OpenAI Future Web Browser, LinkedIn is Mostly AI Posts, BIG Audience AMA!

We should just be thankful for being together. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. We have a fun show, a massive listener, ask me anything, a bunch of you shared questions on social media. So we're gonna spend, like, half the show answering all of those, but we also have some news that OpenAI may be working on a browser, half of LinkedIn posts are apparently AI, and Zoom is trying a big rebrand. This episode is brought to you by 1 Password and by you, those of you who support us directly.

It's a little bittersweet, Steven. Bittersweet. We're recording the day before Thanksgiving.

We are.

Normally, we would be in Florida, which is where you are. And I think at one point, we even talked about trying to do this show in person this week, but we're not in Florida. We're we're still in Michigan.

And behind the curtain, I think the last 2 Thanksgivings

Yes.

We actually saw each other IRL in real life.

Not on Thanksgiving, but the week we had breakfast.

We had breakfast Thanksgiving week. Yes. And, yeah, we met in person. So we're breaking the tradition. What happened, Jason? What's going on?

Well, our kids had school till yesterday. That's the big thing.

Oh, okay.

And then our one of our daughters had a big soccer tournament over the this past weekend, and we were originally gonna go to Indianapolis and then just keep driving. Sure. But then the kids had school, and there was just enough things going. Also, we were told that all of the like, most of the hotels where we go on Treasure Island were all closed, and the pool was closed, and the beach was still being, like,

Oh, true.

Groomed or whatever. So we're kind of like, I'm not taking 4 kids to Florida if they can't get in the go on the beach or the pool.

Yeah. That's kinda

What's the point?

It's actually cold this week too, believe it or not. I mean, not Michigan cold, but it is, like, in the forties. So it'll be a different well, I'm gonna miss our, our first watch of breakfast this year.

Yeah.

We'll have a lot to resume next year, but last week, for the movie quotes, I forgot to mention it was our big 50th episode last week, and I forgot to actually ask you the name of the movie, which I quoted a movie which I hadn't seen before, 5050, which was perfect for the 50th episode, and I forgot to say.

I agree.

Yeah. So 5050, but do you have any guesses as to the movie quoted at the beginning of this episode? It's it's kind of a obvious one because Yeah.

I think it's Charlie Brown Christmas. Exactly. In Thanksgiving, not Christmas. Thanksgiving. So just to be clear.

Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It was Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Yeah. So, you know, day before Thanksgiving where again, one of the listener questions is, one of our favorite Thanksgiving dishes, and so that's coming up later. Or favorite Thanksgiving food.

Keep at it as long as that says 5. We're good. Just doing it.

I just wanna say he said dots on. That's all I have to say about that. And, Aztec 1967 from Canada says we're a must listen and battery percentage on, so you won that one. But that's on. That's on.

Okay. Speaking of listeners, hold on. Speaking of listeners, you know how, like, I'm I think it's, like, connected. They have all these, like, listeners who keep score of all of the games that they play. I think somebody should go back and figure out how many of the movie quotes I actually got right.

That That is true. You've gotten a lot right.

I'm not going to do it, but I think you've gotten a pretty good number of them right.

You've gotten a lot right, surprising amount. So we should we should eventually swap, and, you give me a movie quote at some point.

And If I do it, it's just gonna all be West Wing references. That's, like, the only

Which I have

not seen. West Wing and Friends.

I have not seen friends. Friends I've seen. I could do friends. Okay. Pay that.

Anyway Exactly.

First piece of news. OpenAI might be working on a browser and so they recently released SearchGPT, which is really just part of ChatGPT, where you can click a little button and it searches the web. Well, it looks like they might be taking on Google Chrome. This is an information article where you see the headline and

Can't read.

You just see you see nothing else, but John Gruber actually wrote about it. And in his article where he cut he talked about the information, he said, apparently, OpenAI has hired Ben Goodger, a founding member of the Chrome team at Google. And another recent hire at OpenAI is Darren Fisher, who also worked, with Goodger to develop Chrome. And so it seems like OpenAI will be working towards a browser, which interesting timing, because, a, we talked about last week how the DOJ here in the states might force Google to sell off Chrome. Again, we're not gonna know the result of that until next year, but if Google would have to sell off Chrome and OpenAI comes in with its own browser that's actually good, that would give OpenAI a huge advantage where search GPT could be built in, and just like typing in the address bar in Safari, you can default that Google search, and that's why Google pays Apple $20,000,000,000 a year.

That's the interesting question. I think my first thought on this is, yeah, of course, they are. And isn't it convenient that there may be one for sale soon? But

Right.

I I don't even think OpenAI can afford Chrome if it's really worth what people say it's worth. But it's interesting because it's like, why? Why does OpenAI need a browser? Like, there are lots of browsers. There's there's there's more than enough. Right? We we have we have good browsers, like, you know, Brave, Chrome, whatever, Safari, and then there's browsers like Edge.

People like that.

There's, like, there's other browsers out there. Yeah. But it's it's sort of a revealing revealing truth about, like, these tech companies. The best example, if you download edge onto your computer, which I've done, and it's actually not a bad browser, to be honest with you, but it's just Chromium.

