iPhone 17 Pro Leak, 15 Years of iPad, Shopify Requiring Staff to Use AI, How Tariffs Will Affect Apple Pricing

That will be $1,500,000, please. I'll take cash, check, or transfer. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We might have an iPhone 17 case revealing the new body style, and the Instagram app might finally be coming to iPad, a bunch of AI news where the Shopify CEO doesn't wanna hire if AI can do the job, plus news on tariffs, how that's affecting tech products. And we're gonna choose our most nostalgic Microsoft products because they celebrated their fiftieth birthday recently.

Good. Is that your Matrix t shirt?

No. It is not, Jason. This is the sever this is the the macro data refinement. Mic the my the micro refine anyway.

There's numbers on his shirt. That's all you need

to There's numbers on my shirt. If you watch Severance, get it. It's from, you know, Base Cap guy. He's got the shirt. It's a friend of the show. Do you know the quote? You know the quote from the beginning of this episode? That will be $1,500,000, please. I'll take it in cash, check, or a transfer. I'm not greedy. I just want my half. Mhmm. This is a tough one. I'll try to do something that might be related to, like

That's an old movie.

An old movie. Nineteen eighty eight.

Rain Man.

Oh my goodness.

You said 1988. That gave it away.

That gave it away?

Well, it's that old. I wasn't thinking it was that old.

Like Just the release here.

It's Charlie Baker. Right?

That, Charlie Babbitt, apparently. Babbitt. Babbitt. Yeah. But that's pretty good.

I could've written it.

Nineteen eighty eight gave you Rain Man. That's pretty impressive. Okay.

I I'm I'm a savant, man. Listen. I'm a movie I'm a movie's Rain Man.

Listen. Gotta have eight fish sticks. Can't have four fish sticks. You know what I mean?

Got it.

That's yeah. You gotta see the movie. Anyway, we do a five star rating and review shout outs on this show. And Jason and I, we had a pre pre episode discussion. I thought about moving it later in the show because if you're a brand new listener, you might be wondering who are all these people that they're talking about.

I mean, if he'd put it the other way, it'd be fine. He probably still don't where

it is. No. No. No. He was you know? Lymphio Muebels from USA. Carmela's Jewelry from The USA. A lady tech enthusiast, which super fun to hear from. She says I love their banter and always learn something new. Thank you for that.

I slipped a little bit, but almost. I mean, I still use it most days, and I'm not using it on the weekends anymore.

Not on the weekends.

Mostly because I'm trying to do less work on the weekends.

Oh, yeah. Fair. Oh, fair enough. Because it's a it's a work device for you. It's where you do your research. It

it is. I don't, like, I don't do things like watch, you know, television shows and stuff. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. I still wear it at least once or twice a month. But I did wear it when I was traveling last week to Podcast Movin', and we're gonna talk about that in a second. And one old tech shout out. This is from Christopher Erickson over in, I believe, Sweden. Forgive me. He taught me how to say from IKEA. But he found some old Apple tech in his attic. These pictures look like it might be from a horror movie. I don't know.

It does seem terrifying.

It there's a super old phone, some sauce. But that's a what I what Mac is that? The g three? The little

That's the that is the iMac. Yeah. No. That's the g four iMac.

G four iMac. The g four iMac, he's got that in his attic. Also has even older the layer of dust on this one is impressive.

Wow. I can't even see what the yeah.

That's don't even know that is. I can't even see it. But the back says it's the Apple display, CRT display. And then, look at this. The Macintosh Performa

6,300.

Performa 6,300. Got that in his attic. Man, you should try to plug those in, Christopher, and see if they still work.

You should blow out all of that insulation first, though. Like, that picture is that thing is there's a lot of stuff in there that could catch fire if you if you light that up right now.

I'm just telling you. That's right. Clear it out first. We'll put the I'll put the picture in the chapter or two because that's pretty cool. But thank you for that. Share with us your old tech if you want. You can do that in our community, social.primarytech.fm, or email us. Also, have an announcement. This is a little housekeeping. No.

Does it include the links to actually listen to it? Like, what if I just wanted to use the email to tell me when the show has published, will it have a link to open it in podcast or Spotify or wherever?

Yeah. So it has a link where if you tap, like, the title, it'll take you, I believe, to, like, primarytech.fm, and then you can click your podcast player. But I'll I'll put I'll put a couple other links to, to to things there too.

But Good stuff.

Yeah. And I'm not automatically moving anybody over. So, like, if you're in our community and you want the newsletter, please sign up separately because I don't wanna I don't wanna move people over. You know what I mean? That feels a little shady. Shady.

Aggressive.

Yeah. Feels a little aggressive. Alright. Let's start out with some quick Apple news. First of I wanted to share this story, which was a video that Apple posted on their YouTube channel. But it was a survivor who used the emergency SOS on Apple Watch. Did you see this video?

