OpenAI Social Network, iPadOS 19 to FINALLY Transform iPad, Apple Ads Are Getting Weird

And remember, an elephant never forgets. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. This week, is iPadOS 19 finally gonna make the iPad more Mac like? Plus, OpenAI is considering building a social network. ChatGPT 4.1 was announced. New video generations in Google's AI tools. Apple Ads is now a thing. Where is that gonna go? And FTC versus Meta, some things that have come out in the court case. Meta doesn't know how to redact their own documents.

It's good. I'm dealing with a rogue hard drive that's making loud noises right now, so I'm I'm trying to unmount it and unplug it because all of a

sudden I'm like, what? Why is

a leaf blower in my office? What is happening right now?

I will say I finally have run into the issue where if I right click a drive that's on my desktop, the eject and erase is right next to each We

had this conversation. I think it's really We did.

And I I hide my drives on my Mac Studio, so I didn't have that issue. But on my MacBook Air, I have not hidden them. And every time I go to eject them, I'm like, oh, I might erase it by accident, which is not a good feature.

And, yes, before you all respond, I know there's, like, multiple steps to that, but I still think it's a real bad thing to put those things next to each other.

It's just scary.

Because they also both start with the same letter.

Exact yeah. E race, e anyway. Do you know where the, the quote was from? It was a little vague, but it says, and remember an elephant never forgets. You know what movie that might be from?

I don't know. I mean, elephant. What how many movies do I know that have elephants in them? There's Dumbo, but I don't think the dumb I don't think it's Dumbo. No? Is it a Disney movie?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Jungle Book?

Show's over. Yes. It's the Jungle Book.

I was

using that. If you

had not said that it was a Disney movie, was gonna guess Jumanji, but I don't know why. No.

No. You get this is ridiculous. Jason's your your percentage win on this is ridiculous.

I have four children. I have seen all the Disney movies all the time.

I mean, so have I. But I mean, that's that's pretty impressive. Yes. It was from the Jungle Book. Alright. We have some five star review shout outs. Mikhail Klimovich from Czech Republic. Thank you for that. Tristan James from The USA and Dylan Wade all gave us five star reviews in Apple Podcast. We are a solid 4.9 star podcast here in The US, so thank you all.

I mean, does have a bad rap, but literally that's what it is.

That's literally zero it is. Okay. I wanna talk about OpenAI and all the social network stuff, but one quick question. I'm curious. What phone case are you using right now?

At this very moment?

At this very well, you know, the one that you're using every day during the

I have gone back to I go back and forth between the suitie back and the nomad leather

Nomad leather back? Case. Oh, the nomad leather case.

No. I the nomad leather back, I will never use again because it started breaking in weird play ways.

Yeah. I don't I don't like that one. I I was curious because I'd been using the Ryan London leather case has a wonderful patina on it right now.

It's the grossest thing I've

ever seen. Just I wanted to show that on camera. But anyway, I I was curious because I also have gone back to

the

You

you copied mine.

I had this first. I had these backs first. This is the Souti I made a whole video about it.

Anyway, I

went back to the Souti back as well, and I enjoy it. I think it's a nice compromise between the two. Although I was at a concert the other day, one of my wife's orchestra concerts. I had this instead of my Ryan Linden case, and the phone slid out of my hand. And the floor was concrete, and there was a slope.

We can just see your fingernails. That's it, Steven.

Sorry. I I tried to manicure them earlier, but anyway, there's there's a slight crack. Definitely not enough for apple care, which that was my other maybe we should say this for a bonus episode, but, like, what level of cracking do you then just?

I don't know. But mine, because of that, like, you can see that nice scratching is happening. And I think it's because I think it's just because of slide like, not having a a lip Bottom lip. Yeah. With a case at the top or bottom that is because I have the same thing at the very top exact like, you can't

tell What is it rubbing on? On.

I don't just my jeans, I guess. I don't know. Like, right there at the top. See all that scratchiness? Yeah. So I've been tempted to just throw it out of the car window a couple times and see why.

Which when I'm not actually Apple, not actually.

I don't know how this screen shattered.

Listen.

I have no information.

It was dropped. You just have to say it dropped. You don't know whether or not it on purpose

or It's true. If you have AppleCare Plus, they will take your $29 and replace that screen as many times.

Well, I don't yeah.

But Except for when it's scratched.

Exactly. Yeah. If it's just a minor scratch, they won't do it anymore. But, anyway

This is more than minor. Actually, I'm kinda hoping it scratches a little bit more because then it won't have to drop it. Because if it were to interfere with face ID, I think they would replace it.

Oh, yeah. A %.

Yeah. So I'll be yeah.

What's

the Hang on. Let me get a key real quick and see

what I can do. Just hammer and nail it. Just right in the middle. Alright. There was a bunch of AI news that we have talk about. I think the biggest news

Do you mean the news was generated by AI?

Or No. No. No.

Just just checking.

No. No. OpenAI. This was a big scoop. Kylie Robinson, who she scooped a bunch of AI stuff this past year for The Verge.

There are literally no benefits.

There this I I don't know about that. Now they said it

could be Yes. Because what we really need in the world right now is another social network. Come on.

No. No. No. I okay.

What space would this fill other than a place for people to more quickly dump their AI generated garbage? I mean, right now, it's a little complicated because you have to copy and paste the garbage from ChatGPT into X or threads or Blue Sky. This would be more convenient because they could just integrate, you know, a button that says post slop to OpenAI.x or whatever. Like, I mean, what I don't understand what we are not we are no longer in the phase of I understand why they would wanna do it because it's a whole bunch more content they can use to train stuff. Like, great.

I'm gonna play reverse devil's advocate, I guess.

So you agree with me?

No. Oh, right. No. So just devil's advocate.

