552: Stage Manager Could Never

From Relay, this is Connected, episode 552. Today's show is brought to you by FitBot and Ecamm. I am your keynote chairman, Mike Hurley, and I had the pleasure of introducing keynote chairman. and your chairman, Federico. keynote annual annual keynote chairman Federico Vatici hi Federico hello I'm back I missed you guys really good show I actually finished listening last night

But now I'm back. I'm here fully seated, not in the car. So I'm ready. Excellent. Yeah, you were stuck in traffic for the entire recording of last week. And even longer than that, actually. Most of the post show, everything. Yes. We're also joined by... Steven. That's just your name. Well, WWC is coming up, and I could take the keynote chairman away from Mike. yeah but you won't though so it's fine uh so you're steven rhymes with even uh stefan

Stefan Rines with Farm wrote in again and said that they would like to explain themselves. What they should have said is the A sounds more like the A in Farm than the A in Hand. So it's like Stefan rather than Stefan. so it's not the farm also that that was also on my mind i mean

It still could be unsure. Maybe there's a lot of correct going on. Stefan. So it's kind of like Stefan from SNL, but okay, with an A. Interesting. There is an additional piece of this follow-up that I didn't put in our show notes, but was in our follow-up feedback system. where they said the reason I'm doing this is because of this and they sent in a clip to a previous piece of feedback that they gave us where we called them Stefan rather than Stefan. Bye.

Stefan, you've got to be better with your athletics.

Last week we spoke about EtiQ just saying stuff on the stand, including that Safari browser searches had declined for the first time in April of 2025. I'll give you one guess what maybe Search Company was not happy about that. Was it Ask Javes? They are furious over there. Doc, doc, doc, doc, go. Yeah. They called Eddie Q. Never mind. Go. Google had a blog post. The headline of this blog post is the funniest thing I've ever read. Here's the onblog.google

I was trying to read a .com, but there's not one. Just blog.google. Here's our statement on this morning's press reports about search traffic. Who are they talking to? That's the name. That's how they titled the blog post. What? Who are they talking to? Who wrote that? Hey! It's okay, it managed to say, hey! Hey, here's what we have to say. Hey, you talking about me, huh? This is a single paragraph.

Incredible. We continue to see overall query growth in search. That includes an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms more generally. As we enhance search of new features, people are seeing that Google search is more useful for more of their queries, and they're accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app or using their voice or Google Lens.

Okay. And so what they're saying is, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. People love the Google app that we forced them to use. I think that's what they're actually saying. Do you guys get this too when you Google things? And it's like, why don't you just continue this in the Google app instead? Do you get this on your phones? Yeah. Yeah, it's super annoying. It's really annoying, and I know why they're doing it.

I don't begrudge them for doing it in a way, but I just wish they would stop. Like, they're doing it because they're scared that this is all going to be taken away, right? That's why they're doing it. And I guess it's working because this... This may be the reason that searches are going down on Safari, although I don't actually think that's the reason. I think that the reason is the obvious one. But it's funny. It's funny.

That has been our statement on last week's press report about search traffic.

Here's what we have to say. Federico, you missed last week's show, so we didn't get any teaching takes. Do you have anything that you want to add to the discussion over the App Store Commission stuff? You did a really good job, you know, between you, between John on App Stories and also the excellent episode of Upgrade. I don't really feel like I have anything else to add beyond how stupid can you be not to do what the judge tells you to do. What a mess. And also, it's been lovely.

to see the consequences of this. Just being able to have subscriptions in the Patreon app or... Spotify, all these folks that are now free, Kindle books. It's been just the pleasure of seeing the consequences of this. Yeah, it's been really nice. I don't really feel like... like I personally have anything else to add beyond, yeah, good job, you know. something i've been thinking about is like We really are just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this, I feel like, right? Because...

I think there are a lot of companies, big and small, who are maybe holding fire on this one to see if the appeal goes through or not. And if that appeal fails... I just don't know what the next five years

It's going to be really interesting to see how it will unfold in the long term. I can tell you from the developer perspective, RevenueCat and Superwall and some others have had blog posts about you know hey if you're running experiments like what does it look like to send people out to the web and you know it's very early data right because it's only been possible for a couple weeks

But generally, I think what people are finding is that conversions are down. Like if you lose some amount of people when they go to the web. But obviously, if you don't drop the price, you're making more money. And I think, like, I would just, you know... Thinking about what that would look like if this happens in mass. And I can tell you, most developers are not going to take 30% off their price. They're just going to keep that 30%. Why would you...

Why would you reduce what you're charging? I don't think they should reduce it. I don't either. I think this is the price that their customers are willing to pay. Apple have taken... Now they should be able to get it back again. I think some of the very large companies, it benefits them to lower the price, because they...

They really want to convince people to use their system rather than apples. Exactly. And even if you reduce it by 10 or 15%, you can say, hey, if you go through us, we can cut you a better deal or you can get this promo for a few months. You have plenty of opportunities.

you don't need to reduce it by 30%. Even if you just cut it down by 15, that's enough. When people see a lower price, they'll just say, I'm not stupid. I'm going to go for the lower price. And then it'll be really interesting to see in the long term what those...

What is the actual loss of conversion compared to the amount of money that you gain? And also, my expectation is, and we all have a vague idea of how these kinds of things work, that conversion rate will get better over time as the tools get better. I think so too. RevenueCat is in their biggest interest. All of the companies that will eventually, Epic, all the companies that will provide these tools, The number one thing they can do is to increase the combustion.

However they're going to know it.

Stephen, you may not want to answer this when we run up about it. My assumption is that a lot of these companies are just banging down the doors of developers right now. Oh, yeah. Okay. I imagine Revenue Cat is just sitting outside of the pub cabin. It's like, come on! Open the door! to the garage to get in the truck and Charlie Chapman was just in the front seat. Like, hey! Nice happening on there. Nice. Hey, I'd love to do some conversions. So yeah, it's early days, right? And

Again, this may not last the way that it is, and then what does that look like? But there are definitely people making hay when the sun is shining, or whatever the phrase is. It's definitely rocky and definitely early days, but... It's very interesting. I mean, I said this on Backstage, which is a members-only show that Mike and I do. Mike, you came back from your paternity leave into the most interesting story, or potentially the most impactful story, I'll say that. since we've covered Apple.

If this holds, it changes so much about the company and its control over the App Store in a way that's like, we just haven't seen a shift like this before. And we're not saying those things are related. But maybe if you have another baby at some point, you know, who knows what could happen. Apple gives them up a slightly percent.

It stacks. An extra 30%. Like, hey, you sold this subscription for $10. Here's $13. We're just going to give you $3. We're just going to give it to you. That's for you. That's from us to you. Yeah. A while ago, somebody wrote into our feedback form under the name NotMarkGerman and said, iPadOS is getting live window resizing and positioning similar to macOS and vision OS.

We read that as a joke because we thought it was funny, because it was in relation to Federico saying that he was pulling back from iPadOS again. And then, two weeks later, Mark Gurman reported information similar to that.

The real Mark Gurman. Not Mark Gurman has written in again. So this time, I'm now treating it... The oracle is back. I'm now treating it with a little bit more importance than before. If this is the same person, or if this is anything, I don't know. And they said... iPad OS is getting a triangular pointer when the Magic Keyboard is in use for easier targeting of UI elements than the existing circular pointer, which is terrible for text. triangular?

Well, I mean, the Mac one is triangular, right? Yeah, I think it's like a regular cursor. Right? No, but it could just be a triangle, but angled in such a way that it's more obvious to see where you're clicking. Okay, I see. I see. Yeah. Right. Okay, cool. I have a theory to share. Okay. So I'm actually going to read the first half of this exactly as it was written because you tweaked it as you were reading.