I'm I'm watching it right now. Okay.

No. I did

not see it before here.

Okay. Great.

But it's from Apple Australia.

Apple Australian. So this was a swimmer off the coast of Australia who apparently was pulled out to sea, couldn't even see land anymore, and used the emergency SOS on his Apple Watch Ultra to call emergency services. And he was rescued out there. It seems like without Apple Watch, he would not have survived this. And so Apple tell stories like this periodically, especially, like, during their big events like Dub Dub.

I did.

It was a great show.

That.

And I don't know if you saw this quote from Seth Rogen, but he did an interview with Variety. Seth Rogen, he's starring in the studio. I think he's also, like, executive producer of it. But the premise is like it's a what is it? A parody?

It's a Hollywood satire.

It's a Hollywood satire about, like, a a movie executive.

Yeah. But he's a movie executive. He's running an industry. He's dealing with the, I guess, the existential question of, like, do you make money do you make movies that make money, or do you make movies that win awards, and can you do both and whatever.

So hilarious show, if you haven't seen it. But this quote, apparently, when Seth Rogen was pitching this to Apple, it was clear that he was gonna need a lot of cameos, which if you don't know, Martin Scorsese is in the first episode, Charlize Theron, director gladiator director? What's his name? Ron Howard. Wait.

Not in my Vision Pro. I do not.

Okay. I don't know what to do about that, but it gets wet.

Well, actually, that's not true because I have really bad spring allergies, and the other day I was using it, and I realized I just couldn't see anything, and I'm, like, pulling the lenses out, trying to, like, clean them off and stuff, and I realized, nope. Just my eyes. My eyes are just full of allergies right now.

Just full of that.

I did have that experience, but

Yeah. So that's the only thing about Vision Pro. But I enjoyed watching that in the studio in there. And, of course, the Severance finale. I like I've watched little clips of it again, but anyway. Alright. I'll stop talking about Severance.

No. It's good.

Yeah. Yeah. We should we still have to debate the finale sometime. Maybe by the time season three comes out. Two other quick Apple things.

Yeah. I mean

Don't know.

Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of feelings there, but I do have a question. Uh-huh. What I we talked about this a little bit. I think we're probably gonna talk about this every year. But why do you think anyone cares?

About the camera bump?

Just in general about whether the new iPhone's going to look like, won't we know? Like, in September, we'll know if it looks different. Why like, I just I wonder why, like, why anyone cares.

Yeah. I mean, it's just the intrigue. People like

It's just interesting.

Knowing what's happening.

No one left to buy iPhone seventeens because apparently they're buying all of the iPhone sixteens in the world right now. I got like, no kidding. I I I posted this, but on Monday, I think it was, or maybe it was Tuesday, I got no less than six people texting me and they're like, which iPhone should I buy today?

Really? Yes. Real people doing it.

Just it one day one day. Hey. Somebody would text me about some other random thing, and they're like, while I have you, if hypothetically I was buying an iPhone today, what should I buy? I'm like, why are you buying it today? Well, it's gonna be $1,200 tomorrow and then a thousand you know, $2,500 a day after that. So, yeah, people are buying them.

That's interesting. One, there was a think it wasn't there a spike in Apple stock because of the that everybody's, like, rushing to the stores?

Well, no. There was a spike yesterday in a lot of stocks because most of the reciprocal tariffs were paused.

Right. We're We're gonna get to We have a whole we have a whole tariff section.

You asked the question.

I know.

Know. I know.

Right. You're right. But, yeah, tariffs come later. But so iPhone 17, I don't know. We'll see. If the camera's way better, I mean, we'll we'll see. Instagram app finally might be coming to iPad, by the way. And this is reported by The Information, which shows you absolutely 0% of their article. Just shows you the the headline. So there you go. But I wanted to mention here, did you know, Jason, the iPad is 15 years old?

Do you mean Instagram is 15 years old?

No. The iPad.

Oh, the iPad. Well, also Instagram. Right? They're both 15.

Oh, is it? Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Because the Instagram launched in 2010. But

Oh, they're both

That is that is kinda crazy.

The iPad was announced by Jobs in January 2010, went on sale April 2010. So right just this month, I turned 15 years old, which is

So it's kinda crazy because these two things were meant to be together. Literally. They were connected at birth.

Ish. Definitely ish.

And they never have coexisted together. This but here's actually why this is interesting that Instagram is actually working on because this is what happens when you have just even the littlest amount of competitive pressure. You like, in if you have just watched Instagram over the last eighteen months with threads and with all of the video stuff and with the follow the following feeds and all of those different things, it is what happens when you have TikTok or you have whatever. Like, you have some kind of competitive pressure. Yeah.

Also my Instagram account is messed up. That's another story.

