553: We Have Jony Ive at Home

From Relay this is Connected episode 553. Today's show is brought to you by Scorespace. I'm your annual chairman Federico Vittici and it's my pleasure to introduce Steven. Hello, Steven. Hello. It's me. I don't have a title. I will never get tired of this. I was concerned that it would get tiresome after a while but no no it never gets old it's still funny that you don't have a title i'm sorry yeah hey we're gonna play the rickies in just a couple weeks and maybe maybe i can

Take keynote chairman Mike's title away from him. Hello, keynote chairman Mike. Hello. I wonder if it's tiresome for other people. It's not tiresome for us, but I'm expecting it's probably tiresome for some. If you hate it, let us know in the feedback form. Not on the Apple Podcast Reviews. No, not there. We're going to get to that, though, because some people think that the feedback form, I think, is the podcast.

review form an apple podcast okay that's not great not the same thing y'all okay follow up uh vibe coding which we've been talking about federico explained it to us uh last week cade pronounced as an arcade I'll follow up next week. We don't know how to pronounce arcade. Cade. In Italian, cade means... he or she falls. Cade. Oh no. Yeah. I can't get up. Yeah. That's interesting. What are video game arcades called in Italy? A salad jockey.

Salah Jockey. Yeah, Jockey is games and Salah is just like room. We don't call it the arcade. The room of games. We don't say we go to the arcade. There used to be many salad jockey when I was little, and now you don't see those anymore. Salad jockey, that sounds fun. It's kind of like chicken jockey, which is a different thing. Oh, that's a very different thing, yeah.

What did Kate say, Stephen? Well, after they got off the ground, Kate said, after your conversation about vibe coding, I realized it could solve a really simple problem in my research. I'm an infectious disease scientist at a large U.S. university.

hopefully kate still has a job but the open source microscopy software we use doesn't have a batch save feature which means it can take hours to individually save images despite the editing only taking minutes Using GPT-40, I was able to get a workable macro made in about 30 minutes. Thank you all. I would like to speak on behalf of RelayFM, LLC, and Max Stories Incorporated that we take no... We are not in any way responsible for what comes out of this infectious disease research university.

This has got nothing to do with us. We didn't tell Kate to do this. You, Kate, decided to vibe code your way into infectious disease analysis. Not us. Not us. In fact, I think I specifically remember last week saying if you work in infectious disease research, do not do this. I'm pretty sure I said that. It might have been quiet, but I definitely said it. yeah this is how the new pandemic starts you know don't don't do that vibe coding vibe coding you

I'm not taking it any further. I'm very pleased to hear this. I think this is great. can't solve the problem. I think this is awesome. Dan also wrote in and said, since listening to your episode with no coding experience, I have a small one-person speech therapy practice and have been looking for a simple CRM for ages to manage referrals.

All of those out there are too business focused and don't work for what I need as a healthcare provider. I spent a few hours coding a web app using Gemini Pro 2.5 and ended up with a serviceable CRM that I can build on over time. It is amazing given my zero code. I've been thinking about this and I'm reading this. This is Mike talking now. This isn't Dan anymore. Hey, Mike.

Hello. Is this, like, the best end result for AI? That, like, everybody can make their computers do computer things no matter what their skill level is? No, it's one of them. Like, this seems, like, to me... I haven't done this yet, but I'm actively thinking about, like, I'm trying to pay attention to things I might want to do this for, right? So I can have a reason to try this.

I just think that this is the dream, right? You get the computer to do the thing that a computer can do that you can't. and you don't have to spend tens of hours learning JavaScript or whatever. I just think this is cool. And again, it's like, is this the best version of it? Absolutely not. This is not the best version of it. But is this working for Cade and Dan? Yes, it is. And so I just think that that's fantastic.

It's way better to have a little CRM than to just try and do it in a Google Sheet. And it's better to have a little CRM than programming a microscope. I don't know. I mean, it depends. Look, the other thing is we could potentially have been the reason that some infectious disease gets solved.

if you think about that. Oh, that's true. We could, you know, like maybe Cade now comes into some big discovery because the microscope is working correctly. We want to be listed on your Nobel Prize. Yeah, if you don't mind. There is something, Mike, I had not thought about your question about vibe coding being the best end result. I think in part because I spend a lot of time with programmers and there's sort of the weirdness around that.

But there is something that your question has changed in my mind a little bit, and it makes me think about sort of the early days of computers, when people were figuring out BASIC and stuff as kids. I think if vibe coding can help teach you something, it's good. That has certainly been my experience in using ChatGPT4O to do some WordPress stuff for 512 pixels.

I can see what it's doing, and it's helping me close a gap in my knowledge, but I'm already somewhat knowledgeable about PHP and how WordPress works. So if you're starting from nothing, I would like to see what that educational angle is like, but it certainly is interesting to consider that this is a positive outcome for most people.

I think you're being slightly optimistic with the idea that it might be teaching people programming. I think most people are copy and pasting and then telling it it doesn't work. But I think that's fine. for like your own personal use cases like i think that that is like totally fine like you're just doing the thing a thing that look let's be honest right i know people are like oh but what about the pro

Kate or Dan were not going to employ anyone to do this for them, right? Yeah. There is no lost money in this, right? Like... What was going to happen was Cade was going to be upset with their microscope and Dan was going to continue writing things into numbers or whatever, right?

But what this has enabled them is to actually have a thing that they need at the budget that they have most likely, right? And so I just think it's cool that these people have these options available to them where they would otherwise just be kind of... stuck. Or like Dan would have ended up buying some very expensive software that they don't need.

to do a thing that is very simple and like and I share this like we looked at CRM tools in the past and they are just nightmarish because they are all trying to cater for the most like biggest sales teams and we've always ended up coming back to something like Airtable or whatever instead because it's just simple compared to like use this Salesforce thing, which wants to take over your entire business.

There's a lot of money in that sort of corporate software and they can't help themselves but try to take over everything. Well, yeah, because the more money there is, the more money they want, right? And so they, like, for example, Salesforce buys Slack so they can also have routine communications. Yeah. And what a good job they don't... Slack never changes. Slack, what Slack gets is more features I don't want. Like, always, constantly. Here's brand new parts of Slack.

that you don't need but here you go we have one today it told me i could make a folder i don't know what for but it's like hey make a folder i'm like i don't why what is the folder did you make a folder I didn't make a folder because I don't really know why I would make a folder. Like, what is the folder? Here you go, it says... Folder? No. And I click it and it's like create a folder.

It's like, why? What is it doing? But, like, you wanted to put a little blue dot next to the plus button in all of my windows for me to tell me to, quote, make a folder, but I don't know what the folders are for. And so, like, just leave me alone, please. You know? Make a folder. We talked about podcast reviews. A few weeks back, and... Ask people to go to Apple Podcasts and drop us a review. Some people have done that, which is really nice.

And that link will be in the show notes again today if you want to do that. But Robin wrote in, and I'm glad that this isn't in the podcast directory. Pretty funny, but also really bad. But it's... I was going to read what Robin wrote. Robin wrote, I asked ChatGPT for a limerick on the podcast. It gave me a delightful mess. So this is what ChatGPT wrote.

The connected crews quite a delight with tech news and banter just right. For Mike and Stephen and Snell, their insides all gel and Cortex fans listen every night. And smell? What happened to me? You're gone, baby. Why? I don't know. Sorry about that. I mean, look, I'm happy. I get, like, everything in there. You know, it knows. You also got score attacks. It knows upgrade. It knows score attacks. I'm, like, in this limerick left, right, and center. But this is Federico O'Reilly. It really is.