I can't stand that. The UI, though, the UI is so

But the worst part about it is every time you open it, do you wanna set it as your default? Do you wanna set Bing as your default search? Do you do you like Microsoft? Will you be my friend? Like, it just constantly and it's it just reveals, like, oh, they see these browsers as the entry point to all of their other services.

Right.

And what they don't, you know, especially with search, like that's such, because we have gotten to a point where no one visits, like no one types in www.google.com. Right. You just start typing into the address bar.

Right.

And by default, if what you type is not a URL, it will just take you to a search. And so that's where the traffic for all this comes from and searches such, you know, search advertising is such a lucrative business. And so for chat GBT, like, I guess it kind of makes sense because right now you can sort of Jerry rig your default search engine into for Chrome, which we talked about. I did this right. You can download an extension, which somehow creates a preference that does it because it's not a part of any of the dropdown lists.

Well, I could totally see, you know, you do some searches with search GPT, and it'll give you search results every time, but maybe, like, you go to that recipe page, and the first ten times the OpenAI Browser just gives you oh, by the way, instead of reading all that cruft, here's just the ingredient list and recipe steps, and it just shows you that, like, in a sidebar. And then after 10 of those, it says, well, if you wanna do more, chat gptplus is right here. And, like

You're having more than a 10 course Thanksgiving dinner, so you have to sign up before you can get another recipe.

A 100%, I mean, a 100%, it would be just, like, that maximum search query and then upselling people on on chat gptplus. So I could totally see that, being part of it. I would, I would be interested to use it. Yeah. I don't know.

I do because it's still set as my default. To be clear, I don't know that they want people to use it for search. They just want people to use it. And what they have discovered is the thing people will do on a regular basis is search. They don't they're not as likely to just go to chat g p t to do other as many other things.

You could've just asked me, SSR GPT because I have dealt with 4 possums in my last house, and, I got the big cage. I did tuna fish. I did orange slices. I I was a master at capturing those things after a while. Anyway, that was the old house.

Yes. I mean, I think there's no question Apple would have built a search engine were it not for $20,000,000,000 a year. Right? Right. I I don't think there's any question that Apple and I think Apple is one of the only companies that could build a search engine to compete with Google.

Right.

And so apple, absolutely. There's I don't think there's any question they would have built some kind of a search And maybe they wouldn't have built a, like, maps.apple.com. You'd have searched.apple.com. Maybe it would have just been the Siri search. Like, maybe that would have been the search engine. And to some extent, they have because of what you just said, they have built obviously search. They just have made it more subtle than, you know

And it's not something that they tell you to go do a lot. You know, they don't say, like, use spotlight to search the web. But one of the things we we forgot last week, I was listening to the Verge cast, and they talked about one of the other DOJ remedy suggestions for Google and Chrome was that Google would be required to license their search data, basically, and that they would have to provide an API for a company to build a search engine and or browser with Google's search and click data, which that's really the the value is Google has decades of information of what people click, where they click, how they search, and that is what would allow someone to make a great search engine. That would be interesting if it does go that direction, where the DOJ forces Google to license their click data and, you know, search information, and then OpenAI could actually incorporate that into a browser with ChatGPT, and or even Apple. Like, maybe Apple stops paying Google for the being the default search, and instead just licenses their click data, and Apple starts doing their own.

Yeah. And I feel I wrote an article for Business Insider a couple years ago, which I can't read because I no longer have an account at Business Insider and you fall behind the paywall. And so I'm, like, actually looking at this article in the Google Docs when I wrote it because I don't exactly remember. But the point was that, you know, were it not for that $20,000,000,000 Apple absolutely would have built a full fledged search engine and that they are constantly sort of quietly building it into to Siri. And I I don't know.

Right.

But here, I did wanna say this. I have heard multiple people talking about, and it feels like just glossing over this idea that what the DOJ is asking for is for Google to license out its technology and make search just sort of a platform that anyone could build on top of. And my question is, why would Google do that?

Like, well,

I don't I don't think Google can possibly give up on the search engine. Right. There's just too much invested in it.

Right.

But they're definitely not going to make it better if they have to share it with competitors.

Right.

This doesn't make any sense.

No. It would just die. I mean, they would not up, you know,

I don't know. I just don't understand, like, how the it's it's like you built this thing that makes a ton of money and now you have to make the money making part of it available to everyone else. It's like, I don't. Is that really how the world works? I don't know. I don't get it. We don't live in the EU. Come on, people.

Oh, no. Oh, no. That's this is where we get one star reviews, and they say Jason's not after.

Oh, gosh.

That that's what happens. But, anyway, we're not gonna know any results of that till, like, April, May, and even later of next year. But I wanna say you wrote an article talking about an outage, Microsoft had a huge outage yesterday, Tuesday of this week.

I think it was Monday, Oh, it

was Monday Monday was the outage and they had a very cryptic response which the response is interesting which is what you wrote about. I also think it's funny that they, not funny, but you know they said it on x, you know, that's where they they mentioned the outage and it's like there was another day too, recently when Blue Sky was down for like a little bit and then people were posting about it on x and it felt very early Twitter days.