That's an evergreen statement right there.

Well, that's it's messed up for a variety of reasons, but I got supposedly early access to the edits app, which is Instagram's, like it's gonna be, like, cap cut competitive.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's doing its best to to compete. But I wanted to ask you about the iPad being 15 old. Did you get an original iPad that that launch year? Do you remember?

Well, I don't remember when the first iPad that I got was. I think it was probably the garbage one, which I think wasn't the the three.

The three.

And then I think I quickly got an iPad four. So I don't remember. Gosh. Could I even find out?

I still have my iPad two. It can still turn on if I charge it. And and it went through every one of my kids throughout all the years. That one, I saw my iPad two. I had an original iPad, the cellular version, actually, but I I think I sold it because I don't have it anymore.

Yeah. So I just found my receipt for my iPad with Wi Fi plus cellular for Verizon thirty two gigs black third generation.

Third generation. Yeah.

Which I don't know for sure that I never like, that I didn't have one before that. It's you know what I mean? Like, I don't know what that is. Talk about a wave of nostalgia. I literally just went into my mail app because that is still the best one for searching for things, which is surprising if it's iCloud.

Do remember do you remember your very first Apple product?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a MacBook Pro.

Do you remember, like, the year?

Yeah. It was the titanium MacBook Pro. It was an 800 megahertz with a with a super drive.

Wait. MacBook Pro or PowerBook?

PowerBook. Sorry.

Oh, it was PowerBook. Okay.

It's not a MacBook Pro. It was PowerBook. Yeah. The the TI book.

Yeah. And it was, like, 02/2002 or '3 maybe?

That was, like, that would have been a little bit earlier than that one. Earlier? Because I think '20 02/2003, they came out with the

The g four. Right?

Yeah. Well, it was a g four.

Oh, what?

Hold on. Yeah. TI book release date. I thought it was more like 02/2001.

But Oh, okay. It might be. I remember my first Apple product was an iPod video, which I got in 02/2005. And then later that year, I got my first Mac, which was the g four twelve inch PowerBook. And so I know g 04/2005, I know that coincides.

Yeah. The Titanium PowerBook was introduced in January of twenty 02/2001.

Okay.

And I don't know if I bought I don't know if those ones had the super drive or not, but I when I got one, it was with the super drive. Gotcha. So it's probably 02/2001 or 2,002, and I believe I got an iPodge right around that time, but I don't I don't remember exactly.

Like the first. The first. Have a 02/2001. That was a

Yeah. I'm gonna find this. Somewhere out there is my Titanium PowerBook g four. I'm gonna find it.

I I can't even talk about it because I sold my g four twelve inch PowerBook, and I still I regret it to this day, Jason. To this day. Alright. That's enough nostalgia. We'll get nostalgic about Microsoft in a little bit.

I just don't know what that means because, like, I think about all the things I use AI for, and it's usually like, tell me about this thing that just happened, or I can't figure out how to loosen this, like, bolt on my sink. Whatever. That's a bad idea. But, like, you know I mean? Like, some kind of thing.

You need to build and train a model on your laptop or you're fired.

I'm on it.

That's one. Two, non use of AI requires justification. So employees must demonstrate why AI cannot be used before requesting additional resources like staff or time. That's pretty heavy.

Yeah. Again, what does that mean? Is that like, I wanted to hire an engineer, and I can't just use whatever Chat you a team. To do that or something? Like, that's what I don't understand.

I guess I mean, if if someone on a team wanted to hire, like you're saying, a developer, I guess they have to prove that ChatGPT can't do it, which seems like it'd be really tough because ChatGPT will give you a bunch of code, but you actually have to, like, spend a lot of time to make sure it actually works and maybe even fix the bugs. Anyway, AI and product development. AI must be integrated into the early stages of all projects, basically. And then fourth, performance accountability. Shopify is adding AI usage to its performance and peer review criteria, making AI adoption part of how employees are evaluated and rewarded.

What it really feels like is, what what do you mean? Like, if it it's kind of a all of those are is this just marketing speak? Right? But it no. Because it's an internal audience. And so it's not just like, it makes sense when you hear companies just randomly throw AI into the middle of sentences when they're talking to investors and stuff. You know? It's like, we just had the best AI quarter we've ever had. Like

Right.

What does that even mean? Right? But this is not that. This is for for an internal audience. And it it feels very abstract, and I'm not really sure. Because, again, I'm just thinking about all the tool. And, granted, maybe there's just, like, a lot of AI tools that you and I are not familiar with because we're not but imagine if your boss said to you, it's mandatory for you to use AI in your job. What does that mean? Like, okay. Fine.

If I generate my Slack profile picture with ChatGPT, does that count?

