try to, you know, run. So do you have to like, ask them and then run away really quickly? No, but like, I don't know, you go there like you stretch a little, you make it clear. Like, you're losing my hand. Exactly. Like, look buddy, if you try and
not run me, you're not. This is going to be like, I'm an insphetoreco. I can do a 25 second mile, you know, not 25 seconds. You know what I'm saying? Wow. I can do a hundred meters in 25 seconds. By the way, can you take a picture of us? Yeah, you just make it clear through various, you know, physical signals that you're not somebody to be messed with in terms of running away with your phone. There's a way to do it. And I've always been successful. I get asked a lot to take
pictures of people. I this happens because because maybe they think they can't run you. Oh, what that's what it is. That is what it looks pretty slow. Let's ask him. Look at the camp. Look how believe it and labored he is in just these regular walking pace. Really? No problem with that. Are you think heavily on the sidewalk here? They also have some cool pixel studio, which is Google's version of AI genre. It are on device. It looks it looks terrible in its own terrible way.
Like when I saw the examples of theirs, it's like, I can now see why Apple is doing the way, doing the things that they're doing and the way that they're doing them. But they all look bad. Because Google is just straight up like, we'll make whatever you want. Yeah. And so it just looks like that. The way that AI art looks. They're chasing Samsung on that, I think. Samsung has been there and Apple's taking a different approach marginally. Actually more than marginally, Apple's taking
a very different approach. But I think all of it's gross. None of them are good. None of them are good. And then they have Gemini Live, which is there like talked to have a conversation with the AI thing, which that's not just on pixels. That's like, if you pay for Gemini on Android right now, you're getting it and it's coming to iOS too. And you know, it looks interesting. Is it a... Oh, nice. It's carefully. Because I...
Talking to Gemini, is it as upsetting as the thing we talked about in the pro show last week, the friday, I think like, I don't think so. Like what's the vibe Google wants for talking to Gemini? Is it a friend? Where's it a tool? Friendly assistant. I think it's less... It's even like less flirty than the original OpenAI voice demo from last month. Like it sounds pretty normal to me. Okay. Yeah. Not crazy. It's like talking to an assistant,
like their assistants. It doesn't really feel like it's trying to have too much of a personality. I mean, it talks in a personable way, right? You know, like it's not being like super buttoned up and serious, but it's also not like, you're so funny. Yeah. Yeah. Like the OpenAI one is. Yeah, that one was in that demo. Yeah. Very upsetting. Okay. That makes me feel better, because I get weirded out talking to the machine. Oh, none of them are good.
None of it's like caught and caught good, but like maybe not as concerning as like you should, this thing should be your friend now. Right. Leave your wife and live with the AI. Yeah. Before we move on from this subject, and maybe there's other things you want to talk about, I want to make sure I just hit this before we move on. It's a great article on the verge, which is what I would every time Google dinged Apple during the launch event,
and we're going to read three quotes to you. I enjoyed this. Yes. These were often the presentation, like from various presenters. First one, Gemini is available around the world right now, far beyond English speakers in a single market. Gemini can handle these kinds of complex personal queries, having Google's own secure cloud about sending any of your personal data to a third party AI provider who may not you may not know our trust. Wow. Yep. Yep. Which is like,
I like that because that's a double burn. They got like a two-fer in that. They got Apple and and open AI on one. Yeah. And something that I think will become increasingly important as these things, this type of technology continue. All of the demos we're doing today alive. Yep. Yep. In this world of AI, this stuff is going to feel more impressive if Apple was to go back to live demos again. Yeah. My general feeling and takeaway, and this has been brewing, I guess,
in my mind for a while, and it was confirmed yesterday. If you asked me last year, the answer would have been different. But I think from a consumer perspective, I think the company that it's now maybe best positioned to really sell AI is Google. Like I do think massive advantage right now. Yep. Yeah. And maybe last year, I would say, oh, it's opening AI because Google's barred as it
was called. Like it's so far behind. But now if you just take a look at actual things that people can do on an entire ecosystem of devices, I don't want to say that if I were Apple, I would be scared. I mean, and maybe they are. But I think Google is really flexing with this event saying, well, the Android ecosystem, they're just creating a more and more and more compelling device to buy. Yes. And so they've always been a good choice. Now they feel like a really obvious choice.
