From Relay, this is Connected, episode 546, recorded on April 1st, 2025. This week, this show is brought to you by FitBud and Squarespace. I am your host, Federico Vittici, and I'm joined by Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen. Hello, Federico. How are you? I'm doing great. It's a very nice afternoon here today. I thought it was going to rain this morning and it was kind of like a little bit windy. We don't have time for that.
Okay. We just don't have time for that because we have a question from listener Ramon who wants to know from you. Federico, did your neighbor stop stealing the herbs from your plant in the balcony? If so, were you involved? Or is it because you finally saw their hand reaching in to steal them? Well, let me tell you, Roman, that neighbor is no more. But not because I had anything to do with it. Simply because they moved.
So that person that I'm convinced it was stealing my herbs. In fact, my collection of herbs on the balcony has grown. We have mint, we have rosemary, we have laurel as we used to. We're thinking about sage. next so we have quite the collection of herbs that we've been growing in a little you know we have a little bit of a collection of potted plants outside but that neighbor has moved to a different location so we have a new neighbor
This young girl, I don't think she's particularly into cooking or cooking with herbs, which is why, I mean, it's no coincidence, that plant seems to be doing much better now. So go figure, you know. There's nobody grabbing the leaves anymore. So I guess that plant is doing better. So yeah. That person is gone. They moved elsewhere. We have a new neighbor. She seems quite lovely. And she doesn't give off the vibe of like, I'm going to steal your herbs. Did you ever confront them?
No, no. How would you even? Like, hey! By any chance, do you steal my herbs every so often? How would you do it in a non-confrontational way? I don't even know. I don't even know. Hey, sure that, you know, or I guess I could have approached it like sort of like talking around it, be like, hey, you know, sometimes cooking with herbs.
is really nice and like gauge their reaction i guess i could have done that but i never i never did i i honestly like i really didn't like the guy for other reasons so yeah The herb stealing was on top of my pre-existing dislike for that person. I'm glad it's resolved. Yeah, yeah. If you want to support this... podcast you know mike's been gone for a while and
He's got a kid now. There's a lot going on over there. If you want to support us, you can do it directly through Connected Pro. Connected Pro members get longer ad-free versions of the show. You also get a bunch of really cool perks from Relay, including access to the member's Discord, member's only podcast, a newsletter we do each month.
And on this week's Connected Pro, at the end of the show, we're going to be talking a bit about Federico's use of AI in Obsidian. We had some follow-up from that. And then about our current TV setups. Because this is a podcast well-known. You know, we talk a lot about media and media hardware. So go to connectedpro.co to sign up. It's just seven bucks a month. And thank you for your support. Yes, thank you. We have some follow-up.
Federico, very important follow-up. Okay. What is it about? So you, several weeks ago now, told the world that you don't like the word Mesa when it comes to the thing on the back of the iPhone. Come on. Okay. All right. And then we had some anonymous feedback we discussed last week from someone who says that they worked on some videos for Apple who said that it's the plateau. Remember that?
Well, now we have dueling anonymous feedbacks because this week we got anonymous feedback from a person at Apple who says that the quote camera turret is the language that's commonly used. Okay, camera turret, I will accept. Okay. I think camera turret as a bit of a... I don't know. It sounds very video gamey, you know? Like it makes me think of Star Fox or something. Like, you know, here comes the camera turret, you know? Because also, like, I guess it works because...
Hey, stay with me because you're shooting pictures, you know? Whoa. Right? So you're shooting with the camera turret. I guess it makes sense. I had not thought about that, but I like it. Yeah, you're shooting, so you have a little camera turret on the back of your phone. Yeah, makes sense. I like it better. We also spoke about how you and I both want a natural law or phenomenon or equation, something named after us. Right, right. Well, it turns out there's something called Snell's Law. Oh.
It's named after me. Lovely. It's named after you. And I know you know what it is, but I'll explain it to the listeners. Snell's Law is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction. When referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic medias, such as water, glass, or air.
Yeah, I mean, duh, right? Of course. We know that so well, we can't even explain it to you. What is there even to explain? We all know about the angles of incidence and refraction. Seriously, I mean, if you're listening to the show, you know, it's something that, you know, I bring up every so often because it's after me. And so thank you for the reminder. I guess we just took it for granted, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah, good, good, good to brush up on that. Do you want to tell people about picture in picture in PWAs? Yeah, so we got a bit of feedback. We were talking about web apps and some of the limitations of progressive web apps on Apple platforms and some of the differences between Apple and Android, for example. And we got some feedback from Anton.
And Anton wrote in saying, I'm a developer, a video streaming service, and picture-in-picture have never worked in PWAs, even though they advertise it as enabled in browser APIs. Even worse, funnier, since around iOS 17.4 or whenever... tried to cut PWA support in the European Union, when you start watching a video in PWA, you have to tap or stare at a screen, otherwise the device will lock itself due to inactivity. Huh. That's, uh...
