524: An Absolute Madlad Power User

From Relay, this is connected, Episode 524. Today's show is brought to you by ZuckDuck, NetSoot, an ExpressVPN. I'm one of your co-hosts, Frederic with EG, and it's my pleasure to introduce to this program, Ricky Benjamin Mike Hurley. Hello. Oh, so great to be here. We have now passed the halfway, like we're on the decline towards Stephen Returning,

which as I say that, I didn't mean it like that. The show is going to get worse. If you imagine there was a midway peak, we have now passed that, because I think what, we've got next week's show and then Stephen's back. So then the show, maybe it's the decline now and then Stephen returns and then the show bounces back. You know? Right. That is a very strange way of saying, oh, expressing this concept. I didn't do a very good job

with that. The decline, because you're saying it's the decline toward a happy moment. Yes. Which is a very strange image. Yeah. It's a decline toward happiness, which is what we're looking for. Yeah. It's always darkest before dawn. There you go. And so welcome to the darkness. I mean, literally today, we're going to talk about AI and the DMA. So I mean, I mean, I'm not wrong. But both, I know what you think. Then all you think we're not

doing it in the way that you think we're doing it, but we are going to do it. But before we do it, we have some follow up. So we were actually hoping that today's episode was going to be a Ricky's like that. I was hoping that that was going to be what happened. And we had a whole system in place for if there was going to be a Ricky's where we're going to get O2J to come. And he was going to pick for Stephen. And I was really excited

about that because I was wondering what that was going to be like. Because what I was, what I was wondering and maybe we can ask John this, what I was wondering is would John have actually tried to play the game or would he try to throw the game? I think John, I think John is an honest person. He would have played the actual game. He would have played it. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been good for me though. Because if

you would have won, oh boy, could I have called collusion, you know? Wow, that would have been fun for me. Well, you don't need to get into about that. You had a whole plan, didn't you? I know the two of you. I can hear it now. But anyway, we're not doing it because there are there. Well, there hasn't been an event invite. I mean, who knows? Maybe there's one and it's not until November. But basically, do you think it was going

to be an event? Not anymore. Okay. Me neither. I thought there would be me and Jason drafted. And I said, I thought that there would be an event. Like it, but an event in the sense of just like, hey, here's a video. Like I didn't think it was going to be a big song and dance. But just in the last couple of days, there have been some reporting, namely from Mark Gurman, basically saying that the max is still coming, something still happening

within the next week or so, the new max will come out. And Apple is going to be holding an event for influencers next Wednesday in LA. So my expectation now is that maybe Monday or Tuesday, there will be some press releases with some max. And I don't want to say, like if we do get the Mac mini in the way that they're saying that the rumors are suggesting, I think it's sad that they're not going to do something, but they could just put out

a little video or whatever. Like I remember the magic keyboard. When they announced the magic keyboard in like March 2020, what did they do? What did they do with the magic keyboard? Because it was March 2020. Do you remember that time? They just, they just made a video and it was just Craig Federighi just like showing it off. Oh my God. Yes. I completely

removed that. Yeah. It was the first video. It was the first one of these. Like because they didn't, I think I think it was like the first and I was just like, Oh, hey, here you go. You know what I mean? And they just did just did it. I, yeah, because it was also like all the developer documentation about it afterwards for like the hover stuff. And

yeah, I had completely removed all of that from my brain. Oh, I mean, now, that just reminded me that it was even weirder, which was that Apple made a video, but didn't post it to YouTube, but sent the video to journalists and allowed them to post it. So Jason posted it on the six colors YouTube channel and it's currently sent at 900,000 views. So I think it did good for Jason, you know, they had no idea what they were. They really didn't like they

really, really didn't know what they were doing at that point. Understandably, it was March 18, 2012, like it just all kicked off. And so I think that they were just like, they were just doing doing the best they could of what they had. And then it was not just a magic keyboard, but it was also the fact that the iPad Pro cursor existed, right? Like it was the kind of the combo. And so they did that. That was worthy of more than just

a personal watch. What an exciting day though. Like the introduction of the magic keyboard tribe, I think trackpad, I was so happy that day. I think that was the day that I bought the 2020 iPad Pro like an absolute software and just got lighter. I was like, I guess I had to be happy about that. Like such a such a strange combination of feelings because, you know, on the one hand, a pandemic with the lockdown. And immediately we really had

it bad at that moment. But on the other hand, you know, an iPad with the magic keyboard. So I will say that that time, I mean, I don't know where we are on the podcast now, but like that time in like mid March, they still had that thing of like, oh, this will fix it though. Like we'll just be at home for like a couple of weeks and like it will, you

know, we'll break it, you know, like and then we'll be okay. And then to my recollection anyway, it got like April, May and it was like, oh, no, this is like, this ain't changing huh? I thought it was just going to be a couple of weeks here. We just did the shake hands and see each other. Little did they know. Last years. Yeah. Anyway, so new max next week. That's the look. That's probably what's going to happen, right? But next week's going

to be busy, busy because we've got all the point one releases next week. Apple have got earnings on Thursday. So all this stuff's got a slot in somewhere. So I don't know what we're going to get. But the expectation right now is that they will be max. We're going to have John on the show next week with us. We'll talk about them. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Joanna stunt like so again, part of all this like Apple said that the Apple intelligence

begins next week. And because the release kind of that point one is out, we'll talk about later on the show too. But Joanna stunt set down a Creek, Federie, to kind of talk about the Apple intelligence stuff. There wasn't really anything particularly new in this like because she kind of wouldn't, but I do find it interesting at the moment to just hear

them talk about Apple intelligence. Like I don't know why, but like this, like it's specifically interesting to me to just hear Apple executives talk about it because I kind of want to get my head around where they're at a lot of the time because it's such a sticky, weird thing. And I guess the main thing that I found interesting about it is when they were talking about he was talking about photos. I can kind of like what Apple's doing with photos and how

much more the competitors are doing, I guess. And I found that interesting. You're saying like stuff that we heard before like that there was a lot of internal debate about how much they would add and they just added ketchup. But like what they're not going to do is add generative stuff into photos. I thought it was interesting. I got some breaking news for you. Okay. 18.2 developer beta is out right now. And this beta includes upcoming

features powered by Apple intelligence. I'm pretty sure this one will have a good friend image playground. So I will install this. I am. You want to be able to use it. You want to be able to use it. We were planning today to talk about my experiences of Apple intelligence in iOS 18.1. So when we get to that, I will also be able to talk about the highs of 18.2. Mike is going to prompt Apple intelligence to create images during the

show. That's what we're going to do. Mike is going to create images. English UK is now in here too. So now you know you can. So I'm going to start that. It's apparently 25 minutes to download. So I'm going to put it in the chart. Go for it where we get buddy and I'm not even sure why I'm downloading it on my phone, but whatever. There might be. There might be changes in shortcuts. You know, one feature for me. One changing

reminders, one changing notes. You're going to make me a happy boy. A little treat. A little treat for teaching. A little treat. Just a little treat. I have a question for you. So people who listen to my other podcast cortex, they kind of know that this time of year is state of the apps time. So it's like where we go through all the apps that we use and also share our home screens and stuff. And so usually as I'm preparing for this time,

I'm like cleaning up my home screens. And I kind of did some consolidation and ended up with spots for a couple of small widgets. And I was just wondering if you had any recommendations for good and cool widgets like good ones, cool ones or good and cool widgets. What do you mean good? Because cool. Just like good. Just good ones. Just good ones. Interesting.