Where when

you've the fail whale would happen on Twitter and then people would post about it on what Facebook, Myspace, email lists. I don't know. So it was very like almost it felt like full circle deal, but yeah, Microsoft's response was cryptic. So what what did they say?

Well, first of all, this was an outage to Outlook and to Teams. Teams, which I feel like

Everyone's so relieved.

Very happy. Thrilled.

It's the best idea. But I do

think that if you make an email platform that 400,000,000 people use and it goes down, you should do more than just be like, oops. Sorry, guys. Like, they didn't even say sorry. Their response was just so weird. And it is.

I just wanna read the status. This was on x. Microsoft well, the handle is MSFT 365 status, and it says, we've identified a recent change which we believe has resulted in impact.

Not a sentence by

the way. That doesn't make any sense. It goes on, we've started to revert the change and are investigating what additional actions are required to mitigate the issue. For more information, please refer to m0941162 in the admin center.

Okay. I'm on it. Like, and I by the way, so I still have a a Microsoft account just for fun. Everyone should have one just for fun, but I could not I couldn't figure out how to find that. I mean, I looked. Yeah. Well, I know what the admin centers, but I could not figure out how to find that issue anywhere. And I don't have high enough admin privileges in my admin account.

Can I just say I? I got to delete, like, Internet account off all my Apple devices the other day. It was a thing on the side I was doing, and now it's over. And it was a wonderful feeling to be able to delete that Office 365 account everywhere. Because of all the accounts, which I have Fastmail, Google, and one other one, the Microsoft one constantly needed me to re authenticate.

I still use Microsoft Authenticator, but only because I don't know how to move all of the two factor validations out of it. Like, it it just doesn't seem like well, here's the thing. I have I use it because we have to use it to get into the CMS. So I use it multiple times every single day. And so the idea, like, I don't want to spend any bandwidth on figuring like that's it's I know you make fun of me, but I literally have Microsoft Authenticator on my home screen because it is legitimately one of the apps that I have to hit all the time.

There's gotta Jason, it's it's gotta be, like, 5 steps max. You just you go to your account settings, you go to privacy and security, and set up the 2 factor in Icloud passwords.

But do you know how many of these things I have? I have a lot of them I have to set up. I have to change over my

Well, so you use that as your 2 factor?

It is my 2 factor app. Yeah. For everything.

Jason's drafting himself by just flashing. He just flashed all his 2 factor, but they're all expired by the time his airs. Yes.

They're only good for 15 more seconds.

That's the only

person who can do it if we're not streaming live.

If we're streaming live, maybe that would be an issue.

Whatever. You want my Twitter account? Just

oh, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Jason, you should never have done that. That's a terrible idea.

But at the time, there were no two factor.

One password? One password wasn't doing it?

Not when I not when some of these were set up.

Really?

My Squarespace has had 2 factor on it for, like, years.

Oh, yeah. I mean, well yeah. Oh, man. Well, I will say I'm I'm gonna do a video on this eventually, but passkeys are even kind of more difficult to move over. Basically for a lot of websites, you have to turn off 2 factor and then re enable it in order to set it up in a different app, which is a pain in the neck, and most people don't do it.

Well, let me tell you. Well, I was just going to tell you. I have it on good authority

Okay.

And by good authority, I mean, from the CEO of 1 Password that the Fido Alliance is adding, portability to the passkey standard. So you will be able to just eventually move them over. And and 1 Password and Apple are both part of that, the Fido Alliance. I think they're both actually on the board. And so, like, they're committed to it. So there it is come I mean, I literally asked that question as we were headed from the, convention center to the hotels. Like, I have a question.

You guys sound like in the backseat of a car?

We're in the backseat of a van. Yeah. I was just like, I got a quick question for you. And, and he's like, well, here's what I can tell you. It's coming.

75 Tesla t shirts.

Yep. From they just went to the merch store and just started ordering stuff. Like they

didn't buy a car. They just bought t shirts.

Well, you can just put only the users by the put a deposit. Actually, I don't even know if from the Oh,

yes.

If you could buy a car. But my point is, like, they went into my Tesla account, bought a whole bunch of merch, and I'm just like, this is dumb. And so I was able to cancel it. I was able to deal with it, but I was like, I should probably lock that one down.

Yeah. Like it did.

And at the time when I did it, it just asked, like, the passwords app just popped up and was like, do you want us to handle this for you? And I'm like, yes. Apple, please handle this for me.

It does and it hand it handles it well. Although It does

it great.

Yeah. Well, well, I'll make a video about the passwords app because there's still a lot of things I want for that. But anyway, alright. 2 quick 2 quick news things and then we can get to the listener questions. I saw this article from Wired LinkedIn. Apparently, first of all, this headline. I'm sorry if you have some kind of, reaction to this headline. I don't know why you would put a GIF like this in the top.

Without a warning. Come on.

I know. You need you need a trigger warning. This is, like, disturbing. Anyway, if you're listening to the show, just go to this Wired article and well, just be prepared because you're gonna have a visual disturbance.

Right.

On this thing. It's also terrifying because it's just dismembered hands all over the thing. But anyway, apparently over 50% of LinkedIn posts, 54% of longer English language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI generated. I thought this was hilarious. I have to stop sharing the screen. This wired it just has stuff going all over. Stop.