Okay.

So I do not think we need another, like, feed based short form text or image social network for sure. But and this is gonna come up in our personal tech segment. We're gonna have, like, a lightning round personal tech. I have talked to several people just this week who I would not have thought used ChatGPT to the extent that they do, and they just, like, just power users, just using it all the time. And I don't know if you remember when the custom GPTs launched two years ago.

If only there was, like, a site like Reddit Listen. Where people could share that sort of things.

Wait. Be the new Reddit of

I don't under yeah. I don't think that I just like, I know why this is attractive to OpenAI.

Sure.

I just don't understand why they I mean, other than a hedge like, so what probably happens is companies look at and in in JEDGPT's case, this is almost certainly true. If your growth engine is powered by something like, say, x or Twitter at the time, right, then you and that's where you find many of your users. They come to you through these distribution channels, and suddenly that distribution channel has its own competitor, which means that you are less likely to be able to get the same kind of future growth from that, you think, well then I need to create that. And I feel like that ignores the fact that you're talking about a social platform that has hundreds of millions of users,

Right.

Where people are already doing this, you cannot recreate that from scratch. Like, ChatGPT was the fastest growing consumer product tech product ever. Right? Zero to 100,000,000.

But they do have the user base. That's the thing. Like, the install base for ChatGPT, it's been, like, the number one app in the app stores for weeks or months or whatever. And so when it comes to hundreds of millions of users, like, they actually already have that. And if, like, just having the ChatGPT account now means, like, there's now a social tab in your ChatGPT app, Like, they have the users.

Sure. And they have users for a thing that is not like the other thing. Right? True. True. There are, like, other apps that might be really highly downloaded that are also not going to translate very well to becoming a social app.

But think about think about Instagram and threads. One of the reasons why the threads growth was exponential at the beginning was that direct Instagram integration where, like, one tap and you're on threads with your account.

Right. Well, there's a billion people using Instagram.

Right.

And they got something like a hundred million people to use threads. Right. So that's a 10% conversion rate with all of the dials turned to 11 of show threads everywhere, show thread like, do this, you know, all of these sort of dark patterns. And if if ChadGPT has 200,000,000, then that's 20,000,000 at the same conversion rate. That is not an effective 400,000,000. Fine. That's 40,000,000. That's not an effective competitor.

Right? That that's

Nowadays, 40,000,000 is nothing on a social platform. Also, I guess my point is simply, okay. So what are the most popular Macs? Macs right now says it's the second most I'm I'm this can't possibly be true, but I guess this is not a right thing.

Streaming service, Macs?

No. Yeah. But I'm just saying it's just popular iPhone apps. Oh. Macs is not going to launch effective social platform.

No. I I get it.

Neither is Zoom, by the way. Like, Zoom is on this list too. Zoom had a bad day anyway. But, like, my point is, like, just because you are

network, though?

Just because you I guess by the literal definition, it's not a network. Well, its network didn't work at all this week. Anyway, my point is just because you have a large user base does not mean that you have a large like Duolingo. Duolingo has a massive user base base. If they launched a social network I mean, they do sort of have social

What does

that mean? I just don't think it's one of these things is not like the other, and I just don't think that people are gonna what you're describing is more like, yeah, a forum board to post Right. Stuff.

And that's what I'm saying. I don't think it's gonna be a feed based thing, but I but some kind of social aspect where maybe you even have like friends that, you know, you can quickly share your latest prompt or whatever, or like, hey, here's a meme for Studio Ghibli, and you're probably breaking copyright, but nobody cares. You know, something something like that. But

Yeah. Google is by the way, the number three most downloaded free app. How has the social network thing worked for them?

Google plus buddy.

I'm just, I'm just saying. And I think also the reason I'm convinced this won't work. And the reason is the incentives are completely misaligned. The only reason OpenAI wants this is for distribution and for and for training data. And there's no one like, yes, we're happy to give ChatGPT our training data because we're just talking to it. Right?

Right.

But we don't need another reason to give them training data. And if what you're trying to do is get people to post content like, I just I don't see the incentives incentives being aligned to make that real.

Well, will I think even if it's just a place where Sam Altman can now announce things that's not x, I think he's gonna do it just so he can have another platform. Because he doesn't do it on Threads or Blue Sky or anything.

And he does it on X because there's 400,000,000 people on there. And that's how they it's like the best free megaphone for doing that kind of stuff. Right. If he only if he just wants to announce it to the ChatGPT users, he could literally just put the prompt in ChatGPT. There's nothing stopping them from doing that.

You can do a little flag at the top of the app.

I mean, Apple does a really good job of that. Open the settings app. See what they wanna tell you about today.

We're gonna talk about Apple ads in a second. So alright, well, let's jam through the other ChatGPT news. GPT 4.1 has been debuted. I haven't seen it in my ChatGPT apps just yet, but it's the successor of ChatGPT four point zero. Multimodal supposedly has even larger context window, higher token, a ceiling, and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, if you're asking ChatGPT for your three blind spots, number one is that you're asking a large language model and giving it all of your information. Could be a could be a blind spot

possible. Also,

just because it's able to refer to all your past chats, is that really the same thing as memory?

It's the same well, it's just that

All it means is that they enlarge the token window so they can just shove all of that information in every time you ask it something.

Right. That's is that memory.

I I mean, I I understand. I just think it's funny how they're trying to give these humanoid characteristics

Is it

thinking really, like, all it's doing is yeah. Is it really thinking? It's just processing tokens, man. If you wanna think that that's what it means in your brain, but I yeah. You did miss the most important OpenAI news of the entire week.

What was that? What?

Which is that Sam Altman went on Twitter and said, how about we fix our model naming by this summer and everyone gets a few more months to make fun of us, which we very much deserve until then.