And we'll see what the reviews are like of these devices. But everybody's impressions is all some form of, oh, they finally did it, like referring to all of these devices that like the overall package of older them is really good. And yeah, you're like, they it makes sense to Google. It's always made sense that Google should be able to do this. Google invented the technology that
enabled all of this, right? The transformer model is a Google invention. Right. And so, you know, I mean, Gemini had a very bad launch, but they seem to have gotten over all of that now. I think it also goes to the point, and we've talked about this in other realms before, that it's really hard to go up against the platform owner, right? Open AI and chat GPT, even with Apple's integration is held a little bit at arm's length, right? It's not baked
into the OS like Siri or Gemini. And even if you have a better product, and like, you know, I don't know where Gemini and open AI's tools like blow by blow where they stand right now. But even if you're better, it's hard to be integrated, right? And like, the EU loves that sentence, which is why they're doing what they're doing, but it's true. And if you're open AI,
you're always to a degree going to be on the outside looking in. And maybe you have first mover advantage, but somebody like Google is going to catch up to you when it's built in and has access to the system that you don't have, that's really difficult to overcome.
Let me ask you guys a question. If we didn't cover Apple specifically for a living, if we were more like, you know, people working on a website or a podcast network like, like, more like general tech news like the Verge, for example, um, today in 2024, would we use Android or iOS? I think I would still use iOS, but I think that the answer to that question could be
different in like two or three years from now. I think with the current trajectory, I still think right now today, because, you know, for all of the things we were talking about when we talk about the fault, right? Like I am still drawn to the overall experience of iOS more than the overall experience of Android. Yes. But if these features actually do become really important, and I still think the jury is out on that, like clearly Google is ahead. And like the effort that Apple have to
go to to get to their level is big. Like they showed us a bunch of features at WBC. It's even that full package. I don't think match is Gemini. And we're not going to get some of those features for a year. So, uh, what about you, Stephen? That's a really hard question. I mean, I was a big Apple user and fan before we started this, but Android is more compelling than ever. I don't know. It would be hard. I think I would still be in the iOS camp, but I struggle with
the multiverse questions sometimes. Remember when you had a droid? Droid. I did. I did because AT&T had the iPhone exclusively in the US. And AT&T was miserable at St. Jude. We were at St. Jude a lot. And so I bought a droid on Verizon. And then I bought the iPhone for when it came to Verizon and came back to the fold. So to speak. Found an article from November 2010, reflections on Android. And I'll put it in the shadows for people.
I wonder how that reads. And also one from March 2020, 2010 called Why I Switched to Android. I'll put both of those in there. I had a palm tree in there for a while too. Oh boy, now that. That's a phone, you know. Yeah. Man, WebOS, that's some ideas. Yeah, bring that thing. They had some ideas. The episode of Connected is brought to you by Zojo. Zojo offers a powerful cross-platform development environment that's perfect for Apple enthusiasts looking to create their own apps
without the complexity of any other coding languages. With Zojo, you can quickly create and release apps for Mac OS and iOS, which means you can reach millions of users using a single programming language with an intuitive IDE and drag and drop interface building capabilities. And listeners of Connected, who we know are passionate technology users, will love the intuitive interface and rapid development capabilities that it delivers. Zojo is free for development and
testing. And Connected listeners can take 15% off any license with a coupon code CON24. That's CON24 through October. Just go to Zojo. That's xojo.zojo.com slash connected. Our thanks to Zojo for their support of the show and all of RELAY. Let's talk about Patreon. I want to just start with a disclosure. Ooh! Never really get to do this. That's fun. We work with all of us, work with Memberful, both of us, and we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do.
We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work with Memberful, both from a, we use them as a provider for our membership platforms. We've also all had sponsorships from Memberful, across various things. Memberful is owned by Patreon. All of this stuff that we're going to talk about is completely unaffected. Like, none of the Apple stuff affects us anyway, because it's all dirty with iOS apps.
But I just wanted to mention that, like I feel like that's worried, like, worth mentioning. The news is, this has been going on for a while, but it's kind of like, as of a couple of days ago, really kind of broken the ground, broken ground is that like, Apple essentially is going to Patreon and telling Patreon. People that sign up in the iOS app to become patrons of any creator, we want our third percent of those signups.
