Alexa Will Send Your Recordings to Amazon, M4 MacBook Air vs M4 Pro, Pebble Smart Watches, Pixel 9a Loses Camera Bump

Someday when spring is here, we'll find our love anew. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, we're talking about the Pixel nine a new Pebble smartwatches that are pretty limited. Apple might be in trouble again, especially in the EU. Are voice assistants really listening all the time, and we might get to some iPhone 17 rumors.

It's good. I think you should have mentioned that the bonus episode is just gonna be clips of you trying to get through the introduction 16 times.

Listen. That was if you're watching on YouTube You won't know. You're gonna see a lot of cuts. You're gonna see a lot of cuts. Because I was so thrown off because we start every episode with a movie quote, and today is the first day of spring. So I searched movie quotes about spring. I was we were talking about it before we started recording, and you literally said the quote before I said it.

I gave Steven a suggestion, and it was the quote he planned on using, which is from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

So, man, I I don't understand how now you're like a precog. I That was like a minority report situation. Listen.

I have four children. I've seen all the movies, Steven. Like

That's fair. Yeah. I I know. I know. Anyway, we have the the biggest topic this week is the amount of five star reviews we got, which is going to be a whole segment, which if you didn't know, if you're new to the show, you leave us a five star rating and review an Apple Podcast in any country. We give you a shout out at the top of the show, and people write whole blog posts. I think there were a couple generated by ChatGPT. I don't know if you saw this. A couple. A couple.

Yeah. Math is hard.

We need 1,000 more five star reviews, basically. So keep them coming. Listen. If everyone who listens to this show left us a five star rating and review, we'd have well over several thousand five star reviews. I'm just saying, just doing the math, we might become a five star show then.

Yeah. That's like when you used it to plug it into a phone line.

Oh, okay. Like a 56 k. Except for stuff.

If you do the math, it's a lot slower than what you just described.

So Oh, I see. Okay. I see. Fron Bessora from Spain. Battery percentage off. Thank you. IPhone in the dominant pocket. Appreciate it. Dots on Mac. I'm gonna come back to that dots on the dock on the Mac. That's a hard sentence to say. Russ o 756 from USA, M Forty Forty from Israel, Walf Wintergard from The USA. And he said battery percentage on, phone and back pocket. Pencil tip away from falling buttons. You won on all accounts.

Do you know what those are?

I've seen them.

Okay.

I've never held one.

Also But

I've seen

Also, what year were you born?

Nineteen eighty six.

Wow. You're younger than I thought, Steven. Well, I was not born in 1973 either, so I was just curious if if any we didn't know we were second generation podcasters on this show.

I did I did not know that. Although, if there's ever a way I don't know if there's a way to actually get a digital podcast file to on an eight track. I'm sure there are devices to do that. That'd kind of hilarious. Or maybe a LP. Alright. We're just get two more, three more. D h f k f j g k f u. Sorry. I don't know. I don't no. No. Not like that. It's a difficult name. I don't know what that name is.

I have no idea. But I just wanna be clear. Technically, is an iPhone box collection. Well Because I have a lot more iPhone boxes than I have iPhones, just to be clear.

But no okay. Now hold on because he's gonna be like, well, now wait a minute. I sent another picture.

Okay.

He does have the picture of the phones. Great. He does have the picture of the phones. Now I don't see the original there.

It's got

he's an

He's got an AirPort.

This listen. This picture, this will be the chapter.

The old Mac mini. There's a g four cube in there.

Four cube. Got an Apple Vision Pro casually on the bottom shelf.

Next to a g four cube. They're probably about as useful as each other to most people.

Wow. You still use the Apple Vision

Pro today? Put it on this morning. He's got an iPhone or an iPod video still shrink wrapped and a HomePod mini still shrink wrapped.

That does not shrink wrapped. Got a red is that a red iPhone seven? That looks pretty nice.

Yeah. Project Red right there.

Got a five c in the lime green. Still has the jet black seven plus, I believe. That's those jet blacks. It's been a while. The nice collection.

And just a random 60 watt adapter sitting there on the shelf or whatever that is, the plug.

That yeah. That's that is pretty funny. It's good. So very cool collection. Thank you for sharing that, Shahab. That'll be the chapter artwork as well. For the first topic, wanna talk about how much I love the MacBook Air. I know this might this is, like, old news because I'm new to the MacBook Air game. But because this is my first MacBook Air ever, I am discovering the love of having a thin and light computer for the first time.

Yeah.

Because I've never I've never had one. And it's wonderful. And I think it's great. That's my review. No, did

It's wonderful and I think it's great.

It's wonderful and I think it's great. That's the headline. I will say I did a video. Video did well, so thank you if anybody watched that. I compared it to my m three Pro MacBook Pro.

I was a little bit disappointed that you didn't you didn't give credit to where

you heard

about this for the first time as if you came up it's fine.

Don't know. But did I well, in the video

You're like, yeah. And my cohost, he thinks this too. No. He told you. Your cohost told you that this is going to be the case.

That is fair.

