602: Computer Too Good

Hello and welcome to episode six hundred and two of the Connected Podcast on Relay. This episode is brought to you by Doc Pops, Squarespace and Fundera by Nerdwallet. My name is Mike Hurley and I am of the honor to introduce to you Wow the keynote chairman. Very coverty. Ah, you you stumbled there for a second, Mike, but thank you. It's uh I am pleased to bless you with my presence on this program. And it's my pleasure to also introduce annual chairman Stephen Hackett. Hello, Stephen.

Hello Federico. Hello, Mike. Hello. We're back. We're blessing you, Mike, in case you haven't. Notice you're blessed. Oh wow. Thank you. Yeah. Yes, you were blessed. And in a couple of weeks you could become a keynote chairman, potentially. I will. Yeah. I'm calling my shot right now. Okay. I'm gonna beat everyone. What do people say? You're claiming it, is that what people say? Is that um I mean it is what what does that mean? I mean can say that.

Yeah. Is that a is that a is that a Gen Z thing that I don't know? I know I I know a lot of Gen Z. Air kids, Gen Z. Uh two of them are. My youngest, I'm pretty sure, is Jen Alpha, which is really upsetting. Is that a thing now? Sophia Sophia's gem beta. Beta, okay. Okay. Yeah. Not great for her, really. What's uh what's the what's the next one gonna be called? Release candidate, am I right? Well Whoa. Whoa. W Wowser. Uh Gen R C I want to be Jen uh final underscore V two final.

What gen twenty twenty six point two point four? Oh man, okay can I Uh oh. I know that's a popular w I I don't actually actually I don't think it is. I think in some circles it's a popular way to do version numbers in an app. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Sorry. Ja.

I mean it's it the thing is it's like it's always incrementing, right? Like I know people do it because they don't want to just increment, like, you know, it's his version, whatever, whatever. But it still continues to increment. It just increments in a different way. Like I don't know if it if it serves What people are hoping to do. And it does avoid some of the things like Brian at Carrot Weather. I think Carrot Weather, I'm trying to look it up, is on version.

Uh, where's this listed in the app store? I can't find it. Alien. But it's like point something, point something. Like it just kind of keeps going. Um Yeah. Uh This says version six point five, but that's the anyways. It it can be it can be messy. Now the other side is like sometimes underscore and I like debate like is this a point one or is this a point oh point one, you know. But anyways, anyways, that's not what we're here to talk about.

We here talk about follow up and that of course starts with the most incredible looking car we've ever seen. So we got some pictures of the um Apple livery from this was the Miami Grand Prix? No, Luniseca is where these Yeah you got it. And uh there's Phil Schiller in in An amazing tracksuit. Just truly incredible. Yeah. Uh Phil's looking good, man. He's he's in a track suit. Like how cool. I mean, how cool is Phil Schiller in this picture?

Wait where where's the picture with It's the second image. The the second post from Joe Beam. Joe Beam was there clearly at Laguna Seiko and took some pictures of us and it's of the the actual Porsche on track which has the like Apple computer look. And then also, uh, Porsche bel I believe brought some of the old cars to track and some newer cars that had um been uh Livery painted up. Now it's worth noting one of these race cars, the name on the car, Philip Schiller.

Yeah. So this is Phil's race car? Well where's the picture of Phil? You're using mastodon. Mm. It was a federated picture of Federico. So that is actually Phil's tra not it's like his he didn't I said track soup, I mean i is his suit for driving, that is a driving suit. Yeah. Man, Phil looks good. Yeah. Yeah, man. But I mean he's driving that car, so So uh someone got in the car, it just wasn't the one I thought. Yeah. They're not putting John Turnus in the car.

John Turner's he raised his portion. But he he he's he's CO now. They can't put him in an Apple car. I kinda wanna have a dangerous Apple CEO like like uh that does like stunts and things, like the Tom Cruise of Apple CEOs, minus the Scientology of it all, obviously. But uh, you know, like a CEO that does things. Why not?

I still think that he got in the car because uh Eddie Q was in Miami for the Grand Prix and he said that Turnus was at Laguna Seca and he couldn't make it to the Grand Prix. So I I am convinced somewhere out there there is an image. of future CEO sitting inside of it. For sure, for sure. Maybe. I wha how do y'all think this livery would look on a twenty twenty three Tacoma? I should do this off.

You should do it. And then get the then then get ask Phil where his hookup is for this tracks for this like racing suit and get one of those. I got a Pokemon onesie from a old Pokacathon. I could use that. That's not the same. Also can can we can we appreciate for a second just how good of a name is Apple Computer? Yeah. Oh I know. I miss it. It was so cool.

When when when it became Apple Inc., that was that was cool at the time, right? Because it's like we're not com just computers anymore. But now it's like ah I missed the computer part. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. We have s also have some follow up about our Tim Cooked quote game that we played. Yeah. played last week and we had a question about one of the quotes um uh about the drop of blood. So the quote is, Mike, you dug this out for me. The quote was we see it every day with every data breach, every privacy violation, every blind eye turn turned to hate speech.

Fake news poisoning our national conversation, the false promise of miracles in exchange for a single drop of your blood. We were like well that's weird. Collectively. It just seemed very intense. Yeah. You know? But but the entire listenership of Connected reminded us of Theranos, and that's what this is in reference to.

Right. Theranos had the uh fraudulent blood machines. You could put a drop in, it could tell you everything wrong with you. People are in prison to this day because of Theranos. Um Avi Tavanian, an old uh old school next and apple person was uh on the board. He's not in prison. Not he's not a prison. Um but uh yes that obviously was uh in reference to Theranos and I I don't know how that didn't click for any three of us, but it has now been corrected.

I would like to recommend a T V show called The Dropout. which is Um starring oh who is Amanda Seafried. Yes. It's So good. Very good. She does a great job of the voice. Do you remember Elizabeth Holmes had that like she she affected that voice? Uh, and Siefried does a really good job of that too, um, over the course of the movie. It's it's uh and uh the TV series, I should say, is excellent. It's really, really good. And what a name.

Um, we did also have some praise. Um, and this this idea like Federica, this was you. Like s sometimes one of us just shows up is like I have a whole thing ready for you. Um and Amory wrote in, the Tim quote tier list was such an amazing, unhinged, connected energy. No one else could match this. I do not know how you c how you three keep this up. But genuinely one of the funniest and most enjoyable ways to mark the era. Never stop. Oh thank you. We jumped the shark when we read this on the show.

Maybe Like just we like Steven just chose to congratulate us in front of everyone. No, because to answer Mory, one of the ways to keep it up, usually in a couple, we can also do it in the thropple that we are is every once in a while, you you know, beyond you know the little bit of spice here and Yeah. Lying about our your age, like Steven does. Um, you also gotta compliment each other every once in a while. That's true. Balanced. Yeah. That's true. That's one of the secrets. So the secrets.

Thank you, Amori.

For all of the nice comments that we got, we got a lot of mean comments too about Game Hub. So Ben wrote in and said The reference made to the technique that Game Hub's using is if it's completely new. Uh however, crossover by code weavers, the maintainers of wine, have been doing this level of performance now for quite a long time and integrate the game porting toolkit. Federico mentioned Whiskey, which was an essentially a community version of Crossover.