This is not right. At this moment is when Federico stopped users' chat GPT forever. you know just the disrespect of it hello Claude friendship ended with RGPG we should see if Gemini would do a better job you know yeah for 200 $49 a quarter. $4 million a month. They will write you a good lyric. We'll get to that later on. A couple of news items. Fortnite is back in the App Store.

basically apple kind of held epic submission they did not reject it they did not accept it this kind of broke fortnight because of the way in which they submitted the application epic wrote to judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and was like, we think that they shouldn't do this because we're following all the rules now.

And the judge wrote a letter saying, ah, you should just deal with this yourself. And if you can't, there'll be a hearing at the end of May. Someone from Apple who's responsible can come to this hearing. About a day later, it was approved. Apple was given zero statements about this. And now Fortnite. Our long national nightmare is over. Fortnite is back and number one in the app store.

yeah a couple things here i cannot believe it's been five years since this started yes like i keep reading that i kept thinking that's got to be a typo and like i go to text whoever wrote the article like wait a second That's not a typo. Yes, it is the top free thing in the US App Store as of right now. They are, as you would imagine, promoting their own system. And they're doing this in a couple of ways.

The big way is earning epic rewards and vbucks and they're also which i don't really know what vbucks is and none of my children are home for me to ask them Okay, V-Bucks is the currency inside of the app. So you're not earning V-Bucks, you're buying V-Bucks. So you're buying V-Bucks to then use that virtual money to buy things inside of Fortnite.

They are also promoting that across their other applications. So Epic has more than just Fortnite. So they're making a big push, which is not surprising. I don't even mind it, because you know what? We've never had competition like this in the App Store, and it's really interesting to see what it could look like. I mind it. I'm annoyed about what they're doing here. Like, the whole point about this has been like, oh, it's bad for the customer, right? They're not giving you more for your money.

Did you think they were going to just take 30% off? I thought you would get more V-Bucks for the same amount of money, right? But if you do 1,000 V-Bucks for $8.99, you get an extra $200 or something like that, right? Like as a bonus or something like that. Or 1,000 V-Bucks cost... $8.99 through an in-app purchase or $6.99 with the Epic Game Store purchase.

which is what like everybody else is doing right spotify is doing that right it's like if you buy it through internet purchase it's this if you is that correct federico and if you buy it through web purchase it's this is it cheaper I think it is, yeah. So I'm really surprised that the way that they're doing this is you get epic rewards, which maybe you can spend for V-Bucks too, but this is just not the way that I expected them to do it. I find that to be really weird.

You know, they need all the money to pay for that litigation and lawyers and stuff. I guess so. It's interesting. V-Box more like No. No. I got nothing. Okay. Down. Fossil arm. Fossil arm. Big news. Everybody ready? This is from Bloomberg via MacRumors. Apple is planning to open its AI models up to developers. via an SDK in iOS 19. This would include the LLMs that power Apple intelligence notification summaries, writing tools, Genmoji, and everyone's favorite image.

Playground. Does anyone care about that? Was anyone asking for this? It's a shallow and narrow framework. Look, look, look, here's the thing. So this Apple intelligence tools, I want to guess that Mark did not read the technical white paper that Apple published last year about their models. So they work in a couple of different ways. There's a small model that is called AFM. So AFM stands for Apple Foundation Model.

and it comes in two flavors the the small one the little the little model um which is called afm on device And that is when Apple says, oh, it's downloading Apple Intelligence and it runs on device. That's what it's downloading. It's downloading like, what is it? Like three, four gigabyte or something, possibly more. That's AFM on device.

And that is a large language model that deals with the on-device generation stuff. Then they have AFM server, and that is the Apple Intelligence large language model running in the private cloud compute. for that size and performance.

I want it like I struggle to imagine, based on the current version of AFM, Who's the developer who will want to say, well, you know what, instead of using the new Gemma 3, what's it called, Gemma 3N that they rolled out yesterday, we're going to talk about that later.

or instead of using like a small mistrol or a small deep seek like instead of using one of these small on-device models i really want to use afm i really want to use the apple one the only advantage that i can think of instead like if you want to stay local so if you don't want to call a cloud model you just want to run on device

the only advantage i can think of is that obviously in this case with AFM your app wouldn't need to come bundled with any additional model in the download So you wouldn't have to download the 3GB or you wouldn't have to put out like a 3GB app on the App Store, right? you wouldn't need to worry about the license, you wouldn't need to worry about anything else. You would just call a native API, Apple is going to give you an SDK, and that's potentially nice.

I want to see if there's an updated version of AFM. That's the thing. I want to see if there's a better version of the Apple Foundation model improved from last year.

that maybe could tip the scale for developers to say, you know what, instead of calling Gemini 2.5 Flash or... gpt 4.1 nano or something or instead of downloading you know a mistral model or a gem model on device we can just use the apple stuff I really want to see how they advertise this and what kind of performance they show to convince developers, hey, come here and use this instead of this other open source thing.

I don't know. Can I give you some breaking news? I was just coming here to say this. I'm going to read something to you. What happened? May 21st, 2020. This is an extraordinary moment. Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding. Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces. Two years ago, Johnny Ive and the creative collective Love From quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI. Oh my god.

A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible design. The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools and helped us learn, explore, and create.

It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Johnny founded IO with Scott Cannon, Evans Hanke, and Tang Tan. We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers, and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades.

The I.O. team focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco. As IO merges of OpenAI, Johnny and Love from will also assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and IO. We could not possibly be more excited. Sam and Johnny. This is insane news. This is monumental. This is huge news. Apple is so cooked. This is...

This is crazy. I have chills right now. This is insane. This is insane. This is on the OpenAI website. There's a 10 minute video that I can't wait to watch. I can't believe this. I can't believe this. I don't even know what this means. It doesn't really mean anything. But what it means is... Johnny Ive is building stuff again, and it's with OpenAI. Oh my god. And I'm...

I'm scrolling through. I don't mean it to be an unpopular thing. I don't mean it to be controversial. I'm just stating the fact. these kinds of news right now if you want to find these links like there's so much stuff on what used to be called Twitter and basically nothing on Blue Sky and Mastodon and it sucks because like all these people that I would like to follow for example I just found out that Mike Mattas

Remember Mike Mattis? He made paper, right? Yeah, yeah. And went to Facebook. Excited to share, Lofrom and OpenAI have come together to form I.O., a new company creating the next generation of AI products and interfaces. I've rarely felt so inspired by a project and team. So Mike is working there. Yeah, I heard about that. I think on threads. I think I saw that on threads. Some of this stuff finds its way to threads.

There are quotes on this, like, for example, Johnny Ive, I'm reminded of a time three decades ago when I immigrated to America as a designer, I was drawn to the exhilarating and innocent optimism of Silicon Valley. I can't believe this. They are purchasing I.O. for 6.5 billion dollars. OpenAI is? Yeah.

let me tell you that johnny ivy knows how to make some money let me tell you that oh man i mean i am assuming love from remains yeah love from remains and johnny and love from are going to be doing the design OpenAI and I.O. along with the fact that I.O. is now part of OpenAI. This is... I mean...

If I were Apple, I would be trembling right now. Still waiting to find the thing that Johnny Ive is working on at Apple, which I always remember that. I was like, oh, he's going to keep working on stuff. Can't wait to see what that is. I mean, this is... I don't know. Like, who knows, right? But this is about as bad as it could be for all of the current companies, I think. Like, I know that Johnny Ive catches a lot of flack. I know that. I understand.