Fact, your cohost gave you advanced information even before the reviews dropped that the typing was different.

You know what's funny is? I'm gonna do an accessory video on this m four air, and I'm gonna I will have a segment in the video where I just put your face on screen.

Please don't.

And I'll say public service announcement. No. PSA.

Nope. It's fine.

Jay's at eight. I don't know. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.

Now quick question, though. Yeah. Your m three pro MacBook Pro was probably, in a lot of things that you do, faster and more powerful than your Mac Studio. Correct? I'm curious why you didn't get rid of that one and just hang on to this one for a while until you upgrade your Mac Studio. Because it's like it seems like you it was an interesting decision you were kind of faced with because you could have just slotted that thing and turned it into, a desktop laptop.

Here's the thing. My m one Max Max Studio, it has 64 gigs of unified memory, two terabyte SSD, and I think there were you know, there's usually two options for core counts on the m one Max's, And so I got the higher one on this Mac Studio when I got it. And I still find this to be faster than even my MacBook Pro on exports through Compressor. And when I need when I'm multitask, meaning I'm, like, transcribing an audio, I'm editing video, I'm exporting a different video. My Mac Studio never hiccups or slows down.

For sure that the m four air was gonna be the thing, and it's great. But here's I've been using MacBook Airs for a really long time, and it's great. And but there was a part of me that's like, hold on. I can basically keep this for, I don't know, six or seven years before I send them I'm just kidding. I don't keep them that long.

Now you got you got the one that had 48 gigs Yep. Unified memory? Yep. See, B H still calls it RAM. Apple doesn't like saying RAM anymore. They say unified

memory. You know why? Because B and H knows that no one knows what the heck that means.

Right. Exactly. So this is this is the one you got. Right?

No. That's a 16 inch there, buddy.

Oh, my bad. My bad. You got the 14 inch. Okay. Just yeah. I was wondering why this is more expensive. But you got the 14 inch with the 48 gigs.

And the one terabyte.

But it's only one terabyte SSD. That's

That's fine. It's fine.

I know. I know. This is the one you got.

Right? Yes. That's You got the 48

gigs, one terabyte SSD for $2,400. This is basically, like, $200 away from the MacBook Air I just got, but very but powerful.

Ports, Steven. Ports. We just talked about ports, But

those actually that's actually not the well, the ports I need listen, I have very specific port needs. Okay? Anyway, I'll go link to this computer if you wanna buy it. Affiliate link, %, just saying. It'll be in the show notes, but yeah. There you go. Do you have do you have affiliate links?

No. Affiliate links? What is that? No. I'm just kidding. No. I'm not allowed to do affiliate links, Steven. I'm a journalist.

Wow. Excuse me. Excuse me. I will not say I'm a journalist so I can continue doing affiliate links. Oh, there we go. Anyway, I love my MacBook Air. Jason got a new MacBook Pro. Leave us questions in the community. I I really love the Air though. Typing on it is wonderful.

MacBook Air, great. Best computer for most people. For almost

every problem.

When I say most people, I mean, like, 97 and a half percent of people.

That half percent. You may or may not be in that

half probably two and a half percent of people for which a MacBook Pro or a desktop of some sorts makes more sense. Sure. MacBook Air for everyone else.

So now that we started several this is all gonna be cut out, our listeners and viewers don't realize this. But we've had like four recordings so far because I keep messing up. I accidentally stopped a recording. And now I don't like, the time is usually like how long we've been going.

I just think

it's not on my You know what? This is why you get paid the big bucks.

And subtract about seven minutes from that. We've probably been recording for about eighteen minutes.

We've been recording for three hours so far. It's The only The only thing I wanna say I returned my first Apple review unit yesterday, and I looked back because last year and I said it in the video, but the AirPods four, Apple sent me those to review back when those came out in September. And, you know, they tell you, return them by this date. Jason usually goes two years longer than that

date, and then he'll return. Listen. I said Listen. You're very large box back just last week with a whole bunch of things that, had been in here for a long time.

So they gave you

the MacBook Air in there. There was maybe

Are you for real? No. I'm

kidding. Twenty eighteen iPad Pro. Say. No.

I looked back at the email because they tell you, like, please return by this date. Obviously, it's just a suggestion as Jason can tell from experience. But my six month date was, like, March 22. And so I beat it by, like, three days. And so I've the one product that I've sent back, at least has been on time.

What did you send back? AirPods four?

AirPods four. ANC and regular. But the next I think the next thing that they send me that I to return is an iPad mini, and we will see I'm probably gonna go past six months more than that. I'm gonna be honest. But I'll send them an email. Do you send them an email to, like, request more time or you just, like

It depends on what it was. Right. Generally, like, I have a lot of review units, and so I tend to, like, twice a year just box a bunch of things up and send them back. And I feel like as long as I keep doing that, that if there's a thing that they're like, we would really like this back, I'll absolutely put it in a box and send it back immediately. I will I'm not very good about requesting an extension to those review loans.