It is very weird.

It is very weird. 54% of LinkedIn posts, and listen, I will say, I try to be active on LinkedIn because for job stuff, you know, whatever. I post over there, But when I I don't scroll because a lot of times when I scroll LinkedIn, I see these long posts, I'm like, wow, that I mean, okay, I get it, but this Wired article now makes a lot of sense. It does feel like people are just throwing, I don't know, a 30 minute podcast they did, or they just did a voice memo, and they're throwing it into AI and say, make a LinkedIn post. And I don't know why LinkedIn especially like, it doesn't feel like that, even on threads or I mean, there's engagement bait on threads, but but it doesn't feel like AI generated.

My feeling about LinkedIn is that it is who, I mean, the only thing that ever happens to me on LinkedIn is I get a massive amount of people promising to give me sales leads. What?

I give names all the time. Constant

constant, like, in in my inbox in there from people who wanna sell me things, and I every time I mark them as, like, spam, I get told by LinkedIn, no. No. No. No. No.

so and it's like LinkedIn rewards these long posts, which most people are probably not gonna sit there and write a bespoke post for LinkedIn. They're gonna take their blog article or their newsletter and just run through chat gpt for it. I do find my LinkedIn DMs are all people that are podcast promoters. They all wanna say, like, we can get bigger more listeners for your podcast. That's what they say. We we can get bigger listeners for your podcast.

Bigger listeners.

I mean, bigger listeners. Okay. Like, bigger ears.

You have small listeners now. We're going to use some big ones.

And then my Instagram DMs in my request, it's all people saying, like, it's all the same message, and it also feels AI generated. Like, oh, I see that your YouTube channel has some views, but your thumbnails suck. Would you like us to make you thumbnails? Or or would you like us to edit video video edit for you?

No. Well, the weird thing for me about Linkedin is, yes, I 100% believe that most of its AI generated. Like, I actually wouldn't be surprised if half of the accounts on Linkedin or AI generated. But like, so it it's an interesting thing for publishers because, like, I'll write an article and then LinkedIn has, like, these featured topics. Right?

like, yeah.

But what's the point of that? Like, how is that even useful? Like, I don't

get it.

Wow. The click through because it's here's the thing. LinkedIn rewards you for basically summarizing your entire article, so I don't need to click through to read your article. You Right. You just had to write the whole thing, which is basically what Elon Musk has said about x.

I don't click any of those expand to read the full thing. Yeah. I just don't I just don't. I actually like Blue Sky actually has I think the shortest character limit now and I I kinda like feeling that again like, alright, let me let me revise this post and actually make it short. I don't know. I think Yeah. I think it's good. Alright. Last, I get more AI news. Zoom 2 point o.

no. This this feels to me okay. First of all, I love the Fast Company headline. Fast Company is the sister publication of ink, just for whatever it's worth. But their their headline is Zoom just rebranded itself to Zoom.

But if

you are like, we went from being called zoom video communications, Inc, to just zoom communications, Inc, like, and you have to write a whole blog post to explain that. I don't really think you accomplished what you think you accomplished. And also this really feels to me like a one trick pony that broke one of its leg. And now it's trying to figure out what a 3 legged pony could do. No, seriously, like this, this is a thing.

like that. No one just FaceTime, like, family and friends.

Sure. FaceTime. Yes. A 100%. But that's different than you have to sit on my computer.

Yeah. I I try to use Zoom the least amount as possible. And Mhmm. Apple doesn't use Zoom. Apple uses Webex. Like when you

Which is just mind blowing because Zoom is better than Webex.

Is it? I mean, Webex is fine for me. I feel like what I I mean, I don't mean I don't like any of them. I'm always curious why Apple doesn't use a FaceTime link which I know they don't have all the controls and like administrative like waiting rooms probably.

If only they knew someone who could add that stuff to their own product.

You can't, but like if you didn't know, you can literally copy a link when you're in your FaceTime call and anyone can join, like a Windows PC. Yeah. Someone can load that in their browser, someone on their Android phone, like you can have anyone join a FaceTime call and you can have, like, 30 plus people in a call, like, you can do that right now for free and you don't get all the controls and stuff and whatever, but, yeah, it's I mean, you can do it, but

Yeah.

Okay, Zoom. I I don't I mean, listen. I don't need an AI avatar talking to another AI. Like, what are we even what are we doing?

Yeah. I feel like if I had to have a meeting with my AI avatar after the fact to figure out what happened in the meeting that my AI avatar went to, maybe it would just be easier for me to go to the meeting. I think I I did write about this recently that it's like, if you're trying to come up with reasons to make it easier for people to not go to meetings, maybe you should have less meetings.

Listen. That, jobs before, when there was a heavy meeting culture. And if you look at what job products are actually accomplished, The amount of hours spent on actually doing things is so small compared to just hours on meeting. Preparing for the meeting, having the meeting, debriefing about the meeting, finding out what actually are the action items from the meeting, because no one communicates clearly often in those meetings. Like, that's that's the job.