So are you looking for something like for productivity or stuff to just because like I'm pretty sure that one of the cool ones that I've seen, maybe you're using it dark noise. Is that the name of the app? Yeah, I know. You're talking about the white noise app. They have some pretty cool, they have some pretty cool home screen and control center widgets

that are interactive and the let's just start playing sounds from there. See the thing that I struggle with regarding widgets is that the type of widget that I will use all the time doesn't exist. I just want to have kind of like on Android, I think it's possible. I just want to have a widget that that I click on it and I stay on the home screen, but I can type something with the keyboard. Right. I just want to have something for quick entry. And the only way that I can do it is

VI shortcut. That's the only way. I think you're I think you're unfortunately asking the wrong person because I I have zero widgets on my home screen. Right. That's not good. And the ones that I do have in the today page like a schmuck are calendar and remind us. That's what I don't know why you're so

bad at widgets, but it turns out you're about it. Which is so I am really passionate ones. If you have suggestions for good and cool widgets, go to connectedfeedback.com and send them in because I would like them because I was honestly expecting that Federico would have answers for me, but tens of dozens of connected feedback.com if you have suggestions for both good and cool widgets, I must be good and cool. I will give one suggestion of my own. The vital's widget is pretty good

and cool. I like it. It looks nice. And it's like that's good information for me to just have my home screen. So that's a good and cool one. So if you have good and cool widgets, connectedfeedback.com, help your boy out. This episode of Connected is brought to you by ZuckDuck. Being an adult has its high points. Like, you can eat ice cream whenever you want. You can leave a social occasion early whenever you want.

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of Relay. So you published your iPad mini review. So we spoke about the iPad mini last week. And in the meantime, you collected what collected you read sent one, which you may have collected from somewhere. I don't know. And then you have also reviewed it. Not a lot to say about the product, but I think

you had a very good take on its kind of role in your life. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And to be fair, it could have been a take about any, like it could have been at the same take for the old iPad mini. Yeah. It just so happened that I had this idea while thinking about the new one. But it just, it also applies to the previous one. I guess it's, yeah, it's this idea of a third place, right? It's basically I thought of this old commercial for the PS2 directed by David Lynch of all people.

J.G.A. being that there's this concept in sociology of a third place in the sense that most people have a first place, their home, they have a second place, their work, their office, whatever they go to work. And the third places I've referred to as these usually social places where people go to to socialize with other people to spend time around other people. They can be bookstores,

coffee shops, bars, clubs, theaters, public parks, whatever. And with that commercial in the year 2000, Sony wanted to sort of drive home this idea of the PlayStation 2 thanks to its its capabilities. It can get you all these different third places, right? Because of the boundless possibilities created by video games, you can be, you can be an adventurer, you can be a racecar driver, you can be a spy, you can be, you know, you can be whatever you want because of, you can

have a variety of third places. And that's why that commercial and the other commercials in that campaign were so strange and odd, you know, combining multiple characters, very cryptic vibe, which looked edgy and cool for the time. But that was the idea. And I was thinking about this in the context of, as people, we still pretty much function along those lines, we spend time at home, we have our responsibilities for work. And then we just hang out usually with other people.

We pass the time, we socialize with other people. And I started thinking like how does that translate to the tech products that we use? And so I thought of this analogy, you know, we have our phone that is our primary device. In a way, it's our first place, we have the second place that is our computer, because that's where we do the work, right? Most people, I would say, they do their work these days on a computer, whether it's a laptop or a tablet or a desktop, whatever.

And then we like to spend time reading watching movies, listening to music, podcasts, playing video games, whatever. What device do we use for that? And I, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, just like in that Sony commercial, there's a variety of third places. There's tablets, some people have a knee reader, others have a dedicated music player, it can be a video game console, it can be a PC handle, it can be a steam deck. You know, there's plenty of options to choose from

when you want to pass the time with something digital, right? And so that's what that's how I started thinking about the iPad Mini. I don't want to use it as an alternative to my iPad Pro. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. I don't want to use it as an alternative to my phone, because my phone as my SIM card in it, as my phone number, that's how people reach me, that's how everything else

reaches me, right? I just want to use the iPad Mini as a third device, as a third place for just a handful of tasks that are just for me reading usually articles, watching my YouTube Q, watching the occasional TV show, you know, just streaming something in a device that is more comfortable than my iPad Pro and bigger than my iPhone. So that was the idea. And yeah,

not that I had a lot to say about everything else, because the iPad Mini is so similar. I mean, it's literally the same chassis with just slightly different specs inside. I mean, a lot of this job at points is finding stories about the technology that's not the technology, right? Like that's that's the work, right? I think you could just write the very, you could just

write a very technical review about this product, and that could be the end of it. But being able to communicate something more interesting is what separates somebody who's good at this and who's not in my opinion. So I was very surprised. I mean, for this particular product, I was very surprised that anybody could have a really interesting take, but I think that you had one. Yeah. Just because of how similar it is. And I don't think Apple is hiding that, right?

Like this product exists solely so they can have an iPad Mini that has Apple intelligence on it. Which I agree with the thinking, right? Like I agree with the thinking. I would like to see them do more. I believe they will do more, but for the time being, they just want to update this product because it is a relatively expensive product to have a better chip in it. Because there are so many other iPads that can support these features just because of the chip that they

have in them. So I'm happy that they did it. The third place idea is really interesting to me, especially in the contrast of the the Sony ad that you're mentioning, because like it's more about like physical places. And you talk about this a lot in the article two, right? Of like the kind of the idea of this is like they're actually physical places. But our lives have changed so much since that point. And really the devices are emblematic of social work. Yes.

Now more than ever, right? And so I guess there is something particularly interesting in the third place idea that it shouldn't. It shouldn't really have access to any of these things. And I think it's the thing that you hear people talk about a lot, but not in these words, whether like I want a Kindle because it has no apps on it. Or I want to, you know, the thing that every blogger has said forever in history and forever into infinity, I want to dedicate a writing computer.

Or similarly to like, you know, like what you're doing, like I want to set up an iPad that has different apps on it. It's like what I'm doing, right? We spoke last week about my two iPads. And one of them is set up with just a specific set of apps on it to accomplish a specific type of work, which is in a physically separated part of my studio. And like that is its own place. And I feel, like I was actually journaling about this today, like I, I have a different feeling when I'm

working at that desk. It's actually just like very mentally healthy and a vigorous for me because I'm in this different place. And just in general, in my studio, I have three distinct places, which is funny to think about. Or for really, I have a lounge area. I have my desk where I sit and work with, I have the desk where I record and then I have my product design desk. So like,

I am definitely of the mind of like separating these things out as much as you can. And I even similarly to a point have this for some apps, like for example, if you take me and Steven, we, I message about personal stuff and we talk in Slack about work stuff and we never cross them, which is that is like a thing that I find to be super valuable to be able to maintain personal relationships, to be able to work with, to kind of like try and separate the work and the personal

a little bit. But anyway, that's just like a long way around to say, like I really like that idea. Do you, do you, I mean, obviously there's more than three places now. I think that's the, the thing that has changed, right? Because we have games consoles. Some of us have like 25 games consoles. Yeah. Some of us do. Some of us. Some of us. How is your second ANO did? What is going to see? Well, I'm going to say that there's going to be a third one. I know it

is going to be a third one. So that's going to be interesting for you. But yeah, I thought it was just, I just thought it's an interesting idea. And it is about, I think, as our lives, our like online lives and our real lives have become so intermingled, especially in the last five years, just like in general, everything everybody feels this way. And also like where you work, maybe different to where it was five years ago, then the need to have a little bit of separation is good.