That was pretty good. That was pretty that's self aware self awareness. That's pretty good. Also, other quick AI news before we get to Apple, Anthropic is working on a voice AI that you can speak to. So it's gonna be launching that. So Claude will be able you'll be able to talk to Claude. The mode options are mellow, airy, and buttery.

Everyone needs everyone needs a buttery voice assistant to talk to.

I don't know if I want the buttery voice, but

anyway Buttery, is that like Morgan Freeman voice? I don't I don't know

which one. He's not buttery. He's gravitas. That's the gravitas voice.

So what's buttery?

Buttery is Matthew McConaughey? Maybe Matthew McConaughey is buttery?

I would say he's gravelly.

Sure gravelly. Okay.

Sorry. This is a weird thing. This is a

weird is be the bonus content that we're be offering.

Steven Robles is buttery.

Oh, thank you

very Your voice.

Well, this is getting weird. Okay. Also, last AI news. Google Google rolls out, an AI video generator. So if you're on Gemini Advanced, you can generate some videos. It seems like they, did not generate enough frames in all these videos. They're all pretty, jittery. But, yeah, you can now generate video there as well. And I don't know. I'm less optimistic about our future with AI generated video and ads and social media.

You have to convince them that you're not the conspiracy theorist. Right?

I am not AI butter. Okay? I'm not it's not I

think that we we do live in a weird time, though. I mean, what you just mentioned is true. That's that's unfortunate that we have to spend all that energy. But as an as someone who covers AI, we live in a weird time because every time you write a story about a new feature being released, you have to save that story. And about a week later, you have to do a find and replace and change everywhere you put OpenAI and then put Google's name and then do the same thing back and forth.

But you know what you never find and replace with?

Buttery.

Apple intelligence. Apple intelligence. Sorry. I thought I thought you were gonna get there. I mean,

it's true. That's true.

We're gonna cover that too in a second. Alright. So speaking of Apple, let's talk about some Apple news real quick. I just wanna share. I have the USB C AirPods Max and the iOS 18 dot four update, came out a couple weeks ago, brought lossless audio.

First of all Yes. I can't believe you bought those. But, I mean, it can.

Apple sent me these to review. Full disclosure.

I don't know much.

So I gotta send them back.

I do feel better. Thank goodness. But I do I feel like I don't understand the not yours, but the obsession with this because I mean, lossless just means uncompressed. Right? Like, that's literally what it means is there's no data loss to compression.

Right. And also, like, you really get into the audio file stuff, and people will be like, well, if it's not a FLAC file, it's not whatever. And even the lossless, like, I forget the exact numbers, but Apple said, you know, this is capable of lossless up to whatever data rate. And the lossless tracks you get in Apple Music are not at that level. Like, they're they're less. You know what I mean? Like, it's just it's not that high. So, you know, it's I don't know. Cannot tell a You

said you're sad. I guess what I was gonna say is actually what's good about that is the fact that the stream the streaming music that you're listening to must be pretty good quality.

Can't It is it is really good. The streaming quality is is that good. So anyway, that was the AirPods Max. Trigger warning, if you're watching on YouTube, you're about to see some feet. Okay. I'm just letting you know. Jason, YouTube. I don't know if if you saw this ad or not.

I have no idea what's about to happen.

Okay. Well, this this was Apple literally released a whole commercial about nano texture. Did you see this commercial? The guy with the laptop?

I did not, but now I'm gonna have to write about this because

Just wait. This entire commercial is a guy shirtless, sitting on a beach chair on some roof in a city. Half the ad is just sun glares off buildings and him working on his MacBook Pro, and it's a nano texture ad.

I don't know, but I think this is the worst thing they've ever made. Maybe the mother nature video was close. That was pretty bad.

I still stand by. I didn't like the crush ad. I know people have mixed opinions on it.

I think the crush ad was tone deaf, but it didn't make me wanna throw up.

I'm listen. A trigger warning for those listening as well. I'm gonna put, I'm gonna make the chapter artwork the dude's feet in the opening shot, but I I don't I I was very curious to see Apple make an ad like this. It didn't it didn't seem, I don't know, Apple like.

But didn't seem necessary. The word is necessary. Like, there's here's here's why I say that. Nanotexture on a MacBook Pro is such an insanely good feature. You didn't have to do that. Could've just, like, there are so many ways you could have shown it off. And, honestly, I wonder, like, that ad, there are probably some people who think it's brilliant, but I think it was gonna turn more people off to nanotexture.

It's a pretty niche feature too. Like, most people buy a MacBook Air, which there's no nanotexture option.

Sure.

And if you're getting a MacBook Pro, you probably already know that nanotexture is an option, and whether you want it or not, it seems like a a weird feature to advertise.

Everyone who buys a MacBook Pro should buy it with NanoDry.

I don't I don't know if I agree with Everyone.

If you're buying, you should buy it. I promise.

I don't well, first of all, I wanted to check the comments on this, and Apple turned off the comments, which might be telling. Just throwing that out there. I would say I have a Nanotexture iMac, which is an Apple review. I need to

say Not the same thing.

I brought it outside, though. I brought it outside. Even but even inside, the contrast, the color richness, I'm a glossy screen guy. I want the glossy for the best colors, the darkest blacks. I I want it.

It's not OLED. The iMac screen is 52 years old.

Even between my two years old. My studio display and that iMac next to each other, I could see the difference with my eyeballs.

Right. But you know that the MacBook Pro is about a trillion times better display than that iMac. That iMac is literally the worst quality display that Apple makes on a Mac. Worst quality.

Okay. That's fair.