I will say that that was the one killer feature of Hey email is that they had the gatekeeper was so good that you get to decide. And if you said, I don't wanna hear from this person, you never heard from them again. And Spark actually does that really well, on the actual soft on the on the client's side as opposed to the server side. It does a really good job of that as well. But I did send you a link from this article that I wrote, which is basically how all of those AI note taking apps.

do. We need to address the robot.

Also, it's weird because it's like if you're in the meeting and like the meeting organizer is like, we're going to record this meeting. Everyone's like, yeah, cool. That's what happens. But when someone else just sends a robot and you know that that's recording, it's it just I don't know. Don't do that.

It feels weird. Yeah. It feels weird.

Don't just send your robot.

Is the robot judging me? Does it have I don't know. Feel a certain way? Does did it laugh at my joke in this meeting? That's really what's important going on. Anyway, alright. We're gonna talk about, our personal tech, which is a bunch of listener questions. We got some great ones. Jason asked me what 3 shortcuts would I keep if I could only use 3, which is just send me on a spiral.

I I wanna just say, this is how you know how well I know my co host is I knew the question now.

That was good. That was that was a good question. But before we do all that, I wanna thank our friends. Now the the sponsorship was not planned. We talked about them, and Jason interviewed the CEO.

Is that the is that the version 2 with USB c?

Yes. These are AirPods Pro 2 with USB c.

Okay.

153.

Which is ridiculous that we have to, like there are 2 versions of AirPods Pro 2, just to be clear.

There are no. But these these are the new ones, and it's cheaper than AirPods 4 with noise canceling, which is 168. But you can get whichever one you want now. And I'll just mention, Anchor this little Anchor cable management thing is really fun. They're little magnetic blocks, and you can put cables through it, and then it's like a cable management thing. And this HOTO screwdriver, have you ever gotten one of these?

No. But I so I watched Steven's video. Steven has a really good video where he basically talks about all of these things. And I did I was like, oh, I might have to put some of these things on my list. So I'm gonna be sending Steven's affiliate links to everyone that I know. And I just buy anything on this list and it's fine. But the one I was interested in was the the anchor power prime power bank. And so I love that you're like, this is how I charge my blinds.

Like, first of

all, the fact that you have to charge your blinds is just everything you need to know about Steven. But secondly, that he bought this thing that you can't take through airport security because they will think it's a bomb for sure.

Oh, for sure.

It's what he uses to charge his blinds. I love it.

It's great, though. It's the anchor prime power banks, 27,000 milliamp hours. I charge my my smart smart shades with it, but I also, I'll it can charge my laptop. It can charge my laptop almost all the way if it's dead, and that's what happens. Like, I go out on the patio, I forget to charge my laptop, and it's dead. I just bring this little block out there.

How about your Tesla? Will it charge the Model s?

No. No. It doesn't it doesn't charge it doesn't charge that.

Just checking.

No. No. Alright. We have a the rest of the show is all gonna be answering your questions because we've got a ton

of questions.

It's gonna be so fun. Alright. I'm gonna answer your question first because this sent me a spiraling. You can only keep 3 shortcuts. What are they? Now for the record, if I go to my shortcuts app right now, it's so buggy I don't even know if it's going to show me a number for all shortcuts because yeah. 708. I have 708 oh the brightness is too far up. Anyway, I have 708 shortcuts right here. There they are.

Wow.

Here on the left. Because what I do is, I can click the little three dots and there's a copy links option, and that copies all the links to the tabs in that tab group. And then I have a shortcut that basically formats the show notes, so it formats all the links that I wanna include. It also has all kind of like the boilerplate stuff I include in every episode, like social.primarytech.fm. I put our merch in there.

Okay. I have 3 also.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

But only because I only have 3 shortcuts. Literally, I have 3 shortcuts. I have a shortcut that will unmount all of the hard drives so that if I'm about to record something or I currently I'm using this Mac mini, but typically I use a laptop and it's better to unmount the drives before I unplug the laptop from the studio display. So I just have one. It just sits in my dock without a dot in it.

Yeah. Yeah. Right? But traffic, I'll I'll check directions for traffic.

Sure. But it is kinda nice. And then the third one is a shortcut that I have that I can that opens just a text field. I can type in an article idea, and it creates a Ulysses draft with that. Whatever I type in there is a headline, and then it adds it to things to my list of articles that I need to write because and that's actually that shortcut is actually my action button.

Just to add it.

Really love is for that to also then add that to my my content calendar. It can. I'm at the work on that. So

Yeah. Yeah. The the Notion actions, they're new, and, you can now add stuff. I will say on that, the one where you text your wife that you're headed home, you know, you could also get your travel time from your current location to home and text that.

I mean, sometimes I might wanna stop somewhere on the way. I'm just kidding. That's not true. That's not true.

Okay. Okay. That's fine. That's fine.

It's not true.

And what

are you

doing in your business? Isn't it so much fun? It's not true.

Well, I should have my location anyway, so she can always she can help me out and see. So yeah.

Alright. This was Jason from the community, which you could join at social.primarytech.fm for free, and we have discussions over there. It's a great time. Over 200 people have joined the community. But he says favorite non Apple tech of the year. A favorite non Apple tech. This is this is tough. I I don't actually don't have an answer yet. Do you know?

Is it gotta be something that was introduced? We can make it up because he didn't say. Something that was introduced this year.