Now the important thing, and I do think it is important to actually make very clear what is and what is not happening because people are understandably assuming the worst, the absolute possible worst of Apple in this scenario. What is the, yeah, I wonder how Apple ended up in that situation. It is Apple is not going to get 30 percent of existing payments. They're not going to get 30 percent of all Patreon payments.
Apple wants 30 percent of all iOS signups, so people that sign up in the iOS app to become a patron to patron of a creator from November onwards. Anybody who has signed up in the iOS app before November, Apple gets none of that money. It is for new signups from this November date onwards. I would love to know how Apple and Patreon got to that agreement. And I will actually say, like, I think this is the testament. Patreon is obviously putting a lot of hard work here.
Yes. Because they have been able to get Apple to come to some kind of deal. Lots of people are throwing around this idea of like, Apple, Patreon should just say no, like whatever. This is clearly a deal. Apple and Patreon have come together, which I'm sure has come. This is Patreon's response to a bunch of threats from Apple is my expectation here. And this is the deal that Patreon feels like is maybe the best one for them to be in.
So that's kind of the ground work, which I think is important to establish. 30% of people that sign up for Patreon in the iOS app only from November onwards. And Patreon is enabling it for creators to choose if they want their 30% to come out of the money that they set or if they want to in the iOS app increase their amount by that 30% so they'll get the same amount of money.
So if you say my Patreon is $5 a month, if people sign up on the web, I'll Android to pay $5 a month and if people sign up on iOS, they'll pay 30% more than that. Whenever that ends up being. And so you as the creator get the same amount of money from every sign up, even though people would pay different amounts in different places. So that's kind of the groundwork. Get into your feelings. I have them.
I mean, I make, I don't know, a large percentage of my income from members direct support of my creative work. Jim, very thankful for. And we talked about this on clockwise yesterday. This is my topic. And what I said then is like Apple doesn't have any right in my view to step in between content creators and people who want to support them directly. And Shelley Brisbane responded with a really good point. It's like, isn't that also true of a bunch of stuff in third party apps? Yeah, agreed.
But this is the topic of today. So for me, I understand that Patreon by the letter of the law was outside of the rules of the app store for a long time. And they've talked about that for a long time. They previewed these changes a while back, so not be surprised if you've been paying attention. And I guess to Apple's credit, they're doing what you said, Mike, moving, you know, moving forward in November, new signups only through the iOS app.
But it is clear to me that Apple wanting a piece of every transaction that flows through their app store payment system just makes less and less sense. And you know, as someone, I get it, right? Like we're content creators supported by our listeners, right? Like we're the target demo for this, so it feels more personal to us. But I have a very hard time understanding why Apple has any right to that money. And my personal feeling is that it's disgusting, honestly. That's how I feel.
I think over the past 16 years of the app store, some of us, maybe, you know, including me at some point, we diluted ourselves into thinking that it was fair to give up 30% of revenue because of the services that Apple provides you with. And in this case for Patreon, I think it's especially, it's especially evil to ask for 30% when all you're doing is provide the binary of the app that is distributed through the app store.
Yeah. When effectively, all the work is being put in by the creators and by Patreon providing the infrastructure. I can, I just cannot believe that 30% is justifiable because what you build the OS and you build is with UI and you like it. And now you're asking for 30% of all the payments that occur through the iOS client of Patreon. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
And I think, you know, I feel like what Apple doesn't seem to understand right now is that there's a financial cost for these things. And there's a reputational cost and what they seem to be failing to understand right now is that their reputation is running away from them. They, if you just consider the past year, when all the DMA stuff started, I mean, let alone all the app store and developer controversies from the past several years.
But even if you just put your mind to the last year alone, they Apple has gone in the public eye in the media has gone so quickly from being, you know, the company formerly created and run by Steve Jobs to this sort of greedy monopolistic entity that doesn't really understand creators and creatives. And I think it's quite scary to think about it. And it's even scarier that they don't see it. Sometimes you got to lose money.
