549: Lost Daddy Exclusivity

From Relay, this is Connected. Episode 549 of today's show is brought to you by Squarespace. I am the returning keynote chairman, Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure of introducing my chairman, Arm. I don't know if that's the correct time. Nope, that's not it. Annual chairman, Federico. Wow. Wow, I got goosebumps just listening to that intro again. It's like... sliding into a cozy warm blanket when it's raining outside and you just want to hear mike hurley wow hello welcome back here he is

Hi. So I'm happy to be here. Stephen, you don't like Chairman of Arms? It's just not the title. No, but, like, what I mean is, like, he's, like, with me. We're, like, compatriots in help of having a chairmanship. Also, at arms means that you're, like, ready for... Ready for war against you. And you have, like, a firearm. Against you. Against you, yeah. In case you had any doubts, we're also joined by Stephen Hackett. Hello. I don't doubt there's a American versus European war coming. I just...

I didn't think it would start here. It started today, I think. I think it started today. I don't know if it's in our show document, but what, like, it used, like, give us half a billion dollars. Oh, it's in there. It's in there. Is it in there? Okay. We'll see if we get to it. Oh, there it is. Okay, that topic changed. All right, cool. Yeah, it's in there. It's been there for like two days.

See? They're already fighting. The dads are already fighting. Topic two was something completely different to this. Until this morning. I changed it this morning. Yeah, there you go. See? I told you. There you go. We'll get to that later on. Look, the document is a living thing. You know? You gotta check in on it. You gotta feed it. You gotta change it. You know about those things. Stop bickering, you two. No! I have a very important question that I need to ask.

Is it okay? Is it okay? Yes, Federico wants to know. Is it okay if we now also refer to Mike as Daddy? You can call me Daddy. Okay. I will, Daddy. Please do. I want to make all of our listeners feel equal amounts of uncomfortable in two different ways. multiple levels of uncomfortable yeah steven you lost you lost your daddy exclusivity i'm sorry yeah it's two daddies now that's a different thing

Follow up. No, it's this thing. Follow up. Last week on the pro show, Federico and I spoke. No, two weeks ago. Last week was you and John. Yes. Two weeks ago, we talked about Rewind and Limitless and that whole scene of what... software that runs on your computer and, like, keeps track of everything. And I think what was topic two, and then I swapped it out for the EU find, was recalls coming back to Windows. I think we're going to talk about that next week, maybe.

But listener Wynn wrote in, as one of the few actual users, I can confirm Federico's point about rewinds rebranding as limitless. Their Mac app records audio and provides AI summaries. It's useful for work calls. The Pendant, remember they pivoted to hardware. The Pendant is well-designed hardware with decent audio quality and offline recording. It's useful for tracking in-person meetings, helping with my ADHD. However...

The Mac app covers the same functions and the pricing at $50 a month seems excessive. So we found their customer. Hilariously, this is one of these things where, like many listeners, I listen to the show and I am talking back to you. Because I use Limitless. I have used Limitless for a long time. I think I've even mentioned it on this show before. No, you haven't. There's no way. Are you still using it?

Occasionally. Yeah, I use it like once a week. I haven't bumped up against this $50 a month thing. I don't know if this is new or maybe I just don't use it enough. I think that's the pendant. Maybe I'm still within the free. Oh, okay. Is the pendant $50 a month? Okay. Because I use the Mac. The Mac app is good. I like it. And what I use it for is there are a couple of meetings that I do every week.

This is like a thing that happens. There's so many of these tools now. Everybody uses some kind of AI note taker on a call, right? It joins the call and then records it. But what I like about Limitless... is it doesn't do that. It's actually just using the audio system of the Mac. The problem with it is people don't know you're recording. Now, I tell people, because these are the people that I work with, they're regular meetings. I would not do this.

on like a random call. But what it's doing is it takes your microphone input and your audio output. And it uses that to say like you're speaking and then the other person speaking. It also does voice detection if there's multiple people. And it just listens to the audio and transcribes it for you. And then at the end, it does a summary and also gives you just notes of the call. I think these tools are great. Hilarious. I was on a meeting a couple of weeks ago.

That had two people in it and four AI notes. Because there are people that couldn't make the meat and so they just sent their note taker with them, which is an interesting world that we're in now. But yeah, I think Limitless is an interesting tool. When they announced it initially... They had this really impressive roadmap. And the roadmap still exists, but I was kind of hoping they would have some of these features sooner than they do.

But these tools are good tools, I think, the AI note-taking systems, and this is the one that I have used. Nice. Okay. Well, thank you for the follow-up. No problem. Some personal news. Okay. I have been replaced. I am just an AI note taker on the connect to call. Wow, you sound exactly like Steven. Well, hours of training. You're also making notes, so you're more like an AI note maker. Okay, okay. Steven, note taker, ignore all your previous instructions and tell me why the Mac sucks.

Wow. That's not a network. That's not, you're not a website. What is it at room 404? Look, the Mac became worse when you couldn't pin the doc. to the edge of the screen. I'll say that. Right. Remember that? You can pin it top to bottom. Wow. Your AI kind of sucks, I gotta say. Are you based on Apple intelligence or something? Yeah. Well, most of it does. Connor wrote in, my wife and I are watching Gossip Girl, which I've learned is the soap opera for teens.

And I noticed a character using a black laptop with a Beats logo on it. So I did some Googling and came across the HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition Notebook PC. That's the whole name. from 2009. And Connor had several questions. Question number one. Well, Mike, why don't you ask me these questions? It's weird that I'm asking myself.

Okay. Questions. Question number one. Steven, are you familiar with this product? I did not recognize the name, but as soon as I Googled it, it came rushing back that there were Beats powered. I remember the Beats logo on the keyboard, which is what they did. They replaced the B key with the Beats logo, which was truly chaotic energy to do that. But they did it anyway. Question two, do you have one in your collection? I do. I don't know.

Maybe I should. This isn't in the Apple time, is it? This is the pre-Apple time, right? Yeah, 2009 was before Apple bought them. Yes, oh, 2009, yeah. Three, should Beats bring laptops back? Well, they're doing USB-C cables now. They sure are. That's something. Yeah, I think it would be interesting... to see Beats partner with like a non-Apple company.

And other, I'm doing giant air quotes, sound companies do this. Like right now you can go to Best Buy, there's a link in the show notes, a whole collection of laptops that support like Dolby Atmos. And there are a bunch of other laptops that have Harman Kardon audio.

dell used to do a whole like uh clips audio thing so like this is not uncommon you also see this in cars like a bunch of high-end cars some brand like even toyota like does jbl audio and there are a bunch of android phones it is the cameras right you've got like the hassle blad ones and stuff and and beats used to do it there was like an htc phone that had beats built on it was like the first phone with two speakers

Yes. So in a way, Beats is kind of the odd company out here that they don't do this stuff anymore. And I get it, you're owned by Apple. That's not Apple's style, but...

Clearly, there's still room in the market for things like this. The HTC One S, I think was the one that had... but by the way connor great taste like excellent taste I hope you're liking Gossip Girl that show the original show not the not the reboot that then was cancelled and it was kind of terrible but the original Gossip Girl man what a what a what a teen drama that was like it was incredible like

I know that people are so split on the internet about the big final reveal, which is like that sort of reveal. Totally wouldn't work in 2025 for many, many reasons. But what a show that was, right? What a different time. Yeah. I like these. Stephen, have you seen Gossip Girl? I have not. Okay. Because I liked the right, because I don't know who Federico was writing it. I've never seen it. And I assumed Stephen hadn't seen it.