That's funny. That is indeed worse and funnier at the same time. Let me read it again. When you start watching a video in PWA, you have to tap or stare at a screen. Otherwise, the device will lock itself due to inactivity. Stare at a screen? I guess watch it and tap it every once in a while? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Huh. I guess they have a timeout thing going on in PWAs. Huh. Yeah. Well...
added to the pile of problems. We were also talking about my issues with my Vision Pro sort of thinking that I was traveling. When I was using the computer at night and sort of asking me to enable travel mode. Because your Apple TV was showing the sliding landscape screensaver.
Yes, the aerial screensaver. And Jim wrote in saying, I wanted to let Federico know I had a similar move-in issue with the meta quest 3. I was in a Horizon Workrooms meeting, and after about 15 minutes, my avatar started sliding left. out of the workspace. It kept happening, so I told everyone I'd be right back and quit the app. As soon as it closed, I could see in my pass-through that my MacBook's Arial 4 screensaver was on and scrolling to the right. So the Quest cameras thought...
I was moving to the left. I gave feedback to Meta. So it's amazing. Thank you, Jim. It seems like it's not an isolated issue to the Vision Pro. It seems like all these systems, when they see... something that looks like a landscape scene from above, they must be thinking, oh, this person is looking through the window of an airplane. They're traveling. So, yeah, it seems that it's quite a common...
misunderstanding in these mixed reality systems. Very funny that in this case you're not being asked to enable travel mode. Your avatar is literally sliding to the left. There's something very amusing, in my opinion, about that. It's very funny. Yeah. And how do they fix it?
Well, I'm guessing this is like one of the things where you got to use machine learning to determine like, okay, what am I seeing here? I'm seeing a computer and the computer shows what looks like a screensaver. And so the system may need to make a decision like, okay, do I think the user is...
traveling given the current context of my surroundings or do i think that's like an image being projected on another screen i do think this is something that one of those vision apis for example could easily fix by segmenting you know the things that it's and saying, okay, this is a computer, this is a TV, the user seems to be seated. I'm assuming that they're looking at a screen, they're not looking at the window of an airplane. So good.
It's just so, so funny. And I would love to know, maybe we mentioned this, but I would love to know, did someone Apple come across this at some point in the development of these products? Or was it a fun surprise for later? Do you think it ever happened to Mike Rockwell? I don't know. Probably. Probably. Yeah. He's in charge of Siri now. What a world.
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at fitbod.me slash connected, and you'll get 25% off your membership. Our thanks to Fitbod for the support of the show and all of Relay. Time to saddle up, Federico. It is rumor roundup time. Yeehaw. Oh, that was good. The sheriff is back. Back in town. Mark Gurman himself. He's got a big cowboy hat.
Strolling into our show notes. He's got the boots, you know, he's got the boots with, what do you call the thing, the things in the back of the boots, you know, to like... Spurs. The spurs. He's got the boots with the spurs and the hat. And he's back. He's got a smoking gun. In this case, it's a report from Bloomberg. The deadliest of all weapons.
Garmin had a lot of stuff in his newsletter this week. I want to start with some Macintosh rumors. Macintosh, okay. Garmin says MacBook Pro models with M5 chips will launch later this year. probably October-ish, and then followed by the M5 MacBook Air early next year. So I think sort of the cadence we've been on the last couple of years is where Apple wants these notebooks to be, which...
Fine by me. I like annual updates. I think that's a good move. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a spec bump, but I think that's fine. I think that's fine. i think i appreciate more to have regular boring boring spec bumps than to go back of you know
to what it used to be years ago, where you would go years without an update. And then every once in a while, there would be a new Mac, even though they're boring, you know, racing the baseline, especially now in this highly competitive space for when it comes to desktop computers and maybe, or laptops.
that need to run like AI stuff locally, I think it's much better to keep up and have like even like 10, 15% improvement year over year rather than waiting two, three years for a big bump. I think this is the right approach. And it also means that no matter when you need a computer, like there's probably one that's been recently-ish updated, right? Yeah. Inevitably, your laptop would die like two years into the MacBook Air. It's like, no, I don't.
I don't want to buy it. I know there's going to be a new one. Gurman does say that in contrast to the M5 sort of spec bump generation he's expecting, that 2026 with the M6 chip... Could be much more exciting, complete with an OLED display up from mini LED, which we have now, and being thinner machines as well, which... is really interesting to me. When they went to the current generation sort of style, I was super happy about it. You get ports back, the battery life's incredible.
They're really not that thick and heavy. Like, I don't really have complaints. You know, a 14-inch MacBook Pro is my main computer. And looking at that computer... Really, the only thing that I think if they really were to slim it back down, like the HDMI port is sort of the first thing they run into. And I, for one, even though I don't use the HDMI port on my laptop hardly ever, I think that's a really important port to have.
People are hooking these things up to screens and to projectors and meeting rooms and stuff. And I just don't know if getting rid of the HDMI port is a good move at this point. I don't think they should move back to all just USB-C stuff. It's a MacBook Pro. It's fine. The Air is there to be the thin and light one. So I kind of have my eyebrow raised at that a little bit.
M6 would be a number of years from this current design. So I think we're probably getting close to a time for a refresh of some sort. Yeah, I really don't know what they should do with the HDMI port because like you mentioned, like it's a MacBook Pro, Pro users want that kind of flexibility.