But he is also the greatest product designer of all time, in my opinion. No question. There are people up there. Braun is up there. People are up there. But I just... In the modern world... The things that he has made. untouched. I just don't think anyone is operating at that level. They have defined our society and culture. I mean, it is what it is. From the smartphone to the tablet to the earbuds to the AirPods to the Apple Watch.

He's made stuff that has defined modern society over the past 20 years. And that's like... It's not an exaggeration. It is what it is. And if you think he's still got it, which I have no reason to believe that he wouldn't still got it, right? Like, I just don't know why he wouldn't. This could be a problem. In a joint statement to Bloomberg, I've said I have a growing sense that everything I've learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place and to this moment.

But for one sec, let's just go back to that. Where was that left? As I.O. merges with OpenAI, Johnny and Loughran will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and I. So chat GPT designed by Johnny Ive basically is what I'm reading here in the short term. Yeah. Oh, man. With hardware, maybe software products to come.

well uh okay so we were saying about apple foundation model i just want to just put a note on something real quick like just like a thing that i wonder about right and like i i don't really know much about Samo. But what he clearly has is the ability to convince people to do things. He clearly has that. He can convince everyone to give him a lot of money.

I really wonder in Johnny Ives, like, does he see him like a Steve Jobs kind of figure? Like, does he see that? It's like, is that why he's doing this? Like, does he see in him of like, oh, I know a person who was like you. Like a person who could lead product. and like get things done because i've got to wonder like why else would he do this like he he doesn't need this right johnny doesn't need this johnny's good like he's like generationally good right

You've just got to assume that he sees something. If you're Johnny Ive, you hope that you still have the ability to see what's good and what's not. I find this Truly fascinating. What you just said, I think it's fascinating what you just said. A friend of the show, Parker Ortolani, just also basically tweeted the same thing you just said, which is...

Hard not to read all of this as Johnny basically saying Apple's fallen behind and Sam is the closest person to a modern Steve Jobs. Yeah, I mean, look at the picture of the two of them. Yeah, they're hugging, you know. But that is just like... It's Sam in the front and Johnny in the back. Sam's slightly out of focus. Yeah, I noticed that. Sam's face looks like that meme.

with the guy from The Incredibles that on the left it's in color and on the right it's in black and white with one side of the face slightly darker. You know what I mean? how do i describe it oh oh i think his name is no no the yeah it's the the villain from the first movie right it's like the kid like everyone's special no one's special I do think that there's something to... to the idea that

Johnny Ive likes to work with visionaries, and he needs it to a degree. Absolutely. The criticism of him after Steve Jobs' death was there's no one to keep his ideas in check, and we got some... weird ideas from an office that's all glass and people walk into the glass walls to

uh you know some product decisions that maybe weren't the best in terms of uh hardware design and maybe he he needs that i don't know i don't think sam altman has the pull that steve jobs had in those areas but We also haven't seen Sam Altman's ideas

for a hardware project except for that creepy eye scanner thing that we didn't talk about because it was too weird so it is very interesting i am not sure i'm willing to go as far as apple is screwed but it is It is potentially the most interesting news in the AI sphere in a long time. Yeah. Obviously, it's fun to say Apple is cooked. They're just a funny thing to say. But there will be people who think it seriously. I'm not saying I don't know if Federico did or not.

I mean, I guess what I'm saying is they're slightly... sizzled at least you know yeah it's not good it's not good for everyone right because something something is coming right No one knows what that thing is. We're going to talk about Google I.O. Google I.O. is trying everything. Google I.O. is trying everything. Something is coming next, right? It would be a decent bet that the person who came up with the thing that currently is could maybe do it again.

Now, there's nothing to say that he could, right? There's nothing to say that Johnny Ive has in him the ability to do the next thing after the iPhone, right? But maybe he can, right? Like maybe he can do that. And of course, he wasn't wholly responsible for creating that product. But he's very important in making that product. Yeah. The other thing, I can't believe I'm coming down the side of, like, defending that this could work because I just don't know. But...

The... The Humana AI pin, right, or some of the other AI hardware things that we have seen, all of which I think... It's safe to say our failures. That's like, mom, we have Johnny I'm at home. It is. No, it is. I was going to make a different thing, which is just so funny to actually hear Stephen talking through his head in his hands. yeah but there were Other smartphones before the iPhone, there were other MP3 players before the iPod, right? Like Apple.

one of their things is like let others try weird ideas and then they hit on it and johnny i was at the center of most of those and so While the fact that we have not seen an AI hardware product make sense so far doesn't mean the category is a bad idea. No. I do think that... creating a product like this in 2025

is unbelievably harder than it was in 2007. The iPhone coming into the smartphone market in 2007 is just fundamentally different than an AI product coming into the smartphone market of 2025. But maybe he's the guy to do it. Yeah, the table stakes are so high. Can I read you some quotes from Johnny? Please, I want them. You know I want them. I have felt that my most important and useful work is ahead. that's nice but

reading from the end of the article. This is not a quote. This is just Bloomberg. There have been public failures as well, such as the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 personal assistant device. And now Johnny says, those were very poor products, said Ive at 58. There has been an absence of new ways of thinking expressed in products. You know the meme with the Simpsons with Ralph and his heart?

That is everyone who worked at Humane. Right now. Everyone who worked at Humane. Like, oh no, Papa didn't like it. I was thinking of Tim Cook as Ralph on the bus saying I'm in danger after reading his article. They think it is a Ralph Wiggum meme for every possible scenario. Of all the things that... We've had plenty of things disrupting the show over the years, from

From my internet going down to me catching a burger, like a person trying to break into my home live on my own camera. I don't think anything will ever beat that. I don't think anything's ever beaten that. But I did not have Johnny Ive coming back like this on my bingo card. Back from the dead.

I mean, it was obvious they were working on something together because that's basically said as much. It was announced that they had started this startup. And, you know, I think it's... one of the most interesting things about that is the relationship with love from like that it is

but that will continue you know i don't know what left from is doing like they're doing stuff with stripe and they made the the postcard for the king and stuff but airbnb airbnb yeah which uh we should say just like see what i'm doing john john one true john And Cardi B. Both win. No, Megan Thee Stallion. Oh, no. Oh, Steven. Now you say now John's calling. You're not.

You know, there's a screenshot in my photo library of me saying in a text, today I learned someone named Cardi B exists, and Federico's response is, oh, Steven. Cardi B could have been there too. But anyways, John was at their keynote two weeks ago or last week where they announced a bunch of cool stuff and y'all did some stuff on app stories and on the website. Go check all that out. It's really interesting and cool.

Yeah, John is just like, he's doing stuff. It's great. Maybe John's going to meet Johnny now. Maybe that's what happens. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. I'll do anything, by the way. I'm just putting that out there. I will do anything. I just want that to be said into the universe to meet Johnny Ive. I will do... I would do anything. I just want people to know that. No, you saw Johnny Ive. I saw Johnny Ive, and it was suggested I go and speak to Johnny Ive, but I said...

Why would I do that? Why would I do that? He doesn't want to talk to me. And so I didn't go and talk to him. So my... My example of this is when I went to the iPhone 15 launch. It was the only iPhone thing I've been invited to, but it was really cool. And Avi Tevanian was walking around. And no one was talking to him because no one knows that he, you know, made BSD and Next Step and stuff. But he was there. You should have gone and spoke to him. Hey, Avi.

Because it would have been fine, you know? Like, my problem was everyone wanted to speak to Johnny in that moment. And so, like, I wasn't going to go up and talk to him. Because, like, what do I say? Like... Hi, I'm Mike. You know what I mean? I'm saying I want to speak to Johnny in a professional context. Someone let me interview Johnny. Man, crazy town. What a... Man, sometimes...