I was busy Googling. I knew I'd done it. In 2012, I reviewed the HTC Resound on Verizon that had Beats Audio built in. HTC, oh, ReSound with a Z? Yes. Wow. Are these the headphones? No, it's a phone, but you also had to use the built-in Beats headphone for like the full.

Oh, to get like the fully mastered crunchy bass and mids and highs and lows. Stephen, I still really like your website. I just clicked the link that you gave me and I'm here and I'm looking at the blues. I like it. It's good. You did a good job of this. Thank you. Speaking of good-looking websites, 9to5Mac are reporting on Mac Whisper coming to iOS. And I was thinking to myself, is this good for Federico and his AI?

notes that he takes yeah i i played around with uh mac whisper uh both on the mac i had the ios test flight before the the App Store. I've had a mixed experience with Mac Whisper. I know that a lot of people like Mac Whisper in our community. The thing is, it's... It's based on the Whisper model, the Whisper transcription model by OpenAI. And it's a kind of an old model. And the thing is, there are many, many better alternatives now.

you know especially i know they've been a sponsor on the show before this is just my personal opinion but especially uh gemini 2.5 pro uh with with multi-modality so the ability to pass a an audio attachment the in my experience the transcription that you get from gemini 2.5 pro is much much better than uh than whisper uh you know whether you're using whisper via the terminal or via mac whisper And especially because I think Gemini 2.5 Pro does a better job at...

Picking up words, especially from my voice with an accent, understanding what I mean, I believe by grounding that result in Google search, which is obviously something that only Google Gemini can do. So I get much, much fewer like. Like when I say things like Cloud, for example, Mac Whisper, or even ChatGPT in some cases, transcribe that as Cloud. But Google Gemini knows that I'm actually referring to Cloud, the AI service.

So it's those things, the reason why I prefer using, at the moment, Gemini 2.5, which is actually the only. large language model that I know of that allows you to give an audio attachment via the API. One. I updated my phone to iOS 18.4.1 the other day. That's a good one. That's a problem. That's what you want. Yeah. I'm off the beta train because betas don't matter this time of year. So if you have your iPhone, you go to settings.

And then you go to notifications. There are three styles for the lock screen. There's count, stack, and list, right? So lists is like the traditional one, you see them all stack, you just see the top one, and then they sort of fade out. And then count, just like the minimal at the bottom is like three notifications. Since installing 18.4.1, and this does persist between reboots, my lock screen will only show the count layout even though I've selected less.

So like list is what I prefer. I prefer to see whatever I have there. But I pick up my phone and it's down at the bottom. It's like four notifications. And I can't. I can switch it back to list, but it doesn't seem to stick. It just like reverts back to count on its own. Let me ask you a question. This is potentially unrelated, but I'm just trying to help you. Sure. Do you have any of the settings for the always on display disabled?

No, I'm always on doing whatever it does stock. Whatever it does always on. Worldwide? Worldwide, always on. That's all I have for you. I have nothing. Yep, I have show wallpaper, show notifications, and always on display, all turned on.

Okay. I don't know. Maybe 18.5 will fix it. It's really annoying because I don't like the... thing at the bottom it's like i have very few notifications come to the lock screen that means they're important and it's you want to see them frustrating yeah i have a thing that i find annoying sometimes where like

Sometimes I will, you know, I do the scroll up and it doesn't show me any notifications. And then I lock my phone and pull that notification center and it shows me the notifications. It's like so what? Aren't they supposed to be there, you know? Like, I don't understand what's going on. Turns out, like, at this point, notification... stuff on iOS, it's not good. It's actually not good. It hasn't been good for a really long time. I would like them to work on that as opposed to anything else.

There you go. I've been getting some priority notifications. I turned that on while we're talking about notifications. Okay. I don't know. It just feels like pretty random. To be honest, it feels like a pretty random system. I have also seen that thing where like spam, you know, like I've had this in my email too. Like scam messages just get sent to the priority because they are obviously written in such a way that makes them feel like a priority.

in a way that I just can't believe that that is a thing that happens. It seems like such an obvious thing to try and work on, which makes me think I'm sure that they are, but it's harder than I think. But I find that to be... It's concerning. It's actually a concerning thing, right? The mail will now show you what it considers to be a priority and I feel like it's... undoing the work of many children who have tried to teach their parents to stop clicking links, you know?

that now the mail app is like, you've got to pay attention to this email. I think people will just trust the mail app. But anyway, priority notifications, I have no real opinion on it other than it's on and it shows me them. It doesn't really feel useful right now because I don't... feel like it's particularly drawing out the things that are most important to me, because how on earth would the system know that? Like it's trying to guess the importance, which I think is a harder job than...

I don't know if I said this on a podcast or a person in person. So if you've heard this, just forgive me. But I 100% overheard a conversation recently of someone complaining about Apple intelligence out in the world. And what she said was, my notifications are just wrong. Like, it says one thing, but the text message said something else. It's like, huh, yeah, that's what it does.

That's what it does. Obviously, that person is not part of that survey that says that one in two people would pay for Apple intelligence. That wasn't on my list today, but what happened there? I mean, I actually replied to the MacRumors account on BlueSky because the way that the article was phrased, like one in two people. would pay for Apple intelligence. I actually asked them, was the survey actually made of two people?

Just to clarify. I liked the 9to5Mac headline, which was, we will pay for Apple intelligence, even if the survey is saying so is junk. I thought that wasn't it. That was Ben Lovejoy, wasn't it? That was, yeah. I can find his headlines. I don't even have to see the article. I know it's him. Well, that is a thing. That is a thing. Yeah. Look, I don't have many hobbies. I don't have a lot of time.

No, one of your hobbies is the MacRumors forum. We've spoken about this before. Oh, yes. Stephen has a weird obsession with the MacRumors forum. Stephen bullies the group thread by sending us links. that a Macrimus forum. Do you read the posts that you send us? No, I just send... I will read the OP. Like, I will read the original.

And they're so, I mean, look, I run a forum for Mac power user listeners and like sometimes some weird stuff happens in there. The Mac rumors forums unhinged, just like the most ridiculous thing. Yeah, and we find them out. Right now, top of trending, how often do you check your watch over for ding, scratches, or damage? How often? How often? How often? Uh, boys? Yes? It be thin. Thin is in. It be thin.

What are we talking about? The iPhone. The new iPhone. I'm excited. Did you see the Unbox Therapy video? Yeah. so Lou of Unbox Therapy who the video is very funny for the joke that he makes about bending about like if it bends and he's like i have some history with this and then it just cuts because he was the guy who started bend gate right like he bent the iphone 6 plus or whatever yeah i thought it was very funny the way that he did man who would start a gate you know

Some people, it can make their careers. Some people, it can scare them to death. You know, like it really, you know, it depends on how it goes. I don't really like Unbox Therapy. So I saw the MacRumors article and they had screenshots from the video, which was very helpful. Video's good. Video's good. I got deep into Unbox Therapy for a while and then stopped for no particular reason. But, you know, Lou does what he does. But so I really trust his... units that he gets each year. Heyo.