You're obviously running into the limits of the physical size of the HDMI connector, which is, in a way, it's also what's happening on mobile devices with the physical size of the USB-C connector, right? I mean, we have the iPad Pro. We're going to talk about the iPad Pro in a minute.
have the iPad Pro and the M4 is essentially limited by the size by the thickness of USB-C so I really don't know if there's a good solution for this other than say well you can just use a dongle but I feel like we've been here before and I think, you know, you can probably shave off a couple of millimeters more by basically having the HDMI connector being almost flush with the thicker side of the MacBook Pro. I think realistically, that's what Apple is going to do.
the computer lighter make the display lid a little bit thinner but probably not get rid of the hdmi connector yeah i think that's probably probably about right oled is exciting i mean mini led is amazing The other kind of like potential upside with OLED is even better battery life. And so that's kind of another thing like thickness also means battery. Does the OLED offset that?
It does make me increasingly sad about the state of the studio display being basically like the 5K IMAX, like LCD display. But... Yeah, the MacBook Pro continues to push forward, and I think that's a good thing. I mean, it's a very important computer in Apple's lineup. Unless, I mean, and I'm going to say something absolutely cursed here. Unless you plugged in HDMI from the bottom. Wait. You know how the magic mouse charges? Oh, yeah. There's a connector at the bottom. Yeah, no, that's cursed.
That is cursed. But, you know, that's one way to make the MacBook Pro thinner while also retaining the HDMI connector. You know, you say that the HDMI port... It's pretty long. The part that goes in the port, it may be longer than the laptop is thick. Well, what about Periscope HDMI port? There it is. Absolutely horrible. Don't do it. German also talks about an M5 iPad Pro. What's going on here? So it seems like we are going to be getting, later this year, German says...
sometime around October, an M5 iPad Pro spec bump. And it's going to keep the same design as the M4, which we just mentioned, incredibly thin design, OLED display. Tandemola, in fact, as they call it on Live Pro. But it looks like we are... Going to see, just like on the MacBook line that we mentioned a few minutes ago, we're going to see a spec bump of the iPad Pro to an M5 for a bigger update at some point in 2027 with the M6.
And the second version of the Apple cellular modem, the C2. Fun. So, like, here's the thing, though. Like, spec bump on the Mac, I understand. Because there's plenty of things. that you can do on macOS to take advantage even of a spec bump. How do you take advantage of a spec bump on iPadOS with the iPad Pro? Given that the M4...
Is the iPad Pro limited by the M4? Absolutely not. I know plenty of people who are still using that M1 iPad Pro and they're completely fine. I really don't know. Unless there's something. In iPadOS 19. No, come on. Don't do that to yourself. No, no, no. I'm not doing this to myself. I'm just like... Is there going to be anything in iPadOS 19 that is going to be made markedly better by the M5? I don't think so. There's plenty of headroom.
in the m4 already so i think it's just it follows the same conversation that we had with the macbooks like if you have it refresh it it's a spec bump It's always going to be the iPad. It's always going to be iPadOS, but you're not going to be able to tell. Maybe you're going to have a final cut for iPad export going from 1 minute and 20 seconds down to 1 minute and 10 seconds. Cool. For the people who care.
cool but like the one thing the one thing that i could see is maybe the m5 the m5 enabling more ram at the high end or more storage options for maybe but then again we go back to that idea like okay what more multitasking on the m5 ipad pro there's plenty of power already for that on the m4 ipad pro and they're not taking advantage of it
AI is a different conversation. Like if the M5 supports more. But see, the thing is, even when I'm saying this, I don't believe it. That's the problem. So I just think it's going to be a spec bump and that's it. Hmm. What if it folded? No, just kidding. We can't do that today. The thing that's most exciting to me about this iPad part of his report is M6 and C2. Like, do those come together?
Could we get them in a Mac? Is that why the MacBook Pro is getting redesigned for the M6? See, I'm connecting the dots, Federico. Probably right. I don't know. I think it's interesting that we're... Like, we're not going to see the M6 in 2026 then. We're going to get the M5 in late 2025 and then go a full year until we see the M6. Interesting. Or maybe it's 18 months. Maybe it's in the spring.
Right. Maybe. Hmm. Yeah. Maybe. Let's shift gears to software a little bit. And, uh, German also reported that iOS 19's code name. is solarium solarium solarium solarium in italian it's solarium so we're going with that okay uh which as you know as a architecture aficionado sure that uh it's a room with a bunch of glass glass in it to let light in do you know the new os could look like frosted glass very exciting
So I look at this rumor and maybe the codename doesn't mean anything. That's what Ben Lovejoy, who ironically wrote a very Killjoy piece on 95 Max says. The iOS codename sounds like it means something, but doesn't. Okay, Ben. Let us have some fun, man.
Yeah. I don't know. It is a pretty interesting coincidence when you know what a solarium is. I continue to bring up this theory that I shared a couple of episodes ago here on the show that... like okay so if the idea is to have a more translucent transparent ui
that sort of is inspired by vision os and we talked about vision os like what is it about vision os the thing about vision os is that it shows you the context of your digital surroundings and by digital i mean it's like this mixed reality environment where both your physical reality as showcase by pass-through, but also the windows, like the overlapping windows that you have in Vision OS. So if we are bringing that philosophy to iOS...