The the the biggest one for me is gonna be the iMac because they sent me the m four iMac to review, and that's just gonna be a pain in the box and I was like

Well, the good thing was so when I got the m four iMac to review, I boxed up the m three iMac and sent it back in the same box that they sent me the m four in, and I just sent it back. Wow.

So I should just wait for the m five iMac. That's interesting.

Would there be an m five iMac? Interesting question.

We'll talk about rumors later because there are some rumors we wanna talk about. I wanna talk about the Pixel nine a because Apple released their quote unquote budget phone recently, iPhone 16 e, which costs $600. Right? Isn't it $5.99?

Correct.

Yeah. $600. So the Pixel nine a was announced. It's not available for preorder yet, but, of course, MKBHD already has his review up. So I'll put that link in the show notes. This is the Pixel nine a. It will be $500. You'll be able to preorder next month in April. So undercutting Apple's, quote, unquote, budget phone by a hundred dollars, notably, two things. There's no camera bump on this phone.

I mean, it's not that different than the 16 e.

True. That's true.

I mean, these

are bump on the 16 e, but it's not significant.

And the I mean, it's more like just a camera.

It's just a camera. I I like it. I think this is a cool look. And especially if you get, like, a fun color, I mean, I think it looks really cool, the the Pixel nine a. I'll put a chapter artwork. You could see it if you're just listening too. But I'm, yeah, I'm down. I I'm always tempted to try Pixel. I don't know if I will I mean, I don't know if my audience cares about it, but it looks cool. I don't know. I do have did we talk about the Nothing Phone on the show?

No. Because you started talking about it six minutes after we finished recording because, you know, you didn't think that would be something you'd wanna cover on your tech podcast.

That's right. I did get this because I've tried Pixel phones in the past, and I'm never crazy about it. So I did get a Nothing Phone three a. They didn't send it to me. I just I bought this because I wanted to try it. And so I'm gonna try it a little more. We'll talk we'll talk about that later. But anyway, it's nice. I like the the aesthetic. It's fun.

If it was thicker, the weight class of the 16 as opposed to the 16 Pro, then probably it'd be fine.

That is true. It would get very heavy. It would get very heavy. Also, it makes phone heavy. No.

know if it'll be in the 17 lineup, but I think it's pretty clear that this is where Apple absolutely wants to use this. That's been true for they wouldn't have spent a billion dollars on Intel's modem business if they weren't gonna like, they didn't they're not just writing that down. They're gonna do something with it, and they're apparently not putting it in Mac.

It's so annoying.

So I'm sure that they're gonna be putting it in, you know, iPads and iPhones soon. So

That's cool. Overperforming. Then another I don't know if it was big, but another announcement, if those, listeners and viewers remember the Pebble smartwatch. This is like years ago back was it before the Apple Watch? The original Pebble was before the Apple

that's true. Yeah. I think so.

I believe yeah.

Was true. Yeah. Well, it launched in 2012. So

Yeah. Apple Watch was 2015. So yeah. Yeah. This was one of the first quote unquote, like, smartwatches. And then, obviously, once the Apple Watch came out, Pixel watches are out there, Samsung Galaxy watches, kind of went away for a while. Well, it's it's back. Pebble Watch, you can actually preorder it right now. It doesn't start shipping until December, so you're gonna have to wait a minute if you wanna get your Pebble Watch. Two different watches.

Well, okay. So this is interesting because, Eric Majakowski was, like, the person who created the pebble in the first place. Right? Right. And then that was, I think, where they bought by Fitbit, which became a part of Google maybe maybe.

Anyways. Yeah.

So the I mean, he has some like, he's pretty well respected as someone who who knows what they're doing. And I think this is more of a it's kind of a novelty. It's sort of a like, someone who just really it's like the same kind of people who maybe bought the the what was that thing called? The r one the r one? The was it the

Wait. Router one?

Yeah. The people who just like For the Hemian AI pins? Yeah. Exactly. No.

The only one I

Home maybe? Home app.

I do use the home app on my watch, and I do use Anylist for grocery shopping because it's nice not to have to hold the phone and check items off as you're shopping.

Okay. Great.

I use Anylist. That's like the one app that I use. Otherwise, it's just all

app still is basically just serving you data from your phone.

%.

Yeah. So Yes. The and then that so that's essentially still in my mind lives in, like, the notification category because it's, like, just stuff like that. Like, there's not very many things people are using. Like, you're not using a trail app, right, to go hiking random trails, that kind of

thing. No. No.

No. So I feel like for a lot of people, this is gonna be really interesting. The blog post obviously points out why it's problematic because Apple doesn't let you do all these things, which leads into another topic that we have to talk about. But I Yeah. I don't know. I just thought it was really I it's good that people are trying things.

Hundred $50 for the Core two Duo version, which is kind of a hilarious name, if you remember the Intel Core two Duo processors. That's got a 1.2 inch screen. The Core Time two is 225. One and a half inch screen, but that's also a touchscreen. So it looks like no touchscreen on the on the cheaper one. But What's cool Yeah.

What's cool about that Core two Duo is he says that the name is so there was a Core two before, and the Duo means it's a do over. So it's like redoing the one he did before. So and he's having fun with it.