And I don't think it needs to be a device though, right? Like I do think that Apple has done a good enough job now of being able to let you customize devices with focus modes and stuff like that. Like there is an element of being able to give something to give you even just one device, like separate feel. And you can do certain things like concern and apps, often, certain focus modes and stuff like that. So you could try and create that third device on your

iPhone or your iPad. But yeah, I think it's an interesting idea. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think obviously there's always going to be the tension between, oh, I want to be able to do everything on one device and be more minimalistic with the hardware that I use versus I just want to have dedicated devices, you know, specialized devices, each doing what it's supposed to do. And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I think and actually, I even think it's okay to change

how you feel about that throughout your life. Like maybe there's a period of your life where you want to consolidate where you want to be more minimalistic. And maybe there's another season of your life where you just want to be, you know, you want to take the maximalist approach and be like, I want to have a dedicated device for every single thing I do and be very specialized in the computers that I use. I don't think you're supposed to, I think it's okay to be fluid in that sense

with the technology that you use. And so maybe I enjoy using the iPad Mini now. Maybe I want in a year and that's fine. I think, I think we have gotten so especially, this is especially a thing in the Apple community where you're supposed to make a decision and stick with it. It's silly. It's a silly thing. Use whatever brings you joy in any season of your life and move on

if it doesn't anymore. That's what I think. Yeah, I mean, this isn't the podcast for today, but I think that in general, there is a mentality that it feels like in today's society that any opinion that you make, you're bound to for the rest of your life. No, yeah, that's so you hinted at this in your cortex episode like the follow up to AI. Yeah. Like it's so silly. Like when the reality around you

change you so quickly, why are you supposed to stay the same? Yeah, right. It's silly. So, I guess social media should be a femoral and I guess it's the statement I make in which I do believe in. I kind of think any social media should be something sticks around forever. Thank you Jack Dorsey for creating that idea for us that that that tweets would not delete. And there we are. Yeah, there we are. Anyway, this is the jelly scrolling. I cannot see. Apparently the only

person who can see the jelly scrolling is David Pierce at the verge. Maybe David. Maybe David. Maybe David. You're looking to that. Why five 16 set of why five six? I hope I'm so pro. I do think that I mean, I haven't seen one of these iPad menus yet, but I can imagine a scenario in which it is still there, but is is is significantly fixed because lots and lots of displays have this problem. But yeah, it's it's it's mostly imperceptible. And if David seeing it, maybe David is

just more sensitive to it. Like in a way that like, you know, Stephen can't use promotion kind of thing, you know, right? Maybe son or your book. You just see it more than others, but it does seem like from reports from people who have had it and also reports of reports of reports of conversations. Like Jason, snow had happened to him that that Apple seems to have addressed it, even though they're not specifically saying as such, but hey, they've made some changes to display control

or whatever. Right. Right. That's how they answer. Yes. But yeah, I mean, right now, this iPad mini is going to be without a case, the tablet that I keep on my nightstand. Why not? Why not? Okay. So I like the smartphone. I just I like it. I like it. But the way I'm going to use it, this device is not going to travel. It's one less thing I need to like physical thing I need to carry about. I do worry about because like when I'm going to read, I'm just going to take off,

take out the smartphone, you're like, anyway, I'm just I'm just not going to use it. So I use my phone without a case. Why should I use my iPad mini with a case? Yeah. I know I agree with that. I do think iPad cases provide utility that iPhone cases don't, but if you don't feel you need it, that's fine. Right. Like in that you can they can stand, you know, what I mean, you can like stand than iPad. But if you don't need that, that's great. And then also it makes the device feel thinner

if you don't have a case on it. Exactly. That's nice. That's nice. Yes. Maybe popsock on it. You know, say how you feel? I actually thought about it. You know, does it? So help me out here. Do they live residue in the back? Well, stick it. You have to stick it. Right. But is it like is it like that microsuction thing or is it actually? I have went when I was using them stock, they were microsuction. I don't know what they're using for adhesive now. Because now I just

use the max if once. Right. But there's no max. There's no max. I'm sure that they use the microsuction, but I don't know for sure. I look into it. Yeah. Look into it. This episode is brought to you by NetSuite. What is the future hold for business? Ask nine experts. You'll probably get more than ten answers. Some will say rates will rise or fall. Others might say inflation is going to go up or down. The only way business owners can know for sure is if someone

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Connected. Thanks to NetSuite for their support of this show and relay. So, some time ago, I think it was in March, we created a new game called the EUEs, where we made a selection of picks based on what we thought could happen with the DMA. And we set this, I think, a month in advance and nothing changed. None of the things that we thought could change changed. So then we will like, well, we'll just kick this can down the road

and score it six months from now. Those six months have passed. So we're now going to look back at our predictions and see what's changed. I will put a link in the show notes to the wonderful rickies.co and rickies.net because they have, as they always do for all of our games, put together a list of the picks that we made in case you want to score along at home, spoiler alert, but there's only really one way of scoring any of this. And realistically, the answer is

none of it is being scored in a way which is good, I suppose. So let's go through it. So we're going to score this velocity event because this was the agreement. We had two rounds. We made two picks each. Do you want to talk about your first pick? I said, the CTF, the core technology fee is considerably altered, especially for web distribution.

So I spent a bunch of time today, Federica. I did. I spent some time on on both of our behalf digging through, oh, it says I had a horrible one and digging through the support documents on the developer forums and so it's a developer website to try and see if anything had changed of any of this stuff. That's fine. And so this was maybe, okay, so I found an article from Juliet Mac stories Mac rumors. This Mac rumors, not stories. They talk about rumors, not stories.

You talk about stories, not rumors. Couple of quotes. So there have been changes to the CTF. The CTF has in fact been considerably altered. First, independent and small developers who are no revenue at all will not have to pay the CTF. Second, to address fears of the CTF, causing outrageous fees for an app that suddenly goes viral, Apple has implemented a three-year on-ramping process for small developers. Okay. So it has been considerably altered. But

not, not for especially for especially for web distribution. There have been zero changes that are specific for web distribution. This is not a point. But Federica, we're not bound by any rules. Well, the CTF is considerably altered especially for web distribution. The CTF has been considerably altered. I think it's a half point. But we don't have, we don't do half points. There are no rules for this game. We can do whatever we want. I can give you 15 points for that. Okay. Okay.

So this is half a point. You're still half point. I say that's a half point. I get my half point. Yeah. Finally. Take your half point. You got a half point. There are no rules. We establish zero rules for this game. So that's a half point. I say that is a half point for you. I've been waiting for a half point for half my life, really. I do think we used to give half points, which is why we ended up getting rid of half points. The sweet cent of a half point. Yeah. Because there are no rules.

My first pick was Member of Good Standing Language Removed. So this was the idea that for web distribution, you had to be quote a Member of Good Standing in the App Store. Is it still in there? Yeah. Yeah. They still talk about that. So I found this today. It's currently two, it says to be a Member of Good Standing of the App of Developer Program for two continuous years or more.