But the actual writing is iPad... Release the Not My German Cut. iPad is getting triangular pointer when magic keyboard is in use. There are no articles for iPad. Oh, this is someone from Apple. This person knows what's up. iPad is getting triangle on point and magic keyboard. Yes, I see what you're saying. Not the iPad.

Not iPadOS. Or iPadOS, which is what I said. Because my brain was like, let me change this because it's written poorly. No, it's written the Apple way, which is a poor way of speaking. Okay, no, let's do this. Interesting. By the way, what I was just saying is talking about terrible tech selection. Let me tell you where terrible tech selection exists. Android. My God, how still? It's bad. It's bad. Trying to paste something. It's impossible.

But will you agree with me, Mike? Will you agree with me? The text selection is bad. However, typing with the keyboard is so much better than the iOS one. I mean, I'm a swipe typer, right? So for me, they're much and much the same. But I do like it. I like their split keyboard a lot. The autocorrect for me is like leagues beyond the iOS one. Yes. I'm going to pay more attention to that. I'll pay more attention to that

This was the quizzes I prepared last week, but I think I wasn't here. Welcome back to the quizzes, everyone. This is a quiz show within a podcast where I might hurley quiz my connected co-host randomly and by surprise. on a variety of varying subjects We've been talking a lot about services. I have eight questions for you.

related to Apple's services, products, division, etc. In 2025, we have only played one round of the quizzes and Stephen is currently in the lead of 150 points to Federico's 100 points. There are eight questions on offer today. There are 25 points per correct answer. As the current leader, Stephen, you get to choose whether you would like to answer questions first or second, but we will be doing the snake draft style, so you don't need to get that for the first round.

If you answer second, you'll answer first in the subsequent round, et cetera, et cetera. I will go second. All right. Question number one. So, Federico, you're answering first. In what year did Apple announce the small business program for developers? Oh, my God. What year? 2019.

Damon? I not only know the year, I know the month. Oh my god. Because I've been preparing for the rickies and i've been thinking like would apple announce something before wwdc and i wondered what things have they done that before the small business program not announced before wwdc but it was announced in november of 2020 That is absolutely 100% correct. Incredible. What a friggin' nerd, you know what I mean? What are the chances that Steven has already researched this question?

Yeah, that is really weird. Why were you looking up the small businesses? Okay. No, no, I was looking for examples because, like, I'm thinking about the rookies. Sure. And I'm thinking Apple is in a mountain of hurt with developers. What have they announced? in that run-up to WBDC in the past. And I thought, oh, the small business thing, that was probably right before WBDC, but it wasn't. It was in November of 2020 when other things were happening.

i did just check and federico you'll be happy to know this uh stephen does not have access to the spread Look, I've started strong. It probably won't continue. Well, Steven, you're up next. I want you to name the three tiers of Apple One. The three tiers of Apple. The tiers of Apple. Exactly. Right? It was a surprise to me to remember this. There are three tiers. One of their names. There's... There's Premiere at the top. Yes, I agree, actually.

Personal, family, premiere. Okay. Federico? I think he's right on family and premiere. Is it called Apple One personal? I mean, if they have family though... Or is it just called Apple One? Oh, I didn't even think about that. No, there are three distinct names. Apple One has three tiers. They all have their own name. Okay. So it's either personal or individual. I will go with personal. defeat snatched from the jaws of victory there as it is individual

premier. I'm so excited for you Federico. Oh my god. Federico you get the chance to answer this question first. Which tier of Apple One is the most expensive out of individual, family, or Premiere? Wait, what? What? Which tier is the most expensive? Individual, family, or Premiere? Ah, this is a trick question. Because you will think Premiere. Yeah, I would say that the family is more expensive. Steven? Uh, Premiere.

Premiere is the correct answer. Because Premiere includes family. It's so confusing. This is a horrible game. Three questions down. Steven has 50 points. Federico has 0 points. Steven. In what country did Apple first launch Apple Pay outside of the USA? The United Kingdom. Yeah, the UK.

you both get 25 points uh they announced it with uh like it was very heavily focused on the underground yeah the funny thing about that is everybody had to wear their in the promo images everyone had to wear their watches on their right arms because the turnstiles are on the right side which is just like a very weird image that everybody's wearing their watch on their right arm because it's the only way to make it look good in the imagery otherwise you're crossing over.

It was awkward when I was there.

this summer yeah like trying to hey i ended up using my phone too yeah wait i don't get it what's up what's awkward about it can't you just so if if you wear your watch on your left arm and the turnstiles on the right of you you have to like you have to stretch over your body that's not a difficult movement it's not difficult but it looks bad in imagery like if you're from a like oh we want to show how easy this is for you to get through the turn style it's just way easier if you just use

Your right arm. Marketing people overthink stuff. That's what marketing people are all about. I believe Federico you're answering this question first. What was the maximum iCloud storage size a user could have when it launched in 2011? Jeez. That is incredibly specific. The maximum iCloud storage size that one user could have when it launched in 2011. Would you always pay for additional iCloud plans? I will give you the answer to that, which is yes. so for sure there was not a one terabyte plan

In 2011? Yeah I'm saying there was not a 1TB. I'm thinking about it. There wasn't a 1TB plan. I'm sort of leaning 100GB. I'm going to say 100GB. Okay. First of all, the free tier, still the same as in 2011. 100 seems high. I'll say 50. Close. 55 gigabytes is the overall amount that you could have because you would add 50 to your five. That's not how I interpreted the question, but I accept. I said the maximum iCloud storage size. Yeah, I get it. All right, Steven.

When the App Store launched in 2008, how many apps did Apple claim were on the store? At launch, when the App Store launched in 2008, how many apps did Apple claim were on the store? Um... As his closest wins. Shaw. 100,000. Okay, Federico. When the App Store launched? Yeah. So on day one? Yeah. And Stephen said 100,000. Stephen said 100,000. When you say it that way, I don't know. Stephen said 100,000 apps, yeah. Okay, 3,000.

Okay, Federico wins, but neither of you were close at all. It was 500. 500! 100,000 apps! 100,000 developers in 2008. Is there another question about the App Store launch? Uh, no. Okay. Why do you want to know? Because I want to look at something because I remember a number. Okay, here it is. Press release from July 14th. iPhone app store downloads top 10 million in the first weekend.

Yeah, but that's not it at all. That's not what I'm talking about. But I mean, that over 500 apps is like bananas. People got real rich if they were in there at the beginning. I know. Those are the glory days people think about. All right, the next question, Federico, you're answering first. In what year did Apple introduce the ability for apps to offer subscriptions directly through the App Store? Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. I'm torn between two years. Okay. I'm gonna say 2016.

Do you mean all apps or just like newspapers and stuff? Let's say all apps while I click my link to check down. 16 seems too late to me. We need 12? Now that you've... So, okay. I want to read you a quote here. Okay. I want to get the two of you to give... Okay. In 2011, the App Store started supporting subscription apps, and by 2016, it expanded support to all 25 of its categories. That's what I was thinking of. It was a 2016 announcement before WWDC.

Yeah, I think he gets that. I think he's closer to truth than me. Because now that you've said that, I think maybe that 2011 number was newspapers. something so i'm giving federico i'm giving you those points yeah you got 25 points you're now 75 75. and so Steven I will ask you this question first which version of iOS introduced app clips A very popular feature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. App Clips. I'm gonna say 2020

That's not a version of iOS. Sorry. You're just saying stuff now. You want to get that one another go? I do. Excuse me. I said I would have been iOS 14 in 2020. Okay. I remember. So I need to do some mental math. I remember thinking, and maybe I'm mistaken. if I don't get the point. I remember thinking that when app clips came out, I remember thinking, oh, this would have been useful.

when like everybody was doing qr codes for the pandemic So we are in 2025, in 2024, iOS 18, 2023, 17, 2022, 16, 2021, 15. I'm going to say iOS 15. You may have had the similar idea but slightly earlier because it was iOS 14. So you were just in September of that year thinking, oh man. You're one of these QR codes. It was still six months later. It was in the time where everyone thought it was going to be okay. And then it wasn't. Final question.