That's no. That's fun. Listen. I'm I'm I love Gedget. This is fun. So the thing is with Apple not allowing smartwatches like this to work like an an Apple Watch, I don't I almost said iWatch. I don't know why. Wow. It almost just came out. Don't have to wash my mouth.

Super not the right way to say that.

Super not the right word. No. To function better. Well, you'll have more better features.

You just added lots

of Functional. I don't know what

You combine functional and pebble, and you got functionable.

Brilliant. Yes. But yeah. So I don't know. Do you think I don't know. Will we see movement there? EU or

Well, the EU is literally just saying you have to do this. Like, the digital market tech already gives them the ability to do this, and the statement from the EU is literally just, we're just enforcing the law. Like, this is what the law says. We are going to make the countries. And their statement was something along the lines of, like, doesn't matter.

Yeah. Yeah. So And there's other so and other countries too. Like you sent me a couple articles here from websites that I can't read, like the Financial Times. The Brussels

Well, that's the EU. Brussels is the EU. Mhmm.

It is the EU. All again, I just every anytime I go to the Financial Times, it just amazes me. Like, when you click a link to their article, this is what you see. The headline is smaller in font than the try unlimited access, only a dollar for four weeks. I mean, hilarious.

a can't wait to I'm gonna watch this whole episode because I have no idea how it's gonna turn out.

I'm gonna keep this in the show, but I'm gonna I'm recording just a little bit because I wanna put it in the intro. We're gonna talk about whether voice assistants are actually listening and how to convince family and friends that they are not. Okay. Yeah. That's what wanna put in the intro.

I'm so happy. What? No. That's great. I'm so happy.

Yeah. Okay. And speaking of security, like we just did, I'm gonna try I try to do a transition. This show, I just feel so off the rail. I don't know what's going on. It's the first day of spring. Think I'm just throwing

allergies, Steven. Just can always blame it your You can blame

it on your I don't have allergies. Trying to help you. I don't have allergies.

I'm throwing you a softball across the plate. That's a sport. I'm just trying to help you out here.

I know that softball is a sports ball. But what I what I wanna talk about is I wanna thank our sponsor for this week, which is 1Password. And listen, we talked about security and privacy, and that's important, especially if you're at a business, a brand, and you have a bunch of devices that are distributed to a team. You gotta keep that stuff secure and private and people not doing their own thing, downloading apps and other identities on their devices. But what happens is when you use mobile device managers and some of the other services, it really locks down devices, then employees are, like, frustrated because they can't do what they want with their devices.

Yeah. So we talked about this, I think, last week or the week before that I have a time machine backup that is just for review devices. And, basically, my habit of that is I use it to set up a review device, and then at the end of the review device's life, I do a time machine backup. Right? So I have a current so I'm not backing things up to, like, six years ago or whatever.

That's pretty great. I'm gonna time my setup when I eventually get a new Mac Studio. But one of the things that has I always we talked about this, do I start it from scratch new? Do I use Migration Assistant? I've used Migration Assistant in the past for something, I forget what.

It says something. I mean, you have some things that I understand why they would wanna be in the startup. Elgato, whatever, whatever, Hazel, whatever. There are three different Opel camera pieces of software

in here. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is why I don't use migration assistant because if I get a new Mac, I don't want any of this stuff. And if I were to try and go and, like, delete all the little files in the library folder and application support that have to do with all these little things, like, you would never find them all.

different. Eye lock. It doesn't tell you if you click on it, does it? No.

No. You get zero information. You can't even, like, right click. You can't option click. Nothing. There's also so like you said, the Opel Camera. I had to test some webcams, videos on Riverside, so Opel Camera installs, like, 18 different helper applications. So I got these over here. I have Reincubate because I tested out Camo, but I'm not using anymore. Setapp. You have like Setapp, but also like a Setup Limited. What is that? Universal audio. I don't even use a universal audio on like,

I'm looking at your list, and I'm like, I feel like I should have Rogue Amoeba in here somehow.

A recent update to Audio Hijack and Rogue Amoeba software

It limited

doesn't require the kernel installation Okay. So you probably don't have that. Like, the audio capture engine is not necessary anymore. That's fine. Like, I understand.

That's true.

That I don't know. And so that's that's why I do what I do. That's also why I use Hazel. If you didn't know what Hazel was, pro tip. Hazel's a wonderful application from, Noodlesoft, and you can do, like, automations based on files and folders.

The DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone? Is that what you're talking about? North Korea.

Thanks for your help. Thanks for your help. If you if you try to, like, delete an application that you just installed from a website, there's gonna be all these files and folders. And Hazel, when you delete it from your applications folder, will search your library and application support folders. We'll try to find all the folders and files related to that app, and we'll ask if you wanna delete those as well.

Okay. So here's the thing. Your Alexa devices, for the most part, handle most of the voice commands on device. That's why you had to be very particular about what you say. Right?