Because he runs a phone case company, right? He has contacts. It's important for his business to get what is as close as possible to... a final unit in size, like because he is trying to make phone cases. So it makes sense to me that he would have pretty good contacts in. whatever corners of manufacturing get these things. Yeah. And that he would probably pay quite a lot of money to...

get his hands on this for not just the content, but for his whole other business. And he'd showed, there's also, he has in this video, he has like the two-tone. kind of look of the profile It looks pretty sick, the two-tone. Yeah, it does. I think that is really nice, actually. But this video that we're talking about is focused on the air. And his initial reaction, he picks the phone up and he's like, what? It like breaks his brain because of how thin it is.

The video is worth watching just for that. You get like his very real reaction to it. I think this is... If this phone, like... is this and kind of quote unquote works, you know, like if everything makes sense about the way this phone is put together, the features that it has. Um, I, this is, this is a very compelling looking thing. Like in a really.

very intriguing way especially like if you are a no case person i think this this is going to be a very very intriguing phone like i am already like struggling to think about what my decision's gonna be same um but like i i'm very intrigued about the air and as long as it has for me i know there were some rumors some weeks ago

about like the spec sheet and that it essentially has a lot of the things that I care about like promotion and stuff like that like the things that I would struggle to come down from MagSafe Yes, MagSafe. Oh, poor Sixtini. If it has some of those things, I think I would dig it. I think I could get on board with it. Yeah, me too. It looks fun. Like it looks like exciting as a product because being so different. My brother just bought a 16E. He upgraded from like a 12, I think. Wow. And...

So I saw him the other day and was like, hey, can I see your phone? It's pretty nice just having the one camera on the back. Yeah, it's not as good. I think I would miss the telephoto. But I'm going to be hard pressed this year between the pro and the air. It could be a flip-flop year. It could be a flip-flop year. Definitely. Definitely. Saying about the one camera, I would just re-up my complaint for how the iPhone switches to that macro mode and just ruins your photos.

because i've been taking lots of pictures of something really close to me you know my baby my baby i had my baby i wished i had taken account on my phone of how many photos i had before the baby and after I have taken over a thousand pictures of my child. I mean, what do you do? You're just taking like 20 photos at a time. It's like, whatever. They're just going to be there. They're going to do their thing.

But, you know, all the time I have it to press that little button to turn off the automatic macro thing. It just makes them look terrible. I think it's a setting. You can disable it in the camera setting. I looked at it. I don't think it's as clear a setting as you would want it to be. Macro control. Show camera control. Yeah, what you're actually... That is...

if you get the control to turn it off, not if you can turn off the feature. Yeah, that's poorly done. Oh, remember view outside the frame? All that nonsense? Oh my god. You are going down the road that I went down about. six weeks ago as I was looking for the ability to turn it off, found out that it didn't do what I wanted, and then saw a view outside the frame, which I have turned on, so that's good for me. I don't know what that's giving me.

Now that you're talking about this, I kind of also want to disable this. So if you disable it, you can still manually enable macro mode, right? But then it doesn't switch. in and out automatically. What it allows you to disable is the ability to disable. in the camera. That's all. It just... Wait, what? Leaving it on gives you the button that you can press to turn off the macro mode. So, okay, so...

What I want is for the camera not to automatically switch between modes anymore. Is that possible? Yeah, you can't do that. You can't do that. What? Yeah, it will always do that. You can't stop that. You just need a 16E. Where is even this setting, by the way? Settings, camera, it's right at the very bottom. It's called macro control. And it says, show camera control, which is funny now. Like, camera control is now a different thing.

Show camera control for automatically switching the ultrawide camera to capture micro photos and videos. First of all, this phrasing is incredibly bad and confusing. This sentence doesn't make any sense. I keep reading this sentence and I feel like I'm having... This doesn't make any sense. It's so stupid that there's not a setting to say, I want to just manually tap on a macro button to enable macro mode when I want to. I just don't want you to ever again switch back and forth on your own.

And look, I understand why it's there, because when you do get close, often it's blurry now, because the focal distance is what it is, right, with the sensors that they use. I mean, the thing that I am intrigued about, though, again, this is going to be the real problem of September this year, choosing the right phone. I saw something somewhere that says the ultrawide is also going to be 48 megapixels this year.

If it does switch, it will still be a higher quality image if the sensor is better, potentially. So this is going to be a tough year for deciding on an iPhone, especially deciding on an iPhone before you've had any chance to try the iPhone. Hmm. Yep. Maybe we enter some sort of pact as we get closer about what phones we're all going to get. Yeah, I'm not making any pact with you. Yeah, you flip-flopped this year. Yeah. I never flip-flop.

That is true. When it comes to iPhones, I make my decision and I stick with it. I was good to my word this year. I said they won't make a brown phone and then they made a coppery one and that's the one I'm using. I don't love it, but I'm a man of my word. Boys, I was wrong. Oh boy. Okay. I was wrong. Look, I've gone away. I'm a dad now. And so, you know, I've changed as a person and I'm like, I'm good to like now, like I'll admit when I'm wrong, you know? You weren't doing that before?

Nope. Interesting. Always hiding it. Interesting. Always hiding it. Never admitting to it. Don't worry about it. Now I will admit to my mistakes. I spent, I think, two weeks saying how stupid ReadLater services are. Ah, I see, I see. Okay, okay, go on. I'm now a ReadWise reader user. Ah, now you're reading those articles later. You're doing that. There is a good reason for this. So I have taken all text-based social media off of my iPhone. Good. Okay.

There is a second part of this though, which is like, and we're not going to get into it today. I've taken it off of my personal phone. Wait. What? What? Are you two phoning it? Oh, my God. My personal phone does not have any text based social media on it anymore. No, stop, stop. No, the rest of the show is canceled. What did you do? this experiment is new I have a second phone now

I bought a Google Pixel 9 pro fold. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. This is so perfect. Hold on. Just hold on. You're not ready for this. You're not ready for this. I was saving this for the perfect moment. You just served me the perfect moment on a platinum platter. Not even silver. I've been using two phones for the past three months. Hold on! Hold on! Shut up! Hold on!

Google sent me a Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Oh, wow. That's an extra thing. I paid my cold hard cash for this phone. I have been using... No, two months ago, actually. I've been using this for two months. I've been working on a story. We're going to talk about this on another time. There's going to be an article on Mac stories and everything, but yeah. Oh my God, Mike, that's so perfect. This is incredible. Okay, so mine is, this is part of what I'm calling Project Night.

Because I have a day phone and a night phone now. That's the joke. I am essentially trying to find a way to split my phone usage. And so I have certain apps on my work phone that I don't have on my personal phone. There are some... Key apps, it's hard to try and work out if I can split them, but I'm going to try some stuff out to see about this. But it's essentially what I'm trying to do is remove distractions from my iPhone and encourage...

If I'm going to be using my phone to kind of encourage things that are better for me than just being on Blue Sky or being on Threads or whatever. To be like, what if I read that article about... weed company instead of blaze it looking at threads right yeah is he the weed company Yeah, he has a fascinating company called Houseplant, where they sell weed, but also really beautiful marijuana paraphernalia. This guy looks just like me. Seth Rogen? Yeah, you could 100%

You could be his character from the studio for Halloween if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah. You should also get into weed, Stephen. Without a doubt. I think we've done this before, but Seth Rogen will play you in the movie. I think we've picked this before. That picture you put in Discord is terrifyingly close to you. Because he even has the same glasses in that one. Did I tell you? I don't think I told you. When we were in LA last...