And this thing is called solarium as a codename. And a solarium is a structure made of glass that lets the light in. If we're letting the light in according to the codename, and I shared this a few weeks ago, but what about letting the literal light in? And this is the idea that I shared. What if Apple really, truly built a system that is using some kind of camera, like some kind of extremely low power consumption ambient sensor or a camera?
that analyzes your surroundings, captures your surroundings as you're using your phone in your hand, and sort of makes the iOS UI sort of blend or be contextual. to what's physically around your phone. This idea of like, imagine that you have your iPhone in your hand and sort of like with this system, the bezels almost disappear in your hands and it looks like your phone...
and specifically the interface of the phone, is blending in with the environment around it. I think it's almost sci-fi adjacent theory. I think it would be pretty cool, like on a phone, but I have another secondary theory that I'm bringing to the show today because I think it makes a little bit more sense. I could see a scenario in which this redesign... It's a bit of a training ground for Apple because this kind of UI that lets the light in, blends in with your surroundings, sure.
made perfect sense on on vision os makes perfect sense on the vision pro could be applied to ios could be applied to other operating systems but it sure seems like the perfect opportunity to start testing a UI that would make a whole lot more sense if you were to project interfaces in glasses.
If you were to... So let's say you're Apple, right? And you know what's coming down the pipeline. You know what's coming out in three years or four years. And you know you're working on these mini glasses that can project, you know... could be something widget-sized, could be something very small, project a little UI in front of your eyes. It sure would make sense for that UI to blend in and to sort of have the Vision OS style.
sort of contextual tinting and accent colors based on what is physically around you, what your eyes are physically seeing. And I'll give you one more, Stephen. This kind of contextual UI... would also make sense for a little appliance that you put in your kitchen or that you put in your living room.
You're buying a HomePod with a screen or you're buying a little Apple robot, as the sheriff likes to call it. It sure would make sense if the interface that you saw on those displays would blend in a little better.
with your physical space in your home i mean i love it i think this would be it would be so cool to have your device and your your your ui sort of shift and adapt to where you are like in a way it's the end game set up by ios 7 remember one of the big things in ios 7 was your wallpaper would tint the ui that came in front of it
So like on the lock screen, if you did the pin code, the buttons, like if your wallpaper was like kind of blue and green, the buttons would kind of be blue and green, right? Yeah. Over time, that got dialed down and down. Same thing on the Mac with sort of the translucency and stuff we saw kind of after the...
Sort of like in the El Capitan days, like back then, a lot of translucency. And that's been dialed up and down over time. But having it react to the real world is like next level. And I think it would be really cool. I would love it. Here you're saying, like you mentioned the wallpaper in iOS 7, but here we are essentially saying, what if your wallpaper was...
your wallpaper. That's right. Like your actual wallpaper in your home. If you do have a wallpaper. I mean, it could be something else. It could be your kitchen table. You know, it could be your nightstand. I would love a phone. that looked like my furniture, to be honest. I don't know. It's... Hey, maybe we are...
Like, not even reading between the lines. We are writing an essay between the lines here. But, like, I think there's something to the idea of let's actually take the digital interface and make it blend in with your... physical environment. I think there's something to that idea that goes beyond the Vision Pro. I think it would obviously make a lot of sense for glasses, but I think screens that you hold or screens that you place in an environment.
could also take advantage of this okay here hear me out the new siri interface right it has like the gradient rainbow around the outside of it to distract us from the fact that siri is still bad okay If the UI is tinted by your surroundings, then Siri is more present in your space. And when you're wearing glasses, it would be around the edges of your glasses.
Just like it would be on your phone. Like, you sold me. I don't know if any of this is true, but I want it to be true now. Just very exciting. So if I'm using my phone...
Yeah, using your phone in your green room. I know each of your rooms in your house is a different color because you're in architecture. No, no, no. I'm just thinking about what Siri will look like if I were to use my iPhone in the bathroom. Well, I mean... if you're in the bathtub you know it's like right bubbly right right but to be to be fair though there is a serious point here to be made about like if apple were to actually make
an iOS UI that takes in the visual cues of your surroundings, there is a privacy angle that Apple needs to tread extremely carefully. There's so much potential for people to misinterpret this idea and be like, wait, does it mean that my phone is always looking at me and my iPhone design looks like what the camera is looking at? It's an extremely dangerous slippery slope from a public perception standpoint. That is, I would say, is the biggest downside of this theory. Like, how...
Can you even sell it in a way that doesn't sound creepy? Maybe they're doing like, Hey, we're going to pick the three, you know, sort of most prominent colors and like build a UI off of that. Like not actually. I mean, like you said, you're sensing the light, like not actually like a camera pass through, but like a vibes pass through. Yeah. Vibes. Vibes pass through. Vibes pass through. It's going to be fun. It's going to be a fun summer.
unless you build apps, in which case it may be a very long summer. All right, here's... Okay, so all that's great. Macs, iPads, software. We now get to the part of the roundup where... I wish I could just leave town. Gurman reports on Project Mulberry. Okay. Codenames, you know, maybe they mean things, maybe they don't. Mulberry is a plant. I looked it up.