There are also major contributors to Proton on Linux. It's been possible to play Windows games on a Mac, including AAA games, for that for a while. And Alex wrote in and said there are they are not using any kind of custom X eighty six emulation layer on Mac, they're just Nobody ever said that. Mm-hmm. Uh there I might have. They are not using any kind of translation technology for Windows, DirectX or similar. They're just using Wine and adding a shiny UI plus AI frame interpolation.

Is the shiny UI also making sure that you can log into your Steam account and making sure that you can select the right driver, uh FEX version, uh D The the key here is that like sure, right, the technology exists. Sure. Yeah but they are making it accessible to most people um rather than needing to I don't know find Crossover by code weavers, I guess.

Pretty sure that crossover or wine they never bothered with integrating with Proton, for example. Like the it's that's uh I mean, I understand the feedback, which is also appreciated, but I think it's an oversimplification to say oh game hub it's a shiny UI on top of wine and crossover because that's not it. They're doing a lot more things to make sure that you can not just log into your Steam account, but you know, uh especially when you consider the Android side of it all and now the Mac side.

um dealing with proton, dealing with uh FEX bivalve, like all those things, uh to the best of my knowledge were never part of whiskey or or crossover. So it it I mean, sure, the technology's not new, but the packaging is often what matters because hey. Otherwise we would all be l using Linux computers and laptops on this show and we're not DHH. We use Apple computers because I mean it's also about the packaging sometimes, you know? There's that.

Okay. Mm-hmm. I have a little follow out. That's where we do follow up for a different podcast. For some reason. Uh on this week's upgrade, uh, Jason and you, Mike, we're talking about the forthcoming, yet still rumored M6. class of MacBook Pros, which is expected to bring a redesign and an most importantly an OLED touch display. Um, it's been believed, I think, I think rightfully so, that this would be a more expensive MacBook Pro on top of the current machine.

Uh so the you know, it whether it be M five or maybe those get the M six as well, but uh the b a premium for the touch screen and the OLA display. Um And y'all talking about the name MacBook Ultra. Did this come from a listener question? I forget how y'all got into this. No, I think it was part of rumor roundup. Uh Philip Esposito at Macworld reported that Apple would be using the name Ultra for both the folding phone and the MacBook.

Um and Jason made a point of like, don't do this unless you are committed to Ultra being a fourth laptop line. Yeah. Um, which I totally agree with. I and I think MacBook Pro is a really strong brand and then you're making the Pro like the middle one. Like that that's a bit a bit weird. Um And y'all like touched on this but then like flew away from it like a butterfly landing on a flower and then going away. So I wanted to touch on it here. Um They're beautiful.

Apple solved this in twenty twelve with the MacBook Pro with retina display. It was the exact same situation. You had the regular MacBook Pro, which was already unibody at that point. Um, but did not have a runner display. It the old one had an optical drive and you know was a little bit thicker and

Um, they'd already sealed the batteries in at this point, but it was that it was that sort of classic unibody MacBook Pro. And then in twenty twelve they said, Hey, uh actually it was Phil Schiller speaking of of our our neighborhood uh Porsche driver. saying, uh do you want to see what the future is? Like do come over here. Like let me show you where we're going. And unveiled a high end MacBook Pro with a new industrial design and a new display.

And I think and hope that that's what Apple does this time around is that it's the MacBook Pro with something. Now I don't know what the name is because retina display, like that's wordy, but it worked. I don't know what they would say this time. Right. Liquid touch. Yeah, yeah, or like with multi-touch or you know, but what that lets you do is it lets you keep the name separate as long as you need to because eventually

all MacBook Pros got retina displays, right? And and the um the distinction went away because it was clear I get this is gonna start at the top, it's gonna come downhill in price and in and feature set over time.

And once that happens, we don't need the distinction anymore. And it I hope, at least that this is exactly what's gonna happen now. What I what I don't want to have happen is what Jason said, is that the Ultra is like a new machine or a new, you know, a new uh little family of laptops at the high end. And that Apple never brings OLED and touch to the other models. I think that's a mistake. I think all MacBooks should have touch displays on them at some point. Um and

keeping it like in its own thing just makes me worry that that that that wouldn't happen for a long time. But if you give it a modifier, then hey, you know, it signals that we're gonna do what we did last time and Yeah, it may take a little while and like the last non-Retina MacBook Pro hung out way too long and I I'm sure the same thing will happen with the last non-touch laptop. It'll hang on for ten years.

But I think a modifier is better than a new brand name. And I hope that's the the lane Apple's gonna go down. Yeah, and I just I I'm not s I'm not set on the ul this ultra name anyway. Like I I I don't think that it necessarily works for the For products outside of the watch? I I don't know. Wait until they call it MacBook Studio. That would be fun. See, I would like that name. Yeah. If they If they had something that was more kind of like designy feeling about the touch screen, you know?

I could see a scenario in which they pitch it as a way for creative people to be even more creative on a MacBook.

Sure. I just I don't imagine that they will only make one touch screen laptop. That's the problem. Yeah. Right, the touch screens will come to all of the MacBooks and so then w what's the MacBook Studio if they all have touch screens in three years, four years? Apple could do what they want. They're not bound by their history. So they could give it a brand name. Studio is a good brand name, and it's weird that it's just on a couple products.

Um, I actually disagree about the ultra name. We can have that debate another time, but I think it means whatever Apple all these names mean whatever Apple wants them to mean. Yeah, and I just don't like it. Like it's not really so s I mean, I do have the I make the argument of like Ultra seems to suggest it will have more, but the folding phone it will have a lot less in a bunch of waves. But irrespective of that, I'm just not a big fan of Ultra um as a as a product name.

Uh so yeah, that's um that's our follow out to upgrade. It's a good point. the success of the Neo and like loving the idea of having another m laptop brand. that they may just do it on the other end. Um, we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, that that's definitely a concern. Um, I think it would be

I just think it it for years we talked about how messy the MacBook lineup was. And it's like they kind of finally have it in a way that makes sense. Like, just leave it alone. Like just just This episode of Connected is brought to you by DocPop.

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I got some bad bad news boys. Okay. We're the bad news boys. Um Apple continues to struggle with memory shortages. All sorts of weird things are happening in the in the Mac lineup. Mike, you just mentioned the MacBook Neo. Do you want to walk us through this report from uh Tim Culpin? So Tim Colpin had a report a couple of weeks ago kind of saying Apple completely underestimated the demand of the MacBook Neo and is now facing a crossroads.

I think we spoke about it on the show a little bit. Of like essentially they ran out of the processors, the A18 pros, they just ran out of them. Um and they ne they need if they were going to continue to sell the Neo, they weren't gonna let it go out of stock. They had to

buy the chips from somewhere. Like sorry, like source the chips from somewhere. And so the pot the most likely scenario that they would end up doing is getting TSMC to make more of them, but that's going to be expensive because they're going to need to kind of jump the queue to do that.

uh because the node that those chips are made made on is is like oversubscribed by not just Apple by everybody. Um and so like I'll just say like so there's this the the the to kind of prove the point in the earnings call uh last week

Tim Cook said we're supply constrained on the MacBook Neo. We were bullish there you go, Federico, we were bullish on the product before announcing it, but we undercalled the level of enthusiasm that would be with it. So they just basically just did a way too good of a job with the Neo. Um and it's like it was a product that was essentially created to give a use to chips that were not good enough to go in the iPhones, right? They're all binned chips.