I mean but it's like you I could understand if your boss is like, no. You can't hire someone to listen to your videos and transcribes them to just use an AI tool, but it feels like that's not what this is. This this is something because you don't have to tell people that. Like, people will take the path of least resistance. We'll do that anyway.

Well, also, the one, like, AI must be integrated into the early stages, even prototype phase of projects. That feels like, I don't know, like, one of the core competencies competencies of humans versus AI, I would think, is like genuine originality and creativity since AI literally has to be trained on things rather than you know, everything that AI does is based on something else. It's been trained on content. And so to be integrated in the early stages, I'm like, isn't that I don't know.

But, also, is that just take the brief description of the product feature you want and plug it into ChatGPT and say, what should I call this? Like, is that integrating it in the early phase? Because, honestly, ChatGPT is great at that.

Right? Sure. Sure.

It's great at giving you a list of here's 30 things. I can then look at one of them and be like, you know what? I that's interesting. Let me iterate on that or something like that. So it's it is good.

Right.

That that's useful. But again, you don't have to tell people to do that. Like, we will do the thing that makes my job easier automatically. No questions asked.

Right. I do think you know, it's funny because there are many other industries and jobs where there's great resistance to it. I think where I was in an environment, like an educational type environment, and the use of AI by students was being policed. Students were not allowed to use Chateappete to do some of their assignments or write papers, which I understand. If the assignment is to write a paper and you ask Chateappete to write it, you didn't do the assignment.

Well, and the interesting thing, just wanna touch on that because I think that's actually a really important point. And I think I told the story on this podcast, maybe on the maybe on our bonus episode about my son who

Alright.

Literally just typed a question into chat GPT and turned it in. And the teacher was like and he's 10. And the teacher's like, this is really, really good. This is a little bit too good for a fifth grader. And he just asked him.

Not happen.

But it but that's that's an important piece of it. And so learning how to learn is important so that you can then evaluate the garbage that comes out of all these chatbots.

Learning how to learn. That's deep, Jason. I'll also say so one of my use cases for ChatGPT is every time I make a video, I transcribe it. I give that to ChatGPT, and I ask it for title and description ideas for YouTube. And I've been doing, like, best apps or whatever for this and that and best whatever.

So It's writing checks. It's writing the data on checks out of the checkbook, and it's, like, still updating them the wrong thing.

Exactly. So I don't know. Maybe it's becoming more human. Maybe maybe it's becoming more human. I don't know.

So That part's not surprising. Not surprising. It is weird. I'll just say, like, Llama, it's so interesting that Meta is doing this because I feel like the primary motivation for for Facebook, Meta, whatever, to have its own LLM that it can build on is this idea of, like, instantly targeted personalized ads. Right? Being able to show you and I a personalized ad that's like, hey, Jason. You should buy a belt. I'm like, thank you for that. Right? Like, just all of that kind of thing.

Right.

But, also, like, it doesn't I don't ever hear anyone. Like, I've other than you and I talking about it right now, I've never had a conversation with anyone about Llama or anything that Meta's building. Right? Except for the the fact that people are constantly like, how come when I search for something in Instagram, it automatically tries to give me this AI gen. I was like, I just wanted to re I couldn't remember the person's profile name.

Listen. I'm a tell I I didn't know if

I was gonna

share this story, but I wanna share it because

I'm so glad.

Meta's I don't even know what the lava systems. I'm just upset because Instagram listen. Instagram is, like, my smallest following, so it's not a big deal. But my son, he wanted to start posting on Instagram for reels and skateboard videos and things like that. So I like, okay.

You have discovered the secret to antiaging, Steven.

No. But it is also the secret to now my my profile is private, and I can't make it public again without the, quote, unquote, help of a parent. And I'm like, what is happening? And then when I try to change my birthday, it says, well, you recently changed your birthday, and you have to wait a few days to change it again, which this was like four days ago. And so now I'm like stuck, and I'm like approving follower requests in Instagram like an animal because my account is private, and I don't know.

This might explain why you have the smallest following on Instagram.

It says, you've, Leah, you've recently changed your birthday. There's a limit to how many times you change it. So I removed my son's account from my meta accounts thinking, well, maybe it'll snap back to what it was. It didn't, spoiler. And so now I'm still a 15 year old. And then

I love that you join according to Facebook, according to Instagram, you apparently joined Instagram when you were, like, three and a half months old. Just based on when your birthday was and the date you joined Instagram.

And so so I tried contacting support. That was no help. They were like, well, yeah, you changed your birthday recently, so you can't change it back. But I didn't change it. I was just trying to add my son. So anyway, then I tried because we actually have a primary technology Instagram account that's just out there. I don't really post anything to it. But I tried making that my parent to then see if I could change my birthday through that account for the

You can't just make anyone your parents, Steven. There's like laws of

Apparently, primary tech show could not be my parent, and so I wasn't able to do that. So now my Instagram account is stuck in private as a teenager. And anytime it's, like, even close to 10PM, it's like, time to shut down for the night. Instagram.