That does things. Okay. Plant, planty things. It's got leaves and stuff, you know, like a plant. I'm not a scientist. Project mulberry is a wide and broad project. to build a new health coach and health sort of apparatus for users. So Gurman describes a new health coach as a, quote, an AI agent.
That will again, quote, replicate your real doctor. Okay. So this is an update to the health app that would include things like food tracking, which I think would be a good addition to the health app. It would be like...
You know, they're like the health app can do step tracking and sleep tracking, but pedometer plus plus and sleep plus plus, you know, more powerful, better applications for it. I think there's still be room for food noms and others to succeed. Do some basic food tracking in the health app. or like better integration. Those apps can see activity and they can count calories into health. Maybe there's something there. So I'm for more data collection and data connection in Apple Health.
Where I sort of struggle is making recommendations and giving feedback on that data. That feels like a very potentially slippery area. And Apple's looking to do this. with a new AI agent that's being trained on data managed by Apple hired physicians. You know, Apple has medical doctors working there. They also are looking to hire, quote, outside doctors.
to create videos for the new health app. So like maybe you have to have your appendix out and you can find a video from a doctor telling you about the appendix and appendicitis and the surgery and that sort of thing. Okay. German says these videos will play to help explain concerning health trends to users and a very specific note that it will be recorded in a new facility in Oakland, California. So.
I guess they have a health space there. Apple also wants to find a quote, major doctor personality to serve as a host for the new service. Oh. major doctor personality yeah I mean I don't know what Dr. Oz is up to yeah I was literally about to say Dr. Oz he uh They should call him Dr. Tim. Oh, he is the president's nominee to serve as the administrator for chiefs of Medicare and Medicaid services. Things are going great. Things are going great.
Yeah. A major doctor personality. Yeah. I'm on his Wikipedia page. He ran for Senate in 2022 and just used the Dr. Oz show logo, but instead of show said U S Senate, like it's the same logo. sure i mean it is a show it is a show a show so here's the thing yeah i hate all this like i just um i think I mean, the more stuff in Apple Health and making it easier to use, that's all really good. And Apple Health is a very powerful part of the iPhone platform in particular. I do feel weird about apps.
and services giving users like recommendations. So one thing I love about the Apple Watch, right? If it detects like an issue with your heart, right? It has the monitoring and... It can say, hey, you know, we noticed this AFib thing. You should go get it checked out. And your whole history of it's in Apple Health. Anytime you run an EKG, it's saved in Apple Health. You can go over it with your care provider.
That stuff's really powerful. And like, it literally saves lives. Like we've heard from listeners whose lives have been saved by their Apple watches. Things like crash detection, right? That I tested for the show a couple of years ago. Like good, powerful features. But that feels different than recommending a user change in their lives, their diet or their habits or whatever, based on that information. That feels like it should be left up to a medical professional.
And then you mix AI into it. Federica, I lost my mind. This was, this came out and we were talking last week about how Siri doesn't know what month it is. Like this feels. At this point with where we know where Apple is with AI, this feels incredibly ridiculous for them to be taking on as a project. Am I off base with any, like, am I just being an old dad here?
And no, I don't think you are. I think... So here's the thing. Obviously, a lot of people... I've read a lot of stories of people going to ChadGPT or Claude to... talk about their medical issues and try and get a second opinion in terms of diagnosis and like figuring out things. that actual doctors were unable to figure out. Like I saw, I think a week ago, a thread on Reddit about someone who, and this person posted screenshots and everything of what they did.
But, like, this person was saying that they had a rare medical condition. They, you know, years, you know, these problems had been driving them crazy. And... they were able to get to a solution just by talking over and over and sending sensitive data to, I think it was Claude. I don't think it was ChatGPT. But people are doing this. Are a lot of people doing this? I don't think so. Should people be doing this? Probably not. Because I feel like when it comes to actual treatment and diagnosis...
you do need to go see a proper doctor. There is an argument to be made for... This is such a complex political thing. There is an argument to be made for different parts of the world having different access to healthcare, right? It may be extremely cost prohibitive.
for say a lot of folks in the united states to say you know spare no expense i'm gonna go see all the doctors i can to get to the bottom of this right And if that's impossible to do, I could see someone who's desperate or doesn't have any other options to say, well, let me spend 20 bucks. on the fancy version of ChildGPT and have a long conversation, maybe this thing can help me figure out my problems.
Like I said, it's a very complex thing, especially when you consider how like in an ideal world, everybody should be able to go see 50 different doctors if they are unable to get to the bottom of an issue. Still, I feel like the problem here is that Apple doesn't exactly have the best pedigree when it comes to artificial intelligence.
They do have the incredible work that they have done with the Apple Watch, with HealthKit, with sensors, with atrial fibrillation, all the health studies that they have done. They have the data. They have the hardware. But I feel like building a doctor agent is maybe for them right now a bridge too far. Like, how would you sell this to people? when you cannot even figure out your basic assistant, right? They have a perception problem right now when it comes to the basic stuff.