This is one of the ones where I believe the EU has been like, you can't say that. But nothing's changed yet because they're kind of the last that I paid significant attention to DMA stuff. Because I've decided to take a little bit of a mental break from that wheel because they just don't find it to be very enriching. Really, it seems like that currently the EU and Apple are in a bit of a, they just cracked their heads together and nothing's changed. Well, like, the EU is like

you're in breachable, a bunch of stuff that hasn't kind of like handed out anything yet. It's the last that I remember. And one of the things that they pointed to us is Member of Good Standing thing. But nothing's changed yet. And so Apple's still saying that you have to be Member of Good Standing. Okay. So there's zero points for me. Steven said, developers aren't required to use Apple's scary screens for alternate payments and linking out to the web for purchase. These are still in

place. Okay. This is like, I think another thing that is that is still kind of being contested as whoever they can do this. But currently in the developer documentation, they still have the, I think they're called PSPs, which is always funny to me. PSPs. What is, I'm trying to find what it stands for, but I think it's like purchase. We call it all the time. Something. Oh, no, it's, PSPs are like the payment

service providers, but they're like the payment service provider screens. And it still says like, this app doesn't support the private and secure payment system. You're going to be going out. That it right. So it's got all of that language in there still. So they haven't removed those. So at the end of round one, you scored half a point. Okay. Good. Nice. Round two.

My peak was Phil Schiller replaced as head of the initiative. And no, as far as we were aware, that has not happened for all we know for all we know Phil is still so hanging in there at the DMA table. You know, I mean at the beginning of the year, he was giving a bunch of quotes about it. We haven't really heard anything about it since, but we haven't gotten it. We haven't gotten anywhere. So far. Okay. What did you say next? Mine is the CTF is removed for fully free apps.

They did that right? We said that. I mean, yeah. Half a point to you. I think it's kind of because the language is independent and small developers who are no revenue or all will not have to pay the CTF. Okay. So somebody is fully removed for in some circumstances, but not half a point. So circumstances, I would agree with you. I think that's half a point.

Half a point. I love this. I love this. I really, I think this is fantastic. And Stevens round two was changes to rules about apps being installed from alternative source. Now here's the thing. Stevens picked. I don't know why we allowed the wording this because it's like not all what he was. It does not describe what he was talking about. Today, I had to go back and listen to this part of the podcast from when he made the pick. What he was talking about was

because I and it's funny because he made his pick. And then my immediate thing was to him. What does that mean? And then he explained what he actually meant. So I don't know why we we just kind of let it roll the way that they're but what he was talking about is let's say you have Delta installed, right? And from the from the app store and you download all store and then you download Delta that it should one should replace the other that does not happen. Like the what he wanted is that like

apps installed from other sources could just update themselves over another app. And that seems to also not been changed at all. And in fact, I found wording that said that like you know when when they're talking about like what happens if you go away for a month or whatever that you lose your access to your applications and you you have to re download the from another store if you move or whatever and you may lose data. So they haven't changed that either. So

so essentially the main change is that the CTF did get altered. And because of that we both go off the point and see if the school zero points. Good. Good. That's what he that's what he gets for being away. That is when he has points. Yeah. Yeah. Take that take that as a sabbatical know how points. Yeah. How'd you like that now? Cool. So we won. Right. Is that is that the conclusion? I think so. I mean, okay. And I think let me take a look here. So what do we get? What do we get

for winning? Um nothing. But we'll both walk away with half a point. This is the saddest victory ever. We got nothing because we got to have points. There is a lot of conversation to discord as you can currently imagine that these things would go about what the actual scoring rules were for this. I don't remember setting any scoring. No, no, we didn't. I don't think but whatever the scoring rules are, me and you both got half of what it could have possibly been.

Yeah. Me and you we got half of the truth and we will share the victory. Yeah. How about that? See? We yeah, this is a this is a useless victory to be fair, but it's still a victory. So you know when you close your laptop today and you go home and you'll be on a train, you'll be thinking man, I want something today. It doesn't mean anything, but I want. I will say though, like being this far away from us making these picks, I am really surprised that nothing significant has changed

in a lot of these areas. It all kind of stopped. Now to be honest, it's not like in Europe you can expect regulators to be working in the summer, right? Special essential Europe. Okay, that's a good point. So maybe things will pick up again before Christmas, but realistically, if it's like in Italy, you have a month before people start taking time off again. And we'll talk about it again in mid-January. We'll see. I feel like as well that there's just like enough stuff has happened

that basically somebody needs to do something now. Like someone needs to do something significant. Either the EU needs to actually find them or Apple needs to say screw you. Like one of these things has to happen now, I think for there to be any meaningful actual change to this scenario. Because all it has been for the last year or whatever, it's just how about this? No, how about this? That's just going to carry on forever. One of them needs to actually make some kind of big

statement to make, I feel like some kind of significant change. I'm not necessarily saying I want any of those things to happen, but like something significant needs to occur to move this forward. I was thinking the other day, like as I tend to do, I was thinking about the 30% cut. I think about it a lot. I was just like, just imagine just like WWE see and they're like, look, we have some news. We're changing it. Okay, we're just people would just be so happy.

I was thinking about the Vision Pro, the Vision Pro App Store, and I was thinking about AR glasses and like an AR App Store. They need to change that dynamic. That dynamic has to change to be able to move forward. I think if we get to a scenario where there are these metaglosses and then there are these Apple glasses and matters like, come do what you want on our store, whatever, we're cool. Which it's not how they work right now, but they could do that if they

wanted to. I think that could cause a problem. I just feel like they could, but I don't think it's going to happen, but I just want them to do it. I just want them to just loosen it. That would be something to see. I don't think they're going to do it. No, but I want them to. Can we talk about TeamCook using 12 different devices on a daily basis? Yeah, I really want to talk about this. Can you contextualize where this idea comes from?

So there was a Wall Street Journal profile of TeamCook, which I have not read the entire thing. I've just been reading little bits and blobs of it so far, but there is an article on the Verge written by Wes Davis, which is also a great article because Wes tries to live their life the best that they can. Like somebody who just uses every Apple product imaginable, it's a fun take on this article, but it's coming from a quote in the Wall Street Journal magazine,

where this is a quote from the article. While discussing his daily routine, TeamCook told Ben Cohen in this, sorry, this is a combo of from the Verge and the Wall Street Journal. So I read it from the Verge. While discussing his daily routine, TeamCook told Ben Cohen in the WSJ magazine interview that he every day uses every product. In the story, he mentioned specifically using an iPhone and Apple Watch AirPods and then for work two different MacBooks,

an iMac, a Vision Pro, and an iPad Pro. So this is every day. TeamCook every day uses an iPhone and Apple Watch and AirPods two different MacBooks and iMac, a Vision Pro and an iPad Pro. Okay, so the first half is fine. It's okay. It's normal. I also use an iPhone and Apple Watch and AirPods every day. Yeah. It's the second part of the sentence. Yeah. Now again, very aware of the fact that we've both said that we use multiple iPads, right? So that's on us.

We're basically TeamCook, but I don't know why you need two different MacBooks. I don't know what that's for. So let's assume that you have one MacBook at home and one MacBook on your desk. But then why are you using a laptop at all if you're not taking it with you? Not the problem is two MacBooks plus an iMac. Yes. Plus an iPad Pro and a Vision Pro.