So I'm just saying, like, that is you there's no there's zero comparison that you can make. The MacBook Pro nano texture, amazing. It's better than the iPad. The iPad has OLED, and you can get it with the nano texture. The problem there is, like, the bezel is not nano textured, which I understand why it's not because you don't need the nano texture of the bezel.

Well, I guess I I can't really speak to it because I don't I have not had one. I've looked at it in the store, but that's not the same. I have not used it. So we'll see. But I've been I've been loving my MacBook Air so much. I I don't know if I'll ever go back to a MacBook Pro.

And that's fair. I'm not I would buy one on a MacBook Air in a heartbeat, and if they put it on there, I would say the same thing. Everyone should buy it.

Interesting. Well, I also think the ad is interesting also because people like Parker Ordalani, he's been sharing pictures of all the billboards around New York. And all the Apple intelligence billboards have now been taken down, and Apple is advertising other features, even just iPhone 16 Pro camera and stuff, which is not old, but obviously it's like there's been other products since then. And so, you know, we got this shirtless guy in a lawn chair, nano texture instead of Apple Intelligence. So there you go.

That's what Apple did. They're like, you're gonna you're gonna give us a hard time about this? We'll show you. We're gonna send you this and say, you don't want Snoop Dogg hacking Apple Intelligence on T Mobile. We're gonna give you this instead.

Listen. That Snoop Dogg Apple Intelligence thing was pushed hard. I I heard it on like a ton of podcasts, on TV. I think it was during the Super Bowl too, it might have been, with the Olympics. Was it the Olympics?

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. Because it was Everywhere. Yeah. Was it was everywhere. So speaking of ads, though, I find this interesting.

I mean, there's a lot of ads for other Apple shows, but

Well, yeah. But That's

what was just talking about.

But ads for other things. And so this could be the foray into more advertising on Apple services like TV plus and more services revenue for Apple. So you think we'll see more ads? You think we'll see more ads around

Apple's ad product is so bad.

The Apple News ones seem a little weird.

Understand why they spend all that effort to hide distracting items in Safari. So Apple will let you hide other people's ads

Oh, %.

Even though they're sometimes good. But then you open the Apple News app, and it's toe fungus everywhere. It's worse than that ad that they that's, like, terrible stuff.

I don't know if I've had toe fungus. Hold on. Let me let's see.

I'm it's just the it is the literal worst quality ad product that has ever been made.

I don't know about that. I mean, the ad the punch the monkey ads in the early days of the Internet, those are pretty bad. I'm going to Apple News plus because I'm just curious what kind of ad what's the first ad that I see? Well, that that article didn't have any ads. Do you really see toe fungus ads in there?

I I did for a long time.

Okay. Here's one.

I even I even checked my toes to make sure there was I'm not even talking about the video one, but, like, look at the this quality of this ad is, like, garbage in the middle of this, like.

I mean

And then you see the same ad 16 times in the same article.

It's like,

we didn't we ran out of inventory. Like, what what is this, Steven? Like, it's No. No. No. This to look like

No.

Supposed to look like a New Yorker comic, but it's not. It's just some random

No. This listen. This is the kind of quality ads I see in Apple News. Okay. You ready?

And this

What's the link between aging and your pillowcase?

It's exactly. Thank you. Or or seniors are eligible for a bathroom remodel. What what is this?

I don't know what's more triggering, that shot of the bathroom or the dude in the lawn chair.

Who charges the most for car insurance? And it's like people going like, what are they where are those people going? I almost said something very political, but

No. No. No. No. Not to get

I'm not going to.

No. No. Not to get political, but, maybe that's why Apple ads is now a thing because now they can get better

Who's living in this slum that they need his bathroom remodel? I think you just burn it down and move.

Like, man,

this is the worst.

Apple ads is gonna fix it all. It'll just fix it all.

Those are Apple ads.

I know. I know. But but anyway, okay. I wanna talk about iPad and the possible iPadOS 19 that's going to solve all the iPad woes. That's a little sarcastic there.

Hold on, though. I have to ask one last question. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. This ad that I'm never gonna be able to sleep again. Do you think it's here's what I think. Do you think it's possible that Tim Cook doesn't actually know that these ads exist and that when the revenue shows up, someone's just like, oh, yeah. Don't worry about that, Tim. It's just some money that we found somewhere, and they don't tell him how bad this is.

Here's how it goes. Tim Cook, he opens Apple News. He says, what in the world? Where did this and then someone just slides a piece of paper with the profit of what all the ads from Apple News makes, and he's like, oh, yeah. Okay.

It's like 17¢. Is such a small niche thing for them. That's why the ads are so bad is because, like, no one is actually anyway, I'm sorry. I know you were trying to move on, but

I just No. No.

That's fine. Understand how a company like Apple anyway. I

think we're gonna touch on this because for some reason, you know, I think all the companies know that we release an episode on Thursday because then everybody drops news on Friday. I don't

know if that. Thanks, guys.

You know what I mean? I think that's what everybody they're looking at primary technologies and say, listen, they go on Thursdays. Let's do the bad news on Friday. So we know how we see the game everyone's playing. But one of the things is that information article, which had a bunch of behind the scenes and supposedly people who worked at Apple previously in the AI and the Dingus team, the Hey Dingus.

Yeah. I feel like he might be getting some hopes up because if you just read that, I'm told this year's upgrade will focus on productivity, multitasking, and app window management. And you hear those things and people are like, yes. It's about time. And then it's like, the last time they focused on productivity, multitasking, and app window management, we got stage manager.

Right. Exact. That's all that's all.

Which everyone hates and wants them to change. And then, so I don't What do you Are you optimistic?

Here's the thing. I love my iPad. I edit the audio version of this show in Fairlight on my iPad. I recently did a video about the 20 best iPad apps of all time. There's great apps on the iPad.