We're 100 points to Steven, 75 points to Federico. You really pulled it back, Federico. I did. Final question. In 2013, Apple celebrated a major milestone by giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card. What was the occasion? Federico, you're answering first. In 2013, Apple celebrated a major milestone by giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card. What was the occasion? They gave away that gift card to the person.

who downloaded an app from the App Store and that app was like the... Is it important that I get an app? Is the number also correct? Yes, that's what I'm looking for. The person that performed on their account the one billionth download on the App Store. Steven? One billion seems low. But 100 billion seems bananas. 25 billion.

you're above close but neither of you are correct is the 10 billion app store download that's an incredible thing to me and also was reminded of when they used to do that they did that a bunch of times like that wasn't the only time they did that they used to give away these huge absolute gift cards and this might have been the last one um because like what were they gonna do a hundred thousand I'm still a gift card. Loads of subscriptions. So that brings us to the end of the quizzes.

Steven racked up 100 points in Federico. That brings this year to 175 points for Federico, 250 points for Steven. Thank you for playing this version of the quizzes. The quizzes will return.

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So as expected, as to become expected, it was Global Accessibility Awareness Day this week and Apple previewed a selection of features to help those with disabilities. It was funny to me. I saw somewhere else that it was Global Accessibility Awareness Day and thought to myself, oh, there'll be a press release later on today. And there was. I'm going to run through a few of these things. There's a big list of stuff.

Accessibility nutrition labels in the app store. So does it like the privacy nutrition label? And this will essentially help a user understand if an app will work for them. Does it have the accessibility features that will fit what they need? My expectation here is that this will, like, the privacy ones be self-reported. So this is a good thing that exists, but it would be nice if somehow it could be, like, rubber-stamped by Apple. I think this goes for privacy, too.

to really make sure that it works well. But nevertheless, it's a good thing to exist because I have no doubt that it is really frustrating for a lot of users that if they need voiceover support, they're not going to know until they download the app. I bet that's really annoying, especially if it's a paid app, right? I bet that is really, really frustrating. So this is a good thing. I think the biggest... impact from a marketing perspective is the magnifier app for the Mac.

They made a video that's in the press release, which is in the show notes, that I recommend watching because it's quite a complex... and fully featured app for the Mac that does a lot of things. you can pair it with continuity camera and you can basically like look at things in the world and you can make them big on your screen you can like reorient things like say like a whiteboard you can reorient it so it'd be flat to your screen like how you can do with scanning documents in the notes app

you can change backgrounds you can highlight text like it's really good there's a lot of really really interesting stuff the video is very good and shows kind of this in more detail So I recommend that people watch it. There's enhanced support for writing in braille and better support for braille access devices. AccessibilityReader is a new version of the reader kind of function, but it's in a lot of the system. It's in files, for example, and it makes it easier to take text and read it.

for people who have dyslexia or low vision and it can amend the text to make it more easy for you to read. Live captions are on the Apple Watch, and this would be useful. If two people are having a conversation, you can have the iPhone be a microphone, and you could read the captions on your Apple Watch. That's super sweet. um there are updates to the zoom amp on vision pro and it can provide this little like magnified window in your vision it kind of reminds me of you know like

people that work on jewelry and they have like that little magnifying gloss in their eye. Yeah, it looks like one of those essentially, but in the Vision Pro so you can like more easily see things. So I guess you could do your, if you want to do some jewelry, you could have a YouTube video in the corner and then just use the little Zoom app and you could do some jewelry work at Vision Pro.

and there are tons of other smaller updates like uh enhancements to the background sound system which is awesome i like the background sound system and it's like got a timer and stuff like that on it now um and uh vehicle motion cues so this is when you look at your iphone and all those dots go down the screen like motion sickness is coming to the mac tons more is like again I am always surprised at the breadth of the amount of features that they come up with every year.

It almost feels like an entire operating system's worth of features just for accessibility every year. It's very impressive. When we have all this down stuff about Apple, it is stuff like this that makes me remember why I like them. Can they put these people in charge of the whole company? They seem to just do incredible work, like really innovative work as well, which is obviously coming from listening to their community. This is a microcosm of how we want the entire company to work.

It's a bunch of stuff that is very impactful. Maybe it doesn't impact the bottom line, but it makes the experience better for users. It's a great example of what we love about them. But to be fair to Apple as a whole, this is expensive work. where they are not seeing a return from i can only imagine right like there's a lot of money a lot of effort being put into these features And some of these features, they will have a smaller audience than others. Like some features, like...

I would expect everybody should be using at least some accessibility features. I use them. I'm sure you both do too. There are ways to use a lot of Apple's accessibility tools. even if you do not have the accessibility need that it is made for. You can use them and tweak them and stuff like that, and you can find some stuff that's good for you. It's always worth poking around in there because you might find something you didn't know was there or something that can be good for you.

But I like that Apple continues to invest in this the way that they do. I think it is a good thing for everyone. Absolutely. I agree.

speaking of operating system updates so uh google did Something I think is just really weird. So Google I.O. is next week. Yeah. But they showed off a bunch of Android features this Not as part of Google I.O., just on YouTube. The Android show. Weird. Like, my expectation is... Gemini is going to take up the majority of IELTS. Oh, big time. Along with, I expect some Android stuff, but maybe some bigger impact things.

that they want to give some stage time to, right? Rather than like, hey, there's the new operating system and here's some other stuff we're doing and here's some security updates. This is like a really good 25-minute keynote. The presentation at some points I found a bit cringy, but by and large, I think they did a really good job visually and the presenters were really good. It just surprises me. For WWDC, the operating system is what it is, right? Like that's WWDC.

But for I.O., Android has not always been the thing for Google. This is a problem with I.O. in general. they put too much into the presentation yeah so maybe this is good for the google io right like that they actually did cut some stuff and gave it its own spot but it's just like a funny thing to compare the two companies But Android is not as important to Google as iOS is to Apple, realistically. Another thing I noticed is...

what's going on with Google and Samsung? What's happening? Like, I know that they have a lot of like, they do a lot of co-work together, right? Like, which is clearly a bunch of agreements that they've made over time, essentially to try and stop Samsung from pushing them out. Like, you know, they... I don't know what they gave to Samsung to get them to stop working on Tizen for their watches and to just use Wear OS and stuff like that. But all of the promos were... S25s.

when Google makes their own phones. And there was a literal marketing promotion for the Galaxy S25 Edge. In like the first two minutes of this presentation. Hey, look at this thing. It's coming soon. Isn't it nice? It's like, what is happening? It's very peculiar. There is this weird thing where Google makes Android for Samsung, essentially.

is the effect of how successful Samsung is, which is just like a, I just find that funny. It's just like looking from the outside. It's these things are funny. Anyway. Material 3 Expressive. We saw it already. We spoke about it a week or two ago. It looks fun. It looks customizable. The thing that we didn't get from the images that we get from the videos is there's loads of animations, which look really nice. Lots of them. Lots of them. Very springy animations.

Very Apple-like in quality and just general aesthetics. Like bringing some fun and some joy to the operating system. Again, I wonder how much of this will find its way into third-party apps but what we saw in the Android show. was a lot of these in the operating system itself, which I think will be great. Yes, you can put these in the apps. It's nice if it shows up in the apps, but you will just get this stuff in the operating system. So yeah, I thought it looked really nice.