Recording this show live when breaking news happens is just so much fun. And it's been a minute, I feel like, since it's happened. Sam Altman just tweeted, thrilled to be partnering with Johnny, in my opinion, the greatest designer in the world. Excited to try to create a new generation of AI-powered computer. AI powered computers, that's a very interesting phrase. Do you think, this just pops in my head, it's not a fully formed thought.

But do you think Sam Altman like getting, I'm putting that in huge air quotes, getting Johnny Ive, like it's just a giant flex to all the other billionaire tech people. i got him you know i got him yeah they would all want him right like all given the opportunity everybody wants to make hardware get the greatest hardware designer that exists like

Yeah, anyone will take him, which is why Love From has been able to charge obscene amounts of money just to consult, right? Because then you get to say, I got him. I can't even imagine how much money Airbnb paid. oh dude just ungodly amounts of money just so you get to be the person who says like oh yeah he's making my thing everybody wants him but this is like oh no you're like You got him. Like, you didn't just get him to consult. Like, he what?

with you right now. Because he's not even the CEO now, right? Someone else is the CEO, but he kind of still runs the company. Very strange. What a time.

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And when you're ready to launch, use the code CONNECTED to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain name. That's squarespace.com slash connected and the code CONNECTED to get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show and all of Relay. Yesterday was Google I.O. We spoke a couple weeks ago about their Android announcements that ran before I.O. We assumed that I.O. was going to be all about AI, which of course it was.

There's a lot of stuff here. I feel like even more than previous years Google just threw a lot of stuff out there. And it's honestly, it was like a little overwhelming to watch it live because it was just one thing after another. A couple of just meta things for me though, and then we can get into the announcement. God, I wish Apple did live events.

like yeah oh okay it was i thought it was so good like them on stage and they had demos and you know microsoft is doing this too uh with build which was uh last week or a few days ago

Although right now, I think Microsoft wished they weren't doing that. Yeah, there's a story that... Okay, we've got to talk about this for like three seconds. There's a story out today, Mike will find it, put it in the show notes, I think, of... build was interrupted by protest and during like the recovery of that of like getting back to the demo

The person on stage basically switched to Microsoft Teams for a second and leaked a bunch of stuff about Walmart's AI plans. And just a few things here. What is your demo computer your actual computer? Like, have a demo machine and that's all that's on it. But if you are going to use your actual computer, for the love of everything, close every other application. I feel so bad for this person. I honestly do. But it was so easy to avoid.

Anyways, Google I.O. We got a bunch of links in the show notes. We're going to walk through some of the things that we thought were the most interesting. And we're going to start with... Google Beam, which replaces Google Starline, which we saw I think two years ago. And it basically makes video calls feel much more personal. And there's a video, The Verge does. It's, it's wild. So you sit at this table, they're sick.

video cameras rendering you in 3d at 60 frames a second all that's infused with AI to make it smooth and make it look really cool Apparently, HP is shipping something later this year. It's going to be in a bunch of offices. I wrote in the notes, seems physically heavy for vaporware, but if it slips, it's not vaporware. This is like the re-re-reintroduction of this technology. This is what Google does. You'll see something, and then the next year you'll see it again.

and you'll see it every year until it's a thing. And at least this time, they have committed to actually being a product that's shipping and listed a bunch of companies that are going to put it in their office. But the thing that I find interesting, so Alex Heath did a little video about this on The Verge. Everything he describes is my experience as special personas. So like... I would like to try this.

but like you know it's like oh there's nothing like this there is like everything is describing about a sense of presence and you can see facial expressions and it doesn't feel so fatiguing to do the meeting because it's not like a regular like all of this is I feel like I experienced a special persona meetings. And so I... I would like to experience what this is like but I do feel like that there are similarities here but it does look cool and

It looks like some of the footage that they've shot, I don't know how they did it, it gave an idea of how you can kind of see the effect, and it does look very good. It does just look like someone sitting on the opposite side of a table to you. It's cool. Maybe we move the podcast to that instead of Zoom. Love it. Let's do it. Has anybody made the joke Gemini? Oh yeah. Has that like been a thing that anyone said or am I the first person to say?

You've been exposed to Steven for too long. But it's good though, right? Like Jem and Io. I love it. Because this is what this was. I love it. Yeah, of course he does. Of course he loves it. It was all Gemini all the time. Like, it's almost at this point kind of embarrassing that Google is called Google. Like, they shouldn't be called that anymore. They should just be called Gemini because it's in everything. I mean, it works for Meta. I think. Yeah. Hard to say.

I mean, they did it. It worked. People do call them meta. It's like we do not call Google alphabet. Nobody ever calls them alphabet. That whole thing is just a mess. Because they didn't do it. And the same guy runs both companies. It's very confusing. They didn't do it. Um, There were a few things that I found interesting. I think, Federico, I'm sure you did too, and we probably find different things interesting, where I guess I'm probably...

The things that I liked from this were more of the products and I'm expecting you like more. at least found more of the API stuff a bit more interesting because that is more your speed right now. One of the products, they showed up a couple of things that were... effectively either currently shipping as of right now or going to be shipping very soon versions of what Apple tried to do really with Apple intelligence so Gemini Live

which is yeah so gemini is the app gemini live is the um like where you can talk to it oh no i'm doing the ad breaks that we did yeah they sponsored a long time ago um it's they they've basically put this feature in so you can open your camera and like show gemini what you're doing on what you're seeing and you can talk to it about what you're seeing and it will talk back to you. So it's essentially like the ultimate version of the visual intelligence.

And they're also adding integrations for apps. It looks like all Google apps right now, but maybe other apps will be able to integrate with it. So, like, for example, you could do the thing where you point it at a flyer and say, add this to my calendar, and it will do that, and it knows what to do with that. Like, I found that really interesting. There was a thing where Sundar Pichai says,

when he's talking about another thing that they're doing, something we call personal context. They're like, oh, no! Yeah. Where they are able to, and they are going to be shipping a feature. Gem and I can learn about you from across all of your Google apps. So like all of your Gmail, all of your calendar, all of your docs and sheets and everything to provide information, results and answers. Like for example, he was like,

You could reply to an email in Gmail and the personal context will know everything about you across all of your Google Apps. And that could be very powerful as a way to help you. write things, for example. I thought that was interesting. The thing that I liked the most was It was a video of a thing that they're trying to do as part of their Project Astra, which Project Astra for Google is like...

these are the things we're working on that will come later. So like that thing I was mentioning about the visual intelligency thing, that was part of Project Astra. They showed it last year and now it's here. But they're showing computer control in the Gemini app on Android. Gemini on Android can like actually do things for you. And I recommend watching the video that's linked in the piece on this in the show notes where there's like a guy fixing a bike.

he's doing a bunch of things so he asks it to look up a youtube video and you see youtube open it starts scrolling and it clicks a video like it's doing it there's one thing where he like needs it to make a call and makes a call for him which is hilarious because that's back do you remember that the drama they had years ago about calling their hairdressers

they're kind of like oh they can do that and you know so the ai is calling this bike shop to get him a new screw uh you should watch this video if you haven't steven because this guy has a lot of problems with his bike and maybe that will hit home for you oh i i was watching it live Okay. A few things. One, Google put a good bike in your demo video. It's not a good bike. I am. I am. And a person who knows enough about how to fix a bike. to like be that far into it would would not be

I don't know. It was fine. You just think that they should know more to be better, right, at biking? Be better. This was a nice demo, I think for a bunch of reasons. like the visual stuff but the how sort of the model was taking actions in multiple places. And if you think about it, those are things that Google is working on. Right now, Google has these technologies and it's the classic Google problem of...

this tech is being implemented in slightly different ways in different places. Like for example, when the model was opening a PDF and reading through a PDF and scrolling through the paginated PDF. That was a version of computer use that Google has demoed in a couple of different occasions, and they have their own version of computer use, for example, when it comes to Gemini in Google Chrome, which is another.