But now they've created like the hottest computer and so it it's it's it's I mean it's a good problem to have, but they've ended up in a scenario where they don't have the chips. So Uh Tim Copin has published another report yesterday, um, kind of following up on this, um, essentially saying that what Apple has chosen to do, they had a bunch of things that they could have potentially done, but what they have chosen to do is ask T SMC

to go ahead and make more chips for them. So they're gonna make more A18 pros. I'm gonna read from uh Tim's uh newsletter. With a fresh batch of A eighteen pro system on the chips, most of the new processes for the Neo will but will actually be top tier and only some would fall into the down bin category.

This means that in most cases the six GPUs would be fully functional in the Neo, but Apple is likely to deal with the disparity by simply switching off one of the GPUs through software. And so like the funny thing is now that they're actually going to make the good chip.

uh and they're gonna have to put these chips which are essentially more expensive into the Neo. So Apple is definitely, definitely losing mar going to start losing margin on its computer now because they have had to produce more chips, which is more expensive, they are now kind of taking the cost, which is not o of these chips for this computer. It's not so much like

amortized across the iPhone line as well, right? Because these chips were essentially just unused. But they they were rejects and they were going into this computer. So never probably another reason why they get the price down to the level that they have. And so now they're kind of paying for the success of this product.

by needing to produce chips for it specifically so they can continue. And they've essentially doubled the um overall order. I think it was five million units they they had originally ordered, um, of the Neo, and now it's ten million. It's it's just wild that Apple is like so good at this and and this product surprised them. It doesn't seem to happen very often. You can't know though. I mean like No you can't but

There's only so much you can do, right? And and it seems like this product has kind of surpassed even their best expectation for what it could have done. Mm-hmm. So that's that's still that TikTok marketing, man? I've I've had maybe y'all have had this I've had friends of mine who aren't Apple users, like Android users, PC users, like, hey, I need a new laptop or

I sending my kid to school, they need a laptop. Like, should I look at the Neo? It's people I never would have guessed. It's it's been it's been really cool to see. It's what Apple wanted. Um now the the thing now is though, what what will they do, right? So this product is going to be more expensive to produce, so they have a few routes. Either A, they can just eat the margin different. realistically, as long as they're not losing money on it.

Not gonna show in the financials'cause the MAC line isn't big enough. Right? It it's kind of how I look at it, but anyway, so like they could just eat it. They could or Cop uh Tim Culpin rec suggests another two things they could do. They could stop selling the two hundred fifty six gigabyte model, so there will raise the starting price to six ninety nine, so just be the five twelve. Or they could reduce new uh introduce new colours now to kind of

give another shot of enthusiasm. I'm not really sure how that would help. They would just sell more of them in that scenario, but it's also something they could do. And then maybe kind of like the more they can sell for sure, the better it will be overall. But th they're definitely going to lose margin on this. Mm-hmm. So all this to say computer good. Yeah. People love this computer. Computer too good. Yeah, too good.

I I would be love to know the conversations inside of Apple where it's like, Well, now what do we do? Like be like going into the future? Like have we created a product that is going to be consistently very popular? Because this machine was only was was kind of always meant to sell up to a fixed amount, which is not, I think, how Apple tend to be, right, with this stuff. Like it they

in theory for it to be what they wanted it to be, they could only ever sell up to as many bin chips as they had. Which feels like something you can kind of you know, I'm sure they can rough this stuff out. But like if you're not producing the A teen pros to create the bint

Then what do you it's weird, it's it's it kind of feels like the strategy that they had, which on paper seemed really good, has kind of bit them a little bit now. In w which again, good problem to have'cause computers are too popular.

Certainly interesting. Um the other problem they have is that they can't get their hands on uh memory, at least at the pricing they want, or they're trying to preserve the memory they have for their more popular products. Probably a little bit of both. Um, but they keep uh narrowing what's available for the Mac mini and the Mac studio. So back in March we talked about this, they killed Federico's beloved five hundred and twelve gig. um unified memory model at the Mac studio.

Still have my loan from Apple and I'm not giving it back. Yeah. That's a rare bird now. haven't like just just like written you many letters to get that thing back at this point. Yeah. They could they could pop the RAM out of there and sell it. I think, and this is generally like, you know, sort of inside baseball, I think. I think Apple loves the coverage of this computer. Like it all started because like they were approaching people for coverage on like MLX, Apple Silicon, local AI models.

And I think what they have and this is sort of my speculation, not coming I'm not quoting Apple here, but my sense is that they were happily caught by surprise by the open claw phenomenon of it all. Another just going with it. Uh, which is I mean, if you're Apple and and you find any way that people can talk positively about you in terms of AI, you'll take just about anything these days. Yeah. 'Cause that's what's happened is

These I mean it's it's open claw and everything else, right? It's not just open claw, it's All of the clo clo cowork, uh open AI codecs, all of these things that can do some kind of computer use. People are buying Mac Minis especially so that it's sequestered from their computer. And so they have this like clean room computer, which they only give it what it needs, and then they have it on all the time running and working for them.

And it's relate resulted in in the last two weeks, Apple have made two changes to the starting model, right? Like they cut off the sixteen gigabyte five ninety nine version. Yep. When it took a six ninety nine version. Then they cut the six ninety nine version. So now it starts at seven ninety nine, the magnet.

Which is very strange to make uh two cuts to the same product in a week. Like what happened in the intervening like three or four days that they had to do it again. Um there was something funny that I've seen, I've mentioned this in a few places now, but Perplexity is just sending Mac Minis to people. I keep seeing this everywhere. Like creators that I follow. Yeah, supposedly they're sending one to me as well. Really? Yeah, they just keep mailing Mac Minis to everybody. Yes, yes.

which seems unneeded. Yeah. Uh to do. But like this is part of the problem, right? Like They're buying a bunch to send to influencers Yeah. People are buying them because they wanna just have these clean room computers. And also people just want them for computers. And it's ended up that we're now in the situation where

I think Apple, I think it's a combo, right? Of one, they're selling more of this actual computer than they expected, so they don't have the chassis for these computers. But also two, they are prioritizing RAM for the m for the laptops. Which is why they're happy to cut this one. Yeah, it's the majority of what they sell or those notebooks and they they gotta keep that train moving. Um

Yeah, it just it's it's wild. I mean, the delivery dates continue to be really far out. Um and it stinks. Like if if you just straight up need a Mac Mini right now, like you're just you know, you need one for your your office or your, you know under your TV or whatever, it's like good luck. You know, you can't you can't get one. That's a that stinks. Especially not for the price you used to be able to get them for. Yeah.