Yeah, I thought it was cool. Wallpaper integration, as we suspected. Really curious to see what Apple does now. you know if they do something completely different from this or if it's going to be ios but basically more translucent you know picks up the wallpaper lets you choose an accent color that sort of stuff we'll see i don't know as we gear up to the RNBC, what I want is an iOS 7 moment. I want to see UI that makes me go, oh my god, what are they doing?

what i want yeah that's what i kind of feel like we need that shot in our lives right now you know i mean it'd be fun right like it would be an actual fun thing to dissect for all like i remember Steven, you probably do watching the intro video for WWDC. Oh, yeah. Together in a hotel room. Yeah. Yeah. And like just seeing.

while they were showing what is happening it was it was very exciting and i i really hope that they're able to pull that off and that they have the courage to do it because like that was a History has shown that that was maybe not a great idea to do it the way that they did. I want to see them try it again.

oh but the moment was so good though like yes because you see that there's like there's like with apple there's like bad drama and good drama and this was good drama like it was like a thing that lasted for years and like all the designers getting upset that summer and Apple slowly pulling back from the thin fonts and the colors and then over many years they sort of adjusted.

I mean, arguably, you got to say, though, that that design, although it was maybe a little bit exaggerated at the time, it did allow a lot more people to get into design and making UIs for mobile apps. than was possible before. It made it more... approachable to people. Yes. You didn't need to be extremely skilled at making photorealistic leather textures in Photoshop or whatever to be a designer. And there's something about that, I think.

History seems to have suggested that the iOS 7 design was pulled together in a few months. Why not? My think is, well, what if they did actually have a year to do it? What if they've been working on this for two years? Could they land the full design more successfully if they'd had more time? like that was the iOS 7 was like very short and that was why so much changed because so much had to be rethought about but maybe if they've had more time with it yeah

They're adding live activities to Android for live updates. But really weirdly, it's just for food deliveries, ride-sharing, and navigation. That's it. i mean to be fair that's that's the thing people use them for? I would disagree with that, actually. I have it for weather and sports scores. You use it for weather? Yeah, if there's like, in carrot weather, like if there's a set amount of rain coming. I mean, you do have, you do have.

weird weather. He has weather. You know what I mean? You've got to have Stephen's weather on a live activity because at any moment that snow could turn into a tornado. That's true. Snornado. I use it for a few things, too, like Timery. I use it for the Mango Baby, which is the baby app that we have. I did not hear Mango, and it's like, wow, that's... I don't know what you thought. I heard Magababy. Incredible. Make baby great again. I think it's really weird.

to debut this feature and then restrict it somewhere. like i find it odd because they're like obviously i don't know if people actually use this but apple very much focuses sports scores for live activities, right? It's like a big reason for it. Like, it's weird to me to so clearly rip off a feature and then do it so limited. Weird. I find that odd. I have a conspiracy theory about this that I think Federico would like.

did google is google limiting this because they think their developers won't take advantage of it and so they just like Like, oh, what if no weather app actually does it? And then they feel bad. So they're limiting it at first. And then those weather app developers are like, dang, I want that. And then they... They do it. But where's the conspiracy? Like it's got to be more juicy than that. Yeah. To be a conspiracy.

The conspiracy is Uber paid them. Yes, see, now that's how you make a conspiracy. That's the conspiracy. Federico, Gemini everywhere, right? Gemini everywhere. And it looked good. The demos that they had looked really good. Looked good. I appreciated the many, many subtle digs at Apple and Siri. Like, how many times did they say, none of this is available today? Wink, wink. They literally did the wink at one point.

like they really wanted to let you know that Gemini can search your email can let you know what was that restaurant that my friend mentioned a while ago and you know Gemini can do all that Objectively speaking I can do it today. I had a funny thing with this right like because there was a feature that they showed a bunch of times that I thought was cool and I could do now which is you can like you can go to Gemini and you can say like look at my

look at my screen and tell me what you think about it. It's a weird UI where you have to scroll the screen yourself. I just think, scroll it for me. Why am I scrolling the screen? But anyway, you have to scroll the screen. I did have an email I got from my accountant today. And Jem and I told me that I would be getting a tax refund, which I'm definitely not.

Thank you, Google. If you would like to give me that money, I'll take it. But that's absolutely not what was happening. The email was about the fact that I need to pay more taxes than we thought I did, not less. but sure google whatever you say Are you sure that Gemini didn't mean like the government will get a tax refund from you? From you! You've been stealing it from them! That the king will get his sweet, sweet money from Mike Harley. He's going to. Oh, boy.

anyway they shut off Gemini on Wear OS 6 which by the way Wear OS 6 looks really nice. Where? Big jump scare, by the way, in app stories where you said you've been wearing a smartwatch for six months or however long it's been. Two months or so? Yeah. Somebody doesn't listen to App Store. I'm so behind on podcasts. It's bad. We'll get to this, I'm sure, when you do your big article about the fold, but that was a surprise. I haven't worn my Apple Watch in like three months.

Wild. Gotta pixel watch. so much nicer than an apple watch and customizable imagine that it's round which is all i want it's round that's all i want everybody Everybody compliments me on my smartwatch, like on my phone. They don't follow the news. They're like, oh, is that like a round Apple watch? Because they assume. that i'm using apple products right i'm like no it's a pixel watch

And their first reaction is like, you traitor, you're using Google products because they know me. And yeah, well, it's a thing. But then when I show it off, they're like, although that does look very nice because it's round. Anyway, Gemini on Android Auto. Gemini coming to cars with Google built-in, like my new one. I'll get to choose. At some point, do I want to use Gemini on Android Auto or do I want to use Gemini on Android Automotive, as it's called?

Gemini on Google TV, Gemini on Android XR, which will be the Vision OS equivalent powered by Android. And they even did a teaser for... XR, non XR, glasses. We're going to see those at IO. Google is absolutely destroying Siri and Apple when it comes to AI. It's funny and not so funny anymore. None of these models are perfect. But in just a couple of years, I think we've gone from an absolutely unusable bard that told you that it was fine to put glue on pizza.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is arguably the best model right now for coding and like even the smaller versions they can get you there for most tasks in everyday life and now they're not stopping. That's what I find so fascinating about Google right now.

it took him a couple of years to get to this point and and many many black eyes with bard and the first version of gemini but they got momentum now and um yeah even if they're wrong right which they are still all the time but not always but sometimes Even if they're wrong, Google has this stuff available in products in the way that Apple wishes. Even if you just accept that all models are flawed. Google is at least doing stuff that Apple wished they...

But they can't. When Apple does a large language model, I think a lot of people, a lot of Apple-pilled people are maybe thinking now, All these folks, OpenAI, Google Anthropic, you know, Meta, they have all these models and they all hallucinate stuff. Are you thinking that Apple is going to come up with a large language model that will not?

confabulate information. I remember that being a talking point before last year's WWDC. That is technically not possible because of other transformer architecture work. I mean, you can reduce those. And I mean, if you follow the news, you can see, you know, all these companies now, they have hallucination rates and they have, you know, system cards that talk about like, okay, this new version of ChatGPT, how much does it hallucinate?

You know, this version of code, how much does it hallucinate? But it's intrinsic to the architecture of the large language model to hallucinate information. And if you're thinking that Apple will come up with a perfect LLM that will never hallucinate, boy, do I want to be in your brain and be as optimistic as you are. about a hallucination of its own.

Yeah. It was also fun to see Deaton Bowen break in. Yes, so good. And also, like, I mean, it's, you know, people that join tech companies from media, like, usually don't know what they do. And it gave his, like...

job title i don't remember exactly what it was but it was like product narrative or something and then when he did the thing it's like oh he's doing the thing like this is obviously what he does for a living he's like look at all these products let me tell you about them there was also On Screen! An unannounced thing. Desktop mode. Which has been rumoured like a desktop experience for Android. It was on screen? I missed that.