Go to bed, Steven. Yeah. I Yeah. I will I'll connect you with somebody who can help you after this.

Oh, for real?

Yeah. For real. Oh, shoot.

I didn't realize you had the hookup.

I'm just saying.

You're gonna connect me to llama? Llama four?

I'm gonna I'm gonna send you directly to a chatbot

that will me out?

Tell you congratulations on your fifteenth birthday, Steven. We're excited for you. No. I'll just, like I think I will just okay. I have had this experience recently not with that.

Hosting services and things

like that. Exactly. Yes. Figuring out how to do that is almost impossible.

Right. Exactly.

It is almost impossible.

I it is so busy.

You have to have a PhD in in D U M B. Bureaucratic comradery. Like, it's just unbelievable.

I think it is it is ridiculous. So, anyway, though, I just wanted to vent a little bit because it's all week, my Instagram account's been like, Hey, teenager. I have a full beard and I have three children. You can see my pictures. Anyway, last AI news, and I'll throw it to you. This is about Anthropic. They've they've been trying to upsell you, Jason. Is that right?

This is true. Yeah. I got an email the other day that said so I I paid for Claude like a lot of people did when it first came out just to try to check it out and that kind of stuff. And Claud is Anthropix chatbot, just like Chachibi Tees, OpenAI's. And at one point so I subscribed to it.

Did you actually hit that when you were using it?

No. I used it twice even. I paid $20 and used the thing twice.

You used it. Like, it's

not usage limits thing. Like, is that we noticed that when you left, the usage limits were likely getting in your way. We've built something new. Introducing the max plan designed for those who need expanded access to Claude for the most important work. Substantially more usage to work with Claude.

Right.

You get this many queries to deep research. Right. Right? You get you know what I mean?

Like, It was pretty clear.

Some sort of a quantity associated with it, so you'd know. But this is just like, no. Five x. This is this is a typical, what I what do they call those? Bezos charts where there's like a line that means absolutely nothing. Apple's really good at that too.

There's no x or y axis. It's just a curve.

So it's like, it's more. It's 10 times more efficient than this thing that you don't know what it is. Right. So yeah.

That's hilarious. It's amazing these companies. I mean, I guess people are paying for them because for these plans to exist. But also

That's literally the reason it exists is because, yes, there are people who will pay for it.

Can can we also stop calling everything max? Everything is max. I know we already got

pro There's pro and there's max.

Pro and

there's There's no There's only three adjectives you can use to describe something, and everyone is using them. Gonna integrate. Uses them now. Apple uses them. Claude uses them. ChatGPT uses them.

I'm gonna use AI in my my job right now, Shopify CEO, if you're listening. What are 10 other words for Macs? I'm asking ChatGPT right now. This is how this is how you use AI in your okay. Here's 10 other options. Peak

Hold on. Before you say any of them

Oh, okay.

You're gonna Steven's gonna explain this to us, and it'll be the perfect example of why they just use the same words over and over.

Yeah. These aren't great. Okay. So if you're using max as maximum, other words are peak, limit, top, cap, ceiling, upper bound, extremum, I didn't know those word, Zenith, Apex, and utmost. Now I don't know about you, but iPhone 17 Pro Apex?

No. It's the 17 Apex ceiling. Oh. That's the zenith.

Then maybe yeah. 17 Zenith. Yeah. IPhone 17 Pro utmost. Rolls right off the tongue. Anyway, if you're using Max as a nickname, you should also consider Maximus, Maxwell, Maximilian, Maxi, Mac, Mace, MJ, Max and Max and Mako. I don't know why it gave me all those.

Because it's a

it's a

name for a person.

Yeah. Anyway, I'm I'm up for the iPhone 17 Apex. I'm down for that. Let's do it. Let's do it. Chat GPT unmost.

Let's manifest this as the kids would say.

I don't like that word. That's it's like most mass this.

Also, the when you start this is the thing. When you start to hear your kids say words that are cool among teens that have been around for a very long time and we gave up on saying them because we realized that we just sounded stupid. And now you're like, I'm both old, and I'm completely out of touch.

Wait. Like what? Like what?

Like that. Like, the the kids are like yesterday, we had a our daughter had her first track meet. Yeah. And it was such bad weather, and they got to a point in the meet where my daughter's school was so far ahead of the other two schools that there was no chance that anyone else was gonna beat them. So they're like, should we all just agree that the meet's over?

Like, what are you, storm from the x men? You can't like, get out

going on.

That's hilarious. Alright. It's time it's tariff time. So listen, if you think saying the word tariffs is political, please use the chapters and skip forward to Microsoft's fiftieth anniversary birthday or whatever. And I will be honest.

order it. And you know who got the worst deal on this?