That's what I think that sometimes you got to be flexible and lose a bit of money, especially when you're worth what? Three trillion dollars? Yeah. I forgot. How much money do they get from the Patreon? How much? I don't know. I have an idea. What is it? Like seriously, what is it worth? One billion, two billion, when you're worth, how many billions is a trillion? Like a thousand or so? Like I don't even know. It's so much money. It's ridiculous.
Sometimes you got to be flexible and, you know, be welcoming and reduce your commission so that you can gain in reputation, especially, especially now that your reputation is at risk because of what you're doing with AI, because of what you're doing in the European Union, trying your best to squeeze every last cent out of regulation as much as you can, because of what you've done with the crash ad, with the iPad Pro.
Like the fact that they don't understand what people in the creative field have started thinking about them is concerning. And to be so out of touch right now to say, well, people on Patreon, who cares? They got to start paying up. I don't know. It seems antithetical to what Apple stands for and it seems like a very silly business decision given the current climate in 2024. I don't understand what right Apple believes they have to for any of this money.
Like to go back to what you mentioned, Stephen, what Shelley has responsive, like it's the same for developers. It's not the same for developers. Developers get something from Apple, right? I don't believe that it is worth the 30%, but it's worth something, right? They get access to the platform, access to the app store, no cost for distribution. It's all handled by Apple. And it also, if you want to put a price to the SDK and to the IP, you can do that. So develop there is an exchange.
A YouTuber has no relationship of Apple at all for their work. So Apple want 30% of that. They can ask Patreon for money, right? If they want to and Patreon and Apple can work out 30% of what Patreon takes from creators, which I think is about 8%, which is incredible when you think about it, right? Because Patreon are providing all of the infrastructure, like similar infrastructure. And here's the thing. I believe this is the biggest risk Apple's taking reputationally when it comes to money.
Developers, people don't care about. I love developers. We love developers. Everybody listens to their show of developers. The average person, they don't think about developers. They just don't think about them, right? It's not something they think about. People don't even like paying for apps anyway, right? People don't think about it. Sure. People don't think creators, though. People love their content creators. People love their content creators.
And they want to give them money because they have that relationship to them. What's going to happen now is content creators are going to say, sign up from Patreon, but not on iOS. Sign up on the web or Android, but not on Apple. Don't sign up on Apple because you'll pay more.
It's interesting that that is a thing that happens on Meta's applications where if you go to buy an ad or a couple of other things, it's like they show you Apple markup, that for you with a call, it's something kind of cheeky. And of course, Meta can do it because their Meta and Apple is not going to. Well, so even then, Meta can't be as brazen as the YouTuber will be. Yeah. Where they will say Apple will charge you more. So you should just sign up on the web. And they are happy.
And like surely someone's thought about this, right, Apple, they're happy to take that risk when they're starting at zero dollars. Right. Every creator will start to say, don't do this. And Apple is starting their relationship with Patreon, making no money. Because it starts in November on a clean slate and everyone from that point. So Apple is willing to take that risk of starting at zero. They'll make maybe what, $100,000 maybe in the first year. Like it's not going to be a lot of money.
No. 30% of the people that sign up for Patreon's in the iOS app. Like, yeah, there are so many layers you have to go through. And then you're putting yourself in the position where every Patreon creator will say, don't sign up on Apple. Apple wants to take money as well. Apple are happy for their customers to pay more for digital goods. They don't care as long as they get there. They don't care that Spotify is more expensive. They don't care that you choose more expensive.
They don't care that any of these things are more expensive as long as they get there 30%. So like if you are a customer on Apple's platforms, you pay more than people on Android and you pay more than if you just use Safari. Apple does not care. It is perfectly fine for you to put 30% on top. They just don't care. They just want their money. And I think it is wild to me. Like this is as I think as bad as it has ever been with them for awesome.
Let me say I think it's also what I really dislike is the hypocrisy of saying that you love the environment, but also not blinking twice when it comes to charging people 30% more. It just I just cannot. I just cannot. How are you making those two together? Yeah. How does the environment get to 30%? Well, because they are trying to put up a good face when it comes to the environment, but also at the same time you don't care about people spending more money and therefore, you know, I don't know.
Like just wasting resources I guess is what bothers me. I think if I can try and maybe jump in for you just to say like the environment just they put the good guy face on. They put the good guy face on about preserving resources, but then when it comes to preserving human, you know, people's resources, time and money, you just don't care.