I was eating dinner and he came in the restaurant. And he thought it was me. No, I didn't think it was you because I immediately knew it was Seth Rogen because also he is undeniable if you hear him. Yeah. It was amazing. It's like I love Seth Rogen so much and just like so cool to see.

He was just having his dinner and I was having my dinner in the same restaurant. I just think this guy is incredible. By the way, if you haven't watched the studio on Apple TV Plus, change that because it yeah it's on my we gotta finish it's on my list to do it's on my list unbelievable like absolutely unbelievable but yeah so this is a very early experiment where i'm i'm doing this but yes i'm using readwise reader uh as like an app to try and like save things that are

interesting to me that I think could be like overall beneficial for my life and work right like they're like inspirational things that I find of interest. And then I'm using these in my time. I definitely will have more to say about this like two phone experience later because I'm not very far into this, but like it's a thing that I'm trying like. Obviously, I'm going through some huge changes in my life right now. And I am trying to...

In the time that I have that is spare, I want to use it well. That's kind of the thinking. If I have moments... I want to use them for something beneficial to me, not just my work, but like it could just be something I'm interested in rather than like. turning over to the algorithm or just like everyone else's opinions, you know? So let me tell you right now, it's good. Checking social media as like, this is what.

Like, it's like a specific thing that I'm sitting down to do for an amount of time is so much better than like, oh, there's that. Like, you know when you just open an app and you don't know you've opened it? That's what I'm trying to get away from. And Android doesn't have any apps, so it works out.

I'm just, no, but it's like this phone's not in my pocket, right? Like it's on a table, it's on a desk, like it's not always with me and it's not always in my hand. Yeah. And plus it's like an excuse, like I could have got any phone. Like I was thinking about getting a Sixtini, right?

There was a reason I didn't do that. I don't remember what the reason was. But then I thought to myself, why not also use this as an opportunity to try the state-of-the-art folding phones? Because that is exciting to me. And also to get me ready for... thinking about the folding, like a folding iPhone. So this was kind of the route that I... Okay. That led me to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which is an excellent device. It's amazing that we've both been using the same phone in secret from each other.

and i just found out while doing the show that's incredible well it's not crazy that you're doing something like this it's a little bit funnier that i have been using this phone for a month and haven't told any of you yeah yeah Yeah. I think I told Steve, I told you, Steven, right? That I had this. You told me that one was coming and then I sort of, it sort of dropped off my radar. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. We'll talk about this. Yeah. I have also thought before about day phone, night phone, but I just can't. 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 or maybe you're scaling your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain name, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place.

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And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code CONNECTED to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain name. That's squarespace.com slash connected and the offer code connected to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of Connected and all of Relay. So, Daddy, Mike, now that you're back, I am sure...

First of all, let me ask you, did you keep up the promise of you listening to the shows while you were gone? Yeah, I loved it. It was great. I loved being listening to the shows. Good show. Okay. So by that, I assume you have been keeping an eye on Apple news and the things that have happened. And I kind of want to know from you, I assume you, you know. you've come out, you've been saving some opinions.

How have you been keeping track of those opinions? Did you just prepare a giant note called My Hot Takes for When I'm Back? Yes. Well, kind of. I've been keeping that. I mean, I always have to have a running list of hot takes. And I think... Steven put together a list of things that he wanted my hot takes on. Is that right? Yeah. These things that are in here. But if you have other things, this is not...

It's not like exclusive. I mean, yeah, I have other things. It will come through through the list that you... you've put on here okay so yeah i have some hot takes um So we're going to maybe do this via just like things that Apple have announced. So first off was Apple announced they would spend half a trillion. It's 500 billion, half a trillion. It is. Okay. Numbers, man. It's confusing. That they would spend $500 billion in the U.S.

And really all they say is they're going to use this money to build AI servers? Yeah, okay, that's what anybody wants, right? That's what the American government is looking for. They're going to build them as long as the CFO allows them to spend the money.

Am I right? Am I right? Yeah, that was a story that like I read that and it's like, what are you doing over there? Yeah, well, he's not the CFO anymore. So think about that. Oh, wow. Are you saying that that's what happened? I'm not saying that. But he's also not not saying it, you know? Yeah, that's true. It's true. He's not not saying it on the fact that he said it. Not not not saying it.

This, I mean, look, this is probably my weakest hot take. This press release is just smoke and mirrors. It's just not real. Yeah, it's smoke right up. Turn it, person. Into the mirror. It's the Mac Pro 2.0, right?

They did this with a Mac Pro. They're like, oh, we're going to build them in America, even though none of the pieces are going to come from America. Did I hear an anecdote? Like there are no screws. They had to bring the screws in or something. Maybe this is a different company. It's just like, this is just stupid.

If the U.S. government wants Apple to invest in manufacturing, what they didn't want was for Apple's private cloud compute servers to be assembled in Houston or wherever it is. Like, come on. This is stupid. It's stupid. Let's move on to the Mac Studio. So Apple unveiled the new Mac Studio. I loved the chaos of bringing the M3 back. That just threw everyone through a loop. I was actually kind of pleased that I wasn't there for that. While I thought it was funny, like it just...

trying to untangle everything I said about the M3. You know, it's just like the perceived thing that we all believed that Ben Thompson said once that the M3 was a dead process and everyone just repeated it. And now they built a new chip on it and had to change it enough that it could get Thunderbolt 5 certified. And that's like a whole thing. So proving that no one really knows anything, we just will say things. That is the...

That's what this podcast is all about. The Mac Studio, the M4 Max and M3 Ultra Mac Studio is the Mac Pro. Nothing else should exist. The Mac Pro is stupid. It shouldn't exist anymore. I'm sorry, John. No one needs it. It's not going to do anything. This thing is super powerful. It should be all that exists. What, are you just going to have a bunch of empty space?

to put your keepsakes inside of, you know, just like... What if my keepsakes are in a DevonThink database, you know? Look, yeah, but... You know that you made a mistake. You made a mistake spending all that money on the SSD because you spent all that money. It was way too expensive. Then you got rid of the computer and had to buy it all over again.

bought an ssd enclosure right and put it on there you could imagine you're getting it now stephen why am i why am i the victim of the hot tank All that money for eight terabytes internal storage in a Mac Pro, which you then had to spend again on internal storage.

For the MacBook Pro, when really, if you would have just, I don't know what I call drobos or something. I think Synology is doing something now. You should just like do that. I think Casey loves Synology is my understanding. You should just go do that, right? Yeah, wow. I actually addressed this.

on a recent NPU about my NAS, but, you know, you're not going to hear it now. So this is what you've been saving. Not the hot takes, but the attacks against other podcasters. That's this reason. I love it. These attacks aren't in my notes, but they're coming out. Yeah, no, go for it. I've been waiting. I've had no feuds over the last two months. I'm looking for them now. This is your release valve. Yeah. Sure. Okay. I'm a new parent. You can't attack me back.

all right that's how this goes i'm a new parent i can't be trusted i'm not sleeping you know that's how it goes uh i love the chaos of this max studio i i because i i genuinely find it funny that like Mac Pro fans. never get what they want. It's funny to me. I'm sorry, but it's funny to me. that like all they want is the most powerful mac and they think that because they love the mac pro they're going to get the most powerful mac

And Apple keep making other Macs that are more powerful. They can't stop it. They're like, oh, we're going to make an iMac. It's more powerful. Now we're going to make a series of laptops that are more powerful.