Okay, so maybe the Vision Pro you're using at night. Let's just say the TeamCook and he said that before he watched Ted Lasso on the ceiling, I believe that was a quote from last year or this year. Where do the two MacBooks and iMac and an iPad Pro go during the day? That's what I don't understand. It's all those computers, especially because the iPad Pro maybe is walking around Apple Park holding an iPad Pro. He likes to take his walks and he's doing email,

walking, grabbing an iPad Pro as a tablet with a pencil. But the two MacBooks plus an iMac. Why are you doing there? So I don't know. I think this is more of a, I kind of want to say publicity stunt. I don't think it's a publicity stunt, but I think it's like, yeah, sure, I use everything. I mean, maybe. Look, you don't have to say you use two different MacBooks, right? Like that answer thing is to say, I use an iPhone and an Apple Watch AirPods, a MacBook and iMac

Vision Pro and iPad Pro. But it's the two MacBooks thing that I'm getting stuck on. Because I'm like, what are you? Why? What are you doing? I love it. I just love the thought of who I'm using or these computers. I don't know why I'm using an iMac. Why is he just not using one of his laptops plugged into a studio display? Does he use a studio display? I want to know more. This is the thing, like, you know, if I was ever offered the opportunity to interview Tim Cook,

right? By and large, it would be pointless. Let's be realistic, right? In the sense of, I might enjoy it, but everyone's going to be unhappy, right? Because I'm not going to be able to get answers to any of the questions you want. Like, I'm not going to be able to get an answer from him about the DMA, let's say, right? Like, we all know the pitfalls of these things. Like, you're not actually going to get answers to questions that you that people that the listeners want you to get because

Apple is not going to give that information willingly, right? That information is given when they choose to give it. You can't just say to them, tell me about this. People think that if you just ask these questions, you'll get answers, which is just madness, right? Like, there's no idea. People have no idea how these interviews work. Yeah. That's the problem. You can ask whatever you want, but they're just going to say I'm not going to answer that. And so like,

then you've wasted everybody's time. Not also it's never going to be part of the interview that you see or listen to. That's just not how it works. Yeah. And like, yeah, yeah, people have no idea. And also, I mean, at least for me, I don't feel the need to go around making enemies of people. Like, I don't want to be combative, right? I don't want to sit down with Tim Cook and then make him like annoyed at me. Like, why would I do that? Now, I am

CEO of the biggest company in the world. I am going to make you willingly uncomfortable. That's what I'm going to do with my life today. And I will never be able to interview you again in the future. And yeah, that's a solid plan. Why not? But anyway, and like, this is why I'm happy to not be a journalist, right? I know journalists. I have no, I was going to say I have no ethics. That's

not what I mean. I have zero ethics. No, but I'm not bound by like the journalistic code or whatever that everybody else puts their right hand on the AP style guide and their left hand to the sky and make some kind of statement. I don't know. Do you think that's how that's how the do you think that's how Steven did it? Probably. Right. Okay. Probably. But what I would want to ask him, like, if I got the opportunity to speak to Tim Cook, I want to ask him about this, right? Like,

I want to go through in my new detail how he uses his products every day. Like, what is he doing on them? Like, what devices he pick up first in the morning? What does he do on it? Where does he do his email? Where does he send his messages? Like, and there is some of that in this article, right? We're like, they're talking about the group threads. Did you catch this? He's like, Oh, do you have a name or group threads? He's like, Oh, I can name a group threads. He's like,

I have all of my roommates. I've now called it roommates. I'm incredible. That's what I want. And I do like the Ben Cohen got some of that stuff out of him. But like, I, I, that's what I want. So Apple, if you're out there and you want Tim Cook to talk about exactly how he uses all of these devices every day, call me and that's what we'll talk about. And I tell you what, that would be

the most interesting interview I could get out of the man. Like, I know that for sure. Because I'm with all I have a good time with nerd out about like the benefits of one screen size over another, you know, super great. But Tim Cook is an is an absolute mad lab power user is what we've learned. I'm still thinking about this two Mac books plus an iMac plus an iPad pro. I cannot get over that. But okay, two Mac books, two Mac books, two Mac books, an iMac, yeah, and an iPad pro.

Yeah, these are not for some price. Hang on a minute. He just says this one big screen that he just keeps on folding. And he puts it in different places. Wow. That's how it works. Who would have thought it? This episode is brought to you by Express VPN. Going online without Express VPN is a bit like driving a car without insurance. Why take the necessary risk when you connect to an unencrypted network in cafes, hotels, airports, networks that you have no control over your data may

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today by visiting expressvpn.com slash connected. That is EXP RISS VPN.com slash connected and you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. That is expressvpn.com slash connected. I thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and relay. So next week, iOS 18.1 is coming out and the release can't get us out. And we mentioned it earlier,

iOS 18.2 is now out and my phone is very hot but it is installed. So I have that there for them if and when we want to get to that because I've not even done anything with the X. I don't even know where to start. Like I don't know where to go or to start with. Maybe you can help me with that. But you wanted to know a little bit about how I have been using Apple Intelligence, I think.

Yeah. So ask me what you want to know. I don't know. I was just because I think I've been talking to John about it and he's had a completely different type of experience. And so I just wanted to know like his Apple Intelligence is something that you use on a regular basis. Is Apple Intelligence something that if you went into settings and turned it off, is it something that you would miss immediately or like what's your relationship with it? How much

do you use it? Is it as it becomes something you rely upon or just is it still a gimmick? Like I want to know. Yeah. How you live with it? How you work with it? Well, I think at this point, there would be features that I would miss and there would be features that I wouldn't. Like I could just go do something else. I could just do something else. So I think the features that I would miss would be summaries. And like these are summaries of various things. So I have come to really like the

notification summary stuff. And it is not perfect. Like that's for sure. Right. Like there's some stuff that it summarizes where really the thing that is being summarized like this app probably shouldn't have summarization applied to it because it just doesn't make sense. Like for example, I have an example, right? I'm going to turn this off because it doesn't work for me. Like I have notifications

for overcasts. They just go in for the my notification center. So like I can see when new podcasts that I like have posted. And overcast notifications have the episode description in them, right? Now episode descriptions for two different podcasts merged together doesn't make sense because these are two incredibly different things. Like for example, I have the episode description for today's episode of the Panatic that me and Brad made because I

subscribe to my own shows to make sure they post. And then also the summary for the techery daily update. And like one is about pens and pencils and one is about technology. So like when they are put together as if it's one source of data, they're so disparate from each other that it doesn't make sense to summarize it because what it does. So I will read this to you. Netflix's margin expansion highlights its business model differentiation. Tykonda October continues with pencil kit buildout.

Like one is about Netflix. The other is about Brad's pencil case. Now like together that isn't helpful, right? But there are lots of things that are like the best ones by far are like the home kit stuff, right? So like I have I get a notification from my front doors open closed. And you know, prior to this feature in point one, I would just tap it and there'd be like a list of 20 things, right? Maybe during a day. But now I look at it and it's like multiple

statuses have changed for the door. It was most recently closed. Like that is just like a good piece of information to get from the notifications. Like that is that is a better notification than door closed plus 20 more, right? I think that there is there is a benefit to that. And similarly, like if somebody sends me a long Slack message, it summarizes it. That is helpful because I can get a sense of what the message is in one sentence. Like by and large, most of these things are good.