Then the model was like saying, okay, I'm going to watch a YouTube video. I'm going to find a YouTube video. And a YouTube video understanding is one of the current features of Gemini. I think if you use it in... with 2.5 pro i think it used to be like exclusive in ai studio and now it rolled out to gemini so if you go to gemini you can just paste a youtube link and say hey can you tell me what this video is about

and gemini is gonna quote unquote watch the video for you and tell you what it what it's about so like they're bringing together this and obviously the phone calls right um they're bringing together these multiple things that they showcased before under the umbrella that everybody loves to use now of like agentic ai so like you're basically it's been like

There is a whole separate conversation here about the real innovation right now in these models. It's not necessarily happening in the model itself. It's happening on two fronts. First is happening on the reasoning front, so the model actually thinking and reasoning over each individual step and basically, you know, enhancing the compute power, requesting more resources.

taking longer to run to produce a better output. That's what everybody's doing now from OpenAI to Google and Anthropic. Everybody's doing this. And the second is tool calling. So what Google showed here was a really fancy visual approachable version of multi-tool calling in an agent.

So you have the model, you're having your conversation and then the model is basically splitting the conversation into multiple sub-agents. There's the one that goes off and makes a phone call. There's the one that scrolls through a PDF. There's the other one that opens a YouTube video and watches the video and you're still holding a conversation with that model. That kind of structure is what... Every single company is doing that.

Every single company is doing this asynchronous agents. You look at OpenAI, what OpenAI is doing with HGBT, and especially when you use O3 and O4, or when you use Kodak. which is their new asynchronous coding agent. You look at Anthropic, how Anthropic with cloud research, how it works. It literally in front of you spins up a bunch of sub-agents and every one of them is doing its own research. And now Google is doing the same thing. So I think it's kind of funny.

And I think, by the way, that of all the companies, Google had the best demo because they didn't even mention things like sub-agents or asynchronous. They just showed... a conversation doing multiple things, like with the robot doing multiple things. And it was, I think, the best version of what all these companies are doing now, for sure. Sorry about the parentheses here. No, it's good. It's helpful. I just thought that this was a really good demo video.

of kind of like one of the dreams your device doing stuff for you like it's helping you like you're not it's kind of like your phone becomes an assistant for you rather than the tool that you use to do that you talk to your computer that just goes all the way back to Knowledge Navigator, right? Yeah, let's go! Maybe that's what Johnny's doing. He's going to build the Knowledge Navigator. He's going to be in his bonnet. He wanted to do it, you know? You're going to make a new...

It goes all the way back. Everybody understands the idea and I think believes that you should just be able to tell your computer what to do and it should do It's what everyone has always wanted. It's what all of these voice agents have attempted to be. It's what Echo is. It's what Siri is. It's what all of these things are. But none of them have been able to do it. This is what appears to be the technology that could unlock it, right? That like...

It's actually your phone can do things in the background and also in the foreground of like operating the device, understanding how it works. There's this thing, this MCP thing, which I only slightly understand, right? But it's like a... Essentially, it feels like an SDK, really, in a way, just a way to get computer programs to talk to each other, but it's AI, right? AIs can talk to each other. Kind of. It's basically become this standardized format.

for plugging tools into a large language model. the concerningly non-secure way, but it's improving. It's improving compared to when it actually launched a few months ago where there was basically no authentication in front of MCP and everybody was like, well, you just paste this thing into Cloud and it connects to your file system. Good luck. It's evolved really, really quickly over just what is it like six months.

So you've got that, and you already kind of mentioned it, but I just want to speedrun a couple of things to read a quote that I thought was very funny. So then you've got another thing where Google Chrome is doing the... going out and doing stuff for you on its own. So you can have like Chrome doing it for you on its own. Then you have something called AI mode in search, which is like a total reimagining of search, which is available in the US right now.

which is doing a bunch of things, including personal contacts and also doing stuff for you kind of like agentically in the background. Then you have this thing called visual shopping, which you've probably seen videos of already where it can like... put an outfit on you, but then it also can go out and buy things for you on its own. And there's Gemini and Chrome, which is like a whole other thing. I want to read a quote from Casey Newton.

Two quotes, actually, because it was very funny in platformer. Also, the products overlap. Would you like to search with AI? You can now do that in Google search and get an AI overview or in another tab within Google search called AI mode or inside Gemini, the standalone AI search app.

And while the company continues to protest, it seems obvious that this new world will give you many fewer reasons to visit the open web. Google will generate the things you want searched for and all the businesses that once relied on those services we need to plan. be those are like two things i found interesting but like the second part is like All of this is like, oh, great. Everything is here, but also why is anyone going to publish stuff to the web anymore?

I include that really because I know that it will hit Steven in the heart. Shut up the heart! Yes, that is exactly what it is doing to him and I know it. But the thing is, Google... are doing so much! And so much of it is exactly overlapping. And I can't understand that. There needs to be a person at Google that's like, no, don't do that because we have it over here. Let's just bring it together instead. I find it so weird. That's a tale as old as time with Google.

or at the very least like confusing and overlapping products like look at just their their long list of dead messaging platforms there's no one at google seemingly that has a high enough level view to be able to dictate those things. Or the power. Or the power. And Google, historically, and I think to this day, I think to a lesser degree now, but definitely... historically is made up of a bunch of like disparate teams that don't always know or communicate with each other like and that

That's fine. Apple works that way too, except someone at the top knows what's going on, and Google just has never had that, and it leads to this sort of thing, and it leads to... confusing products. And looking through this, and we're going to get to the paid offerings in a little while, it is not easy to understand what all of these things are and how they relate to each other.

I don't know. I wish they were better at it. I think they would find more success if they pared these things down before they went out the door. They would cancel fewer things if they were a bit more editorial in the beginning. Yep. Anyway, those are some of the things I found interesting. I think that their filmmaking tool is horrific. Uh,

I just hate it. I hate it so much. They have Imogen and Veo. That's like their image and video models. And one of the things added to their video model is it can create sound effects and speech and add them to the video. And then there was just this moment where like this guy's making this, um, AI video in an app they call Flow, which is like an AI video editing tool.

The way that it works is interesting, right? That like, you know, you can chop up a clip and extend the clip by changing the prompt and da-da-da. it's like I don't want this in my life I kind of wish it didn't exist but if you're going to do it this is an interesting way to do it but there was just this very dystopian moment to me of like This guy made a video, showed the video and then people applauded. It's like, what are you applauding?

Like, what are we applauding here? Like, what is going on? Like, why is that? Oh, yes, congratulations on this AI video you made. Like, what is that? That was so weird to me that people applaud. Yeah. Remember that time Apple got in trouble for smashing a bunch of creative tools into an iPad?

Google is not going to get the same backlash that that did. But it is... I was just sort of reminded of that a little bit watching that video. And I agree with you. I don't like it. I wish it didn't exist. I don't think it looks... It very clearly had the AI look to it. you know it will get better over time but i just that ai look has really changed though right like

The AI look is very different to what it is now. Oh yeah, it's not Will Smith eating spaghetti like it was two or three years ago, which has burned it in my consciousness for all time. But, I don't know. After we said it before on the show, we all just wish generative AI would go away. And, like, agentic AI is so interesting. Just get rid of the generative. Like, just get rid of that. Like, go away. No videos. No imagery.