And to go from being unable to deliver on the AI promise with basic stuff to, well, I guess we're building a health coach and a doctor agent. that is going to live on your device and it's going to give you actual recommendations, you know, it feels like one step too far for them right now. What I guess I'm saying is that... I think there is potential in the idea, especially when you consider how a lot of medicine is about ingesting data, looking at patterns, visualizing images.
dealing with a lot of text, dealing with a lot of previous cases. And I say this as someone who in his life has produced a lot of documents for doctors to analyze and study. I have been part of case studies. and experimental medicine, experimental treatments. I've done all of that. And I know that it involves a lot of research, a lot of academic papers and text and images and opinions. Those are the sort of things that large language models excel at. If you go back and read, for example.
A few months ago, the CEO of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, Dario Amodei, published this really popular, really long essay called The Machines of Loving Grace, where he tried to extrapolate like the... given the strengths of large and good models, they see incredible potential for AI as applied to research and medicine in the future.
And so I do see the argument for that. I do see, especially when it comes to unlocking access to a semi, you know, not even semi, but a pretty reliable digital diagnose, tool to all kinds of people living in, you know, all kinds of countries around the world with different healthcare systems. I do see the potential, but...
It still makes me feel a little bit awkward because it's yet another thing that we are potentially replacing humans with. So there's also that conversation going on. And it's coming from Apple right now in 2025. The company that doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to AI. They do have a stellar track record when it comes to wearables and sensors and health kit. But I feel like maybe they're...
biting off more than they can chew right now. Do I make sense here, Stephen? I think we're in agreement there. Yes, it could potentially unlock care for people and... in new and interesting ways, important ways. But it feels like Apple in particular is not the company to do this.
To your point, people have been Googling health symptoms forever, right? There's a reason the meme is like, I looked on WebMD and I'm going to die. WebMD is like a Plinko machine, but the only thing at the bottom is like... Terrible cancer diagnosis, right? Yeah. I just, the amount of trust you have to have in a platform with your health is so high, right?
There are already people who struggle with that, right? Who for good and understandable and logical reasons may say, you know what? I don't want my fertility information in an app or on my phone, right? This, in the end game version of this, it's like that times a thousand. Now, if they start small. And I could see a world where there are apps that do this sort of thing is like you set a goal like, hey, Apple Health, you know, I would love to.
I'd love to lose 10 pounds this year, or I would like to walk 10,000 steps a day. And then they can use this technology and all the inputs they have from your Apple Watch and your other health apps and food tracking, whatever. And then it can guide you towards that goal in a reasonable and sustainable way. Like that's a good thing, right? Like one of our sponsors this week is FitBot. It's something that they do in their app. That I think is reasonable and even good.
But it's the replicate your doctor language that just like really made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. And I also, okay, so the other angle to all this that really I sort of am struggling with. And I just, I had the thought this morning, Apple's executives are all getting older, right? They're spending a bunch of time in doctor's offices. And at least here, when you go to a big doctor's office.
There's TVs on in the lobby, right? And they always play one of three things. The news, some sort of like food network thing, or like endless health programming. Yeah. like is apple just trying to replicate that like we have food and apple news plus now with um ios 18.4 we're gonna talk about all the releases in a second uh you're gonna have
Uh, you're going to have now you're going to have like a host of your Apple health video series. Like I just, I don't know, man, something about a bunch of this just kind of hits me the wrong way. I think there was a lot of potential upside to it, but the downside potential downsides to me feel so like. all-encompassing, it's like maybe it's not worth the upside to risk the downside. I just don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.
But don't worry, Federica, they're not going to replicate me with an AI. Not yet. Okay. You sure? If my Devon thing becomes sentient, we're in trouble. Okay. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just starting out your business or maybe you're scaling it up.
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Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of Connected and all of Relay. Now would be time for the details, but these software releases are out. So it's just... regular news it's just regular details just regular details yeah oh that's good uh you want to tell us about all these software releases it's a 0.4 week out here in apple land
Yeah, so all the .4s. I saw some people saying that watchOS 11.4 is not actually out yet. I was going to say, I tried updating. I updated my phone. My phone was already on the beta. But I updated my iPad last night. I went to go get my watch and just like wasn't available. So yeah, I don't know. All right. Yeah, so... macOS 15.4, iOS and iPadOS 18.4, VisionOS 2.4, watchOS 11.4 in theory, and tvOS, what is it, 18.4 also on tvOS?
We have an article on Mac Stories by John sort of recapping the highlights. These are not huge upgrades for European users. I guess the big... is the availability of Apple intelligence in more languages. I can now use Apple intelligence in Italian, but I won't. Also because I use my phone in English. So beyond that, there's the new Apple News Plus Food channel, which we previously mentioned. It's got recipes from some global publishers. You can...