Like I will say that there are a lot of viral ones. And even in that interview that I mentioned earlier with Joe and his turn and Craig Vittorighi, Joanna brought up. There was like somebody who got a bunch of messages that they were broken up with. And it was like super sturm or it was like relationship is over, request for your heart requesting stuff to be picked up or something like that.

And Craig was like and Craig did a great job answering this, I think. He was like, yeah, I mean, that is a bit like straightforward, but also it's not great to be broken up with by text anyway. So there's kind of no good way in which you're going to get the information. And I was like, that is a great answer. Because like, okay, the notifications got condensed, but you would have just seen the notification where I would have said I'm sorry, but it's over.

So like, is it really that much different? It's just like that was the content of the message. But like I do feel like getting some of these summaries can be really good. And like I feel the same about you get these email summaries now too. So there are two ways that you can get some reason emails. And like seeing the in my inbox, right, you get a list of messages and you can

choose to have a summary of the message as the preview. A summary of the contents is better to me than just seeing, I might how you over and over and over again from different messages, right? Like getting a message instead of seeing like the preview of like, I might how are you to be like, you know, this message includes details about the order and it has an invoice. Like that is just a better preview, right? Then the ways in which people would start an email. So I like that. I think

that is good. I also like that a lot of marketing emails that I get. Sometimes it'll be like talking about a new product line. It includes a 20% discount code of like, well, that one's maybe interesting to me because it's I can see that there is stuff going on in this email. So I like that. And

similarly, when you're in an email, you can press the button to summarize it for you. And for some email newsletter, I subscribe to I will press that button to kind of get an overview of what is in the email to decide if I want to dig into any of the topics because I subscribe to some email newsletters where I don't feel the need to read everything. I think that is healthy. Like I'm not like, I'm just going to read all of it. And before I would be like, if I don't have the time for this,

I'm just going to have to get rid of it. But now if I don't have the time, I can get a quick summary to see if maybe I do want to jump three two thirds down the email to read this one thing. So I like it for that too. So the summary stuff is my favorite. And like it. And if that was gone, I would miss it. That's kind of the only thing currently that I would significantly miss. So other things that I mean, I've tried the writing tools, you know, like the writing tools that

I built into the system. I find them good for proofreading. I like the condensing feature to kind of just make something shorter. And but the best one I think is making a list of stuff. Like that's just helpful because making lists is annoying. Like if you have like a bunch of text and you want to turn it into a list, being able to say like press one button, make this a list, that's just like a great feature for a computer to do. And like computers don't do a good job of that.

And like that, this is like a good thing for your computer to just be like, here's a list for you. Right. Right. I find the tone of some of the rewriting stuff. You know, like we like make this happy, make this serious to just be way over the top. Like they need to dial that tone back. Like if I've ever tried to get a tone change on something, like I'm like, you know, I write something out and like write this in a cheerful way or a professional way, I feel like they go way to

extreme in that tone request. And like what I like about a tool like chat GPT for this is you can specify yourself what that tone should be. Right. So like you can say write this in a such and such tone and like one of the things that I like to do when I'm doing these tools is I keep my style of writing, but just make this better. And I find that to be pretty good. And this is where I feel filled tools like this a better. And I believe you can create them from wrong. I think that I have

actually made some tweaks like that for point two. Yeah, it seems like you can now prompt the system for to ask for more specific changes. This is something that I'm going to try and understand how it works. As we are doing the show now, I writing tools is to describe your change. So that's just up to top. So previously you would just use the buttons and now it's now you can just type in a prompt. So here's a user from fact for you. Here's a fun fact for you. Tell me.

I logged out of my Italian App Store account logged in with my old existing US Apple ID. I can use Apple Intelligence. So I requested access to image play around, which is a separate Q. It's things. All right. Okay. And Apple Intelligence is now downloading. That's what it says in settings. And I got writing tools in notes. I'm also signing in the chat GPT. Oh, look at this. This is what I wanted. You have an option to confirm chat GPT requests.

Where do you get this? So chat GPT is in the Apple Intelligence like settings. There is an option called extend Apple Intelligence in series like one of it's like halfway down the page. I guess I don't have it because it's still downloading. Yeah. And so you've got chat GPT and I get an option says, Syria says confirm chat GPT requests and it's turned on. So I will turn that off because I don't I want it to get the information for

me. And I've signed in anyway. So it will have my stuff because that's how you do this because also at the bottom of writing tools now, it says compose. And that is where you can just straight up whatever you want, right? Write me a message about this, you know? So I can be like, oh, here we go. I'm going to do this on a group chat. Who is Federico Fatici? So I've just put that into into writing tools in iOS and it composes a message, which is working right now. Oh, interesting.

So I'm doing the setup for chat GPT. Yeah. There's an hour as set up screen for chat GPT. And you can you can say enable chat GPT or optionally, this is non not highlighted by default. You can use chat GPT with an account. Yeah, I've signed in. Oh, and to what benefit? I don't know, man. I don't know. I do think that they're I think that I did say something about this that there was some benefit to signing in. But I have

an account. So I've just signed in anyway, maybe it saves my questions. I don't know. But like now I just sent this in our group thread. I just said who is Federico Fatici and it just gave me a chat GPT on. Okay. Now that you show straight up composed from nothing built in to basically anywhere on the system. Okay. So can you describe with two truths and one lie? Oh, interesting. What a waste. Mike early. I've never thought to ask an AI

a question in that way. That's hilarious. To to to be like give me two truths on a lie. That's no unable to create content at this time. Oh, no lies. They're not allowed lies. No lies. Again, this might be because stuff's downloading for you. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff is downloading. I guess there's a big asterisk to all of this conversation, which I'll say to you and I'll say to the rest of listeners like like it. Or I hate it. I'm using it. Right. Like I understand

why people don't like it. I feel like I've made it very clear that I wished that Apple would have done things differently. I wish that all of these services would have done things differently. But I considering these things exist. I am using them and I want to see what they can do for me. And I have found many ways in my professional life that these tools do help me. Like today to try and dig through to get the answers in the DMA stuff. I was beginning my searches with chat GPT

and then going out to the link that it was providing because searching Google was terrible. Like any of these services that are attached to the internet are better search engines than Google. Like they just are like this is the case for complexity. This is the case for chat GPT. I know how bad they are. You know, like I want them to pay the price for the copyright lawsuits. I want them to lose. I want them to have to pay because they have stolen stuff. But if we just ignore that

for a second, these are better search engines than Google. I will not use Gemini. I am sure like Gemini is as good. But I find it easier to get what I'm looking for by asking these services than by Googling it. Because Google, like a straight Google search, it's looking for the words I'm searching. But that isn't always going to get me the answer. Right. Like having a level of understanding and interpreting and being able to do thousands of searches, right. However many

searches it's doing, gets me the answers that I want. And so, anyway, I don't need to argue my point for now. Siri, I like the UI, right? Right. But that's kind of it. It's going off. I'm sorry. I knew that was going to happen because I was way too forceful in the way that you said. The UI is nice, but it's incredibly inconsistent and it's still pushing me to the web. Now again, I am hoping that that is about to change of 18.2 because I do believe some of the things that I ask and it's

like, I'm going to go to the web for you. If it just sent that question to chat you be T, I would get the answer I wanted. And like, my hope is now with point two, which again, we're not used in enough detail, that that is going to be a significant change in the usefulness of this assistant that you can ask it complex questions. And it gives you an answer rather than saying, I searched this on the web for you. Like, I think that is going to be hugely beneficial,

but I have to see how it goes. Something that is absolutely terrible is the smart replies and messages. Okay. I don't understand whose messages they look at to try and understand these replies, because I have never once spoken the way that these messages want me to speak. Like, absolute psychotic behavior. Like, it says bananas. Like, ha ha, comma, that's funny exclamation mark. If I sent that message to anybody that knows me,

they would think my phone had been stolen because I don't write like that. Like, I believe my theory on this, this is just a theory. My theory on this is that this is the exact same system as like the predictive replies before, but they've just they've made it look like Apple Intelligence. Because I can tell zero difference. And I feel like you have every message I've ever sent. Put it into an LLM. That would be great. Right. Just put it into an LLM. That's on device for me.