I was one of those people, like just a few weeks ago, I was trying to get a Mac mini. It's like nope, can't do that. Yeah, and then also th it looks like Apple's gonna start getting hit by the RAM stuff at at some point in the next few months. This base it's him cook gave like a really roundabout way of trying to say, like, uh there's gonna be maybe some decisions we need to make, essentially, and so we'll see we'll see what they end up doing or not, um, in regards to ramp pricing.

This is the first step, is they're gonna start cutting the lowest margin products so that the the starting configurations are gonna become more expensive.

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My thanks to Squarespace for their support of the show and all of Relay. So to continue our special coverage of John Turnus uh becoming in a few months Apple CEO. Uh I thought we would do something else for this week's episode. We covered the tier list of Tim Cook quotes last week. And this week came up with another idea. Uh the tentative title for this segment was Jobs for John.

Yep. And it's a classic connected style round robin where we give each of us give uh gives three suggestions to the upcoming Apple CEO, John Turner. Uh these are not predictions. There are no points or money on the line. Oh, I thought we were scoring this. Unless you guys want to make it. I mean I think we should score it at least, like maybe like a year from now. Okay. I'm always down to gamble. So when when we're done, I'll save this and we'll come back to it uh next May.

Yeah. Okay. And uh it's just uh so a total of nine predictions slash suggestions.

And I think I'm gonna go first because I came up with the idea. That's the only reason. Uh this is probably gonna sound controversial. I'm just gonna say it. Uh uh John Acquire perplexity. All right. And now stay with me. Um Obviously this company is in uh how do you say it, hot waters?

uh with many other publications and companies that have uh sooth perplexity and uh they don't have exactly the greatest pedigree when it comes to Things like scraping the web, data practices and uh and all of that. But You're not you're not it's so I I'm turning this scenario. You're not selling me so far.

I'm gonna get into it. I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. I'm getting to it. That's totally something that Apple Legal can help with. Um, but here's the thing that a lot of people in our community don't wanna hear. Perplexity has a good product. They have great designers. And they have good apps in the form of regular perplexity and the new personal computer. Um most of all, Perplexity has a good product for being an aggregator of multiple AI services.

I mean I remember when when you were the person who didn't want to hear this. What? Since you know you know me so well, I'm so humble and that's why I can say that one of my greatest qualities is the ability to change my mind. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Look, look. What's the opposite of humble? Non-humble? what is it like you're like famous and infamous you're like in humboldt An inhumble person wouldn't say Um Mm-hmm.

No, but look, especially if you're Apple and you're in this position where it seems like they will end up being in iOS twenty-seven with the new Siri. They will bet on becoming an official Platform aggregator of multiple AI services with the Gemini deal. They already have the ChatGPT extension. They're gonna have even more extensions. In in Siri, so it's right there. What Perplexity has been doing and what Apple wants to do, there's a lot of overlap.

It's interesting, right? Because I I remember like people have been saying this for a while. Like there was a confront there were actually conversations reported on, right? That like they were gonna buy perplexity. And I remember at the time we were saying like why would they want to do this? Perplexity doesn't have the models, which felt like the important thing.

Now we've gotten to the point where Apple doesn't have the models either and is building product We assume going to try and build products that are not too far away from what publicity's doing, which is we need to build tools that integrate with any model that we may choose to work with, which is like their whole thing.

They have a really good search engine, which Apple wants to have for C integration with the web. They have a great voice experience that already integrates with reminders and Apple Music. They have the new perplexity computer, which is of something that you install on a Mac. And I've been using that, uh comparing that to OpenClaw and you know the cloud integration that you have on desktop.

It's by far uh the best designed experience for a desktop agent that I've seen to date. Really nice design, tons of permission prompts, which I'm sure Apple will love, lots of sandboxes. You've sold us. Yeah. How can we How can we spam people when they install a new version of macOS?

John, I'm t John, I'm telling you, this thing has it's so many permission prompts, you're gonna love it. Um They have really nice design and they are just this idea of the model agnostic uh AI provider, it seems to me like that's exactly where Apple is gonna end up being.

And so it's right there. It's been rumored for a while and then it was not rumored anymore. I just feel like also let's face it, at some point, perplexity will be looking for an exit, right? They have not raised the kind of money that OpenAI has raised and, you know, open these companies like OpenAI and Anthropic has b have basically become

impossible to acquire unless I don't know you're the government of the United States or something. Um but Perplexity has raised some money, but not an obscene amount of money. And at some point today we'll be looking for a way out. And when that happens, John, they're right there. They have great designers, really nice experience. They know how to deal with multiple models at the same time. Why not?

All right, my first pick. John, resist saying one more thing. Don't do it. You got you gotta build up to that. What about what what about what about one extra thing? Hey, here's another one. You could say those. Just don't do it. Don't do it. I th I say don't do it at all. I think that this is the thing that shouldn't have continued post jobs, honestly. Because I don't think any of the times that they have said it since

justified saying at all. Um, I would love to have a list of what they are. I I know they did it for the Vision Pro. Right? And the Apple Watch. The apple like and I just think that none of these things justify that. Um ev look, none of not all of the jobs one more things justified it. But it was still like it was his thing, right? Um and so I

Oh, Apple Music for Zoe. The iPhone ten. Okay, maybe that one. Right? Like maybe that one was good enough. But the the anyway, I think that there is a real risk that he's gonna do it in his first keynote with the iPhone with the folding iPhone. Like I'm w I'm worried he's gonna do it. And it's like John, just don't do it. Hmm. That's really interesting.

I think that you gotta make your own way here. And I think playing the hits like that is not is not the best way to start. That's that's my that's my feeling. And everyone's gonna get so excited when he says it. Oh yeah. And when he says that I'm gonna get goosebumps, but still I'm j I wished he wouldn't do it. I'm not opposed to him saying it. I do agree that it should be timed Not the beginning. Like don't do it off the bat. Um I think it's a fun part of history.

Yeah, I think you might do it.'Cause you know, it's probably nothing bigger than a new iPhone, you know. But I just Got that got that wide boy coming, you know.

All right. Um mine is stop cluttering the UI with ads for services and I cheated a little bit, increase free iCloud space. Uh I don't think you're gonna get I don't think this is gonna go. Y'all aren't getting yours either, but I I think Yeah, I might. I think that um

I'm totally fine with Apple telling their customers that services exist. I think there's lots of ways you could do that. Just like uh app developers have to figure out a way to tell their users about subscriptions and an app purchase. There there's clearly a spectrum there of ways you can do it that respect the user and your app and that don't respect the user or your app. And Apple's been sliding toward the second. Badging

a settings app icon because you haven't set up Apple Pay feels aggressive. But now if I'm in settings, show me. Right? I I think you I think you can give people some credit that they do bounce around inside their phone and their devices. Surface them where they make sense. Um but I'd like to see that dial back a little bit.

Uh, and come on, five gigs. We don't have to talk about this anymore. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Just double it. Just do something, you know. I say that, I know it's complicated. I know that I've Have a... stake the claim for myself of not liking data centers and that requires more data centers, but it's painful. Um maybe the maybe the alternative is making the paid iCloud tiers cheaper, doing something to uh to make that better for people.