Sitting on the left side of his table the whole time was just a screen standing up on its own. It was being held up by something. I guess it was a tablet. And it was just Android with a dock and a bunch of overlapping windows. Wait. It was just saying that all the time. I missed it.

So I don't know when they're going to show that one off, but maybe that's part of Google IO2, or maybe that's coming later when they have a tablet or something to announce. But it's just sitting there the whole time. But it's really great. Loved it. In the detail segment? Mm-hmm. I'll finally find him. Okay. Yeah, so we'll talk about Google I.O. next week, I expect.

Yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting. Oh, I see where it was. Oh, that's a nice desktop mod. Stage manager could never. Well, we'll see. Not Mark Herman says they will. Triangles. Triangles everywhere. Triangles. Triangles. This episode of Connected is brought to you by Ecamm Live, the leading video production and live streaming studio built for the Mac.

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All right, boys. Do you want to talk about vibe coding? Absolutely, I do. Because I said this in an upgrade.

I don't really know what vibe coding is and I want you to explain it to me. Alright, I will. This segment started because of this a real mark german report on bloomberg that apple is teaming up with anthropic the makers of of claude on uh on a new vibe coding integration so let me read you this and then we'll talk about why I sort of dislike this and sort of some more general thoughts about AI-assisted program. so government route apple is teaming up with startup

Anthropic. Kind of funny to think about it as a startup after all the billions of dollars they have received. That is my quote, not German. Steaming up with startup Anthropic on a new Vibe coding software platform that we'll use. artificial intelligence to write, edit and test code on behalf of programmers. The system is a new version of Xcode.

that will integrate Anthropik's Claude Sonnet model, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Apple will roll out the software internally and hasn't yet decided whether to launch it publicly, said the people who asked not to be identified. Alright, so this is not vibe coding. so first of all the term vibe coding so uh to the best of my knowledge This expression

was created by one of the OpenAI co-founders, Andrei Karpathy. They're no longer at OpenAI. And it basically describes this idea of coding, like creating code. without actually thinking or caring or to an extent not even seeing the code. This was a popular tweet by Carpathi from February, from a few months ago. So it's a 2025 thing. And it's basically describing this idea of like even using dictation. So using the Super Whisper app.

on a Mac to dictate what you want the model to create. Imagine sitting down being like, hey, I kind of want to create like a web app that visualizes a bunch of vegan menu. like you never actually mention the code you don't talk about the code you just vibe code your way into a product or more like a hobby project. And in fact, from the original tweet that started the whole vibe coding expression trend.

Karpathy wrote, it's not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I'm building a project or web app, but it's not really coding. I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, copy and paste stuff, and it mostly works. So that was the idea of vibe coding, where you got to put together a small script, like a throwaway Python script, like I did today. I didn't vibe code it.

actually ask what I wanted but you're just like you completely disengage from the actual coding part and you just write hey make me this and then it doesn't work, and you don't care about the bugs, you don't even paste in the errors, you're like, it doesn't work, do it again. So I guess vibe coding is essentially like AI image generation. I'm not involved in the image being made. I just told you what I wanted. And then whatever happens, happens. It's not like I have Photoshop open.

And I'm like, it's weekend. Well, there's tweaking going on, I think. Yeah, but not me. I'm not doing it. Exactly. The pure version of vibe coding, if we go by the definition of the person who came up with this idea... is you just talk. Sometimes you even dictate. and you just copy, paste, test, run, doesn't work, ask again, you never touch the code, you never care about the code.

This is different from AI-assisted programming, which is why I kind of wanted to talk about and go back to this report about Apple. AIS is a programming is, from my perspective, The developer story that Apple is missing out on big time right now. when it comes to AI. And I look at it from this angle, that there are two great narratives right now in AI. There's the user story and there's the developer story.

And Apple is missing out on both fronts at the moment. The user story is what we've been talking about for many months now, with a twist that I will also mention in a minute. But the developer story is equally important. Because you look at like over the past year especially, there's been essentially a revolution in terms of the apps that developers use to write code.

you know we're used to talking about apple platforms and apple stuff and so we know that the vast majority of developers we you know we talk to we know they use xcode right they they create ios mac vision os apps Can you make iOS apps without Xcode? Well, you cannot build them without Xcode. The answer is kind of no, right? to be involved. you can use a different text editor for sure yeah but you you gotta build them you gotta build and run in xcode

We're going to compile them in Xcode. Yeah. It's the name of the podcast. It's right there. Yes. Yes. That's an old joke. It was built and analyze. Oh, I'm sorry. It was called Build and Run. That was the name of the show. That's how everyone remembers. In any case, there's been this completely new wave of apps or, you know, IDE is basically developer development, development, interactive development environment. So apps where developers can write unusually test code.

And all of this, like all of the popular ones, have AI agents or co-pilots or whatever you want to call it. They have an AI integration built in. So the popular one is Cursor right now. Cursor. originated as a fork of the open source of VS Code, so Visual Studio Code by Microsoft. Cursor was possibly one of the first, if not the first. to have this sidebar where you can talk to the AI and the AI can have varying degrees of integration with your code.

You can say, hey, go to this line and refactor this code, or you can ask more specific questions. You can hook it up to a model that has long contacts built in, like Google Gemini. You can say, hey, analyze this code base. because I'm new to this project. Can you explain what it does?" Cursor is a really popular one. VS Code now obviously comes with what's it called? GitHub Copilot built in. There's WindSurf. So WindSurf is basically a cursor alternative.

that is the one that supposedly OpenAI is going to buy for $3 billion. So Windsurf is the most popular cursor competitor right now. And it sounds like OpenAI is going to acquire these folks for three billion. There's ADAR, which is another AI assistant IDE that is kind of similar to Cursor and Windsurf. Then there's a whole other sort of segment.

of this and i'm barely scratching the surface here guys but there's a whole other segment when it comes to uh ai assistant web development So these new tools that allow you to spin up a web app Usually they even take care of the hosting for you. like Replit, V0, like all of these tools that basically use AI integration to let you write web apps with AI Assistant and publish those web apps in like minutes, if you know what you're doing.

Now there's even companies that are going to do this AI assisted. Konakot programming. for user interface. I know that there's this company called Variant AI that is playing around with this concept. I think Figma just announced their AI stuff. Meanwhile, Xcode Swift Assist, which Apple sort of teased, just like Apple Intelligence with Siri AppIntense last year, is still nowhere to be found. Like nowhere to be found.

and all these other ide's they either have a a like a proper ai assisted mode or they have agents now agents are all the rage right now i was playing around today with pycharm because i needed to test and run a python script on my mac And I realized that even PyCharm has an agent for Python called Junie. That is kind of wild. Like all of these apps, they have AI right now. All this to say that over the past year, the developer narrative has basically... sort of gotten away from Apple.

There's this new generation of tools, IGEs, you know, building web apps. hosting web apps, using web APIs, of course, using the APIs of AI services, new toolkits that have been coming out for the past year and Apple is still stuck with Xcode. Now, there's also, at the same time, a potential user story here. And this is more in its infancy right now, really. But I've been wondering for the past few months, what's going to happen when somebody...

will come up with a way to turn vibe coding. Let's go back to vibe coding. What happens when somebody productizes vibe coding? into an experience where anybody can open an app and say, hey, I want an app that does this. And they end up with a proper app on their phones. Completely sort of... by completely excluding the App Store from the process, right? Without having to be a registered developer, without having to be anything. People are thinking about this.

One of the apps that I know is doing this, you can pre-order it on the App Store now. I know they've been doing a test flight beta for a while. It's literally called VibeCode. They have a website at vibecodeapp.com. And it's advertised as the app that builds apps. Now, I think I know they're using Cloud behind the scenes, but this is what I'm talking about. Well... See, there's all these aspects coming together now when it comes to distribution, Apple under fire from regulators. I think...