Who's that?

I believe it's true that Nintendo also paused the preorders in Canada because Canada is very in fact, I can drive to Canada from where I live in, like, an hour and forty minutes.

You're very close to it.

And so I think that they were trying to avoid the fact that suddenly there would be millions of Americans crossing the border into Canada to buy bootleg versions of the Switch two, and then they wouldn't sell any in The US once they you know what I mean? Like, so they had to pause them in Canada as well, which is just insane. So

Well, apparently

this whole thing. Yeah. Go ahead.

Apparently, the launch date is still June 5, which we'll see. So but the actual news is tariffs have come and gone. Was you Trump made an announcement about tariffs that were gonna be hitting, like, 10% across everybody and then much higher percentages on certain countries. And then just yesterday, April 9, Trump said on Truth Social that he is putting a ninety day delay on many of the tariffs or a ninety day pause except for China who he doubled down and is tariffing them even more, I believe.

Yeah. Yesterday morning, we woke up and it was a %, and then he just randomly changed it to a 25%.

Right.

And then he voided all of the reciprocal tariffs above 10% everywhere else except for China because he says that they're very unfair to the world markets or something like that, which I don't I don't I don't know.

Yeah. So that so that that

Lack of that China has shown to the world's markets. And world's markets is in capital. And I don't know if you have these in, Florida, but there is actually a store near here called World Market. And I thought and it's mostly imported stuff from around the world. And I read that tweet, and I thought to myself, he's really upset. Has he been shopping at World Market or something? Like, what's going on?

I did not know that was the thing. But those are just the facts. It's just tariffs has happened and now unhappened, but they're still happening kind of. But the tech angle, this was wild. In order before the delay of the tariffs, and even now, even though it's still affecting China, like, delay did not affect China, and that's where a bunch of Apple devices are still made.

Well, okay. You said this seems accurate, but what you really mean is, like, yeah, there's numbers, and I don't know what you're talking about. So I'm just gonna assume that this is all correct. But there are some assumptions here. We don't actually know how many iPhones Apple sells in a year.

just kidding.

No. But it's it's it's it but I'm just saying, like, those are not iPhones. Now I'm sure there are iPhones on there. But I think that if you're thinking about what the maximum impact of a tariff is going to be, the the if it's based on the value of the product that comes over, not the retail price as we were Right. As we were reminded, the value of the product, a MacBook Pro, a Mac Studio, even a souped up Mac Mini or whatever is gonna be much more Affect adversely affected by tariffs of a 25% than an iPhone.

Right. Even if the numbers are wildly off, I mean, we're talking weeks of supply, not, like, enough supply to figure out to to outlast this tariff war, which, again, what what is actually gonna happen? What is happening? It seems like again, I'm not a economy expert nor a political expert. Feels a little bit like a game of chicken. Like, who's going to cave first with tariffs as far as, like, China, US, whatever. But I and then the other point is, again, not to be political, but

it seems know that if you say not to be political, you're just being political? Is it? I'm just kidding, Steven.

No. Don't know. Don't know. The only the only point that I will make is the announcements that Trump is making wherever about tariffs, I'm gonna put this one up about TikTok and the ban, these things keep moving. Like, they're just very just clearly moving targets.

And you know and you know why it didn't happen?

Was it?

Because he slapped tariffs on China. They had an agreement apparent this is reporting. They had an agreement in principle, and that but it required the approval of the Chinese government, and they just they weren't they decided they're not they blew the whole thing up by adding those tariffs to China. But going back to the tariffs thing for a second, I and the plane specifically, I think the way to think about those planes is that their dollar cost averaging, this is not we just shipped over the next twelve days of supply early. What this means is we now have twelve days of supply that we can then filter into all of the normal supply chain gonna continue moving.

you over time.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that, I think, is a better way of thinking of it. That twelve days worth of supply, maybe they're expecting that to last them sixty days, and it brings the overall cost. And, actually, Apple's probably not gonna raise I'm almost sure they're not gonna raise the price of an iPhone in the next sixty days. Yeah. So they're just it's mitigating against how much of a hit they might take to their bottom line. Right?

Right.

So I think that's a more important way. And in that perspective, having twelve days, full days of supply that you could spread out over. I mean, I don't know, do the if you do the math, but like you could lower the impact of the tariffs by something like 20%, you know, because twelve days out of 60, that's a big deal for a company like Apple.

Right. So I think the real life implication of whatever's happening, like, just like the normal people, there were reports that customers were going to Apple stores trying to buy Apple devices hopefully before, like you're saying, prices are raised. You said you even had people texting you.

I had six people on Monday or Tuesday asking me, I'm going to the store today. What do I buy?