I mean, if it's something that you just use all the time, I feel like that would also apply. They were non Apple tech. I also I was

I probably would go back to oh, yeah. I know what I'm gonna say. Okay.

Go on.

I just have to find Oh,

he's funny.

This is ridiculous, though, that this is my answer. But it's true.

Just kidding.

No. This is my favorite non Apple piece of tech that I use all the time.

The Belkin MagSafe.

This is just the Belkin MagSafe MagSafe thing to stick on the top of my laptop screen. Yeah. I use it. I use it every day. So I do I actually really like this.

I will say okay. So 2 things. I was gonna reach I was gonna reach for them, but I don't know. My headphones might unplug. Let me see what I have over here.

Yeah. But speaking of things that stick to your phone, my other one this is what I should have said. It was this Nomad leather back. This is my favorite thing. I love this.

I am I am now a back only phone user.

It's weird.

I use the I use the Nomad one. I've been using the Sooty for the last week just to switch it up, but I love the back only because it feels like I don't have a case, but I have a case. I will say

And I like it more than I can explain why. Like, that's the problem I have is

when people

are like, why do you like that? I'm like, I absolutely love this. Yes. They're like, why? And I'm like, I have no idea. I cannot rationally explain why it's so great, but it just is.

I will say, I dropped my phone the other day, and, I was getting out of the car, and it slipped out of my pocket, and I had the Nomad leather only back, and I was like, oh no. What is gonna happen? But I had my screen protector on, which I had not been a screen protector guy until this year, but with the back onlys, I've been doing a screen protector. Screen was flawless. Screen protector protected it.

Not really.

You can't even see it.

I drop mine every day, and this thing just pops off the back. Seriously. And it does actually have a little tiny nick in the case.

Why do you have it? Why do you drop it every day? What are you doing?

I drop it all the time.

It's fine.

I don't really know why.

My wife just first all the time. For

a person who never uses a case, I drop my phone more than I should.

But Apple AppleCare is my case.

I do. Yeah. Exactly.

Alright. This one was a good question. I think we need we both need to go to our Icloud subscriptions. This person, Jason on x, was asking how many subscriptions do we pay for? I feel like if we open it up to outside of the Apple subscriptions, we'd be here forever, because we have, like, the streaming services you pay for and then, like, whatever is Frontier, Internet subscription.

I mean, the first 15 of them are all just AppleCare

for all

of the devices. Yeah. Same. Same.

I have all these AppleCare ones. I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I have 8 AppleCare subscriptions,

and

I do the month I do the monthly because I wanted to just go beyond the 2 years. Just keep going.

The one thing we don't have an AppleCare subscription on is my wife's Apple Watch SE, and she just chucked it across the room the other day. And and so now now she's it's actually funny because she's using a, Apple Watch Series 9 that I don't have a use for, but it was it's sized for my wrist. She's wearing a phone on her watch.

It's her phone. Yeah. It's huge. So besides the Apple Care subscriptions, I'm gonna just run through that. I'm gonna run down mine. I have the Apple 1 subscription. I pay for Apple 1 Premier. Apple Podcast Connect, you have to pay $20 a year to offer subscription audio, like bonus audio and ad free audio, so I gotta pay $20 a year for that. Bear, I pay for Bear, $15 a year. A call sheet, I pay for call sheet annually.

losing money on your own show.

I really am. I really am. I pay for the New York Times games because I like to use the app and have my stats saved. I'm paying for key for peacock this month because we wanted to watch The Voice. So I'm paying for peacock for 1 month. I'm trying out Q, the podcast app. I pay for Screens 5, the VNC app. I pay for Sofa, Transcriptionist, VidAngel. You can go listen to movies on the side for that. Watch Smith, underscore David Smith, Apple Watch, app for custom things.

I'm paying for a lot of things I didn't know I was paying for, so this has been both helpful and depressing.

This has been instructive.

I do. I mean, I have an Apple developer account. I have an Apple one. I apparently, at one point was paying for bear, but I did cancel that.

Well, you use Ulysses. Do you pay for Ulysses?

Yep. I use Ulysses. Call sheet, Carrot Weather. Yeah. Jet GPT. Apparently, I pay for drafts, which I'm not gonna do that anymore.

Drafts is a great app. I I use it. It's a great

app, but I don't I don't need it. I don't use it for anything.

Right. Right.

Literally, I haven't opened it since I somebody said you should check out Drafts, and I did. And, anyway, Fantastical, Finalcap Cup Pro for iPad.

Oh, yeah. I pay for that too.

Flighty. Yeah. I I pay for the mods bonus episodes, not because I my children wanna listen to it because they don't they don't know it exists, but I listen to it. And I like I listen. I'll I'll say it again. I'll say that the bonus episodes of mods is my favorite podcast. Just anyway. Thanks. It's true. Fotomator.

Oh, yeah. Fotomator. Okay.

Pocket cast, an app called Transmit, which basically I is just it's like a FTP thing. It's just basically, it's used for putting things on AW or on AWS, like, on Yeah.

Yeah. I used to use Cyber Duck. Cyber Duck was the Mac app we used to.

There you go.

It's free.