You can basically just help me write my messages. It would make my own uh, uh, auto correct better, right? Because it would be auto correcting in the way that I speak. Like, that's what they I hope they will do one day. Like, why not? You have I have given this device. Hundreds, I think a million i messages. I think it says I've said. Millions of i messages. Like, for sure. That is you have every way I would ever speak to someone.

Like, that is the true smart reply. That's not just at that point. It's not just replying. Like, giving me options on how to reply. That is like straight up. You know what I would say to this question, right? It's kind of scary if you think about it. Like, you know how to fake me if you want to. Sure. But I think it's fine as long as I'm able to decide to send it. Oh, yeah. Right. Like, sure. Yes. That you can just you can give me a response to this. Like, you know me. So help me.

Because currently the smart replies, which it's already showing me, they'd it's not a point in being there because they're there of zero use. Like, the most I have ever done is tap one and then edit it, which is like at this point, I may as well just written it on to myself. Males priority messages. I don't find to be reliable or have any kind of discernible patterns to what is considered to be a priority message. It just doesn't really seem

to do anything. And then I think the last thing that I've used is the memory stuff in photos. Mail just got the new design in 18.2. Yeah. Looking at it now. Now that is an 18.2 thing, right? 18.2. Yeah. Look at that. No, I don't know. Mail categories. I got primary transactions, updates and promotions. That's what I have. No, but I'm already confused by it. So I'm going to look because for example, I have one message that is in both transactions and primary.

Sure. Why not? No, why would any even has a little transactions icon next to it? No, I would do that. Finds the messages that matter most. Oh, in primary and organize everything. I need to dig into that. But I'm excited about that featured in general because I like email all the email apps do this. Mail should do this. I should not have to see receipts in my main inbox. You should know it's a receipt. Put it somewhere else. Something that's great. So I'm looking forward

to that. I mean, looking ahead to 18.2 right and beyond. So chat to your integration. I'm excited about because I just want to see what I saw about. I'm intrigued about priority notifications, which I don't know if it's going to be in point two. Because I've been playing around with the reduce interruptions focus mode. I think it's interesting. I haven't I'm not using it fully yet because I'm waiting until I install all of this stuff on my Mac too because I don't want to be

on a focus mode that one device can't understand. Even though weirdly, one of my focus mode options on my Mac is reduce interruptions, even though I'm not running point one. It's doing its thing out there. But like I think that that could be interesting. And I feel like I've been using it on my cortex brand iPad. I've had it on all the time. And I think it does do a decent job of surfacing some stuff. And so I'm intrigued to see how priority notifications works.

I'm genuinely horrified about image playgrounds. I just I I've requested access and I have to wait. So this is probably going to have to be something we follow up on next week. I requested access immediately, but I don't have it yet. And so I'm going to keep opening and closing until the episode's done. We have visual intelligence, which I which I don't really understand what I'm

supposed to do with this. I'm supposed to walk around walk around them point at stuff. I can you know when I tap this iPhone captures what's in view and sends the information to chat GPT for information. Visual intelligence with camera control. Learn about the objects and places around you and get even more information about what you see. Okay, so there's two buttons. Oh, this is hilarious. So I just showed it my desk, which has a play date on it. And it says this image features a desk set up

of a Game Boy Advance SP. For me, it's searched for a poster that I have and it said I'm going to search with Google and they provided Google search results to similar products. Or I'm going to take the picture again and ask. And the ask button does nothing because I guess Apple intelligence is still downloading on my device. Yeah. But I can use half the things and the other half just doesn't work. Here's the thing. The fact that I can hold my phone up to anything and ask

chat GPT what it's looking at. And then come follow up the questions. This could actually be pretty interesting. I'm going to point my phone at your profile picture. Oh, Oh, interesting. I got a search. No, it's just finding pictures of computers. Okay. Well, I've done it to you. I've taken I've taken it. I've just scanned my picture and it says this is a digital profile picture of a man with curly hair and a beard set against the warm colored

background. The use of vibrant hues suggests an attempt to convey an approachable and friendly demeanor possibly used in social media or communication platforms. Do you feel like that's a good description? Yeah. What you're looking at? Yeah, I think so. Is it a friendly and approachable? I'm going to press the search image button, which does a reverse Google image search. No results. So we're doing our best over here. I think that the Google image search part is genuinely pointless.

I think that they just didn't want this to be the chat GPT phone. Like, what is the use of a Google, a reverse Google image search, like realistically? Like, is that that compelling of a thing? I don't think so. Like to be fair, to be fair, doing reverse Google image search is a mobile has always been kind of challenging. Okay. So now at the very least now you have a quicker way to get to those. But yeah, I don't I mean, if obviously the real value is in the proper explanation,

right? Yeah. Instead of just like, here's some web results for you. So far, when I wanted to do Google image searches, I've been using the Google app on my phone. Yeah, I guess it's Google lens, really, isn't it? So I might be I might be giving a short shrift there, but at the moment, every time I've pressed the searching with Google button, it hasn't really gotten me much of what I'm looking for. Okay, I just put it to a candle. I have on my desk and it immediately gave me

the candle. So okay, I can see some use for that. I see personally more use in the chat GPT thing because you can kind of be like, Hey, what am I looking at here? You know, like how you would use it in the Rayburns. But again, I need to really spend more time with this. I mean, the image playgrounds and the I assume gem mode is part of that. I don't have access to any of that yet. So see, but I'm

what I'll say is like, just looking at what they've added here. 18.2 is significantly more interesting than 18.1. I would have you with that. There is a lot more in here. And I think a lot of it is the chat GPT stuff is unlocking a bunch of functionality. They they they should have I'm going to say it again, they should have waited. They should have waited until they could package this whole thing

together, 0.1 and 0.2 and put that all out together. They should have waited. The stage throughout the whole out I feel like and the whole strategy of pitching the new iPhone says, built from the ground up with AI, it obviously comes from a place of maybe not fear is the right word, but it comes from a place of concern, right, of being left behind compared to the rest of the industry. Yeah.