I don't know. What would we do without image playgrounds? Exactly. Just agentic AI is so interesting. Like, why can't we just... Anyway, that's the stuff I found, Federico, what kind of... I wanted to go over some details that I saved. Project Mariner, this is the agentic computer use browser integration.

it can now multitask so you can sort of spin off 10 up to 10 tasks at once and that's basically a version of Gemini sort of using browser tabs on its own so if you don't want to do it you'll be like in a browser tab can you go here and book a table for this day and then you go into another browser tab and you're like i don't know you know understand my kids soccer practice in my google calendar or something So you can multitask with that. The computer uses stuff.

when it comes to web browsers is one of the things that I'm really skeptical of. And computer use in general, I do understand that wild implications for accessibility. And I am intrigued by some of the upcoming models for computer use when it comes to understanding a complex application like say Final Cutter logic. with natural language. That's interesting for me, but this computer using a web browser I still struggle to understand.

We'll see. Anyway, that's Project Mariner. Still unclear. Is it going to be an actual product or an extension in Chrome? A lot of the things that I would want a computer to do for me, I'm not going to be able to have it go and buy me tickets to a concert because that's going to be... They're going to find something. They don't want me to do that, right? That's the whole thing.

That's pretty much the thing that Perplexity is launching this Comet browser, which is based on Google Chrome. And that's our whole thing right now. It's a browser that does things for you in Perplexity. I don't know. maybe it's just me some of these things i don't understand um uh agent mode in gemini i think it's this is one of my favorite announcements uh

Soon you will be able to integrate MCP tools in Gemini, as well as Search and Chrome. But I'm mostly interested in MCP in Gemini. MCP can be confusing. in so many different ways. You can find MCP servers that are hosted remotely on GitHub and you literally connect to a thing on GitHub. via code made by somebody else You can download and install an MCP server on your own computer.

so at the very least the code is on your actual machine that's a double-edged sword because well the code is on your actual machine There's no good way of doing it. Thankfully, thankfully, over the past couple of months, things have sort of standardized a little. So there's a popular directory for MCP tools called Smithery, Smithery AI. that's a really popular setup

gallery for different MCP tools that have sort of verified and you can see how many people use it and so forth. But by far, I think my favorite MCP integration right now is the Zapier one. because they made it so easy to integrate with Claude and other apps.

And they have this UI where they give you a private link that's tied to your account so they authenticate you with your Zapier account. And that link is private to you. And they have this interface where you pick and choose the tools that you want to use. So instead of installing like 20 different MCB servers, you just install the one Zapier one which contains like 50 different tools.

And they have a visual interface to do all this. It's very nicely done. I use it with Claude all the time now. And soon you will be able to do that in Gemini. So that's exciting.

they had the gemini 2.5 flash update which according to them it's second only to 2.5 pro in the llm arena which it's a whole other thing these benchmarks that i don't fully I don't think they're necessarily reflective of actual performance and quality, especially because the funny thing about benchmarks and leaderboards is that these companies are training their models against the best possible outcomes for the leaderboard.

which kind of defeats the purpose, you know, somebody actually using a model and understanding what it does. So Facebook did that, right? Yeah, everybody does. Ben Thompson interviewed Mark Zuckerberg and he asked him about this. And it's like, but it's like, ah, we make. I don't know what it was like. It was very funny.

They showcase audio previews in Gemini, including a mode that can talk in multiple languages and also whisper, which was kind of creepy, but also quite impressive at the same time. And as I was mentioning before, given that the innovation right now is happening in tool usage and reasoning models, They also announced a version of Gemini 2.5 Pro, which is a big model. This one is called 2.5 Pro with DeepThink.

Guess what? To give you even better responses, you don't need a new model, you just need the existing big model to run for longer and use more compute power. So that's what DeepThink is going to do. And it's going to be in preview right now for Gemini Ultra subscribers. Have we talked about the crazy expensive subscription tier yet? Probably not. Not yet. Yeah, we're going to talk about that at the end.

What else do I want to mention? Personal context is interesting. It's kind of similar in some ways to memory in ChatGPT. And this feature, like this personalized... assistant, I am noticing that People either love it or absolutely hate it. one of my favorite writers about about ai right now simon willison they have an excellent blog like really old school blog with like uh blog posts and linked posts pretty much inspired by daring fireball yeah who would do that sort of thing in 2025

I know, right? And it stands out because there's all these grifters on X and on YouTube with these AI influencers. And here's an actual developer. Wow, this is an old school blog. And with an old school block that is so full of useful information every single day. Has to be one of my favorite. The little orange and white RSS thing. Oh, man. Look. Look at this.

This is incredible. Simon is the real deal. The LLM command line tool that I've been using lately is made by Simon. Incredible, incredible open source tool. In any case, if you take a look on Simon's blog, you will see I really don't like CharGPT's new memory. And Simon has been writing about this for a long time.

like i disagree but i understand why this idea that people want to use a large language model and it's sort of like pure essence, like they don't want personalization, they don't want the model to change responses based on what they think they know about you. So it'll be interesting to see this personal context in Gemini, just how much it'll influence. If I ask Google, hey, tell me about California, is the answer going to be influenced by how many times I've been to California over the years?

So that'll be fascinating to see if you can turn it off or not, how much you can customize it. We talked about AI mode insert. Only referenced. I don't really understand. This is that thing, what I was saying, what Casey Newton says. It's confusing for me to be able to separate all these things from each other because they just all seem to overlap.

Yeah, yeah. So this is basically Google doing perplexity, right? The AI mode, I mean, if you compare them side by side, it's basically perplexity with a sidebar. But of course it's powered by Gemini, which is again 2.5 and especially 2.5 Pro, one of the best models right now. And so they're feeling the pressure, I guess, from people searching in Chagypt where search is no longer like stringing together a bunch of keywords, but it can be multiple sentences.

strung together. So that's what they're optimizing for. I guess what it gets kind of confusing is that on top of that, you have the shopping integration and you have the visual shopping and you have the more agentic behavior where you're like, okay, now go find this ticket for me.

i don't know we'll see it's rolling out in the us i mean it's out in the us for everybody everybody right now and this is very different from ai overviews which you know i'm sure you've seen at the top of google searches this is once again basically like a chatbot ui uh it sort of gives you a page of results and then you have a right sidebar with more information you can click through and do a bunch of

It was a funny thing what Sundar said, because this AMO thing has existed for a while, like in the labs feature. and he was like he was touting that like typically a search in AI mode people write two to three times more words than doing a Google search I was like what is that What is that? What are you saying? Like, is that good? Like, is it bad? You know what? Like, why is that like a... Ah, so great.

you know what i mean it's like it's just like a strange thing to tout as like a benefit of this feature is like people write more stuff in the box it's like yeah okay like okay like i know because i am aware of this like when i am

searching for something in chat gpt i i search more with more words and like there are two reasons for this one because i just feel a bit more like chatty, then like i know what to look for on google but also because i feel like i have to give it more information so like because i I know that without that it is a less efficient thing but if I give it all of the information I can get the answer I want better so it is essentially saying that like these

These tools require more effort from the user. I just found that it's a strange thing to be like, hey, people type more. It's like, okay. this isn't like a thing we're all looking for like oh man if only i could type more in my google search like ah why can't i do that if only Android XR got a bit of time. Android XR is a big project spanning all forms.

of AI, sorry, like alternate reality stuff, like mixed reality stuff, like it's their headset that I work with Samsung on, but it's also glasses. And they spent quite a bit of time essentially showing their... reference design which samsung has made but it's not going to be a shipping product which is basically the meta ray bands but with a display inside they did a demo the demo was fine clearly

pushing the device really hard. The video stream came from it. It was very choppy, but whatever is how I feel about that. I don't particularly feel like it needs to be live streaming as a product point that it needs. I thought that the idea of Metal Ray-Bans, but with a little screen inside so it can show you stuff that are. Okay.