There's the potential of a perfect storm coming for Apple here. Which is why the idea of Apple sort of starting to approach the likes of Anthropic. Let's go back to that. If you're Apple, at this point you pretty much realize, okay, look, we're not going to have a large-run good model. let alone answering basic user questions. But a large language model for programming, for coding, we're not going to have that within the next two years at least.

so we're gonna go to the best guys in the business anthropic is one of them and i know it wouldn't surprise me if apple is actually aware of the plants that Anthropic has to supposedly release. Sonnet 4 or Sonnet 3.8. I was reading this morning on the information that Anthropic is coming up with this model that is going to think even deeper and sort of alternate going back and forth. between reasoning and using functions and tools and then going back to reasoning, like jumping back and forth.

to provide even better coding results and even better answers. So it wouldn't surprise me if Apple is making a big investment here and they have seen the plans that Anthropic has, and they're like, yes, give me that. We want that in Xcode. But if you're Apple, you must be thinking about this, right? You must be thinking, well, we're not going to have a large language model for programming.

Developers have been moving in this direction. I mean, it's pretty much clear and obvious at this point. And we have zero to offer. You know, we don't have something like Cursor. We don't have something like VS Code. swift assist is nowhere to be found we don't have a terminal integration like cloud code which is also very good by the way we have nothing right now

What can we do? And so I think the idea of starting with an Xcode integration is good. But if I was Apple, and this is where we get to my final takes, if I were Apple, I would also consider a couple of things. This idea of empowering people to create their own mini apps is fascinating. shortcuts could be a perfect candidate you know to say hey like for example a few days ago sylvia was like hey do you know like i need a i need a thing on my phone that gets a list of names

and spits out a randomized list of those names. I was like, I can probably build it with a shortcut. And I did. That's not nice. It doesn't look nice. You can put it on the home screen. I guess what I'm saying is it would be so much better for a lot of people to just say, hey, let me quote unquote vibe code my way into this sort of thing that I need. I will also say half jokingly. that given how smart these models are at writing code for webapps

Now would be a fantastic time to bring back iWeb and let people create websites with a large language model. I'm just saying, I'm just saying you can create decent web apps with Gemini 2.5 Pro or Cloud Sonnet. What a missed opportunity for the iWeb name not to exist anymore. So hopefully this small segment, Mike, answered your doubts about VibeCoding.

I didn't have doubts. I just didn't understand it. And I think what this has shown to me is that, oh, okay, vibe coding is like artificial intelligence. Like, it means something, but now what people use it for is not actually... Because AI is just machine.

All the stuff we have now in AI is just machine learning. It's just more advanced machine learning. And like vibe coding, the idea behind what vibe coding is, is very much this like... hey i just like i figure i want an app and like i don't really know how to make the app and like i'll just talk about it And it's become like any time a transformer model is added to code in any way is now Vibe coding. So I get that.

You know, it is super interesting. And this is not vibe coding, but it's in the same area. But when I was doing the 5.12 redesign, like there was some stuff I needed to do.

that was i was like i'm pretty close to what i want but can you help me kind of get it over the finish line and yet not all of it worked right like at some point i like pushed to changes you know my development site was completely broken but i could wind it back and try something else and That is all really compelling for the individual user, but when you're talking about making an app for Sylvia, or maybe I want to...

use AI to make an app for my kids cross-country team and like have them able to check in and you know do some things like then you just run headlong into distribution chat is a way that the web can stand apart from native applications, of course, but it is fascinating to see the progress of this, even though I would strongly recommend not using something like this for a complete shipping product. But to assist you, I think it's come a long way.

Well, I would adapt that and say, like, if you think that this is a way to make a shipping product, good luck to you, I suppose. Yeah. Because I don't think you're going to... Users need things, and if you don't know how to fix them, then it's going to come back to bite you. But I need to feel that in AI. Right now, the real power from my perspective is not when you fully automate something with AI, but when you combine like manual user input with AI, like if you take a really good program.

and you gave that programmer AI assistance. the results will be a hundred times better than decent programmer with AI assistants. So I think the human factor only compounds the utility that you get from AI and which is to say also like if you think you can ship a fully functioning product. that was only vibe coded like you said like good luck to you like um i think i think the real secret lies in giving really skilled people

really good AI. It's that combination. You can apply this in any field, I think. Yeah. But to wrap this all around again, it is interesting. that Apple is using an external party for this. This is what you were hoping they would do, Federico, right? Yeah. Will they ship this? I don't know, but they... The new Craig Federighi era is like, all right, we need to be building, and that means we can't be relying on our own research because it's not good enough right now.

No, no. I mean, I believe that Apple is doing really good research. Like yesterday, they put out another paper about like reconstructing 3D images with a vision model.

uh like they they put out really good research really interesting research but they need to build they need to ship we we are living in that era where every single week all of the major AI labs and all of these different startups, they put out something and Apple is seeing as the company that is standing still and they are behind and Even if we disregard AI, they were already seen as the company behind when it comes to the whole native apps versus web apps and this new generation of programmers.

who are building web-based software. But when you add in the AI integrations, They're like super behind. And so I think the more pragmatic approach would be like, all right, let's cut our losses with this research or maybe let it continue going in a building at Apple Park. Let's spend a bunch of money and get access to Cloud Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro or whatever. And rely on those folks. i mean i'm not in charge of apple software but that's what i would do given the situation

So I want to talk a little bit while we're on the AI topic about XAI. This has been... the topic of discussion on 512 pixels most of the month. And we had some listeners wanting me to talk about it here and maybe get into some feelings because I've basically just been doing kind of straight reporting on the website. A little timeline. Of course, XAI now owns X from my Twitter. They merged. Somehow.

hilarious maybe a financial crime it's hard to tell incredible it's a good way to erase all the debt right So in June of 24, so almost a year ago, it was announced that XI was going to come to Memphis to build, and I quote, a gigafactory of computers. doesn't mean anything. It means something. It's words one after the other. It's true. But the number of jobs or even the exact location were not announced. Again, quote, due to global security concerns. Well, where they ended up?

Building it was a former appliance factory in South Memphis that had closed in 2020. About 530 people were laid off when that factory closed. It's been sitting empty. And then in September of 24, XII's supercomputer named Colossus came online, I would note, with no appreciable bump of jobs in the Memphis area. Because it doesn't take that many people to run a warehouse full of NVIDIA hardware. It just doesn't.

Yes, there was an increase, but it was like seven people. It's like a bunch of security guards or whatever. I've got people shoveling coal into the civil computer or whatever, I don't know what would happen. We're going to talk about coal in a second. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, wow. I was not expecting that. So why Memphis? There's not a really simple answer to that. I will say the Musk family has.

ties to memphis his brother had a couple of restaurants here at some point and memphis has relatively cheap land and power and available water, which we'll talk about in a second. There's also a lot of reasons not to put a data center in Memphis, just to be real honest. We have severe weather. We're on a major earthquake fault line that is ready to blow. We've not had a major earthquake in a long time, and we're overdue, according to some experts. Why have you never told me this?

Because I don't want you to worry about it while you're here. I don't want to know about that. You don't want to be staying next to the rack with all the Power Max on it when the earthquake comes. I'll say that. You want to be far away from that. But there were immediate concerns about how this was going to be powered because if you've paid any attention to this, power and cooling are major issues in any data center.

But in AI data centers where it's basically a bunch of GPUs just running as fast as they can, that's a pretty big deal. And our local utility company is called MLGW. So I'm going to reference them again, Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. Their power is provided 100% by TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority. is like a historic American story, and 99% Invisible has covered a lot about the TVA over the years, which has been very interesting to listen to.