So like you put on a good guy face when it comes to trees and solar power, but then when it comes to like actually taking money out of my wallet, you just don't care. Or even just like apples always and continues to talk about creatives and they make their products for creatives and yeah, like the backbone of the thing different like but. That's the same vibe after that iPad ads, quishing all the instruments, right? Like is it the same? The same kind of feeling, which is not.
And here's the thing I don't understand, right? So 30% what's that for? Because see that's what I was asking like I have no idea. Apple's not distributing anything right for these people's patrons doing the distribution. They're distributing the app, VICDN. Yeah, but that's not the 30% of the creators though, right? No, no, because whenever Apple is pushed, right? They will say it's 3% for payment, and then 27% for RIP and the use of our developer tool. I mean, that's a commission.
Okay. But like that's what they say, right? That's how they break it down. Well, it should be 3% then shouldn't it? Because all the creators are using the creators you're taking the money from or they are using is the payment processing because everything else Apple is not involved in at all. Now, again, Patreon makes an app and Patreon makes money from the app.
If Apple and Patreon want to work out a scenario where Apple takes 30% of what Patreon makes, then all right, what might happen is Patreon puts up their percentage to create it as by 2%. But then that's only 2% and then they can then pay off Apple out of the difference. But we're looking at 30%. And so like Patreon take 8%. Now Apple want 30%. Incredible. It's incredible. Incredible. Why would you do this? You were doing this for $0. You're going to make $0 to stop. It doesn't make any sense.
And what's even more problematic is that I feel like there are going to be a ripple effects and there are going to be consequences because this idea that Apple is greedy and that Apple hates developers and that Apple hates creatives. It's out there now and it's growing stronger. It's not a fluke. It's an idea that is, I think it's spreading. That's what memes do, that's what ideas do.
And the ripple effects of that, because this is something that I feel internally and I got to believe that it's true for other people as well, I see these stories and it makes me feel bad about giving more money to Apple with services even though I like Apple music for example. But it almost makes me feel like just maybe out of spite or as a principle maybe I should use Spotify because I don't want to give my money to Apple. And I think it feels problem.
Like you can imagine you've got like the good side and the bad side and you just keep adding things on the bad side and then what point is it not worth it anymore. I'm still not at that point, even though I hate this. I'm still not at that point because the products and everything is so good, but you get closer and closer all the time right to the scales kind of tipping.
Maybe fair, they're like right now I feel like it's the products and I want to put my emphasis here, the existing ecosystem that's saving them because everything else from policy to developer relations and if you consider new ecosystem because I mean let's face it, the vision pro is not a success by any means.
Like it is not and it doesn't have an ecosystem and you got to believe that a part of the reason there is that because if you're a new developer today, would you just trust your entire career to Apple right now as a new developer with a new ecosystem. So what's saving them is the quality of the product from a hard work perspective, from a design perspective and the strength of the existing ecosystems.
The Mac, iOS and to an extent, iPadOS, but I do believe that they have a problem and they are not reacting to the problem. They're just making it worse. I can jump back a second to the memes thing you were talking about and like people's opinions about Apple. I think one, the responses that I've been seeing a lot of people have to this is perfectly that, which is people saying, oh well, they're doing this because of the thing that they might be losing their Google money.
That's just not correct, but it's interesting that people feel that way, but it's not correct, but it feels correct. Exactly. That's the problem. It's emblematic of where they are right now. I mean, the reason I say that is this thing with Patreon and Apple, it's been going on for a long time.
Patreon actually first spoke about this months and months and months ago and that Google thing happened last week, but like the timing of these things have just come together, but it's still the same thing. It's emblematic of the fact that Apple want, for some reason, Apple want all the money in the world. Like, I actually don't know what they are planning to do with it all, but they want all of it. That's what's is true, but like people are just like that happens, so this has happened.
And they draw that line because it is absolutely their trend right now. Because we're talking constantly about this stuff. Yeah. How many more Patreon's are they going to have to squeeze to make up for 20 billion, you know? Like a lot of Patreon's. Look out. Look out. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. The fact that people jump to that is pretty damning in and of itself.