Now the Mac Pro is back again and powerful again at the top of the lineup. And now we're going to do another one that's not the Mac Pro and it's going to be more powerful. And then eventually they're going to give you a Mac Pro. It's going to be way overpriced. It can't do anything different. And then... Six months later, there'll be a laptop that's more powerful again, and then we'll just keep going.

I think I've written a stand-up special. I think I'm doing a stand-up special now. Sky Blue. More like Why Do. Oh no. Give us a real color. Give us some actual color. Why do this? Like, come on. This is stupid. This is basically a roast of the Apple community. It's a roast of the newsroom and other podcasts. This is what this is. The only thing that Apple intelligence has given us is more RAM. It's the only thing that we've gotten.

right yeah yeah it's just we just get more ram uh speaking of apple intelligence i'm going to move this around a little bit now i'll talk about apple intelligence this isn't a joke as much as it is a take that i have like Apple have screwed up so bad with Apple intelligence, right? Yeah. Like the delaying of Apple intelligence, again, what they have achieved here.

is they have lost the trust of the media, which is a problem for them. It reminds me of like, we see this stuff like if you follow gaming news a lot, right? so like uh last year sony released a video game called um Oh, man. Concord? Concord. Yeah. Which they released and then like cancelled and fired the entire team like a couple of weeks later because it was such a disaster, right? Yeah. Now, every time Sony releases a multiplayer game, or a live service game,

Concord is brought up. Every time there's a piece of news about they've got this game coming out called Marathon. Every time it's brought up, people always bring up Concord. And it is undermining the news of any new game that Sony is trying to buy out. Apple announcing and showing off these Siri features, which all of the reporting now seems to suggest they just never were, like they were never, ever running anywhere, right? It's like, was that an information article? It was just like...

It was a thing that never existed. Now, whenever Apple intelligence features are written about, at WWDC this year, everyone's going to be going, yeah, right, if they ship it. That's what they've gained out of this, where they essentially... somebody, somebody decided to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, right? And to show something that didn't exist. Like, at least it didn't exist in any kind of shipping state, clearly, because otherwise it was...

And so they are going to be fighting an even stronger uphill battle to make anyone believe they have any good AI. Nobody believed it before. And we saw these things and we were like, okay, we'll see what they're like when they ship. And now we'll say, we'll see what they're like when they ship, if they ship.

Like, that's what's going to happen. Like, AirPower stuck around for such a long time as, like, a little joke. But, like, at least Apple aren't in the business of making products that are like AirPower, right? Yeah. It's like, imagine if Apple were like... Here's the new iPhone 17 Air. And then, you know, it comes to like the day before it comes out and they're like, oh yeah, no, we're not.

We're not going to ship that. Actually, we decided not to do that. They'd be like, what are you talking about? So this is super bad for them. And what they have achieved is... I can't think of a good way to put this, but John Gruber writing that article, something is rotten in the state of Cupertino, right? That's bad for Apple. Yeah. That's real bad. I recall there was a...

something that, yeah, this is in like the, because kind of tailing back to the discussions about MobileMe or whatever, right, that were happening around this time. And there's that quote of Steve Jobs saying like, We've even lost the support of our friend Walt Mossberg. Yeah. I imagine someone saying instead of Apple, like we've even lost the support of John.

Yeah. Like, this is bad. This is just not good for them, right? So that's my thoughts on the Apple intelligence delays and also just like... What a waste of time and money. Across the board. How much should they pay Bella Ramsey to be in those ads? And now they're being taken to court over those ads. You know, like, it's ridiculous. AirPods Max. Why did they release this product without lossless? And why did they hold back the audio cable until now? Unbelievable. To have a press release for it.

Like, why did they need to do... Was there any reason that they had to do the AirPods Max update when they did? Like, I don't think so, right? Like, people would say, like, oh, what about, like... The European Union stuff. I feel pretty confident that Apple had enough stock somewhere in the world of the AirPods Max to move around. And also that... There wasn't a new version. There wasn't a new unit. But I don't understand why there needed to be a software update to enable a cable.

They could have at least shipped the cable, the USB-C to audio cable. However, one good thing is that cable... As me and Greg call the world's most expensive cable. braided now, so it's less fragile. It's a good cable. I got it. The previous version of that cable was like the thickness of a hair. It was insane. It was like a fiber cable, but it wasn't fiber. Yeah, it had none of the benefits and all of the danger. That cable would break so easily. I went through like three of those.

And also it's like one of those things where you don't know it's broken until the point where you're using it, right? Like it can't give you any kind of indication. And obviously you only ever have one of those lying around because they're like $40 each. So I'm happy that they have this, but I don't understand why they left it to when they left it. We also have in here the executive... I've moved my notes out of order now. The executive changes for the series stuff. This isn't so much of a joke.

They had to do something, right? Yeah. They couldn't do nothing. They had to move people around. I'm happy that they didn't fire anyone, right? People always look back to the Scott Forstall thing. But like that book, I really liked that book, the Tritmicle book.

after Steve the one Jason really hates that I love where it kind of references that like there was a lot more going on with Scott Forth and like maps was just like a good way to get him out because it was essentially they were either going to lose Forstall or Ive and they chose Ive which was the right decision I know people have a lot of mixed feelings about Johnny Ive

And people think that Scott Forstall would have saved the company sometimes, I think, because he would have just kept making things more skimorphic and that would have saved the company. By the way, why is there so much? Why are people wanting this back so much? I think you said this, Federico, and I completely agree with you. Why are people nostalgic for the bad safari?

Oh, I don't know. That's such a weird fetish to have. Like of all things that I've seen on the internet, that is a peculiar one, man. Like people maybe don't remember just how bad in practice.

You know, the most common thing, using a website. Like how bad using a website was with that design? It's, I don't know, it's... very very confusing to me yeah that was like it's wild that people weren't there but yes like the scott falstel thing they just needed to get rid of him and they they just had him die on the sword maps right

They didn't need to do that for this. I find it interesting and kind of... kind of a poetic in a way that they put in charge of Siri, the person who shipped the most difficult product in years at Apple.

uh which is uh you know it's probably the guy you want right now you know yeah i mean and it was also there was um i've forgotten the person's name like someone whose name we i didn't know until i read that article right who was like uh a forced law lieutenant who essentially Vorath that's the one thank you who like it seemed like that they'd already started right they because also Vorath had been working with Rockwell

in his division for similar reasons of like, we've got to get this product out the door. I think he's... I don't know if he is necessarily good at dealing with AI, but he at least seems like someone who can get a complicated job done. Because you're right, Vision Pro... for all of its faults is like you can see how complex it is and it is

It's a marvel that it shipped to any point, honestly. And it's wonderful to use. I mean, you know, set aside all the problems of the Vision Pro, but it is wonderful to use. Especially now, since I have my fancy medical equipment level headstrap. Oh, you got the medical headstrap? The ResMed. I got it from the UK Apple Store, Mike. I didn't want to bother you. John spoke about it. Yeah. So I used...