But MLG&W could not power Colossus in the beginning. And so the county health department said you can run 15 gas turbines to supplement the power the utility company can provide as the... power company was building out additional capacity so mlgw is building a new substation which is saying this part of town is industrial right like there was a factory there that it replaced

There is a TVA water pumping plant right down the street, which has its own issues. So there was already a lot of power and stuff in this area, but they've got to build more. And the gas turbines, they don't power the GPUs directly. It seems like they're powering Tesla battery packs. And then that's being, that's supplementing with the grid. Avilance companies working together.

That's the way to do it. They have not launched any rockets out of South Memphis yet that I've noticed. You want to keep bumping up? That's right. All the security guards are in Cybertrucks. I don't know if that's true, but I like it. I would like it to be true. so you have the power thing it turns out there's photographic evidence that some 35 gas turbines have been in use not 15. we're going to come come back to that in a second

But water was also a concern. Initially, MLG&W said the site was going to need a million gallons of water a day to cool the racks of supercomputers. Other estimates have that number as high as 5.7 million gallons of water a day. One of the reasons that's particularly concerning in Memphis is Memphis sits atop a series of aquifers, so underground water that we pump through a layer of sand that filters it, and that's where our water comes from. And Memphis has...

generally and historically some of the cleanest and best tap water in the country because of these aquifers. It's a huge natural resource that we have. The Algar Forest have been a center of many issues in the area. In fact, around the corner, there's an existing gas power plant that has dumped ash from their fires into a pond that is like... potentially leaked into the aquifer, which is bad. And the utility company pumps water out of the ground also nearby.

That's not going to make your water so clean. No. You don't want ash or, you know, you also can't, like, use this water. Like, you can't pump it through NVIDIA hardware and then into a glass and drink it, right? Because it's mixed with other stuff.

So in the spring, the city sold land adjoining the XAI Colossus facility to build a gray water plant. So they would take wastewater, treat it, cool colossus with it so you're not pulling fresh water out of the ground you're recycling wastewater which is great and that's how a lot of other data seems smart yeah like that seems like a smart way to do this where it's like water nobody wants

And you're treating the water and getting what you want out of it. Absolutely. And the city has talked about having a wastewater plant in this area for some time because of the other industrial uses in that part of town. XAI getting here is kind of what tipped it over the edge. It seems that the plans for that water treatment are underway, but it's going to take a year.

or more to be able to come online uh but that's good like right yeah yeah use recycled water don't pump it out of the ground that just that makes sense anywhere not just here when we have really clean water as a natural resource So that's okay, right? They're using gas turbines. There's been a lot of complaints from people in the area about about those turbines, the sound. There's some evidence that the pollution is higher there because of the turbines than it was before.

That's not great, but it's not the end of the world either, I don't think. Especially, like, the number of turbines will go down once capacity comes up.

Where we run into problems is XAI's second location, which they have announced. And the reason this caught my attention, because it's kind of just been in the background for me for a while, is a headline that the second... site which is located several miles away it's not the immediate same immediate area could require the power needed to power 40 percent of the city Excuse me? Yeah.

Where is it going to come from? Well, we're going to talk about that. Because no one has an answer to that. It's 1.1 gigawatts. Mike, please insert a Back to the Future joke here. Great Scott. And by the way, members, we're going to watch Back to the Future as our annual special this year. We'll have more details about that soon, but I'm very excited. The 1.1 gigawatt number has not been studied by the utility company or the TVA because XII has not formally made a request.

So even though that building is under construction, it's unclear how power will be delivered to the building. A power request that large actually triggers oversight from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Guess what billionaire who's been cutting federal programs, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, owns XAI? can you think of anyone essentially the thing that he needs To be done? Nobody works there anymore. That's incredible!

It has not had the cuts that other areas of the government have had, but it's clearly not good. This is where I will complain about my local journalism, is that no one in MFSBest I can tell linked to those things. like oh you need the ferc to approve this oh has doge cut that it took me one google search to find the answer to that

No one, including our paid media. This is why Memphis University should give you a journalism doctorate. This is the reason. I know. Some blogger with tattoos figured it out. It seems inevitable. that MLG&W TVA is not going to have 40% of the city's power ready to go when this site comes online. So even if they can transition from gas turbines to the grid for Colossus, The second site is going to be working on turbines. There's no way around.

There are not plans for massive solar power. In fact, TVA makes it very difficult to implement solar power generation in the area. Well, I would say a joint between MLGNW and TVA. Somewhere where their policies overlap, that's difficult to do in this area, which is really stupid.

you have so much sunshine i know like come on i would do it you know my house actually faces the wrong way but like i know people who would do it if it were easier to get done in the air Um, So we could be seeing like any ranges from 30 to 50 or 50 to 90 gas turbines spinning. at the second site, which is much closer to where people live. So the first site where Colossus is, it's an industrial area.

There are people in the area who live there, but not super close to the site. That is not true in the second one. There are people much closer. And both of these zip codes are poor zip codes. The wealth gap in Memphis is unbelievable, and these are some of the poorest areas of town. And so there's also that sort of layer to it of environmental justice. Yeah, I don't like that. That's tricky. Um...

Local leaders are far outmatched here. So in April, it was reported that XAI was expected to pay more than $30 million in local taxes. You think, that's great, that's a lot of money. The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, which best I can tell, is run by idiot. They said XAI, because they were instrumental in XAI coming to Memphis, although they signed a bunch of NDAs, so they can't say what the meetings were about, even though they're a public, like they work for us.

They said XAI was going to generate $12 billion in tax revenue. The reality is $30 million. They have since removed references to the $12 billion on their website. I'm not a mathematician, but those are very different numbers. There is a gap. I will give that to you. There is a gap. There's a gap there. When it came to light that there were 35 turbines first in use at the first site, the Memphis mayor denied it, a guy who I voted for.

denied it, saying, no, there's only 15. Well, 15 is the number that the county approved, so incorrect about that. And then on May 8th, so just a week ago, it was announced that XAI would not be using gas turbines at the new site. The Chamber of Commerce said there will not be turbines at the new site. According to a report obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center,

XAI has already planned to utilize, again, between 30 and 50 turbines at the second site. So the Chamber of Commerce is just either completely wrong and out of the loop or they're...

wrong and lying about it. Either way, uh not great and i will say this stuff to me just feels much like in the sense of like they asked and were told and they're just stupid enough to believe it yeah i think so too and these are like methane gas turbines right so they do release smog hazardous chemicals um that are linked to asthma, respiratory disease, and are particularly harmful

to children and that second site good stuff it's just like bubbles and rainbows coming out of the data center um and the white haven neighborhood where it's in uh their house is half a mile from the site It's concerning. And it's really disappointing that our local leaders Like... when it was announced it was coming here my blog post about it it was it was just like a very tongue-in-cheek thing i was like hey this could be great for the city

As long as our local leaders aren't getting screwed over by Elon Musk. And I'm not even sure he's actively screwing them over. I mean, I think there's probably some element that they're doing things. without telling the government or moving faster than regulation. But also, our local leaders just aren't capable, seemingly capable, of dealing with that. Yeah. And, you know, they are trying. And I understand, like, Memphis is a city.

that if you ask a lot of people is on a trajectory not unlike someplace like Detroit, right? Like it is. a poor city. We have some major industry here like we have FedEx and AutoZone and we have LSAC and some other hospital groups. So there are some big tenants here. But if... some of those were to go away, there would be even more trouble. So you mean like when the car companies left Detroit? Exactly, right. We're not as precarious as Detroit was when that started.

But it's not all that different either, unfortunately. And so I see local leaders, like they were trying to like, hey, Memphis could be a great place. Like this AI revolution is happening. and we could be at the forefront of it. In fact, it's been announced that a second AI company is coming to town to build a data center, not XAI.