Right. For Prime

not gonna just you can't handle that kind of thing. And so they're gonna now record you. It used to be that you could tell it don't set you know, save my recordings and send them to the cloud. And, yes, in the past, one of the reasons they would do that there's a big controversy. This actually affected both Amazon, Google, and Apple where they would be sending recordings of your interactions, and then they'd review them by humans.

It's not on your Echo Dot on your Bedrock.

It's running on Amazon servers, which, by the way, power most of the Internet anyway. Right? Like, AWS. Right? They're gonna send it to the cloud.

So here's the thing here's the thing about voice assistance. And if you didn't know, if you have ever had an Alexa device and you have an Amazon account, you can actually go and see everything that it has heard and recorded you say. And so I'm actually here on my Amazon account, and it said this was when I had that I got that Echo Show 10. I was like, maybe I'll try Amazon Alexa Plus and make a video about it. And then all it did was show me ads and I immediately returned it.

Yeah. Put it in kid mode, by the way. Pro tip, everybody. Put those things in kid mode and it makes it a lot easier.

So these were the few requests that I made when I had that show 10. I said add stevia to cart, liquid stevia. Now here on Amazon's website, so you can again, you log in to your Amazon account, you go to voice history, like, can see all the things that it heard you say, and you can delete the recording. So I'm curious if that will go away. I guess that's that's what they're saying is you won't be able to to delete it.

Well, it's a little bit different because essentially, you must not have okay. There's a difference between having the recording and having them sent to the cloud. Right? And so the and I don't know. Obviously, these are sent to the cloud because you're looking at it on

the web I know. I'm

not looking browser. A web browser. Not have had that feature turned off, the feature turned off. So Yeah. So I would imagine that if and I guess I could just look while if you talk for a second, I can just look and see.

But I also feel like likely a very high percentage chance that Amazon is gonna use the request to train its LLM

on Well, and that's the part that I you can't find I could not find in their privacy policy yet.

That so that's the thing. Now the whole LLM side of it and training is one thing, but I just wanted to ask briefly what and and this is for the audience too and for Jason, but I'm curious to hear you can go to social.primarytech.fm and comment on the post for this episode or just hit us up on social media. All our links are in the show notes. But when it comes to speakers with mics in them, that could be a HomePod. That could be an Echo.

I mean,

a %, yes. %, yes, but only listening for the wake word. And then once it detects the wake word, then it's actually taking whatever you say after that as a request and maybe doing something with that. Maybe sending it to the cloud, maybe trying to process on device, like when you ask, hey, Dingus on your actual iPhone or with Amazon now, know, sending it to the cloud, maybe training it to LLM. So it's such like a nuanced statement to try and parse to say, yes, but and maybe it doesn't even matter.

Okay. Typically, though, what people mean when they say my devices are list listening is they mean Instagram on their phone. No. Like, really. Like, that's what people think.

That's what they see the ads that are

That's what people think. They're like, my phone is always listening to me and see, I got an Instagram ad that shows that my phone is obviously listening to me. And the point you were making is that actually they don't have to listen to you and even Meta doesn't have to listen to you because it know it's okay. Fine. That's what they normally mean.

Right. And you can actually get like, that's the one thing on the iPhone. You get the little orange dot or green dot in the status bar when the microphone or camera is active. Right. And that's why if you do something I did a recent video where if you turn on sound recognition.

Yeah. So for your other devices, though, are they listening to you all the time? Yes. They are always listening. Well, here's the no. But here's the thing. Like, literally, there's no way for it to know that there's a wake word being said if it isn't listening for that wake word. That's different, though, than is it recording what I'm saying? Is it whatever? So all the time, those devices, unless you are smart like I recommend and you turn off the HeyDengus on everything except for your watch.

Right.

So all of a sudden in your mind, you're like, how does this device know I'm sleeping? And this particular device has no camera, and they spent a decent amount of time reiterating there is no camera on this. And the reason is they want you to put it on your nightstand next to your bed, and no one wants a camera pointed at them when they're in bed, like, any reason. Like, just there's no scenario where you want that. And Yeah.

also no one's gonna stop using their phone or their other devices. And so they just accept it.

Yeah. We clearly don't care that much.

And and they would have made it, like, five seconds into your explanation just then. And then they would have been like, yeah. Okay. Whatever. Like, people just check out. Like, they don't like, not techy people. They our audience too they were locked in on you. I'm just saying, like, when you try to talk to to your father-in-law about your device and not

listening. Well, that's because they stopped after I said, of course it's listening. And they're like, see? Okay. And then

they just moved on. It just moved on. But I wanna convince you now because you you you think you are more now convinced that they are listening. Is that right?

Well, I just what I think I said to you before we recorded was I am less convinced that they're not always listening even though I know that they're not just because what I'm really convinced of is they do such a good job of being able to surface content based on whatever things that you are interested in. And I I couldn't think of a specific example, but there have been a number of times recently where I'm like, maybe they are listening because of something that pops up in the Instagram feed that we just had a random conversation about a thing we don't normally talk about or it's not a because it's if you start seeing ads in Instagram for the place you wanna go on vacation, it's probably because you did, like, a Google flight search or you went to Marriott's website or you did all these things, and all that information is connected in the background and then Facebook. Although Or Hold on.