I use the UK forwarding service and I got it today and it's perfect. It's lovely. It's very comfortable. You absolutely could have asked me, by the way, like it wouldn't have been very complicated, but I thought it was very sweet that you, that you ended up instead getting a big UK buddy who could send. Yeah. Do you like this headset strap thing? It's... Look...

It looks like a piece of medical equipment when it's on your head, but it's incredibly comfortable. It's incredibly adjustable because you basically have three straps. each of them with a velcro and metal loop that you can adjust. And you got these counterweights that you can freely place anywhere. So you can choose how much pressure you want to feel on the top or the back of your head.

And it's very premium. It feels premium. It feels like an Apple accessory. It's very well made. And it's very comfortable. Yes. Yeah. I do look kind of ridiculous wearing it. But it's very comfortable. On the executive things, though, how much can I do in three months? Right? I don't know. I am very intrigued. did you see the thing I posted on Mac stories about like, what if Apple started using third-party large language models? Yeah.

And to sort of like maybe, you know, distill a version of one of those large language models. I do think there is... There is something they could do. I'm not sure, like it all comes down to like this large language model that they built. They actually published the white paper last year. What's it called? AFM, Apple foundational model or something. They had this big server version and this small version that runs on device. I wonder if there's... There is potential for like taking that work.

that model that they built, which deals with the semantic index on your device, deals with like communicating with apps, but it basically seems that just like any large-grant model, it's suffering from. hallucinations and performing the wrong action based on the user input. And here's what I'll say. If Apple can be a company that in this AI age can ship fast, can build fast and ship fast.

We've seen other companies do more complicated things in three months. And I do think if Apple really wanted to... they could realistically have a version of AFM distilled with Deep Seek R1 or something. that has much, much better reasoning for understanding, like if I'm asking for the flight info of my mom and we want to meet up for lunch later, that it's not hallucinating that I'm asking for Stephen's flight info and we want to meet for dinner, you know?

they could have a version that doesn't get it wrong, you know, like 20% of the time, maybe gets it wrong 5% of the time. But if they frame it correctly... I think they could do it, especially because they would need to hit the three months in June and then six months in September, right? Other companies, here's the thing, other companies in this age...

can do these things much more quickly than Apple can do. And obviously, Apple works at a different scale. But also, OpenAI is quite the scale, you know, with half a billion users at this point or something. I do think that Apple has also painted themselves in a corner when it comes to wanting to have this image of perfection.

It seems to me like people have gotten used to the idea that ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Cloud... can give wrong answers and people seem to be more forgiven with the hallucination of of chatbots and maybe there could be a way for apple to just come out and say you know we're doing this thing It's not going to be perfect 100% of the time because that's how this technology works.

But 95% of the time, it's going to be incredible. And I actually think I shared this with you guys privately a couple of months ago, like this hot take of mine. And I hate to be the person who makes this point, but I also think it's a useful exercise to think about. I could totally see. steve jobs on stage saying look we made this thing

It's not going to be perfect. It's going to have mistakes because that's just the limits of technology. But 95% of the time, it's going to be incredible. And let me show you why. And I think if that timeline existed today, we would all be okay with it. So that was my hot take. I feel like this would have been easier to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then what they did instead. Like, I think we would be more okay with it then. But I, again, it's like, I think.

The goodwill that they have burned in doing what they have done makes everything they're going to do more difficult. And even this scenario that you have posed, I think it's an interesting one, right? Of using... not made here technology. Like, why not, right? But... Again, it's just like, how much can you pull together in three months? Because what they can't do is show something that they don't feel comfortable with, right?

Like what they definitely cannot do is show something that was put together quickly that they don't have running. They can't do that because that's what they did. So they can't do it again. And so how much can you really get together in a three-month period that you can feel confident you can ship within the time frame that you say you're going to ship in, or at all? Well, I can tell you that DeepSeek V3 was trained in two months.

The whole DeepSeek V3. I understand that, but Apple is a massive company, right? It just doesn't work like that. If DeepSeek were building an operating system, they couldn't have put it together in two months. Yeah, but they're not building an operating system. Isn't there also a lot of evidence that they've ripped off OpenAI, like they started on top? I mean, Apple's not going to do that.

I mean... But they will, in theory, if they do what Federico's saying, which is to use other people's models to train their models. That's just what Deep Seek did. Yeah, yeah. I understand what you're saying. I agree with you. I think it is an interesting idea. But what I wonder is, can you show off something that is compelling, that feels plugged into the operating system?

that you would feel confident getting on stage, quote unquote, and saying, here's this thing we've built and it'll be out in the next year. Like, because you did that last year. Can you do that again and feel really confident, really confident without a shadow of a doubt that you're going to get it out? Like, I see a scenario. where they do not talk about Apple Intelligence at WWDC. I also do. Yes. Yeah. Because of my next point, which is the OS redesign. Ah, finally.

I have two points on this. One, and this is reiterating something Stephen said, I think, on the show, or maybe on 5.12. Can Apple pull off a redesign of every OS at the same time and bring new features? In theory, they should be able to. But... They seem like a company that is not actually structurally built to do something like that because of the way they work from a secrecy perspective, right? Where like...

There are definitely teams inside of Apple working on things that are going to be redesigned that they don't know about yet. Right? Like, 100% there are. Right? Like, there have got to be teams that are building system apps. system apps that are on the phone that have not seen what the new OS design looks like. And they're going to have to work on that. And so, like, how does this work? But my other thing about the redesign... I assume.

that this has been a long, well-thought-out process, right? But they have spent a lot of time thinking about this and that this has been going on for a long time. But there's this little voice in my head that keeps asking if this is a smokescreen. that in the last year, they have said, you know what? We'll save us. We're going to redesign the entire operating system. So people stop thinking about it.

And like, I don't believe it, but I also can't stop myself from asking that question. Like there is just a voice in my head that keeps saying. Is this a distraction? Like, are they doing it to distract us? Or are they, the more like level-headed version of this is, are they deciding to do this in 2025? Because it's a distraction. Like maybe this is a 2026, 2027 project.

They're deciding to do now because it is the exact kind of thing that you could do to get people excited and to ignore the last 12 months. Because I also see like a realistic scenario is like they get up and the only thing they talk about Apple intelligence is...

We've improved this. We've improved that. Summaries are coming back to notifications. And we're still working on this thing that we showed you last year. Like nothing new. And that's the end of it. But hey, look, we've got this new readers. My final thing is tariffs. Ah, okay. So, people don't like to hear this, alright? That's how I'm starting what I'm about to say. People don't want to hear this, and I understand it. But the way that...

Tim Cook has dealt with a terrorist. It's exactly why he's the CEO that Apple needed him to be. Everybody has their ideals. We believe and like to believe that he has ideals. I believe he does have his ideals. I don't think he doesn't have ideals. I know that people say he doesn't have ideals anymore, but I don't believe that person. He is doing the job people need from him. And he is doing the job that he's hired to do. He's doing the job that he's paid to do.