What if they I think the definition of optimism is, like, positively hopeful. But

No. I'm sticking with it. I'm sticking with

it. But I so let's assume for a minute that they were going to do all the things that people think that they would want. Would that actually be a better outcome?

I don't know because there is, like, the sliding scale of if you add 10% of the Mac features, let's say you get audio input output, maybe you even get video, which you can do video and just kind of. But let's say you get 10% of those features, there's immediately going to be another level of users that's like, oh, yeah. That's great. But I can't do x, y, and z that I can do on my Mac. And so I don't know if Apple can really win here as far as, like, adding enough features that some power users are placated, but not all power users.

Yeah. I mean, I think Apple brought this on themself because they ran that what's a computer ad to basically positioning the iPad as, like, the next coming of the Macintosh or whatever. I don't even know. Like but let me let me just do a double, you know, reverse double advocate on you and just like, I don't even know. I don't I don't quite understand the obsession people have with not just letting the iPad be the iPad.

I agree.

Is the perfect iPad.

But it's terrible We agree on something.

But it's terrible if what you wanna do is, like, use it as a computer because the Sure. The Magic Keyboard is too small. I mean, it's it's usable. Don't get me wrong.

Right. Right. Right.

Like, as someone who writes lots of words every day, it is not a big enough keyboard to do that on on a on a on a regular basis.

It's also heavy and thick, and it's like

Well, that's what I was gonna get to. So then you have the the 13 inch iPad Pro, which is actually kind of crappy as an iPad because it's like you're holding, you know, I I don't know, an airplane wing in your hands to try to do stuff. But then you put it in the Magic Keyboard and it's amazing as a laptop replacement, but it weighs as much as a MacBook Pro. Right. It's like there's no scenario where you can make this good at that.

Right.

I I don't know, Steven. Why are we here?

No. I think I I agree. I personally, I'm good with what the iPad does. And I guess I'm not necessarily looking for like, it would be nice to when I'm traveling to use the iPad to record. But, honestly, like, with the m with the MacBook Air now, I'm like, that's such a perfect device when I'm away from the studio and it does all the things.

And I think it's largely a a problem of possibility because we go like, well, it has an m four in it. It has 16 gigs of RAM and a two terabyte hard drive.

Right.

So does my MacBook Air. Why can't they do the same things? And I'm like, because they're different products. Like, they they they they're there's a lot of things different about them, and the operating system is probably the main one. Could conceivably Apple just make an iPad that runs macOS?

And if you wanna know how macOS would be on an iPad, download the Screens app, VNC into a Mac that you already own, and try to control that. Yeah. It's it's not easy nor good. So Yeah. We'll see. I mean, Apple, they add stuff every year. I feel like last year, what they added was like math and the calculator app. So we'll see. Let's see what they do this year.

So adding stuff there is doing a lot of work in that sentence because they added you're right. They added math in the they added a calculator app, and you can do math

That's right.

In the calculator app.

Do you do you use your what do use your iPad for?

Well, I edit a podcast every week, so Fairlight, that's a big one. Uh-huh. I use it for a lot of reading and research when I get what I'll often be doing during the day is collecting a bunch of, like, research, clipping it, and that kind of stuff. But it's a lot easier for me to sit down and read that on the iPad because for a lot of reasons. One, I can sit in a comfy chair, just read.

Idris Elba.

But I it was I I enjoyed it. Yeah. The only not to sidetrack too much. My only beef with that show is the whole premise is he's this insanely amazing corporate negotiator. Yeah. And he does almost no negotiating in this entire show.

He he does some talking. I only made it halfway through the season, so in my mind

It's good. I liked it. It was super entertaining. One of those shows that, like, it's just better not to think about that stuff. Just

just enjoy it.

It's like one of the Ryan Reynolds movies on Netflix. It's just like, oh, this is fun.

Yeah. Very true. Alright. Well, we'll see. We're only a couple months away from Dubbed.

Mike Rockwell. Mike Rockwell.

Mike Rockwell. He's not gonna be in charge of Apple Intelligence. But, again, it's gonna take a while. Like, I don't even know if they can announce stuff at Dub Dub. I mean, maybe they'll announce stuff even if it's not even close to being ready or worked on. But, anyway, it's interesting. Look. I'll link the MacRumors article where they have some pull quotes. The information article is behind a paywall, but you can, yeah, read the whole thing there.

I think the real issue here see, I'm sure there was some, like, corporate dysfunction or drama or whatever. That's just the way it works. Like, you can't have a company the size of Apple without having some of that kinda whatever, especially at that level. And for but I think what happened here is that when John Gianandrea was hired away from Google, you know, he's a sort of a superstar Yeah. In his field.

Oh, that is true.

Remember that. No. $20,000,000,000. We're good. You guys can be the search engine. It's cool. We'll just we don't wanna compete. We'll just take him. Can we just have him Right. Just have Right.

Right.

But you but you can't break all of people's shortcuts and routines and all these. It's it is a very complicated problem. And I just think that if there was any dysfunction, it was not recognizing that the group of people that you handed it to was, were incredibly capable and incredibly talented at thing a, and we need them to do something completely different. It would be like asking John Turnis to, to be like redesign iOS for iOS 19, like incredible engineer, not his sweet spot.

Or like Johnny Saruji to redesign iPadOS. Right. We want him making chips.

Sweet demo, but I just feel like, you know, you don't you don't have Luke Amaistri, who I guess is not actually the CFO anymore, but you don't have him coming in and, like, wiring up chips either. Like

What? That was the other thing in in the information article. Mhmm. It talked about how Tim Cook seems to be conflict averse. Like, don't bring him conflicts.