Like, that's it, right? They announced they're working with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. I thought the Warby Parker thing was just funny to me. I was like, so, okay, there's two brands that make good-looking glasses, and like... They're going to, you know. They're both doing stuff now. But it's like understanding. So Victoria's song at The Verge had a good point about this. It's like they understood the right thing from matter.

You have to make products people are actually going to want to wear, so they need to be designed by people who design products that people want to wear. You can't just make the, here's the Samsung ones. That's not... the thing like that samsung don't understand how to make attractive eyeglasses like you need to work with companies that do that so yeah i thought it was an interesting demo i'm intrigued to see what comes of it um

Also, X-Ray were making some, Federico. I'm sure you're excited about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought the glass demo looked excellent. Yeah. I'm sure there were Wi-Fi issues. Yeah. I don't fault them for that. That's not what I care about. I don't care about... how well it live streams right like the things that it was doing that were interesting, right? Like it could take a picture, it was showing viewfinders, it was showing directions, it was showing little pieces of text.

Now, as I've said a long time ago on this show, I'm not sure I want notifications in my eyes. That's actually a thing I do not want. I don't want that. But for things that I'm asking it for. Being able to get turn by turn walking directions. I would love that. Oh my god, I would love that. To just be able to see where, not have to have my phone out while I'm trying to navigate somewhere.

just use my eyes like that yeah looks fantastic what's what's interesting about that is we're talking about our phones and other things wanting to be more proactive but something in your eyes you want to be basically solely reactive i think is what you're saying and i agree i think that's spot on just interesting to me like the the difference in there caught my attention yeah and i think it's just the

There's like a spectrum, right? Where it's like your watch is somewhere in the middle, right? It's like a kind of proactive-reactive. The more connected it is to my physical senses, the less I want it to... take over without me asking. That's kind of how I feel anyway. But yeah, I thought that looked really cool. It's fascinating to see that like 10, 11 years later or whatever it is, they actually, the technology exists for Google Glass to be like a thing that people are willing to accept.

Yeah, that's a good point. Should we talk about pricing? Yeah. How much does everything cost, Stephen? So Google AI Pro, you get the 2.5 Pro and Deep Research. and Veo2 and the Gemini app, you get that AI filmmaking stuff flow that Mike talked about. You get Notebook LM with basically five times more audio overviews and notebooks and stuff. Gemini and Gmail Doc. Gemini and Chrome and two terabytes of storage. That's Google AI Pro. That is $19.99 a month in the US.

which used to be called gemini advanced that's right that's yeah yeah it's basically i think almost exactly the same plan just with these newer features And then there is Google AI Ultra for $125 a quarter. So that's, what, $42 a month? 42 bucks a month. You get all the pro stuff. Why would you do that? Why would you charge it that way? I don't know. Why are you just charging me monthly? I thought it was $120 a month. I did too, which is like, wow.

well and that's that apparently is uh discounted normally it's going to be 250 a month that's like drawn with an outline with a strike through on it i don't know um you get everything in pro you get basically like gemini app turned to maximum You get Veo 3. You get, um... The highest limits in Notebook LM.

You get the highest limits in Gemini and Docs and Gmail and everything. You get Project Mariner, which is the agentic research stuff that Federico talked about. You get YouTube Premium and 30... terabytes of storage for Photos Drive and Gmail. All that is Google AI Ultra for $125 a month for three months. Wait, no, it's not $125 a quarter. It's $125 a month, but you sign a three-month...

So I misstated that. Or is it just $125 for the first three months and then $250 thereafter? I think that may be actually. That is very confusing. Yeah, it is. Google AI Ultra is available. I'm looking for the Google blog. $249 a month. with a special offer for first-time users for 50% of your first three months. So it is $250 a month. Okay. So forgive my quick math of... That is confusing on the...

It's very confusing. The Google AI plans page. AI Ultra is US only for now, and Google AI Pro is free for students through, quote, finals in 2026. So if you are a student, you can see if you're eligible for a student discount. There's a page about that. $250 a month is a lot. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. What's the expense of OpenAI? When is it $200 a month? They're all about 200, aren't they? So OpenAI Pro is 200, and Cloud, they have two versions of CloudMatch.

which is, let's see, either 100 or 200. Okay, so it's a little bit more than that, but maybe they're offering more. It's expensive. Federico, let's put our cards on the table for a second. What, if anything, are we paying for with AI tools right now? What do you mean? What do you mean? Like are you paying for Claude Pro or- Oh chat GPT, you're paying for all of them aren't you?

Yes. Okay. Why would you do this to him? Why would you make him say it? So Federico's spending money everywhere. I'm doing... I don't think... But I don't think I'm going to pay for the Gemini Ultra one. uh because i mostly use gemini over the api and that's built via the google cloud console whatever so okay i don't need the consumer subscription yeah okay Yeah, I'm paying for ChatGPT, the regular one. 20 bucks a month? 20, yeah. Yeah, me too. And I...

Was paying for Gemini. But then somehow I got it free. I think with my Android phone. Like they got like a year or something. oh no okay yeah i remember now i got it for free i got like free for a year on my personal like account like gmail like google account and then i'm paying for it on a business account Well, now it's all integrated with Google Workspace anyway, but I was going to pay for it because I wanted the good notebook. I needed more space.

And so I was going to pay for it, but then they kind of rolled it into Google Workspace and increased the price. And so it's like, all right, so I got it. I don't pay extra for it. So the only one that I'm like paying for is the regular OpenAI. subscription. Not the 200 dot, not the 201. Yeah, I'm doing the 20 bucks a month. That's out, GPT.

Yeah, you're probably also getting the Google one. Yeah, I think... Because it's something you pay for somewhere. You're getting it somewhere. They basically, I think, turned that on for a bunch of Workspace accounts, which I found really frustrating because the price went up. They turned it on and then increased the price of Workspace. which is just like well yeah so profiles are paying for that but i have not i have not really i've not spent much time with the new gemini stuff i tried it out

I don't know, six months ago or something, but definitely not any of these newer things. Gemini is getting better and better. It's getting better and better all the time. And it's particularly good on an Android phone, obviously. If you love this podcast and would like to hear more from us each and every week consider Connected Pro. Connected Pro members get a longer, ad-free version of the show each and every week.

So we do an extra topic at the beginning of the show. Then after the show, we wrap up, pick titles, goof off for a little while. And we do that each and every week. There's a link in the show notes to become a member. It's just seven bucks a month or $70 a year. And now is a great time to sign up. Again, the link is in the show notes.

but you'll get more than just longer ad-free versions of the show. Members also get access to a bunch of perks through Relay, including the Relay Members Discord, which is my favorite place to hang out on the internet.

wallpapers, a newsletter, a couple of members-only podcasts, one Mike and I do each month just talking about the company and our lives and we answer questions from members and the other one is called spotlight it's usually hosted by kathy campbell where she takes questions from discord members

and ask them of various hosts and other people associated with the network. It's all really cool. It starts at just $7 a month or $70 a year. Again, the link is in the show notes. Check it out. We'd love to have you join Connected Pro. So the OpenAI news that we covered a second ago, the breaking news, that aside, I feel like there's been a real shift in the way we're thinking and talking about Google in the era of AI. I feel like...

six months ago, maybe even three months ago, I was like, well, Google is, like, they're in trouble, right? Because ChatGPT search and these other tools are going to make people search less. And it seems to me, and some of this was in that Casey Newton column that Mike mentioned earlier, it feels like this IO is...

in a way was designed to counteract some of that and say like, no, like search is still really important. We're making search better with AI, but we're also doing these other things. Is the way that y'all have thought about that, has that shifted after IO in any way? I still think Google's in trouble. I just think that they're attempting to meet the moment more. Like, Google sucks. is at risk. And the way Google makes money which is Google search is at risk.