Browse them in Apple News+. There's a recipe catalog that allows you to browse, search your recipes, save them in a save the recipes section. There's a cooking mode, which is basically, as we mentioned before, inspired by the... Apple Music lyrics screen that allows you to follow cooking directions. It's the same screen, which I absolutely love. Yeah. And there are, of course, like editorial curation going on with stories about restaurants.
stories about like healthy eating habits, that sort of stuff. The six new emoji that we previously covered. with our little game, including the one with the tired face, which is an incredible banger of an emoji. In Image Playgrounds, God bless that little... Stupid app. You can now use this sketch style illustration. Go check out the incredible, and by incredible, I mean awful, examples that John tested in the story on Mac Stories featuring me.
As a farmer, or I guess, you know, a person who pretends to be a farmer, especially the one with the hat. The one with the hat in the sketch style really takes the crown. I find it kind of amusing that Apple is sort of releasing this and kind of bragging about it in the press release days after ChatGPT image generation. Oh, I know.
Two completely different timelines going on here. And then it's just like, oh, and I guess there's the Vision Pro app on your iPhone that allows you to browse recommended apps for your multiple Vision Pros if you have... multiple vision pro if you happen to be a millionaire and you have multiple vision pros you can you can you can see those like in the watch app you can see multiple apple watches yeah uh
And then it's just like a grab bag of stuff. Like on the Mac and on the iPad, you can see the categories in Apple Mail. Or turn them off if you don't want them. Turn them off. The Vision Pro has the spatial gallery app. that has a collection of immersive videos, spatial photos, the panoramas. There's some behind-the-scenes footage from Severance, some third-party content from Red Bull, that sort of stuff. Yeah. I think the space...
is a really good addition to Vision OS. I mean, that stuff was sort of scattered around, like some of it was in the videos app and having it all in one place is good. It does highlight kind of how thin.
this collection is right now yeah but i think it makes a lot of sense and it's you know vision os 1.0 in hindsight really was missing a lot of like kind of important things i think this is one of them like this this is a really good addition and makes makes a lot of sense and um i think it's great i agree i agree uh what else is there oh the you if you have a Matter enabled Robo Vacuum. You can now add it to HomeKit. You can turn it off, turn it on. You do not have...
There's not like a proper mapping integration to see, you know, the map that the RoboVacuum built of your house in HomeKit, but at least you can control them. So that's nice. And yeah, there's like an expansion of Apple intelligence, more languages, the sketch style, the priority notifications, which I turned off because I don't trust the system. Are you using?
priority notifications no i don't even have ai summaries on notifications i just i find it all kind of infuriating yeah yeah so it's obviously like not to the point for dates that we were expecting, say like three months ago, we were all convinced, oh, it's going to be a big 0.4 release with all the new AI stuff and the personalized contextual series stuff.
Instead, it's a miscellaneous update, really. You got a bunch of things here and there and a new emoji, but honestly, not that exciting. And that's just, I don't think we're going to get... anything more exciting than this before WWDC at this point. Yeah, this seems like kind of the closing chapter for these OSs. I mean, there's a story that like 0.6 is running around, but I think we're kind of in bug fix land now until...
At least until WWDC, I don't think there's going to be any more major features. Yeah, overall, though, I think it's good. I like the Vision OS stuff. Obviously, we have new emoji. But yeah, man, image playgrounds, it's just a toy. OpenAI text or image generation now, it can do text and not look like gibberish. And they got sketch style out here.
I mean, the one of you in the middle of John's story with like the little jaunty straw hat is so, so bad. Yeah, I know. Right. I know. Well, yeah. Yeah. Big releases, though. Yeah. You've got that Mac mini and Mac stadium we spoke about last week. Do you run your software update remotely? How'd that feel? I haven't done it actually. I guess I got to do it, right? Yeah. You got a Mac in your life again. Yeah, I do. Oh, man. Well, happy updating, everybody. It is now time for Ask Connected.
Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. All right, Stephen, so Tom wants to know, hi, I'm a new listener of Connected, so maybe this has never been covered, but about Stephen's pod cabin, is there a mini fridge in there? I mean, beyond the Macs and recording equipment, is it a place to just hang out?
That's a great question. And the answer is there's no mini fridge. I have thought about it, but like I would just keep like water and drinks in it. And the noise I think would be. Yeah, that's a problem. Concerning. Also, it's not very big. It's like 200 square feet in here. It is not big. In terms of hanging out, I actually don't hang out out here.
So if Mary has girlfriends over, they're going to have a movie night or something. If I've got work, I'll come out here. But if I'm going to read or do something else, I'll just go hide in our bedroom. um i treat this as my workplace like i only come out here when it's time for work and i've been that serious about it for so long now like if i on occasion so you know i'll have a friend over and maybe it's raining or the kids are doing something inside and like okay i'll
We'll hang out in the office. It feels weird. It feels like my brain is, is revolting against it a little bit. So yeah, not really a hangout space, but it would be cool. It'd be a cool hangout space. That's for sure. Yeah. Okay. Up next, we have a question from Brian. Do either of you have overall life advice for starting habits? Mostly finding the time to do a hobby, start a fitness routine, or eat better.