Okay. How okay do you have a like can you verbalize what ads are okay and what aren't? I think a hard line for me is is putting a badge on the settings icon, like like on the dock or on the lock on the home screen of the phone. Yeah. Um if I open the sports app and there's a a banner at the top about F1, I'm okay with that. Like it's in context of what I'm doing. Add some maps. I don't like that, but mainly because I think

'Cause I like maps a lot. I just don't want ads in it. This is a messy thing. Like I you know. Yeah. There's no clear lines and there's lots It's like you know it when you see it, I think is the is yeah.'Cause everybody has their own lines too, right? Like I have no problem with ads and maps because I'm a Google Maps user. So I get ads and maps, you know, like I'm very used to ads and maps. Yeah. Um And there there are upsides okay, this there are upsides to having

ads in a mapping product, right? If you're a local company, like it could be huge for you, right? Like there's this thing I mean I think we've talked about this before. We're like You'll see a company it's like AAA Locksmith. Well, they did that, so they were the top of the yellow page. Right. Or now it's a coffee place near me and that's like the name of the coffee shop because they're like gaming SEO.

There are reasons to have ads and and pro in a product like maps. For me, I'm just sad about it because I really like Apple Maps. It's I basically use it exclusively now. And um and I pay for you know and I pay for Apple One, and that's another lever they could pull of like if you're paying for these other things, do you have a lighter ad load? Do you have no ad load? I don't know. I'm not the CEO, but I think it needs addressing.

Okay. That's all. Um, as a bit of follow-up for you, I have uh been we've been sent in the Discord a list. Of one more thing moments. This is found by Jared HP. I don't know if this is like exhaustive, uh, but we ha there were uh twenty-nine instances of one more thing. Five of them were Tim Cook. Would you allow me permit me to read this list? So the first one was Apple's return to profitability.

Uh and he's so Steve said one last thing here and then referenced that they were returning to profitability. I'm sure that was a very important in nineteen ninety eight. Oh yeah. Apple Airport was the next one. Okay. Then the twenty two inch Apple Cinema display. Maybe I MacDV Including the S C and iMovie. That thing had fire wire. Get on board with the future. One more thing. Uh then the announcement of Aqua and Jobs becoming the CEO of MAQ two thousand. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

The Power Mac G four cube. Yeah. That's worthy. That's a good one. Then the PowerBook G four. Then in two thousand and two, iPod for Windows. Okay. And the seventeen inch IMAC G four at the same time. Then it was Power Mac G five, Power Book G four, the twelve inch aluminium version. Okay. Two thousand and four the iPod mini. That's good. One more thing. Then the thirty inch cinema display. In two thousand and five iPod Shuffle. And then iPod with video.

It's funny to me the the new iPods all being one more things, like we knew they were gonna keep making more iPods. Like it's not surpr it's like imagine if every year at the iPhone event it's like one more thing, we have a new iPhone. You know, it's like Steve, we know you're gonna keep doing this. Uh in two thousand six MacBook Pro. In two thousand and then again in two thousand six iTunes movies, Apple TV, and a John Mayer performance. Hey man, John Mayer's a big deal. Safari for Windows.

That was one more thing, Safari for Windows. Get this. 2007, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. We joke about that now, but it was kind of sick to be able to buy music wherever you were. So what were we doing before? Sinking buying it on your power book and sinking it with a wire. So was this the the availability to buy it from like your iPhone and your iPod touch? Uhhuh.'Cause it was two thousand or seven. Okay. Two thousand and eight, the aluminium unibody MacBook.

Then 2009, the iPod Nano with video and speaker. Then FaceTime. Uh Apple T V and iOS in two thousand and ten. Uh MacBook Air in two thousand and ten. It's a revision of it. Itunes Match was a one more thing. That was Steve's last one more thing. Wowzers. Uh, and then Tim Cook did the Apple Watch, Apple Music, iPhone 10.

And the M one chip, which I also give him as a good reason, and then the Apple Vision Pro, I feel like the iPhone ten and the M one were worth it. The others that Tim did were not.

Uh Mike, you're up next. Oh wow. Okay. Uh make local Apple intelligence models a product that people actually want to use. They're not good, right? Because they're they're there's not only are local AI models difficult anyway, because they're never going to be as good as the stuff you can put in the data centers, Apple's models are just not good enough to begin with.

So what I want them to do is find a way to make it work because I believe if we can shift more to local, I think it's going to reduce a lot of the issues that people have with AI. Yeah. Quite rightly. You know? Like then we're not going to be burning these data centers all day, every day, if people are using local models more often for more things than we're doing right now.

So I I I d I don't know how you do this. This feels like a very difficult thing to do, but I want them to really push on this because I think it could make a big difference. Uh I'm up next. Um, it's to rebuild relationships with developers. This spans uh the business deal with the app store.

Um, documentation, which something casey has talked about uh a good bit. I ran into that headlong this week looking at something. I was like, why is this document not saying anything helpful? Um and then accessibility to internal support at Apple. So you have a question. can be hard to get it answered. Um I think I think Apple's lost a lot of goodwill in that community and it would behoove them to get Can I just add to your list by saying um the feedback system?

Oh yeah. That's that's that's a good Deal with the feedback system. If you're gonna make us fill in feedbacks, actually respond to them. That's good.

I'm up next and uh pretty simple one. Uh launch smaller stranger products. I think this is something that uh that we've been saying for a while, and and also Mike and Jason have been saying this on upgrade. Uh every launch from Apple. Has to be a big deal. And and I understand why. Like everything needs to be a massive success because they're the biggest tech company on earth. But that doesn't mean that they cannot try and and have, you know,

And I I don't really know how they can potentially present the product by saying this is something that we're trying. But I think Exactly. I'm I'm I'm not being silly. It's like that was just like here's a weird little thing we're doing. Yes. Don't worry about it. And I think if you own it, I think we've seen lately from from from for example from from OpenAI, it's not unusual for open AI to say, hey, this is something that we're trying. We're not sure where it's gonna go, but here's this thing.

Yeah. And I'm not sure. I mean, obviously Apple is more judicious than any AI company really. But I would love to see Apple kind of own the idea of here's this product, here's this accessory. It's very different from something we've done before and we wanna see how it goes. Like that kind of honesty, uh it's it's it would be different from the kind of hyper polished image that we've gotten from Apple for the past decade or so.

I don't know. Uh it goes back to that idea of I I was half joking when I said let Apple have a dangerous CEO. Like in that sense, like a more of a kindred spirit, so to speak, you know, like a like a A different person that is n willing to take risks even when it comes to announcing products to the public. That would be fun to see. I mean, I feel like this is the you know, the idea of not everything has to be a platform. Yeah. Yeah. Some things can just be accessories.

They can play off the existing platform that you already have with the iPhone. I mean, unfortunately they they seem to have been trying that with the home pod with a screen product, but then Yeah. But then there were other problems that have stopped that thing from shipping. But that feels like the right approach. Um than like trying to build an app store for everything. Yeah.