Yeah. I mean, in Tim Cook, he's like pretty you say he's conflict averse. If you just remember the last major conflict, it was when he fired Scott Forstall. Like, so he probably has some PTSD from he he would prefer to not be fostering those types of competitive rivalries and and just, like, you guys you guys are like, we're paying you millions of dollars a year. You should be able to work this stuff out.

I'm sure he's savage in, like, a negotiation, though. I'm sure he's had lots of negotiations with, like, factories and fabs and all that stuff. Like, he's probably a monster there.

Sure.

That's conflict of a sort. So

But he doesn't want he doesn't want personality conflicts where where two of his leaders are coming to him, and they're like, we don't agree. We can't get along. We think each other is at at at fault, and you figure it out. He's like, I I got too much

to do. He's in his office wearing his Apple Vision Pro for that vanity fair. I'm get

out of here. Listen. I'm too busy approving Apple News plus ads in my Vision Pro. Like, I have real things to do. I got listen. I don't have time for this. I have to use every single one of our products every day.

Every day. The Apple Watch SE, the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra two,

the

The

MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro, the

The iMac, the Mac Mini, every single one. Just imagine it's just all lined up along a wall. If you're not sure if you don't know the context is in some interview, Tim Cook was like, use every Apple product every day. And so it's like, just along the wall, he's got the base model iPad. He's got the iPad Mini, the iPad Air, the iPad Pro.

What do you think he uses the Mac Pro for, honestly?

Oh, it's good. He just like has a He has one Final Cut project just sitting there, and every day he just says render. Just figured maybe

it was, like, how they air condition his room because it's the only basically, only one with a real fan in it anymore.

Or maybe Heats. Maybe Heats. Maybe they had that thing just chomping away at

Cranking away at AI. That they're doing Apple Intelligence on that thing.

That's here's this is the rumor. Apple Intelligence is running on a single Mac Pro in Tim Cook's office. That's why.

That's definitely what it is.

That's definitely what it is. Okay. Let's jam through a couple things and get to a personal tech. There was a bunch of a tariff back and forth last week, and how it has now ended up is that smartphones and computers are now exempt from the latest tariffs. And so iPhone prices looks like they won't go up or Mac prices for now.

Except for that Trump says that they're coming.

They might they might still

be coming. Going into a different bucket. Yeah. He's like, they're definitely coming. Nobody's getting away from this.

That's the news. And I just need to, for a second, talk about the CNN page because now that I'm taking a closer look at it, yeah, I'll link this page, but I don't know if this is gonna change. So you can go over to youtube.com/atprimarytechshow, go to this chapter and see. I just need to read some of the words on this page because in the top middle, there's a fear and greed index. I don't ever spend time on CNN business, but apparently

It's a contrast between what is driving the market right now.

Right.

Greed, which is we see an opportunity and a bunch of people are trying to pounce on the opportunity. Ah. And fear, which is we're selling everything because we don't know what's gonna happen.

So is greed the positive side of this speedometer?

Greed means the numbers go up.

Oh, okay. Okay.

Fear usually means the numbers are going down.

Well, right now, we're at a 19 apparently, and we're

Which is extreme fear.

Extreme fear is driving The US market. So that's right there at the top of CNN business.

By the way, extreme fear, probably not good for the market.

Probably not good for the market, which right to the left of that, it's all red. Dow Jones, S and P, and Nasdaq is all down. But then there's start the day here. This is a banner at the top of the CNN page, and it says Trump administration ramps up attacks on Harvard. Island wide blackout hits Puerto Rico. Colossal squid captured on video. Like, just look

just Are those things related? Like, did the squid take out all of the power in Puerto Rico?

That's exactly what I

I was And Trump blamed Harvard for it?

I was just glancing around this page. I was like, black eyed in Puerto Rico colossal squid? What? And then

Right below that, Taco Bell is bringing back a wildly popular they're gonna have squid tacos.

I was just that's the next thing I was gonna say is, like, and then under that, Taco Bell bringing back a menu. What is happening on the CNN page? This is messing my I can't even look at this anymore.

Here's the thing. The feeling you have right now is the way that everyone who has stuff on a boat from China feels right now. They have no idea what's gonna happen. I was listening to the, I think it was the pivot podcast where, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway were talking about how, like, there are literally people who, like, sell furniture, have boats full of stuff. This you know, let's say you have a hundred million dollars worth of stuff sitting on a boat somewhere.

And I know there's been, like, cars just sitting at ports so they don't have to import them yet, trying to

see Yeah. They're waiting to see if they can, like Waiting to see. Will this change? Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe this giant squid that caused an island wide blackout will save us all.

See, didn't even do it. Is if what you mean is take out the power of the entire country and reset, maybe. I don't know.

Have we tried turning it off and back on? That's what

we're doing. Unplug it and plug it back in and reboot it.

That's that is CNN, I don't know what you're doing. We need to mention the FTC and Meta. There's an antitrust lawsuit happening this week. Mark Zuckerberg is testifying. There's a a bunch of news that came out of it. One is there was some

redact You need unlimited access to the Washington Post, one of them.

I wanna talk about this in our bonus episode because I need to know. Think I need to finally start paying for some of these news websites, and I need to know which I need to pay for. So anyway, I'm gonna link a bunch of Paywald stuff, then there's a Verge article, which may or may not be Paywald. I don't know how depending on your Verge reading. But there's been there were slides or whatever that were supposed to be redacted.

Or do they?

Well, that's the other thing. This could have been intentional. Hard to say. But this was one of the slides that actually is quoting one of Apple's director of product marketing, Ronak Shah, at least at the time of this data was taken. But this is talking about use case of messaging apps and iMessage.

I mean, it must be because messages is not on anything else.