And where that site's going to be is not far from my house. I have driven past it. I drove past it the other day after it was announced, and they're already working to tear down the building that's there. And so I see the value in wanting to bring jobs and economic opportunity to the city. I'm not against that. You've got to do it in a way where local leaders can have oversight and be able to talk intelligently about it.

you know all the stuff that ai does and i you know i will say like i am i think out of the three of us the coldest on ai but These problems are solved in some ways, right? Like if you look at other data centers, And Federico's got some great links in here that we'll put in the show notes about the impact on power consumption. And you can do this in a way that uses renewable energy.

and doesn't pump water out of the ground. But XAI in particular has moved so fast with so little regard to the environment and the people around it that... They're causing harm to people in the area. And that's a real bummer when your local leaders seem ill-equipped to manage. It's that terrible combo of politicians where it's not their subject matter.

But they're pulled in by... something that i think can get them re-elected right which is look how much money we brought to the town look how much uh how many jobs we brought to the town which could also be like the you know good intentions and all that but like There is that kind of like... I was going to say corruption and thinking, but the word is not what I'm trying to say. Sure. I'm not.

saying that like anyone has paid anyone any money or anything because i just like whatever like i don't know but it's that idea of like they're you know just like oh we could do this ai thing here like that would be everyone's talking about it like yeah that'd be so great for the city right like we could be we could be first we could be the leaders in the south we could be the leaders in america like it'd be amazing like let's encourage this we can give like and i don't

if you think you have a problem with like wicked tax breaks right i'm sure they will like that is how industry is encouraged this is the entertainment industry and stuff like that right like that's a big thing in london uh like you can incentivize it typically it brings jobs but like it's unknown but things like that can potentially happen depending on how things go like that i see how it happens and those incentives are in place like um one of the things so so i would say

XAI has not taken advantage of everything it could have in terms of government incentives. which I think is interesting. The new company coming to town, they have done more of that, but their average pay has to be, I think it was like $80,000 a year, which is a lot in a city like Memphis. Again, if you're incentivizing a car factory, to go back to the other example, that's hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people.

Even though they're so roboticized now, it takes a lot of people still. It's like building an iPhone. It takes people. Ford is building a giant plant. 40 minutes outside of the city limits and they're hiring tons of people and that part of the state is like blowing up in terms of population because of that.

building a data center it takes a lot of people an investment right it's a lot of money you know h100s or h1000s whatever they are like nvidia charges a lot for that it takes a lot to build the centers and like build the cooling. But once that's all done and it's running, the day-to-day isn't that many jobs. And if you're a chamber of commerce or you're a city council, Jobs is like what people ask you about every day. And this doesn't really fulfill.

No, it's like a short-term thing, right? There's a bunch of contractors in Memphis right now who are doing great. Yeah, they're killing it. But this is the thing. You see how it gets to the situation, but it requires the follow-up. But the problem is... We're getting real existential now. Part of the problem of this kind of elected official is long-term thinking is not important. It is, what is the thing I can do in the next three years? Anything past that.

It doesn't matter because it's not what I live for the next three to four year cycle. That is part of the problem in modern politics, I think, in a bunch of places. No one's willing to... We're having a big problem in the UK with our water provider in general. And this is a problem that if someone would have actually started doing something about it years ago, then the water situation in London would be so much better, and England in general, or just around the Thames.

But because nobody did it, we're now in a situation where the plumbing is just falling apart. And it's costing us so much more money. because nobody did anything about it years and years ago when these problems were enabled, because it was like, why would I do something that might be effective 10 years from now? I won't even be running for office then. That's the problem. Yeah. Maybe we should run for office.

I don't want to. I would hate that, actually. I don't think I'd be very good at it, and I wouldn't want to do it. I appreciate this. This is really interesting stuff. It sucks. It really sucks for Memphis. It should have been a good thing, and it isn't. I hope that... It can be, right? Like I hope that something can make it better, but like, yeah, this isn't, it won't ever get better if people don't address it or talk about it. Right. And so it's been really amazing.

to see like national coverage of the start as well like i've linked to stuff on 512 like politico and uh the new yorker had something like it is happening more now part of that and i have tried really hard in my coverage and talking about today, to separate my local issues and my personal feelings for the man who owns the company. Right. That has not been true in all the reporting. Like there was one article I did not link to because it turned into like.

That dude's a bad dude, which I agree with, but my issue is, well, you're pumping smog into really poor neighborhoods in my city. That's bad. And we can separate those things. Well, you actually might be lucky about the fact...

in that regard. Yeah, that's true. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yeah. Because more people will pay attention to it. It would not get national coverage if it was like... whatever that other company is whose name I can't even remember exactly you don't know right then that you are proving like that is a proof of the point like people know it because it's him so it gets more attention so it may actually be more likely that something would be forced to change in it. I will hope for it.

We'll see. In some cities like Atlanta, I talked to a reader like Atlanta and some other areas have put good rules into place about where these places can go and how they're powered. We just haven't done it.

I would like to finish out today's episode of a very quick anecdote, which is soul crushing to me. So Stephen and I both share a tattoo. And it is a tattoo of the Relay 5th Anniversary artwork in my special artwork for Anniversary. And it's like the half circle, but five times in a little spiral. Oh, I know what you're going to say. You ever chat to me too yet? Like on your own? What? I thought I was the champion.

Oh no. This is potentially worse than my COVID tattoo. Yeah. Which I also have Mike has refused to because he's a coward. That's not true. I have a whole plan, but I just got to go to a certain place to get it done. I will put something in the show notes with the chat GPT logo and the Relay 5 logo side by side. They don't look that close to each other. They just, like... But at, like, first glance? Yeah. I mean, and that's what it was, right? That kind of dance.

like oh no no no no no it's not that sound that's what i'm dealing with Oh man. Well, I think that does it. I think we've reached the end. We've vibed. We've coded. I would say get you a podcast that can do both. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's what we do here. We could talk about... what we find interesting in AI and also how AI is destroying our city. You know? It contains multitudes. Because here's the thing, this is a complicated subject. Right. And it, uh,

There's good and bad to it. Like all things in the world, right? If anyone ever tells you something is all the way good or all the way bad, it's just not. It's not true. Okay, if you want more of us, we are online. Say that you want to find some show notes. for the show, right? Like, oh man, those stories sound really cool. I want to build an app with vibe.

Those links are in the podcast player of your choice. They're also on the web at relay.fm slash connected slash 552. A couple of those links. are really special. They're just so special. They're more special than the others. The first one is where you can join and get Connected Pro, which is a longer ad-free version of the show that we do each and every week. This week's was a little unusual in that we talked about Federico's, well, he's the Pope. Yeah. Congrats. Kind of. Congrats.

And we're so glad you're back. We missed you last week. You can also leave us feedback or follow-up. That link is also in the show notes. You can make it anonymous. You can write us a poem. Whatever you want to do, you can do that as well on the website. You can find Federico's work at MacStories.net.

Lots of great stuff going over at MacStories just all the time, building out the team, doing lots of stuff. Very exciting. And you can also listen to Federico on AppStories with John Voorhees. It's an excellent show, even though I'm a few episodes behind. John is really like, I feel like he's winning the podcast circuit right now because of his lawyer background.

Yes. That's a really coming clutch for y'all. Very well positioned right now. It's like how you're from Memphis, which means you can talk about that. That's right. I don't have anything, but eventually maybe one day. Hey look, you know. What? I don't know. Something. Something could happen. okay you can find mike hurley on a bunch of other podcasts here on relay find his work at cortex brand the new notebooks are very good thank you go check those out

You can find my writing at 512pixels.net, and I co-host Mac Power Users here on Relay each and every Sunday afternoon. I'd like to thank our sponsors, FitBot and Ecamm. And until next week, guys, say goodbye. Arrivederci. Cheerio. Bye y'all.