TripIt's actually, I don't pay for TripIt Pro anymore because I get a free subscription to that. So let's cancel that. I have 2 subscriptions. Live Ulysses, whisper transcription, widgetsmith, and, YouTube premium, which shows up as YouTube music. And I go to cancel it every single time. And I'm like, oh, actually I want that because YouTube premium is the best deal. Yeah. See, there is.

There's a few things I pay for directly. Like, I pay for YouTube premium, but directly through their thing. So yeah. So that that's some of our Apple subscriptions. That that was one. Now Jason's gonna spend the rest of the show canceling his.

I I already did. I canceled 15 while we were just sitting here, but that's okay. You didn't ask the if not iPhone, what device would you want to use?

Oh, sure. Okay. So back to Jason. Yeah. Okay. So if not iPhone next question. If not iPhone, what device would you use?

I think I would probably use the, Galaxy Fold.

Real? The Galaxy Fold? I thought you were gonna go Pixel.

Well, I think the Pixel Fold would be great, but they haven't sent me one to review yet. So I'm withholding my my judgment on that one.

You would like the Fold, though. You like flipping it out?

Listen. If I'm gonna go something that's not an Apple device, I'm gonna go all the way, and you might as well just get Most expensive. The thing. Android tablet's terrible, and so you might as well get the best 2 in one combination thing you can get. So that's I think that's what I would do.

I would probably go Google Pixel 8 Pro. Is that that's the latest one. Right? Is it or the 9 Pro?

I think they're on the 9.

Whatever the latest Google Pixel Pro is because camera's great. I would want a pure Android experience. That's probably what I would do.

I will just say Yes. My favorite Android phone ever is this OnePlus 8 plus pro

thing that they I

don't know. I can't remember what it's called. It was a terrible name. But the only reason I don't use this as my Android phone to carry around when I don't have a different one is because it doesn't have 5 g. And the thing I most frequently do with the second device, because it's on Google Fi and my phone is on Verizon, is it gives me another option for tethering when I don't have a good option.

Yeah. The one plus had some great phones for a

while. I loved this phone, and it's it's, like, a great size. It's and it's, like, basically the size of the iPhone Pro Max, but, like, half the weight.

Oh, that's pretty slick. Okay. That's pretty good.

So That's

good. Alright. Spencer on x was saying, what is one tech product that you can't do without on a daily basis besides your phone? I would say my Mac. I mean, my Mac is where I get everything done. What would you

I would say my AirPods. I literally use them constantly, and I could use I think I would prefer to use a Windows PC. I would not prefer to use a Windows PC, but I would prefer to use a Windows PC before I prefer to not have AirPods.

Really? I see. I well, because you're

I have them in all day long. Like Yeah. I wear them. And I would actually rather leave home with it with my without my iPhone than without my AirPods. Now that doesn't make any sense because what I'm gonna

do is I'm gonna have to turn the lights. Yeah. I get it. I think see, if it was me this is the John Gruber question. Would you rather have an Android phone and a Mac or an iPhone and Windows?

Yeah. I get that. That makes sense. I I could do it because mostly what I do is type words onto the Internet. And that is a thing you can do fairly well. Although, it does bum me out how many you don't think about this as a Mac user. How many Mac only apps there really are that are so good? Like, Ulysses is not available

Right. On Well, Fantastical is coming to Windows, they actually announced.

Yeah. But, like, Bear is not?

No. Audio Hijack is not.

All the writing apps I'd want to use, none of I'd have to use Google Docs, and I just do not wanna write in Google Docs.

Alright. Alright. Let's switch it up favorite Thanksgiving food. This is from Sean on Blue Sky.

Pumpkin pie.

Apple pie?

Pumpkin pie.

Oh, pomco. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie. You put whipped cream on it? Yes. Of course.

Do you wear pants when you leave the house? Like, come on.

That that was quick. Okay. I would say I'm torn. My mother-in-law makes a, like a almond covered sweet potato casserole thing, and it's really good. It's almost like a dessert. But my wife makes a pumpkin cheesecake, and the pumpkin cheesecake is very good. So I would I would have to go with one of those.

Yeah. The almond thing, I would die for that. I mean, literally, it would kill me. I'm allergic to nuts, but it sounds good.

You're allergic to almonds? Oh, no. No.

I'm allergic to tree nuts. So Oh, well

disregard the package I sent you because it's all

We are we we were walking through we were in Indianapolis. We were walking through this Christmas market. Our kids were going ice skating, and they had, like, the toasted almond things. And my wife so desperately wanted to buy some. And then she's like, but I don't wanna kill you today. I was like, thank you.

Today.

And then, for Thanksgiving, we're having her parents over, and her mom loves, pecan pie.

Oh, yeah.

And so she was gonna make a pecan pie, and she's like, will anyone else eat it? And my wife is like, probably not. Also, Jason would die. Right. And so we bought her, like, a very, very small one. It's, like, it's the cutest little thing. It's but it's weird to think that something so small could just make me dead.

Make you dead. My wife is also definitely allergic to pecans and walnuts specifically. And yeah, whenever there's, like, a roaster around Yeah. Like, Christmas time, like, just forget about it. Yep. Justin on Blue Sky, some people were saying they're gonna pronounce it Blueski, like Blueski?