Right. So messages is, like, 88% of devices are being, like, used on devices. In the and I just found the next ones now to be interesting. So messages, 88%. Instagram, the second at 48%. Facebook Messenger under that, WhatsApp under that, and then Snapchat. So that's three meta messaging apps that are in the top five right under messages. So

By the way, pro tip, the way you should do this is you open the thing in preview, you add your shapes, and then you take a screenshot of that.

That's how you do it, at least.

That's how you redact it.

That's how you do it.

Thank you. You're welcome, Meta. Let me just help you out here.

There you go. I will link to this is the article if you wanna read kinda more. Alex Heath put together kind of like the most interesting things that Mark Zuckerberg has said during this court case. He's been there all week listening to it. There's a very funny picture of Mark Zuckerberg with sunglasses in the back of a car.

Well, let's okay. Here's what I wanna say about this. I'll try to keep it very brief. One, and I'm gonna say something political, Steven. I'm sorry.

Okay. That's fine.

This case is stupid. Also meta equally stupid. Like, this is one of those things where no one looks good. I mean, clearly, like, the best part of the reporting is how it's just obvious that Mark Zuckerberg donated a million dollars to the inauguration and and settled the case with with the president for $25,000,000 because he was hoping that Trump would overrule the FTC or FTC and agree to settle this case for $450,000,000. And the FTC is asking for, like, 30,000,000,000.

Right.

The the whole thing is, like, nobody looks good. Nobody's gonna come out a winner. I did hear an interesting point, which is that typically speaking, breakups like this are very uncommon because that's what they're asking for. They're asking for them to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp or at least Instagram. They're very uncommon.

Okay. Thank you for that.

Is that fair? Like, is that a fair assessment?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

Is it political if you're like, everybody's dumb?

I don't know. You tell us. Leave us a five star rating and review, and tell us if saying everybody's dumb, is that too political. I'm gonna link your article too, Jason, before we get to our primary or personal take, which is Zoom. Thanks. Zoom had an outage. Spotify also had an outage last week. But, yeah, I don't use Zoom. Use see, let me say this clearly. I use Riverside for all of my meeting needs. Yeah.

All of your meetings are on Riverside because you work for Riverside,

Brad. That's exactly right. Full disclosure. Full disclosure. I personally pay for this account, though, to record primary technologies.

Just wanted to be clear

about as well. Saying. Just saying. But, yeah, Zoom Zoom had an outage, which is, like, what half of remote work runs on.

Yeah. And I think it was what what was kind of bananas about it is that apparently it was because of some, like, domain name misconfiguration. The Zoom.US domain name was like I don't know. There's something complicated it had to do with GoDaddy and some other company. They, like, had misconfiguration.

That's the first mistake. Can I just say I bought a few domains this past week as you do? Don't buy don't don't buy domains from GoDaddy. Okay?

Hover's a good place.

Hover.com. They've never sponsored me for anything, but I own 1,000 domains from hover.com.

Well, the irony is that it doesn't matter. They could sponsor every single episode, and they'd you'd still be in the red with them probably.

Probably.

It doesn't even matter.

Dot FM domains are expensive. Hundred dollars a year.

But But it was just this they, like it was the stupidest thing, and it but it took out, like, everyone's Zoom because you could if you can't resolve the domain Zoom.US, you can't you can't resolve any Zoom link.

Right. Right.

That was the genius of Zoom was just you could click on these links and you could just open it and that kind of thing. And so but I I I wrote about it because I thought, like, you didn't even you you minimized that this was just a minor technical glitch. But if you were somebody who was hoping to have a job interview on a Zoom call or meeting with a potential new client as a salesperson, and you couldn't have that meeting

stuff

and you missed out, the impact is not negligible. It's like, that is the worst case scenario for you.

So yeah. Inter interview, especially that'd be terrible. Yeah. So Zoom. Listen. This is why everybody should use Riverside. But no. No. I was gonna say Webex, I was like, no. Need to say

it's a job. Okay.

It's It's good It's Not really.

They don't actually sponsor this podcast, but I don't we would have preferred Steven not lose his job.

Sure. That's good. Personal tech. A few things. One, Notion Mail is out there, and you can try it for free. I have not tried Notion Mail, but you did? You've been trying?

Yeah. I tried it. It's fine. It's good. I mean, like, design is nice. Yeah. It's very Notion y.

Very Notion. It only works with Gmail accounts right now.

That's and that does that's not surprising because Notion calendar also only works

with email.

Yeah. But, like, Notion is quietly building up a competitor to everything. Right?

That's

true. They're competing with Google Workspace. They're competing with Microsoft three sixty five. They're competing with I don't know. Like, is a CRM next? We'll see what

comes up. Management? I mean, is product management also?

Asana. Yeah. They're you can publish websites with it. So they are competing with all those things. So they are just quietly, you know, competing with basically everybody. So it it is cool. I I can't say this for sure, but I do think that you can only add

like, if

you have in whatever you use to create your Notion account, I think that's the only email address you can attach to it. I couldn't figure that out. But, I mean, the interface of it is nice. Like, I like it. It's it doesn't I I was able to add two inboxes. I don't believe there's any unified inbox. I'm looking at it right now. Sorry. That's why I'm doing this. So you see them separately, but that is that's becoming more common.

So I do like their design language. You can get the Mac app now. The iOS app is coming soon. And I did see this one thing that made me like, which is that you can basically compose an email like you do in Notion, doing like forward slash and then different blocks and Yeah. That's kinda sweet, honestly. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So anyway, I I don't have a Gmail account, to try with it because I use Fastmail. But

You don't even have a personal Gmail account?

I do, but I don't use it for email. I don't ever check the email.

I mean, maybe you should.

No. No. No.