Right. And so to your point, I don't know. Like, the prices are not gonna change in the next sixty days, even if whatever happens with the tariffs. I do think there's probably consideration on the next iPhone lineup come September, and we might see price raises. I have no basis for this, but I feel like even if prices go up, Apple's probably gonna do, like, 1 or $200.

Yeah. I think the more likely scenario is that for every 10% that they increase the tariffs, you're going to get another notification in the settings app to sign up for a service.

Every percent.

You laugh, but you actually know I'm that that what

I'm saying

is a % true.

It is it is funny because I have an iPhone 14 here that I'll do betas on, and it's not signed up for anything. There's an iCloud account on it, but it's not there's doesn't pay for Apple One, doesn't pay for any Apple services. And the amount of notifications that I have to, like, clear on that phone about iCloud storage, about News plus, about Fitness plus, about Apple Music, it is pretty wild.

Yeah. Just this morning, I posted a photo that was in my iPad that said, image creation tools are here. Open image playgrounds. In the settings app, there's an ad to get me to open it. And I and I wrote I'm like, yes. I know that it exists. No. I don't ever want to open it on my iPad. The fact that I have not opened it is not that I don't know it's there Right. But that it's a terrible app.

Yes. But I would point out I'll put a link to Jason Snell's last Apple quarterly revenue thing where he has a bunch of charts. IPhone revenue, meaning just the hardware, which is what would be affected by tariffs, is 56% of their revenue. Like Yep. More than half of the company is just iPhone hardware sales.

Scroll down scroll down just a little bit farther on that chart. I know this is really good podcasting. Oh, it doesn't show you. Okay. The thing yeah.

Right. Which is a majority of that services revenue, but they are also spending billions of dollars on, like, original content for Apple TV plus.

Yeah. But you they could spend $10,000,000,000 a year on original content, and that would only be half of what Google gives them for the default search placement. Like, no. I'm serious. I like and that's just free money.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's So what I all I'm trying to say is, like, yes. And that totals that total revenue for the iPhone is worldwide, and we're only talking about The US. And so it's a fraction of that, and they could they are going to maintain the price point because that that revenue dollar amount will not change if they keep the price point the same. Their profit is what's going to change. Right.

And that's what this part of the chart Yeah. On the six colors, that that service is just gradually going up, whereas the product profit graph, it's widely you know?

Well, that changes be that's the total, which means and then you just notice that every four every I think it's Apple's first quarter, which is our fourth quarter or whatever.

It's when Apple comes out.

It's the yeah. It's well, it's actually the holidays.

The holidays.

Oh, it's really when it's a big deal. And, obviously, they time the iPhone coming out to that. You see it in in total dollars, that profit goes way up because they sell a lot more.

They sell a lot more. Yeah. Well, that was good. I I appreciate that that explanation. That was good. Alright. Let's talk about something fun. Microsoft. Microsoft.

You said fun.

Well, listen. Microsoft Microsoft has had some fun things over the years. Microsoft celebrated fifty years. They had a big event with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Sundar Pichai, and they were all no. Satya Nadella. Sorry. Sundar Pichai is Google.

Pichai is the CTO.

Satya Nadella is Microsoft. But they did a big event. Did you listen to that that VergeCast where they played clips from the event?

I did not listen to Vergecast where they played clips, but I watched a video of the event.

Oh, well, Balmer did Balmer did his, like, developers yell again

Yeah.

Which is what he's famous for. There were also some protesters at the event. I think it was twice protesters actually, like, stood up and started shouting, and they had to be removed. They were actually Microsoft employees, and they've since been fired. That was news just yesterday.

I mean, it's on the Microsoft

designer Vincent Canari created Comic Sans in 1944 and was a scourge on society in person.

'94.

Just What? What did I say?

You said 1944.

No. Nineteen ninety Sorry. That's right. Nineteen forty four.

There were no personal computers, but we were making fun.

I had an IBM computer as a kid, and it ran Windows 3.1. And I still remember my dad trying to figure out what to do with MS DOS and how to do c colon forward slash to access the file system. Very fond memories. A couple old Microsoft computer games. Did you ever play commander Keen? You're doing No. King's Quest? You ever play King's Quest?

Oh, yeah. Like, seven different versions of it. Yes. Fact, you can play those online still. There are, like, emulators online that you can still play.

I bet not. I would fall down that rabbit hole so fast. And then do you remember Battletoads? No. Our listeners and viewers, if you remember if you remember Commander Keen or Battletoads, please let me know. And then Starcraft was was big in in high school when we had a Compaq Presario. But I will say

SimCity? You left out SimCity.

I did play SimCity, and I played, like, a weird, like, MLB baseball game, and there was, like, a magic carpet game that came with it. I remember going to, like, Office Depot in Staples and playing the ski game, ski free.