It's good. Mine we we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, highlight again. Like take a long, hard look at software quality. Please. What's going on there? Stuff like just the just like a lot of these weird, strange products, Federico, you want, which I also want. That's a really good job for John. Um, it seems like a lot of stuff, at least recently, has been held back by the software side of the of the organization. And that that's a little disappointing.

I'm up next again. I mentioned this before. Uh kind of a similar idea. John, bring back the live event. Please. Enough with the videos. I get I get why you started with the videos necessary. I get that they're cheaper to produce. But now m and I think I said this a couple of weeks ago on the show. The way that I do them. Yeah, nothing is cheap, especially for Apple, but still like especially now I think um people are seeking the kind of personal touch from the tech industry.

um as a response to AI and the fears around AI. And I think there's something about a not hyperpolished live event that brings back that kind of human touch And especially you, John, as a product person. that could really give a feel of Apple is back with a person at the top that cares. About product. has been making products and can tell you a story about those products live on a stage without anything quote unquote fake around it, as in a pre-produced, super polished video.

And there's something to that idea of the human touch live on stage. Mistakes and all. Because that's part of what humans do on a stage. Every once in a while they screw up. And that's fine. Because I think, in a way, it kinda adds um That's a touch of delight and whimsy that, you know, uh to quote to quote the masterful Noel Gallagher, true perfection has to be imperfect. And so Bring back the live event.

I think my final one actually is is hand in hand with yours, Federico. Uh John, do a good podcast interview, like a long one. Sit down with someone, talk for a couple of hours. Yeah. Let's hear you in conversation, show what makes you tick. Like you know, go on the talk show, although you should come to us. But you know, like do something like that. You know you'll have a good time of us. We'll play a game. Yeah.

We'll talk about you being in a race car. But like show us who you are, right? Like go and do something that is a little bit more Real. And have a have a conversation with someone for a bit. Let's let's kind of see who you are as a person. No, no, have a conversation with us, not something. With us specifically. Tell us where you come from, what were you into as a kid? Do you like video games? Did you like video games? Do you go to Star Fox, all that stuff. Yeah. I mean what yeah.

Yeah, we need some humanity up there, I think.

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I've done a thing, boys. I'm d this is me reading the title of the section. I have become a home assistant person. Why would you do this to us? Right. Because I'm f well, because I'm friends with Casey Liss and he he drugged me into this. You can be friends with Casey without being dragged into Casey thing. That's true but difficult. The really it started because I needed to solve a smart home issue I was having and

I've just got to point something out real quick. Sorry, I gone to the Home Assistant website. It says Home Assistant twenty twenty six point five point oh No's bad. They're doing it. Yeah. I know. Casey does it with uh Call Sheet too. It hurts. Oh yeah, I know.

So uh I needed to solve an issue, which I will get to, but just very briefly before everyone quits the podcast, I'm gonna do a little overview of Home Assistant. Because I I was confused Very briefly you said do do I need to put you on a time? No, please don't. Okay. I didn't because I wasn't really aware of like where it fit'cause it's different than Home Bridge. Like Home Bridge, which actually just got updated

this week to support matter devices, which is cool. Yep. It's a HomeBridge is like a shim, so you can get non-HomeKit accessories into HomeKit. Right. Home bridge is like a one-way funnel basically for that sort of thing. For instance, at my old house, my home alarm did not have any awareness of HomeKit, but it did work with HomeBridge. And so I could pipe my home alarm system into HomeKit via HomeBridge. It ran on a Mac mini and it broke.

Steven, you're losing me. You're staying home too much. I can't I'm I'm already struggling to keep So home assistant, should we call it H A home assistant? No no no no, just stop talking about competing things.

Mike, it's only gonna get worse. Wait till I tell you about the two home kit plugins for home assistant. Um No So Home Assistant is an open source smart home and home automation platform. So it is independent like HomeBridge exists to serve HomeKit, more or less. Home Assistant is like its own thing. Like people who don't have a single Apple product can use Home Assistant. And because it's open source,

you get a lot of flexibility. It can run on basically anything like a Raspberry Pi. It can run directly on a bunch of operating systems. You put in a virtual machine. I'm running it on what's called a home assistant green, which is a little I think it's Raspberry Pi based. I bought it like It's a it's a pie, yeah.

Yeah, I bought it like two years ago and it was literally in a box on the shelf. And then I got it out for this. Um'cause I I we actually we were going to do a an MPU episode about home assistant and it kind of f the outline kind of just didn't ever go anywhere. So I had the hardware but didn't use it until now. Um Also because it's open source, it has a wild amount of integration.

And so it can plug into other ecosystems natively. So like Mike, you and I have both have a lot of Accara stuff around our houses, right? Um You just tell it, Hey, I have a bunch of a car stuff and it finds your hub and it and it can talk to everything. Akara. Uh, same thing with the Lutron Cassetta Lights, which is and Yolink, which is a bunch of um I use their leak detection sensors, and what's cool about Yolink is they have extremely long range. I was having trouble

Um, the attic of my house is like completely lined in metal backed, like foil backed insulation. And my what I was using previously I guess they were using matter, I don't really remember, but those water sensors dropped off the network all the time because the radios weren't strong enough and Yolink R and so I have a bunch of those around. Um

And it's open source, so there's also like community projects. So like me, Ross, I have the garage door opener. I could pipe in through a a third like an open source third party community project. Um Eufie smart vacuums, a whole bunch of stuff. So it's a it's its own world. Like you don't have to have anything Apple. You don't have to have Apple Home or an Apple TV or anything to run this. And I think most people who have home assistant, or at least a lot of people who use it.

Aren't Apple people. Android, PC, Linux type of people who want to do this separate of any ecosystem. And a benefit of that is a lot of the stuff can be done locally. A lot of the stuff with Home says it doesn't require a trip to the cloud. Now, that varies depending on w your exact smart home devices and that sort of stuff, but um it's popular for those I'm a bit popular in air quotes. Uh it is around for those those reasons.

But if you have home kit They have tools to bring devices from HomeKit into Assistant and vice versa. Um, so for instance, my Yo Link leak detection sensor. The Yolink app is not good. Um, it's very confusing as to what is actually happening sometimes, like when you're trying to set up notifications. But Assistant can talk to Yolink and I can set up notifications through there. Um so for instance, um I have one of their, they have some outdoor gate openers.

And I have one on one of the gates uh at my house and I want to be alerted if that gate is opened when no one is home. Like if we're home, it doesn't matter, right? It's probably one of the kids, maybe, you know, someone's watering or mowing the grass and like we have to open it or whatever. Um but if I'm gone, I really want to know if that gate has been opened. And Yolink, because their app is bad, doesn't have any

awareness of your location. So you can't set up, oh, alert me if I'm gone, but not if I'm home. Well, I could do that really easily in assistant. So that was one of the first things I did actually was solve that notification problem. Um And so you can also, so yeah, so you can sling things back and forth between HomeKit and Assistant as needed through a couple of their plugins. Um For me, everything that I have works in both. And so I didn't have to do any of that.