Nope. That is not a thing.

The logo, like, the image the brand is literally a sky. Like blue sky.

A blue sky.

A blue sky. It's a blue sky. Anyway, Justin on blue sky was saying, what's one of your favorite items you own that doesn't require any power source? This is interesting. So basically, like, your non techie item. Jason's still gonna pull out a techie item. He's gonna say his phone keeps No.

It's easy. My

Oh, the note

my notebook.

The notebook.

Yep. This is my this is the most important productivity tool I have.

Oh, he has to do. Have you tried the remarkable stuff? You ever thought about trying the remarkable?

I reviewed the remarkable one, and I have a friend who swears by the remarkable 2. Okay. And then there's now there's, like, the color one. Right? And so I I would I would give it another shot, but I don't wanna carry another thing. Like, it doesn't replace an iPad for me, and so I don't know.

Yeah. I wanna say something like the little HomePod stands I have on my outlets that hold the HomePod mini.

That's So

that's still it's still connected to the thing. And then I'm really struggling to think about things that I have that don't require power, that aren't also related, to the power. I do like this finder pillow. I put this in a lot of the background in a lot of my videos.

I was just gonna say the merch you're wearing right now is pretty sweet.

Oh, yeah. Ptsmerch. There you go. Primary tech.firm/merch. No. I will say I really love reading a physical book on the patio. And so I'll say my patio chair because I would say the book, but I like reading multiple books. And so it's Yeah. Quite hard to say. I will say one of my favorite books just because, Creativity Inc.

I mean, not yet because we're not monsters, so our Christmas decorations are not up yet.

It's not that early, Jason.

They will be by the end of the day. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. They probably will be up by the end of the day. We, I was gonna look them up, but we do have we just have switches that are at HomeKit compatible. I I don't know what they are.

just does it.

It just does it. Like, And it changes throughout the year. It's, like, perfect. And then for the Christmas lights, we just have all these little switches and, they're all just set to, like, they come on at 5:45 in the morning and go off at 7:30 because everyone's gone. And then they come on again at, like, 6 and turn off at 9:30. So it's great. Yeah. I love it.

That is great. But I don't know I don't know what

they are. I'm gonna look them up while you talk.

Okay. Yeah. Well, I was I don't actually have lights outside. I've been looking at some of the, like, govy. Like, you can get, like, cute like, long house lights, and they're all smart. I haven't gotten any of those yet. But there's Christmas lights that my kids have in their rooms that's, like, strung around their beds, and those are on just smart plugs. They're on, like, the Maris smart plug. They turn on or off. You know, at night, they run their good night, good morning scenes.

No. Yeah.

Do you find what they were, the things?

I'm looking. How do you keep looking? But Amazon, like, freaked out on me. So

Well, I'm gonna show okay. Well, I'm gonna go to the, the threads post, which if you're talking about engagement, we got the most replies here on threads. I'm just saying.

Nice. They are me, Ross, by the way. Smart plug mini. Yeah. I bought, like, a 5 I bought, like, a, oh, I bought 2 4 packs of them. So I have lots of them around.

They're good. They're they're pretty solid.

Like I love it.

Alright. Well, I'm gonna answer, like, maybe 1 or 2 more, and then we'll save the rest for the bonus episode, which we're gonna go record. But I wanna redo because p.mill on threads asked, what's your favorite everyday carry non tech item? Similar question, as before, but I forgot this is what I should say, because I'm so sad about this. This is the Grovemade task knife, and I absolutely loved this knife.

My it's sort of, tech adjacent, so I'm I'm gonna just go there anyway. But I bought this little it's from Nomad, but it's basically just this it could

fit in

a key chain. Yeah. But it's just USB c, tiny little thing that I always have, and it, like, sticks together so it fits in a pocket perfectly. So I guess it's technically not non tech, but it's not like a device or a gadget. But I really like this little guy. He's really useful. I use it all the time.

Do you so, like, you use it all the time, but it's, like, super short. Right?

Like Yeah. But it's perfect if I'm, like, sitting at my laptop and I just need to, like, plug the phone in real quick or plug something else into it real quick. And I don't need, like, one of these super long cables or whatever. And it's also nice because it just always is in my in my bag. So I always have this with me, basically. So

I don't know. Interesting. Okay. Maybe

it's a terrible idea. I don't know.

No. I keep seeing it around. And and it was like in the Verge's gift guide and I thought about it because I was like, it looks really cool. Yeah. I don't know when I would use it, but I don't know.

gets just as hot. It boils.

It boils. It looks just cool. All right. So I think, looking at some of our other questions here on threads, maybe we'll just do this in the bonus episode.

Okay.

But the Apple rumor we're most excited about, how does one go about starting their own website or blog? That's interesting. We'll do that. And then do we use large icons on our iPhone and multiple home screens? Yeah. Let's talk about that

Alright. All in

the bonus episode. So here's what you do. You go to Apple Podcasts, which I pay $20 a year for to offer ad free episodes. It's in my subscriptions. And you can support the show there, although you won't get chapters because I already if if you didn't also if you didn't know, there was a little Easter egg after the end credits of last week's episode where we rant a little bit about Apple Podcasts.