Ski free. Yeah.

Ski free on the computers. That was oh, look. And that that's actually in this article. It's number 35. I'll put that as my as maybe second fondest memory because I I played a lot of ski free. And I also remember sometimes it will go to screen saver and it will be password protected. But if you just hard reset the PC by holding the power button, it would start up again without the screensaver or password. So I did that. But I'm actually gonna be nostalgic for Windows Phone because

Nobody's nostalgic for Windows Phone.

No. There are there is nostalgia for Windows Phone because it was an interesting and different operating system, the metro interface, which is still alive in Windows today. But I also think Windows Phone garnered some interesting hardware, like the Lumia series of phones where it had, like, crazy cameras and, you know, cool Windows phones. And the one Windows phone I wanna talk about that I was very nostalgic for and still am, the Dell Venue Pro. Do you remember this phone?

No. Because no one cares about Windows phones.

That's not true. People care about this. I need you, listeners.

Who are the people?

Come to my aid in the community. Who

cares about this?

The podcast. Who does it. I need to know. The Dell Venue Pro ran Windows Phone. It was a slider with a full QWERTY keyboard at the bottom.

Yeah. I do. And I also remember when they burned the whole thing down and took a multibillion dollar loss on the Nokia thing because, like Yeah. It was just they yeah. I don't wanna make people mad. But I feel like I'm actually not gonna make anyone listening to this mad by saying very few people really care that much about Windows Phone.

It's fair, but it was it was a third

It was interesting.

It was interesting.

It was not good. It was not like, but it was interesting. It was a different take. The design language part of it, fine. It didn't work because Windows doesn't work on a phone.

They weren't great. The the Nokia Lumia phones were interesting, again, because of the camera and the hardware was pretty slick. This is I'm gonna link this event in the show notes. Remember, if you wanna get this in an email, you could subscribe, and you'll get this in an email tomorrow morning. But this was the Windows Phone seven launch event.

It was an interesting third alternative. It was never viable. Like, it just it was terrible. It died. Like and and the reason is because Microsoft couldn't get it out of its mind that it had to be Windows.

Right. And, also, they couldn't get the developer buy in. So, like, you didn't have Instagram or whatever on it for I don't know if you ever did. But, anyway, what are you nostalgic for Microsoft wise?

I'm not really nostalgic for that many things Microsoft wise, but I do really mean, I don't I don't hate Microsoft. We I didn't have a Mac until February and we were just talking about this. 02/2001, I think it was. I was trying to find my first purchase receipt in my email, and I have a lot of them. Anyway, so I grew up in a household where we had a compact no.

at

the time. Yes. But I think I think for me, I would I I I had a friend at the time who had a Mac. I don't really know which one it was, an s e two or something like that. Probably, this was in, like, maybe 1987, '8, '9, whatever. The Mac was relatively new, and Windows was there was no Windows at the time. Right? Like, well, I don't know when three point o came out, but it it doesn't matter. Yeah. And I was super jealous.

Windows three point o came out May 1990.

So it was definitely yeah. I mean

Yeah.

That makes about sense.

Well, yeah. Descent. You ever played Descent, that game?

There are probably so many things I forgot

Yeah. I know. I know.

That I've played.

I But Yeah. It was a I don't know. I I grew up Windows. You know, I didn't start using Mac until college. So yeah, it a big part. But

I will say that the Windows XP wallpaper, I'm nostalgic for that.

That that's number I

mean it's I mean it for real.

I know. I get it.

Oh, Microsoft Golf. Microsoft Golf.

Oh, Microsoft Golf. There you

That was probably my favorite game. And that thing was just, it was insane, but it was yeah.

The Windows XP wallpaper, it's number 27 on the verge's list. It is amazing how iconic that wallpaper is and just, I don't know, immediately recognizable. Apparently, it's a place. I've also seen people on TikTok go to this hill, can recreate this picture. But also Windows just XP is the operating system.

So Well, that's what happened with the CrowdStrike. That's why Delta couldn't schedule anyone because the computer system that was running that software was still running like Windows 95. And the the the best part about it is if you're running Windows 11 today and you go into the settings menu and you click on just about anything and it opens another menu and then you click on any of those options, you're probably going to see a Windows 95 window pop Yeah.

Exact amazing. Amazing. Alright. Well, that's Windows. We're gonna go talk about digital spring cleaning. I'm curious to hear Jason's strategy for cleaning his digital life, if he if there is even is a strategy.

I'm I'm interested to hear what this topic means.

Okay. Well, yeah, we'll we'll talk about it. So we're gonna go record a bonus episode. We didn't have a sponsor this week, so thank you all to for you if you support the show. And if you don't already, you can support the show either directly in Apple Podcasts or at primary tech dot f m and click bonus episodes.