Years from now and maybe not even years from now, maybe even months from now, we'll look back and say, man, they should have really they should have just waited for like 18.1 and 18.2 together to tell a much more compelling story instead of rationing out of the door with 18.1 and then following up quickly with 18.2. At the same time, I also think this slow drip of AI features, it works in their favor from a PR perspective, probably because they contain they remain in the

cycle. That's like up the news. So there are pros to that approach, I think. And I just wanted to say something if you'll allow me before we wrap up sort of a more of a can I before because I notice is going to be a real good big point. I just want to say one last thing that I've noticed this is and I think is very smart UI. So now the emoji search field in the keyboard says describe an emoji, right? So you will start typing the emoji that you want and it will search the emoji

that's there. Or if there's no result, it's like, would you like create an emoji? That is clever. That is clever. Like a British man. Well, it's not going to let you do it because you go to writing a motorbike once you get an emoji, create an emoji. I don't like that. Yeah, the way I was like, Sandy, it's not going to work. Yeah. But I think that is that is very clever. User experience design, I think to combine those two things together. And there is also a specific

button that you compress to just go straight into that mode. But I think that is going to be a way that a lot of people are going to discover that this feature exists. So I think that's cool. But

anyway, take us home, Federica. I just want to say something. I think a lot of people are under the impression that because I had opinions, so this is circling back to what we said toward the beginning of the show, because I had opinions months ago and I still do about how the training data was used for AI, not just for Apple Intelligence, but for all kinds of other companies. That because of that opinion, I will bury my head under the sand for the next five years and

never talk about AI. That is not my plan. That is not what I am going to do. I think people can hold multitudes of opinions. You know, like you can think two things about something, about someone, and even though they are conflicting, you can still hold those two thoughts. And so I think it was important for me to take a particular stance regarding training, regarding the danger of AI for creative people. I do believe. I still do believe there's real danger.

There's we're seeing the stories every day. There's real danger to the idea of enabling a whole generation of kids, younger adults like us, you know, to just generate content without the help of a professional. That's something that I think at the same time. And again, that's one opinion. At the same time, I also think there's real value in using this technology with my data after my consent on my phone or on my iPad to say, this is the text that I wrote in notes,

do something with it. This is something like Appingtons, for example, coming out next year. These are the apps that I'm using. Use my data to train your model, right? And help me out here because I need to remember something that I don't remember. I think what we are witnessing is so unlike anything we have experienced as people who follow tech over the past 15 years, right?

And to have one opinion and sort of have it become your brand forever, it's so dangerous right now, which is why I think, you know, strapping because it's going to get weird, right? I'm going to have opinions about AI and then I'm going to use AI and it's all going to happen in the same bucket of a person, you know,

it's all going to happen together. And it's okay. I think it's okay. I genuinely think it's okay to believe something about AI and think advantage of the things that work for you because the other reality is, and this is where I'm going to wrap up, the reality is in the near future, this strain, and stopping. Like this is happening. Like this keeps going. Like it or not,

this is what's going to happen realistically for the next few years. Does that mean I need to, you know, just accept it, you know, shut up and accept the things I don't like, no, no, but it also means, don't want to become irrelevant, don't want to become the kind of person who just, you know, like, ah, everybody else is writing about AI, I don't care. I'm going to

be writing about wired earbuds forever. No, it doesn't, it doesn't mean that. It means now more than in fact, now more than ever, because of this technology, we need people advocating for, for, for the ethics of AI, advocating for proper training practices. Now more than ever, we need opinions. And you got to play the game. That's, that's how I'm going to sum it up. You got to play the game if you want to change the game. I agree with you. Like this is, I think this

is, I'm actually very happy to hear you say this. I don't think you would, I personally don't believe, and I want people to agree with you, but I don't believe that you would be able to make your point as effectively if you never use these things. Right. I think that, and I do believe that there is a path, I don't think anyone's going to take it, but there is a path to using these tools ethically, like create, and you still have the ethically, I thought Apple was going to be that

company. Right. Yeah. But they won. Yeah. I see this comment into this chord that I think is interesting. And I want to address before we, before we end the episode, um, um, scary music boy, great username. Um, I think vocally not talking about it is an incredible powerful stance. If you don't approve of it, yes, and no, because from, from, from, uh, if you look at this problem with, with the end goal being, I want change or I want, you know, such and such result. What is more

effective to say, oh, yeah, Federico, it doesn't cover AI because it's politically against it. Or is it more effective if Federico tries AI and says, oh, look, X and Y company, I can create an image of an Nazi with your tool. Like what is more effective to end up with a better product? Because clearly as an individual, right. Myself or maybe somebody else like me, obviously, objectively almost, I would say, I don't have the power in my hands. I don't think nobody

does. Not even NKBHD does. I don't have the power to single handedly stop the entire tech industry from shipping AI, right? Yeah. Nobody does talk about it. It will not change anything. If I don't talk about it, it doesn't change anything. However, there is a small chance that if I do talk about it and complain about the things that don't work, maybe that will have an effect. You're able to shift the course of the ship. You cannot drop the anchor.

Yeah. Like look, individually, we're all pretty much powerless here. Like we're literally talking about corporations with trillions or hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves. Like, nobody cares about us from that point of view. So what are we going to do? Like, are we going to just sit in silent and switch to Linux, you know, become that person? We could do that. Some people have done it. The most Linux I can get in my life is the Steam Deck

personally. Or there's another way. And the other way is, get your multiple opinions in order because you're going to need them. So that's my take. I don't know. I don't know. I'm a working progress. Everybody's a working progress. And that's fine. If you were expecting your favorite content creator to be a fully formed person, that's not the case. I just, I think, realistically, I mean, I feel like I'm going back to the same conversation that we had when this began,

which is that like no one's going to be happy here. And we're just moving forward together. Yeah. You know, you listener will have different opinions to us on this scenario. We're just all look to try and give each other a little bit of grace. And we are all just trying to work our way through this new era of technology together. We've never been in something like this before. So here we are. We're all just like moving forward, doing whatever it is we're going to

try and do. We're all just poking at the walls, whether they're tiny walls or big walls. We're all just like, we're trying to work out what we're comfortable with. I don't think that people should be persecuted for those decisions, like using chat GPT is not a crime. Maybe the way that the information was harvested was a crime, but like I'm not responsible for that crime. And maybe there's an ethical stuff in there. Yeah, there is. We all have our own ethical lines of this. I just

think that it's too difficult to paint a broad brush. And that we're all just trying to work this out together. But next week, we'll have more about it and maybe some max too. Yeah. And by the way, I did try to request a description of Mike early. And it just, it stopped at chat GPT is requesting additional details. So chat GPT can't catch me. Chat GPT doesn't want to describe you. Or maybe or maybe you're so unique, you cannot be described.

Yep. You know, a description wouldn't hold the many facets of Mike early. Indeed. So. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Connected. Thank you very much for our sponsors, the Zock.net suite and ExpressVPN. Thank you for everybody who signs up for Connected Pro to get longer ad free versions of the show every week. You can go to get connect to pro.co to get that.

If you have follow up feedback or questions, you can go to connectifeabac.com. You can hit the link in your show notes to send us in some feedback or question or whatever for a future episode. If you want to find Federico online, he's on mastodon. He is the teachy at maxstories.net. And you could also find him over at maxstories.net. And on the many podcasts, I think just go to a podcast app and search Federico and just see what comes up. Maybe it'll be something new for you there.

You can find me. I'm at iMike. I am yke. You can find me here on relay and my work at kotixbrand.com. We'll be back next week and turn on and say goodbye Federico. How do you there to? Cheerio!