Or you liked a post from a friend who went to Cancun, and so Facebook is like, maybe you're interested in Cancun.

Right. Or And that happened. I do have a favor, and I would really like it if Google and Amazon and Meta especially would be a little bit smarter about the content they shove in our faces. Because if I just booked a trip to Cancun, I don't need to see ads for Cancun. If I just watched a YouTube video about how to replace the light bulb in my car, I'm not suddenly a light bulb car aficionado. I don't need my entire feed to be filled with it, but that is exactly

what happens. Seventy eight Camaro's light bulb.

It's like, oh, you search for one light bulb changing video. Here's 73 more. No. I'm done. I've moved on.

Here's here's what here's what I wish AI would do. And if Apple Intelligence did this one thing, it would be worth it. If somehow it knew what things I have purchased or services I already pay for so that any ad for that thing is automatically hidden from me. For instance, I have paid for Squarespace for one thousand years. I should never have to see a Squarespace ad anywhere, ever again.

On television or on an Internet or anywhere. If

it well, here's the thing. Like, Apple is actually uniquely positioned to kind of say like, they probably wouldn't do this for privacy and security reasons, but, like, I'm logged into Squarespace on my Apple computer, and I it's in my Apple passwords. Of course, I know they're using that information. But, like, on my Apple TV, if I was streaming something, they should know, like, he already pays for Squarespace. And, like, don't show me that ad.

Right.

Or I don't need to see ads about random charging things because I'm gonna buy it anyways. Need I

need to tell the streets looking for charging things to pick up. He doesn't need

the charger?

No ads.

Hasn't any charger? Haven't been had a charger in a while. I would just say, like, all the MagSafe charges that I have bought, I see duplicate ads. Like, I already own that. I own that. Right. I already have that. It would be amazing if all the platforms knew what I have already bought. Like, here's the other thing. I'm looking for a new office chair. I think we've talked about this before. We did. But I keep yeah. I do we don't know. Well, I'm starting to look again.

Yeah. Would I get that the internet is based on ads. That's fine. I hate it, and it's whatever. But at

least in the show.

At least stop showing me the ones for the thing I literally bought three minutes ago.

Thank you. Thank you. That if there's any change we can bring to the world through this podcast, hopefully it's that.

No kidding, Steven. I clicked on an Instagram ad and I bought a thing, and the next day saw 16 more ads for the same thing I just bought.

I think that platform especially Why?

I it. Bought it.

Through the Instagram with it. I know. I know. It's ridiculous. Anyway, that's fine. Okay. But you had another article talking about Apple's trust or the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah. I mean, this is similar to what we did in and I just wanted to expound on I had written back in in December that the one thing Apple needed to do is deliver on its Apple intelligence promises.

Yes.

And then it didn't, obviously. And then we had a lot of kerfuffle about that, and I kinda just wanted to circle back on it. And I just so, yeah, I just the the risk to Apple is we we when Amazon says they're gonna put a flying drone in your house, it'll be your security camera all the time. We're like, whatever. Amazon just says stuff.

Two suggestions I have if Apple's listening. One, go back to live events. People on stage talking about stuff.

Steven, I'm writing that article right now.

The I WWDC this year should be live on stage.

I mean, it's probably too late for WWDC this year, but I am I'm not kidding. I'm writing an article that says the the one thing that they need to do to prevent this from happening again is go back to live demos.

That, %. And two, I feel like the seeds of this doubt were planted years ago when we started not getting all the dub dub features at the initial OS release. Because all the way up until, like, iOS 14 or 15, it was like every feature you heard about at dub dub in June, you got in iOS 14 dot zero. And maybe there were some bugs. Whatever.

Yeah. I disagree. The reason why I disagree is Okay. Because two well, two things. One Yeah. I think it's fine to stagger the features as long as you deliver them. And I can't think of other than CarPlay two. Anything that they announced at, like, something like that, they promised was coming that they didn't deliver at any point other than, like, Apple Intelligence. And I think the reason for the staggering makes sense. Here's why.

that are fine. It's fine.

But but the other thing is it allows them to take on more ambitious things that may not seem like a big deal to us without the pressure of it all has to be available on day one. Because if you think about it, when when it goes out, the first thing you're doing is you're dealing with all these bug fixes. It may not be till later in the cycle that they're even able to start working on certain features, and it allows them, I think, by staggering things out throughout the year. That cadence, I think, allows them to do more things that otherwise they wouldn't be doing. I think that that's fine.

But maybe, and I would argue, being more ambitious, maybe at this point right now is not the thing to do. Maybe it is to be more conservative in the new feature side and more ambitious in, like, the shipping, the ones we've already talked about and fixing the stuff that's already out there, maybe. And I listen. I want Apple to be ambitious. I want new features every year like everybody.

Well, and the difference in the past is in when they released iOS 16, they didn't run ads promoting the free form app, which wasn't coming until five months later. Right? Or they didn't run ads promoting, like, the emergency SOS changes, which weren't coming until the point three update. Like, that's the biggest difference. I I think I understand why they stagger features.