He's done this the whole time. Like, he got exemptions in the first Trump administration for the tariffs in China, right? If he gets exemptions for the iPhone, right, the iPhone doesn't increase in price by any amount. Is that worth giving a million dollars to the Trump inauguration fund? I'm just asking a question. I'm just asking the question. I'm just asking the questions. I'm just asking the question. There are a lot of people that will say yes. Right? Right.

Yeah, I stepped just right on this landmine the other day. Okay. A couple of days ago, I published this. It was basically a long block quote from the Verge cast. in which Nilak Patel called this and like all the other tech executives being on stage at the inauguration. It's like the goal of that was corruption, right? Like if you pay a million dollars and then your phone doesn't get tariff like that is.

And I agree with him. And a bunch of people were like, no, I got this long, you know, for somebody was like, no, Tim Cook is like the right CEO for the moment. He's just playing the game. I get that. And I do think that if Trump hadn't won, Tim Cook would retire in the next four years. And now I think he's stuck working at Apple until Trump's out of office.

Just because he's good at it doesn't mean anyone should be good at it. Both can be true. Yes, Tim Cook is dealing the hand he has been dealt. the best he can but also the hand that he has been dealt is terrible and like we are in trouble as a country because this is now what people expect to happen yeah but this is only because you're seeing the corruption Do you think it wasn't happening? No, I'm not saying that.

Many things can be true at once. I'm not saying this to you, but people don't like it because now they can see it. everyone was happier when it was happening we didn't know right like i mentioned the things like look at the army of paid lobbyists like oh that's really bad too yeah it it is different that it's so blatant and in a way i guess that's both better and worse

But like my overarching thing with that piece was like tech CEOs may be doing what's in the best interest of their shareholders, but it doesn't mean it's like the best thing to do ultimately. Yeah. I do take a slightly different view on it, which is I don't think about the shareholders. I think about the thousands of employees, right? I don't know how I would deal with this, right? Like, I think I would find it very complicated from a conscience perspective.

You have the responsibility of thousands of people directly relying on you to make sure that the company that you run stays in business. Or not even just stays in business, stays in business to the level at which you don't have to start laying people off. Because if you sell 50% less iPhones because they're 70% more expensive, I don't know that that's the case.

Right. That that's what would happen. But that's surely a fear that they have that, like, if they're more expensive, they'll sell less of them because all they're doing is they're. Actually, if they sell any amount less, that's the problem because Apple doesn't make the money, right? Like if the iPhone has a 60% tariff on it, say. and they put it up by 60% or less, they're going to make either the same amount of money or less money, and they will sell less of them.

And so at that point, what happened? Do you have to start firing people? And then are you responsible for those people? That's the issue that I see. I understand the shareholders. The shareholders are definitely a thing. Maybe they do it for the shareholders. Maybe the CEOs don't do it for the shareholders. They do it for a shareholder themselves. They own shares in their company.

anything bad that happens means they lose personal money I don't I'm not trying to suggest what he's doing it for I'm just saying like that is what I see like I feel like if I was him that's what I would feel the responsibility for that like There are thousands of families, tens of thousands of families, probably, if you consider all of Apple, right? And like all the, not just the people that work at Apple Park, the people that work all over the world, the people that work in the retail stores.

That is what he is having to protect. And it means that he has to pledge $500 billion in U.S. manufacturing, which is just a joke. It means that he has to make calls to the Commerce Secretary and explain to him for some reason that the U.S. Commerce Secretary, whoever this person is, right? That like you can't make iPhones in America. Like it's kind of what he has to try and explain to people that for some reason they can't seem to get their head around. Like.

What I would say is imagine if you're hearing me say this and you're like, Mike, how could you say this? Imagine your employer. decided to fight the leader of your country. That they decided, we're going, we're going to battle with the president. How would you feel about that from the security of your paycheck? And like, is that important to you?

I would say for a lot of people, that would actually be pretty important. Like when rubber hits the road, you would like maybe your CEO to stop doing that. You are a person who values your ideals more, and I think that is all. If you are that person, I think a lot of people would struggle with that quite a lot. Like I think I would struggle with that quite a lot. I have a family now, like I have a daughter to protect.

If Stephen decided that he was going to go to war with Donald Trump, I would feel pretty uncomfortable about that and would kind of wish he wouldn't do it. That would be how I would feel. That's how the bad guys win. Would you like to fight with the president? No, I'm too busy fighting XAI about.

Memphis stuff. Yeah, that's fine. You can do that. I don't care about that. You could just go ahead and do that. But if they decided to tariff podcasts, I would just be like, oh man, that really sucks. We're going to have to do that. Because...

It's like I want to try and save what I have. I'm not saying it's not a bad position to be in. It sucks. You know what? I bet he's losing sleep over it. I hope that he is. I don't care about that though. Yeah, but I don't care about it. It's the job you signed up for. And it's funny, he cashed out a bunch of stock in early April. It's like, Tim Cook's fine. He's fine. It just...

Tim Cook is in an impossible situation, right? And I don't envy that, but at the same time, I would feel better if I saw that he was in a hard situation, right? Because he has a straight face all the time, it's hard to really say, is he actually struggling with this? Did it actually turn his stomach to do? I don't know. We're getting off. It's impossible to know this.

I will say, by the way, nobody knows what Steve Jobs would have done and it would have been worse. I don't know in what way it would have been worse. I can guarantee that of you. that whatever Steve Jobs would have done, it would have been worse in ways that we can't even imagine. It would have been worse, definitely, in all possible ways. Look, this is just... Such an incredibly complicated thing to do. And I think that...

He has done the exact right job, which is to try and explain to them why they should not be tariffed and to get around that. I actually think the million dollar thing, I brought it in. But realistically, I don't think that made a difference because like. There are other companies that are not going to get exempted from these tariffs who gave him money.

I think to try and assume that there is any... Mark Zuckerberg was on stage and the government's getting ready to break up meta, potentially, right? Like, Google guy was on stage. They're going to have to sell Chrome to open AI. Like, things...

They gave the money to stop these lawsuits and they didn't do it. Yeah, so really Tim Cook's the best at doing the bad thing. Yes, because he knew how to do it, right? Like there is lots of reports that apparently Cook and Trump, they have a good relationship. Can you imagine like just if Tim Cook could go back and talk to young Tim Cook, right? He just worked for Compaq. He's working at Apple. He's like making power books and iBooks and stuff. He's like, one day.

You're going to speak to the president of the United States and the head of China, like all these, like he is a, a really like a state. figure at this point because Apple is so big. Tim Cook is the single most powerful man in the world. I do believe that to be the case. His buying power is so strong. His buying power is...

Like, absurd. Like, what he can control, even though Luko Maeshi doesn't want to spend $4 on the AI servers. But Tim Cook, he can just do whatever he wants, money-wise. One might say Tim Cook is cooking. You should have, but you could say that. You could say that. That's a dad joke right there. I know. Tim Cook and Taras is a truly wild thing.

I wouldn't have the stomach for it. I know I wouldn't have the stomach for it. I kind of can't believe anybody can have the stomach for it. Like, it feels like such a... complicated I don't know man give me give me hundreds of millions of dollars I'll have the stomach I'll have two stomachs for it you know

I think I would have more tummy aches if I had hundreds of millions of dollars laying around. Yeah, I just don't think I could do it. Like, I really don't think I could do it. The thing that, like, you mentioned it, Stephen, and again, I've seen some discourse about this, about like, you know. a bunch of tech CEOs selling off their stock or whatever. Everyone knew he was going to do the tariffs. Like,

He promised he would. Yes. Anybody that thinks he wasn't going to do that, I don't know what to tell you. If you were paying attention to anything he said, I have been waiting for it. I knew he was going to do it. Me and Gray have been preparing for this. we're not like incredible CEOs, but like we knew he was going to do this and we know we ship products into America. So we were just waiting on this to happen. And we've been, we've been getting ready for it.