One of the reasons they're pushing so hard is because of that, right? So I think Google is struggling, but... You know, my opinion of Google's ability is significantly better than when they started, right? Bard was a joke. Which is why they had to rebrand it. Because it was just so bad. It was getting things so wrong. And I like Gemini. My experience using Gemini has been very positive. my experience with the Google AI summaries has been very negative. Like I kind of,

don't understand why they're so different. I feel like I get better responses from Gemini than I do from the Google AI summary. I think you're right. They're in a better spot now. I think people look at them as being more of a... leader again but I still think that like Google's core business they need to try and work out how that's going to not fall apart for them, I suppose. Sure. I feel like...

If the current landscape of the tech products that we use is to stay the same Google is the company that's best positioned right now, given the status quo of devices that we use. and they are trying, I feel like they have They have the most compelling ecosystem right now of existing products.

What Johnny apparently is calling legacy products in the promo video that I need to watch later for IO. So if we are considering legacy products, and at this point, I mean, even glasses and headsets are legacy products, to an extent, especially. especially headsets. But if we consider the current ecosystem of legacy products, Google right now has the most compelling one because they have a really good AI.

And I know that Apple people, Apple fans that listen to this show don't want to hear this, but they have a really good AI integrated with the system in a way that Apple dreams they could have it. So if we consider the current landscape but they are well positioned. If we consider that everything is changing They are also at risk Right? They are, like, especially search.

given that their core business is ads, search, and all that stuff. And they're not necessarily making money off of Android, really. I do think that, though, the company that is in the worst shape right now is Apple. Like, it's just objectively speaking, you know.

clearly people are and i think it's i think it's so funny i think it's so funny that either over the feedback form or in the discord or on blue sky or god forbid on mastodon um we we got this feedback still after two and a half years of these things existing from people saying oh you know it hallucinates it's you know it's it's uh you know what it's snake oil i mean do you think that half a billion people half a billion people

using ChatGPT on a monthly basis or whatever it is, daily basis, I don't even remember. Do you think that half a billion people are stupider than you? And that you, the feedback sender, are the clever one for having assumed over the past couple of years that these products, there's nothing, absolutely nothing good about them. That half a billion people just for TIGPT. I mean, how many if I consider all the other services?

They're just stupid. They're using these services, they're using these products because they're under some kind of collective gaslighting or something? I think this technology just elicits a lot of very strong emotions in people. I mean, but when you look at the numbers, when you look at the numbers, like live, you know, nerds, nerd. tend to be people who appreciate the empirical method and the scientific method. So just take a look at the numbers.

Do you think that it's possible that given these numbers, all those people are part of a collective hallucination? Or is there something potentially good about these products? I mean... I don't think it's got to be as hardcore as that. I understand where you're coming from. You know me. You know me. I find it frustrating when people just repeat the same things over and over.

You know, the joke of like, oh, I told you to eat, put glue on pizza. Like, I just, I don't think it's funny anymore. That's kind of funny. I don't think, I know you like it, but I don't think it's funny. it's just like yes that was a thing that happened but it doesn't happen now so you know they fixed

But I am acutely aware of the fact that this causes a lot of feelings in people. And so I think it elicits a response that is unlike other stuff in technology because it is... it's still it's a hot button and it's going to continue to be one for a long time and i think that a lot of The things like the glue on pizza thing, it is a very hard thing to shake out of people because it's like if you...

If you come at it from a spot of like, I don't want this technology, then you are going to be leaning way harder into all of the problems of it. Similarly, of like the environmental stuff, of which there are environmental concerns, I think.

everything that i've seen is like it's in the middle of what a lot of people think it's like it's bad it's not as bad it's worse than a google search but like how much and yeah but i don't know because i'm not smart enough to understand it but like i feel like i've seen a lot of people whose opinions i do trust that talk about it of like it is definitely worse than a lot of the things we're doing on computers currently.

But to what actual degree? And I think it's people overestimate it maybe. Yeah. And I can be mad. that xai is using uh tractor trailer sized gas turbines in poor neighborhoods to power grok of all things and think that there are uses for this that are helpful and pay for chat gpt right like those yes some of those things are in conflict with each other but it's just the same conflict we feel over like we like apple products but think there needs to be change in leadership or

i really like driving my truck even though i know the gas mileage isn't what you know i would be getting with a hybrid right like All of us make conflicted decisions all the time. AI is just the latest, and we've been doing this a long time, a long list of things that get... Nerdy-oriented people worked up.

And so I don't think it's got to be as hardcore as what you said, Federico. But I also think that like all of us need to understand that almost everybody, except for maybe those bros on X that you were talking about, like trying to scan people with AI courses or whatever. Except for those guys who we all dislike. So many of them.

You know, those guys wearing two polo shirts popped. Heyo! That was a thing, alright? There was a place in time where people were wearing multiple colors. And that dude just bought Johnny Ives, so... Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, now we always wear multiple colors. Exactly. I think basically everyone has conflicts about it even on this show right we and frederica you've talked you and john talked a lot about this right like y'all don't like how these models were built

but you do like what the technology unlocks in terms of your workflows and what you can create. Those things are in conflict. And so that is all inherent to this. And any hardcore statement about this is 100% good or 100% bad, that's just not useful because it's not true. And everyone's going to fall in between those two things at some point. Mm-hmm.

Anyways, I'll get off my soapbox. That's been rattling around in my head for a week. So thank you for letting me do that. Everyone has soapboxes. That's kind of the point of the conversation. You know what I mean? I think we've spoken about this many times. In all the years that I've been interested in technology and have spoken about technology professionally, nothing has elicited the kind of responses that this technology has.

that elicits in people good bad in the middle it is really interesting like there is a lot of emotion in this which is just an intriguing thing to see unfold Okay. Feelings. Thank you for, yeah, yeah. We're allowed to have them. You know what I mean? And we're allowed to express them. It's important to remember there's nuances, right? And just like, we're just all here just talking. You know, we're just here. We're just talking. Mm-hmm.

Anything else from IO we want to get back to? We sort of got derailed there for a second. I think we covered everything. But we didn't have time to talk about my Mac Studio, so we'll talk about that next week. I copied that to next week's document. I was like, nope, not making it to that. But yes, you have a sick Mac Studio. that you're doing wild stuff with. Yeah, boy.

Well, until then, if you want more of us, we're around. You can find Federico's writing and work over at Mac Stories, where he is the editor-in-chief.

Lots of great stuff. I know you guys are gearing up for WBDC. You just did the Airbnb thing. John's hanging out with famous people. It's awesome. Mike, host... no I don't know I mean who am I to say some people say some people say many people are saying if you want to hear more of Mike he hosts a bunch of shows here on Relay and check out his work at Cortex Brand You can find my writing at 512 pixels, and I co-host MacPower users here on Relay each and every Sunday.

I'd like to thank our sponsor this week, Squarespace, for making this possible. If you like Connected and want more of it, check out Connected Pro, the longer ad-free version of the show that we do each and every week. The link is in the show notes. It's just seven bucks a month. And until next time, gentlemen, say goodbye. Bye, y'all.