Right. Right. Okay. Well, let's try and do a lightning like an actual lightning round, Jason.

Love it.

Let's try. We don't talk about we don't talk about rumors much, but the iPhone seventeen and seventeen Air, all these rumors have been out there. There's this thought of, like, some big bar across the top for the camera bump. You think that's legit?

I don't know. I hope not because that case looks like something out of the minions or something. I don't even, like

The minion. It's minion case.

Seriously, don't know. I don't know. It's like a ski goggles on a minion is what that looks like to me. But I I don't know. I just you we've talked about this. I don't understand the need for like, the phones are fine. Like, come on.

I would listen. But I'm down for the you know, the rumor is the iPhone 17 Air is gonna be like a ultra thin and light iPhone. I'm down to see what they do with that and how that compares, but I don't want the bar, though. I don't like

the bar. I don't like any of it. There you go. That's that's my take.

Okay. There you go. Also, this has been rumored for years, but apparently now Mark Gurman is like, home OS as an operating system is coming this year. I think I just swallowed a net. Hold

on. I think doesn't the doesn't the HomePod run tvOS or something like that or the

I can't even talk. I get listen.

Okay. We this is a lightning round. Sorry. Pretend I didn't

say It runs like a derivative of iOS or something, I thought.

I mean, they're all a derivative iOS at this point.

Right. Yeah. Alright. Fair enough. Anyway, sure, HomeOS would be great. Maybe if it actually, like, actually does other things. Like, maybe two k to four k HomeKit secure video cameras, pan and tilt controls in the home app, better robot vacuum support, better automations and tools that way. I would love to see it. I'm like fifty fifty because it's been rumored for five years. I don't know. What do you think we'll see that percentage?

Most of the words you said, I don't even understand. So I'm not too worried about it. But I think for people like you and Gentooie, this will be really exciting or really disappointing if it doesn't happen. But if they bring back that home set that they had for WWDC twenty twenty two, I'm here for it.

Yeah. That'd be fun. And lastly, I just wanna talk about Plex real quick because I'm a huge Plex aficionado. Plex prices are actually going up. So as of April 29, we still have, like, a month to get in there.

Did you get a lifetime pass for that Humane AI pin?

I won't talk about it. You don't even use you don't use Plex at all, do you?

I don't even know what Plex is except for it's like a video peer to peer service. I don't know. It's a video server that you own yourself and you can stream to devices.

We don't have time with it. At the very least, it's a great app that you can have on all your Apple devices that if you set up a Plex server, which could be a folder on your Mac, it could be a folder on your Mac Mini. That could be your video server, or you can have a Synology or another network attached storage. And then the Plex app, wherever you are in the world remotely or in your house, you can stream the video files you have on that server to your device. So it's like your it's a whole media server, but everywhere.

Didn't Apple TV used to do that? Didn't you used to be

able to that? Don't know if you could still do it. It used to like, there was a computer app on the Apple TV.

Stuff from your computer. Yeah.

But it had to be in your, like, iTunes library, and I don't I don't think that's there anymore.

Gotcha.

Like, I don't think because you can't really, like, drag video files into the Apple TV app. You know what I mean? Fright. I don't think.

I think you're right.

Yeah. Correct me if well, someone correct me if I'm wrong. But, anyway alright. Let's talk about, personal tech. Two quick things. With my new MacBook Air, I tried your method of turning the dots off for active apps in the dock. I couldn't stand it. I did it for, like, a week or two. Can't stand it. So I put the dots back on. I tried it, though. I tried it. You should try the battery percentage off, and you can report back after a week. That's what I say. Here's the thing.

Just click on it. I don't understand what you need to know the dots for. Well, why? Why do you what benefits

think it just glanced down. I don't have to click on anything. It just glanced down.

Why do you need to know? In the world of Apple Silicon, why do you need to know if something's running or not?

Okay. Here's an example. Final Cut, I exclusively edit off external SSD drives. And so I'll have an SSD drive attached to my computer. When I'm done exporting a video file, I'll quit Final Cut. I'll eject it, and I'll unplug it. If for some reason I see that Final Cut is running, I will not pull out the thing or try to eject it because I know Final Cut, with a % certainty, is accessing that external SSD. So I wanna

know Does Final Cut, do you have, like, an AI robot in Final Cut that just does things without you do it? Like, you started the thing. Was running.

Yes. But, like, a compressor export might take twenty minutes, and so I'll minimize all those windows, and I don't know what the current state is. And then if I do a bunch of other things, I'll have to really, like, did I quit Final Cut or is it still open or what do I need to do? And just glancing whether or not Final Cut is still open or not is information that then I can use to say, oh, let me quit it real quick. Let me eject it.

I can't understand. But that's okay. That's all

I'm just saying.

Alright.

I gotta I have found a use case. All the things I found a use case. So

Great.

I feel I

feel just good. I do have one quick thing too. I know you have another thing. I want you I wanted to just go on the record. I am no more case back. I can't do it anymore.

Me neither. I got a full case.