It's

it's too far gone. It's too far gone. Like, it's it's gone away. Fastmail. I just renewed my Fastmail subscription. Not a sponsor, but I use Fastmail. I wanted to talk about two well, alright. Two quick things. I got my Instagram back. It finally let me change my birth date. I don't think anybody from Meta actually helped me. I think just the statute of limitations passed, and I was able to change my birthday again. So I have my Instagram account back. It's public. That's cool.

Steven, I, the other day so in a Tesla, you can turn on sentry mode, which keeps the cameras on when you're not in the car. So it's like a security feature. You have all these cameras on the outside of the car and they keep track of it. When when you turn on sentry mode, on the screen, if someone approaches, it shows this giant pulsing red eye. It's actually terrifying. I I was gonna I could have you seen this thing? Seen this eye?

I know. I I don't know if I've seen the eye.

I was just looking really quickly to see. I can I can share this photo because there's I won't dox myself?

Oh, you mean on the screen?

Yeah. On the screen. Have you ever seen what

I'm not looking at images. I'll share these images now. There's a bunch of, like it's,

half. It's actually actually terrifying.

It's the 2,001 Space Odyssey. It's terrifying.

So I got into the car the other day, and Sentry mode was very much not on, but my wife had turned it on previously. So I I walked in. I got in the car, and it wouldn't go away. Like, it it just was sitting there. And I'm like, what is happening to my car right now?

And I need to I think you try it more often in more places because I have a bunch of use cases, like, for my video and stuff and this podcast. But, yeah, in real life situation, I'll try more.

Steven, I use ChadGPT more often than I use the VisionPro, which is That's saints. But but I use the Vision Pro every day. I use the Jai GPT, I don't know, 30 times a day.

Yeah. That's wild. It's crazy. Anyway, lastly, find my, you gotta find my story. I just wanna say real quick. I dropped my AirPods Pro two the other day in my bedroom, but they went flying as they do. You know, they just scatter in all directions, the actual pods. One, could see on the floor. I got that. The other one, could not find. But apparently, if you go into the Find My app, I think this is just AirPods Pro two, but you can actually just see individual buds

Yep.

If they're out of the case. And it will say out of case, here's the bud, And you can have it make a sound, just the individual bud, which is cool. And you can do the proximity find my. It doesn't show you the arrow on screen, but it does show you just like the circle and how many feet away it is. And you can do that with just the individual buds or the AirPods Pro case, and I found the other bud.

I think it's fair to say that low key find my is one of Apple's best features that's ever released.

I think that's not When

you judge it by the criteria of the, it just works philosophy of like, this thing just improves my life in such a simple way, and it does it in such an intuitive way that I don't have to think about it. Now there's one drawback to Fine Mine, which is my problem that I had this morning, which was my office, as our listeners probably know, is a shed in our backyard. I'm sitting in a shed. So the house is

like It's a nice shed. Don't feel bad for Jason if you've

never seen mean, can see it. It's a very

nice shed. Only

a nice shed because I spent a lot of time and effort and money

You built it. Making it

a nice shed. Yes. But I it's not just like where the the lawnmower's sitting over here in the weed whacker. You can't see any of that stuff. It's just right here.

It's five gallon buckets.

It's that's not it at all. But it I mean, it's heated. Anyway Yeah. But I couldn't find my keys. Right? So I locked this shed because there's a lot of stuff in here I don't necessarily want people to come in and take. And I couldn't find my keys, and I was like, oh, yeah. There's an AirTag on my keychain. Of course. So I opened the FindMy app, and the only thing I don't love about FindMy app, I understand why this is the case, is the AirTags do not update in the in the background.

Did it show you the arrow on screen, though, and it pointed you in

For AirTags. Yeah.

Yeah. For the

AirTags. The downside of the AirPods thing, by the way, is if your AirPods fall out into a laundry basket, that little beeping is not gonna help.

No. It's yeah. It becomes very difficult.

You're spend a lot of time wondering where where is

it? I just wish the arrow thing worked on more things, like MacBook Airs and Pros, Vision Pro, even iPad. Like, put the arrow on screen for all of that. Not just like, it's about 20 feet away. Like, point to

How often do you lose your MacBook Pro?

I mean, never. But Okay. The time but that's the thing. The time you do, you would like to to show you an arrow on screen.

But if you okay. So the reason for the arrow is you might have lost it under a couch or in a couch cushion or in your in your cope. This happens to me, and it's actually really confusing because the coat closet in our hallway and our main or our walk in closet for the primary bedroom are back to bed. There's a wall between them. Right?

a Right.

Right. It's about a hundred foot well, not a hundred foot. It's like a 25 foot walk around that way, but it's just pointing right there. I'm like, is it in a coat pocket or is it in my sweatshirt and what is it? But, yeah, the but the the reason for it is the the if it was your Mac, the point is get you in the right room and hopefully your eyeballs will just do the rest of the work. Or if it's an AirPod, you need a little extra help or an AirTag.

But even even, like, on the grand, like, find my network deal, you know what I mean, it would be nice. Like, there's no you

want point to point directions to my wife's office to tell me, like, this is how you get that. You can do that, actually. You can just be like, oh, yeah. Take me to that location.

That yeah. That's true. Anyway, in my mind, when it works, it's great, and it does work reliably most of the

Almost all the time. Yeah. It's just just be aware. There is a slight lag in the Yeah. Updating of AirTags.

Yeah. That's right. Alright. For our bonus episode this week, I'm gonna ask Jason about aliens. But I'm also gonna ask him what news I should subscribe to. But it's

We're gonna I feel like those two things are more correlated than they should be. I think we need to get you some better news sources, Steven.

They are very connected as far as that. So gonna be our bonus episode. We're gonna go record that now. If you would like to hear it, you can go to join.primarytech.fm, support the show. You get bonus episode every week, an ad free version of the show, and there's gonna be some future benefits, which we would love to hear from you.