What tech or apps do you use in any of these habits that you may have? My advice is probably not what you're looking for, Brian. My advice is pretty simple. Don't use any apps. Don't use any habit tracker. Don't use any lists. Just convince yourself that it's something that you want to do. The biggest catalyst for a change that you want to bring in your life is you need to be...
Deep down inside you need to be convinced that you want to do it. And if you have that conviction it becomes a habit by itself. If you don't you can distract yourself. with a habit tracker, you can distract yourself with a productivity angle that makes you feel good for a couple of days. And then those like missed badges keep piling up in the app. Just, you know.
Just convince yourself about something that you want to do. And on a more practical level, I mean, I guess it depends on the habit, right? But if it's something that doesn't need to happen every day... perhaps at the beginning don't do it every day just say okay i'm gonna do this twice a week
And be flexible, you know? Obviously, if it's something that you need to do every day, then you need to start like that. But if it's something like, oh, I want to work out more, like, do it twice a week. Also, because, like, don't push yourself too hard, you know? To go from never working out to working out every day, that's going to... be bad for your body so like just be convinced you know start simple be convinced and be consistent about it even if it's just twice a week like uh it just needs
you you i guess what i'm trying to say is that you don't need a habit tracker if the habit tracker is by default your brain so yeah i think the biggest thing is like you have to set it as a priority and you got to be willing to move other things around to make that possible. So like if your goal is to, you know, work out three times a week, like.
Put it on your calendar, but just know that you got to say no to other things to say yes to it. And you've got to make it top of mind. BG asks, if your Audi is producing a podcast about Apple and tech. What do you think your innie is podcasting about? Interesting. So my Audi is producing a podcast about Apple tech and video games. So my innie. cannot also produce podcasts about video games. I think my Innie, so let's say a brand new personality based on me.
doesn't know anything about what I do, what would it do? Yeah. My Innie would do a podcast about... I don't know. I'm fascinated by like conspiracy theories. Not in the sense that like I believe in conspiracy theories. I'm fascinated by the people who believe them. Right? So like debunking conspiracy theories, I guess.
That's what I would do. Okay. I would do a podcast about that. Yeah. I just want to know, like, maybe we are our innies and we just don't know it yet. Wait. So there's like another version of us? Out there. out there and so our life is the is planet earth lumon is that what you're saying i don't know i don't know what i'm saying huh it's all very very hard to know God, what a good show, Federico. Your Audi once recorded a podcast and people clapped. You're Audi's friend.
Revealed a tattoo live on stage. Steven, what would your Annie do a podcast about? What would my Annie do a podcast about? I mean, he's me. Right? Yeah. But he's like a younger, immature version of me because he's only a few years old. I don't know, maybe like Lego? Lego. Yeah. Or emo music, like high school emo music. I mean... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, actually, you know, same. That's all things considered like a younger.
a version of me would probably do a podcast about that because like the fascination with people who believe conspiracy theories it's something that I developed as an adult so yeah it would actually I think we would both do a podcast about like dashboard confessionals or Jimmy and that sort of stuff. There you go. That's perfect. That's perfect. Yeah.
Steven, finally, Logan wants to know, why do so many podcasts have such terrible show notes? Relay has spoiled me with links, chapters, dynamic artwork. Why do all of these other seemingly high-budget podcasts I listen to put in... seemingly zero effort to the show notes oh thank you logan we do work hard on that yeah i mean just look at this uh week's chapter art like i've done a bunch of jokes across all the chapter art
Like I said, of the details, it said the details. If I may answer this, I think it's the same difference between reading... like an indie blog or an indie site like ours, like 512 or Mac Stories, and the time and care we put into links or footnotes or like sections. versus bigger publications who just, you know, write in Google Docs and just publish the output from a story that was created in Google Docs. Like, I think it's a format thing. I think it's an indie thing.
Like, I think people like us tend to gravitate toward plain text, RSS, Markdown, and therefore really taking advantage of the spec. that is underneath and doing that out of two things. One is we're nerds and two, we want to produce the kind of stuff that we as listeners would like to receive. And so we try to put that out for our listeners. I think that's really well said. I think that we value that sort of thing.
And our business model allows us the time and opportunity to do it, right? If you're doing some big podcast and like you need people to go to your website for some other reason, or you have dynamic ad insertions, like your chapter markers don't work.
There's lots of things that we do in the way that we've structured things so we can make the shows that we want. And we've been very fortunate enough to be able to continue to do that. And hopefully forever. Like we always want to make these shows the way we make them.
And, um, we, uh, yeah, we try hard. It does drive me bananas. Like if I'm listening to another podcast, like, oh, I would love to learn more about this thing. There's like the only thing in the show notes is information about their sponsor or. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. Like, come on, just do it. Well, I think that does it for this week's episode.
If you have feedback, you can send it to us at connectedfeedback.com or you can join and get a longer ad-free version of the show at getconnectedpro.com. You can find us on social media. And our websites, Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. And I am the writer over at 512pixels.net. Federico hosts a bunch of podcasts in the greater app stories universe.
App stories is a must listen for me each and every week. So go check that out. And you can find me on Mac power users as well. I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Fitbot and Squarespace for making the show possible. And until next time, say goodbye. Goodbye. Bye y'all.