But what's nice about that is is you have that flexibility. You could make assistant like have everything there and just then it just pass everything to HomeKit and you don't have to manage anything in in Apple's home app directly. It also means that my family doesn't know I've done this. They just use the Apple Home app. They're just using home pods and all that stuff still works exactly the way it did before I started this. Um

And so it lets me have more control and and really why did it was some of the automation stuff, but they don't have to see it, right? Like I'm not running around putting the assistant app on everybody's phones. Like they just use Apple Home the way they always have. Which is good. It's what I wanted. I don't want them. Everyone would take that so kindly if you didn't. They would not. Um No. And like the kids, they have a limited access.

to Apple Home. Like they can do some things in it, but not everything. And you could do that in Assistant, but it'd be really fiddly. And home makes it really easy to like add a guest and just tell them, you know, okay, you can open the garage door and do these lights, but you can't Um

So for me it it really was the The automation engine is what drove me to this. One of my examples was that Yo Link notification issue. Um, but the other was Something very specific in my garage. And this is where Casey comes in because Casey loves his garage. He he backs both of their cars into it very proudly, if you've ever seen a photo. Um, and he loves home automation. It's like great, Casey's the person I need to talk to.

I have I wanted the overhead light in my garage to stay on for a set amount of time after activity in the garage. So it come on automatically when the garage door goes up or if the door between the garage and the house is opened. Okay, that's easy. But I want you to turn off after thirty minutes. Home kit can do that. If you're putting an automation in the home app, there is a setting like turn light off after X amount of time. The problem I was running into is that

Home kit seemed to get confused when like multiple things were happening in that 30-minute window. So the garage door goes up. And then someone goes from the garage into the house. What sets the 30 minute thing? That's not a big deal. That's probably only 90 seconds in between the two. It doesn't really matter. But what happens if I'm 27 minutes into the timer and something happens? Like, should it reset? Should it not? And I found it to be inconsistent.

And that was frustrating because then you'd like be in the garage and the light would turn off unexpectedly. Or it wouldn't come on the way that you expect it to, or like it'd be on in the middle of the night and um And I had tried solving this with have you guys played with like the presence detectors? Like they're more than motion. They can actually detect if someone is. No I haven't. The millimeter wave ones or whatever?

I I haven't but'cause I don't know what I would use them for. Plus a lot of them until very recently had to be like wired all the time. So that's right. Where would I even put this thing and have the wire dangling around? So no. But I know they they're battery they have battery ones now too. Do. And in fact, I tried one of their battery ones. Um, and I tried a Yolink um uh presence detector because my initial thought was

Okay, when the door opens, turn the light on. Like that's just a good like base. base level. Um

But what happens if you're like in the garage? And I wanted the light to stay on if you were in there. And what I found, again, just my experience, was that the presence detectors didn't work very well in the garage. I think Um because If a vehicle was in there, we we had a two car garage, like say that one car is there but I'm working on the other side of the garage, like, you know, fixing a shelf or or working out or something.

It would get conf I think having a car there like just made it difficult for it to get a sense of what was going on. And so you would be in the garage and the light would turn off because it says, Oh, there's no one in here. Let's just turn this light off. Let's save some energy. Um this was all very frustrating to me. It was very frustrating to my family and and as as all of you know. Smartham stuff is fine until it annoys the people you live with, and then it's bad. Right.

You can't that's a line you should not um um you should not cross. And so what ended up with an an assistant, this is like a a small example, one reason I've really come to enjoy setting it up and and using it. is that assistant has the The the tr the ins and outs for automation. in home assistant blow away anything else that I've seen. Uh the home app is very basic in terms of ins and outs. And that meets a lot of needs. Like it's it's good that it's basic.

But if you need to go further, you kind of run into issues. Um there is an app called Home Plus C. uh version six. It's in the app store. And they do a good job of of surfacing some of this stuff in a very Apple like way. But uh what is nice about assistant is that you can do things like timers. And so I have Okay, the door opens, the light turns on, but also you're starting a 30-minute timer. And so that is what's in control of when the light turns on. And if a door is reopened.

then the timer restarts. And it's very simple to see and control what's happening. I'm not I'm not I don't have two timers racing each other to the finish line. It's just one that both these automations talk to and Um I mentioned the Yolink thing. Um one that I am working on. I actually had to buy a new sensor for this is okay, like my porch lights come on an hour or two before sunset, right? It's pretty straightforward.

But I would like them to come on if it's dark outside. So if it's a really overcast day or it's getting ready to thunderstorm like I would actually find it beneficial for my porch lights to be on in those situations. And so I have this little like matter uh lux sensor coming. And I think Eve makes it and it works with assistant and I can tell it, okay.

Out of all the things this sensor knows about, I just want to look, they call it an entity. I just want to look at just the light outside, like not the humidity, not the temperature, just the light, and build an automation off of that. Um, it's fiddly, but it's really powerful. Um, and I'm having fun with it. And my family doesn't know, and I'm not ruining their lives, so that's all good.

Anyone's still there? Yeah, no, I'm still here. I mean again I I I struggle to get my head around some of this stuff, um, because it's so complicated and also I I have like a A real problem with home assistant. I know that's not what you're waiting home bridge. Home bridge. I had one of them. I think I had home bridge and it just completely failed for me. Yeah. Bridge I found to be pretty fragile.

But home assistant you like more. So really it's you wanna do more complex automations than HomeKit is going to allow with devices that don't necessarily tie into HomeKit anyway, right? Okay. And and you can tie these things Together in more ways with with the automation. Um and I think So they... Are these automations ever running through your Apple devices? They can, so you can set the location of your phone to be a trick.

So right. And you can do that in the home app, right? In fact, that's one thing the home app's really good at of like when the first person gets home or the last person leaves, do these things. Um, but you can also, if if the Home Assistant iOS app is installed on the phone, you can use its background location as a trigger, just like you can in HomeKit. So but like essentially what you've got here is an operating system. Yeah. disparate devices. It's not like

'Cause you say like I think I I think I'm starting to get my head around the difference. With home Bridge. You are bringing non-home kit stuff into the home app on your iPhone. Correct. But on Home Assistant, you have a specific device that is talking to all of these things on its own. That's right. Okay. And do you have home kit devices in your home assistant as well? So I have everything set up in both. Say that there was no

They don't. In fact, if you t like say I turn a light switch on an assistant Not only turns the light on, but the home app responds instantly that it's on. Okay. There's no You're selling me on this. Um pray for Dina. The um I don't have uh I'm good. Like I don't yeah yeah I don't think I have needs. Sure. Uh not yet. Mm-hmm. Um the uh

For so if you had a device that was only for some reason only supported home kit like maybe like a lot of older devices, right? Remember back in the days like I bought this plug because it works with Amazon, but then I got a home pod. I have to not use that switch anymore. Like that sucks. Most of that stuff's gone, but there are there's still pockets, I think, of smart home things that are really designed for one ecosystem. There's a you can pull in home kit devices.

to assistant if you want them there as well. And does it support matter? It does support matter. Supports thread and it supports uh Zigbee and Z Wave as well. Those I think have kind of fallen out of style a little bit, at least with the stuff I'm using. Uh not Akkara. Akkara's all um They all the d a car's new stuff is matter. Um But they're still using the the It's like matter over Zigbee or something? Or over Z Wave. Uh uh some it's basically some of their stuff is thread.