You know why? Can you can you see how incredibly scratched up the that bottom is? Yes. And the same thing is true at the top. We can't see it now because the light came on.

Why is it?

Because of the case. That I mean, because of the back. It doesn't give any protection at that spot. So it's, like, right at those two surfaces are the most likely to get scratched. And it's like, oh, I have to put a case on this. I wanted to do the case back thing so badly, but

Yeah. I dropped my phone a couple times with just the back on it, and I think I got a small nick on, like, the corner or whatever. And, you know, the two schools of thought, people are like, it adds character. It's part of owning the phone. Just use the phone.

Not in glass. No. No. No.

I am not of that school of fun.

Yeah. I almost I had I was I was strongly thinking I was gonna have to walk out to the driveway and drop this a few times so that I could take it and have the screen replaced. They won't replace it for a a scratch.

No. They will not. Not anymore. You used to be able to be like any little Nick. He'd be like, can I have a new phone? Like, AppleCare? Sure. Why not? Not anymore. No. You gotta shatter that thing. Oh, yeah. Gotta be unusable. But, yeah, I agree. I'm I'm on the case now. I'm using the Ryan London leather case, and look at that patina.

That's gross. Yeah. It's good.

What do you mean gross? It's a leather patina. What are you you have leather stuff.

That looks a lot like you picked it up after some nachos. My my mother patina is is, like, nice. There's no

What is it? What case is that?

This is the nomad mother.

There's no patina on it. That's why it's nice. What is no patina?

There's no patina.

Oh, I see. That's that's not a patina. Listeners, viewers, let let's hold our phone up at the same time.

Yours is no. Don't put that thing up there. People are gonna get nauseous.

This is a patina. I posted a picture of this, and people were like, oh, yeah. It's a good patina. That's how they sounded my mind.

Looks like you spilled a margarita on it is what it looks like.

I don't use my phone with messy hands. All right. I wash my hands all time. I don't like doing that. And if I'm eating something, I'll do the weird, like, pinky little bit a tap with my pinky because it's the only thing without the

I think this is a problem, but let's talk about your real problem.

Listen. I don't think it's not a problem. It's an opportunity. It's that I love charging things. Okay?

It's that Steven walks down the street and he looks in the window of people's houses, if he sees that blue glow, he's like, they got a new charger. I'm gonna go in and knock on the door and see what they

Listen. My audience on YouTube, I think, appreciates that I talk about so many different chargers so they can make an educated decision. Well, what charger is best for them? I sent you a charger. You still use

the top rest head. Only because I'm too lazy to switch back

to

whatever I

had before. Doing no. No. No. I think you found benefit. I'm doing a service.

It won't charge my AirPods very often. It just blinks a bright white light at me all the time, but so I don't charge my AirPods on there. It's like you have to get it in the exact right spot. The exact don't, it just, there's a white light that just pulses at you. It's like, wake up, stupid. You didn't charge them right.

That's what it's saying. That's why I like my 12 South High Rise three Deluxe, which is still my favorite, my nighttime fan. But here's the thing. This guy, look at this. First of

Okay. First of all, Steven, that looks like it's going to kill you.

G2, you got the MagSafe puck for your phone and Apple Watch and a place to charge your AirPods. And look at this little indentions so you know where to put it and it doesn't yell at you. But also, look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Three to four USB c ports and these little metal things where you can have your your iPad lay in there, maybe my MacBook Air, maybe other iPads. And there's even a place to like an outlet facing upward. You need to do that. Plus, this is modular. Look at this.

When it needs to be charged.

See, that's the thing. But if that is that's how I do it. But the problem is it always needs to be charged then because when you wanna pick it up, it never has a charge.

I don't think it's I cannot think of a time that I've picked my my iPad mini is different because I think it's I mean, it's older, but I can't think of a time when I picked up my m four iPad Pro that it didn't have at least 40%, which is more than enough battery for anything I'm gonna wanna do with it.

So I have a push cut notification that tells me when my iPad I see. Falls below 25%, and it's all the time. Like, it's regularly. So I got this because a, I wanna put it in a video. But b, I want to test.

Steven, you're my friend. And I just have to tell you as your friend that you have crossed over some lines. I don't know what it even is, but I just want you to know that that I don't think your family will tolerate that contraption anywhere in that house.

They're totally it's gonna be on my nightstand.

Steven, how your nightstand has to be bigger than my desk if

I also got this thing. I get this thing right now.

Steven, you don't have this many devices.

Hey. Can I get this one? Hold on. There you go. Steven. Anyway, I like testing chargers, Jason. I give them away. They all find a second home when I'm done with them. Okay. I've given away lots of chargers to you as well.

I did get I appreciate that. That was very kind.

Anyway, be looking at my channel. I'm gonna put that in a video. So there you go. Alright. We're gonna talk about severance in our bonus episode. So here's what you do. Tell me what your favorite charger is or any of the many things. You can leave us a five star rating in Apple Podcasts. I don't know how many it's gonna take to get back to five stars, but you guys have been showing out. So we really appreciate it.