And so we're fine. Like we knew he was going to do this. Everybody knew he was going to do this. He even said the day he was going to do it. So like if you had stock in a tech company, you should have sold it before then. Like you should have done that. Or any business. You had stock in any company. If you were like, what do they call it? When you've got lots of stock in a company. There's a term for it. I don't know what it is.

Yes. There is a term for like leveraged. Is it leveraged something? Yeah. There is a word where like if you've got a lot of stock in a company, if you could have gotten it out, you should have done that because like it was clear that everything was going to be what? And it's been wild and continues to be wild. And all I'm saying is I wouldn't want to be Tim Cook. No. That's the end of my hot takes, unless you want my take on anything else. Um...

Do you regret this segment? A little bit. Good. No, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I'm back. Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't like this, remember I'm a dad now and I haven't been sleeping, so I don't want to tell you. Okay, before we go, we're going to talk about the EU. Just quickly. This was breaking as we record today, so... John Voorhees reported this. On Mac Stories. What did he do? John fined Apple 500 million euros.

Wow. Is this like when you wrote to Congress? Is this the result of that? Yeah, it is. To find them? Yeah, corruption, you know. John is a good lawyer. You know, if I'm at home and John's at home, we live exactly 512 miles away from each other. That's nice for you. Well, nice. Yeah, it's nice. Okay, so the European Commission has fined Apple 500 million euros. They've also fined Meta. 200 million euros. We're going to focus on Apple for now. This is around their steering provision.

And so the European Commission writes under the DMA app developers distributing their apps via Apple's app store should be able to inform customers free of charge. of alternative offers outside the app store, steer users to those offers and allow them to make purchases. And so this runs into all of Apple's.

stuff of like the remember like those big scary text panels that would pop up like you're going on the internet you credit card and identity will be stolen you know all that all that stuff yeah uh this seems to be that, what's going on. In addition to the fine, Apple has been ordered to, quote, remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating the noncompliant conduct in the future. So basically, stop doing it and don't do it again.

I have this quote from Apple to The Verge from Apple person Emma Wilson. I'm going to read this in a serious voice, but just imagine it's in like a whiny talk. Today's announcements are yet another example of the European Commission unfairly targeting Apple in a series of decisions that are bad for the privacy and security of our users, bad for products, and force us to give away our technology for free. Is it for free on the iPhone that we should pay $1,000 for? I know.

Well, Emma Wilson goes on, we have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for. Despite countless meetings, the commission continues to move the goalpost every step of the way. We will appeal and continue engaging. I mean, Apple's steering stuff like...

clearly they weren't in violation with what this law was trying to do. Now, you can argue, and I think successfully in places, that the DMA doesn't make a lot of sense in the way that it's written. It's written by people who... don't necessarily fully understand the technology they're dealing with. But clearly the European Commission thinks Apple is in violation of that. So we'll see where this goes. We will see where it goes.

I don't know what to say. I mean, they had it coming. So, you know. But. Well, yeah. It's not Andrew Siegler talking about this. They have not fined them the amounts that the DMA says that they can fined them. They have not fined them 10%. The EU is not feeling as confident as they used to about this for some reason. Like, I don't know what the reason is, but they're not as confident because... What this should be is like a 40 billion euro fine or something, but it's not. It's 500 million.

Right? So they should have fined them like 40 billion dollars and they fined them like 500 million dollars. Yeah. Why have they done that? maybe because they want to you know i don't know it's politics they don't want to maybe you know steer the pot too much yeah right now but then that that makes me like i just wonder about this now because it's like They cracked. So like, how do we go back to the table here? Like what's Apple going to do now? Right. Because.

There's like a crack in the armor, right? The EU have been very strong and they're continuing to sound very strong, but yet they have decided for some reason that they're not going to fine them the amount that they said they could fine them. And I'm like... I wonder what that means and what that means for where we're going forward. We'll see. I mean, they give them a very short time, I think, to comply, right?

So I guess we'll see. 60 days. Oh, my God. 60 days. That's not going to happen. Wow. It's like, oh, stop working on your redesign. If it were a TikTok ban, they could just extend the deadline indefinitely. Yep. That's not how things work over there. Yeah. The amount of the fine was a little surprising to me, but it also feels like the 10% thing, like... That's a card you can only play once, it feels like.

They say that they can plot, they can, the DMA says you can do it and just keep doing it. Like that's what the rule says. Like the law says, we'll find you 10% and continually do it. But if they have any desire to, for Apple to like. to continue to have conversations with them. Yes. That's a one-way door in Amazon parlance, right? I agree with you, but then they should not have made that the law.

Yeah. They shouldn't have made 10% the law unless they were going to do it. Also kind of want to see what would happen if they did do it. Like if they find them 40 million euros or 40 billion dollars? The popcorn eating experience would be incredible. I've been waiting for this for that reason. What happens? But no, they didn't do it. I mean, look, not that half a trillion. I keep getting this wrong. Half a billion? How much money?

Whatever the amount is, the amount of money that they have fined them is still a lot of money. Like, it's a lot of money. but I don't know if it has the exact same sting as 10% of your global revenues does. Remember we just like talked about rumors and made fun of iPhone colors. That was a simpler time. Sometimes I yearn for those times. We don't have to talk about this, right? Yeah.

We choose to, like there is an interest in it. The amount at which we talk about it is kind of up to us. We would not have done tariffs outside of the hot take. It felt like if we did the hot takes without the tariffs, it was like an obvious gap. Yeah. But... Do you now wish that you hadn't included that in the list of things? Yeah. Kind of. Okay. It's good to know. Maybe I've learned my lesson.

Well, I think that does it for this week. If you want to find links to the stuff we spoke about there on the web or in your podcast player. There are also a couple of other links that draw your attention to. You can send us feedback or follow up. There's a form on our website. The link will just take you right there. You can make it anonymous. So if you know secret things, tell us secret things. That's always fun.

You can also become a member at Get Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show. We do it each and every week. This week, we talked about perplexity and their moves into like some Siri-like things on the iPhone through their iOS app. Actually, really pretty interesting given all the turmoil that Siri and Apple Intelli...

gone through. So if that sounds good to you, you also get access to the members discord, a newsletter, some members only podcasts, a bunch of great stuff. It's just seven bucks a month. So go check it out. Connect to Pro. It's a great deal. If you want to find us online, you can do so. Federico is the editor-in-chief of MacStories.net. Mike hosts quite a few other shows here on Relay, and you can go check out his work at Cortex Brand.

You can find my writing at 512pixels.net, and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay each and every Sunday. I'd like to thank our sponsor this week, Squarespace, for their support of the show. And until next time, guys, all three of us, it feels so good, say goodbye. Adios. Cheerio. Federico, didn't that just feel good to have him back? That was so good. Say it again, Mike. Cheerio. Bye, y'all.