But some of their like sensors are still communicating to the hub, which I think is either Zig B or Z Wave. Okay. Because like some some matter products cannot be added to home kit. That's right. unless you have a hub. That's right. Um and for me, my car stuff like

Home Assistant sees the hub and so it it's is communicating through the hub but already had it, right? It was you know uh there is definitely some some shifting sands when it comes to some of these standards. Um but uh hopefully um Hopefully that's getting sort of settled out now.

Well, I mean this is not how I thought it was gonna go, this conversation. I mean I'm a little bit more like I understand it a little bit more. I think I just I had such a bad experience with Home Bridge, uh that I think I kind of just like Um tarred all of these things with the same brush. Where this does sound a little bit more friendly, I think. Yeah, I mean... Well I'm happy for you. Can get complicated quickly. Like one thing I sort of had to wrap my head head around was

Uh like my echo be thermostats. They set the temperature, they set the fan control and all that stuff, but they also know the temperature and humidity and presence in the room that they're in. And Apple Home doesn't really have a a meaningful way to do anything with those things. Like it shows you all that data, but an assistant, you could say, okay, when the humid for instance, if when the humidity at this thermostat hits this point, do these other things.

And so you can pull out like individual pieces of data from these devices. And and do things with them, which is really flexible, but it's also kind of overwhelming. Like you you look at your list of like all the data this knows about your home. It's like there's a lot of stuff in here that I will never need or touch. It's cool that it's there, I guess, if I want to go see it, but that is sort of the downside. Like this is

a full blown operating system in many ways. Like it is extr it can be extremely complicated. It doesn't have to be to start with. And I'm sure over time I will build more complexity. That's probably inevitable. But I I I was surprised and pleased that it was relatively easy to sort of set up a base level of stuff really just in a couple of hours, you know, clicking around at Chrome. And is that how you interact with it mostly in Chrome?

Yeah, so I've got the iOS app on the phone, um, which is totally fine. It looks a like the home app and you can actually like put buttons where you want them and stuff. Um, but as far as like the management and like building the automations, I've just found it easier. Um so you it gets an internal IP address. And then you can access it from the outside if if you uh set that up. And so yeah, just doing it in the browser is is is the primary way.

But if you do you need to interact with any of the devices or are they all just like sensors? So the devices that you have in home assistant, are any of them like specific things that need your attention. You know, like if you were shutting a blind or whatever, right? Uh I mean yeah, like I I can like go into assistant, like turn a light switch off, but I could also do that in the home app. You're not doing that with the things that you have.

Not currently. I'm still I'm still basically using Apple's home app for that because I think it looks a little bit nicer. But you certainly could do it either way. Some of the stuff you have in Home Assistant doesn't show in the home app though, right? Some of like the automations don't. Like they're they're you know the the home app from an automation standpoint, if assistant does something

All Home Kit sees is, oh, this device changed state. It doesn't know why it did or like what caused it. Um but I haven't run into any conflicts with that either. It it it really The the joining of the two really is w I I really thought maybe it used to be this way. Maybe I was just had a bad understanding. Was like, oh, I'm gonna have to like ditch Apple Home and like move my family to this. And you don't absolutely do not have to do that, at least the level I'm playing at. Okay.

And do you have anything like that's super different? Like so like a ring system or whatever inside of here? Uh I put my entire unified network into it. A couple of reasons. Um one I could have it set up. I think you can do this in Unify, but I've never found a way to do it.

Or at least do it well. I could have like when this device shows up on my network, send me a notification. Or If my um so like we're talking with Casey, some of his location stuff is is also dependent on where Aaron's phone is. But home assistant is not even on her phone. How he's doing it is, is Aaron's phone on my network? Then she's at home. Then that's a trigger.

Um and also gets kind of one to see what it would expose. Like, am I doing anything meaningful with Unify inside of Assistant? Not really, but it's interesting that it's there and it it could be something that I uh rely on more like if I want to do location stuff with the kids' phones, I I probably wouldn't put assistant on their phones, but I could do it with, hey, are you on the Wi-Fi? Then it's a probably safe bet that you're here. What about your room?

Um the uh I actually switched to a Eufy. Um Oh you did? I did. Uh we wanted one that mopped and it was like as it as that was happening as Roombo was like going out of business and it was very uncertain what was happening. And Sparks had a U fee that that uh that they really liked and so Do you like it? Do you like it? OK

Um and it shows up and um it you don't have all the controls you have in the Eufi app. Like I don't haven't found a way to be like go clean just the kitchen. You can do that in the Eufy app, of course. Um but the Eufi app is really rough and it's like talk about something full of ads, it's like my worst Um v app's bad. I had a UV camera that I just had for a long time and we just used it when uh it was one of those cameras that could move. Mm-hmm.

You know, you could control it and we only set we set it up when we were having a leak in uh the downstairs. from the bathroom and we were going on vacation and so we turned the water off, but we wanted to be able to like pan around to see if the there was any leaks. Uh but that's the only thing I ever used it for. But I found the Eufy app to be terrible. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Yeah, I'm still learning and I would love to like if people are doing cool things with it, let me know. I'd love to hear what you're doing. Cause it is like a whole world unto itself, which is which is fun.

Thank well, thank you for the update. You are welcome. It's it's no uh what have we been doing in the pro show, like the check ins and sometimes that leads to purchases. I d I don't feel like I've changed any of your lives, which is probably good. No. Well un unless I don't know something happens now and and uh my entire home network gets destroyed and I have to start all over again.

Well, that does it for this week. If you want to find links to the things we spoke about, uh, they're in your podcast player. They're also on the web at relay.fm slash connected. Slash 602. There's a link there to leave feedback or follow-up. Uh drop us a note. You can make it anonymous. You can make it rhyme. I really would love to hear like cool home assistance. Tips and tricks'cause um I'm having a lot of fun learning this stuff.

Um, you can also join and get Connected Pro, which is the longer and ad-free version of the show that we do each and every week. So every week we do an extra chapter at the beginning of the show. Uh this week we talked about um my apparent oblivious obliviousness that Nintendo keeps reinventing Star Fox. Um and the the new one. But the point is they're not reinventing it. They just keep doing the same thing over and over They just keep putting better graphics on top of the same game. Yeah, yeah.

Uh so we talked about that. Um lots of great stuff in Pro. Of course it's ad free. Um and then we talk about titles and some other stuff at the end of the show. Seven bucks a month. It's a great deal. Go check that out. If you want more of us, you can find us online. Uh Federico is uh the editor in chief of maxstories.net, the esteemed award-winning wow yes journalistic output. Mac Stories.net. I th I don't know what I was doing there. Thank you, thank you. That works.

It is good. I read it every day. You can find Mike on a bunch of other shows here on Relay. I mean Connected is his best one, but he's on some others. And uh you can see his blogging at the enthusiast.net and his work at Cortex Brand. You can find my writing at five twelvepixels.net. I'll leave our sponsors this week, Dog Pops, Squarespace, and Fundera. Until next time, guys, say goodbye. Arrivederci. Cheerio.