And I just, I just keep going back to what I think Federica used to add about the reputational damage they're doing to themselves is just it's breathtaking. And for a company that, I mean, for a long time, pride itself, I think still does. I think, I think generally Apple so pride itself in making tools for creatives. Like, this is just the wrong move over, over and over and no matter how way you, which way you look at it. There's just a team that has too much power.
There is a team inside of Apple that has too much power. That's what this is. I was going to say it's almost like there are two apples within Apple. And there's the one that we love that is making great products that makes the new iPhone that makes the designs, the dynamic islands that makes the Apple pencil pro. That's the builds AirPods. Like that's the Apple we love. And that's, and that's one of them. And the other one is the Apple that manages the second Apple.
And that's the one doing all the damage, unfortunately. Yeah. John's been writing a lot about this during Fireball and he had a piece on Tuesday arguing that creator platforms to be a special category in the App Store, which I think is a fascinating idea, right? They carved out reader apps, you know, Netflix, whatever, etc. There's a go and he brings up sub stack, which is like is a problematic example in many ways. I'm not going to touch any of those things.
The way sub-sack does it is they basically have an in-app purchase for like each distinct plan within the app, which is bonkers. It is wild that someone has to go to that links to be compatible with Apple's rules that are really written for games and applications. Do you remember Twitter did this for a while when they were doing this too? Oh, yeah, to pay for Twitter blue.
It was, no, it was, it was, you could sign up to give credit as money, but they had to limit the amount of credit as they could bring on to the platform because they had to set credit. That's a new in-app purchase to you for every single one. Yeah. And well, thankfully, you know, Twitter's really well staffed, they could handle that. But Patreon is a small company. So what are you going to do? It's just, it's so disheartening.
Like, I mean, this has been going on for a few days now, like every article I read about it, I just, I'm sad because I don't, I don't want to live in a world where like Apple is making these sorts of decisions. And I think that the app store model for all of its problems, the lack of flexibility when it comes to things like this is towards the top of my list. Like, yeah, why, why are you taking 30% from this? Like, shouldn't there be a carve out for apps like this?
And yes, Patreon's probably the biggest, but there are lots of apps that are create or focused. And they all have to deal with this in one way or another. And you're just hurting people who are like want to make things for their fans. And that's, that's not a position Apple should be in. Yeah. But maybe by the next episode, there's going to be an apology and, you know, a reversal of this decision, but I don't know. This one just seems like an easy one not to do.
But yeah, like, but the fact that it got this far makes me feel like they just don't care. And they will just write it through like they don't care. I think it's a real possibility. This doesn't change. I thought the first couple of days like, Apple's going to roll this back. But this isn't, this isn't going to happen. But it's been, some product manager just have too many meetings that they shouldn't have had.
And like it didn't pass through somebody else and then Patreon posted this thing and they're like, oh my god, what are you doing? Yeah. But you hope it's going to happen. But Phil Schiller knows about this now and it hadn't changed. And I don't know if it's actually his decision, but it feels like maybe it's his decision. And that's unfortunate. On that note. I think we're done. If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about this week, they're in your podcast player.
They're also on the web relay.fm slash connected slash 514. There you can submit feedback or follow up and you can make that anonymous if you like or not anonymous. If you want to get, tell us your name or whatever. You have lots of options with us. That's what I'm saying. You can also become a member and support connected directly. Members get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week.
And they also get access to a bunch of cool relay perks, including the discord, some members only podcast and newsletter, some wallpapers and our undying love. If you want to find more of us, we're online. You can find Mike on threads and Macedon as I'm Mike. That's I'm Y. K.E. Mike does a bunch of great work over at Cortex brand and host a bunch of shows. I'm going to go to my website here across the network. Mike and I will be doing our Q&A. If you're in the relay discord, submit a question.
It'll go on our spreadsheet and we're going to pick some of those and talk about them next week. You can find Federico's writing at maxstories.net, the growing team over there doing great work. You can find him as Viteechi, Vi, T-I, CCI across social media. I am the purveyor of Performa Month. So read about that at performa.blog and you can. Yeah, but don't do Https though. Don't do that. Don't do that. Go on work. And you can find me as ISMH86 on Macedon and threads slash Instagram, whatever.
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